#Also the writers literally had no idea what to do with him so the first season is just unhinged confusion

[secretinasecret]

In defence of Bridgerton Season 3:

"It feels different."

Many people HATED the second season at first because it didn't have Simon and wasn't "according to the books," but they ended up loving it by the end.

Y'all need to give this one time to marinate fully and see the rest of the season before coming to a conclusion.

It might feel odd, but that is because it has been two years since we saw these actors and these sets. We are bound to be unfamiliar with it at first.

Season three has the exact formula as the last two seasons: Colorful, bright and two leads that look great together on camera.

"It doesn't have any tension."

I assure you that splitting the season into two parts ruined the experience.

"Colin didn't suffer enough."

He did, actually. To some extent. He RAN to catch up to Penelope's carriage in the middle of the night! Not to mention his little angsty scene when he returns from a night out with his "friends," and he simply throws himself onto his bed without bothering to take off the rest of his clothes.

But I hope Colin will truly LOSE his mind when he learns that Penelope is Lady Whistledown. If he doesn't, then yeah, the writers of this show officially failed ME.

We DESERVE to see this man go absolutely batshit crazy and show that he can express emotions other than confusion, longing and boredom.

"Polin had no chemistry."

Polin had EXCELLENT chemistry; y'all just wanted to see a slow burn, enemies-to-lovers like Kathony, but I am afraid every season has a different trope, and it's okay if friends-to-lovers aren't for you.

Luke and Nicola are very good friends on and off set, and you can literally FEEL their chemistry in press interviews.

If you simply didn't feel ANYTHING at all this season, that may be because you do not feel a connection to Colin or Penelope as characters.

I do want to say, though, that these four episodes could have fleshed out Colin's character a bit more.

Book readers and Polin fans know Colin, but new viewers don't. He needed flashbacks to make the rest root for him. How did he become a people pleaser? What is his relationship like with his family? His father? What made him want to decide to travel almost every single year?

Although people finally like him after the carriage scene, they should have liked him from episode one because he is the LEAD.

"Colin gave me the ick."

To each of their own, but Colin acted EXACTLY as he was supposed to in the first two episodes.

He is a PEOPLE PLEASER, so he tries hard to fit into the mould men like Anthony and Simon made for themselves: A rake. He is supposed to make you think, "Oh, this is too much," because it IS.

Even Eloise and Violet point it out to him, and he finally lets go of that disturbing persona when he asks Penelope to marry him.

Look, the man simply wants EVERYONE to like him because he clearly has some issues that the show is failing to dive deep into, but you get the point.

"Too many sub-plots."

Y'all might be onto something with this one, tbh. But I will say that after a few watches, some sub-plots lowkey start to make sense to me, except the Mondrich one.

I have no idea why the Mondrich family are in this season; why do we need to care about their club or their newfound wealth? I will never know.

But Francesca's plotline makes sense; we needed another diamond, therefore, another Bridgerton to debut. Colin also uses Francesca to ultimately ask Violet about how to confess his feelings to Penelope: "What do you wish for Francesca?" is code for, "What do you wish for me, exactly, in the love department?"

The Featherington plotline was also really funny. We needed a comedic relief.

Benedict's plotline HAS to have some sort of importance because Lady Tilly looks like a very powerful woman. She might play a role in Lady Whisteldown's reveal or have a connection to Sophie. If she is simply there to make Benedict look like an aimless man with no goals in life (AGAIN), I will lose it.

Eloise and Cressida's friendship plotline directly affects Penelope, so that makes sense as well.

The Queen's plotline also makes sense, the woman has been trying to unmask Whisteldown for three years now.

At some point, every single plotline starts to look orderly and chronological, at least to me.

So, was part one of this season absolutely amazing?

No.

Was it enjoyable?

Depends; it might be in the 'Hall of Fame' if they can wrap up part two satisfactorily.

And I'll leave it at that.

#bridgerton #colin bridgerton #penelope featherington #bridgerton season three #bridgerton 3 #bridgerton s3 #bridgerton netflix #bridgerton spoilers #colin x penelope #polin #anthony bridgerton #eloise bridgerton #cressida cowper #queen charlotte #violet bridgerton #kate sharma #kate bridgerton #francesca bridgerton

[bloomeng]

I know MXTX is a good author I want to get that out of the way before I get into this. She’s a fantastic (male) character writer and she has a great grasp on interpersonal connections. Though she’s working in an established niche genre she’s still very creative, I think SV especially is evidence of that. But there’s one thing that I just can never seem to get a pulse on, and that’s how much she means to comment on classism.

Author’s intent is always gonna be tricky especially when I have to rely on translated texts and interviews. There’s probably a lot of nuance that I miss, not to mention literally interviews I’ve never seen etc. It also doesn’t help that I haven’t read most of TGCF yet, so I can’t comment on that series, and with SV this conversation is less applicable, so for the sake of what I know best I’m gonna be using MDZS as my main example.

Classism is undeniably at the heart of MDZS’s themes, however for years anytime I analysis the text I’m usually fairly cautious to note that I don’t know if this was intentional. This isn’t because I think MXTX is stupid or can’t handle deep conversations, it’s simply because I can’t tell if it was her intent. On paper it seems obvious; WWX, JGY and XY’s wealth disparities, how privilege drives the plot, literally everything about the Wens as a whole. So much of the novel’s runtime is spent showing us how corrupt the feudal system can be, going so far as to have a protagonist who dies for the cause and two antagonists who are driven to be awful because of their poor circumstances in life. It feels intentional that WWX was granted a certain amount of privilege based on something he was born with (his parents connections) and how easily people turned on him because to the world he is a villain (also he does bad things that he likely wouldn’t have to if he had no need to defend anyone). JGY acting as a foil for WWX feels intentional and I would absolutely consider them foils regardless of intent. With all this in mind I would be inclined to say that yeah, MDZS is commenting on classism, but then WWX marries into the corrupt system and we the audience are supposed to read this as a good thing.

This has always been my biggest qualm with the book. We spend so much time showing how awful this system is and the two people who do anything to try and save it are punished for it by death. Sure WWX is brought back but as soon as he’s in Mo’s body he’s aimless. JGY is of course the secondary villain of the series, but MXTX goes out of her way to make us understand that even when JGY had power, his birth kept him from actually holding any real control, and what control he did have he mostly used to get bad people out of power and make the community better (he was biased and paranoid and vengeful but MXTX’s characters are nothing if not nuanced). Why set all this up to end up in such a contradictory place?

I get that solving such big issues such as classism isn’t easy and we want a happy ending but does MDZS even have a happy ending? None of the mc’s besides LWJ and (supposedly) WWX and LSH and LJY are in good positions by the end of the story. I remember reading MDZS for the first time and thinking that LWJ would fall for WWX because of his radical ideas and eventually see that the Lans were contributing big time to this awful system that favors wealth over everything. Especially because we have a second plot line about whatever was going on with LXC and JGY. And then it just never happens. Instead the Lan sect are painted as ok just because they’re monks. The system wasn’t the issue actually it was the people in charge but don’t worry they’re gone. Life is great now that the most powerful sects are in the hands of a 15 yr old, a man with unchecked anger issues, a council of elders that think corporal punishment is the solution to everything and a man who committed to a life long bit to get out of all forms of responsibility. What could go wrong?

I’ve always thought it was strange and ooc that WWX just accepts going back to Cloud Recesses. His literal incense burner fantasy was a cottage in the woods away from society. He never really warms up to the rigidity or their bland ass food, and he doesn’t even really respect the Lans culture more than he has to. It’s clear he only lives there for his husband and son’s sake. So why am I to believe this is his fairy tale ending?

The only answer I’ve been able to grasp over the years is that the romance genre of the novel overpowers everything else.

This is what brings me back to my original point. I don’t know if MXTX’s intended to comment on class, because if she did I struggle to understand how the ending of the story fits this intention. Which means by default it wasn’t the intention, at least not the priority. I mean ok duh, obvious conclusion, this is a danmei, it’s the bl genre, of course the romance comes first, but that’s not exactly what I’m getting at. You can absolutely have a romance that comments on other things at the same time and I think MXTX’s writing is smart enough to do this, except it fumbled so hard at the end it left me questioning if she even meant to comment on classism in the first place.

A part of me thinks that all of this commentary was just a coincidence of the genre conventions. Cultivator/ historical fantasy tends to just have classism baked into setting, so maybe that’s all it was. Perhaps she was just borrowing what was already there to make interesting character motivations and it wasn’t done with any intention of commenting on any sort of greater societal issue. Which for the record would be ok. I’m not policing what MXTX should write and romance for the sake of romance is perfectly valid, but as a reader I’m allowed to say this particular instant made me dislike the actual romance she set up. These issues in the book made me actively dislike LWJ. I’m on an island about that though. Getting back to my point, I struggle to call this commentary intentional and thus things like WWX and JGY suddenly feel unintentional as well.

I also find MXTX’s own words to be contradictory at times. For instance, she’s mentioned that after SV she found writing more than one couple to be too taxing. When asked if other characters in MDZS were gay she said explicitly they were not, yet both MDZS and TGCF have unofficial side couples that are an inch away from being canon. She’s also mentioned that XY, Sl, and XXC were old characters of hers and were originally going to be the focus of the book, which leads me to believe that they would’ve been a canon love triangle. So I am skeptical when she said all the characters besides WWX and LWJ are straight. I’m not accusing her of lying or anything like that. Tolkien contradicted himself so many times in his letters and essays, it’s sort of par for the course in my opinion. What it does mean though is that I can’t get a read on her intentions. What I can gather from what she tends to focus on in her extras, interviews, and just the fact that this is the BL genre, I’m inclined to believe that a lot of these parallels are unintentional but then I circle back to just how heavy handed it all is and I’m unsure again.

Anyway this was just the world’s longest way to say that actually we don’t have any idea what her intentions are and this is why when I’m analyzing her work I make a point to not put words in her mouth.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #txt #mxtx #mdzs meta #wei wuxian #jin guangyao

[therealladylucifer]

Derek Hale is such a guy. i love him so much because no one can figure him out, not even the writers who created him. he oscillates wildly between slightly unsettling to downright villain. he's rich af but for the first two seasons he lived in his family's burnt out shell of a house and a train station. the only thing we ever see him do in his free time is work out shirtless to edm. he's always loitering creepily literally everywhere he goes. a character will be like hey derek meet me on the football field and instead of just chilling in the bleachers like a normal person derek is standing under them looking like he just killed a bitch.

#teen wolf #derek hale #i literally love the way the writers treat him it's so funny #you can tell for the first two seasons they had no idea what to do with him #also since we don't ever see him do anything else i like to say his only two hobbies are loitering and working out to edm #that's canon

[gh0stsp1d3r]

hellooo!! I've been reading your stuff and oml I am OBSESSED!! You are such an amazing writer my dear human!! Thx for just being here to fulfill my hobie obsession lol

I don't often request so idk what u need but here goes nothing ¯⁠\⁠(⁠°⁠_⁠o⁠)⁠/⁠¯ Could you do a hobie x fem! reader where the reader is super quiet until you start to talk to her?? Like she's nice but has a bit of an rbf and is just rlly silent until someone strikes up a conversation w her type thing. Maybe a story like she and hobie were assigned a job or smth together but they didn't talk for like the first few days cuz she can't hold a conversation (and it doesn't help that the man she's tryna talk to is literally so fine) but then eventually hobie's like "what is your deal why won't u talk to me?" Idk idk it's kinda a bad idea but it's stuck in my noggin

Anywayss thanks for considering/writing this!! Much love ♡♡⁠♡

I love!! Thank you and I’m glad you like my stuff (: also I js watched the little mermaid and seeing that made me so inspired to write sum like this 😭

Quiet

“Okay… Hobie and Y/n.” Miguel called you both up first, telling you the mission.

You didn’t know too much about Hobie, and you don’t know why you were being paired together. You usually worked alone.

“Uh, Miguel, sir.” You mumbled after he explained it.

“If you’re gonna ask if you can work alone, the answer is no.”

You mumbled something under your breath, looking at Hobie as he set a portal.

“So… I’m Hobie.”

You didn’t say anything.

“Y/n, right?”

You just looked at him.

“Alright then..” he muttered, thinking you were just being rude. You both started to swing.

You weren’t used to being teamed with people, and he was attractive. Like insanely attractive.

You focused on the mission, completing it easily.

But that one day of teaming up with Hobie turned into two, then three.

“Hey, Y’Know do you not like me or something? I’ve known you for three days and all I’ve gotten was stares.”

“It’s not you.” You croaked.

“Oh she talks.” He said.

“I just don’t like talking… to anyone.”

“Got it. Well, glad that’s cleared up.”

————————————————————

After a week, you had started to get more comfortable and talking more. Hobie was glad, because he liked hearing your voice.

“So, yeah, no it doesn’t make sense but it does if you know what I mean.”

“Nah, it definitely makes sense.” He said as you dragged the guy across the floor, webbing him up against the wall.

“Good job.” He said, nodding to the passed out man.

“It was light work.” You shrugged.

“So, I was wondering if you wanted to hangout with a few of some other friends I got..? They’re cool, and I think you’ll like them.”

You sighed and thought.

“I guess..”

He smiled at that. An I guess was the best answer he’s gotten out of you.

“Quit smiling.” You said, but smiled as you did so.

“You just smiled!” He put his arm around your shoulders, and messed with your hair.

“Knew I could do it.” He smirked to himself.

#hobie x reader #hobie brown x reader #hobie brown #spider punk

[jnnul]

ready for love

PAIRING ▸ lee jeno x fem!reader (ft. tbz's juyeon)

GENRES ▸ fluff, non!idol au, college au, slice of life, friends to lovers but also...it’s complicated?

WARNINGS ▸ uhh swearing, drinking (but legally), mentions of infidelity, there was supposed to be so much more but it just turned into a fluff piece sooo..., y/n is indecisive and jeno is stupid, they're a match made in heaven 🫶🏽, jeno is the loverboy of the century towards the end, they make out and a few allusions to sex but no graphics, is it just me or is that header really blurry

SUMMARY ▸ a boy who has never taken a relationship seriously. a girl who is seriously over relationships. when they end up finding each other, will they let their ideas of what a relationship should be like ruin their relationship before it even starts?

PLAYLIST ▸ ready for love - blackpink, lovin’ me - fifty fifty, siren - taeyeon, island - youha, hate that - key & taeyeon

WORD COUNT ▸ 19.5k words

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ oh hey it's that one fic i've been writing since july! which reminds me - if that ending looks familiar, it's because technically, this was supposed to come out right after that timestamp did oops.

as always, feedback, comments, etc. GREATLY encourage writers! if you felt any sort of way (in a good or bad way!) about this fic, pls leave feedback!

far too easy. a couple of lingering stares. a coincidental request on social media. a few well-placed messages. one date later and...done. he was in. hook, line, and sinker.

it was almost getting predictable. at first, lee jeno just wanted to have a little fun. it was never anything serious - and it definitely wasn't always about sex. truly. as distrustful as men had made themselves out to be within the past few thousands of years, jeno truly wasn't thinking with his dick when he got into relationships.

it was just about having fun. he just wanted to get to know people, do sohing romantic just for the experience, and maybe, get to know their body if the relationship felt so inclined.

there was never any delusion about what a relationship with jeno was like. it was two months, if you lasted that long, and every second of it made you feel alive like you never had before. but the honeymoon stage would pass and jeno would lose interest and soon, there would be a heartbroken girl left behind, even though she knew exactly what she was getting herself into.

and it wasn't as though they could really get mad at him. he was a sweetheart through and through and he would continue to say hi if they ever saw each other around and he had definitely saved a couple exes from some ugly encounters. jeno never meant to hurt anyone; it just happened soimes because he was such a good guy.

at least, that’s what you understood of your best friend. from his nights of drunken confessions and the few encounters you’d had with his ‘girlfriends’, you had surmised that jeno lee was just meant to be a serial casual dater.

you, quite frankly, were on the opposite end of the spectrum. after a few too many boyfriends who had turned out to be grade a douchebags, you had effectively sworn off men.

dating was just far too hard. the 'did he notice me?' stage where you dress up a little prettier than normal. and then the internal panic when they request you on instagram. the casual talking stage where you've already accidentally planned out the wedding. the date where you choose to move past all of the blatant red flags you see. and then the relationship, when the red flags become red banners the size of antarctica because goddamnit, how did you miss the fact that this man was a literal freudian case study.

so whenever jeno would introduce his newest girlfriend or go on about his many adventures (including the details about the not-so-family-friendly aspects), you couldn't help but feel a little pang of jealousy because where the hell was jeno finding such amazing relationships? and why the hell isn't he taking them seriously?

you're sure you couldn't even count the number of sweet girls you knew would've been perfect to take home to his mother you had been introduced to before they were gone the next week.

"and that's why i think you're an insufferable brat," you grumble, pointing a stick of celery at him threateningly. jeno snorts slightly, redirecting your celery to the hummus sitting next to where you were perched on his kitchen counter.

"you've been saying that for as long as we've been friends," he says, pouring a spoonful of soy sauce into the rice for the fried rice he was preparing for dinner.

"three years too many," you say, squinting your eyes at him suspiciously. "how have we actually stayed friends for three years when you're so...wishy-washy?"

jeno's roommate, na jaemin, rubs his eyes as he stumbles into the kitchen, saluting you sarcastically as he reaches into the fridge to grab an entire bowl of strawberries.

"what a burn, y/n. wishy-washy. yeah, i'll bet that really did a number on him, didn't it, jeno my boy?" jaemin snorts, pouting when he quite nearly drops the bowl of strawberries on his foot.

he also very nearly escapes decapitation by celery stick, ducking from your brutal aim.

"at least i don't have a mommy kink," you snide, salvaging what was left of your celery snack.

jaemin jabs a strawberry in your general direction with a look of indignant betrayal on his face.

"i thought we agreed to never speak of what was revealed during balkan night," jaemin hissed. "you promised, y/n!"

"i was crossing my fingers," you shrug, placating your best friend with an olive branch of a silly smile when he swears vengence by strawberry assault a second time.

"whatever," jaemin grumbles as he slinks back to the darkness of his room. jeno just shakes his head fondly, tossing in the vegetables the two of you had just chopped up into the fried rice.

"why do you always feel the need to rag on him like that?" jeno says, mixing the vegetables into the rice.

"why do you always feel the need to avoid taking a relationship seriously?" you counter, hopping down from your perch to throw out the now empty hummus container.

"you know, anyone hearing this conversation right now would think that you were the one not taking relationships not seriously instead of me," he says calmly, taking a spoonful of rice. he blows on it before reaching out to you, letting you taste-test the fried rice. you hum, sifting through the ingredients in the fridge as you analyze what the missing ingredient was. your eyes land on a small plastic container with finely chopped garlic inside, the realization clicking in your head.

"just because i'm a little youthful and you have the personality of a grandpa doesn't mean that you have to be the one who takes relationships too seriously," you say, sprinkling the garlic into the fried rice. jeno hands you the wooden spatula and lets you take over the cooking process as he finds three bowls for the three of you.

"whatever helps you sleep at night," jeno says with a soft chuckle.

"speaking of relationships though, i'm not going to be leeching off of you for dinner tonight," you say casually, offering a spoonful to jeno this time to let him taste your shared creation.

he flashes you a happy eye smile, retreating into the hallway to call jaemin out of his room for lunch.

"date?" jeno says, a strange look in his eye as he hands you your spoon (you had a preference for only eating with the singular small spoon in the entire apartment for some reason) with a knowing smile.

"somewhat? it's a double date but i'm only going for jimin because she really really likes the guy and she's afraid she's going to fuck it up if it's just the two of them," you explain, giving him a thumbs up for the successful food collaboration.

"do you know who it's with?" jaemin pipes up, seemingly refreshed after consuming an inhumane amount of strawberries.

you furrow your eyebrows, trying to recollect the name of the guy jimin mentioned that jaehyun was bringing before shaking your head.

"i think his name was jayeon? yeonju? juyeon? i don't know, i don't really remember. all i know is that jaehyun better be head over fucking heels for jimin by the end of the night," you say in between bites.

"juyeon? lee juyeon?" jaemin says suddenly, his spoon clattering as he drops it in his bowl. jeno and jaemin exchange a look that you don't miss and you definitely don't like.

"am i missing sohing here? do you guys know him?" you ask, the worry lines on your forehead having become near permanent. jeno shrugs, pushing his food around in an uncharacteristically hesitant manner.

"i mean i just heard that he was a bit of a heartbreaker when he was in college but i don't really think that it was that big of a deal," jaemin says finally. you roll your eyes, puffing out your chest sarcastically.

"i'm a big girl guys, don't worry. i can handle myself," you say, patting jeno's shoulder comfortingly as you move to wash your bowl. "and besides, i'm not actually going there to find the love of my life; i'm just going there to support jimin."

"just be careful, y/n." jeno gives you a quick little side-hug before disappearing into the living room to turn on some tv. you turn to jaemin but your question dies on your tongue when you see that jaemin is already staring at you with an unreadable expression.

"what's up with him?" you ask, when jaemin sighs, getting up to wash his dishes.

"jeno's worried for you," he says. you huff, watching jaemin put his washed bowl into the dishwasher.

"i get that, dipshit. what i don't get is why!" you exclaim, wincing when you realize that you're much louder than you had intended.

"because juyeon's just like jeno."

it's all jaemin says but it's all he needs to say because now, you finally understand.

+++

"now remember, i'm only coming with you for you, okay? if you ever want to just be with jaehyun by yourself, let me know and i'll be more than happy to head on my way out," you whisper to jimin as you flash a bright smile at jaehyun, who approaches the both of you with a dimpled smile as he tucks his car keys into his pocket.

"y/n! it's so good to see you after so long," jaehyun says, pulling you in for a friendly side hug.

"i know," you say, squeezing quickly before letting go. "can you believe it's already been a month since renjun's party?"

jaehyun furrows his eyebrows, shuffling so that he was standing next to jimin. "no, really? has it already been a month?"

he doesn't wait for you to answer, turning to jimin almost immediately. "it's been a month since i met you? why does it feel like i've known you my entire life?"

it takes all you have to turn to the side before fake gagging, unable to help the cringe that runs through your body from the cheesiness, jimin fighting back a giggle, but you can see that her cheeks are bright red.

"jae, for your sake and the beautiful ladies', i'm gonna have to pretend like you never said that," a deep voice says from behind you. the man steps into the light and you're sure that your eyes are about to fall out of their socket.

juyeon is one of the most attractive men you've ever seen. long, long legs that lead up to broad shoulders, beautiful eyes and lips that would make kylie jenner jealous. his dark hair is slicked back and he holds himself with a humble, quiet confidence that makes you ready to fall to your knees instantly. he turns to you and his cool demeanor is instantly broken when he smiles, his face glowing in the faint lights of the restaurant.

"hi, i'm juyeon," he says, sticking his hand out for you to shake. you stare at it for a moment before taking it.

"y/n. it's nice to meet you," you say dreamily, before coming to your senses and retracting your hand. you were here for jimin and jimin only. juyeon and his beautiful face would have to stay in the friend zone - especially if what jaemin had warned you about was true.

but just because you couldn't purchase doesn't mean you couldn't window shop.

"y/n," juyeon drawls, letting your name roll off of his tongue. "a pretty name for a pretty girl."

jimin can barely stifle a giggle at your dazed expression, elbowing you in the rib cage. you shake your head slightly, composing yourself once more. how in hell were you supposed to confine this man to the friend zone if everything he said threatened your very sanity?

"well, they say that you should never keep a pretty woman waiting," you say with coy smile, gesturing towards the restaurant. "shall we head inside?"

juyeon mock-bows while jaehyun opens the door and says, "ladies first."

you blow juyeon a kiss with a teasing smile, linking arms with jimin and sauntering into the restaurant. juvenile? perhaps. but where was the fun in being adult all the time?

the four of you make your way to where there's a receptionist standing behind a booth, jaehyun stating his name for the reservation.

"right this way, ladies and gentlemen," the receptionist says, gathering a handful of menus and leading you to your table.

"so jaehyun tells me you are a business major," juyeon says, falling in step beside you. you hum, shaking your head slightly.

"i was a business major; i double majored in finance and economics, but i graduated two months ago," you explain, thanking the waiter as you take your seat at the table. juyeon takes the seat next to you and jimin takes the seat on the other side so that you were sat directly across from jaehyun.

you're about to turn to jimin and say something only to find her enraptured by some fascinating conversation that her and jaehyun seemed to be having, turning back with a knowing smile.

"i'm sorry, i was under the impression that you were still in school since it's only march," juyeon says, handing you one of the menus the waiter had left on the table.

"i graduated early because of the overlap between my majors. i was required to keep up my grades for my scholarship anyway so i was able to build up credits fairly quickly," you explain, trying to ignore the spark of electricity that you feel when juyeon's fingers linger on yours.

"oh, so you were quite the academic," he says, running a hand through his hair. you determinedly stare at the menu, forcing down the hot flash that runs through your body when juyeon catches you watching.

"you could say so," you nod, scanning the menu. "how about you? what did you major in when you were in school?"

"i was your direct senior," juyeon begins, smiling when he sees the confusion on your face. "i was a finance major in college."

"no way! that's so interesting. where do you work now?" you ask once you put down the menu to meet his eyes. maybe jaemin and jeno were just being overprotective? it wouldn't be the first time they steered you away from heartbreak but juyeon seemed like such a sweet and genuine guy.

because juyeon's just like jeno.

that statement is enough to bring you back to your senses as you focus on what juyeon is saying, jimin and jaehyun still debating the difference between computer engineering and computer science (their respective majors) and which one was better.

nerds.

"i was at amazon up until last summer but i recently switched to a new company. it's a pretty small company but they specialize in cleaning the ocean of plastic and recycling the plastic for 3D printing. it's very niche but i didn't want to just be another finance bro that just worked for the sake of money, you know? i wanted to work with a good consciousness."

maybe curving juyeon from claiming a place in your already fragile heart would be a little more difficult than you expected. kind, environmentally aware and a chose ethical work? juyeon was already better than approximately 90% of your exes.

"how about you? have you started working yet? the market is pretty brutal for freshly graduated f&e people, from what my friends tell me." you nod, internally composing yourself and steeling yourself a little bit more to keep from falling into juyeon's charms.

just like jeno. the reminder is harsh, but it works like magic as you feel the butterflies in your stomach beginning to dissapate.

"it certainly is a lot more competitive than i think a lot of people anticipated. thankfully, i was able to connect to a sponsor during one of the scholarship banquets and was offered a position for right after school," you explained and juyeon's eyes turn from mild and observing to full of respect as he nods, almost approvingly.

"which company?" he asks, taking a sip of his water.

"i actually am working in the finance department at patagonia..."

+++

the night progresses almost too smoothly. once the food had come out, jaehyun and jimin finally seemed to come out of the bubble they were in and the conversation flowed so well, it was almost as though the four of you had known each other for years.

it was clear that jaehyun and juyeon were close, having met each other at work and instantly clicking. the easy back and forth between them allowed you and jimin relax a little more, allowing the conversation to turn to less formal subjects.

you find out that juyeon has a dog, much to your dismay.

"y/n loves dogs!" jimin exclaims, and you can feel your heart's walls crack a little further. there were many things you could handle - a cute boy with a dog? that was a little out of the realm of control.

"really? oh you'd love ray then - he's a big dog but he's got a lot of love. sort of a gentle giant," juyeon says, his eyes twinkling as he pulls out his phone to show you his wallpaper. it's a picture of him and ray curled up next to each other, sleeping in bed, both of them in the same exact position as they snored away.

"i swear, him and ray are the same soul in two different bodies. i've seen this guy have full on conversations with his dog. which would be weird but it kinda just works for them somehow. i kinda think that ray genuinely does understand juyeon," jaehyun snorts, nodding at juyeon's wallpaper. "that was when ray was still a puppy and he would copy every single thing that juyeon did."

juyeon shrugs, smiling as he tucks his phone back into his pocket. "not much has changed there, if i'm being honest."

you're about to say something about meeting ray when your phone rings abruptly, rudely interrupting the conversation. you frown as you flip your phone open, looking at the contact profile on the screen. jeno?

"hello?" you say as you answer the phone, pointing to the restroom as you excuse yourself from the table. from the corner of your eye, you can see the waiter coming with the bill for your table and you vaguely register the fact that only two cards are being put on the table (jaehyun's and juyeon's) as you make your way somewhere a little more private.

"hellooo? y/nnnn-ie? you stilllll at your, huh, date?" jeno slurs into your phone and you hear someone in the background, presumably jaemin, trying to convince jeno to stop himself from saying or doing something stupid.

"yes, jeno, i'm still at my date. that you interrupted, by the way," you say with a frustrated sigh. you check your watch and realize that it's only 9:30 PM and jeno does not sound like he's been taking it easy on the alcohol. "why are you drinking jen?"

"whattttt, so now i'm a shitty lover and i can't, heh, drink?" jeno grumbles into the phone and it's clear from the sudden silence in the background that jaemin has completely giving up on wrestling jeno's phone out of his hand. you had firsthand experience with drunk jeno - he turned into the hulk.

"jen, if you called me in the middle of my date to go off the rails about how you're a lonely fucker, i'm going to kill you," you hiss, smiling at the lady who comes into the restroom as you weren't threatening your best friend with murder.

"I'M NOT A LONELY FUCKER!"

oh, so this part jeno could say without hiccuping or slurring his words. fantastic. you sigh, switching your phone to the other ear as you wash your hands, getting ready to leave the restroom. there's a pregnant pause where no one says anything but you can hear the top gun theme song in the background so you know jeno's on the line.

"if - if i change, will you not go out with juyeon?" jeno mutters finally, just as you're leaving the restroom. "if i finally start getting serious about relationships, will you not go out with him? will you come home?"

you pause at that. jeno's always been the protective type. for all of his own playboy (even if technically he wasn't trying to be a playboy) charm, jeno genuinely wasn't very happy when you dated people. he wouldn't be rude to them and he certainly would never force you to break up with them but every time he would run into them, regardless of how long you had dated them, he always had something to say.

he looks like he jerks off to weird porn. definitely something about shampoo, a hot girl, and way too much viagra.

he has a small dick.

he makes his girlfriends lose weight even though he has a beer belly.

i'm not even gonna lie to you - i just hate the fact that he's balding.

most of the reasons that jeno gave you were kinda stupid. but ultimately, he was usually right about which people to avoid and even if he said it was because they were ugly and balding, it was usually because he knew that they weren't kind people on the inside.

it was because you just didn't have a great self-image, jeno used to say. if you saw yourself the way the rest of us - the way i see you, you'd never even give some of these assholes a chance, y/n. think of it as playboy experience about how to find the people actually worth your time.

but he had never said anything like this before. for all of the hazy comments and strange strength jeno developed when he was drunk, he had never said anything like this to you before. mostly because jaemin was really good at protecting his roommate from making stupid decisions but it was clear that even jaemin couldn't stop this.

"jen, you sound crazy right now," you say, rubbing your forehead. you step out of the restroom to see juyeon waiting at the table alone, as jimin and jaehyun seemingly already left together. "i don't really know what you're trying to say and quite frankly, i have no clue why you're acting like this. ask jaemin to make sure you're drinking a lot more water and we'll talk about this in the morning, alright?"

jeno doesn't say anything but from the shuffling in the background, you realize that jaemin has finally rose from his slump and was signaling something to jeno. good. maybe jaemin would be able to understand why the fuck jeno was acting like this.

there's an exchange of words, mostly jaemin berating jeno to hand over the phone as you hear a loud thump in the background before jaemin is speaking.

"hey, y/n it's me," jaemin says. it's clear that he's been drinking too but jaemin isn't too much of a drinker so he still sounds pretty levelheaded as he speaks.

"what's up with jeno, jaemin? why is he acting like that?" you ask, making your way over to the table slowly. you realize that juyeon is holding onto your coat and suddenly, you're not really sure about what to do. you don't know what it is about the simple fact that juyeon is holding your coat but the entire thing seems a little domestic. like the two of you actually were on a date.

"y/n, i'm gonna be so honest with you, i think it's best if you have some distance from jeno for a while. i think he's just getting in his head about stuff he shouldn't be and really, i think the only way he's gonna get over it or figure out how to talk to you about it if he has some distance."

how perfect. you sigh, running your hand through your hair as you smile at juyeon, who helps you put your coat over your shoulders, the scent of his cologne filling up your lungs. you decide that if it was distance that jeno wanted, it was distance jeno was going to get. quite frankly, this wasn't the first time jeno had randomly pulled away from you, even if it was the first time he had finally come close to clueing you into why.

it was clear that jeno didn't like you dating people - especially not juyeon. maybe even to the extent of jeno changing his own playboy ways to convince you otherwise of interacting with juyeon.

you had considered the fact that jeno might be interested in you romantically or that maybe he was jealous for your affections. but every time you thought that, jeno would come back from his faraway space with a new girl and a genuine twinkle in his eye and suddenly, everything was back to normal.

jeno simply was an overprotective person, you decided. and he would do whatever he thought was right to make sure that the people around him didn't get hurt.

it really did check out, honestly.

jeno was equally overprotective of everyone in his life because getting that close to him in the first place was a feat within itself. once you made it past that original barrier, however, he would be willing to give his life if he thought it would help even the slightest.

but...even so. this was weird.

either way, juyeon was opening the passenger door to his car and you were aimlessly climbing into it so any and all thoughts about jeno would have to wait until you made it down this slippery slope first. the last thing you needed in the morning was the honest to god gripping panic of doing the walk of shame.

juyeon doesn't seem like the type to expect a lady to put out because he bought her dinner but you can never be too careful. he seems to notice your apprehension because he asks you for your address upfront, raising three fingers in an oath.

"i promise to conduct no funny business and i will take you home safe and sound, y/n," he says solemnly, and the way his eyes sparkle in the light of the moon is enough to make your resolve melt a little bit as you laugh softly.

"alright juyeon. since you promised no funny business," you quip lightly, entering your address on the navigation screen next to the steering wheel.

juyeon squints at your address, which is fifteen minutes away, before looking at you strangely. "are you sure this is the right address? my building is right next door! i would've seen you at some point, and trust me, i'd never forget a face like yours."

"uh, yeah, this is my address. i'm usually never home though, since i'm always either with jimin or my friends jaemin and jeno," you say, watching as juyeon sets the car in reverse to pull out of the parking spot. his arm lifts, as though he were going to put it behind the headrest of your seat to do the classic flirting move to reverse. he sets it back down when he sees you staring at the screen (which had a rearview camera feed on it), realizing that it would be dumb to try and make a move in such a cliché way.

"jeno? jeno lee?" juyeon asks as you guys pull out of the parking spot. you glance at him sideways, wondering if he were going to offer the same cautionary tale that jaemin and jeno had presented to you.

"yeah. he's one of my best friends. do you know him?" you ask, already presuming the answer.

juyeon is silent, as though he's weighing options in his mind. should he be honest with you? should he preserve your feelings?

"i know of him. i don't know him all that well," juyeon says finally, and you know that juyeon has decided to take the third option. neutrality. and while you're tempted on asking him to expand, you really don't know him well enough to do that.

so you just leave the topic aside and wait for him to start a different conversation.

he does soon enough, but you know that his heart isn't in it anymore. you engage in polite smalltalk until he pulls up to your apartment complex. you thank him for driving you and are about to step out of the car when juyeon suddenly touches your wrist gently, afraid to make rude or rough gestures.

you pause, half out of the car as you turn to him with a quizzical smile.

"i had a good time getting to know you today, y/n. and i know that it was just an excuse for those two to go on a date without making it weird but i really did have a good time getting to know you. i hope that i didn't make a bad impression at the end." his eyes are shining under the dim lighting of the few rooms that are still lit up in your apartment complex.

you smile at him gently, shaking your head to assure him. "you didn't make a bad impression. i had a good time getting to know you too."

you're ready to step out of the car once more when juyeon's fingers on your wrist wrap around them, this time a little bit more firm on claiming your attention.

"i - i want to see you again. i've honestly never connected this well with someone before. would you be open to that?" juyeon asks. you pause for a moment before giving in. how could you say no to him when he was looking at you with such big, brown eyes with so much hope hidden in them?

but even as you give juyeon your number, you can practically hear the bright red warning signs in your mind - and for some reason, jeno was the one screaming every single one of those signs.

"good night y/n," juyeon says, his smile every inch as heartbreakingly charming as the moment you knew he'd be bad for you.

you offer a tight, cautious smile in return. "good night juyeon."

+++

for someone who was fiercely overprotective of his friends, jeno had a strange tendency of self-sabotaging his relationships with them. not all of them - mostly just you. he didn't know what it was about you but somehow, he always just seemed to be saying the wrong things at the wrong time.

jaemin seems to think that it's because jeno has feelings for you (which he most definitely does not) (at all) (for real).

it wasn't as though jeno didn't like when you went on dates. in fact, he liked to think that he was rather supportive. it was just that you had a tendency to pick out all of the shittiest men in seoul to date and quite frankly, jeno hated it.

and you knew that. you'd been dealing with jeno's strange tendencies for three years now. he knew that you knew that he'd call you by next week and everything would be back to normal. that's usually how it went when you went on a particularly serious date on any level. strange set of coincidences that jeno only seemed to fuck up the worst right before or after a date you were raving about.

huh.

"i'm telling you jeno, you have got to tell her the way you feel about her," jaemin says, tossing a water bottle at jeno. they're sitting on the floor in front of the tv, watching money heist halfheartedly. terrible show to be their 'let's talk about our feelings' show but jaemin and jeno never could have a conversation like that without some level of violent scheming occurring in the background.

"i don't feel any way about y/n, jaemin. honestly, it's getting really fucking annoying that you keep saying that i do," jeno says, digging his chopsticks into his chinese takeout food. jaemin rolls his eyes, sitting down next to jeno with his own box of takeout.

"i swear to god. why did you call her then? why did you call her on her date last night?" jaemin asks. jeno shrugs, setting his food down before sighing.

"i don't know, okay? i just...you know what happened with juyeon. i just can't imagine her going through something like that," jeno says softly. jaemin looks at him before clearing his throat, forcing jeno to look at him square in the eyes.

"look, i know that you and juyeon don't have the greatest past but you have got to let her find her person. who knows! maybe juyeon's changed in the last three years. you literally don't know him anymore. and besides, this isn't about juyeon and you know it. you did this when she got with daniel, and then sunghoon, and then even doyoung." jaemin shakes his head, trying to get jeno to understand his own feelings. "you're blind to it but every time she actually feels good about someone, you somehow need to take a break from her. why?"

jeno doesn't actually have the answer to that question. why, indeed, is the question of the night.

later that night, when jaemin has turned in (or rather, announced that he was going to sleep, only to sit in bed and occupy their shared netflix account for hours), jeno pulls out his phone and searches up three words.

we need space.

he searches in his messages and cringes when he sees the number of outgoing texts that have space (as in the number of times he's broken up with someone over text) in them. he filters all of the other people out except for you and it pisses him off that jaemin is right.

may 2020. the first time jeno had asked you for some space, when you'd asked daniel to be your boyfriend.

august 2021. the second time you guys had taken some space, when you'd gone on your first date with sunghoon.

september 2022. the third time that you had had to take a break from each other. when jeno had introduced you to doyoung with his own hands.

realistically, jeno knew that jaemin was right. and with the evidence staring at him so incriminatingly, there was no way to refute the accusations.

but as much as jeno had dated around, he still didn't know what or who he was looking for. sure he was attracted to you as a person and your, uh, physicality - but that didn't mean that you were the one for him. and if jeno were to pursue something with you that made him realize that you truly weren't what he was looking for after all, not only would he be losing you as a partner but he'd be losing you as a best friend too.

so he continues in the toxic cycle of taking a break from you every time he feels as though his feelings are getting too high in his chest for him to contain them and never giving you or jaemin an explanation of why.

jeno knew it was wrong. he knew that his life would be so much easier if he just came clean and you fell one way or another on the scale of 'already dated' and 'haven't dated yet' like most of the girls on campus. but it was different with you.

it'd always been different with you.

so jeno rolls over, and goes to bed, dreaming of you and juyeon holding hands on your first date alone. he's never had such a restless night of sleep in his life.

+++

you know that you're being a bad friend to jimin when she's pouting at you swirling your straw in your macchiato instead of listening to her rambles.

"come on, y/n. it's been three days. you know that jeno gets like this - it's not like this is new right?" jimin says, covering your hand with both of hers, blinking at you curiously.

you smile and shake your head. "yeah. i'm sorry. this is supposed to be about you and i'm just getting in my head about this shit."

jimin tuts, eyebrows furrowing in mock anger. "that's not what i mean and you know it. i'll talk about jaehyun whether you're listening or not and you and i both know that. i just - i guess i'm not sure why you're always so hung up over jeno doing this when you know that he's gonna do it."

"you're right. it's not new. and i'm sorry that it keeps coming up when i really hate that he does this but i just wish he would talk to me instead of shutting me out every time that something like this happens. it's just him and jaemin cooped up and talking to each other for a week before they go back to being normal. and i get it. they're guys. they need a break and they need to do guy things and take a break from girls or whatever the fuck straight boys do. but this is getting out of hand and ridiculous."

but you catch yourself, shaking your head once more as you focus on jimin. "thank you for letting me get that out of my system. now tell me what you were saying about jaehyun. i feel like i've lost my best friend to some random guy for the past three days!"

jimin eyes you for a moment longer (and you know that she's not going to let this go) but decides to take mercy on you.

"well, jaehyun and i have been doing really well, honestly! we've seen each other every single day for the last three days - which isn't that hard considering that we've been having sex all day in every square inch of his apartment." jimin sees the scandalized look on your face before laughing. "don't worry, he lives alone and we've actually been going on non-sexual dates too. we connect in more ways than one if you get what i mean."

you slap jimin's arm incredulously, looking around the cute little café that you were sitting in to make sure that no one was listening. no one was, of course, given that it was 11:30 am on a monday but that was besides the point.

"oh my god. so are you guys going to make it official or what?" you ask, leaning forward on your steepled fingers. jimin shrugs, leaning back in her chair languidly.

"i don't know. i mean, i really like our chemistry and i like where this is going but i'm not going to label it. i'm definitely not going to be the one to pop the 'what are we' question - that's gotta be him," jimin says. "even though i am so incredibly head over heels for him. so i would like to be his girlfriend. for realsies."

she adds on the last part almost as an afterthought when she sees your unbelieving face.

"i mean it! i really want to be more than just a situationship but i really can't be the one to initiate that. i'm tired of always having to express interest in others. i attract; i don't chase," jimin says with a catty smile and you can't help but grin at that.

maybe jeno was really onto something. girl time was amazing. maybe that's why jeno needed some space from you.

"i agree. and you know what, i don't want to knock it but that honestly doesn't seem all that strange, considering that your location has consistently been showing that you're at jaehyun's place for the past 72 hours," you say, laughing at her mischievously when she returns the favor with a slap to your arm.

"i don't know. yeah. anyway. speaking of jaehyun, or not really him, but his friend - not the point! jaehyun mentioned that you gave juyeon your number? and that you've been kinda talking?" jimin says, and now it's your turn to blush.

"no - i mean, yes. i did give him my number but it's honestly not like that. he seems great and all but jeno and jaemin seemed really spooked when i mentioned him. i trust them when it comes to boys. especially with my shitty taste in them," you say thoughtfully and jimin can't help but agree with that.

she checks her phone and groans, starting to shuffle her things together as she prepares to leave. "this has been so good but i have to get to class and you know how much of a pain in the ass professor joo is."

you also start to gather your belongings, slurping down the leftovers of your macchiato. "yeah. i think that my early lunch break is coming to an end anyway. i've got a meeting at 6 pm but we're still on for dinner and drinks this friday, right?"

jimin nods distractedly as she checks her phone to see if jaehyun had texted her. he hadn't. in the past four hours. she clicks her phone shut and looks at you with a determined look in her eyes.

"yes. for sure. you and i have a date this friday and i don't want you to cancel, you hear me? and do not let those investors keep my baby from me like they did last time," jimin says, wagging her pointer finger at you threateningly. you roll your eyes, pressing a kiss to her cheek as the two of you make your way out of the café.

"i hear you. no more investors past 7 pm on a friday," you say, raising your hands in surrender when jimin squints her eyes at you. she side hugs you before checking the time once more (therefore realizing that professor joo wasn't above calling her out in the middle of class) and scurrying off to snu, a block down from the café you were previously in.

you sigh, shaking your head fondly as you turn in the opposite direction to head to work.

+++

turns out, friday seems to be a very popular night. not only do you have back to back meetings from 4 pm to 7 pm, but juyeon and jimin have texted you multiple times to confirm or (try) to make plans for friday night.

and honestly you didn't really want to go out. in between the radio silence between you, jeno, jaemin (who only really communicated in really stupid tiktoks back and forth), juyeon's suave maneuvering you into agreeing to a raincheck to saturday for the date, and jimin lamenting the fact that jaehyun hadn't brought up the 'what are we' conversation, there was so much going on.

all you needed were your friends, chinese takeout, and a little bit of jane the virgin. or other soapy dramas to take your mind off of everything.

but you had promised jimin and you'd be damned if you were going to bail on your friend when she was already not feeling well.

and besides, you refused to be a corporate slave who canceled on her friends because she was married to her job. that's not why you had chosen this job. and that's definitely why you had decided to reject pre-med as a sophomore in college.

so you find yourself taking shots with jimin in her kitchen and...jaehyun and juyeon.

when you had walked into jimin's apartment with nachos and shooters of pink whitney to pregame, you really weren't expecting to be face to face with juyeon - or jaehyun, honestly, given that jimin had been so heartbroken over the fact that jaehyun hadn't initiated the conversation yet.

not to mention the fact that she had made sure that the two of you were going out in the first place because of the whole jaehyun fiasco. so when you come face to face with the last person on the planet who should be in jimin's apartment, you're more than a little confused.

"oh, hey y/n. long time no see," jaehyun says with an easy smile, dimples showing that he had no clue that you knew that your best friend was waiting on a kind of serious conversation with him. you manage a tight smile before pulling shooters out of your purse, putting all four of them down on the counter in front of you.

"yeah. i thought it'd be a little longer though. jimin, i thought we were having a girls night?" you ask, eyes flashing at her when you turn out of view from jaehyun and juyeon. jimin just shrugs helplessly as juyeon steps in.

"don't blame her. i was the one who asked if we could tag along for the night. i promise we won't cause any trouble," juyeon says, and you turn to look at him, only to see him looking straight at jaehyun. his eyes dart between jaehyun and jimin before finally landing on you and you take the hint.

"oh. no worries. yeah, no worries at all, actually. hey, you know what i actually wanted to confirm something about tomorrow's plans with you if i could steal you for a couple seconds?" you say, leaving no room for denial as you wrap your arm in his and walk the both of you to the balcony, closing the door behind you.

"thank you for understanding - jaehyun wants to talk to jimin today about making things official but he's been so nervous about it that he's been putting it off. i figured that it would be better for me to come with him to make sure he doesn't chicken out. and catch you guys before you leave so that he doesn't sit and ferment in his feelings any longer," juyeon explains slowly, sure to refrain from turning around to see how things were going inside.

you lean over the metal bars of the balcony, the cold sinking into your skin in a refreshing way, the april air finally warming up enough to go out without needing a literal winter jacket.

"ahh. good idea. don't tell her i told you this but she was worried that he really wasn't into her," you say. juyeon snorts, a sound that's almost unbecoming from a man so handsome.

"isn't into her? he's head over heels for her. i don't think it's taken him more than thirty minutes to get into a relationship with someone if he wanted to. the fact that he took over a week to figure out his feelings means that he's serious. more serious than i've ever seen him." juyeon seems thoughtful as he trails off, letting his words sit on his tongue in a way that almost feels like he can truly feel the weight of the words.

"hm. or is just unsure of how he feels," you say, and juyeon looks at you strangely, turning so that he was leaning on the railing, his gaze fixated on you.

"are you really that cynical about men?" he asks chidingly, and you shrug.

"yeah. i mean. i don't know. i'm best friends with two of them so i know first hand how fucked up men can be. trust me, i pray to god every day for more patience before i fuck jeno or jaemin up for good," you say, and you can feel juyeon's presence grow cold at the mention of your best friends.

when you look at him though, he has nothing but warmth in his eyes and he smiles at you. "i will admit that there are a lot of messed up things that guys have done but it's not fair to categorize all men due to the faults of a few."

"uh-huh. and when men turn into heartbreakers after getting fucked over by one girl...it's okay?" you say, raising an eyebrow and you can feel juyeon trying to physically retract his statement.

"no. no. it's definitely not okay to hurt other people because you've been hurt. but give us some credit, okay? some of us are trying our best," juyeon says, and you watch as his eyes fall to your lips before dragging them upwards again.

"some of us are just trying to find our other half."

you're silent for a moment, and the moment is all you need to push off of the railings and turn to juyeon with a sad smile. "look juyeon, you're a great guy and i hate to nip things in the bud - especially with someone i get along so well with. but my friends are the most important people in my life. so i don't know what happened between you, jeno, or jaemin but i know that if it really came down to it, they take precedence."

juyeon nods, like he'd been expecting you to say as much. how, you don't understand, given that your reasoning had come out of pretty much left field. and for no real reason too. but men are predictable, easy to read, and all it takes is one moment to understand their intentions.

"yeah. i know. i figured you'd pick them. not that i'm trying to guilt you for that or that i expect you to pick me or anything but i still tried my best, you know," juyeon says casually, giving you a thinly suppressed heartbroken smile. you melt slightly as you turn to him, giving him a half shrug.

"i'm sorry. i'm sure your other half would be so lucky to have you," you say gently. you look at your phone, where jimin has texted you saying that she's going to have to bail on girls night as her and jaehyun had decided to stay in for the night. juyeon seemingly gets a similar text because when you look back inside to the apartment, jaehyun is holding hands with jimin, who uses her free hand to wave sheepishly at you as they recede backwards where the bedroom was.

"i guess we've overstayed our welcome," juyeon says with a laugh, opening the balcony door as the two of you make your way back inside to grab any personal belongings and leave before you witnessed something that would end up scarring you forever.

you eye the shooters and then exchange a look with juyeon.

“i know we’re not - whatever but honestly, i think that you’re good company and this kind of night doesn’t deserve go wasted,” you say, grabbing the shooters and juyeon’s hand and dragging him out of jimin’s apartment when you hear the very telltale sign of a bedroom door shutting down the hall.

juyeon takes one look at the shooters in your hand and the glint in your eyes before taking the two of the little bottles you offer to him.

“i can’t believe i’m doing this right now,” juyeon mutters under his breath, but his smile is lighthearted.

“what, grown men can’t drink pink whitney?” you ask, throwing a shooter back and immediately regretting the fact that you don’t have chasers with you. you may not be an amateur on the night scene but alcohol still always needed a chaser.

“no,” juyeon says, knocking back both of them a little too smoothly. “i meant taking shots with the girl who rejected me in front of her best friend’s apartment where her best friend and my best friend are fucking.”

you look at him, searching for any sense of genuine discontentedness but the way that juyeon’s eyes curve into teasing crescents convince you otherwise.

it would be so easy to choose him. so incredibly easy. but jeno’s face flashes through your mind and you find yourself taking a step back, shaking your head when juyeon looks at you questioningly.

“to the club!”

+++

there are two things that you learn about juyeon by the time you’re another two shots deep: a) he is an absolute gentleman - not just to you, but to the other people around the two of you as well. b) he is a very flirtatious drunk.

in fact, he manages the very big, very linebacker looking bouncer to let him into the club even though his name wasn’t on the list with nothing but a charming smile and an absolute inability to keep from flirting with everything and anything in sight.

which is funny to watch, especially from the other side of the bouncer, because every time juyeon says something particularly risqué, you can see the bouncer’s ears go bright red before he finally relents and lets juyeon in.

but it’s somehow less funny when he’s using those lines on you. it somehow makes your head dizzy and it makes you forget why you turned him down in the first place. you’re half-convinced that this had been juyeon’s plan all along. to turn on the charm to the max so that when you’re under the lights (that honestly might invoke epilepsy; why the fuck were they flying around the place like that), you forget all about jeno.

it’s a bad decision, you repeat to yourself as you watch juyeon make his way through the crowd to where you’re standing in an isolated, somewhat calmer corner. jeno and jaemin warned you against him for a reason. protect your peace, y/n.

and even while you repeat that to yourself over and over again, when juyeon’s hand holds yours precariously as he pulls you into the growing mess of bodies, you find it harder and harder to convince yourself that that was the truth. god, he looks good.

his hair has fallen messily across his forehead, contrasting the way it had been carefully gelled back before. he’s rolled up the sleeves of his button up to reveal his forearms, and you feel no matter than a man as your eyes trail the depths that planes of his chest promise from where they peek out of his half unbuttoned shirt.

you’re vaguely aware that there are various people waiting for you to either make a move or to push him away once and for all. it felt like every single person in the club was fixated upon the two of you - do you want him or not? because you’re holding up the fucking line. for you and your friend.

and so you take the plunge.

you move his hand from where it was innocently resting on your wrist and place it on the small of your back, smiling when juyeon takes the hint and draws you closer to him so that your chest is pressed against his.

“hey beautiful,” juyeon breathes as he looks down at you, almost in disbelief. “what are you doing here?”

you know, even tipsy, that he’s looking for a real answer. and you don’t want to play him - you don’t want to add to the list of heartbreak.

“i’m looking for someone to keep me company tonight,” you say and look up at him through your lashes, a coy smile playing on your lips when juyeon’s breath falters as you do so. “just for the night though. you know anyone who might interested?”

juyeon pulls you impossibly closer and you register the copious amounts of men (for you) and women (for him) that are turning away from the two of you, more than a little disappointed.

“yeah, i might know someone.” 

and with that, he spins you so that your back is pressed against his front, his arms caging you in protectively when he sees that a man is looking at you like he genuinely wants to eat you up.

you can feel your self-control slipping further and further away from you as the two of you just let the music fill you up, forgetting about your inhibitions as long as you had this music and him.

it’s too perfect though, and you realize as much when you make eye contact with jeno fucking lee across the club. right before he dips his head to whisper in some girl’s ear.

jaemin is right next to him, his arm laying casually on another girl and you can see the sheer panic in his eyes when he sees you, and then the confusion when he realizes just who you’re pressed up against. you watch as he leans over to whisper (yell; you’re sure that no one can whisper in an establishment threatening to break the sound barrier) something in jeno’s ear but he’s firmly shut down when jeno waves him off.

you scoff at that, turning around the pair of you around so that juyeon’s back was to the two idiots that you call your friends, now facing the dj booth.

the song switches to a much more upbeat song that you don’t recognize and you take it as your cue to push any and all thoughts of your friends out of your mind. you choose to give no apologies for the way that you spend your time - especially if your friends chose to give you no explanation for their behavior.

if they didn’t need to explain themselves, neither do you.

and it works for a while. for a while, all you can think of is the warmth that fills your body. from the alcohol, the heat of juyeon’s body pressed against yours, or even the excitement of the atmosphere; all if it is just so intoxicating.

you forget all about the fact act jeno and jaemin are just a few feet away, actively avoiding you (and doing a poor job of doing so) until juyeon spins you around, looking deep into your eyes in a way that makes you feel, heat rising to your cheeks as you watch his lips move.

“i know that you don’t want - honestly, whatever it is that you don’t want - but jeno and jaemin are here and you haven’t pushed me off of you. so i’m going to shoot my shot for one last time, y/n. and if you reject me this time, i think that we should go our separate ways,” juyeon says, his voice soft and gentle and yet somehow, you can hear every word he says with perfect clarity. 

you honestly don’t know what to say. juyeon had caught you in a bad moment with jeno and jaemin. more specifically, jeno. you didn’t want that to cloud your judgement though. you had known juyeon for a total of maybe a week. you had known jeno and jaemin for years and for those years, their opinions on the men in your life had very rarely been wrong. 

and yet, the boy that they had warned you against was pressed up against you and those two were on the other side of the club, arms wrapped around girls you knew they would forget about by the morning.

you sigh, stepping back from juyeon, the sheer ridiculousness of the situation making you sober up more than you want to. you hear the beat drop to ‘kiss me better’ by rihanna in the background building up and it seems like everything in the universe is just pushing you to give juyeon a chance.

but juyeon understand what you mean when you step away from him and he gives you one last, longing look before smiling, gently tugging you forward so that the two of you can make your way to a less crowded area.

“you wanna go home?” juyeon asks. you know that he’s asking for his own sake, almost as though he was asking for permission to get with someone else to nurse him through his rejection if you wouldn’t. but he’s a gentleman and he wouldn’t leave you for the wolves and so he asks you if you want to go home instead.

“yeah. i want to go home.”

juyeon nods, already pulling out his phone. “let me call you an uber. and y/n? i’m not upset. i’m just glad that i know i did everything i could. jeno’s a lucky guy for you to care this much about what he says and thinks.”

you want to disagree with him. he’s my friend. of course his opinions matter. sorry. it’s not personal. i actually liked spending time with you.

but even as these thoughts battle in your mind, you find yourself unable to say any of the words out loud. 

jimin was your friend but that stopped you very rarely from doing whatever you wanted to do in the end. jaemin would often yell at you for your terrible affinity for working yourself to the bone and you brushed his concern to the side every time. but it was different with jeno. it had always been different with jeno.

you’re too drunk to think about the implications of any of that though so you just smile once again, leaning up to press a chaste kiss to juyeon’s cheek.

“you’re so good, juyeon. regardless of what anyone says.”

and with that, you step into the uber that has reached the club in record time and head home.

+++

you’re not surprised by the text you get from jimin in the morning. or the one from jaemin. in fact, there are only two texts that surprise you when you manage to finally look at your phone with clear enough eyes.

jiminy cricket: OMG i’m so sorry abt last night love!! heard you went out w juyeon tho ;) we need to debrief fr

jaejaeminna: sorry i didn’t get a chance to say hi before you left

juyeon lee: did you get home safe?

ur mom (jeno): can we talk?

you respond to jimin with a quick for sure, girlie! before stepping into the shower, electing to ignore the rest of the messages in your phone. your roommate, jessica, a girl that you barely interacted with, given that she was usually at her boyfriend’s place or you were at jeno’s or jimin’s had kindly left extra pancakes that she had clearly made before she dashed out of the house.

you munch on them slowly, sending her a message of profound gratitude as you try to digest the events of last night (as well as the delicious pancakes), making sure to tousle your hair every so often to get it to dry faster.

first, jimin and jaehyun had clearly made things somewhat official (or at least were on the same page) which meant that you probably wouldn’t have to try and help jimin decipher what that entire situation was. a win, really. second, you and juyeon had gone clubbing together and had shared more than one or two intimate moments. third, you shot him down once and for all. fourth, he still called you an uber and made sure you made it home safe. fifth, you saw jeno and jaemin at the club and neither of them said anything to you.

this was officially the longest that you had gone without speaking to jeno - or even jaemin. 

even the stupid tiktok’s had faded away to nothingness by the end of last week from jaemin, which meant that something was so incredibly wrong, it wasn’t even funny.

also, jeno never said can we talk. 

it was usually a much more casual wanna get chinese? or even a bring your stupid ass over here cause jaemin misses you. that was more his speed in his form of apology or trying to make it clear to you that the two of you were back to normal now. he’d never acknowledge the two or three days of radio silence, electing to just pretend that they never happened in the first place.

so going from not talking at all to suddenly such a loaded question was new and kind of surreal for you. not to mention that jaemin’s last text to you was also indicative that something was seriously off between the three of you. the text before that had been a tiktok of a man sitting in a car yelling, “it’s the way you act!” and now it was that he didn’t say hi at the club.

you sigh, debating all of your options carefully. 

you were obviously going to have to talk to jeno about the situation at some point. and honestly, you were going to have to have a serious conversation about the fact that he would do this every so often because it’s getting way too much for you to handle. it wasn’t as though you were doing something wrong - jaemin would call you out on your behavior, even if jeno didn’t. 

you were left to decipher what exactly it was that had jeno in such a pissy mood and you would have to try and figure out what it is on your own because he’s a grown man that doesn’t know what communication meant. for someone who always warned you against the toxicity of men, he was doing a pretty great job of showing you exactly why to avoid them. 

pushing all thoughts of jeno and everything else to the side, you decide to take the day as a self-care day for yourself. lord knows that with everything you had going on, self-care was the one thing you desperately needed. of many things, really, but taking a walk and soul food was going to have to do.

you’re just putting on a face mask (one of the korean ones that you had had to sell your left foot to pay the shipping for) when your doorbell rings and you hate the way that you already know who’s at the door even before you step to the entryway, where the monitor is to see who is buzzing for you.

you’re greeted by jeno’s face, alone, looking worse for the wear as he ruffles his hair, shifting from foot to foot as he waits for you to either let him in or at least press the intercom to speak with him. you’re trying to make a decision and you know that decision, as trivial as it seems, would be what would set up your friendship with him in the future.

were you really going to give him another chance? even as he continued to mess up this hard?

you don’t say anything in the intercom but the faint buzzing noise that echoes in the monitor is response enough as jeno opens the door that has opened once you pressed the button, effectively solidifying your decision.

he was jeno. your jeno. you couldn’t just not listen to what he had to say.

the time that jeno takes to make it to the fourth floor where your apartment was seemed to have stretched on for eternity. you weren’t sure the last time that jeno had been in here (last weekend) but suddenly everything in the apartment was just too messy.

you panic and rush to clean everything in sight before you pause awkwardly. this is just jeno. the same boy who had come over and thrown up on your birthday after drinking too much at your party. the same boy who would be sitting in his room screaming into his headset as he played video games, having no regard for you and jaemin spending quality quiet time together. 

and he was also the boy who asked for space when you needed him the most.

so you put down your weapon of choice (a swiffer mop) and wait for the eventual knock at the door that finally comes about a half second later. you take a deep breath before opening the door, coming face to face with your ‘best friend’ of the past three years. 

the little monitor had done the damage little justice. the eyeballs under jeno’s eyes were deep and purple, with his cheekbones protruding a little more than you remember them to, and his gaze deep and sorrowful. 

but somehow, you could look past all of that because your gaze is caught by something else - the purple and very telling hickey on his neck. he’s clearly made an attempt to cover it up with what you assume is whatever foundation you might have left at their place on the nights that you’re too lazy to come home before work. the attempt isn’t all that successful, given that your foundation is about three hundred shades too dark for his skin (which is as pale as a ghost around this time of year) but you appreciate the effort.

not really.

jeno looks uncharacteristically shy as he stands in the living room, having switched out his shoes for his slippers that he bought specifically for your apartment once him and jaemin started coming over more often. they usually fought over ‘jeno’s’ slippers (they had peaches on them while ‘jaemin’s’ had ducks) but jaemin usually conceded to jeno.

usually, he’d be sprawled out on the sofa with little more than a half-hearted ‘hey’ and bags of chinese takeout on the kitchen counter but you see none of that now. now, he looked like a lost puppy, shuffling awkwardly to stand next to the couch.

it would almost be funny if it weren’t for the fact that the two of you haven’t spoken in a week. or the hickey.

“has it ever occurred to you that we might act like more than friends?” 

the question is sudden, breaking your nostalgia and bringing your train of thought to a screeching halt.

“excuse me?” your voice is calmer than you thought it would be in your head as you spin on your heel to look at jeno in the eye. he licks his lips, a nervous habit that he’d picked up from you, but his eyes don’t shift from yours, decidedly steady. he’s thought this for a while, you realize belatedly. it was just a question of how long and what that really meant.

“i mean you leave your foundation at my place and i buy slippers for yours. i can’t stand olives but when we get pizza, i get olives anyway so that you can pick them off of my slices and eat them. you don’t know your left from right but you still drive forty-five minutes down and back to the bakery to get iced lemon poundcake every time i’m upset.

“i can’t stand it when you meet a decent guy for once in your life and i go off the radar but we - i can’t spend more than a few days away from you. so, i’m always showing up at your apartment with chinese food when the last thing i want to do is hear about you raving about your new date who has a job at amazon and wears real rolex watches while i’m still eating instant ramen and trying to get a grip on life.

“the worst part is that i think i’ve always known. even last night, i was falling into my old pattern of using people to get over you, y/n. in between trying to figure out why i couldn’t click with anyone else besides you and trying to figure out why i feel so empty every time i feel like you’re slipping away from me, i think i figured it out. sure, i hate juyeon because of who he is and what he’s done in the past but i hate him even more because he used to be just like me. and now he’s changed so much and become such a good person. the fact that he’s the bigger, better, older, stronger version of me with his life together freaks me out so much because what if you replace me with him? and then i lose the one person i think i’ve ever properly fallen for and one of my best friends all in one go? and it’s all so selfish but when i have ever tried to hide myself from you, y/n?”

your mind is spinning. jeno is heaving by the end of his rambling. you can’t seem to find your grip on reality. everything is just wrong. it’s all wrong. everything is wrong. what?

jeno lee. playboy extraordinaire. mr. couldn’t be tied down. the boy who came home with a new broken heart in his jar of hearts that he hid deep inside his mind so he wouldn’t have to think of the unintentional consequences of having an unavailable pool of love.

and here he was, standing next to the couch in the living room, looking at you with so much anger, confusion, and sheer love in his eyes that you’re almost upset with yourself that you hadn’t seen it sooner. had he always looked at you like that?

you don’t know what to say though. you can’t even tell if he’s still talking, by the way that the blood is rushing in your head like an unforgiving tsunami has broken loose. you can’t hear anything, much too preoccupied with your own thoughts to even think of listening to his. 

you vaguely register the fact that you and jeno are somehow sitting on opposite ends of the couch, a good entire seat away from each other. that was good, at least. you’re sure that your legs would’ve given out on you at some point if you had remained standing.

“why do you hate juyeon so much?”

the question doesn’t seem to faze him as much as you wished it would. what was it with men and not being stunned by the most random questions or thoughts you can come up with? it somewhat frustrated you that you couldn’t stun them with the same shock factor that they seemed to utilize on you.

jeno sighs, raking a hand through his messy hair as he struggles to come up with the right words to say. or honestly, any non-stupid words.

“juyeon was actually one of the reasons why i came to snu in the first place. he was kind of like my mentor - a guy that i looked up to a lot in high school. he was one of my older friend’s roommate so when i came to check out snu, he toured me around and showed me his entire lifestyle. i was a senior in high school back then and he was just a sophomore but i swear, i’d never clicked with someone that fast before.

“he’s always been super smart and incredibly charming. and back when i met him, as a stupid senior in high school, i thought that everything that he had was what i wanted. he had a new girl at his apartment any time he wanted and always seemed like he had the entire college wrapped around his finger.” jeno gets up, looking frustrated as he starts pacing back and forth between the walls of the living room of the apartment.

“long story short, i caught him making out with my girlfriend at the time over the summer between high school and college. and it all came crashing down. in hindsight, maybe i shouldn’t have hated him nearly as much as i did but the fact that i couldn’t see that he had no qualms of getting with anyone who wanted to get with him hurt me. everything i had idolized came crashing down when i saw the two of them.” 

jeno stops pacing, looking down at his hands, rough and raw from the biting winds outside. “it just - it just hurt y/n. and it made it so incredibly easy to just not believe in love anymore. and then i met you and you came into college looking for the one and it was just so hard not to believe in love. when you said you were going out with juyeon, it took me back to the darkest parts of my past mentally. ridiculous? weak? yeah. i know. but i couldn’t help it.”

“it’s not weak or ridiculous, jeno,” you say gently, finding your voice once more. “i’m just hurt that you didn’t tell me before. i mean, i thought i was your best friend!”

jeno laughs drily, a grating sound that tugs at your heart strings. “but he’s gone clean, y/n. he’s everything that i couldn’t be and so much more. he’s near perfect. i couldn’t stop you from finding ‘the one’ that you’ve been dreaming about since i’ve known you. even if that meant that i finally had to let the past go. even if it meant that i had to give up on being able to love you.”

you can’t help the tears that spring to your eyes. “jeno…”

jeno shakes his head, looking at you with watery eyes, dragging his red hands across them roughly. “stop. i don’t need pity. i just…i just wanted clarity. have you always thought of me as a friend? was i making up everything in my head? did - did i imagine that we could’ve had something this whole time?”

you’re at a loss for words. jeno wasn’t wrong. you’d gone to the ends of the earth to make jeno happy. any time he was upset, you’d drop everything to go get that goddamn lemon cake. you couldn’t go more than a week without him. even if the entire world went to shit, you’d always thought that you and jeno would go down together, fighting side by side. if it really came down to choosing between your friends, some part of you knew that you’d always choose jeno before jaemin or jimin.

and some part of you wonders if you’d always had that much affection for him.

“i don’t know,” you say honestly. jeno’s face falls, and an awkward silence falls between the two of you, with his feet pointed to the door and muscles tensed to move. you know that if you don’t come up with the words to say something that’ll convince him to stay, you’ll have given him no reason to. you know he’s going to leave.

no matter what, you cannot lose jeno, you realize. he’s the one part of your life that cannot leave. he’s the person that buys slippers for your house. he’s the boy who can’t stand when he has to compete for your attention. he’s the man who’s shoulder you cry on when your heart suffers even the smallest scratch. 

he’s your jeno.

“i don’t know,” you begin, rushing to continue when you see jeno’s crestfallen expression. “but it’s all so sudden, jeno. you’ve been thinking about your feelings for a long while. i’ve honestly never considered the possibility of - of us being more than friends. of being together. maybe i’ve had feelings for you this whole time without knowing. maybe my ‘one’ has been you this whole time. maybe we’re better off as friends! i don’t know anything.”

jeno’s breath catches as he realizes what the hidden implication in your words is.

“but i’m willing to find out if you are.”

+++

after the enlightening conversation that you’d had with jeno that morning, you’d made plans with him to go on a proper date on wednesday, a day that you had nothing but boring meetings and jeno only had two classes. the two of you had decided to first go on the date and then try to figure out how you felt about each other from there. 

you’d also taken it upon yourself to curve juyeon once and for all. he was a great guy and you were sure that he’d be a great person to whoever he’s meant to be with but after reminding him that you were distinctly uninterested (and apologizing if you’d insinuated that you wanted to see him as an anything after that night), you’d deleted his number and all thoughts of him from your mind.

jaemin had been equally easy to make up with. you understood - after all, jaemin was jeno’s friend first and foremost. even if he didn’t necessarily agree with jeno and his tendencies, being his friend first meant that he had to prioritize jeno and his feelings. he was relieved to hear that jeno had finally grown the balls (verbatim) to confess the painstaking secret that he had been holding onto for the past three years.

“three years? he’s liked me since he met me? and you never said anything, jaemin?” you say incredulously, thanking the barista with a quick smile before grabbing your coffee, rushing to beat the morning sidewalk traffic as you walk to office.

jaemin’s face on your screen is mostly covered by his covers - a sign that he’s either skipping a class (ancient world history) or avoiding some work that he has to do. it was both, but he would concede neither to you.

“it wasn’t my place to say anything,” jaemin says finally, and you finally look at him properly through the little facetime box, watching him drag his hand over his face. he looks as though he’s aged about ten years in the time that you haven’t seen him - which was only a few days ago, technically. 

“and besides, you saw us at the club. did it look like jeno was exercising any type of common sense? clearly not. he wasn’t ready to listen to the truth, no matter who was delivering it. so there was no point in trying to make him to his senses,” jaemin continues, wrapping his blanket around himself a little tighter. “it didn’t help that his coping mechanism thus far has been to just run away from his issues, forget they exist, and then use a distraction to pretend that he was never affected by it in the first place.”

you sigh. this much was obvious to you as well. the day that jeno had come over, that had been one of the first things that you had confronted him about. he had presented a similar explanation then as jaemin was now but even if he didn’t say anything, you knew that was the truth.

“that reminds me - jimin texted me this morning asking if you were okay. have you talked to her since friday night?” jaemin asks and you groan. in all of this mess, you had completely neglected to debrief jimin and fill her in on everything that was happening.

“oh shit, i completely forgot to call her,” you say, swiping into the company building, smiling as you pass a familiar face. “i’ll talk to her tonight.”

“yeah. she seemed kinda worried. apparently juyeon told jaehyun that you two had cut it off for good and told him about you seeing jeno and i at the club. i guess jaehyun went and told jimin,” he says sullenly. you roll your eyes at his dramatics.

“just because you’re the only one getting no action doesn’t mean that you have to be jealous of jimin,” you say.

“no - what? no! it’s not that. i’m single by choice, thank you very much. i could have a hundred girls lining up for me if i wanted,” he says, clearly miffed. you stifle a laugh; it was so easy to rile men up. “but it’s like a violation of bro code. jaehyun knows that jeno doesn’t fuck with juyeon and he also knows that jimin is one of your best friends. like what did he think? that jimin wouldn’t tell jeno and i or that she wouldn’t talk to you about it?”

you blink, completely lost. “i swear to god, i think guys have more complex interpersonal links than girls do. i followed like maybe 20% of what you said.”

jaemin sticks his tongue out at you childishly. “whatever. don’t you have a job to do?”

“don’t you have a class that you’re paying thousands of dollars to take to go to?”

“touché.”

with that, jaemin ends the call but even as you finally sit down in your little glass office, you know that he’s absolutely not going to go to that class. it didn’t help that you’d taken the class last semester and had handed him your notes. at this point, he basically only went to take the tests - after studying your notes for maybe 10 minutes right before.

you’re about to call jaemin again to make sure that he actually gets up to go to class when there’s a knock on the glass of your office.

“y/n? someone’s ordered breakfast for you,” haerin, an underpaid and quite frankly undervalued intern at your office, says. she’s holding a little pastry box and a straw without any coffee. “the person who dropped it off said that he figured you’d already have coffee but you probably forgot the straw.”

you don’t even need to hear the name of your mystery courier boy because you already know who it is.

jeno.

+++

“he brought you breakfast? to your office?” jimin asks incredulously. you had called her soon after haerin had handed you the breakfast (with your favorite pastry inside the box). you seriously needed to hear a girl’s perspective on all of this, even if it was coming from the most romantic person you knew.

“yeah. i mean he’s done it before - like during my first couple of weeks of working, remember how stressed i was? he bought me lunch and dropped it off at the office, back when i was just an intern running around and didn’t have time to go and get it myself.” you blink, looking at jimin worriedly. “that’s not weird, is it?”

jimin ponders for a moment before shaking her head. “i mean you guys were best friends. i’d do it for you. but i don’t know. i feel like guys and girls who are just friends are more like siblings and i feel like girls who are really close are basically like a married couple.”

“why do you and jaemin always say weird shit that confuses me?”

“no - it’s like…like with a truly platonic set of girl and guy friends, they’re always doing sibling-like things. for example, i think i’ve seen you nearly give jaemin a black eye for taking a bite out of your pizza. but if i wanted a bite of your pizza, you’d probably honestly give me the whole slice. i don’t know, but it’s a dynamic that i’ve seen with all of my female friends compared to my guy friends. but you and jeno have never been like that.”

“i have most definitely tried to fight jeno over pizza. i’m sure i’ve fought him over much less, to be honest,” you say and jimin shrugs.

“i’m not here to make you feel one way or another about him. your feelings are yours to figure out. but as an outsider looking in, even if you were to fight him about something stupid like that, it was because that’s how you guys talked to each other. it’s not like you’re actually going to rip that pizza away from him. in the end, if he really wanted it, you’d concede to him. you don’t really do that for siblings. it’s charged in a different way.

“i’d give up my life for my older sister. but if she even looks at me the wrong way, i’m ready to pull out her hair. or my younger brother? he genuinely gets pleasure out of making me have to redo my entire skincare routine because he switched around all of the labels. would he send me breakfast to my office just because? fuck no. would he give me his kidney in a heartbeat? hell yeah.”

jimin looks down before looking up at you once more. “and even if none of that was true, you don’t look at jeno like you look at jaemin.”

this startles you out of your own attempts of running parallels between what jimin was describing and how you and jaemin were or how you and jeno were.

“what do you mean? how do i look at jeno?” you say, your voice coming out shockingly soft and confused.

“you know how you were kicking yourself about not realizing how jeno looks at you? yeah. that’s how i feel looking at you looking at jeno. i didn’t want to say anything to you about it. honestly, mostly because i hated seeing you get down every time he would just disappear from your life. i don’t know that as your friend, i should be encouraging you at all. but he makes you more happy than i’ve seen anyone else make you,” jimin says. “and that’s reason enough for me to be happy for you. to tell you what you don’t realize yourself. even when you dated other people, you always looked at them differently than you looked at jeno.”

“how do i look at jeno, jimin.” it’s not a question and both you and jimin know that you know the answer to what you’re truly asking.

“you look at him like you’re finally ready to love. like you’re realizing again that maybe jeno was the one you’d been waiting for every time.”

+++

your first date with jeno had been a full course of a dumpster fire with a side of natural disaster.

after your (jimin induced) realization that maybe you’d actually had feelings for jeno longer you’d thought, you find yourself going through the day as if you were on autopilot. jeno sends you breakfast on tuesday and wednesday morning as well, although he doesn’t mention a word of it when the two of you are texting.

at least nothing had changed there, thus far. he still sent you those stupid reaction memes that he found on pinterest and never failed to make fun of your typos in the group chat with you, jaemin, jeno, and now jimin. 

you hadn’t seen him since friday night but by the time wednesday rolls around, you wish that you had a little bit more time. you’re still reeling from your newfound enlightenment and some childish, hidden romantic side of you wants to bask in the uncertainty and the almost juvenile way that your heart beats a little faster whenever you think of the date tonight.

the two of you had decided that you were going to try and approach it as a truly romantic date, rather than the quick food runs that you were used to with him. which meant you were going to have to clean up and put on a dress - a sight that you’re sure jeno was truly not used to seeing after so long of you lounging around his apartment in sweats all day.

since this was the first proper date you were going on (you insisted that the date with juyeon didn’t count, since you had only gone with the intention of being a good friend to jimin.) in a good while, you’d called in the big guns for reinforcement. the only reinforcements you had, but that was besides the point.

“i still don’t get why you’re curling your hair. it looks so pretty naturally,” jimin laments, setting down the section of hair that she was working as she moves onto the next.

“i know. it’s kinda silly but i wanna feel cute - like i wanna look feminine and feel cute when i see jeno. it’s stupid and i swear it goes against everything feminism has taught me but i just want to feel and look like my inner girly-girl has been begging me to,” you explain, pouting when you catch jimin laughing through the reflection of the vanity mirror where you were sitting.

“baby, that’s not silly at all. and it doesn’t go against feminism to want to dress up and look cute! reminder: feminism is about empowering other women and helping everyone have the freedom to choose what they want for themselves. whether that’s dressing up cute or being a stay-at-home mom or being a working woman or some combination of all of the above and then some,” jimin says and then there’s a wicked glint in her eyes. “it’s also very feminist to get men to do your bidding, i think. and hey, if you have to put on a little black dress to do that, then i’m all for it.”

“you sound absolutely ridiculous,” you scoff, but a little smile tugs at the corner of your lips anyway. 

“speaking of little black dresses, you’re wearing a matching set underneath, right?” jimin teases. you swat at her with your free hand that wasn’t applying glitter to your inner eye. “i’m holding a hot iron, you psycho!”

“jimin! i’m not going to have sex on the first date. not that i’m above it but jeno is different,” you say and jimin unfortunately catches the underlying longing tone in your words.

“oh he’s different, is he? girl, where having you been hiding all these feelings for so long?” she says and you find yourself not being able to come up with a rebuttal. honestly, you didn’t know how either of you had been so blind to your feelings for each other. and suddenly, a cold rush of fear runs down your spine.

you twist in your chair, ignoring jimin’s protest that she was almost done with your hair. “wait. you don’t think that this is a mistake, right? like what if he thinks that he has feelings for me but it’s been the chase this whole time. or what if we just don’t click like we think we will? what if i lose my friend and the person that i think i’ve liked for longer than i’d like to admit in one go.”

jimin’s expression turns serious at that. “y/n, you’ve only had a week to figure out your feelings. it’s okay if you want to raincheck and then go on the date when you’re more sure of how you feel, if that’s what you want.”

“that’s not what i want. i think that i actually have liked him for longer than i think. it’s just been so hard to realize that because he’s always been with someone and i’ve always been waiting for the one. it just scares me to think that maybe the one that i’ve been looking for is someone who actually doesn’t think that i’m the one, you know? i don’t know if i could live with losing him.” you blink furiously, willing yourself to not let a single tear fall and ruin all of your hard work for the past couple of hours.

“trust me, y/n, if you’re sure about your feelings and if he really is the one, then everything will work out. have a little faith in the universe.” no sooner does jimin say this, the buzzer rings and you and jimin look at each other in panic.

“it’s still 5:50! he said he was coming at 6:00!” you exclaim and jimin rushes to finish your hair. “you have to distract him! i still have to put my dress on!”

“oh my good lord, i forgot about that. okay, you focus on getting ready, i’m running!” jimin says, cursing when she trips over the cord to the curling iron as she’s running to open the door for jeno.

you shimmy out of your pajamas in hurried movements as you hear jimin say that jeno could come up but that the elevator was broken so he’d have to come up by stairs.

“there’s no sign that says the elevator is broken though,” you hear jeno say as you’re caught in one of the legs of your pajamas, shaking it off wildly as jimin tries to come up with a random explanation on why exactly the elevator had no sign.

“yeah, it actually just broke. like right now. like it was so recent that they didn’t have a chance to put a sign up yet. in fact, i bet that we’re in a space-time pocket and time just moves faster for you and slower for people inside. maybe this building is narnia or something,” jimin says. the room is silent for a moment before you hear the sound of the elevator dinging and you wince, your movements no doubt mirrored by jimin.

you can already see jeno’s amused smirk as jimin says that the elevators must’ve been repaired by the aliens in the space-time pocket. but they were living in a speed that was faster than human senses.

you’d seriously have to buy her a drink when this date was over, you think to yourself as you struggle to zip up the back of the dress. you don’t think that you’ve heard jimin pull out that much utter bullshit in one breath before.

you have heard jaemin say something similar before though, so it made sense that jeno was neither fazed nor taking her seriously. not that anyone could take that seriously, anyway. 

you’ve finally managed to contort your body in the right position to zip up the dress when you hear the door open and jeno saying something to jimin.

“i know i’m early. and i know she’s definitely not ready. but i found these earrings in my apartment and i figured that she’d want to wear these. if i know her at all, she’s wearing black and she always says that she loves to wear these earrings with her black outfits.”

you open the door just slightly for jimin to slip into your bedroom and deposit the earrings in your hands. 

“how do i look?” you whisper, waiting for jimin’s reaction with bated breath.

jimin smiles at you and wraps you up in a tight hug, careful not to wrinkle the silky fabric of your dress. 

“like a dream.”

that works for you and you take a deep breath before opening to door to see jeno. it’s just jeno, you remind yourself. and although it’s not just jeno because you don’t know if he’s ever been just jeno to you, the words serve as a good reminder.

he’s jeno. your jeno. not someone to be afraid of. someone who’s seen every side of you and still wants to see more sides.

you walk into the living room, where jeno is sitting on the couch, scrolling through his phone (tiktok, as you can tell by sounds of football highlights). there’s a bouquet of flowers, gardenias, laying across his lap and he’s clearly cleaned himself well. he’s wearing a black button down and rolled up the sleeves to reveal the tattoo that he’d gotten halfway through freshman year.

it’s a tattoo of jeno’s favorite quote from his favorite movie, chappie. you are made for good.

he introduced you to the movie early into your friendship, and had been thrilled when he realized that you liked as much as he did. in fact, the same quote that he had gotten tattooed on his forearm was the one that you had custom-made for your phone case. huh.

how long had you and jeno been doing things like this? since the very beginning, you balk.

“you look beautiful.” jeno’s voice is low, softer than you remember and your instinct is to counter him and say that you always look beautiful but he looks a little too sweet under the light of skylights for you to find it in yourself to do so. 

“thank you.” you lean closer, eyes crinkling into a smile when you recognize the cologne that jeno was wearing. “is that the cologne i got you in sophomore year?”

jeno nods and smiles with you. “jaemin said that my normal one was too…fuckboy.”

“the sauvage one? hell yeah, it is. i think that most girls have a trauma response to that cologne at this point,” you say, and suddenly everything is so simple again. it’s your jeno, after all.

“it’s a good thing i listened to jaemin, then.”

you cock your head and you’re vaguely sure that he means more than just his cologne choices.

“yeah, i guess it was.”

+++

pretty much everything from there went completely wrong. for one, jeno’s car (which was infamous for coming up with the most random issues at the worst times) had decided to blare with just about every warning known to man almost as soon as the two of you sit in the car. 

by the time that jaemin arrives to where the two of you had pulled over to take the car to the car dealership, jimin offering her car instead, the two of you were already about thirty minutes late to your reservation. 

it had taken a lot of persuasion on jeno’s end to convince the restaurant to let the two of you sit and eat anyway, although you were past half an hour late for your reservation. as if that weren’t enough, the restaurant refused to accommodate for your dietary restrictions (even though they promised that they did on their website!), causing you to only be able to order an overpriced caesar salad with maybe three vegetables and too much vinegar.

then, as you were leaving, you found out that the valet had parked pretty much on the other side of the country. and it was pouring rain. to the extent that your phone had gone off about three times with warnings that there was a flood watch in seoul.

which meant that jeno had had to book it to run to get the car and pull it up to the front of the restaurant, where you were waiting, shivering even with jeno’s jacket around your shoulders. and due to the layout of the restaurant’s front, you were forced to run in the run in the rain anyway to dive into the passenger seat of jimin’s car. 

and yet, even with all of this, you couldn’t help but laugh. the date was perfect. every time something occurred, jeno handled it with ease, allowing you to just turn off your brain and let him take care of everything for you. he would always turn to you with a silly smile and another story of how the two of you always seemed to find yourselves in the most unbelievable situations.

through all of this, you finally understand what you had been thinking that you wanted this whole time in your wait for the one. not someone who made sure that everything was perfect and that the date was always planned out to the t.

no, it was someone who made you feel like you were having a good time, even when everything was going to shit. 

you look at jeno, recounting some story about how jaemin and him had snuck into a wedding once to eat food after days of cooking instant ramen in their dorm in freshman year, laughing so hard that you could barely hear the pelting rain outside. and seeing him smile like that, feeling yourself smile like that, just because you knew that he was smiling, your heart finally felt at ease.

definitely not a platonic type of love, you decide.

“hey, you okay?” jeno asks, eyes trained on the road in front of him as he navigates to your apartment. “you seem kind of checked out.”

you smile, shaking your head. “yeah. i’m all good. i was…i was just thinking about how stupid i’d been to think that i’d been looking everywhere but right in front of me for ‘the one’ when i didn’t even know what i wanted.”

“yeah? what do you want?” jeno says, his grip on the steering wheel growing tighter as he waits nervously for your answer. you look at him and jeno has to fight himself to keep looking at the road when he wants nothing but to look at you and commit this vision of you to memory.

your glinting earrings and your twinkling eyes under the seoul night sky. your drenched dress and jeno’s jacket across your lap. your wet hair that still somehow looked sexy as you flipped it over your shoulder. your soft smile and seeing you finally look at him the way that he’d been looking at you this whole time. he wants to capture it all within his mind and never forget the way you were looking at him now.

“i want someone to make me feel like that even the stupidest situations were easy to overcome when i’m with them,” you say softly. 

jeno pauses at that, heart beating a little too fast to be good for him. a smile tugs at his lips, no matter how stoic he tries to look. “oh? does this mean you think this date was a success?”

“i think this date was an utter flop,” you say drily and jeno rolls his eyes at that. “but i think my date was pretty great. i’m not going to lie, i’m still a little hungry though.”

“i still can’t believe that they gave you a bowl of lettuce and charged like $30 for that,” jeno says, shaking his fist dramatically. “i’m going to write a scathing yelp review.”

“i mean i didn’t have to pay so that yelp review’s all yours,” you say before turning to him with a sly smirk. “aren’t you going to ask what i’m hungry for though?”

“what do you mean? what are you hungry for?” he asks, turning onto your street. 

“ramen. wanna eat ramen and go?”

jeno has to use all of his self-will to keep from hydroplaning as he pulls into your apartment complex. “y/n. you want me to eat ramen and go?”

“yeah. i meant that literally though. you wanna eat ramen and then maybe ramen?” you ask, batting your eyelashes innocently at him as he parks jimin’s car in your designated parking spot.

“uh, isn’t jimin at your place?” jeno asks, feeling his heart skip a beat when you shake your head no. 

“jaehyun’s apartment is like two complexes down so she just walked over. why? you don’t want to eat ramen with me?” you say, faking a sullen pout. jeno rushes to correct himself, resting his hand on your thigh gently.

“look, y/n, i think that you’re incredibly attractive and i really like you. but that’s - that’s my issue. i like you so much that i don’t want to make you feel like i was trying to get in your pants and then do something that you or i regret. and i know that you’re probably just saying that to get a rise out of me but hear me when i say that i want to take things slow. for your sake, not mine.

“i’ve been thinking about my feelings for so long and i’ve been thinking about how in love with you i am for longer than you might think. to me, sex would kinda just be the next step in taking our relationship to the next level. but i know you. you’ve really only been thinking about this about us for the past week or so. i don’t want to make you feel like you’re obligated to like me if we sleep together. i know that sex isn’t just sex for girls; or maybe it is but isn’t for you, no matter how much you tell me otherwise. and i honestly don’t know where i’m going with any of this but y/n, my feelings for you are true.

“i want to take things slow because if we take that next step, i want it to be when you’re sure. when you’re sure of how you feel for me. maybe i’m not the one for you, y/n. and as much it kills me to say that, it’s a very real possibility. you deserve someone who’d bring down the moon and gift it to you if that’s what you wanted. and i know that i would do that for you. but i need you to believe that too. wholeheartedly. i’ll wait for you for as long as you need. you’re my person, y/n. i’ve waited three years - granted, three very controversial years - for you. i’ll wait three more if that’s what you need.”

you’d said the ramen thing very jokingly, only half-serious about your proposition. but hearing jeno now, you’re happy that you had. you’re not sure that jeno would’ve told you how felt about you and just how deep his feelings ran for you if you hadn’t. he was right, of course. he knew you better than anyone else, after all.

so you kiss him on the cheek good night and open the passenger side door.

you’re about to close the door behind you, ready to bid him goodbye for the night when you lean down to say something to him.

“thank you for waiting for me, jeno.”

+++

turns out, romantic jeno is just like just friends jeno. mostly because you don’t think that you’ve ever truly been just friends. he’s quiet, teases you at any given moment, and listens to you recount even the most boring stories about work.

you went on a couple more dates with all of the formalities before slowly growing more casual with each other once more. neither of you had brought up the topic of physical touch after that night but lately, it was getting harder and harder to find places on jeno’s face to kiss besides his lips.

not to mention that you’d caught jeno’s lingering gaze on your lips (among other things) more and more often. so, just like everything else in your relationship, your first kiss was completely unexpected.

jeno had come over with chinese takeout, since the two of you (honestly, you had made the decision and jeno was just along for the ride) had decided to start the indiana jones franchise together. 

you didn’t know what it was. the tousled hair? the way his arm was casually tugging you into to his side, covering your entire side as you cuddled closer into him? the way he was only a breath away from you? the look in eyes when he tears his eyes away from to look at you with the sweetest gaze?

everything. all of the above. you lean up to peck him swiftly on the lips. 

jeno freezes, eyes going round as his entire face turns bright red. it was hard to think that just two months ago, jeno had been walking around with a girl on either side of him at a frat party, the promise of a good night hidden in his smile when he looks like a deer caught in headlights at the slightest sign of physical touch.

“did - did you just kiss me?” he stutters, and you shrug playfully, looking back the movie in front of you. he shifts you so that you’re facing him, unable to look away as he turns to face you.

“i thought we’re taking it slow?” he asks and you smile coyly.

“a month and a half of dating wasn’t enough to convince you that i actually like you the way that you like me, jeno?”

that’s all jeno needs to hear because no sooner do you say this does jeno dip his head to press his lips to yours, gentle and undemanding. he’s soft and careful, almost as if he were afraid that you were going to disappear if he chased after you too hard.

but you’d been waiting long enough and this was jeno so you pull away from him, a horde of butterflies settling in your stomach when he chases after your lips, eyes still closed, as if he couldn’t bear to part from them.

“jeno, i’m going to do something and you have got to tell me if you want me to stop, okay?” you whisper against his lips softly and jeno nods, opening his eyes so that you can see the look of absolute love and trust in them.

you get up and hook your leg over both of his so that you were effectively sitting on his lap, poised dangerously so that you could part from him at the slightest sign of discomfort. it never comes, though because as soon as you do this, jeno pulls you in closer so that his chest was pressed flush against yours.

“are you sure?” he says, confirming for the last time as you see the last strings of his resolve snap.

“god, jeno, i love you. now please just kiss me.”

his lips are pressed against yours the second the words leave your mouth, a little rougher and more insistent than last time. his arms are wrapped around your back and waist, eyes closed and you lose yourself in the feeling of being so close to him.

needless to say, that night had been a long night.

+++

“i look like an idiot,” your boyfriend complains, checking himself out in the mirror of your vanity anyway. you giggle, pressing a kiss to his temple so that you don’t mess up his make-up, carefully dodging the stray glare that he offers you.

“you look beautiful, jeno. and besides, this is for a good cause, remember?” you remind him as you make sure that your costume looks good as well.

“i don’t remember what me dressing up as a spandex wearing animated character has to do with changing the world, but alright,” jeno grumbles, shifting uncomfortably as his ‘uniform’ seems to cling to all the wrong places.

“you say that now but you and i both know that the moment you see those kids at the hospital, you’re a sucker. tell me you aren’t going to practice your mr. incredible in the car,” you say cheekily, and jeno is unable to refute that. ever since you and him have been dating, you have often dragged him to events such as these.

at first, they were rather simple things, almost as if you were testing the waters with jeno. for example, when the two of you went on a date to a zoo in the beginning of your relationship, you casually mentioned that many zoos that didn’t treat their animals with love and respect.

then, soon after, you asked him to sign a ‘take down unethical zoo practices!’ petition. and then from there, jeno found himself at a protest to rally for the rights of beluga whales. 

not that jeno had anything against whales (he actually came to be quite passionate about the mistreatment of them the more he went to these events), but the fact that you took the world’s issues to be your issues was simultaneously your biggest character flaw and strength.

and he loved you all the more for it.

“you know who you are?” jeno says, swiveling around in the chair to mean mug you. “you’re woo young woo from that one kdrama. and i’m that poor unsuspecting boyfriend who wants to spend time with his girlfriend but ends up at a whale protest anyway. that’s what cute girls like you and her do; you get our attention, make us fall in love, and then ba-bam! you use us as a bodyguard and backpack carrier at protests and rallies!”

you roll your eyes, leaning down so that you were now eye level with jeno, the both of you lovingly aware that the banter between the two of you was not a symbol of actual annoyance but rather, mutual appreciation. you, for having so much empathy. jeno, for being so patient.

your heart swells when jeno looks at you with such loving eyes, trust and admiration swimming behind his façade of annoyance. you lean forward, pressing your lips to his, involuntarily smiling when you feel jeno’s lips curve upwards as well.

he hums softly, pulling you close so that you’re practically sitting on his lap. gentle and strong. a little callous, but only so that the butterflies in your stomach seem to be rebelling against the confines of your stomach, as if they too want to be showered in the love of your kindhearted and wonderful boyfriend.

you want to melt into his embrace, as you usually do whenever you’re near jeno, but your phone buzzes and you sigh, pulling away from your boyfriend reluctantly.

“that’s jaemin. he’s asking, and i quote, ‘what the fuck are you guys doing i’ll whoop your ass if you don’t come soon i hate this fucking gru costume and the kids keep asking where you are’. you think we should get going maybe?” you say, raising your eyebrows at the series (of rather graphic) of emojis that depict you and jeno conveniently being pushed off a cliff.

jeno snorts at his best friend’s antics, his touch lingering on your waist as he leaves to go start the car. he waits for you to finish responding (with a threatening message of your own) before extending his arm without even looking, waiting for the comforting weight of you clinging to his arm as the two of you leave your shared home, walking into the buttery evening.

it truly couldn’t get much better than this.

#jnnul #nct fic #jeno x reader #nct dream fic #nct dream #jeno imagines #nct dream fluff #nct fluff #jeno fluff #nct dream imagines #nct imagines #nct x reader #nct dream x reader

[carpe-mamilia]

Ghosts’ Larry Rickard Explains Why They Chose the Captain’s First Name

Photo: Monumental,Guido Mandozzi

It couldn’t be a joke. That was one rule laid down by the Ghosts creators when it came to choosing a first name for Willbond’s character. Until series five, the WWII ghost had been known only as The Captain – a mystery seized upon by fans of the show.

“It was the question we got asked more than anything. His name,” actor and writer Larry Rickard tells Den of Geek. “Once we got to series three, you could see that we were deliberately cutting away and deliberately avoiding it. We were fuelling the fire because we knew at some point we’d tell them.”

In “Carpe Diem”, the episode written by Rickard and Ben Willbond that finally reveals The Captain’s death story, they did tell us. After years of guessing, clue-spotting and debate, Ghosts revealed that The Captain’s first name is James. At the same time, we also learned that James’ colleague Lieutenant Havers’ first name was Anthony.

The ordinariness of those two names, says Rickard, is the point.

“The only thing we were really clear about is that we didn’t want one of those names that only exists in tellyland. It shouldn’t be ‘Cormoran’ or ‘Endeavour’. They should just be some men’s names and they’re important to them. The point was that they were everyday.”

Choosing first names for The Captain and Havers was a long process not unlike naming a baby, Rickard agrees. “It almost comes down to looking at the faces of the characters and saying, what’s right?”

“We talked for ages. For a long time I kept thinking ‘Duncan and James’, and then I was like ah no! That would have turned it into a gag and been awful!” Inescapably in the minds of a certain generation, Duncan James is a member of noughties boyband Blue. “Maybe with Anthony I was thinking of Anthony Costa!” Rickard says in mock horror, referencing another member of the band.

Lieutenant Havers wasn’t just The Captain’s second in command while stationed at Button House; he was also the man James loved. Because homosexuality was criminalised in England during James’ lifetime, he was forced to hide his feelings for Anthony from society, and to some extent even from himself.

In “Carpe Diem”, the ghosts (mistakenly) prepare for the last day of their afterlives, prompting The Captain to finally tell his story. Though not explicit about his sexual identity, the others understand and accept what he tells them – and led by Lady Button, all agree that he’s a brave man.

Getting the balance right of what The Captain does and doesn’t say was key to the episode. “It wasn’t just a personal choice of his to go ‘I’m going to remain in the closet’,” explains Rickard. “There wasn’t an option there to explore the things that either of them felt. That couldn’t be done back then – there are so many stories which have come out since the War about the dangers of doing that.

“We wanted to tell his personal story but also try to ensure that there was a level at which you understood why they couldn’t be open, that even in this moment where he’s finally telling the other ghosts his story, he never comes out and says it overtly because that would be too much for him as a character from that time.

“He says enough for them to know, and enough for him to feel unburdened but it’s in the fact that they’re using their first names which militarily they would never have done, and in the literal passing of the baton”.

The baton is a bonus reveal when fans learned that The Captain’s military stick wasn’t a memento of his career, but of Havers. As James suffers a fatal heart attack during a VE day celebration at Button House, Anthony rushes to his side and the stick passes from one to the other as they share a moment of tragic understanding.

“From really early on, we had the idea that anything you’re holding [when you die] stays with you. So it wasn’t just your clothes you were wearing, we had the stuff with Thomas’ letter reappearing in his pocket and so on. And the assumption being that it was something The Captain couldn’t put down, it felt so nice to be able to say it was something he didn’t want to put down.”

Rickard lists “Carpe Diem”, co-written with Ben Willbond, among his series five highlights. He’s pleased with the end result, praises Willbond’s performance, and loved being on set to see Button House dressed for the 1940s. He’s particularly pleased that a checklist of moments they wanted to land with the audience all managed to be included. “Normally something’s fallen by the wayside just because of the way TV’s made, it’s always imperfect or it’s slightly rushed, but it feels like it’s all there.”

Rickard and Willbond also knew by this point in the show’s lifetime, that they could trust Ghosts fans to pick up on small details. “Nothing is missed,” he says. “Early on, you’re always thinking, is that going to get across? But once we got to series five, there are little tiny things within corners of shots and you know that’s going to be spotted. Particularly in that very short exchange between Havers and the Captain. We worried less about the minutiae of it because you go, that’s going to be rewound and rewatched, nothing will be missed.”

The team were also grateful they’d resisted the temptation to tell The Captain’s story sooner. “We’d talked about it every series since series two, whether or not now was the time, but because he’s such a hard and starchy character in a lot of ways you needed the time to understand his softer side I think before you had that final honest beat from him.”

“What a ridiculously normal name to have so much weight put on it for five years,” laughs Rickard fondly. “Good old James.”

From Den of Geek

#bbc ghosts #bless you larry for doing all these den of geek interviews #I wonder if they just did one marathon session with him #inside ghosts was kind of disappointing this week #I guess Ben just wants to let the episode speak for itself and you're like yes but I would like to hear you talk about every detail #trust me we will be interested #long post #I really thought they loved the joke of nearly saying the Captain’s name so much that they'd never reveal it #so it's so lovely that they were like no this is not a joke name; he's a real man with an ordinary name #and we are going to tell you that in the most devastatingly romantic way #I am eating my words and they are delicious with that spread on top #also 'that's going to be rewound and rewatched' = 'I know you people are loopy so here is content specifically for you' #bbc ghosts spoilers

[riddlerosehearts]

thinking about how people who watch the emperor's new groove and somehow come out of it shipping pacha and kuzco, or thinking yzma only became evil when kuzco fired her and that she would've been a better ruler than him, are both so wrong in so many different ways and are also missing one of the things that i absolutely love about the movie. which is that, the way i see it, pacha and yzma are counterparts. as parental figures to kuzco.

like, just to get this out of the way first, yzma was a dismissive asshole to a peasant whose family was starving. and yeah, if kuzco had been in her place he definitely would've also done that, which... is why she would not be a better ruler than him. she'd just be the same because they're both horrible people in the exact same ways. her reaction to being fired is to plot murder, and as soon as his funeral is over she sets everyone to work on replacing paintings of kuzco with paintings of herself and covering the palace with imagery that makes it clear that it's all about her now. i'm not even sure why this is a discussion tbh.

and also, kuzco is literally a teenager. he's barely 18 years old. source: in the movie, yzma says at his funeral that kuzco was "taken from us so tragically on the very eve of his eighteenth birthday." she also claims in the movie to have "practically raised" him, to which kronk replies "yeah, you'd think he would've turned out better". and sure, she could be exaggerating, but what evidence do we have that she is? we learn absolutely nothing of his parents, who are never mentioned even once in the movie, or of anyone else who could've raised him, and she's his advisor who for some reason sees no problem with attending to royal duties in his place. most likely because she's his regent. also, i'm not exactly a fan of the sequel tv series "the emperor's new school" but it does have something that backs up my point: kuzco is revealed to be an orphan and just before his father went and got lost at sea, he asked yzma (who was also his advisor) to take care of kuzco if anything happened to him. so, yeah, the writers who worked on the series clearly thought that yzma genuinely did raise kuzco, and nothing in the movie contradicts this.

and i find the idea of her being his only parental figure for pretty much his whole childhood incredibly interesting because, and this also goes back into why she wouldn't be a better ruler than him--she mirrors him as a reflection of what would've become of him if he'd never met pacha. they're both incredibly arrogant, power-hungry, selfish, and cruel, with a tendency to blame their problems on everyone but themselves. yzma was even originally going to have her own reprise of kuzco's theme song "perfect world", which i really wish had been kept:

[ID: Lyrics that read:

I'Il be the sovereign queen of the nation And the chicest chick in creation I'm the cat with all the cream and ooh-la-la This deadly concentration Will put an end to my frustration Now this perfect world begins and ends with moi

What's my name? Yzma, Yzma, Yzma Yzma (what's my name?) Yzma, Yzma (What'd you say?) Yzma (Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) Yzma. End ID]

(this song can be fully heard in "the sweatbox", the documentary about the making of the movie, and is also on youtube btw)

anyway, i'm sure yzma would not exactly have been the most nurturing or hands-on guardian, especially given that she and kuzco don't exactly treat each other like family. but it makes a lot of sense to think that her behavior influened kuzco's throughout the years. and for the entire movie, she remains determined to kill him. when he tries to reason with her and admits that he should've been nicer, she says the same thing to him that he originally said when he fired her. she never grows or changes and in the end, she hurts the one person who was willing to stand by her (and even then, kronk had never fully been on board with her plan) and he ends up trying to crush her with a chandelier. kuzco on the other hand is able to realize the error of his ways, come to regret who he was in the past, and start taking steps toward being a better person. his theme song gets a reprise where it's changed from a song about one person being the center of the world to a Power Of Friendship song. why? because, as i've already mentioned, he has pacha.

pacha, who similarly to both yzma and kuzco is in a position of authority as the leader of the village but unlike either of them is gentle and humble. who isn't afraid to stand up to kuzco and be honest with him even though he's the emperor, who agrees to take him back to the palace but has no obligation to be so helpful, kind, and caring toward him--and just about every reason not to be--and still chooses to be anyway. pacha who is 45 years old (also stated in the sweatbox documentary) and can see that kuzco is practically still a kid, not a single day over 18, who has time to grow and change. pacha, who already has a wife and two kids with another on the way, but practically treats kuzco like one of his own. who acknowledges that if kuzco dies all his problems will be gone and then still worries about him and goes out of his way to rescue him after he wanders into the jungle. who sees kuzco shivering at night and covers him with his poncho, who carries him when he's genuinely too weak to keep walking, who refuses to give up on him even after repeatedly being betrayed by him because he believes there's good in everyone.

also, while yzma ends up repeating kuzco's harsh words of dismissal as she tells him of her plans to kill him, kuzco had previously repeated pacha's words that "nobody's that heartless" after he saved pacha's life. and as the movie progresses kuzco and pacha's relationship becomes more and more equal and is constantly contrasted by moments of yzma being cruel and unappreciative of kronk's kindness. a good example of this is how kronk is constantly being forced to carry yzma everywhere on his back while yzma literally walks all over him and steps on his hands when she gets down, whereas when pacha briefly carries kuzco after the latter collapses he tells him he'll have to walk the rest of the way later and kuzco doesn't even protest.

idk if i'm even explaining well what i'm trying to say here. but basically, if yzma actually raised kuzco and contributed to his current behavior, then she and pacha both are figures who guided him and helped him grow. only yzma helped him become the tyrant that he was at the start of the movie, who was selfish and callous and saw everyone else as beneath him. whereas pacha helped him see the value in being selfless and considerate of others. and in the end, yzma is stuck as a cat and nobody is concerned about her. kronk has found a new job that makes him genuinely happy, while kuzco has decided to build a hut on the hill next to pacha's and effectively joined his family. in the sweatbox documentary it's even mentioned that chicha and the kids were at risk of being removed from the film, but it was decided that they needed to be there because having just pacha as a single guy who lived alone wasn't interesting enough--kuzco needed to go from having basically an empty world where he had nobody to being able to come together with pacha's whole family. and i just think that's incredibly satisfying and beautiful. it also leads up to one of the few things i really do enjoy about the emperor's new school, which is the fact that during the show kuzco moves in with pacha and chicha and pretty explicitly thinks of them as basically his parents while he's like a son to them.

idk. i feel like my mind went in a million different directions while i was writing all this. but i guess i just think that for all of the praise the emperor's new groove gets for its comedy and for how hilarious yzma and kronk in particular are as a duo, the movie also has a lot of genuine heart that gets overlooked. kuzco's character growth and his unique dynamic with pacha is, for me, really what elevates the movie from just a funny movie that i like to one of my favorite disney movies. and i wish more people appreciated that aspect of it and saw it as a found family story in the same way that treasure planet, brother bear, and lilo and stitch are all found family stories.

#disney #the emperor's new groove #help i wrote a whole essay about this movie #and i didn't even mention how much i love the way kuzco's home life is contrasted with pacha's #ugh. they have one of the most interesting and unique dynamics ever in a disney movie. i love them #love how kuzco gets away from yzma's toxic influence by way of accidentally being adopted #by the guy whose village he almost destroyed for a theme park #they're ENEMIES to FOUND FAMILY.... sobs #kuzco #pacha #yzma #kronk

[evilminji]

Thinking About Ghost Writer's Library ( o.o)

Yeah, that's right folks! It's ya girl! Back on her bullshit, with PONDERING TIME. But like? GW? Is AT BEST? Somewhere around Victorian or Edwardian, given his aesthetic, right? And? Granted! It COULD be, he just vibes SUPER HARD with this Hot New Look(tm).

But like?

He is Baby.

They basically ALL are Baby. It's the... no, A(!) Baby area of the Zone. A place where sentient life is JUST sort of beginning to happen. On the COSMIC, INTERDIMENSIONAL, scale of things. What, after all, is a MERE few millenia? When the average is counting things by Eons? And even WORSE? When your ENTIRE COUNTRY and HISTORY is? What... CENTURIES?

Zygote. You are not but an infant. Back to daycare with you.

Which of course, leads the baby sitters. Even the occasional Adult. SOMEONES got to watch them. But it's not like THEY want to volunteer their eternity. They have Obsessions to follow. And there are A LOT of Baby Zone's to watch! More forming every day! The great dance of Life And Death etc etc, Yada yada!

Who's being punished? Make them do it! *Clockworks in long term plan*

But! Not the point here! Though fascinating to consider! The POINT? GW->Baby. His Library? Larger then then any Earth libraries, yes. But! Still SMALL. A BABY'S collection of books! Still growing. And for all his bragging and posturing? FAR from the Zone's BEST Library.

It likely doesn't even get to make the LONG FORM list.

Which Danny? Who is STILL banned? Quickly figures out. Because? Amity Library is... DECENT. It's working with the funding It's gotten dispite the damage ghost fights have done. Danny loves that library. He does. But... he also? Kinda has run out of things to READ.

And like HELL is he gonna BEG to enter GHOST WRITER'S Lair. Mister "Love Christmas or I'll torture you with it" can SUCK [REDACTED] and shove it up his [REDACTED BUT WITH VIOLENCE THIS TIME]. So? He asks, vaguely of course, Mr. Ho the librarian what he should do.

The man practically froths at the mouth at the thought that there is some BASTARD denying children books over PETTY PERSONAL BULLSHIT. Wants to meet this guy out back. "Talk books". Mr. Ho is like a bazillion years old and a tiny grandpa, he's amazing and Danny STILL kinda wants to be him when he grows up.

But since Danny won't let him deck Ghost Writer. He shows him how too look up other libraries in the area. Which... sparks An Idea(tm). He thanks his favorite librarian and races home. Makes a Bee Line for the Far Frozen.

Can he LOOK at the Infinity Map, Frostbite? He knows taking it is only for Important Events, but... why, you ask? Well...*explains*

Which is how he ends up, with a pen and paper, watching Trained Yeti Map Makers(tm) quickly sprawling out Map after Map, as Frostbite (who is apparently the only one AUTHORIZED to do this, who knew?) formally asks the Map in? Weirdly specific and oddly phrased ways, for the best libraries? Huh?

Ooooh! Frostbite is authorized because he's the only one TRAINED in the exact workings of the Map. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. When Danny was using it, it dragged him at like Mach bajillion all over the place and he had to keep rephrasing things.

So? He can go now, right? Since he has the directions?

What do you mean "not quite"?

Danny finds out he needs an "Adult Escort". Because he is Baby. And much like children can not fly to Peru alone from halfway across the globe, so too, they can not LEAVE the baby zones to travel through Adult Territories where they could get Ended by accident, WITHOUT Adult supervision. Safety first!

D:< He just wants BOOKS!

Fine! Clockwork is old as BALLS! Older probably! He's LITERALLY TIME! How's THAT for OLD, huh?! Can he GO NOW!? He just wants to check out their ghostly sci-fi section! He's curious AF! He bets they have ALIEN Sci-fi! Come oooooooon!

Clockwork, of course, let's himself be dragged along. Because this is hilarious. AND going to terrify so, SO many assholes. Which is Funny :)

Danny gets his library card to *Unpronouncable without several neck bones humans do not have*, which is the size of Jupiter's BIGGER BROTHER. It isn't even the "Best" library. Just the closest. Danny has a manic... everything, the Fenton blood is strong with this one. So Many Booooooooks~!

And yeah, school books or whatever, probably a great learning resource.

BUT THE SCI-FI AND COMICS SECTION! It goes on for MILES! LITERAL MILES! *incoherent noises of joy*

Needless to say, the Librarians think he's ADORABLE. Such an eager reader! And so SMALL! A BABY! Look at his lil hands~! Be careful with the books, okay sweetie? Oh heck yeah! He WILL be!

And obviously? He gaurds those books with his LIFE. That's his Premium VIP Celebrity Gucci Bespoke Comics of The Multiverse Access! You'll have to pry it from his multi-dead, still smoking, Ended 5Ever hands!

The problem with THIS is?

Even with careful book covers? Those are CLEARLY glowing books. Like... day glow. Unnaturally glowing. The OTHER problem, is UNLIKE that baby GW? Adults can make their books multilingual. OMNILINGUAL. Is this book in French? Or Ainu? Yes. If it's YOUR language, then that's what you're reading in. Is it a bit clunky at times? With things that don't translate well, having to be explained in side notes? Yes. But better then not being able to read them at all!

And of course, comfort and repetition breed mistakes. You get too used to doing something. Forget you're supposed to be HIDING it. Maybe you go to college. Maybe the world moves on. You bring down a government agency with your friends. Become an infant king, much to the unspeakable alarm of the adults who SHOULD have been watching and protecting you. Maybe you have WORDS with them. Who's to say.

You're tired. It's been a long month.

You just want your coffee and a snacky lil treat. Something yummy for the you. Surely you've earned it, right? You've been good. So you take your sweet new alien sci-fi epic, your scrunkly feral Racoon lookin self, and you crawl like the half dying man you are. Towards the sweet relief of sugar and caffeine. Pride? You don't know her. Gib the coffee or you bite.

Unfortunately! There is some shitty "the Youth Today blah blah blah, let try and catch them of gaurd with loaded questions to prove my point and make a whole generation look dumb" reporter on campus. You see them out of the corner of your eye. They clearly think you are the weak link.

They are making their way towards you, mic raised.

Ah. Tragic, they have chosen death.

Before they can reach you, you raise your voice and not so much throw them under a bus, as drive the bus over THEM. Because THIS Coffee shop is the Punk hangout spot. And you've made casual friendly acquaintances with the six foot something, Sam clone from Scotland, whose life goal seems to be "Fight God".

And THESE fine folk DEFINITELY want an interview :) Have Fun, Thorn!

Needless to say, the clips go viral. With Danny sitting in the background, coffee and muffin achieved. Minding his business. Reading his glowing book. Which everyone ignores, on campus. Because EVERYONE knows Danny can make things glow! It's his weird minor power. Some lab accident in his teen years. NBD

But like... no body ELSE "knows" that. So it attracts attention.

Which would be FINE.... if he was reading an EARTH book.

But he's NOT.

And someone recognizes it.

Maybe it's Martian. Kryptonian. Could be Asgardian. Depends on the crossover you want! Because it could be ANY crossover! Lost books. Not just the Great Classics(tm) that people like to save. But the silly ones. The small ones. The equivalent of dime store novels and cheap drug store comics. Children's books. Banned books. The things Powerful People tried to erase from history itself. The things TIME tried to erase, with the fall of nations and the coming of war.

The destruction of worlds.

All of it there.

Imagine it. Standing on a planet, far from the world that was once your home, KNOWING in your heart that everything is gone. Everyone. That NOTHING but what you carry with you remains. And looking up one day to see, in the background of some average and silly video? Not "War and Peace" or "Great Expectations" or some other likely exported peice... but? Some youth reading that overly dramatic trashy sci-fi book that your cousins wouldn't stop raving about. The ones all the adults were SICK of hearing about.

It would NEVER have passed the bar for export.

It was silly and embarrassing but culturally significant.

It's... it's right there.

How?

Wouldn't the desperation that fills you be suffocating? Are there others? Is that an original? How is it here? How can he READ it? Who taught him? Who IS he? Is he one of us? Where? How? HOW?! Please. PLEASE!

And Danny? Would have no idea! :)c it's great~

@hdgnj @hypewinter @the-witchhunter @ailithnight @mutable-manifestation @nerdpoe

#dpxdc #dpxmarvel #dpxanybody #dp prompt #go nuts folks #minji ponderings

[perseruna]

heyyyy do you have any details/sources for the ca*ill being a jackass thing? ngl i watch twn for yen and jaskier so i was already planning on continuing to season 4 but i'd love some reasons to be actively excited for the actor switch. but i haven't kept up on the behind-the-scenes stuff so i'm kinda lost on that front if you're up for sharing any of what you know!

okay guys buckle up this is THE anti henry cavill megathread xoxo

First of all him dating a teenager as a 33 year old fully grown man literally gross and disgusting.

Also as this quote implies they started dating a year prior and only went public when she was 19 so they supposedly started dating when she was 18.

His entire dating history is a MESS. Sure the women he dated are not him, but he chose to date them, I wouldn't even associate myself with people like these let alone be in a relationship with them. He dated the infamous transphobic TERF Gina Carano, albeit before her loud controversy, but I doubt her harmful views were any different back then. His current gf has a history of doing black face.

His "Me Too" comments.

His comments on the Me Too movement are literally so vile. If you don’t want to be called a rapist, just don’t rape women, it’s literally as simple as that. They’re even more foul because they’re promoting the idea that women lie about their abusive for fame, promoting that harmful rhetoric especially in our times is incredibly dangerous.

Now onto his on set behavior.

We can't talk about his set behavior without mentioning the deuxmoi set leak. Here's the transcript of it:

[Transcript:

There’s something I really really wanted to read to you guys--it has to do with why Henry Cavill left The Witcher. I know that was something that you guys were super interested in when it happened, and I just recently got this message. Somebody was like “Hey, do you want to know what really went down?” And I was like “Sure!” So let me just read it. It says:

“At the beginning of the show, Henry was good to work with. A lot of difficult demands that made people feel like he wasn’t a team player, but that’s not unusual for a really big star. Though in TV it truly usually doesn’t happen until the second season. But in season two and three something shifted and he became really impossible for women to work with, which is always a big problem, but even worse here because the showrunner is a woman. He would try to overrule her and try to get changes made last minute across the board without her knowledge, which, if you know anything about showrunning, is completely fucked. The showrunner has to sign off on every miniscule detail down to the buttons on a costume. Female writers and directors were suddenly being completely ignored on set, unable to do their jobs. Every department head was complaining. He started making comments—it wasn’t a sexual thing, he wasn’t grabbing anyone or being lewd, but it was disrespectful and toxic all the same.

“He is deeply addicted to video games, to the point where it was like working with any other addict. He was distracted, he was late, he was obsessive, and a lot of people think the misogyny came from gamer world. Video game bro language is not how you talk to coworkers, and he wouldn’t stop. Someone on the show compared it to watching someone get brainwashed by QAnon, like his whole personality shifted. Eventually his disrespect escalated. He would rewrite scenes without even alerting the other actors in the scenes until it was time to shoot. He decided that he didn’t want any romantic scenes at all—no kissing scenes, no shirtless scenes, et cetera. He wanted complete control of storylines but really had no idea of the limitations of TV, structure, budget, et cetera. He formed a weird alliance with one writer who was also a gamer, who eventually got fired after multiple HR complaints were made and after that writer left, Henry did anything he could to hold up production and cause problems.

“Eventually top brass at Netflix was tired of him costing them money with delays and HR investigations and the showrunner was asked to construct a potential exit for him. Netflix reached out to him personally and he was given one final warning, and violated that warning with an email he sent to the entire writing staff right after that meeting. That was it. It’s very disappointing.”

End transcript.]

Now believe me or not, but I know from a really good source that the leak was indeed real.

There's a lot of patterned behavior that tracks with what we know of him and his past controversies.

After that leak came out, there was a lot of people from different places coming to comment that ‘yes’ they’ve heard a very similar story adding a little bit more details of their own.

this quickly deleted tweet from one of the writers/producers:

there were rumors about him being an asshole to Anya specifically.

He went on record that he doesn't "understand" sex scenes. Which I know the sex discourse is rampant nowadays and each to their own, but he specifically signed up for a role that requires those scenes and then refused to do them and was allegedly nasty to Anya about it and with the way he talks about women...

Also it’s important to touch upon the “writer he had a weird alliance with” that man in question is Beau DeMayo of the recent fame of getting fired by Marvel from X-Men ‘97. He was previously allegedly fired from The Witcher for being emotionally and physically abusive. And he allegedly got fired from X-Men for being abusive as well. One of The Witcher writers tweeted this after Beau smeared them for “disliking the books” Beau was literally the first person to start that narrative.

The fact that it was HIS idea not to say lines of his dialogue in S1 and instead grunt. To the point that Joey had to take Henry’s lines and make it his own, so the plot would make sense, he talks about it in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Oyh0t117t0U&, and then once S2 press arrived Henry was talking about how he was trying to fight the big bad writers to give him more lines. Ridiculous.

Everyone is already pointing out that the cast looks so much happier without him, and it’s very true. Henry was never present on close to any BTS pics from filming the previous seasons, or on any cast dinners or birthdays. He wouldn't even do any shared interviews with the other three mains but only had solo interviews which to me was giving disrespectful like you're an ensemble you’re not the only lead here. It felt like he was above them to sit down and answer questions with them. When they were doing press junkets in Brazil and Poland Anya, Joey and Freya would always arrive together and leave together with that man leaving all the events early and by himself. And like people who post quotes from the cast about him being perfect from press junkets as “proof” are insane to me like Obviously they’re going to say nice things about him, not only they're newcomers, and he's an established industry name, but they’re doing PRESS for a show that he’s a STAR of (well, was lmao)

The fact that he never defended Anya from the racist trolls, even though most of them were HIS fans. Like she had to go through so much and that man couldn’t make a single comment about it as a leading man BUT he could make a whole IG post because people were being mean to his gf and calling her out for doing blackface.

And sure people might say that a lot of these are unverified sources, and I’d get it if it was a singular case, but there are a ton of these accounts that all match each other. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

#anti henry cavill #the witcher #mega thread

[thatdeadaquarius]

Have some more language brainrot for your brainrot

Writer reader getting kind of insecure that even if they write something nobody will understand it, so when Al haithem askes you if he can keep a draft or two just for analyzing, there's hesitant agreement but ultimately you tell him to please burn the documents once he's done. They're too awkward to look at now...

Only he doesn't burn them, in fact he ends up recruiting several people close to the creator with knowledge of olden speak to analyze them. A funeral parlor consultant well known for his historical knowledge, a 500 year old shrine maiden who owns and runs her own publishing house, and a bard who somehow butted his way in on the project. None of them could resist the opportunity to witness the creator's sacred scriptures with their own eyes.

Needless to say, the papers ended up being fought over and have been making their rounds around your acolytes. It started with Ei, who insisted that as an archon she also should see the creator's work with her own eyes. Then once Ningguang found out, she ordered they be handed over to a team of literary analysts in order to be properly handled and deciphered. Things got really messy quick, but have luckily come to a halt as none of the acolytes want the creator to know their random writings are being fought over.

Especially when it comes to the creator's sullen additute. Their acolytes first have to convince their holiness that their inability to read and understand the creator's writing shouldn't prevent you from doing what you love. In fact... could they convince you to write some more?

WRITER OR READER WITH TALENTS HAS MY WHOLE HEART LIKE-

On one hand, same 💀 id be terrified for my all time fav skrunklies to see my bs

But at the same time i rlly wanna show them goddamit- THANK U FOR THE BRAIN FOOD IM RUNNING LAPS AROUND MY HOUSE THINKING ABT THIS-

Sun: Gender Neutral Reader (they/them), Writer!Reader

Planet: Language Shenanigans

Orbit: Scenario

Stars: Alhaitham mostly, some of Kaveh, mentions of other Sumeru characters

Comets & Meteors: Content Warnings: Insecure about craft/writing, anxious first pov (not serious),

& Trigger Warnings: Mild Negative self-talk, insecure perspective/reader “you”, possible anxiety depiction.

You were not a very confident writer.

This had been an avoidable feeling ever since you picked up a pen for the first time and were asked to write a story for school.

You were always anxious turning in essays, letting friends proofread them, anything that would expose your writing to more eyes, because you’d learned the hard way early on that as you get older and better at something, the stuff from the beginning… starts to look a lot different than you remember.

things you used to be proud of after having completed them in the moment, were something you struggled not to rip to shreds a year or two after you re-found it.

If it weren’t for other writers advising holding onto old work so you can see your progress over time, you’d have probably literally nothing older than one year on your ao3, wattpad, etc…

So when you had the fortunate luck (no it is not unfortunately, you are very happy to be here tbh) to fall headfirst into your video game you’ve been obsessed with lately,

You were not planning on showing them any of your writing.

Why would you, after all? You’ve got the weapons, the artifacts, everything they need to be more powerful. Why would you show them a silly little story you wrote? Fanfic or otherwise, not that theyll recognize any characters besides themselves, but still.

Alhaitham, bc ofc it was alhaitham, cocky, deviously aware bastard he is, caught you writing in your spare time first.

You’d gotten your hands on an old journal (if made you feel better than something completely new, a nice worn leather journal, sold at a secondhand shop from an old adventurer) and had started to write what you could remember about some of your ideas you’d had drafts for in your old world

After initially walking in on you writing in the House of Daena (it was the closest you could get to lofi girl, god u missed her lmao), you nearly jumped a foot in the air bc Haitham’s a nosy bitch and leaned over your shoulder and scared the absolute shit out of you, mans goes from asking politely, to begging you to let him read some of your writing over the course of 3 weeks (a month really)

Finally, after this 6 ft (about 180cm) man leans down one day (you’re sitting writing again), and gives you the most insanely good?? puppy dog eyes??? you’ve ever seen on a man???

you give in, revise a draft about 5 times in a row, lose sleep bc ur having a breakdown about alhaitham judging ur writing the night before you give him his copy-

and hand over a small short story for him to read. you specifically leave a little note not to judge you so hard for Haitham bc u werent used to people reading ur work/let alone someone as highly academic as him, ESPECIALLY since your speech is already so much more archaic than his/all of Teyvats-

His stupid green eyes with diamonds look into your soul (are they sparkling??) and he braces your shoulders after you give him his copy,

“Mine Greatest Guide, you hath deemed this one worthy of thy trust of your creations personally, I would be a fool to gaze upon it in jest. To take this work as anything less than a masterpiece in its infant stages.”

…you just leave him to it, and are nearly running out of there (u managed to be calm enough to just speedwalk),

and you make a point to not ask what he thought about it, or even bring it up at all

you’re kind of hoping he forgot tbh… and so nothing happens!

◇

Nothing happens… for 2 weeks after you gave Haitham a copy of your short story.

You still don’t know Alhaitham’s opinion when you see the advertisement, a sign saying something about, a new book? By YOU???

You nearly start a mob because the shopkeeper insisted you sign some copies, but you only signed a few before too many people overwhelmed you, and seeing it was that same draft- !! Oh god, you’d been agonizing over the spelling errors you’d missed when you gave it to Alhaitham, and now it’s just out there???

(luckily it seems the reviews are positive, but dammit you’ve been rereading ur story u gave him for days, and now ur positive it’s shit-)

You make a break for it, and are literally running (more like speed-walking after a while, since u got further away) thru Sumeru City:

you pass by the open patio of a restaurant, the scholars are heatedly discussing ur characterization-

you pass by Dehya, Candace, and Dunyazard, the merc is waving around a copy of ur book, the other two women look excited abt the conversation-

oh my god-

Nahida is relaxing in one of the many little gazebos thruout Sumeru, while Wanderer seems to be reading your story to her-

You fucking track down Alhaitham’s house like a bloodhound.

You are banging the infamous gay roommates’ front door, panting til ur throat burns raw.

“Yes, yes, alright, greetings to you too! I was simply visiting the Acting Grand Sage Alhaitham, tis why I’m here- Greatest Lord?!”

Kaveh is nearly jumps a foot in the air at the sight of you, but recovers, (you’re still not tho lmao)

and invites you in bc apparently, Alhaitham’s been meaning to talk to you about your draft you gave him!

Oh yeah, you’ve got some words to give Haitham after giving him that damn draft privately-

But when he sees you, the fucker just- smiles??

Like he’s done nothing wrong???

You’re about to tear into him when he speaks first to tell you the good news!

He grabs your hands at the table and gets down on one knee, ohhhh no.

Alhaitham is giving you those damn begging puppy dog eyes again.

“My Greatest Lord, Giver of Power, and Guide to All, your exquisite story has entranced all of Teyvat, might I please insist you write a sequel? It is an excellent literary piece to analyze… or perhaps, even better, share other stories you’ve written??”

…

….Motherfucker.

☆

Hello I’m alive! I just took a longer-than-usual break between posts from those last 2 mammoth pieces about gifts,

1: bc they were a lot to write in between writing other stuff like fanfics im already working on lol 2: I got busy with holidays and trying to apply to jobs!

Not that I’m still not doing that.. but you get what I mean!

Safe Travels Anon,

That being said, as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve made a kofi! so if you ever liked my writing (hot mess it is) and want to show me some love, feel free to leave a tip! :]

Iced coffee?? :0

💀♒

☆

♡the beloveds♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist / @thedevioussmirk / @the-dumber-scaramouche

#hello i live #i just took a longer than normal break between posting bc the gifts were vv big and i had holidays/job searching to do #which i am still looking #but its better now #also gonna start linking my kofi if anybody is feeling generous! :] #sagau #genshin sagau #genshin isekai #my asks #genshin imagines #gender neutral reader #self aware genshin #sagau x reader #genshin impact sagau #genshin impact isekai #genshin x reader

[bloodweep]

HIHI! DO YOU WRITE FLUFF? YOURE LIKE ONE OF MY FAVORITE WRITERS ON TUMBLR SO I WANTED TO ASK🤭 IF YOU DO, I WAS JUST THINKING ABT BROZONE (OR JUST JD) WITH A READER WHO ALSO MAKES MUSIC? YOU CAN HAVE THE HCS TURN OUT HOWEVER YOU WANT I JUST HAD THAT GENERAL IDEA🙏🏽🙏🏽

OKFG PLEASE IM NOT THAT GOOD

And yes I do 🥺👉🏻👈🏻 it makes me so happy and giggly like the bitch I am jfjfhfhfhfh

YOU KNOW MY HEART IS GONNA GO TO JD FIRST I WANT HIM IN EVERY WAY I CAN

━━━━━━━ ✦❘༻༺❘✦ ━━━━━━━

JOHN DORY:

‗ ❍ I love him so much but I just know he would be a bit of an asshole at first, far better than before, don’t get me wrong! But he will still ask what you’re going and provide “tips” to make it better, but will be quickly silenced if you glared at him

‗ ❍ he is literally the definition of “oh I hate that man, I hate that man! But oh cara mia how I love him”

‗ ❍ after a while he would be silent and just listen to you, he would highly enjoy your music btw

‗ ❍ would get stuck in his head constantly where he is humming it wherever he is, bobbing his head to the beat

‗ ❍ would so just hold you close, arm around your shoulders watching you write away, nuzzling into your hair

‗ ❍ would beg to have a duet with you, no lie, will literally beg on all fours to have one

‗ ❍ UGH ITS STUPID BUT HE WOULD SO GRAB TOU AROUNF THE HIPS AND PULL YOU ALONG THE ROOM TO DANCE

‗ ❍ he would hold you so tight and kiss along your head while he sways with you and sings

━━━━━━━ ✦❘༻༺❘✦ ━━━━━━━

Bruce:

‗ ❍ he would be so fun to write songs with, so attentive, leaned back and just listening

‗ ❍ wouldn’t say anything until you were finished and asked for tips

‗ ❍ “play it again” he would say just so he can hear your voice again and listen to the melody

‗ ❍ he would do this a few times before you caught on and playfully punched his knee

‗ ❍ he would just laugh and shake his head “nothing needs to be changed it’s wonderful ”

‗ ❍ he would so sing the songs you make while surfing too

‗ ❍ he’s your number one biggest fan, will fight anyone to get that position

‗ ❍ he will be the loudest person in the audience and dancing in the crowd

‗ ❍ sings it for his kids any song you create

━━━━━━━ ✦❘༻༺❘✦ ━━━━━━━

Clay:

‗ ❍ he’s such a little nerd, would be vibing to anything so hard

‗ ❍ he will fight whoever even if it’s his own brothers to be the number one fan

‗ ❍ he would so teach you how to dance to whatever you’re writing

‗ ❍ his hands holding your hips to help you move better

‗ ❍ begs to hear you sing all the time because he likes it so so much

‗ ❍ makes up all your choreography for you, and isn’t upset if you desire to change it

‗ ❍ he would so so beg to dance with you on stage at least once (he’s a lair all the time he wants to dance with you forever)

━━━━━━━ ✦❘༻༺❘✦ ━━━━━━━

Floyd:

‗ ❍ He would be so happy to see you write and create music

‗ ❍ he would relax back and listen with such a peaceful smile on his face

‗ ❍ he would so love to do duets with you too

‗ ❍ they would be so soft and gentle; you’re very mindful of what happened to him and don’t want to push him to hurt himself - even if he says he’s fine and can handle whatever

‗ ❍ holds your hands while you practice with him, showing you his full attention and encouraging you whenever you stumble or feel like you can’t get something right

‗ ❍ UGH his smile will be so fucking soft and gentle as he looks at you

‗ ❍ when he watches you from the crowd he is just smiling and dancing slightly the whole time

‗ ❍ UGH tells you how proud he is of you all the time, and you deserve all the fans and happiness

‗ ❍ if he ever preforms with his brothers he definitely invites you in and puts you right next to him - holding your hand tightly the whole time

━━━━━━━ ✦❘༻༺❘✦ ━━━━━━━

‗ ❍ GOSH that stupid look he gives when he really loves someone??? That look the whole time

‗ ❍ fully understands if you don’t feel comfortable singing with him or in front of him just yet

‗ ❍ or even if you just want to do it on stage only

‗ ❍ if you feel self conscious about a song he will preform it with you and his brothers so you feel better

‗ ❍ never ever tells you to change it because there’s no such thing as “perfect” and a song is what is felt from within - things no such thing to be perfect

‗ ❍ every time you do sing in front of him he will drop everything he’s doing and listening to you

‗ ❍ he’s so giddy to hear you sing but doesn’t go over the top to stress you out

━━━━━━━ ✦❘༻༺❘✦ ━━━━━━━

Im sorry it’s so short I struggle with sfw for some reason because fluff makes me so giddy and excited and I feel gushy

#trolls band together #trolls #trolls 3 #brozone #headcanons #john dory #floyd trolls #bruce trolls #clay trolls #branch trolls #floyd trolls x reader #brozone x reader #john dory x reader #trolls bruce x reader #clay trolls x reader #branch trolls x reader

[thir10th]

52 pick up - Emily Prentiss x Fem!reader

Summary: So basically this is a Emily x reader one shot based on ep 4x9 because I really wanted to read one but I could not find ANYTHING so I guess I had to write it myself *sighs*

TW: spoilers for 4x09, Fem!reader, (very poorly written) smut, mutual masturbation, fingering (this might be so bad I’m sorry in advance if it is) I think that’s it but let me know if I miss anything

A/n: very new fanfic writer so please be gentle and any feedback is appreciated 🙏 English is not my first language so sorry for the possible mistakes

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

“we need to study his style up close and personal. It’s gonna take someone that he’s already attracted to” Spencer says, raising his eyebrows in a suggestive tone, soon enough, Morgan and Hotch are also looking at Emily, and you are too, only to realize what they’re trying to say

“oh… oh this is really gonna suck” Emily complains when she realizes she’s the one who will have to approach Viper.

You really didn’t like this idea. You weren’t obviously happy to let your girlfriend get in the line just to be approached by that same asshole who had already been extremely inappropriate to her, objectifying her, suggesting he could “make her do whatever he wanted”. Only if he knew if there was anybody in the world capable of making Emily Prentiss do anything was you.

All of that was true, but why was also true, and you wouldn’t admit, was how unreasonably jealous that thought made you.

You knew for sure Emily would never cheat on you, or do anything to deliberately hurt you in any way, and there was also the fact that she was a lesbian, so there is no way she would be attracted to that guy in any way, however it did make you feel jealous, just the idea of your beautiful, sexy girlfriend walking into that bar, as a literal decoy, her, all dressed up as any other night she would do, to go out with you and the rest for a BAU party night, but instead getting there by herself just with the aim to be eye-fucked by that disgusting misogynist of a man.

“ok but you’re not going by yourself, I’m going with you. It could be more effective is we approach him as a couple, isn’t that what our unsub has been doing anyway?”

You wait for your boss’ response, he frowns as he considers the idea

“You’re right, it could be more effective that way. Go get ready” He finally admits, and you go get your go bag

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

You enter the room while Emily is already changing in, opening the door slightly just to take a peek so you can surprise her. She is already unbuttoning her work shirt.

“would you like me to finish that for you?”

You ask her, a she startles

“jeez y/n! you scared me, I didn’t know you were there!”

“Sorry, honey” you say as you enter the room and close it behind you

“are you excited to go clubbing or are you mad that I offered to go with you? I just really hated the idea of you approaching that asshole by yourself” you walk up to her, surrounding her waist with your arms, resting your hands on her sides, softly caressing the skin there

“yes…well about that” she surrounds your neck with her arms, twirling little strands of your hair with her fingers there

“you actually got mad?”

“no, no it’s not that… Hotch just came in and we talked about Jordan, and I kind of suggested she came with me”

“so basically I’m not going?”

“it’s just…she’s really trying hard to be a part of the team, and I can’t help it”

“you see yourself in her? Ems…” you knew how good she meant but you couldn’t help to think that she was being too nice to her, plus you weren’t so sure you liked Jordan that much. Maybe it was because you missed JJ, or maybe you just didn’t really like the way she looked at her sometimes.

“I just don’t want her to feel left alone now”

“I know, baby and I love you for that, but you were not like her, you did your best ever since the first day, you never needed to prove yourself by lying or anything like that

“Yes, but I did feel very left out at times, and I will never forget how comforted it made me feel that you included me and asked me for help at times”

“yes, but that was because I was trying to get in your pants” she laughs and closes her eyes slightly as in “I can’t believe you’re saying that” way.

It’s sometimes surprising how shy Emily can get specially considering her confidence in the bedroom, and also how she would slip some suggestive comments about your relationship in front of the team from time to time mostly to surprise them, but you loved both sides of her, and you though her shyness was adorable, so you laugh with her.

“I know it’s important for you, and it’s just so cute how you want to help her, so I’ll forget about it and just stick with Morgan and Reid, but if he touches you, remember I’m armed.”

She smiles, softly, looking at your lips, and she kisses you softly, and you gently kiss her back.

“I promise I’ll compensate you”

“I will hold you on for that one”

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

It can feel strange to be dressed in your casual work clothes in the middle of a bar but there you are, handing in flyers with Morgan and Reid, you can’t help but to look among all the faces trying to find Emily, completely aware of how bad this could affect her cover, but you can’t help it.

She should be here already, what’s taking her so long?

Someone is suddenly standing behind you, you turn hopeful to see Emily but disappointed to see it’s just Morgan

“is pretty girl looking for her girlfriend?” he teases you

“shouldn't they be here already?” You ask him, ignoring the teasing

“relax beautiful, or you’re gonna blow up their cover, and even Pretty boy here has handed in more flyers than you, don’t get so distracted” he advices you, but you don’t really listen, you just keep walking around until you catch a glimpse of someone standing on a table, you can instantly recognize Emily, wearing a beautiful black dress that hugged her curves perfectly, accentuating her breasts and making her look more beautiful if that was even possible already.

Almost immediately you can see Viper approaching her, he looks so confident in his “alpha male” appearance but you’re certain it will take Emily mere seconds to destroy him.

Then Jordan arrives, she has also dressed up for the occasion but she doesn’t look nearly as hot as your girlfriend. They both engage in a conversation with Viper, visibly suggestive. At the beginning you can tell his confident, he has done this a million times, but as time passes, and the conversation goes on, every time one of her talks he also gets more and more insecure.

You observe how Emily teases him, at one point she gets so close to his mouth you actually believe he’s going to kiss her but she just laughs it off and his body language changes again.

Looking at your beautiful girlfriend interacting in this way from afar was making you feel more and more aroused it even embarrassed you that it was turning you on, but you couldn’t help it. I mean, how could you when she just looked like that? You couldn’t even blame yourself every time you looked at her mouth and how her lipstick suited her perfectly.

Everything happens quicker than you thought, first thing you notice is how their face expressions change, and suddenly they’re walking away, leaving Viper there, and picking up the phone probably to call Hotch. You look for Morgan and Reid and tell them it’s time to leave.

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

Back at the precinct you catch Emily when she’s entering the changing room again, you check that Jordan isn’t inside too, and get in with her.

“you look… wow” it’s the first thing you say to her. She’s looking straight at you, with a smile on her face, hinting she probably has something in mind for you

“you liked it?”

“Em, you look so beautiful”

“I could see you there in the back you know?” she grabs you by the waist, gently pushing your back against the lockers, you surround her with your arms for support, she keeps talking seductively, with her face so close you yours that your lips could crush if you just moved a bit closer. Instead you both just remain there, as Emily talks, just millimeters away from kissing

“really?” you ask, it’s a stupid question but you’re too surprised to say something coherent right now.

“really, yeah, you were practically drooling, was I doing that to you baby? “

“yes, god Emily yes”

She closes the space between us, her lips crashing against yours, practically devouring you, softly, full of lust.

Emily’s kisses were like that, no matter how much they lasted she always left you wanting more.

Her hands pull your waist to hers, grabbing your flesh desperately, anywhere she could find it. You run your finger through her soft black curls. Her tongue finds yours in a matter of seconds and suddenly the kiss turns into something bigger, her hands travel down to find your ass giving it a gentle squeeze because you know how much I love that she grabs your ass and how much it turns you on

You hear a knock on the door interrupting the scene, and you fly away from each other in less than a second

“Come in!” Emily just says a bit too loud. Her cheeks are red, and when Jordan enters she notices

“sorry, am I interrupting something?” she says, but it’s not a real apology

“no, sorry I was already leaving” you reply maybe a little too fast, and with one last look to Emily, you leave.

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

After a case is closed you always feel like an eternity has passed. You are way so tired you can barely stand anymore, but at least you’re glad you got there in time to save the last woman the unsub had taken before something horrible happened to her.

You enter your hotel room, the one you shared with Emily. You started sharing rooms during cases after you made your relationship public, Hotch thought it was for the better since you wouldn’t be sneaking out of your rooms every night, and technically you were saving money.

“my feet are killing me, maybe those heels weren’t such a great idea as I thought” she sits on the bed, and you help her take her shoes off

“if I remember correctly, you had promised something to me” she grabs you by the waist, getting you closer to her, looking up from where she’s sitting

She simply smiles, looking up at you

“you know me. Im a woman of my word” she starts unzipping your pants, pulling them off your legs, she leaves a little kiss right on top of your underwear, she grabs them and pulls them down just like she did with your pants.

You start unbuttoning your shirt, and she does the same thing, but before she can finish you interrupt her

“you’ve undressed many times today already, let me be the one who takes you clothes off now” you move to sit next to her and you take her shirt off, then to unzipping her pants. It doesn’t take muck more for Emily to take the lead. She pushes you down so your back is laying flat on the bed, just to finish unbuttoning your shirt and opening it to discover you’re not wearing a bra underneath

“look at what we have here!” she teases you

“you look beautiful like this baby, did you enjoy the little act on the bar today? Because I think it turned you on, you couldn’t take your eyes off of me could you?” she says positioning herself on top of you, straddling you, lowering her face to kiss your cheek, then your neck, leaving soft and wet kisses all over your jaw.

“Yes, Em god yes” you say completely out of breath

“was my baby jealous?” she asks, alternating kisses between words

“I was” you admit, completely at her mercy, and very turned on by how her fingers trace all around your stomach, your chest, how she whispers in your ear and kisses everywhere she can reach.

“you’re mine, baby” she whispers in your ear, and moves to bite of on your earlobe

“I’m yours” you answer, and you can feel her smile forming on her lips against the tender skin right behind your jaw where she was kissing you

She started her trip down your body, leaving wet kisses all along your skin, stopping suddenly when she reached the hemline of your underwear. She put her hair between her ears and instead of going on to where you wanted her, she began kissing her way up your thighs, nipping the sensitive skin there which you were sure will leave small purple marks tomorrow that you were too ashamed to admit you loved carrying with your for the whom day, watching them on your own reflection on the mirror, tracing with your fingers the same path her lips had made hours ago.

She reached closer to your centre, lingering right where your thighs ended and met the elastic on your underwear. This had you bucking up your waist to her face, which caused a giggle from her

“someone’s eager”

“Em you’ve teased me enough already, just please” you say out of breath, begging her to get where you wanted her the most

“I can’t say no to you” she kisses you right in the middle of your underwear, the sudden contact making you moan in pleasure

“Fuck. Em” your hands practically flew to wrap your fingers between her hair.

She uses her own mouth to lower your underwear with her teeth, and taking them all the way off using her right hand, the other one never leaving its place. Other times Emily would simply move your underwear enough to get exactly what she wanted, but tonight she needed you naked, nothing more than you on her head.

Before you could complain on her slow pace, her lips crashed against yours, she moaned in your mouth and you did the same, simultaneously she cupped you, a slight cry in pleasure leaving your lips

“Emily please, just ple-“ Emily cut you off by burying two fingers inside you, the sudden pleasure causing a long, loud moan escape your lips.

You were both always so vocal about your time together even when staying at hotels, so you could count that Morgan would be teasing you about it tomorrow since he was the one sharing a wall with you. But you could not be bothered.

“Am I hurting you?” She asked with genuine concern on her eyes.

“No, it’s perfect just don’t stop” she smiled against your lips. You decided to take advantage of the situation, and moved the one hand that wasn’t wrapped on her hair, to meet her centre, and gently run your finger through her.

“Fuck. Don’t stop” she breathed before kissing you again.

She continued to move her fingers inside of you and you met each thrust but you almost fell apart when she pressed her thumb against your clit and rubbed

One last hard press against it had you coming undone, Emily let you ride your orgasm, although it doesn’t take her long to reach her high as well and she comes apart collapsing on top of you.

The heavy breaths filled the silent room, you caressed her hair, and she gave you a last peck on the lips before getting off of you, moving so you could face each other, she wraps her arm around your waist and brings you as close to her as possible.

“I couldn’t stand the way she was looking at you today” you admit

“How she looked at me? Don’t you mean he?” She asks

“I mean both of them, Viper and Jordan”

“Oh c’mon, you’re not being serious” she laughs it off

“I’m serious, I really think she’s into you”

“You’re not even jealous anymore, you are being completely unreasonable now”

“Ok, whatever you say, just remember, my gay radar never fails” you tell her to make her laugh, but you’re not totally joking

“Just so you know, Viper was right. I did have someone in my mind”

“Oh? And who might that be?” You say teasingly

“Try and guess” she says, going for another kiss that you reciprocate with a big smile on your lips.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:

#wlw #lesbian #lesbian pride #wlw fanfic #wlw smut #criminal minds #criminal minds smut #Emily Prentiss #Emily Prentiss x reader #Emily Prentiss x you #criminal minds x reader #Emily Prentiss imagine #Emily Prentiss wlw #emily prentiss lesbian #bisexual reader #cm 4x09 #criminal minds 4x09 #cm 52 pickup

[vampbunnis]

boothill x writer&reading enthusiast!reader!!

wc: 680

tags - fluff!!!!!, hurt/comfort without the hurt, so just comfort, this is my first fanfic EVER!?!?!?, lots of projection, probably inaccurate portrayal of boothill srrie, boothill calls u darlin'/sugar, this is really really messy oops

a/n - the story kinda diverges into them just reading a simple book written by someone else but the idea was that they'd slowly work into reading more n more complex stuffs-- which eventually include reader's works !! tbh i like to think even if boothill doesn't fully understand yet he'd still wanna know what reader is writing. i'll probably rewrite this sometime in the future with the same concept, diff execution b/c this lowkey didn't turn out how i wanted it to ૮ ྀི◞ ⸝⸝ ◟ ྀིა

he feels bad and a little insecure about his illiteracy!! because he bets you're so so talented in what you do but he literally cannot appreciate what you write :((

sometimes he wonders if you'd be happier if you were with someone who was able to fully understand all of you-- all of your cute rambles about the usage of different literary devices in the books you were reading, all of the times you cried over dystopian novels and heart-crushing personal narratives and profound, emotional sentences that he just didn't have the capacity to understand.

when he sits you down one night and confides in you about this, your first course of action is to comfort him (obviously!!).

"trust me, i don't love you any less just 'cause you dunno how to read," you coo, peppering his warm face with loving kisses. "if i had to be with anyone else, i'd be sad forever knowing you'd still be out there. i love you, don't forget that, 'kay?"

you can see his worry-addled face relax a bit as you remind him of just how much you love him-- but you can still notice the crestfallen look in his eyes. you realize he has been worrying about this for a while; possibly since the first time you told him you were a writer.

you come up with a plan.

he's a little confused the first time you lay in bed earlier than usual with a book in hand, gesturing excitedly for him to join you under the covers. you usually read books on your own, no?

it didn't take him long to notice a difference between the book you were holding and the books you usually read.

he saw a few of the books you'd read previously-- they were thick, way thicker than the book in front of him now, and definitely way smaller in size. the covers also had pretty big differences. the covers of your usual books were much more mature-looking-- like they were meant to be read by adults. this book, however... had a fat, crudely drawn green caterpillar on the cover.

his metallic body slips underneath the sheets, relaxing on the mattress. he protectively wraps his arm around your waist, pulling you closer to him.

"what's this, darlin'?" he asks, pointing to the book with his free hand.

"the very hungry caterpillar," you reply, a bright smile on your face. you pause for a bit before speaking up again.

"i feel like i've been making you feel bad by leaving you out of my passion for literature-- i mean, reading, and writing and whatnot. i'm not the best teacher, but i still wanna share this part of me with you."

he has to try his hardest not to explode on the spot.

"'s alright, sugar, 's not your fault," he murmurs, gently caressing your side in an attempt to comfort you. "did 'ya get this book just f'me?"

you nodded, the solemn look on your face suddenly being replaced with one of excitement.

"this book is real simple, so i can read it to 'ya and hopefully you might learn a few things," you smile, giving him a peck on the cheek as you open the book.

since he barely knows how to read, you have to read the entire book out loud to him. that doesn't bother you, not in the slightest. in fact, you'd say it's even more fun that way.

he starts to snicker as the drawing of the caterpillar slowly gets bigger and bigger, eating food in larger quantities as the pages flip.

after you shut the book closed and put it on the nightstand, you turn to him. "how'd you like the book?"

"it was so stupid," he grins. "that [beautiful] caterpillar was still hungry after eatin' all that?"

you burst into giggles, hugging him tighter as you laugh. "mhm, i guess so. it's like me whenever you take me out to get fast food."

"oh, don't compare your pretty self to that thing," he smirks, tucking the both of you under the covers.

#⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊ 별빛이의 글쓰기 #⊹.(⸝⸝ ˆ ³(⁎˃ᴗ˂⁎)˚. byeolhill #boothill x reader #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x reader

[anyasathenaeum]

Hello! I feel like I might have already requested this before your ask box was wiped, but how about a virgin!Knives x Reader smutfic?? I love how you characterized him as shy and flustered over the idea of sex in that one crackfic you wrote 😵 I hope you have a great day and life is treating you well!! You're one of my favorite writers regardless of what you write :D

A/N: Hey anon! Yes, I remember this request! I'm so sorry it took me so long to get to it, but here it is! This is my first (serious) attempt at smut with Knives, so uhhhhhhhhh please don't come for me, I tried my best. I've decided to start with some headcanons followed by the fic itself, apologies - it's long. Also, anon - thank you SO much for your comment, you're super sweet and I'm sorry I took so long to get to this. All the best! Warnings: MINORS DNI, Virgin!Knives, AFAB!reader (female terminology is used), hinting towards plants having "heats", a touch of yandere-ish behaviour (it's Knives, so not entirely surprising) penetrative sex, P in V sex, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it folks), reader is submissive in this one, rough sex, marking, a little bit of a breeding kink, Knives being a Loser™, he's kinda in love with you but the fucker definitely refuses to admit it, name-calling (Knives calls reader things like "slut" and such) Word Count: 3.3k

Virgin!Knives is definitely not nearly as confident and as ruthless as he is in all other points of his life - he might seem like he knows what he's doing, but deep down? Man is SHY, but he'd rather die than have anybody realize that

Seriously, you won't ever hear him talking about sex, and he doesn't even use the word if he can afford to outside of the bedroom

When it comes to his first time, he likes to make it seem like he's in charge and like he fucks all the time, but he's literally just a hair breadth away from cumming the moment you touch him for the first time.

Would absolutely make you ride him (mostly because he has no idea what he's doing), but he plays it off with cool indifference and because he "just wants you to please him".

He tries to make up for it, trying to be more forceful or rough with his thrusts, talking dirty to you and calling you names, but it's a double-edged sword because the moment you're crying out his name and squeezing around him, he sees stars and cums WAY too soon.

Basically, Virgin!Knives is a mess and wants to seem like he's still in charge in bed, but with a few thrusts of your own, driving him deeper and deeper into you, you'd have him falling apart beneath you in moments.

But, of course, because he's not human, his stamina is INSANE and the moment he cums for the first time inside you, it unhinges him (do I sense a breeding kink???) and suddenly he's chasing orgasm after orgasm using you, and you're definitely not gonna be leaving his bed for the next few days.

Full fic below! Enjoy!

"Are you sure this is what you want, Master Knives?"

The question slipped from your lips before you could stop yourself. You just couldn't believe what you were hearing.

Millions Knives, the independent plant who you'd been working for for years, had had you brought to his chambers in the middle of the night so that he could ask you something important.

"Are you questioning me, pet?"

The way Knives glared at you, his gaze cold and calculated, made shivers course down your spine, and you quickly bowed your head.

"No, Master Knives. Not at all. I was merely surprised by your request. I apologize."

Knives simply raised his eyebrow as he continued to gaze at you, taking in your form as you stood before him. You'd initially been just some filthy human he was forced to keep around due to your utility and your skills, but over time, as much as Knives refused to admit to it, you'd grown on him. You were one of the more intelligent of your species, it seemed, and one that seemed to know its place whenever you spoke to him. But, in the end, you were still just a lowly, miserable human, part of the plague that threatened Plants across the planet.

So... why?

Why did Knives feel this... pull towards you? Why did he have to fight the urge to be near you each and every time he spotted you, the urge to tuck you against him with his wing and whisk you away, out of sight and out of reach of all others? Why did he feel rage boiling up within him whenever you smiled or laughed at something somebody else had said? A fair share of other henchmen had lost lives and limbs just for speaking to you (not that you knew that, of course - they just conveniently "disappeared" during a mission).

Beyond just those moments, Knives had also noticed... other things. A warmth that seemed to bloom from whatever part of him had brushed your skin, spreading through the rest of his body until it became full blown heat. This heat was unbearable to resist and made him feel as though it were burning him alive from the inside out, unquenchable even when he took matters into his own hands time and time again.

Knives wasn't a fool. He knew of the lust and the need to reproduce that his kind often felt, but he'd never experienced it himself ever before. Not until you showed up. But, you were part of the very thing Knives had sworn to destroy, so why did his body call to you in this way? Why did his body betray him so? What was it about you that made him feel this way?

"You heard me, (Y/N)," Knives spoke slowly and quietly, his gaze not leaving you for a moment as he lounged on his bed, "I wish for you to stay the night."

"Yes, Master Knives."

"You will not speak of this to anybody," he continued, his voice scarily level, "Or I shall ensure you are permanently silenced."

You simply bowed your head again, your heart pounding frantically in your chest.

You had always had an interest in Knives - asides from being somebody who was hired to work from him, you found him a truly interesting being. An independent plant, more beautiful than any living creature you'd ever seen before, hellbent on exterminating the human race to save his sister plants and trying to find his twin brother, another independent plant. He was always transparent of his end goal, and despite it all, you had still agreed to work for him. After all, humanity was a mess and it wasn't going to get any better - you'd seen proof of that time and time again throughout your life.

So, here you were - working tirelessly so he could achieve his goal.

Although, you hadn't expected to be summoned to Knives's chambers so late in the night, and you certainly hadn't anticipated him to wish for you to stay the night. You'd been summoned to his chambers several times in the past, sometimes for work purposes, other times simply on a whim, and you weren't ignorant of the way you felt around Knives.

His presence made you feel simultaneously safe and on edge, as if something was always just about to occur. As though there were always words hanging in the air between you two, just waiting to be spoken but never truly acknowledged.

Despite his reputation of being unforgiving and ruthless, you'd never been on the receiving end of that side of him, somehow. He could be harsh and sharp with his words and his actions, but he'd never caused you any true harm. You couldn't ignore the way your skin felt as though electricity coursed through it whenever Knives accidentally brushed against you, or the way the heat rose to your cheeks whenever you found him watching you intently. He never looked away immediately whenever you caught him staring at you, simply maintaining his gaze and ensuring to keep eye contact with you for a couple moments before looking away almost lazily, as if he'd grown bored of you. But the fact that he did it so often... could it mean?...

You didn't dare let yourself hope. It couldn't possibly mean anything. After all, you were just a human. Unworthy of him in every possible way.

And yet, here you were, summoned to his chambers in the middle of the night and told you were to stay with him overnight. Your mind was in overdrive, trying to figure out what this meant.

"W-Where am I to sleep, Master Knives?" You inquired softly, not daring to look up at him.

Knives would've scoffed and laughed had it been any other person standing before him, but this was you. His pet, of sorts. And as much as he refused to accept it, you softened him. You weakened him.

"We'll address that later, pet. Come here."

Before you could process everything, you found yourself approaching Knives's bed, stopping right before it and waiting for his commands, not wanting to overstep.

"Did I not make myself clear? Here, pet," Knives all but hissed, making it clear he wanted you right on the bed next to him.

Blushing slightly, you quickly followed his demand, crawling into his bed so you were right by his side. You could feel his gaze on you, and you risked a glimpse at his face - his expression was surprisingly calm, almost curious as he studied you as you sat there next to him on his bed.

"Don't move," Knives whispered quietly, bringing his hand up to your face.

Immediately, you froze, almost afraid to breathe.

"So obedient," you heard Knives chuckle, clearly amused, "What a good pet I have."

Without further comments, you felt Knives's fingers beginning to trace over your skin, skimming lightly over your cheeks and making his way over the bridge of your nose, then down over your lips. His touch was surprisingly gentle, more gentle than you ever thought him capable, but you remained silent as he continued his barely-there touches.

You struggled to ignore the beating of your heart and the roaring of your blood in your ears, your whole body feeling like a livewire. You had to remind yourself not to let your mind wander and make your hidden desires obvious, but something in the way Knives was watching you made you believe that he already knew of your hidden desires. You felt your face heating up even worse than before as you looked away from Knives, suddenly finding the threading of the bedding very interesting.

"I don't understand you."

Knives's sudden voice startled you, making you jump slightly as you sat there next to him. However, you remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

"Look at me, (Y/N)."

Slowly, you brought your gaze up to look at Knives, trying not to let your heart beat straight out of your chest as you did so. His icy blue gaze was steady as it trained on your face, still studying you even intently.

"What do you not understand about me?" You asked quietly, steeling yourself as you held Knives's gaze.

After a couple moments, Knives replied quietly, "I don't understand what it is about you that makes my body feel this way. How you, a mere human... are the only one who has the ability to set my soul and my body aflame. I get no rest because of you."

You felt your heart stop for a moment before it began to thunder violently in your chest, your eyes widening in surprise. There was no way that he meant what you thought he meant.

"Master Knives, I-"

"Nai."

You looked at him curiously, and Knives simply continued, "In here, I'm not Master Knives. My name is Nai. You use my name, here and only here."

"Yes, Nai," you replied softly, testing out his name on your tongue.

"I think you know why I've summoned you to stay the night, now. Don't you, (Y/N)?"

You nodded, making Nai smirk slightly, "Clever pet."

Without a second of hesitation, you felt Nai's hand cup the back of your neck, pulling you down against him and slotting his lips to yours in a passionate, lustful kiss.

You let out a small, muffled yelp as you fell forward onto him, your lips pressing against his and your eyes wide in surprise. His taste was surprisingly bright, and you found yourself melting into the kiss, eyes closing and matching his passion in the kiss within moments. You felt Nai's hands burying themselves into your hair as he pulled you on top of him, holding you close to him as he continued to kiss you lustfully, his desire for you overwhelming his typically-controlled self.

Despite the kiss being lustful and filled with desire, you found that Nai's kiss still felt as though he were holding something back. Was it simply due to him not being as invested as you believed him to be? Or was it for some other reason? Regardless, you found your hands coming up to cup Nai's face gently as you continued to kiss him, his hands resting firmly on your hips and holding you in place.

You could feel Nai's hands pressing your hips down hard against him, and underneath his robe and through your clothes, you could feel something hard rubbing against your core. A wanton moan escaped you as Nai continued to force you down onto him, getting you to grind on him as his hands guided your hips. You could feel your pussy beginning to soak through your panties, and your whole body shuddered as Nai pulled away from you, a string of spit connecting your lips together.

You watched as Nai's knives suddenly appeared from him, slowly approaching you. Your eyes widened in fear, and you tried to figure out what you'd done wrong, your whole body freezing and your blood turning to ice. However, the blades of the knives didn't touch your skin, instead the tentacles slowly working their way under your clothing, cutting piece by piece loose and letting the scraps of fabric fall from your body. The tentacles of knives glided across your skin almost tenderly, continuing their work diligently until you found yourself completely naked in Nai's bed, your clothing nothing more than strips of fabric now.

"Worry not, pet. You'll get new clothes," Nai spoke quietly, his eyes eagerly taking in your naked form.

Nai could feel himself getting riled up the moment he laid eyes on your bare skin, his cock hardening beneath his robe as he took in every part of you. You were beautiful, he supposed, for a human.

As he gazed at you, Nai couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like for him to finally take you, to stake him claim on you and to feel you around him for the first time. Of course, he'd never let you know that he'd never done any of this before, instead maintaining his façade of cool indifference and superiority, as if he'd done this so many times that it almost bored him.

Reaching out towards you, Nai pulled you back on top of him, his robe dissipating and allowing you to finally see him, his cock rock hard and throbbing, a glob of pre-cum leaking from the tip. You could see that the same plant markings that sprawled across the rest of his body were also on the shaft of his cock, as well as his tip. Just the sight of him, laid out before and below you like this and clearly wanting you, had your pussy dripping wet. You couldn't believe just how badly you wanted him inside you.

"Well? Go on, pet," Nai commanded, watching you carefully, "Please me."

"Yes, Nai."

You couldn't believe this was happening, but you found yourself feeling excited by the fact that you actually got the opportunity to sleep with Nai. As much as you wished that it could've been more than just sex, you were happy to have this, at the very least.

Slowly, you settled yourself in his lap, your hand wrapping gently around his cock and aligning him with your pussy, letting the tip just barely rest against your entrance. You were surprised to hear Nai hiss as soon as you took hold of him, feeling his body tense and feeling something warm and wet dribbling over your fingers.

"A-Are you okay?" You asked softly, looking at Nai with slight concern, hoping you hadn't hurt him or made him uncomfortable.

"Fine," Nai gritted out, "Don't question me. Remember your place, pet."

Then, suddenly, you felt Nai's hands tighten on your hips, grabbing onto you firmly before pushing you down onto his cock hard.

You let out a cry at the sudden stretch, your pussy stinging at the feeling of being split open so deeply for the first time in a long while, trying to adjust to the feeling of Nai inside you. With him sheathed inside you, you could feel just how big he was - even without moving, he was pressing against the most perfect spot inside you, pulling a whine from your lips.

"Quiet, slut," Nai growled, his hold on your hips bruising your skin as his fingers dug into your flesh.

What you didn't know was that Nai was struggling worse than you were at the moment - he'd never felt such warmth and tightness before, especially not around his cock, and he was trying so hard not to cum then and there. He hadn't expected you to feel so good around him, or for his body to be this sensitive.

However, as he held you against him, you let out a soft whine of pleasure and began to roll your hips desperately, pushing him just the slightest bit deeper into you. Nai's grip tightened on you, and he was about to growl out another command when his orgasm suddenly washed over him.

A choked "Fuck!" slipped from his lips as he involuntarily bucked his hips up into you, wanting nothing more than to bury himself into you even more than before as his seed coated your walls, painting them in white and claiming you as his in a way nobody ever really had before. You let out a moan and clutched onto Nai's shoulders as you felt the warmth spreading within your abdomen, and you couldn't help but continue to roll your hips as you chased your own release, wanting to feel more of Nai inside you.

"N-Nai, please," you whined, continuing to thrust your hips against him, "Want more... need more of you... please..."

Hearing you plead for him, for his cock, to give you pleasure made something in Nai snap.

In a flash, you found yourself laying back in the bed with Nai above you, his cock still buried inside you and still hard as ever. However, now, you could see a fire in his eyes as he gazed at you, his hand coming up and squeezing your breast. The mewl that came from you as Nai touched you made him feel more powerful than ever before, his instincts beginning to take over.

Leaning down and pressing his lips against yours hungrily, Nai began to thrust into you with urgency, his thrusts powerful and deep, pulling moan after moan from you as he continued to fuck you into his bed. He couldn't care less that this was his first time - nothing else mattered right now except for cumming inside you over and over again until you knew nothing but his name and that you belonged to him. He allowed his instincts to take over, the instinct to claim, to mate, to breed, to fill you up until it spilled from you endlessly.

"You're mine, slut. You hear me? Mine."

The growl that came from Nai made your whole body shiver, and the way he sunk his teeth into your neck and left a dark bruise to show that fact to the world made you scream out, partly from pain and partly from pleasure. You were his now, and nobody else would ever have you.

"Say it!" Nai commanded, thrusting into you harshly without stopping. "Say-" thrust "you-" thrust "are-" thrust "mine!".

"Y-Yours!" You cried out, feeling your own orgasm wash over you stronger than ever before as Nai continued to fuck you through it, "'M yours, Nai!"

"Mine!"

Nai slammed his cock into you one final time as he came yet again, filling you to the brim with cum once more. As he recovered from his orgasm, Nai continued to leave marks down your neck, your shoulders, your breasts, working his way down until he was ready to go again, wanting nothing more than to continue this until he could no longer stand it.

"Prepare yourself, (Y/N)," Nai growled into your ear, pulling your body against his hard, "You're to stay with me all night. And I'm nowhere near done."

#anya's athenaeum #trigun stampede #trigun stampede x reader #trigun x reader #trigun #trigun smut #knives x reader #millions knives trigun #knives smut #millions knives #millions knives x reader #nai x reader #nai trigun #nai x reader smut #millions knives smut

[cryptidghostgirl]

Hello hello!! You're probably swamped with asks, but if you have the time and energy, you should do a slow burn Alastor x reader set in the 1920s where the reader is a performer at mimzys speakeasy and that's where Alastor goes to chose his victims. He sees the reader for the first time and immediately thinks that they are his next victim but he keeps getting thwarted by small incidents, such as the reader leaving early and him barely missing his chance. After a while he notices small things about them and their personality after sort of observing them, and then they meet and he loses his interest in killing them. Of course the slow burn happens, the drama ensues, he's still a killer but keeps it a secret and then after a while the reader finds out. You can choose if you want a happy ending or not, but I had that idea in my mind and your one of the only writers I see that could do it justice. Thanks for sharing your talents!!! Your amazing and gifted in ways that inspire everyone who interacts with your blog🫶🫶🫶

A/N You’re literally so sweet?? Wtf?? I love you?? Thank you??? I hope you like what I did with this fun and fluffy idea!!! ahhhhhh!!!! also, I am running with the ambiguity of the ending. I am such a little slut for ambiguity.

Burn (Human!Alastor x Human!Gn!Reader)

Pairing: Alastor x Reader

Warnings: SLOW BURN. SLOW. BURNING IMAGERY. A LITTLE OVER THE TOP ON THE BURNING IMAGERY THING. Dead bodies, blood, murder, killing, mentions of stalking. This one got away from me a bit.

Word Count: 4,197

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Ravenous, that was the word. Not in the way where everything dissolves, leaving only the object of your affection. Not in the way that someone is controlled by desire. Hungry in the way fire eats paper, in the way kindling catches light. Starved in the way that leads to a progressive repeated sense of the word, a starving. A constant state of being famished that turns into a well loved and cared for blaze. Alastor burned.

The box of matches pulled from the pocket had been Alastor going to the bar, all those months before. Nearly a year now, once he sat and really thought about it. He had been going to Mimzy's little speakeasy on the outskirts of town since it had been just that, a little speakeasy on the outskirts of town rather than the full fledged, illegal club she ran today.

Back when it was a speak easy, there had never been a problem. On that fateful day, though he hadn't known it then, the club had changed its form. It had become the kindling. Sitting down at the table had been pulling a match from the box and Y/n.... Y/n had been the rough hewn striker paper he lit it on. It was all so obvious now, looking back. The expression 'hindsight is 20/20' existed for a reason.

So, Alastor had entered the club (matchbox out of pocket). As soon as Mimzy had spotted him, she had run over with a bright smile and a glass of whiskey on the house as always. Alastor had always liked Mimzy. She was wild and positively hilarious when she wanted to be but, at the same time, she had a good head for business. Her morals were just wobbly enough that Alastor felt comfortable with her, a camaraderie he felt with no other.

The lights had gone down suddenly and Mimzy, cutting herself off mid sentence, had turned to the stage in excitement.

"Good show tonight?" Alastor had asked.

Alastor never came to Mimzy's club for the music. She knew he didn't care, not really. Still, he had the curtesy to ask and so, she whipped back towards him.

"You betcha." she grinned up at him, "I just got this new kid? Came from all the way up north, can you believe that? Anyway, they have a set of pipes like you wouldn't believe! Just the bees knees, I tell you."

Grabbing Alastor's arm, Mimzy dragged him to a table by the stage. Alastor sat down across from her (match from the box) with an air of mild reluctance. Mimzy tapped her hands on the table impatiently.

A spot light flickered on and a scrawny young kid stepped onto the stage. He couldn't be much younger than Alastor or Mimzy themselves but he was one of those people that always look younger than they are. He had been working for Mimzy for a while now but, Alastor had never bothered to learn his name. He was simply 'Mimz's Manager' in his view of the world. The kid cleared his throat, leaning in towards the microphone which had been placed at center stage.

"How are we feeling out there tonight?" he asked the room at large and there had been a miscellaneous cheer from the room at large, "Well that's good to hear! We've got a real treat for you tonight folks. All the way from the Big Apple, we bring you, Y/n!"

The kid left the stage and a new figure stepped out from the shadows (revelation of match striker paper). The minute Alastor saw them, in the well cut suit that shone dark in the light, he knew. They were perfect. Slim, but not too fit and shorter than he was. Morally ambiguous enough in their aims that they had come running from New York to work at a speakeasy. This 'Y/n,' if that was even their real name, was his ideal next victim. Alastor smiled in the dim light as somewhere off stage, a piano began to play.

"I'll be loving you, always" the person sang and Alastor was taken aback.

Mimzy had been right. He had never heard a voice like it before. They sang with an emotional depth that could be heard from few. Somehow, they still managed to keep it sounding like music.

"When the things you plan Need a helping hand I will understand, always, always"

Mimzy leaned across the table to Alastor, her eyes alight.

"What did I tell you?" she whispered.

Alastor nodded his head to the side in vague agreement.

"Not for just an hour Not for just a day"

When they finished their set a half hour later, it was to raucous applause. The house lights raised and with them, Mimzy stood from her chair.

"I'll be back in two shakes." she promised before disappearing off into the crowd.

Alastor leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking beneath his weight. Contemplatively, he took a sip from his drink. The time before a kill was nearly as an enjoyable as the act itself. It was ritualistic, it brought him closer to god.

Before he knew it, Mimzy was back, dragging the singer behind her. They looked slightly frazzled, their hair a bit messy and their brow furrowed.

"Mimzy!" they exclaimed as they struggled to keep up with the woman holding their wrist in her vice-like grip.

Their speaking voice was... different than Alastor had expected. From the way they had sung on stage, he had thought it would be sharp, loud, ebullient. Instead, it was rather soft. Alastor couldn't help but think of the creek out back of the house he had grown up in.

"Al, meet my new favorite!" Mimzy announced, coming to a stop beside Alastor.

"I..."

The situation had been unexpected to say the least. Alastor had had a long day. He hadn't come here to socialize, he came here to drink. Now, he was at a loss for words, the haze of sleep and irritation clouding his mind.

Y/n looked at Mimzy before fixing their gaze back on him. The took a step forward, fixing a smile on their face, and held out their hand.

"Y/n."

So it was their real name. The one they presented to the world, at least.

Alastor smiled, standing from his seat and taking their hand in his.

"Alastor."

They had a firm handshake. There was something authoritative about it, something just a bit too confident.

"Pleasure to be meeting you." they said.

"Quite the pleasure." Alastor nodded.

They broke contact and Y/n turned to Mimzy, suddenly seeming very tired.

"I'm gonna head, Mimzy." they hummed, their voice nearly drowned out by the cacophony surrounding them.

Before Mimzy could say a word against their statement, they were gone. The crowd sheltered them from sight almost immediately. After that night, Alastor started coming to the club a lot more often.

He always sat in the same seat, the table near stage left. It was right next to the exit. Anyone getting off the stage had to go right past him. It was a calculated choice. Step one of his little projects, so to speak, had always been learning more about his victims, finding out their patterns.

The problem was, Y/n never seemed to do the same thing twice. Every time Alastor would think himself ready, would ready everything for the action, something different happen. The first time, it had been that Y/n had simply managed to slip out earlier than normal. Mimzy was always introducing them to someone or another after their shows, delaying their departure. That night, it seemed, they had somehow been able to avoid the mayhem.

Another time, the problem had been that Y/n had stayed at the club too long. Alastor was a working man and once the clock hit midnight, it was time to cut his losses and go home. A third time, Y/n had just happened to call out sick the very night he had gotten everything back in order.

A month in, and Alastor was ready for his fourth attempt. He sat at his usual table, drinking his usual drink. When Y/n left the stage, he kept his eyes trained on them as always. It went like clockwork - Mimzy pulled them away, they tried desperately to escape and eventually, they succeeded. That was when everything went south again.

One second, Y/n was by the bar and the next? Gone. Alastor got to his feet, tossing a bill or two to the bar tender and disappearing out through the door. He was determined. Tonight had to be the night. If tonight wasn't the night? He was done. Alastor was not a foolish man, he knew when he was beat.

Quietly, nothing but the sound of cicadas and the occasional echo of a car from elsewhere in the city accompanying him, Alastor slipped down the ally he knew the club's back door let out into.

"There you are."

Alastor spun around.

"I was beginning to think you wouldn't show."

Y/n leaned casually against the wall, the dark fabric of their dress blending softly with the night. When Alastor didn't reply, standing in their gaze like a deer in headlights, they stood themselves up and walked the step and a half it took for them to be face to face with him.

"I'd like it if you stopped following me. Or, trying to follow me. It's getting kind of old.'' (match struck paper, match remained unlit.)

Alastor resumed his composure. Sliding his hands into his pockets, he leaned forward, fixing a teasing grin onto his face.

"Oh, would you now?"

Y/n, much to his surprise, held their ground.

"Yeah, I would. Whats your interest in me anyways?"

Thinking on his feet had never been an issue for Alastor. Besides, he really did have some questions for the illusive singer. Or, he had one question for them. One that might lead to others.

"Oh, you know." he hummed, straightening back up, "All the way from the 'Big Apple.'"

Y/n scoffed at his parody of their nightly introduction to the stage. They crossed their arms, glancing off to the ally's entrance as a drunk couple stumbled by.

"Yep."

"Why?"

Turning to face him again, Y/n narrowed their eyes.

"Why do you wanna know?"

The hint of an accent. At least he knew they weren't lying about where they came from.

"I suppose you can call me a curious fan."

"I think being a bit less of both those things would suit you."

They fell into a brief, nearly uncomfortable silence. Letting out a sigh, Y/n was the one to break it.

"Look," they began, "I know you're friends with my boss and all but... I am going to go back into that dive and I am going to stay there until you are long gone. I'll stay the night if I have to, d'ya get it?"

Alastor's smile tightened.

"Loud and clear."

"Good."

Y/n didn't see Alastor for another week. Slowly, the tension that had permeated their every waking moment since meeting Alastor that first night, the constant ache of his eyes on their back, began to fade. Just a little, but it was enough. When they saw him sitting at the bar almost two weeks after their little altercation, the amount it had faded was just enough to make them angry at his return.

Alastor hadn't really meant to come back. His plan was to give it a month, maybe even two. His plan was to come back and resume life like it had been before he had ever even known Y/n existed. His mind had other plans.

He had tried to find another target, occupy himself with a new victim. There was something unsatisfying about it, he couldn't quite get his head in the game. Every time he went to trail a potential victim, he heard their voice ringing out in the silence of his mind.

There you are.

Alastor had been killing for about three years now. He had a good number of victims under his belt and was in no ways a newbie. Even back when he had been one, no one had ever caught him out like that before. There had been a couple close calls, sure. There always were but waiting for him? Thwarting his plans repeatedly? Beating him at his own game?

"I thought I told you to leave me alone."

Alastor looked up from his glass of whiskey, smiling politely up at Y/n. He could feel the anger radiating off them in waves.

"Mimzy would be rather sad if I just up and disappeared like that, no explanation."

He caught sight of her across the open space and waved. With a bright smile, Mimzy waved back before returning to the conversation she had been embroiled in. Alastor turned back to Y/n.

"Oh, wouldn't you hear that? You're getting sober. Congratulations."

"Ah, but there is still the music and that wonderful new singer who came down from up north not too long ago."

Y/n took a deep breath, calming themselves.

"It's not that hard of a question to answer. Or at least, it shouldn't be for most people. What, are you on the run from the cops? I heard life is oh so dangerous in those big cities up there, after all. Maybe part of the reason was you."

"If I answer your question, will you leave me alone?"

Alastor was silent for a short moment before he replied.

"If I like the answer? Sure. I'll leave you alone."

In a single, sharp movement, Y/n dragged the stool beside him out and sat down. Tapping their fingers on the table, they got the bartender's attention and ordered themselves a drink.

"You want to know why I left New York?" they hummed thoughtfully, "It's because of guys like you."

A shock of sudden nerves fought through Alastor's system. Did they somehow know? After all this time, had someone figured it out? After just under two months?

"Guys like me? What ever on earth do you mean?"

"You know, pretty boys. Pretty boys who turn out to be creepy boys that don't know the meaning of the word 'no.'" (match struck paper, match remained unlit.)

It wasn't the first time Alastor had been called pretty or handsome or something of the like. In fact, he knew he was pretty. It was part of why the whole ruse worked. Normally, however, when people told him he was, it was accompanied by far too much blushing and looks to the side. Y/n held his gaze firmly the whole time.

"So, you're escaping an ex? A jaded lover?"

"A jaded 'someone-who-watched-me-perform-once-and-decided-it-meant-we-were-married'? Yeah."

The bartender placed the drink in front of Y/n. They picked up the glass, downing it in one go. They grimaced.

"You like my answer?"

"Hmmm... no." Alastor grinned, ear to ear, "I don't think I do."

Y/n sighed.

"What is it you want from me?"

Alastor's brow furrowed in confusion. He was very good at keeping the inside from showing on the outside. The question had just caught him so off guard, or maybe it was something about Y/n that had him on his toes, he couldn't help it. They kept seeming to make his head spin.

"Want from you?"

"Money? Sex? Fame? A fall guy? What."

"I don't want anything from you." (match struck paper, match remained unlit.)

Y/n eyed him suspiciously. The answer had been automatic. Alastor himself was struggling to comprehend the words that had left his mouth. He wanted to kill them, right? What he wanted from them was their life, right? That was what he had been working for over all these days, fighting for. He knew it was true so why did the statement not feel like a lie as it had traveled from his tongue?

"Yeah right." Y/n placed their hands on the bar, pulling themselves to stand, "I totally believe that."

"Just your time, Songbird. Just your time."

They turned to him.

"I don't understand you."

"You don't have to. I don't understand you either."

They paused.

"It frustrates me." Y/n admitted, "Who even are you? I don't know anything except your name."

Alastor gave their now empty chair a pointed look. Y/n stood in contemplation for a few seconds before they nodded their head once, seemingly to themselves, and took their seat once again. Confidently, they tapped two fingers on the lip of their empty glass.

"Another."

(match strikes paper, match lights.)

Alastor was the match, Y/n was the paper. The club stopped being kindling the moment the pair took their conversation outside its boundaries for the first time, about a month or so later. For a while, there was no kindling, there was just match and paper. Alastor liked it that way.

It had been hard enough to come to terms with the fact that he really did have no interest in killing them anymore. That the moment such an idea occurred, he could see them in his minds eye, smiling or picking at the hem of their shirt the way they did when they were nervous.

The kindling reappeared when Alastor realized the match had been struck in the first place. That was a whole other thing. The friendship suddenly seemed easy, the loss of bloodlust directed toward them was like nothing in the face of a realization like that. Once he recognized the flame, Alastor stopped being a match and Y/n stopped being paper. The match became the little flutter of their stomachs when they caught sight of one another, the tension of the moments where they could make contact. Y/n and Alastor were kindling now and they were standing oh so very close to that dangerous flame.

It was Alastor's sleeve that caught fire first. It happened when they had gotten caught in the rain. Y/n had opened their umbrella and, seeing Alastor had none, insisted he join them in its cover. Alastor had, of course, refused. With a roll of their eyes, they had grabbed his hand and yanked him forcefully into place beside them. Alastor hadn't realized they had only touched once, when they first shook hands, until Y/n's skin made contact with his once again.

The worst part about it all, was that it made sense. It made so much sense. They were quiet, contemplative, and calculative. Before long, being with them felt like being with an extension of himself in an odd way. Alastor couldn't quite describe it, he didn't have the words.

Y/n always seemed to notice things no one else did. When Alastor had forgotten his umbrella the next three or four times it had rained, they had confronted him.

"Almost like you're doing this on purpose." they had hummed softly.

Though they didn't look at him, Y/n knew Alastor was blushing.

"Shut up."

The next thing to catch had been Y/n's collar. Y/n had been chatting with him, sharing a drink before their set and they had lost track of time. At the sound of the stage manager, Alastor still did not know his name, beginning their introduction to the stage, they had jumped up in fright, hurriedly tightening their tie which they had loosened in the casual atmosphere. Noticing that the action had caused part of their collar to fold awkwardly, Alastor had gotten to his feet as well. With a gentleness he had not made use of since his mother died, he had fixed Y/n's collar.

"Wh-" they had stopped mid question, having realized what he was doing.

His hand lingered on their collar. Y/n's eyes traveled up his arm, at last meeting his own.

"Thank you."

Those big wide eyes, full of curiosity and comfort. Alastor could get lost in those.

"Y/n!" the stage manager announced.

"Shit!" they exclaimed and the magic of the moment was broken as they pulled themselves away.

All it took was that. It wasn't much but, fire has a way of working with what it has. When a few days later Y/n had stepped out into the street without looking, being too caught up in the story they were telling Alastor, and he had pulled them back just as a car passed, it was too late. The house couldn't be saved, the flames had gone too far. A few blocks later, after thanking him, Y/n had realized they were still holding hands. They stopped, pulling Alastor to a halt beside them.

"What are we doing?"

"We're going for lunch. Are you quite alright? You were the one who sugge-"

"No, Alastor. I mean: what are we doing?"

Alastor followed the path of their eyes to their interlaced fingers.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

There was a pause. The world turned around them.

"I don't... I don't know if I can do this anymore."

Alastor took a deep breath before braving the sight of their bewildered and slightly saddened face once again.

"I said all I wanted was your time."

"That's the problem."

Y/n let go of his hand, running their own through their loose hair.

"That's the problem, Alastor." they said again.

"What is?"

Y/n had a habit of telling him the most serious things eye to eye with a stoney demeanor. He was surprised to see them break from this confident custom of theirs as they looked away, their arms wrapping protectively around themself.

"I want more. I want you to want more."

Alastor was stunned, he was speechless.

"I... I'll see you tomorrow, Al."

Before they could make it more than a step away, Alastor grabbed their shoulder, spinning them to him. Y/n looked up at him, confusion painting their features with the most delicate brush.

Alastor struggled, he fought. Still, there were no words.

"Don't you get it?" he asked, "I want your time. Y/n, I want you."

Alastor kept finding himself in trickier and trickier situations. First there had been trying to kill them, then the hurdle of not wanting to kill them. Friendship had given way to its own bag of worms and now that they were more than friends?

He had thought that it all would stop. He had thought that if things ever worked out the way they had, everything would be okay. He had forgotten his nature.

At first, hiding the killings was just as easy as it had been before. It did not stay that way. Alastor was good at hiding things, always had been. That wasn't the issue. What was the issue was that he cared about Y/n, he didn't want to hurt them. Keeping secrets... well, his mother had always told him that no one ever fools anybody. His mother was a wise woman. His mother had been right.

Y/n had stopped by as a surprise. They had a home cooked meal in a basket and a bag over their shoulder full of records they thought he would like. When they stepped into the foyer of Alastor's large, garden district home, they had called their usual greeting.

Alastor's heart had stopped at the sound of their voice. He froze, his cleaver still firmly wedged between the shoulder and chest of the man he was chopping into pieces for easier disposal. Hoping it was his mind playing tricks on him, he waited. They called again.

"Al! I have a surprise for you! The surprise is me! And also? I made you dinner. Come out! I know you're home!"

Under any other circumstances, them showing up like this would have filled him with unbridled joy. However, it wasn't any other circumstances. It was these circumstances. Alastor was covered in another man's blood. There was a body just a few rooms from his beloved. Either way, they would find out the truth. They were a nosey thing, always so inquisitive.

"Alastor!" he heard them call again.

They were closer now, much closer. He watched in a mixture of horror, despair, and a twinge of excitement as the doorknob jiiggled.

"Alastor?"

How would Y/n react to such a sight? Would they cower in fear? Was their love alone enough to hold them here, to tie them to him in loyalty? Would they run to the cops? Would they cry? Would they ask to help? Would he have to kill them too?

It was sickeningly delightful, all the unknowns. His heart pounded violently in his ears. The door swung open.

"There you are!"

Ravenous, that was the word. Not in the way where everything dissolves, leaving only the object of your affection. Not in the way that someone is controlled by desire. Hungry in the way fire eats paper, in the way kindling catches light. Starved in the way that leads to a progressive repeated sense of the word, a starving. A constant state of being famished that turns into a well loved and cared for blaze. Alastor burned.

"My dear! How wonderful to see you."

----

TAGS:

@willowshadenox @i-love-jafar @elfyeet @reader3 @lazygirlfanfic0-0 @kahlan170 @wendyphan01203-blog @fairyv-ice @clarakainda @lunaramune @mcueveryday @luxky-aish @peterpankat @corvid007 @juskonutoh @simpingsohard @sethianaa @gabile18 @slytherin4ever @skyeliteratures @zombiesnips-blog

Sorry if the end made you angry,,, I just think the not knowing is so much more fun!

Also the song is "Always" by Irving Berlin.

#hazbin hotel #x reader #hazbin alastor #alastor #hazbin hotel alastor #alastor hazbin hotel #alastor the radio demon #x reader fics #fic writer #hazbin hotel x reader #alastor hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel x y/n #hazbin hotel x you #hazbin hotel x gn reader #alastor x gn!reader #gn reader #gender neutral y/n #gender neutral reader #gender neutral pronouns #alastor imagines #alastor x reader #alastor x you #alastor fanfiction #human!alastor #human!alastor x reader #the radio demon x reader #radio demon x reader #the radio demon #radio demon

[bugsbenefit]

currently rewatching s3 and honestly... yeah no wonder Mike and Will had to be across the country in s4 for the plot to work they're too fucking good with this. even in s3 where they play a lot of plot support for El they're actually CARRYING the groups actions

s3 actually makes the difference between Mike and Will and the rest of the party Extremely clear. El, Max, and Lucas are lost at first, ranging from not taking Billy too seriously or just not knowing what to do

Mike and Will are the only one's with first hand experience. Will was possessed by the MF (Henry) and Mike sat next to him like this for over two days straight. Will has the intel and Mike has seen what possession looks and acts like up close. they KNOW what they're doing in s3 which is why they take the threat of Billy and the MF so serious so fast. even El has to ask them how possession works and how you can identify it. because despite having powers she still has no experience with this

that experience also gets highlighted in situations like the pool, where Max wants to wait and see what happens with Billy to know if he's flayed but Mike and Will know they have to act first

they know you don't wait until someone activates. the entire population of Hawkins lab was killed last time someone activated and they both witnessed it first hand. but the other's weren't there for that and don't really know how to deal with the current situation

also, Mike and Will are fully on the same page regarding the supernatural, which is why they're so efficient. Will gives his insight on the MF (Henry) and Mike immediately jumps to thinking of a proactive plan. the sauna idea took him less than 5 seconds

they would have completely fucked the plot of s4 over had they been in Hawkins i'm so serious. s3 literally shows us exactly why they couldn't be there:

Will can tell when Henry gets close (which s4 even confirms he is still able to do). had he been around in s4 he could've warned everyone if Vecna got to Max. no wondering when he's going to get you. Will would Know and he'd Tell you. they wouldn't lose time looking for Vecna in the Creel house, they wouldn't lose time scrambling to get headphones last minute

Mike is incredibly good at adapting prior knowledge to new situations which the Hakwins crew was Abysmal at. Mike can apply chemistry facts from years ago when it's convenient and can convert Will's possession into a working possession-test for Billy. but in s4 we have to suffer watching the crew remember that fire was the UD's weakness and then never use it on anyone but Vecna himself. a bottle of hairspray and a lighter could have gotten them out of being strangled by vines but they only had the clunky molotovs for Vecna. their planning methods directly contradict Mike's approach to plans

also. both of them act proactively. everyone at Hawkins lab died because they didn't stop Will in advance and s3 shows they learned from that. i honestly can't see a way for them to be on board with an "i'll be bait" plan. they directly argue against waiting for him to take action multiple times in s3. they KNOW that's how people die because it's too late when he gets here

and best of all. MIKE LITERALLY CALLS OUT WHY THE S4 PLAN DIDN'T WORK. word for word. you could paste this into s4 and pretend it's Mike berating them for the plan they just came up with

s4 makes it super clear that Mike and Will being absent is BAD with their friends directly commenting on how they're not here to help, and the last shot of the season being them returning to town speaks for itself, but s3 also directly shows us why. based on how they've dealt with the UD's/MF's return just six months before s4 shows how they would have approached something like s4. and at this point the two of them are too good of a team with too much experience to let them be around for it

(which would in universe most likely be Henry waiting for both of them to be out of the picture and out of universe be the writers putting them on the gay roadtrip in the weed van to be able to set up endgame s5 in peace without having them be in the way)

#byler #mike wheeler #will byers #those two are genuinely a scary team #even while on fighting terms they can push that away immediately and gang up on all their other friends for having bad ideas #i genuinely can't wait for the s3 problem solving byler dynamic to come back tenfold in s5