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100vern · 4 months ago

Text

ex-conomics | csc

you supported seungcheol through years of being an aspiring athlete, and all you got to show for it was your undergraduate degree and an awkward, stuttered apology when he dumped you to go semi-pro. now he’s back after an injury derailed his career, and there’s only one problem: you’re the only one available to tutor him. you - 0; the universe - 1. talk about no return on investment.

⚽ pairing: choi seungcheol x f. reader ⚽ genre: exes to (lite) enemies to lovers; university au; angst, fluff ⚽ rating: while there is nothing explicit in this fic, there are two brief references to smut. while i can't stop anyone from reading this, i would prefer minors do not interact with this or any of my work. ⚽ warnings: cheol is some degree of famous, reader is a grad student/TA, mentions of an injury and coping with the aftermath of it, lots of economics talk that even i do not understand, swearing, one mention of alcohol, some misplaced jealousy, rom-com tropes, dino is kind of a loser but we love him anyway. probably a lot of other things i missed, but this is actually pretty tame for a fic of this length. ⚽ word count: 13.4k ⚽ thank you: a lot of people looked this over for me in the process and i'm sure i will forget some of them so if i do i'm sorry: @the-boy-meets-evil, @hot-soop, @highvern, and @haologram, who also gave me some wonderful ideas for the vlogs. thank you to MIT for opencourseware existing. i took microeconomics and dropped it, so i couldn't have done this without you. everyone in the discord server for helping me along the way and keeping me motivated. ⚽ author's note: i haven't posted a fic in nearly seven months, so i think it goes without saying that there are parts of this i like and a lot more i'm not 100% happy with. i'd love if this was more fleshed out and 10k longer, but i was able to write anything at all so it's good enough. this was written for the back to school with seventeen collab, hosted by @camandemstudios. thank you both for letting me participate! please make sure to check out the rest of the stories! everyone worked so hard and this collab was a ton of fun to participate in. <3

You look down at the paper. Back up at who handed it to you. Down at the paper again.

“You’ve got to be joking.”

The poor freshman kid laughs, all nerves, and even though the sound is grating, you remember what it’s like to be forced into work study. How far away graduate school seemed; how large your professors loomed over you with all their power and knowledge and credentials; how you constantly felt like the dumbest person in nearly every room you walked into for four straight years.

“Um—”

You sigh, just barely resisting the urge to slam your head onto your desk. “I—it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Your words do little to ease Freshman’s nerves. He’s still hunched over in the doorway of your office, wringing his hands as he shifts his weight back and forth, in for a lifetime of body pain with the way he’s squaring his shoulders. “You’re sure about this, though? Like, I’m really not being set up?”

“I don’t think so?” he offers, slowly starting to turn green right before your eyes. “Dr. Lee ga-gave me the paperwork himself, I don’t think he would’ve messed it up? Oh no, did I mess it up? Should I go back to Student Services and conf—”

Good god, this kid’s anxiety is gonna stink up your office for weeks. “No need!” you interject. “I’ll just…” Sign it, you want to say, but the longer you stare at the sheet of paper the quicker you’re losing your resolve.

TUTORING REQUEST FORM Student Name: Choi Seungcheol Degree: Undergraduate Major: Business Course: ECON04101 Introduction to Microeconomics Instructor: Lee Yeonseok, PhD. Recommended Tutoring: High (3-4 hours per week)

You curse under your breath. Of the two names on the paper, Dr. Lee’s does not come as a surprise. He’s a notorious hard-ass with an infamous attrition rate—most students don’t last more than a week in any of his classes—but he’s also the sole reason you were able to pay for someof your grad school tuition out of pocket with all the tutoring money you made.

That, however, was two years ago.

“Does he know I don’t tutor anymore?” Stupid question. The kid stares blankly back at you, as if to say I don’t know any more than the people in Student Services, let alone Dr. Lee. It is literally my first year here. “I’m Dr. Ahn’s TA this year. I’ve got my hands full with her bullsh… stuff—”

Immediately, you know you’ve said something wrong, because the kid’s eyes light up, all that previous anxiety disappearing like smoke. “Wait, the same Dr. Ahn that teaches the crypto course?”

“No, that one died,” you say quickly. Kid deflates. “Anyway, I don’t really tutor anymore, especially for econ. As you can see”—you gesture vaguely around the cramped four walls of your office—“they’ve upgraded me. They even put my name on a little placard by the door! Go look! They spelled it wrong! If that doesn’t sum up this university I don’t know what does.”

You heave another sigh. Try to school your face and tone into something that exudes professionalism and finality. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you. I tutored Dr. Lee’s students for, like, three years in undergrad so I’m sure they just… forgot that wasn’t my actual job here. Who’s in charge of tutoring these days? I’ll shoot them an email and explain all this.”

Freshman gives you a name, and it takes less than a second to find them in the employee directory. You expect that to be the end of it, but he’s still taking up space in your doorway. You quirk an eyebrow. “Yes?”

The hand-wringing returns, along with an embarrassed flush that disappears beneath the neckline of his school-branded sweatshirt. “I just—um. Maybe you could, uh. Send that now? Before I get back there?”

You blink. “Don’t you have to go all the way back across campus? How slow do you think I type?” He shrugs, and you give up on the idea of getting rid of him. “Fine. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Lee Chan. I’m a sophomore. Do you know that guy?”

“Oh. I thought for sure you were a freshman, but you’re gonna need to be more specific, Lee Chan, Sophomore.”

“The guy they want you to tutor.” You freeze. The guy they want you to tutor is—“Choi Seungcheol,” Chan tacks on, and, yeah, you know—knew, you correct yourself—someone with that name, once upon a time.

But there are a lot of Chois and a lot of Seungcheols. It’s been years since you’ve spoken to the Seungcheol you knew, and that was when he’d broken up with you to—“I heard he’s a football player? Well, used to be, I guess. The girls in the office were freaking out so I guess he’s pretty famous, but I don’t know anything about sports, do you? They said they have photocards of him. I thought they only did that for idols.”

You think about being kids together in Daegu. Think about the exasperated looks you’d share when your parents would drag the two of you to festivals: Palgongsan in the autumn, Biseulsan in the spring; transformation and rebirth. Think about being eight years old and watching your father cram into the small space of the Chois’ living room, standing around the TV with Seungcheol’s dad, shouting at Park Jonghwan. Daegu FC made the FA Cup quarterfinals that year, and you think, of everything, that’s what you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

You think about falling in love slowly. Sixteen and clueless, the pair of you were. Didn’t really know any different, just that you’d look at him and feel butterflies. That you’d hold hands in secret. Text beneath the dinner table. That you’d watch him on the football pitch and be consumed by pride. That the future felt impossibly far away, that life would never catch up to the two of you.

You think about all the football jargon you didn’t understand—the academies, the teams, the implications. You think about, I’m thinking about trying out for the FC Seoul U-18, I just don’t think there’s much more I can do here in Daegu. You think about replying, Oh, I applied to university there.

You remember thinking it must’ve been fate, how easy that had worked out. How easy that first hurdle had been overcome.

You think about how fast everything happened. The try-out, the acceptance, the explosion. Remember being unable to go anywhere those first few months without seeing Seungcheol’s face, touted as the next big thing. Think about applying for scholarships when he was applying for international visas. Think about studying for midterms when Seungcheol was studying English for interviews.

You think about the last few weeks of your relationship, when it felt like you were desperately trying to cling to ghosts. Think about how Seoul had once felt endlessly big, both in opportunity and size, and how it now felt suffocating. You think about, So you’re just giving up? Is that what you’re saying? Think about, I don’t know what else to do. It doesn’t feel fair to you.

You think about all the places you’ve watched him. On countless football pitches; shy glances in school hallways; in the passenger seat, wracked with nerves on the drive to Seoul; poised above you in bed, hairline dotted with sweat as he rolled his hips, telling you how much he loved you.

You think about watching him walk out the door, and how you never watched him again.

So you fire off your email, concise and to the point about why you can’t tutor Choi Seungcheol in Introduction to Microeconomics, and turn to Lee Chan, Sophomore.

“No,” you finally answer. “Never heard of him.”

For all intents and purposes, your rejection should’ve been the end of it.

A few days go by. You hold office hours, attend lectures, work on your thesis when you have both the time and the energy. Try to ignore the feeling of bees beneath your skin, anxiety needling each time you check your email. You were well within your right to decline the tutoring request, but you can’t help but feel like you’ve done something wrong. That someone somehow knows who Seungcheol was to you and will pull you up on it. That those girls who’d gushed about him to Chan are somewhere laughing at your expense.

But you don’t hear anything at all about it… until you do.

Sunday evening. You haven’t moved from your couch in hours, some variety show playing in the background, barely audible over your keyboard clacking. Much to your detriment, you don’t write many papers these days, so you’re out of practice. Feels like you haven’t done anything besides formulas in years, all of your academic knowledge reduced to fucking math, so you’re about ready to toss your laptop out the window long before the email even comes through.

You see, From: Lee Yeonseok. You see, Subject: Choi Seungcheol - Tutoring.

Your stomach plummets to the floor.

You scan the body quickly. You see the words personal favor… friend of his father… urgent matter… and your hands start shaking. Whether it’s from the sheer audacity of this man or anxiety, you aren’t sure, but it’s not like it matters. There aren’t a whole lot of people on campus brave or dumb enough to go up against him twice.

“Motherfucker,” you spit, bitter the only taste in your mouth.

Where did you go wrong to wind up here? You’d followed the script: got the grades, passed the exams, received half of the required education for the Respectable Career, helped a few others along the way chase dreams that may or may not have been their own. You’d fallen in love. Only had a broken heart to show for it, but that’d been in the script, too: The First Love, followed by The First Heartbreak.

The split from Seungcheol was supposed to have been the end of that chapter. You’d planned on never seeing him again, and you never would have, had it been up to you. Apparently the universe has other plans, participation required.

“Did you spill onion dip on the rug again?” You startle, sending your laptop flying. Kaori, your roommate, is perched halfway in between the living room and the kitchen like a cryptid, clearly not expecting your reaction. “Oh. Were you watching porn?”

Face burning, you fetch your laptop from the floor. “In a common area? Kaori, please, I have far more decorum than that.”

She snorts, resuming her trek to the fridge. “See, that’s what I thought, but then I walked out here and you threw your laptop so fast it was like watching my ex get caught watching furry porn all over again.” She pries the lid off a large container of yogurt. “You think this is still good?”

“Dunno. What’s it smell like?”

She sniffs it and pulls it back to check the label. “Vanilla, I think, which is concerning because it’s supposed to be strawberry.”

You shrug. “What’s the worst that can happen, you get extra”—you pause, trying to remember the correct order of things, before giving up entirely—“...biotics?”

“Mm, so close. Care if I just eat this with a spoon?”

Nose scrunched, you wave her off. “Couldn’t pay me to eat yogurt on a good day, let alone if it’s expired. All yours, babe.”

Spoon in hand and a pleased smile on her face, Kaori collapses onto the couch beside you. You try to return your attention to your paper, try to find your momentum again, and it works for all of ten minutes before you’re groaning and slamming the top closed.

You don’t even need to look over to know Kaori’s staring. “What’s up with you?” she asks. Before she can answer: “Wait, is this serious? Because I can’t have a serious conversation in this t-shirt.” You steal a glance sideways. Ask Me About My Hemorrhoid! it says, and you exhale loudly. “Don’t breathe at me, I lost a bet.”

“And continued wearing it?”

She jokingly rolls her eyes. “God forbid a girl has hobbies.” Nudges you with her foot. “C’mon, spill.”

Kaori doesn’t know about you and Seungcheol. Most people don’t, aside from a few old classmates from Daegu who found you on social media and tried befriending you once he started making a name for himself in Seoul. After that, it was just easier to keep things private while you were together. New friends knew you were seeing someone but not their name or how long you’d been together. Any curiosity surrounding why the Choi Seungcheol was following you on Insta had been waved away easily. Our parents are friends, we grew up together. Then you broke up, and there wasn’t any evidence to delete, and he wasn’t following you on Instagram anymore, and it was easier that way.

So, yeah—even though you hadn’t met her until years later, Kaori knows you have an ex. She knows you’ve had a few flings and situationships in the time since, too, and it’s why she’s none the wiser when you ask, “It’s nothing, really. Just—do you follow football at all?”

“Nah, not really. The new guy’s pretty into it and keeps trying to get me to watch the games with him, but it’s so fucking boring? I dunno, I can’t get into it. Not in real life, anyway—I binged all of Captain Tsubasa in an embarrassingly short amount of time, though. Why?”

“Student Services asked me to tutor someone the other day and I had to turn it down. I just don’t have the time, you know? This semester’s already killer, and Dr. Ahn’s been riding my ass nonstop about grades. Turns out it’s some football player, so Dr. Lee emailed me asking me to do it as a personal favor, which means, on top of all the other shit I have to do, I’m now tutoring some football player four hours a week in Microeconomics.”

Her face distorts. “God, that guy’s such a prick. Like wow, you’re good at the economy! Good for you! Who cares! Why don’t you go balance the national debt or something instead of torturing university freshmen!”

You also wrongly assume that’s the last you’ll hear of it from Kaori.

Two days later, after Student Services replies to your email with the days and times you’ll be tutoring Seungcheol, she materializes in the living room to harass you.

“You didn’t tell me your football player was Choi Seungcheol.”

The panic is instant. You know how she means it, but it’s not how your body interprets it. All of a sudden it feels like an interrogation, an accusation, and a whopping serving of guilt takes up residence in the middle of your chest for not being entirely honest.

“Explains this weird text Ken sent me.”

She slides her phone over to you, open to her text thread with her current flavor of the week. Beneath an article about Seungcheol enrolling in classes at your school:

doesn’t ur roomie TA there Why are you calling her “ur roomie” like you don’t know her name?? Rude. Also yes. ask her to get me an autograph No babe pls he was my fav player before he got injured No 🙄 fine. can i come over later? Starting to think you’re using me for my roommate. Get your own job 🙄

You hand her phone back. “I didn’t think you’d know who Choi Seungcheol even is.” It’s the best you can do, even though it just digs you a deeper grave. “You said you’re not into football.”

“I’m not, but unfortunately I am into that stupid man.” She sighs, wistful and longing. “Babe, you have to understand. His dick is so big.”

You hadn’t wanted to stay in Seoul for your graduate degree, let alone the same university you’d gone to for undergrad.

You’d applied to schools all over—Japan, Europe, even a few in the States. Romanticized the hell out of NYU, went window shopping for an overpriced apartment, picked a favorite pizzeria based on nothing but vibes and online reviews. In those few months after graduation, there wasn’t a whole lot tying you to Seoul. Your and Seungcheol’s relationship had been old history by then, your parents split. Your dad stayed in your childhood home and your mother moved a few hours closer to her sister. They’d waited until your brother was old enough to be out of the house.

And it’d just been… a lot. Overwhelming. Some days you could barely shower or feed yourself, let alone move halfway across the world, so you’d stayed in the familiar and tried not to let it feel like failure.

But the good thing about familiarity is you learn its tricks, figure out the hiding spots. Early on, your first or second week of grad school, you laid claim to a study room on a floor of the library everyone else ignored. You write notes on the whiteboard with faded blue markers that are still there days later. The chair on the opposite side of the table is always exactly where you left it, the space between it and the table enough to only accommodate you. Sometimes you leave books—old paperbacks littered with notes in your writing—or papers, just to see if they move.

They never do.

And all of this is why it feels like a punch to the gut when that sanctity is tainted. When you’re halfway through a stack of Dr. Ahn’s exams and the doorknob rattles behind you. When you don’t even need to turn around to know who it is, because he still sounds the same, still has that overwhelming presence. You’ve always sensed him before you felt him.

“There you are,” Dr. Lee says, ambling into the room before you can protest. He, too, is overwhelming, just in different ways. Immaculate posture that anchors his slight frame that’s always dressed impeccably and expensively. Wears a watch that’s triple your tuition. Shoes polished so bright they’re nearly blinding. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

This time it is an accusation.

Well, you found me, you want to say, but just knowing Seungcheol is behind him, lingering in that half-study room, half-hallway space, is enough to keep you quiet. Like if you speak you’ll summon him closer and you’ll no longer be able to pretend this is nothing more than a nightmare.

You plaster on a polite smile. Say, “Ah, here I am, kyosu-nim,” and put all your energy into trying to glue Seungcheol to the floor with your mind.

Which is fruitless, because Dr. Lee moves further into the room. Gestures for Seungcheol to follow him with an impatient huff, and the study room is small, sure, and with three people it feels cramped, but that’s not the reason it feels like all the air’s been sucked out of the room.

Seungcheol looks… different. He looks as anxious as you feel, and he sticks close to the wall like he’s trying to disappear. Dr. Lee introduces him with grave importance, unaware of your history, and the forced smile he offers you almost looks embarrassed.

You know Dr. Lee is still hammering away, probably giving you a stern talking-to for rejecting his request the first time, but you can’t tear your eyes away from Seungcheol. Feels like the world around you has reduced to a pinhead, all hyperfocus; feels like your lungs are sucking in stale air one at a time.

“...his father is a very good friend of mine, so I expect…”

You expected to feel nothing. Seungcheol had left to chase his dream—one you’d always been so supportive of that it sometimes felt like your dream, too—and, perhaps naively, you thought the distance and the years would’ve been enough. You expected your heart to have hardened. You expected all those nights you spent crying to hit you at full force. You expected anger, hurt—indifference, at the very least.

“...as many hours per week as you both can manage…”

But you should’ve known better. Should’ve expected the butterflies, the way your palms grow clammy, the way your heart rate spikes. Should’ve expected everything to feel upside-down. You should’ve expected to look at Seungcheol and feel sixteen and in love all over again.

“...you are responsible for his academic progress…”

And that simply will not do. You’ve spent the last few years pulling yourself out of that hole, clawing your way back to something resembling normal. You’ve purged the thought of him from your mind—let his scent fade from your sheets, an old sweatshirt he’d left behind; forgot the way his lips felt against every inch of your skin; forgot the way his entire being lit up when he laughed; forgot the safety he encompassed, the way he whispered all those sweet nothings.

You cannot go there again.

So you roll your shoulders back, smile politely. Say, “Ah, kyosu-nim, Choi Seungcheol-ssi seems very intelligent, I’m sure he is capable of being responsible for his own academic standing, don’t you think?”

Dr. Lee cannot disagree without all but calling Seungcheol an idiot, so he hovers before you in shocked silence. Makes a show of huffing and checking his watch, like he’s all of a sudden remembered he’s late for something and being inconvenienced by this conversation he started, and then he’s halfway out of the library with a terse, “Discuss and figure this out amongst yourselves,” thrown over his shoulder.

You have an entire dramatic exit planned in your head. Gather your things, fake a phone call that makes you sound authoritative and important, and brush past Seungcheol wearing your nicest perfume as if all of this is so far beneath you you can’t even bring yourself to care about it.

Of course, you actually have to brush by him for any of that to happen, and since you’ve already decided you will not go there again, you quickly scribble your email address onto a piece of paper and slide it across the table at Seungcheol, who has steadfastly remained planted just outside the door. “Here’s my email. I don’t have time to discuss this right now.” Seungcheol cocks an eyebrow. You start throwing things into your bag haphazardly. You know you look frantic and affected, but there’s not much you can do about that. “What? Send me a copy of your syllabus and what you want to prioritize. It’ll be easier to get through this if we have a plan instead of winging it.”

He seems to catch on to your distaste because he mirrors it. Scoffs as he rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, no use spending more time together than we have to,” and if you hadn’t gone years without speaking, you would’ve seen right through it.

But you did, so it stings all the same.

As it typically does, the planet keeps spinning after your run-in with Seungcheol.

You grade Dr. Ahn’s coursework. Try running off your anxiety at the gym, even though it’s pretty good at keeping pace with you these days. You meet Kaori’s maybe-boyfriend sneaking out of your apartment early in the morning and he has the good sense not to mention your ex, but you chalk that up to the mess of hickeys covering his neck and not any sense of social decorum.

Other people’s embarrassment saves you a ton of your own, you’ve come to learn.

Throughout all of this, Seungcheol only emails you once to send you his course syllabus. Doesn’t mention tutoring or provide you with his schedule or ask for yours, so when you’re sitting in a bar with your friends, three or four drinks deep and feeling a little petty, you forward him the original tutoring request and make sure to bold, underline, and highlight the “Recommended Tutoring: High” part for good measure.

He doesn’t take your bait—electronically, at least—but he does show up to your office hours the following Tuesday.

Bag tossed onto the floor, he flops unceremoniously into the chair across from you and says, in lieu of a greeting, “They spelled your name wrong. On the door thing.”

“I know,” you reply, your smile polite and terse. Incredible how he has the ability to raise your blood pressure in milliseconds. “What can I help you with?”

“Depends. How long do you have?”

“Well, considering you’ve shown up to my office hours on time, I’m assuming you already know I’m here every Tuesday and Thursday from four to six. So”—you glance at the clock above the door—“assuming no one comes by who needs my help more than you do, you have approximately one hour and fifty-eight minutes.”

Seungcheol is quiet for a moment as he takes you in. His stare is weighted; it makes you feel a little green around the edges. Clinical and sharp, so far removed from the way he used to look at you. You clear your throat. “I looked over your syllabus. The good news is there’s only a midterm and a final and the rest is problem sets. The bad news is there’s only a midterm and a final so they’re weighted quite heavily. You really need to know this stuff inside-out to have any hope of passing.”

“That’s why you’re here, right? Dr. Lee specifically requested you.”

You huff a breath through your nose. “I’m here as supplemental help. I can’t take your exams or do your readings for you. What else are you taking this semester?”

He sighs, sinking further into the chair, very much playing the part of the heir who has no interest in any of this. Which… is unlike him, you think, if you’re even allowed to. The Seungcheol you knew years ago took everything so seriously. Never clipped corners or took shortcuts. Anyone else would think him a spoiled, petulant child. “Business Accounting and International Trade.”

“Could be worse,” you note. “At least those three courses are tangentially related.”

Seungcheol rolls his eyes. “Easy for you to say. I haven’t taken a fucking math class in years.”

You return it. “You remember how to add and subtract, don’t you?”

“I ruptured my ACL, not my…” He trails off, looking a little embarrassed that he can’t name a part of the—“Brain.”

Whatever you were going to quip back with dies on your tongue. It's the first time Seungcheol has broached the topic of his injury—the first you’re hearing of it at all, actually—and he says it like it’s a joke, like it’s not a thing at all, but the pain is all over his face. The bitterness of the situation he’s found himself in. The unfairness of it all.

And there are so many questions you want to ask that aren’t your place: if it’s fixable, if he’ll ever play again, how he’s coping. But you don’t really need to—you can’t imagine how you’d feel if someone suddenly pulled the rug out from under you. If everything contained within the four walls of your office suddenly disappeared.

Not that the man sitting across from you hadn’t already done that, but.

“Right,” you continue, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. You know Seungcheol—know he wouldn’t want you prodding, sticking your fingers in that particular wound. “I want you to take a look at this,” you say, handing over a printout you have saved from your undergrad tutoring days. “Tell me what looks familiar, what doesn’t; what does and doesn’t make sense.”

He looks down at the paper. Back up at you. Down at the paper again. “What the fuck is this?”

“I—what? Cheol, it’s my old notes on recitation. Surely you’ve already covered this—the syllabus says this is week one stuff.” He looks down at the paper again, and it’s so familiar, watching the life drain entirely from someone’s eyes.

You barely resist the urge to slam your face onto your desk a second time.

You meet Seungcheol at the sports center for your next tutoring session.

He likes the humidity and the smell of the chlorine by the pool. He also likes that it’s not the football pitch, so the two of you sit in the bleachers there and go over his lecture notes. Much to your surprise, Seungcheol talks a mile a minute. Has stars in his eyes when he says he finally understands elastic demand curves, supply shock; tells you he spent a whole hour making flashcards.

It’s the first time you’ve seen him so excited since your tutoring began—the first glimmer of hope you’ve felt since Dr. Lee cornered you in your library hideaway. None of this surprises you. Seungcheol has always been smart, even when football was his primary (and sometimes only) focus. He has more determination and grit than anyone you’ve ever met, so you’re not surprised he’s doing well, excelling, but you are surprised—

“Can I ask you something?” Seungcheol shrugs, shoves half a protein bar in his mouth and swallows without chewing. “Why are you… uh. Here?”

“At this university?”

“Not exactly. I mean, I am wondering about that, but I guess… why business?”

Seungcheol hums. Tucks his good knee to his chest and stares down at the pool. No one’s using it, and truthfully the two of you probably aren’t even allowed to be here, but you understand why he likes it. It’s nowhere near as secluded as the library and definitely not as air conditioned, but it is peaceful. Calm. The water laps against the coping in quiet, small waves.

“Ah, I don’t know. You know how it goes.”

You quirk an eyebrow. Never, in all the years you’ve known him, has Seungcheol done anything he didn’t want to do. All that grit and determination. “What about your father, then? Dr. Lee mentioned this was a favor to him. He’s a pretty important person to have in your Rolodex of favors.”

Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what this is: Seungcheol’s father has new money; worked from the bottom up, made some smart investment decisions that finally panned out after Seungcheol left for Seoul. Started doing his own thing, made a name for himself. Last you’d heard from your mother, Seungcheol’s brother was second-in-command. Hell, even your own brother did an internship there.

So you know what this is: a father helping his son after his dream was shattered, life turned upside-down. You can’t blame him, even if you’ve heard the whispers from all the way across campus. That Seungcheol is washed up now, trying to nepo his way into his father’s company because of it; that all he knows is sports and he should’ve stuck to that, what does he know about business, why is he the one Dr. Lee went out of his way to help.

Doesn’t stop any of them from smiling at him, though; doesn’t stop them from asking for autographs or selfies.

But you also know this isn’t something Seungcheol seems willing to discuss, so you crack a joke—“I mean, business. God, who’d wanna go into that?”—and go back to what he was willing to talk about.

You’ve never hated elastic demand curves so much in your life.

Deep in the throes of tutoring—when you can’t tell if it’s week two or week twelve—you make it back to your apartment just before ten, head pounding.

The door flies open just as you’re about to punch in the code, and there stands Ken, looking far more put-off than you’ve ever seen him. Looks defeated, if you’re being honest, like someone mopped up all his emotions and wrung them out like dirty dishwater.

“Oh, hi,” you say hesitantly. The man in front of you seems too much like a caged animal to let your guard down. “Everything okay?”

He aborts a nod halfway. Mutters an apology as he brushes by you and stalks down the hall, disappearing around the corner to the elevators. Usually he’s a talker—you haven’t been able to avoid a Seungcheol-related conversation in weeks—so you’re a little stunned. Stand there stupidly for a while, and that’s where Kaori finds you a moment later.

“You gonna stand out here all night, or…?”

“Oh—yeah, right.”

You follow her inside. Toe off your shoes and put them in the rack. Focus on the sound of the kettle whistling instead of the overbearing tension in the room. Drop your bag off in your room, throw on a sweatshirt three sizes too big and a comfy pair of socks. Rummage through the fridge for leftovers, contemplate what mindless show you’ll watch as you eat, and you do not, under any circumstances, ask Kaori what happened.

You don’t have to. You knew what this was going to be the first time Ken spent the night—the way he looked mortified to be meeting you in the shared kitchen at seven a.m., wearing a look that begged you not to tell your roommate he was sneaking out.

I, uh, have an early class, he’d said. You know how it is.

Maybe you should’ve called him on it then. Issued a warning-but-not-really. She’ll get attached if you don’t tell her. She should know it’s different for you, if it is.

But you’d convinced yourself it wasn’t your place. Kaori wouldn’t want you in her business like that, so you stayed quiet, just nodded before watching him slip his shoes on and close the door behind him so quietly you wouldn’t have known he left at all if you hadn’t been looking. Gone, just like a ghost.

So, yeah, you know exactly why your roommate looks haunted.

“I’m a few episodes behind on this if you want to watch with me,” you offer, pointing at the television with the remote. It’s a lie—you’ve never watched this show a day in your life, which Kaori seems to know—but she contemplates it nonetheless. “Also, my mom mailed us some cookies. I think they’re in the fridge.”

“Why are there cookies in the fridge?”

You huff a laugh. “They were outside the door this morning before I left for campus. I don’t know—just saw who the package was from and was like, oh, this must go in the fridge.”

She nods. Grabs the container and joins you on the couch. Sticks her feet beneath your butt and doesn’t mention a thing.

The closest she comes is a few days later. Catches you right before you head out to campus and asks how tutoring is going.

“Not bad, actually.”

Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes when she says, “That’s good. I’m glad things are going well for you two.”

Lee Chan, Sophomore makes his unexpected return at your office hours on an unsuspecting Tuesday.

“Can I help you?”

He doesn’t answer right away, just helps himself to the seat across from you. “Maybe,” comes his cryptic retort. “I was thinking about signing up for that crypto course next semester.”

You narrow your eyes. “No, you weren’t.”

He sighs. Looks a little panicked, like he can’t believe that didn’t work. “You’re right, you’re right. I, um—I wanted to come say thank you.” He pauses. “You know, for that… email you sent.”

You blink. “No, you didn’t.”

Lee Chan, Sophomore cracks immediately. Thunks his head on your desk and lets loose a pained sound. It nearly sounds like he’s wailing when he says, “I’m sorry! They put me up to it!”

What you’re able to piece together is this: Lee Chan, Sophomore has become a bit of a celebrity in the Student Services department ever since he met you, Choi Seungcheol’s tutor. And, like any smart, previously unpopular university student would do, he took advantage of it. Might’ve stretched the truth a little to make it sound like he knew more than he did, so now here he is, angling for information the girls with the photocards may or may not have paid him to get.

“They want to know about his girlfriend.”

“His what?”

What you’re able to piece together is also this: the Photocard Girls are certain Seungcheol is dating someone, based on little more than vibes. You suspect these vibes are their three degrees of separation, considering there was an abnormal amount of Change of Major files formed after his enrollment, but you tell Lee Chan that you don’t know anything and, even if you did, you wouldn’t put his business out there like that.

But some part of you still has this inexplicable urge to protect Seungcheol, so you match their offer with interest and tell him to say there’s nothing to report—not that you didn’t know, not that he couldn’t get anything out of you. Seungcheol isn’t dating anyone.

You don’t know if it’s true, but you figure that if it isn’t, he still deserves privacy.

Which is a notion you have trouble explaining a few hours later, when Seungcheol strolls into your office with a grease-stained paper bag full of cheese coin bread, offering one to you with a proud smile that drops slowly when you just stare in return.

“What’s wrong?”

Your mouth opens, closes, opens again. Nothing comes out, even though it should be simple. Some sophomore kid was just in here angling for information or the Student Services department is taking bets on whether or not you have a girlfriend would both suffice, but you cannot bring yourself to say the words.

What you settle on is, “Sorry, I just… had an interesting meeting before you got here.”

“Oh. Are you okay?”

You sigh. Tilt your head back to stare up at the ceiling. “It was about you, actually.”

Seungcheol chokes, starts stuttering over words you can’t make sense of. Says, “Me? Why? I passed my last exam—I mean, barely, but I still passed. And that wasn’t your fault! I didn’t study enough! I’ve been losing my mind over my International Trade class, that shit sucks—”

“It wasn’t about your grades, Cheol.”

“Oh.” Then, slowly, a lopsided, pleased smile overtakes his face. “Haven’t heard you call me Cheol in a while.”

“Seungcheol,” you correct.

He seems to forget all about the meeting. Tries again to offer you a coin bread before he threatens to eat them all himself, so you acquiesce mostly to shut him up, say you’ll bring the extras to Kaori. For some reason, you tell him about how much she’d loved the cookies your mom sent, and the nostalgia sets him off, gets him talking again, asking if they were the yakgwa she used to make when you two were kids.

They were, but you can’t seem to tell him that, either.

Seungcheol: sorry it’s last minute - running late. can you meet me at my place instead?

Seungcheol shared a location with you

You’re halfway to replying—I don’t think that’s appropriate—before you sigh and delete it. Midterms are only a few days away and you don’t have time to argue over where your tutoring sessions will be, so if Seungcheol wants to meet at his apartment that’s where you’ll meet him.

You read over the midterm notes on the train. Once, twice, and then a hundred more times until they’re nearly memorized, all so you can ignore the voice in the back of your head saying what a bad idea this is. That you have no business being on your way to your ex’s swanky part of town or integrating yourself into his life beyond tutoring at all. You shouldn’t know where he lives. Maybe you shouldn’t even have his phone number or answer his texts.

Not that there’s much you can do about it now, two stops away.

Seungcheol greets you warmly, if not a little rushed. Apologizes for the mess once you step inside, although it’s less “mess” and more “haven’t finished unpacking,” but there’s enough clear space to study at the dining table, so that’s where you set up, determined to keep things professional.

“Sorry again about this,” Seungcheol says, placing a can of cola in front of you as he takes the seat across. “I had to meet with my father and lost track of time, I guess.”

“Oh. How’s he doing?”

Seungcheol sighs, leans further back in the chair as runs a hand through his hair. A light brown, now. “Same as he always was, I guess. Talked about the business, about my brother. Can’t get him to shut up about that stuff most of the time.”

“The business is doing good, though.” You cough, clear your throat. “My, uh. My brother interned there during undergrad. I don’t know if your father told you that.”

You don’t know why you say it, because it’s clear from the brief flicker of pain on Seungcheol’s face that he hadn’t known, that no one had told him. And it hurts you too that they felt the need to keep it a secret, to protect Seungcheol from you even in tangential ways.

“He didn’t,” he admits, “but I’m sure he was happy to see him. He was, uh—he was glad to hear you’re my tutor. Said you were always smarter than all of us boys combined.”

You laugh. Hope it sounds casual instead of strained. “Well, no need to prove him right. Come on,” you say, tossing a study guide in his direction, “let’s get to work.”

Everything is alright for a while—nearly an hour at least. He has the formulas memorized and attributed to the correct equations. He can explain supply and demand, preference and utility, but things start to fall apart around budget constraints and constrained choice.

The formulas get mixed up. He grows frustrated when he doesn’t know the answers to your questions right away. Rolls his eyes and gets a little snappy when you correct him, try to explain things differently in a way he understands. At first he’s able to temper it, collect himself before things truly start spiraling out of control, but the longer the two of you sit there the more it all unravels.

He snaps, you snap back, and you can’t figure out why. You’ve survived this long in Seungcheol’s orbit even though you never thought you’d be around him again, and perhaps it was bound to explode eventually, but…

It’s the familiarity, you realize.

You and Seungcheol aren’t friends, though you’ve been playing at it for weeks now: meeting outside of the library or your office, the personal conversations bordering on reminiscing, being in his personal space. You don’t belong here. You don’t want to be his friend—you can’t be, not for real or pretend.

“That’s not what I’m say—”

“Then explain it better,” Seungcheol fires at you, eyebrows creasing. “You’re the tutor here.”

You roll your eyes. “I’m trying, okay? All I meant was—your answer isn’t wrong, but I know Dr. Lee and he’s going to want more than that in a response.”

“Right—not good enough, like I said.”

“I’m just asking you to expand on your answer—”

“And I’m telling you that’s all I’ve got. I’m not like you, all right? I don’t have all this shit just floating around in my head all the time. I’m not smart, I barely have any idea what’s going on half the time, and you sitting here being condescending about it is doing fuck-all to help.”

You inhale sharply, taken aback at the hostility in his voice. Suggest calling it for the night, say neither of you will be productive if you keep going like this, and neither of you bother to apologize.

So much of your relationship with Seungcheol was marred by clichés.

The two of you passing notes back and forth during class. You in the bleachers of all his games, screaming along to the team chants, waving a sign around with his name on it. Not realizing you had a crush on him at all until he liked someone else and it made your stomach hurt. Childhood friends turned lovers.

Another cliché: that it’s starting to feel like that all over again.

Seungcheol sits across from you in the library, econ textbook cracked in half in front of him as he pays no attention. Keeps grabbing his phone each time it vibrates across the table. Can’t fight the smile that forces its way onto his face when he reads whatever’s there.

Stupid, you think—both to do this and to think it’d play out any other way. Seungcheol left years ago. Probably lived ten lifetimes while he was away while you were here in this exact spot doing this exact thing. Barely lived half a life, just stuck your nose in textbooks and forced your way through.

“Cheol,” you say, trying to drag his attention back to the study guide. No use. He’s typing away, presses his tongue into the fat of his cheek as he responds. “Seungcheol,” you try again.

Also fruitless.

You have no claim here, you remind yourself—not to his time, not to him. He’s only here because someone else mandated it. You’re only here because someone else mandated it, but it stings all the same. Another reminder of what used to be, of what ended regardless of what you wanted. Another reminder that the role you used to play in his life is not the role you play now. That the space you used to take up created a vacancy, and eventually it was going to be filled.

And if this was anyone other than Seungcheol, if you were more emotionally evolved when it came to him, it wouldn’t gnaw at you as much. All of this would roll off your shoulders.

But it isn’t, and you’re not.

“If you’re not going to listen, then—”

“I am listening,” he interjects, but he’s not looking at you. Not looking at his textbook or his study guide. Keeps laughing and smiling at his phone, and it’s sick how bothered you are by it. That it feels like your stomach’s been turned inside-out with jealousy; with annoyance, because you don’t want to be here anyway, don’t want to do this anymore, and you’re wasting your time on someone who doesn’t appreciate it.

Perhaps he never did.

“What are we discussing, then?”

Still not looking up: “Consumer theory.”

You laugh—more a huff of air than anything, grin sardonically out of one corner of your mouth. Seungcheol sees none of it. “Wrong,” you answer, already expecting the way he shrugs it off. “I’m gonna skip ahead a few chapters, though. Consider it a freebie for your business class.”

It must be your tone that finally grabs his attention. Cutting, precise, purposeful. Seungcheol lowers his phone, quirks an eyebrow, wonders where this is going to go. It’s clear he’s pissed you off, that you’re itching for a fight. It’s clear the years of silence are finally coming to a head.

“Let’s talk about ROI. You know what that is?” You barely give him a second. “Return on investment. A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of several investments. So, let’s say I make one-hundred-thousand won on a ten-thousand won investment: my ROI is 90%. Are you following?”

He nods.

“Great, now let’s try something a bit more hypothetical.” You suck in a breath. “Let’s say I invest years of my adolescence into someone. A friend at first and then something more. Let’s say I played cheerleader, supported every hope and dream he had—went to every game, cheered him on, helped him practice his English. Held his hand and talked him down when the pressure felt overwhelming, when the only thing that felt inevitable was failure. Now, let’s say all I got in return was a stuttered, awkward apology as he dumped me and walked out the door. Let’s say that guy showed up again after years of silence just to once again waste my fucking time.”

The thing about pain is it’s not linear. What hurt five, ten years ago might not hurt today, but it might tomorrow; what hurt yesterday may never hurt again. The thing about pain is it lets you stick your head in the sand until it can’t anymore, and that’s where you are now: that window of time between Seungcheol walking out the door on the assumption you’d never see him again before he bulldozed his way back into your life has been slammed closed, locked up tight.

So you don’t even notice you’re crying until the room goes deathly silent and you can hear the drip drip drip of tears on paper. Until you watch Seungcheol’s hands flex and unflex in mid-air, stuck in that liminal space, wanting to reach out but knowing he has no right to. Until your chest aches so bad you’re sure you’re either about to break into stardust or cease to exist.

Until you say, “What, Choi Seungcheol, would you say my fucking return on investment was?” and he has nothing to say at all.

Kaori invites you to a party.

Just something small to celebrate the end of midterms and a classmate’s birthday. Nothing out of control or raucous, not even the kind of thing that’d earn a second glance from campus security. I won’t even make fun of you if you leave before eleven, is how she sold it to you, in addition to a small amount of begging and bargaining and a powerful set of puppy-dog eyes.

After everything the two of you have been through, you find it hard to say no.

So here you are, nearly eleven o’clock on a Friday, a cup of cheap beer in hand. A friend of a friend of a friend is wailing into a karaoke machine and although your ears are bleeding, it does feel nice for that to be your greatest worry. You aren’t thinking about your classes or how you’ve been prioritizing everyone else’s academic success. You aren’t thinking about whatever’s going on between Kaori and Ken. You aren’t thinking about Seungcheol.

At least you aren’t, until he walks through the door.

You’re going to continue not thinking about him at all—not about the fact he’s alone or how good he looks in a simple black T-shirt that’s a little taut in the shoulders. You’re not going to think about the way the air shifts, like the universe knows he’s important and is willing to accommodate. You’re not going to think about how Kaori catches your eye across the room, recognizes him from all her internet searches, and the way she mouths oh my god he’s so beefy at you.

You’re not going to think about how guilty you feel that she doesn’t know, because if you do you’re certain it’ll take over.

You watch Seungcheol work the room; watch as he floats between conversations, as strangers fall over themselves at the sight of him. How eager everyone is to give him something and how reluctant he is to take them. You watch as he winds up in the same circle as Kaori and how she must mention you, oh, your tutor is my roommate, because there’s a question in return before he turns and meets your gaze.

You wonder why the distance between you feels more insurmountable now than ever before.

Seungcheol finds you in your office.

It’s not a Tuesday or a Thursday, far later than four to six in the evening, but he doesn’t even bother knocking before he’s barreling in, stifling your space with his bad energy.

You haven’t seen him in nearly two weeks. Not since the party, if that even counts. Hasn’t bothered to reply to any of your texts or emails, and that was just fine by you, if that’s how he wanted to act, but it isn’t until he’s brooding on the other side of your desk that you realize you’re still aggrieved, too. Feels a little too familiar, him leaving you behind and in the dark.

So you don’t mean to—typically have much more professionalism than this—but when he tosses a stapled stack of papers with a barely-passing grade on your desk and says, “This is your fault,” the words come automatically and without forethought.

“Fuck off, Seungcheol.” It’s not your words that take him by surprise; more so the roll of your eyes, the accompanying huff. The impression that all of this is beneath you and nothing more than a mere annoyance. That however affected you were two weeks ago is not how affected you are anymore. “That’s what happens when you blow off your tutoring for two weeks because you’re a coward.”

He laughs, incredulous; unable to help the sound the tumbles out of his mouth. “I’m a—I’m a coward?”

“Yes,” you reply, tone giving away nothing. All he sees is feigned nonchalance despite the hurricane you feel brewing beneath the surface. “This,” you continue, pinching the corner of the paper between your fingertips and disposing of it in the trashcan beneath your desk, “is all on you, but do please let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to blame me for. I’m all ears.”

You don’t miss it: the way Seungcheol’s eyes grow wide at your ‘I’m all.’ The way he thinks you’re going to punctuate that sentence with yours, and it nearly has bile rising in your throat. Makes you want to scream, rip at your hair. If the last few months have taught you anything, it’s that you are still hopelessly in love with the man across from you—the man that continues to leave before he’s left, always at your expense.

So, yeah—Seungcheol is a coward, but only when it comes to you.

But he doesn’t look much like one now, gripping so hard at the edge of your desk that his knuckles have gone white, baseball cap pulled down low enough his eyes are barely visible. He’s always been overwhelming, always carried himself with an exaggerated arrogance even when it wasn’t warranted, always took everything so seriously, and maybe that’s why you’d thought he’d treat you the same way. Take you seriously. Wouldn’t just throw it all away on a maybe thing, and that’s why it's been years and you still aren’t over it.

Maybe Seungcheol is a coward, and maybe so are you.

Because not once since he’s been back have you been able to say what you mean. Can’t seem to tell him about the anger, the hurt, the heartbreak. Played it all off as petty nonchalance because you foolishly thought that would hurt him, that you’ve been reduced to simmering ash, no hope left for a fire.

“I could never blame you for a goddamn thing,” he says, voice so deep you could drown in it.

You so desperately want to know. You don’t want to know anything at all. You want Seungcheol to explain everything to you in detail and spoil the ending, but only if it’s guaranteed to be happy. Enduring another loss like the first time—you’re not sure you can take it. Not after you two have crossed paths like this, because you’ve never quite believed in fate but you think that has to mean something. That so much time and life had transpired and you two came back together.

Today, though, it doesn’t look like you’re going to get any answers.

Seungcheol straightens, looms at full height. Digs into the pocket of his sweatpants and pulls out a thumb drive. Wordlessly, he hands it over, and then he’s gone just as abruptly as he’d arrived.

Again.

Kaori wants to spend the weekend moping, and you can’t come up with a good reason not to join her.

She doesn’t mention Ken once. Not when she’s sobbing over A Silent Voice and Toradora! after that. Not when she keeps glancing at her phone every couple minutes to see if she has any texts. Not when you—only halfway paying attention between grading and your own assignments—suggest ordering something for delivery, maybe that new burger place down the street you heard was good, and Kaori shuts it down so vehemently you can only assume it was Ken’s favorite place.

Kaori just cries over the man with the big dick she never expected to take so seriously, and not even your stonewalling makes her feel ashamed of it.

And there’s respectability in that kind of openness and vulnerability. At least whatever she’s feeling is honest; at least she can admit she’s sad. You think watching Kaori process her breakup might help you process yours too, years too late, so you suck in a breath and ask, “Can I tell you something or is now not a good time?”

Kaori looks over at you. Dabs a soggy tissue at her eyes. “Well, I guess it depends,” is her answer, and she doesn’t shy away from how waterlogged her voice sounds. “If you’re going to tell me you’re a Takasu and Kawashima shipper, maybe, but if it’s anything worse I’m not sure I could take it.”

“I—what? Who even are they?” She gives you a half-hearted thumbs up. You sigh in response, sink further into the couch. “It’s, uh.” Clear your throat. “Do you remember when we met sophomore year? At that party? And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything and you said, and I quote, why not, I have a sixth sense for this kind of thing and I know that guy will have a huge—”

She hides her face behind her hands. “Ew, god, yes I remember that. My dick whisperer era. How embarrassing.”

“Right. And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything because I’d just gotten out of something.”

“Not really by choice, if I remember correctly. I told you if it was quiet it should’ve been loud, and then you never talked about it again.”

You nod. “I—yeah, that sounds like something I would’ve said.” You suck in a deep breath. “Listen, this is probably gonna sound bad considering I did never talk about it again, but—”

“Hey,” Kaori says, nudging you with her foot. Meant to be comforting, somehow. “It’s okay. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, too… most of which I’m not sure you should, actually.”

A laugh forces its way out, gives you a nice reprieve from the anxiety of the conversation you’re about to have. The need to explain it all, the need for advice. Maybe it’s not her—or anyone else’s—business, but you think you’ve kept this to yourself long enough. You and Seungcheol loved each other, once, and it seems foolish that no one knows.

Maybe Kaori had been right. Maybe love should be shouted from the rooftops; exist out in the open. Maybe something hidden in the shadows can never thrive in the light, and you knew it back then, deep down, but now it seems so obvious.

You think back to a few days before the library. Think about how things didn’t feel good but they felt okay. Think about the frustrated crease between Seungcheol’s eyebrows as he stared down at his textbook and how all you’d wanted to do was smooth it. Think about how you’d rolled your lips and tried not to laugh; how you thought it’d take a miracle to help Seungcheol pass this class.

Think about: What is the difference between the short-run and the long-run from the perspective of production theory?

Think about the short-run of your and Seungcheol’s relationship—that you’d burned bright and fast, even though it’d felt like a million years. Hadn’t dared to consider the long-run because anything beyond that bubble felt impossible.

Think about: Which of the following is not a property of isoquants?

Think about the way Seungcheol’s eyes lit up when he knew the answer. That they’re always linear, he said, and you smiled at his enthusiasm, raised your hand to high-five him and dropped it when he hadn’t noticed.

You think about the explanation—isoquants can be linear when inputs are perfectly substitutable—and what those graphs look like. Downward sloping, left to right. Think about how the graphs change when the isoquants are perfect complements.

L-shaped. Less straight as the inputs become poorer substitutes.

You know what your and Seungcheol’s graph would’ve looked like back then.

So it’s easy, almost, to tell Kaori everything. You tell her about growing up in Daegu, about the smell of the azaleas at Biseulsan in the spring. You tell her about how your parents had befriended the neighbors, how they had a kid your age, that that kid was Seungcheol—yes, that Seungcheol.

She’s able to anticipate the rest from there, but you fill in the blanks of what she can’t: being sixteen and falling in love, holding hands, the clandestine notes. All those football matches and how your throat would be hoarse from cheering. How nauseous you’d felt applying to university in Seoul, how excited you were when Seungcheol said he was coming with you. That, after you arrived, it felt like you were living in fast-forward. Barely any time to breathe or adjust; no time to just be you and Seungcheol. You had to be a student, someone responsible; Seungcheol had to be a phenom.

“Could you feel it was going to happen?” Kaori asks, now sat ramrod straight, all her attention on you. “Like, did you know?”

“I don’t know,” you admit. “Maybe I did? It’s hard to say now, all this time later. I know things definitely felt different, like life was pulling us in opposite directions.” You laugh, bitterness coloring the edges. “You couldn’t go two blocks without seeing him on some billboard, and I was just… normal, you know? I wasn’t some rising star athlete like he was, I just went to my classes. How was I supposed to compete with something like that?”

Your roommate hums, leans back into the pillows as she stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t think you were. Maybe that’s why Seungcheol was worried—maybe he felt like you were losing your own identity feeling like you had to keep up.”

You want to push back, argue that you weren’t, that you didn’t, but the truth is that it’s possible. That the shadows created by Seungcheol’s dreams were so massive you wouldn’t be surprised if they unintentionally swallowed you up. “It still wasn’t his choice to make,” you say, voice barely above a whisper.

And Kaori already knows all about your hurt, listened as you explained it all and laid everything bare. So when she says, “Sometimes that’s just how it goes, though, babe,” it doesn’t feel condescending. “We do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time. You can say now it wasn’t Seungcheol’s choice to make, because it’s been almost five years and you’ve made a life for yourself separate from him. But the—god, this is gonna sound so patronizing, I am so sorry—but you guys were so young. No one has it all figured out at that age.”

She snorts, runs a hand through her messy hair. “Shit, I’m nearly halfway to thirty and I still don’t know anything.” Adopts a frown. “What do you want now? Do you want closure? Want to try to fix things and become friends?”

“I don’t know,” you admit, biting at a hangnail. “He actually, um. The other day when he stopped by my office, he left me a USB drive? And before you ask, no I did not already look at it.”

“A USB drive? Who does this guy think he is, James Bond?” A pause. “Are you gonna look at it, though?”

You do.

Not until the silver, midnight light creeps in through your bedroom curtains and you’ve stared at the ceiling long enough; waited long enough for texts that never came, for divine intervention to, well, intervene. It never did—fair enough—so you decide to take fate by the reins. Grab your laptop, instant headache from the screen, stick the drive into the port.

It takes a second for it to load, but when it does: dozens of videos, organized by date. Vlogs, by the look of them—some from before your breakup but the majority of them from after.

You’re not sure what you expected, but it wasn’t this.

You click on the first one: a month and a half before both of you moved to Seoul. A fresh-faced Seungcheol appears on your screen, cheeks still round with adolescence. He’s in his room back in Daegu, can’t get the camera angle right. Nostalgia hits you like a ton of bricks as it pans to the side, to the wall behind his bed, and you see all his old posters. Mostly football players you couldn’t name, some girl group he used to love, a few movies. Just below them are some of the notes you’d written him in school, and they’re all you can focus on as he talks about how excited he is for the move.

The next: a few weeks after you’d started classes. By then, Seungcheol was well into the swing of things with Seoul FC. Already a big fish in a small pond, tryout offers from European teams starting to roll in. You can hear yourself in the background stressing over your first exam, wishing a generational curse upon your calculus professor. In the video, Seungcheol laughs, whispers like he’s telling the camera a secret as he talks about how nervous he is for his future. I don’t know why, he says, but it just feels like everything is about to change.

There’s a long pause between that one and the next. You understand why when you look at the date: three months after your breakup. Your hands hover uselessly above your keyboard. Whatever answers you’ve been looking for the last few years are probably in this video, but you can’t bring yourself to open it. Not right away, at least.

You click on a different one at random. Seungcheol’s somewhere in Europe, judging from the language on the signs behind him. Snow falls quietly—whenever he filmed this, it must’ve been early. No one else is around, and he cracks a joke that it’s a good thing, people would probably think he was crazy if they saw him. He doesn’t tell you where he’s going but he narrates the entire walk: points out a cafe he’s grown to love. The way to get to his practice stadium from where he’s standing. Pauses near a restaurant and laughs ruefully, shakes his head, says, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but one of my teammates set me up on a blind date here and I got stood up. You’d probably think that was funny.

(You do. It also makes your chest ache.)

One from two years ago: Seungcheol in a hotel room, clearly nervous. He raises his hand to wave at the camera and you can see the corners of his nails bitten raw. Dark circles beneath his eyes; cheekbones more pronounced than you’ve ever seen them. On the screen, Seungcheol sighs, rakes a hand through freshly-bleached hair. Sucks in a deep breath as he says, I’m so nervous. I’m so—so fucking nervous and I don’t. Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I want to call you because you always knew what to say but that’s so fucking selfish. God, we haven’t spoken in years, and it’s my—that’s my fault, I know, so I brought this all on myself. I just want to hear your voice.

Another from a week after that: the color’s returned to his face, and he’s recording from what looks like a penthouse apartment. Sleek, modern; a small white dog napping on the bed beside him. He smiles, looks like he got his teeth fixed, looks like he’s no longer carrying around the weight of the world. Talks endlessly and excitedly about some tournament. Talks so fast you can barely keep up. Talks around words tinged with languages you don’t understand.

Seungcheol wins a championship. Records a drunk vlog from the same night, hair soaked through with god-knows-what—water, champagne, you don’t know. But he looks radiant. Looks like the culmination of two decades of dreaming. He looks happy, free, at peace. He looks like the reason he let you go, why he had to go away.

You scroll to the bottom of the files. Pause at the last video, dated seven months before the term started.

“Hi,” he says, and you can immediately tell everything is all wrong. Seungcheol’s in the dark, face only visible enough to see the tears tracking on his cheeks. “This is going to be the last one of these I make. I don’t know if you, uh—I’m sure you aren’t paying attention to me—my career—anymore, but. I, um. I got hurt. Ruptured my ACL. They’re not sure I’ll…” A sob escapes him. Has you wanting to climb through the screen to hold him, thumb away his tears, tell him everything is going to be okay. “They don’t know if I’ll ever play again.”

Seungcheol no longer looks happy, free, at peace. “Maybe you’ll be happy to hear that,” he continues. “Maybe it’ll help you to know I threw away our relationship for nothing.”

Cut to black.

The sudden silence is deafening. Has you desperately clicking back to the video you’d skipped, the one from just after your breakup. Seungcheol looks the same in that one, too, like the life has been drained out of him.

I don’t know why I’m doing this. It’s not like I’ll ever show these to you now, since I…

I’m sure I owe you an explanation. To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing, I just—things have been so hard, and I’m still trying to make sense of it all. I feel like my life went from zero to a hundred before I could even blink and now I’m scrambling. I didn’t think it was fair to—to drag you through that. Me being away, moving to an entirely different continent. I have faith we could do it, I just. I don’t know, baby, I don’t…

You deserve to have your own life. Be your own person. I’m so scared that the world will never see you for who you are—so beautiful and intelligent and kind. You don’t deserve to be reduced to my partner. And if you ever see this, I know you’re gonna roll your eyes. Probably call me a mean name because I took the choice away from you, because you think I’m trying to be selfless and heroic, and you’d be right. It’s not fair, and I wish I could tell you I’m sorry.

I wish I could just… pluck out my brain and give it to you, because even if it killed me to do it, at least it makes sense to me. And I don’t—I don’t want you to think I’m not hurting. I’ve been sick to my stomach since I left. I know I’m making a mistake, I know I am, I just—how do I do what I think is right in the long-run when it’s not what I want right now, or ever?

I don’t want to get over you. I don’t want you to get over me, and that’s how you know I’m not acting selflessly, because you should. I want you to always be happy, I just… wish it was with me.

So, I’m going to keep making these. I’m going to take you along for the ride, wherever it takes us, because you should be here but I can only hope you can one day understand why you’re not. I’m so—I’m so sorry, I don’t…

I’m sorry.

I love you.

You fall asleep and dream that you were the one meant to meet him at that restaurant.

The first thing you do is make a call to your mother.

“Could you send another container of yakgwa?”

On the other end of the line, your mother tuts, motherly intuition audibly kicking into overdrive. Is probably wearing that all-knowing, sly grin she always does when you try to be coy and evasive. “What happened to the last container I sent?”

“Ah, you know Kaori loves those. They barely lasted an hour after I told her what was in there.”

She hums an acknowledgement. Sounds like she takes a sip of tea. “I remember someone else being quite fond of those cookies, too.”

“Well, they are the most popular cookies in the country, so.”

After haranguing you into admitting they’re for Seungcheol and not your roommate, your mother promises to send them quickly. A few days at most, which buys you enough time to figure out how you’re going to approach the man in question.

The vlogs have turned your entire world upside-down. Answered questions you hadn’t even known you had. Took all that anger and resentment you’d been holding onto and set it free, and now you’re just left with… a void. Want to mend things, and it makes you wonder if such a thing is even possible, if it’s too late, but you don’t let those thoughts get very far.

Instead, you let them spur you into action. Have you sitting in front of your laptop at your desk, office hours long since over, silence creeping in the more the department empties. The thrum of the airconditioning and the tick-tick-tick of the clock are all the only company you have.

You worry if it’ll show on camera, how out of sorts you feel: sweating from the nerves, dabbing at your hairline; cheeks warm to the touch. But you suck in a breath anyway, steel yourself. Look at your webcam and the daunting red circle…

And start recording.

He hadn’t gotten it at first. Not really.

There’d been a container of yakgwa outside his door with his USB drive taped to the top of it. No note—not that he needed one to know who it was from, but he wasn’t sure what it was. A goodbye? A please fuck off forever and never contact me again?

He’d just taken them inside. Ate too many of the cookies while feeling sorry for himself. Maybe had a glass or two of wine to compound the issue, and never, ever considered contacting you. Didn’t think he could bear it if you never wanted to see him again, but he just…

Well, he was drunk and alone and he missed you, and he’d rewatched all those videos he recorded a million times before when he was like this, so what was a million and one?

It’d been the same as every time before: he smiled at the happy parts, cried at all his old wounds. Wanted to reach through the screen and strangle his past self for including that part about the blind date, because he never wanted to date anyone who wasn’t you, why would he say that, felt mortified at the thought of you watching that—

And then there it was.

All the way at the bottom. A new video. One that hadn’t been recorded by him—

Hi, Cheol, you say, and that’s all it takes to reduce him to a sobbing, yearning mess. I’m not sure what to say here. I don’t really record much—sometimes for lectures when the professors are too busy, but never anything personal like this, but I watched every single one you made for me and I thought I should return the favor.

I wanted to tell you everything I’ve been up to since you left, but it hasn’t been much. I got my degree. Tutored a lot in undergrad—the same thing I’m tutoring you in now, actually. I was good at it and it felt good to have something that was mine, you know? I almost moved for grad school. Thought for a while I was going to wind up in New York, but then my parents divorced and it felt like too much, too scary, so I stayed. Kaori also stayed, so we got an apartment together. It’s not much, definitely not as nice as your place, but it’s good enough.

I don’t think I ever told you, but she was seeing a guy for a bit and he was… obsessed with you, to say the least. Thought you were the coolest person in the world. They aren’t seeing each other anymore. Ended pretty badly, but—speaking of which, maybe steer clear of Student Services for a while, too.

Sometimes it felt like failure that I wound up staying here. That I had scholarships from all these far-away, prestigious places and didn’t take advantage of them. That I gave into my fear. And now… I don’t know. Maybe there’s a reason I stayed behind. Maybe there’s a reason you ended up back here, too.

Whatever happens—I don’t want you to think I still blame you. Kaori says we do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time, and I understand now that’s what you did. Even though it hurt me, you were trying to protect me. I get it now. And I’m sorry you had to go through all of that alone. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been to go to all these places you didn’t know. To have to deal with your injury, the loss of a dream.

You said in one of your videos that you just want me to be happy, and that’s all I want for you, too, whatever that looks like.

Here’s my address if you ever want to come by to talk.

I love you, too.

—and then he’d been up and out the door, feeling stone cold sober, running to the front of his building to wait for his ride.

Felt like the drive took hours. Must’ve hit every red light between his apartment and yours. Took the steps two at a time just to get to your door faster.

There’s a man already standing outside your door when he gets there. One that looks shocked to see him, stars in his eyes, and when Seungcheol says, “Oh, you must be Kaori’s ex,” he looks more like he wants the earth to swallow him whole. Embarrassed in front of his idol.

He knocks on your door and gets no response. Knocks again, harder this time, and he has to try really hard to stifle his laughter when your voice yells from the inside, “Fuck off, Kenji, I already told you she’s not here!”

“It’s me,” Seungcheol yells back.

There’s quiet again. Just enough time for it to feel like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest and follow Kaori’s ex down the hall.

Then you’re yanking the door open—slowly, so slowly, like you’re scared it’s not actually him. Your eyes are brimming with tears when they meet his own, and he doesn’t let himself think, just goes on instinct, when he grabs for you, hands on your cheeks, and presses his lips to yours.

Somehow you taste the same.

Somehow you taste like redemption.

You taste like home.

Seungcheol kisses you until the tears slow. Kisses you until the universe realigns, until he could map your mouth in the dark. Kisses you until all you’re all he knows again.

When he pulls away, you’re gripping at his sweatshirt, don’t want to let him go. He presses his forehead to yours, offers up a million more apologies, starts talking nonsense. Says he’s going to drop microeconomics, what the hell does he know, he barely has a passing grade anyway, what does it matter, he’s such an idiot—

And then you say, “You came back,” and nothing else matters.

“I always will.”

(Later on, as you’re trying to steady your breathing, slick with sweat, your thigh thrown over Seungcheol’s hip as he stares down at you, dopey smile on his face, you say, “Choi Seungcheol, don’t you dare drop that class. I have worked my ass off to get you to barely-passing.”)

if you’ve made it this far thank you so much for reading! i am still very new at writing for seventeen, so i hope this was acceptable. i'm now going to throw myself into the warped tour vernon fic and will hopefully not go another 7+ months without posting anything. 😭

i would love to hear your thoughts! <3

#seungcheol x reader #scoups x reader #seungcheol angst #seungcheol au #scoups angst #seungcheol imagines #scoups imagines #seventeen fanfic #seventeen imagines #seventeen x reader #jewel writes

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pastelhikaru · 3 months ago

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dp x dc prompt's that live in my head space

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:⋆·˚*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:⋆·˚*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:⋆·˚ ༘ * 🔭

✧₊⁺ Danny was practicing shape shifting when he accidently sets off a portal gun. Now he's a little stuck as a kitten in Gotham, shenanigans ensue

✧₊⁺ Random influencer asks a sleep deprived Danny about his opinion on Red Hood. And his response is smash and nothing else

✧₊⁺ Twins Al Ghul & Reveal gone wrong AU however Danny was hidden and given away to the Fenton's to adopt.

✧₊⁺ Danny is Tim's half-brother, The portal incident when he's younger

✧₊⁺ Danny is de-aged to his actual ghost age and gets adopted by Talons

✧₊⁺ Cat!Danny / [Snitches] Au. in which he gets stupid injured and shifts into a cat. Is found by Damian. He loves to out the bat's injures :3

✧₊⁺ Exposé! Danny AU. Where Danny acts as a "villain" to train inexperienced vigilantes

✧₊⁺ Dick gets surprise adopted by the Fenton's after a tiring mission.

✧₊⁺ A small Tim summons Danny to act as his Dad for a parent teacher conference

✧₊⁺ Wish dad Tim and the surprise baby clone child

✧₊⁺ Danny's Batman and Superman's clone

✧₊⁺ Zone College AU

✧₊⁺ Of kindness and empathy prompt

✧₊⁺ A ten year old emotionally repressed Damian runs away and gets adopted by Danny

✧₊⁺ To fail and succeed prompt

✧₊⁺ Danny wakes up as Damian's younger brother and doesn't want to be neither an assassin nor vigilante

✧₊⁺ Dead man walking prompt

✧₊⁺ Tim is hit with a cuddle pollen shenanigans ensue

✧₊⁺ There's a baby in the pits! Well i guess let's blame the situation on Bruce

✧₊⁺ Clockwork is Cronos prompt

✧₊⁺ Will work for food prompt

✧₊⁺ Tucker has a power mishap and gets stuck in the digital web

✧₊⁺ Danny gets his dna stolen and he now has clone children with Red Robin

✧₊⁺ Bruce is misplaced in the DP universe and emotionally adopts Danny

✧₊⁺ Danny is Match and Kon's brother Au

✧₊⁺ Danny is an annoyance to Ra's cause he keeps stealing the pits

✧₊⁺ Zone Comic con :3

✧₊⁺ Failed reincarnation AU

✧₊⁺ Danny talks cultist out of giving up their soul

✧₊⁺ Batman comes back a ghost and also becomes Danny's hero mentor

✧₊⁺ Talons take care of de-aged halfa trio

✧₊⁺ Danny punches the Joker and people assume he's Batman. The Batkids add fuel to the rumors

#dpxdc #dc x dp #dcxdp #dc x dp crossover #dp x dc prompt list #dp x dc prompt recommendations #dp x dc prompt #masterlist

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tinfoil-jones · 3 days ago

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Jerk Ford AU: The Worst Ford You Know II: Cosmic Switcharoo

~15 or so years ago

"Ya know you can just… not do this, right? You are a squishy human that's not even that special. All you have is a brain that is outclassed by countless amongst the multiverse, and a sense of misplaced righteousness that ya deserve somethin' grander as retribution for being bullied."

"The Oracle said that I would be the one to-"

"-beat Bill Cipher, same face, yada yada yada."

"You have talked to The O-"

"For Pete's sake Stanford, every Stanford that is thrown in the multiverse has talked to her! All of us! She gave the same goddamn bullshit spiel to thousands of us- maybe more!

If we all had a grand destiny to beat Bill Cipher- with this many 'Destined Heroes', why the Hell is he still out there, causing problems and bein' a major bitch?"

"So you're just going to not even try?!"

"Why bother putting myself in harms way? Bill is going to be another distant Stanford's problem with another hero complex. Me on the other hand? I'm tryin' to get back home to my family, because I know there's at least one person who will accept me no matter how many fingers I have, no matter how much social decorum I don't have, and especially not a 'lack of ambition' that's only ever noticed by supercilious versions of us, like you."

"Mark my words, Jerk Ford; ignoring your Bill Cipher problem is going to bite you in the end. Also, your Jersey is showing."

"Mark these nuts, Bitch Ford; ya fly's been down the whole time."

*supercilious = behaving or looking as though one thinks one is superior to others.

[Dialogue primarily by @tearosepedall]

There's a lot of difference between Canon Ford (Ford-46'\) and Jerk Ford (Ford-PJC311), one of the first things is how they return to their dimension.

Before Canon Ford returned to his dimension, he was doing his last-stand against Bill Cipher, and he went into his own portal when it popped up to stop Bill from doing it first.

Jerk Ford had heard about how most 'good' versions of Ford Pines were doing that, but he didn't see a point in doing the same because it wouldn't get him home faster, and most if not all of them would most likely die. So he got drunk the parking lot of a Space Waffle House, and his portal showed up.

Even though he injected himself with a Drunk-B-Gone concoction that he created to end alcohol intoxication, it needed a minute to take full effect.

Anyway, this is how Canon Ford returned to his dimension:

Dipper: What...? Who is that?

Stan: The author of the journals... my brother.

Mabel: Is this the part where one of us faints?

Soos: Ohoho, I am so on it, dude.

Meanwhile, this is how Jerk Ford returned to his dimension:

Mabel, Dipper, Soos: …

Stan: …

Jerk Ford: …I'm okay. *thumbs up from the ground*

Now let's say, something went wrong, that some cosmic wires within the hologram of reality were crossed, and somehow, someway, Canon Ford and Jerk Ford went through each others portals instead of their own. Perhaps their chance meeting almost two decades ago did something, and now they're in the wrong universe.

In Dimension PJC311 (w/ Canon Ford):

Stanley is elated to see his brother, after three whole decades, finally! His hard work has paid off! He's so excited, he doesn't notice that Dipper starts visibly vibrating in anger as soon as "Author of the Journals" leave his mouth.

He greets his brother with open arms - although, the way Stanford stalks towards him, it's almost like he's about to hit him. And does he seem a bit more... serious?

He barely has time to look confused as Ford rears a fist back - there's a THUNK sound, but a blow never lands on Stan. Because Ford is now keeled over on the ground, holding the back of his head because Dipper had just wacked him with a metal fold out chair that he found.

Ford, on his end, is in pain and confused (but mostly okay because of his protective metal plate) as Stan takes the chair away and scolds Dipper, telling him to apologize because no matter how unhelpful his journals were, he's still family.

His journals, unhelpful? That can't be true. As Stan is still trying to get 'Dipper' to apologize, Ford pulls back out the Journal he'd just picked up off of the floor, and quickly scans over it.

It's in his cursive handwriting, and drawn in his hyper-realistic sketching style. But... the entries are wrong. They're worded in a way that tells the reader to do the opposite of what they should do. Anyone who follows the advice of this would end up hurt, ridiculed, cursed, or some combination of those.

Even after thirty years, Ford knows for a fact that he would never write his research like this.

The kids and Soos start demanding answers. Stanley starts giving the backstory of himself and his brother, the portal incident, and the thirty years spent trying to fix the thing, it becomes abundantly clear to Ford that this isn't his world when the details don't line up the way they should.

Forgave him for the Perpetual Motion Machine? They went to Backupsmore together? He was banned from every establishment in Gravity Falls? People think Stanley murdered him???

In Dimension 46'\ (w/ Jerk Ford):

Although Stan is confused (although he does also find it a little bit funny) that his brother stumbled out of the portal and landed flat on his face, he's so excited to finally see him that he let's it slide for now. As long as he doesn't get drunk around the kids in the future, he'll excuse this incident.

Jerk Ford recovers pretty quickly as his Drunk-B-Gone finally takes full effect, and he walks over to Stan, accepting and returning the hug offered. Dipper finds it strange that "The Author" walks right past his Journal on the floor, even though he clearly noticed it.

Moreover, Soos notices something just as Jerk Ford withdraws from the embrace and steps back to properly take in his surroundings.

Soos: Are those... are those crocs?

Jerk Ford: aRe thOsE CrOCs? Do you even hear yourself right now? Of course they're crocs. I'm almost sixty, The Drip can take the backseat.

Stanley is certainly taken aback- sure, his brother could be insensitive sometimes, but he's never seen him rapid-fire mock someone outright. Also, even after thirty years, he never saw his brother as the type to pick up and use modern slang.

Also, did he really just call the kids "Twerps"? Ford had never been a kid person, but-

The kids and Soos start demanding answers. Stanley starts giving the backstory of himself and his brother, the portal incident, and the thirty years spent trying to fix the thing, it becomes abundantly clear to Jerk Ford that this isn't his world when the details don't line up the way they should.

Turned his back on him? Homeless conman? They didn't speak for ten whole years? Stanley faked his own death???

In Dimension PJC311 (w/ Canon Ford):

This time, Ford does not give his half of the story, and uses the excuse that he needs a minute to collect himself. He doesn't know what dimension he's in, he just knows it isn't his own.

The motley crew of an alternate version of his brother, his apparent grand-niblings (one of which hates his guts), and a large hairless gopher (his nephew?) tell him about being encroached on by the U.S Government, and he handles them just like he did in canon; he is surprised however when Stanley tells him to only erase the memories he needs to, and not to add something unnecessary 'just because it would be funny'.

Stanley also questions how Ford forgot how to use the memory gun, considering he invented it.

Wait, what? Uh, it's been thirty years, he forgot some things.

When they get the agents off of their backs, Ford looks at what had once been his home. It was certainly more lively and lived in than when he had last been here. Things not entirely organized, some things out of place here and there but expected when there were two children in the house.

It was a home. And it wasn't his home, in more ways than one.

He notices a particular photo on the mantle - because he had a near-identical one, once upon a time. It was the one taken shortly after he'd mathematically proven Fiddleford's hologram theory. There's a few differences however; for one, Ford in the photo looks more smug than excited, for another, Fiddleford is enraged and looks like he's trying to strangle him, but the biggest difference is that Stanley is there and he's struggling hold Fiddleford back.

When he snoops around a bit, and in what must be Stan's office or study, he finds amongst other things on the wall (pictures of the twins, Soos throughout the years, and a red-headed girl appear quite frequently) that Stanley has a masters degree in Education and PhD in Analytical Chemistry. He has teaching awards going back decades.

Words that Stanford heard a lifetime ago and hadn't thought of in a long time come back to mind with startling clarity:

"No, no. You don't understand what I've been through! I've been to prison in three different countries! I once had to chew my way out of the trunk of a car! You think you've got problems? I've got a mullet, Stanford!"

In Dimension 46'\ (w/ Jerk Ford):

Like his canon counterpart, Jerk Ford chooses to not give his half of the story, using the excuse that he’s still in shock and needs a minute for his fight/flight/freeze to die down so he can think clearly. He doesn’t know what dimension he’s in, he just knows there’s been some kind of mix up in the cosmos.

When the alternate version of his brother and their grand-niblings, and a giant hairless gopher who may or may not also be his nephew, tell him that some government agents are after them, the first thing Jerk Ford asks for is his memory gun.

The grand-niblings look baffled (because they knew it was Old Man McGucket who created the memory gun), but give up the memory gun, and Stan looks suspicious because he had no idea that ‘his brother’ had built a memory gun. Just like in canon, Jerk Ford memory blasts Agents Powers and Trigger, but once they’re gone he also casually drops the following tidbit to Stan;

Jerk Ford: I also erased the concept of how to take a left-hand turn while I was at it.

Stan: …Why?

Jerk Ford: To make their drive back to D.C more… entertaining. *snerk*

Stan wonders what being gone for thirty years really did to his brother, and Dipper is still fanboying over ‘The Author’ but Jerk Ford makes a rude remark about Dipper “hovering over him like a fly on s[beep]”. He does, at least, promptly clean up his language when Stan tells him to watch what he says to the kids. Jerk Ford notes that this version of Stan is more aggressive than his own, which is typical of the variants he’s seen over the years.

Stan tells him about the Mystery Shack - like most versions of himself, Jerk Ford isn’t a fan, but he isn’t going to be in Stan’s face about it. Who knows what the circumstances of this were?

Jerk Ford: Was teaching not paying you enough?

Stan: Teaching… what?

Jerk Ford:

Jerk Ford: Nevermind what I said *steals a novelty shirt in front of everybody*

The layout of the cabin is different, but it did remind him a lot of home. When he and Stan had moved to Gravity Falls, the way the interior was set up and decorated always seemed to be a clash of the brothers interests. Stan’s insistence on making the place seem more like home, and Ford’s projects and research always haphazardly breaking free of the confines of his lab, bedroom, and study. This version of Stan seemed to find a happy middle, because a lot of weird and cryptic objects were there, but integrated and functional to what a home was supposed to be.

But it still wasn’t his home. This wasn’t his family.

While Stan was distracted with trying to get the kids to go to bed in spite of the excitement earlier, and Soos was making a rambling phone call to someone who sounded tired on the other end, Jerk Ford snuck off to snoop. He didn’t used to be so covert when it came to messing with other peoples stuff, but after that incident with a non-portaled Ford who nearly killed him, he was more careful with that these days. You never know when you’ll find skeletons that should have been laid to rest, and inconsolable crypt keepers who’d sooner bury you instead.

It looks like someone had beaten him to the punch of looking through Stan’s more hidden things - a lot of stuff that confirmed what Stan had already covered when talking about his and his brothers backstory. Fake id’s and news articles. Nothing that really stood too much to help Jerk Ford figure out who’s dimension this was. This Stan’s backstory was almost beat-by-beat similar to the one he heard from most of his variants, and versions of Stan that ended up being the one on the other side of the portal instead. That lack of a gimmick in this dimension didn’t make things easier.

Although… every aspect of this dimension seemed to be found, in at least some small way, in all of the other dimensions. Could it be…?

The prime dimension? The alpha timeline that many versions of Stanford Pines had been speculating about but never could confirm? He needed more data before he could-.

Well, this Stanley isn’t his brother, but if he’s going to identify this dimension and hopefully return to his own, he’d need to explain his situation to him first.

To be continued...?

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wordstome · 1 year ago

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kingdom come - i

king König x princess & assassin reader

2nd person, no y/n, she/her pronouns, afab reader, romance, enemies to lovers, arranged marriage, kind of age gap because König has been king for a good chunk of time but it's not really much of a factor, fantasy/medieval setting, magic exists but it's the creepy kind ordinary people don't fuck with

3.5k words

tw: swearing and König gets a boner. what's new

[NEXT]

GUESS WHO'S BACK ON HER BULLSHIT HAHAAA IT'S MEEE STARTING A NEW SERIES/AU AGAINNNnnnnn. Don't fret, I'm still working on university au! I just started watching The Great (the tv show) and I was like hmm. I should get back to that one idea I had.

p.s. When I mention a "mask" on König, imagine a sort of phantom of the opera, Brahms kinda thing. He isn't always wearing the hood.

Outside, the bells are tolling. Back home, you’ve only ever heard church bells ringing to rally the troops. But here, in these foreign lands, they ring for a royal wedding.

You're wearing a truly massive dress shaped like a pastry. It's a work of art, to be sure, but it leaves you feeling restrained and vulnerable. You should be wearing armor into war—hard boiled leather and curtains of steel rings, not delicate lace and silken ribbons. You're walking into a battle: you would have liked to be able to bend forward further than thirty degrees.

You're at least glad you don't have to wear a veil—it would have been borderline unbearable if you had your vision restricted on top of everything else. It does mean, however, that you can see him standing at the end of the aisle, waiting for you.

A gigantic man with a soldier's physique, wearing a mask that covers more than half his face. Just the sight of him sends a a chill down your spine.

The officiant’s voice booms out over the assembly, but you don’t hear any of it. The sound washes over you, distant and echoing, as if your head is underwater. Your whole being is on alert as you tilt your face upwards to look at the only part of your soon-to-be-husband that you can see properly: his eyes.

They bore into you as if they're looking straight into your soul. As if they're revealing all of your secrets. For a moment, you feel disarmed, even though you can still feel the calming, solid presence of your trusty dagger against your thigh.

As the officiant finishes the wedding vows, he offers his hand to you, his touch shockingly gentle.

You steel your resolve and stare resolutely back at him as you place your hand in his, and the officials begin to bind them together with velvet cords. You remind yourself who you are, where you are, and what you must do.

You remind yourself that you have to kill him as they tie the final knot.

The woods are foreboding, home to a darkness that seems infinite and all-consuming. The heavy old trees that surround the palace grounds shut out most sunlight and all moonlight, and sometimes it feels as if the forest itself is a living, conscious thing brimming with a dangerous unknown. It's proven to be an effective line of defense in the past: citizens don’t dare to trespass on the royal grounds as it is, but an extra deterrent never hurt anybody.

Except perhaps enemy soldiers. But they learn their lesson quickly.

To you, however, the woods are comforting. You’ve spent many lonely nights amongst these trees, training until your body was sore all over. These trunks have withstood many a misplaced blow, these exposed roots have been your downfall many a time, and this mossy undergrowth has cushioned your bruises during many a tumble and fall.

Tonight, however, there is no training. No combat, no groans of pain, no thuds against wood or flesh. You are blanketed in quiet, something sorely needed as you contemplate the days to come.

This is it. The task you’ve trained for all your life is here. Every sore joint and pulled muscle, every tear-soaked pillowcase, every scolding in Father’s office has led to this. Sometimes it seemed as if the day would never come, as if years of reading, shooting, riding and sparring would be for naught. Though your breath rattles the leaves around you, you feel as if you’ve been holding your breath ever since Father broke the news. This is happening.

You leave in a few hours, as soon as the sun comes over the horizon. Your maids have already packed your luggage—you had to enlist their help after it became too difficult to pick what to bring and what not to bring. If all went well, you’d be back in this room in a few weeks. But what could you afford to bring? What did you need for your sanity? What minute details of an object could compromise your position?

Luckily, Calliope, your most trusted lady-in-waiting, was able to step in when she found you sitting on your rug, clutching your set of cloth dolls—the only toys you’d ever owned as a child that weren’t made with murder in mind—and suggest you take a breath of fresh air. You don’t know where you’d be without her, honestly. You may be your father’s pride and joy of a perfectly well-rounded monarch and killing machine, but you would never have gotten here without her by your side.

You sigh and lean your head against the thick limb you’re lying on. If you didn’t already know you’d wake up with a complaining spine that would then have to spend days riding a horse, you’d go to sleep right here, right now. The woods are your home, these trees your solace. You’ll miss it terribly, as the only place you can truly avoid all servants, generals, teachers, and parents.

Well. Parent.

But as with all things—Father’s rare good mood, your training days, peacetime—the sweet, silent embrace of the forest can’t last forever.

Reluctantly, you give the tree one last pat and climb down, making the trudge back to your room so you can at least attempt to catch a few winks of sleep.

It takes quite a few days of travel to get to your destination. You arrive in the empire next door's capital city saddle-sore and on edge. This was the snakes’ nest, the heart of the beast.

And yet…people are happy.

The mood in your hometown is far quieter and more grim—your country has been at war with this one for as long as you can remember, and yet the contrast could not be more vast. Back home, people walk directly from place to place, and don’t make eye contact with each other. Here, children play unsupervised, outdoor markets overflow with people, and windows are thrown wide open as neighbors chat.

You don’t know how to feel. The previous king here was a ruthless conqueror, building an empire by invading neighboring countries and forcing their monarchs to yield—or killing them when they were defiant. Your own land had only escaped being absorbed into the empire by employing rigorous military discipline and strict wartime measures. Yet here, in the heart of the empire, you would never be able to tell it was a nation at war.

And now you’re marrying the king’s son. The current king. The one they call König. So little is known about him that his entire existence is shrouded in rumor: that the hood he wears conceals a monstrous, disfigured face, that he plotted his father’s demise, that his first wife died not of childbirth, but was assassinated in quiet due to being unable to provide an heir.

You don’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out if the rumors are true.

To your surprise, your reception by the people feels more curious than hostile. You’d expected a bit of resistance, or at least a few dirty looks, considering you're the princess of the country they've been at war with for years. But whatever König has told them has been far more charitable than you anticipated.

Your arrival at the palace is greeted by a flurry of activity. Your entourage scatters to put affairs in order, but Calliope and a small contingent of guards follows you into the main hall. Not that you need them—but you need to keep up appearances. No one outside your family’s most tight-knit circle knows you can throw a punch, much less have an assassin’s training.

You don’t feel in the least bit prepared to meet your fiancé—and target—face to face fresh off a days-long journey, but you’re ushered into the main hall anyway. It seems your task has already begun whether you like it or not.

“Ah, princess. Welcome to my humble home.” You hear him before you see him, his voice heavy with an accent. There’s something a bit charming about it, you think—before the sight of him shakes some sense back into you.

He’s huge. He towers over even his own palace guard, broad with muscle, and moves with a deadly raw power even in this nonthreatening setting.

When his father still ruled, before the current peacetime, stories of the empire’s prodigal heir on the frontlines served as frightening bedtime story and a terrifying cautionary tale for the nation’s soldiers. A beast in a hood who fought with the strength of ten men.

You stand your ground as he approaches you. The hood, then, is real—although the stories were so consistent about it that it was never really in question, was it? What the stories had left out were his eyes—striking and green, piercing into your soul as he bends to kiss the back of your hand. It’s an odd sensation that sends shivers racing up your spine.

“The pleasure is mine, your majesty,” you respond, a hint of apprehension in your tone. Of course you had been expecting some form of courtly courtesy, but for some reason you hadn’t expected him to be such a…gentleman. A part of you had been expecting some feral animal, needing to be put down.

"I'm sure you must be exhausted from your journey," he says. "I hope you will find your rooms to your liking." Something about his demeanor is almost...bored? As if greeting his future wife is just another task he's obligated to complete.

He doesn't join you for dinner that night, which is odd. The servants inform you that he's taking care of some urgent business. You hope that your dejection is taken as disappointment that you won't have an opportunity to get to know your fiancé. You are, but not the way people may think.

After all, getting to know your target is half the battle.

You're left to your own devices the next day. König, you're informed, won't be available. That urgent business from last night appears to be an ongoing situation.

Fine by you. You could use some time to prepare.

You spend the day wandering the palace, familiarizing yourself with the grounds and plotting an escape route. You're halted on your brisk survey when you stumble upon a...garden?

Unlike the perfectly manicured hedges outside the palace, or the groomed efficiency of the kitchen gardens, this place is small. Quiet. A little overgrown, but clearly taken care of. The grass is long and soft, dappled in sunshine. Flowers burst forward, crowded around trellises spiraling with vines.

Part of you feels like a trespasser in this private little sanctum, but another part of you is set at ease by the idle tranquility of this place. You pause, feeling a pang of homesickness. It reminds you of the forest: wild in its own way, but gentle and welcoming at the same time.

Something at the corner of your vision catches your eye. A bush bursting forward with round, dark little berries.

Nightshade. Deadly nightshade, in fact. What is this doing in this peaceful little garden? You move forward to examine them closer.

"You shouldn't be here."

You whirl around to find König standing behind you. You had been so absorbed by the garden that you hadn't detected his approach.

Your cheeks burn. You've only been here a day, and already you're letting your guard down. This won't do.

"My apologies, your majesty. I got....lost."

You hold your breath as he draws near. His expression is unreadable—not that you can see most of it, anyway. But when you meet his gaze, you can tell he's sizing you up.

"This is quite a long way to wander."

Shit, is he suspicious? Thinking fast, your brain supplies the best answer you can muster.

"Should a future queen not know the palace she is to live in?"

"Mmm. You make a fair point."

Before you can say or do anything further, he's standing right in front of you. "That's nightshade, you know." You can feel him watching you, assessing your reaction. "Not many can recognize it."

"I..." You can't very well tell him that you know what nightshade looks like because you're an expert in deadly poisons. "I had been wondering what they were."

"I see." He leans forward and plucks a berry off the bush, rolling it between his fingers. "Have you ever tasted one?"

Does he know? Is that a threat? You can't read his expression behind that goddamned mask of his. You stare at him, hoping you look dumbfounded instead of panicked.

"No? They're quite sweet, you know." He holds it out to you. "Care to try one?"

"Your Majesty, I—"

"Don't look so nervous." If you had ever thought he looked frightening before, there's something uncanny about the half-smile that he gives you now. "I didn't expect you to say yes." Before you can say or do anything, he pops the berry in his mouth.

You're too stunned to do anything but watch as he chews for a moment and swallows. One berry won't kill him, but you're more concerned about why he's doing this. Is he trying to intimidate you?

"This was my mother's garden." He gestures to the general surroundings. "I spent a lot of time here as a child. Peaceful, isn't it?"

You let out a tiny sigh of relief now that the conversation appears to be moving on. "Yes. Quite."

"It's always been a place to get away. The first time I ate a nightshade berry was right here, when I was six. I was violently sick for weeks." His tone is a little too light for someone describing being poisoned as a child, and it's unnerving.

"That's when I learned to be careful of things that are too sweet. A good lesson to learn, don't you think?" He walks towards you, and you brace yourself for anything.

He stops next to you, you facing one way and him the other. "Take care then, princess. I will see you tomorrow."

You stare resolutely ahead. "Yes."

And hopefully you won't see him for much longer after that.

Fuck. You forgot about this part.

You had been prepared for this, of course, but you only realize now that you hadn't been mentally prepared. It wasn't until Calliope was helping you undress that you remembered what usually happens between a man and a woman the night of the wedding.

You pace the room, stewing and plotting, getting increasingly antsy before the door swings open and the man himself comes strutting into the bedroom.

"You look like a cornered deer." You hear König shut the door behind him, but you don't turn around.

"I've never done this before." Mentally, you curse yourself for the quaver in your voice.

"Well. Tonight won't be your first."

"What?" You do turn at that, watching him carelessly shed layers all across the room between swigs of his drink.

"I have no interest in bedding you. We do have to sleep in the same room for appearances, though." He plucks a grape from a cluster sitting on a side table and throws it up in the air, catching it with his mouth.

You haven't been in his presence much in the past few days, but each time you have, something about your encounters with him have shaken you up and set you on edge. Somehow, he's kept you on your toes even with a limited presence. Your meeting in the garden was dizzying and confusing, the ceremony set you on high alert. And now, he's thrown you another curveball.

It feels almost too easy. He's just going to go to sleep in the same room as you? No fanfare? "You don't want to...consummate the marriage?"

"You sound upset." He cocks an eyebrow at you. "Were you hoping to?"

"No!" Your face feels hot as he gives you that lopsided half-smile again, more like a smirk this time.

"That's a shame. I prefer fucking willing participants, you see." He drapes himself over the elaborate chaise lounge opposite the bed.

"Are you usually this vulgar?" you retort.

"I see no reason for pretense. We're married, after all." Curiously, he hasn't taken his mask off. Does he sleep in it? Or is he only keeping it on because you're here?

You feel silly now, dressed in a flimsy little silken thing, wrapped up like a present for a brute who won't even touch you. Considerate of him, you suppose. Not that it will matter for very long.

"Sleep well then, hmm? You should be well rested for your first day as queen tomorrow." There's a dangerous gleam in his eye, but it disappears so quickly you wonder if you had imagined it.

"Yes," you say, sitting on the bed while not taking your eyes off of him. "Sleep well."

You give it a few hours, just to be safe. A few hours of laying awake staring at the ceiling. A few hours of watching as moonlight bathes the room in silver light. A few hours of watching him.

The deepening darkness casts sharp shadows across his face, making him seem even more inhuman. What do bloodthirsty emperors dream of? Dominating the weak? Slaughtering the innocent? Conquering women? You shudder. Best not to know.

It's well past midnight when you slowly, quietly get up and pull your dagger from its hidden holster. One downwards thrust, and you're going home. One quick motion, and all of this is over.

It's a little anticlimactic, you think. But this is for the best. For you. For your people. For your family.

Light as a feather, you straddle him, hovering over him just enough so that your weight doesn't wake him. You try not to think about how intimate this position is, and remind yourself that this is the best way to prevent him from getting up or struggling, should your first strike not end him immediately. Which it will, of course.

You take a deep breath as you position the blade right over his heart, calming the fluttering anxiety in your mind. The beginning of a new chapter of your life begins now.

You plunge the dagger downwards.

In an instant, König's eyes fly open. Before you can react at all, his hand has seized your wrist in an iron grip, the tip of your dagger a hair's length from his chest.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" He purrs. "A little assassin?"

You grit your teeth and attempt to overpower him: you're so, so close. But his strength is so overwhelming that you can't even get the tip of the dagger to make contact. Panic starts to set in. This isn't good. This is disastrous, actually. He was supposed to be asleep!

You attempt to pull away, to get away, to do anything, but it's no use. "You don't seem surprised," you spit.

"It's not every day your most bitter enemy offers you his daughter's hand in marriage as a truce," he replies, clear amusement in his voice. Is he enjoying this? "Of course I smelled a rat. You must think me a fool."

"No." Yeah, you kind of had.

"Lying ill suits you, princess." You cry out as he jams his fingers into the tendons in your wrist, forcing you to release the dagger. You watch, helplessly, as he picks it up with his other hand and turns it over, studying it in the moonlight.

"What a delicate little knife," he muses. In your hand, it's a sizeable weapon. But held in his fingers it looks small, harmless. To your dismay, he then proceeds to chuck it at the opposite wall, the blade sticking itself solidly in between two panels.

"You knew?" you ask, a tremor in your traitorous voice.

"Oh, I suspected. You had me disappointed for a while—I thought you would have made an attempt well before this." He lets out a deep chuckle that sends terror through you. "For a moment I even thought that you were as you presented: just some poor little lamb, a peace offering given up to the slaughter." His eyes narrow behind the mask. "I am glad to see that you have proven to be much more interesting than that."

"Interesting?" Out of all the reactions you would have expected him to have, this is not one of them. Fear, anger, even immediate violence. Not...interest.

"You have no idea," he says. Your eyes widen as he you feel his hand run up your thigh.

That's not the only thing you feel, though. He shifts a bit underneath you, and it's then that the earlier flush to your cheeks returns in full force. Is he...hard?!

"If you're going to kill me, then get on with it," you ground out through your teeth.

"Little one, if I had wanted you dead immediately, I would have already pinned you down and snapped your neck. No, you've given me a gift: a gift I intend to cherish." You shiver as he slides a hand up your thigh. "A challenge."

"Is this a game to you?" You're not sure if your breath is running ragged from fear or anger, now.

"I could end this at any time, you know." You gasp involuntarily as a hand closes around your throat. "But that would be no fun, now would it?"

"You are a fool, then." You stare at him defiantly, even as his grip constricts your breathing. "Because I will kill you."

His eyes dance with some mad glee. "That's what I like to hear."

Hiiiiiiiii besties. I've been chewing on the idea of a medieval royalty sort of au since before Shrike, and I came up with this premise like. At least a year or two ago, before I was even in the COD fandom. So I'm glad to finally be making some real headway on it! I have no idea how many parts this is going to have. I have a lot of plot planned for it, so we're just gonna have to see where the vibes take us!

I'd like to thank @danibee33 my angel as always. I bounced a lot of royal/medieval/king König ideas off of her, some of which I still may use, but I changed the plot drastically when I had an epiphany a week or two ago. Hope you like this one babe <3 Also, thank you @kneelingshadowsalome and @gremlingottoosilly for their historical/time period aus. Your fics gave me a real kick in the ass to finish this.

Also shoutout to Pedro Pascal fans? I stumbled upon some breathtakingly kinky fanfiction on this beloved hellsite featuring the Mandalorian, and thought: you know what? If people can proudly write and publish the nastiest, most shameless smut I've ever read, then I can push through whatever impostor syndrome, perfectionist embarrassment I have with my work and get it done.

As usual, please let me know your feedback! I'm trying out a bit of a different characterization for König (not that much different, he's still our beloved violent horny maniac), and I want to know what people think.

I'm also going to be using my taglist again. If you were tagged here and don't want to be tagged anymore, please let me know! And if you would like to be added to the taglist, drop a reply <3

@crowbird @poohkie90 @cumikering @iytatsworld @papaver-decervicatus @anxietyrain @riotakire @ax0lotly @cookiepie111 @kacchasu @no1runawaymilkdad @chthonian-spectre @backwards-readings @yxllowtxpe @garbau @hexqueensupreme @queenthorin1 @violetstyless @her-majesty-theking @vegan-peppermint @peonytarian @ghostslittlegf @euuuuuuun @e1x03 @kokonoiwife @deaddainish @dragonfang @teehee-47 @catluvwr

#alright lads place your bets now what do you think happened to his first wife #könig #konig #könig cod #konig cod #konig x reader #König x reader #konig x you #König x you #cod #cod mw2 #call of duty #mw2 #fic: kingdom come

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bluestar22x · 4 months ago

Text

Boo!

Summary: You buy a mansion on the cheap having no idea it's haunted by the previous owner's friend

Pairing: Dieter Bravo x F!Reader

Rating: 18+ (mature readers only)

Word Count: 5,900(ish)

Warnings: "Enemies" to lovers vibes (they annoy each other at first), recreational drug use mentioned, medical stuff, subtitle mentions of sex/yearning, ghost Dieter follows you around the house but isn't a total creep about it - he's just really bored and invisible, AU?, foul language, fluff

Author’s Note: This was created for Jamie's Halloween Writing Challenge by @mermaidgirl30 - I already had the idea of writing ghost Dieter before this challenge, so I thought it was the perfect time to write it up. The theme I chose is "haunted mansion" for obvious reasons. I was slightly inspired by a movie some may or may not know.

xxx

You had bought the mansion on the cheap - hardly a million dollars despite the huge, modern layout.

Just outside of New Orleans, the mansion was only one of three you owned as an unusually successful author. One of the few that had gotten rich off of making a crime novel series that had later become a successful drama show that was still running after five years - a true feat in modern entertainment.

Your other two mansions were in Los Angeles and Denver, the first being your main home when working and the second being a winter holiday escape, a place where you could go and experience what winter was supposed to be like. You had grown up in Maine, and it hadn't taken you long after moving to Los Angeles to miss the changing of the seasons, even if you didn't quite miss the often dreary weather.

This mansion in Louisiana was supposed to be another escape, one close to a city with rich history and lore. Spooky lore, that was. You were thinking about writing a vampire series - what better place to inspire you than New Orleans?

Though you'd moved there specifically for the stories of monsters in the dark, you avoided the creepy mansions listed on the realtor sites like a plague. Just cause you were interested in writing it, didn't mean you wanted to live a horror-themed novel.

Your mansion was boring compared to the centuries old mansions and plantations nearby and far from any swampland. It was also only ten years old - a baby mansion that had little chance of having been able to attract attention from any supernatural beings.

Not that you really believed in them, but you were the type not to press your luck. Every time you had in the past, you'd paid for it.

However, the universe had to have been against you, as it often was, because after only one week in your new vacation home strange things started happening.

It began with misplaced items, something easy to dismiss when you were still unpacking and organizing the place. You'd set down a mug of coffee on the countertop and find it on the bar later on or, to your dismay, the living room end table without a drink coaster underneath it. You'd throw a fresh shirt on the bed and enter the bathroom to take a shower and find the shirt on the floor when you returned. You'd place the manuscripts on your desk in a neat pile and find them disorganized the next morning. Things like that.

Then after a month more concerning things started happening. You'd lock a door and find it unlocked minutes later. You'd hear heavy footsteps on the second floor when you were in the kitchen or living room downstairs and you knew no one else was in the house. You'd see doors creak open on their own when they hadn't done that before.

Suddenly the cream colored modern mansion felt unsafe despite the high tech alarm system being in full working order and having never gone off.

You took to listening to music almost constantly, attempting to block out the feeling of unease you felt when everything was quiet. What you thought was your irrational side screamed at you to leave, to sell the place and go hang out at your Denver mansion or return to your main home, but your stubborn, so called rational side balked at the idea. You didn't want to admit defeat against a haunting you were pretty sure was all in your head or had explanations that were not of the supernatural kind.

Then one morning, the day before Halloween, you wandered downstairs to find a strange man sitting at your bar, dressed in ripped blue jeans, a dark tan oxford shirt, and a pair of tan slip on sneakers. You also had time to note that he had a graying patchy beard, sunglasses, and a single gold loop earring attached to his left ear before the fear set in and you screamed.

There was a complete stranger in your house! An interloper! Whatever his reason for being in your kitchen was, it had to be no good.

"Holy shit, you're loud!" he snapped, jumping in his seat. "Why are you freaking out so early in the morning?"

He turned to face you and his jaw dropped when he realized you were starring directly at him. "Wait, can you fucking see me?"

"Of course I can fucking see you," you spat. "You're in the middle of my kitchen, seated at my bar. Get the fuck out before I call the police!"

The man rubbed at his temple, his head pounding, which was really unfair, he thought, considering his situation. "Lady, if I could, I would, you are the saddest company I've ever kept, but unfortunately I have no say in the matter. I was here before you and I can't leave. Believe me, I've tried."

"Clearly you haven't tried enough," you hissed, pointing an index finger at the front door. "Try again."

He sighed and rolled his eyes dramatically, though you couldn't see the latter action behind his shades. "Fine, if you insist."

He pushed himself away from the bar, sliding off the stool he'd been seated on, and headed for the door. He opened it and glanced back at you, finding that you'd trailed him with a glass vase in your hand.

At least you were a resourceful recluse.

He braced himself for the sensation of being catapulted back into the mansion and sure enough, as soon as he stepped through the threshold he felt whatever force that was keeping him inside push him back.

He landed on the tile floor several feet away from the door in the mess of his long limbs. "Oof."

"What the fuck?!" He heard you yelp and he groaned.

"Told you."

"What the hell was that?"

He stood up slowly and massaged his lower back. "That was what's keeping me from leaving, sunshine. Now that you've seen why I can't go, I'll let you guess how this situation began."

"A voodoo priest cursed you to eternity in here?" you guessed, purposely trying to come up with what you thought would be a ridiculous answer. You still were trying to recover from what you'd just witnessed. People didn't just get thrown by invisible forces, yet there was no realistic explanation for what you'd just seen.

"I wish," the man huffed. "But it's not a curse. Not as far as I'm aware. Well, maybe. Maybe some god thought it would be funny. But I'm pretty damn sure it wasn't a person who did this. I don't remember much, but the last thing I do remember before this was partying with a friend, breaking my one year drug sobriety with a dose of some pretty fine cocaine, and then waking up splayed out in the middle of the living room - a very empty living room. By the time I worked through my denial over what had happened to me, you had moved in."

"You overdosed?" you questioned, breath catching because that would mean...

"Yeah, that's what I figured," he replied. "I'm not one hundred percent sure about it. Usually I was always careful about that. But it's not like I hadn't overdosed before." He put his hand out - "Long story." - And sighed heavily. "All I know is I'm dead."

You covered your mouth in shock as you pieced it all together. "You are the one that was moving things, making noises. Did you do that on purpose?"

"What? To scare you?" He looked amused. "I wish I was that clever. Maybe I'd have better company by now. But that was just me trying to keep my sanity. You don't know how maddening it is to wander around a boring mansion all day unable to interact with anything, not even a damn spoon. I'm not good with isolation. Glad the practice paid off."

You walked into the living room and collapsed into your leather couch. "This can't be happening."

He took off his sunglasses as he followed you in and you met his dark but surprising soft eyes for a moment. "What's your name, anyways?"

He placed a hand over his chest and acted shocked, a little stung by your lack of familiarity with him. You could tell he was just being dramatic and didn't really care. "You don't know? Hint: I was an actor who was having a great Hollywood comeback when I died."

Your mind was blank. You didn't know a lot of actors by name, or by face for that matter. You didn't watch a lot of TV and movies, your preferred entertainment being reading. Your office walls were covered by filled bookshelves.

You shrugged at him.

"Dieter Bravo," he told you. "My name is Dieter Bravo. Almost everyone I know calls me Dee though."

"Do I know you now?" you inquired.

"Hardly," he snorted. "But I know you enough, unfortunately, no offense."

You rolled your eyes at him, annoyed. "You can't insult me then claim no offense. I'm gonna take offense. Especially since we've never even talked before now."

"Sorry," Dieter apologized half-heartedly. "I've just been going crazy and all you do is sit at your desk writing or read on the couch. And you seem to prefer it that way."

"Introverts do, yes," you said. "But I can be fun when I want to be. I'm going on a tour of the city tomorrow."

You didn't mention that you were going alone. You hadn't made any friends in the city yet. That always took you a while. Something that most actors probably had little trouble doing. People begged for their friendship or more, didn't they?

"Is it one of those ghost tours?" he asked. "Cause that would be ironic."

You held your tongue and kept your comment about him having used the word ironic wrongly to yourself. You were pretty sure that was something someone boring would point out. You weren't sure why you cared about what a dead addicted actor thought about you, but you did for some stupid reason. Probably because his untamed curly hair looked very tuggable and his jeans were tight in all the right places and you hadn't been laid since your last book tour. Handsome guys were your weakness. You weren't usually into jerks or addicts though. Losers, as far as you were concerned.

Instead, you let your mind wander to all those times you'd heard things moving around while you were undressed or in bed. "Please tell me you haven't been stalking me this entire time."

"Stalking is a strong word," he protested. "We're in the same house for hours on end. We have silently interacted, or rather been in the same room. And I might have been watching you, but only when you were dressed, cross my heart."

"That's comforting," you said sarcastically, but you believed him. No one with so much disdain towards your daily activities would have bothered to peep on you, would they? But he could be the type who didn't care if a girl had personality, as long as she had boobs, right?

You decided it was not worth the trouble thinking about. Not when you had no idea how to get him to move on, or at least get him out of your mansion.

"So, what unfinished business is keeping you here?" you inquired. "Last I heard that's the only way either of us is going to get some peace in the forseeable future."

"Ouch. Fair."

"Do you know?"

Dieter shook his head. "What unfinished business don't I have? My latest movie will never finish filming, my girlfriend broke up with me over the damn phone on my way here, I have no idea if Perry overdosed too or if he's still alive, and my family all hate me."

"Surely not," you said. "They just didn't know how to help you with your addictions anymore."

Dieter blinked at you. "I thought you didn't know anything about me?"

"I don't," you replied. "But I've had a couple relatives, not close ones, but still, they got addicted to painkillers and they wouldn't let the family help them, so my family got angry at them and gave up trying. You can't help those who don't want to be saved is how my mother put it."

"What if they wanted to be saved but didn't know how to accept help?"

The vulnerable question, seemingly uncharacteristic, threw you off. You stared at him and Dieter glanced away. "Just asking," he muttered.

"I don't know," you told him honestly. "Same applies. It can't be one sided. They would've had to find a way to accept it. But they didn't. And they've been buried six feet under for five years now."

Dieter nodded.

"I don't think I could help you with your family issues," you continued on. "But I can tell you Perry is alive, if he is the same Perry who owned this place as I assume. He sold me the mansion three months ago, a month before I moved in."

"That's good," he said, scratching at his neck. "I knew from your calendar and your phone that it has been six months since I died, but I didn't know if he was still alive. I can't remember him ever coming back. Maybe he did and I just wasn't...aware at the moment. Time is different now for me. And I think ghosts actually sleep too. Kinda."

"The realtor showed me this place," you told him. "Perry only showed up to finalize the paperwork at her office. Maybe it was too painful for him to come back?"

Dieter pursed his lips. "Maybe."

"Did that help?" you asked hopefully. "See any doors or light to go into?"

He barked out a laugh. "If only! But there's nothing. Guess we're not getting rid of each other that easily." There was a gleam in his eyes that suggested he wasn't as annoyed about it as he was before. It was actually playful.

"Too bad," you stated, smirking.

He chuckled. "At least we can talk now."

"That we can, so long as you promise not to keep watching me like an invisible creep while I sleep," you said.

"I do not."

"I've felt it," you hissed.

"It's hard to look away," he admitted. "You do know you drool, right?"

"Shut up."

After your first run in with Dieter you didn't see him for a few days, and you wondered if he'd finally moved on, but of course, no such luck.

You choked on dinner when he popped up next to you at the dining room table on the fourth day.

"Sorry, didn't mean to almost kill you," he said humorously, patting your back.

You felt nothing when he did it. Maybe a cold breeze, but nothing really notable.

"Where've you been?" you inquired once you'd recovered.

"No idea," Dieter answered. "I think showing myself to you all afternoon zapped all my 'spirit' energy. What day is it?"

"November three."

"Damn. Oh well."

"You going to use your newfound 'spirit energy' to find a way to move on?"

He pouted. "Said like I wasn't trying to do that before. And jeez, in a rush, are we?"

You huffed. Like he'd given you a reason not to want it fast. It would be way better for you both once he found peace.

"Aren't you?"

"Of course I am!" he shouted before pointing a finger at you. "But I'm not leaving before I give you this advice: don't wear jeans on the night of your death. You may think they're comfy, but they're not. Not after weeks, months in them. I miss my pajamas. My robe."

He sighed wistfully and you couldn't help but chuckle at him. "Alright, advice taken."

He whirled and phased back into invisibility, leaving you alone until the next morning, when he nearly made you choke on your breakfast.

Days turned into weeks like this, with Dieter spending minimal time with you as he made attempts to figure out what he needed to do to be free of the mansion, as he tried to make peace with the things that haunted him in hopes that resolving his unfinished business would open the beyond up to him, but slowly, the more hope he lost, the more time he spent with you.

It started with meals, watching you eat and participating in discourse that became less and less hesitant and hostile over time, turning into shockingly friendly debates and banter.

It turned out Dieter wasn't so bad to be around and he wasn't the loser you'd thought he was, or had been. One search of his wikipedia page and a few youtube videos had settled that for you. He had worked hard to gain his success, spending nearly a decade taking guest star role after guest star role, working in a bar when the roles and his money dried up. And when he did find a major role to catapult his career, he continued to take as many roles as he could.

He was known for partying hard on weekends, but he never showed up for work high.

He enjoyed comfy clothes on his time off, and especially loved wearing his light green robe, sometimes even going to his local coffee shop in it, but he cleaned up well for interviews and other important functions.

Dieter had a good reputation despite his addictions. It seemed like his fellow cast members always had nice things to say about him, even those who worked with him on the disastrous set of Cliff Beasts 6, which was apparently where he'd had his first overdose.

By Thanksgiving you were solid friends, and after you left for the holiday to visit your parents and home in LA, you returned with a souvenir for you both - a fridge magnet with a picture of the city buildings just beyond the Hollywood sign. You'd noticed Dieter seemed homesick and you sometimes felt it too. But you wouldn't leave New Orleans until Dieter figured out how to move on or until you were forced to. The magnet gave you a daily reminder of what it looked like.

As Christmas neared, Dieter began hanging out with you in the living room at night, watching whatever you were watching, which were mostly Christmas movies in December. He did it even when you watched Hallmark, though he'd roll his eyes and make sarcastic comments about the plot throughout those.

"They always fight and break up over an assumption," he rattled on more times than you could count. "Dumb ones at that. His jealous ex flaunts her a ring and says it is from him and the leading lady just bolts without asking him if it's true? And they said I needed therapy."

"You needed therapy."

"Well, not as bad as that bird."

Dieter couldn't leave the house to get you a Christmas gift, and you'd agreed you both would spend Christmas Eve, the night before your parents arrived to celebrate the holiday, just curled up on the couch together as usual, but that hadn't stopped him from giving you something anyway.

He'd thrown a box at you, unwrapped and told you to look inside and you'd found a beautiful charcoal drawing of you writing away at your desk inside. The sight of it made your breath catch.

"You did this yourself?" you questioned, stunned.

"Yeah," he replied. "It took a lot of energy out of me, but I got it done in a few days. I know we said no gifts, but I wanted to give you something anyway. You know, since I can't pay rent."

He'd expected you to laugh at the comment but you were too busy studying the image. He'd gotten every detail, right down to your blemishes. He'd put a lot of care into drawing you. It felt...reverent.

When you tilted your head up to look at him, you did it differently. You saw him in a new light. And though he was in the same jeans and shirt as he always was, you thought he looked particularly handsome in that moment, chocolate eyes hopeful.

"So, do you like it?" he asked nervously.

"I love it," you assured him. "But I...didn't get anything for you."

"It's okay," he said, "Free rent."

"You are the least messy roommate I've ever had," you told him. "But you've got to stop sneaking up on me and making the rooms cold."

"The temperature is out of my hands," Dieter said, shrugging. "Unless you want me to turn up the thermostat. I've mastered turning dials."

You smiled. "I'm good tonight."

You should've known better than to get drunk alone on New Year's Eve, but you did.

No, you weren't alone, alone, but you were the only one drinking since Dieter was not physically able to drink. And he should've been the last person you'd hang out with drunk.

Being drunk made you silly, made you excitable, and it also made you bold.

One minute you and Dieter were laughing loudly, and the next you were leaning towards him. "Can I tell you something?"

"Sure. Anything."

You leaned in closer and lowered your voice, "It really sucks you are dead, Dee. It sucks because I really wish we could kiss right now."

Dieter stared at you, dumbfounded, but the shock quickly turned into glee. "We could still, you know."

"You've gotten good at making yourself more solid," you said, "But I can't feel you whenever you touch me, Dee. I don't notice it unless I see you doing it. That's the only way I know. By sight."

"Well, you've never focused on it before, have you?" he inquired. "It always takes me a lot of focus to hold anything, even a pen, for long, but I do."

"It may not seem that way, me being a writer, but I'm terrible at focusing," you admitted.

Dieter brushed your cheek compulsively and you smiled weakly at him.

"Can we try something out?" he asked.

"What'd you have in mind?"

He nodded at the couch. "Turn off the lights and lay down on your back and close your eyes."

You raised your eyebrows questioningly, and he flashed you a reassuring smile. "Trust me."

You did as ordered and Dieter took a moment to take your prone form in, peering through the darkness, and he noticed how your fingers were twitching due to your inability to ever keep perfectly still.

He couldn't believe he was finally going to kiss you. Two months ago he wouldn't have wanted to. He'd had bigger concerns, and you weren't his usual type.

But with time and forced proximity he'd grown to enjoy your company. You were smart, generous, surprisingly witty, and he'd always found you pretty.

He doubted he deserved you, he was certain you were better than him, but you wanted him to kiss you, and lately he'd wanted that too. He couldn't deny you.

He approached the couch and sat down next to you, leaning over you so his face hovered above yours.

"Try to clear your mind."

You nodded and did as told, doing your best to keep all thoughts at bay while your heart thudded in anticipation against your rib cage.

Then you felt his lips on yours. They weren't warm or cold, soft or chapped, and they didn't taste like anything, but you could feel the pressure of them. You could feel when he moved his lips, when he deepened the kiss, when his hand reached out to cradle your face.

You reached up for him automatically, your eyes still shut, and you could feel his strong neck under your hands, could feel the tips of his curls at the base of it.

There was something electric about the moment, and you moaned softly as you let the sensation consume you. The more you got lost in it, the more kissing Dieter felt real.

It was sobering.

You gently pushed him away and opened your eyes to find him gazing back into yours, a confused look on his face. "What's wrong?"

You shook your head as tears flooded your eyes. "I can't, Dee. I can't do this with you. You're dead."

"Pretty sure we just did," he said, wiggling his brows suggestively. "And if we can do that, imagine what else we might be able to do with time."

"I can't," you repeated. "Someday you will move on and I'll be alone again."

"I'll wait to move on only after you die," he declared. "Problem solved."

You shook your head again, harder. "That's unfair for us both and you know it. I don't want to spend my life keeping you a secret, and you don't want to stay cooped up in this house for another four or more decades. You'll go mad."

"Not with you here," he swore, his hand gliding down to squeeze your upper arm.

"I can't take that chance," you said, standing up. "I'm sorry."

You began to walk away, but in the archway to the hall you turned to face him again.

"You should keep looking for your way out," you told him. "Make it your priority again. Cause next week I'm headed back to LA. I've got a book that's going to hit shelves in three weeks and my editor wants to plan some last minute fan meet ups for when it does. I can't stay here while we're doing that."

You tried to avoid looking at Dieter's face but you still got a glimpse of the hurt on it.

He was so upset he didn't say anything to you back, and you told yourself silently that it was easier that way.

You climbed the stairs, quickly curled up in bed under your sheets, and tried to think about anything but him until you fell asleep.

You had no idea that when you woke up in the morning, he'd be gone.

Steady beeping was the first thing Dieter registered when he gained consciousness in the hospital, but it was far from the least pleasant thing about the experience. That had gone to the bright lights briefly, then to the uncomfortable feeling of his feeding tube that was pulled through one of his nostrils.

Dieter would never call waking up from his coma fun. It had been confusing and exhausting (he thought that was ironic) and he’d been sore from not moving for a long time, but at least that discomfort felt short compared to what came after.

He'd been in a coma for nearly a year and that had taken a toll on his body, along with the seizure that had caused him to go into it in the first place, a side effect of his long term use of hard drugs.

He had most of his mind right from the start, but his body was weak and had loss some of the connections he'd made as a child to do simple functions like walking and eating with a fork. Frustratingly, he'd had to learn it all back again.

His only solstice was that his parents were there every step of the way. They'd had him transferred to LA after he woke up and had regularly visited him in the hospital and Dieter kinda wished he'd heard them while he was taking his long sleep. What had they said to him?

Probably what they'd been saying since. His parents rarely missed a chance to tell him they loved him, that they regretted letting his addictions come between them.

"It was my fault," he'd told them, but they'd shaken their heads.

"We didn't go about finding you help like we should've. We gave up too fast."

Dieter didn't care about that though. He was just grateful to have them back in his life. To still have a life at all.

He didn't remember the fateful night that had led to his coma, but he was able to video chat with Perry on his laptop and his friend filled in the blanks.

They'd gotten together and Perry had given him all the cocaine he could ask for. They'd gotten comfortable on the couch and rode out their highs talking about the trouble they used to get into in high school. Then he had began seizing sometime after midnight and Perry had dialed 911.

Even with the fill in, Dieter felt he was missing something. Something important. But any time he tried to recall his night with Perry, he got nothing.

He had dreams though, often several times a week, of him patrolling Perry's mansion alone, of an attractive woman chatting away with him at the dining room table, of him kissing her in the shadows of the night, and those felt like the missing pieces, lost memories, but they couldn't be. He couldn't have been a ghost while he was in the coma, he reasoned.

But all the reasoning in the world wouldn't allow him to shake it off. Eventually he caved and asked Perry, who was visiting him after getting out of rehab, to describe the woman who had bought the mansion from him.

When he gave every detail he could think of, Dieter was flabbergasted.

The woman Perry had detailed sounded exactly like the woman in his dreams...

But it couldn't be, could it?

He decided there was only one way to find out.

As soon as he was back to full strength, he'd fly out to New Orleans and knock on your door.

He'd find out once and for all if any of it had been real.

He didn't mean to go to New Orleans on Halloween, but that's how it ended up - with him on an early flight to one of the spookiest cities in the world on the arguably spookiest day of the year.

He took a taxi to get to your house and hesitantly made his way to the front door.

How should he go about telling you he had dreams about you? To ask if you knew him when he was in his coma and was a ghost? What if it had really all been in his head?

There were several carved orange pumpkins on the front porch - jack o' lanterns - something he didn't remember you having last year, and they immediately sent him into a spiral of deep uncertainty.

She can't be her, he thought. She didn't decorate for Halloween last year.

It was kind of ridiculous to assume that just because you hadn't had Halloween decorations one year you wouldn't have them the next, but that was how much he was doubting himself.

He took a moment to beat down his nerves on your doorstep, shake it off, then knocked, not knowing if you'd hear it or if you were even on the same side of the house. Not knowing if you were home at all.

You were both shocked when you opened the door and found yourselves staring at each other.

How could it be? You'd assumed Dieter had moved on well over half a year ago, and yet there he was before you, looking very much alive and in a fresh pair of black jeans and an olive green button down shirt that was basically his tan shirt's twin.

"Holy shit, I didn't think you were actually real!" Dieter exclaimed.

"Are you?" you inquired. "Last I knew you were dead. What the fuck?"

He guffawed and you marveled at the way the skin around his eyes crinkled, at how they shined with life. His hair was more gray than you remembered, but it only added to how alive he looked.

"It turns out I wasn't actually dead," he explained. "I was in a coma. I woke up in a hospital bed back in January and found out I'd been unconscious for several months. I didn't overdose, but I'd had seizures from the cocaine I took. I had no idea that could be a side effect. The doctors said it was a miracle I survived, let alone had a full recovery."

You stepped outside with him. "And you've stayed clean?"

He huffed. "Of fuckin' course. I'm not a complete idiot. I'm not going through that shit again. Physical therapy was a bigger pain in my ass than any of the cravings could ever be."

You laughed briefly before your expression turned serious again. "That's good."

"I wanted to see you sooner," he told you, scratching at his cheek over the beard he still had, though it was more neatly trimmed than it had been the last time you'd seen him. "But I wanted to be fully recovered before I flew back out here, and for part of that time I didn't remember being here. Not even the night me and Perry hung out in the living room."

You folded your arms, nodded, and pursed your lips. "So how much do you remember now?"

You tried to keep your expectations low but there was a knife stabbing at your heart when you realized that he might not be able to recall much of you at all. Did he even remember your kiss?

Dieter smiled. "I remember us not getting off on the right foot, and maybe scaring you on purpose a few times."

You gaped at him. "I KNEW it!"

He grinned slyly and continued, "I remember how we used to talk a lot, and how that would drain my energy right out, but I'd always linger a little too long, until I had no choice but to slip into the darkness to rest for a while. I remember loving your sarcastic sense of humor and the way you lose your breath when you laugh too hard. And I...remember that night, when we kissed."

That had been something else. Unexpectedly titillating. It was by far the sharpest memory he had of that time he'd spent between worlds.

"I don't know if you remember it, but I regretted every day since that I said what I said that night," you told him, chewing your lip.

He nodded. "I remember. But you weren't wrong. You deserve to be with someone breathing, and I was really getting sick of being stuck in the house."

You chuckled but the sound was cut short when you felt him palm your cheek.

He was sooo warm. Real.

Your stomach fluttered when your eyes met.

"I thought I'd never get to say goodbye," you whispered. "All I wanted after I woke up to an empty house was to get that chance. But this, this is so much better."

"I missed you," Dieter admitted, drawing closer to you.

You beamed at him and he felt his chest warm.

"I missed you too."

He pulled you into a kiss, far more passionate than the first you'd shared, and you gripped onto his elbows tightly, fiercely clinging to him, almost afraid to let go.

When you eventually did, you smirked at him. "You're a day late for our anniversary, you know."

"First meetings do not count," he claimed.

"Oh yes they do," you countered.

"Well, excuse me for fuckin' forgetting to fly out yesterday. Pretty sure I still have some brain damage."

You huffed playfully. "Excuses."

Dieter shook his head at you fondly and kissed you again.

xxx

Tagged: @harriedandharassed

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#Dieter Bravo #The Bubble #Dieter Bravo Fanfic #Dieter Bravo Fanfic (Mine)#Fanfiction #Mine #X Reader #Jamie’s Halloween Writing Challenge #jamieshalloweenwritingchallenge

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