#would like to see house hire this guy and pronounce his name | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

seraphimguks · 5 years ago

Text

roses, poetry and jeon.

☾ pairing: bookstore employee!jungkook x reader

★ summary: Between the pieces of sappy poetry and dried rose petals hidden in every book you buy from the local bookstore; you fall in love with the anonymously enigmatic writer.

➳ genre: bookstore au, enemies to lovers-ish?, fluff, slight angst

☂ words: 12k

♡ a/n: hellooo! So, after countless days and nights working on this, I’m VERY proud as to how it came out to be. I don’t have any experience as a bookstore employee so please forgive me if I made some mistakes! Also, all the poetry compositions have been written by yours truly hehe. I really hope you guys enjoy this story as much I enjoyed writing it! Let me know how you felt (reblogs and comments go a long way!) c:

~*~

The sunlight filtering through your window was a familiar feeling. As it warmed your covers, you lazily turned to the other side of your bed hoping to find a cooler spot to resume your slumber. When not even cocooning yourself helped, you angrily pulled your blanket over your frame and let the heat take the win for this one.

You opened your eyes and took a minute to take in your surroundings. You felt like your party-hungry college student-self waking up one morning on someone else’s bathroom floor that wasn’t yours. In that reverie, you winced as you could almost taste the vodka at the back of your throat and the puke roiling up in your stomach.

A half open book lay face down on your nightstand and dried up drool pooled near the top of your pillow, possibly because you dozed off in between. You checked your phone, and was relieved that it was the weekend. There were no messages from work, you wanted to jump up in joy like you were a child on sugar rush.

Your job as a market assistant was good, and although you enjoyed the work, sometimes it felt dry and you lost all enthusiasm to continue. Your boss was an asshole, you really wanted to smack him. Your colleagues were no less either, but in all speaking you didn’t want to change your job yet because it paid well to give you a good apartment room and four-square meals a day.

Even thinking about work made you upset. You hugged your knees to your chest, resting your head on them because you were just too tired. Deep down in your conscious, you knew you couldn’t pursue your true passion for financial reasons and because it was just a dying profession.

Thoughts aside, you decided to treat yourself to the weekend by going to the bookstore just around your block. You loved bookstores, it was your favourite retreat growing up when your father would come and pick out the books you wanted to borrow. You were a very avid reader as a child, however as the homework started piling up as you went up a grade, there was no time to wiggle some reading time in between the cracks of your heavy schedule. Until now.

The bookstore opened five years ago, a cozy place that usually met a lukewarm crowd on weekends. You were a regular there. The owner, Kim Namjoon, was few years elder to you but was polite, handsome and very well read despite having a demanding position at his accounting job. Namjoon had opened the bookstore as a part-time thing to stay rooted to his love for literature, and since his profession earned well, he was able to recruit two or three employees to help him out when he was at work.

Ji Changmin was the cutest employee there, and honestly you couldn’t deny that part of the reason why you headed up to the cozy establishment was to see him. He had an ebullient disposition with lovely dimples that you couldn’t help but think was cute. He always greeted new customers with a wide smile and you stifled a laugh when you remembered his extremely loud shriek when one of the customers accidentally dropped a book. The poor boy almost fell from the ladder when he was trying to sort out the books on the highest shelf.

He was a dance major at the nearby University and his shifts were on the weekends, the two days when he was free. He often came to the store disheveled from practicing on his own, but he still managed to clean up and look flawless in a simple apron uniform.

You also knew that the first weekend of the new month meant fresh arrivals – so not only were you going to see your favourite employee (you would never tell Changmin, of course) and get some eye-candy, but also browse through the new novels waiting to be read by fellow bookworms like yourself. Maybe even eye Changmin over the top of the pages you read, and knowing him long enough he would probably be practicing few steps of his dance routine, and oh didn’t he look sexy.

And with that said, you were ready in flat 15 minutes.

~*~

The conundrum of living in cities was known to you – the whizz of scooters going by in the morning, the delightful screams of school children returning from class in the afternoon and the shutters of karaoke bars and clubs opening up for the evening.

That’s why you were so relieved that the apartment you were housing in was located in a sleepy neighbourhood, where the hustle-bustle was less pronounced. It was also near a subway that took you effortlessly to work. The street which you lived in mostly had all the necessities you could ask for, from grocery markets, a hospital, small cafes, retail stores, and of course, a medium-sized bookstore.

Fact and Fiction Bookstore was a store squeezed in between a medical shop and an apartment, just a couple of blocks from your place. It always had a wooden signboard that had “Open” and “Closed” in hand drawn letters and the interiors were festooned with decorative pendant lamps that lit the room in a golden halo. Walnut coloured, skyscraper height bookshelves lined the walls in even spaces, from classics to children’s books to study materials. There were few wooden stools scattered hither and tither and a small cash register at the extreme center, that led to the store room in the back. Overall, the shop had a modern yet minimalistic look that was to your liking.

As you walked inside of Fact and Fiction, you heard the familiar bell chime as you pushed open the doors. You made it just in time, and of course there were no customers there. You smiled a bit, knowing that Changmin might just be around and you could have some quality time with him for a bit. But instead of seeing Changmin usually wiping the bookshelves carefully, you were surprised to see Namjoon in his place.

“Oh Y/N! So nice to see you this morning,” Namjoon smiled, walking up to you. Namjoon never came on weekends, and if he did, it was when one of the employees were unable to work anymore. But that was very rare. Could that mean-

“Hey Namjoon,” You said, trying to mask the slight disappointment. “I thought you didn’t come on weekends?”

“I don’t, but now I guess I have to,” He laughed, returning to clean the bookshelves at the far right of the room.

“Why, what happened to Changmin?” You faked playing it cool by taking a book off the Bestseller’s shelf.

“He had to leave, he got scouted by an entertainment agency couple days ago. He’s going to be a trainee,” Namjoon shouted from the opposite side of the room.

As much as your heart felt like it fell from the sky, that you were no longer going to be ogling over the button eyed boy now, you felt a surge of happiness at Changmin finally achieving his lifelong dream to be an idol. It would take some years, but seeing him on the big screen – possibly even cuter – made your heart flutter. Of course, Namjoon was handsome too, so you didn’t mind stealing glances at him now that you no other choice.

“So, what are you going to do, now that he’s gone?” You asked. Surely the other two employees would be a replacement, you thought.

“I already hired a new employee; he’s going to be in charge in weekends now,” Namjoon wiped his hands on the cloth and disappeared into the storeroom.”

You silently nodded to yourself. It was silence now, just you and the books. Evidently you moved to the New Arrivals section, picking an interesting book cover and started reading the first chapter.

As soon as you ensconced in the setting, you heard the door open with the low chatter of what you assumed were female college students.

You heard footsteps. Someone from the other end of the store, presumably the new employee, greeted them in the conventional fashion bookstore employees usually do.

"What may I help you ladies with?"

The hair on the back of your neck stood. Your ears perked up out of its own volition. The vibrations in your heart quickened. Your knees suddenly felt weak, goosebumps erupting on every inch of your skin. You felt the air shifting, as if the coffee toned floorboard beneath you was angled and moved on its own accord.

You've heard that voice before. No, you knew that voice. You started to panic, leaving the book you were reading on the wrong shelf and scurrying past the aisles to the center of the room, where the voice seemingly came from.

You tried to recall where and whom the voice belonged to. The vestiges of your brain that locked out certain memories of your high school unlocked. Your mind worked like a tape recorder left on fast forward. If what you thought was right, it seemed as if that voice belonged to a certain five foot something, a mean, nitpicking, lanky teenager that went by the name –

Jeon Jungkook.

Your eyes widened immediately. The second you laid eyes on your high school enemy, your legs went cold. You stood there gawking at the boy – now a man – and couldn't for a second fathom why, in all places, he just had to work here in the same neighborhood you lived in. For a second you were cursing Namjoon, but honestly how could that innocent and charming aficionado, unalike Jungkook, know who your high school nemesis was?

Jungkook too, seemed flustered by your appearance, hand straight away behind his neck as he looked at you sheepishly. He aged well, you thought for a moment. He was no longer the gangly teenager that he was; he was bulky, with budding muscles on his arms if you strained your eyes just a bit. He grew out of his ridiculous mushroom haircut, settling for a fringe that slightly kissed the top of his eyes. He grew taller, no doubt, and this time he grew into his features, a square face with a visible jawline that could, quite literally cut glass.

Your history with Jungkook was clear as day. You guys were classmates in high school for four years. The then 15-year-old used to tease you every chance he got. He used to make fun of what you wore, the pieces of writing you wrote and why you always received the highest scores in literature class. Even when he asked for your help in getting better scores in English, he would always speak with a hint of sarcasm and impatience. You left high school cursing him through and through, but was happy you'd never get to see or run into him ever again. Until today.

"Hi Y/N," he said.

"Jungkook," you took a step forward, crossing your arms. This was habit you did as a form of defensive mechanism. Sure, whatever teenage Jungkook said to you during your high school years were long past, but it did put a dent in your self-esteem even if a bit. Maybe your teenage self still feels that the grown up Jungkook would once again sputter mean words to you even though high school was a good while back. “Been long.”

"Yeah, you're right. It's so good to see you again, I mean, I never expected," his voice soft, kind. Of all things, this was the most surprising. You tried to forget how shockingly attractive he turned out to be.

"Ditto," You said, unsure of what else to say. You looked down at your shoes, circling one foot around the other. "So how do you know Namjoon?"

"Oh, Hyung and I go way back. He used to tutor me in high school. Maths, geography, literature, you name it. I owe it to him, for making me pass. I heard he was looking for work so I decided to step in."

Oh, so that's why. The pieces were falling in place now. It did feel nice to catch up with an old high school ‘acquaintance’ of sorts, so you kept aside the qualms of your bullying experiences aside.

"Hey, now that you're here, I never got to say that I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused you in high school. I was dumb, stupid really, I mean, dumb and stupid are the same thing, but what I mean is-"

"It's okay, Jungkook. I'm long past it, to be honest. You're forgiven." You manage a small smile, your insides warming with his thoughtfulness. What was even sweet was that he appeared a bit nervous, even though the line seemed rehearsed - it made you think as if he'd been saying this apology to himself so many times as if he would meet you again one day and say it.

Now that the mood was lighter, few more customers began pouring in. You let Jungkook continue with his work even though you wanted to know details about his life now. You resumed reading the book, considered even making this the first purchase in a long time, before Jungkook waddled up to you suggesting that he was free to talk.

"So," Jungkook began slowly, leaning over the wall opposite the bookshelf. “You live here?

“Just a couple of blocks from here. What about you?”

“Oh no, I took the subway here. It’s bit far from my boxing center at home,” he smiles, bowing at new customers who already seemed to know what to look for. You noticed when he smiled that the one thing that didn’t change about Jungkook was his doe eyes. God, they were so misleading to anyone else who didn’t know him well.

And wow, that explained the muscles. Jeon Jungkook having his own boxing center? You pegged Jungkook as being unemployed after high school because if you recall correctly, his grades were dismal. But you can’t judge a book by its cover, right?

“Wow, boxing center huh? How’s that going?” You kind of feigned interest, nodding your head more than usual whereas you just wanted to read.

“Great actually. I took business in college, and it really got me thinking. So, I pulled some strings and opened a center, that way I could practice and so can everyone else. It’s going pretty good,” he nodded satisfyingly.

You give him a sad smile. He was doing something he liked. You were too, but not exactly.

“So, do you still write poetry?” He asks, knowing he’d been talking too much about himself.

Ah, that was your sour spot. Your true passion. Writing poetry. Those years in high school you realized nothing gave you true happiness than what the joy of words did. You never wanted to make a career out of anything if it didn’t happen to include writing. However, prospects in becoming a writer were perilously low and by the time you finished your first year in college, you realized you had a take different direction if you wanted to lead a financially stable life to pay off your loans.

“Oh, that.” You shrugged, another one of your defense mechanisms. Jungkook’s eyebrow lifted questioningly. You weren’t one to call poetry as ‘that’.

“Well, I learnt poetry can get you far enough as someone with a dying YouTube career, sadly as it is. It's a beautiful profession, but I needed to make ends meet. So currently I'm working as assistant marketing manager at this company an hour away.” You tried to seem as content as possible.

“How is it?” Jungkook now had to go and take to some customers but he was still listening to you.

“It's great!”

It's fucking tedious. Sometimes I want to scream, tear some papers and run around like a maniac.

“I love my boss and my teammates.”

My boss is a sexist, misogynistic prick and my teammates love to kiss his ass.

“There are days when I don't even think about poetry.”

I think about it every single second that I'm at work. I can’t even write cause I’m so packed with stuff to do.

Jungkook laughs as he aligns some books in the correct angles. "You were a good student in high school. With those grades, getting that job must have been piece of cake for you. Although, it must suck not to write because of your work.”

You’re telling me.

The book you were previously reading wasn’t that interesting as you thought. You moved over to the Poetry section, skimming your fingers over the covers of books. You saw a familiar title and took it out. It was the same book of poems that your school had given as part of your Literature syllabus. This book made you fall in love with words and what they mean. You looked inside and to your relief, it had all the poems of love, tragedy and loss that you came to love when you studied them meticulously when you were still a student.

Your favourite poems were I Dream of You by Christina Rossetti and Rooms by Charlotte Mew. You longed for a romance like the ones they described in stanzas, but only seldom in your life did you come across someone who shared the love of sappy poetry like you did.

“Rooms, huh? I love that poem,” Your head sharply whipped towards Jungkook’s direction, who was now curiously studying the book you had in hand.

Jungkook, liking poetry? The same lad who made fun of all the writers for being over-dramatic over love, was now saying he liked poetry?

“Surprising, I know. But like, if anyone found out the guy on the football team shared a secret love for prose and poetry, I would’ve been thrown out,” He shrugs lightly. You understood, your school solely ran on conservative values of toxic masculinity and favouritism. You managed to survive all of that, thankfully.

You and Jungkook then engaged in a discussion on the best poems and writing you guys read, surprised at his wide knowledge and the opinions he had to share. You agreed on many, disagreed with a few. But one thing you realized was that maybe meeting Jungkook wasn’t such a bad thing at all, you guys could finally be friends.

You decided to buy your book of poems. You haven’t seen this book in ages and it would be nice to add to your collection anyway.

As you handed over the book to Jungkook to check out, your hands touched only slightly. Jungkook gave you a small, shy smile, and you returned it. Right before he was going to give you the bill, his hands awkwardly hovered over the register for a moment.

“Wait,” he quickly remembered. “I have to put a stamp inside of this. It’s a way of checking what books are purchased. Work regulations. Give me a sec?”

You nodded and he disappeared into the store room for a good 10 minutes. You waited as you looked around the store for the nth time and wondering when you’d be back again. Jungkook suddenly returned, looking a little sweaty even though the air-conditioner was still on. He wiped his sweat using a towel next to the register and handed over the book to you with both hands.

You smiled at your purchase, tucking it in your bag and respectfully bowing to Jungkook before you decided to make your leave. As soon as you turned your heel towards the door, Jungkook awkwardly extended a hand to you.

“So, what do you say, friends?” His eyes were looking down, to hide his embarrassment. You thought it was cute. You extended your hand too.

“Friends.”

~*~

The sky had enveloped the sun the same way it always did during sundown. You settled comfortably in your duvet, taking out the book inside the paper bag that had the initials F.F. printed in large colourful letters. You placed the book gingerly between your legs as you scanned the hard cover.

You inhaled the pages, the smell settling somewhere in your bones. Then you began reading. It was sunset when you started and then midnight when you got to the middle. You held back a yawn as you decided to call it a day and then get to work from tomorrow. You were putting a bookmark inside the page you stopped at when something like a scrap of paper fell out of the book.

Carefully, you kept your book on the night stand and picked up the fragment and turned it over.

The paper looked as if it were torn from a notebook. What looked like a poem was written in the childish scrawl of a 10-year old, but it didn’t seem reasonable that a child would write something with such thought and maturity.

Thousands of libraries will never exhaust

How you wander in the loveliest recesses of my thoughts,

An angel fallen from heaven,

Am I merely just a spectre in your presence?

Your fingers possess secrets in every page that you write

But how would it feel my dear,

if the hands that touched your skin, were I?

Books may command your attention

But I mean no harm,

But beyond the classroom walls, here is my confession

That it fatigues me that to remain a boy who will love you from afar.

You stared at the paper for a while.

The poem was no doubt very beautiful, suggestive even. Unrequited love always made the best poems, you knew. You imagined a love-struck young boy penning down this very poem for his classmate in the back of his Algebra book, thinking it would never be seen by anyone else except him. What you loved most was that in each verse, the writer made his best effort to form an analogy between his lover’s passion for books and his passion for her. And to top it all, you and this girl shared your love for books.

But how did such a sensitive piece of writing wind up in your poetry book?

The paper didn’t match the quality of the paper of your recent buy, obviously. Namjoon was also not one to keep second-hand or used books in his store either. Was someone else reading the book and somehow slipped this inside? But the writing seemed very personal and it would be irresponsible for someone to misplace something like this.

You shrugged it off later, safely keeping the piece in one of your night stand drawers. Just when you were about to place your treasured book of poems in your book case, rose petals from the book fell to the floor.

Gasping, you picked the bunch in your hands, the petals bearing an angry crimson shade. Roses were your favourite flower, so you couldn’t but smell the petals that lay within your reach.

But if anything, it only multiplied the questions in your head as to how, when and why both the love poem and the petals were in the book in the first place.

~*~

You forgot about the poem and the rose petals until you found yourself going back to Fact and Fiction the next week. Surprisingly, work load was less but you didn’t want to be one to ask why.

It was a sunny afternoon. You got the news that a sequel to one of your favourite series released few days ago. You were sure that Namjoon would keep a neat pile of the sequel somewhere in his bookstore.

Jungkook was already at the register handing a customer his receipt when he noticed you entering through the glass door. He gave a small wave as you scuttered to the New Arrival’s section. Anxiously, you browsed through the section until you finally saw the familiar title.

“Yes, yes, yes,” you muttered, the pads of your fingertips feeling the glossy hardcover. You had only turned to the front page when a dark-haired someone appeared by your side.

“Seriously, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes? Heard it didn’t get good reviews,” Jungkook smirks at you.

“Didn’t get good reviews my ass,” you mock him, going back to reading. The boy shakes his head and lets you read as he helps a customer find a certain book. More customers started to pour in, and soon Jungkook is up and running across the store every five minutes. You felt sorry for him, but then you realised with all his working out, running across a five thousand feet store was practically nothing.

It was just you in the store when it was evening. Jungkook leaned on the wall, resting his head on the counter in respite. You smiled dejectedly at him, wanting to say something to light the mood.

“So, how is Taehyung and Jimin? We couldn’t really catch up properly,” you said, sitting on one of the tools.

Jungkook sighed, almost happy that he could have one conversation today that wasn’t about foraging book titles of books ceased producing copies anymore.

“Jimin is good,” he said, wiping his sweat with the back of his hand. “He’s working at this law firm in Australia. Taehyung is pursuing his Master’s in Europe, something in cultural studies.’

“Wow,” the jealously in your voice was slightly apparent. You did work at a well-known company, but still, working abroad was a different league altogether.

“Gosh, can you believe how messed up we three were? Always fooling around, teachers said we wouldn’t amount to anything,” Jungkook reminisced, leaning his elbows on the counter now.

“I remember,” you laughed. “Especially when Taehyung pranked Mr. Choi with that whoopie cushion and Mrs. Kang when you drew her face on the board one day.”

“I think even Mrs. Kang laughed at that drawing herself, it was pretty impressive,” he smirks, lips breaking into a cocky grin. “

“And I think everyone remembers how you made Hae-ri cry in front of the whole class when you broke up with her,” you chucked, remembering the incident. Hae-ri and Jungkook sort of were going out in the middle of eleventh grade, but you always heard rumours how Jungkook was just playing around, like boys always did.

“Come on, Hae-ri and I were a joke. Can’t help it if she took us seriously,” Jungkook rolled his eyes. He clearly wasn’t interested in her as much as she was. As much as the others girl were really, even though to you he was what you always thought he was – a stupid, mean and lanky adolescent. “To think of it, I couldn’t help if I was a bit popular.”

“Oh, you were the cynosure of all eyes, Kook,” you smiled, looking down. It was true. Jungkook always carried an aura of confidence was that infectious. The kind of charm that made heads turn when he walked in the room, the type of startling charisma that was unnatural of a fifteen-year-old.

“Everyone’s eyes except yours,” he emphasised, crossing his arms over another.

“I mean, you hated me. We hated each other,” You state matter-of-factly, as you got up from the stool to the counter to make your purchase. “I can’t believe I even tried to be nice with you.”

Jungkook faced you with an expression on his face you couldn’t decipher. “I didn't hate you, not completely.”

That was news. You always thought Jungkook and his little gang were out to torture every weakling in school. Jungkook especially liked to torture you, so it would be an understatement to say you were a bit surprised.

“Which part of your icky teenage self,” you jabbed a finger in his shoulder playfully. “-even tolerated me?”

“The part that tolerated you thought you were special. And you still are, Y/N. Special.” He repeated.

There was a twinkle in his eyes when he spoke that you didn’t miss. Your heart felt like it was floating, warmed by the how Jungkook meant every word he said about you. Your stomach did this thing where it felt like a million bees were swarming around when you felt shy. A blast of warmth shot up your arms. The feeling lingered even when you pushed The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in his direction.

Jungkook’s smirk didn’t wipe off his face after you had given your payment. The silence seemed unusual, did you just share an intimate, if brief, moment with your high school foe? Why had he called you special? You never stood out even when you were classmates, so why was he saying this now?

“I’ll go stamp this, yeah?” he cuts the silence. You nod, and he vanishes into the storeroom again. He comes back five minutes later this time and hands you the paper bag. You take your leave and silently leave the store.

What you don’t see is Jungkook’s gaze following you intently as you pull the door, walk across the street from the store and disappear into the night.

~*~

You returned home, your laptop greeting you with tons of messages from work. You cursed each of them, especially the one from your boss asking you to revise last week’s updates even though you emailed in a bunch of times saying you did. You pulled an all-nighter as you completed the tasks expected of you. By the time you were done, it was already two-thirty in the night.

You flopped on your bed, your body relaxing as it hit the soft covers. You breathed a sigh of relief as you pulled out your purchase from the paper bag.

You suddenly remembered the poem and the petals. You decided it would be weird, but you turned the book over as if you were expecting the same contents to pool from it. And sure enough, you were right.

Not one, but two pieces of notebook scraps settled onto your lap with some blue coloured rose petals. Your mind did a mental ‘what the fuck?’ before picking up the petals and placing them on your night stand. You picked the scraps and read them, never expecting what you would find.

Help me, for I am surrounded by loquacious ghosts

Yet you stand there, a beauty in flesh and bone

Women would die for me,

yet my mind echoes only your name

Break me from my reverie,

To kiss you in the blue sweater that hugs your delicate frame

You eye me with pure hate, yet is I to blame

I treat you wrongly,

But only to hide my love for you – if you push me away.

You read the second one now.

Blue,

It is the colour of the sweater you wear every first Monday of the month

The pencil you write poems at the top of your chemistry notebook,

The rain as it brushes against your skin when you're late to class

The look on your face when you're happy

The sound of my heart when you walk past my seat at the cafeteria table

The smile you wear when your friends hook their arms around yours

And my love for you that will never be requited.

Cold sweat broke out on your spine. This wasn't some love poem that was mistakenly placed in your book. It felt like the poems were directed at you. Even the first poem made you feel slightly suspicious because you had a resemblance to the girl mentioned in it.

You tried to knit all three poems together, because all those years in poetry class made you an expert at analysing. You found a connection. They were written by someone in high school.

The love for books, the pencil, the sweater, the behaviour traits, all reminded you of your teenage self from years ago. It was so intricate, as if this person had been observing you through a lens in class for years.

It was someone that you hated and he hated you too, but then again, you hated a lot of people in high school, and they too, you felt, disliked you. You had few friends, however good ones, all of which whom you remained in contact today.

Who could this person be? He definitely had outstanding poetry skills, the words worming its way into your heart ever since you had the first poem. You felt shy. Someone, in your class, liked you behind a mask of hatred. Your body contracted as you concluded that you had a mystery writer sending you messages with every book you bought. You wondered why you were living in the dark for a long time.

How had this not happened earlier? Why was it that before buying the book, it didn’t seem to have any individual contents in it, but after taking it home, it did?

You wanted more answers. You wanted to write back, but whom would you be writing to? You didn't know this person or his address. You realised that this was a one-way connection. You could only build your assumption if you had more poems to build them on.

And that could only happen if you happened to go to a certain bookstore couple of blocks from your apartment.

~*~

You went there the next weekend, on a cold Sunday morning. You kept the mystery poet a secret to yourself, although it haunted you for the whole week while you were at work.

As the weeks ensued, work was piling up, but you felt at peace when you were there among the books and Jungkook's company. The weekends went by with Jungkook narrating funny stories of certain customers he encountered, high school memories, work schedules, and of course books.

“No, Dark Places was absolutely not one of Gillian Flynn’s best works,” you commented, one evening.

“But the Satanic vibe was cool, you have to admit,” Jungkook’s voice was lost as he piled books in front of a stand.

Jungkook was a diligent worker for a newbie; he polished the shelves and smoothened out dog-eared books. He always checked the register and counted the cash, aligned the books the correct way, made note of what books were available and those which needed immediate restocking. He lost his callous attitude of high school years, but you berated yourself for always comparing his high school habits to the Jungkook now.

You rolled your eyes. “Have you read Karin Slaughter’s books though?”

You could feel his smirk from behind the stack of books. “Pretty Girls.”

“The Good Daughter.” You argued.

“Pretty Girls was grislier. I like.” God, you wanted to lunge a book at this guy. Everything gory or Satanic amused him, it seemed.

Jungkook was funnier than you imagined with the comedic antics he sometimes pulled off, by failing at twirling a book in his hands to accidentally hitting his head on the storeroom door behind the register. He sometimes flirted here and there, which was mostly harmless. But you couldn’t forget that time in the store when he called you special. The look he gave, the sincerity behind it, how genuine it felt.

You kept buying books and of course the love letters kept emerging along with the roses. You still had no idea who this person was, but as time went by, you kept falling more and more in love. You kept the petals in your journal. They did dry off, but you kept them regardless. You always kept the poems in your drawer, neatly piled into one corner. Sometimes, you pressed them close to your chest as if the words would somehow leap up from the page, dissolve into your rib cages and settle near your heart.

But one stormy morning that you were at the bookstore, you were weighed down by how work was progressing. The company had faced some setbacks, so you were responsible for getting the hearing from your boss. You tried to mask your sadness until you see Jungkook doing something suspicious near the centre of the room.

There was a small stand, where usually books were heaped into a mountain of paperbacks. It looked as if the boy was trying to pile the books in a house of cards fashion. The experiment was bound to fail, and Jungkook was lucky Namjoon was never here on weekends to see what was about to be happen.

But you help him instead.

“Do you like working here, Kook?” you tried to sound nonchalant. You hand him two books at a time, while he dexterously stabilised a book on top of another.

“I do,” he replies. “It’s relaxing. Especially when I’m not sweaty and working out all the time. Why?”

“It’s just, I hate my work environment you know, and I miss writing– “

Jungkook eyes you worriedly as he stops midway through the activity. You don’t notice and hand him some books anyway, but they fall right at the edge of the pile and the whole stack falls down on both of you like dominoes.

Jungkook falls back first on the ground, catching you as you fall on his stomach. Your faces are inches away from each other, but you rest your head on his chest, tears stinging the corners of your eyes.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry! See? I’m such a mess. I can’t do anything right, I’m a failure, I’m-“

Jungkook rests his hand on your back and the other hand gently stroking your forehead. You picked up on his hesitance, as if he was asking your body to relax as a signal that he was comforting you. You did relax, you felt as ease. The weeks when you were around him, you never felt comfortable with anyone in your life. Let alone the fact that he was attractive, erm, cute – but he was probably one of the best people you knew.

“Shut up okay? You're amazing. Those assholes at work don't know how talented you are. You're amazing.” Jungkook whispered, rubbing your back in small circles. “I…I sometimes don’t like working at my centre either. The toxic masculinity over there makes me want to puke. I hate the environment, and sometimes I think I’m the one who sparked it.

He wraps both arms round you now, and you're reminded again literally, that being surrounded by books and Jungkook was what led you to Fact and Fiction every weekend. You two lie there for a good ten seconds, before you realised that a customer may walk in any moment. There was also the mess to sort out.

You help Jungkook up, wiping your tears with the back of your hand.

“I can’t really see you cry, I start crying too,” Jungkook jokes, as he hands you a tissue from the tissue box. Always so concerned, you took note. “Is there something that keeps you happy apart from books? Y-you could try and do that?”

"Actually,” you sniff. “There is something that keeps me happy these days. Someone keeps writing me love letters."

There, your secret finally revealed. Jungkook gaped you, as if he didn’t believe it. Honestly, you didn’t either until you made the connection yourself.

He proceeded to ask you details of the discovery, and was shocked himself when you told him of how you thought the person could be someone from high school. It really got him thinking. He named each classmate you’ve ever had an interaction with, but you couldn’t picture any of them having any interest in you.

How did your mystery writer/(lover?) know so much about you? Little details, little quirks. Was he a stalker? But how did he know exactly which books you bought and when?

"Well, maybe you should write something of your own too. Maybe like, in response to how you feel when you read his poems.” The boy suggested, picking the books from the floor, dusting them before putting it in a box next to him.

You mirrored his actions. You pondered over the thought for a while though. Writing to him would be a way to practice your writing that you thought you lost. It was a great idea; you were doing it for yourself. And then if you ever meet this mystery guy, you would show him too.

“Wait, before you leave,” the doe-eyed boy stops your tracks. The books were successfully placed in the box, and you were helping him put it in the sore room when he asks you to wait.

Jungkook walks you toward the end of the room. He picks out a book and shows you the cover. It’s a limited-edition copy of one of your favourite authors of all time, and signed. You wondered what it was doing at the back, when it should be out in front.

“I saved this copy, just for you,” Jungkook’s cheeks blushed a tinge of pink. “I remembered how much you liked his work in school. And I’m willing to give this to you, half the price.”

You ran and hugged Jungkook the tightest hug you had ever given someone in years. He laughed, returning the hug. You felt like the luckiest girl, customer, (whatever!) and you almost felt bad because you had gotten something exclusive for a discount because you knew the employee, anyone else would have paid fortunes for this. You thought about declining, but Jungkook really insisted.

“Don’t think about refusing. I’ll go stamp this before you make your payment,” he says before you could protest.

Really, where had Jungkook been all this time? So much kindness, this boy was brimming with endless love that you thought you didn’t deserve. After a while, he comes out and you hand him the cash.

As you say your goodbyes and make your leave, Jungkook says “And please don’t cry, wouldn’t want to taint that pretty face, right?”

Something stirred in your heart. You had just started seeing Jungkook as a man, was it now that he started seeing you as a woman? A blush creeps up your neck as you contemplate the thought all the way home.

~*~

You carefully keep the purchase on your bed. Taking out the scraps of love poems from your drawer, you needed to look at your muse before you started writing on your own.

You stretched your hands, pen in hand, ready to recreate wonders when it hit the paper. But you were blank. It’s like your mind had wired out all the imaginations you had kept stored for the last couple of years. You fell flat on your desk, exhaustion over coming you. Had you really lost your touch? Your parents, teachers and friends always praised you for your writing skills, have you let them down? But you weren’t really going to quit this easily.

You looked at your purchase. There must be another poem hidden inside. As if controlled by an entity, you opened the book, flipped the leaves and saw the very page sitting in between the middle pages. You removed the pink rose petals too, your guy never seemed to forget adding them in. You turned the scrap over.

Today I heard your laugh

Setting my heart in a frenzied trance

The purest sound even the sweetest nightingale could not match

Like fireflies bouncing against thin glass

The most beautiful treasure, I can never have.

Your eyes watered. It was a poem tinier from the rest, but this one struck something within you. “Like fireflies bouncing against thin glass”, the words feeling sweeter every time you repeated them. You couldn’t believe someone, who was so far from you, could love you this vehemently.

Suddenly, you had found your strength. You were going to write. You were doing this for him. For you.

You picked up the pen and the words just came to you. It was a struggle, but it was a start, you console yourself. You never imagined you would be writing a love letter to someone you had never seen, touched and spoke to, but you didn’t care. Your hands worked away, filling the page in front of you.

But your mind echoed the same mantra over, and over again: I am doing this for us. I am doing this for us. I am doing this for us.

~*~

It's three weeks later that you decide to do an experiment. It's been quite a while since you've been to the store, and the poems stopped coming as well. Work was driving you crazy. You knew sometime in this week you had to drop by the bookstore, so you decided to see if your mystery lover came on the weekdays.

Another employee whom you didn’t know personally and Namjoon were there. Jungkook, of course, was nowhere in sight like you guessed. Namjoon gives you a wave from the register as he speaks to a customer. You knew that you already had too many books, but today was crucial if you wanted to see if your experiment worked out. You could also return the book after you bought it, granted you brought it in after fifteen days. You could buy a book for someone else; your mystery man would never know you were buying it for yourself. Yeah, that’s what you decided do.

You picked up a random title from the shelf and made your way to the counter. The store was mostly empty, except one or two customers. Everybody was busy on a weekday.

As you made your payment, you noticed Namjoon stamping the inside of the book before handing it over to you. The counter was designed in a way so that a person standing a normal distance away couldn’t see what was inside of it. So naturally, your eyes furrowed in confusion.

“Don’t you have to go inside and stamp?” You asked, wondering if Namjoon made the wrong stamp. Even the brightest minds can forget.

“What do you mean? Namjoon looked at as if you had said the most ridiculous thing ever.

"Like whenever Jungkook checks out a book, he goes into the storeroom and stamps? It’s a rule?" You weren’t being sure of what you were saying right now. You sounded like a poor student explaining the concept of rocket physics to a professor.

"Oh, I don't know why he does that, since there's already a stamp here." He holds up a plastic rubber stamp like someone would hold an antique. "And I mean, you could do that, since there are few spare ones in the storeroom, but that’s like extra effort you have to put in. I'm not sure why he does that."

You nodded, kind of silent.

"Does he do that to you or for every customer?"

You realise you never even noticed this. Usually when the store had customers, you were engrossed in reading or looking at books. You never even wondered if Jungkook went to the storeroom to stamp all the books that were purchased. The bookstore would be very crowded during weekends, and the time taken for Jungkook to go and come back usually takes five or ten minutes. Surely, he would’ve taken one of the stamps to the counter itself cause the journey would be too tiring. But you didn’t know for sure what he did for other customers. You slapped yourself in your head for being so ignorant.

You left the store with an uncertainty heavy on your chest.

You return home. Billions of questions bounced from one corner of your mind to another in an intense ping-pong battle. What was worse, when you looked inside the book you bought, there was no poem. No rose petals either.

Could it be that Jungkook knew your mystery guy? Was he the one slipping in the poems when you made your purchase? Did your guy come in the middle of the week and hand Jungkook his writing and leave it up to him to do the favour? Is that why there were no poems or roses today, cause Jungkook wasn’t at work?

You didn’t know. All you knew was that the best way to handle your doubts was to confront Jungkook.

You noticed that you needed to buy groceries for the night. You just had take-out for three days in a row and now the thought of Chinese food made you feel icky. You hit yourself on the head for not buying groceries earlier after you were at at the store. You took your purse and made it in time at the grocery before closing.

Once you were done, you stepped out with your heavy paper bag and saw it was pouring heavily. Pedestrians were already waiting outside the store, hoping the rain would subside soon. Nobody suspected today that it would rain and neither did you.

“Fuck,” you muttered, you didn’t bring an umbrella. The bookstore was just across the grocery. It had a bigger shade, enough to cover seven people from the rain. You silently thanked Namjoon’s choice of constructing the store as you launched yourself across the street.

Jungkook was standing under the shed, looking for something in his bag. You didn’t notice he was there until he called your name.

“Y/N!” his eyes lit up. Desperate, your eyes searched his hands. He was carrying an umbrella. You breathed easier.

“Oh hey,” you say, the rain making it hard for you to be audible. Raindrops pounded against the shed like fists banging a door. “I thought you didn’t work on weekdays?”

“I don’t,” he said. “I was meeting someone here for work.” You nodded, wondering how would bring up the topic of the poems. Maybe you would ask him on Saturday, two days from now. Right at this moment, didn’t seem like the best time.

“Would you mind dropping me off at the subway, though? It’s just near my place,” you knew you sounded desperate, but you needed to get back home. You remembered he had to take the subway to get home too. Jungkook violently nodded his head as he opened his umbrella. You both started walking, shivering slightly at the cold.

"Hey, come closer. Don't want to get your pretty outfit wet," Jungkook huddled you closer to his side, wrapping a hand around your waist for purchase. Your cheeks reddened, maybe at the way the wind whipped your skin or the fact that no one's ever been this near you.

As the space between you and Jungkook closed, you looked at the boy who was always so concerned with your well-being. He had been occupying your thoughts lately. Maybe because of his dorky personality or because he was very smouldering in person, but either ways, your experience of crushes told you that this was the beginning of another infatuation. But you, liking your high school classmate? As much you fantasised him from time to time, you had to resist thinking about it. He maybe had a girlfriend, who knew? Someone as wonderful as him deserved one.

But in this moment, under the incessant rain where both of you trying to turn his upturned umbrella, Jungkook breaking into bouts of laughter as a car splashed water on your clothes, and you complaining of your matted hair – you felt so happy. The puzzle of the poems was longer a worry to you. All you wanted was to be happy in the moment, with Jungkook.

“So, are you going to give this mystery guy a chance?” Jungkook's voice strained to speak over the rain. Ah, coming to the point. You had been so sure you wouldn’t bring up the topic, but destiny had other plans.

“How am I supposed to give him a chance when I don't know who he is or how he looks like?” You say, uncomfortable at how wet the hem of your jeans was. You were walking at an uncomfortable speed, trying to avoid the puddles in your path but in vain.

“He surely knew what he had to do to get you swoon over him,” Jungkook laughed, as if he was so sure. He was right though, strangely.

“He does have a way with words,” you agreed. The wind was horrible now, pulling your top over your midriff. "I'm scared cause maybe the day he'll come up to me, I'll look like trash."

"No, you never look like trash. You look pretty in whatever you wear, Y/N." Jungkook scoffed. You blushed again. God, why was it so hard not to blush in front of him? “But you do know what's coming.

“What is?” Honestly your mind had been occupied so much about work, and your anonymous lover than you had no time to think the next Jungkook wanted to say.

“Valentine's Day.”

As soon as you heard it, something in you jolted. Two days from now was Valentine’s Day.

"Do you think he might make his appearance that day?" you asked, your voice high as a sparrow’s chirp. Jungkook offered to hold your grocery bag in return for holding his umbrella. You obliged.

"Can't really say that, but would it make your day if he did?" he continued.

“Oh my god, yes,” you stressed on the word, even slightly a little bit anxious because you wouldn’t know what you did if he came out of nowhere.

“Does someone have butterflies in their stomach now?”

"Stop it.” You nudged an elbow at him. You have no idea what he does to me."

"I do know." He holds his gaze longer this time. The rain finally subdued. You saw something in Jungkook's eyes then, you're not sure what – sadness, hope, expectation? But whatever it was, you felt something reverberate in your ribs long after he tears his gaze away.

"I think this is where we part." You say, brushing the hair from your eyes. You were still holding his umbrella, waiting for the right moment to give it to him.

Jungkook suddenly takes your free hand and squeezes it in his own. "Whatever you do, Y/N, please give that guy a chance. He does seem to really like you." He tucked a hair beside your ear, you shuddered a bit at the cold touch.

Why was Jungkook being so persistent about it? Why was he so serious when it came to you and your mystery lover? Whatever the deal was, Jungkook's expression didn't waver. He was right too, and that strengthened your resolve to accept this stranger no matter who he was. You nodded, which made Jungkook only happier.

"I wish I can see him." You sighed, wondering if Jungkook was thinking what you were thinking.

"Y/N," Jungkook leaned over to whisper in your ear. "Maybe you just need to keep looking around you, because he could be so near to you, but you just don't know it yet."

You still don't understand what the raven-haired stunner meant by his words when he hands you the groceries, leaves without his umbrella and descends the subway stairs.

~*~

It was Saturday. Valentine’s Day.

Jungkook woke up in his one-bedroom apartment, a little shaky. Today was the day.

As he reached over to pick up the backpack he took to work, he unzipped the tiny front pocket. Scraps of paper fell out from the seams, like snowflakes on a wintry morning. The twenty-three-year-old looked at each piece, running his fingers over the love poems his high school-self had written to you. If Jungkook had told his angsty teenage self that someday the poems he had written at the top of his history notebook would be read by you, he would have never believed himself.

Jungkook always liked you.

It wasn’t love at first sight, heck, he didn’t believe in that. He didn’t mind you at first, but he realised what made you so special than the rest. You were strong, maybe not in the vocal way, but in the way you saw the world around you. When the teacher complimented how well you would write your answers, you evocative your poetry was – Jungkook could never imagine how a shy girl, her nose so lost in a book at the corner of class would do that.

So when Jungkook read your answers one day, or when he would sneak a glance at your writing, he felt insecure. The real reason why Jungkook always teased you was that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t write as well you did, put his mind to something that you did so well, to be so intelligent, strong and soft. From you, he understood that strength doesn’t equate to being aggressive, or overly vocal. It can be in the way you can showed kindness as well.

So that’s why started pestering you, to hide his own feelings he could never reveal to anyone.

Jungkook never forgot how even after he teased you repeatedly in class, you would always give him an extra pencil when he wanted one, or a reassuring smile when he was anxious before a test. That was the only limit of his interactions with you, but it was more than enough.

He quickly took notice of you in the most subtle ways. The pencil you wrote with, the way your hair was styled one morning, that blue sweater that was apparently your favourite. How you passed by his seat at the cafeteria every morning to sit with your friends. How opinionated you were about certain authors and their writing styles. Even when Jungkook had to put up his ‘popular boy’ persona, sometimes he would tune out all the meaningless conversations he had just to hear how soft your laugh sounded when your friends showed you something funny.

You quickly became his muse. Jungkook was good at physical activities. He was popular, everyone had expectations from him to go on to college with a football scholarship. Everyone looked up to Jungkook cause made himself look like an idol. But in reality, Jungkook had nothing to show except for a fleeting charisma. Jungkook was good at physical activities, but not at words.

But you made him fall in love with words. Like everyone else, he was at first impatient at why poets and writers took so long to get to the point. But he learnt from you that art was patience. Love was patience.

He struggled, for weeks, months, trying to get the right words out of him. How he felt for you, how you made him feel. He now realised how hard it was express your feelings in few words. But with some practice, Jungkook eventually got there. He had begun to read more, surprising his parents too, but he eventually loved the activity. It calmed him. Soothed his nerves. Staying up late at night just reading, Jungkook noticed his English answers were improving. When he received the final grade, it wasn’t great. But he was satisfied. His whole gang slapped high-fives with him asking how he cheated his way through the exam successfully. He bit his lower lip, a habit of his, as he shrugged at them in response. The real reason was a pretty girl who always sat in the corner of class.

He kept his proudest pieces of poetry hidden in his bag for so long, secretly thanking you for realising a part of him he never knew existed. He took the bag everywhere with him, serving as his strength. His true, strength. Not the kind that had him running 20 laps around school and bench press 30 kilos to impress his coach.

He always regarded you as his first love, not Hae-ri, not any of the girls he went out with as a joke. He was sad when he graduated high school, but was too shy to come up and thank you. He regretted not saying anything to you then, knowing life is not one to give second chances.

But when Jungkook saw you in the bookstore for the first time, part of him thought this was fate. His feelings resurfaced, stronger than ever. He still had the scraps of poetry in his bag in the storeroom, he could just retrieve them and slip them into the book you would purchase. Maybe even some roses Namjoon liked to decorate on the inside.

When you slid your book the counter, Jungkook had deliberated the idea. But he knew that everything happens for a reason, so he decided to do it anyway. You would never know who it was, but at least he could tell you how he felt for you in one way. He kept repeating this as many times as you bought something from the store. He loved your company, he felt like the luckiest man in the world. Never had he felt happier when he was talking to you, getting to know the real you.

So that’s why he wanted to reveal himself to you, behold! I’m the writer behind all those poems!

Valentine’s Day would be the perfect opportunity to do so. He just hoped, wished, that you wouldn’t push him away. Or, be disappointed. That was Jungkook’s fear that kept him wide awake at night. Could you have been hoping for someone else? Did you not look at Jungkook the way he looked at you?

He would only know today. He was bracing himself, when he got changed, when he showered, when he raced to the subway and made it sharp at ten am.

Namjoon was already there, smiling at the young boy wondering why his cheeks were so red. Jungkook’s heart never beat that fast. His heart felt like it would be sliced open by a hundred bullets. He quickly put on his apron and pretended to be busy arranging the books on the middle shelves in proper order. It was already an hour when he heard the door open.

Jungkook’s feet almost leapt up when he saw you coming inside. He waved, a bit too much he thought, and took few seconds to gather himself together. He was ready to approach you any moment now. He would take your hands, press them against his chest and say: “Its me, Y/N. I’m the anonymous writer you’re looking for.”

Jungkook edged himself forward. All this time he’d been waiting for this.

Until he sees Namjoon walking up to you first.

~*~

“Y/N,” Namjoon approaches you. You didn’t expect him to be talk to you, since he was always so busy on weekends. He cleared his throat. “I just wanted to say…that you look pretty today.”

“What?” you laugh, nervously. Namjoon calling you pretty? All of a sudden? You never even thought he even looked at you beyond a friend. Yes, he was very good looking, Jungkook must have talked about you to him, hadn’t he? The former always complimented on your appearance, making you smile inwardly.

“Gosh,” he chuckles in return. “Your laugh really does sound like fireflies bouncing against thin glass.”

You blink twice, hand going right up to your mouth. Namjoon. Wait, Namjoon? So, it had been him all this time? Yes, it all made sense! Only someone as charming, educated and well-mannered as Namjoon fit in all the right pieces of the mystery man you pictured. No wonder the poems had a very loving touch, it was written by someone like him. But how he had he known so much about you? Was it Jungkook who told him all those teeny, insignificant details that you were made of?

At that moment, you didn't care. All you knew was that Kim Namjoon noticed you. He had noticed you.

You smile at him.

You looked over your shoulder, Jungkook’s face turning to a shade of grey. His seemed frozen in position. You wondered why. You just wanted to jump up and shake him and scream into his face: Jungkook! Namjoon is the one! He’s been the one writing to me!

“I've been meaning to ask, would you like to go out to coffee with me today? It is Valentine’s Day,” he scratches the back of his neck. You take his hands in yours. You nod willingly. You were too excited that all you had was time to point at Namjoon to Jungkook when Namjoon had his back turned to remove his apron.

Jungkook got the message you tried to tell him. He only smiled, but you wondered why it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

~*~

The café shop that you and Namjoon decided on was already swarming with customers, couples mostly. You guys decided to sit outside, a table for two. You were so excited, you were ready to bombard Namjoon with a series of questions, hoping it would give you the insight it needed. You both ordered two lattes and brownies with ice-cream topping.

“I can’t believe you readily agreed to go out with me,” the man before you shrugs modestly. “I mean, I could pass on as your elder brother, right?”

“Um, no, I was so happy that you asked, I…I never imagined, really. I’m really happy you did,” you stuttered, reaching out your arms to touch his. He appreciated the compliment.

“That’s so sweet, Y/N,” Namjoon smiled again, resting the palm of his hand on his cheek, giving you a longing gaze.

“Sweet, just like the poems you wrote for me,” you giggled, waiting to hear just what he would say. You almost choked on the next words.

“The what?” He blinked. Immediately, you knew you looked stupid. You tried to find your words.

“I said, just the like the poems you wrote for me.”

“I never wrote poems for you, heck, I can't even write poetry, Y/N.” Namjoon sipped on his latte that arrived. Your knees turned rubbery. He was joking right? You continued to insist, but Namjoon just shook his head firmly.

“I'm serious, I never wrote anything for anyone. Ask all my exes.” He was looking at your curiously now. You did too. Your hands were getting sweaty with nervousness.

“Then why did you say that my laugh sounded like fireflies tinkling against glass?” Exactly your question.

“Cause, I heard Jungkook saying it was.”

Your heart again did a little flip at his name. He was talking about you to Namjoon. But Jungkook was narrating the same line from the last poem you received, how is that possible, granted if he didn’t know the content? Or if, someone had given him the poem in the first place and he just happened to see it? A streak of anger went up your body when you thought of Jungkook intruding on your privacy.

“If...if, you didn't write these poems, then who did?” You searched your bag, taking out the poems that you kept in your wallet. You laid them out, one by one, on the table. There were many of them, but Namjoon scrutinised each piece closely. His eyes darted from one end to another, eyebrows furrowed in confusion suggesting he was in deep thought. Namjoon squinted at the scribbly, childish scrawls on the scraps and suddenly his brain clicked.

“This seems a lot like the poems Jungkook showed me, you know.”

You looked up shocked, your heart feeling like it was dropped from a height. Jungkook writes poems? You knew he read often; you didn’t know he wrote too. Did he have the time to? When did he start writing? All these questions made your head feel like it was stuffed with cotton.

Namjoon noticed your silence. “I know,” he laughs. “Seems weird right? He doesn’t seem like it, but that boy does have some talent in the writing department. He says it calms him somehow.”

“Do you keep roses in the store room, Namjoon?” You said, not looking at him. Your voice almost sounded robotic.

“I do, to brighten up the space there. Although I realised on the days you would come, there would always be one rose less the last time I counted them.”

Do you think...?

Suddenly, your brain had connected the dots. You shouldn't have judged Namjoon so quickly. All the times you remembered, Jungkook mentioned going to the storeroom to stamp the books you purchased. There was actually a stamp right there in the counter, but he never failed to go inside the storeroom instead. Maybe he slipped in the poems and the roses then?

And the handwriting. You remember going through Jungkook's essays in high school when you tried to help him out, even a bit. You remembered how bad his handwriting was.

But Jungkook, writing poems for you? You admit you did feel a soft spot for Jungkook albeit your sour history with him in high school, but soon you realised he's so much more than his shy demeanour. Yes, your assumption on Namjoon being your mystery writer overlooked all the clues, and you wished you thought more thoroughly. Now, because of your impulsive decision-making skills, you landed up in this awkward situation with Namjoon.

Jungkook was the one writing poems for you. Only he could notice those habits you had possessed in school, he was your classmate for fuck’s sake! All those years that you hated him for being mean to you, he was crushing on you instead? How, why?

But then you understood. You liked Jungkook. Ever since the first poem. He became such a beautiful writer, with all the delicate details he noticed about you. So, there was meaning behind him calling you special. There was meaning when he looked at you for a few seconds longer. There was meaning in his smile, in his actions, in his concern. There was meaning in every little thing he did because he liked you, and still likes you. And you liked him too.

Why had he resisted the ache in his heart to come forward and tell you the truth about who the person behind the poems was?

You put back the poems and muttered several apologies to Namjoon before you fled the scene, your mind rehearsing exactly what to tell Jungkook the first thing you meet him.

~*~

You barged inside the familiar bookstore, the cold air from the air-conditioner hitting you smack in the face. There were no customers, it was Valentine’s Day you remind yourself. Jungkook was busy cleaning up the bar, a solemn look colouring his usually bright face.

He looked a bit startled when he saw you open the door, as if he didn't expect you to enter at this hour.

“Y/N! How was your date?” He faked enthusiasm. You marched up to him and slammed the poems down on the counter.

“You could have told me, you know. The worst I could do was to storm off,” You crossed your arms, this time not as a defence mechanism.

“What are you talking about?” He wasn’t looking at you, he was looking at the poems now. How long was he going to keep up this act?

“Disappearing to stamp my book? The horrible handwriting? The intricate details about how I was in school? Sounds like only someone who knew me, or observed me very well, would know.” You said, tone a bit lighter. “I'm not dumb, Kook.”

There was a slight pause on Jungkook’s end before he speaks. “Took you this long to find out, though.”

You grinned. “You’re a coward.” You leaned forward, slightly kissing him on the lips. He responds, smiling, taking his hand to cup you on the cheek. It’s awkward at first, but his lips were just the right amount of soft and yours. Suddenly, Namjoon, your temporary crush on Changmin, disappear. The moment is magical as you lock both arms around Jungkook’s neck as he kisses you excitedly. Sparks fly between both your bodies.

You break away from the kiss. “You say big words in your poems, yet you can't muster up the courage to confess to the girl you like?”

“I thought…you and Namjoon hyung...” Jungkook’s cheeks are flushed crimson, as he eyes the floor in attempt to hide his evident embarrassment.

“Which wouldn't have happened if you confessed to me earlier.” You rolled your eyes, baffled that he didn’t speak up when he should have. “Do you know how awkward it was, realising you were the one behind the poems and not Namjoon?”

“Oh my god, did you leave him there all alone?” He tried to suppress a small laugh. “So, do you like me now?”

“We just kissed, Jungkook.” You punched him. “But yes, I have liked you ever since I read your poem the first time. And your writing is just…wow.”

“I try,” He did that thing again where he rubbed the back of his neck when he got shy. “Only for the girl I always had a crush on.”

“And you succeeded.” Throwing your hands over his neck again, nuzzling your nose against his, you felt the comfort, the same one whenever you were around Jungkook, slowly making it way from your legs to your arms.

“Valentine's Day is not over yet, shall we go out?” You nodded at Jungkook’s suggestion as you both made your way out the store, no customers projected to come anyway.

Hand in hand, you realised that fairy tales with happy endings did exist. Except for princes, dragons and villains – your story had roses, poetry and Jeon Jungkook, your enigmatic writer in hidden notebook scraps, whom you loved with all your heart.

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rayeverydangday · 3 years ago

Text

Get it with a Kirby Back, Guarantee! Chapter 8

Notes: It only took me 8 chapters to figure out how to distinguish Light novel kirby from anime kirby. But this is the end folks.

When Tiff witnessed what she assumed was an edgy version of King Dedede fly out the window like a balloon, she self-diagnosed herself as insane. This was it. She was done.

A thing she had accepted as she walked through the castle doors with her family, down the hall that was practically destroyed, and to the throne room. She was finally snapped out of her daze when a small little pink puff ball came up and hugged her, happily exclaiming “Poyo!”

Her look of acceptance turned into one of joy when she hugged them back. “You did it, Kir… bies?” She looked around at the other doubles.

Dedede was staring out the window in shock while the Bandana wearing Waddle Dee comforted him. Meta Knight seemed like they wanted to say something to the King but the Waddle Dees attempts to reassure them opened no window of opportunity.

Only the other Kirby seemed to be in a peppy mood as they laughed, yelling, “We did it! We did it!”

“Yeah…” Tiff said in nervous agreement. Her father stepped forward. “Well… it seems we might need a… explanation.” He said, trying to find the right words.

~~~~~

It took a bit and there were a lot of questions, but once everything was cleared up, everyone seemed to relax and enjoy the day in the courtyard. Sir Erbum and Lady Like decided to throw a party at the castle as a sort of celebration for the overthrow of the king in the courtyard.

Dedede wasn’t too sure about the reason for the party but at least he could enjoy some good meat.

Guests from the village soon filed in, bringing their own dishes and giving Dedede confused looks that disappeared when Tiff explained the situation.

“Whoa! You're from another world!?”

“What's it like there?”

“Did you do the same things our Dedede did?”

A group of small children had gathered around him, asking millions of questions. He would normally enjoy being this popular but after today's ordeal and the kids asking things like, “Did you hire this monster? Or that monster?” He wanted to sit down.

“Uh… I gotta go.” he said, leaving the kids without answers. Dedede looked around to see if there was a place to sit and saw Meta Knight at a picnic table with the adults. His eyes darted around the party, as if looking for something. Grabbing a chicken leg, he headed towards them.

He sat down and asked Lady Like and Sir Erbum many questions of his own, while eating.

“So the me here, brought a ton of monsters, used them to try and kill the kids, and then when the company was clearly trying to kill them to in Meta’s ship thing-”

“Halberd.” Both knights corrected. The one from Dedede’s dimension sat by his side while the other stood much to the protests of Escargoon and his men, cape wrapped around as usual, hiding his injuries.

“Yeah. That. He still worked with them?”

“That does seem about right…” Lady Like said.

“Makes me a little grateful that you're much nicer.” Meta said.

(Did… did he say I’m nice…?) Dedede thought.

Just then, Bandanna Dee, Tiff, and Tuff walked up to their table.

“Have you guys seen Kirby?” Tiff asked. He shook his head. Now that she mentioned it, he hadn’t seen his Kirby either. Then again, which one was she asking about?

As if on cue, a little yellow bird plopped himself on his head (much to his annoyance) and turned to Tiff. “Those two went to Kirby’s house. I can’t even handle one and now there's two? What sort of stuff would they get up to?”

~~~~~~~

Kirby decided to call this version of themselves Kābī since that was the way they kept pronouncing their name. Kābī bounced up and down shouting “Poyo,” as he led them down a familiar path. Kirby chuckled, “ It’s weird how I never been here but I feel familiar with almost everything here. All these differences are a little scary though.”

Kābī turned to them and gave him a reassuring hug. Kirby hugged them back, a smile blooming on their face. The two continued down the road, holding hands till they reached their destination. Their house.

After everything that happened today, it felt like it had been a million years since he had last seen it. Kābī opened the door and Kirby followed. It was all so similar but there were a few differences. Little action figures sat by the windowsill, resembling Meta Knight in a way. A weird work outfit was tucked under the bed and there were dolls resembling Tiff and Tuff.

“Poyo, poyo, poyo. Poyo? Poyo!” Kābī exclaimed happily, showing off his room. Kirby giggled. They showed him different toys, some photos of the adventures he went on, and even shared some of his food.

The two ended up sitting on the roof, staring at the stars. Kirby told them stories of his own adventures as he looked at the constellations. “Once we were done climbing the tower, we had a big party with LOTS of food!” he explained.

“Ooooh!” Kābī said. Even though he was a baby he understood Kirby just fine. The thought of this version being younger than them and experiencing half of what they did was kinda sad in a way. Kirby tried to think back to their earliest memories but all he could come up with was when Dedede stole all the food and they had to get it back.

This version of him seemed around that age but already defeated a world ending god. They didn’t do that till he was-

“Poyo?” Kābī patted his head to get their attention.

“Oh, sorry. I was… hmm… you’ve been through a lot, huh?” They asked.

Kābī seemed surprised by the question but his shock was replaced by sadness as he nodded. Kirby scooted closer to him and snuggled next to him, “It’s okay.” Kābī hugged them back, a small sniffle escaping them. “It’s okay. You have all your friends by your side and I’m sure they would be happy to help you with anything.” Kābī chuckled, sniffling occasionally. “Hmm. Maybe I should ask my friends for help… “ Kirby said.

He would often have these emotions and feelings that he would try to just stuff down, acting as if everything was alright. But maybe he shouldn’t stuff his emotions down. His friends came to another dimension to help them.

Why wouldn’t they help get him therapy?

They smiled, “Come on. I think it's time to go.”

Tiff hugged Kirby and said, “Make sure to come visit. The more the merrier.”

“Yeah, and pick us up some food from your Kawasaki!” Tuff said.

“Ha ha ha, We will.” Bandanna Dee chuckled.

Escargoon shook Dedede’s hand, “Your welcome anytime.” Then Meta Knight grabbed Escargoon’s hand and shook it roughly, “Yes, but don’t you dare touch my Dedede.” He whispered.

Escargoon chuckled nervously. “Don’t worry. I think I have my heart set on someone else.” He turned to his dimension’s Meta Knight, who was talking to Dedede.

“I- what?” The other Meta said.

Once everyone said their goodbyes, the whole town waved farewell to the group as they headed to their home dimension. Right as Kābī said a bad word that Dedede taught them after the battle.

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jeannereames · 3 years ago

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Hi, Dr. Reames! I just read your take on Song of Achilles and it got me thinking. Do you think there might be a general issue with the way women are written in mlm stories in general? Because I don't think it's the first time I've seen something like this happen.

And my next question is, could you delve further into this thing you mention about modern female authors writing women? How could we, beginner female writers, avoid falling into this awful representations of women in our writing?

Thank you for your time!

[It took a while to finish this because I wrote, re-wrote, and re-wrote it. Still not sure I like it, but I need to let it go. It could be 3xs as long.]

I’ll begin with the second half of the question, because it’s simpler. How do we, as women authors, avoid writing women in misogynistic ways?

Let me reframe that as how can we, as female authors, write negative (even quite nasty) female characters without falling into misogynistic tropes? Also, how can we write unsympathetic, but not necessarily “bad” female characters, without it turning misogynistic?

Because people are people, not genders, not all women are good, nor all men bad. Most of us are a mix. If we should avoid assuming powerful women are all bitches, by the same token, some women are bitches (powerful or not).

ALL good characterization comes down to MOTIVE. And careful characterization of minority characters involves fair REPRESENTATION. (Yes, women are a minority even if we’re 51% of the population.)

The question ANY author must ask: why am I making this female character a bitch? How does this characterization serve the larger plot and/or characterization? WHY is she acting this way?

Keep characters complex, even the “bad guys.” Should we choose to make a minority character a “bad guy,” we need to have a counter example—a real counter, not just a token who pops in briefly, then disappears. Yeah, maybe in an ideal world we could just let our characters “be,” but this isn’t an ideal world. Authors do have an audience. I’m a lot less inclined to assume stereotyping when we have various minority characters with different characterizations.

By the same token, however, don’t throw a novel against the wall if the first minority character is negative. Read further to decide if it’s a pattern. I’ve encountered reviews that slammed an author for stereotyping without the reader having finished the book. I’m thinking, “Uh…if you’d read fifty more pages….” Novels have a developmental arc. And if you’ve got a series, that, too, has a developmental arc. One can’t reach a conclusion about an author’s ultimate presentation/themes until having finished the book, or series.*

Returning to the first question, the appearance of misogyny depends not only on the author, but also on when she wrote, even why she’s writing. Authors who are concerned with matters such as theme and message are far more likely to think about such things than those who write for their own entertainment and that of others, which is more typical of Romance.

On average, Romance writers are a professionalized bunch. They have national and regional chapters of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), newsletters and workshops that discuss such matters as building plot tension, character dilemmas, show don’t tell, research tactics, etc. Yet until somewhat recently (early/mid 2010s), and a series of crises across several genres (not just Romance), treatment of minority groups hadn’t been in their cross-hairs. Now it is, with Romance publishers (and publishing houses more generally) picking up “sensitivity readers” in addition to the other editors who look at a book before its publication.

Yet sensitivity readers are hired to be sure lines like “chocolate love monkey” do not show up in a published novel. Yes, that really was used as an endearment for a black man in an M/M Romance, which (deservedly) got not just the author but the publishing house in all sorts of hot water. Yet misogyny, especially more subtle misogyny in the way of tropes, is rarely on the radar.

I should add that I wouldn’t categorize The Song of Achilles as an M/M historical Romance. In fact, I’m not sure what to call novels about myths, as myths don’t exist in actual historical periods. When should we set a novel about the Iliad? The Bronze Age, when Homer said it happened, or the Greek Dark Age, which is the culture Homer actually described? They’re pretty damn different. I’d probably call The Song of Achilles an historical fantasy, especially as mythical creatures are presented as real, like centaurs and god/desses.

Back to M/M Romance: I don’t have specific publishing stats, but it should surprise no one that (like most of the Romance genre), the vast bulk of authors of M/M Romance are women, often straight and/or bi- women. The running joke seems to be, If one hot man is good, two hot men together are better. 😉 Yes, there are also trans, non-binary and lesbian authors of M/M Romance, and of course, bi- and gay men who may write under their own name or a female pseudonym, but my understanding is that straight and bi- cis-women authors outnumber all of them.

Just being a woman, or even a person in a female body, does not protect that author from misogyny. And if she’s writing for fun, she may not be thinking a lot about what her story has to “say” in its subtext and motifs, even if she may be thinking quite hard about other aspects of story construction. This can be true of other genres as well (like historical fantasy).

What I have observed for at least some women authors is the unconscious adoption of popular tropes about women. Just as racism is systemic, so is sexism. We swim in it daily, and if one isn’t consciously considering how it affects us, we can buy into it by repeating negative ideas and acting in prescribed ways because that’s what we learned growing up. If writing in a symbol-heavy genre such as mythic-driven fantasy, it can be easy to let things slip by—even if they didn’t appear in the original myth, such as making Thetis hostile to Patroklos, the classic Bitchy Mother-in-Law archetype.

I see this sort of thing as “accidental” misogyny. Women authors repeat unkind tropes without really thinking them through because it fits their romantic vision. They may resent it and get defensive if the trope is pointed out. “Don’t harsh my squee!” We can dissect why these tropes persist, and to what degree they change across generations—but that would end up as a (probably controversial) book, not a blog entry. 😊

Yet there’s also subconscious defensive misogyny, and even conscious/semi-conscious misogyny.

Much debate/discussion has ensued regarding “Queen Bee Syndrome” in the workplace and whether it’s even a thing. I think it is, but not just for bosses. I also would argue that it’s more prevalent among certain age-groups, social demographics, and professions, which complicates recognizing it.

What is Queen Bee Syndrome? Broadly, when women get ahead at the expense of their female colleagues who they perceive as rivals, particularly in male-dominated fields, hinging on the notion that There Can Be Only One (woman). It arises from systemic sexism.

Yes, someone can be a Queen Bee even with one (or two) women buddies, or while claiming to be a feminist, supporting feminist causes, or writing feminist literature. I’ve met a few. What comes out of our mouths doesn’t necessarily jive with how we behave. And ticking all the boxes isn’t necessary if you’re ticking most of them. That said, being ambitious, or just an unpleasant boss/colleague—if its equal opportunity—does not a Queen Bee make. There must be gender unequal behavior involved.

What does any of that have to do with M/M fiction?

The author sees the women characters in her novel as rivals for the male protagonists. It gets worse if the women characters have some “ownership” of the men: mothers, sisters, former girlfriends/wives/lovers. I know that may sound a bit batty. You’re thinking, Um, aren’t these characters gay or at least bi- and involved with another man, plus—they’re fictional? Doesn’t matter. Call it fantasizing, authorial displacement, or gender-flipped authorial insert. We authors (and I include myself in this) can get rather territorial about our characters. We live in their heads and they live in ours for months on end, or in many cases, years. They’re real to us. Those who aren't authors often don’t quite get that aspect of being an author. So yes, sometimes a woman author acts like a Queen Bee to her women characters. This is hardly all, or even most, but it is one cause of creeping misogyny in M/M Romance.

Let’s turn to a related problem: women who want to be honorary men. While I view this as much more pronounced in prior generations, it’s by no means disappeared. Again, it’s a function of systemic sexism, but further along the misogyny line than Queen Bees. Most Queen Bees I’ve known act/react defensively, and many are (imo) emotionally insecure. It’s largely subconscious. More, they want to be THE woman, not an honorary man.

By contrast, women who want to be honorary men seem to be at least semi-conscious of their misogyny, even if they resist calling it that. These are women who, for the most part, dislike other women, regard most of “womankind” as either a problem or worthless, and think of themselves as having risen above their gender.

And NO, this is not necessarily religious—sometimes its specifically a-religious.

“I want to be an honorary man” women absolutely should NOT be conflated with butch lesbians, gender non-conformists, or frustrated FTMs. That plays right into myths the queer community has combated for decades. There’s a big difference between expressing one’s yang or being a trans man, and a desire to escape one’s womanhood or the company of other women. “Honorary men” women aren’t necessarily queer. I want to underscore that because the concrete example I’m about to give does happen to be queer.

I’ve talked before about Mary Renault’s problematic portrayal of women in her Greek novels (albeit her earlier hospital romances don’t show it as much). Her own recorded comments make it clear that she and her partner Julie Mullard didn’t want to be associated with other lesbians, or with women much at all. She was also born in 1905, living at a time when non-conforming women struggled. If extremely active in anti-apartheid movements in South Africa, Renault and Mullard were far less enthused by the Gay Rights Movement. Renault even criticized it, although she wrote back kindly to her gay fans.

The women in Renault’s Greek novels tend to be either bitches or helpless, reflecting popular male perceptions of women: both in ancient Greece and Renault’s own day. If we might argue she’s just being realistic, that ignores the fact one can write powerful women in historical novels and still keep it attitudinally accurate. June Rachuy Brindel, born in 1919, author of Ariadne and Phaedra, didn’t have the same problem, nor did Martha Rofheart, born in 1917, with My Name is Sappho. Brindel’s Ariadne is much more sympathetic than Renault’s (in The King Must Die).

Renault typically elevates (and identifies with) the “rational” male versus the “irrational” female. This isn’t just presenting how the Greeks viewed women; it reflects who she makes the heroes and villains in her books. Overall, “good” women are the compliant ones, and the compliant women are tertiary characters.

Women in earlier eras who were exceptional had to fight multiple layers of systemic misogyny. Some did feel they had to become honorary men in order to be taken seriously. I’d submit Renault bought into that, and it (unfortunately) shows in her fiction, as much as I admire other aspects of her novels.

So I think those are the three chief reasons we see women negatively portrayed in M/M Romance (or fiction more generally), despite being written by women authors.

------------------------------------

*Yeah, yeah, sometimes it’s such 2D, shallow, stereotypical presentation that I, as a reader, can conclude this author isn’t going to get any better. Also, the publication date might give me a clue. If I’m reading something published 50 years ago, casual misogyny or racism is probably not a surprise. If I don’t feel like dealing with that, I close the book and put it away.

But I do try to give the author a chance. I may skim ahead to see if things change, or at least suggest some sort of character development. This is even more the case with a series. Some series take a loooong view, and characters alter across several novels. Our instant-gratification world has made us impatient. Although by the same token, if one has to deal with racism or sexism constantly in the real world, one may not want to have to watch it unfold in a novel—even if it’s “fixed” later. If that’s you, put the book down and walk away. But I’d just suggest not writing a scathing review of a novel (or series) you haven’t finished. 😉

#misogyny in m/m romance #how to avoid misogyny writing women characters #writing complicated women characters #asks #writing life #writing advice

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twoidiotwriters1 · 4 years ago

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Hellooo!!! If I may, I would like to put in a blurb request please!!? I was looking at the blurb prompt list thing and I feel like an Anne with an E, gilbert and anne would be so cute with the Alternative universe either Cute Neighbor + Cryptid mess (number 4) or Very conflicted costumer + worker at the store (number 7)!!! I would like to put a request in for one of those if you guys have the time!! ALSO YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME THANKS I LOVE READING YOUR FICS!!! :)

I went with the neighbors stuff but not modern bc is cuter this way lmao -Danny

A/N: If anyone wonders what promptlist we’re using, we created it during our 300 followers celebration, but we never used the whole thing so feel free to send more requests with it!

Early Visit -(Shirbert fic)

Gilbert comes home from checking on a patient at around midnight. He’s tired, his clothes are a mess and his hair is probably looking like a nightmare.

On his way back he sees light coming from the house near his, where he knows lives the one and only Anne Shirley, Avonlea’s beloved teacher.

He stops his horse near the house and stares at it for a moment, wondering what is his dear friend doing.

Well, “friend” is an exaggeration, Anne has barely spoken to him like three times, but he finds the sweet girl endearing... which means he’s completely and ridiculously in love with her.

The small figure of a woman walks across the lit room and stops abruptly when she sees the dark figure standing right outside her house. Gilbert panics and realizes it’s probably not the best time to be daydreaming, and so he starts to gallop away, cursing his own lack of decency.

The next day he wakes up to a loud knocking on his door, he’s disoriented and still sleepy, but he’s used to random people coming to his house at all times to ask for help and so he immediately dresses up without really paying attention.

He stumbles down the stairs and finally opens the front door to meet a very worried Anne.

“Goodmor...” The woman briefly looks down at his figure and yelps. “Mr Blythe?”

“Yes?” He asks in awe.

“You’re missing clothing,” She says weakly.

“Oh,” He looks down for a moment, then closes the door on her face.

Gilbert looks at the reflection of the mirror he has on the entrance’s hall and is absolutely horrified to see he’s not wearing a shirt.

“Er... just a moment!” He says through the door. “Just one moment Miss Shirley!”

“It’s okay!” She speaks, her voice sounds like she’s trying very hard not to laugh. “I just came to leave lunch for you!”

“What?” He stops at the foot of the stairs. “I’m sorry Miss Shirley, I don’t remember asking you to bring me such a thing?”

“Oh... no. No, you didn’t,” Now she says anxiously, has there been some sort of misunderstanding? “It’s just that I saw you last night when you were coming back home and I thought you would wake up hungry... and since you keep refusing to hire someone to help you around the house—”

“I can handle myself just fine,” He says defensively.

“Yes, I see that,” She replies quickly, but he can hear the irony in her voice.

Gilbert approaches the door again, he opens it a bit and peers through it. “Would you like to come in, Miss Shirley?”

“Anne,” She corrects, she also makes a huge effort not to stare at the mop of hair Mr Blythe hasn’t been able to brush since she woke him up by coming unannounced.

“Anne,” He nods, and the woman feels a strange thrill at the way he pronounces her name. “Would you?”

“If it’s not a problem...”

“It isn’t,” He assures her. “I just... I... You would need to come in and look away for a moment, just while I go back to my room to dress properly—you see, I don’t want to upset her.��

“You would never,” She responds. “But I don’t want to make you feel like a bad man, so of course, I will look away if that’s what you need me to do.”

Gilbert opens the door completely and Anne fixes her eyes on his feet.

“There you go,” She shows him the small basket she’d brought and Gilbert’s heart squeezes with affection. “Where should I put it?”

“You can take it to the kitchen, although I warn you, it’s a mess in there—didn’t have time to clean it before going to check on my patient last night...”

“Don’t worry, Mr Blythe, I promise I won’t judge you much.”

“That’s hard to believe, coming from Miss Cuthbert’s daughter,” He replies humorously.

Anne laughs. “Well, she was as understanding as she was strict, believe me when I tell you I won’t be cruel.”

“Very well,” He starts to walk towards the stairs. “I’ll be back in just a moment, please feel free to take a seat—my home is always happy to welcome you in.”

Anne smiles without looking up. She listens to his footsteps going up and in the brief moment of weakness that takes over her, she looks towards the sound.

Mr Blythe’s back is possibly the most entrancing thing she’s ever seen, almost out of a fairytale, she thinks that’s how knights in shiny armours are supposed to look—without the armours, of course.

The woman shakes her head and frowns, what kind of ideas are those? She mustn’t go around talking about stranger’s backs as if it were okay!

Anne goes into the kitchen and what she sees is slightly alarming. Mr Blythe wasn’t lying when he said it was a mess. There are newspapers spread around the table, dirty plates and leftover’s still laying around. She even sees a sock hanging from a chair! That’s when she decides she can’t leave this house without helping him out a little. The poor thing, he’s been living like a caveman!

Twenty minutes later, when Gilbert finally comes back down to receive Anne properly, he almost doesn’t recognize his kitchen.

It’s not that he enjoys living in a dirty space, he simply doesn’t have the time to keep it as spotless as now. His eyes land on Anne Shirley, who is making tea at the far corner of the room.

That’s when he decides that he’ll marry her. He’s got no idea of how, or when, but Anne is a dream come true, and he won’t stop until she turns into his reality.

“You didn’t have to clean,” He says softly.

“My, Mr Blythe, I believe the right answer would be ‘thank you',” She replies.

“I thank you very much,” He approaches the table and places two cups on it. “But you’re making me feel like a villain. First, you bring me food at an early hour, then you clean my living space—I know you’re a generous and kind person, but do you have to embarrass me every time we speak?”

“It’s you who embarrasses himself every time, dear sir,” She points out. “I hope this doesn’t offend you, but you’re the messiest person I’ve ever met. And I used to burn Marilla’s food when I was little!”

Gilbert laughs, and Anne discovers it’s her favorite sound in the whole wide world.

“You’re not entirely mistaken... I guess I truly am a little out of control.”

“Well at least you do feel bad about it, I’ve met men who believe that being dirty equals being mainly and they’re proud of it! Gross creatures, I’d say... you’re not gross, Mr Blythe.”

“Please, call me Gilbert,” He retorts, and Anne’s heart melts at how gentle his petition comes out of his lips.

“O-of course,” She smiles a little, hoping her flushed cheeks aren’t as red as her hair.

He seems utterly elated at her short reply. Gilbert grabs her basket and starts placing the food on his table in such a graceful way that all she can do is stand and watch him move around. Finally, he draws out a chair and politely asks her if she wants to sit.

She decides a second thing then, it comes from deep within, that part of her that keeps her young and bright. It’s her favourite part of being herself, and because of this she always listens to the things it has to say to her, they’re always good advice.

What this little voice is telling her that morning is rather simple:

Miss Shirley, you have to marry this man.

Forever Taglist.

@i-am-scared-and-useless-bisexual @greengarsstuff

ANNE All Genders Taglist.

@ninizkd @valnunu @http-itsrebecca @aleksosoto

#twoidiots writing #anne with an e fanfic #Anne with an E #anne shirley x gilbert blythe #anne shirley cuthbert #gilbert blythe #shirbert fanfic #shirbert #awae

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mst3kproject · 4 years ago

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The River of the Giant Alligator

A bunch of Italians pretending they’re not Italian in a movie about a guy who chose the wrong place to build a hotel… it’s like Avalanche by way of Devil Fish, with an alligator. And racism. You can’t have a 70’s Italian jungle movie without the racism, and this one layers it on real thick. I think The River of the Giant Alligator has its MST3K bases covered.

Rich Asshole Joshua has opened Paradise House, a resort in the middle of the ‘virgin jungle’. He proudly tells visitors that not only has he left the surrounding ecosystem undamaged, but he’s helping the local people by giving them jobs and improving their standard of living. Naturally it’s not as simple as that. Trouble begins when Sheena, the model they brought for their advertising photographs (just for a dash of Killer Fish), vanishes overnight. Photographer Daniel and hotel manager Ally go to the locals looking for her, and are told that the River God has awakened and intends to drive the white people away by assuming the form of a giant crocodile and eating them all. Considering how mind-bogglingly stupid the tourists in this movie are, that should take all of twenty minutes.

The locals, who call themselves the Kuma, have a name for their River God but it’s pronounced five different ways and I won’t guess how to spell it. Because of the deep breathing sounds that presage its first appearance, I shall call the creature Darth Gator.

Let’s get the basics out of the way first. The whole movie is dubbed and the voice actors are bad. The Darth Gator prop is completely immobile but they mostly keep it in the dark or in really tight shots so we don’t notice… it’s only the occasional ill-advised wide shot where it’s obviously fake enough to be funny. There’s a spiky fence that exists mostly so that people can get impaled on it and a cloying little kid for no reason whatsoever. The ‘wildlife’ is a stock footage smorgasbord that includes orangutans and hippos on the same river. The worst effect in the film is a terrible miniature shot of the hotel on fire, which would have looked just fine if the people involved hadn’t forgotten that flames don’t scale.

So all that sucks, but is fairly harmless. Now let’s talk about the racism.

We’ll start with the movie’s treatment of its two ‘love stories’, and I use the floating commas because neither of them quite qualifies. Daniel and Ally are the main ‘couple’ of the movie. The camera lingers on each of them to show that he thinks she’s beautiful and she thinks he’s rugged, and they spend the whole movie hanging out on balconies and boats together and discussing whether the resort is good or bad for the local people… but they never get so much as a kiss. This is kind of nice, actually, because there’s very little time to stop and make out when you’re being chased by a large carnivorous reptile. It does, however, make for a hell of a contrast between them and the other ‘couple’ we see.

This is the model, Sheena, and her Kuma boyfriend. I am unclear on where this movie is set (the closest we get to a clue is Ally referring to the area as ‘the Orient’, which could honestly mean anything) but it’s perfectly clear that the reason they hired a black woman for their publicity photos is to make the place look ‘exotic’. There’s a weird moment when Joshua attempts to flirt with Sheena by telling her, “it occurs to me that Eve herself may have been black”, which… yes, that is how human evolution worked, what about it? All that aside, at the end of the day, Sheena runs off for a romantic evening with one of the tribesmen. We never see her talk to this guy or have any clue what made her pick him over any of the others. They just go fuck on a beach and then get eaten by an alligator.

So… we have blonde, blue-eyed white people having a perfectly chaste, wait-for-marriage love affair in which they actually get to know each other… and black people who run off with a stranger and screw out in the open like animals. Holy shit. I want to say I hope this wasn’t something the film-makers actively thought about, but it might be worse if they didn’t. Naturally, this is also a version of the ‘people who have premarital sex must die’ trope from slasher movies, and the movie makes doubly sure we know this is Bad Behaviour by having Ally remark that the Kuma are forbidden from visiting ‘the Island of Love’ on the full moon.

The deaths of Sheena and Nameless Kuma Guy also begin a pattern that lasts almost the entire movie. Even though we’re told, repeatedly, that Darth Gator wants to drive the white people out of his jungle, for the vast majority of the running time it’s the brown people who are getting chomped. We’re told that twelve white missionaries came here years ago and Darth Gator ate all but one of them, who then became a crazy jungle man (not gonna lie, Father Jonathan was my favourite character and I wish we’d seen more of him). We see Sheena, her boyfriend, and the boyfriend’s brother get eaten alive. Furthermore, most of the white deaths in the movie are at the hands of the Kuma, who run in and kill the tourists with spears and fire arrows in the belief that they’re doing their god’s bidding, and much of this happens offscreen. Those hit by the arrows quickly fall into the water and vanish from sight. The only time the camera lingers on a white person dying is Joshua, who I guess they think deserved it. The impression one gets is that white death is a horror better implied than shown, while brown death is a spectacle. Again… holy shit.

The River of the Giant Alligator can’t seem to decide what we’re supposed to think about the Kuma people. Early in the film they’re portrayed as victims. These foreigners have invaded their land and built this giant hotel, and claimed to be helping them by giving them ‘work’. Ally notes that they’ll be able to live longer, healthier lives, but Daniel wonders if it’s worth it when they’ve basically become Joshua’s slaves. The movie leaves this question hanging there without exploring it any further. When Daniel and Ally come looking for information about the alligator attacks, the Kuma direct them to Father Jonathan, knowing they’re more likely to believe a white man, even one who’s obviously not quite all there. The movie really wants to be about the exploitation of indigenous peoples, treated as decorations and curiosities by white tourists.

The problem is, it wants to eat that cake, too. By the end of the story, the Kuma have devolved into stock savages. They attack the hotel and kill everybody, and kidnap Ally so they can tie her to a horizontal King Kong contraption as a sacrifice. The ending just makes it all the more confusing, as they turn up to discover that their god has been blown to bloody chunks after biting into a van full of explosives, and they cheer and they just leave. Is it really that easy to kill a god? Won’t a dead god demand vengeance anyway? Does this mean they actually like the white people after all, and were only angry because Darth Gator was eating them?

The ending also muddles the movie’s other point, about the nature of eco-tourism. One of the selling points of Paradise House is that it’s in the middle of virgin jungle. Joshua brags about how he’s left the surrounding ecosystem untouched – but then we cut straight to trees being cleared using dynamite, and later we see live piglets being thrown into the river to keep the crocodiles hanging around so people can gawk at them. You can’t build a hotel in the middle of a place and then call it ‘virgin jungle’. You’re the one who violated it!

The script is a little unclear on whether Darth Gator is a natural or supernatural threat. Ally and Daniel insist that it’s no mere alligator (I don’t think this movie knows the difference between crocodiles and alligators any better than I do) and Father Jonathan seems to believe it’s the Devil Himself, but it certainly dies like a flesh-and-blood creature. Whatever its nature, it’s clear enough that Darth Gator represents the jungle striking back at these intruders to drive them out. The Kuma literally say as much. So what are we to take from the fact that it dies at the end? Have we won the right to destroy the forest by killing its guardian? I don’t believe the people who make these movies think this stuff through.

I can tell that we’re supposed to hate the tourists, and we do, although not always for the reasons the movie wants us to. Minnow, the red-haired little girl who ‘only likes to play with boys’, tries so hard to be Adorable that you want to punt her across the room. Her mother leaves her to wander around the hotel alone, because Mummy’s got a smarmy mustached boyfriend to bang (even this relationship gets more attention than Sheena and Unnamed Kuma Guy, by the way… we are told that Mummy and Mustache have met before, and are here mostly to see each other rather than the jungle). Other notable annoyances include a lady who seems perfectly sane until she starts talking about the aliens, and a guy who loves to complain about Youth These Days and will seize any opportunity to do so.

I kinda wanna gripe about these obnoxious characters, but I don’t feel like I can. You may recall that I spent a month stuck on a cruise ship earlier this year. I can tell you definitively that these people do exist, and I hate them even more in real life.

Man, this could have been a fun monster movie. I’ve seen movies about man-eating crocodiles (or alligators… does it honestly matter that much?) that I really enjoyed. Primeval wasn’t even that bad – it was about how humans are more monstrous than anything nature can produce. Lake Placid had that immortal bit where Betty White says if I had a dick, this is where I’d tell you to suck it. The River of the Great Alligator is just boring bullshit and things that seem kinda racist on the surface but then you think about them a little longer and realize they’re incredibly racist. I went into this one hoping to like it, but it absolutely pissed on the last shreds of my optimism... like a lot of other things in 2020.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the river of the great alligator #the great alligator #fuck this movie #fuck it so much #70s

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artificialqueens · 4 years ago

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If We Walk Down This Road, 1/2 (Scyvie) - Ashley

It’s the final year of sixth form and stress levels are high for Yvie as she balances school work, Uni applications and her “part-time” job in a kids activity centre. However, things only get worse when her boss decides to hire his privately educated, definition of privilege daughter, Scarlet, as their marketing assistant and she rubs Yvie up the completely wrong way. Until, of course, she doesn’t.

Here goes a very late submission to the black girl magic fic! Hope you guys like it! This is a prequel of some sorts to my fics Got My Number and Girl on Fire but it works fine as a standalone so you don’t have to have read those to understand anything. Big thanks to @pink-grapefruit-cafe and @artificialortega for all the help, love and support with this fic.

Yvie loved her life. She wouldn’t have changed a piece of it for the world. Only, every now and then, she longed to be someone else.

This feeling usually arrived when making her way through the industrial estate, hearing the loud Kidz Bop music they were forced to play at her work ring in her ears before the building was even in sight. In fact, that feeling arrived every single time she walked towards her work, it was just something she had become accustomed to. It wasn’t the worst job in the world, she got to hang out with Jaida, Heidi and Priyanka on the weekends and the pay wasn’t awful. She just sometimes wished that after a long, frustrating day of writing essays she could stay on the bus until she arrived home, take a nice shower and do her homework with the telly on instead of hopping off after just six stops to put on a fake smile for a few hours and pray that no one was sick in the soft play area.

And on what seemed like the dullest Friday since she had started her job there, God (who she didn’t really believe in but had no one else to make the prayer to) decided that it most certainly wasn’t her night because a grand total of three kids were sick in the soft play instead of just the usual one.

So worth the twenty pounds she’d end off earning. So, so worth it.

Ready to throw her gloves in the bin, wash her hands at least four times and spend the rest of the night lurking at the back of the cafe until it was time to close, Yvie was stopped in her tracks when she returned back to her spot. Her spot that was currently occupied by a thin, unfamiliar red-head.

Pale legs poking out of a plaid skirt that reeked of prefects and lacrosse games, she stood out like a sore thumb against the bright yellow hoodies that made up their uniform (Yvie’s slightly stained with bleach and too short for her gangly arms). Yvie watched in silence for a second as the girl burrowed through the fridge, hearing a big, dramatic sigh of relief escape her red lips as she laid eyes on a Coke Zero.

“Can I help you?” Yvie asked.

Only it wasn’t really a question, Yvie using her level ten voice that was usually only saved for people who tried to push in the queue for the toilet on nights out or for idiots who answered easy questions wrong on Pointless when she watched it at Nina’s house. Annoying customers were normally only confronted with a mid-range level of anger on Yvie’s behalf, passive-aggressive rather than completely pissed off. As much as forever feeling the need to call out people in the wrong irked her, Yvie knew that she shouldn’t do that at work, leaving it for at home where the threat of being fired didn’t loom over her shoulder like the grim reaper’s scythe.

Something about this girl just threw that out into the window and sent it flying down the motorway at rapid speed, Yvie’s patience nowhere to be seen.

“Sorry.” The girl giggled. Actually giggled. “Took me forever to find the sugar free!”

“Normally you’d wait to be served it.” Yvie shot imaginary laser beams with her eyes. “At the other side of the counter.”

Yvie watched the girl pause, a coy grin on her face as her eyes danced between Yvie’s face and her own reflection in the clean glass.

“It’s a shame there was no one there to serve me!” She unscrewed the lid from the bottle, taking a swig and aaahing in delight as though it were the nectars of Greek gods.

Her voice was posh.

Not tea and crumpets, let’s-go-shoot-some-clay-pigeons posh but still posh nonetheless. She pronounced the Ts in her words in a way that neither Yvie nor any of her friends did and Yvie knew that if she wasn’t so furious she would have found it sexy.

She was always a sucker for a posh voice.

“Well, if you’d have waited two minutes then I would have been here,” Yvie replied, letting her nails squish into the palms of her own hands - a self-control mechanism that didn’t tend to work when your nails were bitten down to stumps like Yvie’s currently were (something she liked to attribute to the stress of her A-Levels despite it being a habit she’d formed as a kid).

It was safe to say she didn’t feel relieved.

Especially when the familiar lull of the owner’s voice boomed behind her. How perfectly convenient.

“Yvie!”

Normally Yvie would be relieved to realise he’d actually gotten her name right but her mind was full of other thoughts - supermodel shaped thoughts with blue eyes that were probably going to get her murdered.

At least she’d taken the rubber gloves off before she met her untimely end, she thought to herself, pulling the biggest ‘I’m sorry, I should be more attentive’ smile she could muster as she turned to face her boss.

“I see you’ve met my daughter!” He motioned to the girl.

His daughter, of course.

“Yes,” Yvie stammered, her cheeks red at the mistake she’d made.

The girl, her boss’ daughter, instead seemed nothing but amused.

“Scarlet’s here to help with our marketing; gotta make sure that personal statement is in tip-top shape ready for applications!”

Yvie felt his words crawl under her skin, the itch of casual nepotism. Casual nepotism that would probably land people like Yvie without a Uni offer. She never liked to think of herself as bitter when these situations arose, but this time she couldn’t deny that she was at least a little tart. After all, Yvie was pretty adamant that any Russell Group would favour the privately educated white girl who had marketing experience with a local business over the one who cleaned the toddler’s sick from the ball pit.

It really was as simple as that.

Yvie didn’t know if Scarlet failed to sense her discomfort or simply ignored it anyway as she moved over and held out her hand.

Yvie couldn’t remember the last time she had actually shaken someone’s hand but obliged nonetheless. Scarlet’s eyes narrowed slightly when Yvie met them, her face concentrated like she was about to be quizzed on Yvie’s appearance. Realising she hadn’t blinked since their hands met, Yvie pulled away quickly, the brightness of the centre snapping back into focus around her.

“I guess I’ll be seeing you around, then.” Scarlet took an extra big swig of the bottle before tossing it in the bin and leaving the cafe with her Dad.

And she wasn’t wrong. Indeed, Yvie found herself “seeing Scarlet around” on every single shift she was on the rota for. For an entire three weeks. Without fail.

She was starting to think the phrase, ‘bane of my life’ was an understatement for how she felt about the girl.

It’d started small, Yvie finding herself rolling her eyes whenever Scarlet came into the cafe for a drink. But soon Yvie started to believe that Scarlet didn’t just live in a different part of town but in a whole other fantasy that the rest of the staff were foreign to, parading past the trampolines once every hour as if the carpet were the runway at Paris Fashion Week.

“Do you think someone needs to tell her she’s not actually a real princess?” Yvie spoke into the walkie talkie, exchanging glances between Scarlet and her friend.

“Leave her be! She’s just playing with the kids, you witch,” Jaida responded from the opposite end of the park. “Stop being so cynical.”

Yvie was grateful for her work friends. Although she loved Nina and Brooke with every piece of her often cold, dead heart, it was nice to have found girls more like her at work. Girls who understood how it felt when her school told her she wasn’t allowed any “extreme” hairstyles and she had to take out her braids. Girls who also got told they were too confident, sometimes arrogant when all they were doing was being proud of themselves. Girls a little bit older and wiser (not that she’d ever admitted that she found them wise) who helped her love her skin just that little bit more than she already did.

“Yeah but she’s probably getting paid double what we are to swan about like that!”

Yvie raised her hands in the air to Jaida but didn’t get a chance to hear her response, turning the volume down to zero when she saw Scarlet making her way towards her.

“Hey, doll.” Scarlet plonked a notebook down on the counter in front of Yvie, a big grin of optimism filling the lower half of her face.

Her hair was down that day, soft ginger curls falling in front of her chest. Yvie had a sudden urge to push a strand back and tuck it behind her ear.

Why did the most annoying girl on the planet have such flawless bone structure? It simply wasn’t fair.

“Hello,” Yvie responded rather formally, reaching to grab Scarlet’s usual order. The faster she did so, the faster she walked away - so Yvie may or may not have been keeping a couple of Coke Zeros in the special fridge under the counter that was saved only for open milk bottles, just so she could serve Scarlet with the utmost efficiency.

A part of her just wished she would serve herself again.

“Oh no.” She shook her head, reaching out to touch Yvie’s arm and stop her. Yvie could hardly feel her hand through the thick hoodie, yet her heart still decided it wanted to start sprinting in the middle of the leisurely stroll it was taking before Scarlet had come over. Maybe she had to add the human anatomy to the list of things she’d decided she hated that week, right underneath her new English teacher and egg mayonnaise sandwiches. Her stupid, fat heart.

“I’m here for your interview!”

“Interview?” Yvie raised a brow and chuckled to herself. She wondered if Scarlet had ever actually had to be interviewed for anything in her life nevermind conduct one.

“For Instagram! I’m posting little profiles of all the staff, a little get to know me! It’ll help the youngsters really see what a family we are here!”

Yet another thing Yvie hated was how Scarlet always managed to talk like an edgy teenager and a middle-aged woman at the same time, figuring that was the first and last time she’d hear an eighteen-year-old refer to kids as “youngsters”. Or at least she said she hated it in one of the many Scarlet-included rants she’d had to Heidi the weekend before; she may have actually loved it. The two feelings were often blurred in Yvie’s brain, hard to tell one from the other in her web of brutal honesty and blunt opinions. She was ninety-nine per cent sure she hated it.

“I’ll get someone to cover your station and we can go natter in the staff room.” Scarlet took her lack of words as acceptance and turned on the spot.

Maybe Yvie was only eighty per cent sure.

Yvie had never seen Scarlet in the staff room before, watching most days as the girl took her snacks outside where she ate alone in her car. So it was strange to be cramped on the small sofa with her, both of them staring at the mirror in front rather than at each other. The smell of a ready-made curry that had been left in the microwave for too long that day was lingering warm in the air. Yvie took a deep breath and held it, scared that if she released it her body would touch Scarlet’s just that inch too much and then the entire world around them would explode around them, kind of like the curry.

“So, what’s your favourite snack from the cafe?” Scarlet held a fountain pen in her hand, ready to write. Yvie didn’t need to look at the notepad to know her handwriting was beautiful, a piece of art next to her own illegible scrawls.

“I don’t buy food here,” Yvie responded nonchalantly.

Scarlet popped the end of the pen in her mouth for a moment then let it rest back at the paper.

“You’ve never eaten anything here?” Scarlet questioned, clearly dissatisfied with Yvie’s answer.

“Nope. It’s far too expensive. I just buy my lunch at the off-license before I get the bus.”

“You know what I want you to say!” Scarlet whined. Yvie thought she would do great as a soap actress if the whole marketing thing never worked out for her. She had that dramatic flare mastered down to a tee. And the charming voice to match.

“I’m being honest.” Yvie half-chuckled. “I’m not a liar.”

“Well, I’m just gonna write cheesy nachos then!” Scarlet was trying her hardest to act serious but Yvie just about caught the quiver of her lip.

She wondered if Scarlet somehow knew about her love for cheesy nachos or if it was simply a wild coincidence, either way, she carried on to battle through the questions with Scarlet, praying that there weren’t many to go.

“Which party room is your favourite?” Scarlet still hadn’t lost her enthusiasm, despite having to write down three sarcastic answers as if they were genuine and completely make up new answers for another two so far.

“The volcano room. Normally older kids hire that out and they don’t make as much of a mess as the toddlers in the mermaid or the pirate one.”

Scarlet didn’t even bother to respond to that one, simply shaking her head at Yvie’s response.

“If you don’t like my honesty…” Yvie started, desperate to get back to the comfort of the park where she could swap spots with Jaida for an hour and bask in the comfort of the ball pit.

“I actually find it quite refreshing.” Scarlet gave an all-knowing smile.

Sometimes Yvie got scared that the girl was part-wizard and could see inside of her soul. After all, she knew which school Scarlet attended and she wouldn’t be shocked one bit if it was revealed to be some modern-day incarnation of Hogwarts (then again Yvie did kind of think that about any school with a tuition fee or Latin slogan, so she didn’t know how strongly her argument would stand).

“That’s weird,” she blurted back, unable to think of something quick and witty to say. Where was Brooke with her encyclopedia of shady comebacks when she needed her? Tempted to text her some form of a rant about the interview/ambush she decided against it, knowing Brooke had planned to spend the day with her new “almost-girlfriend” that she had picked up from the literal curb earlier that month.

“You’re weird.” Scarlet stood up, giving Yvie that smile yet again. Yvie knew it so well now that she should have been able to draw it by memory only she knew it would never be captured just right. Not even with all the pencils and canvases and colours that the rainbow had to offer.

She didn’t even try to come up with a comeback to that one.

“Now for the photoshoot!” Scarlet grinned, opening the door for the pair of them.

“Photoshoot?” Yvie’s head whipped around and fired red laser-beams at the girl from her eyes. There had been absolutely no mention of a photoshoot.

“Follow me, my muse.”

***

“Are you doing homework?” Scarlet craned her neck, making out Yvie’s hunched over figure behind the big coffee machine.

“Sorry.” Yvie stood up straight and made her way to the front of the counter, her brown eyes a little droopy compared to normal. Scarlet knew Yvie always played the ‘I hate my life and don’t want to be here’ game at work regularly, but this time was different.

If she were anyone else in the world Scarlet would have pulled her into a great big cuddle. But she wasn’t. She was Yvie. And Yvie hated her.

Most of the time Scarlet didn’t mind that Yvie hated her, she found it quite amusing winding her up and seeing her face scrunch up in frustration. She knew that her confidence didn’t always rub well with people but she’d always told herself that anyone who didn’t want to live in that world with her was simply missing out. Only sometimes she wished things were a bit different at the centre.

She guessed it was one of those days.

“No need to say sorry to me, I’m not paying you!” Scarlet made her way around the back of the cafe and entered. This was something she’d withheld from doing whenever Yvie was stationed there, after their first Coke Zero incident (which she, for the record, actually found quite funny), but the urge simply pulled her and when the urge took control, Scarlet’s will power was nowhere to be seen.

“Is this History?” Scarlet held the papers close to her face. She’d never suited her glasses and had made the executive decision not to wear them around the centre. This was probably some sort of safety hazard considering the fact there were kids jumping around left, right and centre that she was supposed to be constantly observing, but she simply pretended this thought had never even crossed her little air-head brain. Scarlet knew that it never hurt to look good. After all, you never know who could be sneaking glances at you through the gaps in the slush machines.

Scarlet knew exactly who was sneaking glances at her through the gaps in the slush machines. The constant squinting was worth it.

“I really am sorry. I’ve just been really busy and I’m trying to get all my references for Uni but-” Yvie started but stopped to serve a customer. Scarlet heard her voice waver slightly when she asked if she wanted a medium or large. It broke her heart into a thousand little pieces.

“Is it due soon?” Scarlet flicked through the questions. “I did this last term. My file is in my boot if you want me to get some notes out?”

“I don’t need your help.” Yvie took the papers from out of her hands and placed them back on the counter.

Scarlet knew that behind her constantly on-guard exterior there was a girl who just wanted to relax for a second and have fun. She caught her sometimes. Like the time Heidi queued the entirety of the Hercules soundtrack on their iPod and Yvie complained over the walkie talkie yet Scarlet saw her dancing to the songs in the back of the cafe when she thought no one could see (she may or may not have added I Won’t Say I’m In Love to her playlist that night). Or when Jaida fell into the big airbag and shouted at everyone to look away and Yvie released one of her big hearty laughs that managed to surprise Scarlet every time she heard it. She’d always try to catch Yvie’s face when the girls played their own version of Russian roulette with the bottles of cleaning spray that they thought no one else knew about, closing their eyes and spinning the nozzles then stopping to spray - Yvie dying with laughter every time the liquid spat on her jumper.

“If you’re stressed, I can help. You’re applying to somewhere really good aren’t you?”

“You don’t know everything, Scarlet. I told you already that I don’t need your help, I don’t need your special private school notes or whatever it is you pay to get taught.”

It stung. Those weren’t Scarlet’s intentions at all. But she knew how they must have come across.

“That’s okay.” She grabbed some cans of pop from the back and started to stack the fridge. “Just letting you know that the staff room is really dirty and someone needs to clean it.”

“What?” Yvie turned to face her. “Pri cleaned it yesterday.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to clean it again.” Scarlet made a point of looking at the camera in the corner that she knew her dad would glance at from his office every half an hour. “I’ll watch the cafe while you do it. And take those papers with you.”

“Do you even know how to make a coffee?” Yvie caught on, grabbing her notes and a roll of cloth for show.

“Oh my god. Yes, I go to private school but I’m not Paris Hilton! I can watch the cafe for half an hour.”

“Sorry.” Yvie smiled as she left. “And thank you. Really, thank you.”

And Scarlet felt that thank you deep in her bones, one she’d keep saved somewhere to replay on a day when she felt lonely. Only she began to think that Yvie should’ve taken the thank you back when she realised that she should have absolutely not been trusted to watch the cafe for half an hour.

Scarlet knew she wasn’t the best “employee” they had, spending most of her days taking photos, making social media posts and chatting with the little ones when they were done playing. But she didn’t know how quite bad she was until she had burned two toasties, overcharged at least five customers and accidentally poured one woman’s change into her cup of tea instead of her hand.

Maybe she should stick to Instagram.

She tried her hardest to help, cleaning the toastie machine as best as she could before Yvie returned but she knew that she had messed things up, creating more jobs on top of the ones Yvie already had to do when closing the cafe.

“Are you nearly done?” Scarlet heard her Dad ask Yvie later on as he prepared to lock up for the night.

“Sorry, I’m just trying to cash up the till. There are a few discrepancies I need to try and fix.” Yvie didn’t even look up from the tablet, punching numbers into the digital counter with frustration.

“I’ve got my car.” Scarlet blurted before she knew what she was saying. “I’ll help Yvie and lock up here when she’s done. Get yourself away, Dad.”

Scarlet looked at her phone, full of notifications from the girls’ chat: Naomi telling everyone what booze she was going to bring, Plastique asking what they were all wearing, Pearl waking up from the longest of naps to tell everyone she’d be an hour late. She didn’t read them all properly, sending a quick message before popping her phone back in her pocket:

‘I’ll be late tonight. Don’t wait on me xx’

It was the least she could have done.

They were silent for a while, the two of them all alone in the big airy building, the main lights switched off with only the small ones at the top of the cafe kiosk to help them see.

Scarlet did her best to help, double-checking Yvie had counted the piles of coins properly whilst she fiddled around the tablet. She figured that maybe silence was better for them, she couldn’t annoy Yvie with her dramatic exclamations and Yvie wouldn’t bombard her with unsought “honest opinions”.

Until that silence was broken with a bang, echoing through the darkness and causing Scarlet’s entire body to leap out of her skin.

Yvie didn’t even quiver.

“What the fuck was that?” She asked Scarlet, her thick eyebrows raised as she peered towards the soft play.

“That doesn’t normally happen?” Images of axe-wielding lunatics stowed away inside the slides flashed through Scarlet’s mind.

“Funnily enough, it doesn’t,” Yvie responded, still as sarcastic as ever in times of panic. “Put your phone light on.”

Scarlet didn’t really want to go and inspect the noise but she also didn’t want to wait in the cafe alone. She knew she was the perfect damsel in distress, axe murders would love her! Trying her best not to be a baby, she followed by Yvie’s side with her phone light guiding their path.

“What if there’s a bomb?” Scarlet placed a hand on her chest and felt Yvie stop next to her. “One of those ones with a remote control that detonates it!”

“You think someone planted a bomb in our play area? And waited to detonate it when no one was around other than me and you?” Scarlet knew Yvie was rolling her eyes as she spoke despite not being able to see her. “I honestly don’t understand how your brain works sometimes.”

“You love me really,” Scarlet responded without thought as they turned another corner. It was an automatic response she often used to her friends when they made fun of her, it felt weird saying it to Yvie. With anyone else, she would have brushed it off, but with Yvie it was different.

And then Yvie gasped.

Before Scarlet knew it her hand was in the other girl’s. It was automatic. She got a shock and Yvie was there. A patch of her hand turned cool where Yvie’s ring pressed against it.

“What was it?” She asked a second later, her brain too caught up with why her hand was gripping tightly onto Yvie’s hand and why Yvie hadn’t pushed her off to actually know what Yvie had reacted to.

“Nothing.” The hearty laugh came back. It was almost comforting in the darkness. “Just wanted to see how you reacted.”

‘Well there you go,’ Scarlet thought to herself as she looked down to their hands, not quite brave enough to say it out loud.

And then Yvie started to laugh, a noise Scarlet would never ever get used to.

“There’s your bomb.” Her hand slipped out of Scarlet’s and pointed in front of them, the remnants of a big silver helium balloon on the floor. “Good job I was here to protect you from that.”

Before she knew it they were back at the till, fixing each of Scarlet’s mistakes and counting out their float for the next day. They worked relatively well together, only managing to butt heads once more when Scarlet suggested they write out a whole new balance sheet instead of scribbling out a mistake and writing the new number next to it as Yvie wanted. She let it go in the end, her phone vibrating in her pocket with texts from the girls a constant reminder that she had a little red dress with her name on it waiting at home.

“Guess I’ll see you later,” Yvie murmured as they left the building, pacing down the road as Scarlet fumbled with the keys. She was a racehorse in the rain, taking her steps twice as fast as the average human as if the building was on fire.

“Where are you going?” Scarlet had to shout after her, half expecting Yvie to ignore her and keep walking anyway.

“Home?” She stopped up the road for a second and turned around. “Now if you don’t mind I have a bus I’m about to miss.”

About to insist she got in the car, Yvie was already far in the distance, slipping out of Scarlet’s vision in the rain by the time the doors were fully locked. Maybe wearing her glasses would have been useful after all.

Cringing as the puddles splashed up her legs, Scarlet ran to her car as fast as she could, throwing her phone onto the passenger seat and taking off down the road. Thankfully it didn’t take her long to catch Yvie, her dark hair poking out through her hoodie and already scraggly with rain.

“Hey!” She pulled up into the bus stop. “Get in, I’ll take you home.”

“What are you a stalker?” Yvie raised her arms in the air. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“You’re going to freeze.”

“The bus will be here any minute.”

Scarlet knew she should have just given in and turned around but she felt the guilt for their late departure weighing on her shoulders.

“Look Yvie-” Scarlet started but was cut off by a loud beeping behind her, just making out an angry bus driver in her rearview mirror.

“Move or it’ll drive past!” Yvie cried at her, the usual monotone of her voice rising in pitch.

“Sorry, what was that?” Scarlet attempted some humour, grinning from ear to ear as the bus pulled away. “Oops! Guess you’ll just have to have a nice warm lift instead of getting the bus with a load of drunkards.”

Yvie didn’t speak at first, simply pulling the car door open and plonking herself down, arms folded like a huffy toddler. But as Scarlet began to follow the directions she gave it was almost as if the other girl couldn’t help herself from falling back into their usual rapport of snide remarks and winding each other up.

“So do you always kidnap people in your Fiat 500 or is this something new for you?”

If this were any other member of staff, Scarlet knew she’d call them ungrateful but it was almost like her brain had learned a new language with Yvie, acknowledging and adapting to the different way she showed her emotions.

“You’re welcome.” Scarlet turned the heating up a notch, hearing the chatter of Yvie’s teeth between words. “And this isn’t even a Fiat 500.”

“Apologies,” Yvie responded. She was the difference between rudeness and bluntness that Scarlet figured many people couldn’t see, always honest and unbashful but never actually impolite.

Scarlet’s phone rang three times on their way to Yvie’s house and she didn’t even try to answer.

“Thanks for the lift,” Yvie whispered as Scarlet pulled up to the curb, the lights all turned off in the semi-detached next to them. “Even if you did leave me no other choice.”

Scarlet released a sigh and smiled at the return of the girl’s cynical side.

“There’s the Yvie, I know. Thought I’d lost you, being nice to me for a second!”

“Yeah well, you caught me on an off day.” She gathered her things and opened the door. “Don’t go telling anyone I went soft on you, I have a reputation to uphold.”

And she was up the path before Scarlet could think of a response, leaving her a baffling mess of feelings who couldn’t help but hear a certain laugh bouncing around inside the car even when she turned the music up loud and tried to distract herself from Yvie.

A distraction technique she had to use after every shift for a month.

Scarlet had never planned for the lifts to become part of her routine, it just sort of happened. She told herself that she wouldn’t have let one of the girls from school or her younger sister ever wait in the rain for the bus so it was common sense not to let Yvie do that either. After a little while of Scarlet ranting about how it was safer and faster for Yvie to go home with her instead of catching the bus every time they left work together, Yvie stopped trying to argue and simply started hopping in the passenger seat. Of course, she did this in the most classic of Yvie fashions and told Scarlet she was only agreeing so she didn’t have to listen to her whiney speeches about the dangers of the dark every night but it made Scarlet feel better still. Even if she did receive an average of three sarcastic responses to her comments each time.

Slowly but surely, the eggshell around Yvie began to peel away. Scarlet discovered through blunt replies Yvie loved learning about international relations and global conflict, that she wanted to go to Uni to study them despite the high offer and the money that went with the dream. Despite the fact that only one per cent of the campus she wanted to be a part of was black. Ignoring that her teacher had told her to play things safer.

Yvie was real and passionate and thriving and everything Scarlet admired.

Yes, she was still the same sarcastic self she always was behind the cafe counter but she was even more than that underneath the fluorescent lights in Scarlet’s car. A small chunk of the divide between them had been left at the bus stop in the rain while they basked in the warm air shooting out of the vents.

Scarlet was hesitant to call Yvie a friend, they didn’t really chat and gossip - as she did with Plastique, Naomi and Pearl - and when they did at least half of their conversation was made up of insults but Scarlet liked it. Yvie was a refreshing change from the girls she was surrounded with every day at school and Scarlet wanted to drink that in as much as she could. Even if Yvie did still hate her.

In fact, Yvie had started to use those exact words as a regular comeback to Scarlet’s dramatics, rolling her eyes to match.

“Would you hate me if we stop for food before I drop you off?” Scarlet asked one night. “I’m honestly starved.”

“I already hate you, don’t think food would change that.” Yvie laughed.

That fucking laugh.

Scarlet hoped she only-half meant it. But she never really knew for sure.

Making their way into the food chain, Scarlet’s mind was too consumed with the thought of what she was going to order to even realise that her friends were there until she heard her name.

“Hey, sweets.” Naomi smiled from the table. “I thought you were at your Dad’s work?”

“We were just on the way home and I got hungry.” Scarlet motioned to Yvie, stood almost a step behind her.

“Who’s this?” Plastique asked, raising a perfectly shaped brow.

Opening her mouth to speak, Scarlet’s brain went blank for a second. She obviously wanted to tell the girls about Yvie but never knew what to say, she didn’t even know what they were herself nevermind having to explain it to them.

How do you say, ‘this girl works for my Dad and I drive her home every night whilst we listen to Lady Gaga in almost complete silence except for when she insults me because she maybe hates me or I try to get on her nerves because I maybe fancy her,’ in a clear and concise way?

“Erm, this is…” She tried to start but was stopped by Yvie herself.

“I’ll go order our food.”

“Oh,” Scarlet turned, pulling her purse from her pocket. “Here let me pay.”

“It’s fine.” Yvie turned her back. “I guess I owe you a lot of petrol money anyway.”

Her words struck Scarlet a little different. They lacked any emotion, spoken from dead eyes and a stern face. She relived those words a lot in the next few weeks, popping into her head again at the most random of times. For they were the last words she heard Yvie speak for a while, ignoring any effort Scarlet made to chat, even when she gave her perfect opportunities to poke fun at her like bringing up her house team at school or her sister’s upcoming dance recital (Scarlet knew how much humour Yvie found in the fact that their names were just stupid ways of saying red and yellow and normally laughed whenever Scarlet even mentioned Lemon).

“I won’t be able to give you a lift home next week.” She’d told her as they pulled up to Yvie’s house, ready to explain that Pearl had bought them tickets to a theatre show and it started too early. But Yvie hopped out of the car before she could even finish, leaving Scarlet with even more confusion about how the girl felt.

Because Yvie was still Yvie after all. And Scarlet realised after that particular journey that it would take a lot more than a few rides home to get them anywhere close to being classed as friends.

An observation in Scarlet’s mind that only grew stronger over the weeks following, especially when she decided it would be okay to join everyone on one of their regular staff nights out. A decision tinged with regret as soon as she entered the pub.

“Dress was a big mistake!!!! Huge !!! xx” Scarlet texted her teenage sister aggressively from under the table as if it would somehow fix her situation.

Excited to hit the town with everyone from the centre, she’d spent all day getting prepped and ready, letting Lemon paint her nails as they pondered over what she should wear. Eventually, they’d settled on a shimmery gold Oh Polly number she’d worn to Naomi’s birthday the year prior, her jewellery matching just right.

Only that didn’t matter once she arrived, riving her necklace from her throat as soon as she saw the rest of the staff. With all the other girls in bodysuits and trainers, she was the definition of overdressed and out of place.

It started small at first, hearing someone whisper something including the word “Daddy” as she made her way to the tables, one of the girls from the front desk asking her if she was gonna be getting the rounds in all night.

“Scarlet, come sit here!” Heidi had waved at her over, allowing for a second to catch her breath.

Only her nerves didn’t go away once she joined their booth. In fact, they only grew larger when she caught Yvie’s gaze, her eyes wide at Scarlet in a face she’d never quite seen the girl make before. She’d fought hard to ignore it, but her eyes couldn’t stop from glancing back every few seconds, wondering what it was exactly that Yvie’s face was speaking into the universe around them.

Knowing Yvie it was probably something along the lines of ‘What the fuck is the primadonna doing here in that dress’ but she didn’t know for sure, trying her best to join in their conversation and catch the familiar side of the other girl she’d caught glimpses of over the past few months.

“So, whose ID are you using?” Scarlet asked her in an effort to make conversation, having learnt from the walkie talkies that Heidi was usually Yvie’s go-to girl when she went out with her other friends, despite them looking nothing alike.

“Here.” Yvie slid it across the table for Scarlet to examine, the other girls in the booth taking a look too.

“I know her!” Jaida exclaimed. “Chile, I did her prom makeup a couple years ago.”

“Perks of Brooke’s new girlfriend. I now have black friends that aren’t you guys I can borrow ID from. Not the best though, it’s a good job they never actually look properly.”

“Wait.” Priyanka raised two hands in the air. “You’re telling me that your gal Brooke has an official girlfriend? I thought they were just fucking about, damn!”

“Oh, not this again!” Heidi joined in. “We get it, Pri. You got together once and she didn’t remember your name. Move on!”

Scarlet checked her phone to see if her sister had replied but saw nothing, resorting to scrolling through her own photo album and reshuffling her apps so she didn’t look left out. Listening to the girls continue to gossip about people she didn’t know, Scarlet began to question the friendships she’d made at the centre, little voices in her head telling her that none of them would ever like her enough to open up and gossip with her as they did with one another.

For as long as she remembered she had always been confident, never caring what others thought of her. But as she started to gulp her drink down faster than normal, Scarlet felt that confidence slip away more and more. She was so far out of her comfort zone she couldn’t have made it back on a giant jet plane at full speed. And Yvie’s big brown eyes taking stolen glances at her didn’t make any of it better.

“It’s okay, Pri.” Jaida’s voice pulled Scarlet back into their conversation. “At least Yvie remembered your name when you two got with each other!”

“Oh, fuck off!” Yvie slammed her glass onto the table at the same time Scarlet spat some of her drink back into her own.

What an elegant lady she was.

She’d always just assumed that Yvie was into girls too. There was just something about hearing it for real that made Scarlet’s central nervous system stop working for a second, starting again with a scare.

“That was one time,” Priyanka cried from the opposite side of the booth, thankfully oblivious of Scarlet’s reaction.

Only someone wasn’t as oblivious. Someone was looking right at her and sending every thought, every feeling, every fear inside of Scarlet into overdrive.

***

Yvie wasn’t a stranger to awful dancing. After all, she had been friends with Nina for the majority of life, the girl whose feet were built of hard oak and desperation.

But this was something different altogether.

Watching Scarlet across the dance floor, the phrase ‘Bambi on ice’ brought a whole new meaning to Yvie. If she wasn’t so mad at her she’d go over herself, give the girl a twirl and watch as she missed every beat like she had no cares in the world. Only that wasn’t the case, because mad Yvie certainly was.

Yvie didn’t know why she felt so hurt, it wasn’t like they were friends? It wasn’t like she even liked Scarlet? But something about having to stand there while she scrambled for an explanation of who she was to her privately educated, life’s not fair, acrylic nailed girl gang made Yvie’s blood boil. And she’d never admitted it but she may have even shed a tear or two once her blinds were shut and she couldn’t see the not-Fiat 500 and the annoying girl who drove it.

To think she’d started to believe that she was only fifty-five per cent sure of her hatred.

“Staring much?” She could hear the raise of Heidi’s brow in her words as she spoke to her ear, the loud bass around them not heavy enough to drown out the accusation in her friend’s voice.

Yvie couldn’t even deny it, for she’d been staring at Scarlet from the moment she’d walked into the pub earlier. Of course, she’d stalked the girl’s Instagram enough to know what Scarlet looked like dressed up, rolling her eyes at the dumb self-indulgent captions that were always attached to her selfies. Only it was different in person, a mix of gold and warmth and beauty and envy that made Yvie want to snap a pencil in half (she settled for a paper straw instead which certainly did not give the same level of relief). She’d watched as Scarlet ripped a necklace from her neck earlier and longed to put it back on for her, taking her time to hook it on the right loop so that it would hang perfectly above her collarbone.

She tried to fixate on the memory of Scarlet squealing every time they went over the speed bumps outside of their work to give herself the ick. Only that image had become entwined with one of Scarlet getting out the car one night to help a cat out of the road and Yvie only felt more confused.

“I’m just judging her dancing abilities,” Yvie lied.

She knew it was a lie. Heidi, who once confidently believed that Jaida had found a ghost in the dodgeball cupboard, knew it was a lie. The whole club knew it was a lie just from Yvie’s expression. Did lying count as breaking your streak of tough love and honesty if you wanted to believe you were telling the truth so badly? Is lying even lying if it’s yourself you’re lying to? Yvie didn’t know. All she knew was that red and gold looked so good together it should have been illegal. Only it was herself breaking the law when her eyes met Scarlet’s again, holding for a second before she turned to walk away.

The songs all blurred into one once Scarlet was gone, Yvie’s brain out of focus. That was until she was snapped back by a familiar squark pulling her away from her work friends.

“Hey, Yvie! Or should I say Akeria tonight?” Vanessa grinned, a loved-up Brooke with her arm around the other girl’s waist.

“Thanks again.” Yvie tapped her nose, grateful for Brooke’s new relationship and the new friends that had come with it. “I owe you a drink.”

“So where is she then?” Brooke piped up, straight to the point and not wasting time with any cordial greetings on her best friend.

“Priyanka?” Yvie squinted in confusion for a second, wondering why Brooke wanted to see a girl she had previously hooked up with and usually refused to speak about when all she’d talked about for the past few months was how excited she was every Wednesday night to eat special chicken stew and watch soap operas that she pretended to hate at Vanessa’s house.

“No!” Brooke raised a hand to her mouth, her eyes leaping to Vanessa for a split second. “Ja’mie Private School Girl. I wanna see her in person.”

“Oh.” Yvie’s brain slotted the pieces together. Had she really complained about Scarlet that much?

“Is this the girl you always ragin’ about?” Vanessa joined in.

Okay, maybe she did complain about Scarlet too much.

“I’m not sure where she’s at.” She brushed them off, the memory of Scarlet telling her she couldn’t take her home anymore after seeing her friends tinging Yvie sharply, her face starting to flush. “I’m gonna go to the loo but I’ll get you that drink later?”

“Noted.” Brooke pointed a finger, the sound of their voices carrying as Yvie ran desperately to splash her face with some cold water.

Only she never quite made it to the sink, the sight of an upset red-head stopping her as soon as she entered the toilets.

Yvie went to speak but wasn’t given a chance.

“Go away.” Scarlet’s voice wavered as she knelt down, pulling jackets out from under the couch like they were infested.

“I can’t believe you didn’t pay for the cloakroom.” Yvie joined her on the carpet. “Out of character for you.”

“I said go away.” She turned her head to Yvie, her bloodshot eyes living up to her name.

Yvie felt the sudden urge to scoop Scarlet in her arms and cradle her there till the music stopped and the lights turned off and there was no one left in the building. She felt a need she never knew existed.

“Hey. It’s alright, I can help you…”

But Scarlet had already found her jacket and started racing out of the club as though her life depended on it.

“For fuck sake, Scarlet.” Yvie reached for her arm once they were outside, the cold air penetrating through her bodysuit and making her long for the comfort of her bed at home. “Just talk to me.”

She turned, her face illuminated under the street lamps, full of anger and sadness and perhaps a tinge of pain too.

“Why do you want to talk to me? You hate me.”

“I don’t.” Yvie squeezed her arm slightly and looked her in the eyes to try and show that she meant it. Because sometimes her words failed her and she struggled to sound sincere when in her mind she was, so she had to rely on her actions. All she had at that moment was a gentle squeeze to try and show Scarlet that she meant it. She didn’t hate her. She didn’t know when that had changed or if she’d really hated her in the first place but at that moment she was one-hundred per cent certain, the feeling was nothing like hatred.

Scarlet scoffed and pulled away, tapping her phone furiously with her nails. “You tell me you hate me nearly every day I spend with you.”

Yvie tried to argue back but Scarlet was on a mission, waving her hands in the air when she spoke.

“And if you’re not doing that then you’re bitching about me through the walkie talkies. Or giving me dirty looks. I try my best to pass it off and rise above it Yvie but tonight I just can’t anymore, I just want to live and breathe without you looking at me like I’ve shot Bambi’s mother. Like what did I even do to you?”

‘Everything,’ Yvie thought only it came out as a blunt “nothing” instead. “You’re the one that was embarrassed to be seen with me in public.”

“I wasn’t embarrassed, Yvie. Sorry it took me a minute to try and think of something other than ‘a girl I drive around even though she hates me.’” Scarlet kept taking glances between the road and her phone, not meeting Yvie’s eyes. “Or doesn’t hate me, apparently. And I just had plans after our next shift.”

Without knowing what she was doing, Yvie reached out to grab her hand, slipping her fingers through Scarlet’s and clasping like they had done the day Scarlet was scared by the balloon. Scarlet was right. Maybe she was too fast to jump to conclusions. She was up in the sky leaping on the trampolines at work whilst Scarlet was grounded by the cafe, taking herself to a whole new narrative that didn’t really exist. In other words, she’d fucked it.

“I don’t hate you.” Yvie expected Scarlet to let go. She didn’t.

“Well, you don’t act like it.”

But her hand didn’t leave, Yvie had hope. Not a lot, just a slither like the piece of Scarlet’s hair that stayed in front of her face when she pushed the rest back. But it was still hope, it was still something.

“Please just let me explain.” Yvie tried to make Scarlet understand.

She’d spent years trying to dial and change how she spoke. If the black girl in the class raised her voice then she was angry but if she didn’t put up a fight with her words then nobody would take her seriously. All she wanted was to be honest, but the words were flying around her head and wouldn’t stop to land. And then Scarlet’s Uber started to pull up and they were going even faster. Scarlet turned to look at her and Yvie watched as she opened her mouth for a second but no words came out, her eyes frustrated and begging Yvie to fix things.

She waited for the rejection, for Scarlet to push her away as she moved closer, for her to call Yvie crazy and jump in the car, ready to make her time at work even more of a living hell than she already did. But as her lips met Scarlet’s, it never came.

“Your Uber.” Yvie pulled away slightly, their faces only an inch apart and Scarlet gasping for breath. She could feel Scarlet’s sticky gloss on her own lips but didn’t dare wipe at it, wanting the moment to go on like that for as long as it could.

“I guess I’ve gotten used to riding in the car with someone.” Scarlet took her hand again once the car pulled up, their eyes communicating in their own language that Yvie didn’t have the words to explain.

Yvie pulled her phone out to text the girls and tell them she’d headed home, dropping another one to home with an excuse for staying out, feeling Scarlet on her neck as they clambered into the backseat. They didn’t speak for a short while, Yvie simply placed her arm around Scarlet’s shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if she hadn’t spent months terrified of making contact with her.

“I thought you couldn’t stand me,” Scarlet whispered in her ear, her hand burning hot on Yvie’s thigh.

Suddenly Scarlet’s flair for the dramatics was wiped clean from her mental list of things that irked her, replaced accordingly with the concept of clothing, more specifically jeans. Her jeans, that she regretted spending a lot of money on - wishing she’d settled for the paper-thin pair Nina had told her to get from Primark instead. In fact, she’d have paid more for the thin pair right then. Paid anything for Scarlet’s hand to live there just a little bit longer. Yvie let the back of her head hit the seat, lost in the moment until they pulled up to Scarlet’s house.

“We’ll have to be careful,” Scarlet spoke after unlocking the door. “My sister’s home.”

“Does noise even travel here?” Yvie looked around the foyer only half-joking, stopping to chuckle at a big photo of Scarlet and her sister as kids. “Adorable.”

“If you’re loud enough.” Scarlet raised a brow and motioned for Yvie to follow her upstairs, sending tingles through her body at her words.

“I don’t think I’m gonna be the one who needs to worry about keeping quiet.” Yvie let Scarlet lead her to her room, throwing themselves down on the four-poster almost immediately.

It felt weird finally being in Scarlet’s room after spending so long of interacting at work. She couldn’t say she hadn’t pictured it, often imagining Scarlet painting her toes on top of magazines or picking out her outfit each morning. Too distracted to get a proper look at all the photo frames and trinkets around, Yvie made a mental note to make a joke the next day about how she’d always assumed Scarlet had one of those grey crushed velvet headboards like the girls on Twitter.

It was crazy how something could feel so wrong and so right at the same time. Scarlet’s body pressing into her own, it was so insane yet made complete sense. She felt familiar.

Before she knew it Scarlet’s thumb was rubbing over the fabric of her bodysuit, teasing at her nipple through the lace.

Yvie had never been more grateful for her decision not to wear a bra.

“Are you sure you want this?” Scarlet asked her, pausing in her movement to look Yvie in the eyes and confirm. “We can’t go back.”

Yvie knew what she meant, thinking of all the shifts she’d have to spend with her, pinning Scarlet’s new promotional posters around the park, being watched to make sure she placed them in the exact right spots. She’d be unavoidable. But Yvie didn’t care.

“I’ve wanted this ever since you stole a Coke Zero from the cafe.”

Apparently, that was all Scarlet needed, taking the opportunity to smash her lips against Yvie’s, letting their bodies melt into each other. Again and again and again until Yvie was weak with fatigue and let her head hit the pillow one final time. Her vision blurred, she could just make out Scarlet’s figure among all of the stars as the girl switched off the bedside lamp and crawled into bed beside her. They hadn’t just shaken the earth but the whole solar system too, galaxies swirling around the room and lulling Yvie to sleep.

A sleep she’d have happily basked in forever if she hadn’t woken with a jolt the next morning, the sun beaming through the blinds to cast light on the empty side of the bed next to her.

“Morning,” Scarlet’s spoke from across the room, wearing a pair of glasses that Yvie had never seen before as she looked up from the papers at her desk. Yvie suddenly understood Scarlet’s constant examining gaze - she wasn’t scanning Yvie’s insides for error codes, just a tad bit blind.

Grabbing her phone from the bedside, a groan escaped Yvie’s mouth as she saw the time, of course, Scarlet was awake at nine in the morning after a night out. After what Yvie would estimate to be at least two hours of sex. Kind of intense sex. If it hadn’t been for Scarlet’s pretty face and messy hair then Yvie would have snatched the nearest pillow and thrown it over her head, instead, keeping an eye open to watch her whilst fighting exhaustion.

She wondered how long it would take them to address it. In the past, Yvie had never felt awkward discussing a hookup, giving a compliment or laughing it off as a drunken mishap like she had with Priyanka that time. The thought crossed her mind for a second, thinking she could make a joke about how smashed they were before ringing Brooke to take her home as fast as she could but Yvie decided against it. If Yvie was anything then Yvie was honest. And she knew what happened was not a drunken mistake. At least not on her end, she didn’t know if the same could be said for Scarlet, sat twiddling her pen around in her hand as though Yvie wasn’t lying in her bed and her gold dress wasn’t in a heap on the floor, thrown there in a moment of passion. Looking at it made her laugh, thinking of how fast she’d gone from describing Scarlet’s whining as the human equivalent of a dog whistle wit Jaida, to finding herself turned on by it. Scarlet must have noticed her looking, placing the pen down.

“I think you owe me a new zipper for that.” She pointed to the dress, raising a brow at Yvie.

“Sorry, I’ll take it to get fixed.” Yvie went to step out of bed before realising her own clothes were just as haphazardly spread as Scarlet’s.

“I’m kidding,” Scarlet smiled. “I’ll get you some joggers to borrow.”

“You own tracksuit bottoms?” Yvie fake gasped as Scarlet pulled open a drawer, surprising herself at how quickly they returned to their usual exchanges. There she was making fun of Scarlet for being all posh and dramatic, it was like nothing had changed. Except she was in Scarlet’s bed. Naked. And they’d had sex. Maybe a lot had changed.

“Oh my god, I just got it.” Scarlet pointed a finger to Yvie and let out one of her classic giggles. “That is hilarious.”

“What is?” Yvie pulled the clothes Scarlet had given her on quickly, automatically ready with her defence.

“That face you always pull at me! I honestly thought it was just your expression of pure hatred at my being but it’s not, you were eyeing me up!”

Yvie stifled a laugh at Scarlet’s hysteria, her cheeks turning the slightest bit red. “I don’t pull a face at you.”

“You so do. Like this.” Scarlet did her best to impersonate her.

“I don’t do that. And I don’t eye you up either, you’re so annoying.”

“Want me to prove you do?” Scarlet flipped the conversation and caught Yvie off guard.

She hadn’t expected round two to come at all nevermind that fast, but she most certainly wasn’t mad at it.

The same could have also been said for round three, which happened around a week later when Yvie just so happened to take her lunch break at the same time as Scarlet, following her out to her car and letting Scarlet drive a couple of minutes to somewhere more secluded. The sun beamed down through the windscreen and glistened on Scarlet’s pale skin as they moved together rapidly, the pair already becoming familiar with the little easter eggs that made each other tick.

“Ten minutes to spare, wow.” Yvie checked the time on her phone, allowing herself to lie back in as much comfort as she could given that she was in the back of a rather tiny car with a rather tall girl by her side.

“What are we doing?” Scarlet sat up, hitting her head slightly on the roof but not acknowledging it, a trait Yvie had picked up on before having watched Scarlet’s clumsy legs take many tumbles around the centre only for her to keep walking like it hadn’t happened (Yvie always found this funnier than the fall itself, especially that one time it was a running child that sent Scarlet tumbling, utterly priceless).

“Erm, lying in the back of your car trying to remember how to breathe?” Yvie knew it wasn’t the answer she was looking for but gave it nonetheless.

“No. This, us. What is this?”

Yvie wished she knew the answer. At first, she didn’t know how to approach her, bringing the borrowed clothes to work in a carrier bag ready to return, only to be left silent once Scarlet came to the counter to fulfil her caffeine addiction that day. But Scarlet managed to break the ice, making a subtle joke about her lack of regret as she took the bottle from Yvie’s hand. It was bittersweet - Yvie knew there was a clear distinction between having no regrets and wanting to do something again, and she was at least seventy per cent sure she wanted to do it again. Ninety-nine once the opportunity had finally risen again, Scarlet dangling her car keys in front of Yvie like the forbidden fruit of Eden. An apple she couldn’t help but take a bite from, no matter how much it would bite her back later.

So Yvie thought about her answer, she didn’t want to get this one wrong. The natural answer was that they were friends, only Yvie knew they weren’t. They were less than friends, they didn’t chat and gossip like friends and frankly she couldn’t stand Scarlet most of the time, the chatting and gossiping with her actual friends at work usually revolving around that fact. Yet they were also so much more, Yvie’s eyes followed the girl wherever she went like she was being guided home and her heart had just about snapped in two when she saw Scarlet upset.

Maybe it wasn’t Scarlet she hated but instead the way she felt about her. Or the way she didn’t even understand what that feeling was. Perhaps that is what she’d hated all along.

“I don’t know.” Yvie stepped outside to straighten her uniform and move to the passenger seat.

“You don’t know?” Scarlet joined her in the front, slamming her door a tad too hard once her foot was inside. “You always have an answer for everything.”

“Well, do you?” Yvie retaliated.

“I’m the one who asked in the first place!”

As much as she wanted to, Yvie couldn’t deny she had a point there.

“Well whatever it is, I’m glad to see we disagree on it already,” Yvie replied as Scarlet started to drive back to work.

“You can take me on a date sometime if you’d like.” Scarlet let the words jump out of her mouth quickly just before the traffic lights turned green, acting completely casual and nonchalant just like she had after hitting her head as if nothing had happened at all.

“A date?” Yvie’s voice raised an octave higher than it should have.

“You know where two people who kind of fancy each other go and get food? It’s a pretty basic term, I thought you’d know seen as you’re crazy clever and going to the best University in the country.”

Yvie choked on her water and sent it flying down the wrong way, a mess of coughs and splutters next to Scarlet’s pristine self. It wouldn’t have been the worst way to die, at least she’d never feel the embarrassment afterwards and have the dignity of knowing she’d given the girl a good time just before.

“I haven’t gotten in yet.” Yvie’s mind was thrown away from the conversation and back to the impending doom of her University application. Thank god she always had Scarlet to remind her of the massive feat she was trying to achieve.

“You can say no if you want, I don’t care.” Scarlet pulled into the car park, not really caring that her wheels were at a forty-five-degree angle and only just within the lines.

Yvie thought of all the times she had come up with convoluted methods to avoid Scarlet’s presence after their first meeting, of that first day she’d been given a lift home and how much had changed since then. Scarlet was confident and sometimes lived on a different planet to Yvie altogether but that didn’t hide her warmth, her wit or the big smile that came on her face whenever she tried to dance. And as much as she was shocked by her own thoughts, Yvie couldn’t deny that an evening with that warmth, wit and smile was all she really needed to relieve her stress.

“Well, where would you like to go for food then?” Yvie asked her as they entered the building, ready to part ways until the end of the day.

“Sorry, you’ll have to come up with that one on your own.” Scarlet grinned. “And please don’t fuck it up, Yvie.”

#rpdr fanfiction #if we walk down this road #got my number #scarlet envy #yvie oddly #scyvie #lesbian au #sixth form au #high school au #british au #enemies to lovers #black girl magic fic #diversity fic #ashley #tw references to racism and racial sterotypes #concrit welcome

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xxisxxisxxis · 5 years ago

Text

Gateway Drug | Part Fifty-Eight

A/N: Just saying the story is picking up pace after this part so get ready.

Words: 3.4K

Warning(s): Explicit language, mentions of drug abuse

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LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO BE TAGGED

I watch as Tommy and Nikki finish up their MTV interview to promote the new album, Nikki glancing at me every now and then.

"And, before we go, can you repeat those dates again for the release of the video of first single and the debut of the album?"

"Uh, the 'Girls, Girls, Girls' video--we're filming for that around the end of the month, the album's coming out between May fifth and May tenth, probably." Nikki states.

"Alright, you heard it here. May is gonna be the month of Mötley Crüe, obviously when those release details become more specific we will let you all at home know but for now just keep your eyes on May. Nikki, Tommy, it's always a great talk anytime you're in the studio with us, we appreciate you dropping by."

"No problem." Nikki says.

"Anytime, Dude." Tommy adds.

"Good luck with the album, it's gonna be at the top of the charts when it's out, I guarantee."

"Thanks, we really appreciate that." Tommy nods.

"And good luck also with shooting the video, I'm sure plenty of our audience will be looking forward to all the women, and of course we'll be looking forward to all the censoring we're gonna have to edit in." The interviewer's last line is sarcastic as he shakes their hands, and they laugh. "Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe, folks. Don't go anywhere." He finishes as they cut, and Nikki waves me over, sitting his coffee cup down to reach for my water bottle in my hand.

I give it to him and he nearly drinks the entire thing before handing it back to me.

"Thank you, babe." He says to me, letting out a breath as the interviewer bids them one last "goodbye" as they stand up and stretch.

We have to meet Mick, Vince and Doc at their rehearsal space so they can continue their auditions for background singers.

So far, the girls that have tried out are either gorgeous but can't sing, and the ones who can sing like Whitney Houston aren't "hot enough to be on the same stage as Mötley Crüe", even though I've seen them hook up with far worse.

I haven't said a word about 'You're All I Need' because the giant, heavy scratch my key left on the entire passenger side of Nikki's brand new car will say plenty when he finally notices it.

So far he hasn't even driven the thing since he's been back. It's just been in the garage.

"...Okay, thank you for your time." Nikki pipes to the pretty dark-haired girl with almost honey colored eyes.

I think she's on the "hot but talentless" list.

"Dude, we're never gonna find fucking singers." Tommy groans, rubbing his face.

"Viv, can you sing?" Vince whines.

"Like chalk against a chalk board." I reply blankly and he sighs.

"All this has been is just hours and hours of disappointment with a few good blowjobs in between." Vince states.

"Just shut up and be patient." Mick tells them.

Doc sends the next girl in, and I see everyone's faces light up because she's pretty.

Blonde hair, a nice figure, and she dresses the part.

"Hi." She greets us with a smile.

"Hi." Vince grins back.

"I-I'm Donna McDaniel." She says next.

"Okay, here's some lyrics." Nikki hands her a sheet of paper with the main lines of a few of their songs she'd have to sing backup for and she takes it. "Start when you're ready."

The relief on their faces when she starts, makes me want to laugh.

She's attractive and she can sing.

"When you leave, tell Doc that we're interested, and he'll lead you to where you can stay until we finish up." Nikki informs her and she nods, handing the music back to him.

"Thank you." She tells them as she steps out.

"No, thank you." Vince says out of earshot, looking a little more hopeful that they'll find their second singer.

And sure enough, they do.

Within forty more minutes, they're sending everyone else home after another blonde, named "Emi" but she pronounces it "Amy", comes in.

I can see Vince's mind churning up how to get her and Donna to fuck around with him, and Nikki can see it, too.

Once Emi is sent to wait with Donna, Nikki's going into military sergeant mode.

"If we hire them," he starts, pointing at Tommy and Vince, "nobody fucks them. Got it?"

"What? Why?" Vince looks heartbroken.

"You don't shit in your own backyard, man, that's why. They're employees, we're the bosses."

"Yeah, Vinnie, we can't have employees having us wrapped around their finger." Tommy adds with a nod.

"It's the easiest pussy there possibly will ever be, are you serious?" Vince complains.

"If it's so easy, why did they both turn you down already?" I point out and he glares at me.

"Just. Don't. Fuck. Them. Got it?" Nikki sternly asks.

I guess now is a good time to mention that Nikki fucked Donna on the "Girls" tour.

The closer we got to tour, the more adamant Nikki was about cutting his addiction.

But, despite him constantly saying "I'm done with it" and throwing away everything to get high on, I'd always find him crawling around in our yard, naked, with his shot gun...carrying on about midgets and Mexicans.

It wouldn't take the neighbors five minutes to call and let me know he was out there.

Trying to tell them a believable excuse was the hard part.

I let out a soft breath, pulling the covers tighter over me, drifting further and further into sleep as the sound of our ceiling fan and Nikki flickering his lighter from the closed closet every now and again moves through the room, and lulls me to sleep.

I don't know what time it is when I wake up to the sound of Nikki screaming, running out of our room, but I force myself to sit up as quickly as I can and go after him.

I turn on the light in the hallway just in time to see him pressing the "panic" button on our security system contact box, which alerts West Tech, our security company, and they send out one of their people to come check on the situation.

"Nikki, what the hell?!" I ask him and he turns to look at me, pissed off and paranoid.

"I'm tired of these bastards not giving us any peace."

"W-What? Who?"

"You know who!"

"Nikki, what are you talking about?!"

He had smoked his crack and convinced himself our security had bugged the house and were watching him, constantly.

Then, he had decided "no, it's the FBI that's watching me" and gained the courage to set off the alarm to our security that something wasn't right.

And then, by the time West Tech arrived, Nikki was turning on them, again.

"Nikki, let me get to the door." I tell him calmly as the knocking continues.

"Fuck off!" Nikki shouts.

"Mr. Sixx, it's Chris with West Tech--"

"--Get off of my fucking property or I'll fucking shoot you!" He screams as we stand on the other side of the door, his shotgun ready. "You motherfuckers have bugged my house and I'm not fucking taking it anymore!"

"Mr. Sixx--"

They stop trying the second Nikki cracks the door open, and points his gun at all of them.

I hear them scatter to their van, the tires screeching as they quickly make a break for it.

He slams the door shut and locks it, the both of us waiting in silence until we decide they're gone.

"You called our security...then shot at them because they answered the call..." I point out to him, exhausted, and he looks down at me. "I'm sleeping in the guest bedroom." I state.

I lock the door behind me and climb into the bed, hearing Nikki go back to our bedroom, and I envy Karen for staying over at a friend's house because Nikki is starting to really wear me down with his shit.

The next few nights consists of Nikki, Tommy, me and the director working on the music video, Wayne Isham, trying to decide what strip club would be best to film the video for "Girls, Girls, Girls" at.

And me and Nikki arguing over another matter that is too be determined:

"I said I'm not gonna be in the video." I repeat to Nikki, crossing my arms and he raises a brow.

"Babe, it's not that serious." Nikki states.

"I already told you I'm not comfortable with it."

"You wear bikinis all the time, you wear thongs and bras all the time...It's not like I'm gonna have you up there topless or anything." He motions to the stage of the Seventh Veil.

"Nikki, I'm not comfortable with it. Why can't you just let that go?"

"Why can't you be more fun?"

"Nikki, it's fine if she doesn't want to." Tommy lightly tells him with a chuckle.

Nikki doesn't even hear him, too busy focusing on me to see if he cracked me or not.

"Are you fellas good on drinks?" A scantily clad cocktail waitress asks us.

"We're fine, thanks." Wayne tells her with a decent amount of class...but that doesn't sit well with Tommy and Nikki.

"Okay, my name's Tabby if you guys need anything, let me know."

Before she can smile and walk away, Tommy's stopping her.

"Actually, there is something else, Tabby." He states, smiling, and she grins politely.

"What can I get for you?"

He motions for her to come closer and he gets in her ear, with Nikki smirking, knowing exactly what he was proposing to the pretty brunette.

Her face pales, and she glances at me before awkwardly giving Tommy nudge with her elbow as if he were joking.

His face shifts to one of seriousness.

"What, you think I'm joking?" He asks her and she tries to keep from looking too uncomfortable, giving all of us a small smile before saying:

"I've gotta get back to work. Let me know when you guys need a refill, you know it's on the house."

She walks away and Nikki and Tommy chuckle.

That was the first time I had seen a woman get uncomfortable around the guys.

Usually they were all for whatever it is Tommy or Vince suggest doing with them...I later found out Tommy had suggested to Tabby that he and Nikki meet her in the bathroom to tag team her.

That's why she had looked almost sick looking at me, when he was whispering in her ear.

She was probably thinking:

"Bless her naive heart."

Me nor Wayne bother to ask any questions about the incident before we're getting ready to go.

The guys and Wayne talk to the owner about possibly shooting the video and he's all for it, giving them the day after tomorrow to get it done.

I'm too busy thinking about what Nikki said earlier to really listen all that much.

"Why can't you be more fun?" who the hell does he think he is? Oh, right, he's "NiKkI fUcKiNg SiXx."

Once we're stepping outside and telling Wayne "bye", Nikki and Tommy are putting in to going to the Cathouse.

I just want to go home.

"I don't feel like going all the way back home, then coming all the way back." Nikki complains and I furrow my brows a little.

"Nikki, it's..." I grab his wrist to pull his jacket sleeve up and look at his watch. It's nearly 3:00am. "...2:53."

"Then just call a cab." He suggests.

"Are you on smack right now?" I don't sugarcoat the question. "You're being a bigger asshole than you are when you're sober." I add.

"Fuck off!" He snaps at me.

I can tell Tommy wants to say something, but keeps quiet.

"Fine." I say, turning on my heel to the payphone down the way.

I realize I don't have any money to pay for it, but before I can go back and ask Nikki for some change, he and Tommy are off.

So I find my next option.

I walk nearly an hour to the Franklin and get to where Duff's staying, only to find him, and none of the guys are home.

I feel like crying, but decide this isn't the end of the world before I calm down and sit by his door like a lost puppy.

I wake up to the feeling of someone nudging me awake with their shoe, and I'm met with Izzy looking down at me.

"Izzy." I greet him.

"Viv." He replies blankly. "Did you leave or were you thrown out?" He asks me and I roll my eyes before he gives me the slightest hint of a smile before it fades and he's nodding across the hall. "C'mon."

I stand up as he unlocks his apartment and motions me inside.

"You can stay here until Duff gets in." He says.

"Thank you." I reply, sitting on the couch as he hands me a shitty blanket.

"I'm gonna go scrub the lipstick and regret from my balls." He informs me, heading to the bathroom.

"At least you regret it." I say back.

"Nah, I don't regret getting a blowjob from a random girl, I regret not nailing her." He corrects me and I don't even hide my laughter.

Once he's done, he's stepping across the hall to see if Duff's back. Apparently he is because Izzy's coming to get me.

"Fuck off, Sixxette." He takes the blanket from me and I gladly head towards Duff's place.

When I get inside, Duff's passed out on the couch, snoring, and smelling like a bar.

I walk over to him, gently shaking him awake, and he let's out another groan.

"Go away." He waves his hand, his eyes closed, and I raise a brow.

"Duff, it's Viv. C'mon, at least go get in your bed so you won't feel worse tomorrow."

He perks up at the sound of my voice, lifting his head, rubbing his eyes.

"I've...is this a dream? 'Cause usually you're naked and 'Purple Rain' is playing." He slurs and I feel my face heat up in embarrassment.

"No, it isn't a dream...and I didn't need to know that but thank you, I guess." I reply, pulling his boots off.

I help him stand, his tall, lanky figure towering over me.

"You look pretty, were you on a date?" He asks when I get him to sit on his bed, helping him not fall over as he tries to take off his shirt and gets caught in it.

"Er...kinda?" I shrug and he nods. "Were you on a date?" I ask when a condom wrapper falls from his jacket and he scrunches his face up.

"Er...kinda." He replies in the same tone, rubbing his face and I laugh. "Hey, I'm a bachelor now, Viv. I'm gullible. I mean elgib--no, estrang...or amb...what the fuck is that word?"

"Eligible?"

"Yeah, that one." He coughs, taking his belt off as I pick up his scattered dirty clothes and put them against his wall in a pile.

When I turn back around, I get a split-second's worth of an eyeful of him completely naked and snap back around, covering my eyes.

"Ohh...I should've told you I'm freeballing." He says.

"Just..." I turn around, keeping my eyes closed, holding my hand out for his pants so I can put them in the pile with his other clothes.

"Are you reaching for it or something?" He laughs and, again, my face is bright red.

"No, Duff, I'm not reaching for it. I need your pants." I inform him.

He laughs some more, throwing the pants my way and I take them and put them in the pile as he crawls into bed and under the covers.

"By the way, it's bigger than that." He informs me and I furrow my brows and look at him.

"What?"

"It's cold in here so..."

I realize he's referring to his dick and I scream internally.

"...Okay, Duff, too much informa--"

"--I'm packing. That's all I'm saying. I'm like a can of Spam. Lotta meat in--"

"--Shh!" I blush even more, squeezing my eyes shut.

"Oh, oops."

"Jeez. Goodnight, Duff." I'm about to go sleep on the couch.

"Where ya going?" He asks me when I turn the light off.

"Sleeping on the couch."

"You can sleep in here, I can take the couch." He sits up.

"No, no. You're not gonna feel good tomorrow just sleep in here, really, it's fine."

"Well, are you gonna be okay? You don't sleeping by yourself."

I sigh, wishing it were that simple.

"Duff, we can't do that. Nikki wrote an entire song about wanting to kill me, and it was because he thinks something's happening between you and I." I explain.

"Nikki accusing you of cheating?" There's an uncomfortable wait before he says, "that's fucking rich."

"Yeah, well, he doesn't like it so out of respect for him--"

"--I don't fucking respect him." He mumbles.

"Duff, you're drunk. Just sleep it off."

"You're right. I should shut the fuck up let the universe deal him his fucking cards."

I ignore him saying so, turning to leave, but I stop myself.

I'm only here to begin with because Nikki couldn't just take me back home.

I step back to the bed, taking my heels and jacket off.

I take the extra pillow under mine and put it between us as I get into bed.

"Goodnight, Duff." I say quietly, turning my back to him.

"G'night, Viv."

Nikki would have had an absolute fit had he known, then again, I wasn't fucking Duff, I had no intention of doing so, and I told Nikki exactly where I ended up staying the next day.

The sun glitters through the window of Duff's room, hitting my face, and I blink my eyes open, feeling Duff breathing in and out.

Sometime during the night I must've broken past the pillow partition because, although I'm facing away from him, my back is pulled to his side, the side of my face is resting against his bicep, my shoulder tucked under the pit of his arm, and the arm that my face is against, is wrapped around me, his hand resting against my stomach.

I turn to look at him, seeing his peaceful expression as he sleeps contently.

My mind drifts back to that dream I once had about him.

I hate that Nikki thinks anything is going on between Duff and I, but it's my fault.

I lied about seeing him, I lied by omittion at the beginning by not even telling Nikki about him...a part of me wants to think if I were to tell Nikki about me dreaming I had sex with Duff, it'd be a wake up call that our issues are more serious than he believed.

I mean, when you're in a committed relationship and you can picture yourself having sex with someone you're close to, to the point your subconscious creates this entire fantasized scenario, there's something wrong that needs to be talked about.

But another part of me knows he'll flip his shit, call me a "whore" and probably file for divorce.

So, keeping it to myself it is.

My eyes go to my crucifix lying on the bedside table, and I reach out for it.

I taken it off last night when I felt too guilty for sweeping in the same bed as Duff, knowing Nikki wouldn't like it.

I thought if I took it off, I wouldn't feel bad anymore.

And I didn't.

When I was a teenager I would take that necklace off anytime I did something I thought my mother would disapprove of. Whether it was cheating on homework assignments, or, eventually, fucking Nikki Sixx.

I ended up picking that habit back up once Duff and I started getting closer, except instead of avoiding the disapproval of my mother, I was fleeing the disapproval of Nikki.

One thing I didn't take in to consideration, however, taking it off left me at risk for leaving a track.

Just like Mick had put together I had slept with Nikki because my crucifix was on his bedroom floor back in '81, halfway through the "Girls" tour with Guns N' Roses, I accidentally left my track on the bathroom counter in Duff's room, where Nikki went to throw up while he was hanging out with him, Slash, and Steven.

What they should teach in children's church: if you're going to sin, keep any religious jewelry or articles of clothing on.

Whomever the hell you worship already knows you're up to no good.

#nikki sixx #mötley crüe #nikki sixx fanfiction #nikki sixx x oc #gateway drug

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breanime · 5 years ago

Note

“Don’t be an ass” with miguel galindo pls !! 💕

Here you go sweetheart!

“This has got to be a joke,” Miguel said, a forced smile on his face and a hand on your waist, “He’s joking, right, mi amor?”

��Miguel,” you hissed back, smiling as you walked, “be nice.”

He scoffed, his fingers twitching on your hip. “This place is barely a house,” he went on, looking at the ceiling with distaste, “let alone a home.”

The two of you were wandering through the newly refurbished home of an ex-boyfriend/current client of yours; he had invited a few people over to see his home, and Miguel insisted on taking the day off and coming with you. “It’s nice,” you said, nose wrinkling at the choice of orange he had painted the living room wall, “It… has potential.”

“It’s a shoe box with windows,” Miguel said back, “He spent all that money for this?” He gestured to an admittedly ugly pea-green sofa with his free hand. “This is hideous.”

You swatted at his chest, trying not to laugh and failing. Miguel didn’t like this guy on a good day—he didn’t like any of your exes on principle, but he especially didn’t like this one you had to work with. Plus, this guy had been your last relationship before you married Miguel. In fact, he had proposed to you, and you had been engaged when you met Miguel. It had been a…tense breakup, to say the least. But that was years ago, and he’d hired you happily. Miguel, of course, assumed he had hidden motives, and he was not happy that you were spending time with him again.

“Look at this place,” Miguel went on, guiding you around a corner and nodding a hello to another couple as they walked past, “It’s a lesson in tackiness.”

“Miguel,” you giggled, “don’t be an ass.”

“I’m just saying, this place is an embarrassment.” His hand fell from your waist for a second to swat your ass, making you giggle and hit his chest again. “Can you imagine if you had actually married this clown?” He shook his head, disgusted with the idea he brought up. “This would be your home.”

“Good thing I traded up,” you said, smiling up at him.

Miguel smiled back—a real, genuine smile. He leaned down and kissed you, holding you close to him in the house of your ex-fiancé. “Yes, it is.”

“Y/N! Miguel!” Your ex called. When he said Miguel’s name, he always said it like ‘Me-gul’, like he’d never heard it pronounced before. He was smiling as he approached the two of you, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I heard you were around here somewhere; I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Shouldn’t have been too hard to find us,” Miguel smiled back. You nudged him in the ribs. “Your home is beautiful.”

“Well, it’s not quite a fortress like your place,” he said back, “But I’m hoping that’ll mean I won’t get as many visits from the FBI as you do, Mr. Galindo.” He laughed.

You bristled. “How could it be?” You replied, standing up straighter. “A fortress, I mean. Our home is over 8,000 square feet. This is basically a two-story shed.”

Miguel laughed into his fist, trying to play it off as a cough. Your ex’s eyes widened, but you weren’t done.

“I mean, we own properties in the U.S and Mexico, and none of them are as small and tacky as this place,” you went on, “even the ones that have been visited by the FBI.”

“Y/N…” Miguel said, though he was smiling as he said your name.

“Hold on, my love,” you said to Miguel, smilingly glaring at your ex, “I have one more thing to say before we leave: get a new representative, okay?”

“Y/N, please,” he said, eyes wide, “I didn’t mean to offend you—”

“You didn’t,” you interrupted, letting Miguel drop his hand from your waist and walk off to grab your coats, “but I’m starting to see that my husband was right about you. When you first called my office looking for a rep, Miguel said you had ulterior motives, but I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but now I see what this is. This is a pissing contest. You want to show me what I gave up when I married Miguel.” Miguel was back now, his coat on and yours in his hands. “But here’s the thing: I was never going to marry you in the first place. I wasn’t happy with you. Towards the end, I wasn’t even in love with you.” You held your arms out and let Miguel drape your coat over you. “We were never meant to be. And do you know why?”

“Because you like danger and I’m too stable for that?” He answered, eyes narrowed as he watched Miguel help you into your coat.

“No,” you went on as if he hadn’t said a word, “We never would have worked because you are a small, insignificant man who’s never had any real ambition or success in your life. We never would have worked because I’m too much woman for you. We never would have worked,” you grabbed Miguel’s hand, “because I was always meant to be with Miguel.” You looked up at your grinning husband in his finely pressed suit and tailored coat. “Are you ready to go home, darling?”

“I am,” he said back, not even looking at the ex, “Come, mi amor, let’s go home.”

You let Miguel lead you out of the house, your hand in his. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “I’m sorry about that,” you said, “I hope I didn’t embarrass you; he’s just so pretentious—”

Miguel interrupted you with a kiss that was completely inappropriate for the public, and he was grinning when he pulled back. “Embarrass me? Mi amor, I’m so hard right now I could cut diamonds.” He kissed you again. “I love when you get like that.”

“Let’s go home,” you said, lips still on his, “and you can give me I-told-you-so orgasms for the rest of the afternoon.”

*******************************************************************************************

Everything Taglist: @jigsawlover10 @gollyderek @charlylama @realduckvader @teacuplotus @whovianayesha @lexxierave @loveintheroyalfamily @fanfictionrecommendations-com @maxslime-blog @songforhema @lucielandss @themadhatter92 @the-blind-assassin-12 @christinawxxx @anabella-baby @blackcoffeeandgreenteaforme @luminex3 @littlemermaidprobz @ashkuuuu @luckysstrikes @carlaangel86@floralpeaceofmind @dylanobrusso @iaintnofurry @ymariejp @its-my-little-dumpster-fire @mrsjaxtellerfan @holamor @drinix @rhabakoli @stories-you-wont-hear @king4thesirens @leahnicole1219 @evanlys19 @binbons-is-theloml

Miguel Galindo Taglist: @glimmerglittergirl @cococruz-mayansmc

#miguel galindo x reader #miguel galindo imagine #miguel galindo #prompt drabbles

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softest-cinnamon-roll · 5 years ago

Note

Hi! First off, I love your blog, you’re really cool ;o; And for the Halloween prompt thing, I think “maybe I’ll just summon a demon so I have someone to hang out with” would be interesting! Lots of love xoxo

a/n: writing this made me want to make this a fill length fic. If any of you are interested, please HMU so I can plan out a full length fic!

ao3 link

* * * * *

With a sigh, Eddie stepped into the dorm room that he shared with his roommate, James, and sat on the bed, staring at the ceiling. It was currently Halloween, the 31st of October, and everyone was out on campus enjoying the parties and the alcohol. Not Eddie though, no, he was sitting alone in his dorm room at eleven pm without a single plan in his mind of what to do.

He could watch a movie, or do some homework, but both of those options were exceptionally boring and if that was what Eddie was going to do, he would much rather just go to sleep for the night. It sucked, being the outcast at the place where he thought he would be able to shine.

Pushing that thought to one side, Eddie picked up his phone and typed into google, “Things to do when home alone on Halloween.” The first few links were boring old things like watching horror movies or if you were younger, making prank calls to other houses. It wasn’t until he reached the third page of the google search that Eddie came across something that peaked his interest.

Alone and want someone to hang out with? Why not summon a demon!

That was something Eddie had never thought of before, simply because it was ludacris! Demons didn’t actually exist, so how was he able to summon one? Even if it was just to talk to him through the night and keep him company. God, he really was a sad sack and needed to get out more.

He clicked open the link and scanned over the article, which was explaining the steps he needed to follow in order to summon a demon. He paused at the end and pursed his lips before looking around his room for some incense and the other items listed before placing them in a circle on his dorm room floor.

“This is crazy but… fuck it. I’m desperate.” Eddie muttered to himself before closing his eyes and muttering the incantation that the article had written, word for word. The rule was to say it three times, and when Eddie uttered the final word, he stopped, holding his breath. “Did it work?” He asked into the, probably empty, room.

“Why don’t you open your eyes and see for yourself?” A voice asked and Eddie shot his eyes open, moving back on the floor as his sight landed on a man, standing on the other side of his room with his eyebrows raised. “Damn, why are all you humans the same? You summon a demon and then freak out when I arrive. What did you expect?”

Eddie blinked, his mouth dry as he reached a hand up to rub his eyes. When he focused again, the man was still standing there, a smirk on his lips. “You- you’re a demon?” He asked, voice cracking a little. “Are you- shit… seriously? It worked?”

The demon barked out a laugh and rolled his eyes, taking a step forward. The movement made Eddie scramble back a little more and the demon held up his hands, “Easy, I’m not going to hurt you. We have rules and all that shit you know. We’re not as bad as you think. In fact, Angels are worse. If you’d summoned one of those prissy bitches they’d probably have hypnotised you by now and wiped your memory.”

“Are- okay just… give me a second to wrap my head around this okay?” Eddie muttered and slowly moved off of the floor and onto the bed. The demon remained where he was, following all of Eddie’s moves with a smirk still on his lips. “What- what’s your name?”

“No offense, but you would never be able to pronounce it, and anyway it’s another rule, we’re not allowed to tell our names. Since they can be used against us and all that shit.” The demon rolled his eyes. “You can call me Richie.” Carefully the demon, Richie, stepped closer and held out his hands. “Pleased to meet your acquaintance, Eddie.”

The fact that Richie knew his name didn’t surprise Eddie as much as it should have, and he reached forward, shaking Richie’s hand. “Nice to meet you too, Richie.”

Richie grinned and flopped down on the bed, moving his arms behind his head and crossing his ankles. “Now that introductions have been made, may I ask why you summoned me here?” He asked and Eddie swallowed, his cheeks going red as he realised how ridiculous his reasoning was. Most people summoned demons to make deals, to bring their loved ones back from the dead, all that dangerous stuff and there was Eddie, who just wanted a friend.

“You’ll laugh at me,” Eddie mumbled.

“Try me,” Richie countered back, raising a single eyebrow at him. “Eds, believe me, I have had many a ridiculous request. Nothing you can say will surprise me anymore.”

Eddie pursed his lips before he sighed, “I wanted a friend,” he admitted, pulling his knees up to his chest. “It’s stupid, I know and I would totally understand if you would rather go back to Hell or wherever and be summoned by someone else. I mean, it is Halloween, I’m sure this is the busiest night for you guys.”

“Oh yeah, you’d be right, and I hate it,” Richie cackled. “Look, you have me for the night, so… what do you want to do? Talk? Paint each other’s nails? I’ll even let you braid my hair, I mean look at these curls!” The demon laughed at his own joke before going serious once more. “What will it be, Eds?”

For a few moments, Eddie didn’t speak, he just stared at Richie as though he was waiting for someone to jump out and say psych. Maybe someone overheard him do his weird incantation, maybe his roommate was playing a trick on him and hired Richie to wind him up. Yet, there was something… off about Richie. Demonic. “You really are a demon, aren’t you?”

“Well I’m certainly no angel, cupcake,” Richie winked, that smirk back on his lips. “You summoned me, so of course I’m a demon. What else would I be?”

Eddie swallowed, “Everyone thinks I’m weird,” he admitted. “When I was younger I was always the sick kid and now that I’m free from my mother and her abuse I- I don’t really know what I’m doing. For that, I’m an outcast. I can’t win.”

Richie pursed his lips for a moment, “So you feel like you don’t belong anywhere huh? All alone in the world as life moves along without you?” He asked and slowly, Eddie nodded his head. “I can help you with that, you know. I can make sure you never feel alone ever again.”

Tilting his head to the side, Eddie sat up a little, intrigued by Richie’s offer. “How- how do you do that?” He asked, biting his lip.

“You could come with me,” Richie offered, that smirk back. “You’d be an asset in Hell, I’m sure of that. Put that pretty head of yours to good use instead of wasting it up here where people don’t… appreciate you.” He moved a little closer and Eddie’s breath hitched. “I’d appreciate you, I’d worship you like you deserve.” Carefully, Richie moved his lips to Eddie’s neck, his hand resting on his knee and moving up to his inner thigh. “What do you say, cupcake?”

Eddie swallowed and pulled back, a twinkle in his eye. “I say… don’t call me cupcake and I’ll think about it.”

Richie cackled and sat back, shaking his head. “I like you, Eds. I’ve never met a human who I’ve liked before. Not really. Most of them are just self centered and want money or fame or sex. You however,” Richie pointed a single finger at Eddie. “You want a friend.”

“Say- say I accepted your proposal,” Eddie whispered, nerves clear in his voice. “How- how would you do it? Would I sign a contract or something? Cut my hand open in a blood oath?”

At Eddie’s words, Richie shook his head, chuckling a little, “You’ve been watching too many movies. None of those things I’m afraid.” Richie stretched his arms, grinning at Eddie, “It’s way more simple than that.”

“And what- what is it then? What would I have to do?” Eddie asked, voice trembling and Richie moved a little closer so his lips were right against Eddie’s ear.

“Kiss me.”

* * * * *

@richietoaster @tozier-boy @eds-trashmouth @bitchbrak @sloppybitchreddie @its-stranger-than-you-think @maximusfraker @jem-carstairs-is-perfection @thejadeazalea @halfway-happy353 @tinyarmedtrex @inthebreadbinwrites @kat-ships-everything @takeourpure @lo-v-ers @that-weird-girls-blog @studpuffin @s-s-georgie @reddie-for-anything @trashmouthtozierr @richietoizer @girasol-eddie @bi-bi-richie @honeybeehanlon @mars-14 @reddiesetandgo @marsisaplanetyall @xandertheundead @sedanleystanley @hawkinsbabe @beepbeeprichiellc @stellarbisexual @oldguybones @thundercatseddie @eduardoandale @purplepoisonedgem @reddie-to-cryy @pink-psychic @violetreddie @deadlighten @queen-sock @appojoos @moonlightrichie @rreddies @disneyfan567 @annxmatron @lifesucksheres20bucks @anellope @roobarrtrashmouth @are-you-reddie-for-it @callmechee @nancynwheeler @reddieforlove @twoidiotsinl0ve @madi-artist @tozierking @s-onora @atownofeggs @wilding-throught-thehallways @no-she-wasnt-reddie @dadbodrichie

#reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #writing tag

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zuholymama · 5 years ago

Text

Kim Youngbin | The Escort

Chapter 5. / Confrontation

Warnings: Violence

Word count: 4459

Pairing: Youngbin x OC (female)

Featuring: Suho (EXO), Jaeyoon

chapter 1 / chapter 2 / chapter 3 / chapter 4

===============================

Youngbin is stealthily approaching his first target. He’s in the most vigilant state for today, he makes sure the coffee he drank doing its job. As soon as he gets close enough, with a swift movement he locks the man’s neck as he pulls him in with his arms. The man’s struggle is futile for 2 seconds later his life is forfeited with a snap of his neck. After the body is falling lifelessly to the ground with a thud, Youngbin continues to move to the nearest bodyguard and quickly does the same. He wants to gather as minimal attention as possible.

He’s currently on the side of the penthouse. Hiding behind the wall, he takes a peek to see how many guards he has to take care of.

“6. Alright.”

The man is confident. Cocking his gun, Youngbin then steps out of his hiding to shoot the nearest guard on his line of sight.

“Shit! One down! Notify Darian!!” One of them shouts as soon as they hear the thunderous gunshot. He immediately brings out his own gun to shoot the intruder.

However, it’s not that easy.

Youngbin uses the guard’s body he had shot as his shield. With a precise aim, he shoots one guard who’s stupidly walking closer towards him to get a better shot. Quickly cocking his gun again, he then pushes the body away from him to gain more mobility. A moment of defenseless is what it takes for his enemy to start firing their rounds. Youngbin immediately crouches down and run as fast as he can towards another guard. When he sees his target pointing his gun towards him, Youngbin uses his left hand to quickly grabs a hold of his hand and stopping him from pulling the trigger. Using his other hand, he shoots the man in point blank range.

“What the fuck!?” Another one curses when he witnesses how fast the assassin is.

Not wasting any time, Youngbin uses both of his hands and shoots the rest of the guards.

Lawn area clear.

But it’s not the time to let his guard down just yet. With the whole gunshot party, he’s sure everyone in that penthouse heard him. His attentions shift towards the windows that separate the lawn and the inner part of the house. For a second there he sees his reflection.

“….!?”

The man realizes it’s not only his reflection that’s present by the window, but there are three man behind it that’s equipped with a machine gun and it’s pointing towards him. Without wasting his breath, Youngbin runs towards a huge tree to take cover. The windows shatter immediately upon the rapid bullet’s impact.

“That’s a little barbaric, don’t you think!?” Youngbin laughs in his hiding, wholeheartedly amused with his situation, “Damn, Doyle.” From within his jacket, Youngbin pulls out a single grenade he had stocked up from The Continental. Pulling out the safety pin, he takes a peek from his cover to see how far he needs to throw it. He sees the windows are completely shattered to the ground. Those men are completely bare for him to blow up. With a single powerful throw, Youngbin throws the grenade into the house, completely obliterating those three poor guards with a spectacular bang.

After he feels it’s starting to die down, Youngbin walks out of his cover. The smoke is still too thick for him to get a clear vision but he can tell how much damage he has done with that bomb. He still readies his gun just in case someone else is coming out of that area. Very unlikely, he ponders.

“I can’t believe he’s hiring these amateurs to protect him.” The brunette clicks his tongue in disbelieve. He doubts the men he killed even know about the world he’s living in. That makes him wonder, where is Darian? He could swear he heard that name shouted from one of the guards before.

Carefully walking inside of the house, Youngbin decides to try finding his final target. He uses his arm to cover his face from the smokes. Squinting his eyes from the dusts, as he walks further inside, he can see the kitchen area further in the back of the room. The house turns out to be roomier than he had thought.

The assassin is scanning the room around him. There is a corridor that leads to another part of the house. It’s still untouched from the damage of the grenade he threw.

It’s oddly silent he thinks. They must be hiding in the dark, waiting to ambush upon his arrival. But that doesn’t scare him at all. Knowing the bodyguards are a bunch of small fries, the only person Youngbin worries about is Darian. He’s sure that guy must be present in this house.

With careful steps, Youngbin starts walking through the corridor. Both of his hands are ready on the gun. He can see that it’s very bright on the other side, it must be another living room. He’s taking a mental note of an open space that he needs to deal with.

Walking past the corridor safely, he finally arrives at the living room that’s completely unscathed from the whole gun fight before. It’s completely empty. Not a soul in sight. Other than the wooden interiors, he can see the view of New York’s skyscrapers from the wide windows. Youngbin feels wary. What if Charles Doyle isn’t here?

“So you’ve come.”

Completely snapping him out of his thought, Youngbin immediately goes back to high alert and points out his gun towards the voice. They’re coming out from another hallway towards the east.

A familiar man with someone older appears from there. They’re not alone, four more guards are standing in front of them. The assassin can easily identify those two.

“Huh,” Youngbin smirks, “I see that you’re recovering well, Darian.”

The huge man chuckles lowly, “The Bowery King must’ve tipped you off.”

“Does that matter to you?” The assassin answers nonchalantly, “He bows to no one but The High Table.”

“It seems like you’re ignoring me here,” An annoying high-pitched sound interrupts their fleeting conversation. Walking forward uninvited, he begins to shamelessly introduce himself. “I’m Charles Doyle. It’s very nice to finally meet you, mister Iron Fist or should I call you… Kim Youngbin?”

Youngbin chuckles, mostly because of his poor attempt on pronouncing his name. Moreover, the fact that this old man is his target makes it even more annoying.

“I don’t care. I don’t have the time to play around with you,” Youngbin’s tongue rudely answers, he doesn’t have the time for bullshits, “Today is going to be your last.”

“Who-whoa hold on, young man! Let’s talk!”

The assassin raises his eyebrow. The finger that was almost pulling the trigger stops halfway, wondering why Charles Doyle is acting funny. As much as he wants to cut short this weird conversation his target trying to initiate, he is also curious to hear what he’s going to say.

Acknowledging his hesitant behavior, Charles continues to speak, knowing well he may still have a chance, “Let’s make a deal.”

“…What?”

“How much did Han pay you?”

“...Hah. Seriously?”

“I’m going to cut to the chase. I’m going to pay you 5 times more than he does.” The business man grins, “In return, I want you to join my side and then—”

“Then what? Kill Junko Han?”

“You got it.” Charles shrugs with a big grin plastered on his face. “Seems like we’re on the same wavelength here, yeah? What about it? Care to switch side and end this bloodshed?”

Youngbin chuckles. To think that this situation is actually happening to him. Truth be told, during his assassination career he never once got this kind of tempting offer. The reason why? It’s easy to know, if you’re an old timer in the underworld.

It’s a well-known fact of how loyal The Director’s children are to their Mother.

“I can’t believe you let him talk about this deal, Darian.” Youngbin answers in disbelieve, “Are you trying to disappoint him?”

The bald man merely chuckles, “You have to forgive my client’s ignorance. He’s new to this business. Well then, your answer?”

“You know what it is.”

“I see. A shame then.” Shaking his head in disappointment, Darian gives an approving nod to the rest of the bodyguards. He proceeds to take Charles Doyle with him back to his room. The assassin could hear his target shouting about how he would regret this. But of course, that threat means nothing for him.

Without warning, the bodyguards are starting to shoot at him. 6 vs 1, in the middle of this spacious living room, it’s easy to find your target. But no time to think, he runs back towards a long white sofa, hiding behind it to take cover. The shooting doesn’t stop just yet. The guy reaches out towards his jacket again, trying to find some ammo.

“Shit. One cartridge left.” He grunts.

He takes a quick glance from his hiding, shooting towards the direction of his enemies. Immediately taking cover again, he could hear a loud groan coming from one of them. It seems like he got a good hit.

The bullets are starting to slow down. It’s the moment where they’re getting more cautious, trying to get closer to Youngbin to corner him. He looks at his right, waiting for that one guy to get close enough towards him. Then as soon as he sees the tip of his shoe, Youngbin leaps out towards the man and then punches him on his face. He makes sure that his position stays behind the man he’s hitting to make sure the others won’t get a clear sight to shoot.

Easily winning the melee combat, Youngbin doesn’t take away the man’s gun immediately but proceeds to take on the nearest guy in front of him. Being on point blank, it’s hard for the second bodyguard to shoot him. Quickly Youngbin grabs his arm and then pulls him in for a hard kick on his stomach. The man falls unconscious instantly. Before he’s bare for a shooting spree, he takes out his own gun again before the body falls completely on the floor. Not wasting the last five of his bullets, two men are dead unceremoniously without able to touch him. Realizing that he’s out of bullets, Youngbin throws the gun towards the man in front of him to shake him off. He then grabs a glass vase on his left and then throws that as well. The vase shatters upon impact, giving Youngbin a clear opening to knock him out cold.

But then he let his guard down for a second.

“Argh!!” Youngbin groans loudly. His right shoulder got shot, blood’s starting to seep through his jacket. But his adrenaline rush keeps him away from the pain. Picking up a piece of shattered glass, he throws it towards the direction of the one who shot at him and then successfully hit his chest. Of course it’s not enough to kill him. After he sees the man stumbling back, Youngbin runs towards him and then kicks him until he falls to the ground. Using his boot, he stomps on the piece of glass on his chest, pushing it further inside. The poor guy screams in agony before he dies.

“Shit.” Youngbin curses under his breath. Of all places it has to be his right shoulder, his dominant arm. He may not feel the pain that much but he knows his body is more honest than his stubborn mind. His arm wouldn’t work as good as minutes ago and he still has to take care of Darian. But just worrying about it wouldn’t get things done. He starts walking quickly towards the direction where Darian took Charles with him.

Kicking the locked door, Youngbin gets his way inside with force. He sees Darian standing readily in the middle. Charles? He’s cowardly hiding behind the desk.

“This ends now.” Youngbin growls.

“Why won’t you accept my offer!?” Charles shouts from behind the desk. The fear felt obvious within his trembling voice, “Do you want me to raise the price!? Just tell me how much—”

“Shut your damn mouth. I don’t give a shit about your money.” Youngbin spats, finally lost it towards the cowardly man attitude, “You’re gonna die today and that’s final.”

“Y-you fucking brat! Hey, do your fucking job and kill him!!” He orders from behind that damn desk. Poor guy, he’s scared shitless.

Sighing, the big man stretches his arms and neck, “This better be worth it.” Darian chuckles lowly.

The final battle begins. Youngbin brings both of his fists into his front. He brings his martial arts stance out for a show to his opponent. Despite of the wound on his shoulder, his posture still looks strong. Solid. Intimidating. People wouldn’t be able to tell that he’s injured if it weren’t for the blood that’s sipping through his jacket.

Darian, of course, realizes this. The cunning man cockily grins. He’s confident Youngbin is only millimeters away from his grave.

He lunges ahead first. A strong left jab coming towards Youngbin’s right. He dodges that easily and prepares himself for the upcoming continuous attacks. Each punch is targeting his weak points. One jab almost took a hit to his ribcage if he wasn’t enough. A sharp pain then comes uninvited to his wounded shoulder, forcing him to hiss to suppress the pain. That one second of opening let Darian to send a strong right kick towards his body.

Youngbin quickly blocks the attack with his arm, but the difference of body weight sent him harshly to the bookcase. The impact gives another sharp pain towards his shoulder, but the Iron Fist grits his teeth to make sure he doesn’t let that weakness again slips again. He curses mentally, taking notes of how the son of a bitch didn’t actually gave his all back in The Eugene.

From behind of his shielding arm, Youngbin sees his opponent is already walking towards him for another hit. Using the height difference to his advantage, he dodges the punch by crouching down, resulting Darian hitting on the books instead. Youngbin throws his arms around Darian’s waist, pushing him with all his might into the glass table ahead, shattering the vulnerable furniture into small pieces.

Holding on to the momentum, Youngbin sits up and throws a punch towards his opponent’s face. It seems like the cracked jaw injury from last night hasn’t fully healed yet, considering the loud groan coming out of him. His punches are relentless, mercilessly making sure that Darian would lose the shape of his own face.

Until he grabs his wrist and stops him.

“Don’t get too cocky, you piece of SHIT!” The big man roars before he pulls Youngbin in for a head butt.

Youngbin screams and hisses loudly. His forehead’s throbbing over the impact. He feels dizzy that instant and let his guard down. Before he knows it, Darian is already dragging his collar and throws his body into the wooden table where Charles is hiding.

“WHAT THE HELL!?” The cowardly hiding man screams when he hears the loud bang on the table.

“Fuck!” Youngbin curses under his breath. His right shoulder’s throbbing like mad, but his dizzied head is the real problem he needs to overcome quick. His vision is still a bit blurry, but he knows that the big guy is coming closer to him. As soon as he’s dangerously close enough, the Iron Fist musters up his strength for a hard kick on his stomach, toppling him backward.

Darian grins. Spitting his blood, he waits for Youngbin to stand back up from the table. He refuses to let this end so easily.

“You’re a fucking stubborn one, Iron Fist.”

“Heh,” Youngbin grins, “same as you, asshole.”

“Let’s end this.”

Without exchanging anymore words, they let their fists do the job.

□□□

“Hey—Suho-ssi! Stop!”

Junmyeon pretends not to hear him just like he tries to ignore the pain on his shoulder. Walking towards the front door feels like carrying leads on his back, but he’s too stubborn to admit it. Jaeyoon quickly stops his patient by standing in front of his way. He’s not giving up so easily.

“Suho-ssi, if you do this you will be nothing but a hindrance to Youngbin.�� Jaeyoon pleads trying to reason, “You can’t even properly hold a gun like this. Please, go back to bed.”

“I can’t leave him alone, doctor.” Junmyeon says. It sounds weak but he’s trying not to show it, “This job is supposedly for the both of us. I can still move.”

Junmyeon looks up towards Jaeyoon. His body may not be fine, but his eyes are still aflame in spirits. They almost moved Jaeyoon to let the man go, but remembering his promise to Youngbin, he quickly steels his mind again.

“Still no. Youngbin told me not to let you go no matter what. It’s my job as the doctor to make sure that you’re recovering well.”

“I’m still going. I wasn’t asking for your permission anyway.”

The stubborn man walks pass the doctor, ignoring the warnings he was given. Jaeyoon sighs. It appears like he doesn’t have any choice.

“Fine. Don’t hate me for this.”

Jaeyoon pulls a sedative syringe from the pocket of his white coat. He then tries to pull in Junmyeon’s hand. To his expectation, Junmyeon fights back by pulling back his hand and tries to attack back. But to his avail, Jaeyoon easily counters it and cages Junmyeon between his arm. The other one gets ready to inject the syringe into his neck.

“Let me go, doctor!!” Junmyeon screams as he tries to get off the grip around his neck. He mentally curses for being so weak right now. He doesn’t have enough strength to fight back.

“I can’t, I’m sorry. Sleep tight.” Without warning, Jaeyoon pushes the syringe into the nape of Junmyeon’s neck, instantly taking his consciousness back to the dreamland. Carrying his limp body back to the bed, Jaeyoon then sits closely near the medicine shelf. The blonde man sharply exhales, looking at the digital clock by the wall. It’s 9 AM. Being aware of the time, his stomach grumbles in starvation. He realizes he hasn’t eaten breakfast.

Standing back up, he walks away towards the kitchen to find something edible. Just as soon as he opens the cabinet, he hears a loud knock on his front door. A little annoyed because of the sudden interruption, Jaeyoon sharply sighs and begrudgingly walks out of the kitchen to see who’s the early customer. Opening the small hole on the door, his dark eyes peek to see who it is.

“State your business.” Jaeyoon speaks.

“I’m So Ra, from Ruska Roma. I’m here to pick up Junmyeon oppa.”

Ruska Roma? The doctor thinks she must be one of Youngbin’s friends. “Uh… About that,” Jaeyoon hesitates before be answers, “I just gave him a strong painkiller so he’s really knocked out.”

“Can you help me carry him to the car, then?”

“…He hasn’t recovered yet. I don’t think it’s a good idea to pick him up now.”

“I know, believe me I hate to do this too. But unfortunately… this is Director’s order.”

Silence fills in the atmosphere for a second. After So Ra mentions who wants his patient back, Jaeyoon knows he has no room to argue anymore. It’s not like it’s his responsibility to keep a criminal well rested inside of his clinic. If they want to go despite of their bad injuries, they’re free to do so. They’ve paid the proper price anyway. But Jaeyoon? He’s different. As a doctor he wants to save as much lives as possible, even going as far as force injecting a sedative into his patient.

But for now, he has to be the one who concedes. Someone in higher power demands so.

“…Fine. I’ll go get him.”

□□□

The blood loss is making him lose focus. He could swear Darian appears to be split in two. They have been going at it for 15 minutes, no one seems to be giving up. Sharply exhaling, his body feels heavy to stand upright. But his heart is steeled, he knows it’s going to end soon. It appears like his opponent is more or less in the same condition as him.

“Damn… Hahaha, you’re amazing, Kim Youngbin…” Darian grunts, his face is bruised and bloodied, but his grin is still confidently etched on his face, “I remember the first time I saw you in that ring… Everyone praised you, they all won a shitload of cash from putting their bets on you. Just within 3 days… you outranked me.”

“Oh, is this the reason why you still wanna work for the coward behind the desk? Is it personal? A little jealousy?” Youngbin smirks, taunting his opponent.

“Heh… maybe so,” the bigger man chuckles, seemingly unbothered by Youngbin’s mockery, “I’m going to win and then I’ll break that woman in front of your eyes. Let’s see how you’ll like it.”

Hearing that threat makes Youngbin’s fury slowly creeps in. His eyes are blown wide, his inner monster is starting to take over. How dare he say that in front of him? How dare he acts as if he’s already winning? How dare he threatens Junko’s safety? Youngbin won’t let him speak any more. He’ll make sure he won’t get out of here alive.

“I’m gonna break your bones until there’s nothing left you can use to move an inch.”

The dead stare on his eyes bring excitement towards the bigger man. They mean business and oh yes, you can bet Kim Youngbin will live up to his words. He means every single one of it. Darian goes into a defensive state, preparing himself for another upcoming attack.

Youngbin throws a solid jab towards Darian’s ribcage. He then uses his foot to make the bigger man loses his footing, resulting him falling towards the floor on his ass. Not wasting his chance, the ruthless fighter stomps his boot on top of his stomach, forcing out a loud groan of pain. He then flips the man over and then pulls his left arm backwards, his foot pushes on top of his shoulder blade.

“ARGH FUCK!”

Darian screams the instant he feels his left arm painfully gets dislocated. His limp arm gets dropped carelessly on to the floor. He can feel the sharp throbbing pain permeating his shoulder. It’s useless now.

“FUCK you Young—GAH!”

His speech gets cut midway with a foot pressing on his head, pushing his face down on to the floor, not giving him a chance to speak a word.

“Shut the fuck up. You’re pissing me off.” Youngbin bellows coldly. “You see, I respected you, Darian. I really did.” He continues as he pulls in Darian’s right arm and then tightly grabs the wrist, “But you… really had to tell me such cheap, insulting, threat…”

With a twist, he snaps another one of his arms.

“FUCK!!”

Looking down towards his enemy, his dark eyes are now void of sympathy.

“You see, I don’t actually give a shit about your issue towards me,” Youngbin lowly speaks, his voice is dripping with spite, “I outranked you? So what? I always win. If you can’t keep up then you’re just weak.” Sitting down on his back, Youngbin rests both of his elbows on his knees, “I am the Iron Fist. If you think just for a second that you’ll win against me, you’re wrong. Why do you think I prolonged this fight, huh?” With a whisper, he moves closer towards his ear, making sure that his enemy hear every single word, “It’s to selfishly satiate my need for a good fight.”

Youngbin’s words sent shivers down to his spine. His pupils are blown wide in fear that he refuses to admit. Is he going to lose? Is this the end? He can’t use both of his arms anymore, is there even a chance for him to win?

“But don’t get me wrong. I did respect you, I had fun. That is, until you decide to threaten me with her.” The assassin continues. “Good bye, Darian.”

Standing up slightly, he pulls Darian’s head by the neck, his hands are positioned tightly under his jaws. His knee pushing on between of his shoulder blades, making sure that the bigger man can’t move. Then, with a careful handling, he pulls Darian’s neck until he hears a loud crack. It’s an instant, swift death.

Youngbin lets go of his head carelessly, moving away from the body to finish the next target.

“You’re next.”

“N-NO! STAY AWAY FROM ME!”

Walking towards the table to find the hidden rat, he sees his final target to be cowering in fear. There is a gun in his hand, but they are shivering so much that it looks so pathetic. Youngbin gets cringed just by looking at it. He sighs. When he tries to take the gun away from Doyle, the older man can’t even pull the trigger. He helplessly looks up like a puppy trapped in a sewer.

Youngbin checks the gun to see if the safety lock is off already.

It’s not.

“…Unbelievable.” The brunette mutters as he takes the lock off.

“Y-you have to understand!”

“What?”

“That Han took everything from me! He stole a hundred million dollars deal from me, taking it for his own!! I’ve spent so much time and money to win the auction, I’ve lost so much! That money could’ve been—”

“Tch. Loser…” Youngbin sighs, pulling the slide of the gun to load his ammo.

“O-ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!” Doyle shouts again in an attempt to save his own life, “I-if you spare my life, I promise to stay away from Junko Han, AND also give you the money!!”

Looking down to the pitiful man, Youngbin points the gun towards the middle of his creased sweaty forehead.

“We’re done here.” He speaks for the last time and pull the trigger.

□□□

Walking outside towards his car, Youngbin mentally cursing the pain all over his body. He’s lacking sleep, lacking blood, and shamelessly hungry. He has to bear with all of that until he reaches The Continental. Thinking about that place, he remembers Jun. Her peaceful sleeping face was the last thing he sees. He wonders if So Ra is taking good care of her. He seriously hopes so.

Once he sees his car is on sight, he finds it not alone. Someone else is already waiting, sitting on the cap with crossed hands, wearing a black trench coat.

“…Luca?” Youngbin calls out to the familiar man.

“Hey,” Luca waves, “Get in.”

To be continued

#fantasylibrary #sf9 fanfiction #kim youngbin #sf9 youngbin #sf9 youngbin fanfiction #sf9 crime au #zuholymama writes

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letmewritemylife · 4 years ago

Text

Like Father, Like Son (Part 2)

My name is revenge and I'm here to save my name. - Shinedown (My Name)

A/N Side note: Sergeant Smith is the guy who was supposed to arrest Lara back in 2017. He took the whole thing quite personally, inclusing and especially Stephen keeping Lara out of jail and Lara constantly fighting terrorism on her own. And yes, he’s an ass

TRIGGER WARNINGS Referenced sexual abuse, referenced abusive parents, referenced murder, implied torture, lots of guns involved, Lara is a precious baby

Sixteen days have passed. Sixteen days in which Lara has tried her best to understand Kevin and to be a decent trainer or acquaintance or whatever she is supposed to be to him and Kevin really can see the effort. He hates to admit it, but he appreciates it. If he has to be honest, he can't think of anyone putting so much effort into treating him well. Yet he still feels guilty, like he's not supposed to be working with S.H.I.E.L.D. after what they've done to his father, the coldest man he had ever met and at the same time his only family.

He still remembers that morning of almost eight years before, the cold breeze blowing in the lonely cemetery. He still sees himself standing by a lonely grave with tears in his eyes as a tall woman with short black hair told him to man up. He still feels the pain in knowing that he was alone because S.H.I.E.L.D. had decided to take his father, his family away from him.

Now he can't say that Lara is a decent substitute, but he's sure there's much worse. And after sixteen days he is sure she is the best person he could have ended up with among agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. What he doesn't understand is why? Why would someone leave Agency X for something like S.H.I.E.L.D, the greatest expression of self-righteousness and arrogance, the only organisation able to never condemn its actions, even when they're proved wrong?

On that day, that sixteenth day, he asks her this question. Lara stands still for a second, her hands gripping the training bench tighter. "That's a trap, Lara. Don't fall for that, it's a f*cking trap." She laughs nervously. "Well, if you put out like that, mine sounds like a pretty dumb decision," she says.

Her gaze turns suddenly darker. "But I'm pretty sure I did the right thing." She straightens up and crosses her arms. "My family. They died. Killed by Agency X to make me work for them. I only found out after I had spent years among their lines."

Kevin nods, well aware that his question has opened a painful wound. "But why did you decide S.H.I.E.L.D. was better?"

She brings her legs to her chest, something that Kevin has noticed she does often when talking about certain sensitive topics. "Because they don't make me feel like a monster." Her voice is completely emotionless and she is looking at the wall in front of her. "Because I can't think of a single moment I felt completely safe after my parents' death and before meeting Strange. Because some of these people have become my family."

Kevin looks down. "Thank you."

She slowly turns to him and attempts a smile. "What for?"

"Because you are to me what S.H.I.E.L.D. is to you."

Kevin really should learn to think things through before speaking, he’d earn nothing but good from it. He clenches his fists, gaze locked on the woman before him, ignoring all the Avengers surrounding them. “You killed him!” he shouts as his eyes start to water.

“I- I can explain-” she stutters and Kevin is sure he never wished to punch someone in the face so much before.

He takes a step forward, pointing a finger to her chest. “Explain what? Why you killed my father?”

She grips the corner of the table, her knuckles turning as pale as the teen’s hair. “How was I supposed to know it was your father? You barely talked to me,” she spits out with a fatal hint of anger. But as soon as these words leave her mouth, she realises she’s doing exactly what Stephen did with her years before, earning nothing but curses.

He shakes his head, using all his strength not to cry. “Man up, Linch.” That voice still lingers in the back of his head and he follows the order, swallowing heavily. “You had the audacity to tell me you were on the right side and everyone else was wrong,” he screams. “But when it’s you to kill, it’s okay!”

Lara sucks in a breath, unable to answer back because, after all, he is right and she, of all the people in the room, should understand his anger. Jonathan takes a step forward, moving his gaze between the furious teen and the motionless woman. “It’s a bit more complex than that, your father-”

“I’m sorry.”

Everyone’s eyes suddenly set on Lara, her arms crossed on her chest in defense. Kevin stands still for a moment with his mouth slightly open, surprised by her unexpected answer, but soon shakes his head and furrows his brows. “I don’t care. Go f*ck yourself.” And before anyone else can even acknowledge it, he’s running away, tears streaming down his face because, indeed, he’s never been able to actually man up.

Jonathan is about to run after him, but Lara stops him, holding his arm with a strength beyond imaginable. When his eyes search for an answer on her face, she’s looking down at the table where the infamous file is still laying.

“Let him go,” she whispers. “If he’s even a little like his father, he won’t listen anyway.” Jonathan nods, not convinced, and Lara curses Kevin’s father one last time for his surprising ability to mess things up even from the other world. “F*ck you, Frank Linch.”

He’s running, running faster than the wind itself, running like his life depended on it, running as if he were still a child and the world were his backyard. Running because he just wants to get out and feel the cold breeze on his face, drying his cheeks. Running because he needs answers. He deserves answers. “Where’s your dad, Kevin? Do you pronounce it ‘dad’ or ‘dead’? And what about your mother, Kevin? Where’s your mother, Kevin?” Few things in his life have been as satisfactory as breaking that child’s nose and kicking him until he was just a bloody mess laying on the floor.

“I thought she was different,” his conscience whines as he rushes down the stairs of the underground. “They’re all the same thing: lying, manipulative motherf*ckers,” replies the lingering voice of his mentor and Kevin lets out a breath, pressed in a crowd of European tourists. One hour, one hour and he’ll finally be back home. And S.H.I.E.L.D. can go f*ck itself.

The pen scribbles on the paper, framing a couple interesting datas, and Lara adjusts her protective glasses on her nose with the back of her hand. Jonathan sighs loudly and steps away from the wall, getting closer to Lara than any security protocol would ever recommend. “I hope you’re not seriously taking the blame for what that assh*le did to you,” he groans.

She throws him a quick glance before returning to her compound. “I am not, but insisting would have done nothing but harm.” Something is telling her that she won’t be able to finish her experiment today.

“There’s a difference between ‘not insisting’ and apologising for something you have not done,” he comments coldly, his arms crossed and jaw locked as he stares at the unknown liquid before her.

She lets out a deep breath, abandoning her hands on the counter. “I did not apologise for that,” she replies. “I scolded him for not trusting me after I had given him a perfect reason not to trust me. That’s what I was apologising for.”

Jonathan follows her with his eyes as she puts the test tubes away and arches a brow. “And how was that supposed to do any better than insisting?”

Lara turns around with a groan. “It was not.” She removes her gloves and throws them away, her brows furrowed. “And thank you for reminding me what a failure of a trainer I am, by the way.”

Jonathan looks down at the floor tiles, sucking in a breath. “He won’t ever come back here, you know it?”

“I know, Jonathan, I know,” she replies angrily. “But what was I supposed to do? Force him to stay and tell him a bunch of excuses why I set his dad on fire? ‘Murder is my way to solve interpersonal problems, sorry not sorry’?” She clenches her fists, digging her nails deep enough in her skin for her palms to bleed. “I ruined everything and now he hates me and I can’t even blame him for that.”

He gets closer cautiously and lets out a bitter laugh. “Family issues, just like when I first met you.”

“No, it’s not,” she replies promptly, eyes locked on him. “You hated your parents, but he does not. That’s the problem.”

“Lara. If you let him go, only God knows what the hell will happen of him. Frankly, the best outcome would be some human trafficker hiring him for him to follow his father’s steps. And we don’t want that to happen.”

Lara is about to reply, when Natasha slams the door open. “Elle, Jon, we have a situation at Linch’s house.” And these words alone are able to drain all colour from Lara’s face.

Duncan Hunt digs his nails deeper into his assistant’s face. “I told you: call Anderson now.” With unnecessary violence, he pushes him on the floor and takes a step towards the hostage, curled up on the floor. “Johnson should definitely take better care of her puppies,” he comments with a grin, careful not to stain his boots in the blood covering the floor.

A quick glance out of the window allows him to see three cars parking right out of the house, moving with difficulty in the crowd of policemen. He smirks and gestures to the dark-haired woman near him to come closer. “Don’t shoot immediately, I first want to see our friend scared.”

The woman nods and, as she instructs her subjecteds, Duncan walks back to the hostage. He grabs his upper arms and drags him to the window of the small living room, then pushes him on the floor, as to keep his presence a surprise. He lights a cigarette and starts smoking calmly. “Your father had a great taste in cigarettes,” he comments with a smirk, looking down for a moment at the teen on the ground. “As well as in apprentices.”

Outside the building, Lara jumps out of the car, loaded gun in hand, followed by Jonathan. Sergeant Smith throws her a glance and arches his brows. “I’m sorry princess, but we have everything under control.”

A bullet avoiding his foot for an inch proves him wrong. As all guns are promptly set on him, Duncan grins. “How cute of you, visiting me.”

Lara clenches her jaw and tightens her grip around the gun. “Where’s the teen?”

“Wait, they have a hostage?” Smith asks surprised and Jonathan can’t help but roll his eyes, making Duncan laugh.

“Come get him,” he replies sarcastically, before shutting the door.

Kevin looks up at him as he takes again the cigarette he had left on the ashtray by the window. The man smirks at Lara bantering with Jonathan and Smith. “She killed your dad, didn’t she?” he asks at Kevin, without even looking at him. Upon hearing a nod in response, he breathes out a laugh. “Yeah, really mean of her to get rid of her abuser,” he concludes before putting out his cigarette with the toe of his boot and walking away, leaving Kevin with his eyes wide open.

Duncan’s phone rings and he smiles upon hearing Smith’s voice on the other side. The conversation between them goes on for several minutes, but Kevin doesn’t listen, too busy staring intensely at the only known face, that of the silent man sitting not far from him. The teen mutters something against his cloth gag, successfully drawing his attention.

The man approaches him and momentarily frees his mouth. “What do you want?”

“Is it true?” he stutters. “Did my father abuse Miss Johnson?”

He does a grimace, unable to understand his sudden interest. “He also put her parents six feet underground, for what matters. Now shut up,” he cuts short before covering his mouth again and kicking him in the stomach.

In that moment, Kevin realizes that everything he had always believed in was a lie. He had always liked to think his father was a good person, that S.H.I.E.L.D had been wrong for killing him. He for sure didn’t want to believe that behind the mask of a cold but overall decent father was the figure of a terrific monster who didn’t work for a terrorist organization because he was forced to but because he earned something from it. Maybe he should have listened to Miss Johnson when he still could.

Finally Duncan gets up. “Too little money, sergeant. Wish the kid goodbye.” With that said, he marches towards Kevin and lifts him enough for his head to rest on the windowsill. He presses his gun to the teen’s temple and grins, already picturing Lara’s face when he will throw the dead body to her feet.

Unexpectedly to him, the door is kicked open and a bullet pierces his skull before he can pull the trigger, sending them both on the floor, one in a pool of blood and the other really close to it. Kevin’s acquaintance jumps forward, a knife in hand, but is pushed back by a punch to his jaw. From his position, the teen struggles to see anything but a pair of dark sneakers moving among the increasing number of people on the floor.

Before he can even realize it, he’s being forced to his feet by a woman, specifically the dark-haired one from little before. She presses a pocket knife to his throat and forces his head up, finally allowing him to see Lara and Jonathan standing with their guns pointed. “You may want to put those down, sweeties,” the woman jokes as a man walks beside her.

Jonathan throws Lara a glance and she nods, her eyes set on Kevin as she slowly lowers her gun and places it to her feet. “Now let him go.”

The woman tightens her grip around Kevin and shakes her head. “On your knees. And if I see any of your magic tricks, the kid’s gone.”

And to the teen’s great surprise, Lara falls to her knees, a scared expression on her face, followed by a rather confused Jonathan. The only agent left abandons his leader’s side and walks behind Lara, wrapping a hand around her throat.

Kevin widens his eyes. “Please, don’t. Don’t do that.”

The man grins. “This will teach you not to try and play the hero.”

“No, no, no, no!”

He firmly places his gun to her temple and-

And the man screams in pain, falling on the ground and shaking vigorously under the influence of a sudden electric discharge. The dark-haired woman takes a step back, dragging Kevin with her, but is quite literally struck by lightning and falls on the floor dead.

Lara slowly gets up, throwing Jonathan a confused look and asserting that he’s even more speechless than before. Her brain finally gives up trying to figure out what is going on when Kevin runs to hug her. She silently asks Jonathan for an answer, but he just laughs at her confusion and looks out of the window to Sergeant Smith who finally decided to check if everything’s alright.

“I’m sorry, I-” Kevin mutters against Lara’s shoulder, “I didn’t know he… he-”

She shakes her head as she caresses his hair. “It’s alright, it’s alright.” She lets out a breath and is surprised by how glad she is that he is safe. “Are you okay?” she finally asks and he just nods, tucking his face in the crook of her neck.

“Are we almost there?” Kevin asks, redirecting his gaze from the window to Lara.

She smiles. “Five minutes at best, promise,” she replies.

Jonathan smirks. “What’s it? The third time you say that?”

“That’s your fault,” she answers back, slightly turning down the volume of the radio. “You got the road wrong twice!”

“Well, you could pick your own navigator.” He arches an eyebrow as his usual grin covers his mouth. “But that’d mean having less time to fangirl over Maria Brink.”

She rolls her eyes, earning a laugh from Kevin. As soon as Jonathan is about to continue the conversation, she turns the volume of the radio back up just in time for the chorus of Adrenalize to begin.

When they finally arrive at their intended destination, Lara leans back against her seat and smiles, turning to Kevin. “Ready to meet your new family?”

He nods excitedly and jumps out of the car. A smiling woman in a flower dress is already standing by the door waiting for him. “Hey, sorry for being late, my sister sucks at driving,” Jonathan jokes as he gets out of the car.

Lara throws him a look and the woman, Mrs Hudson, laughs before calling her husband inside the house.

Almost two hours have passed and Lara must admit the Hudson’s seem a great family. When Kevin first told her he wanted to move out of the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility she had met him in, she had felt like she had done something wrong, like he had not forgiven her for everything that had happened. She knew she had no right over him, but considering his luck with families she was seriously concerned. It took her awhile to adjust to the idea, but finally she had come to the conclusion that he deserved to be part of a family as good as the one she had been part of.

Now, as she sits beside Jonathan on a leather couch in a tiny suburban house, she has a feeling that Kevin will like this new start. She really hopes he will.

Jonathan places a hand on her thigh. “Well, time to go Elle.”

They get up and, while Jonathan jokes with Mrs Hudson, proving himself much more talkative than her husband, Kevin wraps his arms around Lara’s shoulders. She hugs him back, patting his back. “Will you call me?” he asks.

She laughs. “Unless I die yes, I will.”

“And how soon do you plan on dying?”

“I’ll call you a couple of times before, don’t worry.”

He parts from her and smiles. “Also, thank you.”

“What for?” she asks, furrowing her brows.

“Everything, just- everything.”

She smiles. “Anytime.” Maybe, contrary to popular belief, not everyone in the Flinch genealogy is the absolute worst. Especially those underage.

#lara johnson #agata varano #scar #marvel #mcu #oc #original character #writing #mcu fiction #oc fiction #like father like son #stephen strange x original character

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