#ugh you really want to make me get that fucking subscription huh?

[maryse127]

Between the alarm clock, Xenoblade X and now a fucking music app for Switch online members Nintendo sure is on Something.

Like go give us all kinds of random shit that isn't the new console XD

[1kook]

disney+ & bust

this is part of my netflix & chill collection !

summary; There’s a pounding on your door a little past noon, so hard and rough, that you almost think it’s the police finally coming to catch you for all your years of illegally pirating Phineas and Ferb. It’s not. It’s just a really drunk boyfriend wailing for your forgiveness at the door.  warnings; arguments, feelings of insecurity, bit of asshole jk, smut in the forms of degradation, dumbification, choking, fingering, spit kink, self punishment, unprotected but [ passionate ] sex, jk losing his cool, return of mean jk, he is actually an emotional mess in this one wtf miscellaneous; ANGST, anniversaries, the L word😳, app developer kook, rip ‘pretty girl’ </3, we all become phineas and ferb stans word count; 13k !!

notes; me: *writes couple who’s whole arc is being silly* y’all: MAKE THEM SUFFER GIVE US ANGST!! u ask I deliver so now we all suffer 😐 ngl it was hard writing this fic n u might notice there’s some parts that seem weird n that’s bc this was TWO fics w diff wording but I ended up mixing them bc I’m insane. still had a lot of fun! felt like I challenged myself!! not proofread bc when I say we suffer we SUFFER

please let me know what you think!!! a simple ask goes a long way <3

previous part: kissanime & foreplay

Approximately one week after The Bullet Bestie’s rise to prominence, Jungkook grows annoyed with it as his weirdly competitive nature rears its ugly head the more and more orgasms that little vibrator coaxes out of you. It turns on a weird switch in him, something slightly stuck up and snooty that he’ll never admit to out loud but is there nonetheless. By the following Friday, The Bullet Bestie is nestled deep in your garbage can and Jungkook’s back to pleasuring you with his tongue and fingers alone.

He had those moments in him, the ones where he liked to think he was better than any and everyone else, and occasionally they manifested against inanimate objects like a bullet vibrator.

Despite his polite and generally soft exterior, you catch glimpses of that cocky spirit more than anyone else. Over the past year, you’ve come to realize that Jungkook’s personality was like a coin that had been left out in the sun too long. He had this sweet and reserved nature you saw most times, a kindhearted boyfriend who adored you almost as much as you adored him. He was your angel whom you knew had a heart of gold, even if you were slowly bringing out his more childish tendencies. You knew him like the back of your hand, knew what his mom’s favorite color was and how he liked to stack the plates in his cabinet according to size and make. It was a side that was rusted from years of being out in the sun, basking in its adoring warmth, and you loved every inch about it.

And still, there was this other side to him you rarely saw. This cocky asshole who hid beneath the soft smiles and careful hands, making his appearance only through sly smirks and a tongue prodding against the inside of his cheek. He was a braggart, a man who knew his greatness yielded for no one and wanted that fact shoved down everyone’s faces. This Jungkook, this other side that never saw the light of day, was like the Hyde to his Jekyll. An unexpected, almost mean side to him that only dared make his appearance when his exhilaration was at an all-time high. Like when he was fucking you into another dimension, or kicking your ass in Mario Kart, or like now, when he was receiving an award at an annual tech ceremony.

On the eve of your one year anniversary, Jungkook’s company invites him to an awards ceremony for other web and app developers like him. It’s a grand event, filled with all the biggest nerds in the developing industry here to present the baby nerds with awards. Jungkook lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, both a seasoned player and a rookie all at once. He spends the night tolling you around in a floor-length gown and fangirling over all the “legends” in the room.

You know next to none of these people and none of their accomplishments but still pretend you respect them to hell and back. By the end of the main dinner, you’re sympathizing with Barbie’s ever-smiling features because your cheeks feel sore.

Towards the end of the night, Jungkook wins that random award— okay, who were you fooling? He wins the Platinum Mobile Standard of Excellence Award, recognizing him for all the hard work you’ve seen him put in this past year. It’s probably the highest recognition he can receive at this point in his career. It was an esteemed award that was bestowed upon only the most innovative developer of the year among tech companies, something Jungkook had briefly mentioned he always wanted. It’s basically the equivalent of placing first place in his field, but given Jungkook’s competitive industry and his young age, you think it’s like telling all these old Facebook lords to suck his big fat cock. (But that was your job when you got home.)

He gives a short little thank you speech, promising to work hard and own up to this title. The people around you are swooning, obviously endeared with his soft puppy dog features and melodic voice. They don’t know him like you do, don’t know that uppity twist to his grin like you do. It doesn’t slip off his face even when he steps down off the stage, arms wide open as he comes barreling towards you. Even with you in his arms, the congratulations that are thrown from every direction ring loudly in his ears and swell that ego of his.

The night goes like that for the most part, Jungkook’s acquaintances approaching him every few minutes to rain down their praises. He goes a little crazy at the open bar after a while, shoving the gold trophy into your arms as his beloved work seniors whisk him off for drinks. You don’t mind because you resigned yourself to a night of playing Jungkook’s perfectly perfect partner anyway, watching him politely mingling with his coworkers. Despite his earlier success, you know he won’t brag about it verbally. No, he’ll wait until the two of you get home—your place or his—and remind you how amazing he is with a quick snap of his hips.

As you said, he’ll never boast aloud.

However, that doesn’t mean you won’t.

“That’s my boyfriend,” you explain to the seventh person that greets you that night, excitedly pointing to where said boyfriend was slowly losing all sense of self by the bar. You don’t know anyone here beside Jungkook, and you’re pretty sure no one in their hammered minds is going to remember who you are anyway, so a little gloating never hurt anyone. “He won the ‘I’m Better Than Everyone Else’ award tonight,” you emphasize to the tipsy woman beside you who only laughs at your exaggeration. You assume she’s like you, accompanying one of the many developers here, because as soon as you finish boasting about Jungkook she moves to brag about someone too.

Truth be told, you spend the whole night re-analyzing the Zootopia movie you saw on Disney+ the other night in your head. So if the little fox fellow didn’t control himself would the city have fallen to ruins? Why was the useless sheep girl so evil and bitter? Why was there an unreal amount of romantic tension between the fox and the rabbit? Whatever, you’ll have to rewatch it some other night, and with your new Disney+ account, you could watch it anywhere you wanted to.

Now, you had never bothered to purchase a Disney+ subscription or even tried to swindle Jungkook for his password before. As far as you know, Disney+ was filled with old tv shows from your childhood, sitcoms that made you laugh when you were ten. There’s nothing wrong with that, but personally, you were a firm believer that that which was perfect should not be touched once finished; in other words, you were utterly terrified you’d rewatch an old episode of The Wizards of Waverly Place, only to find out the same joke you’ve been regurgitating for the past ten years doesn’t actually go that way.

However, the harsh reality was that Disney+ was good for a few things. Ugh, you hate when giant corporations provide decent services. Aside from Zootopia, you’ve watched about every animated media on there as well, all of which you replay in your mind as Jungkook has the time of his life with these nerds, knocking back champagne glass after champagne glass.

Anyway, the night ends a little past midnight, and Jungkook who is buzzed on alcohol and high on exhilaration ends up calling an Uber for the two of you. Your apartment— the new one he had not only helped you hunt for but also helped you move into, greatly cutting the cost of movers out with those glistening biceps and thick thighs —is still going through her rebellious phase where the potted plants are trying to take over, courtesy of Kim Namjoon. So for now, there’s a potted plant in an awkward corner that both of you stub your toe against on your way to your bedroom.

You’re thinking Jungkook is going to go to town tonight, given the fact he’s on Cloud 9 and has had his ego stroked by a bunch of dudes for the past couple hours. Maybe you guys can try out the hot role-playing scenario you saw on GirlsWay a few weeks ago, or the handcuffs you impulsively bought from Amazon one Monday night. Or maybe, and this one really makes you flutter, he’ll let you fully take the reins for once.

All those lewd fantasies end up being for naught because just as you shimmy out of your gown (with the help of his hands, of course) and turn to climb him like a tree, he’s on the other side of the room getting your makeup remover out for you. And also talking. A lot. And way more than usual.

“Did you see him, babe?” he sighs, dare you to say, dreamily, handing you the cotton pads as he begins pulling a million pins out of your hair. Slowly and with a lot of confusion, you pull your fake lashes off and begin cleaning your face. “He was amazing.”

“Uh-huh,” you say, having absolutely no idea who ‘he’ is or why Jungkook is so in love with him and not you at this very moment. “But so were you,” you add. Perfect. Stroke his ego and then stroke his cock.

Jungkook sputters at your praise. He’s carefully placing your hairpins on your thigh, cheeks flaming red every time he leans over you. “Was I?” he murmurs, voice sweet in that cute little way it always gets when he’s downed one too many shots of whiskey, enough to be buzzed but not enough to be wasted.

You turn and the pins clatter to the floor and across the bedsheets. “Yes,” you confirm, ignoring his sad huff at the mess you’ve made. Instead, you grab him by the collar of that pink button-up he taunted you with all night. “You were fucking incredible and I think incredible men deserve to have their dick sucked.”

Jungkook laughs at your vulgar statement, holding you gently by the hips as you climb into his lap. “Is that so?” The soft, shy persona is gone now, replaced by the gentle stirring beneath his dress pants. You nod hurriedly, plopping down on his lap and running your hands through his styled hair.

“Yes,” you confirm, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Luckily for you, I know this nymphomaniac who would gladly gobble up your cock at your every command.”

He snorts just as you push him into his back, nose adorably scrunched up. “First of all, you know I hate that word,” he chuckles, finally gracing you with a sweet peck that only makes you want him to fuck you into the fifth dimension. “Secondly, please don’t ever say you’ll gobble my cock up ever again.”

Something inside of you squeals with excitement as he rolls the two of you over, firm body pressing down on yours. “Oh, baby,” you groan, lazily throwing a leg over his hip. Jungkook grins and then decides to entertain you for a few minutes with a sloppy kiss.

You say a few minutes because just as things are heating up, he pulls away. He smiles apologetically. “As much as I’d love to be here with you, I actually have an early morning tomorrow.”

You frown at the sudden change in events. “Huh? They’re gonna make you work the morning after a Gatsby party?” you gasp, sitting up as he gets off of you. With every step he takes away from the bed your heart breaks a little more. “They can’t do that— that’s illegal!”

From the doorway he levels you with a comically raised brow. “No, it’s not.”

You scamper after him down the hall, watch the muscles in his back flex as he pulls his suit jacket on. “You can’t work on our anniversary— that’s illegal!” you offer instead.

He stops at your front door, feet squeezed back into his shoes. “Baby, it’s not,” he rolls his eyes, leaning down to peck your forehead. “It was either I work in the morning or work at night,” he explains, giving your messy hair a soothing caress. He’s looking at you with those eyes, the ones that make your heart lodge itself into your throat and make life a tightrope experience. There’s a devastatingly lovesick part of you that wants this moment, this kind face, to be engraved into your mind for the rest of your life. You want this to be the first and last thought you have and nothing else: just Jungkook’s adoring gaze on you for the rest of time.

The moment ends too soon when he flutters one last peck against your lips. “I’ll be done in the afternoon, okay?”

You pout. “Okay, your place?” you huff, making sure to get one last octopus squeeze around his waist. He nods. “Promise you won’t be late?”

The corners of his gaze soften. “You know I won’t,” he smiles, leaning down to bump your noses together playfully. “Can’t stay away from my pretty girl too long. Besides, I have a gift for you tomorrow.”

It’s with that sentiment and a hammering heart that you let him go. With Jungkook gone, there’s really nothing for you to do now. You took the next two days off in preparation for your anniversary sex, so you don’t have to head to sleep early like usual.

With nothing else planned, you decide on rewatching that Zootopia movie that had plagued you all night, ready to dissect every plot hole to hell and back. You don’t think Jungkook’s seen this movie yet so you add it to your long list of animated movies you’re forcing him to watch.

Part of you is actually really surprised Jungkook left. Well, kinda sorta, very, but not really. Jungkook was a good boy, that much was obvious. He took his job seriously, and if his job wanted him to come in at the asscrack of dawn, then he’d come in before the sun even rose. He was a goody-two-shoes, but even so, you were occasionally able to bring out that darker side in him.

Jungkook working, like actually working in an office setting, was pretty rare though. The dude had a chill job that let him stay home most of the time, and essentially clock in whenever he wanted. Every now and then you were able to convince him to stay, tucking him beneath your body or the covers, depending on the night, and refusing to let him go the morning after.

Once he had eaten you out until the wee hours of the day, ravenous between your thighs, and then went to work the next morning like he hadn’t broken you. Another time you had persuaded him into watching every season of the 2017 DuckTales reboot through the night. When the alarm had rung in the middle of the season finale, he had simply gotten into your shower and gone off to work.

So maybe you were a little confident in your skills, and Jungkook slipping between your fingers tonight was a huge bummer. But there was no use crying over spilled milk, you tell yourself, flinging your bra off somewhere in the corner as you snuggle back into your sheets. You’re ready to tear this Zootopia movie apart, scene by scene.

Even though your apartment is a little cold, you’re comforted by the fact Jungkook will be here to keep you warm all day tomorrow.

All men do is lie.

Despite his promise to come home early the next day, Jungkook ends up lying. The meeting he had been in all morning— the same one that had stopped you from getting bent like a pretzel the night before —drags on well past noon. Then, Kim Namjoon, AKA Jungkook’s favorite senpai in the entire world, catches wind of Jungkook’s success last night and absolutely has to take him out to lunch to celebrate.

You scoff, glaring down at your phone and the impulsive messages you’d sent out an hour ago when Jungkook had first texted you telling you he would be late.

You whirl around to stomp off in the direction of his living room, where all of yours and Jungkook’s favorite foods were growing colder by the minute. You had spent the longest time carefully laying them out, making sure the fried chicken was closer than the pizza but not closer than the breadsticks. Truthfully it’s a nightmare. There are about eight stomach aches worth of food sitting on his coffee table, the greasy stench makes you gag and will certainly stick to your hair for weeks, but none of that mattered because it was all for your beau.

Your very late beau who was making you grow more and more agitated with each minute that passed. Ugh! How inconsiderate of him to test your patience on a day like this. You didn’t want to be upset with him, but this was your first, real milestone as a couple with him. You had wanted to spend the whole day cuddled up, maybe finally tell him how much he really meant to you— definitely not waking up alone with eyeliner crusted eyes and an aching heart.

Deciding you’re being a little too dramatic, you head into the bedroom to calm down. This was fine, you tell yourself, carefully laying out the damn near harlotrous lingerie you had yet to put on. Jungkook would come over soon and everything would be A-okay.

Except for the part it’s actually F-not okay because soon it’s nearing sunset and the food has gone cold so you’ve stocked it into the fridge, and the pretty sheer bra has a wonky wire that’s two seconds away from piercing through your heart, but that doesn’t even matter because Jungkook being late for your all-day anniversary celebration has already ripped it to shreds anyway.  

You plop down on the couch in defeat, impulsively opening up the Disney+ app to cry through another episode of Phineas and Ferb. You’ve abandoned the satin robe that came with the lingerie in favor of donning a big t-shirt that smells like him and makes your heart hurt even more. The setting sun paints the living room in muted oranges, the chirping of birds outside the soundtrack to your lonely day.

You end up watching some other cartoon on Disney+, avoiding the Marvel section because you had promised Jungkook he could be there when you lost your Marvel virginity. Well, at least one of you was good at keeping promises, you think bitterly. For a second, you think about randomly watching one of the infamous MCU films out of order just to spite him. But then you think of that soft puppy gaze and how disappointed he’d be in you.

Whatever! It wouldn’t ever match up to the way you felt now.

Anyway, you circle back. When you’re five episodes into Phineas and Ferb you hear the doorknob rattle.

You sit up just as the door swings open, visible from your spot on the couch. He meets your gaze almost immediately, big doe eyes caught in the act. What act? You’re not really sure. In fact, you don’t even know what you’re looking at when he walks in because he’s drowning in shopping bags. His lips twist into a grin. “Honey, I’m home,” he says playfully.

You don’t laugh.

Jungkook frowns, dumping all his bags down at the entrance before waddling over towards you. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks, coming to stand before you and cupping your face in his hands. He’s towering over you, so tall and gorgeous but for the first time, you’re not dazed by his beauty.

“Kook, you said you’d be back hours ago,” you say slowly, avoiding his gaze. You try to keep the frustration out of your voice, but you’ve had hours to dwell on it now, and those annoying cartoon characters, though charming at first, had only served to multiply your annoyance.  

Jungkook blinks, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “I mean… yeah. But I got you presents?” he beams, glancing back at the mountainous pile he made by the door. You look over too. There are some luxury bags squeezed in between other shops you like, the occasional jewelers' logo on the side.

You stand with a sigh, sauntering off into the kitchen with him on your tail. “I don’t want presents,” you mumble, reaching to pour yourself a glass of water. You’re briefly aware of how childish you must seem. Jungkook hovers behind you.

“What? Yes, you do,” he says. “You had an entire wishlist on my Amazon of things you wanted.” It’s his turn to level you with an unreadable expression, slowly crossing his arms over his chest.

Your frown only deepens as you turn to match his stance against the counter. While it may be true that you did indeed have an entire list of impulsive items on his Amazon, that didn’t necessarily mean you wanted them all. Sometimes you just wanted to stare longingly at a pair of satin gloves without actually buying them. You don’t know how to explain this much to him. “They’re not…” you stop with another deep breath. “Forget it. Thank you for the presents.”

Now it’s Jungkook’s turn to question you. “What,” he says in an unimpressed tone, padding over to you before you can escape back into the living room to watch the entire princess movie collection on Disney+. “No, tell me what’s wrong.”

For some reason, that’s exactly what you don’t want to hear. “Jungkook,” you say flatly, narrowing your eyes at him. “You come home six hours after you said you would without telling me why, and normally I wouldn’t care, but today was supposed to be a special day for us.”

Jungkook reels at your bluntness. “Babe, I was out getting stuff for you. I know it’s our anniversary— that’s why I wanted to treat you,” he responds, oddly condescendingly like you’re a child who doesn’t understand what exactly he was doing.

You brush his hands away from your shoulders. “Yeah,” you huff. “Now I know that. But I spent all day waiting for you,” you stress, chest puffing as you grow more and more agitated by his inability to understand you. God, can he let you go now? At least a bunch of animated, geometrically drawn cartoons won’t question you like this and make you feel as childish as he was.

When he doesn’t say anything else you stomp back into the living room, snatching up your phone from its forgotten spot against the couch. “I’m going to bed.”

At that Jungkook seems to kickstart back to life. “What? ___, it’s barely six,” he says as he follows after you into your bedroom. You ignore him, shuffling beneath the covers. In all actuality, you’re going to bed to mope and watch more animated family shows, maybe cry under the guise of the plot just being so sad. Jungkook sits beside you just as you click back on to finish off your episode. “Baby, I don’t get it,” he sighs. “You’re always talking about how much you want this or that, and I go out and get you it all but now you’re mad?”

You bite down on your lip, eyes lasered in on the pictures moving before you. “Jungkook, just forget it.”

“No,” he says, more sternly than he’s ever been with you before. “If there’s a problem, tell me.” There’s a heavy pause, and then he says, “don’t make me waste my time guessing what’s wrong, okay?” 

“Waste your time?” you scoff, sitting up with pinched brows that you find match his. “I’m not trying to waste anyone’s time— in fact, that’s hot coming from you, Jungkook.”

He rolls his eyes. “What are you even saying? You’re mad because I took a little long getting presents, for you, might I add,” he huffs, plopping down on the edge of the mattress beside your knee. “You’re always saying you want this and that, but you can’t handle me going out to get those things? Do you hear how weird you sound?”

You whip the covers off of you. “Me talking about things doesn’t always mean I want them,” you defend.

Jungkook snorts. “Yes, it does,” he says. “Anytime you ramble about stuff for minutes like a little kid it’s because you want me to buy it for you.”

You blink. “Like a little kid?” you repeat, stunned by his comparison. Granted, you always knew you were the more childish of the two, but you never thought that would equate Jungkook thinking of you as a child. Something red and nasty flares in your chest. “Well sorry,” you spit, crossing your arms over your chest defensively, “sorry we all can’t be perfectly mature golden boys who would never see the light of day if I constantly wasn’t dragging them out.” You know it’s a somewhat low blow, especially because Jungkook’s told you before how his introverted tendencies were a sensitive issue growing up, but you can’t help it.

Jungkook groans, dropping his head into his hands. “Baby, don’t do this now,” he warns, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Stop acting like this.”

“Like how?” you spit, “like a kid?” Jungkook says nothing, leveling you with a blank stare from the corner of his eye. You roll your eyes, phone falling off your lap. Another episode of Phineas and Ferb had started, the corny opening tune filling the space between the two of you. “At least now I know what you think of me,” you mutter over the guitar riff.

“Oh my god,” Jungkook blurts, sitting up wildly. “Of course I’m gonna think of you as a stupid little kid, look at you,” he seethes, gesturing at the phone beside you. You flinch. “All you do is watch kids shows and whine whenever I wanna watch anything normal adults watch. You complain every single day about the most normal things, like your job? Why should I fucking care that you’re working a dead-end office job in a field you didn’t even study for— that’s not my problem, __!” he snaps, eyes narrowed into little slits. “I just won an award last night,” he says suddenly, voice back to its regular volume. “I’m at the height of my career and I’m only going up, but I can’t even enjoy that because I have to come home and cater to you,” he finishes, a loud scoff punctuating the final word.

You had never imagined Jungkook finally bragging about himself would be at your expense.

A beat of silence passes, the angry glint in his eyes quickly fading away the longer you don’t say anything. You sniff once, turning your head idly to the side where Phineas and Ferb is still blaring loudly from your phone speaker. Picking up the device, you throw it across the room where it hits his closet door with a terrifying bang the breaks the silence.

The sound snaps Jungkook out of whatever shock he’d been in. “Baby…” he says slowly, carefully, like you’re a caged animal that’s just escaped the zoo.

“I’m going home,” you say, also a little too calmly. You saunter over towards his closet where your shattered phone screen glares up at you as you yank a pair of sweats off a hanger. Jungkook is still frozen on the edge of the bed, watching you with wide eyes as you move about the room.

It’s when you’re in the hallway leading downstairs that Jungkook finally snaps out of his daze, scampering behind you as you descend the stairs. “Baby,” he rushes out, loudly bounding down after you, “___, wait,” he gasps, catching you by the kitchen counter collecting your keys. “I-I didn't mean that,” he rushes out, eyes wide and frantic as they flicker over your expression. “I don’t think that—I don’t, baby, please, just… let me explain, please.”

“Jungkook, let go of me,” you respond, shaking your wrist in an attempt to release yourself. He’s not even holding you tightly— he never would—but the sound of your heart pounding in your ears makes your movements jerky and erratic. “I wanna go home.”

“No,” he chokes, cornering you against the counter. “No, baby, please just listen to me, I-I—“

“You what, Jungkook?” you snap, placing a hand on his chest and forcefully pushing him away. He lets you, stepping back with a wobbly bottom lip. “You need to tell me how you’re too good for me? How much I hold you down because I wasn’t lucky enough to get a job like yours straight out of college?” He says nothing, swallowing roughly as you jab a finger into his chest. “Well let me tell you something,” you snarl, chest heaving, “I may be childish and a huge complainer, but I’m not stupid enough to let someone walk all over me like this.”

With that, you make your great escape. Truthfully, you don’t want him to see the tears in your eyes as you yank his door open, stomping down his steps and in the direction of the nearest bus stop. The door opens right after you tug it shut, painting your shadow across the sidewalk. There’s the scrambled sound of house slippers against the concrete that follows you down. “Go the fuck back inside,” you snap without missing a beat.

Sensing your obvious anger, he pauses before he can reach you. “Text me when you get home?” he calls out quietly.

“No,” you respond.

You would never admit to anyone that you spend the entire night eating a tub of mint chocolate ice cream. It’s disgusting and makes you gag, but it’s the only one you have in your apartment. And of course, it was brought over by none other than Jeon Jungkook himself a few days ago. Even when you’re trying to comfort yourself over how mean he was, on your anniversary night no less, you’re plagued by thoughts of him everywhere.

As much as you want to brush his words off, put on that cool girl exterior you’ve maintained since high school, there’s something different about this situation. You guess it’s impossible to brush off such hateful words when they come from someone you love and adore so much.

Were you too childish? You had always believed that side of you was what made your relationship with Jungkook so perfect. The two of you meshed well because of your differences, like yin and yang. So how had he been able to so easily deconstruct every inch of that balance in a matter of a few seconds? Was this perfect reality all in your head this whole time?

You want to tell yourself it was just a heat of the moment outburst from Jungkook, give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s never snapped at you like this before. Of course you’ve fought a couple of times in the past year, but neither of you had ever stooped as low as you did yesterday. Furthermore, the insecure part of your brain says he obviously felt this somewhere in his heart to bring it up at all. What he had said to you wasn’t something someone could make up on the spot.

You don’t text him when you get home, partly to spite him, but mainly because you had left your phone at his place anyway. You know he tried calling you last night because the call log is synced up to your laptop. He called on and off for about thirty minutes before he probably found your phone in his room. Whatever, he can mope in his regret for all you care

—is what you wanna say, but the longer he goes without showing himself to you the more your insecurities and hurt fester. Was this it? Was this the end of what was probably the best year of your life? It’s too painful to think about, to even consider the possibility that Jungkook might have gained a new insight last night and decided, hey, maybe this is for the best after all.

You drown yourself in an ungodly amount of sugar for breakfast, your laptop blaring yet another episode of Phineas and Ferb on the dining table. Muscle memory has you making Jungkook’s favorite pancakes before you can stop yourself, and by the time you do realize, you’ve resigned yourself to the blueberry smell anyway.

There’s a pounding on your door a little past noon, so hard and rough, that you almost think it’s the police finally coming to catch you for all your years of illegally pirating Phineas and Ferb.

It’s not.

It’s just a really drunk boyfriend wailing for your forgiveness at the door. You open the door with a fright, jumping back when he slumps forward and almost crashes face-first into the floor. “You didn’t call,” Jungkook cries, leaning a little too much of his weight onto you when you reach out to steady him.

The thundering of your heart slows upon registering it’s him. “Kook?” you frown, nose pinched at the ungodly stench of alcohol wafting off his clothes. “Have you been drinking?” you ask even though the answer is staring you right in the face (and in the nose).

He groans, staggering deeper into your arms. You blindly push the door shut behind him, resigning yourself to this new situation while your pancakes grow cold in the other room. “Baaaby,” he slurs, letting you guide him into the living space. He’s unceremoniously dumped onto the couch, half-opened eyes gazing up at you. “Let me,” a hiccup, “explain.”

You won’t lie. There’s a very obvious sense of discomfort sitting in your chest, torn between two paths that you don’t wish to choose between. His skin is warm and flushed like he’s just walked all the way here in this morning sun. You step over to the window that faces down onto the street below. There’s no sign of his car; you would have killed him if he ever tried to drive in this state.

“Did you walk here?” you ask instead, deciding there’s no need for one singular path, not when you can walk straight down the middle, both cleaning him and grilling him at the same time.

Jungkook’s response is delayed, head lolling from side to side as you help him out of his sweater. His skin is sweaty beneath, scorching to the touch. “Uh-huh,” he groans. Jesus, you sort of assumed but him confirming it really set things into perspective.

By no means did you and Jungkook live on opposite ends of the earth. On a good day, a drive from your place to his took about ten minutes. But walking? Easily an hour. Had he walked all the way from his place, drunk on top of that?

You brush his hair away from his face, his eyes fluttering shut at your touch. His lips are pouty yet chapped, dehydrated from the sun and the alcohol he reeks of. “Sit up for me,” you instruct, scampering off to your room for chapstick and water.

“Anything for you,” Jungkook wheezes, throat probably dryer than a desert. When you return, he’s two seconds from face planting into the coffee table and breaking that pretty face of his. You catch him with a hand on his shoulder, keeping him balanced. “Tell me what to do,” he chokes out, voice hoarse.

“Just need you to drink some water,” you say, pressing a cup against his lips. He drinks it, but a drop still dribbles down his chin.

“No,” he groans, catching your wrist in his hand when you reach up to apply some chapstick on him. “Tell me what to do,” he stresses, “to fix this. Fix us.”

His words make you pause, the tube of chapstick hovering over his plush lips. “You don’t have to do anything,” you respond quietly, trying to finish the application so you can pull away.

Jungkook doesn’t let you go. You try to look away, but there’s something about him that looks off. Maybe it’s the raw skin under his eyes, red and swollen. Or the sad droop to those same eyes that hold you captive. Or maybe it’s the subtle tremble in his hands, the fingers that hold tightly to your wrist, not to keep you there but to ground himself. “I don’t wanna lose you,” he rasps out, shakily bringing your hand to his mouth, where he presses one airy kiss to your knuckles. “Tell me ho-how to fix this and I’ll do it,” he pleads, a vulnerable look in his eyes.

Unable to withstand the sheer amount of agony on his expression, you look away. “___, please,” he chokes out, stumbling off the couch in his drunk and desperate haze until he’s kneeling in front of you. “I can’t… I can’t,” he sniffles, tears clouding those pretty eyes you’ve come to love so much. “I don’t know who I am without you.”

You clench your jaw. “You’re Jeon Jungkook,” you murmur, slipping your hand out of his hold to run through his hair. It’s knotted and a little too greasy, two things Jungkook would usually never allow. “This year’s Platinum Mobile Standard of Excellence Award recipient,” you remind him, trailing your thumb across his cheekbone when he turns to look up at you with those big Bambi eyes. “Sweet and shy, but you love being rowdy with your friends. You love movies and TV and organizing your shirts according to fabric type. You work harder than anyone I know and never complain. You date me, even though I’m a huge child,” you smile sadly.

“No!” he jumps, turning that frantic stare back into you. “Y-You’re not— it’s not,” he stammers, words still slurring together. “I’m a liar,” he cries, resting his forehead on your knees. His shoulders shake. “I don’t deserve you,” he weeps quietly. You place a hand on his shoulder. “Y-Y-You make my life so much better, ___, so colorful and fun. I-I wish I knew you in high school,” he admits, “maybe I wouldn’t have been so emotionally constipated now.”

“You’re not,” you reassure him softly.

He disagrees. “You bring out the best,” he hiccups, “the best in me.” Your heart skips in your chest. “I-I love you, you know that?”

You sputter, eyes wide at his sudden confession. “I… love you so much, y’know? I think about you ev-every night, ___,” he rambles, eyes dreamily gazing off into some miscellaneous spot on the wall behind you. “I can’t get you out of my head. Like you're a song, o-on repeat but it’s not annoying because it’s my favorite song, and I could listen to it for the rest of my life, y’know? My favorite song, I know all the words b-because it’s all I think about! I love... My love… I love you so much.”

“Kook,” you rush out, cheeks flaming as you try to pull him away from where he’s slumped over your legs. His passionate speech has you abuzz, body tingling everywhere until you feel overwhelmed, head spinning like you’re on a rollercoaster. “Let’s get you to bed.”

He nods sleepily, seemingly coming down from whatever alcohol induced rampage has allowed him to walk for an hour straight in this searing heat just to confess to you. “Y-You don’t have to say it back,” he continues to stutter as you guide him through the living room on wobbly legs. “I just-I just— can I?” he babbles. “Can I love you, ___?”

You pass through the kitchen space, where whatever you were watching on Disney+ is blaring loudly. It distracts Jungkook for about two seconds before his attention returns to you. When you don’t answer, he presses on. “Is that okay?” he asks, whirling around to face you, catching your shoulders in his hands. He towers over you by the entrance to your bedroom, dark curls tickling your forehead. His eyes are dark and glazed over, both in tears and an emotion so raw and unfiltered it squeezes around your chest until you can’t breathe. “Is it okay for me to love you?” he murmurs softly, knocking his nose against yours.

Your cheeks blaze. “Yes, th-that’s fine, Kook,” you blubber, placing a hand over his chest, where his heart is also hammering away. “Just need you to go rest now, okay?”

He nods sleepily, nudging your nose with his one last time, like a soft almost-kiss, before letting you push him into the room. “Yes, yes,” he breathes, his body finally crashing from his adrenaline spike. He flops down onto the bed unceremoniously, dark waves fanning across your pillows. You try to wiggle him out of his shirt, but it only gets about halfway up his chest before he blindly reaches for the covers. His legs stick out awkwardly, clad in the sweatpants you’ve come to associate with him.

When he’s all swaddled up in your blanket he finally goes limp, tiny snores leaving his lips as he dozes away from reality. You sigh, pressing a palm to his forehead. He’s still warm and clammy, but at this point, there’s nothing you can do but wait for him to sober up.

With a final kiss to his forehead, you leave the room, closing the door behind you before sliding against the wooden surface. There’s a trapped bird in your chest, wildly flapping its wings in an effort to get out, and it’s all stupid Jungkook’s fault in the next room. Stupid Jungkook who demolished and remodeled your heart all in less than twenty-four hours. It doesn’t calm down, even when you rush off into the kitchen for a glass of water, or when you try to immerse yourself in some other show on Disney+. It stays beating against your ribs and your chest until you’re forcing yourself to sit down on the couch and process.

He wakes up a little before dinner. You hear him from the living room, where you’re flicking through the options on Disney+ for the nth time that day. You’ve seen the first fifteen minutes of about twenty different series and movies by now, always growing antsy and abandoning them early on. The only reason you know he’s awake is because the shower turns on for a few minutes, and then his bare feet are heard padding across the hallway back into your room.

By the time he resurfaces in the living room, you’ve resigned yourself to just more Phineas and Ferb, nonchalantly watching the silly cartoon. (Except you’re anything but nonchalant, and your heartbeat rings in your ears.)

Jungkook hovers by the door, clad in a pair of shorts he’s left here before, and a t-shirt you stole from him. “Hey,” he says quietly, lingering by the doorframe. You nod back in response. “Can I watch with you?” Again, another nod.  

Slinking over to the couch, he’s rather careful as he sits down, leaving a few inches of space between the two of you. You don’t even think he can see the screen of your laptop until he murmurs, “he’s my favorite character,” when Perry the Platypus appears on the screen.

You hum. “Thought you didn’t like these kids shows?” you ask. You don’t mean it to sound as petty and backhanded as it comes out, but that’s really no one's fault but his own.

Jungkook’s breathing tightens beside you. “No,” he admits, “I don’t. Only watch them because I know you like them.” You contemplate pausing the episode and engaging in a real conversation with him, but at this point, you’re very tired from the events of the last day. Jungkook doesn’t press either, just shuffles more comfortably beside you.

You get about five minutes in, quiet chuckles shared between the two of you, before he strikes. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he says, so hushed you almost don’t hear it. His hand is resting in the space between you, pinky brushing against yours. “About… being late. And the presents.”

You inspire slowly. “That wasn't even the problem, silly,” you brush off. From your peripheral, you see Jungkook’s slow nod. “I didn’t want any presents,” you mention, “I just wanted you.” You look away from the screen immediately after, pretending like the spot on the ceiling is actually really interesting.

The two of you fall into silence, the animated characters on your screen rapidly chattering away. “Oh,” Jungkook says after a moment.

You roll your eyes. They’re moist but you don’t want him to see. “Yeah, oh,” you parrot back softly, relaxing into the couch again. “Did you eat the food I left out?”

Jungkook shuffles beside you, the soft lull of the speakers soon being cut as he reaches over to pause Phineas and Ferb. A couple of seconds pass and then he’s leaning into you, head resting on your shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes again, placing a palm over the hand he had been teasing for the past few minutes. “I thought I knew what I was doing but I was wrong.”

His voice is so soft and sincere, it makes your chest ache. You try to burrow your face against your opposite shoulder, try to hide the stray tear that escapes out of the corner of your eye. “It’s fine,” you brush off, voice choked off and hoarse.

Jungkook leans up, pecks your cheek so tenderly it makes you go mushy. “No, it’s not fine. I acted like a know-it-all and said something way out of line,” he murmurs, raising his head to look at you. His hand feels warm over yours. It’s the touch you craved all day and yesterday, the warm feel of his body against yours. You’re embarrassed at how easily you melt into it. “You’re the best thing that has happened to me in a long time,” he tells you, holding your hand close to his chest. “I had no right to say those things to you.”

You sniffle, resting your head against his shoulder now. His heart beats loud enough for you to hear. “Was it true?” you mumble. “Do you really think of me like that?”

He shakes his head, his soft breaths fanning across your forehead. “No, never,” he answers. “I think you’re incredible. My brain was just trying to justify my dumb anger.”

You nod, even if you don’t believe it just yet. But that was a conversation for later, you suppose, sometime in the future when you aren’t on the verge of tears and threatening to crumble apart at the simplest word that leaves his mouth.

“I should have come home like you wanted, thought about my words before saying them,” he says, snuggling closer to you. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” you sniffle, covering your face with your free hand as he presses a kiss to the vein that runs over the back of the hand he’s holding captive. “Now it just sounds like I'm just being inconsiderate of your gifts and a crybaby.”

Jungkook kisses your temple softly, gently. “Don’t think about the gifts,” he says. “Just tell me what you wanted to do, doll.”

His voice calms you, has you like putty in his arms. “Watch movies,” you mumble, toying with a thread on your couch cushion. “Be with you.”

He hums. “Then we’ll do that,” he says, reaching for your laptop again. The screen nearly blinds you when it flickers back to life before you, Jungkook’s low breaths against your ear making it near impossible for you to process the titles on the screen. “You liked Disney+?”

Belatedly, you nod. “I like the animated movies,” you admit quietly, the anxieties of before slowly melting away, even more so when he slides his arm around you, pulling you close against his chest.

Unlike other times where he’ll critique the hell out of such childish films, Jungkook says nothing as he starts up the Zootopia movie instead, the same one you had wanted to show him before, right from the beginning. “That bunny looks like you,” you murmur when Judy Hopps first appears on the screen.

Jungkook snorts. “You say that about every cartoon bunny.”

You turn your head to glance at him over your shoulder. He meets your gaze with a small smile you return. “It’s because you’re so cute,” you say softly, lips twisting playfully when his cheeks grow scarlet.

He knocks his forehead against yours, eyes fluttering shut. “Not cute, just lucky,” he chuckles. “Lucky enough to have you.” Your heart turns over in your chest, threatening to burst out of your rib cage at his words. You try to turn in his arms. Before you can say the words that have been sitting on the tip of your tongue for months now, he’s beating you to it once again. “I love you,” he confesses in a hushed whisper, no alcoholic influence. 

Something inside of you blossoms, eyes wide as he chastely kisses you. He pulls away without you ever reacting, too caught up in surprise to kiss him back properly. He stays close, curls tickling your forehead as he leans over you. “You don’t have to say it back, I just wanted you to know. I love you,” he says again, long lashes blinking down at you. “So much. It makes me feel like a stupid teenager again, going to the mall to buy a gift for my crush.” He laughs sheepishly, reaching down to tangle your fingers together. “Is that okay?” he asks quietly, pressing a kiss to your knuckles.

It mirrors the confession he’d given you that morning, those slurred words and teary eyes. It had been difficult to pinpoint the legitimacy of it before, the meaning scrambled by his hazy mind. But with him staring at you like this now, like you single-handedly plucked the stars from the sky to put them in those sparkly eyes of his, it makes something inside you ache.

Still, you choke on your own spit. “I-Is it okay for you to love me?” you sputter incredulously, realizing the oddity of the same question he’d thrown at you earlier. But now, you’re both sober and you can really tear apart that sentence. Jungkook nods a little too seriously for your liking. “Are you crazy?” He blinks in confusion, brows pulling together as you slowly but surely lose the last bits of your sanity. “You’re an idiot, Jeon Jungkook,” you huff, “a stupidly handsome, rich, walking dream, idiot who goes out with stupid girls like me.”

“Not stupid,” he murmurs, closing in on you again as he finally understands the truth behind your masked insults. He smells minty and like his favorite body wash of yours.

“No,” you deny. “You’re actually, like, insane. You have a bachelor pad, make enough money to sustain an entire litter of kittens, look and talk like every teenage girl’s dream boyfriend— but you mess it all up by dating evil, conniving hoes like me who lose their shit over Disney cartoons.” He says nothing, watching you with an amused grin as you talk over yourself, basically regurgitating his statement from yesterday except it kinda seems plausible now that you’re over it. “It’s stupid. No, you’re stupid. No— I’m stupid.”

Jungkook chuckles, kissing the corner of your mouth gently. “Done?” he says, a dimple appearing on his cheek. You could kiss it away, but you need him to know the amount of stupidity in this room was astronomically high. “You’re not stupid, baby,” he says. You level him with a look. “Well. You have your moments.”

“Moments?” you repeat, standing up in a hurry that has him flopping down beside you. Your laptop is lost somewhere on the cushions, the voices faded as they grow farther away. “I am so stupid. I called Namjoon a whore for taking you out for lunch!” you cry. “I am the stupidest person in the world.”

Jungkook cackles, standing up beside you. “Yes, yes, you’re my stupid girl,” he teases, tapping the pout on your lips playfully. “So stupid she slanders herself instead of just telling me she loves me too.” He bumps your noses together, dark eyes staring at you almost daringly after his claim.

You fold soon enough. “I love you,” you mumble, “even if I’m too stupid to say it.”

He rewards your confession with a kiss, pulling you into his arms soon after. He sighs, almost wistfully. “Whatever shall I do with my very stupid girl?”

After exactly three minutes of feeling safe and loved in his arms, he abandons the living room in favor of leading you back to your room, where he pushes you down against your mattress. You cling to him, leaving him positioned over you at an angle. His chest presses against yours, arm curled around the back of your head. “Gotta get up, baby,” he laughs.

You shake your head, caging him in your arms. “Nuh-uh,” you murmur, legs wiggling when he places a hand on your hip.

Jungkook chuckles, pressing a kiss against the side of your ear. “Your movie is still playing in the other room,” he reminds you, thumb drawing soothing circles on your hip. You don’t release him, his mindless touch only encouraging you to keep him close. “Babe?”

You say nothing, relishing in the comfort of Jungkook’s presence. His hair smells good and feels even softer against the side of your face. The cotton shirt he found is crumpled beneath your fists, dark blue pattern wrinkling. Finally coming to terms with his new home, Jungkook eventually relaxes into your hold with a sigh.

“Alright,” he hums, patting your hip as he repositions himself more comfortably. “I get it. My pretty girl must’ve missed me, huh?” You nod, soaking in every detail about him in this moment. Jungkook shifts, the hand on your hip suddenly falling over your thigh instead. “Or should I say my stupid girl?” he purrs, hand slipping between your thighs. “My stupid, little girl?”

A gasp catches in your throat when he runs his fingers over the front of your panties. Your legs kick out wildly at the sudden touch, toes curling at the hands you dreamt about all day and night. “Oh,” you pant, each brush of his fingers feeling better than the last.

“What?” he says, mouthing against the side of your neck. His tongue feels warm, but the trails of saliva he leaves have you shivering. “Too dumb to speak?” he scoffs, biting down against a particular spot on your neck. You whimper, unsure if it’s because of his hands or his mouth.

“N-No,” you try to sneer back, fingernails digging into his skin through his shirt. His hands are getting braver now, the pad of his pointer finger dancing over your engorged clit. The sheer material of your panties certainly doesn’t help, each touch feeling like it’s being magnified three times over. And if it felt this good with underwear, you can’t even begin to imagine how it’d feel without.

You don’t have to ponder for long, because soon after Jungkook is slipping his hand beneath your waistband, touching your sensitive pussy head-on. “Kook.”

He uses your momentary vulnerability to ease himself from your hold, finally recoiling enough to smother your mouth with his. You moan in surprise, thighs quivering as he gets to work circling your hardened bud sans your panties. Jungkook isn’t the least bit kind as he kisses you ruthlessly, likes he’s trying to compensate for something with his movements. When he finally pulls away it’s with an obnoxious pop and cherry red lips. He huffs, glancing down to see where he’s got his fingers pleasuring you.

Your thighs are squirming back and forth, closing around his hand every few seconds. Jungkook snorts. “Huh, look at that,” he mutters, trailing down until his fingers are gliding over your quickly sopping folds. “Stupid girl is good for something.”

Your cheeks burn. “Kook, I’m not—“

Jungkook levels you with an unimpressed glare. “Not what? Not stupid? But I could’ve sworn you just spent the last few minutes saying you were,” he drones meanly, landing one light slap against your cunt that makes your hips buck.

You bite down a whimper. “I was just…” you trail off, eyes rolling back when he teases one finger against your opening.

“Kidding?” he supplies. “Well, I wasn’t.” Your heart stutters in your chest, eyes growing wide as he finally pushes himself off of you, propping himself up with an elbow beside your head. His gaze is dark and unrecognizable. “I think you’re so fucking stupid, doll,” he sneers. “And what are you gonna do about it?”

You should have seen this moment coming, the manifestation of that shiny side of the coin finally reaching its full potential.

While Jungkook wasn’t exactly shy about his interests, he certainly wasn’t tripping over himself to tell you every new kinky thing he wanted to try. You sort of guessed he had some interest in this sort of play a few weeks ago when you watched the Barbie movie at his place. A lot of that night had branded itself into your three am wet dreams, but there was one particular moment that stood out to you. That was you, on your knees, with him condescendingly patting your head. Or just last week, you vaguely remember the term slipping through his lips as he pleasured you with The Bullet Bestie.

The thing about Jungkook was that, until last night, he would have never admitted, or so much as even thought, that he was better than you. That was fine because you would say it enough for the both of you anyway. Did you think Jungkook was amazing, an absolute diamond among these measly rocks? Absolutely. (Were you slightly biased because you were his girlfriend? Skip.) However, you also had this insane evil villain complex that made you want to brag about everything you possibly could, especially if that meant bragging about your boyfriend.

Realistically speaking, he was better than you, that much you could look past yesterday’s anger to admit, and not even in a stuck-up, conceited way; he had a really good job, an architecturally amazing house, and a hot girlfriend. Meanwhile, you had a mediocre job, an okay apartment, and an insanely sexy Calvin Klein boyfriend, half of which he had pointed out yesterday. Regardless of how powerful that third factor was, he still outnumbered you three to one.

Sue you, Jungkook was amazing. Anyone could see that! Except, maybe, himself.

And if the only time Jungkook would openly brag about his greatness or establish how much better than you he was, was in a post-fight, sex-induced setting, then you were more than happy to be his punching bag. So long as it was on your terms, and not as a result of his weirdly bottled up feelings.

(Yeah, you would have a long talk about that tomorrow.)

But for now, you pout up at him, clamping your thighs shut purposefully. “You’re stupid too,” you defend, “stupid and mean.”

Something in his expression changes. Suddenly, he’s moving at superhuman speed as he snatches his hand out from where you had previously trapped him between your legs, yanking you up by the front of your shirt. “Mean?” he mocks. “Isn’t that what you always wanted?” You shiver, fingers wrapping around the wrist that holds your sweater. “Wanted me to be mean and push you around like a little rag doll?”

Jungkook looks at you for another two seconds, before he’s slowly pulling away from you, leaning back on his knees. His tongue is pressing against the inside of his cheek, jaw tightening from the movement. “Baby,” he says so quietly it instills a prickle of fear in you, tainted with delicious excitement.

“Yeah?” you whisper, sitting up tentatively as you watch him, He was a bit frightening, like a wild animal about to devour you whole.

Jungkook rolls his neck, the joints in his spine cracking as he begins tugging off his shirt. You salivate at the sight, too focused on the sinewy muscles of his body to catch the dark gaze he levels your way. He throws it off to the side, his sleeve of tattoos that wraps around his bicep and begins to crawl down his chest wonderfully unobstructed now. “Eyes up here,” he says and you quickly meet his gaze. He leans forward, muscled arms coming to cage you against the headboard. “Stupid little sluts don’t have the room to make such comments,” he rasps out, unamused expression adorning his normally soft features. “Don’t you think so?”

“I-I don’t know,” you stammer, leaning away as he comes closer and closer, eventually just turning your head to the side to avoid that emotionless look. It’s the wrong move, and Jungkook lets you know as much by forcefully digging his fingers into your cheeks and turning your face back around to meet his gaze.

A hand grabs beneath your knee, tugging harshly until you’re flopping down onto your back with a squeal. You settle with his knee pressed hotly against your core. Jungkook stays towering over you. “Dumb little girls who make me watch cartoons,” he spits, tracing a hand over your chest, molding your breasts beneath his hands roughly enough to make you gasp. “And watch little animal movies on Disney+. Aren’t they just so stupid?”

“So stupid,” you concede, subtly shifting your hips for some desperately needed friction. Jungkook snorts, finally granting you your wish with one rough slide of his thigh against your core.

“I agree,” he says, and surprises you with a hand around your throat as he leans in to properly grind his thigh into you. “All they’re good for is being dumb little sluts with good pussy,” he murmurs darkly, thumb pressing into the side of your neck forcefully. “Sometimes, they don’t even do anything,” Jungkook continues, his other hand on your hip hauling you higher up his thigh. You mewl, soaked panties rubbing roughly against your folds. You miss the soft swirl of his thumb, the gentle prod of his fingers. Even so, you can’t deny this change in Jungkook is doing something to you, riling up a part of you that you hadn’t known existed. Maybe it’s the horniness from yesterday that was left unfulfilled, the one year anniversary sex that was put on pause. “Just lay there and take it, too fucked out and dumb to say anything.”

His fingers loosen for the briefest of seconds and you gasp for breath. “That’s terrible,” you whimper, rolling your hips up into his thigh, so close to his swollen cock.

Jungkook chuckles without an ounce of humor, pressing your foreheads together as he helps grind you to completion. “Isn’t it? I think that stupid little girl is cute though.”

“I’m sorry,” you blurt, vision spotting as he tightens his hand back around your throat. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you moan, stomach tight from all the stimulation.

Jungkook hums, slowing you down with a tight grip on your waist. “Hm, what are you sorry for?” he croons, pink lips pulling into an evil smile. “You said you weren’t that stupid girl, __.”

You shake your head, trying to roll your hips up again but he’s holding you too tightly now, rendering you immobile beneath him. “I am,” you choke out shamefully, grabbing at the hand on your hip in a feeble attempt to remove it. “I am a stupid little girl.”

Jungkook smirks, leaning down to slot his mouth over yours. “That’s right,” he murmurs, “nothing but a dumb little slut.”

You shiver, opening your mouth when he slides his tongue against your bottom lip. He’s not the slightest bit nice, and more messy than usual. He pulls away with a bite to your lower lip, meeting your trembling gaze with that same unrecognizable glint in his eyes. “Come on, dummy, keep up,” he snarks before devouring you again. You try to, you really do, but he’s moving like an animal today, despite his slow and drunken movements from that morning. So you end up with his saliva dripping down your throat, clinging to the corners of your lips as he begins slowly grinding you against his thigh again. He flashes you a wicked smile, pearly teeth on display for you as he glances down at your messy appearance.

“Are you gonna touch me?” you ask, lower lip trembling at the thought after your desperate rutting. Jungkook purses his lips together in thought.

“Mmm,” he hums. “Don’t know yet.”

You whine. “Jungkook, please,” you whimper, wrapping your legs around his waist. “I need you.”

Jungkook chuckles, running his hand up your waist and taking your shirt with him. He slips his fingers beneath your bra, pushing the wire over your chest as he mouths at your neck. ��Cute,” he says. “Can’t do it yourself?”

You tremble, chest arching into him as he rolls your nipple between his fingers. “I-I can,” you gasp. “Just feels better with you.”

Jungkook follows your statement with a nip against your skin, tongue soothing over it right after. “Why? Because I do everything better than you? Even make you cum better than you?”

Your cheeks heat up at his blatant ego rearing its head, hands carding through the hair at the nape of his neck. You say nothing, and that only eggs Jungkook on. “Come onnn,” he teases, finally, finally rolling his hips down onto your core. You squeak, head falling back against the pillows as you’re granted the one thing you’d been chasing. “Say it.”

“Say what?” you ask, voice wobbly as he continues to slowly rut against you, the front of his shorts pressing against the soaked crotch area of your panties. “Oh, oh, Jungkook,” you whine.

Suddenly he bites down harshly, teeth digging painfully into your skin. You yelp in surprise, pussy throbbing at the pain that shoots throughout your body. Jungkook pulls away and doesn’t bother soothing over it as he leans up to capture your jaw this time. “Say you’re a stupid little slut who can’t do anything without me,” he purrs, kisses too soft for the words he says.

Your mind blanks, torn between the humiliating phrase he wants you to say and properly checking him in his place. In the end, it’s with a twisted need to please him that you’re repeating the words back to him. “I-I’m a stupid slut,” you whimper, fingers digging into his shoulder blades as he continues pushing you right along the edge. The rope pulled tightly in your core is slowly being pulled apart, threads hanging on for dear life. “Can’t... can't do anything without...”

“Without who?” he asks, reaching down and untying the front of his shorts. “Can’t do anything without who, baby?”

“Without you, without you,” you cry, bucking your hips up against his, the combined movements of both your bodies making you shake like a leaf. “Ah, K-Kook,” you wail, hips stuttering as your orgasm finally swallows you up. Your panties quickly grow wet and icky from your own arousal that pools between your thighs. Jungkook lets you writhe beneath him as you chase your high, mouth sucking a pretty blossom against your jaw.

You know better than to expect the night to end here, especially after seeing the glint that had been in his eyes as he watched you unravel.

He leans close, let’s his nose brush against yours as you catch your breath. “So perfect for me,” he groans, slotting his lips against yours. You can barely keep up with him, languidly going along with his hot tongue. “Perfect, perfect girl,” he murmurs, a stark change from the less than friendly adjectives he used just moments before. “Tell me you love me?” he says softly.

You nod, mind fuzzy as you wrap your arms around his neck. “Love you,” you exhale, letting your fingers knot in his hair. Your proclamation does something to him, makes him grind the front of his cotton shorts hard against you. For someone that was often rough and brutal with you in bed, he sure was sensitive to the mushiest of things.

“Don’t deserve you,” he huffs, hot breath fanning across your skin. He switches gears fairly quickly. “Tell me you hate me,” he begs hoarsely, rutting against your soiled panties. “Tell me I’m a piece of shit and you could do better without me,” he pleads, voice too airy to be another one of his usual sex-induced thoughts.

You shake your head, pressing a kiss to his cheek as he rolls his hips. “It’s not true,” you whisper, “I love you more than you’ll ever understand.”

Jungkook groans, suddenly winding back and tearing your ruined panties down your legs. You gasp in surprise, letting him haul you about in his blind, self-inflicted rage. “Stupid, stupid,” he huffs, though at this point you can’t tell who it’s directed at. With your underwear out of the way, he wastes no time plunging his fingers back into your cunt, bypassing the tight ring of muscle around it without any of his usual care. “You should hate me,” he snarls, lips pressed against your ear.

You moan, back arching at the sudden pleasure that blossoms between your thighs. “I-I don’t,” you gasp, toes curling.

Jungkook groans, the sound traveling down your spine and straight into your pussy. “Stupid girl,” he huffs, slipping an arm around you to pull you so close until you can’t breathe, chests lined up together. His skin is warm to the touch, scorching almost. “Fuck,” he groans, curling his fingers inside of you. You whimper and moan, incapable of staying still beneath him as he tortures you with a thumb to your clit. “Tell me you hate me,” he seethes again.

Despite the fog that’s settled over your mind, you still manage a resolute shake of your head. “N-no,” you cry, digging your nails into his back. They run dark red lines over his skin, making him hiss at the sting.

Whatever punishment he’s trying to put himself through is falling through with your refusal to admit such a thing. It aggravates him even more, your adamant stance on loving him so, and he’s retracting his fingers before you can cum again. “Please,” he chokes, face tucked into your neck. He’s sloppy with his movements; as he pulls his shorts down and kicks them away, he nearly suffocates you with his weight. “I don’t deserve you, ___, please.”

“I love you,” you whimper for lack of explanation. Jungkook leans back, that same madman gaze in his glossy eyes. He’s looking at you in disbelief almost, pouty lips puckered and swollen. Your hands slip from around him, falling on either side of your head.

Like a cobra he strikes, collecting your wrists in one hand he pins above your head. The sudden movement has him leaning in close, lips brushing over yours. His lashes are coated in a wetness he refuses to acknowledge, looking at you like you drive him insane. “If you ever try to leave me,” he whispers, jerky breath fanning over your skin, “I’ll lose my mind.”

He loves you so much it aches.

“I won’t,” you whimper, feeling your own eyes well up with an emotion that consumes every inch of your being. “I’ll never leave you, you stupid, stupid boy.”

A faint smile crosses his features at your words, lips quirking to the side. You relish in it for all of two seconds before he’s ramming his cock into you, your sensitive walls spawning around him. You sob loudly, eyes rolling back into your head. Your legs instinctively hook themselves around his waist, digging into the base of his spine as he rolls his hips into you.

You feel full and complete like he belongs there in this moment and every moment after this. It makes your heart constrict painfully. Jungkook’s soft groans follow your more unraveled noises, the vulgar slapping of skin on skin the underlying melody to it all. “Ffffuck,” he spits, greedily swallowing your moans up. You whine, arms bucking in an effort to hold him close. But he’s determined in his act of restraining you, long fingers tightening around your wrists until they hurt. “I warned you, didn’t I?” he huffs, snapping his hips into you.

Your walls clench around his hard cock, the drag as he exits sending shivers throughout your body. Jungkook’s body towers over you, glistening in sweat as he nails you into your mattress. “Remember what I said?” he asks, voice but a shuddery exhale. You shake your head numbly, overwhelmed by the rough drag across your walls. “All those months ago, when you first came over,” he adds. The hand on your hip abandons its post to cup you beneath the jaw, palm pressing sinfully against your throat enough to block the tiniest of airflow. “I’ll fuck you and keep you forever,” he murmurs, voice deeper than the pits of hell. He licks a fat stripe over your cheek like you’re nothing but a sweet for him to devour. “Do you remember that, pretty girl?”

You nod jerkily, hips arching up into him when he thrusts into you again. It’s a memory that replays in your mind every so often, your first night with the man you had planned to humiliate over a mere misunderstanding, now your boyfriend of one year. “Want that,” you gasp, tears blurring your vision when he begins picking up the pace. “Wanna be y-your pretty girl forever.”

Jungkook groans, kissing the corner of your mouth. His thighs are some magnificent beings, keeping his pace consistent even as he loses himself in his overwhelming need to kiss you. “Always,” he manages, soft lips pressed against yours. “I won’t ever let you leave.”

A shriek tears itself from your lips as he picks up that harsh piston, releasing your jaw to hold both wrists above your head. It makes his curls dangle in front of his eyes, covering that beautiful dark gaze. It makes his thin little necklace swing back and forth too, though it’s too small to actually touch your face. The rhythmic swing has you hypnotized, just like everything else about Jungkook.

With the length of his hair, you’re left staring at his lips, pulled taut between his pearly white teeth. The word from before sits heavy in your chest, begs to drip from the tip of your tongue. But he’s moving too fast and too hard, scrambling your thoughts until all you can think about is the cock plunging into your heat. His name falls from your mouth like mindless blubber instead, arms thrashing as your second orgasm swallows you up. It sends you crashing, body spasming as the sheer euphoria waves over you slowly and then all at once.

“Perfect,” he grunts, leaning down to slot his mouth against yours, “my perfect girl.” Your cum makes the sound of his hips erotic, the loud squelching following your panting. Still sensitive from your high, your body unconsciously tightens around him, keeps his cock from fully leaving. It brings a soft whine out of Jungkook, one he tries to muffle against the side of your face.

“Inside,” you whimper, even though your body feels like jelly beneath him. “Cum inside, Kook, please,” you beg.

It only takes a few more thrusts into your leaking hole for him to finally reach paradise, hips stuttering when that first shot of pleasure hits him. “Fuck, fuck,” he growls, wildly snapping his hips into your achy cunt. You moan, feeling just about brainless at the overstimulation. His cum leaves you full, almost makes your belly bulge from it. When he’s done he doesn’t bother pulling away, simply slumping into your limp form. His cock, though quickly softening, serves as a plug for the cum threatening to spill out of you.

There’s a muted noise coming from the other room, the faint sound of the mail slipping through your letterbox, the quiet chattering of the street outside. And of course, the loud blaring of your laptop playing the Phineas and Ferb theme song. Jungkook registers it at about the same time as you, a soft chuckle leaving his lips.

He pushes off of you soon after, leaning on his palms over you. He’s got that molten look on his eyes, the heat of a thousand suns burning behind those irises as he looks at you. Like he can’t get enough, even though he’s just about taken everything there is to take. “Love you,” he murmurs quietly.

A drop of sweat rolls over his forehead, clinging to the end of his eyebrow. You reach up and brush it away, let your hand trail down his face to cup his cheek. Immediately he leans into the touch, eyes falling half shut. “Love you more,” you respond.

“Impossible,” he scoffs.

Soon after you’re both stumbling out of bed, clothes haphazardly shrugged back on as you drift through the living room. There’s a thin, hot pink package sitting at the door, just having slipped through the letterbox; the stark Sexuality Unleashed logo is printed on the visible side, so you have to wonder what Doyeon could have possibly ordered this time that could be so thin. The laptop is awkwardly sandwiched next to a throw pillow, barely open a crack. Jungkook retrieves it, sets it on his lap as you scamper over to the couch.

“More Phineas and Ferb?” he asks quietly. He hates it, you know he does. And still, he wants to watch it with you.

You nod. “Please.”

He isn’t so concerned with the plot as you, clicking some random episode to start. You snuggle into his side, quietly singing along to the opening. After a moment, Jungkook speaks again. “Phineas and Flirt?” he offers cheekily.

You roll your eyes. “That might’ve been your worst one yet,” you sigh, trying to drown out his indignant huff by focusing on the screen.

“I don’t exactly see you coming up with these,” he points out, obviously feeling wronged.

Without missing a beat you say, “Disney+ and bust.”

epilogue

commercial break one ; the resolution

Copyright © 2020, 1kook on tumblr. absolutely NO reposts allowed.

[curious-minx]

Brian Wilson’s Ghost Theater: The Radiant Radish Story

Somewhere hidden on the isle of kokomo the ghostly casper version of beloved musical genius and heart and soul of The Beach Boys Brian Wilson is starring at a bowl of ice cream melting on top of his piano. The flavor, coconut rum sultana, the ghost of Brian Wilson perks up and smiles a little and looks away, he’s a shy spirit. 

Hey dudes you might be wondering why I’m a ghost when I’m not even dead yet? Well that’s the whole point of Brian Wilson’s Ghost Theater. We’re going to get to the bottom of these mysteries. I have been mainly using this digital forum as a way to write cool reviews about cartoons and good vibrations, but then, well you know, The Beach Boys have fallen into worse company than Ol Charlie. Don’t worry just because I’m a ghost doesn’t mean I pal around with Charlie Manson and the rest of the ghoul gang. You’ve got to cut those toxic people out of your lives. Come, let’s go to my garage. It’s easier to tell a story in there. 

The Ghost of Brian Wilson floats away from his piano stool wrapped in kelp. I am trying to get visual proof of the existence of the Ghost of Brian Wilson but my iPhone is sparking. There are rumors on the island that Kate Bush has relocated here and has built her house on an even more precarious cliff. I take one last glance at the splashing glades of dark and foreboding ocean slapping against the cliffside. I wonder how the Ghost of Brian Wilson’s piano stays in such pristine condition despite the wet conditions? 

The path to Brian Wilson’s Ghost’s Garage is covered in thick overgrown vines from papaya trees, I have to always make sure I am looking down or else I could get snapped up by the foliage. A furry hermit crab is ushering into a sandy cove with the air of the conspiratorial. There are two glowing theremins outside of Brian Wilson’s Ghost garage attracting moths larger than a grown adult man’s head flapping against the glow. I walk inside the garage and the door does not slam shut and lock me inside like I had feared but the sun seems stuck in a sunset. Brian Wilson’s Ghost pats upon a plush plum colored loveseat indicating a place for me to sit. There is an ash tray full of wrapped unsmoked purple joints and more ice cream. 

////

This Story Begins In the Summer of 1970

Leading up to the release of our album Surf’s Up, the one album I was taking a back seat on. I had left my physical body for the first time in 69 sometime after I started using coke. Van Dyke Parks and I were messing around in the medicine cabinet and doing the whole, “This isn’t my coke, this is your coke” routine and I felt my heart bum bum bumming at a vicious “Be My Baby”frequency. I needed a boost to keep up with the fruits and vege-tables at Radiant Radish. I was trying to get this specific chime sound right for my cash register, and I really meant my cash register. It was important for the rest of the store’s six cash registers to still sound like cash a regular cash register. 

(At this point in the story Brian Wilson’s Ghost vanishes and reappears with large cylindrical recordings of cash register noises and we listen to them for a few excruciating minutes)

And my cash register would ring this real pretty tone for whenever a real sexy lady bought some beet root powder and unruly arugula. I was imagining “Deidre,” Bruce’s ex-lady’s sister. As soon as the cash register burst open my ghost leapt out of my skin. I really like the actual Brian Wilson, but he never wants me around. He calls me a drag! I tried helping out with Radiant Radish, but I wouldn’t stop tinkering with the cash register. I more or less inhabited his bath robe and mostly hung around. Sometimes I help the real Brian catch a certain chord shape floating by and haunt Murry, my dad. 

////

“So, you’re a coke ghost?” Are the words I eventually gather and casually toss out for Brian Wilson’s Ghost.  I am hoping that somehow this all connects with the present and explain how Mike Love ruined the band. 

“I’m a health food store ghost!”

“Okay, but I’m not going to buy a subscription to this vitamin supplement program!”

“Then why did you bother coming all the way out to Kokomo? I am not supposed to let anybody onto this island! I should have left you drowned!”

“Hey that’s not fair!” I am really hurt right now but I don’t want to lose Brian Wilson’s Ghost so I check my back account, and of course it’s too low, but I sign up for the $15.99 antimicrobial surprise package and Brian Wilson’s Ghost finally stops doing his heart wrenching pout that makes me want to jump out into the ocean.

“Why did you wrench me out my revery..I feel like I was almost really back there. Dang dude.”

“Weren’t 69 and the start of the 70s pretty brutal for you Brian?” I look for that noble sorrow hidden in the depths of the phantom’s eyes and come up empty. He is completely vacant. “Fuck Mike Love!” I take my own self off guard by how passionate I get when I say this. Brian Wilson’s Ghost only responds with a fuzzy frown. “What? Don’t you get agree? You, or at least the real you, called him a piece of shit that stole The Beach Boys name. The reason I came out here was because I want to steal the Beach Boys name back for you.”

“So then it really will be safe to listen to The Beach Boys again, huh?” Brian Wilson’s Ghost continues doing that perpetual tear suspended in the corner of his eye wounded puppy dog eyes and I really wish I could give this ghost a swirly. 

“What? Um, Sure, but I doubt we’d be converting any new fans like Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu who took to Twitter to let everyone know that he always hated The Beach Boys.”

“That was our slogan back in 70 and 71, “It’s Safe to Listen to The Beach Boys again.”

“Ugh that’s terrible and this was an attempt to make yourselves seem cool again?”

“Our new manager Jack “The Super hurtful Man” came up with that one. What do you have against Mike Love? He’s not a bad man! Come on kick back and let me put on  “All I Wanna Do” could a true asshole sing a song that nice?”

“Yes!  I mean yes I have heard the song, it practically invented chillwave, and yes an asshole can sing a nice tune every once and awhile.  Don’t think I didn’t notice all of the Wanted Dead or Alive Mike Love posters on Kokomo, even the people of his own island can’t stand him. Brian Wilson you are The Beach Boys! The Beach Boys were about spreading love to everyone and encouraging friendly ecology! “Take A Load Off Your Feet” prevented my foot being amputated from lounger’s foot. We’ve got some before the election! Brian Wilson’s Ghost can make his debut and show the world that The Beach Boys do not support Trump!” I feel like I have gone rabid by the end of this tirade and the fuzzy hermit crab is using his pinchers to snap at my toes to shoo me away. 

Brian Wilson’s Ghost licks his dry mouth and gives me his award winning smile. He vanishes inside of his deuce coup and turns on the engine. He opens the door and once again pats on the seat letting me know that the seat is warm and accepting of my sorry ass. I reach into my breast pocket and wave two cassettes, one of Sunflower and the other of Surf’s Up trying to entice Brian to put them in, but he waves them away. Instead, Brian Wilson’s ghost takes out a red blank disc that is labeled with a Radiant Radish sticker. 

Brian was right, these cash registers really are the best part of the store. 

[ask-beacons-finest]

How's the AFD!RWBY+Penny vacations going? Are Ruby, Weiss and Penny enjoying Atlas? Have Blake and Yang gone to the daycare and taken off to Vacuo? 

(Asked by anon)

Afewdrinks!Weiss, sitting in a booth at a club, music pounding in her ears as the various lights around the venue flicker and flash to make a flipbook-like visage: Ugh...where's Ruby with our drinks?

Afewdrinks!Penny, sitting beside Weiss, bobbing her head side to side with the music: Would you like me to go find her? 

Afewdrinks!Weiss, nods, laying her head atop Penny's should for a moment: Please? 

~~~

AFD!Ruby, sitting at the club's bar, laughing drunkenly: No way! I know him too!

AFD!Rando, a dude obviously a few years older than Ruby, chuckling a bit: O-Oh, you really do know the DJ? 

AFD!Ruby, nodding, taking a sip of her drink before putting it down: Yeah!! He's a friend of one of my girlfriends!

AFD!Rando, nodding, putting his hand in his pocket and glancing at the drink: Oh no shit, cool. Wait, did you say girlfriends, like plural?

AFD!Ruby, excitedly nods: Yeah man! I've got two! They're great and I love them a bunch. They're fricken...gorgeous too. Like some of the most beautiful girls EVER.

AFD!Rando, raising an eyebrow in interest: That so? Well hey, where are they? I'd love to buy you all a drink, chat a bit.

AFD!Ruby, turning away from the bar to the crowd behind her, looking around: Uhhhh, let's see...I think they were over there in one of the booths...yeah! Yeah! See that white hair? That's Weiss! Penny must've gone to the bathroom or somethin.

AFD!Rando, quickly putting his hand back in his pocket as Ruby turns back around: That's cool. That's cool. I'm sure they're both pretty great.

AFD!Ruby, nodding, picking up her drink: Oh yeah! They're the coolest!

AFD!Ruby, bringing the drink towards her lips, only for her wrist to be caught in a tight grip from beside her: H-Huh? Oh!!! Hi Penny! Hey this is my girlfriend Penny! 

AFD!Rando, with a bit of a scowl: Hey.

AFD!Penny, slowly lowering Ruby's hand to place the drink on the counter, putting a single finger into the drink: …

AFD!Ruby, confused: H-Hey if you wanted to you coulda just asked for a sip y'know?

AFD!Penny, after a small flash of green light from her eyes, narrowing them and glares daggers at the dude: What did you put in this?

AFD!Ruby, taken aback: Wh-...what??? No Penny he's cool he wouldn't-

AFD!Penny, shooting her hand past Ruby, and grabs hold of the guy's wrist as he tries to walk away: Very well. Don't answer me.

AFD!Penny, uncaringly twists her wrist, a wet snapping sound coming from the guy as he collapses and screams out while holding his hand, steps over and rummages through his pockets to find a few packets of powder, one opened: Ruby. I beg you. Not to be so trusting. 

AFD!Ruby, disgusted: DUDE! WHAT THE FUCK!? 

AFD!Penny, giving the guy a swift kick to the face, knocking him unconscious before handing the drugs to the bartender, and giving a quick explanation on what happened: Let's go back to the booth Ruby.

AFD!Ruby, still absolutely disgusted, embarrassed due to feeling like an idiot, taking a tight hold of Penny's hand after spitting on the guy's face: Yeah...let's...yeah.

~~~

AFD!Weiss, protectively holding onto Ruby, who's clearly upset and was crying: Hey, hey it's okay, it's okay. You're just too nice for your own good. We'll leave okay? 

AFD!Ruby, sniffling, rubbing her eyes: I'm just...I'm an idiot I'm so sorry...I'm so fucking stupid.

AFD!Penny, sitting close against Ruby on the opposite side of Weiss, resting her head against Ruby's: You're safe, that's all that matters.

AFD!Neon, hopping up into the booth, nearly completely nude, her body covered in glowsticks liquid, making her a walking art piece: Hey, you guys okay? Bartender told me some cheery red head snapped a dude's wrist, I suspected it was you guys.

AFD!Weiss, nodding, frowning: Yeah, Ruby had...become acquainted with an undesirable.

AFD!Neon, growling: Fuckin bastards. Thought all of them were banned by now. Do you want me to bring you guys back to Flynt's backroom? It's a lot safer and quieter back there.

AFD!Weiss, nodding: Please. I hope neither of you will be upset if we call a cab back there. I think this might have been enough for us.

AFD!Neon, shaking her head, holding out her hand for Weiss to take, the four of them forming a train: Don't you worry about it, I'll call the cab myself. 

~~~~~

AFD!Yang, sitting at the airship station, waiting to board their flight, joking with Ilia: The next thing I know, I open the shower curtain and BAM, amber eyes glaring at me from the darkness. So naturally I take the showerhead and just spray the shit out of them.

AFD!Ilia, cackling: That's what Blake gets for being a good girlfriend and checking on you after the power goes out?

AFD!Yang, defensively, laughter breaking through: Hey all I'm saying is I've seen more than enough horror movies to know how that situation ends.

AFD!Blake, shaking her head, muttering: Maybe I should've just killed you.

AFD!Blake, with a sly smile spreading on her face: But hey Yang, why don't you explain just what you were doing laying down in the bath with the showerhead in your hands? Hmmm?

AFD!Yang, stammering, embarrassed: W-Well you see I was just...uhhh, I was-

AFD!Trifa, standing up, motioning her head towards the boarding door for the airship: Our flight.

AFD!Yang, jumping up from her seat, grabbing Blake's hands and pulling her up too: Oh no! Guess that story will never be told! 

AFD!Blake, rolls her eyes: Mhhm.

~~~

AFD!Blake, walking down a boardwalk built atop a beach, wearing a large brimmed sunhat: It's a bummer we were separated on the flight. 

AFD!Ilia, happily soaking up the Vacuo sun: It's alright! I mostly napped. 

AFD!Yang, swirling a keychain around her finger, four keys attached to it: I'm just worried about our luggage…

AFD!Blake, taking hold of Yang's hand: Shh, the hotel service took care of it. Now let's hurry! I wanna see our-

AFD!Trifa, as the four walk over a sand dune, her jaw dropping: Holy shit.

AFD!Ilia, dumbfounded: Is...is that our-?

AFD!Blake, nearly speechless: It's...it's like the size of my family's house...and it's on the water…

AFD!Yang, nearly breaking into a sprint towards the cabana, excitedly calling after the three: WELL!? LET'S GO CHECK IT OUT!

~~~

AFD!Blake, stepping into a large open style room, a cool ocean breeze blowing her hair out of her shocked face: This...it's beautiful…

AFD!Yang, sighing a breath of relief: Our luggage. Thank Gods.

AFD!Ilia, going around the room, peeking into doors: A bar! A kitchen! A beautiful living room!!! Two bedrooms! Guys!!!!

AFD!Trifa, looking around in amazement: What uhh...what gym do you go to? I might get a subscription.

AFD!Yang, biting into a peach from a complimentary fruit bowl, with a smile: Well if there are more people there I'd have less a chance to win next year.

[hatari-translations]

Griðastaður (Sanctuary) - translation

Here we go. This is a full translation of Griðastaður, Matthías’s graduation work, complete with a bunch of translation footnotes.

When I translate lyrics, I usually try to stick as closely as possible to the actual words/phrasing used in the original, so as to give an accurate idea of what the original lyrics say (but translating idioms and such appropriately, of course). Here, the main goal is to get across the narrative of this play, so I’ll go for something that communicates that narrative effectively over directly translating the exact words being said. I’m not making anything up that’s not there, and most of this is quite close and possibly too close, but there are definitely times where some other phrasing would’ve been closer to the original but I consciously go for a different one that sounds more natural in English, just has a bit more punch to it, or conveys mood etc. better.

The play is pretty much a monologue, but I’ve included occasional stage directions when they help illuminate the context of what Lárus is saying, so that you should be able to just read the translation straight through without being confused (or, at least, any more confused than someone actually watching the play being performed). You can also try to watch along as you read, and then the stage directions will hopefully help anchor where you are.

Sanctuary

[LÁRUS is pacing, muttering to himself.]

Welcome. Good to see you. Hope you're feeling all right... A store unlike all other stores. All other stores. Unlike all other stores. [unintelligible] Give you a warm welcome. There's good morale, a dedication to customer service, great ambition... looks, responsibility, ambition. Yeah. The employee- employee and human - employee and human resources policy. Employee and human resources policy. The employee and human resources policy of IKEA.

[He sips a drink, then walks over to look in the mirror.]

Okay. Hello.

Hi. I'm Lárus.

Welcome. I'm Lárus.

I'm Lárus.

Hi.

Yeah, welcome. I'd just like to ask you to turn off all your mobile phones and... not take any photos during the meeting.

Welcome, I'm Lárus. I'm just going to - I'd be thrilled if you'd all turn off your mobile phones and not take any photos during the meeting.

Hi! Greetings! I'm Lárus! Um... I'd be thrilled if you'd just, maybe, put your phones on silent, or preferably turn them off, or, and don't take any photos during the meeting. If you need to have it on, of course, you do that. I mean, maybe you've got kids, or... or moms.

[He shakes his head; starts pacing again.]

Hi. I'm Lárus.

Hi! Greetings! Lalli here!1 ...No.

I'm Lárus. Welcome.

It's nice to see how many of you there are, at this unconventional time. Right? Fun to see how... I'm Lárus! It's fun to see how many people are here at an unconventional time. Everyone's probably got a busy schedule, as you do, in a modern society... [sigh] Jesus Christ, man.2

Hi. I'm Lárus, and I'm just going to get you up to speed on things around here. Get you up to speed... I'm going to get you up to speed on things around here. [He starts to write this down.]

Hi! I'm Lárus! I'm just going to get you up to speed a bit on how things work around here. Ah, it's fun to see how many people are here at such an unconventional time. Um, everyone's gone except me, and you, heh. It would've been fun to say hi to people - say hi to everyone, but... Maybe the Securitas guy'll be here later. Obviously he's not actually working for IKEA, unfortunately he's Securitas, but if he comes around, I'll just explain to him that we're staying late, and it won't be a problem.

...Ugh, what am I saying.

IKEA. IKEA, IKEA, IKEA. IKEA. What is IKEA? IKEA. Welcome. I'm Lárus. I'm going to get you up to speed on things around here. IKEA. What is IKEA? IKEA was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad. Uh... Ingvar Kamprad was born in Elmtaryd in Ag- Agunnaryd in Sweden, and he was a young man with big dreams. He wanted... Yeah, it all started with one matchbox, and it...

[He stops and shakes his head.]

Everyone... Everyone has their own special relationship with IKEA, whether they work here or not. It's... I had my special relationship with IKEA long before I started to work here. I'd come here just to browse, and to find some peace. Right, I came here to find peace. And that sense of peace is still here, and there's good morale, and we want people to feel good and give them a warm welcome, and that's not least thanks to the employee and human reason- employee and human resources- employee and human resources policy of IKEA. Employee and human resources policy. Human resources policy.3

[He sighs and flips through papers on the desk.]

Right. Four-day week. Four-day work week, twelve-hour shifts. Twelve-hour shifts, and that's... Twelve-hour shifts, and for those of you coming in full-time - but to balance it out, we get good vacations in between. It's intermittent work. ...Employee and human resources policy.

I, for my parts, I just started to come here because I've always got this fucking4 guilt going on. I started to come here because I always just had this raging guilt. Uh... I guess that's why I applied for a job here.

Today I don't have anything to complain about! I've got a great job, I've got decent pay... [He looks at himself in the mirror.] Nice. The best. [He starts irritably straightening his hair.] I've got a decent car, a Netflix subscription, I've got a Nockeby sofa, I bought a Nockeby sofa here at IKEA, just a three-seater, not the corner sofa. Really nice sofas. And, uh...

Maybe I always just have this guilty conscience. A guilty conscience calling for organic fair-trade chocolate, or eco-labeled5 deodorant. Or a Netflix subscription, but no, that only calls for more chocolate, or a thoughtful status update, or a B-product6, like that Nockeby sofa.

...Right. See, you, as employees, you get a 15% discount on all purchases, but for B-products, it's 30% off. By all means make good use of that. 30%.

Right. So about two years ago, I got... I woke up with a raging guilty conscience. Woke up with a raging guilty conscience. And I came here, to IKEA.

It was just a normal day. I don't know why I was feeling so guilty. I just woke up and got dressed and got some coffee, and I went out and unplugged my car, and I just drove straight up to Garðabær7, alone. Did you know that there's an eco-labeled house in Garðabær? It's just like a regular house, perfectly usable, only eco-labeled. Sustainably produced. It's... neat.

Anyway. So I drive up to IKEA, and what greets me is these flags. They're majestic, the flags outside IKEA, the way they just ripple in the blue and yellow of the Swedish flag. I always remember where I parked my car based on the flags; where the third flag is, that's where I parked. That's how I remember. Yeah. See, I think, the person whose job it is to fly the flags at IKEA has to be really satisfied in their job. They've got to feel like the hero of the day at IKEA, waking up before everyone else and flying the IKEA flag in the morning sun, outside IKEA. Yeah.

But I'm not there to fly any flags, I just go inside and up the escalator and into the living room department, and I - well, I'd just have a quiet moment there, maybe even entire days, without buying anything. You see, I don't feel guilty if I don't buy anything, unless of course it's a B-product. Yeah.

Hello?

I get a phone call. The phone rings on the escalator. A phone call. I'll never forget that phone call.

[He picks up a framed photo on a shelf and looks at it.]

Hi.

Yeah, hi.

What's up? Yeah?

How are you feeling?

Right.

Yeah.

Hey, should I... should I do something for you? Maybe stop by with some chocolate? Green & Blacks? You like that.

No?

Right, okay.

Or we can go out? We can take a walk later, maybe I can... Yeah?

Oh. No, it's... You're tired, I know.

Huh? No, they... they didn't say, all they said is you're not going home until the inflammation gets better. I don't know what that means, it's just... They've got to have the final say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What? No, don't do that. Nononono, you have to take your medicine. You have to take the - yes, you do, it's one red one before you sleep, two green when you wake up, two Paratabs8. And enough water.

Yes, Mom. Yes, you have to... yeah.

Huh? No, I'm just at IKEA.

No - what cabinet?

No, I - Mom, I'm not about to buy anything.

No, you know perfectly well that I'm just - no, I'm just thinking and people-watching.

Yeah... Yeah, I know it's weird. Don't worry about it, Mom.

No!

Huh, María? [He becomes audibly defensive/irritated.]

I don't know. I don't - probably just fine. Mom, we broke up ages ago.

Yeah. No, I told you ages ago. Yeah, I have no idea what's new with her.

Right, I need to keep going here. We - I'll visit tomorrow. Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Take those pills!

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

[He sighs, putting down the photo.]

Just to clarify it a little, see, some people go on walks, around Tjörnin9, or by the beach, and others do yoga, or go to the gym. Some people go to church or a mosque. I'd just go to IKEA. For me. I know it's weird, but I... IKEA is just the place that truly reflects me the most. I... My place is there, among the people, and the cabinets and shelves and price tags, and all my deepest desires and expectations.

Yeah. So I'm there on the escalator, talking to my mom on the phone, and then by the time I've hung up on my mom, I'm in a model apartment, in my favorite staged bathroom in IKEA. And I sit down on the brim of the bathtub and I'm just thinking. What... where do I stand? Who am I, Lárus, here among the furniture? Can I afford this cabinet, or this bathtub? How about that woman? Does she think she can afford it?

Am I ever, in my entire mortal existence, going to have stuff this nice? I'm thirty-seven years old and I would never use my oven enough for it to ever be worth it for me to buy the newest Griljera stove for 160,000 krónur10. Even if I had that kind of money to spare. I mean... and even though it's a good price, do I really need it? Do I want it? What am I doing here? Why am I here? What am I going to leave behind? What, a toilet brush? An IKEA toilet brush? I, Lárus, and my IKEA toilet brush! What, toothpaste? Toothpaste! Two hundred tubes of toothpaste! I, Lárus, and two hundred tubes of toothpaste! 6232 rolls of toilet paper! 6232! 26 bottles of shampoo, actually that's not that much. Q-tips? I actually stopped using Q-tips. I just use toilet paper, take two squares and fold them up and put them in my wet ears after a shower. But you know, think about it. There's just some factory over in China that's producing some little plastic sticks with a bit of cotton on the end, just to put a hundred of them together in a plastic box - what for? And then a million - one and a half million liters of water. I'm not measuring that exactly, but you know, what am I, Lárus, doing with all this water? Or, like, laundry detergent. There's a whole laundry tub full of it - Neutral, of course, it's eco-labeled - fabric softener, lavender spray, toilet cleaner, uh, universal cleaner, floor cleaner, glass cleaner, bathroom cleaner, uh, shaving cream, seventeen bottles, aftershave, razorblades, disinfectant, thirty-four bottles of that. Yeah, I use a lot of disinfectant. And that's not even over that long a period, it's just since I moved out of Mom's place.

And deodorant! 128 rolls! 128 rolls! And I couldn't help thinking, last time I threw a roll of deodorant into the garbage, roll number 127, that, uh... Yeah. We've got a very clear environmental policy at IKEA, but it's, uh... I couldn't help thinking, as I was throwing roll number 127 into the garbage, that there had to be at least one guy in China, on the other side of the world, just spraying himself. Just spraying himself. You know, I use mine sparingly. My deodorant, an organic deodorant, from Germany, a really good-quality brand, not tested on animals or anything, eco-labeled, see - but he's over there, some guy in China, just spraying himself. Spraying himself with his new Nike deodorant in the aluminum can that's produced who knows where, some concoction of nastiness and chemicals, just to have exactly the right smell for the least amount of money. And he doesn't give a shit about the factory and the ecosystem and whether it's eco-labeled. They just spray it on! They spray it!

I think: last time I - yeah, when I was throwing mine in the garbage, at that exact moment, that guy in China, on the other side of the world, is throwing his away, and I'm just yeah, great! I spent 800 krónur on mine. I might want to use lavender, but I want to do it right. And I wish I could just say to that Chinese guy: Hey! Use that sparingly, man! You don't have to spray it on like that! You'll get the smell even if you don't spray it on like that! Hey! Hey, look, I'm not spraying - Look, there's aluminum, paraben and [unintelligible chemical name] in that! Are you crazy?! And I say something like that, but that's not... Maybe he'd just answer back. "You no judge me!11 You no tell me what to spray in my own home! My sister, my sister died! She died! She overworked herself in a really intense environment so I could spray myself with Nike Extreme Men Edition Deodorant!" And I'm just like oh, really, of course, you're right. What am I doing telling some Chinese guy what he does with his deodorant? I don't even know Chinese, I could never say that to him! I can't... I can't even tell my mom how I'm feeling, how am I supposed to tell some Chinese dude what he does with his own deodorant? Maybe he's working in some factory that's full of gross chemicals and all he wants is to just come home and spray himself with some other gross chemicals! Maybe he was going... Maybe he was going to get ice cream, or on a date, I mean, I don't know anything about this guy. I don't know anything about this guy. I don't know how to get across that hey, we both want lavender, but this isn't the right way, you see? This here is eco-labeled! There are chemicals produced under some really toxic conditions! [He's getting choked up.] Like where your sister worked. Right? But you don't have to use it. I want to help you! We're on the same team! Can you help me understand how I can help you? I'm just one man, and you're just one Chinese man. But we share one beating heart! We have to learn to work together, think of the children, and buy eco-labeled! And eco-labeled products are often way higher quality, you just somehow get the feeling that they're better made! And they don't even cost that much more, if you take quality into account, see, if you take quality into account you're really getting way more for your money! Do you disagree with that? Help me... help me understand.

[He bows his head, sobbing, for a bit, before slowly looking up.]

Help. Help! Spiders! Giant spiders! Nooo! Not in IKEA! Nooooo! Watch the children! They're killing the children! Nooooo! They're so small! Aaaaahh! Moooom! Take your mediciiine! Aaaahh! Yeah, glycol! You mean, just spray it on them? [He mimes spraying pesticide, making choked spider-dying sounds.] They're dying! [Sprays.] Oh no! More monsters! No, what a nightmare!12 ...María, will you kiss me?

[He snaps out of it and shakes his head, goes to have a drink, clears his throat, fixes his hair in front of the mirror.]

Ahem. Yeah, that little meditation, uh... it's just... The story about the Chinese guy and the spray bottles and the spiders, that's... I dreamt this once, actually, and I just chose to tell it because it happens here, in IKEA, in this model apartment. The truth is... the truth is that we are constantly battling contradictions, like the eco-labeled nightmare, every day. [Looks in the mirror again.] Nice, Lárus. Every day. We don't want to give discounts; we want to get discounts, on eco-labeled products.

[On 'discounts', he clicks his tongue, miming pressing a button on a remote. The camera zooms out to reveal a projected word behind him, like a PowerPoint slide: "DISCOUNT"]

[Points into the audience.] You there! You want to get a discount, on eco-labeled products. But you won't get that here! Not in IKEA. Not today.

[Another click, switching slides; the projected word is now "IKEA".]

...Or, well, okay, you get a 15% staff discount on everything, and 30% on the B-products, and you should make use of that.

[Projected: "B-PRODUCTS"]

But we, we want quality of life. ["QUALITY OF LIFE"] But what is quality of life? Is it love and happiness? ["NO"] No. Is it security and contentment? Soft beds and good dreams? ["NO"] No. Isn't quality of life just not having that guilty fucking conscience? ["YES"] Yes. Environmental policy. The environmental policy of IKEA.

But how are 7.6 billion homo sapiens ["SAPIENS"] supposed to live and breathe together on one planet without having a raging guilty conscience? It's not like they're all just going to go shop at IKEA. No, they'd just buy up everything in a split second and everyone goes home with their Griljera stoves ["GRILJERA"] while everything goes to hell. So what then? ["?"] Is our conscience perhaps what makes us human? ["US"] Is it fair that I have a guilty conscience, enough to only buy organic fair-trade chocolate and eco-labeled deodorant, but that Chinese guy from the story, he doesn't feel anything? He was just spraying it on. ["LIKE, SPRAYING"] Like, spraying. Not me. Does this make me better than the Chinese guy? ["NO"] No. But I feel like I am.

I have flown to Asia, and I got a hell of a guilty conscience for that. ["GUILTY CONSCIENCE"] Because flying pollutes. And so does eating meat, and keeping dogs. And mass-produced furniture! And cars! My car, even though I drive an electric car. ["NICE"] An electric car. And I sort my garbage. And I'm a vegetarian. No, I'm vegan. Yeah, I'm vegan. ["NICE!!"] Sort the garbage.

And then eating food also pollutes, but it varies how much. But tofu's not eco-labeled! ["TOFU"] Is it? Or the veggie balls here in IKEA? ["NO"] No. And it's all imported. But what about disasters, like tornadoes or hurricanes or those spiders? ...No, they're... I guess they don't pollute. That's tragic. Very tragic. Very tragic.

[He goes and has a drink, then walks over to the corner.]

"Can I help you?"

I'm standing there in the bathroom department, in the staged bathroom, and suddenly I hear this firm, young, but still kind of pathetic voice behind me.

"Ahem. Can I help you?"

See, the only thing that annoys me about IKEA is all the other people at IKEA. And there he is, some summer-job substitute employee in a polo shirt, trying to sell me something, some shelves or a bathtub, or just politely ask me to leave. And he says, "Thanks for that contemplation. Obviously we live in fraught times. An ever-expanding middle class in eastern Asia is entering the same quality of life race as us Westerners, increasingly flying and bowing to ever more exaggerated standards of hygiene. But is that your fight? No. Your fight is to get your own priorities in order. And good for you, buying eco-labeled."

...No, he didn't actually say that. He just said, "I've noticed you've been here in this bathroom since we opened."

Oh. Uh, yeah, you're right.

"Right. And you were here yesterday too?"

Huh? Yeah.

"And the day before that?"

Yeah, that's right.

"Right. Can I... help you with anything?"

What?

"I mean, are you looking for something in particular?"

Nah, or, well, yeah, uh, how much is this cabinet?

"Oh, that's 7950."

7950. It's 7950. He's already trying to sell me something.

"Yeah, it's 7950, and these are really nice cabinets. We've got them in light brown, too."

Right. No, white is - white is fine. What... what do you put in a cabinet like this? Is it for toothbrushes and...?

"Sure. Toothbrushes..."

Toothpaste?

"Yeah, sure, that too."

200 tubes of toothpaste?

"Huh?"

How about medicine and stuff like that?

"What? Oh, sure, you can put medicine in it."

My... my mom is chronically ill, in the hospital.

[He, playing the employee, nods slowly.]

So, uh, do you live alone? Because I live alone.

"What? No, or..." [The employee clears his throat.] "No. I'm sorry to hear about your mom. Uh, how about I write this down for you, the number, and they'll help you with it down in the warehouse? I have to help more customers, so..."

And then he goes and writes down, with a tiny little IKEA pencil, on a tiny little IKEA note, in tiny little IKEA handwriting, that I'll find this cabinet in aisle 7, rack D. And this - this is just a really good example of how there's a difference between service-mindedness and not knowing how to mind your own business. There I was, expertly manipulated into buying some cabinet that I wasn't going to - I mean, I was going to be there until closing, and I'm allowed to do that, but no, now I have to buy this cabinet. I'll just walk the path that IKEA has laid out for me. And it all goes smoothly - the whole building and the people are completely different when you know exactly what you're going to buy. I, Lárus, am going to buy a cabinet, that I, Lárus, picked out for myself, Lárus. And you, whoever you are, you can stand there looking at those neat little spice shelves all day, but I know what I'm buying. I'm here to buy! And I'm just going to pick up a fake cactus and some towels, and some plastic boxes that fit into the Silverån white mirror cabinet. Yeah. And I walk right down there, straight-backed, faster and faster, not giving a fuck what the staff think of me, not giving a fuck if they saw me here yesterday or the day before that or the day before that. All those days are written off, when you're buying a white Silverån cabinet at IKEA. And I walk past the lamps and the potted plants, and I see that on the other side of the potted plants there's a whole new world. The warehouse. Hallelujah. The warehouse, oh yes. A giant hall, shelves upon shelves upon shelves, boxes upon boxes upon boxes, of all kinds of crap. Dead-honest fucking white fluorescent lighting and a flat concrete floor, with garden chairs placed in the middle and a cabinet on display and some woman with a cart trying to maneuver her Billy-shelves onto the cart, and I don't even stop to help her, I just go straight to aisle 7, rack D, and look for that white Silverån mirror cabinet, and what I find is that the white Silverån mirror cabinets are all gone!

Fuck!13

Then what am I doing here, with a shopping cart with some towels and a fake cactus and plastic boxes? What am I supposed to do with these plastic boxes? They were supposed to go in the cabinet! And now I'm all worked up about some cabinet. What am I doing? I'm like an idiot. And you can't just walk backwards against the traffic through IKEA, that just looks silly!

I'm standing there, by the rack, facing this question: why am I here? And that's when my phone chimes, a quiet little chime. I reach into my pocket and see I have three missed calls and a notification from the hospital.

The nurse that I've been talking to the most about my mother's illness writes:

Dear Lárus,

After a diligent struggle with her illness...

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

...nothing that could be done.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Your mother, Stefanía, passed away shortly after three o'clock.

Your mom, Lárus, is dead. She's a carcass.14 Dead as a doornail. Dead as a doornail in the hospital bed. Sorry 'bout that.15

Deepest sympathies, your mom's dead.

And there and then is when I decide the sole purpose of my being at IKEA is to climb up into the rack, behind the boxes in the next rack, without anyone seeing, put on headphones - I carry headphones - and just lie down and wait. I'm going to wait until everyone's gone from IKEA and has forgotten that I exist, and IKEA closes, and I'm all alone in the world. In IKEA.

And I lie there, somewhere in aisle 7 in the warehouse, sometimes with the headphones and sometimes just waiting and listening, for six hours.

[He's curled up inside a box for a couple of minutes while the lights dim and soft, mournful music plays16; you can hear him sniffling a bit. After the music stops, he slowly uncurls himself and stands up as the lights come back on.]

[Whispering] And then it's quiet.

Wow. Can you hear? And I realize I'm all alone in IKEA. The silence is incredible. And I'm all alone, in IKEA.

Your mom, Lárus, is dead. A carcass. Just dead as a doornail in the hospital bed. Sorry 'bout that. Deepest sympathies, your mom's dead.

If I ever cried over the content of that message17, it's here, alone, at IKEA.

And suddenly - suddenly, for no particular reason, don't know why, I imagine - I imagine an argument with IKEA's security guard, who's going to kick me out into the deep blue night, out of IKEA.

"Excuse me, pal, we're closed," says this grumpy IKEA security guard. He says, [more angrily] "Hey, excuse me, pal, we're closed."

No, no, please - hey, listen, man -

"No, listen to me, man."

No, you listen to me, man. IKEA is my sanctuary. Right?

"That's none of my concern. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

No, but - you don't understand - I've had a really difficult day, a difficult month, year. I was just going to - hey, take it easy! I was just going to check out this cabinet and - I didn't mean to - I was just going to search for - hey, calm down. Don't - listen to me! Don't! Let me go! Stop! Don't touch me, you - Hey! Hey! Don't you touch that white Silverån mirror cabinet! It's mine! Fucking shit!18 Go fuck yourself, you disgusting piece of shit!19 Fuck! Fuck!

[He mimes wrestling an imaginary opponent down; he mimes the entire following couple of paragraphs as he's saying them.]

And I take him and throw him to the floor, and I just start to beat the crap out of him. Pow! Pow! Pow! And I take an IKEA screwdriver and stick it in both his eyes, and he's just "Aaaahhh! Aaaaahhh! Aaaaahhhh!" And I pick him up like "Ahaha! Huh?" And he's like "Please, please, I've got kids, I've got kids," and I twist him around and jam the screwdriver up to this throat and say "If you don't fucking leave me alone, huh? If you don't fucking leave me alone, I'll take this screwdriver -" "Yeah, yeah, please, please, please, I have kids, please don't kill me, don't kill me -" "Are you going to get the fuck out?" "Yes! Yes, yes, I promise! I promise! I'll do anything!" "Are you going to leave me the fuck alone?" "Yes, yes, I promise, I promise!" "Who's the king of IKEA?!" "What? You! You!" "I can't hear you!" "You! You're the king of IKEA!"

And then I take him and wrestle him down, and just pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! And I take the screwdriver and - [He mimes stabbing several times, then stands up and mimes stomping on the guard's face, then mimes some other action I can't quite figure out.] And he's just, he's just, "Aahhh, I'm dying, I'm dying, don't, my kids, my kids, I'm dying!" [He's panting.] And I...

...And I'm suddenly just really hungry, so I just head straight to the cafeteria where I'm just going to spray, just spray some Swedish veggie balls into my mouth20, but no! I go there and find they've taken all the hot food and just thrown it away! How typical, how they tell you they're so environmentally friendly, and then they're just throwing imported chickpeas into the trash! And suddenly I really need to go to the bathroom, so I go to the bathroom.

[Leaning against a wall, presumably in the bathroom, he starts to catch his breath.] Okay. Okay. Okay.

When I go back to the cafeteria, I see that the salads in the fridge are fine, and I grab a chicken salad, and a healthy wrap, and a smoothie, and a sixpack of beer. And I take it all to my favorite staged bathroom, and I lie down in the bathtub to have some chicken salad.

[He lies down on a couch, still panting, and starts to eat.]

What was that. What was that.

There's not a soul here. No security guard. He was imaginary. No veggie balls. Chicken salad. Sure.

The king of IKEA, bathing in a staged bathroom. I've always dreamed about doing this. [He gets choked up.] And Mom's dead.

[He's lying there, sniffling a bit, for some time, then slowly sits up.]

I don't get... I don't get when I cry. Why I... I don't get why I'm even crying. I don't get whether I'm even crying. Do there have to be tears for you to be crying? I don't know.

It could be anything. Really I went through the mourning process long ago. I haven't really cried about María since we split up and I've barely cried for Mom. And where should I cry for them, if not alone at IKEA?

See, deep down I knew that Mom was going to die. I knew ages ago. She'd gotten so tired, somehow.

[He stands up and starts pacing.]

Look, in the German PoW camps during World War II - not Auschwitz, not the concentration camps, the PoW camps for captured British soldiers - the first ones to die were the ones who didn't bother to shave. I read that in a book. The ones who shaved and bathed every day, they survived the camps. Maybe years of imprisonment. I know it's weird, but I think it makes sense. I mean, if you've stopped bothering to take care of yourself, you've stopped bothering to live. Tenacity - you lose that tenacity. You just think: Why shave? Why take a bath? Why exercise? Why buy myself flowers21? Let myself have some fine chocolate, just because my life is worth it? She always liked it. Green & Blacks, the green, long one.

Then she stopped wanting it, stopped calling me, stopped wanting to do anything with me, stopped looking forward to going to the theater with me. That's how it was with the World War II prisoners of war, too. The ones who saw a reason to take care of themselves and bathe and shave, they weren't really prisoners. They were just... just sprightly guys.

And part of me said, I said to her, Mom, so what? So what? Of course you're going to die! We all die! Are you just going to sit there wallowing in it? Are you just going to give up? We all die! You, me, the nurses, everyone at IKEA! Me! Just, everyone you see dies! Everyone dies, Mom! Everyone dies, you understand? Just because you're dying, you don't have to wallow in it! No! Because everyone dies! Everyone! Everyone dies! Everyone dies! Do you know how many people died in World War II? No? It was... many. Because everyone dies! Yes! So just have some fucking chocolate, just once go to the fucking theater before you fucking croak! Or whatever, we can go for a drive! You can leave the hospital bed for a bit, the nurse said so. Sure, go, by all means, everyone dies. She said that. Sure, fuck it, just go, everyone dies. Yeah? Because everyone dies! I've got these black hairs in my nose and aches in my knees and my back and every now and then I get a long hair growing out of my eyebrow, right? Because everyone dies! Yes! And I'm not wallowing! No! Fuck it! I love you!

[He looks down.] ...No. I didn't say that to her.

At least, I've gotten up and I've had some food. I'm in the sofa section, looking at all these nice sofas in IKEA. And who should I bump into but the Chinese guy from the story? He's just sitting there. Sitting on this Norsborg canvas sofa, green. Maybe he's mourning his sister. His sister who died.

Maybe she was young, his sister. She wasn't meant to die. She was young and she was - she had dreams. She had dreams, she had tenacity. She was going to - she was going to move to the big city! Shanghai! There's three IKEA stores in Shanghai. She was going to do something real, learn something real in Shanghai. Maybe she wanted to be a nurse. Or a bio... biomedical... or a marine, a marine biologist! The kind that scuba dives with dolphins! And she recognizes them individually, and talks to them... and she's diving, and maybe she sees a turtle, a little turtle stuck in a piece of plastic trash. [imitating turtle] Aaaahhh! And she goes and saves it, and removes the plastic. Here you go, little turtle! Turtle! [imitating turtle and waving] Thaaanks!

And then maybe she analyzes the water for the little turtle, because she's checking if the turtle - this is in the South China Sea, and she's checking if the little turtle can even live there anymore, what with the rising acidity of the oceans. And then she's got coral plants22, maybe she's growing coral plants in her home or at a lab, a lab full of coral plants, and she's going to save the coral reefs, and the coral plants, and the dolphins, and the turtles, and just, do something! Do something other than just dying!

...Yeah. And he sighs, like this [sighs], thinking about his little sister. His little sister who died. Maybe he never managed to say goodbye to her. Maybe he never said 'I love you', those words, to her. Couldn't do anything for her. And I sit beside him and put my arm around him, on his shoulder. And we just sit there, the two of us, in silence. We don't say anything, but we understand.

I feel like I can leave something behind here. It's not about 'What's Lárus going to buy at IKEA?' And it's not about 'What's the Chinese guy' - I don't know what his name is - what he's going to buy at IKEA, but what do they leave behind?

When the time is right, we split up, and the Chinese guy and I go our separate ways, in a deep mutual understanding.

Before long, it's not long at all, before long, another IKEA employee shows up. It's a woman, in her thirties or so, who's probably worked there a few years. Blonde. She obviously just got up, but she's still in a bright mood. She's just flown the Icelandic and Swedish and IKEA flags, in the morning sun outside of IKEA. The IKEA flag-bearer. And she takes my hand and leads me out of IKEA.

Yeah. Bye. [He waves.]

A few days later, I bury my mom. And then a year passes, the great IKEA year. The IKEA year. Today, I work for IKEA. I even outrank Guðrún, the one who led me outside the previous year, the IKEA flag-bearer, her name's Guðrún. I outrank her, working at the same company. Head of marketing and sales for the business department of Swedish furniture giant IKEA, that's me. [He sighs.]

The other day, Guðrún and I visited my mother's grave. Guðrún, the one who led me outside after a whole night alone at IKEA. The two of us together, at my mother's grave. And Guðrún, she knows what she's talking about. She said to me: "Yeah, Lárus, you're right. Everyone dies. Me, you, everyone at IKEA, everyone who designed all those shelves, everyone asking about the quality of the different mattresses at IKEA, everyone having veggie balls, everyone having meatballs, everyone drinking beer after work at IKEA, everyone buying a bunch of Swedish crisp bread and weird soda, everyone having a hotdog at the corner store, everyone arguing about the kitchen at IKEA, everyone browsing spice shelves at IKEA, everyone crying in the bathroom department, everyone buying a bunch of disposable crap they're not going to use, everyone just looking and not buying anything; you're right, Lárus, everyone's going to die."

IKEA is my sanctuary, I answer. Here, mortality is as staged as the staged bathroom.

"Yeah, Lárus," she says, "mortality is a staged bathroom."

...No, actually she didn't say that. She just said some - she was very polite. She said... actually just the other day, out of nowhere, completely out of nowhere, she said, "Doesn't everyone die, Lárus?" Everyone who... everyone at IKEA. Everyone opining on the food at IKEA. Everyone who thought their oven would be more expensive at IKEA, they're going to die. Everyone who thought their whole kitchen would be more expensive at IKEA. Everyone who's disappointed at IKEA, everyone mourning their mother at IKEA, everyone mourning their sister at IKEA. Everyone at IKEA who has kids. Everyone at IKEA who doesn't have kids but still browses the kids department of IKEA. Everyone feeling their age at IKEA. Everyone celebrating a milestone at IKEA. Everyone who gets the IKEA catalogue delivered to their homes but still doesn't go to IKEA. Everyone who takes the IKEA catalogue to IKEA and asks an employee if they've got this carpet at IKEA. Everyone who's been to IKEA once, everyone who's been to IKEA a lot. Everyone who's been to IKEA abroad. Everyone who lives in the countryside and uses the opportunity when they come to the city to go to IKEA. Everyone who thinks going to IKEA is a family moment. Everyone who takes selfies of themselves and their families in IKEA. Everyone who's disappointed in IKEA. Everyone who just can't deal with IKEA. Everyone who feels a spiritual calm in IKEA. Everyone who was just going to visit IKEA briefly but then spent most of the day in IKEA. Everyone. Yeah.

And Guðrún, she... she leads me out, softly, after that fateful night when my mom died, this night that's stayed with me all this time. She says goodbye on the escalator. And I stand on the escalator with tears in my eyes, and opposite me, the first customers of the day are coming in. The first of the day to browse the selection available at Swedish juggernaut IKEA. I can see that outside the day is growing brighter. And I wave to them, one after another. An old man with a walking stick. A mother and daughter pointing somewhere. A just-married couple planning out their kitchen. They don't wave back, they just look at each other. A few teenagers, probably just going to hang out at the cafeteria. Contractors having breakfast. Two sisters around fifty. I don't know what they're going to do. And suddenly I'm all the way down, the king of IKEA. And the years just pass, peacefully.

I know - I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, 'No, that doesn't make sense. IKEA doesn't have two escalators! There's only one escalator and it goes straight up to the living room department! They don't face each other! This doesn't make sense! There aren't two escalators!' But I'm telling you yes! Because it's new! And you know what else is new? I'll tell you. I can proudly tell you that we here at IKEA will soon be introducing our first eco-labeled cabinet at IKEA! The first eco-labeled cabinet! And do you know what it's called? It's called the Silver Swan mirror cabinet! And you know what? It's exactly as functional as its predecessor, but far more sustainably produced! The Silver Swan! The eco-labeled mirror cabinet at IKEA!

"Lalli" is the usual nickname for Lárus, but it's a bit silly-sounding. ↩︎

He actually says "Díses kræst", which is sort of a slightly mangled phonetic import of the English "Jesus Christ". It's pretty commonly used and sounds more casually exasperated than the actual Icelandic "Jesús kristur". ↩︎

He's enunciating this super-clearly, trying to practice saying it because he tripped over it before; it's kind of a tongue twister. ↩︎

The expletive he's originally using here is "helvítis", literally "Hell's". Basically all generic Icelandic swearing is religious in nature, and you don't really get anything stronger than this there, so translating it to "fucking" is appropriate even though it sounds kind of unintuitive in English where all the strongest language is sexual or scatological. We don't tend to take swearing very seriously in general, though; nobody's really offended simply by people swearing, or bumping up age ratings on movies purely for strong language. ↩︎

This is a word that's going to be coming up a lot here. The Icelandic word is svansmerkt or "swan-marked", referring to the Nordic swan ecolabel. ↩︎

I asked some friends and it doesn't seem like this is a thing in English. It's just a term for returned or cosmetically damaged goods that are sold at a discount. ↩︎

The municipality just outside Reykjavík where IKEA is. ↩︎

Icelandic brand name for mild over-the-counter painkiller paracetamol/acetaminophen, the same active ingredient as e.g. Tylenol. ↩︎

A large pond in downtown Reykjavík. City hall is basically in the pond. ↩︎

The Icelandic currency, ISK. Google will convert to your currency of choice if you type in e.g. "160000 ISK in USD". ↩︎

He starts talking in sort of a cringeworthy stereotypical Chinese accent here, only to drop it a couple of sentences in as this character starts to take shape as a human being in his head. ↩︎

He does this whole thing in this obviously fake screamy whisper, kind of the tone of voice you might use as an adult playing along with a child playing pretend. I think the idea here is that he's trying to play off the entire preceding breakdown about the deodorant as just another bit of silly fooling around. ↩︎

This time he's literally saying 'fuck', or rather, 'fokk'. Swearing in borrowed English is pretty common for modern Icelanders, but it's not accepted written Icelandic, and if you're translating something from English into Icelandic you're going to replace any fucks with proper Icelandic swearing. Most of the fucks in this translation are actually literal - from this point on, I believe, nearly all of them are him actually saying 'fokk' or 'fokking'. Note that we wouldn't use fokk in nearly every situation where you might use fuck in English. "Sjitt" is also a fairly common exclamation. ↩︎

In Icelandic, he says "Mamma þín, Lárus, er dáin. Hún er dauð." Both "dáin" and "dauð" mean "dead", but the former is used for people (and pets or other animals that you really care about) and the latter for animals/plants/things. Using "dauð" for a person in this way sounds extremely callous, even hateful, though here I believe it's just him expressing how jarring and callous the message feels for him. (There's no way the nurse actually wrote this.) ↩︎

The original line is "Sorrí með það", featuring another case of a borrowed English loanword, which makes this sound even more casual and callous than "Sorry about that." I tried to convey that by making it "Sorry 'bout that". ↩︎

The music here (which also reoccurs later towards the end as background music) is a very slowed-down, haunting choir version of "Vegir liggja til allra átta", which is originally a pretty upbeat tune, but lends itself really well to this, since it's in a minor key and the lyrics speak of the roads where life takes you, being powerless to control where it goes, and longing for lost love and happier times. ↩︎

He actually says "letter" here, and I honestly think it sounds just as strange in Icelandic to refer to a text message as a letter. I'm really not sure why he'd use that word. ↩︎

I believe what he's saying here is "Helvítis fokking fokk", an infamous quote from a 2008 protest sign. I rendered it as "Fucking shit" because literally translating it would just sound obviously parodic and hard to take seriously, and in this moment in the play I think it comes off as a genuine expression of impotent rage rather than a wink-winky quote. ↩︎

He calls him "ógeð", which is a word that just means "a disgusting thing". He then follows that up with "Ew!" That bit just sounds weird when it's not directly in reference to "ógeð", so I just went with "disgusting piece of shit" and left out the "Ew". ↩︎

In Icelandic spraying food into yourself is an actual figure of speech, so it doesn't sound as bizarre as this does. This is clearly meant to be a sudden unexpected callback to the deodorant story, but I don't think there is any English term that can simultaneously apply to spraying deodorant and gobbling up food, so it's just going to have to be a bit bizarre. ↩︎

The myself there is feminine, hinting he's speaking as his mom now. ↩︎

Corals are actually animals and not plants. Initially I just corrected this to "corals", but now I'm figuring maybe it's intentional, since Lárus doesn't seem amazingly educated about marine biology, so I've undone the correction and am just nitpicking it in the footnote instead. ↩︎

[simnovels-blog]

Descendants of the Sun - Evil meets Good

Week 1

Aiko didn’t know if she had to feel good or bad about the fact that she was getting along with Thornton Wolff. She was glad that this job wasn’t going to be super hard by the looks of it, but on the other hand, maybe Thornton would have been spared if she just couldn’t manage to become friends with him. The real question was if Izanami would forgive her for that though, and Aiko doubted it. So for now, she just decided to do the best she could. Aiko: “...and so we ended up moving from Moonlight Falls to Sunset Valley! It’s good to be in a new fresh town. I was really starting to get confused about who was my family and who wasn’t, haha!” Thornton: “See, this is why I don’t want children. I don’t want half the town to be filled with little Thorntons in a few generations, and especially not with little Morganas. Now that would be a nightmare, haha!” Aiko: “Huh? Isn’t she your wife?”

Thornton gestured to Aiko that she should come closer so he could whisper something in her ear. She was curious what he had to say, especially since it was about his wife who was standing in the way of Izanami’s plan (or was part of it, Aiko really didn’t know anymore). Thornton: “I shall tell you a little secret, since you’re new in town and can’t be a blabbermouth yet to anyone here. Morgana and I aren’t on very good terms. She really wants children, and I want none. We love each other, but our home hasn’t been a very happy place. Morgana can be quite a bitch when she’s moody!” Aiko didn’t really know what to say to that. It sounded like their marriage was already going downhill without the interference of her or Izanami. This whole plan might be way more easy than they had expected.

While Aiko became Thornton’s listening ear about all his marriage problems, Izanami was on her way to the gym to get her athletic skill going. She needed to improve it for her new job, so she decided to subscribe to the gym. Of course she could’ve added a gym to her dungeon, but she felt like a gym subscription was a good way to meet the people in this new town and to make them feel miserable about themselves by showing off her gorgeous body in public. At the gym, she bumped into no one less than Morgana Wolff! What a lucky encounter (for Izanami, definitely not for Morgana)!

Izanami: “Oh hey, aren’t you Morgana Wolff, the wife of Thornton Wolff? I don’t know if someone told you already, but it seems like your husband is getting very cozy with my aunt in the tavern down the street! If I were you I’d keep a close eye on your man.” Morgana: “Excuse me but who are you? And who do you think you are making such accusations about my husband?” Izanami: “Ohh I’m just new in town. You’re gonna love me! I’m not making any accusations though. Just telling the truth! You can go check out the tavern if you don’t believe me.”

Morgana wanted to walk away, but Izanami stopped her by blocking her path. She wasn’t going to let this woman off easily. Morgana was a Good woman. Izanami had read a lot about her. She never got into a real fight with anyone. She donated to charity every month and she did all the chores in the household without complaining, even when Thornton was always too busy with work to help out. Izanami hated people with the Good trait. If it was up to her, they’d all rot in a dungeon somewhere. Fortunately for Morgana, there was no space for her in Izanami’s basement. Izanami: “I wouldn’t put so much trust in a man who hits on younger women in a pub, mrs. Wolff. You better watch out, before you know it, he has a baby with someone else!”

Izanami said the last part on purpose, knowing Thornton hated kids and Morgana loved them. You’d be surprised about all the info you could find about all these Sunset Valley losers on the internet! Morgana: “Who do you think you are?! Being a complete stranger, barging in here like you own the place and then starting to insult me and my husband?! How about you get the fuck out of town? We don’t need an instigator like you among us!”

Izanami: “Oh my Morgana, getting all worked up? I heard it’s not like you at all to get mad at people! There must have been some truth to what I said for you to react like this.” Izanami really wanted Morgana to explode in front of everyone. She wanted the reputation of this little good witch to be ruined. She wanted people to see that no one was truly good. Everyone had some evil, some rage inside them. Unfortunately for Izanami, Morgana kept her calm. Morgana: “Ugh, you know what? You’re not worth the trouble. I don’t know who you are and why you think you need to do this, but I’m not interested. Go find someone else to trigger.”

Izanami didn’t expect Morgana to have such a strong good will. She’d need more time to crack her nut. But that was okay. As long as Aiko was doing her job, this woman would break down soon enough! Izanami: “Don’t think you can just walk away and be done with me. I moved to this town and I intend to stay. You will not be able to avoid me forever.” Morgana: “Is that a threat? Because I really don’t feel threatened. I know my husband better than anyone and especially better than you. None of your words got to me even the slightest. Now get out of my way, I’m going home.” Izanami: “Ohh you silly goose. You have no clue about what’s to come!”

Morgana left, bumping against Izanami’s shoulder on purpose as she passed her. Izanami grinned at that hostile gesture. It was a sign that she did piss off the woman enough to ignite some aggression inside her. She may not show it yet, but soon enough, Morgana would be a raging monster and the whole town would witness how ‘good’ she really was!