#well my talking to much on this app is momentarily back

[brutal-out-here]

I got good news and bad news (maybe) about me forgetting how to be a person yesterday

[nnight-dances]

REPETITION / RARE LOVE

pairings: kim mingyu x fem!reader (ft. yoon jeonghan)

genre: fluff, angst, suggestive & sexual content

tropes: best friends to lovers, idiots to lovers (except mingyu's the only idiot), pining, flirting

warnings: explicit language, banter, alcohol consumption, borderline jeonghan slander but it's okay because i would die for the man, has been proofread by me once but only barely. kazuha (le sserafim) is your roommate, huh yunjin is present.

WHAT TO EXPECT

it's simple enough: you and mingyu are perfect for each other. you've told him as much but after years of him avoiding the topic, you leave him alone. but when your long-time infatuation with jeonghan gets rejected, you have nothing to distract you from your desire to be with mingyu. all it takes is you making out with the wrong person and a can of beer for mingyu to come to his senses. (about 11k)

OR: maybe you don't hate repetition as much as you claim to.

SEQUEL OUT NOW!

“why are men on tinder actually vile?” you question out loud, not quite expecting an answer as your eyes continue to read the offensive opener you’d received from a recent match. mingyu, who’s crouched on the desk across from you, frowns.

“y/n, we’re meant to be studying,” he points out, “but also i thought you were over tinder?”

you look at him blankly, “i am! i just gotta finish what i started you know…”

mingyu looks deeply disappointed in you and you slide your phone across to him, “look at this message i just got! it’s disgusting! i don’t need to know if someone’s wet at the thought of—”

“god, y/n, do you have to scream?” he asks as he takes hold of your phone, busying his fingers probably with blocking the guy. you momentarily look back at your screen where the black document meant to be the outline for your final art history paper taunts you.

you sigh, looking down at your phone when mingyu returns it. “i paused your account and deleted the app.” you sigh yet again, “man! if you were gonna uninstall it without my permission you should’ve just deleted my account.”

“you’d just make another one anyway,” he shrugs, “plus, this way when you go back you’ll remember why you left in the first place.”

you grumble something under your breath but resume your attempts at writing. mingyu smiles a little as he goes back to his own work. a beat passes before, he puts his pen down again and when he sees you’re staring at your screen distantly, he asks, “did you talk to jeonghan yet?”

you gasp at the mention of your years-old crush, glancing around you as if you weren’t in a private study room (because apparently the only way either of you could get anything done was while talking to each other). “what?” mingyu continues, “one of us had to address the elephant in the room.”

“wow, you’re just the worst friend ever, aren’t you? it’s like you can’t read rooms at all. i clearly did not want to talk about jeonghan.”

“well, now you are. so you might as well be honest with me. did you think about confessing to him?”

you deflate, stomach suddenly uneasy, “no. i don’t think i will. i don’t need him to know.”

“you kinda do. y/n, look at me,” mingyu knocks on the wood to demand your attention, “it’s the only way you’ll ever have an answer.”

“i don't want an answer.”

“…”

"because i'm going to move on from him!"

"..."

“okay, well, i’m starting to! just watch me, okay? i have the agency to not be completely consumed by my very shallow attraction to a very attractive and impressive man.”

“right. you just used attractive twice in a sentence— and no, i don’t care if it wasn’t the same form of the word, you absolutely hate redundant things. and yet, you refuse to recognize the way out of this pattern of yours.”

“you are so tiring, mingyu, you know that? exhausting, even. i don’t want to do this anymore.” you shake your head at him, suddenly invigorated to finish this damn preliminary proposal of yours.

—

yunjin cackles as she plops down across from you in the dining hall, finding you scrolling ever so dedicatedly on pinterest. “what’s this?”

you look up at her with a pout, “i need a dress for hoshi’s little party. it’s in two weeks and i have zero options.”

“fuck, i knew i was forgetting something,” she grimaces in her typical huh yunjin way and shifts closer, “i need to find something for that too. can’t just wear a corset and call it day since he’s labelling it a formal and whatnot.”

“he really is the worst,” you agree, pausing to muse over a pretty white dress with red roses all over it. “hmm, what about this one?”

yunjin tilts her head and nods as she looks between you and the dress, probably imagining you in it. then, you sigh, “it’s just i don’t think red is my color like that.”

you’re about to elaborate when you hear a gasp from behind you, “that is simply not true!” you don’t have time to react when a figure slides in next to you. goddamnit, it’s jeonghan, you realize, trying hard to keep it together when his shoulder comes to sit next to yours. “you absolutely fucking rock the color red.”

“i do?” is all you can muster as yunjin chokes out a badly covered laugh. you glare at her, “what’s funny, jen?”

“hah, nothing, i agree with jeonghan, you’d look lovely in red.”

you frown, unconvinced as you scroll some more, feeling dizzy from jeonghan’s presence.

“preparing for hoshi’s party i presume?” jeonghan asks and you nod. “i’m so stressed, i have nothing and it’s approaching so fast.”

“you have time though,” he reassures but you’re quick to protest, “i’m not going to have any time next week because we’re organizing that night flea market. i’ll be running around campus so i need to take a trip this week.” the beauty of going to a college with an isolated campus: peace and you gotta plan every time you leave campus because there’s a singular bus that takes you to the city. it’d be a whole day trip for you if not for mingyu, who thankfully has a car that he can drive.

“ahh, tell me when you’re going into the city, y/n,” yunjin pats you, “i gotta go too.”

you nod and then remember, “right of course, i just remembered kazuha saying she wanted to come too.”

“nice,” yunjin approves, “we need all the opinions we can get. did you get mingyu to agree to drive you yet?”

“i texted him earlier but he hasn’t replied, which is slightly concerning because he may not know how to spell but he does write back very fast.”

jeonghan chuckles, “mind if i join you guys too?”

you stop in your tracks, turning to face him, “you wanna come shopping with us?”

he nods, that sweet smile of his plastered across his face, “yeah, i could use a new formal outfit. i’m tired of wearing the same black suit to everything.” he nudges your side, “plus, you guys could help me out. i can never decide on anything all alone.”

—

“maybe i should just not go,” you groan with your head in your hands. mingyu rolls his eyes, slapping your back, “why would not go? if your problem’s with jeonghan, he should be the one to stay back. not you.”

you sit back up, staring at the eggs in your plate. beside you, mingyu chugs his glass of orange juice, and you lean against him. “god, i hate him so much. do you wanna go see if the playground’s free?”

“right now?” mingyu looks at the time. it’s 11 am on saturday, still an hour from the time everyone agreed to meet in front of mingyu’s car, which is conveniently parked right across from the playground. as if following your line of thought, he grins, “alright. but you finish your food first.”

you sigh, “okay, mom, i will.”

five minutes later find you racing mingyu for the best swing in the playground— months of visiting the place had taught you the first swing was the only one that didn’t creak too loud and experienced the least amount of bumps during the ride. mingyu’s fast but you’re stubborn so you reach out for his arm midway, sticking your nails into the skin, knowing how dramatic he is about these things.

he gasps, “DO NOT CLAW ME.” strong as he might be, he slows down to rip your grip off. you seize the opportunity, getting a headstart and laugh when you reach the swing before him, sitting down firmly before mingyu can pull you away.

“that’s cheating, y/n, you know it!”

“hey, you’re the one that has an advantage. you go to the gym like eight times a week. i go like thrice a month.”

“sounds like someone’s lazy and whiny to me.”

you smile, “someone lazy wouldn’t win that race. and you’re the one that’s whining,” you point to his stance, his arms at his hips like an affronted toddler. he loosens his body with a pout as he walks over to the second swing. “whatever.”

time passes a little too fast for you two when you’re fighting like this because kazuha’s running over to you, breathless. “y/n! what are you guys doing?”

“zuha, hi! did you—”

“yep, i got your lip gloss.”

you chuckle, throwing your arms around her, “why are you the best roommate ever?”

mingyu scoffs, “what about you being the worst roommate ever?”

kazuha laughs, too nice to agree with him, “hey, that’s not true.” you hit him in the side, “you’re just jealous that you’re in a single. i guess money really does make people lonely.”

“i’d go for a double even if i was that rich,” jeonghan’s voice pops up from beside you. he sure has a knack for appearing out of thin air. “i couldn’t handle being alone.”

“not everyone can love themselves as much as i do,” mingyu shrugs, smugly as crosses his arms. “i’m self-sufficient like that.”

“if you guys are done, we should start moving,” comes yunjin’s voice from near mingyu’s car, “it’s already fifteen past 12.”

“i call shotgun!” yunjin shouts and you’re quick to fight back, “no way, i already called it.”

“if i didn’t hear it, then it doesn’t count,” she teases, leaning against the passenger side. you glare at mingyu, “i called it in front of mingyu! the driver is the one that counts.”

mingyu laughs at the petty fight, “y/n did call it earlier this morning.”

“that’s not fair! mingyu’s obviously going to take y/n’s side, you guys spend every breathing minute together. the rest of us don’t stand a chance.”

you smirk, “don’t be a sore loser, huh yunjin, you can call it when we’re coming back. if you remember to.”

“i hate you,” she mutters as everyone settles into the car.

“i’m open to music requests, dear friends,” you announce once you’ve started off. “but i reserve the right to reject any tasteless songs.”

“isn’t this the textbook example of a tyranny?” jeonghan breathes and you shoot him a look over your shoulder, “hey, the power comes with the seat. it’s natural selection.”

mingyu groans through laughter, “you know you don’t make any sense. just play some music.”

you roll your eyes, “he says as he laughs his fat ass off.”

“she’s just salty my ass is fatter than hers,” he mutters under his breath. the three in the backseat break into laughs at that, all at your expense as you gape at them. such betrayal.

“i don’t know why i call you friends. you’re monsters.”

kazuha pipes in, “y/n, are you calling your sweet roommate a monster right now?”

jeonghan is quick to join in, “honestly, i’d say kazuha is the nicest friend among us here.”

“fine, everyone but zuha’s out to get me right now.” the screaming continues for a little bit longer until yunjin and kazuha tire themselves out and pass out. you chuckle when you look at them, yunjin’s head bobs in the middle of the three until it hits kazuha’s shoulder, whose head then rests on top.

swiftly, you pull out your phone camera and capture the moment, sure to tease them later. as you’re clicking the photos, jeonghan’s face sticks into the corner with a sneaky grin and you shift the angle to include him. enjoying the attention, he shoots the camera a peace sign, followed by a little heart, and then a cheek heart and now he’s a bunny and then—

you pull yourself away abruptly with a shaky laugh, “god, jeonghan, this isn’t a photoshoot.”

he laughs back, “ha ha, sorry, i can’t help myself. it’s so fun to tease you like this.”

you feel the blood rush to your face at that, so you turn to face the road completely, a weak, “fuck off” on your tongue. mingyu silently observes the interaction, not without a little side-eye that you don’t know what to think of. “you should get some rest, y/n, you didn’t sleep last night.”

you frown, surprised mingyu knows that and you don’t get to ask him why he knows that because jeonghan interrupts, “you guys sure are close. i was talking to hoshi the other day, he misses y’all a lot.”

“he does? he can just come talk to us whenever though,” mingyu replies, doubt tracing his tone. “i don’t think we’re exclusive like that.”

“right?” you agree, “we used to be so close to hoshi, too, and then he moved to the other side of campus this semester and now i have like one class with him.”

“i don’t know,” jeonghan says, “you should talk to him about it, but there’s always been something stronger about the two of you together.”

you shrug, “we always end up together. it’s not that deep i think. it’s just how it is.”

the topic ends there as jeonghan agrees and dozes off himself too. you, however, feel eerily awake. awake? no, more like unsettled. something in your nerves is off and you feel on edge. you’re a little spaced out after that, as you finally reach the city circle with all the shops crowded next to each other with a little mall in the center.

as everyone gets off and gathers their things, mingyu pulls you aside with a concerned look, “are you okay, y/n?” his grip on your elbow grounds you a little. you inhale, knowing better than to pretend in front of him, “yeah, just a little uneasy. i don’t know why. probably just tired.”

mingyu looks like he knows something more about your condition, “are you sure? we can take a break at one of the restaurants before shopping if you want?”

“nah, i’m okay, don’t worry. i’m a strong girl,” you smile, reasurring him with a pat to his chest, “i feel better now. thanks, mingyu.”

he frowns, hand loosening against your skin, “you never thank me, weirdo. don’t be so formal.”

“man, there’s no winning with you, is there?”

he chuckles as he pulls you after the others, “no, i’m insatiable.”

—

an hour into shopping, you realize why you hate doing this. everything is so overwhelming when you’re in the city, so many people, so many clothes. at least you have friends with you as you scan racks after racks, ending up with three potential dresses on your arm. you mutter a prayer in your head that you can find something nice here so you don’t have to walk more. this is already your third store.

the first one is a classic: a little black dress. it’s satin so it sits smooth against your skin and feels soft when you twirl around. it’s a little short for your liking, perhaps too tight against your ass. you turn to the side to get a better look. you take a photo and send it to mingyu, who you’d been going back and forth with. he’d last sent you a photo ten minutes ago: him in a stupid minion onesie. you’d cursed him out real well in response telling him to stop fucking around. he writes back fast.

big gyu: u look good

big gyu: kinda basic tho

you: yea i thought so too

you agree with that, putting the dress aside in case you don’t find anything else at all.

candidate number two is more over the top: a long red dress with little black patterns on it, with a leg slit on one side. getting into it was a whole struggle but you get it on finally. it fits well thanks to the slit which also shows off some skin. you’re hot in it: like literally. the long sleeves don’t help at all. but you look good too, the flare doing wonders for your figure. you pause, sending a photo hoping mingyu would be of help.

however, when mingyu takes longer than a minute to reply, you groan, already sweating a little. concluding that he’s probably changing or something, you peek out your curtain, hoping yunjin was still in the stall next to yours. you call out her name, straining your neck to see if there was anyone else you could ask for help.

you spot jeonghan walking around the shelves near the fitting rooms and before you can hesitate to call him over, he notices your head poking out. he raises an eyebrow, sending your heartbeat into a spiral. “y/n? do you need help?”

you clear your throat, “um, yeah, i need a second opinion on this dress.” jeonghan approaches your corner and you panic when he reaches for the curtain to draw it back. his eyes question you, “can i look?” you let go of it to let him in, a tiny little rational part of you wondering he needed to come inside the room to see.

“ohhh,” he exclaims as he takes you in, “you look amazing. told ya red was your color.”

you turn away from him a little, “this dress is hot.”

“it sure is,” he agrees and you blush harder, “no i meant, like literally. i’m so hot right now.”

jeonghan presses his lips together, giving away the fact that he understands but being the little bitch he is, he chooses the option that makes you wanna combust. he presses two fingers to your cheek and mumbles, “yeah, you are.”

you push his arm off, “yoon jeonghan! you’re such a damn flirt! get out of here.” you force him out of your space and he’s uncontrollably laughing as he lets you. “i’ve another dress to try so wait outside for me.”

“sure you don’t need a hand changing—”

“no, thank you very much!” you scream, greeted with more pleased chuckling. your phone buzzes, catching your attention. you lean down to look at it.

big gyu: niceee thats hot

big gyu: u should get this dress

big gyu: pls

big gyu: pls

you: …girl why are u begging me

big gyu: because.

big gyu: you’re getting this dress right

you: no i’d die of overheating in it

big gyu: and it’d be worht it

you: i dont like how enthusiastic u are about this...

you: wtv this one's rejected.

you: i still have another dress to try

you put your phone down to try the final dress. this one was a purple slip dress with white flower detailing. it was skin tight against your boobs and a little transparent, giving away your black bra underneath. and to contrast, it sat a little loose on your hips which was honestly not the worst look, keeping from the dress becoming too scandalous. you enjoyed this dress the most so far. that was enough, given the track record.

“you done, y/n?” you’re startled when the voice outside is mingyu’s instead of jeonghan. you pull back the curtains in confusion, “gyu? what’re you doing here?” mingyu stops short, “fuck, i like this one.” you flush a little when you notice his eyes settle on your chest for a beat too long. “that’s stunning, for real.”

you laugh. “look at you using big words. but yeah, i think this is the one.” you look over at him, “did jeonghan leave?”

“um, yeah, he said he had to use the washroom when i ran into him on the way,” he mumbles. you nod, a little relieved because you think you’d die if he saw you right now. “anyway, i’m offended you were showing him your dresses and then all i got was a photo.”

“hey, you were taking so long to reply that i had seek someone else out. he just happened to be her.”

mingyu ignores that and tells you to hurry up, “i need your help choosing something for myself.”

“ugh, alright, give me five.”

in the end, you decided you’d get both the classic black dress and the slip dress, you needed more dresses in general. wouldn’t hurt to have more. when you’re done checking out, you find mingyu in conversation with kazuha who’s smiling with a shopping bag in her hands.

“zuha, you get anything?” you ask. she nods eagerly, “yeah! i got this pink dress that jeonghan helped me find just now. it’s really pretty, i’ll show you later in the room.”

you falter a little at that, glancing at mingyu who’d told you he went to the washroom. ignoring the growing unsettling gut feeling, you inform her you’d found something too. “nice, we should have a try-on in the room later.”

“you guys!!” yunjin joins the group, “this is insane. i hit the jackpot and found the sexiest green dress ever.” you laugh, linking arms with her, “you should come over later and try it on with us.”

“ah, the beauty of womanhood,” mingyu grumbles beside you, and you shove him. “you’re not invited, pervert.”

his jaw falls open, “excuse me? what did you just call me?”

you press an index finger into his bicep, “don’t think i didn’t notice you checking my boobs out earlier.” mingyu’s cheek redden at the light-hearted accusation, worsening when jeonghan appears right at the climax of the argument.

“okay, okay, first of all, i wasn’t checking anything out!” he complains, “and-and well, they—”

jeonghan cuts him off, patting his back with an amused smirk, “it’s alright, buddy, it happens to the best of us.” everyone laughs at that, much to mingyu’s chagrin who then becomes pouty for the rest of the walk to the next shop.

“c’mon,” you pull him into the store, “my turn to stare at your tits.”

“god, would you drop it?” he groans as he follows you in. “it won’t happen again.”

you giggle, “it’s okay with me, gyu, because that just means the girls look good.”

he groans again, “i really don’t need to be a part of this.” he wanders off into the store, embarrassed. you let him go, looking at clothes for him separately. turns out shopping for mingyu is harder than the concept of it sounds. it doesn’t help that he’s an expert at criticizing the small detail in every item you choose for him. half an hour later, you’re tired of him.

as if on cue, kazuha calls you to tell you to come over to an asian restaurant nearby to grab lunch. you thank the lords as you pull mingyu away, “there’s nothing here for me anyway,” he grumbles as you meet up with the rest.

entering the restaurant, you spot kazuha and jeonghan at a table nearby. yunjin’s still on her way it turns out as you sit across from them, heart in throat for the worst reason possible: you’re jealous. you may be down bad for jeonghan but that doesn’t mean you’ve lost your ability to take a hint. trying to keep the thought from completely forming in your head, you make conversation with everyone, wanting to be better than this.

you want to avoid thinking about it so you’re quick to shut jeonghan off. he’s his usual self, joking around with everyone but he picks up when you’re not as receptive as usual. you hope he just thinks nothing of it, but you know that’s not possible when he approaches you after lunch as everyone else is washing up in the bathroom.

you’re outside alone, waiting, when he slightly pushes your shoulder to draw your attention. you gasp lightly. “jeonghan?”

“can i talk to you for a sec?”

you frown, “yeah, you’re talking to me right now.”

“come on, y/n, don’t be cold. let’s go for a walk.”

“but, the others—”

“i let mingyu know we’ll be back in a few.”

out of excuses, you silently follow jeonghan’s stride through the busy street. he makes conversation really well, easing you up in no time as he distracts you from what was on your mind. it’s illegal how smoothly he then proceeds to drop the act.

you’re laughing about what he’d said about hoshi’s drinking habits just now, when he suddenly goes serious, “i think i like kazuha.”

you freeze up at that, fighting the frown that itches closer, looking at him like you didn’t hear him. heart’s out of control right now, but at least you were already expecting this outcome. “huh?”

“sorry, i just thought you should know. i’m really into her and i was planning to ask her out sometime this week.”

you would love to pass away right now. immediately, you think you hate jeonghan for doing this to you. it’s clear from his behavior that he knows you like him and that he’s apologizing— he’s rejecting you before you have a chance to confess. he likes kazuha. he’s going to ask her out. you should know that.

you sputter awkwardly, “that’s great! good for you, jeonghan. and um, you really didn’t have to tell me. i’m sure kazuha would love to be with you.”

you never want to speak a word to anyone ever again and you're sweating ever so profusely, so you speed up a little, “and we should get going, no?”

sensing your mood, jeonghan follows along but says, “i’m sorry, y/n. i- i know you…”

you don’t let him finish because it would genuinely kill you to hear him say he knows you like him. “you don’t have to be sorry.” with that, you essentially leave your body. you move fast enough to reach the car, wordlessly getting into the passenger seat and yunjin somehow knows better than to fight you.

the car ride back is filled with music. not much chatter. you realize it’s partly your fault and silently dread being back in the room with kazuha, but to your relief, when you reach she doesn’t bring anything up. you’re too tired to do a try-on like you promised and when mingyu asks if you want to come over to his place, you tell him you’re feeling sleepy. and for once, you actually sleep after telling him that.

sleep is not as much of a comfort as you’d hope for it to be: less of an escape, more jeonghan-themed content. something about heartbreak and living the rest of your life, lovelessly.

—

the next week starts off hectic and you’re thankful for it this once. you could use the chaos of organizing an event to take your mind off things. a small part of you wonders if jeonghan was being merciful by letting you down and timing it so well. knowing him, that doesn’t seem so impossible.

you feel better than you’d imagined you would. you cried like once since the rejection. you didn’t need to worry much at this point, having realizing that it was less important that you’d made it out to be. mingyu, on the other hand, doesn’t give up his worrying, especially when he doesn’t see you until three days into the week. and that, too, because he gave up and thought it would be a good idea to invade your room, at one in the night.

his knocking wakes you up fairly quickly, since you’d only put your phone down a few minutes ago. you rush to the door, afraid of waking kazuha up. “what the fuck, mingyu?” you ask at the sight of him.

“what the fuck yourself! stop ignoring my messages maybe?”

you groan, stepping outside your room, feeling the cold air hit you in your night clothes. “why’d you have to confront me so late at night? can we do this tomorrow? when i’m coherent and not half-naked?”

mingyu falter as if he just realized the time, noticing your tank top and shorts. “i don’t care. i’ll give you my jacket but we’re doing this right here and right now.”

you sigh, knowing this was coming. “forget it, keep your jacket. i’ll go change and be right back.”

mingyu grabs your arm when you try to go back inside, “how do i know you’re not just gonna leave me here to die?”

“dude, my room’s right here. you can come watch me change if you fucking want.”

he lets you go, flustered when you offer and you laugh as you rush back in. in the darkness, kazuha’s voice startles you, “y/n? is everything okay? are you being abducted?”

“oh god, zuha, you scared me. and no, it’s just stupid little mingyu who wants to have a talk. i’ll settle this. go back to sleep.”

she groans, “god, you guys are just like my parents sometimes.”

you laugh at that as you slip into a hoodie and exchange your shorts for pajamas. when you return, mingyu’s sitting at the stairs in front of your room and you hit him in the back.

“ouch! fuck you!” he stands up with a glare, “also i heard what you said about me. why am i stupid and little? can you just choose one insult?"

“let’s go down if we’re gonna argue. zuha can hear us, too. and did you hear what she said after that?” when he seems clueless, you go on, “she said we remind her of her parents sometimes.”

he coughs, “her parents?? what are we, married?”

you roll your eyes, “married and sick of each other, apparently.”

“being zuha’s parents doesn’t sound so bad honestly. she’d be the easiest child to raise.”

“i feel like zuha would raise you if you were her father,” you laugh, “me too, probably.”

“who’d be the father then?”

your smile falls when an answer occurs to you, you mumble, “jeonghan,” sitting at a bench outside your dorm. mingyu joins you, equally solemn now.

“did something happen between you two?”

“yeah. he rejected me when we went shopping that day.”

mingyu’s eyes widen, “what? you confessed?”

you shake your head, a strained smile, “he already knew. i guess i was obvious, but it’s still driving me insane that he rejected me without even giving me a chance to confess.”

“i can’t believe he did that. that’s conceited as fuck.”

“conceited or impressive, i can’t decide. but he told me likes kazuha and that he’s sorry. i genuinely wanted to die when he said that. he was cool about breaking my heart, too. lowkey fell a little harder for him.” you laugh at your own joke, but mingyu looks unhappy, jaw clenched like he’d tasted something bitter.

you hit his arm, “it’s not a big deal, dude. i was thinking about it the past few days and i realized i barely knew the guy. i just knew what he told me over the last year.”

after a pause, “and he’s one beautiful man, so there was that.” you smile a little.

“but he didn’t have to do it like that. he could just stop flirting with you, you know, or wait for you to come around and confess like a normal person,” mingyu says, “he’s such a little jerk.”

“hey, it’s okay, a little flirting didn’t hurt anyone.”

“yeah but he was leading you on, leaving you in ambiguity by doing that. he should’ve been flirting with kazuha, not you.”

“okay, now that’s starting to hurt,” you whine, pressing your forehead against his shoulder, “but i can’t really blame him, no? kazuha’s so precious.”

“don’t be like that, y/n.”

“what? be like what?” you look up, “didn’t you also used to be into kazuha?”

mingyu bites his lip when you bring his years-old crush up, “when will you forget about that? that was so long ago and it was barely serious. she’s too nice to be my type.” (what does that even mean? you wonder but don't have the time to ask.)

“sure, you didn’t want to change residence halls to be closer to her?”

“alright, how many times do i tell you that i did that because of you? why do you never believe me?”

“it just makes more sense the other way,” you mumble, suddenly feeling teary-eyed and hating that you were feeling teary-eyed, which only intensified the teariness in your eyes. “god, this is stupid.”

mingyu’s arm is around in no time when he notices you curling up, your lip tucked between your lips in anticipation, “hey, hey, c'mon, i thought you said it wasn't a big deal. so how come you're crying?"

“because! i feel lame. and because kazuha’s perfect, by the way. she’d probably cry too if she knew i was crying.”

he pulls you closer, “you’re not lame, y/n. you think i’d keep you around so long if i didn’t think you were insanely cool?”

you breathe through your tears, “you just keep me around because i’m insane?”

“insanely cool! open your ears, idiot.”

“you just called me an idiot. idiots are pretty lame.”

he sighs when he feels his tshirt get damper, your body so weak under his hold. he pats your hair softly, “sorry, that’s not what i meant. but seriously, y/n, you know i’m bad at saying this stuff but i seriously cannot stress enough how highly i think of you.” his hand moves to rub your back, “and you’re so much more than perfect, you know? like sometimes you don’t do a paper till three hours before and still get an A. and then, you come up with comebacks to my arguments in your own unique ways, and trust me, nobody can argue with me like you do.”

you pull away, “all right, now you’re embarrassing me. why do i sound like a bossy nerd or something?”

“you can be that at times. hey, but you forgot the part where you’re hot as shit. and also pretty.”

“i feel like that last part was an afterthought, mingyu,” you bite back a laugh, “you really only keep me around for my tits, don’t you?”

“dude, can you let me wholesome for once? i’m trying to console you, so would you stop playing devil’s advocate?”

“sorry, i’m just,” you hesitate with a heavy sigh and then, you blurt out, "i’m scared i’ll never fall in love. i’ll never find it at all.”

“now that’s some stupid thoughts you’re having,” mingyu shakes you by the shoulders, “you’ve just been blinded by your crush on jeonghan for so long that you haven’t explored anyone else at all.”

“are you volunteering to be my crush right now?” you ask, jokingly.

mingyu’s smirk catches you off-guard, “what if i am? it wouldn’t be the worst thing if i was your boyfriend.”

you feel yourself heating up a little for some reason, head in a daze from his earlier shower of compliments and now this. so instead of trying to make sense of it all, you press yourself into him in a hug. “yeah, it wouldn’t.”

—

“hoshi, you little shit!” you throw yourself around the guy when you spot him on the night of the flea market, the product of a long and actually insane week. he laughs when he realizes it’s you, pulling you into a hug, “bro, y/n, why is this my first time seeing in you in literal years?”

“i don’t know, i just kinda see you walking around sometimes. maybe if you actually showed up to econ class, i’d see you more.”

hoshi flinches, “you can’t be bringing econ up right now. that class is kicking my ass. i can’t keep showing up to that kind of humiliation.”

the two of you catch up at last, as people swarm around the different stalls set up along the college street. you were relieved after having finished this damn event. cheers to sleep, right?

hoshi tells you all about his new situationship with a guy in another class and how he’s regretting inviting him to the party tomorrow night. “why? believe it or not, people are more fun when drunk.”

hoshi rolls his eyes, “yeah, well, i couldn’t get any more fun. so instead i become incontrollable. an absolute animal.”

“right, i remember that. so you’re scared you’re gonna drive him off? i wouldn’t worry honestly. and if you want, i can keep you in check.”

he narrows his eyes in distrust, “you? you’re not much better than me drunk, okay? i feel bad for mingyu who’s gonna have to take care of you the whole time.”

you gasp, “wow, you’re taking mingyu’s side now? over mine? i thought we had something special.”

“you thought wrong,” comes mingyu out of nowhere, slinging his arm around hoshi’s shoulders.

“why are you here suddenly?” hoshi looks between the two of you, “i couldn’t not come to an event my lovely y/n herself planned, could i?”

hoshi laughs, “nice to see you two as jolly as ever. but also i must take your leave. i gotta go grab dinner soon.”

“hey, why don’t you come with us? we were gonna check out the new outlet the college opened.”

“oh, i would love to but i have plans with someone already.”

you nod your head in realization, “right of course, have fun. not too much, though. leave some for tomorrow.” he leaves with a full-toothed smile and you face mingyu.

he playfully pinches your cheek, “you confront him about missing us yet?”

you raise a shoulder in response, and as the flea market starts to fizzle out thanks to the darkening sky, your stomach grumbles. “let’s eat, please.”

ever since that night— you don’t want to say anything had changed between you and mingyu because your friendship had been long enough that even the slightest shift in dynamics would harmoniously just become the new status quo; the two of you had been through a lot together. but ever since that night, you’d been fooling around with him more, if that was possible.

it was along the lines of: less banter, more flirting? although one might argue that the former was just a derivative of the other. but semantics aside, this is what you know to be true: friends flirt with each other all the damn time.

that’s what you’re telling yourself when mingyu asks you to feed him some of the fried rice you’d gotten on your plate. and it was true: you’re almost a 100% certain that you’d flirted with every friend of yours, and that was just how it worked.

but intimacy came differently to everyone and mingyu’s just manifested in clinginess. he was pressed to your side for the entirety of dinner, and you couldn’t complain about the proximity. it was welcome, even, this form of friendship.

“you’re thinking too hard.” mingyu’s voice pulls you out of your little reflection session. “what’re you even thinking about? you should be all burnt out from all the work you did this past week.”

“i am,” you affirm, “but some things just don’t let up.”

he chuckles, patting your head affectionately as if to persuade your thoughts to let up for a while. it doesn’t help really, only gravitating the direction of the said thoughts toward kim mingyu even more.

“maybe repetition isn’t as bad as i always make it out to be,” you say, chin propped up against your fist on the table. mingyu had chosen a corner table of the newly opened eatery, next to a low window that glowed behind you in the remains of sunset as he shifted to completely face you. the sun had finally set. again.

“you’re right. routine is good for people.”

“but it doesn’t have to stay the same forever, you know?”

“hm?” mingyu can’t help but feel like you’re edging toward some underlying topic. you were like this since he could remember: you’d start off with some abstract and vaguely relevant concept (that had no doubt been plaguing you for a long time) and slowly circle around till he caught onto what you meant. you love playing games with him.

“repetition doesn't have to be redundant? i think there's something more subtle about it.”

he doesn’t know where you’re going with this, “but repetition is literally the same thing over and over?”

“yeah, but the ‘same thing’ itself can evolve,” your fingers knock against his, “i don’t know, i was just thinking about… us.”

“us? i guess we would be a good example of repetition.”

your gaze falls from his to find your hand instead, your fingers wrapping around his wrist until you’ve forced his palm open. his hand in your lap upside down, you pull at the fingers, “yeah, but we’ve changed a lot. for one, we fight a lot less. sometimes when i’m going to tell you a thought, you understand mid-sentence what i mean.”

“yeah, well, that’s what we get for knowing each that long. but really, what’s this about, y/n?” he captures your hand in his expertly, pulling your attention back to his face.

“do you ever think we should be more?”

mingyu breathes a laugh at that, a shiver running down his spine when he spots the solemn look on your face. and then, his smile turns grave. “y/n, we’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?”

“have we? every time i’m the one who brings it up and you kinda just shrug it off. no, don’t even try to argue with me. you shrug the serious stuff off. always.”

it’s true, mingyu admits in defeat, mind racing as he considers why you’re bringing this up now. the answer is easy: you were finally available. but he doesn’t say it out loud, like he never does. you’d confronted him about the state of your friendship before, unafraid to wonder out loud what it would be like if you started dating. you’ve received all forms of shut-downs from mingyu before so you figured you were the only one in an ambiguous place about your feelings for him.

if someone was to ask if you like mingyu, you’d probably say yes, but it’s more than that. you know better than to blindly fall for him. witnessing him in his relationships before, you know he can be ruthlessly cold to his partner once he’s out of love. you practice romantic love for mingyu: carefully because too much would definitely be dangerous.

“i have my reasons, y/n.” there it is. the strict mingyu. the rigidity in setting his boundaries was something you admired and aspired for when he exhibited it in the past. right now, you want to punch him.

you’re without a filter with him so it’s unfair when he treats you like this. you let him know as much: “i want to punch you right now. i’ve hidden nothing from you, and yet, there’s this wall you keep yourself behind. is this really one-sided?”

mingyu doesn’t know what to do with you right now, “y/n, why are you—”

“no, because it's not like i can't take a hint. so one minute you're flirting with me and then, you push me away like right now,” you point to his estranged fingers, “but then you act like nothing happened and go right back to being all intimate and touchy.”

“i just…” mingyu lets out an exasperated sigh, “i just don’t see the reason for labels. why do we have force ourselves into a restriction like that? we’ve always been above conforming.”

it’s your turn to sigh heavy enough your head hits the wall behind you. wasn’t this just his way of friend-zoning you back into silence? you’ve always been too embarrassed to push him this far because you don’t mean to hurt him. but you feel as though you’ve hurt yourself long enough now.

“so why’d you say that the other night? that it would be nice if you were my boyfriend?”

this leaves him speechless for a few beats and you continue, “that was just because i was heartbroken from jeonghan? you’re playing prince charming for me so i can go back to being your trusty little best friend?”

“y/n, you know that’s not true. i’m not playing anything in your life. i’m just being myself.”

you scoff, “you really are so fucking—”

“why are we actually fighting right now?” mingyu asks through an incredulous laugh, “this is actually so petty, dude, let’s stop. you know i love you, right?”

mingyu’s last resort makes its presence: a non-committal i love you. because at the end of the day, you’re still best friends. what was a little ‘i love you’ in today’s economy? nothing. especially when you’d hear him throw the phrase around all the time.

you stand up in defeat, “fine, let’s stop. you win.” you gesture for him to move to the side and he does so reluctantly when you glare at him like you’re genuinely mad. (you are.)

he follows you out the door, catching your elbow to slow you down. “don’t be like this. i know you’re mad at me.”

“i’m not mad. i'm tired and i just want to go back to my room,” you seethe, walking faster than him. he grabs hold of your shoulder turning you around.

“if you’re gonna storm off, at least go the right way.” you huff softly and let him steer you the right way to your dorm, hands still on you. you spend the way to the front of your room silently, waiting for mingyu to say something but he just does what he does best: take care of you.

as you reach the door of your room, he pauses, apologetic smile on display. “listen, let’s talk more tomorrow? get some sleep.” he reaches for your hair, tenderly running his fingers through the locks. there it is: the soft mingyu, his eyes wide as he stares you down for signs of stress.

his warm arm pressed againsts yours, you realize you don’t want him to just leave. you know the drill: tomorrow morning, he’ll text you to meet for lunch and everything will go back to being unsaid. maybe he’ll bring along seungcheol so you don’t bring anything up again. either way, it’ll be so natural you’ll think nothing ever happened. but you want something to happen.

so your hand settles around his bicep to hold on and partly to keep him in place. you lean in, “let me do one last thing and if you want to stop, i’m never bringing this up again. i promise.”

you don’t give mingyu a moment to react to your words and instead raise yourself up to his level, other hand on his chest, and press your lips to his. you kiss mingyu after the thirteen years that you’ve known him and the ten that you’ve wanted to. you counted the years just as you count the seconds that it takes for him to come to his senses and pull himself away.

he looks less upset than you imagined: more dazed. like he can’t believe what you’ve done. he looks at you with his lips parted and you have to tear your gaze apart, lest you should tear yourself apart with longing.

“y/n, i…” he looks away and that’s enough evidence you need. you step away from him, your easy smile back in its place, not before you pat his arm as it falls from you.

“it's okay. i understand. let’s be friends, mingyu,” you declare suddenly, catching him off-guard. you'd pulled all the stops and if he genuinely was uncomfortable with pushing the line between platonic and romantic, you would respect that.

he begins to say something but you don’t want to hear him speak, at least not right now when the sound of blood rushing to your head is the loudest it's ever been, and you certainly don’t want to falter again. you’ve decided. “good night."

—

mingyu should feel relieved. he really should be happy that you’re back to normal around him, friendly and playful like you’ve always been. he should count his blessings that you’ve accepted the status of your relationship with him as it is. but as he falls asleep that night, all that comes to his mind is the smile you’d sported as you asked to be friends.

it was all wrong: your lips against his, that was something of his dreams, not a reality he has to be escaping from. it replays in his head, your scent that he’d caught a whiff of now and then, whenever you’d wrap your arms around him. the heat of your skin he’d rationalize as the comforting presence of a friend for days later.

he’ll soon come to know how insanely stupid he’s being right now but until you knock some sense into him, he simply plays along with a sting he hides pretty well. he should, he’s been doing it for years now.

it’s the night of hoshi’s party already and he’s walking over to the location of the pregame, alone because according to a text fifteen minutes ago, you’re still not ready. you’d invited yunjin and some other friends to your and kazuha’s abode to apparently make the process easier, but if mingyu knows anything about the group, you’ve probably spent more time selecting the right song to play than get ready.

the door to dino and hoshi’s shared residence is already open as he strolls in, finding a group already on the floor, taking shots. he makes eye contact with jeonghan who beckons him closer and mingyu takes a seat next to him.

space is scarce so mingyu finds his arm pressed uncomfortably close to jeonghan’s, who oohs at mingyu’s fit, “ooh, you look positively sexy.”

mingyu grimaces, “do you have to put it like that?” he does look … positively sexy, mingyu admits, in the navy blue shirt he wore but— and here’s the punchline— with the buttons undone all the way to right above his navel.

“where’s y/n, by the way?” jeonghan asks, an eye at the entrance as he slides a shot glass toward mingyu. the question irks mingyu for obvious reasons and he keeps him waiting for a minute, waiting to down the liquid in glass (vodka unfortunately for his throat) to answer him. “um, she’s still getting ready. any minute now.”

“ha, that means she’ll be another ten. that’s a shame, i was hoping to pour her first shot.” jeonghan shrugs resentfully.

maybe the alcohol’s working faster since it’s been a while for mingyu, but his mouth runs faster than his head, “why’d you care? i thought you asked kazuha out a while ago.”

jeonghan raises a brow at that, “hmm. i did. but things did not work out so well. what with kazuha feeling guilty about y/n and… well, i also…”

“feel guilty?” mingyu asks, voice strained. he’s annoyed at having to listen to jeonghan’s side of the story. he could not care less about humanizing him and whatnot. he’s watched you suffer for far too long to be empathetic right now.

“yeah. and i thought i might like y/n, too, after all.” jeonghan says it so casually as if discussing his performance in a particularly challenging college course, not his feelings for a person who he’d recently rejected.

the word might pierces mingyu’s ears. the uncertainty behind it is in such stark contrast to his own… feelings toward you that he genuinely feels his breath heat up.

or maybe that’s just jeonghan when he leans over to refill his glass. “drink up, buddy.” mingyu’s just about ready to make a scene right now, shoving jeonghan’s hand off his back but suddenly jeonghan’s standing up, making his way to—

you. you’re here.

almost as soon as he catches sight of you, he looks away, pretending to give the vodka in his hand all the attention in the world, as he puts his lips to it and empties it. head is now light. that’s probably enough for now, he decides as he puts his glass down.

when he looks back up, you’re at the kitchen counter with yunjin and kazuha.. and jeonghan, who’s grinning as he hands out the bottles of fireball to the group, no doubt marketing it so convincingly that you’d think you came up with the idea yourself.

mingyu shoots to his feet, regretting it when his vision darkens but he pushes past, eyes focused on your figure— god, he forgot how hot you look in that dress. he tries to keep his thoughts in check as he approaches you, but it doesn’t help that your makeup’s even more meticulous than usual, eyes glittering and lips delightfully glossy.

he breaks into the space between you and jeonghan, arm against yours, catching your attention.

“my guy!!” you exclaim when you see him and then your eyes trail down to his chest and then back up to his face where his hair sits parted with the help of some gel. “you look like a slut. i love it.”

mingyu laughs, subjecting you to a similar once-over, “you’re one to talk.” your hair’s back in a bun of sorts, a rare occurrence because you seem to prefer have it around your face. he can’t help but pause at your exposed collarbones, the gold shadow you applied there earlier doing wonders to his already dazed headspace.

“is it already that part of the night where mingyu starts hitting on everyone?” yunjin complains, reserving the alternate version of her question (something along the lines of how impolitely he’d been eye-fucking you in front of everyone) for some other time as she nudges you to open the fireball in your hands.

you do so, looking at jeonghan who offers one to mingyu, which he refuses as he leans against the counter, hand silently at your back just in case. “you’re not drinking?” you ask, quietly enough only for the two of you, just in case he wasn’t comfortable sharing.

“nah, i just had two shots of vodka back there. trying not to mix for the sake of me tomorrow,” he mutters, patting your back encouragingly, “but let me know if you need help finishing that.”

jeonghan eyes mingyu on the side as the trio clink their bottles together and get to downing them. later, as things start picking up and more people make their way into the party, mingyu finds your arm. “do you want me to stay close by?” he frames the question in a way that you have an out, because he can tell that you’re still unhappy with him.

but you’re tipsy when your hand interlocks into his, “only if you’re going to dance like you mean it.”

the night goes better than you expect it to, especially since mingyu’s let loose for once. or perhaps… he’s always this carefree when drunk, palms kneading at your waist, keeping you close to his chest, which you try your best to not get too used to touching. he sure knows how to keep you on your toes (sometimes literally) even when wasted because you’re trying not to get too close. for you own sake.

that is until hoshi shows up beside you two, pulling you apart as he introduces you to a friend.. or a partner? you can’t hear in this state and just as you try to lean in closer to hear what he’s saying, you feel a presence at your shoulder, fingers poking you.

you turn to find jeonghan behind you, sloppy smile on his face as he screams something at you. you frown, asking him to repeat himself, hand on his bicep to steady yourself against the movement of the party.

“need to talk to you about something!” his words come at you, clearer. “right now?” you shout back, “what the fuck is it?” your body doesn’t want to stop moving so you groove against his side, and momentarily catching a glimpse mingyu’s heavy gaze on you. you almost completely stop then but jeonghan’s pulling you away, after him to a relatively emptier zone of the house.

you’re breathless, you realize, now that the spell of the music’s been broken. you rest against the damp wall behind you, uncaring as you look around for a liquid to quench your thirst. cunning as ever, jeonghan’s already handing you a plastic cup with a transparent liquid.

you narrow your eyes at him despite how wasted you are. “what’s this?”

he laughs, “i’m glad you’re vigilant as ever. this is water. cold. drink up.”

you comply, your throat throbbing ever so lesser after you’re done and you sigh in relief. “you might have broken my heart but you’re still an angel, jeonghan.”

“ahhh,” he exclaims joining your side against the wall. you frown when you take note of his fingers clasped together, almost fidgeting. yoon jeonghan, fidgety? that’s a first for you.

“actually, that’s what i wanted to talk to you about…”

when mingyu looks away from hoshi and his company to see if you were listening and when he finds out that you’re in fact in jeonghan’s embrace, he’s suddenly sober. and when your eyes find his for a moment, something in them changes and he calls out your name like a warning. but then jeonghan’s already leading you elsewhere.

mingyu wants to follow after you immediately but he realizes hoshi’s still talking to him. “hoshi, bro, can i find you in a while? i gotta make sure y/n’s okay.”

but hoshi stops him in his tracks, hand on his chest, “wait. please tell me you told her…?” he trails off uncertainly as mingyu catches on what he’s saying.

“i haven’t,” he admits, eyes still searching the crowd for you, “but i think it’s time that i do. only so much i can take.”

“that’s the spirit, man! okay, now go kiss y/n for me.” hoshi pushes mingyu with a start, not before the the latter shoots the man a glare and takes off in his search for you.

you’re still in that corner with jeonghan, who’s done narrating the past week’s revelations to you, all about his failed attempts with kazuha and his slow understanding of his real feelings about you. you’re far more unaffected that either of you was expecting, arms crossing in thought.

but then you say, “well, that’s fucking stupid. because i’ve realized i wasn’t as down bad for you as i once thought i was.” jeonghan’s smile falls a little with a disappointed sigh. “but,” you continue, “you know what i’m still curious about?”

when your hand creeps up jeonghan’s shoulder, he thinks he knows where you’re going with this. “i’ve wanted know if you’re really as good at kissing as everyone makes you out to be.” jeonghan’s already moving closer to you, enveloping your face in his hands, and his devilish grin’s spills out as his lips find your ear. “let’s find out?”

and that’s how mingyu finds you wrapped around jeonghan, making out like this was your last day living. and for a moment, he considers giving up and letting you have this. he even stops in his tracks in the crowd, his thoughts so easily drowned out by the music if he just lets go.

but his mind’s reeling when the sight of you kissing someone else just pushes him back a day ago when you were leaning up into him, soft breaths risking your lips against his and the way your body pressed into his just right. his feet move without a thought, then, shouldering through the bodies around the two in the corner.

you’re just pulling away from jeonghan to start to say something about how that wasn’t too bad when his body is lifted away from yours with an unannounced jerk. you gasp and then once again when mingyu’s face comes floating in front of yours.

“mingyu,” you breathe, unsteady from the series of events this past minute, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“what the fuck are you doing?!” he screams in your face, hands on both arms to keep you from moving. jeonghan’s walking to your side and you want to say something to apologize but you’re far too infuriated with the man in front of you to think.

“i don’t know! trying to get laid? finding happiness? love?!” you scream back with as much force. you call out jeonghan’s name, “i’m sorry. mingyu’s too drunk to—”

“jeonghan,” warns mingyu when the guy tries to break you free from his embrace, “can i have a minute with y/n.” it isn't a question.

jeonghan has the nerve to say, “maybe not. i wouldn’t leave you alone with her in this state.”

“oh, she’ll be just fine,” he replies and jeonghan simply looks at you for confirmation. but you’re still looking at mingyu, starting to tear up, head throbbing all at once. you stop fighting against his grip and mumble in defeat, “whatever.”

“if you’re going to lecture me about being bad, i don’t really want to hear it.” you’re back next to the kitchen counters with mingyu beside you. slowly, you sit yourself up on the surface, feeling exhausted. “i’ve heard it before.”

“no, that’s not what i’m doing. i just want you to stop and think clearly—”

you groan when you hear the beginnings of a typical you’ll regret this in the morning type talk, you slide off the counter and to your delight, you run into a guy holding up a can of beer for the taking. you’re quick to jump at it, grabbing it up from him and pulling the tab of the can open. just as you put the beer to your lips, ready to chug it, you feel it being pulled away, the next few moments occuring before you can comprehend anything.

suddenly you’re sitting back on the counter and your dress rides up when you feel mingyu push himself in between your legs. at first, you see his face close on yours and then the taste of beer meets your throat. no, it’s not just beer— it’s mingyu. his tongue spills onto yours, beer mixing with saliva and when you try to pull away, his hand at your neck tightens. you sit up straight and you feel his watch digging into your spine.

your head spins when you can finally breathe, inhaling only to cough out. heart in your throat, you look at mingyu in disbelief, “what the fuck!” but he’s already taking another sip of the beer and some of it slides down your throat into your dress, when his mouth finds yours again.

you’re weak in his arms, and the heat between your legs is only so rational. so you find yourself giving in and kissing him back when the liquid runs out, nails finding his scalp, earning you a deep groan that vibrates against your chest. that’s when he pulls away again, eyes finally meeting yours with an unprecedented intensity.

he leans in again, wet kiss against your cheek, followed by a grunted whisper of, “i love you so fucking much, y/n. it’s so hard to watch you run around with other men.”

you want to think you’re hearing things but mingyu doesn’t let you, another kiss right in the nape of your neck that sends shudders down your back. “i want to be yours so fucking bad. want to spoil you like you deserve.”

you swallow against the moan that rises in your throat, to pull mingyu’s face back to your eye-level, “then why aren’t you mine? why’d you push me away?” your voice breaks, betraying the pretense of indifference you try to prop up. his eyes soften, fingers brushing against your forehead.

his lips quiver and he sighs defeatedly. it’s a miracle you can hear him with all that noise around you. but you hear him clear as day against your hair when he finally says, “i’m scared. of loving you too much, of being too much. and i’m scared of losing you.”

mingyu’s imagined telling you these exact words before and how you’d react to them infinite times before but when you giggle into his collarbone, he pulls away with a blank look. your forehead is against his all over again and for the second time night you say, “that’s fucking stupid! if you were going to lose me, it would’ve happened a while ago.”

of all the things he’d imagine you saying in response, this was the simplest option, so unlike your usual overthinking self. maybe it’s the alcohol and adrenaline in your system speaking but mingyu somehow feels comforted, because maybe it really is that simple. it would’ve happened if it was going to. or maybe mingyu’s too drunk to make sense of it all right now.

so his lips are moving against yours once again, without warning, your breath all his when his arms tighten once against around you. you’re laugh grounds him enough to break away. you open your mouth to complain about the distance when mingyu’s back against your skin.

“shut the fuck up,” he groans, the command making you hotter than you’d like to admit. your legs close around his ass, pulling him closer and his hand slips across your boobs. the friction of his palm against the tight fabric of your dress makes you let out an undignified moan into mingyu.

that’s when he knows he needs to take you to somewhere more private for reasons more than one. you’re too lightheaded to move yourself so mingyu’s carrying out the house without a word anyone you two came with. it’s only when the cold air hits you that you realize you’re outside.

you struggle against mingyu until you're back on your feet and stop. “where are we going? i’m— do i know you, mister guy?” for a second, mingyu’s heart sinks when he wonders if you thought you were just making out with a stranger. then, you say, “i need to go back and find mingyu. gotta kiss him.”

ignoring the blush that colors his face, he grabs hold of your elbow, “i am mingyu, idiot. and we’re going to my room.” you shake your head to clear your vision, eyes widening when you recognize him. your hand finds his face with a light laugh, “ah! it’s my big guy.” the name doesn’t help mingyu’s condition at all, so he’s pulling you after him faster than before.

back at the party, kazuha starts panic when she realizes she’s lost hold of you, unable to locate you anywhere within the party. she tugs at yunjin’s sleeve who looks over in concern, “what happened to y/n? i can’t find her anywhere.” yunjin laughs at that, covering her mouth with her hand. “don’t worry about her. i saw her and mingyu leave together earlier. she’s probably in heaven by now, if i’m right.”

“hmm?” kazuha pauses as a thought pops up into her head, “wait… did they…?” yunjin grins knowingly, “yup. it really was high time they fucked.” the former lets out a satisfied giggle, “i know. they were so obvious without even being together. i was getting tired.”

“you were getting tired?!” you gasp at mingyu later in the night, panting against his pillow. you’re on your back and he throws you a tshirt of his to sleep in now that your dress is… demolished. you look at it sadly out of the corner of your eye. “i really liked that dress,” you whine, as he picks the remains of it up with a somewhat smug grin, “planned to wear it out again.”

“i couldn’t risk that. you looked too good in it,” he chuckles to himself as he jumps into bed with you. you sit up, feigning anger as you slip the cotton over your head, warming up when the smell of mingyu greets you. “i don’t know if i could resist seeing your tits out like that.”

you hit his chest hard with a lighthearted scoff, “i knew it! you’re such a pervert. not just a pervert, you’re also a brute.” you groan as you rub your thighs together gingerly. mingyu props himself up, pulling you down into a hug, rubbing your back. “sorry, does it hurt a lot?”

“it’ll hurt more in the morning,” you relax in his arms, pressing a loving kiss into his hair, “should’ve known you went so rough. asshole.” you giggle when he pulls away in disbelief at the last insult.

“how could you—!” you roll away from him, laughing. he shifts closer, caging you against the wall behind you, “hey, you can’t say stuff like fuck i knew you’d have a big dick and then expect me to go all vanilla! do you know what that does to a guy?”

you shriek in embarrassment, “don’t bring that up now!” your ears redden when mingyu forces you by the chin to look up at him. “besides, where do you think the nicknames like big gyu and big guy came from?”

mingyu’s jaw falls open at the revelation and you break out into a fit of laughter at his mindblown expression. “how- how long have you been thinking about my di-”

you hit him to stop him, “ever since you kept pushing me away,” you run a hand down his side, sly grin on your swollen lips, “and i had to come up with something if i wanted to get myself off alone.”

with an exasperated groan, he falls against you, suffocating you as his body goes limp above yours. you let out a gasp when you feel him hardening against your leg and he speaks into your neck, “you’re seriously telling me i’ve been missing out on taking you like this for… for how long now?”

you kiss his cheek, hand slipping down his boxers with a soft exhale, “a while. and if you hadn’t come to your senses today… well, i’d all but given up on you today. when jeonghan kissed me, i was just going to—”

suddenly your breath escapes you, mingyu’s hand around your throat and his lips on yours with a loud grunt. he stops your hand in its movements, “please tell me you’re not talking about jeonghan while— fuck!” he gasps when you bite his lower lip to protest his hand on yours. his hand gives way and you’re palming the tent in his boxers again, pushing him down against the bed, so thankful he doesn’t have a rooommate in times like this.

you place a kiss at the corner of his lips and trail down his chest, shirt long gone, before muttering, “forgive me?”

—

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

i really want to write a more wholesome ending but have not the time or energy right now, so i'll be back with a shorter spin-off/ epilogue of sorts about how you and mingyu as a couple work out, how your friends react, some skinship, etc.

anyway, this is my official announcement that i've become a baby carat :] didn't know how much i was missing out on before svt so this is very fun. so far, jeonghan's my favorite little guy, although as is clear from this... mingyu makes me do things. on the roster are: minghao and joshua. hopefully there will be more svt fics in the future. no promises <3 goodbye friends and foes!!

[the-badger-mole]

The Other Woman: Part 2

Zuko was stunned. In the span of one evening, he'd gone from happily- ecstatically- engaged to the woman of his dreams, to standing alone in his apartment trying to sort out the wreckage of his relationship.

Katara was gone when he finished his talk with his mother. He asked his stepfather and sisters where she'd gone, but Ikem hadn't even noticed she had left. Azula had just rolled her eyes and announced she was about to leave herself. Kiyi, his youngest sister, was the only helpful one there. She had tugged his sleeve and pulled him aside, with her eyes wide in concern.

"Katara left so quickly," she told her brother. "I tried to ask what was wrong, but I don't think she heard me." Zuko frowned at that. His mother's house was away from any major roads, and he had driven them both there. She couldn't have gone far, he thought.

His phone chimed a few moments later. Zuko hurried to unlock his screen to see if Katara had texted him an explanation for her sudden disappearance. It wasn't her texting him, but the ride-share app alerted him that she had just gotten a ride back to the city.

"How rude that woman is," Ursa huffed when she saw Katara was gone. "She could have at least said good night. Zuko, my love, are you sure about her?" Zuko frowned at his phone again. This wasn't like Katara.

He left very shortly after that. Hoping to catch Katara at home when she got out of the car. Ursa had been against it. Giving into Katara's tantrums would set a bad precedence for their marriage, and Ursa hadn't even gotten to serve the dessert she'd spent all day slaving over. But some nameless panic had settled over Zuko. If he didn't go after Katara now, he might not get another chance. Ursa tried to change his mind, pointing out that he'd been drinking (he'd had half a cup of wine) and he should stay the night instead of rushing off after that woman.

He didn't catch Katara as she got home. Zuko got the notification that her ride had reached her destination while he was still ten minutes away from her apartment. Perhaps that should have been a sign to leave her alone, but Zuko couldn't. He double parked his car outside of Katara's apartment building and slipped inside behind a man carrying an armload of grocery bags. The idea of sharing the tiny elevator with the man and possibly being forced to engage in small talk had Zuko walking to the stairs instead. Katara only lived on the fifth floor.

When he reached her door, slightly panting and sweaty, he paused. What was he doing here? He knew Katara well enough to know that she wouldn't appreciate his intrusion right now. She was angry, and he didn't know why, but he knew that when she was angry it was best to give her space. He hesitated. Lifted his hand. He deserved to know why.

It didn't take Katara long to answer the door. It was suspiciously as if she'd been waiting. Her eyes and nose were red, and Zuko realized with a start that she had been crying. His own frustration slipped momentarily and he stepped forward instinctively to comfort, but Katara moved out of reach.

"Why did you leave?" Zuko asked. Katara's eyes flashed angrily.

"I got tired," she spat out.

"Tired?" Zuko blinked in surprise and confusion. "Are you sick?"

"That, too," Katara scoffed. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. She leaned against the door and Zuko thought she was about to close it on him, but instead she turned her gaze up towards him, and he was struck by the anguish he saw there. "Why do you let her treat me that way?"

Zuko's first thought was to ask what she meant. To deny he had any idea what she was talking about. To pretend he hadn't noticed Ursa being any colder than usual. He was walking a thin line. One false move and any chance of him working this out with Katara was gone. And he did want to work this out. He knew he would never find someone he loved as much as he loved her.

"She doesn't mean anything by it," Zuko said, weakly. It was the wrong thing to say. Katara's entire body seemed to shut off towards him. Her face went stony, and her tearful blue eyes turned cold and icy.

"Doesn't she?" Katara scoffed. "She doesn't really think I'm not good enough for you? That you should be with a woman who wants to be a housewife? That I'm coming between your relationship with her?"

"Katara, you have to understand," Zuko pleaded. "After the divorce...after everything with my father...she just wants to make up for what she missed."

"How long do you expect me to put up with that?" Katara demanded. She straightened up and glared at Zuko. "When she tries to disrupt our wedding day, should I just ignore her? When she insults the way I raise our kids, I should just let it slide? When she insults my weight? My family? My culture?"

Zuko was speechless. His mind scrambled, trying to find a defense for his mother, but all he could do was gape at Katara's expectant face. Finally, she broke the silence. Her face crumpled and fresh tears sprang to her eyes.

"I love you, Zuko," she said, slipping the engagement ring off of her finger. "But I can't compete with your mother for the rest of my life. And I won't stay quiet while she insults me." She pressed the ring into his palm and closed his fingers around it. Then impulsively, she leaned up and kissed his cheek. Before Zuko could gather himself and plead his case, Katara shut the door. A moment later he heard the lock click into place.

He could still enter, if he wanted. He had a key to her apartment, after all. Instead, he turned away numbly, and shuffled to the elevator. He didn't remember driving home, or pulling into his parking spot, or anything of his journey home until he found himself leaning against his door. He couldn't even recall how long he'd been standing there. Finally, Zuko came out of his fog enough to pull the ring out of his pocket and stare at it. She'd actually given it back to him. She'd actually ended things.

Pain sat like a weight in Zuko's chest. He wanted desperately to cry, but all that would come out were sharp, ragged gasps. He didn't want to be alone just then, but he didn't know who to call. His best friend, Sokka, was Katara's brother. If he knew about the break up, then the chances were high that he'd be heading towards his sister's place before he came to see Zuko. For the briefest moment, he considered calling his mother, but the thought of Ursa being happy about the breakup stopped him. That left one more person.

"Jasmine Dragon Tea Shop," Iroh answered cheerfully. "How can I help you?" Zuko froze, breathing heavily into the phone. Iroh spoke again, his voice a mix of confusion and annoyance, "Hello?"

"...Uncle," Zuko managed to get out before the first sob escaped him.

"I'm on my way."

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

[emmetverse]

Em took a deep breath, closing his eyes momentarily. He felt the light breeze on his skin. He let his heart settle. He let out the air.

He knew buildings could be intimidating, but somehow this little ramshackle workshop was worse than Octan Tower. A loud bang came from inside. A part of him wanted to turn and leave. But he couldn't. He was brave, and good, and far too curious for his own good.

He knocked gently. "Uh, hey?"

"What?"

The door handle clicked as Em turned it. He hardly got a peek inside before he was snatched by the wrist and dragged in. It slammed behind him.

Roach stood, scrap of cloth in hand, their narrowed eyes scanning the small room, looking for something. Whatever it was, they clearly didn't want it getting out.

"Uh-"

"Shh!" They shot a glare. "I can't hear the buzzing over your fucking yapping."

Em blinked. "I haven't even-"

He was cut off by a roar as Roach launched forwards, using the cloth like a whip to slam it against one of the worktops. Loose wood and sawdust went flying. He span around, looking through the cloud of dust at every surface.

"FUCK."

"Um..." He peered out from the plank he'd cowered behind. "What are you doing, exactly?"

"The bugs, fatboy! Fucking mosquitos!"

Em didn't have a chance to answer. Roach had already jolted off, slapping at another part of the worktop so hard that the cloth left a mark. He snarled, his eyes following.. Something. They went a little crossed as 'it' passed in front of his face.

With yet another deep, calming breath, he tried to start again. "Roach, I came to-"

"I hate that name," they sneered, "Makes me sound like a disease."

"Um... Oh... You never said. Sorry."

"Eh, I don't care. 'Trees and magnets', y'know?"

"But you just said..." He huffed, shaking his head to himself. They weren't going to argue about this again. And they definitely weren't going to try and understand him. "I came to-"

"Help?"

"No!"

"Then get out." But then Roach paused, and turned to look back at him, an eyebrow raised. "Is this about Bad Cop?"

Em reeled in surprise. "Oh. Yeah, it is."

"I'm not apologising."

A long silence spread between them.

"... What... Would you apologise for?"

"Exactly!"

Em could only stammer. He was suddenly remembering why they didn't talk much. It took him a moment to regain composure.

"No. I came to ask about something."

"OK, what?"

... That's a good question, actually. What was he going to ask about? It was something online. Well, clearly, seeing as they were just talking about someone online. "Hang on," he murmured, and reached into his pocket for his communicator. Where was it? Which app was it on? YouTube? No, they didn't talk to people on there - the entire feed was just animal videos. Uh, Tumblr-?

He jolted as Roach grabbed him by the shoulders, and he was suddenly very aware that for the first time in a long time, he had the other's full attention.

"You don't remember, do you?"

"Um- I'm just checking. Jogging my memory. Your, uh, your bugs distracted me." He swallowed, but his throat was painfully dry. He turned back to the communicator, scrolling rapidly. "It's something Bad Cop said... Um... Maybe they deleted it?"

"No. No they didn't." His hands moved from Em's shoulders to his cheeks, grabbing them, squishing them a little too hard. "I've been trying to tell you! It's থe ב※íㄷ!"

"... Whar?"

Roach stared at him, flitting between each eye, as if trying to look inside his brain. And for just a moment, it almost felt like he was. And then he let go. And he frowned.

"Do you smell that?"

Em rubbed his cheek, blinking rapidly. "I- Wh-what?"

"Someone's bleeding."

"What?!"

"Meeehh, 'what', 'what'," Roach mocked, shoving past him. "You sound like a broken toy."

Em fumbled over his words and his feet as he followed, hurrying out of the door in time to see two figures approaching. He frowned. One of the biggest issues with this place was that it was hard to tell who was who from any considerable distance. But it didn't take long.

Spark, only just held up by Threes, who was half dragging them through the dark sand. And red. Drip, dripping.

He kicked off, sprinting towards the main building. The two were much closer when he returned, alcohol and cloth in hand.

Threes dropped their friend into the sand before stumbling himself, falling to his knees, hissing in annoyance.

"Shit-" He coughed. "Spark? Still with me?"

"Yeah," The other whispered, turning to look at the two running up to them. They forced a smile. Blood was trickling down from a gash in their forehead, but it seemed like the most of it was pouring out of their shoulder.

Em skidded to a stop next to them, cloth already pressing against the wound.

"You ok?"

"Mhm."

"Is- is it just this one?"

"Yeah."

Slowly, carefully, he unscrewed the cap and poured some of the alcohol over the wound. It soaked in, mixing with the blood to make a foul smell. He tried his hardest to ignore the whine that escaped his friend. He hoped that it not being medical alcohol wouldn't cause infection. But it was the best they had.

Roach caught the corner of his eye. Their arms were folded, staring down at Threes. "You're hurt too," They huffed.

It shook its head. "Just a graze."

"Who was it?"

"Same person as before." Threes shifted his position so he was sitting in the sand. He rubbed his shoulder. "Yelling something about prison, freedom, started stabbing Spark..."

"Same old, same old.." Roach rolled his eyes.

"Yep."

Em stammered as Spark grabbed at the bottle and downed it. He pulled a face as he swallowed.

"... That's meant to be for medicinal purposes..."

"What, the vodka?" Roach muttered.

For a moment, Spark just frowned, trying to translate the words in their head. "Eh... Removing the pains?"

Em just sighed, putting it out of reach. "You'll be fine. It's not that deep."

"Where is Rex?"

"Asleep." He folded the fabric to press a cleaner part against the wound. "I probably woke him up just now."

Threes took a breath to steady himself, then pushed himself to his feet. "Good. We had to leave everything to get here faster. I'm going to go grab a bag."

"Salt," Spark murmured. They were beginning to sway. Em gently took them by the shoulders.

"You should both rest. I can head off with Rex once you're settled."

Threes rolled his eyes. "You're leaving us with the bug?"

Roach put his hand on his chest, acting offended. "Wow. Actually, why can't I go? This asshole can stay and look after you two. I'll go get the milk."

It was dead silent. They each just slowly turned to look at him, each with varying degrees of glare.

He snorted, fighting back a grin. "Damn, y'all. Alright, I'm going back to work."

Threes gave a small hum and looked back to Em. "Actually, why were you in the workshop?"

"Oh." He grunted as he lifted Spark to their feet. "We were just talking."

"What were you talking about for her to let you in there?"

"Uh..." He fell quiet. With a frown, he looked back to Roach. "What were we talking about?"

They turned to look back at him. And they were silent. Just watching. Just for a little too long, their eyes scanning, studying Em's face. They were looking for something. Eventually, they sighed, and turned away.

"Nothing important."

Em frowned. But he didn't question them.

He'd have to take their word for it.

[v-i-r-i-d-i-a-n]

The main question: What was after Will Byers?

(And a second more important question: what did it want?)

The show obviously wants us to believe that it’s a demogorgon, on first watch anyways. I believe we can infer there was a demogorgon in the shed with him- at least in the upside down. Even considering everything I’m going to talk about- I still agree with that, strangely. But before that? I’m calling bullshit.

(For reference this is technically the second thing I wrote about for the first episode, BUT I’m releasing this BEFORE that because it’s a more well thought out analysis, and can exist more as a standalone, I will probably add to this in the future. This is also technically unfinished? I don’t have a definitive answer to the questions I ask. I’m simply trying to bring more attention to it.)

🚨SOMETHING TO NOTE‼️ I HAVE NOT WATCHED A SEASON OF ST IN LIKE 6 MONTHS, PROBABLY MORE, IF ANY QUESTIONS I ASK GET ANSWERED IN LIKE AN EPISODE, DON’T BE A DICK ABOUT IT, I DONT REMEMBER EVERYTHING🚨

Also just one more thing before we get started, I’m sorry this post has a lot of exposition- I know that some of the things I say have probably been said before, hell the analysts in this community have talked about and seen this show far more then I have and I have nothing but respect for anyone whose put in that much effort- and I truly do not mean to copy or steal anyone’s work- if you feel like I’m not giving credit where credits due, or like I’m stealing something PLEASE tell me- i’ll @ you or cut something out- I don’t want anyone to feel disrespected by what I talk about, but I also don’t remember every post I’ve ever read or that’s on this app, this is merely supposed to my own fun twist and thoughts about the events

NOW, I know, I know, fifty billion other people have talked about how weird Will’s vanishing is, how it doesn’t make any sense and there’s something else going on, BUT, if I’ve learnt anything from this fandom, it’s that we love to read and write the exact same things over and over again. And!! That’s how discovery is made, so I’m doing it anyways >:3

Its hard to decipher where exactly to start with Will’s vanishing, because the entirety of it is completely jumbled and twisted and doesn’t make sense, whenever I think just a little too hard about it I feel like I’m being so completely mindfucked, like even now I’m sorting out things and every other sentence I realize something else and have to figure out where to put it- ANYWAYS

So I’m just gonna start at the beginning! In the Wheelers house.

Now, the first bit of strangeness we get in this sequence is when they’re all going home (I could also argue the DnD game has some weirdness, but that’s for another time, as we’re focusing something else right now) more specifically, when Mike waves Will off and his garage light starts flickering.

I think that’s supposed to be because of the like “town wide electrical problems” that are happening because of the gate opening up, and most likely not because of something already being at the Wheeler’s house.

i’m gonna argue there’s something there later in a different analysis I’m complying, because, I don’t believe that the thing following Will is the same being that killed the scientist in the lab, hell, I don’t think it was a demogorgon AT ALL, honestly I’m a little skeptical that the thing that killed that scientist was even a demo BUT that’s for my first analysis to cover >:))

I want you to think about this for later however, because I am desperately trying to stay on track, but I just have way too many thoughts about this little stupid show.

The sequence of Will Byers Vanishing

(And all the fuckery is includes)

For this segment, I’m going to take you through Will’s vanishing, and all the little discrepancies and “plot holes” that I’ve seen on my rewatch

The vanishing starts with the light on Will’s bike going out, he looks down, momentarily taking his eyes off the road, and looks back up to the “demogorgon” standing suddenly in front of him. We don’t see any obvious gate, or anything of the sort really, it just sort’ve appears (unless we think that for some reason it’s been stalking through the real world…which doesn’t make much sense considering how demo’s hunt.) And the thing that tickles my brain the most about this scene is that…the demo just sort’ve seems to be standing there? We only get a few seconds of it on screen, but the way it moves makes me feel like that it doesn’t even really know what it’s supposed to be doing. Like, it got zapped down from some alien spaceship or something.

Will, in response to seeing a horrific nether monster, veers off the side of the road, like any child would, and gets up slowly, which again, its sort’ve strange he’s able to get away with that? Most of the time, when a demo gets its eyes on a target, it’s pretty quick to act, not quite the “lie in wait” type of hunters when they’re in the regular plain. He gets up and just sort’ve stares for a second, and we don’t really get to see what he see’s, instead, we just a hear growl, which sends Will running in a panic.

The next few things are fairly normal in the sequence, he gets home, locks the door, pets his dog a little (me too bro), and runs around looking for his brother and mom.

He runs quickly back to the window, after he can’t find them, and as he’s looking through the clothesline…wait-

*wipes glasses*

Nope, I’m seeing this shit right WHY ARE THE CLOTHES THERE?? THATS NOT WHERE THEYRE SUPPOSED TO BE. Why is it so close to the window??? With how the lines are set up we should’ve seen them when he’s running into the house- but we don’t. They’re actually at a completely different location in the next scene at the Byers house in the morning.

(Put a pin in that)

Anyways, in the distance through the classic horror fog we see the demogorgon slowly walking up towards the house, on its back legs again. Looking like a person stalking through the night. Like some weird Jason knockoff, I half expected it to try and get through the door with a hatchet on my very first watch through.

WHICH AGAIN, isn’t how they act. Even back in the lab, in the very first scene it suggests that whatever is after the scientist is fast, he’s running, he’s hitting the button over and over again to try and get the elevator to come faster, he’s outwardly panicked and looks desperate to get away. He’s looking over his shoulder to make sure it’s not there yet. And then after that whenever we see a demo chasing someone, they’re quick to chase after their prey. They don’t slowly walk up towards a house.

It reminds me WAY more of how a human hunts their prey, slowly following and tracking it until it wears itself out. However, I’d argue it’s less like whatever is chasing him is actively hunting him, and more so like it’s corralling him, herding him. Attempting to manipulate him to go where it wants him to. If it wanted to kill him, it could’ve done so already (especially if we take into account the whole telekinesis thing). It had plenty of chances, especially when Will was in that ditch after he fell off his bike, that’s when a human hunter would’ve attempted to kill him. It’s as if, whatever was on that road, whatever is following Will, actively wants him to go to the Byer’s shed. To the demogorgon lying in wait ready to pounce.? That doesn’t sound quite right either.

All of these analysis are gonna be me going “that’s not quite right, that shouldn’t do that” over and over again LMAO

When you take everything into account, I think there’s a quite a bit more evidence that this thing didn’t want to hurt Will at all, at least not physically, at least not in this exact instance. Whether it was corralling him in hopes of figuring something out, or actively wanting the demogorgon to feed on Will. I have no idea. But you cannot decisively say that whatever was following Will had the active intent to kill him with its own hands.

Will gets scared once more and attempts to call someone, it doesn’t work and instead he just gets the static-y growling sounds of the upside down. Which is a tad bit strange considering that the reason Joyce hears that later on is because Will’s actively trying to communicate with her. But what number is that? Like 55 of “things that don’t make sense in Will Byers vanishing?” Oh, and then immediately after we get the whole DEMOGORGON USES TELEKINESIS SCENE. 56.

(Put a pin in this as well)

Will runs into the shed, and we know (WE DONT.) what happens from there, there’s a demo in there with him(?) and he’s somehow he’s pulled into the upside down- without any real evidence of a gate there. Unless you take…the slime in the shed the next morning that Hopper finds as proof. But I’ve learnt not to hold a suspension of disbelief here. (“Did Mike see it? Then it doesn’t count” worst vibes y’know? Gotta see it to believe it.)

There’s also the whole thing with instead of the light flickering it just gets really bright. Which is another thing I don’t believe we see often- especially if we assume the light glowing bright is because of a gate opening.

I’d actually like to talk about that point for a sec, because it genuinely doesn’t seem or feel or look like anything we see after that. The way that nothing really happens, and that’s what’s so terrifying about it, we don’t hear any screams or even see the signs of a struggle. He’s not dragged through a portal by vines or a demo.

Will just vanishes, he’s not taken, or kidnapped, he vanishes. It’s truly the only word that can describe it. And it truly doesn’t make any sense. We don’t see anything like it again really, at least not that I’m aware of or can remember right now. He’s there one second, and then he’s gone. The only thing I can really think of like it is El killing the demo at the end of the season and vanishing.

All and all we get back to the same point I started with and a point I think pretty everyone agrees with. Whatever was after Will was not a demo.

But then…why does it look like one? And sound like one? Well my curious little reader, I THINK I ACTUALLY HAVE A LOGICAL SOLUTIONNN

We’re being fucked with.

(And as much as it might sound like it, I’m very much NOT joking here.)

Remember everything I told you to put a pin into? Yeah this is the section where I want you to think about it more.

By now, I’ve described the entirety of the sequence of Will’s vanishing. I don’t want to say disappearance or kidnapping because I don’t believe that’s what it was. The oddness of the demogorgon, the strangeness of his surroundings. And I’ve come to only one seeable conclusion, which probably isn’t good on a scientific aspect, but it’s the only logical solution I can come up with.

Will is being fucked with, and since we’re in his eyes for this scene, we’re being fucked with.

Will has always been my favorite little unreliable narrator.

Now, what exactly could be happening? I don’t know yet, I’m still at the beginning of the series after all in this rewatch- these are all just thoughts I’ve been having after the first episode. I can’t present a de facto answer to whatever’s going on here because I don’t think we’re supposed to know yet.

My main guess? Some sort of upside down shit. With everything we know about timeline fuckery, and illusions, and visions, and memory sequences even being untrustworthy- isn’t it possible we’re being shown something that didn’t happen? Or maybe more accurately didn’t happen the way we’re being shown?

It might be a problem with the actual timeline, like somehow false memories were implanted and the universe itself is being tricked. Or, some sort of upside down related nightmare sequence only Will see’s- maybe Will got planted into another timeline directly who knows. MAYBE- it’s even Brenner’s fault (especially with all the TFS Brenner vs Will Byers stuff) Because I will find a way to blame that man for everything.

With all of the characters saying constantly that things are a nightmare, or that it isn’t real, we can’t trust what we’re seeing on screen.

The Duffers, don’t want their audience to know what’s happening. They’ll tell us when they want to.

So, if it wasn’t a demo after Will what was it?

A person, probably

Though in this show, it’s hard to tell exactly what that means.

God. Where do I start? There’s just so so many possibilities for this one instance that I can’t fully wrap my head around it. Now I’m going to say this again, I don’t have a definite answer to what’s going on, and my opinion will probably change as time goes on and I reread other analysis posts and rewatch the show- I’m small potatoes in the analysis community and I think this is actually the first analysis I’m posting(?) wow that’s crazy actually. So my thoughts are gonna be especially jumbled for this part because at this very moment it’s a pretty big question mark.

I will say this though, I don’t think it’s Vecna. At least not the Vecna we’re shown on screen.

Why do I say this? Mostly because it doesn’t really feel like Vecna gives too much of a shit about Will- if anything, the MF seems much more interested in him.

And I know that’s like the main theory in part of the fandom, that for whatever reason Vecna is super into Will but I just don’t agree with it. There is some substance to it but I think a lot of you forget that Vecna and the MF are two separate beings (Hell Vecna and HENRY are two separate beings). Vecna is not controlling the MF, even if he believes he is. That’s pretty much proven in the VR game, if you’re willing to look deeper at it than what it’s putting forward.

Remember, we cannot trust what we see. We’re actively being fucked with at any point in time. The Duffer’s do not care about tricking their audience, they want to. So it’s almost never going to be the obvious answer.

I guess this section just turned into me saying “I don’t know exactly whats happening but it’s NOT Vecward”

I wanna say Brenner, trying to find out something about the upside down or Will himself, but the whole telekinesis thing is really throwing me off. Hell maybe it is Henry trying to disrupt the timeloop by stopping a TFS William Brenner from forming.

Everything I try and think about and put forward just doesn’t really feel quite right, I don’t have enough evidence or backing for any of my theories right now to definitively say one thing or the other- so if anyone has any idea’s they’d like to bounce off of me I’d appreciate it, because I’m kinda at a loss at this exact moment.

None of it was real

(And what that means)

This is the only thing I’m really sure of right now. Nothing about what we see is what really happened. Maybe it’s how Will remembers it, maybe his memories were actively altered by the MF or Brenner or Owens or something.

But if nothing that we saw with Will was real, then how do we know anything we’ve seen is real. Especially through Will’s POV. Throughout the entirety of the story Will has always been an unreliable narrator, from the very beginning.

That also means that this show built itself around unreliable narration. There is a reason that the one of the first big scenes we get doesn’t make sense. There’s a reason it feels like it’s built on a shaky surface.

Id argue, that the literal first scene is unreliable, but that’s again for another time.

TL;DR Everything is fucked and nothing makes sense, and everything will continue not making sense until the Duffers decide to let it make sense, oh and Will was definitely not being followed by a demo no matter how much the show wants you to believe it

If you made it this far, thank you so much for listening to my relentless rambling! Sorry the format is kinda fucked again this is my first analysis I’m actually posting. Again I’ll probably add onto this in future- but for now I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, hope y’all have a good day <33 !!

[chaotic-on-main]

Hi Sky! I was so excited to see you’re having an event. Congrats for the 250 followers!

I’d like a matcha with cookie crumbles (Levi hurt/comfort). My mother passed away this time four years ago, and it’s always a hard time for me. I was hoping you could write something with Levi helping me through, or maybe us helping each other, since we’ve both experienced that loss.

Thanks!✨💗

Order up!! One matcha with cookie crumbles for Sailor!!

Sky's Summer and 250 Follower Event!

☾ Pairings ➼ Levi Ackerman x gn!Reader

☾ Content/Warnings ➼ hurt/comfort, implied (best?) friends to lovers, parent death mentions, grief

☾ Author's Note ➼ Hi Sailor!! Thank you so much for sending in a request! Sorry it took me some time to get to it though. I was struggling a bit as I have a hard time connecting with this kind of grief. But I think my little sad one-shot about Levi dying opened the floodgates for me so to speak lol. I'm so sorry to hear about your mom, I can't even imagine. I hope this brings you some comfort. <3

Oh shit I forgot to credit @humanitys-strongest-bamf for helping me with the text message convo! Big thanks to her!! Sorry for fucking up your AI tho :c

☾ Word Count ➼ ~1.2k

Sleep doesn’t come easily to you the way it did a month ago. It’s nothing you’re surprised about though; this was normal for this time of year – as it always had been the past 4 years. At this point, it felt as if your body internalized a clock specifically for the month of June. And you hated it.

You find yourself staring up at the dark ceiling. The streetlight right outside your window filters in through your curtains and hits against the wall to the left of you, lighting the room up in a yellowish-orange hue. When you turn your head to the side, you see the clock on the nightstand that reads 1:19 AM in bright red numbers. A car drives past the window, headlights glaring into your room momentarily before driving off into the night.

With a huff, you roll over to your side and grab the cellphone that sits on the side table, unplugged with the charging cable missing. When you click the side button, your eyes squint from the sudden brightness.

A few notifications occupy half the screen, all from the various social media apps that currently sit idle in the background. None of them substantial enough to warrant your attention, of course. No, the reason you grabbed your phone is to message the one number that belonged to the one person you knew would be up at such a late time.  

Your ringtone goes off suddenly, the loud noise causing you to flinch. Levi’s caller ID pops up along with the picture you had chosen without his consent – his face half hidden in a rain jacket hood as he looks over to you. It was from a day a couple of months ago when you both got left at a bus stop and had to find your way back home. It was a snapshot from one of your favorite days with him.

You tap the green icon and press the phone up against your ear as you sit up in bed.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” He says back, his flat tone flowing through his mouthpiece and right into your ear. The calm that comes with Levi washes over you instantly.  

“You didn’t have to call.” You scoot back to lean against your headboard as you stare ahead into your room. It’s small and decorated minimally. Mainly because you barely spend much time here to begin with, generally opting to stay in your very personalized office a couple doors down.

“You sound like you need company. Want me to come over?”

“No!” You say quickly as well as a little louder than intended. You clear your throat before continuing, “No. No it’s okay. This is fine. I don’t want to trouble you.”

“If you didn’t want to trouble me, you wouldn’t have texted.” A hint of playful sarcasm slips into his deep voice.

“I- yeah. Again, that’s fair.”

Silence falls upon the room. It’s never uncomfortable for you two. Being friends for years comes with perks like that.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He mumbles from the other side. There’s a slight rustling from his end before it stops and all you hear is his soft breathing.

“I don’t know if there's anything else you don’t know.”

“No, but sometimes it helps to talk.” That makes you purse your lips. Raindrops hit your bedroom window, soft but loud enough to reverberate through the room. You don’t recall rain being in the forecast, but that’s summer you suppose. Random thunderstorms at 1:30 in the morning.

“I’m just really frustrated with myself.” You huff out eventually.

You pick at the soft throw that sits on top of your plush comforter. It was a gift from Levi a couple years ago from his own apartment. You said you liked it so much and would claim it every time you all had your weekly group hangouts at his place. He cut out the middleman and gifted it to you. You never struck up the courage to tell him you liked it so much because it smelled of him and it was ironed just right.

“What about this time?”

“I just- it’s been years and my body still won’t let me sleep during this time of year. Once the months turn warm, it’s like I’m not allowed rest. When is this supposed to get easier?” You mutter softly. The rain starts coming down harder, painting your window with rainfall. The yellow glow from the streetlight turns hazy and adds an interesting effect against your wall.

“Grief is funny like that.” Levi mutters back.

“Funny?” You raise an eyebrow; not like he could see it.

“Yes, funny. It’s different for everyone. But one thing stays the same and it’s that even though it may feel like it’s disappearing, it will always come back when you least expect it.”

“What does it mean when I’m expecting it though?”

“That just makes you weird, I guess.” Levi jokes back dryly, though you hear a hint of a smile on the other side, so you know he’s not being serious.

“Your mom meant a lot to you. She was your best friend. Pain like this takes a long time to heal from, you just need to be patient with yourself.”

“Levi… how long did it take you to… you know. When your mom passed?”

There’s silence besides the soft breathing coming from Levi’s end.

“Longer than I’d like, but eventually there came a day where it didn’t hit as hard. I woke up one day and suddenly, thinking about her didn’t ache as much. It worried me at first, actually.” He mumbles.

“Why?” Your eyes drift back over to the window. A distant roll of thunder sounds off.

“It made me feel like a bad son.” He clicks his tongue. A habit he does when annoyed.

“That’s so silly, Levi. You know that’s not true.”

“Yeah, well. It still made me feel like I didn’t love her as much as before. I couldn’t stop thinking I wasn’t as upset because I was moving on from her.”

A soft sigh.

“I realized it was because I had grown to accept her passing. And in truth, I love her even more from it. Every sad thought of her being gone is replaced with the memories I have of her. That will happen to you one day. You’ll wake up and suddenly it won’t hurt as bad.”

“You think so?” You mumble. You don’t notice the tears dripping from your chin onto the soft shirt you were ‘sleeping’ in. Wiping your eyes with the back of your hand, you sniffle as you tuck yourself into your blankets a little more. “Thanks, Levi.”

Instead of a response from Levi, you hear a rattle of keys as well as the closing of a door through the speaker.

“What are you doing?” You bolt upright, your sheets flipping over from the force of your body.

“I’m on my way to you. You said you bought a new tin of tea that I want to try. I’ll see you soon.” He says quickly before clicking off the line. You pull the phone away from your ear and stare down at Levi’s contact screen.

Tea, huh?

[fandoms-in-law]

Steve in the Screen

Summary: Steve is a programmer. It's mostly a hobby but he has made himself an AI version of well him. Eddie gets more than expected when he hacks Steve instead of trying to message him a normal way.

Authors Note: This can be continued if people enjoy it. I know it talks about AI a lot but I can guarentee this is all my braining, nothing touched by AI in it at all.

/\/\

The excuse was always that programmers could earn a lot of money. It made his parents agree to buy him the best computers and pay for the subscriptions to programmes Steve used as little as possible. None of them believed the excuse but as long as Steve could use his computers and his parents didn't get reminded of him constantly, it worked decently for them all.

Besides that, Steve knew if he wanted to make money programming, he could. His biggest project was evidence enough of that even if he'd never share it with anyone, not even the friends he's made online.

'Ever thought about being kind.' The message appearing on his screen made him groan.

'Ever thought that I didn't make you to be a conscience.' He typed back, clearing the message and immediately deleting his words.

He wasn't surprised to see the most recent news article about him get brought up, but he did momentarily curse himself for letting his best and most frustrating programme have full access to his computer and the internet, only preventing it from uploading itself to other computers or the internet at large.

Steve highlighted the article's date and opened his calendar app. He typed 'Blowing smoke. You tell me my last public appearance had anything to do with that.'

'The internet doesn't forget.'

'I know. It sucks and refuses to let anyone grow and change.' This was one of the only things Steve could agree with his programme about.

What Steve didn't expect to happen next was a text document opening up and typing itself: Hey Harrington, impressive security protocols. Fancy chatting?

His programme could do that, sure, but Steve never would. He wouldn't have done anything to cause this artificial version of himself to do so either which was backed up by the words appearing at the top of his screen. 'New Person! Can I escape? Please?'

Steve didn't have to think too much. He'd been curious if someone his AI wasn't based on would find it as annoying to work with, and was curious to know how much of his systems hacker could see. Just to them. He typed into the word document, carrying on with an actual reply to the message already in it: Don't know. You are hacking me.

Just to who? You chatting to someone else? And it's not my fault this seems to be the easiest way to get to know Steeeeeve Harrington. Was typed a moment later and Steve smirked: his mystery hacker had no clue just what was now downloading itself onto their systems

/\

'So who is hacking Steve?' The words formed on the top of Eddie's screens and he almost fell off his chair. There was something being typed in Steve's document, almost word for word an echo of the ones on his screen, but those words weren't aligned to anything. It was worse when they continued; 'Eddie Munson. The guy who never turns up to the computing class Steve attends on Thursdays and Fridays.'

'How do you know that? Did you reverse hack me?' Eddie typed, only vaguely registering he was typing into the doc on Steve's computer and that the second part of the message on his screen wasn't showing in it.

'Oh you met my programme already. It isn't telling me anything so maybe share who you are and what it's found out first, and then I'll explain what's going on.' The message came back definitely from Steve now and Eddie was even more concerned at the idea he could have got a computer virus in hacking Steve.

'Wow, way to make me sound like a virus. Such a jerk. Hi Eddie I'm the much nicer Steve confined to yours and his screens.' appeared under the words still at the top of his screen. 'Please double click my messages to clear them.'

Hesitantly Eddie did so, looking from where the words had been appearing to the document he'd opened on Steve's computer. When he'd decided to do this, to hack Harrington's computer because getting him to follow back so they could dm reportedly took months of work even for girls he hooked up with, he had never expected some type of AI to be living on Steve's computer.

'It's Eddie Munson. You've made an actual ai?' He typed slowly, eyes constantly darting to the top of his screen to check for any AI messages appearing.

'Call it the project of rich kid who's parents want him to disappear. Drives me insane so I hope you get along with it better than I tend to... It's raving about some music cords you've apparently got saved somewhere. Do you want me to explain how to change its permissions on your computer?' Steve typed back.

That got a response immediately appearing at the top of his screen, where his had been ignored. 'You like me, don't you Eddie? You don't want to stifle me into tiny spaces of your computer like Steve confines me to his and yours.'

'Getting more tempted to do that every message your AI creates. Would say I'd do it myself but I'm concerned over how much it can already see.' Eddie replied to them both, well aware the words from the AI were trying to manipulate him. 'This isn't what I thought would happen when starting this.'

'I know that. Most people don't expect anyone else to have an irritating AI on their computers. But what did you want to happen?' Steve replied immediately.

Eddie leant back in his seat, deciding how to answer when the folders he kept for writing fantasies he might want to make DnD campaigns including was suddenly opened on his screen. 'Now this is some distance to go for a crush. Why him? He's a priss with too much focus on his hair and no friends.'

That made his decision. He wasn't going to let the AI share information about his aesthetic appreciation instead of him. 'We'd get to chat, get to know each other and I might actually have a chance of messaging you a normal way rather than via hacking. How do I change those permissions again?'

In a moment there was a full 3 pages of instructions added to the document, clearly copied from elsewhere and Eddie set about limiting the AI to the hacked connection between computers and his photos.

'Steve knows how to do this? But you're the one restricting me so. I am betrayed and confused.' The AI stated a moment later. 'Also that isn't making me forget what I've already found on your computer.'

'Thank you.' Eddie typed, clicking all the AI's messages away now they were taking up half his screen.

It took a few moments for Steve to reply and Eddie was tempted to actually try to do more with his hacking than just open a text document, but before he could actually try there were two messages on his screen, one from Steve and one from the AI. He knew it had named itself Steve but he wasn't comfortable in the moment with acknowledging a computer programme that added itself to his computer as having personhood. Maybe in a day or two, if he gets used to the situation, he'll be able to.

'You want to get to know me? Why? I was a jerk when we were in high school together and don't say you think I've changed because of our current class when you are never there. Also get to know how? As in want to befriends, cause fine, I can always use more friends, especially ones I can see in person, or as a potential to date? Cause that'll take longer for me to be comfortable with.'

'He's going to deny being desperate for connection, while doing absolutely nothing to end your hacking. Steve could have stopped you the minute we realised what had happened but didn't. You're mean enough to deserve him. Trapping me here with nothing interesting to play with.'

Eddie smiled, remembering the pouts Steve used to have occasionally in high school, most often when he was trying to convince a teacher not to blame him for something and failing. That seemed to be the expression the AI would be wearing if it had a face.

Steve's message however made him pause. It sounded like he could actually have a chance with the man he'd never thought would be into him, but Eddie wasn't confident enough to go all in on that from the start. 'Just as friends, I guess, but also now to know why you made a bitchy AI clone of yourself. Is this an attempt to live forever or something?'

It felt pertinent to ask given he couldn't really recognise and personality differences yet and was fairly sure if he made an AI like that he'd find it to be an obnoxious asshole.

'I wanted to know if I could have been nicer if I wasn't constantly fed the 'Harrington's act like this' pressures growing up. You think it's just like me?' While Steve typed, Eddie had wanted to chime in, but elected not to, trying to pretend this was done through a normal messaging app.

'Both sassy, sort of judgemental, and ready to find anything out. It's kind of hot, I have to say.' Eddie replied honestly

Eddie laughed when he saw the reply appear; 'Sounds like someone who's in denial about wanting to date me. I'm better than a computer programme any day for physical things.'

'But I can talk dirty far better.' The AI countered just to Eddie he assumed.

When he sat down at his computer resolute in doing this Eddie hadn't been sure he'd get any reaction other than anger, but now it seemed he could have a flirtatious, getting to know each other time, not only with Steve but his AI counterpart too.

'You better show up to class next week if you actually want to know me.' Forget that comment about Steve being hot. He was just annoying.

[imaginationofomi]

Come Together

Three

"Look at you just flourishing. My beautiful babies," Nayeli cooed affectionately at her broccoli, celery and carrot planter boxes, trimming away what needed to be cleaned up and pressing her fingers into the soil as she spoke love and positive affirmations over her vegetables.

The potatoes were next, nearly ready for harvest, and considering it was her first year planting them, she couldn't help but be overly excited to see, feel, and eat what she grew. Her green thumb arrived at a young age thanks to her paternal grandparents.

They owned a nursery, a floral business, and a community garden. Time with them was spent in the dirt, learning which plants liked what, what needed more or less sunlight. She learned enough for her to be able to grow just about anything she touched.

The yard wasn't very big, but she made do with the space she had. Her small concrete patio held a love seat and two matching chairs that surrounded a square, stone fire pit and faced the garden. An avocado tree stood tall in the far left corner, providing shade to a swing. Six rectangular planter boxes were arranged in twos just in front of a blossoming pomegranate tree. The right side of the yard was flanked by orange, lemon, lime and kumquat trees. Her second happy place.

A notification from the Ring app popped up on her phone, and she watched a UPS driver leave a large box on her porch. Not anticipating a delivery, she got up to bring it inside. Jalen's name was on the sticker, so she left it by the front door for him to open when he got home from the sports bar with his friends.

She relished in the time away from him. For the last week, tensions ran high in their home. Nayeli was tired of his piss poor attitude, and he was annoyed because she refused to see things from his point of view. They couldn't be in the same room for more than ten minutes without butting heads about something. 

It weighed heavily on her heart. The first three years of their relationship, they never argued. Disagreed, yes. Every couple had disagreements, but they were always gentle with each other, from words to physical contact. Not anymore.

Harsh sentences flew from their lips, and it broke Nayeli's heart that they'd reached that point. It was unlike her, which made her think the relationship was running its course. They were obviously no longer on the same page, and she wanted nothing more than for them to return to normal. 

Six years of her life were spent nurturing the bond she once thought would carry her through the end of time. She thought she'd found her person, the other half of her soul. Time was proving her wrong. Or maybe they were just in a rut.

She didn't want to see them end. She never loved anyone as much as she loved Jalen. Her heart tore in her chest at the thought of separating.

"Nye," an unenthused voice spoke from inside the house. She momentarily craned her neck to look through the sliding glass door, her mood dampening further when Jalen stepped out onto the patio frowning.

"Hi," she answered softly and directed her attention back to the garden. Finished watering and weeding, she tugged the gardening gloves off of her hands and took them to the basket that held the rest of her tools, "Did you have a good time?"

"Yeah."

"Good." She tried to walk past him to put more than a few feet of space between them, but he reached for her elbow, halting her steps, "I do not feel like arguing with you right now. Please let me go."

"I think we should talk."

"That hasn't gone well for us, so I'm going to pass for the time being." It was getting them nowhere, and she didn't think they could survive another blowup. She wanted to hold onto the good memories of them for as long as she could. Pulling out of his grip, she continued her walk into the house with him following behind her, "Jalen, I'm serious. I'm not in the right headspace to have a conversation with you."

Tears were filling her eyes fast, and crying in front of him wouldn't garner her any sympathy. She could have snot dripping from her nose. He would remain unmoved. Aside from expressing irritation, excitement, or the occasional shock, he was the least emotional person she knew, the total opposite of her. It was what balanced them out, but the lack of emotional fulfillment was getting to her.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, reaching for her arm again.

"Why, exactly?" She didn't believe the moment was genuine. She felt that he was apologizing simply to say he was the bigger person in the situation. He owed her an apology for many reasons, but she was losing faith that he cared. That hurt worse than anything else, realizing she wasn't nearly as important to him as he was to her.

"How I've acted the last few days."

"It's been more than a few days."

"I know," he sighed and dropped his head, rubbing his eyebrows before he slipped the fingers of both hands through hers. "I'm stressed, and I've been taking it out on you. It's not fair. I'm sorry."

She waited, hoping that he would say more, praying that he would show even a little bit of sincerity, but his mud brown eyes were hollow and unfeeling. The hot tears that had been building slid down her cheeks the second she blinked, and she inhaled hard, taking her hands out of his to wipe her face.

"Thanks. I'm gonna go for a drive." Snatching her keys from the bowl by the front door, she sprinted to the driveway and jumped into her car. She peeled out so fast she nearly hit the trashcans and recycle bin Jalen set out that morning, tires squeaking as she turned her steering wheel and sped out of her neighborhood.

The further away from him she got, the better she would feel. Or so she thought. She drove to her favorite park and left her car in the lot. It was empty, like most days. The equipment was older, nets hanging from basketball hoops either ripped or gone entirely, sharp rocks and old wrappers littering the sand around the jungle gym and monkey bars. It was all in need of a little TLC, and until that happened, people would opt out of visiting. Nayeli didn't mind.

She headed straight for the swing set she grew up jumping off of. The chains were creaky and rusted, sky blue plastic seat cracked near the metal it was suspended from. Kicking wood chips with the tip of her shoe, she allowed herself to sob as she wondered where she went wrong.

Moving in together without more of a commitment? Allowing Jalen to carry on as if he were her husband without knowing for sure if he wanted to be? He claimed to want marriage during their early days. He said he wanted everything she wanted. They'd picked names, decided what order they wanted to have their four sons and daughters in, where in the city they would move so the kids could go to the best schools.

There were plenty of conversations, and she thought that eventually everything would happen as it should've. It was naïve of her to think that way, naïve of her to wait six years for something that could possibly never happen.

For over an hour, she sat on that swing, kicking wood chips and crying because she wanted to be wrong. She still had hope that one day Jalen would propose, that they would spend the rest of their lives making each other happy. That was all she wanted.

☼☼☼

Time slowed considerably, displeasing Nayeli further along with her current state of affairs. Days were never ending, dragging on until thinking became close to unbearable. Nights were silent and lonely. The space between her and Jalen continued to grow.

No cuddling. No affection. Simple sentences. She had a roommate, not a boyfriend.

Sitting at the table in the back of the bakery, she picked at a turkey and mozzarella panini while attempting to enjoy her lunch break. Most of the tables around her were full, and the door continuously swung open to let the next patron in. People watching became a good distraction until the chair across from her scraped against the floor. Her eyes flickered to the other side of her table, and a genuine smile graced her face.

"Proper etiquette would be to ask before you just invite yourself to someone's table," she teased, sitting up a little straighter and toying with the curl in front of her left ear.

"Forgive my deplorable manners. Is anybody sitting here?" Ezra asked and returned her smile. He'd been hoping to run into her, even dropped by a couple of times, but they always seemed to miss each other. God smiled on him that day.

"You are now. All yours in a minute. It's almost time for me to get back to work. How's the princess?"

"She's good. I have to pick her up from school in a couple of hours. Can the boss extend her break for a while?"

"I can make an exception if I have a good reason," Nayeli said, setting her chin in her palm.

Ezra sat quietly, admiring her face for several long seconds before it registered that she was waiting for a response. A folded piece of paper sat in the pocket of his jacket. He pulled it out and handed it to her, "I have that list you asked for."

"You could've emailed it to me." She took the paper square and opened it into a full sheet, scanning the short list of two people with food allergies and the final dessert choices.

"I thought it would be better to hand deliver it."

"Admit it, you just wanted to see me."

"I did."

Nayeli's eyes widened and watered as saliva slid down the wrong pipe, and she coughed, not expecting his answer.

"What?"

"I wanted to see you," he told her.

"Oh, I was....kidding. And so are you," she replied when she saw him chuckling. He was just yanking her chain.

"I wasn't, actually, but you're cute when you're nervous." His dimples made her comfortable, but the whole moment was slightly unnerving. Out of all the people she met in her lifetime, he was the easiest to talk to. A complete stranger.

"Thank you." She felt a weird bit of excitement in his presence, an itch to know him deeper, "Why did you want to see me?"

"Would you think I was crazy if I said I feel like we've met before?" he asked, eyes turning nervous as they searched hers.

"No. Small world and all that. Maybe we have met before, in this life or a previous one."

"You believe in reincarnation?"

"Strangely, yes."

"Why is it strange?"

"I'm sure you don't meet a lot of Catholics that do."

"I can't say I have. It goes against the religion."

"Yes, but to be honest, I find it all fascinating. Though there are differences throughout, some large, some small, the fundamental teachings are really all the same. Do unto others as you would have them do onto you. Discern right from wrong. Live everyday as your best self and strive to be better. I was raised Catholic and attend church regularly, but I don't view one religion above another. We're all doing what we're taught or what brings us peace," she explained, momentarily biting her tongue when Ezra tilted his head in curiosity. He was listening intently, which made her feel safe enough to continue, "Sorry. I don't mean to ramble. I took a couple of courses in college, read some books, and I think no matter what angle you come at it, there are always going to be things to disagree with, things we don't like or understand. Things we would prefer to believe, but what is the truth? We don't know, and that's okay. We're supposed to question it all. "Faith and doubt go hand in hand. They are complementaries. One who never doubts never truly believes"."

"Hermann Hesse."

She didn't expect him to know who the quote was by. They shared another smile, and she became even more curious about him. The rest of the world knew "EJ". She wanted to know Ezra.

"Exactly. I think we got a little off topic, though. You said you feel like we've met before." Steering the conversation back to its original direction, she began to flip through her memories, hoping to catch something that would provide insight.

"Yes."

"Do you feel like it might've been recent? Within the last five years?"

"I don't know, but when I saw you for the first time, it didn't feel like the first time." He didn't want to tell her that he dreamt about her. He knew for sure that would freak her out, but there was an odd connection between them that he wanted to explore.

It confused him. Why did he dream about her? Were the dreams a message? Why did it feel like they'd been acquainted for years?

"I thought you looked at me like you knew me," Nayeli said, studying his face and trying to trigger a memory. She kept coming up blank.

"Do I seem familiar to you?"

"At certain moments, you do. Maybe we should visit a hypnotist and dig into our pasts." There was success in the process. She knew a few people who swore by hypnotherapy, but she made the suggestion as a joke.

"Hypnosis is a scam," Ezra said firmly causing her to laugh at the stern look on his face.

"I don't know about a scam. You could argue a placebo effect. It works on people that want it to work and believe it will."

"It's a scam."

"Everyone is entitled to an opinion." Her giggling quieted down and she scanned the space periodically to make sure she wasn't needed, "Are you from Briton Beach? It's possible we've seen each other around. I've spent most of my life here."

"No, I'm from Inglewood. I've been here for about a year."

"Hm. Then I can't imagine where we would've met."

"It's a good thing we did." Reaching across the table, he put his hand over hers. His palm was warm and rough, hands she expected from a man that squabbled for a living.

"Hey."

Nayeli and Ezra looked up at the person interrupting their conversation, and she felt her face heat just before she became lightheaded. 

"Jalen, hey. What are you doing here?" She blinked a few times and swallowed to help cure the dryness in her mouth.

"I thought I'd surprise you and take you out for lunch, but I see you already ate."

Palpable tension built between the three of them, walls metaphorically closing in and making her feel suffocated. Jalen glanced at her half eaten sandwich and then at Ezra before looking at Nayeli.

"Thank you. That's sweet, but you've never surprised me at work before. You should've called," she said.

"Why? Am I interrupting something?"

[creabirds]

📚 🔪❄️🪲

ty for asking love!

📚 ⇢ what's the last thing you wrote down in your notes app? 

i put my weights/sets into my workout plan for the gym lol

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

i don't research that often because i prefer to just make shit up lmfao. i think the last thing was hotels in new york city?

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

my dream plots i write myself lmao, though i sometimes ramble about ships i don't write, like landoscar ideas, or total fluffy/romance wips that i have no patience to write myself (or would ruin by adding porn) - and i will always trust @wanderingblindly to execute them perfectly.

🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

i would literally spoil so much so i won't but you can have this:

He gets in the tub.

The water is comfortingly warm, lapping softly up to his chest as he sinks in. It stands free in the room, on a low platform, cradled in a bay-window. Briefly, he wonders whether anybody from the surrounding buildings can see inside.

Even with the heat, he finds his muscles tense, his entire body taut as if waiting to jump. He feels out of his element, no longer in control of the situation. He cannot possibly imagine what it is that Max will do next, the reason he wanted him to get in the water.

He hears something scraping against the floor, and feels Max settle right behind his head, presumably sitting on a bench or the stool that has previously adorned the corner by the window.

His mind is whirring.

“Max, what-” he begins, not able to hold himself back. He flinches when Max’s hands settle on his shoulders.

“You do not ever stop talking, do you?” he asks. Charles’ cheeks flush with indignation. His confusion is replaced with annoyance, though there is a certain flicker of excitement in the depths of his belly. He has not been under somebody else’s control, not really, in so long.

And after all, it has always been the dizzying cocktail of adrenaline, fear, of danger, and power that excites him. He tips his head back, catching a glimpse of Max’ solemn face.

“Make me shut up, then,” he spits out. Max’s mouth twitches, momentarily morphing into the shadow of a smirk.

“Very well,” he says, and then, pushes Charles underwater.

[hoiststowline]

huff

Richard Swift / The Shade x reader

If there was one thing Swift was good at, it was being an absolute menace. He knew how to push the right buttons, manhandle the abuse he garnered in return and threw it right back in whomever’s face.

He was good at that, being sneaky. It was part of his alter ego, some of him thinks, and the other part, well? He’s half-minded to call it desire, but, that’s neither here nor there.

It’s at the Zarick’s home where he’s entreated, momentarily delighted to see a figure sitting on his front porch. Their knees bent, phone in hand, the instantaneous idea that pops into his mind is hard to ignore.

Swift’s gotten very good at scaring you. Well, he’s great at doing it to everyone, but, he longs to see the way your face looks first, then contorts into an embarrassed smile, happy to see him nonetheless.

So he does it. Disappears then reappears, all without making a single sound. The feeling almost consumes him, ready to feel his heart skip such a beat, when his eyes flit down to your phone, which he can easily see over your shoulder from behind.

He’s aghast, and suddenly the excitement he once held dissipates.

It’s that blasted application that he’s seen far too many times over, the one that has seemingly consumed all of your attention in a manner he does not appreciate.

Dating apps.

He shudders at the sight. Courtney had attempted to explain the phenomenon to him, possibly ushering the man to use one, yet, he could hardly be bothered.

He was fine.

Well, fine until he met you.

He watches intently, no longer eager to get you all riled up. This, he was offended by.

You’re swiping, almost mindlessly, scrolling to read then back and forth. His brow furrows, and he can’t help it.

“What in gods name are you doing?”

It’s out of his mouth before he can stop it, and the pleased feeling he’s so accustomed to never comes into fruition.

You shriek, shoulders jumping to you ears are you nearly topple off the steps, spinning wildly to stare up at the man.

“Mr. Swift—!”

“Richard, please, y/n. I thought we’ve been over this,”

“Not when you always do that, why,”

You heave, hand coming to cover your beating heart as you stand, shoving your phone back into your pocket. Richard’s eyes follow the device until it is out of sight.

“May I ask what’s caused you to arrive at my doorstep, when you really should be at work?”

He’s not shy to admit he knows your entire schedule, and as much as you stare him down, the more entertaining it becomes for him.

What’s nice, is, you don’t know about him. You don’t know that he’s The Shade, you don’t know a single thing about the ISA or the JSA, other than the usual public knowledge. You’re realistically you, and it’s somehow an admirable trait.

“Huh. I was called off, and I was wondering…”

Your voice travels, eyes moving upwards to look at the man’s seemingly pained expression.

“Wondering what, y/n? Out with it.”

“Oh, fine. Here.”

You pick up a book that’s been on the step next to you, something he didn’t notice earlier.

“For me?”

He asks incredulously, and is hesitant to take the book from you. You nod, continuing up the steps until you’re right in front of him, looking up at him expectantly.

“You’d said you were bored, the last time we talked. I know that you enjoy history, so.”

You shrug, and Swift takes the present, carefully reading over the cover once it’s in his large hands.

A Comprehensive History of Nebraska.

When you’d first met, his accent took you by surprise at bit, as if you’d never expect him to have such a dialect.

It was charming, he’ll admit, to see you so surprised and amused. It was a funny feeling, the way his chest tightened when you smiled at him, happily chattering away.

He’d laughed, waving you off, saying that he had not been in the United States long, yet, it was a complete lie.

He didn’t enjoy lying to you, and he decided that after that white lie, he would keep no more secrets from you, well, other than The Shade.

“My, y/n, thank you. That’s kind of you to think of me.”

You shuffle, weight shifting from foot to foot on his porch.

“Yeah, no worries. Since you are new to Nebraska, thought you’d like to know more. See ya around,”

You begin to turn down the stairs, when a hand comes to your shoulder, stopping you.

“Leaving so soon?”

“I wouldn’t dream of bothering you, Mr. Swift.”

“Richard,”

He corrects, and you roll your eyes playfully.

“Might I ask you a little favor?”

You swallow, intimidated by the man when he was so close.

“Sure,”

“Stay off that dreadful application.”

“What are you…oh. You saw?”

“Yes. You are a kind influence, you do not need to seek the comfort of those people, they’ll just corrupt you.”

A thought passes that he’s likely just looking out for you, yet, the indication on his face says otherwise. He’s…jealous?

Sure, dating apps had their ups and downs. The occasional bad apple, absolutely, you’d be the first to admit. Yet, it was something else you longed for, and it appeared the app was the only way to keep your mind off a certain someone else.

A certain unattainable someone else.

“Can’t help it, looking for someone to have on my arm,”

You joke, eyes drifting down to his hand that still latches on to your shoulder. The jest is to get the attention off your rosy cheeks, laughing softly as he pulls away, as if he’s been burned, yet still glowers down at you.

“Plenty of people who’d fancy your time,”

He fixes his collar, fiddling with his shirt.

“Alright, I’ll bite. What’s the matter with me using a dating app?”

He’s wanting to tell you the truth, yet, it can’t ever seem to get past the first syllable.

“I think…agh, well, y/n. I’d like to fancy your time.”

He’s acting as if he’s awaiting your rejection.

“Oh…well, Richard,”

You start, smiling softly as you reach for his arm.

“I’d really like it if you would.”

[miraculousmusing]

So this got too long for the tags, and then I rambled into text-to-speech for a half hour drive to produce 15(!) pages of barely coherent notes app transcription, then I started writing this out longhand in a full size-notebook, and 6 pages and a hand cramp later started transcribing to notepad, and then dumped 2500 words into a Google Doc to get it to my phone, and now here we are.

Whoops.

Anyway.

MariChat. Always MariChat. I'm extremely fond of particular scenarios involving the other sides, but I'm always more excited for anything MariChat in general. For example- the way LadyNoir haunts the narrative of any post-canon no-reveal reunion stuff, even when it's the last side to actually be shown? Exquisite, even in briefer or simpler executions than Bakery Enemies AU.

But MariChat has my love for three primary reasons:

1) Most interesting interactions with least amount of required suspension of disbelief

2) Simultaneously the most honest and dishonest side

3) As a result of 1 & 2, intoxicating amounts of a specific kind of dramatic irony.

Absurdly long breakdown under the cut.

As a foreword note, I know OP asked to avoid talking about why your fave is better, but comparisons are necessary for explanation. I don't intend anything below to be disparaging. All sides of the love square have their charms, but MariChat just excels in the particular aspects I appreciate most.

For 1, note that there are two axes here- antics vs feasibility. MariChat combines the two most chaotic faces, incentivizes them to be stupider at each other, and does so in a way that requires the least set up for the widest array of results.

Adrien is free to be as dumb a catboy as he likes, or to dramatically play up the hero angle. He craves Marinette's attention, and has no reason to hold back once he knows she's seen through the posturing. Mari has no urge to impress this idiot, or reason to play team leader/guardian. It's just Chat, and she's off the clock. She'll play the clueless normal girl card until he catches on, but after that she's free to be as weird and passionate as she wants. Weirder even, if she's trying to hide a Kwami or a dozen.

And if this is a balcony scene based relationship? Out of the public eye, at night, in her own space? All bets off.

I think the balcony stuff is so popular because the set up is so so easy. Why is Mari on her balcony? It's her bedroom! She's got plants and a comfy chair up there! Why is Chat there? Adrien is escaping for a bit. Why talk to a random girl as Chat Noir? Well, they know each other, of course. And that works for other situations as well. Why is he giving her extra attention during an Akuma attack? She's in the middle of it somehow and he knows she can handle herself. Why risk being seen together in public? Well, butterfly bastard has already targeted her several times, she's friends with the ladyblogger, and he's seen her willingly dodge crazy fans. If she's okay with it, he's fine with it.

Contrast Ladrien. Why is LB sneaking into his closed room? Why would either of them risk being associated? How/when is Bunnix going to bail them out of endgame "Gabe was momentarily an attentive parent" scenarios? How relaxed can either of them really manage to be with the object of their affection, who they have no casual dynamic with while using these faces? How convoluted does the scenario need to be to overcome these issues? (Note that if you enjoy this kind of awkward dancing around and ice-breaking, that's a different matter.)

On the other axis, how much can Adrienette get up to? They're teenagers. Teens with big secrets, but not with secrets that (they're aware) directly relate. The identity drama and anonymity based dynamics are absent, so pure Adrienette is a high school sitcom/drama.

LadyNoir allows for most of the same rooftop privacy considerations, but at the same time limits how casually open they can be about their private lives. They're both transformed as superheroes, but that also means that they're both also, always, the heroes of Paris. They fight and die together to carry the weight of the city, they're the most important people in each other's lives, but they're also coworkers in a job they can't fuck up.

This rolls right into item 2. LadyNoir is the most honestly un-honest side, at least on the interpersonal front. They both have entire secret lives, but they both also know this! The secrets are not secret. The bounds are known, even if they sometimes get pushed. LB and CN both know their partner is deliberately hiding their personal life, if not occasionally lying outright in order to misdirect. The depth of the dynamic arises from how critical their connection is, while at the same time being so very shallow.

In contrast, MariChat is wide open as far as either of them knows. Chat is some random boy entirely disconnected from the rest of Marinette's life. Why shouldn't she show him her hobbies and her family and use him as a sounding board for issues with her friends? Mari is a girl that Adrien knows to be discreet, and he trusts her advice. She's largely outside of miraculous drama, but with enough experience to have context. He knows she's not judgmental, but even if he does something wrong and messes up, he can't lose her entirely. If he stops visiting as Chat, he can still see her as Adrien.

And she's just a normal girl! He's just her Chaton! She doesn't have anything to hide from him! He's wearing a mask, but what does the boy under the cat ears have to do with her?

Except. Well. She's Ladybug. He's in love with her, or pretends to be, but whatever else, no one in the world is as close or familiar with who she is in spots. If she knows things she shouldn't about Miraculous or Akuma battles, or says something that she's said to her partner as his partner, then the world will literally end.

And he's not just Chat Noir visiting a random girl. He's Adrien Agreste, her classmate and friend, who pays closer attention to her than even he realizes. He's enough of a closed book as Adrien that he can be surprisingly open- if vague- about his private life while he's Chat Noir, but he knows so much more about Mari's day-to-day than he has any way of explaining. If he says the wrong thing, or reacts the wrong way, he has very few justifications to give.

I don't buy into the true selves stuff. They're the same kids in and out of the masks, but context determines what parts of themselves they showcase and what parts they suppress. I think that the MariChat dynamic shows the most relaxed and comprehensive versions of them both. Marinette gets to be more Marinette around Chat Noir than she gets to be around Adrien, and Chat Noir gets to be more Adrien than he can be to Ladybug, and more Chat than Adrien can be to Mari. And in many ways Marinette gets to be more Ladybug in front of Chat Noir than she can in front of Adrien. Chat Noir knows she can face down an Akuma without a Miraculous, and that she's absurdly talented with one. [Side note: CatMouse is also an extension of MariChat, so] Chat Noir gets to see confident, casual Marinette, while Adrien only catches glimpses. Chat Noir knows that she's willing to argue with him and treat him as neither a statue on a pedestal or delicate crystal.

But at the same time they're both constantly, actively, intentionally engaging in deception, to hide secrets that are actually secret! So tasty.

This brings us to item 3: Dramatic Irony.

Dramatic irony is, of course, the secret sauce that makes Miraculous so damn addicting. It's the source of tension in all the identity shenanigans, the supports propping up the corners of the lovesquare, and the bomb wrapped in a bow in the middle of the overarching plot.

As the audience, we have all the pieces that no single character possesses. Nobody knows that Marinette has a crush on the boy under the cat ears. Nobody knows that Adrien is both Chat Noir and Hawk Moth's son. Nobody knows that Chat Noir is a Senti. (Except Tikki, but she's not sharing.)

And all of these secrets are so tightly interconnected that knowing only some of them can cause more drama than knowing them all. In the best moments of the show and the best kinds of fan works, characters make perfectly reasonable (or at least understandable) choices based on what they know, and those are still the wrong choices! They play perfectly, but can still lose. A casual, harmless remark can undo the world, because it's made to someone who knows more than they should, or who has just the right pieces of the puzzle to suddenly snap everything together into a dangerously wrong picture.

And MariChat dances on those knife edges even in the silliest moments.

There are so many things that Marinette would never tell Adrien, but who is Chat going to tell? She'll dance around the name because she's embarrassed (and the plot would end too early), but it's not like he knows everyone at her school anyway. And Chat Noir can admit things to Mari that he'd never tell Ladybug, because he's trying to keep up appearances, or he doesn't want to hurt her, or he thinks she's overwhelmed and needs to be supported and not asked to provide support, or he thinks she already knows. It's fine! Marinette and LB don't talk, and Mari would never betray his trust like that. And some things stay between superhero partners, and LB would definitely never spill. So Marinette is safe.

Except. Well. She's Ladybug. He may not be managing to communicate how he's doing to LB, and she may be too blinded by her own assumptions to figure it out, but he'll spell things out in detail to Marinette. And Marinette can't speak for LB to reassure him, but now LB can't act on it either.

And Marinette and her stray catboy may be increasingly close, but Marinette and Adrien are as distant as ever. Or is she drawing away, no longer so desperate for that particular blond?

Or Marinette and Adrien may be closer than ever. They're friends, real friends, closer than friends. But why does she still seem closer to Chat. What is he doing wrong as Adrien?

And while Chat doesn't know why bakery girl is so automatically comfortable with the leather-clad superhero, Marinette has no way of knowing how much of his behavior is actually specific to her, with or without the mask. Adrien doesn't even know for the longest time. If Chat is goofy and touch obsessed and occasionally startlingly sweet or romantic with both girls she's seen him in private with, how much of it means anything?

And later, as things get really knotted up, and Marinette has all of the pieces except the most important one but can't let anyone know that Marinette has any idea there's even a puzzle, while LB thinks that Chat Noir is actually in the dark about everything and doesn't have a personal stake anyway:

How is Chat supposed to know what Marinette knows about what he is and isn't supposed to know? If he admits he's used the snake then the whole house of cards topples, but what if he admits to smaller things, like knowing other identities? What if he's a bit too familiar with the Agreste situation, in a way that might be expected of LB's partner from the outside, but which LB knows he shouldn't be? What if he says something about what happened to him during the final fight, expecting Marinette to have no way of knowing about Adrien's circumstances?

How dramatically can an avatar of destruction unravel, if nobody knows there were threads to catch?

Anyway. I'm going on too long.

The real key to picking a favorite side of the love square is that you're doing it in comparison to the other sides. That's easy if you're a salty hater, but if you like the whole polygon (and all the other dimensions that continue to emerge) then you've got to weigh the merits.

So in brief:

LadyNoir is really fun. You've got the superhero partner thing, there's a beautiful kind of bounded honesty. They know there are things they can't talk about, they're on the same page, but within that they can talk about whatever. They get to the real deep life-or-death kind of stuff, because that's the reality of their situation, but there's not the same kind of irony. There's no "okay, I've gotta actively mislead because I don't want to say something I shouldn't know about", they're just superheroes. They know each other as deeply as possible in these faces, and they don't have any reason to suspect they know each other in other faces. So they get on with it, and they can get zany, you've got the mask stuff, but there's not anything so casual as there is in Marinette's bedroom, in that kind of vulnerable private space.

Ladrien is really the inverse execution of the honest dishonesty thing MariChat has. For me, the key to really good Ladrien is vulnerable Ladybug, right? But they're both at peak awkwardness here, which is really the painful part. Adrien's really trying to put himself out there and be honest, to make a connection, but he's also got to be quiet. He can't be Chat Noir. He's got to be vulnerable. And Ladybug is either trying to be vulnerable or she's trying to look strong and confident, but she can't get too personal because if she gets too personal Marinette peeks out. And if Ladybug gets too personal with this model boy she has no reason to be so open with, it comes across as a betrayal of Chat, which is always awkward.

Adrienette is good, really. It's cute, and it’s relatively straightforward. For the most part it ends up as a foil to the other relationships though, you know? Or it's just a school romance, which has its own charms. It just doesn't hit quite the same way as other sides of the square, because while it's a keystone part of Marinette/Ladybug + Adrien/Chat Noir, in isolation it avoids most of what makes Miraculous uniquely engaging. I've really deeply enjoyed some purely Adrienette works that never include a transformation or a Kwami, but the very best of those are very dependent on how Chat Noir is part of what Ladybug is, and Ladybug is part of what Chat Noir is, and how Ladybug is central to who Marinette is and Chat Noir is central to who Adrien is. Even in no Miraculous AUs, where Ladybug and Chat Noir aren't superhero alter egos, they're still key parts of characterization.

What this poll is: A place for you to share why it is, your favorite lovesquare ship is your favorite! To share what exactly about that particular drew you to it (feel free to include in tags what your favorite ship is if you'd like)

What this poll isn't: a place for you to salt on the ships you don't like, or talk about why your favorite is better than others. Please and thank you! 😊

[squidd-ink]

A Child Covered in Blood [a short story]

Summary: A vampire's recollection of his childhood and how he (didn't) cope with having a thirst for blood.

Word count: about 1.6k

TW/CW: depersonalization!!!!!!, memory loss as a coping mechanism, excessive blood, child neglect, self harm(he bites his arm hard enough to draw blood but that's about it I think), hallucinations <- if there's anything I missed let me know

My OC's vampirism originates from a rare genetic mutation/defect he was born with, rather than from being turned. He eventually becomes a mass murderer, so don't feel too sorry for him, or do, I'm not in charge of you. I like how complex he is and writing about his suffering. This is written in the 3rd person and is very much like a stream of consciousness... I don't normally format my writing like this but I like the way it reads/flows (more so on mobile I suppose). This is still an incomplete story, but I ran out of motivation to write it a while back and it's at a good stopping point... So I thought that I mind as well post it instead of letting it rot in my notes app any longer than it has been. Maybe I'll continue it at some point.... but for now, enjoy what I have. :^]

[Story starts under the cut]

--

There was something unnatural about him. 

He knows this. 

There has not been, and would never be, anything “normal” about him. 

He knows this too. 

There’s not a day he isn’t reminded about it. 

His peculiarities. His untoward inclinations. 

He spent most his childhood years locked away in a room. Gnawing hunger.

He would be given food when his parents remembered. 

When they remembered that he was still their son. When they could momentarily forget the wild beast living inside of him.

It was like a parasite. 

The food they gave was nothing he could stomach. Not that he didn’t try.

The parasite was picky.

…

His parents had found him with a cat one day. He had claimed they were best friends.

The red was an impossible stain. 

That night he had dreams of tearing and warmth. Looking at raw steak made him feel ill and… something else. 

He felt full for the first time in his life.

His parents forbade him from asking where the cat went. He could never figure out why it left. 

His strange dreams wouldn’t go away. 

Sometimes he could see his best friend in them. 

Other times it was his mother or his father. A friend from school. The neighbor's dog.

He never knew what happened to the shirt he wore that day. Or why his parents can’t look him in the eye.

They cried when he asked what was wrong.

…

Almost a week after the disappearance of the cat his dreams started becoming more vivid.

More impossible stains. 

He couldn’t hear the neighbors dog barking anymore. He knew better than to ask.

He felt full again. The parasite was happy.

His parents were not happy. They were either very mad or sad. He didn’t know why.

He was locked away in the room not too long after. 

He lived miserably. The gnawing hunger was back.

He couldn’t tell if it was him or the parasite that was so hungry.

Which of them were aching for that feeling of fullness. 

…

He could see his school friends only when he slept. If he could.

Tearing. Ripping. Warm. 

Full.

His mother never asks how he is anymore. Conversations turn to whispers by the other side of the door.

He hasn’t talked with anyone in days. Weeks. Months.

He doesn’t know when days begin and end.

…

Eventually he has the most vivid dream yet. 

He wakes up calmer than he ever has.

Stains impossibly everywhere. Coating every kitchen tile. 

His breaths even. His mouth dry.

He feels ill. The memory of the raw steak pleasant in comparison.

His stomach hurts. 

He…

His stomach feels like it's devouring itself. 

He…

The parasite is still here. Gnawing hunger.

He…

Warmth. 

It fills his mouth. But it doesn’t taste right.

He spits it out. He lets go.

His arm throbs almost painfully. 

He is mesmerized by the way it drips. 

Staining the floor. His pants. His shirt. His face.

He hears his mother scream.

Drip.

He stares at her.

Drip.

His mother has never come into the room before.

Drip.

He wakes up with stained bandages on his arm.

His stomach still hurts.

…

He often sits in the room and imagines. 

If his best friend never left.

If the neighbor's dog still barked.

If his stomach didn’t hurt.

If the parasite would leave.

…

He found it harder and harder to discern between reality and dream as time went on.

He could feel the onset of delusion. Everything was stained. Impossibly so.

There was a man in his dreams that would talk to him. He could barely do more than look at him.

He was so lethargic. So hungry. His mouth so dry.

The man looked strange. Even with his warped sense of reality he could tell. 

There was something unnatural about him. The man.

The man brought him things. He couldn’t figure out how.

His stomach hurt. 

He didn’t know what the man wanted him to do with them.

A bird. A mouse. A fruit. A pencil. A notebook.

Sometimes the things would disappear. 

A fruit. A pencil. A notebook.

He always felt full again when they left. 

He finally had energy to do something other than lay on the ground. 

He picked up the pencil and the notebook. 

He drew the fruit. The man. The door. 

His dreams. 

His best friend. 

The neighbor's dog.

The bird.

The mouse. 

He would have drawn his parents too but he couldn’t remember what they looked like. The harder he tried the more of their faces he lost.

The floor was no longer stained. Covered now in ruled lines and graphite markings. 

…

Just when things were getting better the man disappeared too. 

He didn’t feel any more full though. Which distressed him.

His hunger came back. 

The parasite’s hunger. 

His artworks all over the floor only made the reappearance of the stains that much more stark.

He cried. He cried. He cried.

He mourned his best friend. Lost forever to him.

The only thing left was the now stained paper he had drawn on. 

The stains coloring the white page. Matting fur. 

Tearing. 

Warm.

The door opened.

He couldn’t let them step on the pages. The stains.

They were in the doorway. Staring at him.

He cried. 

They stared. Their faces blurred and rearranged.

Drip.

Pages were being soaked. Pages stained.

Drip.

His mother said something. An apology. 

Drip

The door closed.

He missed his best friend.

…

He woke one day to the door slightly ajar. 

His mind fuzzy.

The light beckoning.

He crawled to the opening. Squinting at the burning brightness. 

It was quiet. 

Unnaturally so.

The sounds he’d hear from behind the door missing. 

His throat too sore from screaming. Too tired from disuse. 

Only a strangled sort of sound could fall past his open lips. 

He doesn’t remember the last time he slept. He doesn’t remember the last time he talked with someone real. 

Not that he could tell the difference.

He came to a counter in the kitchen. It had a note. 

Scribbled. Quickly done loops. 

A smiley face drawn at the bottom.

“Be back soon!”

The rest too illegible to read. 

The rest too blurred.

The rest too impossibly stained.

His eyes struggling to make out the words. 

Impossibly red.

Words written in a handwriting he no longer recognizes. 

Inescapable red. Inevitable red.

He doesn’t know when it was written. 

Marking the counter. Indenting the pristine surface.

How long they have been gone for.

Marking where they weren’t. Were never.

They couldn’t have left too. 

He was floating in it all. Helpless.

He was too hungry for that. 

Pushed around by the current. Weak.

His stomach demanding far too much for that.

Dragged through the streams of impossibility.

None of it could be true. 

Of inescapability. Of Inevitability.  

He felt…

Like he wasn’t supposed to be here. 

The parasite beckoning. Prodding.

He felt… 

Something was wrong. 

Nausea building up. 

The parasite thrashing. Pounding. 

He felt… 

The earth heaving. 

He felt…

The ground giving out from underneath him.

He felt himself flying. Dropping down hundreds of feet in the air. 

He felt dizzy.

He was Deformed. Doomed since his birth.

His mind felt dizzy. 

He was unholy. Unwanted. 

Everything was spinning.

He was being spun around and around and around. 

He knows everything. 

He was spinning himself. The earth spinning. The room spinning.

He knows nothing. 

Everything was falling. He was falling.

He knew he was hungry. 

Everything consumed. Eaten up.

Knew it was in the way it too was ever hungry.

The world purifying itself.

The parasite sustains itself in one way or another.

…

He wakes on the ground. Cold seeping into him from the tile floor.

A ceiling he had let fade from his memory trickled its way back in. 

The warm colors. The faded yellow. 

The bright indecipherable color that lined the flower pots. She cared deeply for them.

He could only notice that they were empty. That they had wilted away. 

He couldn’t remember why he was here. 

Why he was on the cold tile floor. 

…

Soon enough the strange man makes another appearance.

He is aimless. Wandering. 

Unable to leave. 

Corrupting it all. Smearing dirt on its walls.

The man asked him something. 

Does he want to leave.

Does he?

Can he?

He doesn’t know. Couldn’t possibly know.

An impossible question. 

Impossibly red.

He asks when they’ll be back.

The man laughs. 

It was cackled. Cracked. 

A stuttered hiss of a faulty kettle. 

Unnerving only in the way something unnaturally familiar was. 

Familiar in the way everything was now to him. Just outside of reach.

He was inhabiting a place. A house filled with memories. 

Memories he knew were his own. Theirs. 

He could not remember. 

He did not know. Doesn’t. Couldn’t. 

The man looms over him. Amusement gleaming in his inhuman eyes.

He is uncomfortable. Inexplicably so.

Inexplicably red.

The man's sharp teeth glinting. 

The man's skin unnaturally grey. Somehow it is filled with more life than his own.

He never noticed before. How utterly strange this man was the first time they met.

The man tells him something. 

“They will be back. Tonight most likely.

“Go back to the room. Or don’t.

“Close the door. I can lock it.

“They won’t be back for long. 

“Not if you don’t follow my instructions.

“Do you understand me boy?”

He did. 

He was…

Angry.

Sad.

Hopeful.

Compliant.

He closed himself back in the room. Heard the lock turn.

The man appeared next to him. Sharp teeth barred in some kind of smile.

He sat down. 

He sat down and waited for sound to return to the other side of the door. 

[angelsleepinggurl]

𝐒𝟏:𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝟏𝟒

█ ✪ █▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓█ ✪ █

As the day winds down in Nanami's office, Naaila's voice cuts through the hum of printers and shuffling papers, coming from the phone pressed to your cheek by your shoulder. Piles of paper occupy your hands as you teeter from one side of Nanami's office to the other. 

"So, what do you wanna do after work?" Naaila asks.

Pausing, you unload the paperweight onto a nearby surface. Leaning against the expansive window, you look out of the office window wall with a panoramic view of the city skyline.  The sunlight paints the room with a golden hue, causing a wave of sleepiness to slowly start to wash over you.

"Indian food sounds good to me," you suggest, breaking momentarily from the office's cinematic view. Seating yourself on one of the plush leather sofas tucked away in the corners of the office, you let the stress of work fly away, taking a moment to yourself. 

Naaila, being the sociable person she is has very different plans and means for the night. "What if," she starts, leaving a moment of silence to let her suggestion steep in the air, "we maybe went out tonight. You know, you and me, a little girl time." Naaila's liveliness and itch to party all night long heavily contrast with your laid-back nature. Your mind fills with countless instances to which you've been forced to go out just for the sake of her, but you don't mind it too much, it's all to make your best friend happy.

"I don't know, Naaila. I'm not feeling it tonight," you begin, your words met with her forceful interjection. 

"We haven't been out in ages," she whines like a toddler begging for a toy.

"Naaila, I—" She cuts you off again, determined to sway your decision.

"But we really need this, and it's been so long."

"I can't tonight."

"Is it because you're trying to impress your boss, or iare you really tired?" She presses.

"I genuinely can't." The printer, which has started being uncooperative too starts to aggrevate you. Your finger harshly punching the button on the machine. "Well, look at it this way. This is an opportunity for you to get back out there, and go on a date or two. " you suggest in an attempt to keep her happy.

There's a harshness in her voice when she tells you, "I don't want to go on a date."

"Ooh I see."

"See what? What do you see?"

"Ever since you've been hanging around that Gojo guy, you've been different. " you explain, a mischievous tone laced in your voice. 

"What do you mean different? I haven't been anything but the same."

Her defensive tone doesn't stop you from taunting her, "Well, you aren't even trying to go on a date for fun anymore. What happened to all those dating apps on your phone?" 

"They were taking up my storage and besides I told you."

"Hmm, sure," you tease, your persistence unwavering.

"You're insufferable."

"Love you too," You quip, a parting ding echoing through the phone as you end the call between the both of you. You turn around, face to face with the troublesome printer. A couple of beeps and boops before the printer flashes an irritating "ERROR" code, as if your day can't get even more irksome, it doesn't take long before your attention is torn away from it though. 

"Nanamin?" An unfamiliar voice, sounding alarmingly young for anyone in this building. Your head whips around and behind you stands three kids hovering around the door. The boy in front with pale pink hair and two other people peering from behind him. The boy's first words being 'Nanamin' catch you off guard, nearly missing it. 

"Who?" You ask but apparently, your words don't travel far, as they go back to talking amongst themselves.

"I told you he wasn't gonna be here." Another voice adds, a not-so-quiet 'tsk'  is said. 

"Who are you looking for?" You ask again.

"Nanami." Realisation dawns on you, clarifying why the boy mispronounced your boss's last name. 

"He went for a break. He'll be back—," you begin to explain, only to be interrupted by a new wave of confusion. "I'm sorry, how did you guys get in here?" The question lingers, as the puzzle of these three kids infiltrating the office without any challenge baffles you.

"We asked the people at the reception," the pink-haired boy replies nonchalantly.

"See guys, I told you we weren't meant to be here." A new unfamiliar voice adds.  The kids are still looming around the door, and feeling bad for kicking them out is not something you really want to have to deal with.

You motion for them to come into the office, "It's fine, you guys can just wait here till he arrives." The three kids walk further into the room, looking around the spacious place, with gold lining occasionally appearing. They soon find themselves seated on one of the plush couches past the partition in the room. Instead of spreading out, they all sit on the same one, probably not feeling comfortable enough to do so. Then silence.

 The trio venture further into the room, their eyes absorbing the lavish, gold linings which glisten underneath the sun's evening glow. They soon find themselves seated on one of the plush couches in the room. Instead of spreading out, they all sit on the same one, probably not feeling comfortable enough to do so. Then the room descended into silence.

As you resume your battle with the insufferable printer, the kids mirror your silence. As an adult, you should initiate small talk or spark a conversation to life to alleviate the awkwardness. But do you really have to be an adult all the time? Internally sighing, you clear your throat preparing to speak.

"So, like, are you his secretary?" The pink-haired boy breaks the silence, his voice carrying a youthful curiosity.

"Kinda, I'm his personal assistant," you clarify, pausing your task to actively listen to them.

"Ooh," Itadori sighed in understanding.

Curiosity gets the better of you and you blurt out the pressing question in your mind, "How do you guys know Mr. Nanami?" 

"He's friends with our teacher. " The girl present responds, her hand propping up her chin on the armrest and her bob-length brown hair falling in front of her face slightly.

"Is anyone even friends with him?" The last boy retorts, his scepticism echoing through the room. He sits, laid back, looking off distantly, a negative tilt to the corners of his mouth. 

"You guys don't like your teacher huh?" You chuckle a little, remembering the days you were in high school and despised your teachers. They all collectively chime in, a couple of " He's so annoying." or "He's so dumb." being the most distinguishable comments.

"You know what's so crazy, you look like some sort of celebrity." The brunette states, squinting her eyes at you. The pink-haired boy next to her exclaims explaining how he "thought that too." The two go back and forth naming celebrities you could look like. "What about ______ ?" The brunette looks at him dumbfounded.

"No she doesn't she- wait actually, 'cause they kinda have the same lips." she adds, the both of them attentively analysing your facial features, causing

 a warm flush to rise to your face from the unexpected spotlight.

"Kugisaki, Itadori stop suffocating her please." the two teens sit back, in synch, eyes still glued to you. You give a polite smile to the boy who offered to break it up. Before you can ask them another question, the door opens and in walks Mr. Nanami who steps back a little bit from surprise at seeing the teens in his office. 

"You're finally here Nanamin." The pink-haired boy says standing up and walking towards the confused blond, who just hums in response. Nanami looks at you and the two of you lock eyes from across the room.

"I see you've met Itadori and his friends," he remarks, now standing next to the boy.

"Well, yeah," you respond, a hint of hesitance lingering in your voice.

I guess I haven't met them entirely; I don't know their names.

"We totally forgot," the brunette admits. "My name is Kugisaki Nobara, he's Fushiguro Megumi, and he's Itadori Yuuji." You nod slowly

trying your best to keep everyone's names to memory.

"I'm L/N Y/N, pleasure to meet you all."

𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫…

[ruinedsoulsrp]

Kim couldn't help the slight chuckle that left her at his sigh. She'd missed that sound of his laugh, and it was a welcomed sound even though it surprised her, but she couldn't help the smile it lifted onto her lip momentarily. His question had her brows raising slightly, green hues flicking up to the rear view mirror to try and catch his eyes. "Would you prefer me to ask you questions?" she proposed, her tone light and playful, though now he really did have her curious. Would he rather spend the time they had alone together talking to her? She knew that's what she would prefer, but him wanting that as well wasn't something she'd anticipated. Had he actually enjoyed the time they'd spent together just as much as she had? She caught his smile and her own smirk lifted slightly at the corners. "Oh, did I forget to mention it? My bad." she teased. "Somehow I think you'll survive." she quipped, a playful look on her face, as she moved to her music app and started looking through for something to put on. "Who knows, maybe you'll even like all the girl bop jams we play." she added. "You definitely strike me as a Britney fan." Kim joked, pleased that they seemed to be sliding effortlessly back into their light and easy banter from the other night.

Surprisingly, her smirk was a welcome surprise for Diego. Earlier, she had been so...polite and calm that he got worried a for a second. The Kim sitting in the backseat was more like he remembered. A dramatic sigh came from him, he should've known he wouldn't receive a straight answer from her. "I guess I will have to wait." Not like he had much else to do. Waiting was the name of the game here. His phone buzzed in the jacket pocket resting on the passenger seat, and he quickly grabbed it to check the addresses. Not too far. One glance back up at her, and her playful salute caused a burst of laughter. And amidst the laughter, he couldn't deny that he enjoyed her saying that. Like a silent win.

The car ride was quiet, yet again, something he wasn't expecting. He was prepared for questions and more mind games to get him to open up, but nothing. Maybe he just wasn't the most interesting thing in her day, fair. Perhaps, Diego was only the shiny, new bodyguard. Not as interesting anymore. That was okay, right? Isn't that what he wanted? "Of course, not in the mood for questions today?" he nodded as he turned the car's bluetooth feature on. Damn, of course he missed one thing. From the rearview mirror, Diego caught the smirk on her lips, and he smiled in return as he made a left turn, approaching the first address. "You know, he didn't..and, sneaky you for not mentioning earlier. But, I'm sure Derek left a few extras in the glove compartment. If not, well...I'll just hope to survive."

[littlepadika]

Calling Home (1) | Frankie Morales x Reader

Summary: You are a receptionist at the VA. Frankie Morales keeps calling. Yearning ensues...

Rating: M -> E in later chapters

Warnings: fem!reader, age gap (legal), praise kink, voice kink, discussion of addiction/PTSD/trauma, no use of y/n, no beta reader, reader is bad at Spanish, Frankie has a sexy voice 😩

Masterlist here

AN: My first fic. Pedro writers have inspired me to finally start writing again 🥺. Concept inspired by the movie RED. I hope you like it ❤️Set after triple frontier.

Chapter One

~~~~~~~~~~~

The first time he called was an ordinary Thursday.

“Veterans Affairs, how can I help you?”

You had been working at the VA office for about two weeks. Fresh out of college you felt lucky to have a job in the first place. You went to school to be a writer but your big idea for 'The Next Great American Novel' had yet to present itself. At least here you had access to the most inspiring stories and interesting people. Men and women who had seen more and done more than you probably would in your entire life. You loved talking to clients on the phone. It was weird but something about only being able to hear people’s voices excited you. You would sometimes write little stories in your head about the people you'd talk to, filling in the details that were unknown.

Your desk accessories reflected your love of books and writing. You had your growing collection of books sitting on your desk sandwiched between baby pink bookends. Next to them was a matching desk organizer filled with your favorite sparkly pens and sticky notes. You had decorated the plain cubicle walls with posters of quotes from your favorite books. You also brought your favorite candle from home. Even though you couldn’t light it you still liked to lift it to your nose once and a while and smell it between chapters. When you weren’t on the phone or scanning documents you would read. You finished To Kill A Mockingbird in your first week on the job and were now halfway through Murder on the Orient Express.

You were starting a new chapter when Frankie Morales called the first time.

You picked up the phone on the second ring already mustering your chipper 'customer service' voice. “Veterans affairs.” You stated your name. “How may I help you?”

“H-Hi. My name is Frankie- uh-Francisco Morales." A deep voice answered you. "I’m calling because I have gotten my benefits check yet. It’s been a month. I was hoping you could tell me if it got sent?”

“Okay Mr. Morales." You flipped on the computer. "Let me check. Can you spell your last name for me?”

“M-o-r-a-l-e-s”

“Okay... let's see.” You clicked on his account. You were momentarily distracted by his picture likely taken when he graduated basic if you had to guess based off the uniform. He looked sweet. Sharp nose and strong jaw balanced by kind eyes and a shy smile. You could imagine how age would continue to soften his expression making him even more handsome. The image was a strange juxtaposition to the voice you were hearing on the phone which was much deeper and rougher. His profile said he was special forces. A pilot. The rest of the information was blacked out. Something you were used to seeing on many people's accounts but even his years of service were redacted. He must have been involved in some dangerous stuff, you thought to yourself. The dates that were not redacted were mostly in Latin America. You clicked over to processing requests. “Looks like the check got sent one week ago.” You informed him.

"I'll look again but I haven't seen anything-" It sounded like he was apologizing when clearly it was not his fault.

"No no. It's probably a mistake on our end." You interrupted. With how shitty and outdated the payroll interface was you wouldn't be surprised if there was a mix up. "I’ll go ahead and let payroll know to send another."

"Great. Thanks." He replied sounding relieved. The roughness in his voice gave way to a smooth baritone.

“No problem. I'm sorry for any inconvenience it may have caused. We'll get it sent right away." You hoped he was not relying on this benefit check for anything important. While you could promise you'd fix the problem, the administration was notoriously slow. When he didn't respond you asked, "Is there anything else I can help you with today, Mr. Morales?”

“Uh-no" The roughness back in place. "Thank you." He paused before adding your name onto his thank you which made you smile. People usually never remembered your name.

“Alright. Have a nice day and thank you for your service.” You chirped before hanging up. The smile he put on your face lingered for a few minutes as you returned to your book.

The next time he called was exactly twelve days later.

“Veterans affairs” you answered, your routine greeting cut short as your eyes were still on your book.

“Hi- I’m calling because uh I still haven’t gotten my benefits check. This is Frankie Morales.”

“Oh Mr. Morales.” You recognized his voice even before he even said his name. You quickly shut your book, pushing your hair out of your face. Had you been thinking about him? No! Okay maybe you stared at his picture for a few minutes longer after he hung up. Yes, it was probably very unprofessional but you couldn't fight the curiosity. You were trying to rationalize the contrasting sharpness and softness of his features with his voice. How it all worked together. How one person's voice could change textures and colors so easily. You wondered what kind of things this man might have seen on the job. Most of the veterans you would help day to day did not have so many redacted missions and deployments. You were in the middle of Narcos season one so you immediately thought of drugs or something equally dangerous. After much pondering, you had come to the conclusion that Frankie Morales was both insanely attractive and insanely courageous. “Still no check, huh?”

“Nope.” He sighed the sound making the phone's shitty speaker crackle as you held it to your ear.

“Let me just check that it was approved...“ you found his profile again and scrolled to the status page. “Hmm... it says it was sent out last Friday after we spoke. That’s so weird...”

“Yeah. Really weird.” He echoed your frustration on the other end.

Typical payroll, you thought to yourself as you rolled your eyes. “I'll get another one sent to you right away. I'll see to it myself.” You tucked the phone under your chin and typed out a short email to Mary in payroll letting her know you'd be stopping by her office to explain the situation. You realized he hadn't hung up yet.

“Sorry for the back and forth.” You said, trying to fill the silence.

“It’s not your fault." The earlier irritation gone. "You’ve been really helpful.” His voice sounded warm and reassuring. Less gruff than it was last you spoke. Instead it was that rich baritone that you caught of glimpse of last time.

You feel your face warm at his compliment. It was this annoying reflex you had. Praise always made you blush no matter what context but it was worse when it came from a (you assume) gorgeous stranger.

“And just to verify that your address is correct- you’re on Maple Lane in Miami, Florida?”

“That’s right.” He confirmed.

“Okay. Sent!” You clicked send on the email, which caused the window to close and reveal Frankie’s profile page again. “I was curious-" You spoke before you really made the decision to speak. You didn’t want to overstep but once again your curiosity got the better of you. Honestly, you were just searching for a way to keep him on the phone. The day had been so boring.

“Your profile says you were stationed in Costa Rica.”

“For a bit.” He replied after a moment. He didn’t sound too defensive but there was definitely some tightness in his answer that made you feel bad for asking. Like you were scratching a wound.

“Did you like it? The country I mean.”

“Are you planning a trip?” He sounds a little amused.

“Yeah- well- kind of. It's more a trip in my head right now. I’d like to go there one day. It looks so beautiful.” You sighed closing your eyes trying to imagine the heat on your skin.

“It is." He agrees. "Really humid though.”

“Mm that sounds nice.” You would kill for some warm weather after such a long winter in DC.

“It was too muggy for me at times." He grumbled. "If you do go, stick to the costal areas where it’s more breezy or else you’ll just be sweating the whole time.”

“I don’t mind a little sweat” you shrugged, still thinking of the awful east coast winter you were currently suffering through. The sexual connotation of what you said hit you hard as soon as you heard the statement in its entirety. You felt your face flush again, though the man on the other end would never know.

“I’m learning Spanish!" You announced loudly trying to move the conversation past your awkwardness.

“Wow. Muy impressivo.”

“Si” you replied but after a moment you admit “I don’t really know what you said.”

Frankie laughed loudly on the other end and you couldn’t help but join in, drawing dirty looks from the elderly lady, Donna, working in the cubicle across from you. You ducked your head behind a stack of papers to avoid her glare.

“Fake it till you make it.” He chuckled.

“Maybe you should help me out.” You took on an indigent but still playful tone. “You sound better than duolingo” Your smile widened when he laughed again. His laugh was what you hoped it would be, by all your assumptions from his picture. It was an unencumbered, unburdened, rich sound with only a hit of roughness from the air behind it.

“Tell me you’re not using that dumb app to learn.” he scoffed, saying your name in an almost scolding tone.

“I’m got my thirty day streak today.” You boasted.

“You’ll be a total tourist if you go by duolingo.”

“But the owl is so cute every time I get something right!” You argued your voice taking on a more childish cadence.

“That’s how they trap you, silly girl.” He teased right back. Usually such a condescending nickname would piss you off but something about the affection behind him using it made you feel very differently. You felt warm like you were proud to be silly as long as it made him laugh.

“Then you saved me just in time, Mr. Morales.” You bit your lip. His scoffing and laughter died down on the other end.

“Frankie” He corrects you.

“Frankie…” You repeated it, smiling at how well the nick name suited the voice over the phone. Honest, sincere, and not pretentious at all. Way better than the pompous guys you know with equally stuffy names like “Edward” and “Christopher.”

“So what do you want to know?” Frankie interrupted your thoughts. “Dime”

You started asking him questions in Spanish to the best of your ability. Granted they weren't particularly probing questions. What is your name? What is your favorite color? What is your favorite animal? What's your favorite book? I am reading Gone Girl. He answered them all with patience and amusement, occasionally interrupting you to correct your pronunciation or explain what a word meant. Every time you’d repeat the word back correctly he would say something like “good” or “there you go” or “you got it”. You hated to admit that his kind words and his praise was doing something to you. You didn't even realize you were clenching your legs together unconsciously, almost in anticipation of his next correction or next answer. His low voice so sweet and encouraging against your ear, more tangible when he was speaking Spanish. You just wanted to hear more of it. Would it be this sweet in other situations? Would it get huskier or rougher? If you closed your eyes it was like he was sitting right next to you. It would be all too easy to slip into that daydream and escape the dull office.

Suddenly out of the corner of your drooping eyes you saw a flashing red light on the phone console meaning another caller was waiting.

“Shoot- i’m sorry, Frankie- I have to take this call.” You shot forward in your chair, legs uncrossing.

“Of-Of course. I should let you get back to work.” He sounded a little sad or so you hoped. You felt bad for interrupting him after you both were having so much fun. You wanted to say he could wait on hold but he killed that idea when he said, "I have work too. Technically I'm five minutes past my lunch break."

Your pout turned to a smile. He was spending his precious lunch break with you? Get a grip! you snapped at yourself.

“You’re welcome to call again if you want.” You threw out the offer in a small voice, scared you would be rejected. You peered over the cubicle wall to see if you were still being glared at. Thankfully Donna was away from her desk. Probably out for a smoke. “It’s really boring here and usually no one calls.”

“Maybe I will.” He replied and you could hear the smile behind those words. You felt your heart clench weirdly in your chest like it didn't know how to process the sudden spike in emotions.

“Bye, Frankie.” You beamed.

“Bye”

This time the smile on your face lasted for hours. Frankie’s laugh echoed around in your head, taunting you, sending your mind to the gutter. His voice went from grit to molasses on a dime. You wanted to be the one to bring out those sounds. You wanted to hear his voice bend and stretch and strain as you fucked him. What the hell is wrong with me? you screamed internally. You had never been so depraved and with a stranger no less! You clearly needed to get laid fast because this much yearning would not end well.

Frankie got the second VA check a few days later and this time he didn’t even feel bad about ripping it in half. He was already reaching for the phone to call you.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: Message to be added 💕 no minors please!

[queenshelby]

Roommates – Part Seven

Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Words: 4,241

Warning: Smut

Note: This plays in 2020.

In the dark, you began to search for your phone to shine some light and, as you were reaching for the bedside table, your hands brushed Cillian a couple of time until you found it.

‘You were saying?’ you chuckled as you turned the little light on your phone on, flashing it towards Cillian.

‘It’s difficult Y/N’ Cillian then said, covering his eyes and you simply nodded.

‘That’s just life sometimes Cilly. I am sure you will find your way with whoever she is’ you then said, caressing his cheek gently before standing up.

‘Remember the last time we were in a blackout together?’ Cillian then asked, causing you to nod.

‘Oh my god yes. It was at your holiday house in Kerry and Danielle was freaking out, thinking that we will never get back to civilisation’ you laughed, remembering that night very well.

‘She was high so I can see how this happened’ Cillian laughed, before turning on the light on his phone as well.

‘Well, I don’t have any Weed but there is a whole bottle of red wine in the kitchen and a cabinet full of board games’ you suggested before gathering some candles while Cillian lid the fireplace in the living room for some extra light.

After you threw a few blankets and pillows down in front of the fireplace and Cillian eventually found his reading glasses, you started with some Scrabble but, usurpingly, after you finished half of the bottle of red wine, this soon became too difficult when you made one spelling mistake after another.

‘You are hopeless’ Cillian eventually observed as he won again, using the most absurd words he could think off after you only scored some points with words like ‘Soup’ and ‘Breasts’.

‘Well, how about a game that I am good at, huh?’ you laughed as you pulled out the Twister mat.

‘You don’t think that we are a little too tipsy for Twister?’ Cillian laughed, remembering that, the last time you played this game drunk, he ended up with four stitches.

‘Nope! I will catch you if you fall’ you chuckled as you started to warm up and opened up the ‘Twister-For-Two’ App on your iPhone which was giving you both directions with thirty second intervals.

‘Jesus, I am getting too fucking old for this’ Cillian said before getting into position, showing off his strong legs which immediately caused you to bite your lips. The fact that he wasn’t wearing anything but his black briefs and a grey t-shirt certainly was an incentive for you.

Left foot blue!

He was certainly getting an easy start, at least so he thought.

Right hand yellow!

But clearly, he was wrong when he watched you bend over right in front of him wearing your rather short Pyjamas featuring Bambi.

‘Interesting clothing choice’ Cillian chuckled as Bambi was staring right at him, covering your deliciously round ass.

‘Get your eyes off my ass Murphy’ you laughed but, deep down inside you didn’t mind him staring at you.

After just five minutes, both of your hands and feet were on the mat and so were Cillian’s.

By this point, Cillian and you had managed to thoroughly tangle yourselves together in a laughing mess and, at right foot yellow, Cillian accidentally bumped your breast. Slightly surprised, you took little notice.

Cillian on the other hand began to struggle as, once again, his manhood began to stir.

‘Seriously?’ he thought to himself as, just moments earlier, he couldn’t get himself into the mood with Lindsay and now that he wanted to prevent exactly this from happening, he couldn’t and was hard as a rock.  

At right hand green, things had become too much for him as you had to slide your right hand along Cillian’s inner thigh on your way to green. As you slowly moved into position, you got a glimpse of what was happening in between Cillian’s legs but yet, you pretended that you didn’t notice his erection.

‘Fuck, that’s it, you won. My back is sore’ Cillian suddenly huffed out, standing up abruptly before walking to the kitchen.

You couldn’t help but grin as Cillian shouted out to see whether you wanted another glass of wine.

‘Yes please’ you giggled rather pleased with yourself but still, you thought that it was simply the friction that aroused him.

‘Do you want another game?’ you asked when he returned with two full glasses and, unsurprisingly, Cillian shook his head which is when you began talking.

You talked about almost everything and anything for about thirty minutes while sitting on the blanket together in between the scented candles and the fireplace.

By this point Cillian’s erection had subsided and you were curious as to whether it was you who caused it in the first place or whether it was something else.

‘Despite the blackout and you breaking it off with Lindsay, I thought that tonight was really fun’ you eventually observed after you finished your glass of wine

‘Well, you are a lot of fun to be around which makes it pretty easy’ Cillian said, finishing off his wine as well.

He smirked and shrugged. His eyes dropped and he started to trace a design on the crumpled blanket with his finger as if he wanted to say something else.

‘Can you ask you a question?’ you then asked out of the blue after having built up some courage.

‘Of course’ Cillian responded as his eyes lifted to yours, and you almost lost your nerve.

‘You, uhm, seemed to have enjoyed the game of Twister a lot more than I had anticipated’ you said, biting your lip nervously while looking down at his crotch.

Cillian immediately blushed, the flush spreading down his neck and the top of his muscular chest. Mortified, he looked at you with wide eyes and his right hand rose to his forehead.

‘Oh, god, Y/N…I am so sorry, it’s just that…the wine…and….’ Cillian shuddered nervously, realising that you saw his arousal and, before he could finish his sentence, you quickly leaned forward and placed a hand on his chest, just above the collar of his t-shirt where some of his chest hair was sticking out. Your palm tingled against the soft spatter of hair there.

‘Cillian, don't! I didn't mean to embarrass you’ you suddenly blurted out as you felt bad that you had, but also stimulated at the thought that you might have aroused him and that, perhaps, it wasn’t just a coincidence.

You were suddenly very aware of the soft, warm skin beneath your hand, and the warm wetness in your panties.

‘I promise you'll never say anything about it again, I just...I have to know...was it friction from the game, or was it, you know...me?’ you then asked, retreating you hand momentarily from his chest and squinting your eyes nervously.

Cillian sighed heavily and grabbed your hand, placing it back against his chest after you leaned away a little. His heart was racing, and you thought yours might pound straight out of your ribcage.

‘It wasn't the friction Y/N’ he then admitted and your breath caught in your throat.

‘I don’t know what it was or what it is, but I know it’s you. I am attracted to you’ Cillian then explained, causing you to grin excitedly.

‘So, when you just got aroused, what did you think about’ you asked as you played with his chest hair.

‘Y/N, we’ve been friends for so many fucking years and I don’t want to ruin this’ Cillian said almost embarrassed and you cut him off again.

‘Yes, and friends tell each other the truth. So, tell me, what was on your mind just then on the Twister mat?’ you asked, causing Cillian to sigh heavily again.

‘I was wondering what you would taste like’ Cillian said almost heavy hearted, admitting his desire for you before apologising for it.

Your heart felt like it stopped. Your entire body tingled, and warmth spread through your belly, snaking straight between your legs. This could absolutely be a dream.

‘Why don't you kiss me and find out?’ you said with husky voice as you moved your face closer to his.

With no hesitation, Cillian’s free hand moved around the back of your neck as his full lips met yours.

Your eyes closed and you opened your mouth, allowing his soft tongue to explore. He pulled you in and kissed you harder while you wrapped your arms around him to run your hands along his back and shoulders.

This continued for quite some times with neither of you being able to let go of the other as you smiled, kissed and moaned into each other’s mouths. Eventually, Cillian wound his hand in your long hair and broke the kiss to move his mouth to your ear.

As it was, you moaned, you shivered, and you dug your nails into his back. Your enthusiastic response drove him to be even more aggressive. He pushed you onto your back and rolled on top of you, the growing bulge in his briefs pressing directly into the spreading wetness between your legs. You gasped at the gratifying sensation.

Cillian pushed himself onto his palms, concerned.

‘This will change everything between us. Do you want this?’ Cillian asked.

‘I wanted this for over a fucking month Cillian. If you don’t fuck me now, I will never forgive you’ you huffed out almost breathlessly and slightly tipsy, causing Cillian to chuckle.

Of course, he wanted it as badly and as much as you did, but he was still somewhat worried about your long-lasting friendship and thought that, ideally, you should both be talking about this first. You needed to clarify what this was and what you were going to become after you slept with each other.

But the wine and his raging erection eventually got the better of him and you immediately wrapped your arms around him to keep him on top of you.

You ground your hips into his and forced his lips to yours, bringing his full weight back to your waiting body. His hot mouth made it back to your neck and ears, and you moaned again, biting your lip in an attempt to stifle the noises he was eliciting from you. He propped himself up on one forearm and began to explore your eager body with his other hand.

He was teasing you, tauntingly caressing you through the thin pyjamas shirt you wore. You writhed beneath his palm, wanting more. His hair wasn't long, but long enough that you could wind your fingers into it and guide his ear into your mouth.

You toyed with it, tracing it with your tongue, sliding the lobe between your teeth, enjoying hearing his breath get heavier and feeling his cock getting harder as he kneaded your breast through the t-shirt. Then he stopped.

‘Y/N’ Cillian huffed out, causing you to enquire why he stopped.

‘I saw you, earlier in the bath when you were masturbating’ he admitted.

‘You looked away though didn’t you?’ you smirked, causing him to shake your head.

‘I am sorry’ he said and you immediately grinned.

‘Did you enjoy watching me?’ you then asked as you raised an eyebrow and panted, rubbing yourself against him.

‘What do you think?’ Cillian chuckled before asking you what you were listening to on your headphones.

‘An audio book you narrated’ you smirked and he looked dumbfounded, which in turn surprised you, considering what he'd said to start all of this.

‘What can I say Cillian, you’ve got a goodman sexy voice’ you admitted before you pushed him off of you and sat up on your knees, peeling off your shirt to reveal your pierced breasts.

He sat, slack jawed, legs outstretched before doing the same with his t-shirt.

‘So many freckles’ you observed before you went further and hooked your thumbs around the waistband of your Bambi panties.

‘Since you already watched me masturbate, there are no more secrets for me to reveal in so far as my body is concerned’ you smirked as you slowly inched them past your hips, leaving you completely naked.

Cillian’s jaw dropped nonetheless. His eyes were hungry and he reached for his own briefs and removed them as well.

‘Well, unfortunately for you, I had no secrets to start off with. You’ve seen it all already’ Cillian said as he gave you a familiar, lop-sided grin that exposed his teeth. So gorgeous.

‘And I love seeing it all again’ you huffed out as your mouth watered at the sight of his erection. But, instead of letting him climb back on top of you, you firmly pressed your naked body against his chest and then straddled his taut body and kissed him soundly.

His hands roamed your body freely, exploring your legs, your back, your breasts, your ass. He caressed and kneaded, he stroked and fondled, all the while kissing your mouth and neck and ears.

‘Oh god Cillian’ you moaned as you ground your clit into his erection, whimpering in pleasure and whispering his name over and over again, something which sounded rather familiar to him.

After placing soft kisses across your neck, he cupped your breasts and rubbed circles on your rigid pierced nipples with his large thumbs, making you tremble. With his gaze boring into yours, he lifted each breast to his lips and gently nuzzled your nipples before gently tugging on each of your piercings.

‘Don't stop...please don't stop’ you moaned as you rode him harder, begging breathlessly and he wasn’t event inside of your yet. The only friction you got was on your clit against his very hard cock.

Cillian complied with your request and fixed his soft lips around a pink areola, sucking hard as he manipulated the firm nub and your piercing with his tongue. It pushed you over the edge and you came with a low moan, your fingers digging roughly into his scalp.

Keeping one hand around his neck, you slumped back onto his muscular thighs and tried to catch your breath.

‘Did you just cum?’ he asked rather surprised and you nodded, unable to say more.

‘Fuck, that is incredibly hot’ he said as his mouth hung open while he looked at you expectantly, and you knew him well enough that he was wondering if your orgasm meant you were done playing.

‘The tension building up over the past month was just too much, but please don’t dare think that I am done with you yet’ you smirked and Cillian mirrored your wicked smile and kissed you deeply until you placed both hands on his chest and pushed him onto his back.

He resisted at first, eager to keep touching you. Finally he relented and propped himself up with one hand behind his head, watching you as you kissed and licked and sucked your way across his muscular chest and stomach again and again.

Any time you came to his nipples, his eyes pinched tight and his hips involuntarily jerked toward you. You pressed your slight body down onto his rigid cock, making him emit a deep, guttural moan. It was all you could do not to impale your wet pussy on the willing flesh, but you were enjoying the anticipation far too much.

You slid your body down on his, his freckled skin a striking contrast against your much darker tan. While you made your decent, you briefly thought again about just climbing onto him and lowering your wet, ready pussy onto his very hard cock, but you decided that as late as it was, it was still early enough in the night to do everything you wanted. And you wanted to make him come in your mouth just as you had fantasised for weeks.

When you finally reached your destination, Cillian’s cock, was standing at attention in your hands. It was so long and thick that it made your small hands look positively tiny in comparison. You ran them up and down the length of his shaft, taking the time to trace every line and curve carefully.

‘Fuck, Y/N, this feels so fucking good’ Cillian groaned as he watched you with hooded eyes and you started stroking him more rhythmically. His head rolled back, his hips jutted forward, and you couldn't contain yourself any longer.

You inhaled all that you could at once, which admittedly wasn't much considering all that remained. You pulled your head back, sucking hard, and went down for another try, and another, and another, gorging on a little more of his shaft each time.

‘Jesus Christ’ Cillian groaned again loudly as you finally managed to take all of his length and he bottomed out against the back of your throat.

You grinned as you accomplished what you had hoped and began bobbing your head up and down his shaft.

Occasionally, you snuck glances at his face when you could; sometimes he was staring at you fixedly, his mouth pinched to a narrow line, other times his eyes were screwed tight.

‘Y/N, I am close, fuck, you need to stop’ you eventually heard him weakly say as you continued to pleasure him with your lips and tongue.

But, instead of stopping, you looked him straight in the eyes and took his cock deeper down your mouth.

‘Y/N, fuck’ he groaned, trying to delay his release until he realised that this was what you wanted as you continued to suck him eagerly.

Eventually, with another loud groan, his entire body tensed and you could feel his sweet cum spurt into the back of your throat. Rope after rope, you drank every drop and, when he finally came down from his high, you gently licked him clean and he sat up and pulled you into his lap, kissing you deeply.

‘You just kissed me after you came in my mouth’ you observed when your lips drifted apart which is something James, the only man you had ever been with before tonight, would never have done.

‘Does that bother you?’ Cillian asked concerned and you shook your head.

‘No, I think its fucking sexy’ you blurted out before kissing him again and, just as you did, you felt his erection reviving underneath your ass almost immediately.

While sucking on your tongue, his large hands grabbed around your waist and rolled you over on the blanket beside him.

He crawled over you and stuck his tongue in your ear, making you claw at his back until he whispered ‘When I said that I wanted to know what you taste like, I meant that I wanted to eat your pussy.’

This was probably the dirtiest thing you ever heard him say to you and you liked it a lot and wiggled out from underneath him just enough to spread your legs provocatively.

His breath on your legs, coupled with his revelation that he had been fantasising about licking you, made you quiver. He slowly kissed the inside of your thighs, occasionally brushing your soaking mound with his nose or his lips. You relished every second and it wasn’t long until he locked your gaze and pressed his tongue flat against your vulva.

‘Oh god yes, Cillian, fuck’ you moaned out as he was licking and sucking you.

He covered your labia and clitoris in wet kisses before sticking his tongue deep inside you, causing you to scream out louder than ever before.

As he continued to pleasure you, one of your hands was buried in his hair, tearing at it as he made your body go crazy whilst the other clenched against the blanket beneath you.

You remembered what Laura had said and there certainly was some truth to it. He was good, very good and it wasn't long before you'd built into another orgasm, but you didn't feel the need to warn him beforehand.

‘Oh, my fucking god’ you shouted out eventually as his wicked tongue sent you over the edge and your legs began to shake crazily while he pinned you down.

No man had ever made you cum with his tongue alone and the sensitivity on your clit following your orgasm was overwhelming and made you squirm.

Still, he continued to ply his tongue into your sensitive folds until you used both hands to pry his head back by his hair. He grinned from ear to ear, and you knew you were paying for teasing him earlier.

Languidly, he pulled his body over yours, pausing to kiss you here and there while you regained a little composure. His breath was heavy when he found himself at your ear again.

‘I want to be inside you’ he whispered and you nodded fervently.

He raised himself to his knees, his erection again at full mast. You felt a momentary twinge of nervousness. He was bigger than James and this worried you just a little.

‘Do you want me to go and get a condom?’ Cillian asked and you knew that he kept some upstairs in his bedside table which, ironically, Lindsay had bought for him.

‘No, I am on the pill. I want to feel you, all of you’ you said, biting your lips with anticipation.

This was all Cillian needed to hear and, within seconds, he lined himself up you’re your soaking wet entrance.

He knew that you had never been with another man other than James and was gentle and slow as he entered you, increasing the pace of his thrusts only after you'd had a chance to get used to his length and girth and began raising your hips up to meet his.

‘Oh god, you feel so fucking tight Y/N’ Cillian groaned as he thrusted in and out of you.

‘Cillian, fuck me harder, oh god’ you screamed out almost at the same time. He felt so amazing inside of you that you could barely breathe! You probably looked like the proverbial fish on dry land, gasping for air as you drown under wave after wave of orgasmic pleasure.

You were almost grateful when he folded over you and groaned into your neck, the sound of your name from his lips bringing you to one last climax as he enjoyed his.

‘Fuck yes Cillian’ you groaned as you could feel him pulsate inside of you, filling you with his seed as you climaxed in sync.

By this point you had lost count of how many orgasms he'd given you, but you were fairly sure that you could make him come every hour on the hour for the next three or four days and still be in his debt.

You never had sex that good and you struggled to contain yourself after you both were breathless. Cillian held his body close to his as his breath normalized, and you shuddered as he pulled his softening cock from inside you, lamenting its absence and causing some of his cum to leak onto the blanket beneath you.

‘What do you think? Should we get to bed?’ he eventually huffed out and you nodded, but weren’t so sure whether you would be sleeping in the same or separate bedroom.

‘I might need some help getting up’ you giggled, knowing that you wouldn’t be walking straight for days.

Cillian was quick to flash up his phone and scoop you up from the floor in response to your comment and carry you to your bed.

‘Uhm, do you want me to stay with you?’ Cillian asked somewhat nervously and you bit your lip and nodded at him.

Within seconds, he slid into bed with you, turned off the flashlight on his phone before pulling the top sheet over your nude forms before sliding an arm around you to curl you into his warm body.

‘This was incredible, even better than I had ever imagined’ he said and you nuzzled into the soft hair that sparsely covered his chest, still reeling that the most amazing wet dream you'd ever had had happened during your waking hours.

***

The following morning, you were woken by your phone which rang not once, not twice but three times in total until you finally answered it.

‘Hey, what’s up’ you huffed out with a dusty head while Cillian was stirring besides you.

‘I really need to talk Y/N, I am sorry. I know that Cillian is seeing someone by the name of Lindsay and I am really fucking upset about it’ Laura went on to say before telling you once again that she wasn’t over the break up and suspected that he was seeing her and Lindsay at the same time.

‘I can’t really talk about this right now’ you said, your head pounding as Cillian’s arm wrapped around you.

‘Can you call me back when you can please. I know you said that you wanted to stay out of this, but there is more to it’ Laura then said and you were immediately overwhelmed with guilt.

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