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bombsonboard · 2 years ago

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the day after yesterday: chapter three

Summary: Time travel is volatile, dangerous, playing god. And then sometimes it drops you in just the right place at the perfect time. It’s a matter of perspective. You decide.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader (no Y/N)

Word Count: 4.4k

Series Masterlist | Masterlist | Read it on AO3

A/N: So my scheduled post didnt work! But i’m still uploading this on Wednesday, just a little later than planned lol. Hope you’ve all had a good week and sorry for the lil bit late chaper!

You stood outside ‘Stillman’s Gymnasium’ feeling grateful it was a warm summer’s day and you didn’t have to brave the New York cold without a jacket. Bucky said he’d meet you here, he cleaned the gym after hours in exchange for weekly boxing lessons, promising it would be all theirs so you could work on your escape in peace.

Turns out, jumping the turnstile to get on the subway was a hell of a lot easier in the 1940s, it just took avoiding every man with a conductor hat, which the crowds made easy, and you made it to midtown.

All alone, you let yourself take a breath. Yes, you were stuck in the wrong time, but with the hope of getting home, it was quite an astonishing thing. This place wouldn’t even be here in twenty years, bulldozed for apartments. Having the privilege to be here was something you could hardly fathom but you tried to let yourself enjoy it, at least for the time being.

It was too easy to imagine yourself having a life here, who could be waiting for? Maybe a good girl friend, or maybe some guy was picking you up to go and see a movie, one of those old ones that are only on at Christmas or Sunday afternoons. Your dress would be a bit cleaner, your hair pinned out of your face and you would see him approaching in the distance.

In your mind he had a kind smile on his face, a few roses, not too many and he would walk up to you and say:

“Steve is gonna kill me when he finds out I took his nice sketch paper, this better be worth it.”

You blinked out of your fantasy to see the roses had flattened into a stack of paper and the kind smile you dreamed of was replaced by Bucky’s blank frown. He looked at you curiously.

“What?” He brushed his hair back with his free hand.

“Nothing” You felt caught out.

He shrugged, slowly growing used to your strange looks, and pulled a bunch of keys from out of his trouser pocket and slid them into the door. Unlocking it and pushing the door open with a clunk.

“After you.”

The smell of sweat and floor polish hit you like a wave as you stepped inside and Bucky locked the door behind the two of you. On the bare brick walls hung dozens of pictures of men in boxing gloves, raising their arms in victory. Along the surprisingly clean wooden floor punching bags were lined up, the rich brown leather cracked and beaten from excessive use and just waiting patiently to be used again.

The great big boxing ring was the main event, a square stage of battered cream, held together by rows of red rope. You wondered if it was red on purpose.

You pictured one of the boxing matches happening right there in front of you, the crowd of screaming men, praying for their bet to come clean and bracing for the final take down. The champion raising his godly fists, shirtless, shining and soaking in the sounds of his glory.

So, this is what Bucky wanted to be before the army? You tried to see him there, posing for one of the pictures on the wall with his grin plastered to his face. Though, maybe thinking of him shirtless and sweaty really wasn’t the most efficient thing you could be doing at the time.

“So…” Bucky comes to stand next to you, and offers you the paper

You take it with a quiet thank you.

“Do you have a-”

He hands you a pencil.

You swallow, turn around and begin to lay out the pieces of ‘borrowed’ sketch paper out on the glossy brown wood..

“There’s a desk in the office, y’know” Bucky points out, watching you crouch to the floor.

“That’s okay, I’m fine here.”

He looks at you, confused and waiting for any kind of explanation you would offer.

“I’m gonna need…quite a bit of space.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows, accepting that’s all he was getting, and goes to lean against the wall.

You start your chicken scratches, numbers in the tiniest handwriting you could manage, but the nagging sensation of his presence there itches at you incessantly. You lift your head and notice he’s just standing there, watching you.

“Don’t you have cleaning to do?” It came out a little more spiteful than you intended.

“Looks pretty spotless to me” He kept his eyes trained on you, not bothering to look around at all.

“Okay, so you don’t need to be here then?” You didn’t mind the company really, but why did it have to be him? It was better for you both if he just left you alone.

“I’m responsible for this place, how do I know you won’t mess it up?” Bucky narrowed his eyes at you.

“Christ, I don’t need a chaperone.”

“I’m sure you don’t, spitfire” He scoffs “but I'm not leaving, so…” He gestures for you to get back to your work “Go on.”

Rolling your eyes with maximum effort you go back to work and start to lose yourself in the math. Spread out on the floor with your ass in the air probably wasn’t the most ladylike position but who cared, Bucky didn’t seem to make a comment.

You willed yourself to stop wondering about him for just a moment so you could focus on the task at hand. If you were going to figure out the coordinates to put into the GPS, you needed a start point. It was 1943, that you knew but, the specific date was what you really wanted. There wasn’t anything that showed you today’s date in your immediate vicinity, so your eyes wandered and landed, unfortunately, on Bucky, who had his feet propped up on the front desk, head stuck in a newspaper.

"Is that today’s?” You ask from the floor.

“Yu-huh” He mumbles from his wall of news.

Of course he had the thing you were looking for.

“...What’s the date on it?”

He folds over one corner so you could be victim to his blank stare. “You don’t know what day it is?”

You stare back.

“11th June.” He supersedes.

“Thank you.”

He flips his corner back up and you go back to your work silently.

“11th June 1943.” You mumble quietly as the numbers take over your head again.

Hour One

The silence didn’t last half as long as you hoped it would.

“So, how long does something like this normally take?” Bucky wonders after a while, as if you launched yourself into the wrong time all the time, you felt yourself getting offended until you remembered he had absolutely no idea.

Scribbling down the total days you needed to travel you hid your face from Bucky.

“A while.” You hoped he didn’t hear the small crack in your voice.

“Great. Maybe it’s enough time for me to figure out why you’re so weird.” He chuckled lightly.

Bucky Barnes, ladies man.

“Oh you’ll figure it out…in 29,209 days” You mumble under your breath, you didn’t mean for him to hear, but when you’re the only two people in a room, it’s hard to keep secrets.

Bucky shakes his head in amusement, ignorant of just how truthful you had just been, but he was quiet for a little while longer after that.

Hour Three

Eventually grew restless of the front desk and sauntered over to the back office. You wondered who might usually be found in there, some short and stubby gym manager, dark hair slicked back with wiry eyebrows that look so much like caterpillars they might crawl off his face. A cigar permanently between his lips.

You cracked a smile at the image until you heard exactly what Bucky was doing in there. The crackle of a gramophone interrupts your thoughts and the smile falls from your face. You had no complaints about forties music, really, but you were convinced he was doing this on purpose, taunting you with warbling jazz.

With a frustrated grumble you threw down your pencil, abandoned your work and stalked over to the back office. He was there, leaning back on a chair with his arms crossed, eyes closed and absorbing the music echoing around the room.

Sure, he looked peaceful, but there were bigger stakes here than Bucky Barnes enjoying a record.

You rapped on the door forcefully but he didn’t jump to attention like you wanted.

Bucky slowly opens his eyes and looks up expectedly.

“Could you…turn it down?” You mimicked turning down a volume knob, and he looked at you blankly.

“Please.” It pained you to add.

“Turn it down?” He mimics your action, eyebrows furrowing. “And what’s that?”

“The music” You impatiently pointed it out and walked over to the small gramophone, singing pleasantly in the corner. It would be a relic any other day but right now it was just annoying you.

Shoot, no volume control you realized, it seemed people were just happy to hear music here, nevermind the volume. A little joy in a somewhat bleak time in history.

You needed your peace though, one way or another.

“Could you just turn it off?” You turned to leave.

“If this is gonna take long, I’d like to have something to entertain myself.”

You stopped, breathing in and out to stop yourself from killing him before his inevitable death date.

“You don’t even have to be here” You crossed your arms across your chest.

He smiled at your irritation “Tell you what, I’ll give you a chance.”

While you were occupied with how he just had the audacity to patronize you, Bucky stood from the chair and took the trash can from the corner and placed it at the other end of the office from you.

“What are you doing?” You watched him closely.

He walked back over to you with a self- satisfied smile, taking his time as he stopped just inches from you, the tips of his shoes touching yours just about.

“Bucky?” You felt your heartbeat palpate, your chest go tight.

He wordlessly leaned past you to grab an old coffee mug full of pencils that sat on the desk behind you. Bucky pulled away to stand next to you and embarrassment fizzed in your stomach. Bucky smelt like leather and his mothers cooking.

“First one to get three pencils in a row in the trash can wins. If you win, I’ll turn it off and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

You found that hard to believe and it must’ve shown on your face.

“...mostly,” He added. “But if I win, the music stays and you can’t say a thing about it.”

“Seriously?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die, swee- spitfire.”

He looked at you with his blue as a cloudy sky eyes as you sized him up. It seemed fair and you were always one for a good bet, but the way he looked at you made you feel like he knew something you don’t. Figuring that look out would have you spinning for days.

“Do you need me to move it a bit closer?” He suggested condescendingly.

“Fine.” You grumbled.

“Ladies first.” He held the mug out to you and you grabbed three pencils with a roll of your eyes.

It had to be easy right? You didn’t have the worst hand eye coordination in the world but it wasn’t one of your most notable qualities. The only thing you had going for you was a desire for Bucky Barnes to keep quiet, and you were about to find out how good of a motivator that was.

You toss the first pencil and it lands in the trash can with a happy little clang. The second pencil was subject to pressure and bounced on the edge before landing safely inside, you celebrated inwardly, trying to hide how invested you were in a game of throwing pencils, but you were so close to victory, sweet victory.

One final pencil in your hand, you looked to Bucky “Any final words?” you ask smugly.

“I’m good.” He stared straight ahead.

The last pencil is in the air and you swear you’ve never felt this tense in your life. Maybe apart from the time you landed in the 20th century by accident. Taunting you, it bounced off the edge like the second but this time it was the wrong way. You watched in disbelief as it clattered to the floor.

“Shit.” You muttered and tried to hide how actually sad you were to miss your final throw.

“I’d offer condolences but you were a little cocky at the end.” Bucky plucked three pencils from the pot.

He effortlessly tossed his pencils in without a second thought, one, two, three, in quick succession, giving you no time to think of a plan to sabotage him at all.

Bucky looked at you with a smile “I believe congratulations are in order.”

“Best of three?” You grasped at any chance he might give you.

Bucky just laughed. In your face. You let out a combination of a grumble and a sigh and stomped out of the office.

He had won, the music stayed.

Hour Five

“C’mon you should take a break.”

Bucky had stayed mostly in the office, humming to his music. You had migrated to the boxing ring to lay out your findings. He had been leaning against the door, keeping his eye on you for the last five minutes.

“Can’t take a break.” You didn’t look up.

“You’ve been scribbling for like ten hours” He groans.

“I’m not scribbling” You retort, but looking down at the paper ‘scribbles’ was definitely an accurate word, not that he needed to know that.

“What are you doing then?”

“I’m working out- ugh, stop it!” You needed to be more on the ball with his incessant questions.

“It’s for your own good” You told him as sternly as you could manage.

“Yes Ma'am” He grins cheekily.

He moved from the doorway, you cursed yourself for having half your attention on him again.

“I don’t think you’ve ever taken a break in your life, you’re so…tightly wound.”

You had half a mind to tell him why you were really ‘tightly wound’ right there and then. But then the fatal implications and so on…blah blah blah.

“I take breaks.”

“Hard to believe, you ever been to the movies? Or a dance, maybe?” His analyzing eyes felt like they could see right through you.

“Sure, I’ve been to dances.” You brushed him off and continued writing. Maybe they weren’t the dances he would be familiar with but you had been to some. They just played the Black Eyed Peas, not Vera Lynn.

“Really? Because you haven’t recognised a single song I've put on.”

Oh. He had you there.

“Maybe I just like different music.”

“Who doesn’t like Dick Haymes?”

You put your head back down, ignoring his teasing and diving back into work, and hopefully convincing him that you just weren’t interested in extracurriculars.

“Don’t worry, Spitfire, I’ll get you dancing.”

Hour Eleven

He had run out of records a couple hours ago and was now entertaining himself by standing by the entrance and using some spare paper to fashion a paper airplane and seeing how far he could throw it.

The boxing ring was covered in a blanket of math now, you sat cross legged in the center, surrounded by stretches of equations, statistics, and graphs, traveling along y axis and x axis, finding each coordinate you would need. You had worked this long before but after a day of exerting yourself physically, the strain was weighing heavily on your brain.

You close your eyes for just a second but a rude and painful awakening comes from a sharp poke in the side of your head.

“Sorry!” Bucky calls from across the room.

You sigh and stand, rubbing the side of your head “It’s fine, I needed to wake up anyways”

You were in the land before energy drinks, your go to when the numbers become squiggles in your eyes.

“There somewhere that sells coffee around here?” You grumble.

“Um” Bucky points to the window and you see nothing but black.

How had you missed the sun going down?

“Nevermind.” You ran a hand over your face, eyelids growing heavier by the second, but you knew you couldn't afford to sleep, not now.

But your brain was too exhausted to make sense of the final coordinates you needed and there was no point in half-assing this and ending up in the wrong time again. You had read in some study that regular breaks actually proved to help total productivity, as hard as it was for you to believe, you weren’t opposed to a little experimenting.

Tip toeing carefully over your working, you sat on the side of the boxing ring, waiting for productivity to strike.

Bucky abandoned his paper airplane to sit next to you. The air felt heavy around you and all you could feel was the incomprehensible weight on your shoulders. You had no idea what Bucky thought, you had hardly been nice to him. But the way he was looking at you made you think he just wanted to lighten your load, just a little bit.

“So, how's it going?” He asked after a minute.

“It’s…getting there.” You fiddled with your hands “Maybe.”

“You really are weird, y‘know?”

He was smiling at you, like he had just paid you a sweet as sugar compliment.

“Thanks, Bucky.” You gave your sarcastic gratitude.

With a sudden burst of energy, he practically waltzes to the back office, you watch with amused curiosity, and when he appears again, he’s carrying the gramophone with both hands, a record under his arm.

He places it happily on the corner of the ring, lifting the red rope, he slides under and stands in the boxing ring. What was he doing now?

“C’mon.” He tilted his head at you with a smile.

Waiting for you, you supposed.

“What?”

Bucky began to pile up you papers covering the space and you flew into a panic, if he messed them all up you’d have to spend another hour putting them back in the correct order so they made sense, you hadn’t thought to number your pages because you thought he wouldn’t be stupid enough to touch them. You thought wrong.

“Bucky!” You shrieked with wide eyes.

He looked at you, calmly “I’m keeping them in order.”

His habit of reading your mind was getting pretty annoying. You follow his lead and shuffle under the ropes out of curiosity. With your math tower tucked safely to the side out of harm's way, you faced him with a confused look.

“You needed to wake up, right?”

“Are we going to box? Because I don’t think I'm up for that right now.”

“No, no” He takes the record out of its sleeve with a flourish and places it on the gramophone, setting the needle down, humming with excitement.

An upbeat song begins to play, filling the hall with hearty trumpets and jiving double bass. It almost felt like they were in the room somewhere, hiding under the boxing ring with their instruments.

You stood a meter away from Bucky, no closer and no farther. He held out his hand, you looked around you as if there was any one else he could offer it to.

“What are you doing?” You ask, you could barely hear yourself above the music reverberating around the walls.

“Dancing.” He said it like it was obvious.

You didn’t think you get stage fright in the absence of an audience but Bucky had a funny way of making you nervous. For the third time, you were stuck gawking at his open palm. The vibrations of the music sent waves through the boxing ring, an invisible hand urging you closer to him.

“I don’t think that’s, maybe not-” You splutter.

You tried to think of the ripples in time this could cause but all you could really focus on was how much you wanted to feel his hand in yours again.

“Spitfire.”

When would you ever get the chance again? Never, that’s the answer. Sure, time might crumble before you but he looked so happy standing there, and he didn’t have many of those moments left.

“I swear every time you look at my hand it’s like you’ve seen a ghost.”

That’s what he had in store. Becoming the most infamous ghost story history had ever heard. You made peace with the universe in a surprisingly short amount of time and decided Bucky Barnes needed this more than anything else in this world.

“You gonna keep on staring at my hand or are you gonna take it?”

You take a few tentative steps towards him and slide your right hand into his left. He directs your other hand to rest on his shoulder and he slips his hand behind you. He tucked you closer to his chest with a shy smile and a gentle pull, you gazed up at him with bright eyes, a smile hiding in the corners of your mouth just waiting to blossom.

The next ten minutes, Bucky spends teaching you how to swing dance after coming to the conclusion you had never danced with anyone in your life.

“I have!” You insist after you step on his toe for the seventeenth time.

“Do they still have feet?” He asks in fake concern.

“Ha Ha.” You poorly cover your genuine laughter, but you couldn’t hide the smile that had crept up on you anymore.

Dancing with Bucky was a whirlwind in the most literal sense, you spun like a pinwheel in and out of his arms. You spent half the time spiraling into danger and he would be there to catch you as if there was no risk at all.

When he kept you close, you could just about hear him counting to the music under his breath. It was an endless night of numbers for you, but you were convinced you had never been as dizzy as this before, dipping in and out and twisting up and down but you knew he wouldn’t let you fall. There was something transporting about it, bringing truth to your daydreams.

Dancing with him felt more like time travel, than well, actual time travel.

You were glad he wasn’t enhanced yet, or he would hear your heartbeat picking up speed. For a moment he was all you could think about, and you finally had no complaints.

Until you saw your papers topple and scatter on the floor, the jolting of the enthusiastic swing dance lesson had your precious work falling all over the floor.

Quickly, it all got too much, heat rushed through you and the music was thumping in your head. He was too close to you, chests stuck together that should never have touched in the first place, Hands glued to his, you were trapped in his time and you were losing yourself by the second. If you didn’t let go now, who knows what you could cause.

“Stop, stop!” You pulled away, ripped your hand from his, stumbling back and catching yourself on the ropes.

“You alright?” Bucky spoke cautiously behind you.

“Yeah, yes I’m okay, I just-”

You swallowed down the bile rising from your stomach, and turned to see him standing there with concern in his eyes. Damn him. Damn him for helping you.

“I need to get this done.” You hurried to pick up your work and put it back into the correct order, scared to even look at him again.

“Okay.” He sighed quietly.

Hour Fifteen

Bucky had fallen asleep sometime ago.

The sun had come up again, the cloudless sky left the blinding beams of sunlight to burst through the windows.

His gentle snoring was the only sound as you held your breath,staring at the coordinates. Double checked, triple checked. All you had to do now was put them into the GPS and go.

But something was keeping you here, just for a few moments more. If it had anything to do with the man sleeping a couple meters away, you weren’t sure. All you could do was keep your eyes on the key to your exit.

“You worked through the night?”

Okay, so he wasn’t asleep anymore.

You could disappear right there in front of his eyes and leave him questioning everything for the rest of his life, even though you thought it would be a little funny and maybe he deserved it, it was just too risky.

“Done it before” You shrugged.

“Well my sleep was great, surprisingly sound” He began to walk over “Oh, and if my Ma asks where I was all night, do me a solid and say the recruitment center, something about long queues i don’t know.”

Hang on.

“You haven’t enlisted yet?”

“No?”

“Haven’t been to the recruitment center at all?”

“Been a bit busy” He chuckles

“Well you should go, go do it now”

“What?”

You thought he had gone by now.

“I’ll do it later, suppose” He shrugs

You looked at the coordinates. You could go home. But you couldn’t. Bucky hadn’t enlisted. And if he doesn’t join the army then, then Steve probably wouldn’t either and Captain America wouldn’t exist and maybe we didn’t win the war, maybe we lost all of the wars, the battle of new york, the battle of the earth.

Him not becoming a sergeant . you couldn’t begin to think of the implications.

Was it all your fault?

“Been thinking about it a lot and I know my dad did and all that, but…I don't know”

You had currently beaten your record for amount of shits in a twenty four hour span ten times over.

Getting home, All of this means absolutely nothing if Bucky doesn’t go to war.

He needed to enlist, he had too, you were to blame for this, and you were damn right gonna fix it.

You had to make him join the army, no matter the cost.

Maybe you could afford a couple more days here, you supposed.

“You figure out all your math?” Bucky asks.

You turned to him and stood.

“Not quite.”

Tag-list: @emily-roberts @enchantedbarnes @marygoddessofmischief @nickangel13 @elxvrr @pixiesbored @skittle479 @sweetwritingfanficfriend @curlycarley @acceptedbyace (bold means I couldn’t tag you)

#Bucky Barnes #bucky x you #bucky #bucky x reader #bucky x y/n #james bucky barnes #james buchanan barnes #marvel imagine #the day after yesterday #Clara writes

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howdywrites · 1 year ago

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Gather The Posse - Yeehawgust 1

Part of Yeehawgust 2023 [ WIP intro ] [ my Yeehawgust tag]

Length: 500~ words Warnings: alcohol, mention of alcohol abuse Backstory: after a falling out with the Goldridge Rebellion, Rosalind attempts to make amends and bring the posse back together to take back their town once and for all.

Let me know if you would like to be tagged in future yeehawgust posts from me!

If one thing could bring the group together, it was good booze. Lucinda graciously offered her saloon to Rosalind - for a price, of course. The rebellion needed this meeting to shake off hard feelings. A concrete plan was needed if they were going to wrench Goldridge from the clutches of Caldwell and his crew.

Wood squeaked against wood as Rosalind finished rearranging the last of the tables into the center of the room. From her overcoat pocket she unfurled the shittiest map of Godridge she sketched by hand the night before and smoothed it over the top of the tables along with some nubs of colored pencils that she ‘borrowed’ from Clementine’s room back at the Jacobs ranch.

“Still got that whiskey, Cinda?” Rosalind called over her shoulder, eyeing the squares and lines that made up her map.

“Yeah and you still got the cash?” Lucinda’s gruff voice crooned from the saloon’s kitchen. “What makes you think Eliza and the rest of ‘em want to see your face again?”

Rosalind snorted, shrugging her overcoat off and depositing it over the back of a worn out chair. “‘Cause who’s gonna turn down booze in this town?”

When the hour to meet came and went, it felt as if the world stood still. The oil lamps on the tabletops filled the saloon with a warm glow, creating a beacon for the rest of the group to follow as night swallowed Goldridge. Rosalind stared at the front door, listening to the maddening tick, tick, tick of Lucinda’s grandfather clock. The whiskey and moonshine bottles sat on top of her map, practically begging to be popped open and swallow her anxieties.

But before long, the group arrived.

Su Yang clambered through the door first, dressed in that beautiful ruby gown Rosalind liked so much. In her arm, she dragged a disgruntled Charlie who shot the outlaw with a scowl when they passed her. Anna appeared in the doorway not too long after, following her brother’s lead in side-eyeing Rosalind. They gathered around the table, seemingly in high spirits, though they ignored the woman who had sent for them. Lucinda joined their ranks, pouring generous glasses for everyone.

Rosalind held her breath. They were missing just one crucial piece to this puzzle. Shuffling to the door of the saloon, she stole a peek outside to see if she could make out any other stragglers. The main road of Goldridge offered nothing but the faint sound of jovial piano music from the mayor’s home where Caldwell’s gang partied.

“I hope I’m not too late,” Eliza’s exasperated voice drifted from the back of the saloon. She brushed her brilliant gold hair out of her face before adjusting a sleeping Clementine on her hip. Rosalind’s heart nearly burst and it took every ounce of self control to not run over and envelope the woman in her arms. After their screaming match the other day, she wanted nothing more than to grovel at Eliza’s feet and worship her like the goddess she was.

“Not too late at all,” Rosalind reassured her, flashing her a crooked smile. “Gang’s all here.”

Taglist: @draculinawrites @rosesonneptune

#yeehawgust #yeehawgust23 #yeehawgust 2023 #sobwip

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blujaymi · 2 years ago

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this might be something with pretty obvious answers, but i wanted to start doing digital art

any tips? thank you

hello anon and congrats on being my 2nd ever ask!!

I'm the absolute worst person to ask about this, but I'll try my best.

Disclaimer: Actually blending and painting digitally is a whole other topic. If you wanted me to talk about painting: I'm sorry!! But, I can make a post about that specifically if you want. For this post though I'll be talking about more easy basic stuffs since you said you were just starting out (I still do mention shading tho).

This post ended up being lengthier than I thought, so I'll leave my thoughts under the cut.

In terms of getting started hardware wise, I've only ever had one drawing tablet (its a huion, but I can't recall what specific model) so I'm not sure I can make any good recommendations but I know there are many ppl on yt who have more experience with various tablets than I do if you don't have one yet!

However, in terms of software, I currently use medibang paint simply because it's free and suits my (very) simple needs. That being said I think it's pretty decent and is definitely more than enough for just starting out. There's also firealpaca, which is essentially the same program but with a focus on animation and comics at the cost of less brushes. Both can be used for basic illustration and have pretty much the same basic brushes and functionality, so either are good starting programs imo.

Besides all that, I'm guessing you're asking more about the actual art side. I don't know if you're transferring to digital from traditional art or just starting to draw in general, but hopefully I can help regardless. There's a lot of beginner digital art tip videos by people way more qualified than me out there so I'm gonna try to give tips I feel like aren't talked about as much.

1. Canvas size is important

When setting up your canvas size, it should definitely be at least 1920x1080 pixels (standard HD size). my canvas is usually 3000x3000 or just a large square. This is mostly because I'm indecisive, draw small, and don't know exactly how I want my canvas oriented until I start drawing; however, I find it to be a good starting point in general as it's big enough to be cropped and preserve quality. Basically, just don't accidentally make your art too small (which sounds obvious but it is something I have done before and haven't really seen artists talk about for beginners. It's a really easy thing to overlook).

2. Save ALL of the time

This isn't really an art tip as much as it is a PSA to prevent disaster. I don't think I've seen an artist that HASN'T lost drawings or parts of drawings from their software crashing or forgetting to save. A lot of if not all art programs do have an autosave feature but it's definitely not meant to be relied on. Especially when you're starting out and are likely spending a LOT of time learning and experimenting with your drawings, just make sure to hit CTRL+S often and make it a habit.

And as a side note, save your art in dated folders of each year/month. It makes the process of backing up your art or uploading it to a drive a lot easier. Safe art is good :]

3. Take advantage of EVERYTHING

Okay, moving on from that sort of off topic PSA, If you're used to traditional art, or just not familiar with your art program, it's easy to forget how many tools you actually have at your disposal to make the drawing process easier and/or faster. So I have compiled a list of essential tools that are in every art program that you might want to experiment and become familiar with before just diving into the deep end and making a drawing (which is fine too, but it can be a little overwhelming).

Layers and clipping

Generally, you want a layer for each unique element of the drawing, such as:

Sketch

Lineart

Color

Shadows

Lighting

I typically divide the color layer into a layer for each color so I can shade them individually (not doing so makes your colors susceptible to getting in each other's way and is just kind of a pain). For example, I'd probably split the color layer of a portrait of a person into a skin, hair, and eye layer. I know when it comes to painting specifically having 39178319 layers is usually criticized, but I think it provides good organization and a bit of a safety net, especially if you're new to digital art and will likely be indecisive in the beginning about things like color.

Speaking of being indecisive about color, one of the most important features of an art program is clipping.

Essentially, whatever you draw on a clipping layer will only show up within the layer that's below it (which as I'm typing this I've realized makes way more sense when you see it than through words). There's usually a checkbox to enable clipping on a layer in the layer window, and its usually called just clipping or clipping mask across software I've seen.

(Clipping off)

(Clipping on)

One of the main things you can use this for is quickly changing the color of a layer without having to be decisive about it and permanently change it. You can have multiple clipping layers over one layer and simply hide the ones you aren't using.

The more prominent thing clipping is used for, however, is shading. Basically, you add a clipping layer to your base color and color in your shadows without having to worry about "going outside the lines". I really wouldn't recommend doing shading any other way unless you're just freehand painting. Clipping is definitely the easiest approach.

Blend modes

I don't really know how to define what a blend mode exactly is, but I can tell you what the two most useful ones are. There's a lot of them depending on what program you use, but the most important (imo) and universal ones are called multiply and add.

What multiply does is intensifies the darks and completely gets rid of the lights on whatever layer you apply it to. In simpler terms, it casts itself as a shadow on the layer below it, hence it is used most often for basic shading.

Because of the nature of the blend mode it is common to choose colors like dark purple or dark red as the tone for the shadows. I honestly really love purple/cool shading, but you can experiment with various tones of shadows and find which fits the vibe of your piece. A general rule of thumb is to not just use a darker version of the color you are shading (unless that's the look you're going for), but also shift the hue on the color wheel a bit to add more v i b e s. For example, shading red with maroon/purple-toned red or green with a slightly blue-green.

Add is the opposite of multiply. It intensifies the lights and completely gets rid of the darks on whatever layer you apply it to. It casts a glowy looking highlight on whatever is below it, and is used for intense lighting or making stuff look cool and glowy (my favorite thing).

As somewhat of a side note, each layer also has an opacity (how opaque/transparent the layer is) setting. Lowering the opacity from 100% will make the layer more transparent (very useful for adjusting the intensity of the shadow or highlight layer, and to draw over your sketch).

Conclusion

There is a LOT more I can talk about regarding this but I think most of it has already been said by much more qualified artists. Also this post is hellishly long and I think any more advice would be overwhelming (if it wasn't already). Hopefully everything I mentioned above can help you start your digital art journey. I'm down to make a part 2 of more obscure tips if I can think of enough.

Best of luck anon and sorry for making you read all of this!

#j answers #asks #my lovely anons

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frank-satomi · 8 months ago

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"Today, I woke up...."

(A blog of daily life and realizations)

Saturday: 04/13/24

I woke up at 6:30 to get prepared to meet up with my friends to jog around outlook and gibraltar. We met up and found out just how much jogging hurts not only for the legs, but for your breathing too. I distinctly remember having a sharp pain in my throat, as if I had swallowed knives down my throat. Our jogging slowly turned into a slow pace walk where we circled around the entirety of Gibraltar before taking a pit stop on Mansion to get some water, and to do some rounds of sprints. From that point I felt humbled by how much my body lacked endurance and exercise. Around 9:40 we dropped by the burger place right across our school, we bought one burger and divided it into 3. I was enlightened that you were allowed to add condiments to the plain burger. My whole life up to that point was full of naivety and missed opportunities. This day was also my first time getting a hit of the Cobra energy drink. The taste was distinct, sharp at first but then its sweetness traveled down your throat like a ferryman treading down a waterfall. After all of this, we all went our ways and traveled back to the comfort of our home. At home, panic arises as I was suddenly tasked with solving the Chi-square test in our research manuscript. The solution was anticlimactic, but the following tabulation rocked my world like no other. The night finally comes by and by some grace of God, me and my partner decided to sleep early, at the earliest we’ve slept (on purpose) being “10:40” in the evening. We both agreed to turn our phones upside down just to make sure that we wouldn’t tamper with it any further. This day humbled me, but reminded me that my shortcomings do not define me.

Sunday: 04/14/24

I woke up and my body was heavy. I think I'm gonna sit this day out for a bit. I decided to spend it working on school projects and some Commissions. I was there prepared to spend the day as a lazy couch potato. Finally by some miracle, I found the energy to finally face the commission I was tasked to, and got pretty far with the sketch, I let my client check it before proceeding any further. On this day, I got around to drawing another bunch of random things. I followed a tutorial I stumbled upon on facebook, and the results of the tutorial should be the second image on this post. I’m particularly proud that even on a quiet day, I got to accomplish something.

Monday. 04/15/24

I woke up at least 3 times this morning, and on the third time I woke up. The first two times were strange, waking up at my sleep, roughly around 2:25 am in the morning, the second time at 3:33 am (ohnoes spooky cursed hour). The day went by and as I write this in school, I use it to take note of pending deadlines. I have an artwork to finish by tomorrow, this blog to submit by Wednesday, and a business plan to accomplish along with my groupmates. I arrived home this afternoon with one thought in mind, “draw” and I simply couldn’t wait to finish the drawing I was working on for one of my subjects. Lo' and behold, using the wrong marker color pigment, and the sketch was completely ruined. I sucked up my tears and made something close to it. It should be one of the images attached on this blog. To be an artist, is to have to bear the failures made up from the intense passion and sheer excitement that spurs from the moment, we must keep moving that brush until we’ve made up for it. In life, we'll go through many hiccups, but we can't stop all of it from happening, so we might as well keep moving on.

#the wholesome side #life is too short #letsenjoyeverylittlethingaboutit

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silverskye13 · 6 years ago

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#gaster #w.d. gaster #the void #undertale #the3Ss #L of the3Ss #I'm just doodling again don't mind me #was gonna take a square brush and just like... sketch #but then this happened #and i've been wanting to draw something like this for awhile anyway so #yanno whatever here we are #barking art

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inkdemon-whore · 2 years ago

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email/dm before commissioning

email: [email protected]

(you can also just throw money at me i guess)

cashapp: $ALtaDoodler

paypal.me/altadoodler

i also use square for commissions (when using square i'll send you an invoice link. you don't need an account with square, ya just need to put in your credit card info, kinda like paypal guest)

there's no change in price for brushes, bgs, or greyscale, only the character amount. 1 character being $15 USD, and 2 being $25 USD.

i'm only gonna take 3-5 of these at a time, i might also be a bit slow. check my description to see if i have slots open.

-----

edit: blazing this in hopes of actually getting at least one commission. if you can't commission me but you see this, please reblog, thanks!

(these are a lot cheaper than my usual commissions, which start at $30 for a half body sketch. these are just $15 for anything. half body or full body. an absolute steal, in my opinion)

#commissions

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narraboths · 4 years ago

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[Bodyguard AU, inspired by revisiting @battenthecrosshatches‘s exquisite sketches. Fic also on Ao3.]

Lena can’t stand Sergeant Danvers.

She can’t stand any of her PPOs, frankly. It’s always the same humorless face, the same square jaw and shorn hair, the same cheap cologne, and inescapably, the same thinly veiled disgust for her name.

(At least they only get to spit out her title or the usual ma’am, instead of Luthor, like the rest of the country.)

But there’s something especially irksome about Danvers.

In many ways, she’s cut from the same cloth as the others: the towering, bulky physique, the hard-set features, the air of indifference, the only distinguishing mark being that she’s just handsome enough for Lena to have let her eyes wander for a second too long when they’ve first met.

It’s not that, though.

(Or not just that, anyway.)

It’s the dark, morose look in those ridiculously blue eyes, the haughty twitch of her lips every time she opens the car door for Lena. It’s the rigid, tense way Danvers carries herself, somehow both unnerving and magnetic, drawing Lena’s eye to her whenever she enters the room. It’s the way she just has to know better than any other bodyguard how to protect her and make every aspect of Lena’s life harder in the process, and then have the audacity to take all her reproachful looks with a stiff upper lip and a just doing my job, ma’am. It’s the fact that she does make Lena feel more safe, somehow, and cared for, too, in some odd, itchy way.

Lena cannot stand it.

–

In retrospect, she thinks she has the right to blame the incident at the studio on Sergeant Danvers, too.

The bodyguard is standing by the door, monitoring the room like a sullen statue, and Lena’s decidedly trying not to look her way as she’s flipping through her papers. She’s wound up enough as it is, having to stand in for a major interview at the last minute and defend a controversial bill. She doesn’t need Sourface Danvers to aggravate it.

She’s not looking, then, as Jack is buzzing in her ear with his pep talk, a kind and gentle tone, nor when an assistant floats by with a three minutes and we can go to the studio, ma’am.

But she does look up when Eve strides into the room with a peppy exclamation of “Your coffee!”, the cup already enthusiastically extended towards Lena. She does look up, and by some freakish twist of fate, catches Sergeant Danvers looking right at her with the sort of searing intensity that makes Lena’s heart skip a beat, and her hand knocks a bit too forcefully against the cup in Eve’s hand, and–

“Fuck!”

The coffee stain spreads rapidly across her blouse, and Lena instinctively sucks her stomach in to avoid scorching herself too. Eve’s already dabbing away at it, babbling a nervous mantra of “Oh gosh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”, the fussing making Lena grasp the extent of the disaster more swiftly than the sight of the brown stain on the white silk.

“Stop it,” she grits out, springing up and away from Eve. She stares down at her blouse again, her nails digging hard into her palm. Luck of the Luthors. “Do we have anything I could change into?”

“There’s a spare in the car,” Eve says, slightly trembling. “But you’re on in like–”

“Can’t you give her your blouse?” Jack tries, and Lena shakes her head with an eyeroll.

“It’d never fit. God fucking–”

A pair of wide shoulders move into her view before she could finish, Danvers shrugging off her jacket and tossing aside her tie as she starts to unbutton her own shirt.

“Fresh on this morning, ma’am.”

“You can’t be serious,” Jack laughs, a nervous tinge in his voice, and Danvers only spares a glance for him before she extends the garment towards Lena.

“It’s altered to fit over my ballistic vest, so the chest to waist ratio should be compatible.” Practical, dispassionate, life-saving. It must only be due to the shock of the situation that Lena allows her eyes to linger on the exposed skin of the officer’s shoulders, the flexing biceps of her extended arm. Danvers shows no awareness of being ogled. “But you’re gonna have to tuck it under your blazer, ma’am.”

One heartbeat passes, then another. Then Lena reaches out and takes the shirt from Danvers, her fingers brushing over the bodyguard’s hand without meaning to.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Lena says, but the words come out breathless, somehow. Danvers only blinks, then gives a curt nod, thoroughly unmoved, and that helps Lena find her footing again. “Eve, organize Sergeant Danvers a new shirt. Jack, some privacy?”

Eve is scuttling away already and Jack follows her, too, though not without flashing an all too cheeky smile. Lena resists throwing her papers after him. She reaches for the hem of her blouse, and Danvers is already turning away, stuffing her tie into her pockets and putting her jacket over her now-exposed vest. A most infuriating knight in shining white body armor.

As she hurriedly buttons up the shirt and adjusts the sleeves, Lena tries to shut out every new sensation surrounding her with it. It proves to be an uphill battle. There’s a hint of something around the collar, citrusy, slightly sweet, though not terribly intrusive. Pleasant, even. Much worse is the lingering warmth of its previous wearer, wrapping itself around Lena and clinging stubbornly even when she’s in the interviewer’s chair like an invisible cloak, like a hug that could never be.

The interview goes well. Amazingly, frighteningly, "Press Secretary Grant sending an unprecedented well done text two minutes after airing” kinda well. But when they’re back in the car and Lena catches herself pressing her face into the collar of that shirt and inhaling deeply, the tension in her shoulder that just dissipated returns tenfold.

Sergeant Danvers is nothing but trouble.

#supercorp #my fic #disclaimer: i'm not making lena a tory <3

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gashinabts · 4 years ago

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philophobia|(m)

Words: 7.4k

Pairing: Taehyung x Reader

Genre: Angst, Smut, Fluff, Mature

Summary: Taehyung, a man, who swears he’ll never fall in love meets Y/N a hopeless romantic.

Warnings: Teasing, spitting, oral (f/receiving), fingering, pussy slapping, pussy sniffing ( lmao idk if thats a thing?), squirting, sexual intercourse, mention of homophobia. Topics of child neglecting, if this makes you uncomfortable pls don’t read :) minor character death

A/N: Taehyung is a bisexual king! Tell me what you peeps think, remember that comments motivate me to continue writing!!! This is my work, no reposting this and my other works on any other platforms.

Kim Taehyung was born December 30, 1995 his father left him when he was 11 years old that is when Taehyung realized that love never lasts. His mother pretended that his father never existed, she quickly hid the family photos away, along with covering his tomato garden with dirt. Taehyung wanted to ask where he went but stopped wondering when he heard a few of his classmates whispering that Taehyung’s dad left them for a young woman in her twenties.

As Taehyung grew into his teenage years he would often get asked out by his classmates, he wouldn’t decline, accepting the dates to see if he can ever fall foolishly in love like his Mom once did. However, nothing ever happened, he would kiss them goodnight but won’t call them the next day. In high school he lost his virginity at a party, he wasn’t nervous, just did things he’s seen in filthy pornorgraphy. The very next day the girl spread the rumor that Taehyung was a sex god, that he probably had sex everyday with a different people. Was that a compliment? He remembered thinking to himself as he sat in the back of the classroom, feeling people secretly stare at him.

That day he met Jimin. Jimin was a popular boy that everyone swoon over. Of course he had a girlfriend, they have been dating since middle school. The guys would gawk at her when she would wear a sports bra to track practice. Taehyung was in art class sketching an apple, Jimin came over and talked to him as if they were friends. It was nice, Taehyung listened to Jimin complain about his art. When class was over, Jimin asked Taehyung to hang out with him after school. When Taehyung sat on Jimin’s bed, he looked over on the desk and saw a picture of Jimin and his girlfriend. Right next to it was a picture of what he assumed was Jimin’s family. A Mom, Dad, an older brother, and Jimin. He turned his gaze back to Jimin...who was undressing in front of him. Jimin’s underwear was the only thing on, Taehyung didn’t expect him to have lean muscles and define abs. An hour later they were both breathless, exhausted from the sex.

“ I’m not gay.” Jimin tells Taehyung as he cleans himself with a rag.

“ Okay.” Taehyung shrugs and pulls his pants up. He’s watched gay porn and straight porn before and got turned on by both of them, so it doesn’t come to much of a surprise that he enjoyed the sex with Jimin.

*******

Taehyung watches from afar when Jimin kisses his girlfriend in the school halls, wondering if that’s love. The next few months, Taehyung and Jimin fool around more. Jimin would call Taehyung over, then they would fuck and they would both be on their way. There were never conversations or pillow talks, until right now.

“ I’m gay.” Jimin confesses to Taehyung.

“Cool.” Taehyung shrugs, looking for his shoes.

“ That’s all your gonna say?” Jimin rolls his eyes grabbing his t-shirt wiping the come on his stomach.

“ I’m bisexual, happy?” Taehyung looks at his phone and notices a missed call from his mother. He tucks his phone away, “ Why are you still with her? Your girlfriend.” He finally asks the question he’s been meaning to ask since the beginning.

“ I love her and I don’t want to hurt her, but I can’t love her like that.” Jimin looks at the picture of them and flips it down, almost ashamed of how much of a coward he is. “ Plus my Dad would kill me if I told him I like men.” He throws his head back looking at the ceiling not wanting to cry his eyes out.

Taehyung thinks love is complicated, he thinks people who are in love are selfish. They rather hurt themselves for the sake of love. It’s stupid he wants to tell Jimin that but he keeps quiet until Jimin looks at him with tears eyes. “ I don’t know what to say…”

“It’s fine...you don’t have to say anything just keep me company, yeah?”

“ Okay,” Taehyung sits back on the bed watching but not really watching tv with Jimin.

---

Taehyung’s mom was proud of him when he got accepted to a good college, she would brag to her friends and show pictures of his acceptance letters. Along with bragging how she raised Taehyung all by herself. Taehyung didn’t mind that he was in the spotlight, whatever made his mom happy he would comply with whatever she does. He was good with numbers so he was going to major in data analysis, he really wanted to major in art but his mom laughed in his face, telling him to be realistic.

Taehyung is now in his third year of college, wanting to just graduate already, done with the shitload of classwork and long ass lectures. Just right now he just finished his homework that took him three hours. He’s about to call it a night until Jungkook barges in his room, yelling at him to get dressed for a party. Taehyung switches his dirty hoodie with a clean hoodie, opting out grey sweatpants with jeans. He keeps his glasses on, due to his eyes being tired and not wanting to irritate them with contacts.

Jungkook hands Taehyung a drink, there’s obscene music, blunts being handed around, and people grinding on each other. “ When’s the last time you got laid?” Jungkook asked, as he took a gulp of his beer.

“ Last week...I think.” Taehyung searches through his mental sex list, but can’t seem to remember the girls face or name. He looks around and watches a couple argue with each other. The man rolls his eyes as the woman tries not to cry, the woman ends up leaving him and going upstairs.

“ Damn, lucky. I tried to hook up with this girl and she ended up leaving me hanging. Claimed that she’s not over her boyfriend, started crying on me when I was going down on her.” Jungkook cringes, sipping more alcohol. “ Be my wingman, yeah?”

“ Sure,” Taehyung nods. Jungkook is talking to this pretty girl, and she laughs at every joke that Jungkook makes. Taehyung wasn’t even sure why he asked him to his wingman when Jungkook can easily get a girl to bed. Jungkook nods absentmindedly when Taehyung excuses himself, he wanders around the frat house looking at people getting wasted. Once he gets tired of it he goes upstairs, hoping to find solace in an empty room. He opens a bedroom door, and notices a girl with a pencil and notebook. “ My bad-,” Taehyung is about to close the door.

You look up from your sketchpad, you see a tall man with messy curls and glasses. “ You can stay,” you observe him, he looks like he was forced to come here. There’s no red solo cup in his hand, he looks like he hasn’t a good night's rest. Also why else would he look mindlessly into rooms, the bathroom doors have a handwritten sign stating ‘BATHROOM’, so he must be bored or something searching into bedrooms. “ Or don’t. I don’t care.” You watch him close the door, entering the room.

“ Is this your room?” Taehyung looks around the room, noticing posters of naked women and marvel posters. Weird combination he notes. Along with the dirty clothes scattered all over the floor.

“ No,” you laugh. Shutting your notebook close, taking notice of his nice hands brushing his hair back. “ My friend’s room. I didn’t really feel like partying just decided to sketch,” you lift your pad up. He nods and sits on the bed.

“ Can I draw?” Taehyung points towards the sketchpad. He hasn’t drawn in months too busy in his schoolwork, his fingers would sometimes draw on foggy windows but nothing more. You nod tearing a piece of paper out and handing him a pencil, he thanks you.

You were sneakily glancing at him, sketching him, his angular jaw, messing hair, uneven eyelid, long eyelashes. Getting lost at his elegant features, wondering if he knows how beautiful he looks. You shake your head for easily fawning over this man. His hands are even beautiful, they travel across the paper gracefully with each stroke. You turn your eyes away when he makes eye contact with you, cheeks getting warm. “ What’s your name?” You ask while shading the contours of his cheeks.

“ Taehyung.” He folded his paper into a small square, putting it into his pocket. “ Yours?”

“ Y/N,” you smile.

---

“ Did you get laid yesterday night?” Jungkook is shirtless with scratch marks behind his back, there’s a couple of hickies on his neck.

Taehyung takes a sip of his tea before answering, “No, just talking to some girl. Her name is Y/N.”

“ Y/N. She’s a nice girl. One time I forgot a scantron for class and she gave me one. She’s also friends with Namjoon.” Jungkook pours himself coffee sitting next to Taehyung. “ Are you interested in her?”

Taehyung would be lying if said he wasn’t interested in you. When he entered the room he thought you were pretty and had a kind smile. “ Maybe...why?”

“ It’s best if you don’t try to get at her. Y/N looks the type to fall in love easily.” Jungkook sighs cracking his back on the back of the chair, groaning at his achy body. Taehyung wonders how can someone fall in love easily, he’s not one to believe in love at first sight or any kind of stuff in that realm. “ Alright, I’m gonna take a quick shower and then we can leave.”

Taehyung and Jungkook are at the library studying or trying to study, Jungkook is texting someone the whole time instead of studying for his macroeconimics test. While Taehyung is playing video games on his phone. “ Hey guys! Didn’t know you actually study Jungkook,” Namjoon jokes, ruffling Jungkook’s hair. Jungkook rolls his eyes pushing his hand off his head mumbling curse words at him. Taehyung looks to the side of Namjoon and notices you laughing as the scene unfolds. You’re carrying ice americanos and Jungkook immediately takes it out of the carrier, thanking you.

You look at Taehyung placing one in front of him, “ I didn’t know what kind of coffee you liked.” Taehyung is wearing similar clothing to what he wore at the party, mostly muted green colors and his circle glasses, his hair is pushed back with a headband. He looks surprised to see you, but nevertheless thanks you for the coffee. The conversations between Jungkook and Namjoon get more serious when they finally decide to study for their materials. You try to study but you want to talk to Taehyung wanting to get to know him more, you nudge your foot against his leg. He looks up, looking at you in question, you nod your head towards the exit entrance, he nods slowly unsure to what you're up to but following your lead. Jungkook and Namjoon are too invested in their studying to see you and Taehyung leave. “ Do you wanna go to my apartment?”

“ Sure,” Taehyung shrugs. The apartment was small and kind of messy, you try to hurry up and toss some of the paintbrushes in the sink. There’s water cups filled with murky colors, and paint marks on the tables, he’s not used to a sight like this. In his apartment it is always clean and tidy, not a dirty plate in sight. “ You live by yourself?” he asked, placing his stuff on the table.

“ Yeah, my roommate moved four months ago with her boyfriend.” You give up cleaning the mess since there’s too much to clean. “ Want some-” You are interrupted when you feel Taehyung’s lips on your, your hands push his chest flustered at the sudden kiss.

“ I-I- sorry...I must have read something wrong,” he looks embarrassed immediately backing up giving you space. “ I thought you invited me to your apartment for sex.” Taehyung notices how your eyes widen, fuck he feels like an ass, scared that he made you uncomfortable. “ I should go…” he goes to pick up his bags ready to bolt out.

“ I just wanted to talk...to get to know you better,” you speak before his hands grab the doorknob. “ We can paint and talk, if that's okay with you?”

“ Are you sure? You don’t want me to leave?”

“ Stay.” You go to the sink to wash your dirty brushes.

Taehyung sits down looking at the wall, notices a canvas of a man, he has plump lips, gentle eyes, overall he is beautiful, something that seemed out of this world. Maybe it was the way it was painted that made it appear like that. “ You painted that?” Taehyung speaks shifting his gaze to you.

You look at where Taehyung was pointing at, it was the painting of your ex boyfriend, “ Yeah, that’s my ex boyfriend, Seokjin. The professor told us to paint the definition of love…,” you stare at Seokjin’s face, remembering the memories you shared. The brushes are all cleaned and you set them down, grabbing some water colors that are in the cabinet.

“ Do you still love him?” Taehyung curiously asked, watching carefully at your reaction.

There’s a slight pain of thinking about him, truly not over his death. “ Yeah I’ll always have love for him…”

Taehyung wants to ask more about him but doesn’t want to intrude, he doesn’t say anything else but paints. This is when Taehyung feels like he’s truly being himself painting, expressing himself without saying anything. Moments like these wish Taehyung would’ve chosen doing what he has a passion for insteading appealing to his mothers standards.

“ Why are you a data analysis major?” The artwork he is doing is remarkable, there’s dark undertones and eerie about it but it is beautiful something that you have to keep staring at.

He chuckles, “ Because I need to eat.” You look down feeling a little insulted he must've noticed since he immediately apologizes.

“ It’s okay. You know if you ever want to relax and paint, you can come here,” you continue painting small flowers. The first time, he smiles and nods his head.

---

5 months later

This is the third flower shop visited and he’s getting more tired with each second. “ This arrangement or this one?” You ask Taehyung, as you hold two bouquets. One was more filled with carnations and the other was filled with lilies. He gives it some thought before pointing at the carnations. “ This would be pretty to paint,” you smell it getting happy inside.

“ Finally, when can we eat...I didn't eat anything this morning,” his stomach growls at the thought of food. He’s still carrying the vases you bought at the thrift shop, you had to plead with you to not buy another antique mirror because he knows he would have to carry it to the apartment.

You gave the cashier the money, as he wraps the flowers in newspaper, turning your head you look at Taehyung, “ Why did you come with me if you were going to complain the whole time?” You laugh at his scrunched nose as you pinch it. The flowers are handed back and you thank the cashier, leaving with Taehyung.

“ Because I wanted to,” Taehyung shrugs. In your apartment he puts the flowers away as you cook him food, he always enjoys your cooking. When he was younger all he ever ate was ramen, never really ate some home cooked meals, his mother was always busy working trying to financially support the family so he never once asked his mom for dinner. Even at his own apartment he doesn’t eat Jungkook’s food since he doesn’t know how to cook either. Sometimes when he’s hungry he’ll just come to your apartment and you’ll be more than happy to cook for him.

When Taehyung enters his apartment Jungkook is watching anime, foot propped on the table and sipping some beer. “ Back from your girlfriends’ so soon?”

“ Not my girlfriend but yeah, I left my schoolwork here so I had to come back,” he sighs. Taehyung doesn’t get mad when Jungkook teases him about you being his girlfriend, but he sometimes gets annoyed. He likes the friendship between the two of you, it’s different from any other friendships he had in the past. “ Tomorrow night the apartment is mine. This guy wants to hangout with me.”

“ Just say he wants to fuck you,” Jungkook yells as Taehyung closes his bedroom door.

---

You meet Taehyung at the park with some bread, he hugs you and asks about your day. “ It was okay. Had lunch with my Dad, but it always ends up in some lecture. I swear, sometimes it feels like I’m fifteen or something,” you tear a piece of bread throwing it into the pond watching some ducks gobble it. You try to look at Taehyung but it hurts when you see some hickies on his neck. On the day you were about to confess your feelings to Taehyung you asked him if he ever loved someone, he laughed and said that he doesn’t believe in no such thing as love. As much as you wanted to disapprove of that idea, you couldn’t be the one to change it.

He grabs some bread, chucking some pieces out, “ What was the argument?”

You laugh thinking about your Dad’s red face, “ I invited him to my apartment, and he found the blunt we smoked together in the ashtray.”

“ Shit, I should’ve thrown it away,” Taehyung laughs too, pushing some of his hair back.

“ Just glad he didn’t find any of my sex toys,” you cringe just thinking about it. You feel something tugging the end of your skirt, looking down you see a toddler smiling cheekily pointing at the bread. You smile, “ Here, have fun,” you hand him the rest of your bread. You watch him wobble as he runs to his mother throwing the whole slice in the water.

“ Sex toys?” Taehyung asked once the child was out of sight. “ Like what?,” Taehyung is interested, he doesn’t know, maybe because he can’t imagine you using them. Or he wants to know how you use it. There were times when Taehyung wanted to have sex with you but he turned those urges off. He doesn’t want to give you mixed signals remembering Jungkook’s words of advice. “ Never-”

“ A dildo, vibrator, hitachi wand, or even my favorite pillow,” you trail off not thinking much until you realize who you are confessing to. “ I-I uh…”

“ How often?,” Taehyung asked quietly, not wanting any other people hearing the conversation. He shouldn’t get turned on but he is.

Something about Taehyung’s deep quiet voice is making you squeeze your thighs, “ Every night…” You're still looking at the pond, watching the ripples that are caused by the ducks swimming away. You can feel Taehyung's stare but you ignore it. The conversation switches to another topic when you talk about your school work. The sun sets and you both part ways.

The sound of tea kettle wakes you up from your concentration of you sketching, sighing you pour yourself the tea. Looking at your art, you turn it over not wanting to see Taehyung’s face right now. But fate has different plans when you hear knocking on the door, Taehyung appears, he lets himself in and is close to your face.

“ Taehyung?” You’re puzzled at his frazzled state, deeply staring into your eyes.

“ Can I kiss you?” The words are quiet but firm. Stupidly you nod, not caring about any consequences. His hands cup your face, immediately going into the kiss. The kisses get deeper, his hands travel to your hips bringing you closer to him quickly, you lose friction from the fluffy socks you're wearing causing you to slip, immediately grabbing Taehyung as you fall backwards. His hands are quick to save himself from not falling onto you. There’s a slight pain on your tailbone but is immediately forgotten when Taehyung goes back to kissing you.

The big t-shirt you are wearing is tossed, his hands immediately fondle your breast, his lips leaving kisses on your neck, groaning as he pushes his bulge against your clothed core. “ Taehyung...let me touch you,” you moan when he bites your neck. He pulls back, pecking your lips before taking off his clothes. Your hands trail against his chest, his stomach, towards his pelvic, trying to remember every part of him. He is surprised to have you touching him like he was some marvel statue, usually his past hookups just rush into the sex. It’s very intimate and he doesn’t know how to feel about it.

Taehyung groans when you touch his dick, he’s hard and wants to be inside of you already. He comes down kissing you, his hands get rid of your panties, fingers spreading your wetness. The moans you let out are turning him on even more, he stretches you out with his fingers. He likes the way your eyes flutter, the shape of your lips tremble, along with your chest inhaling and exhaling deeply. “ You are so pretty,” he doesn’t mean to say it loudly but he does. There’s a blush that blooms on your cheeks, it reminds him of the flowers you would get to study paint.

“ Taehyung,” you moan slightly flustered at his compliment. He reaches for his pants grabbing a condom. “ You don’t want to go to the bedroom?” The floor is still cold against your back, and the last time you cleaned the floor was days ago.

Taehyung shakes head, already putting on the condom not wanting to waste time, “ Too far,” he smiles when you laugh. He enters you feeling you clench tightly around, he moans digging his head into your neck. “ You are so tight,” he groans. “ Feels so fucking good, having you like this,” he confesses.

You moan loudly, his thick cock streching “ Oh fuck, Taehyung, please just fuck me,” your hands go to his waist urging him to move. He listens to your command, thrusting slowly trying to get deep as he can. Maybe if you can close your eyes you can pretend that he’s in love with you. He goes faster and cries at the pace he’s going, the pleasure is overwhelming, something that you can’t get with your own hands. “ I’m close already,” your hand goes to tug at his wavy hair.

“ Me too,” his voice is deeper. His hand travels down to your pussy searching for your clit and rubbing it. “ Come for me,” he says into your ear. You moan his name loudly, cumming around his cock, scratching his back. The sight of you creaming around him makes him immediately come, he searches for your lips, moaning your name in the kiss. The two of you lay in the afterglow of the sex, panting loudly his body is barely being hold up, and you laying on the hard floor.

Taehyung gets up throwing his condom away, he looks at you still laying on the floor with your eyes close, the realization of him having sex with you just popped up. He hurriedly gets dressed, then helps you get dressed, he gets shocked when you kiss him as a thank you. The next morning Taehyung wakes up early, making sure to leave quietly, not wanting to disrupt your sleep.

---

You weren’t going to lie, it kind of hurt not waking up beside Taehyung but you shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up. Namjoon invites you to a kick back, only inviting a few people to his house to chill and drink. You take solace on the couch, watching people get high and drunk, you weren’t in the mood to do either so you make conversation with a slightly high Hoseok. He’s in mid-discussion about Shrek being a cinematic masterpiece, when Jungkook yells from the door entrance that he has Taco Bell. Taehyung is beside him wearing all black beanie, crewneck, and sweatpants, but still looks better than half of the people here.

You turn your gaze back to Hoseok who’s left walking towards Jungkook immediately grabbing a taco. Sighing you decide to get fresh air, staring at the tall dark buildings. “ Whatcha you doing here by yourself? It’s fucking freezing,” Taehyung speaks out closing the slider door standing by you. He takes off his vape pen inhaling it.

“ Wanted fresh air,” you shrug, still staring at the buildings. “ Hoseok left me for tacos. He was onto something, saying that Shrek is a masterpiece. Who knows maybe he’ll write his thesis about it.” Taehyung chuckles, he keeps looking at you and you finally stare at him. “ Why’d you kiss me yesterday?”

He blows out the smoke, and puts his pen away, “ Cuz I wanted to,” he shrugs not thinking much about it.

“ Nothing else?” You arch your eyebrow.

He continues to stare into your eyes “ Nope,” he shakes his head.

Some part of you wanted him to say that he had feelings for you but in the back of your mind you knew that wasn’t going to happen. You smile pushing his chest, “ Well that’s the last time we are ever going to do anything like that.” The both of you know that is a lie.

---

For the next couple of months you and Taehyung continue sleeping with each other.

When you are studying with Namjoon in the library, Jungkook and Taehyung spontaneously show up, causing Namjoon to groan. “ You know you love me,” Jungkook jokingly says sitting next to him.

Taehyung sits down next to you, looking at your classwork, “ How long have you been studying,” he whispers.

You turn to look at the time of your phone, “ Like four hours,” you sigh. He hands you a jolly rancher, you immediately put in your mouth. “ Why are you here? You texted me that you were going to take a fat ass nap?”

“ I wanted to see you, kind of missed you,” he lays his head against the table. His eyes close when you brush his soft hair.

“ I’ll be done in forty minutes.” He lets off a quiet okay continuing to look at you doing your work.

Taehyung wakes up to you caressing his cheek, his neck is in pain from the awkward position he slept in. “ Where did Jungkook and Namjoon go?,” he looks at the empty seats. He tries to crack his neck and watches you pack your stuff.

“ They left about twenty minutes ago,” you get up stretching your legs. “ Let’s head home. We still have left over pizza,” you groan at the pain on your lower back.

For some odd reason Taehyung liked hearing you say home, there’s some comfort it gives him but he never says it out loud. Taehyung grabs your backpack, holding it for you as you walk towards your car. You look in the fridge for the pizza, but Taehyung has other plans when he closes the fridge door, pinning you against it kissing you feverishly, his tongue already begging for entrance. Laughing you push him away, “ What’s gotten into you?”

“ I told you...I miss you,” his hands are on your waist. He kisses you again, picking you up easily and placing you on the kitchen table. He takes off your pants and panties, and you reach for his pants but he stops you forcing you to lie completely on the table. “ Look at you, laying so pretty on the table,” he bends down kissing you on your lips before he goes down on you.

He licks your cunt, gently prodding his tongue up and down. Your hips move frantically wanting to feel more of him. His rough hands pin your hips, and he continues with his teasing, lightly kissing your clit before touring you with his slow pace. “ Look at your pussy, it looks like the roses you painted yesterday…,” his finger goes up and down your folds.

The words make your cheeks grow hot, “ No it doesn’t,” you get shy shaking your head. The embarrassment fills your body, for maybe shamelessly liking his compliment. You are probably never going to look at roses the same way ever again.

“ Yeah, it does Y/N, but your pussy is more pretty,” he continues to tease you. Wanting to see you get more flustered, he likes it when you do it gets him more turned on. “ I wonder if it smells like roses too,” he’s about to smell your pussy but you hold his head. He watches you cutely shake your head.

Taehyung is filthy but it makes you get even more aroused. “ It won’t,” you whisper, wanting to cry but he shakes his kissing the inside of your thigh to try to comfort you.

He smells your pussy and he groans, your heart thumps faster and nervous for what's about to say, “ It smells better,” he kisses your clit. His tongue keeps tracing your folds gently wanting to make you beg for more. The movement of his tongue makes you want to pull your own hair out. The pleasure is barely there but it grows within each second of his tongue flicking up and down.

“ Taehyung,” you let out desperate whine, “ please, I need more.” One of his hands slap your cunt, and your back arches surprise but even more turned on. You never knew that you were into that. The sting hurts at first but shoots up ecstasy after a nanosecond, you can’t help but seek more. “ More!”

Taehyung lets out a dark chuckle, he gives you another slap, slightly harder on the center of your clit, the stinging making your face scrunch up but letting out a lewd moan. He groans at your wetness seeping out some of it landing on the table.

Suddenly, he is done with all the teasing, and dives in, nose touching your clit and tongue inside your entrance going in and out. Finding it extremely hot that you are riding his face, like the pillow on your bed. Taehyung vividly remembers when you showed him how you ride your pillow last week. The way you desperately let out cute whines trying so hard to relieve yourself as Taehyung only watched, wanting to see you get off without his help.

He moves his face side to side so his nose can rub your clit. Head in the clouds, your body is floating with ecstasy wanting to stay in it forever. Your hands reach down trying to anchor yourself, Taehyung reaches for your hand holding it tight. You cry out his name loudly, coming intensely, your eyes are shut when it doesn’t seem to stop. Your body finally calms down, looking down you see Taehyung’s face is completely wet. “ Oh my god, did I-

“ Fuck, that was hot,” Taehyung wipes his face with the back his arm. He kisses your lips, he helps you from the table, handing you your panties.

“ Let me repay you?,” you tug at his belt loop, you look down to see the bulge is gone and there’s a wet stain. Your eyes widen, “ Did you come?”

“ Yeah, you squirting on me, made me bust a nut. I swore I never came that hard either,” he sighs happily. Laughing you go towards the fridge, finally eating the cold pizza. You hand him one and he eats it in two bites. “ My mom called me today…”

Taehyung hardly talks about his family, you only know that he was raised only by his mother. He never talked bad about her but you can tell that they didn’t have a close relationship. “ What happened?” You and Taehyung move so you're sitting on the couch.

“ She told me that my father wanted to meet up with me,” Taehyung rolls his eyes. “ Told her that I don’t want to. She started crying and telling me that he’s my father...I sometimes think she’s still in love with him. She’s an idiot.” He lays his back staring at the ceiling.

“ Sometimes it’s hard to get over someone that you once loved. The one you shared your laughs, arguments, touches, memories...vanish into thin air... or you could hold onto it. Love isn’t easy...it’s messy, it’s confusing but it’s beautiful being able to share it with someone. Don’t you think?” You look at Taehyung’s side profile.

Taehyung turns his head looking at you, “ I don’t know...I will never fall in love. I don’t want to end up like my parents,” he closes his eyes.

“ Taehyung-“

He opens his eyes smiling, grabbing your hands, “ Let’s head to bed,” already over the conversation.

---

Jungkook is cooking breakfast and almost burns his hand when a random girl walks out of Taehyung’s room. Immediately she exits their apartment, doing the walk of shame. Taehyung walks out shirtless with hickies on his chest and dishevelled hair. Jungkook clears his throat, “ Thought you were seeing Y/N,” he turns off the stove.

Taehyung grabs a glass of water, “ We are just friends,” he takes several gulps.

Jungkook scoffs rolling his eyes at his friend’s stupidity, “ Yeah, friends who have sex, hold hands, and almost spend every night together. My bad I forgot they changed the definition of ‘friends’ in the Webster dictionary.”

“ Whatever man...I'm out of here,” Taehyung leaves the kitchen going to his room. He looks at himself in the mirror, disgusted at his appearance, at the splotchy marks on his neck. Why am I like this? Taehyung leaves his apartment ignoring Jungkook, entering your apartment with his set of keys. He looks at you cooking pancakes, you look at him quickly and smiling.

“ Hey...you want some? It’s your favorite banana pancakes,” you flip the pancake. He looks at the big stack of pancakes you have on the table, you continue with the last couple of pancakes and sit down taking a couple of bites. You are consumed by the taste, not really focusing on Taehyung until he clears his throat, looking at him you notice marks on his neck. Your heart plummets, you thought the whole time the two of you have been messing around he wasn’t seeing anyone else. “ You hooked up with someone else yesterday?,” you set your utensils down.

Taehyung nods trying to look nonchalant, “ Yeah, is that a problem?”

“ No,” you try to lie to yourself but it’s no use, your face looks the opposite of how you feel, disheartening, you can’t save face even if your life's on the line. Swallowing hard you shake your head, “ Actually, yes. It is a problem,” you sigh. “ I don’t understand you. You treat me like a lover, but then you do things like this…” you get up from the kitchen table tossing the plates in the sink, not caring that you didn’t finish the meal, “ I open my heart with you but you don’t do the same. I feel used in this relationship or whatever the hell this is,” your hands clenched tightly as you turn around and face Taehyung.

He’s now by the kitchen counter standing up, “ I told you I’m not looking for love. I’m sorry if I gave you mixed feelings but I don’t want this to end whatever we have with each other. I like how things are-”

You scoff, rolling your eyes at his words, “ Well I don’t...if you want to fuck around then do it... I’m not going to care for you like I love you anymore.” The angry tears stream down your face, your hands wipe them before he could, “ Go Taehyung. I wish you the best,” his face is etched with subtle pain, turning away from him you wash the dishes not bothering to look at the sound of him leaving.

---

Three days later

Taehyung hasn’t been sleeping well, tossing and turning, giving up completely and decides to study all night long. This has been a daily occurrence since the fight with you. I’m not going to care for you like I love you anymore. Taehyung groans, wanting to get the image of you out of his brain. Jungkook knocks on his door, eyes widening at the sight of him, “ You look like shit, c’mon Namjoon is having another get together.”

When Taehyung shows up to the party he watches you have a conversation with Hoseok, from a far distant, unsure how you would react if you saw him. Taehyung waits till Hoseok leaves, walking towards you as you are on your phone texting someone. He watches you jolt as he calls your name. “ Hey,” you greet him but there’s no smile or warmth like you usually greet. And he hates it, it makes him feel like a stranger.

“ About the last time, I’m sorry that we got into an argument,” Taehyung apologizes, he tucks his hands in his pockets, a nervous tick he developed when he was elementary.

“ Ok,” you nod your head, not wanting to discuss something so private in a social setting. “ I should get going, I got a research paper to go over,” you give him one last glance and leave, not saying goodbye to anyone else.

Taehyung doesn’t like the way your back faces him, leaving him all alone with a place full of people. He pushes against people not wanting to let you go so easily, he wants to talk to you, he wants to hear you talk. He wants to lay in your bed and listen to your heart beat while you stroke his hair, letting him fall asleep in your arms. You're opening your car door, and you halt when he calls your name, you wait patiently for what he’s going to say. Please stay. “ I-I uh...I wish you the best, Y/N” Taehyung says. He watches you give him one last small smile and drive away.

---

Six months later

Taehyung hates visiting his mother, there’s always something unsettling when he enters his childhood home. As soon as greets his mother she comments about his weight, his slightly long wavy hair, and baggy clothes. She doesn’t ask him college, she never does. Instead he listens to her talk about her work. “ I told your father that you're in town,” she says over the sound of the faucet. Taehyung nods, handing her the dirty dishes, “ I told him you are free tomorrow, you are going to visit him at IHOP,” she leaves no room for argument.

The sun wakes up Taehyung before his alarm does, he doesn’t really put in effort to look nice but when his mother gives him a look, he changes into something more appropriate. Maybe if Taehyung was in middle school he would be nervous meeting his father but now that he’s an adult he couldn’t care less. It takes him a while to find his father, he looks older from his adolescent years, has a few gray hairs and slightly wrinkled skin. His father stands up, and Taehyung immediately holds his hand out giving him a handshake not wanting to receive an awkward hug. His father looks surprised but compiles, awkwardly laughing and sits down taking a gulp of his hot black coffee. “ I ordered your favorite,” his father points to the triple drizzle chocolate milkshake with a red cherry on top that is set in front of Taehyung. “ How are you kiddo? You look so grown up, your mother has been feeding you well, huh?”

“ Yup.” Taehyung looks at the red cherry.

There’s too much uncomfortable tension, and his father is letting more awkward coughs to try to fill the silence. “ Almost done with college, yeah? Just three more months, and you gotta face the real world,” his father comments.

Taehyung has been facing the real world since he was a teenager, he worked when he was in highschool to pay for college, he cooked his own dinner because his mother always came home late, he didn’t need to graduate college to find out the world was shitty. “ Yeah.”

His father tries really hard to have some sort of conversation with his son.“ You still like to paint?”

Taehyung smiles, getting reminded of you. He wonders what you are doing right now, if you are painting the canvas he bought you when you guys were friends. “ No. I mean yeah, sorta. I painted with this girl, she made me fall back in love with painting but I did something horrible to her. Now I can’t paint without thinking about her,” he sighs.

There’s surprise etched on his father’s face, since more than a word came out of his son’s mouth. “ Seems like a very important person to you. You should talk things out with her, don’t want to lose someone like that.”

Taehyung rolls his eyes, “ Why? You did the same thing to us.”

“ Taehyung-”

“ You really fucked me up father, I hate that you and mom made me this way. I want to love her but I’m scared...what if she ends up leaving me like you did. I rather be alone for the rest of my life than to have someone steal a part of me,” Taehyung grits his teeth.

“ I-I I’m sorry Taehyung...I really am. I hate myself everyday for not visiting you, I should’ve been there for you...Your mother and I once loved each other but sometimes people fall out of love, but that doesn’t mean love is evil. Don’t give up on love because of our failed marriage, son, you deserve to be in love.”

---

One week later

“ Fuck, watch where you going asshole,” you yell at the asshole who wasn’t paying attention that made you drop all of your art supplies. He doesn’t even bother apologizing, just continues to walk with his friends. You pick up your pencils, someone helps you pick up your other materials. “ Thank-” you stop midway when your eyes are met with Taehyung. He hands you the sketchpads, you quickly put it in your bag, “ Thanks.”

“ No problem. You just got out of class?,” he asked intently looking at you.

His hair is pushed back by his headband, showing his forehead, he’s wearing his usual baggy grandpa clothes. It makes your heart flutter, but you quickly push the feeling away. “ Yeah, but I have to go back to pick up my two pieces,” you shrug.

“ You need a hand?” He offers with a careful smile.

You contemplate, you don’t want to make two trips, “ If you’re not busy…”

He eagerly shakes his head. “ I’m not, let me help.” Taehyung follows you to the art room, and picks up the pieces easily despite it being large canvases. There’s silence when you are done putting it in your car.

“ Thank you,” you give him a grateful smile. “ Do you need to ride home?”

Taehyung took his car to campus but he lies, he accepts your offer in hopes that you guys can talk things over. The radio is on low, and Taehyung is almost near his apartment, “ I lied I don’t need a ride,” he starts off and you let out a surprise laugh.

“ Why are you just telling me now?,” you are about two minutes from the destination.

“ I wanted to talk to you about what happened to us-”

You sigh, not wanting to reopen bandage wounds on your heart, “ Taehyung, I’m over it-”

His head turns to face you, “ I love you. I think I always loved you since we became friends. I was scared to tell you because it was something so new for me...I was selfish, I thought that everything we had was fine but I never took your feelings into consideration.” He’s breathing really hard because he finally confessed his heart out, something he vowed he’ll never do since he was a child.

“ Why? Why now?,” you swallow hard, not looking at him but only the road. Scared that if you look into his eyes, you’ll get lost into them.

“ It took me a while to come in terms with how I am feeling. Because love is messy right?,” his voice cracks.

The car is now parked in his driveway, “ Yeah, it is.” Turning to finally face him, he has little tears in his eyes that haven’t fallen. “ I still love you, Taehyung,” your hand touches his soft cheek, caressing it. Taehyung leans closer to you and you close your eyes expecting a kiss, instead he sobs against your neck. Feeling wet tears against your neck, you try to coddle him but the tight space in the car is not giving you any room to do so. “ Tae, why are you crying?,” you comb the back of his curls.

Taehyung pulls away giving you a tearful smile, “ Because for the first time in my life I know what love is.”

end.

335 notes · View notes

therenlover · 4 years ago

Text

The Boy With The Easel (A Young Artist!Helmut Zemo x Reader Oneshot)

(Hey! If you end up enjoying this fic, it’s the first chronological part of a new fun expanded AU I’ve created with @creme-bruhlee! Their fic Bliss is part of the same timeline and takes place about a year after this one, so you should check it out!!!)

Synopsis: About a month into your first semester at Novi Grad’s top university, you finally meet the strange young man that you’ve taken to calling “easel boy” in the back of a bookshop. From a distance, he always seemed cold and aloof. As you get to know him, though, you realize things aren’t always what they seem.

Tags: Meet Cute, College AU, First Meetings, Coffee Date, Artist!Zemo, Embarrassment, Awkward College Kids Falling In Love

Rating: T

Warnings: Very Vague Mention of Sexual Content, Swearing, Zemo Says The Word Daddy In Reference To His Father and The Reader Thinks It’s Kinda Hot

Word Count: 7000~

This fic has been crossposted to my AO3!

------

The University of Novi Grad

Fall 1996

Mornings in Novi Grad could be beautiful if you knew what to look for.

Sokovia was… different from America in many ways. From the language to the scenery, you often found yourself adrift in the strangeness of it all. There had been nothing quite as old as the buildings in the historical district of Novi Grad back home, no towering grey behemoths serving as a reminder of a bygone fight against Soviet invasion in the memories of your childhood. Still, though, there was beauty in the strangeness nonetheless.

From your tiny room in the Helena Lyudmila International Scholar’s dorm, for instance, you had a perfect view of a large campus courtyard hosting a statue of the donor by the same name. She was some royal who had invested in education a few hundred years ago, and by the looks of her metal likeness, she had been quite pretty. The sight of her shining in the early morning sun was one of the things that made uprooting your whole life seem worth it in the end, no matter how silly that seemed.

There were other small comforts that you had found beauty in during your first month attending your prestigious university, too.

You found beauty in the way the sunlight streamed over the rooftops like the opening to an Oscar-winning film. In the sound of traffic below and the overcast skies above. Sandwiches from corner stores, wildflowers growing in the median of the road, cups of the worlds best black coffee served steaming by scowling attendants at the cafe; Everywhere there was something small and kind and just familiar enough to relish in, more than able to distract you from the stress of living hand-to-mouth in a country where you didn’t even know the language. It made it all worth it.

That being said there was something else too…

Someone else to be specific.

The campus tended to run like clockwork. The same groups of students would walk past your window to their classes, the same professors would get their coffee and lunch at the little cafe across the square, and every weekday morning at 8 am on the dot, easel boy would set up his palette and canvas and paint the same bustling street.

He was talented, that you couldn’t deny. Even from the 6th floor, which was a considerable distance away, it was possible to admire the detailing and consistency with which he painted. His talent wasn’t when kept you captive at your window in the morning, though. Though you were sure his art was beautiful, he himself was a thousand times more stunning.

All dark eyes and dark hair and dark clothes, he parted crowds with his piercing gaze alone. He was always dressed like the protagonist of some awful artsy film. Massive argyle sweaters, untucked button-ups, corduroy jackets, and flare bottomed pants that must have survived his father’s wardrobe from the ’70s… his style was as close you could get to atrocious while still being impeccable as possible, and that wasn’t even getting started on the smudged black liner always present under his persistent gaze. You had never had the pleasure (or embarrassment for that matter) of meeting him in person, but you were sure that you would have had the same awed and slightly frightened reaction if you ever did. He could have been plucked entirely from the pages of some awful romance novel.

You were well and truly smitten with the idea of him.

If you looked at your morning routine through the eyes of a stranger, you’d consider yourself odd for your strange obsession with him, but you didn’t look at it like that. It wasn’t an obsession. You never overstepped your bounds. He was simply pleasing to look at and so you did. That didn’t constitute as obsessive, right?

Even if it did, you weren’t causing any harm.

Easel boy, as you had come to refer to him, was simply a tool you used to ground yourself in your new and frightening environment. Nothing more. If you ever met him, you would surely hate him from the short interactions you’d seen him have with strangers. They never ended well. He would remain an unattainable, attractive ideal in your mind until he eventually faded away into a funny memory you’d share with your kids one day.

Until then, though, you would watch him from your window before your morning classes and refused to feel guilty about it. So, that was that, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

On the morning in question, you had woken up a little late and in a foul mood. In preparation for a test in your foundations of algebra course you had spent the better part of the night pouring over formulas while your upstairs neighbor’s bed slammed repeatedly into the wall and floor. Though you were sure they were having an excellent time, you were most definitely not. It all culminated in you missing your original alarms and despite the fact that your first class started at 10, you were exhausted, furious, and not looking forward to missing breakfast to finish the assigned reading you had put off the night before. The only thing keeping you from throwing in the towel and just giving up was the promise of seeing the painter.

So, when he arrived for the day at 8 am sharp, you were positioned at the ledge by your window, textbook in hand with a mug of instant coffee at your right. It was like a breath of fresh air.

As usual, he retrieved a small pack of cigarettes from the back of his eternally paint-stained jeans only to bring one to his lips and light it quickly. He always smoked before he worked, and just like always, he took an extra cigarette from the pack to tuck behind his ear for later. Then, he got to work setting up his easel and the small stool where he set his palette.

Pulling tubes of acrylic, brushes, and pencils from his well-worn messenger bag, easel boy flipped out the kickstand without any problem and set his thick, pre-primed canvas on the worn metal. You watched in fascination. Art had always seemed so unattainable to you. Instead, you were drawn to the more academic. The man before you, though, created beauty with an ease that had evaded you all your life, and it had you both jealous and entirely intrigued. Slowly, you reached down to take a sip of your coffee as you let your eyes drift back to your reading.

Learning about ancient Babylon was far less interesting than watching him, though.

When you next looked out the window and away from your work the handsome artist had created his base sketch already. How did he do it so fast? You assumed it was practice. He had been drawing the same 3 buildings every weekday morning for at least a month, so after a while, it must have been second nature to measure out the lines and put things into perspective. You smiled. He tended to have that effect on you.

The process was repeated until a little before 9:30. You would read a few paragraphs then look up to watch the painting progress from a sketch to a full-fledged work of art. It was good today from what you could see. The colors were a bit more muted than usual, but that was only on account of the awful, dreary overcast sky that threatened to dump rain on the city at any time. Overall, you would have considered it a masterpiece. Easel boy didn’t seem to think the same.

He regarded the painting with a sort of begrudging satisfaction that bordered on disappointment before he pulled the second cigarette from behind his ear, lit it, and began the process of packing up his materials. You finished the last of your coffee watching him do so. Smoking, well, smoking tobacco at least, had always been a vice you had avoided and yet you often wondered what it would feel like to take a drag of one of his cigarettes after it had been between his lips. Then, the magic lifted.

He folded up the flimsy easel, tucked it away with his materials back into his messenger bag, hoisted the stool under one arm and the painting under the other before taking off at a brisk clip down the street away from your window. You watched him until he was out of sight.

You were snapped from your concentration by a knock at your door.

“Y/N,” a heavily accented voice called, sending you scrambling for your bag, “If you are not outside in the next 15 seconds I will break down your door,”

Shit.

“Coming, Sasha!” You wailed. It took about 10 of those seconds to grab your backpack and shove your textbook inside, an extra 2 to check your appearance in the mirror- you looked slightly disheveled, but it was the best you were gonna do after the night you’d had. Besides, it wasn’t like you were doing anything important. You didn’t need to be dressed for a date -and you were opening the door for a quick save at the 14th second. Your door was safe for another day.

Out in the hall waited Sasha Balandin, arms crossed and grey eyes piercing in the flickering light of the terrible overhead fluorescents. As a fellow international student, you had become fast friends with Sasha. He was a little rough around the edges, and definitely didn’t take your bullshit, but he was a rare friend. “I have been waiting for 10 minutes,” he griped. You tried your best to look apologetic. “Don’t do that,”

“Do what?” You asked, closing and locking your door behind you as you began walking down the hallway.

Sasha huffed. “Do not pretend you were not too busy ogling that painter in the courtyard to hear me knocking on your door,” His Russian bluntness was on full display now as you shook your head in mock disbelief.

“I can’t believe you’d accuse me of something like that!”

“It is not an accusation if it is true,”

“There’s no way you know for a fact that I was watching him again,”

“But you were. This happens every week,”

You sighed, pausing at the top of the stairs. “I was,”

Taking the stairs in twos, Sasha sighed. “You are too soft, Y/N. Besides, you have said so often that he seems like an asshole. Why do you continue to get all mushy at him out the window if this is the case?”

“Because… well, because…” for a moment, you floundered in search of an answer that wouldn’t make you sound like a complete freak, but you found that there really wasn’t one. It came down the one small factor. “He’s just really hot, okay?”

The look Sasha gave you could have killed. He kept his mouth shut, though, choosing to let his silence shame you more than anything else did. It worked. For the entire trip down the stairs and the mile-long walk to your lecture hall, you felt the weight of shame heavy on your shoulders. Or maybe it was just your backpack. You didn’t know which you’d prefer. He did start speaking again eventually, going on about some party you had missed in favor of studying, but the feeling never left. Even as you sat down for your lecture it was still at the forefront of your mind. In fact, you were so busy thinking about your crush on easel boy and the problems with it that you barely paid attention to the professor’s rehashing of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Your error only hit when the professor flipped the PowerPoint to the final slide.

“Before you go, I want to remind you that you have a paper on the importance of Enkidu in the Epic is due at the beginning of class this Friday. The details and requirements should be listed in your syllabus. Class dismissed,”

Fuck.

Friday was only two days away.

You were so screwed.

The problem was, you didn’t have a spare copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh just lying around your dorm room. Usually that wouldn’t have been an issue, the professor for your current history course used English for her slide because her particular history course was specifically for first-year international students. Unfortunately for you, though, you hadn’t been taking notes. Instead, you had been daydreaming about how it would feel to have easel boy blow his cigarette smoke in your face and then subsequently scolding yourself for having thoughts like that about a total stranger. In a terrible twist of fate, the professor only held office hours after her last classes on Mondays and Fridays, so even getting the information from her then was off the table. Dread began to pool in your stomach.

Any other student would have been able to cut their losses, rent a copy from the library, slog through it in a night, and write the damn essay even without the help of the classroom slides for context. The only problem was all the books in the library were in Sokovian, and you still barely knew how to order a coffee correctly. Reading the language in a full Cyrillic alphabet would just be impossible, especially for a book as stupidly old as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In short, unless you could get your hands on a copy in the next day or so, you were absolutely, well-and-truly fucked.

Sasha was quick to find you as the hall cleared out, waiting near your seat as you packed away your notes. “That was all bullshit, no?” He asked, but the second he took in your slightly panicked expression he stopped short, pinching the bridge of his nose and breathing deeply. You knew what he was going to say before he ever said it.

“Something is wrong. You were not paying attention. Were you thinking-”

“Yes. Okay? Yes, I was thinking about him,”

He shook his head slightly. “I am concerned for you,”

“Who isn’t?”

Despite his usually stoic demeanor, that made Sasha huff out a soft laugh. “You got yourself into this mess, Y/N, you will get yourself out somehow,”

Your jaw dropped as you slung your bag over your shoulder and started making your way towards the door. “You’re not gonna help me?”

“Though I would love to be helpful, you forget that my English is poor. It will do me better to read the book in Sokovian myself than to use the information from class,”

Oh, yeah. You winced. “Sorry, Sash’”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he shrugged as you walked out onto the lawn, chilled to the bone by the wind that whipped in every direction.

A storm was brewing. It might not fully take hold of the city for a few hours yet, but it would make the walk to your evening class absolute hell if the rain fell as hard as it had several weeks prior. You could only hope that it wouldn’t start until after you had walked home. Your odds were looking slim, though, based on the way you could already hear thunder clapping in the distance. After a moment you hit the edge of the sidewalk where your paths would diverge.

“Good luck with the paper,” you offered weakly.

Sasha replied with a sharp, “Good luck with your crush,” and then he was off in the opposite direction without another word. Sasha was blunt like that, never overstaying his welcome or lingering when he didn’t need to. There was something enviable about it. What you wouldn’t give to be able to simply say things as they were without an unnecessary sugar coating to save face and spare feelings. It lingered on your mind for the whole half-mile walk to the campus bookstore. Speaking of which...

There was only one place where you might possibly find an English copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It wasn’t the big student bookstore, most of the textbooks there had been in Sokovian, Russian, or German and you hadn’t even tried to set foot in their actual book section. No, your only hope was the tiny hole-in-the-wall bookstore you had stumbled upon during move-in. It was only about half a mile away from your dorm from any of your lecture halls, so you often found yourself wandering inside when you had time to kill. They were one of the only stores you’d come across that sold anything in English, magazines included, so despite the fact that the young cashiers rarely spoke your language you often found that the back shelves of that tiny shop kept you from going mad.

Now, they might also be keeping you from ruining your GPA.

You could only hope. If anybody could save you, it was them.

Ducking in through the small doorway, you were greeted by the soft ring of the bell above your head. The attendant at the register simply regarded you with a polite nod. You had seen her there before and she knew you barely spoke a lick of Sokovian, so she didn’t attempt a pleasantry. Instead, she simply let you wander through the entrance and into the towering bookshelves, passing a few other faceless shoppers on your way towards the back. You were grateful for her nonchalance.

If there was anything worse than feeling foolish for not knowing Sokovian, it was being talked down to in perfect English by a Sokovian citizen. Most interactions left you wishing you’d actually taken anything away from your high school French class other than emotional trauma from your teacher and a caffeine addiction. Damn America and its terrible public-school language programs…

The path to the English classics section was one you’d walked many times since discovering the book store. It was right in the very back corner of the shop, tucked away where the city natives wouldn’t have to address or see it. You had snagged a copy of Pride and Prejudice a few weeks back, so you knew exactly where to search. The only problem was slogging through every single book on the shelf in search of the one you were looking for.

Your eyes scanned the wall.

Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh…

Gilgamesh!

On the 6th shelf up sat one small copy. Score! You were saved! As you reached up to grab it, though, you were met with yet another roadblock. The shelf it was on was juuuust a little too high for you to reach. Oh, come on…

You hopped a little, extending your hand up as far as it could go, but your fingers just barely brushed the spine. Somewhere behind you, you could hear footsteps. Then someone coughed to suppress laughter. The shame was plain on your face. As your flannel rode up and you stretched up in one last desperate attempt to grab the book when suddenly someone, you assumed the same person who had been laughing at your misfortune, spoke.

“They have stools, you know,” he said, accented voice thick with amusement. The English surprised you, but you assumed they used it for your benefit. You were in front of the English language books after all. Besides, the shame of it all kept your mind from questioning it too much. “For reaching the top shelf,”

Of course they had stools.

If your face hadn’t already been burning with embarrassment it definitely was now.

In a split-second decision, you decided playing dumb was the only way you could walk out of the situation with any dignity left at all, so you plastered on a confused smile and spun around to greet the stranger. “Really? I had no cl-”

You stopped short.

Oh.

Oh no.

You’d know those paint-stained jeans anywhere.

There, with his hands in his pockets and the most self-important, thin-lipped smirk you had ever seen, was easel boy in all of his cocky, intimidating, hot glory. Had you really noticed how hot he truly was before? It didn’t feel like it. Not now that you’d really seen him close up and reveled in the way his dark eyes hypnotized you with their smudged liner that felt borderline obscene. You could smell him too, all charcoal and turpentine and cigarette smoke. If you had it bad before when he was just a blurry ideal out your window, you were completely and utterly smitten now.

He regarded you with a sort of practiced annoyance, and yet there was a strange softness to it that you hadn’t found in many native Sokovians, especially ones that saw you as the stupid, bumbling American wandering blindly around their country.

“Would you like my help?”

“Huh?” You were so lost in his eyes that you couldn’t even focus on his question.

“To reach your book. Would you like my help?”

“Oh!” With a brisk nod, you stepped away from the shelf to make room for easel boy, “yeah, I’m just trying to grab that one there. The, uh, Epic of Gilgamesh,”

In one swift movement, he was stepping right beside you to easily reach up and grab the offending piece of literature. The closeness of it all nearly sent you into a tailspin. That wasn’t even mentioning the way your heart thudded just a little faster when he finally handed the book to you, his calloused fingers brushing against your own. You barely find a grip on your brain strong enough to thank him through the fog of embarrassment and attraction. Eventually, though, you managed to choke out a placation as your eyes explored the cover of the book.

“Thanks for that,”

“It was no problem,” he shrugged. He didn’t move though, still standing just inches away from you. When you looked up from the book you found his eyes were still on you, watching intently as if he expected something from you. The answer to what he actually expected was a mystery but you could tell he wanted something. When you didn’t speak, he spoke for you. “So, The Epic of Gilgamesh? That’s definitely a bold choice,”

You looked up at him sheepishly through heavily lidded eyes. “It’s not a choice at all, actually. I’m only buying it so I can write an essay,”

“Ah,” Something about his tone was almost disappointed as the conversation stalled.

You quickly changed the subject to the first thing you could think of.

“Your hair is really nice!”

“My hair?”

“Yeah… your hair,”

Smooth move, dumbass.

Easel boy’s expression seemed to soften once more as his signature grin crept back onto his face. “Thank you, I grew it myself,” Between his accent and the way he was looking at you like he was going to eat you alive, you weren’t exactly sure how you hadn’t had a heart attack yet. Still, the attention was nice, even if it was bourne out of you repeatedly embarrassing yourself in a never-ending cycle of fuckups. He ran a hand through his loose brown hair. “I like your shirt. Very American,”

Silently, you cursed yourself for not taking a few extra seconds to pick out a better outfit when you woke up. Standing next to him, even while he was dressed in his paint-stained jeans and undone button-up, you looked like a wreck in comparison. He didn’t seem to be speaking from a place of judgment, though.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was being nice, but that couldn’t be the case… could it?

“Maybe it’s just that I haven’t met very many Sokovians that are fond of America, but I’m not sure if that was meant to be a compliment or an insult,” You joked. It was a bit sarcastic, the lilt of your voice masking your deep insecurity, and to your surprise easel boy laughed. He really laughed. From your place beside him, you could almost feel the warmth radiating off of him as he shook his head.

“It was definitely a compliment,”

Oh.

Your heart skipped a beat.

That was a new revelation.

You steeled yourself with a deep breath. Fuck it. It was now or never.

“I, uh… I’m Y/N, and you are?”

He regarded you once again with that strange expression of expectation. “What?”

“I asked for your name,” you repeated, and yet he still stood, slightly dumbfounded, staring down at you with that same expectant expression from earlier. For a moment, you almost thought he expected you to know it already. That fact was quickly glossed over when he moved to rub the back of his neck with his hand, eyes drifting down to the floor.

“Sorry,” he chuckled, “I’m not very good with people. My father thought college might help me finally connect with my peers, but I don’t think he expected that I was the problem, nor do I think he expected me to pick a degree in the arts,” Suddenly, he paused and stuck out his hand to you. “I’m Hel. It’s very nice to meet you Y/N,”

With only a moment of hesitation- because wow, your name had never sounded more right on someone’s lips -you took his large calloused hand in your own and shook it gently. His palm was warm, his fingers lingering on your own for just a moment even as he pulled away. It wasn’t much, just a soft brush against your flesh, but it sent a flash of heat and liquid confidence through your chest.

“Is that short for something?” Your eyes met his in the soft yellow glow of the overhead lamps. Seeing him like this, so up close and personal, he looked a lot more human than he had from your window. Sure, he was imposing. Underneath the initial harsh facade, though, was something softer and almost poetic. You weren’t an artist by any means but if you had been, you had no doubt that he’d be your muse.

“It’s short for Helmut, but only my father calls me that, and only when he’s cross, which, unfortunately, is most of the time,” he chuckled, “Besides, it’s an old man’s name. It doesn’t suit me,”

The words left your mouth before you knew what you were saying.

“Well, it’s better than calling you easel boy,”

Shit.

Today really just wasn’t your day, huh?

In the split second where you were mourning your chances with the most stupidly handsome guy who had ever shown any interest in you, you almost missed the way Helmut’s eyes lit up at the admission.

“Easel boy?” His voice was teasing, but not demeaning. That didn’t do much to ease your mortification, though.

“Is there any chance that I can get you to forget I said anything?”

“If you already have a nickname for me when we’ve barely met, I think you already know the answer to that question,”

His knowing smirk was enough to get you pleading. “You can’t just let me off the hook this once?” you begged, scrubbing a hand across your forehead in a desperate attempt to get away from his piercing gaze. The things those brown eyes did to you could be classified as obscene… “I will genuinely do anything if you don’t make me explain myself right now Hel,”

Hel quirked up an eyebrow. “Anything?” The way your stomach turned at just one word from him was both terrifying and extremely exciting. It felt like a promise. Without hesitation, you nodded. That made him smile. “In that case, get coffee with me today?”

Once again, you were rendered speechless.

“My treat,” he added, “unless you’re not interested…”

“No!” Your answer left your lips embarrassingly fast, “Or- yes? No, no, I think I meant no. No; I am very interested. Yes; I would like to get coffee with you,” There was a hint of shame in your words, but only a hint. After the day you’d had already, there wasn’t very much there to be ashamed of. Still, that same pit of dread began to open up in your stomach as you mulled over your choices.

Thankfully, Helmut continued to take it all in stride. “Wonderful! Is there anything else you’d like to do here before we go? It’s best we leave soon if we want to beat the rain,” He offered up his arm as he spoke like some sort of Disney prince. It was, by far, the cutest gesture you had ever been lucky enough to receive.

You linked your arm with his without hesitation. “As soon as I pay we can get going,” He was warm. It radiated off him in waves just like the warm hints of tobacco and wintermint that seemed to seep from his skin and clothes. With that, you made your way to the front desk as Hel shot you a sly smile.

“Who said anything about letting you pay?”

True to his word, he didn’t let you pay for a single thing for the rest of the afternoon.

The two of you made your way up to the cashier together, and Helmut only separated from your side to grab his wallet before you could grab yours. He then spoke in rapid-fire Sokovian to the lady at the register and pulled what could only be described as a wad of Sokovian koronas while you set the book on the counter, and from the looks of it, she seemed more than pleased with the two of you. Who wouldn’t be, especially when Hel seemed to insist that she keep the excess? In the end, after the book had been wrapped nicely in a paper bag and deposited in your backpack, Helmut held the door open for you like some sort of gentleman and followed you out into the grey afternoon.

Then, you were off down the street on Hel’s arm, pushing through the wind and the biting chill that had settled in the air.

“So, you don’t sound like a big fan of your dad,” you asked, half laughing as you attempted to broach conversation once again.

Helmut groaned beside you. “My father is a menace who is unable to understand that some people want more in life than to sit behind a desk all day making phone calls. In fact, most of my family is the same way. The only reason I haven’t completely cut them off and changed my name is the money,”

“I assume you get a lot of it if it’s worth sticking around someone you hate so much,”

“Never ask a man about his net worth,” he chuckled, gently elbowing you in the ribs, “but yes, I’m very comfortable. I have my own apartment just far enough away to be considered off-campus with my own car and as much money as it takes to keep me happy and getting good grades; Daddy makes sure of that,” The word daddy was a deep sneer, barely there in the wind, but something about it sent butterflies through your stomach. Well, that was never something you thought you were into… “Little does he know, I’m not here to make money. I’m here to find inspiration worth my time while out from under his thumb,”

You snorted softly. “Artistic and rich? You’re just ticking all the boxes, Hel,”

“Good for me. Would offering help on that essay of yours endear you to me further?”

“Absolutely,”

The next 5 minutes you spend discussing the Epic of Gilgamesh. Surprisingly, in one of the first stokes of good luck you’d had all day, Helmut seemed to be one of the only people on earth who knew plenty about Enkidu off the top of his head. When he was the one lecturing you in his smooth, heavily accented timbre it was so much easier to pay attention to something so very tedious than when you heard it from your aging and often monotone professor. In fact, you were so enthralled by his retelling of the tale that you barely noticed you’d made it all the way to the cafe that sat across from the international dorm.

If you didn’t consider Hel to be smart as a whip and twice as clever as he was smart, you would have thought it was a coincidence. It couldn’t be though. No, there was no way anything was a coincidence with Helmut around. You shot him a smile when he opened the door for you and ushered you inside.

“You know Hel,” you muttered, “I’m starting to think you might know more about me than you initially let on,”

He shrugged. “You’re American, so it’s unlikely you live anywhere else and I wanted to make the walk home easy. It’s supposed to rain, you know? Besides, despite the… interesting waitstaff, they make the best pastries in town right here in this cafe,”

“Did you mean it when you said you were paying?”

“Absolutely,”

“Then I can’t wait to try one,”

The two of you were seated quickly (you assumed it had to do with the waitress finding Hel as hot as you did, because you caught her looking at him from behind the counter and whispering excitedly in Sokovian to her coworker at least twice over the course of the meal) and the conversation flowed easily as you waited on your coffees and the deserts Helmut insisted on splitting to let you try. Millefeuille, pear tart tatin, chocolate devil’s food cake, and a towering plate of apricot kołaczki awaited you, and they kept you sitting and talking and snacking for over an hour as you really got to know each other. The more you learned, the more you fell in love with the man across from you.

Over the course of the afternoon, you learned that Helmut was majoring in studio art while minoring in psychology just because it interested him, he hated the Beatles almost as much as he hated Freud’s theories on women, his favorite color was purple, and he spent most of his free time reading or getting high off his ass in his massive studio apartment in what you now knew was one of the most expensive areas in the city. He, in return, sat at rapt attention across the table as you gushed about your life in America, your reasons for going to university in Sokovia, your favorite books, and the ridiculousness that was trying to pass college-level classes in a country that seemed to avoid English at all costs.

Eventually, though, you did touch upon his nickname.

“I just thought it was really interesting that you did the same thing every single day, no matter what,” you explained, grabbing one of the last kołaczki from the plate and ignoring the powdered sugar that stuck to your fingers, “and by watching you… I don’t know, I guess it kind of felt like I had another friend who’d share breakfast with me in the morning if that makes sense,”

Hel nodded, swallowing his last bite of chocolate cake. “I understand completely. It can be lonely, coming to a new place without any friends or connections, but you were brave enough to take the leap. I admire that,” He brought his napkin to his lips before crumpling it and setting it one of the now empty plates before him, “But I can’t say I’m not a little disappointed that you didn’t watch me because I’m attractive,”

You nearly choked on your pastry. “Well, I wouldn’t say your pretty face didn’t help…”

The grin that spread across his face was heartstopping. He grabbed a napkin from the little holder next to the two of you and grabbed a pen from one of his pockets as he spoke. “In that case, you should join me tomorrow morning. Bring coffee if you can, I never have enough hands to bring a cup for myself, but even if you can’t bring some, if you want to come and watch me work I’d be more than happy to have a companion for the morning,” he paused for a moment, flustered, “or every morning, for that matter,”

“That sounds like a deal,” Your cheeks were hot, but not from embarrassment this time. No, it was anything but, because here you were across the table from a kind, attractive, intelligent Sokovian boy with money to spend and time to spare for you. You couldn’t help but feel a little bit proud too. He wanted you back, after all. You could see it in the way his eyes lingered on you just a little longer than he should, and even more plainly in the way he wrote his phone number in bold blue ink on the napkin and signed it with a doodle of a heart before passing it across the table to you.

“I’m going to go pay,” he said quietly while standing, “but I’ll be back in a second to walk you out. Alright?”

“Alright,”

There was something strangely similar to sorrow sitting in your chest when you watched him walk away. The sight of his ass as he went made up for it, though. Once he was obstructed by other patrons, you turned your attention to the napkin in your hands. Hel’s handwriting was neat as far as artists’ handwriting goes, but it still held a sort of looseness in its curves, a freedom in the way the numbers had flowed effortlessly from his pen. You popped the last kołaczki in your mouth as you admired the blue ink before devouring the final bites of pear tart and millefeuille. How had you gotten so lucky to have someone like him giving you his number and buying you pastries? You pondered the bizarre nature of it all until Helmut returned.

You stood quickly, folding the napkin and putting it away in your pocket. “Ready to go?”

“If you are,” he replied. In an instant, you were standing beside him again as he opened the door for you. The wind was even stronger now, strong enough that his loose hair whipped wildly around his forehead from the force of it. You couldn’t help but giggle at his appearance.

He caught you off guard as he walked you across the street. “You have such a pretty laugh,”

It was like you were seeing him again for the first time. You fiddled with the strap of your backpack as you got closer and closer to the door to your dorm. “Thanks. I’m pretty fond of your laugh too,”

Then, you were there, just two college kids standing awkwardly before your first departure.

“So,” you said before you could stop yourself, “when I tell my one friend all about this afternoon after my math class tonight, should I say it was a date?”

Hel’s cheeks flushed pink. “You can call it that, if that’s what you would like it to have been,”

“I think I would,”

“Good, good,” he let out a little chuckle, “I’m glad. Would you… would you consider going on another? I promise I have much more to offer than just small talk and tips on where to buy the best pastries,”

Looking into his brown eyes, so full of uncertainty and hope, you knew you couldn’t have denied him even if you wanted to. Still, you weren’t going to give in to his advances without a little bit of taunting. It made it fun, a game to be played where, hopefully, you both would win big in the end.

“That depends,” you teased, letting your lower lip catch between your teeth, “what do you have in mind?”

Helmut shoved his hands into his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels, pensive. “If you want to, we could go to my place and I could actually show you all of the paintings I’ve been working on while you watched me. The view from the rooftop is lovely too. We could have dinner up there while looking out over Novi Grad. I have to warn you, though, it’ll probably be takeout. I’m an atrocious chef,”

Slowly, a brilliant smile spread across your face. “Does Friday work?”

The smile Helmut shot back was as bright as every star in the night sky and even more enthralling. “Friday is perfect. Can I pick you up at 7?”

“As long as you come in that fancy car you were talking about,”

“Then it’s a deal,”

“Well,” you turned away, walking up the steps towards the door before turning back to him, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Hel, and I’ll bring coffee. Have a good night,”

“You too, Y/N. Parting is such sweet sorrow and all that,”

With that, he gave one last short wave before turning on his heel and pulling out a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. You watched him walk away until he turned the corner and disappeared from view. Only then did you enter the punch code and race up the stairs to your room.

Your back was pressed to the door of your dorm room the second you had shut it, your hands clutching at your chest in a desperate attempt to keep your heart from beating right out of your ribs. The second you were in the privacy of your own place, your cool facade had melted away to reveal just how much of a wreck you really were.

He had invited you over to his apartment.

He liked you.

Easel boy really, honestly liked you.

No, not easel boy. Helmut. Hel.

Hel liked you, and he invited you over to his apartment, and you had plans to meet him with coffee as he painted the next morning.

You smiled softly under the fluorescent lights and pulled the book that had brought you together from your backpack. It seemed so unassuming now, just a fresh paperback with an unbroken spine, but in reality, it was so much more than that.

Hel.

It was such a nice name. You liked it a lot.

Now you couldn’t wait to see what else you liked about him too.

------

a/n: I have been so excited to start sharing this AU with you guys, and it’s finally here!!! If you liked this fic, I once again will direct you to Bliss by @creme-bruhlee because that’s technically next in chronological order for this AU. I hope you enjoyed!!!

TAGLIST: @tatestripedsweater , @elaineygrace, @multiyfandomgirl40 , @lovelymischief , @rami-malek-trash , @avgravy , @wh0re-4-techno , @forcebros , @sugarsweetkiss , @grandmuffinsharkbailiff , @killsandthrills , @novasstudy , @thnksfr-ptrkstmp , @inmate-marmalade, @alanathedeer , @your-pixels-are-showing , @shit-post-things , @bbarton , @sux-ubus , @halefirewarrior , @janelongxox , @rax-writes , @mossybank , @simsiddy , @xxspqcebunsxx , @be-cautious-around-bri , @metaphorical-love-for-a-car , @frothonthedaydreams

#zemo #helmut zemo #baron zemo #baron helmut zemo #zemo x reader #helmut zemo x reader #baron zemo x reader #baron helmut zemo x reader #fanfiction

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normalbirb · 4 years ago

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Eyy a step by step painting process for yall. I’ve seen a lot of new beginners when it comes to painting lately and that makes me really happy too see bcs its a really useful technique. My english isnt the best so if anything is unclear dont be afraid to ask.

Lets start with the tools you’ll need. Ofc the color wheel (or whatever shape its in the program you’re using), a textured brush or one who’s opacity is controlled by pen pressure, and the color picking tool/color selector tool. I recommend having a button for the last one bcs its gonna be used a lot.

Normally I use a textured brush, but for this one I went with a hard square one to make it more clear how I work. Its one of the default brushes in krita.

First, make a quick sketch, dont put too much detail into it bcs its all gonna be painted over eventually anyway. If you’re someone who have a bad habit of putting too much detail into the sketch, use a thicker brush. That way you wont be able to spend too much time on it.

Next lower the opacity of the sketch and throw on some colors on a new layer. Keep the colors muted, we’re gonna be building them up as we go. At this point its also good to leave the mindset of cell shading at the door. The base colors, light, shading, its all the same step. I honestly recommend painting on one layer to not start separating them, but its not a requirement. Having a background is very helpful when painting, even if its just one color. It helps keeping the colors balanced and its easier to see if you are using too saturated or too bright colors. Make sure the brush you’re using is somewhat big. Let it get smaller and smaller though the entire process. You wanna save the smaller details towards the end. Treat the picture as clay.

Now the fun begins! Start building up the colors and three dimentionality as you go. A good thing to keep in mind is that a surface that is facing away from you is gonna be darker than the surface facing you. This isnt always super visible depending on where the light comes from, but take any cylindrical object (ex: toilet paper roll) and really look at it and you will see it.

If two light sources meet, add a a dark border to separate them. Now is also the time to start adding more colors. Dont go full out with them, let them build up through the process. I usually use layer effects to help with the building process, but dont rely too much on it. Remember: this is painting, not cell shading.

Keep building up the piece with a larger brush until you get to a point where you feel like no more can be done. Now its time to start cleaning the edges and add the details. I usually end up adding some more highlights at this point. Remember that light bounces. If you look at the hair you can see that the colors of the forehead have been reflected onto it.

And then the very last step, throw on some layer effects. I went with an overlay with blue and green splotches and a big splotch with a blue luminosity layer in the middle. Ofc you can keep going and making it look even cleaner than this but its not a requirement, whenever you feels its done its done. If you use a textured brush the edges between light and shadows wont be as visible as in this pic.

Now go my children! Paint! Experiment! And use references!

#hordak #horde #she ra #pop #fanart #my art #tutorial #painting process

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kpopisthereasonihavenolife · 4 years ago

Text

k.taehyung/reader

genre: arist!taehyung, painting!reader, parallel/horror universe

warning(s): violence, mannequins+paintings coming to life (bc ppl are scared of that), blood- but like red paint instead, horror/dread/action elements (i tried okay), bittersweet

words: 20.3k

One-shot | Two-shot | Series | Drabble | [Rated: Pg:15]

Loosely based on Ib, an RPG Horror/Adventure game + Leia (Vocaloid)

synopsis: Taehyung, a freelance, abstract artist is in the middle of one of the worst art blocks known to mankind. In an act of possible inspiration, he drags his best friend, Namjoon, to a new art gallery just opened. Only, he didn’t know that his visit would result in him getting separated from his friend and thrust into a new gallery. One he wasn’t familiar with in the slightest. Along with this mysterious new gallery, a collection of strange creatures lurking around every corner came with the unsettling territory.

a/n: i literally started this in March of 2019.... I have no excuse for the wait other than my bad. Regardless, Colorblind is FINALLY done and out! It’s obvs waayyy longer than I intended it to be back in 2019 when I could only pump out like 9k at max- it’s over double that now LOL. But that hopefully aint gonna stop y’all (pls, lmk what you thought/thnk, i’m so anxious about this one alsdjf)

“Here you are, gentlemen. Enjoy your visit to the gallery,” the receptionist at the counter smiled as she would to anyone. Handing over two pamphlets to the two men who stood in front of her. One was dressed in white track pants, two stripes running down the legs. A white, collared, button-up shirt with a tie exceptionally loose around his neck with a blue, track jacket with red and white stripes down the sleeve, matching his track pants.

The other man wore loose black pants around his hips. A black and white vertical striped, sleeveless jersey with three buttons on the collar with a red cap placed backward on his faded orange-haired head.

These two men were two Kim’s. Taehyung and Namjoon. Taehyung works as a self-employed, freelance artist; throwing and brushing paint over a canvas in random ways and creating objects and places for his mind to be free in abstract ways. Namjoon is a humbled journalist for a local news blog for his exceptional wording and phrasing on all sorts of topics.

Taehyung had come to the new gallery opening not too far from his home in search of inspiration. He had been in a bit of a slump lately, and with nothing to do and nothing worthwhile happening, he was desperate. Namjoon tagged along because he was tasked with the job of writing a review of the new establishment and creating a small article to include in the next online publication.

“Welcome to the grand opening of The Gallery of Leia!”

Taehyung mumbled to himself as he read the title of the pamphlet given to him. “Why Gallery of Leia?” He questioned the name as the receptionist answered promptly.

“Leia is the one surviving piece of an artist from way back when that survived a brutal fire. In honor of its survival, the gallery was named as such.” She said with a smile as Taehyung nodded and nudged Namjoon’s arm, who stood next to him.

“Let’s go,” he said as he walked inside, not trying to stick around for more conversation and holding up the line of people also trying to gain entry inside. Namjoon following him as he quickly scanned a the front of the pamphlet.

The gallery was two stories in a decent squared size building. It was quite the exercise trip in Taehyung’s opinion. Sculptures were placed against walls or out in the open for rotational viewing pleasure. Paintings and sketches were hanging, littering the walls for guests to see clearly. All the different pieces from all sort of artists featured here was amazing, such a wide variety as Taehyung’s eyes scanned the names. Some familiar, some not.

“Wow, this place is pretty busy,” Namjoon said as he looked around. Namjoon had pulled out a tablet from his side bag, turning on the large touch screen as he took the pen attached to the side of it and opened up a program for taking notes as he started scribbling. Taehyung peeked over his shoulder.

“You haven’t even seen any art yet. Why are you already jotting stuff down?”

“It’s always good to start an article with how packed or how empty a place is. The more people there, the more popular or interesting to the masses it is, which normally leads to more pros than cons. It’s like a first look into how interesting it may or may not be.” He rambled off like he’s answered the question a million times. Taehyung nodded with pouted lips.

“You’re such a workaholic.” Namjoon rolled his eyes at the remark, placing the pen between his fingers as he held his tablet and lowered it to his side.

“Let’s go look around.” The gallery itself, aside from the art pieces inside it, was stark white. White ceilings to match the white walls and tiled flooring in yet more, polished white. The lights weren’t as strong as one would think for a gallery, but if they were any brighter the receptionist would need to hand out complimentary sunglasses along with pamphlets because of all the lights bouncing off and around from the white interior.

Namjoon was busy looking at a large-scale sculpture of a red rose as Taehyung wandered around not too far from him. He turned down a hall that was surprisingly void of any warm bodies. He was surprised to find an area that hadn’t been cluttered with people yet. Though, he assumed it wasn’t all that odd considering the early morning hour.

Along the left wall was a large, long canvas, easily engulfing a vast majority of the wall itself. It also happened to be the only piece in this dead-end corridor.

Taehyung stood in front of the painting as he looked over it. Trying to see each and every detail. He was in awe of the detail and how much time it must have taken to even complete such a large painting. The dedication and time served to it was admirable.

The painting gave off an eerie vibe. A dark background with what seemed to be the space of a studio, a spacey and wide studio with canvas’s on walls, frames hanging, paints and easels littering the space leaking into a greater mass of a space with even more dark, distorted art. As he continued to look at it, he stopped to blink, reset his eyes and rub at them so he didn’t go crosseyed and get dizzy.

As Taehyung gazed at the whole of the masterpiece, Namjoon strode up to him. He whistled lowly in an impressed awe.

“Damn. That's one dedicated, dead painter.” He walked to the plaque underneath the frame, kneeling so he could read the title of the particular piece aloud. “Parallel Reality. Painted in 1996 by-” he couldn’t finish because the hall suddenly darkened. Namjoon and Taehyung both looked at the ceiling and the flickering lights before they blacked out completely. Leaving the room dark and quiet.

“A blackout?” Taehyung questioned. Namjoon stood up, walking back over to his friend.

“We should go back to the front desk.” Taehyung nodded as the two of them began the journey back, stepping carefully and squinting to make sure they wouldn’t run into any sculptures or walls. All the while, never once running into another person. In fact, the entire gallery was completely silent besides their footsteps.

“Where is everyone?” Taehyung asked, his eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness.

“I’m sure they’ve all gathered outside. No point in staying in a dark gallery.” The two made it to the front glass doors. “It’s… dark outside?” Taehyung looked out through the glass doors. “It was just noon?” Namjoon shook his head, pulling on the door, but the door refused to open. “It’s locked!” He grunted, yanking again, pushing and pulling on the door. Nothing. Namjoon sighed as he turned to Taehyung. “Go look around, maybe someone is still here. In the meantime, I’m going to try and get this door open.”

Taehyung nodded before he turned and walked back into the gallery. The halls still dark, every window showing nothing but a dark, deep navy outside. He walked to a window to look outside, maybe get a glimpse of what was going on. But, nothing.

He turned and walked away, but jumped when he heard someone banging on the glass of the window he had just left. Running back, he could just barely make out the imprint of a wide handprint on the outside of the glass. It made a chill run up Taehyung’s back.

For a moment, he assumed it was Namjoon who had gotten out and was getting his attention to run to the front and get out. So, he did, dashing to the entrance and when he didn’t see Namjon around any longer, he tried the door. Still locked.

He hissed as he whipped back around and went back to the window before he shook his head. As he walked around the gallery further, his eyes began adjusting to the darkness and eventually he was even able to make out some of the art pieces again.

A painting of a black cat. One of a man hanging upside down by his ankles. A basket of fruit that he swore use to have an apple included in the basket. The back of a woman dressed in nothing but red.

He felt like he was walking in circles. More than ready to head back to just sit at the front until someone came- since someone had to at some point, he heard another set of footsteps. At first he thought it may be Namjoon coming back to find him; however, the footsteps were too light to be his friends- he always was a bit of a heavy stomper. Taehyung turned and headed towards the steps as they seemed to move further from him instead of towards him.

“Hey!” He called into the echoey halls of the dark gallery. The steps halting momentarily before they started running. So, Taehyung sprinted after them. “Where are you going?!” He yelled as he ran into an open, large venue. He looked around as he ran, seeing no one around. “Where are you?!” He shouted before he stepped in a puddle. No, not a puddle. A puddle would only be an inch or two deep. It surely wouldn’t be enough to engulf him entirely.

Now, Taehyung was sinking. Drowning slowly into the Abyss of the Deep before the lights flicked back on and the murmurs of people resumed.

-x-x-x-

When Taehyung woke up, his head was throbbing, his mind was fuzzy and his conscience more than a little confused. Laying on his chest on the floor like a jersey-dressed starfish, he groaned as he pushed himself up to support his torso on his elbows. His hair was messier than before as his bangs threatened to poke his eyes. Looking back and forth, he was in a hallway. The corridor was dark, a hint of purple and indigo surrounding the entire room. Walls, carpet, ceiling everything was the same shade of purple.

Obviously, the polar opposite than the pure white of everything previously.

Rolling onto his back and pushing himself to stand, he wobbled as he held his head and tried to will away the headache that was beginning to slowly lessen.

Going backward before trying to even round the corner down the way, he found a single wooden door at the dead-end of the hall. Twisting the knob, he entered the small room. The room was square, red and on the back wall was a single large painting of a woman. Her eyes were closed and her face was blank. Her hair was somehow painted off the canvas, down past the frame and onto the wall like it was real hair falling out of the portrait.

In front of that portrait was a single small wooden table with a vase. In that vase was a single, blue rose. A rose with 10 large, vibrant petals and a vine that lacked thorns. Taehyung had never seen a blue rose before- well, not a real, authentic one anyways. Everyone’s seen the fake, painted blue, red, pink, yellow, purple and whatever other color roses in dollar stores before. Thinking it was manmade, he examined it further, putting his hands on the table to close inspect. He became far more interested in the flower the more he looked at it.

It drew him in. The color captivated him and the aura around it seemed almost important and he felt the slightest urge to pick it up. Maybe he should, maybe it would be fine. Reaching out slowly, he drew the rose from the vase and something akin to a jolt of electricity ignited his fingertips. It felt like he had somehow forged an instant connection with this flower as soon as the end of the vine left the crystal clear water of the vase.

Call him crazy, but he almost felt fearful of putting it back and leaving it behind.

The vase on the table cracked as Taehyung’s attention shifted to it from the rose. Crack after crack spread on the vase before it burst into pieces. Taehyung hunched backward to shield his face with his arms from the exploded glass. Shards of glass sat on the table and fell to the floor as the water pooled around the wooden surface and continued to spread as it began to drip off the table’s edge onto the carpet.

“I guess, I’ll take it along.” He muttered to himself as he turned his back. As he exited the room, he failed to notice the woman’s portrait shift. Her eyes opened wide- almost insane- as she smiled. PItch black paint writing appearing under her frame in smeared text.

WHEN THE ROSE WILTS, SO TOO WILL YOU WILT AWAY

Taehyung left the room and the hallway he returned to had changed from what he last remembered. There were random letters on the ceiling and floor, spelling something that Taehyung couldn’t make out in the dark hall. At his feet, he felt himself kick at something when he moved to step forward. Picking it up, he held a small blue key in his palm.

Going further down the hall, he came to a forked path. He could continue going down the hall or take the staircase he that presented itself to him. The stairs lead up higher than he could see with two paintings on either side of the entrance. Two landscapes of a mountain range; one normal and the other an identical copy, only negative scaled. Coming to a decision, he took the hall just to cover the ground floor. Coming to just another dead end, he returned and took to the stairs up.

At the top of the stairs was a door. Trying it, it was locked.

“Naturally,” he huffed. Trying the key he had kicked with his shoe and picked up not too long ago, it fit perfectly and unlocked the door as he stepped through it. The door slammed shut and locked on it’s own behind him. The key becoming useless since their was no keyhole on this side of the door. He dropped it, leaving it behind.

He was in a library now. It was a small room, maybe not even considered a library. Just a room with bookshelves and books. Like a compact study without a desk.

He didn’t recognize a lot of the books- which was surprising considering he did have a liking for reading. He stopped scanning his fingers over the spines of books when among all the thick, sophisticated books was a tiny, thin spine of a bright red children's book.

Pulling it out from it’s snug place on the shelf, he held it in his hands. It was a short, wide book with a picture colored very messily in what he could only assume was crayon on the cover of it. Sitting on the ground, his back against the bookcase, he opened it’s thick, card-stock, wobbly pages.

The book was about a painter. He had been painting his whole life, so long in fact that he started to blend his world with reality. He would give his paintings ‘life’ and he’d treat them like they were truly alive. In his mind, they were his friends.

A painting of a lion toy no bigger than the size of a book, stills of sentient objects like a fan, and even paint brushes contained souls with a conscience and mind to this painter. Even a can of pressurized air that would ‘bully’ or tease the others when they least expected it was ‘alive’, leaving the painter to rip that painting of air up for it’s rotten behavior.

It ends with the painter creating a portrait of someone, something he wasn’t familiar with painting. People weren’t his strong suit and as such, he was left in isolation for most of his life. His devotion to painting left him alone in reality because he ‘saw’ nothing else. Thus, he created his own friend in a painting of a woman that didn't exist. When she ‘came alive’ he even grew to fall in love with her. The last few pages of the story were torn out, so Taehyung would never know the ending.

“Who would fall in love with something they knew was fake? Something painted would never come alive,” he muttered. Considering the painter in the story to be an utter fool.

Taehyung suddenly jumped, children’s book sliding off his legs and snapping shut as the door to his left unlocked with a loud clack. He slowly got up, picking the book back up taking it with him as he put it back on the shelf. The door that unlocked started to whine. The handle was rusty sounding as something from the outside started turning it.

In a very logical fit of panic, Taehyung rushed and grabbed the thickest book he could find and held it at the ready. Absolutely ready to whack whatever weirdo came into this room, knock them out (with luck), restrain them and then question where the hell he was. That, or a hit and run would work too. He’d figure out which suggestion when the time came in a few moments.

The turning of the knob halted. Stopped for so long that Taehyung thought whatever it was had gone away. Lowering his book, he squinted his eyes at the door. It was quiet, all he could hear was his breathing with the occasional nervous gulp of his.

There was only but another beat of silence before chaos erupted.

The door busted open, nearly ripping off it’s handles. Taehyung, with a short, shocked scream, stumbled back as two things threw themselves into the room. One was a woman, or rather half a woman. Long brown hair cascaded down her head and her torso was decked in a red turtleneck. Her face had a twisted demeanor etched into what would probably be a beautiful face otherwise. From her waist down was nothing but a picture frame. Her lower half didn’t exist and was replaced with a black void background and frame with gold edges. It was like some horror effect that dragged around behind her everywhere she crawled.

The second was an actual woman. Legs, arms, chest and all. Dressed in ruined overalls, a long sleeved white shirt with yellow stripes up the arms. Tacky, torn brown boots on her feet as she stomped and kicked away at the woman in the frame. She was wielding... a stick? Or what looked like what may be part of what was once another picture frame. End jagged and just asking for someone to get a nasty splinter.

The woman in the frame hissed at her like a dog as her clawed hands moved to drag her across the floor towards the actual woman’s legs. The framed lady moved faster than Taehyung imagined was possible. Dragging her half body across the floor and slithering with an absurd amount of grace like a snake.

The lady in the frame latched onto the woman’s leg causing her to in turn repeatedly kick at the frame’s head with her opposite foot. The frame screamed as she was kicked against a bookshelf. Books fell, toppling onto the frame as she screeched. However, her insistent screeching silenced when the real woman took the jagged end of the broken frame she wielded and thrust it into the frames exposed and vulnerable head.

Red ‘paint’ erupted from the frame like a fountain before it became completely limp. The woman shook the frame piece around, whipping it like a sword after a battle to remove the blood of the slain. Then, the woman looked over her shoulder at Taehyung. He froze in place, his shoulders jumping at him finally being noticed.

Your eyes widened as they locked onto Taehyung’s. Shocked to see him there. Your eyes were an unusually bright colored abyss with such a dull contrasting look in them. He wasn’t sure if he could even see his reflection if he were standing right in front of you.

You gasped lightly as if being hit with some sort of realization before turning to face him fully. Even if you were a good 10 feet from him he flinched. More than a little bit intimidated with you still holding your broken frame piece and witnessing you pretty much kill what he would label a Feminine Frame Monster.

“You’re the one everyone is looking for…” You muttered to herself. There was a commotion beyond the door that was hanging pathetically onto its frame. From down the hall, scraping and screeching were heard in a humming echo. You looked over your shoulder before you moved towards Taehyung, looking at him and grabbing his bicep with little hesitation. You yanked his arm to signal that you were clearly going to be ordering him around.

Taehyung felt like a doll being pulled around by a child. You were shorter than he expected for someone who just took out a monster as he peered over your head, like a child standing as high as possible to peek out a window. Your grasp on him loosened as you moved to grab his wrist instead. You pulled him slightly again, snapping him out of whatever daze he was in as he finally looked at you again.

“We need to go. More of them are coming, and unless you want to end up painting fodder, you’ll follow me.” He looked down at you as you finally noticed the rose peeking out of his jacket pocket. You gasped, pointing at it with your other hand that whipped around the red stained frame piece. “Hide that!” You seethed as Taehyung’s hand immediately shoved itself into his pocket to cover the rose before she began to run out of the room, Taehyung in tow; against his will, might he add.

The halls he was being dragged through were inconsistent and almost gave him a headache. First running through purple halls, then red filled with empty black picture frames. Zooming through green halls that had arms shooting out of them, claws skimming over Taehyung’s jacket and reaching for his rose. He pulled it from his pocket and held it to his chest to keep it safe from anyone- thing- trying to grab it. Finally, your running came to a stop as you swung open a door before shoving him by his shoulder. You slammed the door securely shut before locked it.

When the door was shut, Taehyung took a moment or two to look around as he tried to regain his breath.

He was in a blue room now. Two bookshelves with almost nothing on them and a small table next to a violet couch. The table held a cerulean vase on it with water filled inside almost to the point it overflowed. On the back wall was only one giant frame with a pure white puzzle glued one the inside of it.

“A milk puzzle?” He questioned more to himself than anything else. You sighed when it was quiet and then collapsed onto the blue carpeted floor. Catching Taehyung’s attention, he panicked as he ran to your side, kneeling beside you and debating on whether or not he should put his hand on your shoulder. You panted and pushed your forehead against the door. Hair hiding your face as it hung, falling off your heaving shoulders. “Are you.. Alright?” Taehyung asked slowly- cautiously.

You only nodded as you finally caught your breath. Sitting up straighter, taking one last breath to even your breathing before you finally looked up at Taehyung. He knelt higher than your head level as he confirmed that he indeed couldn’t find his reflection in your eyes he stared into.

“You’re the intruder that everyone is looking for in the Gallery, aren’t you?” She questioned. He blinked in confusion.

“Intruder?”

“You don’t belong here and you need to get out of here as soon as you can. This isn’t a place for someone like you.” Taehyung wasn’t understanding anything. You held your hand out towards him, almost asking for something. “Your rose. You still have it right?” He nodded as he showed the rose he still held cradled to his chest. He was thankful the vine was thornless, or else his palm would have been riddled with small, painful punctures.

For some reason, he felt like his rose would be safe with you, so he easily handed it over. You took it and looked over it’s petals. Admiring the shade of blue, you shifted her gaze to look from beautiful azure petals and into Taehyung’s eyes. “What’s your name?” You asked.

“Taehyung,” he answered instinctively. You nodded at the sound of it, committing it to memory. “Yours?”

“I’m Y/n,” you curtly told him as you lifted the rose back into the conversation. “Do you know how important this rose is?” He shook his head. You sighed as you moved to face him fully, sat relaxed on the floor. Lifting your arm to bring you opposite hand to touch one of the petals your fingertips dusted around a single soft petal. You held it with delicacy before your grip changed and your nails gripped and plucked it off the stem.

Taehyung gasped, a pain shooting through his chest as his hand flew up to grip his shirt. His one-knee kneeling position changed as both knees hit the carpet.

It felt like his heart just skipped a beat and almost seemed to stall for a moment. Shaken up, he wasn’t sure why, but it felt almost harder to breathe? Air came more difficult to take and his energy felt zapped. The one petal you had pulled off fluttering to the ground at his knees.

You plucked another one, the second petal fluttering to the floor to join the first. More pain shot through him again as he found himself bracing himself forward, the hand that wasn’t clenching around the front of his shirt, falling in front of him to join his knees on the carpet. It felt like someone was wrapping a rope around his chest and squeezing the life out of him. Crushing his ribs and lungs suffocating him.

“What,” he gasped, “are you doing... to me?” He sputtered as he coughed. He heard you move before you were at his back, picking him up and bringing him weakly to his feet. You practically dragged him to the couch, his feet dragging on the carpet the whole way before he fell into the cushions.

As you stood over him, you pluck another two petals off and he let out small, silent coughs of protest. Whatever you were doing, he was ready for you to stop. He really thought he was dying.

“Watch,” you told him as the dark bags under his eyes materialized. You walked to the crystal water-filled vase. Taking his rose that had lost four petals already, you placed the stem over top of the vase and dropped it inside. The stem hit the water and immediately Taehyung’s eyes widened as he watched the petals regrow right before his eyes.

The rose seemed to glow with a calming, almost reassuring, blue hue for but a moment before the pain in his body stopped. The pangs of hurt disappeared from within his eyes as he let go of his chest and the pain faded. It was like the pain was just a hallucination. You slowly withdrew the rose from the vase and handed it back to him as you move to stand in front of him. He had moved from laying in pain on the couch to sitting himself up properly.

Taehyung gently took the rose from you. “When the rose wilts,” you start.

“So too will I…” Taehyung finishes, unsure on how he knew how to finish the phrase. It was like it was just engraved on his tongue as he said it. The dawning realization that this flower was tied to his life grew into his mind as he spun it between his thumb and forefinger. “But, I-I don’t understand.” He shook his head. You moved to sit beside him, ready to answer whatever questions he has. “What’s going on? Where the hell am I?”

“You’re in the gallery.”

“No,” he denied curtly, lifting his hand in denial. “I was in the gallery. Now, I’m here.”

“You were in the real gallery. Somehow, you got sucked into this one. The gallery you were in isn’t where you are now and frankly I don’t know how you got here. This is a fabricated reality created from a man’s paintbrush. A human shouldn’t be able to come here.” You got up and grabbed a small, face down picture frame from the top one of the small, dusty, bookshelves. Bringing it back with you to the couch, you handed it to him.

Taehyung recognized the man in the photo. “I know this artist. He died a long time ago.” Though his name escaped the young artist.

“Guena. That’s the pen name he used in his profession.” You looked around at the small room. “This room, and all the other rooms too. Every painting and creature here was created by him and his desire to create souls for his non-living creations,” you told him. “But, things are different now. Everything is distorted,” you scowled.

Just like the picture book he found. The creations were given life by the hands of the creator then the creator died, leaving all of his ‘lives’ behind. If that were so, then it would be no wonder why everything would begin to fall apart. It was akin to a circus without a Ring Master. Taehyung furrowed his brows before he placed the photo beside him on the cushions.

He looked up to you, into your dull eyes that somehow held the most breathtaking color.

“How long have you been here?” He asked.

“I’ve been here since the beginning and I will remain here until the end.”

“Do you have a rose, like I do?” He felt like he knew the answer, but nonetheless less you shook your head. He knew what he wanted to really ask, but he didn’t know how to ask it- what words should he use? To you, who he had just met in the most fictional turn of events that he still can’t wrap his head around. You were nothing like him and he knew that.

“I’m a painting, Taehyung.”

When you told him the truth he was already beginning to suspect, it wouldn’t be too far fetched to say he still internally panicked. Something that looks so human, yet wasn’t at all. You were nothing but brush strokes and shapes somehow given life. You probably crawled straight out of a frame too.

You saw the emotion flash through his eyes and you were almost jealous of how his eyes could change. Unlike yours that were stuck, his could tell you a whole story without the use of words. Anyone in this place could tell immediately he was human because of those eyes.

In respect to him and his unease, you made sure to keep your distance. You truly weren’t a threat. All you wanted was for him to get out, and to get out safely. You’ve been watching your world fall apart since Guena died. Every creature that was alive was losing their ‘mind’ and it was only a matter of time before it started to infect you too. It was a disease that humans didn’t need to get involved in.

“I’m going to be your escort out of here. With your lack of reaction when in the face of danger, you’d probably get yourself killed in an instant.” You moved back to the door where you sat on the floor, you're back against the wood as you looked at him across the room on the couch. “You rest for now and make sure to keep your rose safe with you. This room is safe, so you don’t need to worry about something happening.”

Then, you stopped talking. Taehyung almost felt guilty. You were a painting, and you couldn’t show all the emotions that the could. You weren’t actually real after all, so it was normal to assume you had a expressional limit. He watched as you sat against the door completely silent and still with closed eyes. He was unsure if you were really sleeping or if you even could.

He looked at the rose in his hands. This rose is so important and he didn’t know how to fathom what the hell was going on. It all happened too fast and he couldn’t begin to process it all.

He missed Namjoon as he knew that he was probably still wandering around the real gallery looking for him. He wondered if Namjoon managed to get out since he wasn’t at the front or if the lights kicked back on and he was alright. He lifted and looked at the photo of Guena beside him again.

It was odd. That was the man who somehow created this world and he was also the same painter who created Leia. The painting that gave the real gallery it’s name. Taehyung never got to see that painting in the gallery- not that he was able too see much to begin with, and he’s not so sure he wanted to at the moment.

Taehyung was a sympathetic and empathetic person- always had been and probably always will be. The line between the two blurred in his case. So, when he looked at you, he felt a sense of guilt as you kept away from him. You spoke curtly, yet kindly. You didn’t seem to have an ulterior motive and you seemed trustworthy enough; especially compared to that framed lady from before.

You brought him here after all. A secluded room and you didn’t attack him or take his rose. You plucked four petals off his rose, but then turned around and healed him. You even returned it, he knew it was all to prove the point of its importance. You weren’t going to hurt him and he believed that with his whole heavy-beating heart.

“Y/n? Are you sleeping?”

Your eyes remained closed, but you answered. “No. I can’t. I’m a painting, remember?”

“Okay. Then, I have a question,” he said as you slid your eyes open. Looking at him from your place by the door. “That thing you killed?” Did you kill it? Could paintings die? “What was it?”

“They’re called, The Ladies.”

“They? There’s more?” Taehyung’s voice slightly quivered at the idea of more hissing, hacking, floor-crawling, psycho half ladies being out there.

You nodded. “What you saw was only one of many Ladies. She was a Lady in Red. There are also Ladies in Green and Ladies in Blue. They’re more common than most. About as common as mannequins.”

“Excuse me? Mannequins?” You looked at him as a shiver ran up his body. Goosebumps littered his covered skin. “I fucking hate mannquins,” he seethed unconsciously to himself. The look he put on his face was that of disgust and pure anguish and yet somehow twisted into an almost comical look. You almost smirked at his foul language and facial cues.

Your smirk twisted and soon you burst out into laughter at his face that just seemed so comical to you. A face someone like you couldn’t pull off because you were fake. He looked at you as you laughed at him. The tension that was in the air seemed to be shattered like a nail being driven into a pane of glass. Soon, Taehyung was laughing at you laughing at him. Your fit ended as you smiled and shook your head, calming down.

Taehyung was more than happy to try and get a small nap in now that he knew that you weren’t completely devoid of emotion. Someone, fake or not, who can laugh and smile like that surely wasn’t a bad person.

-x-x-x-

Taehyung was startled from his small rest when a tremor shook the room. Panicking as he sat straight, rim-rod up, you were already on your feet and looking at the door. You half expected something to charge inside, even when this place was supposed to be somewhere to rest up and be away from any sort of harm. Taehyung flung his legs off the sofa and stood up so quickly he had a wave of dizziness hit him as he held his head and staggered. Shaking it off, he was at your side, standing just a step behind you.

“What the hell is that?” He lightly asked, like if he was too loud something would hear him. You just flexed your arm, the hand around the hardened piece of art frame you kept continuing to wield tightening. “It feels like the ground is moving,” he looked down at his feet. Like the carpet beneath him was beating in microbursts.

“It’s a distortion wave. This happens the weaker this world gets and that means it’s only going to get that much worse outside.” You looked at him. “I hope you have some strength in those arms of yours, because you might have to use it.” Taehyung hated the thought of violence, even if it was against figuratively inanimate objects that weren’t supposed to exist . They weren’t alive, but they were still able to die. His toes curled at the thought of it. You saw the unease in his eyes before looked back at the door, rotating your wrist and twisting around your weapon. “Just stick close to me and run like your life depends on it.”

The lack of an additional ‘because it will’ was an approved choice on Taehyung’s ears.

You opened the door and outside it was a madhouse. Even more paintings coming alive. Some stuck in their frames as they clawed at the air and hissed. Distorted in sharp and blurred strokes as they swiped. Ghastly hands and objects plunged from walls and hung from the ceiling. Mannequins moved far faster than previously and he could hear the hissing and scraping of frames on the floor from the Ladies as they drug themselves across the floor like lethal roaches.

You bolted out of the safe room, Taehyung hot on your heels as he stayed immediately behind you. You dashed down halls, staying in the center away from the walls and anything reaching for you. You kept Taehyung at your side, pulling him to and fro away from anything that could harm him if he got too close. You rounded corners in rushed steps or slides as Taehyung occasionally grabbed the back of your overalls to keep you from skidding into the walls from your unstoppable momentum. You swung and hacked at anything that came close and kept them at bay the best you could with your frame.

Taehyung pointed ahead of you, a set of doors ahead.

“Go into one of those!” He wasn’t sure where he got off telling you where to go. Especially since he was literally the worse qualified person to do so. You didn’t seem to argue back though, so he continued. “The, uh, the yellow one!” He yelled over the chaos. You just looked back at him slightly over your shoulder, brows creased.

“Which one is the yellow one?!” You shouted as he slightly stumbled before he grabbed your wrist and took off, running faster and ahead of you before he stopped at a door of brilliant yellow, pulled it open and pushed you inside, slamming it closed. The room was empty save for a single mirror on the back wall. Thankfully, yellow seemed to be a pretty safe choice.

Taehyung could always trust yellow.

“Y/n,” he called as he still held your wrist in his hand and you were hunched over. You weren’t alive, but you seemed unwell. “What’s wrong?” He looked at the skin under his hand that showed with the fabric of your long sleeve pushed up your wrist. He gasped silently when he saw it’s complexion shift into a distortion of ugly, muddle colors before vanishing as quickly as it came. “What was that?” He shook his head. “No, hold on. Different question. Can you not see color?”

“No, I can’t.” You stood back up, yanking your wrist out of his grip. You looked at your skin as you hissed. The distortion was starting to hit you and the stages would eventually progress into a problem- but he didn’t need to know that. “I was painted as portrait by a lonely, selfish painters. He didn’t think to give me the ability to see color so, I can’t see colors or tell them apart.” You shook your wrist out. “Is that a problem?”

Taehyung jolted. You were clearly touchy on the topic. He cleared his throat as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“Uh, well not really . I guess if you have me, I can point out colors for the both of us. Why didn’t you tell me you were colorblind though? It would’ve been pretty useful to know before we started running for our lives through some fucked-up haunted house reality check.”

“I didn’t think it was relevant.” You sighed. You had made it this far without relying on the colors you couldn’t tell apart. Why would now be any different? You couldn’t even see the color your body or clothes were- if they had color to them at all. For all you knew, you were all black and white and grey. You walked to the back wall and stood in front of the mirror there, frowning as Taehyung came up behind you. He was as black and white as you were in your eyes.

“So, you can’t see any color?” He touched his shirt, opened his jacket and pulled his headband. He pulled your hair up dramatically and motioned to yourself as a whole in the mirrors reflection. “Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all,” you confirmed. “I can conceive the idea of colors, but I’ve never had a proper need to see or tell them apart. I know when something is a threat and I know when something is not. That’s all that really matters here.” Your indifference was something Taehyung- a painter- couldn’t comprehend. What kind of painting can’t see their own colors? Wouldn’t that be painful or frustrating at the very least?

“Your shirt is yellow and white,” Taehyung spoke. You looked at his reflection with raised brows. “Your overalls are faded and nearly ruined, but they’re dark blue and your boots are brown. Your hair is really pretty and your eyes are too.” He described your outfit to you like you were a child, but he meant well.

Just saying the color of your clothes didn’t help you grasp the concept of what it really looked like aside from the range of grey and white and black you saw through your eyes. “Maybe that doesn’t matter, but I thought you’d like to at least now,” he muttered.

“Thanks,” you told him quickly as you pulled at your sleeves, fixing and adjusting them to cover your arms properly again. So, that light shade of grey- nearly white- was yellow? “I've never actually learned what color is what to my eyes,” you told him. “It’s nice knowing at least one color,” you whispered more to yourself than anything.

So, it did bother you. Taehyung felt something swell like pride in his chest as he was acting the role of teacher.

If it were any other situation and if you were a person instead of a painting, he’d be glad to teach you all the colors he could. He felt it was his duty as an artist- freelance or not- to educate those about all the corners of art. However, you weren’t real and he wasn’t at home in his studio, but in a haunted gallery of danger.

Taehyung stepped away from you as he made his way back to the front of the room and the yellow door. He put his ear to the door, not hearing much of anything outside anymore. He hoped that you and he were able to give them the slip- as obvious as a tactic as that was. When he tried the doorknob, however, it didn not twist. Jammed or locked, he knocked his forehead against the yellow wood in frustration.

“Of course,” he groaned before he turned to see you still standing in front of the mirror in the back of the room. “Y/n, the door is locked. Unless we have another way out, we’re stuck in here.” He announced, making his way back to you as you seemed to finally break out of your own reflection and look around.

“There’s got to be something we can trigger to open the door or another way out. Just look around,” you told him. You started wandering the room, but Taehyung only stood still, crippling his chin in thought and tapping his toes. The room was completely empty, what could he possibly miss if nothing was in the room except a single, wall mounted mirror?

He thought of all the cheesy cliches like a floor tile trigger or a secret compartment in one of the four walls of ht boxed room. However, he wasn’t sure if he had the patience to test out those ideas.

Taehyung stood in front of the mirror, looking at his own reflection that scowled back towards him in thought. He scurried away from the mirror in a haste as he yelped when the glass cracked. Splitting down the center in crooked, ugly cracks and small splinters of glass falling from the mirror. Your ear picked up on the continuous cracking of the mirror’s glass, unlike Taehyung and before he knew what was happening, you were yanking on his shirt and jacket collar. He choked slightly at you pulling him away from it completely as it shattered.

Bursting from the inside out, glass shot forward before raining down to the hard tile of the room. What was left behind wasn’t the wall behind the mirror, but a matte black door with a sign hanging on the center of it.

‘PASSAGE’

“Is that our way out?” He asked skeptically as he stood back up and brushed off his clothes of any stray shards that clung to him. Looking back, the yellow door you both had rushed through had disappeared. Nothing, but this black door and the walls remained. He huffed. “Guess that answers that, huh. Wha- hey!” He called as you had already started opening the black door to enter it. “What if it’s dangerous in there?!”

“There’s no other option,” you told him, pushing the door open before stepping into the same, thick blackness the door represented. “Stay here if you’re so scared,” you sarcastically teased as you stepped inside. Unsurprisingly, the artist was hot on your tail inside.

The two of you walked through the black hall that stretched from the door you both entered, Taehyung behind you as he grew in more in nerves. There were no lights and the light front he doorway was long gone behind his back. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face and he felt like he was losing his mind.

He could only hear your footsteps, his footsteps and the sound of your sharpened frame weapon dragging across the ground that you had taken from your belt loop as soon as the darkness became thick enough to warrant a twinge worry.

The air in the ever stretching corridor became so thick it was hard to catch his breath as he moved to grab your wrist for guidance. Then, giggling began echoing from every direction. Bouncing off what might be a nearby walls and drilling directly into his head. Giggling that mimicked creepy doll sound effects in horror movies, only so much worse. You, unsurprisingly, weren’t phased by the verbal taunts- Taehyung, however, was.

You could feel the trembles in his fingers around the wrist of yours he held so tightly. You twisted your wrist, freeing it from his grasp for a moment and you could physically feel his panic the moment his fingertips left your skin. He was quick to calm down when you shot your arm back and grabbed around his hand instead.

Taehyung only grew more and more nervous as the darkness didn’t seem to end. There was nothing in front of him or behind him to act as a beacon of any sort of hope that it would eventually come to a brightly lit finish. Not even your presence he knew was there was any comfort to him. It felt like the darkness was ebbing away at his sanity and choking him.

In the midst of his silent anxiety, he thought he felt something whisper along the back of his neck. He let out a small, strangled noise of startled protest as he unconsciously ripped his hand away and out of yours. His panic set in tenfold now that he had no idea where you were anymore.

He reached out in front of him in a frenzied panic as he waved his arms around in front of himself like a crazy person. He was sure if he was in light or if someone could see him, they’d think him completely bat-shit insane. No matter where he reached or how hard he searched, he couldn’t find you. He couldn’t even hear you anymore.

Your footsteps were gone along with the frame dragging and he couldn’t hear anything aside from his own hiccuped gasps of air. A horrible humming filled his ears and he quickly brought his palms up to the sides of his head, covering his ears to try and block out the noise. It only seemed to intensify though, as if he had cupped around the humming and shoved it directly against his eardrums.

His knees wobbled and his footing staggered before his knees finally hit the ground. The hard ground that was below his feet changed the moment his knees collided with it.

Water was running along the hard ground that now felt like tile. If he ran his fingers along the floor, he would be able to trace the groves of cement and glue holding the pieces of breakable flooring together. He wasn’t able to properly process it in the overwhelming state of mind he was currently becoming more and more trapped in.

The water that seeped into his pants drew higher and higher before engulfing his knees, thighs and eventually coming to reach his waist. His hands stayed covered over his ears as he shuttered and shook his head back and forth- trying to chalk it all up as another nightmare. He’d wake up on another couch any moment in a room that you had taken him too. This was just his mind playing trick on him- wasn’t it?

The humming grew louder and louder before it went completely silent. The shift in noise to nothing was too sudden; uncomfortably sudden. He should be relieved that the horrible, horrible sound that drilled into his head had stopped, but he was only accompanied by the newfound silence with a chill running up his spine and staying in the base of his neck .

Taehyung couldn’t move. He shook and trembled, waist deep in cold water.

Was this what insanity felt like? Was he really losing his mind?

Then he remembered. He was finally able to move again when he remembered his rose. The flower that was somehow keeping him up and kicking. He moved his hands from his ears and began to frantically pat around his body. His chest, his hips and thighs. In and out of pockets. He couldn’t find it. He thought he had already reached his maximum panic level, but he was oh so wrong.

He lost his rose and he felt like he was near his breaking point. He hated that it affected him so much in both a mental and physical sense. Taehyung had normally defined himself as a more or less tough person to break down in more cases.

He hardly had time to adjust to the life threatening new world he found himself in with art coming to life to kill him. Not to mention that his life was tied to a blue flower and he was dependent on a painting for safety.

Taehyung was literally walking through his own personal nightmare. Who wouldn’t start losing their marbles after all that?

His ducked down head shot up when he thought he heard something drop into the flooded flooring. He swore he heard the water ripple as it sounded like someone was walking, or dragging their feet through the water. The sound of moving water echoed and he couldn’t pinpoint from which direction whatever was around him was moving. Then the water pushed up his legs like something pushed the water towards him and he froze again.

He felt a breath blow against his forehead, his hair blowing in small, annoying strands that tickled his eyebrows and forehead. Whatever was wading in the water beforehand, was now right in front of him.

His mouth opened like he was going to scream, but nothing came out before the room erupted in bright lights. He flinched under the extreme difference, the humming coming back to drill into his skull as fluorescent lights lined the ceiling above him.

When he was able to pry his eyes open, they glued themselves open at the sight of the creature in front of him. It was… he couldn’t even begin to explain what it was.

It looked like it had the basic shape of a person, but the limbs were far too long and lanky and it was engulfed in a thick looking, black tar that oozed and dripped from it’s appendages. It’s head was also shaped like a humans, but turned completely sideways. The side of it’s head parallel with the floor as that same, thick blackness dripped from it’s chin that pointed directly to the left. The mouth was nothing but a white circle in the middle of its face with black dripping between it’s ‘lips’ like jail bars.

Whatever it was, it was horribly ugly and Taehyung thought his mind was distorting. The space around the creature seemed crackly- like tv static.

The artist couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t flee. He couldn’t even scream. But it could. It could move, it could groan and moan, it could scream. And it did.

The mouth opened further into an elongated oval and a set of eyes showed themselves in small, crescents with the ends pointing to the left towards their chin on their crooked head. The shrill shriek it let out made Taehyung’s bones rattle under his skin, like someone had just run a xylophone stick across his ribs.

It had brought it’s long, thin, dripping arms up as it seemed to ready lunge at the young, fear-stricken artist. It screeched once more before it began to lunge, but it was immediately stopped in it’s tracks before it could do any sort of physical harm.

The screech was cut short, as the head- in fact- the entire torso of the creature was pushed down by something. It fell face first into the water at Taehyung’s knees as a long, golden strip of a picture frame stuck out of the back of it’s head.

Red paint leaked out of the creatures head as it lay still and motionless in the water, dying the flooded area a shade of crystal pink. The smell wasn��t what he expected- what he expected to smell like iron, blood and death instead smelt of a flower shop, honey and lemonade. The monster with a frame in the back of it’s head smelt like summer.

Was it… dead?

Then he heard more footsteps, however with the lights on and eyes properly adjusted now, he could see exactly where they were coming from and who. It turns out that somehow he had made it into a room- a small cube area that had no windows and only one door that was now thrown open. Through that door, your body was slouched against the frame out of breath- once again ironic since you weren’t alive- and dripping blue drops of paint from your chin.

He was speechless- no longer from fear, but from shock.

You wadded through the pink water to stand in front of him. You turned to the creature you had just taken down by hurling your frame piece at it and quickly pulled the frame out. Red spurt from the wound like a pathetic, paint-filled fountain. Before long, it was simply oozing and rolling off the skull of the creature into the water before it started to completely fade away like ash.

You looked back to Taehyung who had disappeared previously from your grasp and you knelt in front of him. Waving your hand in front of his face, he didn’t respond. You looked down and around him to see his hand stuck on the inside of his jacket- like he had stopped looking for something mid-search.

“Tae-”

“Rose,” he whispered urgently, interrupting you. You gently dug into the small pouch you had on your side- where you got that, he wasn’t sure- and before a moment longer passed, blue petals were shown in his line of sight. That seemed to finally start to snap him out of it. “That’s my,” he whispered, the rest of his words dying on his tongue.

“You dropped it earlier when you let go of my hand,” you told him. You gently took his hand from the inside of his jacket and placed the flower delicately inside his palm. “You need to take better care of that if you want to get out of here.”

One, small tear fell from his eye before he was throwing his arms around your shoulders and pulling you towards him. Your face fell into his shoulder as you felt him shake around you. You raised your arms tentatively and started to pat at his back awkwardly.

“Don’t worry,” you shushed, as you stared at the back wall. You could hear the ashy pieces of the creature disengerate behind your back as his tremors quelled to shivers and soon he was still and his breath wasn’t ragged anymore. He had calmed himself down as he squeezed you against his chest.

“Thank you,” he breathed.

-x-x-x-

Once Taehyung was able to move again without shaking or fearing for his safety and he had properly calmed down, you led him out of the room he had been trapped in. Going down another long hall with nothing but lights lining the walls, he briefly stopped at a plaque on the wall next to another door. This door wasn’t colorful or odd- it looked so ordinary it stood out among the bright purple hall he stood in.

“Gallery ahead,” he muttered, reading aloud as the sighed at the plaque that had an arrow pointing ahead beyond the door.

Opening the door, there was no noise and all was quiet. Taehyung followed you as he looked around.

True to the plaque, it really was just another portion of the gallery. Proper paintings on the walls with names below it, statues sectioned off with rope and dividers, mantles with busts- it too looked like an authentic, ordinary gallery. The door you both passed through shut with a soft click as he looked behind at it still jumpy from earlier on. He was thankful it didn’t slam at least.

The floors were tile and shining like they had just been cleaned and waxed. The walls were covered in a boring, but oddly suiting wallpaper fit for an aged art gallery while chandeliers hung along the ceiling lighting the place in a soft, glowing light.

“This is a nice break from the rest of the place,” Taehyung told you, catching up to your back as you were making your way through the place. He came to walk beside you, looking at your eyes that couldn’t see any color.

“It is a section of the world that hasn’t been touched too badly by the distortion. If anything is alive here, it shouldn’t be a threat,” you assured him. The fact you had put away your makeshift weapon put him further at ease. He looked back and forth at the walls lined with art.

This was what he was hoping to experience coming into the real gallery today.

Just browsing around to try and spark something in him to create something new. To inspire him- not threatening his very life after sucking him into an actual nightmare world. He briefly jumped when a painting of a black cat blinked before it stretched and jumped right out of it’s canvas. He meowed up at him as he rubbed against his leg before scampering off somewhere else. His padding paw steps disappearing down the hall.

Taehyung almost smiled at that.

The two of you walked in silence, the only sound in the gallery was the sound of both of your footsteps and the occasional sound of harmless art brought to life. Taehyung stared at your back as you walked ahead of him and he began to wonder. He wondered about a lot.

He wondered what would happen to you when he managed to get out of this place. What would happen if he tried to maybe take you with him? Could you survive outside this place since you weren’t really born? Would this gallery even exist when he leaves it or would it cease to be?

He stopped in his tracks he he caught himself. Why was he even thinking about taking you with him?

The young artist was ripped from his thoughts when he saw your body jerk forward before you were staggering on your feet then falling to your knees on the tiled floors of the peaceful part of the gallery.

“Shit,” he cursed under his breath as he jogged up behind you. He placed his hand on the middle of your back as he knelt beside you and dipped his head down to try and catch a glimpse of your face. “Y/n, hey!” He called as your body shook and heaved like you were a living breathing person in the midst of a breathing fit. You were a painting with a soul, but not really alive so did you breathe? He found himself asking that to himself way too often.

He shook his head- that wasn’t the thought he needed to overthink right now. “What’s wrong? Talk to me,” he tried coaxing you.

You just shook your hand towards him; whether to shut him up or shoo him away he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t move from your side regardless. When your arm raised, he saw beneath your sleeve a sort of discoloration. It was just like what he saw earlier in the mirror room.

He took your wrist in his hand as he pushed your sleeve up when you suddenly fell into him. He jolted as he rolled you to lay on your side- your head lolling off in a way that looked uncomfortable with your shoulder pushing into the ground. He lifted your head, putting it on his leg to try and help you at least a bit.

You twitched as he examined your skin. It looked like your arm was covered in a horrific bruise. Ugly splotches of black, blue, purples, greens and yellows engulfed your arm like a tattoo sleeve gone horribly wrong. His brows dipped as he looked at the rest of your arm before he looked at the other. It was the same thing, but not nearly as severe in terms of color and blotches. It was like it was spreading.

“What the hell?” He murmured as you seemed to be calming down. You pushed yourself of his leg to lay on your back on the ground as your chest stopped heaving and you stopped twitching. You closed your eyes, focusing on coming back down from whatever attack had ailed you and before too much longer, you were forcing yourself to sit up again.

Taehyung sat beside you, slowly drawing his hand back and away from you as you pushed your sleeve back down to cover your ruined skin. He narrowed his eyes at you as you looked back at him. For someone who wasn’t really alive, you seemed to have bags under your eyes. Something was straining you and you weren’t telling him about it.

“So?” He asked with a sharp tone as you just returned his word with a sigh as an answer. He wanted an explanation and he wanted it sooner rather than later.

“It’s not-”

“Tell me or I’m gonna annoy you continuously until you give in. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

You ticked your eyebrow up at him. “You’re threatening me? You realized I’m the one who’s been taking down everything that has attacked us so far, right?”

“It’s not a threat,” he promised as he crossed his arms sitting on the floor. He looked like a child. In the end you let out another defeated sigh. There would be no point in arguing with him. He’d probably run you in verbal circles until he got his way anyway.

“You know how the rest of the gallery is corrupted, you’ve seen it. Everything in this world that is art is affected.” You grabbed the sleeve of your arm as you sat more comfortably. “Just because I’m fighting against it now, doesn’t mean I’m uneffected. It’s a distortion that affects the arts- good or bad- and we can’t do anything about it. I’m just stubborn.”

Taehyung sat for a moment before opening his mouth again.

“So, you’re going to turn bad too?” He asked timidly.

“It’s unfortunate, but inevitable.”

“That’s crazy,” he whispered to the floors when his chin dipped down. He groaned as he brought his hand up to ruffle his lightly colored hair. You had been protecting him ever since you found him and now there’s a chance you could turn against him too? That was just crazy. You wouldn’t just turn on him like that, right? It’d be gradual and not just flipping a switch from sane to insane, right?

He was pulled from his thoughts again when you moved to stand and he quickly mirrored your actions to stand in front of you. His arms hovered around your waist and back in order to catch you if you happened to fall again.

“Whatever happens, we just need to get you out of here as soon as possible. If we find the exit quickly, we can get you out before I completely lose it.” You turned, ready to start walking off again to explore further when Taehyung shot his hand out and caught your arm.

“Wait!” He shouted, the echoes of his voice bouncing off the white walls adorned with art that wasn’t malicious. “Will you be okay?” He asked even though he really knew the answer. You had just told him that you were going to eventually turn from who you are now to someone else- one way or the other.

You smiled at him, trying your best to reassure him but didn’t offer him a verbal answer. You slowly pulled his hand off you before you were telling him to follow you. His arm dropped back to his side slowly as he looked at your back with sad eyes.

He didn't know what hurt worse; the fact that you basically just told him ‘no’ or the fact that you didn’t say anything for him to understand because even if your eyes are just strokes of paint, they held so much in them and it twisted his gut.

Taehyung wasn’t very fond of the idea that he had to leave the peaceful atmosphere of the white gallery and go back out into the one that actively tried to kill him. His rose was safe in the zipped pocket inside his jacket as opposed to the outside pockets at his sides. He watched before he began to follow you once again.

The drastic difference between the white, bright gallery and the dark, dim, purple backlight one just from passing through a door still through him for a loop each time he went through another passageway. He stopped trying to guess what kind of room he’d be going into, because he’d probably guess wrong every time if he did.

You stayed on guard with your picture frame piece and he stood beside you-more ready to throw down with a sculpture than before- even if he still didn’t want to. He’d tell you what colors were where and lead you in directions if you asked if a certain color was around.

He briefly wondered how you managed to get around before he got there with your inability to see color, but then he stopped thinking about it because if you just went into a room that was filled with a problem- you probably just got rid of it. You were more than capable, you’ve proved that more than enough by this point.

“Taehyung,” you called from ahead of him. He had been so lost in thought his steps had slowed down and he was further back away from you than he knew. “Don’t lag behind.”

“Oh, right,” he called before he was jogging back to your side. Following you through a doorway, he wasn’t as shocked as he should have been to see a room that was dark with only a trunk inside of it. Walking in, you stepped up to it before you tapped it with your frame piece to see if something was inside.

There was only silence before the lid of it burst open.

You jolted, stepping in front of Taehyung as he raised his hand instinctively to maybe try and throw a punch at whatever might leap out of it, but nothing came out. The lid bounced against the back of the trunks frame. The inside of it looked like a pink cloud- it wasn’t empty, just unsettlingly pink. It was like cotton candy or maybe something thicker like thread that could trap you if you touched it.

“What-,” you started before you were yelping into direct fight or flight. The still pinkness in the trunk jolted before it shot out like sentient strings and separated into long, thick arms of darkened red that wrapped around you and Taehyung’s bodies.

Your backs were forced together and to your misfortune, your frame was knocked from your hand and clattered to the ground. The thick strands of red wrapped tightly around your midsections and squeezed as it entangled around your legs and arms and even around your forehead to keep you completely still. Immobilizing the two of you, it then started to slowly reel you in.

Your feet dragged across the ground and your toes lifted up and off the ground at some point as Taehyung was left to keep fumbling over his own feet. He wouldn’t fall no matter how tangled his feet got since he was bound and tied so tightly.

The pair of you were stopped in front of the trunk that seemed to bulge in size- like it was taking into account the size of two people before you were swallowed into the cloud of pink turned red. The sound of the trunks lid slammed above you both boomed like thunder before you were falling.

It felt weightless, but you could feel the wind rushing past you as you were sure you were coming closer to hitting the ground. ��

It was pitch black all around, but you felt Taehyung reach for you- now freed from the strands of red thread that had encased you both. You felt him wrap his arms around your shoulders from in front of you. His chest pushed against yours before his weight overcame your own and he was falling first in front of you.

The fall wasn’t long and it didn’t feel like enough to particularly kill a person, but when the two of you hit the ground with Taehyung bracing the fall you were quick to shoot up from his chest as he groaned laying on his back.

“Are you stupid?!” You scolded as he winced both from your shrieks and the pain of the fall. He sat up, rubbing his back as he just weakly laughed.

“Yeah, so?” Your eye twitched at his lame excuse for a joke at a time like this. As he recovered from his fall and came back to his senses that weren’t cloaked in sensitive fall-stricken shock, you looked around to where exactly you two fell.

It looked like you were pulled into a child’s coloring book. Scratchy, uneven lines of what looked to be crayon or oil chalks were used to make up houses, roads and not too far from you both was a mass of uneven, patchy blue chalk that you assumed was a lake of sorts from its size. It was dark, but it was lit with small patchy lights lining walls or suspending overhead like floating light bulbs.

You made it to your feet after you helped Taehyung, grabbing his hand and offering your shoulder for him to lean on. He graciously took it and you were quick to ask if his rose was alright. He dug it out of the inside pocket of his jacket and showed it to you. A petal or two were missing, but you assumed it was caused from the fall.

No wonder he hurt so much, you mentally noted with an eye roll; his rose was damaged.

You looked around and peered over the chalked created houses. Maybe if you investigated inside one of them, you’d find a vase for him to use to restore his rose petals. You hiked his arm over your shoulder for a more firm grasp on his body's weight on you.

“Alright, first things first,” you started as you got his attention. “We need to find a vase with water to get your rose to grow. That should take the pain away.” He muttered in agreement before both of you walked- ambled- off.

Walking with a body hanging off you was a lot harder than you initially though it would be. He would walk the best he could, but the injury and loss of his petals were obviously affecting him more than he was willing to let on.

The first house you both entered was a small one outlined in pink chalk and inside was just one big open room with a drawn, blue couch, a table and a coat rack. On the table was a vase, but it was empty. If it wasn’t all black and white to you, maybe you would have found the place almost charming in it’s own way- but it was just dull.

You quickly moved Taehyung to the couch and told him to stay put. Taking the vase you left the house and quickly moved down the chalked, dirt road down the lake you saw. Maybe you could put some of the fake water into the vase and just somehow make it work, who knows.

Making it to the lake, you knelt and dipped the vase into the mass of blue as it filled the vase. Your arm twitched before it was jerked and convulsed with it’s own corruption again and the vase slipped from your fingers for just a moment- but that moment was enough to lose it in the chalky blue mass of scribbles.

Without much thought, you dove into the water, quickly snatched it back and as fast as possible swam and pulled yourself out of the mass before anything that could possibly be in the lake even thought about grabbing you.

You huffed in annoyance as your clothes were dusted with chalk and even though it wasn’t real water- you felt damp. You shook out your sleeves before you got to your feet and went back to Taehyung who was waiting in the house you left him laying on the couch with heavy breaths.

When he saw you, his eyebrow quirked.

“What’re you covered in? Dust?” He asked as you just shook your head, kneeling at the couch side and replacing the vase filled with vibrant blue on the table again.

“Forget about it. Give me your rose, please.” your hand was outstretched and waiting as he quickly pulled it out and handed it to you. You hesitantly placed the stem into the water and let it sink as the blooms of the petals rested against the rim of the vase. You heard Taehyung sigh as if his pain was floating away and to your relief, two petals grew once again. “Thank goodness that actually worked,” you sighed.

Taehyung chuckled beside you. “Yeah, no kidding. That was all assumption- if that had taken more petals off, I think I would’ve passed out or something.”

“You mangled to take four petals of damager before,” you told him. “Besides, you weren’t that injured,” you told him as you took the rose back out of the vase and handed it to him to replace in his jacket. “You just don’t know how to take a fall.”

“Excuse me,” he scoffed in disbelief. “Who was the one who took the brunt of that fall, huh?” He sat up and crossed his arms like a child pouting. “A thank you would be nice to hear, you know.”

Your lips tilted in a smile as you moved to stand up and stretched your arms across your chest. You felt helpless without your frame piece that you had lost before you wound up here with the young, human artist. Looking at him like this, you wouldn’t think he’d be in as much danger as he is. He was in a whole different dimension with enemies at his back almost constantly, but here he was pouting for a ‘thank you’. You chuckled.

“Thank you, Taehyung,” you told him. You weren’t sure if it was the dim lights or maybe your vision going because of your own distorting body, but you thought you saw the blank shade of his skin to your eyes darken. Like color had possibly bloomed over his cheeks.

He cleared his throat before you could ask and he was getting up off the couch, walking to the door of the house. He was ready to leave, but stopped short. You came up behind him and opened your mouth to ask him what the problem was when he spun around and shushed you. He pushed you back and led you behind the couch, crouching down and covering you with himself as you both hid.

You had no idea what he thought he heard, but you kept quiet before you heard the door of the house you both were in squeak open. You looked at Taehyung as he looked up, focusing on listening for any indication of someone coming closer to your hiding place.

You racked your brain trying to think of what or who could be following you both. Had someone been inside the trunk before you and had seen you at the lake? You weren’t sure. You heard them pad into the house before they stopped and then a crash sounded through the walls of the room. The footsteps then walked back out of the room and the door slammed shut.

Taehyung and you stared at each other, still remaining silent for a few more moments before determining you were safe. He let out a breath as he peeked over the couch first and scanned the room. There was no one.

“It’s clear,” he whispered as he stood up and moved away from you as you stood up next to him. Your brows dipped as you saw the vase you had just used to heal Taehyung’s rose shattered into pieces with splashes of blue- grey to your eyes- dusted around the table top and blew onto the floor.

You looked at the door with a narrowed gaze. Just what was that? Could something you didn’t know about be wandering around? Then again, even you didn’t know everything there is to know about this gallery.

“I think we need to hurry,” you muttered, Taehyung quickly agreed as you both scurried out of the house. The two of you walked along the dusty, chalk paths before you were stepping up a set of stairs back into a proper gallery. It led to a section that you recognized. You started walking with ease, knowing what was where in this section and Taehyung took notice of that.

“Do you know where we are? I mean, you’ve known a good part of where we’ve been, but I mean-”

“This is my section of the gallery. My frame is hanging around here, so yes I know it.” You told him, interrupting his rambling for an answer to his question.

“Your frame?”

“Yes. You know I’m just a painting. The frame I was placed in and the frame I came out of is around here.”

“Can I see it?” He asked without much thinking before you stopped and turned to him. He almost slapped a hand over his mouth to keep himself from saying anything else without a filter before you turned on your heel and started off around a corner. “Y/n! Wait!”

“You wanted to see my frame, didn’t you?” You popped your head back around the corner to motion him to follow after you and he did so. He trailed you- just as he had been- and eventually you took him to a deadend hall. At the end of it, on the wall facing the rest of the narrow corridor, was an empty frame. “This is it,” you told him, motioning to it with as little care as you would as if you were showing off a bag of dog food.

The frame was silver and engraved with all sorts of weaves across it. It was sturdy and not undamaged. The glass of the frame was broken; however it must’ve been broken from the inside if the evidence of the glass at his feet was anything to go by. You must have burst from the inside out and created the glass mess in front of it. The plaque under the frame read ‘Leia’ as the young artist looked back to you with wide eyes.

“You’re Leia?” He asked. At the discovery he had a pang of small guilt in his stomach from thinking earlier on that he didn’t even want to see the painting since the rest of the gallery was out for his blood. You blinked at him as you nodded simply.

“That was my title when I was created, but I was given a new name because I was granted a soul and free will within this dimension.” You crossed your arms. “Why does it matter what my art piece name is?”

“It's just that the gallery I came from was named after you,” he told you. “I guess I just never expected you to be the last piece of art from someone- not that it’s a bad thing!” He defended at the unimpressed look in your painted eyes. “It was the discovery of that painting that gave my gallery the name it has. You’re like the main centerpiece of everything.”

You looked blankly at your empty frame.

“I doubt that the ‘Leia’ in the real gallery is like me. I may be ‘Leia’, but I’m more Y/n. It sounds ridiculous, but that painting isn’t me.” You softly traced the silver frame with your fingers before you were turning around again. “Come on, we’ve wasted enough time. No more detours.”

Taehyung was quick to chase after you but he couldn’t think of a thing to say to you. He wanted to talk to fill the silence that gaped between the two of you. Taehyung kept telling himself that he had no reason to try and figure you out, you were a painting for God’s sake. What could he possibly want to know?

Other than everything.

He wondered about a great many things and couldn’t help but overthink what you may or may not have been through. How did you feel about this world? Did you consider it home or maybe a sort of prison you were unfortunately born into. How did this world look to your colorless eyes? Just how did it feel being a painting exactly?

When you were ‘born’ and thrust into a world that was already starting to collapse, how did you survive? Did you fight from the beginning, or not? He wanted to ask all these questions, but he knew that he wouldn’t. It wasn’t his place to ask anyway- this world isn’t his and you weren’t even human.

Taehyung followed behind you as a feeling in his gut started to bloom. He raised his hand to his stomach and palmed it through his shirt as his steps slowed and he watched you ever so slowly get further ahead of him. He felt like he couldn’t do this without answers. So, he acted idiotically and moronically and selfishly.

Without you realizing, you got separated from Taehyung once again- only this time on purpose. The next time you turned around to check on why he was so silent, you stopped in your tracks not seeing him around you.

“Dammit,” you seethed.

-x-x-x-

Taehyung had back tracked all the way to your empty portrait frame. He stood in front of it once more as his fingers traced the letters of your plaque. The letters spelling out ‘Leia’ in fine script before he was tracing the frame itself.

He felt selfish for wanting to know about you- a painting- and keeping himself here in a world that actively tried to kill him longer than he needed to be. He scoffed at himself, his mind remembering how he had judged the artist in the book he had read before and how the artist got attached to something like a painting.

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” he chided to himself.

He needed to go home and although he understood that, he wanted to know more about the living painting that had been protecting him up until this point. The same painting who was slowly getting infected with some weird, paint disease that could turn you against him at the drop of a pen.

He knew he was pressed for time. Time was precious, but he couldn’t help but feel like you were too.

Taehyung inspected the black emptiness of the frame that you had come from and reached his hand out. His hand jerked back when the pads of his fingers weren’t met with the sturdy wall that the frame hung on. Instead, the blackness encased by the silver frame rippled like murky water. It was like a pool of ink as he reached out to it again and started to sink his hand into it further.

He wondered how deep that ink went, how far could he reach inside before it stopped him. Could he be able to submerge himself fully into it, or maybe crawl into the frame like a painting himself.

“But then, what would that accomplish?” He questioned himself with a half-sarcastic attitude. However, even if he knew it was more than likely fruitless, he started to climb inside anyways. The frame was big, so he had no problem with grabbing the edges of the frame, lifting his leg over the bottom ledge of it and heaving himself inside the blackness.

He braced himself, feeling like it would feel like that monster from before that encased him in terror as it threatened his very life. However, this blackness wasn’t like before. It was dark and felt endless, but it lacked the deep pit of dread that the monster had. It felt like something- but he couldn’t place exactly what.

Loneliness maybe? Or perhaps a bittersweet sort of feeling; like being free, yet not being as free as a true human being. He walked around aimlessly in the blackness, feeling less and less like he was walking on the floor. He started feeling weightless, like he was walking on air.

There was clearly no end where he was, and he wasn’t so sure if he really wanted there to be. A light at the end of the tunnel? That wouldn’t apply in this situation and he knew that perfectly well. Or, he thought that would be the case. From behind him, he started to feel something close by, like the feeling of someone standing directly behind your back.

Whirling around, he saw nothing, felt no one and squinted his eyes as his ears started to pick up on some noise around. It sounded like it was echoing around from every direction, but he was still able to follow it- maybe it was because wherever he was in your frame was a directionless void.

It was nowhere and everywhere all at once.

As he walked, the blackness started to slowly light up from a greyscale and before long he was standing in a room. Like, a real room, but in this room he couldn’t touch anything. He was in a studio- covered in easels, paints, canvases, stains and tarps and cloth and everything in between.

However, if he even tried to touch something, his hand would just phase right through the object he wanted to grasp. He walked around the studio before the door to the room opened and hobbled in was an older man whose face he couldn’t see. His face wasn’t even that, it was just black scribbles where the features should have been. Static echoed around the room as he assumed that the old man was trying to speak, but the words didn’t reach Taehyung’s ears.

He walked to an easel that was covered with a white cloth before he set up his area and sat on a stool. He cleaned up some brushes, cleaned his palette and rearranged his paints to suit his needs and wants.

Taehyung watched in silence as the old man began to paint and even though there was clearly a passing of some sort of warped time, in the moment it all felt timeless. The end result was none other than your own portrait. He shouldn’t have been shocked to see your spitting image in your portrait, but he couldn’t help it.

Then the old man just turned his back, his fake face seemingly looking right at the young artist before he pointed at you. More specifically, he pointed to the white space of your canvas and Taehyung could have sworn he saw it ripple like water.

The setting of the studio began to suddenly fade out as he started hearing murmuring in the distance echoing around him. It sounded unbearably loud as he covered his ears and the studio brushed away in flakes like eraser debris.

“-yung! -hyung!” He felt like his head was about to burst as he felt something grab the back of his jacket and yank him backward. He was then tumbling out of your frame, out of the void and onto the floor of the demented gallery. “Taehyung!” Someone shouted his name above him as his eyes were blurry and he rubbed at them to try and get them to regain their focus. He blinked as his brows shot up when his eyes shot open wide.

“Namjoon?” There, above him, hovered his best friend. Taehyung quickly whipped around to his stomach before pushing off the ground and looking up to the blog journalist. “What? What are you doing here?”

“I should be asking you that.”

Taehyung was sure he was the only one who happened to fall into this sketched out dangerous gallery. Namjoon wasn’t even where he was left when Taehyung looked for him. He looked his friend over.

“How have you made it this far?” Taehyung was impressed. Aside from the disheveled state of his clothes with wrinkles and small beads of sweat on his brow and temple, he seemed fine.

“It wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you that.” Namjoon groaned as he pulled the artist off the floor and straightened out his jacket, brushing him off. “I’ve been running around like crazy for hours looking for you.”

Taehyung was shocked and honestly glad to see a familiar face. Then you came to mind. He wondered if you were looking for him after he just decided to pull that disappearing act on you. He felt guilty about it now that his actions settled in. For all he knew, you thought he got himself caught in another dangerous situation when he was really as safe as he could be in the moment.

“Did you happen to pass by a girl? Like, our age but wearing outdated clothing.”

“Someone else? No, I didn’t. Is someone else here?”

Taehyung shook his head. “No, she’s not a person, she’s a painting and- argh forget it! It’s a long story and from the look you’re giving me, you don’t believe me in the first place.”

“How hard did you hit your head when I pulled you out of that thing?” Namjoon asked as he used his thumb to lazily point to your empty frame. Taehyung squeezed his eyes shut as he rubbed at his temples. He remembered the way his head spun when Namjoon started calling him before he was dragged out by the man. His head had pounded just like how it did when he was in the room with the tar monster from earlier.

He tried thinking back to the man in the studio he witness and tried putting together anything that could be used as a clue on how to get home. He seemed to obviously be pointing to something, something Taehyung couldn’t help but feel was important. “Whatever you saw,” Namjoon called his attention, “forget it. It’s probably a trap or something. You can’t trust the things here.”

“Not everything is dangerous,” Taehyung countered with you in mind. “Y/n isn’t.”

Namjoon sighed annoyed. “You don’t know that. You said ‘she’ was a painting, right? You can’t trust something like that thing.”

“Don’t call her a thing,” Taehyung growled. “She’s kept me safe up until this point. Like it or not, I trust her. We need to find her before we get attacked by something.”

“Taehyung-”

“I’m not arguing about this. Finding Y/n takes first priority.” Normally, Taehyung was more than obedient when it came to Namjoon. Not only was he older, but the sense of leadership the older held made it easy to listen. However, Taehyung didn’t feel that air of ‘need to follow’ right now around him.

“What about leaving? What about that priority?”

“She can help us. Y/n comes first,” he finalized before he was turning on his heel and going off into the direction he had fled from your side. Namjoon clicked his tongue as he reluctantly followed behind.

Logically, even Taehyung knew that you’d probably be agitated for prioritizing your location over his freedom and escape out of this place. But, the nagging in his head didn’t let him argue the topic, even with himself. He wasn’t going to just find a way to escape and not tell you goodbye at the very least.

You had done nothing but help and protect him, the least he could do was tell you thank you properly before he left. It was the right thing to do, even if a little bit foolish. He knew that.

To his luck, it didn’t take nearly all that long for him to catch a glimpse of you rushing around a corner. You were jogging around, looking to and fro for something- he knew it was him- and he was quick to start shouting at you with his arm raised in the dark halls. Namjoon stood behind his shoulder, still unhappy.

“Y/n!” He watched your head whip around as you started running towards him. As you didn’t slow down in your approach, the closer you got the more nervous he became before you skit to an abrupt halt at his toes and got up into his face, grabbing his jacket collar.

“Stop going off on your own! Are you stupid or do you want to get attacked again that badly, huh?!” You shouted in rightful anger as he felt sweat gather on his neck. He raised his hands in defense as he slightly pushed your shoulders down to gain some distance away from your rage.

“I know, I shouldn’t have run off.” You slowly released his jacket. “That was my bad and I apologize, but,” he stepped away from you and twisted to show Namjoon. “I managed to find my friend. He was in the gallery with me before I got here. This is Namjoon.”

Taehyung introduced the two of you as you just stared at the man and he stared back in a silent competition that Taehyung definitely picked up on. Clearly, there wasn’t much hope of friendship on the horizon- but he figured you’d cooperate with him so that they could get out safely. You were that kind of person- cooperative if not a bit on the stubborn side.

“You found him, huh? Where?”

“Oh, I went back to your frame and he was there.” Taehyung easily answered, deciding to keep the fact that he crawled into the frame and saw what looked like memories to himself. What if it stirred something up with you? Your mood was already foul enough, he didn’t want to risk it.

He wasn’t one to stir the pot, so to speak.

Your brow twitched at his seemingly carefree manner at his ditching stunt. You groaned as you whacked him on the arm before pointing your finger at his face in a warning manner, making him go cross eyed momentarily.

“You run off like that again, and I’ll tie your wrist to mine. Got it?”

“Promise?” He teased as you just threw your hands in the air in defeat and started walking off. He wasn’t planning on running when your back was turned again. Just that one time was enough. Now that he was with Namjoon too, he couldn’t risk being as careless. “We’re going. Come on.”

“At your beck and call, Leader,” Taehyung chided, still trying to get your spirits higher from the mood he put you in. Namjoon followed behind silently with skeptical eyes as Taehyung chatted with you like he’d known you all his life.

-x-x-x-

Taehyung had since stopped his yammering as you lead the charge of three through halls and told them when to be silent and when to be cautious. You kept a close eye on Namjoon, something about the friend of Taehyung’s rubbing you the wrong way. You couldn’t say whether or not you were a good judge of character since Taehyung was the first human you ever met, but you still felt something off. His cold glare made your artificial skin crawl.

You had just walked through an archway before Taehyung made a noise of recognition as you turned to him. He looked around with wide eyes.

“What is it?”

“I feel like I’ve been in this area before.”

“Really?” You questioned. You’d never really gone into this portion of the gallery. It was always too dark to see and you were always put off by how quiet it was. It was like there was something on the other side of the walls that irked you. “Maybe you passed by here before I found you. I’ve never been in this part before.”

“You haven’t been here? I thought you had been everywhere.” Taehyung wasn’t accusing you, he was just curious. He wanted to know why you hadn’t been here.

“I had no reason to be,” you told him. “Besides, I don’t think a creature like me who’s slowly corrupting belongs in a tranquil part of this place.”

“So,” Namjoon finally intervened from behind the two of you. You both turned to look at his cross-armed figure, still glaring and fuming with some odd sense of presence you hated. “You admit you’re dangerous?”

Your brows furrowed. “Excuse me?”

“You said you’re corrupting. So? That sounds like a red-flag if I’ve ever heard one.”

“I’m sorry,” you scoff in disbelief, “has it been you getting Taehyung through this place in one piece? Or maybe it was you who has been taking down threats left and right and going on wild goose chases when things go south. No?”

“Guys-” Taehyung tried dispersing the stifling air, but Namjoon’s ire interrupted him. You both went back and forth and before long you were at Namjoon’s toes, arguing with him face to face- quite literally. Taehyung watched as he tried to think of a way to calm you both down. The last thing he wanted was to both waste time and have the two sides of his trust arguing against each other.

Taehyung was going to open his mouth and shout or something, just to break the string of tension, but his jaw had just dropped when you had stopped mid-sentence. Your hand was raised, an accusatory finger pointed at his best friend’s chin when it started to drop just a fraction to his chest.

“Y/n?” Taehyung called. He shrieked when your hand came to grip his chin, squeezing his jaw as you yanked Namjoon’s face down to look into his eyes. “Woah! Y/n, c-calm down!” You narrowed your eyes before you shoved him away, making his feet stumble back a handful of steps to keep himself upright. Taehyung came to your side as you shook your hand as if it was contaminated. He looked you over and noticed the uneasy look on your face. “What’s-”

“Why are you sticking to that painting like glue?” Namjoon called to Taehyung as he rubbed his jaw. “I’m your friend here, not that.” Taehyung looked up and towards the journalist with confliction.

“T-that’s true, but-”

“But nothing. That thing just grabbed and shoved me, but you’re at it’s side like I did something wrong. You should be checking on me, not fawning over that.” He pointed at you, his eyes grew small in anger as you just shot back at him a silent glare.

Taehyung was less than pleased to keep hearing Namjoon refer to you as ‘it’ or a ‘thing’. Painting or not, you were still alive and, dammit, Namjoon needed to accept that already. He was ready to tell him off, defend you when you spoke first in a low tone.

“Do you trust me?” You asked. You were looking dead at Namjoon, but the artist knew you were addressing him. You repeat the question when you’re met with only silence. Taehyung immedately nodded when the question was repeated.

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“WHY?!” He jumped from Namjoon’s shriek across from the two of you. Your shoulders squared and the action didn’t go unnoticed. “Why trust something you just met?! Who is admitting to killing things and slowing losing its mind?!” His brought his hands to his chest, gesturing to himself. “You should be trusting me!”

“What is wrong with you,” Taehyung whispered in concern, wondering what happened to his best friend. He was normally the type to roll with anything, even in stressful situations he always tried to take it with a grain of salt. He was an optimist, or at least he always tried to be. No matter the dark tunnel, there’s always a light; it was basically Namjoon’s life motto. “Did something happen? Stop accusing Y/n and just talk to-” he gasped when he felt your hand grasp his. Your face was downcast as you squeezed his palm. “Y/n?”

You whipped your head up and looked at him dead in the eyes. “We have to run.” Taehyung jolted back. Run? From what? You looked back at Namjoon, your colorblind eyes slowly unveiling just who and what that best friend of Taehyung’s was. “We need to get away from him as soon as possible. He’s dangerous.”

“What?” Taehyung was in instant denial. Namjoon? Dangerous? The same Namjoon who would cry if one of his plants died or would lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling if someone asked him what his favorite brand of pen is for the hundredth time? “That’s not true, he’s-” Taehyung looked at his best friend to defend him, but stopped short.

Something about him was off. Taehyung had noticed it since the beginning, but dismissed it all. Now, it looked like some veil of black was hovering around his friend’s body as he glared at you. Namjoon didn’t look like himself. He looked fake and at that, Taehyung’s eyes widened.

He looked artificial- just like how you did to his human eyes.

You must have seen it in his eyes, that’s why you grabbed his chin to inspect him further. That’s why you shoved him away and that’s why you wanted Taehyung to flee.

Your hand dropped his as you caught sight of the thing disguised as Taehyung’s friend moving just slightly. You stepped in front of the artist before you took off before ‘it’ could. It lunged and you were quick to react. You lifted your foot and slammed it into it’s stomach as it leaned forward- not at the lack of air, but the force you put into your stomping. You locked your arm around the back of its neck as you tucked it’s head under your arm and held it in place in a lock.

You groaned as you felt your arms burn with contamination again and your grip almost loosened at the paintings thrashing because of it. You planted your feet as firmly as you could, even if the thrashing made you teeterd from your heels to your toes and skid an inch back or forward here and there.

You weren’t sure how long you’d be able to keep the thing under your arm contained and although you had just told Taehyung not to leave your side again, you were ready to tell him to run off and hide somewhere until you could find him.

The moment you turned your head on your shoulders to shout for him to do so, you halted to see him literally at your back already. His large hands had planted themselves one on your back to steady you and the only ensnared in the fake Namjoon’s clothed back, gripping it’s clothes firmly. Even the fabric felt like paint under his nails as he started to rip the thing away from you.

Taehyung caught sight of the fake’s face and what used to be identical to Namjoon had muddled away to show a white tar surface with no sense of expression. He sneered as he took your place of taking it on before he was shoving it backward.

Although he wasn’t a fighter, Taehyung was no push over. He could hold his own if he really ended up needing to and at the moment, he did. He pushed the fake as it stumbled on it’s own clumsy feet before it started to go after him again. Taehyung swung his elbow out, cathing the fake in the whiteness of it’s face before it hit the ground.

He backed up away from the thing he just put on the ground, turning to you and snatching your hand in his again.

Taehyung’s hand squeezed yours and when he did, you spun on your heels and took off, fleeing with the young artist beside you. You both heard ‘Namjoon’ scream behind your backs as Taehyung looked back to see it still laying on the floor, skriming.

Taehyung was terrified, more terrified than he was before. He was terrified on how it gained his trust so easily- a thought that almost made him angry. He felt stupid as he held onto your hand like a linelife as you weaved through the halls and soon came to a staircase.

You stopped as you looked over your shoulder as Taehyung buckled to his knees and heaved after sprinting for so long. He used the wall to support himself as you looked at him trying to gather his breath.

You looked at your hand in his and attempted to pull it away from him, but he just squeezed tighter onto you and tugged it back.

“A little longer,” he whispered. After a few minutes of him gathering himself and you making sure you both weren't followed, he stood back to his height and continued to hold you hand. “Hey,” he called with a tight throat. “If we run into anyone else, if you don’t trust them, tell me and I won’t either.” You didn’t say a word to try and deter him from using your judgement as his own, you simply nodded in agreement.

If all worked out, he wouldn’t need to use your opinions for much longer. You were going to get him out.

The two of you ascended the staircase before you and when you reached the top, Taehyung looked around to see the spitting image of the original gallery.

The white walls and matching floors and ceilings. The chandeliers that weren’t on with the power out and the windows all greyed out as if they were blocked by cement. The front doors were locked as if there was no escape. Trying a switch, he wasn’t shocked to see the lights not working.

“Can you lead from here,” you asked him, just trying to get him to talk again. “I don’t know my way around.” He only nodded before he was walking off, tugging you in tow as you thought of ways to make his voice come out again. You felt oddly uneasy when he was silent. The previous incident with the fake friend of his obviously taking a mental toll on him. It was to be expected, but it still hurt your chest.

If you had a beating heart, you’d call this feeling heartache.

It was when you passed by a rather mundane looking couch that was suclupted in a strange, wavey shape when you figured out a way to get him to talk. You stopped and your hand in his anchored him when he looked over his shoulder. When he looked at you, you pointed to the sofa surrounded in rope dividers.

“What colors is that?” You asked when you looked back at him. Your actions and unspoken desire to get his voice to come out didn’t go unnoticed-

He smiled. “It’s red,” he told you.

-Nor did it go unappreciated.

From that, he would tell you the colors of whatever you pointed at that you passed and before he knew it he had come to a deadend with only one, giant painting on the wall- taking up the entire space of it. His mouth opened as his hand dropped from yours as he looked at it.

“That’s,” he looked at it as his eyes ran over every edge. “That looks like the gallery. The real one,” he smiled as he gazed at it. This was it, his way out. He felt in his bones that this was his exit. His hand reached to touch the canvas, but gasped when his hand just phased right through. It was just like how your frame was. He could climb into this and be somewhere else.

Then he felt a chill run down his spine and a heavy feeling fall in his gut. He pulled his hand back as he turned around and looked at you. You were well behind him against the back wall, your hands behind your back as you watched him.

“What?” You asked. This was his way out and you both knew it. You expected him to jump on through and finally be free of this hellscape, but instead he made his way back to you and away from his exit door disguised as a painting. He stood in front of you, toe to toe as he looked at you.

Taehyung gazed at you, his eyes began to sting as they felt misty. This was ridiculous, he felt ridiculous. How could he cry about leaving you behind when he just met you? You didn’t belong in his world and he knew that just as much as you. Yet, the feeling of parting ways with you made his throat tight.

“I’m leaving,” he told you. “And I won’t ever see you again,” he choked. You were shocked to see the first tear run down his face. You wondered if tears were blue. You brushed it away with the back of your hand as more just kept coming. He could see the distortion on your skin under your sleeve from the angle of you wiping his tears and he just wanted to cry more.

His mind started becoming delusional.

If he chose not to leave and stayed put with you, would you hurt him? Would you hunt him down in time and kill him like the others had before? Would he lose his humanity even? Turn into a painting and spend the rest of his time with you. You wouldn’t be alone if he did. What if he tried to take you back with him? Would you just disintegrate into paint splotches because you had no physical body to speak of?

So many hypotheticals and you wouldn’t allow any of them to come to fruition.

“Go home, Taehyung,” you told him softly with a smile, the hand you placed on his cheek rubbed his skin before letting it softly fall. You urged him, not commanded him and he knew he had to go. He sniffled as he grabbed your hands and held them again. “What, you want a hug goodbye or something?” You teased but when he didn’t reply, you rolled your eyes. “You do, don't you?”

“And? What about it,” he sniffed as he pouted. You pulled your hands away from his, even if he chased after them when you did. You swatted at his hands that tried grabbing yours once more.

“Do you want me to hug you or not?” You asked in impatience while he nodded like a child. “Then let my hands go.” He immediately abandoned your hands and wrapped his arms under your own and pulled you to your toes against his chest. You felt your chest hit his with a dull thud as he held you like you were dying.

Well, you sort of were, but he didn’t need the finer details repeated on your unavoidable fate.

He started swaying you on your toes as he found a home on your shoulder. One of your hands was on his head, shushing him and the other pat his back between his shoulders. He really was like a giant child. Was this what a goodbye hug felt like? It felt nothing like the hug he gave you when he was attacked previously and reunited with him. This one felt much more sad- desperate even.

“Teahyung,” you whispered as you felt him hum against your shoulder. “You need to go.”

“I know,” he admitted before he started to pull away from you when your hands moved to land on his shoulders to push him softly. His eyes looked swollen and wondered what color the skin around his eyes were. It looked darker to your black and white vision. “I think- I think I’m going to miss you. A lot.”

You brought a hand to his cheek again, stroking it as you smiled at him.

“You’ll forget a painting like me in no time,” you eased. He frowned at that, wanting to hug you again, but you just pushed him away. Turning him by his shoulders, you started to push him from behind to the frame before you came to his side. You gestured towards it. “Home is waiting for you.”

He swallowed another large lump in his throat. He curled his lips over his teeth to keep from crying anymore. He was so overly emotional and he was annoying himself because of it. He could only imagine how you felt watching his waterworks.

“What’s going to happen to you?”

“I’m going back to my frame,” you told him. “I’ll go back to my home too,” you smiled. He felt a small sliver of relief at your answer. “We’ll both go back to where we belong, just as he should. It’ll be okay.” You pat his back. “I promise.” You felt bad, lying straight to his face like that.

He nodded before he grabbed the inside of the frame, and began to hull himself over. He had one knee resting on the frame edge and the other still hanging out when he turned and looked down at you hovering above you on the wall. He reached in his jacket and pulled out his rose before he handed it to you. It was a silent agreement as he passed it onto you- he knew he wouldn’t need it anymore. You’d keep it safe even if he wasn’t there anymore and he knew you would.

He put on his brightest smile, “see you around, Y/n,” before he jumped completely through.

As his body faded into the stretched, painted fabric of the canvas and the frame seemed to close like a locked portal that you couldn’t ever even think about passing through, you fell to the ground, screaming as your body felt like it was on fire.

You laughed bitterly as you were just relieved that the one precious person you managed to meet in your miserable existence as a painting without a future was someone as kind and warm as Taehyung.

-x-x-x-

Taehyung felt dazed.

He was staring at a plaque as his eyes were bleary like he had just woken up from a long nap. He felt like yawning before he felt a shake on his shoulder. He lifted his head, rubbing his eyes.

“Hey,” Namjoon called with concern written on his face, “what’s with you? You zoned out for like two minutes.”

“I dunno,” he replied. He moved to look at the giant painting of a black location with messy brushes of what looked like some haunted locations. “I feel like I just woke up from a really nap.” He yawned as he read the name of the painting loud to himself. “Parallel Reality,” the words read and they sounded familiar to him. “I feel like I'm forgetting something,” he frowned. “Didn’t the lights go out a little while ago or something?”

“Dude,” Namjoon’s hand fell from his friend’s shoulder. “You really need to get some proper sleep if you’re taking micro-naps, standing up, around this many people and dreaming about power-outages.” It was only then that the artist was aware of all the sounds around him- buzzing from every corner of the building.

“I don’t wanna hear that from the reigning champ of disarranged sleep schedules.”

The journalist and young, free-lance artist continued walking around the blinding white gallery. People crowded the place and the murmur of them all talking in whispers comforted Taehyung for a reason he couldn’t exactly explain.

He and Namjoon had started down the final hall they had left to view. The sme hall that happened to contain the naming right to the gallery in the first place. At the end of the hall, hanging on the dead-end wall was the one painting called ‘Leia’. The piece Taehyung came to see specifically to see if he could be sprung out of his art-block.

As he stood in front of the painting, he inspected it.

It was a young woman dressed in dated clothes with her eyes looking off to almost mimic looking off the canvas. Her legs were coiled in thorns and she looked like she was running from something, but with a protective sense and not a fearful one. She held a blue rose in her hand as the silver, engraved frame encased the painting.

The piece wasn’t what he was expecting, but somehow looking at the piece, he felt calm despite the action set formed in brush strokes. As the tour guide in charge of 'Leia’ began to explain how it was the artist’s last piece, Taehyung began to zone out again, while Namjoon scribbled down notes beside him.

As she yammered on and on, Namjoon soon caught sight of his friend’s face. He stopped his writing as he lifted his pen up and lowered his arm to tuck it away in his pocket,. When his hand was free of any writing utensil, he placed it on Taehyung’s back.

“Hey,” he whispered softly to not gain attention from the other’s standing around them. “Why are you crying?”

Taehyung jolted as he quickly brought his hands to his face.

He was crying.

When did he start and why? He wiped them away only for more to follow through. He was soon silently hunched over sobbing. Why did he feel this way by looking at a painting? Art had always given him a sense of emotion- but he hadn’t felt such sorrow before.

“I don’t know,” he whimpered as Namjoon took him to some place less crowded. As Taehyung calmed down, he felt oddly refreshed.

“You okay now? I’ve got enough notes for an entry if you want to leave.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I want to go home and paint,” he announced as Namjoon smiled, happy to see a spark behind Taehyung’s eyes return. The spark of an artist that had finally overcome his art-block.

“Alright, then let’s get going.” As the two men walked out, reception bidding them farewell, Namjoon started making conversation. “So, what do you want to paint?”

“I’m not sure, but maybe a blue rose garden or something. Paired with something old fashioned, like outdated clothing or old picture books. I’ll figure it out when I get to my studio.”

He didn’t voice it, but he knew he’d be back to view ‘Leia’ again, and this time he wouldn’t cry. The calmness he felt from the painting- regardless of his tears- was like being reunited with an old friend.

What kind of man would Taehyung be if he cried in front of a friend?

-END-

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