#when they know the outcome will be the same because its their nth time...

[gnp-sara]

If you know, you know

[silkylious]

“I love you. Truly, deeply, eternally.” (Lucifer x Reader)

fandom: obey me! shall we date?

pairing: lucifer x gn reader

warnings: angst, fluff (mildly lol), suggestive (nothing explicit though!), bittersweet, ambiguous ending (??), unedited 

wc: 2.1k

“Lucifer?” you called out to him on a whim, eyes trailing the seconds ticking away on his grandfather-clock.

“Yes?” he didn’t spare you a glance as he worked methodically through his second hill of paperwork; a heaping stack of duties assigned to him by Diavolo, endless bills–a consequence of Mammon’s latest spending spree, you ought to talk to him about those soon–and the sort piled neatly on his pristine desk, slowly but surely decreasing in size as Lucifer burned through the tedious task with unwavering efficiency. You felt exhausted just watching him work. Lucifer? He hadn’t so much as blinked more than three times in the past five minutes (yes, you counted). Obsidian sleeves rolled up just past his elbows, hair perfectly framing his face with one strand slightly out of place–hot–and a gentle crease between his brows (the only observable hint alluding to the mounting stress on his shoulders). He looked positively delectable, nothing like someone who’s been working diligently for hours without any breaks. But that just served as a testament to the fundamental difference between the two of you, you supposed.

“I’m in love with you,”

That made his meticulous fingers pause in their tracks.

“Pardon?”

As it turned out, his ears hadn’t, in fact, deceived him. You repeated the confession as if it weighed nothing on your tongue. You were strangely calm given the words you’d just blurted out; he almost didn’t recognize you. An unfamiliar shade of desperation painted all over your face, and yet your voice bared to him a serene conviction, one he’d never heard from you before. Lucifer’s heartbeat stumbled in your wake.

Basking in your courageous display just a second longer, he sighed. Too bad he’d have to mutilate such a pretty sight so soon.

That didn’t go exactly as he’d planned. The harsh rejection barely deterred you, leaving only a petulant pout on your lips and a promise that you’d come talk to him later.

Lucifer was anything but stupid. He knew that he let things stray too far between you, knew it was his fault for not pulling away from your kisses and instead indulging you (and himself) to the fullest. His fault for ignoring the guilt that settled deep in his gut like hunks of steel when you looked at him like he’d never experienced before. Lucifer had lived for many millennia, had relished the warmth of countless passionate lovers and faceless hookups, none of which had ever set him alight from the inside out like your adoring gaze had. It terrified him how after all these years, watching humans thrive and collapse over and over again, he thought he’d seen everything there is to see, all that humans had to offer. And then you come along, reinventing what love meant right before his eyes, with a simple look no less.

He never intended for you to fall in love with him, and he never intended to reciprocate. Had he been mortal, maybe things wouldn’t be so complicated. But life dealt a cruel hand, and he wasn’t. A relationship like yours was doomed to crumble in heartache from the start, it was best to stop it before things went too far. That was the plan anyway.

You didn’t share the same sentiment.

With one last exasperated sigh, Lucifer focused his attention back on his duties. He didn’t know how long he could hold up against your persistence, and honestly he preferred not to dwell on it. Whatever outcome lied for the both of you in the near future, itching one step closer with each tick on the clock, he’d face it head on when it was time.

Meanwhile, you laid wide awake, in your bed, rethinking every decision that led you here. You didn’t regret your confession, nor were you keen on giving up, but Lucifer’s ruthless rejection, his vehement claim that a relationship between a human and a demon is destined to end in tragedy festered a bud of doubt in you. You noted pettily that he hadn’t outright denied any feelings for you. How could he? Lucifer was many, ugly things but a liar’s not one of them; you wouldn’t believe him even if he did lie, not with how delicately he holds your hand in his gloved one, not with how heartbreakingly beautiful he was when he lets you in at his lowest, stripped completely of his pride.

You knew though, that as much as Lucifer was a creature of the past, he was a creature of regrets.

Somehow, you’d managed to reach the heart of the Avatar of Pride himself, bestowing a porcelain touch on it and subsequently rocking the monotony of his endless life. Despite the acknowledgment of both your feelings, you weren’t naïve enough to dismiss how his heart drums thousands of years apart from yours and would continue to do so long after yours gave its last valiant pump.

He was a creature of the past you realized; humans intently watch minutes, hours, years approach because there’s only so much of them live out, there’s only so much to do in a lifetime. Naturally it would be counterintuitive to waste scarce time on the past. The immortal have no such concern. When time is limitless, and life is all but a blur of recycled events, its only instinctive to lose interest in what’s to come. And you guessed, maybe there was a strange comfort in the predictability of eternity, maybe that’s why Lucifer was so offput by the notion of something serious yet temporary, especially romance.

You decided. You wouldn’t let him look back and ponder what ifs in that stubborn head of his, not while you were still breathing. With regained determination, you glanced one last time at your countertop alarm and entered a dreamless slumber.

Not even two days later, three consecutive raps on his door made Lucifer rub at his temples for the nth time and begrudgingly called for you to enter. Piled on his desk were several stacks of papers (as was the usual), though, that night he was in a particularly sour mood. Ever since your confession, he’d been feeling uneasy, Diavolo hurling more work at him last minute was only pushing him to his wit’s end.

“Lucifer,” he hummed in response, not bothering to conceal his growing agitation. “we need to talk,”

Ah, there it was. He was wondering when you’d confront him again.

“I believe I made myself quite clear last time,” he sighed, dropping his pen and finally meeting your eyes. “If this is about your feelings again then I’m sorry but I can’t–”

“But why? Can you really say that what we have isn’t special at all?” your lower lip quivered just a bit and Lucifer had to fight the immediate reflex of holding you close and hushing your worries. His impassiveness quickly arose frustration out of you. “God Damnit, Lucifer! All I want is to be with you while I still can! To die with no regrets, knowing you’ll be there with me, but it’s very fucking hard to do that when you’re too scared of the future to do something about–about us!”

It was a low blow to go after his pride, you knew that, but he wasn’t giving you much to work with.. Rubbing salt in a ghastly wound had certainly done the trick, the dimmed crimson that pooled just below his pupil began to shine scarlet. You would have found it gorgeous had it not been imbued with near murderous intent. Lucifer’s poker face was rapidly breaking, a horrid mix of anger and melancholy sat heavy in his throat. He was looking straight at you, but his eyes were somewhere else, some time else. He was staring hundreds of years behind you at an unhealed, poorly bandaged cut. An everlasting guilt he carried with him everywhere.

“What would you know about regret?” he breathed out the words like they’re bullets, whatever restraint he’d managed to scarp together deteriorating. He stepped closer, each stride bigger than the last as he closed the distance between you, a perfect diamond manifesting on his forehead and you could see the beginnings of black feathers sprouting from his back. “Do you have the slightest clue what a blessing mortality is? Do you have any idea how agonizing it is to live with your regrets and not be able to die with them?”

“You’re right. I don’t,” you stood your ground. “But, do you really want to live with one more regret to bear?”

He kissed you. He kissed you like he hated you, animosity and anger and pain and, most prominently, pining spilling from his lips. Lucifer parted from you just as quickly as he’d initiated the kiss, taking the time to let his irritation bleed out of him, until he was left grappling with (frankly terrifying) longing and adoration. Just this once, he’d take a leap of faith, he’d break his own rigorous code and take the risk of undying heartache in the future to be with you in the now.

One kiss turned into many, and soon you found yourselves stumbling your way from his office to his bedroom. He couldn’t get enough of you, the thought that some day he would be deprived of you broke him and made him yearn to cherish you just as much. Precious things aren’t meant for longevity, he learned. All the more reason to treasure them when given the chance. You were pushed onto his bed and not once did his hands and mouth and breath leave your skin; he couldn’t bear sever that connection.

Before long, your hands were pined to the mattress, fingers tightly laced with his as if he was petrified the moment will break and a thousand years would pass you by the instant he let go.

“I love you. Truly and deeply.”

Neither of you heard the clock strike midnight.

Lucifer was well-acquainted with sleepless nights. He was no stranger to the prick at the corner of his eye, excruciatingly familiar with midnight’s cold, lonely touch. But this one was different. Where usually lied a cool emptiness in his sheets, your warm, inviting body was just in reach. Where the corners of his mind were usually plagued by past mistakes and sorrowful repentance, you were all he could think about. He reflected on your words now that the high of emotions had worn off. He still disagreed with you on many things and, if he was being true to himself, it would take more than one night to abandon his reluctance, much more. But he was willing to put in his fair share of effort. He was willing to do many things for you, he mused. You were right about one thing though, regardless of whether or not he acted on his feelings, your parting would hurt all the same. Part of him was still resentful that he let himself fall so deeply in love with you, and a part of him knew it couldn’t be helped. You’d carved a home for yourself out of his heart, invited yourself in and declared pompously you’d be there to stay, and he’d be damned to hell all over again if he said he didn’t like that.

Pulling you closer to leech off your warmth, for the first time in forever, he dreamt of the future, a future with you.

Snapping out his reverie, Lucifer refocused his vision on the framed picture before him. It’s been a couple dozen years, the pain dulled into a hollow longing, and yet not a single regret weighed on his back. He was astonished, how you, who had lived but a fraction of his own lifetime, had such impeccable foresight. He lays in bed every night and morning thanking you for not giving up, knowing that if you had, he’d be spending the rest of his infinite days in self-loathing regret.

All Lucifer could ask for now is a little guidance. What was he to do now? Was he even capable of falling in love again after you? Would he allow it? All questions that began frequenting his head since you’re no longer there to occupy it. He only knew is that he’d love you, and love you, and love you until this world fell apart. He toyed with the idea of reincarnation. It certainly wasn’t out of the realm of possibility; he saw you in everything he did. Strange how you’d taught him more about appreciating every day’s mundanities than he had in the many eons he’s been alive. Lucifer wonders about the possibility of you donning the same white wings he once had back in the Celestial Realm. If you ever did, he wonders about the complications that would arise from that, he wonders if you’d even remember him. All Lucifer was left with was a simple truth. If you ever came back, whichever form you may take, he’d welcome you back into the adobe of his heart without a second thought.

He ran his thumb over your smile, a bittersweet acceptance in his own.

“I love you. Truly, deeply, eternally.”

Obey me! taglist: @katsucookie @strwbry-m1lk​ (you wanted to be tagged in this one lol) join my taglist here! <3

[ktheist]

title. “it’s armani, not polyester.” | m

pairings. ceo!jimin x secretary!reader x ex-boyfriend!director!jeongguk

inspired by. conan grey’s heather.

genre. e2f - f2l , office romance, sugar daddy-baby-esque.

words. 10.6k

warnings. explicit content (obviously). mentions of alcohol use. 

concept. a retelling of conan grey’s heather in its future days.

story time.

x

“that’s your ex?” wendy blinks once before proceeding to openly ogle the - as per jennie’s excited text - ‘tall and handsome as hell cutie’ who’s in the middle of speaking to irene who seems to be sporting a larger-than-her-daily smile as her body moves as she nods and laughs and nods again, “i mean - i was expecting some hobo looking guy with spectacles bigger than his head and snot running down his face.”

with a cringe, you shoot her a much needed side eye, “okay first off - ew,”  throwing your gaze back at jeongguk, “second off, we only dated for like three months before everyone started sleeping with everybody.”

“like orgies and shits?” this time, it’s her turn to cringe.

“no,” you roll your eyes, “i mean we had our first fight, he slept with my best friend so i slept with his brother who was dating that best friend.”

“oh,” you can almost feel the way her eyes shift from you ex to you as you continue to type on the computer, “guess no more family dinners.”

“it gets better,” you feel a creep up your face as you turn to meet her wide eyed gaze, “me and his brother got into the same college and we decided to stay friends and now his mom knows me as taehyung’s best friend instead of her second child’s ex-girlfriend.”

by the end of it, wendy’s jaw is quite literally on the floor, missing her chance to greet the cutie who’s obviously led here by irene. standing up, you fix the man who seems to have turned into ice, “thank you, irene, i’ll take it from here,” without even missing a beat you give jeongguk a once over, admitting his worth of the nickname he’ll soon forth be known as in the office, “mr. jeon, mr. park is thrilled to meet you.”

jimin didn’t exactly say that - he only yawned when you briefed him about the interview with the possible new tech guy before dozing off in the passenger seat for the rest of the ride.

“you work here?” thawed from his initial shock, jeongguk hurriedly tries to catch up to you when he sees you walking towards the double doors of your boss’ office which is just twenty feet away.

“oh no, i just deliver pizza and happen to know where the ceo’s office is,” and that marks your second eyeroll for the day to which jeongguk’s lips tuck into a blatant sneer.

before he even finished his “someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed”, you’re already knocking twice on the door before strutting into the room where jimin’s face lights up at the sight of you before returning to its unsmiling state when his eyes lands on something over your shoulder.

“mr. park, mr. jeon is here for the interview for the management information systems director position,” you hand him the ipad with jeongguk’s resume opened and ready for inspection.

jeongguk pretends not to see your feigned smile as you pass him but before you manage to exit the room, a voice stops you, “oh, miss ____, do you mind telling  irene to make me an extra strong coffee?”

“i can make that, mr. park,” you announce, eyebrows threatening to weave themselves together at the peculiar order.

jimin only chuckles, “miss ____, you and i’s definition of extra strong is vastly different,” but before you can debunk it, he’s already complementing his insult with a praise, “you make the nicest chamomile tea though.”

all while jeon jeongguk stands in the middle of the way yet he’s the last thing you see and probably the last thing jimin notices.

“that’s fair,” with a nod and an amused smile, you leave through the door, knowing full well jeongguk is more than able to distinguish between what’s a facade and what’s not.

and he may very well be the first to call bullshit on your too respectful interactions with your boss.

x

jeongguk gets the position. naturally, he would - he graduated at the top of his class, became valedictorian, dished out an inspiring speech to which taehyung showed you a video of when you were having your trimonthly meet up a year a ago.

he was a cutie with brains and brawn. his department sucked him in as their new director and colleague in no time. the news of the new tall and handsome as hell cutie who apparently looks better than most people in suit has spread to every other department with wendy and irene liasing between the rumors - considering the fact that they take the ‘first interaction’ privilege.

perks of being part of jimin’s secretary trio, you suppose.

the aforementioned man peeks up at you with a smirk, his leather black salvator snaking up the side of your black mesh pantyhose as you stand in front of him and just until five seconds ago, were briefing him about his meeting with the representative of the manufacturing company for the new chip.

“miss jisoo will be here in two hours and she’ll be discussing the direct materials cost, direct labor cost and manufacturing overhead - that’s where i’ll need you to pay attention because maque it is known for their concrete bargains but exceptional product outcome.” you inform.

“mr. park,” his eyes snap to yours, “my eyes are up here.”

you’re not sure what he sees, but it may or may not have something to do with your unyielding force but flirtatious tone - either way, he lets out a surrendered chuckle.

“i got it - bargain, get the cheapest overall cost but the best production,” he says before guiding your hand that’s under his chin to his mouth, taking your pinky finger between his pearly whites.

“good, call me if you need anything else,” you nod in approval, lips curling into a satisfied smile before summoning your hand back to your side.

the sound of your heels reverberate against the walls as you make your way to the doors but before you manage to step one foot out, he’s calling out for you, “____,” voice unsettlingly calm but his words couldn’t have been any more overbearing, “i expect the same amount of dedication for your... other line of work.”

you would have let that smile tuck into a knowing smirk, would have given him something to look forward to - enough to keep him on his toes for the rest of the day but not enough to be a distraction to his tasks. if not for the sight of a flock of wavy black hair and darkest brown eyes.

“mr. jeon,” your voice may have rose a pitch higher but you’ve managed to school it into a pleasant smile, “how may i help you?”

jeongguk’s eyebrows falter just the slightest bit as a flash of confusion mixed with suspicion crosses his face before he plainly says, “i have something to discuss with the ceo about my work.”

“i’m not sure how things work at your previous company but you need to schedule a meeting with mr. park before anything else but i’ll be glad to navigate you through your scope of duty since mr. park will redirect me to you anyway,” you say simply, noticing how the man’s eyes flit towards the tinted grey glass with three horizontal parallel line down the middle where one can distortedly see jimin’s body turned towards the glass the way it had been when you last saw him.

clearly, he’s watching this unfold through the same see through space.

“it’ll just take a sec - i promise,” jeongguk sounds halfway annoyed with your insistence.

when he takes a step to the side, you take another to the same side, “mr. jeon, this kind of behavior - and on your first day, at that - isn’t something you need on your record and i didn’t make that policy, it was mr. park,” with a the slightest tilt of your head, you let the smile turn into a snide one, “and since you’ve been going around chatting with your new coworkers, you should know a thing or two about how seriously mr. park values one’s descipline during work.”

he shoots you one last pondering look, tongue forming a gentle protrusion in his left cheek like he’d unconsciously do when he’s debating to do the opposite of what he’s told by first agreeing and then finding another way to get what he wants.

“fine,” his shoulder line jolts as he shrugs, hands shoved into his pocket as a strand of hair falls over his forehead, “i need a list of names of the people in my department as well as the last twenty year’s worth of projects held by the company.”

the smile you have on threatens to split into a disgruntled sneer at his ridiculous demand. ten years is the maximum amount of time someone would take to review and understand the workings of the company. fifteen is a stretch because there’s a chance of a change of policy. but a record of the past ten years means you’ll have to do some digging in the storage room since not all files were digitalized and being the new director of the IT department, jeon jeongguk is not oblivious to that very fact.

“i’ll have them on your desk by thursday,” you announce and he reiterates, “i need them by tomorrow.”

and that’s the last straw for you - letting out a sound between a scoff and a snide laughter, you place your hand on your hip, “huh, are you crazy?”

“i mean, as the new director, i need to learn the ropes of the company asap, no? don’t tell me you can’t even do that?” a smile creeps up jeongguk’s face, one that mimics that of a predator who’s caught his prey walking straight into his trap, “and all that talk about discipline.”

the contemptuous chuckle at the end is what boils the blood in your veins and before you know it, you’re spouting out words that you instantaneously regret as soon as they come out.

“of course, i’ll have them on your desk by tomorrow.”

x

“achoo!”

you curse underneath your breath as you sniffle from the remnants of the sneeze. fourty-three minutes in and you’re already on your nth sneezing fit. index finger flitting across the labels on the box, it takes you three nose scrunching and five boxes down the shelf to find a light blue label with ‘1998′ written next to a ‘september’.

well, that’s the second month of the year 1998 that you’ve managed to locate. the process repeats itself for a good twelve more minutes before you hear the screech of the in-need-of-oiling door and the echo of footsteps against the quiet walls before a tall, black haired figure steps into your periphery.

he’s looking as fresh and crisp as the tie hanging around his neck while you’re pretty sure your updo hair is halfway to giving out to gravity with how you’ve been moving boxes of files around.

“so what are we looking for?” jeongguk begins unnervingly calmly.

but you’re not one to turn down a hand, “anything blue with a label of 1990 up till 2010 - oh and they come in months.”

instead of complaining or at least making his displeasure known, the man simply starts searching the shelves five feet apart from you.

and so it goes, your file searching journey with your ex slash newly appointed coworker. multiple scenarios rushed through your head when you first heard jimin’s excellent review after jeongguk left. the elder man had been typing away on his mac when you’d come to pick up the empty mugs of coffee when he’d passingly say, “you know, there’s something about him that the other candidates lack - where’d you find this guy?”

but you never thought that being stuck in the files room alone would ever come up with this outcome-

“i heard you were the one who recommended me,” that voice of his is as sweet as the first drop of nectar but instead of the boyish tint, it’s tinged with a taste of wine and masculinity.

it’s familiar yet foreign all at once.

“then you must know all three secretaries were required to pick someone to recommend the job for,” with that, you twirl on your heels, a partially full box in your hand as you strut towards the desk where its blue shaded comrades awaits.

“so i’ve been told,” and that’s how you know jeongguk’s initial casual nature was just a facade to conceal his guilt-ridden conscience, “why didn’t you tell me? you didn’t even sign your name in the email - you never mentioned anything -”

“it’s nothing personal, guk,” you cut him off, back on him you pretend to rummage through each individual file of the recent box you’d found, “we needed a new IT director and you fit the criteria but if i gave out any indication that i was the one who reached out to you, your decisions might be affected by that - even just the slightest bit and that’s the last thing i want,” you say simply, “not to mention we pay better - so you get it, right?”

when you twirl around to face him, arms crossed over you chest, ass leaned up against the desk whilst your left knee slants to rest over its right counterpart, you finally meet the man’s curious doe eyes. they’re marred with the signs of life but still as exuberant and beautiful as the first day he stopped you in the hallway. his smiles are more expensive now and he doesn’t shyly look down before talking to you but he’s still the same high school heartthrob you’d had the fattest crush on.

and that’s the thing about high school and the matters of the heart - they’re meant to stay in the past as a fond yet foolish reminder of the things you would do when you were 16.

“i can’t have my guy prancing around the office like an uncivilized raccoon and ji- mr. park is extremely particular about time,” you sigh, throwing your gaze to your blood red soles if only because you can’t hold his gaze longer than this, “trust me, i don’t do things to inconvenience you just because i should have some kind of personal vendetta against you - i don’t.”

“wonder why i have been getting the opposite vibe from you ever since i came,” his shoulder line jolts slightly as he shrugs, eyes rolling but the tiniest smile on his face tells you that it’s all a good natured jest.

“i’m sorry - every time i look at you, it feels like i went back to being that high school girl who lashed out at everyone and everything,” it’s the way his eyes sparkle like stars at your words that drives you to quickly add, “my therapist told me to take a step back every time i feel like saying something mean to you because it’s just my own defense mechanism - i’m still working on it.”

“oh,” is all he says before a blanket of silence wraps around the both of you. it goes on for the longest moment with jeongguk’s unfocused yet heavy gaze on you.

he does that - staring off at something when he’s processing information and knowing his ex-girlfriend who he cheated on now goes to therapy, isn’t something one hears everyday.

“well, let’s get these,” you light tap the box on your left, “to your office - i’ll have the intern pick the rest later.”

“oh-” almost as though snapped from a daze, jeongguk blinks. one. twice. until he’s rushing to your side to get at least two boxes, one piled on top of the other, in each arm while you choose to only carry two.

when he finally finds his words, the first thing he says it -“you don’t have to get me all 20 years of record - 10 is enough and if you walk me through how things work, i’d be really grateful.”

you scoff, a smile on your lips before he mimics yours, “are you like, concerned about me cause i told you i’m seeing therapist -”

“me? concerned? about you?” his body moves along with his eye roll but his tone lacks the sarcasm he’s intending, “not in a thousand years.”

x

jeongguk is concerned. he tips toes around you like you’re the thinly veiled ice over a lake of emotions. as though one wrong move and you’ll break. and that’s how you know you’re not the only one who’s changed and grown with the years you spent apart.

the jeon jeongguk you knew couldn’t care less if you’d fallen into the darkest depth of your ruins - only because you’d hurt him just as much.

though you haven’t got to the point of having lunch together like wendy and irene and the entire team from his department had, you’ve had moments in between  coming back from lunch with jimin and just before lunch hour is up where you’re in the pantry with ice cream in your hand and your phone in the other.

while you’re sure no one would be coming around this time of the day, jeon jeongguk finds away to surprise you with his sudden appearance. strutting in as if he doesn’t notice you, picking up the instant coffee packet only to place one newly stirred coffee cup between you and him as he sips his own that he made with the one he’s apparently gifting you.

“why?” you narrow your eyes at him, suspicion filling every inch of your curled lips.

“oh you know,” his shoulder line shrugs and you realize he’s grown a few inches taller because his shoulder fully past your head, “cause i heard you like your coffees with cream too.”

“how do i know it’s not poisoned?” still dubious, you keep your eyes on him like a hawk - nothing can get past you, not even a nervous gulp.

but instead, he throws his head back, sighing, “___, you literally saw me make them.”

“i don’t know, you’re acting kinda sus, guk,” you insist, phone screen long dead as you take one last bite of the ice cream before tossing the stick into the trashcan.

“sus? me?” his free hand comes flying up to his chest as he looks at you in disbelief.

“give me yours,” you finally announce, hand struck out with your palm facing upwards.

“whatever, idiot,” he shakes his head still, despite failing to hide the tiniest smile that begins to tuck on the corners of his lips before placing the cup he’s been holding on your awaiting hand.

“yay,” you grin, delighted before taking  one long sip and breathing out in satisfaction, “i live another day.”

x

and so it goes, the light banters between moments in time. luckily for you, jeongguk is all round charmer that makes anyone and everyone - men, women and non-bonarys alike - who’s talking to him smile from ear to ear from something he says. possibly a compliment, possibly an agreement to what the other party was saying.

nobody suspected that either of you knew each other prior to this and that’s one less office rumor to look out for. you offer to help jeongguk settle in, murmuring names of the people who greets him so that he’d greet back with their informed name, seeing their faces light up a bit more at the realization that their new boss’s recognition.

“aren’t you with park 24/7? how do you know everyone in this company?” he asks one fine morning after you both got to his desk.

“i’d say it’s talent but i basically had to memorize them overnight right after i joined,” you shrug, “it wasn’t easy but you realize the difference it makes in everyone’s performance when they think their boss knows who they are.”

“so that’s the kind of person park is,” jeongguk nods whilst clicking on the ‘transfer files’ option on the screen of his computer.

“mr. park isn’t like the devil boss from hell - he’s just really self-disciplined,” you correct.

“if he was then why did he make you memorize the names of his employees?” he shoots you a look, one that says ‘you know i’m right’ to which you only roll your eyes.

“the same reason why he needs three secretaries to do his bidding - he’s too busy,” you shoot him a ‘no, you’re not’ look before sticking out your hand after the files are finish being transferred.

“how come i only get one?” his eyebrows knit together in a mixture of dissatisfaction and confusion as he places the usb drive into your hand, not quite showing any signs to take his own hand off just yet.

“maybe ‘cause you’re not that important?” you shoot him a similar ‘you know i’m right’ kind of manner and before he can even say anything, you’re curling your hand over the drive before twirling on your heels.

“ouch, you know that kinda hurts,” a voice comes up behind you and almost like a tidal wave, your apology comes in a second too soon, “really? sorry, i went too far-”

before you can even finish your words, you’re left rooted in your spot. a few feet away from the glass encased room where most of the executives and their secretaries are seen stepping in.

it’s the chuckle that reverberates against your eardrums that washes away your initial guilt like sand on shore, “you’re so-” jeongguk pauses, staring at you with eyes you can’t quite decipher and a flash of emotion you have never seen him make, “you’re so soft, you know that?”

“that wasn’t funny, jeongguk,” you fix him a hard stare, arms crossing over your chest.

“sorry - what i meant is,” and that’s the thing about the two of you - ever since you’d admitted your faults, jeongguk has followed your lead to apologize first. pride seems to be the last thing standing between the two of you at the moment - and it’s times like these, where you’re willing to listen and he’s willing to explain, that you think you might just escape that dark dwelling you call your past.

“miss ___,” a familiar voice drums in your ears, a hand on your lower back pulling your attention from the man in front of you to the attractive devil that’s on your side. the infernal spark in those dark eyes of his disappears as soon as he turns to - “jeongguk, i take it miss ____ has been a great help with the presentation you’re about to show us?”

“yes,” the aforementioned man nods, a look of unadulterated confidence making its way to his face as it replaced the lingering stare where jimin’s arm disappeared behind you, “i couldn’t have finished it this fast without ___.”

at jeongguk’s words, jimin lets a smile slip onto his strong features, making him look less like the unapproachable man he’s known for, “i’m looking forward to it.”

it’s only after jeongguk is walking a few steps ahead towards the open doors of the meeting room and jimin’s hand has long left your body, does the man murmur under his breath, “i’ve received applications for jeongguk’s secretary position, do you mind looking through them for me? though... i left them at my place - if you could come up with me to pick them later after work, it’d be great.”

“really?” you quickly say, before realizing it’d come off too excited for a request of overtime so you clear your throat, looking around the vicinity to see if anyone noticed, “i mean, yes, i can do that - i can drop by for a few minutes.”

“perfect,” his eyes disappears into crescents as the corners of his lips tuck higher before you part ways - him taking the seat at the end of the oval table while you head over to the computers connected to the projector, shoving the drive you’ve had trapped in your hand into its port.

x

“i’ve heard some things,” jimin’s honey voice is barely the subject of your conscience as you watch his lithe fingers working around the buckle of his belt until one end hangs loose before he pulls on the other, the sound of leather against fabric cutting the air like knife.

after jeongguk’s presentation which was met with praises and positive responses by the board, jimin had easily approved of the proposed updates on the - as the first would call it - a tad bit out dated data base. when the wendy, irene and the rest of his team was about to head out for dinner to celebrate their well earned success, you’d belatedly told them that you couldn’t make it because you had to drive jimin home.

seeing as it was a norm for the head secretary to also take on the role of the ceo’s chauffer, nobody questioned it.

nobody but the latest addition to the company.

jeongguk looked like he wanted to say something, stared at you a little longer as you fixed him and the rest of your leaving coworkers a ‘have fun, guys!’ kind of wave. but you suppose that could wait.

“i didn’t think you’d be one to pay attention to rumors,” you manage to say, swallowing heavily as you tear your gaze from jimin’s apt hands that are looping the belt into its buckle.

“this one’s a little bit interesting,” the chuckle he lets out is sinfully innocent compared to the way he slips the looped belt through your head and pulls on it, forcing the leather material to envelop your neck like a collar, “something about you and jeon having a special relationship.”

“that’s-” the words gets stuck in your throat when your heart leaps up at the slightest tuck on your neck, almost as if he’s saying to ‘choose your words carefully, dove.’

“it’s a matter of the distant past,” you say, sending a grateful prayer to the gods for allowing your voice to sound unbothered.

“didn’t seem like what the rumors are saying,” his breath fans your face as he whispers against your ear - you have to clench your fists together to stop the shivers from wracking through your body, “but that’s alright - at the end of the day, it’s my name you’re screaming.”

a moan escapes your mouth when a pair of plump lips press against yours. sparks in your veins and passion in your heart. before you know it, you’re blindly grasping onto the zipper of of jimin’s trousers, salivating at the thought of a part of him you know too well.

“please, daddy, let me suck your dick,” you plea, eyebrows knitting together with a sort of yearning and frustration from how achingly patient the striking blonde man in front of you is.

if it were up to him, you’d be soaking up the carpeted floor with your arousal throughout the night and he’d still manage to edge you on until you’re begging to come.

but that’s the thing, either way, you’re going to be begging for him. and you’d learned earlier on that you gain less from holding onto your pride than holding onto jimin’s dick.

with your mouth, that is.

x

it’s the morning after that - that you curse yourself for not putting any restraints to your carnal desires. in your defense though, begging and pleading jimin to push you to your limits seemed like an irresistible option at the time. that is, until you’re digging out what clothes you have in the drawer in your allocated room only to find most of them catering to the neck-to-just-above-the-cleavage-reveal kind of look.

so you opt for scarves - the bruises aren’t bad but the first days are always the hardest. and jimin notices the way you’re craning your neck from side to side as you keep your eyes trained on the red light that’s about to turn green anytime soon.

“does it hurt?” the saccharine sweet voice drips with honeyed concern whilst his hand goes to massage the back of your neck.

you hum in appreciation, “that feels good.”

“maybe i should’ve been gentler,” the tinge of remorse in his voice doesn’t go past you.

“that’s not even where it hurts most,” you giggle, feeling the familiar tingle in between your legs but you manage to push it to the back of your mind as you say, “but you know i like it when you’re rough.”

jimin only laughs, head shaking at your blatant confession. and so the mini massage session continues until the car starts rolling into motion. you go on with your morning routine of reminding him of the list of things he’ll have to do and people to meet for the day.

it’s only after you’ve parked the car and turning off the ignition that your phone dings with a notification of a ‘you received 50, 000 dollars from park jimin’.

squealing, you hop out of the car, heels click clacking against the concrete as you mini run towards the blond who’d slipped out of the car a second earlier.

“thank you, daddy!” you grin, hands wrapping around his arm as he chuckles softly, eyes disappearing into crescent moons.

“i booked you a session at lotus nirvana for the weekend,” he says a minute later as you stand in front of the elevator.

“oh my god,” you gasp, jaw hitting the floor, “the lotus? really?”

“and you can bring a plus one,” he boops your nose with his index finger, making you scrunch it because of the ticklish feeling it leaves.

“you’re the best!” you stand on your tip toes, placing a kiss on his cheekbone just before the elevator stops one level below the ceo and chairman’s parking level, revealing none other than jeongguk in a dashing cobalt blue louis vouitton suit.

you’ve managed to detach yourself from the now-unsmiling ceo who shoots the newcomer a brief smile as a greeting when jeongguk takes longer to look between you and his boss before finally stepping in.

“morning,” you greet with a wave, hoping to brush off the elephant in the room.

the man echoes back your words but nothing else - at least until you reach the 19th floor where jimin turns to you, hands in his pocket, “miss ___ i need to discuss something with you in my office,” just before you’re about to point out the sunken eyes in the younger man’s appearance.

“yes, mr. park,” you say in a heartbeat, before mouthing a ‘catch you later’ to the brunette.

x

in the next few days, you’ve opt for a variety of scarves to match your outfit. but more importantly, to hide the darkening bruises around your neck as you style your hair to hide what the scarves can’t.

it’s times like these that you keep your distance from people, choosing to stay in front of the computer unless jimin calls for you. whether to ask for if you’re up for having lunch with him, to inquire about the meeting he has or simply to just say “i miss your chamomile tea.”

at that, you can’t help but let the giggle break through your iron wall of a facade, “that’s what you called me for?”

the man’s eyes flit to the right for the briefest second, as though in search for a better answer which he finds none of before meeting your own, “yep, that’s what i called you for.”

“you’re so cute, daddy,” you gush, before placing you ipad down on the desk, hands coming up to frame around jimin’s cheeks as they turn round from the smile that slips onto his face, “i’ll make some for you tonight!” but then your shoulder line falls, eyebrows coming together, “wait - i have dinner with jeongguk tonight.”

“you mean jeon?” he raises an amused eyebrow to which you nod, hands falling away from his cheeks.

“i’ve been avoiding him these past few days and i think he’s getting a little suspicious about us spending so much time together - he thinks you’re... forcing me to do things,” you sigh - just this morning, the black haired cutie caught you in the middle of your way to your desk, pulling you to the side with a set of concerned eyebrows knitted together, “are you okay?”

you took a moment, eyes roaming around the vicinity as though it’d help spot the reason to this abrupt intervention before looking back at him, smiling cluelessly “...yeah, i’m fine.”

he let go of your arm to push his soft tresses which seemed to be missing its usual slick gelled look today, “the ladies have been saying park tends to work you to the bones every few times a month - like right now, and that’s a normal thing here?”

and because it wasn’t the kind of question you got asked often - people just accepted and were even glad that it wasn’t them that jimin was calling to his office every hour throughout the day, you had to take a moment to ponder on your answer “...yeah, it’s normal.”

“and you don’t care?” jeongguk’s blinked, mortified.

“i mean, that’s my livelihood right there so...” and you shrugged.

“i don’t know, i don’t like him,” his shoulder line tensed as he turned his body towards the wall sized window, eyes casted towards the neighboring skyscrapers.

“why?” was all you said - you’d understand intimidating. strict. unapproachable to describe the words jimin is, but no one’s ever confessed to outright disliking the man. but then again, you are the closest person to jimin in the company, no employee would risk getting fired because they blurted out their dissatisfaction towards their ceo to his head secretary.

“there’s just something about him that rubs me the wrong way,” instead of shrugging like what 17-year old jeongguk would have done, this older version of him didn’t even stutter.

you suppose one’s confidence and sense of reasoning - even though there wasn’t any particular reason for him to dislike jimin-

“...something about a ceo calling his head secretary ‘miss’ while he casually address everyone else by their name but never really talk to anyone beyond business matters while nobody’s has a single bad thing to say about him,” when jeongguk’s obsidian eyes fell on you, it was as though the background faded and you found yourself trapped in a glass cage - unable to run away from the truth he seemed to possess, “especially the person he’s overworking the most.”

“well,” there’s this habit that you do - laughing in the face of crisis and this was damn well a crisis because, “if you feel that way then you feel that way.”

“is there something you want to tell me?” he pressed on, speaking under his breath, “if you need help, you can always come to me.”

and that was when the laughter broke into a fit and you’re holding your stomach and his shoulder with your other hand, “jeongguk - i’m fine, really,” there was a tremble in his eyes as self doubt crept up his conscience, which meant whatever you were doing was working, “listen, how bout we go for dinner tonight with wendy and irene? i’m late but i wanna hear how your first staff dinner went.”

you managed to escape jeongguk right after his ‘...yeah, sure’ before mrs. yoo came up to you to ask about the arrangements of the seating for the upcoming corporate dinner. it’s in five months but preparations must be made in advance.

“if he’s starting to notice that means i’m not the only whose got his eyes on you,” the sweet honeyed voice pulls you out of your memories, almond shaped eyes staring at you with a sort of emotion you can’t pinpoint.

and for some reason, you felt the need to clarify where you stand and where jeongguk stands, “we were kids when we started dating - we know better now that both of us clash like two magnets on the opposite poles if we go beyond what friends are.”

“you know i have the utmost respect for you,” butterflies set flight in your stomach when jimin guides your right hand to his lips.

x

the place you end up going to is called han chu where it’s most famous for its variety of chicken-based cuisine which happens to be irene’s boyfriend’s family’s long standing business. it’d been packed with people, mostly those who’d got off work like yourselves but apparently, they have a different room for adhoc visitors who popped up out of nowhere.

“irene’s taking a long time at the washroom,” wendy announces, a small, jealous pout on her lips as she sticks her chopsticks into the rice bowl before you and jeongguk exchange a knowing look with each other.

since her boyfriend works here, you’re pretty sure that everyone in the room knows irene, in fact, did not go to the washroom. and wendy isn’t too secretive about her want for a man she can call her own to which, two bottles of soju later, she slams her glass against the table and confesses, “i’m so lonely, i want a boyfriend!”

by then, irene’s already back and chiding the younger woman about how she needs to stop drinking so much because apparently, at jeongguk’s congratutional dinner, she was that coworker that drank herself silly and might or might have not blurted out something about jeongguk’s exceptional proportions in front of the entire IT department.

“___! you’re single, right?” the way jeongguk’s hand seems to be take longer to pick up one of those spicy-sweet chicken even though he was gobbling them up like there was no tomorrow just five seconds ago, doesn’t go unnoticed by you, “let’s go to a mixer! i’ll text my friend to include our names for one this weekend.”

this time, the way jeongguk’s visibly tensed shoulder line is no coincidence.

“i’m good, thanks,” you chuckle, patting the woman’s shoulder.

irene on the other hand, looks increasingly worried about her fellow coworker as time passes. it’s when wendy starts to gulp down the soju straight from the bottle that you step in, swiping it out of her hands and placing it back down on the table.

“alright, that’s enough for tonight, let’s get you home” at that, you shoot irene a signal with your eyes, counting a short ‘1,2,3′ before you both hoist her up to her feet, directing her arm over your shoulder while irene does the same with the other one.

“i’ll get the car - you ladies wait at the front of the restaurant ” jeongguk announces, just as you step out of the room.

“thanks, guk,” you fix him an appreciative smile, grateful for not having to drag the half-conscious woman’s body all the way to the parking lot.

“you know, he’s been staring at you the whole night,” a voice giggles - and seeing how wendy can barely even open her eyes, that could only mean that it’s the only other woman that’s holding her up that also decided to let out such absurd statement.

“that’s cause i was sitting next to wendy - who by the way, isn’t exactly a quiet drinker,” you roll your eyes, before a separately realization hits you- “you didn’t drink.”

“well, i can’t really at the moment,” the brunette’s voice takes a gentler turn as you watch her free hand clasp her stomach.

“oh my god,” jaws on the ground, you’re not sure if you’re even blinking, “you’re pregnant? how long far along are you?”

“a month, me and jae were discussing how we’re gonna tell our families,” she meets your wide eyed gaze half-heartedly, “and if i’m going to continue working after i give birth.”

“either way i’m so happy for you,” you reach out your free hand that’s not wrapped around wendy’s waist to which the elder woman accepts, squeezing your hand just hard enough for you to feel her fears and excitement and overflowing joy flow through you, “you and jaebum are gonna be the best parents.”

“i never really said it but you helped me a lot when i just started,” the tears in her eyes makes them look like sparkling stars in the midnight sky, “and you’ve always been so supportive - seriously, ___, thank you.”

“stop,” you squeak in between holding your breath and holding back your tears, “i’m gonna cry.”

“if you cry, i’ll cry,” irene is already pulling her hand away and fanning her face, glimmering eyes turned to the sky.

it’s a moment later that a car rolls to a stop in front of the two of you. the window rolling down, revealing an extremely concerned jeongguk, “what happened?”

the “it’s a girl thing” comes a few moments later, particularly after you slipped into the passenger’s seat next to him while irene sits at the back with wendy’s head in her lap.

by the time you reach wendy’s apartment building, irene announces that she’s staying over at the first. if only to look after the drunken woman and make sure she’s okay.

“are you sure?” you ask to which she nods, murmuring something about how wendy couldn’t survive without her hungover soup if she didn’t stay and make it.

wendy manages to sober up and walk with irene holding her hand. and with the way she’s slow-waving at you, you take it as your cue to leave too.

“call me if you need anything, okay?” is the last thing you say before the two of them step through the clear glass door.

the rest of the ride is filled with silence, save for the faint sound of low volumed music in the background. 

that is, until one of you decides to break it with a kind of heartwarming concern you thought already left his mind, “so are you okay?” he peeks at you from the corner of his eyes, as if to check if the tears were still there, “you were crying just now.”

you can’t help but laugh, “don’t worry - they were tears of joy.”

“oh?” only then does he allow the smile to tuck on the corner of his lips, “what about?”

“i don’t know if i can say it,” you feel your own lips curling, “not my story to tell.”

“okay,” he nods, “as long as you’re okay.”

and so the silence returns but this time, it’s no where suffocating or makes you want to hop out of a moving car just to get away from the man you thought you could never stand to be alone with five months ago.

at first, you told yourself that it was for the good of the company - that you didn’t need to be friends, civility was enough. but then you had that talk in the storage room - both equally tensed but both grown out of their youthful impatience into someone who was willing to listen and learn.

and you realized that you work well together - too well, in fact, that jeongguk’s own secretary would come to you even after four months of working with him, just to ask you if he’d prefer his coffees black or with cream.

but you suppose it was because this was her first job after graduating - you were used to taking notes of the littlest of things jeongguk did because that was what worked best for jimin. that, minus the already known facts about jeon jeongguk that you’d gathered during your two years of knowing him and three months of dating him.

and it’s almost as though the plants and the stars align, as the car comes to a stop in front of your apartment building and as he pulls the brake before turning his upper half towards you, “i had a great time tonight.”

“me too, guk, and thanks for driving irene, wendy and me home - you’ve become quite the gentleman,” you chuckle to which the corners of his lips upturns, while his eyes casts itself down to his hands before they meet yours again.

“it was the right thing to do,” but then you can’t escape his eyes - those obsidian eyes that seem to reach through the windows of your soul effortlessly.

“well,” the smile may have been forced but it’s still comes from the heart, “i better go in.”

“yeah - yeah you should,” he nods and you thought you’re just imagining things - irene’s initial observation might or might not have gotten to you.

but just as you’re about to open the door, hand on the handle, jeongguk speaks again, “i was hoping,” at that, you turn to him, “you and me,” you can only hope he can’t hear the sound of your pumping heart, “we could try again, you know?”

you’d like to believe that you’ve gone past that part of your life where you hurt and you hurt others back - the ones that tried to help you, pull you out of that darkened cocoon that you grew so accustomed to.

like to believe that it took a bit more nudging for you to break through the cocoon and that was okay - everyone needed a little bit of help at some point of their life. yours happened to be when you were sixteen hitting seventeen. and even now, you still need help to fly - to let your wings flutter through the wind without breaking and hitting the hard cold ground.

but all of a sudden, you find yourself that same cocoon you thought you abandoned with the ugliest dark brown and maroon walls - the color of the school mascot that seemed to be the symbol of the baseball team’s undefeated victory throughout the year. and all because taehyung’s brother, jeongguk just joined the team.

and you were just one of the many girls who had her eyes on the ace. except your best friend was dating the captain so you sometimes joined her as she watched him practice. until jeongguk noticed you. until he lift you up and broke you down.

“jeongguk,” you say, heart erratically clawing against your chest - obsidian is the color of jeongguk’s eyes as he waited for your answer with bated breath, a rap song is playing in the background, smooth is the material of the handle of the door under your fingertips, marc jacobs is the perfume that faintly wafts from jeongguk’s collar and sweet is the taste of peach soju you had, “i think it’s best to maintain a professional working relationship instead.”

almost as though being pulled from a trance, jeongguk recoils, eyes blinking once before he blurts out a “yeah,” then, a moment later, “yeah, that’s probably the best - sorry for-”

“it’s fine,” you shrug.

“-making everything awkward.” he finally stops.

“i’ll see you on monday,” you say - not so sure if it’s the right thing to say, but jeongguk nods, echoing your words, “yeah - see you monday.”

and with that, you slip out of the car, heels clicking against the ground as you tread towards the door without looking back.

x

monday turns to tuesday and then tuesday turns to an abundant of weeks. your interactions ceased to a strictly professional, work-based relationship. jeongguk talks to you only when he needs clarifying where his own secretary can’t give him an answer.

you go to him when his secretary is doing a job that requires her to go mia for the day. wendy and irene are well aware of the sudden shift in your dynamics but if you’d gladly told them jeongguk was your ex-boyfriend then you gladly told them what you told jeongguk that night.

your only regret was taking away their own friendship with jeongguk. none of them went out for dinner with him because they were torn between their loyalty to their colleague-turned-friend and the boss whom they were halfway to befriending if not for your complicating the whole thing up.

“but you decided to keep your peace instead of the peace around you and i’m proud of you for choosing yourself first,” jimin had told you as he traced patterns on the dip of your back.

and you might or might not have cried and fell asleep in his arms that night before cancelling your appointment with your therapist with the next day and choosing to have it at the end of the month like you were supposed to. ever since then, your relationship hadn’t been all that physical.

“i think i need time for myself,” you’d told him in the middle of getting stuck in traffic with unmoving cars on either side of you, “but i also still want to see you.”

jimin who’d been staring out of the window mindlessly had turned to you - instead of asking you to repeat what you’d said because he barely caught it, he’d fixed you the warmest of smiles, “it’s been over a year, ___, didn’t it ever occur to you that i wanted more than just sex from this? from us?”

if there was something park jimin was, it was arcane. mysterious - just as you thought you figured out his wants and needs, he makes a 180 and surprised you in ways you never would have seen coming.

“doesn’t it bother you that i’m... this?” there was no word for it - for being yourself but also feeling like someone entirely different all at once.

“no, it doesn’t,” he’d look straight at you as he said it, “i know you probably don’t feel like it right now, but let’s go on a walk by the han river.”

and that was where you talked about your feelings and what you could and couldn’t give while you nibble on the fish shaped bun that was wafting with heavenly scent throughout your walk until you found the stall.

jimin still wanted to pay you for the times you’ll be spending together even though there won’t be sex invloved. 

“we still have another few months of the contract, if i don’t pay you then i’d be breaching it,” he’d argued with crescent shaped eyes and the most beautiful smile.

“alright but i’m paying for dinner and lunches from now on,” and there was no changing your mind.

so it goes, you work in the day and leave with jimin for the night. he’d steal away your mac and you’d steal away his but for the most parts, you’d do work in the same room. he’d stop and stepped out only to bring you a cup of hot chocolate and marshmallows and you’d pay back with chamomile tea.

then came the annual dinner which marked five months since that night. he’s decked in a stylish cut black tux with a blue sheen reflected under the light. paired with a glass flute of white wine, he’d probably already won at least three hearts only an hour into the commencement of the dinner while your teeth clamor at the low temperature of the hall.

you’re halfway ready to curse yourself for foregoing your crop blazer in jimin’s car all because you remember been too warm in it - but that was last year and the air conditioning needed fixing - when something warm engulfs your open shoulders.

“jimin,” you blink, recalling the last man talking to a board member just a moment ago before you’d stepped out.

“you should’ve told me you were cold,” he chides and only then do you notice the lack of blazer on his vest-hugged body.

stealing a glance into light poured room, you briefly stand on your tip toes, hands wrapped around the man’s arm as you pull him down to meet your halfway.

“thank you, daddy,” with that, you step away, feeling the rush of heat on your cheeks and the thrill of adrenaline in your veins.

“you’re welcome, dove,” and as soon as he goes back inside, he’s swarmed with other guests who must have wondered where the star of the night went.

and you would have turned to the cityscape if not for the glint of light trapped in glass.

“jeongguk,” your voice is strained, so you clear your throat and put on a smile to cover it up, “how long have you been there?”

a scoff follows your inquiry, “you’re not 16 and a guy giving you his jacket doesn’t mean jack shit, ___.”

at the uncalled for response, you subconsciously tug on the center front of the blazer, “first off, it’s armani, not polyester,” you say, not missing the way his eyes twitching at the comparison - he used to lend you his jackets and sweaters back when you were dating, “and whatever i do with my personal life is none of your business - i don’t have to explain myself to you.”

another scoff hits the air as he steps out of the shadow and into the sliver of light that pours from the hall and onto the veranda, “so all that talk about maintaining a professional relationship were just excuses? because you couldn’t get over the past?”

“the p -” you almost choke on your words, “the past when you cheated on me with my best friend all because i said taehyung was in the right for getting mad at you over you ruining his only chance to get into one of the best theater school in the world?”

“it’s cause of you!” the fact that his voice rose doesn’t go unnoticed even to him as he looks around and only after making sure that nobody was listening, does he continue is a hushed but harsh tone, “i slept with heather because you pushed me to her. if i wanted someone to point out the many list of things i did ‘wrong’ i could’ve just went to my parents.”

you sigh, “that’s the problem, guk-” 

“don’t call me that, you don’t get to call me that,” he shoot backs.

“jeongguk,” you rephrase, fingers fiddling with each other until you’ve hit the ten-second mark, “what we had was toxic. we needed so much work on our self-esteem and personal traumas but we turned to each other hoping the other could fix it and all we did was make it worse.”

“please, you were the one who was so insecure about heather - you think i don’t realize how you look at her? how you compare yourself to her when all she did was be your friend?” it takes everything in you not to flinch at his choice of words, “what personal trauma,” he laughs dryly.

“that’s what i’ve been working on but i’m not the only one flawed -your parents,” you say, choosing to ignore the first part of his retort, “them constantly paying more attention to your brother just because he was older and achieved a little bit more than you did. and everyone else who compared you to taehyung’s ‘legacy’. so you turn to the only girl who noticed you,” there’s a flash in his eyes, one that burns bright with anger - just like it did all those years ago.

but you pretend not to notice, “and i was so caught up with the idea of a boyfriend of my own - a guy that didn’t choose heather over me that i did everything i could to keep you. i was toxic to you because i agreed with everything you said, i put down others while i lifted you up but as soon as i tried to fix what i’d done,” you heave out a sigh, “one push - that’s all it takes for you to fall right out my arms and if that wasn’t enough i hurt you by sleeping with taehyung.”

the last thing you see is the boy the with maroon and brown jacket, staring right at you with eyes prickling with tears and face flushed pink but no words come out from his clamped mouth.

so you turn you back on him like you did five years ago. you turned your back on jeongguk and you don’t look back.

you find jimin somewhere amidst the crowd, conversing with a guest from your rival company.

“mr. park,” his eyes focus on your tight-lipped smile as soon as he sees it, you don’t even have to say another word when he excuses himself and you, not even sparing a glance at the guest before his hand finds itself on your waist, guiding you through the room and into the empty hallway since all the guests have arrived and jimin was supposed to deliver the opening speech before you took him away from it.

you barely remember the ride to his place and how he’d sat you down on his bed, kneeling right in front of you with eyes overflowing with concern.

smooth is jimin’s skin under your fingder pads when you touch his face. plump is his lips that you kiss and sweet is the taste of his mouth from the red wine you’d seen him down at the beginning of the event. the woody scent of bleu de chanel that you got him for his birthday last year is what fills your senses.

but they’re gone too soon.

“are you sure?” jimin’s eyes bore into yours, searching for something - something you can’t pinpoint.

“jimin, please, i-” and that’s all it takes for him to press his lips harder to yours, one hand groping your breast while the other pushes the weight of the jacket off your shoulders.

x

the room is silent.

save for the tapping sound of your fingers across the keyboard. that is, until another pair of hands capture them and brings them across your chest in a hug whilst you giggle at the ticklish sensation of deep violet strands brushing against your cheek, “let’s have dinner together tonight.”

at that, your mouth clamps shut, body recoiling to the side to meet a pair of almond eyes, “don’t you have dinner with chairman of samsung tonight?”

from the way jimin’s lips purse together into a pout, it seems like you hit the nail right on its head, “you quit being my secretary - you should let me lie to you and say i’m free so we can have some ‘us’ time.”

“nope,” you shake your head, breaking free from the man’s grasp before looking at him pointedly, “you’re not going to skip a meal with one of the most influential person in the world.”

“how’s the website going?” he attempts to change the topic, eyes focusing on the sequence of letters and numbers on the screen of your mac as if he understood what the codes say.

yet you humor him, “it’s going okay, though i can’t seem to figure out how to configure the servers.” 

it’s been six months since you’ve quit the job. three since you permanently moved in with jimin and one since you’ve got the paperworks done to open up your own joined business with irene. she decided to follow your footsteps to quit even though wendy was basically clinging onto her legs when she came over to pick up her belongings with a growing belly and a sort of radiance on her face.

naturally, the position for co-secretary was opened and applications were flooding in, so much so wendy had to beg you to meet with her somewhere just to review them together.

“i don’t know how to read people,” she lamented, “i do the technical stuff and you do the mind games - by the way,” something flashed in her eyes as her voice lowered into a whisper, “how did you to it?”

she meant, the explosive and tea-worthy news of how you and jimin came to be.

nobody knew about you and him until much much later. when you were free to go out to dinners and social events together with your hand on his arm and him strutting in with a never-before-seen smile. more jaws dropped that afternoon than the money raised for the event.

jeongguk is still the director of the IT department - you left to keep your peace but you’d also hope to keep his. because that’s the thing about past loves and open wounds. they hurt and they bleed with just the right words as knives but it’s how you choose to treat them that heals you.

and though your way of healing is by tearing a piece of yourself over and over again until you grow a new, steeler part that doesn’t mean you loathe the parts you’ve chosen to cut off. 

as such, you don’t hate jeongguk - you still want him to live life to his fullest potential. you still want him to thrive like a wilting flower after a rainstorm.

you just didn’t want to - can’t be part of that life.

“my father used to say, ‘if you find yourself in a dry spell of ideas’, take a break,” jimin’s voice is laced with a sort of playfulness as his eyes disappear behind crescent moons, “particularly in mauritius.”

“you did not book a plane to one of the most beautiful islands in world,” you can feel your cheeks hurting from the growing smile that creeps up your face, “did you?” 

“our flight scheduled to leave at 2 in the afternoon tomorrow,” he sweeps you up into his arms like you weight nothing at all.

“jimin!” a yelp escapes your lips in between him twirling around and the background moving too fast whilst your arms find their way to his shoulder, “you know i can’t hide a whole ass romantic getaway from my mother! what am i going to tell her when her unemployed, supposedly single daughter starts missing our daily calls because i was too busy vacaying?”

“a month,” jimin adds, head bopping against yours - you’re not quite sure when he stopped twirling, “we’re staying there for a whole month.”

“oh my god,” at first, excitement flashes across your face, then worry follows a second later, “what about your schedule? it’s gonna get pushed back - the phone calls wendy’ll have to make!”

“lisa’s in charge of the phone calls,” he means the new addition to his line of secretaries.

“doesn’t make it okay to give her all the work!” you say, not quite as passionate about someone you’ve never met as he gently lowers you, arms still banded around your waist whilst your foreheads touch.

“after we come back, i’ll make arrangements so your parents could come here - so i could meet them,” he steals a kiss from your half-open mouth.

“you’re kidding, you’re gonna meet my parents?” you echo, halfway into believing that you’re hearing things if not for the way his recently dyed hair bounces as he nods.

“i need their blessings first, don’t i?” he says, chuckling.

“after banging their daughter into the bed every single night, you’re gonna need a whole lot of those,” you pat his hair, in a ‘good luck’ kind of manner - your father isn’t the most welcoming and your mother won’t be as pleased to hear the out-of-the-ordinary ways you fell in love.

a bout of chuckles later, he’s swiping you up in his arms again as he carries you towards the familiar hallway where your shared bedroom lies while you wrap your arms around his shoulders.

“but daddy, it’s still morning,” you giggle.

“didn’t stop you from begging for my dick yesterday, did it?” the corner of his lips curve into a smirk.

x

note. story time (a short post where i talk about the background of the fic eg. why i decided to write it, the overall message of the fic etc.) is already up (queued along w the fic)!

i’m aware that armani is a brand and polyester is a clothing material so it technically can’t be compared together but in a deeper sense, armani’s material is more comfortable than polyester so it works (pls make it work) ahahahahahaha

[kaibacorpintern]

yuugi and kaiba... platonic... maybe a lil angst like kaiba doesnt know how to have friends and yuugi just accepts him as he is and kaiba can be a kid for once.. for the minific prompt pls? :) thank u.. luv ur blog btw

just thought you should know that when i read this prompt i instantly turned into this and wrote almost 5,000 words. it’s a little angsty and about friendship, but it’s also about loneliness and food and depression, with a few jokes peppered in here and there. DSOD didn’t happen but atem is alive, because i say so. i want kaiba and yuugi to be friends so freakin’ bad.

long story short: i went nuts. thanks for the prompt!!

***

Every day, little by little, Kaiba looked greyer. The lines of his shoulders slouched. The hollows under his eyes deepened, like holes being dug in the dirt, on hands and knees; a slow, miserable burying. To hear him speak was worse. Yuugi heard his voice from thousands of miles away, like he was on a different continent, a different planet, and the light of every thought was crossing the staggering empty silence of space. It terrified Yuugi, to think of Kaiba as fading, that someone who raged with all the thrill and fury of a storm could slow down like this. But he was fading. 

“Hey. Are you alright? You seem down lately,” Yuugi tried, on one of the rare mornings where he caught him alone in the elevator, on his way up to the game design department. With no one else around, he usually felt emboldened to drop the act: not an employee with his boss, maintaining proper deference, but someone who’d known Kaiba for a very long time, and knew him like few others did.

The glass-walled elevator whirred as it rose. Kaiba stood there with his arms crossed, impassive, his back to Domino. The city streets unfurled below them.

“The elevator’s going up, Yuugi,” he said, after a full seven seconds of silence. A weak dismissal, by his standards, made even weaker by a toneless delivery.

“Sure. But - ”

With a polite ding, the elevator opened onto the game design floor. 

“You’re running late,” Kaiba said, nodding him pointedly out the door.

“Bro, I’m fifteen minutes early,” Yuugi said.

“Don’t fucking ‘bro’ me, ” Kaiba snarled, with all the sudden, twitching ferocity of a nervous dog. Yuugi smiled and slowly backed out of the elevator, his palms turned out, long enough to make his point: he'd come in peace. Kaiba frowned at him, bristling, until the elevator doors started to close. The last Yuugi saw of him, before they touched together, were a pair of blue eyes, their fiery energy winking out like a popped spark, falling shut with a sigh.

At his desk, Yuugi toyed with his phone for a good ten minutes, ignoring emails and his coworkers’ good mornings, his thumb hovering over Mokuba’s contact info as he rehearsed in his head. Hey, how’s Stanford? You enjoying your classes so far? Making friends? Of course you are. Great. Well, so, I’m calling because I’m worried about your brother - 

A call like that would put Mokuba on a plane within an hour, honestly. But maybe Mokuba would want to know. Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe if he left his first quarter of college and returned to Japan, just because his brother had a few bad nights or something, Kaiba would punt Yuugi off the top of the building. 

Maybe Atem? The only person Kaiba ever “talked” to about anything, if  pummeling each other with card game holograms could be called a conversation. Which they did.

YUUGI What’s eating Kaiba? Is he alright?

He stared at his phone a while longer until remembering it was the middle of the night in Egypt. He put his phone away, put Kaiba out of mind, and got to work.

***

Atem texted back mid-afternoon.

ATEM I don’t know. Go find out

YUUGI Okay but i’m not you lol he won’t tell me. even with a duel

ATEM GO

ATEM FIND

ATEM OUT

YUUGI OKAY I'LL DO MY BEST

ATEM And tell that stuck-up bastard to answer his fucking phone one of these days

Odd. Kaiba never ignored Atem.

YUUGI I’m on it

He finished work late, packed up his things, and headed downstairs to the lobby, moving quickly to catch his train. He had most of a mind to save the Kaiba question for later, go home, and flop face-down on his bed until he roused himself enough to pick at leftovers. The elevated metro station was awash in a crisp dusk light, the navy purple night descending on the day’s final line of gold. His train was coming in three minutes; the next on the same line in thirty-four. He'd just made it.

If he stood at the far end of the platform, craning his neck, he could see the long strip of windows at the top of the KaibaCorp tower. Dark. Kaiba had gone home early. Yuugi frowned, biting his lip, as his train arrived. 

He let it go, jostled and swaying in the flood of people flowing in and out of the carriages. The next train took him far from home, flying with sleek electric ease through the glittering glassy black monoliths of the city, and into the leafy, overgrown estates beyond the far edge of town.

***

Kaiba's estate was a brisk walk from the last station on the line, along the side of a road without sidewalks, and through a tunnel of trees that laced their branches together over the road. By the time Yuugi got to the gates, his feet aching in his sneakers, night had fallen. The trees were thick with shadow and wind, whispering to each other in fairy tale voices. It was the kind of night that urged people into their homes, with the doors locked, away from the ancient things that lurked in the undergrowth, wild and forgotten and stronger for it. He was relieved to reach the gates, on the edge of the illumination around Kaiba's mansion, held in the center of the light like a toy castle in a snow globe.

The gatehouse was empty. A security camera peered down at him from the top of a wall, nestled in a thick swell of vines. Ignoring its glossy little eye, Yuugi studied the door in the wall beside the gates, pushing more vines aside to find the keypad. If he called ahead, the chances of Kaiba buzzing him in were next to nothing. They were next to nothing on a good day.

YUUGI do you know the key code for the door?

ATEM 445241474F4E#

ATEM that took me literally years to get

ATEM go around the back. he won’t open the front door

YUUGI you're the best <3

He tapped in the code, carefully. What if he got it wrong? Would a trapdoor open up below his feet? With his back to the quiet road, and the dense, rustling woods on the other side, he swallowed his laugh. 

The door opened with a faint click. Yuugi slipped through and began the long walk up the drive to the mansion, sneakers crunching the gravel underfoot. On either side of the drive,  the lawns were pristine, every petal of every flower and every leaf on every hedge perfectly in place, holding the poses nature’s hand had fixed them in with effortless ease. Somewhere across the grass, shrouded in the night, came the distant murmur of a fountain. 

The mansion itself was an ugly, graceless brick of a building, so rigid and square in its design that its position in the center of this wooded estate seemed an oppressive intrusion. Per Atem’s instructions, Yuugi skirted the front, with its twin dragon statues and Roman columns and imposing front door, and went around to the back, padding silently through the grass. Like the top of the tower, the windows were dark. Every glance through the glass, checking for life, made him feel like he was looking into the bottom of a well, deep and cold and watery, a tomb for hopeless wishing. 

At the back of the house was a large patio, with a view of the sprawling grounds, which rolled downwards in a gentle slope, all the way to a line of trees. There, the grounds gave themselves back to the wild. Even on a shivering night like this, it was easy to imagine what the patio was like in the full splendor of high summer, drenched in sunlight and everything shimmering in golden-white heat.

A thin light cast a hazy cloud onto the patio through a pair of sliding glass doors. Yuugi stopped, halfway across the patio, questioning himself for the nth time that night. And if he was overreacting? So what if Kaiba was in a mood? Kaiba was always in a fucking mood. Yuugi had no doubt Kaiba would thunder at him for a while over the arrogance, the audacity of his presumptions or something, and then throw him out by the scruff of the neck. Oh, god. The embarrassment burned in his face already. 

Yuugi firmly shoved his own feelings aside. He was a gamer - a gambler - by nature, and he’d learned enough over the years to bet on his  own instincts. He gamed it out, in his head, shuddering into the warmth of his jacket as the breeze rolled through him:

He checks on Kaiba, and everything is fine: he goes home feeling awkward and Kaiba avoids him at work for the next three weeks. Acceptable outcome.

He does not check on Kaiba, and everything is fine: he goes home, and the whole night gets written off as a weird, secret little adventure. Acceptable outcome.

He checks on Kaiba, and everything is not fine: unacceptable, but now someone knows. Acceptable outcome. 

He does not check on Kaiba, and everything is not fine: Unacceptable outcome.

He stole towards the sliding glass doors. They led into a glossy modern kitchen, as pristine as the grounds, and full of clean, gleaming surfaces. It was completely free of clutter like mail, or keys, or coffee mugs, or any of the other odds and ends that usually piled up over the course of normal days. A bowl of flowers sat on a kitchen table in a breakfast nook, starting to wilt. At the end of the kitchen island was a bowl of fruit. A still-life painting split in two. 

Sitting at the island, perched on a bar stool, was Kaiba, his head resting in his folded arms atop the counter. His face was mostly hidden in the crook of his elbow; through the limp tangle of his bangs, Yuugi saw his eyes were closed. His black leather satchel leaned against the leg of the bar stool. The rise of his back as he breathed was slow and subtle, the only thing that convinced Yuugi Kaiba had not turned to stone in his seat. Asleep?

No. 

A small blue light rose up from Kaiba's phone, lying on the counter. One hand slowly unfolded, silenced the call, and refolded itself. A gesture that made less than a ripple across the still water of this tableau.

Awake.

Lifelessly, doing nothing. Not even staring into space, but retreating into the space behind his eyelids, a space Yuugi knew intimately well: shallow and lukewarm and wordless, a space for letting hours and days drift by, uncounted. It had been a long time since he’d visited - not since he’d solved the Puzzle - but it was a space he never wanted to revisit. It was a space that stayed with you for the rest of your life, once you’d been there, and yet a space more distant than the farthest star in the universe, beyond the boundaries of both light and love. A place of perfect solitude. 

Quietly, carefully, Yuugi tried the handle of the sliding glass door and found it unlocked. He slid it open. 

Kaiba startled, pulling himself upright as though yanked by a puppet string on his neck. He turned to Yuugi, still and alert, not quite comprehending. As he understood who stood there, the pieces clicking into place, his eyes hardened in his pallid face, speechless, furious. 

“Before you say anything,” Yuugi said, as Kaiba opened his mouth, “I have a story. Let me tell you, and then you can kick me out.”

“This is my fucking house. I can kick you out whenever I damn well please,” Kaiba snapped.

“It’s more of a puzzle, actually. I don’t think you’ve ever solved this one,” Yuugi said. 

Kaiba looked at him sideways, now more confused and suspicious than alarmed.

“And if I solve it?” he said, because ah, yes, of course, stakes. Nothing ever for the joy of it.

“Bragging rights.”

“If I don’t?”

“Nothing happens,” Yuugi said. 

They stared at each other. Yuugi ventured a smile. Did he dare walk in? He was still standing on the threshold. 

“Fine,” Kaiba said, a word more like a sigh. “Come in and tell me your stupid puzzle.”

***

Every house has its own particular smell, its character, its self-contained story about those who call it home. Yuugi took off his shoes, setting them beside the glass door, and frowned. Kaiba's smelled like clean linens, a touch of dust, cool air. A muted smell with no character. He didn't know what he expected. Something else, something thick and wet and heady, like oncoming thunder, or concrete after rain.

On this side of the glass doors, the kitchen was even more exquisite, temptingly so. He knew, from his lusty late-night Internet searches, that the knives in the wooden block alone cost more than several thousand dollars. Untouched! He refused to let them go to waste. Such things were more beautiful when they were held and used and loved, doing what they were made for. And despite the marbled silence, the thin white lighting, this was a house, not a museum. Yuugi dropped his backpack on the floor next to an empty bar stool and turned to Kaiba, who was sitting upright, hands atop his thighs, watching him.

“Uh - do you have anything to eat? I haven’t eaten since lunch,” he said, slinging his jacket over his backpack.

“No. Every night I just plug in and recharge,” Kaiba said dryly. “I believe that’s called a fridge. Those have human food.”

Yuugi bit his tongue, hiding his smile as he went around to the other side of the island. At least Kaiba was still capable of snark. He opened the massive fridge - sparse offerings, sparsely touched - and rooted around, not quite sure what he was looking for between the limp carrots and slabs of smoked salmon. Only the cheese drawer yielded interesting spoils, unspoiled and exotically European.

“The pantry?” he said, nodding at the door next to the fridge. 

“Presumably.”

Yuugi found a loaf of sourdough bread on a shelf in the walk-in pantry - a fucking walk-in pantry! - and returned to the counter with his haul: the bread, the butter, a wedge of Gruyere, and a brick of Emmental. “I’m making a grilled cheese. You want one?”

“If it makes you happy,” Kaiba muttered.

“It does, yeah,” Yuugi said, unsheathing one of those glorious, mirror-polished knives from the wooden block. He rolled up his sleeves and attacked the cheeses with relish. “So - the puzzle goes like this. You’re fifteen years old. You’re small for your age, underweight, painfully shy. You get shoved around a lot at school. Before school, after school. Whenever, honestly. No one really sticks up for you, although you try to stick up for them, when you can, and no one really talks to you, because you live in your own little world. Your head’s always in the clouds, and you get really excited over a lot of things no one else really cares about.”

As he spoke, he unearthed a frying pan and set it on the gas stove, slicing off several pats of butter. As they melted, soft and yellow-white, he carved several slices off the loaf, shuddering with secretive pleasure at the fresh crunch of the crust. 

“Next time, just bring me your high school diary,” Kaiba said. 

Yuugi snorted, buttering the slices and laying them carefully into the pan, where they began to sizzle. He draped the slices of cheese on top. “So you can read everything I wrote about you? No thanks. Anyway. You have one friend, but she’s not always around - her family travels a lot for work. So here you are, a bullied, lonely little oddball, and one day someone gives you a gift. A puzzle.”

“A puzzle in a puzzle.” 

“Right,” Yuugi said, pressing down on the slices of bread with a spatula. The butter crackled and spat; a thick, warm smell wafted through the kitchen. “And if you make a wish on the puzzle, it grants your wish when you solve it. So you make your wish, and you solve your puzzle. You know the rest.”

He turned back to Kaiba. “Now I’m here in your kitchen, making you a grilled cheese. So. What did I wish for?”

To his credit, Kaiba was taking it seriously, offering no snide comments about magic or wishing, leaning forward with his arms folded again on the counter. Yuugi let him study him, eyes narrowed and thoughtful, knowing he was running back through all eight years of their shared history, doing the math. 

“Well, no one shoves you around any more,” Kaiba said. “Not even me, judging by the fact that I can’t even get you to leave my house. I should’ve known better than to try.”

“Ooh, a compliment. Thanks, I’ll treasure it forever,” Yuugi said, grinning, flipping the sandwiches. Melted cheese oozed from the sides. The bottom slices had toasted to a golden brown. His mouth watered. “Plates?”

“Up and to your left.”  

Yuugi opened the cabinets and, standing on tiptoe, eased out two matte black stoneware plates. Fancy.

“You wished for strength,” Kaiba said. 

Yuugi slid the grilled cheeses onto the plates and severed them in half with the spatula. 

“Nope,” he said, leaning across the island counter to set the steaming grilled cheese in front of Kaiba. The semantic point that his friends and his strength were one and the same seemed irrelevant. He was speaking to Kaiba. He needed to speak in Kaiba’s language. “Strength wouldn’t have solved anything for me.”

“You just said you were getting shoved around  - ”

“I wished for friends, Kaiba,” Yuugi said. “Yeah, I was tired of getting shoved around. But I was even more tired of being alone.”

“I - “ Kaiba cut himself off, pressing a sigh through his nose with a tight, pinched expression. Within seconds his face soured. “You make a wish on your magical little trinket, and you get just what you always wanted. How fucking fantastic for you - ”

“Don’t do the aggressive-aggressive thing, it’s not cute,” Yuugi said. “And don’t test me, either. You and I are way past that. Just look me in the face and tell me, honestly, you want me to leave.”

Kaiba turned that ferocious blue gaze on him, silent.

Yuugi waited, holding his gaze. 

Thin, languid tendrils of steam rose from their melting grilled cheeses and folded away.

“Don’t tell me you think of me as one of your magic wish friends?” Kaiba said.

“There’s nothing magical about our friendship, no,” Yuugi said, and to his delight Kaiba snorted with amusement. “Now eat, before it gets cold.”

***

They ate, the evening quiet of the kitchen magnifying every fried, crunchy bite. Yuugi had hoisted himself onto the bar stool next to Kaiba, congratulating himself on a well-made grilled cheese. He would’ve made it work even without the expensive knives.

"Don't tell Mokuba," Kaiba said, dabbing at crumbs on his plate with a greasy scrap of bread, "or Atem."

"Don't tell them what?" Yuugi said.

"How you found me. On hour six of staring at a wall.”

"I won't," Yuugi said.

"They don't need to worry about me. I can take care of myself," Kaiba insisted. 

"You can, but are you?" Yuugi said. 

"Mmh," Kaiba murmured, resting his elbows on the counter and his chin atop his laced hands. “Don’t tell them that, either.”

His eyes rolled sideways, his gaze drifting around the kitchen, through the arched doorway, through the rest of the house, where all the lights were off. Yuugi slid off his stool and selected two pears from the fruit bowl, heavy with ripeness, rinsing them in the sink.

“Did... something happen? Did you get in a fight?” he ventured. “Atem says you’re not answering his calls.”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Then what?”

The kitchen swelled with silence.

"They left," Kaiba said finally, as Yuugi considered how to cut the pears. A basic wedge cut was too childish. "And I told them to go, enjoy it, make the most of it. They have their own lives to live. Mokuba must've asked me a thousand times if I'd be fine without him if he went to California, and I said yes, go, because I don't need him around. I'm fine. And there's no point in getting angry with someone for leaving if you don't need them in the first place."

The effort must've been massive, Yuugi realized, slicing into the pears, to keep the anger at bay. To dig into the wound and wrench the thing out whole, raw and throbbing, without duels or rubbled islands, and without the help of the people who loved him the most. No wonder he looked so exhausted, so limp; no wonder he was again sinking towards the counter, arms folding, his head dropping like there was a hand on the back of his neck, guiding him down with animal docility. 

“How long have you been feeling like this?” Yuugi said.

“What the hell do you know about it?” Kaiba said, semi-muffled by his elbow. 

“It feels like there’s this dark little pit in yourself that you can’t stop digging,” Yuugi said, “and when it’s deep enough, you’re gonna curl up and bury yourself at the bottom and sleep for a year. Right?”

Kaiba said nothing, heaving another sigh.

“Sit up. Eat this.” Yuugi thunked a plate of pear in front of Kaiba, each slice wafer-thin, almost translucent, dripping with light. Kaiba dutifully pulled himself up and removed several slices of pear, with jenga-like precision, careful not to damage Yuugi’s artful pinwheeling. “Well?”

“I always feel like this,” Kaiba said, a startling confession, all the more terrifying for the blithe, dismissive tone with which he confessed it. “So what if it’s a little worse than normal? I’ll find my way out of it.” 

Yuugi leaned over the counter, hands clasped atop it, business-like. 

“I have no doubt in your ability to get out of this,” he said. “But I don’t think you should do it alone. See, I don’t want you to leave, either.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yeah?” Yuugi said. “I challenge you to a duel. My deck’s in my backpack. I have some new strategies I’m dying to test, and you’re the only one who makes me really fight for it. How about it? Wanna duel?”

Kaiba exhaled, resting his elbow on the counter, his cheek against the back of his hand. He plucked out another pear slice, not eating it; instead just letting it dangle from his fingertips, watching a tiny pearl of water roll off the edge and break apart on the plate with monumental indifference. 

Watching him, Yuugi allowed himself a brief, private moment of grief, for Kaiba, knowing he wouldn’t want it, and he’d be insulted if he knew. To have your heart broken by what you love was one thing; to swing from love to hate was another; but to stand still and feel your love go, leaving nothing in the hollow it left behind, was the worst.

With a light flick, Kaiba released the slice of pear, his gaze drifting again. 

“No. I’m tired of fighting,” he said sullenly, so dull a sound that Yuugi sucked in a breath, two dueling thoughts colliding with concussive impact in his chest. Good, stop fighting, why don’t you finally get some rest, and the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and shout no! keep fighting! I know you’re in there! 

Kaiba lifted his head, looking at Yuugi with an air of steeling himself. “Okay. What... what do you want from me?”

Yuugi almost laughed, but caught himself. No good things came from laughing in Kaiba’s face. 

“Other way around,” he said, drawing a circle in the air with his finger. “This is about what you want from me. Whatever you need. Whatever you want.”

Kaiba frowned, thinking.

“Do you seriously believe the magic of the Millennium Puzzle helped you make friends?” he said.

"Um. Well, it was more like a domino effect, you know? A chaos theory, butterfly hurricane kind of thing - “

“Magic had nothing to do with it. It was all you,” Kaiba said, with more heat and passion than he’d shown in weeks. “But you have to understand I’ll never be your ‘bro’ - ” couching the word in air quotes, a disdainful pair of twin finger twitches - “and I’m not one of your little pals, like Jounouchi, or whatever. That’s not who I am. That’s not how I do it.” 

“I know,” Yuugi said. “Listen - ”

“I don’t - ” Kaiba huffed and scowled at the counter, at his blurred, misty reflection. “I prefer to handle things on my own. I always have. I don’t - know how - ”

“Kaiba.” 

Kaiba looked up, shoulders stiffening, his face tight and stricken. 

“I know,” Yuugi said. He let that hang between them until Kaiba’s shoulders had eased out of their anxious coils. “Don’t worry. I’m not adding you to the group chat or anything. I don’t expect anything from you except the occasional bitchy comment, and maybe a good, boisterous laugh, from way deep down in your chest, like when you draw Blue-eyes in a duel. You know, the ‘I got you now, fucker’ laugh.”

Kaiba laughed - a laugh at half-power, lacking his usual trumpet blare of triumph, but a laugh nonetheless. “You are an oddball.”

“Birds of a feather,” Yuugi said smugly, and checked his phone. It was getting late. “Okay. I think I’ve bothered you enough for the night - ”

“You’re not bothering me. Are you taking the train back into the city?”

“Yeah.” 

“What line?”

“Red line,” Yuugi said, and was struck by an idea. "Why? Somewhere you wanna go?"

"I'm in the mood to get out of the house for a while," Kaiba said. "It's too fucking quiet in here without Mokuba."

Yuugi fixed him with a look. "Yeah, so one of the interns was telling me about a new arcade that just opened off the Ishibashi station. I was gonna go after work with the guys to check it out some time, but..."

He didn't even need to finish the thought. Despite his best effort to hide it, something hopeful had bloomed across Kaiba's face, rich and warm. It made Yuugi ache to see that look, and to wonder what he would've wished for at fifteen, freshly cast from the forge and still hard and brittle and white-hot with rage, burning everyone who touched him.

"Get your coat, let's go," Yuugi said, and Kaiba almost sprang off his bar stool. "Wait - finish the pear. I cut it fancy for you and everything."

Kaiba rapidly ate the pear. "The grilled cheese was excellent, by the way."

"Really?"

"Yes. If you come back and make me another, I'll make all the bitchy comments you want."

Yuugi laughed. "Deal."

***

ATEM did you talk to him? 

Yuugi leaned against the polished wooden edge of the pool table, his thoughts whirling in his head lazy and kaleidoscopic. He was halfway through his third beer. They'd gone through air hockey. The racing games. The shooting games. Foosball. Kaiba had spent fifteen minutes at the claw machine, winning a plush Kuriboh for a middle schooler and pressing it into her hands with a firm explanation of how the machines were rigged against her. 

Then they'd found the pool tables, in a dim little corner, the green felts shining like tropical islands in a shadowy red-brown sea under the hanging lights. Yuugi was still smarting from the whipping, which Kaiba had delivered with almost careless ease, drink in hand. 

"Yuugi. Look," he said, leaning over the table, aiming the pool cue at some bizarre constellation of pool balls, his long shadow falling across the felt. 

"Give me a sec," Yuugi said, and swiftly rescued Kaiba's sweating old-fashioned from the edge of the table.

YUUGI ya. now he's showing off

YUUGI trick shots at the pool table

ATEM so he's fine?

"You're not looking," Kaiba said, lifting his head. "Look."

"I'm looking," Yuugi said.

The cue moved smoothly between Kaiba's fingertips as he aligned his shot - sleek, frictionless, silent - with a quick, sharp thrust he sent the pool balls smashing into each other, cracking like lightning across the table and vanishing into the pockets. The last ball rolled towards the last pocket with slow, melodramatic flair, teetering over the lip, like it knew exactly who had struck it, and what kind of show it needed to put on. 

It dropped in, clattering into its fellows at the bottom of the pocket.

Kaiba laughed, triumphant, glowing with youthful glory, catching the victory by his hip with a yank of his fist.

YUUGI he will be

"Did you see?" Kaiba said, turning to Yuugi. The lines under his eyes were still there; the seams that held him together, pulling apart. Those would take some time to repair.

But for the moment he was radiating with energy, beaming, star-like in the dim electric gloom of the arcade. Not hidden in the blackness of space, but brighter for it. Despite it.

"I saw," Yuugi said.

[untilspringdays]

Lovely Sins || Chapter 4

Summary: You were a researcher investing six strange beings that you didn’t quite understand. They had strange powers that you and your partner Mark Lee were tasked with testing the extent off. It was your typical day really but as time progressed between you and the seven of these men, you found yourself growing attached. Will the seven of these men restore some of your humanity? And could you help them escape?

Pairings: Reader x Super M (OT7)

Genre: Sci-fi AU || Angst, Fluff, Smut (Eventually)

Warnings: Violence, Experimentation, Cussing, Torture, Dark Themes. (Will have some dark things going on please read at your own risk!)

A/N: I have been super busy lately, so sorry for taking so long to get anything out. Hopefully I can have the next chapter of Catalyst out soon too. These chapters are gonna be a little shorter since its been a while. Sorry. 

Word Count: 2.5 k

Previous || Master List || Next

Tag-list: @reiki-chan @j-pping​ (Ask me or message me to be added!)

Kicked out. 

You were kicked out of Mark’s office as soon as Subject 2 had shown up, with possible answers as to what exactly happened between Ten and 109. You wanted to know but as much as you insisted in being there Taemin stayed rooted in his spot that you didn’t need to hear this. That he didn't want you to hear this. Not yet.

Mark informed you that he would find a good way to share with you what information Taemin had shared with him, and essentially ushered you out of the office.. 

It wasn’t fair.. They were your subjects as well! It was your place as their researcher to know important information! You let out a huff and stomped over to your office. You threw yourself into your desk chair settling at your computer to work, even if you were severely frustrated at what just occurred. 

✦

The younger man gestured to the chair you just occupied for Taemin to take a seat. Once the older man had settled, even if he looked uncomfortable, Mark spoke. 

“So why is this information so important that my partner couldn’t be in the room to hear it?” Mark said using a stern voice. He didn’t like to pull his authority especially with someone older than him, but it had to be done. He wanted to have you with him, but this information was too important for him not to pass on just because he couldn’t meet one simple demand. 

Taemin let out a small sigh, his blank look not moving off of his face. “It has to do with her. I may not be the most active in the sector despite my free roam but I notice more than you think I do.” Subject 2 said. 

He straightened out in his chair, pushing himself to sit a little straighter. “I run into Ten often when the two of you aren’t here. It wasn’t unusual for him to act out like that especially when it comes to her.” Taemin said, his voice plain and flat. 

“Subject 10 isn’t one to show violent tendencies. So you are suggesting that he becomes violent with things that have to do with her?” Mark asked, the writing end of his pen sitting between his fingers, ready to write anything down. He didn’t like where this was going. If that was the case then Subject 10 would have to be removed from their observation. Especially if he was too dangerous. 

“More like he becomes violent if someone does something to upset her or hurt her.” The older man stated. “He has threatened me before over something I just casually mentioned. Thinking I was upsetting her somehow.”

Mark paused letting the words sink in for a moment trying to figure out what exactly Ten’s motivations were. “So is he attracted to her in a romantic manner?” If he was, it was another reason for the higher ups to take their subjects. Results would become bias if this was the case. 

“No..” Taemin said, making Mark feel relieved but as soon as the older went to speak again Mark stopped him by holding up a single finger. 

Quickly the researcher typed something in on the computer doing a quick few things here and there before turning back to Taemin. 

“Alright now we can talk freely without Higher ups getting a recording of this conversation.” 

Taemin was a little confused but he wasn’t going to ask just yet. “Not yet anyway. He is possessive of her that is for sure, but I’m certain he is possessive of you as well.” He took a small breath before speaking again. “That incident with 109. I saw the injuries on her arm. I saw her running to help him that night. Afterwards when she made her rounds I could easily see the bandage.” Taemin adjusted in his seat again. “Based on what I know about Ten it wasn’t unusual.”

Mark was deep in thought, but he was listening intently to what Subject 2 was saying. “So this started because she decided to help 109? That 109 is in the condition he is in because he hurt her?” Mark asked leaning back in his chair, dark eyes firm on the older man in his office. 

“I’m saying 109’s damage is Ten taking some sort of revenge. He is attached to both of you, in my current opinion a little too attached.” Current? The word had caught Mark off guard for a moment. “But if you had been the one in her situation, the one with the injury, I think the outcome would have been the same.” 

He was attached to both of the researchers? It would make sense considering how often Subject 10 would barge into their offices. He would spend his free time in either of their company. He basically acted as their friend occasionally stepping into a flirty territory with either of them. Of course neither of the two researchers would accept his joking affection. 

Mark let out a small sigh, before speaking up again. “I can’t believe I’m asking this especially to one of my own subjects.. But,” Mark let out a huff before straightening up, fingers tapping lightly against the desk. “What do you think should be done? Should we turn Ten over to another sector as our protocol states?”

Taemin shrugged. “This is outside of my concern. I don’t care what you guys do.” Subject 2 stood up from the chair, before speaking again. “But.. I suggest not transferring him. If you aren’t careful Ten might wind up being more violent than he already is.” 

Taemin opened the door, noting that your office door was closed and you were nowhere in sight. “He ignored you when you tried to talk to him, didn’t he?”

Mark nodded. 

“Well it sounds to me that he is punishing himself.” Taemin said, before stepping out of the door letting the researcher think to himself. 

Mark hummed. “So I guess we just let this play out. Monitor him closely..” The researcher mused to himself, letting his thoughts take him again. Despite his current closed off nature, Ten would have to be watched closely if he is punishing himself for his actions.. Hopefully it wouldn’t turn into some sort of physical punishment for himself. 

Mark let another stressed sigh. Just more to add to his already stressful workload, but what was worse was how he was gonna have to break this to you. He didn’t even know how to take the information himself. 

“Oh my god..”

✦

It had been a few days at this point. Mark had refused to tell you what he and Taemin talked about always saying he ‘didn’t know how to word it yet.’ You wanted to know. These were your subjects so of course you pressed on the subject ready to jump in and fix whatever the situation was. And maybe.. Just maybe you could get 10 back to normal, and restore the progress made with 109, but the more you pressed for the info the more Mark brushed you off, and avoided you. Honestly.. It hurt. 

At this point you just expected Mark to ignore you, to never tell you the information he said he would share with you. You sat slouched in your chair in your office, eyes going over data for the nth time since you returned to your office. Your morning rounds not even changing. Everything was the same, and now the one time something was different you weren’t even allowed to go talk to either subject the guards still stationed outside both of their containment. What were you going to do?

You rubbed your hands on your face for a moment giving you eyes a break from looking at the screen for such a long time. The question of what to do about the situation repeated in your mind. Your partner, your long time trusted partner, wasn’t even helping you. Your subjects.. None of them could help except for subject 2 but he wouldn’t talk to you. 

Your mind ran through the events of the day, of the interaction between the three subjects that happened the morning before Ten attacking 109. Maybe.. Maybe you could talk to Subject 4 and 88? Maybe they could provide some insight on the situation? 

…

It couldn’t hurt.

With a sigh you pushed back from your desk, standing and stretching yourself out before grabbing your tablet. You stepped out into the empty hallway, your eyes scanning through it before moving down the long hallway that was your sector. Subject 2 and Subject 4’s rooms sat closest to the offices so you didn’t have to move too far to reach the containment. 

As soon as you stepped into the containment, the two subjects' attention was on the door, both of them alert and not particularly happy looking, you knew they probably didn’t like you but they were really your only hope. 

You walked over to the glass that seperated the containment from the first floor observation, plopping yourself down onto the floor with a sigh. Their gazes locked onto you but you didn’t mind. 

You sat with your legs crossed, elbow resting on your knee with your hand holding your head. Your tablet sat on the floor in front of you, your gaze on the screen that held the controls for Subjects 4’s containment. You tapped at a couple things before allowing communication between the two rooms. 

When you spoke your voice was plain and tired. It was clear to tell that you haven’t been resting well since the event that occured. “Hello you two.”

They just stared at you, this was outside your normal rounds. Outside of what you normally did for testing so you didn’t blame them for being hesitant. 

“Look I’m here for some conversation and maybe you can give me some answers. I don’t suppose Mark has been here?”

88 was the one to speak up first. “Mark? That’s his name?”

You nodded. You knew these two didn’t tend to call either of you by your names so it didn’t surprise you that they didn’t know, or at least 88. 4 had been here long enough to know your names but you could tell that he didn’t particularly care about using them. 

“Yes, he is Mark, and I’m Y/N.” You responded. 

“Y/N..” Kai echoed. “It’s a nice name.”

“Thanks,” You said mutely, you weren’t really here for compliments. “Look I know the two of you probably aren’t aware but there was a situation. An altercation happened between two of the other subjects the other day.”

“And that has to do with us, how?” Subject 4 stated harshly trying to figure out exactly what your intentions were. 

“One of the subjects involved was Subject 10. The one the two of you interacted with the morning before the incident.” You stated flatly, eyes gauging the two of them for any kind of reaction. Subject 4 looking somewhat curious while 88 seemed a little shocked by the news. 

“You don’t seem surprised, Subject 4.” You observed simply. 

“I..” One time he didn’t have some sort of harsh tone for you. That was all he ever had for you these days. “I don’t know. I don’t know him well enough but despite his innocent looking demeanor there was something different?” It was a question. He was unsure. 

Kai shook his head. “I don’t see it. He didn’t seem the type, at least not without a good enough reason.” 

“That is what has me confused. Ten doesn’t have a past he remembers. He just remembers this place so what would he have a connection to enough to be willing to harm another subject who is contained?” You asked more so musing to yourself than to them but you would welcome any feedback they could give you. 

The two subjects looked back to each other, not really able to provide an answer to your question. 

You could feel their eyes turn back to you even if your gaze was towards the ceiling, your mind searching for any possible answer to your question as to why this happened. 

"Maybe.." You heard 88's voice. It was quite like he wasn't sure if he should say anything but there wasn't a protest from either you or subject 4 so he continued.

"Maybe it has to do with you? Or uhh.. Mark? I remember subject 10 stating he liked the two of you." 88 was hesitant about sharing this information. You could hear it in his tone. Whether he thought it was private information or if he was wrong in his words you didn't know. "That is the only possibility I can think of but even if I remember that correctly I don't see how that would cause him to lash out." Kai said. 

As subject 88 spoke, it felt like the prices were falling in place. It made sense.. Ten saw your wound from 109 when Mark confronted you about it. You knew he was concerned about it considering how his amusement had slipped away from his face as soon as he saw it. Your subject was concerned about you.. He cared for you more than you realized.. How could you not have seen this? 

The subjects must have seen the change on your face because as soon as your face grew grim subject 4 was the one to speak up. 

“Y/N..?” His voice was soft when he spoke, concern laced in his tone. You almost didn’t even realize it was subject 4 that had spoken to you. 

You looked up meeting Subject 4’s gaze, concern was all you could see. No longer was there a cold front he put up every time you were around. A small glimpse of the person you used to know, but as much as you wanted to relish in that moment you couldn’t. There were too many concerns flowing through your mind. 

You stood, grabbing your tablet in the process, gaze locked towards the ground. “I..” You started. “I have to go.” 

“Wait.. Y/N!” The subjects called after you as you hurried out of the containment. You ignored their calls. With this new information… You had to talk to Mark. Was this what he was hiding from you?

You hurried down the long stark hallway, your mind not even paying attention to what was around you. You needed to talk to Mark, you needed to speak with your research partner. 

You stood outside Mark’s office door. You knew he was here. You also knew he locked his office to avoid you. As much as you wanted to be annoyed by his behavior you couldn’t at the moment. The concern for your subjects, the concern for what you learned plagued your mind causing anxiety to bubble up inside of you. 

If this was the cause of the situation, if you were the cause of this situation.. You didn’t know what you would do. All of this over an accident.. 109 hadn’t meant to hurt you. It was an accident.. And now 109 was hurt because of Ten.. Ten was most likely hurting too from being locked away. All of this because of you, all of this because an accident. 

You let out a shaky sigh before raising your hand to knock on Mark’s office door. 

[letshaikyuu]

𝚞𝚔𝚒𝚢𝚘 // 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙸𝙸𝙸

⇀ 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚊𝚋 𝚖𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝 ↽ ⇀ 𝚞𝚔𝚒𝚢𝚘 - 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍 ↽

𝚊/𝚗: I’m super grateful to be a part of this collab because this server is amazing and filled the most amazing people ever, and when this collab came to mind, I was so excited to see it grow and now we’re already on chapter III !

𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐: none;  𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚔𝚢𝚞𝚞 𝚡 𝚐𝚗!𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛 

𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝: 𝟷.𝟻𝚔

Despite spending a full day in whatever scenario you were in and experiencing yesterday, you look around your ‘room’, still confused as ever. Were you really in a game? A game, like the ones you play on your phone for shits and giggles? That kind of game? Well, shit. You look around your room. It really looked like your typical otome game room – a pastel colored wall with posters of unknown anime and idol groups plastered on it, a simple window with a tiny plant and curtains that could hardly keep out the vibrant sunshine invading your room. It was already morning.

ding!

Flinching at the sudden noise, you look around and see your cellphone, the screen bright and colorful, indicating a new message on it. Looking closely, you see not one, but several new notifications on it. But, what caught your eye first were the large letters above all of them – Day 2. What?

“Are my days numbered or something?” You ask yourself, evident anxiety and fear lacing your voice. What would happen if you didn’t fulfill the tasks needed or don’t end up in a relationship with anyone of the possible characters? You closed your eyes, trying to remember the outcome of otome games you had played prior to this one, but it’s as if that information was nonexistent and unreachable.

Your hands shake as you open the next notification: new character! Oikawa Tooru.

And there, on your screen, was the same boy from yesterday. You could never forget a face like this one; curly brown hair that seemed to effortlessly fall and shine, dark brown eyes that are glinting with slight mischievousness, but keep pulling you in and making it hard not to get flustered at the mere sight of it – “was I this flustered when I stumbled upon him yesterday,” you ask yourself as you lay a hand on your heated cheek.

Clicking on his profile, you see a bar – a progress bar to be exact. Not even half full, but still shining brightly as it shows how much progress you’ve made with said character – 30%. Somewhere around the 80% mark there was a star and below the bar, an explanation:

‘Progress report! This page shows your progress with each met character. Your decisions affect your relationship with each character. Fill the bar to 80% and more to, ultimately end with said character! Remember – you cannot better one relationship without it having a bad effect on the other two!’

You sigh, throwing the phone on the bed and falling back onto it. Staring at the white ceiling above, you try to figure out why only Oikawa showed up. Wasn’t there a second person with him? Iwa-chan, ye, that was his name. Why isn’t he a potential love interest? Didn’t you interact with both of them enough to have a decent enough relationship with both and not just Oikawa? Yeah, game’s never let hot side characters be an option, and that has and always will suck.

ding!

Another notification? You think to yourself, grabbing the phone and seeing another new notification – but, this time, it was something completely new. Skip school or go to class?

“You have got to be kidding me,” you groan and glare at the screen, but the choices remain the same. Was this what they meant with the bolded lettering in the progress report? Neither option was completely perfect. Maybe focusing solely on Oikawa and progressing your relationship with him only would make things easier, but maybe the game didn’t want that. And, who knows, maybe you’re making the right decision with your final choice: skip school.

It happened suddenly. Transporting from your room to a crowded street. Where were you?

Looking around, you notice numerous shops and restaurants lining up on your left, but there was a blinding light in front of a specific coffee shop. You figured no one else could see it because they simply passed right over it, without giving it a single glance – am I supposed to go there?

You try opening the door to the shop on your immediate left, only to find it completely jammed. Same with the next shop, and the one after that. What made it even more confusing was the fact that other people could normally enter them, unlike you. “Sorry,” you mumble out your nth apology of the minute, moving to let other people pass and enter the shop. Your feet slowly moved to the coffee shop, stepping into the shining, bright light; and, suddenly, the door opened in front of you.

The interior of the coffee shop was anything but special. It looked like your everyday coffee shop, with a handful of customers circling around or chit chatting at the tables and counters. Were you supposed to buy some coffee? Your thoughts were rudely interrupted by some steaming hot content that happened to find its way onto your clothing. Oh boy, did it burn.

“Oh shit!” Well, there’s the culprit. “Nice going Bakageyama! Look what you’ve done!” And, there’s another one.

You swallow the stream of curse words threatening to spill out of your mouth and look up at the person who spilled their coffee all over you. Oh, oh.

In front of you was a very, very, handsome looking teen (he looks younger than that Oikawa dude from yesterday, you note down) and despite the fact that he was the one at fault here, having spilled his coffee on you, he looked way more irritated than you. There was a deep scowl decorating his features that seemed very sharp as it is, but the glare and scowl somehow, weirdly, suited him. What caught your eyes were the piercing blue pair looking at your own. Hello, Bakageyama.

“I’m so sorry! No, wait!” It was only then that you noticed his friend beside him, a lot shorter than this guy, but with very vibrant hair. He bowed at first, apologizing for what his friend did and then, as if realizing the inconsistency, shot up and roughly pushed the other guy’s back into a bow. “Hey-““We’re really sorry for ruining your shirt!”

“Uhm..,” you mutter out, not knowing exactly how to respond. “It’s okay. I, uhm, I wasn’t looking where I was going either, so it’s kind of my fault as well.” You rub the back of your neck, face flushed as the two teens straightened. The sticky, wet feeling of cold coffee damping your shit and sticking your shirt to your skin was everything but pleasant, but you felt the inability to go back home and change. What do you need to do here?

“Oh, shi- Kageyama, we’re so late for morning practice!” The bright, orange-haired guy exclaimed – rather loudly, if you might say so yourself – and made a quick dash towards the entrance. “Hurry it up!” „Hold on, dumbass,” the taller of the duo, still holding onto his only third-full coffee cup, snapped back and sighed, eyes glancing downwards to your soaked front. He placed the dirty cup on the nearest table and started unzipping and taking of his jacket, face sporting a fiery red blush.

“W-what are you doing?” You stutter out, face flaming as well. The guy shoves the jacket in front of you, waiting for you to take it. “Just...take this.” His eyes were everywhere yours weren’t, dancing across the whole interior of the coffee shop. “I’m...this is for me spilling coffee all over you, so just take it.” Now, it really did feel like your typical ‘this or that’. Take the jacket or don’t take the jacket.

“T-Thank you,” you shyly say as you take the black jacket from him. He runs off shortly after, leaving behind something between a grunt and a ‘hello’, but you’ll take it. You put on the jacket that was clearly tailored for someone of his size and built, but it did the job perfectly. The jacket smelt divine as well, there was no denying that and it was warm due to being worn for a while by the guy. Wait a minute? What was his name?

And, just like that, the coffee shop felt irrelevant. You, thankfully, remembered the way back to your house – or was it just a room? You didn’t really notice – and made your way into the bedroom. And, once plopping onto the bed, you receive a few, new notifications on your phone.

‘new message from: Oikawa Tooru’

-    Where were you at school today? The teachers were pretty upset with me for not paying more attention to you...I don’t know what their problem is sent 10:34pm

-   I’m sorry...didn’t feel well sent 10:36pm

‘Progress report! Relationship with Oikawa Tooru: 30% > 20%’

‘new character! Kageyama Tobio’

‘Progress report! Relationship with Kageyama Tobio: 30%’

You couldn’t stop the small smile dancing on your lips as you look through Kageyama’s character profile; he looked cute even on screen. Maybe skipping school was worth it, you did meet your ‘second option’.

“Now, we just wait for the third,” you murmur out, abruptly feeling drained as you snuggle under the bed covers. It didn’t feel long when your phone chimed again:

Day 3.

𝚝𝚊𝚐𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝: @kingkageyamathegreat​, @sayakaaaaaa​, @tobubekida-yo​ @chigigami​, @sugacookiies​, @macaronnv, @cadekagi​, @raichijin​

𝚢𝚘𝚞'𝚛𝚎 𝚞𝚙 𝚗𝚎𝚡𝚝, 𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚎! @haikyuu-but-low-iq​ <3

[bigskydreaming]

Potentially really stupid question here, but how does Wanda’s powers actually work? I haven’t read a lot of comics, so I’m a little confused

You and everyone else, pretty much.

The thing is, there is no real set way, at this point. Her powers have been retconned more than her parentage, which says a lot. The most consistent description of them for the longest period of time, I’d say, is back in the 80s and 90s when it was basically like...she threw these energy bolts that were called her hex bolts, and whatever they hit, the result was like...an extreme probability fluctuation. So it wasn’t like she blasted things with energy bolts, though it sometimes looked like that....more accurately, she threw the hex bolt at a robot, and it exploded...because the hex bolt’s actual effect was randomly messing with the probability of that robot exploding because of a mechanical issue with like its core processor or whatever. 

So she could do a ton of different things with her hex bolts, but they were all basically rooted in probability manipulation....NOT reality warps, like she was later changed to be capable of. Like, there had to be at least some initial basis for the end result her hex bolts produced. Say she was underground in a cave fighting someone...she couldn’t throw a hex bolt that resulted in lightning somehow striking them even though they were deep underground, because there was no probability that would result in that, you know? Whereas if she was outside, she could theoretically hurl a hex bolt at someone that resulted in them being struck by lightning, even if it was a mostly clear sky...because even though that was an extreme unlikelihood, there was some base probability to work off of. Especially if say like, Thor was around or there was some other source of potential lightning that her probability manipulations basically...hacked, or hijacked.

Depending on the writer, sometimes she had a lot of control over generating specific results with her hex bolts, while with other writers, it was completely random....like, there was no real guarantee of what would happen if she threw one at something, though it generally was always a positive outcome for her. 

The Ultimate comics version of her, which was like, a rebooted more modern version of the whole Marvel universe that ran at the same time as the main Marvel universe comics, back around 2000 for a number of years....basically her powers worked similar to that in that version, but with a little more control. Like, it was the same basic principle, but it was stated that this version of her kinda viewed probabilities like equations that her powers let her tweak and manipulate to consciously achieve certain end results.

Back in the main Marvel universe though, at other times her powers were considerably more magic based....her origin story is super hella confusing, even without the latest retcons, but the gist is that when she and Pietro were born, it was at a place in Europe called Mt. Wundagore, that was on top of like, the ancient resting site or tomb or prison or whatever of some Elder God of chaos from thousands of years ago, named Cthon. Basically, at various points its been stated that Cthon did something to potentially gain some influence over Wanda, at her birth, or just more generally like, his mere presence altered the powers she would have had, like if she’d been born somewhere else she would have had energy powers similar to Magneto’s (since he was still their dad at the time of these backstory retellings), but because of Cthon’s presence/influence, she ended up with her probability powers...as well as some ability to work magic, specifically something called chaos magic. 

So at various points in Marvel history, Wanda’s delved into the magic side of her powers as much as if not moreso than her mutant probability powers. There have been periods where she didn’t really have her mutant powers for a variety of reasons so she was wholly using magic, there have been periods where she uses both or switches between them, and more commonly in later years where her powers were some vaguely defined fusion of magic and probability manipulation.

This led to Bendis eventually retconning her powers as basically just being able to rewrite or warp reality in whatever way she chose...with his hot take being that this ‘drove her crazy’ because there was no stability she could latch onto when her powers were constantly reordering reality according to her subconscious wishes or desires, rather than letting her perceive reality the way everyone else was. Basically the idea that ‘if you can do or even undo anything, does anything you do really matter’ taken to the nth degree.

Then ultimately that was retconned too, because it was terrible and bad, and it was ‘revealed’ that she was only capable of the reality warps that caused Avengers Disassembled and House of M, because she’d been possessed or come into possession of something called the Life Force, which was like, a kinda similar thing to the Phoenix Force that way amped up her powers and blah blah blah. So once she didn’t have the Life Force anymore, her powers went back to being that kinda vaguely defined ‘whatever a writer wanted them to be’ sorta fusion of probability manipulation and mumble mumble chaos magic which is basically also whatever a writer wants it to be, and not really a defined thing in the Marvel Universe or something any of the other mystical characters use...in fact, none of them can ever seem to agree on whether or not chaos magick is even a real thing, or if its just what people call the shit Wanda does that nobody else can come up with a good explanation for, even within the Marvel U itself.

And then of course, the MCU version of Wanda is completely nothing like comic book Wanda in ANY way, shape or form, in any version of her....and not just because she’s whitewashed and not Romani and Jewish like in the comics, and not just because its gross to make the twin children of two Holocaust survivors in the comics be volunteers for Nazi/HYDRA experiments to get their powers in the MCU, BUT I DIGRESS. But yeah, Wanda’s powers in the MCU are just.....not remotely anything to do with anything Wanda’s ever actually done power wise, which is actually a pretty impressive miss, lmfao, considering just how wide-reaching Wanda’s powers have been at times in the comics. 

But basically, as far as the movies have ever shown and Whedon said in interviews and such, the MCU Wanda has basically unlimited telepathic and telekinetic abilities, lol, which is kinda like...bwuh...when he described that he chose her as one of the characters he wanted to introduce in Age of Ultron because she had those abilities....because of all the ways Wanda’s powers have been described in the comics, she has literally never been described as being telepathic or telekinetic, at any point in time. To this day I have no idea where he pulled that from, because like. That’s literally just not anything to do with her powers. That’s Jean Grey’s powerset, and multiple other characters, sure. But Wanda ain’t one of them.

The only place she’s remotely been shown using powers that could potentially be viewed that way is in the X-Men: Evolution cartoon where like...she basically zapped things with energy and bad shit happened. So like, there it was nominally the same idea as her hex bolts....there was no real rhyme or reason to anything that happened as a result of her blasting at it, so I think it was intended to be the same basic principle...buuuut admittedly, the cartoon just didn’t really seem to care what her powers were because occasionally she used them to levitate someone or hold them in the air like in a way that pretty much only telekinesis can accomplish, and she made inanimate stuff like escalators kinda come to life in a way that really is more like what a telekinetic does as well...

So I mean, I guess someone could argue that Evo Wanda was a telekinetic and that was what Whedon decided to go off of, for some bizarre reason. But again, Evo Wanda’s powers were never truly defined at all, and ultimately just seemed to be “she can do anything that we feel like putting in that looks bad-ass, and we’ll justify it by saying nobody really understands her powers.” And they still don’t account for where the fuck Whedon got telepathy from, lol, because no Wanda ever anywhere has been in any way telepathic.

*Shrugs*

Tbh, I have no idea what her powers are being described as these days in the comics, as they’ve pretty  much kept her in the Avengers sandbox ever since their latest retcon about her and Pietro not being Magneto’s kids after all, or even mutants. And I generally have no interest in reading anything Avengers and pretty much only read X-Franchise related stuff lol, so, I don’t have the faintest clue what she’s up to at the moment.

[svtegg]

syncope (SVT apocalypse!au)

♡ wordcount: 2,1k ♡ chapter 3/? (chapter 1 & chapter 2 is here!)

♡ rated PG-13: mentions of blood, voilence and death, sexual themes

♡ pairing: svt x reader (mostly soonyoung in this part!)

♡ After meeting the boy from the office building again, finding out he was named Soonyoung and then running from him in a panic after another one of the men in his group had shouted for him, I found myself in dire need. The scorching summer was nothing but ruthless and my supplies where long gone. In a last attempt at saving my own life I had searched for water in a park across town but barely managed to get there in time, my weak body giving out. But where did that voice come from? Who was staning in front of my half-unconcious body? How long had I been blacked out? 

“Hyung. Look, over there!” I could faintly hear a voice and then footsteps approaching me, the dry ground almost crunching under the weight of the person walking around me. The voice was soft and high pitched, with a sort of bounce to it. I opened my eyes but couldn’t move. My vision was swimming, and everything seemed to be further away somehow. The foggy silhouettes of two people leaning over me, the green grass and the light blue sky above. There where birds singing in the trees looming above me, and I felt like I had died. An eerie peacefulness encapsulating my body as I blinked in an effort to clear my vision. Then black. And blue. The sky, the fluffy white clouds drifting past me miles above where the only thing I could focus on. I couldn’t really feel my body, but the familiar sound of birds and the smell of grass was still registered by my senses before my body decided I needed to go back into the darkness.

Jicheol had led Eunju, Junghyun and I back into the city. I had recognized the signs. Seoul. The four of us had moved from camp to camp, avoiding the packs of roamers as best as we could. We had almost been hunted down by a group of raiders, or bandits. They drove around in a big military looking vehicle, yelling and laughing as they hit roamers and drove over those who where already dead. Crazy. They must be crazy. Jicheol had managed to hide us in a back alley as they drove past, a huge container serving as our shelter for the night as we waited for the raiders to drive off elsewhere.

“Hello? Are you okay?” I could hear somewhere far away. I could feel my body laying on something soft, and a faint sound of something roaring. It could have been a car engine. “She’s talking, hyung..” a distressed voice said, it suddenly sounded closer. I tried opening my eyes but it was too bright. “Something about a Jicheol?” the same voice continued. I could feel my body shaking slightly, my muscles involuntary clenching as I suddenly became really cold.

“I’m hungry..” Junghyun complained for the nth time that day, it was hot and the sun was burning the skin on my shoulders. No one answered the young boy as the group of 4 trekked along a highway full of abandoned and rusted cars. Eunju was panting heavily beside me. “I’m hungry!” The young boy said again, louder this time. No one answered. There had been nothing. Nothing for days. No food, no water, nothing. A breeze blew by but somehow the wind made me feel even hotter. “I’m hungry!” The child stomped. Eunju turned around, her voice hoarse and dry. “We know, Junghyunnie. We don’t have food, sweetie. You’ll have to hold on for a litte longer.” She breathed, her skin dry but still sweaty, and looking to be on the verge of burning under the unforgiving sun. Jicheol kept walking. His broad back becoming smaller as his heavy footsteps took him away from the rest of us.  

A bridge was coming up, which meant there would maybe be a run-down convenience store or a gas station somewhere near. “Just a little longer.” Eunju repeated exhaustedly as she turned around, following Jicheol’s footsteps. The boy sighed, and trailed after the old woman and as I stood there I could see the backsides of what was left of my group. A broad, strong looking man in his late 40s, a young small boy, smaller than his actual age with a bright neon cap on his head and a older woman, her back looking tired under the weight of her backpack. They all looked exhausted, I was took. Keep walking.

My eyes couldn’t focus and it was dark. Way too dark. I took a couple of breaths, first deep ones to calm myself then it evened out into easier lighter breaths. I blinked a couple of times as I tried to adjust my eyes to the environment. It smelled like wood. Not trees but actual chopped wood used to make fires. Firewood. It smelled a little like synthetic fabric. I could feel my head banging as made an effort to sit up, and I had to steady myself as I looked around. It looked like a small bedroom, almost like a motel. The walls where wood colored, the floor in a beige carpet. A dresser was placed under the window by the door. The window seemed to have been covered with something because small glimpses of sunlight peaked through one of the cracks in whatever it was covering the window. I was on top of a bed, an unzipped sleeping bag thrown over me, and a flannel covering the pillow that had been placed under my head.

I try sitting up, but at first my entire body gave out, my muscles aching at the slightest movement. I turn around slightly and a sharp pain shoots down my right arm. I bite my tongue to keep quiet and sit up. As my feet met the carpet, I noticed my shoes where gone as the carpet tickled the underside of my feet. I looked around and noticed my boots by the night stand. And on top of the nightstand, an unplugged bedside light and plate of food. It looked like bread with something red on, jam maybe. I didn’t spare it a second glance as I pulled my boots onto my feet and rose up from the bed. A wave of dizziness hit me, and I staggered a little before I steadied myself on the closet by the end of the bed.

As I stood and let myself breathe while I tried to focus my eyes back onto the carpet, I heart voices outside. “Seen anything on the lookout?” A deep voice said, it seemed to come from right outside the door to the room I was currently in. I froze. “Nah, no activity tonight. But that’s really the best outcome of a shift. How’s the newcomer doing?” the other person answered, voice even deeper than the first one. “I don’t know, there’s not been much activity there either. I checked a couple hours ago and she still hadn’t touched her food so I don’t think she’s conscious yet.” They seemed to go quiet for a while, until I heard more talking. “Was it Minghao and Cheol that found her?” One of them inquired. The other voice hummed in confirmation. “In one of the parks in fucking Guri.” Answered the lighter voice. “Shit, dude. That place is infested with lurkers all over. Lucky thing she wasn’t eaten alive.” They continue talking, and I start moving around the room. My knife is gone, and my thigh strap is no where to be found. They also took my backpack. I look though all the cabinets and drawers. Nothing. I creep back over to the bed and sit down, I can’t just leave. It seems like they, whoever they are, have set up guard outside the door of my room. My physique is nowhere near able to bust out and escape, I don’t know where I am or what’s outside the door of the apartment, I’m currently trapped in. But why did they bring me back here? Why didn’t they just leave me to die? Or kill me themselves?

As I sit and ponder about what to do, the handle of the door only meters in front of me turns and suddenly I’m face to face with a tall man. “Oh, good! You’re awake.” He says casually and opens the door wider. He stands there, looking down at me as I keep sitting on the bed. “Are you no hungry?” He questions, a slight smile on his lips as he gestures towards the food on the nightstand. I look down at my hands for a moment and then back up at him. The man is very handsome, a black tshirt stretched across his torso, black hair tousled and half covering his eyes. Light wash blue jeans that seem more like beige because of the specks of mud and dirt that are spattered across his legs. He hums in a questioning tone, the hoarseness of his voice shining through even when he’s just humming. “Where am I?” I say, my voice weak, dry and hoarse. I cough a little and look back at the man in front of me. “A little north of Seoul.” He answers simply as he leans against the door frame, still smiling slightly. It was hard to tell if it was a friendly smile or a smug one.

I didn’t say anything else, just looked around the room as his stare is fixed on me. I move a little and hiss at the pain that aches in my shoulder. “What’s wrong with your shoulder?” He perks, his head leaning a little forward to peek through the strands of hair hanging in his face. “I think its dislocated.” I state, my voice still a little strained from the pain. “Shit, how long has it been like that?” He asks in a hushed voice as he moves towards me, I flinch, and he stops in his tracks. “I don’t know, going on about three weeks, I think. I’ve lost track of time.” I state, my eyes scanning the tall man. His eyes meet mine and he seems to be gauging my reaction as he slowly moves towards me. “Let me have a look at it.” He rasps and takes the last two steps over and squats down to my level. When I don’t say anything, he reaches a hand out and places it on the back of my shoulder while his other hand comes up to lightly poke the skin around my collarbones.

His hands where cold, and the air that was now blowing in through the open door is chilly. I took a deep breath in. After a while the man looks back at me, and he smiles softly but his eyes still show worry. “I think we can fix this, but I’m gonna need some help.” He states, voice upbeat and friendly. He stands back up and runs a hand through his hair. As he moves around me, I can smell the scent of smoke, campfire smoke, and pine. And a little bit of sweat. “If you wanna come with me I’ll see if I can find someone to help me fix you up a bit, maybe we’ll even be in time for dinner.” He smiles, voice soft and I can hear a hint of a lisp when he speaks. “Sure.” I whisper, before I even get the chance to think about it. The man seems so friendly and I somehow choose to blindly trust him as I follow after him when he leaves the room.

The place I’ve ended up seems to be some sort of mountain resort, motel layout with several rooms. There are two additional buildings beside the one we’re currently walking down the stairs of. One of them seems to be some sort of administration or facility house, and the other is just a huge hangar. Maybe used as some sort of storage or parking housing. Then there’s the three-story residential housing I’m currently walking down the steps of. The entire facility is painted in deep red colors with green doors and windows, thick wooden beams keeping the overhanging ceiling in place. I spot a fence longer down the road, and something that looks like a watch tower tucked into the tree line.

“I’m Mingyu by the way.” The man says as he looks back at you. His eyes sparkle a little in the low evening sun, the orange light from the sunset making his skin almost glow. Then he turns back and keeps walking. As I look around some more, I spot two cars parked between some of the foliage behind some piles of wood. One seemed to be a dark grey Kia Morning in surprisingly good condition, the other was too far behind a tree to see but it looked to be in good shape as well. As we made our way into the ajar building I could faintly smell something that reminded of food. “What is this place?” I whisper, more to myself but Mingyu hears and chuckles.

“Camp.” He simply says as he reaches the glass door to the facility housing. “We’re a group who lives here, we’re doing pretty well actually.” He continues as he holds open the door, signaling for me to go inside. I look up at him, then back at the door. “You don’t have to be afraid.” Mingyu smiles, “I promise we’re nice.” I sigh and step through the entrance, and Mingyu follows, closing the door softly behind himself.

[pcstilnt]

HUSHED AND UNHURRIED GRATITUDE poured out the inferno of his orbs, watching her relishing in the realm that long embraced her, taking her under their wing the moment she accepted him bare as he was ━ with all the malice, brutality and cruelty. He could not express verbally how beholden he felt towards her, for accommodating hell, that despite she systematically directed solely to him, was always hers: a home she could embrace and find shelter whenever the outer world was too cruel to confront. Even in its own chaotic and perilous way, hell was still tranquil most of the time and the sound of beats often downed to mere whispers, welcoming the same serenity. He did not correct her still, knowing that she had been more than informed of her own possessions ━ what he had, belonged to her, what family he had shielded his whole life, was hers to sought whenever solitude became too intolerable to deal with. And the crown he had upon his head, would be no different from the crown she would have… When the time was right for her to take. He observed her for the time silence cradled her speech, not removing his gaze from her petite frame albeit the infernal beauty was a nature not to be ignored. He was still incapable of averting his gaze, being momentarily riveted and amazed by the woman he had. He still did not miss what she had been stewed during his absence  ━ Magus had informed him of her activities and how she had been lovingly planting her own herbs, hoping to be used when needed. There was no way he could have missed it when they both entered the garden, the aromatic scent becoming a breeze he inhaled nonstop and the multicoloured cloak a sight he would not fail to remember.

                 Her touch brought a pleasant quiver, feeling soft pads tracing the folds he formed with the frown and albeit it soothed the body his encompassed, it did not calm the turmoil of never really being present, not really giving it all. ❝ I would give you my all, you know that. Only a request and I break any strings I have to my throne. ❞ Sincerity dripped from his tiers —  he was a man whose obsession with power had always drifted him towards one sole goal  —  to gain, using any possible means, whatever belonged to him and the beasts of beneath. With her appearance in his life, everything altered. What once was coveted, ultimately became an accessory of luxury whilst she, her whole life  —  past, present and future  —  was the treasure he would rummage through to obtain and keep, no matter what he would have to confront and fight. A sigh rolled off his tongue and he closed his wine orbs whilst she spoke, her saccharine vox becoming the ruler of his whole psyche. ❝ Not on the same boat. You control me. Every part of me. ❞

                 As she wafted away, his tight grasp became stronger as thought refusing to let her hand go but upon watching her creating a portal, he released her entirely in order to be guided towards it. At first, he didn’t know what to say, welcoming nonetheless the immediate scent of his room  —  a combination of hers and his perfume, long nights of eternal love and release of it. There was a quizzical look paid when she blushed and an instant desire to reach out and cup her cheek prickled the tip of his digits, but he failed to materialize her words to what was so intimate when his gaze fell on the bed. He was petrified at that moment, confused not about the item that was enveloped in such beauteous silk  —  the shape and the length made it clear even before he began to walk his way to the edge. He moved reluctantly still, feeling its magic vibrating the closer he was, the owner, the knight — whatever he would be claimed as — what was wrapped in that fabric already knew his master and would react according to his presence. Halting, he inclined over the bed to reach out for the item, hearing her dulcet vox far, yet close; but not processing her words more than the necessary to comprehend what she intended to say. It was heavy in his hands but accommodating rapidly to his palms and the oscillation continued during the whole processing of unwrapping it.

                 It became such a tremendous surprise his respiration halted and his muscles tensed in the act.

                 He secured it with both his palms turned upwards, the fire of it coaxing his own energy to exude from his complexion, mingling together in graceful jazz. Not a single detail had been missed  —  time and space were momentarily forgotten, he gave each prominence equal importance: every jewel, every pearl, every diamond — every craved line and curve; a clear indication that it had been not made in days. Perhaps weeks, perhaps months… If not a whole year. Contemplative, his orbs halted when trails of magic waltzed within the stones and across the length of the blade; a delicate wave of her energy crossed with both realms: his own… And hers. ❝ Stunning… ❞ His vox did not house all the emotions her gift caused and he quickly concluded that they would never achieve such means. How could he? How could he ever be able to express his gratitude, return it and give the whole infinite she deserved? He could not, and the longer he delved into such reality, the closer he was to embrace he would never be enough — would never give enough. He held up the great sword then, watching it igniting with the flame within, ready to assist him, ready to give him everything he sought for  —  a spirit alone riding within its metal limbs. It was made for her king, he felt it beneath his complexion, within the channels of his veins. With it, the whole world would succumb, would feel the wrath and would drop to their knees only to be welcomed by his infernal arms.

                 ❝ Ian… ❞ His gaze shifted to hers and he felt the sword reacting to him and to her, gaining calm flames before its energy returned to its confinements. With care, he set the blame on the bed, atop the fabric it was previously wrapped in and turned his body to hers, staring  —  relentlessly. ❝ For how long will you continue giving me more than what I deserve? ❞ He was unwanted of such attentions, not knowing how to express more than what she taught him with her presence, her reactions, her own endearments. He did not know, as well, how to contain his emotions  —  those she awakened, if not created entirely, without feeling sudden despair for losing every bit of reasoning. Closing the distance, he pressed his forehead to hers and it became the unique touch betwixt them, his orbs closing beneath eyelids, feeling everything   —  everything she caused, everything she increased, everything she empowered. ❝ You give me the whole world and more… I’m at a loss of words. I always am, when it comes to you. ❞  Fighting it off, he was biting his bottom tier, unsettled, nervous, not knowing what to say when she was waiting for something   —  he felt it, in the way she looked at him, so hopeful and innocently sweet. ❝ Holding it… With you on my mind. I will be invincible. ❞ He felt within the chains of his ribcage, the putrid machine beating like a feral lion ready to attack.

                  All those emotions, all those sentiments… It was all too much to bore, feeling his body being pulled down whilst in reality happening so —  his forehead slithered across the length of her frame until he dropped to his knees, halting against her stomach. ❝ I love you. ❞ Arms enveloped her lower back, pulling her closer, literally pulling her into his very soul. ❝ I love you with all I have. The way I know and the way I can love. ❞ It was as if he was fighting against invisible bonds, visage contorted with a painful frown for not knowing what else… What else to do, to say, when he was engulfed in so much of her. He looked up, chin resting against her, watching the beauty of her orbs and losing himself in them for the nth time in his life… And what had been so many times pondered, how to say it, how to explain it, how to detail it was momentarily forgotten — tossed away along with any reasoning he had. His words came without pondering, without recalling the consequences, not for him yet for her. They came forced by the sentiments he bore for her, the emotions she left untamed and not manoeuvred. ❝ Be my queen. Officially, without restraints. Be the woman behind this kingdom, with me.  ❞  //  @jackwngson

ian had   envisioned   a situation of  his overwhelming gratitude  ,   endless   amounts of sentiments that he was not sure on how to control .  she had seen it in his features , the moment he had taken the blade within his hand ; learned of it’s essences and how it was crafted from both of them .  an asset that she wanted to give him for the grand outcome of his ball and because , merely to be truthful , he deserved it .   she had   i n h a l e d     everything that had written across his features  .  soaked in the moment he placed the blade down and came to wrap her with his warmth  ; she didn’t have time to inhale nor engrave the subtle pressure against her forehead when he had kneeled himself before her .

❛ I love you   ❜ 

                       ❛ I love you with all I have. The way I know and the way I can  love. ❜ 

❛  Be my queen. Officially, without restraints. Be the woman behind this kingdom, with me. ❜ 

strong was his hold against her  , face felt nuzzled against her stomach  as her face grew crimson     almost   matching the color of her dress .  ears trying to process what he had spoken , trying to calm the way her heart raced against her chest much like her magic that began to seep from her pores .  ianthina’s  well aware of how odd the sentiments she gives him feel within his chest .   jackson has told her more than once how he is overwhelmed with the affection she causes to stir within his chest .   a heart that had long been     d o r m a n t       awakening to new and unknown emotions that it still tries to understand .  no matter how many times he’s told her that one day , she would rule beside him  ---  he had never been this blunt .    jackson has never asked her in this manner for her to    officially   take her seat beside him . 

 ❛  i-- wait , do you mean ?  ❜  he’s given her everything  ; a home , a place to call her own when it was far from the realm she loved .  new faces to love , a family ; even if crafted from malice and ire , accepted her with open arms after warming up to her .  he filled her in ways that she never thought she would ever feel again .  but this , she can’t help but to feel the sudden sensation of    overwhelming   emotions as her gaze falls down to view sandy locks she often finds her hands running through out of habit . to be his official queen  --- was that a role she was ready for ?  ian had long come to accept the title   willingly .  she knew that with time she would wear a crown upon her own head .    ❛ jackson  ---  ❜   his arms are slowly loosened around her waist as she finds herself going down to his level .    ❛  ----   what do you mean official  ?  ❜   there’s a mix of emotions in her voice  -- one that had her eyes brimming   (�� untold  )   nervousness as her hands carefully place themselves on his shoulders .  one coming to carefully capture his chin within her gentle hold . 

 ❛ i know nothing about monarchy , but i want this.  i want you .  ❜   how she wanted it , even if her anxiety at the thought of having a hand in ruling a kingdom  --  she knew jackson wouldn’t leave her in the blind but yet ; so many people to look after . it was a role that she would not be able to take lightly ,  much like the one she    bore    in the human realm as the guardian of the country .  but that was completely     differently   from this  .    ❛  even though , i don’t know much  and i might stumble and fall .   ❜   his people meant so much to her and his kingdom did too .  after making it a home to herself , she loved his home . ❛   i’ve been ready since the day you asked me .  ❜  she couldn’t deny that she wanted to be with him -- even if being with him  meant wearing a crown upon her head .   she would stand behind him for as long as air filled her lungs and magic ran through her veins .  anything as long as he was beside her for ian knew that her future wouldn’t look as a bright as it did if he wasn’t with her .    ❛  i would love nothing more than to be your queen and stand behind you  .   ❜   how could she say no to the man that fills her to the brim with emotions that cause her heart to ache as she finds herself allowing her forehead to rest against his .  brown eyes locking in with   crimson    ones . 

 ❛  i love you so much . i never thought it was possible to feel this way for someone . i love you with every little thing that makes my essence and more .  ❜  

[luovita]

Start your day with a positive, powerful approach, meditate and appreciate who you are

Lifestyle Idea: Did you know that how you

start in the morning actually

sets the mood of your entire day?

    Just try to imagine waking up so late, snoozing your alarm to the nth time, skipping your breakfast and rushing yourself to work. Is it like chaos? Let me help you change that lifestyle habit and start planning. It takes practice but it will lead you to success. Make a habit, a daily routine that will bring positive outcome. This routine will help you reduce stress, enhance focus and improve productivity. You have the power to create the day you wish it to be, or even create an ideal lifestyle. Opportunity comes everyday but without a starting your day right, it can already influence your chance of having a happy day.     Now, we listed a few tips on how you can start your day right which in time can be your daily routine. We bet on this list as we are confident that these tips would not bring you any trouble.   1. Be grateful and stay away from negativity Feel grateful for the day ahead, feel that good things are coming, order the day you want it to be, you put the time and energy into it, this energy will come to you, you're creating something new, a new environment. Take all the negativity away. It will allow you to open your mind to yourself and be grateful. Don’t let fear enter your thoughts. You are strong enough to overcome your fears and face the challenges that the world throws at you.   2. No gadgets Don't let yourself fall into the common trap of starting your day by grabbing your phone as you wake up. For some people like those who are making money online, there is a big chance they are guilty of this routine.  Don't allow yourself to do the first thing you usually do, emailing, messaging, and getting involved with social media. It isn't the most positive start that you could have. A good alternative would be, by challenging yourself when you wake up, to meditate and think about how your day would be, for at least half an hour or more on what could be different and how you could go about creating changes to your normal life.   3. Fix your bed Did you know that a lot of successful people starts their day in making their own bed in the morning? It is setting a good habit of organizing your stuff which can already set a good mood before you even get out of your room and eat breakfast.   4. Do not skip your breakfast It is the most important meal of the day. A healthy breakfast is essential to boost your energy and maintain the same level even after hours.   5. Well rested body If you wish waking up with full energy, one must have a good sleep at night. A quality sleep is beneficial to the brain and also plays a vital role in your physical well-being. As much as possible, take a 6-8 hrs of uninterrupted sleep.  

Next Step - Be Good to Yourself

    It is not new to everyone that each of us has the potential to become the most critical judge of who we are, what we do and what we can't do. We often feel disappointed in our own actions, in how we look and act in front of other people. I myself feel so conscious about how people would perceive me. The question is, how do we make ourselves less of this. The aim is being aware of this and shift, if we’re gonna be the biggest bully of ourselves that’s only going to work against our happiness. It’s a valuable skill if you start to notice when you do speak unkindly about yourself because being aware of this in the first place is going to be your fist task. It will probably be a habit and that will require practice. But notice when you think something about yourself it puts you on a positive or negative vibration, brings you down or cheers you up. This will be one of the most important steps of helping you improve your behavior, you know, every thought you have is an affirmation, subconsciously either lifting you up or knocking you down, so it’s wise to pay close attention about your thoughts you’re repeating over and over about yourself or your surroundings. What's important now is to start  thinking the opposite. For example if you’re constantly thinking about how traffic is such a waste of time going to your office, then why not think of something that can make the long hours in traffic a productive one. You can actually condition yourself sleeping and waking early so you can leave the house early. And while in the bus or a cab, you can make use of the time reading, or watching educational films online. Another example is about your body,  you don't like your weight, your appearance, you feel ugly and less confident about your physical look. Now, realize that there is something more about life. Physical appearance is just one of them, yet there are other things that matters most. You can shift the way you think in not dwelling too much about how you don't like your physical appearance, but instead thinking over what can be done to improve your looks. This is very shallow of course, but you can think of other reasons that are more motivating. For example, you want to confidently talk in front of people, that way you are marketing yourself way better than before. Be aware that because you have this old habits this thought are still missing but it’s worth practicing, and, day by day this will get easier and easier until the internal monologue inside your head is one that’s supports you, rather than being your biggest obstacle it is going to be your biggest fan. Believe me you’re powerful, you’re a good person, you’re a wonderful person, you’re exactly where you’re need  to be right now in this world and I want you to celebrate that. Celebrate it with yourself first because its only when you learn to appreciate who you are and what  you’re about that you can share that with the rest of the world and we need to be really our biggest fans internally in order to help anybody else and in order to bring about the best we can be and the best person in us so remember how amazing you are today and I hope that you choose to have a fantastic time today and say nice things to yourself, be kind to yourself as much as  you can, stay aware and take care.

Are you sometimes tense?

    Tension symptoms, would you know if you have them? Why not take a Tense quiz?

  The modern world has gifted us with tension, stress, anxiety, depression and many more psychological and emotional disorders. Our ancestors used to live much simpler lives, and were ignorant of these heavy words. But, with the flow of time, we started to lead a busy life that invited some or the other psychological disorders in our life. The best way to get rid of these unrest is to identify them, as they may lead to depression if not controlled on time. Recognizing your own stress or tension is not a tough job. Take the following quiz sessions to find them out. Mornings are the best time to assess yourself. Check if you are getting up lively, happy and with a smile on your face. It means that you are a happy soul with affirmative thoughts. If not, you are heading towards depression. When you wake up tired or with a mind full of incomplete work, it indicates that tension is engulfing you slowly. If in the morning you are not getting up with a delighted heart, take this state of mind seriously as the stress in your life may affect both your physical and psychological health. You might not realize, but stress can be the actual culprit behind your frequent insomnia and dropping productivity at work. You can even take up the quiz while driving or traveling to your office. If you are traveling unworried and enjoying the sights around, you are definitely a happy-go-lucky person and know the essence of living. But, if you are checking your watch after every five minutes and thinking of the day ahead, then you are not only missing the beautiful sights around but also gradually welcoming stress into your life. Unfortunately, in this busy and eventful world, most of us are unaware of the true purpose of living. Most of us either live with the regret of our past deeds or with our future expectations, and thus miss the beauty of the present. We forget that we do not have any hold on our past or future, rather, we should always cross the bridge when we reach it. I advise my readers to cross the bridge at the right time rather than wasting time thinking about it. uiz yourself often to analyze your state of mind. If you find that you are living a tensed life, take a deep breath and relax. Trust me, self-help is the best help and only you can uplift your mood by taking everything easy.  

Next approach, ask yourself 'How Can I Learn to Meditate?'

    In health wellness lifestyle, there are so much we can do to keep ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy. Luovita will focus on one, Meditation as one of our healthy lifestyle tips. Like fitness training, which is a technique to train the body, meditation too is a technique to train the mind. I would say, learning to meditate can be compared with riding a bike. Once you have learned it, you will not forget it for a lifetime. But where can you learn to meditate? Today, in this era, internet is considered to be an excellent medium of learning and communication. There are a lot of meditation tutorials on this platform. So, you can often start learning meditation from these online courses as long as they are not complicated with lots of jargon. In general, most of these tutorials are good and explain the terms they are using, in detail, so that the beginners can understand them with ease. When you are starting out, it's important to choose a meditation method that's easy to pick up. I would personally suggest practicing breathing exercises in the beginning. Meditation is all about focusing on something and thus, one can learn to meditate by focusing on breathing, walking or any action of their choice. If you prefer, you can also go for a high-tech meditation like Centerpointe, where you need to sit down in a comfortable place and play a CD with a relevant and peaceful music. Once you have decided on a meditation method, try it for a week or so, to check whether you have really got the hold of it. If you have already progressed, keep going with it. And if you haven’t, then try another method instead. Remember, like other aspects of life, not everyone gets on with every method of meditation. So, never be embarrassed if you find you can’t get along with a particular technique. A week or two's trial is a good length of time for learning to meditate. As I said above, meditation is more like driving a car or riding a bike, and it will probably take you more than one lesson to learn it appropriately. Choose a particular time and place to practice meditation each day. We are creatures of habit. Thus, when you are learning something new like meditation, you must set aside a specific time of the day when you know you are not likely to be disturbed and carry out your meditation practice freely. Apart from that, meditation can be learned and shared to everyone. You can influence other people of the good benefits of meditation. You can even blog about it and making money through blogging. Yes, you read it right. You make extra money at home or earn money online as you do blogging. You can read more about here : Blogging  

    To be optimistic in life and know the secret behind a happy lifestyle, read my blog How learn to enjoy your life    

Quick Guide on How to Meditate

      Here is a guide on how to meditate and connect to

your inner being.

  Meditation brings so much positive effect to our body and mind, healthy lifestyle habits that one must start practicing. IWe all deserve this wellness and only takes us 5 minutes every day to at least improve our being.     Even if you are super busy, try to find at least 5 min a day to do this:   1. Get yourself a quiet place that is free of distraction and create an ambiance where you can focus. 2. You may shut your eyes because it’s one of the best ways to meditate, but even if it is not so quiet and peaceful, you may try to concentrate just a little harder. It's a question of mindfulness, observe and embrace exactly where you are. 3. Take slow deep breaths in and out, breath in any way you feel comfortable. 4. Start to release any tension and observe the conscious awareness you are experiencing right now. 5. Invest time in yourself, in your mind and body, in your wellness, if you want to do it with your eyes open, just focus on something peaceful, something with that you feel at peace. 6. Choose to use all senses, bring your attention to your feet, notice where your feet are, and how your soles of your feet feel, on the ground or in the shoes you might be wearing. 7. It is all about observation. Focus on where your feet are in the world. Now shift your mind to the rest of your body, are you seated or standing or lying down? How does it feel where your hands are right now? What can you feel? What sensations is there that can be felt? 8. Are you breathing gently in and out? Divert your attention to the coolness of the air, the gentle rise and fall of your chest and your diaphragm. Observe any noises around you and every sound you can hear, take it in, observe it, and notice any tastes you have in your mouth, any smells around you right now. 9. And if you have your eyes closed imagine a visual light in front of you, a ball of light. Think about what color might be right for you today and focus on that ball of energy. If you got your eyes open, observe the colors around you, and the variety. 10. Stay in there as long as you like, when you are ready, focus on your breathing, then, slowly bring yourself back, feel free to observe the senses further, choose to have a peaceful day today.  

  Finding the Time to Meditate Regularly

    If you won't drive yourself to find time to meditate regularly, then you are missing its benefits. If you want to change your lifestyle, then you must be serious about it. It is identical to the idea of you wanting to earn money online, yet you are not dedicated and committed then result may not be favorable. Nowadays, we all are living a very busy life and always seem to be in a rush. There are so many things around us, competing hard for our time. From food and coffee on the go to speaking on the cell phone and typing away at the computer, all of which clash with each other to get our attention and time. In between all these, we struggle to manage time for positive things like meditation. So, in this fast-paced world, how can we devote at least 15 to 20 minutes of our precious time, simply to meditating? Remember, like brushing and bathing, meditation too is an essential activity for your overall health. Initially, it might seem to be an uphill struggle, but with proper synchronization of time and regular practice, finding time to meditate will no more be a pain. If you seriously want to give some of your valuable time to meditation, start finding it today. Get up earlier than usual, as you never know what would work for you. If you are an evening person, dedicate a few minutes to meditation before you go to sleep. There is no particular time to meditate. Prioritize it at any time, when you are free, calm and at a relaxed state. If you can’t devote sometime every day to meditation, then consider becoming a weekend meditator. Usually, Saturdays and Sundays are not that hectic as the rest of the week and thus it is advisable to indulge yourself in meditation during the weekends.  You will still get benefited from these sessions. Meditation sessions allow you to step away from your busy life and cultivate your inner peace. A small action like re-arranging the schedules of the day can help you to find time to meditate. If you watch the TV news, skip it. If something important happens, it will certainly crop up again in the news channel. You can even ask your family or friends to brief you on the latest updates. I personally practice this habit of skipping the news and catch the important ones on the weekly news. If you have a television recorder, use it to skip the advertisements. This technique will save 15 minutes or more per hour of television you watch. Trust me, when you have the willpower, everything goes smoothly. So, never make an excuse of ‘running out of time’, but rather, find an appropriate time to sit down and close your eyes to meditate. Even if it’s only for a minute, it will do its job perfectly.    

A Tip - 2 Ways to Create Your Own Custom Subliminal

Messages

    A subliminal message is basically an affirmation for your mind, which can be visual or auditory presented below the normal limits of human auditory or visual perception. These suggestions are hidden or exposed for such a short period of time, that your mind may not consciously register them at that time. Instead they are listed in your subconscious. Subliminal messages can be either positive or negative. In this blog, I will discuss the 2 different ways through which you can create your own customized subliminal messages. The best way to prove that subliminal messages work is through a situation you have most likely already experienced. I am sure that you have been in a crowded room with many animated conversations happening all around you. Now, if someone calls out your name from amongst the crowd, you would still most likely be able to hear it, wouldn’t you? The first method I will discuss about is subliminal audios. The great thing about this method is that you can apply them anywhere and everywhere, unlike the other method I will tell you about next. These audios are usually accompanied with either binaural beats or very relaxing music. The messages are repeated so fast, that our conscious mind has no idea what it is suggesting. You can get pre-made and customized subliminal audios. This particular route to persuasion or influence is similar to auto-suggestion or hypnosis. The subject is encouraged to linger in a relaxed state of mind, so that suggestions can be directed to a deeper avenue, the subconscious. The other popular method requires flashing messages on your computer or movie screen. Here, the messages are repeated so fast that your conscious mind does not have time to even read them. You would have probably heard stories of the government and large companies using them in advertisements, etc. Today, you can acquire software which displays subliminal messages on your screen while you are working on it. You can choose and personalize the messages before they are even displayed. Recent studies indicate that subliminal messages, when displayed, reflects a person’s normal interpretations of stimuli. It’s about challenging your mind power. However, there is no concrete evidence to suggest that the viewer will initiate actions based on it.   You may want to check this also:

    Meditation naturally improves memory. No supplement, no

medical intervention, just meditation.

    Meditation is an ancient technique to relax your mind and body. It focuses on concentration and breathing exercises, through which stress can be released from our mind. Practicing it regularly, allows a person to be more receptive and open. Meditation can be beneficial to memory too. Studies say that when a person is relaxed, his memory improves. Few situations like forgetting your loved one’s birthday can encircle you with guilt. Mostly, this happens due to stress, but, the guilt in you starts feeding the cycle of forgetfulness by making you more anxious. As the anxiety grows, you start forgetting other things too. Practicing different meditation techniques, opens up your mind and allows your memory to function well. With gradual execution, your memory will improve, and you will be able to recall things like phone numbers, dates and names easily, without referring to phonebooks or calendars. Meditation is a great alternative to some very vigorous exercises and simple enough to perform on a daily basis. I would recommend you to take meditation classes along with some memory developing programs. This would boost your memory more. Primarily, to meditate, you need a quiet place and finally, the suitable mood and relaxation requires the use of candles and essential oils. It is a proven fact that essential oils are highly soothing and relaxing, and thus, can be beneficial for your memory. Nowadays, meditation classes are offered in gyms and natural wellness centres all over the country. You can find one near you, with a purpose to boost your memory. Apart from improving your retention power, meditation has other benefits too. With its regular implementation, it also helps to improve your self-esteem. If you don’t want to join a class, there are plenty of manuals, books and other equipment in the market, that can help you to start meditation at home. The simplest form of meditation that can be practiced at home is the breathing exercises performed with certain poses. Remember, when your mind is calm and relaxed, your memory will get enough room to grow. Everyone seek for a happy life living an ideal lifestyle and practicing a healthy lifestyle habits.  

Finally - Be Yourself

    Staying honest and true to yourself, looking at yourself clearly and letting people see the real you is the greatest reward you can give yourself. You are not limited in pleasing other people, in interacting how most people interact, you are unique in your own ways. There's nothing really wrong in trying to fit in, but its not always the best idea. You can be who you are so long as you don't hurt someone else. Obviously, people who are not pretentious are more happy.

Let me share some ugly truths about not being yourself, and I hope

it will make you realize to start being real.

  Listening to other people's voices over your own opinion and stand Making other people proud whatever it takes Being conscious of your actions worrying what other people will say about you Trying to fit in when you don't actually need to Losing your self-esteem and thinking less about yourself Your standard is not your own preference, but others   Do you think, you'll feel happy being that someone who isn't really you. Don't make yourself a prison of your own. Be free, from that point on you’re going to feel empowered, more in control of your life, more in control of your happiness and you feel a sense of trust with the world, trust in yourself, trust that you actually know what you’re doing. It feels wonderful to actually be able to live your life with that in mind.    

In the past, I always tried to please others and I am so

afraid of being judged. Here are some realization I learned

in my existence, hope you also realize it sooner than me.

  I am unique, I don't need to fake and pretend I could be like others who are more acceptable by our society or at least by those people around me.     I am happier, there's no pressure at all. Accept me for being me because I won't compromise my happiness just to please you. Sorry for being brutally honest, but that's how I feel. You can't love others, if you ain't loving yourself more. How can you give something you don't have, it's pretty simple right? Being true to yourself, is acting who you are and believing on what you know is right. Self Respect. When you respect yourself, others will respect your too. People will see how strong and that you can stand for yourself and in your beliefs.

How to be true? Try these list below, it worked for me.

Be genuine to yourself and you'll be perfectly fine in being genuine to others Take a firm stand on your value Be decisive, you can make decision on your own Appreciate your own potentials, your talents, your skills Remember that there's nothing wrong in being different Keep in mind that you are influencing people to be the better version of themselves   Now, don't be afraid to show the world the real you. It will make you happy and it will guide you to an amazing life experience.  

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[theclaravoyant]

Sparks - Ch.4 - [Simmorse]

Jemma Anne Simmons is a renowned writer. When one of her book readings is attacked, she is assigned a bodyguard - none other than Bobbi Morse, a real life former secret agent. It's a reluctant partnership at first... but not for long.

AN ~ this chapter is much fluffier than the last, a bit of bonding between our two leading ladies. Enjoy!

Read on AO3

Sparks - Ch. 4

After that initial hitch, Bobbi found her new position to be, in fact, quite satisfying. She ate better, slept better, and started walking a few miles every morning before meeting Jemma at a local gym. There, she did her stretches under Jemma’s watchful eye, and then added a few extra drills of her own accord and eventually, decided to teach Jemma some basic defensive moves.

“No one’s going to attack you with a knife, Jemma,” Bobbi scoffed.

“You don’t know that.”

Which was true. She didn’t. It couldn’t hurt to be prepared - and to be honest, it gave her an excuse to get closer to Jemma than she otherwise would, and she wasn’t about to say no to that.

Jemma, too, found the arrangement beneficial. Holding a grudge was a waste of time, especially when it had introduced her to someone like Bobbi. Bright, strong, and undeniably attractive, she sensed chemistry as well as brilliance. She wasn’t usually one for consequentialism, but in these circumstances the outcome did certainly help her move past the act. That, in turn, allowed her to shift her focus to the real problem that needed solving: rampant negative news. Now that she was no longer mad at Coulson (not that she intended to let Coulson know just how un-mad she had become) she could leverage him more effectively, and argue for the chance to speak for herself. Now that she had protection, as promised, he would have to let her try, right?

Apparently not.

Jemma groaned out loud, and shut her phone off. Bobbi smirked a little over her water bottle, at Jemma’s aggressively exasperated expression.

“What?” Bobbi prodded, a little teasing. “Coulson!” Jemma cried. Bobbi made a pantomime show of feigning surprise and Jemma rolled her eyes.

“He’s set me up some interviews,” she conceded, “but they’re all with fan media.”

“That’s important, though, right?” Bobbi pointed out. “Your fans would probably be the ones most hurt by the possibility that you supported… something like that.”

“True, I suppose. But these sites already like me. Most of that fanbase is loyal. It’s always nice to reassure them, of course, but it’s not going to make this go away. I need to face the critics head-on. Call a press conference or something and just say what I have to say, and let the pieces fall.”

She made a sweeping gesture. Bobbi frowned in sympathy, and Jemma sighed.

“It wouldn’t normally be a problem,” she acknowledged. “With the 24 hour news cycle there’s always some other drama happening someplace. Usually we’d just wait it out, but with the book only just beginning its publicity cycle, we can’t afford to go dark. We just also can’t afford to have me questioned as a potential animal-torturing psychopath in every interview from now ‘til eternity. I know Coulson thinks he’s doing what’s best by me, with this whole Ten Point Plan and what have you, but I think he sometimes tends to see me as this bushy-tailed young author - not as a top-tier forensic analyst who started writing on the side of sticking my hands into dead peoples’ chests on a daily basis. I can take it, you know?”

Bobbi nodded, as if she understood, although she hadn’t been seen as a bushy-tailed anything by anyone in a long time. If people made the mistake of underestimating her, they didn’t usually last long.

“And,” Jemma continued emphatically, “I think, if I say my piece, frankly and in front of the critics, I’ll have the high ground after that. All other speculation will be unavoidably tabloid trash. I can work with that. But people who use their hearts and minds to really feel, really mean it – who really care - thinking I did those things? That, I can’t bear… professionally or personally.”

“I know what you mean,” Bobbi agreed stiffly. She’d been hunted down and almost killed over an admittedly contentious decision. Maybe understanding why she’d done what she’d done wouldn’t have healed many souls, but she liked to think she wouldn’t have had her knee shot out if she’d had a chance to explain herself a little earlier in the game. Fortunately though, Jemma and Coulson clearly had a lot of love between them. Nobody was going to be bamboo-splinting anybody anytime soon. So Bobbi decided to keep her nose out of the politics of it and instead, help where she could.

“You know what you need?” she offered. “You gotta learn how to hit stuff.”

Bobbi set down her water bottle and beckoned for Jemma to follow. Curious – and undeniably excited, for all she’d insist otherwise – Jemma obliged, and followed Bobbi to the boxing ring at the back of the gym. She looked up at it, suddenly finding it somewhat daunting.

“I really don’t know about this,” she said.

“Trust me,” Bobbi insisted. “Hold out your hands.”

She showed Jemma how to wrap her hands, and demonstrated a few basic moves. Jemma repeated them back to her.

“Fast learner,” Bobbi praised with a smirk. Jemma blushed, and blurted:

“I graduated summa cum laude twice.”

She blushed harder at that, and in her embarrassment, almost didn’t notice the amusement in Bobbi’s eyes.

“And how many summa cum laudes do you know who can break a jaw with their right hook?”

Bobbi raised an eyebrow, and Jemma guessed.

“One?”

“Soon to be two, I’m sure,” Bobbi promised. “Now come on up here and let’s go again. Practice makes perfect.”

And so they carried on. Bobbi did not want to risk sparring just yet, as she still had to mind her knee, but over the next few days, Jemma took to hand-to-hand combat like a fish to water. Bobbi was struggling to think of challenges she could teach and match properly with her knee as it was when one morning, late – as if that was not unusual enough – a tiny hurricane that vaguely resembled one Jemma Anne Simmons fumed into the ring.

Bobbi swung up after her, and though she gritted her teeth at the uncomfortable angle, she took a moment of pride in the fact that her knee held and she could raise herself to standing without reaching for the ropes. Then, she snapped her attention back to Jemma and raised the mitts. Jemma unleashed a flurry of fists at them, and even threw in a roundhouse kick – though admittedly not her neatest one – before finally settling to catch her breath.

“Rough morning?” Bobbi speculated. Jemma rolled her eyes.

“Apparently,” she explained, her voice crisp and over-enunciated, despite her heaving shoulders. “I’m ‘aloof’ and ‘out of touch’ for hiring a bodyguard. ‘Who does Jemma Simmons think she is?’ seems to be the trend. Started with one rag article and now Twitter’s got a hold of it.”

“Ouch.”

Jemma punched it out for a few more reps, and then added sardonically:

“At least book sales are up. It seems, amongst all this mudslinging, people are getting curious.”

Bobbi smirked, feeling a swell of pride.

“Yeah, well, I’m sure with all these new combat skills the amazing Agent Carter is picking up, the curiosity will only continue to rise,” she suggested, cajoling Jemma with a brag in her tone. She eyed Jemma’s gloves, and Jemma blushed and shrugged her off abashedly.

“Oh, no, she has Agent Bennet for that,” Jemma protested, unconvincing. “Skye is the muscle of the team. Carter is primarily the brains.”

Bobbi shrugged.

“Doesn’t mean she can’t pick up a few things.”

“That would make an interesting development arc,” Jemma admitted. Bobbi tried not to grin too much as she inched toward victory… and toward Jemma.

“Plus, I mean, somebody has to kick Aida’s robot ass into the nth dimension in the sequel, right?” Bobbi suggested. “And that somebody has got to be Carter. Surely.”

Jemma snorted. She was pressed up against the ropes now, both literally and figuratively, and her face was starting to feel hot. Bobbi was unflappable, and beaming with enthusiasm. Jemma’s heart leapt wildly in her chest, but she kept smiling.

“I take offense at your assumption that being primarily the brains means not kicking robot ass,” she objected, and both of them snickered a little at her vulgarity. “I’ll have you know I was planning a bomb or a trap or… something. I haven’t quite got to that part yet.”

“Oh, sure, that would be very exciting,” Bobbi agreed. “But wouldn’t it be satisfying to have Carter just sucker punch that bitch?”

Jemma scoffed, practicality and protectiveness of her story winning for a moment over the dizzying feeling of her pounding heart and the enchanting sparkle in Bobbi’s eyes.

“She’s an evil killer robot, Bobbi,” Jemma insisted. “She’s not going to bat an eyelid at a punch in the face.”

“Shoot her then!” Bobbi cried. “No, I’m serious, imagine it! Aida thinks she’s got them cornered, and so do we - like, the reader’s all ‘oh no, what are we going to do?’ – and Carter marches into the room all Cool Girls Don’t Look At Explosions and just BOOM BOOM BOOM. Shoots her. Straight in the stomach. Or the head, or wherever, you’re the writer.”

“But I’ve already established –“

“I know!” Bobbi pointed out, raising a finger. “I wasn’t done. Because by this point your crazy fans are probably thinking exactly the same thing like, what the hell is Carter doing? ‘We all know Aida’s bulletproof, it said so on page 12 of book 1!’ And so then Aida turns to her like ‘muah ha ha, puny mortal, I am an evil killer robot! Resistance is futile! Your very fast steel means nothing to me!’ and Carter’s already got her trap in motion, see, but Aida doesn’t know that, but Carter does – obviously - so then she gets to say something cool and one-liner-y like: I know, I just always wanted to do that.”

Jemma’s fingers tightened around the ropes as Bobbi acted out the theatrics going on inside her own head. Her confidence and bravado were alluring enough, let alone her pose; an imaginary gun on her hip and a smouldering glare in her eyes, biceps flexed. On top of that, the idea that someone as tall and smart and sexy as Bobbi was playing a character that Jemma had based on herself… well, that was just a dream come true. More than one type of dream, probably.

She blinked like a deer in the headlights, and Bobbi smiled at her. It was a soft, sincerely amused smile, and Jemma was sure she’d been caught out as Bobbi dropped her pose and stepped in closer.

Closer.  

Jemma’s breath hitched and her eyes fluttered closed and she imagined, just for a second, that Bobbi had closed the distance between them.

She hadn’t.

And the music in Jemma’s ears was her phone, buzzing away in her bag on the floor nearby. She bit her lip and hung her head, and she felt like saying of course that happens now, but instead she said;

“I should… get that.”

[manualarticlespinning]

The Considerable Benefits of Top Quality Manual Article Spinning

Lots of people who know how web content works will also grasp that duplicate content is a greater or lesser evil that needs to invariably be averted wherever practical: it's never wise to just copy another person's work to another location. Copied content is proscribed to the point of having with it legal penalties, and among professional web writers it brings a major stain. As a writer as well I will go to substantial lengths in order to keep clear of having duplicate content personally, at times - and this is the paradox - to the extent of actually making use of a software package to help me achieve this!

Furthermore, there is a powerful consensus that Google will likely penalise duplicated content to the extent that it will downgrade or devalue website pages which contain content that it is aware is located elsewhere from a previous date and time, or else pull your web page from cyberspace entirely.

Among the many undisputed tenets of inventive thinking is the fact that there is simply no copyright concerning ideas. It is always appreciated that the same idea could be conveyed in numerous diverse ways, to the point that this is appreciated in the law, which safeguards creative work from getting replicated when written with precisely the same words.

Accordingly, to what degree is a rewritten article plagiarism, and just how is this to be prevented?

Often I'm invited by to rewrite pre-existing subject matter, as they have come across articles they like but they understand that you can’t simply copy someone else’s work.

Every now and then people ask me to "spin" articles, even though what they really mean is that they want me to rewrite the content. And now and again clients want me to rewrite some content over and over again even though manual spinning would prove the clearest and most economic approach. The thing is that here is plenty of genuine bafflement regarding the distinction between rewriting and spinning.

Article spinning and article rewriting are not the same, either when considering methodology or with regard to final results attained. Moreover, they are often very different in in terms of how much they cost, which needs to be a crucial thing to consider for all who want such work completed. See a detailed description of the top of the range spinning solution that I am able to supply at this website.

And it undoubtedly does not help matters that one major article spinning software application brands itself a rewriter when it is, very clearly, a spinner.

From the practical point of view, article spinning can be undertaken when you wish a similar notion recreated as varied unique documents and shown in a number of (potentially hundreds) totally different websites across the web. It might be especially practical in SEO, in which the point is to obtain a large amount of good quality backlinks from a reliable diversity of sites, back to your own site.

There are certainly a large number of websites that could perhaps support your own exclusive material, every one created by spinning. This tactic would likely lead to lots of people reading this on their Web 2.0 site of choice and then possibly following the link (physically, as a person) straight back to your site. It might also mean an increase in positioning of your site as a direct consequence of the hyperlinks from all the different sites pointing to your own website or blog, through a wider SEO methodology.

It ought to be remembered that this type of approach is almost certainly "grey hat" and that any linking system that uses this Web 2.0 element will need to at the same time accommodate back-links made by other means, and hopefully a healthy and balanced diversity from other means.

Spinning sets the original content into an article spinning software application, then splits each one of the portion of your content up into much smaller components, and subsequently replaces each one of them for a synonym or paraphrased phraseology; this may be achieved at the hierarchy of the word, the phrase, the clause, the entire sentence and finally each paragraph. When all those different versions are exercised together, the outcome is a distinctive and unique document which would clear Copyscape (the definitive judge of originality in the Internet Age) and so relieve you of any allegations of plagiarism.

Article spinning must always be a manual techniques, and the individual undertaking it will need to not only be a native speaker, but additionally be highly attuned to the nuances of the language, and alive to the smallest dissonance that the process has an inclination to deliver even when it's carried out really well. This is because the end result must read as if it was newly penned by a human writer.

If anyone was foolish enough to hire someone who was not a native English speaker to carry out the spinning, or if this individual did not have a sufficiently analytical and tidy brain which was up to the project, then they should expect the outcome to be unreadable trash – exactly that and nothing else. They should also expect this rubbish to have a very toxic influence on their image. And what’s more they would deserve it!

Precisely what makes an outstanding spun piece of writing is certainly not the software application but the particular person undertaking the spinning as a profession. The application is the necessary environment, able to organizing and comprehending spun syntax, or spintax (or "spyntax") then able to output hundreds of articles from that "seed" document, usually substituting the alternative words and phrases in a random manner (while some spinner software applications enable you to spin every nth variation).

But that is all the software can do. Please do not believe statements that these spinners, endowed by using artificial intelligence (AI), can easily deliver many hundreds of totally readable documents using a crafty algorithm, as though every single one had been written by a capable individual; that occurrence is a full age bracket off at the very least. These types of boasts are undoubtedly phony, and are as nonsensical as the rubbish they constantly produce, as the despair of anyone who is persuaded by them should confirm.

The English language isn't simply something to be reverse-engineered by an algorithmic protocol. However smart the individuals who designed it, it can never perform the function that it claims. It may provide, to give an example, the one article which turned out adequate, but it will keep hidden the remaining 999 documents that came out drastically wrong.

The spinning procedure, in theory, performs perfectly on all occasions, though it is only likely in the hands of a competent and experienced individual. It is important to carefully concentrate on every single step of the entire task. Three years’ practical experience might be the bare minimum necessary. You have to have made all the mistakes and recognised them so that they are not caused just as before.

Especially, make sure that you fully grasp that a synonym is an extremely duplicitous actor. You trust them at your peril. A classic illustration of this booby trap had been in the demo video recording from the developers of a very early release of SENuke, during which the video's narrator was revealing how their built-in spinner was wonderful at making word substitutions, and opted for the string of words "Shoes are worn on the feet" to show this. Very quickly, he became entangled in the trap of dealing with a replacement of "worn" with the definition of "old and dirty", demonstrating completely the problem that content spinning carries with it if you lose concentration for a second or used in its automatic mode.

Content spinning is incredibly time-intensive when it's done correctly: each and every word and clause should be kept in your mind along with each of its conceivable contexts if it's to be implemented successfully and without horrifying mistakes of all descriptions. Right after a three hour article spinning period your mind is itself spinning and buzzing. And then you check and realise that you’ve just compiled three or four paragraphs!

This is exactly why it is comparatively expensive, in comparison with rewriting. With content spinning, each individual word will need to be thought about systematically. With rewriting, you need to simply recompose the information. But with rewriting you just get one fresh document; whereas with article spinning you might get several hundred of professionally-written content, on condition that a true professional carries it out.

If you only want one version of another article on your website then you should seek a rewrite. You mustn't request this article to be spun. (What could be the point?) In a similar way, if you require a hundred or so completely different and completely readable articles you will not wish to pay for every one of these to be rewritten one at a time: only then is article spinning your best solution, for reasons of economy, if nothing else.

Consequently, article spinning is only able to be validated financially in the instance that the project results in lots of exceptional content pieces, so the cost of each and every piece of content results in being relatively very inexpensive. Provided this is the case, and if the proficiency of the professional creating this is impressive enough, then that is when wonderful things really come to pass. Superbly written articles which read just as if they’d recently been penned newly by a talented copywriter can be produced, each perfectly produced, with each one unique, for just a modest amount of cash.

You should just seek out skillful professionals to carry out these things. The high quality or standard ought not to be in any doubt: it ought to be presumed that the quality should be awesome. Your only factor to consider in choosing one over the other should be the cost per article. Rewriting a 2,000 word article post will cost perhaps (for example) $80. Then you would have just one article which you could call your own for $80. Spinning a two thousand word document would cost you (for example) $250. And yet at the end of the whole project you will own five hundred entirely unique content articles coming in at just fifty cents each! Go figure.

Furthermore from an SEO and promotional view, that will be remarkably significant.

So content and content rewriting happen to be a pair of totally unique and distinct skills. At times the same person will have both those abilities, although usually they will not. You should not expect somebody who is an author, or a rewriter, to be able to spin; neither should you assume an established spinner to have the ability to rewrite content pages, though that will be much more likely as compared to the other way round.

Only a small number of people can correctly rewrite articles and other content, and a miniscule number of people know how to spin articles or blog posts to a level that is even good enough. In the end, the customer only has themselves accountable if they call for one when they essentially need the other, and if they engage an inappropriate individual to accomplish it.

By the way, the above content was written by using my high quality manual spinning technique (and additionally a couple of my own procedures no one else knows about). Pretty good, wouldn't you agree?

For more information about the best content spinning service on the Internet, see https://www.quality-manual-article-spinning.inteltab.com/

[mrtroy]

Little Things Revisited: Embracing the Sweat Stains

This week marks the five-year anniversary of publishing my book, Little Things in a Big Sky. I’ve finally started to go back and read it for the first time! Ha. It’s been really interesting to reflect on that time in my life and read through what I was thinking, how I thought about things in general, and to notice changes in how I think now, and also in how I write now.

When I say I’m reading the book for the first time, that refers to reading it after the editing process ended. When I was working back and forth with the editor, I would of course read what I wrote and make comments on what I was okay with changing and what I wasn’t. But, since the book has been finished I’ve never actually read it. Hopefully after five years, I’m finally ready to do so!

The process of writing a book – especially the way I did it – is mentally taxing. Being that Little Things is a collection of short stories, I essentially wrote one story a day for about 60 days in a row. Most of the stories are around a thousand words in length, so I wrote 60,000 words in 60 days. Most days I would write and re-write that day’s story and then outline, or at least jot down some ideas for what I thought I might write the next day. After those 60 days were up and I felt like I had a good solid core for the book, I edited it back and forth with the editor for about three straight weeks – roughly 2-3 hours each night.

By the time the whole process was complete, I was fried. I was doing this after work each night, and I remember most nights falling asleep in what seemed like seconds after my head hit the pillow.

By the time the jacket artwork was done and everything was worked out with the publishing platform, truthfully, I really had no energy left to actually read the book.

As I started to get feedback from those who had actually read it, it made things even harder. Objectively, the book isn’t all that great, and most of the feedback was nice, but there were twinges of honesty in people’s well-intended critiques. I respect that – and actually prefer it that way – but it didn’t make it any easier to want to go back and read my work.

So now, I finally am, and I’m going to react to it here.

--

In my efforts to read Little Things for the first time, I pulled up my original source file from when I wrote it. Because of the way I wrote it – daily, when time allowed – the original source file is actually a Google Doc. I did it this way so I could write on the go. On my phone if I wanted to take a note, or even on other machines when I traveled. It worked well.

For some reason when I saved the final, final Google Doc, I saved it in reverse order to how it appeared in the book. The last page was first and the first page was last. I have no idea how I did this, and don’t consciously remember doing it, but as I opened the file for the first time since December of 2013, there was the last section of the book on page one of the doc. Strage, but true, apparently.

Five years is a strange amount of time to go back and reflect on writing. I write a fair amount, and do so in a fair amount of formats. I’ve started writing three other books since publishing this one, and between three those three have about 80,000 more words of ‘other book content.’ The point here: As I read my words from 2013, I knew they were mine – they definitely sound like me – but I only vaguely remember writing them.

Here’s the last story from Little Things in a Big Sky:

Embracing the Sweat Stains - 11/15/13

I’ve been thinking for about a week about how I want to end this book. The rest of the book has been written on successive days - the Afterward will explain that - but when it came time to write the last story, I needed some time.

I’m not always one who waits before I express my feelings and in many instances that hasn’t always worked in my favor. In the moment, it’s easy to say something that isn’t necessarily that well thought out.

But at the same time, if I think about things too long I over analyze them to the Nth degree.

So, in many ways, this process has been an evolution and a compromise. Writing every day, but not publishing or sharing any of it for months. By the time anyone reads these words, it will have been three months since I started writing. While that might not seem like a long time to you - and in terms of publishing a book it’s no time at all - to me, that may as well be an eternity.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed about myself during this process is how much I have grown to love sweat stains.

Yes, you read that correctly. I have really grown to love sweat stains.

Let me explain.

The groundwork for this love was laid when my brother was in middle school track and field. Loosely speaking, he ‘ran’ track, and his event was the hurdles if I remember correctly. I admired my brother for joining the track team. He is three years younger than me, but in many ways has always been an inspiration to me

For a long time, I’ve had a fear of getting involved in activities. For whatever reason, I have a hard time ‘just going for it.’ I think it’s probably due to over analyzing things and being worried about a negative outcome, rather than expecting a positive one. I’m working on that now, but back when my brother was in middle school the thought of my joining a sport or activity I had no previous experience in was as foreign as could possibly be.

I was so proud of him for joining track and I gave him even more credit because he was so, so bad at it. We’ve laughed about it since then and he excitedly reminds me that he beat a kid once. He’s not referring to a match race, or a rival, or anything like that. All that means is that one time, in one race, he finished ahead of one kid.

It was after a feat like this that he was able to proudly wear his track team shirt. I love shirts like that. On the front they have the school name and which sport you’re associated with and on the back is some team slogan or team saying. We’ve also laughed in the present day about the fact that this middle school track shirt’s slogan was ‘Pain is temporary. Pride lasts forever!’

The hilarity of these words is never lost on us. Of course the Madison Jr. High track team didn’t come up with these words. I’m sure they’ve been used for generations to inspire world-class athletes to train and compete at the highest level.

The fact that my brother - many things, but not a world-class athlete - owned a shirt with this saying on it is just too funny.

As someone whose reluctance to try things kept me from joining many teams, I have always thought these shirts were so cool. More than anything in the world, I wanted a shirt with a cool slogan on it.

I was in high school at the time my brother was running track and I remember that one of our teams had a shirt that said ‘Sweat is Pain Leaving the Body.’

I don’t remember which team it was, and the overly cliche-ish nature of the statement insures that it could have been just about any team. Heck, I’m sure the debate team could have sweat quite a bit outlining some very painful point-counterpoint arguments…

I remember seeing this shirt and wondering how it applied to me. Despite being decently athletic and having been active most of my life, I never really sweat.

I caddied for ten summers in the sweltering Chicago heat and despite nearly passing out from heat exhaustion on Men’s Guest Day in 2000, I barely sweat at all.

To me, sweating was something that old men did.

That day in 2000 when I almost fainted, I was caddying for Tom Garvin. Tom was the former CEO of Keebler and if the man knew anything better than making cookies and biscuits, it was sweating. Actually, he was a huge fan of track and field as well, come to think of it...

The more I caddied, the more I noticed that old man sweat is super gross. I’ll never forget caddying for a man named Wil Gillet who very politely asked me to loop a washcloth around my front left belt loop. I was fourteen at the time and didn’t think much of it. I did as I was told and tried not to lose his golf ball in the tall grass.

About twenty five times during that particular round of golf, Mr. Gillet asked me for the wash cloth. He’d wipe his brow, his face and his neck and then he’d hand me back the washcloth to store in my belt loop.

By the end of the round Mr. Gillet had sweat completely through his golf shirt and his shorts. What started as little dabs of sweat underneath his nipples connected with an ever-expanding circular pool of sweat that started at his belly button. The lower back sweat then made its way around his hips and connected to form a salty suit of armor that may have been able to repel an entire Roman Army.

But it didn’t repel me. I faithfully stood by his right hip and he grabbed for the washcloth on my left hip. Walking down the eighteenth fairway I started to look to my right to see what time the old clubhouse clock said it was. The clock was rarely right, but I was still too young to know that yet.

I never got to read what time it was because Mr. Gillet needed his sweat rag.

“Hey, boy!” he said. Old man golfers often referred to their caddies in this way. Trying to remember the name of one hundred caddies is much harder than remembering, ‘Boy,’ so I was often just ‘Boy’ or ‘Sport’ or ‘Pal.’ This may sound disrespectful, but it rarely was. For his part, Mr. Gillet was one of the kindest men at the club and someone that I would enjoy getting to know over the coming years.

What I did not enjoy was his final request for his washcloth.

“Let me get that rag one more time,” he said.

He was a few yards away and up the fairway a bit, but he wasn’t walking back towards me. So, to my horror, I had to toss him the washcloth.

Right before you toss a washcloth, you have to grab it a little bit more tightly so that it doesn’t fly out of your hand as you swing your arm back to execute the throw. In this case, doing so caused sweat to come pouring out as my strengthened grip wrang the cotton fibers to the point where the cloth could no longer contain all the electrolytes the old man had lost.

I almost puked, but Mr. Gillet was thankful.

“Thank you, son” he said. “It sure has been a hot one out here today!”

Yes, yes it had and I was ready for it to be over. What I wasn’t ready for was the washcloth, as it came hurling back my way from up the fairway. Mr. Gillet had tossed it back to me and in my state of unawareness it had landed on my left arm and was slowly sliding towards my left hand. My own saliva curdled in the back of my throat.

I let the rag sort of just settle on my hip and then I picked it up like an investigator might pick up an exhibit of evidence from a crime scene and put it on Mr. Gillet’s golf bag. This round was over. I wasn’t going to be needing it anymore.

So to say I was glad that I wasn’t much of a sweater growing up would be an understatement.

I’d see people at the gym and out running and they’d be sweating profusely. I never thought much of it. I was thankful I wasn’t a sweaty person, but figured it was just good genes or something.

And then it happened.

I started to sweat. A lot. I’m not sure exactly when it started, but it did and it was a problem.

All the sudden all my undershirts were heavily stained yellowish brown, even in the neckline area. Really, I thought to myself, my neck is that sweaty that it stains through my shirts?

I haven’t changed deodorants. I haven’t changed my diet. I haven’t gained a lot of weight. But nonetheless, I’ve turned into a sweaty mess. It’s rather off putting.

It culminated this week.

I’ve been noticing lately that I’ve been working out with my t-shirts tucked into my sweatpants. I swore I’d never be that guy, but it’s as if all the sudden I’m this middle-aged dork that can’t help himself. I never recall tucking my shirt in, but it always seems to happen.

The tucked in shirt keeps the fabric in much tighter order than if left untucked and thus sweat collects in the same concentrated areas.

You can see where this is going.

I now get nipple spots like Mr. Gillet. And belly button pools. And the little trail that connects the two. I came back from a run the other night and I could barely look at myself.

My shirt was dorkily tucked into my pants, which were hiked up unnecessarily high above my hips. The pool of sweat that had formed around my belly button kind of looked like the state of West Virginia and I could feel a small amount of sweat accumulation up near my collar bones. My hair was actually dripping with sweat and my glasses were so filthy I probably could have used a pressure washer to get them clean.

The next night, while coaching basketball practice, the same thing happened. I was running with the kids doing a defensive drill and I just started to gush sweat. I looked down at my light blue shirt and saw that it was drenched through.

At first, I was embarrassed. This type of thing happens all the time in gyms, but never to me, so I didn’t know what to do.

I felt self-conscious as I quickly hurried to put my jacket on. I walked to my car carrying my basketball and my whistle. The cool air on my moist neck made me uncomfortably cold, but a strange feeling began to come over me.

Two minutes later I sat in my car. Sobbing. To add to my sweaty mess I was piling tear after tear onto my blue shirt.

These were not painful tears, though. These were tears of joy. I looked down at my sweat-stained shirt. It was gross. I was so gross it was almost intolerable.

Our team colors for the basketball team are light blue and white. As I looked down at the light blue shirt I was wearing everything came full circle.

All of those teams I’d been afraid to join; all of the pain and uncertainty that I unnecessarily infused into the situations that led to my refusal to try; all of that came pouring out that night.

Not only was I a part of a team, I was a coach of that team. A kid even called me ‘Coach Troy’ that night.

I remembered back to a conversation I had had with my brother a few weeks earlier. He coaches high school soccer and his kids also call him ‘Coach Troy.’

This thought brought more tears to my eyes. I hadn’t told him, but his coaching soccer was what had finally put me over the hump to coach basketball. My little brother. That same one who could barely clear a hurdle on the middle school track team was that last piece of inspiration I needed to finally conquer a fear that had haunted me for so long.

I looked down at my sweaty light blue shirt. I smiled through my tears and realized what I had just learned.

Sweat IS Pain Leaving the Body.

As I read this now for the first time in full, I cringe a little – what was I thinking with such vivid description of sweat?? And did I really reveal the name of the sweaty golfer in the book?? – but in general, I feel okay about it.

It’s me.

It’s goofy. It’s a little odd. It’s all over the place in terms of jumping back and forth between past and present tense, but in this moment, I like it.

There are certain parts of the story where I can see myself trying to show off a bit – using unnecessary strings of descriptors and superlatives. I used to do this a lot – especially after I had just learned a new word, or if I had read something where another author featured the word prominently.

Also as I read it now, I realize how much fatigue I must have been experiencing at the time. This was the last story in a long string of stories, and the ending seems very abrupt. Here I was ending the book, and it’s as if the story just ends without warning. I wish I would have closed a little bit more eloquently, but hey, what ya gonna do? I was so focused on wrapping it up and getting it edited and published, I probably rushed through the story itself.

I really like the sweat stains analogy, though, even if it’s hard to actually read through the descriptions. 

At the time of writing the book, I was in the process of trying to get over a relationship that had just gone bad. Mentally and emotionally, I was hurting. The book was my release. My refuge. A reason to look forward to the day and be excited.

Sweat really was necessary to do the hard mental work of processing my thoughts, and trying to learn from some of the mistakes I had made in the relationship.

It’s also fun to look back and see that my admiration for my brother still remains today. Earlier this year, even without recalling the story from the book, I wrote a letter to my brother that hit on a lot of the same themes. Believe it or not, he’s still three years younger, and I’m still looking up to the way he attacks his life!

I’m thankful to be able to go back to this writing to have a snapshot into my life from five years ago that isn’t just a picture, or a video. Writing exposes a lot of what’s on your heart, and it’s cool to see such a large sample of it here.

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever go back and read these stories, but I’m definitely glad that I am. And that I’m enjoying them -

One final note: I can’t help but think back on my buddy, James ‘Mav’ Sudeikis as I revisit Little Things. Mav tragically lost his life this fall, and his legacy will always live on in the cover of this book. He worked tirelessly to shoot the jacket photography for me, and then format the dust jacket to fit around the hardcover of the book. He was so proud of this piece of his work, and I was so overjoyed with how well it came out. He was living in Illinois and I was living in Nashville while I was writing the book. He and I had to communicate electronically and over the phone to make things happen. He called me time and time again to see if I liked certain design ideas, or to discuss which pictures worked best to span both the front and back cover. He could tell at one point that I wasn’t liking any of the photography options he was presenting, so without me having to ask, he went back out to the shoot location and got more shots to consider. Quickly into his second batch of shots, he absolutely nailed the cover, and that’s the final art you see in the image at the top of this post. Revisiting the artwork reminds me of all the different kinds of help and support required to complete a project like this. I’m forever grateful to my editor, Rob Bignell and Mav for their help. Maver, I miss you, buddy. Five years later, and that cover still looks fresh as ever <3

[dareread]

Skin in the Game is necessary to reduce the effects of the following divergences that arose mainly as a side effect of civilization: action and cheap talk (tawk), consequence and intention, practice and theory, honor and reputation, expertise and pseudoexpertise, concrete and abstract, ethical and legal, genuine and cosmetic, entrepreneur and bureaucrat, entrepreneur and chief executive, strength and display, love and gold-digging, Coventry and Brussels, Omaha and Washington, D.C., economists and human beings, authors and editors, scholarship and academia, democracy and governance, science and scientism, politics and politicians, love and money, the spirit and the letter, Cato the Elder and Barack Obama, quality and advertising, commitment and signaling, and, centrally, collective and individual.

But, to this author, is mostly about justice, honor, and sacrifice as something existential for humans.

Let us first connect a few dots of items the list above.

Antaeus Whacked

Antaeus was a giant, rather semi-giant of sorts, the literal son of Mother Earth, Gaea, and Poseidon the god of the sea. He had a strange occupation, which consisted of forcing passersby in his country, (Greek) Libya, to wrestle; his trick was to pin his victims to the ground and crush them. This macabre hobby was apparently the expression of filial devotion; Antaeus aimed at building a temple for his father Poseidon, using for material the skulls of his victims.

Antaeus was deemed to be invincible; but there was a trick. He derived his strength from contact with his mother, earth. Physically separated from contact with earth, he lost all his powers. Hercules, as part of his twelve labors (actually in one, not all variations), had for homework to whack Antaeus. He managed to lift him off the ground and terminated him by crushing him as his feet remained out of contact with his mamma.

What we retain from this first vignette is that, like Antaeus, you cannot separate knowledge from contact with the ground. Actually, you cannot separate anything from contact with the ground. And the contact with the real world is done via skin in the game –have an exposure to the real world, and pay a price for its consequences, good or bad. The abrasions of your skin guide your learning and discovery, a mechanism of organic signaling, what the Greeks called pathemata mathemata (guide your learning through pain, something mothers of young children know rather well). Most things that we believe were “invented” by universities were actually discovered by tinkering and later legitimized by some type of formalization. I have shown in Antifragile how the knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something universities have been very busy hiding from us.

Libya After Antaeus

Second vignette. As I am writing these lines, a few thousand years later, Libya, the putative land of Antaeus now has a slave market, as a result of a failed attempt of what is called a “regime change” in order to “remove a dictator”.

A collection of people classified as interventionists (t0 name names, Bill Kristol, Thomas Friedman, and others) who promoted of the Iraq invasion of 2003, as well as the removal of the Libyan leader, are advocating the imposition of additional such regime change on another batch of countries, which includes Syria, because “it has a dictator”.

These interventionistas and their friends in the U.S. State Department helped create, train, and support, Islamist rebels, then “moderates”, but who eventually evolved to become part of Al-Qaeda, the same Al-Qaeda that blew up the New York City towers during the events of Sep 11 2001. They mysteriously failed to remember that Al-Qaeda itself was composed of “moderate rebels” created (or reared) by the U.S. to help fight Soviet Russia because, as we will see, these educated people’s reasoning doesn’t entail such recursions.

So we tried that thing called regime change in Iraq, and failed miserably. We tried it in Libya, and now there are now active slave markets in the place. But we satisfied the objective of “removing a dictator”. By the exact same reasoning, a doctor would inject a patient with “moderate” cancer cells “to improve his cholesterol numbers”, and claim victory after the patient is dead, particularly if the post-mortem shows remarkable cholesterol readings. But we know that doctors don’t do that, or, don’t do it in such a crude format, and that there is a clear reason for it. Doctors usually have some skin in the game.

And don’t give up on logic, intellect and education, because a tight but higher order logical reasoning would show that the logic of advocating regime changes implies also advocating slavery. So these interventionistas not only lack practical sense, and never learn from history, but they even make mistakes at the pure reasoning level, which they drown in some form of semi-abstract discourse.

Their three flaws: 1) They think in statics not dynamics, 2) they think in low, not high dimensions, 3) they think in actions, never interactions.

The first flaw is that they are incapable in thinking in second steps and unaware of the need for it –and about every peasant in Mongolia, every waiter in Madrid, and every car service operator in San Francisco knows that real life happens to have second, third, fourth, nth steps. The second flaw is that they are also incapable of distinguishing between multidimensional problems and their single dimensional representations –like multidimensional health and its stripped, cholesterol-reading reduced representation. They can’t get the idea that, empirically, complex systems do not have obvious one dimensional cause and effects mechanisms, and that under opacity, you do not mess with such a system. An extension of this defect: they compare the actions of the “dictator” to the prime minister of Norway or Sweden, not to those of the local alternative. The third flaw is that they can’t forecast the evolution of those one helps by attacking.

And when a blow up happens, they invoke uncertainty, something called a Black Swan, after some book by a (very) stubborn fellow, not realizing that one should not mess with a system if the results are fraught with uncertainty, or, more generally, avoid engaging in an action if you have no idea of the outcomes. Imagine people with similar mental handicaps, who don’t understand asymmetry, piloting planes. Incompetent pilots, those who cannot learn from experience, or don’t mind taking risks they don’t understand, may kill many, but they will themselves end up at the bottom of, say, the Atlantic, and cease to represent a threat to others and mankind.

So we end up populating what we call the intelligentsia with people who are delusional, literally mentally deranged, simply because they never have to pay for the consequences of their actions, repeating modernist slogans stripped of all depth. In general, when you hear someone invoking abstract modernistic notions, you can assume that they got some education (but not enough, or in the wrong discipline) and too little accountability.

Now some innocent people, Yazidis, Christian minorities, Syrians, Iraqis, and Libyans had to pay a price for the mistakes of these interventionistas currently sitting in their comfortable air-conditioned offices. This, we will see, violates the very notion of justice from its pre-biblical, Babylonian inception. As well as the ethical structure of humanity.

Not only the principle of healers is first do no harm (primum non nocere), but, we will argue: those who don’t take risks should never be involved in making decisions.

This idea is weaved into history: all warlords and warmongers were warriors themselves and, with few exceptions societies were run by risk takers not risk transferors. They took risks –more risks than ordinary citizens. Julian the Apostate, the hero of many, died on the battlefield fighting in the never-ending war on the Persian frontier. One of predecessors, Valerian, after he was captured was said to have been used as a human footstool by the Persian Shahpur when mounting his horse. Less than a third of Roman emperors died in their bed –and one can argue that, had they lived longer, they would have fallen prey to either a coup or a battlefield.

And, one may ask, what can we do since a centralized system will necessarily need people who are not directly exposed to the cost of errors? Well, we have no choice, but decentralize; have fewer of these. But not to worry, if we don’t do it, it will be done by itself, the hard way: a system that doesn’t have a mechanism of skin in the game will eventually blow up and fix itself that way. We will see numerous such examples.

For instance, bank blowups came in 2008 because of the hidden risks in the system: bankers could make steady bonuses from a certain class of concealed explosive risks, use academic risk models that don’t work (because academics know practically nothing about risk), then invoke uncertainty after a blowup, some unseen and unforecastable Black Swan, and keep past bonuses, what I have called the Bob Rubin trade. Robert Rubin collected one hundred million dollar in bonuses from Citibank, but when the latter was rescued by the taxpayer, he didn’t write any check. The good news is that in spite of the efforts of a complicit Obama administration that wanted to protect the game and the rent-seeking of bankers, the risk-taking business moved away to hedge funds. The move took place because of the overbureaucratization of the system. In the hedge fund space, owners have at least half of their net worth in the funds, making them more exposed than any of their customers, and they personally go down with the ship.

The interventionistas case is central to our story because it shows how absence of skin in the game has both ethical and epistemological effects (i.e., related to knowledge). Interventionistas don’t learn because they are not the victims to their mistakes. Interventionistas don’t learn because they are not the victims of their mistakes, and, as we saw with pathemata mathemata:

The same mechanism of transferring risk also impedes learning.

[evybeibei-blog]

Storyboard Feedback

Rough Storyboard Feedback:

Feedback Summary of Evy's Rough Storyboard

by Jejomaila Garcia - Saturday, 1 October 2016, 2:23 AM

(Hi Evy, I apologize as I wasn't able to clearly capt a few parts of some the points brought up during class, but am hoping a majority of the notes will have enough clarity to them.)

Tia:

- Sugg. 1: Perhaps show a split screen to illustrate how the doctors' acts are directly linked to the action that is taking place in the world of the illness. (ex: when the doctors use the defibrillator in the real world; in parallel, it causes the earthquake in the illness world. Connecting visuals and sounds)

- Sugg. 2: When the doctors puts a mask on the boy, maybe utilize a dissolve rather than a cut?

Narges:

- Had mentioned something about the reaction of Japanese animation characters that go “Aaaaah!!!!”, but where they don't move much while reacting in this way.

Luigi: “For the evil version of the boy, maybe the boy has to do something different to defeat the monster.”

* * * * *

Jejo // Thoughts and comments:

Visuals that create Connections? When I was contemplating the back-and-forths between the two worlds in your storyboard, I felt a heavy disconnect in their relation to each other. As both worlds are closely intertwined, like Tia, I thought it could definitely help to clarify their connection by providing us with more visual or aural clues and as we go forth from one world to the other and back again. : )

I do have a question though before I continue--

Maybe I missed hearing this point in your presentation, but I am wondering what your character's illness is?

The reason behind my question is because I don't seem to remember elements in the visuals of the Sickness World that helped to clue me in or establish clearly what Ming's sickness is. I'm thinking that if Ming's sickness is clarified, this could possibly help with how the big monster he is fighting against can look like (I am not very knowledgeable with different sicknesses and what they entail, but i.e.: could he be fighting against a sickness that deals with blood cells? With the brain? With the bones? With the nerves?, ... ), as well as with the final look and atmosphere of the Sickness World. Maybe the Sickness world could be a representation of the insides of his body? Or the darkness of his mind and heart as he faces his sickness?

Using Dialogue? I'm thinking that maybe one way his sickness and struggle could be clarified is... Maybe right before the doctor(s?) put the mask onto his face, through the use of the dialogue, two or more doctors could be talking to each other above his head or by the bedside, discussing Ming's situation with each other (and as they have masks on their face, lip-syncing won't be too much of a problem as their mouths will be covered-- not as time-consuming to animate!). It could be a way for you to easily introduce what Ming's character is going through; context will be provided to your audience before you make them dive with Ming into his Sickness World.

Nearby People as a Source of Determination? I'm kind of blanking as to whose story Luigi had commented this on, but since Ming is fighting against his sickness --a fight which could involve not only the physical, but also the emotional, the psychological and the spiritual-- maybe he is actually fighting this sickness, fighting for his life and health for the “nth” time (i.e.: for the third, fourth time) ? If this is a direction you might choose to take, I feel it could help you illustrate his emotional and psychological struggle, which could give more depth to his fight, which currently shows a lot more of the physical. When we see him for the first time in the Sickness world, and he is getting off the ground, perhaps he could look very tired and drained, having a hard time getting off the ground. Maybe he stays lying on the ground for a while, while his sickness engulfs him, and he lets it do so. Maybe he cries while this happens. Maybe one of the challenges you will make him go through in your story will be to summon from deep within himself the will to get better and/or live, and finding the strength to defeat the monster/his sickness/his negative mind(?) (once and for all? Or at least for this battle of his this time around), which has been winning against him consecutively up until now. The sword that he makes appear from his body, maybe it appears as a medicine is administered to him in the Real world; maybe when a beloved family member calls his name (in a distant/echo-ee form)? That way there can continue to be a connection made between the hospital room and the Sickness world.

>> Reading what I just wrote in this paragraph and whether what I stated is actually scientifically valid (“...a fight which could involve not only the physical, but also the emotional, the psychological and the spiritual”), I'm questioning right now as to what people who are fighting against their sicknesses go through when they are dormant or unconscious on a hospital bed. Maybe finding, hearing or reading real-people testimonies about individuals who have gone through the same situation as Ming and his specific sickness might help to inspire you on how you choose to portray his obstacles on the screen, as well as his facial and body language.

An idea on the use of sound/a script: Digging a bit deeper on the use of sounds, does Ming have family members by his bed side calling or crying out his name? Supporting him verbally, hoping and/or praying for him to get better? We might not necessarily need to see them in your visuals as they call out to him, but maybe their voices are what will be a sort of 'turning' point for him in the Sickness world, a reason for him to fight back, and not only fight back, but win the battle he is fighting. Family and loved ones can be very important people that play a big role in giving a sick person hope again and a will to live.

Total ambiguity? Careful orchestration behind Mysterious ending? Another question. Although you had mentioned wanting to remain ambiguous in regards to the ending, where the last shots end with the purple orb exploding, followed by an extreme closeup shot of Ming's eyes wide open (which, through its nature, blocks the audience from receiving any additional clues from Ming's surrounding environment that could help them form a solid conclusion on the outcome), I cannot help but wonder if Ming's character is one that comes out victorious or if he loses the fight. I personally find ambiguity quite enjoyable in a lot of cases, as it allows a lot of freedom in interpretation. However, I think if you are able to choose whether Ming's character will be triumphant, or will end up losing the fight, it could help you decide what will happen to him and what you show the audience. I don't think having an ending shrouded in mystery is a bad thing, but I do believe that if you manage to guide your audience's thoughts toward a certain direction, where we more clearly see Ming's determination either dwindling or strengthening as the story slowly progresses, you will be able to lead our interpretations down a certain path, therefore providing some clarity, while not entirely having to reveal everything in an upfront manner at the end. If he wins and lives to continue seeing the day, what do we see or hear from the Real world that allows us to know we're back there with Ming? Maybe the use of sound here can come into play again; after the purple orb explosion, did Ming maybe lose to his sickness? Maybe we hear a flatline heart-rate from the hospital machine after that the orb explodes; maybe we don't see Ming's eyes at the end, maybe it's a fade from the white, screen-engulfing explosion to a black screen, which could illustrate a passing from life to death. Maybe we hear a family member calling out to him in a joyous and hesitant manner, soliciting his response to confirm his return to consciousness or life. Do we hear the doctors again? (Q: But then... did we hear any of these characters talk to Ming when he was in the Sickness world?)>> Maybe certain groups of characters are only heard in one world or the other, but not both. That could help us associate the sound of their voices with the world Ming currently finds himself in on the screen.

With such a high climax as that of the exploding orb, I think it would be hard for the audience to not know what happens to Ming in the end, especially if we see him go through a struggle to emerge victorious, or to die trying.

I guess it will depend how you choose to go about it! : )

Refined Storyboard Feedback:

by Dylan Alberts - Sunday, 16 October 2016, 10:39 AM

• In Sc.34 Ming is face down and then in the next shot he is face up. Although they are two different scenes, the jump from face to down to face up may seem awkward to some people.

• The monster being a puppet is a cool idea but also adds a lot of animation. Perhaps a plain evil Ming would be better than a puppet and monster? It's not bad but it adds a lot of animation so it is dependent on your personal time constraints.

• I personally find the dream sequence really clear to understand and the story as well. The colours of Ming's dream sequence look nice, I particularly like the dark blue of the night time and the hospital shot where the doctors are putting Ming to sleep. The shots seem very powerful and unique in the sense of colour pallets and camera angles being used. Keep it up!