#thread / sleepwalking

[drinkinboilingcoffee]

⚠️ GORE BLOOD BAD ⚠️

“This was my choice, my evil doing 'Cause I died inside when you stop moving

Oh I'm, I'm, I'm a terrible person Inside, side, side the evil lurks within my Mind, mind, mind, I'm breaking slowly I'll fix your living scars, I just went too far”

Something something a dog that play-fights until it rips the other puppies open

[lxvenderhxzehv]

Where Demons Hide

Damian Lamb Self Para

Tw: Arson, Sleep walking, Death, Murder Mentions: Reggie (@ghostsbrokenbyfairytales) & Jessie (@ofescapisms)

Damian hadn’t talked to Reggie since- Well since the fire. He was the only officer who stood by him when he was being interrogated about the fire. Any eleven year old would be scared out of their mind to find out that their whole family was dead and they were not only a potential suspect but the only suspect.

It had all blown over, he was let go and put in custody of his Aunt and Uncle. Who were loving enough but he knew, he saw the way they looked at him, how they put all the lighters up high and put away never let him cook alone in the kitchen. They thought he did it and so did many other people in town. It was a small town, it was bound to happen. However Damian moved on and lived his life, he was starting to be happy again. For the first time in 15 years Damian was getting back to normal and not living in fear that everything he touched fell apart. 

That was until his dreams at night weren’t reflecting what he had been told all his life. He was innocent, he was good, he loved his family, he loved his baby sister with his whole heart. But in his dream a scene played over and over again he was the one who did it he was the one who got his family killed. He knew he was a sleepwalker, and his parents had taken him to therapy for it. For the most part he would end up on the floor in his parents bed room or in his sisters room on the rug in front of her bed like some kind of pet dog. She had always woken him up with a giggle. However in his dreams....nightmares he was asleep, Sleep walking around the house like usual but unlike usually he was aware of what he was doing. He had turned on all the stove tops and just left them on and left them unattended. He wanted to turn them off. He was screaming to turn them off but his body wouldn’t listen. Before he knew it, the whole house was engulfed. It was like reliving the whole thing all over again. He soon would wake up shaking, sweating when he passed out in the dream. Looking over to a sleeping Jessie next to him, He sighed and curled up next to her. He couldn’t sleep but holding her at least made him feel better. 

The next day he went to Reggie and he begged the older man to tell him the truth, to tell him what Damian had been fearing since he was 11 years old. He had to know for himself, for Jessie, for her future child. He deserved to know, she deserved to know…to decide if she wanted to stay with him or not. To let her child be raised by a monster. Damian begged and Reggie finally cracked. It was true, Damian had killed his entire family that night and they decided for the sake of Damian's sanity at 11 years old it would be best to not tell him this and let him go. Now it all made sense. Everything his Aunt and uncle did to keep him out of the kitchen, the lock on his door at night, the baby monitor in his room and the motion detectors they had set up as a security precaution. It was all for him, it was all because of him. The person Damian had hated and hunted for his entire life was him.  He thanked Reggie, thanked him for protecting him for as long as he could. Damian made his way home and called off from work for a few days. He needed some time to think.

This changed everything. 

He really was a monster...

[bookofvesper]

@firepassed asked...

“Does this happen a lot?” 

"No. Well---" Vesper stopped herself. She had no reason to lie to Keyleth. She watched as the druid gently cleaned Vesper's bloodied hands and weaved healing magic as she did so, closing up the cuts the glass had made.

"I sleepwalk. It's not as frequent now as before but... I still lock my door. I must have left the key in the door tonight. I can't unlock it if I place it in the dresser. My subconscious doesn't remember putting it there. I never--" Vesper paused again, needing a moment to process the weight of her next statement. "I never used to before. Always on top of the dresser on a silver tray with my jewelry."

The silver tray and most of her daily jewelry that had sat on her dresser was long gone. There were still many dresses and shoes and the things in her closet that no one had bothered to touch. Empty rooms with clothes and toys and books their siblings would never touch again made better reminders for Cassandra on how hopeless things were, perhaps.

"Thank you."

Vesper had found her way into the kitchens and put her hand straight though one of the glass cabinets, apparently attempting to reach for one of Mother's favorite tea sets.

[taexual]

sleepwalking ● 21 | jjk

pairing: jungkook x fem!reader

summary: due to unfortunate circumstances, you ended up managing your ex-boyfriend’s band. you thought you’ve both made peace with it, but suddenly he’s very eager to prove to you that first love never dies.

genre: rockstar!jungkook / exes to lovers

warnings: explicit language, suggestive themes, FLUFF!!, angst, SLOW BURN

words: 16.4k

read from the beginning ○ masterlist

chapter 21 ► love me 'til my heart stops, hit me like a freight truck

You didn’t have the courage to knock on Jungkook’s door when you woke up the next morning. Your mind had sobered enough to recall stumbling into his room after accidentally trying to pick his lock, and you did not want to remember anything else. The rest of the night was blurry anyway, but you deduced easily enough that Jungkook was the reason you woke up smothered under the warm covers.

You wanted to stay in your room for as long as possible, but your headache was so severe that, if divided between people, it could have knocked out a small village for two days. You needed water. Most unfortunately, the hotel had no room service, so you had to find your way out of bed.

The world had finally stopped twirling around you, but that wasn’t a big improvement because other things bothered you now, like the carpet texture under your feet. Or the light that burned your eyes. Or your satin dress, which had felt comfortable last night but scratched you all over this morning.

Lacking the energy to change, you drew the curtains to block out the late morning sunlight and threw on a robe. Then you hesitated in the middle of the room, trying to place your belongings. You thought you remembered having a jacket on yesterday, but as you scanned your room, you couldn’t see it anywhere.

To make matters worse, when you left your room and the door shut behind you with a loud click, you were forced to pause and strain your muscles to stay upright. Every sound felt amplified like a megaphone had been taped directly to your brain.

You took a deep breath and turned the corner towards the stairwell. Your morning got a little brighter just then—you saw Luna cross the corridor, looking almost exactly how you felt. Taehyung was at her side, pushing a water bottle into her exhausted hand as he led her back to their room. He noticed you and immediately shook his head in disapproval, first at you and then at his girlfriend (not for the first time, judging from Luna’s defeated sigh).

Just as you were about to speak up in your defence, you smacked right into something solid and recoiled in surprise.

Jungkook nearly dropped his phone from the impact. He grabbed the railing of the stairs for support and turned around.

“Shit—hi,” he said. “Didn’t expect to see you out of bed so early.”

The feeling was, obviously, mutual as your reluctant mind needed a moment to understand what was happening.

“What are you—why are you just standing here?” you asked, rubbing your forehead with your fingers. You had hit the clasp of his necklace when you walked into him, and the sharp pain began to pirouette around your head again.

“I was on my way downstairs for breakfast,” he said, a hint of amusement threading his every word as he observed your attempts to make sense of your surroundings. “But I wanted to text you first, so I’d know what to bring you.”

“It—thank you,” you replied, softer. Your thoughts had knotted into a jumbled, incomprehensible mess as images of Taehyung and Luna flashed through your mind again. “But I can go down. I think.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. He remembered you saying that last night, right before he’d half-carried you to your room. “Walking isn’t your strong suit when you’re drunk.”

You took a sharp breath. The mention of alcohol seemed to cause an unpleasant swirl in your already upset stomach.

You wondered briefly how noticeable your sudden nausea was, because Jungkook put his phone away and reached for you. You realised right then that you hadn’t even glanced in the mirror before you left your room. You could only imagine the state of last night’s makeup on your face right now.

“It’s clearly not my strong suit now either,” you said. “Sorry I nearly pushed you down the stairs just now.”

“It’s okay,” he said, snickering. One of his hands hovered over your arm in case you were planning to topple over. “Are you sure you should have drunk that much last night, though?”

“Of course I shouldn’t have,” you said, shielding your eyes with a weary hand as curious rays of sunlight filtered through the small windows by the stairs. “But what’s done is done. I think I’ve already embarrassed myself enough by breaking into your room last night, so that’s my punishment. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jungkook said. He took a small step to the left to provide you with a shadow from the sunlight. “You didn’t do anything I haven’t seen before.”

You groaned. “That somehow makes it worse. But serves me right, I guess. I even lost my jacket.”

“You—” his laughter cut him off. You groaned again, only adding to his amusement. “Different shoes and no jacket. Sounds like quite the night.”

You wanted to shake your head but did not dare move it. Instead, you leaned against the wall, seeking additional steadiness that your stiff legs could not provide. Your ankles felt stretched out and twisted around, and the rigid hotel slippers did not help.

“Get something to eat,” Jungkook suggested, noticing your struggle to hold yourself up. “You’ll feel better.”

You closed your eyes. Your stomach was already churning precariously; you weren’t ready to eat yet.

“No, I just need water and I’ll be perfect,” you said. “I’m going—”

“I can bring it to you,” he offered promptly.

“I’ll walk,” you asserted. Then, realising that you were declining his kind intentions and he deserved an explanation, you cleared your throat and gestured around vaguely. “I brought this upon myself, you know? So…”

“So, you should punish yourself for having fun?” he questioned skeptically.

You shrugged. You did feel responsible for your splitting headache. But you also hoped that walking around would help ease your frozen muscles, which was, perhaps, a result of sleeping like a log all night. Although all that drinking and dancing probably added to the pain, too.

“Could you check on Maggie for me, though?” you asked, holding onto the railing nearby to keep your balance because the wall was not enough. The more you blinked, the more your body yearned to recline. “I’ve seen Luna, so I know she’s alive, but I haven’t heard from Mags.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” he said, pivoting around you. He was evidently prepared to fulfil your request immediately.

You stopped him by placing an unsteady hand on his arm.

“I haven’t forgotten that we—we need to talk,” you said. “And our film.”

Jungkook turned around again. Despite the uncertainty that seemed to boil in his stomach at that thought, he liked hearing this – we need to talk. Our film. He thought he would have liked hearing about you peeling potatoes and parallel parking between two trucks together.

“Oh.” He looked at the small window in the stairwell; the stained glass was thick, but the sunlight behind it was too persistent. “Well—we don’t have to talk or watch anything today. You should—”

“No, no, we will,” you insisted. You said this with no additional pain on your face, and Jungkook took it as a positive sign. “Let me just grab some water, and—”

“I’d prefer it if you got some proper rest first, actually,” he said as you pushed yourself off the wall and paused to catch your breath after the exertion. “I can tell you’re not feeling well.”

You huffed again. Really, an average crow—one of those cawing in the trees outside the hotel—could have recognised that you weren’t feeling well. You wondered if you had enough energy to pretend otherwise.

“I’m—well, I’ll take something for my headache when I get back to my room,” you said. “And, if you wouldn’t mind, I could use a quick nap. And then we—”

“I’ll get us some snacks,” he decided, “so you can come straight to my room after you wake up.”

You managed a grateful smile. “Okay. That sounds perfect.”

He smiled back, and for a minute, the two of you lingered in the warm silence, watching each other as your silhouettes merged into one in the hazy sunlight. Once the realisation dawned that you were just standing here, staring at each other and grinning, the two of you erupted into bashful chuckles and looked away.

A new, unexpected feeling joined the heaviness in your stomach, replacing some of your nausea with a sensation oddly reminiscent of bliss.

“I’m off, then,” Jungkook said, waving his hand towards the corridor. “I’ll check if Maggie’s okay.”

“Thank you,” you said, “I’ll see you later.”

And it really was much later.

When you returned to your room with a water bottle, Jungkook texted you to confirm that Maggie was alive and well, albeit dying of thirst, which he helped her out with. Apparently, she also had your jacket.

Relieved that some of your concerns had already been put to rest, you finished your water, took some ibuprofen, and returned to bed.

And when you woke up, you were understandably startled to discover you had slept for over five hours.

You opened the curtains to get a better idea of the time, but the overcast sky made the hour seem even later than it really was. So you tried another approach and went to the bathroom to wash up, get rid of the pillow creases on your face, and fully wake yourself up.

By the time you knocked on Jungkook’s door, it was almost seven in the evening. You arrived armed with your laptop and dressed in appropriate film night attire: dark joggers and a hoodie. But so much time had passed since your encounter in the stairwell that you wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d found something better to do instead.

Actually, you realised while you waited for the door to open—or not to open—that two weeks ago, Jungkook would have probably gone out with Sid to avoid spending this time alone. But now he opened the door for you, smiling as if you had just made plans and he hadn’t been waiting for you for hours.

“Hey,” he greeted, stepping aside to let you in. “I was just about to check on you.”

“I think I went into a bit of a coma for a while there. Sorry,” you said, walking inside. “And, of course, I’ve got a headache again now because I’ve been asleep for so long. Should we go for something to eat, and maybe—”

You stopped abruptly when you noticed the snacks strewn across his bed—a mound of chocolate-coated dragées, an unnecessarily large fortress of chocolate-chip cookie boxes, and an entire trove of crisps and popcorn. It took you a minute to comprehend it all, and then another minute to come up with a possible explanation as to how he could have got all this; there were no grocery shops within five kilometres of the hotel.

Jungkook closed the door and followed your gaze to his bed.

“Oh,” he said, not responding to your unasked questions. “Maybe it’d be better if you had a proper meal—”

“Are you kidding?” You jumped on the bed with an energy you did not realise you had and reached for one of the brown bags of chocolates, nearly dropping your laptop in excitement. “We’re eating this, and absolutely nothing else.”

Jungkook knew you liked chocolate the most, but he did not want to brag about the three taxis he had to take to eight different shops to get it for you. To be fair, he had not expected your favourite brand to be so hard to find, but he was determined. He would have found the factory and made the chocolate himself if he had to.

“It’s probably not the best choice for breakfast, though,” he said, pulling his phone out of the pocket of his sweatpants. “Even if it’s, uh, seven in the evening.”

You waved away his concerns, your mouth already full of sweets. Smiling, Jungkook sat down on the other side of the bed and pulled out a box of gummy bears that you had overlooked while trying to take in the abundance of snacks.

“So, uh, how did last night go?” he asked as he meticulously picked out the red bears and accidentally scattered the yellow and green ones on the bed.

“You know how it went,” you said. “You probably know more than I do, actually. The last thing I remember is Maggie swiping someone’s feather boa off their neck.”

“Oh, so that—” He stopped picking the gummy bears from the sheets. “Y-you had a feather in your earring when you got back. I was—honestly, I was a little worried that the three of you had robbed a zoo and tried to bring back a peacock or something.”

You snorted. “We might have tried. Did you check my bag for any stray lizards?”

“You didn’t have a bag when you got back.”

You stopped chewing and turned to him. “I—I didn’t have my bag with me?”

Jungkook paused, too. He wasn’t in the right frame of mind to analyse what items you had with you when you showed up on his doorstep last night.

“You had your key,” he said slowly. “And—well, that was it. Are you sure you had your bag with you when you left?”

You tried to piece your fragmented memories together, but your mind struggled to reconstruct the precise sequence of events. You remembered having an umbrella because it had been raining. You also remembered sitting in your bathroom for what felt like half a minute but must have been longer because Luna and Maggie looked a little distraught when they found you there.

You set the candy aside.

“I might have—yeah, I might have left it at the hotel,” you said, realising. “After I talked to my mum.”

Jungkook finished chewing his handful of gummy bears in silence. Each calculated bite seemed to propel him toward a precipice from which there was no return. He hadn’t expected the two of you to get to this point so quickly, even if he was glad you did.

“And how—how’d that go?” he asked.

“Well, it—I mean, we talked,” you said, settling against the headboard of his bed. “She, um—I-I don’t know what I expected her to say, to be honest. I asked her to tell me about her relationship with my dad, and she—well, she certainly did.”

Jungkook took a moment to study the expression on your face, searching for something that he could point out to keep you talking.

“But, uh, you wish she’d said something different?” he ventured when you offered no further explanation.

A measured breath preceded your response. You wanted to explain but finding words proved almost as difficult as confronting your mum about this yesterday.

“I guess I wish it would have made more sense to me,” you finally started. “I had some time to think, and—well, I disagree with almost every single reason my mum had for getting back together with him. But I’ve realised that there’s probably nothing that either of my parents could say that would change my mind. I’m disappointed and angry, and I think I’ve felt this way for a while. I’ve tried not to feel that because it just seemed childish and immature—but I am angry. And that’s fine.”

You lapsed into a silence that Jungkook did not want to disturb. He could tell this was a pause, not a complete stop, and he was too nervous to speak anyway. He was afraid of the parallel between your parents and the two of you—especially in light of everything that Sid was currently sending to his phone.

“I-I mean,” you resumed and Jungkook made an effort to focus on the sound of your voice and not his thoughts, “the way my mum looked at her relationship—honestly, I do think she has a lot of courage. But she, um—she also has—her attitude just seemed a bit reckless. I don’t know. I guess I might never understand why she thought that getting back together with him once wouldn’t already be enough, but that’s—that was her choice. She explained it to me in a way that made sense to her, and I’m grateful she did. But sh-she seems to have blocked out everything that happened after each of their break-ups. She said she was now at peace because she had always listened to her heart. And I’m happy for her, really. But, well, I’m not at peace. This back-and-forth... it brought our whole family nothing but misery, and that does not seem fair to me, or to my brother.”

Jungkook did not think he would ever hear you realise the things he had realised long ago. You had always been so determined to help your mum heal that you’d closed your eyes on your own pain. But it was there. Feelings did not go away just because you wished them to; he knew this well.

And he felt relieved, he realised. No matter what else happened tonight, at least you finally accepted that you had a right to feel wronged.

“Is that why you feel angry?” he asked.

“It... well, mostly, yes,” you said. “Because on top of everything else, this significantly affected how I view my own relationships. I wanted my parents to be happy together. But they just weren’t. And I ended up convincing myself that their unhappiness was universal and inevitable. That anyone who tried to get back together again was bound to fail again. I wanted them to defy these odds, and when they didn’t, I thought no one ever would.”

He toyed with the gummy bear package, and only looked at you for no longer than two seconds.

“But that’s not true,” he said, his voice quiet, tentative.

“It’s not,” you agreed. “I get it now. I may not understand my mum’s choices, but that’s because I didn’t live her life. And that’s exactly it. That’s what helped me come to terms with it all. I got it. My parents’ relationship is not a rule. If anything, it’s an exception.”

Something was glistening on the very edges of his pupils when your eyes met. It struck you that he had been waiting for you to come to this realisation.

“Just because it didn’t work out for them,” you said, looking down, “doesn’t mean it won’t work out for us. That’s, um—that is the main thing, I think.”

Jungkook swallowed. It seemed to him that there were many things to say in response, and he could not find one that he needed. He sort of felt as if he were navigating a field of landmines only visible to himself—but instead of avoiding them, he deliberately tried to step on one. He needed the explosion. He needed you to say something more. But he didn’t know how to get you to say it.

“It’s—that’s good,” he eventually said, because it was all he could manage.

You weighed your next words as your headache doubled and receded in anxious, intensifying waves.

“I’m—I just want you to know that this is still the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” you said. “Which makes me incredibly fortunate on the one hand, because, well, this is nothing. Right? But also it—well, I’m just scared. I don’t think that’s going to go away. I don’t think things will suddenly be better because we decide so. I think it’s going to be something we’ll have to work through.”

“That’s fine, though,” he said right away, and a tired weight heaved itself off your chest and rolled down, relieving an immense pressure inside you. Just like that. “I just want to try again with you. But better this time.”

Your teeth dug into the corner of your lip. You wanted that, too, but you didn’t think labelling it like this was right.

“Trying again,” you said, “implies that, um, we’ve stopped doing something, and now we’re doing it again.”

He gave you a puzzled look. “Right.”

“I—I’m not sure if we ever stopped.”

He took a shaky breath, uncertain if he ever released it or if it would remain trapped somewhere deep inside his throat.

“My mum… uh, she also told me about the songs,” you said and Jungkook looked up as though his conversations with your mum surprised him, too. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

This was precisely why, Jungkook thought, turning away. Because you could not look at him when you talked about the songs he wrote about you, and he couldn’t look at you, either.

Rubbing the side of his nose, he said, “your mum, uh—she warned me that you might get physically violent.”

There was a sheepish grin tugging at his lips; he was joking.

Still, you shook your head. “But I mean when we were—when we started talking again. Not just at the bar in Oslo. Or at the hotel in Manchester.”

He coughed, feeling the sparkles in his lungs as they caught fire. You remembered, then—not just the two songs, but where you were, and what you were doing when he told you about them.

“Did you want me to tell you about the rest of them?” he asked, finally looking up. “You looked about ready to leap out of the nearest window when I brought it up.”

“I—okay, you’re probably right,” you conceded. “But, uh, my mum mentioned a new song you’re working on.”

Jungkook expected that to happen, but his stomach still churned anxiously as he smoothed the bedding with his palm. “Hmm.”

“Can I hear it?” you asked.

He brought his hand to the back of his neck. “Are you sure you want to?”

“Yes.”

He looked at you again, searching for a stronger confirmation in your eyes—and finding it there. He slowly rose from the bed and pulled out his phone from his pocket.

“It’s—I think it’s the most personal song I’ve ever written,” he said, and you held your breath. “Your mum warned me about it, which she’s never done before. Usually, she just gives me permission to release the song and sometimes offers a compliment.”

“She didn’t like it this time?” you asked while he unlocked his phone.

“No, she said she liked it a lot,” he replied, placing his phone on the bed. The screen displayed various voice notes: some with gibberish titles, others numbered. The newest one was labelled, PUDDLE_FINAL11. “But she also said that this is a song I should run by you first.”

You crossed your legs on the bed and hesitated awkwardly for a second—unsure if you could really listen to the song and sit still. Then, you leaned back against the headboard and closed your eyes.

“Let me hear it.”

Jungkook watched you get comfortable and bit his lip. He knew this was what you did when you were nervous or excited—crossing your legs on the couch when the film you two were watching got to the most interesting part; crossing them on the chair in the library when you were studying for final exams, crossing them on the passenger seat in his car when you were on road trips, playing Guess The Song (he always won, which he took great pride in).

“This is, um, the song that I told you I was writing in Oslo,” he said. Your heart was racing just like it had back then. “It’s what the band and I are working on right now. Yoongi, uh—he’s the one who’s working through the tone and the instruments, and—well, that stuff. I’m just kind of there to sing and look pretty.”

You opened your eyes again to give him a look. “You wrote the lyrics.”

“I—yeah, okay. And I wrote the lyrics.” He took a deep breath. “This is—it’s still a demo, though, so—you know. Keep an open mind.”

You froze as soon as he pressed “play” on the voice note. This appeared to be the eleventh version of the song, as indicated by the number at the end of the title.

The recording began with soft, but quick guitar chords. The song was not slow-paced and seemed much more postcore than the band’s usual music. Even though his guitar was the only instrument accompanying his hesitant but clear voice, you could easily imagine an overlay of drums and bass.

How I run when my phone lights up with a text /

My friends all know, “is that your ex?” /

They said I bet you want her, bet you love her, bet you can’t forget /

I don’t remember why I lied, why I agreed, why I made the bet

You turned to look at Jungkook, your eyes filled with graphic surprise, but he was staring at his phone, his lower lip trapped between his teeth. He was tugging on it so forcefully that his lip ring strained against his skin.

The music shifted into a rhythmic bridge—Jungkook had stopped strumming and began to tap the body of the guitar instead, mimicking the beat of Hoseok’s drums.

This feels like a disease I suffer /

Might break just thinking of her /

Can’t breathe, cannot recover /

I love her, I fucking love her

“The chorus is next, and—” Jungkook cut in over the music, “—it’s very simple, but it’s not done yet. It should still sound better with Yoongi’s guitar, and all the rest.”

Immediately, he returned to his own guitar in the recording, the chords rapid and eager as he sang—his voice louder, more forced, emanating from deep within his diaphragm as the song reached the chorus:

I can’t look you in the eyes /

When all I say are these stupid lies /

The memories of when you were mine /

Are playing in my tired mind /

Scared to fail, so I’d rather get high /

Yeah, but I have to stand up and try

The song slowed for the exit of the chorus and Jungkook sang it to complete silence:

And this is nothing fucking new, /

I’ve always been in love with you

You sucked in a breath and closed your eyes again. If your heart hadn’t been pounding so intensely, you might have been able to envision what the musical break that followed after the chorus would sound like once it was accompanied by Taehyung’s bass.

Before you could try to calm yourself, however, Jungkook began the second verse on the recording:

How I miss you and this feeling is all that inspires /

How this pain shifts, grows, how it turns into fires /

It will burn when I write, when I think, when I sing /

Flames will turn to ashes, turn to words, turn to ink

Right as the chorus started again—his voice growing more passionate as he lost himself in the song—Jungkook cleared his throat and commented over the recording, “I wrote that part in Oslo. While—after I asked you to come meet me at the bar.”

You nodded—or thought you nodded; all movement felt surreal right now—and listened in silence.

“The refrain,” Jungkook spoke again as the second chorus ended and the music began to speed up, “is my favourite part. It’s kind of pop-punk, largely inspired by blink-182, but it’s also just… it’s a way to get it all out.”

As soon as he finished talking, you heard the refrain on the recording—his words were rushed, the music barely catching up.

Biffy Clyro at a wedding, but we dance on separate floors /

Hotel bathrooms and champagne, we’re hiding there with open doors /

Years ago before I saw you, I was lost without a cause /

You changed my life from the first time that our paths had crossed /

I knew about you way before, I didn’t think this through /

I walked up to you after class, because our meeting’s overdue /

Years later we’re in Paris, I looked around and knew – /

It was always you, it was always you, it was always you

You focused on the screen of his phone as the song played and you did not dare to move—not even when the final chorus finished, and he reached over to stop the recording.

He asked, “what did you think?” and you realised that your mind was as silent as this room once the song ended.

You felt lost in the echoing recesses of your mind. There were so many things in your head and at the same time, there weren’t any at all. Because everything—from the first time he introduced himself to you after class, to Chloé and Kihyun’s wedding in Paris, to the bet he’d made with Sid and Jude—had just been said.

“I… think you are insane,” you said, glancing at him. “And also incredibly talented to manage to put all of that into a—into one song.”

“Yeah?” A satisfied grin was playing on his lips and you couldn’t take your eyes off it. “Did you like it?”

You shook your head, because this was too feeble—like. Sitting on his bed in this room, you doubted if you had ever simply liked anything when it came to Jungkook. Every emotion you felt for him had always been so much more intense and infinitely deeper.

“It’s—fuck, it’s a great song,” you said, tapping your palm against the bed. Jungkook recognised the beat and felt his heart soar. The whole room seemed to brighten, not at all threatened by the darkness outside the window. “It sounded good. The rhythm—it’s really good. I can see it becoming a crowd favourite.”

“Thanks,” he said but did not relent. In all the crowds in the world, he was going to search for you. “But what did you think?”

Watching him watch you, you said awkwardly, “I liked your voice.”

He laughed, finding the real compliment in your flustered expression and your struggle to answer his question directly.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll take it.”

“Was this the song you played for Yoongi and Namjoon that time?” you asked, so you could avoid giving feedback about the way he captured your whole life in his lyrics, and now your heartbeat matched the rhythm of the song. “W-when Yoongi came to talk to me, worried about you?”

Jungkook still nursed a bitterness about Yoongi’s initial reaction to the song and pursed his lips.

“Yeah, um—at the time, I only had the second verse,” he said. “That’s probably why he was concerned.”

“Well,” you dropped a pillow onto your lap, “it doesn’t sound like a heartbreak anthem.”

He snorted. “I hope not.”

You did not say anything else for a while.

You were not in control of anything that was happening inside of you right now, so this was the best you could offer. A big part of your brain was preoccupied with keeping you seated on your side of the bed instead of reaching—lunging­—for him, and an even bigger part was still processing the song he had just played. This left you with very little strength to be eloquent.

You liked the song. You liked his voice. You were worried the fire inside your chest would do irreparable damage to your heart. You wondered what went on in your mum’s head when she heard it.

“I can’t believe you sent that to my mum, though,” you voiced your latest thought. “The whole thing?”

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug because getting feedback from your mum had become a regular practice. He had continued to reach out to her even after you started to manage Rated Riot.

“With the curses and everything?” you asked, your nose scrunched.

He laughed again. You looked so beautiful like this, analysing his lyrics in your head. He didn’t know what to do with himself.

“She knows I curse,” he said. “She’s read most of my lyrics. Also, I am twenty-six.”

“Still,” you muttered. “There’s so much—you, um—you mention the bet in the song.”

His expression grew serious.

“Yeah. One of the first times I texted your mum, I…” he paused here, tracing his fingers lightly over his eyelids. “Well, actually, I was drunk, so I mostly remember this from the screenshots I took. I asked her if I could write a song that would bring you back to me. I was really—well, drunk and, you know. Sentimental. And she said—and I actually remember this part, because, somehow, no one else thought to say this to me—she said that I could, but I had to be honest in my lyrics.”

He fell silent, but it didn’t feel like an invitation for you to respond.

Looking up at you after a minute, Jungkook continued, “every song I wrote about you was honest. I meant every single word in every single verse. And I was hoping one of them would bring you back.”

It began as a faint buzzing in your chest and escalated into a gentle whisper, then erupted into a loud scream, filled with all the longing that’s been there all this time—mostly dormant, but restless. This longing wasn’t buried under mundane, daily tasks, it just existed right there in your chest, pushing sharply into your heart every time you thought you forgot, thought you moved on.

Every time you looked at him, every time you remembered him, every time you fell asleep, the longing was there, and it was growing, always growing—even more rapidly now that you and Jungkook began to spend more time together. By now, it had grown far larger than your chest could hold. And it was screaming.

“I’m—I don’t—I’m not sure I was ever really gone,” you confessed. “I think I... I actually called my mum with a decision already made. And I just needed her to say it was going to be okay. Because, you know. She’s my mum.”

There it was—the explosion he’d been waiting for. He could see the clouds in the distance but he hadn’t felt the impact yet.

“W-what’s your decision?” he asked.

“I want to try,” you said. “If you—if you’d—”

“I swear to God,” he interjected, his voice gaining volume as his heart rate gained speed. “If you're going to ask me if I want to be with you, I’m not sure I’ll make it.”

A smile flickered across your features, but you clutched the bedsheets underneath you tighter to control your expression.

“Let’s give this a chance,” Jungkook said, echoing everything that your heart demanded from you. “I know you’re scared of what this could mean for your job, and—”

“No,” you cut him off. “That—what happens with my job, happens. That feels—it feels like something we can figure out. But I want to try, and that’s what’s scary. Because this isn’t something we can solve, we either work out or we don’t. And I’m scared I won’t always be able to overcome my fear that we might not work. I’m scared I’ll still try to run away from everything.”

“I’ll find you,” he said, and your heart threatened to stop. “I’ll always find you.”

“You shouldn’t have to, though,” you protested weakly. “That’s not fair.”

“My love,” he said, sliding closer to you on the bed. You felt very light-headed. “Anything’s fair to me when it comes to you. Stay and let me make you happy.”

It was remarkable how his hotel bed managed to fit both of you and all that you’d carried inside you for all these years.

You shook your head.

“I’m happy,” you said. “This is right where I’ve always wanted to be. I’m not going anywhere.”

Jungkook looked at you, and he felt like he was nineteen again, watching you from across the campus quad. Thoughts of how to approach you—how to talk to you; how to look at you—were running rampant in his overstimulated mind. He had just left Sociology class where he’d doodled and daydreamed about you the whole time and now that he had a chance to talk to you, his legs had turned to stone.

He knew you liked Hayao Miyazaki, and he thought, alright, he would lead with that. And then in a frantic attempt to explain his determined stride towards you with a murderous expression on his face, he had ended up introducing himself as Neighbour Totoro.

Your smile in response should have been plastered on billboards; and was, on billboards, actually—all over the canyons of his mind. All he could do after that was just stammer about seeing you around campus, noticing that you shared a few classes together, finding it really cute when you dozed off during your professor’s philosophical rants, and wishing very much that the earth would open up and swallow him whole because what the fuck was he saying to you right now—and you’d smiled again. And the stones in his legs had melted.

You gave him your phone number and invited him to a party that someone on your floor was throwing that Friday. And you’d said, “I think it’d be really cool if you came,” but all that he could hear had been the violent pounding in his chest.

His heart pounded just as intensely now.

“Yeah?” he asked you, breathless and half-drunk as the rest of his hotel room drowned in your eyes.

He thought he could feel the earth move. He thought he could will it to stop, to pause for just a split second until you replied and he could—

“Yeah.”

He had arrived at that party back then, and you had found him right away. You’d spent the whole night talking until he finally mustered up the courage to ask you to hang out alone sometime. Maybe watch a film and have dinner? And you’d said yes.

You’d said yes seven years ago, and now you were here – saying yes, again.

Jungkook reached for you so quickly that you barely noticed the smile on his face, let alone the one on yours. His hands were soft on your cheek as he leaned in, pressing his lips to yours in a clumsy kiss—but your mouths needed less than a second to find a familiar rhythm.

His tongue met yours, and he tasted like the memory of every time you’d kissed him before and a promise of every time you’d kiss him in the future. He tasted like everything you’ve ever wanted and everything you thought you’d lost.

“Did you know,” he whispered, his words punctuated by heavy breaths and your lips smacking against each other, “that I dreamt about you—on the night before you showed up at the company—as our manager—?”

You pulled back slightly to be able to look at him, your lips parted in a surprised smile. “No. What did you dream about?”

“This, actually,” he said, kissing you once more and frowning when you pulled back again, waiting for him to explain. “Except neither one of us pulled away.” He paused here, looking at you very meaningfully. You pressed another kiss to his lips and he grinned, continuing finally, “I hadn’t dreamt of you in months, and I woke up from a text message in the middle of kissing you in that dream. I was obviously pissed. I looked at the text, and it was from Yoongi. He was saying, ‘we’re meeting our manager today, don’t be late’ or something like that. And I remembered debating just going back to sleep. But I forced myself out of bed, thinking that this manager better be worth it.”

Your smile was absurd. “Was she?”

He nodded, tracing his fingers down your neck to your collarbones, and bringing goosebumps to the surface of your skin.

“She was,” he said.

“You didn’t say one word to me throughout that whole meeting, though,” you pointed out.

Jungkook shrugged.

“I hadn’t seen you in two years,” he said. “I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, I would tell you how long I’d been waiting for you.”

You did not feel yourself respond with a defeated, breathless, “oh,” but Jungkook smiled when he heard it.

“Yeah,” he said, leaning in. “Hardly professional.”

“Mmhm—” your hum drowned in his kiss. “Hardly.”

There was something artificially sweet on his tongue when you kissed him back—likely from the gummy bears—and it made your hands instinctively reach for his shirt, pulling him closer. He wondered if you noticed the way his heart rate quickened at that; he found your need for him exhilarating.

You kissed him harder and remembered all your stolen kisses throughout this tour. This did not feel anything like it.

This kiss was not hurried—not until the five minutes you’ve allotted yourselves were up. It wasn’t secret—not until you had to leave your hotel room in Amsterdam. It wasn’t pretend—not until you had to admit to yourselves that you weren’t and could not be friends. And it wasn’t a dream, either—not until one of you had to wake up and realise that this had just been your subconsciousness, refusing to let go. To move on.

The kiss was slow. It was not rushed, and not hidden. It was true, and it was real.

Your heart finally returned home.

Then, Jungkook slowly pulled away, his pupils dilated and filled with something distracting that lingered on his mind.

“You didn’t say anything to me, either,” he said slowly. “When we started to work together, I mean.”

“I know,” you replied, letting go of him. It did not feel fair to touch him when he said that, but Jungkook felt lost for a moment after you pulled back your hands. “I wasn’t sure if I should.”

“Hmm.” He needed to find the string attached to the words he’d kept inside, and he needed to pull them out, but he could only do that by looking away. “I, uh—I get that now, but back then, I felt very, um—well, left-out, I guess. For lack of a better word. You talked to everyone else but me.”

You were struck by the immediacy and the clarity of these memories: how you’d made a deliberate effort not to talk to him unless it was necessary, because that was the only way you could stay professional. In hindsight, that should have probably been a hint. If you had to go to such lengths to avoid someone in order to remain professional, it likely meant you weren’t truly professional, just pretending to be.

“I know,” you said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s—well, I could have said something, too,” Jungkook said. “But after a while, it seemed to me like we’d silently agreed to just ignore our relationship, so it didn’t feel right to bring it up again. I didn’t want to make things awkward.”

Your smile broke through the sombre atmosphere in the room. You couldn’t listen to this without pointing out his reactions to you in those first few days. Jungkook had been very loud about doubting your authority.

“You used to complain about me all the time in the beginning,” you reminded him. “You said you wouldn’t take orders from a kid.”

He grinned, remembering, too.

“Well, I had to say that,” he defended, a glint of mischief in his eye. Age had been his favourite argument against working with you. “How else could I hide that I still had feelings for you?

You looked away—he expected this, and his smile grew wider. You thought you had him there. But he knew that in all the years you’ve known each other, you could not find a moment where he didn’t love you. He couldn’t find one himself.

“Maggie told me you were the one who told her we had dated,” you said then.

Jungkook did not immediately remember. “I did?”

“Yeah,” you confirmed. “We were all drinking together, and you—”

“Oh, yeah,” he cut in, nodding. He recalled Maggie responding to him as though he’d told her he was an escaped convict. “In the parking lot. I don’t think she believed me at first, actually. I was very good at acting unbothered.”

You arched an eyebrow. “She said she came to check on you because Hoseok noticed that you seemed bothered.”

Jungkook clicked his tongue. “Well, Hoseok notices these things. It doesn’t count.”

You grinned, shaking your head.

Jungkook, meanwhile, remembered something else now that you’d mentioned Maggie. It was something he’d held close to his heart for years, and he was hesitant to bring it up now. He knew it was probably not real, but he held onto the ignorant hope that it might be.

“Did you… tell anyone on the staff?” he asked.

“Hm? About us?” you clarified.

He nodded.

“Just the band,” you said.

“Oh.” He held his breath as he considered how to explain this, and how to brace himself for your response. “Because, um—well, apparently, Maggie spoke to Jin after I talked to her. And then Jin talked to Jimin. And Jimin told me that he thought I just had a crush on you.”

“A year ago?” you clarified, a little uneasy about the timeline.

The girls had tried to reassure you last night that you and Jungkook were really not that obvious—but perhaps the truth was that you had wasted all these years just like you feared.

You put unnecessary strain on your heart because you’d convinced yourself that this was how things were meant to be. You’d convinced yourself that Jungkook really did not love you anymore. And when you realised that maybe he still did, you’d convinced yourself that second chances did not work, and it was better to suffer through the initial break-up for years rather than attempt to try again.

“Yeah.” Jungkook swallowed, getting to his point. “And, um—a while after that, Namjoon said he thought you might have a crush on me.”

You blinked, feeling your heart leap into a thrilled dance, each beat a self-assured I told you so.

“Namjoon said that?” you asked weakly.

“Yeah,” he said, keeping his eyes on you. “We were both drunk, trying to work on a song, and not doing so well. I was upset about something that day, so I thought he was just saying that to comfort me. Cheer me up. He said he noticed you staring at me during our meeting earlier that day. He said he thought it was meaningful. Said you didn’t seem to just be dozing off.”

I told you so—

I told you so—

I told you—

You remembered that meeting.

You remembered looking away from Jungkook and meeting Namjoon’s raised eyebrows. You hadn’t realised you’d been staring. But he had.

Right now, in the hotel room, you did not say anything, but Jungkook felt the bubble of hope swell in his chest, straining as it threatened to explode.

It was true, then.

You had been watching him during that meeting. So much so that it led Namjoon—a very smart, but arguably the most oblivious man in the country—to notice that something was going on.

You cleared your throat. “Did he—uh, did he know about—”

“He knew I was writing about you,” Jungkook replied. “The second he yelled at me and told me to stop writing about abstract feelings and start writing from my own chest, I pulled out three different songs for him. He always knew.”

“Hmm.”

A moment of silence followed, allowing the two of you to simmer in the sounds coming from your chests.

You thought you were trying very hard to ignore him and focus on your job, and you did, really. Especially when you first started to work together. But gradually, the less you talked about your relationship to each other, the more your suppressed feelings made themselves known: it was the way you always happened to stand next to each other at the label events. It was the way Jungkook was the only one who remembered where your office was in the labyrinth of corridors at the company building. It was the way you looked at him when you talked to him. It was the way he teased you at every chance he got.

“So, the roadies thought you were dating Namjoon,” Jungkook concluded, “while Jimin thought I liked you, and Namjoon thought you liked me.”

“Yeah. Apparently, we’re all twelve,” you said. “I love how that’s ongoing, too. We’re still a very hot topic.”

Jungkook chuckled, seemingly as entertained about this as Seokjin had been when he mentioned the bets the staff had going about the two of you.

“I know,” he said, trying to restrain his reaction for your sake. “But it—it’s just us. You know? We’re the only ones who really know about us. You and me. And about fifty people on this tour with us, but that’s—well, who cares?”

“Yeah,” you said with a shrug of your shoulders. “Not a big deal.”

He heard the sarcasm in your tone, but he still grinned. “Yeah.”

You looked down and brought your hands over your sweatpants, and his smile faded. He seemed to react to your next words before you even said them.

“I’ll have to, um—I’ll have to talk to the label about us,” you said. “I’ll have to tell them.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Another silence stole away any remaining words. Jungkook wondered if the two of you were really as powerful as he’d imagined. He wondered if you had the authority to decide what you’d do.

“What do you think they’ll say?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” you replied. There was a calmness in your voice that he wasn’t expecting. “We’ll see.”

“Should I—should I talk to them with you?” he suggested—and realised right away that this would not work.

“Probably not,” you replied gently. “It’ll feel a little like we’re talking to our parents. And not, you know, our employers.”

“Right.”

You glanced at him and realised that he appeared more worried than you felt. You thought that perhaps this was how it was between you two: one of you panicked while the other stayed level-headed to provide reassurance.

“It’ll be fine,” you said. “We got so far, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, chewing on his bottom lip. “But, I mean, what if they say this can’t happen?”

“Well, then we break up, of course.”

He gave you a long, questioning look. “I’m serious.”

“I am, too,” you replied, not serious at all.

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, now you want to joke about it. Okay.”

You laughed, and immediately made him smile, too. Leaning into him—almost reflexively—you placed a hand on his chest and gently pulled him down onto the bed until the two of you were lying face-to-face. Finally, he laughed, too.

The truth was, you felt nervous as well. But some innate balance required you to look on the bright side when he couldn’t. Surely, if you overcame yourselves, you could overcome external hurdles, too.

“I’m not joking,” you said. “It’ll be fine. We, um—we know our issues now. I think we can figure out what we should do no matter what happens. We’ve grown.”

Jungkook looked at you for a minute, then finally exhaled and reached out to touch your cheek.

“Alright,” he said, the tips of his fingers careful as they traced over the side of your jaw. “We have. We used to never talk to each other.”

“Yeah, that had always been the core problem with us,” you agreed, leaning into his touch and singlehandedly stopping his heart for a dangerous minute.

The two of you found it very easy to point out your flaws now—like teachers marking all the issues in a student’s essay: lack of communication, toxic friendships, parental trauma.

“None of that now?” Jungkook asked.

“None of that now,” you agreed, closing your eyes.

You felt him scoot closer to you on the bed as his palm replaced the tips of his fingers on your cheek.

“I’m not going to shut up about how much I love you, though,” he whispered.

You looked at him again, and your smile stretched from one corner of his hotel room to the other.

“I’ll take that over silence,” you said.

He responded with a shuddered breath and moved closer. His lips found yours blindly, but effortlessly. His kiss was soft, slow, and lingering because now you had all the time in the world and he was determined to savour every moment.

Pulling back slightly, he brought his nose to yours, and the air you exhaled as you chuckled softly made him close his eyes again. He kissed your cheek and the corner of your lips and the edge of your jaw, and somewhere along the way, he realised that he had wanted to say something else but now he forgot all about it. He kissed your lips once more instead. Then twice more—until you were smiling too much for the kiss to feel like anything other than a gentle peck.

He settled back on the bed next to you. He was so close that you could barely look at him without your eyes going out of focus. And he was beautiful like this—his hair falling in loose, messy curls around his face, his eyes alive with an energy so powerful that you could not look away from him once your gazes met. His lips were parted as he breathed steadily, running his tongue over his lower lip.

You watched each other just like you had earlier in the corridor, with the tips of your fingers locked onto each other’s skin as though transferring electricity from one heart to the other, and back again.

“I’m sorry I did not want to talk about our relationship,” you finally admitted, your voice a timid whisper. “I thought the safe choice would be to speak to you one-on-one as little as possible. And after a few months, it became easier to be in the same room with you without my hands shaking, and my heart—well, anyway. I didn’t want to ruin what little stability we had with each other. Even though for a long time—maybe even the whole time, I don’t know anymore—we were there, in the back of my mind.”

He exhaled. “We could have talked about us before.”

“We should have talked about us before,” you corrected.

“Right.” He rolled onto his back. “Instead, I drank three bars into bankruptcy in those first few months after you started working with us.”

He remembered Sid’s messages as soon as he said this, and for a brief, irrational moment, he waited for you to stand up and leave the room. Instead, he was startled when he saw you smile out of the corner of his eye.

“I know,” you said softly. “I was asked to pay off your debt at one of them.”

He turned to face you, his eyes wide. “No—w-were you really?”

“Yeah,” you said. “Sid called and gave me an ultimatum: either I came to pay for your bill or the bar owner was going to call the police on you.”

Jungkook had to really concentrate to remember anything, and he quickly felt embarrassed that he even tried. He could not remember his own name, that was how drunk he would get in those days. He couldn’t bring them back to his memory now, no matter how much he tried.

“Where was Sid, then?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” you replied. “Probably tripping on something in a random hotel. He never called me if he was still with you.”

Jungkook swallowed, his thoughts racing.

“Well, I mean—shit,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”

“You don’t,” you replied. “I came to the bar and told the owner your name was Isidore Mercer-Hastings, and that they should contact the police to settle the bill for whatever you drank that night.”

Jungkook raised his eyebrows. He thought he lacked Sid’s perpetual sneer to pass as someone from a conglomerate family.

“They believed it?” he asked.

“Well, they didn’t know who you were,” you said. “And it was resolved very quietly after that. I doubt the bar owner even managed to write a report after he mentioned the name at the station.”

“Someone in Sid’s family must have handled it,” Jungkook speculated. You thought so as well. “Sid never said anything.”

“I don’t think he expected me to fight back, actually,” you said. “In any case, I paid the price. After that, he started leaving you in all kinds of shitholes for me to find a lot more frequently.”

Jungkook realised that a ball had formed in his throat.

“I-I didn’t even notice it,” he admitted. “He—he had me by the throat, and I thought he just wanted to hang out with me.”

You didn’t want the topic to shift to Sid, but it felt inevitable. He was the additional burden on your relationship, he always had been.

“And he’s in London now,” you said, sighing.

Jungkook exhaled, too. “Yeah.”

“What are we going to do?”

He looked at you for only a moment, but his eyes were filled with an unexpected alarm.

“I’m—well, nothing?” he said. “I don’t know.”

“But—I mean, he has to be here for you, right?” you questioned.

Jungkook’s phone weighed heavily in his pocket.

“He probably is,” he said.

“So, he stalked you all the way to London,” you noted. “I think we should start considering the possibility of you getting a restraining order against him, or—”

Jungkook whipped his head to face you. “Isn’t that—uh, a bit dramatic?”

Frowning, you propped yourself up on your elbows and turned to him. “He is stalking you, Jungkook.”

He looked away and brought his finger over the bedsheets. If Sid had sent him only that one video, perhaps Jungkook could have handled it quietly. But Sid had kept them coming.

And Jungkook had already tried it before: this method of not telling you and hoping to find a way out of a predicament that he’d allowed Sid to put him in. It hadn’t been successful. He had no intention of trying it again.

“To be honest,” he said, sitting up, “that is not the only thing he is doing.”

Your stomach clenched with something it had come to know very well over the past few days – pure dread.

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“He, um—he’s sending me things.”

“Oh, God.” You turned away from him, groaning. “Don’t tell me he’s sending you the body parts of people he’s stalked before.”

“N-no, that—no,” Jungkook said and then paused to snicker at the thought. “He’s just—he’s sending me videos.”

You did not feel relieved. The way he said it made it sound like it was not just videos. It sounded like it might as well have been severed limbs.

“What videos?” you asked reluctantly.

He hesitated before answering, hoping—almost irrationally—that he would find a way to summarise the videos for you in a way that would diminish their significance. But he was worried he’d make it worse instead. He didn’t want to casually mention them or act like it was not a big deal, only to hear your negative response. You’d think he was still incapable of realising what he was doing, you’d think he hadn’t changed—and he had. He was sure he had. But his hands were shaking as he tugged on the bedsheets and refused to look at you.

“Of—of me,” he finally admitted. “Of us hanging out together before this tour.”

“Oh.”

He did not like the thickness of the silence around you. He didn’t want this to turn into yet another problem. And it wasn’t—it was a continuous problem that he’d willingly brought on this tour.

Jungkook couldn’t stop blaming himself for everything he did with Sid, and now he was convinced that his guilt wouldn’t even make a difference. He’d tell you about this, and the videos would be too much, and he would not be enough.

You’d warned him you were afraid; he didn’t want to add more doubts to what already seemed like a hesitant decision. Of course, he believed in your relationship too much to think that you were willing to try again just for his benefit. He believed you wanted this, too. But he was also rational enough to understand that you couldn’t just wish for your relationship to work out this time, and it simply would. You had to work on that. And he was sure that these videos would hinder the progress you’ve already made.

He decided he didn’t want to talk to you about this as though he needed your help solving this issue. He wanted to tell you about it with a solution already in his mind.

“T-they’re not good,” he added. “But I—”

“Why is he sending them to you?” you interrupted.

He paused, rearranging his thoughts. He wondered if you were intentionally avoiding asking him to show you the videos, or if you did not want to see them. He was not sure which option he preferred.

“He’s, um, threatening to show them to you,” he said.

“Unless you do what?”

“Unless—” He paused again. “I—I don’t know, actually. I don’t think he wants me to do anything. He’s just taunting me. I tried to block the number, but I assume he has multiple disposable SIM cards or something because I keep—well, different unknown numbers keep sending me videos from the same… situations.”

You looked away, absentmindedly patting the pillows on the bed.

You were certain that Sid had a goal in mind, he just hadn’t told Jungkook about it yet.

“Well, what’s in those videos?” you asked.

Jungkook shut his eyes. He was sure of it now—he would have preferred it if you hadn’t asked about the contents of the videos, after all.

“We’re—we’re drunk in all of them,” he said, his tongue catching on the dryness of his mouth. “Just doing dumb shit. Shit that I thought I left in the past. I know I left it in the past, I’m just—but with Sid pulling it all out now, it feels like—it feels like I’m still there.”

You frowned, puzzled.

“But you’re not still there,” you pointed out.

“I’m not,” Jungkook said, but his voice sounded distant. “But it—you were always the one who made sure that Sid and I didn’t damage the band’s reputation, or—well, anything else. I’m sorry about that, by the way. I-I don’t want you to think that all that you’ve done was in vain, and I don’t want you to think I’m still the same—I know I’m not—but it feels like—”

“Jungkook,” you said, cutting him off by placing your hand on his shoulder.

His distress reminded you of the night he told you that Sid was in Manchester with you. He was breathing heavily, barely able to choose his words. He thought, clearly, that you were going to blame him for this. He thought he’d let you down.

“Show me,” you asked.

And he showed you—because he knew he had to. He took a deep breath, sat down next to you, and played the videos for you, starting from the very first one.

But like he had yesterday, he cut the video off just as his hands reached out for his dance partner and he wrapped one of his legs around their ankles.

“Wait,” you raised your eyes to Jungkook’s restless gaze, “what happens next?”

“I, um—” he paused, attempted to inhale, and forgot all his words.

He thought he showed you enough. He thought showing you the rest of the video was going to be bad. He hadn’t considered how bad it would be if he had to recap it himself.

“I flip this person on their back,” he said, forcing himself to continue. He was going to tell you everything, even if he had to rip his heart out to do it. “We, uh—we make out. Or try to. It’s, uh—it’s definitely too much. But we’re drunk. Then a security guard comes to tell us we can’t do that here. I then declare that we’re getting married, so he can, respectfully, get fucked. And all of us get escorted out of the club.”

“Ah,” you said. “You must have been really wasted.”

Your voice sounded disconnected somehow—like you hadn’t fully grasped that he was the person in the video.

Or, he thought in a brief moment of lightness, maybe you had grasped it, but it made no difference because it’s been so long.

But Jungkook couldn’t hold onto this hopeful thought for too long. He felt he deserved stronger adjectives.

“Is this it?” you asked after a moment. His phone screen had gone dark after he hadn’t pressed on anything else. “Is that all he—”

“No,” he said. “That’s, um—that’s only the first one he sent.”

Then he played you the three newest videos—the ones he’d just received earlier today after he turned his phone back on.

All the videos were from days that he could scarcely remember. Sid had filmed him dancing, arguing, screaming, engaging in other activities that would earn a community label if the video got publicised, and drinking. Alcohol was featured heavily in all the videos.

You maintained a neutral expression through the first few clips but finally frowned when you watched the third one. In it, Jungkook was having a heated argument with someone outside what appeared to be a nightclub—the only indication was a bright neon sign behind the two figures on the screen.

Jungkook was visibly agitated in the video, hurling all curses known to mankind—and some only known to animalkind—at a red-faced man whom you did not recognise. The man remained silent, swaying slightly on his feet, frowning more and more with each passing second.

You attempted to remember this moment, trying to place the street where the video was taken—you thought Sid had asked you to pick up Jungkook from somewhere around here. But as you watched it, you could not remember Jungkook harassing a seemingly random person. And then you realised that this likely wasn’t a random person, and Jungkook wasn’t the one harassing him.

Turning your head to look at him, you were surprised to see the resolute defeat on Jungkook’s face. He appeared to be waiting to be sentenced.

“He cut the video,” you said, looking back at his phone, “to make you look intentionally aggressive. This guy—he approached you at the bar, didn’t he?”

Jungkook only hummed. It took him another minute to relax his muscles so he could speak—by that time, the video had already ended, and he snickered bitterly.

“Yeah. He used a few pretty slurs, so I told him we should take it outside,” he said. “Right after the video ended, he actually threw a vodka bottle at my head. It didn’t hit me, but we got into a—a fight, and I cut myself on a shard. No stitches, but, um, it bled like a bitch.”

“Fuck, that’s—I-I remember you bleeding,” you said, looking away. You’d wrapped your scarf on his hand when you found him behind that club, on the street from the video, sometime later. He’d refused a hospital and you had not slept the whole night after you dropped him off at his house. “What was Sid doing while that was happening?”

“Well, he watched,” Jungkook said, locking his phone. “He watched and filmed, and now he’s trying to make it seem like I picked that fight.”

You quieted. The videos had made it very clear that Sid was crafting a narrative about Jungkook—to make him look like an ungrateful, aggressive, alcoholic womaniser. Clearly, he was creating Jungkook’s fictional image after himself, and you would have pointed out the irony if you weren’t so annoyed.

“I know it’s my fault,” Jungkook added. “I shouldn’t have allowed him to get under my skin like that, but—”

“How long ago was this?” you interjected.

“I—it—a while,” he said, worried that this was the wrong answer. “I can’t remember.”

“Were you in Rated Riot?” you asked, hoping to determine a more specific timeline, because understanding when the videos were taken might help you figure out what Sid wanted. But you also just wanted to keep asking Jungkook for technical details to keep him out of his own head.

“I think so,” Jungkook said. “Because—I’m trying to figure out why Sid chose to send me these specific videos since I’m sure he has a lot of other great ones, you know what I mean? So, why these?”

“Why?”

“I think it’s because he called you to come pick me up at the end of these nights,” he said with an unsettling hollowness behind his eyes. “And you—well, I don’t remember, but according to what Sid told me later, you never asked what we were doing. You just pulled me out of these situations… and brought me home. A-and now he wants to show you that—he wants you to know what we were doing. What I was doing.”

“Okay,” you said. “But it—it’s been ages.”

He seemed taken aback by the ease in your voice, and his surprise was crushing. You realised he was expecting you not to talk to him again now that you’ve seen the videos.

To Jungkook, that would have made sense.

For years, his self-worth depended on how he was perceived and whether he lived up to expectations. And he balanced between wanting to live up to very different expectations from very different people: Sid, on the one hand. You and his grandmother, on the other.

That was why he didn’t tell his grandmother that he was friends with Sid. It was why he didn’t tell you about all his failed attempts at making your relationship special. It was why he refused to admit to Sid that he still loved you.

And, ultimately, it was why he did not want to reminisce about the nights in Sid’s videos. Nights when he knew he was making mistakes, but he needed to escape from his thoughts too much to care.

Jungkook realised all that. He understood. But there was nothing he could do with the voices, screaming at him in his head. They were telling him that his friends had all turned to reasons why you broke up that first time. He turned them into those reasons. And now those reasons were right here, on his phone.

“I know. But I just—it feels like this is something I can’t run away from,” he said. “It feels like Sid is telling me that this is who I really am. That I’ll always fuck up in the end, and that I’ll die trying—and failing—to be someone better.”

You were shaking your head, and Jungkook shook his, too, to counter your refusal to agree with him.

“No, look, I think that Sid means to use this to, well, to humiliate us,” he insisted. “Or—or just you. Like, ‘see what he was doing? And you still took care of him.’ So you would—you would realise what I’m—what kind of person—and you would change your mind about me—and about—about this. And then...”

He could not find the end of his sentence, but you knew what this was. Jungkook excelled in most things, but he had a throbbing Achilles’ heel – it was his fear of disappointing the people who mattered most to him.

The first time you learned this about him was at his twenty-first birthday party. Minjun, already very drunk, had decided to make a toast and told everyone a story about when he and Jungkook were fourteen. Among all of Jungkook’s friends, Minjun was the only one who’d actually been to his house, and on that day, they were riding bicycles around Jungkook’s front yard with Jungkook and his cousins. Jungkook wanted to perform a trick and he wanted Minjun to record it to brag to Sid later. But as soon as he lifted the front wheel off the ground, he ended up in his grandmother’s azaleas.

The story at the birthday party ended there, with everyone politely laughing and clapping, but Jungkook gave you the rest of it later.

Apparently, his grandmother had warned him about the flowers in advance; she told him not to bike there. And he had. He’d done what she told him not to do. Really, it was because he wanted to outdo Sid, so this could have been another thing that Sid had ruined—but Jungkook couldn’t even get to that part. He was already defeated by the sheer force of his guilt for letting his grandmother down. He was devastated.

He said she hadn’t even yelled at him after she saw how grief-stricken he was. But he still replanted the whole garden and watered the shrubs every day.

And as you listened to Minjun’s story at that birthday party, you realised that even then, almost a decade later, Jungkook flinched every time his friend mentioned azaleas. And he would keep flinching, as you would see in years to come, whenever his grandmother would bring up her garden.

Jungkook never forgot his mistakes, and they all weighed heavily on him. He could only escape them when he was surrounded by people, their voices drowning out his own.

He thought no one knew—he took a paradoxical solace in the belief that only he and the voices in his head knew about what went on inside him—but you’ve seen it over the years.

“No—but these things don’t make you a terrible person,” you said. It didn’t feel like enough, but the thoughts in your head were fast and frail—you could not find one to settle on.

Still, Jungkook looked stunned.

“I—they don’t?” he asked—with a genuine confusion that broke your heart.

“Jungkook,” you said, the edges of your voice desperate.

“No, I—I know,” he said, averting his gaze. “I know. But—really, this is my fault. I did that. I went out with him. It’s—”

“Your fault was staying with Sid for so long,” you interrupted. “That’s your only fault. But realising what was wrong with these people that you surrounded yourself with—that—that’s not wrong. That’s good. You’ve come a long way from the days in those videos.”

He heard you. But a sudden memory still resurfaced in his head: Taehyung had talked to him in the hotel corridor in Amsterdam. He had accused him of fooling around with you and reminded him that your relationship affected the whole band. Jungkook had told him he was serious. He wasn’t fooling around.

He’d meant it—but the bet had been ongoing. However much he wished it not to be, it was fucking ongoing.

And now Jungkook was all the more aware of the thin line between your decision to try this again with him, and the absolute recklessness of this choice. Had he come a long way? Was he different? Or was he really just running away from who he really was?

It would affect the whole band, Taehyung had said.

If he wasn’t good enough for you, he would ruin everything.

“But look how long it took me,” he said with a frustrated sigh. “I can’t—I can’t erase all the shit I did just because I suddenly decided to be a different person.”

“You can’t erase it,” you said, the conviction in your voice rivalling his anxiety, “but you can learn and move on from it.”

He shook his head again. “How can I do that when Sid won’t let me move on?”

“You can do it by accepting these videos as lessons,” you said. “But leaving everything in them in the past. You can do it by not letting Sid get to you anymore. I mean, you’re already doing it. You showed me the videos, which was what Sid threatened you with. You took away everything he was holding against you. You’re doing okay, Jungkook.”

He looked down and swallowed.

He wanted to believe he was okay so much. But there were so many weights on his chest and he could not shake them off. He could not escape them. He could not even pretend they were not there.

This was the reason, he knew, why he dreaded being alone and inevitably recalling every single time in his life when he could have been better, but wasn’t. When he could have been more, but chose not to. When he could have chosen you, but didn’t.

He longed for you in a way that he hadn’t longed for anything in his life before—so much that it hurt to think and his whole body felt grey and tense—but he’d already let you down. He’d let himself down.

“I hurt you,” he said after a minute, covering his face with his hands. “And, fuck, I don’t—I’m not saying this to guilt-trip you into forgiving and forgetting everything. I’m just fucking—I’m so fucked up. I love you more than anything in my life, but I-I can’t spend a single minute by myself without thinking about how fucking fucked up I am. And I’ve done so much stupid fucking shit. I don’t want it to hurt you any more than it already fucking has. And I know you’re the last person who should be comforting me about this. I’m just—I can’t get over those—”

You wrapped your arms around his shoulders and pressed your chest against his, forcing him to still in your embrace and finally stop speaking.

After a breathless minute, he finally inhaled and you felt him lower his hands from his face and tentatively slide them around your waist, his grip tightening as he buried his face in the crook of your neck.

“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered. It was still his fear talking, you could feel it pressing against your chest as you pulled him closer until you couldn’t breathe, either. “I don’t think I can ever be enough for—”

“You’re you, Jungkook,” you cut him off. “That’s enough for me.”

He let out a shaky breath and closed his eyes; you felt his lashes flutter against the side of your neck.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

You shook your head against his shoulder. “I love you.”

He held you and breathed you in for an amount of time that no clock could not keep up with, but it still felt insufficient. And when you pulled back slightly to look at him, he pressed his lips to yours in a kiss that expressed everything that words could not.

“Thank you,” he added. “For everything.”

You kissed him back—not to say you’re welcome, or no problem. You kissed him to tell him that you had finally made a choice. You were here. And you were staying.

He understood all of it as his lips pressed to yours, as your tongues touched and your breaths mixed together, as his hands settled around your waist as if they’d never been elsewhere. But you sensed his nervous heartbeat against your chest, even though he tried to fight against it.

“Promise me,” he whispered against your lips, “that you’ll tell me if I let you down again.”

Gently—but swiftly—you pulled away.

“I’ll tell you right now,” you said, the firmness in your tone contrasting with the tenderness of your touch as you held a hand to his chest and another one on the side of his face. “You let me down when you put yourself down. We make mistakes, we own up to them, we learn from them. We try too hard, we don’t always succeed, but we get through it together. That’s what we do. And we talk to each other about it all.”

The second you stopped speaking, he pulled you to himself with enough force to knock your breath out of your lungs. You rested your head against his, your heart pounding to the beat of his pulse.

“We’re very co-dependent,” he whispered and the tension in your chest finally eased at his light tone.

“Yes,” you stated. “It’s how we are.”

He snickered and lingered some more in your arms. You rested your hands on his back, rubbing gentle circles and steadily calming down his mind, his heart, and the entirety of his tired soul.

“Maggie, um—she took a picture of us in Amsterdam,” you said. “Did you know?”

He furrowed his eyebrows but allowed you to pull away as he thought about this.

“Wh—oh, in the bathtub?” he asked.

“Yeah. You’ve seen it?”

“Yeah, she sent it to me a while ago,” he said. And, overwhelmed by the honesty of the moment, he added, “it’s beautiful.”

That wasn’t a secret—he’d named his newest song after the moment you’d shared in that bathroom—but he still questioned if he should have said this right now. He could imagine your shock about the picture—that was why he chose not to show it to you when Maggie sent it to him.

But your expression remained gentle, almost pleased.

“Yeah, I liked it, too,” you said. “Well, after I got over the fact that we left the fucking door open.”

He chuckled softly, the sound straining against the cuts and bruises in his chest.

“But anyway, my point is, focus on things like that,” you continued. “That’s who you are. You’re not a video from fuck knows how long ago. Sid doesn’t own you, and he does not control you.”

Jungkook swallowed and lowered his gaze. He nodded his head a few times, but you still started to feel uneasy—was this enough? Or was Sid’s presence in his head still heavier than yours?

You looked around for a distraction, and quickly found one, partially hidden under a stack of cookies.

“We had a film to watch,” you said, pulling your laptop out and accidentally knocking down some of the candy towers he had built on the bed.

Jungkook glanced up and caught a bag of chocolates right before it hit him on the arm. “Oh—w-we had. But how’s your head?”

You had completely forgotten it existed at all, which certainly alleviated your headache. The pure adrenaline from being so close to him probably contributed, too.

“It’s good,” you said, opening your laptop and turning around to adjust the pillows on the bed for more comfort. “I’m great.”

“I still think you should get proper food,” he said, and it struck you that this pattern of worrying, comforting, and taking care of each other in turns was truly a regular occurrence between the two of you.

“I’m fine,” you said. “We’ve got chocolate and more cookies than we should be allowed to eat. I want to live out my nine-year-old fantasy and my dentist’s worst nightmare.”

He smiled at that, but still hesitated. “Okay, but—well, maybe you would rather sleep?”

“I—alright.” You pushed your laptop aside and crossed your arms over your chest. “Now it’s starting to sound like you don’t want to watch this with me.”

“I do,” he said, coming to sit across from you so he could push the laptop back towards you. “I’m just—”

“I’m fine,” you repeated. “I want to be here.”

Hearing that made him happy—the jump-off-buildings kind of happy, where he was glad to have you here or else he really would’ve had no way to keep it all inside himself—but he seemed to still wait for something. The air in the room was still thick with everything that you’d talked about tonight.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “We don’t have to do this—after everything.”

“I want to do this,” you said. And then, responding to the doubts he chose not to voice, you added, “I want to do everything with you.”

He watched as you leaned over your laptop to set up the film across the bed from him. He hadn’t realised he could feel so suffocated from the butterflies in his chest—his stomach could no longer contain them—and he was worried about opening his mouth in case they would try to escape. They’d fill this whole room with their fluttering wings, and the two of you would simply not fit.

“I love you,” he breathed out.

You raised your head and smiled at him—easily, effortlessly. Like you’ve done countless times before.

“I love you, too,” you said.

There wasn’t a building tall enough, he decided. Your voice resonated in his pulse and as long as his heart kept beating, he would always land on the ground perfectly safe.

“Alright,” you said, interrupting his very productive Staring and Smiling. “Let’s watch the film.”

“Alright.”

He returned to his side of the bed and managed to settle on the very edge of it. He watched the paused screen of your laptop and twiddled his thumbs. It took him half a minute to notice you were watching him.

“What?” he asked then.

“You’re comfortable?” you questioned. “Your grandma is going to be disappointed if you tell her that you watched the film but couldn’t even see the screen.”

He looked away. “To be fair, my grandma would be disappointed if she found out I had you in my room and I was across the bed from you.”

You tried everything to suppress your smile, but it crept onto your face in blatant defiance and chose to stay there.

“Well, what’s stopping you from coming closer?” you asked.

“My heart, I think. It might really stop this time.”

You laughed, and he was forced to acknowledge that he did not need to be right next to you for his heart to stop. All it took was this.

He wasn’t sure if he was ever going to recover from the fact that he could finally do this again—sit on the bed with you, watch films together, listen to you laugh, kiss you, tell you he loved you and hear that you loved him, too. And no one could text him and wake him up from this dream.

“Come here,” you said, raising your arm over the pillows to make space for him by your side.

He was beaming. Neither Sid, nor any voice inside his head could ever taint this moment or take it away from him.

Jungkook scooted closer to you, seemingly determined to make you regret your invitation. He immediately draped a hand over your waist and a leg over yours, his body warm, his touch inescapable. You started the film on your laptop, but doubted, suddenly, if you’d be able to watch anything with him so close.

One of your hands had come to rest on the back of his head, gently teasing the strands of his hair as he lied on his side next to you, almost half of his body thrown over yours. His fingers toyed with the edges of your hoodie, and he kept humming an unrecognisable tune under his breath. You weren’t sure if he even realised it, because every time you glanced at him, especially during your favourite parts of the film, he was diligently watching the screen. The only times he looked up at you was if you stopped playing with his hair.

Then, once the film ended about an hour and a half later, Jungkook pulled back a little to be able to see you in his dark room.

If not for the tapping of his leg against yours, he would have looked like an ancient sculpture with the contours of his face illuminated by the glow of your laptop screen. It felt exceptional, somehow, to be able to witness him like this, and you came to the same realisation as you had in Stockholm while walking down empty streets at night with him, and in Amsterdam, when he lied on the hotel bed next to you. You realised how effortlessly poetic he looked. How otherworldly.

And you realised you loved him far more than words could describe.

Suddenly, his phone buzzed.

His expression darkened, but he did not move to check who’d texted. He was determined to stay in the dream he was having.

Within seconds, before either of you could say half of a word about the film you’d just watched, his phone buzzed three more times.

Finally, he exhaled. He did not need to look at his phone; you both knew it was Sid.

“I told Minjun about this earlier today,” Jungkook said, reaching over to grab the device from the other side of the bed. “He thinks I should ignore him, but I’m not sure if that’ll work. I, um—I had hoped Sid would forget about the bet and just leave me in peace, but he saw how bothered I was, and that brought him joy. He never forgets anything that brings him joy. And this is something else that—”

“Reply to him,” you said.

“I—hmm?” He blinked. “What?”

You shrugged your shoulders. He appeared even more perplexed by your apparent nonchalance.

“He’s clearly anticipating it,” you explained. “Text him that I’ve already seen those videos. Add a heart.”

Jungkook was not sure what to make of this. Last night, you had tried to stop him from doing the very thing you were now suggesting.

But then he looked down at his phone in his hands—several new notifications about video attachments from unknown numbers were on his screen—and he thought he understood what had changed. He could see how your responses to Sid had been building up to this point. The bet was just one of many instances, a small drop in an endless ocean of shit that Sid came up with and encouraged. All of it had brought you and Jungkook to this moment: with the videos on his phone looming over him.

Sid may not have been the sole cause, but he had reinforced Jungkook’s already prominent reliance on external validation and his subsequent isolation anxiety. He even played a significant role in exacerbating these issues. Jungkook was aware of it, even if he couldn’t help it. And you were aware of it, too.

While he wasn’t sure how deep inside of his mind you could see, Jungkook looked at the determination in your eyes, and he understood. You were on his side, and after everything you’d talked about tonight, you were angry.

He considered your suggestion again.

“Won’t that antagonise him further?” he asked cautiously.

“Sure it will,” you replied simply. “But what else can he do?”

“I’m not sure I want to find out.”

“Well, he wants you to react,” you said. “He’ll continue to spam you with everything he has in his gallery unless you show him that he’s got nothing to win. You said he’s taunting you, he’s threatening to show me the videos. Well, I’ve seen them. He can’t do anything about that now.”

The more Jungkook thought about this, the more his heart rate increased.

“But then,” he said because he’s known Sid for most of his life, “he’ll find a different way to get under my skin.”

You shook your head. You were convinced that the only reason why Sid got so far, why he had such a tight grip on Jungkook’s thoughts, was because Jungkook allowed it.

“He won’t have that much power,” you said, “if you won’t give it to him.”

Jungkook was still hesitant—his habit of blindly following Sid’s lead was very hard to kill—but he unlocked his phone.

“Alright,” he said. “But—okay, I guess he might not believe me if I tell him you already saw the videos. So, what if I—”

“I’ll text him.”

His stomach sank in horror.

“You—no,” he disagreed, panicking as he got up on his knees on the bed. “No, no—w-we don’t even know these numbers he’s using.”

“I don’t need them,” you said, taking out your phone. “We know it’s Sid. We’ll strip him of all his courage by exposing the anonymity he believes he has.”

Jungkook watched you in helpless awe—as though you were doing something truly impressive rather than simply sending a text message. He leaned in closer to be able to get a better view of your phone screen as you selected Sid’s contact (saved as “ASS #1” on your phone—with Jude following as “ASS #2,” of course), and typed: “I already know about the videos, thank you for thinking of me 🖤”

Then, you put your phone away and turned to Jungkook. He was still biting his lip, evidently doubting and regretting at least half of his life.

“There’s a second part, you know,” you said.

“Hm?” He glanced at the black screen of your laptop. “Of the film?”

“Mhmm. He’s escaping from LA this time. Do you want to watch it?”

Jungkook felt a little dizzy. This was over, then. You sent the text, and that was it.

He was forced to accept that even though he had cut his ties with Sid, he could still feel the phantom grips of Sid’s collar around his neck. He wasn’t sure if he would have believed in himself enough to send one text and be done with it. He needed a deeper provocation—like Sid’s descriptions of you before he punched him—or someone actively supporting him all through it—like Minjun and Taehyung, when he gave his Katana up.

And you, he thought. He was thinking of you during all those times.

“I—well, yeah,” he said finally. “Let’s watch it.”

You nodded and returned to your laptop to prepare the second film. You had your back turned to him, so he could not see the slight tremor in your hands. You did not enjoy texting Sid, but he was using you to get back at Jungkook, and you were tired of sitting down and taking it.

“Do you think,” Jungkook said, leaning back against the pillows, “I should get an anaconda tattooed on my stomach?”

Your relief was so strong that you didn’t even realise you had started to laugh. Kurt Russell’s character had a very prominent shirtless scene in the film, and you had been waiting for Jungkook to mention it.

“That was a cobra,” you said. “And no.”

“I think it—wait, why not?” He leaned forward to look at you, offence prominent on his face. “It looked cool on Snake.”

“You’re not cool enough to pull it off,” you replied. He raised his eyebrows, and you shook your head to hide your smile and to emphasise your point. “It just wouldn’t work.”

He nodded slowly, his lips twisted ironically. “Oh, I see, okay. So, what would work for me, then?”

“Maybe a cute little rabbit.”

“A rabb—oh, sure.” Crossing his arms over his chest and pouting, he looked very much like the tattoo you were imagining. “Go ahead and mock me.”

You squinted your eyes. “A rabbit with a lip ring?”

“Mhmm.” He tilted his chin up. “I will get a cobra tattoo out of spite now.”

Snickering, you hit the spacebar on your keyboard and started the film.

“Let’s watch the second part before you decide rabbit or cobra,” you said.

“I’ve already deci—”

Your phone vibrated on the bed, cutting him off. A familiar anxious shiver ran down your spine.

You glanced at him, and just as before, the two of you quickly came to the same conclusion, and the radiant smiles on your faces suddenly clouded again.

Breathing a little heavier, you paused the film after less than a minute and picked up your phone.

There was a new text message from Sid. He had sent you a link to what appeared to be an Instagram post. His message underneath it read, “Okay :) and do you know about this? x”

You had a feeling what was coming even before you clicked the link; your subconsciousness had made the connection before it should have realistically been possible.

The link directed you to Sid’s profile and the picture he’d posted four minutes ago: it was the black-and-white bathtub shot that Maggie had shown you at the bar last night. Sid had captioned it, “so happy for you!”

Jungkook cursed softly on the bed behind you.

You were not sure if you were breathing.

“Fuck,” Jungkook said again. “He—he must have got it from my phone. Maggie—she sent me the picture, and Sid—”

“This piece of fucking shit,” you swore. Your hold on your phone remained firm, despite the device shaking in your frustrated hands. “He’s definitely not just taunting you, he’s targeting us both.”

The Rated Riot fans knew who Sid was, they saw the picture. Jungkook glanced at your screen once more as you clicked on the likes. They were pouring in too quickly, and the total number—which Sid had not made private, of course—could not refresh in time.

Neither you, nor Jungkook said anything. Neither of you drew any obvious conclusions. Simply watching as the image spread online was already enough.

People said a picture was worth a thousand words, and you wondered about the value of this particular one.

You hadn’t even talked to the label; you’d barely talked to each other about your relationship. How would this look for you? What would you do?

“This is what he wants, then?” you asked, staring at your phone. The usernames on the screen blurred together. “For us to break up? He’s that miserable?”

Jungkook felt a knot straining in his stomach, and he could not respond.

“And why do it like this?” you questioned further. “What the fuck is wrong with him, aside from the obvious? What does he gain from any of this?”

Jungkook thought he knew what it was. He could feel it that night when he handed Sid the keys to the Katana. But he hoped—he really fucking hoped—that Sid would get over it. He got his way, after all.

“He won the bet,” Jungkook said, “but I did not lose anything. He can’t stand the thought that I’m—h-he needs me to know that I’m not better than him.”

You groaned. “Fuck—fuck him. Fuck his immature shit, and his fucking ego. Whatever it is that he wants, he’s not going to get it. He’s already done enough.”

You got up from the bed, and Jungkook watched you move around his room with a quiet purpose that he could not decipher.

“What…” he cleared his throat, “do you mean?”

“I don’t know yet,” you said, and your pacing increased. “But we’ll figure it out. He’s not getting his fucking way.”

Jungkook felt a little foolish as he asked, “you’re not mad?”

You stopped in the middle of the room and looked at the uncertain arch of his brows, the slight pull of his lips. You wondered if you would have had it in you not to strangle Sid if he was in the room with you right now. Really, Jungkook wouldn’t even have to do anything. Maybe dig a hole later.

“At you?” you asked, returning to the bed. “Why would I be mad at you? I—I’m angry in general. But I think Sid would have found some kind of a picture of us and posted it anyway. At least we managed to get on his nerves a little first.”

You sat down beside him, and he ran his fingers through his hair, half-nodding, half-shaking his head.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he decided. “We might have, uh, actually pushed him into doing this without thinking it through. He didn’t even tag us in the picture, right? And I mean, I know it’s us, but we’re completely in the dark, and—”

He stopped talking when you abruptly jumped up, scrambling to unlock your phone again.

“W-what is it?” he asked, alarmed once more.

You returned to Sid’s profile, clicked on the picture, and refreshed the post.

He hadn’t tagged you.

Jungkook was easily recognisable in the picture if you expected to see him there. However, it was likely that besides Maggie and Luna—who already knew it was you because Maggie had said so—no one else could identify the other person in the bathtub.

“Shit, you’re right,” you said, your heart speeding in your chest. “He didn’t tag us. If I hadn’t texted him, he might have posted the picture later, after thinking it through better, and—but he hadn’t. Fuck, this is—we can fix this. I—oh, we will fix this, and I’ll fucking make sure this is the last game he plays with us.”

Right away, just from the tone of your voice alone, Jungkook knew that Sid had lost. He’d lost and he didn’t even know it yet.

You hadn’t broken up. You were together—seemingly even more together now than you were hours ago, when you’d first entered his room.

Finally, Jungkook exhaled in staggering relief.

The two of you had already won.

chapter title credits: normandie, “blood in the water”

prev ○ next

[weepingtalecowboy]

Ghost Dreamwalker wind au

Fanfic prompt: Considering that wind got his ability to see ghosts in a dream

What if in order to see ghosts in real life he has developed the method of livid-sleepwalking (which essentially means that the person has their eyes open and a bit of processing ability but still is functionally asleep and does extra weird shit)

And the chain got the “joy” to experience wind at his most deranged

Like Time is sleeping together with Malon when suddenly something scratches the door from outside

Opens it up and then wind just wakes him up with shit like :

“It’s... under the river, where the stars can’t swim,’

‘You have to burn the red thread before it knots, or the moon will forget to rise

He wants his face back and I am afraid…umh..no good”

Then before time even gets the chance to process the words he just heard wind is already between both of them and not waking back up

He knew nothing about the subject next day

But then it just kept happening with everyone while Wind was (they know now) sleepwalking

Legend gets his lost lovers entire back story from Wind (and he is also have a crisis over it because how the hell did wind get Marin’s name right her dad's name and why the hell does he know about the whale god)

Wild gets “HIS” backstory from Wind while Carrying him on his back and not being capable of giving him to someone else

He hasn’t slept well that night

Wind always looks like a doll when he is busy with terrorizing everyone and it makes him more cryptic

When four hears wind continuously tell people that his shadow is kinda gone because of his mirror

He was starting to think that maybe

Just maybe wind isn’t just making stuff up while only half lucid

[auntie-social-acab]

Two more women have come forward accusing Neil Gaiman of sexual assault.

It is very difficult for anyone to come forward about sexual assault. It can ruin your life to say “this person assaulted me” when you’re both just normal citizens. When you accuse a celebrity, you’re put under a proton microscope rather than just a regular one.

Anyone who comes forward about sexual assault is disbelieved from the get go. You are suddenly guilty until proven innocent. Different things are said about women than are said about men, but at the core it is all about disbelief and the court of public opinion just doesn’t think you were actually harmed.

Victims are also forced to tell their story over and over again, and often must undergo painful and intrusive examinations, all of which only causes more trauma.

A few weeks ago, I found this comment on reddit while looking at a thread for celebrity rumors:

Screenshot discussing one user being happy that Neil Gaiman is writing for Doctor Who. Another user expresses concern about seeing Neil’s name because they believed he would be accused of sexual assault, and then the final comment by u/elliegriezler: unfortunately, yes, him too. A friend of a friend stay d overnight in his house and he warned her he may wander on Ambien (note: a sleep drug that does cause actual sleepwalking, sleep eating, and sleep impulse buying in a lot of people). She woke up to find him in her room and she didn’t go into specifics, but she was upset and implied that he was groping her. She didn’t want to hurt her career so she didn’t share it publicly. I’m just waiting for something worse to eventually come out about him. Don’t pin your hopes on him being a squeaky clean guy. There’s another comment about his ex wife Amanda Palmer who is also known for odd behavior and liking very young looking “boys” around her. This thread is 184 days old.

This situation is very sad and very upsetting. I hadn’t held out much hope after the initial reporting, even if the podcast it was reported on may have their own agenda. I said to my bff @goblynn whom I’ve known for over two decades, that even if Gaiman isn’t guilty of rape, there’s no way to have him come out of this looking good. He preys on young women and uses his celebrity and friendships with other celebrities to get what he wants.

We’ve discussed how now, in light of these accusations, there are parts of his books that I’ve read and at the time said to myself, “wow, that’s an odd way to write that.” Of course at the time, I figured it was a way he wanted us to see things and not how he feels. Ha! Yes, that’s a sarcastic ha!

Anyway, I feel like this is just the beginning. I would HOPE that Gaiman makes a more complete statement and offers some sort of recompense to his victims. I would hope that he gets the help he needs. I hope this isn’t swept under the rug and forgotten about just because we actually do like his work.

It’s a sad day. It’s okay to be upset. You can be upset and still support the victims at the same time.

[fluideli123]

Sonadow Fic Rec

Okay, before you jump down to the masterpieces listed below, I just wanted to state this:

These authors have given this phenomenal content for free, baked with time and effort. I have never once ignored this, hence why I try and comment on each and every one of these fics. However, my energy and ability to be verbose differs day to day. Some of these fics I have not given proper comments for, despite this, I will be on it the moment I can be. In the time being, (once I am able to find my comments on each of these fics) I will be sharing my adoration for them further in other posts (and most likely link back to this one).

With that being said, please, PLEASE take your time to check each of these fics out. If they're not your cup of tea? Valid! But hands down I have never dedicated myself to making a fic rec like this until now. But I MUST share and spread these works, they are much too dear to me not to, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

(All fics are listed by order saved in my bookmarks, not in the order read)

tangled threads and bite-marked shoulders by @rubyiiiusions

Words: 32,287 | Series | Complete

Shadow hissed in pain. The laser had just grazed him, but it still stung, and he instinctively gripped the wound it left on his arm. “You dare-” He stopped. The laser hadn’t hit him. In fact, it had struck Sonic, right on his lower left arm. So why did his forearm feel like it just got shot? He whipped around, fear climbing up his throat, and he suddenly became hyper-aware of something new. It was like a sixth sense, feeling the confusion that emitted from Sonic’s fur in waves as if it was his own. “What did you do?!” Shadow snarled. or, eggman accidentally soulbinds shadow and sonic, and no one has any idea how to undo it.

Sleepwalking by Tirainy

Words: 22,117 | Complete

'There is a strong arm curled around his torso, the appendage keeping him close to its owner, whose warm breath is ghosting over the back of his neck. Sonic is sure he went to bed alone the previous night, but he isn't worried about the intruder. After all, this isn't the first time this has happened…'

Secret Admirer by @trenchcoat-gecko

Words: 24,313 | Complete

Sonic understood well what it meant to be loved. He was a world-famous hero, after all; his presence never went unnoticed. For the most part, he lavished in that attention, he soaked it in and encouraged it. But not romantic attention. So, when the blue blur found himself falling in love? Well, the prospect was rather daunting, no matter how easy Amy had made it out to be. So maybe, just maybe, he should just take the easy way out...

Rose Drops Series by @magicstormfrostfire

Words: 122,489 | Series | Complete

Love, Intuition, and a little bit of magic ensues as Amy sends Sonic and Shadow on an unforgettable adventure.

Wolfboy by @trenchcoat-gecko

Words: 73,856 | Complete

World-famous monster hunter Shadow the Hedgehog has a job to do. It doesn't take long for the one-shot wonder to realize that this job won't be as simple as he'd expected: a small town, rumors of a lone werewolf, and a handsome, green-eyed, chronically-injured casanova who manages to worm his way into Shadow's heart... What starts off as a simple job turns out to be something much more life-changing.

Blizzard Bedfellows by @magicstormfrostfire

Words: 21,294 | Complete

When a rare blizzard takes over the island, Sonic is on the run to make sure a certain angry loner is safe and sound. Y-you know, because...uh that's what heroes do.

We never met but can we have a cup of coffee or something? by @whitejungle

Words: 3,630 | Complete

It's been almost two months since Sonic lost someone he didn't even know, but he can't stop thinking about it.

Clean Slate by nottheweirdest

Words: 155,880 | Complete | Note: Squeal pending and I am cheering you on author!! Whatever you decide I am excited to support you!!

Shadow has lost himself before. He knows what it's like to straddle the line between reality and false memories, but this time, it’s Sonic whose memory has vanished. A premeditated set of circumstances and an accidental injury leave Sonic with no memory of who he is, his life, or more importantly, his painful history with Shadow. It’s up to Shadow to remind the hero who he is in the midst of a global outbreak. It’s a chance for redemption. It’s a chance to right the wrongs of the past. It’s a clean slate.

say i reckon (i love you, for a millisecond) by @redamancering

Words: 30,205 | Complete

There’s a hand on his shoulder, barely making contact. A red gauntlet glows around the wrist. Sonic blinks, the pain having evaporated so fast he feels almost weightless. “Shadow?” Shadow’s breathing heavily. “Problem.” The retrieval of the ancient tech Shadow (and Sonic, in tow) has been sent to uncover takes a turn for the worst. In this case, the “worst” means… becoming physically and inextricably linked to each other. For the foreseeable future. OR: Metaphysical handcuffs, and general gay buffoonery.

Judge my sins, not my feelings by yellothebeeloved

Words: 228,479 | Complete | Note: Possible one-shots pending from the author for the series, I am here to support you author!! What ever you decide I'm here for it!

Maybe he's not meant to touch. It's the newest excuse he thought of in hopes that he could prolong the game a little more; a careful ruse to enjoy the bittersweet torture of seeing the days pass them by, while he pretends he doesn't seek azure blue whenever he's restless. At first, all he wanted to do was watch: but now the desire to touch, to have, to affect is at a point where he's not sure whether reaching for Sonic would truly be fruitless. He wonders that especially when Sonic's eyes light up upon seeing him. When he corners Shadow, when he invades his space and he touches and takes and then excuses it by calling it a fight. Shadow truly wonders then: if only he was brave enough to reach out, what would his grip find? Loose stars or a battle-worn body? Standing up, he glances at Sonic again, whose eyes have now met his own. There's something heavy in the eye contact, something Shadow doesn't dare name. Neither of them say anything, and yet Sonic's eyes move away from him again, like they did. Shadow warps away, hiding from the stars once more.

Child of Prophecy by @trenchcoat-gecko

Words: 139,321 | Completed

On the night the Mobius Castle was ransacked, the Queen received a prophecy. “One of three will not cry; send him down the river, for you can only save your kingdom if he does not grow up royal.”

Coming Home by nottheweirdest

Words: 55,740 | Completed

Shadow's life has been full of mistakes, some worse than others, but admitting his unrequited feelings to Sonic tops the list. He's spent the better part of a decade ruminating on his regret and hiding from feelings he couldn't bear to face. He never thought he'd see Sonic again, and he told himself that was for the best. Until now. At the bequest of his former rival, and in an attempt to finally get closure, Shadow has returned to Central City. The reason? Sonic the Hedgehog is marrying Amy Rose. And Shadow is invited.

[arachnixe]

One Final Homecoming

The rain falls hot on my skin, landing with a sizzling hiss whenever it manages to dodge the brim of my hat and find a patch left exposed by my dress. The burns heal immediately, the spell an automatic reflex I don’t consciously register anymore.

I don’t sneer at the people hurrying through the rain, shielding themselves from the downpour with umbrellas and coats. I don’t show my contempt for what I can only conceptualize as a form of cowardice, knowing the rain would happily embrace them if they let down their guard. The water would glide smoothly over their skin with a gentle caress, a “you belong here and I love you” that stands in stark contrast to the downpour’s efforts to scour me away.

I don’t sneer. I keep myself composed. My mask of indifference remains flawless. The world may reject me, but I rejected it first, didn’t I? Being born here came with certain terms and conditions I found disagreeable, and so I made myself its enemy.

It’s in the spirit of this mutual animosity that I stand here right now, in front of an unmarked office building in a city that sleepwalks a cancerous expansion of itself. My hand drifts of its own accord into my bag seeking the reassuring touch of the seed I carry. It’s still there—smooth, warm, pulsing gently—the beating heart of something altogether foreign, yet not a heart at all, and maybe not quite a seed either, but rather a key, and if there’s anything in this world or any other that a witch understands, it’s keys.

Time’s wheel turns, as do the wheels within and without. I turn the mind’s eye inward to watch. I raise my eyes skyward to see. At last the inner aligns with the outer. Above and below, a moment clicks into place. I press my hand to a locked door and push it gently open.

The security guards inside are unprepared for me. “The Anomaly” is their name for me, and they shout the epithet while drawing guns. Their bullets splatter across my clothes, leaving even less of an impression than the raindrops, and it has been a very long time indeed since mere weather could divert my path. I pluck their threads and discard the rest—without much gentleness, I must confess—as I proceed to the elevators.

Their computer networks would deny me access to the lower floors if I asked permission, so I do not. “Down” is the most natural direction for a thing to move anyway, and it takes little persuasion to coax this little box where it wants to be. Down, down, down below the surface of this world, I pass alongside the city’s veins of sewage and lightning, poisoned air and poison dreams.

Real resistance makes itself known down below. This building’s ideas have strong roots down here, where people in stark suits spin a web of ontology to catch and contain, sneering their contempt of me. I let the mask fall. I am no moth, mercurial and unaware, easily misdirected to get ensnared by their traps. I dance electric across the apocalypse they’d weave for me, high voltage burning my entrance and exit through their collective consciousness.

I have even less gentleness to spare for these agents than I did the guards above. They collapse, mindsblood painting the walls in crackling infrablack.

A stairwell—less accessible than most, requiring the right eyes to even see it—takes me down to the bottom floor. There, the root office. In the office, a table. On the table, a briefcase. Above it all, a fluorescent light flickers.

I shove the table aside and get to digging. When a thing is meant never to be unlocked, one may need to carve a keyhole. Sometimes this means using one’s bare hands to claw through carpet and concrete. I do as I must, working quickly and ignoring the arrival of my executioner.

The bullet she puts in my head is made of realer stuff than mere lead, and I die almost immediately. Not much time left, then, but enough to reach into my bag, extract the key, and offer it a single kiss. I plant it and suture the building’s wound with the guards’ threads.

“It’s over,” my executioner informs me as if she believes me unaware that I’ve already died. I offer my most withering smile, one I’m quite sure will eventually kill her, before laying myself down to rest. My curse rattles her enough to command that concrete be poured here, filling the root office and sealing me in, as though I were radioactive waste, safe as long as I can be sequestered away indefinitely.

She will survive my smile for a decade or so. Long enough, I think, to see the strange new roots growing upward through the building, throbbing with the lifeblood of something truly alien to her reality. A fine curse, I think, to be the only one aware of corruption gripping the nexus of her life’s work.

My bones will rest easy, nourishing the world that is to come.

[wannab-urs]

Ravage

Pairing: Ezra (Prospect) x f!Reader (in the role of Venetia)

Word Count: 1.6k

Summary: “Oh birdie… I could just eat you.” OR Saltburn-style hate as consumption

Warnings: Weird vibes, period/menstruation smut, bloodplay and blood consumption, weird classism stuff, biting, fingering, oral f!receiving

A/N: Inspired by, but not a one for one recreation of, the Saltburn vampire scene between Ollie and Venetia. It’s a little combo of both scenes between them that take place outside the mansion + some details I thought would make it more interesting. Oh and I skipped the ED stuff.  Thanks to @beskarandblasters and @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin for letting me yell about this fic

Ezra Masterlist | Main Masterlist | AO3 | Kofi

You’d left your room in a near daze, wandering the halls of your family’s estate barefoot and in your thin nightdress. A wraith speared through by the moonlight, flitting from corridor to corridor until you ended up outside. You settled on a bench just below the guest room window and gazed out toward the labyrinth. It felt, often, as if your mind were trapped in that hedge maze. Circling, wandering, endlessly lost. 

“Birdie?” 

You nearly topple off the bench, a scream getting tangled in your throat and falling in a pathetic whimper from your lips. 

“Fucking hell, you scared me.”

Ezra, your brother’s friend, steps out of the shadows. He pops his knee out and puts his hands on his hips, eyeing you. 

“Apologies, little bird. I feared you might be sleepwalking.” 

You give the man a withering glare. His way of speaking seems to come naturally to him, though from anyone else you’d swear it was some sort of performance. Perhaps a mockery of high society or the educated class. 

“I just wanted to look at the moon. It’s nearly full. You know what that means?” You turn your gaze to the sky and draw your bottom lip into your mouth. 

“Can’t say that I do. Enlighten me.” 

You flick your eyes to him without dropping your chin. “We’re all about to lose our minds.” 

Ezra stares at you a moment, the blonde patch in his hair nearly glowing in the light, and a deep chuckle suddenly bubbles from his chest. You join him in his laughter, even though you think he’s making fun of you. He goes quiet again, staring at you. 

“You must be cold,” he intones, stripping out of his plush robe – provided by your family, of course, so really it’s your robe. He’s nearly naked underneath, broad chest bared to the moonlight, bulge in his briefs at your eye level. 

“I’m coldblooded. We’re all coldblooded. Haven’t you noticed?” Your voice holds a note of disdain – for him or your family, you’re not sure – but you take the robe from him and wrap it around your bare shoulders. 

“Oh birdie, you’re not coldblooded. Your family has been more than generous to me.” Ezra drifts closer to you and you almost unconsciously part your thighs. 

“Sweet,” you whisper. 

“No one has ever ventured so far as to call me sweet, little bird.” Ezra saunters away from you, turns his back on you, and it feels somehow like a loss. 

“Real, then.” 

Ezra hums, moves behind the bench you’re sitting on and lets your back press against his naked torso. 

“You’re presumptuous,” you sneer, as if you hadn’t just been mourning the loss of his heat between your thighs. 

Ezra’s hand threads into your hair and tilts your head back as he bends to whisper in your ear, “And you are adorned in a transparent night dress just outside my window.” 

Your body shudders, in fear or arousal or both. “It’s– it’s my house. I can go wherever I want.” You try for defiant, but your voice shakes. 

“Oh, okay. And your desires led you to be in a transparent nightdress just outside my window?” He straightens again and pulls your body back into his. 

“I didn’t really think about it.” 

“Just a masochist, then.” It’s not a question. He moves slowly, almost predatory, until he’s settled on his knees in front of you. 

“Maybe,” you stare at the moon, refusing to look at him kneeling before you. 

He sits up on his knees, pinches your chin in his fingers and forces you to look at him. “Oh birdie… I could just eat you.” 

He grabs the hem of your nightdress and shoves it roughly up your thighs. You smack his hands, shoving the gown back over your legs. He pushes the hem up again, and you don’t stop him. Your hands grip the bench beside you. 

“Ezra. It’s– it’s not– it’s not the right time of the month,” you plead with him halfheartedly. You don’t want him to stop now. 

“Do you think that will hinder me?” He quirks an eyebrow at you, his hands gripping the meat of your thighs tightly. “How fortunate for you, birdie, that I am a vampire.” 

The tip of his middle finger swipes through your folds. You gasp sharply, but his hand is gone as quickly as it came. He holds his fingers up in the scant space between your faces. You feel trapped in his gaze as the pink tip of his tongue flicks against his shiny red finger. He traces your bottom lip with it and your mouth falls open. 

You’re trapped somewhere between disgust and awe. His finger plunders your mouth, smearing your own slick and blood on your tongue. His other hand snakes up your thigh, two fingers plunging into your slick heat while the fingers in your mouth hook your jaw. He shoves your head back until you’re looking directly above you, the robe falling from your shoulders. 

You’re hooked on him at both ends, unable to pull away even a fraction. You gasp and moan around his digits, pressed so far back in your throat you’re almost gagging on them. His thick fingers feel perfect inside you, gliding easily through your slick and blood. 

He drags your face to his, slotting your lips together. It’s not so much a kiss as Ezra trying to eat you alive. His right hand slips from your mouth and grips your hair. He drags your head backward even further, forcing your chest out and baring your throat to him. You are entirely at his mercy. His lips and teeth clatter down your neck. His tongue dips into the hollow of your throat, his teeth graze your collar bone, his lips close around your pulse point and he sucks hard enough to bruise. 

He jerks your head back up to stare into his eyes once again. “You got a little something there,” he whispers, his thumb dragging over your bloodstained chin. He has a feral glint in his eye. He looks every bit like a wild animal barely contained in the body of a man, and he’s on his knees before you. 

You almost laugh. Maybe you do laugh. He throws the hem of your nightgown over his head and buries his face between your thighs. He grips your hips tightly, pinning you to his face and keeping you from toppling completely off the bench. 

His tongue curls languidly through your folds, as if he’s trying to collect every bit of you and swallow it down. You grab his head through the sheer fabric of your dress and let yourself fall into the sensation. 

Two of his fingers slip easily into your cunt and his tongue finds your clit. He lathes your bud in steady circles, bringing you to the edge. You squeeze your eyes shut so tightly you see starbursts of color behind your lids. His fingers curl perfectly into your spongy walls and your eyes snap open as your body convulses in pleasure. 

Ezra quickly replaces his fingers with his tongue, your core spasming around the wet muscle. His hand, shiny with your own blood, slithers up your body, smearing red on your nightdress. His face remains buried in your cunt as his hand finds it’s way to your mouth. You should push them away, but you let him press the pads of his fingers against your tongue, let him fill you up with his spit and your slick and your blood. Your lips close around his digits and you suck them clean. 

He groans into your pussy before dragging his lips down your inner thigh. You can feel a wet trail where his mouth has been, skin tingling from his mustache. His teeth latch onto the sensitive flesh where your thigh meets your groin and you scream, the sound muffled by his fingers in your mouth. He almost certainly broke skin. 

He releases your flesh only to bite down again, slightly lower. You bite down on his fingers in return, splitting open the skin of his knuckles. You smooth the bite with your tongue as he finally drags his hand out of your mouth. 

Ezra places his left hand on the small of your back and brings his right back beneath your nightdress. You wish you could see more of him than the outline of his body between your thighs. 

His lips close on your clit at the same time he buries his fingers inside you, your blood combining with his inside you. He pumps his fingers deep inside you, so hard it feels like he’s trying to scoop out your insides. His blunt nails catch your front wall and you try to squirm away from him, crying out at the sharp sensation. He clutches you closer to him, catches your clit in his teeth and smooths the pads of his fingers over your agonized cunt. 

You are shockingly close to coming again, despite the pain radiating from your thigh. His tongue joins his fingers inside you and you bear down on him, his aquiline nose grinding into your clit. His nails dig into your back, pulling you even closer to his face, and you’re free falling. 

You cry out into the wet night air, feeling at once scattered in the breeze and held entirely in the grip of the man still between your legs. He rises slowly, releasing you. You nearly fall backward without the support of his strong hands on your body. You cling to the bench, chest heaving, panting breaths puffing mist into the air between you. 

The moonlight casts him in an eerie glow, but his face is almost entirely in shadow. He looks satisfied or disgusted, you can’t quite tell. He turns on his heel and saunters slowly back up the stairs, leaving you beneath his window. 

[fuckmeyer]

timewarp!twilight: a time travel au

[throughout the series, Bella Swan has prophetic dreams that reveal her future (or present predicament) in cryptic ways. but tho Bella can peek forward in time, her true power lies in the past.]

time first unzips when James sinks his teeth into Bella at the ballet studio.

the burning in her veins overwhelms her. for a delirious moment she seizes from venom & bleeds out on a hospital room's tile floor where her mother is giving birth. to her.

the Cullens barge into the studio. Bella's writhing on the ground. they never see the warp. a stunned James is defeated.

Bella says nothing, chalking it up to a near-death experience. ofc she can't unravel the fabric of time lol like what?? who does that???

over summer, night terrors haunt her when Edward is away.

the "good" dreams give her flashes of the future. wolves. light. cliffs. a stone antechamber. red hair. a casket.

it's the nightmares she fears the most.

her PTSD-fueled flashbacks feel so real, she unzips time to escape James's attack & wakes up in random places as if sleepwalking.

at first they're tiny jumps. a few minutes back. then several months before she meets Edward. then the day Renee leaves Charlie with Bella in tow.

the night after her disastrous birthday party, her nightmare dumps her in the back alley of a neon-lit diner.

this isn't home. not 2006, not 1996, not 1986, even...

disoriented, she stumbles in and sits at the counter. the folded newspaper by the napkin dispenser, the Philadelphia Herald, reads March 3rd, 1950.

oh god.

when she looks up, a familiar pixie-haired vampire stares back at her with moony gold eyes.

"you've kept me waiting a long time," says Alice, pushing a plate of pancakes toward her.

time zips. back in bed. morning. 2006. Bella scrambles to school to tell Edward about the time skips.

ofc, it's hard to speak when you're being sucker-punched in the gut by your first love's painful breakup monologue.

instead of confessing, Bella says goodbye.

October. November. December. January.

as the wolves shift and Laurent stops in for a visit snack, Forks gets all gunked up with paranormal vibes. Bella warps further back for longer periods. 1935. 1933. 1911. 1863.

luckily, she often crosses paths with the Cullens. as humans, she knows, they won't remember her. it's cathartic to see them, if only for a few moments...but it's never enough.

she pulls increasingly dangerous stunts to keep traveling. motorcycling. chasing wolves. stalking vampires. on & on.

Bella dives off a cliff to chase the visions.

she smacks the water & warps to 1918.

human Edward Masen immediately falls in love with a drenched & shivering Bella Swan. over the evening, she falls in love with him. again. ugh.

but was it a time skip, or a near-death experience? she wakes up coughing water, Jake breathing life into her on the beach.

Alice returns. with a renewed love for Edward (ugh), Bella jets off to Italy to save him & meet the Volturi.

back in forks, the vote ignites a fiery rage she'd buried for months.

how could they do this to her? how could they break her heart & leave her behind when she needed them?? did they even stop to think about Laurent??? the wolves?! VICTORIA?!!

just as she lunges for Edward to rip his stupid face off, time unzips in front of them & she vanishes.

further back than she's ever gone.

London. 1640s.

human Carlisle tries using a silver cross to defend himself against a starving vampire while Bella looks on.

when the vampire's eyes find hers, the horror of what Bella has been doing settles in like a dense fog.

with each time skip, Bella seals their fate.

not only is Bella the thread that ties the Cullens together in time, but Bella aligns the stars for every member to become a vampire.

in the 1640s, she is the scent that pulls the starving vampire away from Carlisle.

in 1863, María sees Bella's warp & pursues her until she finds confederate Jasper Hale on his way to Galveston.

in 1911, her time skip startles 16 y.o. Esme out of a tree, breaking the girl's leg. she is treated by Dr. Cullen.

in 1918, a cold & wet Bella gives Edward the flu.

in 1933, Carlisle spots Bella on his way home from the hospital & finds her so eerily familiar he calls out & rushes to catch up. frightened by the commotion, Royce et al leave a dying Rosalie in the street.

in 1935, warping into a forest pisses off a huge black bear. Emmett saves her & subsequently gets mauled.

in 1950, she listens to Alice tell the story of her only human memory: prophesizing as a little girl about the "lady in the blue jeans" who comes to visit, to the horror & disgust of her superstitious parents. they throw her in an insane asylum.

now, in 2006, she reappears & falls at the Cullens' feet. her face reflects their looks of shock.

it was her. it was always her.

& all because she ditched Alice & Jasper to confront James at the ballet studio.

"oh god," she whispers from the floor in a broken voice. tears blur her vision. Bella looks up at the family of vampires. "i think i've made a terrible mistake."

[justforbooks]

Haruki Murakami

The acclaimed Japanese author’s deceptively simple writing combines fantasy and reality in stories of everything from missing cats to dystopian histories via fantasy thrillers and meditations on love.

Japan’s bestselling living novelist Haruki Murakami started writing aged 30 and became a literary sensation in 1987 when his fifth novel Norwegian Wood was published. His mixture of realistic and dreamlike narratives has earned him a dedicated fanbase, and his name is often floated as a contender for the Nobel prize in literature. If you’re new to him, or want to re-read his greatest hits, here are some places to start.

The entry point

Murakami’s novels can be crudely separated into two categories: the fantastic and the realist – although many fall somewhere in between. Published in 1987, Norwegian Wood lacks the otherworldly strangeness that has come to characterise much of Murakami’s most popular work. Instead the novel is a deceptively simple reminiscence of young love. Landing on a German runway, narrator Toru Watanabe hears the titular Beatles song and is transported back to his college days and turbulent love affairs with two different women. Nostalgic and sweet, Norwegian Wood is Murakami’s most accessible novel, and the book that transformed the author into a literary superstar in Japan.

If you only read one

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is peak Murakami, and features many of the things the author is known for (Mysterious women! Vanished cats! Phone sex! Spaghetti!). Unemployed thirtysomething Toru Okada is looking for his missing cat and missing wife when he sleepwalks into a wild goose-chase of increasingly bizarre events. “The best way to think about reality,” he declares, is “to get as far away from it as possible.” Part detective story, part nightmarish Alice in Wonderland, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle becomes a story about Japanese history, bizarre mysteries and red herrings. Abstract, infuriating and very funny, it is Murakami at his most beguiling.

If you’re in a rush

If you want to make a critically acclaimed film, adapt a Murakami short story. The South Korean thriller Burning took Murakami’s story Barn Burning as its foundations, while, more recently, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi won an Academy Award for his adaptation of Drive My Car. Some of Murakami’s finest storytelling can be found in his microcosmic worlds. Sleep, published in the New Yorker in 1992 and included in the short story collection The Elephant Vanishes, was the first time Murakami wrote from the perspective of a woman and the result is stunning. The story offers a character study of a devoted wife who is suffering from a sleeplessness that is not quite insomnia. Murakami frequently – and justifiably – receives criticism for how he writes female characters, but Sleep is a brilliant story that uses the liminality of the night to evoke the unease of being a woman in a patriarchal society.

The memoir

Murakami’s biography could be the backstory for one of his protagonists. The author was running a jazz club, turned 30, and quit to become a novelist. The rest is bestseller history. Murakami’s slim memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, offers an insight into his diligent creative practice. “Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day,” he explains. Only seriously taking to running in his 30s, Murakami reflects on the comparisons between marathon-running and writing , and demystifies the author’s practice as regimented routine, endurance training and occasionally injury inducing.

It’s worth persevering with

Across three volumes and over a thousand pages, 1Q84 is Murakami’s most ambitious novel to date, encompassing cults, assassins, parallel realities, two moons and creatures that emerge from the mouth of a dead goat. Following twin story threads of fated lovers, Murakami’s epic is set in a version of 1984 that slips between the familiar and unfamiliar. While 1Q84 is certainly sprawling, it’s structured like a maze with the occasional trick mirror and trap door. It was bemoaned by some critics as a disappointment when first published in 2011 and its length may be intimidating to the casual Murakami reader, but descend into 1Q84’s world and you’ll be treated to a page-turning thriller, a tender love story, a pulpy mystery and a meditation on the metaphysical mysteries of a world not dissimilar to our own.

The one that deserves more attention

After its publication in English in 2001, Sputnik Sweetheart left the orbit of Murakami’s more popular works. It’s a shame because the novel offers a refreshing variation of the author’s most predictable trope: women vanishing. Narrated through the eyes of a typical Murakami narrator (male, pining, passive), at the heart of Sputnik Sweetheart is a lesbian romance between Sumire, a wannabe Jack Kerouac, and Miu, an older, refined wine importer. Lusting after Miu, Sumire begins to shed her bohemian exterior, transforming herself to become Miu’s chic personal assistant. The unequal romance soon develops into self-obliteration as Sumire seems fated to be forever Miu’s sputnik – orbiting her from the isolation of space – before she disappears. Sputnik Sweetheart’s yearning romanticism is as tender as it is uncomfortable.

The masterpiece

Departing from his typical thirtysomething, whisky-drinking, jazz-listening protagonists, Kafka on the Shore is narrated by 15-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura. Fleeing his violent, dead father after receiving an Oedipal prophecy, Kafka finds refuge working in a small coastal town’s library. Alternating with Kafka’s tale is Satoru Nakata’s, an older man who lost his childhood memories at the end of the second world war, but instead gained the ability to converse with cats. Nakata is forced on the run after he crosses paths with a sinister cat-catcher who goes by the name Johnnie Walker. Both characters embark on vision quests, with one foot in everyday Japan and the other in a magical undercurrent that delivers the characters to each other. Murakami has said that the urgency behind his stories is “missing and searching and finding”. Kafka on the Shore eludes genre pigeonholing, and instead exemplifies its author’s ability to map a dreamscape labyrinth, one with its own strange poetic justice.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[pocket-watcher]

Hi, this is based on the Northwest (USA) and a thread about carnivorus plants but: a forest that works as its own entity that lures people in with ambiance/aromas to act as food for calcium-deficient trees :)

Oh shit that’s dark!! TW I’m going to venture more into horror than horny with this one, so please be aware this story contains references to animal and human death!!

The forest called to him.

He’d felt it when he’d first come to town.

Something in the air wrapped around him, fogging his brain, like the smell of food when he was starving.

That’s when the dreams started.

He’d never sleepwalked before, but here he was, steadily trying to break out of his own house to head to the woods.

Good thing he had roommates.

Yet, he could never quite remember what exactly he was dreaming about at the time…

“I’m going for a walk!” He yelled out to the house.

“Okay!” He heard called back from the other room, whilst in here the TV was turned off.

“So…” his roommate said casually, “where ya off to?”

“What do you mean?” He said, a pit in his stomach.

“You know what I mean. Are you heading to the well?”

The well was on the edge of town. It also was next to the edge of the woods. He’d found himself drawn back again and again and -

“Seriously, man. Don’t do it. It’s not fucking worth whatever it is you think you’re gonna find in there.”

And with that the TV was turned on again.

He slammed the door behind him, heading into the crisp autumn air.

He didn’t mean to end up at the well. It’s just, he could smell something sweet in the air, coming from the woods. The scent wrapped around him pleasantly, leading him back. Always leading him back,

He signed and rubbed his eyes.

This place had been messing with him, haunting him, and he was so damn tempted to just march straight in and give it a piece of his mind.

How dare these forces control him like this?! He was his own person, goddamn it, and he could make up his own mind on what to do and where to go - screw his roommates!

He left the well behind him, marching on into the woodland.

His first thought was that it was much more damp than he’d anticipated. His boots sank into the mud a little with every step.

The next thing he noticed was how strong that sweet smell was. It was strange, clearly coming from one direction.

His mind whispered to him. Go deeper…

He felt a sort of giddiness at taking control and taking action, at finally being in these woods. See? It wasn’t so bad! Nothing scary here, nothing but pine trees and the pleasant sounds of nature…

Except, didn’t nature sounds normally include birds singing and critters racing around?

It was eerily… quiet.

Except for the squelching of mud.

He headed for a greener area, hard land, and when he arrived his first step was signalled by a harsh snap beneath his heel.

He pulled back and noticed the tiny bones.

Probably from some unluckily animal, he thought.

That was when he noticed… more bones.

In fact, a rather worrying amount of bones.

The majority were old, from small birds or squirrels, but some were… worryingly larger.

Dogs? Wolves?

He froze.

A human skull rested at the base of one of the trees.

His roommate was right. They were all right, he shouldn’t be there.

The sweet smell wasn’t just there to cover the scent of rotting corpses, it was there to lure in more prey.

To lure in him,

He started to turn back, but his head felt heavy. The adrenaline didn’t do much to stop his limbs from freezing up.

Everything titled.

His vision was blurring.

The smell, the air, it was poison.

And it felt so good, it made him feel so sleepy.

And the bed of bones looked so comfortable.

I’ll just take a little nap, he thought. The forest is so peaceful, after all.

[strayflowersstarsandlove]

𝙴𝚢𝚎𝚜 𝚆𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚞𝚝 - a Han Jisung short au!fanfic

PART 3

💫PART 4💫

You know you should but you can't look away from those eyes and those lips. Red handed. He caught you staring at his lips too. An incoming speeding train. You can see it approaching faster and faster as the sudden realisation that you cannot move overwhelmels your senses. You. Cannot. Move. You won't save yourself.

It's not something you're just watching anymore, you're inside of it. Supple lips smashing against yours. Not even in a rush but you gasp anyway, as if all air has been sucked out of your lungs. Your heartbeat gallops, his fingers trail up your face and your hairline, fingernails threading their way through the tangles.

God is this what it feels to awaken after a coma? Like the energy of the sun is blasting through your body? Like you never knew you were sleepwalking for the past 2 years and now the sky is too bright and the manic energy in your veins is about to lift you off the ground? In the heat of the moment you barely realized Han has crawled on top of you, the new, exhilerating feeling of his body weighing down on yours sends shudders throughout your body.

How is this even real? You cup his face, fingertips brushing his soft, smooth cheeks just to make sure he is real and this is happening. He pushes himself a little over you, angling his face so he can deepen the kiss, readjusting his body so he can slot in between your legs, the hardened length in his crotch hits the inner side of your thigh and you gasp again, momentarily detaching yourself from his ravenous mouth.

Short of breath, hair falling in his face, slick, puffy lips and tense jaw, Han looks unreal. Even if it's near pitch black, his face is still so close to yours you can see him perfectly, taking in the almost drunken look in his wild eyes, pupils dilated and blushy cheeks and all. You stare in awe, dumbfounded at how the hell you went from talking nonsense to making out like this.

You try to form words but your voice is stuck on your throat, all you can do is stare and try to slow down your labored breathing: "cat got your tongue?", he whispers, tilting his head to the side as he smirks, he doesn't let you reply, he just kisses you again, tugging gently at your bottom lip, "should I get it back for you? Can I have it then?", he murmurs on your lips as they stretch in an amused, stunned smile.

Again there's no time for you to speak, to form any sort of thought, really. You're overwhelmed with each new sensation like the way his lips are so fucking smooth and tender and the way he's kissing you like his life depends on it, and god his honey skin is so warm atop yours and his breath is hot and intoxicating and his body feels so strong and toned yet soft.

You've never imagined what it would have felt like to have him on top of you like this, it's like a new part of your psyche has been unlocked and now you can't get enough. Your hands roaming down from the nape of his neck to his muscular back are not large enough, not sensitive enough to grasp at the magnitude of sensations you're experiencing right now, you need him closer, like he's all you ever wanted your whole life.

You're desperate now. His hands grip your hips, squeeze your sides, inching closer and closer to your upper body as he thrust himself onto you, not without causing a throbbing within you. Not fully aware of yourself, you inadvertently buck your hips: "oh ... UH",he moans. Han moans. In your mouth. And it's quiet but deliberate. It booms and echoes in your brain like a fire alarm and suddenly you're hyperaware you're surrounded by 7 other sleeping people.

The spell breaks. There's not time to think, you slap your hand over on his mouth, wide eyed, incredolous as you gasp, trying to control your breathing.

Not a single stir. Changbin loud snoring still drowning out the otherwise complete silence but for the gentle, lithe lull of breathing all around you. Han raises an eyebrow, a smug look on his face even when half of it is covered with your hand.

You hold your breath in for another moment, just to make sure nobody has awakened. "What the fuck are we doing? What was that oh my god oh my fucking god", you whisper/shout confusedly, angrily perhaps, too. Han removes your hand from his mouth and tilts his head to the side, "what does this look to you, y/n? You don't like a little voyeurism?", he taints, eyes pointing down at your bodies basically interlocked if not for the clothes separating them.

You roll your eyes and motion for him to get himself off of your body, and as soon as he rolls over to the side you grab his hand firmly and pull him up with all of your might, fueled by both adrenaline and shock and something else burning in the pit of your stomach. You drag him downstairs and back to the basement where you make sure to close the door.

"What. The. Hell. What the fuck just happened?", you exclaim, you're tone still relatively low but loud enough not to sound like the half whispering half shouting you've used so far. You sound almost panicky, like all reality came crashing down on you out of nowhere, all at once. "What happened is that I'm sick and tired of pretending that I can't stand you, enough bullshit y/n, I'm done, I'm so done: I'm in love with you. Point blank. There, I said it. I'm in love with you and I can't fucking help it".

To say you're taken aback would be a severe understatement. You're utterly shocked. "You ... are in love. With me?", you mumble, blinking in astonishment, Han sighs and tuts, "you're so oblivious. So clueless. I spent the past 2 years agonizing over you, hating everyone who you became close with to the point where I started despising my own best friends. Imagine, just fucking imagine how fun it was for me tonight, watching you kiss everyone but me. Literally having to watch you making out with Minho. I was chocking on my own boiling blood, y/n", he spits out angrily, and it hurts. More than you're willing to admit to yourself.

You open your mouth with the intention of forming proper words and not just muttering nonsense but no sounds comes out. You just stare at him like a deer caught in the headlights. "Say something please fucking say something. I did not just pour my heart out like that for nothing", he prods, but there's nothing gentle in the way he goes about it, he sounds angry, upset, frustrated with you and probably with himself too. "I-i... I don't even know what to say, Han. I... This is a lot", you cower, your chest tightening in a whirlwind of emotions.

The brunette snarls, his face contorting in disappointment, "you have nothing to say? Really? Ugh I should've known. I should have fucking known, it's Felix isn't it? Or is it Hyunjin? Minho hyung saw you two were quite comfortable earlier on while I just wasted my one and only chance to come out of this fucking hell of a friend zone for absolutely nothing. Of course you have nothing to say. Of course-".

"-But tell me do they know you like I do? Mmh? Do they know the name of your favorite movie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and your mum's favourite meal, kimchi stew and sashimi on the side, do they know the name of all the songs that make you cry? Do they know the only way to calm you down from a panic attack is hugging you so tight you can't move? Do they know you sigh for exactly 3 seconds whenever you get your favorite cup of coffee in a white mug at the corner table? Do they know you have 5 different ways to say hello depending on the mood you're in? Do they kiss you like I did? Do they make your breath cut short in your throat? Do you get fucking shudders when they touch you like I do? ".

Red and blotchy in the face, chest heaving with much effort, Han looks like a beastlier version of him, the vein on the side of his neck pulsating so visibly underneath his skin it looks like it's going to pop any second, and you don't know whether it enrages you or makes you feel heartbroken over him more.

The way he knows you, the way he has been counting  the literal seconds it takes you to sigh over coffee, the way he's clearly been observing you and noticing every single thing about you in silence and had you believing he did not care about you all the while. Your heart feels heavy. And raging. And confused.

"You're... You-this is insane. It's ridiculous. Why are you even mad at me I don't understand! I had no fucking idea you had feelings for me, why are you taking this out on me? And what the hell do Felix and Hyunjin have anything to do with anything? Felix's my best friend, he has been for the past 10 years. He's the sweetest person I know, he might not know my coffee order but he would never fucking hurt me and make me feel like shit like you're doing right now. For no reason I might add. And what about Hyunjin? I don't know what Minho saw but I do know is that he just fucking cares, and he's kind to me".

Your spitting out everything that's in your chest now, panting from the flurry of emotion you're experiencing right now. You hold back the tears threatening to spill out and swat your forehead from the sweat building up there.

"I-I don't even have to justify any of my relationships with our friends, I'm immensely lucky to have them and I don't have to feel guilty about it. You want to hear how good of a kisser you are? There. You are a good kisser. You made me short circuit. You sure know how to make someone want you. You're insanely attractive. You're good at reading people, you're fucking good. But I don't owe you anything, Han-". You pause, ears ringing, heart beating out of control. But you're not done yet.

"You did it all on your own. You made me believe we might have had something, you kissed me and then you discarded me like I'm a piece of trash, said it was a stupid mistake and then proceeded to either ignore me or dissimulate your annoyance at me for the past few years, making me believe you resented me. And it hurt like hell. It still does-".

"-Whether our friends noticed but decided to be gracious about it I'm not sure but I don't care. They're good people, we have fun together and if we decide to play an actual stupid kissing game just for shits and giggles and we happen to enjoy it, then I'm not going to feel sorry about it cause I wasn't aware of your feelings and we are not dating and you don't get to decide what I do with my own heart after you single handedly broke it".

These are the words you've never spoken before. As much as you're now freely crying and feeling immensely sorry for yourself, you also feel a tiny bit liberated of a weight you weren't fully aware you had been keeping deep down in your heart. "I liked you, Han. I used to... I used to be head over heels for you. I actually fell hard for you. Like really hard", you sniffle, using the back of your hands and your arms to dab at all the salty wetness on your cheeks.

"But it all came crumbling down when you dismissed me like that, I don't know... I don't - I want to believe you... I want to believe you're in love with me and I want to tell you that I'd been longing for you ever since that day but how am I supposed to reconcile that with the way we've been these days? Why tell me now? Why wait two whole years and let me think you couldn't stand me? ".

🥀PART 5

[thebonejunky]

im redesigning the Yellowjackets(90s versions) so i thought i would share some of my brainstorm ideas for new designs

note: look at the reblogs for full thread because i will be adding on as i post each character

im going to draw one(out of seven) character every day. i really love all the actors and outfits in the show, but i want to take them a step further to make them more interesting and stylize them into drawn characters. i also think more symbolism could be implemented into their appearances. my notes below are just random little things i want to add, or some more complicated characterization. i would also very much like to read anyone elses ideas!

Shaunas eyebags heavier

Misty wears redcross patch on her jacket and has bandages wrapped around her sleeves and pant legs

Misty wears the most Yellowjacket gear out of anyone because she desperately wants to feel apart of the team(overcompensation).

Jackie wears a lot of jock-like clothing(bomber jacket, jersey, cleats, etc) but does not have the body type or body movement of a jock, like she's overcompensating for her lack of athletic ability compared to everyone else.

Van's scars are much bigger and more jagged. they werent able to sew up the hole in her cheek and her teeth are visible through the hole, and her left eye is permanently discolored(red sclera, yellow iris) and vision has been lost there. she is not a werewolf, but has stylistic traits reminiscent of one, like sharp teeth and nails. represents the ways in which she has been forced to become more feral and animal-like in order to survive.

Van and Tai's cult masks parallel each other and are recreated versions of their doomcoming masks. while their doomcoming masks represent love and new beginnings, their cult masks represent codependancy and death.

Luara Lee wears entirely white throughout her entire time in the wilderness to represent her innocent and "purity". there are moments where her clothes becomed stained(some times with blood) but she always removes the stains with great care(inspired by Fear Street 1978 when Cindy removes red moss stains from her white polo- the white polo representing her heteronormativity, and the red moss representing lesbian desire). she dies without losing this innocence. this symbolism also reinforces the idea that cannibalism represents girlhood and love between girls(blood is a symptom of femininity. to eat is to give into desire).

Tai becomes more contridictory of herself in her appearence as time goes on and her sleepwalking-self becomes more prominent. clothes with contridictory colors/patterns, Gemini themes.

give van even more butch energy

Lottie wears clothes and accessories that are more witch-like and reminscent of nature. fur jacket, bones and antlers, leaves used to tie clothing together.

make Nat more punk. piercings, band patches on her leather jacket. not design related but i think it would be cool if she played an instrument, like practiced guitar on the down low when shes not playing soccer.

[simply-smitten]

Smitten Master Post!

About me - my socials - my fics

About me~

She/her pronouns

26 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in social work

Mcyt is my first/only fandom

I primarily write DNF and Karlnap, but I do have a few multiship thread fics on my 18+ NSFW twitter :)

My boundaries: do not interact with my NSFW content if you’re a minor, do not supply my NSFW content to minors, and do not repost my work whatsoever (only exception is to translate it, but please contact me first to get permission)

My socials~

Ao3: simplysmitten

Main twitter: simplysmitten_

Alt twitter: simplysosmitten

NSFW twitter: simplysmutten (must be 18+ with your age in your bio)

Wattpad: simplysmitten

Curiouscat: simplysmutten

My fics~

Thread fics - Separated by ship (dnf, karlnap, snf, dnn, dnkn), NSFW threads have a warning in red and are posted to my 18+ twitter (simplysmutten), SFW threads that were turned into chapters of “Between Friends” have the Ao3 and Wattpad links, and NSFW threads that were turned into works for my “Beyond Friends” series have the Ao3 link.

Karlnap fics~

Because You Are Love (rated T, 140k, 61/61 chapters)

Summary: Sapnap grew up in Texas, a state where being gay just wasn't something you were allowed to talk about- so he didn't. He never came out to his family and even when he made new friends who loved him unconditionally, he still couldn't bring himself to come out. Staying in the closet never felt like a problem once he moved to Florida with Dream, well, until a video collaboration introduced him to a boy that made him question if he could keep hiding. Now, Sapnap has to return to Texas for the first time since his move to Florida for his step-sister's birthday. What's waiting for him when he arrives is going to make keeping his sexuality a secret from his family that much harder.

(i’m worried) it will always be you (rated E, 120k, 20/20 chapters)

Summary: College AU. Sapnap, a notoriously sullen computer science major, is attending North Carolina State University, along with his roommate and long-time internet friend, Dream. While Dream has been pining over the pretty British boy in a couple of his classes, Sapnap finds himself having a much harder time avoiding a certain gray-eyed ray of sunshine.

*Story is not told chronologically. Chapters will vary from Freshman year (2015-2016 school year) to Senior year (2018-2019 school year). Chapters will be dated at the top to avoid confusion. Also, for reference, 'present day' is spring semester of senior year.*

Your Telephone Calls are my Favorite Place (rated T, 100k, 62/62 chapters)

Summary: Karl is finding it more and more difficult to hide his feelings for his best friend, Sapnap. He's willing to risk it all for his chance at love, but does he really understanding just how much he's risking?

DNF fics~

Please Let Me Go (rated M, 75k, 14/14 chapters)

Summary: Dream finds himself in an introverts worst nightmare when Sapnap convinces him to host seven of their close friends for Sapnap's 21st birthday. The only thing holding Dream together was knowing he could finally meet his best friend, George, in person. However, the person who stepped off the plane felt like a complete stranger to Dream- an unrecognizable personality inhabiting the body of the person he thought he knew better than anyone in this world. Years of online friendship had built up this moment for him, only to come crashing down when George wasn't the man he thought he was.

Between Friends (rated T, 110k and counting, oneshot collection)

Summary: A collection of fluffy DNF oneshots. Each chapter is its own completed story (aside from ‘Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas’ and ‘Homesick-London-Cafe’). Most oneshots are canon adjacent, and so far two are AUs. Primarily takes place around the time of the meet-up.

All paths lead to you (rated T, 30k, oneshot)

Summary: When George is stressed, he has nightmares, and when George has nightmares, he sleepwalks. In a subconscious search for relief, George sleepwalks to the safest place he can find- Dream's room. Dream finds out more than he bargained for when trying to decode George's nonsensical sleep-talking, but he struggles to make conscious-George as comforted by his presence as unconscious-George.

‘Idiot’ means ‘I love you’ in Floridian (rated T, 20k, oneshot)

Summary: Model-George x bodyguard-Dream AU. George has been working as a model for a few years now. His father, a higher up in the English government, insists that George has a bodyguard with him at all times. As an act of defiance, George makes a point to sneak away from his bodyguards to prove to his father they're useless and he doesn't need one. Desperate to find a bodyguard that can actually keep track of his son, George's father hires a bodyguard from a different background- a masked man named Dream. For once, George isn't so eager to get this bodyguard fired.

The Colors We Don’t See (rated T, 7k, oneshot)

Summary: Soulmate AU. Soulmates are predetermined, but that never held Dream back from loving George. When George is finally able to move to Florida, the first thing Dream notices is the way his laugh bounces more clearly than ever before. The second thing he notices is the bright yellow aura surrounding him, like George had stolen the sun out of the sky and placed it in his heart instead. George is his soulmate, that much is clear, but trouble arises when George can't see Dream's aura in return.

Live, Laugh, (Blood)Lust (rated T, 6k, oneshot)

Summary: Vampire-George x wizard-Dream AU. George doesn’t believe bloodlust is real, so Dream offers to put a love spell on him to prove him wrong… but he’s not the best wizardry student.

The Remedy to Everything (rated E, 196k, 50/50 chapters)

Summary: After nearly a year of waiting for his visa, George is finally allowed to go home. Home, meaning a house in Florida that was already inhabited by his two best friends, Dream and Sapnap. Being an omega, George feared what trouble moving in with two alphas could potentially create. He never expected that trouble would come in the form of soft curls and green eyes, sparking something irreversible inside himself.

First Love / Late Fall (rated E, 13k, 3/3 chapters)

Summary: George has been going down a dark path for a while, carelessly using people in order to satisfy selfish needs. He hides who he is from his friends who only know him via the internet. This double life becomes a lot more challenging when someone shows up on his doorstep in the middle of the night. Could this be the event that triggers George to change?

It Takes Two to Edge (rated E, 7k, oneshot, part 1 of Beyond Friends)

Summary: Dream and George are in a fwb (... plus feelings) type of situation. After their edging session gets interrupted, George rewards Dream with the promise of fulfilling his breeding kink for the first time.

my honey, my moon (rated E, 20k, oneshot, part 2 of Beyond Friends)

Summary: Dream and George go on fake honeymoons, indulging each other in everything they miss about relationships. Then things change when Dream actually gets a girlfriend.

bet your ass i’m right (rated E, 12k, oneshot, part 3 of Beyond Friends)

Summary: Dream and George like to make bets, even over the dumbest of things. The stakes get higher when they start to wager sexual favors.

More Convenient (An Arrangement of Sorts) (rated E, 8k, oneshot, part 4 of Beyond Friends)

Summary: Dream can't get off without having a partner to please, but luckily for him, George just moved to America. (also they are idiots in love they are so dumb and so in love but not in an angsty way just a "they're so stupid" way)

GeorgeNotFound OnlyFans (rated E, 37k, 5/5 chapters, part 5 of Beyond Friends)

Summary: Fresh out of university and struggling to land a job in his field, George finds himself desperate for a way to make ends meet. While his friends have big dreams of blowing up on YouTube, George decides to make an OnlyFans profile. Shockingly, George goes viral on both platforms, making his money troubles a thing of the past, but maintaining his anonymity a constant worry. How funny is it that he manages to make a friend named Clay on both platforms?

Warm, like Starlight (rated E, 53k, 2/2 chapters, part 6 of Beyond Friends)

Summary: Humans are banned from touching other species in the galaxy, but George, a cat-hybrid, takes a leap of faith and lets the human aboard his ship, Dream, pet him. It awakens a side of George he’s desperate to satisfy, and Dream is more than willing to meet all of George’s needs.

Extra-Circadian Activities (rated E, 12.4k, 3/3 chapters, part 7 of Beyond Friends)

Summary: George had never grown out of the 'wet dreams' phase in life. He'd learned how to navigate it- never sharing a bed, no sleepovers, not falling asleep around other people for more than a quick nap, etc.- but then Dream had to go and derail his plans. Between the flirting, the touching, the kissing- it made George want to do something stupid... Stupid, as in tell Dream all his fantasies about being touched in his sleep. After George's innocent nap in the living room went on for a little too long, Dream got more than he bargained for when he let George use him as a pillow.

(A dnf love story of truly finding the match to your freak)

Use me or Lose me (Beg for it) (rated E, 16.4k, 1/1 chapters, part 8 of Beyond Friends)

Summary: After Dream's most recent fling fizzles out, he's left pent up and searching for relief. George finds himself in the unforeseen position of being the center of Dream's desire- a desire that he's so desperate to fulfill, he's willing to beg for it. Pathetic eyes and frantic pleas for George to be his sex toy for one night open a can of worms in George's mind. But it'll just be this once... right?

high risk, high reward (rated E, 20.2k, 1/1 chapters, part 9 of Beyond Friends)

Summary: George can't come. Okay, he can, but it takes him a ridiculous amount of time to reach his climax. Dream pokes fun at George about it until he goes a little too far, which leaves him scrambling to make it up to him. What starts as spit-balling ideas to solve the issue unintentionally turns into Dream claiming that if he gave George head, he'd come within a designated timeframe. His off-handed comment grows into a full-fledged bet.

Three tries, a thirty-minute time limit, and instructions to pull out all the stops.

Happy reading!

<3 smitten

[buckybarnesss]

on fire: a teen wolf novel chapters 1-3

on fire was published on july 17, 2012. the day after raving had aired during the show's second season.

it was written by nancy holder who has written many, many tie-in books for multiple franchises but most notably she wrote novels for the buffyverse.

by tapping nancy holder to write the novel confirms to me that mtv was trying to do what teen wolf's spiritual predecessors did and create tie-in novels with the show and on fire was testing the waters for that.

it did not succeed because teen wolf doesn't have the kind of space for that. the timeline is too tight. teen wolf was part of the new netflix binge era. it had a seasons of 12 episodes that were wall-to-wall plot. there weren't silly filler episodes and they didn't do monster of the week plots.

on fire assumes that you have seen episodes 1-5 of the show but it is also an AU of season 1 post-the tell.

i get the vibe that the author was given notes, some information or like an outline that she used to build a plot so it's interesting to see what tid-bits holder uses and refers to that still gel with canon or is consistent with what we know.

this isn't a novelization of season 1 that's for sure but, hey, i took notes.

i'm going to break the novel up into 3 chapter chunks.

so without further ado let's get into it. on fire: a teen wolf novel or as i've been thinkin of it as.

the novel starts right at the very end of the tell after the parent teacher conferences. 

the way it's described when argent shoots the mountain lion brings to mind the scene in to kill a mockingbird when atticus shoots the rabid dog. chris argent is no atticus finch but he sure does learn to walk a mile in someone else's shoes doesn't he?

i somehow always manage to forget that the tell is the episode where allison turns 17. she doesn’t live to see her 18th birthday. shot through the heart man. 

oh my fucking god scott. the way this is written i imagine holder is trying to invoke derek and kate as if there’s some wild age gap between him and allison when they're like 9 months apart in age. allison is not kate jesus chris. look at this shit:

“scott hadn’t known allison was seventeen, a year older than the other kids in their class -- older than him -- and didn’t want anyone to know.”

Fuck Rafael McCall. Meet me outside and catch these hands.

“he knew his dad wasn’t keeping up with child support payments. not that his mom had ever mentioned it.”

this is where the transition into heart monitor would be. it is a pretty terrifying dream scott has. peter’s such a dramatic bitch. scott’s dreaming of being in the woods with everything on fire and then he’s being compelled by peter to come kill with him. which just reinforces my whole thing about peter and scott being psychically connected. we don’t see this with any other alpha-beta connection to this degree. derek senses victoria killing scott in raving but we really do not get this in the show very much as it seems to be a Dark Sided power. but we do see peter use it again in season 6a with the whole “you were my beta first” scene. 

scott mentions stiles’s having ADHD so to me that means that nancy holder was definitely working with the idea that stiles does have it. stiles having ADHD seems like a plot thread that got dropped really quickly by the show but remained in dylan’s acting choices and in fandom’s mind.

scott is the only beta we see experience sleepwalking episodes. it seems tied to the compulsion and mental link he shares with feral alpha peter.

the entire paragraph is something. firstly, it wasn't until night school, the episode after this one, that peter tried to push scott into killing his “pack”. but lol melissa called stiles scott’s “litter mate” and stiles wearing his target shirt that he wore in wolf moon and the one that subtextually could reference the nemeton and eventually scott's pack symbol. i don't believe we ever actually saw that shirt again. the tragedy.

“stiles had on his bullseye t-shirt, and it kind of freaked scott out when he wore it. as if it meant that stiles were a target. They both knew the Alpha wanted Scott to kill him to cement Scott’s acceptance that he was a member of the Alpha’s pack. Who better to take down than the guy Scott’s mom had once referred to as his “litter mate”?”

this is where it's starting to get kind of weird because the plot of this book takes place during season 1 but it’s not strictly following the plot. it feels like an alternate season 1.

jackson has gone missing. when is he not missing is the more appropriate question? 

so chapter 2 starts with scott and stiles joining lydia and allison at The Popular Kids Table to discuss jackson being missing. this wouldn’t have happened in season 1. this dynamic didn’t exist until at minimum season 3. lydia didn’t even acknowledge stiles’s existence until the winter formal at the end of the season. 

jackson’s parents apparently went to paris right after the parent-teacher conference, leaving their high school age child alone for an extended period of time in the middle of the school year? what? no wonder jackson’s fucked up. why didn’t they just go around christmas and instead they waited another three weeks or some shit. that is weird.

jackson’s been left a note from a supposed private investigator about his birth parents while his parents are out of town, which is totally not sus at all. 🙄🙄 lydia's concerned about him looking stupid so she won’t go to the sheriff and she doesn’t even approach jackson’s best friend danny. like, danny would know a lot more about jackson than scott or stiles would. lydia, i know allison is the one who involved scott but for fuck’s sake. 

look even a page later lydia says “he and jackson barely know each other.” then why are you involving scott in what you seem to believe is a personal matter? 

do people just generally know jackson was adopted? i can see lydia knowing but scott and stiles? allison just fucking moved there so she doesn’t know anything about anyone. this is quite the personal piece of information i doubt he’d want others to know lydia. 

this is such an AU because after the parent-teacher conference stiles was giving scott the cold shoulder due to his dad being hurt. 

also stiles is supposedly sitting at this table the entire time lydia, allison and scott are talking and has not given his opinion on the matter yet. very unlike him. if there's one thing stiles has it's opinions on jackson and his father's job. stiles would be all over this.

this fucking line is brutal man -- “stiles was the only person on the planet who knew he had become a werewolf. well, derek knew, too, but derek hardly counted as a person.” that said, i do think it’s accurate to scott’s headspace at this point regarding derek. avoiding seeing derek as a person is a way of detaching himself from the situation he’s found himself in. 

alright so we’ve got a POV change to allison --a nd it’s all about how cute acott is. allison I love you but chill please. 

okay so this is interesting. “her mom had been angry, too. allison could tell that if had been left up to her, she wouldn’t have been so harsh about having to stay all weekend. her mom liked scott.” are we sure we’re talking about the same victoria argent? granted this is pre-werewolf reveal so as far as victoria knows allison is just mooning over a nice normal human boy but i have a hard time imagining this being the same victoria who gave us the crazy eyes and the sharpening your dick metaphor.

this still haunts me.

"except i won’t get to spend time with scott except at school until i’m, oh, 112.” oh right in the feels

this book really assumes you’ve seen episodes 1-5 of the first season. allison’s mentioning aunt kate and the necklace in a way that makes the assumption the reader knows who and what they are. 

jackson’s password for his tracking app is “captain”. that is worse than the password being lydia or like scott famously having allison as his password. y’all suck and have shitty computer security.

these kids are sophomores in high school and lydia and allison are really having a discussion about jackson going to a pay by the hour motel as if that’s a thing 15-16 year olds do in the california subburbs on a regular basis. as if jackson would lower himself in such a way to begin with. he’s snobby as fuck. it’s such a weird conversation.

i am page 20 and i feel like so far this author hasn’t been very nice to stiles. not having him say a word in the lunch conversation about jackson despite not only being very opinionated about jackson whittermore’s general existence he’d also have thoughts on a missing person. like, he didn’t even speak when his dad was brought up as a possible avenue of help which is odd. then about a page later there’s this sort of tone used around stiles that feels condescending about him being hyperactive.

this paragraph is, uh, something that could’ve only been written in 2012 because it feels gross:

“lydia shrugged. then she turned to allison. “tell you what. if the boys are willing to the motel for us ---” “to a motel. to look for a guy,” stiles said. ”maybe you should ask danny?” danny, their lacrosse team goalie, was gay, out and proud. “he could act, you know, more casual about it.”

that said, it does track with stiles being overly occupied with the perception of his sexuality and that danny does shit he’s way too young to be doing which is written around his sexuality. remember the whole older boyfriend and going to the jungle thing is season 2? 

it has been like 23 pages and allison’s got this subplot where she wants to have sex with scott. like girlie you’ve known scott for 2 days, keep your pants on. (it keeps coming up with scott too and it's annoying, okay).

it took stiles barely a paragraph to mention derek hale when the point of view switched to him. sir. 

i’m laughing at how derek’s point of view is paired with stiles in the way that scott and allison’s are. even in the non-canon book the Sterek Agenda is there. 

“a prankster with a wicked sense of humor.” is what derek refers to peter as before the fire. is that what we are calling it derek because i would disagree.

“i dreamed of other alphas coming after me. why? it’s not a crime to kill an alpha. i’m a werewolf. the way we progress in status is through challenge.” now this is an interesting perspective. werewolves progress via challenges. that's still sort of in-line with what we see in canon.

allison and scott are driving into the seedier side of town. AKA what seems to be where the poors live. scott describes seeing boarded up buildings, pawn shops and “some kind of clinic where you could sell your blood.” which I assume is a plasma center where people donate and get paid in return and this little classist shit says “remind me to never get a blood transfusion.” god he’s such a 16 year old..

i saw kate's name on the next page where chapter 4 is