#when I left home for a week I did fully have my roommate print out a picture of her that I could look at when sad

[deityofhearts]

aside from wanting a locket because they’re really cute and fun, I also just wanna put a picture of fluffy in it

[gukyi]

four weeks | kth

summary: four weeks. that’s how long you’re trapped on campus after missing your flight home because of a grossly overtime final. and as you’re walking around your empty campus, thinking that you could sink no lower, you find yourself alone in the art building with a certain freshman-year-dorm-neighbor from hell, and he’s got an offer that you don’t think you can refuse: he’s staying on campus this winter break as well, and he’s happy to let you live with him.

or, four weeks is all it takes to fall in love.

{enemies to lovers!au, roommates!au, college!au}

pairing: art and chemistry double major kim taehyung x female reader genre: fluff, angst, comedy, the whole nine!! word count: 20k warnings: alcohol consumption (be safe!), unwanted sexual advances (not between main characters and not at all explicit), and a ton of college tomfoolery. a/n: i’m finally finished with my very first semester of college! it was a lot, but finishing this fic was a treat after my damn finals, which were very stressful. this is part of the stranded for christmas collab, and i’m so honored to be doing this with such amazing, talented writers! please give them and their fics lots of love, and enjoy this super fun train wreck of a fic!

Admittedly, Global Politics in the Twentieth Century has never treated you particularly well. 

Your lecturer is about as interesting as grass growing, the readings are low quality scans of book pages with the tiniest font and absolutely no line spacing, and any friends you had in that class in the beginning of the semester dropped out of it by the time mid-September rolled around, leaving you trapped due to societal pressures and a History and Politics general education requirement you still have yet to finish. 

But, of all the things you could imagine Global Politics in the Twentieth Century doing to you, like charging you an exorbitant $200 dollars for a textbook you would never open anyway, burning your house down, or even straight up just murdering you, this is by far the worst. 

It’s bad enough that your final for Global Politics in the Twentieth Century is on the last possible day for finals at the latest possible time, but when the clock strikes 8:00PM and you have just about fucking had it with this semester, you realize that no one else is standing up. 

This panic intensifies as you begin thinking of all of the terrible things that could be the reasoning behind this: you’re just the dumbass who finished their final first and got all of the questions wrong, the clocks have yet to adjust to daylight savings and you think that it’s 8:00PM when really it’s 7:00PM, or, worst of all, your final is running overtime. 

You have only ever heard of horror stories about overtime finals. Things like having to cram the next three-hour final into one hour, or having to reschedule the final to some other time that is equally as conflicting. Stuff that is, to a normal human being, a minor to moderate inconvenience at best (and to an overdramatic college student—pure, unadulterated hell), but when this is the last final on the last day at the latest time, there are no other finals to be had. No other school-related scheduling conflicts barreling into you. 

It’s just your luck, really, that on the last day of the semester, at the latest time you are allowed to be here, Global Politics in the Twentieth Century would come back to bite you in the ass one last time. As if all the times you dozed off in class (or just plain skipped), forgot to turn in your reading analyses, and showed up late to your recitation are finally catching up to you. Like the very worst kind of karma that could ever befall you. 

Well, to be fair, it’s not as if the rest of the day has treated you any better. The entire time you’ve been awake on this fine December day has been an absolute trash can of a day. 

This is how the beginning of your very last day of the semester played out:

Your alarm went off at 8:00AM sharp, purposefully set that early so you could wake up and have a productive day studying before your final at 6:00PM.

You hit snooze and ended up waking up around 11:33AM.

You scrambled out of bed very inelegantly and attempted to get your life together before noon so you could at least have six hours worth of a productive study day before your final. 

You remembered that you hadn’t packed yet, so you spent the next hour frantically stuffing your belongings into the singular carry-on sized suitcase meant to last you through your month-long winter break. 

You also realized that you hadn’t done your laundry for the week (well, week and 6 days…), and you obviously want to bring clean clothes back home so you spend the next two hours doing your laundry and finishing up your packing.

By the time you finally managed to get the time to study, the panic had fully nestled itself into your bones, so you could not focus and spent the next three hours staring at your study guide and praying that osmosis would kick in so you could actually retain information. 

You left to go to your final five minutes later than you should have and then ran across campus (with absolutely no dignity left) in order to get there on time. 

You arrived at your final just in time, only for there to be technical difficulties with printing the exam because your professor is a procrastinator, just like you are.

The next thirty minutes were then spent contacting the IT department, attempting to fix the printer, having to go print in another building, and then coming back with the final exam to a room of aggravated students who thought that they would be thirty-minutes into the exam by now. 

You are taking the final exam. It’s stupid difficult and you’re absolutely going to tank it. 

You are watching as the final runs overtime for about half an hour.

You are watching as the final runs overtime for about an hour. 

You are watching as the final runs overtime for about an hour and a half.

And on your very last day of the fall semester, your final runs overtime by two whole hours because of some mystic force determined to ruin your life, and your flight heading back home took off fifteen minutes ago. 

You know, it could be worse. You could have failed all of your classes. Instead, you paid an exorbitant $500 to miss your flight, fail your Global Politics in the Twentieth Century final, and end up trapped on campus for all of winter break because you don’t have the money to buy another plane ticket at such late notice (or at all). 

So, it could be worse. 

You trudge out of your final exam and try not to burst into tears on your way back to your dormitory. Barely anybody is left on campus now that finals are officially over, but you still want to save that last shred of dignity. As you’re walking down the pathway, you begin to feel wet splotches on your face. For a moment, you think that they are fat tears rolling down your face, but you look at the cobblestone beneath your feet and realize that instead, it’s raining. 

The perfect weather to match your mood, if you’re being honest. 

Not wanting to get caught in a downpour, you end up taking refuge in the coffee shop connected to the art building on campus. It’s a genius business design, if you say so yourself, because there is no one more dependent on caffeine than sleep-deprived, eyebag-laden art students. Surprisingly enough, there are still people behind the counter bustling around, so you use the last of your university dollars to order a peppermint hot chocolate to warm your insides (but not your cold, dead soul). 

From there, you take a quick detour to explore the art building, a building you have, admittedly, never really taken much of a look at. It must be empty now, with everyone off campus—except you, of course—which gives you the perfect opportunity to wallow in peace while admiring art. 

Walking inside, you stare at your reflection in the enormous glass walls. Look at your tired eyes, slouched shoulders, lips pressed thin, and hands warmed only by the heat of your cardboard coffee cup. Count each acne mark and hair out of place. It’s almost like you’re watching yourself as you look in the mirror, a third person standing in the background. The audience. Like the person who’s looking back at you isn’t you at all. 

It's quite artistic, actually. Ironically enough.

But no matter how picturesque, how cinematic this particular moment of your life is, nothing can really soothe you after missing your flight, failing your final, and pretty much having the worst day of your entire life.

Just then, you hear footsteps echoing down the halls.

You assume that it must just be a professor leaving their office, or even maybe one of the hardworking security guards, but as you watch the glass walls to catch a glimpse of who's passing by, you realize that it's not a professor, or a security guard, or even a very large mouse scurrying across the floor.

"I thought I would be the last one in here," Kim Taehyung says when he spots you, stopping in his tracks with a canvas about half the size of him underneath his arm.

"So did I," you muse in response, not really wanting to turn around to save yourself the trouble of talking to him.

Still, Kim Taehyung has always been one hell of an observant guy, so by the time he's stopped behind you, he's already peering into the reflection of the glass windows to look at who he's talking to.

"Y/N?" He asks, walking up to you with his eyebrow raised. He comes over, standing next to you as you look at each other's reflections in the glass. "Never thought I'd see you in here."

"Me neither, to be honest," you say. Seeing as you aren't a visual studies major, you never really considered the art building to be a location of top priority. Until now, that is.

The last time you spoke to Kim Taehyung was the last day of your freshman year, when everybody was getting ready to move out, packing up their belongings and removing the fifteen thousand Command hooks stuck to their walls. You and him made eye contact as you placed the last of your boxes for the semester into those enormous Residential Services carts, glaring at each other from your adjacent rooms. 

“First year flew by, didn’t it?” Taehyung asks, smirk lacing his features. 

“Thank God it’s over,” you tell him. 

“Not gonna miss me, huh?” Taehyung winks, and it makes you want to take this cardboard box filled with all of the notebooks and lined paper and folders you used throughout the year and chuck it at his head. 

“Miss you?” You ask with a scoff. With the final box finally out of your room, you can officially lock the door behind you, closing the chapter on your very first year at university. “Please. Nothing makes me happier than the fact that I don’t have to live next to you anymore.”

“Why are you still here?” Taehyung asks, tapping his fingers on the side of the canvas underneath his arm. “Thought you’d be off campus by now.”

“I had a late final,” you say, pretending that your life and every aspect of it is fine when it is, in fact, not fine at all. The best case scenario is that Taehyung accepts your bullshit answer for what it is and heads off to do whatever it is that he does, leaving you alone so you can wallow in pity and ponder the meaning of life. The worst case scenario is that Taehyung stays. 

And Taehyung has always been very good at picking the latter. 

“Ah, sucks, for what class?” Taehyung asks. You can’t tell if he’s genuinely curious or just wants to interrupt your personal self-wallow time for as long as possible. 

“Global Politics in the Twentieth Century,” you tell him with a sigh. You don’t want to have to hear, say, read, or write that name ever again. 

“Oh, really? I took that class last semester,” Taehyung says with an eyebrow raised, surprised. “I thought it was super interesting.”

As if you needed any more proof that you and Kim Taehyung are exact opposites in every way. You are hardly surprised that Kim Taehyung enjoyed Global Politics in the Twentieth Century—not when the two of them have so much in common, like inconveniencing you, being annoying, and sort of always having it out for you. It’s like they were meant to be together. 

“I can’t say I thought the same,” you say pointedly, lips pursed into a tight line. 

“Ah, well, I never did peg you for a history buff,” Taehyung says with a shrug of his shoulders. 

“Why are you still on campus? I thought art students had to turn in their final projects on the first day of exams,” you ask, turning the focus onto him. It’s obvious that he has no intention of leaving you alone, so your next best option is to interrogate him until the tension between the two of you is so suffocating, so thick and heavy, that he wants to leave. 

“I had a couple of chem finals after I finished up my art classes,” Taehyung says. Right. You forgot he was doing a double major. “And, my parents are actually travelling this winter break, so I was planning on staying on campus. Didn’t really want to go back to an empty house, you know?”

After the day you’ve had, you can think of nothing better than opening the door to your home, knowing that you have the entire place to yourself and can spend the night in your bedroom, watching Netflix. 

“You’re staying on campus?” You ask. Great. The only two people who will be on campus this winter recess are you and Kim Taehyung. Fantastic. 

“Yeah,” Taehyung says, clearly unaffected. He seems particularly unbothered by the fact that he can’t go home, almost like he’s been looking forward to having the entire university to himself. “You’re about to head home, then, aren’t you? Just taking a quick break in the art building?”

Well, almost to himself. 

The chances of running into Taehyung this winter break, despite being probably the only two people on campus, is still slim. It’s a big campus, and there are people who are not part of the university that walk on campus all the time. 

And still, you don’t know what you’ll do if you lie to Taehyung and tell him you’re about to fly home, and then bump into him at the local coffee shop. You might just perish. That might be what happens. 

So, for once in your life, you suck it up and tell the truth. For once. 

“Actually, I missed my flight because of my final running overtime, so I’m sort of stuck here,” you tell him, and as the words leave your lips it feels like your whole body gets weighed down, like you’re cemented to the floor.

It’s only then that Taehyung actually turns to face you, so you aren’t standing shoulder to shoulder and staring at the rain pattering on the pavement outside. You look at him, meeting his eyes and to your surprise, they aren’t filled with mirth. He hasn’t got this pleased grin on his face. He’s not milking this situation for what it could be milked for at all. He could be standing here, bathing in the satisfaction of your timely demise, and he’s not. 

He actually looks quite sad. 

“Really?” He asks, genuine. 

“Yeah,” you say, and it’s then that you accept your fate, resign yourself to the fact that you’re trapped on campus with no way (and no money) to get home, and try to look for the silver lining. “So, I’ve actually got to get going, grab my stuff and everything.”

“Oh, do you live off campus?” Taehyung asks. “We should get together sometime this break. Who else are we gonna talk to, right?” 

Spending time with Taehyung on your lonely-ass winter break sounds like the absolute worst thing in the entire world. It’s been two years since the last time you were forced to be within fifty feet of each other, so even having this conversation is taking you by surprise.

“No, I’m still staying on campus. But my dorm is closing for the winter break, so I need to go and find an Airbnb or something to stay somewhere,” you say, feeling your heart break at the notion of spending even more money this winter break after having watched your $500 dollar airplane ticket get flushed down the toilet. 

Taehyung stays silent, eyes gazing at the lines between the linoleum tiles on the floor. He’s stopped tapping on the side of his canvas, a painting which you still haven’t fully gotten a glimpse of. In the quiet of the art building, the dust settles, and you wait for Taehyung to say something. Anything. 

After a few more seconds, you decide that the two of you have been standing in awkward silence for long enough. 

“Well, I’ll see you around, I guess,” you say nervously, letting out an unnatural and forced laugh as you turn on your feet and begin to head towards the exit. You have no idea where you’re going to go or what you’re going to do, but what you do know is that you have to be out of your building by noon tomorrow, so you’ve got less than a day to figure it out. 

And then, Taehyung says the worst thing he could possibly say at this given moment:

“Do you wanna stay with me?”

You stop dead in your tracks. 

“What?”

“You don’t have to say yes,” Taehyung immediately clarifies, as if that makes the offer any less sudden. “But I live in an off-campus apartment year round, so you could always stay with me if you’d like. You wouldn’t have to book an Airbnb or anything. But you don’t have to.”

You close your eyes, feeling your chest rise and sink as you inhale and exhale. You can’t believe you’re actually considering his offer. You can’t believe that Taehyung would willingly offer up his personal abode, his private apartment to you, the freshman year next-door neighbor who knocked on his door every six hours to tell him to shut the fuck up. You cannot believe that you are on the verge of accepting. 

“Are you sure?” You ask, both eyebrows raised. Yes, the idea of free lodging and no-hassle appeals greatly to you, but you’re not so certain that Taehyung or you actually want this. After all, you spent all of freshman year hating on each other’s living habits as personal hobbies of yours. “You don’t have to offer just because I don’t have a place to stay. Seriously.”

“No,” Taehyung says, taking a step towards you. It’s barely a foot, but it feels like he’s a thousand miles closer to you than he was before. “I mean it. If you want to stay with me, you’re welcome to. I have a futon in my living room that you can sleep on. I’m being serious.”

You cannot believe that he’s asking this. 

You cannot believe you’re considering this. 

You cannot believe you’re about to say yes to this. 

“You really mean it?” You ask one more time, just so you can be certain. You’d hardly be surprised if this whole thing was just a mindfuck. 

“I do,” Taehyung says. “No matter what, I don’t think anybody should be alone for the holidays.”

“Then yes,” you say, letting Taehyung catch up to you as you begin to walk towards the exit, step by step. “I’d really appreciate it.” You turn to look at him, your eyes meeting his own chocolate brown ones, nearly ink black in the dark. You can’t offer much, certainly not anything to top this gracious proposal, but you smile, and he smiles back, and you think that’s enough. 

Your first order of business is trekking back to your dormitory and grabbing your fully-packed suitcase. At least spending an hour shoving as many of your belongings as possible into a tiny carry-on has its benefits despite you not setting foot in the airport. 

“Been a long time since we’ve done this,” Taehyung comments mindlessly as you walk through campus, following the cobblestone path as a shortcut to his apartment. 

“Done what?” You ask snarkily. “Hung out with each other?” You scoff. You and Taehyung spent all of freshman year skirting around each other, desperately trying to avoid contact while also banging on each other’s doors every ten minutes. It was essentially two semesters worth of shouting at each other through walls and sneering when you actually locked eyes. 

“Talked,” Taehyung simplifies, because he’s right. 

“Isn’t that what we were aiming for?” You ask with a raised eyebrow, turning to look at him as your suitcase wheel skips on a stone out of place. “I thought we had reached that consensus already.” It’s been a year and a half since you last spoke to each other. You were almost confident that, without any overlapping classes, you would be able to keep that streak going long after graduation. 

As it turns out, things change. 

“I don’t know if we ever actually agreed on that,” Taehyung says, thinking back. “Almost like it went…” he pauses, and you can’t be sure if it’s for dramatic effect or because he actually doesn’t know what to say. “Unspoken.”

The irony is not lost on you. In fact, it hits you smack dab in the forehead as you watch Taehyung’s curious expression morph into the sleazy frat boy one he wore so much back then. He looks very pleased with his pun. It makes you want to sock him in the face. 

And as it turns out, some things never change. 

You resist the urge to punch him in the shoulder because he offered you a place to stay for this break and you sort of (actually, really) owe him big time right now. But that doesn’t mean you can’t send a disapproving frown, which seems to do the trick. 

“I distinctly remember how you were so excited to never have to live next to me again when we moved out,” Taehyung says like he’s remembering a fun trip to the zoo. Almost like he looks upon the last time you ever interacted with each other fondly. 

You mentally sigh. If only freshman year you knew what was going to happen in the middle of your junior year. If only your final hadn’t run overtime by two hours. If only you had booked a later flight. 

If only. 

“I don’t remember that at all,” you lie like a liar, saying the words as the picture of you snarkily spitting them at Taehyung at the end of your freshman year plays in your brain on repeat. 

“You sure about that, Y/N?” Taehyung says, turning to look you up and down. He’s always been such a people reader, and you’ve always felt so helplessly transparent in front of him. Even back then. Even now. “Because I don’t really think that your memory is that bad.”

“Nope, no, I don’t,” you say quickly, trying to get Taehyung to stop eyeing you like you’re a question on an exam that he thinks is suspiciously easy. 

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter then, does it?” Taehyung muses as you round the street corner and his apartment complex comes into view. “Since we’ll be living together, anyway.”

“Miss you? Please. Nothing makes me happier than the fact that I don’t have to live next to you anymore.”

Before you can wheel your cart down the hallway and kiss your freshman year goodbye, Taehyung opens his mouth and says one more thing. You almost don’t hear him, too busy reminding yourself that you’ll never have to see him again, but then he says, “One day, Y/N, you’re going to realize that we’re closer than you think.”

When you walk into Taehyung’s apartment, your eyes zero in on these three things: the navy blue futon pushed up against the wall by his television and the fact that it doesn’t look like the kind of used furniture from off of the street that most college kids typically resort to, the little wooden kitchen table that looks straight out of a family-owned Italian restaurant (looks like the two of you will be eating dinner together), and the paintings on the walls. 

“Did you paint these?” Is the first thing you ask once you’re inside, putting your suitcase up against the wall as Taehyung takes off his coat. 

“Those? Yeah, I did them early last year. My walls looked so damn plain without anything on them.”

In freshman year, Taehyung seemed like the kind of artsy hipster who shopped at Urban Outfitters and put vinyl records on his wall with Command Strips but never actually listened to them. 

But the pieces on his walls aren’t vinyls of bands like Arctic Monkeys and Modern Baseball. They’re paintings, oil and acrylics and even a bit of charcoal. Still life and portraits and shadows. 

You had never seen one of his paintings before. You never imagined you’d ever want to, or even get the chance to. And now, you’re standing in the middle of his apartment, and you’re surrounded by them. 

“They’re…” You trail off, eyes bouncing from wall to wall as you take all of them in. There’s at least ten, one, if not two on each wall in sight. His bedroom is probably filled with them. His apartment’s not enormous, rather small since it’s only got one bedroom, but the paintings make the whole place bigger. Make it feel full of life. 

“They’re alright,” Taehyung finishes. He’s already grabbing extra blankets from the storage closet in the side of the wall. “They were assignments we had during the semester so I figured that they’d be put to good use on my wall.”

“It’s very impressive,” you admit. “Kind of a flex, but an impressive flex.” There is something so perfectly Taehyung about the fact that he’s got art all over his walls, but they’re his very own pieces that he has framed and hanging, on display for the entire world to see if they’d like. 

“They’d collect dust otherwise,” he says with a shrug. He tosses two blankets and a pillow your way, letting them plop onto the futon. “Are those enough blankets? It can get fucking cold in here, so I don’t want you to freeze to death or anything.”

And for a moment, you think that Taehyung has actually outgrown his asshole-y freshman days, maturing into someone with an actual moral backbone.

“How considerate,” you say sarcastically, “but I think I’ll be alright. I’m a big, strong girl.”

“Just don’t come crawling into my bed if you want a taste of that weighted-blanket life,” Taehyung says, pretending to flip his hair. “Though, I wouldn’t blame you if you did want to sleep with me.”

With a pillow right at your disposal, you waste no time grabbing it and chucking it straight at Taehyung’s face. He easily dodges, having spotted the move from a mile away, and chuckles. 

“Come on, Y/N, you can do better than that,” he says disapprovingly, shaking his head as he makes his way to the kitchen. “Your arm was much stronger back in freshman year.”

Scowling, you watch as he puts on the kettle to boil, letting the water begin to bubble as he goes about his business like he doesn’t have a guest in his living room that absolutely can’t stand him. 

And you realize that maybe Taehyung’s a couple of years older, a couple of years wiser, but that doesn’t make him a couple of years any less unbearable.

If you were a sleep-deprived engineering student three cans of Monster deep who, in their 4AM haze, invented a time machine to go back to freshman year, and you told your eighteen-year-old self that you would be living under the same damn roof as Kim Taehyung in two years time, freshman year you would probably sock you in the face. And ask you if you changed majors. Which, you did.

It’s not a far reach to wonder why. By the time October rolled around, the two of you had already established yourselves as archenemies until the end of time. 

It was a natural progression, really. Two tiny dorm rooms right next to each other, two beds pressed up against opposite sides of the same paper-thin wall, and two disgruntled freshmen trying their hardest not to die of alcohol poisoning. 

Now, you don’t have a track record for going to sleep at a reasonable hour. In fact, you don’t think you’ve gone to bed before 11PM since middle school. But is it really that irrational of you to want to get some well-deserved shuteye at two in the morning after a long day of procrastination and a long night of doing the studying you should have done during the day? Your roommate is fast asleep across from you, having gone to sleep at midnight like a regular college student who has her life together, which means that she’s immune to the fact that right next door, you can hear nothing but pounding drums making the very linoleum floor of your dormitory shake. 

Scowling, you scramble out of bed, sliding on your shoes to go give a certain Kim Taehyung a bit of a reprimanding. 

Why the fuck does he listen to heavy drums at two in the morning? What the fuck is he doing? Does he not own headphones, or anything that might restrict the sound to his own two ears and nothing else? Does he not have any respect for the people next door to him that might also have to listen to the sound of a thumping bass while they’re trying to go to sleep?

Some of you have 9AM’s tomorrow morning. And by some of you, you mean you. 

You quietly shut the door behind you so as not to wake your roommate, dead-bolting it so you don’t get locked out and have to trudge down to the Help Desk looking like a tired piece of non-recyclable garbage, and immediately bang on Kim Taehyung’s door. He hasn’t got a roommate, and you know he’s awake, which means that if he doesn’t respond, you’ll know why. 

Surprisingly enough, he does, opening the door and immediately grinning once he sees who’s on the other side, like he can’t get enough of the fact that his mere existence bothers you. 

“It’s 2AM,” you tell him, in lieu of a greeting. 

He checks his watch. “That it is.”

“Would you mind turning down the music? I’m trying to go to sleep.”

“This late, Y/N?” Taehyung asks, an eyebrow raised. “No wonder you’re always so cranky.”

“Maybe it’s because my next-door neighbor plays loud fucking music when I’m trying to go to sleep!” You say, already beginning to raise your voice like a loser who can’t control her emotions.

Which is exactly what you are, actually. So this is very on brand for you. 

“Hmm, never thought about it that way,” Taehyung says innocently. He’s got a gleam in his eye that says otherwise. 

“I’m being very nice to you right now, Kim Taehyung. Please turn your music down. Because it’s loud and you’re probably bothering other people as well,” you say, restraining yourself. If you were any more sleep-deprived you’d storm into his room and pound in his face like it was the fucking drums he’s listening to. 

“But you’re my only neighbor,” Taehyung says, a bitter reminder that you were unlucky enough to be the second-to-last room in the corridor, and he, the very last one. 

You inhale, trying to not lose your cool despite having probably already lost it. Kim Taehyung makes you want to tear your eyeballs out. Or buy heavy-duty earplugs off of Amazon Prime. The thing is, one of those options costs you money, and one is entirely free. So, it’s not difficult to see which one you’re leaning towards. 

“Taehyung, please turn your music down, or so help me God. I’m asking nicely,” you can feel the carbon dioxide paths coming from your nose as you breathe, in and out and in and out. 

“Just for you, Y/N,” Taehyung says with a grin. God. You could just straight sock him in the face right now. “It helps me focus, but so does getting to see you.”

“Perish immediately,” you tell him sharply before pulling the door shut, marching back off to your room. 

True to his word, Kim Taehyung does turn off his music. Or puts in headphones. At least he’s conceded.

That is, until you wake up to a crash of glass later that morning at 7AM, coming from only one direction. 

The fact of the matter is, everything you and Taehyung did that year bothered the other so immensely that hatred, pure, unadulterated dislike, was really the only thing that could have come out of it. 

“You still listening to loud ass drums in the middle of the night?” You ask, eyeing the speakers by Taehyung’s television as you sit on his couch (as far apart from each other as possible) and eat some leftover spaghetti. 

“I invested in some AirPods as a treat to myself last year, so yes, but don’t worry,” Taehyung says. He’s mindlessly flicking through the available Hulu options on his TV, severely unimpressed by every one of them. 

“Wow, AirPods, sounds like you’re moving up in the world,” you say callously. “At least I don’t have to listen to it with you anymore.”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said it helped me focus,” Taehyung says, all matter-of-fact about it. “It was from a Spotify playlist of modern orchestral music. You should give it a listen, it really gets you into the zone.”

“My relationship with classical music has, unfortunately, been tainted by a certain someone,” you remind him, taking the time to shoot him a glare just in case he doesn’t already know who exactly is at fault. 

“What a shame, you might actually like it,” Taehyung says sadly, shaking his head. 

“So what are the speakers for, then? If not for your fuckin’ drums,” you ask, motioning to them again as you slurp up the last of your spaghetti. It’s not as if you’ve got some sort of sacred reputation to protect in front of him. He’s seen you at your best (the first day of freshman year, when there was still light in your eyes), and at your worst (2AM, coming out of a drunken stupor, and bedhead-ridden). Like an ex-boyfriend, or something. 

“My friends really like singing karaoke,” Taehyung says. He points to the bluetooth microphones underneath the television as extra proof. 

“Why does that not surprise me,” you muse to yourself. Taehyung always struck you as someone that needs people not to calm him down, but to elevate his already boisterous personality. Friends who are equally as unabashed as he is. 

“Since you’re here for a whole month, we should try it some time,” Taehyung suggests, taking the empty bowl from your hands and heading back to the sink to wash up. 

“You need help with that?” You ask, immediately getting up because even if Taehyung has a tendency to drive you up the wall, you’re still going to be a good guest.

“No, don’t sweat it,” Taehyung says with a shrug. “You know, I have karaoke for All I Want For Christmas Is You. Super seasonal, right?” 

You dust off your hands from where you’re standing, loitering in that weird halfway point between his kitchen and his living room. Checking the clock underneath his television, you realize that it’s already past ten. And while you haven’t gone to sleep this early in a while, being in Taehyung’s apartment makes you feel all sorts of strange. Subdued and exhausted, too grateful to be your normal aggressive and witty self. And after such a long goddamn day, passing out on his navy blue futon seems like absolute heaven. 

“Not right now,” you say, shaking your head. Karaoke is something that friends do with other friends. And despite currently living under the same roof, you and Kim Taehyung are not friends. 

(But perhaps you will be. And that’s the scary part.)

You sigh, absolutely tanked. It’s been a stupidly long day. “Maybe later.”

Living with Taehyung is a sort of strange limbo you never, in a million years, pictured yourself in. You aren’t close enough to be friends but you’ve matured out of being the true enemies you had both envisioned the yourselves as in freshman year. The both of you walk around his apartment like you’re afraid to talk to the other, waiting patiently for the bathroom when the other person’s inside, trying to keep yourself busy with nonexistent work (it is winter break, after all) and the apps on your phones. 

This is the sort of thing you dreamed of when you were a freshman. A Kim Taehyung that you could co-exist with peacefully. Someone who didn’t spend every waking moment of his life making every waking moment of yours unbearable. You used to find excuses to sleep overnight in the library (it was open 24/7, after all) just so you wouldn’t have to go back to your dorm and see his stupid face. Now, the two of you sit on opposite ends of the couch minding your own goddamn business and doing two totally unrelated activities. In silence. The only noises being his refrigerator/freezer combo when it starts making ice and the sounds of your fingers hitting the keyboards on your laptops. Maybe he’s playing a video game on the Playstation 4 he keeps out in the living room, but he has headphones on and isn’t saying a word. 

It’s a very strange sort of limbo indeed, because no opportunities arise for you to become friends nor do any arise for you to become enemies. At this rate, you’ll live together for the month-long winter break and when it ends, you’ll go back to never speaking to each other again. 

And that, strangely enough, makes you sad. Makes you want to reach out to him, try and build up a relationship that last ended in absolute chaos so that when you leave this place, it won’t have been for naught. You will have gained something from it, no matter how small. 

But just like usual, Taehyung beats you to it. 

“Hey,” he says one day, walking into the living room and already pulling on his overcoat. “You free right now?”

“Yeah, why?” You ask, shutting your laptop as you turn to him. He’s all dressed up and you’ve been wearing the same hoodie for the past forty-eight hours. 

“Let’s get hotpot. I’m freezing and I want some hot soup and meat.”

So, you go and get hotpot. 

Like any normal university with more than approximately three East Asians enrolled, there’s a hotpot place right off campus that many a college student frequent. You have, admittedly, not been since freshman year, but this winter break you seem to be reaching back into all of those memories anyway, like a can of worms. Memory worms. 

“I’m starving,” Taehyung says as the two of you sit down. He’s already opening the menu, eyeing all of the different ingredients he can order for a simple All-You-Can-Eat fare. “Plus, I’ve been craving hotpot for weeks now.”

As if on cue, his stomach grumbles and you can hear it from across the booth.

“Even my tummy knows,” Taehyung says, placing a palm to his belly to soothe it. “Have you gotten hotpot before?”

“Yeah, but it was a while ago. I just never had the time to go for a whole two hours and pig out on food,” you say with a sigh. It’s been so long that you barely remember what it tastes like. 

“Then we’ll spend every minute that we’re allowed to here, eating as much food as we want and gaining a few pounds while we’re at it,” Taehyung says, determined. The waiter comes by to pour you both some water and he already begins to order, pointing to about fifteen different things on the menu before the waiter whizzes off. 

“I don’t think I heard a single word you told that guy,” you say candidly. Taehyung listed everything off so quickly that it went right over your head. 

“I just ordered a lot of food, so be prepared,” Taehyung says like it’s a promise. He’s got this glint in his eye, one that tells you that you should be glad you came on a fairly-empty stomach because it’s about to be filled to the brim. 

And prepared you are. Within five minutes of Taehyung ordering, there are plates and dishes and boards of food in front of you and a steaming pot of broth in the middle. There’s so much on the table that you can hardly see the marble table top underneath. 

Taehyung dives right in, clearly an experienced hotpot eater. He grabs two bowls filled with various sauces and pops a couple of the vegetables into his mouth as he waits for the broth to boil. And when it begins to bubble, he immediately begins dumping everything in sight into it, from meat to noodles to vegetables. It all looks ridiculously appetizing. 

When the first round of hotpot is over and done with, you already feel yourself starting to get sleepy just from the consumption overload. Taehyung, on the other hand, has apparently no limit and is already ordering more, pointing to another fifteen things on the menu. 

“Never thought we’d be doing this, did you?” Taehyung asks, and you can hear the knowing tone in his voice. Like he already knows how you’re going to answer him. 

“I have to admit that I never did,” you say. It must the food that’s softened you up. No wonder Taehyung invited you to a place where you can literally eat as much as you want in a two-hour timeframe. 

“This is nice, though, isn’t it?” He asks. 

And for once in your life, you agree. It is nice. Not just the food (though the food is very nice) but being with someone on a winter break that would otherwise be overwhelmingly lonely. Eating out with someone, even if it’s someone with whom your relationship isn’t all that strong, isn’t that sturdy. It’s nice. Because it means that, somewhere along the way, you both wanted something to change for the better. 

“It is.” You nod. “Way better than all the times we fought during freshman year.”

“Remind me why we never went to our RA to resolve things like we should have?” Taehyung says, but he doesn’t make it sound like you both made a mistake. He asks because he’s curious, and because the past is the past. 

“I think we were both too fucking prideful for our own good,” you say, shaking your head. You now would disapprove of you in freshman year so strongly. “We thought that we could either resolve it ourselves or spend the rest of our lives hating each other.”

“Isn’t that crazy?” Taehyung asks, holding up his water like it’s a glass of vintage red wine from the 1800’s. “That we thought that we could just spend the rest of our lives hating each other?”

“I was prepared to do it,” you say, taking another piece of meat from the hotpot in front of you, letting the steam waft from it like a tiny campfire. “With how big this school is, I was convinced that you and I would never have to see each other again. Never have the opportunity to change how we felt about each other.”

“But that’s not how life works, Y/N,” Taehyung tells you, looking into your eyes like he’s trying to reach into your soul, pick apart the memories of freshman year and watch as your relationship deteriorated as each day went by. “It doesn’t matter if we see each other every day for the rest of our lives or if, after this, we never say another word to each other. You will always have the opportunity to change how you feel about someone, even if you aren’t with them. Even if you aren’t seeing them at all.” He takes a deep breath, and reaches over the steaming pot of soup to nudge your shoulder with his finger, ever so slightly. It makes you look up at him, meet his dark brown eyes with your own, foggy from the steam. “That’s what makes us human, Y/N. We’re human because we can change.”

Your heart, still and silent, begins to thump. 

“Do you wanna go to New York?”

“Today?”

It’s early in the morning on Christmas Eve, and the two of you are wide awake after Taehyung’s neighbors a floor below him called the fire department as an early wake-up call for the entire complex. You’ve always been a light sleeper—Taehyung made sure of that in freshman year—but even he woke up as the fire trucks pulled up to the fire lane next to the apartment building. He came stumbling out of his room in nothing but a t-shirt two sizes too big and sweatpants hanging low on his hips, locks of his hair sticking every which way, face illuminated by the blue, red, and orange lights of the emergency vehicles beneath the window. 

And he stayed like that, even as the noise died down and the sun rose. He marched around looking like he had just rolled out of bed, barely sparing himself a second glance in the reflection of his refrigerator. 

“Yeah,” Taehyung responds like it’s obvious. “If we hopped on a bus now we could make it there by nine and spend the day there. How about it?”

“You mean, right now?” You ask, just as clarification. College and its many features have forced you to grow used to spontaneity, but it usually came in the form of “I’m hungry, so I am going to eat an entire bag of Hot Cheetos at this exact moment” or “Yes, my bank account is crying but these pants are very cute,” and not, “Do you wanna go to New York?”

“In a bit. Buses leave from here every hour to go to New York, especially since it’s the holiday season. Tickets are ten dollars. We could do it, if you’d like,” Taehyung says casually, like he’s suggesting that the two of you go grocery shopping or something else equally mundane. 

“Just for the day?” You ask, a girl of both many questions and a shocked expression. 

“Sure,” Taehyung says with a shrug, biting into a tomato as if it were a goddamn apple. “We can go to a museum or two, eat a nice lunch or dinner, and go ice skating at Rockefeller. See the tree, too. It’ll get us in the holiday spirit, don’t you think?”

And normally an outing to New York would have you planning weeks in advance, organizing reservations and buying tickets for entry into exhibits, but it’s winter break and you’ve got more free time than you know what to do with. 

And maybe you’d hate to admit it, but you need someone like Taehyung to get you off of your ass and out of the house, do something fun and spontaneous like college students do in the movies. 

Taehyung is practically a movie portrayal of a college student in real life. He’s spontaneous, secretive, sage. He’s artsy and worldly, paints but is also extremely smart and well-educated. He lives in a quaint off-campus apartment by himself and spends his days making friends and keeping busy. He loves to tease you, and has that sort of lopsided smirk that all casanovas do. And he is, as much as you’d hate to admit it, always been something of a looker. He’s got the same sort of handsome, classic look that young European men in paintings from the eighteenth century have, a portrait of them in the prime of their lives. One wink and he’d send every preteen girl in the audience to their knees.

And you? Well, you suppose you’re the tragically unlucky female lead who has to live with him until classes resume. 

Taehyung’s standing in the kitchen, leaning on the counter island as he scrolls for bus tickets on his phone. “There’s a bus leaving from the station in thirty minutes. Think we can make it?”

It might be the fact that you’ve been holed up in Taehyung’s apartment for the past forty-eight hours that makes you say yes. Or it’s the desperation to do something, anything, literally anything, to keep yourself busy this break. 

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that little voice in the back of your chest, one buried in the depths of your heart, that makes you go. Because there is something so wonderfully exhilarating about being spontaneous.  And there is something even more exciting about it being with someone you know. 

You grin. “Let’s do it.”

Two hours later, the two of you are standing outside Penn Station in New York City, staring at the road signs to try and orient yourself. It’s chilly and a little windy, but the sun beats down regardless, shadows of skyscrapers cast along the streets. 

You pull out your phone to pull up the Maps app, looking up directions, but Taehyung just begins to walk down 7th Avenue, not a care in the world. 

“Where are you going?” You say quickly, scrambling to catch up to him. This early in the morning, your breath still turns to fog as you jog towards him to meet his abnormally long strides.

“Do you want to go to the Met, MOMA, or Guggenheim?” Taehyung asks simply, like he’s trying to decide which type of Doritos to get in the chips aisle. 

“Uh…” you are, admittedly, not that particular to the art that you’ll see. Art does not have as much of an immediate relevance to you as other things in your life, like your bank account, or your final semester grades. “Why don’t you pick the museum, and I’ll pick the restaurant we go to?”

“Deal,” Taehyung says, that same devilish gleam in his eyes, a trick (or two) up his sleeves. Only this time, you aren’t afraid of what he’s got in store. 

You find that you are very much looking forward to it. 

Twenty minutes later sees the both of you standing outside the gigantic glass doors of the MOMA, surrounded by a pitch black exterior about as edgy and contemporary as the pieces of art inside. 

“You never struck me as a modern art kind of guy,” you tell Taehyung as the both of you walk inside, glass windows and ceilings on every side of you and a bustling crowd right in front of you. Modern art seems rather stuffy. And perhaps, two years ago, you would have equated Taehyung to such, but now, stuffiness couldn’t be the furthest adjective to describe him. He may be a little obnoxious and overwhelmingly charismatic, but he is certainly not stuffy. 

“I prefer Impressionism and the subsequent periods,” Taehyung tells you, another fact you never knew but happily stow away. “But I am, admittedly, a bitch for modern art, no matter how goddamn stupid it is.”

“Good to know we’re spending our money on a museum that will definitely be worth our while,” you say dryly, taking the two tickets from the woman behind the desk. You pick up a map while you’re at it, almost certain to get lost in this maze of a museum, but Taehyung is already zooming off, forcing you to scurry through the herds of people just to keep up his pace. 

“Do you know where we’re going?” You ask, entirely serious. You fumble to open up the map and suddenly you’ve got a piece of shiny paper larger than your backpack in your hands, overwhelmed. 

Taehyung stops, the two of you standing right by the middle of a doorway, blocking everybody’s path. And he places his hands on top of yours, lowering the map as you gaze up at him, wondering why the heck you haven’t moved to the side so you aren’t inconveniencing the thousands of people roaming the museum. His brows are soft, a little furrowed, like someone began to knit them together but then forgot halfway through. Like he’s thinking. Like he wants to tell you something. 

“No,” Taehyung says softly, large hands enveloping yours as he begins to fold the map back up, “I don’t know where we’re going.”

You open your mouth, about to prove your point, but Taehyung continues. 

“But I don’t need to. Because we’re supposed to get lost,” he tells you, honest, candid, and true. “That’s the whole point. It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.”

You scoff, heart a little warm on the inside but wit still sharp. “You sound like an infomercial for a cruise.”

Taehyung laughs, tilting his head back in the way that says that he means it. “I’m serious, Y/N. Please. We don’t need a map. We can guide each other. All we need is faith, trust…” He pauses, leaning in and waiting for you to finish his sentence. 

Begrudgingly, you give in, mostly because he’s too naturally charming not to. “And pixie dust.”

Taehyung grins, satisfied, before he catches you by surprise, takes your hand in his, and pulls you into the elevator. 

Much like the corrupt businesses whose main offices are only a few minutes walk away, you go from the top down. Taehyung says that it is like a very, very long slide. You say that it’s an extremely slow walk. 

He’s an art student. You don’t really know what else you were expecting. He stares at each piece until it bores into his eyes, fills up another cup in his soul, overflowing with color, with light and meaning and everything in between. Every now and then, he and you stop at the same one, inspecting each and every detail, and Taehyung will lean to the side and whisper in your ear. 

He will tell you what he thinks of the medium, what he thinks of this piece and what he thinks of the positioning of that specific object. He tells you not how he interprets it in the eyes of the artist, but what it means to him, and how he perceives it. And, as the hours pass, you realize that, while you have been in museums before, you had never felt like you were truly there. And here you are, standing in front of priceless pieces of art with a boy in love with art beside you, and he holds your hand as he takes you through what brings him more joy than anything else. 

(Well, besides perhaps, chemistry.)

When you reach the first painting and sculpture floor, Taehyung lets out an audible gasp. 

You round the corner and before you know it, you’re standing in front of what could very well be the most famous painting of the nineteenth century. 

“I forgot it was here,” Taehyung says distantly, like he’s forgotten who he’s talking to. In the ink black of his pupils, you can see the oil painting reflected, the thick blue and yellow brushstrokes, each and every line on the canvas. 

“Now, this piece I’m familiar with,” you say, standing next to him and staring up at The Starry Night, an artistic feat, worth more than probably a hundred times your tuition, and a legacy. The legacy that The Starry Night left behind is one that you see still reflected today. You see it in all of the other people in this little room, clambering over one another just so they can get a glimpse. You see it in the little children who draw self-portraits in art class, Sharpies and markers and crayons littering the page. 

And you see it in the boy next to you, who loved something so much he knew that he would be doing it for the rest of his life. He would be following a legacy, forever, until he forged one of his own. You look not at the art but as Kim Taehyung gazes at it, memorizing each and every stroke and imprinting it onto his brain. And you finally realize what art means: passion. It means that it fills you up, flows through your blood and into your heart, consumes you. And it means that the only thing you can do to prevent it from eating you alive is to spread it, and let others get a taste of the madness. 

“It really is beautiful, isn’t it,” you muse. You don’t know much about art but when there is something so mesmerizing, so stunning, in front of you, it’s difficult not to notice. 

You feel Taehyung turn his head, letting the gaze of his piercing brown eyes rest upon your figure for a split second before he turns back. “It is,” he says. 

The way that the two of you go through art museums, by the time you emerge, it’s already dark and the streets are beginning to empty as tourists and cityfolk alike find places to eat, walking into every bar, restaurant, cafe, and house on the hunt for a good meal, whether homemade or curated. You had spent nearly an hour in the gift shop alone, laughing at the overpriced t-shirts and kitschy pillows. 

“Where to next, m’lady?” Taehyung asks as you push open the glass doors and let the biting cold hit your noses. 

“You know, we were so busy in there that I didn’t even have time to find a nice place to eat tonight,” you admit sheepishly. 

“That’s alright,” Taehyung says with a shrug. “I like surprises. Spontaneity is my thing.”

“You don’t say,” you comment sagely, making Taehyung roll his eyes. 

Knowing that it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation now, you and Taehyung make your way south, following the flow of traffic heading towards Times Square and keeping an eye open for any places that look relatively nice and busy, but not too busy, the perfect sign of both a delicious and available restaurant. 

After walking for a few blogs, cuddling together (in a totally platonic way) to preserve as much body heat as possible in the now freezing weather, air no longer warmed by the sun’s rays, you stumble upon a tiny hole in the wall Mediterranean place. You can’t really see anything inside due to the fog on the window, forming from the combination of cold air and hot, but Taehyung does a quick google search and says that it’s a modern Mediterranean restaurant that specializes in pizza. Google says it has two dollar signs. You hear the word pizza, and everything pretty much goes out of the window. 

“Hi,” Taehyung says as you squeeze through the little hallway to get to the host, voice warm and silky. “Table for two?”

“Your last name, sir?” The man asks. 

“Oh, we don’t have a reservation,” Taehyung says with a shake of his head. You two are college students. It’s not like you plan ahead anyway. 

“That’s okay, we still ask for every customer’s name for a more personalized experience,” the host says. He leans forward, eyes wide, waiting for Taehyung to respond. 

“Kim,” Taehyung says simply as the host gathers two menus and a wine list. 

“Right this way, Mr. and Mrs. Kim,” the host says, and you open your mouth to correct him (Because you are not married. You’re not. You’re not even dating. This is not a date. It’s not a date, right?), but Taehyung puts a finger to his lips and tells you to zip it. It’s almost like he’s enjoying this. 

For the rest of the evening, the wait staff all address you and Taehyung as Mr. and Mrs. Kim, which is absolutely outrageous for multiple reasons: you are college students, you both look like college students, you’re not dating, you don’t act like you’re dating (other than the hand-holding and cuddling which was purely out of survival and nothing else), and most importantly, you’re not interested in each other like that. That part is obvious. Isn’t it?

When you order a glass of champagne each they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When Taehyung has a question about one of the ingredients on one of the pizzas they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When you order your food they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When they come by to clarify Taehyung’s request of no anchovies they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. When they bring these massive pizzas and place them down on your table, wishing you a pleasant meal they call you Mr. and Mrs. Kim. 

Mr. and Mrs. Kim, they call you. 

“Everything alright, Mr. and Mrs. Kim?” Your waiter asks as you’re plowing through your individual pizzas very inelegantly. 

“Yes,” Taehyung grins cheesily. “Thank you very much.”

He’s positively beaming. 

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” You ask, a single eyebrow raised. 

“This pizza is really good,” Taehyung tells you. 

“Not that,” you say with a roll of your eyes. You know that Taehyung knows exactly what you’re referring to, he’s just being annoying about it, as per usual. “The whole ‘we’re married’ thing. You like it, don’t you?”

“The “Mr. and Mrs. Kim’ thing?” Taehyung says with a smile. He’s relishing in the feeling, especially when it’s obvious that you’re not as keen on the collective nickname. “I fucking love it. You don’t?”

“We’re college students,” you remind him. 

“So? That means that they think that we look old enough to not be college students. I consider that a win, especially because Jimin always says I look twelve,” Taehyung says with a shrug. 

“We’re not married,” you add. It’s the truth. 

“You’re right, we’re not, but Mr. and Mrs. Kim has such a nice ring to it, don’t you think? I love the way that it sounds,” Taehyung says. He basks in it. 

“We’re not even dating, Taehyung,” you say with a sigh, exasperated. Doesn’t he get it? It’s weird, being Mr. and Mrs. Kim, because you never have been. There never was a Mr. and Mrs. Kim. And quite frankly, there never will be. “We’re not even interested in it.”

“Who says?” Taehyung asks, and the path he’s directing this conversation down is not one you’d like to take. It’s rocky and bumpy and unclear, hazy with fog. You don’t do fog. You like when things are clear cut and visible. 

“I do,” you say with a frown. “Are you interested in dating me, Taehyung? Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to date you right now. Or, like, at all.”

Taehyung pauses. His brows are furrowed again, but all the way this time. He stares down at his pizza, and he contemplates. You sit there and watch him, feeling the weight of every second as it passes by. Were you too harsh? Maybe you were. But it was the truth, and he deserves something honest, even if it’s brutal. 

“Oh,” Taehyung says, like he wasn’t expecting those words to come out of your mouth. What you said has been lingering between you like smoke, refusing to dissipate. “Well, I—I guess that makes two of us.” It’s obvious that there’s something else there, just underneath the water, but you don’t press further. It sounds like he’d rather keep it hidden. 

When you leave, the waitstaff bid you goodbye exactly as you had predicted. 

“Enjoy your evening, Mr. and Mrs. Kim,” they say cordially as you and Taehyung pull on your coats and hats and gloves and head out the door. 

“You too,” Taehyung says softly after a few seconds, like he was waiting for the words to fade away before speaking. “Thank you.”

Your bus leaves from Penn Station at 9:30 that night, and it’s barely seven. Plenty of time for you to continue exploring, see Times Square all lit up like it’s New Year’s Eve, go up to the top of the Empire State Building, or even take a peek into Central Park at nighttime, when the moon is high and the lanterns are lit. 

“How about we go ice skating?” Taehyung suggests as the two of you walk along the pavement, side by side. Your hands are buried deep into the pockets of your coat. 

“At Rockefeller?”

“Sure, why not?” Taehyung says. That sentence pretty much sums up your trip to New York thus far. “I’ve always wanted to go skating and see the tree during Christmastime. When else will we get the chance?”

Five minutes later you’ve paid for rental skates, a locker for your shoes, and a ticket to the rink. Visible right next to you is the enormous tree, the lights twinkling and cameras flashing as everyone scrambles to get their Instagram picture to prove that they actually went to the tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City. 

When the zamboni is finished and the employees have skated over the ice enough to increase the level of friction, Taehyung and you balance on your skates as you walk towards the entrance. Slowly, everybody begins to glide on, wobbling at first before eventually getting the hang of it. There are a couple of small children holding onto those little penguin skate assistants, laughing as their older brothers and sisters guide them along the ice. 

“I’ve never skated before,” you admit nervously, about two seconds before you’re about to enter the rink. 

Taehyung’s mouth drops open. “Never?”

“No,” you reiterate, even more nervous than before. “I have no idea what I’m doing, I just said yes because like you said we’re in New York and it’s nearly Christmas and we should just seize every opportunity that we have and—”

“Y/N,” Taehyung says, calming you down as he ushers you away from the entrance so you aren’t blocking other people’s paths. “It’s okay. You don’t have to worry,” he tells you, holding onto your wrists to make you look up at him. “I can show you how to. It’s easier than it looks, I swear. I won’t let you fall. You just have to trust me, alright?” He shakes your wrists to catch your attention, make sure that you heard him. “Alright?”

Deep breath. Inhale, exhale. 

“Alright.”

Everything is, in fact, not alright. No matter what Taehyung says, ice skating is way more fucking difficult than it looks. Taehyung steps onto the ice and it turns into second nature for him, gliding around a small circle to get warmed up as you cling onto the side railing like an idiot. You have no idea how to move, you have no idea where to go, you just shuffle along the railing with the rest of the children who are far younger than you, also trying to skate for the first time. 

This is embarrassing. 

“You’re a liar,” you tell Taehyung pointedly as he circles around, coming up to rest next to you. You’d point at his chest for emphasis, but you’re afraid you’ll fall without both hands on the railing at all times. “This is—” you pause, remembering that there are children present, “—very difficult.”

Taehyung just chuckles. “You have to be brave, Y/N, come on,” Taehyung implores. He holds out his hand, motioning for you to let go of the wall and take a leap of faith. 

“No, I will not be brave. Please let me be weak,” you beg, scared for your life. One wrong move and you’d go splat in the middle of the rink and embarrass yourself in front of all of New York City. 

“Come on, Y/N,” Taehyung says, holding his hand closer. “You said you trusted me. I told you, I won’t let you fall. Come on. Be brave.” And then he adds, leaning in to meet your eyes, “for me?”

He’s always been too charming for your own good. 

Tentatively, second by second by painstaking second, you remove your hands from the railing, first the left and then the right, as Taehyung pulls you right next to him, holding on tight. 

“See?” He asks as you begin to move on your own, Taehyung’s short glides pulling you along the ice. “Look, it’s not that bad.”

“I am scared for my life right now.” You blink. 

“Focus on me, okay,” Taehyung says, making you meet his eyes once more. “Eyes on me, alright. You’re doing fine. You’re skating, isn’t this fun?”

“I am terrified that I am going to perish on this very rink,” you repeat for emphasis. 

“Look, Y/N, look! You’re skating!” Taehyung tells you, and finally you glance down at your feet and realize that they’re beginning to move on the ice, all on their own. 

“Oh my God! I’m skating! What the—heck!” You say, eyes widening in excitement. 

“I knew you could do it,” Taehyung says, hands gripping on tight. You can feel the warmth from his palms seep into your own, feel the back of your hand burning from the touch. “You just had to trust me.”

“This is so cool,” you say, immediately very pleased with yourself. “I’m such a pro, I can do anything. Who said skating was scary?”

Taehyung opens his mouth to respond, but you shoot him a warning glare and he zips his lips. 

“Watch this, I can even do it on my own. You’re gonna be very impressed, Kim Taehyung, just watch me!”

Within the next moment, you’re letting go of his hand and pushing yourself away from him, gliding along the ice ever-so-slightly as you begin to balance on your own. 

But power is short-lived, and much like every leading male in Greek tragedies, your hubris gets the best of you, and you face the ultimate demise. 

The moment you attempt to pick up your left foot, your right toe pick gets caught in a dip of the ice and you go toppling over, collapsing onto the ice in a cold, bruised ball. 

Luckily, your coat takes most of the hit, its length preventing your knees from hurting into the next century, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing. Ashamed of yourself and even more mortified to have to face Taehyung after boasting about how amazing you are, you slowly push yourself off of the ice, wobbling like a baby deer. 

“What was that, Y/N?” Taehyung says with a raised eyebrow as he skates over. He’s clearly just recovered from a laughing fit. 

“Fuck off,” you mutter, and you don’t even care if children hear you. “I got excited.”

“Clearly,” Taehyung notes, eyes wide and knowing. He holds out a hand, and before you even have time to think of a snarky retort your palm is reaching out for it, letting him pull you up off of the rink. “Here. Come on.”

One hour and two fairly bruised knees later, you and Taehyung are taking off your skates and relishing in the feeling of your feet, flat on the ground like feet should be. 

“You alright?” Taehyung asks. You didn’t have any massive falls following the first spectacle, but you admittedly, still cannot ice skate very well. You’ll have to figure out a way to learn. 

You round out the night by going to look at the Christmas Tree. Now that it’s fairly late, the massive families with young children have all gone home, leaving only the young adults left to bask in the glory of the peak of Christmas decorations. 

“It seemed bigger in photos, didn’t it?” Taehyung asks as the both of you crane your necks to look at the tree in all of its glory. “Like it was the size of a small tower.”

“Yeah,” you agree. It looks somewhat disappointingly small, now that you’re here in front of it. “Today was a lot of fun, Taehyung. Your spontaneity paid off.”

“When does it not?” Taehyung asks, proud of himself. He even has enough of an ego to do a little hair flip, making you shake your head disapprovingly. “But I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I certainly did.”

“What was your favorite part?” You ask. 

“Definitely when you were in your prime for one moment and a puddle on the ice the next,” Taehyung says, and for that, he earns a punch to the shoulder. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. But I did really enjoy ice skating.”

“Yeah, because you can actually do it,” you remind him. 

“What about you?”

You think. This day has been so long, from getting woken up by Taehyung’s irresponsible neighbors and the entire city’s fire department outside your window, to hopping on a bus to New York, to museums and restaurants and ice skating and the city, you feel like you’ve lived three days in one. 

“The museum,” you finally decide. “I’m not really an art person, but I thought it was lovely. Nice and heated, too.”

“Yes, the best part about the Museum of Modern Art was its modern, state-of-the-art central heating,” Taehyung repeats, making you laugh. “I’m glad you liked the museum. I was worried you’d think it was too stuffy.”

You had thought that too. And then you watched someone fall in love with each and every piece, right in front of you, and you realized that there’s more to art than putting a price tag on it and critiquing it. It’s passion, materialized. It’s real.  

It’s Taehyung. 

“No,” you say with a shake of your head. “I thought it was beautiful.”

On Christmas Eve, it snows. 

Correction: On Christmas Eve, it snows a lot. 

Correction for the correction: On Christmas Eve, it blizzards. 

When you listened to “White Christmas” last night, this isn’t exactly what you had in mind, if you were being honest. Maybe an inch or two. Maybe even just a flurry. But certainly not nearly two feet worth of snow, effectively trapping you inside of Taehyung’s apartment complex until the next day because not even the snow plows are allowed to go out on the roads. Not until the snow stops. 

“Good thing we don’t live on the first floor, right?” Taehyung asks with a laugh that late afternoon, taking a peek out of the window to stare down at the white expanse below you. “I’d hate to be those guys.”

“It must be so cold,” you say sadly. You’ve spent the better part of today huddled up in as many blankets as Taehyung owns in his apartment and you have no intention of shedding even one of them. Not even as you sweat right through your pajama shirt from high school. 

“We can just make dinner here, tonight,” Taehyung says, fishing around in his kitchen to see what the options are. It’s already beginning to get dark even though it’s not even five o’clock. God, you hate winter. 

“What are we making?”

Taehyung fumbles through the cabinets and his fridge, hunting for anything that might make a good meal. Eventually, he pulls out two cartons of Trader Joe’s vegetable broth and every vegetable in his fridge. 

“Wanna make soup?”

Soup is very easy to make. You set the broth to simmer, chop up vegetables, and dump them in the pot. 

But the idea of you and Taehyung sharing his tiny kitchen space, both with knives in your hands is, well, a recipe for disaster.

Luckily no knife mishaps occur, but, like the children at heart that you are, you eventually end with pelting uncooked lima beans at each other in the most adult version of a food fight you have ever had in your life. No fuss, no mess, no tomatoes or key lime pies or spaghetti doused in sauce getting chucked across the kitchen floor, the dinner table. 

No, your little food fight ends with you and Taehyung kneeling down on the tile as you pick up each little lima bean, gathering them in your palms. 

You make to toss it out but Taehyung stops you. 

“Wait,” Taehyung says, a hand on top of yours as it hovers over the trash can, “don’t toss them out.”

“Huh?” You ask. 

“I’ll feed them to the birds,” he says, taking the pile from your hands and placing all of the lima beans, along with his own, in a Ziploc bag. 

“You have a porch out here?” You ask, looking around. You’ve never seen it. 

“No.” Taehyung shakes his head. “They land on my bedroom window sill so I feed them.”

When you were in freshman year, you remember how Taehyung always left his window open. You know this because even though yours was always closed, anytime a police car, fire truck, ambulance, or particularly loud motorist drove by, the sound was always loudest on the wall of your room that bordered Taehyung’s. You hated how he always left his windows open, even in the winter. Wasn’t he goddamn cold?

And now, even though it’s Christmas Eve and there’s a blanket of snow outside nearly two feet deep, Taehyung will go and open his bedroom window again and feed the birds lima beans like a fucking Disney prince, and it makes your heart flutter, ever so slightly. 

You end the night sitting on Taehyung’s couch, only a foot or so of space in between your bodies as he multitasks, channel surfing and gulping down your homemade soup. 

“I haven’t made soup in a while, but damn, this is good,” Taehyung says, drinking the rest of it before getting up to help himself to seconds. He sticks a hand out to take your bowl as well, and wordlessly you hand it to him. 

“It’s my magic touch,” you tease. It was not. Taehyung did most of the work. You don’t have much of an affinity for cooking.

“It’s my chemistry brain,” Taehyung corrects. “Chem is basically like making soup.”

“But it can kill you,” you tack on.

“But it can kill you,” he agrees, returning to the couch. This time, when he sits down, he plops right down next to you, your sides touching as you sit in front of his television, slurping up homemade vegetable soup. “How’s your major? What is it, again?”

“English with a minor in Psych,” you say over a mouthful of carrot. 

“Sounds like too much reading for me,” Taehyung comments. “I’d only like picture books.”

“Yeah, wonder why,” you tell him sarcastically. “But it’s going well. I’m thinking of maybe adding Consumer Psych as another minor since there’s a lot of overlap, but I’m not sure. I’ll think about it.”

“Sounds busy,” Taehyung comments. 

“Almost as busy as visual studies and chem,” you remind him. “Seriously, do you ever sleep?”

“Inspiration is a fickle mistress and the will to do my chem problem sets, even more fickle,” Taehyung muses like the two subjects aren’t the absolute bane of his existence. “But yeah, I mean, I made it this far.”

“Our majors are so different,” you comment. They are. Encompassing all sides of the college major spectrum, from STEM to art to humanities. The only thing you’re missing is a business minor. But only snakes would ever be interested in something like that. 

“It’s nice,” Taehyung decides. “Because this is forcing us to talk with someone with whom we don’t already share all of the same classes with.”

“I couldn’t imagine taking the same class as you,” you say, not because you’d hate having to be in the same room as Kim Taehyung or dread the potential to be paired up for group work, but because your tastes are so different. They’ve always been different. Art, English, chemistry, psychology. Headphones or speakers. Closed windows or open. It’s always been opposites with the two of you. 

“Maybe I’ll take a psych class so that way we can,” Taehyung says. 

“Maybe I’ll take an art history course,” you retort.

“You’d really take an art history course? They’re awfully boring, and I’m an art major,” Taehyung says, in disbelief. 

You ponder it for a moment, but then nod. Yes, you would. Even if it sent you to sleep. Because it looks genuinely interesting. “After today, I wouldn’t mind it. You showed me a lot about art, Kim Taehyung. More than I thought I would ever learn in my lifetime.”

Taehyung sighs, shutting the television off. You guys weren’t watching it anyway. You hardly realized it was on. He looks down at his empty soup bowl, and then at you. He always does that—always looks somewhere else before looking at you, like he has to muster up the courage by first staring at an inanimate object. And then he says, “You’ll never stop learning about art. Neither will I. It’s a constant cycle, learning and relearning and changing your mind and revisiting old pieces. Because art is all around us.”

He looks at you, like he’s trying to say something else but doesn’t have the words. “You just have to look for it.”

New Year’s Eve is often a time of reflecting on the year that’s passed, making a list of goals to achieve once the clock strikes twelve. Thanking your friends and family, your loved ones, for being there for you this year, and promising to be there for them as well next year. 

To you and Taehyung, it’s literally your last chance to get piss drunk this year without repercussions. You’ve never stayed here, at your university in the city, for New Year’s Eve (obviously). You’d be interested in getting all dressed up to go out. Taehyung would also be interested. 

And so, after a day of slouching around and making half-assed resolutions you know you won’t keep (like managing your time better. As a college student? Impossible.), you and Taehyung decide to get dressed up and go out, pulling out the winter jackets you don’t care if you lose, or if they get trashed, or if they stain with vodka. All you want is to lose your goddamn mind in a tiny club with a bunch of other wasted young adults who don’t want to stay at home on the last night of the year. 

You are, unsurprisingly, a self-proclaimed not-a-going-out person, but tonight is something of an exception. It’s your last night to do this this year, and honestly, you can’t really think of a better way to end the year. There’s been plenty of ups (that A+ on your paper on the ethics of Beowulf, yay!) and plenty of downs (Global Politics in the Twentieth Century, yikes), and no better way to say goodbye to them all than with alcohol in your system. But even if, during the regular college season, you’re something of a stick in the mud, you remembered to pack a nice party dress just in case, so you tug on a little black velvet mini-dress that sparkles rainbow in the light, covered with tiny glitters that get stuck in your hair and never come out. 

As you’re fishing around for some tights that you don’t care about so your legs don’t freeze off in the cold, the door to Taehyung’s bedroom opens. 

Out he walks in all of his New Year’s Eve glory, a full black ensemble complete with structured belt and a leather jacket. You turn around to look at him and he stops dead in his tracks, eyes blinking like he doesn’t know where to look. It gives you a clear view of him and his simple yet extremely flattering outfit. He looks like Danny Zuko. He looks like a boy you would avoid in high school. 

Funnily enough, seeing him now draws you closer to him.

“Wow, hot stuff, you clean up nicely,” You comment, tugging on some black tights with a hole in the back that no one’s going to notice. 

“I could say the same thing about you,” he adds on, a hand coming up to rub at the nape of his neck. “I didn’t even know you had this.”

“I packed it just in case,” you say with a shrug. 

“Came in handy, didn’t it?” He asks. He comes up to stand by you, holding his arm out for you to wrap yours around, two people on a mission to not remember most things about this night. “You ready to go?” 

Stuffing your phone and wallet into your purse, you quickly link arms with him as you walk to the door, your black boots clopping on the floor like the obnoxious high-heel owner you are. 

“Yeah, you ready?” You ask, doing a quick double check. You’ve got everything. 

“Let’s fuck some shit up.”

And fuck some shit up you do. By the time you reach the club that Taehyung had found online, you can already hear the bass pounding through the walls, feel the ground shake from the speakers alone. Go big or go home, you suppose. 

As you expected, the club is already packed with bodies. Every young adult within a twenty-mile radius is out tonight, eager to spend the last night of the year doing what young adults in the primes of their lives do best: drink. And you and Taehyung are no exception. 

Like everybody else entering the club at the same time as you, you make a beeline for the bar, already itching to get something into your system. You don’t love being drunk, and you like the taste of alcohol even less, so you just order a simple cocktail that should keep you occupied for a while. 

Taehyung, on the other hand, well. He seems to harbor the go big or go home mentality quite firmly. It’s obvious that he’s here to do one thing and one thing only, which is not remember what he did when he wakes up tomorrow. You watch, a little impressed and a lot nervous about what exactly he’s trying to achieve, as he downs several shots in a row, pays the bartender, and immediately pulls you into the crowd of people dancing in the center of the room. 

“The more I move, the faster my body can process the alcohol,” Taehyung tells you as your cocktail sloshes around in the glass in your hand. It’s an alright cocktail. A little too sweet for you, but you suppose that that’s your fault. 

“Wow, when you said you wanted to fuck shit up, you meant it,” you comment as Taehyung dances, jumping and swaying to the beat of whatever Top 40 pop song is blaring from the speakers. You can barely hear the music over the volume of the rest of the club, people shouting to speak to each other, the sound of feet hitting the floor. 

Within approximately fifteen minutes, Taehyung is already fairly tipsy and eager to keep going, bubbling over with excitement. 

You convince him to dance a little longer before he goes back to get more, trying to make sure at least a bit of the alcohol he had at the beginning of the night goes through his body. The song changes to something much sultrier, like honey dripping from the speakers themselves, and suddenly, the entire club’s atmosphere changes. 

“I love this song,” Taehyung says, and it must be the lack of control that causes him to place a hand on your waist and pull you in close to him, making you gasp. 

“Wow, okay,” you comment, blinking. Taehyung rests his chin on your shoulder, leaning down as he holds you tight, your bodies swaying in tandem. 

“You don’t mind this?” Taehyung asks. 

“Not if you don’t,” you respond. He’s practically drunk, and you’re even a little buzzed. There are worse things you could be doing. 

“This is nice, isn’t it?” He inquires aloud. It’s a good thing that you can’t see his face, can’t watch the haze in his eyes, otherwise you might lose your footing and collapse. 

“What is?”

“This,” Taehyung repeats unhelpfully. 

The next three minutes are some of the most confusing ones of your life as Taehyung rests a hand on your waist, palm rubbing up and down as the two of you dance together like it means something to the both of you. 

But it doesn’t, does it? You chalk it up to both of your minds not being as sharp with some alcohol in your systems. That must be it.

When the song ends, the mood disappears as well, and Taehyung’s back to his bouncy, tipsy self. He’s practically stumbling over himself once he determines that it’s time for more shots, and you’ve never seen Taehyung drunk before but you can tell that he’s nearly there. You’ll probably put a hard stop on the drinks after this round, since Taehyung is the one most familiar with the way back to his apartment and you wouldn’t mind going home and sleeping after this.

“Come with?” Taehyung asks as he eyes the bartender like he’s the love of his life. 

“No, it’s alright, Tae,” you say.

“You never call me Tae,” Taehyung comments mindlessly. Even when he’s nearly drunk, he still picks up on the little things. 

“I guess the alcohol is making me soft,” you admit. “You go. I’m gonna find the bathroom and hope that nobody’s having sex in it.”

“Okay,” Taehyung singsongs as you pull away from him, looking for a dingy hallway to go down. “Be safe.”

“You too, I’ll be back soon,” you promise him, and that’s when you go rushing down the hallway.

Things are certainly weird down here. It must be the feeling of the new year looming over your heads. Like this is the last night to do everything wrong without regretting it in the morning. The bathroom is, luckily enough, empty, so you rush in and splash your face with some water, not caring about if your makeup runs. You’d sweat it off, regardless. You stare at yourself in the mirror, and this feels so stupidly like a goddamn romantic comedy that it makes you want to laugh at the irony. 

Beautiful male art student lead gets drunk, confuses hardheaded and impenetrable female lead who doesn’t believe in love and supposedly hates beautiful male art student’s guts. Tension ensues. 

Your life may as well already have a shitty Rotten Tomatoes rating stamped on top of it. 

After collecting your thoughts and praying that that white stain on the wall isn’t what you think it is, you leave the bathroom and scurry down the hallway, eager to find Taehyung and make sure he isn’t bouncing off the walls after a second round of shots. 

He’s not. 

Instead, he’s still standing by the bar as a beautiful young woman speaks to him, long dark hair resting against her shoulders and a model-esque smile on her face. She’s leaning in with a suggestive look in her eyes, a hand coming up to rub at the side of his arm. 

You furrow your brows as you watch them from afar, a little hurt by the fact that beautiful male art student lead is confusing hardheaded and impenetrable female lead even more, but then you notice Taehyung’s hesitance. The way he backs up a little when she gets closer. How he stiffens when she touches him. 

And, well, fuck that. 

 “Tae,” you say, rushing up to him faster than you’d like to admit. “There you are, I was looking for you.” 

The girl next to him frowns at the sight of you, and it’s clear she feels no shame to hide the immediately dislike. Sure, you don’t have model proportions or a smile whiter than snow, but you have morals. 

“Who’s this?” You ask, trying to be nice. 

“Nobody,” Taehyung tells you, and his hand immediately interlocks with yours. Standing next to him, you can feel as the tension fades from his body, his whole demeanor relaxing now that you’re by his side. “She just wanted to talk.”

“Are you a friend?” She asks, because she knows. 

“I’m a special type of friend,” you say. There’s no way she’ll leave Taehyung alone otherwise. And this is definitely on the cocktail you drank (and nothing else, you swear!), but you even reach up to plop a kiss on his cheek for proof. Taehyung’s eyes widen as you do, but he plays it off as catching him off guard and grins, wrapping an arm around you to pull you even closer. “Can we help you?”

The girl is absolutely pissed, which means that you did your job. 

“No, it’s alright,” she hisses through gritted teeth before turning her sights on someone else. Someone without a friend to protect them. 

“Thanks,” Taehyung whispers once she’s gone. Even though she’s probably not coming back, Taehyung keeps you close, a hand on you at all times like you’ll fly away if he doesn’t hold on tight. 

“Of course,” you tell him. “You’d do the same for me.”

“She scared me,” Taehyung says, and if his red face is anything to go by, it’s clear that he’s pretty much reached his alcohol intake limit. “I’m glad you came.”

“I could tell you didn’t want to talk to her,” you say. 

“Because I wanted to talk to you,” Taehyung says, and it’s definitely the alcohol that’s erased his filter. “I was waiting for you to come out of the bathroom and she just came up to me and started flirting with me. I think she wanted to get in my pants. I didn’t want her to get into my pants.”

“I know.”

“I’d much rather be with you than with her. Than with anybody else. I would always want to be with you, instead.” He tells you, keeping your hands firmly intertwined as you lean against the bartender counter. 

And well, huh. That’s different. Taehyung’s aforementioned lack of a filter means that any thoughts that run through his mind immediately turn into spoken words, but you weren’t expecting those words. You never thought you;d hear them, not in a million goddamn years.

“Okay, Tae,” you say, patting him assuringly. He’s just drunk. That’s all. 

“I’m serious, Y/N,” Taehyung tells you firmly, pushing your comforting hand off of his shoulder and turning to face you directly. “I mean it.”

“I know, Tae.” you reassure him. It’s easier than trying to fight him, especially when he’s this hammered. You check the time on your phone. Maybe it’s time to leave. If you go now, you’ll be able to make it back by midnight. “Let’s go home, okay? I’m ready to go home.”

Wordlessly, Taehyung nods, and the two of you leave the club before people are even thinking about ringing in the New Year. 

When you reach Taehyung’s apartment, he takes off his leather jacket to hang on the coat rack and turns the television on. Only three minutes to midnight. 

“I had fun,” you say, trying to lighten the conversation. The way back was silent, the only noises the sounds of New Year’s Eve parties on every block you turned onto. Taehyung kept his face forward and his eyes ahead, even as you tried to huddle close to him to conserve the warmth. 

“It was sort of fun,” Taehyung halfheartedly agrees. 

“Did you drink too much?” You ask. His face is still beet red. 

“I don’t think I drank enough.”

Two minutes to midnight. 

You frown, brows furrowing. Why on Earth would Taehyung want to drink more? What would change if he had another shot, a can of beer or a little cocktail?

Slowly, you begin to peel off your own layers, resting your coat on the back of the couch and slipping off your boots. The both of you stand in his living room as the TV begins to buzz with excitement, the broadcast of Times Square lighting up the otherwise silent, tense atmosphere. He’s only a couple of feet away but it feels like he couldn’t be farther from you. 

One minute to midnight. Everybody begins to count down, and you feel yourself holding your breath. 

“Will you be alright going to sleep?” You ask. Even if Taehyung’s still drunk, he’s far less bouncy than he was at the club. 

“I’ll be fine. Goodnight, Y/N,” he says, beginning to walk past. 

Three. 

“Okay.”

Two.

“Okay.”

One. 

Something overtakes Taehyung, something quick and brief. He stops right next to you and flinches, like he wants to lean in and do something, anything, goddamnit, but stops himself before he goes through with it. Everyone on television is cheering, but this apartment couldn’t be less festive even if you tried. 

Taehyung sends you a small smile as the world rings in the new year, dashing off to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him. 

And you stand there, in the middle of his living room like the goddamn fool you are. Turning to the television, you watch over and over as every couple in Times Square kisses, clip after clip after clip, and like a goddamn idiot, you wish that Taehyung had done the same. 

The end of winter break approaches faster than you’d like it, just like it does every year. Before you know it, there’s less than a week left before classes resume and you go back to the daily college life. Less than a week left before you can go back to your dorm and pretend like this year’s winter break mishap never happened. 

Less than a week before you and Taehyung go back to never seeing each other. 

You’re sitting at his kitchen table, clearing out your backpack and recycling every paper, every syllabus and assignment and study guide from last semester, doing a deep cleanse of your life (because holy shit, you need it), when you come across the purchase you had made at the MOMA. 

“Taehyung,” you call out before you can stop yourself. 

“Yeah?” He asks from where he’s sitting on the couch, reading a James Joyce book. You love that novel. It was one of the very few you read for fun last year. 

You take the small paper bag in your hands, walking over to the couch. “I almost forgot about this, but since winter break’s starting to wind down, I just wanted to give you this as a thanks. For everything.”

“You got me a belated Christmas gift, Y/N?” Taehyung asks as you hold out the gift, clearly something thin like a posterboard or an art print.

“If it means I don’t have to buy you two things, then sure, consider this a belated Christmas gift,” you say with a laugh, sitting down a foot away from him as he slowly opens up the packet. “It’s sort of cheesy and very basic, but I just wanted to get you something nice as a thank you.”

Out Taehyung pulls is a print of van Gogh’s The Starry Night, big enough to fill up the empty spaces on his walls, so every inch of his apartment, of his life and his home, is filled with art. 

“Oh my God,” Taehyung says, mouth agape. “This is…”

“It’s basic, I know. But I know how much you loved seeing it in person, so I thought that a memory of that would be nice,” you say, trying to ease the nervousness that has bubbled up inside of you. 

“It’s wonderful,” Taehyung says, and you swear you’ve never seen him so happy, other than perhaps when you saw the real thing. “This is so fucking thoughtful of you.”

“I just—you told me a lot about the art we saw that day, but when we reached this painting, you were speechless. And I sort of knew, then, that it was your favorite piece. Because you didn’t have to explain it with words,” you tell him. “I could just tell. It was like your whole body warmed up the moment it came into view.”

“I’m touched, Y/N.” Taehyung beams. “This is all an art student could ever want, really. To be able to know that their love for art meant something to someone else.”

“I just wanted to say thank you for everything. Taking me in, cooking me food, being really nice me despite me entrenching on your living situation.” You smile. 

“I was happy to do all that stuff,” Taehyung tells you honestly. “I’ve had a lot of fun this winter break, even if we’re still trapped on campus.”

You loved getting to go home for winter break your freshman and sophomore years. You loved being able to escape from the college mindset and just relax, no deadlines, no assignments, no worries. 

But looking back on it, you think that you’ve had the most fun this winter break, stuck at school, a five-hundred-dollar plane ticket short, with your dorm neighbor-slash-nemesis from freshman year. Never have you done so much in so little time. 

“Yeah, me too,” you say, thinking back fondly. It feels like this winter break has lasted for years, but also as though it went by in the blink of an eye, 

“I have something for you as well,” Taehyung says, scrambling up to dash into his room. “Consider it just a Christmas gift, because I don’t really have to thank you for letting you stay at my apartment for free for a month.”

“Roast me, why don’t you,” you muse jokingly, rolling your eyes as Taehyung fumbles around in his bedroom before he emerges with an equally flat, similarly-sized gift wrapped up in some spare tissue paper. 

“I don’t recall you buying anything at the MOMA,” you tease as Taehyung hands you the gift, settling back down on the couch to watch as you open it. 

Slowly, you peel back the tissue paper, and when you reveal what he’s wrapped up for you, it drops to your lap. 

It’s a portrait of you, done entirely in pencil. It’s you smiling, with your eyes closed, lashes fluttering. He’s memorized your entire face, drawn it neatly onto this piece of sketch paper, like he was just passing the time and suddenly he had a picture of you on his hands. He’s even remembered where your freckles go. 

“What’s this, Tae?” You ask, like you don’t already know. 

“Uh, it’s you,” Taehyung says sheepishly. “I wasn’t planning on drawing you, I didn’t have a gift in mind, but I was practicing sketches the other day and an hour later I looked down and I had drawn you. And I felt bad for not telling you, because that’s weird, so I thought that you could see it.”

“You drew a portrait of me? Just randomly, from memory?” You ask, looking down at the sketch in your hands like it’s just ruined your life. 

“Yeah, so?” Taehyung asks. He looks terribly nervous. 

“So, that’s—people don’t just do that, Taehyung. You don’t just draw a picture of someone purely from memory while you’re practicing sketching,” You say, reeling back as he tries to lean in, attempts to explain himself. 

“What do you mean? I did that. I thought of you and I drew you, what’s so bad about that?”

“I don’t know if you missed the memo, Taehyung. I told you in New York. We’re not dating, Taehyung,” you tell him, so firm and certain in your conviction that you hardly pay attention to the way his shoulders sink. “We’re barely even friends. I’m not interested in you like that. Please don’t think otherwise.”

“Don’t tell me what to think,” Taehyung snaps, and he’s mad. Really mad, not like the fake anger from freshman year when you tried to get back at him by being an equally-annoying neighbor. “Don’t tell me how to feel. I drew you, Y/N. Not because I’m obsessed with the idea of us getting married, or because you’re my muse or some bullshit like that. I drew you because I thought of you, and I draw what I think of. Don’t tell me what to fucking think.”

“Do you like me, Taehyung?” You ask, on the verge of shouting.

Taehyung’s furious. “So what if I do? Huh? What difference does it make? You’ve told me over and over that you don’t like me back, so why does it matter? It’s not like I’d ever have a chance.”

“I told you because I didn’t want to confuse you,” you hiss, standing up and beginning to grab your belongings. It’s clear that this conversation is turning sour. 

“Confuse me? You didn’t want to confuse me?” Taehyung shouts. “You did a damn good job at that. Telling me in New York that you hated being called Mr. and Mrs. Kim, but holding my hand as we walked around the city and looked at art together. Kissing my cheek in the fucking bar but then patting me like on the back like I’m just a sadass friend of yours. Can you blame me if I was confused, Y/N?”

“I told you,” you say again. 

“I’m sorry, Y/N,” Taehyung bites. “I’m sorry that I fucking fell in love with you, even though half of the time you acted like it was alright. My mistake.”

“It was your mistake. I never said I wanted to date you,” you tell him firmly. You refuse to take the blame for something you had made so explicitly clear. 

“Can you fucking blame me for being hopeful?” Taehyung asks. He’s standing up, about to head back into his bedroom, absolutely furious. “You held my hand and kissed me on the cheek and I thought that meant that you felt it, too.”

“Taehyung—”

“Keep the portrait, Y/N,” Taehyung spits. “I don’t ever want to see it again.”

He slams his bedroom door. 

It’s a good thing you made friends with some upperclassmen when you were a freshman. 

After packing your belongings into your little suitcase and standing in the lobby of Taehyung’s apartment complex, you remember that one of your old friends who had graduated last year still lived in an off-campus apartment since he would be beginning graduate school at the same university. 

“Yoongi?” You ask when you hear him pick up your call. 

“Y/N? What’s up?”

“Long story,” you say with a sigh. “Would it be alright if I stayed with you until school started?”

“Holy shit, you’re on campus? What the fuck, yeah, sure, you know where I live. I’ll be here whenever you stop by,” he says without question.

Fifteen minutes later, you’re standing outside his door, double checking to make sure you’d got the right apartment. 

You barely get the first knock in before the door swings open to reveal Min Yoongi himself, clad in all black and looking very tired. 

“Are you okay?” You ask. He looks exhausted. 

“I could ask you the same thing,” he says, ushering you inside. 

“Have you been up all night?” You ask, resting your suitcase against the wall. 

“I took a brief nap between two and three, but yes, I have been,” he says like it’s natural. 

“You’ve always been a chaotic sleeper,” you say with a shake of your head. 

“The grad school grind stops for no one,” Yoongi says with a sigh. “What’s up? Why are you on campus?”

“It… it’s a long goddamn story. Do you have time?”

“I have a piece due for a small indie band tomorrow at noon that’s barely finished,” Yoongi says.

“Oh,” you say. You suppose the story can wait. Yoongi offered up his abode to you until classes resumed if you needed it, and there’s no way in hell you’ll be going back to Taehyung’s. 

“What do you mean, ‘Oh’? I got loads of time,” Yoongi says. He plops down on his couch and motions for you to sit next to him. “Tell me everything.”

Yoongi has always been a particularly good listener. Not just to other people’s words, but to music, to the sounds of the chords and the notes of the piano. He has an ear for things that most others would never notice. 

It’s the same thing for when he’s doling out advice. 

“To clarify,” Yoongi says when you’re finished telling your story, thirty minutes later. You had warned him that it would be a long one. “You had once hated his guts, but no longer hate his guts?”

“I stopped hating him after freshman year,” you admit, more to yourself than to Yoongi. It’s true. The moment the two of you stopped seeing each other, everything dissipated. 

“And now you like him.”

“We’re friends,” you say, tentatively. Maybe less than friends after the disaster that just went down in his living room. 

“But he drew you a portrait of yourself,” Yoongi mentions. 

“I said that it was complicated,” you say with a frown. 

“It doesn’t sound that complicated,” Yoongi says. And maybe he is a graduate student with more life experience under his belt than you, but you think that it’s pretty complicated. 

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds like he likes you, and you like him. I wasn’t really interpreting it in any other way,” Yoongi says casually. 

You reject the notion immediately. “I do not like him.”

Yoongi frowns. “Would you really be here, in my apartment having a relationship breakdown, if you weren’t confused about your feelings for him? Really?”

“I just needed to get out of his damn apartment, that’s all,” you say, avoiding eye contact. Yoongi has this very annoying habit of being extremely reasonable all of the time, and it bothers you immensely. 

“Sure, okay. Y/N, I’m not gonna dictate how you feel and try to change your mind, or anything. But if you can look me in the eye before the end of your break and tell me, one-hundred percent honestly, that you don’t like him, then I’ll believe you,” Yoongi tells you simply. “How about that?”

It sounds like a very doable deal. Maybe it’s not doable right now, but it certainly seems possible in the future. In the future, specifically. 

“Fine. But you’re making a big deal out of nothing,” you tell him matter-of-factly. Why does he care? It’s not like you’re worried about it. 

As it turns out, you’re worried about it. 

You’re worried about it because even though you’re not in the same room, not in the same building, not even on the same goddamn street as him, you’re thinking about him. Thinking about how much fun the two of you could be having right now as you relish in the last couple days of your winter break before the cold reality of school hits. 

Think about the things you could be doing. Exploring, going out to restaurants, finding new little gold mines in this city that you call home. And instead, you’re moping around your friend’s living room wishing that the two of you hadn’t ruined the whole thing. 

Maybe you had been too harsh. Taehyung has a right to be mad at you for lashing out at him. How was he supposed to feel? You held his hand and kissed his cheek and pretended that it was still freshman year, that the two of you were still just two people stuck together by unfortunate circumstances. Acted like nothing had really changed despite the years going by. Going through with all of these adventures with him knowing, in the back of your mind, that once classes started back up, you’d probably never make an effort to see him again. 

Drawing a portrait of you says one thing, but dancing around him says another. Every time you fucking see Yoongi in his own goddamn home you try to muster up the bravery to tell him that you don’t like Taehyung the way that he thinks you do, and you can’t. 

He sets up his pullout couch in his living room for you when you go to sleep that night, you dream of Taehyung. Envision him wandering the halls of a nameless museum, priceless pieces of art hung along every wall, from van Gogh to Monet to Picasso. He turns back around so you get a view of his face, dream up his curly black hair and soft eyes, sparkling with wanderlust as he roams the corridors, stopping to spare a quick glance at every painting he passes. 

And then at the end of the hall, he pauses in his tracks, looks up at the painting on the wall. You watch as the camera zooms in on what he’s looking at, what made him stop in his tracks the moment he laid eyes on it. 

It’s your portrait. A simple piece of paper out of a sketchbook, graphite on the coarse canvas. It’s barely more than a line drawing, your eyes here, your nose there, the little freckles that decorate your skin. It’s only in one color and still, even now, it leaves you speechless. Taehyung made that. He drew that, line by line. He made that for you. 

You wake up in a cold sweat at seven in the morning. Yoongi’s fast asleep in his bedroom, and you know he won’t be waking up until the hour on the clock reads double digits. Frantic, you scramble through your backpack until you pull out the sketch paper a little bit larger, a little bit thicker than the rest, still wrapped up in tissue paper. 

Pulling the paper away to reveal the canvas, you stare down at it in the hazy light of the sunrise, small rays beginning to stream through Yoongi’s window. Your fingers trace along each line, picturing Taehyung as his pencil scratched along the paper, over and over until it looked perfect. Taehyung made this. He sat down, thought of you, and drew this. 

A picture may be worth a thousand words but this one doesn’t say a thousand words. Instead, it only says three. 

Curiosity getting the better of you, you flip the sketch over to see if there’s anything else he’s drawn. There isn’t, but you find a little note in the bottom right corner. 

Y/N,

I hadn’t realized that I had drawn you until I was nearly finished with this. My bad, but it was too late to stop. I don’t know if I’ll ever give this to you, or if I’ll just have a guilty conscience for the rest of my life, but just in case I do, I want you to know this: art inspires me, and you are no exception. 

Tae ♡

When Min Yoongi wakes up that day and trudges out of his bedroom, he finds you sitting on his pullout couch, staring down at a sketch in your hands. When you turn to look up at him, he sees your red eyes and wonders how long you’ve been out here, crying. 

“I can’t do it, Yoongi,” you tell him. 

“Do what?” Yoongi asks, even though he already knows the answer. Why else would you be letting your tears drip onto your portrait?

“Tell you that I don’t like him. Because I do. And I can’t lie to him like that.”

Yoongi grins. He knew you’d come around, like you always do. You may have quite the stubborn streak, but you’ve got a big heart, and it always gets the best of you. 

He sits down next to you, glancing down at the portrait. It’s gorgeous. Taehyung did a wonderful job. He looks at you as you cry over a sketch of yourself, and he thinks that, even if he doesn’t really know this Taehyung character, the two of you will make a perfect pair. 

“You should tell him that,” he tells you with a nudge. You look up at him, scared for your life. “I think he deserves to know.”

The night before winter break ends, you ask Taehyung if tenants of his apartment complex are allowed on his rooftop. He says no, but also says that his landlord is out of town for the holidays. 

In the biting cold of a mid-January evening, you climb up the stairs of his apartment complex and push open the heavy metal door to the rooftop, a gust of wind nearly blowing you right over. Looking around, you spot Taehyung in nothing but a sweater and a scarf, sitting on the edge of the rooftop and looking out over the city. 

“Aren’t you cold?”

He turns around to find you standing next to him, wrapped up in a long coat, gloves, a beanie, and a scarf. 

“I’ve got a warm body,” Taehyung tells you, looking back out into the sea of lights. 

“This is scary, isn’t it?” You ask, sitting down next to him. Your feet dangle off the ledge, and normally you’d be insistent on sitting in the middle of the rooftop where no danger can befall you, but this feels a lot more personal. 

“Why did you want to meet me up here?” Taehyung asks, all business. 

“I just wanted to talk,” you tell him. “You know, since it’s the last day of winter break and all.”

“It went by fast, didn’t it?” Taehyung muses. 

“I remember failing my final and missing my flight like it was yesterday,” you remember fondly, laughing. It seemed like the end of the world at the time, but there’s always a silver lining. You just didn’t know what it was, back then. 

You think you have a pretty clear idea of it now. 

Taehyung chuckles, letting the two of you fall into a comfortable silence as you gaze out at the rest of the city. Taehyung’s apartment building isn’t particularly tall, but it’s got enough height to it that it feels like you’re looking out over a place you hardly recognize. There are so many things you don’t know about this city, despite having lived here for over two years. So many things you are aching to find out, and only one person you’d really like to do it with. 

“What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” You ask randomly, interrupting the quiet that had befallen the both of you. 

Taehyung jumps at the sound of your voice piercing through the atmosphere, caught off guard. You lean in, expecting him to answer. 

“Oh, um, I guess to draw and paint for fun more. A lot of the stuff I’ve been making in school I’ve been doing because I had to,” Taehyung says quickly. It’s sort of obvious that he made up the resolution on the spot. “Uh, what’s yours?”

You press your lips into a thin line, smiling to yourself. “To be honest.”

Taehyung scoffs at that. “Believe me, Y/N, you are more than honest. Brutally so.”

“To others, yes,” you reason. You always were a tell-it-like-it-is sort of person. “But I’m not very good at being honest with myself.” You swing your legs slightly as they dangle over the ground below, kicking into each other. Taehyung turns to look at you, waiting for you to continue. “Yoongi says I’m a very stubborn person. I always have been. Once I determine something is the way it is, it’s very difficult to change my mind.”

Taehyung chuckles to himself. He’s probably quite familiar with that aspect of your personality. 

“But I realized recently that sometimes, things change without you even realizing it, and that instead of being afraid of those changes, you should embrace them. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to be more honest with myself, because I think I’ll make everybody around me, including myself, happier.” You continue. 

“Good for you,” Taehyung tells you mindlessly, turning back to face out towards the city. 

“Kim Taehyung, I’m not finished talking, yet,” you demand, forcing him to look back at you. “I hated you in freshman year. You were the worst thing to happen to me that year, annoying and full of yourself. And I didn’t know you in sophomore year. We stopped talking and decided that it was better if we never did again.”

He lets out a little huff of breath, visible in the cold night air. 

“But I do know you now. You offered me a place to stay when I missed my flight after what might have been the worst final I have ever taken in my entire life. You took me to New York, and we made vegetable soup together. You let me hold your hand and kiss you on the cheek, and you drew me a portrait,” you say firmly. He looks up at you and finally, finally, his eyes aren’t foggy. There’s no haze, no mist. You look into his eyes and you can see yourself reflected in the ink black of his irises. He’s beautiful. He’s sitting on the ledge of the roof of his apartment building in the middle of January with nothing but a sweater and a scarf on, and he’s beautiful. “You are the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Before you can even take another breath, Kim Taehyung places a cold palm on your scarf-covered cheek and pulls you into a bruising kiss, his other hand wrapping around your waist as you shuffle along the ledge, closer and closer. And even if his hands are cold and his lips are chapped, his mouth is warm and soft, wanton and desperate. You beam at the feeling of his lips on yours, wrapping your arms around his neck as you ring in the New Year for real. This is how it was supposed to be. This is what you had been waiting for. 

When you part, Taehyung’s lips are a cherry red to match the tip of his nose. His brown eyes are twinkling, and not from the light pollution of the city. 

“Can I be honest, too?” Taehyung asks. He’s got the biggest goddamn grin on his face. “I think I’m in love with you.”

The words are music to your ears. “My honesty is rubbing off on you,” you tease. “Because I think I’m in love with you, too.”

Smiling, grinning, positively fucking beaming, Taehyung wraps his hands around you and kisses you again. It warms your heart from the inside out, blossoms like a tulip in spring. When you started this winter break, you thought you had reached your lowest point, but you’re finishing it on a high that you hope never fades. He loves you, he loves you, and most importantly, you love him back. And as it turns out, the movie where beautiful male art student lead and hardheaded and impenetrable female lead are stuck with each other for four weeks has a happy ending, after all. 

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

[moldisgoodforyou]

without you by my side

i thought i posted this already APOLOGIES !!! 

wordcount: 2.4k

_____

Sophie had barely talked to Rafe in the first two weeks she was in Spain, suddenly being consumed with a week-long orientation and then going straight into her internship, juggling her Spanish lessons and trying to just get by in an unfamiliar city. She’d texted him a few updates here and there, and had FaceTimed him briefly in her first week, but most of her spare time was spent getting to know her roommates and checking off random errands.

The time difference made things extra tricky, but Rafe made it a priority to talk with her, no matter where he was. When they finally got a chance to talk, she called him, grinning when the call connected. “Hi!”

He grinned to himself too, feeling warm just from the sound of her voice. “Hi, you. It’s good to hear from you.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I’d be so busy.” She worried her lip between her teeth and he shook his head quickly, although she couldn’t see him. “It’s alright, I knew you had things to do. Don’t stress about it. I want to hear about Barcelona, tell me what you’ve done!”

Sophie beamed and launched into an excited description of everything - her students in her classes, her new coworkers, how she got assigned to a cool project and how she got drunk on a two dollar bottle of wine that was ‘the best she’d ever had.’ Once she told him everything, she paused, letting silence fill the air.

“That sounds awesome, Soph.” He smiled, then frowned hearing her pause. “All good?”

“Yeah, just. I wish you were here. Um, I wear one of the shirts you let me take to bed, and I just realized it doesn’t really smell like you anymore. Washed it too soon, I think.”

Rafe let out a small sigh and clutched his phone a little tighter. “I can send you another one.” His voice had a teasing lilt to it, but he was dead serious.

“No, I’m sorry, it’s stupid.” She spoke quickly and he could distantly hear a few sniffles, then when she brought her phone back to her ear, voice nearly cracking. “I’m okay.”

“Wait, are you crying? Sophie...” He trailed off and she could hear the frown in his voice. He closed his office door so he could talk to her more freely, without having to keep his voice so quiet.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m fine. I just miss you a lot more than I thought I would.”

He immediately pressed the button to facetime her, smiling when she picked up, then instantly dropping it once he saw her teary cheeks. “I can change my flight and come visit sooner. I’ll do it, angel, you know I will.”

She smiled a little at the pet name, swiping her sleeve over her cheeks. “I know, but it’s fine. Once I get into a routine I’ll be okay, everything’s just a little jarring.” She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. “I thought I knew Spanish and turns out all I can really manage is where’s the bathroom and hello. Everyone speaks so quickly, I feel like an idiot.”

He grinned. “You’re not an idiot, baby, you’ve been practicing for this for months. Just don’t go around telling anyone else te amo.”

She sniffled a little as she laughed. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Hey, how’s home? Have you gone surfing or something yet? Any big parties?”

He shrugged. “It’s alright. I think there’s a party this weekend, but.”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. Feels kind of strange without you by my side.”

“Aw, Rafe, you miss me.” She teased, fully aware she was in no position to poke fun, as she’d just cried over missing him two seconds ago.

He paused and glanced away for a second, not wanting to guilt trip her in the slightest. He just wanted to be sure she enjoyed her trip without having to worry about him. “You know I do.”

“I miss you too.” Her face dropped a little and she bit the inside of her cheek, trying to stop herself from crying again.

“I want you to have fun though, okay? I’m only a call away, and I’ll see you soon enough. Three months will fly by. Easy.” He told her, almost trying to convince himself. Just the last two weeks alone had dragged by for him, especially with how quickly he’d had to leave all his friends in Columbus once the frat house closed for the summer.

“Two months and two weeks,” she corrected. “We’ve made it half a month already.”

He laughed and flipped the camera briefly to show his calendar pinned up behind his desk, little numbers scribbled onto each square. “I know, I’ve been counting down the days.”

“That’s sweet.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and he frowned, narrowing his eyes. “Hey, where’s your ring?”

Sophie instantly blushed and grabbed her backpack, fumbling through it until she found the ring box lying haphazardly at the bottom (and brushed off a few crumbs before showing him). “Here! It’s right here, I have it, promise.” She quickly flipped open the box and slid it on her finger to show him.

“Do you not like it? I should have asked you before, I -”

“No! I love it, no, it’s not that.” She reassured him quickly. “I’m just really worried I’m going to lose it, like on the metro or walking to work, and I can’t have that happen. So I carry the box with me.”

“Oh.” Rafe sat back in his chair, thinking. “How about I get you a chain?”

“A chain?”

“Yeah. You can wear the ring on the chain, like a necklace, when you’re not wearing it on your finger. And when I come visit, we can take it in to Cartier and get it resized, if you need to.”

“No, it fits perfectly, I’m just nervous.” She smiled. “A chain sounds like a good solution.”

He nodded and wrote himself a reminder to order one and have it shipped to her apartment in Spain the second they were off the call. “You got it.” At a knocking on his door, he hesitated before glancing over for the source. “Hold on one second, okay?”

“Okay.”

Rafe stood and opened the door, letting his dad in. Ward strode in and dropped a stack of papers on Rafe’s desk, regarding him with annoyance. “You need to go to the printing company right now and get these flyers fixed. Half of them have the ink fucked up and the phone number’s wrong on all of them.”

“You said I got a half hour lunch break.” Rafe replied evenly, not glancing at the papers - that were the secretary’s responsibility, not his.

“You can get a lunch break when you pay closer attention to the details.” Ward fished his card out of his wallet and slapped it on top of the stack. “Grab me lunch while you’re out. Don’t be long.” He turned to leave, but paused upon seeing Sophie waiting on the facetime call, Rafe’s phone on the desk. “Who is that?”

She froze, hair hiding her face a little, and wasn’t sure if she should hang up or not. Rafe made the first move and flipped the screen over so his phone was facedown on the desk. “I was talking to Sophie. Remember, I told you she’s in Spain, so the time difference -”

“I don’t care.” Ward interrupted. “Don’t let some girl distract you from work.” (Rafe swore he hadn’t acknowledged that Sophie was his girlfriend once.) He left abruptly and kicked out the door stopper as he went, letting the door slam shut behind him.

Rafe winced and took a breath before flipping the phone back over. He looked defeated, “I have to go. I’m sorry.”

“S’alright.” Sophie gave him a small smile but her heart was racing, embarrassed about how easily Ward was able to dismiss her. “Call me later, if you want? I’m staying in tonight.”

He glanced at the door again and cocked his head a little to catch the sounds out on the hallway, just giving her a nod and a forced smile before ending the call.

___

Rafe only had a week back in Columbus before he had to pack up and head back to the Outer Banks for one last summer. He had resigned himself to the fact he’d be going home, but was mainly fine with it until he learned Sophie wouldn’t be coming home too. Ever since then, he’d been dreading it - the beach days, country club and even his friends at home weren’t worth the amount of time he’d have to spend with his dad at work.

His dad had been preparing him over the last few years to take a high position in the company, and Rafe had never protested it, just figuring he wasn’t meant for anything else. It wasn’t until Sophie sent him a few links for internships in downtown Columbus that he began to consider that maybe, just maybe, he was capable of more. He ended up applying to five internships in whole, not sure if he could handle too many rejections. Other kids in his major already had at least one, sometimes two internships under their belt, and Rafe’s resume with work at his dad’s company and a couple leadership positions in his frat didn’t exactly measure up.

He was rejected almost immediately from a couple internships, but interviewed for the three others based on a few strong recommendations from his professors. No matter what, he had to return to the Outer Banks and get some extra clothes and furniture to haul back with him for his senior house, so he settled on going back for a little while he waited to hear back from the other companies.

Later that night, he called her back after getting berated by his dad at work and taking the blame for two other interns’ mistakes. It was late, nearly one am for her on a Tuesday, but she picked up anyways, anticipating the call. “H’lo?” Sophie mumbled into the phone, half-asleep. 

“I can’t deal with this anymore. I’m sick of it.” He confessed immediately and she sat up in bed, concerned. “What? What’s wrong, baby?” 

“It’s my dad, I swear to fucking god. I have to get this internship, Soph, it’s the one excuse he’ll take for me not working for him.” Rafe huffed, trying his best to calm himself down, shaky fingers pressing the Facetime button. 

She picked up right away, the lag in wifi barely interrupting their call. “Breathe, Rafe.” 

He nodded quickly, taking a few shallow breaths, then frowned as he saw the pillow marks pressed into her cheek. “Fuck, did I wake you up? This fucking time zone shit -” He cut himself off, knowing he was just angry with his dad, not her. 

Sophie shook her head. “No, um, was just scrolling through social media and laying down.” 

It was a blatant lie, but Rafe accepted it anyways. “You need to sleep earlier.” 

She shrugged, not wanting to share that she couldn’t sleep that well without him sometimes. “I’m fine. Tell me what’s going on.” 

“It’s just.” He paused and propped the phone up, then pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “He puts so much pressure on me, all the time. I’m supposed to take over this company and I don’t even know if that’s what I want to do, I’m a business major just because he told me that’d be a good idea, it’s just -” Rafe took a breath, trying not to get himself more worked up. “It’s a lot.” 

Sophie frowned, catching herself reaching toward the screen for a moment in an attempt to comfort him. “You’ll get the internship in Columbus, I know you will.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“I do know that. You need to think more highly of yourself, Rafe.” 

He sighed, chewing on his bottom lip. “Kinda hard when no one else is thinking highly of me.” 

“Rafe.” She caught his attention with a stern tone, frowning. “That’s not true, not in the slightest.” 

“A little bit.” 

“You’re a loyal friend, you’re generous, you’re smart. I know I can always count on you. You just need to be nicer to yourself.” Sophie encouraged, smiling when he gave her the tiniest hint of a shy smile. 

“You don’t need to say all that.” He countered, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“I know. But I mean all of it.” She got up from her bed, taking the phone with her. “Hey, go look outside.” 

“Why?” 

“Just go look outside.” 

He furrowed his brow but followed along, bringing his phone to his bedroom window and walking out to his balcony. “What am I supposed to be seeing?” 

“You see the moon?” 

“Yeah.” 

She flipped her camera briefly, showing the glow of the moon in the sky over the city. “It’s the same moon, okay? We’re seeing the exact same thing.” 

“Okay...” He trailed off, confused. 

“It’s almost like I’m there with you.” She paused. “Kind of. We’re not that far apart.” 

“Four thousand miles.” He argued, getting more miserable. “God, I miss you.” 

Sophie nodded with a frown, biting the inside of her cheek. “I know. I miss you too, baby. I’m sorry your dad is being so shitty.” 

“He’ll hear you.” Rafe half-teased, glancing around just to make sure he wasn’t down below on the deck or nearby. 

Her jaw set, stubborn. “Good. When do you hear back about the internship?” 

“In a couple days, probably. I had the final interview yesterday and they’ll give me a few weeks’ notice before I need to move back.” He opened his mouth, about to add another self-deprecating comment, but stopped himself. “It went okay.” 

“I’m sure you were fantastic. Model candidate.” She grinned and he just ached for her even more. “It’s late for you, isn’t it.” 

“Um...a little. But I can keep talking if you want. Any time.” She promised, hiding a yawn behind her hand. 

He shook his head, smiling. “Go back to bed, angel. I’m sorry I woke you up.” 

“Don’t be, I’m glad I got to talk with you again.” Sophie paused. “It’ll be okay, Rafe. I know it.” 

“Yeah.” He agreed just to appease her. The last thing he wanted her to be doing when she was in Barcelona was worrying about him. “Love you. Sweet dreams, Soph.” 

“Love you too.” 

taglist: @whoeveniskendall @kkmaybank @karsinner @outerbanksbro @outerbankspreferences @randomficsandshit @sunshineitsfine44 @jailcalledlife @tovvaa @moniamaybank @illbesafeforyou @dontjinx-it @freddymaybank @jjmaybankzz @g4bster @oopsiedoopsie23 @babygal-babygal

[tyunniverse]

Midnight Crisis

pairing: huening kai x reader

genre: fluff (?)

word count: 1728

synopsis: huening kai gets woken up by his neighbor's alarm every midnight and finally decides to do something about it

There it is again.

Kai lies awake in his bed, eyes heavy and dark circles evident. He stares at the ceiling, trying his best to cancel out the noise that's been plaguing his mind for countless nights but to no avail. He's grown to hate the noise with each passing day. It's been like this ever since he moved in two months ago.

The first night was bearable, he'd assumed that his neighbor had something important to do at midnight. After all, it wasn't unusual for a college student to be up that late to finish an assignment. The first week was excusable. Kai figured that they must be working on an extremely important project that couldn't wait until morning to be finish. The next few weeks were hell. He thought he'd be immune to the alarm blasting through his walls but he wasn't. It sounds off for five minutes and after that, waits another five minutes more to go off again. His suffering doesn't end until it nears 1 am, and if he's lucky, it'll end before 00:30. This became the norm for Kai.

But the alarm had been going off for more than an hour. A hundred thoughts go through Kai's mind. Should he just try to go back to sleep? At this point that seemed impossible. He'd tried a hundred times before and it never worked. Should he just stay up until it ends? He'd be tired by morning but that's the safest possible decision. But what if this goes on until sunrise? He can't risk falling asleep in class when he had a presentation first thing in the morning.

Kai bunches the his blanket in his hands. "Why me?" He groans, shifting to the side to check his phone. His classmate, Beomgyu, had left him a message a few hours ago.

Hyuka, I can't make it to class tomorrow. I'm at the hospital with my roommate. Sorry, but I think you have to do the presentation on your own tomorrow. I promise I'll make it up to you.

Great.

Given the news and the loud pinging of the alarm, Kai decides that he has had enough. He can't deal with the stupid alarm going off every night, especially when he really needed the rest.

He hops out off bed, grabbing a hoodie from his closet and putting it over his shirt before storming out of his room.

—

You were beyond tired.

The classes you had on that day had all conducted tests, leaving your brain fried by the time you got home. You immediately pass out once you reached the comfort of your bed, not even caring to change out of your clothes. Your mind peacefully drifts into sleep, remembering that you had something to look forward to at 1 am.

You never forget to set your alarm. Sometimes, it was hard waking up in the middle of the night when you're having such a good time sleeping, but you made sure that it went off every five minutes until you're forcibly awoken by it's blaring sound.

The drama your best friend, Soobin, had recommended to you had been the highlight of your day since the beginning of the semester. School has been nothing but the source of your stress and you found that watching the new episodes every night helped you get through it and prepare yourself for anything to come. Little did you know that your energy booster had become the bane of someone else's existence.

"Excuse me!"

You were woken up by the sound of loud banging on your door. Having just come to your senses, your eyes wander to you phone that had been blasting your alarm since 12 am. You reach out to it, checking the time and panicking once you saw that it was way past the time slot for your drama. It was about to finish.

"Shit." You scramble towards your laptop, hoping to at least see if there was still hope to watch it until your attention was brought back to the loud banging on your door.

"Excuse me! Is anyone in there?"

You frown. "Who the hell disturbs people in the middle of the night?"

The place was quiet for a while until the banging came back. You take one last glance at your laptop before treading towards the door. You grab anything heavy along the way in case things get a little weird with your unexpected visitor.

Kai rubs his eyes as he waits for his neighbor's door to swing open. His ears perk up when he hears shuffling behind the door. It opens for about an inch wide, raising a few questions in Kai's mind.

"Do you need something?" You speak out from behind the door.

Kai's brows knit as he leaned a little closer. "It's me, Huening Kai, from room 208. I need to talk to you about something but isn't refusing to open your door a little rude?"

"Oh, sorry." You relax once you realize that the visitor wasn't a threat. You'd seen him a lot on your way to your room but you've never interacted before. All you know was that he seemed like a pretty nice guy. "Ah," You look up at him. He looked kinda cute despite his tired look. His messy hair had almost entirely covered his eyes and his hoodie had a molang print on the side. "But isn't it also a little rude to bang at your neighbor's door at 1 am?" You ask him, brows raised.

Kai purses his lips, trying his best to hold off on snapping at you. He was truly at his limit. "Not when that neighbor has kept me up for the past two months with their stupid alarm?"

"What are you— oh." You cut yourself off upon realizing the entirety of the situation. Maximum volume. You had set your alarm at maximum volume to make sure you never missed an episode. It had barely been effective on you but it sure did its work on your neighbor. In hindsight, you should've seen this coming.

Kai watches as you space out and decides to just tell you then and there instead of waiting for you to invite him inside. "Uh, listen." His hands fidget, trying to get through the awkwardness. "You must have something important to do but please be responsible with your alarm. It's ringing has kept me awake since the start of the semester and I haven't gotten a good night's sleep since. I have a presentation later and I really need to get some sleep before that, so can you please tone the alarm down or just shut if off? I don't think I can survive another night like this."

There he had it.

Kai felt a bit better. He should've done this sooner. His problems would've been solved by then. He figured that you'd apologize and stop your alarms since by now, the two of you have probably reached an understanding.

"I understand your side, I really do." You tell him, looking up at his now smiling form. "But I can't lower the volume." His smile disappears.

"What?"

"I can't wake up if it's not at maximum volume. Please understand, I need this in order to wake up." You insist.

Kai didn't know how to react. He'd been so sure that you'd cooperate that any other responses would have rendered his mind blank. "What?" He repeats. "Then, can you at least tell me why it's so important for you to be awake at this hour?"

You cant. You can't tell him.

The moment he finds out that you were willing to sacrifice his sleep for the drama you've been watching, he'd never let you hear the end of it. "I have a project and it needs to be finished by tomorrow."

Kai crosses his arms, frowning. "So you're saying you have an important project every single night?"

You hold your breath. "Yes?"

"Yes?" Kai scoffs. "Please tell me you're joking."

"I'm serious!" You wage him off. "I really do have one!"

Kai takes a peek at your room and sighs. "Then bring it here. The least you can do is prove that you're telling the truth. I can't keep suffering like this, Y/N."

Hearing your name made you nervous. Of course he'd known your name, he had delivered your packages a few times when it ended up in front of his doorstep by mistake. What's worse, he wanted you to show him the project you made up on the spot to hopefully escape the situation. Your mind goes blank, and there's only one thng that passes through it despite being fully aware that this solution was only temporary.

"I'm sorry!"

"Huh?"

Kai freezes in his spot as the door slams shut in his face. He hears you run back imto the safety of your room and he's left standing there, speechless. It takes him a few seconds to register what had just happened.

"Hey!" He reaches out for your door knob, twisting it a few times before giving up and knocking on the door. "Y/N? Y/N! Open up! We're still not done talking!" He knocks a few more times. "Hey!"

You snicker, hellbent on ignoring him and focusing on what's left of your show. Even if it's just the ending of the episode, it was enough to at least get you through tomorrow.

The episodes starts loading after a few clicks and you move to get your headphones. That's when you realize that Kai had finally stopped bothering you for the night. A smile creeps in your face as you feel a mixture of relief and guilt. "I'm sorry, Kai, but I need this."

You plug your headphones in and was about to focus on the episode when a loud alarm starts blasting through the walls of your room. Eyes wide, you check your phone to see if your alarm had beem turned off. It had been dead ever since you got up, which meant that the sound could only be coming from the room next door.

You jump when you hear a rather loud laugh coming from Kai's room, followed by him banging on your shared wall. Your phone buzzes with a notification and you check it.

Hey there, neighbor! If I'm not gonna get any sleep then so are you. Suffer with me >3<

[clawsandblood]

4 - “Do you trust me?”

link to ao3

first part on tumblr   previous part on tumblr

Once both men were awake enough, Borna told Steven of his strange encounter last night. Steven’s face grew more and more alarmed as the story progressed.

“You won’t believe this,” he slowly said, “but I also had a weird encounter last night and-” He stopped. “There was this woman, looking kinda how you said yours was looking, and in the end she gave me a huge tip, saying that both me and my friend could use some money.” 

“How huge?” Borna asked, brows furrowing.

Steven stood up, walked over to his jacket and dug out his wallet. “This big,” he said, showing Borna the hundred dollar bill.

“Fuck,” Borna swore under his breath. He took his phone, frantically going through his browsing history until he found a picture of Madam Reid. “Is that her?” he asked Steven, showing him the screen.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely.

They exchanged looks. “How the fuck did she know we know each other?” Borna asked.

“Oh, shit.” Steven was staring at Borna. “You’ve already got a job interview with her company, right?”

Borna nodded. “Tomorrow. They were in an awful hurry.”

Steven collapsed on the couch. “What if they’re some sort of human trafficking ring?” he asked. “What if they’re with the mafia?”

“I think they won’t do anything after one interview,” Borna said. “Or I could just cancel.”

Steven nodded. “That would probably be the safest, yeah.”

Borna opened his phone, thumb hovering over the number that called him earlier in the morning. He sighed, putting the phone down. “But I’m curious,” he said. “Maybe one interview won’t be that bad.”

“Borna,” Steven pleaded.

“I can just decline afterwards.”

Their eyes were locked in a staring contest.

“If your kidney gets sold on the black market next week I won’t help you, I’ll just say that I told you so.”

Borna’s lips twitched into a smile. “Note taken.”

---

It took some digging through their shared wardrobes to find a presentable pair of trousers and a shirt for Borna to wear to the interview. Steven did have some semi-formal clothes, but Borna somehow felt like most of Steven’s patterned shirts were a touch too vulgar for the occasion.

“How do I look?” he asked, giving a little twirl.

Steven chewed on his lip. “Presentable,” he finally said.

Borna nodded. “I feel like a tuna fish in a can.”

“Meaning?”

“Stuffed, uncomfortable, about to be half-eaten, half-thrown away.”

“Having last minute jitters?” Steven smiled at Borna and clapped him on the back. “You’re gonna go there, snoop a bit during the interview, go home and tell them you’re actually going to Russia.”

Borna snorted. “Sounds good.”

They went to the building where the interview was going to take place together. It was a modern office building, fairly boring and unremarkable. The entrance had plaques of several different companies on the wall, Northwest Holistic Natural Remedies being among them.

“Well,” Steven said. “This is kinda anticlimactic.”

“What did you expect?” Borna asked him.

Steven shrugged. “Something more glamorous. Or completely rundown. I don’t know how human organ traffickers work.”

Borna elbowed him. “They’re not gonna sell my organs,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steven mumbled. He gave Borna one last look-over, fixing his hair a bit. “You’ve got this,” he said and patted his shoulder. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Borna walked in, going to the reception desk.

Steven stood for a few moments, looking after his friend, and left. There was no need for him to keep loitering and there were groceries to be bought.

---

Borna found the office that the receptionist directed him to. The doors were slightly open and the plaque on them said “Northwest Holistic Natural Remedies - Madam Reid.” He tentatively knocked.

“Come in,” said a voice.

He entered, closing the doors behind himself. A different lady was sitting behind the desk, looking at him expectantly. There was a sign on her desk that read “Natalie Adams, secretary.” The walls were decorated with various pictures of nature, keeping a cohesive theme. It was terribly bland, yet tasteful.

“Madam is already waiting for you,” she said, gesturing to the doors to the side.

“Thank you,” he said and walked in.

Now that office was a lot different. The furniture was darker, sturdier. Decor was still revolving around nature, but this was darker, feeling more like antiques rather than mass-produced photos printed on canvases. Behind the desk sat Madam Reid, as sharp and poised as the night he met her.

“Hello, Borna,” she said. “Please sit down.”

Borna obeyed, drawing the heavy leather-padded chair. “Good morning,” he said.

Her pronunciation of his name was miles better than what he was used to, though her decision to use his first name rattled him. Maybe she just didn’t want to deal with pronouncing my surname, he thought, suppressing an amused huff.

“It’s two in the afternoon,” she pointed out.

He chuckled awkwardly. “Had another night shift,” he explained. “Those tend to mess with perception of time.”

She nodded. “Understandable.”

“I brought my resume with me in case-” he started, but got silenced by a hand gesture.

“I think both of us know that that’s not why you’re here now,” she said, fixing him with her stare.

“Then what is it?” he asked. He grew hotter in his shirt and dress pants.

She took his hand, unbuttoning the cuff and rolled up the sleeve until the bite mark was fully exposed. “When was it?” she asked, examining the scar. “Three days ago? Four?”

“Four,” he answered. “Are you also a…” He trailed off.

“A lycanthrope, yes.”

“Okay,” he said, still staring at where she was holding his arm.

She rolled the sleeve back up, buttoning it. “We need to keep together,” she said. “Lone wolves don’t survive for too long.”

“Meaning?”

“There’s an organisation that I’m a part of,” she explained. “It connects people like us all over the continent. We could help you out with things.”

His brows furrowed. “What things?”

Madam Reid gave him a look that he’d describe as sarcastic if she was literally anyone else. “Money.”

“I can get by,” he protested. “I’ve got a job, I can pay rent-”

“You work the graveyard shift at the carwash and have to live with a roommate,” Madam interrupted.

Borna swallowed. “How do you know about my roommate?” he asked quietly.

“I met him the same night as you.” She smiled, but it just looked like a beast baring its teeth. “He is a very friendly man. You two spend too much time together, you smell like each other.”

“We smell-?”

She nodded. “It should come to you soon,” she said soothingly. “You’ll get used to it.”

Borna nodded, staring at his own hands, trying to process all the given information.

“Borna?”

He looked up.

Madam Reid was looking at him, features soft and relaxed. For the first time she didn’t look like she was about to swallow him whole, though her eyes stayed the same. “Do you trust me?” she asked gently.

“I don’t know,” he replied softly. “I think you’ve been truthful, but I don’t think I should trust you just yet.”

She leaned back in her chair. “Smart,” she commented. “Not the smartest, but admirable approach.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “I’ve got a proposition,” she said, leaning forward again. “On Friday we’ve got a meeting. I’ll have Natalie email you details and you can come see how things work for yourself. How does that sound?”

He took a moment to consider her offer. “Okay,” he conceded. “Maybe I’ll come.”

“That’s all I ask for.”

He slowly started getting up.

“And Borna?”

He looked at her.

“I don’t think I need to tell you to come by yourself, right?”

He shook his head. “You don’t.”

“Good.” She also got up, offering him a hand. “Hopefully we’ll see each other soon,” she said.

He just nodded wordlessly.

“Goodbye,” she said and then he was already through the door. The secretary gave him a friendly smile and a goodbye of her own as he exited the office.

---

“How was it?” Steven asked him when he got outside.

Borna took a deep breath. “She’s also, uh-” he gestured at the bite mark on his arm. “She offered help. She knew we live together because we smell like each other.”

“Wait, what?” Steven was staring at him, nose wrinkled, and mouth falling open. “We smell like each other?”

“Yeah, I know.” Borna sighed. “She said I should be able to… detect these things soon too.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah.”

They stood in contemplative silence for a few moments.

“We should go home,” Borna said and Steven nodded. He had his arms occupied with bags from the grocery store and he handed over one to Borna, who automatically took it.

---

He was working the night shift again. Again, he couldn’t understand why would a carwash service need to be open at such unholy hours. Again, he was reminded that the wealthy, the weird and the criminals were also paying customers.

So far he had to deal with only a few people that seemed a bit too inebriated to be anywhere near car keys. He did have to watch himself physically way more than usual, but the drunk were usually quite generous tippers and that night didn’t prove any different.

He had a long period of nothing, where he almost nodded off several, but the noise from the neighbouring gas station managed to keep him up. Then, just a one hour before the end, a car drove in.

---

Dorian’s phone rang. He groaned, looking at the caller’s ID. Three poop emojis were displayed on the screen. He groaned again, louder, then finally accepted the call.

“Hi, Gary,” he said. For a few moments he was quiet, listening intently. “Fuck,” he finally said. “A feral one?”

He got up from the couch and turned off the TV, which was showing some shitty horror flick. He sandwiched the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he started pulling on his pants.

“Yeah, give me ten min, I’ll be there. Bye.”

He disconnected the call, putting the phone down. He dressed up, sturdy, warm, practical clothes, and left the flat, remembering at the last moment to take his phone and wallet.

He rushed downstairs and walked briskly to the main street. A car was already waiting for him. 

“Move it,” Gary said, poking his head through the window.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dorian grumbled breathlessly. He sat down on the passenger’s side, fastening the seatbelt. The moment he was done the car peeled off the curb, making Dorian swear quietly, which in turn made Gary cackle.

The car sped through the streets, out of town to the forest road.

“Do you know where it’s supposed to be?” Dorian asked.

“Somewhere in the west,” Gary answered. “Near one farm, the owners complained about the cattle being killed.”

“Not regular wolves?” 

Gary shook his head. “The tracks didn’t fit, plus there’s been rumors of Bigfoot in the woods.”

Dorian snorted. “Of course that’s what they say.”

Gary shrugged. “Not that far fetched in comparison to the truth,” he said.

Dorian sighed. “Fair point.” He started rifling through his pockets for the cigarettes. “Sometimes I still can’t believe this is my life.”

“Yeah,” Gary said absent-mindedly. Then he noticed the cigarette pack in Dorian’s hand. “Hey, fuck off with that,” he grumbled. “No smoking in my car.”

Dorian rolled his eyes. “So sensitive.”

Gary glanced at him with a poisonous look. “Don’t you dare,” he growled.

“I can open the window.”

Gary puffed out an angry breath. “You won’t you-” He pawed at Dorian, trying to take away his cigarettes, when something collided with the car loudly, making Gary swerve and brake.

“Fuck!”

They stopped abruptly and jumped out of the car. There was a dark figure lying on the side of the road, whining loudly.

Gary glared at Dorian, who awkwardly stuffed his hands into his pockets. They tentatively approached the lump. Coming closer, it was visible that it was a sort of a wolf, only larger and as much as the moonlight permitted to see, with a different coat colouring.

It started snarling as they approached.

“I think we found our feral wolf,” Dorian said quietly and squatted down, facing the creature. Gary stayed a bit behind him, standing.

“We got you pretty hard, didn’t we?” Dorian asked quietly.

The wolf growled in response.

“I know, I know,” Dorian said soothingly. He got up and started taking off his jacket.

Gary groaned. “I’ll get the stuff from the car,” he said and left.

Once Dorian stripped off all his clothes he squatted down, tilting his face towards moonlight and began to change. His body grew, transforming into a lupine form, growing thick fur all over.

He slowly walked over to the hurt wolf, sniffing softly. The wolf whiled quietly, but let him close. Dorian carefully nuzzled the other one and gave the bloodied fur a few careful licks. Finally, he settled, laying down next to the hurt wolf.

Gary sighed. He had thick gloves on and a gun in his hands. “Dorian,” he said disapprovingly.

Dorian looked at him and just gave the wolf another gentle lick.

Cocking the gun, Gary took aim and fired.

With one last whine, the wounded wolf died.

Dorian slowly got up, nudging the wolf with his head, giving it a few small, affectionate licks, before leaving it, walking over to Gary.

“You know I don’t like shooting when you’re right there,” Gary said.

Dorian in between transformed back to human, panting slightly from the effort.

“He was so scared,” Dorian said. “And hurting.”

“We did hit him with a car,” Gary pointed out.

Dorian shook his head. “It was something from before,” he said. “We should take a look at the body before we get rid of it.”

“I’m not hauling a huge wolf back to the city for you to play a doctor,” Gary said. He went back to the car, putting the gun away. “Come help me get the covering, I don’t want blood all over my car.”

Dorian sighed and finished dressing up. Gary had a waterproof tarp in his trunk and they used it to protect the interior of the car before they dragged the cadaver into it. They had to put it on the backseats, the trunk of the car being too small to fit a grown werewolf.

After some more driving they found a muddy road through the forest. Gary parked in the undergrowth and they spent the better part of the night digging a large and deep enough hole.

Dorian wiped sweat off his forehead. “We deserve a bonus for all this,” he groaned.

Gary glared at him. “Like you’re doing that much,” he grumbled.

They were hauling the body out of the car now, Dorian desperately trying to carry an equal share, but he was mostly getting covered in blood seeping from the plastic while Gary was supporting most of its weight.

“Not all of us spend all the time in the gym,” Dorian bit back.

They finally hauled it to the grave and rolled out of the tarp, pushing it in.

“You put the tarp in, I’ll take care of this,” Gary said and started pushing the dirt onto the dead werewolf. Dorian nodded and started folding the plastic, trying not to get blood everywhere.

They were finished soon, getting back in the car. Dorian had the bloody tarp resting in his lap, clothes almost equally as dirty.

“You look like you showered in blood,” Gary said after a while. They were still driving through the forest.

“I kinda did,” Dorian replied.

“My car must look like shit.”

Dorian shrugged. “It’s just some mud.”

Gary huffed. “And blood too.”

“It’s just some bloody mud.”

---

The car was covered in more or less fresh mud, with a bump in the front that looked suspiciously bloody. Borna approached the driver’s window, squinting at the bright headlights.

“Good evening,” he said automatically.

“Do you guys have anything extra for mud?” the driver said.

Borna barely heard him, because in the passenger’s seat was an unmistakable figure.

Fucking hell, why Dorian covered in blood?!

Alarm must had been written on his face, because the driver laughed awkwardly. “We hit a wolf,” he explained. “Hauling one of those beasts off the road is a nasty business.”

Dorian met Borna’s eyes and quickly looked away.

“I see,” Borna said. “I could clean the dirt manually but it would take longer and cost more.” He tried not to stare at Dorian, who was very stubbornly pretending not to see him.

“Eh, I’ll just take the basic automated wash,” the driver said.

Borna nodded. “Okay.” He directed the car where to go, turning on the wash cycle. The overwhelming smell of the detergent finally overlaid the stench of blood, but Dorian’s blood-soaked image still danced in front of his eyes. Once the car was clean the driver paid, leaving a small tip and left. The entire time Dorian pointedly avoided Borna’s eyes.

Once they were gone from the station, Borna took his phone out, opening the text messages.

“what the fuck was all that??” he typed out, sending the message to Dorian. He leaned back on the wall, waiting for the response and staring at the clock.

[maren-as-an-adult]

The 2020 Experience, Part 2

When I flew back to New York a few days later (yes, I braved the airports and a plane) I could not stop crying. What should have been a loving and heartfelt reunion between myself and Graham turned into an awkward situation for him, with me bent double in the front seat of his car sobbing inconsolably.

And suddenly I had to adjust back to life more or less on my own. I couldn’t have friends come over, my family who lived in NYC were too far for me to get to them without public transit, and Graham’s mother was immunocompromised so we couldn’t spend much time together. I was back to sitting at my computer, taking online surveys for the promise of money and sending out application after application. Jena and Julia, my other two roommates, were still not back, so it was just me and Polina.

Things started to get a little better though. I had applied for Medicaid so I had some health coverage again. I scheduled an appointment with my new doctor, I started talking to a therapist again in August, and I stopped budgeting for birth control and got it for free. The after school program was up and running again, this time remotely (only one of my schools was able to host their program though, so my work hours were still cut). I looked forward to every other weekend, where Graham would drive out and pick me up to spend a few nights at his place. Jena came back and announced she was moving out, and our new roommate Michelle moved in. Michelle and I had a lot in common, and I found it easy to talk to and connect with her.

I even got out to see my family. I braved the subway to see my family up in Astoria, and Polina told me about the ferries I could take that brought me to my family on the Upper East Side.

One day in late September, however, I woke up with abdominal pain. It was pretty mild at first, but it kept getting worse. As someone who has periods, I assumed it was just week-early cramps brought on by stress combined with a poor diet that didn’t include much fiber. I tried to assuage the feeling by eating an apple, but after a quick trip to the bathroom it made a reappearance coming back up the way it went down. I decided to do what most people do (and what doctors hate) and look up my symptoms online to try and self-diagnose. The two big contenders for what I was suffering from were IBS or an ulcer. I texted Graham and told him what was up, and he asked what I was going to do. My current plan was to try and wait it out, and if things still felt bad in the morning, I would go to the ER.

If it wasn’t for Graham’s suggestion that I go to an urgent care center (which I had completely forgot existed at this point in time) I may have died.

At 7:12pm I grabbed my bag and walked three blocks to the urgent care center closest to my apartment. Unfortunately, they were no longer taking walk-ins for the day, but told me that another urgent care center was open until 8 and would take walk-ins.

It was 17 blocks away.

I walked 17 blocks with severe abdominal pain to this urgent care center just to be seen and tell a health professional I wasn’t feeling well. I knew there wouldn’t be much they could do, but maybe they could give me a better idea of what was wrong with me. I called Graham and gave him the address of the urgent care center, asking that he come out to be with me. Whatever was happening to me, I did not want to go through it alone.

I made it to the urgent care center fifteen minutes before they closed. I was taken to an observation room where a brusque young Russian woman took down my vitals and information as we waited for the RN to come see me. When he finally did come in and I started telling him what was wrong, I barely finished explaining what happened after I ate and failed to keep down the apple that he interrupted me saying, “You need to go to the ER immediately, because what you described sounds like you have a GI bleed. You’ll need an endoscopy, where they take a camera on a long, thin tube and feed it down in through your stomach and into your intestines to see if you’re bleeding internally.”

It was getting late, I was alone, and I was TERRIFIED.

I was told where the nearest ERs were, was given a printed referral, and then dismissed for the evening. All I could do was wait for Graham and tell him what was going on... and then call my mother and tell her.

I love my mom. I’ll likely never not love my mom for the rest of my life. But sometimes she takes a bad situation and makes me feel even worse. When I told her I had called Graham to come get me, she pointedly asked why I didn’t call any of my family who lived closer than Graham. Well, of my family who live in the greater metropolitan area of New York City, we have:

- My Aunt Barbara and Uncle Danny, currently NOT in NYC and instead staying out in Milford, PA

- My Uncle Brian, Aunt Corinne, and cousin Nikki up in Astoria. My aunt cannot drive and gets panicked easily, my cousin only has her learner’s permit, and my uncle (though I love him) would not be the most comforting presence to me at the moment, being VERY pro-Trump Republican and a FIRM anti-masker

- My Uncle Mike, Aunt Gloria, and cousins Maura (and her husband Andrew), Brendan, and Kevin. Maura, at this point in time, was nine months pregnant and due to give birth any minute, and I was not going to be responsible for pulling my aunt or uncle away from the birth of their first grandchild

With this information presented to my mother, she did concede that calling Graham had not been a terrible idea. Continuing to fret, however, she said I should at least have called them to let them know what was happening. She took it upon herself to do that, and additionally call my father and tell him (dad was on the road at that point and so missed my initial call of “Hey, jsyk, I’m going to the ER, wish me luck!”). Graham pulled up, I ended my mom’s call telling her I’d keep her posted, and headed off to the unknown.

As we were driving to the closest ER, my dad called. Thankfully, he gave advice that calmed me down. He listened to my symptoms, told me it was likely an ulcer, and told me what would happen when I went in: I’d be admitted to the ER, they’d take my vitals, I’d explain my symptoms over and over and over to multiple people, they’d probably admit me overnight, knock me out and do an endoscopy, and in the morning I’d be sent home with a prescription to help with the ulcer. I felt better.

Graham and I made it to the ER at about 8:45pm. I was admitted immediately, my vitals were taken, I was given a cup to pee in, an IV was placed in my arm, my blood was taken, and I told my story to two different doctors and a few different nurses. I went in for an ultrasound to rule out pregnancy, endometriosis, and ovarian cysts. I waited, with Graham by my side.

The doctor came back at about 11:30pm and told me my urinalysis and ultrasound came back unremarkable, but my bloodwork showed a high white blood cell count, which meant my body was fighting off an infection somewhere. This is absolutely something I did and did not want to hear in the middle of a global pandemic. On the one hand, go immune system! Keep me safe, you beautiful, hard-working bitch! On the other hand, what was it my body was fighting off?

The doctor said if I wanted to leave at that point, I could, because nothing obvious was found. “But,” she said, “I would strongly recommend we do a CT scan just to be safe.”

It was late, both Graham and I were tired, and my abdominal pain wasn’t awful to the point where I was bent double anymore. I could stand and walk around with only a slight discomfort. The thought of getting out of the ER, a frankly dangerous place to be in these COVID times, was deliciously appealing.

“What the hell, lets do the CT scan.”

I was given almost two liters of fluid to drink to prep for the scan. It didn’t taste bad, actually, kind of like a flat lemon La Croix that had been left in its aluminum can too long. At 12:30am I went in for the scan. Two hours later, Graham and I were still waiting for the results. At around 2:30am Graham turned to me and said, “Honestly, I’m ready to go. I won’t leave you here alone, but I’m exhausted and ready to get out of here.” I responded, “Honestly, I am too.”

At that moment, a doctor walked around the corner into our area and said, in a too cheery voice, “Hi there! You have appendicitis.”

I swear in that moment I could feel the cosmic force of the universe tremble with suppressed laughter at this finely crafted moment of ironic timing. My only response to the doctor and Graham was, “Well... I guess I’m staying here for the night?” Remember when I thought it was IBS? Couldn’t we go back to that?

I’ve mentioned before the idea of surgery scares me. I’d hoped I’d only have to experience anesthesia from getting my wisdom teeth removed. I fully expected to break down in hysterics then, but I guess I was just too tired and overwhelmed to react in such a big way. I called my mom and told her what was happening, and the first suggestion she made was for me to come home and heal in Chicago.

...mom, I love you, but getting on a plane immediately after major surgery in the MIDDLE OF A GLOBAL PANDEMIC FROM AN AIRBORNE VIRUS is frankly the DUMBEST IDEA EVER.

After realizing that would be a bad move, she suggested she come out to be with me while I heal. While an appealing process, it ultimately wouldn’t be of much use, because she’d have to quarantine for two weeks before seeing anyone at that point. Eventually, she offered to book a hotel room for me and Graham for a long, extended weekend to help me recover. It was extremely generous of her, and I’ll forever be grateful she did it.

I was hooked up to antibiotics to prep for surgery, and the attending surgeon explained the procedure to me. Everyone was so calm and sure of themselves that I felt okay, and the inevitable wave of panic was held off. At 4:30am, I was wheeled up to the operating room. Graham stayed by my side as long as he could and walked all the way to the doors of the OR hallway with me and the attending. I made sure he and my mom had each others’ phone numbers so he could give updates. I was wheeled through the doors, and met with my operating team.

The anesthesiologist and practicing surgeon assured me that they felt fine, well-rested, and at the top of their game, and I was able to relax some as I moved off of my gurney onto the operating table. Once I was on the table, clad only in a thin hospital gown and gripper socks, my body started to shake. Whether it was from the cold or the panic had finally set in I wasn’t sure, but I calmly told the doctors that I thought my fight or flight response was kicking in, and they might need to consider restraining my shaking limbs.

They did, and they also put a heated (and somewhat weighted) blanket over me which relaxed me so my limbs weren’t shaking so violently. An oxygen mask was placed on my face, sealing my nose and mouth into a thick plastic chamber. I tried to breathe deeply and evenly, forcing myself to think of pleasant thoughts and not spiral into a headspace of worst case scenarios. I think what helped most was actually an attending nurse reading out loud my patient chart for posterity and recording’s sake, and he said, “Patient is a twenty-seven year old female named Maureen Ford.”

The annoyance I felt at being misnamed (again as Maureen) cut through the second wave of panic buildup, and my only goal was to correct him. The oxygen mask muffled my voice, but I like to think if you were to listen to the audio recording of my surgery, you would hear, very faintly in the background, me indignantly stating, “It’s pronounced MAREN!”

My last thought before I went under was that I need to make sure that nurse was corrected.

When I woke up, I felt more comfortable than I had in a very long time. The only thing that kept me from being in a total state of comfortable bliss was the slowly incoming knowledge that my mouth was drier than the Sahara desert at noon in July. Despite this, and the residual effects of the anesthesia still in effect, I was pleased to find that not only could I clearly hear and understand the conversations happening around me, I could also coherently speak and communicate with people. I asked for water as soon as I could, and the nurse told me that they’d have to work me up to water. We’d start with a lemon swab in my mouth, followed by ice chips, and then I could get water. The attending surgeon came in to tell me the surgery went smoothly without complications, and I asked her if she could make sure whoever called me Maureen was corrected on my name pronunciation.

I really hope it wasn’t written off as a sleepy patient’s delirious request, because I was absolutely serious about it.

After eating some very powdery eggs and drinking an apple juice, I was discharged and told to get my medications, rest up, avoid lifting anything over 15 pounds, stay away from submerging my sutures in water, and to schedule a one week post-op follow up with my primary care provider and a two week post-op follow up with the attending surgeon.

Graham drove us back to Bay Ridge, and I gave him my keys to go grab some essentials from my apartment. I gave Michelle and Polina a heads up that he was coming up (and I had let them know what was happening before I went into surgery) and that I’d be gone recovering through the weekend and partway into the week. They both wished me a speedy recovery, Graham grabbed a few essentials for me, and we drove up the street to pick up my meds from Rite Aid.

For some reason, they had only filled two of the four prescriptions. One they didn’t fill because it was a controlled substance and the hospital hadn’t submitted the proper authorization for it, and the other prescription (one of two laxatives) I have no idea why it wasn’t filled. Eventually, I got both my pain medications and one of the laxatives, with the other laxative to be filled and picked up at a different Rite Aid, closer to Graham’s work.

Exhausted, sore, hungry, and (in my case) in desperate need of a shower, we made it back to Graham’s to spend one more day there before going off to the hotel my mom had booked us. Graham had been scheduled to work that day, but after calling into the office was told he should only come in if he thought it was absolutely necessary. He ended up catching a few hours of sleep before going in for the late shift at work. I managed to take a shower and fell asleep on his couch as his bed was too soft and sent my abdomen into absolute agony. I blinked in and out of consciousness for the next few hours, waiting for Graham to come home with my last bit of medication. In that time, my dad called to check on me and ask how I felt, what I was prescribed, and what was expected of me. As we were talking Graham called, and I excused myself so I could answer the call. Nothing could have prepared me for what Graham was going to say to me.

“I was just hit by a truck.”

*click*

[oddcoupler222]

Akskdkdk I’m not crying I just got some tww feelings in my eyes and to the rest of tww fans you’re welcome (I’m the biggest one of them all) let it be multi chapter 🤲🏻

did i take one person asking for something and turn it into a spinoff semi romance novel? i… may have.

Eliza -

Colleen -

(for funsies)

 Fall 2018

Eliza wouldn’t say she loved her work study job in the registrar’s office. But she had friends with various other jobs throughout campus, and she knew because of their tales that her job wasn’t the worst.

Would she love to trade with her new friend, Sara, and have the job in the printing lab in the library, where she would just have to un-jam the printer and restock it with paper, then sit on her laptop? Of course. But she was also nosy as fuck and she got a lot of insider info from her supervisor here. Plus, she got all of the registration codes early. So who was the real winner?

Still Sara.

“Hello? Hi. I’m sorry, are you busy? I’m - I’m not trying to be obnoxious, but I really really have to get into a class, and I have nowhere else to go to ask. I’ve tried the professor, I’ve tried her TA. I’ve asked all of the upperclassmen I know. And this is the final stop before I may very well have a breakdown.”

A frantic, pleading voice interrupted her IG scrolling. It was technically one of her two fifteen minute breaks that she got during her five hour shift. She intended to tell the interloper that she would have to wait until the other side of the office didn’t have a line, because where her desk was, was technically closed.

But Eliza had never seen an angel in real life before. And she was such a simple, simple lesbian.

Never in her life had she ever been struck like this, though. The tousled blonde hair that she could see was usually nice and orderly. The clothes that screamed an upper-middle class (at the very least) background, though trendy.

Blue eyes crystal clear but starting to brim with tears.

“I’m not busy. What can I do for you?”

“Thank the gods! In order to graduate on time with my major and both of my minors, I need to double up on some courses. Which means I have to take some courses before I’m technically supposed to. So, I got permission to take Ethnicity and Identity with Dr. Oakhart next semester, even though it’s a semester early. Because I need to take Cultures of Essos the semester after, and it’s a prereq. But it took forever to get permission to take Oakhart’s class early; I had to basically camp out in her office,” a little laugh fluttered out, anxiously. “And now? She gave me permission but told me she wouldn’t let me jump the waitlist. I just. I really need to get into that class. Can you even just tell me how long the waitlist is, maybe? Please?”

Someone was wound extremely tightly. It wasn’t usually something Eliza, as a laidback person, enjoyed. But she was already charmed.

“Let me check.”

She typed in her credentials into the system as she surreptitiously glanced up at the girl. Her cheeks were flushed and seven hells. She was cute.

“You really camped out in her office?”

“Huh?” A fleeting smile flashed over her face, and it warmed everything inside of her. “Oh. Well, I know it sounds crazy in retrospect. I can just sometimes get very focused.”

“I gotcha.” Eliza did not, in fact, relate. But her pretending to put this girl at ease.

She pulled up Oakhart’s Gender and Identity class for the spring – and yikes, there was a waitlist a mile long.

“That’s not a good face.”

“Ouch.” She kidded.

“Gods! No, your face isn’t -”

She stopped her before she could ramble anymore. Especially because she wasn’t sure she could handle some sort of mangled compliment from this gorgeous creature without stumbling over herself. “It’s cool. Uh, yeah, no the waitlist isn’t bad.” She lied through her teeth.

“It’s not?” The could-be model’s voice was as incredulous as it should be, as she tried to lean over the counter to see the computer. Like she had to see to believe.

And Eliza quickly turned the computer more toward herself, “Uh, you can’t - against policy-” once again, the lies.

“Sorry. That was probably crossing a line.” She blew out a deep breath and her shoulders deflated. “I guess, can you just put me on the bottom of the list?”

“Yeah,” she lied, fully intending on breaking the rules, as she clicked the top of the waitlist to flag her into the class. “I just need… your name.”

She very much wanted to learn her name.

“Colleen Durand. D-U-R-A-N-D,” she spelled it, and Eliza could very easily see that she’d spelled her name or heard it spelled just so in order to get places in life many times.

She typed her name into the first place on the wait list. “I imagine you will probably hear about this class sometime soon. Don’t fill this block on your class schedule.”

An all too brief, but brightly blazing smile stole her breath. “Thanks so much.” Colleen checked her wrist, a nice looking silver watch glinting in the light coming in from the window. “Gods, I have to go. All right. Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome!” She called after her.

Colleen Durand. She loved the registrar’s office.

Spring 2019

Approaches to Comparative Literature… was a joke.

Colleen rarely thought of classes like that, because all she had in her head was her mother’s voice, saying, “If I’m paying for you to go to a public institution“ - even though it wasn’t in the top 5 universities in the nation (god forbid she go to a public university, even if it was ranked as one of the top ten colleges in the country) - “You’d better be bringing back nothing short of straight A’s.”

She was a junior in college, was on track to graduate at the top of her class even with having two minors - she took 6 classes a semester, not counting the summer and winter semester courses she took. And she took all of them seriously - took color coded notes by hand, sat in the front of the class.

But this course… she just couldn’t. She tried for the first two weeks, learned that the professor left much of his job up to the TA, and then said TA had hit on her in an extremely slimy way and she - well, after that she started slipping into the back row. Just this one class wouldn’t hurt.

She was the only one in her row and sitting in the back gave her a whole new perspective.

It especially gave her a perspective on the girl she’d only known as Nice Girl at the registrar office who doesn’t think I’m crazy before now, and now she knew her name - Eliza.

Eliza, she’d learned from sitting in the front, types vigorously during every class on her laptop and occasionally makes very funny commentary.

It was only in switching her seat to sit behind Eliza that she realized she isn’t taking notes on her laptop, but was instead just being very active on various social medias. Mostly twitter.

@elizathesapphicSCREAMING my TA just announced that some of our earliest lgbt writers were great friends and roommates. i could teach this course better lmao

She wasn’t wrong.

@elizathesapphica limerick -there once was a TA from hellwhose hair is rock solid from gelhis voice is nasally and gratinghis ignorance is so fucking frustratinglet’s not forget he’s smarmy as well

Colleen had genuinely had to smother a laugh from that one. And, it turned out, from many others. The semester passed in a blur of moments - her twentieth birthday, an intense and stressful visit from her mom, juggling 6 courses and her first practicum - but Eliza stands out.

They don’t talk, because… well, what would they even talk about? They seem like really different people and Eliza is super lively, but she learns a lot about her.

If it wasn’t obvious from her twitter handle (obviously), she’s a lesbian. Who very much loves Margaery Tyrell - someone Colleen vaguely knows is a recently out politician - and Sansa Stark - who Colleen is very familiar with, because of the writings she’d done and the classes she’d taken that Sansa had TA’d for before she’d finished her master’s - and their very public relationship.

As well as many, many other lesbian celebrities and television shows that Colleen does not watch or follow, but is still entertained by because Eliza is entertaining.

At the end of the semester, she follows Eliza’s twitter on the account she never uses that is basically untraceable to her. It has her name on it, sure, but nothing else. No pictures. No retweets.

But Eliza’s twitter is good for a laugh and sometimes she needs that.

Fall 2019

“Ohhhh my godddd, Sara. Can you believe it’s her?” Eliza wrapped her arm around her best friend’s shoulders, pulling her close - as if they could shrink back against the wall behind them.

They were going home the following day for winter break and so it seemed like everyone who had an off campus apartment was throwing a party. Which was great because Eliza hadn’t gone out this semester much at all. There had been too much work and too much - uhhh well, being lazy and not wanting to leave her dorm when she could binge watch shows with Sara.

Sara elbowed her in the side accidentally as they fell back against the wall. “It’s who?”

She pointed across the large living area full of tipsy-to-drunk college students, to the front door. “Colleen! She - I don’t think she ever comes out? Why do you think she is right now?”

Sara’s eyes rolled before she jostled their shoulders. “Oh you mean your cruuuush. I don’t know, it’s the end of the semester. Everyone’s out. It’s not a big deal.”

Eliza ignored her and stared at Colleen as she and a friend Eliza recognized didn’t know the name of - she was a master social media creep but that didn’t help when someone didn’t have social medias - chatted and made their way across the room.

And her heart started racing. “Oh my gods. Oh. She’s coming over here. Do you think she -”

“We’re right next to the drinks, why do you think she’s coming over?” Sara’s retort quickly popped her rapidly inflating hopes, and she trained a critical eye on Colleen-Gorgeous-Durand. “That is dream crush girl?”

Eliza spun so quickly to face Sara that she nearly sloshed her vodka cranberry over the rim of her cup. “How can you say it like - like that? Look at her!”

“I mean. She is pretty. In a buttoned up way.” Sara turned to face her, having to tilt her head up just enough to quirk an eyebrow. “Is that your type? You haven’t dated much in our eight month friendship tenure.”

Eliza scoffed. “No! No. I don’t have a… type.” She started slapping Sara’s arm, “Ohhhh gods, she’s coming, she’s coming, she’s -”

Sara caught her hand and held it tight, hissing, “Calm down, you look insane.”

Colleen approached them with a nervous looking smile. “Hey. Can I ask where you got your drink?” She surveyed the table in front of her, dubiously, “I just don’t really see the mixer I want -”

It was like an automatic reaction. Eliza’s hand shot out and offered her cup, “Take it! Still full. Just made it. Made tons of them. See?” She held it up so the rim reflected the dim light. “I didn’t take a sip yet or anything. I can go make another cup.”

Those sky blue eyes were so brilliantly light and she gave the slightest twitch of an eyebrow as she accepted Eliza’s drink. “Um… thanks?”

“Yeah. No prob. Enjoy.” She grinned, knowing it was too bright for the moment, but whatever.

She felt triumphant, even when Sara collapsed against her in a fit of giggles as Colleen walked away. “Holy shit. I see now why you haven’t dated.”

“Um, what is that supposed to mean? She sought me out.” Now that she replayed the interaction, though, she could… sort of… see where she’d gone wrong.

Oh, fuck.

Sara only laughed harder, letting Eliza’s hand go and wrapping it around her waist in a hug. “Listen.” She tried to calm her laughter. “Listen. What I just witnessed means one of two things: your crush is an absolute idiot who took a drink from you, a weird ass stranger at a party. Or she actually somewhat recognizes you, too, and doesn’t think you’re a creepy stranger.”

“Oh, fuck. Now I need to find more cranberry juice.”

Spring 2020

“Who’s that girl over there? She keeps looking at us.” Colleen’s friend and flatmate, Natalia, commented. They were in the dining hall, which is a rarity since they hadn’t lived on campus since they were freshmen.

“What girl?”

“Pretty, dark hair, dark eyes. She has like 4 piercings up her ear. She has a rainbow pin on her backpack. Seems gay.”

Pretty with dark hair and eyes, the earrings, and the dead giveaway rainbow pin already tells her it’s most likely Eliza Harlow, even before she turns and looks. Colleen rolls her eyes. “How does she seem gay? Besides the rainbow pin,” she adds on, even though she knows - of course Eliza Harlow is gay.

Her still very active twitter is still hilarious and very, very full of lesbian pop culture. It’s gotten almost kind of frustrating, the fact that Eliza never really posts anything about herself on her twitter. Colleen definitely knows she is a lesbian more than anything - she posted something just last night about a pro soccer player and proclaimed that her lesbian heart wasn’t going to survive her coming out.

But she never posts anything about her own life. It’s not like Colleen cares? But she can’t help but be intrigued. It’s weird. But maybe that’s just the culture they live in these days.

She still turns and looks where Natalia is pointing, anyway. Sure enough, Eliza is sitting - backpack perched on the table next to her bagel, rainbow pin on display - with her ever present friend whose name Colleen knows is Sara (thanks, twitter). Pretty with her dark hair curling, as usual, over her shoulders.

And, Natalia was right. She’s throwing looks over at them.

Eliza had spoken to her for the first time, without having to do so for a class project, last week. She’d tossed her backpack over her shoulder super casually - Colleen had noticed out of the corner of her eye, as she’d packed up her own bag - and approached her.

“Can I borrow your notes?”

Colleen was always loathe to part with her notes. She took pride in them - even color coded them - and she doubted that strangers would take as much care with them as they deserved.

But Eliza… well, she didn’t really know her. But she didn’t feel like a stranger either. Especially with her eyes looking all hopeful and nervous. She wondered if Eliza had fallen behind in class with all of the work she was doing on her social medias. Or on her work for the internship she had at the Red Keep (thanks, twitter).

She’d handed over her notebook with a smile that was genuine.

“Whatever. The rainbow pin is why she seems gay, fine. But she’s coming over here.” Natalia brings her back to the moment, making a face at the meatloaf she’s eating before she pushes the tray away. 

Colleen sat up straighter, dropping her own fork. “That’s Eliza. We’re in Valyrian Lit class together.”

Eliza walked even closer, looking… apprehensive. Her big, expressive eyes were downcast, as she worried at her generous bottom lip. Which was weird because no, she didn’t know Eliza personally. But she kind of did know her personality. And she was not apprehensive.

It took a moment for Colleen to notice the notebook in her hands. And that it wasn’t the same green one - always green notebooks for lit classes - she’d given Eliza three days ago.

“Hey! Colleen! Hey. Uhhh. I have… your notebook.” Eliza held out the notebook toward her, shifting back and forth on her feet. “Your notes were - great. Such a help.”

“No problem, but…” Colleen eyed the notebook - a mint green as opposed to her hunter green. “That’s not mine.”

“No, it is! I - it is.” Eliza cleared her throat and slid it down onto the table. “It’s definitely yours, now. Um. The thing is. My obnoxious roommate  - I didn’t choose her? I was supposed to live with my friend, but then housing got all messed up and. It’s a whole thing,” she waved her hand, and Colleen, despite being so anal about what the fuck happened to her notebook, couldn’t help but be entertained. “The point is, she spilled her coffee all over your notebook.”

“What?!” All the gods, her notes. All her time and color coordination. And that had all of her handouts and - fuck. Dr. Lannister was not an easy professor to pass, his exams were notoriously difficult -

“Ohhhh, shit,” Natalia whispered.

Eliza quickly flipped the notebook open, frantically pointing at the pages. “No! Wait. I, I dried out your notebook and spent all last night re-writing your notes. I tried finding a matching notebook, but this was the only green one they had at the store. And I bought colored pens, because I figured out the color system, too. It’s all there. I swear. And I made copies of all of the handouts and put them in the back. Thanks. For the notes. I’ll never ask again, I swear.”

She hitched her backpack over her shoulder without another word and spun on her heel.

Colleen leaned over the table to peek at her notes and… wow. Eliza really did figure out her color coding system, even down to the obsessive tonal color changes for different types of literature. And. She skimmed her eyes quickly over the page - Eliza definitely left some insightful notes in here that Colleen herself had missed.

She turned her head to see if she could even call out her thanks to Eliza, but she was too far away. All she could see was the other girl slapping her palm against her forehead as she turned to leave the hall.

It made her smile.

Fall 2020

Professor Stark tapped her hands on her desk, “And as much as I know group projects aren’t everyone’s favorite thing, the sad reality is that we have to work with people in real life that we don’t get to choose. So, you will all individually document what you do in this project and then evaluate each other’s contributions at the end. You have your groups, the rubrik, and some examples to start with. Even though the project isn’t due for over a month, I would highly recommend starting it early.”

Eliza wouldn’t say she loved group work by any means, especially when the groups were assigned.

Colleen caught her eye and asked, “You want to come to my place this weekend to get started? I really don’t like to wait until the last minute for these kinds of things.”

Eliza was pretty sure she was going to write Sansa Stark a thank you letter.

[artificialqueens]

nobody knows where we might end up, chapter two (branjie) - holtzmanns

(read on ao3) | (tumblr)

“Then why,” Nina punctuates it with a click of her pen, “have you been so on edge since finding out that it was her?”

Brooke scoffs. “What are you talking about?” She’s not that obvious. She’s professional. Dr. Mateo doesn’t affect her that much.

“You practically ran away from the conversation when I introduced her to you-”

“I did not-”

“And now you’re sitting here like you’ve been personally wronged. If you were anyone else, I’d tell you to get the hell out of my office and respect my hiring decisions. But it’s you, and you’re my friend, and I care about you, so you need to start talking.”

AN: Hello, hello, chapter two! Some bonding outside of class in the past and a pissed off Brooke in the present. Thank you writ for being an amazing human and helping me talk through ideas, roasting my writing, and being a great beta.

(then)

“C’mon, B. You’ve barely come out with me at all since orientation week.” Brooke’s roommate flops down on her bed, fixing her with a quivering pout that’s dramatic enough to win an Academy Award. 

“I gotta study, Detox, it’s already week three and midterms start-”

“Fuck midterms.” Detox’s statement is punctuated by a hand in the air. “Uni’s not for studying-”

“Yes it is-”

“-Uni is not only for studying. You’re gonna regret it years from now if you spend it locked away in a dorm room preparing for midterms that are still weeks away.” Detox flips over onto her stomach. “Come study the different types of shitty mixed drinks that we can make instead.” 

Brooke bites her lip. She’s always had a plan - get into uni, study her ass off, get experience in the field, and ace the MCAT all so that she can be accepted into med school. A worthy four year plan. She’s vowed to herself not to get distracted, not to get pulled away from it. Not if she wants to get into med school on the first try. 

Detox sees the torment on her face and lets out a sigh. “It’s one night, B. It’s not even a party. Just some people on our floor gathering in 718 to get to know each other more and chill.” 

“Promise we won’t stay too long?” Maybe she can go for an hour or so, max. She can spare that much time. 

“Oh Jesus, yes fine, we won’t stay too long. We can come home for your nonexistent curfew so that we don’t make your mom who lives hundreds of miles away mad at you.” Detox extends a hand, tugs Brooke up into a standing position. 

“She lives in Etobicoke, actually, not too far from-”

“Irrelevant. Now c’mon, put on something a little sluttier than that high school marching band t-shirt you’re wearing. Not exactly gonna get yourself a man in that.” Detox starts rifling through her own clothes, pulling out a crop top and holding it out for Brooke. 

“Who’s to say I even want a man in the first place?” Not that she’s even come out to Detox just yet. Better to test the waters with her first. 

“Whatever. Get changed. It’ll be fun.” 

 It’s only kind of fun. 

Detox finds other people to talk to as soon as they step through the door, leaving Brooke to her own devices. She makes small talk with a girl who calls her ‘stunning’, which is flattering, really, before she realizes that the girl uses ‘stunning’ as an adjective for pretty much everything. 

“This cider? Stunning!” 

Case in point. 

Brooke nurses her own drink, noticing with a wrinkle of her nose that it’s emptying faster than she’s planned. She’s only brought one, not intending to even get tipsy - she still has another lecture to get through tonight if she wants to stay on top of her study schedule. 

She runs a hand through her hair when the girl leaves to grab a snack, wishing that she’d just stayed in her room. It’s hard. Having to socialize is hard. Uncomfortable. She almost misses home, misses her ballet friends and how easy things were when they had common ground to bond over. 

But she’s left dance behind with high school, not following the path of her friends who want a ballet career. Her body is tired, worn. Her mind has better uses. 

Maybe she should just go home and study. 

“Brooke!” 

Brooke’s head snaps up at the mention of her name, a voice yelling who is most definitely not Detox but-

“Vanessa?” 

She’s here. Grinning with a smile that lights up her face, her hair in a high bun with pieces falling in front of her face that she goes to tuck behind her ear. 

She’s adorable. 

Vanessa maneuvers between the people sitting on the floor to come sit beside her. She’s in another shirt-dress, one with Led Zeppelin’s logo on it. 

Brooke points to it. “Didn’t know you liked Zeppelin.”

“Who?” Vanessa looks down at her shirt. “Eh, I don’t. Stole it from my brother’s closet when I was last home.” 

Brooke can’t help the giggle that escapes her lips, sounding quite similar to the girls that sit outside the Athletic Centre and watch the guys’ football team practice while hoping to catch their attention.

Nauseating. She’s better than this. She has game. 

But then Vanessa nudges her, grabs her can of cider to look at it (‘I’ve never tried this one before’) and Brooke realizes from the way that her breath catches that no, she really doesn’t. 

“Try it, see if you like it.” The comment slips out before Brooke can stop herself.

Vanessa raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?” 

Her sip leaves a deep red lipstick print on the edge of the can, one that Brooke can’t help but stare at when Vanessa passes it back. 

“You’re right, that shit is good. On second thought, I want another sip.” Vanessa reaches across to grab her can. 

Brooke lifts it higher, out of Vanessa’s reach, can’t help but grin when Vanessa pouts up at her. “How about we trade?” 

Vanessa practically thrusts her own can in Brooke’s direction. “Take it, I’m tired of this hard lemonade. It’s not even good.” 

Vanessa takes another sip from Brooke’s drink, running a hand through her hair. Her leg is bouncing in place again, but somehow it’s less annoying than it is in class. “Question. What were you doing here alone, looking all sad and shit when I came in?” 

“I wasn’t sad. ” Brooke’s voice is defensive. She wasn’t. 

“Yeah you were.” Vanessa’s eyes are twinkling, making Brooke see that she’s just playing around. “Pouting and everything by yourself like a sad kitty.” 

 “You’re making me feel real cool.” Vanessa cracks up at Brooke’s wry statement, her laugh reverberating in the small room and it’s so cute that it makes Brooke crack a smile too. 

“Nah. I just…my roommate dragged me here. Wasn’t really in the mood today.” Brooke shrugs at her. 

“Are you ever?” Vanessa can’t keep a straight face before nudging Brooke. “Kidding, kidding. I’ve just never seen you at one of these floor hangouts before.”

Brooke can feel the blush rising on her face. So maybe she’s a bit of a hermit in her room. Who needs to hang out with others all of the time? But at the same time…Vanessa noticed.

“You were looking for me, huh?” It’s her turn to tease, and it feels great to turn the tables when Vanessa is the one flushing crimson. 

“No! Okay…maybe. It’s just kinda nice seeing you outside of class. Where we can actually talk and shit, not with Professor What’s His Nuts droning on and on and on.” 

Brooke can’t help but clap a hand over her mouth, looking around as if the man is going to actually materialize out of thin air or something. “Professor Who?”  

“I said what I said.” Vanessa takes another swig of Brooke’s drink. “I can never pronounce his actual name, it’s too damn long.” 

Brooke snorts. “And yet you can pronounce things like ‘ventricular tachycardia’ just fine in class.” 

Vanessa shrugs. “Priorities, bitch. I practice. Speaking of which, I’m fucking glad we moved onto cardio from neuro. Neuro was boring.”

“It is not.” Brooke has to stop her mouth from dropping open at Vanessa’s statement. “Neuro is so fun! Learning about how the brain sends messages and the different cranial nerves and-”

“Zzzzz.” Vanessa pretends to snore. “Already asleep.” 

Brooke gapes at her. “How can you hate neuro? Cardio is so confusing, with all of the different nodes and phases. I still haven’t fully gotten it, I need to go back and study it again before the midterm comes up.” 

“Is that why I barely see you around? Cause you’re studying all the damn time?” 

“No!” Brooke makes a face Vanessa gives her a pointed look. “Maybe?” 

“You need to loosen up a little.” Vanessa stands up then and faces her. Sticks a hand out. “Lemme show you how.”

“I don’t really want to drink that much tonight.” Her protest is cut off, however, when Vanessa winks at her and makes the words that are resting on the tip of her tongue disappear. 

“When did I say there was gonna be more alcohol? Come on.” 

Brooke relents, letting Vanessa pull her into a standing position and drag her to another corner of the room. The music is louder, people dancing and laughing and then so is Vanessa, singing along to lyrics that Brooke doesn’t know and grabbing her hands, trying to make her move too.

Vanessa giggles at the way Brooke is frozen in her spot, stiff despite the music. “C’mon, you. Why you looking like a baby giraffe trying to learn how to walk for the first time?” 

“I don’t dance. Not like this, anyway.” She’s a ballet dancer. She doesn’t know how to do this kind of dancing, one where she doesn’t have to drill the steps into her head a million times first. 

“Sure you do.” Vanessa’s smile is a bit too mischievous and oh , that’s why, because she puts her hands on Brooke’s hips. Brooke’s heart does approximately twenty-five flips, because does Vanessa even know what she’s doing to her?

“Try and sway a little.” Vanessa moves her hands, bringing Brooke’s hips with them. “There you go.”

“I look like one of those inflatable balloons outside of used car dealerships.” Brooke feels her heart glow in her chest when it makes Vanessa crack up. 

“Shut up, you don’t.” Vanessa says it with a smile that makes her eyes sparkle and hey, even though Brooke may be looking a bit stupid, does it even matter when she can make Vanessa’s face do that? 

Vanessa lifts her hands from her hips, the loss of contact tugging on Brooke’s chest more than it should. But then Vanessa grabs both of her hands, intertwines their fingers and jeez. Brooke feels like she’s had more alcohol than she actually has, because she feels so light and happy and Vanessa is singing along again, and hey, maybe dancing like this isn’t so hard. 

Brooke can’t keep the smile off of her face when she stumbles back down the hall to her room hours later. She’s a little sweaty and tired and definitely in need of a shower but her heart feels like it’s shimmying to its own rhythm, one curated by Vanessa and the way she had danced around her. 

Brooke tosses Detox’s crop top back onto her bed, her roommate still not back, probably not returning until the morning. 

Vanessa’s fun. Real fun outside of class, when they’re not taking turns asking and answering questions and annoying the fuck out of everyone else present in the lecture hall. 

Maybe falling a tiny bit behind on her study schedule is okay. She’ll just work extra hard tomorrow. 

She thinks of the way that Vanessa had held her hands, twirled her around while going on her tiptoes (‘Why are you so tall, what are you, a skyscraper?’). Perhaps she’ll need to alter her schedule to allow for such extracurricular activities, because she’s made up her mind. 

She absolutely needs to hang out with Vanessa outside of class again. 

(now)

Brooke exits out of the Word document open on her office computer with a frustrated growl. The words aren’t coming to her no matter how hard she fucking tries and it’s annoying, this never happens, shouldn’t happen because this research trial is her baby and she should be able to describe her findings in words. 

Except that the words seem to be gone. 

She rubs at her temples, trying to work away the tension headache that has started to blossom. The day has felt longer than usual. Her craniotomy had complications with bleeding that needed to be dealt with, making the surgery go for an hour longer than necessary. The patient that she had a consult with had to be intubated after a code blue. Now her research is just…not working. 

Brooke hasn’t felt this off-kilter in a while. Things just changed after she saw…her. 

Fucking Dr. Mateo. Throwing Brooke off of her rhythm. 

Brooke stands up, shutting off her office computer. She needs a break from her work, anyway. 

Her feet lead her to Nina’s office before she even realizes where she’s walking. Nina’s on the phone when Brooke lets herself in, holding up a hand until she hangs up. Brooke flops down on a chair, crossing her arms. 

Nina raises an eyebrow at her when she puts the phone down. “Hello to you, too.” 

Brooke leans forward in her chair. “You didn’t tell me that the new hire was Vanessa Mateo.” 

“You never asked.” Nina’s forehead wrinkles. “Wait, is there something professionally that I’m missing? Her references were absolutely gushing about her.”

Brooke pauses. “Well…no. I don’t know much about her as a surgeon.” 

“Then why,” Nina punctuates it with a click of her pen, “have you been so on edge since finding out that it was her?”

Brooke scoffs. “What are you talking about?” She’s not that obvious. She’s professional. Dr. Mateo doesn’t affect her that much. 

“You practically ran away from the conversation when I introduced her to you-”

“I did not-”

“And now you’re sitting here like you’ve been personally wronged. If you were anyone else, I’d tell you to get the hell out of my office and respect my hiring decisions. But it’s you, and you’re my friend, and I care about you, so you need to start talking.” Nina fixes her with a look. 

Brooke deflates in her seat. “It’s…it’s not work related. It doesn’t matter. I can work with her.”

So she doesn’t want to talk about it. Sue her. Why bring up a relationship that ended so many years ago? 

She can be professional. She can avoid Dr. Mateo, if necessary. They head completely different units, for crying out loud. Who’s to say that they’ll even run into each other at all?

Nina sighs. “Brooke-”

She’s up from her chair. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.”

Brooke shouldn’t be a child about it, anyway. She can just stay away from her. 

“I gotta get back to work.” She’s at the door, ignoring Nina’s disapproving look.

“If you now think that I’m absolutely not going to get this out of you, you’re wrong.” Nina clicks her pen in her direction again. “We’re gonna talk about this sometime. As well as your penchance for avoidance.”

Brooke waves a hand. “Yeah, yeah. Love you too, West.” 

She’s out of the office before Nina can say anything else. 

 “That’s it, come on baby.” Brooke mutters the empty words into the ear of the…nurse? Radiation technician? Whoever she’s fucking on this bunk in the on call room. The woman’s moans sound fake, and would annoy Brooke if she couldn’t currently feel the way that she’s shuddering underneath her. 

Brooke extricates herself as soon as the woman comes, wiping her hand on her pants. It doesn’t matter. She’ll change into a different pair of scrubs before her next surgery, anyway. 

The woman is still lying on the bunk, dazed expression on her face as she giggles. “Wow, Dr. Hytes.” 

Brooke pulls her lab coat back on, letting out a noncommittal hum in response. She grabs the woman’s scrubs from the floor, tosses them to her. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to work, too?” 

“Uh, yeah. I will.” The woman’s still looking a bit out of it as she pulls her shirt back over her head. “Can we do that again sometime?” 

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” Brooke leaves with that, shutting the door behind her. 

She’s used to letting off steam like this, pulling one of the women on the floor that fawn over her into the on call room for a little break. Though this time, it hasn’t been as stress relieving as it usually is. The tension in her shoulders is still there, the headache that has hovered for the last few days behind her eyes still present. 

Brooke lets out an annoyed huff as she passes the cardiovascular ICU because she knows exactly why she’s still felt so off, no matter how much she wants to pretend that she hasn’t. 

She hasn’t seen Dr. Mateo since she started working at the hospital at the beginning of the week, but reminders of the woman are everywhere. Avoidance hasn’t helped when the gossip on the various units is so loud, so carrying, everyone gushing about Dr. Mateo’s surgical techniques and daring nature and how fucking friendly she is. 

Brooke doesn’t care. She doesn’t. But why has Dr. Mateo felt the need to come here, of all places? 

She’s ruminating as she power-walks to the Stroke unit, intent on distracting herself with checking up on some of the patients that she’s operated on during the week. Her mind is running as she flips through the files in her hands as she walks, barely noticing the woman heading in her direction-

“Shit! Shit, sorry-”

The woman’s apology cuts off and it makes Brooke look up and oh. 

“Dr. Hytes.”

“Dr. Mateo.”

Of fucking course. 

Dr. Mateo’s in her scrubs now too, dark blue ones matching Brooke’s because she’s also an attending surgeon. Brooke clenches her jaw. Her luck, really. She doesn’t want to deal with her. Even if she still looks fucking good. 

Not that the fact is relevant whatsoever. Doesn’t matter in the least. She needs to go back to work. 

“Excuse me.” Brooke shoves past her, and if the files in her hands knock against Dr. Mateo’s shoulders it’s absolutely not her fault. Not at all. 

“Not even the end of my first week and you’re already pushing me out of the way. Don’t let me keep you waiting from whatever important shit you’ve clearly got going on.” Dr. Mateo’s tone is biting, and it makes Brooke’s eyes narrow. 

“More important than whatever it is that you’re doing here.” With that, she stalks down the hallway without looking back because she’s mature, real mature. 

She’s fuming when she reaches the Stroke unit, an emotion that is only exacerbated when she overhears nurses talking about “that new cardio surgeon, I heard she’s crazy good,” making her slam her files down on the nursing desk with more force than necessary. 

Clearly avoiding Vanessa isn’t going to be enough, not when she’s the talk of the hospital. Focusing on her work is going to be more difficult than she thought.

[ltleflrt]

prompt please: dean/cas panties

Okay so fun fact about this story:  This is actually the first seed of an idea that developed into Satin and Sawdust, but I ended up not being able to use the premise for Reasons.  I always wanted to do this little meet cute ficlet though, so thanks for giving me an excuse.  Also thanks to @pallasperilous for helping me get over the tiny hurdle that I ran into with the plot :D

Working from home means pajamas as a uniform. There’s a lot of advice against it; stuff about “getting into aprofessional mindset” by “dressing like you’re going to the office” and otherbullshit that probably works for others, but Castiel doesn’t subscribe to thosenotions.  Especially not before he’s on his third cup of coffee, and eventhen, why dirty another set of clothing? He hates doing laundry.

Of course, he does haveto leave his apartment sometimes.  For meetings, or to deliver thefinished product to the office.  But for the short trips to the office topick up his mail and deliveries, pajamas are just fine.  It’snot like a t-shirt and some Ninja Turtle patterned sleep pants are indecent, oranything.

Not that he cares whatpeople think about how he’s dressed.  He’s only on coffee number two, andsocial functioning doesn’t start until halfway through cup three.

He’s more alert thanusual this morning though, even if he isn’t awake enough to justify changinginto normal daytime clothing.  A new neighbor has moved in across thehall, and Castiel catches him leaving for work sometimes.  The eye candy is almost equal to a third andfourth dose of caffenation.  Brown hair, scruff, freckles, and eithergreen or hazel eyes--maybe light brown?--plus a body built to kneel before inworship and supplication… The guy’s practically built to Castiel’s taste.

And oh how he’d like ataste.

Maybe he should startthe caffeine infusion earlier.  So he’ll feel fortified enough to start aconversation one of these days instead of just exchanging a smile, a wave, anda quiet hello before they go their separate ways.  And he can finally getclose enough to figure out the guy’s true eye color.  It would be worth getting up earlier.  He’s not a fan of mornings, but he’s a fan ofhot potentially single guys.  He can make an exception.

Unfortunately he seemsto have missed the object of his desire this morning.  The door across thehall stays firmly closed for the few minutes Castiel lingers, hoping to get hisother morning fix.  But he decides it’s just a little too chilly out toloiter any longer, and he heads down to the office to pick up his mail.

There’s three packagesfor him today, and he’s pleasantly surprised because he wasn’t expecting one ofthem for another day or two.  That means he can get started on the nextproject earlier than he’d promised.  Hecan use the extra time that saves him to stock up a few pre-made things for hisEtsy shop.

He goes over a mentalplan for what kind of crazy sweaters he can design for the shop as he opens theboxes.  He smiles as he unpacks the Alpaca yarn, pausing to pet the softgreen.  This one is for himself, and hepromises he won’t use it for any commissions this time.  He’s got a lovelyscarf in mind, and since the weather is getting cooler, he needs to get startedsoon if he wants to use it this winter.  

The second box is fullof regular wool, and he checks to make sure all the colors he requested wereincluded.  Last time his order had been short a few hanks, and it had beena huge pain in the ass to get everything straightened out with his supplier. Everything is fine this time though, and he’ll still be on track for hiscurrent projects.

The third box shouldcontain the vegan yarns.  Not his favorite to work with, but he respectsthat people choose a lifestyle that requires it, and they still want mittens,scarves, and sweaters.  Plus they’re usually okay with paying extra forthe cotton yarn instead of the acrylic. So as long as they’re willing to shell out the cash, he’s willing to knitout the goods.

When he opens the box, hesmiles when he’s greeted with a rainbow of colors and reaches in to pull outthe plastic wrapped skeins.  He rips at the plastic, and then hissub-optimally caffeinated brain catches up with reality and he realizes thathe’s not holding yarn at all, but something satiny.  Whole cloth, not thematerials to make it.

It’s a pair of panties.

Castiel blinks at thered satin in his hand.  “This is not what I ordered.”

He pulls out a few moreplastic wrapped bundles.  All panties. What the hell?  

Finally he reaches theorder sheet.  And when he reads the information printed at the top, horrorcreeps through him.  This package wasn’t meant for him.  He doesn’t recognize the name, but hedefinitely recognizes the apartment number.  It’s for… his new neighbor.  

“Oh, no.”

 ***

 Dean is more than readyto get home and relax after the day he’s had.  Too many fires to put outat the job site, and feathers to unruffle when he had to advise the client thatthe new timeline they were requesting wouldn’t be tenable.  Seriously whatis up with folks agreeing to an estimated finish date, and then wanting it donein half the time?  Entitled bastards.

At least it’s Friday,and he shouldn’t be needed for anything for the weekend.  He’s going tocozy up to a few beers and the episodes of Doctor Sexy building up in his DVRand relax.  

Plus, he’s got a packagewaiting for him that he’s been looking forward to for days.  Just thethought of it puts an extra bounce in his step as he locks up his car and headsfor the office.

Ten minutes later, hisgood mood goes up in a puff of metaphorical smoke.  The package isn’tactually there.

“Are you sure the emailsaid it was delivered today?” the receptionist asks for the third time.

He waves his smartphoneat her.  “Got the delivery notification email right here.”

Her vaguely hopefulexpression crumbles and she shakes her head.  “I’m so sorry, it’s reallynot here.  I even checked to see if itgot left on someone’s desk instead of in the mail room.  There isn’tanything addressed to you.”

Dean sighs and tucks hisphone away.  Well there goes part of his weekend plans.  And on topof it he has to deal with reporting a lost shipment to the vendor.  Funstuff.  “Thanks for checking anyway.”

She smilessympathetically.  “Have a good evening.”

Despite hisdisappointment about the missing package, his plans aren’t totally ruined. So his smile is mostly genuine. “Thanks, you too.”

A few minutes later helets himself into his apartment, and he leans back against the door and justbreathes for a few seconds.  It’s quiet and dark and it’s nice not havinganyone needing his attention.  It reallyhad been a rough week, and he feels like he hasn’t had a minute to stand stillfor days.  The only bright spots in his week have been the notificationthat his present to himself had been delivered, and the few times he’d caught aglimpse of his hot neighbor across the way.

Those are always gooddays.  It’s become something of an obsession for him to see what kind ofwacky pajama bottoms the guy’ll be wearing each time they meet.  Dude’sgot quite the collection, ranging from bumble bees, to kittens, to hammers andsaws, to superheroes.  Plus he’s fuckingsexy with his sleepy eyes and mumbled greetings.  He never quite lookslike he’s all the way awake, but he always greets Dean with a warm smile and adorky little wave that leaves Dean feeling light and bouncy all the way to hiscar.

Maybe when thisconstruction project is done he’ll take a few less intensive jobs. He can seeif his hot neighbor wants to hang out a bit.  Even if he’s not into dudes,it would be nice to make a friend in the new place.  Dean’s used to having a roommate, but nowthat he’s living on his own, it’s a little lonely in his down time.

“Oh well,” he says intothe empty apartment.  “At least I’ve still got Doctor Sexy.”

A light knock betweenhis shoulder blades startles him away from the door.  He looks at itsuspiciously for a moment before putting his eye to the peephole to see who’sknocking.  When he gets a glimpse of wild dark hair and blue eyes, hejerks back in surprise.

Why is Hot Neighborknocking on his door?

Only one way to find out.

When he opens the door,Hot Neighbor seems startled.  He stares up at Dean with wide, very blueeyes, that immediately make Dean’s world fall away for a few seconds.

“Oh,” Hot Neighborbreathes.  “Green.”

The non-sequitur bringeverything back. “What?”

“What?” his neighborparrots, squinting in confusion.

Oh no, he’s cute. Dean’s internal monologue sometimes has a knack for stating theobvious.  He shakes his head, dislodging the thought and dismissing the previousexchange.  “Uh, hi.”

Hot Neighbor shakes hishead too, apparently also needing the mental reset.  “Hello,” he says, anddamn his voice is just as sexy when he’s fully awake as it is when he’s sleepy. “You’re Dean, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me. How did you--?” The question cuts off when he realizes that Hot Neighboris holding a box.  That’s been opened. “Oh.”

Heat rushes into hischeeks when he realizes that this guy has probably seen what exactly is in thatbox.  It’s only slightly reassuring when he also blushes, all the way tohis hairline.  At least Dean’s not alonein his mortification.

“Sorry, I picked this upwith my other packages,” his neighbor says, holding the box out to Dean. He clears his throat and smiles. It looks forced.  “Your girlfriendhas excellent taste.”

Maybe it’s because he’stired, or maybe it’s shock from the situation, or maybe he’s just a dumbass,but Dean’s mouth opens and the truth comes out.  “No, these are for me.”

If the increased heat inhis cheeks is any indication, he’s about to spontaneously combust.

“Oh, um…”His neighbor lifts the box in Dean’s direction again.  His smile turns tosomething far more genuine.  There’shumor there, but also… maybe interest?  “Well, you haveexcellent taste.”

Okay yeah that’sprobably interest.

Dean finally takes thebox, unsure how else to respond to the compliment other than “thanks, man.”

The guy nods and grinsbrightly.  “Anyway, uh… have a good evening, Dean.”  He does hisdorky little wave and turns back to his own apartment.

Before he can open thedoor, Dean’s brain finally shifts into the correct gear.  “Wait, what’syour name?”

Hot Neighbor turns withhis hand on the knob.  “Oh, I’m Castiel. Or Cas.  People call me Cas.”

“Castiel,” Dean says,relishing the way it feels to say.  “I was going to veg out with a beerand some trashy TV.  I got a few extrabeers if you’d like a drink.”

HotNeighbor--Castiel--Cas, beams so brightly that Dean’s a little dazzled by it. “Yes, I’d like that.”

Thrilled, Dean stepsaside and gestures for Castiel to come inside.  When he shuts the doorbehind them, his eyes fall on Castiel’s ass. Through his admiration of the shapely body he notices that Cas is stillwearing pajamas.  They’re covered in Ninja Turtles.  “Dude, your pants are awesome.”

Castiel turns and flickshis eyes down at the box in Dean’s hands then meets his eyes.  “Yours too.”

“Maybe we can do afashion show for each other some time,” Dean suggests, feeling brave.  IfCas was going to be weird about the panties, he wouldn’t be here now, right?

“I think I’d like that very much.”

Oh yeah, they’re goingto get along great.  

Unless…

“I’ve got a bunch ofDoctor Sexy on the DVR.  That sound okay?”

Castiel practicallyglows with excitement.  “It’s my favorite show.”

Dean grins. “Awesome.  Have a seat, I’ll getyou that beer after I put these away.”  

Yup.  Definitelygoing to get along like a house on fire.

[leelee10898]

Chikara: Zenshin suru (2/?)

Summary:Moving forward. At least thats what Ellie is trying to do. Meanwhile Colt finds trouble back home. Catch up HERE. If you would like added to the tag list, let me know.

Raiting: Mature. This series deals with violence, angst, death, sexual situations and bad choices. Read at your own risk.

Ellie sat up in disbelief oh you have got to be kidding me she flopped back down on the bed. "Oooh come on Ellie, its gonna be so much fun." Ellie rolled her eyes as she was lifted up off the bed. "Seriously Ingrid, how the hell did you end up in here? You had a different roommate." Ellie groaned, could her luck get any worse? A horribly emotional Thanksgiving, and now this, she was convinced someone hated her.

"Well," Ingrid flipped her hair and sat on ellies bed "I put in for a new roommate before Thanksgiving. She was horrible, she used to microwave liver, the dorm smelled like burnt rotten sneakers." She pointed her finger to her throat, making a gagging sound. "So they called with this opening and well,  here I am!" She perked up. "Come on, there's a party tonight in the dorms across the quad, lets go."

"A party? God no. I'm really not in the mood to party, it was a long,  long break and a long flight, you go on without me this time ok. " Ellie refused.

"No can do! I have watched you mope around this campus like a sad little puppy dog. It stops now! Get up, get your ass dressed." Ellie eyed Ingrid in disbelief, was she really going to allow her high school rival boss her around. She stared at Ingrid a moment longer,  arms folded against her chest. "Fiiiiiiine!" She got up and started getting ready. Once she was fully dressed she grabbed Colts jacket and walked out the door.

They walked into the crowded halls of the building across the quad. The music pumping throughout, kegs in many of the rooms and almost everyone had a red solo cup in hand. "Want a beer?" Ingrid tried talking over the loud music. "No. I don't drink." She shouted back, Ingrid shrugged her shoulders "suit yourself."  Ingrid paraded Ellie around, introducing her to so many people. She felt oddly out of place, but if she was going to try and move on, she figured maybe this was a start. What she wouldn't give to have Riya here with her now, but Riya was a little over an hour away at hartfeld. They were standing there talking to some girl Ingrid knew when two guys approached, one with Dark blonde hair, the other a brunette with stunning blue eyes. The girl walked away leaving the two of them, with the two guys.  "Looking good Ingrid." The blonde smirked as he leaned in kissing Ingrid's cheek. "Kyle, this is Ellie. Ellie, kyle." Ellie gave him a shy wave. "Nice to meet you Ellie, this is my friend Nick." Kyle introduced the two.

Ingrid and Kyle were caught up in an intense, flirtatious conversation, leaving Ellie and Nick standing there. "So. You don't look like you want to be here." Nick finally broke the silence. "I'm not really into the whole party scene." She admitted.  "Neither am I, I only came because Kyle wanted to see Ingrid." He chuckled as he stood next to Ellie. "Yeah. Ingrid drug me out. Still getting used to being friends with her, after being rivals for so long."

"Oh, so you two knew each other before college?" He quirked his brow, seemingly interested in having a conversation with her. "Yeah. We went to the same high school. Battled for valedictorian our senior year."

Nick leaned in a little closer.  "And which one of you won it?" His voice low and Intoxicating. She bit her lower lip. Trying to stop the huge grin from spreading across her face. "I bet it was you. You got that smart and beautiful thing going for you." Her face was now beat red. "Beautiful huh?" She tried to even her voice, praying he didn't hear the slight tremor. "I call it how I see it. And you Ellie, are probably the most beautiful woman here." Ellie turned a deep shade of crimson,  it had been a while since anyone flirted with her. She couldn't help but think about Colt, what he was doing in that moment, wondering if he even thought of her at all anymore. Ellie mentally reprimanded herself, she was trying to move on with her life, she needed to stop pretending that she and Colt were anything but a distant memory now. "Hey Nick, wanna dance?" Nick smiled wide "Lets do it."

****

California…

Colt climb off his bike and stashed it, he made his way quickly down the familiar street and ducked in the side through the loose boards. He had been coming to the shop here and there for a few months, ever since the heat from the FBI died down. He hadn't been in a couple weeks, he spent Thanksgiving break with his mom and he was itching to get back to the shop and continue his treasure hunt. He started in the back of the shop, mostly sticking to the private quarters. His pop wasn't like a regular blue collar guy, he didn't use a bank except for the legit auto shop account. Everything else he had was hidden in the shop like In the walls where one or more of his great grandparents installed a fireproof safe, Loose floorboards, hollowed out cabinets with a removable panel. Colt had found the deed to the garage, a copy of Kaneko's will leaving everything to him, the original he was certain in a safe deposit box somewhere, he knew he would have to piece clues together,  it was what his dad did. He also found Several stacks of money, bonds and other property deeds.

He climbed the steps to Logans loft. He had yet to go up there, the bitter taste of Jealousy still thick on his tongue. He hated Logan from the moment he met him, he hated that a pretty boy was his father's prize poodle, he had the nice car,  the good jobs, and he had Ellie eating out of the palm of his hand. He snorted, a smirk forming on his lips when that changed. He swore he could still feel the softness of her lips pressed against his, her arms wrapped tightly around him as they lost themselves in the pacific.

Colt walked through the room, stepping over debris, a gaping hole in the roof letting the moonlight shine in giving him some natural light.

He found a metal box under the burnt bed frame, he had to pry it open, not much inside except a few slips of paper and a flash drive. He checked his phone, 9pm. He had been there longer then he should. He pocketed the flash drive and descend the stairs to the bay. His eyes landed on something glimmering in the moonlight. He reached down to pick up the item,  his heart caught in his chest as he realized what it was.

******

The day he took Ellie to her driving test, he wandered around inside the dmv, waiting for her to finish up. He knew she would pass, she was a natural. A rack of keychains sat displayed in front of him, he fumbled through them until he found the perfect one.

He waited outside as Ellie bounced out of the DMV, a freshly printed license in hand. "I passed, I passed!" She squealed as she threw her arms around Colts neck. "Congratulations. Here I got you something." He held out the silver crown keychain. Ellie looked between him and the key chain, as she took it out of his hand "thank you colt. But why a crown?" Colt shrugged his shoulders, "I'll tell you later, now come on let's get back to the shop."

*******

How did it get here? He knew Ellie had it on her keychain when she left for school, she hadn't been back to the shop after that night, unless. Unless she was there, sometime while he was away. He felt the lump in this throat grow bigger, she was there and he could have seen her. In that moment the need to see her, to feel her in his arms, to hear her voice, taste the sweetness of her lips. It was all too much to bare. He shook the thoughts from his head,  she was at Langston, safely away from the crime ridden streets of LA, it wouldn't be long until he was with her again.

He put the keychain in his pocket, along with the flash drive and headed to where he stashed his bike a few blocks over. He kept looking over his shoulder,  a nagging feeling he was being followed. He got to his stash spot, attempting to quickly climb on his bike and start it and thats when he hit him. Colt crashed to the ground with a thud, his bike coming with him. He had just enough time to roll as his attacker came down on him with a knife. He sprang to his feet, adrenaline coursing through him. His assailant charged forward, colt side stepping, grabbing the attacker by the arm, bringing his elbow down on his shoulder,  the knife hitting the ground with a clatter.

The man clutched his shoulder, crying out in pain. "Wrong choice buddy. Guess you don't know who I am?" Colt spat as the man turned, baring a rage filled face. "I don't ask names, I do what im told." He circled Colt, looking for his opening when his fist connected hard with Colts jaw. The attacker grabbed the knife, as colt lunged forward, tackling him to the ground. Colts first landing blow after blow, the man lifted his hand, slicing into colts side. Fuck! Colt screamed out in pain, it only fueled his rage further as he screamed "Who sent you?" he screamed as he twisted his body bringing the mans arm behind him,incapacitating him. "Arg, not going. To tell you." Colt shook his head as he pulled his arm further behind him. "Ahhh. Wallace. His names wallace." Satisfied colt released his hold on the man, shoving him to the ground. "Of course he didnt give you a fucking name. The little bitch. He knew you'd never fucking do it." Colt circled the man, stalking him like a lion and he was his prey. The man looked up at him confused, A devious smirk played on his lips, "the names Kaneko." He let the name set in. "I'm thinking the letters M.P.C are flashing in your mind right now aren't they?"  The man sat there, paralyzed in fear. "Now, you run and tell all your friends, that MPC still runs things." The man nodded his head and took off.

Colt clutched his side,  the realization that he was hurt crashing down on him at once. He hopped on his bike, flying down the highway to the only place he could think to go.

He pulled up to a small house in a backwoods California town, Killed the engine and walked to the house. He reached the door, banging harder than necessary. "Colt. What the hell are you doing here?" The voice spoke through the latched door. "I know. I'm sorry but, its an emergency." He pulled his blood covered hand from his side. "I need your help."

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[percywinchester27]

Unconventional Roommates (Epilogue)

Word count: 2.6K

Pairing: Dean X Reader

Warnings: Fluff

Series Summary: Now that his brother is at Stanford, for the first time in his life, Dean does something for himself. He takes a step towards chasing his own dreams and moves away from Lawrence to start college, which is both thrilling and scary at the same time. Only catch, in this unknown town, he is stuck with the MOST infuriating female on the planet- the roommate from hell!

A/N: Here we are! Thank you, guys. Your love kept me going <3

This couldn’t have been possible without the incredible @deanssweetheart23. Thank you so much for everything, Athina. You rock, my princess <3

Unconventional Roommates masterlist

"This is a horrible fricking idea!" Dean grumbled, getting out of the car.

Y/N merely smirked, and Dean had to admit that the expression had never looked so alluring on anyone else. "You're just nervous. This is the coolest thing I've ever done."

Dean adjusted his tie. She looked so happy that he would have done anything to keep her smiling like that. This wasn't a big deal as it is. He was only nervous because he had never done this before, and also because he was about to walk in with the best girl he knew.

Incidentally, the reason for Y/N's excitement was same as his nervousness. She had never done this before either.

The building was colored in flashing crimson and purple lights which reflected on Y/N's face. Dean couldn't help but be reminded of the fair, when they were stuck in the Ferris wheel. She had looked beautiful then, and she looked beautiful now. The black wig that she was sporting suited her perfectly, so did the dark lipstick. She looked something else.

Just before they could enter the hall, Dean caught hold of her hand and pulled her back.

"Have I told you that you look absolutely stunning?"

Y/N looked down, smiling shyly. It would still take him time to get used to her reacting like that instead of glare down at him like she was about to pull out a butcher's knife.

"You don't look bad yourself, Romeo!"

"Are you kidding me?" Dean complained, touching his slick black hair. "I look like a clown."

"No you don't," she said, running her hand over the lapels of his coat, fussing over him. "You look hot." She licked her lips. "I'd kiss you, but I don't wanna ruin the look with my lipstick."

"Screw the look," Dean said, reaching out for the small of her back and pulling her close. "I don't give a damn about the look."

He leaned in, but she put a finger to his lips. "If you kiss me now, we'd have to go right back home to finish what we started, and I don't want to miss tonight. It's such a big day for you."

Dean could feel the heat rising to his cheeks. She was so proud of him.

It wasn't a big deal. They were launching the paper today, but they all did it every month. For him, though, this was the first time. They had loved his pictures so much that a couple of them were being used in tonight's Halloween party as a backdrop with some Halloweeny stickers. Y/N had been delighted to know about that. It was right after telling her that, that Dean had asked her out to the party.

She had been excited about it from the get go, especially the dressing up part. Dean found it amusing that she was so excited about dressing up even though she did it for a living. That was until he found out what she was planning to dress up as. Honestly, he shouldn't have expected any less of her. She had somehow convinced him to dress up as Gomez Addams, complete with the temporarily colored black hair. He might have to take a couple of days to wash it off completely, but again, her happiness was so palpable that he didn't want to take it away. She was ravishing as Morticia.

All things considered, it was still better than her idea of dressing up as Ted Bundy and Clementine Barnabet. Dean had to talk her out of it. He loved that she was still wearing the printed socks that he had gifted her. The skull beanie had been a constant up until tonight.

As the day approached though, despite her initial reaction, Y/N seemed to grow a little anxious about it. Not enough to curb her enthusiasm, but definitely enough to not fully enjoy it. They had had fun with putting together the ensembles. For the past week, since their evening on the beach, Dean had woken up at ungodly hours to catch Y/N's closing act of the night. All eyes in the club hungered for one look at her, but her eyes only searched his, and Dean felt like his chest widened a couple of inches each time.

After each show, he'd wait behind the curtains to welcome her when she came back, not believing that the Nymph was his. The other girls were happy for Y/N. They were all around her age, but she had mentored almost all of them. It made him clearly see her for who she was- a giver. She did so much for the girls who could very well end up being her own competition, and she did so much for all those little girls in Mia's school, too. Seeing her interact, he also realized that she was a natural teacher, she loved to share what she knew, selflessly.

They scourged through the fancy costumes at the Elixir, trying to try out funny hats and coats, entertaining the girls who had been exhausted after entertaining people all night long. Y/N's eyes shined when she saw him accepting her life and everyone in it so easily. She kissed him harder that morning in the car.

They did find the perfect costumes for Gomez and Morticia, too, there.

Other girls passing them were dressed as nurses or hot assistants, making the most of the opportunity to wear revealing clothes without it being questioned and more credit to them, but there was something very endearing about Y/N's childish excitement about dressing up in two full length layers.

"C'mon!" He grinned, pulling her by her arm, but she didn't move.

"Are you sure you wanna do this?"

Dean huffed. "Now you're having cold feet about this? After you made me spend 2 hours in the bathroom trying to get the hair right?"

"No… Dean," she said, voice abruptly serious. "It's not that, I mean…"

"Hey," Dean put his hand against her soft cheek. "You alright? You're not feeling sick, are you? I told you not to overdo the shifts. In fact, you can take it easy now. Anyway you're quitting the job next month when all your installments for the apartment are paid."

"Dean. Listen." She put her hand over his… the one she was already holding. "Do you want to be seen here with me?"

"Y/N!"

She was quick to put up her hand. "Look… I'm not doubting you. You're like God's personal blessing who just happened to creepily drop into my apartment, but not everyone is as accepting as you. Someone might recognize me… and I'm used to all sorts of slurs, but you're not. I don't want to put you through that."

Her voice had consistently risen, and her eyes were widening with every said word.

"Shhh… Just stop panicking," he said, pulling her against his chest. "You're missing the whole goddamned point here. You think I'd be ashamed if someone said anything about you? Don't you get it by now that I'm just beyond thrilled to be with a fantastic person like you? The first night when I found you at Elixir, I didn’t leave because I was mad at you, I left because seeing me there was distracting you. I thought you knew that."

She shook her head. "I do know that, and I know you won't be ashamed… I thought you'd be more like… angry."

"If someone called you a bad name?"

She nodded meekly against his silky black lapels.

"We could always make them a customer in our newly furnished torture room," he shrugged. "Bet that will teach them to talk crap about hard working people."

She laughed, breaking completely free of the dismal Morticia façade. "You're crazy."

"Says you!" He said smiled, pecking her cheek. "That's very rich, don't you think?"  

This time she let him take her in.

If it was a rainbow disaster outside, the inside was how the fairy world would look in the scene of an Armageddon. It was insane. Dean didn't know where to put his eyes. Wasn't Halloween supposed to be incredibly gloomy? Why was it so colorful?

"Hold me!" Dean said, grabbing Y/N by the shoulders. "I think my retinas are screaming for a savior."

"Shut up, it's not that bad," she admonished. "Besides, bright flashing lights are supposed to make you bold and all that. People dance without stopping to think what they look like."

"Seems fair." Dean looked at the centre of the floor where couples were trying to dance along the jazz tune.

"You wanna go out there?" She jerked her neck towards the floor.

"What? No!" Dean said, flustered. "I can't dance to save my life."

"It's not that hard… come, I'll show you."

He rolled his eyes. Of course she could.

Y/N pulled him towards the dance floor, but still away from the centre. She guided his hands to her waist and put both of hers on his shoulders. "Now you just sway from one side to another. See? Like this."

"I'm just gonna step on your dress and pull us both down," he warned trying to follow her. It wasn't fair that she was doing it so effortlessly and he was left to struggle.

"OMG, Y/N!" Hannah exclaimed, walking up from behind. "I didn't know Dean was gonna bring you along! You both look great."

Hannah was dressed like a Vampire… at least that's what Dean made out of the fangs and blood crusted lips.

"Cas, Meg!" She called out. "Look, Dean's here and he bought Y/N along."

Soon enough Dean's other two friends were there. Meg was wearing a red and black bodysuit with horns and tail, while Cas was dressed in a white suit with attached feathered wings, a halow perched on top.

"Angel and Demon?" Y/N asked. "That's very original."

"Hey, it wasn't my idea," Cas said, pulling her into a half hug. Dean wasn't really sure Y/N was the hugging type, but Cas just gave the vibe.

"You turned out to be way more badass than we gave you credit for," Meg grinned, nudging Y/N in the shoulder. "And there we were wondering how you could rock that limbo so hard."

It was hard to tell in the flashing lights but Y/N seemed to blush.

The DJ changed the song to a more upbeat one Meg pushed Y/N towards Dean, "C'mon, you guys, move it!"

"You wanna move it?" Y/N wiggled her eyebrows, grinding against him. Dean laughed but before he could reply, his eyes fell on Nick who was eyeing them from the sides.

"C'mere!" Dean pulled Y/N tightly against him, one hand sliding down her back to grab her ass, the other fisted in her hair, holding her to him. He brought his lips to her temple, kissing her softly, then deliberately dragged it along her cheek and down to the base of her neck. Sucking a mark exactly where he knew affected her the most. Y/N's moan was both muted and involuntary.

"Dean!" She giggled. It wasn't something she did often, but Dean loved the sound. He didn't stop there…. He let his lips travel along the column of her neck, hands roving all  over her back.

Y/N's fingers gripped his coat tightly, her chest rising and falling against his own. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Nick had disappeared.

"Who are you putting on a show for, Winchester?" She said, reaching up to kiss his lips, not caring about the lipstick anymore apparently.

"No one of importance," Dean shrugged. "You mind putting on a show?"

"Nope… not at all. I do that for a living."

Dean didn't care if he had put Nick in his place, or not. Nick had sure tried to ruin it all for Dean, but ultimately hadn't it worked in his favor after all. For all he cared, Nick could go screw himself. He had Y/N, there would never be a bigger victory than that.

"So about Thanksgiving," Y/N said, "I can't really cook a turkey. I mean we invited all these people, and I can't cook to save the world."

"It's okay, we'll figure something out," Dean replied. "There's like a million cookbooks out there. Besides we can always order, and everyone is getting something or the other. If the turkey sucks, we can eat the mashed potatoes."

"But counting Mia and the girls, Sam and Jess, Cas, Meg and the couple of girls from the club, there's like 12 of us. Our apartment isn't big enough."

"Y/N. Stop panicking!" They had both stopped dancing by now and were just holding each other's hands. "We have almost a month to go. By then you'd have signed the papers for the building and we can do it in the basement."

She still didn't look convinced.

"Hey," Dean lowered his face to look into her beautiful eyes. "Even if they don't like the turkey, the newly minted torture equipment will keep them from saying anything." He winked.

"Seriously, Dean," she said, "I've never done this before. I don't know how to talk to people… what to talk to people about. I just- this feels so normal and I've never had normal before."

His heart broke for her. She wanted this and yet she was so scared of the unknown.

"You know the girls, Y/N. And Meg and Cas are friends. They like you. You know that!"

She nodded absent-mindedly. "What about Sam and his girlfriend?"

Dean scoffed remembering the conversation he'd had with his brother. "Sam thinks you're way out of my league. And Jess? I've met that girl. You don't need to talk, she'll talk enough for everyone in the room."

"Mhmmm…"

He pulled her back against his chest and they started moving in slow circles again.

"You'll have your dream, Y/N. We'll have a studio downstairs and Mia can live here. You can study something else at the University in the day and I'll get a job in a few years down the line. We can eat crappy food, play scrabble on weekends and have long walks on the beach. That is normal, right?"

"That doesn't sound too bad," she mumbled, and her voice was so hopeful, Dean was tempted to take one look at her face to know what she was really thinking.

"Do you want to head home?" he asked quietly.

She shook her head. "Let's stay a while. This feels normal and I like it."

She put her head back against his shoulder as swayed on the same spot. Dean didn't know what tomorrow held. Hell, all of this was so new to him that he couldn't even estimate what the next minute was going to bring. But as long as he was with Y/N, he knew he could do it. He could do anything. Dean was happier than he had ever expected to be in his life.

He was learning what he loved, his brother was happy and doing good in life and there was an incredible girl in his arms.

To say he was content would be an understatement.

He was fucking ecstatic.

Dean bent down to kiss Y/N's forehead. He could get used to it…. in fact, he would be the luckiest guy in the whole wide world, if this unconventional life became his normal.

*************************

A/N 2: This is it, guys! We are done with one more series. My immense gratitude to everyone who has commented, sent asks, and words of love. It’s meant more to me than I can ever tell you. Thank you so much!! Much love <3

So, did you guys like it???

A/N 3: Please do consider reblogging my work and leaving feedback. Reblogging helps spread it, and also helps against the “best posts first” option tumblr has. The more the notes, the less chance of it getting buried beneath others posts. And the comments are what keep me going. I love you guys and I’ll be in forever grateful <3

Here’s my side blog @percywinchester27-writes. You can give that blog a follow and turn the notifications on to know about updates.

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[jarrettfuller]

Conan, Late Night Talk Shows, and Multi-platform comedy

1. Apartment 103

My college roommates and I were close. There were four of us — Ryan, Eric, Dustin, and me — and during the two years we lived in Apartment 103, we did everything together. We ate dinner together, around the table, like a family. We bought a Christmas tree together and made stockings for each other. We went to movies and watched every season of The Wire and Dexter. That apartment was the first place outside of my childhood house that felt like home.

It was the end of the semester and Ryan and Dustin had already gone home for the holidays; only Eric and I were left. He had made eggnog earlier in the day (as you do) and at 11:30pm, we sat in front of the television to watch Conan O'Brien's final night as host of The Tonight Show. I had just started getting into late night talk shows and was obsessed with the Tonight Show debacle. Here’s a quick refresher: in 2004, Jay Leno announced he was retiring from The Tonight Show and handing the show over to Conan O'Brien, then the lost of Late Night. At the beginning of 2009, Conan took over and the ratings dropped. NBC, in a panic, didn't want to give Conan the time to find his footing, and after a mere nine months, announced they were moving the Tonight Show back a half hour and giving Leno a new show at his old time. Conan quit and the network gave Leno his old show back. In the ten years since, Leno retired again, and every other talk show got a new host. Conan found a new home on TBS where he's been chugging away, doing his thing, quietly becoming the longest running talk show host of the current era.

Conan was never my favorite host — Letterman always held that spot for me, and now it’s Stephen Colbert of the current lineup 1 — but I always found him the most interesting of the bunch. Certainly more interesting than Leno and Fallon, and I was sad to see him lose the show2. Watching that final show with Eric — the images of Conan on The Tonight Show set, playing guitar with Max Weinberg and Will Ferrell as the credits rolled — is one of my strongest memories of late night talk shows, and certainly a highlight from Apartment 103.

2. “We’re Trying to be Anarchists”

Late last year, Conan announced that his now almost decade old TBS show would move to a half-hour format. The change would allow him to try new things on the show while also expanding his popular digital presence. Over the last few months, while the show was on hiatus, Conan launched a podcast, went on tour, and announced a new website that will archive every episode of Conan's shows. The shorter show would allow Conan to do more of what he does well — the travel shows and web exclusives like Clueless Gamer have proven surprisingly successful. By reducing the run-time for his TBS show, he'd have more time to devote to these extracurricular experiments while also easily playing with what the show itself can be.

On the new Conan, the desk is gone, the suits are gone, the band is gone. The set has been rebuilt, now just a small stage that can be reconfigured depending on what they are doing. Andy Richter is still there on the side of the stage. And Conan is still Conan. In the first few episodes I watched, the show felt largely the same, just shorter. As Rob Harvilla wrote for The Ringer, it was "addition by subtraction". The show obviously looked new and everything felt looser but the structure was still there: a monologue, a sketch or prerecorded bit, and an interview.

No show knows what it is in the first episode; or even the first year. The mistake NBC made in 2009 was jumping the gun, not giving Conan the time and space he needed to settle in and make the show his. It's hard to remember now, but Colbert's first year on the Late Show was rocky; with constant rumors that CBS wanted to swap his timeslot with James Cordon. And of course when Conan took over for Letterman back in 1993, he was rumored to be on a week-to-week contract. We shouldn't judge the new show by one week of episodes but it feels underwhelming after months of hearing how the new run-time would allow the show to be more experimental. Perhaps they are still easing their way into it, perhaps they still aren't sure what they can do. But for this new show to be truly exciting, it needs to get weirder. Conan needs to lean into what makes Conan Conan. There's still a lot of potential here.

Every time a new host takes over a franchise, there is a chance to mix up the standard talk show format popularized by Johnny Carson — there’s the monologue, a desk bit or a skit, two guests or three guests, and a musical act or stand up set — but each reincarnation is largely more of the same. Sure, Colbert made the monologue his own, where they often clock in well over ten minutes. Seth Meyers performs his monologue behind the desk. James Corden and Jimmy Fallon focus more on games and viral-style videos but it’s still just a white guy in a suit sitting behind a desk telling jokes and talking to people. It's a design problem, really: how do you work within the constraints of the format while making something your own? “We’re trying to be anarchists, but I’m trying to be a good boy and do a good job for the network,” Conan told Dave Itzoff of The New York Times. What he’s engaged in now, he said, “is this gradual progression toward me making the job fit me more — what do I like?”

That’s the tension with late night talk shows — especially with established francises like Tonight or Late Night: how do you honor the form that's been honed down over the last three decades while creating something new. Conan, perhaps more than any other late night host, has pushed himself up against that dominant form to question what else it could be. Sometimes, like Colbert or Seth Meyers, you find ways to work within in the system. But for Conan, the best way forward, I think, is to throw away that tradition and making something wholly his own. With TBS, he found a partner that gives him the space (and time) to try new things and make the show more like him. But the other, more important, question is: how central is the show to Conan's new output.

3. Building Your Own Printing Press

Ten years ago, around the same time I was watching the final episodes of Conan's Tonight Show with Eric, I started to get interesting in media distribution. The iPad would come out a few months later and this was when the first paywalls were being erected around newspaper websites. As someone who was always publishing little things online, I was excited by the potential and increasingly low-bar to entry. I wrote an essay for the now-defunct blog I kept through college on these changes and wondered out loud whether Conan even needed a new network. The essay — titled “Building Your Own Printing Press” — is no longer online but used the A.J. Liebling’s popular aphorism, “Freedom of the press is only free for those to own a printing press” as my starting point. The internet, I argued, gave everyone their own printing press. Conan was my prime example. Here's the key paragraph:

Under his exit contract with NBC, Conan O’Brien is unable to join another network until after September 1. So what will he do until then? Mr. O’Brien finds himself with a lot of free time and a lot of cash which make for the terrific combination to fully embrace independent media. It would be extremely easy for Conan to launch a new show without any network, contract, and deals and it could be all online, the way his fans watch him anyway. He would get to do his show, the way he wants to do it and not have to worry about networks giving him a hard time. The way we are consuming our media is changing and it’s about time the distribution caught up.

That was in 2009 — I was an overly optimistic (and arrogant) college student — and I realize now how much harder that would have been a decade ago. But now, in 2019, it is possible. YouTube stars are a thing. Instagram influencers is a term we now say without flinching. And it's exactly what Conan is now doing. Conan and TBS have entered a deeper partnership and are careful to continually point out the "show" isn't the only part of that partnership. There's already a podcast and a recently finished tour and I imagine we can expect more of that. Under the new contract, Conan can record as much as he wants each day and only owes TBS a half-hour. The rest can go online, or in any other place it fits. The format I wished for ten years ago probably wasn't financially possible then but it certainly is now.

This raises the question: how important is the TBS show to this new multi-platform comedy empire (ugh)? If anything, the show has been reduced to just another spoke in the wheel. By devoting less energy specifically to the show, each component can shift more freely. It’s here that Conan is truly subverting the late night form.

This is what I couldn’t quite reconcile ten years ago: Conan is on TV but his fans aren’t watching TV. The late night talk show is an archaic format; a relic from another era. Appointment viewing isn’t how people watch television anymore. (Think about how many times Netflix has tried to get into this area. So far they’ve been unable to crack it because it goes against Netflix’s whole model.) These shows are increasingly being watching in bits and pieces on YouTube the next morning. I’ve never seen an entire episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers but I’ve watched every single one of his A Closer Look segments.

Instead of prioritizing the show, Conan gives everything — the show, YouTube, his podcast — equal weight. It’s appealing to both sides of the generational divide, both packaged for TV and distributed across the web. You can watch it as a traditional talk show or online in short clips. While late night viewership decrease on television, they are increasing online. Much like newspapers and magazines struggled to get their content online in the early days of the web, so to are television networks still figuring out how to go digital. For many of these other shows, segments are clipped for YouTube or there’s a separate team making original content for online venues (that often feels like it’s separate from the show.) The other networks and hosts can take a cue from Conan and TBS, fully integrating the two, giving equal weight to both sides. As Conan said in another interview, perhaps in five years people won’t even notice that the “show” — in the traditional sense that we think about it now — is completely gone. Under this new model, it’s not impossible that ever-so-slowly, everything moves online.

Content-wise, Conan will find his footing within the new show. These first few weeks are testing the waters, being a beginner all over again. But it’s important to not overlook how much he’s already trying something new. This openness to different media platforms is, I think, the future of the genre. At least, it’s the future I wanted when I was sitting there in Apartment 103. I haven’t sat down at 11:30 to watch The Tonight Show since.

1. I’d also put Dick Cavett on my list right along Letterman, but his show never felt connected to the big four: Tonight, Late Night, Late Show, and Late Late Show. It always seemed like he always was doing his own thing. ↩

2. I’ve long held a theory about the Tonight Show. Letterman famously wanted it in the nineties after Carson retired — and Carson supposedly saw Letterman as his rightful heir — but the show went to frequent guest host Jay Leno. When Leno retired again in 2013, Jimmy Fallon took it over and is the current host. The Tonight Show is a brand name — that’s the popular show. It has to be generic, inoffensive, appeal to the most people. Letterman wouldn’t have been good on Tonight — he’s too smart and too weird. Same with Conan. Leno and Fallon and can do that. They are less interesting, better at appealing to the widest audience possible. ↩

[daybyjae]

The Tale of a Desk

I finally have a functioning desk setup!!

My History with Desks:

I have been needing a new desk setup for months now. From May 2020 up until this past February. That may come as a shock to you as this past year being the working and schooling from home era, desks were a necessity.

I've had a desk for the majority of my life. My childhood bedroom set came with a desk, then I later bought a replacement before I went off to dorm where bedroom desks were a given. Even though I've always had desks rarely did I fully utilize them. My childhood desk was a catch-all during my sloppy phase. It held books, school papers, clothes, hair products, everything!! Because of this I never used it to study, do homework, or even read as the entirety of its surface area was occupied. Fast forward to my late teen years I wanted to get rid of the desk. I was aware that the desk was causing more harm than good, feeding into my clutter habit. So I downsized to a small desk that I intended to use as a vanity since I wasn't going to lie to myself and say that I'd actually do any work on it. I still have it to this day, it's still fulfilling the role of a vanity as I store makeup and hair products there but it's too small to function as a desk for me.

When I went off to dorm for college I had no choice but to finally use a desk. I was determined to do well in school and I knew that the best way to limit procrastination was to separate my areas of work and rest. It also helped that in the tiny room that I shared with another person that it was the only seating with a flat surface in front of it. Instead of using a dining table for a desk (as I had been for most of my life) I was using a desk as a dining table. The truth of its role was a constant reminder to get work done. When I returned to college again last year I fell back into the routine of getting most of my work done at my desk. However, once the panoramic pandemic hit I wanted to not only separate work and rest but also put creativity in its own realm. At this point, I was still dorming but my roommate had left so I had an extra desk.

I made that my creative space. I would paint, read and even edit videos at that desk. I loved having a designated fun space and it helped me out of a couple cycles of the lockdown blues. When that semester ended it was time for me to move on and out, I rented a small room in Brooklyn. Sadly there was no space for a desk so I couldn't create a solid work or creative space there. I would do whatever work I had in bed and but it was only a temporary stay so I made it work. After 3 months of renting that room, I went off to rent my own apartment! I was ecstatic but slightly broke. I had just put down over $5k to move in and I had to spread out my furniture purchasing. For about the first 6 months of my living in this apartment, I had no desk OR dining table. This is especially wild since I worked from home for months. I moved my vanity desk from my childhood home into my space but it was too small for what I needed plus I didn't have any chairs. I spent the first three months furnishing in other ways as to not completely blow all my money in one go. The last 3 months were spent hunting for a desk. Now I know what you're thinking, "It doesn't take that long to find a desk", but in a pandemic it does!

I had a particular size and style in mind to match my current space and the options were limited so I was saving. The first desks that I was looking at were upward of $200 so I had to double-check my decision and would then always change my mind. One day I had FINALLY decided on a desk but two issues arose. One, it was constantly out of stock in the color that I wanted. Two, the shipping was $50. The desk I ended up getting ended up being around $90 but it was coming from IKEA and they don't do free delivery. This lead to me trying to bulk up my order so that the purchase would be "worth it". I finally bit the bullet in February as the $50 on top of the actual price of the desk still kept me under my original budget.

How I Will Use the Desk:

With this desk, I had a few things in mind. Yes, this is a working space (typing this on her right now) but I also wanted it to be my creative space. Since I'm not in school and I go out for my job all the work that I do at this desk is leisurely work. Education and self-administered projects that I do for me and me alone. Because of that, I don't feel the same need I did when I was in school to separate creative space from working space. At this desk, I will continue to learn and grow in whatever avenue that piques my interest. I will hone my writing, study math, edit videos, paint, and oftentimes eat at my desk ( still don't have a dining table).

When I have the time and energy I choose a subject to learn or introduce myself to. Some of the educational work I have done on my own time have been; using Codecademy to learn the basics of different coding languages, taking Coursera courses on whatever they are offering for the great price of free, use my college provided Linkedin Learning account to learn the basics and intricacies of a variety of topics and currently I am teaching myself statistics through Khan Academy. I love to learn even about things that don't immediately impact me. My true goal in life is to learn about as many things as I can and those online resources that I mentioned are just a few ways that I work on my never-ending status of being a student.

Let's talk a little more about the creative side of this desk. I already told you about some of the fun things that I will do here but let's dive into it a little more. I have been writing and editing more even before I got this desk since I started working on this blog and posting videos for it but I want to expand. When it comes to writing I want to improve not just my grammar and wording but also my physical handwriting. I have pretty bad handwriting, certified chicken scratch, and I plan on improving that. This will probably be a project that goes across several years but we all need a starting point and mine was simply to actually have a flat surface to write on. I started journaling before I had the desk to get some thoughts down and actually use my handwriting more often but I would have to cut it short since writing without a table or desk is pretty difficult to do for long periods of time. Now with this desk and the excess of time caused via coronavirus I can easily journal two pages without my wrist crying out for help. Today I even started to watch some videos on how to improve my print. The true goal is to be able to produce amazing calligraphy but I understand the value of baby steps so I will start off small for now.

I will especially plan at this desk! I love to plan out my days, weeks, goals, habits, whatever comes to mind I will try to plan for it. However, it felt somewhat counterproductive when I would hunch forward in bed to plan out my day and week for productivity. I plan my best when my mind and body feel good and planning with poor posture didn't make sense.

Hobbies I plan to test out/improve that benefit from having a desk

calligraphy

editing

painting

sketching/ drawing

planning (yes it's a super fun hobby, fight me in the comments)

people watching through my window

comment how you're personally enjoying your desk besides school and work

Simply Benefits of Having a Desk:

The separation between leisure and work. I have goals with my home studies, I don't have goals for my streaming consumption.

I have already felt an increase in productivity. Since I know have a designated space to work it is easier to focus. It has even made falling asleep easier. With my bed no longer being a place of productivity I can sleep easier and faster with far fewer tossing and turning.

My room is less empty. I moved into my current apartment around 6 months ago and it is still pretty bare. Having this desk take up some of the blank white space feels good and makes me happy when I see it.

I'm not sure what my desk status will be in my next home but hopefully, it takes less time to figure out.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.

[jsirius]

interlude ;

Characters: James Potter, Elijah Finch-Fletchley ( @finchxfletchley )

Mentioned: Harry Potter

Triggers: nsfw, homophobia

Timeframe: Evening, 12/24/2017

TL;DR: James pops his cherry. Features: giggling tiny gays making plans for the future, a closeted, homophobic Harry Potter. seriously you don’t need to read this that’s it

ELI: Eli waited for James in his orange Volkswagen Bus around the corner from his house. It’d only been a few days since they saw each other but as soon as James hopped in the van, it felt like forever. So Eli grabbed him, nearly pulling him into his lap as they kissed before driving quickly off back to the muggle London suburbs where he lived. It was a quiet neighborhood, everyone just minded their own business which Elijah liked. Kaia and Justin left for business early that morning, waving them off after being told all the house rules for while they were gone. Which he quickly broke as soon as he used the car to go pick up a boy to bring home for the rest of the week. The house was small, his parents preferred it that way. It kept the family humble. So it didn’t take very long for Elijah to lead James down a short hallway and into his room. There was really only enough room for his bed, with his mismatched blankets and pillows, and a desk right beside it. His walls were covered with band posters. Elijah flopped down on the squishy mattress, pursing his lips as he looked around his own room. “So-- uh-- welcome? I guess? To my humble abode.” Eli smirked, grabbing an old magazine and tossing it to his cluttered desk. JAMES: James knew that if he wanted to spend this time with Eli, he was going to have to sneak out of the Burrow—which certainly wouldn’t be difficult. All he had to do was get one of his more sympathetic cousins (aka Molly) to cover for him and because the house was so busy all the time during Christmas, as long as someone knew where he was, no one would ask any questions. And so he was able to sneak out and go to Eli’s place, though he knew he’d have to go back to the Burrow for Christmas dinner, and he was more than grateful for both the break from his family and the chance to be truly alone with Elijah. After what they had talked about this being, about making it special, James had been waiting anxiously for it. When they got to Eli’s house, James followed him without a word. It was a simple place, much like his family’s home, the only difference being that his house was definitely big enough to hold everyone who lived there, while this house seemed just right for a family of three. He paused in the doorway of Eli’s room before walking around it, running his fingers along the walls and looking at the posters adorning it. “This is just how I expected it to look.” ELIJAH: Eli grinned as he watched James look around his room. “I left my record player at the school, but I figured maybe for once we could forget the music. There’s probably something beautifully ironic in that anyway.” He smirked, reaching to grab James’ hand to pull him down on top of him, the bed wobbling some as the action was quick. “I feel like it’s been months.” He started to whine. “I was left here by myself since 6am. You’re my first human interaction in hours.” Elijah wrapped his arms around his neck as he kissed him. “And all week I’ve had to follow mom on her photoshoots or go to classes and help my dad grade finals. I was actually dying of boredom.” Eli pouted. JAMES: He smoothly landed on top of Eli—thanks, Quidditch training—and laughed as he looked down at him. “You’re dramatic,” he replied, feeling his heart rate pick up slightly as he shifted to straddle him, his hands sliding under Eli’s shirt as he leaned down to kiss him deeply. “It’s a good thing I’m here to save you from your inevitable boredom-caused death,” he replied, kissing Eli deeply and wrapping his arms fully around Elijah’s torso. “Godric, I missed you, Elijah,” he mumbled before kissing him again. “It’s only been a few days, but I just wanted to see you.” ELIJAH: Eli was just in a plain t-shirt and some sweats since he’d been lounging around. He quickly squeezed James’ sides with his legs. “You love it though.” He told him with a slight crinkle to his nose, holding James’ chin to bring him down for a kiss. “You should’ve called me then, I would’ve come to your rescue sooner.” He hooked a hand in the waist of James’ pants, pulling him down as he pushed for a deeper kiss. They were completely alone here, no roommates could walk in and no one could start a common room party. “I missed you calling me Elijah. And you kissing me and holding me...and touching me.” He smirked. JAMES: James easily slid his hands all the way under Eli’s shirt to tug it off his body. There were no pretenses about why James had come over—they both knew what they wanted, and James wasted no time in getting down to things, kissing Eli deeply as they lay on his bed, fiddling with the string on his sweatpants. He rolled his hips down into Eli’s at his urging. “I really do,” he replied, nodding slightly before leaning in and kissing him again. “There is going to be a lot of touching and kissing and holding,” he replied, a crooked smile curving up at his lips as he sat up, tugging off his own shirt before just looking down at Eli with an awestruck expression. He slowly trailed a hand up his torso, carefully feeling each of his ribs and leaning over him with a soft sigh before kissing him again. ELIJAH: Eli pulled his sweatpants down himself, the string wasn’t even tied by that point-- he already undid it before James got in the car. Almost immediately as James’ shirt came off, Eli’s hand lifted to press between his thighs slowly, “how much is a lot though?” His brow raised as he kissed James, pushing his pants down his legs and onto the floor. Now he prodded at James’ throw his boxers, grinning as he felt him harden while Eli’s tongue practically went down James’ throat. “I bet you’ve never grown that fast for anyone else.” Eli teased him, rubbing against his length while pulling back to check over the old, fading hickies. JAMES: He gasped softly as Eli’s hand was suddenly pressing up against him, and he collapsed onto his forearms over Elijah, kicking off his pants easily. He whined softly as he felt himself harden under Elijah’s hand, biting down on Eli’s lip and tugging at gently. “To be fair to me, I didn’t expect you to go for it so soon,” he mumbled into Eli’s lips, thrusting his hips against Eli’s hand slightly, wanting more from him. His core ached—already, he had grown rigid under Eli’s teasing, and he couldn’t help but want more. ELIJAH: “I like to have fun.” Eli told him slowing his hand down as he prodded at him. “I love you though. And I did miss you. All your rambling and horrible jokes.” He moaned into him, being carelessly loud as he led James to lay completely against him. His hand working between their bodies. Eli’s other arm stayed around his neck as his tongue slid across the top of James’. “I missed your mouth. I missed being called by my entire name.” He spoke softly, hovering in front of him with his lips parted. “You’re calling the shots today, okay? Tell me what you want to feel and where and I’ll deliver. Merry Christmas...” JAMES: He followed Eli’s lead to flatten on top of him, but after a moment he rolled over, pulling Eli on top of him—he preferred it this way, liking the feeling of Eli grinding down on him. “I love you too. And I missed you being an ass and taking pleasure in my pain.” He dropped a hand to Eli’s ass, sliding down into his boxers and squeezing at him. James opened his mouth to allow Elijah’s tongue to wander, moaning softly into his lips. “I missed your hands. I missed your mouth.” He let out a shaky sigh. “Keep going,” he whispered, his hand coming around to slide down the front of Elijah’s boxers and wrap around him. ELIJAH: Once they flipped, Eli looked down at him as both his arms came up over their heads to grip at the several print blankets underneath them. “One more time--- I love you.” He nudged his nose with his own before slowly pushing his hips down against him. “My mouth missed your mouth.” He smiled, letting his tongue press up against the roof of his mouth and then letting it curl under James’ tongue. “I’m right here--- all of me is right here just for you.” Elijah whispered in his ear as he moved into his hand, slowly thrusting his hips against his palm. JAMES: He groaned at the feeling Eli pushing his hips against him, his hardened length grinding up against Eli and sending a jolt of energy through James’ body. “I love you,” he whispered before leaning in and kissing him again. He started stroking at Eli at a grindingly slow pace, sucking at his lips. James reached his other hand down to push at Eli’s boxers, taking them off easily and helping him kick them off his feet so that James could stroke at him unencumbered. ELIJAH: “Sit up with me.” Eli shifted so James could sit up with him in his lap. Both of Eli’s hands went to his face as he kissed along his jaw, biting at the corners and his chin. He looked down at James stroking him, mouth gaping slightly before looking up again and catching his mouth in a deep kiss. Eli really did miss James, and this had been planned for at least a couple weeks and thankfully, James was really into it. “Fuck. Fuck.” Elijah moaned into his mouth, louder than he dared to at school. JAMES: He was willing to follow any direction Elijah gave him, and he sat up with Eli, still keeping a firm grip on his length and stroking at him while gradually increasing his pace. James grinned crookedly as Eli spoke again. “Come on,” he said sweetly. “Don’t hold back,” he whispered into Eli’s lips. He leaned in to kiss him deeply, his unoccupied hand wrapping around his hips and dragging him as close as possible. He pulled away just enough to let out a soft sigh against his lips. He slowed down his pace to a crawl, chuckling softly as he looked down at Eli’s length before looking up at him. “Come for me.” ELIJAH: Eli’s hand squeezed at the back of James’ neck as he looked down, hips grinding down slowly as the tension at his core released around James’ hand. “Godric.” He whined, throwing his head back while he still moved his hips around in James’ lap. “No one’s ever told me that before.” Eli kissed him lightly, all over his face as he reached down for James’ length and his own, stroking both of them with one hand mostly wrapped around James. “Good thing I waited to wash my sheets, right?” JAMES: He felt Eli release, and he shifted slightly, squirming as Eli rolled his hips against him, feeling his rigid length get jostled and sending yet another jolt of energy through his body. His hand raised to his mouth to lick off whatever mess had collected between his finger before he pressed that hand against Eli’s lips, sticking his index finger into Eli’s mouth. He moaned softly and had to catch his breath before replying. “There’s a first time for everything,” he replied, a crooked grin on his features before he kissed Eli one more time, lightly. He was going to kiss him again, but he couldn’t bring himself to close his mouth, instead leaving his lips open as he took a few panting breaths. He whined softly as the tension built, his muscles tightening. He squirmed some more, pushing his hips into Eli’s hand. “Oh, Merlin, keep going,” he moaned. ELIJAH: Eli gladly opened his mouth to suck at James’ fingers, teeth grazing against them lightly. He continued stroking at both of them, making sure James really felt Eli hard against him. “You’re built as fuck, by the way. I meant to say that last time I was sucking you off.” He laughed, ducking his head under James’ chin to suck marks under his jaw. Eli’s pace quickened, trying to keep himself from coming again until James did so he just stroked the two of them faster before slowing down suddenly. “I can’t hold myself much longer, Captain.” Elijah teased. JAMES: James groaned, tilting his head back as he felt the tension building up not only in his groin but in his core as well, his thighs tingling and his muscles tensing. "Thanks, it's all for you," he quipped breathlessly, letting out a long moan as Eli switched his pace. It only took a couple of strokes for James to finish hard, his hips thrusting forward slightly as he spilled all over Eli's hand. He was panting once he was finished, and brought his head back forward to lean in close to Eli. "Oh, fuck," he mumbled before he leaned in to kiss him. ELIJAH: Eli smirked, not cleaning his wet hands as they held James' face. "You're my first time." He said quietly. "My first time doing it with someone who loved me-- someone who's already kissed me in a crowded room." Elijah whispered to him, trailing kisses along his face and licking the cum that Eli had gotten on him from his hands. "When you found me in the woods with the search party, I just wanted you to hold me and hide me from everyone, James." He admitted, kissing his lips tenderly. "All I want is to hide with you--- inside you." He whispered again. JAMES: He shivered as Eli whispered in his ear, not caring about how messy they got—in fact, it only made everything that much hotter to James. His hands wrapped around Elijah's waist, holding him close as James ran his fingers lightly across his skin. "I was so scared when you were gone," he said softly. "I kept thinking the worst." He paused. "Is it bad that I was hoping for you, over anyone, to come home?" he asked, leaning in and kissing him deeply. He pulled away just enough to keep their lips separate, his forehead pressing against Eli's. He let out a soft sigh, licking his lips. "I'm nervous," he whispered. ELIJAH: "Me too." Eli sighed into his mouth. And from what he remembered, the worst definitely did happen. Thanks to the potions, the wounds and any scarring had disappeared-- but not his nightmares. And definitely not the quick flashbacks he got in the middle of the day. "I love you so much, James Sirius Potter." He held his breath as they kissed, not letting itout under they became separate again. "We don't have to do it yet." Elijah kissed him quickly, holding his face and rubbing circles on his cheek with his thumb. "We can just be here together." Eli rolled his hips around in James' lap, lifting up and down a few times before finally settling. JAMES: "I love you, too, Elijah," he mumbled. His hands came up to touch Eli's face, brushing his fingers through Eli's hair as he shifted slightly under him, making sure they were both comfortably pressed up against each other before he carded his fingers through Eli's hair some more. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing his eyes as he leaned in slightly to brush his nose against Eli's. His breath was somewhat shaky from the nerves that had taken over, and he leaned in to kiss Eli gently, his hands dropping to Eli's thighs and rubbing up and down his legs. "I get so invested in people so easily," he whispered. "And so quickly. And they always hurt me." ELIJAH: Eli’s fingers scratched at James’ scalp as he spoke to him, his face hiding in his neck to press light kisses there. He pulled back to look at James, their lips brushing one another’s as he spoke. “I am never ever going to hurt you, James. And I know people just say that sometimes--- but I’m truly never going to hurt you.” Eli promised him, nodding before trailing his fingers over the spots he kissed on his neck. “Let me have all of you.” He still whispered, even though they were alone, he still felt the need to keep this secret and protect it because he only wanted James for himself. JAMES: He bit down on his lower lip slightly, sucking it between his teeth somewhat anxiously. He had thought he was ready for this, but James hadn't realized just how much it meant to him that he did it right—that he did it with the right person, that he did it with someone who cared about him as much as he cared for them. For all intents and purposes, Elijah was that person. He felt like that person. So then why was he so nervous? James' hands came up to wrap around Eli's wrists, holding them gently as his thumbs rubbed up against the distal side of his forearms. "I'm already all yours." ELIJAH: Eli smiled at him, leaning down so James would lay back with his head at the end of the bed. He kissed at his neck, nipping at his collarbones before stopping suddenly to grab his wand from the pencil holder. Eli recited a spell to light the two candles on top of his dresser before dropping his wand and going back to kissing James. “Who knew what a cheesy romantic I am?” He teased, hand sliding down to press between James’ thighs again. Eli’s hand moved at a slow pace, massaging at him before he pulled his head back. “Do you want to?” He asked before kissing James, groaning lightly into his mouth. JAMES: He followed Eli so that they would be lying down, a breath hitching in his throat lightly as he reached a hand up to touch his face. He giggled softly into Eli's mouth, picking up his own wand from where he had discarded his jacket on the floor and pointing it at the light switch, turning off the lights so that they were just lit by the warm glow of the candles. "Good thing I am, too," he replied, gasping softly as he felt Eli's hand between his legs. He paused for a moment before he spoke, his voice barely above a whisper. "Yeah," he said, nodding slightly before lifting up to kiss him again. ELIJAH: “You’re sure?” Eli asked again, slowly sliding off the bed to grab a condom and the lube from his underwear drawer. He got back on the bed, guiding James onto his stomach before sliding the condom over himself and rubbing the lube over it. Eli leaned down to kiss down James’ spin, coming back up to whisper in his ear as his finger pressed slowly into his entrance. “Relax.” He spoke as he kissed his ear. “I’ve got you, alright?” Elijah moved his finger in and out of him carefully, breathing against the back of James’ neck. JAMES: His heart started beating faster as he looked up at Eli, realizing with a start that this was it. He nodded again. “I’m sure.” James slowly rolled over onto his stomach, feeling more vulnerable and exposed than he had in a long time—but with Eli, he didn’t think that was a bad thing. A short, soft whimper left the back of his throat as Eli pressed up into him, and he nodded, shifting his hips to settle in against the feeling. “Okay,” he said softly, his hand coming up to touch the back of Eli’s neck as he leaned in, his fingers carding through the hair at the nape of his neck. ELIJAH: “I love you.” He grinned against his ear. “Tell me I love you.” Eli carefully worked in another finger, pressing up as far as he could go before creating a careful pace. “And tell me you love me too.” His forehead pressed against his shoulder as he adjusted himself at James’ entrance, taking a deep breath in and only exhaling once he pushed himself inside him. One hand went around to hold James’ stomach, the other held tightly onto his hip. “You can move a little-- until it’s comfortable.” Elijah told him, gently moving in and out of him while his fingers pressed into his hip bones. JAMES: “You love me,” he said softly, his voice catching in his throat as Eli adjusted. He let out a low groan, closing his eyes and gripping the sheets with one hand. “And I love you.” James felt Eli lining up against him and his heart rate quickened, his hands curling into fists in Eli’s blanket. A sort of pleasurable burn spread through his hips as Elijah pressed into him, and he let out a soft whine, turning his head to the side and gripping even tighter at the sheets. He shifted his hips until he got to a place where it felt best, and he pushed his hips back against Eli slightly, moaning softly. ELIJAH: Eli’s hips rolled smoothly into him, just as they did when they were dancing at the Gryffindor party. He sat up, putting his hands on James’ back as he continued with the slow pace, nails digging into his shoulder blades. “Is it okay?” Eli looked down, hair falling in right in front of his eyes as he pushed in deeply. He wanted this to be perfect for James--- he wanted it to mean something and to show that Eli wasn’t going anywhere, ever. “You’re really tight...” Eli moaned, a small laugh leaving his lips as he pushed back and forward. JAMES: After he got past the initial discomfort at the strange feeling, he started to feel himself tingle and tense up with the pleasure. He moaned softly again, biting on a corner of Eli’s blanket as Elijah hit just the right spot, getting James to whine loudly and screw his eyes shut. He nodded. “More than okay,” he said breathlessly, whining again and rolling his hips back into Eli’s, matching his pace. “Is it okay for you?" ELIJAH: “Bloody amazing.” He smiled, leaning down to press heated kisses against the back of his neck. His hips began to quicken the pace as Eli saw James bite the blanket. “Did I tell you I missed you already?” Eli groaned, taking James by the jaw and making him look at him before pressing a deep kiss to his mouth. His tongue slid lightly against James’ as he felt the tension in core start to release. Elijah held himself for a few seconds before he finally pushed as deep as he wanted, moaning into James to “come now” as his hand went around to finish him off. JAMES: He whined again, starting to say something, but as Eli quickened the pace, all he could do was moan into the blanket. He shifted to allow room for his hand as he started to stroke at himself, feeling himself get hard almost immediately. James turned his head as far as he could, letting out a drawn out moan into Elijah’s mouth. He took a few deep breaths, collecting himself before Eli pushed against him again, and he groaned loudly, the tension in his core releasing as he panted for breath. “Holy—holy—fuck,” he stuttered. “Fuck." ELIJAH: Eli’s house was hot already from the heater running, so as he pulled out of James, he wiped the sweat beads off his forehead and back into his hair. “That feel alright?” He grinned, slipping off the condom and disposing of it before letting James roll onto his back again so Eli could sit on top of him. “You did it.” He leaned in, flicking his lips with his tongue. “You did it with me and it was so good.” Elijah humbly bragged, running a hand through James’ sweaty hair. “It’s hot in here.” He spoke, catching his breath. JAMES: He didn’t realize how hot he was until he rolled over, finding that his chest was damp with beads of sweat, and he shoved his hair out of his face, feeling that it was damp, too. He nodded, letting out a shaky sigh as he processed, a slight smile curving up at the corner of his lips. “Yeah, it felt all right.” He could feel his hips throbbing, the after effects of feeling that for the first time, but it wasn’t a bad sensation by any means. It just made him want more. “You’re so arrogant! How did I ever fall for you?” James teased lightly before raising his arms to wrap around Eli’s neck so he could kiss Eli deeply. “You look good when you’re sweaty. Maybe you should work out with me...” he said with a grin, knowing that it wouldn’t happen. ELIJAH: Eli’s fingertips traced lightly up and down James’ hips, knowing it probably felt different but it got better--it would get better. “Just alright?” He teased, teeth grazing over James’ lip as he smiled. “I’m confident, what’s so wrong with that? You had no problem with it while I danced at the party.” Eli let out a giddy laugh. “Because I’m hot and amazing and irresistible. That’s how.” He noted, humming against James. “Or--- we could just do this more. I’ll have a six pack in no time.” Eli smirked, squeezing at James’ ass before that hand trailed over his abs. JAMES: “I have no frame of reference. I can’t say this is the best sex of my life when I know you’re probably going to kick it up the next time.” He raised a hand to Eli’s hair so he could grip at it, holding on tightly to his dark locks as he kissed Elijah deeply, pressing his tongue up against his teeth and exploring his mouth. He could do this forever—in fact, it felt like he just might until he finally pulled away enough for Eli to talk. “Not to brag, but we could match,” he replied, gesturing down at his own stomach with a wink. ELIJAH: “Nah.” Eli wrinkled his nose as he looked down at James. “I just had to assert myself this time. It’s all fluff from here on out.” He shrugged his shoulders. He glanced down to where James’ eyes pointed and shook his head. “If I got a six pack too, then I could just look at myself instead of you. I can’t believe you’d let me do that.” Elijah kissed him again, sliding down his body to kiss along his muscles and leaving light purple marks as he hummed against the skin. “And I can’t do this to myself.” JAMES: “Good, because I’m not sure if I’m ready to have a super dirty boyfriend,” he replied with a crooked smile. James tangled his fingers in Eli’s hair as he lay on his back, letting Elijah kiss across his body and arching his back into his touch. “Please, you’d never be able to drop me,” he replied, snorting softly. “I want you to leave marks everywhere,” he replied softly. “I want to go back to Christmas dinner and still only think about you." ELIJAH: “Good, you haven’t earned it yet anyway.” Eli joked, biting roughly above his waist to start sucking a large mark on his skin. As James spoke, Eli looked up with raised brows--- “James Potter, you dirty, dirty boy.” He laughed, kissing and biting at the park till it turned the absolute right shade of purple before he crawled back up to James’ face. “When I’m done, you’re going to be able to still taste me even after whatever bullshit Christmas dinner you’re eating tonight.” Eli smirked down at him, slipping his tongue in his mouth again. JAMES: “Hey, ouch,” he replied, crinkling his nose up and tugging at Eli’s hair lightly. He released his grip and tilted his head back, enjoying the feeling of Eli’s lips against his bare skin, humming softly as he tilted his head back forward to kiss him deeply. “I want to constantly taste you in my mouth,” he replied, raising his other hand so he was gripping onto Elijah’s face with both hands. “How long did you say your parents are gone?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Because I go back home day after tomorrow…and it’s a lot easier to sneak out when I’m home…" ELIJAH: “Next Thursday.” Eli mumbled in between kisses, wrapping his arms around James’ waist to pull him closer. “Just stay here.” He whined into him. “You got snowed in at Qudditch camp or something. You can eat Chinese takeout with me tonight and watch shitty TV. Do you have Netflix in your house, Jamesy?” Eli’s nails lightly started to scratch down his back, hard enough to leave thin red marks. “I taste way better than any dinner. You’ve had it for yourself, you can speak for me... In my favor, I hope.” JAMES: “I have to go. I can apparate, my mum and dad wouldn’t believe it for a second if I got snowed in,” he replied, shaking his head. “What’s Netflix?” he asked, leaning in and kissing him deeply again. “Actually, I don’t care all that much,” he mumbled into Elijah’s mouth as he rolled over, straddling him and sitting up, shoving his long hair out of his face. “You taste way better than anything I’ve ever had,” he replied sweetly, leaning down and grinding their hips together as he kissed him again, a hand holding onto his jaw tightly. ELIJAH: “You left your wand at home.” He continued, biting and dragging James’ lip. “Next time I’ll introduce you to Netflix and chill--- it’s very productive.” Eli ran his hands up and down James’ torso as he rolled over him, licking across his own lips. “Then stay with me. If you don’t, I’ll just wither away into nothing in all my loneliness.” He went on dramatically as he moved his hips up into James. “You can’t just get fucked and leave me hanging after, sweetheart.” Eli smirked as James held onto his jaw. JAMES: “Like they’d believe that.” He groaned softly as Eli tugged at his lip, following him forward until he could crush their lips together again, grinning against his mouth. “I have a few hours,” he replied. “You don’t have to worry about me running just yet.” He rolled his hips against Eli’s. “So, you’re saying if I fucked you, I’d be cool to go?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and giggling softly as he leaned in and kissed him again. “Besides, I can’t go home without a shower. They’ll smell it on me, and Weasleys are like wolves." ELIJAH: “You sat on it and it broke. You dropped it. You met up with the hot Head Boy and he did it just right that you couldn’t bear to leave.” Eli moaned, laughing into his mouth as he teased him. “I’d almost expect you to leave at that point.” He mused, holding James against him until he pulled away to speak. “What I’m hearing is that you want a shower. And I’m a messy, sticky mess too so---” Eli pointed to his brain then to James’, as if to say he knew what he was thinking. JAMES: “Ha. Funny. You should have seen my dad when Albus came out, and he actually likes Albus. I’d never be able to leave the house again. They’d put bloody bars on my window.” His nose crinkled up as he kissed Eli again. “I can never fuck you. You’re tiny, I’d be too scared of breaking you. Also, I like you on top.” He kissed Elijah a few more times between words. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?" ELIJAH: “I’ll steal you then. We’ll run away and after a few years you’ll send a letter about how you ran off with me and we’re living our best lives deep in the city.” Eli continued before stopping, brows raised. “Never? We’re going to have to rethink this entire thing if I’m never getting fucked just because I’m tiny. Do you really think you being to big is a problem for me?” Eli tried to keep a straight face but he just started laughing uncontrollably. “You’re gonna take a shower, get out, and then I’m gonna take a shower? Yes.” He teased again, starting to sit up. “The hot water in this house sucks so we’re gonna have to share a shower, I’m afraid.” Eli faked a pout. JAMES: “My dad’s an auror. He’d find us and probably hex you into oblivion thinking you actually kidnapped me.” He pressed his lips against Eli’s. “We’re going to do this the right way. It’s going to be good—the full traditional route.” James laughed. “I’m just saying, you’re very small, and I’m very strong.” He flexed a bicep before laughing again and kissing Eli some more through the giggles, sitting up easily with him. “I always could use a helper in the shower,” he replied. “You know, to get my back." ELIJAH: “I’d get hexed into a thousand oblivions for you.” Eli smiled as they kissed. “You get strong but all I get is small? Sure.” His eyes rolled playfully before Elijah stood out of bed, ruffling his own hair as he looked around the room before going down the hall to start the shower. “I always got your back.” He laughed from the other room, running his hand under the water to check the temperature. “I’m serious though-- as soon as you’re back, just tell them you’re spending the night at my place to play video games or some shit. I came out too early to even use that excuse but it’s all yours now.” JAMES: “Sap.” He followed Eli into the bathroom and put an arm around his waist, tugging him close as he kissed and bit at his ear and the back of his neck. “I told you, it’s easier to sneak out once I’m home. I’ll tell them you’re helping me with my potions coursework. It’ll be the best excuse.” He kissed at the corner of Eli’s jaw. “Because they barely know what video games are.” He nipped at the skin there, leaving the tiniest mark just under his ear before biting at his earlobe. ELIJAH: “But that’s what--- two days from now? What am I going to do with myself.” Eli leaned back into him, watching then both in the small bathroom mirror. “I mean, I’ll definitely need to wash all my blankets. So there’s that.” He turned to face him, leaving tiny kisses on his chest. “Two days is going to feel like a lifetime and I don’t give a shite if I’m being overdramatic right now.” Eli confessed, kissing him as he stepped over the wall of the bathtub to get into the steaming shower. JAMES: “Draw sad portraits of me with santa hats over my nipples,” he whispered into Eli’s ear before biting at it again, sucking lightly at his ear until it turned pink. “You’re welcome for that, by the way,” he said, tilting his head up as Eli kissed his chest before following him into the shower, leaving kisses against his neck and his back. “It’ll be fine. I’ll send you notes from home, it’ll be cute." ELIJAH: “I’m never doing that ever, so let it go.” Eli rolled his eyes. “I’ll teach you how to use the washing machine, it’ll blow your bloody mind.” He spoke as they got in the shower. “Notes from home? That’s it, I’m getting you a phone so you can text me over holidays. I’m not trying to get anymore paper cuts.” He ran a hand down James’ abdomen, past his waist until he could hold him in his hand. “You can send pictures instantly on them, that might work for us. Videos too.” Eli hummed, pushing James against the wall and biting at his neck. JAMES: “Not even for Christmas?” he asked with a pout. He was surprised by the way Eli grabbed a hold of him—though he shouldn’t have been—and he gasped softly, as if it was the first time he’d ever been touched. “Sounds like a plan,” he replied, his voice slightly higher before he swallowed, leaning back against the wall and holding Eli’s waist. He paused for a moment before leaning down and rubbing his hands against the back of Eli’s thighs, a short warning before he hoisted Elijah onto his waist so they were at the same level as they kissed. ELIJAH: “Definitely not for Christmas.” Eli told him seriously, though a smile was still on his mouth as they kissed. He wasn’t paying much attention to anything but their kiss, so when James suddenly hoisted him up around his waist, Eli let out a small noise. “Well, the weather is nice up here.” He snickered, both arms wrapping tightly around his neck as Elijah rolled his hips forward into him. “Stay with me.” He continued to whine as they kissed, even though he knew James would have to go back. JAMES: “Rude,” he said with a soft laugh before he leaned in and kissed him deeply again, not wanting to part for even a second. They had precious few hours before he had to go back—he wanted to make these hours count. “I can’t,” he whined into Eli’s mouth, his hands squeezing at his ass as he continued to kiss him. “In all seriousness…I do need to actually shower,” he said with a slight smirk. “And while this is fun, it’s not much of a shower if come out of it still smelling like your cum,” he added before kissing him deeply again. James couldn’t seem to stop—even as he spoke, he barely pulled away, his lips still brushing up against Elijah’s while he breathed out into his lips. ELIJAH: “I’ll kiss you some more...” Eli pleaded, “I can fuck you again, I’ll suck you off, I’ll do anything to make you stay.” He leaned into his ear and spoke lowly, “I can whisper to you like this, baby oh baby.” Eli whined softly into his ear as he untangled James’ wet hair. “I’ll do anything. I mean it.” He kissed him harder, whenever James pulled away, Eli just leaned right back in again to catch his mouth. “My nights have been so lonely, James.” JAMES: He paused for a minute before a wicked smile curved at the corner of his lips. “I might be convinced if you fuck me again,” he said quietly, a devilish tone to his voice. He kissed Eli back with the same intensity, biting down on his lower lip lightly before running his tongue over it to soothe the bites and kissing him again. “We just have a few days left of break,” he replied. “Then I’ll make sure your nights are never lonely again." ELIJAH: “If you’re a good boy. I don’t fuck naughty boys.” Eli taunted, letting out a deep sigh as James soothed over the bite marks with his tongue. “Or maybe I do.” He mimicked James’ smile, continuing to roll his hips forward into him. “Live with me...” Eli mentioned quietly, pulling back from the kiss. “Last month I got accepted into Pratt in New York--- come with me. Play for the National team-- they practice in New York sometimes..” He told him, fingers curling tightly in James’ hair. JAMES: “When have I ever not been good? You’re Head Boy, you know what I’ve been getting up to.” James dropped Eli so that he was standing again, his hand going down to stroke at him lazily. He pressed some more deep kisses against Eli’s lips, sighing into his mouth. “I told Falmouth I’d play for them yesterday,” he whispered. “Their keeper is retiring this year. They want me as first string.” He continued to stroke at him, hoping that Eli wouldn't make a big deal of it—James wasn't technically supposed to tell anyone, and he didn't want to think about being here when Eli was across the ocean. ELIJAH: “Oh.” He said softly, nodding and kissing at James’ chest as he watched James stroke at him. He didn’t get jealous or nervous of James meeting other people--- Eli knew he was too good of a person to do anything like that. That and James seemed so head over heels for him that Eli finally felt like he had something forever. But Elijah did have the need to make sure James was thinking about him all the time...and how much better he was than anyone before him. “I didn’t know you chose already.” Eli licked his lips, soft eyes locked on James as he moved his hips with his hand. “You’ll do great there.” JAMES: “I’m not technically supposed to tell anyone,” he said. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked, biting his lip lightly as he grinned crookedly at him. He leaned in and kissed him again deeply. “I think I deserve a reward…” he added softly. “Come on, do I have to ask again?” he asked, leaning in and kissing Eli once more, leaving small kisses on his lips and on his jaw as he kept stroking at him, licking up the side of his neck and feeling the hot water stream down between his lips. ELIJAH: “I won’t tell.” Eli looked at him with an amused grin, his hold on him just growing tighter. “What kind of reward?” He sighed, closing his eyes and tilting his head back as he felt James’ tongue on his skin. “Weren’t you the one who didn’t want to forget how I tasted?” Eli pulled him down some, feeling his length harden as James stroked at him. “Get down there, Falmouth.” He bit at James’ chin, pushing his wet hair back out of his eyes. JAMES: He grinned at Elijah, shaking his head slightly at him before biting at his chest lightly, easing himself down to his knees. “You got hard so fast,” he said with a crooked smile as he looked up at Eli. “Do you really love me that much, Elijah?” he asked, taking Eli in his hand again and running his thumb in circles around his tip before licking him once. “I’m flattered." ELIJAH: “At least I don’t cum on sight.” Eli said quickly, fingers carding through James’ hair before curling tightly against the strands. “I love you more than that.” He leaned his head back against the wall, letting the water run down his chest perfectly. “I love you too much.” Eli admitted, swaying his hips as James began to lick at him. “You’ll be missing out on this for two days, James--- I hope you dream about me and moan so the entire house hears you.” JAMES: It didn’t take long for James to start working Eli, using both his mouth and his hand to stroke at him, increasing his pace quickly. Now that he kind of knew what he was doing, it was easier for him to do it faster, to try something new to make Elijah squirm under him—which was now his only goal in these situations. He opened his mouth slightly to let out a loud moan before looking up at Elijah with a wicked gaze, his tongue running under Elijah’s length as he waited for him to finish. ELIJAH: Eli took in a deep breath once James’ mouth was around him, his knees nearly gave out as James licked under him. “Fuck..” His head tilted upwards, as if he were saying it for the Heavens. “Little more---” As soon as Eli spoke, he got it and slowly came in James’ mouth. “Don’t forget that.” He told him, lifting James’ chin to look up at him from where he knelt. “Don’t ever forget that. Especially not at Falmouth.” Elijah pulled him back up, kissing him deeply and pushing him towards the other end of the shower. JAMES: He followed Elijah’s hand back up to kiss him again, feeling himself get pushed against the shower with soft oof, his hands going down to Eli’s hips. He pressed his tongue up against Eli’s before making a soft noise in the back of his throat and pulling back just enough to disconnect. “I really do have to make sure I don’t smell like your cum,” he whispered with a soft snort. ELIJAH: “Fine. I’ll just smell like yours.” Eli winked at him before pulling back to grab a bottle of body wash and his loofah. “There. Scrub yourself clean, Captain.” He whistled, pouring some shampoo in his hand and massaging it into his own hair. “I can’t believe you don’t want to smell of me.” Eli pouted, blinking a couple times as he got soap in his eyes. JAMES: “I really, really, really like the sound of that,” he said. James soaped himself up before raising his hands up to run his fingers through Elijah’s hair, scrubbing the shampoo into it gently. He let the soap rinse off his body as he tilted his head to press his lips against the side of Eli’s neck, running his fingers through his hair to rinse the shampoo out. “I think collaborative showering should become a part of our routine." ELIJAH: “Just come all over me.” Eli held his arms out, laughing as James scrubbed shampoo in his hair. His hands went to rub soap on his torso, slowly rubbing it into his abs. “We’ve got a routine now? What is it? We fuck, we shower, and we cuddle?” He smirked, standing on his toes to kiss James’ lips. “Sounds like a good routine to me.” Eli put soap on his hands and brought them around to James’ ass so he could squeeze at him. JAMES: "I mean, when you put it so nicely..." he teased lightly. He raised his hands to Eli's face, his fingers digging into Eli's cheeks lightly as he pulled him in for anoher kiss, giggling lightly into his mouth. "Of course we have a routine, I've only been sleeping in your bed almost every night for the past month," he pointed out, tilting his head back and laughing as he felt Eli's hands on his ass. "You can teach me all about muggle shit. I only know some of it from my dad, but he's almost as clueless as my mum." ELIJAH: “You have been sleeping in my bed.” Eli said with a small smile. “Hold me after we dry off?” He asked, as if it were even a question. Eli just wanted to be close to James--- being alone in his house had scared him. His parents were reluctant to go on their trip and leave him, but Eli insisted that they should and that he needed time for himself. “I’d rather do other things than teach you about muggle shit, if we’re being honest.” JAMES: “Did you think I wouldn’t?” he asked, rubbing shampoo into his hair and shaking his head slightly, playfully splattering Eli with soapy water. “Yeah, but now that we’re clean, we have to keep it PG,” he teased, leaning in and kissing him again, grinning as he left kisses on Eli’s lips and jaw. “You should sleep in my bed sometime. You know, I have real sheets." ELIJAH: “I don’t know if I can with you.” Eli smirked, a hand coming forward just to over over James before he brought it up to hold his cheek. “Kissing is PG, right?” He raised a brow, laughing as James kissed along his jaw. “Are you saying I should sneak into your house to sleep in your bed?” Eli rinsed the soap out of James’ hair. “Because I can. And I will. With your parents in the house even.” He spoke sweetly. JAMES: He leaned in and bit at Eli’s jaw, snorting. “Try your best. Come on, we’re not rabbits,” he replied, kissing his neck lightly. He ran his fingers through his hair, waiting for the water to run clear before he turned off the tap. “We have magic, you know. We can just make it look like you’re not there.” He kissed Eli again. “And that sounds like the best idea." ELIJAH: “You’re no fun with sneaking out--- always cheating.” Eli wrinkled his nose. “I did it just fine, with no magic in fact.” He noted with a nod. “You just turn your music up a suitable level, they’ll think you’re being angsty or whatever and will leave you alone. But really you’re busy snogging me.” He snickered, stealing a kiss from James before grabbing a towel. JAMES: “Magic was made for us to cheat and lie to our parents, come on,” he replied, leaning in and kissing him again. “Also, my dad would come in and tell me to turn off the music or put on headphones, and it wouldn’t be great. Trust me on this one,” he said, following him out of the shower and wrapping a towel around his hips before he wrapped his arms around Eli’s waist from behind, walking along with him. “Now, PG suggestions for the evening, go." ELIJAH: “Then you’ll just sit on me and I’ll be hidden.” Eli teased, running his hands throw his hair in the mirror as James wrapped around him. “Oh, Merlin, let me think about that one.” He sighed, head back against James’ shoulder as he pursed his lips. “We could take my blankets off the bed and throw them in the machine while I tell you how pretty you are.” Eli thought out loud. “I could tell you everything I want... Everything I want to do with you.” JAMES: He chuckled softly and leaned in to kiss Eli’s ear. “That sounds like the perfect plan. You know how much I like it when you call me pretty,” he replied. He pressed some kisses against Eli’s jaw and neck. “I assume we’re doing this naked? Because even if that makes it PG-13, it would be way more fun naked." ELIJAH: Eli giggled as he watched the two of them in the mirror, happiest he’s ever seen either of them. “Well, duh.” He snatched the towel off James’ waist, wiping his face with it before adding it to the pile of laundry along with his blankets. Eli took off his own towel and threw it in the washer, starting it up and laying down on his stomach on the mattress. “Look at that post-sex glow.” He teased, James, leaning in to kiss his forehead. JAMES: His jaw dropped comically as Eli snatched his towel, and he grinned as he bit at Elijah’s ear, a little more roughly than usual. “You’re going to pay for that later,” he replied, flopping down on the bed while Eli dropped everything into the washing machine. He laughed, grabbing Elijah by both arms and pulling him over to lie on top of him. “You think I’m glowing?" ELIJAH: “Am I? Oh, I’m trembling, James.” Eli snickered as he walked back into the room, rolling over James with a grin as he kissed him. “Me on top of you, naked? I think we’re pushing the PG-13 thing.” He teased and kissed his lips. “Of course. But I might as well call it the Post-Sex with Eli glow, really.” Elijah’s fingers traced over the purple marks on James’ abdomen. JAMES: “Don’t worry, it’ll be shot artistically so all of the good bits are covered,” he replied, leaning in and kissing him deeply and giggling into his mouth. “You don’t think I’m always glowing? I’m hurt.” James rolled over to be on top of him, straddling him easily and kissing him lazily. “I think I’m addicted to you,” he said. “Any time we’re not touching, I just want to be touching you." ELIJAH: “Smart. You’re a smart, smart boy.” Eli complimented while they rolled over. He glanced up and down his body shamelessly, hands hovering over his waist. “Well, you’re not always having sex with me.” He laughed loudly. As James spoke again, Eli let out a quiet noise before simply saying “wow.” while his fingers ran up and down his sides. JAMES: “Thanks, I really do try,” he replied, leaning in and kissing him again, barely even holding himself up and instead just letting himself rest against Eli. “We should change that,” he replied, biting down on Elijah’s lip lightly. “What do you think?” An eyebrow raised. “I can’t believe I made you speechless. I consider this a great success." ELIJAH: “I doubt it’s hard for you. You’re the smartest human I know.” Eli complimented. “Change what? To having sex all the time?” He grinned, hands resting behind his head. “Alright. I’m down.” He moaned out at James’ biting his lip. “That one-- that one was good. Where’s my notepad at?” Eli asked, looking up at his nightstand. JAMES: “I’m glad you think so,” he replied, rubbing his nose lightly against Elijah’s. “Yeah, I think it’d be beneficial for both of us,” he replied. “And it’d help with my stamina. For quiddich, y’know.” He reached his hand up to grab Eli’s jaw and swivel his head back to look at him. “Right here,” he replied before kissing him again, wrapping both arms around his waist and holding him close. ELIJAH: “Well when you put it like that, I can’t be hindering your Quidditch skills.” Eli sighed, as if it were a problem. He reached for his notepad just as James turned his head back, and Eli’s hand went to grip James’ arm as they kissed. “I’m serious. I want to write that one down.” His back arched up to press into James. “Just grab my book and pen.” Eli laughed into his mouth. JAMES: “It’s important that I stay in top shape for Falmouth  next season,” he replied. James kept his hand on Eli’s jaw and kissed him some more. “Sorry, what?” He kissed him again. “I can’t hear you.” He kissed him again, this time more deeply, sliding his tongue against the inside of his mouth and humming softly. “I think there’s something in your mouth." ELIJAH: “This mouth gets you in a lot of trouble, doesn’t it?” Eli mumbled as best he could with James’ tongue down his throat. While they kissed, he reached again and grabbed his book with the attached pen to set down by his head. “What’d you say? Addicted to me. Always touching me.” Eli turned, freeing a hand to scribble down James’ words in his book. “Say it again and your mouth’ll get full.” He taunted with a smirk. JAMES: “Headmaster McGonagall and I are best friends now because of this mouth, don’t knock it,” he replied, a grin on his lips before his tongue darted out to lick across Eli’s lower lip. “I really think I”m addicted to you,” he whispered before kissing Elijah. “Any time we’re not touching, I want to be touching you." ELIJAH: “That’s disgusting.” Eli groaned turning on his side to scribble down what James had told him. He closed the notebook, attaching his pen to it and tossing it back to his nightstand. “Thank you.” He smiled, hand going to the back of James’ neck to pull him in so he could slowly push his tongue into James’ mouth. Eli slid his tongue across James’ before pressing it up against the top of his mouth. “I feel like I’m drowning in you sometimes. Now I’m not afraid to swim in the ocean if drowning feels as good as this.” He mused softly. JAMES: “You started it,” he replied, grinning down at him. James slid one hand up to press between Eli’s shoulder blades, the other hand going down to his ass to squeeze at it playfully. “I love the poetry and all, but…” He got muffled as Eli pressed his tongue up against his mouth again. “I think you promised that you were going to tell me how pretty I am,” he joked lightly before kissing him deeply again, letting out a contented moan into his lips. ELIJAH: “I said nothing about my mouth and McGonagall.” Eli rolled his eyes. His hips jolted upwards as James’ squeezed at his ass, a surprised noise was made into his mouth. “Because they’re not filming down there, right?” He teased. “I think the next wonder of the world is lying in my bed right now.” Elijah mused, fingers ghosting over James’ face as his mouth closed against his tongue, swallowing his moan down. JAMES: “I’m not taking it back,” he replied with a shrug. “You’ll have to think about it forever.” James laughed softly as Eli flinched. “Hi there,” he said softly before leaning in and kissing him again. James moaned softly again. “Tell me more,” he said softly before tilting his head, nudging Eli’s jaw aside with his nose before pressing soft kisses against his neck. ELIJAH: “You probably know it, but every time your lips press against my skin--- my muscles burn and ache.” Eli tilted his head as James nudged him and he let out a long, content sigh as he felt his lips on his neck. “Your skins as delicate as parchment and waiting for some pretty pictures and words to be drawn out on it.” As he spoke, Eli ran his nails up James’ sides, leaving dark red marks followed by a satisfied smirk. JAMES: “Good. I always want you to feel like that.” James pressed his lips against Eli’s collarbone, nipping at the skin lightly and sucking at it to make a slight mark, nowhere near as dark as what Eli did, but small and just for James to see. He groaned as Eli scratched him, shifting slightly against him. “You’re so rude." ELIJAH: “You’re right--- this is really hot.” Elijah’s fingertips smoothed over the thin red marks that he left, dragging them down lightly to graze over James’ thighs. “Who? Me?” His brow raised before he hummed and closed his eyes. He tried taking his chin to bring him up for a kiss, but when James just continued to kiss at his chest, Eli let out a deep, loud moan--almost like a whine--until James returned to his mouth. JAMES: “I’m glad you’re having fun. One of my family members is going to see me without a shirt on and the jig’s going to be up.” James pressed more kisses across Elijah’s chest, shifting to kiss the other side of his collarbones. A gasp left his lips at the sound of Elijah’s moaning, and he brought himself back up to kiss him deeply. “Fuck, you’re attractive." ELIJAH: “Always.” He hummed, quite happy with himself. “Good--- tell them you’re grossly taken so they can stop trying to find someone for you.” Eli wanted the entire world to know they were together so no one tried to pair them up with anyone else. He firmly believed they belonged together, soulmates even, and the possessive part of Elijah wanted the world to see it too. “Fuck.” He repeated, smirking against James as his hand slid up his chest for his fingers to lightly wrap around his throat. JAMES: “I’ll tell anyone that I’m grossly taken. You’re my boyfriend, Elijah, you’re absolutely stuck with me.” James leaned down and kissed him deeply again, biting down on his lower lip as he felt Elijah’s hand against his throat. “And now the kinkster within is being revealed,” he said suggestively, raising an eyebrow. “You still have yet to tell me things you like. I’ve told you so many, it’s not fair." ELIJAH: “I don’t kiss and tell.” He gave his throat a small squeeze as he wet his lips. “I mean--there’s things that could be interesting to try but,” his fingers ran over the dark marks on James’ chest. “These are kinda my thing-- the different colored pinks and purples.” Eli mused against his mouth. “And also literally any noise you make ever.” JAMES: “I’ll just tell people that we’re madly in love and that you’re great in bed. I don’t see the problem with hyping you up,” he replied, snorting softly. He brought his lips back up to brush against Elijah’s as he spoke quietly. “Then why aren’t you leaving more of them?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Because I have a lot of free room still. Plenty of space for you to brand me however you want,” he added, leaning down and kissing him once, letting out a drawn-out moan into his lips. ELIJAH: “Oh, honey.” Eli laughed as he put a hand on James’ chest and slowly pushed him over onto his back. “One day, I’m going to leave one right here.” He pressed his tongue flat against James’ neck, licking up the skin and then pulling away. Eli slipped down to a spot just under his sternum, kissing him delicately before he began kissing and sucking at him. His hand came up to hover between his thighs, letting himself rest on James’ leg as he remembered they’d just showered. JAMES: He shivered slightly as he felt Elijah’s tongue against his neck. “I like it when you call me pet names,” he replied. “Seriously. It’s sweet,” he added, somewhat breathless as he felt Eli creating a dark mark on his chest, the hand on his inner thigh driving him crazy. He let out a shaky sigh. “This is definitely not PG-13 anymore,” he mumbled. ELIJAH: “Baby. Love. Gorgeous. Sweetheart..” Eli spoke through his teeth as he kissed different shades into James’ skin. The mark looked like water colors as it got darker the further into the center of it. He laughed a little, moving his hand away to James’ knee. “I’m trying.” Eli looked up at him, fingers drumming against his knee. “Merlin, I’ve never been so needy and clingy to anyone before.” JAMES: He let out a soft noise, arching his back slightly into Eli’s touch. He looked down at him, his hand coming up to tangle in his hair and scratch against the back of his head. He let his hand drift down to Elijah’s back, lightly scraping his nails across his skin, not leaving any marks but instead just gently lulling him as they lay together. “I told you. Addiction. The best kind of addiction." ELIJAH: “Addiction’s red-- I’m seeing red.” Eli mused, closing his eyes as he came back up to tease James by lingering just slightly away from his mouth. “Red because we’d give our blood for it. Because we’re passionate about it.” Elijah drawled on, taking in every single detail about James’ face and memorizing all the marks he’d left on his chest. JAMES: “Godric, I’m so bloody in love with you. I can’t believe it.” He brought his hand around to touch Eli’s face, holding his jaw lightly as he looked up at him. His lips were slightly parted, waiting for Elijah to kiss him again, but it didn’t come—instead, he listened to Elijah talk, enraptured. “Have you ever considered writing poetry? You should. You could be like—like Robert Frost or something. End up in every single bloody English course there is." ELIJAH: Eli stuck his tongue out carefully, the tip barely grazing across James’ mouth before he slipped it slowly inside. “I’m in love with you.” He grinned against him. He kept the color red in mind to remind himself that he hadn’t seen or felt red in a very, very long time. “But then our kids would learn about me and how I got my inspiration and I don’t think you’d want to explain to them why I touched you just to memorize everything about you.” Eli smirked. JAMES: He kissed Eli slowly, a passion burning behind his actions as he held Elijah as close as possible, moaning softly into his mouth and lifting up slightly from the bed so they could be pressed tightly together. “All five of them,” he joked lightly before kissing Eli again, his hand sliding back into his hair to keep their lips pressed firmly together. ELIJAH: “You’re hilarious.” Eli mumbled into him as he rolled his eyes. “I literally asked my parents to be an only child when I was five. Plus, the world has plenty Weasley-Potters making a mess.” He smirked, his hand coming back up to wrap around the back of his neck so Eli’s thumb pressed into James’ throat. JAMES: “I think it’d be nice to have five little rugrats running around,” he replied. “I love kids, y’know. And despite everything you say, you’re not that bad with the first and second years.” James giggled softly. “But don’t worry, I don’t want kids for a long time. You’re spared—for now.” He wrapped his arms around Elijah’s waist and pressed his palms flat against Eli’s back to press them together. He pulled away just enough to speak into his mouth. “I have to go soon,” he whispered. ELIJAH: “Spared for twenty billion years.” Eli scoffed, his brows raised lightly as he hummed into another kiss. James pulled away and he just shook his head. “Potter, don’t talk.” He groaned, leaning down to kiss him again--- trying to do anything he could to make him stay. “Don’t open that mouth for anything other than to put it on me.” Eli told him as his hand went down to hook behind his knee to hold him close. JAMES: “Elijah,” he whined. “I’m serious. I have to go soon, otherwise I’m going to catch hell from my dad.” He kissed him again. “I told you I would.” He didn’t make any motion to leave, however, instead just following Eli’s hands where they pulled him and wrapping his arms tightly around him so they could kiss deeply. He let out a soft noise. “Godric, you’re making it difficult to leave." ELIJAH: Eli pressed his hips down into him, laughing against his lips as he bit down on James’ neck-- not hard enough to make a lasting mark, though. “Baby, please?” He whined, tongue pressing against the skin as he moaned louder. All the sudden though, he stopped. He didn’t want to get James in any trouble, so he just leaned forward to grab something out of his drawer...an old phone. “You’re gonna try texting. It’s easy, just ask Molly, I showed her over summer.” JAMES: He laughed, taking the phone. “I know how to text, Elijah, I’m not completely useless, you know.” He pressed his lips against Eli’s again. “Albus has a phone. I never needed one, all my mates don’t care about texting.” James chuckled softly, holding the phone against his chest with one hand, his other hand coming up to run through Elijah’s hair. “I’ll be back. And I won’t even apparate, I’ll let you drive me home." ELIJAH: “I never know with you purebloods.” Eli’s nose crinkled as he kissed him deeply before he got off the bed, pulling his clothes on. “I’m serious about New Year’s Eve, James.” He noted as he pulled on his jacket and smoothed his hair back. “Completely, totally serious.” Eli sat back in James’ lap as soon as both of them had gotten dressed again. “The first noise I want to hear in the new year is you moaning for me.” JAMES: “You know I’m only half, right? Well—three-fourths. It’s a thing.” James picked up his boxers from the floor, pulling them on. “Good. Me too.” He was just about to put on his jacket when Eli flopped into his lap and he crinkled his nose when Elijah spoke again, wrapping his arms around Eli’s waist and holding him close. “You’re gross, you know that? Totally gross." ELIJAH: Eli shrugged, “Fine. I never know with you people who have two magical parents. Better?” He mused into his mouth. “If we time it just right, I bet I could make you cum right at midnight.” Eli let out a giggle, both hands holding the sides of James’ face as he pressed a lasting kiss to his lips. “I’m romantic. When did that become gross?” JAMES: “Yeah, you don’t care to know, but people out there?” He gestured vaguely. “They definitely care, and I’m definitely not a pureblood to them.” James crinkled his nose. “That definitely was not PG,” he replied, leaning in and kissing him again. “Because I’m innocent, and you’re just stealing that innocence away. My poor ears." ELIJAH: “They’re stupid. We’ve gone through this in almost every class.” Eli shrugged his shoulders, a hand going to rest inside his thigh. “Tell me something dirty before you make me drive you home.” He smirked, trapping James’ bottom lip between his teeth. He thought it was funny whenever he put James on the spot like this, mostly because he went above and beyond what Elijah ever expected. JAMES: “Yeah, I know, but that doesn’t make them stop thinking it,” he replied, leaning in and kissing him once. He paused for a moment, feeling heat rise to his features, but he just took a deep breath. He figured that the blushing was inevitable by now, and Eli was just going to have to learn to live with a tomato-red boyfriend. He kept his face close to Elijah’s, speaking into his lips. “I’m going to make you cum so hard that you’ll see fireworks every day, not just New Years.” ELIJAH: Eli let out a laugh as he kissed James’ cheeks. “Yeah, you better.” He lifted his knee between his legs to kiss him once more before getting up. “I might send pictures tonight. So don’t let anyone get a hold of that.” Eli nodded to the phone in James’ hand. He motioned for James to follow him out front to where his orange bus was parked, opening the passenger door for James to get in and then running around to his side. JAMES: He let out a soft gasp as he felt Eli’s knee between his legs. “You’re really making it hard to leave, you know,” he replied, following Eli’s lips as he pulled away, wanting more even though he knew he had to leave. He got up and followed Eli, snagging his jacket from the floor and shrugging it on over the itchy Christmas jumper for this year (thankfully, Grandma Moly had kept it tame and had just put a J on the front, unlike last year’s full Santa and sleigh scene). He slid into the bus, and it didn’t take long for them to get to his place, his hand in Elijah’s lap and squeezing at his thigh the whole way. "I don't want to go in." ELIJAH: Eli sat in the car in front of the house, looking back at James with a troublesome smirk. He glanced around before grabbing James between his legs, brow raised. “I can still turn the car around.” Eli mused before pulling him in for a small kiss. “Like you said-- I’ll see you very soon. And I gave you a lot to think about while you’re at your crumby family dinner. Me. Naked. Writhing under you.” He snickered, kissing him again. JAMES: His jaw dropped slightly as Eli grabbed him between his legs, and he couldn’t do anything except react to Elijah kissing him, kissing him back with full force. “We have a few minutes,” he replied before kissing Eli again, parting his lips to leave Eli’s tongue some room to wander in his mouth. He didn’t realize how much time had passed, however, until Harry was knocking on the window of the bus, obviously fuming. James expected as much, knowing that he would get chewed out for sneaking out, but he didn’t expect what Harry said when he opened the door. “We’re all wondering where you are, and you’re out here snogging some bloke.” The way he said it made James’ blood run cold—he sounded as if he was disgusted. “Get inside, James. This is completely unacceptable.” Harry tilted his head to look at Elijah. “And I better not catch you here again,” he said firmly as James got out, shutting the door behind him. Harry stalked inside, and James had no choice but to follow. He couldn’t even look back. 

ELIJAH: Eli leaned in for more, but just as he did-- there was a knocking at the door. “Fuck...” He whispered before pulling away, he couldn’t hear much at that point-- but he caught the look Harry gave him and his natural reaction was just to give him a mischievous smile as he looked out the other window. By James’ body language, Eli could tell his father wasn’t happy and when he didn’t look back to him, that was the second Eli felt his heart drop in his chest. He quickly flipped on the radio and sped out of the neighborhood.

[themiddlelayer]

I’m an idiot...

And an oxytocin junkie. And it’s killing me. Seriously. 

I’ve been in my apartment for a full week now and I’m as moved in as I’m getting for now. There are still a few little stupid things I need like a step ladder and the nails to hang my Frida print but otherwise, things are functioning and I’m comfortable. That’s the easy part. 

The hard part? The loneliness. I’ve never lived alone... I had my Kiddo and/or a husband/boyfriend/roommates since I left home at 16. When I lived at home, I was alone all the time... I didn’t have any real connection to my family of origin so I spent most all of my time beginning around age 10 alone in my room. I felt like an outsider in my own home, so I made my bedroom my sanctuary. It was always clean, vaccummed, dusted and in order. The rest of the house was always dirty and as chaotic as a household of 3 (me, my father and my younger brother) could be. 

I know that’s the root of my need to be in a relationship. I grew up alone and never felt like I was part of my family so I’ve spent my entire life trying to build one of my own... and failing over and over. Knowing that doesn’t change how hard it is to be single and how scary this feels. Knowing I’m capable, strong, financially stable enough.. none of that stops me from waking up in the morning and crying... feeling like I want to crawl out of my skin just to not be here. 

The dark twisty thoughts have started to creep in and I’m doing everything I can to fight it off and keep myself safe. I’m safe right now. And I know what I need to do... but it’s exhausting to constantly push away those thoughts and keep going. Keep showing up for “work” and answering messages from people... people who genuinely love me and want to see me happy and healthy. 

I’m in that place where I’m afraid of exhausting Cookie with my stuff because she’s the only person I’m really comfortable with seeing me like this in real life. She’s got an old flame, Shakespeare (SS), who re-emerged, freshly divorced and giving her all the feels again. She’s so happy that I hate bringing my heavy to her. 

The funny thing is that she came over on Friday to talk about SS because he missed a planned phone call and she was in the same place I was with LEO... feeling like an idiot for getting all twitterpated over someone who can’t even reply to a good morning message for over 24 hours. She took my advice and messaged him basically asking if she should be miffed about being stood up (they had planned a phone call that he missed) or if she should be worried. He replied right away, saying all the right things. He’s worried about messing things up and worried that he won’t be able to ‘walk the talk’ when it comes down to it because of where he’s at in life right now. Honest. Transparent. Awesome. I’m so happy for her!

But me? I’m an idiot... LEO and I finally had a longer-ish video chat Friday night but I’d had an edible, fallen asleep on the couch then got a message from him as I crawled into bed. Admittedly, I was still a little high when we chatted. And he finally got to see my boobs.. LOL! 

I don’t doubt him for a second when he tells me that he loves me and wants to be with me. But that doesn’t change the lack of conversation and the way our schedules just aren’t lining up. And none of that seems to stop me from melting into a puddle of goo when he calls me ‘Babygirl.’ Fucking ridiculous. 

If I’ve learned anything over the course of my failed relationships it’s that it takes more than love to make a relationship work. It takes work. It takes common interests and shared ideas about how the everyday things should go... little things that seem trivial, really aren’t. What smells a person loves or hates... where they want the thermostat set... if there is a ‘right way’ to load a dishwasher... little seemingly trivial things that I gave up on really add up and can snowball into a life where I’m small and powerless. I can’t do that again, and I know that. 

And then there’s that part of me that’s just flat out tired. Exhausted from a lifetime of survival mode and of all the chaos and deep emotions that came from polyamory... burned out, just like my grandmother used to talk about. Shortly before she passed away she said that she saw me burning so brightly that she was always afraid I’d burn out too fast. That’s what this feels like sometimes. 

That part of me wants to just go home to California and be a cop’s wife. No need for the politics and deep conversations. No need for the effort. No need for anything other than just doing daily life and breakfast burritos. I could go back to being the house where the kids come afterschool.. LEO has a 10 year old daughter and a few grown kids... I could help another little woman into the world but maybe she would actually want me in her life, unlike my Kiddo who hasn’t spoken to me in years. Ouch.

Further complicating my emotional state is my renewed connection with McT back in MD. We’ve had several chats, a phone call that lasted over an hour then last night we video chatted for almost 90 minutes. I showed him my apartment and then he walked me through his house, pointing out and telling stories behind all of artwork and knick-knacks. He pulled out a couple of his ukuleles and played them and sang to me. I couldn’t stop smiling. 

He’s moving towards filmmaking after writing several plays that have been performed out there. He’s upped his game from hosting burlesque shows and writing into more and more sideshow acts. He does straight jacket escapes, strongman feats like tearing decks of cards and bending things like horseshoes, nails and frying pans, and is working on sword swallowing. He travels to perform while holding down a full time job in a museum in DC. He went to art school and makes a living at art! Unheard of, right!?! 

McT makes me smile. We have great conversations... he’s hot. And kinky. Ridiculously smart and witty... and when we talk, I almost always end up feeling like I’m just flat out boring. He’s motivated and has interests... and I guess that’s actually normal, like the product of a happy, healthy upbringing complete with summer camp and the ‘almost became a rabbi’ path. He’s not someone who I could ever see getting married and doing the kind of life thing that LEO wants. He feels like a bright spot or a comet which has its own merits but ultimately I feel like he’d get bored of me if we were to ever actually pursue anything serious. 

Realistically, I need to put my energy into myself, my job, and into finding other things... not people... that make me happy. I know this. I really do. 

I’m still grieving the loss of the life with MM because I didn’t really, fully do that. We unraveled in slow motion but it’s really over now. In all likeliness I’ll never see that house again. I’ll never see Bleu or Monster again. And I may never see MM again after he leaves for DC at the end of the month. He was my family and has had my back through this Tampa episode in a way that most wouldn’t. But I don’t recognize him anymore. Our interactions in person have all been cold and awkward and I still can’t talk to him without holding back tears most of the time. 

And this Tampa bullshit. I woke up angry at him this morning. Things did not have to be this way. I didn’t have to be worried about running into him at the grocery store... we could have still enjoyed the good... I woke up thinking about making french toast and wishing I could watch the latest episode of Harley Quinn. And then I thought about inviting Cookie for brunch but the place in town with the best benedicts is the place where Tampa and I had brunch that last weekend before he flew back to Florida and a fresh flood of tears sprang. I just want to kick him in the shins and yell, “What the fuck, dude!!?” 

I pulled back because I had to for my own dignity, and instead of hanging on and working on things he threw me away. I wasn’t worth the effort because I was too easy from the beginning and I can’t make that mistake again. 

Just as my tears were drying up, my phone rang... Washington state. My first love and first lover... 

I can’t believe I haven’t talked about him or given him a nickname! Or have I? Well, I’m going to go with “Byron” now. When we were much younger, I came across a quote from Lord Byron that always made me think of him, “In her first passion woman loves her lover; in all others, all she loves is love.” 

Byron’s 5 year old daughter was murdered a little over a year ago and they are in the middle of the trial. He’s been homeless, living in his car for awhile now, unable to work due to his own health and then this whole thing with the trial. To say that his life was hard before this is an understatement.. admittedly, he was responsible for a lot of the struggles he’s faced, but he has always kept going. 

He’s battled alcoholism, health issues including multiple hospitalizations for diabetes complications, liver cirrhosis and injuries like the broken femur he’s still healing from. Once upon a time ago, he ran a comedy club and partied with celebrities... he dated Tonya Harding briefly and when he told me all I could do was chuckle because she seems like his type. When he was diagnosed with  cirrhosis a few years ago, he called me to tell me because he wanted me to hear it from him before he shared it on social media. 

We haven’t actually seen each other in over a decade when he lived with me briefly in Texas. He was still drinking then and things got ugly... but he’s Byron and I’ve always loved him so when he got back in touch all was forgiven. 

The thing with Byron that always got me was that after my being so in love with him when we were kids and him dating all of my friends... after losing our virginity to each other and continuing to have sex while he was dating my ‘best friend’ at the time... After all of that, I left our hometown and was moving on with life. I met my Kiddo’s father and that same weekend Byron called me out of the blue telling me, “I love you. I’ve always loved you. Please come home and be my wife.” 

It was a moment in my life where I literally had two paths unfolding in front of me and I had a choice to make. I can’t say I’ve had a moment so clear in terms of where life could have gone since that one. And I chose my Kiddo’s father, which has lead me to a life where I’ve had a new addresses, new zip codes, new states, a new country over and over rather than going “home” where I never felt at home. 

Byron is home...my home in that he knows me under all of this and I only wish I could be there to support him through this now. The crazy thing is that when he called me just now and asked how I was doing, I broke down crying again and he went on about how proud of me he is, how strong and amazing I am... He told me that I need to remember who the fuck I am. And he’s right. 

He’s literally been sitting in a courtroom seeing pictures and video of his little girl’s last moments, of her injuries... of the medic on scene going off saying that there was no way things could have gone down like they were trying to say... He’s been dodging the media and turning down offers to go on national TV to talk about it because he just wants justice for her. All of this while living in his car alone in Washington state. And here he was comforting ME and keeping this positive attitude in the face of unbearable loss... all while staying sober, which is huge for him. Holy shit, right!?! 

If I’ve learned nothing else in the last few weeks it’s that I’m loved and I’ve made a difference in other people’s lives. People I haven’t talked to in years have reached out to check on me after seeing my posts on FB. People I’ve been in and out of contact with have told me in no uncertain terms that the things I’ve taught them have helped them get through their own toughest times and told me over and over again how strong I am. These are the things I need to hang on to. These are things I need to learn from and in turn be sure that I’m reaching back out to the people who have made a difference in my life. 

I know I’ll survive this and that this is the hard part... the grieving and loss of yet another incarnation of myself. I’m really feeling the urge to get a tattoo... a phoenix. Or maybe a butterfly... something that will remind me of my capacity to rebuild and be reborn again like I’ve done so many times before. 

I’ll be okay. Better than okay. I just need to ride this out and remember who the fuck I am under all the years of making myself small enough to fit into other people’s (men’s) lives. 

Time to dry my eyes again and get dressed. I need to buy water since my water dispenser died on me and it will be a bit before I can get a replacement sent. It’s still under warranty so it shouldn’t cost me anything. And I need to go by Cookie’s for my replacement glasses. 

I’ve got this... and I’m so grateful for everyone who’s still out there listening, watching and rooting for me. I love you. 

[winky-the-alcoholic-elf]

85 Questions

I was tagged by @defiled-diadem  :) 

rules: answer these 85 questions and tag 20 people

tagged: @doitforgranger @floral-print-punk @libertysir @looneybeth @susanbone @sansaslays @malchiex @jujuoh @miltank-tittymilk @boobpunch   (optional obviously and if y’all want me to never tag you in anything again let me know) 

THE LAST

1. drink: cold apple cider  2. phone call: my dad  3. text message: my co-facilitator for a grief support group 4. song you listened to:  the chain, fleetwood mac 5. time you cried:  y’know that post that talks about crying once every six months for like 5 min? that’s me. I think i had my two seconds of tears like two or three weeks ago, so i’m good for awhile 6. dated someone twice: no 7. kissed someone and regretted it: i mean i guess? more like i regretted it much much later  8. been cheated on: yeah 9. lost someone special: Yeah a few people. hence become a grief group facilitator 

10. been depressed: i have chronic depression. 

11. gotten drunk and thrown up: once. i had like a shit ton of vodka but it was mixed with stuff and it came up pink and i was blacked out but for some reason i remember that so like i just have this super vivid memory of barfing with zero context 

3 FAVOURITE COLOURS 12.  purple, any shade but more blueish hues, not pinkish ones 13. maroon 14. turquoise. and orange. i can’t pick three when i have four faves.

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU 15. made new friends: i don’t think so?  16. fallen out of love: that’s complicated  17. laughed until you cried: i have no idea if in the past year, but i’ve def done that in my life a lot 18. found out someone was talking about you: if you count my roommate talks to herself and one time i heard her say “she’s still in bed” and there’s a 99% chance that she was talking to herself about ME, then yeah  19. met someone who changed you: in the last year? i don’t think so.  20. found out who your friends are: i feel like that question is very middle-schooler-who-thinks-they’re-grown  21. kissed someone on your facebook list: yeah? lots of people? p sure there’s only one person i’ve kissed that i’m NOT fb friends with and that’s because i de-friended that person. still friends with their mom though. just bc i feel weird defriending her. susan didn’t do anything wrong?

GENERAL 22. how many of your facebook friends do you know in real life:  99.9% 23. do you have any pets: sadly, no 24. do you want to change your name: nah. it’s not my favorite name in the world but like i’m not my favorite person in the world so it all works out in the end  25. what did you do for your last birthday: tbh i don’t even remember. i probably got drunk w/ friends? i turned 22 it’s not a big deal birthday  26. what time did you wake up: like 10:30  27. what were you doing at midnight last night: homework  28. name something you can’t wait for: the sweet release of death 29. when was the last time you saw your mom: like three weeks ago 31. what are you listening to right now: spotify, my playlist is called from tosca to tupac. it’s p great, i have pretty much every genre except modern country and christian rock covered 32. have you ever talked to a person named tom: a few 33. something that is getting on your nerves: at this exact second? i’m bloated and i can’t fart bc my roommate is home. 

34. most visited website: tumblr probably. sadly.  35. hair colour: dark brown. kinda has some red in it, in the sun. 36. long or short hair: very long.  37. do you have a crush on someone: this girl who works at panera. i just know her by sight but like she’s hot and her name is andy and every time i have to give her my order i get all quiet and squeaky and she probably thinks i’m a freak 38. what do you like about yourself: you’re not my therapist why are you making me do this? but okay i’ll say my compassion for others. 39. want any piercings: i can barely remember to wear earrings often enough to prevent my holes from closing so no i’m good 40. blood type: no idea 

41. nickname: cizzo 42. relationship status: single and basically allergic to mingling  43. zodiac: libra 44. pronouns: she/her/hers 45. favourite tv show: Brooklyn nine nine, buffy the vampire slayer, Go On, and sense8 46. tattoos: None, sadly 47. right or left handed: left 48. surgery: nope 49. piercing: just the standard ear lobes, if they haven’t closed up which they probably have 50. sport: i’m a pro at tripping over my own feet  51. vacation: what about vacation??? i’ve been to 46 states bc my dad’s a nerd. and 4 canadian provinces. i honestly would be fine never travelling ever again tho. i know that’s super odd, i’m just a homebody. staycation for the win. 52. pair of trainers: i have one pair of cheap gym shoes from target that i wore for my job at target and also for camp but otherwise i’m not a gym shoe kinda person

MORE GENERAL 53. eating: nothing currently. i had mashed potatoes for dinner. 54. drinking: apple cider 55. i’m about to: watch buffy the vampire slayer. i’m re-watching it and currently in season 3 56. waiting for:  me to get my shit together 57. want: to live alone 58. get married: probably not. that would kinda kill my whole living alone thing 59. career: trying to graduate college so i can get a masters so i can get a licence so i can be a social worker

WHICH IS BETTER 60. hugs or kisses: hugs 61. lips or eyes: neither  62. shorter or taller: so vague  63. older or younger: for dating? the same age 64. nice arms or nice stomach: who/cares/ 65. hook up or relationship: neither  66. troublemaker or hesitant: irrelevant 

HAVE YOU EVER 67. kissed a stranger: i don’t think so 68. drank hard liquor: oh honey. yes.  69. lost glasses/contact lenses: only for like 5 min at a time 70. turned someone down: yes 71. sex on the first date: no...? i guess  72. broken someone’s heart: i dunno  73. had your heart broken: it’s complicated  74. been arrested: no 75. cried when someone died: not immediately but i have cried about dead people, yes.  76. fallen for a friend: i guess? not like while in the friend stage 

DO YOU BELIEVE IN 77. yourself: that’s a loaded question i’m trying to answer in therapy 78. miracles: no? i guess not? i dunno  79. love at first sight: no i really don’t  80. santa claus: i am a fully grown adult  81. kiss on the first date: sure? this isn’t something you can “believe” in but like if you’re asking if i’m chill with the idea of someone doing that then yeah, get it friends 82. angels: no, but when i was little i sure as fuck did. i used to have /conversations/ with my dead sister thinking god must’ve been omnipotent only by having angels watching over different parts of the earth so i thought on mondays my sister was watching my part of the earth and i’d talk to her on monday nights. i’ve learned that’s apparently somewhat normal for grieving kids but like it sounds fucked up and i’m pretty fucked up as a person so i didn’t realize that could be normal 

OTHER 83. current best friend’s name: i have a few 84. eye colour: brown 85. favorite movie: i dunno dude