#weren’t but on a personal scale they were cos they were things your little brain had put together so they were important to you

[yaminerua]

I remember being in school one day and hearing that the meaning of the “pseudo” part in words like “pseudonym” meant pretend or fake and to my kid brain I felt like I had just made a genius realisation that the sudo in sudowoodo was also from pseudo and that it actually meant fake tree

sat there at my desk while my little mind was being blown xD

[rodeo-boots]

Tear me down and Take me Home

Rating: Teen and Up 

Pairing: Arthur Morgan x Javier Escuella

Tags: Alternate Universe - Pirates, Fantasy, Merman Javier, Hurt/Comfort 

Warnings: mentioned Character Death

[check it out on AO3]

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Arthur was long used to silence, to nights that were deeper and darker than they had any right to be. He's been sailing his whole life, had seen more than most men his age ever would. But he's only believed half the things he's laid eyes on in his time.

This night, the sky was pitch black like he's never seen it before, the moon standing high upon the firmament, hidden by thin and harmless clouds. He used the stars for orientation, alone on his ship as he's been for a long time, abandoned by the people he's once called his family. They had left him, one after the other, had succumbed to illness or madness, had been taken from this life by force or misfortune.

It might be his influence that had tainted them all this time, that had cut so many existences short, and maybe, he was better off living in damnation as he did now.

He didn't mind it. Far from it. Arthur treasured the silence, found solace in the swaying of his ship and the movement of the waves. His entire life he's known nothing else, the ocean the only thing that stuck with him without fail.

Believe it or not, sometimes he left his ship behind, went ashore to stock up on provisions he couldn't obtain in the middle of nowhere, showing his weathered face to people who'd forget it in a heartbeat. He didn't have the luxury to linger, the blood in his veins telling him he needed to go back, itching and aching for the soothing motions of a hull above the bottomless sea.

There was a time he's been terrified of it, though Arthur couldn't remember much of that period. Back when he's been picked up, merely a dirtied and starving kid from the streets. He had despised the ocean then, had asked to return to shore even though Dutch reassured him of his safety, spending the nights crying and wailing because he was scared of what lurked beneath his feet.

Arthur had gone on land not too long ago, walking up the same path he's once known by heart, entering the dingy tavern Dutch and Hosea had frequented most. It had been almost comforting, the stench of the drink and of heavy tobacco smoke, the music filtering into his ears.

He had met a man, gray and scarred and grumpy, little different from himself. The stranger had lots of stories to tell, had nursed a drink in his hand while glancing up at Arthur with his one healthy eye, the other focused on a place up on the ceiling.

"You know the most dangerous of 'em all, boy?" He had asked, well into his tales already, though Arthur hadn't paid too close attention. The man's voice was hardly audible above the overall noise. Arthur had given him a grunt, almost curiously, looking up from the rum in his own hands. "Mermaids." The way he'd voiced it sure made it seem like the man has never met anything more repulsive and despicable in his life. But Arthur knew that his story was nothing but balderdash in the first place.

For some reason, he could remember the conversation still. The words never having left his mind entirely.

Soulless, heartless monsters these are. Luring sailors to the riffs, takin' pleasure in watching 'em crash and drown.

He hadn't bought into it before, his many strange encounters never having involved mythical fairy-tale creatures. The only dangers in the world were man-made. The only monster man himself.

It had been Dutch's philosophy, but Arthur still lived by it. He had never forgotten the things the man had taught him, even if he had left him a long time ago. Even though he'd exchanged his loyalty for gold.

Arthur stepped towards the wheel, glancing up at the stars to make sure he stayed on trail, though where it led him, he wasn't too sure about. There was no place he wanted to be, nothing he really wanted to see, craving the loneliness and emptiness in the middle of the ocean more than anything.

As he slightly changed course, however, an unexpected tune made him slow in his movements. Usually, the nights at sea remained quieter than the days, both fish and seagulls disappearing the moment the sun sunk below the line of the horizon.

It was odd to hear anything other than the rushing of the waves, more so when it sounded like a person was making those mournful sounds.

His legs led him closer to the railing, Arthur squinting his eyes to see through the darkness. He was getting closer to the sound, to the singing, or wailing or crying, words shaped in a language he couldn't understand, in a voice that sounded more like a harp than anything human.

Oh, they're pretty, make no mistake. Angelic, some call 'em. But that only makes them more dangerous.

He couldn't believe his eyes. A sliver of moonlight illuminated a rock within the water, and atop that rock – sat a creature.

Arthur had never bought into the many fairy-tales, into the fiddle-faddle even Hosea had used to like so much. Stories of the many wonders in life had never interested him, the magic of it lost when it came to things he couldn't understand nor grasp. He had experienced his share of suffering, of misery and pain, unwilling to believe that it could co-exist with the likes of fairies, angels, mermaids.

Right now, he wasn't sure if he was waking or sleeping, if maybe he would awaken in a cold sweat minutes from now, staring up at the ceiling of his empty cabin. It had to be his imagination, the loneliness finally getting to him and inducing images that simply weren't there. He had always thought such tales to come of crazed men after all and maybe finally, his own mind was starting to break from the long days and nights he'd been on his own – but the singing... he was sure his brain could never think up anything like it.

The creature was nestled on top of the stone, a naked human torso with two arms, a head upon it's shoulders with long dark hair. It appeared so much like a person, though Arthur had no way to ignore the tail, the shimmering scales that reflected the moonlight in colors he couldn't describe, colors he had no name for.

Silence soon spread over the area. And all Arthur could think about were the reverberations of that ethereal voice.

Why did they stop? He thought, unable to voice his words as his eyes tried to find the creature's – the man's, he had to remind himself. This wasn't some magical being.

"Are you lost?" the stranger didn't open his mouth to speak, the sound of his voice dancing through Arthur's brain.

Is it that obvious? he thought to himself, earning himself a laugh, clear and chiming like a bell, a startled breath escaping his chest. His tongue darted out to lick his cracked lips, dry from the salt-water splashing upwards constantly, from the sun burning down on him day in and out.

"Don't be afraid," the voice was in his head again, Arthur taking a step away from the railing, moving back to the wheel to hold it, to hold something. It had began turning all on it's own before, seemingly bringing him closer to the cliffs. Though he didn't know if it might've been him who's given it that impulse.

They get into your head, and infest it like a disease. They know what you fear, what you need to hear. Believin' a single word they say would be your downfall.

But Arthur was falling already, had been for a long time, yearning for nothing else but a comfortable place to land. "You deserve a break." He heard water splashing and as soon as he turned his head, the creature was gone from it's place – the man nowhere to be seen, Arthur rushing over to the railing almost desperately.

He shook his head, trying to snap out of it, rubbing at his eyes before taking a deep breath. The water glistened innocently under the illumination of the moon.

For years, he's been alone without feeling lonely, has lived on despite the emptiness that had taken over him. He had done well in forgetting Dutch and Hosea, his family, his brothers, his own father and the woman he had once loved. Neither of them had needed him and now, he didn't need them anymore. There was a certain heaviness to his heart, either way, a weight that seemed to pull him down, melancholy overcoming him like never before.

His eyes focused, and the man was back, closer this time. Arthur caught a glimpse of his tail moving beneath the pitch black water, the scales glinting in violet and blue – in many more shades he couldn't decipher.

"What's– your name?" He asked, dumbly, seeing eye to eye with this creature that was more beautiful than any human he's laid eyes on before. His skin was dark, bronze, his eyes deep as the ocean he was living in. He had scars, pain behind the depth of his gaze. Just like Arthur did.

He didn't want to remember the old pirate's words but he couldn't help himself.

Once they got their eyes on you, you've lost. 'Cause they see inside you, and find that weak little soul you keep locked away - and they suck it outta you with one look alone.

How could that be true if the man in front of him was looking at him like this? So honestly, affectionately... like no one else ever had.

"Javier," this time he'd opened his mouth to speak, Arthur's hands clinging tighter to the railing. The man smiled at him, reaching up and out of the water. His fingers were cold where they held onto Arthur's. But they were undeniably human; freezing like the ocean, but without claws or webbing between them.

"Aren't you– afraid of me?" Was what left Arthur's mouth next, his voice in disbelief that a creature as fragile and beautiful would be willing to touch him. His hands had been drenched in too much blood already, had killed and hurt, had broken families apart for his own benefit.

Big brown and bottomless eyes focused on him, and he felt ready to drown within them. "Why would I need to be afraid?" It seemed as though the man couldn't see into his soul after all, unaware of the rottenness within. "You won't hurt me," he continued, certain of that fact, his fingers clasping Arthur's a little tighter.

No, I wouldn't do that, he thought, catching the quirk of Javier's lips at his unspoken words.

Don't think they'd show mercy. All they want is to pull you down into the depths.

But maybe, he didn't deserve mercy in the first place. Since Arthur's purpose in this world was long forgotten, what difference would it make where he was? The presence of this man made him feel safe, warm, at home. And whether he believed in him or not, he couldn't deny that he was right in front of him now. Offering him a way out.

He gazed down at him, the melody from before flooding his ears again, turning his lids heavy and tired. His limbs started to feel like they weren't one with his body, though he still couldn't let go of the railing.

"Don't leave me again," he whispered, unsure where the words had come from, the song in his head reawakening the sadness of his mind. "I want–" he wanted to stay with him, with this fairy-tale creature, wanted to fall with him and let go of the pain he's caused before.

Yet again, he didn't need to open his mouth for Javier to understand, his cold hands lifting to hold onto Arthur's face, pulling him down. "I'm not gonna leave." He brought their lips together, and Arthur could feel himself turning lighter, weightless, drifting for a moment until his body broke through the surface of the pitch black water.

Arthur didn't hear the splashing, didn't feel the cold or how his clothes grew soaked. His guns would be useless by the time he resurfaced, but it didn't matter, because he was kissing this man and they were falling together – deeper and deeper into the darkness of the sea.

Faintly, he remembered the old sailor again, though his image swam before his eyes.

And no matter what they make you believe, they aren't capable of love. They'll mourn after they've drowned you, but no grief is strong enough to keep them from doin' it again.

[belovedbangtan]

Dive| Part 9| jjk

<Masterlist>

Pairings: Jungkook x y/n, Yoongi x oc

Word Count: 4.5k

Series Description:  Camping with your ex, sounds horrible right? The camping trip was   planned and payed for long before y/n’s shitty boyfriend broke up with   her. Her best friend Abby, Yoongi, Taehyung, Jimin, and Jungkook are there to make sure she has an amazing time. However, sharing a tent with  a smoke show like Jungkook is bound to lead to some complications.

Warnings: language, drinking, mentions of sex, hardcore flirting,  maybe Jungkook didnt change afterall?, 

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You wake up on Saturday morning, in potentially the best mood you’ve ever been in. A ‘good morning beautiful’ text from Jungkook definitely helped set things off on the right foot. You reply back when he instantly asks if he can Face Time, so you get up and get dressed.

When the calls connect, your breathe hitches; fuck he was so attractive. You lean in giving him a cheesy smile, scrunching your nose and telling him good morning properly. Pretending not to be phased when he rolls onto his back keeping the phone above him. You totally weren’t thinking about riding him this early, nope.

“You look pretty,” He says with a playful smile. You pause coming back over to the camera, resting your forearms on the counter.

“You’re one to talk, do you just wake up looking like that?” You tease, giggling when he tries to contain his blush. Pushing his long, tattooed fingers through his recently washed hair.

“So… where do you want to get dinner tomorrow?” He changes the subject.

“Mmm I don’t care, you can pick.” You reach into your fridge pulling fruits out so you can make a smoothie.

“Well, what’s your favorite food?”

You grin at him, you were in a teasing mood, “I told you… remember?” your face drops a little.

He instantly sits up in the bed, his brows knitting together, “You did?” he asks quietly, “Uhm, let me think.” He pulls his thumb up to his mouth and he starts to nibble at his fingernail.

“You don’t remember Kookie?” You tease again, this time pouting a bit to really sell it.

“No… I-I I remember, it’s uhm Pizza? Or Pasta?” he pulls his lip in looking at you, clearly still trying to scan his brain for a memory that you knew didn’t exist. Pausing, you come close to the camera smiling wide.

“You know, I’m actually pretty impressed. I was fucking with you. I’ve never told you my favorite food, but you guessed right somehow,” You squint, giggling when he throws his head back onto his pillow at your confession.

“You’re so mean! I really felt like an asshole! All I could remember was on the float trip, you were so drunk and you wouldn’t stop talking about Pizza,” You both start laughing at the faint memory that seemed like it was so long ago.

“Ahh so drunk me told you, that bitch,” You shake your head earning a laugh from him.

“Yeah well drunk me likes to tell secrets too, so it’s all good,” You nod your head thinking of his own drunken confession and how thankful you were for it.

“What other secrets did drunk me tell you?” you ask throwing all of your ingredients into the blender.

He  looks up thinking about his answer when a smug smile starts to pull at his lips, “I mean besides when you told me that I was the sexiest person you had ever laid your eyes on and you wanted to try every sex position known to existance with me?”

You choke on air, eyes wide as you turn to look at him through the phone screen, “I said what now?”

“That I was the sexi-“He starts to repeat himself, but you don’t need to hear it again.

“Yeah, no I got it. Uhm, when did I… when did I say that?” you stutter, trying to seem nonchalant. It definitely sounds like something you would think, but why the fuck would you say that… to him! You hold your finger up, telling him to pause. Turning the blender on he watches you patiently for about a minute. You’re eyes nervously flicking to his, hoping to recall at least a piece of this memory. Once you’re done, you pour your smoothie into a cup. You take a sip as you walk over to the phone, leaning down to hear him.

“You don’t remember? Come on babe, not even a little bit?” He cocks his head, his sinister grin making you think that maybe it wasn’t so farfetched.

“No, I kind of remember… we’re we in the tent?” you lie, you had no idea. Maybe if he thought you remembered a little bit; he might ease up. Was it better if you were completely black out and didn’t remember, or you were only a little drunk and the memory is fuzzy? Either way, your cheeks were burning red.

“Nope, not in the tent,” He giggles readjusting the phone and you see his toned chest for just a split second. Again… maybe drunk you was onto something.

You tilt your head, closing your eyes tight trying to remember any moment where you would have been bold enough to say such a thing. Suddenly his laughing brings you from your thoughts, “What’s so funny?”

“Well, I was lying but is that something you feel like you would say, y/n?” His head tilts and you realize he just pulled a you on you. “Because, I have a Karma Sutra book and we can do a few pages a day… it might take some time but i-“ He rambles on sarcastically.

“You are such an ass,” You bury your face in your hands. How didn’t you catch on sooner? Probably because you had that thought but a more R rated version of it every time you made eye contact with the fucker. Of course, it was something you would say.

“So Pizza and Karma Sutra? Is that our date,” you quip raising your brows. His face hardens, his eyes locking on yours, you can tell he’s attempting to read you. Was this a part of the joke or were you serious?

“I’m joking,” You giggle, getting closer to the camera before whispering, “or am I?”

He tilts his head and runs his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip, “How’s your smoothie?” His voice is quiet. You smile, giggling a bit because he took the easy way out. You admired him for that. Obviously, you wanted to finally have sex with Jungkook. Clearly the sexual attraction was there. You gave him the perfect opportunity to talk about sex, and he deflected.

“It’s really yummy,” you smile sweetly, the both of you just enjoying each other, “Ill have to make one for you.”

He lets out a big sigh, and the smile that takes over his face reach up to his eyes, “Do you remember me telling you about how I wanted to uhm…” He rubs the back of his neck nervously, “just be home with you? Like do normal day to day things with you?”

You smile nodding your head softly, how could you forget.

“Well I meant it then, but… I really mean it now. I wish I was there to drink smoothies with you, and just talk about our day. Maybe lay on the couch and watch a movie with you, until we’re both starving.”

Your heart feels like it could beat out of your chest. You’d be lying if your head didn’t interfere a little, warning you of the last time he made you feel this way with these promises. You take a deep breath looking away from the screen.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” He says softly and you quickly shake your head. That last thing you wanted was for him to think that he should second guess telling you anything like that.

“No, I-uhm, I still feel the same way about that. I liked the idea then, and I like it now,” You tell him.

“Im glad,” he smiles again before clearing his throat, clearly letting the moment make him softer than he was used to being, “So you’ve got your work thing and I’ve got my family thing, then tomorrow we can get dinner and uhm… talk.” He mumbles and you nod your head, laughing to yourself at how flustered he seemed to be.

“Okay then I’ll text you, bye beautiful.”

“Bye Kookie.”

As your finger hits the red button, you wait for second to make sure he’s gone before collapsing onto your kitchen floor. Your stomach filled with an army of butterflies, and your chest thumping so hard you could feel it in your ears. You wished you could skip today and fast forward to tomorrow, eager to finally be able to call him yours.

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The day flew by and before you knew it you were in the Uber on your way to meet up with your co-workers. It was Johnny’s birthday, and he all but begged you to be there. You’d be a bold face liar if you said that the men you worked with weren’t attractive. All of them were breaking the scale of attractiveness. However, you never once thought about them in the way that Jungkook was worried about. To be completely honest, it was hard for you to think about anyone the way you thought about Jungkook. Even when you hated him, you still thought the world of him.

You thank your Uber Driver, flattening your peplum skirt down when you get out of the car. Texting Namjoon to announce you arrive. He meets you outside instantly enveloping you in a hug, taking your hand and leading you to the table where the rest of your co-workers are.

“y/n! I was wondering if you would make it!” Johnny yells, standing up to hug you. His tall frame hovering above yours.

You chuckle, “How could I miss it? You told me if I didn’t come you would stop getting my coffee every morning!” you quip, he shushes you by handing you one of the readily available shots on the table. Tequila. Wonderful.

After a few more shots of the harsh white liquid, you’re standing at a table with Namjoon. He’s checking his phone because he can’t seem to stop working. You pull out your phone, thumb hovering above his name and the cute monkey emoji that accompanied it. You decide to send him a simple, Hey you. He told you he had to do a favor for his Aunt. After your call in the morning you texted a bit and he told you to call him when you left the bar. It was only an hour in and you wanted to leave already. Scratch that, you wanted to talk to him already.

“You seem to be in a good mood,” Namjoon’s calm voice snaps you from your reverie.

Smiling down at the name on your screen, “I am actually,” you giggle because you were. You were so excited and happy for the next step in your life, “You know that guy I was talking to you about?”

Is brows raise and he lets out a huff, “You mean the only guy you talk about, Jungkook, right? Yes, y/n, we all know about Jungkook.” He giggles and you playfully smack his arm. Okay maybe you were talking about him a little too much.

“Yes him, well we’re going to dinner tomorrow and I think I’m ready to ask him out.” You bite your bottom lip hard, just thinking about it.

“I think that’s probably a good idea,” He laughs, bringing his beer to his lips.

“I think so too. I just wish all of the doubt was gone, ya know?” you take a drink from your drink, “Like, a tiny part of my brain just keeps reminding me of how much he hurt me.”

“But he explained all of that right?” Namjoon asks, you nod sucking your drink down anxiously, “Well I think that speaks volumes. If he meant it, and he actually feels sorry, AND he explained why he reacted that way… I’m pretty sure he cares about you as much as you care about him.”

You slowly drag your eyes to meet Namjoon’s, a smile tugging at the corners of your mouth. He widens his eyes as he cocks his head, as if to silently say, ‘I know, I’m a genius’. You couldn’t argue, because he was right. If Jungkook truly didn’t care about you or your feelings, he wouldn’t explained himself at all. You inhale deeply, looking at your phone for the umpteenth time. Maybe he was still busy with helping his aunt, you think.

Before you can start overthinking, a very intoxicated Johnny finds you and Namjoon. Three more tequila shots, and your head is spinning now. You’re drunk but at this point you can manage to get an Uber. You tell Namjoon you’re leaving, and you beg him not to tell Johnny. You watched how he guilt tripped another of your co-workers when she was attempting to leave early, and you don’t think you have it in you to tell him no. He seemed like beast on the outside, but he had those puppy dog eyes on lock down. Namjoon hugs you and tells you to let him know when you’ve gotten home safely.

After your Uber is confirmed you walk outside to the busy street to wait for it. The strip of bars was insanely crowded, so you sit along the window frame of the bar you had just left. Looking at your phone once again, it was almost 1 am. Your hazy thoughts wondered if he forgot about you. What would he still be doing for his aunt this late? You get a notification telling you that your uber was about to arrive, so you stand up and walk to the edge of the side walk. As you search for the white Chevy Cruze your gaze is pulled to the group of people piling out of the bar to your left.

You roll your eyes at how obnoxious they were. Loud and clearly piss drunk. Suddenly the crowd spreads apart, and what you see must be a mirage. Her dress was clinging to her body and she was clinging to him. Him. His arm was around her waist as he walks with her to a car. Her drunken form wobbling along the cobblestone. He laughed at something she said, and it made feel like you were dying inside. She says something in response, but he only seems to be concerned with getting her home. He slides in after her, and you watch his familiar tattoos disappear as the car door closes.

Your Uber honks obnoxiously, making you jump. Inhaling for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. You get into the Uber, and you almost want him to take you the hospital. That cant be right, you think to yourself over and over again. So many questions running through your mind and you can’t find an answer for any of them. All of your questions reminding you of the reason you stopped talking to him to begin with. Reminding you of the fact that you really didn’t know who he was. It felt like your chest was on fire, burning your lungs from the inside out. You don’t know when the tears started to fall, but now they weren’t stopping. You sit back and you think. Your brain and the 8 shots of tequila having very different opinions on how to handle this situation. Fuck it, you think to yourself, tequila wins this time.

“Excuse me sir,” You sniffle, attempting to mask the heartbreak, “Could I change my destination please?”

His eyes flick to your red, wet ones through the review mirror and he listens closely as you tell him the new address. Once he changes his route, you melt into your seat. Wishing it would swallow you whole so you wouldn’t have to deal with any of this. As fucked up as all of this was, and as much as you wanted to disappear; more than anything you wanted a fucking answer. Why would anyone toy with someone this much? It wasn’t a fucking game and he deserved to know that. The Uber slows to a stop and you thank him repeatedly, and he asks you again if you’re sure you were okay.

The Uber drives away, and you stop, staring up at the tall building. The last time you were here, Jungkook was the drunk one. His arm slung over your shoulder, much like the image that scorched itself into your brain of him and mystery girl. The tears are back, you decide that they have a mind of their own, because right now you can not be sad. Sure it feels like your heart was ripped out of your chest, but you can be broken later. Right now, you have to be the girl that stands up for herself, the girl that knows she doesn’t deserve to be treated like an old plaything that you love one day and throw out the next. You deserve better, and you hate yourself for giving into his deception.

It feels like a video game as you walk the familiar path. Your hand tingles when you picture his hand pulling you up the stairs. When you finally get to his door, you stand there for what seems like a decade. Your fingernails digging into your sweaty palms, trying to build an ounce of courage so you can knock. You start to over think it all, as you start to walk away you hear a high pitched giggle and then a very aggressive ‘shush’. Then before you can overthink it any more your knuckles are knocking aggressively.

The door opens quickly, “Im sorry! We will be quiet I prom-“ His eyes meet yours turning pale in an instant, “y/n, wh-what are you doing here.” His voice is shaky.

You bite your lip hard to keep from crying on the spot, without saying a word you push past him and into his apartment.

He closes the door and turns to see you running your finger along mystery girls’ purse and coat, His eyes widen when he realizes why you’re here.

“Baby, No! I swear that is not what it looks like! She is-“ He rushes to you taking your hands in his and you fling them away from you pushing him back.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” You scream and his face drops, “I don’t care who she is! I don’t want to know anything! I really thought you cared about me Jungkook! I thought that you were different, even after all of those horrible things you said to Ben. I believed that. Turns out you were worse than him! At least Ben never fucking lied to me! He might have been a piece of shit but he didn’t lie to me! You don’t want to come home to me! You don’t want to be with me! This is all just some fucking game to you! Well guess what, I fucking quit. I don’t want to play anymore.” The tears on your face are constant now. Your knees tremble as you watch him reach out for you, pushing him away again.

“Kook,” a small voice yells out, “what is going on?” Mystery girl asks as she comes into view. She was probably waiting for him in his bed, your fist curls at the thought.

“Oh is this y/n?” She slurs, clearly still way too drunk, “Oh gosh she’s so pretty, why are you crying?” she tilts her head as he ushers her back to the hallway, whispering something to help her understand.

You exhale a shaky breath, why did she know your name? You swallow hard, wondering why something felt wrong. When he appears again, his face is hard.

“She’s my cousin…” He explains and suddenly the wind is knocked out of you.

“I should have told you what was going on but, I honestly didn’t know I would be doing all of this. It’s her birthday and she wanted to go out, so my aunt asked me if I would show her a few places. Her friends got way too fucked up, and she got way too fucked up. She started throwing up, so I brought her back here because I didn’t want to leave her like that…” He runs his hand through his hair stopping when he gets to his neck.

“I’m… I’m so sorry…” You blink at him, “I just saw you with her leaving the bar, and you weren’t responding to my text… and I don’t know..” you start to ramble, wishing that you could take it all back.

In one stride his hands find your waist, pulling you close to his chest. He reaches up to your tear stained face and delicately pushes your hair from your face.

“I’m not mad at you. It looked bad. I get it, I know that I still have to work on your trust,” His voice is soft as his forehead rest against yours.

You look up locking your glassy eyes with apologetic ones, “I’m sorry for screaming at you,” is all you can manage to say. Your head stopping you from spewing all of the thing your heart (and tequila) want you to say.

You feel his chest when he laughs to himself, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“You can scream at me, I don’t mind,” He chuckles reaching up to wipe another tear away, “But I really hate seeing you cry. I never want to be reason for your tears.” His eyes start to mirror yours, before he cries too you wrap your arms around his neck pulling him down to you so you can press your lips to his.

His hands meet behind your neck pulling you closer. The longer the kiss goes on, the more you don’t want to stop. His tongue presses against your bottom lip before you allow it to meet your own. You suck his bottom lip into your mouth before pulling away.

“Are you drunk baby?” He asks quietly pressing his swollen lips to your temple.

“I drank a lot of tequila,” you answer methodically, only causing him to chuckle.

“Well you should stay here, with me. My aunt is picking her up in the morning, but we can cuddle on the couch, is that okay?”

You smile and nod knowing he wishes the circumstances were different. What he doesn’t know is that even if you had to sleep inside the bathtub, you would stay because you wanted to be with him.

“Ill go get you some clothes,” He smiles and kisses your lips fervently once more before he disappears.

You put your things down and you quickly text Namjoon to tell him you’re home safe. Smiling as your fingers type the words because ‘home’ was starting to have an entirely new meaning to you. Jungkook returns with a pair of grey sweatpants and baggy t-shirt, handing them to you as he looks you up and down.

He sighs, “You look like an absolute Goddess in that outfit but I have to be honest,” He grins, pulling you close to his chest again, “I’ve been dying to see you in my clothes again.”

You giggle as his hands travel down the length of your skirt, stopping at the hem. His fingertips brush along your thigh, before traveling up slowly. You reach out grabbing a fist full of his t-shirt to pull him impossibly closer to you. When your lips connect with his jawbone, he lets out a sharp exhale. His hands ball up and he places them back onto your hips, making you slow your attack on his neck.

“What’s wrong?” you ask with a dramatic pout, pushing yourself back so you can look up at him.

“Nothing baby, its just that you’ve drank a lot,” a soft smile forms on his lips as he leans in to kiss your forehead once more, “Now go change so we can cuddle, yeah?”

You nod instead of protesting, walking to the bathroom to change into his clothes. His baggy sweatpants hang off of your hips and you know they look so much better on him. You fold your clothes up and place them on top of your purse when you walk out. His eyes are on you as you walk over to his seat on the couch, his eyes seemingly satisfied.

“Yeah… I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing you in my clothes,” He mumbles, pulling you down to him. You decide to straddle his hip, resting your head on his chest. You feel rather than hear his laugh as you exhale dramatically. The combination of his fingers running up your spine and the melodic beat of his heart slowly turns you into mush on his chest.

“I’ve missed you,” you say quietly before you can even think about it.

“Mm, I’ve missed you too baby,” He tilts your chin up, brushing your hair from your eyes so he can look at you before pressing his lips to yours once more, “Get some sleep, don’t want you to be tired on our date.”

____________________________________________________________

A/N: I think the next chapter will be the final chapter guys! Please tell me what you think! Also, request are open! I have a few that I'm working on currently but I'm searching for a new series to write! Also check out my new one shot, Simple Things, if you haven't already! 

Also, Im getting so fucking pumped for comeback, how are we gonna handle this new era guysss?!?! 

✨✨⭐️✨✨⭐️✨✨⭐️✨✨⭐️✨✨⭐️

Taglist:

@cainami @carolsummerlove @zeharilisharaban @jikooksgirl19 @fallen-for-luke @madygswich @sugalarity @lofikoo​ @ggukkieeee @peachy-bhun @megs58298 @kawaiiayasan @ jeonchan26  @ambersaesthetics​ @hopekookies​ @rumpucis @iaintnohollybackgirl​

[tuanhood]

delta

pairing: professional frat!jackson wang x reader

genre: lot of fluff, pining from afar, professional frat

warnings: none

word count: 3,700+

summary: when you joined your school’s co-ed professional frat all you had wanted was to get valuable business connections and resources that could help you in your future career. you really didn’t think you would end up with a huge fat crush on mr. popular. 

a/n: soooo this one is a little different because I know everyone always writes fics about jackson being the guy who throws the party or the kinda party boy type so I wanted to do something less expected and lil more soft. also this is unedited and lowkey a mess but :) yeehaw a post.

lambda | alpha | gamma | kappa | theta | sigma

You weren’t sure whether to scream or cry.

All you knew was that you wanted Jackson Wang. Badly.

Most of the girls that tended to crowd around him simply fell at his feet for his ridiculously good looks – which you had to agree was true – but you wanted more than just that. You wanted everything that Jackson was and is. His looks, his sense of humor, his kindness and his brain. You had been addicted to him since you joined Delta Sigma Pi at the beginning of the school year and you had to do something before you overdosed.

It hadn’t been your intentions to fall so head over heels for someone who you had mostly admired from afar and talked to in passing, but you really couldn’t help it. You had become a part of Delta Sigma Pi only for the possible connections it could bring you in your future. If you had wanted to join something more social you would have rushed a sorority like some of the girls in your dorm Freshman year. 

In fact, you were pretty against everything the Greek system stood for and advertised, but when you had heard of co-ed professional fraternities that aimed to help students make connections in their chosen profession and encourage advancement, you changed your mind. Instead of an organization that prided itself on binge drinking and toxic behavior, you joined Deltasig – a business fraternity for male and female students that centered on “professional” activities and fundamentals.

Of course, there were still “social” gatherings amongst the conferences, workshops and service activities that filled most of the members’ schedules. The social events were never really your thing – you’d much rather focus on advancing your future then drunk on a dance floor and squished in between two of the brothers you took a startup workshop with. You started to avoid and skip that aspect of Deltasig until you had taken notice of Jackson.

To be completely honest you had noticed Jackson long before you started getting little butterflies in your stomach every time you were in a room with him, but it wasn’t until two months into the school year that things changed.

You had shown up rather early to one of the weekly meetings – finishing class an hour before and not wanting to go all the way back home, then back up to campus. You had settled down at one of the tables and decided to take out your sketchbook to kill some time, not expecting anyone else to show up until at most thirty minutes before the meeting start time. With your hectic schedule this year and a heavy class load, it wasn’t often anymore that you could find time to work on your clothing sketches. It was your dream to have your own fashion label and company – an avenue where you could be creative through designing and also be a ball busting career woman with her own business to run. You hoped joining Deltasig would help you there.

It wasn’t until you had finished the shading of a winter coat that you realized you weren’t alone.

“Nice design.”

The deep voice had startled you – so much so that your pencil had fallen from your grasp and made its way to nearly the other side of the room. “Shit. Sorry about that,” you looked up from the table to be met with probably the brownest eyes you had ever seen. Your minimal encounters with Jackson before hadn’t prepared you for this up-close moment where all you could focus on was every little detail on his perfect face, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Immediately, you positioned your eyes down and back to the sketchbook not wanting to creep him out at how much you apparently now loved staring at him.

“Totally fine,” you mumbled, still not daring to look back at him. You had heard so many girl – not just in Deltasig but all over campus talking about how mesmerizing Jackson Wang was. Legend has it that once you make direct eye contact with him, you’re placed under an unbreakable spell and become his forever. That kind of talk had always made you laugh. How could a human being – just a person has the capabilities to make another human being feel that way? Maybe it was because you had never been into the social partying thing or really ever had time to date due to your focus on designing clothes, but you couldn’t understand it. That was until that day.

More silence had settled between you and Jackson. You figured that by the way you were reacting, he probably thought you were rude. Somehow in your mind you had comprehended that maybe Jackson hating your guys would actually help you. If he didn’t like you then he would ultimately spend less time around you, therefore you would no longer have to feel whatever it was you were feeling as a result to being around him for less than two minutes.

“Let me get your pencil for you,” it was like you couldn’t make use of your body properly. As soon as he said it, you found your head whipping up to look at him go to the spot where your long-forgotten drawing utensil had landed. Your brain had repeatedly said “no look away” as Jackson leaned down to grab it, but your head remained stagnant in its place, eyes fixated on his back and the way his shoulder muscles moved.

Luckily you found yourself snapping out of the Wang induced trance as he stood up and turned back to return the pencil. To you it felt like you were being obvious and acting like a complete lunatic, but to sweet clueless Jackson he thought nothing strange of it.

“Here ya go. Sorry again,” Jackson smiled as he placed the pencil down on the table near the sketchbook, “you’re really good by the way. Is fashion design the reason why you joined?”

As much as you had wanted to respond to him, your mouth felt dry and your stomach churned in anxiety, afraid of saying the wrong thing. Instead, you nodded in response and despite your clear hesitations in conversing with him, Jackson smiled once again, “well that’s awesome. We’re really happy to have you in the frat Y/N.”

That was the last thing he had said to you before heading to his seat to also wait for other members to show up and start the meeting. The fact that Jackson Wang had knew your name made you want to blush and hide under a rock all in the same moment.

Ever since then you tried to push down your feelings for Jackson. You had heard crazy things about him – that he was very much into the small “social” part of Deltasig and even partook in a partying life outside of the org. That life wasn’t necessarily for you and that gave you more reasons to shove your daily fantasies of you and Jackson married with two children and successful companies out of your mind.

Despite all that talk of the kind of life Jackson led, you couldn’t ignore the way he acted at meetings and frat events. The way he would always encourage whoever had the floor to share an idea or concern, the way he would make sure to laugh twice as hard at someone’s joke if no one thought it was funny and especially the way he carried himself during workshops. He went from kind and alluring goofball to professional businessman. You loved a man with duality.

Then you started going to the Deltasig mixers and no longer could you ignore your feelings. It was all downhill from there.

They weren’t the average frat party where hundreds of people would show up and overall chaos would occur. Instead, the parties were more on the scale of just friends getting together to have a good time. Discovering that notion made you feel more open and comfortable in this kind of setting and you told yourself that was the reason you started going. Not because Jackson would always be in attendance.

You tried to be the average partygoer, but every time you would find your eyes drifting over to Jackson who was always in the middle of telling a story, dramatically using his arms to emphasize certain points. The smile he would get on his face when the person he was talking to would nod and laugh along made you feel even more sucked in. You weren’t even apart of the conversation but you felt Jackson’s charisma and just overall goodness in every part of you.

Then at a certain point during the party – every single time – you swear you could sense Jackson looking at you. You never look to see if you’re right and you’re unsure of what scares you more – being wrong or being right.

And now as you stood here, at probably the seventh Deltasig social you had been to, you once again watched the countless other girls in your frat fawn over Jackson. The girls obsessing over him and trying to get his attention wasn’t a new thing, after all this was the seventh time you were experiencing it. Only this time it was getting to you a lot more than before.

It was mostly being caused from the fifth – or was it the sixth? – “special” mixed drink Mark had made you in the kitchen.

“I don’t know I just throw in whatever sounds like it would be good,” he had said.

That had been good enough for you.

“Let me know if you decide to go for the MBA, my dad’s on the board of admissions at Northwestern and could totally help. Anything for that extra edge, right?”

It’s difficult to ignore how loud Hana is trying to sell her connections to Jackson. As if that’s what’s going to make him interested in her. Why would you want to be with a guy if all he liked about you was the fact your dad could write him a cushy letter of recommendation? She’s not the first however, and she’s certainly not the last.

Jackson smiled at her and you can’t help but smile in return from across the backyard. You’ve identified practically every different type of Jackson Wang smile and based off the way his mouth stretches across his face along with his eyes fixated downwards, it’s the “I’m smiling just to be nice” smile. It makes you satisfied.

“I’m good for now, but I’ll definitely let you know if anything changes. Thanks Hana, you’ve always been so helpful.” It amazed you how he could be so genuine with everyone about nearly everything. It certainly didn’t fit the picture of the Jackson who apparently always parties. But what did you know?

Hana smiled once more at Jackson before she cut her losses and headed back into house. You waited to see who the next contestant would be to try their tricks on Jackson. You watched and watched, looking at Jackson and surveying his every move. It wasn’t long before you realized that you had been staring at Jackson for an unfathomable amount of time – a clear sign that the alcohol had hit you. You didn’t drink ever and it felt like the effects of Mark’s special mixed drinks had come all at once.

“Y/N are you okay?”

It felt like you were getting lost in trance after trance, as though you couldn’t focus on one thing entirely. Your thoughts were so scattered you didn’t even notice Jackson’s approach.

“Y/N?”

Since you had started coming to the Deltasig socials you had never directly spoken to Jackson. Sure, during meetings and workshops there would be a word or two that would be exchanged between the two of you, but never a real conversation. Those were also under more professional circumstances and even though this was still a “professional frat” event, it didn’t have the same implications.

Blinking, you snapped out of your daze and looked at Jackson on your side, “y-yeah. I’m fine… just- why does it seem like I’m not okay?” Rather than the teasing tone you wanted to convey; you came off as genuinely concerned for yourself. Which was… good?

He sipped from the red cup he was holding and you feel yourself lose focus once again – this time on his pink heart shaped lips. “You were just kind of staring at me… for like a long time.”

Sober you would be embarrassed, but drunk you smiled at his words. Despite staring – something that was weird – Jackson still made you feel comfortable, like it wasn’t a strange thing to do.

“Oh yeah sorry. I was just enjoying the view,” you almost want to bite your tongue at how candid you are, but you figured that the Jackson that everyone knows and loves would just smile and shrug it off like he always does.

Instead you ended up being surprised, “oh really… and what view is that?”

You swear that the alcohol is playing with your mind, because even if Jackson is saying that to you, then it certainly can’t be in the tone that you think it is. It was hard to distinguish what was real and what was in your head.

“Just you,” drunk you is very surprising, but you kind of liked her.

You tried to read Jackson’s face, but for once you couldn’t. Instead of one of the smiles you had memorized and etched into your brain, you were taken aback to be met with Jackson’s blank face. For someone who was always smiling, it made you feel like you had whiplash at his out of character demeanor. “Y/N… I think you’re drunk.”

You were drunk? Okay yes… maybe you were, but after spending the party staring at Jackson and all of these months watching is every move it was clear that you were drunk on more than just alcohol. You’ve been drunk for months and right now was the tipping point.

“No. YOU’RE drunk.” You couldn’t believe that out of all the things you could say in response, you had chosen the one where you accuse him of being drunk. Jackson furrowed his eyebrows in confusion and looked down at the cup in his hand, “that would be impossible considering the fact that I don’t drink.”

Now you were the one left confused. After all the things you had heard surrounding Jackson, him not drinking didn’t really match with that, “are you sure?”

A smile stretched across his face and he lets out a little laugh. Your heart warms when you realized it’s one of his better smiles – his “that’s so funny, please tell me more” smile. If you had to spend the rest of your life seeing that smile, you’d never have a reason to be upset ever again.

“I’m sure I don’t drink alcohol.”

Your eyes widened at his reveal, “what? You don’t drink? The Jackson Wang? Party animal?”

It’s then you notice that most everyone else has left the backyard to go inside. The table that had once been full of drinks and surrounded by groups of people was suddenly cleared and deserted. You could still make out a hum coming from inside the house where people were still continuing the kickback, but from the empty backyard you suddenly felt so removed from it all.

Jackson takes a step closer to you, and frowns. At this point your mind is too hazy to analyze what kind of frown it is. Whether it’s a genuine frown or one of Jackson’s pouty frowns he wears when he gets teased by his friends, “Party animal? Where’s that coming from?”

You shrugged, “it’s just what I’ve heard… ya know through the grapevine.”

“Well I’m definitely not a party animal, so let’s clear that up now.”

“I just thought since everyone always-” you began, but he abruptly cut you off seeming a bit annoyed – something you hadn’t seen from him before, “Well not everyone knows what I’m actually like. They just make assumptions, I guess… I didn’t think you were like that though.”

The way he says the last part isn’t out of anger or annoyance, instead he sounds disappointed which makes you feel even worse. You grow quiet, your head beginning to hurt – unsure if it’s from Jackson’s reaction or the alcohol, you crouch down to the ground and place your head in your hands.

Jackson crouches down beside you out of concern and you’re barely able to make out his question of whether you’re okay or not. All you hear is an annoying ringing sound and Jackson and the yard in front of you begins to spin.

“I’m never drinking again,” you mumbled mostly to yourself, but you hear Jackson chuckle.

You feel yourself freeze and the ringing go away when Jackson reaches forward to tuck a strand of hair behind your hair, “you probably shouldn’t have had any of Mark’s drinks. They’re known to be lethal.”

“How did you know I had Mark’s drinks?”

This time it’s Jackson’s turn to freeze, his cheeks heating up, “just… took notice I guess.”

Jackson Wang had noticed you? You knew that he was attentive, the caring kind of guy who always looked after his friends, but this was different. It made the world stop spinning and your headache magically disappear as if you had been granted some sort of clarity.

You felt words on the tip of your tongue that could embarrass yourself further in front of Jackson. So much so that it could drive you to drop out of Deltasig and kiss your hopes and dreams of making connections in the business world goodbye. But the haze of the alcohol and Jackson’s big brown eyes right in front of you provoked you to let the words out.

“I always notice you Jackson.”

As soon as the words are out in the open, you look down at the ground not wanting to meet Jackson’s gaze, just as you had the day, he caught you drawing in your sketchbook. The silence that looms between the two of you feels heavy as it’s not often that Jackson’s left speechless. Even in awkward situations he always has something to say or a way to break the tension. You had seen it countless times before with all of the groupies in the frat that hang around him, so why now did he have nothing left to say?

You cleared your throat, “anyways… maybe I should get going since I’m drunk and all…” Despite your words you made no effort to get up off the ground, instead you felt yourself nervously tug at the grass around your feet still waiting for a word from Jackson.

Finally, after what felt like forever you felt like you could breathe.

“Is it the same way that I notice you?”

You know what he means, you know exactly what he means and it makes your heart stop. Your fingers leave the newest tuft of grass that you’ve pulled out of the ground and look back to Jackson. You’ve never seen him look so small and shy before; the alcohol makes you want to wrap your arms around him. Nodding at his question, you see a smile appear on his face. A smile that you haven’t seen before, one that you haven’t memorized and analyzed.

He licks his lips, “Y/N… I’ve never really been interested in parties or these stupid socials… I only really started going because I thought you would be there. I wanted to come up to you so many times, but… I just chickened out. I know we don’t know each other that well, but ever since you joined Deltasig I can’t get you out of my head. I only joined the frat to keep in mind what’s really important to me – my future – and I never thought much about making friends or,” he paused, “dating… It just wasn’t on my mind. But then I met you and I don’t know what it is… whenever I’m in a room with you I can’t stop looking at you. Ugh, that probably sounds psychotic, doesn’t it?”

You’re hanging on every word of his confession and soon find yourself laughing when he reaches the end. This entire time you had thought Jackson was this super cool, unattainable guy who paid you no mind. That he was the kind of person who was nice to everyone and had an aura to him that caused him to be labeled as one of the members of Deltasig that loved to party. But that was all wrong… Apparently, he was just like you.

“Are you laughing because you find me creepy or is it because of the alcohol?”

When you finally catch your breath, you fan yourself feeling hot from your intoxicated state and the laughter that had consumed you, “actually neither. I’m laughing because I’ve felt the exact same way.”

His face lights up and you once again catch a glimpse of that new smile. It makes you position yourself closer to him, leaning in until you can feel his breath and he can hear your heartbeat.

Just as you lick your lips and are about to close your eyes, you feel him move his hand forward to brush your hair out of your face for the second time of the night. Jackson looks at you with such a fondness that he almost convinces you that you’re a fragile doll that needs to be protected.

“I really really want to kiss you… but not while you’re drunk.” His words make sense, but they cause you to pout. You wanted his lips on yours as soon as humanly possible.

Jackson looks at you shyly once again, “can I walk you home instead?”

You felt like this was the beginning of something, the beginning of something so big and so important that never seemed fathomable before. All you had really wanted was for Jackson to look at you the same way you looked at him. It was a simple request that you never thought would be fulfilled, but with your new favorite smile etched on Jackson’s face, you felt a new kind of electricity run through your body.

“I would love that.”

[prettywordsyouleft]

All I Want For Christmas Is: Chocolate

Summary: all you wanted to do was sell your chocolates at the Christmas market. What you weren’t anticipating was finding someone as gorgeous as Jackson – or dealing his competitive nature over who made the best chocolates this Christmas.

Pairing: Jackson Wang x reader

Genre: enemies to lovers / Christmas au

Warnings: none

Word count: 2240

[All I Want For Christmas Is A Got7 Collab Masterlist]

“What can I offer you, ladies? A sweet, sugary delicacy? Or perhaps something more dark and sinful?”

Rolling your eyes as you watched the man across from your stall openly flirt with a group of women, you attempted to keep your reaction to just that. It was the time of year for festive joy and not for murderous contempt.

And yet that’s all you could manage when it came to Jackson Wang.

When you had been setting up your handmade chocolate stall on the first day of The White Miracle Market, you had been excited to finally get your sweet treats circulating further than your friends and family. It had taken some encouragement to even rent a space at the market this year, and some of your decision had been made because you knew a couple of your friends would be there as well. Still, it was a big deal for you since you had never put yourself out there before.

“Oh hey, chocolates, huh?”

Glancing up from the banner you were working on tying to the stand, you stared at the smiling man before you, silently thanking Santa for giving you your Christmas present early. He was gorgeous, and with the way his hair was brushed away from his face, the warmth of his eyes and the pearly smile he still shined at you, it was amazing you didn’t just get lost staring at his face. You had the foolish audacity to scale the rest of his form, deciding when you were done he was nothing more than a God.

No human had ever looked this good to you before.

Noticing the way he arched an eyebrow at your obvious examination and pursed his lips together, you blinked, rapidly instructing your brain to work.

To say anything.

“I love chocolate,” you breathed as you stared at his eyes, your brain catching up with what you had just uttered, sending a flash of colour across your cheeks. “I mean, making them. I love making chocolates.”

He grinned, folding his arms across his chest and you watched the action as if your entire life depended on it. “We have something in common then.”

“W-We do?”

How could you have anything in common with him? He was out here looking like he should be on the cover of every magazine in his cashmere turtleneck and you were certain you had cocoa powder somewhere in your hair from this morning’s mad dash to make several more batches of chocolates.

“Of course,” he replied with an amused chuckle, pointing to the stall right across from yours. “That’s me.”

Eyes now the size of saucers, you attempted to regain a sense of coherency. “Y-You make chocolates?”

“Not any kind of chocolates,” he oozed and you decided his tone was as sweet as the delicacies you were selling. “Mine are organic and made with fair-trade sourced ingredients.”

Oh.

Swallowing roughly, you attempted to smile. “Wow, that’s really neat.”

“I even have some for dairy-free customers. You never know when you’re going to strike someone with an allergy, right?”

Nodding numbly, you half turned, attempting to straighten out your banner that had fallen sideways when you had lost attention on it. The man moved to assist you, startling you somewhat. “You didn’t tell me your name. I’m Jackson. Jackson Wang.”

As you gave over your own name, you were trying to remain optimistic.

But the light was fading out.

You would spend the next month across from the most handsome man you had ever seen. And what was worse than having him so close to you every day was that he was your only competitor.

It surprised you how well your sales had gone on the opening day of the market. You had been hesitant as you continued setting up, taking glances over in Jackson’s direction now and then. Not only did his stall look professional compared to your more farm-style one, he just exuded an energy that made you feel feeble. Still, your chocolates had garnered a lot of interest and you were rushed off your feet trying to keep up.

“Wow, these are really creamy!”

“I can’t believe the quality of these chocolates. Do you have a website I could order some from in the future?”

“Are you sure these are homemade? They’re out of this world tasty!”

These comments had you rising to the challenge. You held your head high, smiling brightly over at Jackson whenever he caught your eye through the hoards of punters approaching your stall. It wasn’t meant to be a silent offering of battle, rather, you just felt you did indeed have more in common with him like he had mentioned.

You made chocolates and you were doing exceptionally well at selling them.

The next day, however, your success had clearly prompted Jackson to come up with a sales pitch. As people wandered down the small aisle of stalls, he angled himself to catch their attention, graciously calling them over to try real, authentic chocolate.

At first, it hadn’t bothered you but when he mentioned he was certain other people used lesser quality ingredients compared to him, whilst staring at you the entire time, well, it got to you a little. When business died down, you marched over the aisle to his stall, placing your hands on your hips. “Can we talk?”

“Do you want to try some, Y/N? I’ll give you a taste that will blow your mind.”

You were too worked up to fully be affected by the way his eyelashes fluttered or that he purposely leaned into you either. You dug your hands further into your sides, making no move to take his offering. “We can co-exist here, Jackson.”

“Of course we can, isn’t that what we are doing? You’re doing your little treats and I’m over here with my organic delicacies. There’s room for us both.”

“You’re acting as if my chocolates are worthless and I’ve heard you say more than once today that mine are poorly made. What the hell are you playing at?”

“I said nothing about you. I merely said other chocolates-”

“Whilst staring at me-”

“Just don’t have the same impact as mine does. That’s all,” he continued as if you hadn’t interrupted him, smiling smugly as he placed down his samples container. “I definitely didn’t mean any hard feelings about it. I’m just selling my products how I usually do.”

“Right, well please try to be more considerate. It’s the Christmas season and we’re all here for the same reason. I’m not going to stamp all over you so let’s share the space together.”

You turned to walk off when he scoffed, hearing the words he spoke under his breath before greeting new customers to his booth.

Like you could even match me.

As you returned to your own stand, you watched on as he worked on his selling pitch, his eyes casting over in your direction.

Instead of shrinking away you squared your jaw, shooting him back a challenging look.

If he wanted to make this personal, you would have no issues in proving just how well you matched up to him.

It was now war.

Over the following week, running your stall at the market had become exhausting. It wasn’t from all the chocolates you made each day to supply the demand for them or even the daily setup and closure of your booth.

It was from dealing with Jackson and his outlandish ways.

Your sales dipped when he started to offer a new caramel flavour to his menu, and when you came up with the idea of bulk bins, you definitely stole the show. Sure, you had people who would buy from both stalls to keep everyone happy, but on a whole, it was a race to see who could get a potential buyer to come over first.

You drew the line at openly flirting to make a sale though.

“Don’t you want to try a line or two on me?” a bored sounding tone wondered and you looked up at the man, noticing he was from the ticket booth. Your forehead creased as you tried to decipher his question. Jerking his head in the direction of Jackson leaning over his stall and talking up a set of women, you groaned, shaking your head.

“I don’t play that dirty,” you answered gruffly and he lazily grinned, picking up several bags of the chocolates.

“Oi, Jinyoung! What the hell?! Get over here!” Jackson called when he saw who was spending his time perusing your chocolates and you blinked slowly as Jinyoung, as you now knew him as, pushed some money into your hand.

He held up the treats. “Thanks for this. Not only will I have something to get me through the hell that is my shift, but I got to piss Jackson off too.”

“Uh, thanks for your purchase!” you called as he trudged off, leaving you wide-eyed and unprepared for Jackson’s approach.

“How many did he buy?”

“What?”

“Your chocolates! How many?”

“Six packs.”

“Six?! That cheap asshole told me he couldn’t even afford to buy two from me!”

“Well, your prices are higher than mine. You know, to cover all those harder to source, fair-trade and less of an unethical footprint on the Earth chocolates of yours.”

Jackson raked an unsteady hand through his hair. “I’m watching you.”

“For what?! This is ridiculous, don’t you think?” you finally announced, gesturing between you both. “We’re making fucking chocolates, Jackson. This isn’t some multi-corporate thing but just a side business for the holidays. I admire your pride in your creations, but we’re acting so pathetic fighting over who does better! I’m done caring anymore. As long as it stops you throwing yourself at women to catch their attention with your handsome face, it’ll make the rest of this market that much smoother to put up with if we stop competing over who is better!”

Jackson couldn’t help but smirk. “I’m handsome?”

“Is that all you got from what I just said?” you whined, shaking your head incredulously.

“Actually, I got a whole lot more from it.” His face now thoughtful, Jackson reached over and gently took a hold of your forearm.

You’d be lying if you said that, even if you had wanted to murder this asshole all week long, Jackson touching you didn’t make you shiver with delight. You were tingling all over when he smiled genuinely at you. “Tomorrow, can I come over to yours? I think I have a great idea.”

Despite being hesitant, Jackson coming over to your apartment to make chocolates had been the best decision you had made. You shared recipes and tricks you had each learned in the process of making chocolates. And you had found a way to come together, creating the best batches of chocolate you had ever tasted.

Of course, they were a hit at the market too.

“Weren’t you two opposite each other last time I was here?” a man asked as he took a sample, his face lighting up with the taste. “And these have improved!”

“We decided we had a lot more in common than we thought and combined our styles. Would you like to purchase any of our chocolates?” Jackson pitched and the man bought ten.

That day you made more sales than you had in an entire week. And you sold out before the market closed that the next day you tripled the amount you made together with Jackson.

As you packaged up the treats and handed them to Jackson to place into one of the storage bins, you smiled at him. “You know, we make a good team.”

“You’re only just realising this now?”

Rolling your eyes, you nudged him playfully as you handed him another package. “We should have joined forces earlier than fighting over who had the best chocolates.”

“I’m glad we took our time though,” Jackson replied and you frowned, glancing at him curiously. He grinned, nudging you back. “I can’t lie and say it wasn’t fun.”

“It was fun for you?!”

“Seeing you light up as you tried to out-pitch me was really attractive, Y/N. I sure got to see a whole different side to you that I wouldn’t, had we remained civil.”

“A-Attractive?”

“You don’t think it was just you checking someone out, right?” Jackson wondered with a laugh. “When I first saw you, I thought Santa had-”

“Given you an early present this year,” you finished off for him, and Jackson gaped at you. You giggled. “I guess we both had the same intentions from the beginning.”

“To make the best chocolates and be in the company of someone gorgeous?” Jackson offered as you blushed, handing him another package. He took your hand instead, smiling at you in a way that made you feel as if it was made just for you. All the air was knocked out of you, and you scolded yourself for still falling trap to his charms.

“I mean, making the best chocolates is a given, right?” you managed, attempting to restart your heart by looking away.

Jackson then popped a piece of chocolate into your mouth, surprising you as you felt it began to melt upon your tongue. He then swiftly leaned in to kiss you, this kiss sweeter than anything you had ever tasted before.

When he pulled back, he grinned. “You’re right; we really do make the best chocolates.”

_________________

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[buzzdixonwriter]

My Five Most Influential

Someone asked:   Who are the most influential writers in your life?

Good question.

The broad answer is that one gets influenced many different ways by many different sources.  I enjoy poetry and song lyrics because they find ways of conveying the strongest emotional content in the most concise manner, music brings a sense of dramatic rhythm and fulfillment, the visual arts suggest ways of subtly adding many insights to a single strong idea, etc., etc., and of course, etc. (and that is also an example of a creative influence in my work).

But…to boil it down to those whom I most consciously made an effort to emulate, we find ourselves facing five creators that primed the pump.

This is not to say others whom I began following after them didn’t wield a lot of influence (thanx, Ernie, Bert, Jack, Bob, and Hank!) but these are the foundation of everything I’ve done in my career.

(And to those who notice a lack of diversity, I know, I know…but to be honest I have to acknowledge the truth, and the truth is for whatever reason, by chance or by choice, by fate or by fortune, these five dominated my sensibilities.  I trust that I’ve grown and expanded my horizons since then, but they’re the hand I got dealt.)

. . . 

Carl Barks

I loved ducks as a kid and my grandmother and aunt would always bring me a passel of duck-related comics when they came to visit.

There were some Daffy Duck comics mixed in there but while I know I looked at and enjoyed them, none of them stick in my mind like the Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories of Carl Barks.

Typically my grandmother would read these comics to me and I’d imprint the dialog and captions in my brain, replaying them as I looked at the pictures over and over again.

Barks never wrote down to his audience, and his stories covered a vast array of genres, everything from straight domestic comedy to oddball adventures to screwy crime stories.

Donald and his nephews encountered dinosaurs more than once (another big favorite of mine), and Uncle Scrooge setting out to explore the asteroid belt in order to find a new home for his fabulous money bin was another tale I loved literally to pieces, but A Christmas For Shacktown remains my all time favorite graphic novel.

I’ll concede there are better graphic novels, but none of them warm my heart the way that Christmas story does.

Barks showed it’s possible to combine heart (not to be confused with sentimentality or =yuch!= schmaltz), vivid characters, and strong, intricate narrative.  His plots where typically filled with unexpected twists and turns but his characters were always deeply involved in them, not just along for the ride.

He’s one of the greatest storytellers in the 20th century, and his work remains timeless enough to last for several centuries to come.

. . . 

Ray Bradbury

The first Ray Bradbury story I remember encountering was “Switch On The Night” in its 1955 edition, read to my kindergarten class towards the end of the school year.

This would place the event sometime in the spring of 1959.

“Switch On The Night” captivated me because it was the first story I’d ever heard that showed what could be seen in the dark that couldn’t be seen in the day.

Even as a child, it made me realize the night wasn’t scary, but contained wonders and insights we miss in the harsh glare of day.

I don’t recall if the kindergarten teacher told us the name of the author, and if she did it didn’t stick, but boy howdy, the story sure did!  Did it open the doors of the night for me, or was I already inclined to be a night person and it simply confirmed that as a valid identity?

I dunno, but I’m typing this right now at 12:24am.

And the thoughts Bradbury planted in little Buzzy boy’s brain stayed and grew and flowered, as you can read in my poem, “The Magic Hours Of The Night”.

The next time I encountered Ray Bradbury’s writing was in grammar school, certainly no later than junior high.  I was already interested in science fiction by that point, and had read “The Pedestrian” in one of my school English books (we weren’t taught the story in class; the teacher skipped over it for whatever reason but I read it anyway then re-read it and read it again and again).

Anthony Boucher’s ubiquitous 2-volume A Treasury Of Great Science Fiction was in my grammar school library and in it was Bradbury’s “Pillar Of Fire” (which I would later learn was one of his alternate Martian Chronicles and a crossover with Fahrenheit 451) and in that story he offered up a veritable laundry list of outré and outlandish fiction to be tracked down and read, authors to dig up and devour.

Oh, man, I was hooked.

So of course I began looking for all the stories and writers Bradbury listed in his short story but I also began looking for Bradbury’s own work and before you could say, “Mom, can I get a subscription to the Science Fiction Book Club?” I’d read The Golden Apples Of The Sun and A Medicine For Melancholy and R is For Rocket never once dreaming that at some point in the future the roadmap Ray plopped down in my lap would eventually lead to us being co-workers (separate projects, but the same studio at the same time) and friends.

There is a beautiful yet deceptive simplicity to Ray’s work, and even though he wrote his own book on writing (The Zen Of Writing) that has lots of good insights and professional tricks & tips, he himself wasn’t able to explain how he did it.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good Ray Bradbury parody.

I’ve seen parodies that clearly are intended to evoke Ray Bradbury, but only in the same way a clumsy older relative might evoke Michael Jackson with a spasmodic movement one vaguely recognizes as a failed attempt at a moonwalk.

But, lordie, don’t think we didn’t try to emulate him, and while none of us fanboys ever came close, I think a lot of us did learn that less is more, that the right word carries more impact than a dozen paragraphs, and that there’s magic in even the most ordinary of things.

And of course I discovered the film and TV adaptations of his work, and in discovering them I also discovered that there are some things that just can’t be translated from one media to another, and that the light, effortless appeal of Ray’s work on the page (paper or pixel) can at best be recaptured with a good audio book reader but even the best dramatic adaptions -- even those by Ray himself -- are cold dead iron butterflies compared to the light and lively creatures flying about.

So eventually I stopped trying to write like him, and instead picked up the valuable lessons of mood and emotion making an impact on a story even if the plot didn’t make much logical sense.

Decades later I would become a fan of opera, and would learn the philosophy of all opera lovers:  Opera doesn’t have to make logical sense, it just has to make emotional sense.

Ray Bradbury, opera meister.

. . . 

H.P. Lovecraft

As noted above, Bradbury’s “Pillar Of Fire” tipped me to numerous other writers, first and foremost of which turned out to be Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

Okay, before we get any further into this, let’s acknowledge the woolly mammoth in the room:  H.P. Lovecraft was a colossal asshat racist.

He was a lot of other terrible things, too, but racist is far and ahead of the rest of the pack.

It’s a disillusioning thing to find people one admired as a youngster or a teen later prove to have not just quirks and eccentricities and personal flaws, but genuinely destructive, harmful, and offensive characters.

I’ve posted on that before, too.

How I wish it were possible to retroactively scale back that hurtfulness, to make them more empathetic, less egregiously offensive (in the military sense of the word), but that ain’t so.

We have to acknowledge evil when we see it, and we have to call it out, and we have to shun it.

Which is hard when one of its practitioners provides a major influence in our creative lives.

Here’s what I liked about Lovecraft as a kid:  He was the complete opposite of Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury’s instinctive genius was in finding the right word, the simple word that conveyed great impact on the story, drawing the reader into the most fantastic situations by making them seem more familiar on a visceral level.

Lovecraft achieved the exact opposite effect by finding the most arcane, bedizened, baroque, florid, grandiloquent, overwrought, rococo verbiage possible and slapping the reader repeatedly in the face with it.

If Bradbury made the unreal real, Lovecraft made the weird even more weirder.

And let’s give this devil his due:  The Strange Case Of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dunwich Horror are two masterpieces of horror and serve as the bridge between Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King, not to mention his creation of Cthulhu and other ancient entities existing beyond the ken of human knowledge…

…oh, wait, that’s where the story simultaneously gets messy yet provides a convenient escape hatch for fans.

While Lovecraft created Cthulhu, he did not create the Cthulhu Mythos.

That was primarily the invention August Derleth, a writer / editor / agent and H.P. Lovecraft’s #1 fanboy.

Lovecraft had some loosely related ideas in his stories and several themes he revisited repeatedly (in addition to racism).

He also had a circle of fellow writers -- including such heavy hitters as Robert “Psycho” Bloch and Robert E. “Conan” Howard -- who picked up on his ideas and, as way of a tribute, incorporated them in some of their stories.

Derleth took all this and Lovecraft’s unfinished manuscripts and short ideas he jotted down and turned it into a whole post-mortem industry, linking all of Lovecraft and other writers’ tales.

And he did a damn fine job of it, too.

So much so that the Cthulhu Mythos has taken on a life of its own, and pretty much anybody can play in that cosmic sandbox now (including Big Steve King and a ton of Japanese anime) and so Lovecraft’s works have an enormous influence on pop culture…

,,,but Howard hizzowndamsef can be -- and is -- cancelled.

Derleth and various biographers downplayed Lovecraft’s virulent racism for decades, and I don’t think Ray Bradbury was ever aware of the scope and tenor of Lovecraft’s bigotry when he name checked him in “Pillar Of Fire” and other stories.

In a similar vein Bradbury didn’t know -- because thanks again to overly protective literary executors, nobody knew -- just how big a racist asshat Walt Whitman was, either.  It is one thing to call shenanigans on a Bill Cosby or a Harvey Weinstein or a Donald Trump because their egregious behaviors were noted long before they were held accountable, but quite another to do so on a creator who died while hiding their most awful behavior from thousands if not millions of fans who felt inspired and uplifted by their work.

It’s one thing to call out a contemporary bigot and not support them by not buying their work, it’s quite another when their bigotry has been shielded from view and fair minded, decent people have used their work to draw inspiration into their own creativity.

Of course, I had no way of knowing all this when I was in junior high and seriously began tracking down Lovecraft’s work.  

He possessed a flair of the horrific and unearthly that to this day is hard to match (but easier to parody).  He was a tremendous influence on my early writing (truth be told, I zigzagged between Bradbury’s stark simplicity and Lovecraft’s overarching verbosity, giving my early oeuvre a rather schizophrenic style) and the ideas he sparked still reverberate to this day.

If only he hadn’t been such a giant %#@&ing asshat racist …

. . . 

Harlan Ellison

In a way, I’m glad neither Harlan nor his widow Susan are alive to read this.

I cherished Harlan as a friend and greatly admired his qualities as a writer.

But damn, by his own admission he should have been thrown in prison for aggravated assault on numerous occasions (he was courts martialed three times while in the Army).

We’re not talking about arguments that spiraled out of control until a few wild punches were thrown, we’re talking about Harlan by his own admission stalking and ambushing people, knocking them unconscious or causing grievous bodily harm.

We’re talking about sexual abuse and humiliation.

We’re talking about incidents he admitted to which if true put people in life threatening situations.

And yet ironically, in a certain sense Harlan (a bona fide Army Ranger, BTW) was like the U.S. Marine Corps:  You’d never have a greater friend or a worse enemy.

I became dimly aware of Harlan in the late 1960s as I started diving deeper into literary sci-fi, transitioning from monster kid fandom to digests and paperbacks.  Harlan first caught my attention with his macho prose (years later a similar style also drew me to Charles Bukowski) in stories like “Along the Scenic Route” (a.k.a. “Dogfight on 101”) in which Los Angelinos engaged in Mad Max motor mayhem but soon it became apparent the macho posturing was just a patina, that the heart and soul of much of the work reflected great sensitivity and often profound melancholy (ditto Bukowski).

Harlan was a fighter, and again by his own admission, he acknowledged in his later years that he was not a fighter because his cause was just, but rather sought out just causes because he knew he would be fighting regardless of his position, yet possessed a strong enough moral compass to point himself in the direction of a worthy enemy…

…most of the time.

He hurt and offended a large number of innocent and some not-so-innocent-but-certainly-not-evil people.

He also helped and encouraged a large number of others, people who had no idea who he was, people who had no way of adequately reciprocating his kindness and generosity.

He defended a lot of defenseless people.

He also mistakenly defended a lot of terrible people.

If someone tells me Harlan was a monster, I’ll agree:  Monstre sacré.

What made his writing sacred was that no matter how outlandish the situation, Harlan dredged up from the depths emotions so strong as to be frightening in their depiction.

Skilled enough not to lose sight of humanity, outlandish enough to conjure up ideas and emotions most people would shy away from, Harlan hit adolescent Buzzy boy like an incendiary grenade.

Unlike my first three literary influences, Harlan was and remained active in the fannish circles where I was circulating at the time.  He regularly wrote letters and columns for various fanzines, including a few I subscribed to.

In a literary sense he stood, naked and unashamed, in full view of the world, and that willingness to go beyond mundane sensibilities is what made his work so compelling.

He certainly fired me up as an adolescent writer, and proved an amalgam of Bradbury and Lovecraft that got my creative juices flowing in a coherent direction.

I don’t think I ever consciously tried to imitate him in my writing, but I sure learned from him, both in how to charge a story with emotion and how to fight for what’s right regardless of the blow back.

I loved him as a friend.

But, damn, Harlan…you could act so ugly...

. . .

H. Allen Smith

Who?

Most of you have never heard of H. Allen Smith, and that’s a damn shame.

I’d never heard of him either until I stumbled across a coverless remaindered copy of Poor H. Allen Smith’s Almanac in a Dollar General Store bin in Tennessee in the late 1960s (it was a memorable shopping expedition:  I also purchased Thomas Heggen’s Mister Roberts and Let’s Kill Uncle by Rohan O'Grady [pen name of June Margaret O'Grady Skinner]).

Reading Smith’s editorial comments (in addition to his own essays and fiction he edited numerous humor anthologies) I realized I’d found a kindred soul.

Smith had a very conversational tone as a writer; his prose seemed off the cuff and unstructured, but he slyly used that style to hide the very peculiar (and often perverse) path he led readers down.

He sounded / read like a garrulous guy at the bar, one with a huge number of charming, witty (and delightfully inebriated) friends in addition to his own bottomless well of tall tales, pointed observations, and rude jokes.

Of all the writers mentioned above, that style is the one I most consciously tried to emulate, and one I seem to have been able to find my own voice in (several people have told me I write the same way I talk, a rarity among writers).

Smith was hilarious whether wearing an editor’s visor or a freelancer’s fool’s cap.  If you know who H. L. Mencken was, think of Smith as a benign, better tempered version of that infamous curmudgeon (and if you don’t know, hie thee hence to Google and find out).

Compared to my other four influences, Smith didn’t need to add the fantastic to his fiction:  The real world was weird and wacky and whimsical enough.

A newspaper man turned best selling author, Smith became among the most popular humorists of the 1940s-50s-60s…

…and then he died and everybody forgot him.

Part of the reason they forgot is that he wrote about things that no longer seem relevant (TV cowboys of the early television era, f’r instance, in Mr. Zip) or are today looked upon askance (and with justifiable reason; the ethnic humor in many of his anthologies may not have been intended as mean spirited, but it sure doesn’t read as a celebration of other cultures, viz his succinct account of an argument following a traffic accident between two native Honolulu cabbies rendered in pidgin:  “Wassamatta you?”  “’Wassmatta me’?!?!?  Wassamatta you ‘Wassamatta me’?  You wassamatta!”).

I’m sure I picked up a great many faults from Smith, but Smith also had the virtue of being willing and able to learn and to make an effort to be a better person today than he was yesterday, and better still tomorrow.

I’ve certainly tried applying that to my life.

Smith’s style was also invoked -- consciously or not -- by other writers and editors, notably Richard E. Geis, the editor of the legendary sci-fi semi-prozone, Science Fiction Review (among other titles).  Smith died before I could meet him, but while I never met Dick Geis face to face we were pen pals for over 40 years.

Geis certainly sharpened specific aspects of my writing style, but the real underlying structure came from H. Allen Smith.

Smith’s work is hard to find today (in no small part because whenever I encounter one in the wild I snap it up) but I urge you to give him a try.

Just brace yourself for things we might consider incorrect today.

. . . 

So there’s my top five. 

With the exception of Carl Barks and Ray Bradbury, none of them are without serious flaw or blemish (though Smith seems like a decent enough sort despite his fondness for X-rated and ethnic humor).

In my defense as an impressionable child / teen, I was not aware of these flaws and blemishes when I first encountered their writing (primarily because in many cases efforts were made to hide or downplay those aspects).

The positive things I gleaned from them are not negated by the negative personal information that came out later.

I can, for the most part re the more problematic of them, appreciate their work while not endorsing their behavior.

Ellison can only be described in extremes, but his fire and passion -- when directed in a positive direction -- served as a torch to light new paths (his two original anthologies, Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, pretty much blew the doors off old school sci-fi and belatedly dragged the genre kicking and screaming into the 20th century).

Lovecraft I can effectively ignore while finding entertainment value in the Cthulhu Mythos.

But I must acknowledge this isn’t the same for everyone.

For example, as innocuous as I find H. Allen Smith, if a woman or a member of a minority group said, “I found this in particular to be offensive” I’d probably have to say, yeah, you’re right.

But I can still admire the way he did it, even if I can no longer fully support what he did.

. . . 

By the time I reached high school, I’d acquired enough savvy to regard to literary finds a bit more dispassionately, appreciating what they did without trying to literally absorb it into my own writing.

I discovered for myself the Beat generation of writers and poets, the underground cartoonists of the late 60s and 70s, Ken Kesey, Joseph Heller, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. LeGuin, and a host of others, some already alluded to.

Some, such as the Beats and Bukowski, I could enjoy for their warts and all honest self-reflection.

Yes, they were terrible people, but they knew they were terrible people, and they also knew there had to be something better, and while they may never have found the nirvana they sought, they at least sent back accurate reports of where they were in their journeys of exploration.

By my late teens, I’d become aware enough of human foibles and weaknesses -- every human’s foibles and weaknesses, including my own -- to be very, very cautious in regarding an individual as admirable.

While I will never accept creativity as an excuse for bad behavior, if a creator is honest enough and self-introspective enough to recognize and acknowledge their own failings, it goes a long way towards my being willing to enjoy their work without feeling I’m endorsing them as individuals.

It’s not my place to pass judgment or exoneration on others bad behavior.

It is my place to see that I don’t emulate others’ bad behavior.

Every creator is connected to their art, even if it’s by-the-numbers for-hire hack work.

Every creator puts something of themselves into the final product.

And every member of the audience must decide for themselves if that renders the final product too toxic to be enjoyed. 

    © Buzz Dixon

[kodzukuroken]

Seasons change, but people... Do too I guess.|Chapter. 3, Change

Genre: Angst, Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers

Summary: You and Tsukishima had been friends for years but upon the arrival of a very special invitation, your relationship takes a sudden change. Will your long-harbored crush for your best friend finally come into the light? Or will your relationship be altered for good?

Aka, Reader is an artist who is in love with Tsukki, there's angst, there are laughs, there are three established captain relationships! What could a person want?

Pairings: Tsukishima Kei x Reader (Kuroo Tetsuro x Kenma Kozume, Bokuto Koutarou x Akaashi Keiji, Daichi Sawamura x Sugawara Koshi)

Warnings: Drinking, Swearing, Smut

Read on Ao3 | This will update before Tumblr

This is the 4th chapter (including the prologue). I really love writing this story, there are currently 6 chapters out on AO3, so if you’d like to read past this chapter that’s where you can do it! Enjoy!

It took you about a year to fully get back to some kind of normal after everything that had happened. It was slow at first, after that night at Kenma and Kuroo’s they’d given you a ride back to your place but within minutes of being there, you couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore. You’d never realised it before, but Kei was all over that place. His old volleyball sweaters in your closet, photos of the two of you on the fridge and a small plush dinosaur that he’d won you at a carnival in college. Your apartment suddenly felt too big, too empty and after putting all of the things that reminded you of him into boxes, you found yourself not stopping until everything was boxed up. You’d called Kuroo the next day and he’d helped you move everything out, and into your art studio. He seemed concerned at first, the idea of you living in the same place that you worked but the gallery owner and boss didn’t seem to mind as long as you kept it to yourself.

“Otherwise I’ll have all of you starving artists living up there in some kind of commune” he’d said in an annoyed tone that reminded you of Kei.

For the first few months, you were basically a hermit. You spent your time painting and working in the gallery and basically nothing else. If you did have to go out, for groceries or something else you did that as late as possible. You didn’t want to run any risk of accidentally running into Kei again like that night in the summer, or worse run into him and his new girlfriend and she fawned all over him. Luckily, the universe had seemingly given up pushing the two of you together and you managed to get time to heal. Around Christmas time was when inspiration first really struck you again. After everything that had happened and Kei’s discouraging words about your art, you’d found it exceedingly difficult to come up with anything original. You kept up with your commission work and a few other landscape paintings that you knew would sell in the gallery but you could never really seemed to paint anything that meant anything to you. This was until one day in the winter when a friend of yours from the gallery had come to raid your studio for supplies and had found the torn-up canvas with the destroyed painting of you and Kei on it. She’d asked if she could have it, to repair and paint over, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to let it go. You couldn’t understand why at first, you’d managed to put everything else that reminded you of him away why not this too? But as the cogs in your brain began to turn, you realised what you had to do with it.

From then, you found yourself diving into probably the largest project of your life. Several large scale paintings, all some of your best work and all that your boss had deemed “exhibition worthy”. You couldn’t believe it when he’d first said it, you’d always had your work displayed in the gallery, something your boss had been nice enough to do for all the up and coming artists who worked there. However, nobody who worked there had ever even been offered the prospect of an exhibition, those went to more well-known artists the ones who were all the rage on social media or whose work had made it into the best magazines. You didn’t hesitate to agree of course, and before you knew it, almost a year after all the awfulness with Kei you finally felt like you were on a road to a new normal.

“It’s called Change,” you told Kuroo and Kenma one night at dinner. “You guys will be there right? It starts in two weeks.” Kenma nodded furiously, but Kuroo was off somewhere else. It wasn’t until Kenma nudged his husband in the ribs that he even realised you’d been talking to him.

“Huh?” he looked at Kenma who gestured to you.

“(y/n) is asking you to attend the biggest event of her career babe, be present” you giggled lightly.

“Oh sorry (y/n) I guess I was just distracted. We’ll be there, of course, we will, when is it?”

“Two weeks” you repeated “Tetsurõ, are you okay? You’ve been off all night” he laughed, about to undoubtedly come up with some kind of excuse but Kenma nudged his side again, a little harder this time.

“Ow!”

“Just tell her” Kenma shot back.

“Tell me what?” Kuroo was silent for a minute and then decided his husband was right.

“Okay, but promise you won’t be mad?” you rolled your eyes and he continued “I saw Tsukki yesterday.”

“Oh” the sound left your mouth before you could stop it, you hadn’t heard that name in a while.

“I promise (y/n), it’s the first time since everything happened with you guys. I was so mad for what he did to you, but then…”

“Then?” you questioned you hated that you were so intrigued by any of this.

“Well, Bokuto suggested we meet up, just some of the guys from training camp days. I didn’t even think about it at the time but when Bo said it would be at Tsukki’s place I-”

“You were at his place?” god why were you asking? You could already feel the pit forming in your stomach. Kuroo nodded and looked at you with guilty eyes.

“I met her (y/n)” now you were lost for words. Suddenly it felt as though everything you’d done this past year had been for nothing, you still weren’t over it.

“She’s not you,” Kuroo chimed back in “he’s not the same with her as he ever was with you, I can see it. He doesn’t look at her like he did with you, he doesn’t joke with her.” Kuroo paused for a minute and looked around as if he was about to tell some kind of shocking secret.

“(y/n) she’s nice to him, like actually nice. She doesn’t challenge him like you did… he’s bored.”

You shut your eyes tightly trying to push down the bubbling hope in your stomach.

“No,” you said squeezing tighter so that you could see patterns behind your eyelids.

“It’s true!” Kuroo began again but you shook your head.

“Tetsurõ please, don’t do this, I can’t. Not again.”

“Okay, okay,” he said “I’ll drop it” you opened your eyes to see a solemn look on both his and Kenmas faces. Kuroo extended his hand and placed it on yours.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked, eyes doe-esque and wide.

“No, of course not. He was your friend too. I just, I can’t do that again. I was in so much pain after that night.” The two nodded and with that, the subject was dropped. Kuroo went on to ask more questions about your exhibit, evidently trying to distract you from what had just happened. But it was too late, the door that you’d taken so long to force closed in your mind was open again and you were thinking about him.

~

Two weeks later when your exhibition began you could not have felt more loved. Kuroo and Kenma came the first night, with a huge bouquet of wildflowers and a bottle of champagne. You’d showed them around and felt giddy at the genuine look of pride on their faces. A few nights later Bokuto and Akaashi stopped by, Bokuto was confused by most of your paintings but no less enthusiastic because of it. He even said that he wanted to buy one particular painting because it “looked like the back of Akaashi’s head”. But you told him that you didn’t plan on parting with them any time soon. Your exhibition got more reception than just your friends though, some of the attendees were really big deals in the art world, you’d even ended being interviewed by a local news station. Overall, the exhibition had gone off without a hitch, attendance was consistent and there were no huge disasters. That was until the last night of your show.

There was only about an hour left until the gallery closed, most people had come and gone for the day. The only people who were left besides yourself were your boss and a few of your coworkers. They’d brought out a bottle of champagne and a few glasses and were toasting in your honour.

“To (y/n)!” your boss said brightly and blush rose in your cheeks as they all cheered. You were half-way through thanking them all for their help when you’d noticed you were no longer alone. You caught a glance of his figure out of the corner your eye first and it wasn’t until you’d turned that your drink caught in your throat and you realized who it was.  Standing there, in the middle of the gallery staring up at your paintings was Kei. The pit from two weeks ago began to reappear in your stomach and you began to feel your heart pounding in your ears. It wasn’t until your co-worker saw who you were looking at that you managed to snap out of it.

“Who’s the tall glass of water in the jacket?” he’d asked, sipping his drink. You hadn’t noticed at first, but Kei was wearing a stylish dark blue jacket with a colour coordinated turtleneck underneath, his glasses were new too. Your stomach churned as you scanned his new look, it wasn’t that he looked bad, god no, quite the opposite. It was that he looked incredible, the clothes fit him perfectly but you’d known that they weren’t ones he’d chosen for himself. All things considered, Kei had always had a pretty good sense of style for someone who didn’t care about fashion, but he’d never tried at it, it was just what he wore. This had thought put into it, this was her handy work.

“Uh, he’s an old friend” you finally replied after what felt like minutes. You held out your glass and he took it from you smiling and turned back to the group.

Your legs were weak as you walked and it wasn’t because of the heeled boots you were wearing. However, their clack on the hardwood floor had alerted Kei of your presence and now he was staring right at you.

“Hey,” you said, surprised at how natural your voice managed to sound given the circumstances. He looked back up at your work,

“Hi.” you were both quiet before he spoke again “I saw a flyer for the show, and before I knew it” he trailed off, the pit in your stomach began to bubble with hope again. You both stood in silence for a while staring at your feet and he at your painting before you couldn’t stand it any more.

“There’s an order yano” you gestured around the room “to all of this.” He met your eyes for the first time that night, god you’d missed his eyes. “Want me to show you?” and in his very Kei way, he answered with silence.

You led him to the painting closest to the door, it was one of the smaller ones in the collection, but still above your average size of painting. It was an abstract painting of a pair of broken glasses, painted perfectly from memory of one of your first times hanging out with Kei. You stood there for a moment, letting him stare and the work, he cocked his head to the side and a little and then looked at you expectantly. You led him to the next one.

The second painting was the view out of a window, looking out onto your old college campus in the fall. The painting was filled with oranges and reds, you liked this one a lot, it almost looked like flames. It was the view from Kei’s dorm room window, the same one you’d sat at years ago.

You led him around a few more paintings, all different scenes from your lives together. One depicted the carnival you’d attended together in your first year of college, another the sunset you’d watched together on the day you’d both graduated. They were all painted from memory, every one of them had sat like postcards in your brain, you’d had to get them out.

Finally, you led him to the end of the room, where the final two paintings stood side by side. The penultimate painting was the one he’d been staring at when you’d noticed his presence. It was a self-portrait. Your abstract figure sat, hunched over on an ornate spiral staircase. Your face was hidden, but the dress was the exact same colour as the one you wore on the night you’d kissed Kei.

The final painting was by far the largest in the set, it was one that had become so familiar to you that it had seemed the show was incomplete without it. There, towering above the two of you, was the painting you’d shown Kei on the night you’d fought. The red paint was still there, splattered over the pair of your faces, but the once shredded canvas had been repaired. You’d spent hours in your studio sewing the canvas back together, and the thick black thread that you’d used to do so stuck out against the bright paint.

You were both silent for a while longer, and when you were sure that he’d had enough to process you spoke again.

“I know this kind of stuff isn’t usually your thing.”

“No, but I think I got it.” There was something so familiar about the way he’d said it, that honesty mixed with smug that you hadn’t heard in so long. You’d really missed it.

“Kei I-” you began, but you were cut off by your boss's hand on your shoulder.

“I’m sorry to interrupt (y/n) but we should really close up.” Fuck.

“I guess I should go,” he said, but you couldn’t reply. You wanted so badly to protest but you just couldn’t get the words out. He turned to you once more before leaving.

“Goodbye (y/n)” and with that, he disappeared out into the night.

~

When Kei got back to his apartment late that night his head was reeling. He couldn’t believe what he’d done. He’d been standing in the grocery store what felt like forever ago now and had seen the flyer for your show in the window. Without even thinking, he’d dropped his groceries and had walked the few short blocks over to your gallery. He wasn’t shocked to see you there, he’d kind of expected it really but what he didn’t expect was how fucking good you’d look. The last time he’d seen you you’d looked so... broken. Your hair had been a mess and you’d looked completely exhausted, he had still found you endlessly attractive but it was more the kind in which all he wanted to do was take care of you but he’d done the exact opposite of that. But tonight you looked so good that he could barely keep himself breathing. The way your tight black clothes had hugged you so perfectly and the small lift that your shoes had given you just enough height to bring you to eye level with him, you were literally breathtaking. And the way you’d spoken with such ease when you’d seen him as if nothing he had done had ever affected you, as if you were completely over everything he’d done to you just over a year ago.

Your work had been incredible too, it was all so beautiful he could see your thought process in every single brush stroke on the canvas. It made his heart swell in a way art never had. He was even more impressed in the way you’d managed to remember so many aspects of your relationship. The exact shade of black metal of his glasses from all those years ago and that small crack in the window of his dorm room from college. You’d remembered it all so well and it was right there on the canvas. He’d felt as though he was being transported back to all the best moments of his life, all the moments with you. And when you finally led him over to the final painting in your exhibit, his heart had shattered all over again. It was the painting you’d shown him that night, even with all the red paint and damage he could have recognised it anywhere. He thought back to the first time he’d seen it, it was so beautiful, so full of colour and true emotion but he couldn’t enjoy it. He’d felt guilty, guilty for the way he’d treated you that night at the wedding, guilty for finding someone else when he’d been trying all the time to tell you how he really felt. But rather than apologize rather than try to fix things he’d ran, your words that night had hurt him so badly but it wasn’t because they were inaccurate. You’d been right, he’d known that even then, he was running from you, from something he’d wanted for so long but fear had set in and got the better of him. Fear of hurting you, the fear of things not working and ruining seven years of friendship. So instead he decided to do exactly what he’d feared doing in the first place. God, he was a fucking idiot.

It wasn’t until the light in the hallway flipped on that Kei noticed how long he’d been standing in the darkness of his apartment.

“Tsukki?” he looked towards the source. It was his girlfriend standing there, arms crossed and a little blurry-eyed, he’d obviously woken her.

“Where did you go? You’ve been out for hours” she asked, she was in her pyjamas. They were matching, pink and silky. You had never worn matching pyjamas, you’d usually just worn whatever old Karasuno sweatshirt you’d stolen from him and shorts. His chest tightened at the memory.

“ Kei? ” she asked again, a little more annoyed this time.

“Somethingcameupatwork” he muttered quickly and tried to push past her into the bedroom but she put a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Work? You’ve used that excuse three times this week Tsukki!” he didn’t answer her, just stood there staring into her eyes. Your eyes were so bright compared to hers, she always seemed to look annoyed even when she was completely content, Kei missed your eyes.

“You’re seriously not going to tell me where you’ve been?” she asked but he just shrugged. He knew he should be better to her, she was a very nice girl but after seeing you tonight it didn’t feel worth it to pretend anymore.

“Fine.” she spat. “I’m done Tsukki, done.” He didn’t try to protest, he just leant against the wall in the hallway until she had changed out of her pyjamas back into whatever clothes she’d arrived in. Then once she’d gathered her things, he watched her walk out the door without another word. He knew what he’d done was shitty,  but he couldn’t really care about that right now. He would apologise tomorrow.

He sat down on the couch and pulled out his phone, he was half-praying that you might have texted him, but then again who knew if you even still had his number in your phone? He pulled up Instagram and typed in your username, he wasn’t much for social media so he hadn’t really checked your profile since the two of you stopped talking. There was only one post he recognised to be something he hadn’t seen, he guessed you might have secluded yourself from social media in order to produce the kind of work he’d seen tonight. There was no way you’d had any distractions. He clicked on the new post, it was a video of you being interviewed by a local news channel and it was captioned “Hey look! I was the news!” with a bunch of those stupid emoticons you loved. He turned up the sound on his phone and listened to you speak.

“Someone once asked me what I did, I was so young at the time, but even then I’d known what to say.” you paused for a minute and he noticed your eyes wander down to your feet just like they had since you were young. “I’d told them I was an artist, that I liked to make things. And that’s what I do, any time that my soul is at odds with reality I take that and make something from it. And that's what this project is, it’s the process of grieving… and moving on.” Kei swore he could have seen the smallest amount of tears raise in your eyes, but the camera wasn’t close enough to see. He listened to the video a few more times, you were talking about him. He was the one who has asked you that all those years ago in the kitchen of that party. He couldn’t believe you still thought about that day when the two of you had first met. Of course, he did too from time to time, but he’d never thought that that conversation had ever had any kind of effect on you. He was so glad that he was wrong.

[kieron-oduibhir]

DC AU Headcanon: Imagine a Post-COIE like universe where The Jokester and Batman both co-exist and fight crime on occasion in Gotham City.

That would be fascinating, tbh. Batman not having driven Jokester out alone means either Jokester was too damn stubborn for him or they came to some kind of agreement.

Now, somebody did a little one-shot version of this scenario a few years ago where they were, inexplicably, dating, and I followed up my kneejerk reaction to this of ‘no, why, no’ with a painstakingly reasoned-out set of headcanon justifications for how this situation could have arisen, which ultimately didn’t line up with the little scene I was riffing on very well because it relied heavily on the kids, who weren’t actually in evidence. 😂 As you do.

So my brain went there, first, even though I definitely don’t ship it, because the groundwork was laid.

Even without that, though, the first two Robins are a really great focal point in this hypothetical ‘verse. Because the Joker and Robin were both written as literary foils to Batman. And that means there’s a lot of overlap, when neither of them is evil. That is to say, they’ve got a lot in common.

And Jokester is a clown, and Dick’s from the circus. And as I understand him Jokester’s inner Gotham local, and so is Jason. So if they’d bumped into him on patrol etc and knew him as acquainted fellow Gotham vigilante whom Batman had not put out of business, he’d be a really natural person for either of them to go to, when feeling homesick for pre-Manor life, or frustrated with Bruce.

Dick already had Superman so I don’t know how much having a Weird Local Clown who Isn’t Really Friends With Batman would have done for him as he got older, but I really think it would have been good for Jason to have an adult to go to who shared more of his background, and wasn’t automatically aligned with Batman. So there’s my optimism. ^^

Funniest scenario, both inherently and for irony points, when Jason fights with Bruce as a teenager he storms off to the old neighborhood and stays with the clown, who spends the whole time flipping back and forth between supportive and ‘kid you cannot just move into my safehouse your dad is going to literally kill me. all the way dead. also i’m low on grocery money now you are a growing boy. what do you mean you have three cards with no credit limit.’

The really fascinating thing, if I’m laying out my own headcanons here, is that Jokester and Batman would clash about enforcement strategy and ideology hard, and largely along class lines, though this would blend extensively with the underlying lawful-chaotic alignment issues.

For example: Batman wants to fix the police, but considers the #1 thing wrong with them that they’re vulnerable to bribery and extortion from organized crime. That has...not been the primary police corruption issue in America in quite some time.

Jokester meanwhile regards police and organized crime as filling similar roles in society, and while he’s willing to concede that police in their theoretical form are better for providing general security-through-threat-of-violence, he kinda trusts the mob to actually live up to their much more limited obligations more reliably, and he’s iffy on the whole principle of the state monopoly of force, or he wouldn’t be a vigilante. He’s all for police reform! But he has a very different visual of what that means, and he considers it as its own distinct issue rather than a prerequisite for tackling ‘real’ crime.

So he’s pretty prone to getting arrested and/or fighting cops, and he and Batman have a lot of arguments about the definition of ‘criminal’ and how it relates to their own activities.

Also Jokester mostly doesn’t take mugging very seriously on a scale of Problems I Worry About Daily, and feels very boo-boo the fool when he at long last learns Bruce’s secret identity, because he should have realized that hangup was personal.

[southernchicstyle]

The Big ONE

                                                                                           Photos by Daniel Ortiz

I always think my party ideas for the kids are so original until I start looking for items for them and find a million parties done in the same theme. Our son’s first birthday was no exception, but I like to think we put it all together in a creative way you haven’t seen yet... Reeling in the Big ONE! 

Our little guy turned the big ONE and we had the best time celebrating with a fishing themed party. Keep reading and scrolling for ALL of the details with photos by Daniel Ortiz . 

Fishing bobbers, nets, lures (keep out of reach of little hands because the hooks are sharp!), lanterns, and cattails all came to mind immediately as I gathered decorations for the party. “We’re reeling in the big ONE” read the invite. A comprehensive list of the items will be at the bottom of this post, but I also linked the ones I refer to in the body of the post like the fish food tents above.

PHOTO OPP

A photo spot with bobbers and nets formed in my brain as I pinned ideas, and the variations of those came together to create this one I’m so proud of below! My husband assembled scrap 2x4s we had that were painted grey into the photo frame.

The bobbers on the photo spot (pictured below) are paper lanterns we spray painted red on the bottom half (painters tape used to make the line) and the top (linking the paper lanterns). There’s pretend fish hanging below the bobbers on the left strung with fishing line. 

And, the directional arrows pointing toward “fishing hole”, “weighing station”, “bait and tackle”, and “catch of the day” were cut by our friend and I drew the words and art on with paint markers. (pictured below)

ONE

My mom and her crafty skills is always a part of making these parties a reality and she helped put the finishing touches on the “ONE” for the picture table. I love how it turned out! We used styrofoam letters (”O”, “N”, “E” each linked), cut out one for the boats from the invitation for the “N”, and glued cardstock paper in red, white, blue and green to the letters. The blue waves we cut out in different colors and there is twine wrapped around the “E” and the cattails.

We also had to secure the letters to the backdrop (tape was sufficient) since they are styrofoam and could easily fall over.

MONTHS

Each of the months (on paper bobbers from newborn to one) just HAD to be displayed on a net, so figuring out how to secure them was a challenge we solved by hot glueing small clothespins to the back of the flat paper bobbers and taping pennies to the back of the pictures to attempt to keep them all from blowing up when the wind blew. 

The wind had other ideas, but it looked good throughout the party.

The red lanterns, net, fishing lures, small fishing bobbers, and cups are all linked. Click on the words to shop them. And, the tackle box on the table was a Houston Nutcracker Market find. 

TIME CAPSULE

We also decided to do a time capsule (directions in the frame on the left in the photo above) at our guy’s 1st birthday. I regretted not doing one for our daughter’s first birthday after my mother-in-law passed shortly after the party. Each person in attendance can write a message to the birthday kiddo and answer some fun questions about what they think the child will be and like, etc. Your child can read all of the messages when they turn 18!

What I’d give for a message from my mother-in-law for our daughter to read when she’s older.

FISHING SHIRT

For our big guy’s outfit, I found an adorable baby fishing shirt onesie for our birthday boy to wear for his party. Even if you’re not doing a fishing themed party, this shirt was so cute on him! 

Our nanny made the balloon 1 with fishing line and balloons pictured above. Linked the balloons we purchased here. We went for a slight ombre effect with more light blue on the top and dark blue on the bottom. (Would recommend buying a couple of packs to ensure you have enough of each color)

FISHING THEMED FOOD

Galvanized buckets were the perfect serving piece for the food along with fishing related food items, like gummy worms labeled as “worms”, Twizzlers as “fishing line”, Swedish Fish, Goldfish, peach rings as “Life Preservers” and pretzel sticks as “fishing rods”. The pretend fish decorating the tables are foam (squishy is the best way I can describe them) but really good looking and linked here. 

I also saw the puffer fish idea online and thought it would be fun for the kids to have the punch balloons to play with. And, I was a bit nostalgic thinking back to playing with punch balloons as a kid. Obviously, one year olds weren’t doing much balloon punching, but they were fun for older kids. 

The wooden boat and boxes on the food table were borrowed from a friend, but the white 1 was purchased online.  Also borrowed fishing poles that were used throughout the party. 

ACTIVITIES

Along with puffer fish punch balloons, we had a “Catch and Release” activity where we put water in a kiddie pool with fish in it and fishing poles (magnets on the poles and fish connect the two) where kids could attempt to catch fish. And, our “Feed the Fish” station was a bean bag toss which has now been repainted for a third time to have fish swimming. 

The printables I used for the activity signs & favors are here:

Bait Bar

Thank You for Making my Birthday Reel Fun

Catch and Release (couldn’t find this one so I used my own skills to make one)

Feed the Fish (couldn’t find this one so I used my own skills to make one)

CUPCAKES

When it comes to kids and cake, I’ve become a big believer in cupcakes being the easiest all around. They don’t have to be cut, don’t require a fork or spoon, and are cost effective. So, this time I did store cupcakes from our Kroger with blue icing and bobbers on top (linking the bobbers here).

If my son ever decides to be a fisherman, we now have bobbers and lures for days!

CENTERPIECES

Cattails for centerpieces made for a simple table decoration. I used the galvanized buckets with paper in the bottom (had a bunch from all of my Amazon orders) then river rocks on top to fill the bucket with the cattails secured in between. Around the buckets we draped some fishing net with some smaller rocks, lures (be careful of the sharp hooks), and bobbers. 

The cocktail tables I use are linked here along with the table covers. For the bigger tables, I used a fun blue with the raised circles adding texture to the table.

DIAPER COVER

My goal with the “Ofishally ONE” diaper cover was to get a picture of him in just that, but this was the best I got. Fishing shirt and diaper cover. It’s still adorable, though! And, you get a close up look at the baby fishing shirt. 

I’ve learned to let some things go at the parties and enjoy it. Hard for a type A personality like me, for sure!

EDIBLE CATTAILS

These cattails are Swiss Rolls on on bamboo skewers (which we cut to eliminate the point on the end) held in place by styrofoam under the moss in an oval galvanized tub. And, bobbers made everything more festive!

Now, I have to share our learning. The Swiss Rolls will slide down the skewers since they are standing upright, so we cut slivers of wine cork and slid them under the rolls to hold them up. Completely a game time call as they were sliding right before guests arrived. You can see the cork if you look closely.

COOKIES

The cutest cookies were done by a local baker, Sweets by Shey: bobbers, fish, “Gone Fishing” sign, and one that looked like an oval piece of wood with “The Big ONE” on it. 

The other two items, scalloped napkins and fish coasters, pictured below were perfect additions to the party. The scalloped napkins with a  gold trim were a fun nod to the scales on a fish while still keeping an elegance to them. I found the coasters at HomeGoods randomly and snagged the “Drink Up” coasters for the event. 

TABLES, CHAIRS, TABLECLOTHS

Here’s a closeup of the texture of the blue/turquoise raised petal tablecloths. I used cream colored ones for my daughter’s 2nd birthday Bubble Bash so when I saw this color I knew it was perfect for the party. 

Also linking the tables and chairs that at this point have been used for 4 birthday parties and a couple of other events. For us, since we have room to store it all, buying was ideal. 

BANNERS

The banners I found online were perfect for the background of the cake smashing. “The Big One” banner is customizable and comes with the fish and bobbers also (or without if you choose). The cute “ONE” for the highchair was an easy order and great quality!

I hung the big banners behind the high chair on bamboo poles and put the bamboo poles through actual fishing poles so the fishing poles flank the banners. They somewhat blend in with the busy vine background, but the small detail made me happy.

SMASH CAKE

For a smash cake, there’s a baker in my area that makes a blueberry cake (it was INCREDIBLE) and could create this “wave” look - Kingwood Bakery. I found the fish and “The Big One” sign cake topper online and added them myself along with the 1 candle. I used a log cake stand that has come in handy more often than I anticipated.

Below you can see the layout of the time capsule pages I printed (they were an easy printable I found online) that went with the theme. It includes sections like “When you grow up I think you will be...” and “How do I know you?” to name a couple. 

FAVORS

Fishing pole favors were a must! I found little water squirting fish, handheld fish water games, fish stickers, and Swedish Fish and cinched them in clear favor bags with twine tied to sticks we collected around the house. Gathering sticks was a fun activity for my daughter to feel like she was a part of the planning.

The printable tags were easy to print, but I had Katie & Co print and cut them to make sure the bobbers were cut correctly. And, I printed a sign that was framed near the favors that said “Thank You for Making My Birthday Reel Fun!”

My apologies to my friends/the parents who had sticks in their cars on the way home, but it was really cute! 

Unlike his sister, our little guy dug right in to the cake and enjoyed eating it! I love this picture that Daniel Ortiz captured of him once we took the cake away. O-fish-ally ONE!

We love that so many friends celebrate with us. And, below is a close up of the photo spot (you can see the paper lantern bobbers) with two of my friends that are so good about coming!

POOL BOBBERS

Having our pool completed literally the week of the party was chaotic, but I was able to create my big bobbers for the pool. This was not a perfectly executed project, but overall I was happy with them and they looked great. The top is a to-go container spray painted red and the bottom is a red plastic tablecloth taped to the floating orbs I purchased with red Duck Tape.

The taping of the tablecloth to the orb was a feat in itself. With help from my family, we did it once and then redid it. Ultimately, the tablecloth was taped at the base of the orb. It will take in water, so I attempted to tape the seam as well as we could.

I wish I could give a step but step tutorial, but the pool bobber was truly a “try and see what works” experience. Biggest tip: have patience and don’t be afraid to redo them if they don’t look right.

**A big thank you to all of my family who helps me execute all of my ideas and to Daniel Ortiz for the great photos!

__________________________________________________________________

Reeling in the Big One Party Supplies

- Bait Bar Sign (printable) $2.50

- Balloons (light blue, white, and true blue, 100 pack) $10.99

- Banner: The Big One (personalized banner linked w bobbers & fish) $44

- Banner: Burlap One for Highchair $10.99

- Bobbers (small for cupcakes and tables) $6.49

- Cattails (set of 4 sprays) $24.99

- Cake Stand (Rustic Log) $48.86

- Cake Topper: “The Big One” starts at $14.99 (linked similar as exact one no longer available)

- Chairs (individual and 4 pack) $44.72 and $142.41

- Cups (gold rimmed, 50 count) $14.99

- Diaper Cover: “Ofishally One” $20

- Duck Tape (red) $7.08

- Favor Tags: Bobbers $3 (in favors: Fish water game, Swedish Fish, Stickers)

- Favor Bags (100 clear bags) $3.98

- Favor Tags (bobber printable) $3

- Fish (foam, decorative on tables and photo spot, set of 3) $15.91

- Fish & Poles for Catch and Release $13.86

- Fish Coasters (unavailable online, cork ones here $12.24)

- Fish Food Tents Printable $3.50

- Fishing Game (fish and 2 poles) $28

- Fishing Lures $18.99 (found a similar set for $15.99)

- Fishing Net (natural color 2 pack) $9.50

- Fishing Net (blue) $5.52

- Fishing Shirt (for baby) $37.99

- Fish Squirts (for Favors) $7.49

- Fish Stickers for Favors (3D puffy, 20 sheets) $7.97

- Fish Water Games for Favors (assorted with others) $38.99

- Galvanized Buckets (small, set of 12) $18.87

- Galvanized Buckets (large, 2 gallon) $28.98

- Galvanized Tub (for edible cattails) $31.99

- Highchair Banner - ONE $10.99

- Invitiations: “Reeling in the Big One” file $11.99

- Kiddie Pool (45 x 10″) $10.39

- Lanterns (red) $9.97

- Months Paper Bobbers $9.50

- Moss (SuperMoss Spanish Moss) $9.52

- ONE letters (12 inch styrofoam “O”, “N”, and “E”) $9.98 each

- Paper Lanterns (made into bobbers, set of three 8 in white) $10.99

- Plastic Red Tablecloth $14.99

- Pool Orbs (made into bobbers) $89.99

- Puffer Fish (Punch Balloons, 30 count) $10.99

- Scalloped Napkins with gold trim $9.99

- Skewers (bamboo, 100 pieces) $6.95

- Swedish Fish (0.5 oz packages, 64 count) $14.99

- Swiss Rolls (for edible cattails, 6 boxes, 36 count) $11.94

- Tables: cocktail ($107.88) and large 60″ round ($118.99)

- Tablecovers (cocktail) $16.99

- Tablecloths (blue with raised round petals) $39.99

- “Thank You for Making My Party REEL Fun” signage - $2.50

- Time Capsule Printables $8

- Twine (2 roles x 656 feet) $9.89

- Wooden 1 (8 cm tall) $7.89

***Photos by Daniel Ortiz

[hayjeon]

Cut Me Open (ft. Yoongi) Part 02 [M]

→ marriedcouple!au, surgeon!au spin-off from CardioPalps → 15k words, rated for sex, possible triggers (talk of divorce/miscarriage/family issues), and medical jargon that took me 5ever to research 

→ part 1 | part 2 | story talk | fin.

Yoongi graduated top of his class at Harvard. He’d excelled so well that he was immediately recommended to Seoul Gen, where his parents lived, and was happily relocated to intern at the huge hospital. Under Do Kyungsoo, one of the scariest but smartest residents, he had excelled even more, learning so much and becoming one of the best interns Seoul Gen had ever seen. When Kyungsoo retired and appointed him as co-director of the neuro department, it was smooth sailing from these. 

Yoongi never really had too much trouble in his love life either. In high school and college, his passion and drive had always attracted a girl here and there, and he’d always gotten his fix. But then you came along, and you flipped it out of nowhere. 

Instead of girls just being the main reason to compliment him and fuel his ego, you made him a better person. You challenged him, and you even beat him sometimes at your tests. You were his fuel for everything. 

But somewhere along the way, Yoongi had lost it. He’d lost his grip on everything, his surgeries, his marriage, his superiority. 

It all started with the day he accidentally sprained his finger while he was looking for flowers. A mistake, was all it was. Feeling like the both of you had been a little out of loop, with your differing schedules, Yoongi had driven straight to the closest flower shop to catch the owner wrapping up the store, smiling apologetically as he ran inside to grab the first thing he saw. But then he wasn’t paying attention and had closed his car door on his index finger. 

Wincing, he’d cried out, and had gone back to the hospital, showing Ortho his finger and getting a cast for it. His surgeries after that were difficult, the junky silver metal wrapped around his finger awkward and too weird to handle flawlessly, especially when he was probing the sensitive brains of a patient. 

One by one, his surgeries started to become a bit more difficult to handle, and the stress of possibly messing it up began to take a toll on him physically, and mentally.

The flowers were forgotten in the car, and when he finally remembered them, they were already too wilted and gross to give to you. 

You deserved the best. 

Which is why when you got pregnant, fulfilling all of his wishes and dreams, he’d done his best to make sure that you were stress free. He was the one who bought the furniture and assembled it, coming way too close to accidentally hammering the healing finger, and taking surgeries off to spend time with you. 

The month after that was fine, and he’d enjoyed it. It was like you two were interns again, coming home to eat whatever you wanted, lounging on the couch in eachother’s arms watching and laughing at shows, and decorating the new room in your house. It felt wonderful. 

But one day, you woke him up with bleary eyes and a trembling lip as you told him about the miscarriage. He hugged you until you fell asleep and spent the day cleaning the room, de-assembling everything and packing it away neatly so you didn’t have to go through the stress of looking at all the reminders again. 

He heard, heard from Sehun that it wasn’t only because it was embedded in the fallopian tune instead of the uterus, but also because your blood sugar levels were incredibly low. You weren’t taking care of yourself. 

He knew you were keeping a strict diet to make sure your appearance on television was good enough to draw in a regular viewing audience, and it was important, professionally, to do so. But on top of all your hectic schedules, the tall heels you were always teetering on, and the irregular schedules and horrible morning sickness....”It all added up,” Sehun explains. “I didn’t tell her because I knew it would kill her. She loves this job, man.” 

“Thanks,” Yoongi mumbles, patting Sehun’s arm. “You did good, not telling her that part. I’ll make sure she’s eating okay.” 

And he did. Yoongi did his best. He took off more surgeries, more time to make sure he was home when you came home, cooking the healthiest and fullest meals that he’d ever taken care to do. But...what did it do? What good did it do when everytime you came home from work, you’d trudge over to the bedroom and just faceplant onto the bed? You pushed him off whenever he tried to talk, began sighing and mumbling about “alone time” whenever he tried to help, and fell asleep before he could initiate anything. 

Cold leftovers were one by one thrown out, while Yoongi’s reputation at the hospital began spiraling down. 

After the finger breaking spectacle, he was on thin ice. Already, three surgeries hadn’t gone well under his watch and Seoul Gen had to call for help from a neighboring specialist to come in and monitor his surgeries. A major professional disappointment for the hospital and him. 

But then he began taking more time off for the pregnancy, and then the miscarriage a month after, and then the whispers and wry looks started. Maybe it was just him, but was the Chief low-key scheduling him less than compared to the other doctors? His name appeared next to more low-risk surgeries, scheduled the day of and the bigger, most interesting cases were handed off to the other guys in his department. 

Frustrated, Yoongi couldn’t do anything. He felt as if his life was a scale: on one side was you, clinging onto a thread attached to his wrist. On the other, was his career and everything he’d worked for, the single reason he met you in the first place. It was also hanging from a thread. Whenever Yoongi reached for the other, one would fall, slipping away through his fingers and he was so scared, so afraid that he would lose it all. 

And...he lost you. 

The night you brought up the divorce...it was his fault. He’d forgotten about the anniversary. He’d gotten yelled at by the Chief, and had brazenly accepted a difficult 15-hour surgery without hesitation to try and prove that he was still in the game. Unfortunately, his phone was left in his office the whole time and he had missed everything, including his assistants reminders, his personal reminders, your calls, your texts, everything. 

That day, the surgery had gone impeccably well, but he’d come home to have the other half of life completely fall apart. 

When you laid it in front of him, explaining that you were sick and tired, so so tired of waiting for him, so tired of being “too busy” and so tired just of everything, Yoongi couldn’t say anything. 

He was weak. Weak, because he couldn’t hold onto you when you said you were leaving, but also weak, because he had let you believe that he’d stopped loving you. 

How could he stop loving you? You were his anchor, his rock, his meaning for everything. He worked hard so that you wouldn’t have to do surgeries. The reason why his mother had laid off of your back? Was because you weren’t doing surgeries anymore, but more “lady-like” things like brunches and television shows. It was because he’d taken on double the load when the both of you became co-leaders. 

And maybe his surgeries had gone not-so-well because he’d been busy fending off the new assistant who was obviously interested in him even though he’d told her off multiple times. 

“Break up with her,” Jooyoung purred into his ear, weeks before you brought up the divorce, as she and him whizzed through surgeries together. 

“I don’t talk about personal issues during surgeries,” Yoongi comments, not taking his eyes off of the tumor he was cauterizing. “And also,” he glances up, glaring at her behind his mouth mask and glasses, “Refrain from talking to me, outside of anything. Forever. Suction, please.” 

She rolls her eyes, expertly applying suction to where he instructed. He couldn’t deny, although she was such a meddlesome bitch, she was definitely one of the best surgeons he’d ever seen. Way after you though, of course. Huffing, she continues to hold the skin of the brain aside as he continues probing for the white mass. “You guys don’t even talk. I’ve heard gossip that your marriage has been rocky.” 

“Jooyoung.” He warns, glaring up at her again, and she finally shuts up. 

Yoongi finds the tumor with ease and finishes up the surgery with no problem at all. Hoseok, the nurse practitioner, follows him out as Yoongi removes his scrubs, eyeing his longtime friend as he sighs and begins cleaning himself. 

“You alright man?” 

Yoongi sighs. “I don’t know.” 

Hoseok joins him at the sink, running his hands and arms through the cold water. “Is it true? T-that you and Y/N have been having problems?” 

Sighing, Yoongi shuts off the tap, wiping clean the rest. “Yeah. Not sure how it got around though.” 

Hoseok follows him to his office, sitting on his couch as Yoongi collapses into his swivel chair. “Well, have you and Y/N talked about it? I mean, like after the miscarriage and all?” 

“I don’t know...” Yoongi sighs, running his hands over his face. “Hoseok...did you and your ex-wife ever have issues like that? Like I mean...it just feels like I don’t even know her anymore, you know?” 

Nodding, Hoseok falls back into the cushions, scrolling through something on his phone. “Yeah, we got married right out of nursing school. But our schedules...they just didn’t match. And at one point, it just became that fighting was the only thing keeping our marriage together. Arguing became our only way of communicating anything. And so...I let her go.” He raises his eyebrows, and Yoongi sighs. 

“We...don’t even fight. That’s the thing.” 

Hoseok shrugs. “I don’t know man, sometimes when the other person wants out, if you love her, letting her go is the best choice. It was for us,” he corrects, reminding Yoongi, “It doesn’t mean that’s what you have to do.” 

Yoongi groans, and leans back in his chair. 

His phone rings, and he leans forward and presses the receiver to his ear with his eyes still closed. “Hello?” 

“Ah, Yoongi, can you come to my office please?” 

He sits up, straightening up. “O-oh, Chief. What’s the issue?” 

Dr. Bang clears his throat. “Just come here, Yoongi. I’d like to talk to you in person.” 

Yoongi nods at Hoseok who leaves with a wave and an empathetic expression and sets the receiver down. He walks over to the office and pushes the nice doors open to find Dr. Bang reading something on his desk. When Yoongi enters, the chief smiles, setting his book down, and gestures for Yoongi to take a seat. 

“Yoongi,” he says, father-like and all warm, “I wanted to call you in here because I wanted to tell you in person.” He leans forward, smiling gently. “I’m retiring.” 

Yoongi’s eyes widen, “Oh my g--chief, seriously?” 

Chief nods, sullenly and nostalgically looking around the office. “My time here has come to an end. I...I wanted to ask, if you were interested in taking my spot.”

Yoongi’s eyes widen. “Ch-chief...I don’t understand...why me?” 

Dr. Bang shrugs. “I want to ask you and Y/N to do it together. She couldn’t make it here today, but I’d be most comfortable and at peace to leave it in your hands. You two have been interns, residents, and attendees here for 8 years, and all the other senior attendees have either left or retired early. You both know this hospital, inside and out. There’s no other person I’d be happy leaving this place in its hands.” 

Sighing, Yoongi leans back in his chair. “Sir...We....we’re having a lot of trouble lately. I...I can’t take this job. Our marriage...it’s becoming really hard to even be husband and wife together, but if we take this position...I’m sorry chief,” Yoongi says, standing. “I can’t take this. I don’t know how Y/N feels but I for sure can’t take this.” 

The chief nods, mulling it over. “And if Y/N wants to take it? You know it’s not going to look good with the Board if they find out your marriage isn’t going well. And...to be honest, the lot of them are old and still don’t believe in a woman being in a superior position than her husband.” 

Yoongi hovers by the doorway. “If it’s what she wants...give it to her. I’ll figure something out. I have a feeling our marriage won’t be an issue for long.” 

“Come, gather around,” Dr. Bang ushers the rest of the doctors into the meeting room, waiting impatiently for everyone to file in and get seated. “You all come running when there’s an interesting patient but gathering all of you for a meeting feels like I’m trying to run a government.” He rolls his eyes and you chuckle from your place. 

As he finishes, Yoongi comes sauntering in, hands stuffed in his gown pockets, collapsing in the leather chair next to yours. 

You roll your eyes, turning your chair to the other direction. You crinkle your nose at his attire, still clad in the scrubs he was wearing during his morning surgery. He catches your expression, internally groaning at the lecture he knows is coming. 

“Wanna stop glaring lasers at my outfit?” He quips, quirking an eyebrow at you. He’s chewing on a candy bar, just like you’d always nagged at him not to. He always had a habit of eating sweets after a surgery instead of actual meals and good nutritious balanced snacks. 

You grumble, as Dr. Bang dims the lights and begins his introduction. “You really couldn’t have taken 3 minutes to go to your office and change into your suit?” 

He sighs, finishing the lollipop with a crunch, and shattering it between his molars. “Don’t have time,” he grumbles. 

It’s because you were the one who always sent his stuff to the dry cleaners and had his assistant put it back in his closet. Min Yoongi was smart, but had absolutely no idea how to take care of himself. Even with an assistant. 

You’d stopped doing him favors once you had that....conversation. Seems like it was taking its toll. 

“You never had time for anything.” You mumble, scribbling on the document in front of you. “Also nice of you to actually show up.”

He sighs, “Oh god, stop before you start nagging again. Jeez, let’s just have a meeting where there’s some peace and quiet, yeah?” 

You blink, reading through the powerpoint, but not really processing it. “Just...just sign the papers Yoongi.” 

He doesn’t respond. 

Present

Yoongi walks into the meeting, Jooyoung trailing behind him. You grit your teeth as you squeeze the pen in your hands. Dr. Bang had called a final meeting, and all of you were forced to be here. But you particularly because he was about to announce the next Chief. Jungkook sees the action and gives you a small smile, taking the pen out of your hands and placing it gently out of your reach as you roll your eyes.

“I knew it,” you mutter, “They’re fucking.” 

Jungkook sighs, rubbing your shoulder. “Y/N,” he murmurs like you’re a small toddler. “You know Yoongi would never do something like that.” 

You sigh, turning to him. “You never know men Jungkook.” 

He puts his hands up to protect himself, “Woah woah, okay don’t turn this on me. I’m happily married and have a family.” 

Rolling your eyes, you sigh and turn back to the agenda as the lights dim and the Chief takes his place on stage. 

“I wanted to call this final meeting to finalize my retirement.” He smiles forlornly, glancing around the huge circular hall of doctors and residents that he’d raised literally from day 1. “It has been a pleasure, and an honor serving you all as Chief of surgery, and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

“Doctors,” he continues, “are workaholics with god-complexes, uncapable of truly separating emotions and work. That’s what they say,” he chuckles, “But as I have worked alongside the lot of you, I have never, ever met such a group of passionate young people as you all. You guys put your heart and soul into making this hospital the place that it is. And I am so honored to have been able to call Seoul Gen the place that I have placed all my work, blood, sweat, and tears into. You all have grown, so much. Thank you.

“Now join me in applause as I invite up the next Chief of Surgery to take my place. Y/N Min,” he smiles, holding out an arm to you, and you stand, bowing to the audience as you take your place up on the podium next to him. 

Everyone bursts out in applause, and you smile and take the mic, thanking the chief. “Thank you everyone for joining me here today for yet another boring meeting.” Everyone joins you in laughter, and you just smile and continue. “It...it has been an honor serving you as an intern, resident, and attendee, and now co-leader of the neurosurgery department. I can’t imagine spending my life elsewhere, and this has been a dream of mine, to become a Chief that cares about her peers and her patients. I will work incredibly hard, these next few years, alongside you all and will make my best efforts to fill the shoes that Chief Bang is leaving behind, and become someone who makes all of you proud.” 

You smile, tears brimming in your eyes as everyone stands in applause, and you see your friends, Jungkook, Taehyung, Jimin and Jin, and even your nurses with Hoseok, and even the nervous scared intern Namjoon whoops in the back of the stadium for you. 

Taking the flowers from Suho, you grin and smile, as camera click away and step down from the podium. 

Once the meeting is over, you’re bombarded with congrats and hugs from friends and peers, but your eyes linger on Yoongi who hesitates by the doorway, but leaves eventually anyway. Plastering on a smile, you just grin and take pictures anyway, trying not to let your gaze stray towards the entry. 

Suho accompanies you to your office, agreeing to join you later to help you gather all your things into boxes and help you move into the Chief’s office. 

Setting down the flowers and cards, you pad over to your bookshelf, and begin packing away your old medical books. As you set each leather-bound book neatly into the box, you come across an old booklet and open it with a forlorn smile. 

Flipping through the pages, you grin as you read through all the tiny notes you scribbled in the margins during late nights studying. Also, little encouragements dot the corners, like, “Don’t give up!” “Keep going, only 4 more pages,” bring a smile to your face as you perch on the edge of your desk. 

Never did you realize, that you’d be acheiving your dream so quickly. All you wanted when you walked into this hospital 8 years ago with a huge smile on your face, was to ultimately become a Chief. And you’d done it, slowly working your way up from a measly intern into the next chief of Surgery. 

But as you flip to page 254, your finger stops as your smile falls. Nestled into the pages, is a polaroid of you and Yoongi, smiling up into the camera, and in the bottom, you’d sharpied in the date. 

It was from your third date, when you and he were still infatuated with each other. 

You run your fingers over the glossy material, feeling your heart twinge at the view of Yoongi’s gummy smile next to yours. You both were so young...so innocent and so ambitious. It was a fun date.

“What are your goals?” You ask him, at the diner near the hospital. 

“Huh?” He frowns at you, a fry hanging out of his mouth. “What do you mean?” 

You shrug, taking a thoughtful sip from your shake. “I don’t know, we’re interns, and then we’re gonna become residents and all...but like ultimately, you know? What do you wanna do?” 

He stares down at the burger in his hands, and chews slowly. “I...I don’t know.” He says. “I never really thought about it. I guess...just become an attending and just make enough money to retire early?” 

You laugh, and he looks up at you, wiping a bit of ketchup from the corner of your mouth. “Really? Yoongi! You’re so competitive, I never thought you’d have such normal dreams.” 

He snorts, “Normal? Fine then,” he says, leaning forward with a wicked grin, “What are your dreams?” 

You grin at him, answering immediately. “Chief.” 

Yoongi’s eyes widen. “Ch-chief? Chief of Surgery?” 

You nod, grinning as he whistles. “Damn...that’s like...another decade or so.” 

Shrugging, you finish off your chicken strips. “Yeah, but I’ve always wanted to do that. To become...a chief who cares you know? I want it more than anything else.” 

He nods thoughtfully, “Well,” he agrees, “I’ll help you.” 

Your eyes widen. “Seriously?” 

Laughing, he sips his soda. “Damn right. I’ll do whatever I can to make sure you get that position.” 

Sighing down at the photo you set it aside on your desk. You’d achieved everything professionally. But you were also stuck in the middle of a divorce situation, and there was nothing else that would change that. You had everything, but your marriage and love life, was collectively one thing that you’d lost completely. 

Closing the book, you raise your chin to survey the shelves of your bookcase, reaching up to bring down a picture frame of you and Yoongi’s wedding day. You’re clad in a beautiful dress, although heavy and ultimately chosen by your mother-in-law, you remember Yoongi’s face when he saw you in it. 

“Yoongi, you gotta say something,” you giggle, grinning up at him. Spinning on your heel, you hold your arms out. “How do I look?” 

He just stares down at you, slackjawed, and then you realize his eyes are red and wet. 

“Oh my god, Yoongi, are you crying?!” You gasp, and the photographer snaps away at the sight as you laugh at him. “Oh babe,” you whisper, holding his cheeks in your hands. “Please don’t cry. Or else you’ll make me cry, and then I’ll be mad that you made me ruin my makeup. Don’t even mention what your mother would do if I did that.” 

The last part makes Yoongi chuckle, as he sniffles and wipes his eyes with his hands, holding you at arms length to take a good look at you. “You...” he hiccups, “Look so beautiful.” 

He leans in and kisses you, hands cradling your jaw and your fingers curl around his wrists as the photographer clicks away at the beautiful scene. “You’re perfect,” he coos against your lips. “So perfect, so beautiful. You’re everything I ever wanted. The dress is beautiful.” 

You laugh, grinning into his lips. “You know your mother chose it. It itches so much, and it’s so damn heavy.”

Grinning, he leans in closer to your ear so only you can hear what he says next. 

“Then it’ll feel much better when I rip it off of you later.” 

“Yoongi!” 

You set down the frame, closing the stand and setting it face down into a box with the rest of your things. You finish off most of the books, leaving behind a few folders and things for Suho to pass onto the filing department. 

Suddenly, there’s a knock on your door. “Come in,” you call out, and turn to see its Yoongi. 

Setting down the books you were holding, you watch him come in. “Busy?” he says nervously, ditching his usually sarcastic tone for a softer one. 

Still feeling a bit nostalgic, you reply similarly. “No,” you sigh, dusting your hands off. “Just...clearing a few things up.” 

He looks down at the books, nodding. “Oh, right.” 

A silence ensues, and you swallow heavily, not knowing what to say. 

He speaks up. “I...congrats. I came here to say congrats.” 

You smile a bit, clasping your hands together. “Thanks.” 

“It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?” 

You nod, perching on your desk. “Yeah...” you trail off, not knowing what else to say to him. He looks so tired. You want to reach out to his face and smooth back the wrinkles in between his eyebrows like you always did, but you can’t. Usually you would encourage him to take a nap before he tried driving home. When he looked like that...he just happened to always doze off on the wheel. 

But you can’t even move forward to reach for him. 

“Here,” he says, holding out a manila folder. “I....I signed them.” 

Your eyes widen as you reach out to take them from him. Your breath leaves your lungs, huffing out from your nose. “You...you’re going through with this huh?” You ask him, eyes stinging. 

He meets your gaze. “It’s what you wanted.” He says softly, “I promised. I promised to do whatever it took to get you here.” 

Frowning, you step towards him but he’s already leaving. “Wait, Yoongi, what?” 

The door closes shut behind him and you stop, lips trembling and tears already falling down your face. 

In just a few moments, your marriage had completely ended. He didn’t even try to hold on to you. He didn’t even try. 

“I...I want a divorce, Yoongi.” you’d said, perched on your vanity, form slumped forward as you delivered the words to him. 

He didn’t even flinch. “Is...is that what you want?” 

Your eyes lift up to him. Was that all he was going to say? “What?” You frown up at him. 

He sighs, running his hand over his face tiredly. “If that’s what you want...then I’ll do it.” 

You frown, rolling your eyes exasperatedly. “Seriously? That’s it?” 

“What...what do you want me to say, Y/N?” He says, throwing his hands up in the air. “All we do is fight. No, no. We don’t even fight,” he laughs bitterly. “We don’t even talk to each other dammit. And I can see how much it hurts you. If it makes you happier to just stop it here...then lets do it.” He says bitterly, staring up at you with red-rimmed eyes. 

You bite your lip, body trembling with anger and betrayal. “Fine,” you grit out, “Get out.” you point towards the door with a shaking arm, other hand clasped in a fist. 

He doesn’t even argue with you, hastily grabbing his keys and wallet from the nightstand before stalking out. Before the door slams, he bitterly calls out. “Just know that I tried. This is what you want!” 

The slam echoes throughout the house that you and he built and designed together.

You let the arm drop to your side as you collapse onto the ground, cries racking your entire body and shoulders shaking as you bury your head into your arms, rocking back and forth as you cry yourself to sleep on the carpet near the bed. 

Finishing the rest of the bookshelf is harder with the weight of the completed divorce papers on your desk, glaring back at you in its white glory. You’d opened it, and gazed at the scratch of Yoongi’s handwriting in the end, the date scribbled neatly next to his loopy signature. Alongside it, was your own version. You finish the rest of your room, emptying out your desk drawers and closets and packing them neatly into boxes. 

Suho comes in and takes away all the boxes, leaving you standing in the empty office with just the folder in your hand. You don’t know why you didn’t give it to him when he came by. 

But you realize now, sitting in the empty office that was once designed perfectly to be right next to your husbands, that Yoongi’s action of handing you the finalized papers was his way of letting you make a final decision. 

You laugh bitterly. It was always like that. He never fought for it. He just kept saying that he’d let you do what you wanted. You sigh, as you take slow steps outside, to where you know Suho is sitting in his office. All you had to do was hand the papers over to him...and it would be over. 8 years of marriage. It would just be over. 

When you turn the handle to your office, your phone buzzes in your white coat. Frowning, you tuck the papers under your arm as you open the call from an unknown number. 

“Hello?” 

“Hello? Is this Mrs. Min?” Someone says over the receiver. 

Frowning, you walk over to Suho’s desk, and lean on the counter as you answer. “Yes....what can I help you with?” 

The person says slowly. “Mrs. Min, your husband was in a four-way car collision. You’re gonna have to come to the emergency room.”

You ditch the heels, chucking them somewhere as you run from your office towards the elevators. 

Jamming your finger into the button, you cry hysterically as you push it over and over, but the elevator is on a totally different floor. Screaming in frustration, you throw open the door to the stairs and climb the six flights down to the emergency room, whipping around to see if Yoongi had gotten here yet. 

There, in the entrance, the sirens of an ambulance wail in the distance and you see a few gurneys being rolled in. Scampering up to them, you look at the faces until you see a familiar one. 

“YOONGI!” You yell, running up to the gurney being wheeled in. His face is pale, and his lip is busted, blood running down his brow and chin. 

“Miss!” The paramedic yells, trying to wrestle you away. “You can’t be here!” 

You realize you forgot your white coat and your heels, and look like a complete stranger. Suddenly, Taehyung comes up to the gurney, putting his stethsoscope into his ears. “She’s with me,” he breathes out, and you nod as you help wheel the gurney into the room. 

The paramedic reads out, “34 year old male, involved with a four-car collision in the freeway. Unconscious from head injury against the wheel and inherent malnutrition and exhaustion. Collarbone shattered on impact, and probably a few broken ribs.” 

You breathe out in relief, shoulders slumping as you watch him be transported onto the hospital gurney. “So...he’s ok?!”

The paramedic nods, “We’re sorry for the alarming phone call, but he wasn’t responding well to the painkillers.” 

You nod, wiping your face with your hand. “Yeah...he’s allergic to the usual one.” 

The paramedic nods, leaving silently and Taehyung cuts open Yoongi’s shirt to see bruises littering his torso. His shoulder is bruised nastily and you can see the odd disfiguration. Yoongi’s skin is absolutely pale and his cheeks look so ghaunt. 

“Jeez,” Taehyung whispers as nurses scurry around your husband, hooking him up to machines and such. “That’s a nasty break. He’s probably gonna have to go into surgery for the collarbone. But he’ll be alright. Don’t worry Y/N. We’ll schedule one right away.” 

You nod, collapsing into the chair, and scooting up to look at your husband. “Jesus,” you breathe, “You really scared me.” You whisper at him, reaching out to curl a hand over his calf. “You...you really scared me Yoongi.” 

You don’t even have anymore energy to cry as Yoongi is wheeled into surgery and Ortho begins to repair the ribs and the collarbone. Sitting, slumped in the waiting room, you spin the wedding ring around on your finger, a habit since you started wearing it. 

Kihyun exits the ward an hour later, removing his mask, and smiling at you. “He’s fine, Y/N. Don’t worry. He’ll just be confined to a bed for about 6 weeks, but he’ll be okay once he goes through PT and all.” 

You nod, biting your lip. “He’ll be off of the anesthesia soon right? How much did you give him?” 

Kihyun frowns at the clock. “Ah, it should be wearing off by now. He’s in the VIP ward.” 

You thank him and run to the room, throwing open the door and running up to him laying down on the huge bed. 

“Yoongi,” you whisper, and he groans, eyebrows furrowing as he comes to. “Yoongi, can you hear me?” 

He blinks groggily, frowning up at you and squinting at the light. “W-what...what? What’s going on, Y/N?” 

You smile, breathing out exasperatedly, tears now flowing freely as you collapse onto the bed, burying your face in his hand as you cry. “Oh my god...” you wail, “Thank you...” you say to no one in particular. “Thank you...” 

“What’s going on?” He croaks, frowning at his surroundings.

You blink up at him, wiping away your tears. “Y-you fell asleep at the wheel, Yoongi. And then you hit your head on your wheel and lost consciousness immediately and broke your clavicle and four ribs. You just came out of surgery from ortho, but you’re gonna be alright.” 

He frowns down at the IV plugged into his hand and the thick cast wrapped around his torso. Blinking groggily at his surroundings, he zeroes in on you. His hand twitches but he doesn’t do or say anything as he observes your swollen eyes and blotchy cheeks. 

You both sit in silence for a while, just warily watching each other. 

You speak first. “You....you became unconscious because you’re malnourished. And they diagnosed you as extreme fatigue. Are you okay?” 

He just watches you, eye bags drooping down to his cheeks. Your hand twitches, wanting to reach out and smooth his cheek. But you just wait for him to respond. 

He chuckles a bit, and winces when it puts strain on his broken collarbone. You watch him calm down, and he just gives you a sad smile.  

You clear your throat, grabbing the files at the foot of his bed and reading through his documents with shaking hands. Taehyung had been pretty detailed in his reports, careful to make suggestions and little notes here and there for you. 

Flipping through the pages you wince at the amount of painkillers he’s gonna need, and walk over to lift his free hand that’s not wrapped up in his cast. Maneuvering it around a bit, you hum, adding a few more notes. 

“Your left hand is okay, but you’re gonna have to be careful with your right hand. Which means no heavy lifting for this week and even being careful when using it for menial tasks.” 

He groans, wincing as he tries to sit up. You rush over and help press the button for the bed to stay propped up. “Even that!” you nag, sighing at the way he groans at the movement. 

“Here, drink this first.” You grab him a cup of water and lift it to his lips, watching as he carefully obliges, taking huge gulps of water. Setting the cup down, you take a seat next to his bed, and as if on cue, the nurse comes in, wheeling the day’s meal. 

You thank her and accept the tray, and set it up on his bed tray. He takes the spoon, movements slow and groggy as he spoons a bit of soup into his mouth, nodding at the taste. 

But because he only has his left hand free, he fumbles a bit and struggles to cut the pieces of kimchi, unable to use chopsticks in his left. You sigh and grab them from him, splitting the cabbage with the chopsticks in your hand and placing it on his spoon. “Here,” you mutter. 

Yoongi watches you carefully, eyes lifting toward you in an odd expression before he eats the kimchi, spooning soup and rice into his mouth after. 

“You don’t have to...” He mutters, as you carefully choose side dishes to place onto his spoon. 

You just give him a blank look. “You can barely even take care of the clothes you wear, how am I supposed to trust that you can even take care of that arm? Don’t you know how important it is for a surgeon to take care of his limbs?” 

He stops, the spoon halfway between his bowl and mouth. “So...this is just because you’re the chief now, right? Because you need to take care of your surgeons?” 

Your eyes widen, dropping the piece of fish you’d picked up. You blink, catching yourself and grabbing the protein and putting it on his spoon. “Yes,” You whisper, focusing on watching the way his spoon moves slowly towards his mouth. “Yeah, I guess.” 

He nods, humming and the both of you fall into a comfortable silence. 

“Oh,” you comment, “also, I saw on your charts that you had a fracture in your finger not too long ago...” You trail off, and Yoongi looks up at you with a grimace. 

“Yeah,” he says, voice a bit hoarse. “Why?” 

You blink, uncomfortably shifting. “Um, what happened?” 

He sets down his spoon, washing down his food with a swig of water. Clearing his throat, he just sloshes the water around in his cup as he answers you. “I-I slammed it in the car door.” 

“Where?” You balk. 

“At the flower shop across the street.” 

“And why were you there? Why in such a rush? You’re usually not that clumsy.” You comment, frowning.

He shrugs, “I was getting you flowers.” 

Oh. 

“Oh,” you clear your throat, blinking a bit. “Um, and then you were in a rush?” 

He picks up the spoon again and begins eating. “Yeah, but by the time I got a cast for it, I had another surgery so I couldn’t go home that day. Flowers were dead since they were stuck in my car all day.” 

You fall into silence as he continues chewing. 

He frowns and frets at certain side dishes but you give him a glare that silences him and he finishes the entire thing with a burp and a content sigh. It was the first time you’d seen him finish any kind of meal in a long time. No wonder his weight was at such an all time low. He hadn’t even been taking care of his meals. 

The nurse enters again to pick up the meal. Yoongi calls out to her, “God, I feel gross. Can I wash up now?” 

“Oh!” she says, right before she leaves, “You can take baths now. Would you like for us to send a nurse later?” She turns to you with a smile. 

“Ye---” “No,” you butt in, cutting him off and smilling at the nurse. “I can do it for him, it’s fine.” 

She smiles and takes her leave, leaving Yoongi with a sour look on his face. “She could’ve just done it.” He mutters, leaning back into his pillows. 

You glare at him, stuffing your hands in your pockets and surveying the restroom that has a nice tub in it. “Well,” you sigh, “No one knows about the divorce yet and it’s not like I haven’t seen anything either. Also Chief Bang was able to cancel a lot of my appointments for this month so I can help take care of you. The Board and the panel understood it when they heard you were caught up in an accident.” 

Yoongi nods, letting you walk over and slowly help him up, onto a wheelchair. You push him right up against the sink, where he can tip his head back far as his collarbone allows, and then you use the hose from the bath to begin rinsing his hair. 

Careful not to get water or soap in his eye, you smooth back the strands on his forehead, running your fingers through his hair and cupping it on the back of his nape to make sure that area got wet too. Grabbing a handful of shampoo, you begin lathering, gently combing through the strands and rubbing at his scalp, massaging and washing with the pads of your fingertips. The only sounds in the restroom is of the running water and the sounds of your lathering, but it’s quite comforting, especially after all the craziness that happened today. 

As you massage, you recall all the events. You got position of chief, you moved out of your office, Yoongi signed the divorce papers finally, and then you’d received the call about the accident. It was a hell of a day, even for a surgeon. 

When his hair is relatively clean, you rinse it out, and then finish off with some conditioner before washing it out completely. Grabbing a towel, you wrap his head as he sits up, and you turn him around to look straight at the mirror as you begin to towel off his hair. 

Yoongi watches you through the mirror, watching through the strands of his wet hair the way you crinkle your brow a bit when you’re concentrated and thinking hard, and the softness of the way you towel off the strands at the base of his neck. 

This...this was a thing for the both of you. Sometimes, when either of you were on shift and the other wasn’t, you’d come home with an exhausted face and sometimes Yoongi would wash your hair for you. Not because you couldn’t, but it was...it was nice. And vice versa. 

He sighs as he watches you, drowned out by the way you click on the hair dryer and begin blasting through his strands, fingers carefully combing through his locks to make sure it dries evenly. When you finish, you smooth back the frizzy pieces, cocking your head at it. 

“Your hair got really long,” you comment, smoothing it down where it reaches past his earlobe. 

“Hm?” he looks at himself, turning his head slightly to see. “Oh, didn’t even notice.” 

You frown, walking around him to also do the same on the other side, frowning when the ends of his hair touch the edge of his jaw. “Jesus, Yoongi,” you breathe, “Do you seriously not have any time to get your hair cut?” 

He wants to shrug but he can’t. So instead he just chuckles a bit. “Yeah, unfortunately.” 

You groan. “Wait here.” You jog out of the ward, leaving Yoongi to stare at himself in the mirror. He sees the signs. His face is much more gaunt and thin, the stubble on his chin growing out and making a shadow on his grey skin. His lips are pale and the hollows of his eyes dark and deep. In addition, there’s quite a nasty cut on his brow bone. It was probably why you were being so careful when you were washing his hair. Yeah. It wasn’t anything more. 

You return, weilding a pair of surgical scissors. 

Yoongi balks. “What the hell?” He tries to turn in his chair but winces at the movement, unable to do much besides just warily watch you evilly snap the scissors open and shut with a smile. 

“I’m gonna cut it.” You announce, wrapping a new towel around his shoulders like a makeshift bib. Leaning down, you grip the sides of his head to make him sit straight, and lean down behind him to start snipping. Yoongi groans, “Don’t tell me you learned the whole hair cutting thing from Seokjin.” 

You laugh behind him, and he feels the warmth of your breath on his nape. “Actually, I did.” 

Yoongi groans. “Are you kidding me? I’ve seen the way he cuts his hair and I’m telling you that idiot has just wasted so much more money trying to get his hair fixed from the way he ruined it, rather than the way he was supposed to cut it.” 

You laugh, moving around him to do his sides. “Chill,” you coax, “Don’t be such a lil baby.” 

He glares at you from the side, as you oddly cheerily snip away at his hairs. The tense and silent, nice, atmosphere is lifted, where it was fake smiles and awkward touches. But now, you touch him with more familiarity, and although your touches are a bit more rough, they’re not any less gentle. Its almost like when you’d first started...dating. 

 But Yoongi pushes that memory to the back of his mind, instead honing in on the sound of the sharp scissors cutting away all of his precious hair. 

When you finish, you clean the rest of his hair and carefully wipe away any stray pieces of hair stuck to his neck and ears. When you look up to see his expression in the mirror, you see that he’s dozing off, eyes drooping heavily and head slowly beginning to fall down. 

You grin to yourself, finishing up cleaning and carefully wheeling him back towards the bed. 

“Yoongi,” you whisper, gently patting his shoulder. “You should sleep on the bed if you’re feeling tired.” 

He just groggily nods at you, too tired to argue back as you help him up, his good arm wrapped around your shoulder as you support him to sit on the hospital bed. You move around the bed to tuck in the sheets around his body once he’s situated, and then take a seat next to him, just observing the way his lashes flutter against his cheeks and his head lolls to the side as his mouth falls slightly open. 

Yoongi’s a really quiet sleeper, you noticed during your years of knowing him. He barely snores or talks in his sleep, and even barely moves. His face always looks like he’s dead, no expression or strength in it. But today, Yoongi looks incredibly tired, not just because of his fatigue, but you can clearly see the signs of aging in the way his smile lines are carved deep into his jaw and the crease between his eyebrows that gets deeper with every frown he puts on. 

His skin is becoming much less glossy and now has a greyer hue to it while the skin under his eyes is becoming almost permanently tinted with a darker bluer shade from all his sleepless nights. 

You reach up, smoothing back a piece of hair that sits on his forehead and then curving down his jaw towards his chin, where you can feel a bit of stubble beginning to grow a bit too prickly. You make a mental note to do that for him tomorrow. 

Sighing, you sit back in your chair, and feel a crinkle in the pocket of your doctor gown. Frowning, you sit up and produce the manila folder, all crinkled up, from the pocket of your gown. The divorce papers. 

Smoothing down the edges and the wrinkles, you remove the inside contents and survey the loopy scrawl of Yoongi’s handwriting in the papers. His address, his phone number, his security information, are all written neatly into the columns and rows, and in the final page, his signature and date are written into the two lines that legally separate you and him from your marriage. 

You sigh as your eyes skim through the contents. 

One packet, 4 papers. 

One more visit to the lawyer’s office and then it would be final: 5 years of marriage, 2 years of dating, and 1 year of knowing eachother as interns and best friends and partners, all down the drain. All neatly filed away. All drawn behind a line. 

You fold the paper back into its tiny little crumpled state and stuff it back into your pocket.

Especially when Yoongi was in the hospital like this, you couldn’t do that to him now. 8 years of knowing eachother, it was the least you could do for him. Not now. 

Leaning forward in your chair, you lean a cheek on the bed mattress, eye-level with his hand that’s wrapped up in a cast from shoulder to elbow. You reach forward and lightly rest your fingertips on top of his, thumb smoothing over the taught skin on his knuckles. 

“Stay fucking still!” You hiss, as Yoongi grunts and glares as you lean forward to slide the blade carefully over his jawline. 

He winces as the razor scrapes a bit harshly against his sensitive skin, but you just glare at him when there’s no blood. “Oh hush, don’t be a little bitch about this, I didn’t even draw blood yet.” 

“Yet?” he frets, slumping as he leans against the sink. “I asked you to help me with only the left side! You didn’t have to go over this side again!” 

“Oh my god, you didn’t even do that side correctly, that’s why I’m doing it again! God, stop talking so I can finish here!” You carefully twist the razor against the ball of his adam’s apple, careful not to apply too much pressure against the uneven bumps and ridges under his skin. 

He just watches you, standing between his legs as he leans against the sink counter, eyes furrowed as you observe where any more hairs are straggling as you shave the rest of his neck. 

“You know,” he mutters, and you hum in response to let him know that you’re listening. “My...my mom asks about you a lot.” 

You pause in your shaving and your eyes flicker up to his hooded ones. His expression is one of confusion, eyes dark and moody as he stares at the opposite bathroom wall. “Oh really,” you comment, humming and resuming sliding the shaver over his chin. 

“Mhm,” his voice vibrates under the skin you’re shaving, and his adam’s apple bobs a bit as he swallows nervously. “She...she wants to see you.” 

You frown and stand up straight, staring up at Yoongi suspisciously. “Seriously? She wants to see me? I’d feel much better hearing that she wants to murder me.” 

He chuckles a bit, itching his nose. “She really likes you, Y/N...” he mumbles, watching your expression. You just shake your head and sigh, squirting a bit more shaving gel onto your finger to smooth it over the crook in his jaw where you missed a few hairs. 

“You know she drove me crazy...” you mutter, finishing the spot. “I seriously drove myself crazy trying to cater to her.” 

He clears his throat. “I know you’ve been doing a lot but...please go see her. She’s...she’s not doing well. My dad has been really absent lately and our divorce has gotten her into a weird mood and she keeps asking for you, saying some stuff how there’s no one in her life who listened to her as well as you did...and...” he trails off, eyes flickering up to yours in desperate but silent asks. 

You sigh, running the razor under water and cleaning up. “I...I don’t know Yoongi. I haven’t seen her since we told her about the divorce. I really don’t think she’d want to see the woman who dumped her precious son.” 

He trails after you into the room, settling down on the bed while you perch on the chair next to it. “I know, which was why I was careful about bringing it up to you. Just...” he breathes in through his nose. “Please. I...I lost a lot of things recently, please don’t let me lose her too. This is the best that I can do. She won’t talk to me.” 

You sigh, placing his meal on his bed tray. “Fine, but you owe me.” 

He smiles, gummy teeth appearing as he looks up at you appreciatively. “What do you want?” 

You laugh, helping him open the sealed yogurt. “I want the rights to the car you bought me. And the tapestry we bought in Egypt.” 

He grins, “Deal. Now feed me this yogurt.” 

“He’s gonna need two more surgeries,” Dr. Moon tells you, scanning through the charts. “One more to fix that horrible collarbone, and another to make sure that all the glass shards are out. Only the first one will require any heavy anesthesia. Just keep him hydrated and don’t let him eat anymore solids and we’ll be fine.” 

You nod, thanking him as he leaves, and you watch as Yoongi’s already-grumpy expression descends into absolute glowering. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He hisses, curling his lip in disgust. “No more solids? Do they fucking want to kill me?” 

You roll your eyes, crossing your legs as you review some documents and paperwork from Chief Bang. “Shut up,” you groan, “they only let you eat recently because you were so dehydrated they were scared to extend the operation. This is your fault. Since when did you stop taking care of yourself, geez. Yoongi, you’re literally almost ten pounds lighter than when I first met you. Don’t they say that thirtys bring on the most weight? What happened to you?” 

He sighs, slumping back in his pillows. “I don’t know. It was just...busy. I didn’t have time to even pee, with all those surgeries, so I guess I just stopped remembering to eat and drink too.” 

You roll your eyes again, tsking at him. “Stupid. Here, drink this.” You hand him a cup of water and he takes it gratefully, gulping it down as he watches you pour over the paperwork. “What’s that?” 

You hum, nibbling on your pen. “Some paperwork about the new back-up energy generator. We’re changing it on Friday to make sure that even in blackouts, the surgery ward is still supplied with enough energy. I have to sign off on it, and it’s my first important thing as the new chief.” You look up at him giddly, “Wanna see?” 

He nods, and you hand over the folder, and he scrunitizes the tiny print with a wrinkled brow. “God,” he hisses, handing it back to you. “This is what Chief is being about? Paperwork and having to read fine print? I hate that stuff.” 

You giggle, “Well, that’s why I have a law minor and you don’t. This stuff to me is better than any movie or drama. I love it.” 

You don’t see, because your eyes are back to scouring the page for any minute details that might end up becoming an issue later on, but Yoongi watches you warmly, eyes drooping eventually until he lapses into a deep sleep. 

You’re disturbed moments later when your phone buzzes in your pocket, and you pick up, surprised to see it’s your mother in law. Or....ex-mother in law. 

“Hello?” You pick up, setting the paperwork down to exit Yoongi’s ward. “Mother, it’s...been a while.” 

“Yes, Y/N, it has...” she trails off, her voice sounding a bit less harsh and more frail than the last time you remembered it. 

“Can...can I help you with something, mother?” You ask carefully, leaning against the wall. She’s silent for a moment before chuckling a bit. “I...I don’t even know why I called you, dear.” She sighs, “I guess I have no one else to talk to, besides you.” 

You frown. “What do you mean? You have so many friends who love to listen to you.” 

She sighs, clucking her tongue. “I mean, I do!” She corrects, too prideful to admit the reality. “But...but sometimes there are things that I just need to talk to you about.” 

“Anything on your mind, mother? I can listen to you,” you offer, and she begins talking. 

“I-I...I realize now when I’m in and out of Yoongi’s ward to take care of him, that I barely got to know him. I need your help, he doesn’t really have much to say to him and same with me, I...I don’t even know my son anymore.” 

You hum, not knowing what to say. She asks, “What kind of food does he like?” 

You frown, “Wh-what food?” 

She sighs, “Yes, what food does he like to eat? I packed him some healthy ox-tail soup the other day but he only took a few bites out of it and left the rest. I don’t even know what he wants anymore.” 

You sigh, picking at your nails. “Yoongi doesn’t like soups that much, he prefers spicy and salty and savory things. Which is bad, I know,” you chuckle when she makes a sound of disgust, “But I balance out that unhealthy obsession of his by forcing him to eat his salad first before he gets to the meal. He also doesn’t really like anything that’s too hot. Prefers mildly warmed.” 

“Oh also,” you add with a smile, “Yoongi is on bed rest for the rest of the week because he has surgery soon. So don’t worry about bringing him food for the next few days, mother, because he’s also on a no-solids diet, and I’ve been taking a few shifts here and there to make sure he’s getting his nutrients and drinking his juice.” 

“Oh, Y/N...” she says, her voice trembling a bit. “I...I just wanted to say thank you.” 

“Oh, mother, you don’t have to--”

“No, Y/N. I do. After Yoongi’s father left the house last week, it’s been really hard and I got some time to think about how I treated those around me. And I realized that the only person who really put up completely with the worst of me was you. And still, here you are, assuring me that you’ll take care of my son and telling me about his preferences...I-I have nothing to say as your mother in law, and I’m just so, so sad that you two are parting ways and I--”

“Mother,” you cut her off before she goes into another tirade about your divorce. “It’s...it’s fine, really. Yoongi and I, we have so much history together that even though our marriage might not have worked, I still appreciate and love and support him very much. And I know he does the same. You don’t owe me anything for this, I chose this.” 

She agrees and continues to thank you, and you both end the call with closure, and you lean back against the wall, sighing as the tiredness of the day completely washes over you. You’re about to call it a day and go inside to gather your things, when Jungkook shows up, moments after the call. 

“Noona,” he calls out, walking up to you with a small smile, “Wanna go get drinks with me?” 

You sigh, smiling up at him. “Why?” 

He shrugs, scuffing at his feet. “Heard you on the phone with Mrs. Min, and assumed you’d need to just relax after that.” 

You smile, feeling content. “No...it was...it was a good talk. It wasn’t tiring at all.” His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, “But I’m still down for a drink right about now though. Yoongi’s asleep.” You finish, and smile as you check your watch. 

Jungkook grins, and leads you to the bar across the street, taking a seat on the bar and waving at the familiar face bartending the counter. Shownu hands you both your regular drinks, and you sigh as you wash down the familiar taste of the margarita down. 

“So,” Jungkook begins, stirring his whiskey. “How’s it been?” 

You sigh, drumming your fingers against the countertop. “Hard. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do so many administration stuff, but hopefully it’s just temporary while I figure out how to get settled the fastest way possible.” 

He raises his brows. “That’s it?” 

Frowning, you take another sip. “What?” 

Avoiding your eye contact, he swirls the ice cube in his glass around, watching the dark liquid slosh around it absentmindedly. “I mean,” he tries, carefully choosing his words, “with Yoongi hyung being admitted and everything...” 

“Oh..” you say, having really nothing else to add to what he was implying. “It’s...different.” 

“Good different?” 

“Just...different.” You hesitate, blinking up at him. “I don’t know. It’s just weird...honestly it feels like nothing changed, like we’re married again and we didn’t get a divorce or anything but I know I shouldn’t be thinking like that.” 

“Why not?” Jungkook asks, finishing his drink and waving down another one. “You don’t still have feelings for him or anything do you?” 

You stare down at the pale yellow of the new cocktail that Shownu has given you, fingers stopping playing with the tiny mint leaf placed on the top. Shaking your head, you squeeze your eyes shut for a second to erase the momentary odd feeling. “No,” you say a little too loudly, “I’m the one who brought the divorce up. It wouldn’t be fair for me to feel that way. I don’t have that right.” 

Jungkook chuckles a bit into his drink, doe eyes crinkling at you. You frown, “What’you laughing about?” 

He grins, “Noona, don’t you remember what you told me when I was all scared about my own relationship? You told me that when two people are in love, they lose all their rights, because they give them up. For each other. You’re the one who said that when you told me to go get her.” 

You frown, “That was in a differen--” 

“No, noona,” he cuts you off, patting your shoulder. “Literally everyone in this damn hospital can see that you and Yoongi hyung still have feelings for each other. There...there were just a few bumps in the road, that’s all. I really, truly, believe that you and him can figure this out. You guys are the strongest people I know.” He says, eyes sparkling like the way they used to as an intern, a little measly punk who was placed under your own residency. 

“Just go tell him,” he whispers. 

“How do you even know he still has feelings for me?” You whisper, eyes blurring a bit at the tears that threaten to spill over. “He agreed to the divorce.”

“Noona,” he murmurs, “I...I just heard this in passing but the Board was gonna give Chief to Yoongi hyung only, just because he’s a guy and the man of the family and all that. But Yoongi hyung never wanted that. He knew you wanted that, more than anything. So when you brought the divorce up, he accepted it. All he wanted was for you to be happy, don’t you see? Him letting you go was the best way he knew at the moment to love you.” 

That night, later when you get back to the hospital, the hallways are quiet and still, save for the occasional family visit or the bustle of nurse’s feet down the hallway. You slowly make your way down the hall, strolling and tucking your cold hands in the pockets of your coat as you survey the brightly lit walls of the hospital you were practically born and raised in. 

In these halls was the place you first met Yoongi, where you fell in love with Yoongi, where you worked after marrying Yoongi, and where you had and lost your first child with Yoongi. Every inch of the hospital was a daily reminder of how much you had gone through together. 

But as you take one foot in front of the other, you really ponder about what exactly went wrong. It...was so hard to try and remember now. 

It was a culmination of things: the miscarriage, the forgotten anniversary, the busy schedules, the stress of his mother in law, and the mundane-ness of your marriage. They all happened and bombarded your lives so fast and so quickly and painfully that at one point, you couldn’t take it anymore. 

But now, as you walk the halls, a bit buzzed and thinking back to what Jungkook said, it’s odd that you thought you couldn’t handle it. 

You weren’t smart. Naturally, like the others. Throughout college and medical school, while others read a chapter once and understood it, you had to go home and re-read it three times, make flashcards, take notes, practice problems, and watch videos online to learn the same thing. You had to work your ass off to get where you were, and to be honest, your body and your psyche had seen worse during those years. 

You suffered through depression and anxiety as you watched your friends excel at things you fell behind on. You poured yourself into studying so much that it stressed you out and you became overweight, and then in an effort to lose the weight suffered from an eating disorder. You barely could handle relationships at all with guys because you were so emotionally unavailable and distracted. It was a miracle you still had friends who stuck with you and your messes throughout med school. 

You’d done it all. All by yourself. 

And Yoongi. He was such a breath of fresh air. He was someone who was smart, who was naturally good. But he also worked hard, and he never failed to encourage you throughout your internship together, and even in your relationship, always praised your for your talents, not your flaws. He made it easier. He explained things to you that you would have never understood. He tutored you on procedures on the exchange of you demonstrating your best stitches that ultimately caught the attention of the higher surgeons. He took care of you, even if it didn’t seem like it, and always put you first. 

So why had you, in the heat of the moment and the culmination of all the bad things that had gone in your life, given up so quickly on Yoongi? 

Maybe it was the way that your finally perfect life was crumbling to an end. Maybe it was the way that Yoongi agreed too quickly, not really trying too hard to convince you otherwise. Maybe it was the way that for once in your life, you felt accomplished when you saw the positive pregnancy test and had something other than Yoongi and work in your life to live for. And then you lost it. 

You don’t know. 

Finally rounding the corner to Yoongi’s ward, you stare up at the paper on the wall inscribed with Yoongi’s name and peer through the small door, watching Yoongi perched up on the bed, signing documents and probably going over his patient records with a keen eye. Turning against the wall beside the door, you lean against it and slide down, crouching down and sitting on the cold glossy floors. 

Putting your hand into your pocket, you produce the ring that he gave you and turn it over in your hands. It’s a gorgeous damn ring. 

“Oh my god, Yoongi, how much did you even pay for this?” You ask him, hand stretched out wide in front of the both of you as you nestle into his naked chest. He’d asked you to marry him with it, and you’d only ever noticed how heavy it was on your finger until now, after a couple hours of heavy love-making. 

He rolls his eyes. “Too damn much if you ask me,” he grumbles, and you giggle against his neck. 

“I love it,” you croon, arm sliding around his waist and nestling into his warmth, his smell. Everything is Yoongi right now. The bedsheets surrounding you smell like him, the dark and monochrome furniture and the cluttered books on the bookshelves against the farthest wall so indicative of Yoongi’s style. The moon shines through the crack between the blinds, dim enough not to illuminate everything, but bright enough on his 7th floor apartment to show you the beautiful lines of his face. 

The slope of his eyes downward that soften his always tired features. The flutter of his long eyelashes against his pale cheeks. The way his lips, although always turned down in a frown, curve slightly upwards at the ends, as if mischievously scheming a prank or a joke, and the pout of his lower lip that made him so much cuter. 

The way his fingers, long and knobby, wrapped around your shoulders and stroked the soft skin of your shoulder. His legs tangled within yours and skin slightly damp but warm from the sex earlier. The way the beautiful diamond ring sits perfectly fitted on your fourth finger, slotted around your hand as if to declare to the world that you’re his and only his. 

You once were his, you think to yourself as you slide the platinum onto your finger. It still fits perfectly, slotting around that odd spot where your ring had sat for 5 years, the permanent dent in your skin fading, but still present enough for the ring to nestle in exactly. You twirl it around your finger, relief flooding you at the old habit. 

It’s so stupid, you think to yourself, so stupid how Yoongi made all those decisions by himself. It was absolutely, annoyingly, dumb how he decided by himself that accepting your divorce was the best thing he could do. You hated how he was always like that. Never taking a step in front of you, but always a step behind, letting you go first and letting you lead and never getting in your way. You hated it, yet it was the single thing that made you fall in love with him. He respected you and honored you and encouraged you like no other. 

Suddenly, the ward door slides open, and Yoongi steps out, arm still in his sling and tired eyes blinking down at you. 

He doesn’t look too surprised, but when he catches the glimmer of tears in your eye, he just silently crouches down, and with his good arm, pulls you in for a hug. 

The dam breaks, and you begin sobbing, the regrets and overload of emotions and feelings and memories washing over you in a tsunami as you bury your face into his neck. He just silently holds you close, hand resting on your shaking shoulders as you blubber meaningless things into his skin. 

“I--I’m so stupid,” you sob, eyes squeezing shut. 

“So stupid, so dumb, everything is so stupid,” you cry, and Yoongi just hums as he continues holding you close. “I just can’t--” 

“Can’t what?” he murmurs. 

“I can’t just forget, and just leave everything behind. I can’t Yoongi,” you wail, and he just cooes and strokes your hair. “It’s just all so hard and I thought I was doing it for us, for you.” 

“But I was so selfish and dumb and arrogant to think I could do it by myself, I’m so sorry,” you cry, hiccuping and blubbering other meaningless things. 

But Yoongi just holds you tighter, sitting with you on the cold floor in just his hospital pajamas, letting you blubber all over his shoulder as he whispers back, “I don’t care. It’s okay,” He shushes you, blinking down at you gently, “It’s really okay. I know, I’m sorry too, shhh, it’s okay.” 

You continue to cry, all the pent-up frustrations of the last couple of months pouring out in waves and out in front of Yoongi. All your regrets, all the memories, all the things you went through alone. All the insecurities, all the pain and fear. All of you. You cried and vented and apologized until everything inside of you was out. 

You were naked and vulnerable, cards all on the table. 

You were literally almost like his patient, open and really up to his call. You’d cut yourself open, spilled everything out in front of him, and now it was his turn. 

He just holds you tight, never letting you detach from him. 

His voice is as clear as the day he asked you to marry him. 

“I love you.” 

You blink up at him through bleary eyes, confusedly. You were expecting him to say it was okay, to say either that he did or didn’t accept your apologies, or to give you an explanation or something. 

“I love you so much, Y/N.” 

He says again, pulling you even closer and burying his nose in your hair. 

“I would never, ever, try to hurt you on purpose.” 

His hand strokes your arm, like the night he asked you to marry him. Everything smells and feels like Yoongi, here in his arms. It’s like home. 

“And I’m the one who should be sorry. I hurt you, and I promised the day we got married that I would never hurt you. I love you so much, I love you Y/N. Everything’s okay. We can get through this, I’m sure of it. I love you so much,” he says, and the shakiness of his voice at the end tells you that maybe he too, is crying too. 

But he won’t let you pull away to look at him, so you just curl your arms around his waist, holding as tight as you can, not letting go. 

You were never gonna let go again. 

“Chief Bang,” you announce, walking into his office with purpose. It’s actually your old office, he’d moved in as soon as you’d moved into his. 

“God, Y/N,” he groans, a hand on his chest. “Please don’t scare an old man like that. Who knows what could’ve happened.” 

“Oh, hush,” you grin, strolling in and taking the seat across from him, “I’ve seen your diagnostic, you’re in almost perfect condition.” 

He rolls his eyes at you. “What brings you here?” 

You drop the file on his desk. “What you asked for.” 

He eyes you weirdly as he takes the manila folder, wrinkled all around the edges as he smooths it out and produces the stapled packet inside. As he flips the first cover page and sees the official lettering of the second, his eyes widen and he looks up at you with a start. “Your divorce papers?” 

You nod, smiling. 

His gaze softens, “Oh, Y/N...I’m so sorry. I...I really had hope for the both of you.” 

You blink, “Wait what?” 

He sighs, flipping through the rest and lying it down on his desk. “I know I asked you to reconsider, but I trust that you guys made the right decision.” 

You frown, “Wait, Chief, you don’t understand.” 

He continues, shaking his head. “Gosh, I’m so sorry to have you put you both in that position...I should have never brought up the gender discrimination for chief in the first place...It was all my fault I---” 

He’s cut off by you leaning forward and taking the packet in your hands and ripping it cleanly across the middle. His eyes widen, “Y/N--”

“Chief,” you declare, smiling at him. “I took your advice. We’re not separating. Actually, we’re quitting.” 

He balks at you, “Excuse me?” 

“Okay that was actually a joke, that last part,” you giggle, and he sighs, collapsing into his chair. “But on a serious note, we’re not giving up. We...we talked about it and it was just a lot of miscommunication. We want to try again. But...but before you retire, we wanted to say that we can’t continue this lifestyle if we want to make any changes to our marriage. I decided last week when we talked that I want to take the transition slowly, and I want to do it with Yoongi.”

“Okay....” Chief Bang murmurs, watching you warily. “And?” 

You straighten up. “We want equal surgeries. No more stupid meetings and events. I’ll hire someone who actually likes to do that.” 

“Mhm...” He muses, eyes narrowing in concentration. “Keep going.” 

“And--” “Chief Bang!” His office door swings open again, interrupting your list. The both of you turn to look at who it is, and his frazzled secretary apologizes profusely. 

“I-I’m so sorry, Chief but Mr. Jang, he--” 

“Shihyuck!” The elder man walks in proudly, cutting off the secretary and sauntering in. “What you up to ol’ man? Ah, Y/N!” He grins, sleazily walking up to you and clapping you on your shoulder. “What brings you here too?” 

You grin fakely up at him, “Good morning Mr. Jang.” 

Chief Bang crosses his arms. “What brings you here, Jang? Don’t you have a Board of Trustees to be running?” 

The other man grins, perching on the desk rudely. “Actually, good thing you’re here, Y/N, because I’m here to tell Chief Bang something. We want to liquidate the free clinic. It’s just too much money, and think about how much money we would make if we charged per visit and--” 

“No.” You state, firmly meeting his confused gaze with your steely one. Chief Bang’s head turns to you in surprise. 

“E-excuse me?” Jang narrows his eyes at you. “What did you just say, missy?” 

You stand, standing eye to eye with the man in your heels. Thank god the Chief job required you to have a few killer heels in your closet cause damn, you felt powerful. 

“No,” You repeat, facing him. “We are not liquidating the free clinic. Some doctors have worked their blood sweat and tears off for that service, and we are not going to stand by and let you liquidate for your own greed.” 

Jang sputters, “Wha- do you even hear yourself talking right now? As a woman--” 

“As a woman,” you sneer, “you should know that I’m very close with Mrs. Jang, and I’ve been hearing some things about you and your aesthetician. Do you want me to invite her out to lunch tomorrow?” 

He’s silenced immediately, mouth opening and closing like an idiot. You smirk, “I thought so.” 

“Chief Bang, let me finish with the other requirements I was saying before Mr. Jang barged in and interrupted our conversation.” You state, sitting down and crossing your legs. 

“One. I want Yoongi and I to share the Chief position. Two. No more stupid parties and meetings and meet and greets. I’ll hire someone to fill in. Three. I want you to move Jooyoung into a different surgery department. That girl keeps trying to flirt with my husband and I don’t like that.” You cross your arms. 

Chief Bang finally speaks. “Is that all?” 

You hum, mulling it over. “Yes.” 

He nods, “Its fair.” 

Jang sputters, “F-fair?! What are we going to do with two people as chief? That’s never even happened before!” 

You turn, eyeing him down with a cold stare. 

“Mr. Jang,” you ask, slowly facing him. “You’re the president of the Board of Trustees, correct?” 

He nods, frowning. “Yes, why?” He retorts rudely. 

You take a menacing step toward him as you speak. “Well, as the president of a hospital board of trustees, you must know that without the doctors, a hospital will absolutely disintegrate. Wouldn’t it?” 

“A-are you threatening me?” He rages, eyes blazing. 

You shrug, innocently looking at your nails as you step towards him. “Well, then you must also be aware that as the face of this hospital, you can’t get rid of me. That would be a total horrible public PR mess for you and hospital. I wonder,” you muse, “what the rest of your board of trustees would think if you tried to get rid of me, or if I said that I quit because you were being difficult.” 

You laugh a bit, “Think about that! The face plastered all over the building and over TV and bus ads that you thought would bring you more revenue, quitting, and stating on television that the board of trustees she worked for were money-hungry hyenas, all lead by a certain president who couldn’t even keep his promise to his wife? Wow, I wonder what would happen.” You smile sweetly at him, twirling a piece of hair around your finger. 

“Think about it a little!” You sing-song, as you pivot on your heel and move to walk out the door. 

You stop halfway, eyes falling into the figure leaning on the doorframe, grinning gummily at you. Smile widening, you walk up to him, arms sliding around his waist. 

“Hi,” you blush, and he grins down at you. 

“You’re so sexy when you take lead like that,” he murmurs, lips leaning towards yours, and you let him kiss you a tiny bit before you break away and give a last meaningful glance towards the red-faced Mr. Jang and the satisfied Chief, and give a tiny bow to the elders before exiting with your husband. 

As soon as the door shuts behind you, you slump a little, caving into his embrace. 

“God,” you breathe out, “I thought I was going to die of fear. I seriously hate everyone from the board. They scare the shit out of me.”

Yoongi chuckles, “I’m pretty sure you just scared the shit of him. So you’re good.” 

You smile, “Really?” 

“Yeah.” He grins down at you, tucking you under his arm. 

“How are you feeling,” you murmur as the both of you quietly make it down towards your office. 

He shrugs his arm a bit to show you. “Feelin’ good as new. I can go home by tonight.” 

You hug his waist a bit closer. “Good,” you murmur into his shirt. “It’s uncomfortable sleeping on your hospital bed. I wanna go home.” 

“Me too babe,” he whispers, hand stroking your cheek and resting on your shoulder. When his arm grazes your neck your cheeks heat up in a hot blush, and you blink up at him through your eyelashes. 

He recognizes the look right away. Glancing around, he chastises you, but with a shit-eaitng grin. “Y/N,” he hisses, “We can’t.” 

You pout, “Why not? No one even comes into your hospital room anymore anyway. Plus, I have a new office!” 

“Did you forget that’s now gonna be our office?” He hisses, eyes rolling. 

You huff, “C’mon! Just once, I don’t understand why you won’t just fuck me! We’re not even getting a divorce anymore anyway!” 

“Shhh!” He hushes you, pushing you into the office, and locking the door behind him. “Jeez, just yell it out for the entire hospital to hear, huh?” 

He takes off his coat and settles into your couch. “Why not? Dont you want me?” You whine, stomping your feet petulantly. 

He sighs, eyeing you levelly. “Trust me,” he says lowly, “I haven’t fucked you since 6 months ago, and I’m all pent up and annoyed and pissed and I’d give anything to be buried all the way deep inside you but I have my priorities and my first priority is not having our first time together be in an office. I’m going to take my time.” 

You roll your eyes, perching on your desk. “You said it yourself, you’re all pent up and frustrated. Why does it even matter? You’re not gonna last long anyway.” 

His eyes narrow at you, mouth twirking up in a grin. “Is that a challenge?” 

You jut your chin out at him. “Wanna bet? Whoever cums first loses.” 

He rolls his eyes. “I see what you’re doing. Whether or not whoever loses, you win anyway becuase you eventually get sex.” 

You grin, “Exactly. So are you down or not?” 

He stands up, hastily shrugging on his jacket. 

“Call Gina right now,” he commands, eyes darkening at you. “I need to be discharged now.” 

Love.

Neuroscience and Biology like to tell us that it’s a side-effect of a release of a hormone called Dopamine and oxytocin, the same two hormones released when the guy living under the bridge snorts up another line of coke, and when the horribly suffering and screaming woman holds the human she just pushed out of her vagina for the first time in her arms. 

And at first, you’d thought it was just that too. You never really believed in the powerful nature of love, just that it was a warm fuzzy feeling and something that made you happy. 

But now, you’d learned through the hard way that love, it made you do crazy things. It made you lay down your rights, lay down your priorities, and put the other first. It meant forgetting about all the hardships because the good times weighed them out. It meant working together. 

Sure, to be fair, after you and Yoongi had resolved your issues and decided to cancel the divorce, you still had to try. Love didn’t come that easily. If it was easy, then it wouldn’t be true love. 

You and Yoongi had to attend marriage counseling sessions, make an effort to start going on dates again, and had to have long talks in car rides home to resolve and sort out all the miscommunications. You had to give up some of your responsibilities as Chief so that it would be easier to focus on being Yoongi’s wife, and also designate some work for him. Yoongi had to give up a few surgeries so he’d have time to spend with you after work and dedicate some to share the responsibilities of chief. The both of you had to make a sacrifice. 

But it was worth it. True love, without sacrifice, you learned, meant nothing. 

Doctors are also professional line-drawers. 

Not the plastic surgeon, sharpie-a-line-over-your-boob kind of line, but a physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental line. And then, there’s the line you draw with those who you love. Whether or not they’re sitting on your table, brain flap open for you to probe, you must draw lines. You can’t operate on someone who’s close or related to you. You can’t offer to waive fees for someone who you once respected back in high school. You can’t be in relationships with your patients, friendly or sexual.

And you definitely shouldn’t be married to your partner, and co-leader of your department, and fellow co-Chief. 

But before you were a doctor, before you were a chief, and before being anyone else, you were you. Yoongi’s wife. 

And you were going to prioritize it. You were going to prioritize you, your time, your mental and physical health, and your emotional health, which meant prioritizing your relationship with Yoongi. He was your everything. 

So you realize, that sometimes breaking the rules is allowed. Sometimes, cutting yourself open and spilling out your emotions and true feelings as a doctor is okay, when its to the one who you know and trust will still love you after seeing how ugly things can be. And sometimes, drawing lines around you and someone else, instead of between you and them, is okay. 

Because you trusted that even though life cut you open, Yoongi was going to be there right along you, to help you stitch it all back up. 

fin. 

After finishing, please read my story talk here! Thank you for reading! :) 

also, thank you for all the support. I’m pretty sure I’m going to write one more tiny epilogue so that this couple gets their closure!

[peacefulwriter88]

Bad Habit - Part 5

Lance Tucker x PoC, Curvy WoC

Warnings: SMUT, Language, the usual

A/N: Mad Lance feels. I hate that when I am accosted with Lance he likes gets under my skin, literally attacks my being and cripples/ruins me for other characters. Soooooooo yea. This is a long ass part. I’d either get comfortable on your bed/couch/whatever and enjoy because the angst is but a rumble or two away.....

“That guy was totally into you.”

You look up from your IPhone, frowning as you maneuver around pedestrians before you find your stride again with your co-worker Emily, quirking your right eyebrow.

“What are you talking about?”

Emily snorts and rolls her eyes as you both stop at an intersection and she fans herself, trying to juggle the rolls of fabric she has in her hands. You were juggling three bags, a large iced mocha and your phone as she says,

“Listen, Andrew loves your designs and is always willing to give us the premium fabric because he has a thing for you. I told you this back in February – he is newly single and I know he’s been waiting for the green light to ask you out.”

You give a slow nod, taking a sip of your iced coffee as your brain racks over this new information. You were sure Emily had told you, probably multiple times, but you had been too distracted by the blossoming romance between you and Lance the past month that the idea of anyone else had become dust in the back of your mind. The light changes and you both cross the street, inching closer to the theater.

“I forgot about him.”

“How do you forget about Andrew!? He is basically hotness incarnate and he’s sweet and funny. You guys would totally match. Honestly, if he wasn’t so into you I’d go after that.”

You chuckle as you shake your head. Technically Emily was right – Andrew checked all the boxes you invested in when dating someone. But he was also incredibly boring and you typically tended to waver off into your mind when you tried to listen to him talk. While he was all the things a girl should want, he also didn’t have that air of confidence you tended to always fall for in a man, nor the wit or energy to keep up with your sassy attitude. Which you knew was a result of a certain former Olympian that had captured your heart.

Lance Tucker the Fucker.

You hadn’t really told anyone about Lance. Not because you were ashamed but because there was still this small part of you that couldn’t’ believe that he was all yours –all 195 pounds of committed perfection that he was. You knew that if you opened the door to informing them about who you were dating, they would want to know more. How’d you meet? How long you’ve been dating? What did he do? What did he look like?

Typically you were open to share that stuff with your team – you all had worked together for years. But Lance was different. Lance on a physical scale was a solid 10. Probably, honestly, a 14 out of 10. But the minute he would open that big fucking mouth of his and that snarky and cocky attitude would drip out, any physical attributes would drop his fine ass down to the single digits. You had a history of dating bro’s – shallow men who didn’t value and appreciate you. They had been there with you through all the heartbreak and humiliation. They had committed to ensuring you would stop dating men like Lance. They wouldn’t be able to see how selfish he was, how thoughtful and brilliant and intelligent and incredibly witty the former athlete could be. No, because Lance was a walking epidemic of insecurity and the first sign of being anxious or unsure would draw out that fucking attitude of his and you weren’t ready to battle your closest friends with why this time, actually, really, Lance was different. Way different than the assholes from before.

“Hello, earth to Y/N, you still there!?”

Emily’s voice refocuses you to the present and you turn to her, smiling.

“Sorry, thinking about some designs I’ve been flirting with for this upcoming set…” you turn to her and sigh. Emily was one of your closest friends since you’ve moved to New York. You both told each other everything, good or bad. She even knew Lily – you were that tight. It was one thing to not tell your co-workers; it was another not to tell her.

You hadn’t even told Lily for obvious reasons and keeping it from the two people you loved the most was taxing. Emily would be a good test for Lily who would eventually either find out or be informed.

“Listen Em,” you walk into the cool space, raising your sunglasses as you walk into the empty theater, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Please don’t say I need to stay late tonight. Again. We’ve been pulling late nighters for weeks – I like can’t handle it.”

She’s giving you those exaggerated puppy eyes that has you laughing and rolling your eyes. She’s mocking one of your interns of course, even if you knew that a small part of her was also hoping that it wasn’t the case.

It was a tough time in the season.

“No, no, no…nothing like that.” You stop in front of the elevator and she looks at you expectantly.

“Listen, I haven’t been hitting on Andrew because I’ve been talking to a guy.”

Its only five seconds of her processing the words before she lets out,

“Wait, what!”

“I’ve been –“ she doesn’t allow you to finish the words as she holds up a finger. “No, don’t tell me. I heard you. You’ve been DATING someone. For how long?”

You turn, punching the down button on the elevator as you mumble,

“I guess like….almost three months technically.”

“Technically!” she shrieks out, getting the attention of a few passer byers and you nod as the elevator chimes and she’s pushing you in.

“Dish.”

You shrug as you take another long sip. Thank god for America and Starbucks for inventing venti size for moments like this.

“Nothing to dish. Lance is a childhood friend and we used to date then broke up in high school then recently rekindled our romance. ‘Nuf said.”

“Enough said?” Emily asks incredulously, “Did you just tell me that you have a rekindled romance with your former high school lover and you’ve been with him for three months and you haven’t told me why? Is he horrible looking?”

You snort.

“Okay, is he a horrible person.”

“I mean, he can be cocky and a little rough around the edges but he’s not horrible.”

Emily squints her eyes at you.

“Then why’d you hold out so long!?”

You sigh,

“You know me. I start dating someone and I get weird about it because I just had to test to make sure that this was real….that’s all.”

Emily nods as she leans against the elevator wall.

“That better be it. I expect full pictures and an invite to dinner sometime soon.”

“Ahh,” you note as you look at her, “He also currently lives across the country soooo….”

“Y/N!”

“What!” you laugh back as the doors open and you are accosted with Aimee your intern. Aimee, of all the interns, was the most competent. She met deadlines and was open to feedback. You liked her, even if she could be a gossip and slept with too many of the tech guys.

As she stood in front of you now, her eyes wide saucers she practically grabbed you out of the elevator as she breathed out,

“There is a literal sex god waiting for you in the workshop!”

Emily looks over at you and you scrunch your eyebrows together. Who the hell would be meeting with you, let alone what kind of hot sex god as Aimee put it would be trying to meet with you? It was Thursday, typically a slow day regarding your supplier. No need for chiefs or production assistants to visit. You frown as you walk past her, Emily and Aimee hot on your heels as you say,

“Did he tell you his name?”

“Said you would know who he was.”

You groan. Great. It was either a former ex-boyfriend who still remembered your minor job history or an ex actor who had a crush on you. Neither were ever invited to your space. Emily can feel your tension as you both turn the corner and your accosted with the scene.

Everyone is trying to act like they are working, pretending to reflect on stitch work or designs but really they were googling to what, indeed, Aimee had referred to as a sex god.

Lance was always oblivious to the impact he had on people. Men and women alike couldn’t help but be affected by his charm, his strong good looks. He was wearing dark jeans that hosted the ray bans you loved him and a simple white shirt that found every contour of his muscles with a light navy bomber jacket. He was trying to experiment not wearing his USA gear after a comment you made, trying to prove that he didn’t use it as a second layer of protection to his identity. What stands out more is the large bouquet of peonies that lazily hang in his hands as he falls back on the desk he’s leaning on and you tried to bite back the flutter that he remembered that peonies were your favorite. He’s looking down at his phone, eyes furrowed together as he responds to texts and you’re surprised he hasn’t picked up that the shops normal high nose has gone down a decimal, all interested to know who he was and how he knew you.

“You’re right,” you say, flicking your eyes to Aimee. “I do know who he is.”

The call had come in at 7 p.m. California time, while Lance was driving home from a long day at the gym. He had been looking forward to talking to you, both of you missing each other by your current hectic schedules when real estate agent had called. Apparently there was a building, in Brooklyn, that was up for lease. Prime real estate right off the subway tracks, good location for marketing and promoting, and for the US Olympic team because the owner was an avid fan of Lance’s past wins, could get the space at a price that might as well be highway robbery. If Lance wanted to look into it, he’d have to jump on a red eye and check it out in the morning, 10 a.m. Eastern Time. If Lance liked what he saw, they would go through with the deal. Most of the association had already checked it out and approved it but because Lance was the one who would be the main lead on this, they wanted his okay.

That had been humbling, that they were looking for him to be making such a big decision. So he hadn’t hesitated when he had said that he was completely down. 

So he went home, quickly packed and jumped on the next flight to New York. Got in around 5 a.m., stole four hours of sleep before he was up looking at the expansive space. Didn’t matter that the Americano had him wired like a hot set of wheels, that he was verging on the line of delusional and annoyed – the minute he stepped into the large warehouse he knew that he had to have it. It was perfect. High vaulted ceilings, enough floor space to house thirty times more gymnast than the gym in L.A. a nice set of office that were private and open, a place where he could escape but also monitor competitors if he needed too. He was giddy, already thinking of the gym layout, how he wanted to get your insight on decorating the space and then halfway through laying out the terms it hits him.

He was in New York. He could see you. He could visit the boy’s real quick – probably even stay the weekend. It’d be a nice surprise for Lily. For you. For him.

So, after doing some negotiating and talking to the right people, he makes a beeline to your theater. Already making plans with Lily who confirms that for the first weekend in months, you have off and was planning to help her clean out mom’s house. How perfect it was that he could join and help. He knows on Thursday, instead of being on the main stage you were in the shared workshop where all designers collaborated for the many theaters – small and large – that were peppered off of Broadway. Knew that this was one of your slower days despite the fact that it was also when the weekend rush started. Knew he had the flexibility to drop by without you being distracted.

What he doesn’t expect is for you to take him off guard.

It was mid-May, the heat hadn’t even really consumed the city yet but you still wore high waist shorts that flattered your frame. Was wearing the frilly crop top that was exposing that smooth skin he loved to caress, the navy blue popping against your skin tone. You were wearing chucks because of course you were wearing chucks but it didn’t look out of place on you, not paired with the casual bun you had managed your hair into on top of your head.

He can feel his erection trying to make an appearance and reminds himself of all the things that can temper it – how melancholic he had felt while signing the lease to the warehouse because he knew that he couldn’t call his mom after to tell her it was finally happening, how he had absently called her six times since she landed all to be greeted with an out of service line. It’s enough to get him to clear his throat, a large smile printing itself on his face as you shake your head, that cocky smirk mirroring his. Knowing that you might be just a tad upset that he had shown up without letting you know, but that you secretly appreciated surprises because it meant that he was thinking about you.

He starts to walk over to you, ignoring the way half of the women and some men’s eyes snap at him because he’s only focused on you. Wants to claim you for his own – wants everyone at your job to know that you’ve branded yourself onto him, to his soul and that he had done the same. Feeling incredibly territorial all of sudden because he realizes that it’s the first time since the start of your relationship that he’s on your turf.

He lifts the flowers, loving the pleased way your eyes glaze over as you take them, biting your lip as you juggle them in your already full hands. Tries to be patient but suddenly drawn to you, in a trance as his fingers reach out for you. He just needed to feel you, needed to dance his hands across the skin that he’s already memorized in his mind and he doesn’t care of the audience in front of the both of you as he hands fingers find your hips as you nearly drop all of the things in your hands before he plants his mouth on top of yours.

Kissing you – he had also decided since the month you had seen him – was probably one of his new favorite past times. He could kiss you for hours, tongue combating yours for dominance, slowly and lustfully as he drank you in. The way you would occasionally moan and position yourself closer to him, hands threading through his hair as his hands explored all the curves of your body. He loved the softness of your lips, the warmth from your skin radiating onto him, the way you smelled. His hands creep behind your underside, biting into your ass as he forces you closer to him, not afraid this time of the way his cock twitches a bit, as he draws out a small moan from you.

“I love you…” he murmurs when he pulls away, only far enough to look you in the eye. Your eyes are lust filled, heavy lidded as you regain your senses, irises burning into his as he places soft, feathery kisses over your face.

“Love and missed you so much.”

You wrap your arms around him, the coolness from your iced coffee a contrast from the outside heat emanating off your body onto his chest as you laugh, face jutted up so he could continue to kiss your eyelids, nose, chin, cheeks and mouth.

Who was he? What was it about you that made him operate like a man without control?

And then your arms are wrapping around his neck, urging him back down to kiss you again and he knows, knows by the way your lips seductively pass over his own as you mutter out the words his heart lunges at every time he hears it escape your mouth.

I love you too.

The moment is short lived, interrupted by the clearing of a woman’s throat and the sound causes you to stiffen, for your eyes to break away from him as you look over and give an embarrassed smile to the woman who is watching with that same amused glint in her eyes.

“Right,” you try to distance yourself, remembering where you are but he’s having nothing of it. Keeps you tightly trapped in his embrace as you continue, “Em – this is umm errr…Lance.”

Emily nods, smiling growing larger as she sticks out her hand.

“Pleasure to finally meet you Lance. I’m Emily. One of her co-workers and….”

“Good friends. Yea. You hang out with Y/N and my sister, Lily. They talk about you both a lot.” He remembers her name, vaguely remembers her picture. Emily was cute, but simple and plain and easy to forget compared to you. He tries to bite back the thought as he sticks out his hands, giving it a hearty shake as Emily looks over at you, eyes round saucers.

“Realllllllyyyyyy? Interesting seeing as…..”

“Seeing as Emily needs to go and check the designs of our intern. Go check the designs with our interns. And the rest of you, enough of the porn show, back to work.”

You’re giving Emily the look – the one where your eyes narrow in that playfully threatening way and he never knows if you are truly going to act on it or it’s a warning. Emily picks up on it, laughing as she pulls the young red head that’s giving him Japanese’s heart eyes a once over, reminding her that she was crazy to think that she’d have a shoot with a chance at Lance, let alone a man that was handcuffed to you. That part was at least true.

You pick up your belongings, shaking your head as you ask,

“I gotta jump into a meeting in five minutes and can’t talk long. Why are you here? Didn’t think you’d be in town for another month?”

Always to the point. He smiles as he shrugs,

“I’ll tell you on one condition.”

Now you’re giving him that look, the condescending one that makes his smile break wider.

“You don’t make a fuss about me helping you and Lily clean out mom’s house this weekend.”

You roll your eyes but the smile that slowly creeps on your face isn’t missed as you exhale,

“Fine. What is it?”

He shrugs, bending down and planting one last kiss on your lips. Hating that he had already decided to tease you, wanting nothing more than to pull you into a bathroom and have you screaming out his name.

“I’ll tell you when I see you this weekend,” he bites at your bottom lip as you groan, “And make sure to please that pretty little pussy I’ve been jerking off too for the past month.”

The last part is whispered lower and you flicker your eyes up at him, large doe eyes that are drenched in lust as he pulls away. Then you moan, giving him a punch as he laughs.

“You’re such a jerk!” you say and he only shrugs.

“A jerk with great timing. Your first weekend off and we all get to spend it together…”

He doesn’t have to look back to know how deeply you roll your eyes at him.

You don’t know how you had gotten yourself into this position.

Saturday morning, the birds chirping and a pretty day just begging for you to enjoy by a pool or beach and instead you were trying to muffle your laughter as you pulled Lance further into the tight closet space, adjusting your body as he raises you against the shelf, his mouth planted on your neck as you reach down for his belt.

“What’s gotten into you Lance? Miss me?” you whisper as his mouth nips at your neck before pulling away, smiling up at you. His eyes were shining that pretty dark shade of cerulean as they drunk you in, pulling away far enough to start making work on the buttons of your romper.

“You are such a goddamn tease, you know that?”

You giggle as you shake your head, watching him curiously as he makes quick work of the small fasteners.

“Takes a tease to know a tease. You were the one who basically had been a hot, sweaty mess at my job. My place of work sir. Do you know how much shit I’ve gotten since you’ve dropped by casually?”

You’ve popped his jeans open and your thighs pull his pants and boxers down and he groans as he follows suite, spreading your legs and pushing his erection against your folds.

“As much as I want you too. I want them to know who’s pleasing this pretty little pussy. Do you know how fucking much I’ve missed it?”

He looks up at you as you giggle and spread your legs wider, bending down to kiss him.

“That all you miss? If a girl didn’t know better she think you’d only miss her for her body.” Your voice is a soft murmur against his lips as he inserts himself in you and you both gasp, his hands digging into your flesh. He doesn’t waste time as his cock slowly slots into you, both of you revering the way your walls flutter around his taut muscle as his lips moving to your neck. He only waits a second before he’s moving into you, his hips moving with skillful ease that draws a low moan from the raptors of your throat.

“No. I missed your smile. Missed your eyes. Missed your – fuck, goddamn,” he bites down on your collarbone and you yelp as his hands move down to your clit, digging your hands into his back.

“I don’t care right now. Just make me cum, fuck please make me cum.”

“Baby girl, that’s all I want to do.”

He pulls away far enough to watch you as he hitches your leg up higher and you scream, his name loud on your lips and he bends down to kiss you as his hips expertly shimmy in you, your first orgasm hitting you hard.

“You gotta be quiet sweetheart. Don’t want to get caught.”

His words are lost on your ears as you fall back on the shelf, toys and board games falling on you as he rams into you harder, his hands digging into your hips. You feel another orgasm building up, his hand never relenting from your clit and you kiss him deeper, dragging him closer.

“Come on Lance, cum for me. Show me how much I please that beautiful cock of yours.”

You knew he loved it when you talked dirty to him, the lascivious sentences that you would form and he shudders as his hips stutter into you, moaning your name as his seed spills in you. His head falls lazily into the crook of your neck and you both give a content sigh, your hands running slowly through his hair.

“Rompers make having sex way too complicated.” He finally lets out, drawing a laugh out of you as you press a soft kiss onto his forehead.

“Yea but that’s the fun of it. Knowing you have to work for it.”

He chuckles as he pulls out of you, his softening dick leaving a trace of his cum in its wake and he places a tinder kiss on each of your breast, nipping at the fatty tissue behind your push up bra before pulling away, helping you down from your spot on the shelves. The minor shift causes more toys to fall and you both give a chuckle as he bends down to pick up his pants.

“I know all of that. Saw you coming in through the living room dressed like a goddamn runaway model. Wedges and that romper that just made your ass,” he gives your ass a squeeze, causing you to yelp as he bends down to kiss you. “…do things to me. Why do you think I had to pull you into here the first minute I could?”

You smile up at him, before finding something to wipe the sticky cum from dripping down your leg further. You’re grateful for the IUD you had gotten before you had headed out to see Lance in L.A., knowing that he brought your reckless habits, fearing the consequences of something that monumental so early in your relationship. He fixes himself up quickly, before he takes you in as you finish wiping yourself before his hands find the bottom of your romper, starting to button up the thin fabric. You watch him as he tenderly does the task and he smirks as he states,

“By the way I miss this. Being able to be near you. To hear your laugh and voice and feel your skin and the way your heart beats and know that at any moment, I can pull you toward me and kiss you. Cause I don’t know how else to show you that I’ve missed you, that I care. That I love you….” He stops, frowning and looking down at you knowing he’s betrayed something you know he’d only normally write in your journal.

You always pulled out something sentimental and vulnerable in Lance. Ruth had always joked that outside of her, you were the one who saw the sensitive flashes that Lance only occasionally shared with the rest of the world. His eyes are threaded with worry and concern, helplessness flashing in them even in the dim light of the walk in closet and you take his face in your hands and give a soft smile,

“You don’t have to say it. I know. I know that you love me Lance. I love you too. And I can’t even begin to voice how much I’ve missed you.”

You bend up, pressing a soft kiss against his lips and he gives a content sigh, his hands resting on your waist, weaving past them to your ass to draw you closer.

“I’m not afraid to say that I love you Y/N. I’m afraid it’s going to push you away.”

You pull away and smirk, before nudging your nose against his.

“Gonna have to try harder than that.”

He smiles before he places a soft kiss on your lips and sighs,

“Can we tell Lily about us?”

You don’t mean for the frown to pop up on your face but it does. You knew this was headed down this path. He had poked at ever since you both had officially started dating. He’d keep secrets from the world but his sister? No way. You knew he was only holding out because he wanted to prove to you how much he valued your opinion.

“No.”

“Your mom?”

“No.”

“….not trying to push me away you say?” he throws you a skeptical look and you laugh as you shake as you shrug, biting your lip.

“I’m not afraid to tell them it’s just….Lily….I have to be the one you know. If it comes from you she’ll be pissed.  Then you can tell my mom – she’ll be thrilled.”

You roll your eyes and he laughs and nods, placing one last kiss on your neck before pulling away.

“You’ve ruined the game closet.”

“You’ve ruined the game closet.” You repeat as you open the door, jumping and screaming as you stare down at Jack and John who are looking up at you with large, curious eyes. Jack was 4, two years older than his younger brother and they both held toys as they looked at you expectantly. The scream takes Lance off guard, and he immediately pulls you back toward him as he tries to get in front of you, before taking in his nephews. He looks back at you and you sigh as you step out, a large smile on your face.

“What are you doing in Grandma Ruth’s game closet?” Jack finally asks and you turn to Lance who is watching you in amusement.

“We were looking for a game and then your uncle Lance was showing me a new game to play.”

Lance chokes on his laughter and Jack looks from you to him skeptically.

“What game?”

You turn, your eyes looking at Lance who shakes his head.

“Hide and go seek.” He finally says and Jack rolls his eyes.

“That’s not a new game auntie Y/N.”

“For your uncle Lance it is.” You smile at him, before leaning down and picking him up, giving him a kiss on his forehead.

“Let’s go find your mommy!” you tease and he giggles as he squirms in your arms, John not too far away. Lance watches you before looking behind him at the closet. So many games and toys had fallen down and he knows it probably reeks of sex and he groans, closing the door as he makes his way back to the family room. He made a mental note to take care of the game closet first when cleaning rooms, knowing if anyone found the evidence from your lovemaking the gig was up for both of you.

“What the hell took you so long?”

Lily’s voice carries over the TV that is playing in the background as she looks up from the box of books she’s going through, her hair thrown up in a ponytail. She takes in your attire, the way your hair is a bit mused and she gives you a skeptical look as she repeats,

“What the hell took you so long? And where the hell is my brother?”

You could never get anything past Lily. She had always suspected that you still had a thing for Lance. Despite how many times you denied it she insisted that you were repressing feelings and now you felt that admitting your feelings, you would be giving into her prediction and now your pride was letting you fight the urge to tell her.

“I had to run to the bathroom, then went into the game room to grab some toys for your little men. And I don’t know where the hell your brother is.”

You shoot Jack a look and he looks at you shaking his head before he giggles and takes a spot in front of the TV. You hoped the little boy would forget anything he had seen or heard in the past fifteen minutes.

“Ah, perfect. Well change out of your cute little one piece and get ready to start the purge of Ruth Tucker.”

She gives a large sigh and you kneel in front of her and rub her back. Five months still felt too soon you knew. You had urged her to do this slowly, purging her family home, but Lily and Lance had decided that they would rent the place. The mortgage had been paid of years back and technically, it was still in their name and neither had the heart to sell it. Lance was debating moving back east and probably would eventually settle down in the place. So they would rent it out until either one of them were ready to move in.

“It’s going to be okay. And besides you got me here AND Lance. When was the last time Lance helped you clean anything?”

She shoots you a look and shrugs shaking,

“He’d say this morning. He ate all my waffles off my plate.”

You laugh and nod, before you get up and move toward Lily’s room.

“Gonna assume you left an extra set of clothes in your room and then we can get to it.”

“You’re amazing, you know that.” Lily yells and you giggle as you yell back,

“No you are!”

You change quickly, finding Lily as she sets you on the task of boxing up the kitchen and bathrooms. Easy stuff that was even easier to re-allocate. And while you’re knee deep in plates and soap, Lance is busy working with your mom boxing up the living room. He spends more time comforting her then actually packing, and its halfway through that she dismisses herself, saying she wasn’t ready for being immersed in her best friend.

Before you know it its seven, the eastern slowly waning into the horizon as you find your way into the kitchen where Lily is busy trying to figure out dinner. Lance is there, John on his laps and he doesn’t do a good enough job of giving you a once over. You had changed in shorts and a T-shirt but they were Lily’s shorts and despite being elastic since clung to your ass as the large fabric of the shirt you wore found every curve you were proud of or not. Lance loved the suppleness in you, loved that you were soft and hard and full of edges and kept taking deep breaths, trying not to keep his eyes trained on you as he strains to pay attention to his nephew. Biting his lip as he tried to keep up with the words John was saying. Lily’s looking through coupons on the counter and you take the moment to lean into the island, eyes challenging him back as you rake in his casual attire, a simple black t-shirt that hugged every bicep in his arms and jeans. You hadn’t the chance to really look at him earlier, so eager to jump his bones that you take a moment to appreciate the way he looked in the evening light. You liked it. Wondered if you could barter sex in exchange for him grabbing your night bag and doing so topless. Unable to wait for Lily and the boys to leave so you can ride him like no tomorrow. You know your eyes are drenched in your lust as he watches you, that fucking supple bottom lip hidden by how much he’s biting down on it before he pops it out and you fight back the loud moan that wants to escape as you rest your head in your hands, shaking your head in contentment.

You both were so achingly in love even you were disgusted.

“Uncle Lance – listen!” John’s voice snaps him from his gaze, and his eyes revert back to the toy the little boy was showing him and you clear your throat, rolling your eyes to meet Lily’s gaze.

“What!?” you ask and she shakes her head, shutting the island drawer before she says,

“John, go watch a movie with your brother in the living room.”

The little boy doesn’t need to be told twice as he jumps off of his uncle’s lap, eagerly running into the living room and the three of you are left alone. Lily falls back, eyes flickering to the both of you before she chuckles, shaking her head and walking to the fridge. She grabs three beers, popping one for herself before she asks,

“You guys gonna continue to bullshit me or are we going to pretend like I’m an adult and not the naïve 14 year old who doesn’t know when my brother gives my best friend fuck me eyes.”

Lance snickers as he sits up from his chair, walking to grab the two beers before he stands near you, opening yours before sliding it over. You don’t pull away as he leans close to you, knowing that really this was in your court. And whether he liked it or not, he’d act accordingly. You can’t say it though, not to Lily. This would trump everything because it would prove that she was always right. Your pride refuses to take a hit like that.

Lily snorts as she takes another swig.

“Silent treatment huh? Well how about this – Jack told me about your little game of ‘hide and go seek’ this afternoon,” your head shoots to her and she gives you knowing eyes as your eyes flicker to Lance who is raising his hands. “Uh huh. And then I went into the game closet, just to make sure that my son wasn’t making this all up and damn if it didn’t look like a fresh fuck me zone. You guys NEVER cleaned up after yourself when you fucked in that closet. Would drive mom insane. Now I know why – it’s a lot of fucking cleaning.”

“I thought you cleaned the closet!” you incredulously whine, looking at Lance and he puts his hands up defensively.

“I thought that you had cleaned the closet!” he rebuts.

“I cleaned the closet. And then allowed you both to swim in this lie until you fessed up to it.” Lily says pointedly and you moan as you place your hands in your hands, shaking your head.

“Don’t say it Lily.”

“Don’t say what?” Lance asks and Lily snickers.

“Know why she didn’t tell me – because I had pretty much suspected two weeks after the funeral. Lance was suddenly your friend on Instagram and leaving cute comments on your photos and shit. My brother doesn’t do that to women he respects, let alone likes but he’s always had a thing for you Y/N. You’re each other’s Achilles heel and I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN!”

“Shut it Lily!”

“Knew that we’d get together?” Lance asks confused and Lily nods reverently.

“I told her that she loved you too way too much to be done, for good, with my dear brother Lance Tucker. And goddamn if it doesn’t’ feel good to be right because I’m usually always wrong when I challenge her but for once, for once I am right! And now she owes me an evening out to the country show of my choice OR she’s stuck with the boys for a week. And I have the luxury of being right.”

“…..you bet that you wouldn’t fall back in love with me?” Lance asks incredulously and yo moan into your hands, so annoyed for so many reason.

“I hate Tuckers. I hate you both sooooooo much.”

He chuckles, wrapping his arms around your body and drawing you close to him. 

“Well look at it this way. I’ll be around to help you nanny because you’d be dumb to commit yourself to the piss poor country music my sister will subjugate you too.”

You let out a low moan, before you pop your head up, looking him in the eye before asking him softly,

“Wait – why are you going to be around to help me nanny?”

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[aspiestvmusings]

The problem with people who see everything as “problematic” on screen (film/TV)

(MILD) SPOILERS FOR “BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY” (2018) FILM

...because I use this film as an example

ALSO ... “UNPOPULAR” PERSONAL OPINION 

In short: 

1. However untruthful you think the surviving band members POV & take  on things & Freddie are, their take is closer to truth than your fan take on things that relies only on hearsay (everything you think you know as fact comes through “journalist” or “gossip” filter - so everything is someone elses take on the man & the events. Even his other friends & co-workers & family members take on him are just someones take on things. That doesn’t make them any more truthful than the bands take on things. Just one POV of so many. 

2. Though biography, it is still a fictional film. This is not a biography book, or a documentary, and people need to stop expecting biopic films be like documentaries - chronologically, factually, and otherwise correct in every detail. How does it still surprise people that a biopic film is still a film. With a script... that is “loosely”  based on reality, but “tweaked” to fit the movie script standards & tell a story... Its still entertainment.  

3. When will the critics stop focusing on the politics & start focusing on the legend? You can have whatever opinions you wish, but  it doesn’t mean your take is correct. And mostly... as the film, too, hinted... Freddie didn’t care  for the politics, or the labels. He cared about the music, about his cats,  about the fans, and about his loved ones. He lived his life as his authentic self (as much as it was possible these decades ago, when being openly “queer” was not so “welcomed”), and he refused any labels & being a poster boy for anyone...any minority he belonged to. He lived & defined the label, the label didn’t “define “him. 

4. The fans projecting their own wishes on him - claiming that this or that label defined him, or that he’d wanted this or that - is the opposite of what Freddie would have wanted. A lot of the things that are disliked by many are actually based on facts & real events - and any wishful thinking doesn’t change them. It baffles me how fans,who claim to have a lot of insight only take claims from  certain sources as the ultimate truth, but not respect Freddie’s own wishes & preferences - the things he said in many interviews. The little he shared of his personal life. And it’s kinda funny in a sad way that what some people claim some groups of people have done to them, is exactly the same (tactic) they are using on those other people. #cryptic 

The problem is that these people only see the package/the labels, not the real product inside/the message and story itself. 

The problem is that the message isn’t that because they see the man/woman relationship portrayed as “good/happy” & the “man/man” relationship as “bad/negative”, forgetting that that view is based on their personal POV. The story itself doesn’t do that. The sexes of the characters are not important. The point is that they are showing two different experiences. It just happens that in this case the negative one is involving a man. Because this is actually accurate - that was one of the things they copied from real life (in general, not in detail). Because yes, they took liberty in changing facts/timeline... to fit the story in 2 hrs, and have an ongoing plot. But they also kept several things as they actually did happen. And in his case the long-term positive pre-diagnosis relationship was with a woman, and negative one was with a man. And if you completely dismiss the ending...and the Jim scenes and that part of the story...then you didn’t really pay attention to what the film was actually showing & telling you. If your brain in wired to make the assumption that you can transfer one (bad) example to every case... if your brain likes to generalize and you truly think that just because one example is like this, then the same can apply to every case... then I am truly sorry that you are unable to think outside the box, and not stereotype and generalize everything. I honestly can’t imagine living this way/with such thought process. 

The problem is that the “breaking off engagement” scene isn’t telling you that either of the labels used in that scene is singular truth or accurate. The fact is that those were the exact words used by the real people... during the real-life moment that scene is based on. This is another scene that is copied from real life (not timeline wise, but lines wise). The problem is that it is your assumption that everything said in films/tv is fact. And that everyone must think that just because some statement is made on screen, it is the truth, and everyone will see it this way. Well... in that case... why don’t we say that characters on crime-shows, who are the villain of the week saying that they committed the crime, because they had the “right to” are correct? Why is this applied to “political/identity” issues themes on screen? Why do the complainers take  one characters opinion as the universal truth? Every single character in fictional stories is only saying what they personally think/how they see things (based on their perception of things...at that moment). And that scene is all about...mostly... how his self-search really begun. And the scenes between that moment and the tea party moment is really about his journey (”back”) to “happiness”, and towards his true, authentic self... finding himself. And because it is not an easy journey... we get to see the bumps on the way. The wrong turns. But we don’t get to see it all. To assume that what is actually shown is the whole story... specially in the case of this man (he himself IRL always preferred to not be labeled, always kept work and personal apart, and was very private..off stage... and never confirmed anything)... is silly IMO. Like.. if you don’t get that not showing him interact with other women after he met Paul means that what you see is all there is, is silly. There is so much of the real on stage & backstage & personal story that was not shown. Those are the parts that you get to add yourself for the fictional story & discover on your own for the real life story...by reading about him...watching old videos/interviews, listening to their music... it’s not erasing anything. It’s just not showing everything....because this is a 2hr film that covers 15 years of history & adding more threads just isn’t possible...

They do not portray any of the characters as simply good or bad. Every character has many sides. We see Freddie’s “wild life” shown, too. Some say that was missing, but it wasn’t. It was there, though in more subtle, hinted way. The white powder on the table, the “inappropriate” behaviour - when he first met Jim (and during the big party scene... when he used the same move on a fat-bottomed girl on a bicycle). We saw the other band-members with new girls & groupies in different scenes. We saw how behind-the-scenes politics tried to make them change them - record company vs the band & the band staying true to themselves & making an operatic album, and choosing their own single song..etc. There were so many little details in so many scenes...that were all references to the real-life moments. Tweaked...a bit.And yes, I admit that not everyone can “read between the lines” & understand movie plots that aren’t spelled out word-to-word...exactly, but... that doesn’t mean the film is lacking. Just because you don’t see or get something doesn’t mean it’s not there/shown/said. You might just not catch it, because you’re focused on the superficial. 

And if even my own mother (who has a hard time following complicated film plots) saw that everything... Freddie’s different  relationships (women, men), his partying & lavish lifestyle, his illness, his bigger-than-life personality, and his music, plus his complex person (the loneliness, sadness, not just the good times)... all were touched upon in the film, then in my book if you missed it, you didn’t pay attention. She saw it all being “shown/mentioned”, and some people might have wanted more, and more focus on those parts, but... that’s just personal expectations, and forgetting this is a fictional film, not a documentary, so you’re gonna have to have a flowing story...that fits 15-20 years  of events into 2 hours of film, and you simply can’t focus on everything in more depth. The film makers this time chose to focus on these elements...to tell the story of the band...with a focus on Freddie & his POV. 

Do not assume that every viewer is so closed-minded and can’t see beyond what’s been physically shown . Viewers are actually very much capable of drawing conclusions.. on wider scale, and not assuming that things said or shown in a fictional story (even if it’s marketed as biopic) are the only truths, and there is nothing more to the story. The problem is that most of the people who see the scene as “problematic” have no actual understanding of what the world was like just 40 years ago. Its like time-travelling to 16th century and judging people of that time for not understanding light-bulbs or plastic surgery, or women and men all studying together in school... being equal. If you do not count in the time when the film takes place, you’re not getting it. (just like in a film taking place when women weren’t yet able to go to uni or be elected...ignoring those realities of those times... just to not offend the political correctness cult people, who can’t appreciate the freedom we have today in out western world) In other words: WHEN a film takes place matters. Just like a period piece from 1550, 1860 are different, because times were different, same is with films taking place in 1970/80s. Language, terms, norms, knowledgeability... all change... and even in a few decades...  So their thoughts represent the actual era...when they were spoken, not todays views. (and IMO the horrible trend of changing words &   things from books & plays (also popular children's books) from 100 and 150 and 200 years ago... that tells you of how things were back then, just to match todays political correctness rules... is super sad, and “erasing the past”... and instead of giving an actual view of the past, we get distorted view, and I think this doesn’t help future generations in understanding how far we have come) 

And mostly... I want to ask the complainers to ask themselves why do they consider Mary’s words to have more weight than Freddie’s...in the “break up  scene”. What makes them think there wasn’t a follow-up conversation later, off-screen? What makes them think that other peoples view of them (in this case Mary’s opinion on Freddie’s sexuality) is the singular truth? In truth...none of us (besides Freddie, and maybe the people closest to him...family, band, close friends/lovers) truly know how he identified as... and it does not matter. No matter how much you think it does, it doesn’t. He was simply an “icon” for “everyone different”. The labels don’t matter. You can all claim him as “your own”... (and let others do the same). I get that it’s vitally important to some to have their “label” be shown/mentioned on media sources (films/TV), but the argument gay vs bi is so pointless in this case. From the film you can both claim him as your representation. In the films universe he was shown to have genuinely loved & have a relationship with both a man & a woman - Mary and Jim (pos), and also Paul (neg). You can take the film in either way (cause they don’t define anything)... if its so important for you to  have your label being the defining point. 

The problem isn’t that the film “erased” or “mis-(re)presented” this or that... historical or personal fact/thing. The problem is the way the brains of the people who say this happened. Humans are wired to transfer their feelings and thoughts onto everything and everyone. To project. And to generalize and label everything. And it takes a little bit of extra use of the “little gray cells” to see the bigger picture, and not to stereotype, generalize and project. To not box everything. And understand that their own personal experiences have tilted their view on ... things... Not everyone can read between the lines, and understand complicated tv/film plots, and not take others opinions/POV as fact. I always used to say that studies claiming that videogames & TV make kids (future adults) behave as in the fictional worlds & claiming that people aren’t able to distinguish fiction from reality and not see fiction as “the source of all accurate & scientific truth” as silly, but modern social media age has made me rethink. As it seems that that’s whats happened. Media (films, TV shows, magazine articles are) is considered as trusted sources... and seen as the source that tells you how things really are - what to believe, how to think... (when I was a kid I considered scientific material as trusted source, now any random line from a fictional story or from gossip magazine is considered as trusted source...by so many). And representation in film/TV does not have to be sanitized & all positive...cause nothing is that...and characters not following the “political correctness rules of 2018″ in films set in past is not erasure or misrepresentation or harmful in any way. It’s portraying the world as it is. Not a perfect, utopian version. Because times are different & people are different). Just because a character doesn’t speak according to the rules made up by today's social media groups does not make them phobic in any way. I understand that is a hard concept to get, but..it is so.

The issue isn’t if the film portrayed his identity incorrectly, erasing something. The problem is that the people seeing this happen are only able to see that one side of things. And claim that their label is accurate, because it’s based on facts, and what the man himself labeled himself as. When the truth is that no-one besides the people close to him (friends, family, band)...and maybe even not them... knew how he actually identified himself. he never confirmed or denied anything in public (ETA: I have found info...though not seen/heard the material myself... that there are one or two unedited videos/interviews, where he pretty much reveals how he identifies, but besides that one/few times... all other times he’s only ever not labeled himself). He never labeled himself...as anything (other than human, singer, rock legend...). Both sides claiming that their label is factual...are actually wrong. They are claiming other peoples opinions as facts. All the “unofficial biographies”, all the claims by “people who knew him”, all the terms used by journalists and others...are those peoples interpretation of him (and yes, the claims from band & his closest life-long friends: “Phoebe”, etc... can be pretty much seen as fact, but their views are still their interpretations of him). The labels they gave him, not how he himself identified. (and yes, based on all the images, video footage, his behaviour & looks - clothes/hair/make-up..) we can make assumptions...but those are just our guesses..based on what we think we see) And the issue isn’t which label is correct. The issue is peoples inability to enjoy the film, and celebrate the man...without a specific label being thrown out. And this goes against everything he was, everything he wanted, everything he represented. He lived as is authentic self (even if it took some time and struggles to really find himself) and not care about labels, opinions. He tried to live for himself, as himself. Not for others. The labels didn’t make him (and its unimportant  which label he truly identified as)... as both (most used options) are represented in the film... said out loud on big screen. And so both groups should feel represented, because both labels got used (about him)... and neither was claimed as fact. Despite anyones take that the scene somehow claimed one accurate, and other not. 

(I fall under a non-traditional label, too, when it comes to sexuality, and I appreciate when there is a character like me on TV/films, but... my worth is not defined by if & how “my label” is represented in fiction.) And I get that I’m different in that way & for “normal people” external validation & representation are needed to feel good about themselves, but... here’s a little secret - (and that was also this films message, in a way) - don’t let anyone else define you - not your parents/family, not your friends, not your fans & idols, not the strangers. The path to self-like is hard, and sometimes long, but the only one who needs to like you is you. You’re not defined by others with the same label. You share the one label with others, but everyone with this label is different. Also... there are heroes & villains in every “group”, but none of those traits are transferable to others in that group. Just because there is one negative gay character in film (Paul) does not mean other gay characters are like that (see: Jim). Just because you’ve heard gossip about the rock stars personal life does not mean it’s all true. Everyone has their own perspective & agenda. And unless it came from Freddie himself, it’s just an opinion. So every single post claiming that “I know he identified as this, because..:” are all just personal opinions, because none of us, fans, knew him. And as much as you may disagree with the band-members & friends take on things... they knew him....so much better than any of us. They are a valid source for info on him...(even if they do change some facts...to fit a movie narrative)

The issue is that no matter how much the man himself in the interviews (etc) that are still available to access, and no matter how much the man who portrayed him on screen now...stress the importance of no labels, and how he was himself, not a “poster boy for any agenda”, the complainers don’t care, and show no respect for the mans wishes, and the story itself. A story about a band...for people. a  story of a man searching for himself and his place. a story of music and legends. A story about how legends were made. It’s not some political correctness fest, satisfying all the “label enthusiasts” dreams... it’s a pretty honest look (even considering all the timeline twisting, and creative liberties taken) into the reality of things... those several decades ago. The complainers completely miss the message - they need to like themselves as they are (gay, bi, extra teeth, foreigner, outcast...)...not pretend for others sake. They can find the man as a role model & representation of their label... because he was & can be more than one label & represent more than just one group. The truth is not singular here - and both the film & real Freddie are representation for all different “outcast” & “minority” labels - not just one. And the arguments that he was just one thing sound a bit silly - both sides calling the other side wrong, when in truth Freddie represents you/us all. 

My conclusion: Fiction/Films are so much more enjoyable, when you are able to see & hear and understand all the nuances - you get the whole experience...not just the superficial and general idea of the story. And I am so happy that I didn’t have to watch this film from inside a box... because my visual field wasn’t narrowed (like I'm a race horse wearing blinders), and my brain... with the aid of my eyes... was able to show and tell me the whole story and whole experience... without any restrictions. And I am still not ready to say more plot-wise, because I do not want to spoil some great scenes...

btw...go ahead and make assumptions about me..based on this. I dare you. ;)

I’m someone who loves pointing out scientific inaccuracies & little continuity errors in films/TV shows (but mostly for fun). I’m someone, who doesn’t fit into specific boxes, and someone who is not traditional. I’m someone who is different...in many ways... but doesn’t let it define me or consume me... I’m someone who doesn’t define themselves by their past experiences... in the extent I see some do. I’m someone, who has experienced... quite a bit... but I’m also someone who isn’t defined by how others see & define me... I’m someone who belongs to many “minority” groups...if I were to list the labels that apply to me, but all of these things are parts of me.... and none demand any outside validation from others to “define” me.

[the-rawl]

my imaginary friend saves my life on the regular

I lived in an unpleasantly run-down house in a third-world country with my younger brother, and my parents, who were missionaries. My entire peer group had moved away in the space of six months, leaving me the only fifteen-year-old in our community.

Since only seven children between the ages of thirteen and seventeen remained, the co-op school neglected to hire a teacher to cover our grades, leaving our parents to negotiate their own means. Mine enrolled me in an online school, conducted via online chat and screensharing -- I never saw my classmates' or my teachers' faces. My parents were quite preoccupied with their mutual work, so that the family rarely ate together or spoke except for purely practical reasons. I was terrifically lonely.

No one noticed how late I stayed up, or how late I slept in, or whether I did my homework or attended class or ate regularly. I ate a lot of chocolate -- a bar of dark chocolate a day, sometimes -- and read every book in my collection over and over again, trying to become the characters, and have their problems, which were always solved by the end of the series. I ate toast when I was hungry, because when the power was on it was easy to make. I cried a lot. Some nights, about two in the morning, I'd walk around the silent house and the courtyard in the dark, too miserable to sit still or to sleep or to read. I remember looking up at the sky through the grapevines on the arbor and wondering if this was rock bottom, if I could possibly feel worse.

Well, I could.

long text post under the cut

My mom and I went to the shop down the street for groceries. It was probably a fifteen minute walk, both ways. Early on the way back, some young local man made an inappropriate gesture at me, and after we passed him, followed us for a short way. My mom told me I needed to walk with more confidence, that I looked like a target. I was afraid.

After that, getting home seemed to take forever. It was like I existed in dark fog with the consistency of cotton candy, thick, and cloying. Sound seemed muffled, like being underwater. I was cold.

I got to my room on autopilot. I laid down. I was at the bottom of a well, knee-deep in cold water. I couldn't see day at the top, just some specs of light, stars maybe. I couldn't get out. I had something living in my chest, thick and black, stinking like tar, or like rotten vegetation. If you cut me open it would seep out without depleting, like an infection. I had a hood over my head that smelled like dust from a closet that hasn't been opened in years. There was a pain in the back of my throat, like I needed to cough, or scream, but I couldn't make a sound. My bedroom light, a bare bulb, had a fuzzy halo around it when I looked up, so I knew it was on. But the corners of the room were dark.

That was the first time I thought about killing myself. Eventually I fell asleep.

When I woke up it was morning, and I was hungry. Emotionally, there was nothing. I'd been pressed flat between two slabs of concrete. I was a single grain of sand on a tile floor. I got up and made toast. Then I cleaned the rabbit hutches, and pulled down hay for them.

When I'd finished my chores I went to my laptop and plugged in the usb stick for accessing the satellite internet. I was only supposed to use it for school, but last night had told me that I wasn't just sad all the time -- there was something wrong with me, and if I didn't do something, I was probably going to die. That didn't sound all that bad, except that me dying would be a terrible burden on my family.

That's how I learned I was depressed, that it was a legitimate medical condition, and that I had no access to any of the resources the websites recommended -- not therapy, not medication, not social support (I didn’t feel like I could approach my parents at the time, although I eventually did, which lead to some major life changes later on).

I also learned that the way I was feeling and the things I told myself weren't normally-calibrated responses to my environment. That I couldn't trust my own brain to interpret what was happening to me without applying a false negative patina. This would have been quite alarming if I had been able to muster any emotional response at all. What do you do, when you can't trust your own brain?

I needed someone or something that could be with me. That could tell me the truth, serve as a reality check, remind me of my options and the reasons I had chosen not to pursue some of them, and that could be available at any time of the day or night.

So I made myself an imaginary friend. Her name was Ka, and she was shaped like a little dragon, small enough to sit on my shoulder. She was green, and the edges of her scales were soft, and the tips of her talons were blunted -- she wasn't there to protect me from things around me. She was there to protect me from myself.

I knew that making a construct of this kind was dangerous, that I was relying on my own faulty brain to regulate what amounted to a second personality. But I was at the point where having an alternate personality or a voice in my head could hardly make anything worse. I put in some safeguards, choosing to trust in my ability to create and maintain them.

Ka could only ever tell the entire, unbiased truth, and she couldn't force me to do anything. I wasn't allowed to give her the driver's seat. She couldn't interact with the physical world in any way, not as herself, and not through me. When I was very lonely, I would pretend she was sitting or walking next to me, but she only ever existed in my head.

I would wake up, and it would be two in the afternoon, and I would feel bad about wasting most of the day. But Ka would say, you are up now, and you didn't sleep for twelve hours this time, which is an improvement over yesterday. You have enough time to eat and to log in for your English class. Oatmeal would be a healthy alternative to toast. You could put honey in it.

I would forget to do my chores, and someone else would feed and sweep up after the rabbits. And I felt terrible about neglecting my animals, and I felt like I had been neglected, too, because whichever of my parents had done the work never brought it up, and I was desperate for some accountability. Then Ka would tell me that feeling bad about forgetting the rabbits was a good, reasonable thing, because it meant I recognised I had failed to maintain my responsibility to them. That before I look to my parents for accountability I needed to look to myself. That my parents had made sure my animals wouldn't suffer. That I had another chance not to make the same mistake. That possibly my parents hadn't failed to discipline me, but rather decided I had too much on my plate, and tried to be kind by not mentioning my lapse. That symptoms of depression include sleeping too much, tiredness, trouble thinking, concentrating, deciding, remembering, and so forgetting the animals was not entirely my fault. That I could forgive myself.

I would skip my most hated class, Biblical Worldview, and feel both guilty about doing it, and pleased with getting away with it, and confused and sad because while I was skiving I wasn't doing anything I enjoyed more, because I couldn't think of anything I would actually enjoy doing. Ka said, you're old and mature enough to decide for yourself whether attending lecture is necessary for you to understand the material in this unit. That if you made the wrong decision by not attending, the consequences will occur when you struggle with the homework. That some consequences will occur regardless in the form of your participation grade. That loss of interest in normal activities is a symptom. That choosing to do nothing rather than participating in an unpleasant activity is still an improved experience, and therefore a reasonable, if mildly hedonistic, decision.

When I thought about hurting myself, about hurting myself more than just digging fingernails into my arm without breaking the skin, Ka said that doing so was risky. I might experience a brief emotional relief by doing so, but the risk of infection or accident was considerable. That self-harm was noticeable, and as she reminded me, above all I didn't want to be noticed. That in all the stories or accounts I ever read about self harm, not one person failed to regret it later. That however much I might hate another person, I wouldn't take a knife to them. Why should my own body be an exception?

When I wanted to die... Ka said that by killing myself, I would abandon everything that would happen to me, and everything that I would do, and everything that I was responsible for. Yes, the pain would stop. Wanting to escape pain is normal. But the depression could ease, and that would also stop this particular suffering. If I died, who would finish the stories I wrote? If I died, our wandering outdoor cat might decide never to come home again -- I was her favorite. If I died, my parents would be very upset, and surprised (I don't think they understood the depth of my affliction until many years afterward). She said, even if you hate yourself, hate being yourself, there are creatures left who rely on your existence for their physical and emotional wellbeing. She said, cutting your ties to this place in that way means cutting all of them, even the good ones, even if there aren't many good ones left.

Ka wasn't all about dispensing sensible thoughts into my unbalanced brain. I would tell her stories, on my good days, and she would contribute to the plot. When I had a positive emotion (positive emotions were usually muted, when I felt them at all), she would echo that feeling back at me, so it was like hanging out with a friend who enjoys the same things you do. It was incredibly reassuring to be able to fall back onto her sensible, even-tempered presence when I felt anything but.

About a year later, motivated by my persistent mental health issues and my brother’s own health problems, my family moved back to the States, and I got some real psychiatric care, including counseling and a prescription. As my depression eased, I needed Ka less often, and eventually she retreated. She said I didn't need her anymore, and after a while, I didn't miss her. I made a few new friends. The sky seemed so much clearer for my last three years of high school. I rediscovered what it was like to enjoy life.

For many people, depression is a chronic condition. When I went to college, mine came back. Not quite as strong as before, because I recognised the symptoms early and started deploying coping mechanisms sooner. But it was there, that blackness welling from deep in my chest, creeping up my throat till eating made me feel sick. My dorm room was a poor refuge, because my roommate loved people, but not cleanliness. I had no support system, because I attended college out of state, and no one came with me.

I missed a lot of meals. I lost about fifteen pounds, and I was never heavy. I slept fourteen hours a day on weekends, and four hours on weekdays. I got all As, my first two years, with a full class load, in the engineering track.

At the end of one bad day, first semester of freshman year, I came back to a blessedly-empty dorm room, locked the door behind me, and had a panic attack on the floor. When that finished, I wanted something to make me feel better. Getting chocolate would mean leaving the room -- not an option. I had no comfort foods, my bedding was stale, the bathroom was grimy. No one I trusted lived within eight hundred miles. My betta fish swam to the surface when I lifted the tank cover, but it was not in their nature to be cuddly.

I remembered Ka. I wished she were there. I pulled at the spot where she used to be, wondering if I could recreate her, or something like her.

She uncurled, lifted her head, and said, "I'd hoped you'd look for me soon. I couldn't come back to help until you asked for me."

This depressive episode has lasted for four years, prolonged, I think, by my pigheaded stubbornness in pursuing a degree far past when the cost to my health exceeded the benefit higher education could bring me. And also by my parents' divorce precipitated by my dad's gender transition. I'm only recently starting to emerge from it, an improvement brought on mostly by my decision to drop out of college.

I haven't called on Ka as often as I did as a teenager. I have more access to external resources, these days, including finances, medication and trusted friends. But even now, if I tap at the part of my mind where she is, she'll uncurl and sleepily ask, "What is it?"

I think, "Just checking you're still there. Go back to sleep. I'm okay right now."

I'm not writing this down as advice; I'm not saying, if you're depressed, make yourself an imaginary friend. Don't do that, or if you must, make sure you know what you're doing, and the risks. What I wrote up there about constructs like Ka having the potential to be dangerous is real. I was careful, but I was also lucky.

I wrote this on the off chance that someone already has their own Ka, in the unlikely event that that person reads this, to let them know that they aren't the only one. And I'm hoping, a little, to learn I'm not the only one.

[youcantunringthebell]

Husband’s posts pissing you off? Block him. (Or how we got the ol’ marital bait-and-switch and still renewed our vows.)

Within the last month, I have shouted the following sentence at my husband: “If I actually DO ever die of cancer, I am BEGGING YOU to please marry someone who shares your belief system instead of tricking some other nice liberal woman into marrying you and MAKING HER CRAZY.”

Was it overly dramatic? Possibly. Do I regret it? Certainly. Will it happen again? Obviously. 

Our problem dates back to the Nov. 4, 2008, presidential election. We early voted, because we would be on our honeymoon cruise on Election Day. I remember very clearly standing in line at the Madison, Tennessee, public library with Jeffrey, who was wearing a Barack Obama T-shirt. We were absolutely giddy to be casting a vote for our first black president. We joined the Obama election party on our cruise, tearfully hugging strangers as the results rolled in.

At the time of our marriage, we had similar ideas about food, vaccinations, climate change ... or at least I thought so. Then Jeffrey went on a rant against the medical profession on his Facebook page. They’re in league with Big Pharma, he wrote, and invested in keeping people sick. A nurse friend texted me about it: “Um, did you see what your husband just put on Facebook?”

“Are you out of your mind?” I asked him. “We have tons of friends who are doctors and nurses. Do you honestly think they’re invested in keeping us sick? You should take that down.” 

He took that post down but ultimately posted 10 more just like it. He started posting anti-Obama rhetoric and backing Ron Paul. He posted anti-vaxxer memes and wrote about “chemtrails.” His diet became more and more stringent: everything had to be organic, but it wasn’t just that. One day, a certain brand of organic cracker might be OK, but it wasn’t the next because of something he’d read about an ingredient. Unchurched when we met, he joined a congregation in the Messianic Judaism faith, never missing a service. (I’m a Presbyterian.)

We fought and fought. I felt betrayed, disappointed and embarrassed, and his posts infuriated me. I asked him to at least make them private instead of public. He didn’t. Friends still texted with, “Did you see what Jeffrey just posted on Facebook?”

Honestly, we almost got divorced over it four years in, but we agreed to try marriage counseling before ending things. I was so ready to have the therapist back me up and tell him how wrong he’d been to hide his real views. That’s not what happened. The entire blame for our marital problems went to me.

Surprised? I sure was. So let me save you $500 in therapy co-pays.

Turns out that most couples have less than 50 percent of their ideals in common. There’s a chemical in your brain when you’re falling in love that makes you say stupid shit like, “We’re so alike. I mean, we come from different places, but our VALUES are the same. He’s perfect for me.” I actually said those things. My friends will attest to how difficult it was to keep their eyeballs from doing a 360 back into their heads and to the front again, because they could easily determine from spending 10 minutes with us that we were nothing alike. But they also weren’t getting dick on the regular after having it doled out like government cheese from a gay husband for 10 years, so EXCUSE ME FOR LIVING.

That chemical wears off about two years into the marriage, and then the scales fall from your eyes and you see who you’ve actually married. At that point, you have a choice: trade or stick. If you trade, you’ll just meet some other person, the chemical will kick in again, the scales will fall and you potentially will repeat the cycle. If you stick, you can live out the highest purpose of marriage: to work out the shit you brought into it and go through life with a teammate. For instance, part of the shit I brought in was my family’s insistence that everybody think alike or hit the road. And as much as I hated being a victim of their approach, damn if I didn’t carry that right out of the family unit with me and spend years either people-pleasing to keep friendships or amputating them, depending on how much I valued the person or how bad they pissed me off. I didn’t know how to love people in their diversity of opinions.

And maybe JJ really did like Obama for that first election, as evidenced by the t-shirt, but he changed his mind. People get to do that. And thanks to JJ being right here in our home, I get to figure out that not everybody thinks like I do, and we can disagree and still love each other.

(Fortunately, he voted for Johnson and not Trump in the last election, so we didn’t have to test just how much I’ve self-actualized around this topic.)

Anyway, I tell newlyweds that, two to four years in, they’re probably going to get furious with each other. When that happens, DON’T BE SCARED. Embrace it as an opportunity to shed those ideas you brought into the marriage that don’t serve you anymore. Get some counseling. I know a lady. She would say that you could pretty much pick a spouse at random and, if you are both good people, willing to listen and grow, you can make a marriage work.

Now, when my friends come to me complaining about something JJ posted on Facebook, I say, “Block him. That’s what I did.” When we go to someone’s house and they want to know what he eats so they can try and match his diet, I say, “Even I’m not consistently able to do that. He will bring his own food.” Is it weird? Obviously. But it isn’t their marriage, it’s mine, and this is the kind of healthy detachment and individualism that make it work. He influenced my eating for the better, I expanded his world through travel, we both make each other laugh like crazy. We love our little home, our little dogs, our little lives. And, finally, I can say I love JJ.

I’ve also figured out that, when I lose my mind on him as recounted at the beginning of this post, I can offer a genuine apology and try harder next time, because there’s a kind and loving way to disagree ... and that wasn’t it.

BELOW: Our vow renewal for our 10th wedding anniversary. He bought a low-glycemic, vegan cake. I loved it.

P.S. OK. So for those of you who made it this far, I’m going to offer a bonus from our marriage counseling. Our disagreements got so bad, it affected our sex life and led to performance issues on one side and poorly expressed frustration on the other side. I won’t say who was who, but I will say this ...

STOP DECIDING THAT A HEALTHY SEX LIFE IS WHAT THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY SAYS IT SHOULD BE.

A healthy sex life is any physicality that brings the two of you closer together. It’s not a hard this and a wet that and Tab A into Slot B and a certain number of nights per week and a failure if there’s no orgasm. (If you think about it, that approach is a little narrow-minded, because doesn’t even take in the lovely variety of gender and sexual orientation surrounding us in this world.) Things finally got better between us when I was able to believe that, if we decided to wear each other’s underpants and turn backflips under the light of the full moon, and it brought us close together, THAT WAS OUR SEX LIFE. And guess what? We never had to do that. But we talked more, we accepted more, and one day, things looked a little more like the Hollywood version, and that’s nice, too.

[kristablogs]

These ultramarathoners say life is easier after running 40 miles on frozen backwoods trails

‘I could do this all night,’ O’Neill thought. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

It is 10°F outside of the wood-beamed shelter at St. Croix State Park, a 34,000-acre pine-and-oak expanse in eastern Minnesota. Hell, it’s cold inside, despite two fireplaces blazing, their smoke pulled into flared metal chimneys that resemble the business ends of rockets. The 54 athletes standing around keep their hats on, for the most part. Each has spent good money to embark on exactly the kind of endeavor most people would pay to avoid: running or skiing—whichever suits their fancy—for 40 miles. At night. In Minnesota. In January. While pulling a sled packed with 30-plus pounds of supplies.

This torturefest is called the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra, and its participants find pleasure in the hardship. At 4:30 p.m. they jiggle their legs and apply insulating tape to their cheeks and noses while the organizers give a prerace pep talk.

Of sorts.

“No one died last year,” says Jamison Swift, deadpanning. “Let’s keep it going.”

He soon passes the stage to Lisa Kapsner-Swift, his co-organizer and wife, who talks about what the racers can do if they feel like they’re coming down with the winter-ultra baddies: trench foot, frostbite, hypothermia.

The advice washes over Meredith O’Neill, who wears glasses and bright blue snow pants; two Heidi braids hang down her shoulders. She’s prepared for months, training to be alone, cold, and tired for what might feel like forever as she runs across an Upper Midwest oak savanna, passes through stands of pines, and treks across acres of trees felled by a storm. She’ll go and go and go until she returns, finally, hopefully, to this same building sometime tomorrow.

It’s fun. Not the normal, easy kind that comes with games of horseshoes or beach volleyball. Wilderness-seeking enthusiasts often call that “Type I Fun.” Instead, this is the more complicated variety, “Type II Fun,” which basically encompasses an activity—like backpacking up a steep mountain or scaling a sheer rock face—that suuuuuucks when you’re doing it but seems cool in retrospect. (Their categorization system also includes “Type III” activity, which is never actual fun and puts your life in danger.)

Type II recreation appeals to a variety of nature-loving folks, including a growing community of runners called ultramarathoners—those who think the traditional 26.2-mile course isn’t a big-enough test of physical endurance and mental fortitude. Their events mostly take place on remote trails, rather than on big-city streets with live bands and aid stations stocked like curbside Trader Joe’s. There were just over 100,000 finishes in ultraraces around the world in 2018, compared to 1.1 million for marathons. The extreme feats have to cover at least 31 miles (50 kilometers) and sometimes include extra challenges, like St. Croix’s sleds and snow. For tonight’s contest, participants must bring along, among other things, insulated water containers, gear for sleeping in the elements, a stove kit, and enough food to finish the course with 3,000 calories to spare.

The St. Croix winter ultramarathon covers 40 miles—from dusk till done—and draws athletes considering longer events. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Sports psychologists have investigated the why of races like this one, looking closely at people who think that “more than a marathon” sounds like a terrific Saturday. What they’ve found is that ultrarunners get a kick out of tackling self-imposed challenges, forming community while also pursuing solitude, exploring the wilderness as well as their own limits, and then applying the idea that they can nudge their own boundaries to their tamer everyday lives.

If you ask athletes like O’Neill why they push themselves to and through mile 37 toward the finish line, their anecdata matches scientists’ findings pretty well. “In road marathons, there’s a lot of people, and I’m more introverted,” she says. “I wanted something a little quieter, more nature-filled.”

After her first ultra, a 31-miler outside of Minneapolis, O’Neill knew this was the sport for her. It wasn’t about fast finish times or jostling with other competitors. Participants like her go slower, mostly alone, through pretty places. She liked that. “I could do this for eight hours,” she thought. “I could do this for 12 hours; I could do this all night.”

O’Neill realized she could continue beyond where her biology told her to stop. That it was thrilling to go past her usual boundaries. “Your brain is holding you back a little bit to protect you,” she says. “But that’s sort of a wiggly, wobbly line that you can push further.”

It’s an idea exercise scientist Tim Noakes first suggested in the 1990s and dubbed the “central governor” theory: Your brain sends a signal to the rest of your body, informing the muscles that they’re too tired to possibly go on, and that if they do, they might damage themselves. But that signal comes long before it needs to, when the body still has tons of energy left.

Finding out how much literal and figurative fuel she has propels O’Neill into the now-single-digit Minnesota night—that, and seeking the kind of peace physical exertion provides. “It’s one of the few times I don’t really think about anything other than how far I’ve gone and how far I have to go and whether I feel okay,” she says. “I’m very present. I like it. I like having that calm.”

At 5:55 p.m., when it’s just below 10°F, O’Neill stands in full moonlight next to her sled, which is about the size of a Flexible Flyer a kid would ride downhill. Some entrants have wrapped their gear in fancy REI stowage; others merely tote big, blue IKEA bags with the handles knotted together. O’Neill’s kit hides in a black duffel. Her camp stove, like everyone else’s, rests atop the snow, ready to be lit in order to show that she can boil water in the cold—required before she can start moving her legs. Unlike road races and traditional ultras, this event requires all runners to demonstrate not just that they’re able to last a long time, but also that they have survival skills to fall back on. When the official says, “GO!” to signal the start, O’Neill’s cooker engulfs itself in a ball of flame, then settles down. A hundred feet away, two rows of primary-colored triangle flags wave from the start of the course.

Across the snowy ground, a participant named Bill Hansel has decked out his sled with Christmas lights, their blinks reflecting aggressively off the white flakes. Nearby, a spectator in an inflatable T. rex costume dances, a Cretaceous cheerleader. Hansel is a veteran ultrarunner who also organizes his own events, the Storm Trail Race Series, as a fundraiser for youth mental-health initiatives. Like O’Neill, Hansel loves what distance challenges do to his brain. “You’re alone with your thoughts a lot,” he says. “It’s my meditation.” But he also enjoys the community. “Trail runners are a very welcoming group. Everybody wants to help everybody,” he continues. Even if you’re mindfully alone for 25 miles, “you can pick up a random person” in the middle of nowhere and chitchat through ragged breaths.

Runner ­Meredith O’Neill likes being surrounded by nature. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Hansel starts working to get his cold fuel to light.

Standing still like that, the elements start to intrude. At first it doesn’t feel so bad. Crisp! But then you breathe in sharply, and the insides of your nose flash-freeze together for a second. Frigid! Your lungs contract. Ouch! Then all of a sudden you realize that the iciness has slithered into your veins. It’s part of you now. And just as you can’t really remember exactly what it felt like to be a teenager, you can’t recall what it felt like to be warm. Maybe, you think, you never were. Maybe you’ll never be again. But the seemingly never-ending chill is temporary.

This, too, shall pass. Hansel talks in phrases like this sometimes—aphorisms interspersed with regular sentences, snippets of wisdom that are about running but really could be about anything: “There’s ups and downs, and it will get better if you keep going.” “Even if you run the same race, it’s not the same course.” “Don’t look at the big picture.”

That last one will buoy him throughout this challenge, as it has during every other ultra. He always, for instance, sets the timer on his watch for 10 minutes. When it’s up, he’ll take a drink of water. He’ll reset his watch. He’ll shift his attention to the next interval. “I have run 200 miles, 95 hours, 10 minutes at a time,” he says. He’s persisted so long that he’s hallucinated recreational vehicles (multiple times)—tales he swaps like drinking stories with other Type II enthusiasts.

This, though, is his first winter ultra, and he’s going into it with the same three big aims he always has: to finish, to have fun, to not die. He likes to play around with what he calls his superpower, which is the ability to go very slowly for a very long time. To take pleasure in how the moonlight hits the snow, to really notice his body at work, to hear only his footsteps and internal monologue, and to feel from afar the support of friends and family.

Soon, the water in his stove bubbles, and he begins moving toward his trifecta of goals. As the yellow moon rises over the trees, Hansel jogs between the flags, which lead down a snowmobile trail. He and O’Neill and the others will follow the path for the first 24 miles of the race, watching for yellow signs with blue reflective arrows to appear out of the darkness, showing the way to the only checkpoint.

More than one-quarter of the 54 people who set out on this evening will quit there.

O’Neill prepped for months to run the St. Croix trail ­ultra in frigid temperatures (Ackerman + Gruber/)

So, yeah, the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra does claim some victims. But it’s actually one of the easier cold-weather endurance events out there. The Swifts founded it specifically for people who weren’t ready yet for the truly masochistic affairs: the Iditarod Trail Invitational 1,000, the Alaskan original and still the mother of all these races; the Tuscobia Winter Ultra, whose 160-mile route is a step toward qualifying for the Iditarod; and the Arrowhead 135, a challenge that begins at International Falls in northern Minnesota and that more than half of all starters don’t finish. (The numbers in the names refer, of course, to distance in miles.)

The Swifts want to give anyone interested in trying a winter ultra a safe place to practice something “short”—especially considering that even out here, in a straightforward test, it’s not very hard to die simply by standing still for too long. That’s why the runners have to show off their survival skills: so that someday, if they do have to set up a subzero camp, they’ll be ready.

Kapsner-Swift gets that. She does similar races herself. Last year she completed her first 24-hour run. “It was terrible,” she says, “and I loved it so much.” Her statement echoes the dichotomy articulated by another St. Croix participant, Adam Warden: “You want something that’s going to suck,” he says. “And be beautiful.”

For Kapsner-Swift and Warden, and for most ultrarunners, getting through the gut-wrenching parts is a game, like a tough chess match. “Not to get all existential,” Kapsner-Swift says, “but we have this incredible privilege of having, generally speaking, very comfortable lives.” That’s great—most of the time. But challenge is good for human beings. It’s how we grow. “Sometimes a little fear and self-doubt go a long way,” another participant, Kari Gibbons, explains. “I don’t feel that anywhere else in my life. That means I’m not pushing myself. I’m not taking a risk. If I do feel that, I know I’m doing something important.”

If life doesn’t give you lemons, in other words, you should probably pluck a few and bite down. Then, when you actually do get lemons, you’ll know what to do with them. That shift—from athletic challenge to regular existence—may be easy for ultrarunners, according to a 2014 dissertation from organizational psychologist Anthony Holly, now a director of strategy and analytics at PRO Unlimited, a workforce management company. He wanted to understand how these athletes’ mental toughness plays out in the workplace. By interviewing runners, he projected that the discipline, patience, and tenacity they use to complete races are skills they could transfer to job environments. It sounds a little Hallmarkian to say, “Because I could plod more miles, I knew I could handle the frustrations of office politics and rough deadlines.” But it seems to work. The St. Croix athletes have found that the extremes help them cope with personal and professional troubles.

St. Croix athletes pull sleds with emergency supplies. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

To understand why people initially decide to go to such lengths, Rhonna Krouse-Adams, an associate professor of health science at the College of Western Idaho, studied endurance athletes. After she failed to find any data on women ultrarunners, she decided to focus her research on them. She herself was one, and had become fascinated by the community and camaraderie among these women, who technically are competitors and mostly fly solo. “They’re noncompetitive people who form almost a family unit through this process,” she thought.

Surveying 344 participants, Krouse-Adams found they cared about health and used running to give themselves a sense of well-being. They focused on self-centric goals, like just finishing the race, rather than outward-facing ones, like besting a competitor. “The sense of freedom and accomplishment” topped the “why” list. “A sense of belonging was really high,” she says. It’s a whole identity—not just a hobby. According to a 2018 study, finishers are more motivated by their group affiliation and a feeling of happiness and fulfillment than those who complete shorter distances.

This is a self-selecting bunch, though, Krouse-Adams points out. “You can’t commit to something for 25 hours a week and have a lot of other commitments,” she says. “This was not a sport chosen by families. Not by moms.” Perhaps not surprisingly, other researchers have found that ultrarunners in the United States are around 85 percent male, 90 percent white, and more educated and richer than average. It’s a pursuit often taken up by those with lots of leisure time and money to spend on the $100-plus entry fees.

Life circumstances aside, not everyone is mentally suited to endurance events. Gavin Breslin, a sports and exercise psychologist at Ulster University, sees a focus on self-challenge. “The marathon is achievable,” says Breslin, who also coaches a team of Olympic hopefuls. Ultrarunners ask, “‘What can you do above that?' There’s risk-taking involved.” The uncertainty is that you might not be able to do what you set out to do. The fist-pumping triumph is when you do it anyway. As O’Neill puts it, “That was liberating, to know that when I thought things were over and done, I had a little more.”

Breslin and his associates have also looked at how distance athletes score on a personality test of five major traits, sometimes called the Big Five, which in concert can define character: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Ultrarunners tend to score significantly higher than average for that last trait, thanks to some mysterious mix of genetics and upbringing. You can cultivate this quality, he says. “You can develop goal setting. Somewhere within us all, there’s a level of ultraendurance.”

At the 24-mile checkpoint, some of the St. Croix participants might be questioning Breslin’s assessment. The ones who decide to bow out join volunteers inside a billowing warming tent that looks like it was fashioned from the inflatable T. rex at the starting point. Other crew members stand slump-shouldered around a fire, waiting for each bedraggled, frigid racer to emerge from the darkness.

The first athlete arrives around 10 p.m., but the last runner doesn’t get there until around 2:30 a.m. If they plan to take on the last 16 miles, they have to again prove they have the skills to stay alive in an emergency. They must stop, set up their bivy sack (basically a body-shaped tent that envelops their sleeping bag), climb into the makeshift bed, wait around 30 seconds, then pack it all up before leaving. That sounds like a pain, sure. But no big deal compared to running 40 miles, right?

Counterclockwise from top: foam pad, sleeping bag and bivy sack, water bottle sleeves, camp pot and stove, fuel (red canister), snacks, trekking poles, microspikes. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Wrong: When the temp nears zero, and you’re sweaty, you get cold quick—the kind of chill that seems to attach itself to your DNA. Some who feel too frosty after their survival demo, or just beaten, call it quits and either walk a mile (as the crow flies) on a road back to the finish line or catch a ride in a volunteer’s car.

Around 3 a.m., back at the starting point, the race crew begins making breakfast in the shelter for the people who’ve returned, either humbled from the checkpoint or triumphant from the trail. There are flaky eggs, bacon, Krusteaz pancakes, bags of Colby Jack cheese, and Activia probiotic yogurt. Also a big orange cooler with a piece of paper taped to its side: “TANG!” On the registration table, not-yet-cooked bacon languishes—which is fine, because it’s still too cold inside for bacteria to propagate.

Hansel comes in around 4 a.m., shaken. Shaky, actually. His lips are blue like Frost Glacier Freeze Gatorade, and his fork wobbles as he brings eggs up to them, or tries to cut into the pancakes.

“I had dark times starting after about five miles,” Hansel says. He didn’t really see anyone else—at all—till the checkpoint. “I’m used to dark times,” he continues, “but not that early.”

To keep going, he says he thought of his family and all of the people who support him. Would he do it again? No. “Was it fun?” Hansel asks aloud. “Yes,” he answers himself. Perhaps that’s Type 2.5 Fun. (Within a couple months, though, he would be training for next year’s St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra.)

When O’Neill comes in around two hours later, after more than 12 hours on the trail, she looks jubilant. She caught that heightened state of being she’s always chasing through the woods—what psychologists call “flow,” or total absorption in a task. You lose track of time, you feel totally in control, like you are in charge of yourself and the world. “I’m not thinking of anything but what I’m doing, my footsteps, what’s around me,” she says.

She removes her coat, revealing a pale blue argyle sweater, the kind you might wear to the office, and a down running skirt over her bright blue snow pants. The race appears to have barely fazed her. She says, in fact, that it was “90 percent Type I fun.” Her only trouble was that all her food froze—except for a stash of Twinkies. But no big deal: She just ate Twinkies, fully present to sense their spongy outsides, their gooey centers, their sugar flowing into her veins. Crisis averted. Achievement unlocked. Game won, and over.

This story appeared in the Summer 2020, Play issue of Popular Science.

[scootoaster]

These ultramarathoners say life is easier after running 40 miles on frozen backwoods trails

‘I could do this all night,’ O’Neill thought. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

It is 10°F outside of the wood-beamed shelter at St. Croix State Park, a 34,000-acre pine-and-oak expanse in eastern Minnesota. Hell, it’s cold inside, despite two fireplaces blazing, their smoke pulled into flared metal chimneys that resemble the business ends of rockets. The 54 athletes standing around keep their hats on, for the most part. Each has spent good money to embark on exactly the kind of endeavor most people would pay to avoid: running or skiing—whichever suits their fancy—for 40 miles. At night. In Minnesota. In January. While pulling a sled packed with 30-plus pounds of supplies.

This torturefest is called the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra, and its participants find pleasure in the hardship. At 4:30 p.m. they jiggle their legs and apply insulating tape to their cheeks and noses while the organizers give a prerace pep talk.

Of sorts.

“No one died last year,” says Jamison Swift, deadpanning. “Let’s keep it going.”

He soon passes the stage to Lisa Kapsner-Swift, his co-organizer and wife, who talks about what the racers can do if they feel like they’re coming down with the winter-ultra baddies: trench foot, frostbite, hypothermia.

The advice washes over Meredith O’Neill, who wears glasses and bright blue snow pants; two Heidi braids hang down her shoulders. She’s prepared for months, training to be alone, cold, and tired for what might feel like forever as she runs across an Upper Midwest oak savanna, passes through stands of pines, and treks across acres of trees felled by a storm. She’ll go and go and go until she returns, finally, hopefully, to this same building sometime tomorrow.

It’s fun. Not the normal, easy kind that comes with games of horseshoes or beach volleyball. Wilderness-seeking enthusiasts often call that “Type I Fun.” Instead, this is the more complicated variety, “Type II Fun,” which basically encompasses an activity—like backpacking up a steep mountain or scaling a sheer rock face—that suuuuuucks when you’re doing it but seems cool in retrospect. (Their categorization system also includes “Type III” activity, which is never actual fun and puts your life in danger.)

Type II recreation appeals to a variety of nature-loving folks, including a growing community of runners called ultramarathoners—those who think the traditional 26.2-mile course isn’t a big-enough test of physical endurance and mental fortitude. Their events mostly take place on remote trails, rather than on big-city streets with live bands and aid stations stocked like curbside Trader Joe’s. There were just over 100,000 finishes in ultraraces around the world in 2018, compared to 1.1 million for marathons. The extreme feats have to cover at least 31 miles (50 kilometers) and sometimes include extra challenges, like St. Croix’s sleds and snow. For tonight’s contest, participants must bring along, among other things, insulated water containers, gear for sleeping in the elements, a stove kit, and enough food to finish the course with 3,000 calories to spare.

The St. Croix winter ultramarathon covers 40 miles—from dusk till done—and draws athletes considering longer events. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Sports psychologists have investigated the why of races like this one, looking closely at people who think that “more than a marathon” sounds like a terrific Saturday. What they’ve found is that ultrarunners get a kick out of tackling self-imposed challenges, forming community while also pursuing solitude, exploring the wilderness as well as their own limits, and then applying the idea that they can nudge their own boundaries to their tamer everyday lives.

If you ask athletes like O’Neill why they push themselves to and through mile 37 toward the finish line, their anecdata matches scientists’ findings pretty well. “In road marathons, there’s a lot of people, and I’m more introverted,” she says. “I wanted something a little quieter, more nature-filled.”

After her first ultra, a 31-miler outside of Minneapolis, O’Neill knew this was the sport for her. It wasn’t about fast finish times or jostling with other competitors. Participants like her go slower, mostly alone, through pretty places. She liked that. “I could do this for eight hours,” she thought. “I could do this for 12 hours; I could do this all night.”

O’Neill realized she could continue beyond where her biology told her to stop. That it was thrilling to go past her usual boundaries. “Your brain is holding you back a little bit to protect you,” she says. “But that’s sort of a wiggly, wobbly line that you can push further.”

It’s an idea exercise scientist Tim Noakes first suggested in the 1990s and dubbed the “central governor” theory: Your brain sends a signal to the rest of your body, informing the muscles that they’re too tired to possibly go on, and that if they do, they might damage themselves. But that signal comes long before it needs to, when the body still has tons of energy left.

Finding out how much literal and figurative fuel she has propels O’Neill into the now-single-digit Minnesota night—that, and seeking the kind of peace physical exertion provides. “It’s one of the few times I don’t really think about anything other than how far I’ve gone and how far I have to go and whether I feel okay,” she says. “I’m very present. I like it. I like having that calm.”

At 5:55 p.m., when it’s just below 10°F, O’Neill stands in full moonlight next to her sled, which is about the size of a Flexible Flyer a kid would ride downhill. Some entrants have wrapped their gear in fancy REI stowage; others merely tote big, blue IKEA bags with the handles knotted together. O’Neill’s kit hides in a black duffel. Her camp stove, like everyone else’s, rests atop the snow, ready to be lit in order to show that she can boil water in the cold—required before she can start moving her legs. Unlike road races and traditional ultras, this event requires all runners to demonstrate not just that they’re able to last a long time, but also that they have survival skills to fall back on. When the official says, “GO!” to signal the start, O’Neill’s cooker engulfs itself in a ball of flame, then settles down. A hundred feet away, two rows of primary-colored triangle flags wave from the start of the course.

Across the snowy ground, a participant named Bill Hansel has decked out his sled with Christmas lights, their blinks reflecting aggressively off the white flakes. Nearby, a spectator in an inflatable T. rex costume dances, a Cretaceous cheerleader. Hansel is a veteran ultrarunner who also organizes his own events, the Storm Trail Race Series, as a fundraiser for youth mental-health initiatives. Like O’Neill, Hansel loves what distance challenges do to his brain. “You’re alone with your thoughts a lot,” he says. “It’s my meditation.” But he also enjoys the community. “Trail runners are a very welcoming group. Everybody wants to help everybody,” he continues. Even if you’re mindfully alone for 25 miles, “you can pick up a random person” in the middle of nowhere and chitchat through ragged breaths.

Runner ­Meredith O’Neill likes being surrounded by nature. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Hansel starts working to get his cold fuel to light.

Standing still like that, the elements start to intrude. At first it doesn’t feel so bad. Crisp! But then you breathe in sharply, and the insides of your nose flash-freeze together for a second. Frigid! Your lungs contract. Ouch! Then all of a sudden you realize that the iciness has slithered into your veins. It’s part of you now. And just as you can’t really remember exactly what it felt like to be a teenager, you can’t recall what it felt like to be warm. Maybe, you think, you never were. Maybe you’ll never be again. But the seemingly never-ending chill is temporary.

This, too, shall pass. Hansel talks in phrases like this sometimes—aphorisms interspersed with regular sentences, snippets of wisdom that are about running but really could be about anything: “There’s ups and downs, and it will get better if you keep going.” “Even if you run the same race, it’s not the same course.” “Don’t look at the big picture.”

That last one will buoy him throughout this challenge, as it has during every other ultra. He always, for instance, sets the timer on his watch for 10 minutes. When it’s up, he’ll take a drink of water. He’ll reset his watch. He’ll shift his attention to the next interval. “I have run 200 miles, 95 hours, 10 minutes at a time,” he says. He’s persisted so long that he’s hallucinated recreational vehicles (multiple times)—tales he swaps like drinking stories with other Type II enthusiasts.

This, though, is his first winter ultra, and he’s going into it with the same three big aims he always has: to finish, to have fun, to not die. He likes to play around with what he calls his superpower, which is the ability to go very slowly for a very long time. To take pleasure in how the moonlight hits the snow, to really notice his body at work, to hear only his footsteps and internal monologue, and to feel from afar the support of friends and family.

Soon, the water in his stove bubbles, and he begins moving toward his trifecta of goals. As the yellow moon rises over the trees, Hansel jogs between the flags, which lead down a snowmobile trail. He and O’Neill and the others will follow the path for the first 24 miles of the race, watching for yellow signs with blue reflective arrows to appear out of the darkness, showing the way to the only checkpoint.

More than one-quarter of the 54 people who set out on this evening will quit there.

O’Neill prepped for months to run the St. Croix trail ­ultra in frigid temperatures (Ackerman + Gruber/)

So, yeah, the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra does claim some victims. But it’s actually one of the easier cold-weather endurance events out there. The Swifts founded it specifically for people who weren’t ready yet for the truly masochistic affairs: the Iditarod Trail Invitational 1,000, the Alaskan original and still the mother of all these races; the Tuscobia Winter Ultra, whose 160-mile route is a step toward qualifying for the Iditarod; and the Arrowhead 135, a challenge that begins at International Falls in northern Minnesota and that more than half of all starters don’t finish. (The numbers in the names refer, of course, to distance in miles.)

The Swifts want to give anyone interested in trying a winter ultra a safe place to practice something “short”—especially considering that even out here, in a straightforward test, it’s not very hard to die simply by standing still for too long. That’s why the runners have to show off their survival skills: so that someday, if they do have to set up a subzero camp, they’ll be ready.

Kapsner-Swift gets that. She does similar races herself. Last year she completed her first 24-hour run. “It was terrible,” she says, “and I loved it so much.” Her statement echoes the dichotomy articulated by another St. Croix participant, Adam Warden: “You want something that’s going to suck,” he says. “And be beautiful.”

For Kapsner-Swift and Warden, and for most ultrarunners, getting through the gut-wrenching parts is a game, like a tough chess match. “Not to get all existential,” Kapsner-Swift says, “but we have this incredible privilege of having, generally speaking, very comfortable lives.” That’s great—most of the time. But challenge is good for human beings. It’s how we grow. “Sometimes a little fear and self-doubt go a long way,” another participant, Kari Gibbons, explains. “I don’t feel that anywhere else in my life. That means I’m not pushing myself. I’m not taking a risk. If I do feel that, I know I’m doing something important.”

If life doesn’t give you lemons, in other words, you should probably pluck a few and bite down. Then, when you actually do get lemons, you’ll know what to do with them. That shift—from athletic challenge to regular existence—may be easy for ultrarunners, according to a 2014 dissertation from organizational psychologist Anthony Holly, now a director of strategy and analytics at PRO Unlimited, a workforce management company. He wanted to understand how these athletes’ mental toughness plays out in the workplace. By interviewing runners, he projected that the discipline, patience, and tenacity they use to complete races are skills they could transfer to job environments. It sounds a little Hallmarkian to say, “Because I could plod more miles, I knew I could handle the frustrations of office politics and rough deadlines.” But it seems to work. The St. Croix athletes have found that the extremes help them cope with personal and professional troubles.

St. Croix athletes pull sleds with emergency supplies. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

To understand why people initially decide to go to such lengths, Rhonna Krouse-Adams, an associate professor of health science at the College of Western Idaho, studied endurance athletes. After she failed to find any data on women ultrarunners, she decided to focus her research on them. She herself was one, and had become fascinated by the community and camaraderie among these women, who technically are competitors and mostly fly solo. “They’re noncompetitive people who form almost a family unit through this process,” she thought.

Surveying 344 participants, Krouse-Adams found they cared about health and used running to give themselves a sense of well-being. They focused on self-centric goals, like just finishing the race, rather than outward-facing ones, like besting a competitor. “The sense of freedom and accomplishment” topped the “why” list. “A sense of belonging was really high,” she says. It’s a whole identity—not just a hobby. According to a 2018 study, finishers are more motivated by their group affiliation and a feeling of happiness and fulfillment than those who complete shorter distances.

This is a self-selecting bunch, though, Krouse-Adams points out. “You can’t commit to something for 25 hours a week and have a lot of other commitments,” she says. “This was not a sport chosen by families. Not by moms.” Perhaps not surprisingly, other researchers have found that ultrarunners in the United States are around 85 percent male, 90 percent white, and more educated and richer than average. It’s a pursuit often taken up by those with lots of leisure time and money to spend on the $100-plus entry fees.

Life circumstances aside, not everyone is mentally suited to endurance events. Gavin Breslin, a sports and exercise psychologist at Ulster University, sees a focus on self-challenge. “The marathon is achievable,” says Breslin, who also coaches a team of Olympic hopefuls. Ultrarunners ask, “‘What can you do above that?' There’s risk-taking involved.” The uncertainty is that you might not be able to do what you set out to do. The fist-pumping triumph is when you do it anyway. As O’Neill puts it, “That was liberating, to know that when I thought things were over and done, I had a little more.”

Breslin and his associates have also looked at how distance athletes score on a personality test of five major traits, sometimes called the Big Five, which in concert can define character: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Ultrarunners tend to score significantly higher than average for that last trait, thanks to some mysterious mix of genetics and upbringing. You can cultivate this quality, he says. “You can develop goal setting. Somewhere within us all, there’s a level of ultraendurance.”

At the 24-mile checkpoint, some of the St. Croix participants might be questioning Breslin’s assessment. The ones who decide to bow out join volunteers inside a billowing warming tent that looks like it was fashioned from the inflatable T. rex at the starting point. Other crew members stand slump-shouldered around a fire, waiting for each bedraggled, frigid racer to emerge from the darkness.

The first athlete arrives around 10 p.m., but the last runner doesn’t get there until around 2:30 a.m. If they plan to take on the last 16 miles, they have to again prove they have the skills to stay alive in an emergency. They must stop, set up their bivy sack (basically a body-shaped tent that envelops their sleeping bag), climb into the makeshift bed, wait around 30 seconds, then pack it all up before leaving. That sounds like a pain, sure. But no big deal compared to running 40 miles, right?

Counterclockwise from top: foam pad, sleeping bag and bivy sack, water bottle sleeves, camp pot and stove, fuel (red canister), snacks, trekking poles, microspikes. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Wrong: When the temp nears zero, and you’re sweaty, you get cold quick—the kind of chill that seems to attach itself to your DNA. Some who feel too frosty after their survival demo, or just beaten, call it quits and either walk a mile (as the crow flies) on a road back to the finish line or catch a ride in a volunteer’s car.

Around 3 a.m., back at the starting point, the race crew begins making breakfast in the shelter for the people who’ve returned, either humbled from the checkpoint or triumphant from the trail. There are flaky eggs, bacon, Krusteaz pancakes, bags of Colby Jack cheese, and Activia probiotic yogurt. Also a big orange cooler with a piece of paper taped to its side: “TANG!” On the registration table, not-yet-cooked bacon languishes—which is fine, because it’s still too cold inside for bacteria to propagate.

Hansel comes in around 4 a.m., shaken. Shaky, actually. His lips are blue like Frost Glacier Freeze Gatorade, and his fork wobbles as he brings eggs up to them, or tries to cut into the pancakes.

“I had dark times starting after about five miles,” Hansel says. He didn’t really see anyone else—at all—till the checkpoint. “I’m used to dark times,” he continues, “but not that early.”

To keep going, he says he thought of his family and all of the people who support him. Would he do it again? No. “Was it fun?” Hansel asks aloud. “Yes,” he answers himself. Perhaps that’s Type 2.5 Fun. (Within a couple months, though, he would be training for next year’s St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra.)

When O’Neill comes in around two hours later, after more than 12 hours on the trail, she looks jubilant. She caught that heightened state of being she’s always chasing through the woods—what psychologists call “flow,” or total absorption in a task. You lose track of time, you feel totally in control, like you are in charge of yourself and the world. “I’m not thinking of anything but what I’m doing, my footsteps, what’s around me,” she says.

She removes her coat, revealing a pale blue argyle sweater, the kind you might wear to the office, and a down running skirt over her bright blue snow pants. The race appears to have barely fazed her. She says, in fact, that it was “90 percent Type I fun.” Her only trouble was that all her food froze—except for a stash of Twinkies. But no big deal: She just ate Twinkies, fully present to sense their spongy outsides, their gooey centers, their sugar flowing into her veins. Crisis averted. Achievement unlocked. Game won, and over.

This story appeared in the Summer 2020, Play issue of Popular Science.