#there really is no explanation for why we celebrate Valentine's the way we do

[duxfemina]

Happy Lupercalia!

May you be visited by a near nude Marcus Antonius bearing a crown and bits of goat flesh during this festive time

[dyns33]

Flufftober 2024 - 9 Bane

There were many things about the "modern" world that Bane didn't understand since he met Y/N and often visited her in Gotham.

That didn't mean he hated it, just that he didn't understand, after all this time in the Pit then with the League, and that he was too proud and stubborn to say when he loved it, because it wouldn't go with his speech about how rotten the world was.

He still had to hide his fascination when he asked a lot of questions about birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and now Halloween.

Y/N had been trying to explain to him for several minutes what the best celebration was, but it was obvious that he was grimacing under his mask.

"… Why do you think it's the best ?"

"I just explained it to you, Bane."

"You told me that children went out alone in the street to ask strangers for sweets while being disguised as people who don't exist, allowed to vandalize the houses of those who didn't respond favorably, risking being kidnapped and gorging themselves on candies that are bad for their health."

"… Of course, it doesn't sound great when you summarize it like that. But adults go the children, they don't have the right to vandalize, and often the candies are not all eaten at the same time."

"Hmm." Bane growled, still not convinced.

"Besides, adults can also have fun like I told you."

"By drinking way too much alcohol and waking up in situations that are as avoidable as they are tragic."

"You're saying that because of last night's horror movie, it's less crazy and bloody in real life, I promise you ! Trust me."

No, really, the explanations given did not allow Bane to give a favorable opinion on Halloween.

However, he had blind faith in Y/N, as much as he wanted to make her happy. So if she liked this holiday, he would not criticize it too much.

For a moment, his eyes would let out a hint of interest when she spoke to him about spending the whole evening together, her with a rather revealing disguise, watching television. He refused to admit it, but he liked television. And maybe her in costumes, but just maybe.

But the glow disappeared when she spoke of going out on the street.

"Since everyone will be disguised, you will not need to hide your mask with a scarf for once. We will be able to walk quietly."

"Some hidden in the shadows could see me, take advantage of it. It is not a good idea."

"Oh." sighed Y/N, disappointed. "We go out together so rarely. I do not like you being locked up all the time when you visit me."

"I've been to prison, Habibi. I'm not locked up when I'm with you."

"Aw, Bane."

"And… I don't like the idea of ​​all these people looking at you and trying to take you from me."

It wasn't that important to her to get out, she was too old for trick-or-treating, and if Bane felt more comfortable staying in the apartment, then she wasn't going to push it.

They would have a good time, looking for a horror movie that would finally make the giant ninja jump a little. So far, all the ones they had seen had simply perplexed him.

[runabout-river]

Thoughts on JJK chapter 221 (spoiler)

Gojo is out, what a relief that is

We can see Gege's art style change extremely well with him and also, he looks too good in a black shirt

With the last bits of his uniform he even looks like a one winged angel

I wonder if Gojo was able to manipulate his sense of time inside the prism realm. Maybe he managed to stay inside of there for exactly as long as he needed to make a plan for defeating Kenjaku and possibly Sukuna, and that's the things he needs to take care of in the next month

The 24. of December is not a family celebration in Japan, it's a day for couples similar to Valentine's day. The few times Gege has introduced queer elements into the story he did that in a really unobtrusive way and this seems like that as well

Megumi's birthday is December 22 😢

I'm pretty sure that Gojo was directly talking to Megumi in this scene without mistaking Sukuna for him. He's probably going to do that in the future as well to wake Megumi up

Megumi's and Gojo's situations are a parallel to each other: both are lost in a deep abyss, one physical, the other in the mind/soul, and both couldn't/can't get out on their own. Gojo's seal had to be broken by others but he still had to fight his way to the surface on his own through the failsafes that Kenjaku had planned for him.

Megumi also needs someone else to break his "seal", or more like, his despair for his first step of freedom. But the rest of the way to the surface he has to go alone. He has to fight Sukuna on his own to regain back his body.

While we talk about Sukuna: this is the thing that Yorozu told him. What did she create for him and are we going back to that moment again? Why does Sukuna think about that right now? Does he see Gojo as enough of an equal that his loneliness might be pushed back for a while, or does he see Gojo as the lonely person while going through Megumi's memories? And what does Sukuna have to do for Kenjaku?

Also, Sukuna sidestep and Shoko mood

If the next chapter stays with Gojo and he goes for a reunion with the squad then we'll finally get to confront the question: is Nobara still alive? Because logically, Shoko would've to be the one to save her and also fake her death, any other explanation for her survival would become too contrived

Nobara surviving has one big advantage for the good guys: Sukuna/Megumi think she's dead and therefore she'll be a great asset in the fight against Sukuna. It would also be funny if Nobara went on a broventure with Todo together to find the rest of Sukuna's fingers

All in all, super chapter, even though I was spoiled with the leaks, but this time I'll forgive everyone. Gojo returning had really everyone talking.

[silverstark]

A White Lie Extra

Surprise for 520, aka “Chinese Valentine’s Day”

Ficlet for A White Lie, a 2ha / The Husky and His White Cat Shizun au where Xia Sini claims to be Chu Wanning’s son. Read it on Ao3 (Registered Users Only). SPOILERS FOR FULL NOVEL.

Auuthor’s Note: This doesn’t necessarily fit into the “canon” of A White Lie because I didn’t think it over carefully enough to see if it messes anything up in my plot. However! I wanted to write something to celebrate 520.

x-x-x-x-x

Mo Ran woke up early so he could go check on his recovering shidi first thing in the morning. Having reassured himself that the child was looking well, he wrote a note of explanation for his absence.

‘I’ll be back soon to give you medicine! I will be with Shi Mei for a little while.’

It was just a precaution: Xia Sini was still fast asleep, and the medication would make him less likely to wake up early. Chu Wanning had always woken up very late when he was sick. Mo Ran expected that Xia Sini would take after his father, as he did in so many other regards.

Mo Ran laid the note upon Xia Sini’s latest boring book. This one was about rare poisons. Mo Ran could only approve of Xia Sini finding a safer way to pursue his ‘win at all costs’ drive than through sword-fighting, so he did not plan on asking about his interest in the subject. He then snuck quietly out of the room and shut the door behind him.

Shi Mei was surprised to see Mo Ran.

“Good morning, A-Ran.”

“Good morning, Shi Mei,” he replied brightly.

“Do we have early morning training today? I must have forgotten,” Shi Mei said apologetically.

“No, no,” Mo Ran said. “It’s nothing related to training.”

Shi Mei’s expression changed. He looked faintly awkward.

“Oh? Then…”

He stopped himself as he realized that he almost asked a rude question.

“I hope I didn’t wake you up early,” Mo Ran said hurriedly.

“No…”

Indeed, he was fully dressed with his hair in near order. It seemed he had been quietly studying in his room, as Mo Ran had expected.

Mo Ran sighed in relief. “I’m glad. I was just hoping to ask you something…”

Here Mo Ran hesitated and scratched his head a little diffidently. Shi Mei seemed unusually reserved. Mo Ran had never interrupted his morning studying before to avoid inconveniencing him. Now he had, and on top of that, he was going to ask him another favor. He wondered if he should check whether Shi Mei had the time before asking him for the favor, or else Shi Mei might agree purely out of politeness.

Shi Mei watched him and suddenly lowered his gaze.

“Want to come inside?” he asked quietly.

“Huh?”

Shi Mei rarely invited Mo Ran into his room. Mo Ran hadn’t been expected to be invited in today of all days.

“So we can speak privately,” Shi Mei said.

“Oh! Thank you, but I don’t really have time,” he said apologetically.

Shi Mei’s eyes widened slightly. Mo Ran couldn’t remember the last time he had declined an invitation to spend time with Shi Mei. Usually he wanted to stick to Shi Mei like sticky candy, as close as Shi Mei would permit, every moment he could get.

Mo Ran explained, “I have to— actually, that’s what I wanted to ask. If you have time.”

“What is it?” Shi Mei asked, puzzled.

“Will you teach me how you make wonton soup?”

Shi Mei blinked in surprise. Then he looked at Mo Ran with an expression like dismay. Mo Ran didn’t understand it until he remembered his poor timing.

“You don’t have to make it with me. If you tell me how you make it, I can just try it on my own.”

“…Why do you want to learn how to make wonton soup?”

“Little Shidi is hurt. I was thinking yesterday, that when I’m hurt, wonton soup always makes me feel better. I want to try to make Little Shidi wonton soup before he wakes up.”

Shi Mei frowned and seemed thoughtful, even a little uncomfortable. Mo Ran blinked at him in confusion. He didn’t understand why Shi Mei didn’t seem to want to want to share the recipe.

“I thought Shidi didn’t like spicy food.”

“I’ll make it without chili for him.”

Shi Mei hesitated another moment. Mo Ran gazed at him in befuddlement, trying to figure out what the problem was.

“Do you…want to keep the recipe a secret?” Mo Ran wondered.

Shi Mei held out another moment before sighing in resignation.

“Shizun will have to forgive me,” he said quietly.

“Um. What does Shizun have to do with this? It’s not like it’s his recipe,” Mo Ran said, laughing a little at the idea of Chu Wanning’s cooking skills.

“It is,” Shi Mei said.

“Hahahahaha!”

Shi Mei watched him laughing. Mo Ran waited for him to drop the serious expression, but as time went on and Shi Mei failed to crack a smile, Mo Ran faltered. Then he stopped laughing entirely.

There was a tired look in Shi Mei’s eyes. The joke had been out of character; perhaps it was his way of distracting Mo Ran from something that was troubling him. Perhaps he had invited Mo Ran in wishing to tell him and unburden himself.

“What’s wrong?” Mo Ran asked gently.

“…Nothing.”

Mo Ran tsk’d and took Shi Mei’s hand intending to lead him into the room so they could talk privately. Shi Mei allowed it.

“Tell me,” Mo Ran urged once the door was closed.

“There’s nothing wrong,” Shi Mei said. “It’s only that I can’t teach you that recipe.”

“That’s okay,” Mo Ran said. “I shouldn’t have asked you out of the blue like that. But that can’t be the only thing that’s wrong. It’s not like you to make jokes at Shizun’s expense.”

“…”

Shi Mei gazed at him with an unreadable expression. Mo Ran looked back at him sincerely, hoping that Shi Mei would see how much Mo Ran cared about him.

“That was not a joke,” Shi Mei said. “It really is Shizun’s recipe. He’s the one who has been making wonton soup for you. I didn’t tell you because he asked me to keep it a secret.”

Mo Ran stared first in disbelief, and then in horrified realization.

“Mo Ran?” Shi Mei asked.

His voice sounded far away. Mo Ran was far away.

Before, he couldn’t think of the wonton soup without feeling a warmth that seeped deep into his bones. And now, he was remembering those wontons rolling across the floor, thrown away by Mo Ran’s own uncaring blow. He remembered the expression on Chu Wanning’s face after. He remembered his own satisfaction in the vindictive cruelty.

“Mo Ran?” Shi Mei asked again.

He sounded concerned. Mo Ran gulped and tried to pull himself together. He couldn’t have a breakdown in front of Shi Mei without explaining.

“Ah, so it wasn’t a joke,” he said with an attempt at a smile. It crumpled into a grimace.

Shi Mei sighed. “Shizun feared that you would react like this. That’s why he didn’t want you to know…”

Mo Ran again remembered the look on Chu Wanning’s face after Mo Ran had strewn his wontons across the floor. Chu Wanning had feared his reaction. But he couldn’t have known…

Mo Ran sucked in a breath. He repeated to himself that he couldn’t have a breakdown in front of Shi Mei.

“Don’t worry,” Mo Ran said. “I won’t tell him.”

He didn’t have time for a breakdown right now. He had to go start making the soup if he wanted it to be ready before Xia Sini woke up. He muttered some polite farewell to Shi Mei and hurried to the kitchens.

x-x-x-x-x

Cooking always settled Mo Ran’s spirit somehow. Cooking for someone he loved was even better. He put special care into every step. He knew very well that he could not fix the mistakes he had made in his past life. What was done was done. But…perhaps he could do better in this lifetime. He wanted to do better by Xia Sini.

The soup was beautifully made. It was nothing compared to the soup Shi Mei had brought him just when he had desperately needed it. The soup that Chu Wanning had made for him and sent to him just when he had desperately needed it. Mo Ran remembered his overwhelming gratitude and the spark of love that had flared in the wreck of his heartache over the way Chu Wanning had treated him. He didn’t know what to make of this now. He didn’t know how to feel towards Shi Mei or Chu Wanning now.

The only thing that was clear was his feeling upon walking into Xia Sini’s room to offer him the wonton soup. Xia Sini was sitting up now seemingly reading the note Mo Ran had left. He startled at Mo Ran’s arrival and tossed the note like he was embarrassed to be caught reading it. Mo Ran grinned, feeling his heart light up with warmth and affection.

“You woke up early,” he noted.

Xia Sini looked at him warily. Mo Ran was a little surprised that he didn’t make some cranky comment.

“Does your wound hurt? Don’t worry, I’ll give you medicine soon, as I promised,” he said cheerily.

“It does not hurt,” Xia Sini quickly denied. “You can take that away.”

He gave the soup bowl a disgusted glare as he spoke. Mo Ran laughed.

“Won’t you even give it a taste? Your shixiong worked hard to make this!”

Mo Ran placed the tray close to Xia Sini and uncovered the bowl to reveal the soup. Xia Sini stared at the contents.

“What? Don’t you like wonton soup? I promise it’s not spicy.”

Xia Sini didn’t look up.

“You…you made me wonton soup?” he asked uncertainly.

“Of course! Little shidi needs good food to recover.”

“…”

Xia Sini said nothing and made no move to pick up his chopsticks. Mo Ran looked at him in concern, but his lashes were low over his eyes and Mo Ran couldn’t read his expression.

“Do you really not like it? I can go get you something else...”

Mo Ran was a little worried. He would have no time to make something good before Xia Sini got hungry. It would have to be some plain, boring congee.

“No, don’t take it away,” Xia Sini said. “I like it.”

“Oh,” Mo Ran said, relieved. “Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong. It’s just that no one has ever taken care of me like this.”

Mo Ran’s heart ached to hear those words. He had suspected it, but now he knew it was true. He reached out and gently patted Xia Sini’s hair. He didn’t understand how it could be that no one had cared for this precious, clever, kind child.

Xia Sini looked up at his touch and finally met Mo Ran’s eyes.

“Thank you, shixiong,” he said sincerely.

Mo Ran smiled even has his heart broke open, overfilled with affection. Light spilled out through the cracks.

“I said I would take care of you, didn’t I?”

Xia Sini blinked and stared. He said nothing, but Mo Ran thought he saw something small and fragile lighting up in his eyes. Mo Ran tucked a strand of hair behind Xia Sini’s ear.

He cleared his throat before speaking to be sure that it wouldn’t break.

“If you want to show your gratitude, you better start eating before it gets cold,” he chided.

Xia Sini lowered his head and obeyed. There was a little smile on his face. Mo Ran couldn’t look away from it.

x-x-x-x-x

[thebreakfastgenie]

🍀 <3

🍀 - What thoughts or emotions that didn’t make sense to your past self make sense now that you know you’re queer?

Okay I'm sure I can think of more for this one.... I think I had kind of this sense of being different and not knowing why, but I had enough confidence it kind of turned into a superiority complex. Not being interested in boys and thinking dating was trivial was kind of normal and rewarded in my smart girl circles into middle school. We were independent! We had more important things to think about! And I don't think this is a bad attitude for young girls to have in our society, but sometimes it's something else. In high school, several of my friends didn't date, because honestly most of our school kinda sucked and we did in fact have a lot to do and not a lot of time. So I was able to ride that "I'm not interested in boys yet" wave longer than I should have, but it started to waver. When I was around 15 or 16 I was looking at rage comics people had made about their relationships and for the first time I thought "I actually like the idea of being someone's girlfriend" and then I immediately thought "of course I don't want a boyfriend, though." It took a very long time after to that to figure out what I actually wanted in that situation which is very funny. When I was younger, I always felt totally out of the loop when girl talked about their Disney channel and boy band crushes. I just didn't get what they were so excited about. When I was in about 6th grade (give or take; my grade was an unknown quantity for years) our teacher had us do this game for Valentine's Day where we named a celebrity we'd like to get a Valentine from. I like that teacher a lot and she had good intentions but looking back... Valentines at that age are at least quasi-romantic and that's a whole can of worms. I said Chessie the manatee, tapping into my romance hater reputation, and it's not like I thought of a girl and was afraid to say it. But still, I think I remember that because I was gay. The only other kid's dream Valentine I can remember was a boy said Taylor Swift (she had just become known; I think this was the first time I heard her name) "because she's hot" and the teacher cautioned him. I was really paranoid about coming across as romantically interested, both in girls and in boys. I panicked when I accidentally sent a girl a kissy emoji on yahoo chat when I was 13ish. I had a weird friendship of sorts with a boy in middle school where we couldn't admit we wanted to be friends, so we "hated" each other and attacked each other in various harmless ways. I cut him off without explanation because people kept relentlessly saying we were flirting and calling us lovebirds and it freaked me out. Later I did have boys I was friends with develop feelings for me and interpret my friendship wrong, so that one wasn't totally irrational. One I've been thinking about a lot recently is I was always drawn to tomboy characters. The girls who hated all things girly and wore dirty jeans and backwards ball caps and only played with boys. I adored Leslie Burke in Bridge to Terabithia because Jess couldn't even tell if she was a boy or a girl at first. There was a part of me that related to these tomboys. I was not a girly-girl. I was brash and outdoorsy. But I was in-between. I had long hair and I liked pretty things and dolls and pink. I did relate a lot to the girls who passed as boys in historical fiction, but that was because their options were pretend to be boys or not be allowed to do anything. I thought I'd do that if I lived in that setting, but I'd prefer to just have adventures while being a girl. I guess I always admired tomboys, but I think a lot of it was also attraction, in whatever way kids experience it. I still like jock women, so.

[somuchyoudontknow]

I don’t care if his friends and her friends are In The same proximity. Notice how Chris hasn’t been pictured with her AT ALL since V day and the April Premiere of ghosted. The v day dump was already prepared way before Valentine’s Day. //

This is going to be a long one:

At the moment it shouldn't even matter if this is real or not. I am team PR, btw, but we are not asking the right questions:

WHY DO THESE PEOPLE NEED US TO BELIEVE THE RELATIONSHIP. WHAT IS THE POINT!!!

Either Chris really hates his fandom and the people who have supported him to a point where he is willingly allowing his 'very serious girlfriend who he intends to marry😒" troll JUST FOR LAUGHS..

OR,

He has some of the WORST FRIENDS A CELEBRITY COULD EVER HAVE who send anonymous leaks and hints of his private life to Tumblr FOR FREE, because they secretly hate him. Anyone who is actually thinking about this must at least wonder, what is really going on, that after decades of having such a tight ship, suddenly information is just being given left right and center about things that the general public shouldn't be aware of.

IF HE TRULY WAS TO MARRY THIS PERSON, AND HE WANTED THE WORLD TO KNOW, A SIMPLE CALL TO PEOPLE MAG FROM HIS VERY HIGHLY PAID PUBLICIST WOULD DO. A CONFIRMATION.

(which , even to this date NON of the teams have done so. The only evidence available from any of them is long gone)

So why is all this happening. The only explanation, at least for me. THIS IS SIMPLY A PR RELATIONSHIP, that by all signs ended and the trio are using whatever photos or connections they had with Chris's group to troll and get attention.

Honestly, the whole Bermuda holiday thing felt like the trio found out about Chelsea and Tara's trip and went there. It explains the accommodations and the fact that they were never spotted . Same with the Vegas thing and also NYE. This was just material to troll and get the attention. Even if we get pics of Chris with the group, isn't it weird that they would stay at different places while in the same location 👀

No one can tell me that Justin didn't know about the pastries causing chaos. They made sure to send those to some blogs( I think the trio are the sources for team real blogs but the info is sometimes wrong because Chris's team never reveals much to Alba's and they really never spend time together as we are led to believe, so the info is always a maybe case in point,the premier of ghosted. It felt very last minute)

AGAIN, I ASK, WHY DO THEY NEED PEOPLE TO BELIEVE. Its not like Alba is trying to win over the fandom. Even some team real do not like her. So what is the point.

Outside the fandom, no one is getting these drops, even the mags and gossip sites are getting the info from the fandom. The GP believes the RS is real, so why keep up? Why keep sending anonymous tips.

.

[youngkryptonitetree]

Making it Work Q0 Long Distance Relationship Tips from the Experts

Here's what open and honest communication in a relationship looks like. I'm open to friendship, lovers, and partners. When you know what you want and can define it, it'll be that much easier for you to eliminate people who are bound to leave you disappointed and dissatisfied. Even if you don't want a proper lady, per se, there's a kind of woman that is just right for you. Ready to find out the kind of woman that is right for you? Unlike your friends, they don’t offer their opinion or ‘advice’, they just listen and ask the right questions so that you can find your own answers and ways forward. That's what this quiz is all about We're going to ask you some probing questions that will help clarify what's really important to you and what you can certainly do without. Always. She can't help it. Not really. She prefers to help others shine. Part of the reason why Sophia mentioned she was a fan of the apps, however, was not necessarily because she thought they were the best way to meet people - but rather that the apps’ intended goal is to bring people together.

Unless you're looking for a quick fling, you can discard some people and hone in on the ones that are likely to make you happy. According to Knapp, you'll take various steps to either climb towards (coming together) or descend from (coming apart) a romantic relationship in your life, and both of these directions are full of their own challenges. Ultimately, this may result in not enough contact to sustain the relationship. שיחות סקס Approach the relationship with your ex as a business partnership where your “business” is your children's well-being. “Sometimes, anxiety symptoms within a partnership can be triggered from some past traumas in relationships, such as cheating, or the divorce of parents, or anything else that impacted your partner in some way. Informational interviews can be fairly easy to set up, and they can really tell you a lot about the company without the pressure of impressing someone for a job. Freddie feels under pressure from Stuart to land a major new acting role. Investigators fret about West Africa's terrorism links - northern Nigeria is home to the notorious insurgent group Boko Haram - and its role in international drug trafficking.

However, there are some things that you might need in your man before you even realize that you need them. If isochrons of negative slope (which must be mixing lines) were reasonably common, then we might suspect mixing to be an explanation for a significant fraction of all apparently valid "old" isochrons as well. No, and I might. Despite her objections, in addition to getting a car for graduation, Jim also gives his daughter the only thing her mother ever gave him that he kept -- a ring. ”, and “Are there other ways of getting into the celebration, apart from these two? The right lady for you is out there. The old lady must be worth the attention. I think it's endearing if she pays more attention to the dog's appearance than her own. Is she adventurous and passionate, or is she more kind-hearted and altruistic? She's more of the perfect hostess. Fine, as long as she doesn't boss me around. Fine, if it doesn't get in her free-spirited way. The way you form a sentence says a lot about your background and education. Very. She likes romance the old-fashioned way. Be wary of anyone claiming to be a deployed soldier - The US Department of Defense has warned about romance scams in which online predators claim to be deployed active-duty soldiers.

The Chronically Metropolitan actress brought G-Eazy as her date to her sister Shaylene Benson’s intimate wedding the following month. What's your idea of a fun date? She takes care of herself and tends to look great. She tends to wait for my call. Valentine's Day is a beautiful reminder to show those dear to our heart that we love and care for them. She doesn't show off. I want someone fit and healthy for sure! While you may want a mixture of many of these attributes, the degree of your leanings is indicative of the style, personality and general appeal of the woman you're seeking. I dig that in a woman! Leave used stuffed animals in the freezer overnight to kill dust mites and then wash with lots of detergent in your washer's gentle cycle. Too much sun can kill it. How much does that affect you? In Malebranche's occasionalism, he viewed thoughts as a wish for the body to move, which was then fulfilled by God causing the body to act. Then let's get started! He/she is just trying to get into my pants.

[rising-dawn]

peonyumi​:

ʚɞ

she smiled softly watching their hands before allowing her eyes to scan back up to his face. “no, no you didn’t do any thing i just…” yumi sighed, squeezing is palm within her fingertips. “i’ve never. well i have, but, that’s just another long story.” the vocalist’s eyes rolled as she sighed again shaking her head, a story she was not interested in sharing. not right now, eventually she’d have to explain to dawn why him settling in that empty space in her heart was so painful. why it felt like every nerve of hers was on fire to kiss him but in more ways than one. she hadn’t wanted to get sad all over again, but eunwoo’s death had gone from being a something she’d distanced herself from, to becoming a cloud over her, and that mostly came from the woman she’d die and kill for all in the same breath. “i just had a lot…i needed to think about, and it just made me really anxious. i closed you out rather than just talking to you, it had nothing to do with what you did.”

yumi couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled in her throat, shyly she broke one of the entanglements of their fingers to hide her mouth on instinct as she did so. “no, oh my gosh sungie it wasn’t the kiss.” she smiled brightly, “the kiss was amazing, i mean i did ask you to kiss me a second time didn’t i? it was everything i’ve ever dreamed of.” she said sheepishly, hiding the way her cheeks flamed a bashful red. yumi sighed again, firmly shaking their hands to still them for a moment. “daesung-ah can we just…start over.” the blonde looked at him hopefully, big eyes softening, threatening to mist over with tears. “but like not from the beginning…from phoenix…around 2:10AM…on janurary 1st…if that’s okay with you?” yumi tacked on with a growing smile.

♡ .  

his eyes were soft as he intently listened to her explanation, but he felt his heart tighten again in worry for her. he didn’t want to pry, but whatever it was she didn’t want to indulge on seemed to be making her upset. “well i want you to know that you can talk to me. if you want to, of course. in the future,” he tried to sound as genuine as he felt, but the way his words awkwardly stumbled out of his mouth made him feel a little dumb in the moment. he just prayed that she truly understood. he didn’t know what he would do if he ever ended up in a situation like this again.

dawn awkwardly chuckled along with her for a moment, unsure of where it was going, but his smile tore into a grin as he finally got to see the familiar blush of her cheeks he missed so much. it finally felt like a huge weight was lifted off his shoulders and his posture visibly eased at her reassuring words. “january 1st, 2:10 am, phoenix. i think that works for me,” he smiled, hearts nearly blooming in his eyes as he could finally take in her smiling features again after what felt like ages. “well, if we’re still ringing in the new year... will you dance with me?” he pulled away slightly to formally offer her his hand, the slower music accompanying the ambience of the ball. a valentine’s celebration with the one he liked so deeply was all he could ask for, but wasting the night twirling her around on the dance floor could only make it that much better.

[alltoowelltom]

pink lines [part three]

tom holland x reader

series summary: when you find yourself alone, pregnant and scared, there’s only one person you can turn to. but where do you draw the line between friendship and more…

updates around tuesday nights EST

warnings for this part: alcohol, probably some cursing

+ series masterlist!

✧･ﾟ: chapter three･ﾟ:✧

“So it’s not as if she hasn’t acknowledged it’s Valentine’s Day, because she did get me flowers but she wants to just stay in? On Valentine’s Day? I just didn’t know we’d reached that point in our relationship where we don’t even try anymore,” worries Mabel, the chef at the hotel and also your work best friend/colleague/closest confidant mashup.

“Maybe she just wants to stay in and…celebrate in other ways,” you wiggle your eyebrows suggestively.

Mabel sighs, not picking up on your meaning. “Maybe,” she says as she continues to ice mini heart shaped sugar cookies with pink frosting.

Before she can worry any more, the kitchen door bangs open. “Y/N, your boyfriend is here,” Silas, the concierge announces as he rolls his eyes.

Mabel almost drops the cookie she’s icing. “Nico? I thought you two…” she trails off questioningly as she glances at you.

You nod. “We did.”

“Well, there’s someone waiting for you at reception.” says Silas, shrugging. “I don’t get paid enough to take names.”

You look at Mabel with one eyebrow quirked to which she replies with a shrug. You grab an iced cookie as you make your way out of the kitchen, zoning out from Mabel and Silas’ bickering.

Leaning casually on the reception desk and flipping through a brochure advertising the restaurant’s brunch deals is Tom. You allow yourself one (1) second to appreciate the way his curls tumble down his forehead, slightly damp from the February weather.

“Tom?” you squeak.

He turns around, dropping the brochure. “Hey darling, you almost done here? This looks great by the way, we should check it out sometime.” He taps the brochure as an explanation.

You frown, desperately trying to piece together why he’s here.

“No? I’ve still got a couple things to sort out today-”

“Didn’t you get my text?” Tom questions. “I’m taking you to the twins' birthday party tonight.”

“Oh crap sorry, my phone’s been in my bag all day. It’s been crazy around here, we’re having a linen supply emergency.”

Tom chuckles. “Thrilling.”

You swat at his arm over the desk. “Shut up, we can’t all be multi-millionaire movie stars. Anyway, there’s no way I’m going to the twins’ party tonight, I can’t even drink!” you gesture to your stomach for emphasis as you begin to tidy up behind the desk.

“What? But I already told them we’d be there!” Tom whines.

You shake your head, picking up the phone on the desk and flipping through a stack of cards to find the right number. “Sorry. I have to make a thrilling phone call to our towel delivery guy.”

“Silas can handle it, that’s why you hired him.”

You shake your head. “I know, but sometimes he’s rude to staff and we really need this to-”

“I can handle it, Y/N,” says Silas, taking the phone from your hand and winking.

You almost jump out of your skin, “Jesus, where did you come from? And why are you wink-”

“Go go, put on a dress, let your hair down with your friend Tom,” says Silas, dialing the number as you sigh and pick up your bag in defeat.

As Tom pulls out of the hotel parking lot you bite your lip, looking up at him.

“Silas has never willingly done his job before, something must be up. I should go back and-”

“Y/N!” Tom interrupts. “Everything’s fine. It’s Valentine’s Day, there must be something in the air. I’m sure he’ll be back to being an arrogant snob by tomorrow.”

You snort in response. “Okay, I’m sure you’re right.”

Tom looks satisfied with himself. “I’m always right. Now I am trying to take you to a birthday party, on Valentine’s Day, so please shut the fuck up and have fun, alright?”

You roll your eyes at him.

“Fine. Can you stop in at my place so that I can change first?”

Tom smirks. “Oh you mean you don’t want to wear that to my brothers’ party? I thought the blouse and skirt look was absolutely smokin’, babe.” He uses a terribly exaggerated American accent for the last bit.

“Tom? This is a warning,” you glare at him.

He holds up his hands in defence. “Okay, okay. Stop one, Y/N’s flat.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

“And you’ll never guess what Ben did next!” gushes the blonde girl who’s name you’ve already forgotten.

“What?!” asks her friend excitedly, draining the rest of her drink.

Before you can find out what shockingly boring thing Ben supposedly did next, an arm is slung around your shoulders.

“Y/NNNNNN!” slurs a drunk Harrison.

You giggle, excusing yourself half-heartedly from the conversation you weren’t even paying full attention to.

“What’s up, Haz?”

“Thomas is drunk. I mean wasted. Pissed.” says Harrison, giggling at himself already.

“Oh, yeah? What gave it away?” you ask, taking a sip of your Coke.

“He’s on the table.”

What the fuck does that mean?

You look at him questioningly and he repeats himself.

“Tom’s on the table.”

“Can you take me to him, please?”

Harrison nods as he grips onto your hand, weaving through people dancing, laughing, yelling, making out, and doing god knows what else. When you open the door to the dining room, you see that even in his drunk state, Harrison was telling the truth. Tom is indeed on the table. He’s on his hands and knees, with his shirt riding up his torso. On seeing you standing by the doorway, Tom freezes in his actions.

“Y/NN!” he yells, clambering clumsily off the table. “Where have you beeeeen, I missed you,” he pouts.

“Woah, hey.” you say as you hold onto his shoulders to keep him upright as he wobbles. “I think it’s time we get you home, yeah?”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

After taking dragging Tom up the stairs to his room, he flops onto his back on his bed, groaning.

You giggle at his state, immediately starting work at getting him in bed before he’s passed out cold. You unlace his trainers and yank them off his feet, tossing them into the corner for him to deal with tomorrow.

“Arms up.” You wiggle him out of his hoodie so he’s just in his t-shirt. He grins as you unbuckle his belt and reach down to unzip his jeans.

“Shut it, Tom. I’m just getting you comfortable.”

He smirks. “Whatever you say, darling.”

Tapping his hip so that he’ll raise his pelvis and allow you to get him out of his jeans, you finally manage to remove them and they quickly land on top of the shoes and hoodie in the corner.

It’s a whole other mission to convince Tom to get under the covers as he’s all too comfortable curled up on top of them, at the foot of the bed. However, he’s finally in bed, under the covers and you take this as a chance to run downstairs and find a glass of water and an aspirin for him, which you place on the bedside table. You go into the bathroom and grab the little bin in the corner, bringing it to Tom’s side of the bed.

“Tom, I’m putting this here, okay? In case you feel sick and can’t get to the bathroom in time.”

He groans in response, covering one eye. You giggle.

“Okay Tommy, go to sleep.” You reach over and tuck the covers around his chin. You’re reminded of how many times you’ve looked after a drunk Tom, or vice-versa. Of course, in your mind the best nights are the ones where you’re both drunk and would fall into bed at the end of a long night and spend the early morning hours pissing yourselves over the most niche videos on YouTube: ‘x factor judges laughing at auditions'; 'cat with a crazy deep meow’; 'iridocyclitis' - you know the type.

Tom breaks you out of your reverie, speaking so softly you almost miss it.

“Why don’t you like me?”

You freeze. “Wh-what? We’ve been friends for almost twenty years Tom, and you really think I don’t like you yet?”

“No, I mean why don’t you like me?”

You’re silent. How do you respond to that?

“I have to sit and watch you fall in love and then get hurt, fall in love and then get hurt, over and over again,” Tom continues, beginning to get himself in a state. “Will you really date everyone else before you’ll date me?”

Your heart shatters into a million tiny pieces. He’s drunk. He’s so drunk and vulnerable he doesn’t even know what he’s saying, you think, and you tell him as such.

“You’re drunk, Tommy, get some sleep okay?”

You lay down next to him, rubbing your hand up and down his arm to lull him to sleep. He looks like he wants to protest, but his eyes are already drooping.

You press a feathery-light kiss to his forehead. “Goodnight, Tom.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

The golden-yellow light streaming in through the window feels like an attack as it rouses Tom from his sleep. He grumbles as he opens his eyes, but cuts himself off when he sees your sleeping form snoring gently on the other side of his bed. His heart swells as he sees you changed into his clothes, a pair of his sweatpants and an old band tee adorning your sleeping frame. It feels so natural to him, waking up next to you and he allows himself a moment to imagine a future where this could be a daily occurrence, and then maybe he’d hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet running down the hall, jumping up on the bed to say good morning, and you’d smile and kiss their little heads before pressing your lips to Tom’s own-

You groan as you stir awake, breaking Tom out of his domestic daydream.

“Mornin’ darling,” he grins.

“Hmmph,” is your groggy response. He giggles and pokes your side playfully.

“Wake up, wake up and talk to meeeee,”

You roll your eyes.

“Aren’t you supposed to be grumpy and hungover?”

He nods.

“I am grumpy and hungover. But the aspirin you left me helped, plus waking up next to you, how could anyone not be happy?.”

You ignore the way your heart flutters as he teases you, choosing not to respond verbally.

After a few moments of silence, you speak up.

“Tom?”

“Yeah, love?”

“Why do people think we’re dating?”

He sits up at your statement.

“What? Nobody thinks we’re dating.”

“People do seem to think we’re dating,” you confirm.

“Who? Who thinks we’re dating? Did I say something?” he questions.

You decide not to bring up his drunken confession from last night. “No,” you shrug. “ But Clara thought we were dating for most of our conversation.”

He scrunches up his face in thought, trying to match the name to a face. “Clara…”

“She works with Sam, I think? I don’t know, that’s not really important. What’s important is people think we’re dating.”

Tom shrugs. “I don’t know, we’re close and we spend all our time together, I guess?”

You decide you’ll have to take that as an answer, because pressing the issue would possibly result in a very awkward conversation. But before you can stop yourself, you hear yourself speak up again.

“Aren’t you dating that girl?”

Tom screws up his face. “What are you on about? What girl?”

“Your co-star?”

“What?”

“Are you guys not dating?”

“What, Zendaya?! No, I’m not dating Z? What the fuck, Y/N?”

“Oh.” You do your best to hide your smile and keep your face blank. Why did that make you feel so much better to hear? “Okay.”

“How did you think I was dating Z?”

Now it’s your turn to be confused. “Huh?”

“You thought I was dating her and you didn’t even ask?”

“Well yeah. I don’t really care about your love life, I didn’t really think too much about it.” you say, shrugging it off.

“You do care who I’m dating! I always tell you who I’m dating.” he argues back.

“Well, it wasn’t that important to me.”

“Bullshit, Y/N. Why didn’t you want to know who I’m dating? Even though I’m not dating her.”

“I just didn’t care, is all?”

Tom softens and his tone lightens. “So, there’s no underlying reason?”

“No.”

He hums smugly. “Mm hmm.”

“Tom?”

“Yes, love?” he smirks.

“Shut it.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

a/n: thank you so much for reading! likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated and my inbox is always open for everything <3

series taglist: @fezcosholland @justsomebodyweird @wildxwidow @sraholland @nothoughtsjustwriting @pickle-rick-y @spideyh0lland @myshaahmad77 @official-mother-uwu @wildholland @notanordinaryprincess95 (sorry if tumblr wouldn't let me tag you, check your settings?)

let me know if you want to be added!

[ptergwen]

call me cupid

w/c: 3.5k

warnings: very mild angst and a few swears

summary: despite your hatred for valentine’s day, peter attempts to make you a card

a/n: happy valentine’s day my loves!! i hope y’all get to spend some time with your people today and eat lots of chocolate <3 love you & enjoy mwah

-

it’s no secret that peter is terrible with words. he gets so flustered he can’t talk or forgets what he wants to say altogether. school presentations are torture. ordering food out is impossible. he’s accepted it at this point, that speaking just isn’t for him.

the one place it doesn’t come across is on paper. peter is ridiculously smart, and he knows all the right words to string together, which is why writing you a valentine should be no trouble at all. should be no trouble at all.

to tell the truth, he’s been sitting at his kitchen table with a blank sheet of paper in front of him for what feels like hours. nothing is coming to him. he’s not sure why this is so hard. you’re his girlfriend, he loves you, he’s said it so many times in every way he could think to. what’s different about it now?

everyone puts way too much pressure on giving the perfect gift when they should really just be enjoying each other’s company on a holiday about love. or, in your words, a meaningless holiday that was created by capitalists as another excuse to take people’s money. 

alright, you aren’t too fond of valentine’s day.

it makes anyone who’s single feel like shit and anyone who’s in a relationship lose their shit.

only mj agreed when you shared your criticisms. ned and betty gave you looks like you were insane, and flash muttered something about you being undateable. peter had laughed and swung an arm around your shoulders, but he didn’t fully agree.

although valentine’s day has its flaws, peter likes to see it as twenty four hours of extra appreciation for the people in his life. you can buy chocolate for your friends and family. it doesn’t have to be a significant other, really. him and ned would do it before he had you and ned had betty.

peter wants to remind you how loved you are even if you’re not into the festivities like he is, that bringing him to writing your card. it’s a simple and clinically underrated way of expressing his gratitude. he’d write you love letters every day if he didn’t suck at them.

may comes out of her room to see peter in the same place he’s been since he got home from school. she looks at him through her glasses, smiling as she comes into the room. he’s tapping his pencil on the table, eraser down, searching his mind for anything to write.

“still nothing?” may asks him, making her way over to the cabinets. peter puts down the pencil and sighs. his shoulders slump. “nope. i haven’t gotten past the intro.” “intro, huh?” she teases her newphew and grabs a jar of sauce. “y/n isn’t your teacher, kiddo. you’re not writing her an essay.” she looks at peter over her shoulder. a sheepish smile creeps onto his face.

“you know what i mean.” he reads over the only words on his paper at the moment. dear y/n. he’s starting to feel like spongebob the one time he wrote a paper. “what are you making?” peter asks may so he can temporarily take the focus off his unwritten valentine. “pasta,” may shakes the box in her hand. “and meatballs.”

“should i dial 911 now or wait until we’re in flames?” peter jokes about her awful cooking skills. may shoos him off and puts the box of pasta on the counter. “worry about your own kitchen nightmare.” she nods at the sheet of paper tormenting him. frowning, he glances back at her. “i’m the worst, may. i really don’t know what to write.”

may struggles to open the jar of sauce as she replies. “i thought you said- jesus.” it pops off. “y/n doesn’t like valentine’s day.” she slides over a pot from the stove and dumps the sauce in. peter stares up at the ceiling. “she doesn’t.” that’s probably why he’s having such a hard time. “why are you writing her a card, then?” may questions, turning on a burner.

“because, i dunno, it’s nice? it’ll make her happy? she might not care, but i do.” he mumbles the last part. he’s a bit of a hopeless romantic, so he hasn’t quite adjusted to the idea you had of not getting each other presents. you’re treating it like a regular day. some takeout and cuddles is all you’re doing.

peter would rather buy you things until his pockets are empty. not that there’s much in them, anyway. the point is that you deserve proper spoiling instead of corny words in his shitty handwriting.

“peter, honey. it might be better to stick with what y/n wants,” may suggests while stirring the sauce in the pot. she’s well aware that a few paragraphs from peter won’t change your mind. your opinions belong to you, and there’s nothing he can do about it, though he does have good intentions.

ignoring what may just said, peter makes a request. “what if you help me write it?” she faces the stove again. he can picture her playful smile when she quirks back, “she’s not my girlfriend.” “no, but you’re a girl... a woman,” he corrects himself, earning a scoff from may. “you’d probably know what sounds good.”

“you know y/n better than me, peter. do it on your own,” she exhales and turns back around with the wooden spoon in her hand. “it’ll be more... heartfelt.” peter hates that may is right because he’s completely stuck. his heart is being stupid today. “okay. i’ll try.” he gives her a slow nod. “why don’t you take a break? come stir the sauce. i’ll start the pasta.”

peter gets up from the table and grabs the spoon from may. she pinches his cheek on her way to the sink, getting a tight lipped smile from him.

this is not good.

-

the next day at school, peter asks around the lunch table for advice while you’re on line getting food. he feels guilty about it because may told him not to. he’s never going to get your valentine done if he doesn’t, though. it isn’t the worst thing in the world to bring on some co-writers.

“ok, what do you have so far?” betty asks, fully invested in the situation. she’s hoping this will switch up your views on valentine’s day. peter pulls out the same piece of paper from last night and says verbatim what’s on it. “dear y/n.” he looks up at ned and betty, the corners of his mouth twitching down. ned motions with his hand for peter to go on.

“that’s it,” peter confesses and folds the paper back up in shame. “dude, you told us it was a work in progress,” ned winces, betty taking his hand that’s resting on her shoulder. “where’s the progress?” betty patronizes him. they’re making him feel worse than he already did. what great co-writers he’s collaborating with.

peter throws a hand up, an eye roll included. “yeah, it’s terrible. can you help me or not?” mj narrows her own eyes at peter from the other end of his bench. she’s not interested in participating when the conversation is about forcing you to celebrate a holiday you don’t like.

“ooh!” betty squeals and squeezes ned’s hand. “you should make a list.” ned grins, leaning his head on hers. “genius, babe.” “a list of what?” peter furrows his eyebrows as he looks between the two of them. “what you love about y/n,” she explains, ned adding on, “stuff you do together, or you appreciate.”

“put whatever you come up with into sentences and voilà,” betty says in her best french accent. “oui oui,” ned agrees, both of them giggling. that doesn’t sound half bad. peter could manage a list about you. “thank you so much, guys. you literally just saved valentine’s day,” he confidently tucks his paper into his pocket. “it’s what we do,” ned tells him coolly.

“you never asked what i think,” mj cuts in, staring down her friends, who reluctantly meet her gaze. she pushes her bag of goldfish aside and raises an eyebrow. “mj, we know how you feel about valentine’s day.” peter presses his lips together. “y/n feels the same way,” mj reminds him dryly.

it’s true, but he doesn’t want to hear that right now. he’s having a breakthrough.

like clockwork, you appear at the table. you slip into the spot next to peter and put down your lunch tray. “what’d i miss?” you comment on the obvious tension, eyeing betty for an explanation. mj gives it to you. “valentine’s day discourse,” she tells you knowingly. peter shifts in his seat, uncomfortable, like he’s been caught doing something he isn’t supposed to.

he technically has.

“yuck,” you murmur, winding your arms around peter’s neck. “yuck, yuck, yuck.” he finds your words ironic because you then kiss his cheek, and peck his lips when he turns his head. peter puts a hand on your side and lets his eyes go up and down your face. a smile spreads across it, which he returns without thinking about. mj huffs in disapproval. she’s seen enough pda.

-

peter makes his list later that night. he decided he isn’t being inauthentic because he’s coming up with everything himself. he breezes right through it, jotting down what he loves most about you across the paper. it’s a mess. scribbled out misspellings and shreds of eraser, single words and whole phrases covering both sides. he’s proud of his actual progress.

he’ll write the official letter tomorrow since you’re coming over tonight. he at least has his material. the next, thankfully final, step is to reword it.

you’re ranting to peter about some drama with one of your teachers. he listens intently as always, chuckling when you crack jokes and grinning the entire time, feeling so lucky to have the most passionate, say whatever is on her mind girlfriend ever. seriously, it’s inspiring to watch.

“no, like, i never know what’s going on in that class,” you snort, peter snaking his arms around your middle from behind. “because you don’t pay attention,” he hums with his face nuzzled into the back of your neck. “because it doesn’t make any sense!” you defend yourself. his lips brush against your bare skin, drawing a giggle out of you.

“back to what i was saying,” your voice drips with sarcasm. the two of you naturally gravitate to his room, you walking in first. “she called on me, and i- what’s this?” you escape peter’s arms and head over to his desk. crap, he was working on your valentine and forgot to put it away. it caught your attention because it’s surrounded by crumpled papers and glitter.

peter was... experimenting... with designs for the front of the card. he’s learned that he isn’t too artistic either.

“wait, don’t read that,“ peter tries, but you’ve already got the list in your hands. he anxiously sucks his lower lip into his mouth and comes to stand next to you.

you first see the ‘dear y/n,’ then focus in on a few other words. my person forever, which makes you coo at the paper. insane (in the best way), which makes you gasp dramatically. i know you don’t like valentine’s day, but...

you drop the card back on the desk and let out a breath, shutting your eyes as irritation creeps in. it wouldn’t be fair for you to be mad at peter because it’s a sweet gesture, it really is. just, not for you personally. you’re on opposite sides of the valentine’s spectrum. you despise it, he sort of loves it. you’d hoped to meet somewhere in the middle.

“i thought we said no gifts,” you keep your voice level and spin around to look at peter. his face is painted with guilt. “it’s a card,” he murmurs, then meets your eyes with his brows knitted together. “i can’t even give you a card?” “i mean...” you shrug and shake your head. “look, peter. we had an agreement. i’m not doing valentine’s day.”

his disappointment comes out in the form of hanging his head. “yeah, you’re right. sorry.”

may tried to tell him this would happen, mj tried to tell him, and now you’re telling him. he should’ve expected it. he isn’t sure why he’s being so mopey about it because he was fully aware of your hatred for anything with the word valentine in it. it still hurts. peter just wishes you’d let him have the one day to love you and only you, give you some special attention.

“it’s nothing against you, babe,” you reassure him, noticing the shift in his mood. you put a hand on his shoulder. “i really just don’t like valentine’s day. it feels so... fake to me.” peter musters up a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. it drops when you loop your arms around his torso.

“if i celebrated, you’d be the first person i’d wanna spend it with.” you punctuate your words with a kiss to his cheek. he rests his chin on your head, you nuzzling your own cheek into his sweater. he’s feeling a bit better now. it’s not about him, that’s what he needs to remind himself. “thanks, baby,” peter speaks lowly into the air. you hum as if to say no problem.

scratch literally everything he’s done.

-

peter rolls over in his bed, rubbing at his eyes as his alarm goes off. it’s today. happy valentine’s day to... himself. he doesn’t think you’d want to hear it.

he’s not as broken up about everything as the other day. you have your reasons for not celebrating, and peter accepts them. hey, he still gets to spend the whole day with you. you’re technically having an unspoken valentine’s date.

he gets up from his bed with a yawn and starts to dig through his drawers for an outfit. you should be over soon.

before you head over to peter’s, you decide to make a quick stop at cvs for a few things. you ended up feeling pretty terrible about snapping on him essentially for loving you. it was over a harmless valentine, something to make you feel good and be an outlet for the hundreds of romantic bones in his body. basically, you were bitter about having a thoughtful boyfriend.

you want to make it up to him by giving him gifts instead. you’ll never be down with the whole exploitive and capitalistic side of valentine’s day, but there’s a deeper meaning to it than what you give it credit for. you see that now. peter was able to show his love for you through a homemade mess of a card, and you felt it. the price tags don’t matter. the meaning does.

dressed in his nicest sweater with his hair all styled, peter answers your knocking at his door. a grin instantly paints his face as he takes you in. you’re bundled up in a coat and holding a bag by your side. “hey,” he greets you and lets you past him. you shut the door behind him, returning the smile and winding an arm around his neck for a hug. his drapes around your back.

“hey. happy valentine’s day.” “happy valentine’s-“ peter realizes what he’s about to say and what you just said, then stops himself. “what?” he breaks the hug, squinting at your odd behavior. you’re the last person he’d expected to hear that from. “it’s valentine’s day. so, happy valentine’s day,” you tell him like it’s nothing.

he stays quiet while you shrug off your coat and throw it over one of the kitchen chairs. you bring your bag along with you, peter following you in. he’s suspicious. intrigued, and suspicious. it’s been less than a day since he last say you. you had a change of heart that fast? you aren’t the biggest valentine’s day anti he knows anymore?

“where’s may?” you wonder aloud, taking both of peter’s hands in your now free ones. he eyes the shopping bag you put down while you lace your fingers together. “with happy. they’re getting brunch.” he’s never particularly psyched to talk about their relationship. it’s always been in a joking way, though. now, he sounds genuinely upset to go over may’s whereabouts.

“they’re so cute,” you comment, tugging on peter’s hands so he looks at you. “you good?” “great,” peter half lies and nods, then presses a reassuring kiss to your cheek. he’s not bad. puzzled is the word. what you say next only adds to it.

“good. i have a few things for you,” you beam at him and grab your shopping bag off the chair. that’s what that’s for? peter isn’t fully sure what you’re up to. it doesn’t stop a smile from stretching across his lips, though.

“what happened to no presents?” he tests you as you reach into the bag. “well, i feel bad about how i acted the other day.” you pull out a heart shaped box of chocolates. “the card was really sweet, and i was too caught off guard to appreciate it. i’m sorry, pete.” peter’s eyes twinkle at you, gazing as you give him a smile with a hint of shyness behind it. you’re leaving your comfort zone and entering his.

“i was wrong and cynical and just, yeah. happy valentine’s day,” you add on and shove the box into his hand. he finally grins, so wide and then lets out a breathy laugh. “thanks, y/n. i know it was probably hard to shop being surrounded by this stuff.” he holds up the box. he’s right. you’ll unfortunately be seeing pink and red for weeks. “it was, but i did it for you.” you happily open up your arms for him.

peter puts down the chocolates and pulls you into his arms, his cheek squished against the side of your head as he hugs you to his chest. “oh my god, i love you so much,” he mumbles out, you squeezing him in response. “i love you, pete.” you press a quick kiss to his neck and hold him at arm’s length so you can see him. “i have something else for you.”

“baby,” peter coos, a pout on his lips. “you don’t have to do all of this. i would’ve been fine without the chocolates, even.” “stop, you deserve it,” you shut down the part of him that’s way too nice and selfless. “you’re my real present,” he says lower and with a toothy smile. shaking your head, you reach behind you and into the bag.

he can’t believe you’ve switched stances on valentine’s day. you’re the present pusher, and he’s refusing them. peter thinks it’s some sort of miracle that you’re not only acknowledging the holiday, you’re also partaking in it. his hopeless romantic side tells him it’s actually love, and it is. that’s the cheesy, hallmark movie truth. you suffered through shopping at a heart themed cvs because you love him. simple.

you return with a pink envelope that you place into peter’s hand. his face softens as he closes his fingers around it. “y/n, you made me a card?” “kind of,” you laugh at his overstatement. it’s obviously pre-made. you’d used a pen to fill it out in the store, scribbled a few words and tucked it into the envelope.

“it really doesn’t compare to yours, though,” you simultaneously warn and compliment him. peter dismisses you with a lighthearted click of his tongue. “oh, shush. that was only a rough draft.” “which proves my point even more. open it.” you grip onto the bottom of his sweater and grin.

he keeps his eyes on you while ripping open the envelope, then looks down and chuckles at the gag of the card. it has r2d2 and r4d4 from star wars on the front. inside is already written, “r4 is red and r2 is blue. if i was the force then i’d be with you.” you giggle to yourself, watching him read what you wrote next. i love you more every day, especially on valentine’s. xo, y/n.

peter holds the card to his side and slings an arm around your waist. “they make star wars valentines?” he murmurs, another smile breaking out on his face, one that you of course return. you use his sweater to pull him closer. “apparently. perfect for you.” peter tosses the card down next to the chocolates, both arms now holding you.

“thank you so much, baby. you’re an angel,” he sighs and pecks your lips after. “call me cupid,” you answer.

you give him a longer kiss back, tilting your head up to deepen it. your hands find their place on his biceps, earning a hum from peter as he moves his lips against yours. you can feel his love in every little movement, how he hugs your waist like you’re made of glass, rests his forehead against yours. when your lips mutually detach, peter speaks first, voice slightly husky.

“happy valentine’s day, cupid.”

you breathe out, peter closing his eyes in content.

“happy valentine’s day, r2.”

[gukyi]

that’s the spirit! | myg

summary: min yoongi hates halloween. as his best friend and resident halloween-lover, that is simply unacceptable. but when halloween night rolls around and you and min yoongi feel farther apart than ever before, you discover that what’s come between you is more than just a bad trick, and that no matter what day it is, loving him is the sweetest treat of all.

{college!au, friends to lovers!au, halloween!au}

pairing: min yoongi x female reader genre: fluff, comedy, a little angst? (a little i promise) word count: 8k (woohoo! i did it!) warnings: alcohol consumption, underage drunkenness in flashbacks, misunderstandings, helpless but mutual pining, halloween parties, this is halloween during college, what else do you expect a/n: some scenes inspired by love, rosie, my absolute favorite rom-com! happy halloween, and i hope this brings some joy to your life before armageddon i mean election day rolls around! much love 🎃💜

Min Yoongi hates Halloween. 

Which is ridiculous, because you assume that there must have been at least one time in his life where he liked it. Halloween is a universally-liked holiday. It was the one day of the year where he, an unbridled child rebelling against authority, got to dress up as his favorite book character, superhero, or movie star, hang out with his friends past sunset, and solicit strangers for free candy. Free candy! How could anyone hate that?

But the thing is, it doesn’t matter what Min Yoongi was like in his youth. Ever since you met him, he has hated Halloween. For reasons completely unbeknownst to you. 

Unfortunately for Min Yoongi, just because he hates Halloween doesn’t mean that he gets to spend his October pretending that it doesn’t exist. Because, unlike him, you do not hate Halloween. In fact, you rather like it. So much so that Min Yoongi has to deal with the holiday no matter what. For better… 

“Ah! What the fuck!”

Or for worse.

You pop your head out of your bedroom to find Yoongi about to throw down with the fake skeleton you’ve propped up by the door, one of those cheesy ones from Spirit Halloween that make a zombie sound whenever its artificial brain can sense someone near it. He’s got this wide-eyed look on his face, fists up in front of him like he’s going to beat the damn thing senseless, even though Min Yoongi is barely five-feet-ten and has a body that functions exclusively on iced coffee and could probably get taken down by the average third-grader. 

Min Yoongi does not have a flight instinct. He only knows how to fight. 

He’s muttering to himself by the time you emerge completely from your bedroom, grumbling about how he nearly wet himself at the sight of the thing, fingers glossing over the plastic bones as he inspects them. There he stands in the doorway of your apartment, curled-up fists tucked inside the too-long sleeves of his too-big hoodie, pink lips parted in innocent confusion as he blinks at your apartment’s new resident. 

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” You chide from where you stand in your room, watching as Yoongi jerks his head up. The sound of your voice seems to catch him off guard for a minute, eyes wide in shock before he realizes that it’s you and his whole body relaxes. “Was that you I just heard screaming outside my apartment, Min Yoongi?”

“No,” Yoongi deadpans, fully aware that the both of you know that it was him. “Must have been someone else.”

“Yes, of course, my mistake,” you tease, coming up behind him to rub his upper arm, the palm of your hand pressing against the worn fabric of his hoodie sleeve as he sighs. “You don’t have a problem with my festive decorations at all, do you?”

“Not those,” Yoongi frowns, pointing to the orange and black streamers hanging above your apartment window, to the mini pumpkins sitting in the center of your dinky kitchen table, to the construction paper cutouts of black cats decorating your walls. He rounds on the skeleton, propped up right next to the door with the sole purpose of scaring whatever visitors you have. “This, I have a problem with. What is this thing?”

You smile proudly. “Reginald.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Yoongi looks at you, positively flabbergasted. “You named it?”

You scoff. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I? I bought him, he’s mine now, and he needed a name. So I named him Reginald. What’s the issue here?” You weren’t about to buy a twenty-five dollar plastic skeleton, set him up to be your personal doorman, and not give him a name. 

“The issue is that this—” he motions to Reginald’s face, “—is the first thing I see when I walk into your apartment, instead of—oh, I don’t know—you,” he says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Aw, I’m touched,” you say, pressing a hand to your heart. “Didn’t know you always wanted to see my face first thing when you come over.”

Yoongi’s gaze drifts down towards the floor, thumbs twiddling. “Well, yeah,” he mumbles, words barely audible. “Why else would I come over?”

“I don’t know, for the ambience, maybe?” You say with a shrug, watching him slide his backpack off of his shoulder and onto the floor by the couch. “Anyway, maybe if you had come with me to Spirit Halloween when I went shopping for decorations, you wouldn’t be so surprised.”

“I had two midterms that week! Two!” Yoongi reminds you.”

“I’m just saying,” you tell him, hands up defensively as you make your way to the kitchen, fishing out two teabags from the cabinet as you set the kettle to boil. You never used to like tea, but a year ago Yoongi convinced you to try this jasmine flower one from the Asian supermarket downtown and you haven’t looked back. Now there’s always at least three spare boxes in your kitchen cupboards, for you and for him. “No time is a bad time to get into the Halloween spirit.”

Yoongi sighs, loud and obvious, because this is the third year in a row you’ve brought up this conversation and it’s not any more convincing than it was the last two times. “Do we have to do this?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t we just pretend it’s November Eve?”

“Come on, Yoongi,” you plead, because he’s never given you a good explanation as to why he refuses to spend Halloween with you, and you just want to know why. “Won’t you just celebrate this one stupid holiday with me?”

“So you admit it’s stupid?”

“That’s not what I meant.” You frown at him, crossing your arms as the kettle starts whistling. 

Yoongi exhales, reaching over you to pour the boiling water into your teacups, matching His and Hers ones you bought from the sale section of Target last year for Valentine’s Day. “It’s just not my thing. You know that.”

“But we’re college students,” you exclaim. “Halloween is the best when you’re a college student! You get to dress up as whatever you want and go to five different parties and spend the night with your friends without your parents chaperoning you.”

Yoongi purses his lips, unconvinced. “So… basically an opportunity to get piss drunk in a frat house? No thanks, I’ll pass.”

“You know that I wouldn’t care what we did if you celebrated Halloween with me,” you say, leaning against the counter as you hold your mug in your hands, the heat warming your palms and steam brushing against the skin of your cheeks. “Even if we just stayed in and watched a movie. Or played one of those horror video games Jungkook’s always talking about.”

“That sounds worse,” Yoongi admits with a helpless laugh. It really does. Neither you nor Yoongi have ever been huge fans of the horror genre Jungkook loves so much. 

You chuckle. “Honestly, yeah, forget I said anything about that.”

“You know I just don’t care for Halloween that much,” Yoongi says, gazing down into the swirling brown of his mug, the steam from the water making his glasses fog up. “It’s nothing personal.”

You sigh. That’s about as good of an answer you’re going to be getting out of him. No matter what you suggest, whether it be a house party, a night in, or even just a candy feast, he has always declined, citing his unexplainable dislike for the festivities. The only reason he deals with the holiday in the first place is because you love it so much. 

“Will you at least help me carve some pumpkins please?” You ask, a last ditch effort to get him to participate. “The supermarket on Fifteenth Street is having a sale on them, and I wanted to decorate the windowsill. It’s easier with two people, you know.”

Yoongi narrows his eyes, looking hesitant. 

“Oh, please, Yoongi? Just this once? It’s not even, like, a strictly Halloween thing. It’s just a fall thing! Plus, we can roast the pumpkin seeds after for a snack,” you plead, placing your cup down on the counter so you can tug on his arms, hands wrapped around his wrists as you stare into his eyes, positively desperate. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Yoongi says with a huff, that resigned tone to his voice that signifies that he’s caving in. “Yes, we can carve pumpkins together. That I will do.”

“Oh my God, really? Yes! Yay, thank you so much!” In a fit of excitement, surprise, and joy, you pull Yoongi in for a hug, wrapping your arms around his neck as he tilts back in shock, tea spilling out over the edge of his mug and onto the linoleum floor beneath your feet, drops of it splashing against your skin. 

“Whoa, whoa, okay,” Yoongi says, taken aback. Still nestled tightly within your arms, he carefully sets his mug down onto the counter so as to avoid more spilling, his other hand pressing against the small of your back. “I didn’t know pumpkin carving was so important to you.”

You laugh, pulling away as you look into his eyes, crinkled up into fond little crescents. “It’s not. But you are.”

“So cheesy,” Yoongi chides.

“You love it,” you remind him, pressing the side of your body against his as you lean against the counter together. Instinctively, you let your head flop onto his shoulder, fitting perfectly in the crook of his neck. “Thanks for doing this for me,” you say softly. 

“Of course,” Yoongi says. “Anything for you.”

“Look how festive campus is!”

Yoongi chuckles as he watches you skip down the main walkway, the one that winds right from the west to the east side of campus, relishing in the feeling of autumn. Yoongi always forgets that it’s fall until it hits him like a brick to the head, and suddenly it’s getting dark at five-thirty and he can’t go outside without a proper jacket anymore. It’s a week until November, and Yoongi still refuses to wear anything heavier than a denim jacket, no matter how cold it gets. It can’t be winter yet, right?

“Wow, all the tones really fit the spooky mood,” you tell him, leaves crinkling as your feet step on the fallen foliage, brown and orange and yellow and red.

“How convenient it is that orange happens to be one of Halloween’s signature colors,” Yoongi chides with a roll of his eyes. “Is the Castle still hosting that party next week?”

“The costume one? Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” you tell him with a nod. “We’re still going, right?”

“Only because it’s our first year,” Yoongi reminds you pointedly. “And since you wanna celebrate together so badly.”

You scoff. “Don’t act like it’s such a drag. I know you want to spend time with me.”

Yoongi chuckles to himself, casual and cool. He knows you’re just teasing him but quite frankly, if Yoongi could spend every day of the rest of his life with you, then he would. If he could turn himself into a witch and cast a spell to keep you by his side for the rest of time, then he would. From the moment the two of you met in your dingy dorm, you clicked. And Yoongi knew, in that moment. He just knew. 

“Oh my God, look at the pumpkins!” 

Your voice breaks him from his thoughts, your finger pointing excitedly at the carved pumpkins outside of the dormitories that line the walkway, lit candles nestled safely inside. They’ve got everything from the college logo to video game characters to the face of your lovable-but-memeable university president carved into them, decorating the street with a little more personality than normal. 

“They’re so cute, holy shit,” you tell Yoongi fondly, all endeared and heart-eyed, the same way you get when someone walks their dog through campus or a professor sends out an update email with a picture of their newborn grandchild. Yoongi’s only known you a couple of months, but already he’s starting to figure out what makes you tick. “I love them. Don’t you love them, Yoongi?”

You turn around to meet Yoongi’s eyes, and when he looks back at you it feels like his whole heart is lighter. He sees your smile and it makes his body fill with warmth, like someone’s wrapping a blanket around him, like a warm cup of hot cocoa on a cool autumn afternoon. He looks back at you, and it feels like everything is right. 

“Yeah,” Yoongi says, grinning. “I do.”

The lopsided legs of your creaky kitchen table tremble as the pumpkin hits it. 

“Damn, is this thing heavy or am I just getting weaker?” You ask, smoothing out the newspaper spread out on the flat surface of the table, two college students’ best attempt to avoid a mess. They’re old student copies with headlines like Brand New Cafeteria, but is the Food Even Any Good? and New Semester, New Me! sprawled across the front. You care about your school news, you really do, but the members of the newspaper team that hand out the papers practically stuff them down your throat whenever there’s a new issue, which is three times a week and at every street intersection on campus. So you’ve had extras lying around. 

“Nope, they’re definitely heavy,” Yoongi agrees as he plops his pumpkin onto the table next to yours with a thud. “Though it’s not like I go to the gym much anyway.”

“Didn’t we say we were gonna try and be healthier this year, since we’re graduating?” You ask. 

“That was before that new doughnut place opened up next to the ramen restaurant three streets up,” Yoongi reminds you. 

“Maybe grad school?”

Yoongi rolls his eyes, reaching over the table to grab the pumpkin carving kits the two of you bought from the drugstore down the road. “Caution. Keep out of reach of children ages three and under,” he reads. “Welp, guess I can’t do this then…”

“Ha ha, very funny,” you say with a deadpan frown, grabbing onto his wrist. “Hold on a minute, Mr. I Promised I Would Do This For My Best Friend.” Yoongi exhales dramatically as you pull him back towards the table, though it’s not as if there was much resistance from him in the first place.

You pry open the plastic wrapping that surrounds the kit, the orange tools eventually popping out of their casing and onto your newspaper-ed table. Sure, you could have probably pulled out two knives from your kitchen drawer and it wouldn’t make a difference, but spending ten dollars each on these two little pumpkin carving kits didn’t seem like a waste of money. For the sake of Halloween spirit, right?

“What do you want to carve?” You ask, handing Yoongi your open kit as you gaze at the instruction manual. Pumpkin carving shouldn’t be too difficult, should it? You cut open the top, pull out all the gunk from the inside, and then carve a face, or something. 

“I’m not a very good artist,” Yoongi admits, looking hesitant. 

“Well, the good thing about pumpkin carving is that no one expects them to look nice,” you point out. “I think I want to do that anime eyes face emoji. You know the one. Let’s see…”

You grab a hold of the plastic knife that came with the kit, hover the tip over the top of the pumpkin, and stab. It sinks into the squash up to the hilt. That’s the good part. 

The bad part is that, because you’re holding onto a knife made out of non-recyclable plastic, moving it once it’s inside the pumpkin is exceedingly difficult. You pull it right and left fruitlessly, watching as the knife sits firmly in place, the handle bending with the curve of your fingers if you tug on it too hard. 

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Yoongi says with another sigh, abandoning his own pumpkin, which he has already de-stalked in the minutes you weren’t looking his way. “Let me help you.”

Suddenly, you feel a warmth wrap around you. A figure presses against your back, this musky, coffee-laden scent surrounding you, and you watch as Yoongi’s calloused hands slowly envelop yours, fingertips pressing firmly against your skin. It makes you freeze up instinctively, jumping at the sensation of his body around yours, of his torso pressed against your back, of his breath tickling your ear. 

“Relax, alright?” He says, voice calm and gentle. He brings your hands to the knife, lets his palms rest against them as your fingers slowly wrap around the handle. You can feel him breathing, feel the slow rise and fall of his chest against you, the heat of his mouth just inches away from your cheek. “It’s just me.”

You force a chuckle. “You just surprised me, that’s all.”

You feel Yoongi pause behind you. 

“Seriously, I’m fine. Help me,” you insist. 

Steadily, albeit a little bit tentatively, Yoongi does. His hand wrapped around yours, together the two of you carve out the top of the pumpkin, his chest pressed firmly against your back, body engulfing you. He feels so close, so goddamn close, like there is barely an inch of space in between the two of you, like if he were to bend down right there and if you were shift yourself around you would see nothing but his face right in front of yours, his hazy brown eyes looking back at you, twinkling in the white light of your kitchen. 

It almost makes you want to turn around and look. 

“There we go,” Yoongi says, voice suddenly soft, quiet like there’s something else weighing on his tongue. “What are you thinking of carving?”

“I don’t know,” you murmur, lips upturned. “Maybe you?”

“I don’t make for a very attractive pumpkin picture,” Yoongi says with a shake of his head, even though that’s total bullshit for a number of reasons. 

First of all, a pumpkin portrait is by no means meant to be an attractive portrayal of you, unless you’re Keanu Reeves and you look photogenic no matter what. Second of all, there has never been a time where Yoongi has not looked good. He always does. He did during finals week when his body was made of nothing but iced coffee, he did in freshman year when the two of you would stay awake until the early morning getting vodka spilled all over you in frat houses, and he does now, tired eyes and soft skin, dark hair and pink lips, standing in your apartment like he belongs here, like this is where he was meant to be. 

“I think you would,” you tell him honestly. “You’d look good no matter what.”

Yoongi’s silent at that, but you can tell from the way his cheeks are turning red he’s taken the compliment to heart. It makes you want to shower him in them. It makes you want to freeze this moment in time, suspended in reality, and stay like that forever. 

“Then I’ll do you,” he says with a grin, because what else would he say? Who else would he choose? You are going to put two matching pumpkins on your windowsill, and they will be of you and him. Messy, Picasso-style portraits carved into the orange skin. Two best friends, together even as fucking pumpkins. 

You will carve out a picture of him, and he will carve out a picture of you, and isn’t that what this is really all about?

“Do you think people are gonna get the wrong idea about us?” 

“What do you mean?”

Yoongi turns around to face you where you stand in front of your dorm mirror, this giant plastic one hanging on two hooks that you’ve latched onto the door of your room. He knows that you can see him in the mirror, staring back at you with a black mask over his face and a cape draped over his shoulders, the giant yellow emblem printed out on a piece of paper and taped onto his chest. It’s a last minute costume, for sure, but it gets the job done nicely. 

“I mean,” you say, fixing the cat ears that sit atop your head. “Do you think people are gonna think we’re a couple, or something?”

Yoongi grins nervously and hopes that you don’t notice. “I mean, we’re just going to a frat party. I doubt it’s going to be light enough to see anything at all. Why?”

“Well, I don’t want people to get the wrong idea about us,” you say, adjusting the mask over your eyes. Yoongi, unabashedly, rakes his eyes up and down your figure. Your black turtleneck and skintight leather leggings don’t leave very much to the imagination. You’re definitely much more in costume than he is, to say the least. 

“We’re freshmen, people already have the wrong idea about us,” Yoongi scoffs. 

You turn around just so you can shoot a frown his way. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Why are you so worried about people getting the wrong idea about us?” Yoongi asks you, an eyebrow raised. This does not exactly bode well for him. “We can be Batman and Catwoman together no matter what people think.”

“I don’t know, I guess I just—” You stop in your tracks, letting the words fall off your lips and crash to the floor. “Never mind, it’s stupid.”

“What? You can tell me,” Yoongi says, concern lacing his voice. He rushes over to you, the two of you staring at your reflections in the mirror. Two friends, clad in black, wearing matching costumes. If Yoongi wasn’t sober right now, maybe he would actually do it. 

Maybe. 

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” you shrug it off with a shake of your head. “I’m happy to be doing this with you. Even if your costume totally sucks.”

“Hey!” Yoongi exclaims defensively. “It is not my fault you came up with this idea last minute even though you already owned everything. I had to pay twenty-five cents to print this in color, you know.”

“A Twenty-five cent costume and you still look good.”

You and Yoongi smile at each other in the mirror, lips turned up as you stare at yourselves, wondering if this is all you will ever be, or if there is something more. 

Yoongi sure hopes it’s the latter. 

And he’s determined to find out, once and for all, tonight. 

You’ve just lit the candles that sit inside yours and Yoongi’s pumpkins when you hear the knock at your door. 

You’re sure that Yoongi can hear you from a mile away as you scurry towards the door, white platform heels clapping against the floorboards with every step you take. You’re going to have to practice walking in these a bit more. Maybe you shouldn’t have bought them only a week before Halloween, and maybe you should have at least tried to break them in a little bit. 

“Hello?” You swing open the door. 

“He—whoa,” Yoongi begins before his eyes widen to the size of the moon as he fully takes in the sight in front of him. “What’s with the—uh, the… dress?” He’s scratching at the nape of his neck, eyes sweeping up and down your body. 

You hold out the skirt of your sequined, bedazzled dress as best you can, and grin. “I’m a gogo dancer! What do you think?”

“Wow, I—” Yoongi starts, a little speechless. “I don’t know. Wow. You look… you look nice, Y/N.”

You smile, thankful for the compliment. Yoongi seems weirdly breathless, blinking more often than usual, like he’s trying to convince himself that what he’s seeing is real. Although, you will admit that this dress is much more sparkly than anything else you have in your closet. You reckon a few disco balls were sacrificed to make this costume. 

“Why—uh, why did you call me over? Did you need something from me?”

“Actually, yes,” you say, ushering Yoongi into your apartment. 

As he’s walking inside, Yoongi notices the pumpkins sitting on your windowsill. “Hey, those look cute together.”

“Don’t they?” You say proudly. Nobody else has commented on them, but then again, you live on the fifth floor of your apartment, so you don’t imagine many people can even see them from ground level. But it’s nice to know that they’re there, and that they mean something. Not to a whole lot of people, but to you. And to him. “But that’s not why I asked you to come over.”

“Why, what’s up?”

You freeze when he looks up at you, like you can hardly will the next few words to come out of your mouth. They’re stuck at the dam of your lips, refusing to budge, because there is this tiny, this little part of you that doesn’t even have the courage to ask. To say it. Because you know already. 

“Hoseok’s throwing a party tonight—”

“No.”

“You didn’t even let me finish!”

“But I know what you’re going to say,” Yoongi says like it’s obvious, because it is. “You’re going to ask me to come with you. And I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, Y/N, but I am not going to go. I’m just not.”

“But it’s not a shitty frat party or anything!” You exclaim, desperately trying to dig yourself out of a hole you’re already six-feet in. “It’s at his place, an apartment across campus, with just some friends of his. There won’t be crazy music and sleazy guys and jungle juice. It’s just going to be a house party.”

“I don’t care, I don’t want to go,” Yoongi tells you. “There’s nothing you can do to change my mind.”

“Why? Why won’t you go?” You demand, because the least your best friend of nearly four years could do is give you a real reason. A real reason as to why he hates Halloween, why he never wants to celebrate it with you, why he never wants to go out with you on your favorite night of the year. 

“Because I just don’t want to! Why can’t you just accept that? I don’t want to go!”

Silence. It’s almost as if Yoongi’s shocked he was even speaking so loudly in the first place. 

Next to you, the candles flicker. 

“I don’t get it,” you say, resigned. “I don’t understand. This is our very last year to celebrate Halloween as college students, as best friends, and you can’t even give me a real excuse as to why you won’t come with me.”

Yoongi frowns. “What do you mean, ‘a real excuse’?”

“Exactly that,” you say sharply. “A real excuse. Even when I offer for us to just stay in and eat KitKats and watch a shiity movie you refuse. All because it’s Halloween. I don’t get it. It’s not the crowds, and it’s not the drinks, and it’s not even the other stuff, like the pumpkins and the decorations. Is it me? Am I the reason you don’t want to celebrate Halloween?”

“No, what the fuck, it’s not you!”

“Then what is it, Yoongi?” You plead, not even making an attempt to lower your voice. Can’t he hear the sheer desperation in your voice? The hopelessness? “Why won’t you just tell me why you don’t ever want to celebrate this goddamn holiday with me? Is it my fault?”

“I just don’t!” 

The sound of Yoongi’s shouts echoes throughout your living space, bouncing off of the walls. You look back at him, feeling helpless, but he doesn’t look angry, or enraged. He looks exhausted. Like this conversation has knocked the wind right out of him, stolen the breath from his lungs. Like suddenly the pot has boiled over, only it’s extinguished the flames that kept it burning. 

“I just don’t,” Yoongi repeats, fists clenched tightly by his side. “I’m sorry, Y/N.”

He gives you one last tired look, matching your own defeated expression, before turning around and walking out of your apartment. The door shuts firmly behind him, neither a slam nor a gentle stop, leaving you stranded in the middle of your living space, watching his silhouette disappear. 

You sigh. You don’t think Yoongi will ever tell you why he hates Halloween. And while that may be no fault of your own, you can’t help but feel like it has something to do with you. 

Yoongi could probably count the amount of times he’s gone to a frat party on one hand, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t already know everything there is to know about them. In his eyes, once you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all. 

Still, he supposes that it being Halloween makes this one a little different. Everyone’s in some sort of costume, whether it be good or bad or just plain old lazy, and there are at least a few orange and black decorations lining the walls of the Castle, and they’ve curated a playlist with Halloween songs as well as rap songs Yoongi has heard plenty of times before, so for once, Yoongi will give the fraternity a bit of credit when it comes to their Halloween party-planning. 

Beside him, you take another giant chug of your drink from the orange solo cup in your hand, wincing as the alcohol burns your throat on the way down. 

“Hey, take it easy, okay?” He says, though he doubts you can even hear him over the music, loud in the kind of way that his ears are going to be ringing far into tomorrow morning. 

“I’m fine!” You shout back, even though you are definitely not. The entire room reeks of a mixture of vodka and sickly sweet soda. 

“I just want to make sure you’re not overdoing it!” He tells you as the two of you get shoved together from some massive guy pushing past Yoongi and sending him crashing towards you. He catches a glimpse of the contents of your cup, eyebrows raising when he sees that it’s almost empty. You just got that drink five minutes ago. 

You smile. “I’m not!”

The song changes, and Yoongi swears that he can feel the entire house shake as everyone screams, cheering as they bounce up and down, dancing to the beat. Next to him, you are finishing the last few drops of whatever’s in your cup, finding an empty ledge to place it down on when you’re done, and pulling him in close to you. 

“Let’s dance!” You shriek excitedly. 

And who is Yoongi to resist?

He lets you take your hand in his own and parade him around the tiny little space the two of you share, a couple square feet of freedom in this crowded room, chock full of sweaty bodies just like his. Yoongi may not have had as much to drink as you, but the little bit of alcohol in his system is already shutting down normal mental processes like not-staring-at-you-constantly and pretending-that-he-likes-you-just-as-a-friend, sending him into a tizzy whenever he meets your starstruck eyes.

Even in this dingy, sweaty, unventilated fraternity living room, you are beautiful. You are beautiful here, and you are beautiful at three in the morning after twelve straight hours of studying, and you are beautiful after spilling the dining hall’s chicken noodle soup all over yourself. 

God, you’re the only person Yoongi is looking at in this room. You’re the only person he sees. 

Shaking his head, Yoongi abandons those thoughts as the song comes to an end, a hand wrapped around your wrist as he leans into your ear. “Do you wanna go outside? It’s hot in here!”

“Okay, whatever!” You agree easily, too easygoing after you’ve got a few drinks in you. 

Yoongi grabs a hold of your sweaty hand and tugs you towards the back door, one that he thinks leads to a fenced in backyard. You squeeze through the crowd, getting a couple of drinks spilled on your shoes on the way until you reach the back door and Yoongi fumbles with the knob, shaking it a couple of times before it gets loose. Eventually, the two of you stumble outside into the backyard, where a couple of people are playing beer pong and a couple of others look like they’re making out. 

It’s a frat party. What else did Yoongi expect?

It’s the end of October, and Yoongi doesn’t even have on a jacket, but the chill of the night has little effect on him after being in a room that’s felt like one hundred degrees for an hour. Out here, Yoongi feels like he can finally breathe. 

“It’s kinda cold out here, don’t you think?”

Yoongi doesn’t even have time to respond before you’re wrapping yourself up in him, curling into his body and placing his arm around your figure, letting the heat from his frame radiate onto your skin. 

“Better than being in there,” Yoongi reasons. 

“But aren’t you having fun?” 

He looks down to see you looking up with him with big, wide eyes, like you’re afraid that he isn’t having fun, or afraid that you’re enjoying this night more than he is. It makes him smile. “With you, I am.”

You grin at that, turning back to face forward, head pressing into the crook of his neck. “That’s good to hear,” you tell him. “It seemed like you were kinda nervous.”

“Nervous?” His voice cracks as he says it. Fuck. 

“Yeah, is there something you wanna tell me? It looks like you’ve been dying to say something all night,” you comment mindlessly, clearly much more observant now than you are when you’re sober. Or perhaps, Yoongi’s just more obvious. 

He takes a deep breath, pressing his eyes shut tightly. This is his chance. He knows it. 

“Actually, yes, there is,” he says, and it feels like he has to force the words out of his mouth because they’re refusing to come out on their own, pausing at the edge of his lips. It feels like he has to overcome his own mind in order to tell you, feels like every word is a sucker punch to his lungs. 

You pull away from him, looking up at Yoongi with big, blinking eyes. It’s a clear night, and Yoongi knows because he can see the fucking stars reflected in your pupils, see them twinkling as your glossy eyes gaze back up at him. You look up at Yoongi and God, you are just so beautiful. You are beautiful, and Yoongi wonders, then, if you know. If you know how Yoongi looks at you. If you know how he feels about you. He is so in love. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. You are beautiful and he is so in love, and he’s been dying to tell you that and this might be his only opportunity to do so, because tomorrow will be a new day and Yoongi won’t have the guts tomorrow. This is his only chance. 

You deserve to know. 

“Well?” You ask him. “What is it?”

Yoongi wraps his arm around the small of your back, pulls you into him, and presses his lips to yours. 

Hoseok’s party is fun. It’s definitely one of the better ones you’ve been to in your four years of university so far. There aren’t too many people, and the drinks are actually good instead of just burning your throat, and his music taste is impeccable. 

And yet, you don’t think you’ve ever been so unenthused at a party in your whole life. Thriller by Michael Jackson blares from Hoseok’s television speakers, chatter fills the room, and Hoseok’s girlfriend, Haebin, is constantly checking up on you, but never has one place felt so empty. 

It’s not really very difficult for you to wonder why. 

“Hey, Y/N!”

You whip your head around to find Haein standing by the kitchen table, gesturing towards Hoseok as he’s looking up the recipe for a drink he wants to try. 

“You want one? Hoseok’s trying to make Long Island Iced Tea,” Haebin asks. Next to her, Hoseok is struggling to get the measurements right. At least he’s making an attempt. 

You stare down at your nearly-full cup of strawberry daiquiri. You took one sip when Haebin first handed it to you thirty minutes ago, and haven’t touched it since. “No, I’m alright, thank you.”

Haebin sighs, patting Hoseok on the back encouragingly before she makes her way over to where you’re sitting on their couch, pressed up against the arm of the sofa as you mindlessly swirl the drink around in your cup, eyes zoning into the whirlpool you’re creating. She sits down next to you with a smile, with the kind of look on her face that makes you simultaneously thankful for and dread the conversation you’re about to have.

“Hey, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.” You don’t even believe yourself when you say it. 

“Listen, you don’t have to tell me. I just know that Halloween is your favorite holiday and I was wondering if there was something getting you down tonight,” Haebin says in that comforting, gentle sort of way, like an old friend who knows all your tells. 

“It’s not a big deal, really. I think I’m just out of it tonight,” you say, not drunk enough to divulge more information but also not sober enough to keep your mouth completely shut. 

Haebin smiles at you, lips pursed. “Alright then. If everything’s alright.” She pushes her hands onto her thighs as she gets off of the couch, heading back towards the kitchen to help Hoseok figure out how to mix drinks. But before she leaves you alone, she turns around and says one more thing. “You know, I don’t know why Yoongi’s not here or anything, but I wish that he was. You always look so much happier whenever he’s around.”

And that just sends your mind into meltdown. 

Defeated, alone, and best friend-less, you place your cup down on the end table to your left and get up off of the couch, beginning to gather your belongings, your coat and your shoes and your bag, tugging your arms through the sleeves as you storm towards the door, eyebrows knitted together, lips pursed.

“Hey, where are you going—?”

“I gotta go, Haebin. I just—” You pull on a shoe, tugging at the boot as it slips over your heel, “—I gotta go. Thank Hoseok for me, okay? I have to go.”

You only have time to catch Haebin nod, wordless, before you tug open the door to Hoseok’s apartment and stomp outside.

This is the worst Halloween of your life, bar none. The time when you were four and you tripped over a curb on the sidewalk, spraining your ankle doesn’t even come close. It’s your very last year to celebrate Halloween as a college student, to celebrate it by getting dressed up in a low-effort costume and spending time with your friends, and your best friend isn’t even here. He refused. 

He refused and you still don’t know why, but worst of all he refused and you still wish he was here. You wish you could have spent time with him tonight. More than anything else. You wish you could have spent the night wrapped up together on your couch, or on your bed, watching your favorite television shows and enjoying each other’s company. You wish you could have curled into his body as the television blared, pressed your head against his shoulder and felt the warmth of his skin on yours. God, you wish you could have. 

You wish you could have told him. 

You wish you had the guts to. 

Twenty minutes later finds you outside one of the dozens of frat parties likely occurring on campus right now, the bass from the music so loud that you can feel it in your eardrums even outside of the building. No part of you wants to go inside something like that, but at this point you start to wonder if maybe hopping different frats is actually your best idea. Get a drink, get drunk, and then move onto the next one. Rinse and repeat until you don’t remember a thing about this terrible, awful night. 

As you walk along the sidewalk, you spot another student sitting on the curb underneath a leaf-less tree, a cheap black drugstore masquerade mask covering the top half of his face. He doesn’t seem to be having a particularly enjoyable night either. 

Normally, the last thing you’d want to do is sit down next to a stranger whose face is disguised, because who knows what could happen to you if you do, but there are at least twenty people surrounding the two of you, loitering outside the frat house in the hopes that they can eventually get inside. And honestly, you could use a fucking break. 

As casually as you can possibly manage, you take a seat next to the boy, a few inches apart from him as he looks up at you. You can’t make out too much in the dim light of the frat house, but he’s illuminated just enough for you to see his eyes widen at the sight of you. 

“You don’t mind, do you?” You ask. 

He shakes his head. 

You smile in thanks, shifting around where you’re seated on the cold cement, eyes drifting all over the place, from the houses across the street to the road to the people standing around, anything to avoid turning back towards the boy and initiating an even more awkward conversation. Sitting down, the world stops spinning, just a little bit. You didn’t have too much to drink at Hoseok’s, but it was enough to loosen your mind. 

“Can I say something?” You say loudly, turning towards the boy. 

It was enough to loosen your lips too, apparently. 

The boy stares back at you, silent. 

“I’m sorry, I just need to get this off my chest.” You close your eyes, breathing in and breathing out, feeling your chest rise and fall. “I am not having a great night. And I wish I was out here with another friend of mine, instead. He’s my best friend, actually. He just… didn’t want to come out tonight with me. But I wish he was here, because I love spending time with him, and I miss him.”

The words spill off of your tongue like lava from a volcano, bursting from your lips completely unfiltered. It surprises you, a little, how much you actually have to say. How much has been weighing on your chest.

You don’t expect him to respond. Truthfully, you can’t even believe you’re unloading all of your baggage onto him in the first place. Since when are you the type of person to tell other people about the tragedies of your life?

But then, he says, “You do?”

And it makes you wonder what else you’ve been keeping hidden. 

“Yeah, I guess I do,” you realize. “I love spending time with him. He makes every day brighter, turns everything he touches into laughter. And I wanted to spend time with him tonight because I actually thought he would want to. You know, we carved pumpkins together a few days ago. Of each other’s faces.” You force out a laugh. “We carved each other’s faces into pumpkins and he still isn’t here tonight. I wanted him to be here because he’s my best friend, and because he makes me so happy, and even other people are noticing what effect he has on me. Noticing how fucking happy he makes me. Because he does. I feel like I’m a better person with him. I want to spend the rest of my life with him and he’s not here and instead of going to look for him I’m sitting here telling you the sob story that is my life and I just wish—”

“Does that mean you love him?” The boy asks softly. 

“What?”

“Does that mean you love him?”

You turn to look at the boy, eyebrows raised, almost ready to deny such a thing, but when you open your mouth, nothing comes out. 

How could you say you don’t love Yoongi? Of course you do. He is your best friend. You never want to live a day when he’s not by your side. You want to spend the rest of your life with him. He makes you smile and laugh like it’s nobody’s business, brightens your day without even trying. Just seeing him is enough to lift your spirits. Seeing his face on the other side of your apartment door, all ripped jeans and Converse sneakers, hands wrapped in the sleeves of his hoodie, dark brown eyes blinking back at you, pink lips parted in a grin. That image you have of him in your head—it’s one you don’t ever want to forget. He is standing in your apartment, lips upturned, eyes crushed into crescents, smiling at you. He is mid-laugh, grinning from ear to ear at something you said. He is right there. 

“Well, yeah,” you say, because what else are you supposed to do? “I guess I do.”

Suddenly, your chest feels a whole lot lighter. 

The boy next to you smiles, the dim light barely illuminating his features, but when you look at him there is something so strangely familiar about him, about the way he blinks at you, about the peak of his Cupid’s bow, about how his lips are stretched into a grin. It couldn’t be him… could it?

But before you have time to ask, he is leaning towards you and pressing his lips atop yours, crashing your mouths together in a desperate, messy kiss. His palm presses against your cheek and you can’t help but sink into it, sink into the way his other hand curls around to rest on the small of your back, let yourself be engulfed by him. 

You’ve never kissed Yoongi before, but you know that this is what it must be like. 

You know, from the way your blood starts to sizzle, sparks rushing through your veins. From the way your heart is pumping, loud and clear in your ears, like it’s been jolted to life. Like a shock is running through your body. Like a warmth is filling you up, from the inside out. 

When you part, as Yoongi takes off his mask, he can’t keep the smile off of his face. “I knew it. I knew you loved me.”

“What are you doing out here?” You ask, positively shocked. “I thought you hated Halloween.”

“I do,” Yoongi confirms. “Or, well, I did, I guess.”

“Then what changed?”

“You. Us. We changed,” Yoongi says, motioning between your bodies. “I hated Halloween because it had bad memories for me. Nothing crazy, but, yeah. You don’t remember?”

“What?” Your mouth drops open. “What should I remember?”

“We kissed that night.” Yoongi begins, eyes shifting down towards the ground. Clearly recalling this is awkward for him. “Halloween, freshman year. Outside of the Castle.”

You don’t remember this at all. 

“Well, I kissed you and you kissed me, and I thought that we had established then and there that we liked each other. You know, like, really liked each other. But you were so drunk that night. I don’t know what you had, but you could hardly walk by the time I got you back to your dorm. Your roommate was furious with me.” He shakes his head at the memory, replaying in his mind like a movie. “And I thought, okay, we’ll just talk about this tomorrow. But you must have had a wicked headache or something, because I saw you the next day and you said—”

“God, whatever happened last night, I don’t want to know.”

It’s the middle of the day, the sun high in the crisp November sky, but you have been cradling your forehead ever since Yoongi last dropped you off, back at your dorm, when you were slowly starting to crash. 

“What?” His voice is hollow, empty. 

“Last night fucked me up real good,” you say with a huff, shaking your head. “I’m glad I don’t remember what happened last night.”

As Yoongi traipses back to square one, his heart shakes in its cage. 

“I guess you just didn’t remember,” Yoongi tries to explain, much to your horror as you realize that you and Yoongi have been crushing on each other hopelessly for three years extra without you even realizing it. “So, uh, yeah. That’s why I didn’t like Halloween.”

“You kissed me that night?”

“What?”

“You kissed me that night? Outside of the Castle?” 

A tingling on your lips. A faint feeling of warmth. You remember bits of that night. It was cold, and you were freezing in your costume. And you and Yoongi had gone outside to escape the crowd, and he said something, and then you said something, and then he—!

“Yeah.” Yoongi nods. “I did.”

“And I didn’t remember?”

“I mean, you were really drunk.”

Your shoulders sink, the thought of Yoongi, helplessly pining after you for three more years because he thought you didn’t like him like that, because he thought that the love you shared was one-sided, still sticking by your side as your best friend. At the thought of him deciding it was better to be best friends and keep that love hidden than tell you and risk it all over again. At the thought of him accepting what he thought was his fate. 

“I’m sorry,” you say. What else is there to tell him? If you had remembered, if you just didn’t say those words, if you had just told him how you felt, this would have all been so much easier. 

“It’s okay now,” Yoongi says, expression growing fond as he pulls you in for a hug, sad to see you so gloomy. “You love me and I love you. What more could I want?”

A realization dawns on you. 

Pulling apart from him ever so slightly, you quirk an eyebrow. “You know, you could have just kissed me again the next day, and then we wouldn’t have had to deal with all of this. Plus, you would have still liked Halloween.”

Yoongi scoffs, pressing a kiss to your icy cheek. “So what? I like it now, how about that? I fucking love Halloween now. It turned my best friend into my girlfriend. She’s the love of my life. We can celebrate every Halloween together from now on until the end of time.”

You grin, pressing a kiss back on his little button nose, pink from the cold. Finally. “That’s the spirit.”

↳ don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

[the-witty-pen-name]

Can’t Help Falling in Love

Loki x Reader (f) 

Valentine’s Day with the God of Mischief 

Based on suggestion by: @squadleaderchase​

A/N: Thank you so much for the suggestion! I loved writing this, it was so much fun! 

Happy Valentine’s Day y’all!

There is also a gender neutral version of this fic, and will be posted shortly after this one! Read it here! 

I recommend to putting on Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis towards the end just for that finishing touch! 

Summary: When Loki learns about the traditions of Valentine’s Day, he asks you to be his Valentine- and reluctantly takes advice from Steve Rogers. 

Word Count: 2.9k

Warnings: none; just fluff 

“Can’t Midgardians have a holiday that doesn’t involve such a grotesque display of… red?” Loki asks walking into the living room of the Avengers compound. Loki arrived at the compound a few weeks before Christmas and so far, he’s experienced two Earth holidays: Christmas and New Year’s. Of course, Tony had picked the theme for both parties to be elaborately red and gold- he claimed the fact that it matched his suit was merely a coincidence.

“Just wait until next month,” you reply casually, your eyes not leaving the brief you were reading while you sat cozied up in one of the large armchairs. “I think you’ll like St. Patrick’s Day much more… color scheme wise at least.”

Loki looked up curiously at the hearts of all shades of red and pink Natasha had hung up to decorate the Avengers’ living quarters. She had gone to visit Clint’s family and his kids spent hours making Valentines and decorations out of construction paper and glitter. Loki looked almost puzzled at the lopsided hearts that hung from the ceiling on transparent line so they looked like they floated mid-air.

“Perhaps I might,” he mumbled to himself, the lovesick aura of his surroundings making him slightly disgusted. “Though I suppose I find your rituals as bizarre as you’d find on Asgard.”

“Mhmm,” you mumbled in response to his thinking out loud. It was rare that the compound would be this quiet. It was a Friday evening and in the middle of a team meeting earlier today, Tony declared exhaustedly that everyone needs to start the weekend early and dismissed everyone despite Steve’s protests. You weren’t sure where everyone else went and you didn’t particularly care- enjoying the rare peace and quiet.

You didn’t mind Loki’s company. He was a little aloof but overall, you found him more to be misunderstood than anything else. He wasn’t like Thor and sure, he had a very trouble ridden past to downplay it- but he’s confided in you all it wasn’t entirely his doing. Out of everyone living at the compound, he probably had grown the closest to you, or as close as Loki would allow himself to be to someone.

“What even is this holiday?” Loki asked, pulling his attention from the decorations to where you sat, binder in your lap. You looked up and closed the brief, tossing it onto the coffee table in front of where you sat.

“Sunday is Valentine’s Day,” you say looking back over to him, meeting his eyes. “I mean overtime the traditions and how we celebrate have changed but it’s originally the day meant to honor St. Valentine and commemorate his death. There’s a lot more to it than that and there’s all different of different origins, but now it’s more like a day where you celebrate love, because he was the patron Saint of Love.”

Loki nods, liking the idea of this holiday much more than New Years already. He didn’t mind Christmas, but the elaborate parties made everything not very appealing to him. You can’t blame the god for not having a good time at parties where every guest fears him or hates him. He walks over and takes a seat on the couch and crosses his legs. He was intrigued enough to continue the conversation and ask you more questions. “What are the traditions?” He asks curiously.

“Traditionally, you would ask someone to be your Valentine, and that’s the person you want to spend the day with,” you answer with a small shrug, trying to explain a holiday you’ve never had to explain before. “Some people have it easy and they ask their significant other, and if you don’t have one, you ask someone you’re romantically interested in to be your Valentine. Then you give each other gifts, like chocolates or flowers, anything really that’s romantic and you go out on a date, like a nice dinner but it doesn’t have to be. That’s the basic gist.”

“Thank you, (y/n),” Loki said, mulling over your explanation. “You’ve been helpful, as always. Tell me, who’s your Valentine?”

“I don’t have one,” you answered honestly. The only time you really celebrated was when you had been with someone. You’d never really participated otherwise. You planned to just spend the night alone or with Nat if she also didn’t have plans and probably watch a movie- most definitely Pride and Prejudice.

“Shame,” Loki said with a tsk. “Perhaps, if you would be interested, you could be my Valentine?”

“Really?” you ask, honestly surprised.

“I actually like the idea of the day,” Loki shrugged. “And I don’t know many people, people seem to hate me on this planet- no idea as to why. You’ve always been kind to me, and you are the most tolerable person I’ve encountered on this planet.”

“That’s oddly very kind of you,” you say with a chuckle. “I appreciate the sentiments. Um, yes. I’d be happy to be your Valentine.”

“Excellent,” he grinned. He clapped his hands together and stood up. “Splendid. I’ll ask Thor to help me plan something.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” you smile, picking up your paperwork again as Loki heads off to find his brother.

***

“Brother,” Thor’s voice echoed in the training room. “Spar with me?”

“As much as I would love to,” Loki said sarcastically, “I need your help with something I need to plan.” Loki walked over to the side of the mat where Thor had been training with Captain Rogers.

“Plan what?” Captain Rogers asked curiously. It was an innocent enough question but Loki took it as Rogers insinuating his distrust in him. Of course, Loki can’t blame the man but it did rub him the wrong way.

“If you must know Captain Rogers, I’m making plans for this upcoming Valentine’s Day,” Loki said matter-of-factly. “I’m sure since you have quite the active love life recently, your words of wisdom are probably of infinite value.”

“You can learn a thing or two from me,” Steve retorted as he put the punching bag beck into place. “But I don’t like your attitude.”

“I don’t know how I’ll ever manage without you,” Loki scoffed. He turned his attention back to his brother. “I need help to determine where I should take (y/n) and what I should get her.”

“(y/n) agreed to this?” Thor asks, his eyebrows raised in confusion. Rogers kept his mouth shut, deciding to see where this conversation will go before

“Yes, brother. I asked her to be my Valentine as stated by tradition and she said yes.”

“Ah! Good for you, brother!” Thor exclaimed, happily. “I’m glad you’re immersing yourself in the Midgard culture.”

“Yes, yes,” Loki waved him off, “Now, please, tell me what I should do.”

“I’ve never celebrated Valentine’s Day,” Thor says with a shrug and a sympathetic look. “I haven’t had much opportunity to explore the culture. Every time I’m on this planet I’m a little busy preventing its destruction. Perhaps Rogers can help you?”

Loki let out an exasperated sigh. He avoided Rogers as he knew the man had such a smug look on his face. Loki refused to give him the satisfaction. However, he realized that wouldn’t be fair to you. Rogers not only knew what to do, but he was also close friends with you. He quickly realized if he wanted to celebrate with you properly, he’d need to rely on the infamous super soldier.

“Captain Rogers,” Loki said with a charismatic smile, turning back to the man. “I wholeheartedly apologize for my lack of… social niceties. If you’d be willing to help me, to ensure your dear friend enjoys her holiday, I would be sincerely grateful.”

“Only because of (y/n),” Rogers says skeptically, waving a finger at Loki. “She deserves to enjoy her time and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let you screw up her evening.”

“What a loyal friend.”

Years later, the Avengers would still talk about the fact Loki cared about you so much, he sought out advice from Captain America and Thor. And as Captain America said, he helped Loki with every last detail and Steve never let Loki forget it.

***

Loki had told you that he’d come to your room to get you at 6 o’clock Sunday evening. He wore clothes he had picked out, black dress pants, a white button-down shirt and shiny, black dress shoes. He had kept the last button of the shirt unbuttoned and he had rolled the sleeves up, a styling tip he had gotten from Thor. He had his long hair gelled back and tamed, ignoring Captain Roger’s horrible suggestion for a haircut. He felt very weird not wearing any green, but he took the advice he was given on his ensemble.

You were just putting on your heels when he knocked at your door Sunday promptly at 6pm. Of course, Loki would be very punctual. You gave yourself one more quick once more in the mirror in your room before heading to answer the door.

You had on a pair of dark green heels that perfectly matched your dress. You also layered over the outfit a suede brown jacket, that complimented the jewel tone of the dress and shoes nicely. You kept your appearance simple, sticking to how you usually styled your hair. Not wanting to keep him waiting, you quickly opened the door, your jacket and bag both in hand.

“Wow,” you say with a grin, when you take in Loki’s appearance. “You look very nice.”

“You look stunning,” Loki said, his eyes widening, taking in your appearance. The compliment made you have butterflies.

“Thank you,” you said with false confidence. Underneath, you were a nervous wreck as you took the arm that he extended to you.

“So,” Loki began to walk down the hallway with you. “Apparently, this planet has something called reservations, and anyone who tries to get one a few days before Valentine’s Day is a “moron,” according to a very rude young man I had the pleasure of speaking with- the first time using a phone too on top of that. So, I hope you don’t mind if the evening is a little… makeshift.”

“I’m sure it’ll be great,” you reassure him. You feel him relax slightly. You found how hard he was trying so endearing.

Where else did he bring you but just down the hall to the living room. At night with the lights dimmed, combined with Natasha’s homemade decorations, it actually looked quite beautiful. He had decorated with an eclectic array of candles as well that covered most surfaces of the room. It also looked like he had swiped every throw pillow in the whole compound and had them arranged the coffee table in the center of the room.

“Did you do all of this?” You ask in awe.

“Yes,” he replied, just watching you. “Do you like it?”

“It’s perfect.”

“I had to make my own version of advice I received,” he disclosed to you. You sat opposite each other on either side of the coffee table, you kicked off your heels and he did the same with his shoes. “Captain Rogers said- and I’m trying my best to quote verbatim, ‘You need to show a girl a good time. You gotta take her to dinner and dancing.’” He even mimicked Steve’s voice perfectly. It made you laugh.

“I can’t believe you subjected yourself to Steve for me, I’m touched,” you smiled. “I mean I love Steve,” you continue, “But I can’t imagine you too being best friends anytime soon.”

“No, I suppose we probably won’t be,” Loki chuckles.

“I hate to point it out,” you continue, “but I think you missed both the dinner part and the dancing part of that plan.” Loki smirked and when you blinked, he transformed the whole room.

“Did I?” he asks, with an eyebrow raised. You gasp, looking around the room you were now in. You knew it was an illusion, but it felt very real. The atmosphere, the breeze coming in from the large bay windows that weren’t there before. The coffee table now a table now one of many dining tables in an incredibly high-end restaurant. The table had food, and a bottle of wine. You were stunned. There was a live band and other couples in other tables and out on the dancefloor.

“Loki?” You exclaimed, looking around at your new surroundings. It was amazing. You couldn’t believe the magic right before your eyes. Of course, you knew it was just one of his tricks, but it felt so incredibly real. You picked up your fork and took a bite of the food in front of you. It was incredible, you questioned if you were even eating.

“It’s real,” Loki said, like he could read your mind. Honestly, he had only just anticipated your next question. “I made it. Well, I made it with Friday’s supervision.”

“It’s fantastic! I can’t believe you went through all this trouble just for me.”

“Sweetheart, you are very much worth it- worth much more than this,” he responded casually, throwing in the term of endearment to see how you’d react. He caught the way it made you smile.

You continued to talk for a little while, and shared stories. You were worried that compared to his life on Asgard, he’d find your stories incredibly boring and mundane. It seemed to be the opposite. His attention was only on you and he held on to every word you said. He created this elaborate setting just to keep you the center of his attention.

“Should we dance?” He asks suddenly, a glimmer in his eye. You looked down apprehensively.

“I’m not really a dancer,” you tried to insist.

“Do you actually not want to dance, darling? Because if so, I will not bring it up again,” he says earnestly, “But, if you’re saying no because you’re afraid I’m going to judge you, I honestly can promise you I would never dream of doing so.”

You give it another moment to ponder over his words. You were taken aback at how well he seemed to know how you were thinking. You let out a sigh of defeat, and smile. “I’d love to,” you reply.

He stands up and offers you his hand. His smile is enough to make you weak at the knees. You take his hand and he leads you over to the dancefloor as the band starts playing its next song. “Does that singer sound like Elvis?” You ask, the small glitch in the illusion throwing you off for only a moment.

“I don’t know who that is,” Loki says with a laugh. He pulls you in close and rests one hand on the small of your back and the other grasps your hand close. You wrap your other arm around his shoulder. You are both pressed up incredibly close to one another. You rest your head on his chest comfortably, and you can’t see how much the action makes his whole face go red. Guiding your movements together, it mostly just swaying in place. The steps were small, and with the music playing for the two of you.

“This place is incredible,” you sigh happily looking up at him. “But I think I liked the first place a little better.”

He nodded in agreement and you got to watch a green hue encompass the walls of the restaurant as they almost melted away, and everything around the two of you just fade away. The sconces on the walls, revealed themselves to be the candles that cluttered the living room and the couples evaporated with the green mist. The table you had both sat at, turned back to the coffee table but the empty plates remained. The elaborate statues that surrounded the room turned into the furniture you knew well, and then the live band faded away to reveal Steve’s record player indeed playing a 45 of Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley.

When the room finished revealing its true appearance to you, you laid your head back on Loki’s chest and mumbled that now it was perfect. He smiled to himself, thinking about how without a doubt in his mind, Valentine’s Day is his absolute favorite holiday on Midgard. He now couldn’t believe this reality was real. If he wasn’t holding you, he’d pinch himself. You were here, with him, in his arms, dancing in the middle of the living room on this godforsaken planet.

“(y/n)?” he whispered softly as the song was coming to an end.

“Mhmm?” You responded, your eyes closed, really just basking in the feeling of being so close to him and the smell of his cologne.

“Will be mine?” He asks carefully, remembering the phrase from Captain Roger’s advice. That phrase apparently being very important if today went well and he wanted to ask you to “go steady.” You chuckled softly, hearing Steve’s influence in the phrase.

“I would love to,” you say with a shy smile looking back up to him. He beams, incredibly happy you said yes. Swept up in his emotions, he swiftly leans down and presses his lips to yours capturing them in a passionate first kiss.

“Oh gross!” You hear someone exclaim, making you both pull away. It’s Tony- who was currently holding his side in pain as Pepper elbowed him in the side.

“You really had to do that?” she chastised him, rolling her eyes and giving an apologetic look to you and Loki before pushing Tony down the hallway to give you both your moment back, as sullied as it had become thanks to Tony.

“I’m so sorry,” she said embarrassed by his outburst, ushering him out as quickly as possible.

Loki turns his head back to you, immediately after they are out of view. “Where were we, darling?” He smirks, pulling you in for another kiss.

[jeongjaebae]

Love Station

⇢ Jaehyun x reader | AO3

⇢ 7k of fluff, heart fluttering moments, and meme references

⇢  You never expected anything good to come out of a train delay, much less for it to play cupid on this Valentine’s Day. 

Turning 23 wasn't something you were overly excited about.

Nothing good could come out of being this age anyway—you were starting to feel old and life was starting to feel stagnant. Besides, everyone's seen the meme about checking up on your friends born in a certain year because no one likes you when you're 23. But heck, you'd already felt that way for long enough so it doesn't really matter that it's your birthday today because no one liked you at 22 either. Or at any age.

Maybe that's why you're still single on this Valentine's Day, which coincidentally happens to be the date you enter your 23rd year since birth. Whatever deity that's up there probably planned this to give you a headache every year, making you watch couples all around you broadcast their PDA everywhere while you only became one year closer to growing old and wrinkly. And dying single.

"Are you on the train yet?" Yoojin's loud voice comes through the phone. "Also what are you wearing, because I'm having an outfit dilemma again."

"Almost at the station," you reply, checking the time for the sake of it. You knew your best friend would be late regardless of the occasion, so you never had to rush. "I didn't expect it to be so cold out here. Wearing the pink blouse with the bow, that black skirt, and some thin tights. Long coat of course."

Yoojin was your best friend of seven years and happened to be the complete opposite of you. While you were generally shy, she had no qualms about talking to strangers. She'd always been bold and unabashed with her opinions, attracting quite a large group of friends and enemies alike, whereas you have always stayed within your comfort zone of invisibility. And whereas you were completely dense and unlucky when it came to boys, she had a list of them long enough for the both of you.

"Tell me you at least have some tall boots on," she replies with some rustling sounds in the background as she probably flips her entire closet upside-down. "You should've gone with a warmer outfit; there won't be any boys around for you to impress! It's only your date with boring old me."

You roll your eyes and play along. "I'm dressing to impress the cute waiter, obviously," you say, "the one with the super sweet smile who looks like NCT's Doyoung." It's all made up, of course. In reality the two of you didn't have a reservation or even a restaurant in mind yet, and of course, there's obviously nobody who could ever be as cute as Doyoung.

Your best friend was all about being spontaneous and winging it, and even letting fate decide things.

"Oh you better hope that he's not out with his girlfriend tonight then," she singsongs. "Anyway, I'll go pick out an outfit now and bring a pair of leggings for you or something. Oh and before I forget, happy birthday!"

"Thanks," you say with a smile as you approach the train station. "I'll see you soon!"

It's slightly more crowded at the station than the emptiness that usually greets you at this hour, but that's not surprising since it's Valentine's Day after all, and people would have plans in the city. And just as you would expect, there are people holding big bouquets wrapped in a special paper with hearts all over it, packs of chocolates in pink and red boxes, and delicate single roses encompassed in beautiful ribbons.

It wasn't something that you felt like you were missing out on. You've never spent Valentine's Day with someone special anyway; it was always some sort of birthday celebration with friends. Until your friends started getting into relationships and then the birthday thing got pushed to different days. Either way you didn't mind because people don't need particular days to show their love for others, so Valentine's Day was all just a big marketing scam.

Or so you tell yourself.

The February air is cold and makes it hard to pry your transit card out from your wallet with your frozen fingers. When the machine nearby is finally free, that's when you go to tap your card.

"Don't."

A hand slides right in between your card and the machine, blocking it from being detected.

"Excuse me?" you automatically respond.

The first thing you notice about this annoying stranger is that he's tall, as it takes a while for you to look up to see the face of said annoying stranger. The second thing is that he's incredibly good looking. Nice skin, large eyes, and some evidence of dimples slightly visible on each cheek. A strong jaw line and sharp gaze.

But none of that matters because he better have a good explanation for you.

"Don't waste your money tapping your card. The train's been delayed and won't come until maybe an hour later."

"What? An hour? Is this some kind of joke?"

He shakes his head. "There was an announcement a few minutes ago but they'll probably repeat it soon."

"But it's not even April Fools Day," you mutter under your breath, but proceed to put your card away anyway. "Are you serious?"

That earns you a funny look from the annoying stranger, a mixture of a smile and a grimace of sorts. "Yeah, I'm really just going to go up to strangers and prank them by telling them about a train delay."

"Well, maybe if you're one of those YouTubers who go around pranking people for reactions?"

He rolls his eyes. "No, but your reaction was terrible, by the way. A two out of ten at most."

"Hey, you're the one who had to break the news to me like that!"

The corner of his mouth twitches but before he says anything back, the blare of the announcement comes on.

"Attention all passengers! Attention all passengers. The line 1 eastbound train is experiencing delays due to a technical issue on the tracks. It may be over an hour before the track can get cleared. Once again, the eastbound train is currently experiencing delays of an hour or more. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

"And there it is. Do you believe me now?" the annoying stranger asks, raising an eyebrow at you. It's not so much of an 'I told you so', but rather a sad 'welcome to the club'.

"Yeah... sorry for not taking you seriously."

"Nah, no worries," he shrugs and gives you a quick smile. The first you'd seen from him. "We're all just stuck here now."

When he turns to look at the announcement board, that's when you take the chance to really study him. He's dressed like he's walked out of a Korean drama: turtleneck and a nice formal jacket. He looks to be about your age, maybe a university student or fresh grad. Hair gelled up and parted at the side. Perfectly dressed to go on the perfect Valentine's Day date with his perfectly stunning girlfriend.

As perfect as it can be with this whole train delay issue anyway.

You follow his gaze to the announcement board and see that it now has red words everywhere, indicating all the delays of the trains. It definitely wasn't looking good. Even if Valentine's Day was nowhere close to being one of your favourite holidays, you were looking forward to at least seeing a friend on your birthday.

"Yeah, I guess so. On the one day I had plans in the city." You sigh at the thought that seeing your best friend might not be possible anymore.

 "I know the feeling," he frowns, somehow still looking just as good as before which is entirely a mystery to you, "I'm also supposed to be in the city tonight."

You nod, then pull out your phone to shoot Yoojin a quick text about the delay. The cold wind sears your hands and you yet again regret wearing so little when you knew this train station didn't have an indoor waiting area.  

"So, what are our options for getting out of here now? Do you think the buses are still running because we could probably take one?" he suggests.

The 'we' takes you by surprise, but then you realize that he's probably talking about everyone here. All of the ten or so people that are just stuck at this station in the cold for the next hour.

You grimace at the thought of dissipating his ounce of hope. "Well, the nearest bus station is all the way across town, so by the time we get there maybe the trains will have already started working."

The handsome stranger sighs. "Maybe an Uber then?"

"It'll be rush hour soon so that only works if you want to be going during the most expensive time of day using the most expensive form of transportation."

"Ah, that's true." He looks disappointed. "Hmm, if the trains don't come by the next hour, maybe I'll just head to the bus stop."

Oh how nice it would be to have a car to get there yourself.

Buzz. The phone vibrates in your pocket and you could already imagine how Yoojin would be reacting to your news. Hopefully she hadn't already started on her crazy makeup routine yet, because who knows if your meet-up could actually happen at this rate.

"It's chill, don't worry about it! I'll head to you instead. Text you when I'm near."

Sometimes Yoojin's spontaneity was just what you needed. You message her a quick thanks and then shove the phone into your pocket before your fingers freeze off.

It's quiet for a bit and you almost forget about the handsome stranger entirely until there's a crinkling sound and you find yourself staring at the rose in the pocket of his coat, the clear foil around it blowing gently in the wind. It was on the side facing away from you earlier, which is probably how you didn't notice upon first glance.

Of course, he has a girlfriend. With a face like that, who wouldn't have a girlfriend? Or boyfriend. Maybe even multiple.

"Special occasions, right?" The corners of his lips are curled as if holding back a grin, and like this his dimples are visible.

But why was he still talking to you? You figured he was probably just trying to be friendly seeing as the two of you would be stuck here for an indefinite amount of time. Maybe you'll even become all buddy-buddy by the time this ordeal finishes. While you weren't a fan of small talk or talking to strangers, it was nice to be able to have someone by your side who was experiencing the same struggles.

And besides, he clearly has a girlfriend so there was no point in writing that "strangers to lovers" fan fiction in your head.

You clear your throat. "So... Valentine's date with your girlfriend?"

"Valentine's—" he pauses for a second and you can almost see the gears turning in his head. "Right, it's Valentine's Day today. Nah, I'm celebrating my birthday instead." Then he holds up the rose up and glances at it as if he'd also forgotten about it. "And no girlfriend. This is for my cousin. Her boyfriend's overseas so it's hard for them to meet up, so I thought I would get something nice for her and keep her company."

That actually takes you off guard and causes you to replay the words in your mind to make sure you heard correctly.

"Wait, it's your birthday today? Really?"

He gives you a strange look. "Yeah, there are actually people born on Valentine's Day, believe it or not."

"That's not what I meant—"

"I'm just kidding." His eyes twinkle in amusement. "It's also your birthday today, isn't it?"

"What—how did you know?"

He chuckles. "Your reaction said everything."

"Wow, someone is a smartie."

"What about you? Valentine's or birthday date with your boyfriend?"

"Best friend," you correct him. "And yeah, it's a birthday dinner."

"That's nice. I've actually never met anyone else with a Valentine's Day birthday."

"Honestly, same."

His eyes curve up into crescents as he smiles with his entire body, and it's dazzling and is so bright that it makes you want to stare for just a moment longer. The two of you laugh for a while at that coincidence, still amazed.

"So, how old are you turning?"

You groan, "The age where no one likes you."

"Ah, I just passed that." He wrinkles his nose as if remembering how terrible a year it was. "But hey, can't have no one liking you at that age if no one liked you anyway."

His words immediately put an image of that roll safe meme into your head and you find yourself laughing.

"Wow, those are my thoughts exactly."

The handsome stranger only gives you an innocent shrug. His meme game was on point, and that almost makes your heart flutter for a second. Almost.

Another cold breeze whips your hair into your face and blows straight through your thin tights, making you shiver.

"Hey, um, I hope this isn't too forward... but since we're stuck here anyways for the next while, do you want to possibly go hang out in town?" He bites his lips a little, making his dimples stand out even more. "It just kind of sucks to see our birthdays go to waste like this. Only if you're comfortable with it though, but of course we'll be in public areas the entire time."

You couldn't believe your ears for the second time today.

On one hand, the logical voice in your head was screaming stranger danger because you just met him! You hadn't even exchanged more than a few sentences! On the other hand, you could already picture Yoojin telling you to never waste an opportunity, to go with the flow and live life a little recklessly. To stop waiting for a train that might never come, to stop waiting for perfectly planned moments in life that might never occur.

"So, what do you think?"

Besides, if he's not some crazy serial killer or anything along those lines, the only other danger you could possibly see was getting heartbroken. But of course there's no way you'd fall for a stranger in one day; you didn't believe in love at first sight or fate or whatever other mushy romantic cliches that movies love to portray. This would merely be a fun time between two people who happened to be stuck together because of a train delay, on a day that happened to be both of their birthdays. A simple coincidence, really.

"You know what," you smile. "Screw it. Let's go."

***

The smell of the arcade brings back memories from when you were a child—friends' birthday parties, hangouts in middle school, the occasional school trip. It had been fun as a child even though you hadn't been very good at any of the games and probably never won anything worth keeping. Looking back, you hadn't set foot in this place in years.

"We'll get the one with the most tokens," the handsome stranger—Jaehyun—says to the guy behind the counter, flashing you a smile when you raise an eyebrow at him.

Jaehyun. It had sounded so pretty when he introduced himself.

You'd been afraid that conversation would come out awkward and forced between two strangers brought together by no more than a train delay, not knowing where or when or how to start. But there was actually never a dull moment between the flow of words and laughter that made you feel as if he was someone you've known for a long time. The short walk to the arcade had been spent on reminiscing and comparing past memories of growing up in this town, brainstorming fun places and cool restaurants that you'd been to or have yet to go to, pointing at familiar buildings and telling funny stories about interesting moments spent in there.

"Come on, let's go." He leads the way into the main area where all the action is.  

The arcade still looks the same as the last time you were here, though everything seems smaller than you'd remembered it. Bright lights flashing from every machine, loud noises at every corner. So many games that you'd once thought it was impossible to play through all of them.

"Let's start with this one?" You point to the zombie shooting game. It was something that you had always wanted to try as a kid out of pure curiosity, but you'd been too scared to at the time.

"That one? Really?" He raises a brow at your suggestion. "Alright, but I bet I can beat you."

"I would also bet on you winning," you respond dully.

After choosing characters and weapons on screen, the two of you settle in your seats and finally start. It's like watching a horror movie where you expect huge jump scares at every corner except there's no music build-up or anything to warn you that a zombie might just show up. Horror was definitely not your forte but maybe he was better at handling these things than you were.

You get your answer when the first wave of zombies finally show up. Jaehyun screams. You scream.

Somehow you manage to shoot some of them by pure instinct guiding you, however your aim isn't exactly good with your eyes closed half of the time. By the time the screaming dies down and you notice that both your characters had died in the zombie battle, you finally turn to see how he's doing. The way his face is twisted in a mixture of utter shock and horror would've been something to laugh at if you hadn't been just as scared.  

"If I recall, someone said they were going to beat me at this," you tease after seeing the final score. Neither of you did particularly well, though your score somehow turned out to be much higher than his.

"You should've given me a warning that it would be this scary."

You burst out laughing at his expression. "I didn't know either!"

That's when you notice how you're clinging to each other. Your hand clutching his arm, his hand right on top of yours.

"Oops, sorry," you mutter and quickly detangle yourself from him.

"It's fine," he says with a laugh. "But yeah, those zombies were next level."

Needless to say, you guys don't go back to that game.

The arcade is quite empty on this afternoon and you're glad that most of the games are unoccupied and can be played right away. Even with everything going well so far, you still have the fear of having awkward silences and uncomfortable conversation.

It's a while later when you try again at a different shooting game, though luckily this time it isn't zombies that you're dealing with, so it isn't scary at all. It's a teamwork game this time, and what surprises you the most is just how good your teamwork turns out to be.

"To your left, in the corner."

"Phew, got him. Thanks," you reply, promptly shooting the character before he could shoot you. "Watch out—right above you."

"Got it."

It lasts a few rounds but you manage to make it to the end and finally clear the game.

Jaehyun's whole face is lit up when he turns to you. "Wow, that was awesome. Great teamwork."

He holds up both his hands for you to high-five, and just as your hands meet his, you can't help but notice the way they linger together a little longer.  

Time flies as the two of you go from game to game and you're trying your best to beat him at any game possible. While he does let you win some of the time, more often than not, he ends up winning. Though it's not like you could be upset about it at all when he looked so happy after each win, excitedly showing you his score or prize. It was definitely nice to be as carefree as kids again.

Yet there was something deeper with the adrenaline coursing through your veins and heart racing that it becomes hard to tell whether it may be from the excitement of the games, the warmth of his body right beside you as he patiently teaches you his strategies for winning, the bright smiles that seem to light up his whole face, or those damn dimples.

Why did this Valentine's boy have to be not only heartbreakingly handsome but also incredibly kind and considerate?

"Hey, you want to try one of those?" The sound of Jaehyun's voice pulls you out of your thoughts and you silently pray that you hadn't been staring at him subconsciously. And if you had been staring, hopefully he didn't notice as he's pointing to the line of game stands at the side where the games are always rigged and you can never win big prizes.

"I've never won anything from there before, so I sure hope you're good at those."

He ends up picking a dart game out of all the options, but maybe this one would be easier than the rest.

The man at the dart stand greets you and explains the rules. "Are you trying to win something for your girlfriend?"

"Oh, we're not—" you start but stop as soon as you hear what Jaehyun says instead.

"It's Valentine's Day after all," he says easily then follows with a wink at you.

He didn't deny...?

It's three shots dead center to win one of the biggest prizes or five within the smallest ring. It makes your heart pound a little faster seeing Jaehyun so focused with his nice stance, sleeves rolled up slightly, and intense eyes on the target. However, he misses on the first shot with his dart going off the board.

"Well that's no fun," the man says, frowning at where the dart landed. "I suppose I could give you another chance, since it's Valentine's Day and all. Wouldn't want to end up empty handed, right?" He laughs to himself but puts the dart back in Jaehyun's hand.

"Thank you," he says, flustered judging by the hint of a blush that sweeps his cheeks. "I'm not usually this bad."

"It's okay! You're doing great, sweetie," you joke.

He rolls his eyes at you despite the way his lips curl up at the corners, then gets ready to throw the dart again. And this time? You're sure your jaw is to the floor when he manages to get all three darts to hit the board dead center. The man congratulates him for winning and then they disappear into the back room to pick a prize. Jaehyun later comes out holding the biggest dog plushie you've ever seen.

Once you're back outside after the arcade adventure, that's when he stops and turns to you.

"I wasn't sure what you'd like but I hope this is okay," he says quietly, gingerly handing you the giant plushie.

"It's great, Jaehyun." You meet his gaze as you take the plushie and he quickly looks away. "Thank you."

"You know, I'm really glad we ended up doing this. It's even better than what I had planned originally." Then he adds more quietly, "One of the best birthdays I've had in a while."  

"Yeah," you smile. "Me too."

It's only then when you realize that Yoojin and the rest of your plans had totally slipped your mind.

***

It's chilly outside as the two of you walk around town. Valentine's Day decorations were everywhere, with the chalkboard menus of local restaurants featuring couple meal sets with tons of hearts drawn around them, various pink and red plushies lined up on the windowsills of nearby shops, and even lamp posts on the streets covered with mini heart shaped lights. The sight of those things usually would've made you roll your eyes and pretend to puke, but somehow it doesn't seem to bother you quite so much today. It's as if you're seeing everything through a new perspective—one that might find the rosy decorations pretty and one that might understand the hype of such a holiday.

"Y/N," Jaehyun suddenly says, wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you to his side. Before you could even react, he's quickly switching positions with you so that you're sheltered between him and the wall of the nearby building.

Then he's turning to you. Hand on the wall behind your head, body leaning towards you.

So close that you could see the individual eyelashes framing his eyes.

But in the next instant he's looking behind him where a car drives by and splashes up a large amount of water from the melting snow on the side of the street. Which lands right where you were standing just a moment ago.

Jaehyun turns back to you, eyes filled with concern. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," you breathe. "Um, are you?"

"That's good." He glances behind him and then reassures you with a quick smile. "And yeah, all good."

"It was a close call. Thanks for saving me."

"Wouldn't want your clothes to be ruined by that." He laughs. "How are you doing though? It's pretty cold out here."

"I'm okay," you automatically reply.

That earns you a skeptical look. "Your cheeks are all red. Come on, let's go warm up somewhere."

When you resume walking, he's taking the outer edge of the sidewalk.

A couple of blocks later is when you find out that the place he had in mind turns out to be the local coffee shop. You'd never been there before but had always thought of it as a cute place when you pass by it, so when you enter, the interior definitely matches up to your expectations. It has a rustic theme with warm glow from fairy lights hanging from the ceiling and there's soft music playing in the background, a nice place to study if it's as empty as today.

Jaehyun buys you your drink. Kind of.

"I bought one, but they gave me one for free," he says, beaming when he comes back to the table with the drinks—a coffee for him and a latte with a cute little heart floating in it for you. "Maybe the barista was charmed by my smile."

"Hmm." You look behind him to see a sign at the front of the store saying, 'Buy one get one free—Valentine's Day special'. "Are you sure it wasn't because of my charming smile?"

"You're right, that could be it. You are quite cute."

"Exactly."

Wait, what did he just say?

You do a double take but he's merely staring back at you with dimples just barely visible and eyes sparkling through thick eyelashes that you could only wish yours looked like.

Suddenly it feels like the heater's on extra high in this cafe or maybe it was the way the latte burns your tongue as you take a big gulp. Whatever it was, it definitely succeeds in warming you up a little too well, especially your face.

"You okay? Don't burn yourself," he says, the amusement in his eyes betraying the concern in his voice.

You nearly spit your drink out at him. "Nah, no burn. I'm good, thanks," you say dryly.

Time seems to slow down as you relax in your seat, body finally warming up in the coziness of the cafe. The small corner you're in almost feels like a liminal space; such a transient place you'd only ever noticed while passing by, yet a whole different world on the inside where one can hide forever. Perhaps you wanted to hide here, to enjoy the fleeting moments of a strange but amazing birthday.

Conversation ebbs and flows though you're a little surprised when Jaehyun opens up about his life. His passion for music, especially, is what picks up traction as he happens to know your favourite group, NCT. From there it becomes a debate of whether Doyoung or Taeyong was the best looking member (you insist that Doyoung's Instagram was all the proof one needed, whereas he points out that Taeyong's sharp jawline could totally cut that VVS diamonds they keep singing about). You definitely don't tell Jaehyun the fact that maybe—just maybe—he's even more attractive than your NCT biases and that he could totally be an actor from a Korean drama.

Everything you hear about him makes you appreciate his vulnerability, yet you can't help but wonder if he's so open with just anybody. You were a complete stranger, after all.

Yet every time you see the twinkle in his eyes when your gaze accidentally meets his, part of you wonders if 'strangers' no longer fits the definition of where this strange relationship was going. It leaves you with wanting to avoid looking at him which is quite difficult with him seated directly across from you. Maybe you should've sat where your plushie was, taking up its own chair between the two of you, but it's too late and now you're left to deal with the audible thud of your heart every time you make eye contact with him.

And yet when you think about it, you realize that it wasn't Jaehyun's cute dimples or his deep voice or his lame jokes that had your nerves acting up.

It was probably the caffeine.

But maybe it was the small things that you hadn't even realized you'd noticed. Earlier at the arcade when he patiently taught you the games that you were unfamiliar with, letting you win games but also winning at them himself just so he could give you the prize. Saving you from a car first then from the cold with the warmth of the cafe. Opening the door for you, sitting closer to the door to block the cold wind from reaching you.

And how despite the number of reschedules and plan cancellations you both had to make due to the train delay, he hasn't pulled his phone out a single time. You admired how in the midst of all the chaos today, he was still nothing but calm and polite the entire time and seemed to have everything under control. He was a comforting presence that made you forget about the madness of the outside world for a little while.

Nah, it had to be the caffeine.

Still, you find yourself glad to be stuck here with him, even as far as dreading when you both had to leave. You're definitely appreciating Yoojin's ability to be late right about now.

A lull in the conversation has you sneaking a glance at your phone to check up on your best friend. There's no text from her as she's either still doing her extravagant makeup or still on her way here, but for some reason you let out the breath you held in relief.

"I wonder if the trains are running now." A glance out the window shows you the remnants of sunset and the quickly darkening skies. Then you cautiously throw out the question that you'd been holding onto for a while. Something that you'd been reluctant to bring up, carefully stepping around it the whole day, and something that he hasn't talked about either. "Oh right, didn't you say you would end up taking a bus? If the delay is still going on."

Maybe it's a test to see his reaction, maybe it's to end this vague relationship before you become even more attached than you already are. Because any rational person wouldn't just throw away all their birthday plans for someone they'd just met.

"Oh. Right." Jaehyun looks down and swirls the stir stick in his drink. Clockwise, counter-clockwise, back and forth. "I, uh, actually forgot that I didn't drive here today." He shoots you a sheepish grin then runs his fingers through his hair that has deflated quite a bit since you first saw him. "So can't exactly drive over to the bus stop."

You smile back weakly. "Ah, that's okay. There's probably a ton of traffic out there now anyways."

An ambiguous answer for an equally ambiguous relationship. It could definitely be a real excuse, yet somehow the thought of that makes you almost disappointed. Maybe there are no answers to the questions and uncertainties muddled in your mind.

"But did you want to get rid of me so fast?" He actually pouts at you, as if his regular face weren't already enough to break hearts.

"What? No, of course not? I—what?" you manage to get out.

"Okay, good!" The pout immediately goes back into his regular smile. "Phew. It's sad enough being single on Valentine's Day; no need to get rejected on top of that."

Then his phone buzzes and it finally pulls it out.

"As if anyone would reject you," you mutter under your breath while he's distracted.

It's true. You might've expected Jaehyun's appearance to be making up for other areas, or maybe even hoping he'd be too rude or too blunt or have a bad character. Because the cognitive dissonance in your head wants a reason or excuse to remain distant and emotionally detached from him. But the kindness and authenticity that you saw today just leaves you without a reason, which makes it that much harder to stop yourself from liking him.

"Sorry about that; what did you say?"

"Nothing!" You plaster on a cheerful smile.

"Okay, my cousin is going to be here soon."

"Oh."

Then there's the sinking of your heart, the inevitable dread that this unexpectedly enjoyable afternoon is coming to an end. Somehow it manages to crush the anticipation you had for your birthday celebration with Yoojin.

"You know, I kind of feel bad that you paid for everything today," you say. "Let me pay you back?"

"It's fine, Y/N. We had fun and that's all that matters."

"True, but you should've at least let me buy the drinks!"

That manages to make him smile but it quickly dies as he bites his lip, suddenly hesitant. "If you really want to..."

"Yes!"

"...you could just pay next time."

What.

"Next time?" you repeat, afraid to believe what you were hearing.

"I mean, if you—maybe—want to hang out again sometime?"

You open your mouth to say something, or maybe it was already open in your state of shock. Nothing comes out as if you lost your voice.

Jaehyun briefly meets your eyes before continuing. "Well, um—I just wanted to say that I had a really good time with you today. I know the train thing was probably an inconvenience to everyone else but to be honest, I'm kind of glad that happened." He laughs a little. Stops. Bites his lip. "And yeah, if you're down, we could hang out again sometime. Because I'd love to get to know you better."

Thud.

You could only stare back at him as the roaring of your pulse becomes all you can hear. The whole day you were telling yourself that it shouldn't be possible to develop feelings for someone within a day, almost trying to hold yourself back from enjoying your time with him to the fullest in the fear that you might be wrong. And it's not like you developed crushes very easily, but here in front of you was a boy so friendly and good-natured even to a stranger he'd just met, someone who really seemed to care about you.

"Jaehyun..."

He continues, "I know it's weird meeting like this, and I don't really believe in this whole fate thing where we just happened to be stuck here and we happen to have the same birthday. All I can say is that I really enjoyed talking to you and hearing your thoughts and um, youknowyou'rereallybeautiful."

The logical inner voice had been screaming stranger danger the entire time because you didn't know him at all! You'd just met him today! Yet the small fic writer voice in your head, which definitely sounded a lot like your best friend's voice, was trying to convince you that maybe fate does exist. That if it doesn't, how likely was it that you met someone with the same birthday which happened to be Valentine's Day? That you met at exactly the right time and that the train the two of you were going to take was delayed? That you managed to have one of the best birthdays that you could recall?

Maybe sometimes you need to let go of any fears and just live life to its fullest. Let yourself feel a wide range of emotions without being afraid of getting heartbroken. Stop holding back and just be true to yourself.

It suddenly feels too hot in the cafe once again.

"Yeah," your voice comes out quiet, unsteady, but his words give you the courage to reach over to hesitantly take his hand. "Today has been amazing and I'm so thankful that you're the one I was stuck with."

His eyes flicker to yours then away. "But...?"

"There is no 'but'. Jaehyun, I'd love to see you again."

"Yeah?" He lets out a long exhale before his face visibly brightens again. "That's a relief. I didn't think you would agree, but I didn't want to have you walk out of my life just like that."

Then there isn't a need for any more words as shy smiles are exchanged and fleeting gazes meet and there's a warmth bubbling in your chest. It's as if you spent the whole day worrying over nothing. That somehow, everything worked out. That maybe it was fate, and maybe it wasn't, but the connection you thought you felt wasn't just one-sided. It was something real, something tangible.

"Jeong Jaehyun!"

The booming voice jolts the two of you out of the moment and makes you immediately spring apart.

"Did you seriously make me take the train all the way here just for you? Who is this girl because she better be real nice for you to ditch me—" The loud voice from the woman walking into the cafe stops right when her eyes land on you. She smiles sheepishly, dipping her head lightly as if apologizing for her outburst. "Never mind; forget I said anything. I approve."

"Nice to see you too, Minah," Jaehyun greets as you both stand. You can see how his face is still flushed from earlier, but now he's put on a neutral expression again and what you'd seen just a moment ago has been erased. "Don't worry, I won't make you take the train back. I'll drive you home after."

"Oh, you have the car. Bless." Minah brushes her hair back, tidying it from the effects of the wind. Then she stops suddenly and narrows her eyes at him. "Wait, why didn't you just drive over if the trains stopped working?"

"You—have the car? I thought you said you got a ride," you muse out loud.

"Oh, uh. Actually I forgot I had it since I usually get a ride here and it would've taken too long to drive there in rush hour anyway... so... yeah..." He trails off and shifts his weight from one foot to another, and it's even more evident how flushed his face is, from his cheeks to the tips of his ears.

You hear a snort and see Minah practically shaking with quiet laughter.

"Y/N!" The bell at the door rings again as Yoojin steps into the cafe, bringing a rush of cold air in with her. "There you are! And oh—" she stops mid-sentence when she spots you with Jaehyun, his cousin, and the massive plushie sitting in its own chair. "Minah?"

"Yoojin?"

"You guys know each other?" you ask tentatively.

"We were friends in high school!" Yoojin replies. Then gives you a questioning look. "Minah, it's been so long. We should totally catch up."

Minah nods enthusiastically, jumping up to give Yoojin a warm hug. "Totally!" Then she briefly glances at Jaehyun. "Well, I was supposed to have dinner with my little cousin over here but if you and your friend are free, then we could all go somewhere together?"

"How about we head over to that cute little diner that was our hangout spot for the longest time?" Yoojin suggests with a glance over at you and Jaehyun.

Minah squeals. "Let's do it; it'd be just like old times!"

"Actually, if you don't mind, I wanted to borrow Y/N for a bit," Jaehyun says. "We'll let you guys catch up in peace without a third and four wheel."

"Yoojin, we can always hang out another time if you want to go with Minah."

Your best friend looks at you suspiciously with her eyes narrowed. "Hmm, yeah that works. I'll call you later and you better give me all the details though."

"Okay, deal."

And with that, they both head for the door. Yoojin turns to give you one last wink before they're gone.  

"I guess it's just us." Jaehyun's eyes are sparkling when they meet yours and he gives a gentle smile before shyly holding you hand. "We're probably too late for my reservation, but there are some good food places not too far from here."

"So..."

"Have dinner with me?"

"Hmm, I thought you didn't have your car here."

He looks pained. "Y/N!"

"I'm just kidding! I'm actually starving so let's go."

***

It's hours of delicious food, good conversation, and shy glances later that he finally drops you off at home. When your phone buzzes this time, it's not from Yoojin—it's a text from an unknown number followed by an image attachment.

"I have a feeling this is very false for you :)" it reads. And your heart skips a beat when you see the image.

It's the "no one likes you when you're 23" meme.

On the day of your 23rd birthday, you definitely weren't expecting anyone to like you, just as you haven't for the past 22 years. But with the words in Jaehyun's text that you read and reread, the light fragrance of the rose now in your vase and the giant plushie on your bed, and your mind replaying his bright smile and dimples and the sparkle in his eyes, it seemed like today was different.

Maybe today, someone just might like you when you're 23.

[homeformyheart]

prepared - adam du mortain x f!detective (twc)

day 25 – regret

author’s note: this outline was 2 pages long from weeks ago and i’m so glad i was able to figure out a non-angsty response to this one. thanks so much for the request, @agentnolastname​​. this ended up being a full fic pretty much, i hope you all enjoy!

copyright: all characters, except my oc detective, are owned by mishka jenkins @seraphinitegames​​. series/pairing: the wayhaven chronicles – adam du mortain x f!detective (regina bishop) rating/warnings: 16+; suggestive imagery word count: ~2k based on/prompt: day 25 – regret from #28dateswithunitbravo challenge by @wayhavenmonthly​​ summary: after a heated night where adam panicked, regina is left confused and hurt.

prepared

regina walked into the living room, smiling at the sight of adam reading quietly on the couch, on one of their rare days off. they had implicitly agreed to explore things between them, and she was both excited and terrified. more often the former than the latter these days, especially when he was like this, relaxed and willing to stay in her company.

“you’re staring,” he murmured, without looking up and turning the page of his book.

she tried to suppress her giddy smile as she bounced over to him, standing in front of him and casting a shadow over his book until he was forced to look up at her. she reached down and removed the book from his hands, carefully placing it on the seat next to him. he looked at her quizzically, the raised eyebrow dropping to meet the other as she placed her hands on his shoulders before settling her knees on either side of his thighs.

she sat down, comfortably seated on his thighs and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“how can i not stare at you?” she said with a soft smile. “you’re gorgeous.”

the corner of his lips quirked up into a smile against his will. “how could i possibly compare to you?” he said, delicately placing his hands on her hips.

regina hummed. “i guess you can’t,” she grinned cheekily, sliding slightly closer and watching a faint blush creep up his neck and color his cheeks.

she ran her thumbs along his jaw and tilted his head back, her attention squarely on his lips. her eyes flicked upward hesitantly before she tilted her head down, feeling his pulse quicken and his throat still under her hands as though he was holding his breath. she moved slowly, to give him the space to stop her, but his grip on her hips only tightened slightly. his mouth parted and regina closed the gap between them, closing her eyes at the feel of his soft lips moving against hers and soft moans vibrating between them.

his thumbs slipped under the hem of her shirt, whether consciously or not, she wasn’t sure, but it spurred a desire to be bolder than she usually was with adam in moments like this. her tongue danced with his when his mouth parted again, her hips mirroring the movements. she ground against him, hands moving toward his back and under his shirt, trying to close the nonexistent gap between them.

a low growl escaped adam’s throat and sent a thrill down regina’s spine. she could feel that he was hard even through their clothing and the sensation spurred her on, the room around them fading away as she ground harder and faster against him.

“adam,” she sighed, in-between kisses, moving her hands to slip under his shirt.

he froze at the sound of her voice and pulled away, stilling her hips and shifting her back. regina opened her eyes, stunned and confused, shifting her weight back on his lap.

“hey, it’s okay. it’s just me,” she said softly at the sight of his panicked expression. she moved closer to him again, settling herself against his hips.

he refused to meet her eye, standing abruptly instead, the sudden movement threatening to send her flying off him and onto the floor. his arms wrapped around her back and he set her on her feet before turning and walking toward the hallway.

“i’m—i’m sorry,” he said quickly, turning his face toward her without making eye contact before disappearing from the room.

what just happened? regina wondered, collapsing against the couch and wrapping her arms around her knees. maybe she had pushed him too quickly? the nature and state of their relationship was still a question mark, but she had thought they were making progress. maybe their relationship wasn’t meant to get physical.

or maybe it was just her. tears started prickling behind her eyes as she desperately tried to push away her deep-rooted insecurity trying to claw its way to the surface and drown her from the inside.

a few days later, at the police station

adam looked at the station doors from behind a nearby tree, internally warring with himself as to whether it was really the best time to talk about what happened a few nights ago. he certainly never pictured himself wanting to have a personal conversation about their relationship while regina was on duty, but the thought that she may have been left with the wrong impression about his intentions toward her didn’t sit well with him.

his shoulders tensed at the sudden sound of someone whistling near the station. he peeked around the tree, only to clench his jaw at the sight of the nosy reporter making his way into the station. no doubt to bother the detective.

regina sighed as she nudged the stack of paperwork to the edge of her desk with her forearm, pushing her keyboard as far back as it could go so she could rest her forehead on her arms. the last few days hadn’t been easy, between the impromptu agency meetings regarding new supernatural species moving to the area and mediating a territory dispute in the forest. it barely left time for sleep, let alone a chance for her and adam to talk.

if she was being honest, she knew she was avoiding the conversation and welcomed the additional work. but she also knew she couldn’t let this drag on much longer. there was still an awkward tension around them, even though she did her best to remain professional.

“your bodyguard isn’t around today,” bobby’s voice cut through her small office, his face partially obscured by the narrow glass vase in his hands encasing a few red roses.

“he’s not my bodyguard,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“is he your boyfriend?” bobby asked, jealousy clearly marking his features.

regina faltered and looked away. “not exactly, no.”

she could almost hear the smirk that appeared on bobby’s face and looked back at him to find that he had stepped closer to her. “so you’re single, and i’m single, so why don’t i take you out for a nice valentine’s day dinner, like old times? i even got you your favorite flowers.”

she shuddered at the memories of their past valentine’s celebrations together, none of which had been particularly pleasant for her. she eyed the vase as he set it down on the desk in front of her, placing his palms carefully on the wood surface and leaning toward her.

“first of all, those aren’t my favorite flowers. you would know that if you paid attention. and given our history, it’s incredibly bold of you to bring me roses and ask me out on a date,” she said, pursing her lips together to prevent her train of thought (presumptive asshole) from being spoken out loud.

bobby took a step back with a hand over his chest in mock hurt. “you wound me, angel.”

“just get out of here bobby,” she said, gritting her teeth.

“that’s not a no, so i’ll pick you up at seven, angel,” he called out as he headed out of her office.

she came to her senses at the nickname, standing up and rounding her desk quickly. “it’s always going to be a no to you!” she snapped at his retreating back, but he merely waved his hand at her without looking back.

regina let out a frustrated yell, grabbing the vase he had set on her desk and threw it as hard as she could at the far wall, the sound of it shattering and falling to the floor in pieces doing little to release the tension in her shoulders.

adam had waited patiently outside the door to regina’s office, not wanting to interrupt her conversation with the reporter, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t listening to every exchange between them, his grip on the doorknob tightening and warping the metal before he realized and tucked his hand into his pocket instead. he moved swiftly to the side as bobby walked out and glared at him, and it was all adam could to do suppress the urge to knock him unconscious.

he knocked twice and walked in, surveying the room briefly, lingering on the broken vase and scattered flowers before meeting her gaze. “i will not be paying for that,” he said, his mouth curving upward into a gentle smile.

regina couldn’t help but smile and appreciate that he was actually joking with her. “not that i’m complaining, but what are you doing here? i figured you’d be busy today,” she said, moving back to sit on the edge of her desk.

adam’s smile faded and regina noticed his eyes had turned a conflicted green, shifting from an icy green to its usual warm emerald. she wasn’t sure if she had seen him this nervous before; one of the things she appreciated about him was that he didn’t beat around the bush.

he finally looked at her and clasped his hands behind his back. “i wanted to talk about what happened the other night,” he said finally.

a weight settled in her stomach. “oh, right,” she said, swallowing nervously.

“i regret the way i reacted. and you deserve an explanation,” he said softly, stepping closer to her as if that would ease the awkwardness between them.

regina shook her head, trying not to let her disappointment show. “it’s okay, adam. i know we never talked about it, but it’s alright if you’re not interested in anything more physical. i can respect that. and it doesn’t change how i feel about you.”

his eyebrows shot up so quickly that regina thought they might fly off his face. “you are mistaken.”

at the frown on her face, he cleared his throat and followed up quickly, “i am very interested. i was just… unprepared that evening and you deserve… more.”

unprepared? she thought the word choice was odd since it wasn’t like they had planned to do anything physical; she had just gone with her instincts after all. although she vaguely remembered adam telling her once that he hadn’t been with anyone in that way since before he was turned.

understanding dawned on regina’s face. “oh adam, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about, i promise. it happens.”

“still, i want to make sure you are aware of how… receptive i am to progressing our physical relationship as well. in fact, i have thought about it often,” he said warmly, but the underlying tone was suggestive.

the way he said it, as his gaze slowly trailed down the length of her body and back up, sent a shiver up her spine. her mouth parted open in surprise at his boldness as she met his gaze, icy and full of fire at the same time, the intensity of them stealing her breath and rooting her to the spot, raising her body temperature even though he was still a few feet away.

he stepped slowly, but surely, closer to her until he was hovering over her and regina had to tilt her head up to look at him from where she was perched on her desk. he leaned down and captured her lips with his, her body reacting instantly, hands moving to his waist as his tangled themselves in her hair. his lips were fire and water, each movement against hers sending sparks down her throat and drowning her at the same time.

when he finally pulled away, she felt flushed from head to toe and cleared her throat, “well, i’m probably not going to get any work done today.”

adam looked a little proud that he had flustered her so visibly. “perhaps i can help you later this evening then. we can do… paperwork at your apartment together,” he said slowly.

the deliberate way he paused before the word “paperwork” made her breath hitch and she could only nod.

he walked out of the office backwards with deliberate steps, putting his sunglasses on slowly before turning away, but not before regina noticed the smirk on his lips. she looked at the pile of paperwork on her desk and knew that the end of the day couldn’t come fast enough.

* * * * * permatag: @kelseaaa​; @kat-tia801​; @anotherbeingsworld​; @crackerdumortain​; @pearlsandsteel​; @gloynporslen​; @sosolenoo​; @alyssalauren​; @wayhavenots​; @gingerbreton​; @takemyopenheart​​; @writer-ish​; @fhauvilles​;

[tamcitrus]

Love days.

pairing: Kuroo Tetsuro x fem. reader

genre: fluff, romantic

words: 1.7 k

warnings: none

tam’s notes: a little late but finally my HQC collab piece is here! It’s been a while since I wrote for the last time so maybe this isn’t my best work but I like it! I think it’s cheesy and cute. And I love Kuroo so much. I’d marry him without hesitation.

You can find all the “Say You Love Me” collab pieces here!

You and Kuroo were the most popular pair of teacher assistants in all Tokyo University. Every young man and woman studying chemistry knew about this pair of handsome and -also- youngs T.A. that had this big organic chemistry class. The whole point people choose this class sometimes was to see them.

“You have to do this here,” Kuroo said as he took the pencil from the girl’s hand “and this one comes here.”

The girl was looking more at Kuroo’s face than to the clear and simple explanation he was giving for the exercise.

“Do you think you can do the next one alone?” you said and she was startled.

“Yes! Thank you,” she smiled at Kuroo and left to his seat.

“Kids these days have no shame, I see,” you whisper to him.

“She really didn’t get it,” Tetsuro said while he checked his phone. “Do you have plans tonight?”

“Tonight? It’s tuesday,” you said as you got up to check on another student that needed help.

Kuroo followed you with his eyes all the way. Maybe this is the reason there’s so many rumours about us, he thought. Still, he never stopped looking at you.

“Yeah and it’s Valentine’s day,” he said when you were back by his side.

“Oh...” you answered.

Of course you knew what day it was.

“I’m going to Bokuto’s house, we’re having dinner there if you want to come,” he smiled.

“Awesome, I’ll be there,” you smiled.

💐 🌷 🌹 💐 🌷 🌹

“Are you still waiting for a confession?” Bokuto crashed by your side on the floor and offered you his drink.

“What do you mean?” you said and he looked at you with a straight face. “Am I that obvious?”

“Well no, but he’s my best friend and I pay attention here and there…” he laughed.

Bokuto was the only person in Kuroo’s friend group that you could talk to as if you knew him your whole life.

“Sometimes if you want things done you have to do it yourself,” he added.

“You sound like my dad.”

He laughed out loud and you saw Kuroo turn around to look at you so you smiled at him. He smiled back and kept playing some weird game with Kenma and Akaashi.

“You look like you want to punch Bokuto,” Akaashi commented. “Why don’t you just…?”

“I already told him,” Kenma interrupted. “He swears it’s not like that.”

“I’m talking from personal experience,” Keiji insisted. “Just go and say that you love her. It makes zero sense for you to be jealous of Bokuto.”

“She might not know he’s dating you…” he tried to excuse himself.

But Akaashi was right. Bokuto was not interested in you so why did he feel the need to go and interrupt whatever conversation you two were having?

Maybe it was the fact that you were so far his only friend in university. What would he do if he ruined that? If suddenly he lost the only person that understood him and he could talk to? From the first year until now that you two almost graduated, you were always there. When he decided to join the volleyball team you started going to every game even when you were not interested in volleyball. And he did the same, he was there with every new thing you wanted to try. Makeup artist? He would sit and let you practice with him. Writer? He read every single thing you tried. Sports? He would make you train with him so you didn’t get bored. And then you found dance, you liked it and you were really good at it, he could watch you dance for hours.

“Hey, I’ll get going,” you said as you tapped his shoulder. “Bokuto will go with me to the bus stop.”

“No, I’ll take you home, it’s faster in the car,” he said as he grabbed his keys. “I’ll be right back, guys.”

“I don’t want to interrupt your night…”

“It’s ok, y/n,” he smiled. “Let’s go.”

“Thanks for taking me home,” you said as you stood out of the car by the driver window. “You didn’t have to.”

“I just wanted to make sure you made it home safe,” he smiled. “See you in class tomorrow?”

“Yes. Get some sleep because if you fall asleep I won't lend you my notes,” you joked. You bent down while he was laughing and kissed his cheek. “Good night!”

He was frozen for a second until you closed the door of your building. He drove back slowly. He couldn’t stop thinking of that little gesture the whole night.

💐 🌷 🌹 💐 🌷 🌹

Kuroo: Hey I didn't see you in class today. you ok?

y/n: I think i caught some virus or some shit. not feeling well.

Kuroo: do you want me to take my notes to you?

y/n: i think i’ll be off the rest of the week, wanna come on saturday?

Kuroo: ok i’ll be there, if u need anything just text me

You took your cellphone to your chest after reading his message. Your face felt hot and you couldn’t tell if it was the fever attacking again or just Kuroo.

Sometimes if you want things done you have to do it yourself. You kept thinking about what Bokuto said. He also swore to you that Kuroo felt the same way you did but he was too stubborn to admit it.

Maybe this cold, virus or whatever had come at the right time. You needed a few days to think of what you felt and what you wanted to do. When you faced the fact that you couldn’t do a proper confession, you opted for leaving little bread crumbs and hoped that Kuroo found the way.

It started in a shy and simple way. On saturday when he went by to give you the notes for the week, you bought him chocolate. What’s better than chocolate to tell someone you have feelings for them?

“What's this for?” he smiled.

“Nothing special,” you lied. “Just wanted to thank you.”

“Thank you,” he repeated and giggled. “I could use some coffee to drink with this. We can share it.”

“Sure.”

💐 🌷 🌹 💐 🌷 🌹

Next week, it was flowers.

“Do you know something about the meaning of flowers?” you asked.

“Out of nowhere?” Tetsuro said. You nodded and he took a minute to answer. “My grandma used to make flower arrangements, so I might remember something.”

“That’s cool.”

Two days later you gifted him tulips.

“What’s this?”

“I bought some plants and flowers for my apartment but I got too much, so…” you lied.

“What's the meaning of tulips?”

“I don’t know,” you laughed. Another lie. “You said you knew.”

Declaration of love. That was the meaning. And you hoped he would ask someone for it if he really didn’t know.

💐 🌷 🌹 💐 🌷 🌹

Two weeks after the chocolate, it was dinner outside.

“Since we passed this class, why don’t we go out to celebrate? I’ll pay.”

“That sounds good,” he smiled at you. “I’m free tomorrow night.”

“Ok, I’ll choose a place and text you later,” you said as you walked to the only class you didn’t share. “See you tomorrow!”

“This is a nice place, y/n. Too nice I’d say,” Kuroo said as you waited for your food.

“We never go to too nice places,” you giggled. “It’s good for a change.”

“I’m not letting you pay for everything,” he said. He had his chin resting over his hand as he looked at you.

“Shush, I said I’ll pay. Next time you can invite me,” you offered.

“This looks like a date place,” he casually commented.

“Yes, it kinda does,” you agreed.

“You’re blushing,” he said with a smug smile.

“Shut up and eat.”

💐 🌷 🌹 💐 🌷 🌹

Three weeks after the chocolate situation it was also white day. You’d been giving hints for almost a month and decided today was the final day. It was cliche but you didn't care. And at this point you just wanted to know if you really had a chance or not.

“Hey, did something happen? You never call me,” you heard Kuroo’s voice on the other end of the line.

“No, sorry! Don’t worry. I just wanted to know if you can meet me at the cafe we always go to near uni?”

“Like… right now?”

“Yes?”

“I’m walking there,” he said and hung up.

You waited for him at a table far away from the others, on a quiet corner. There was a flower bouquet on the table and two coffees.

“I already ordered,” you said when he arrived.

“You’re starting to worry me. You’re acting weird. Is everything ok?” he didn’t understand what was happening.

“This is for you,” you said and smiled.

Kuroo received the bouquet in silence. And then the biggest smile appeared on his face.

“Roses… do you know what these mean?”

“Do you?” you asked back.

“Love.”

“Oh, so you finally get the message,” you took a sip of your iced coffee before you kept talking. “I’ve been doing these little things for a month and you never said anything so I was getting really worried, you know? My mind never stops working, you know that. And I really wanted to know what you think because if you don’t feel the same that’s fine and if you-”

“I love you,” he interrupted your nervous rambling.

You blinked and tried to process what he said.

“I love you, y/n,” he repeated.

“I’ve been waiting to hear that since valentine’s day,” you laughed. “I love you too.”

“This is why you’ve been giving me all those gifts?”

“I thought you would get it sooner!”

“I did… but I thought it was a misunderstanding…”

“Oh my god, we’re supposed to be smart!” you felt shy all of a sudden.

“Love is not logic so I think we’re still smart, honey,” Kuroo smiled.

“So, do you want to date me? Like… officially, let’s be a couple,” you giggled. This wasn’t the most usual love confession but it still worked.

“Of course I want,” he answered.

“Awesome,” you said.

He took a rose out of the bouquet and walked to your side. He bent down to leave the flower on your lap and you looked at him without moving. You saw him licking his lips and then he kissed you. You smiled in the kiss and caressed his cheek with your hand. He took a step back when he heard some girls giggling as they walked to a table near you.

“We should go to put this on water when we finish our coffee,” he said looking at the flowers.

“Yeah, of course. Let’s go wherever you want,” you smiled.

💐 🌷 🌹 💐 🌷 🌹 

[yaz-the-spaz]

But I want to know your theory. :(

ok ok i guess i’ll spill…i was kinda hesitant to share just cause i’m still not all that solid in my belief in it myself but basically it seems like maybe ziam has made it a tradition to have some kind of couples trip most years (if not every year) in february ever since 2014…

(btw for future reference this ask is a continuation of this ask re ziam both being publicly in vegas earlier this year)

ugh sorry guys! hit enter by accident and posted this wayyyy before i was anywhere near finished lol…this will be updated within the hour (if it doesn’t take me too long to get my thoughts out)

narrator: she did not finish it within the hour.

…

ok so part of the reason i’ve been hesitant to share this is because a good portion of it is VERY speculative and just based on a lot of guesswork and assumptions, but also there’s the fact that it feels like this is something major that more people in the fandom (or at least someone, other than little ass me lol) would have noticed before now and it kind of freaks me out that maybe no one else has?? (unless ofc i just haven’t happened to see any other posts there are about it idk)… 

also fyi a lot of what i propose throughout this is heavily based on info from this post just to make sure i remember to site my sources before we get into it lol

alright now onto the actual theory…

SO. all this started with me scrolling through old posts from late 2013/early 2014 and being reminded of the fuckery that was zayn’s bday that year (with the douche canoe crew and everyone pretending like liam was barely there as seemingly some sort of weird over-the-top cover-up)…the same party that seemed kinda like liam’s possible “introduction” to the malik family as more than just zayn’s friend/as his possible significant other. which was also only a month after that suspicious engagement-looking ring first showed up on zayn’s ring finger in december 2013 from bts midnight memories mv footage (and which stayed around as a necklace throughout january 2014 and early febuary 2014 right before the first appearance/debut of the mandala tat in mid feb). 

bts midnight memories mv with the ring in view - dec 2013:

(suspicious?) malik family outing/celebration with the ring in view - dec (or possibly late nov?) 2013:

[putting the rest under the cut cause as per usual with me this got insanely long]

liam and aunt zileh at zayn’s bday party - jan 2014:

liam and one of the little cousins at zayn’s bday party - jan 2014:

then sometime in between late jan and early feb 2014 liam went on a trip to barbados with his whole family (and supposedly also sophia lol more on that later*) while zayn was SUPPOSEDLY still home and steadily “posting” pics of himself at home with various members of his family (with the ring on a necklace clearly visible in the pics lol), anddd as some have also pointed out his hair was suspiciously unchanged in these pics despite his claim of getting a haircut BEFORE most of the pics were posted lol

zayn in family pics with the ring on a necklace - late jan/early feb 2014 (sorry i’m not the one who cropped his fam out lol):

but yet we’re supposed to believe zayn - who had just gotten awarded the asian ambassadorship for the VERY FIRST time - mysteriously (and willingly) MISSED the ceremony on feb. 5th with absolutely no explanation. which…we all know how big a deal that was to him from the way he talked about it and how honored he was when he went in 2015…which begs the question if he was really just home not doing much of anything at the time in 2014 why in the world would he just pass/bail on that HUGE HONOR with no explanation??? mayhaps because he was actually already an ocean away with liam and fam in barbados celebrating his engagement (and getting his own “introduction” to the payne family) and literally COULD NOT ATTEND?

anyway so then, we have him getting the mandala tat around feb 18th 2014 - or at least this is the day he debuted it on his old ig, so the date may be a few days off from when he actually got it - but this still would’ve been shortly after they got back from the barbados trip when he debuted this particular tat (aka another solidification of the engagement??) 

THEN we get the very first ig ziam likes from the famous and beloved aunt zileh (!!!) in this same month (still feb for reference, but she continues steadily and heavily liking stuff all the way through april when she seems to cool down again). fast forward to the 2014 brits at the end of february where we have the infamous moment with 1) ziam giddy as fucking ever, 2) zayn whispering into and practically mawling liam’s neck in public, 3) liam talking about how it was great to “fill each other in” on what they were up to during their break while zayn’s just steady standing there smiling like a loon and then 4) liam still later being like ‘you don’t wanna know’ when asked what he got up to (and zayn still grinning like a fool)

ziam being gross at brits 2014:

so to sum up so far: 1) one of them possibly proposed around nov/dec 2013 (or that’s my best guess anyway based on the evidence lol), 2) then zayn shows up with a suspiciously-engagement-looking ring in dec 2013, 3) then all the weirdness with liam’s attendance at zayn’s bday party a month later (possibly also liam’s formal intro to the malik family), 4) then liam takes his barbados trip with his fam (and supposedly sophia lol*) just a couple weeks later while “zayn” stays home and posts family pics (but is very likely secretly on the trip with liam lol which is also possibly zayn’s formal intro the payne family and a belated celebration of their engagement), 5) and then we get the beginning of aunt zileh’s likes, 6) the debut of zayn’s mandala tat, 7) and the 2014 brits wildness…all in the space of like 3 months. and most of it happening in FEBRUARY. what a wild fucking journey right?

*side note/fun fact: liam and his fam were posting stuff regularly throughout the duration of the barbados vacay but there were literally zero pics of sophia posted from this trip until like dec 2014 or sometime around then when like ONE random pic suddenly surfaced/was posted and lots of ppl had already speculated that sophia was never there in the first place so once this one pic came up that idea got upgraded to people theorizing that they maybe had some of the fam go back a second time later in the year just to stage take photos to retroactively prove/authenticate the narrative that sophia was there lol

but anyway so back to the actual matter at hand - most of that shit happened in february right? specifically the barbados trip (aka the possible engagement celebration trip)…and when i was talking about all this to a friend we realized ZIAMI WAS ALSO IN FEBRUARY. AND SO WAS THIS YEAR’S VEGAS SHIT. AND THEN. AND THEN. My friend did some research and there was apparently this little known/barely talked about article (or at least barely talked about that i’m aware of) about liam taking a TRIP TO THE MALDIVES IN FEBRUARY 2016… which coincidentally (or not lol considering these shady ass hoes) is also around the same time he got his 4 tattoo (I believe this was the first article, or at least one of the first articles, that mentioned the tat’s debut) 

BUT WAIT. 

THE INSANE SHIT DOES NOT END THERE FOLKS.

GUESS WHICH MONTH THE CARTIER BRACELET FIRST DEBUTED?

FUCKING FEBRUARY 2016.

specifically on liam’s wrist in preparation for the 2016 brits (photo posted to his brits stylist’s ig on feb 23rd). and he didn’t take it off till like june.

so. quick timeline:

february 2016 - maldives trip and debut of liam’s 4 tattoo (around feb 21st); debut of cartier bracelet via liam (feb 23rd); (there was also that valentine’s day roses pic liam posted feb 14th of this year which was quite interesting considering he and c hadn’t even been officially announced as a “thing” yet…ofc we know it still got retroactively attributed to her anyway but whatever, we all know who it was really for lol 😏)

february 2017 - i don’t have anything on this year, partly cause i stopped paying as close attention due to heavy ramping up of stunts, although if anyone has more concrete info on this period that hints at anything please do hit me up and i will add it in, but anyway just based on a little light research there does appear to be a good period of inactivity from both of them during this time (as in both of them had quite a bit of time in february where they were pretty inactive on sm, not being papped, and essentially mia and would have potentially had time to go on a private trip) - UPDATE: HOLY SHIT I CANNOT BELIEVE I FORGOT ABOUT THIS BUT THIS IS THE YEAR LIAM SHOWED UP AT THE BRITS WITH THE MOTHERFUCKING 25 ON HIS JACKET AND FUCKED SIMON ALL THE WAY UP BY SWERVING ON HIS UGLY BITCH ASS SPEECH IN FRONT OF GOD AND ENTIRE WORLD (and i think also thanked zayn in his speech if i’m not mixing that up with another year??) - all on feb 23rd to be specific.

february 2018 - ZIAMI OBVIOUSLY (which specifically started feb 22nd, or at least that’s the day i’m counting it as ‘started’ cause it’s the day liam joined zayn in miami, can’t recall the exact day zayn arrived but pretty sure it was only a couple days before that)

february 2019 - zayn starts wearing this distinctive fishhook earring in all his ig pics, which on the surface seems like a pretty small thing, but quite possibly commemorates their famous august 2014 fishing trip (directly after which he also started wearing a fish hook pendant on a necklace back in 2014); this was also another period they were pretty quiet/mia as far as i can recall, although again if anybody has more concrete info from this time that could point to something please let me know, but anyway point being they again would have had a good chunk of time to possibly go on a private trip together

february 2020 - VEGAS BABY

ofc i’m sure you all will notice one year was left out - february 2015 they were on tour with no breaks coming anytime soon so they obviously weren’t able to go on a trip that year. BUT. february 14th 2015 (aka valentine’s day lol) is also the day liam was famously papped with some small shopping bags that looked suspiciously but precisely like the type that usually come from a jewelry store, and then later that same night they had a performance (for otra tour) where we have zayn pictured wearing a new gold bracelet (as in he hadn’t been seen wearing it ever before on tour or anywhere else) - btw the op of this linked post actually marks this day as the debut of the cartier bracelet but there’s a lot of counter speculation that it’s not and given that it doesn’t quite look like the cartier bracelet looked in later pics (it’s more round and more gold than the cartier bracelet which imo looks more angular and more kind of a two-tone/silvery-gold than this vday bracelet) i’m inclined to lean more towards it just being a regular but still very sweet vday-gifted bracelet. but anyway back to more important stuff. now considering this was literally just a little over a month before zayn left - and one of my theories for zayn leaving was that it was possible he felt it was the only way to save his relationship with liam…i mean if they were still giving each other vday presents they were clearly still VERY in love at this point. like that’s not the kind of thing you’d expect from a couple that was on the rocks and on the verge of breaking up and i know a lot of ppl (myself included for a brief minute) speculated that zayn leaving the band meant he maybe left liam too/or things weren’t working out b/t them or whatever, but given this context of the vday gifts just a few weeks before him leaving that doesn’t really line up…what does line up though is him being so in love and so sick of the bs that he might be driven to just be done with it all (as far as the stress of the band and mgmt bs is concerned at least). and ofc liam did say that zayn is the most emotionally impulsive/emotionally driven out of all them so when you think about it it really shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise…

anyway, in conclusion: 

it appears quite possible ziam has made it a couples tradition (ever since that first honeymoonish vacay in 2014) to go on some sort of trip/getaway together around the end of every february (or at least do something special together/for each other when they can’t) and in further conclusion I AM NOT OKAY AND WILL NEVER BE OVER THIS REALIZATION OKAY THANKS BYE 😭😭😭😭😭🌈🌈🌈