#there are certain limitations but not many — for good or ill | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blossom-hwa · 2 months ago

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a very fine line, indeed [6] | c.bg

pairing: Beomgyu x fem!reader genre: fluff, angst, enemies to lovers, regency era!au, nobility!au warnings: cursing, period typical misogyny word count: 11k notes: — updates every M/W/F at 8pm EST until the series finishes — inspiration taken from an amalgamation of different bridgerton stories - let me know what easter eggs you find! — story takes place in the same universe as my duke!yeonjun and earl!taehyun fics - check out the link to the series below for some more easter eggs :) In a society where it only takes a year for a young woman in search of a husband to be considered out of season, it is no wonder that by your third year out, you are desperate to marry. Known as one of the beauties of the ton, such a task should not be difficult for you—but with an absent father, no dowry, and a reputation centered around your inability to keep your mouth shut around one certain Beomgyu Choi, your prospects are more limited than you’d like. While you cannot recover your family or your wealth, however, the one thing you can try to control is your reputation. So when the third season rolls around, you resolve to keep your distance from Beomgyu Choi, your childhood enemy, and the man you hate most in the world. Enter Beomgyu Choi, second son of the Kensington Viscountcy, one of the most eligible bachelors in the ton. His older brother, cousin, and good friend have all recently married, leaving the mamas to salivate at his doorstep for the chance of marrying one of their daughters to him. When Beomgyu walks in on a particularly traumatizing moment between you and one of the most unsavory men in the ton and learns of your desperation to marry, despite your history of enmity, he proposes you a devious deal—to pretend to court you. It seems like a winning situation for both of you—more gentlemen will take notice of you, enhancing your prospects, and he will have the ton’s mamas off his back—and so, despite your misgivings, you agree. With you hell bent on marriage and Beomgyu completely indifferent to the concept, even independent of your hatred for each other, it seems unlikely that any sort of true affection will bloom. But as you begrudgingly put aside your differences to spend more and more time in one another’s company, and as you grow to know each other beyond your ill-conceived preconceptions from childhood, you begin to realize that perhaps you two have more in common than you had once thought. And as your faked acquaintanceship becomes more truth than fiction, a friendship beginning to bloom most unexpectedly— Perhaps you no longer need to convince the ton of the veracity of your courtship, because anyone with eyes can see that it is true. Part 5 >> Part 6 >> Part 7

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When Beomgyu wakes up in the morning, he decides he is never going to sleep again.

Not truly, of course. Even in school he was never able to stay up all night to study, something Taehyun did often with ease. But if his sleep is going to be as restless as it has been for the past two weeks, then he’d almost rather not sleep at all so that the dreams can’t find him.

The dreams are what really are going to kill him.

How many times will Beomgyu have to relive that kiss—the moments before, the awkwardness after? How many times must he feel your lips against his, hear your little moans into his mouth, see your eyes fluttered shut as he holds you to him closely, so closely? Not to mention when his dreams go a little further than reality did and he ends up even closer to you than he ever could have imagined before…

God, he thinks about you too much. Dreams about you too much. Through his dreams alone Beomgyu almost thinks he could trace the planes of your face, your neck, your torso, onto paper, or shape it from a lump of clay. He sees you nearly every day, if not in person, then through visions at night.

It’s torture.

Beomgyu groans, rolling over in his bed. He’s never thought of a single person this way—never wanted anyone like this—and it’s screwing up his whole life. He doesn’t know how he survived the Bridgerton ball without you noticing anything. The entire time you were dancing, he could hardly stop thinking about kissing you right then and there.

He was so grateful, too, when you spoke to him of being friends. Of truly leaving your grudges in the past, and continuing to see each other not for the sake of the deal but just for being friendly with one another. He certainly didn’t have the courage to say anything about it which just makes you even more admirable in his estimation, not to mention that you did all that while apparently being terrified that he would view you with derision if you tried.

Did you enjoy his company that much? Did you truly like him so?

Even the idea that the answer to those questions might yes makes him want to smile like a child in a candy shop, and that terrifies him.

All of this terrifies him. It’s hardly an exaggeration. He’s come to so many realizations about you over the past few months that just thinking about all of it gives him a headache. You are not the person he once believed you were, just as he said at the Bridgerton ball. You are vivacious, you are kind, and you have a wicked sense of wit that keeps him easily entertained. You are intelligent, honorable, and lovely not only on the outside, but in your heart as well. You are far more than the arguments you used to have in years past.

Beyond that, though, you like him. You wanted to be friends. And you were brave enough to admit it, even with years of hostility and distrust behind you, which means you cared for him on a level deeper than perhaps either of you ever believed possible. Beomgyu should feel over the moon because of this.

Instead, he just finds himself wanting more.

It’s the stupid kiss’s fault. He resists the urge to throw his pillow across the room. He shouldn’t have offered, shouldn’t have played along, shouldn’t have gone with you until it was too late, but—it wasn’t supposed to mean anything. You were going to stop seeing each other in less than a month. It shouldn’t have mattered to him or to you.

Yet here he is, dreaming about the kiss, and wanting something more than friendship.

Wanting. Beomgyu isn’t accustomed to want, as shameful as it is to say. He’s always been provided for, has always been given access to his basic needs and far more. He had a loving father and still has a loving mother. He has a wonderful brother, though he’ll never admit it, and his sister in law has only ever brought good things to his life. He has a good cousin. He has very good friends. He has never wanted anything more than what he currently has.

But now…he wants you in a way that friendship won’t fulfill. And he doesn’t know what to do about it.

He still doesn’t know what to do about it later that night when the family carriage pulls up in front of Lady Park’s home for a dinner party, the lights in her windows bright and warm and in stark contrast to the anxiety that’s been building in his blood throughout the entire day. You’re supposed to be here tonight and if Beomgyu knows anything about Lady Park, she’ll seat you two together for her own entertainment. Half of him rejoices. The other half of him wants to keel over and die.

“You look constipated,” Soobin says as the carriage rolls to a stop. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” Beomgyu scowls, which probably makes him look even more constipated. He can’t tell Soobin that he’s nervous, because then he’d have to explain exactly why he’s nervous, and he isn’t ready to go into that with anyone. Not even himself. “I’m not constipated.”

“Good for you.” His brother’s wife smiles at him serenely and Beomgyu wonders exactly why he wanted them to get together so badly. They’re both menaces to him and to society and combined, they have some synergistic effect on him that’s more than awful. He almost wishes they would go back to pining for each other in secret. At least then they didn’t have time to tease him nearly as much. “Settle your expression so it doesn’t look like it, though, or Lady Park is going to have a field day with you.”

Beomgyu does manage to relax his face, but his mood improves very little as they enter the hall. In fact, it takes a downturn as he looks around and can’t find you among the small crowd of people milling about the entryway. On one hand this is a good thing—he doesn’t have to deal with your eyes staring back at him, your terribly kissable lips curving into smiles and frowns and every other micro-expression you have in your arsenal— but on the other hand, seeing you is half of the reason he’s here.

“Mr. Choi!”

Ah. And there’s the other half of the reason.

Beomgyu pastes a smile on his face that isn’t entirely faked as Lady Arina Park comes walking up, her cane thumping ominously on the ground. “Lady Park,” he says politely, bowing in greeting. Soobin and his wife have somehow managed to vanish and he curses them with every ounce of his being for leaving him to deal with her alone. “Thank you for inviting my family and I tonight.”

“Of course I invited you.” Her eyes glint, and Beomgyu is reminded why he finds this old woman so terrifying. She must be in her seventies or even her eighties, but even in her old age with her stooped walk and her cane, she remains as sharp as ever. Beomgyu shudders to wonder what a force she was in society when she was younger. “You, Mr. Choi, are one of the only people in this ton with an ounce of wit in their head. You were one of the first people I put on the invite list, along with that girl of yours…Miss L/N.” She clicks her tongue while Beomgyu just blinks. “What are the chances of you two bringing down the house tonight, Mr. Choi? Can I expect some marvelous entertainment from the two of you?”

“…We’re courting, Lady Park,” Beomgyu gets out. He’s almost certain she knew this already.

“Oh, I already knew that.” She waves her hand dismissively and Beomgyu just feels stupid. “I wanted to hear it from your own tongue. I could hardly believe it when I found out, you know. Your, ah, discussions, had been my greatest entertainment in years.” She sighs, as though remembering some good old days, then leans in to Beomgyu almost conspiratorially. “Though I suppose it makes sense. The line between hatred and love is always finer than anyone believes it to be.”

“Love?” Beomgyu splutters. The wit that Lady Park mentioned before seems to have abandoned him entirely as he tries to remember how to breathe. “Lady Park, that is hardly—”

“Ah, is that your lady?” Lady Park’s eyes narrow on something behind him. Beomgyu turns to see you entering the hall, looking vaguely uncertain until you meet his eyes. Your expression breaks into a smile that only grows wider when you see the woman standing next to him.

“She’s hardly my lady,” Beomgyu says, though he can’t hide his own smile at seeing you.

“Delusion doesn’t suit you, Mr. Choi.” And as he’s reeling from that statement, she thumps her cane against the floor and grabs his arm with surprising strength. “I believe I will accompany you to her. I should like to speak to the girl myself.”

Beomgyu tries to convey his apology through his eyes as the two of you draw near, but you don’t seem to be the slightest bit terrified or even hesitant to see Lady Park hanging off his arm. “Lady Park. Mr. Choi.” You curtsy, the smile on your face unwavering. “Lovely to see you both.”

“And lovely to see you too, my dear.” Lady Park reaches out to give you a fond sort of pat on the cheek and Beomgyu just gapes. He’s never seen her outwardly display such affection before. “I was just telling Mr. Choi that I should like to see some entertainment from the two of you tonight.”

You blink. “Um, Lady Park. We are courting.”

“I know that,” she huffs. “Why is it that both of you seem to think I am daft?” Before either of you can apologize, though, she’s plowing on with her next comment. “Watching you interact is already marvelous enough. I never thought I would see the day that you two could stand in the same room civilly, let alone be courting. And I have been in society with you two for over twenty years!”

Beomgyu has no idea what to say to that. Judging by your expression, you don’t seem to either.

“I could shed a tear.” Lady Park lets go of Beomgyu’s arm—damn, he didn’t realize how tight her grip was until it was gone—to wipe something away from the corner of her eye. Beomgyu would bet five quid that it was fake. “That two of the people in this ton with a reasonable amount of wit should court and potentially raise families that will be surely be the ton’s sole source of intelligence from now and forever on…oh, if I were capable of crying in my old age, I would already be doing it by now.”

You open your mouth, then close it. Beomgyu would try to help, but he is still trying to process the fact that Lady Park expects you two to raise a family.

“With all due respect, Lady Park,” you finally say, a carefully blank smile affixed to your expression, “I think you might be getting somewhat ahead of yourself here.”

“I am never ahead of myself, Miss L/N.” She sniffs. “I say what I see how I see it.”

For some reason, Beomgyu almost laughs. “That was never in doubt, my lady.”

“Take care to keep it that way.” She gives him a threatening little smile that, despite her age, makes Beomgyu want to take a step back. “Well, Mr. Choi, Miss L/N, I should love to stay in your company for the rest of the night—” Beomgyu hardly bites back a shudder—“but alas, my duties as a hostess precede me. Mr. Choi.” She turns to him sharply. “Do take care not to offend Miss L/N. I do not believe I need to be the one to tell you that letting her go would be the biggest mistake of your short life.” With a parting whack of her cane to his calves, she disappears into the crowd, leaving Beomgyu to stumble forward with the force of her smack almost right into you.

“Careful,” you say, steadying him with a hand. Your eyes twinkle. “How hard did she hit you?”

“Hard enough,” he mutters, trying not to fall over again at the touch of your skin against his. God, between Lady Park saying he’d be remiss to lose you and her speculations about a possible family, he’s losing his mind. “Apologies for letting her accost you. She insisted on accompanying me the moment she saw you.”

“No apologies needed. I quite like her.” You grin. “Do you not?”

“I certainly don’t dislike her,” Beomgyu replies. He shudders a little. “But you can’t deny that she’s terrifying.”

“In the best of ways,” you agree. “She’s hilariously witty. I want to be like her when I’m older.”

Beomgyu glances at you sidelong. “I don’t think you’ll have much trouble with that.”

“…I’ll take that as a compliment.” You take his proffered arm. Beomgyu tries very, very hard not to notice the way your lips curve when you smile anyway. “I like her.”

“She also seems to like you.” He raises an eyebrow. “If her saying that I would be an idiot to lose you is anything to go by.”

“And that might be the greatest compliment of all.” You turn a little towards the crowd and Beomgyu’s heart does a little skip of panic when you tug his arm and it feels as though you might pull away. Good Lord, he needs to get a hold of himself—he’s gone two weeks without you suspecting anything strange on his part and he doesn’t intend to break that streak anytime soon, at least not before he’s figured out his own thoughts first. You don’t let go anyway so he feels stupid for panicking in the first place. “It looks like everyone is going inside,” you say, apparently oblivious to his internal turmoil. “Shall we follow them to dinner?”

Beomgyu survives the meal. He survives sitting next to you for the best part of two hours, watching you eat and talk all the while with that lovely smile on your face. He survives having to talk to you for the entire two hours and doesn’t spit out any food every time he remembers that Lady Park expects you two to have a family, to have children.

What he very nearly does not survive, however, is when he is talking to you in the drawing room when the men have rejoined the women after they’ve drunk their port, and Lord Cho comes up to steal you away from the conversation.

Beomgyu notices him eyeing you first from across the room. “Lord Cho incoming,” he says, and he only manages a half smile to indicate that this is a joke. Or at least that it was meant to be, because he doesn’t feel much like smiling.

You glance at him. “I don’t understand why you don’t like him,” you say frankly. “He’s very nice. At least he seems genuinely interested when he speaks to me, unlike many others I could name.”

Beomgyu shrugs. He wishes he knew why too, but he can’t exactly explain why Lord Cho gives him that slightly slimy feeling that puts him off so. Outwardly there was nothing amiss with their conversation the first and only time they spoke, but everything about it still felt all wrong. “He seems nice,” he agrees. “But just because he’s nice doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take precaution as you do with all the other men who might seek your hand.”

“As I should have done with you?” you ask, raising an eyebrow. A teasing smile plays on your lips and in a moment of weakness, Beomgyu imagines kissing it off.

He pinches himself hard. Maybe he needs to get a brain replacement. “Well, I think you have already seen many of the worst parts of me,” he says superciliously. You laugh and he preens a little for having been the cause of it. “So I don’t know how much more precaution you must take around me. You have already proven yourself quite capable of fighting back.”

“Might I take that as a compliment?”

Despite himself, Beomgyu smiles. “Yes, you may.”

“Then I’ll thank you for that.” You take the last sip of water from your glass and place it on a nearby empty tray. “And I’ll take your advice, Beomgyu. I appreciate it, though I don’t know how warranted it is.”

Beomgyu tamps down the stupid thrill that rushes up his spine when he hears his name from your voice. It’s not that hard to hide this time, not with Lord Cho’s approach dimming his mood already. “Just be careful, is all,” he says quietly, just before Lord Cho makes the last step into conversational range.

“Miss L/N. Mr. Choi.” Lord Cho makes a polite bow. Against his will, Beomgyu moves slightly to include him in your small group. “I haven’t had the chance to speak to either of you tonight.”

“A pity that Lady Park had us seated on opposite ends of the table,” Beomgyu says, not really meaning it.

You shoot him a sidelong glance which tells him you heard all of the indifference in his tone, but he doesn’t really care. You look more amused than annoyed with him, anyway. “A pity indeed,” you echo, giving a short curtsy. “How are you, Lord Cho? You look rather well.”

“Better now that you’ve been so kind to me.” Lord Cho smiles, and Beomgyu fights the urge to roll his eyes. Maybe this is why he doesn’t like Lord Cho—he’s never been one to stomach flirting, at least not as outright as this. “It seems Mr. Choi has quite kept your attentions this evening. Would it be remiss if I stole some of your time?”

“Of course not.” You smile prettily before taking his arm. “Mr. Choi, I shall see you later tonight or sometime soon, I am sure.”

“And I, you,” he says, smiling directly at you. He doesn’t bother looking at Lord Cho and the other man doesn’t seem to care as he turns you to another corner of the room. Beomgyu watches you leave on his arm, then decides he doesn’t care much for the scene and goes to get another glass of whiskey. He suddenly very much feels like he needs it.

Soobin sidles up to him as he picks up a glass from a servant’s passing tray. “Well, you look like you have a mouthful of sour grapes,” he says, and Beomgyu nearly spills his drink all over both of them. “Hey, watch out!”

“You watch out,” Beomgyu hisses, cradling the glass to his chest. “You’re the one who startled me.”

“Well, if you weren’t so busy glaring holes into Lord Cho’s back, you might have noticed me approaching.” Soobin sniffs. “What did he do to you this time?”

Beomgyu groans. “Of course she told you.”

“What, my wife? She tells me everything.” Soobin smirks. “Including that you might have felt a pinch of jealousy towards the man who’s talking to the woman you’ve decided to court this season.”

Annoying as Soobin is, his words throw a splash of cold water over Beomgyu’s thoughts. He isn’t courting you. Not really. Even though you decided to continue seeing each other, it isn’t because you wanted him to pursue you for real. It was because you wanted to be friends. He has no business feeling like this, wanting to kiss you, feeling annoyed when someone else steals you away. He can’t even put it down to just blatant uneasiness about Lord Cho anymore because even if that unease might still exist, to say that there is no jealousy whatsoever would just be a lie. “I regret the two of you ever realizing your feelings for each other,” is all he manages to say around the sick feeling growing in his stomach.

“You’re the one who complained about suffering in silence amidst all the pining,” Soobin points out. “Though if I may—”

“You may not.”

“—I’d say I understand your frustration, now.” Soobin glances across the room where you’re chatting animatedly with Lord Cho and a few others, then back at Beomgyu. “This tension is unbearable.”

“There is no tension,” Beomgyu snaps.

“Beomgyu, I may not have your gift for discerning personalities at a glance, but I’m not daft.” Soobin fixes him with a deadpan stare. “You clearly feel something for the girl. Whether that feeling is a simple interest or something more, I will not presume—I would like to believe you know yourself better than I—but there is something there. I only wonder why you have done nothing about it yet.”

Oh, if only he knew. Beomgyu barely suppresses a scoff. “And you are so knowledgeable about love?” he snaps. He’s lashing out because he’s angry and frustrated, he knows, but in this moment, God he doesn’t care. “It took you years to realize that you were in love with your wife!”

Surprisingly, Soobin looks more amused by Beomgyu’s outburst than angry at his tone. “First of all, I never said anything about love.” He waits a moment for Beomgyu’s spluttering to stop, then continues. “Second of all, though it may have taken me a long time, at least I did realize it in the end.”

Beomgyu raises a sardonic eyebrow. “And how, exactly, did you realize it?”

“I realized that every moment I was away, I wanted to be with her,” Soobin says seriously, either not hearing or completely ignoring Beomgyu’s sarcastic tone. Beomgyu is inclined to believe the latter option. “When I did not have her attention, I wanted it. When I was with her, I was happier than I believed I ever could be.”

Involuntarily, Beomgyu’s gaze flashes towards where you are speaking with Lord Cho right now, that pretty little smile on your face. His heart spasms and he finds himself with the passing thought that he’d much rather that smile be directed at him. That he dislikes that it’s being directed at someone else. Specifically Lord Cho.

“I do not claim to know your heart or your thoughts with any certainty,” Soobin says. From the way he’s looking at him, Beomgyu gathers that he noticed the glance. “But I would implore you to make any decisions you need to make before it is too late. And, Beomgyu.” He smiles teasingly, which Beomgyu does not appreciate for even a second. “It would do you well to remember that the line between hatred and love can be a very fine line, indeed.”

. . . . .

After the fifth time you stab yourself with a needle, Soyoung removes the embroidery from your hands. You barely put up a struggle. It’s late, it’s dark, and all you can really do is stare at the small bead of blood welling up from the pad of your finger, deep red in the flickering candlelight.

“What’s wrong with you?” Soyoung asks. You’ve always liked working with her in the dark of night—she becomes more casual, lets her words and laughter flow more easily as though the darkness erases some of the social barriers between you two. But right now, you wish you were alone. Your thoughts are hard enough to unravel as it is. You don’t know how to explain any of it to yourself, much less to someone else.

“Nothing.” You shake yourself out of your daze and reach for your embroidery. Another dress, hopefully one of the last you’ll have to remake for the season—you’re not sure you have it in you to put together much more before the season is out. Each one already takes up so much time. “Soyoung, please give it back.”

She narrows her eyes at you. You’d smile if you weren’t so tired. “Not until you tell me what is bothering you so, Miss L/N,” she finally says, though she slides you a small towel to wipe off your finger. “You’re usually never this careless, especially not with your own clothing.”

Suddenly you’re tired. So tired. Between the whirlwind of society events and doing the household chores and keeping up your ruse with Mr. Choi—Beomgyu—you’ve barely had a moment’s time to truly relax. To breathe. You barely have time to sleep. Makeup can only hide your dark circles so many times and you’re already running out of your concealing powder. You’ve counted the remnants of your pin money and you hate the amount you’re going to have to set aside for more powder but there’s no choice but to do it. And what little time you do have to yourself after the days are all done and over now has to be spent on refurbishing your old gowns because you have no money to buy new ones.

All of this, and you still have to contend with emotions. Feelings. Desires and wants that you have no right to have and that you really don’t want to have, but that you do anyway. It is an incredibly annoying situation and you are tired of having to deal with said emotions, because they are really getting in the way of things that are very important. Like marriage.

You try to put your face in your hands and very nearly poke your eye out with the needle you’re still holding. You can’t even muster the energy to glare at it, not in light of yesterday’s events. When you accepted Lord Cho’s invitation to promenade that afternoon, you had thought little of it. He’s a suitor. A nice one at that. This is normal. To be expected.

You did not expect him to hint at a proposal.

Everything logical tells you that you should be happy about this. After two seasons of despairing you will ever be married, you finally have a hint that you will really receive a proposal from a very eligible gentleman who will be certain to take you far from this place. You want to be happy. You really do. But you aren’t, at least not nearly as much as you should be, and you don’t know why.

Actually, that’s a lie. You know exactly why. You wanted someone else to propose.

You wanted Beomgyu to propose.

Which is—insanity. Your courtship isn’t even real. It doesn’t matter if you are friends now—none of the presents, none of the dances, none of that meant anything. Not even the kiss. You knew you had felt something after the kiss but you put it down to it quite literally being the first time you kissed someone. Of course anyone would feel butterflies in their stomach for days after that. Right? Right.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to matter if that’s true. What does matter is that the kiss wasn’t apparently just a kiss for you.

Candlelight flickers in the dark, throwing strange shadows on Soyoung’s face. “Miss L/N?” she asks softly.

You feel close to tears. It’s too late and it’s too dark and you’re feeling far too many things right now for you to process. You should be happy to marry Lord Cho, so happy. But now all you can feel is dread for the next time you will see him, because while you know the answer you will give him must be in the affirmative, you know that you won’t be happy with it.

When did you start feeling this way about Beomgyu? When did you start liking him beyond just the basic acquaintanceship, then the tentative friendship? When did you start wondering, however subconsciously, whether you could live a life with him that wouldn’t just be filled with screaming and arguments? It wasn’t just the kiss. That may have been the final straw. But you know yourself, and you must be honest with yourself right now, and you know that that wasn’t when it all started.

Maybe it will begin to make sense if you try to speak of it.

You choose your words very carefully. “I may receive a proposal in a short time.”

Soyoung’s entire face lights up. “Oh, truly? That is wonderful!” Her voice feels brighter than the candle and it makes you head hurt a little. “I was honestly expecting it since you’d been spending so much time with him, but now that Mr. Choi has all but confirmed it—”

Mr. Choi?

“Soyoung.” You interrupt her excited exclamation, a very strange feeling in your stomach. “Soyoung, why do you think it was Mr. Choi?”

She stops midway through a word, her mouth still open like she plans to finish it. You watch her open and close it several times in the ensuing silence, her expression morphing into confusion. “Is it not?” she finally asks. Her voice is much smaller.

“No.” You shake your head. “It was Lord Cho.”

“…Oh.” She doesn’t sound so enthused about him, and that reaction just intensifies the strange, sick feeling still roiling in your stomach.

You two sit in silence for a moment. Soyoung’s hand has gone slack, but you can’t find it in you to take your embroidery back. You probably wouldn’t even be able to do anything with it even if you had it—at least nothing beyond stabbing yourself another five times on accident. “Do you not like Lord Cho?” you eventually ask, though you’re not sure you want to hear the answer.

“It’s not that I don’t like him!” Soyoung frantically shakes her head. “He seems to be a nice man. But that one time he asked about Mr. Choi…”

You remember that moment and how uncomfortable it was. How cornered you felt, how the intensity in Lord Cho’s voice and eyes made you tense up in…not fear, not exactly, but wariness at the least. You didn’t enjoy that conversation even after the tension was cut. Soyoung was there and confirmed then and now that whatever that was, it wasn’t normal.

But it only happened once. Lord Cho has never given you any reason to be wary of him since, and if it weren’t for Beomgyu’s insistence that you remain on your guard you’d probably have relaxed around him entirely by now. He wouldn’t hurt you, you’re sure. At least not in the way that Mr. Thompson would. And anyway, it is entirely understandable that one suitor might be wary or want to know more about another. While you may not have appreciated the way Lord Cho went about to get that information, you think you can understand why he did it.

So why does Soyoung still have so many apprehensions?

“It was only one time,” you say, uneasy. “You’ve been with me and him before. He hasn’t done anything strange since.”

“Yes, but…” Soyoung looks down, fiddling with her needle and a little bit of thread. “I don’t know. You do seem happy around him. He seems to be a good man. You would likely be very happy if you married him.”

For all the certainty of Soyoung’s words, her voice only thinly hides a current of wariness just beneath the surface. You debate for a moment whether or not to press her on the topic—have her explain why she dislikes Lord Cho so. But you decide not to. She doesn’t seem to know herself.

It reminds you of Beomgyu, when he was trying to explain the same thing to you.

You return to your original question. “Why did you think it was Mr. Choi?”

“Well, you just…you just always seemed so happy around him. Not always in the beginning, but even then, you were always…yourself.” She glances around the room like she’s afraid someone else will hear. “Even when you were arguing. You didn’t try to hide that part of yourself like you would have around others. And when you were just talking with him, your smiles were genuine. You didn’t try to be pretty around him the way you do with Lord Cho. Especially recently, whenever you look at him…I don’t know. You look at him like he’s the only one in the room."

The sick feeling in your stomach intensifies. You feel like you might throw up.

“And he looks at you the same way,” Soyoung continues, apparently oblivious to your growing sense of dread. “He didn’t do it before but now he’s always smiling, even when you two argue. It seems like he’s not arguing with you to hurt you anymore. It’s more like…he just wants to keep talking to you. No matter what.” She pauses, and then her voice lowers. “He gave you gloves.”

Stricken, you can barely even nod to confirm her statement.

“I don’t know who would perform such a gesture for anyone they didn’t love,” Soyoung says, almost as though she’s in awe. “When I saw that, I just…I thought there was no way he didn’t love you then.”

You seriously might throw up. You—you tricked her. You tricked Soyoung. You tricked the whole ton—you knew you would, that was the entire plan, but somehow, hearing it from Soyoung, one of your closest friends, that she really thought you were in love…

Suddenly you can’t stand it.

“It wasn’t real.” You force the words out one by one, horrible relief coating your voice as Soyoung’s eyes widen. “None of it was real, Soyoung.” In as few sentences as you can, you tell her about the deal, about how you two conspired to trick the ton for the sake of winning you more suitors and discouraging his small army of followers, about how it succeeded. You don’t say anything about the kiss. You don’t say anything about being friends.

You don’t say anything about the sick feeling in your stomach that rose to your chest when she said there was no way he didn’t love you.

After you finish, silence descends upon the table. The candle burns low but you can’t move yourself to replace it, just watch the wax melt slowly, slowly, until the moon provides more light than the flame. Soyoung switches between staring at the candle and staring at you. She doesn’t say anything.

“You can’t tell anyone,” you finally say, the warning rough in your throat. “I’m serious, Soyoung.”

She blinks. Shakes her head slightly, like shaking off a daze. “Of course I won’t,” she replies, and you immediately feel bad about doubting her. “I’m sorry. I just—it seemed so real.” She shakes her head again and you can’t tell if the disappointment in that movement is directed towards you or the situation at hand. Maybe both. “If I didn’t know that you would never lie to me, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

The room is too stifling. Too hot. Never mind that there’s only one candle barely burning and you’re wrapped in a blanket. You rise from your seat on stiff legs to open the window. The sudden burst of cold air hits you like a hammer and forces you to think.

Soyoung’s words made you feel sick because they were true—at least on your end. You can say nothing about Beomgyu and how he feels. But it is true that you haven’t really felt that you had to hide anything around him. It’s just as he said before, as yourself have thought before—you’ve seen the worst of him and he’s seen the worst of you. There isn’t much left to hide if anything at all. You think less about your words, care less about your appearance—you certainly feel freer around him, more able to express yourself than around anyone else.

You swallow. Soyoung said you never tried to be “pretty” around him, like you did with Lord Cho. You unfortunately do have an idea of what she means. To nearly everyone in the ton, you are just a pretty face with no dowry to accompany it, which means you’ve had to rely on that pretty face to get you where you need to be. It’s not extremely effective, which tells you exactly what you need to know about how much money is valued in this society, but that’s not the point. The point is that you’ve never been able to let that pretty little façade drop around anyone, because that is your main selling feature. Your beauty.

Only you don’t have to hold that façade up around Beomgyu.

Against your will, the kiss comes back to mind. Cool air rushes over your face but even then, your cheeks start to warm with the memory. God. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t been idiotic enough to go down that train of thought with a man with whom you were about to separate in just a few short weeks. Instead, you got caught up in the moment, had your first kiss, dreamed about it for days (and unfortunately you are still dreaming of it), and then begged him to be your friend so you at least wouldn’t have to stop seeing him ever again. What kind of idiot does that?

An idiot in love.

You grip the blanket tighter around your shoulders. Maybe you really are in love with him.

The heavens really must be having a good laugh at you right now.

“Miss L/N?” Soyoung’s voice brings you back to earth, the call of your name soft and uncertain. “Are you all right? It’s quite cold.”

You look down and realize that for all you felt stifled before, you’re now shivering under the blanket. You let Soyoung help you close the window and light a new candle. The flame dances cheerfully in the dark, a stark contrast to the emotions sitting in a solid, tangled lump behind your chest.

“Don’t tell anyone,” you say again, voice far more ragged than before. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

“I won’t,” Soyoung promises. “On my honor, I won’t.”

That reminds you of another oath taken on someone else’s honor. An oath of silence when that person found out your deepest secret, the cracked and swollen secret hidden behind a thin layer of cotton fabric.

You love him. You don’t love him. You might love him. The three statements bounce off the corners of your skull. Two of them are lies and only one of them you know for certain.

“If Lord Cho proposes,” you mumble, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Soyoung looks at you sympathetically. “Miss L/N, I’m sure that when the time comes, you will do what is best for you.” The certainty in her voice only makes you feel a little better.

Silence falls save for the clicking of needles and rustling of cloth. Soyoung doesn’t say anything more, and you stab yourself another five times before you finally give up and go to sleep.

. . . . .

Beomgyu shouldn’t have come tonight.

Objectively, there is nothing wrong. The Haynesworths always host good parties, if not particularly interesting ones, and Beomgyu sees nothing to complain about this ball right now. Anyway, even if he did, it’s only their second year holding a ball for the ton. Flubs would be understandable and Beomgyu won’t insult them for it. But there are no flubs. The music is pleasant. The food is good. The decorations are nice.

What is wrong, however, is the fact that you have been attached to Lord Cho’s side the entire night.

He arrived late, which wasn’t his fault—dinner with Kai, who just returned to London, took longer than expected. By the time he stepped into the ballroom, Kai at his side, you were already busily conversing with Lord Cho. The sight annoyed him slightly, but Kai was there and he didn’t want to ruin his friend’s night so he tried not to react. It didn’t matter—he would just find some other time to talk with you, and maybe dance.

It's been just over three hours and Beomgyu has still not been able to speak to you once.

He really thought it was just coincidence and bad timing during the first hour or so. Fine. Normal. Beomgyu came late and you kept getting whisked onto the dance floor by one person or another in between very long conversations with Lord Cho, so Beomgyu tucked himself away with Taehyun and Kai and caught up with his friend’s inheritance issues some more. He took to the dance floor a few times and enjoyed himself well enough.

By the second hour, however, he was starting to suspect Lord Cho was keeping you sequestered away on purpose.

It can’t just be coincidence that every time Beomgyu leaves the dance floor, you and Lord Cho are deep in conversation on the entire other side of the ballroom. It can’t just be bad timing that every time Beomgyu tries to make eye contact with you, Lord Cho hands you another glass of lemonade or guides you to another area of the room. As the second hour passes and the third hour rolls around, Beomgyu is grinding his teeth visibly and Kai is starting to look slightly concerned.

“What’s wrong with him?” Beomgyu hears Kai whisper.

“I don’t know.” Taehyun shrugs. “What’s wrong with you, Beomgyu?”

Beomgyu does not answer. You just laughed at something Lord Cho said, and he feels vaguely sick.

“Ah.” Taehyun has apparently come to a conclusion even without Beomgyu saying anything. “He’s jealous.”

Kai frowns. “Jealous?” he asks, at the same time Beomgyu snaps, “I’m not jealous.”

Taehyun ignores him, which he’s had ample practice with since they went to school together for almost ten years. It does not make Beomgyu feel any better. “Beomgyu here used to have a mortal enemy,” he says sagely, as though Kai isn’t completely aware of the previous animosity between the two of you. “That used to be Miss L/N over there.”

“…I’m aware.” Kai looks even more confused. “Why is he jealous of her?”

“I’m not—”

“They started courting this season,” Taehyun says, evil delight coating his every word as an irritatingly pleasant expression remains on his face. “Apparently they’ve put their past behind them, or something. They’ve become quite attached at the hip especially recently, but because Miss L/N is quite beautiful, of course she has other suitors trying to win her hand.” He gestures slightly at you. “Voila, Beomgyu is very jealous of Lord Cho.”

“…Just how much did you omit from your letters when I was abroad?”

“Quite a bit. Sometimes, telling stories via letter just isn’t as impactful as telling them in person.” Taehyun is still wearing that easy smile and Beomgyu is feeling the growing urge to punch it off his face. “Beomgyu, if you keep glaring at Lord Cho like that, you’re going to bore a hole in his head. Not to mention Whistledown will be scribbling terrible notes with her feathered pen to round out the gossip papers in a few days.”

With effort, Beomgyu looks away from Lord Cho. He still feels vaguely sick—his throat feels tight for some reason—so he takes a sip from his glass. “I’m not glaring at him,” he snaps.

“You’re not now,” Taehyun agrees. “But you were.”

Beomgyu nearly screams.

“Is there something wrong with Lord Cho?” Kai asks timidly. “You seem to hate him a lot more than you would if he was just a suitor.”

God, Beomgyu doesn’t want to go into this again. “I don’t like him,” he snaps with finality. “It isn’t just because he’s trying to court Miss L/N. He feels strange to me, and I don’t trust him. I wish I could tell you why.”

Kai looks at him strangely. “If I didn’t know you better,” he says slowly, “I’d say you were in love with the girl.”

Buzzing fills Beomgyu’s ears. The orchestra fades into white noise, the lights of the room suddenly too bright and loud against his eyes. Love, Kai had said. He didn’t hear wrong. He said the word love. And he said that Beomgyu was in love with you.

Beomgyu blinks rapidly. Some of the spots clear out of his eyes but everything still seems too bright. “I beg your pardon.”

Taehyun steps forward, the previous humor drained from his expression. “Beomgyu,” he says quietly. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Of course.” The room is too bright and his head vaguely feels like it’s spinning and his stomach just dropped to his feet, but he’s fine. Completely fine. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Some of the sardonicism returns to Taehyun’s face. “I don’t know, maybe because when Kai said you might be in love with Miss L/N your entire face turned pale and you looked like you were about to keel over right then and there.”

Lies. Slander. There’s no way Beomgyu looked like that. “I’m not in love with Miss L/N,” he says emphatically, but even though that’s supposed to be true, every single word sounded wrong.

“Then why do you care so much about her?” Taehyun presses. “Let us assume Lord Cho does not have the lady’s best interests at heart. I will grant it is normal to be concerned. But to stare at them for nearly three hours wearing that expression on your face?” He waves a hand at Beomgyu. “That is hardly expected of anyone.”

“Well, she’s not a monster,” Beomgyu snaps. “Of course I should care.”

“You used to talk about her like she was one,” Kai says, raising an eyebrow. “And Taehyun’s point wasn’t that you shouldn’t care. It’s that you care so much more for her than would be normal for an acquaintance or a friend who was simply concerned.”

Beomgyu flounders for a response. Taehyun takes the opportunity to go in for the kill. “So are you going to give us another reason why you are so jealous of Lord Cho you can’t even see straight?” he asks. “Or are we going to have to go with the very logical conclusion that you are in love with the girl, and resent him for keeping her away from you this entire evening?”

Almost involuntarily, Beomgyu glances across the room at you and Lord Cho. Several others have joined your group but you seem only to have eyes for him, standing close by with that bright, pretty smile on your face. Not once since an hour ago have you looked at Beomgyu. Not even once.

Maybe…

Maybe it is jealousy. But if it’s jealousy, then where did it come from?

Against his will he recalls Soobin’s words from Lady Park’s gathering.

“I realized that every moment I was away, I wanted to be with her. When I did not have her attention, I wanted it. When I was with her, I was happier than I believed I ever could be.”

“It would do you well to remember that the line between hatred and love can be a very fine line, indeed.”

Kai thinks he’s in love with you. Taehyun thinks the same. Soobin certainly seemed to be hinting at it. Beomgyu clutches his glass, feeling suddenly like the floor is tipping beneath his feet. Is he in love with you? Is he truly?

He blanches. The fact that he’s even considering their words says far more about him than he’d like to admit.

“I need to go.” Beomgyu swallows hard and puts his half full glass on some empty tray. “To the washroom.” He doesn’t wait for a response before he starts pushing through the crowd.

The washroom is quiet, empty. Beomgyu stands in front of the small basin and splashes water onto his face until he feels a little more alert. There’s a small mirror hung up above the basin and he looks into it, not really seeing his reflection, but contemplating it.

These are the facts. Beomgyu likes you. He enjoys being your friend. At some point he disliked you very much, but most if not all of those feelings have disappeared. You are a good person. He is happy to know you. He is even happier that you have overturned your previous opinions about him, and that you like to be around him. He was upset at himself when he mentioned ending your courtship. He was overjoyed when you said you didn’t want the friendship to end.

And yet he still felt like something was missing, even with all that hope and joy fluttering in his chest.

Beomgyu swallows. There are still more facts to sort out. He kissed you. He wanted to kiss you. It was the only kiss that had ever made him feel something more, the only kiss that had ever made him want more. He dreamed and still dreams about the kiss and he doesn’t know why.

Or does he?

He takes a deep breath and lets it out quickly. Slowly, slowly, he forces himself to consider the fact that he may be in love with you.

It unfortunately explains a lot of things.

The jealousy. The dislike of Lord Cho beyond the fact that he seemed only to view you as chattel to win in marriage. The fantasies about the kiss, the constant dreams where the kiss morphs into something more. The desire to be with you, to be the reason you smile and laugh.

Beomgyu splashes more water on his face. He can’t do this right now—maybe can’t do it ever. He can’t face the facts or even try to make sense of them. He needs to get out of here or else he’ll go insane.

He wipes his hand on the roller towel and leaves the washroom. Kai and Taehyun are nowhere to be seen, which is annoying because he really should tell him he’s planning to leave. Beomgyu wades into the fray again, searching the crowd for his friends, but then his eye catches someone else’s.

Lord Cho’s.

It seems as though he’s frozen in time. Lord Cho regards him with an impassive gaze, Beomgyu still rooted to his spot halfway across the ballroom. For a moment neither of them reacts.

Then Lord Cho smirks.

All at once there is nothing in Beomgyu’s mind except the desire to punch this man into the floor. Unfortunately, an ounce of sense remains—just enough for him to know that that would be a terrible idea, one that would land him in Wooyoung’s bad books forever and possibly even the town jail for a night or two.

Besides, there’s another way he might wipe the smile off Lord Cho’s face for an hour or two.

He pushes through the crowd with singular ease, beelining right for where you stand next to Lord Cho, listening to something a nearby gentleman is saying. The man’s words falter as he sees Beomgyu walking towards them, and when he does, you turn to see who he’s looking at and meet Beomgyu’s eyes.

Beomgyu would dearly love to give Lord Cho the cut, but years of politeness in society force him to give the man at least a small nod in greeting before turning directly to you. “Miss L/N, we haven’t spoken all night.” He doesn’t wait for a response, only extends his hand. “May I have the next dance?”

. . . . .

The next dance is a waltz.

Which—normally wouldn’t be a problem. You have to get permission to take to the floor for this dance—with all of the touching and close holds, it is still considered extremely scandalous even several years after it was introduced to the ton. To dance it with anyone who isn’t a close relative or betrothed could be social suicide. You’ve never had an issue with this, though, because you’ve never been given permission to dance the waltz, and you’ve never bothered to ask.

Though today, you do have permission. Your mother is friends with Mrs. Haynesworth. She extended that permission as a token of friendship with the invitation to tonight’s ball, and while it might have been nice to think about it, you never planned to use it. No one has proposed to you, even if Lord Cho seems close to it. You have no close male relatives with whom it would be acceptable to dance. It doesn’t matter—you’ve always sat out the waltz and you planned to do the same tonight.

But now Beomgyu stands before you, his hand extended, his mouth smiling but his eyes sharp, burning with a fire you have never seen before. You have no idea if he knows what the next dance is. You have no idea why he’s looking at you as though no one else in the room exists.

Some of Soyoung’s words come back to you, from several nights ago. “You look at him like he’s the only one in the room,” she had said. “And he looks at you the same way.”

Beomgyu asked you for a dance. Not just any dance, but the waltz. You don’t believe Beomgyu is an idiot. You don’t believe he would have asked for the next dance if it didn’t mean anything to him. Nothing he does in society is without reason. So if he is asking you to waltz…

A stupid, burgeoning hope starts to burn in your chest. Might Soyoung’s words be true? Might he be in love with you, the same way you might be in love with him?

It’s like you watch yourself place your hand in Beomgyu’s, watch from above as he smiles as you with the force of ten thousand suns as he leads you onto the ballroom floor. People are watching, whispering, but you seem to hear none of them as he bows and you curtsy. You feel light, almost like you’re floating on air—you don’t seem to have any weight as Beomgyu effortlessly spins you through the opening bars of the dance.

Watching the waltz before, you had never quite understood why it is considered as scandalous as the old-fashioned mamas of the ton make it out to be. Sure, it involved some more close contact than usual, but other than that you couldn’t see much of a difference from the other dances.

Dancing it now, though, you see exactly why the waltz could lead to social ruin.

Beomgyu’s hand rests lower on your back, just beneath your shoulder blade. Your bodies are almost flush together. Your hand, gingerly placed before on his shoulder, has since slid down his arm, and when you turn to face him, his eyes are barely a few inches from yours.

Your breath catches. From the looks of it, Beomgyu realizes, and a little smirk begins to curl his lips.

You hate how attractive you find it.

He spins you out and catches your other hand before you manage to fly away. Even though several feet now separate you two instead of mere handsbreadths his fingers curl around yours, so strong and steady as he pulls you back into his dancing embrace. His eyes still hold a hint of that fire from before and in your burgeoning hope, you allow yourself to wonder if he was perhaps…jealous. Envious, maybe, that another man had your attentions for so long. While you don’t love jealousy, it does make your heart flutter to think that he might care about you enough to care about that.

Truth be told, you had been trying to get away from Lord Cho for some time. The first hour was nice, and you hadn’t seen Beomgyu at all during that time so you weren’t bothered. But while you like Lord Cho, and his friends are fine, the moment you saw Beomgyu, you wanted to go to him. You tried to make excuses time and time again to leave but someone always struck up another vein of conversation with you or asked you to dance, or Lord Cho easily sidestepped your request and led you to another area of the room to speak to someone else.

It wasn’t unpleasant. But even then, at some point, you wished you were elsewhere. Though you couldn’t have dreamed that you would end up here in Beomgyu’s arms, waltzing the night away.

Beomgyu catches you in the crook of his arm and lowers you into a slight dip that has you staring directly into his eyes. Your arm wraps around his shoulder, half as part of the dance and half to steady yourself on your jelly-like legs, and you can’t help it when your heart races even faster. Beomgyu’s breath whispers over your lips and suddenly it reminds you of the kiss. You almost trip over his foot when he pulls you back up.

Judging from the way Beomgyu’s eyes flutter down to your lips, you’d say you weren’t the only one feeling the same way.

As the waltz begins to wind to a close, you feel your face getting hotter as Beomgyu spins you once, twice, three times. You feel like you’re flying—your toes barely skimming the floor, your skirts whirling around your legs—your feet follow the one-two-three rhythm of the waltz with ease, your slippers tapping merrily against the floor. The song ends but you still have that rhythm in your blood and Beomgyu seems to realize that because he spins you out as the orchestra finishes, letting the momentum carry you into your deep curtsy.

When you stand up, you’re smiling like no tomorrow, and nothing, you think, could ever induce that smile to fall.

A smattering of polite applause comes from the outskirts of the ballroom. The sound reminds you that you and Beomgyu are not, in fact, the only people here and you almost jump. Were it not for Beomgyu’s hand in yours, you might have. As it stands, though, your heart begins to pound as you look out at the sea of faces whose expressions range from astonished to horrified and everything in between.

It hits you what you’ve just done, then—danced a waltz, the most scandalous dance in polite society, with a man who wasn’t a close relative or even your betrothed fiancé. You knew that when you accepted Beomgyu’s invitation, but somehow, now that it’s over, it all feels so much more real.

But you trusted him. You trusted Beomgyu to know what the dance was, and to know what it would mean both to you and to the ton. And when you look up at him now, precious hope cradled close to your chest, you wonder if he will do what you have wanted him to since…well, almost since Lord Cho hinted at a question he might ask the next time you were in more private company.

You wonder if Beomgyu will ask you to marry him.

It is a small hope. Maybe even a futile one. But though you thought it impossible over the past week, when you first realized you desired it so, now you think that maybe it wasn’t so impossible after all. Not with the way he looked at you when he asked you to dance. Not with how he treated you as he spun you across the floor. Not with the way he looks at you now…

Right?

You look at Beomgyu. He does not look back at you. With his head turned just so, you can’t tell what expression is on his face. For the first time since the end of the dance, true unease prickles your chest. You trusted Beomgyu so completely to be right, to do right, but why won’t he now look at you? Now, when it is most important?

“Beomgyu?”

At the sound of his name, he starts. And then he does look at you. But where you expected to see love, trust, that same fire that burnt in his eyes throughout the entire dance, now he just looks…

Blank.

You swallow hard as dread begins to creep up your spine. “Beomgyu,” you say quietly, hoping your words will jerk him out of whatever daze he’s in. “That was…that was a waltz.”

Some of the clouds clear from his glassy eyes but not in the way you expect. He still looks mostly blank, and a little shaken—panicky, even. He takes a deep breath that rattles around his chest in a way that you’re not sure you like. “So it was,” he says, and the subtle tremble in his words only unsettles you more.

You dare to glance at the gathered crowd. Even more people are staring now, eyes glued on your figure as mouths whisper behind pastel fans. Your heart beats even faster but not with excitement—instead, you feel like you might throw up. “You’re lucky I had permission to waltz,” you say, forcing a certain lightness into your voice. “What would you have done if I didn’t?”

Apparently this was the wrong thing to say, because Beomgyu looks down at your still-linked hands and immediately lets go.

A chill travels up your spine. Your hand suddenly feels incredibly cold, even though you felt so warm just minutes ago—the heat of Beomgyu’s palm against yours suddenly ripped away, only the cooling silk of your gloves left to caress your skin. Your fingers curl into each other, nails pinching through silk to bite into your palms as you try to rein in your trembling.

You expected a witty answer. After all, that’s what Beomgyu is—wit and intellect rolled into one annoyingly handsome person. But the longer you look at him, the longer he says nothing, and the more you begin to realize that you’re waiting for a response he isn’t going to give.

“Beomgyu?” you ask, voice a little more pleading this time. His face looks pale now, his skin a little clammy, and his eyes, while trained on you, don’t seem to see anything at all. “Beomgyu, is something—” You reach out, touching his hand with the tips of your fingers, and he flinches.

You drop your arm immediately. “…Is something wrong?” you finish quietly.

Buzzing fills your ears in the silence that follows. The entire room is too bright and your heart has crept into your throat. Beomgyu’s face is becoming blurry in your vision and you really, really hope that doesn’t mean tears are coming. “Beomgyu?” you try one last time.

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he turns tail and pushes his way out of the room before you can react, almost running in his haste to get away.

To get away from you.

You stand there on the ballroom floor, alone, staring at the path he carved through the crowd when he left. He knocked one or two people over but you can hardly hear their grunts of pain over the buzzing in your ears. You’re starting to feel incredibly lightheaded and when you bring a hand up to touch your temple, one finger brushes against your eye and you feel the telltale wetness of tears.

Damn. You’ve never cried in front of another person before, not to mention the entire ton.

You look up to find every single person in the room staring right at you, and in that moment, two things hit you very suddenly.

One. You are in love with Beomgyu Choi.

Two. He just as good as left you at the altar.

You suppress a hysterical laugh. As it stands, a strangled noise still manages to leave your lips as you contemplate the irony of it all. This is actually even worse than if he left you at the altar. At least then you would have been betrothed, and the blow to your reputation might have been softened by pity. Right now, though, you’re as good as ruined. A dirt poor, barely titled harlot who seduced an unmarried, unbetrothed gentleman into a waltz, only the most scandalous dance of the decade, and had the nerve to smile after it.

Well, you certainly aren’t smiling now.

The humiliation hits you hard and fast and the tears start flowing in earnest despite your attempts to blink them back. You were an idiot to believe Beomgyu could love you, an idiot to think he would ever want you beyond what any other man has ever wanted you for—your face, your beauty. You were an idiot to think anyone could ever want you for more than that. You were a fool, a bloody stupid fool, for thinking you might have been worth sacrificing his reputation for.

You really trusted him. Trusted him, and his honor, because even when you hated him before you had never seen him act less than gentlemanly around anyone else. He kept your secret. He gave you gloves. You thought you could trust him and you fell in love, even, because of that trust. But now…

Embarrassment burns hot in your throat as you remember asking, practically begging him to be your friend. All because you couldn’t get a single stupid kiss out of your head. All because you held on to a stupid hope. All because you dared to want something more than you ever deserved to have—attachment. Care. Love.

What an absolute fool you are. Just as your stepmother always said, you will never be worth such things. It was all you could do to try and secure a husband and look at where that got you.

Desperation is a cruel mistress, and you are just another groveling subject at her feet.

A choked noise rises from your throat and you clap a hand over your mouth to rein it in. Eyes burning with tears, you cut through the crowd just as Beomgyu did seconds or minutes or hours ago, fleeing into the night. No one follows.

You find yourself in the Haynesworths’ rose garden. A small stone bench sits in a small clearing. The moon glows brightly overhead. It reminds you far too much of the night you struck a deal with the man who just left you on the ballroom floor.

You sink to your knees in the grass and cry.

Reblogs and comments are deeply appreciated! Hope you enjoyed this, and have a lovely day :)

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holmsister · 1 month ago

Text

The labru chess meme but like serious: why Kabru bets on Laios and wins

If you're like me (mentally ill (I can say that I'm diagnosed) about labru) you have seen several variations on this meme:

With Kabru and Laios. (To see a small collection of them, please click on the "labru chess meme" tag on this post). Would you like me to hyperanalyse this aspect of their dynamic to death and not even in a shippy manner, therefore sucking all of the fun out of the meme? Keep reading!

Spoilers for the whole manga ahead. Contains also a quantity of Winged Lion.

First of all: as noted several times, it's not that Laios is eating the pieces to win at chess, it's that he's hungry, chess pieces are available, and he thinks Kabru is a fellow chess piece eater as well. Because he offered him a chess piece. And kabru ate it. While still trying to play chess because he thinks Laios is playing chess in some novel way he wants to understand better. If you think I'm beating this metaphor to death now you haven't seen anything yet.

The thing is. Kabru's whole thing is about finding someone who can defeat the dungeon, whatever shape that takes. And Kabru knows he cannot do it. He lacks what it takes, again, whatever exactly that is. And at some point, he makes the call that Laios has that something.

What's that something? Well. He's eating the chess pieces.

In another post I have already talked about the parallels between Kabru and the Winged Lion. Without going into it again: I think that all things aside, those two have very similar types of intelligence. They're fascinated by people and finding out what motivates them. They can be manipulative and even cruel in the quest for what they believe to be the "good ending". And they both think their end can be achieved through Laios.

See, *those two* are playing chess. Have you ever played? It's a very ancient and noble game, you know, very storied.

Two opponents, Black and White, take turns moving pieces on a checkerboard according to rules that depend on the piece itself (Towers move only horizontally but of as many squares as they please, Pawns only of one square at a time and only move towards the opposite side of the board, Bishops move only diagonally, etc etc). Players can only move one piece per turn, once per turn. Two pieces cannot be in one square. When a player moves a piece in a square that is already taken by a piece of the opposing colour, the piece that was there already is "captured" and removed from the board. The rules are actually much more complicated but this is the barest bones.

I hear sometimes the win condition in chess being described as "capturing the King". That's not entirely it. The win condition in chess is putting the opposing King piece in checkmate, that is, in a position in which the King will be captured by the opposing player by the next turn no matter what moves either of them makes.

Chess matches between masters are notorious for being impossibly long. Some last YEARS. Not only that, it's possible to draw in chess - when none of the pieces on the board have legal moves left but nobody is in check. This condition is called a stalemate.

Since the pieces can move in limited ways, mathematically, it's possible to calculate a most efficient way to move them. In 1997, the AI (real AI, not the stuff that passes for AI nowadays) Deep Blue beat then chess world champion Garry Kasparov for the first time in what is considered a milestone achievement.

It's a complicated game with very set rules and almost infinite yet calculable possibilities, is what I'm getting at. It's why it's a favourite mental exercise for mathematicians and people with similar minds. It's a problem to solve in a certain number of steps according to certain rules. There's a solidity in chess reasoning - even when you're trying to guess your opponent strategy, you still know there are things they are NOT going to do. Like eating the pieces. That's why the meme is funny. I think. I've lost sight of what normal people find funny years ago.

This is the game Kabru and the Winged Lion are both in. They are both positioned to move in checkmate (conquering the dungeon/escaping the dungeon), but they have both reached a point in which they cannot move further on their own power. They're in stalemate and they know it. They both need Laios to move them out of the stalemate.

The difference is what they choose to do.

The Winged Lion treats Laios as another check piece. An important one for sure (the Queen, even. That's a chess joke AND a gay joke). But a piece he can manipulate, that moves around in predictable ways.

Kabru, however, has spent enough time chewing on chess pieces to realise thats not where Laios' potential really lies. What he does is step aside and leave the board to Laios. He says "OK, dude. Eat the damn pieces if you must. I trust you know what you're doing."

You see. There's no rule in chess about eating the pieces. I think. Maybe they added one. But still. Most people when teaching someone to play chess would not think to add "and don't eat the pieces!" There at the end because they will assume that goes without saying. It's an unspoken rule that when you are playing a game involving pieces on a board, the pieces are not for eating.

Laios, our beloved autism knight, needs his rules spoken. Otherwise he's just gonna do whatever comes to mind. And that's what he has that Kabru lacks, and what leads him to outsmarting the Winged Lion. Because he does not think in terms of rules and limits. He does not try to guess what's the catch. He does not go after the King.

When Laios figures out what the primary motivation of the Winged Lion is (wanting to eat wishes), he does not wonder about his wider plan. He stops and thinks. That makes human wishes sound so tasty, he thinks, that a creature so powerful can give up on its life of perfect bliss and immortality on another dimension to taste them. I wonder if I could eat them too. I wonder if I could eat away the Lion's desire to eat desires - I could kill two birds with one stone!

He doesn't know or care what the aim of the game is according to the rules. *His* aim now is to eat the Winged Lion's desire. Because it would solve things, because he wants to know how it tastes like, who knows, who cares. The point is: what's the fastest way to get at his aim?

Well. The Lion promises to turn him into his ideal monster... the same one he wrote about in his book. Maybe he can add a line about the monster being able to eat desires. That would work, right?

It's such a stupidly simple plan that almost has no right to work. Neither Kabru nor the WL think about it. Because of a variety of reasons, but most importantly, because *that's not in the rules*. The rules are: Laios makes a wish, the WL realises that wish, in exchange he gets Laios' body. Laios' wish: to be turned into his ultimate monster that he wrote about in his book. It goes without saying that he can't just go ahead and add whatever to the book description. Right?

Kabru would not have thought to add a line in the book in a MILLION years. The WL does not think to check if Laios added any strange condition. It's like using one wish of the genie to wish for infinite wishes - I mean yeah nobody SAID you couldnt do that but it's obvious right? It's basically cheating... Who does that? ...what's this? Laios, what are you eating? Spit the King out!

Ps: in Italian, the word for "capture" on a chessboard and the word for "eating" are one and the same.

#dungeon meshi spoilers #dungeon meshi manga spoilers #labru chess meme #kabru #laios

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trans-axolotl · 1 year ago

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and this is also why i think that any meaningful community building/advocacy/support around madness/neurodivergence/mental illness needs to be founded on principles of liberation and abolition, and that we need to be able to distinguish between people who are allies based on our shared values + goals, and between people who use some of the same language as us, but are fundamentally advocating for separate things.

One example I see a lot of is the idea of "lived experience" professionals, people who have a career in the mental health system and who also have some personal experience with mental illness. These professionals oftentimes will talk about their own negative experiences in the mental health system, and come into their careers with a genuine desire to improve the experience of patients. But their impact is incredibly limited by the system they have chosen to work in: the coercive elements of psychiatry incentivize professionals to buy into the existing power structures instead of disrupting them. And as a whole, many lived experience professionals end up getting exploited and tokenized by their employers and used as an attempt to make carceral psychiatry seem more palatable. Professionals in this dynamic are not working to effectively challenge the structural violence of their profession: they become complicit, even if they do also have good intentions and provide individual support.

(I do know some radical providers who have found innovative ways to fuck up the system and destabilize and shift power in their workplaces, but this is a very small number of providers and is not most of the lived experience providers I've talked with.)

Another example I see a lot in our spaces has to do with the evolution of the neurodiversity paradigm. I feel a very deep connection to the original conceptualization of neurodiversity and neurodivergent as coined by Kassiane Asasumasu, but in recent years I've seen a lot of people using neurodivergent language in a way that feels pretty dramatically different than the foundational principles. This isn't saying that people should stop using ND terminology or that all neurodivergent spaces are like this--rather, I just want to point out some trends I see in certain communities, both online and in my in personal life. Although people will often use neurodivergent language and on the surface, seem allied with concepts of deinstitutionalization, acceptance, etc, the values and structure in these community spaces often rely heavily on ideas of classification based in DSM, and build very prescriptive and rigid models for categorizing different types of neurodivergence in a way that ends up excluding some M/MI/ND people. Certain types of knowledge are valued over other types of knowledge, and certain diagnoses are prioritized as worthy of support over others. There's a lot of value placed on identifying and classifying many types of behaviors, beliefs, thoughts, actions, into specific categories, and a lack of solidarity between different diagnoses or the wider disability community.

Again, this isn't to say that ND terminology is bad or useless--I think it is an incredibly helpful explanatory model/shorthand for finding community and will call myself neurodivergent, and find a lot of value in community identification and sharing of wisdom. I just feel like it's important to realize that not every ND person, organization, or initiative, is actually invested in the project of fighting for our liberation.

when thinking about our activism, as abolitionists, it's important to be very specific about what our goals, values, and tactics are. For example, understanding the concept of non-reformist reforms helps us distinguish what immediate goals are useful, versus what reforms work to increase the carceral power of the psychiatric system. And when building our own value systems and trying to build alternative ways of caring for ourselves and our communities, we need to be able to evaluate what brings us closer to autonomy, freedom, and interdependence. I need people to understand that just because someone is also against psych hospitalization does not mean that they are also allies in the project of letting mad people live free, authentic, meaningful, and supported lives, and that oftentimes people's allyship is conditional on our willingness to conform to their ideas of a "good" mentally ill person.

#personal #psych abolition #mad liberation #surviving psych #antipsych #neurodivergent #also to be clear i'm not saying any of this as a way to say some people are more or less disabled than others #or that becoming a provider makes you no longer neurodivergent or something #but rather this is discussion of activism + strategy + goals + tactics #not a commentary on "who counts as disabled or who deserves support #this is talking about: how do we build the type of world where mad people are liberated and how can we tell who is also working towards tha

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yamayuandadu · 5 months ago

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Sorry If i am bothering you but i want to know what role did the wilderness and its animals play in Mesopotamian mythology?

I like answering questions about Mesopotamia which indicate genuine interest, so no need to worry.

The most straightforward answer would be that the wilderness was generally perceived negatively (see ex. Wiggermann’s Scenes From the Shadow Side). The steppe in particular was usually portrayed as a place where one can get robbed at best and as the dwelling of ghosts, demons and the like - or just straight up the underworld - at worst. The mountains were frequently viewed as a site of confrontations between gods and their opponents but more neutral or even positive portrayals pop up in literature too. It’s also important to note that the marshlands were viewed pretty firmly positively. As for wild animals: by far the best overview of Mesopotamian zoology is offered by Jeremiah Peterson in his dissertation A Study of Sumerian Faunal Conception with a Focus on the Terms Pertaining to the Order Testudines. Niek Veldhuis’ Religion, Literature, and Scholarship: the Sumerian Composition Nanše and the Birds, with a Catalogue of Sumerian Bird Names is really good too. There’s also quite recent Entomological Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia by Vazrick Nazari but you should bear in mind the author is an entomologist, not an assyriologist, so some sections are… less than reliable and sources as old as from the 19th century, and as questionable as Paropola’s phantasmagoric visions, are employed once the focus shifts away from identification of insects.

More under the cut.

Animals were generally seen as an essential part of the world outside human dwellings. Positive comparisons to certain taxa - wild and domestic cattle and lions - are very common in myths, royal hymns, and other genres. The bovine analogies are so popular in Mesopotamian texts that even scorpions could be metaphorically described as a sort of bull.

Demonic traits could be attributed to some animals viewed as dangerous: snakes, scorpions and dogs in particular. Additionally, omen texts indicate that ants were seen as messengers of Ereshkigal, presumably because their burrowing lifestyle made the Mesopotamians assume they could move all the way down to the underground land of the dead. Finding ants while digging foundations for a new building was therefore an ill omen; seeing flying red ants above a house, meanwhile, was a sign the owner is at the risk of being killed. Due to such risks, behavior of ants was sometimes observed by religious specialists, and some of the namburbi protective rituals specifically deal with them. Locusts were a bad omen too, but that’s a given. On the other hand, moths were viewed as bringers of good omens.

Some deities were associated with the wilderness, and broadly with animals dwelling there. Most notable examples are Ninkilim (addressed as “lord of the creatures”; his name was at times confused with ninka, “mongoose”, leading to the development of the idea that he was a deified mongoose himself), Sumugan (though he was associated with domestic animals too) and to a smaller degree Numushda, arguably. Ennugi, a minor courtier of Enlil, could be addressed as the creator of grubs, though a similar role is also attested for the mythical king Alulim; attestations are limited to incantations against field pests, though. For more context see here.

A special case is Nanshe. Two of the major literary texts focused on her focus on interactions between her and animals - Nanshe and the Birds and Home of the Fish. These belong to the subgenre called “enumeration literature”: while there is an actual plot, and deities are involved, the goal is mostly to fit as many terms from a single category into a single composition. As a result, Nanshe sounds… unusually passionate (fixated, even) on the core topics. I think it makes for really unique characterization but alas, as a major Mesopotamian deity who fits neither into questionable Bible takes nor into the madonna-whore complex she’s not getting anywhere in popculture. Something that’s generally missing from the Mesopotamian repertoire are myths involving anyone turning into an animal. There are two notable exceptions, Enlil and Namzitarra, which involves Enlil turning into a raven to test a devotee, and Dumuzi’s Dream, in which Dumuzi asks Utu to turn him into a gazelle to escape underworld gendarmes pursuing him.

Major gods were not theriomorphic, and with some small exceptions (Tishpak, whose skin is in one case described as green and scaly; Ishtaran, who might have been depicted with the lower body of a snake) didn’t even have any animal body parts. However, deified animals are nonetheless also attested - multiple examples of divine bulls are the main example, obviously (for instance Indagara, Buru, the borrowed Hurrian Sheri and Hurri, possibly Magiru, “obedient”), as expected divine lions also pop up every now then, but that’s not all.

There’s a number of deified birds, though most of them occur only in Early Dynastic sources which do not provide any real insights about their character. One example that comes to mind is the deity Kiki or Ninkiki (“lady of the kiki); we have no clue what sort of bird the kiki was though, other than that it was loud enough to be compared to the storm. Nirah is a deified snake.

Deified invertebrates are much less common but it’s still worth bringing up Eḫ, a member of the court of Nungal whose name is pretty semantically similar to English “bug” (though it might also specifically refer to a louse. There is also an either divine or demonic centipede, Ḫallulaya. Among the numerous ancestors of Enlil there is a pair named Engiriš and Ningiriš, “lord butterfly” and “lady butterfly”. It is often claimed that Uttu, the goddess of weaving, was portrayed as a deified spider, but the evidence is at best limited, see here and here for details. Peterson doesn’t list her among deified animals.

A mythical creature listed in enumerations of Ninurta’s enemies, kulianna (“friend of heaven”), might be a supernatural dragonfly, though it’s also possible it was imagined as something else altogether and the link to dragonflies is just the result of homophony with Akkadian kulīlu, “dragonfly”. For more detail see here, p. 89. In art there’s a fair number of depictions of animals behaving like humans, but the full context of such works remains poorly known. There’s a brief overview here from p. 237 onward.

Especially in Assyria wild animals were customarily hunted by kings, and trophies acquired this way served as a way of showing off the extent of their dominion. It has been suggested that they could eventually acquire apotropaic qualities, as evidenced by the preparation of protective statues of the apsasîtu, the burḫiš and the nāḫiru, sometimes interpreted as water buffalo, yak and whale. However, the meaning of these three terms remains uncertain, for some recent considerations see here.

#mesopotamian miscellanea

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fruitless-vain · 2 months ago

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hi! do you have any ideas on how to reward a dog who doesn't have any strong motivators? Treats are the only thing that work but he doesn't really care if there is something else he wants, doesnt care for toys, pets are ignored. I just have no idea what other rewards could be used

Id take a good look at Why the dogs motivation seems to be lacking, what environment it tanks in, and ensure to keep an eye out for things like stressors, overstimulation, fear, met needs, and other variables that may impact a dog’s comfort taking treats or exhibiting play behaviour. Things like illness or pain should also be considered as a factor for a lack of motivation (schedule their annual and take a good look at their behaviour and their movement- do they sit sloppy, pop hip often, hunch back, etc. these can all be more overlooked signs of pain!). Breed can also be a factor as some are more self motivated than people pleasing so their motivation tends to just look a bit different!

I'd also be curious to know if this dog has always been disinterested or if this has cropped up over time. A common factor for decreasing motivation is the fact that training itself has become unfun. Usually as a result of asking too much of the dog too fast, not paying them adequately for the work they're doing, working in far too complicated settings, too many competing reinforcers, getting frustrated during the session, using rewards to lure a dog towards feared things or simply having training sessions run on for too long where the dog then ends sessions feeling bored or tired. This can cause even the most active dog to become averse to training as a whole which can present itself as an aversion or lack of interest in many common rewards.

Additionally see what sorts of environments the dog is comfortable being rewarded in, perhaps they take treats okay in a certain room of the home but not outside. This can give us a lot of info and allow us to start in an environment they can succeed in and gradually shift to other environments with more complex challenges (like the competing reinforcers you mentioned)

Reinforcers can be Anything the dog actually wants. The sky is really the limit here. I can stick a treat in every dogs mouth and it’s not going to help anything if the dog itself doesn’t find that treat rewarding. Some options might be:

Treats- experiment with different types and textures. Smelly cheeses, hotdog, and sausage are common high value snacks that can help increase motivation in difficult situations but all dogs are different and some might find a satisfying crunch of a crispy biscuit more rewarding. Try new things and see what they gravitate towards. Additionally watch the way you deliver the reward, a common mistake is to push the treat in towards the dog's nose- this can be off-putting as you add spatial pressure which over time can cause a dog to refuse to take treats altogether. Instead try to offer the treat a distance away from their nose so they step towards it to take it (also watch for things like the way you hold your hand, some dogs may find a hand looming down with the treat threatening while a hand held below nose level with the palm up to be nicer to take treats from). You can also deliver treats in more engaging ways instead of just handing it to them. Toss it in the air for them to catch, roll it along the floor to chase, scatter a few pieces in grass, have them chase and follow the hand for a bit prior to releasing the treat. Make getting the treats a whole Experience!

Toys- rubber toys, canvas, biting, chasing, squeakers, tug. There's a ton of options. Not all dogs like playing in the middle of training as it breaks their focus but others live for it. While not for every dog I will say that playing is a good measure for a dog's comfort. If, for example, you can play tug indoors and have a fun time but the dog is unable to play tug at all outdoors that tells us the dog doesn't feel comfortable enough to exhibit that behaviour. That's information we can use!

Petting- Not my favourite thing to use, affection isn't really something you want to be bargaining off in exchange for favours but it has its uses. A fearful dog may love some pets to help comfort them and reduce that fear response, some affection can also go a long way in just grounding your dog and keeping a training session light and fun. A bit of a social fun break. There's definitely some dogs that can appreciate a pet as a reinforcer and they can work in a pinch if other reinforcers aren't available.

Sniffs- Not something you want to overuse as sniffing is a fundamental part of how dogs explore the world but an excellent way to shift to self reinforcing fundamentals like loose leash walking. Most dogs love a good sniff, your hound types especially, and you can use that to your advantage as you ask for a behaviour and then release them to go snuffle away. Sniffing is also a calming behaviour that can reduce heart rate and build confidence in their environment which can reduce issues like not taking treats outdoors in the first place.

Speed- A lot of dogs find human walking paces slow and frustrating (a common cause for leash pulling) so you may find that in outdoor environments you can reward your dog by simply jogging for a short burst. The speed is fun and enticing and as such can often become quite the powerful reward.

Personal play + Volume - Whether this be the opportunity to howl and bark or you getting loud and excited with them. Sometimes a dog may not be interested in toys but they may be interested in your engagement. This might be baby talking to them in a happy tone or fully getting down on their level to wrestle and bop around or perhaps running away and having them chase you. A different way to initiate play for those disinterested in toys.

Premack's Principle - When you are dealing with competing reinforcers most people will find they lose this battle where whatever you have is not as valuable as what the dog actually wants (chasing a squirrel perhaps). In many cases you cannot fight instinct and genetics with a piece of cheese. At least not without prepwork. This is where Premack's Principle comes in to play, where a dog is able to do a less desirable behaviour (ignoring the squirrel) in exchange for a more desirable behaviour (getting to go chase the squirrel). You can use the thing you're struggling with to reinforce what you'd rather see. Another example may be having your dog a distance away from other dogs, waiting for eye contact and then releasing them to go greet the dog. Over time this could cause an exciteable greeter to offer frequent eye contact to you whenever they spot a dog in anticipation of getting to go greet the other dog which is a nice alternative to barking or pulling. Practically everything your dog would Rather Be Doing you can use as a reward for what You would rather they be doing.

I'd also take a look in to "engagement games" online, there should be a load of force free resources out there for ways to make yourself more engaging and fun which can really help in encouraging a dog to be more excited to train. Strong foundations in how they view interacting with you and training as a whole can really go a long way in impacting motivators and training results.

There's a whole lot more to consider and a ton of more complex things that could be at play but without knowing your dog personally I'll leave this here for you to ponder and play with!

#dog training

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lorei-writes · 2 months ago

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... Just some ramblings.

It happened several times that I've been told that I'm an optimist or an otherwise very positive person. There are certain things I don't complain about much, which I presume can give off the wrong idea that nothing goes too askew in my life. In that case, not despairing would be easy.

But that's not real. The time I spent being bedridden in 2022 & 2023 combined exceeds half a year. My day starts with 10+ pills. I've had to start the same degree three times now, despite never failing any exam. I got discarded on the basis of being ill. The list goes on -- I struggle like most people do... And I don't dislike my life. I enjoy being alive, even though some days I wonder why.

[Directed more so at myself than anybody else -- I wanted to organise them in my head a little, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to share it either.]

>> Contentment is everywhere. Enjoy the smallest things.

At one point it felt like settling for less, but now I think that was rather misguided. It's increasing your sensitivity to pleasure more than anything. It can help you stay present in the moment.

I can't have many treats, but I can still drink black tea. The feeling of the hot mug against my hands, the texture of the ceramic. The smell of the tea. Its taste. Being warmed from the inside. The way the loose leafs float in the water... Previously I'd just overlook it, but now it's more pleasurable than any cakes I would have had it with before.

It isn't to say that cakes don't taste good anymore. They're something "extra"... and now I just don't need that "extra" to be content.

>> Your life is the only one you have.

Wondering about "what ifs" is a waste of energy. You live only in the present and cannot rewrite your past. You can know a lot of answers to your "whys", but... if you don't live, don't move on, does that change much?

I cried about things being unfair, but that never made them fair. It's a pointless effort. The reality still is that I have to deal with a certain set of limitations (and a certain set of advantages), and that I can only try my best to work with that.

>> Humour helps. Not the self-depreciating one.

Some days you need to cry, and then, by all means, cry. Some things you may never want to laugh about... But some? Meh. They become so mundane they get funny, and at the end of the day, laughter's good for you. There are no brownie points for always being serious.

(I shall not talk about shitting with ghosts.)

>> Bitter? In tears? Live through it.

Putting on a front doesn't do anybody any favours. We're only humans. If you feel bitter or sad about something, you are bitter or sad about it. Allowing yourself to experience the negative emotion is... fine. I'd say it's only reasonable to sit with it and let it wash over you -- without spiralling and going into negative "nothing is ever going to be okay, everybody is bad, that person is rotten, yada yada" loops. Sometimes you just need to observe the mind.

>> Nobody can predict the future.

When everything goes askew, it is tempting to say that things will always be this way. Our brains like patterns. They love searching for them... at the same time, they're full of biases and a couple years hardly define the entire rest of your life. Things can fall apart in a week. They can also be brought back together... and ultimately, when you live in the future, you forget about the present, which is the only time you really have.

>> Nobody thinks about you as much as you do. In most cases it's not malice, it's just ignorance. (And everybody will be guilty of this.)

>> Everybody has hard days.

>> The you of today lives only today. Make the most use out of your time. Anticipate the internal reward you will get.

Do you have to start studying early for your exam? No. But... Think about the you from the future. Will they be happy to be able to just revise on the day before it? Or would you rather leave them with still having to work through a portion of the material? It may seem it's all "you", but "you" of today is not living with the same consequences as the "you" of tomorrow or two months from now. Help the "you" from the future! Anticipate the feeling of relief you'll get then! It's a team effort!

Lorei of the good days is constantly working so that Lorei of the bad days can be at ease.

>> Agency matters.

There are things that are outside of your control. Sometimes I can't sit up by myself. It's frustrating. However, I can also pick what book I'm going to read next, I can choose to take my medicine on time, I can choose to continue on studying. No matter how insignificant it seems, there's always a choice I can make, even if it's something as small as choosing to eat even though it hurts.

Some things I can't control. I'm not giving away the choices that are in my hands.

>> You control only yourself and your reactions.

Don't give power to other people. It's impossible to control how they feel or what they think about you. It's impossible to make people stay. It's all up to them, and yes, sometimes they will be hurtful, sometimes you will be misjudged. But whether you care about that is only up to you.

>> Forgive, but don't forget.

Holding onto grudges and feeding old emotion only wastes energy. Letting those control me or influence my actions would only give away the power I have. I can choose to move on and to be unaffected. And I can choose not to allow somebody close again, even though I don't feel anything about them.

>> You are not entitled to the consequences of your actions.

You can work your ass off and it can still not pay off. The only thing you can affect is what's within your grasp -- as such, worrying about outcomes becomes irrelevant.

>> One goal at a time. (Even if you have multiple of them: if you're working on thing A, you're working on thing A only.)

Separate goals within your mind. The more things you have to do and the more you mix them, the lower the satisfaction from progressing any of them.

>> If you're in pain and can't avoid it, accept it and feel it.

I can't take painkillers. Avoidance of inevitable pain only prolongs it. It's easier to take it when I accept it as bad as it is, and let it go through my system.

>> You may not be ready to do something. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.

>> Learn to fail. Failure is a feedback.

>> Discomfort is not danger.

It is good to learn to sit with your discomfort. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable makes learning, conflict resolution, and growth overall easier. You then don't have to appease emotion.

>> The self is fluid. Don't cling.

We all change. We're not marketable products with branding. Let yourself change... and even if you're stripped from all the things you've thought you were, it's not as scary. You are more than them.

There was a time when I was neither dexterous, nor smart, nor hard-working, nor useful, all against my will. I was none of the things I'd previously call myself... But I still was. It's not as scary to lose any of them anymore. I just am and that's enough.

>> Try to understand. You don't have to agree, but try to understand.

>> Be wary of your own arrogance. Don't assume you're absolved of ignorance.

>> You have more to give than you realise. And honestly? Giving to the right people is awesome.

... and there could be a couple more, but I've rambled my heart out, so I'm good now.

#rambling #personal

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thewildsophia · 1 year ago

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3Below//Krel Tarron x Depressed!Reader

A/N: Re-watching 3Below has reignited my love for Krel. There also aren't any Krel x depression out there so fuck it ima do it myself. For these headcanons, I imagine the reader to have Major Depressive Disorder as opposed to any other kind of depression bc that's what I have. Enjoy!

TW: S//H, S//I, Adult Language

Another warning will be placed before sections containing the above.

Words: 2485

"Read More Link” placed due to length.

Krel Tarron x S/O w/Major Depressive Disorder

At first, Krel would not understand. That is, he wouldn’t pick up on the fact that you have depression.

His knowledge of human sociology and behaviors is very limited when he and his sister first land on Earth. However, even after he’s spent months here he still struggles to understand and pick up on social cues.

So even though you exhibit very obvious signs of depression — i.e. lack of energy/appetite, excessive sleeping, and loss of enjoyment in activities — Krel doesn’t suspect anything inherently wrong with you. He thinks that your personality is just different from your other human counterparts.

And to be fair, for as long as he’s known you, you’ve always acted this way (because you were depressed-).

You would definitely have to tell him you’re depressed because otherwise, he would never figure it out. You ended up telling him during a period of lucidity where you didn’t feel too bad and were conscious of his lack of understanding of your behavior.

As you tell him, Krel stares at you intently, committing everything you're telling him to memory.

Now he really doesn’t understand.

This whole time he thought you just have a different temperament from the other humans at your school, but in reality, you were suffering from a serious illness that he had no idea you had.

Tbh, Krel’s not ok for a few days after you tell him. For a brief moment, he’s angry that you didn’t tell him sooner, but he quickly understands why and his anger dissolves into sadness. He feels so terrible about not picking up on the fact that you’re constantly in pain and that he’s done nothing to help you.

Krel spends the next few days after you told him researching all about depression and other similar mental illnesses. He’s honestly a little fascinated by how many illnesses there are lmao. It’s just that on Akaridia-5, there aren’t illnesses like that, so he’s happy to learn something new (even if it’s not under more favorable conditions).

Krel has a lot of questions about your flavor of depression for when you’re mentally ready to answer such questions.

Tbh, he’s a little insensitive with some of his questions, but that’s just because he doesn’t know any better. Correct him (politely) and he’ll make sure to be nicer with his questions.

Not much changes dynamic-wise; Krel’s still your loving boyfriend, the same way that you’re still his loving significant other.

He does make it a habit to compliment you every time he sees you. Whether it be a compliment about your looks, your school work, or even something as small as “I’m happy to see you today,” he really tries to boost your confidence in hopes that you feel better about yourself.

He also tries to be around you more often, both to make sure you’re ok and to show you that he’s there for you.

Krel becomes better at predicting when you’re about to enter a depressive episode. Having been around you for so long and now knowing what the warning signs are, he’s very good at guessing when you’re entering certain episodes (sometimes even before you know. Scary, huh?)

When you enter depressive episodes, Krel does everything he can to make sure he’s there for you, both physically and mentally. He will hold you close to him with all four of his arms while he listens carefully to what is troubling you.

Krel still doesn’t quite understand the emotions involved in depression. Like many other people, he believed that it was just constant sadness, but the more he read and spoke with you about the matter, the more complex it all became. Sadness, despair, emptiness, fear, anger, jealousy, all emotions that he’s never really felt in full. Not to mention other even more nuanced emotions such as paranoia and shame that he’s actually never felt at all.

Krel is also very good at helping you through mood swings. He’s come to understand that all humans fluctuate between many different emotions, sometimes in a short period of time. He knows when you want him close to you and knows when you want space.

If you are someone who is very mature with how you explain how you’re feeling, -- like telling someone you’re mad at them, why you’re mad, and that you want space to cool off/talk with them about it -- Krel has an easier time responding to you. He’s much less likely to misinterpret your feelings and what you want.

Krel actually learned how to vocalize his own emotions from you whenever he’s distressed or upset which definitely opened you two up for a much more healthy form of communication.

He just struggles with emotions in general, but he makes the effort to understand for you :)

TW: S//H, S//I

If Krel ever gets even a hint that you’re hurting yourself, his mental walls would fall and he’d collapse in on himself.

If there is someone who is threatening or hurting you, he, his sister, and Varvatos can easily get rid of them. If you are sick, he can help treat you until you are better. Even if you do something as small as scraping your knee, he can be there to put a bandage over it.

But yourself? He can’t protect you from yourself. He doesn’t know what to do and that scares him so much.

After what happened with his parents, he is very grateful for the lives of those he loves as he understands just how easily they can be taken away from him. He is afraid that one day you will be gone and all that will remain is him.

Krel would have found out about your self-harm either on his own or someone tipping him off about it. You just didn’t have it in you to tell him yourself.

Krel then begins to really try and learn human medicine. He would spend hours reading medical articles, watching first-aid videos, and taking copious notes about everything he learns, even if it grosses him out a bit (organic organisms were never really something he was interested in before).

He tries to come up with other things you can do when you feel like hurting yourself; Drawing/coloring, writing, reading, playing games, anything that will distract you. He’s always sending you ideas especially when he’s not with you and knows how you’re feeling.

And to both of your credits, your self-harm does lessen in both severity and quantity. But unfortunately, it doesn’t always help since old habits die hard.

Krel is there in an instant to help you when you relapse assuming you tell him you need help. Even if you decide not to tell him immediately and care for yourself that day/night, Krel almost always finds out sometime after and worries over you about it.

His hours spent learning first aid pay off when goes to treat your wounds; Cuts, burns, bruises, bites, you’re convinced that Krel can treat any minor injury. And you’re grateful for that.

Krel is thorough about disinfecting any open wounds with hydrogen peroxide or Neosporin over burns and is incredibly gentle when wrapping them in gauze. He likes to check on them every few days as well to make sure they’re healing correctly.

He holds you close to him afterward -- all four arms wrapped around you and face pressed into your neck/shoulder -- and begs you not to leave him. At first, you’re confused thinking he meant, like, break up with him. It isn’t until you give it more thought that you realize that he doesn’t want to leave him through death.

If you ever express feelings of guilt -- whether verbal or through body language -- Krel quickly dismisses them from your mind by telling you how he wants to help you and how much he loves you. That he wouldn’t bother doing all of this if he didn’t see anything of substance in you.

If you ever express a desire to die, -- whether through suicide or some freak accident -- Krel will look cool on the outside but on the inside, he will be panicking. As hard as he may try, Krel could never understand why you want to die.

Even if you explain it to Krel -- Everyone and everything that troubles you and the awful guilt you constantly feel by just being alive -- he believes that there is always a reasonable and achievable solution to your problems. It’s not that he’s trying to downplay your problems or your emotions, he’s just naturally more of a rational thinker even under stress.

But even though he doesn’t understand the emotions themselves, he does understand that human emotions can elicit other undesirable responses and thoughts.

Krel will constantly tell you how much he loves you and that he doesn’t know what he’d do with himself if you were dead.

He does what he can to push those thoughts from your head.

As written earlier, Krel likes to spend time with you in person. Not just because he loves you sm but also because it makes it easier to keep an eye on you and intervene when necessary.

Def says something along the lines of, “I’m happy you’re alive.” And the first time he said that you cried so hard he thought he insulted you lmao. You had to explain to him that you weren’t insulted but relieved and overjoyed.

Krel is not the most emotionally intelligent person out there, but he tries to be and is willing to understand them for you.

When you had shown up at school with a busted lip, bloody and bruised knuckles, and a dull gash on your cheek, Krel freaked the fuck out. The moment he spotted you walking to your locker from his own locker he was all over you.

“What happened?” Krel cried while gently taking your face into one of his hands while the other went to grab your hand.

“It’s nothing,” You mutter, pulling your face out of his grasp and taking a step back. Krel scoffed, looking almost offended while saying,

“Nothing? Nothing did that to you?”

“I just-” You start, raising your hands up in defense before dropping them at your sides, “I got in a fight with Steve. It was over something stupid. We’ve known each other for most of our lives; I just worry about him.” You cross your arms to hold onto yourself and look anywhere Krel isn’t. Krel moved his head so that it was in your line of vision, forcing you to meet his eyes.

“I take it you don’t want to talk about it?” He asked. You nod ‘yes,’ and Krel frowns.

“I won’t push you then, but I really want to get you treated,” He says, taking a step closer to you. You stay where you are and allow him to hold your hands.

“Later, I’ll be fine for now,” You say while bringing up one of his hands to kiss the top of it, “You can have Aja or even Mother patch me up after school.”

Krel looks at your knuckle hesitantly before agreeing, trusting that you truly would be fine until after the school day.

The moment the last bell rang he made a beeline to find you and ran you to his house as quickly as possible. The two of you were the only ones home when you got there, so Krel wasted no time in having one of the blanks retrieve a first aid kit. Once given to him, Krel attempts to treat your injuries but fails pretty miserably.

You end up showing him how to clean and wrap different kinds of cuts and bruises. It’s when you’re in the middle of cleaning your knuckles in the sink that Krel says something that makes your stomach drop.

“Mother, can you scan Y/N for any more injuries, please?”

“Wha-Mother! You don’t have to do that!” You shout panicked and covered your arms in a vain attempt to conceal your other injuries.

“Numerous other injuries found upon Y/N in the upper arm, forearm, and thigh regions. Approximately 27 cuts to the epidermis and 3, 1st-degree burns found.”

“What!?” Krel turned around so fast to face you, you swear you saw his electric blue hair whip from the air, “Where?! I demand you show me!”

“No!” You cry back panicked, hands gripping the side of the sink behind you. Krel scowls and grows before shouting,

“Mother, show me a hologram of where the injuries are on Y/N!”

“My King-in-waiting, It would seem that I have breached a highly sensitive topic on behalf of Y/N. I believe it best that they discuss it with you themself.” Mother responds. Krel sighs, his upper right hand running through his hair.

“Y/N,” He starts, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m really worried.” He carefully walks over to you but leaves a foot of space between the two of you.

“Will you please show me where you’re hurt?” He asks quietly. Your eyes begin to burn with tears and your mouth opens to explain yourself before shutting quickly with a ‘clank’ of your teeth. Unable to speak, you place your hands into his lower ones, palms up, and nod your head. Gently, Krel’s other hands push your long sleeves higher up your arms, and he’s baffled at the numerous cuts he sees littering your arms. There were many different colors, thicknesses, lengths, and stages of healing -- some were a day old while others were weeks old. He ran his thumb over one of the older ones.

“Wha…” Krel stutters, eyes dancing over your arms, “What are these? What-Who did this?” His eyes flicker up to yours.

Your jaw twitches -- wanting to speak but unable to -- and you pull one of your hands away from his to point to yourself. Krel’s eyebrows furrow.

“I-I don’t understand,” He whispers, his own eyes beginning to water, “I want to understand.”

“I did this,” You mumble out, pulling your other hand away from his, “I am…ashamed.” Tears begin to fall and you scrub gently at your eyes to dry them.

“You-You did this?” Krel asks, confused and stunned, “You willingly hurt yourself? Why?”

You heave out a few breaths trying to figure out how to relay your emotions to him. While difficult to say, you manage to squeeze out three words.

“I hate-” You stammer, “I hate myself.”

And Krel is immediately embracing you.

“I love you,” He says, cupping your face in his upper hands and staring into your eyes with his other two around your waist, “I love you so much. Please don’t ever say you hate yourself.”

Gently, he kisses your forehead, your cheek, and then your lips.

The two of you are left a sobbing mess of tender skin and emotion in the kitchen for Varvatos and Aja to find later when they arrive home.

#3below #tales of arcadia #toa #toa 3below #krel tarron #krel tarron x reader #krel #krel x reader #aja tarron #varvatos vex #toa x reader #3below x reader #tales of arcadia x reader #thewildsophia writes

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wanderinginksplot · 1 year ago

Text

Sev + "I'm going to give you five seconds to take that back."

Sev x gn!reader (no use of 'y/n' and no pronouns). Flirty (ish).

Word Count: 2,400

Warnings: discussions of medical concerns, references to missions, stimulant misuse, grandstanding, ill-planned bets, semi-flirtatious wrestling.

---

It had all started when you tried to talk your most recent set of charges into being more healthy.

Delta Squad had been a source of constant frustration for you since you were assigned to be their medic. Normally, commando squads weren’t overly concerned about having a medic on-board. However, Delta had a close call on a previous mission. One commando, Sev, had been in especially bad shape.

Some time in a bacta tank had fixed the worst of their injuries, but there were certain limits they shouldn’t push if they wanted to avoid a repeat. Sev needed to be particularly careful, since he had suffered damage to his ribs and many of the organs within them - including his heart.

Which was why you had been irretrievably furious when you found him downing a packet of stims.

“Are you trying to die?” you had demanded. “Because I know you’re not stupid, and those are the only possible reasons you would be using stims with damage to your heart. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that I have a mission to complete and I don’t have eight hours to sleep before we get there.”

Honestly, you could have expected that kind of answer, but the nonchalant tone Sev had used was what pushed you over the edge.

“And when they wear off? You know, since you took them three hours before we even break atmosphere?” You had shaken your head, clenching your jaw so tightly that the muscles ached. “If you had bothered to talk to me, I would have advised you to sleep for that time, then take half a stim pack when we arrive.”

“I don’t need some vorpan baar'ur telling me what to do,” he had spat. “As long as I can do my job, the GAR doesn’t worry about the little things. Including my health or my life.”

You didn’t understand the Mando’a, obviously, but that didn’t stop you from rolling your eyes at the drama of his caustic words.

“Apparently, having someone tell you what to do is exactly what you needI” you had countered. “Do you know what kind of shape you’ll be in after another dose of stims? Even I would be able to beat you in a wrestling match! Some use you’ll be to your brothers then.”

It was a bit too far, and you felt bad as silence fell in the small ship. You had worked with enough troopers to know that they prided themselves on loyalty to their brothers above all else. In your defense, though, you recognized the signs of someone who wouldn’t be talked out of their nihilism. By meeting him head-on using the parameters of life as he saw it, you had hoped to shake him out of his stubbornness.

It was only bad luck that it hadn’t worked. Sev’s expression had darkened and you prepared yourself for a threat or a cutting insult, but Scorch had laughed, breaking the tension.

“Sounds like a good, old-fashioned bet,” he had said, chuckling in a way that could only be described as ‘gleeful’.

Sev had scoffed and walked away without another word, but your luck ran out.

Delta Squad had gotten a call from General Jusik, alerting them that the leader of the Separatist-controlled planet had opted for a peace talk. As a gesture of good faith, the GAR was withdrawing the commando squads who had been set to invade.

“We’ve been redirected,” Boss announced when Jusik disconnected the call. The sergeant stepped out of the small cockpit where he had been navigating with Fixer. “We’re to touch down on a Republic-friendly planet in the next system and settle in. We’ll be backup if things go south, so stay ready to go. Get some sleep if you can.”

“Those of us who didn’t already take a packet of stims,” you had muttered when Sev went back to cleaning his blaster instead of heading for the bunks.

Unfortunately, your sarcasm would prove to be your undoing. Scorch perked up at your quiet admonishment, visibly brightening. “Hey, didn’t you say you could beat Sev in hand-to-hand when he’s using stims?”

“Yes,” you confirmed, holding eye contact with Scorch, but trying to watch Sev in your peripheral vision.

“I’m going to give you five seconds to take that back,” Sev growled. When you looked over, you saw that he very much was not focusing on his blaster anymore.

“I don’t think I will.” The way you lifted your chin was nothing short of antagonistic, but you were angry. Clarity of thought while angry had never been your forte. Despite that, you clocked the gray undertones in Sev’s face and the way his fingers were trembling slightly. “In fact, I think I could beat you now, whether or not you take another dose.”

“You’re on,” Sev told you, a challenge thick in his tone.

“Wait-” How you hadn’t seen this coming, you weren’t sure, but your stomach was sinking. “I didn’t mean I actually want to wrestle you. I’m just telling you, as a medical professional, that-”

“Hey, you already said you would,” Scorch reminded you. “Too late to go back on it now.”

“Knock it off, Six-Two. It isn’t too late for anything,” Fixer told him, turning around in the cockpit to face you all. Before you could thank him, he continued as he eyed you directly. “It’s actually a choice: wrestle Oh-Seven or admit that stims aren’t that bad.”

“They are that bad, though,” you insisted.

“If you’re going to wrestle on my ship, do it in the cargo bay,” Boss said over his shoulder. “I don’t want to explain broken equipment to the GAR.”

“This isn’t enough of a challenge to break anything,” Sev decreed. He watched you as he set aside his blaster and stood. “Cargo bay. Five minutes.”

It was overdramatic to specify a time and place on such a small ship, but it still made the pit of your stomach tighten. You took care to offer him an unimpressed face and a simple nod.

"This is gonna be fun!" Scorch said excitedly.

You strongly disagreed, but that wasn’t going to help. It was far too late for that. So you stifled your misgivings and made your way to the back of the ship.

Sev had stripped off his armor by the time you got there. That hadn’t been a concern, but you wondered if it should have been. There was nothing at all you could do against plastoid armor. However, much as you loathed to admit it even to yourself… you were almost as disadvantaged anyway. The sight of Sev’s muscles swelling and bulging under the tightness of his body glove was enough to make the ship feel like it was lurching through the galaxy.

You were wearing comfortable clothes, having refused to change into your lightly armored medic’s gear until you were closer to your eventual destination. You were comfortable and didn’t have to strip off any clothing, but that was almost a pity. It was starting to feel distinctly warm aboard the small ship…

“Ready?” Sev asked.

You nodded, resigned to being decimated by the fully-trained commando. He didn’t attack immediately, choosing to watch you instead. You circled warily, already closer than you liked. The cargo bay of the ship was reasonably big and, as promised, you weren’t going to break anything. That should keep Boss happy, but there still wasn’t a vast amount of space.

So you and Sev circled around, watching each other. You were focused on his chest: all of the hand-to-hand training the GAR had offered told you that motion was typically forecasted in the torso, so that was the best place to watch if you wanted to avoid being surprised.

When you occasionally snuck a glance at Sev, he was watching your face rather than your torso. At first, you wondered if you should be doing the same with him, but then you started to feel flustered rather than wary at the weight of his eyes.

That was when he pounced.

You managed to avoid the first lunge, but you weren’t expecting him to recover his balance as quickly as he did. In half a moment, Sev was upright once more and diving at you.

A strong arm hooked around your waist and you were falling, cushioned from the ground by Sev’s body, but the impact still knocked the air from your lungs. Sev flipped you over and you made your move, rolling quickly out from under him before he had time to close the distance between you.

You got to your feet - or, you started to. Sev’s hand closed around your ankle and pulled. It wasn’t enough to put you back on the floor, but it was enough to bring you heavily to your hands and knees. Since you were already in the proper position, you kicked out with your foot and felt a surge of victory when your heel connected.

And then you were horrified, turning around as you gave a loud gasp. “Sev! Are you okay? I’m so sorry-”

There was a small smudge of dirt on his forehead from your boot, but Sev’s grin flashed bright. “I’m fine. Keep going.”

And then he grabbed both of your ankles, pulling hard enough that your knees went out from under you and you landed on your stomach with a soft, “Oof!”

Sudden heat at your back warned that Sev was getting ready to pin you, so you rolled again. He seemed to expect the movement then, dropping onto you in mid-turn from your side to your back.

With a sudden, surging need to keep your freedom, you pulled back a fist. Your goal was Sev’s recently injured ribs, but you came to your senses before the blow came too close to landing. You were a medic, and every bit of training you had received covered how to prevent injuries, not cause them.

Sev didn’t know that, however, and he winced sharply. He curled into himself in an effort to protect his ribs - a motion that only put more pressure on them. The flash of pain across his face would have made you stop even if you hadn’t already decided to do so.

“Are you-?”

Before you could ask if he was hurt, he had reached down, snagged your wrists, and pressed them against the cold metal of the floor. You were pinned.

You were on your back with a commando pressing you into the floor, but you both… stopped. Your breathing was heavy and - with more than a little surprise - you noticed that Sev’s was, too. Of course, his ribs probably still hurt and you would have to check him for a boot-borne head injury, but you couldn’t help but wonder if he was feeling anything other than pain.

You definitely were.

The chilly bite of the floor at your back faded into the distance as you and Sev studied each other from closer than you had ever been. Sev always looked vaguely angry, but you had wondered if that was his natural expression. That seemed to be true: if you didn’t know him as well as you did, you would have taken his expression to be one of irritation and disdain. But there was softness in it, too. That was what left you feeling like you couldn’t get a full breath.

“Well, Sev, I’d say you won,” Boss remarked dryly.

The comment pulled you back into the moment and you realized that Boss, Fixer, and Scorch were all observing the scene. It felt vaguely ridiculous then, wondering what it would be like to kiss the man who currently had you pinned to the dirty floor. But as Sev released his grip and stood, you missed the warmth of him like it was something tangible.

To your surprise, though, Sev held a hand out to you in a silent offer to help you stand. You took it and he lifted you easily. The silence was thick.

You cleared your throat. “Well, I guess I was wrong. One stim pack isn’t enough for me to win a wrestling match. I still think-”

“Save it,” Sev ordered and you froze. No matter what you thought had changed between you, it wasn’t enough to save you from his sharp tongue. But when he spoke again, Sev’s voice was far more gentle. “It was closer than I thought it would be. Another few minutes and I would have probably lost. I’ll lay off the stims.”

“Aww, no rematch?” Scorch complained.

Fixer made a sharply derisive noise and left for the cockpit. “I’ll pilot us to the staging planet.”

“All of you, get some rest,” Boss ordered before he left as well.

Scorch lingered a moment, glancing between you and Sev. You were still standing close together, the tension palpable between you. Unlike most of your interactions, that tension was not actively hostile.

You were torn between wanting Scorch to leave so you and Sev could talk about what had just happened, and wanting him to stay so you didn’t have to. Slowly, like he was watching something interesting unfold before his eyes, Scorch turned and retreated to his bunk. Since the bunks were in the section just ahead of the cargo bay, Scorch was still in hearing range, but a sense of privacy settled thickly around you and Sev.

When you finally gathered the courage to look over, Sev was watching you. Neither of you spoke, and your mind raced in an effort to find the right words.

Your lips parted, though you didn’t have the slightest idea what you planned on saying. Fortunately, Sev spoke before you could say some muddled assortment of words that might mean nothing… or too much.

“We should sleep while we can,” he told you. After a moment, he added with a wry grin, “Some medic told me I need actual rest, not just stim packs.”

It was more familiar ground, and you relaxed enough to jibe, “What disappointing news.”

“Yeah,” Sev agreed. “But the delivery made it a little better.”

You could only shake your head as you followed him to the bunks.

---

Author's Note - I love Sev wayyyyy too much! I have written more fics for him than for any other member of Delta Squad. That being said, I'm going to focus on Scorch and Boss next since I haven't done much for them. If you have any great ideas for either one that you'd like to throw my way, feel free to comment, ask, or message!

Thanks for reading! You can find other works on my masterlist. As of a few days ago, I discontinued my taglist. You can find just fics on my side-blog, @wanderinginksplot-writes. (As soon as I work through my drafts on this blog, all fics will be posted there first and cross-posted here later.)

#star wars #star wars fanfiction #star wars republic commando #star wars legends #delta squad #republic commando #repcomm #delta squad sev #sev x reader #sev x you #reader insert #reader #gn!reader

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invisiblegarters · 3 months ago

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(Absolutely not) Micro BL and GL Reviews

I spent the last couple of weeks being ill in bed with very little energy. Not great, but also it meant that my limited ability to get up and move around much gave me endless time to catch up on a bunch of shows that I'd let fall by the wayside (or never even started in the first place), and now I have thoughts to share!

Joy? Joy! Welcome to yet another set of my talks about shows that is supposed to be small but never actually is.

Completed

Wandee Goodday: This wound up being way sweeter than I expected from the promo material, but I'm not complaining. I genuinely love shows where most of the people are just trying to get alone while being decent, and that was certainly the vibe here. I was happy with the sex positivity and the introduction of Kao being ace, although I will admit that I felt like it was a little too "let me educate you" about that bit at certain points. That said, it's a topic that maybe needs that kind of thing in this context? I also really really loved that Dr. Dee and Yak got it together and spent a bunch of episodes just being adorable and dealing with struggles that had nothing to do with their relationship. It's so refreshing to see adults being in an adult relationship and actually acting like it. There were several times when the show could have just manufactured drama for drama's sake and chose not to and I really respect and love that. It was also fun to see Title appear in a role that wasn't to cause problems. And Char and Yei were fucking adorable my god. 8/10

We Are: Way better than I expected, if I'm honest. It got a little draggy for me at the end, but Pond and Phuwin always give solid chemistry and I finally got to see what everyone likes so much about Winny and Satang paired together. I never watched MSP and I never will because it's just a little too young for me, but Toey and Q were fucking cute so I get it now, guys. I especially adored Toey - Satang plays endearing brat very well. I also really liked Tan and Fang - their teasing dynamic worked for me. Also Boom is so pretty my goodness. I do think that it was trying to juggle too many couples but as I already said it dragged a little for me at the end so I think they could have done it with better pacing. It seems to me that New has a thing for dramas driven by internal conflicts, and that was We Are all over. The plot advanced as the characters did, which I can understand might be frustrating but I find that if I'm in the right mood I eat it right up. Especially ones like this, with mostly sweet people just living their lives and trying to do right by themselves and each other. Cute, earnest, a really good friend group. It probably won't be something that I revisit much or that sticks in my mind for a long time, but I had a good time. Giving it a 7/10, mostly for the pacing stuff I already mentioned. It kinda lost me towards the end.

My Marvelous Dream is You: idolfactory's second GL and I think I wanted to like it more than I wound up liking it. The chemistry was good and I love the cast (even if I think my girl Silvy was way underutilized), but the plot was a little...not great. I'm still not entirely sure what it was going for, or why the shared dreams were important. I really liked Ae (Kim's mom). And Wan was my favorite. Girl was messy and brash but my kind of messy and brash if I'm honest, and I cheered aloud when she went off on Mawin's family. They were awful. Awful, too, was Mawin in the end. I get being hurt but I always get a little (a lot) irritated when people mess with someone's livelihood out of pettiness, so him fucking with Kim's business because she broke up with him (and yes, in a really shitty way but also lbr here he knew she wasn't into him in some ways he did that to himself) was never gonna do anything but piss me off. It does amuse me that Heng has now played 2 dudes in idolfactory GLs who very nearly marry one of our heroines when she really really doesn't want him and he's very aware, though. I find myself wondering if he's gonna go for the third in The Loyal Pin (I hope he does). 7/10

Love Sea: I loved this one. I knew I would. The premise had me from moment one, lol. And frankly, Fort and Peat deliver on chemistry so it was kind of a no brainer for me. I knew that Trongrak was gonna wind up being really messy the second love came into the picture, and I was absolutely right. I love how he was perfectly fine with Mahasamut holding him and defending him against his shitty dad and following him around and getting all jealous when he implies he's going out to fuck other people (and whether or not he'd have done it is up for debate - I think he would have forced himself to try and failed miserably because that's my favorite lol) and take care of his niece like family, etc...but the second the word "love" actually makes its way out of the dude's mouth he can't handle it. My only quibbles were Prin - why was she so awful for no reason, MAME? The dad - he was not an effective villain to me. I wish that he'd been a little more menacing but I guess it works that he just let Tongrak think that he'd done a lot of things that he hadn't, and I do like that he was basically squeezing money out of both Tongrak and his mom just by showing up on occasion and assuming that they wouldn't talk to each other (which they weren't, both trying too hard to protect their family from his sliminess). I also like that it was finding that out that made both of them snap out of it. And last but not least - what the FUCK, MAME. How dare you give me that lesbian side couple and make it SO COMPELLING and actually get me invested than then not actually offer a resolution because oops, we're on episode 10 now and it's time for the love issue between Tongrak and Mahasamut to rear its head? How very very DARE you. Genuinely this made me the angriest and dropped my personal enjoyment a lot. I haven't seen the special yet so maybe that gets addressed (it SHOULD I was INVESTED), but while I would probably have given it a 9 (I really liked it a lot okay) I am dropping it to a 8/10 for that. Tempted to drop it to a 7 because I am petty.

This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans: Another one I really liked! The chemistry between Sailub and Pon is absolutely scorching and while I have noticed that actors are getting a lot better about it in general, I always take notice when they are so entirely comfortable with not just the steamier scenes but the emotionally intimate ones as well. I love when I am watching a show and I can believe that the characters want each other and like each other, and not like a part of them isn't flinching at the very idea of it (unless that's the character, but just go with me when I say that there's just a very specific vibe you get when one (or both) of the actors isn't comfortable and I think it actually happens more with the sweet, couply stuff than it does the steamy stuff. But I digress). Chemistry like that can help me forgive quite a bit.

I liked how obnoxious Wan was in the beginning - I did not expect that and it was annoying but also kind of delightful. He grew on me despite my initial annoyance. Oab was a little different - he annoyed me right out of the gate by not calling Kao Suay and telling her about her dad. I get the respect thing, I do, but also what if he died and she was abroad, none the wiser? How would everyone have felt then? Keeping it from her was NUTS, and I don't even care that Kluer called her and told her for nefarious reasons. Someone had to. Oab's wishy washiness with her when she came back annoyed me too - a personal failing of mine has always been that I don't have time for that kind of waffling. I just wanted him to make a choice and stick with it (and was doubly annoyed as it became clearer and clearer what his choice was and he still couldn't just say it). Thank goodness he had Nubnueng there to gently prod him into finally doing the thing.

I wish Kluer's turn to villainy had been more evil, but I guess that wouldn't have made sense for this show, since no one really was, not even Enemy No. 1 Methas. Speaking of which, I wanted to like him and JJ more than I did in the end. I did like them, but I guess I just wanted more development there than I got in the end. They were cute though JJ was hands down my favorite character. I understood Methas so much. I also really enjoyed his relationship with Wan.

One thing that I thought was utterly hilarious was Oab's pettiness. As a petty person myself I can't help but find opening a new restaurant to steal all of your ex's customers because he wouldn't just apologize for, you know, deceiving you for most of your relationship and initially planning to sell your restaurant to the one man in the world you emphatically never wanted to own it absolutely hilarious. No notes Oab you keep rocking on. 8/10

Currently Watching

The Loyal Pin: Everything in this show is so damn pretty it's hard for me to think about much else. Especially Freen, and it seems like all the show wants to do is remind us of her beauty at every moment. Which, well. I am not complaining the woman makes my breath catch.

But this week I finally started paying a bit of attention to something more than oooh pretty, and I am genuinely wondering if this show isn't going to be all pretty dresses and gorgeous women falling in love and carving mangoes and if maybe there aren't some extremely serious things swimming in the waters.

Watching Anin wield her power this week hit me way way harder than all the ways that she'd been doing it before, and in a way that made me think a lot harder about how she'd done it before as well. I think it's because usually she sticks to manipulation to get what she wants - she's charming, she smiles, she talks people around - but last ep she dropped all pretense a couple of times, and we watched it cut more than once. Anin is a woman who knows exactly what she wants and she has the means to get it, she is spoiled and she will do whatever it takes. Other people have talked about it better, but I will say I am absolutely fascinated, and am genuinely curious to see if this is going to be addressed or if it's just the way it is. I also want to see if there's something that will butt up against Anin's frankly terrifying amount of power. Something she can't either manipulate or brute force her way through (although in the end I bet she manages to do one or the other anyway).

Also, kisses. Teach Pin more things Anin! She's a good student.

The Trainee: This show was not really on my radar at all, and I'm genuinely not sure why I decided to pick it up. Maybe because I was finishing up another GMMTV show and it was next in the youtube queue?

Whatever the reason, I'm so glad I did because I fucking LOVE this show. it's my favorite thing airing right now and that I never would have expected or believed.

It really is so good though. I think for me it's that it feels realistic - maybe in a way that can be uncomfortable for some but I love it. No one here is perfect, it's not just the mentors constantly schooling the kids because even though they are older, they are still growing too, and still have things to learn. Especially when it comes to Jane, who is my favorite character in the show I think and is hands down the best Off character I have personally seen. I am so iffy with Off normally that my adoration for Jane is confusing me, but he's so good. He's an adult and he handles most of his problems like an adult (which frankly I think is sometimes missing from these shows), but still has moments where he fumbles because he's still human. And I like that when he does fumble, he apologizes. I'm also really in to the whole deal that happens in the workplace where people think he's a certain way and judge him for it, but he's really just...dedicated. Strict, yes, but not entirely uncompromising. I dunno he's just a great character.

I also really like how this feels like an ensemble show with the romance not at the forefront. I don't always want that but this is so well done that I'm happy for it. I like that we have gotten to showcase each intern, their struggles and their achievements and just...growing up and learning to handle that scary point in life where you're really starting to enter the adult sphere, with all it's responsibilities, but still not ones that are entirely on your shoulders. If you do things the more traditional way, that is - I know a lot of us were in that world well before college. Still, it does resonate with me.

I am also enjoying the insight we're getting into the background of production. Such as how much work and effort goes into even the smallest change in filming even something that seems as simple and straightforward as an ad. Imagine how hard it would be to reshoot scenes from something like a TV show, especially considering the stuff like location, OT, cast and crew...I had already guessed a lot of it, but it's always nice to be proven correct. I like being right, what can I say? And the Ryan's awkwardly trying to draw people out without directly asking them how they are After Work Corner is very charming. I like that it gives insight into the business but also Ryan, who I do sometimes feel is the weakest of the interns. Which is insane because he's played by Gun Atthaphan, but there you go. I did like that he was brave enough to ask Jane about his feelings last ep, and I'm looking forward to seeing him more in his element (or at least what he's used to) next ep.

I really hope this show continues to impress.

1000 Stars - This is a rewatch for me as I roped a friend into watching for the first time. I warm up to this one more each time I watch it. The first time I was annoyed with Phupha's everything but I feel like I get him more and more as I go on. I also love a show that has heart (heh, this show has heart ror sure (and this is why we can't take me anywhere)) and this has a ton of it. It also amuses me whenever Phupha and Tian start doing their intense staring thing and there are other people around. I bet they're all just like "welp there they go again we've lost them, best go about our business" and leave them to it.

I also always forget Khaotung is in this one. Every time I watch I'm like "oh yeah" when he shows up. It's so funny to me.

Looking Forward To:

Peaceful Property (28 Aug) - Is it BL? Is it bromance? Who knows. Do I care? I...don't think so. Whatever the romance situation it looks like a ton of fun, and I am excited to see Tay back in glasses and to see this cast, especially doing comedy.

Kidnap (06 Sep) - This one also looks like fun. I love Ohm, Leng looks like he's doing a good job matching him, they seem to have good chemistry from the trailer. And pettily I'd watch this anyway because some of the shenanigans of certain fans have made me that annoyed. Good for me that it looks like something I'll like regardless, I guess.

Pluto (???) - GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME. It has been 84 years I am DYING here. If it doesn't get released this year I might actually cry, but I am hoping that it will.

There are others I am looking forward to (honorable mentions if you will): My Golden Blood, The Heart Killers, ReVamp (still a stupid title), Friendshit Forever, Hide & Sis, Us - but all of these are either not filming yet or so early into their schedule that I'm not letting myself get too excited for them. And for The Heart Killers especially I don't want this to be an Only Friends situation where I got really hyped and then was inevitably kind of disappointed (at first - I shook it off and came back around eventually lol). I just wanna go in there and have a good time - I'm excited to see that entire cast do a romcom, I think it'll be fun, and that's about all I want to expect out of it. I'll get excited when we get an air date.

Also thinking of picking up 4Minutes since it's on Gaga now, apparently. And maybe trying to find My Stand In since it's over and I can inhale those deliciously toxic fumes all in one (or two) sitting(s). And maybe, just maybe, poke around for BL and GLs outside Thailand, lol. I feel like it's been all Thailand all year for me when I used to watch JBLs and KBLs too.

Any recs?

#wandee goodday #we are the series #my marvellous dream is you #love sea the series #this love doesn't have long beans #the loyal pin #the trainee #peaceful property #kidnap the series #rambles #reviews #i really should stop saying micro they never are

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