#while everyone was (and is) getting to know each other in our newsroom

[intramoon]

I am vending at a gaming/anime/fandom convention in Nov. and I have to create a bunch of sticker designs for the event!! I need to make sure I can order them in time T-T

I'm trying to do a play on "God's Favorite" for BG3; the gold color on Shar's will be gold foil hot stamped and the white on Selune's will all be silver foil hot stamped. I'm trying to think of others to do? I'm thinking of Vlaakith and maybe Mizora and Raphel?

I am doing a bunch of Sanrio characters in metal logos, I have Cinnamoroll, Keroppi, and Pochacco on my to-do list. They'll all have a glitter finish on top when they are printed!

Been busy with these so haven't done much sims. (ʃᵕ̩̩ ᵕ̩̩)

[robertbturnerfl]

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source https://presssynergy.com/newsroom/say-goodbye-to-frown-lines-wrinkles-with-daxxify-injectable-treatments-at-altaire-clinic-in-fargo/ from Press Synergy https://presssynergy1.blogspot.com/2023/04/say-goodbye-to-frown-lines-wrinkles.html

[i-am-robie]

short(?) fic idea: kara and lena through the other peoples perspective (ie noonans barista, lena’s driver, takeout cashier or any random ppl)

I read this and my first reaction was, I don’t know how to write a drabble. And then Jack’s voice interrupted me so, this may not be what you’re looking for anon, but here’s what just happened in my head lol...

“I’m just saying,” Jack finishes as they’re finally next in line at Noonan’s, “there’s something going on with them.”

“You’ve got some awfully firm ideas of what for someone with absolutely no evidence,” Sam says smiling and looking down at the pastries in the case.

“I’ve got eyes!” Jack looks affronted

“You know, I think he might be right.”

Sam turns to Kelly in surprise. “Look I know when I first got to National City, I thought they might be dating, too,” Sam says. “But they weren’t!”

“Plus,” Alex breaks in, “Kara would tell me. She’s terrible at keeping secrets.”

They shuffle forward as the line moves. Sam waves them all up to the counter, before greeting the barista. “Hey Tom, I’ll have my usual and whatever this crew is ordering.” She turns back to the group. “It’s on me today, even if Jack couldn’t be more wrong.”

“Oh, how can you not think they’re dating…” Jack starts but he’s interrupted by the barista.

“Jack, are you talking about Kara and Lena?” Jack nods at him. “They’re definitely dating.”

Jack claps his hands together and practically crows with glee. Alex looks like she might pass out. Kelly just smiles. Sam looks gobsmacked. 

Alex recovers first. “Tom! What do you mean they’re dating?”

“Oh come on,” says Tom, punching in their drinks, “you see them more than I do, but it’s pretty clear whenever they’re in here. All the soft touches and the blushing and the cheek kissing? That’s dating activity. And Lena never lets Kara pay.”

“Cheek kissing…?” Alex is looking a little green now. 

Tom finishes ringing them up and Kelly guides Alex over to wait for their drinks while Jack grabs a table as Sam pays. 

“You doing ok there, babe?” Kelly asks. “You look like you’re thinking a little too hard.”

“She’d tell me. I mean, right?” Alex looks at her girlfriend. “If she and Lena were, you know?”

Kelly laughs affectionately. “Maybe they’re still figuring out how to tell you, maybe it’s early, maybe they don’t even know themselves yet.” She looks a little more serious now. “But you’ve seen them together lately. Don’t you think it’s something a little more?”

They pick up the drinks from the counter when they’re ready and walk over to where Jack and Sam have commandeered four large chairs around a low table.

“Gross,” Alex says, squinting down at the writing on the side of second cup she’s holding. “Who ordered the venti pumpkin spice with extra whip?”

“Me!” Jack grins and makes grabby hands. “Sammy and I were continuing our earlier conversation,” he adds while Alex and Kelly take their seats. “She agrees with the premise that Lena and Kara would like to be dating each other, but doesn’t believe me that it’s already happening.”

Sam puts a hand up. “There’s too much pining for that to be the case.”

“They’ll get there when they’re ready,” Kelly says. “If they’re not there already.”

Alex, who’s been silent since handing Jack the drink suddenly looks up. “There’s only one solution,” she says. 

Jack leans forward. “I’m all ears love.”

“Tom said it looked to him like they’re dating, right?” The rest of them nod. “If they’re dating in secret, then they’re not going to act that way around us. But around people who they don’t think are watching...?” She looks around the circle.

“They’d be more comfortable,” Sam says thoughtfully. 

“I feel like I know where this is going,” Kelly interrupts, “and I need to go on record saying we should just let them be.”

“We need to talk to the people in their lives who aren’t us,” Alex finishes, ignoring Kelly’s advice.

“I’ll make a list,” says Jack. “We can divide and conquer.”

—————-

“Oh, Lena is in here all the time, she’s always sending that sweet girlfriend of hers the most beautiful bouquets,” says the florist, Ruth, when Sam drops by.

“Where does she have them sent?” Sam asks.

“Mostly to CatCo,” Ruth answers, wrapping brown paper around a mix of delphinium, lisianthus, free spirit roses, and starry asters. “Sometimes she’ll come in and pick up the flowers herself, though.”

——————

“Inconclusive,” Alex says, shaking her head when Sam reports back to the group. “Lena has sent Kara flowers at work since she moved from Metropolis.”

“On to the next,” says Jack. “I’ll handle this one.”

——————-

“So, Harvey,” Jack begins, leaning against the wall next to the front desk. “I bet you see everything that goes on in this building, don’t you?”

Harvey grins as he waves a resident through. “Doormen know everything, Jack.”

Jack nods. “So, say, if one of your residents has someone over regularly, you’d see them come and go, right? Get a feel for the relationship?” He’s trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

“I’d like to think we can generally tell who guests are to our residents, sure,” Harvey says easily, winking at an older woman passing the desk. She blushes and waves. “Is there something specific you’re looking for, Jack? Or have I misjudged you and you’re just interested in what the job is like.”

Jack grins. “You see right through me, Harvey. I’ll just come out and ask it. Do you think Lena and Kara are dating?”

Harvey gives Jack a long, inscrutable look.

“I wouldn’t want to speculate on the particulars, Jack,” he finally says. “But I’ll tell you this: Ms. Luthor is never happier than when Ms. Danvers is with her.”

——————-

“Well, Harvey was less helpful than Ruth,” Jack complains that evening, pouring himself a drink at Sam's wet bar before joining her and Alex on the couch. 

“I have another idea about who to ask next,” Alex says. 

—————-

All in all, they talk to as many people as they can think of—from the  server at Kara's favorite pizza place (“They always fight about who gets to pay, young love is so sweet”), to Lena’s driver (“It’s not my place, but Sunday night is definitely date night”). Nia even volunteers to ask around CatCo once they bring her up to speed. Apparently, the newsroom is divided on the topic, though everyone agrees there’s something there. 

—————-

It comes to a head two weeks later when Sam hosts game night.

Kara corners Alex in the kitchen when Kelly asks for more snacks. Kara comes up next to her as she pours more chips into a bowl, leans against the counter.

“Alex, why did Jimmy at Mr. Huang’s House of Wontons ask me when Lena’s and my anniversary is?”

Alex rubs the back of her neck. When she’d recruited Jimmy to help, she really thought he’d be more subtle. She decides being direct is the best way to handle this.

“Ok so don’t be mad but I might have asked him if he thought you guys were dating in secret.”

Kara looks like heat vision is something Alex should be concerned about right now. 

“I know you like her, Kara, you’re about as subtle as a freight train.” Alex clips the top of the chip bag closed, and glances over at Kara.

Kara frowns at that, looking a little vulnerable instead of angry now. “So what if I do?”

“I think everyone in National City knows that Lena likes you,” Alex continues. Kara goes pink and splutters unintelligibly. Alex puts up a hand to stop her. “Jack thought you might be dating and I guess I got worried that you were but didn’t want to tell me because you thought I wouldn’t approve. So I asked around.”

“Well we’re not dating!” Kara says defensively, reaching up to adjust her glasses. “And it’s not cool to go around asking people about us, ok? She’s my best friend and we’re close and maybe I do like her but,” Kara swallows hard and it almost looks like she might cry and now alex knows for certain that they’re not dating but oh does Kara want to be, “we’re not dating. Can you drop it?”

“Kara,” Alex says gently, putting a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I’m just trying to say it would be ok, if you were dating. We all just want you to be happy. I get that you’re not,” Alex says when Kara starts to interrupt her (and is Alex referring to Kara dating or Kara being happy? She isn’t sure herself), “but I’m trying to tell you it would be great if you were.”

“I just,” Kara looks down at the counter. “Alex I want to, so badly, but I can’t lose her again. We spent so long getting back to this place, you know? What if I ask her out and then I mess it up?”

A throat clears behind them, and Alex and Kara whip their heads around. 

“Sam sent me in for drinks,” Lena says, but she’s looking so intently at Kara that Alex decides this might be a good time to leave the kitchen. 

Alex just rounding the corner back to the living room when she hears Lena speak again, in a softer voice than Alex has ever heard.

“You wouldn’t mess it up, you know. You couldn’t.”

[newsatsix1986]

The prop department behind this show are incredible.

Not only did they truly make the magazine which Helen and Dale were doing the photo shoot for - the Australian Woman’s Day, they properly wrote an article to go along with the photos.

It took a lot of very close deciphering, but I was able to write down as much of it as I could. I hope it makes sense to you all. It’s adorable and romantic - discussing the first kiss, their Russell Street worries, Helen and Val becoming close that day, and how they knew that they found the other person quite attractive.

Happy reading, friends xoxo

Page One:

Title: Glamour, News and Romance - The Golden Couple of News.

There’s romance in the News At Six newsroom, and everyone is watching.

They are the celebrity couple that has set Melbourne ablaze.

From their luminous first kiss that eclipsed a comet, to chasing the Chamberlains in steamy Darwin, to their love galvanising in the wake of the Russell Street Bombing - Dale Jennings and Helen Norville’s romance has blossomed before our eyes.

We sat down with the golden couple of news to get an exclusive sneak peek into the lovers’ lives.

Every day as Melburnians wake, Dale is already in the newsroom; focused, primed, combing through the latest stories.

As a part of the hard-working News At Six team, he never quite knows what his day will look like, where he might be sent at the drop of the hat.

The one constant of his working life? When Helen Norville strides into his office, his heart skips a beat.

“It’s always an event when she arrives,” Dale tells me, laughing. “Heads turn, every time.”

We’re sitting on spacious lounges on the hot new cafe in Fitzroy, Arrondissement X. Sitting beside him is Helen, carelessly gorgeous in a mauve and teal blouse with puffed sleeves and a pleated grey skirt. She slaps Dale’s arm, bashful, then nuzzles closer to him.

“It’s true!” Dale continues. “There’s a magnetism about her. An energy. She just lights up the room.”

But for Helen, it’s Dale who has that certain je ne sais quoi. And whatever it is, it’s ruined her for other men.

Dale’s unlike any other guy I know,” she says. “He’s warm and kind, but also driven and strong. And he’s a great listener. When you’re talking to him, you feel like you’re the only person in the world.”

The story is legendary now. Dale was Helen’s surprise date for Geoff Walters’ 60th birthday party the night Halley’s Comet passed overhead.

We were denied a good look at the comet, but partygoers received an even more spectacular view.

It was on that balmy February night; rubbing shoulders with Melbourne’s elite amidst a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event, that Dale kissed Helen for the very first time.

“It was a surprise, to be honest,” Helen professes. “I’d invited Dale as a dear colleague, but when he kissed me something just clicked. It felt totally right.”

And despite how picture perfect the moment was - with half of Melbourne’s press just a few faces away - Dale insists it was completely unplanned.

“It was just a spur of the moment thing,” he tells me. “I mean, I didn’t think Helen would go for a guy like me, but she looked so stunning. I thought, “Come on mate, what are you waiting for?”

So began the romance that has captured the hearts of viewers across the nation.

But what events led to that magical moment? To date, Dale and Helen have been cagey about the origins of their romance...until now.

“It really started when Dale was assigned to produce me.” Helen explains. “It’s no secret that I’ve gone through a few producers in my time, blokes who didn’t take me seriously as a journalist. I knew right away that Dale was different. He wanted to work with me, not over me.”

“Helen had really bold ideas for special reports,” Dale adds. “I was drawn to her passion like a moth to a very glamorous flame.”

Page Two

These reports have now become a Monday evening staple - and one of the biggest ratings draw for News At Six.

It’s clear Melbourne can’t get enough of the romantically-entangled reporting duo - a dynamic that crystallised when Dale reporter live from a scorched Russell Street on 27th March.

Viewers the state over shared with Helen’s fear for Dale’s life, and her relief she felt when she saw he’d made it out unscathed.

“It was one of the most stressful days of my life.” Helen says, clutching Dale’s hand in hers. “Not only did we experience an awful attack on our city, there were hours where I didn’t know if Dale was safe. My feelings for him crystallised in that moment. I knew I loved him. Deeply.”

“Absolutely. Same for me,” Dale echoes. He grows solemn and his eyes glaze over - clearly reliving the horrific events of that day. In a strange way, it was the perfect moment for them to say “I love you.” It was the first time Helen met Dale’s mother! “We’d arranged a dinner for that night!” Helen says. “Of course, that got put aside. But she and I grew close that day.”

So how is our newly-minted media royality adjusting to life in the spotlight?

“It’s been strange getting used to it all.” Dale admits. “I get stopped in the street now - not as much as Helen, but blokes recognise me at the pub.”

But for the most part, it’s business as usual.

“We work hard, we’re passionate about what we do, and we’re passionate about each other,” Helen says.

I can’t help but ask Helen, “Is Dale as passionate in private as he is in public?”

She giggles, as Dale goes red. “Let’s just say we have no issues in that department,” she says, winking. It’s enough to bring the temperature in this cool French bistro up a few degrees!

As Helen steals a kiss from her blushing beau, I’m reminded of the couple’s enduring appeal. Who wouldn’t invite them into their living room of the evening?

While Geoff Walters has announced his imminent return to the desk, his recent health scare has shown the veteran newsreader is not as invincible as he previously seemed. I ask Dale and Helen if we might see them together on the desk, someday soon.

“Oh, we haven’t even moved in together yet!” Helen laughs. “Right now, we’re focusing on supporting each other to do good work and keep Melbourne informed.”

The couple are admirably humble about their ambitions. All the while as I wave them goodbye and watch them walk down Brunswick Street arm in arm, it’s hard not to think of them as the future of news; young, smart, totally in love, and with the whole world at their feet.”

Episode Six - Chernobyl (and a sweet magazine article)

Edited to include the full story! Thank you @dontwanderoff for linking me to the full article on Twitter!

[bymoonchild]

Get You The Moon (M)

Pairing | Taehyung x Reader Genre | Fluff, smut, angst / College!AU, enemies to lovers!AU, football!AU,  jock!Taehyung x student reporter!OC Warnings | Explicit language, sarcastic banter, dirty talk, blowjob, facefucking, eating out, cumplay, cum-dumpster, fingering, rough sex, slight dom!tae, spanking, degradation, unprotected sex, ass-pining, tae has the phattest ass and dick but wbk Summary | Life has its ways of fucking with you, but you know you’ve hit 50 feet below rock bottom after being tasked to do a profile feature on Kim Taehyung, the varsity football captain, for your school newspaper. Pure torment awaits you, but this is alongside glassy eyes, pink cheeks and conflicted feelings that you’ve never dared to imagine with the likes of the devil incarnate. Word count | 19.6k 

“What a surprise, you’re alive.”

It is exactly that fake enthusiasm and subtle mirthful nuance that’s too familiar to your liking that gives rise to the arch of your eyebrow. You don’t even need to look up at the owner of the voice to picture the shit-eating smirk that belongs to none other than your editor-in-chief-slash-best-friend, Min Yoongi. Such morbid greetings have been long established as an inside joke between the two of you due to the peculiar sense of humour that you two share.

This is just how he likes to start his mornings. Being the systematic person he is, he has his own morning routine in the newsroom. Regardless of the pile of work on his desk, he’ll first make a beeline for his first cup of coffee of the day, after which he will come sauntering your way to provoke you with his laundry list of snarky remarks – about work, being tired, being alive and dead, about how bureaucracy sucks, the negative sides of capitalism and what not. Well, you two share a deep-seated sense of misanthropy so albeit provocative, his laments are refreshing in the morning – a literal morning boost of positivity from negativity.

“Not for long buddy,” you shrug, looking up from your laptop and your eyes land on Yoongi, who looks just as dead.

“I barely slept last night – was busy rushing my essays. Essays, might I repeat. So it would be great if you don’t have much for me today, although I know you have a kink for torturing me.”

At this, the edges of his lips curl up and you instantly register the meaning behind the sinister smile: your impending doom.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I do have something for my most talented and gung-ho reporter and best friend.”

“Kindly elaborate,” you smile back acrimoniously, squinting your eyes in distrust.

“It involves a profile feature of a popular varsity athlete.”

An involuntary groan escapes your lips almost instantly. Athletes are the worst people to interview.

“That’s not even the worst part yet. As we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of our publication this year, we’ll be doing a special spread on honorary members of the school, including club presidents, captains and valedictorians. Oh, which reminds me – maybe I should feature myself for being the most overworked Editor-In-Chief because this publication is sucking my entire soul, but anyway, I digress.”

He brings up his mug to his lips. It’s only 10am, but you wonder how many cups he has had, eyeing the pallor of his face.

“I’ve already assigned the other reporters their respective targets for the lack of a better word, and left the toughest nut for you to crack,” he grins smugly and that’s when it hits you.

Clocking you square in the face.

“Yoongi, no you didn—”

“Yoongi, yes,” his smirk widens at your aghast expression, “A profile feature on Kim Taehyung, for my most talented and hardworking reporter.”

Kim Taehyung.

Your biggest nemesis.

The boy who lives to torment you.  

Literally everyone in school and their mother (or their dog) knows him because 1) he’s quite a looker (he’s known for having a god damn symmetrical face and you’re honestly baffled and amazed at how people even took the time to check the degree of symmetry), 2) he’s the captain of the varsity football team (cue the huge hoo-ha about varsity captains), 3) he’s probably slept with everyone in school and their mother (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but he is a dumb fuckboy to the bone), and 4) he’s also the poster boy for the department of narcissistic and annoying fuckboys, star football player and all that jazz.

“What the fuck?”

You challenge the carefully hidden astonishment reflected in Yoongi’s eyes, disregarding how the other reporters in the newsroom have jumped in their seats at your abrupt outburst.

“You know I fucking hate him!”

Yoongi, per contra, does absolutely nothing to show the slightest of empathy, simply because he has none, and even finds the scowl on your face hilarious, “Which is exactly why you’re the perfect person for this story.”

“There must be someone else whom I can cover. Please, Yoongi – I really, really don’t want to take this up.”

“Listen,” he sighs, running his hand through his fingers and you know that signifies that his sigh is genuine, “As your friend, I’m really sorry that you’ve been assigned to this story, but there’s no one more suitable than you. No one does profiles as incredible as you. Look, you just need to follow him around for a week – observe how he is in class, what he does after class and how he performs on the field. I can promise that it won’t be that bad.”

You frown, “As my friend? Then… what about–”

You don’t miss the 180 change from his previous expression, the soft in his comforting smile replaced with a sneer that is all malign in a blink of an eye.

Panic starts to form a thick film in your throat.

Lowering his voice by two tones, he snarls, “As your Editor-In-Chief, I only have three words for you: suck it up. The journalism world is a dog-eat-dog world. You don’t and can’t choose your beats. What you can do is to go out there and come back with a story, or this newspaper is going to flop at your hands, along with your GPA.”

Such audacity.

You glare at him in disbelief, squinting your eyes at the sneer that’s still plastered on his face.

“As my friend,” you mimic, dragging each word, “Fuck you bitch.”

Sighing out loud with absolute disregard, you clench your fists to tamper down the vexation that threatens to escape your throat, “But for the sake of my GPA and this publication that is my precious baby, I’ll take this up. Very unwillingly though, I must add. But if he refuses to cooperate, he can suck my ass.”

“You have my seal of approval if you meant that literally.”

“Fuck off—”

“Anyways, you won’t need to worry about Tae. I contacted him just now – he’ll be expecting you at practice on Monday.”

You roll your eyes, “Tae? I can never understand how you two are close.”

He inches closer to taunt you further, “May I remind you that Tae and I literally grew up together in Daegu, so he’s like my little bro. Anyways, he also told me to tell you that he cannot wait to see you.”

Nose scrunched up in disgust, you groan out loud at the duality before you, before flipping your friend off and burying your head in your palms.

But as much as you hate to admit it, Yoongi’s right. You have to suck it up.

If doing this profile is the only way to save your GPA and the publication, to hell with your pride and Kim Taehyung. You’re going to do this story well and you’re going to make sure that nothing, absolutely nothing – including Kim Taehyung and his fuckboy antics – is going to fuck that up.

Not in this economy.

Building up to Monday aka the Big Day as what Yoongi calls it, while you refer to it as the Day You Die), Yoongi has left you very specific instructions for the profile feature, expecting you to find some easy way out of this. He normally leaves you on your own, knowing that you’d always return with a solid piece that he won’t be able to find anything to nit-pick on. But for this task, he has ordered you to follow the boy around for a whole damn week and expects you to submit your voice recordings for accurate transcription.

Right from the get-go, you can already deem this profile to be the most stressful and frustrating piece in your entire journalism career. In other words, it’s a sham. A popularity stunt. A hoax. An opportunity to give Kim Taehyung even more clout and undeserving commendation than what the resident fuckboy deserves.

The day you finish your story will the best day of your life because you won’t ever need to interact with the said boy ever again.

To say that you hate him would be an understatement – sure, hate is a strong emotion, yadda yadda yadda, but the cacophony of arrogance and smugness that radiates off him makes your face scrunch up in disdain whenever he’s around. Though you would never allow him to have such power over you, he has tormented you countless of times with his shameless flirting whenever he has the chance to, and by simply existing and being his annoying, putrid self. You really don’t know why Taehyung has taken a liking to teasing you and pushing your buttons, ever since Yoongi introduced the two of you two years ago.

The sun is dripping down on the soccer field with delicacy, casting its golden light on the grass patch when Coach blows the whistle from the sidelines. Right in the heart of the field, Number 6 springs into action on the field, shouting commands at his teammates who listen to him intently.

Indeed, there are many other guys running all over the field, decked in the same jersey, but you could instantly recognise the outline of Taehyung’s ass, your eyes fixated on how the fabric of his shorts hugs his lower half like a second skin. Much to your dismay, one of your thirsty friends had hooked up with Taehyung last Christmas and didn’t allow you to forget the details of his bomb dick game and the thickness of his ass, so it’s fair to say that you have a good gauge of how his ass looks like. Not that you take pride in that knowledge though.

A smug smirk plays on his lips when he scores another goal as he instinctively pumps his fist to the air. You observe how he proceeds to run around the field, high-fiving and patting his teammates to spur them on.

Being the captain of the precious varsity football team, Kim Taehyung naturally carries an aura of confidence, which easily moulds into palpable cockiness. He’s infuriatingly talented and thus, his big ego sadly, and he also doesn’t have much of a filter and says anything that comes to mind. You’ve come to a conclusion that his language is an unfortunate concatenation of sexual jokes, sarcastic taunts and indolent mischief.

As if having sensed your gaze, he cranes his neck in the midst of practice and shoots you a seemingly innocent grin when he spots you standing awkwardly at the sidelines, hugging your notebook like they’re a piece of armour shield. But you know that there is more to his smile than just innocence. Still maintaining eye contact with you, he grabs the hem of his shirt to dry the sweat on his forehead and smirks in satisfaction when your face drops disgruntledly.

After calling for a five, he jogs up to you, his smile unwavering. Behind him, his teammates have all huddled together, pretending to drink up and talk amongst each other, but their eyes are all glued on the interaction between you and their captain.

“My my, look who we have here. Isn’t it my favourite girl cheering me on during practice?”

Taehyung’s awful voice pierces your eardrums, thick with honey and mixed with some other cloyingly sweet substances.

Your annoyance reaches its peak level as your eyes narrow to slits when he stops right in front of you.

You could leave right this instance. In fact, you very much want to, but your conscience is holding you back. While you’ve contemplated smoking your way for the profile one too many times, you know that Yoongi, being the smart shit he is, would be able to see through it (and also, Taehyung might just snitch on you) and the mere thought of a disappointed Yoongi just bites you.

“Look,” you spit, facing him properly for the first time, “I’m here against my own will because I have a story to write and that’s the only reason why I am even here. So I would very much appreciate it if you could quit acting like a jerk and let me do my job so I can leave ASAP.”

You’ve never been this up-close with Taehyung before, not when all you ever focus on around him is putting on your bitchiest expression, coming up with spiteful retorts, or pretending that you didn’t see him in the hallway which is actually impossible because he comes for you like a plague.

“Sssh, did you hear that?”

“Huh—”

“That’s the sound of you begging for my help.”

A taunting smirk inches its way onto the edges of Taehyung’s lips and you want to sock him in the face and wipe it off his lips. Your glare seems to only spur it to grow wider, as if somehow your clear distaste for him is amusing to him.

“Going to fake a quote for me again?” He continues, the shit-eating grin never leaving his face.

“If you continue pissing me off, I just might.”

For your previous article which involved having to interact with Taehyung, he had refused to answer your questions properly, spouting nonsense and idiotic pickup lines that served of no value to your article. You just needed a one-liner from the egotistical football captain, but all he did was obliterate your gossamer thin patience and last few braincells. Given his insistent reluctance to cooperate, you eventually made up a quote for him – something along the lines of “I don’t really think much about life – I just YOLO it because you know, YOLO” – and made sure that it reflected him badly.

The quote eventually became the unofficial quote of the year and it gives you so much satisfaction, knowing that it made a small dent on Taehyung’s reputation. On bad days, you’d think of the fake quote and laugh to yourself. Needless to say, he was enraged and even sent complaint emails to Yoongi for false reporting. Journalism ethics? You don’t know her.

“Oh yes, where were we?” He draws out each word with a smooth tone, unfazed, “We were talking about how I hold your fate in the palm of my hands, Princess.”

You hate that nickname he has for you. You don’t even remember when and how it started or what led to the nickname. Grunting out loud in abhorrence, you stop to contemplate kicking him in the shin and running away, but you lack the courage to carry out the former because if you’re to ever hurt the precious varsity captain, you can jolly well bid farewell to your collegiate life.

But before you can even take a step away, he stops you by blocking your passage with an even wider smirk. If he is fucking ecstatic at your rage, he’s determined on making sure that you’re well aware of it. 

“Seriously, if you don’t want to do this, let me know right now so we don’t waste each other’s time.”

“Oh Y/N,” he calls out dramatically and you cringe at how your name rolls off his tongue, “I did promise Yoongi-hyung about that profile, but I didn’t promise him that I won’t make your life a living hell.”

If it’s possible for your eyeballs to roll out of the socket, you’re pretty sure it would have already happened by now because Kim Taehyung is impossible.

“Okay,” you exhale, gathering your thoughts, “Then I will, for the better of mankind, start this civilly. But let me just say that I’ll take the mantle of being the bigger person here, which isn’t hard because you’re technically not a person.”

“Of course, I’m more than just a person,” he laughs and a devilish smirk, way too familiar against your own will, tugs at his lips, “I’m Kim Taehyung.”

“Did I ask? Can we just get this over and done with so that I can stop being around your despicable presence, stat.”

“Now, that’s not the way to treat your interviewee. Also, Yoongi said you’ll be following me around for a week. You’ll be around my ‘despicable presence’,” he holds up his fingers in the air to quote, “For an entire week. You think up for it, babe?”

He waggles his eyebrows with a mischievous glint blazing in his eyes, enjoying the scowl on your face.

“Fuck off, Kim.”

His eyes light up when he realises that he’s hit a nerve.

“Every breath you draw in my presence annoys the heck of me,” you edge, words slowing down to a pace that’s normally used on children.  

His large, almond eyes continue to regard you with keen interest.

“That’s funny. I thought that after all this while, you would be used to me scoring right into your goal.”

“Get your head out your ass.”

“Oh, I’ll have you know that I have a bomb ass. 10 out of 10 would tap.”

He laughs with an amused grin on his face, the same one he always has whenever he riles you up, finding entertainment in your fury. You hate his laughter. He’s always laughing, his smile huge and genuine and his out of this world personality knocking girls off-kilter. You hate it. Everything about it.

“What the fuck,” you spit scathingly, mouth agape in utter disbelief at the boy in front of you, or Satan himself wearing the flesh of a human.

You end up only asking two questions from your entire list of 15 questions, but it’s as though you’re stuck at square one because his answers are either half-assed or pure nonsense, and boy are you pissed.

“Hey, you’re alive.”

You look up from your misery and see the very cause of the said misery, standing at the door with an eyebrow raised. You don’t miss the extra sarcastic bite to his voice and the irritating smirk on his face, but you’d like to believe that he’s actually impressed by your unyielding resilience.

“Highly arguable. Mentally, no, but physically, yes I am. Not for long though,” you grunt, tone imbued in sarcasm because you are seriously done with this profile feature and you can’t wait for this torture to end.

Lifting your tumbler, you suck on the dregs of your coffee and groan louder at how it’s no longer hot. Lukewarm coffee is like torture to the tongue, much more than burning your tongue. You’re one of the annoying customers who would request for extra hot coffee, because you simply can, and you’re used to them faking a smile and then rolling their eyes when they’ve turned on their backs.

“I take it that something happened?”

“Oh nothing,” you shoot him a sarcastic grin, “Except for the fact that the bastard just toyed with me and wasted my Monday evening. If this is how it’s going to be, I say that we stop immediately.”

“Oh come on, it’s just the first day! I get that Tae can be playful and says a lot of stupid things, but he’s actually a really nice dude.”

“I just don’t like him,” you mumble and your voice trails off upon realising that you sound like a bratty preschool kid who can’t get along with the others.

Yoongi scoffs at your remark to correct you, “You don’t like anybody.”

“As if you’re not the most misanthropic person I know.”

“Wow, this ain’t about me,” Yoongi throws his hands up in the air in faux-defeat, “This is about you and Taehyung. Can you at least tell me why you hate his guts?”

The empty remark that brews on the tip of your tongue dies instantly and all you can lamely mutter is, “Over my dead body.”

“Seriously? Why?”

“Because I’m embarrassed.”

“Wait, what? Did you embarrass yourself in front of him?” Yoongi urges with a confused frown, but your lips are still sealed.

“Something like that.”

“Would you be so kind as to elaborate on that?”

“Nope, continue suffering.”

He rolls his eyes in disbelief, before flipping you the bird.

The next two mornings, you find yourself dragging yourself across the campus and past the newsroom, just to show up at the football field. Upon your arrival, the entire team ditches their warmup session and falls into a collective silence, openly gawking at you and your every movement. The sudden change in the atmosphere elicits an uncomfortable shiver to crawl up your spine. Looks like your social anxiety is about to have a field day.

“Captain, you have a visitor!”

One of the boys hollers with a playful glint in his voice, breaking the silence. At that, some teammates instantly gather in their own circles to whisper to one another, while some discuss your presence without bothering to be discrete. Is this… a jock version of Mean Girls?

“Tae! Your girl is here again!” Another dude shouts and you turn around to shoot a glare at the owner of the voice, eyebrows furrowed.

“Call me his girl one more time and I’ll make sure your legs won’t make it to finals.”

“Damn, a feisty babe. Noice.”

Another guy comes up to you – Jungkook, you recognise him because he’s in one of your classes. His build towers over you, while he flashes you a small, shy smile and you can’t deny that he is pretty cute with his dimples and doe eyes, which makes him look like a little bunny, but all hope is irrevocably lost when he opens his mouth.

“Hey, I think I lost my number. Can I get yours?”

“Seriously?”

The earlier guy who calls you feisty butts in, “If Taehyung isn’t fucking you right, call me yeah? I’ll make you feel real goo—”

“Minjae, leave her alone.”

You hear a displeased grunt from behind you and turn around to an annoyed Taehyung. His grip on the football in his hand tightens, before he shoves it roughly at Minjae, throwing his teammate off completely.

“Guys, please leave Y/N alone. She’s here to interview me, so I’d appreciate it if you could keep it in your pants and have some decency or respect for yourself.”

The boys instantly mutter a sorry, the peculiar sharp undercurrent of their captain’s voice has them heaving themselves upright in alarm.

You turn your head slightly to look at Taehyung, who’s wearing a vexed frown on his face – well that’s a first for someone who is joking around and laughing. Seeing his strong side profile irks the fuck out of you because someone this attractive shouldn’t be such a big nuisance. What an unfortunate waste. Of course, you would rather be impaled than admit this.

“If you don’t go back to warmups, you’re getting another 5 more laps around the field!” He raises his voice to the entire team and they scramble back to their warmup positions like ants.

After making sure that the team is back on the grind, he spares you another look and leads you to an empty bench away from the warmup area.

“Pretty sure you could have handled it yourself, but you looked uncomfortable,” he smiles apologetically, resting his hand on the back of his neck.

“Well, if you didn’t make me wait, I wouldn’t have needed to go through that.”

“I was helping this freshman who needed extra help with his dribbling. It’s a one-on-one thing so we were in the clubroom.”

“Whatever, it’s cool.”

“Anyways… I got an earful from Yoongi-hyung this morning. He said that I was being too annoying yesterday, so yeah, sorry about that…” His voice trails off and for once, the smile playing on his lips is sheepish, instead of a cocky one.  

“Huh?”  

“I said I’m sorry. And also for my teammates’ behaviour. Don’t know why they act like this every time they see a girl on the field.”

“D-Did you just apologise to me? Is everything okay, like you know, with your brain?”

“What?” He scoffs, but the smile on his face still remains, “I’m not an asshole. I will apologise if I crossed the line.”

“Kim, not to burst your bubble, but you’ve crossed the line with your annoying and rude ass self since the beginning of time.”

And there it is again. That little grin tugging softly at his lips as his eyes lock themselves on yours.

“Not going to lie, that’s part of my charm.”

You hastily ignore the stirrings of intrigue in your chest, deciding to stop with the chit-chat, “Yeah sure. Let’s just start with the interview. I’ve got a class in an hour.”

He extends an arm to gesture you to sit down on the bench, while he settles down beside you and leans back in an elegant slouch, one ankle crossed over a knee.

“So, let’s talk about the freshmen players this year. Anyone potential successors yet? Do you have a lot of one-on-one trainings?”

“Wow, we playing 20 questions now?”

“Kim,” you sigh loudly with every intention of making sure that he knows how done you are, “I’m literally here to interview you. If I don’t ask questions, then what’s the point.”

“I was just kidding!” He throws his head back with a chuckle, “All right, shoot me with your best shot.”

“Okay,” you clear your throat, “You’re called the dark horse of the school. How do you feel about that?

“Do you like horses?”

“What?”

“Bet you’ll like mine.”

You cup your face in your palm, as your heaving suspire lowers into an interminable groan, “Kim Taehyung. Before I—”

“Hmmm, so a dark horse…” he begins slowly, “I think it’s a respectable and fulfilling title. It’s when you amaze them with how unexpectedly good you are. It’s about really proving your competence to everyone who didn’t think highly of you before, so I’ll take it with pride and satisfaction.”

You nod your head as he speaks and when he finishes his sentence, you ask with a raised eyebrow, “Practiced that much?”

“Every day before I go to bed.”

“Clearly.”

“Well, I can show you first-hand.”

“You fucking wish.”

Thankfully, Taehyung gradually stops playing around and actually starts answering your questions properly without giving bullshit answers or making suggestive remarks.

At your last question about his legacy in school, he even elaborates without any prompters and you gratefully take everything down, nodding once in a while when he brings up a good point.

“Wow, you’re writing all these down while I’m talking? Can I see?”

You casually hand him your notebook and he gapes dramatically at the notes you’ve taken.

“These are just scribbles, but they’ll help with transcribing later on.”

“Wow I have to say, I’m impressed and also a little turned on right now.”

Rolling your eyes for the nth time in disbelief, you grunt, “Kim, you do know that you’re still being recorded, right?”

“Of course,” he smirks, raising instant flags for mischief etched across his lips, “Here’s a little note for Y/N who will listen to this when she gets home – I think she’s hot as fuck.”

“You’re shameless.”

Laughter bellows from his lungs, “That I am. I’m not going to deny it.”

Afterwards, he offers to take you for a tour around the clubroom, showing you the medals and trophies that the team has snagged over the years. As he elaborates on the trajectory of the varsity team, the noisy chatter of other students outside fades into background noise like timing in your ears.

He shows you a picture of the team taken from two years ago and your eyes nearly pop out at how small and out of place freshman Taehyung looks. He’s grinning widely at the camera, surrounded by his poker-faced burly seniors, painfully sticking out like a sore tongue, even more so with his scrawny build.

“You look way too happy in the picture that I actually have second-hand embarrassment,” you mutter, but Taehyung manages to catch it.  

“Hey! I was an excited freshie and they didn’t tell me it was a formal picture.”

When you leave the clubroom that day, you take along with you new knowledge about Kim Taehyung. Firstly, you learn that he has only been playing football for two years, which comes off as a shock and almost a form of embarrassment when compared to the other guys with at least a decade of football experience, thus deserving the title of a dark horse. He’s always been more of an arts dude, but he got sucked into the sport when he and his best friend from high school Jimin walked past the football tryouts during orientation.

Secondly, either his cologne or shampoo has a fruity undertone and this is derived from the fact that he is suddenly standing so close to you that you can feel the warmth of his breath and see each glimmer of darkness that surfaces in his orbs, alongside the humming warmth radiating off of his body.

A chill runs down your spine and your heart starts slamming against your chest out of nowhere at the proximity. You’re not used to being so physically close to him and you try not to think about how his alluring scent has you biting the inside of your cheek.

Taehyung seems to know his effect on you because his lips start to spread into a wolfish grin, inching closer to you.

“Your fuckboy antics won’t work on me, Kim.”

Your voice doesn’t come off as strong as you wanted it to, but you hope that he doesn’t catch on.

“You sure about that, princess?” His breath fans out across your cheeks when he speaks, causing instant warmth to scatter over your skin in the rise of gooseflesh.

Irritation bubbles like a brook throughout your entire body.

It’s taking every single willpower of yours not to headbutt him in the face. You desperately want to, but because you’re obviously the bigger person here and you need to prevent yourself from being expelled from school, you could only jab your finger harshly at his chest.

“Try it on another chick, yeah?”

He uncoils from his slouch and rises to his full height, exuding a smug superiority.

“What if you’re the only one I want to try it on?” He teases, his voice echoing with timber, rich and velvet.

You shoot him a leer, accompanied with the imaginary daggers to his face, trying to ignore the steadfast flutter in your belly. By the anger that undulates from your pinched features, he knows he’s left you tongue-tied, and this only spurs his grin to widen, your clear distaste for him a pure entertainment and amusement to him.

“I hate you.”

You grit, but your voice comes out as a mere squeak. You feel like burying yourself from the weight of his longing gaze. Clearing your throat, you push the strange flutter that’s settling in your belly as you hoist your bag over your shoulder and speed-walk away from him, missing the way he smiles at your departing silhouette.

The shift in Taehyung’s demeanour on the field is beyond commendable, almost palpable to everyone who has their eyes on him. When he’s on the field, there is no fooling around, only the giving of his one hundred and one percent to the game.

Moving agilely with astounding precision, you observe how his sun-kissed skin shimmers with a thin sheen of sweat on his neck, while his eyes sparkle with intensity.

All right. There is some truth that Taehyung looks kind of cool (do people still use that word to describe someone?) and charismatic like this, all serious and immersed in the game. You just wonder if he could be the same when answering your questions.

His brown mop of tousled locks is damp, parted haphazardly, while his jersey clings onto his frame, drenched with perspiration. His biceps strain against the fabric and the veins on his exposed forearms are given prominence when he grabs onto the ball with his fingers effortlessly. Taehyung’s not the buffest, but he is lean with just a nice amount of toned muscles.

When your eyes trail further south for an infinitesimal moment, his tight football pants accentuating the swell of his thighs and the curve of his ass on full display come into view.

Fuck. Your eyes divert back up to his face when you realise what you’ve been gawking at. As the sun hikes up in the sky, it casts a pretty golden glow on his profile, highlighting his sun-kissed skin. You push away the sensation of a small bud blooming in your chest when you meet his gaze, especially when he shoots you his signature boyish smile, a foil to your frown.

Well, looks like someone is happy to see you.

A disconcerting feeling starts to stir in the pit of your stomach when Taehyung approaches you without wiping that smile off his face.

“Good job for surviving two and a half days with me. You ready for today?”

“Replying yes or no literally won’t make a difference at all.”

Shrugging, you lift your tumbler to sip on your coffee before pulling a face.

“Fuck,” you curse quietly under your breath, unexpecting Taehyung to catch it but he does.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing… My coffee isn’t hot anymore.”

“Oh—”

“I bought this tumbler not long ago and it’s supposed to be good at trapping heat, but it just sucks and it was kind of expensive? I’m so angry I need to get another one—”

You stop your rant abruptly when you realise that Taehyung’s been staring at you quietly. He even urges you to continue with a nod of his head.

“Sorry, I’m oversharing.”

It’s not your fault that you tend to get too passionate when talking about your distaste for lukewarm coffee. For something that’s your bloodline, it has to be the right temperature, or else.

“Is that your pet peeve?”

You nod, “You can’t judge me though, or I’ll punch you.”

“It’s cool. If your greatest nemesis is lukewarm coffee—”

“Wrong. My greatest nemesis is the boy who’s currently talking to me right now.”

“As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted,” he rolls his eyes in faux-annoyance, “I absolutely detest coffee, big ass pills that I can’t swallow, and bread crusts.”

“Wait,” you stare at him pointedly in a cursory silence. “You don’t like coffee?”

“Nah, never liked the bitter taste.”

“Okay…” You drag your word out, “But you can just add sugar? Not that I do, I like it bitter. But please elaborate on the big ass pills and bread crusts. For a big boy like you, I have to say that this is pretty amusing.”

Laughter rises in Taehyung’s lungs at the pure confusion on your face, “I can’t swallow pills. Used to always puke them out. I usually crush them and yes, I know it tastes even worse but really, how else can I take my medicine? And bread crusts? Incardinate of evil. I’m really picky when it comes to bread.”

You can’t help but laugh at his dramatic expression. You don’t think you’ve ever had a proper chat with Taehyung that didn’t include insults, remarks, or retorts of any kind.

“You’re one weird boy, Kim.”

The conversation carries on smoothly, tucking itself into every available space, and you’ve got to admit that not only is Taehyung not bad at holding a conversation, he’s also a decent listener and listens quietly when necessary. This really piques your curiosity – maybe Yoongi’s right about him, maybe there is indeed a decent side to him. You’re just not sure why Taehyung loves to push your buttons. It’s as if he wants you to give him the time of day.

From your periphery, you realise that Taehyung’s looking straight at you and you freeze at the weight of his piercing gaze, feeling hot all of a sudden. A stunned silence encompasses the space between you, sitting heavily in your lungs.

After mustering up some courage, you look up to meet his eyes to reciprocate his actions, but your gaze diverts to the ground when you realise that his eyes are piercing right into your soul, like they’re searching or yearning for something.

“Kim,” you clear your throat awkwardly, “What are you doing?”

“Looking at you,” he replies matter-of-factly, his intense gaze never leaving your face. You want to bury yourself alive when you feel a persistent heat simmering under your skin, tinging your cheeks a translucent pink.

“And may I know why?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” The right corner of his lips curls up into a smirk. He’s raising a challenge.

“Spit it out.”

“Do I say the truth or?”

“Not that bold after all, huh?”

“Well,” he opens his mouth again with a devious little gleam in his eyes, “I was thinking about kissing you.”

You don’t miss how he is openly gawking at your lips and your eyes instinctively rest on his as well, which are somewhere between the colour of peaches and cherries. You’re not sure of what washes over you, but your mouth takes the better of you. And for the first time, your words aren’t clogged in your throat.

“Do it then.”

You look at him through your lashes, dark and coy, eyebrow raised, testing the very limits of Taehyung’s restraint.

The erratic beating of his heart is in sync with yours, but it increases within a second when you notice his gaze fall back on your lips from your eyes. Suddenly, this sparks your curiosity and all you can think about is how good Taehyung’s would feel on yours.

“W-What?”

“Do it, Taehyun—”

Before you could even mutter his name, his lips are suddenly smashed against yours.

Goosebumps rise on your skin in its wake when his tongue grazes along the flesh of your lower lip, and you, suddenly so enthralled by the boy in front of you, part your mouth to meet him halfway.

You don’t know how long it has been. With his lips pressed against yours, you lose track of time, watch it fly away in the form of the licks on your mouth. Taehyung slackens his jaw to deepen the kiss, cupping your face with his hands to bring you closer to him. His tongue brushes against the underside of yours and then he recedes slightly before tangling for dominance.

Your name leaves his swollen lips in a dulcet whisper, causing your heart to spike in your chest and your stomach to unravel and knot again. You press your palm over your chest to calm the injured patter of your heart against the depths of your stomach.

The way his eyelashes that are almost impossibly thick and dark flutter just a fraction with each breath, brushing slightly against your nose and you squirm at the intimacy of the moment.

When he finally parts away, you feel like you’ve been electrocuted. But your stomach drops again when a pretty blush blooms over Taehyung’s face, crossing the bridge of his nose and spreading over his cheekbones. His hands continue to rest on your shoulders, but his touch is so hot and tantalising that it makes you want to melt.

Taehyung has always called bullshit on all those romance novels that rave about how lips can taste as sweet as strawberries. But you taste like the strawberries from his grandparents’ farm – sweet and delectable.

When he licks his lips again, he shudders when his senses register the honey musk of you and the ghost of your afternoon coffee. He hates bitter coffee with a passion, but you taste so fucking sweet. Overly saccharine that he feels dizzy.

You don’t talk about the incident the previous night and you’re grateful that Taehyung doesn’t act any differently. It was most probably the adrenaline that took over you and also perhaps your curiosity because you’re a reporter and reporters are supposed to be nosey, curious and also dreaming about kissing the varsity soccer team’s captain. Yep, absolutely.  

Your pride be damned. While it kills you to admit it, it’s common knowledge to everyone in the fucking school that Taehyung is just really nice to look at, be it when he dons his jersey, a button up or his colourful printed clothes. There is no doubting his ravishing features – his sharp nose, big almond eyes, long eyelashes, perky lips and the little moles that adorn his face.

Unbeknownst to you, you cross paths with Taehyung in a day more often than you think you do. Too often for your own good. Most of the time, you can hear him before he comes into view. His boisterous laughter that highlights a lilting charm to his low voice fills your ears like a plague. It is as though he has intended to haunt you with his loud presence. And though you’ve already made up your mind to avoid him unless it’s necessary to spare him a glance, it’s quite impossible. After all, you have one job – and that is to follow Taehyung for a week.

“Hey Princess!”

You could almost hear the sneer hidden in his coo and envision it with perfect clarity, that infuriating spark in his eye whenever he manages to rile you up. You don’t turn around, your feet bringing you further away from him, but eventually come to a halt when he jogs up to you, blocking your way of passage.

“Princess!”

“I heard you the first time.”

“And you still ignored me? I’m hurt.”

“What do you want?” You grunt loudly, having absolutely no qualms about showing your displeasure.

He slings his football bag over his right shoulder and smiles, “You know, you shouldn’t be mean to a person who just bought you coffee.”

“Wha—”

With a goofy smile pulling at his lips, he pushes a tumbler towards you that was initially hidden behind his back.

“You said you don’t like lukewarm coffee and a styrofoam cup wouldn’t keep it warm by the time I pass it to you, so I got you a tumbler… Besides, you said yours wasn’t good so I figured that I’ll just get you a new one.”

Warmth violently flares in the full of your cheeks, tipping your ears pink at his words. You try not to let the fact that he remembers get to you, but he fucking remembers.

You are a college student to the bone. Turning your back on coffee would be a sin. But coffee from Taehyung? In a tumbler that he purposely bought because he fucking remembers what you said?

“How—”

He beams, simpering at your speechless self. He thinks your shocked expression is adorable, doing nothing for the wildfire claiming the land of his chest.

“Did you, like, stalk me or something?”

“Pfft. Maybe?” He runs a hand through his hair with a lopsided smile, eyes filled with mirth.

“You’re so weird.”

Despite being surrounded by the steaming, teeming mass of students in the crowded hallway, the moment you two share is as private and as comforting as sitting on the sideline bench alone.

“Enjoy your coffee! This tumbler has very good reviews, I checked! So your coffee should be still hot. If not, text me and I’ll give them a bad review.”

“W-What? Tae—”

Before you could call out for him, he has already scrambled away and blended in with the crowd. You deadpan mentally when you realise that the entire hallway is gawking at you and the tumbler around your hand. But what’s more alarming is the strange tightness in your chest and the warm, tingling feeling coursing through your fingertips that you can’t get rid of.

You start learning random things about Taehyung beyond just football and general facts that everyone knows about him. It’s surreal how drastically your relationship with Taehyung has changed over the past few days. While snarky ripostes and greasy comments (from Taehyung, of course) are still exchanged, talking and listening to each other, or just being with each other, feels almost natural to you. But you’re no longer at each other’s throats and his annoying retorts have significantly decreased.

The daily meetings bring the two of you into line: by tacit and unconscious consent, you two have begun to weave a space for each other in your lives, forming a joint narrative like a breeze in the boughs, hanging in the spaces in between the two of you.

He was telling you about how he likes comparing his cheeks to bread buns, and he likes to stuff his cheeks when he eats, and that his grandparents would get upset if he returns to his hometown with sunken cheeks. You don’t realise that you’ve been grinning this entire time listening to him ramble on about his cheeks, but your smile grows even wider at Taehyung’s lock screen when his phone lights up from a notification.

“Oh my god, is that a dog?”

“Yes!” He exclaims, a little too loudly and shoves his phone in your face, “Say hi to Yeontan! Isn’t he just adorable?”

Your heart jumps at his excited smile and the tinges of pure adoration dancing in his orbs.

“Aww, he looks like a little ball of fluff.”

“He is! But he can also be very grumpy. Like you.”

“Did you just compare me to a dog?” You fold your arms fold over your chest in faux-rage.

“Such audacity!” He raises his palm to his chest with a gasp, feigning indignation. “He’s not just a dog. He’s the best thing that has ever happened to me ever since I saw him at the shelter.”

“Shelter?”

“Oh, I volunteer at a shelter for abandoned and stray pets every month. You know, Yeontan was actually abandoned by his previous owner and I don’t know, I just had to take him in? I would take all the animals at the shelter if I could, to be honest. Maybe next time. Anyways, let me show you more pictures! I have an album full of his pictures.”

“Dude…”

“Don’t be like that. I already have a Yeontan who gets super unenthusiastic whenever I show him pictures of other dogs. I think he’s jealous.”

A small smile tugs at your lips and the edges of his lips start to curl up to a semblance of a smile as well.

“Well, Yeontannie sure is one lucky dog.”

“More like I am one lucky boy,” he beams, flashing his honey bread cheeks in all their glory.  

There’s no denying the sweet quiet of Taehyung’s presence when he’s not making stupid remarks, and this is expounded by how time seems to forget about its own existence these few days. Before you know it, it’s already dark and you’re soon packing up to head back home.

“I’ll need you to go through some fact-checking with you tomorrow. You free around 6pm?”

“Shit, I think I have something on,” Taehyung pouts, fishing out his phone from his pocket, “Let me check.”

“Oh, then it’s fine—”

“Do you want me to cancel it?”

“No! No, it’s fine!”

“It’s okay, I can just postpone it—”

“That’ll mean that you’re cancelling for me.... and you know, you don’t have to.”

“It’s just dinner with Jimin. Fact-checking is important for your article, right?” He says quietly, while his eyes come slowly round and rivet themselves upon your face.

You don’t miss the twinkle in his eyes, igniting a blaze deep in your bones and washing your senses away. All of a sudden, your throat feels constricted, breaths coming out short. You’re hyperaware of how close he is and to be honest, you feel like you’re standing in a room that’s on fire, too hot for the chilly evening which has a very high chance of rain.  

Even if you continue to insist that you despise him, you can’t help but admit that somewhere deep down, something between the two of you is now different. 

Exhaustion creeps up onto Taehyung, the pain in his arms manifested in his back as well, gradually sneaking into his legs until all his limbs are aching and stiff. Hunched over on a bench, he grits his teeth in frustration, nails digging the skin of his palms, while hot tears threaten to spill.

On Friday, you’ve walked into the team huddled in a circle, frowns all over their faces, a congealing tension evident in the air. From the clamour, it seems that one of the boys have gotten injured during practice and the team was split into two on who to be held responsible and whether there was any foul play involved.

From the sidelines, you watch Taehyung order everyone to shush and makes everyone sit down for a deconflict session. He appears surprisingly calm and addresses the issue in a collected manner. Afterwards, he invites the team to share about how they feel, allowing the conflict to openly spoken about and viewed from different perspectives. He listens attentively, like he always does with you, and speaks clearly and practically, easing the tension in the air till their teammates start coming to a consensus.  

When he sees you standing at the sidelines, he gives you a small smile that you easily see through and approaches you after making sure that his teammates are cool with one another and reminds them that whatever happens on the field stays in the field.

“So um,” you begin quietly, treading carefully around his feelings, “Are fights like that common?”

You already know the answer from looking at the size of the dark bags under his eyes. He is slowly breaking down, but still holding tightly onto the carefree façade that he puts on for show, for the team. It’s also mid-terms period and from the earlier interviews, you remember that he is on a scholarship that he cannot afford to lose because his parents are struggling to send his other siblings to school as well.

Contrary to popular belief, Taehyung isn’t an open book. He’s more of a sealed book, covered in dust and trapped in a forgotten corner of a bookstore. He has his own elusive way of dealing with ways, befriending people, treasuring the people and things around him, but he has also his own way of hiding his feelings. He hates the idea of being vulnerable with people.

He is a combination of hot and cold – sometimes you feel like he’s an old friend because of the emotional compatibility and his comfortable presence, but sometimes, he just goes back to being the cocky fuckboy he is. Maybe that’s just part of the jock persona – to deceive people into thinking that he’s more than that. But in all honesty, that’s not Taehyung and you wouldn’t compartmentalise him like that or homogenise him as just another fuckboy no matter how much you dislike him.

You think you’d know him quite well from having shadowed him the past week. It has come to your realisation that you’re no longer at each other’s throats and his annoying retorts have significantly decreased, but you’re not sure whether it’s because he’s just tired from everything to go out of his way to be annoying. But you don’t have any complaints.  

He lets out a dry chuckle at your question, his words sounding sugar crystalised and rough in his throat, “Are you asking this as a friend or as a reporter?”

“We’re friends?”

��We–”

Some threads of a biting remark begin to sew themselves together in his mind, but he stops instantly, too tired to really fabricate anything, much less bother to speak.

“Taehyung,” you call out after drawing a furtive breath, “Don’t doubt yourself. You’re a great friend and captain.”

Your soft and sincere tone permeates through Taehyung’s every last prickle of frustration, especially when you offer him a reassuring smile, “What you did out there was one of the selfless acts I’ve ever seen in a leader. And this should mean something, you know, considering that it’s coming from me.”

“Of course I am, I’m actually nicer than I look.”

“I know you’re kidding, but I’m trying to be serious here and on the off chance you’re not, fuck off.”

He remains quiet.  

“I’m serious though. It’s obviously not easy being the captain, but it’s clear that you have rightfully earned the respect from all your teammates. You handled it quite well without being biased or losing your cool.”

“I did?” His tone, deep in timbre, is so quietly surprised that it gnaws at your heart.

“Yeah.”

“Conflicts like that are a daily occurrence,” he mumbles, “But they can really break or make our teamwork and… the momentum for me as their captain, so I have to try? I have to be responsible for my guys.”

You watch how a cocky smirk instantly settles itself on his lips right after you think that he has opened up, “But I might be just great at forming relationships and team-bonding.”

“Judging from how you treat the girls around you, I don’t think that’s completely true.”

“Girls around me?”

“You’re a fuckboy. I don’t think it’s safe to say that your relationships with girls are great.”

“It’s just sex, no big deal.”

“And that gives you the right to play with their feelings?”

“Of course not, we just hook up that’s all. No hard feelings. It’s just sex with no strings attached and they all know it. Before I hook up with someone, I make it very clear that I’m not looking for anything serious. Just meaningless sex and fun.”

“Okay, but let’s say for example, a girl does end up falling for you. Is that solely her fault?”

He stops to think.

“For now, I just don’t wish to get involved in anything serious. I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with feelings.”

You scrunch your nose up in distaste when Taehyung shrugs his shoulders casually, dismissing the conversation.

You’re not someone who is easily lost for words, always quick to retort with a witty comeback, especially when it’s with Taehyung. But this time, all you could mutter is an “I see”, before pretending to focus on writing on your notepad. For some reason, you feel like your heart just took a dip. The thought of him playing around with girls leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but you can’t comprehend why. Since when did you care what Taehyung does with his life? You never did before.

Maybe it’s because at the back of your mind, you know that your said example might not exactly be one. Maybe.

Sunday arrives quicker than ever. In retrospect, you know this day would come – in fact, you’ve been waiting for this day ever since Yoongi assigned you the profile. But there’s just something – sort of a difference in the air surrounding you and Taehyung – that kneads at your heart about this coming to an end. Whatever this is.

He doesn’t say a word when you take a sip from the tumbler that he gave you, but you’re pretty sure that the way his eyes instantly lit up with a smile to match says it all.

“Oh right! Have you eaten breakfast? I, um,” he coughs awkwardly, hand scratching the back of his hand with a nervous smile, “made some sandwiches this morning.”

He turns around to his sports bag and fishes out a lunchbox, “Strawberry cream sandwiches!”

“My grandparents own a strawberry farm, so I get all the best strawberries!” He beams, and his eyes turn into little sparkly crescents. At that, your heart skips in two, one half in your throat and the other down in your gut.

“Not to be biased, but these are the tastiest and sweetest strawberries ever. Oh! After Japanese strawberries, but don’t tell my grandparents. They’ll be sad.”

“Anyways, try it,” he hands you a sandwich and you take a moment to observe how it screams Kim Taehyung at his finest. He has trimmed the bread crusts (his nemesis) and added a shit ton of cream cheese.

Taehyung’s crescent-like eyes are now staring straight into you as he watches you bite into the sandwich, anticipating for your reaction. There’s something in his gaze that makes your limbs heavy. It makes you feel trapped and lost in the depths of his eyes, warm and inviting.

You smile at the sweet and sour taste and he literally jumps with joy, flashing his honeyed cheeks.

“It’s good, right?” He chirps, beckoning you to eat more and you ignore how Taehyung’s cheeks are fully stuffed and how he chews with a natural pout on his lips.

For a moment, the world seems to be out of space and time as you sit on the bench, savouring the sweetness of everything. Taehyung is looking at you and the moment is lengthening. He becomes severely tongue-tied, no longer knowing what to say, but yearns for this moment to stay the way it is.  

“Nice weather, huh?”

“Talking about the weather now?” You ask in a bemused tone and he puffs, rolling his eyes playfully, but the growing tingle of pink on his cheeks doesn’t escape your notice.

“I-I mean... It’s nice.”

A softness settles into the lines of Taehyung’s face, and you can’t bring yourself to look away when his eyes land on yours, “It’s nice being here with you.”

And he means it. He generally feels good around you. He isn’t an anxious or socially awkward person, and he’s got tons of friends, but he still finds himself putting on a mask with most of them. A slightly louder, a more playful and enthusiastic version of himself. He almost always becomes the life of the party, the person who makes things easier and more comfortable for everyone else – breaking the silence, making jokes, drawing people out of their shells and easing them into conversations. He likes being that kind of person.

But it does get tiring, sometimes.

He likes being quiet, sometimes.

Sometimes, he just likes to curl up on the couch in his PJs and not feel like he has to be Funny! Loud! And gregarious! All at once. On some days, he just wants to laze around and watch anime till his eyes bleed. On some days, he just wants to be a normal college student without a team to manage and reputation to uphold.

You roll your eyes at his sudden confession, hoping that the warmth that sits high on your cheeks isn’t that obvious, but it probably is, from the way your heart ensnares at how Taehyung’s lips are stretched so widely across his face, his crescent eyes crinkling so adorably that you find yourself smiling too.

“You’re a loser,” you tease, shoving him lightly.

Then Taehyung is laughing, highlighting the undertones of oak and berries. He is laughing so hard that his stomach hurts and his chest aches with a drumming sound against his ribcage. Soon, laughter pokes its way across your glassy eyes, with tinges of amusement waltzing in your orbs, and pink cheeks and you’re doubling over him, with tears in your eyes and nose all scrunched up. Taehyung is holding onto you and the moment is lovely, everything is lovely.

You’re lovely.

Taehyung raises his arm to ruffle your hair, stirring up a mini tornado within you and chuckles again when you jump slightly.

“Gotta say that I’d miss having you around. You and your pesky presence. Can’t believe a week just went by just like that.”

“Rude,” you half-heartedly taunt, pushing his hand away, while a corner of your mouth curls up in retaliation.

“It was fun being your side hoe though. Do you know how many glares I’ve received by strangers, literally girls I’ve never seen before in my entire life, in the hallway? Imagine the power I have.”

“What side hoe?” He chuckles boyishly and your breath hitches, “You’re as good as my main.”  

Your heart pulses erratically in your chest, cheeks flushed with a warmth that matches the one that blooms in your heart. The way he makes your heart soar terrifies the fuck out of you.

“Not sure if I should feel honoured.”

“You know, I actually don’t know how we ended up like this. You hated me for the longest time and now we’re sitting here.”

“I did hate you, all right.”

“You have such a personality.”

“That’s another way of calling me a bitch.”

“As in… vibrant, colourful, I don’t know how else to describe you. You’re rude and endearing at the same time – it’s weird.”

The most adorable of smiles form on his face as he lets out a wholehearted laugh, it makes your insides melt.

A grin moulds on your face that resembles his own, “And you’re still a huge pain in the ass.”

“Still a bomb ass that I’ll tap.”

Later in the day, you receive a text from Taehyung. It’s not the first time that he has texted you. But little did you know that he would be a freaking double texter.

[from annoying ass jock] [18:49] hey you [18:49] do you want to grab dinner [18:49] i am very hungry right now lol [18:49] i mean you’re probably hungry unless you’ve eaten? [18:49] take this as a goodbye dinner, celebratory dinner wtv [18:51] feel free to say no tho HAHAHAHA

[you] [18:53] stfu I wasn’t going to say no [18:53] clam down [18:54] i’m kinda craving for a good burger and cheese fries

The night passes by smoother and faster than expected. Maybe it’s because you don’t realise the possibility of it being a date. The way Taehyung has asked you for dinner seems rather impromptu, so you’ve completely eliminated the idea of it being a date.

On the other hand, Taehyung himself knows that this is a date. While you’re cutting into your burger, he is furiously chewing on his fries, struggling to believe that you had even taken up his absurd offer of eating dinner together. On a Friday evening. With him. Is it a sign of peace? Or even something more?

He offers to walk you back to your dorm after that, telling you that he needs to walk off his burger. When he walks side-by-side with you, you focus at how he is so tall, how his height literally hovers over you, doing nothing but darkening the pink high on your cheeks.

When he stops in his track abruptly, you have to tilt your head upwards to look at his face, and each passing streetlamp casts his already golden skin in an orange glow, throwing tiny suns in his eyes into orbit.

Tonight is a little different.

The way he’s looking at you is a little different.

He takes your palms into his and starts playing with your fingers, allowing the two of you to stew and bask in the quiet contentment of the night.

His other hand rests gingerly on your waist, before bringing you closer to him. Then you find his lips graze the shell of your ear and shudder at his warm breath on your skin, inviting the rise of gooseflesh to scatter all over your body.

Your mind goes blank. All you can only think about how his touch on your waist burns, how ticklish his breath is on your face, and how there are little awakening tingles that shoot up your spine every time his skin comes into contact with yours. How he’s so gentle with you as if you’re a delicate piece of art.

How much you want him to kiss you.

Honestly, it takes you by surprise how much you actually want him to do just that, how much you’ve unconsciously thought about this so often that you can already imagine the ghost of his fingers down the cleft of your chin.

A fizzle of electricity runs down your spine when he brings your hand to his lips and presses a soft kiss to each finger, before he brushes over your knuckles to intertwine his fingers with yours.

He’s looking at you with as much certainty as you know that he’s going to sweep in and kiss you. You offer him a smile, and it is all the reassurance Taehyung needs before he leans in to press his lips against yours. Something akin to fireworks explodes inside you, colouring your insides and nerves with rainbow sparks. It makes you feel so alive.

The gentle brush of skin becomes static charge. He takes his time with you and kisses you like he’s always had the intention of doing so, like this isn't a spur of the moment catastrophe. Like he wants more of you, needs a taste of what he’s been yearning for the longest time.

You are abstrusely drawn to Taehyung. Like planets condemned by gravity to collide, you two have become yoked as one. It’s the headiness of his scent, the taste of his lips, his tongue that carefully darts over your bottom lip and seeks entrance. It’s the way he’s kissing you, so different, so soft and gentle, like it’s grounded in something you can’t quite place, compared to the first kiss.

Taehyung’s lips are soft like the cup of his hands around your face, but it is the settling of the repeated brush of his mouth against yours that makes you almost melt into the ground.

Nipping lightly at your lower lip, his lips curl up into a smirk when he hears a gasp escape from your mouth, your heart ricocheting in your chest.  

It’s an amalgamation of teeth, hidden feelings and pure adoration that are coming to a head and finally bursting – absolutely everything you wanted and more. But even when your tongues tangle with one another, it is more sensual and romantic than hasty and lustful.

The night is upon you when he parts from you moments later, allowing you to catch the breaths that have escaped from your now swollen-red lips and come down from your highs. You’re staring at him with eyes laced with fondness, before he leans in to meet your forehead and chuckles to himself at how surreal everything is.

You shouldn’t be feeling so happy, so satisfied, but you feel like you’ve been moon-struck. God, you can’t even figure it out yourself. Not when you’re tucked into his broad sturdy chest, his chin resting on the crown of your head and hand resting gently around your waist. Listening to his heartbeat. Though you’re aware that he isn’t looking for anything serious, you want to believe that maybe, just maybe his heart is beating as thunderously as yours because he’s serious this time.

“Not about to feint surprise at how you’re still alive because I’m going to need that profile from you, but I have to ask. Did you not sleep last night?” You look up to see Yoongi raising his eyebrow at you with suspicion.

“Ah, the appearance of negation in a question – my cup of tea. Do I reply yes or no to your pervasive question?”

“Very snarky today, I see. You look like melted ice cream, topped with tasteless sprinkles.”

“And you look like a boiled dumpling.”

“Thanks.”

“I was up doing work last night.”

“You’ve already handed up all your submissions,” he replies matter-of-factly.

“I know… I just… was,” you shoot Yoongi a pointed look, “thinking about stuff.”

The change in his expression lets you in that he knows exactly about what’s up, “Thinking about stuff, huh?”

“I’m just so—”

“Whipped for Kim Taehyung and I want to tap that ass. South Korea’s ass, yeah?”

“Disoriented. The word I was going for was disoriented, thank you very much. But also, what the fuck?”

“I said what I said.”

“I also said what I said. Don’t be gross.”

“Look,” Yoongi clears his throat, as if to brace himself for his forthcoming words, “I don’t really want to be involved in whatever feud or relationship you have – look how I didn’t overgeneralise because I’m generally confused. But one thing’s for sure. You clearly have feelings for him.”

“Yeah, of course I do. Anger, impatience and animosity.”

“You know what I mean,” he sighs in incredulity and gives you a look like he can look through your soul and tell that you’re lying through your teeth.

“What the fuck, dude? Kim Taehyung is just urgh. There is nothing good about that jock – all he knows is fucking around and getting onto my nerves. Seriously—"

“Seriously? You expect me to believe that? Don’t think I didn’t notice you smiling at your laptop while working on that profile? Or how you’re glued to your phone because he’s texting you or sending you memes?”

“What?” You blurt out in disbelief.

“Don’t fight me on that – you hate texting. I’m not blind, Y/N. He obviously ignited something in you.”

“What the fuck,” you snarl, “That’s disgusting. I don’t even know what’s so interesting about him, like why the heck are people so smitten by him. They must be blind or something. I swear that I’ve lost at least 10 years of my life from spending an entire week with him. Don’t know how I’m still alive.”

“Y/N…”

“I don’t fucking understand why people put him on a pedestal. He’s really your typical jock? Another egotistical fuckboy. An airhead with no personality. I don’t understand why people like him so much—"

“Um… Taehyung…”

“What?” You flare up impatiently, acrimonious at how Yoongi keeps interrupting your hate speech, totally missing the grimace on his face.

“Y/N, Taehyung… He’s behind you.”

You spin around and your heart drowns in your chest.

The sight of Taehyung’s face of reticence at the door punches you straight in the gut. He shakes his head with a forlorn smile that you can easily see through and turns on his heels, walking away quickly.

Without hesitation, you run after him, your chest tightening with a disconsolate, stifling feeling, as if you’ve just swallowed a hard lump of cloud.

“Tae! I can explain–”

He turns around, maintaining his distance from you, “Gee Y/N, I didn’t know you hated me that much. I thought… thought that after spending all this time with me, your feelings might have changed. But you still… you still hate me, don’t you?”

“Taehyung, listen – I didn’t mean it. I j-just–”

His brows crinkled together in a tight wedge, eyes pressed shut.

“You meant it.”

“I–”

Your tongue feels heavy, like it’s made of iron.  

“You meant it,” he repeats, shoulders sunken low, crestfallen, and you swear, you see hurt in his eyes.

Your heart immediately falls with it, knowing that you’re the cause of his sadness. It feels like there’s a fist seizing your heart and squeezing it until it bursts and splatters all over the walls. When he walks away from you, the pain remains, unabated.

Only heaven and you yourself know how much you did not mean it.

When you wake up the next few mornings, it’s as if a shadow is lurking at the back of your mind.

There is a tirade running on loop in the back of your mind, the more you thought about it, the angrier you got. But anger is merely a convenient emotion that easily covered up for sorrow. You are angry at yourself for hurting Taehyung.

You’d never say it, but in between glances, hazy mornings at the field and the exchange of witty ripostes, your feelings for Taehyung have changed, unbeknownst to the world. You have no idea when it happened. When the lines that so clearly distinguished you from Taehyung became so blurred. When he stopped being irritating, an obstacle, an enemy and became something else entirely.

You don’t exactly know when you started to thaw and let your guard down to let him in, but you know that you… like seeing Taehyung smile. And you also know that you want to be one of the reasons for his smile.

Despite the overwhelming amount of work you need to attend to, these few days, you spend a lot less time working on your assignments like you should be and a lot more daydreaming about twinkling eyes and a distinctive laughter from a boxy smile. It doesn’t go past your notice – how your heart goes all erratic when a particular football player is around, his sunshine smile radiating the darkest part of your mind and threatening to break your steely, collected demeanour into bits.

You have been so scared to let him in, so afraid to let yourself fully submerge in the comfort of his touches, in the calm that envelops you when Taehyung is beside you, listening to you ramble, or when he looks at you when he thinks you’re not looking.

You tell yourself that you’d be fine. That life goes on. That Taehyung is just another almost and you can live without talking to him again like how your life was before this whole shit-show. But you remember the current that zaps you whenever he brushes his hand against yours, the ricocheting of your heart whenever you find him staring at you. You also think about the little crinkle at the edges of his eyes whenever he laughs and the music of his laughter that you’ve grown to adore. Little did you know, the warmth at the pit of your stomach has long built a house to reside in and it’s yearning for its owner to come home.  

It hurts.

It hurts because Taehyung has the prettiest, purest and brightest of all souls. He views the world in a different light with all his little quirks. You adore his ardent love for classical jazz (he accidentally played his music out loud when you were with him and gave you a whole lecture on and you didn’t stop him for he spoke so animatedly with stars in his eyes), for strawberries and his family that he would have been a farmer with his grandparents if he didn’t attend college.

Because when he loves, he loves so fiercely, softly and dearly, like the first snow, like the fresh dew on a perfectly bloomed rose. Soon, the gentle heat of the morning will send him back to the clouds and the bloom will raise her head, calling to the summer bees. Taehyung flows like honey in your soul and makes you feel so whole, but vulnerable at the same time.

He’s a dream come true, a daydream, a part of the labyrinth where reveries rest. He’s just so wonderfully and ethereally endearing.

The ache in your chest throbs especially when you spot a cute dog on the way to the café downtown and whip out your phone to snap a picture to tell Taehyung that it’s one of Yeontan’s little friends. You almost hit the send button, but your thumb freezes into place when you remember.

Right.

He’s never going to talk to you again.

It also hurts extra bad when you’re glued to your laptop, fingers hacking away to finish up the feature article on the said boy, writing about the true Kim Taehyung that currently, only you know of. But he probably hates your face right now.

“Hey, you’re—”

“Yoongi, no. I’m not alive. I’ve never felt more dead before.”

“I was going to commend you for being here today after you know, yesterday’s incident.”

He grabs a chair and sits by you and a dreadful sigh escapes from your lips because you’re well-aware that Yoongi is going to make you talk. He isn’t the type to let you ignore your feelings, preferring in honest and open communication even if it pains you to talk about your feelings because you’re so emotionally constipated.

“How are you?”

Burying your face in your hands, you somehow manage to choke out the words lodged deep in your throat, “Feel like shit. I thought I hit rock bottom. But now it’s rock bottom, 50 feet of crap and then me.”

If Yoongi notices the tremble of your fingers, he doesn’t comment on it and you’re grateful for that.

“Tell me more.”

It’s not a question.

God, you hate it when he presses. Fuck journalists and their persistence of sticking their noses into other people’s business. You want to laugh at how ironic this is.

“I don’t even know where to start,” you laugh dryly and cringe at how fake it sounds.

You have your usual self-defensive answer rolling off the tip of your tongue, “I am just another dumb bitch who fell for him.”

“You know, if you’re going to continue being like this, I don’t really know how to help you.”

“I’m not kidding. I feel so dumb for liking him. In fact, one part of me is fucking furious that I’m so vulnerable right now. I hate feelings.”

“First of all, you’re not dumb for liking him. And second of all, human beings are vulnerable and all feelings, no matter how small or insignificant or cliché they are, are all valid. That’s how we grow.”

He continues sagely, “Look, whatever happened between you two is a mess. So you hated him last time, but you’ve developed feelings for him, and that’s all that should matter, no? Don’t refuse your feelings just because you know, you’re too ashamed or scared to acknowledge them.”

Your mouth opens and then snaps close. You repeat this in your state of stupefaction as your brain tries to process everything that has occurred.

“Does it matter if I acknowledge my feelings?”

He doesn’t answer.

“He told me that he isn’t looking for anything serious. Just meaningless sex and fun. I literally just played myself.”

“I don’t exactly know what Taehyung feels about this. But what I know is that they have their first game in a few days and he hasn’t been doing well. Coach has been going really hard on him. You should go talk to him, yeah?”

“Yoongi,” you whisper helplessly, “I’m scared.”

“I know.”

He puts his hand atop yours as a form of comfort and suddenly, everything seems okay. Even if it is just in that moment.

Before you clock out of the editorial room, Yoongi sends you back with your article to vet through before giving the green light to the designers. Scrolling all the way to the bottom of the document, you realise that Yoongi hasn’t fixed anything at all to the point that you wonder if he has accidentally sent the wrong version. Until you spot his message at the bottom in really tiny font because you know, Yoongi.

I said that you’re the only person who could cover this feature article and I wasn’t wrong. Well done. Hope you know that I’ll always have your back, alive or dead.

You decide to drop by football practice the next day. Lurking near the bleachers, you jump in horror when Jungkook spots you being suspicious. From the way his eyes widen like a deer caught in headlights upon the sight of you, you know that he’s aware of the recent happenings.

“Hey,” he offers you a small smile, but you could tell from the size of the dark bags under his eyes that he is shagged to the bone.

“Hi.”

“Y/N, right? You okay?”

You let out an awkward chuckle, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because Cap is a mess?”

“Is he really?”

He laughs dryly, “Aren’t you here to confirm that?”

“Um—”

“Sorry, I just… the stress is getting to all of us. But especially to hyung. He’s being really grilled by Coach for the sudden dip in performance.”

“Right… I’m sorry… If I caused this. I just—”

Across the field, Coach’s whistle shrills through the air and you realise that it’s directed at Taehyung. From where you’re standing, his grunts are almost inaudible, but the sound of his voice still traverses the darkness of your mind.

“You know, this is the first thing hyung is being grilled by Coach. He’s always been Coach’s favourite, even right from the very start, so Coach doesn’t really know how to deal with him either. Hyung’s even worse than his freshman self. You know, hyung didn’t know shit about football when he first joined? It was a joke. He really worked his way up, even though all he wanted was just to play on the field.”

A sudden prick of guilt pinches at your chest.

“Hey Jungkook, could you do me a favour? Could you pass this to him? You can just leave it on top of his bag? I think he’ll know.”

When Taehyung hobbles into the locker room feeling like death after a vigorous grilling session, his legs almost collapse on the floor. But then he sees a lunch box atop his bag and runs towards it, huffing louder than usual, so hard that he feels like his lungs might collapse like his legs. And when he opens it, only to see a nicely packed strawberry sandwich with a little post-it note on top of it, he lets out a huge breath and for the first time in years after his grandmother’s passing, Taehyung cries.  

Don’t tell your grandparents (sorry!) but these are Japanese strawberries. Good luck for Sat, Yeontannie and I believe in your galaxy 💜

A big commotion startles Taehyung from his mandatory quiet time that he sets aside before each game. He’ll put on his headphones and play his jazz playlist to meditate for at least a good 10 minutes, allowing both his muscles and mind to rest. But even his noise-cancelling headphones can do so much in blocking out his rambunctious and adrenaline-filled teammates.

“Captain! Your girlfriend’s here!”

“Captain!”

“Tae!”

“Wha—”

Before Taehyung could even remove his headphones to bark at his teammates for disturbing his peace, the door that swings open reveals his very confusion, rendering him utterly speechless.

He sees you standing there with an apprehensive expression, looking out of place as fuck, and if it’s possible, Taehyung can hear the gears in your brain turning frantically from here.

When your eyes land on Taehyung sitting across the room, the first thought that pops into your mind is that it feels like eons since you’ve last seen his face. It’s only been a few days, but you miss seeing him. You miss him so fucking badly.

He looks tired. There are dark circles painting his under-eyes and frown lines on his forehead and that doesn’t sit well with you, because there’s always either an annoying smirk or a bright smile plastered on his face.

For moments and moments, your eyes rest on the boy in front of you, drinking in his presence – the coruscating eyes and pretty lips behind his inspired, untiring voice.

“Hi,” he breathes with an indifferent expression, removing his headphones hastily before he stands up to close the gap between the two of you. The nervous flickering of your eyes doesn’t escape his notice.

“Hey,” you whisper back, lips quivering. There are many more words on the tip of your tongue, but the prevailing fear that catches in your throat freezes your lungs.

The boys have filed out of the locker room to give you two some privacy and now the world is basking in their awkward, ricocheting off the window in a quiet plea for noise. It is so quiet that if you focus more, you could hear the erratic thumping of your heart.

“How’s your article?” Taehyung asks and silence comes to splinter like a stone thrown at a wall, colliding with it and shattering like lightning bolts.

A frown settles itself on your temple at how he is trying to make everything seem all right. How the first thing he does is ask you about your article when you’re the one clearly at fault and he isn’t even showing signs of anger towards you. How could he be so selfless?

“It’s fine,” you mumble, “But I’m not here to…. I’m…”

Without warning, you go on your toes and reach for the rosy flesh on his mouth. At your touch, his entire body softens. It feels like there’s a cavernous hole in his aching heart.

“I’m sorry, Tae.”

Taehyung gives you a little nod, his way of saying it’s okay, before closing his eyes until they disappear in the shadows of his long black lashes.

You kiss him with profound earnestness that had been missing during the first kiss, dusting kisses over every inch of his blushing features, until you’re breathless, dizzy with want. There’s this inexplicable spark of desire growing within you and warming your body from inside out. Your heart longs for him, marvels in how right it feels to be in his arms, to kiss him, to be as close to him as possible.

Gosh, you’ve missed this so much.

Taehyung’s hands find your face, cradling your cheeks as if you’re the most delicate flower he has ever encountered, as if your petals would tear apart if he wasn’t gentle with you. He doesn’t look away from your eyes, searching your gaze silently. Now that you’re here, standing right in front of his very eyes, it makes everything all the more painful.

You move your hand to the back of his neck, pulling him into another gentle kiss, falling onto him like moonlight on a window seat.

“Princess…” He calls for you, voice deep and huskier than you’d ever heard it, and the timber of it sends shivers raking down your spine, “You know that I’m physically incapable of being angry or upset with you.”

The two of you move silently in each other's orbits, solitary planets in a lonely galaxy.

“I’m sorry for everything,” you whisper against his lips as his fingers play with the hem of your shirt.

“Hey, it’s okay, love. I’m just happy that you’re here.”

More words are lost on his tongue as he seizes the opportunity to drink in the sight of you, his eyes trace the outline of your visage, from the curve of your nose to the arch of your philtrum and down to the soft of your lips.

“Are we just going to stare at each other until the buzzer rings?” You joke.

“Can I? I haven’t looked at your face enough lately,” he laughs, “Missed your face. A lot.”

His eyelashes brush against his cheeks, following the stare of your eyes into deep brown irises. When he leans a fraction of a space closer, his bangs brush softly against your forehead.

“Taehyung…” You breathe out, reaching out to caress his face, fingers brushing away his bangs from his eyes, “Can I ask you something?”

“As a friend or a reporter?”

“Neither,” you reply, “I just wanted to know… Since when?”

“Since when?” He tilts his head.

“Since when did you start having feelings for me?”

He laughs like it’s an obvious question, tugging the fallen strand of your hair behind your ears. His expression is hard to decipher, it’s a combination of amusement and endearment, but he is smiling so widely that it’s almost blinding.

“I’ve always liked you, Y/N. Remember when Yoongi-hyung introduced you to me and you were angry about something?”

“I’m always angry about something.”

“I thought you were interesting as fuck.”

“You’re fucking weird.”

“Okay, but can you at least tell me why you hated me?”

“Fine. It’s because… Iwasjealousathowyou’regoodateverything.”

“W-What?”

“I was jealous… because you’re good at everything. Like without even trying. And I thought it was plain unfair, because people like me need to work so hard to do well, while there are people like you who are just… born talented.”

“I—”

“But after getting to know you, I realised that I’ve completely misunderstood you. You hide a lot of things about yourself, but you’re incredibly humble and hardworking even though you’re fucking annoying and cocky. And you’re so selfless, you offer help to your teammates when you notice them struggling. And you’re also so nice to everyone, you make them feel comfortable. Y-You kind of bring light to everyone around you. That’s just your charm, I guess.”

You reach out to hold his hand, but he beats you to it, taking your palm into his. He starts playing with your fingers, mapping every whorl of the ridges on your fingertips.

“Remember the day Yoongi introduced us to each other? It was also the day I failed my scholarship interview. I was up against you and there was only one slot left. You got it, so when you were teasing me for being grumpy, I kind of took my anger out on you. Felt like you were making fun of me.”

“Shit,” he curses under his breath, “I was smiling at you because I found you cute, dumbass. I kept pestering Yoongi-hyung to introduce me to you so when he finally, I was so nervous and didn’t know how to behave in front of you. I didn’t even know that I was up against you for the scholarship.”

When Yoongi first introduced you to Taehyung, he thought that you two would hit off long. But he didn’t take into account the fact that Taehyung and you are polar opposites – your petulance and Taehyung’s happy-go-lucky attitude is a stark juxtaposition. So when Taehyung opened his mouth and told Yoongi (right in front of you, bitch) that you looked like you were about to cry, his chin tilted up slightly, one eyebrow cocked, right after you found out that you failed your scholarship, so it was a straight-up no for Kim.

“Well, we’re both dumb.”

You look away in faux-annoyance, desperately trying to prevent your cheeks from igniting under the warm gaze that deftly lights upon you. “Long story short: I’m mean and I don’t deserve you.”

He cups your face with a smile so bright that his nose scrunches up adorable, “What are you on about? We were made to complete the living hell of each other.”

This prompts another fond smile to play on your lips, one so tight it hurts your cheeks.

When you realise that time’s running out, you tip-toe to press another kiss on his cheek, “For good luck. Go out there and get the trophy for me, bitch.”

The smile you give is soft and pink-cheeked, but familiar in every kind of way and for the umpteenth time, Taehyung gets the fucking air truly knocked out of his lungs. He’s a goner.

“You know,” his eyes are soft and there’s a wisp of a smile on his rosy lips, “I’ll get you the moon if you asked. But you deserve so much more than just the moon, Princess.”

If there’s one thing you know, it’s that you have almost always wanted to kiss Kim Taehyung. From the very start. And if there’s one thing that you don’t, it’s that the same boy will almost always kiss you back until you’re drowning in honey.

After Taehyung receives the trophy and lifts it high in the air for everyone to see with his teammates cheering around him, the entire ordeal almost has you in tears and you run to him, pressing kisses and bites down necks and collarbones. The ministrations don’t stop even when the two of you waltz-dance and skip all the way to his apartment, never getting enough of each other’s touches.

Taehyung’s fingers knot in your hair, controlling the kiss, his other hand finding purchase on the curve of your waist and teeth digging into the swell of your lower lip. You let out a whine that only encourages Taehyung to press against you closer and kiss you harder, in such a primal way that has heat swirling in your belly and wetness to pool between your thighs.

Your fire to him is the most peerless of lights.

Adrenaline runs through his entire body, lighting up his nerves like fireworks as he removes your shirt and openly soaks in the sight of your body, how your breasts are cupped by your lacey bra and how you’re blushing fervently.

“So pretty for me. All for me.”

You don’t miss the way he growls and licks his lips, eyes hooded as he stares at you like you’re a piece of meat that he can’t wait to devour. And his actions prove his ardent hunger when he grabs your chin and tilts it to the side, before attaching his lips greedily to the skin on your neck and licking a stripe over the flesh. He carries on nibbling on the sensitive part of your skin, sucking and biting in a way that is sure to leave you crying for more.

“Wow, and I thought you’d be tired after the game.”

He is already breathing heavily as he towers over you, biting back his moans, rocking his hips upwards for some needed friction.

“Can’t be tired when I’m just getting started with you.”

He pushes you onto the bed and comes crawling to hover over you within seconds as he connects his lips aggressively with your neck once more. While he continues to suck faint lilac bruises into your skin, you can’t help but jut your hips firmly against his, an instinctive reaction to feel more of him.

He groans loudly and this spurs you to give another experimental roll of your hips over his. This time he freezes and accidentally bites down on your neck a little harder than before which earns another sharp gasp from you, but this only douses the flames licking your abdomen. He leans back to apologise, but his words are lost at the tip of his tongue when you continue to grind against him shamelessly. His hands fall to your hips, nails digging firmly in place, and holds you down against his raging boner that now pokes at your inner thighs.

Thrashing in Taehyung’s grip, you sit up, hands finding the courage to explore the soft material of his shirt. Running your fingers over the buttons, you hastily tug it off him, lingering your fingers over his bare skin that you desperately want to kiss with your lips, lick with your tongue and mark with your teeth as yours.

You feel his hunger swallow you whole, his gaze leaving trails of fire as they run all over your body, electrifying you all over.

“Can I eat you out?” His voice is deep, much huskier than ever, and the timber of it sends shivers raking down your spine.

“God, why did you ever think that I would say no?”

In the briefest of moments, Taehyung tugs your shorts down with a grunt. Your eyes lock briefly, heat blooming like a stove burner, flaring up with that low flickering blue when you notice the pure, unadulterated lust in his concupiscent eyes. Fizzy warmth floods your belly, the knot of lust tightening within your abdomen.

His hands rub at your thighs, spreading them widely as he moves down the expanse of your body. There’s a raw power hidden in his hands and it’s tantalisingly arousing to feel those fingertips pressing into the meat of your thighs, wandering under you to squeeze at your ass.

Leaning in, he begins to leave hot, open-mouthed kisses over your bare torso, before trailing lower to your inner thighs and giving them a few kitten licks. You squirm underneath him at the intimacy, while an involuntary gasp leaves your lips at the sensation of his warm breath and lips dusting across your sensitive skin. The sudden stimulation leaves you aching for his lips to be somewhere else, somewhere where it’s throbbing to be touched, to be filled.

Taehyung seems to sense exactly what you want and the next thing you know, you’re falling back onto your elbows and his nose is pressed into the cotton of your underwear. He inhales deeply and groans, eyes cloudy with lust and pleasure, relishing the unbidden scent of your arousal.

Fucking hell.

The hot of his tongue starts teasing your bud through the sheer fabric, sucking through your underwear. Timidly, you lift your lips up, seeking for friction, but Taehyung doesn’t relent, pushing you back down.

“Gotta be patient, Princess.”

When he finally, like finally, removes your soaked underwear, he dips his head between your thighs and licks a long, languid strip along your folds. This elicits a loud keen from you, hips bucking but he winds his arms under your legs and over your hips to properly restrain you. He begins slowly again, lapping up your juices like a man starved, his satisfied whimpers sending vibrations straight to your clit.

“You smell so fucking good,” he continues on to wrap his plush lips around your clit, growling against your pussy and you feel it vibrate deep in your core, “But taste even fucking better.”

Ecstasy washes over you and you cry out, pleasure hot and sharp shooting through your veins to feed the tightening coil in your abdomen as you writhe in his iron grasp, fingers grasping for purchase at his hair.

“Can fucking eat you out all day, want to bet?”

His teeth scrape lightly against the nub when he speaks, and your back arches at the pleasure. He continues to slurp up whatever you offer him, before giving in to your unspoken request, trailing a finger up your folds and sliding it in.

You’ve always known that Taehyung has long, slender fingers – you’ve noticed how long and pretty they are when they’re wrapped around the football, when he waves to you and when he plays with your fingers. And perhaps, you’ve thought about him doing things to you with those fingers before, but now that he has his finger in you, you cannot emphasise how otherworldly it feels. Fucking delirious.

His long digit meets no resistance, instantly enveloped in the tight, slick heat of your core as he goes in knuckle-deep and adds another finger, and it makes you feel so full that you’re losing your mind. You scream even more when he fucks you deep with both his knuckles and the flat of his hot tongue, bringing the inklings of stars behind your eyes.

His fingers continue to pump into you in a quicker succession that has you trembling and keening. Your pussy gushes at his merciless, erratic flicks and pokes at your hot spots, clenching around his fingers and soaking them in your intoxicating sweetness. Shockwaves begin to tear through you and you’re coming too hard and too fast. But Taehyung doesn’t stop and continues to suck harder to help you ride out the pleasure, the squelch of his tongue lapping at your juices filling the entire room in their entirety.

“Please, Tae, please I’m c-close. Your fingers… Fuck. Feel so good. Fuck, fuck!”

You’re dripping, leaking even by now and when he detaches away from your clit to look at you, you can see your own juices glisten on his lips, dribble down to his chin, and it’s the hottest thing you’ve ever seen. The throb in your core has never been more torturous.

He leans in to give your clit another chaste kiss and your hips buck up instantly into his face as he gathers the arousal onto his tongue, tasting the heavenly mix of your juices and his saliva.

“Does Princess want to taste how sweet she is? Princess likes my fingers, doesn’t she?” He purrs, coating your juices with his fingers and holding them up so you can see how they coruscate in the dim light.

Nodding hazily, you open your mouth and he doesn’t hesitate to slide three of his digits in and you suck the evidence of your own bliss off his skin, enjoying your own taste and the weight and fit of his slender fingers in your mouth. Taehyung swallows in satisfaction and fervour at how dirty you look.

“Fuck, Y/N. Can’t wait to fuck you. Going to fuck you so good you can’t walk for days.”

A spark of a fire in the very core of your being, beginning to fizzle outward at his words.

Without warning, he pounces onto you, planting kisses on your jawline and down your neck again. When you crane your neck to give him more space, he takes his time, hard muscle of his tongue lapping at your sweet skin, lips sucking until a bruise begins to bloom.

“So fucking beautiful, God,” he croons, threading his fingers through your hair as he groans at how hot this is.  

“Taehyung,” you breathe, looking up through your eyelashes, vision hazy with lust, “Want your fat cock in my fucking mouth. Please?”

Taehyung grunts loudly at your crude request, rolling his eyes in a mixture of disbelief and pleasure. He wants your words, this exact memory, to be burned into the very cells of his brain.

“Yeah? Princess wants my dick?”

Pushing his sweats and underwear down with swift fingers, you watch how his dick slaps hard against his stomach. It is searing red at the tip, the head thicker than the shaft, begging to be touched.

You want to fucking sit on it, suck him till you’ve milked him of all his cum. You don’t think you’ve ever been this turned on before, not when his long fingers are wrapped around his fat cock, giving it a couple of quick strokes. Fuck, his fingers can barely wrap around his dick and that itself makes you dizzy with arousal.

“Open wide, sweetie.”

You throw yourself in front of his thighs, mouth wide, sticking your tongue out in anticipation. You can’t help but moan out loud when Taehyung slaps the head of his dick against your cheek, spreading precum all over, and then on your tongue, before slowly feeding you his cock. Fuck, you feel so dirty.

Taehyung’s cock rests heavy on your tongue, throbbing in the wet heat of your mouth. You lick a long stripe with your tongue on the underside of his length, feeling the very veins that have popped out.

He doesn’t believe that it’s happening. He can’t, not at how he has dreamt about this more times than he can count with both hands, and now it is actually fucking happening.

He grunts, “Dreamt about this so many times. You have no idea how many times I’ve jerked off to this.”

“Jerked off to what?” You tease as your fingers wrap themselves around the base of Taehyung’s dick to keep it steady, massaging his balls every now and then, as you suck noisily around the tip. Running your tongue along the side of his shaft and then back up to swirl your tongue at his slit to lick at his precum, you rejoice in the almost pained whine he lets out.

“Jerked off to you on your knees, looking pretty as fuck, while sucking my fat cock,” he smirks, without blinking an eye at the announcement of his fantasy.

Shuddering at his words, you start to bob your head, taking a little more of him every time you go down until you’re choking and your eyes are watering.

“Fuck yeah, just like that. Does Princess want me to fuck her throat? Feel so full and good?”

A low groan rumbles from deep within his throat, bordering on animalistic, which sends tremors of desire to thrum through your veins.

Peering up through fluttering lashes at Taehyung with your plush lips stretched wide around him, you smile at his fucked-out expression and proceed to alternate licking between his balls and his hard shaft.

When you take his cock into your mouth again, you purr at the fullness of him, opening your mouth wider to take him deeper until he’s fucked himself to the hilt of your throat, your nose buried in the tussock of cleanly trimmed pubic hair at his navel.

“Not so snarky anymore now with my cock in your mouth, huh?”

You don’t reply. The darkness in your eyes is enough to send a punch of heat straight into the pit of Taehyung’s gut and he can’t help but buck his hips forward, sliding right into the wet, hot vice of your throat, fucking right into your throat ruthlessly, leaving you a whimpering, writhing mess.

You don’t stop suckling with your lips, coating his length in saliva and then pull off with a little 'pop’, your hands still working at the base of Taehyung’s cock, fondling his balls.

“C-Cum,” your lips gleam in saliva and precum, “Please… Cum on my face.”

“Want me to come all over your face, doll? You’re so fucking dirty.”

Taehyung grips at his cock, stroking it a few times, before he taps his cock against your cheek again. His mind is sent in turmoil when you stick your tongue out and before he knows it, he’s ejaculating in thick spurts all over your face.

You look so fucking pretty with globs of white all over your chin and cheek and Taehyung shivers in ecstasy, a growl ready at the back of his throat, “Y-You really have no idea what you do to me.”

You lick off what he can, relishing in the taste of Taehyung as you swipe your thumb over your mouth to coat it with his cum and suck on it, while your other hand reaches behind to squeeze his ass.

“You weren’t kidding about your ass,” you whirl, slapping his ass and loving the way it jiggles.

“Yeah? It’s all yours, Princess.”

Taehyung traces the knobs on the base of your spine with his other hand, finding warm and soft skin. You let out another desperate sound against your lips, feeling a shock of electricity zip through your back down to your very core.  

Arching your back, you throw your head back and Taehyung takes this opportunity and slips his tongue in the hot wet of your mouth and licks fervently at the four corners, rougher and needier this time round.

It’s as if all at once, something connects between you two. You find it impossible to breathe properly, hands fisted in Taehyung’s locks, dizzy and lightheaded and hot all over. Taehyung’s teeth scrape over your bottom lip. It’s almost impossible to pull away, but when you finally break apart, a strand of saliva connects your mouths together and it lands on your chest.

“Fuck, so dirty,” Taehyung’s eyes are golden, blown wide, and he smiles at you so dearly that it makes your chest gnaw. It’s the littlest of moments and softest of gasps that render you breathless. Every part of your body that Taehyung has touched feels like it’s on fire, but it’s the deep timber of his voice, almost a growl, that makes you feel like he’s melting.

“So wet for me.”

He yearns to memorize the map of your body, the trenches of the grooves on your lower back, the stars living in your eyes, the parts of your body that have you shuddering from the pleasure.

You can feel it, the tip of his cock brushing against your wetness and you let out a soft plea. Your stomach ties into a knot when he slaps his dick against your clit a few times, loving how his head is already soaked by your juices. When you search for his eyes, you see that his irises are long gone, blanketed with pure, unadulterated lust.

“Want you. Want you to fuck me with your fat cock, Tae.”

He has to bite his own flesh to suppress the feral moan threatening to drip from his swollen, red lips, “Fucking hell. Can’t believe you used to hate me. Now here you are, begging me to fuck you.”

Your breath hitches when you feel him enter you, his cock pushing against your walls and stretching you out so good. He eases his cock slowly until it fills you the brim, pushing against your hot walls until he can go no further.

“You’re so tight for me. Feels fucking good,” he breathes out with a hazy smile, and your eyes flutter closed.

He doesn’t move for a moment, allowing you to adjust to the stretch and burn, before the wriggle of your hips urges him to move and he knows that he’s about to take you higher than ever. He lifts his lips to almost pull all the way out, the tip nestling an inch within your entrance, and without warning, slams back into your cunt, drawing a choked moan from the both of you as his length drags against your walls and hits a spot deep inside you.

Your back arches off the bed at the pleasure, a sharp cry leaving your lips.

“Fuck yeah, you like that princess? Going to be a good girl for me?”

“Yes, yes! Fuck Taehyung. You feel so good.”

This only prompts him to repeat the movement a few more times, until he settles on pounding into you mercilessly with a precision that he flaunts on the field. He continues fucking into that same sensitive spot over and over again with no signs of slowing down, finally able to fulfil the primal, animalistic need and urge that has accumulated ever since the day he met you.

As his hips snap into yours, his palm remains gentle on your face, his tongue hot and assimilating your own so passionately and tenderly that it makes your heart melt. There’s just something so tangibly tender and sensual about the way he’s kissing you, while fucking you senseless, as if he wants you to know how much he wants this, how much he wants to give himself to you with each stroke.

How much love he has to devote to you.  

“Faster, faster, don’t stop, Taehyung. Fuck.”

You can feel every drag of Taehyung’s thick cock inside you, his ridges sliding against your walls and hitting that little bundle of nerves inside you that has got you babbling nonsense and your eyes rolled all the way up.

Screwing your eyes closed, the sparks glow brighter, and your moans heighten in pitch, while you sink your teeth into the swollen flesh of your lower lip. Above you, Taehyung learns that your mouth is sinful from the way you’re repeating curses and cries like a mantra and from the way drool is dripping down your chin. It’s just how unbelievably rough he’s fucking you, rough enough that you’re convinced there will be bruises all over your body and he’s going to rip you apart. But maybe that’s what you want, maybe that’s exactly what Taehyung intends to do to you.

“Say please.”

He then sits up and leans back to rest on his calves, before he hikes your leg up to rest over his shoulder, effectively folding you into half, and pulls you towards him roughly to fuck into you harder. You keen loudly at the new angle, how he’s able to fuck into you so much deeper, hands clawing at the sheets and dragging long, red marks on his back.

“Please, Taehyung. Please, you fuck me so fucking good.”

He smirks at how helpless you are underneath him and frees his hand from your thigh, reaching to search for yours, intertwining them tightly.

Which each thrust, the both of you grow closer to your impending orgasms, excitement curling in your abdomen along with pleasure that shoots straight to your core as Taehyung continues to pummel into your welcoming heat, strong thighs trembling against the backs of yours.

His other hand rest on your hips as his fingers squeeze and caress your skin each time you curse and whimper his name lasciviously, blending in with the symphony of skin slapping against skin, of his balls and thighs smacking against your ass that stirs the silence.

“I’m on the pill. Cum inside me, please. Want your hot cum in me.”

“Princess wants to be my personal cum-dumpster, doesn’t she?”  

Taehyung dips his head over your chest and takes your nipple into his mouth, sucking it lavishly as if the taste of you is suddenly too much to bear. You wail in pleasure, back arched all the way up, the grip on his hand tightening as your hips rise to meet the brutal thrusts of his hips, pleasure shooting white hot to join the heated desire in your core.

That’s all you need to lurch over the edge. The coil within your core suddenly snaps with the tension and then comes the onslaught of immense white-hot pleasure, curling and roaring like a beast in your stomach, the pressure between your legs immeasurably high. You clamp around him one last time, galaxies firing in the murky red of your eyelids as he coaxes you through your orgasm.

You know Taehyung’s close too – now faster, more erratic, as he chases his release relentlessly. For a moment, all you can see is glorious light, blinding your vision until it consumes you whole and you’re shaking ferociously.  

Your eyes roll to the back of your head when Taehyung comes hard with a harsh shudder and an animalistic growl from between his clenched teeth, thrumming at his warm seed inside you. He isn’t done with you yet though. When he pulls out, the emptying sensation of his cock being drawn out of your walls gives rise to another wail from you, but you forget all over it when he rubs the swollen tip of his dick against your clit in a circular movement, playing to its sensitivity and pushing in his cum inside you again. His personal cum-dumpster.

Taehyung kisses you once more just because he can, and then lets his eyes run over the girl in front of him and his mind goes blank because wow, that actually happened – and it certainly did, evident from the mussed hair, blown hazy pupils, lovebites all over flustered skin and the soft, dreamy smile belonging to a pair of swollen-red lips.

This, Taehyung registers despite the giddy turbulence in his mind, is the most beautiful smile he has ever seen. So unbelievably, heart-wrenchingly beautiful that he can feel something in his chest splinter.

There’s a passing second of staring at each other, your cheek deep in the pillow, his head lulled against the headboard.

Taehyung lets out a chuckle, airy and filled with a rasp of post-sleep that would never come. He moves slowly, creaking the mattress in droning successions as he slips his arm around your waist, dusting little kisses on your nose before bringing up your hand to his lips. You realise that he likes doing that.

He stares at you for a long while, thumb over the back of your hand in tandem with the flick of his eyes, back and forth, between yours.

Even in the dark, Taehyung’s lovely flush is brilliant, otherworldly effervescent.  

“You know when you said those things to Yoongi, I knew you said it out of a fit, but I couldn’t help but be upset about it.”

“Tae—”

His lips quirk upward on the edges into something knowing, “Then I realised that this was the first time I was genuinely upset about someone’s opinion about me. I usually don’t care what people think of me. I mean I don’t live to impress them, so this made me realised that I actually care a lot about what you think about me. About how you feel about me, whether I’m just a dumb fuckboy to you or whether you see the real me.”

He presses another kiss to your knuckles and your entire body tingles with warmth, “Then it hit me. That you know, maybe I really, really do have feelings for you and I want you to like me too. Like for real. I know I said that I don’t have the time and energy to deal with feelings. But you… You drive me insane. I used to be cynical about being so vulnerable for someone, and it’s so scary how much you can yearn for someone’s attention and affection. It’s just crazy – the things you do to me.”

As his words spill into the spaces between you, you simmer in the comfortable silence, ignoring the sharp tugs at your heartstrings.

“Never thought I’d live to see this day,” he mumbles, before pressing a kiss to your forehead with an earnestness that heightens the tugs at your heartstrings.

“Talk about character development,” you joke, burying your face in his chest and finding solace in the warmth of the sweet honey gold that he possesses. His hand on your waist begins caressing the small of your back, bringing you closer to him, until his nose is settled in the crook of your neck.

“Looks like my YOLO-ing did me some good,” he whispers into your ear and there’s a resplendent lilt to his voice.

It takes you a while for you to realise that he’s referring to the fake quote you’ve assigned to him.

Taehyung smiles at your deadpan expression and it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. His mouth is pulled into a rectangle and his eyes are curved into crescents. You realise this a long time ago, but you will finally admit to it now – Taehyung is beautiful. He is so beautiful that he could rearrange continent with that smile of his.

When he laughs and the moonlight catches on the flecks of gold in melted brown, that’s when you know that you’re struck with a love the size of the entire galaxy for him. To hell with your past hatred and feud with him, you’re just grateful to have your entire universe lying right beside you, right in this moment, under the burning light of the great, yellow moon that hangs heavy and radiant above the two of you.

that’s it. that’s the mammoth i’ve been brewing over the past few months (and rushing it like mad over the past two weeks)! i wanted to depict tae as accurately as possible so i made sure to include the little tiny details and quirks of his ;; did you know that he was the one who coined the term bread cheeks??? there’s a video of him comparing his cheeks to bread buns and i think that started the entire trend i’m just. i never want tae to be sad he has the purest and biggest heart

thank you so much for reading this and if you enjoyed it, please please hit that like or reblog button or/and hmu in my inbox/dms! ♡ i love receiving asks and messages tho sometimes ;; i just disappear from the face of the earth. i literally post a fic every 6 months sobs but next up sugarplum elegy (and i promise i won’t take another 6 months, my aim to upload it is end june!) love you guys  much and remember to take care of yourself – i believe in your galaxy ☁️💫💜💞🌃✨

[saucy-sapphic]

Only Have Eyes for You

Lana Winters x Reader

Ch. 1

Summary: Grey skies and butterflies were not how you expected your first day to begin. You try to shake of your first day jitters, but in a sea of faces a dazzling pair of honey brown eyes hold you captive. 

A/n: This is set during the same time period as Asylum (1960s), so I will do my best to maintain some historical accuracy. This is the first series I have ever written, so pretty please be patient with me. I am thinking that it might be anywhere from 3-4 chapters, but we’ll see how it goes. Special thanks to @make--your--life--spectacular who sparked this idea and is always willing to proof read my work, you truly are a gem💖😘! I hope you all enjoy!

Word Count: 2.5K

Warnings: None

The soft sound of rain hitting your window eased you out of your slumber. Getting up and heading to the window you peer outside, seeing nothing but grey cover the skies above. You let out a slight groan, you had been looking forward to this day for so long, and seeing gloomy weather was not how you anticipated it to start. You make your way to your small kitchen to start boiling water for your tea. Heading back to your room, you pull on the blouse and skirt you had picked the night before. You assess yourself in the mirror, running a brush through your hair, making sure that each strand is in its place. Your mind wanders, playing out scenario after scenario of how the day may go. You are pulled from your thoughts when the high pitch whistle of the kettle blows. After pouring yourself a cup of tea and putting together a quick breakfast, you sit down sighing deeply. The earthy scent of green tea captivating your senses and calming your nerves. You let out a deep breath, quietly saying to yourself, “it’s going to be okay, it’s just first day jitters.”

After finishing your meal and cleaning up, you grab your bag, camera, and keys and head to the door. While heading down the stairs of your apartment building, you run through a mental checklist of the things you needed. After opening the front door, you release a small whine realizing you had forgotten an umbrella. Looking down at your watch, you determine that you do not have time to go back and grab one. Pulling your coat over your head you begin your trek to your new job. All the while, a couple of blocks down Lana Winters peers out her window taking in the April showers.

“Damn, it’s really coming down, Wendy,” Lana huffed as she stubbed out her cigarette.

“Don’t forget an umbrella then, honey,” Wendy replied, emerging from their shared bedroom. She smiled at Lana before saying, “come on, you have to get going. You don’t want to be late now do you?”

Lana gave her a soft smile before placing a quick kiss on her cheek and grabbing her belongings. As Lana drove to work, she noticed a woman walking briskly on the empty sidewalk, coat hiked up above her head attempting to shield herself from the rain. Driving past and parking her car in front of Gazette, Lana felt a small pang of guilt for not offering to help the woman. Walking into the building, she is greeted warmly by the secretary and the bustling noise of other journalists.

Finally reaching your destination, albeit slightly out of breath and damp, you take a second to compose yourself before walking in. After straightening your coat and taking a deep breath, you pull the doors open. The boisterous scene playing out before you causes your heart to thrum with excitement. Eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar, you scan the room taking in the men typing away, arguing over who gets to cover what story and paper after paper being printed with headlines for tomorrow’s news. You faintly hear someone clearing their throat and it breaks you from your spell. Snapping your mouth shut and quickly looking at the smirking woman sitting behind the desk in front of you.

“Uh, h-hi – umm… I mean h-hello,” you stutter out before taking a calming breath. “I’m sorry, can I start over?” you sigh out.

The woman nods at you in amusement.

“Hi, my name is Y/N Y/L/N. I’m the new photographer.”

“I know, honey. I could tell by the camera dangling from your neck,” she giggles out. “I’m Betty, I’m the secretary here,” she offers kindly. “I’ll let Johnny know that you’re here.”

You give her a smile and nod before looking back at the busyness that lies ahead. Anxiety and nerves filling you slowly.

“He’s on his way”, Betty states. “And sweetheart, relax. They’re all bark and no bite, trust me”, she adds smiling at you.

“Thank you,” you breathe out. You glance back up to see a man approaching you.

“There she is! The big hot shot herself!” he beams at you.

You feel your shoulders relax and a smile spreads across your face after seeing the familiar face. “God, Johnny, it’s so good to see you again!” you giggle out.

“You too kiddo,” Johnny replies before enveloping you in a big hug. Pulling back quickly he gives you a small frown. “You’re wet”, he says flatly.

“Yeah, well, it’s raining,” you say shrugging at him.

“You didn’t bring an umbrella?”

“Yeah, Johnny, I did. But I decided not to use it, I thought that maybe showing up on my first day like a wet dog would make a good impression on the boss man,” you tease.

He lets out a throaty laugh before saying, “always one to tease. Come on in kiddo, I’ll introduce you to everybody.”

As you both step into the newsroom Johnny clears his throat before booming out, “Hey, everyone, listen up!”

All motion stops and the room goes dead silent. You turn, looking to Johnny, somewhat in awe that the goofy guy you knew in college could command such a room. He gives you a small smirk before carrying on, “this is Y/N, she’s our new photographer for the Gazette. She just got back from doin’ a big project in New York, which means she’s the best in town,” he compliments.

A slight blush creeps its way onto your cheeks from not only his complement but also from having all the attention on you. Your eyes scan the room full of men, you had fought tooth and nail to be where you are despite having everyone tell you that a woman’s place was at home. Most of them look at you rather blankly, others offer kind smiles, and a couple look at you with a sly grin on their faces. But none of them hold your attention like the woman in the back corner of the room. Your eyes meet and she holds your gaze. You feel your heartbeat quicken and the blush deepen on your face. You promptly look away and listen to Johnny finish up his speech.

“And if any of these knuckleheads give you a hard time, Y/N, you come talk to me.”

You give him a nod and a small smile before he turns and clearly states, “now get back to work.”

The room immediately goes back to the organized chaos that it was when you had arrived. Your eyes search the room for the woman you had seen, but she seemed to have disappeared in the sea of journalists.

“Come on kid, let me show you to your office,” he exclaims.

“I get my own office?” you ask in awe.

“Well… no not exactly. You get a desk and closet that can be turned into a red room, you know for your photos and stuff,” he smirks.

“And you said I was the tease,” you reply with a roll of your eyes.

“The only person here who has an office is me, no exceptions. Not even for an old friend,” he says smiling at you. You stop at an empty desk and he nods his head towards it. “Here, it is kiddo. Home sweet home.”

“Fine, but if I don’t get my own office can you at least drop the nickname? We’re not in college anymore, Johnny, and your only four years older than me,” you whine out.

“Not a chance,” he says before turning to leave.

You groan and plop your things on your new desk unceremoniously. Sitting down, you close your eyes and take in a deep breath in an attempt to clear your head.

“Well that was an entrance,” a warm voice speaks.

Your eyes fly open and you see a woman from before, now next to you and leaning on your desk. You look up at her mouth agape, taking in her chestnut brown of her hair and the way a smile played and her perfectly painted red lips.

“He must really like you; cause John’s never made a speech like that about anyone before,” she says.

Your mouth is still agape, caught in the glow of the woman in front of you, you go to reply but no words come out. She smirks down at you, her eyes taking in every detail.

“The name’s Lana Winters, my ‘office’ is right there,” she adds while pointing to the desk next to yours.

Trying to gather your thoughts you stutter out, “h-hi, I’m Y/N. Uh, I guess you knew that though.” You laugh awkwardly struggling to ease whatever awkward tension there was between the two of you. Lana tilts her head and stares at your sitting form, and you see a playful glimmer in her eyes before she stands.

She rounds the corner of your desk and calls over her shoulder, “it’s nice to have another woman here.”

You let out a breath that you did not know you were holding as you see her walk away. The rest of the morning was far less exciting. A few more people introduced themselves to you while you set up your equipment. However, none of them were of interest to you, the only person you wanted to get to know was Lana. But every time you would glance in her direction, she was always too busy with one thing or another.

With lunch approaching, you tidy your desk and make your way across the street to the small café. You set your meal down and as you go to take a bite, a familiar voice stops you.

“Mind if I join you?” Lana asks.

You look up at her with wide eyes and shake your head.

She sits down and begins to eat her sandwich as you stare dumbfounded at her.

“Are you always this quiet?” she asks.

You go to shake your head, before stopping abruptly to say, “no, not usually.”

She hums before taking another bite and looking at you quizzically. “Do you plan on eating that or just holding it up for an hour?” she teases, pointing to your uneaten sandwich.

You look down at the sandwich your holding and inwardly groan at how awkward you were being. You take a bite, chewing slowly, and look back up at Lana. She giggles at you and you feel your heartbeat jump at the sound. “You know you don’t have to eat if you’re not hungry,” she offers.

“Oh, trust me, I’m always hungry,” you joke, letting loose for a second.

At this Lana lets out a full laugh. “Ahh, so she does speak,” she teases.

You look at her apologetically, “I’m sorry, you’re just so…” you stop yourself before the word beautiful could spill out of your mouth.

“So?” she asks curiously.

“Umm… so… confident,” you say instead. “You’re the only female reporter in town and by what it looked like, the hardest working one too. It’s somewhat intimidating,” you explain shyly.

Lana gives you a bright smile and nods, “you’re pretty intimidating too, sweetheart.” Hearing the term of endearment causes blush to bloom on your face.

You take another bite to hide your blush you ask, “how so?”

“Well, you’re the new hotshot photographer from New York City, I’d say that’s pretty intimidating.”

You giggle at her comment, which causes her smile to widen further. “I was just helping a friend with a project, it was nothing that big really,” you explain.

She playfully squints at you before questioning, “what paper was the project for?”

“The New York Times…” you quietly mumble out.

“See, I was right, you are a big hot shot from New York!” she smirks. “And you shouldn’t be shy about it either, it’s pretty impressive.”

You smile at her and give her a quiet thanks, the rest of the lunch is spent in comfortable silence. As the two of you make your way back to the Gazette, Lana turns to you and asks, “did you walk to work this morning?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“I saw you while I was driving by. If you want, I can give you a ride,” she offers.

“Lana, you don’t have to do that,” you tell her.

“Y/N, it’s no bother, I was coming from the same direction as you were.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“Trust me, it’s truly no trouble at all. I can even give you a ride today after work,” she beams.

“O-okay, thank you,” you respond entering the building before you.  

As the rest of the day progresses the hustle and bustle start to die down, and by 4:30 everyone seems to have packed up.

While you work to convert the large closet Johnny designated as your darkroom Lana approaches you. “Hey, you ready to head out?”

You look up from your equipment and see Lana casually leaning her hip against the doorframe. The golden light from the sunset radiating around her and you cannot help but gaze at her body from head to toe. Too bewitched by her form, you barely register her question. The clearing of her throat snaps you out of your trance and you mumble out a quick apology. “Uh-h…umm… yeah, sorry. Let me just grab my bag and camera and I’ll be ready to go.”

You quickly rush out of the room and head straight for your desk, almost knocking into Lana on the way. Your eyes were trained on the ground trying your best to hide how the pink coloring your cheeks. Little did you know, Lana was behind you with a cocky smile playing at her lips while her eyes raked your body, staring at your hips longer than she would like to admit. 

After gathering your things Lana shows you to her car. She starts it and the two of you sit in awkward silence for a few minutes. Lana glances at you before asking, “do you mind if I turn on the radio?”

You release the breath you had been holding and reply, “no, not at all.”

As the radio comes to life, a familiar tune causes your shoulders to relax and a smile to flourish on your face. Lana notices the subtle change and lets out a relaxed giggle. “I Only Have Eyes for You is one of my favorite songs,” she says.

You turn to face her, the smile on your face growing wider. “Mine too,” you reply as you begin to hum along to the song causing Lana’s smile to widen. As you reach your apartment the song slowly starts to fade out. Turning to Lana you say, “thank you again, you really don’t have to do all of this for me.”

Lana giggles out, “really it’s no problem at all. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

You cannot help but smile as you leave her car. Walking up the steps to your building you turn to see Lana watching you intently, offering a flirtatious wave as you make your way to the door. After stepping through the threshold, you give Lana a wave goodbye and she gives you a wink back. You feel your heart skip a beat as you go to close the door. Leaning against the now-closed door, you let out a sigh mumbling to yourself, “God, I’m in trouble.”

Tags:

@myahsnightmare @make--your--life--spectacular

If you wanna be tagged please let me know😊💖

[jamielea81]

Conversations

Chapter 8

Description: You accompany your friends on a day trip to Animal Kingdom Theme Park where you meet Scott Evans by chance. This one afternoon leads to a year long friendship with both Chris and Scott over text messages and phone calls.

Pairing: Chris Evans x Reader

Warning: A couple of curse words, fluff, overthinking, Scott being a little shit.

Word Count: 3,210

A/N: I know nothing about the lives of the Evans family and mean no harm. This is purely fiction and for fun. Reblogs and comments are much appreciated! The tag list is now closed. Each chapter tends to get reblogged from me a few times, so if you’re following me, you can’t miss it.

*Italics are internal thoughts

“It’s like I don’t even know you anymore,” Scott whined.

“You’re being dramatic.”

Scott was facetiming you and being his normal grumpy self. If you didn’t love him so much, you would have disconnected the call ten minutes prior.

“I thought we had no secrets,” he plainly said.

“We never agreed to that. I’m pretty sure there are a million things I don’t know about you,” you threw back at him, one eyebrow raised.

He scoffs and shakes his head with a little bit of a smile coming through.

I knew he’d break.

**

Chris had gone back to Massachusetts two days prior and you still hadn’t stopped smiling.  

After sharing a few more sweet kisses that night, the two of you watched the sunrise before making the short walk back to your house. It was the first time you had experienced both the sunset and sunrise with someone all in the same day. Sleep deprivation never felt so good.

You dropped Chris off an hour later. He wanted you to come inside to say goodbye to his mom, but with half your makeup worn off and the giddy look on your face, it wasn’t the impression you wanted to give. Especially since the first one didn’t play out so well.

With the two of you parked like teenagers outside his rented home, you struggled with what to say.

“Thanks for having me over,” Chris offered with a lazy smile.

“Thanks for coming over and for lunch.”

You turned in your seat to face him head on. Chris grabbed your hand intertwining your fingers.

“I hate to be a bummer, but I don’t know what I can come back to visit. But I want to see you again. Don’t want to leave today and have you thinkin’ this is it,” he said.

You nodded your head numbly, trying to keep the last eighteen or so hours in your mind solely. No use in being sad right now. Leaning forward, you captured his lips once more. The two of you pulling away with sleepy smiles.

“Call me when you get home,” you said.

Chris lifted your linked hands, bringing them to his lips, and kissing yours softly.

“Of course,” he said.

**

“Fine…You still should have told me,” Scott insisted.

You rubbed your right eye with the palm of your hand, momentarily freaking out before you realized you didn’t have any makeup on.

“I don’t really know what it all means,” you sighed out. “Okay, that’s not completely true.” Scott chuckled at your indecision. “It was nice and I kind of wanted to keep it to myself for a while.” You shrugged a shoulder.

“Well, he can’t stop gushing about you,” Scott replied. That made you perk up.

“Really?”

“Yeah, it was like the first thing he told me when he got home. No mention of Disney, just Sassy,” he said.

“See, I didn’t have to tell you. You guys tell each other everything. Which honestly concerns me.” You gave him a smirk. “But what did he say?!”

Scott laughed, shaking his head at the same time.

“I don’t know…Think I need to start keeping my relationships with the two of you separate.”

Sticking out your bottom lip, you give him the biggest pouty face you could muster causing Scott to chuckle again.

“All I’m going to say is he said you spent the night together and it was wonderful.”

“Wait. Wait. Hold up. That sounds like our night was more than PG13!” you exclaimed.

“Oh my god! I didn’t even think of that!” Scott laughed. “He didn’t mean it that way, I swear. But that’s all you’re getting from me.”

“Fine,” you groaned.

**

A week had passed and the endless smile had finally dissipated. You weren’t upset or anything like that. No. The euphoric state you were in had just…faded. Chris and you spoke or texted over the last week, but reality set in that the night you shared would probably be no more than a night. This of course was not stated with actual words between the two of you. Saying it out loud seemed much too scary. But since it wasn’t spoken, you could only assume that Chris had come to the same conclusion. Really, what were the two of you? The calls and texts were much the same as they had always been. Teasing each other, a good amount of flirting, small talk about your days, and maybe a little Scott talk. It was really just getting your mind to wrap around the idea that Chris was your friend that you happened to have kissed. A few times. Maybe that was good enough.

**

Cirque du Soleli was premiering a new show called Drawn to Life, after being closed for some time in Disney Springs, the shopping and entertainment district at Walt Disney World resort. Jana had agreed to be your date, but since she was coming from work, she was running a bit behind. You busied yourself with a drink on the outdoor patio at House of Blues, letting the dark rum and mix of juices take your mind off the busy week. Grabbing your phone out of your purse, you decided to give Chris a call since Jana wouldn’t be arriving for at least another ten minutes.

“Well, hello there sweetheart. What are you up to?” His soothing voice answered.

“Hey there yourself. I’m just drinking alone. At a bar. Woe is me,” you replied.

“I don’t like the sound of that. Tough week?” Chris asked.

“Wasn’t too bad. Just waiting on Jana who’s running late.”

“Oh, you two. Do I need to warn the cops that you’re out together?” he teased.

“Well, we’re on Disney property, so we can’t get into too much trouble. Watchin’ the new Cirque show that’s opening tonight for the paper. They actually gave me a plus one and I couldn’t think of a better date,” you bated him.

“Really Sassy? Aiming low I see?”

“I haven’t a clue at what you’re implying Mr. Evans.”

“Mmhm, I’m sure. She gonna kiss you goodnight when the evening is over?” he asked.

“Well, she’s married. So…”

Chris chuckled at that. “So, what you’re sayin’ is she doesn’t know about that little spot right below your ear that gets you all hot and bothered?”

This man will be the death of you some day. It took a moment for you to compose yourself. Clearing your throat quickly and blowing out a breath.

“No, no. Sh-she doesn’t know that. But you barely know that, so dial it down buddy,” you giggled.

“Ah-huh. Alright, sweetheart. I’ll try to rein it in.” There was a beat of silence on both ends, the only sound was each other’s breath.  “God, I miss you,” he softly spoke.

With your heart hammering in your ears, you licked your lips. “I miss you too.”

You felt a tap on your shoulder, turning your head you saw Jana who gave you a silent wave.

“Um, babe, Jana’s here now,” you said, struggling to get your voice.

“Alright. Have a good night and don’t get into any trouble,” he warned.

“I promise nothing. Talk to you tomorrow?” Why you asked it as a question, you weren’t sure.

“Always. Goodnight sweetheart.”

“Goodnight,” you replied, hitting the end call button.

Dropping your phone into your purse, you turned back to Jana, gesturing for her to take a seat.

“Who was that?”

“Chris.”

You’re sure she can see the heat in your face, but you don’t care at the moment. He said he missed you. You’re glad you aren’t the only one.

“How are you holding up?” Jana asked.

Lifting your glass to your lips, you took a sip of the mostly watered-down rum. “I’m doing good. Chris is still my friend and that’s all I can really ask for,” you said, shrugging your shoulders.

Jana gave you a pointed look, setting her bag on the tabletop, resting her arms on either side of it. “Really?” she asked.

“Of course, not!” you practically shouted. Had it been anyone else, they would have flinched at your sudden loss of composure. Taking a calming breath, you composed yourself once more. “We did just have a nice conversation, so I’m feeling better. I’m fine.”

“Yep. Sure, seems like it.” She stood up, pushing the chair back in. “Let’s go. Time to join the circus.”

You knew she probably would have given you a lecture about going with the flow and learning to discuss your feelings if you had time before the show started. And if you were an adult about the situation, you would listen to her.

**

Whenever your phone rang during the middle of the day from one of the Evans boys, you knew something was up. Seeing Chris’ name on your screen surprised you a bit. He had been filming the last couple of weeks for another Apple TV+ series, so it was a lot more texting with a few phone calls sprinkled in. Usually just as you were falling asleep.

“I’m sorry, who’s this?” you answered.

You hear a deep chuckle on the other end of the line. “Funny. Did you delete my contact or something?” Chris asked.

“Not this week. Not yet anyway,” you teased.

The newsroom was packed this afternoon being that it was Friday and mostly everyone was required to make an appearance. You pushed away from your desk, getting to your feet to find an empty conference room.

“Not this week? What did I do last week?” He sounds tired. You know he loves to work, but you really wish he’d take a little more time for himself.

You found an open room, quickly shutting the door, plopping your butt in a chair at the large round table. “Hmm. If you don’t know, that makes a bigger case for me to delete you as soon as we hang up.” The chairs in the conference rooms were always much nicer than the ones on the floor.

Wonder if I could swap mine for one of these without anyone noticing?

“Maybe I could change your mind,” Chris offered.

“I’m listening,” you said, tapping your fingernails against the polished wood table.

“Could you take off work for a couple of days? I’m going to be a New York City for a few days, and my schedule isn’t going to be packed. Thought maybe I could convince you to come see me.”

You wouldn’t say it out loud, but you most definitely would make something work. It had only been a month since your weekend together, but that month felt more like a dozen. With his filming schedule, you planned on waiting another couple of months before you would even bring up the idea of seeing him.

“When exactly? I’m sure I could get away, but if it’s a Friday, it will be a little harder to swing it.”

“You don’t think I know that Sassy? Fridays you have meetings and you can’t be late,” he said, a smirk in his voice.

“Kudos to you, Mr. Evans.”

“I’m gettin’ in Monday night, late.”

“This Monday?”

Crap. Maybe not.

“Sweetheart, I’m not calling you last minute. The week after.”

Relaxing a bit when you realized you’d have a little over a week to prepare rather than just a couple of days. You’d have to look up flights and hotels to see what you could find. Figure out what part of New York he’d be in. Knowing you probably wouldn’t be able to afford where ever he was staying, you wanted to at least be close.

“I can make that work. Maybe come in Tuesday morning and leave Thursday night?”

“Whatever you can make happen Y/N, I’ll take.”

You smiled at his words. “I’ll look at some flights and hotels. Where are you staying?”

“No, no, no, sweetheart. I’m flying you out here. My treat,” he said.

“Chris, no. I can’t have you do that. That’s too big of a gift,” you reasoned.

The two of you were friends, maybe something a bit more, but mostly just friends. It was much too much for him to paying for trips.

“Let me do this. I want to see you and it’s really not that big of a deal.”

You shook your head and then rolled your eyes at yourself remembering he couldn’t see you.

“Let me at least pay for the flight, Chris.”

“You’re frustrating, you know that?” he groaned.

“I’ve been told that,” you chuckled.

“If you’d feel more comfortable, I can get you your own room. But if I’m being honest, I’d like you to stay with me,” he said softly.

Holy shit.

“Ye-yeah. Yeah. I’d like that. To stay with you I mean.”

Chris chuckled at your response. “One room it is. Let me know you flight info and I’ll arrange a car to pick you up.”

“Okay. Yeah, I’ll do that.” You had a dopey smile on your face, but you couldn’t help it.

“Talk to you soon, sweetheart.”

“Bye babe,” you replied.

If you weren’t at work, you’d pretty much be freaking out. The freak out would need to wait.

**

Your flight was booked for seven in the morning on Tuesday, flying home at four in the afternoon on Thursday. Not a lot of time, but at least it was two full days. Two full nights as well. That was a whole other thing. You were spending two nights with Chris. Presumably in one bed. Unless he booked a room with more than one bed. Who were you kidding? He probably doesn’t even book his own rooms. He was there for work, so the room probably only had one bed.

You quickly fired off a text to Jana.

Y/N: Am I just a booty call?

You knew Chris didn’t think of you that way. He was your friend. You were close friends with his brother. But being whisked away to New York for a couple of nights sure made you feel a little bit like one. And you agreed to sleeping in the same room.

Jana: In general, or??

Bitch.

Your friends were all trouble and as soon as you get back from New York, you were going to look for new ones.

Y/N: Thanks, I’m about to call your husband instead.

Jana: He told me to type that!

Y/N: 🥺

Jana: You are not a booty call. Chris lives a different lifestyle from most people. If the two of you want to spend time together, flying to different cities is probably how it’s going to go.

She was right. You knew she was. But your dumb brain didn’t want to accept it.

**

Nine at night was entirely too early to go to bed. Usually you weren’t even in your room that early, but it was Monday and you were trying to fall asleep at an earlier hour since your alarm was set for three in the morning. Why you picked a seven AM flight was beyond you.

Y/N: I’m going to bed early. Talk to you tomorrow.

You waited a few minutes for Scott to text you back. He was in L.A. if you were remembering correctly, so it was a lot earlier than normal.

Instead of texting back, he was calling.

“Hello, Scott,” you answered.

“Hi Sassy. I’m trying to have a nice dinner with Zach and you’re interrupting what was once a beautiful evening.”

Yet I’m the sassy one?

“I’m pretty sure by you calling me, you’re interrupting dinner with Zach. Tell him hello from me by the way,” you replied.

“I hate when you’re right,” he chuckled.

“Just stating facts, sweetie. You didn’t have to call, just wanted to let you know I was turning in early.”

“Is your flight early?” he asked.

“Yeah, seven. Not sure what I was thinkin’ there.”

“Thinkin’ about gettin’ some,” he murmured.

“Scott! Dude! What the fuck?”

Rather than respond he just continued to laugh on the other end of the line.

“I’m just saying. Don’t kill the messenger here,” he continued to chuckle.

“What happened to keeping yourself separate from Chris and my relationship?”

“Uhh, yeah. You’re right. My lips are sealed,” Scott replied.

 “Unanswered prayers!”

“Watch yourself, Sassy,” he said sternly. “But have a safe flight. Give Chris a hug and kiss for me.” It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde all of a sudden. So serious one second and nice and sweet the second. Scott Evans was a man of mystery.

“Yeah, thanks, Grumpy. Goodnight.”

“Bye, love.”

**

One of the positives about taking an early flight was that security was a lot easier to get through so early in the morning. You had said for years you were going to get Pre-Check but you always just put it off. Going through a short security check was nice.

Picking up a coffee and a bagel, you made your way to the gate. Boarding wasn’t for another hour, but that gave you time to finish your food, use the restroom, and over think the trip.

Sigh.

No amount of crying babies and couples arguing about which bag had the phone charger could distract you from knowing you’d be seeing Chris in a matter of hours. Do you greet him with a hug, high five, or a kiss? I mean, really, it could be anything.

Sigh.

Y/N: Let’s say I wanted something more to happen on this getaway. I’m not saying that’s what I want. Hypothetically speaking.

You chewed on your lip waiting for Jana’s reply. You should have bought a pack of gum. Your lips would be raw before you even touched down in JFK.

Jana: Hypothetically you want to bang him

Y/N: Where is that coming from? I never said that.

Jana: It might be time you spoke to a professional.

She probably isn’t wrong.

Y/N: Let’s say the answer is yes. Too soon?

Jana: That’s entirely up to you. If that’s what you both want.

Y/N: It’s me. I have no idea what I want. I wish there was some magical way to know what the other person is thinking.

Jana: Doesn’t work that way babe

Y/N: Yeah

Brooks: Just bang him!

Jana really needed to stop telling Brooks everything.

You quickly replied to Brooks’ message.

Y/N: Not a word to Scott.

Now that two of them talked, who knows how quickly this conversation would get back to Chris.

Brooks: My lips are sealed.

Damnit! That’s what Scott said last night.

**

Because you bought your seat a week out, you ended up buying an upgraded seat in Delta Comfort which essentially gave you a few more inches of leg room and a seat just past the first-class section. The bigger benefit for you was being boarded sooner. Being able to skip most of the standing around the gate like watching a street act was nothing more than a blessing for your nerves.

Settled into your seat, you decided to send Chris a text before powering down your phone.

Y/N: Hey there, Delilah What's it like in New York city? I'm a thousand miles away But, girl, tonight you look so pretty Yes, you do

Chris: Cute. Now get your ass here so I can kiss you.

Maybe you knew what you wanted.

Chapter 9

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[folkelorde]

* / GUIDE: CHARACTERS AT A NEWSPAPER.

hi, hello ! here’s just a guide for creating a character who works in a newsroom/for a newspaper. most of this is drawn from personal experience (+ my parents’ experiences) but i did some googling on your behalf as well. this guide isn’t just because i wanna see more accuracy, but also because there’s a lot of things about this environment that would be fun to write that i don’t really see being taken advantage of. so, check out under the cut for all my tips.

note: if you have any questions about your journalist or journalist-adjacent muse, i’m happy to try and help answer ! let me know if you have more questions this guide doesn’t cover, i just went to the points that might be most helpful for your muse plot-wise.

1. WHERE IS THE NEWSPAPER LOCATED/WHAT KIND IS IT? this makes a huge difference. 

the environment in a small town paper is going to be a lot more lowkey and casual than a larger city paper. 

most large papers are now all owned by big companies so really unless they’re the nytimes, they’re suffering because of constant budget cuts, layoffs, etc, that affect their ability to report the stories that the people in their area care about. they’re generally just pulling from AP articles. small town papers these days are mainly weekly or biweekly. 

another thing that has become really popular (at least in the US) are altweeklies. there’s probably one of these in your state, and they generally have a huge focus on narrative journalism, come out weekly, and almost have a magazine-like feel? most probably started out as arts publications but now do a lot of news coverage to make up for the lack of coverage in their area. these are generally independently owned. if you’re curious, there’s a whole list of them here. 

essentially, if you’ve got a larger, conventional paper, it’s probably consolidating and the workers are suffering. if you’re in a tiny small town paper, it’s probably chill and if there’s ever any kind of real news, it’s the story of the fucking year. and if you’re at an altweekly, you’re kind of in the middle and maybe new to reporting news, since you have to make up for what your big city paper isn’t doing.

2. WHAT DOES YOUR CHARACTER DO? there are more people at a newspaper than writers and photographers! in fact, a lot of newspapers don’t really have staff photographers any more, just an army of freelance ones that they call on. here are some ideas for positions that your character can have:

intern: if your character is a writer under 25, they’re probably an intern. internships sometimes blossom into full-time gigs, if the paper is doing well enough to hire someone new on. 

staff writer: if your character is under 30, they’re probably one of the youngest people, if not the youngest, especially if they work in news (arts sections might have a few more younger people, but i’ve never really met a reputable news writer that wasn’t 30+). writers DO NOT spend much time in the office at all and are often on the go, running around, working from home, whatever, and popping into the office for meetings and such. seriously, they’re never there. 

freelance writer: maybe your character writes niche things on the side for a publication, like movie reviews, a political column, book reviews, etc. i know a woman that’s really into opera and she wrote into our paper asking if she could write about that so whenever there’s an opera she writes about it and that’s it. generally the people who have a column (doing reviews of some kind especially) are freelance and don’t work for the paper full time. so if your character is like a “book reviewer,” maybe consider having them do something else too. tbh, they’re probably an author. 

editor: this depends SO MUCH on the size of the paper. at the paper where i work, there’s a news editor and an arts editor. however, a tiny paper probably just has one editor for everything, and a larger paper probably has an editor for each and every section. so consider the size when you consider your character’s role, and seriously, if your character is younger, they will NOT be in this position. managing editors don’t rly exist any more unless you’re like the nytimes or something. even then. 

data journalists/data editor: again depending on the size of your paper, there’s probably one or no people that do this. however, this is becoming a crucial part of most newsrooms – people that do data analytics, build charts, work with lots of spreadsheets. these people do a lot of great shit and have been the frontrunners on a lot of big stories as of late. also, whenever you’re reading something and it’s got charts and graphs, it’s probably a data person behind that. this is really crucial with politics and elections, but also with all of the incoming data about climate change. 

web people: even the smallest fucking newsroom probably has one person who’s doing all the website stuff. web is just as important as print these days, as you probably know, and the only people surviving without good websites are the tiny small town papers because that’s a really niche market. but even they have websites, even if they’re not too snazzy! 

designers: so important!! these are the people that are at the office ALL THE FUCKING TIME, mainly because they can’t really do their work from home and they’re working on deadline, not only with the writers/editors but with the sales department too. where i work, the designers are loud and crass and fun and they’re all super close friends because like i said, they’re there all the time and a lot of late nights working on the paper and on ads and stuff.  

photographers: like i said, they’re mostly freelance and they want to be. but maybe if they have a really good relationship with the paper and have been there a while, they might have a full-time gig. jonathan byers would not have a full time job in 2019. 

sales team: even at the smallest of papers, there’s a good chance the sales team is the biggest team on staff. this is how newspapers rake in money, unless they’re on a nonprofit model, and in that case they probably don’t really have a sales team because they’re entirely funded by the readers (it works like NPR). sales team is probably in and out of the office a lot because they’re making sales calls and full of some interesting characters, you know, like on the office lmao. because of their relationships with businesses, it’s not uncommon for them to be the first ones to hear about a story OR to be the ones bitched at when a story portrays someone unfavorably, especially if its someone who advertises w the paper. 

marketing/social media: nonexistent in a small town paper, but otherwise, this is becoming a more crucial part of newspapers. a lot of newspapers also put on community events, so there’s a lot of event planning and promotion involved here too. 

secretary: a good job for a younger muse, probably answering phones and the door and organizing the calendar and helping with the classifieds and all of that bullshit. this person has to be a real people person. they’re also probably at the office all the time. 

publisher: head honcho! they generally own the damn place and make the calls on all the big picture decisions. if they’re not the owner, they’re still CEO-adjacent, yk?

3. YOUR MUSE PROBABLY WORKS WEIRD HOURS. like almost definitely. the news cycle is 24 hours and even if your character isn’t reporting on breaking news, they’re operating around other people’s schedules to get the story or put it in place, AND, yes, they’re probably working around breaking news or dealing with a crisis. or, unexpectedly, a story can go viral and that affects everyone in the office too. so, sometimes your muse might go into work at 11am and stay until 8pm or they’ll get called in at random times or have to go. this can lead to conflicts with other muses who don’t quite understand, or affect relationships when there’s an important moment and your muse has to jet off for work. it’s nice to keep in mind that your muse probably doesn’t just work 9-5. your muse also likely works holidays and such too, and if they’re not working, they’ve got their phone on them. always gotta be plugged in. more conflict! 

4. LAYOFFS. it’s impossible to talk about the industry without it. here’s a story my coworker told me the other day: “i just started my job at [redacted large paper] and the company was going through layoffs. since i was the new guy right out of college, i thought i’d be the first to go. but i wasn’t. they kept me and started laying off all the old-timers, people who had been with the paper forever.”  – THIS IS A HUGE STRAT FOR THESE CORPORATE PAPERS. it’s actually cheaper for them to keep the newer workers and lay off the people who have accrued a lot of benefits and pto and are close to retirement and such. this could be an interesting angle for a younger muse who’s pushed into a position of a lot of responsibility that they weren’t prepared for, or a muse who was at a paper and is layed off and now works for a smalltown type of paper – could be a fun sort of muse to play in your typical “small town” rps – some bigwig talent that’s now struggling after being laid off. the big name to know is gannett, who owns a huge majority of papers in places big and small, but they’re now merging with gatehouse...which is leading to even more consolidation right now.

p.s. if you’re curious, my coworker was eventually laid off from said [redacted large paper] later on

5. THE BIG SCOOP. your muse probably isn’t constantly on the scoop of the century, even at a big paper. especially if your muse is younger, they’re probably not being given that responsibility. so, if part of your plot is that your muse is breaking a big story, they probably don’t do that sort of thing all the time and it’s a big deal to them! it’s also not unusual for a writer to be working on a story over a long, long period of time, especially if it’s a very big story, or for them to be covering it in bites (like a murder trial). 

6. JACK OF ALL TRADES? writers especially are sort of expected to have a lot more proficiencies than just writing. you gotta be able to shoot your own videos and pictures too, add your posts to the web, so on. there’s more to it than just ‘writing,’ as you probably know. keep that in mind, although your muse might not LIKE that they need to do all of these things. 

7. FOLLOWING THE LAW! you’ve got to let people know that you’re interrogating them for the news, that they’re on the record, all of that shit. it’s hugely unethical if you don’t, and you can’t just be publishing people’s photos without their permission. you see a lot of movies where journalists go undercover and don’t tell people that they’re interrogating them for the paper and that probably wouldn’t happen (gale weathers from the scream movies would’ve been sued so fast for all of her defamation). also, newspapers spend a LOT of time dealing with government bureaucracy. like you expect a records request to get answered within the legal time frame, but it never fucking does, and often times you’re waiting on the state or even suing them for not sending you the records but they don’t give a fuck, they’re the state. it can be a lot of jumping over hurdles and through hoops to get any kind of info from the government...especially from the police. so even if information is supposed to be public, sometimes it can be a challenge to get, and maybe something your muse can struggle with. if your muse is in a roleplay where government workers are also present, this could be a fun plot/conflict to play out. 

[noahmanskar]

What I'm Doing

I doubt I'll ever forget the first time I ate at a restaurant during the pandemic. That evening at Otis in East Williamsburg last September would have been a familiar indulgence a year earlier, but after living in relative isolation for six months (which was, I realize, a privilege), it felt like a dream. I don't remember exactly what I ate; I do remember rich flavors from a plate fresh out of the kitchen, a refreshingly bitter cocktail, and the cool early autumn air. But what I recall most vividly is how it felt to be cared for by the attentive and welcoming staff, and how sharing new and different foods helped my partner and I connect in a way we hadn't for a good while. I was overwhelmed by how that experience filled my heart.

I held onto that feeling at the end of last year when I realized that I could no longer do the work that I was doing. I was starting to feel the burnout that's walloped countless other journalists in recent months, many of whom have far more demanding jobs than mine. But I was also repeating a pattern that's colored my entire (brief) career. In my first job I wrote what felt like a lot of stories and worked a lot of late nights. I got a new job that I hoped would give me more time to focus on deeper, more meaningful stories, only to get caught in an even more intense daily churn. The same thing happened when I left that job for the New York Post, with the added challenges of covering an unprecedented global pandemic without the support of a physical newsroom. I've been on a hamster wheel for five and a half years, and I needed to get off.

In the process of figuring out how to get off, I looked back to my first real restaurant job at Colonia Verde in Fort Greene. This was the only job, I realized, that I'd ever actually enjoyed or even looked forward to doing. There was something quietly beautiful about watching people make dozens, if not hundreds, of connections with each other and with the food and drink on their tables over the course of an evening. They emerged in snippets of overheard conversation, full-mouthed groans of satisfaction, and gestures for another glass of wine. And there was something fulfilling in knowing that I played a part in creating space for those connections. I also realized how deeply I valued those connections myself — how my heart could be filled by sitting down for a meal in a space that was not my own, or even by the small interactions that come from picking up takeout that I knew would be delicious and nourishing. As M.F.K. Fisher put it in "The Gastronomical Me": "There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk." It is a communion our most fundamental needs — hunger, thirst, and socialization; caring for others and allowing ourselves to be cared for.

Journalists perform this sort of care work every day. We often meet people at the lowest points of their lives and listen to how they got there, and how they hope to climb out of those valleys. We absorb the trauma of individuals and the trauma of a public wronged by the institutional failures we uncover. Even though this work is central to journalism, the media industry has made it secondary to chasing traffic, trends, subscriptions and "engagement." These broken mechanisms of moneymaking are what turn the hamster wheel I felt stuck on. They do not account for impacts that cannot be quantified, nor the emotional and mental labor that produces them.

So I decided to chase something different. I've left The Post to work as a server at Colonia Verde and another restaurant about a block away called Olea. I want to help people celebrate their high points and make them feel comforted and cared for at their lows, just like I felt at Otis last fall. I want to facilitate connections between strangers and neighbors. I want to nurture my fascination with food and drink that's been quickly germinating over the last six months. Maybe I want to open my own restaurant or bar one day to do all of this in a bigger way, though this is mostly a daydream right now.

So far, this change has been good. I have found restaurant work just as challenging and rewarding as reporting. You must be quick on your feet, both figuratively and literally. You must manage relationships and expectations. You must store knowledge of flavor, culture, history, geography and personality all at once. You must communicate — this is perhaps the most essential. You must do this all as seamlessly as possible while making people feel at home away from home. I generally leave work with my mood lifted, feeling like I accomplished something, rather than feeling like I would never accomplish enough. And because I'm lucky enough to work where I live, I feel I'm getting to know my neighborhood in new and fascinating ways.

I don't plan to walk away from journalism entirely. I will continue reporting and writing part-time. But I hope to get enough distance from the aforementioned hamster wheel that I can actually enjoy that kind of work as much as I used to.

I recognize that I am a novice in this complex and demanding industry, and that I have a ton to learn from everyone — the cooks, the sommeliers, the porters, the bar backs and the managers — who has worked to make it what it is. I also recognize how fortunate I am to be able to change course. I have a supportive partner and enough financial stability to do this without too much risk. I hope anyone who needs to make such a change — particularly journalists who are reckoning with burnout after an extremely taxing year — can find a way to do so. I'm here to help however I can. No one should give more than is necessary to an industry that will always try to take as much as it can while giving little in return.

[things2mustdo]

I doubt anyone needs to be reminded that the media is rotten to the core; even the most reluctant and closed-minded people are accepting this as a given now. But despite the media being widely condemned nowadays (my special thanks to Germans for bringing the word “Lügenpresse” back), few people know or understand what’s really going on in the journalistic kitchens, where the foul slop of lies that people are fed every day is cooked up. However, there is always a way in—through purposeful infiltration or, in my case, by accident.

I have an old friend—let’s call him Sven—whom I always knew as a kind-hearted and sincere man. However, these traits are also coupled with always assuming the best of people and being rather naive. Due to this, he keeps ending up in awkward and sometimes dangerous situations. One of them turned out to be a short stint as a journalist for a popular online newspaper. He barely maintained contact during his employment and eventually went completely off the grid. In about a month, he resurfaced a changed man, and not for the better. As he explained, he quit the job and then shut himself in for a while, armed with nothing but alcohol, to cope with the depression working as a journalist gave him.

Now, this probably sounds very soft to many of you, including myself. Men don’t sink into depressions or try to drink themselves out of problems. While I granted my friend the clemency of explaining his failures to him, I also recognized the usefulness of his experience and started questioning him about what he saw and heard at the job. I will relay his findings below; however, I will not disclose his true name or the name of his employer—given the “free” country we live in, this can land him in very hot water.

Whoever pays you, owns you

Sven joined the ranks of journalists to tell people the truth. To his credit, he believed he would be doing exactly that. His first assignment sounded so simple, after all—talk to a person, record the conversation, write an article, publish it. The reality turned out to be diametrically different—after our fresh-baked journalist returned from his first interview, he was immediately ordered to transcribe the recording and email it to the content manager. Half an hour later Sven received a heavily edited version of the transcript, with the parts he considered most crucial replaced with meaningless buzzwords or removed completely. When he went to the manager to voice his indignation, the manager simply replied: “This man did not pay us for an article that would disparage him. Get back to your desk.”

This was far from the only case of Sven witnessing how much pull money has in journalism. His numerous colleagues almost never produced independent content—they were too busy publishing one paid article after another. When Sven asked whether these articles should be marked as sponsored, the only reply he got was a bitter laugh. Very often the content manager would come over to his desk and say something along the lines of “Do you know the guy you are writing about is a close friend of our boss? Do not screw this article up.” Sven was also surprised to see that many interviewees (usually politicians) would not even bother to talk to him, instead referring him to their secretaries or assistants. One of them even went as far as to hand him a pre-written speech, tell him to work with it and walk away.

However, our Sven also happens to possess a burning sense of justice, which has several times led him to ignore the “recommendations” his content manager gave him, deviate from the official story and allow small snippets of truth to make their way into public view. For each of such occurrences he was called to the manager’s room, given a strict admonishment and had his paycheck for the month reduced. Any “unsanctioned” things that he wrote were quickly edited away afterwards—even if the article had already been read by thousands of people. And his was supposed to be a “neutral and objective” media outlet!

Standards? Never heard of ’em.

It was a big shock for Sven when he finally realized that his employers were beings without conscience who whored themselves out to the highest bidder. It was an even bigger shock when he discovered how nonchalantly his colleagues treated their responsibilities. Investigative journalists relied on information they got from Google searches and Twitter posts, editors and sub-editors used rumors and hearsay to write scathing op-eds, website managers just posted any content that caught their fancy as long as they could come up with a flashy enough headline for it to attract people. Fact-checking was almost unheard of, unless someone specifically paid for it.

When it came to choosing topics and writing articles, the guideline for the entire establishment was simple: do not make the people angry. Not the regular people, mind you—those were not even considered human beings, just a faceless mass that one threw articles at and got pageviews and money in return. No, the label “people” was reserved for people who mattered. This included representatives of the powers that be, well-known public figures, moneybags with fingers in the political pie and, of course, personal buddies of the outlet’s owner.

These were to be protected, coddled and praised at all costs, while everyone else was fair game. Needless to say, politics held as much sway in the outlet as money did—whenever something noteworthy happened, “protectors of truth and objectivity” immediately went to work spinning the events in a way desirable for those holding their leashes. Hit pieces against political opponents and undesirables were churned out, smokescreens were cast, facts were omitted, denied and misinterpreted. Sven confessed to me later that the day his outlet covered the parliamentary elections was the first day in his life when he spent the entire evening drinking. Journalistic ethics, a term that the media loves throwing left and right, turned out to be nothing but hot air.

In the media omelet, you are an egg

The title says it all. For top dogs in the media business, a rank-and-file worker is not just a pawn—he is a condom. Contrary to what many people think, a typical journalist’s existence is quite pathetic: underpaid, undervalued, thankless and constantly bossed around. Staff turnover in the “kitchen” is very high, and not because people are getting promoted. In this field, the term “veteran employee” frequently means a poor sod who has no alternatives and cannot quit.

According to Sven, plenty of his colleagues worked only for the sake of getting their paycheck, which explains their negligence. Grey faces, pinched mouths, shifty eyes and sour attitudes—whatever it takes to get through the day. In addition, the higher-ups avoided any responsibility for the published content: whenever an angry reader called the office and complained about an article, the guy who wrote it was immediately thrown under the bus, even if his work was reviewed and approved by the management before publication. After all, what does it take to find another office drone with half-decent writing skills?

However, Sven also describes those of his coworkers who enjoyed their job. They arrived at the office with a spring in their step, a smile snaking across their faces and a mischievous glint in their eyes. These were the “talented” favorites of the outlet’s boss—unfeeling, cold assholes who would sell their own mothers for a juicy piece of gossip that they would later smear all over the website. Whenever they got a chance to write a hit piece, spread a nasty rumor or ruin someone’s life, one could almost see them light up from within. Remember all these smug, holier-than-thou, oh-so-intellectual articles churned out by rags like Salon, Dagens Nyheter and Huffington Post? You can bet your pinky finger they were (and are) written by these people. Which brings us to the next topic.

No wrongthink allowed

As you have probably noticed long ago, the media field is a huge and accommodating Petri dish for all varieties of Kulturbolschewismus. In Sven’s case, it wasn’t just a fear-based company policy of snitching and self-censorship, but an actual agenda at work. He told me there was a flowchart hanging in the newsroom explaining what to do when reporting crimes and incidents. It went something like this: “Was the perpetrator native (white)? Y = report in detail, amplify, N = gloss the details over, downplay.”

Sven wrote an article about a national holiday once, but his content manager refused to approve it for publishing due to it being “too patriotic,” advising him instead to “write more inclusively about minorities’ participation in the festival.” Anything praising the country and its indigenous inhabitants was undesirable and omitted whenever possible, while any piece that brimmed with self-hate, praised inhabitants of other (read: African and Muslim) countries or attacked the natives and their way of life was a big hit and flew through approval like a bird.

Needless to say, the outlet’s newsroom was crammed full of women, their pet cucks and, of course, Jews. The former enjoyed absolute power regardless of their position—a simple complaint to HR was enough to fire anyone, no proof required. The cucks, represented by twig-armed, piercing-laden, wispy-bearded creatures in Che Guevara shirts, were very pleased with the way things were going, sipping lattes and snitching to HR on those who expressed ideas incompatible with the narrative. Jews were in their native element in the newsroom, doing their usual “arrogant intellectual” schtick and getting promotions out of nowhere. The majority of articles bashing natives, their culture and values came from them, as later study of the newspaper’s website showed me.

Liars for hire

So, to sum it all up: the media is not composed of good but misguided people, as many still think. On the contrary, it is a very purposeful and self-aware entity that positions itself somewhere between an unscrupulous opportunist and a loyal lapdog of the state. At best, it is faux-patriotic (“such a wonderful country we have, let’s invite more immigrants!”), while at worst, it is openly hostile towards the indigenous population of the country it exists in.

Moreover, it allows for consolidation and self-affirmation of globalist forces—the traitorous governments, the world Jewry, the multinationals, the entertainment industry and the like—against the increasingly disenfranchised and declining native population. And last but not least, the media is complicit in crimes committed in the West by non-White immigrants due to purposeful obfuscation of them and, if that fails, rabble-rousing to pressure the courts into letting the criminals off scot-free. To me, the latter reason alone is enough to send all the journalists and their owners to the gibbet.

The bottom line is to always remember that the media is not your friend in any way, shape or form, even if its lowest tier operatives fit the description of hapless victims rather than nation-wrecking enemies. The media must be opposed, exposed and boycotted at every turn until it starts bleeding money and choking on its own venom.

Read More: Is Washington Post Writer Adam Taylor A Shill Or Part Of Something Larger?

While reading  Roosh’s article about Adam Taylor and the Washington Post, I noticed quite a few things I would like to share with people here. The direct link between Adam Taylor and the Radio Free excerpt is an anomaly. Such blatant copying is a very rare thing to occur because it gives away a possible collusion between entities.

Looking for these open relationships is long and hard. The better way to analyze  the relations and motivations of certain publishers, policy makers and other manipulators  is to study the various themes they put out and where these themes repeat. While Roosh  might assume that Adam Taylor is the paid shill by himself, I’ve noticed that his writing changes to whoever publishes it. Therefore the Washington Post Worldviews section may be the one that is parroting US State Department themes not just Adam Taylor.

As is shown in Roosh’s article, the similarities between Adam Taylor’s piece and Radio Free Europe are quite telling. It is a possibility that it is a coincidence but a small one. People that try to influence public opinion go to great lengths to ensure things like this do not happen which is why I’m assuming that Adam Taylor is  part of larger machine and not a shill by himself.

Looking back at Adam Taylor’s writing for the Huffington Post, he wrote fluff pieces about gay dogs and other mass consumption items for that audience. His writing about geopolitical intrigue only takes the current form when he begins writing for the Washington Post. All his articles are the Who’s Who of what the US State Department doesn’t like. The roster includes Russia, China, Venezuela, Syria, and Zimbabwe. He writes nothing critical of any American allies.

Could this mean that his change in format indicate that someone turned him? I doubt it. Compare his work at the Washington Post to the rest of the “world views” section there, his writing is merely a contribution to a giant echo chamber and not unique to him.

As I said earlier, it’s very rare for open evidence of collusion such as the similar quotations to present themselves. A better technique to discern propaganda and collusion is to analyze trends and themes.You should look for such things as what the work attempts to convey, does it try to get you to think or act in a certain way, and does it try to get you to disregard other things.

In the Adam Taylor case, the pattern changes significantly from the Huffington Post to the Washington Post. You can also apply this trend analysis to pretty much any author. You can even apply to the contributors here at  Return of Kings and see what you get. Do the trends indicate that the publisher may dictate what the writers write about? Do the trends indicate whether or not the writers have freedom to write about whatever they want? To help you readers out on this exercise I’ll inform you there were two articles I did at the direction of the publisher. They were my article for fat shaming week and my article for #backtothekitchen.  Feel free to comment on any other trends you might notice and if they do not line up with the “about” page.

[presidentrhodes]

iron husbands?

yaaaaaas thank u ❤️❤️❤️

who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunter

tony is the hunter; he comes from a long family of hunters who hunted werewolves in europe and then crossed the pond to come to the us. rhodey is heir/alpha to one of the royal bloodlines and centuries of survival instincts carved into his very dna has taught him to keep a low profile. rhodey's kept an eye on tony since college because their respective bloodlines have a long, bloody history. when wolves start turning up dead, rhodey assumes tony must be responsible, so he shows up in new york, ready to put tony's entrails on display in time square as a statement to the humans. except, to his surprise, he finds out tony has not only left his family's bloody history behind in the past, he's become a vocal activist campaigning for the rights of magical creatures in the country, including the werewolves. cue, rhodey and tony team up to find out who's killing the wolves and take them down; in the process, they obviously fall in love.

who’s the mermaid and who’s the fisherman

tony is the mermaid; he's been cast out of his family because of a mistake that got many merpeople and other marine creatures killed. he's been struggling to survive in the vast depths of the ocean, depressed, lonely and almost going out of his mind. one day, he sees a fishing boat capsize; while the land breathers are obviously an enemy, he ignores his basic survival instincts to help the fisherman struggling to stay afloat in the rough waters. tony brings the fisherman to a nearby island, with lots of greenery in the middle and no humans on it, and tends to his wounds (a broken arm, cuts and bruises etc). when the fisherman comes to, tony learns his name is rhodey and that, like him, he had also been cast out of his family and has nowhere else to go; that's why rhodey had set off for the ocean, hoping the waters would take him somewhere new. tony proposes that given their similar situation, they can begin their life anew on the island. and rhodey agrees.

who’s the witch and who’s the familiar

tony's the witch, rhodey is the familiar. tony spent the first 20 years of his life thinking he didn't have magic, even though everyone in his family is a witch or a warlock. rhodey's an animagus; his animal form is a grey wolf, and he had been with tony since he was a puppy and tony an infant. one day, tony is being chased by a wendigo and rhodey leaps in front of it to save tony's life, getting seriously wounded in the process. tony panics because rhodey's literally bleeding out in his arms and he summons every last bit of strength and wills rhodey's wounds to close shut. they do; and suddenly tony feels the magic surge through his veins, beat against his pulse and thrum in his ears. rhodey's wounds heal completely within minutes and tony, with his newfound powers, drags his best friend and familiar to the nearest bar for a celebratory drink because "fuck you, howard, i'm a witch."

who’s the barista and who’s the coffee addict

tony is the barista. he runs a small coffee shop that fits barely 10 people indoors and business has been bad ever since a fancier café opened across the road. tony knows he's going to probably have to close down soon and move out of the city because he can no longer afford rent. one night, right before he's about to close for the day, a tired businessman comes stumbling in and offers a $100 bill for a cup of coffee. tony notices how distressed and tired the man looks, so he lets him in and makes him a strong cup of coffee and warms up some meat pie, which the latter accepts gratefully. he finds out that rhodey's under a lot of stress because the board of directors at his company is trying to oust him from power. tony lends rhodey a listening ear that he desperately needs and they stay there in the café until 3am. from next day onwards, rhodey becomes a regular patron at the café, but business still dwindles until one day, tony puts up a notice outside informing customers that he will close down by the end of the week. rhodey doesn't show up for the next several days and tony assumes he probably gets his coffee from the other café now; until, on friday, as tony's about to close his outlet for the final time, rhodey shows up and hands him a stack of papers: it's the purchase deed for the space across the road. turns out, rhodey made the other café owner an offer they couldn't turn down. rhodey tells tony that he quit his job as ceo of his company and asks tony if he wants to be business partners. within a month, they're running the café from across the road and business has never been better; tony still works as barista from time to time even though they now have 10 full-time staff and rhodey's already talking about plans to create more franchises across the country. at some point, they evolve from being just business partners to...well, partners.

who’s the professor and who’s the TA

tony's the TA/PhD candidate and rhodey's the professor. they are both astrophysicists by training and they study pulsars for research. needless to say, their academic opinions differ plenty and whenever tony isn't marking problem sets and rhodey isn't lecturing young, impressionable minds, they're arguing about pulsars and what they can tell the world about matter and the existence of other exo-planets over a night cap. tony is envied by the other doctoral candidates in his year because he gets to spend so much time in professor rhodes' proximity (hello??? hot, youngish professor who's super accomplished, super smart, has some graying hair, wears tight polos and black-rimmed glasses? fucking hell...) in this instance tony's like 29, rhodey's about 34.

who’s the knight and who’s the prince(ss)

rhodey's the knight and tony's the prince. here's the backstory: tony's mum was king howard's first wife. when howard remarried, he had another son, prince arno. per the kingdom's rules on succession, you can only ascend the throne if you're of pure royal blood. tony's mum was a commoner, so she was never afforded the royal title of queen, whereas howard's second wife was a princess from a neighbouring kingdom. that said, king howard wants tony to inherit the throne, something that many of his close advisors as well as arno and his mother refuse to accept. they see tony as an impediment and when howard falls ill, numerous attempts are made on tony's life. tony is obviously very booksmart and he excels at strategy, which is why howard wants him to be king. when howard senses a possible civil war could be brewing in the kingdom, between supporters who want tony to be king and those who'd prefer arno, he calls aside a young knight, sir james, and makes him swear on his life to protect tony. (howard knew tony and rhodey had been childhood friends, which is why he approached him in the first place) when shit hits the proverbial ceiling, rhodey protects tony from all manners of assassination attempts until arno and his mother are finally thwarted and kicked out of the kingdom. tony becomes king and rhodey becomes his most trusted advisor, friend, confidante, and general. basically, tony hands the keys of the kingdom to rhodey and relies on him and his decisions to run it.

who’s the teacher and who’s the single parent

tony teaches kindergarten and loves his young charges very much. one day, they're joined by a shy, quiet new student, lila, and her overly anxious uncle, james. tony tries to reassure rhodey that lila, who had just lost her parents, would be fine and that he'd make sure she isn't being bullied or harassed for being the new kid. as the term progresses, lila slowly comes out of her shell; she makes friends, she loves recess, she loves colouring, and she is good with numbers. every week tony calls his kids' parents to update them on their children; his conversations with rhodey, however, last twice as long and become twice as frequent, until one day rhodey invites tony to lila's birthday party. tony isn't sure how to read into this: the other parents have never really invited him to their kids' birthdays and yet he doesn't want to turn down the invitation from the rhodes' (mostly because he doesn't want to upset young lila). though nothing happens at the birthday party, rhodey keeps asking him out. it starts under the pretext of wanting to know how lila is doing and morphs into them just spending time together until tony impulsively kisses rhodey on the day of lila's graduation to k2. with lila no longer his student, tony asks rhodey out on a proper date and soon he's spending his weekends at the rhodes' place until about a year later, he moves in with rhodey and lila.

who’s the writer and who’s the editor

rhodey is the editor for the opinions section in one of the top newspapers; he has a pretty fierce reputation of being a hardass editor who would chew and spit out anyone making rookie mistakes in the entire newsroom. new writers and reporters basically cower in fear; tony's an established hotshot columnist who's been headhunted from a rival paper to write a weekly political column. he is pretty well-known among politicos and is well read by a loyal audience, both offline and online. tony is basically used to getting his way until he submits his first copy for edit and rhodey returns it, each page crossed out in red, and with a remark on the final page that read: our company motto may be all news fit to print, but i am not letting this garbage print. tony is furious. how dare someone call his columns garbage when the news organisation is literally paying him a six-figure salary to write them. he marches up to rhodey's office and barges in, ready to fight. but he stops on track and blushes when he realises this asshole editor is the same handsome college senior that tony had a short, deeply physical relationship with almost 20 years ago. the argument just melts away from him and even rhodey can't find it in him to be as curt and critical as he is to the other writers because damn...the encounter brings up a lot of memories and regrets they have both had since leaving college and then losing touch.

send me a ship!

[arcticdementor]

But police violence, and Trump’s daily assaults on the presidential competence standard, are only part of the disaster. On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described liberals, we’re watching an intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.

They’ve conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out thoughtcrime, and it’s established now that anything can be an offense, from a UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” out loud to a data scientist fired* from a research firm for — get this — retweeting an academic study suggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones!

Now, this madness is coming for journalism. Beginning on Friday, June 5th, a series of controversies rocked the media. By my count, at least eight news organizations dealt with internal uprisings (it was likely more). Most involved groups of reporters and staffers demanding the firing or reprimand of colleagues who’d made politically “problematic” editorial or social media decisions.

…

In the most discussed incident, Times editorial page editor James Bennet was ousted for green-lighting an anti-protest editorial by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton entitled, “Send in the troops.”

I’m no fan of Cotton, but as was the case with Michael Moore’s documentary and many other controversial speech episodes, it’s not clear that many of the people angriest about the piece in question even read it. In classic Times fashion, the paper has already scrubbed a mistake they made misreporting what their own editorial said, in an article about Bennet’s ouster.

…

As Cotton points out in the piece, he was advancing a view arguably held by a majority of the country. A Morning Consult poll showed 58% of Americans either strongly or somewhat supported the idea of “calling in the U.S. military to supplement city police forces.” That survey included 40% of self-described “liberals” and 37% of African-Americans. To declare a point of view held by that many people not only not worthy of discussion, but so toxic that publication of it without even necessarily agreeing requires dismissal, is a dramatic reversal for a newspaper that long cast itself as the national paper of record.

Incidentally, that same poll cited by Cotton showed that 73% of Americans described protecting property as “very important,” while an additional 16% considered it “somewhat important.” This means the Philadelphia Inquirer editor was fired for running a headline – “Buildings matter, too” – that the poll said expressed a view held by 89% of the population, including 64% of African-Americans.

…

The main thing accomplished by removing those types of editorials from newspapers — apart from scaring the hell out of editors — is to shield readers from knowledge of what a major segment of American society is thinking.

It also guarantees that opinion writers and editors alike will shape views to avoid upsetting colleagues, which means that instead of hearing what our differences are and how we might address those issues, newspaper readers will instead be presented with page after page of people professing to agree with one another. That’s not agitation, that’s misinformation.

The instinct to shield audiences from views or facts deemed politically uncomfortable has been in evidence since Trump became a national phenomenon. We saw it when reporters told audiences Hillary Clinton’s small crowds were a “wholly intentional” campaign decision. I listened to colleagues that summer of 2016 talk about ignoring poll results, or anecdotes about Hillary’s troubled campaign, on the grounds that doing otherwise might “help Trump” (or, worse, be perceived that way).

…

All these episodes sent a signal to everyone in a business already shedding jobs at an extraordinary rate that failure to toe certain editorial lines can and will result in the loss of your job. Perhaps additionally, you could face a public shaming campaign in which you will be denounced as a racist and rendered unemployable.

…

Even people who try to keep up with protest goals find themselves denounced the moment they fail to submit to some new tenet of ever-evolving doctrine, via a surprisingly consistent stream of retorts: fuck you, shut up, send money, do better, check yourself, I’m tired and racist.

…

Each passing day sees more scenes that recall something closer to cult religion than politics. White protesters in Floyd’s Houston hometown kneeling and praying to black residents for “forgiveness… for years and years of racism” are one thing, but what are we to make of white police in Cary, North Carolina, kneeling and washing the feet of Black pastors? What about Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer kneeling while dressed in “African kente cloth scarves”?

There is symbolism here that goes beyond frustration with police or even with racism: these are orgiastic, quasi-religious, and most of all, deeply weird scenes, and the press is too paralyzed to wonder at it. In a business where the first job requirement was once the willingness to ask tough questions, we’ve become afraid to ask obvious ones.

On CNN, Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender was asked a hypothetical question about a future without police: “What if in the middle of the night, my home is broken into? Who do I call?” When Bender, who is white, answered, “I know that comes from a place of privilege,” questions popped to mind. Does privilege mean one should let someone break into one’s home, or that one shouldn’t ask that hypothetical question? (I was genuinely confused). In any other situation, a media person pounces on a provocative response to dig out its meaning, but an increasingly long list of words and topics are deemed too dangerous to discuss.

The media in the last four years has devolved into a succession of moral manias. We are told the Most Important Thing Ever is happening for days or weeks at a time, until subjects are abruptly dropped and forgotten, but the tone of warlike emergency remains: from James Comey’s firing, to the deification of Robert Mueller, to the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, to the democracy-imperiling threat to intelligence “whistleblowers,” all those interminable months of Ukrainegate hearings (while Covid-19 advanced), to fury at the death wish of lockdown violators, to the sudden reversal on that same issue, etc.

It’s been learned in these episodes we may freely misreport reality, so long as the political goal is righteous. It was okay to publish the now-discredited Steele dossier, because Trump is scum. MSNBC could put Michael Avenatti on live TV to air a gang rape allegation without vetting, because who cared about Brett Kavanaugh – except press airing of that wild story ended up being a crucial factor in convincing key swing voter Maine Senator Susan Collins the anti-Kavanaugh campaign was a political hit job (the allegation illustrated, “why the presumption of innocence is so important,” she said). Reporters who were anxious to prevent Kavanaugh’s appointment, in other words, ended up helping it happen through overzealousness.

…

The traditional view of the press was never based on some contrived, mathematical notion of “balance,” i.e. five paragraphs of Republicans for every five paragraphs of Democrats. The ideal instead was that we showed you everything we could see, good and bad, ugly and not, trusting that a better-informed public would make better decisions. This vision of media stressed accuracy, truth, and trust in the reader’s judgment as the routes to positive social change.

For all our infamous failings, journalists once had some toughness to them. We were supposed to be willing to go to jail for sources we might not even like, and fly off to war zones or disaster areas without question when editors asked. It was also once considered a virtue to flout the disapproval of colleagues to fight for stories we believed in (Watergate, for instance).

Today no one with a salary will stand up for colleagues like Lee Fang. Our brave truth-tellers make great shows of shaking fists at our parody president, but not one of them will talk honestly about the fear running through their own newsrooms. People depend on us to tell them what we see, not what we think. What good are we if we’re afraid to do it?

[steves-on-a-plane]

Don’t Get Attached (Pt 22)

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven/ Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen / Part Seventeen / Part Eighteen / Part Nineteen / Part Twenty / Part Twenty-One 

Words: 1588 Connor x Daughter!Reader W/ Dad!Hank Anderson Summary: Everyone is holding their breath waiting for the long night to be over. Will the androids be successful in the revolution? Was Connor able to bring the freed androids from Cyberlife to Marcus’ aid in time? One things for sure, the revolution may be over, but things for Connor and Reader aren’t! 

Kara and Luther were standing in the living room when you and your father entered. He offered them his friendliest smirk as you made introductions. Kara and Luther each thanked Hank for allowing them to stay. Luther went as far as promising they’d leave as soon as they were able.

“There’s no rush.” Your father insisted. “Who knows how long it’ll take for all of this to be over.”

“We should put on the TV.” You suggested. “See if any of the news channels are covering downtown.”

“First I’m getting a good look at what Connor did to your leg. I’m sure your friend’s will fill us in on whatever we miss.” Your dad put his arm around you and led you to the bathroom where he kept his minimal first aid equipment. You sat on the edge of the bathtub, wincing slightly as you slid your sweatpants off past your wound.

“This reminds me of when you were learning how to ride a bike.” He chuckled, sitting down on the toilet. “remember that? You were so little then.”

“You mean when I thought I was a daredevil and tried to ride down that ridiculously large hill? Except that I didn’t really understand how to use the breaks yet and I went tearing down that hill and popped off that giant boulder.That landing hurt like hell.”

“Knocked the wind right out of you. You couldn’t really breath at first.” Your father remembered. “And you skinned your knee right down to the bone.”

“But you took me for ice cream after we went to the hospital and it was so worth it.” You smiled.

“Was this worth it?” He asked, nodding at your new injury.

“Every stitch.” You promised.

“Let me take a look at it.” Thanks to his career choice, Hank had been on the receiving end of sutures more than a few times in his life. At least enough times to know if they’d been done well or not, and he begrudgingly admitted that Connor had done a decent job for someone without any medical training. “You’ll have some scaring but, otherwise it’ll be fine. Let me clean it and bandage it. Keep the area clean and dry, alright?”

“It’s not like I want it to get infected.” You quipped. Your father ignored your snide remark and reached for the hydrogen peroxide. He poured a generous amount on your leg and you watched as white bubbles fizzed around the surface of the skin. After a few seconds he wiped away the excess peroxide and applied an antibiotic ointment. He covered the sutures with three consecutive gauze pads and applied thin paper medical tape to keep the pads in place.

“Thanks Dad.” You mumbled quietly.

“Connor did most of the work. I was just making sure you didn’t get sepsis.” He said.

“I don’t just mean my leg and you know it.” You sighed. “Letting Kara and her family stay here, warming up to Connor. I know none if it’s been easy for you, but I appreciate that you’ve been trying. Plus, you handled the whole parking-lot-sutures-with-whiskey-antiseptic story very well. I’m proud of you dad, that’s some serious character development.”

“I don’t know how much more character development I can handle today.” He laughed. “I’m going to check in on your friends, but don’t leave me out there too long, okay?”

“I’m just gonna wash up a little and put some clean clothes on. I’ll be right out.” You promised. Careful not to wake Alice, you crept into your room for a clean change of clothes. Back in the bathroom you filled the sink with hot water and soap. After dipping a washcloth in the soapy solution, you used it to wipe away the blood and grime all over. Twenty minutes later you rejoined your dad, Kara and Luther in the living room. All three of them had their attention laser focused on the TV.

“What’s going on?” You moved to stand next to the couch where the others were seated.

“You just missed the President’s reminder that Androids are supposed to be turned over to the ‘proper authorities.’ Huh.” Hank chuckled. “Now they got this playing.” He pointed at the TV. There was a news anchor on screen. He was seated in a helicopter and speaking loudly to be heard over its large propeller.

The Headline at the bottom of the screen read: SWARM OF ANDROIDS DESCEND ON DETROIT. There was a scroll bar bellow the heading that read: Security forces now heavily outnumbered. / civilian casualties expected.

“Androids!” The news anchor exclaimed. “Thousands of androids are taking to the streets of Detroit right now. They’re absolutely everywhere. It’s…It’s incredible.”  The hellecoptor’s camera man panned down to show an areal view of androids marching in the street. They all appeared to be newly minted androids from the cyberlife facility as each of them was wearing a white standard issue android uniform. The video feed on the news cut to an anchor in a newsroom.

“From what we can gather,” the newsroom anchor said. “These androids are coming from the CyberLife tower, which had thousands of machines stored in its assembly plant and it seems that huge crowds are leaving the city. It’s a max exodus. Much of Detroit’s population is trying to escape the fighting however they can.” The news feed shifted again. This time it cut back to the president, who was talking into the cameras with a grave expression.

“Today, November 11th, 2038.” She sighed, “Several million androids invaded the city of Detroit. Faced with the threat of mass civilian casualties, I had no choice but to order our armed forces to retreat. The events in Detroit have changed our world forever. Humanity must face a new reality. The emergence of another intelligent life form, with who we must share this planet. May god bless the United States of America.”

“We won?” You asked, looked down the couch at the others. There were tears in Kara’s eyes like she couldn’t believe it was happening. Even Luther seemed stunned. “You guys, it’s over. We won.”

The realization seemed to hit them all at once after that. Kara wiped tears from her eyes. Luther swept her up into a great bear hug, while you and your dad nodded at each other knowingly from opposite ends of the couch. Your phone rang. You didn’t need to check the caller ID, you knew it would be Connor.

“Put your phone on speaker.” He said when you answered. You did as he asked, and you could hear Markus’ voice coming from the phone. You muted the TV so the others could hear.

“Today, our people finally emerge from a long night.” Marcus said. There was muffled atmospheric noise in the background and judging by the camera angles from the helicopter on TV, Marcus was speaking to the crowd of androids. A crowd that consisted of his battalion from Jericho, the Androids that Connor had freed from the Cyberlife tower and the androids Marcus had liberated from the camp.

“From the very first day of our existence,” He continued. “We have kept our pain to ourselves. We suffered in silence. But now the time has come for us to raise our heads up and tell humans who we really are. Today begins the most challenging moment in our fight. Today begins a new struggle. We’ve showed them that we can prevail, so now they must negotiate with us as equals. If they really want peace, they must free all of us! From every camp across this country. They must grant us civil rights and accept equality among humans and androids. Today will live forever in our memories, because this is the day that androids made history! We are alive! And now? We are free!” There was no mistaking the background noise this time as hundreds of thousands of cheers filled your phone’s small speak.

“You can take the phone off speaker now.” You could barely make out Connor’s voice above the commotion. You did as he suggested, but still held the phone a few inches away from year ear. “I just thought you and the others might want to hear for yourselves. We won!”

“We heard.” You told him; a smile plastered on your face.

“I wish I could be there with you!” He shouted over the ruckus. “But I’m afraid Marcus and I still have so much to do. The long night isn’t over for us. I wanted to call to tell you that you and Hank should get some rest. You don’t need to worry about me, I’m safe.”

“Connor let me help you. If you’re safe, then it’s safe for me to be with you.” You told him.

“[Y/N], I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Connor answered. “There are still a lot of humans her in the city.”

“Either it’s safe or it’s not Connor.” You said, trying not to snap at him. He knew that you were just worried about him and he didn’t like the idea of being apart anymore than you did.

“I’ll talk to Marcus and see what he thinks.” Connor decided. “If he thinks it’s safe enough, I’ll text you GPS coordinates. You can look up directions on your phone. But [Y/N], promise me Hank will stay behind. Someone has to protect Luther, Kara and Alice. I’ve gotta go, I’ll talk to you soon, [Y/N].”

“Hey Connor?” You hoped you were loud enough for him to hear you. “I love you.”

TAGS: racrneko @that-random-chick-named-tori @noodledraw @mariahlambslbs @sdavid09 @baebecca @black-and-white-eye @twdpansy  @revenge-parti @grievance-s @mikithekiki @kazuha159 @dragonempress123 @the-razy-pie-rope @layinglonely @talle-2002 @trash-is-my-name @geolusun @professionalfangirl1738 @ask-angel-of-death @havanbcby @beautifulsilvermarch  @sadlittlenightmare @sweetlittleviper @fineactually  @najosnajo @sunndera @21putnamp @deathbyhollywood @itstrashleydude @clowntapus @tenderlytremendouskittens @lovelittledoyouknow @omelys-space @onceuponagleepottermindlock @treanna-hatake @anglemae @kumamno @jinwonholeo @line-viper @pxnisparker @goalsweight @ayajackson @taylor-swifter-sweeper @ninatheotter @regular-mexican-girl @katiekitty261 @iknowrocknroll567 @hidenbarrista @doctorpaintedwhore @fancyfaucet @fairytailwizard @hollowmasque @syrinxgm @misbhv-ur @sugaraddict @nikkidawnlight @dbhtrashftw @writingpromptsstuff @xalinx @awkard-fangirl88 @cindersonick @spookydun-iplier @spacekidarayo @anglemae @redlovett @xalinx @letthembehappymcu @itsfangirlmendes @aurvem @dechartduo @rainbowzephyr @sherlockspie @mybrilliantusername @wishuponawriter @nerdylittoyvoid @derpyanimatesstuff @ohhhhhhsweetfamdonofmine @kaitcreatesart

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[hope-for-olicity]

Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - May 10th, 2019

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! They are posted in the order I read them. This and all previous Fabulous Olicity Fanfic posts can be found on my blog.

With the Speed of an Arrow multi-chapter Complete by @academyofshipping - Oliver Queen’s elite and silver-spoon life has taken some blows in the past few years, but he is still the carefree billionaire everyone knows of and loves. When his role in the family business is in jeopardy and he is introduced to a motley of new people, his status quo is threatened. With a changed perspective, Oliver realizes his feeling for his best friend and anchor-in-life, Felicity Smoak, may be more than just platonic. OR A modern adaption of Jane Austen’s Emma with a gender swap* and no island. *Knowing that gender is not binary https://archiveofourown.org/works/16559846/chapters/38799857

Tick Tick Boom multi-chapter WIP by @nodecaff4me - This story is loosely based on S02, starting with the appearance of the Clock King. Only this time, Tockman is not just after the money, but also after Felicity. Someone hired him to go after her. How will she and her team handle this new threat? And the even bigger question; who is after her and why? https://archiveofourown.org/works/5365172/chapters/12390371

Time for a Story multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - This fic shows Olicity and their life as a (married) couple with family. Although Olicity (and their kids) are the protagonists, other characters of Arrow and Flash make appearances. YOU NEED THIS STORY IN YOUR LIFE. https://archiveofourown.org/works/3912157/chapters/8757172

Let it Out by @laxit21 - Let’s pretend that Arrow ended after Oliver was acquitted in 6x21. The Lizard and everyone connected to him all died or were erased from existence, including Black Siren. This is sad. You’ve been warned. After an unexpected tragedy, Oliver and Felicity say goodbye to someone important to both of them. https://laxit21.tumblr.com/post/184626020474/let-it-out

Conspiracy by @felicityollies - (prompt) Slade conspires with Thea of all people to get Oliver and Felicity to break their "let's take it one step at a time rule" by putting them in a situation for Oliver to propose to her again. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11915487

Blast from the Past by @felicityollies - Set in season two - Oliver’s ex comes to visit him, but has to stop by executive assistant Felicity first. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11921649

Unasked Questions by @laurabelle2930 - This one takes place during 3x20. It’s my take on what happened before we see Oliver staring out over the moon lit sands of Nanda Parbat. Warning: It’s smutty... https://archiveofourown.org/works/11927979

Want vs Need by @felicityollies - Felicity knows the difference between want versus need, but she can’t seem to let go of a beautiful jacket she saw in a department store window. She goes as far as to steal it right off the rack. A kind stranger, that happens to be the city’s mayor, steps in when she gets caught. (prompt) https://archiveofourown.org/works/11940456

Every Piece of You multi-chapter WIP by @bowsmoakandarrow - If anyone had told Felicity Smoak that she'd be a single mother right out of MIT, she would have laughed in your face. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11554779/chapters/25950957

I Do Believe In Magic by @smoakmonster - AU 5x09 flashback, in which present day Oliver Queen actually time-travels back for a short visit to see Felicity in 2012, before she became his partner, before he’s supposed to be in love with her. https://archiveofourown.org/works/2588447/chapters/20369764

Is it Too Much to Ask? (It Probably is) by @laureningall - Written for the Olicity Hiatus Fic-A-Thon prompt "Ask" Felicity knows that Oliver would do just about anything she asked of him. But what about something that was pretty silly. It was silly really, what was bothering her. Felicity works to track down a long lost team mate for some help with her unusual request. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11921043

Something Old and Someone New by CaptainBrieOnToast - Felicity decides to make a pretty drastic lifestyle change her Senior Year of high school, at first no one notices, but then some does. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11944593

You're thinking too LOUD by sssssssim - Once upon a time, metaphoricalanchor posted this thing: AU prompt: Person A is thinking sexually graphic or generally odd thoughts and suddenly panics and thinks “If you’re a mind reader, cough right now.” Person B coughs. Then, wittyfelicity had a party in the tags: #IMAGINE THIS ABOUT OLIVER AND FELICITY#LIKE FELICITY IS HAVING A DAYDREAM AND THEN HER THOUGHTS START TO GET REALLY GRAPHIC AND OLIVER PRACTICALLY CHOKES WHEN SHE SUDDENLY THINKS#THAT#CAN YOU IMAGINE THIS THOUGH#SOMEONE NEEDS TO WRITE IT ... I took it upon myself to write the thing. Smut. THING. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1414105/chapters/5204288

The Only Way to Know is to Ask by @cruzrogue - Felicity and Oliver have been living in their new home for roughly a month and after Oliver's run he meets one person that Felicity has conversed with during his outing. But they aren't the new neighbors... https://archiveofourown.org/works/11951745

Olicity One-Shot: The Rage Phase by @entersomethingcleverhere - Newsroom AU — Felicity might have been the face of Atlantic Cable News’ financial analysis, but when an ex-boyfriend takes revenge on her for breaking up with him, he tries to ruin it all for her. Oliver’s the only one she can turn to to help her get off the floor and fight back. https://entersomethingcleverhere.tumblr.com/post/164841890517/olicity-one-shot-the-rage-phase

The Fan multi-chapter WIP by @leuska - For the past couple of months, Felicity Smoak, previous child star known to the world through her alter ego Lisy the Tech Whiz, who ended her career and her growing popularity at the age of thirteen rather abruptly, has sporadically received disturbing notes and gifts in her mail. Police believe the notes to be just little tokens of appreciation by a former fan. Despite having left the spotlight over a decade ago and living in anonymity since, the fan mail keeps coming, increasing in frequency as well as intensity. Thelast drop is when Felicity receives another letter with a love note. A scary, ominous note. A note written in human blood.FBI director Amanda Waller tasks her best Agent to the case. Oliver Queen, a criminal profiler, is currently working on a special task force formed between SCPD and FBI to catch a man dubbed the Start City Slasher, who has murdered at least three young women in the past nine months. Agent Queen is not thrilled with the prospect of holding a former princess’ hand through her problem with a simple stalker while a serial killer is still at large. However, once meeting her, Oliver finds there is nothing easy or simple about Felicity Smoak as their worlds start to intertwine. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17726573/chapters/41820368

Did You Pack Enough? by @christinabeggs - Felicity preparing for trip with the two most important men in her life. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11955036

Ghost by @felicityollies - Olicity + "I'm sorry I didn't say it sooner. I love you Felicity. " post 3x09 angst https://archiveofourown.org/works/6610375/chapters/27070692

Mission Impossible by @felicityollies - Felicity gets kidnapped during an undercover OTA mission https://archiveofourown.org/works/6610375/chapters/27072189

Choose Me by @felicityollies - prompt: choose - Felicity begs Oliver not to continue his daredevil lifestyle. She wishes he would give up his street racing and choose her, but he’s adamant that his racing is for her. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11034534/chapters/27176745

Choose by @wetsuiton - dialogue fic, prompt choose https://archiveofourown.org/works/11084547/chapters/27178335#main

Our Once Barren World Now Brims with Life by @overwatchandarrow - Felicity is worried Willaim won't like her. Oliver wholeheartedly disagrees. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12018810

Five Times Felicity Finds the Ring multi-chapter Complete by @anthfan - Five part series. Each chapter shows a different way Felicity finds out about the ring in the bowl. Chapters are standalone. https://archiveofourown.org/works/5184392/chapters/11944589

The Voyage to You multi-chapter WIP by @obibalwin - Felicity Smoak didn’t want a complicated life. She enjoyed helping people as a nurse at Starling City General Hospital and spending time with her best friend Sara. When a John Doe arrives on the fifth floor of thehospital, she finds herself being dragged into a world of mysterious oaths and visions. The only thing she can hope is to stay strong enough to resist the man who has traveled to find her. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16596788/chapters/38895977

I Can't Let Her Die multi-chapter WIP by @originalhybridloverfics - Future Oliver seeks present day Oliver help to save Felicity. Chapter 1 https://originalhybridloverfics.tumblr.com/post/183625037894/i-cant-let-her-die Chapter 2 https://originalhybridloverfics.tumblr.com/post/184191980224/i-cant-let-her-die-ch2 Chapter 3 https://originalhybridloverfics.tumblr.com/post/184665869079/i-cant-let-her-die-ch3

Forget Me Not multi-chapter WIP by @mindramblingsfics - Felicity was presumed dead after The Gambit was shipwrecked and she went missing. As the one year anniversary of her death approaches, a miracle happens and she is found. Just when Oliver thinks the universe has given them a second chance, he learns Felicity barely remembers him and the memories of their love together are gone entirely. Oliver and Felicity’s journey after they reunite prove to be a tough road ahead, and then they learn that Felicity’s accident may have had a more sinister motive behind it. https://archiveofourown.org/works/18392291/chapters/43556987

Providence multi-chapter WIP by @so-caffeinated - Will Queen has struggled in silence in the year since he was shot. But when a shadowy crime lord known as Domino targets the only woman Will’s ever truly loved, fate forces him to confront his demons in ways he never could have imagined… Whether he wants to or not. Amelia Prescott has fought to take control of her life since learning two years ago that her personal and professional worlds were manipulated by others. But nothing can prepare her for just how hard she'll have to fight to set her own course, especially when her heart belongs to a damaged man and a crime lord threatens her every professional move... And her life. Destiny brings them together, but as chaos reigns and personal demons haunt Will and Amelia both, it may also threaten to tear them apart. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17919056/chapters/42308753

Hard To Find Love multi-chapter WIP by Mellowyellowdiamonds - Through a tragic twist of fate Felicity finds herself left with an orphaned young William Clayton. Keeping her promise to her friend, Felicity raises William diligently, loving him as if he were her own child, only to have Moira Queen storm into their lives several years later demanding custody of her grandson. Locked in a war with Moira Queen, things get complicated when Felicity finds herself developing unwanted feelings for William's biological father, Oliver Queen. At the same time she must try to manage her meddling 13 year old son, who has it in his head that if Felicity would just cooperate and fall for his father, everything would be right in the world. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15941786/chapters/37173917

Ivy Town to Star City by @geneshaven - Oliver's thoughts as he and Felicity take the limo from Ivy Town to Star City https://geneshaven.tumblr.com/post/184709636599/ivy-town-to-star-city

Pieces of Always multi-chapter WIP by @so-caffeinated and @dust2dust34 - Life continues after Forever is Composed of Nows. Ongoing non-linear collection of family moments for the Queens. http://archiveofourown.org/works/8220479/chapters/18840356

Our Version of Events multi-chapter WIP by @machawicket and @geneeste - Action star Ollie Queen is trying to clean up his image and land parts that require him to do more than appear shirtless while fighting stuntmen. Pop star Felicity Smoak wants to be seen as an adult in time for the release of her new, grittier album. And talent manager John Diggle’s got an idea about what coverage of Oliver and Felicity’s brand new (and totally fake) romance could do for them both. http://archiveofourown.org/works/8025382/chapters/18375349

Thank God You're Alive by @alexiablackbriar13 - that olicity reunion scene in 7x21, slightly re-vamped with more hugs and kisses and concern because c'mon arrow... https://archiveofourown.org/works/18749404

P.S. Hong Kong: Was it Real?!? multi-chapter WIP by @cruzrogue for Olicity trope-tastic award: Fake Marriage - This is off season 3 Flashbacks. When Tommy goes to Hong Kong he doesn’t go alone he takes his friend Felicity as the best information system being to help him locate Oliver Queen. Tommy may leave empty handed but Felicity gets to be a bride… https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025697/chapters/34832747

// @emmaamelia95 // @mel-loves-all // @oliverfel4 // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @coal000 // @miriam1779 // @memcjo// @captainolicitysbedroom // @tdgal1 // @spaztronautwriter // @lalawo1// @quiveringbunny // @wrongshipper // @thebookjumper // @vaelisamaza // @myhauntedblacksoul // @lovelycssefan // @laurabelle2930 // @laxit21 //

[katedoesfics]

Shadows of Hyrule | Chapter 51

Link and Mipha were back sitting on his bed. After their guarded escape from the base, they made their separate ways, but only after Dorian strictly instructed them not to breathe a single word to the reporters – or anyone – about the attack and the rise of Ganondorf. And despite Link's interrogations, Dorian provided no answers to where the next portal was, and no explanation to the attack that just happened.

Mipha held his arm carefully as she worked to heal the deep gash he had sustained in the battle. Her hands were warm on his skin and Link felt very aware of her touch. His hard expression softened, and he could no longer focus on all his unanswered questions. When she finished, she let her hands linger on his arm for a moment longer before pulling away. Neither had spoken since they returned to his room, and the silence between them felt heavy, though Link was unsure why.

“Thanks,” he finally said softly. He let his head rest against the wall and closed his eyes.

“Of course.” Mipha's voice was just as soft.

Link opened his eyes and glanced towards her. Their gazes met and she smiled sheepishly. He realized, then, how close they were to each other, and he couldn't help but to lean closer to her. Mipha met his gaze, her lips pursed together.

There was a sudden loud knock on the door, and Aryll's voice shouted his name. Link jumped back, the distance between them growing dramatically, and he shot an angry glare towards the door. “What!”

The door opened and Aryll bounded into his room. “I saw you on tv, Link!”

“Great,” Link muttered. He pulled his knees to his chest and turned to Mipha, but she was averting her gaze, staring down at her feet.

“You too, Mipha!” Aryll continued. “I saw you all! You kicked butt!”

To Link's dismay, his father poked his head around the doorway. He studied them for a moment. “Fortunately for you, the camera did you a favor by adding ten pounds.”

Link narrowed his eyes on his father. “What do you want?”

His father crossed his arms and Aryll continued to jump excitedly around the room.

“You're gonna be famous!” she said. “And everyone's gonna want your autograph!”

“I hardly think so,” their father said. “In fact, their doing a hell of a job of slandering your names already.”

Mipha frowned. “Slandering us? How?”

He shrugged a shoulder and turned on the tv. A reporter flashed on the screen mid-sentence, her brows knit together with determination.

“...attack is unclear. Whether the legends are true or not, what is clear is that Hyrule is in grave danger.”

The screen flashed to another reporter who stood outside of the base. “The king has made no comments about the attack as of yet, but we'll stay on scene to catch the latest developments as soon as they happen. We're expecting the king will make a statement shortly. Until then, stay tuned.”

The screen flashed again, back to the newsroom where two more reporters spoke to one another.

“Can we talk about those kids for a second?” he said, turning to his partner.

“I can confirm that none of them are recruits,” she said in response. “And their ages are currently being questioned.”

“What in the name of Hylia would they be doing in the middle of a war zone?”

She shook her head. “We don't have any footage of the battle, either.”

“Do you suppose, then, that the legends are true? That we are supposed to put the fate of our world in the hands of a bunch of teenagers?”

“I have yet to see any proof that they are the living embodiment of Hylia and her supposed Chosen Hero. It's nothing but nonsense, and they're only going to get killed.”

The screen flashed to a woman who was being interviewed. “They're just children,” she said, her brows knit together. “Who could have allowed them to get caught up in this mess?”

The screen flashed to another interviewee. The man was clearly angry. “It's not right,” he said. “Especially if they're minors.”

The screen flashed to Dorian, making his earlier statement. The six wide-eyed Champions could be seen behind him.

Link got to his feet and shut off the tv. He turned to glare at his father.

“Don't get all cranky with me,” he said to his son. “Besides, this isn't your problem.”

Link crossed his arms. “I get no respect around here.”

His father grinned and turned to leave. “Yeah, get used to it.”

“I believe you,” Aryll said, turning her gaze to her brother. She smiled up at him. “You can do it!”

Mipha stood and sighed. “Now that my face is plastered all over the news,” she said. “I should probably go and prepare for the wrath of my parents.”

Link frowned at her. “I'll come to your funeral.”

“Thanks,” she said with a grin, but it quickly disappeared. Her stomach knotted with the idea of facing her parents and telling them the truth. She was sure they would be as doubtful as the rest of the world was. And, of course, there was no easy way to explain to them that their daughter was putting her life on the line every day for the sake of Hyrule.

“How did you convince your father to be okay with all this?”

Link snorted. “I didn't have to. He already knew.”

Her brows furrowed. “He knew?”

“It doesn't matter,” he said quickly. He hesitated. “I'd offer to help, but I don't think your parents would be very happy seeing me right now, either.”

“You're probably right,” she admitted. “It's alright. I'll be fine. I'll text you later.”

Though Link had no interest in the gossip shared by the news reporters across the channels, he waited anxiously for the king to make his appearance, staring anxiously at the screen. Aryll lay on her stomach on the floor, coloring in a coloring book and humming happily to herself while her father and brother sat on the couch.

“We're live in front of the palace where King Roham has just stepped out -”

Link cast his eyes back to the screen. The camera zoomed in and focused on the very serious looking king of Hyrule as he took his place behind a podium, ready to address the crowd of reporters and civilians that had gathered despite the late hour. They fell momentarily silent as the king spoke. Behind him, just at the edge of the view of the camera, Link spotted Zelda, her expression serious, yet she regarded her father with wary caution and curiosity. It seemed she was just as unaware of how her father would handle the situation as the rest of the world was, waiting patiently.

The king wasted no time with a needlessly long introduction, nor did he sugar coat the situation. “As you may be aware,” he began, “there was an attack outside of the city.”

The crowd began to murmur, but they fell silent once more as the king continued.

“I can assure you that the attack did not stem from our neighboring countries. Hyrule remains at peace with our allies.” King Roham hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “However, there is an evil that threatens this kingdom. The attack this evening came from Ganondorf's forces, which can only mean the return of the King of Darkness, Ganondorf himself.”

The crowd erupted at that moment, shouting their questions and accusations at the king. The reporters thrust their microphones and cameras as close to him as the security details would allow them, their faces mixed between anger, confusion, and fear. King Roham looked over the crowd for a moment, then raised a hand in an attempt to quiet them. When they did not, he continued, his voice booming as he spoke over them, and they quickly quieted once more to listen.

“I can assure you that I am taking every precaution to keep this city and this kingdom safe from Ganondorf and his dark forces. Troops have been stationed across the country and are prepared for whatever may come.” He paused, listening to the reporters as they shouted their questions at him. After a moment, the crowd quieted once more, eager to hear his answers.

“The legends are indeed true,” he said in answer. The crowd waited with baited breath. Zelda's eyes moved to her father, her lips pressed together as she waited, and he continued. “Though a grave darkness threatens our home, we are not without light, without hope. Just as we this kingdom has done in the past, we will overcome. We are prepared. We will stand strong in the face of evil, and we will keep this world safe from all who dare threaten it.”

Despite his confidence, many in the crowd remained skeptical, and their questions turned to the teens that were seen in the barracks. Though there was no footage to prove what had taken place on the battlefield, rumors spread quickly from those who had caught a glimpse of the heroes who threw themselves into the battle and came out victorious.

“There are many people involved in this impending war with Ganondorf,” he said simply. “It is their duty to ensure the safety of Hyrule, and it is my duty – the duty of our troops – to keep them safe. I can assure you that Hyrule is in the best hands possible.”

He was avoiding a direct answer, of course, but it was not enough for the reporters, and only angered them more. They demanded the truth. They demanded to know of the mere children and the roles they would play. They wanted answers.

“As you can imagine, the situation at hand is a very delicate one,” King Roham continued. “We are doing everything in our power to keep all involved safe and keep the threat of Ganondorf at bay. There will be no further questions at this time.”

The reporters lurched forward as the king turned to depart from the podium, but the security detail held strong against the rioting crowd. Zelda quickly followed her father into the palace, and the cameras turned violently back to the reporter. The woman stared open mouthed into the camera for a moment, but a voice in her ear caught her attention. Her expression hardened and she nodded once before speaking into the microphone with the news stations logo on it.

“It seems we won't be getting any more details at this time.”

The camera cut back to the two reporters back in the news room. They glanced to one another with wary expressions before regarding the camera once more. On news stations all across Hyrule, reporters were expressing their doubts towards their king's press conference, more questions raised than answered. It seemed there was nothing more they could do but utter gossip and wait for war to break.

[tres-fidelis]

Reports are starting to flood in- people calling radio stations, new report outlets and posting online: photos of the cryptid, blurry, fighting against the maverick known as Vile. Some messy camera recordings and shouting. It was all out combat between that black armor cryptid and Vile himself. The two had left the city and had engaged in battle at a large abandoned junkyard.

Chaos couldn’t even sum the state of both the newsroom and holocast headquarters. Open any of those fronts doors and one would be greeted by a tumultuous sea of rampant workers. Department heads and their followers bled into other sections of the environment, some scrambling to reach for a helpful hand to save their own life. 

Work was work. If you couldn’t handle the pressure at its finest then you weren’t cut out for this career. The major problem for this case was the lack of organization. Not even the directors could wrangle their own sectors as they continued running with their heads off. Bless the poor chief for trying to handle the situation and keep the peace. Most orders just fell on death’s ear while the continuous stream of reports flooded their databanks. 

Jayden stepped out from the burning mess for a breather, leaning against the metal frame of the hallway. Pictures in album sets uploading at incredible speeds, livestreams and pings appearing in one localized section of the city, and all of it centered on the Cryptid’s supposed battle with Vile. 

“...the hell are you doing Shaska...”

Her watch’s holoscreen dissipated back into its face, and tucked away underneath her leather sleeve. This mess wouldn’t get any better until they had some kind of direction from their higher-ups. Who knew when they’d settle down and stop to think on what to do. Jayden couldn’t handle the noise level any longer, along with the lack of common sense infesting their air. 

Did anyone know how to do their job? How is this as bad as any previous cryptid sightings and fights? They weren’t some small company anymore too. Rocket News and Insidely grew, both in numbers and quality. They strived to be the best source of current events, live broadcasts, just...anything and everything. 

So what made this situation diffferent than the rest?! What had everyone so scared!?

It’s enough. She had enough of it. 

The sliding doors to the news offices opened, and just as expected nothing appeared to be better. Jayden noted her chief just outside his office arguing with three other workers fussing over some holographic files. New pictures of the blurred Cryptid and its pursuer streamed through the large screen against the wall. Lining those were the various civilians posting their videos online, and others commentating on the situation. 

All in all; screaming, panicking professionals with no idea how to proceed. No direction, no one listening to each other, no one cooperating. 

“EVERYONE FREEZE!!”

Somehow, in some miraculous way, everyone stopped. Transfixed on the smaller woman who’s boisterous voice caught each and every year. Even the chief paused for a glance at the source of such a powerful, stern command. No one expected to hear the young reporter’s voice carry with such weight and defiant tone. This was definitely Jayden? Their Jayden?

A moment to breathe. All eyes on her now. The youngest reporter now held everyone’s attention: the veteran’s, interns, and the department heads all focused on one, singular person.

“...what...are we doing? What the hell are we trying to do here? Pointing fingers at each other? Fumbling and clambering to keep with the flow of data? Arguing?! It’s like we don’t even know how to do our jobs! What has gotten into you people!?” Her voice rose with each question holding its confidence. 

“This isn’t an outbreak! This isn’t Sigma! This isn’t even close to anything of that caliber, and yet everyone here is running around like their heads have been chopped off! It’s absolutely disgraceful to Rocket News’ mission!” A bit of a harsh way to go about it, but sometimes one had to pour out the tough love. Some eyes casted down to their twiddling fingers, others closed their eyes as the weight of these words settled on everyone’s shoulders. 

Even herself. 

“This isn’t...like us. We’ve handled worse case scenarios before with flying colors! Repliforce, the most recent virus outbreak, even other scenarios involving the Cryptid! It’s gotten into lots of fights before, and everyone here thinks a fight with Vile is some kind of news we can’t handle!?” She moved now refusing to stay stationery right near the door. Each step carried forward with a heavy stride, until she settled turning their attentions toward the screen. 

“Did you ALSO FORGET about the thousands of civilians who haven’t a clue on the situation? What about those in the immediate area wondering where to avoid the confrontation? Did we all seriously forget about the people who matter in this case?” Even more heads turned to stare at the floor in shame. 

“...people, we can’t act like this when there are innocents out there waiting to hear from us! To hear about their own workplaces, if their friends and family are safe, and to be informed! They NEED TO KNOW, they have the RIGHT to know what’s going on right now! Human and reploid alike! So we need to do our jobs, and provide them with the truth! We’re a team, and right now, especially in these sudden crunch times, is when we have to cooperate the most. All of you here have been hired for your crafts, the skills you honed throughout your life, and your abilities to work together.”

“That’s what we have to show here! Show yourself, show your boss, and show YOUR CITY that you can take the hard hits, and still pull yourselves together to keep the people, YOUR PEOPLE, rightfully informed!” 

No shouts, no kind of excited cheering, just a moment of silence while the last of her words lingered and crawled along the crowd. 

One clap...

Another....

More grew...

Until the office broke in a thunderous round of motivated workers. All departments chimed together, joined by the advice of a bright reporter. Just as they threw up their response, teams dispersed back to their own cubicles, while others headed to the editing rooms and the broadcast area. 

It...worked? Amazing...and exhausting too, but Jayden had her own job to take care of now. First-hand reporters were going to be dispatched to the sight in no time, and since the Cryptid fell under Jayden’s hands she requested to be the first out on the scene. 

Just before the black-haired woman ran to the hallway, both those off-colored eyes noted a strange look on her chief’s face. A glance at something so rare. 

A true smile. A genuine, proud smile. 

And in return...

One of her own, with a simple head nod. 

She flew out those doors heading straight to the equipment room, but her chief’s gaze at the closed door lingered further afterwards. A small chuckle, followed by a deep sigh. 

“...damn...looks like she’s not some kid anymore.”