#I have fucking holes in my walls. I have shattered windows at seven years old. I get stressed and I have to throw things or I AM GOING TO -

[theinkbunny]

my family after finding out that no, my reaction to pain isn’t to cry or whine, but to become hyperaggressive to anybody nearby

#This is because the fact I’m constantly at every given moment holding so much hatred and anger #So much pain and suffering that it takes a toll on my fucking soul and I still choose to love. To create. #I choose to be peaceful most of the time #My past was not fair. It wasn’t acceptable at all. I shouldn’t be alive right now #And I know for years my life is going to be shit. I’m going to be socially outcasted due to shit I cannot control #I have spent from the age of three fucking years old to now not being able to go outside in the winter with others #It’s going to stay for the rest of my life. I’ll never build a snowman. I’ll never eat an icicle. I’ll never go sledding #I am forever going to live without those memories that people take for granted. #I have to stay inside and try to scratch the feeling of his hands all over me off while people get to play and have fun #My life is fucking hell #And yet? I’m still KIND TO PEOPLE THE BEST I CAN #I AM TRYING I REALLY AM #But when I’m in pain to the point I can’t move for hours I am going to be a bitch. #The anger is festering and boiling and it’s going to end up hurting somebody or me. #I fucking hate anger issues so badly #It’s so fucking trivialized #Like “ohhhh it’s funny when people are angu over stuff!!!” But the same people get annoyed when I actually show the bad sides of it #I have fucking holes in my walls. I have shattered windows at seven years old. I get stressed and I have to throw things or I AM GOING TO - #- TAKE IT OUT ON ANOTHER PERSON. I don’t want to be who I am but I have to. I’m trying so hard and I’m failing

[whump-town]

Been Having a Hard Time Adjusting

Summary: Alternative to the peaceful homecoming of Emily Prentiss - Aaron Hotchner never truly comes home with her.

Warnings: medical trauma, amputation, scarring, blindness, mental health, hallucinations, and just sad stuff

AN: I have over 9K of this fic written already. I'll warn you all now, it's a painful one.

Part One

The night that he came home from the hospital, more evenly placed stitches, staples, and drugs than man he locked himself out of his apartment. He’d been in the hospital two days, counting the day he’d woken up and the day he left, and unable to stand on his own was escorted out of the hospital in a wheelchair. The timing was perfect. He’d scared JJ and Penelope away, it’s amazing how feeling like death often allows you to look the part. He’d scared them away with his weakness and the anger trying to burn him away. Spencer can’t leave his own hospital bed until his knee has been properly braced but for now, he’s immobile while the swelling from the surgery goes down. Derek is nowhere to be found. It’s too surprising the usual suspects are flaring their heads to tell his “orders” to go fuck themselves.

But on the second day, Strauss had called Emily and Dave both to meetings all day, questioning their behavior and what the next plausible course of action will be for the team. Leaving him roughly seven hours to bust himself out and it’s exactly what he did.

Derek had spent the whole night before fixing his apartment, ripping up the carpet, plastering the wall, and changing and adding locks. As Hotch discovered this, metal scratching metal as his hands trembled unable to even get the old key into the round hole, he’d laughed. Throwing his head back and breaking the stuffy feeling in the hall with its depth and desperation. Laughing that twisted to sobs as he leaned into the door, forehead resting against the wood. Someone had changed the locks. He’d never felt so relieved, so happy to be stuck out in that hall because if he can’t get into the apartment Foyet wouldn’t be able to either.

He’d slid down the wall, head pressed into the doorframe, to rest his temple against the painted wood. He told himself he just needed to rest a moment. He’d rest for a moment and he’d call Derek or Emily or Dave and tell them what he’d done and things would be okay. They’d be angry but someone would take him to a bed, home and he didn’t even care if they were his own. He fell asleep, long legs extended out in front of him and his frame drawn in to stop his stitches from being pulled on. His core was weak and he was in pain but he just needed a second.

A second turned into four in the morning and Derek yelling his name. Peeling his eyes open and finding Derek dropping down beside him, the other man’s warm fingers pressed under his neck checking for a pulse. He’d find one, pounding and rapid but there. His memory of what happened next is hazy, a cloud of Derek talking quickly and being furious. The sound of tears in Derek’s voice as he’d been pulled to his feet, pressed tightly into Derek until they could get into the apartment.

Nothing after that matters. Not Emily’s anger and Dave’s disappointment. The only thing in the world was the feeling of the opposing keys in his hands. The tears that fell down his face when he could look into his palms and see two very different keys. Derek had added more locks, an electric thing that screams and makes his ears hurt but is so loud someone would hear it. That way this would never happen again.

He’d locked himself out a lot after that day. Needed to know the security system worked so he’d take that old key into the hall and sob with relief when he couldn’t get back in. Irrational thoughts and needs like that consumed him and someone was always there to meet those needs as best as they could. No matter the hour, Emily and Derek always showed up to let him back into the apartment with their spare keys. Never met him with an air of annoyance or like he bothered them. They always found him in that hall and mumbled the same promise, “he can’t get you, Hotch.”

And, now, only a year later Emily is out there somewhere. Consumed by those irrational fears born from great desperation and the shattering of her entire sense of security and they aren’t. No one will meet her desperate two a.m. wake-up calls with patience and a spare key to let her back in. She won’t be able to check and double-check because dead women have to play the part and desperation is a characteristic of the living.

He’d taken that away from her. Aaron had taken her life and her security and her family and sent her to another continent to live under an assortment of different names. Isolated her.

He’s finding it impossible to live with himself. With the guilt and the knowledge of how hard it is to cope and move on and live after every sense of security and home has been shattered. She’d been there for him. How many times had she come in the middle of the night because he called? How often did she show up even when he lied, even when he swore he was okay? All so that he wouldn’t have to sit alone in that apartment. Brought snacks and suffocated him in blankets and distracted him with boring movies she loved. Picked at him for his oddities so he could think of anything but his wounds and when he’d needed that she’d given him space. Sat on the other side of the couch in his silence and held his hand.

Now she’s an entire continent away. Dead to the world. Alone. Entirely alone.

Penance, he decides, is the only way to move on from here.

The foreign jobs were always something he and Derek used to scoff at. Not in some idle way that they might be better than the agents (mostly cadets) that take those overseas jobs but because everyone knows the Army chews through feds faster than rats through boxes in an attic. It’s a suicide mission to overtake and he knows that he knows that and he still signs his name on that dotted line.

Emily never went to Pakistan.

On the plane ride over, he tries to dig down and remember all the states she’d once said she had visited in her youth. She’d told him plenty of times, he should know them in his sleep. It’s always what she talked about when she got drunk. A few cups of Dave’s “good stuff” and she’d stretch out over the couch, often placing her head in one of their laps. Drunk is really the only time Emily ever knew how to be affectionate bar all hesitancies.

She’d tick off each place, naming them lazily with a tongue and accent he could never get quite right. His own mouth was too rounded, too rough to get it right. His attempts would make her laugh, the way he’d butcher the syllables with his accent.

He cries. Eyes closed and melted back into the chair.

He knows this is a mistake. Knows that his grief and pain will not dissipate just because he is punishing himself. Instead, he’s furthering everyone else’s. Distancing himself from Reid who is already struggling to grasp hold of this situation. Leaving Derek in charge of a crumbling team. Pulling away from Dave-- it had always been the three of them and now it’s just him. It’s unfair and he knows it is but it’s the only thing he knows. It’s solid and it hurts and it makes more sense, it’s more feasible than anything else.

He has to leave.

He couldn’t tell anyone. Knew too well all he needed was someone to grab his coat-tail, someone to pull him back from the ledge. Turning around isn’t impossible and wiggling out of his contract won’t be that hard because he knows all the right things to say to a therapist. He knows how to make himself look dangerously unappealing to the Army. But he hears Clyde Easter’s words in his head “can you swear that your team will save her”? Feels JJ’s fingers ghost over his hand as she’d told him, and remembers Emily’s dead and it’s his fault. This isn’t about Dave or the team, this is about his penance and it’s what he owes.

It’s too late now. The decision is not even really his to make.

On the plane, pinned in a window seat and knees aching from the cramped space, he thinks about her. The yellow light cast over her features, the weight of her head on his thigh, and Dave pressed into his other side. Smiling until his face hurt and seeing her nails. Remember how high, how warm he’d felt between the two of them. Just Dave and Emily and no monsters to hunt or hurt to protect. Her hand stretched up, how freely she’d laughed.

“Russia,” she’d ticked off. “Romania. Turkey. Israel. Laos.” She’d stopped biting her nails. They were healing.

She’d smirked drunkenly up at him. Dave was getting the car together, the only one of them sober. Liquor always makes her tongue lose, inhibitions lowered and little secrets slipping out. Earlier that week she’d thrown out the soft sentiment that she considered the team her family and they’d agreed to the same but she’d seen the look Hotch made. Knew that glint in his sad eyes.

“You’re my family too,” she’d whispered that night. Her fingers danced just along his chin and he hadn’t flinched, he’d been entirely lost by the sight of her. Giggling and poking his stomach when his only response was to look down at her. “Hate you sometimes,” she’d yawned, “but I like to keep you around. You’re nice and you smell good.”

It’s not what she’d want-- any of this-- but she’s not here to talk him down. That's the bitter part, she's the only person who could talk him down. The only person who seemed to speak through his irrational fear and anger. So it doesn’t matter.

He falls into what he knows.

Penance.

It tastes like the sand, salty and dry. A great never-ending expanse of nothing.

Hotch lets the motion of the Humvee settle him, going bonelessly with the great machine as it plows the road. Behind his sunglasses, arms tucked over his chest, and mouth set into a deep scowl he shuts his eyes. Tries to relax and to take a moment for just himself before he’s thrown back to work. This is entirely something new, different from home. Here they are not a team. Each person has a job and none of them talk to him, they don’t concern himself with him and he doesn’t bother trying with them. He just does his job and tries to hold on.

“Fucking hotter than Hell and half of Georgia,” JR curses, lifting his helmet to swipe at his brow.

Billy sits forward, settling his weight elbows on his knees. “JR,” he says seriously. “What in hillbilly hell does that even mean? I swear, they must have recruited you from some inbred town, didn’t they? Out here hardly able to read and--”

JR hits him hard, the sound jarring and Hotch doesn’t even open his eyes. He doesn’t need to see the two soldiers across from him to know exactly what’s happening. He clears his throat, “knock it off.” JR and Billy are nothing like Reid and Morgan but Hotch thinks about them nonetheless. About the jet and the air conditioners but mostly about Morgan’s relaxed handsome smile and Reid’s long thin legs stretched out for miles ahead of him. Their voices tangling in the late, calm nights into soft laughter.

He’s pulled roughly from his daydream, Billy’s voice breaking his mirage.

“Way to go you dumb fuck, woke up the old man.”

He wants to go home.

The Humvee rocks hard and these things are rough to ride in but there’s a distinct thing-- the hair on his arms stands up. Painfully so. He sits up. “Billy--” he never gets the chance.

He makes it three and a half months in Pakistan, trudging around the desert before the inevitable happens. He’s just a profiler surrounded by foot soldiers, every last one of them is expendable and that’s why the job is so dangerous. They can be replaced by cocky twenty-year-olds and they’ll just force a cadet to do his job. But nearly four months is damn near record-breaking. As the bare skin of his forearms burns in the harsh sun, his blood drying to his face, he wonders if Derek will be proud that he lasted so long. If Derek will know he did try to make it back home.

He tried.

“Hotchner!”

He moves, blood rushing to his head and he can’t hear anything past the sound of his own pounding heart. He pulls himself up on his elbows, choking on the thick smoke and wincing at the feeling of the hot flames licking out dangerously at him. Warning him to get away. He can’t see anything past the thick black smoke of the other Humvee. Nothing past the pool of blood around his left leg, gushing and flowing through the sand. He sees the mangled flesh, his eyes look and he knows and he recognizes the broken, mangled way his left leg sits in the sand but he says nothing. Does nothing.

He looks up to the soldier kicking up sand as she runs towards him. “JR and Billy,” he shouts, moving his left hand over his eyes so he can look in the direction of the soldier. “You need to find JR and--”

The woman, he can see her bun and her hooked nose. She’s only a kid and if he had to admit to liking any of them he’d be okay with naming her. Jamie shakes her head and he’s reminded that she’s just a fucking kid. Some twenty-year-old from a poor school district, too smart for this bullshit. “They’re dead,” she tells him, sinking to her knees in the sand. Her hands tremble, hovering to find a distinct place to hold. A way to stop his rapid blood loss before she’s left here entirely alone. She clamps over his leg and his vision goes black.

Gunshots wake him.

The night is encroaching, the smoke from the ruined Humvees still snaking into the clouds, and he can feel the temperature drop. Trembles, body weakly trying to stay warm. He peels his eyelashes open, caked in blood.

“Hotchner?” Jamie. He can’t open his mouth, his jaw cramped with shivers and convulsions while his body fights futility to keep him warm. He turns his head to see her. She’s pulled her helmet down over her head and she looks afraid. Drowsily, he feels her hands on him. It’s out of body like he’s not really there. “Medics are on their way,” she promises and he feels himself a rock, feels the chills, and her hands. The ground rocks and her attention snaps in the direction of the origin of the motion fear in her eyes as her breath quickens.

His eyes start to drop shut and she shakes him. Between pained hisses, breathless little pants, he’s glad he’s too weak, too tired to fight. Jamie won’t hear him whimper and writhe, he’s too far gone for that. Her palm presses to his cheek, “you have a son?” She knows he has a son. “Tell me about Jack,” she begs. “How old is he?”

He doesn’t even try.

He wishes he could apologize. She shouldn’t be so young. He hates he’s taking away measures of her innocence with each breath he struggles to draw in. The way he’s dying in her arms.

God, she’s so fucking young.

He blinks and the heat of the sun has been traded for the shade of a medic tent. A penlight makes its way across his face, attempting to draw his eyes to focus. With a groan tapering off into a pained moan he moves his hand, fingers just briefly tapping against the light. “Agent Hotchner?” The light burns his eyes but he cracks the left one open, just a sliver of the smoke agitated white of his eye to dart until he can find the doctor. “Agent,” the doctor frowns down at him waiting for Hotch to find him in the sea of movement and loud noises. “Agent Hotchner, you're going into respiratory arrest.” His lips are cyanic, parted limply as he fails to draw in deep breaths. Skin cold to the touch despite the flush creeping up his neck to suggest he might be warm. His brow and chest perspiring heavily, the area at the base of his neck sinking in with each quick, wheezing breath he pulls in.

“I’m going to lower the head of the cot and intu--” the doctor flinches as Hotch’s trembling, cold fingers wrap around his wrist. The Supervisory Special Agent’s lips move but no words come out, just the cracked sound of dry lips touching but the doctor knows well enough what he’s saying. “Agent,” the doctor takes his hand, moving the fingers from their tight grip on his wrist to his own. “Your breathing is rapid and shallow, it’s no longer sustaining your body. It’s why you can’t speak.” The doctor squeezes Hotch’s hand, “you’re tachycardic, your heart is beating too quickly. If you’re not intubated this problem will not abate on its own.” They’re playing with time here, just waiting until his breathing is agonal or stops entirely.

Hotch shakes his head, lips cracking as he gasps. He needs to know where Jamie is.

But they are Army docs and their job has nothing to do with his hesitation. With his preoccupations.

A doctor with long, cold fingers tilts his neck back. Manipulating his jaw open. Aaron looks up at the younger man, vision spotting as the drugs in his body take effect. He’s lost, drowning in memories of years far away. The water crashes over his head, inky black tendrils wrapping around his ankles to dunk him back down.

He thinks of Spencer Reid. Standing in his kitchen with the genius leaning close. The soft, familiar weight of his voice mumbling through Hotch’s weary bones. The way he can nearly hear him now, recall the exact sounds of his voice and that distinct little sway and playful patter of Spencer’s body when he’s happy. Hotch has never been an excellent or even very good cook but he always tries and he remembers the day in question Spencer had come over to learn how to cook pasta. Spencer hates sauces, tomato-based ones are too acidic but he also just doesn’t like the consistencies. So Hotch had spent hours looking for the perfect recipe.

He thinks about Penelope Garcia. The very first time she got sick and he found her crying in her office, trying to soothe her ailments with over-the-counter products. Having convinced herself that he’d send her to prison in a heartbeat for missing a single day. A few weeks before the whole Doyle incident, she’d come into his office two hours late for a meeting they were supposed to have. A cookie in one hand and a coffee in the other to butter him and then attempt to distract him. Even asked about a doctor’s appointment she had to have hacked into some database to have known he had that morning. Things change…

They change so quickly.

Two federal agents leave home.

Only one comes back.

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner

[virtueangel]

limitless.

chapter seven.

wc: 2,313. original publish date: october 12, 2020. 

Four-thirty-five looks like every other freeway exit in all of America. JFK pushes firmly down on the brake as the car rolls up to the white line of the intersection. There is a green sign next to the road, and oddly enough, Marshtown is marked in metallic white lettering at the bottom. Printed next to the town name is a right-turn arrow, and even smaller next to that is the number five.

"Five miles," John F. Kennedy says, grinning.

Vincent can't help smiling either. He can still feel JFK's arms wrapped around his torso and the way his chin rested on the taller boy's shoulder. "We're getting close."

"Think it'll be worth it?" John asks, glancing at his passenger.

Van Gogh shrugs. "I sure hope so."

"We've spent all this time romanticising it..." Kennedy starts.

Both boys turn to each other, giddy smiles still plastered across their faces. "Wanna do it some more?" They say in unison, breaking out into boyish giggles afterward.

"God..." Vincent mutters.

"Hm?" John hums as the light turns green. He accelerates.

"I feel like we're little kids again," he says in a sad voice, but the smile is still taught across his lips and Kennedy doesn't know which look to meet his gaze with.

"We were pretty fucking awesome as kids," he tries.

This earns him a grin from Van Gogh. Score. "Yeah. I was cool back then."

John knocks his best friend's arm playfully. "You're still cool, Minivan."

Van Gogh covers his eyes with his hand, mock repulsion surfing the waves of his voice. "God, don't remind me of that nickname!"

"Hey! I might've meant to antagonise you back then, but I promise you: I've changed."

Vincent shakes his head, but he can't help smiling. His cheeks are starting to ache, but his happiness is genuine. "Oh, I know you have. That little five-year-old didn't know how to -- how do you put it? -- 'bang the sweeties'."

Kennedy laughs. "Oh, believe me -- he did."

The car goes silent as the sky fills with fog. It's thick and grey and the windows of the shiny red convertible are already starting to precipitate. Vincent zips his letterman jacket all the way up and tucks his chin into the collar, the cold already starting to set in. Even John has to admit that his knuckles clamp up and go a little white against the steering wheel.

"We must be getting close," Vincent says. The sky hadn't been blue for the earlier part of their drive by any means, but even the clouds that hung in the sky let the faintest bit of sunlight filter through. Now there is a dense blanket of moisture blocking the rays from view.

John goes quiet, suddenly wishing they'd planned the trip. He worries that he'll get in another fight with Van Gogh over where to sleep or how they'll keep themselves entertained in this town that they know next to nothing about. They aren't even sure if it has a marsh or not. But most of all, he fears that Vincent will get cold in the fog or the air will be too wet for him to draw. Part of the reason Kennedy had even vouched for this trip was so that the boy would have a lot of inspiration to paint or sketch or read or write, because above all, John loves his best friend's poetry. But he doesn't know how to tell the boy any of that.

Van Gogh looks across the car as Kennedy starts to drive more defensively, and his brow furrows; not in disgust, but in worry. He notices the boy's white knuckles and the way he grips the steering wheel like he's trying to strangle it. He reaches out and places a hand on his best friend's forearm, rubbing him through the sleeve of his jacket slowly and comfortingly.

"Hey, hey, what's wrong?"

John swallows. "Sorry. Nothing, sorry. Don't worry. I'm okay."

Van Gogh's worried gaze lingers. "Are you sure?"

Kennedy gives his best friend a smile and a nod, but the motion is only half convincing. Vincent sighs and turns away anyway, not sure if he's allowed to push.

A couple seconds of silence pass before Kennedy requests timidly, "Can you, uh, keep doing that? With your hand, on my arm? It feels kinda nice." He laughs at himself sheepishly.

Van Gogh smiles to himself and obliges, happy to keep touching the boy. Er, uh, that came out wrong! He thinks. I'm just doing a good thing for him. Just trying to calm him down. He banishes the first thought, convincing himself that this is an uncomplicated act of kindness that he's doing for his best friend. He'd do anything for Kennedy, right?

Vincent stops rubbing the boy's arm and squeezes instead. With a gasp, he points out the windshield. "John, look!"

In front of them is the Marshtown sign, a yellowish-beige rectangle with dark green trim and text. It's an ugly sign, Van Gogh has to admit; especially from an artist's perspective. It's dilapidated and sinking into the ground, parts of some of the letters missing and splintering. The population number has been knocked off but the word "population" itself is still intact. There is no "welcome" or cheesy slogan. The boys can barely see the road beyond the sign, because the fog seems to have thickened since entering the town.

"Vincent, it's-"

Both boys stare into the fog, jaws dropped and pupils dilated. They are at a loss for words and almost a loss for breath. The road turns into a bridge, and on either side is a marsh, wet and gooey with coarse grass shooting out of it in various locations. The cement is covered in puddles and John slows down the car to ten miles per hour, squinting to see through the fog.

Beyond the marsh is a town. Not much of one, but it's there nonetheless. Every building and house is falling apart -- some are burned down to the foundation, others are missing doors and windows and from what Van Gogh can see, some of them are without floors as well. There is a dense ring of pine trees around the houses and they seem to stretch forever, but then again, John and Vincent have limited vision due to the intrusive fog. Each house looks different, and not just the way they're destroyed; the floor plans are unique, with different finishes and dimensions.

To their left is a general store. It's more intact than most of the houses, but its door is hanging off the hinges and there's a gaping hole in the middle of the wooden stoop. There's a sign on the door, flipped to the "open" side. Van Gogh wonders if some teenager had come by to flip it in their day of mischief or if there's someone in this ghost town to manage the shop.

With all of its lichened and weathered wood, Marshtown looks like a summer camp location. Neither John nor Vincent had spent their summers shipped off into the arms of overenthusiastic counsellors to go swimming and hiking, but they've seen enough cliché coming-of-age movies to know what a good old fashioned American summer camp experience should look like.

"I love it," Van Gogh blurts, eyes fixed out the window.

Kennedy grins. "It's incredible."

Vincent turns away from the limited outside view to look at his best friend's side profile. "I want to live here."

John's smile widens. "Okay."

"No, I mean it."

"I know you do," he meets Vincent's glare. "I do too."

Both boys seem to realise at the same time that Van Gogh is still gripping the taller boy's arm, and he lowers his hand sheepishly without a word.

"Do you think anyone still lives here?"

JFK squints at the houses, looking for cars or intact doors. "No," he concludes.

Van Gogh smiles to himself. "So we've got the whole place to ourselves, huh?"

Kennedy's stomach somersaults and his breath catches in his throat, his jaw suddenly going slack. "It would appear so," he swallows.

Vincent doesn't seem to register the boy's off-kilter tone. "Ooh, you know what?"

"Hm?"

"We should locate the creepiest house and stay in it."

Kennedy chuckles. "Vincent, some of the houses don't even have roofs."

"Perfect for stargazing."

JFK laughs even harder. "We can barely see six feet ahead of us!"

"So we'll pretend. Make up our own constellations."

Kennedy and Van Gogh make eye contact, and the shorter boy's deep brown gaze burrows itself into JFK's soul. He feels it snaking around his heart and making its home in his stomach. His cheeks seem to smile themselves.

"Okay. I'll play along."

Van Gogh leans back in his seat, satisfied. His hands shake, and he can't tell if it's due to nervousness or excitement. They are, after all, the same emotion -- the only difference is how they're interpreted by the subconscious.

"Try that one," he says after a couple minutes, pointing to a two-story Spanish style house finished in yellow stucco. It stands out from all the other developments, and not just because of the material it's made out of. It's almost perfectly intact, complete with a bay window and a second-floor balcony. It has a few imperfections, probably due to lack of maintenance. There are deep cracks carved into the outer walls and the paint on the door is chipping. Some of the upstairs windows have shatters blossoming in them, fanning out across the glass like spiderwebs. Van Gogh knows this is the right place to stay.

Kennedy redirects the car off the road and into the driveway of the house. The lawn is splotchy and has more mud and puddles than grass. The plants that actually grow there are clearly invasive: coarse wheat-like sprouts and greying succulents. The succulents are definitely artificial -- Van Gogh knows nothing of the sort could prosper on marshland.

"Why this one?" Kennedy asks, just for the sake of conversation. He parks the car in the driveway and slides the keys out of the ignition. He unbuckles his seatbelt, but makes no move to exit the car. He sits back in his seat, moving his feet away from the pedals and turning his knees toward Van Gogh. The shorter boy unbuckles his seatbelt and turns his own knees toward the driver, his letterman jacket still zipped snugly up to his neck.

"Because it looks special."

"You can do better than that."

Vincent sighs and looks away from Kennedy, thinking about his answer and choosing words from his lexicon wisely. "It looks like a home and not just a house."

"But you don't know anything about it," JFK challenges, and he wonders if he's crossed the line into the asshole realm.

Van Gogh smiles, thankfully amused by the comment instead of annoyed. "Let me tell you something, John: when you're an artist, you start to look at everything like a piece of art. It kind of sucks sometimes. I can't read books without thinking about the edits I'd give to the author. It ruins the fun a little bit."

JFK reaches out, not quite sure what he's intending to do with his outstretched arm. He lays a palm on Vincent's shoulder awkwardly, guessing he's in too deep to retreat his arm without any contact at all. "But I like the way your artist brain works," he says, and it feels like an admission instead of a conversation volley.

Vincent smiles down at his lap, flattered. When he looks back up at Kennedy, he can see that his best friend's cheeks are pink. "I want to know this house's story," he adds.

Kennedy smiles affectionately, staring down at the boy with soft eyes. "So what are you waiting for?"

Vincent opens his car door, and immediately the thick fog wets his tongue. He opens his mouth, half expecting a snowflake to dance down from the sky and land in his mouth. But while it's dark and gloomy here in Marshtown, it isn't April winter like it is in Exclamation!. For a fraction of a second, he misses the city's name on his mind. He shoves the thought away, hoping it will dissolve on its own.

JFK and Van Gogh walk up the driveway to the house side by side. They climb the three brick steps to the porch in unison, John slowing down for Vincent the way he always does. He sneaks a glance at his best friend, still staring at him with the same cloudy eyes.

"Oh, shit, moment of truth," Van Gogh says, taking the door handle in his hand. He looks back at his best friend, who is standing with his hands shoved into the pockets of his khakis.

"What do we do if it's locked?" Kennedy asks, which he knows is a stupid question.

Vincent shrugs, but there's no disappointment or angst frozen behind his features. "We'll find out." He squeezes down on the handle and the mechanism clicks. He slowly pushes the door open, suddenly worried there will be someone inside.

The first room in the house is the kitchen, a beige tiled floor meeting his shoes as Vincent steps inside. To his pleasant surprise, there's no grime crusted into the tiling, no spider nests burrowed into the corners of the room. Grey, foggy light spills in from the bay window, washing the room a drowsy white. Everything seems to shine, even in the permanent dreariness of Marshtown.

"You were right, Vincent," Kennedy says, and he doesn't need  to see the rest of the house to know it's true.

Vincent turns around to face the boy, a genuine smile sitting lazily across his lips. "Haven't you learned not to doubt me?"

John steps forward and wraps his best friend in a hug, resting his chin on Vincent's head without a second thought. "I'm still learning, Minivan."

Into his chest, Van Gogh mumbles, "I hate it when you call me that."

#clone high #clone high jfk #clone high van gogh #clone high reboot

[realllllfangirllllll]

More Than Friends ||

Chp. 37

Masterlist

CEO!Jaehyun AU x Reader

College Student!Jaemin AU x Reader

Summary: After a complicated relationship with the infamous CEO, you want nothing more than to live your life as a normal college student; however, Mr. CEO just can’t let you go.

{ Previous / Next }

Jaehyun’s pov

The feeling of my comfortable chair gave me a tiny ounce of relief. I let my body sink into the furniture as the slow jazz music played in the background of my study room. Although the music was relaxing, my mind was not. I ran my hand through my already messed up hair as I recalled the events that happened the past days.

The moment the projector screen lit up, I knew someone was set to sabotage the night. What I didn’t know was that they would stoop so low as to sneak into my company and expose my personal love life.

I quickly ushered the security to come forward in an attempt to bring down the video that never seemed to end. I hate to say this, but Jaemin was actually of help. Not only did he stop the projector from playing, but he even assured his father in as many ways as he can to prevent an argument. As the two of us tried to explain to the chairman, we were rudely interrupted by a wave of reporters. Suddenly, the speakers intruded our eardrums.

This is the true identity of the person you plan on working with. An office romance with an intern? How can someone be so unprofessional… I am hugely disappointed and so should you.

The distorted announcement kept ringing in my ears. My heart shattered when I scanned the ballroom, desperately searching for y/n, but to no avail did I find her. I panicked and rang the group chat in an attempt to find her whereabouts. I was worried sick at this point, not even bothering about the rowdy reporters and their flashing cameras. It was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. I pushed through the crowd and left the chairman to explain himself. 

This very action made it final that Starship will not be working with my company anymore, but the only thing on my mind was my girlfriend. I wasn’t going to leave her alone in this situation. I know her well enough to know that she will put all the blame on herself when in actuality, it was all my fault. 

My phone buzzed and I quickly checked the notification. The next thing I knew, I dropped my phone and ran to the women’s bathroom. As I ran past the many hallways and doors, my heart sank deeper and deeper. At that moment, it felt as if I was seven years old again, running to the hospital to find my mom. I remember running away from home when I witnessed my father’s affair, reaching my mom’s hospital room a little too late, and the letter she left me that caused me to cry in the middle of the hospital until my eyes burned.

On the letter, it read: If you get this letter, then it must mean you got in a fight with your father, my husband. Don’t be too mad at him sweetie, you’ve been a good boy and have done nothing wrong. I was simply too weak to provide your father any happiness so he did what any other person would do. Please forgive him, son. However, your father’s and my actions do not define who you are. You are special. You are not just any other person. Makeup with your father, but do not be like him. You are too pure-hearted for this world and so you must grow up to be strong and only love those you can trust. Never fall for those who want to benefit from you, but never lose those who make you feel at home. Home is where your heart lies. My dear son, follow your heart and everything else will follow. Love you always, Eomma~

At that very moment, I followed my heart. I ran like my life depended on it, because it did. I prayed to the gods that the love of my life was ok.

When I reached the ladies restroom, I found Soyeon with a tear-stained face, sitting against the wall. I was about to lose all sanity, thinking of the worst case scenario. Roughly, I gripped her shoulders, shaking her to snap her out of her sorrow daze. “What the fuck happened to y/n?!” I shouted louder than I wanted to, fear taking over me. I continuously shook her, trying to get an answer from her.

She slowly snapped out of her daze and turned to me, wiping her face, she softly answered, “S-she fainted. I didn’t know what to do...” She continued to explain with her eyes shaking in fear, “I kept tapping her but s-she wouldn’t respond. I-I called Mark over and he took her somewhere...”

I kneeled down in front of her, a wave of relief washed over me after hearing that Mark was taking care of her. I silently comforted Soyeon, getting ready to take her home from this chaotic mess I caused. 

As soon as I got home, I relentlessly tapped my phone. I contacted y/n and everyone that might know where she is. I need to know she was fine, but I received no response.

The next day, I turned on the tv to see news about y/n and me scattered all over the channels and on my tablet. I figured she’d seen them all by now, so I had to text her again to make sure she was ok.

I waited and waited for her response but nothing came. 

Finally, I ran to my phone when I heard it buzz, but the next thing I knew, my heart shattered into a million pieces. 

Jaehyun... I don’t think I can do this. It’s just too much... bye

I stared at the text she sent me. I know she’s only doing this as a habit of running away from her problems. I know. I know that it was exactly like how she ran away from me after developing feelings for me during our complicated relationship. I know it. I just know she still loves me and that's why I text her back, trying to set everything right. Trying to convince her to stay with me.

But she doesn’t reply.

I call her.

But her phone is turned off.

Rage took over me and I threw my already cracked phone across the living room, not even caring that it left a hole through the glass window.

The next few days, I spent my time locked up in the study. Neither did I slept nor did I talk to anyone, not even Johnny or Lucas. Occasionally, I would hear Soyeon pounding on my door, but I paid no attention. For the only thing on my mind was losing the love of my life.

It was all my fault. I dragged her into this lifestyle knowing she did not want the spotlight. I made her hide our love for the sake of my reputation. I was too caught up with loving her that I never realized how much I trapped her. It was nobody’s fault but me and my selfish tendencies. I was too greedy to ask for both success and love so now I’m face to face with its consequences. 

The vinyl record stopped playing and I was brought back to the present. I walked forward to change the record, a familiar R&B song played and immediately, I was thinking of her again.

This was the song that played whenever I was with y/n. I recall the morning after sleeping with her. This time, I was sober enough to feel every part of her. The song was playing in the background while she fell asleep on my chest. I would chuckle at how she acted so tough but ended back up in my bedroom. Her soft breathing would send shivers down my body. Back then, I thought it was only lust I felt. However, even then, I felt a warmth surround me every time we slept together. Her very presence made me feel at peace, whether we were making out or endlessly bickering. I loved every moment I spent with her, even when we were only sleeping buddies.

After our childish tickling battle and yet another intense session of fucking, I softly played this song in the bedroom as y/n hogged all my blankets on the bed. Her soft breathing and the sound of the music meshed perfectly into a serene tune. I remember laughing to myself. Never would I have thought anyone would know about me being ticklish nor thought I would do such childish things and laugh so hard from it. She made me feel like a kid that day, a kid that said “lotion” instead of “sorry.” That day, I only cared about having fun and not having to worry about why my father did what he did nor about my company struggling because of a spoiled brat. I felt like I was truly myself when I’m with her.

This song also filled the bookstore while I read her my favorite quotes from Pride & Prejudice. That wasn’t a mere coincidence, however. I did purposely tell the cashier to play the record when I saw it in midst of the endless boxes of vinyl. That was one of the first time I shared an innocent kiss with her. Ironic that the innocent kiss came after all the endless nights of lust. Nevertheless, my heart felt something that day. It was as if it was doing flips over and over again. Maybe it was because she initiated the soft kiss first, or maybe it was because she called me cute afterward. Or maybe it was just the fact that I had already started to fall in love with her.

Again, the song played in the background of my living room as I lulled her to sleep. I remember smiling to myself as I stared at her puffy eyes, having cried from watching The Notebook and was then clinging onto me while falling asleep. It was the very first time she truly believed that love in fiction could exist. She believed in it so much that she cried. It made me realize just how much our existence changed each other. I was the hopeless romantic who read romance to never forget how love can make up for so much. On the other hand, she was the atheist who read romance novels to see how love was just “fiction.” Although we both shared the same tough act toward others, we gradually changed. We became our real selves when we were together. We were each others’ safe haven. We weren’t just in a relationship, we formed a home.

Tears rolled down my eyes as I thought of our shared memories. She was my home. My heart only beats for her, and only her. 

My mom’s words suddenly filled my mind:  Never lose those who make you feel at home. Home is where your heart lies.

I wiped the tears off my face. That was it. I loved her too much. My world revolves around her and I am not going to lose her. It’s time for me to man up and show her that our love can overpower all hatred.

I rushed out of my study and left my house. I knocked wildly on Soyeon’s door. The moment the door flung open, I said with all seriousness, “I know what I need to do now, and I need your help again.”

———

• I was so stressed as I wrote this ashdkdhdkj •

• Stream BOOM 💥 •

• Omgg also I love The Rose sm so imma have to promote my bbys •

• Stream RED by The Rose 🌹 •

#nct #nct 127 #kpop social media au #wayv #nct dream #nct texts #nct imagines #nct reactions #nct jaehyun #nct smut #nct angst #nct fluff #nct scenarios #nct 127 texts #nct social media au #nct 127 jaehyun #nct 127 imagines #nct 127 fluff #nct 127 angst #nct 127 smut #nct 127 scenarios #jaehyun imagines #jaehyun social media au #jaehyun texts #jaehyun nct #jung yoonoh #jung jaehyun #jaehyun scenarios #jaehyun timestamps #more than friends

[aemperatrix]

Keats Is Coughing

by Marianne Boruch

Everything is made of everything. — Leonardo da Vinci

I found Rome in the woods.

Fair to admit it’s mostly tundra to the west in the park, past Toklat the Denali I revised, low grasslands engineered to freeze deep by October — this being Alaska — the great

           Tabularium close to the Temple of            Castor and Pollux I rebuilt that same summer —             not superimposed, exact as any scheme

in secret — the Arch of Septimius Severus at the gravel bar        where fox drank from a river turned stream,           a Theater of Marcellus near               the ranger station where one raven,                                                                                    such a brat,   complained of                      my Circus Maximus, Trajan’s Column,                              my Baths of Diocletian, too many spots soaked in unpronounceable Latin.

                   I really did, I shouldered bits of it,      a ruin-hushed haunted business, my brain                                                         a truck bed, a lift, pulleys big as a whale’s heart, expletives of cheap wonder all over                                                                  my woodlot and expanse.                          One self-anoints to embellish day, years, life thus far, and think oneself so...    

                      Then busted — 

by a raven!

Well, that’s memory for you, that’s so-called        civilization for you, to layer up,                         to redo the already done.

I mean it’s a fact, the puny life span we’re allotted.              And proof — Denali in August, fireweed, spunky scrawny first Latinate — Erechtites hieracifolia — 

              giving off flowers to mark               what weeks left, little               time bomber, time traveler, ancient               slips red-flagging the countdown to winter               by climbing its own stalk.

Something perverse about that. Something perfectly fiendishly self-conscious about that.

•

From the start perverse, any premise.      Ask...We can’t know. To be compelled

           makes an occasion. Rome’s grand     past horrific, fire and ash, swamp into bog, lust              and bloodlust — 

The Alaska Range dreams lurid as Rome,                                        the worst way below being fire, summer snow at night      off the highest peaks by noon              as distant from our cabin as the size of a hand if I                         held up the one with                         an eye in the middle

to know how this works. Some have the power to raise from the dead a before, before scary and beautiful           back to mystery cults, in caves, rubble far under a Roman street, the altar to Mithras still slaying his bull, crumbling the stonework.

            All things being equal. But they’re not.                    Agony, it’s older.                      Ask the moose at Denali,                         the snowshoe hare, the lynx,

such a wily courtly lot.                                           Ask Ovid      banished to his hovel on the Black Sea, aching                for Rome’s exalted rude cacophony, each      exiled month a big thick X down

                                  Februarius,                                 Aprilis to home-shattered sick enough

for an undersong. Look it up! Undersong: a strain; a droning; the burden of a song —                                              Maybe that lowest common denominator is contagious. Rome or Denali, a mash-up of lunge and cry out, predator and prey throwing coins to a fountain, footholds made first by a hoof, pickpockets at buses and trains, nuns queuing up their no-nonsense, thorny brambles, raggedy spruce groves,                                           a look, a nod to sell loveless love on the street, a chain of mountains in choral repeat, saints stained to glass, how ice gouged rivers from rock-bound,                                 the one-lung rapturous common-sense Pope all outstretched arms, his little popemobile circling the thrilled at St. Peter’s up on our rickety chairs to see in six, seven languages how radiant —                             Cross my heart, he was. And Keats, Keats is coughing.

•

You find the fossil record everywhere. In woods, tundra, under streets, in cadaver labs.                                 Not those bright transparencies, wistful orderly page after page in biology, a lie, a kind of flip-book romance. It’s the one big mess of us in us, the generous extraordinary dead prove that, signing a paper, giving themselves away                                            to be cut, disembodied for the knowing it, sunk to their chemical depth in some afterlife, opened on a table by kids really,                                             belabored doctors-to-be, our shabby shared wilderness to untangle, bones   joints   arteries   valves,                                                         The Dissector in hand, weirdest how-to book on the planet. For Keats too, 1819, his scribbled roses and sunflowers in margins,                                                                  his training,                                                           his anatomy theatre, looking down and later: still London, then Rome (he who gets it,  body fails, second floor, beside the Spanish Steps).                                           Heart, not my heart anymore.                                     Forgive me. I’m worse than the hopelessly confused misnamed English sparrow, descendant of the great weaver birds of Africa, a finch that lost the gene

      for nest, how to beneath, to across so intricate, precise, bringing bringing sticks and hair and bits of shiny paper. Undersong: the burden of a song.                                                       Poor bird. Poor sweet muddled middle of it. I watched morning after morning, his offering...                                                                           It’s Keats who made claims about beauty and time. His bed at the last                        too low for the window, his must-have                                 tell me, what’s out there — 

I admit: a ridiculous layering, Rome in Denali. Just because? Because I went to both in short order? Two continents, an ocean apart. My mother loved hand-me-down expressions — never the twain shall meet. They do meet.                           To repeat: that’s civilization for you. Happenstance and right now drag along future and past                             and why the hell not the Denali, the Rome in any of us, no two states of being more unalike, worn-out compulsion to collect and harbor, piece together,                                                                    stupid into some remember machine.

  Such fabulous unthinkable inventions we’ve made to merge or unmake: the trash compactor,   the poem, all tragedy and story, pencils sharpened to

a point that keeps breaking, wilderness gone inward as

                  an ocean-going ship’s container,                         a Gatling gun,                                 the AR-15 of the seething deranged,                                         the H-bomb,                                             Roman legions to Canterbury to blood-up fields into legend then dig the first plumbing but

                                            how can you                                             be in two places at once                                             when you’re not anywhere at all!

       (Thank you, Firesign Theatre, brilliant wackos,              old vinyl on a turntable still in the game... )

                     Fine. Fuck it. Start over.

•

See the sheep on high ledges, the arctic squirrels below.

See the way Dante saw, sweeping his arm across Vasari’s great painting as Boccaccio looks off, the plague sealing city after city. Dante

in hell, steady-luminous     those fact-finding trips to service           his worldly Inferno.

Winter sleeps through. August at Denali, bears shovel it down       a razor-edged maw —                                                 twigs! berries! more stems! —  Fate hoards to prepare, sub-zeros, fattens into...   

See the park’s camper bus, 92 miles how most of us jolt and slow, crossing hours more daylight than night all summer, rattling tin can with its exhaust and hissing gravel, the fear landslide                  an undersong just-possible, how we zigzag a mountain. Look!

                 Nearing a bear, the young caribou abruptly                             hesitant, shy as a leaf — 

No! Don’t! Do not! That grizzly huge, bent to his ploy just                                                 these berries around here, his ignore ignore, sure, quiet-tense as a trigger, and we of                      fogged scratched windows so hard to open — 

stop! The bus stopped. Jesus. The thing curious, closer...                          They’re not

that smart anyhow, a stage-whispering drunk from the back      of our imperial realm, mile 62, the Park Road.

What did Venus decree in her temple up whichever narrow street in Rome, the Ancients’                             stink of slops, standing water,           a bear chained to a slave (out of slav, by the way,                             backdrop is horde, human spoils)

both shackled to a grindstone for                                                             a later mob and roar.

Here’s what we saw: the little caribou  in reverse wanders sideways and safe.                                             Our bus one big sigh or like a wheezing asthmatic the brakes unbrake.

Bad dream, bad dream, the undersong start to all fable if                        for real we’d seen that kill back to lions off their continent cornered, bloodied in the great amphitheaters, rearing up, a nail to hammer’s                                   bite and blow. The wilderness in us

is endless. Near the cabin, near evening, a warbler                               in the fireweed                                                    hawk saw or heard,                          his switchblade clicked to —                                                                         I was and I was                      whirling feathers, either bird —    Every hunger                            is first century. Forever-thus   feral cats at the Forum about to leap too.                                                        The Forum, last homage   I shoveled holes and rocks to   remake, mile 82, while the haymouse riddled the meadow   down deep, her catacombs.

•

Time + beauty = ruins. Perfect shapes in the mind       meet my friends Pointless and Threat and Years of       Failure to Meld or Put to Rest. Ruthless                                                                                 is human.

I ask a composer: How to live with this undersong thing                             over and over, how to

                                                                   get rid of it,                                                                        the world of it — 

 He looks at me. What undersong thing? And shrugs       I’ll put it on the test! Let students define it.

     So I dreamt such a test: Go there. To Rome.                    Half-doze against a wall                      two thousand years of

    flesh    sweat    insect wing ago, stone laid by hand, by a boy when a whip, a whip, a welling up, his will not speak.

   Have at it. Please explain. Please fill in this blank.

Grief punctures like ice, moves like a glacier   to flat and slog and myth, low blue and white flowers       we hiked trail-less. The rangers insist. They insist — 

      never follow or lead, never lay down a path.

                                                                       From above the look of us spread out, our seven or eight a band, little stray exhausted figures                                           as over the land bridge from Asia,

circa: prehistory keeps coming, older than Rome, both   both underfoot, understory, underway

        miles below numb, it’s burning.

•

To see at all, you time                                         and this time and time again.

The spirit leans intrigued, the other part bored, then there’s want,                                                                    then there’s wait.

Once a city began with a wolf whose two human pups would      build, would watch it fall, nursing                                              at her milk for centuries               in marble               in bronze.

         She stands there and cries of                                                               that pleasure, by turns a blood-chill. The tundra. At night.

A snake eats its own tail, forever at it on a fresco. A real snake                       leaves his skin near the gravel bar. Some words sting, some are sung. Another life isn’t smaller.

#marianne boruch #poetry #keats is coughing #poem #cuvinte potrivite #i need to lie down. i. i— #long post

[tonguesanndteeth]

Tongues & Teeth Chapter: 4

Jasper waited across the street from the little coffee shop on the corner. By now it was too dark for anyone in the cafe to see his face. He was early, but Teddy was already inside, seated at a table by the window with her nose buried in a book. It wasn’t like him to keep a lady waiting, but Jasper took this opportunity to study her, if only for a moment. 

Her flaxen hair hung long and straight down the length of her back, her eyelashes casting delicate shadows across the planes of her cheekbones. Whatever she was reading must have been captivating, or perhaps confusing, as he watched her eyes dance across the pages intently. A little dimple appeared between her eyebrows when she focused. The emotions pouring out of her were unreadable.

Jasper crossed the street, the late November air frozen and still. A bell rang as he opened the door to the shop. It was a cozy, hole in the wall kind of place with old wooden walls and green subway tile. There weren’t many people here this time of night and Teddy’s head snapped up at the sound.

She smiled at him as he walked in, and it was breathtaking. Only his inhuman eyes could see it, but the light glinted off her teeth and threw a dazzling eight color rainbow.

“Sorry I’m late, ma’am,” he said, striding over to her table. Their table.

“Don’t be, cowboy. I was early.” 

Jasper tried to suppress the smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Should I be offended by that?” he chuckled, taking a seat.

“Why, whatever do you mean?” she said, putting the back of her hand to her forehead and feigning a swoon, ��My very own southern gentleman, I do declare.”

“Definitely offended.”

“What, you don’t like my Scarlett O’hara?” she teased.

“I suppose it could grow on me,” he smirked, no longer working to keep the natural twang out of his voice.

Teddy smiled and looked away, taking a sip of her coffee. But when she looked back at Jasper her brows knit together. He felt a wave of confusion roll off of her.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asked, eyeing him over.

He silently cursed himself, he’d forgotten to wear a jacket. His body didn’t register the arctic temperatures, but still, he needed to dress as though it did. Humans tended to notice little things like that.

“No, I’m fine,” he said, hoping she’d drop the subject.

Her eyes narrowed slightly and she reached across the table to touch his hand. Instinctively he moved to pull it away, but she caught it in her grip. Teddy inhaled sharply through her teeth and dropped it immediately as if she’d been burnt. 

“Fuck, Jasper, you’re freezing.”

“Really, it’s nothing. I have poor circulation.”

And by poor, he meant non existent.

“Bullshit. Here, drink this,” she said, pushing her cup of coffee towards him.

Jasper grimaced at the black drink in front of him. Human food was even less appealing than the herbivores, at least those had a heartbeat.

“I’m serious,” Teddy said firmly.

Jasper sighed and took the mug in his hands. If anything, holding the hot ceramic would warm his fingers to a semi-human degree, should she try to touch him again.

He looked at the soft ring of pink that her lipstick left on the rim of the cup. He wondered if he’d be able to taste her.

Bracing himself, he took a small sip.

The drink was hot and acrid on his palette, but he skimmed his tongue over her lipstick stain and his mouth was washed in her flavor. It was slightly waxy from the makeup, but round with notes of smoke and peppermint. Jasper shuddered slightly.

“Thank you,” she said with an approving nod, “now your hypothermia won’t be on my conscience.”

Jasper rolled his eyes and pushed the mug towards her.

“Nah, you keep it. If I drink anymore I’ll be up all night.”

He bit back a comment about not having slept in a century and a half, something told him she wouldn’t find it as funny as he did. Instead, he set his gaze on the book she’d put aside.

“What were you reading?” Jasper asked.

“Oh, that? Nothing, just notes.”

Her tone was too casual. Jasper could sense an evasiveness in her aura.

“What about?” he pressed, settling a blanket of calm over them. Jasper had never used his powers on Teddy before, and he wasn’t proud to do it now, but his curiosity got the better of him.

Teddy sighed and the tension melted away from her shoulders.

“It’s just where I write when my mind gets too full. Sometimes it feels like my thoughts turn into these sharp, twisting puzzles. Getting it out on paper helps though, I can rationalize the mess a bit better. I-I don’t usually tell people this.”

She shook her head as if to clear a daze.

Jasper was slightly taken aback. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t that. He’d always known that Teddy felt things strongly, processed life differently, but hearing it in her own words was a wholly other thing. Was that what she had been experiencing the first time he’d sensed her mind? When he’d felt it lashing out with a powerful and shattering force?

“How do you endure it?” Jasper asked.

She shrugged.

“You find ways to cope. I wasn’t always a smoker, you know.”

“And that helps?”

“It helps enough. Plus it’s cheaper than knocking back a xanny every few hours.”

Jasper wasn’t entirely sure what a “xanny” was, but it sounded stronger than cigarettes.

“I’m sorry,” he said helplessly.

“Don’t be, everyone’s got shit. I’m sure you do.”

“What makes you say that?” Jasper asked, quirking an eyebrow. She was right, he did have ‘shit’. A lot of it. But he was curious as to why she thought so.

Teddy shot him a scathing look. 

“Jasper, have you looked in a mirror? You look like a goddamn Kalvin Klein model. Nobody’s that pretty and okay on the inside.”

He barked out a laugh, surprised at her choice of words, but also the weight of their accuracy.

“It’s that easy to see through me, huh?” he grinned.

“Crystal clear, unfortunately. You look like you’re ready to throw yourself off a bridge half the time.”

She wasn’t far off the mark. Being in such close proximity to humans, to her, could be torturous. If only jumping off a bridge could solve that problem.

“We’ve both got issues in the coping department, I’m afraid.”

“Well,” she grinned crookedly, “cheers to being two of a kind.”

Jasper smiled sadly in return, tracing the rim of her coffee cup with his pinkie finger. He was contemplating forcing down another sip just to taste her again.

“Tell me something,” he said after a moment.

“What?”

“Anything. I just..want to know you,” he admitted.

She flushed deliciously at his words, blood pooling in the thin, clear membrane of her cheeks. Jasper clenched his fist roughly under the table, marble skin pulled taut over his knuckles. He didn’t let himself breathe until the blush faded.

“I’m a vegetarian,” she offered after a moment of consideration.

“So am I,” Jasper said, amused.

“Really?” she laughed, “I would’ve pegged you as a meat and potatoes kind of guy. Red blooded American and all that.”

“Oh, believe me, I used to be,” he said wickedly.

“What changed?”

“My family. When they adopted me they showed me a new way of life. More humane.”

“You’re adopted?” she asked.

He nodded.

“My parents died a very long time ago. I was on my own until Carlisle, my father, found me. He gave me a home, siblings, endless patience. Everything I could have ever hoped for.”

“Wow,” she breathed, processing his words.

“What’s your family like?” Jasper asked.

Teddy’s expression turned sour.

“Dysfunctional.”

“How so?”

“I mean, I guess my childhood was pretty normal. My parents got divorced when I was seven and I stayed here with my mom. Which was, spoiler alert, a big mistake. My dad moved to Nevada, owns some shitty motels now, I think. I see him every couple of years. I don’t even know where my mom is anymore.”

“You don’t know where she is?”

“Nope, and I don’t really care to. She was in and out of rehab too much to keep track of after I moved out, it’s just better like this.”

He could sense her sadness as it rolled off her body.

“Maybe I should have asked you about your favorite color instead,” Jasper said regretfully, he shouldn’t have poked at such a sensitive topic.

Teddy rolled her eyes at him.

“I’ve never been very good at small talk anyway. But, for the record, my favorite color is white.”

“An interesting choice,” he mused.

“Hey, no judging! It’s a nice color. I’m sure yours is something stereotypical like blue.”

Jasper was torn. If you’d asked him a minute ago his favorite color would have been red, the rich iron pigment of her blood. If you’d asked him again he might have said green, the electric shade of her eyes. Or possibly rose, the hue of her lipstick smudged on the rim of a porcelain mug. But he couldn’t say any of that. Instead, he just smiled and said:

“Ya got me.”

“I knew it,” she smirked.

Jasper noticed that the already sparse coffee shop had emptied considerably, the young woman behind the counter beginning to clean up for the night.

“It’s getting late,” Teddy sighed.

He sensed something like disappointment coming from her.

“May I walk you home?” he asked tentatively.

The disappointment disappeared.

“You may,” she smiled.

The two of them exited the warm cafe, the frigid winter air soaking through to their bones immediately. Jasper felt nothing, but Teddy shivered and pulled her coat more securely around her shoulders. He frowned to himself, upset that he could offer her no warm embrace to take the chill away.

She fished around in her bag for a moment before producing a lighter and a fresh pack of Marlboro Reds. Apparently she wasn’t picky about brands. She lit one swiftly, inhaling deeply, and then let it go in a gust of smoke and frozen air.

“This way,” Teddy said, walking down a side street.

She offered the lit cigarette to Jasper, which he accepted, falling into step beside her.

He took a drag and held it in his chest, watching as the breeze whipped Teddy’s hair around her face. They walked in silence for a while, passing the cigarette back and forth.

“Do you think the stars know that they shine?” she asked absently.

It was a rare, cloudless night. The sky was an impossibly inky black and studded with stars like white diamonds. 

“Maybe,” he mused, “but they might be happier if they didn’t.”

“That’s true,” Teddy sighed, “things seem so much easier up there. No worries, no responsibilities.”

“But we get a much better view.”

“Yeah,” she smiled, meeting his eyes.

They approached an old, but well maintained apartment building, and Teddy stopped.

“Well, this is me.”

There was a beat of tension between them. Jasper felt the pull of emotion coming from her. It was small, and cautious, but it was the unmistakable feeling of desire. He had to work very hard to keep his mind in order as he realized this.

He wanted to do something reckless. He wanted to kiss her. It was a terrible, horrible idea, but it tempted him almost more than her blood. For as strong as Jasper was, he needed to be equally as gentle. He could stroke a soap bubble with his finger and leave it unharmed if he issued enough control. Teddy was just as delicate. Silk over glass. Breakable. 

She looked up at him with her wide, clear eyes, and he felt himself lean in. Her pulse quickened and his mouth pooled with hunger. He’d never been this close to a human’s without intent to kill before. The scent of her blood seared its way through his throat and dizzied his head. 

With all the pressure of butterfly flapping its wings, Jasper pressed his lips to the supple flesh of her cheek. He wanted to linger there, overcome with the sensation of her warmth, but the thirst ripping its way through him was too powerful.

“Goodnight,” he whispered as he pulled away.

He turned and began to walk back down the street.

“Goodnight, Jasper,” he heard her say quietly as he slipped into the night.

#chapter 4

[vankoya]

The Devil Skates on Thin Ice, 2.

Genre | Hockey Player / Figure Skater Rivalry AU.

Pairing | Min Yoongi / Feminine Reader.

Words | 26,491 words.

Conspectus | The number one rule of Korea National Sport University is to never allow their elite figure skater and the captain of the ice hockey team be in the same room. Or in their case, on the same ice rink. They are infamously known for riling each other up in any way possible, and for having a mysterious history that even their closest friends know nothing about.

But when their coaches decide it is finally time to put an end to their five year rivalry, the pair of them certainly have very conflicting views about it.

Warnings | Heavy swearing and insulting. Some good ol’ pining. Alcohol and mentions of drugs. Angst. Uh, mayhaps a smidgen of smexual tension. A tad of misogyny. A very small moment of violence. Apologies to Yugyeom for making his character such a dick.

Parts | One • Two • Three (Finale)

The ‘read more’ function does not work for some mobile app users. We are still waiting on Tumblr to fix this issue, so please message them about it and not me, as I have definitely put a ‘read more’ break beneath this note!

To say you do not remember a single thing about last night is greater than an understatement.

It feels, quite literally, as though a spell of amnesia has been cast over the past multitude of hours, wearing off at about six in the evening when your first Caipiroska was poured by Minah. Everything between then and now rests beneath a thick fog of uncertainty—you could have met the bloody Queen of England, for all you knew. The scattered memories are all the more difficult to grasp as a result of the throbbing headache that pounds fiercely between your temples, encouraging you to keep your eyes tightly closed so as not to allow even a sliver of sunlight through.

A thick film coats your tongue, tasting of stale alcohol and, oh god, probably vomit. When you part your lips, your voice creaks like an old door that has been closed for years. The rusty hinges croak in a groan directed at Past You for not taking Future You, which is now officially Present You, into consideration when the soju bombs were handed out in fives.

“Fuck you, ___,” you grumble into your pillow, shoving your face deeper into the feathery plush as though you can bury your migraine in the fabric. “You insensitive, alcohol-mixing bitch. Never drink vodka and beer in the same hour. How could you forget that? It’s the golden fucking rule. Stupid girl. Silly bloody idiot.”

In the midst of aspersing yourself, there is a raucous clatter from outside of the bedroom, sounding like a lightning strike within the apartment as it shatters through the walls. More so, it is the familiar sound of heavy cutlery clanging against pots and pans within a stainless steel sink, metal-on-metal that slams straight through your skull and pierces the centre-point of your headache with a swift blow. The clanging continues in a cacophonous symphony that appears to be boundless in its protraction.

So, burying yourself into the nest of sheets with a whine, as if the thin cotton can even manage to smother the noise in the slightest, you curl your fingers into the mattress. Bracing yourself against the torture with taut shoulders, and barely withholding a distressed sob while you wallow in your agony.

You wonder what delusional, potentially still drunken state Minah must currently be in to be unleashing such torturous hell on a Saturday morning. Or why she is even awake before midday after a night out, for that matter. On any other occasion, Minah is a corpse until the late afternoon, and only when the sun is nearly perched upon the horizon to make way for the moon is she rising from the dead to inhale two litres of water and a microwave meal before she returns to her grave until practice begins at seven the next morning.

There is a vicious shout of, “Shut the fuck up, would you!” and the disturbance ceases to absolute silence. But the peace remains for the scarcest of moments until another voice is roaring back with hardly suppressed outrage, spitting, “It’s not my fault you haven’t done the fucking dishes in a week, you selfish prick! Some people like to eat, Yoongi!” followed by a punctuating, singular clang. Then, the quiet returns.

The sudden tranquillity is a soothing balm on your raging temples. You release the breath you were holding tight in your lungs while you had braced yourself against the vociferation. The exhalation gently lulls your tired limbs into a state of–

What.

When your eyes snap open, the sunlight is immediately striking; a searing burn on the sensitive film that coats your bloodshot gaze. You hardly need to adjust your focus in order to know the sole fact that settles in a heavy stone of dread within the pit of your stomach.

This is not your room.

The space is minimal, though the floor is filthy; littered with laundry and hockey gear and discarded balls of paper. A broad desk that is surprisingly neat and paired with a sleek, black swivel chair is pushed in the corner opposite to the bed, which is positioned under the window where the blinds are marginally open above you, allowing slats of sunlight to filter through and torment your throbbing headache. Next to the double doors of the closet is a free-standing mirror, and your reflection is unseen from the angle that you lay startled within. The top half is draped in a terribly familiar jersey of red and black.

The number 31 is salient in large, bold white lettering at the centre of the material. Though it is most certainly not as prominent as the MIN that stands out inches above it. The three letters set off screeching alarm bells within your mind, and you bolt upright on the mattress in a state of suffocating panic, cracking your elbow against the sill of the window in the process.

“Shit!” you yelp, cringing from the sharp pain that shoots up your arm, cradling it to your chest as you keel over your knees and dramatically collapse back onto the bed like the world just could not help but dig your hell-hole of a situation all the deeper.

You are in Yoongi’s room. Of all the fucking people it could have been, it had to be him.

Amidst the anguish, a succession of thumping footsteps steadily becomes apparent as they grow louder, nearer, almost as though they are jogging. Then, the door is histrionically thrown open and a wide-eyed, flustered Yoongi comes into view, panting a little like he had ran from the other side of the apartment at the voicing of your distress. Honestly, you surprise yourself by holding back the lurching urge to hurl up the contents of last night at the sheer sight of him.

“Oh, you’re awake,” he impassively states, hand slipping from the doorknob as the veil of concern that thinly manipulated his features is composed into one of nonchalance. “Thought you might’ve died overnight. I was hoping, at least.”

“No, I’m just sleeping with my goddamn eyes open. Of course I’m fucking awake, what does it look like?!” you shrill, squinting at him as the migraine spikes especially acute, fingertips abandoning your bruising elbow and coming to your temples to gingerly massage the thrumming flesh. “And to be frank, death sounds like a much more favourable option than waking up in your room. What am I doing here, Yoongi?”

He merely shrugs, not giving anything away. “I’d like to ask you the same thing.”

“Don’t start,” you mutter bitterly, slowly lifting yourself out of the—admittedly, exceptionally comfortable—bed at a steady pace in order to not throw your pounding head into another death spiral of agony.

As you do so, you notice an unfamiliar weight that sags over your figure. Glancing down at your body, you come to realise that your attire from last night is drowned beneath a thick, maroon sweater, the hem brushing at the middle of your thighs. The aroma that drifts from it is oaky; a damp forest on a misty morning combined with underlying tones of cinnamon. A familiar and refined scent that is so potently Yoongi, making it evident that the clothing is his. An involuntary shiver crawls up your spine.

Though before you can claw Yoongi down to the bone for answers, Minah’s voice reverberates through your hammering skull in a long-lost conversation, filed somewhere in the pages of under a year ago.

A man is no gentleman if he doesn’t let you wear his sweaters after sex! It’s just a part of the common courtesy code!

Desperately, you stifle the urge to screech as a burning sensation climbs your throat, flushing your cheeks with a heat of sheer horror while Yoongi watches on, utterly oblivious.

“We didn’t–” You emphasise with wide eyes and a swaying gesture of your hand– “Uh, you know?”

Yoongi, for a second, looks wholly alarmed by your assumption before he eases into amusement, barking out a sharp laugh. “While you were drunk out of your mind? Hell no. Do I look like some crazy sicko to you?”

The both of you stare one another down in a cursory silence, broken by your voice as you start to wrestle the sweater over your head, senses drenched in his cologne, “I’m not going to answer that.”

“Once we got back, I left you to your own devices, thank you very much.” Offence lays thick in his tone. His arms fold indignantly over his chest, and you blatantly ignore the way that the lean muscles of his biceps peek out of the navy sleeves of his shirt. “I slept on the tacky leather couch, which is like laying on an ironing board made of granite, I’ll have you know. So yeah, thank you Yoongi for sacrificing your bed to my drunk ass for the night,” Yoongi mimics in a pitched voice that is nowhere near similar to your own, proceeding to jab an accusing finger at your face. “I hope that hangover feels like a bitch for the rest of today, you ungrateful brat.”

“Well, thank you for manhandling my ass into your apartment, pervert,” you hiss with conviction, ditching the sweater to the sea of trash that comprises his bedroom floor, cringing at the mess. “And christ, into this pigsty! What the hell, do you still not do laundry? And dishes either, by the sounds of Jimin’s aneurysm.”

Still. You bite your tongue, wincing, hoping Yoongi did not notice. When you glance at him, his exaggerated smirk appears as though it is fighting to mask a twinge of something much softer. Shit.

Despite this, he sends you a slow, deliberate wink. “What can I say, the ladies love it when I’m dirty.”

“No, fuck no. I refuse to throw up right now. Shut your goddamn mouth.” Clutching at your woozy stomach, you hastily scan the room for any sign of your cellphone or purse—anything that draws significance as your own belongings amidst everything that is so entirely and unbearably Yoongi. “Where–”

“This?” Yoongi cuts in and your gaze darts back to him, noticing with a wave of relief that the familiar case of your mobile is held gingerly in his grasp. Like a magnet drawn to an opposite pole, you speedily pick your way through the colossal clutter until you stand a good metre away from Yoongi, hand outstretched.

“Thank you,” you barely manage to say as a way of inclining him to hand over the device. The expression of gratitude tastes sour on your tongue, and it ferments all the more when he merely grins wider and makes no move to give it back. Barely containing your rage, you close your eyes and exhale loudly through your nose. “Please, Yoongi. Give it to me.”

“Well, isn’t that just a little suggestive.”

As simple as flicking a switch, the restrained anger that you were genuinely doing so well to keep at bay ignites all the greater, eyes snapping back open to discover Yoongi still wickedly grinning. “I swear to–”

The starting notes of your Until the End of Time ringtone startles the both of you; Yoongi nearly drops the vibrating device while you jump with a parrotlike squawk. The shock sparsely settles before you take the opportunity of his momentary vulnerability to lunge towards his hand, reaching for your mobile. But his sportsman reflexes are too sharp, underestimated in your desperate efforts. Yoongi lifts the cellphone high above his head, a victorious blaze flaring in his eyes as you create a strangled sound of annoyance and firmly plant a palm on his shoulder so that you have some leverage to push yourself up when you jump. All the while, Justin Timberlake continues to sing above your heads and Yoongi-come-Satan laughs heartily at your meagre attempts to grab the phone.

“Yoongi! Give it here!” you shout directly in his face, mid-jump, and he cringes at the dusting of spit that sprays from your mouth onto his cheeks.

“Ugh, the fuck–”

“The call is going to end, stop it!”

Once you are stationary on the ground, preparing to leap again, Yoongi takes the advantage and yanks you down into a headlock, hunching over your torso and nestling your face against his stomach as you squeal out of surprise. Among your exasperated thrashing, the ringtone ceases and you believe, for a sparing moment, that it is due to the call having rung through to voicemail. But that credence is only fleeting when you hear Yoongi begin to speak.

“Hey Minah, yeah it’s Yoongi again,” the Devil converses casually as if he does not currently have you wrestled into submission. “Uh-huh, yeah ___’s awake now, she’s just– Oof–!” A firm elbow knocks into his side, which you come to realise is the one that you previously smacked against the window, and you both groan in unison. Even so, his hold does not let up. “She’s beating the absolute shit out of me. Agh, um yeah, sooner is better than later because we have to practice. Bring some clothes for her if you can. ‘kay, bye!”

At long last, your bind is released and you scamper to grab your phone that he now willingly offers to you. The both of you are mildly panting after such exertion this early in the morning, and most especially in the wake of your hangovers. Before you can lift the phone to your ear to catch Minah before she hangs up, you realise that the call has already been disconnected. The locked screen displays an array of notifications that you swipe through—unanswered texts and missed calls from both Hoseok and Minah. Your brow furrows when you realise they have completely ceased by about 11PM.

“What’s wrong, doll?” Yoongi teases, though his expression remains blank, leaning against the doorframe as the old nickname shoots through your heart in a kryptonite bullet. You frown all the more in an attempt to guise the pain of the fragments shattering amongst your ribs; a metal firework of old memories that you wish he would stop trying to resurface.

“Looks like my friends are a lot shittier than I first assumed,” you mutter, staring at the screen. You ignore how the fluttering vessel in your chest continues to bleed among the damage, exceptionally so as you truly begin to register how close you are to the Devil himself, right now. “They stopped the missing-persons search before midnight, which is unheard of since nobody goes home until it’s known that everyone is safe. But they clearly broke the pal code by the fact that I stayed the night with you, and they haven’t even bothered to make contact until the damage has already been done.”

The corners of Yoongi’s lips twitch, as if he does not know whether he wants to smirk at your ignorant insolence or smile at the fact that you have hardly changed. “They tried, y’know. You caused them a fair amount of trouble last night.”

Flicking your gaze up from the phone, you glare daggers at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s just say that you were really drunk and you ran off on them at the start of the party,” Yoongi pushes himself off the doorframe and shoves his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, staring right into your eyes to convey his honesty. “And then I, also quite drunk, found you out on the roof. We had, uh, a conversation, I suppose, before the police arrived to shut the place down. You kind of passed out, I had to carry you most of the way outside and both Minah and Hoseok were waiting for you, worried as all hell. They were insisting they take you back to your dorm with Minah, but you were coherent enough to say that you weren’t um–” Despite himself, a flush blossoms on Yoongi’s cheeks, which has your own beginning to burn with sheer embarrassment and a growing concern as to what you possibly could have said– “Leaving me. You wanted to stay with me–”

“No fucking way.”

“So, with their permission and after an exchange of phone numbers, we came back to my place–”

“No fucking way.”

“Yes way. I dropped you into my bed and then I went to sleep on the couch once I had made sure Jimin and Taehyung got home without missing any limbs or teeth,” Yoongi, as though he cannot help but rev the engine for the guilt trip, narrows his gaze at you like a disappointed guardian scolding their child. “If anything, I’d say you were the shitty friend for putting Hoseok and Minah through all of that. You basically ruined their night, since they spent most of it looking for you.”

A sea of mortification submerges you. The water fills your lungs and you feel yourself suffocating, unable to believe the truth that Yoongi bleeds out on you, though no surface makes itself apparent to break through and breathe once again like this is a punishment that you are deserving of for cussing out your friends when you were the one who was the burden in the first place. Still, you manage to find your voice buried in the back of your throat, meekly making its way past your lips.

“You’re lying.”

Yoongi’s frown deepens, creasing the smooth skin between his eyebrows. “No, I’m not.”

“Not about the last part, I’m sure that’s true,” you raggedly inhale, trying to hide the way your fingers shake around the device you clutch by dropping your hands to your sides, gaining the confidence to stare him directly in the eyes again so you can gauge the slightest shift in his reaction. “But there is no way that you would have just put me to bed like nothing happened. That’s not your style. You don’t leave people alone when they’re in need.”

It is barely there. The glint of vulnerability that is quick to be guised by a stone cold facade. Yoongi watches you guardedly, lacing his words with enough venom to conceal the dishonesty when he mutters, “Funny, somebody made me change that about five years ago.”

You cannot help but flinch as if he has physically inflicted you; the words are carved into your chest by the tip of a knife held by his own hand. It is ridiculous, utterly stupid to be so hurt by such sentiments when you were the one to enforce him to despise you this way by being the instigator of such a tragic rivalry. Standing there, staring into his unchanging expression that has done nothing but grow sharper and more handsome over the past five years, the pearly scars prickle and itch like a reminder as to why you must stand your ground and never hold up the white flag of surrender.

But a smothered voice at the back of your mind starts to question whether such determination to be spiteful is even worth it anymore.

The blare of a horn outside of the apartment startles the both of you silly, and a strange sense of comfort settles in your chest when you realise that you are not the only one who is feeling so high-strung around the other. A balancing act where, eventually, one of you is bound to fall, and it is up to the other whether they have the courage to face the drop with them.

You let your eyes fall to the sensation of your phone vibrating once against your palm, not bothering to check the screen. “That’s Minah,” you mumble, combing your free hand through your knotty hair and shaking it out as if doing so will rid you of the anxiety. You briefly wonder what on Earth the rest of your make-up-smeared appearance must look like when your knuckles snag on the tangled strands. “I’m leaving.”

A streak of something that resembles mild panic darts through Yoongi’s eyes, though you are already pushing past him to concern yourself with what it may have truly been. As you go, he mutters underneath his breath, and that, you do catch onto. The words send a chill beneath your skin that has not a thing to do with the cool air of the bedroom.

Just like you did the first time things got hard, huh?

The apartment layout is precisely the same as your own, allowing you to easily navigate down the hallway of mostly closed doors to enter the shared living room and kitchen. Immediately, your nose is hit by the mouth-watering aroma of eggs and butter in a frying pan that is manned by none other than Park Jimin in a pair of boxer shorts. And praise all the holy things, it is clearly not a myth that he has the thickest thighs on campus, evident in the defined muscles that curve the golden skin of his legs; flexed in unadulterated display with the way that his weight rests upon his right leg while he works. Your phone vibrates once more in your hand, and you cannot help but quietly chuckle to yourself at the thought of sneakily snapping a picture for Minah to salivate over. Though that plan is quick to be corrupted when Jimin whips his head around at the sound.

“Oh, hey Ice– ___,” Jimin says from the breakfast bar as if it is the most natural occurrence in the world to see you walking out of Yoongi’s bedroom on a Saturday morning. His gaze slips southward from your face, eyes widening as he, suddenly flustered, stammers out, “C-Cute outfit you got there.”

“What?” All mirth is eradicated as you exclaim the single word, overwhelmed by alarm and you glance down and realise that, oh god, you completely forgot how utterly flimsy, thin, and terribly short the white dress that you wore last night is. Your entire body burns with the might of the sun. “No. Shit. I’m so sorry, I–”

“Is he terrorising you, sweet pea?”

The deep, anonymous voice floats right beside your ear and you jump in surprise, covering your mouth to conceal the shriek. The speaker of the question manoeuvres around you in a silky red kimono, his peculiarly gorgeous face inches from your own. Amidst your heart palpitations, you assume him to be Kim Taehyung—a man you have only ever heard stories about and never actually seen in the flesh.

His large, almond eyes regard you with keen interest. A broad, tan palm gently rests upon your bare shoulder and sends an unusually tantalising shiver up your spine. “Hm, I see why Yoongi is so enthralled by–”

“I thought you were leaving.”

At that, all heads turn to the second intruder of the conversation. Yoongi stands behind you, appearing both mortified and infuriated. His eyes zero in on your face, vaguely fleeting to Taehyung’s hand that gingerly touches your exposed skin before coming back to stare at you with a greater volume of seething darkening his eyes. A bud of spiteful glee buds within your chest.

“That’s no way to introduce me, Yoongi,” Taehyung purrs before directing his gaze to you, and you have to admit that you are slightly blown away by the boxy grin that he gives you, absolutely dazzling at this proximity. “I’m Taehyung, sweet thing. No need to tell me who you are, I know all about you. It is a pleasure to finally meet the one and only heartbreaker of Min–”

It occurs all at once. Yoongi charges at Taehyung. Jimin hastily drops the dirtied pan in the sink to prevent the oncoming slaughter between his two flatmates, and the loud clatter slices through your migraine like it had no more than twenty minutes ago. Lastly, an angry fist pounds heavily against the front door, and at that final sound, all movement ceases to a complete standstill. Yoongi is in the process of getting Taehyung into a headlock, and Jimin already has an arm wedged between their bodies, wielding a wooden spoon dotted with the morsels of his scrambled eggs.

You stand before them, astonished by the bizarre scene. Clearing your throat, you slowly begin to shuffle around the spectacle, and the three boys shift their gazes from the entranceway across the room to you.

“M-Minah’s here so, uh, bye,” you stammer, picking up your pace and zipping away to the front door with your phone clutched tightly to your chest. You release an exhale of relief the second you are around the wall and out of their line of sight.

But the repose is short-lived, for when you open the door, you come face to face with the epitome of sheer vexation.

“Well well, if it isn’t the goods that I came for,” Minah, hands on her hips, says with bitter impatience. Her gaze slides down your attire in a manner that is similar to the way Jimin’s had. Unsurprisingly, the judgement in her eyes is tenfold. “I see why Yoongi told us to bring clothes. Vaginas are great and all, but whipping them out willy-nilly can be a little confronting.”

“You,” is hissed as you grab the hem of the dress and pull it down, cheeks burning brighter, “were the one who told me to wear this! And what do you mean us?”

Minah throws a thumb over her shoulder. “Hobi is in the car. We both came to the agreement that we’re going to get coffee and sit you down for a nice, long chat about everything that has happened over the past 24-hours. Prepare yourself for the interrogation.”

Peering past her, you notice that Hoseok is most definitely sitting in the passenger seat with his eyes closed and the side of his face smushed against the glass of the window. You glance back at her, raising an eyebrow. “He’s looking one-hundred-and-ten percent dead right now.”

“Hence why we’re doing this over coffee.”

“Hm, understandable.”

“Hey Minah, thanks for picking ____ up,” is cheerfully voiced from down the entranceway, growing nearer with his footsteps. You briefly close your eyes in all of your chagrin just as Minah flicks her own above your head, looking at Yoongi. You can practically hear the grin in his tone, unbearably close, as he continues to say, “I’m sorry she caused you so much trouble last night. It seems like she hasn’t changed much since the old days.”

Your entire body suddenly feels as though you have been dunked into the Arctic Ocean. What the fuck is he doing?!

“The old days,” Minah echoes with a tight grin while you attempt to telepathically send a giant fuck you to the pea-sized brain of the bane of your existence. You hesitantly look at Minah, who has now averted her gaze to you, eyes filled with accusation and the potential threat of first-degree murder. “Sorry Yoongi, but do you mind elaborating on what exactly you mean by that?”

“Oh, ___ hasn’t told you about us at all?” Yoongi’s faux bewilderment sounds more intrigued than anything to your own hearing. The curiosity that underlies it is undeniable, especially paired with the prickle of the small hairs at the nape of your neck when you feel the flicker of his pupils resting there. For a fearful second, you are absolutely certain he is going to reveal the history that you have smothered so well from your present life right on his front doorstep. That he will unlace the taut stitches to expose the ugly scars beneath for Minah to witness—to finally see the truths you have masked for the past five years.

Yet, you are unsure if you should consider it a blessing when Yoongi curls his arm around your frame and lightly jostles you. His bare skin is desirably warm—comforting—against your own, when he instead says, “Well, I’m sure she’ll fill you in. We were very close back then, I’ll have you know.” At that, his palm that cups your shoulder lifts, and the weight of his presence momentarily alleviates, only to return with his hand against your spine, swiftly shoving you forward and out of the house, almost barrelling you into Minah. “Enjoy your coffee date!” he calls, sugary sweet, and then the door slams with a loud bang that drives another nail into your pulsing headache.

Of course, only Min Yoongi—Satan himself wearing the flesh of a human—could possibly save your ass whilst simultaneously serving it on a silver platter to be slaughtered by none other than your best friend in the terrifyingly near future.

Speaking of the aforementioned, she would appear almost comical if it were not for the fact that she looks about ready to skin you alive. With Yoongi having pushed you out of the house, you stand nearly nose-to-nose with Minah. Her brows are raised to the skies; her eyeballs are bulging with barely suppressed rage; her fingers are digging deep into her hips as though she is tightly gripping onto the final shreds of her sanity.

Your mouth opens and then snaps close. You repeat this in your state of stupefaction as your brain tries to process everything that has occurred over the past hour, concurrently attempting to conjure an explanation before Minah makes you her next taxidermy project.

But some deity must be looking over your sorry self, for your best friend wordlessly turns on her heel and storms towards the car. Then again, you are not entirely certain this is a more positive outcome than her screaming bloody murder in your face for the entire residence to hear.

Awkwardly, you skitter after Minah as she charges towards the car pulled up on the curb, still opening and closing your mouth like a complete idiot. Yoongi has only cracked the gateway to the past open. Allowing you the choice of either filling that gap with yet another layer of deceit, or to swing the door wide open and let all that you have kept secured under lock-and-key to come flooding through. But you know that you owe it to both Minah and Hoseok after all this time of keeping quiet.

Perhaps, not the entirety of the truth. But at least enough of a glimpse to tide them over until the next time Yoongi so abruptly thrusts his hands into your history and yanks the unwanted memories right into your field of vision.

Before you climb into the backseat, you notice your reflection in the window. To say you look hungover is a grand understatement. Your silver eyeshadow has broken apart and is scattered in glittery specks over the spotty foundation on your cheeks; mascara rims your eye bags and emphasises the purple crescent moons embedded there; your lipstick only remains to be a dodgy line that outlines your mouth. You look like absolute shit. And not in the I-just-had-the-best-one-night-stand-of-my-life way, but in the my-brain-feels-like-it-is-going-to-explode-because-I-slept-in-the-bed-of-my-number-one-enemy kind of way.

When Minah slams the driver’s door, the entire car trembles on its wheels. The sound wakes up Hoseok with an annoyed garble of insults, and slices another dagger of agony through your skull. You shut your own with a soft click, behaving like a mouse in the presence of a cat. Not wishing to make any moves that may disturb your best friend and make her pounce.

Yet, staring at the haggard reflection of yourself in the review mirror over Minah’s shoulder, you finally sigh and say, “Can I at least go home and shower first?”

“No, you need to suffer a while longer,” Minah firmly denies you as she jams the keys in the ignition. The engine revs before the squeal of the tyres skidding out on the road silences whatever protest you were attempting to muster.

A small voice in the back of your mind agrees with her, whispering that you deserve this. You have deserved it all since the first moment you told Min Yoongi you never wanted to see his face again.

During the drive to the cafe, you change in the backseat into a simple black sweater, blue jeans, and your battered white sneakers. The familiar clothing is an immediate comfort, yet you continue to avoid looking at your deathlike face and dishevelled hair in any kind of reflective surface. As the promise of a hot beverage becomes ever closer, both you and Hoseok slowly gain more life. Yet the car remains to be swamped by an unpleasant lack of conversation, which is unusual for your gossipy trio. The radio is blaring so loudly that none of you would be able to hear each other if you tried, anyway.

It is not until the three of you have arrived at the cafe, ordered, and received those aforementioned orders that the silence finally begins to crack. A sigh passing through your lips acts as the key to the gateway of conversation.

“Look, I’m really sorry–”

“Apology accepted. We all make mistakes. Now,” Minah immediately cuts you off, her interests clearly residing elsewhere. Nonetheless, your mouth hangs open and she reaches across the table to lift your chin and shut it. “If you could be so kind as to tell me what one, fine Min Yoongi meant when he said the old days…?”

You nearly choke on your sip of iced Americano at the question. Hoseok, looking at least ten times more alive than he was in the car now that he has half of a latte in his stomach, jerks back in surprise. His eyes bore into Minah.

“What?” Hoseok says, completely aghast. His eyes slide over to you, bulging out of their sockets. “What? Excuse me. What the fuck happened while I was teetering on the cusp of death?”

With your knuckles digging into your eyes, you mutter, “Min fucking Yoongi, that bastard–”

“Yes, that bastard,” Minah helpfully coaxes you, leaning across the table to stick her face in your own, behaving like an interrogator trying to get a criminal to confess. “What old days did you have with that beautiful bastard?”

“We were…” you trail off, feeling years worth of bile rising in your throat, clogging up your airway. You close your eyes and bury your face further into your palms, elbows propping you up against the table, lips pressing against the heels so that both Minah and Hoseok have to lean further in to catch your mumble of, “Befthfnriens.”

There is a moment of confused silence. Then, Hoseok tersely says, “What?”

Swallowing the bitter taste that now touches the back of your tongue, you push yourself away from your cage of skin and knuckles and instead wrap them around the disposable cup. There, exposed, you finally open your eyes and let them burn holes into your drink. Anywhere but the faces of your two friends when you whisper, “Best friends.”

Minah nearly shrieks, “You and Min Yoongi were what?”

The café bustles too loudly, and you wish that you were the block of ice in your cold Americano. Blending into the surroundings; melting away into nothingness. You prod the cube with the end of your straw, gradually putting more force behind the blows until the ice is shooting down to the bottom of the plastic cup and then dejectedly floating back to the surface. Minah snaps her fingers, and you lethargically look up, feeling well and truly dead inside in comparison to the animated, wide-eyed expressions that she and Hoseok currently sport.

The big hand ticks into the third minute since the inquisition began. A sigh heaves from your lungs, and you return to murdering the ice cube.

“Do I really have to repeat myself? Again?”

Minah does not even blink. “Yes, and this time, a thorough, essay-worthy argument to support your thesis is required. Because what the fuck.”

You take a sip from the iced coffee, feel the chill slip down the walls of your throat. Although you wish you could physically project your being into any other location than here, you say, “Up until the end of high school, Yoongi and I were–” A cringe, not because of the title, but the fact that it is half a lie when you spit out– “Best friends.” Another sigh; another gulp of ice cold. “Our dad’s knew each other before we were born, so we grew up together. As kids, we shared a lot of interests, and our friendship developed from there. But once we started high school, we just drifted apart because we were both busy with our sports. The hatred grew with the natural rivalry between figure skaters and ice hockey players, I guess.”

You wonder if you cannot outright tell them that Yoongi ruined your chance at becoming a star because you are not so sure if you believe such a sentiment anymore.

“Sounds like bullshit, but okay,” Hoseok deadpans, and you automatically recoil. Minah, on the other hand, socks him in the shoulder, to which he yelps so loudly that the guy at the cashier glares at him.

“How does that sound like bullshit?” she says in your defence, crossing her arms and scowling. “It sounds completely reasonable to me.”

“I don’t know. I mean, it feels like there’s something missing,” Hoseok winces, dramatically cradling his wounded shoulder. He averts his gaze from his attacker to you, eyes narrowing a fraction. “To be best friends and then hate each other so much over a ‘natural rivalry’ sounds too fishy. Was there like, a fight or something?”

“Well, yeah,” you sigh, flicking the tip of your straw with your nail. Technically, it is the truth, even if the fall-out was over something completely different to what you say. “But it was the rivalry that caused the fight. We had a huge argument over not being able to hang out because of training, which then lead to insulting each others’ sports, among other things. It was petty and stupid. But we were only teenagers at the time, and we were already under loads of pressure with our intense training, and with getting good grades to graduate high school. So the fight was the last straw, y’know. We didn’t talk again after that, nor forgave each other, and it’s stayed that way ever since.”

Sometimes, you terrify yourself with how effortlessly you can craft a lie when put on the spot. An awful habit that nobody should be proud of.

Hoseok watches you for a moment longer before nodding slowly and leaning back in his chair, seemingly satisfied with your explanation. “Alright, fair enough.”

“Ugh, you can be such an ass sometimes. Why would you make ___ relive such a sad period of her life? Do you feel validated now?” Minah huffs after knocking back the last of her mango smoothie. Immediately, she and Hoseok launch into a round of pointless bickering, and you safely return to your silent sipping.

The topic of Yoongi ceases to be brought up again. For that, you are more grateful than the two of them could ever comprehend. But when you finally get back to the apartment and turn the shower on steaming hot, letting it scald your skin, you cannot help but think. You angle your face up at the shower head, let the mascara dissolve and stream down your cheeks, feel the day-old lipstick becomes chalky, and think.

Min Yoongi. The boy you used to know who still smells like candle wax and cinnamon. The intimate look in his eyes before he said he did not help you, did not do anything at all, last night.

Lying may not be a talent to be proud of. But at least you are not the only one who has refined it.

The atmosphere of his bedroom is discomposed. The sunlight that filters inside the stuffy space outlines the shape of her body where it has been carved out by the creases on the mattress. The sheets incline and decline like a small mountain range—an imprint of her presence. Yoongi stands at the centre of the room, slowly suffocating on his own breath, eyes boring into the lingering remnant of her existence that haunts him like a restless spirit. The hills and slopes in his bed. Her, entirely.

Yoongi did not dare to tell her that, last night, he carried her limp form across the grassy accommodation courtyard once the taxi had pulled up to the curb. Tucked safely into his chest, murmuring nonsensical sentences against his collarbone. He refused to let her know that he held her chin as he tipped nearly a litre of water past her lips over a span of three glassfuls; that he rubbed between her shoulder blades and gingerly held back her hair while she vomited in the bathroom sink; that he gave her the sweater to change into. And most definitely, he never hinted that she stumbled quietly into the living room while he was draping the couch-come-makeshift-bed in a quilt, clutching at his wrist and entreating him to stay by her side while she fell asleep.

An utter fool, he had obliged without question. Perched on the edge of the mattress, he drew soothing patterns over the back of her hand for the scarce minutes that it took her to drift off. Even then, he had remained much longer than necessary to gaze at the soft pout of her lips, the delicate feathering of her splayed eyelashes, the moonlight accentuating the youthful innocence that only sleep can ever conjure.

No, she did not deserve that kind of knowledge. That glorious victory hanging over his head in an upper-hand that she could use against him in the future.

Now, his knees tremble and he feels pathetic. An utterly despicable excuse for a human being with the sweater of his that she was wearing bunched up in his fists and clutched to his chest like a lifeline. Their smells kiss with tongues in the maroon threads; the colour of her blood. Yoongi knows this because he has seen it with his own two eyes against frozen white. Tinted silvery blue by the shadows of midnight draped across the sky, studded at the centre by the full moon in all of its might.

The thin film coating Yoongi’s unblinking eyes dries into a delicate crust. He knows why she would not have told her friends about the two of them, and yet, he cannot help but wonder. Is she really so terrified of her own vulnerability? Of being cracked open like a fault line splitting the earth, allowing those standing by to peek at the gory innards? Perhaps, it is because she already understands how it feels; the sensation of flesh slicing open, of cells pulling apart to allow the bone to cut through and be exposed to the still, icy air. She has known such pain all too well, so she folds it like origami until it can fit in the thin crack between her fibula and talus, and she lives as though she was never once hurt.

Yoongi watches the dust motes glacially glide through the sunlight, basking in the warm honey of it and landing upon the mountains that she rose amongst his bed sheets. There, with the blood-soaked sweater pressed against his thrumming heartbeat, with her tone of malice remaining to be a sticky syrup in his ear, the realisation surrounds and embraces him. He had believed he understood this entire time, and yet, he had always been beyond far off the mark. He knows this now because of the ghost of her figure atop his mattress. He understands why she pushes him away with all her might; with all the breath in her lungs. He understands why her body folds inward, smaller, like origami to hide in the spaces between bones, when she sees his face.

Yoongi has cracked her open once, and he is not afraid to do it twice. This time, for the right reasons. This time, with his eyes wide open.

Yoongi begins appearing wherever you go. Like the black plague.

Despite the hostility he had exuded before you departed his apartment after that evening, the guy has been nothing but a picture of perfect juxtaposition over the following two weeks. He wears a grin that is neither snarky, nor cocky, and it haunts your every move. Whether you are standing in line at the campus cafeteria, or rushing down the hallways to make it to training after one of your classes, or shopping at the nearby supermarket that is frequented by all of the campus residents for snacks. No matter the location, the bane of your existence has managed to announce his passing presence through a peripheral glimpse of a peculiar curve of lips. A smile that is so fleeting, so sincere, that you find yourself wondering for hours afterwards if you had merely imagined it, or even falsely fantasised that he was there in the first place.

So really, at this point, you are reasonably terrified that you might wake up in the middle of the night due to the demands of your bladder, and find Min Yoongi standing beside your bed, grinning down at you like an ultimately more horrifying remake of Paranormal Activity.

But although he has been popping in and out of existence like a spectre, and your guard is now automatically activated the instant you leave your flat, you foolishly allow yourself a moment of relaxation in a situation deemed high risk. That is, in public, as you tiredly stroll from one of your classes to the stadium.

Night-time has begun to stretch across the sky in a pink and orange sunset, looking like smears of bleeding watercolour. A threat of clouds dwells in the distant horizon, opposite to the direction that you walk, hinting at a late-night storm that crackles with lightning and draws goosebumps along your arms. Not many students are out. Those who are seem to be heading home from their training, or speedily rushing along to their evening lectures. At this time of day on a Friday, the chances of the rink being empty and you being able to get in without a booking slip tends to be high, and so you decided to save time by skipping out on stopping by the office to collect one altogether.

After a strenuous afternoon of classes, you are too exhausted to second-guess the nearing tap-tap of sneakers against the pavement. It sounds similar to a light jog, as though the person is warming down from their afternoon exercise, or perhaps heating themselves up to evade the chilly air. They are quick to gain on you with the slow trudge that you currently enact, and you mentally anticipate the mild shock that will fizzle through your blood at the sudden intrusion of a being in your periphery; the slight breeze that will come with their passing by…

Except they never do.

“Hey, ___!”

A shriek of surprise involuntarily escapes your lungs, and you are certain that your soul has been startled out of your body. “What the fuck?!”

“Normally, people say hello back,” Yoongi, who has materialised beside you, sniffs wetly. His breath comes out slightly ragged, concluding that he is the mystery jogger, much to your utter displeasure. “Or how are you?”

You purposefully take a step to the side, putting distance between your parka-bundled, sports-bag-loaded bodies, and venomously bite back with, “No, I genuinely mean what the fuck. Were you hoping for me to have a heart attack?!” With that said, you continue to walk ahead, taking deep breaths to calm yourself down. Yoongi, like a puppy waiting for a scratch behind its ear, eagerly follows. You whip your head to the side and glare at him. “Stop. Why are you walking with me? Go away.”

He sniffs again, ignoring your demand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Besides, I’m not walking with you. I just happen to be walking beside you since we’re both going in the same direction.”

“You literally jogged to catch up to me,” you deadpan, quickening your pace and praying that he gets the message loud and clear. But Yoongi, as always, is not one to accept defeat so easily.

“Actually, I was getting my blood circulation going to keep warm, but whatever you want to think,” he says with the sly smirk of a liar, and your entire body boils with barely suppressed rage. “So… how’s life treating you?”

You stop dead in your tracks, and wish to beat the sense out of whatever it is that briefly flutters in your chest at his soft, casual tone. “Yoongi, don’t act like you care. Do you want me to apologise for that night at the party? Is that why you’ve been acting like Casper the Friendly Ghost for the past two weeks?”

Yoongi, having trailed a few steps ahead after your abrupt halt, twists on his heel to face you. His expression, despite its playful facade, is otherwise unreadable. “Hey, no. I don’t care about that. I’m only doing this for the sake of our coaches who want to dick each other.” His brow furrows. “They have a point, you know. Time heals all wounds.”

“But I’ve got the scar to prove it,” you snap, taking off again, and Yoongi visibly flinches as if you slapped him. Although you are the inflicter, you cannot help the cold sliver of guilt that slides down your spine at the remark. There is a poisonous taste on the tip of your tongue, even after the words have dissipated with a cloud of mist at your lips.

But it seems that even words in the shape of a blade cannot cut through his thick skin, nor deter him from any semblance of hope. Long used to years of your bitterness. Yoongi’s resilience remains as stable as a wall of iron, and is further proven when you can hear feet catching up with you again. His voice, right beside you once more, casually asks, “Are you mean all the time, or is that anger only directed at me?”

You press your lips into a firm line to prevent the small smile that threatens to curl them. “You’re certainly a catalyst.” The cold skin of your face heats up when you quickly glance out the side of your eye and notice that Yoongi’s gaze is fixed on you, hardly paying attention to where he steps. “Anyway, how in the world is walking together doing it for their sake? They’re not around to see us.”

“Maybe, but word spreads fast. Our rivalry is infamous on this campus, after all. Check it out,” Yoongi says, and you look up, but not without a brief side-eye at him in order to see where his stare is directed.

Following his gaze, it lands upon two girls walking on the opposite side of the thin trees that separate the massive path, brazenly watching the unlikely pair across from them. No, more so, they stare as though they have come upon a sight so rare and astounding that they can hardly tear their eyes from it—like you and Yoongi are aliens walking without their disguises. When the both of them realise that the two of you have taken notice of their observations, they make a fuss of panicked screeches and grab each other to tailwind it out of there.

A small missile of unease and insecurity implodes within your stomach, causing you to scowl. You are not entirely sure what creates the twist. Perhaps, being observed like an exotic zoo animal by strangers who know no better. Perhaps, walking so closely alongside the bane of your existence that your senses are tantalised by the cinnamon whiff of his cologne. Perhaps, agreeing with his sentiment. Wounds, no matter how ugly, can heal.

What you are certain about is that you need to get away from him before the foreign, virulent twinge in your chest blooms into something dangerous. Something unmanageable.

“Cool, and now they’ve seen us, so you can go,” you firmly state, curling your fingers tightly around your bag strap and picking up the pace again. “I have more important things to do than deal with your headache-inducing presence.” The arena, your escape, now resides no more than thirty metres away, and you determinedly stride towards it.

Yoongi, for what must be the third time, effortlessly catches up with you. Damn his longer legs to Satan’s fiery den. “Do you, now? Where are you headed?”

“The stadium.”

“Oh, me too. For what?”

Apparently, a lot of mental energy is required to will him the fuck away. “Practice,” you growl.

“Me–” The tail end of Yoongi’s sentence is completely severed by his mouth snapping shut. Right there, the realisation swiftly dawns as you both come to a standstill, staring roundly at each other in the middle of the pathway. “Do you have a booking slip?”

The moment of hesitation is infinitesimal. Then, the both of you are charging at the speed of two wild and voracious cheetahs in the direction of the arena.

“No! Don’t – you – dare!” you screech, arms pumping at your sides and sneakers smacking hard against the pavement, desperately attempting to catch up to Yoongi, who managed to take off a half-second before you. “I need to practice, asshole!”

Yoongi, almost at the stadium stairs, barks a sharp laugh. “We all have to practice!” he shouts back in a high-pitched voice. Immediately, you realise he is mimicking you from the time you dismissed his missing booking slip, and your blood reaches boiling point. “Cry to somebody who cares!”

An exasperated scream rips out of your chest, driving you to push your legs harder and finally reach Yoongi’s side, just as he is about to take to the first step. But before you can even reach for the collar of his parka to yank him behind you, Yoongi is whirling on his heel and, at a frightening speed, wrapping his arm around your waist and effortlessly lifting you from the ground. There is hardly a second for your brain to process what is occurring and ultimately conjure a shriek, because as quickly as the Devil sweeps you and your sports bag up, he is ungraciously depositing you in the shrubbery that lines the pathway before taking off again.

“First in, first served. Suck it, doll!” Yoongi crows from halfway up the stairs, all the while you spit profanities and struggle to wriggle your way out of the bush. By the time you have found your feet, the bastard is grinning and giving you two middle-finger salutes from the top of the stairs. Then, he is slipping through the sliding doors of the stadium entrance. Shit, shit, shit!

“You’re an idiot, ___,” you loudly curse yourself, partially out of breath as you hastily scale the steps, and not giving a single damn if anyone can hear you. “Who cares if you have to waste an extra ten minutes and walk to the other side of campus! Always get a slip, dumbass!”

Once you pass through the doors and realise that Yoongi has already crossed the foyer and entered the ice rink, you slow down your pace, despaired. Frankly, you feel more irritated at yourself for being too lazy to get a booking slip, which has clearly made you pay the price and lost you a bonus three hours of evening training. The fact that the extra time was missed out on because of Yoongi, of all people, has you inwardly brewing a storm, no matter that you already did your required five hours per day this morning.

Well, that is until he comes bursting out of the double-doors that lead to the arena, causing your heart to stutter in its otherwise fluid pattern of beating. For a fleeting moment, you wonder if the weird kindness he has been exhibiting to you lately has caused him to turn over a new leaf of consideration, and he has come out to let you have the slot. But that peculiar sense of hope fades once you realise his features appear utterly disgruntled.

Thus, with the bitchiest smirk that you can humanly muster in your deathly exhausted state, you ask, “What? Did somebody beat you to the punch?”

Yoongi comes to a halt a few feet before you, and the wicked curve of your mouth involuntarily shrinks. His sharp, dark eyebrows are narrowed in a scowl, and you stupidly have to force your stare at the linoleum in order to stop yourself from gulping at the fierce, stomach-sinking sight.

“The Zamboni broke down in the middle of the rink,” he says, evidently annoyed. “By the look of things, they won’t be able to resurface the ice or get the shitty thing off it until tomorrow.”

Not one to directly trust the words of Satan himself without blatant evidence, you navigate around him and head towards the double-doors. Sure enough, when you peek through them, it is to see a motionless Zamboni near the centre of the half-resurfaced ice rink. Two maintenance men skate around the vehicle, seemingly trying to figure out why it has broken down, and how on Earth to fix it.

Letting the doors swing shut, you state a disinterested, “That sucks.” Then, without sparing a glance at Yoongi as a safety precaution for your double-crossing heart, you brush past him and head back towards the stadium entrance. Because if you were not going to be training on the ice tonight, then you were most definitely rescheduling your date with your plush, cosy bed to approximately 15 minutes from now.

“Hey, wait.”

Your feet turn to stone, anchoring you in place. In that instant, if the manner in which it bounds at the sound of his soft tone is anything to go by, you confirm that your heart is a traitor.

Not expecting you to twist around, Yoongi, instead, comes up to your side and roots himself between you and the exit. A terrible sincerity is laced around those two words, and they bring forth a deluge of similar instances where they have left his lips. From across a sun-warmed playground as a shaved ice van pulled into the parking lot; to racing after the bus on the first day back at middle school; to underneath a streetlight with a hand curled securely around your wrist, Yoongi hesitantly leaning in.

The Min Yoongi who stands before you now is so different, and yet entirely the same. It nearly breaks your heart all over again.

“Let’s go to a pojangmacha,” he insists, rubbing the back of his hand against his wet nose. An old habit that vaguely soothes your inner conflict and your surface irritation. “There’s one close to campus that does the best tteokbokki–”

“I can’t– I don’t want to,” you sigh, anxiously chewing the inside of your cheek at the slip-up. You shift your gaze away from Yoongi’s eyes, absently staring at the empty kiosk across the foyer instead. “I have nationals coming up. I’m on a strict diet.”

“Well, isn’t that the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” Yoongi says, surprisingly genuine. I can think of one thing sadder, skims your tongue, but does not escape. Before you can part your lips to reply, Yoongi continues to say, “One night won’t hurt though, right? For Seokjin and Namjoon, of course, to prove to them that we can be civil. That’s it.”

Your gaze drags back to Yoongi, and you can feel your pulse thumping in your ears. His mussed, midnight hair is windswept from the frantic running, fringe in a slightly pushed-back disarray. The peaks of his cheeks are still flushed in a soft, rosy shade that makes him glow underneath the fluorescent lighting. His expression borders on being somewhat tender, vividly akin to the one that he used to save for nobody but you, yet not quite. It is guarded by glass walls; allowing you to observe, though protecting him from your touch.

But your fists have been known to shatter.

“Fine,” you huff, your stare unwavering. “For the coaches. But you’re buying.”

When Yoongi breaks out into a grin, looking like everything you have tried so hard to forget, you ignore the voice at the back of your mind that begs to differ.

Yoongi knows he should despise how utterly excited he feels. Yet there he is, feeling the kind of descending-rollercoaster-rush of exhilaration that he gets in his gut when the game is tied with 30 seconds left on the clock.

The entire 15-minute walk to the pojangmacha is submerged in a dense silence, though he hardly minds. Knowing that she is keeping up to pace beside him—despite the scowl that appears permanently etched into her features—is enough to satisfy his urge to be near her for the time being. Even so, he keeps glancing out the side of his eye to make sure that she is still there. To be absolutely positive that she is not some incredibly lucid figment of his imagination which, given the circumstances, would been highly concerning.

In fact, Yoongi is still struggling to believe that she even agreed to such an absurd offer of a stir-fried dinner on a chilly Friday evening. With him. Especially since she is on a diet for a figure-skating competition, which is something that she takes very seriously. Always, when it comes down to anything that involves her sport. Her future Olympic career.

What he really cannot fathom is that she accepted on the basis of such a flimsy excuse. Given their recent history, it was wholly unnatural on her part. She must have been able to see right through the “for the coaches” facade and caught wind of his genuine desire to sit down and talk civilly with her. Because surely, there must have been better options for her to schedule into her agenda. Like burrito-ing herself with bed blankets, cramming a bland salad down her throat, and bingeing on Netflix.

So, is this a subtle sign of peace? Or is she merely hoping that if she sacrifices the next handful of hours to his overly eager grasp, he may, perhaps, cease annoying her to the end of her wits?

Yoongi, as per usual, is as clueless as a fucking goldfish. Yet knowing that he will have the chance tonight to speak at least two sensible words to her—ones that are not founded on a pointless argument or a five-year rivalry—has him trying to compose that rollercoaster sensation all over again.

Once they turn the final street corner, the orange tent comes into existence through its bustling appearance and mouth-watering aromas. She, with her lips still clamped shut, strides right ahead and through the open flaps of the entrance. Yoongi, teeth grinding to powder, is tempted to fling an insult at her for her blatant rudeness. Instead, he channels that negative energy into propelling his legs forward, following her.

Determinedly, she weaves through the busy stall and picks a table in the far corner without so much as a glance back at Yoongi. So obviously attempting to project her lack of care for him and this entire situation. Without warning, a hopeless grin itches at Yoongi’s lips.

“Hungry, are we?” he says once he is back within her proximity, dropping his sports bag beside his seat and shrugging off his parka as she does with her own. Underneath, she wears a black, form-fitting long-sleeve. He hastily casts his gaze elsewhere before she tries to call out the pink flush on his cheeks for him being perverted.

“Yes, but I also want to get this over and done with as swiftly as possible,” she grouses, tossing her jacket over the stool and then plunking herself atop it.

Yoongi proceeds in doing the same, but not without retrieving his soon-to-be-withered wallet from the parka pocket. “If you eat too fast, you’ll get stomach cramps.”

“I’ve mastered the art of speed-eating, I’ve got this,” she sneers, leaning towards the makeshift kitchen to better penetrate the constant, chattering hum of the other patrons with her calling voice. “Can I please get one serve of tteokbokki and two bottles of soju?” Without turning to face him, her eyes slide to the side, meeting his own. “That’s only for me, by the way.”

Swiftly as possible. Right.

“I thought you were on a diet.”

“Yeah, I’m actually ‘Min Yoongi intolerant’ and the diet’s been working until, well, right now.”

“Ha! She says to the Min Yoongi who is paying for her meal,” he bites back sarcastically, though the words lack any poison.

At that, her mouth slowly seals shut, eyes narrowing at him in barely accepted defeat. Triumphantly, Yoongi smirks, and then calls out the same order to the little old lady. Within minutes, the steaming hot food and bottles of alcohol are being served to them, and Yoongi is reluctantly saying goodbye to the very few bills in his wallet. He takes a healthy swig of bitter soju to numb the pain.

“Calm down, cowboy. I don’t want to be dragging you back to campus,” she comments, skewering a piece of tteokbokki and blowing away the steam. Her pursed, plush lips glisten as they nibble at the stir-fried food. Yoongi takes another swig to spite her and to distract himself from the tantalising view.

“The fact that you wouldn’t just leave me here to fend for myself is commendable,” he says, raising an eyebrow. He similarly picks at the food, while she realises what she has said with mild horror. “Besides, you were the one who ordered two bottles first. Who’s to say that I won’t be dragging your ass back to campus?”

“I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can somewhat stomach your presence when I’m tipsy,” she clarifies. “And that’s as far as I’ll be going tonight. The last time I got drunk, I woke up in your bed without a single memory of what happened the night before. Pervert.”

Yoongi blinks, completely ignoring her last comment. “You can drink two whole bottles of soju and only be tipsy?” He ungraciously shoves two pieces of steaming tteokbokki into his mouth, stuffing them into his cheeks so he can continue speaking. “I always thought you’d be a lightweight. Yet here you are, proving me wrong.”

“And I always thought you’d grow out of being a pain in my ass, yet here you are,” she sighs, taking a swig of alcohol to try and conceal the tender smile that crawls at the corners of her lips. But Yoongi is too hyperaware of every slight shift in her expression to miss it.

“Admit it, I’m a pain that you can’t live without,” Yoongi says, staring right at her. He can see in her curious eyes that she senses the underlying venom. Yet, instead of acting on it, she rests the rim of her already refilled glass against her lower lip.

“I’m not giving you that glory, Min Yoongi,” she says, though it is practically an admission in itself. She knocks back the soju, and Yoongi follows in suit. Two souls numbing an agony that is still too unbearable to even whisper.

Their voices momentarily subdue and they focus on eating their servings of tteokbokki. Yoongi feels a little ridiculous to be so thrilled about doing something as mundane as eating with her, especially now that the conversation has dialled down to nothing more than chewing and sipping. Every so often, he will glance up at her as he mindlessly brings his chopsticks to his lips with more food pinched between them. Behind her, the orange canvas trembles with each caress of the wind outside. The buttery glow of the tent lights, the eye-watering haze from the food cooking in an enclosed space—they smear the outline of her, turning her into a nebulous, dreamlike being that slowly, silently eats.

Maybe the alcohol is contributing to the warming of his insides and the softening of his muscles like sun-touched clay, but he knows deep in his gut that it is mainly because of her. This sensation is no foreign entity; it never has been. It is as familiar as her eyes, watching him with misplaced contempt.

Yoongi, in a somewhat morbid sense, finds it ironic that the one thing they loved the most—the ice—ended up wrenching them apart, like the strength of a current upon a ship in savage seas.

With the ice on his mind, Yoongi cuts through the silence with a question. Akin to her, he is on his second bottle of soju, and so his words slip from his tongue like liquid. “Are you nervous for your competition?”

Her own voice drizzles honey-like from her lips. “I mean, of course. Who isn’t nervous about them?” She leans her elbow on the table and rests her cheek against her palm, blinking slowly. Brave eyes are set on his face. A hopeless war stirs chaos inside of his heart. “But I’m confident and free-skating is my forte, so I know I’ll do good, at the very least. My only issue is that Seokjin wants me to execute a quad-Salchow, which has only ever been done by Miki Ando in like, 2002. It’s a guaranteed ticket to the 2022 Winter Olympics. But if I fuck it up, I probably won’t get the spot. I don’t know why he’s insisting I do such a risky move, even though I’m coming pretty close to landing it, now.”

Yoongi’s brow pinches. “Four rotations? Wasn’t that Seokjin’s gold medal move?”

Her brows raise in bewilderment as she grabs for her soju bottle. “How did you know that?”

“Namjoon, of course,” Yoongi grins, and she hastily looks away, suddenly focusing on pouring her nth glass of alcohol. He decides to not call her out on it; the idea of her being flustered over his smile is something he wants to savour. “Anyways, I’m sure you’ll land it and the crowd will go fucking crazy because you’re the second woman to complete the move. You’ll do it again in 2022 for the whole world to see, and then you’ll become an icon in the history of figure-skating.”

Carefully, she sips from her glass, gaze focused on the wet ring of condensation that the cold bottle has left on the plastic-covered table. “Do you really mean that?”

“Well, you’re not called the Ice Princess just because you’re an asshole.”

She does not say thank you. But her glassy eyes, in the fleeting second that they meet his own before she tips the last of the liquid down her throat, are brimming with foreign appreciation.

After making a satisfied exhalation and wiping her mouth against the back of her hand, she says, “When’s your semi-final game? And before you ask how I know, it’s because your team never shuts up about in the cafeteria. I hope you realise I had to sit through five team chants while eating my beans this week, which made them taste even more awful than they already are.”

Yoongi gets sheepish about that, rubbing his thighs with his palms. “Yeah, they like to amp themselves up when a game is near. It’s tomorrow afternoon.”

The way her eyes bulge is comical, and Yoongi has to bite his tongue to stop himself from laughing. “What?! Shouldn’t you be practicing?! And you’re even drinking, what the hell!”

He shrugs. “I don’t like the other rinks on campus. That’s why I looked pissed off about the broken-down Zamboni, if you noticed.” He knows she noticed—he had clearly seen the victorious smirk on her lips when he had stormed out of the rink. “Namjoon always advises against practicing the night before a game, anyway. There’s nothing worse than having to deal with last-minute injuries, especially for any of the prelim rounds. As for drinking–” He polishes off his soju for emphasis, sealing it with a grin– “I wasn’t about to let you outshine my alcohol tolerance. If we lose tomorrow because of my shitty performance, I can at least blame it on you.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” she deadpans, though the corner of her mouth trembles with barely suppressed humour. Blaming each other for their own mistakes is something they have always done best.

Yet Yoongi, strung in this limbo between tipsy and drunk, wants to lean across the table and taste her swallowed laughter on his own lips. To be fair, she would probably slap him. Surely, she would.

Right?

Yoongi chews his desire and gulps it down. Instead of taking her face between his palms and kissing her until his tongue knows the precise shape of her lips again, he says, “You should come watch us play.”

“Don’t push your luck, Yoongi,” she says, and he smothers the small flame of hope that had unknowingly lit up inside of him. After checking the hour on her horribly cracked phone screen, she sighs. “Are you done eating? It’s getting late.”

“Yeah, let’s go.” Though as she begins to stand up from her seat, Yoongi stops her, eyes still lingering on the shattered glass that is lightning-like. “Wait, I just had an idea. To prove to the coaches that we hung out…”

When she endearingly tilts her head to the side like a curious puppy, Yoongi forces himself to not jump across the table and connect their mouths. He points at her phone on the table and continues on. “We could… take a selfie?”

He knows he sounds ridiculously unsure, but it is only because he is certain she will shut him down as quick as she did with the game-watching offer. So Yoongi is more than surprised when, after a silent pause of her chewing her lip and frowning at her phone, she shrugs. Though her nose is wrinkled with what appears to be mild displeasure.

“Uh– Yeah. Okay. Fine, yeah,” she rambles, sitting back down and pushing her hair away from her face. “But we’ll have to take it on your phone. My front-facing camera has a crack through it and it distorts the photos.”

“Oh, so that’s why you haven’t been posting any selfies to Instagram lately,” Yoongi mutters under his breath as he grabs his own phone and stands up.

“What?”

“What? Scoot over.”

Grudgingly, she obliges, pushing her seat back from the table to make room. Yoongi pulls the third, unused stool out from underneath the table, places it next to her own and sits on it. This close, her floral-scented deodorant lingers lightly in the air, and Yoongi subconsciously takes a deep inhale as he opens up the Snow camera app.

“Can’t we do it without a filter?” she says with a tinge of vexation, peering at his unblemished screen as he swipes through the different face-filters. “Hurry up.”

“Do you really think you look pretty without filters?” Yoongi lies through his teeth, and she socks him hard in the bicep for it. Her fist might be small, but her knuckles manage to dig into a weak point of his muscle, making him groan.

Knowing him, he will dote on the bruise she has made until it turns yellow as a durian.

“Fucking hell, ___,” he still grunts, finally deciding on a filter with a press of his thumb. He lifts his hand before their faces. “Here we– Hey, you’re going to have to lean in so the filter recognises you.”

“What even is the–” She cuts herself off mid-sentence when she leans a little closer and the filter attaches itself to her face, matching Yoongi. He is full-blown grinning by this stage, juxtaposing the way she frowns and presses her lips together, as if she is trying to not laugh. “Fucking heart crowns? Are you serious?”

“We’ve got to be convincing,” Yoongi says with an air of nonchalance. He cannot stop staring at her through the screen, nor will his mouth cease curving at the cartoonish pink hearts that dance around her head. “Don’t you want to make it worth it?”

“Oh my god, shut up and take the damn photo.”

“Calm your ass down. Annnd… smile!”

She absolutely does not smile. Her death glare pierces through the camera lens with an intent to murder, yet it is terrifyingly cute when paired with the little crown of hearts and the soft, rosy tinge of the filter. Yoongi nudges her elbow with his own as a means of firm encouragement, though all he can manage to weasel out of her is a half-hearted tilt of her lips.

Still, he grins wide and genuine and presses the little white circle once, and then a few more times for good measure. The shutter sound rings above the sizzling of fried food and the continuous drone of chatter within the tent. Satisfied, Yoongi drops his hand and bends his head over the phone, entering the photo album and clicking the last of the six-or-so identical images. When the preview image expands to fill the screen, air becomes locked in his throat.

“Hey, let me see,” she mumbles, her silk-like voice nearing as she leans closer to view the device. Yoongi, without peeling his eyes away from the photo, tips the phone in her direction.

He hears the air suck between her teeth; a blackhole inhaling the stars. He knows that she sees it, and he wonders if it crushes her ribs like the blows of swinging fists.

While she does not smile at her utmost potential in the photo, the mirth lingers on her mouth and lightens her soju-sparkled eyes. Her head is tilted closer than Yoongi first realised—almost close enough to be pressed against his own; close enough that their individual heart crowns overlap. In the past, they had taken hundreds of photos in this precise position. The only difference is that there would be arms curled affectionately around necks, and their cheeks would be unabashedly flush against each other.

But staring at this image of them now, it is like a brutal documentation of their reality. It reminds him of everything they lost—of what they could of been, had that incident never occurred. Although  the image depicts her hovering close by, the blatant evasion of any physical contact is stark—a black smudge on an otherwise perfectly white canvas.

A deep, unsuspecting crack on the surface of an otherwise perfectly frozen lake.

Yoongi’s throat suddenly feels bruised and swollen.

“Can you send it to me?” she quietly asks, breaking the tension that has been steadily hardening in their chests. Newfound velvet wraps around her tone, softening the syllables. “S-So I can send it to Seokjin–”

She stops when Yoongi drags his eyes away from the photo for the first time since opening it, only to look at her and realise how near their faces have become to one another.

Yoongi knows that his expression must be twisted into one of remembrance—of pure tragedy. The photo unlocked a gate that he has kept under tight security ever since that day, and he feels each of those memories anew. A scarred wound that has opened again, riper than ever. This close, her sad eyes are swallowed with pity and spite and something else that he refuses to cultivate hope for.

It was only two weeks ago that he was this close to her, hidden between the shadows, sweetness on his tongue, red and blue lights dancing in a taunt on the walls. Yet, even now in a soberer state, he cannot decide where to rest his eyes—choosing to let them flicker between her nose, eyes, and the small opening of her parted lips. Not knowing when he will get to be this close to her again.

I’ve missed you, he remembers her whispering while she was dressed like an angel, submerged beneath a sea of intoxication. I’ve really missed you so much, Yoongi.

Yoongi’s eyes settle, at last, on her mouth. The flesh glimmers, plump and begging. He has no idea how many years it has been since he felt it melt into his own, all innocent and empathetic with young love. He can sense her testing him in the way that she does not move away—how the tip of her tongue snakes between her lips, wetting them in tantalising preparation.

But I can’t apologise, no matter how unbearable this has been.

Yoongi, in an effort more strenuous than he lets on, looks away. Though he cannot ignore the cold blade that carves her initials into his heart.

“Yeah. What’s your number?” Yoongi says the question as though he did not confess his undying love for her, solely through the look in his eyes. As though he was not about to kiss her with freshly harvested apologies and offer the bouquets of repentance with his tongue, tied at the thorn-ridden stems with urgent forgiveness.

Quieter than she had first asked, she rattles off the numbers and he presses at the keyboard with shaky fingertips. All the while, a tiny voice in the back of his mind makes him realise that he now has her phone number—something he has not had stored in his contacts since his old phone was wiped at least three years ago. He clicks the ‘send’ button, and her phone proceeds to vibrate in two quick pulses on the table. By the time she is reaching for the device to open the message and save the photo, Yoongi is standing and gathering up his parka, sliding his arms through the sleeves.

“Come on,” he says with a sigh, wedging his phone into his sweatpants pocket and slinging the strap of his sports bag over his shoulder. She, having been staring at her phone screen since he moved, suddenly snaps out of her silent daze and gathers her belongings.

The walk home, much alike to the walk there, is silent. Though rather than it being weighed down by her indignation and his stifled amusement, it is suffocated by unspoken confessions and dithering apologies. Yoongi cannot get the sight of her lips out of his mind, and he is somewhat glad that he no longer faces her, for the temptation of them being right before him like a forbidden fruit dangling from a low-hanging branch is too much.

He knew that cracking her open and digging through her bones for his vindication would not be a clean task. He knew that he would be up to his wrists in blood and the gore would tuck itself beneath his nails. He just never realised how completely in love with her he still is—that this vying for first place on who can hate the other the most was never about hate at all.

The part that eats at him the most is whether the feelings are requited. But, as always, she hides herself well behind her mask of ice.

After becoming used to the rhythm of their sneakers against the pavement, her shaky exhalation is like an air horn violating his hearing. Yoongi’s head snaps to the side, initially thinking that she is crying. Though when he sees that no silver stains her cheeks and her jaw quivers uncontrollably, he recognises the signs. A welcome familiarity amidst the foreign, yet oh-so familiar feelings they traverse.

“Your teeth are chattering.” Yoongi says, and she glances at him with a surprised jump of her shoulders. “Are you still prone to the cold?”

“N-No, I’m fine,” she bluntly insists, averting her eyes and continuing to stride ahead.

But Yoongi is faster, grabbing at her elbow and twirling her freezing—and now flustered—self around to face him again. “Nope. This won’t do.”

“D-Don’t be ridiculous,” she sputters, but Yoongi is not having it. He drops his bag to the sidewalk with a heavy clunk, shucks off his parka, and wraps it around her already padded shoulders and the sports bag at her hip. While he ties the sleeves at her chest to keep it in place, she keeps her conflicted glare on the ground.

“Warmer?” Yoongi asks with a forced, lopsided smile. The cold relentlessly attacks him through his thin sweater, digging its nails into his ribs and squeezing tight as he picks up his bag.

She wrinkles her nose and returns to her initial stride, though her teeth have stopped rattling like a loose doorknob. Yoongi, following after her, knows it is the only expression of thanks that he will receive. But he cannot find it in himself to mind, anymore.

By the time they have reached the campus accommodation, Yoongi’s muscles are frigid and his skin feels permanently raised in goosebumps. The silence between them has eased in its tension, yet he struggles to grasp the right words with his tongue when they reach the walkway in front of her dorm. Because really, what do you say after a night like this? It was never a date—a compromise, at best. He cannot kiss her on the cheek and wish her a good night. He cannot book another moment of meeting, as if there is something even close to friendship strung between them. He cannot tell her he will call her for coffee next weekend.

Thankfully, she saves him from his internal war-waging. Her hands come up to the tied sleeves, about to untangle them. “You can have this back,” she starts, but the words are lurching up Yoongi’s throat before he can stop them.

“Keep it,” he insists, fists clenching at his sides in an attempt to suppress the embarrassment that suddenly washes over his body. She stills, staring with uncertainty at him, especially now that he is slowly stepping backwards. “I… I mean return it, of course. When I see you next, yeah?”

Her brows are slashed downwards. “I don’t plan on–”

“Too bad!” Yoongi shrugs, now grinning like a thoroughbred lunatic at her utterly perplexed expression. Then, before he can fully comprehend the actions of his own body, he is turning on his heel and jogging down the path, calling over his shoulder, “See ya!”

If she says anything more, Yoongi does not hear it over the adrenaline rushing through his ears, the slapping of his sneakers against the pavement, and the rattling of his bag as it bounces against his ass. With his sudden spurt of energy, he runs from her dorm to the other side of the village, which, had he been walking, would have taken ten minutes. Though he finds himself slowing at the walkway to his own apartment within a record-breaking five minutes. His muscles burn with an aching heat, and the humiliation over his blatant corniness flares like a long-forgotten mosquito bite that he accidentally scratched.

“Oh my god,” Yoongi groans to himself, yanking open the already unlocked front door. His over-exerted limbs scream at him, and he knows that the prelim game tomorrow is going to be the epitome of Hell for his body. “I’m a whole fucking idiot. What the fuck.”

“I don’t need to know the context because I completely agree with you, nonetheless,” comes Taehyung’s voice from the opposite end of the entranceway. Yoongi looks up from kicking off his sneakers to find his housemate peering around the wall. There is a sly grin on his face, and the whites of his eyes are evidently stained with red, spidery webs.

Unsurprisingly, he is as high as the Lotte World Tower.

“Piss off,” Yoongi mutters, trudging past Taehyung and entering the living space. Jimin is nowhere to be seen, which is definitely a good thing. Dealing with one of his housemates is like trying to control five toddlers, as it is. “I don’t need your shit right now.”

“Ooh, somebody’s had their kimchi dipped in ghost pepper sauce,” Taehyung cackles, trailing after him in that tattered excuse for a kimono. Yoongi makes an immediate bee-line for his bedroom. “Why’re you lookin’ so flustered, huh? You smell like fast-food and alcohol. Weren’t you supposed to be training–”

Yoongi slams the door in Taehyung’s face and locks it. In the darkness of his room, he drags his feet across the small space, lets the strap of his bag slip off his shoulder and to the carpet, and then collapses with an agonised sigh on his bed. His muscles just about cry with relief. Though as quickly as they begin to unwind, they seize up at the memory of his random outburst—his sudden escape, leaving her with the sole means of having to see him again.

“What is my damn problem,” Yoongi mutters into his pillow, body deflating like a hot air balloon. “I practically forced it on her. She was going to refuse. Now she has to come and see me to give it back. God. What the hell. I hope she leaves it on our doorstep without knocking. I hope she gives it to Hoseok and he gives it to Jimin. Fuck.”

Yoongi slowly submerges himself into his own cesspool of self-loathing. Though the thoughts gradually mould into ones of observation, the subject unchanged. His mind, as always, remains to revolve around her like a moon orbiting its planet.

After tonight, Yoongi has realised that she is not the shell of a memory he has clung to for so long. He saw her in there, although she was hidden beneath layers upon layers. She peeked out every now and then in familiar mannerisms or ways of speech that alluded to long-forgotten fondness. Maybe, she did not realise the small slip-ups she made throughout the night; her tipsy carelessness let the layers peel back and fall to her feet like a rose wilting its petals. But the knowledge that not all is lost is enough to comfort Yoongi for the time being. It holds enough importance for him to linger.

Because he knows that he saw the hint of forgiveness in her eyes—still struggling to make it to her lips.

Perhaps, he thinks sleepily, eyes drooping closed, we’ll make it there one day.

You have been awake for a whole two hours, though you have not yet detached yourself from your bed. Despite it is nearing 1PM, you have remained cocooned in your doona the entire 120 minutes (give or take), reclined on your back with your head dangling off the edge of the mattress. You are certain that all of your blood has drained from your limbs and pooled within your skull, if the prickle-like, pins-and-needles sensation across your forehead and scalp is anything to go by. Nevertheless, you lay like a corpse and unwaveringly stare across the room at the foreign item within your quarters.

Yoongi’s parka.

The black swathe of puffy material is slung over the back of your desk chair, unsuspecting as a vase of flowers. In spite of its seemingly ordinary presence, you watch it from your upside-down position like an owl eyeing off its prey, as if the piece of clothing is a mouse that is going to flee if you dare look away. All the while, you continue to mentally flick through the scrapbook of your memories from last night; meticulously reading through the pages, all smudged by the lingering effects of two soju bottles.

(Okay, so maybe you were slightly lying when you said that two soju bottles only got you tipsy. By the time you had left the pojangmacha, you were certainly sitting more on the one-more-drink-and-I’m-dead-fucking-drunk end of the spectrum.)

But you keep finding yourself stuck on a particular scene, repetitively turning back to inspect the finer details of it. In the image, the Devil’s tragic face is a breath away from your own and his molten eyes are drinking up your features like cold water on a searing summer’s day. And while your sight was softly smeared like gouache at the borders, you are certain that his midnight gaze lingered longer than appropriate on the shape of your lips. You are absolutely sure that he was restraining himself; double-checking the titanium locks on his desire to ensure it would not break free—that he would not dive into your mouth with his own and remind you that he tastes like blackcurrants and first loves.

“Jesus on a Razor scooter,” you exhale, eyes still on the parka. Your face burns like a pot on a stove, and something small and deep inside of you whispers that it is not because of your body’s blood supply gathering in your head. “What am I doing? Why am I even thinking about him? I… I hate him. Yeah. I hate him.”

That little something—in a place within you that you refuse to reach—laughs with lungs full of incredulity, as if to say: Silly girl!

It is then that your intimate staring contest with the jacket is cleaved by Minah suddenly barging through the door. She looks as though she has just woken up herself, if the struck-by-lightning hairstyle is anything to go by. “Rise and sh– Oh, you’re… What the hell are you doing? Your forehead veins are bulging like John Cena trying to piss with a urethra infection.”

“That’s… a very unique way of putting it,” you say from your position, rather perplexed. “John Cena? Of all people?”

“Haven’t you seen his forehead veins when he wrestles?”

“I– No? Have I ever exhibited any interest in John-goddamn-Cena over the past three years of our friendship?”

Something flits across her face; a flash of discomfort that is not founded on the fact that you do not keep up to date with professional wrestlers. Something that screams: Well, I know less about you than I first thought. Who knows what other secrets you harbour.

But it dissolves quicker than medicine in water. Like a bandaid on a bleeding scratch, Minah plasters a grin on her lips and seats herself beside you. “Touché. Anyways, where were you last night? I woke up to the sound of you emitting a continuous, soft scream and slamming all the doors in the flat, so I have a feeling you weren’t at the stadium.”

“Oh, shit, sorry. I thought you were staying at Hobi’s place,” you feebly apologise, lethargically rolling onto your stomach and taking your precious time to sit up. Your body feels light as a meringue as all the blood rushes out of your head and back into your limbs. “But yes, I was… out. At a pojangmacha.”

“Drinking without me? Rude,” Minah says, tugging at a corner of the doona after she notices you struggling to be freed from its confines. You mutter a small thanks when it effectively loosens the material’s bind on your body. “Since you didn’t rat me out to Seokjin after my Shark Week binge, I’ll be merciful to you and your alcohol-abused liver.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” you bite with every inch of sarcasm you can muster.

“Damn right I’m your Queen,” Minah asserts, and you roll your eyes. A sly smirk inches its way onto her lips and she jabs her thumb at your desk. “So, I’m guessing you went out with whoever owns that parka?”

You freeze mid-stretch. A thousand and one excuses charge through your head like an off-course train—your usual knee-jerk reaction to lie. And while your gut screams at you to oil the hinges of your defence and heave that bulletproof gate shut on the truth, your heart urges you to reconsider. After all, Minah is your best friend. She deserves a Royal wedding buffet over the stale breadcrumbs you have always thrown her to keep her hunger at the bare minimum of satisfied.

You can feel her eyes on your skin as you slide your own back to the jacket. The face of its owner—bright and mischievously determined—looms at the forefront of your mind when you bluntly state around a mouthful of thorns, “It belongs to Min Yoongi.”

Silence hangs like a fog over your bedroom. You do not dare to sever your gaze with the jacket and meet Minah’s stare. A year ago, you would have said it was because you wanted to upkeep your meticulously cared-for facade of strength. Yet now, you not straying your eyes to your best friend is completely and utterly due to you being terrified of witnessing her reaction up close—the range of emotions that must be stretching and shaping her dainty features like dough.

For this reason, your heart lurches in surprise when Minah grabs your shoulders, forcing you to face her near-manic grin as she giddily shrieks, “Are you pulling my dick right now, ___?! Because I swear to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I will shatter each of your knuckles with a hammer while you’re sleeping if you’re lying to me!”

Dumbfounded, you blink at her. “N-No, I'm serious! Please don't do that, what the fuck–"

"Oh my god. What. This is... insane! The two of you have hardly spoken since we started at KNSU a whole three years ago. Yet, in the past fortnight alone, you've slept over at his goddamn dorm and skipped training to go on a drinking date with him?!"

"Would you just calm down for a sec–"

"Are you sure you're the real ___?" Minah urgently asks, hands coming to your cheeks and squishing them like putty. Her eyes are round as dinner plates. "Has a ghost possessed you? Am I going to have to take you to a shaman? You know, like in that Jo Jungsuk K-drama where he's a chef–"

"I'm not possessed, Minah!" you finally snap, recovering from the shock that her unexpected reaction thrust upon your body. You bat her palms away from your face. "Christ, you jump to conclusions like you jump on dicks."

"Hey, don't shit on my enthusiasm," she snickers, hands falling to her lap. "Seriously, though. What's gotten into you? Has Yoongi black-mailed you into becoming friends again? Do I have to kick his succulent, Channing Tatum replica ass?”

You sigh, picking sleep-crust out of the corner of your eye. “Well, not exactly… it’s complicated. The coaches want us to move on from the past, but it’s not that easy.”

From there, you explain the incident with the Zamboni and you striking a deal with the Devil in order to get back into Seokjin’s good graces. You let the information flow out of you in a stream of truth, only retaining the part where your faces were separated by an exhalation and Yoongi’s eyes were sinkholes, set on consuming you. Nevertheless, your stomach feels less congested by the time you have finished speaking, and Minah seems pleased enough with what you have shared, if her bemused yet thrilled expression is anything to appraise.

“This is fucking wild,” Minah oh-so eloquently summarises. “Hey, can I see the photo?”

“Must you?” you groan, reaching for your phone on the bedside table nonetheless. A low-battery signal pops up when you unlock it, and you silently admonish Past You for prioritising a low-key panic attack over remembering to put the device on charge last night. “The lighting was pretty bad in the tent, so you can’t see much,” you pitch as a final attempt to get Minah to lose interest in the photo, though you know it is hopeless. She snatches your phone once you open up the message in which Yoongi sent it.

“Oh my god, the filter,” she immediately giggles, pinching at the screen and zooming in. Your cheeks are uncomfortably warm, sleepy features screwed up like a cat just passed gas on your lap. “Wow, you look like you’re one more photo away from giving him a vasectomy.”

“I was,” you partly bluff, chewing at the inside of your cheek and leaning closer to see the screen without the light of your window reflecting on it. Minah zooms the image out again so that the entire thing is visible, and a soft, heart-shaped lump wriggles up your throat.

“Dare I risk you snapping off the blades of my skates when I say this,” Minah begins, her gaze adhesive as glue on the device. “But you guys actually look… kind of cute together?”

You snort, ignoring the way your face feels as though it has been dunked in boiling water. “If you think so, why’re you saying it like a question?”

“Because the skates weren’t cheap, and thus, suggesting an element of uncertainty with my own statement might give them a chance at surviving your wrath.”

“Am I really such a heartless monster in your eyes?” you say with a pointed glare, seizing your phone from her grasp. Minah now stares directly at you, and the humorous quiver of her lip is unmistakable.

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

You smack her over the back of her head with your pillow, to which she yells in protest.

“Oh, you bitch!” she cries, though it is said through a cheek-splitting grin. She leaps off the bed to evade your second sweep with the pillow, which narrowly misses her side. From a safe distance, she says, “Wait, since Yoongi texted you that pic, that means you’ve got his number now! Are you going to message him so you can meet up and give his jacket back?”

To be honest, you did not even think of that—the fact that you now have a means of directly contacting your nemesis. “Uh, no. I think you’re forgetting that I still hate his guts,” you claim, though the words sting like nettle leaves on the tip of your tongue. “If he wants it, he can come and get it.”

Minah smirks like an evil witch. “He can come and get it, huh? Are you talking about the parka or are you talking about yourself now–” She, with the reflexes of a jaguar, catches the flung pillow before it can strike her face. She hugs it to her chest and laughs while you glower at her with faux loathing. “Well, hear me out on this,” she starts, raising her finger in a gesture of silence when you go to speak again. Mildly disgruntled, you bite down on your tongue. “I’m going to be driving to the off-campus stadium in approximately two hours to pick up Hobi. If you want, you can join me. Yoongi will be there for the prelim game and it should be over, if not close to that by the time we get there, so you can give his parka back. The match starts at 2PM.”

As much as you would love to spend the rest of your afternoon becoming a single organism with your bed, Minah undoubtedly presents a prime opportunity for you to be rid of the jacket. You make a contemplative hum, flipping your phone over and over in your hand as you chew on the offer, even though you are certain from the get-go that you are going to accept it. Your hesitation is more due to you knowing that your best friend will give you a whole lot of shit for the next handful of hours if you are to accept without a hint of regard.

“I know you’re stalling because you think I’ll give you shit,” Minah—apparently a fucking mind-reader—interjects, tossing your pillow back onto the bed and making her way to the door.

You cease fiddling with your phone and gaze impassively at her. “What makes you think that?”

She turns and leans against the doorjamb, arms crossed. “___, I’m your best friend, which basically means I’m your mother. I know everything about you, your mannerisms, and your expressions.” Then, her final comment is spoken with a raise of her brow, “Also, you’re wearing the kind of dumb smile that one does when they think about Labrador puppies. Be ready in 40 minutes, okay?”

Immediately, as Minah departs with a wicked cackle, you smack your hand against your mouth, realising that yes, indeed, your lips are goofily curved in a stupid smile. Groaning into your palm, you tip backwards onto the mattress and gather yourself into the foetal position. God, what is getting into me? Now I’m subconsciously smiling at the thought of Yoongi? What the ever-lasting fuck.

“He must be Voldemort,” you reason, giving the stink-eye to the guiltless parka and hoping that it somehow channels through to its satanic owner. “He must’ve cursed me as a method of torture. That’s the only reasonable excuse.”

If Minah had of heard you, she would have sighed and said: Really? The only reasonable excuse? Are you that blind to your own feelings? But Minah did not hear you, and thus, your totally unreasonable justification as to why you are experiencing even the thinnest sliver of pleasantness towards Min Yoongi is safe with you and his jacket.

Once you have surpassed your dramatic moment and put your phone on charge, you shower the remaining listlessness from your skin and throw on a dark grey hoodie and black skinny jeans. Assessing your attire in the mirror, you definitely look like the reincarnation of your 13-year-old emo phase, but that is exactly what you are wanting—to look as inconspicuous at the stadium as you can humanly muster. With the jacket under your arm, you meet Minah—who is still unnecessarily enthusiastic about the entire situation—in the living room and head out to the car.

And while Justin Timberlake has always lifted your spirits, you find that throughout the 20 minute drive to the stadium, you cannot even bring yourself to sing along to SexyBack. Instead, you cling to the parka on your lap as if it is the only thing keeping you rooted in place, and internally blame the way that your stomach swirls like a blended milkshake on a peculiar case of car sickness.

“Have you even breathed in the past half hour?” Minah questions once you have reached the location, striding into the stadium’s foyer. A hint of genuine concern turns her lips down. “Really, you look like you’re about to pass out. Do you want me to give the jacket to him?”

“N-No,” you stammer, instantly feeling heat gather at the nape of your neck over the way your voice trembles like a harp string. You cough, clearing your throat. “I think I might be a little hungover from last night, is all.”

“Okay.” Minah draws the word out, her tone blatantly conveying that she is unconvinced. Before she can say anything further, her phone pings and she slows her walk to a standstill, checking the notification. “Hobi says the game finished ten minutes ago, but he’s with Jimin and Wonwoo in front of the change rooms. Let’s head there.”

Although she does not say it aloud, the mischievous twitch of her near-smirking lips says, Yoongi should be there, too, loud and clear as a billboard promoting a sex shop. A little reluctantly, akin to the feeling you have right before you rip off a bandaid even though you know it is not going to hurt as bad as you think, you nod and follow her. Dodging around the crowd that is slowly spilling out of the arena exits.

By the look of some familiar KNSU faces and the exuberant commotion that they make, the KNSU team must be the ones going to the finals. A small sense of pride blossoms in your chest. Not for Yoongi’s sake, but for the representation of your university at a game that will put them up as potential contenders for the next Winter Olympics. If they are successful in the final and get the placement for 2022, they will become South Korea’s youngest ice hockey team in the country’s entire Winter Olympics history. They will be renown by the future generations for decades. It is difficult to not feel thrilled for them, as much as they annoy you in the cafeteria.

Yet, betraying your initial thought, a tiny space within your chest fills with warmth over Yoongi’s triumph in particular. He is a defenseman, so you know he would not have scored the winning goal or anything of the like. But as the captain of the team, having a large role in assisting his coach with planning the gameplay techniques, you can imagine how exhilarated he must be at the moment—chanting the KNSU anthem with his teammates; a tad breathless from being squashed beneath the pile of their bodies on the rink in a typical ice-hockey-style victory hug; still charged from the adrenaline of the game. He is probably calling his parents in the locker rooms right now to let them know of the successful game. Wait, oh shit, unless–

“___, is that you?” announces a perplexed voice, simultaneous with a hand tentatively resting on your shoulder, halting your forward motion.

In an instant, it feels like all of the blood has been sucked out of your body, and you are now no more than a sagging sack of meat with weak, jiggling knees. When you lift your head, it is to see a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair. His skin is wrinkled around the corners of his hesitantly smiling mouth.

A spitting image of Yoongi in 20 years time, except a head-and-a-half taller.

Sweet fucking Mary riding a mechanical bull.

“Mr. Min,” you almost gasp, hand reflexively tightening around the smooth fabric of the parka. “Hello! Sorry, you startled me! I should’ve guessed you would’ve been here for Yoongi’s preliminary game–”

“And what exactly are you doing here?”

The nasally, sneering voice comes from around Mr. Min’s elbow, belonging to the side of the family that Yoongi gets his shorter stature from. His mother’s crow-like, narrowed eyes peer at you with an obvious glint of contempt. Even when you and Yoongi were friends, she was never necessarily fond of you. Mrs. Min tolerated you, if you must call it anything. She thought you were nothing more than an unneeded distraction for Yoongi, and he scorned her for it, which certainly did not assist her skewed perception of you.

To her, the accident must have been a blessing in disguise.

“Honey, she’s here to support her university’s team. You know that.” Mr. Min casts a firm glance at his wife, who merely sniffs and continues to critically dissect your perturbed features. Then, with a smile that has a softer curve to it, he says, “Look at you; you’re all grown up! I almost didn’t recognise you, but your outfit is identical to the one that you would always wear during the, er, teenage phase that you went through with Yoongi.” He laughs and tenderly shakes his head, all the while you curse Emo Phase Past You for essentially getting you in this predicament.

Unsure of how to behave—especially with Mrs. Min glowering at you like you are the bird shit that just landed on her blouse—you settle with a deferential, thin-lipped tilt of your lips. “It’s been a few years, yes.”

You hope that the Min’s sense the vibes of discomfort rolling off your being, taper the conversation there, and go on their merry way. But Mr. Min, always the courteous man, continues to ask, “How are your parents? I haven’t managed to see them since the summertime.”

It is then that Minah politely clears her throat, prompting you to remember that she was leading the way to the change rooms, which are now no more than a few metres down the nearby corridor. You give her a small, reassuring smile with a look of firm insistence, to which she immediately catches on and, with a nod and a raise of her eyebrows, continues to walk away without you. Squaring your shoulders, you return your attention to the Min’s and say, “My parents are well, thank you. I wasn’t aware you were still in touch?”

You bite your lip to refrain from adding on: Since after the incident.

“Well, your father and I try to catch up for a drink every few months.” Mr. Min chuckles good-naturedly. Mrs. Min remains silent, wearing an expression of one who has just caught a whiff of expired canned tuna. “We’ve know each other since we were studying, after all.”

“Exactly, how else would you’ve met our darling son?” Mrs. Min bitterly mutters, not quite underneath her breath; intentionally loud enough for you to hear. The urge to scream at her rises high in your throat, and the smile on Mr. Min’s face slips away like water on a plate. He inhales deeply through his nose, turning to berate his wife.

“___? You came?”

The baffled exclamation of your name comes from your left, and you immediately whip your head to the side to face its owner. Yoongi is still in his red-and-black hockey gear; the safety pads underneath his jersey fill out his shoulders and chest, narrowing down at his waist like an arrowhead; the battered helmet is held by the cage with his gloveless fingers, allowing you to experience the full-force of his post-game appearance. His onyx hair is mussed and sticking up with sweat; his eyes are wide and bright, the pupils still slightly dilated with adrenaline; his skin glows a faint shade of salmon from the freezing rink and his exertion; his cold-cracked lips are creamy and plump, liberally coated in lip-balm.

Yoongi looks more a sportsman in this moment than he ever has.

Yoongi looks… fuck.

“I-I just got here,” you stutter, and it is only when your brain restarts in order to formulate a sensical sentence that you notice the bewilderment that traces his features—the panic that steadily fills his eyes. He looks down at your hand which clutches his jacket, lips slowly parting in realisation.

But Mrs. Min is suddenly bursting forth, beaming and reaching for him, nearly knocking you aside in the process. “Yoongi, sweetie! Congratulations–”

“Excuse us a second,” Yoongi bluntly cuts her off, grabbing your elbow and practically dragging you and your stumbling feet to the floor-to-ceiling windows of the foyer. You are too dumbfounded by the entire situation to shake his hand off or fire a few insults at him over his manhandling, though his hand ceases contact the moment he finds a spot that is not swamped by departing spectators.

At a loss for words, all you can do is stand and stare at him, quietly uttering, “Um.”

“Are… are you okay?” Yoongi tentatively questions, still looking a little shell-shocked. His eyes momentarily flit over your shoulder, in the direction of his parents, before they return to your painfully astounded expression.

Yoongi asking about your wellbeing makes something viciously blossom around your heart, and you grit your teeth as though the roots are situated between your molars and you have a chance at ceasing their growth. You shift your gaze to his nose when the genuine look of benevolence in his eyes only fertilises the feeling.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” You almost say: I see your mother is still a nasty bitch, though you work the affronting statement into, “I didn’t expect to see your parents here.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Yoongi comments with a raise of his brow, and you cannot help but quirk your lips at that. His gaze strays to his parka, still bunched up in your grasp. “If you only just got here, did you come to drop this off? I mean, thanks, but–”

“Do you really think I’d go out of my way to give your jacket back?” you snark, but the words come out a whole lot less savage than you were intending. Nevertheless, you pass it to Yoongi and let your hand fall to your side, fingers aching a fraction from how tightly you were clinging to the material. “Minah was coming here to collect Hoseok; it was nothing more than a convenient opportunity. After all, I didn’t think you’d come and get it yourself after you literally ran away from me last night. Do you do that after your dates, too?”

Yoongi, looking like you just lifted your hoodie and flashed him your bra, coughs. “Uh, I don’t date.”

“Unsurprising. I don’t know anyone who’d want to,” you tease with a teaspoonful of salt in your tone, but you only realise what you have said when Yoongi’s eyes flash like lightning. Your heart just about punches right through your ribcage as the horror dawns on you like a summer storm—out of the blue, yet in an instant.

“You did, remember?” Yoongi taunts, wearing a grin coloured by melancholy.

You want to wipe it off his face. With your hand; with your mouth—you cannot decide. After everything that has occurred over the past day, chipping away at you like a hammer and chisel on marble, you have been reduced to a state of vulnerability that you have not experienced in years. You have become a knight stripped of his armour and sword in the middle of the fight, with nothing but his fists and his willpower left to protect him.

But you cannot find the strength within you to throw a punch.

Yoongi seems to notice this when you do not immediately fire back with a scathing remark. The curve of his mouth straightens and he quickly backtracks. “Sorry, that was out of line,” he says, and you are stunned that he even apologised for the jibe. “Anyways, thanks for bringing this along. I should, uh, get back to my parents. But before I go, the usual frat will be hosting a party for the team’s win tonight. You should come.”

Grateful that the subject has shifted before it could fully develop, you fiddle with the strings of your hoodie, a hint of amusement tinting your expression. “They were that confident you guys would win?”

Yoongi’s grin returns. His eyes crinkle like his father’s. “Oh no, it was either going to be a winner’s celebration or a pity party. All we knew was that getting drunk was going to be on tonight’s schedule, no matter the outcome.”

“Well, if that isn’t the spirit of KNSU in a nutshell,” you chuckle. His grin grows impossibly wider and your heart does the ridiculous punch-through-muscle-and-bone thud again. A fierce urge to slap your chest in order to scold the traitorous vessel momentarily overcomes you. “Is it cool if I bring Minah and Hoseok?”

The smile falters. “Uh, only Hoseok.”

“Wow. I can’t believe everyone thinks that our rivalry is bad.”

“I’m kidding. She only hates me because you do,” Yoongi shrugs as he begins to circle around you. “I have to go. But I’ll maybe see you tonight?”

“Keyword: maybe,” you state with a smirk, rotating on the spot to watch him go. Yoongi nods and lifts the hand that holds his parka in a half-hearted salute, heading towards his parents. Though he only manages a few paces before you are realising what you have not said, which imminently leads to you clenching your fists and calling out, “Hey!”

Yoongi stops and turns back around, quizzically observing the immediate regret that contorts your features. Especially since—to your complete horror—a few KNSU students have come to notice the interaction occurring between you and Yoongi. The infamous foes who would once not dare be seen in the same room together. Heat spills into your cheeks, and despite the small audience, you inhale deep enough to consciously sense your lungs shrivelling up like dried grapes before they are expanding once more, releasing your voice.

“Congratulations on the win,” you say at a much lower notch than your initial shout—loud enough for him to hear you, though not at a volume where the distant spectators can precisely make out the words. “Your team has done KNSU proud.”

Yoongi’s expression shifts. The thinly veiled amusement melts into something akin to when one has an epiphany; a cocktail of sincerity and fulfilment, garnished with the shimmer of elation that softens his eyes. Although it must last no more than a few seconds, it seems as though the moment has been taken hold of at its ends and stretched out like taffy. Yoongi stares at you like the past five years never occurred and you, with your hummingbird heart, wonder what that could possibly mean. And in this prolonged time where your enemy exudes forgiveness in tidal waves, you are almost tempted to let the current sweep you under, too.

But a fist of ignorance keeps you standing by the fingers it curls around your throat, and Yoongi must see the bruise marks it leaves on your flesh. Because then, without a word, he twists around and continues to walk away.

Anger does not strike a match on your bones and light up your insides. Rather, your spine is stroked by a warm hand of serenity, and the strength to bat it away evades you. Leached from your limbs like a receding shoreline, as if Yoongi’s physical being is drawing the vigour out of your soul with every step that he takes.

From the corner of your eye, you see Minah and Hoseok approaching with quick strides. As they near, they glance between you and Yoongi, who has now returned to his parents. Once she is close enough, your best friend slings her arm around your shoulders in a manner that is more colluding than consoling, and turns you to face the windows instead of the thinning crowd.

“Were they Yoongi’s parents?” Minah hisses, looking over her shoulder to where the Min family is standing. “Oh, they’re already gone. His mum sounded like she had her head up her own ass.”

“What? What’s going on?” Hoseok asks, leaning close, hands on his hips with his brows pinched. “Why are you two always hogging the tea from me?”

You sigh, though it comes out as more of a groan. Your limbs still feel filled with air after the way that Yoongi looked at you, like he was one bad decision away from gathering you in his arms. “Yes, they were. And no, we’re not, Hobi. There’s nothing to discuss, alright?”

“I don’t believe you, you’re being shady as hell lately,” Hoseok says with a nonchalant shrug. The tips of your ears burn like smelting ores, extracting the irritation from a small nook within you and igniting it into a vivid sensation. “First, you stay at Yoongi’s overnight. Then, not even a few minutes ago, I saw you have a whole conversation with not only his parents, but with him, with my own two eyes!”

In your periphery, Minah bites her lip. Clearly torn about whether she should keep your confidences locked behind her teeth, or cease holding back the truth from Hoseok. But this is not her issue to deal with; it is your own. Thus, you shift her arm off your shoulders and breathe in, ready to exhale your defence.

“You’re overthinking it, Hoseok. I already told you that Yoongi and I used to be best friends, which is why I talked with his parents. Yoongi was merely putting up a good front for them when he talked with me; they still don’t know about the severity our fight. They think that we’re still friends.” Now that you have hastily dressed the wound, you cover it with protective plaster by steering the topic towards something more favourable. “Anyways, all he said was to tell you two that you’re invited to the celebration tonight. The frat is throwing a winner’s party for them. And no, he didn’t invite me, but I’m still coming, of-fucking-course.”

“A party?! Aw shit,” Minah excitedly exclaims, leaping on the new subject like a determined puppy, and you are beyond grateful. She looks to the ceiling, hands held up in prayer against her chest. “Coach Kim, I’m sorry that I’m going to break the rules of my diet. But it’s for a good cause, I promise.”

“As long as we can still fit into our dresses, he won’t notice a thing,” you laugh, linking your arm through her own. The both of you stray your eyes to Hoseok, who has remained silent and is still vaguely looking like his cereal has been pissed in. Your grin of encouragement slowly widens. “Are you going to come, Hobi?”

“It’s not like he has a choice,” Minah pitches in, matching the size of your smile and innocently batting her lashes at him. Hoseok’s expression does not budge an inch. Well, until she adds, “After all, didn’t your fuckbu– I mean, very good friend Wonwoo already invite you?”

Suffice to say, Hoseok’s cheeks ripen into a shade of fresh cherries and you, oblivious to this budding romance, amiably accuse him of withholding information from you, too. From there, it only takes you and Minah teasingly getting up in his face about Wonwoo—a combination of poking at his ribs while making offensive, lewd sounds—for his lips to finally split into a bashful beam, the details of his recent hook-ups with Wonwoo imminently gushing out. The three of you leave the stadium and head to a salad bar for a late lunch in good spirits, and you are finally distracted enough to put your torn emotions about Yoongi on the back-burner of your befuddled thoughts.

Until the evening, that is.

Normally, your drunken selves are more than happy to take the half-hour walk to the frat house a little ways off the campus. But now that the winter is truly beginning to settle in on this side of the hemisphere, your trio makes the wise choice of splurging on a luxurious method of transportation for once—an Uber. This not only gets you there 20 minutes faster, but it comes with a solid heater system that fogs up the car windows like morning mist on a river.

Not that the three of you notice, of course. You and Hoseok are too busy dealing with Minah, seated between you, who perhaps took this night of free-rein a tad too far, considering she consumed almost half a bottle of Russian Standard at the pregame in your dorm.

“Swallow it, you little shit!” you desperately urge, hand wrapped around the lower half of Minah’s face. While you are certainly not as drunk as she, your vowels have attained a noticeably slurred quality. “We’re turning down the street now! Only a few more seconds ’til we’re there!”

“If she throws up in this fucking Uber, I’m going to throw up,” Hoseok warns, nearly just as drunk after losing a game of beer pong against you. He holds Minah’s handbag open underneath her chin, in case you forcing her to keep her vomit down happens to fail. “I’m serious, ___. I’ll paint the fucking car with my power-puke.”

Minah tries to speak, but her voice is muffled against your palm, which impulsively presses tighter on her mouth. You glare daggers at Hoseok from across the backseat. Yet, considering that you can hardly see his paling expression in the dimness of the Uber, you are positive that he cannot see you looking at him like he has a death wish.

“Pull yourself together, Hobi!” you snap, having no desire to pay for a clean-up fee, and knowing that neither of your broke-as-hell-student-life friends can afford it, either. It is then that, to your immense relief, you feel the car slow to a stop, and the Uber driver, perceptibly panic-sweating, announces that you are at the destination. “Oh thank god. And thank you for the ride, kind sir. Minah? I’m letting go to open the door, but I promise I will throw your $300 Lush collection into the trash if you projectile spew before I can get you out.”

With that said, and with what sounds like an affirmative grunt from Minah, you use your free hand to unbuckle the both of you. (Hoseok, the unhelpful asshole, departed the car the instant the driver put it into neutral.) Then, you are hastily snatching away the hand on her mouth and grabbing the handle, yanking the car door open and stumbling out into the street with your best friend—thankfully—close on your heels, handbag under her arm. Immediately, she staggers across the pathway and bends over the frat’s neighbouring front lawn.

“At least you’ll still fit into your competition dress because you’re throwing up lunch, dinner and pregame,” you call out to her as you slam the Uber door shut, giving the driver a jolly wave as he speeds out of the street, probably signing off for the night after that traumatising experience. You turn to face the drunken mess and, luckily for her, you are the only two out on the street. Hoseok left the scene so fast that he most likely has Wonwoo’s dick down his throat already. “Are you really gonna let Jimin see you like this?”

“Shut uuup,” Minah whines, and you are empathetic enough to walk over and hold her hair away from her face. She would do it for you, if the roles were reversed. Minah takes a series of loud, deep breaths, though not even a glob of spit comes out onto the grass. She stays in her hands-on-knees position for an instant longer before she is standing, nonchalantly shrugging and looping her handbag strap over her shoulder. “Nah, I’m good. Told you guys that I get motion sickness.”

Your eye twitches. “I could kill you in your sleep, y’know?” you threaten with a smile, sharp as a sword’s edge. Minah simply gives you a knowing look, which directly translates into: Try me, bitch. “No, really, I could. Especially since I had to change after you spilled the Kremlin’s drink-of-choice all over my first outfit.”

“That was merely a misfortunate event, my sweet pal,” Minah hums, patting the top of your head like you are a misunderstanding preschooler. “But this outfit is cuter, so who cares.”

“I’m wearing a turtleneck sweater to a frat party,” you deadpan, pinching the coffee-coloured collar for emphasis and narrowing your eyes at her infinitely more party-appropriate silver, silky camisole.

“But it’s cropped, and you’re wearing your Ass Jeans,” Minah giggles and begins to walk towards the party, winking and planting a firm smack on your behind as she goes, which is admittedly shaped magnificently by the black denim. “I wouldn’t lie to you. All the better to seduce Yoongi, amiright.”

Like an elbow to the gut, the remembrance of Yoongi being no more than a handful of metres away from you—of him being the one to even invite you in the first place—forces the air out of your chest in a rush. Your stomach flutters like it is filled with moth wings and your palms grow damp as stones on a lake’s edge. The sheer knowledge of all this is enough to keep you from feeling the chill of the air—eager heat licks at your body like flames consuming kindling, burning up your skin from the inside and boiling away your intoxication. The sweater and jeans suddenly feel too hot; you are suddenly too conscious of the situation to deal with this.

“Oh come one, I was only joking. Wait, woah, you okay?” Minah, back at your side, rests her hand on your bicep. She looks as though she wants to ask something else, but instead, she says, “Have you come down with something? You look like you did at the stadium today. We can go home if you want–”

“No no, I’m fine,” you insist, coercing an assured smile onto your lips. “Just had a wave of nausea. Probably from all that vomit-talk in the Uber. Alternatively, it could’ve been you just putting the disgustingly vivid image of seducing the Devil in my head.”

“Or it could’ve been the five Pineapple Malibus that you drank at home,” Minah suggests, smirking and raising her eyebrows. You huff and roll your eyes, to which she laughs and wraps her arm around your waist. “Come on, pumpkin. Let’s get smashed and regret it in the morning.”

Shoving your nerves into a box and storing it in the back of your mind, you exhale the jitters and grin at your best friend. “God, Coach is going to break our ankles for this,” you say, stretching your arm out to rest your hand on her hip and beginning to walk towards the party.

Minah whoops with delight. “Onwards to our shattered bones!”

The house is trembling with energy as the pair of you approach. Trap music spills from the open windows into the front yard, where only a smattering of sobering partygoers wait for their Ubers or flatmates to pick them up. The front door lays open like an arm swept out in welcome, and the steam of the celebrating, clustered bodies within the purple-and-green-lit frat house immediately sticks to your skin upon entering.

Minah and yourself huddle into a corner by the stairs, and you survey the crowd for the missing member of your trio while she rapidly taps away at her phone. Neither Hoseok nor Wonwoo are in sight. In fact, you cannot see Jimin, his strange flatmate Taehyung, or any of the other ice hockey team members in the thrumming living space. Peculiar, considering this party is for them and you assumed they would all be dancing the night away.

I wonder where Yoongi is, you quietly muse to yourself, though you hurriedly bury the thought and reprimand your treacherous mind. Shut up, idiot. Stop thinking about him.

Then, Minah is leaning into your ear, yelling loud enough to nearly pop your eardrum. “I’m going to go pee! But Jimin just texted to say he’s in the backyard, if you wanna go hang with him for a moment!”

“Cool, I’ll get us drinks and text you where I’m at!” you shout with a thumbs-up and she nods, planting a sticky, raspberry lipgloss kiss on your cheek before scampering away to the bathroom.

You begin to weave through the crowd, still buzzed enough on your last few drinks to sway your hips to the beat and pause to dance with some of your classmates as you go. By the time you have passed through the mass, you are grinning like a fool and feeling slightly sweatier than you were before, but the endorphins charging through your brain like a happiness drug have you feeling too high to give a damn. Ahead, the fluorescent white light of the kitchen entryway spills into the low, pearly illumination of the living-space-come-dance-floor, and your tread towards it becomes steadfast, knowing that a treasure trove of alcohol and mixers awaits you within.

But what you do not expect is to find Yoongi in there, too.

You do not see him straight away; the transition from darkness to blinding light makes you flinch, eyes squinting in an effort to adjust. It definitely does not help that your vision is still somewhat hazy from your earlier Pineapple Malibus consumption, either. Though the blurred, watery edges of the kitchen gradually come to form solid shapes. At first, your gaze zones in on the island bench, overwhelmed by a plethora of glinting liquor bottles and red cups. But it is only once your eyes focus on what you were searching for that you finally notice the movement in the background—the girl cornering the boy into the counter, her supple, tangerine lips pressed in a feverish caress against the rosiness of his own.

The rosiness that you used to kiss.

“I…” you unconsciously say aloud, only realising when the girl jumps back from Yoongi as if his lips are suddenly buzzing with static electricity. His half-lidded, confused stare drags from the girl to the interruption, and when he realises it is none other than you, his cloudy eyes seem to clear, growing wide as moons. The connection of his gaze with your own is what seems to kickstart your heart, and your frozen tongue follows in its stead. “Woah. Didn’t mean to… Woah. Bye.”

It feels as though your soul detaches from your being when you quickly walk out of the kitchen, observing from above as your numbed body pushes its way back through the crowd. Calmly to begin with, though increasing in its haste once the front door becomes visible. You watch yourself charge into the front yard, and it is not until you have reached the walkway, separating the lawn from the road, that your soul seems to catapult back into your chest, bringing a torrent of emotions with it.

Yoongi was kissing another girl. But that is fine. That is completely okay. I hate Yoongi. I utterly despise him for what he did to me—for ruining my chances at a younger start as an Olympian. He destroyed everything I worked so hard for. I hate him. I hate him. I… do I?

You are halfway down the street when you hear your name be called out from the shadows. And while you know deep down that you should keep walking without looking back, the soles of your feet disobey, cementing you to the ground. It is as if you have become a marionette and a higher being is controlling your movements, pulling at your strings to turn you around and be faced with the last person you wish to see.

Slowing his jog to a walk, Yoongi looks like he did out the front of the stadium on the night you went to the pojangmacha. Windswept, red-cheeked, breathing hard. Except his mischievous eyes have been replaced with ones of deep-rooted sorrow and the cheeky smile is weighed down at the corners. Now, standing no more than a stride away, you can see that an apology is perched on the bow of his swollen lip, trembling and unsure.

But… an apology for what? He has done many things wrong. Yet, on this evening that took a wrong turn somewhere down the road, he did nothing that requires him to express remorse. You hold no claim over Yoongi, and neither does he with you. Yoongi looks like he knows this, and perhaps this is why the repentance clings to his mouth and refuses to be shaped into words. He did nothing wrong.

So why do your cheeks feel kissed by the cold, streaked wet and filling the corners of your lips with the taste of the ocean?

“Don’t go,” Yoongi finally murmurs, hand hovering next to your elbow as though he wishes to grab it—to keep you by his side. But the world is suddenly cracking beneath your feet and dropping you into a dark pit, sucking you back into the past.

“Don’t go!” Yoongi calls out, voice thick with desperation. Since you are physically incapable of escaping fast enough, he circles around your frame with ease and blocks your path. His expression is wild; a storm of rage and love and urgency. “Please, ___. I’m so sorry. Please. We can still be friends, can’t we? I’m–”

“Get out of my way, Yoongi,” you mutter from between your gritted teeth, staring over his shoulder and at the end of the empty high school hallway. But he continues to gripe, eyes glowing and frantic, the pleas falling like pennies from his lips. It is only when he goes to grab at your shoulders that you shriek, “Don’t fucking touch me!”

Everything is sucked from his expression in that instant, as though a higher being has plucked his soul right out of his body. He stares at you with a look of terrifying blankness, like he does not know you—like he never knew you.

And you are fine with that. It is exactly the way you want it to be. You want Yoongi to forget all about you, because you have already erased everything about him from your heart.

Yoongi seems to recognise something in your expression, for his hand drops limply to his side. And as grateful as you are that he is not burdening you with his insistence, you almost wish that he would grab your wrists and pull you close and tell you that what you saw was nothing.

That the two of you, after all these years of competing against each other in this game of spite, could still be something.

Yet, with your chest aching for the wrong reasons, you give him a final, regretful look before you turn on your heel and continue down the pathway. Yoongi does not follow you with desperation defining his tread. Yoongi does not scream out your name and beg for you to come back as if it is the last time he will ever see you. The cold night is all that grabs at your skin with its icy teeth and whistles in your ear with its freezing wind.

Deep down, tucked within a crevice of your heart that you are reluctantly—at long last—admitting exists, you wish the winter evening that embraces you as you stride further away from the party was Yoongi instead.

When Yoongi wakes up on Monday, a shadow-like something lurks at the back of his mind. A dark smudge that exudes discomposure, as if it is anticipating a horrible thing to occur. And while he savours his final moments in bed before he must get ready, it gradually creeps into his stomach and stirs the sleep-heavy contents with its inky fists, making Yoongi feel woozy and uncertain.

Foolishly, he passes it off as an after-effect of drinking twice over the weekend and the fact that it is a Monday, which is always the hardest day of training. Now that the KNSU team is in the final, Namjoon is bound to make it ten times as gruelling. Though, in hindsight, Yoongi should have known better to seize the tenebrous warning by its tail, made up a half-assed excuse to his coach, and stayed home. But did he? Absolutely not.

Yoongi knows bad things happen in threes. Monday delivers the first bad thing in the locker rooms, and the second right on his doorstep.

Number one happens after the 8AM training session, though Yoongi feels it bubbling thick and pungent like tar throughout the whole four hours. While the strenuous training grates his resilience like a block of cheese until it is nothing more than a weary nub, his uncertainty grows like a poisonous weed from Kim Yugyeom. They have never been on good terms. But there is something about the way in which the younger player watches him the entire time they are on the ice, like a prowling panther, that puts Yoongi on edge.

Thus, once the training finally comes to its end near midday, Yoongi is grateful. Not only because he can now go home and melt his muscles beneath a hot stream of water, but also since he no longer has to deal with Yugyeom eating him alive through his intense stare.

When he enters the lockers, the first thing he notices is that the men’s speed skating team is already in there, preparing to use the rink. Then, he realises that half of them are gathered around a grinning Yugyeom, cackling amongst themselves and leaning in to get a better look at whatever he holds up on his phone. Walking straight to his locker, taking out his sports bag and placing his skates inside, Yoongi decides to not engage with their little party, especially after the nasty smirks that his teammate was sending him throughout training. But the universe has apparently put a bounty on him, offering a million-dollar reward to whoever can get him to snap the quickest.

“Oi, Min!” Yugyeom vociferates, which causes the surrounding speed skaters to snicker. Yoongi clenches his teeth and ignores them, yanking away his jersey and protective gear, shoving them into the bag. But Yugyeom refuses to let up. “I know you’re listening, Min Yoongi. Now, tell us, how’s her pussy?”

Yoongi freezes for an infinitesimal moment, as if spontaneously paralysed, and then he reaches into the locker, pulling out his hoodie. No, there is no way he would be talking about her. He would not be so dumb to talk shit about her after last time. It must be about that girl from the luge team.

Attempting to appear as unfazed as possible, he pulls the soft material over his head and says, “No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Aw c’mon, I know you do, Min!” Yugyeom jibes in a honey-coated tone. Yoongi does not turn to face him as he packs away the rest of his belongings, though his hyperaware senses can pinpoint the exact movements of Yugyeom’s casual approach. “I can’t believe you two hid it from us for so long. Pretending to hate each other when you were secretly getting it on behind our backs. Look, is this when you had a little lovers’ spat?”

Yoongi knows he should let Yugyeom’s sneering fall on deaf ears and walk away. There is no use in fuelling this fire because it will only serve to burn him down. Yet, despite his internal negation, Yoongi’s perfidious eyes twitch to the side to see the phone screen that Yugyeom holds out towards him. And there, in effulgent LED, Yoongi sees a zoomed photo of a girl—of her—standing in a doorway, taken through one of the kitchen windows at the frat house.

Her expression is twisted into one of desolation; eyebrows bent like longbows; eyes glassy with tears; mouth hanging open in a soulless shape. The sight strikes Yoongi like it did when he saw it in the flesh, slicing right through his chest and hunting for his heart.

The whole locker room is silent.

Yugyeom takes Yoongi’s seething silence as some sort of sick permission to continue. “So, does our Ice Princess like it gentle or rough? I bet it’s like hate-fucking. All wild and kinky and shit. Does she cry like this and call you ‘daddy’ when you stick it in her, too–”

“I would shut the fuck up right now, if I were you,” Yoongi mutters, turning his head enough to murderously glare at a still grinning Yugyeom through his bangs.

“Ooh, what’cha gonna do, big guy?” Yugyeom barks a sharp, nasty laugh and straightens his spine. He towers a head taller than Yoongi, not that it will make any difference if he continues to talk shit. “Are you gonna slap me like you slap her ass while she’s snivelling about how much she loves you on your tiny cock–”

Yoongi has never punched a person, but he would consider his first to not be so bad. The second lands much better against Yugyeom’s cheekbone, and Yoongi cannot tell if it is his own knuckles or his teammate’s bones that crunch. By the third swing, he feels like he is getting the hang of it, and he distantly finds it somewhat amusing that Yugyeom, for all the bullshit he was just spouting, is practically a bag of flour beneath Yoongi’s fist. But before he can manage a fourth, there are short but strong arms curling under his armpits and yanking him back, off of Yugyeom who now slides down the side of the lockers with a crimson-soaked mouth.

Then, the blood rushing through his ears ceases to impair his hearing, and the enraged shouting booms against his ear drums at full volume. “That’s enough!” Namjoon roars, standing between Yoongi and Yugyeom. While Yoongi does not fight the arms that keep him locked down, they do not lessen the strength of their hold. He only realises it is Jimin when the familiar voice of his flatmate mutters into his ear, telling him to settle down.

“You’re both fucking lucky that I can’t afford to bench either of you for the final,” Namjoon barks, staring hard between Yoongi and Yugyeom. Almost everyone flinches at the threat—it only serves to hit home how furious he is over the situation. Then, Namjoon’s eyes settle on Yoongi, and Yoongi truly understands the phrase if looks could kill in this moment. “Go home. Don’t come back tomorrow.”

Jimin, after a brief second of hesitation, drops his arms. Without a word and with his eyes on the ground, Yoongi calmly slings the strap of his sports bag over his shoulder, leaves the change rooms without an utterance of defence, and runs back to the dorm. It is not until he is reaching for the front door’s handle that he notices the vibrant red caked on his swelling fist, and he winces and hisses as his knuckles scream in protest at the way he curls them around the metal. He figures that he can tend to his wounds later, and instead heads straight for the shower, set on scalding his skin of the anger still clogging his pores and the abuse that Yugyeom spewed all over him.

It is late in the afternoon by the time that the second bad thing materialises at the front door in three loud thumps, as if the person is knocking with their closed fist.

His own has now been sanitised and bandaged by Taehyung, who soon after left the dorm in a bright purple tracksuit. Yoongi, as always, did not question it. Jimin has not yet come home, and Yoongi is somewhat glad, considering he needs at least another hour of downtime before he has to exhaust an explanation about why what happened, happened. Though Yoongi wonders if it is, in fact, Jimin at the door. He could have forgotten to take his house-key to training, and Taehyung could have possibly locked the door behind him as he left, which would be a first. It is definitely more common to find the door unlocked than locked—he is genuinely shocked that their flat has not yet been raided by thieves; it would be an easy entry and an even more effortless escape.

So when Yoongi opens the door with an expectation of seeing Jimin, or potentially, a delivery man, the air is knocked out of him when he is faced with her. She wears an expression that is carefully sculpted to be as smooth as a still sea, and he cannot tell for the life of him whether she is here on good or bad terms.

Nonetheless, Yoongi blinks, surprised, and says, “Hey, what’s up–”

“What the hell are you doing?”

Although her features barely shift, her tone strikes like a cobra, sinking its fangs deep. Yoongi’s eyebrows raise underneath his fringe as her venom bleeds into his veins. While he knows deep down what warrants her sudden visit, he is shocked that she would come all the way to his doorstep about it instead of blatantly ignoring him, as usual.

“Is this about the night at the frat?” he says, crossing his arms and flinching when his bruised knuckles tuck into his elbow. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to–”

“Are you really that fucking idiotic, Yoongi?” she snaps, expression cracking with a fracture of scarcely composed rage. Yoongi is suddenly taken aback, and he truly thinks that he must be what she claims he is when she lifts her hand and points at his bandaged fist. “This is about that and the fact that you beat half the shit out of Yugyeom because of me.”

Yoongi’s mouth hangs slack, stunned speechless. He cannot comprehend why she is so outraged over him defending her, and that is all he can think to say. “I– I don’t understand why you’re going off like this when I was literally defending you because that bastard was making those disgusting comments!”

“That’s exactly it, Yoongi. When did I ever ask you to start standing up for me, considering you’ve hated me until the past month?” she bites, eyes flashing like a lightning storm. “Why the hell are you doing this? Why are you acting like we’re suddenly… something when that’s clearly not in your interests?”

“Not in my interests?” Yoongi scoffs, the candlelight of anger within him steadily growing. “You know that I’ve wanted to move on and heal all this time when you’ve been the one stuck in the damn past, not allowing that to happen! I should be the one saying that us being anything is not in your interests because it certainly hasn’t been until recently, too. Don’t be so fucking hypocritical!”

Now, the indignation is painted as clear as blue skies on her face. “Oh piss off, asshole. You’re the one playing cat-and-mouse with me!” she yells, fists clenching at her sides, taking a step closer so she can stare right up into his face and he can see the finer details of her fury. “For the fucking coaches, is that really what this was? You actually wanted to be friends again? And yet you were sucking face with that girl on Saturday night after inviting me to the party?”

Yoongi cannot help the vicious grin that rips at his cheeks over her statement. He knows he is being nasty, but really, she fell into the trap with such grace. “Oh, and since when do friends kiss, doll? Huh?”

If Yoongi had of blinked, he would have missed the way that the anger washed out of her face for a split second, replaced by a look of genuine confoundedness. But he sees that gleaming surprise flicker in all of its momentary agony before the hostility returns with renewed strength.

“That’s– Don’t twist my words! What I’m trying to get through your stupid, marble-sized brain is that one minute you’re kissing other girls and saying that this thing between us is only to keep our coaches happy, and the next, you’re out there acting like you’re my fucking boyfriend! Like… like you think you have some kind of right to put your career on the line over me because of who, fucking Yugyeom of all people? Yugyeom, who we all know talks shit and has always done his very best to get on your last nerve? So don’t you dare turn this around on me when you’ve not only been the one trying to kiss my ass and pretend that I hold some kind of importance to you, but you’ve then been turning around and using that as an excuse to fuck with your future!”

Yoongi knows she has a point, that her words come from a place of honesty within her. But he has years of anger festering around his lungs, finally rupturing and oozing into his every word like a disease. Unstoppable. He latches his teeth onto the only bit of meat that she has left tender enough to shred apart.

“What I do with my future is my decision! Why do you even care if I fuck it up for myself? I thought you would be happy to see me come crashing down after what happened. Eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth, right?”

She visibly bristles—shoulders hunching up to her ears; spine curling. He cannot tell if it is due to his accusations or because he blatantly ignored the tougher parts of what she initially said. The portions that he refused to chew. “I don’t care. I just can’t live peacefully because you’re constantly wriggling your way into my life in one way or another—this is merely a prime example! And now it’s come to a point where you’re sending me mixed signals and fucking around with my feelings like it’s some kind of sick game! What did I ever do to you, other than despise you, to deserve this, Yoongi? Really, what did I fucking do to you?”

“Are you really that thick in the head that you think your feelings for me are returning because I’ve somehow manipulated you into liking me again?!” Yoongi is roaring, but he could not care. He wants the clouds in the sky to hear him and compress his words into a storm, drowning her in the torrential rain. “Does it really kill you so much to admit that hey, perhaps we never fell out of love?!”

Her eyes shine, wet with rage and frustration. “You’re delusional if you think I still give two shits about you!”

“Go on then, say it,” Yoongi snarks, and he feels hot to the touch, like he would release steam if he were to have a bucket of water dumped on him. “Say that you don’t love me anymore. Say that you stopped loving me when it all went to shit five years ago.”

He expects her to deny it straight away. Yet, under the pressure of his ferocious gaze, she simply stares over his shoulder, into the void of the entranceway, and keeps her mouth clamped shut. Her failure to speak is practically a profession of assent in itself, but Yoongi is not so sure, anymore. He exhales, harsh enough to disturb the hairs floating around her distressed expression.

“When are you going to stop blaming other people for every single thing that doesn’t go the way you want it to, ___? When are you going to realise that only you can control your own feelings? When are you going to see that some things just naturally happen, and nobody can be blamed for it?” Yoongi, without remorse, lunges for the jugular and begins to tear, tasting copper and salt and vivid scarlet. “When are you going to stop blaming me for that accident and apologise to me? I’ve said I’m sorry to you about something that was never my fault more times than I ever told you I love you.”

“Fuck you,” she immediately spits, beginning to twist on her heel and flee. The right one—the one that she is convinced he smashed to smithereens with his bare hands.

But not before Yoongi slams the door in her face with enough force to shatter his heart.

Note | If you haven’t already noticed, I’ve decided to split the finale into two parts. This will enable me to get content posted for you guys much faster and it’ll be a weight off of my shoulders!! As you can see by the word count, it was getting pretty darn long sdfghs. Also, the ending was very scrappily edited, so if it’s bad, just know that I’m going to go through it again on Monday.

Anyways, prepare for the finale to be posted sometime over the next few weeks!! In the meantime, I’d love to know all of your thoughts on their relationship and what you think happened in their past!! ♡

All Rights Reserved © Vankoya. No translations, reposting and/or modifying of the material is allowed without my direct permission.

#yoongi angst #yoongi fluff #yoongi x reader #bts x reader #yoongi fics #min yoongi #bts fanfics #bts fluff #bangtan sonyeondan #bts scenarios #yoongi scenarios #bts #tdsoti #vankoya

[filmflowersbangtan]

Glitch | pt. 1

An abnormality in science creates your “perfect man.” 

pairing: jungkook x reader

genre: angst 

warnings: swearing, mentions of sex, parental issues 

word count: 4,150

a/n: thanks to @jiminvbias​ @hyyh-baeptae​ and last but especially not least @namjinbooty9298​ for all the love and support. You guys keep me motivated! Much love and many kisses to you all! I hope everyone enjoys this, and feel free to give me feedback. Thank you!

“What are you thinking about doing for your thesis paper?” Namjoon said to you from across the table. Like usual, books and pens and notebooks were scattered about in front of him. “There’s a method to the mess,” he said to you once when you asked him why he had to take up so much room. He got distracted easily like a cat, so the only way to keep himself focused on his studies was to surround himself with them.

You were sitting across from him, shopping online for a pair of Givenchy heels. “Um… I’m thinking about doing my paper on photosynthesis and why it’s important,” you said, more interested in those grossly expensive block-heeled mink and leather heels than biology.

“There is no way in hell that you’re going to write an entire paper on photosynthesis. In graduate school.” Namjoon didn’t sound too convinced. You could tell from his voice that he was making that face that meant he was judging you. The one where he squinted his eyes and pressed his lips together.

You glanced up at him from over your laptop. “What?”

He snatched your laptop, scattering some of his notes in a flurry. “These are the ugliest fucking shoes that I have ever seen in my life. You’re wasting time on looking at these rather than working on your paper that’s due in two months.”

You sighed dramatically. “Yeah, two months. Shopping for shoes for like, two seconds, won’t hurt.”

Namjoon slid your laptop back over to you. “It will hurt. Because, knowing you, you’ll forget all about it until the night before it’s due. And no one but maybe Jesus himself can write a coherent twenty-page paper complete with research and graphs and charts and references the night before without dying.”

You closed your eyes and rubbed at your temples. “Oh, God, Namjoon. You’re such a buzzkill. I just want to buy some fucking shoes.”

He slightly raised his hands in a fragile surrender. “I’m just trying to be a good friend here.”

Because of the unnecessary stress that your friend just placed upon you by talking about the inevitable thesis statement, you went ahead and bought the shoes to placate yourself. If you were going to fail out of graduate school, at least you were going to do it in style, goddamn it.

-

People in graduate school were boring. People in biology graduate school were even more dull. Nobody here partied anymore. But the guys at the engineering school across the town were pretty fun.

You met a guy named Taehyung there who had pretty eyes and even prettier hands that he put to good use when the both of you stumbled into an empty bedroom. You ditched the place with him after he gave you a world-trembling orgasm to get drunk at a frat house that was also having a party (who knew engineering schools had fraternities?). Everything after that was a beautiful blur of drunken sex.

The very next day, you regretted the entire night.

Something on the floor was buzzing insistently. The sunlight through the blinds was too bright. You squinted one eye open. The room you were in was unfamiliar. There was a strange contraption on a desk that looked like a mini rollercoaster that was in the process of being built beside a MacBook with too many stickers around the apple. The vintage Star Wars posters plastered all over the walls made you think that you had stumbled into nerd hell.

The object was still vibrating, but you were too tired to reach over to where it was on the floor to turn it off.

“Oh my God,” a voice deep and husky enough to make your knees weak if you weren’t so hungover said. “Shut that damn thing off.”

You fought through the heaviness in your head and bit back a snarky remark to sit up and grab the object. It was your phone, surprisingly unscathed. Usually when you woke up in unfamiliar rooms, it meant that your night was wild enough to shatter a perfectly good phone. But one look at the screen and you realized that you fucked up royally, and not in a way that meant you had to make another stop at Best Buy. Ten missed calls and five texts from Namjoon, seven missed alarms for your afternoon class, and three missed calls from your dad.

You held the breath in your lungs as you read Namjoon’s texts.

Namjoon [12:10 PM] ummmmmm where the hell are you???

Namjoon [12:13 PM] you know that you can’t miss class. you know what your dad will do!!!

Namjoon [12:22 PM] i’m risknig my life hre to text you durig lecture… whre the fuk are you!!!

Namjoon [12:25 PM] you rlly can’t miss class. you know professor lee and your dad are best buds

Namjoon [12:31 PM] fuk it i’m done tryig to help you

You ran a hand over your face. “I’m so dead,” you groaned.

The person behind you grunted as he stretched his arms and legs. “Good morning to you, too.”

You turned and remembered the handsome face but couldn’t place a name with it. “Um… What’s your name again?”

The guy blinked a few times and scrunched his eyebrows together. “I’m Taehyung. Don’t you remember? We had sex like five times last night.”

You sighed and got up to fetch your clothes. “The fact that you remember last night, and I don’t is not a good look on your part, my dude.” You tugged your jeans up your legs and hopped as you tucked on your heels. For some reason you couldn’t find your shirt.

Taehyung got up to pull on his clothes, too. “I thought we really had something going… You said that you liked my rollercoaster.”

Your shirt was still nowhere to be found, so you rummaged through the nearest clothes drawer and slipped on the first top that you could find. “Please. I like everything when I’m drunk.” You touched up your hair and makeup as much as you could in the mirror that hung on the back of the door. Thank God you didn’t lose your purse last night.

Taehyung was standing a few feet behind you, looking as if you just kicked his dog. You felt a little bad that you were treating him this way, but one glance at the Star Wars posters let you know that Taehyung was a guy that didn’t get a lot of one-night stands, which meant he was probably going to ask for your number and most likely wanted to keep in touch. You had probably said a few things to him that made him feel special, and making boys feel special will make them cling to you. So even though you did remember the sex (which was amazing by the way. The boy had a tongue like a snake), you pretended like you didn’t. Attachment wasn’t sexy.

You opened the door and turned to him one last time. “Well, it was nice knowing you. Kind of. See ya. Oh, and I’m keeping the shirt.”

As soon as you were in the hallway with the door closed behind you, all the strength in your body melted. You sagged against the door and shut your eyes, trying to calm the dizziness in your head. Whether it was from the onslaught of texts and missed calls, or if it was from the hangover, you didn’t know.

You wanted to scream. Your dad was going to kill you. Namjoon was going to nag your ear off for putting yourself in a situation to make your dad want to kill you. And you left a beautiful boy alone in his room because you were afraid of him liking you. Congratulations, Y/N. You’re a complete fuck up.

Your phone buzzed in your hand and your heart leapt into your throat. “Oh, shit,” you whispered to yourself when you saw your dad’s face pop up along with his caller ID. With trembling hands, you slid the green button across the screen and lifted the device up to your ear.

“Hi, Daddy!” you said in a too sweet tone that you used to use when asking him for money when you were in high school. “How’s work going?”

Your father was not amused. “Y/N,” he said. It was kind of sad that you heard his “I’m very disappointed in you” tone more than you heard him pleased with you. The only time you heard his happy voice was whenever you did something biology related. He actually smiled at you the day that you got accepted to that stupid graduate school.

“Where are you?” he said stiffly. “Professor Lee told me that you missed class again. What did I say the last time that you missed class?”

You were pushing out of the dorm building and into the afternoon that was bright enough to burn your eyes out of the sockets. “You said that if I were to miss class again, I would have to move back home and work at your lab to stay out of trouble,” you grumbled. There was no forgetting those words. You loved your apartment, and you hated being home. You hated that you would have to be under the eye of your father like you were fifteen again.

“Exactly. And what did you do today?” You hated his tone. Like he was scolding a five-year-old for drawing on the walls.

You fished your sunglasses out of your purse and pushed them on. “I missed class,” you mumbled.

“Yes, you did. Now, where are you?”

-

You waited for your dad on a steel bench outside of the engineering school’s library. You were still in last night’s jeans that probably burned a hole into your savings and still wearing those mink Givenchy heels that you bought online for a little over a grand, but you felt like you were waiting to be picked up with the day’s trash.

Your dad’s car pulled up in front of you, the black paint gleaming in the sun like a panther’s ebony coat. He rolled down the passenger side window, extremely serious in his pressed dress shirt and dark sunglasses. It bothered you that you saw your own face in his.

You got in the car without a word and yanked on the seatbelt.

“What are you wearing?” he said.

You glanced down at your shirt. Darth Vader’s head was positioned in the center with the words STAR WARS hovering above it. It was made to look like a vintage 80’s print, but to you it was simply tacky. “Of course,” you muttered to yourself. As if your father couldn’t judge you any more than he already was.

“You smell like alcohol and must,” your father said as he drove.

You ignored him, gazing out of the window at the buildings that passed by. “I haven’t had breakfast yet. Can we stop at McDonald’s or something?”

He was good at ignoring the things that you said, too. “Y/N, I just don’t understand why you still act like this. You’re twenty-five years old and you’re brilliant at math and science. You could excel in your studies if you actually tried.”

What if I don’t like biology, you wanted to say. What if I hate science? But those words would only fall on deaf ears. Your father was an award-winning biologist, gaining world recognition for his achievements in cell cloning. This caused you a lot of stress growing up. Everyone expected you to be as smart or as good at math and science as him like intelligence was a gene. Too bad you were actually good at the shit, making everybody believe that maybe good brains did run in the family. Too bad you secretly hated biology.

Namjoon was at your apartment when you arrived. Your dad waited in the car as Namjoon helped you stuff some your clothes into various suitcases.

“You’re a really good friend, you know that, right?” you said to Namjoon as he pulled some more of your clothes from your closet.

Namjoon laughed a little through his nose. “I would say the same to you, but you really need to get your shit together.”

You scoffed playfully and shoved his shoulder, and he stumbled dramatically. But the light-hearted atmosphere was dampened almost immediately. You sat down at the end of your bed with your shoulders slumped. “I really do need to get my shit together,” you said, staring down at the lines in your palms.

Namjoon stopped flipping through the clothes in your closet and sunk down on the mattress beside you. He wrapped an arm around you, and you rested your head against his shoulder. “I know that you hate this biology shit. You don’t have to tell me. I’ve seen all those beautiful drawings in your sketchbook. I’ve noticed how you pay more attention to fashion than you do about cells and molecules. I know that your dad is a pain in the ass and that you’re doing all of this for him. But you’ve got to tell him that you don’t want this. It’s the only way for you to be happy.”

Something sticky and warm rolled down your face. You swiped at your cheek and your hand came away moist. Oh Jesus. You were crying. “Goddamn it, Namjoon. Leave it up to you to make a girl cry.”

“I usually only make girls in Star Wars shirts cry on Saturday nights,” he said.

You choked out a laugh through the tears, wiping harshly at more that trickled down your face. “What the fuck does that even mean?”

He smiled and rubbed your arm with affection. “I don’t know. At least it made you laugh, though.”

What did you do in your past life to deserve him? Because in this life, you hadn’t done shit.

Outside, your father honked his horn once. You tilted your head back and groaned at the ceiling.

-

“I’ll take care of your apartment. Don’t worry,” Namjoon said as he loaded your last suitcase into the trunk.

“That means I won’t have an apartment to come home to because you’ve burned it down,” you said.

Namjoon smiled at you and you let him engulf you in a hug. “Stay strong, beautiful. Only you can be the one to tell him what you really want,” he whispered in your ear.

Your old room was the same as you had first left it when you were eighteen. A bed with an abundance of stuffed animals and down pillows. An organized desk with a cup of pens and sticky notes and a letter stacking tray. A bookshelf full of physics, chemistry, and biology books. Print-out calendars marked up with different colored pens. A shelf of trophies from robotics competitions, spelling bees, and science fairs. The only thing that was different was that the succulents were missing. Your dad must’ve tossed them out because there wasn’t anyone that would take care of them after you’d gone.

God, you hated this place.

“Make sure you get yourself some breakfast before we head out to the lab. We’ll be there all day,” your dad said as he passed your open door.

You rolled your eyes up to the ceiling and exhaled deeply from your nose. Your head was still pounding from the hangover, and your father wasn’t making it go any quicker.

You ate breakfast in your room while looking through some of the old sketchbooks that you kept in a shoebox under your bed. When you were in high school, you used to draw the same person over and over again. He was your “perfect man” (that was back when you thought such a thing existed, when you were young and naïve). Tall, well-dressed, and handsome with silky hair and big, brown eyes. A breathtaking smile with a barely visible dimple in his left cheek. You wondered what this guy looked like, what he smelled like. What was his favorite color? What kind of music did he like to listen to? Back then, the young, naïve you believed that if you thought about this guy really hard, he would come and save you from those stupid kids who thought that you were nothing more than a science geek with a rich dad and from that rich dad that thought you were his biology prodigy.

This perfect man understood you. He didn’t judge you or think that you were too nerdy to hang out with him.

Now, you laughed as you flipped through dozens and dozens of drawings of this one man. You drew him in several different styles of clothes. Maybe this was where your love for fashion began. You took one of the sketchbooks with you to the lab to give you some internal strength.

-

Your father and his team were working on some “top secret” cell cloning project. You didn’t know much about the project at large, but you did little tasks here and there for the team. Fetching coffee and copies, double checking to see if certain doors were locked, looking at cells in microscopes and writing down observations when one of the scientists were too preoccupied with something more important.

As you were getting coffee for the team that you were working with for the day, the fluorescent lights above flickered for a full minute before ticking to normal.

“We’re still trying to figure out how to stop that from happening,” a lab technician said when you asked her about it while giving her the coffee that she asked for. “It’s the energy from the system that we’re using for the project. We’re either using too much or not enough. So far all the tests have failed.”

That was the most that anyone had told you about this project that they called, “Project Aureus.”

During your lunch breaks, you found a place to hide in. It was one of the rooms that had to be locked twenty-four seven. Technically, you weren’t allowed in here, but you didn’t care. You were the only one who checked the doors to see if they were locked, so no one would figure out. The room was small and bare. There was absolutely no furniture and it was completely white. The plainness of it calmed you sometimes. It helped with the stress that your father and his colleagues were pressing onto your shoulders throughout the days.

You sat in here and ate a sandwich as you flipped through your sketchbook again, looking into the face of your once perfect man. He never did come to save you from high school. And now that you were stuck under the thumb of your tyrant of a father, seeing those drawings again only pissed you off.

No one was going to save you. No one was going to carry you out of the black hole that you threw yourself into. Namjoon was your friend, but he had his own life and career that he had to think about. You didn’t want to get in the way of that. Namjoon loved the hell out of biology, so there was no way that he could understand how much you hated it. How much you needed to escape from it.

A bead of moisture fell onto the paper, pressing a dark dent into it. You wiped at your eyes to discover that you were crying again and that pissed you off even more. Meanwhile, your perfect man’s stupid face looked up at you with his stupid eyes and stupid hair. You tore out all the pages and rushed out of the tiny room, locking the door behind you.

“Hey! What were you doing in there?” a scientist that happened to be walking down the barren hall at that very moment said. He had a clipboard tucked under his arm. You forgot that sometimes they made rounds to this side of the facility. “That room is used specifically for Project Aureus’ purposes. Don’t go in there again.” He spoke in a tone that resembled your father’s which only angered you even more.

You nodded and rushed off, your hands tight in fists at your sides.

-

The very next day, as you were returning to the lab from the longue with both your hands full with mugs of coffee, the lights flickered and buzzed like they usually did at this time of day. You were immune to it by now like everyone else in the building was. They were running tests again. But this time was different. The fluorescents completely shut off, resulting in the hallways being washed in the eerie red glow of the emergency lights.

You paused in your steps, your heart thrumming in your ears as doctors and scientists everywhere scurried about shouting things that you didn’t quite understand.

“It worked!” a man rushing pass you said with glee. “It actually worked!” You weren’t sure where he was going or what he was talking about, but you assumed that the current project was a success.

Curious, you headed back to the lab room to give the doctors their coffee. This was the only area that still had power due to its back-up generator because of its “high importance” (you didn’t know why this room was important, that was just what you were told on your first day). It was uncannily silent as everyone watched a set of monitors displaying whatever was going on. Their faces were a mix of confusion and wonder. It was so quiet, and everybody was so still that the sound of your footsteps rang eerily throughout the room. There were more people in here than normal, a majority of them standing to get a good look at the screens.

“Here’s your coffee,” you said to Dr. Greene, bending down to place the mug on her desk. You felt like you had to whisper because it was so silent.

Dr. Greene didn’t acknowledge your presence, which was usual unless she was barking her coffee order at you. “We made an entire human?” she whispered, her fingers in front of her mouth in awe. You knew that she wasn’t talking to you, so you moved on to find Dr. Kim’s desk through the bodies all standing around in their starched white coats.

“But those papers? Where did they come from?” another doctor responded.

“Were those papers the answer to our problem all along?”

“But that’s the problem. We weren’t trying to create a person. We were just trying to clone a solid subject without it coming out deformed.”

As everyone chimed in with their observations, the room began to buzz with conversation.

Your curiosity got the better of you. You knew that you weren’t supposed to know anything about the project, and you knew that the doctors sent you out of the room for coffee at the same time each day so that you wouldn’t see whatever was going to be displayed on the monitors in the front of the room, but what they were saying was so strange that you had to look.

You slowly pushed through the congregation of doctors and scientists, pretending to look for the owner of the coffee in your hand until you reached the front of the room where the two flat-screen sized monitors hung up on the wall.

As soon as you got a look at the screen, the cup of coffee in your hand slipped, crashing to the floor. The scorching liquid bit at your exposed ankles when it splashed, but that didn’t faze you. A few people around you jumped back, muttering insults at you, but you barely heard them.

The two monitors displayed an identical set of rooms that both looked exactly like the one that you ate your lunch in the day before. One still had the pages that you ripped from your sketchbook scattered across the floor.

And in the other –

The man in the room was sitting on the floor, his legs pulled up to his chest and his arms around his knees. He was completely naked, his muscles taut and toned. The room was drowning with red because of the emergency lights, but despite that, you saw the gleam in his eyes when he looked up at the camera in the corner. You knew that he wasn’t, but it felt like he was gazing straight at you.

Those were the eyes that you knew better than your own. Big and brown and doe-like. You’d been drawing them all throughout high school, and never in your life would you be able to forget the way that they looked.

“She has to get out of here! This is confidential!” Bodies made a path for your father, the man that this very facility was name after. He snatched your upper arm, but despite him dragging you away, you kept your eyes on the man on the screen.

This couldn’t be. There was no way that you were seeing this correctly.

Your perfect man was real?

another a/n: Okay, okay. I know Jungkook doesn’t show until the end, but this is just the set up chapter. I promise that there will be lots more Jungkook in the future!

#kreativewritersnet #bangtanwriters-net #btscreatorsnet #jungkook fanfic #bts fanfction

[blackswcns]

*✧·˚.  O R I G I N  S T O R Y  Y O O S U N G :: RUN AWAY BOY

tw: domestic abuse, alcohol, injury, mental illness

*✧·˚. Y O O S U N G, as a dark brown mopped top little boy, was utterly and entirely a sad child. every day that passed was a day he grew deeper and deeper into the dark hole that he was shoved down by his parents. the seven year old woke up to a clatter once more this week and it was no different to the times before. he lifted his hands up to his face, rubbing the sleep from his tired eyes before reaching for his glasses he left beside his head on the mattress, or possibly he had just forgotten to take them off before he dozed off mere hours ago. B A N G ! yoosung sat up, his movements becoming a little more quicker than before. the sounds were well too familiar to the young boy. his father was home. with his corrective lenses on, his eyes begrudgingly looked over at the alarm clock on his night stand. 3:02 AM. no surprise there.

“ WORTHLESS. BOTH OF YOU !! “ yoosung heard his father yell from down the stairs. his words were slurred, too slurred for a tuesday night. it usually wasn’t bad during the week days, yoosung thought to himself before another loud sound came from the living room, this time a scream. his mother’s scream and glass shattering. his heart would have stopped if this was the first time, but he was sort of numb to the whole situation now. even if it was him down there getting the beating, he would have been numb.

leaning over to turn on his small lamp next to his bed, his body started to move automatically as the banging and screaming continued from down the stairwell. perhaps he would have some sort of sympathy for his mother. if she didn’t do the same thing to him that his father did to her. it was just a food chain of the household, and the small twig of a boy they called a son (with full resentment and distaste on their lips) was the bottom of it.

yoosung did not know what he was thinking when he grabbed his school back pack and dumped all of his projects from it, but he knew after tonight, he wouldn’t be returning to school. or this household ever again. the halls had secrets that never traveled out of them. once stepped outside of that front door, everything had to be normal. he was trained to keep his lips closed. to act like nothing was wrong within the four walls of the han household, only because they told him that he was the root of all their problems. he was supposed to save the marriage, but it was past the point of saving. yoosung couldn’t comprehend how he was supposed to save their relationship. he was only a kid, barely comprehending live itself, let alone a complex ideal like a man and wife.

stuffing the importance in his pokemon backpack, some clothes, a few snack he had sneaked back home from school, and a battery operated night light, he was ready to just leave. even at his young age, he knew that he had to remove himself from the situation before they did. he pulled on his heaviest hoodie and threw on his backpack.

before he could open the window, he caught himself in the the reflection. his face wasn’t tear stricken like all the times his father came home angry and drunk. it was expressionless. his eyes bare from all emotion. “ you got this, yoosung . “ he told himself, pulling up his hood before swallowing hard. it wasn’t until the window was opened and he looked down. why did his room have to be on the second story. his fingers started to quiver against the window sill. before pulling himself into it. there was a bush right under his window in the backyard. he knew what he had to do. jump into it, crawl out, run towards the city, avoid adults, and NEVER LOOK BACK. he never wanted to see his parents ever again and he would go to any extreme to do that. if he could, he would change his own face because he would look in the mirror and see how his face was almost a exact replica of his fathers. he couldn’t think of that now.

with his feet dangling against the side paneling of the house, he counted down from five. and jumped on two.

yoosung hit the bush hard. the impact causing his body to emanate with pain from his ankles. both of them. “ FUCK. “ he cursed through gritted teeth. “ fuck, shit shit shit shit… “ tears started to flow from his eyes as he whispered obscenities. it hurt and his body began to tremble from the pain and the feeling of the late winter breeze. he clawed his way from the raggity bush and into the lawn before scrambling to his feet. his mere weight caused more pain but he knew he couldn’t stop now, if they found him, he wouldn’t just be hurting in his legs. while limping away from the house, his hands clutched to the straps of his bag, he said his final goodbyes to his mother and father even though he was the only one to hear it.

“ KISS MY FUCKING BUTT. “

#i wondered everyday how far I’d go [ origins ] #like a child who got lost [ yoosung ]

[krissewrites]

À Triomphe - BTS AU

AU:  Art Thief!Bangtan

Description: You are a curator at one of the many museums in Paris, and have finally earned the bosses trust.  But after a strange meeting with a new coworker and his friends, you begin receiving messages from an unknown party.

Part: Nine / Eight / Seven / Six / Five / Four / Three / Two / One

Warnings: Swearing, Violence.

They had him under lock and key, strict supervision.  Six accounts of manslaughter, two accounts of domestic abuse.  He played back the punishment fit for the crime in his head; Death Row. He would be sent back to Korea the following morning. If only he was actually to be blamed.

Jimin sat in the corner of his cell, his back pressed against the wall as he gazed at the window across from the cell bars, the only light showing being the glow of the full moon. It was curfew, with only a few other prisoners within his cell block still awake.  The sound of heels clicking against the metal catwalk echoed.

“Jimin Park,” a husky voice berated.  Jimin groaned, refusing to turn his head.  “What do you want? I told you, I—“

The cell doors slowly glided apart, creating a riff in Jimin’s attitude.  He turned his attention to the guard behind him.  “Now you know how I feel, right?”

Jimin quickly bounced to his feet, tugging his arm as the shackles constraining him to the wall pulled him back.  “What are you doing here? They’re going to fucking kill—“

Jimin was hushed as the black haired boy pressed a finger to his own lips.  His eyes wandered.  “Do you hear that?”

Pure silence, as if there were no souls inhabiting the facility.  Jimin furrowed his brows, turning to his old friend.  “Why are you doing this for me, Yoongi?”

The black haired boy smirked, leaning down to unlock Jimin’s cuffs.  “I won’t let him do this again,”  Yoongi straightened his back, watching as Jimin rubbed his wrists.  He pulled two small masks from his jacket pocket, handing one off to Jimin as he instructed him to wear it. “You want to help, don’t you?” He held the mask against his face.

Jimin slowly nodded, swallowing any resistance he had as Yoongi turned on his heel, walking down a small set of stairs opposite of the way he had come. Jimin followed close behind, careful to not make a sound.  “Yoongi, I’m in the most secure block, what do you think you’re doing?”

Yoongi ignored the yapping boy behind him, striding through the halls with his hands in his pockets.  Jimin quickly realized what turmoil had occurred.

Bodies strolled the halls, the guards face down to the concrete unconscious.  A foul smell grew the deeper you went, batons strolling the area as shattered security cameras littered the floors.  Yoongi had single-handedly taken down an entire facility.  

“How did you do this?”  Jimin quizzed, stopping behind Yoongi as they reached a small door leading to an employee parking lot.  “I put chloroform in the main floor vents.  Then I decided to let out some steam.”

Jimin sneered, smirking as he watched Yoongi hold the door open, motioning for Jimin to continue on.  “We have work to do, Jimin,” he grinned.

Your eyes grazed over the article dated December 17th, 2015.

A woman aged at twenty-one years old found slaughtered in Gangnam apartment last week.

Detectives found imagines on the victim's phone of her and what is assumed, her boyfriend. No traces of him have been found at the crime scene.

Relatives of the victim do not wish to give statements.

Your lips trembled as you read through the article, scrolling past pictures of the scene; a woman, barely together, hidden under a white cloth.  Her blood stained the covering. You grew angry, disgusted, impatient.

What the fuck does this mean? Who are you?

What are you trying to tell me?”

Anxiety quaked through your body as you watched three small, gradationed dots appear.  Whoever it was was typing.

Text Message from Unknown Number

“I’m here to help you. I’m doing my part, you do yours.”

You cursed under your breath, the sense of hatred you had before began to boil in your blood; you had been reminded how much you wanted to leave. Yet, you heard Jeongguk continued to whimper after Hoseok and Jin had moved from the door, concluding that he had become less violent.  A lightbulb went off.

As you stomped to the door, kneeling down before the wooden panel, listening to the grown man sob as he banged his head against the door, calling for someone; he was calling a name other than yours. You had never been the type to manipulate people, and especially in a time of distraught, but you knew no one else would give you the information you wanted.

“Jeongguk?” You cooed, being sure not to frighten him.  You heard him pause his pleading. “Darling?”  He murmured, almost denying who it was.

You heard Jeongguk move his position, turning to face the door.  You saw him kneeling through the crack at the bottom.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” he wept.  “I didn’t want to do it,” he protested.  He continued in his beg for forgiveness, “Please let me in, baby, I won’t hurt you this time,”

Your breath hitched as you heard the different tones in his voice; a cent of grief, a cent of anger, and a cent of insanity.  He continued to call you by the wrong name, leaving you to wonder about his past.  

“I forgive you, Jeongguk,” you mewled, feeling guilty as you continued the charade.  “I’ll let you out if you answer my questions.”

Jeongguk’s voice pitched, his hand hitting the door as he quickly agreed to your offer.  You began to twiddle your thumbs.  

“Why is (Y/N) here?” The words felt foreign as you heard yourself speak in the third person.  Jeongguk quickly replied, his voice trailing.  “Namjoon is using her.” You clenched your first, your lip twisting as you recalled how Namjoon looked.  You wanted to kill him.

“Where’d Jimin go?”  You beckoned, hearing Jeongguk’s breathing fall to a hush as he grew calmer.  He felt serene with the thought of the mystery woman being on the opposite side. “Namjoon sent him away.”

“Why’d he do that, baby?”  

“Jimin wanted to help her.”

You felt your heart stop as your imagined the scenario.

“What’s the wager?” Jimin spoke softly, submitting under Namjoon’s ego. Namjoon slinked back behind his desk, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped, glaring at Jimin.  “They’ve been tailing us.  I need bait.”

Jimin rubbed the back of his neck, cursing under his breath. “I thought we dropped them months ago? Why do they keep finding us?”

Namjoon shrugged, popping a piece of gum into his mouth.  “I’ve asked Yoongi, he swears the grid hasn’t been breached.” Namjoon’s attention drifted to an old pastry dish from two months ago.  He’d been using it as a paperweight, unwashed.  “I trust him, too.”

Jimin leaned his palm against the edge of Namjoon’s desk, his head dropping down as he stared at the floor.  He groaned to himself.  “What do I have to do?”

Namjoon grinned.

You felt Jeongguk pet the door, breaking your train of thought.  “I’m sorry, lamb,” he muttered. You pursed your lips, growing insecure in your act.  “I forgive you…” your voice trailed.

“What the fuck are you doing?” You snapped your attention to glare at Hoseok who stood beside you, his face contorting in a mix of disgust and anger.  “What the fuck are you doing?”  He yelled, lifting you up by your neck.  He slammed your body against Jeongguk’s door.  “Baby?” You heard Jeongguk coo.

“I—I was—“ you choked, glaring at Hoseok.  His glare could burn holes into your skin.  He quickly tangled his hand into your hair, pulling you from the door with a jerking motion.  You yelped.

“I save you from Jin, I ignore you when you try to escape, but I won’t tolerate this.”  You writhed under his grip, tears coming from your eyes.  “Why the fuck were you doing that to him?”  He growled.  You winced, your breath speeding up as Taehyung and Jin both exited their rooms, watching the scene unfold before them.  Hoseok glanced at each of them.

Taehyung stood, silent, as he watched Hoseok manhandle you.  It was as if you were cellophane—you no longer mattered to him.  He rubbed the bruises on his throat as he turned back to his room, shutting the door behind him.

Hoseok turned his attention back to you.  He jolted you forward to the end of the narrow hall, stopping in front of Namjoon’s door to open it.  

Namjoon watched as Hoseok entered the room with you in clutch, his eyes widening.  “Hoseok…” he whispered.  “What are you do—“

Hoseok threw you to the floor, watching you shake as he closed the door behind him.  “Jeongguk cracked,” he whispered.  You heard Namjoon quickly rise to his feet, his lethargic streak suddenly vanishing.  “What do you mean?”

Hoseok cackled, throwing his head back as he replayed the scene.  “She fucking manipulated him,” he hissed.  “I know I told you she’d be useful, but Jesus fucking Christ,” he cursed, “I’d rather her die right now.”

Namjoon held his hand to his head, brushing back his already short hair as he assessed the situation.  “How much did she hear?”

Hoseok stepped over you, walking closer to Namjoon as he continued his lecture.  “I only caught the tail end of it,” he said, “but I would assume too much, Joon.”

You crawled back against the door, trying to hide in plain sight.  There was no escape from this hell house.  Namjoon glared at you, corrugating his eyebrows as he gave his order; “Follow me.”

Hoseok quickly followed Namjoon out of the room, walking past you as they began their discussion behind a closed door.

“I don’t trust her, Namjoon.  How much longer until she tells them it wasn’t Jimin?”

“I can’t kill her, Hoseok.  You and I both know that.”

“Who says you have to? Lock her in a room with Jin for long enough, he’ll tear her to pieces.”

“That’s not how this works, Hoseok.”

“Who the fuck says this is working in the first place?”

Hours had passed before anyone bothered to open the door to Namjoon’s room, your new cage.  Jeongguk would occasionally scream, followed by the comforting words of Hoseok.  The evening had turned to dusk, and you grew weary with every passing minute. Darkness consumed the room, casting you into the shadows as you cowered behind Namjoon’s desk.

You had fallen asleep at some point in your captivity, tears staining your cheeks. A creek echoed through the room, leading you to snap your eyes open.  You vision adjusted as a light switch flipped.  

“(Y/N)?” A voice cooed.  Taehyung.

The door shut, footsteps slowly easing their way across the room.  You purposefully remained quiet, as you had developed a fear for male voices. A shadow cast over you as Taehyung towered over you, looking pitiful.  A worried look took over his usual puppy-like features.

“What do you want?” You mumbled.  Taehyung squatted, moving a tender hand towards you.  You immediately flinched. Guilt washed over him.  “I know you aren’t happy,” he murmured.  Taehyung began to sit beside you, his voice falling to a whisper.  “I’m not happy, either.”

His hands trembled, gaining your attention as you turned to him.  His eyes watered.  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” he stifled a cracking voice. Taehyung turned to face you, noticing your matching gaze.  “You deserve something better than being here, with me.”  He reached out his hand, brushing his fingers through your hair as he tucked strands behind your ear.  “I’m not a selfish man,” he whimpered.

Taehyung quickly stood to his feet, pulling you up with him as he turned the corner around Namjoon’s desk.  He stopped in front of a small window hidden behind black curtains.  Taehyung gripped the bottom of the panel, pushing it up as he stepped back, making room.  “Leave,” he muttered.

You glared at him, eyebrows knitted together as you tried to pick apart his actions. “What are you doing, Tae—“

“What the fuck?”  You heard a voice growl behind the door.  The door shook as the voice’s owner tried to force it open.  Minutes passed with silence before the pounding came back in twos. Taehyung turned to you, growling, “I have someone waiting for you two blocks away.  I can only hold them off for so—“

The door was rammed down, shredded wood scattering as Jin and hoseok stood, huffing.  A small pistol gripped in Jin’s hand. Taehyung hastily grabbed your waist, pushing you outside of the window before slamming it behind you.

You fell against the grassy side of the house leading to the back yard.  You looked over your shoulder, watching as Taehyung began to scream at the two men.  

“Fucking do it, Jin! You don’t have the balls.  You never did—“

Bang.  You winced as you heard the gunfire, quickly turning your head to avoid the scene.  You saw blood splatter the window in your peripheral vision.

Jin watched as Taehyung’s limp body slid against the window, falling to the floor.  You appeared on the opposite side, staggering as you tried to stand up.  “Go after her!”

You heard two gunshots ricochet against the window, a third one breaching the glass as you began to take off. Your legs strode against the cool November air, turning corners as you heard Hoseok’s distinct voice curse in the distance. You’d gotten far enough from his sight to lose him.

You found an alley two blocks, as Taehyung had said, away from the house, where you hid.  You bent over in pain, panting in an attempt to catch your breath.  

“Brat,” a husky voice called.  You turned your head, your eyes screwed shut from exhaustion opening only a bit; a short, waify man stood at the end of the corner.  “You don’t follow directions well,” he taunted.

You stood straight, watching as he took a drag from a small cigarette in his hand.  Your breath hitched as you muffled a question. “Do I know you?”

He grinned, flicking the cigarette to the ground and smashing it with his sneakers.  “No, not as much as I’d like you to,” he bewitched.  “I know you, though.”

You slowly walked towards him, his features coming into focus with every inch—he had doll-like lips.  “(Y/N) (Y/L/N), 24 years old.”

Another foot, closing the gap between the two of you as he mocked you.  “An art theory major at University of Rochester, you’re father told you that you’d never make any money the day you graduated.”

Another foot, his eyes beckoning you—cat eyes.  “You moved to Paris at the age of 21, moving job to job as you tried to grasp your footing,”

He was the boy from the video.  “And you finally found a decent job—the Maillol, was it?”

He tossed his head to the side, watching as you approached him like a curious child.  “Until some asshole asked you on a date.  Your family has been worried,” he muttered under his breath the following, “but they’ve been keeping you from the media, haven’t they?”

You were now only a foot from him, watching as his gaze pierced through you.  “Follow me,” he ordered.

You, with no other choice as the fall weather left goosebumps on your skin, followed his demand and trailed him around the corner of the alley into the open.  

There sat a small black car, one fit only for a couple of people. He opened the driver's side door, quickly getting in.  You stood, feeling odd in your judgment.  

Who the hell was he?  

How’d he know me so well?

The driver's window rolled down, an impatient stare coming from cat-boy.  “Are you just going to stand there?”

You walked around the car, stepping into the small car before buckling your seatbelt.  Cat-boy began to talk once more.

“I told Taehyung to meet us at the warehouse if he really wanted to get out of that shithole—“  He turned his gaze to you as the car drifted through the streets under the nightlight of Paris.  “Did he mention—“

You stopped him, “He won’t be coming.”

Cat-boy sat in his seat, pressing against the steering wheel as he eyes trailed from you back to the streets.  “They caught him, didn’t they?”

You could hear guilt in his voice as if Taehyung was a brother to him.  He sighed, sharply turning the car around a corner as he pressed on the gas.  “That poor bastard,” he muttered.

You sink back in your seats, crossing your arms over your chest as you began to feel uneasy.  “Who are you?” You muttered.

He turned to you, smiling gummily.  “You’re a little obtuse, aren’t you? What, did Tae fuck you, or something?” He joked.  The air in the car grew tense as you didn’t respond.  Cat-boy paused, realizing that his joke was true.  “Oh… shit,” he whispered.  He waved his hand, sighing as he got back on track.  

“My name is Yoongi, although you probably know me by Creepy-Stalky-Texter,” he laughed at his own joke.  It was nice that he found amusement in his own company.  “I’ve been watching you for a while now,” he spoke softly, pulling into a parking complex.  

“Why?” You hissed, growing impatient.

“I work with Namjoon,” he sighed, “he’d been planning to hit the Maillol.  Jin was in charge of getting access to a clean entry to the building—“ he turned to you.  “Sorry about that, by the way.  I heard you really liked him,” Yoongi laughed.  “It must suck having your date steal your work keys,” he muttered.

He pulled to halt, putting the car in park as he unbuckled his seat belt.  “I knew you’d be targeted, and honestly, I’ve grown annoyed with the whole lot.”  He referenced the boys—Hoseok, Namjoon, Jin, Jeongguk—leaving you to wonder just what caused his irritation.

The two of you exited the car as he walked you across the parking lot to the exit.  You both began your trek across the wide road to a small lot of garage units.  “I didn’t want to be a part of their clique anymore, so I started texting you,” he glared at you, continuing, “but you see how good that worked out.”

The two of you came to a stop in front of a small garage unit where Yoongi began to fidget with a padlock on the bottom of the slide up door.  He quickly slid the door up, revealing a small, bunker-like, room.  He held the door up on his tiptoes, waiting for you to enter.  His stomach peeked from under his shirt.  

You entered the small room, accompanied by multiple cots and miscellaneous objects for entertainment, and resting.  A table sat in the middle of the room with an odd amount of chairs surrounding it.  A small alignment of cabinets lined the back of the unit, customized with a small sink and miniature fridge.  

“It’s not the best thing in the world, but it is safe.  I’d feel safer here than in my own apartment—“ he trailed off.

In the corner of the compact room as a door, leading to a small section of the unit that was converted into a bathroom.  The door slowly opened.  

#were getting close to the end :( #njnfhs #bts #bangtan sonyeondan #bts au #bangtan boys #bts fanfic #bts smut #bts fluff #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts reactions #kim seokjin #seokjin #jin #min yoongi #yoongi #suga #bts angst #jung hoseok #hoseok #jhope #kim namjoon #namjoon #rap monster #park jimin #jimin #kim taehyung #taehyung #jeon jeongguk

[jodiwalker]

These Are the Best Things Happening on ‘Game of Thrones’ Right Now, Part II

Hey y'all, something bad is coming on Game of Thrones, so just real quick, let's remember the good times in episodes 3 and 4, when teenage assassins were reuniniting with their teenage ruler sisters and teenage psychic brothers. When Littlefinger was getting ragged on so hard. When Jon and Davos had nothing better to do than chalk up the cave walls of Dragonstone with little bitty zombie drawings to prove a point and flirt with Missandei, respectively.

There were Catspaw Dagger references for the most careful of watchers, Jon saying "I'm not a Stark" as a Targaryen dragon flies overhead for the mildly observant viewer, and there's Jon and Dany touching each other's wrists in caves for everyone else who's just like, I don't understand what's happening here, I've never understood what's happening here, I don't care what's happening here, but I will be here until it's all over and Dany has married her nephew, SO HELP ME R'HLLOR.

So, once again, this is not a recap, not a review, just a simple, definitive, and all-encompassing list of The Best Things Happening on Game of Thrones right now (which is to say last week and the week before):

Almost Everyone Playing the Game of Thrones Is a Baby-Child

It suddenly became clear in episode 3 that while the lead characters in Game of Thrones don't seem particularly young when they are commanding their armies and large, magic animals—when they come face to face in a throne room, they suddenly seem like two particularly formidable and hormonal teenagers facing off at a Model United Nations simulation. Except, y'know, one of them recently died and was resurrected by a thousand year old sexy priestess, and the other has a bunch of giant toddler dragons and, like, ended slavery, I think.

I'm, of course, speaking of Dany and Jon, the two most popular rulers at Westeros High. Now, since Kit Harrington and Emelia Clarke are each 30, you wouldn’t think they would seem that young…but they're also both, like, 5'1 if they're an inch, so when they first came face-to-face in episode 3, they more often resembled a couple of adorable Shiba Unus tussling over a Kong ball and sniffing each other's butts, instead of two rulers arguing over getting to save the world in the specific way they want to.

In that sense, their first meeting was a particularly precious reminder of how young they still are. Yes, all the GoT kids were aged up three or four years from the books at the start of the series, but Dany and Jon are still only 22 or 23 as they fight to save the world from heretofore unknown evils—and by that, I of course mean Queen Cersei making ever woman get her goofy pageboy haircut. 

When Missandei announces Dany like one of Blair Waldorf's be-headbanded lackeys, Game of Thrones briefly turned into a Disney Channel Original movie, bringing along all the clashing dynamics of darkness and precociousness a DCOM denotes. You can practically hear Missy saying, "You stand in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn, President of the Student Council, rightful member of the A/B Honor Roll, rightful owner of a used Ford Prius she got as a reward for said A/B Honor Roll, Haver of an Afterschool Volunteer Internship at a Veterinary Office, Breaker of Bullies, the Sister of a College Sophomore Who Lets Her Wear His Old Fraternity Formal Shirts So People Think She's Cool, Voted Most Likely to Play with Fire and Like It a Little Too Much, and the Survivor of a Particularly Bad Case of Strep Throat Last Year.

You scared yet Jon Snow, you creepy-loner-who-doesn't-know-he's-hot-and-smokes-cigarettes-behind-the-school-but-secretly-makes-all-As-and-has-a-heart-of-gold-Patrick-Verona-lookin'-ass, you?

If Dany hasn't stood up on the Iron Throne and tearfully choked her way through a rendition of the "10 Things I Hate About Jon Snow" by the end of all this, I will be shocked. Because, as we will discuss later, Dany doesn't hate King Jon (King Snow? No, that doesn't sound right, does it Davos)…not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

The Stark Children Are Happy…Well, As Happy As a Live Stark Child Can Be

Of course that's not even mentioning the actual children roaming around Winterfell with severe PTSD and a recently developed case of the huggies. Sansa's running the Stark show at Winterfell while Jon is away at Dragostone giving up all his weapons and doing arts and crafts in the underground caves, and in her time as a prisoner of various evil families, she seems to have picked up quite a knack for organizing grain supplies and commanding that leather be added to armor because the dipshits apparently haven't heard that WINTER HAS COME.

I thought Sansa would be cool for like an episode or two and then go back to being dreadful, but her recent transition from Little Sister to Big Sister inside the walls of Winterfell seems to be suiting her well. When Meera finally brings Brann back home and after dragging his 6'4 ass all over the North, she gets exactly zero sibling hugs because her brother died protecting Brann—justice (and a warm shower) for Meera—but the newly minted Three Eyed Raven gets a sweet embrace from big sister Sansa. 

He returns the love by informing Sansa that now he can see everything that's ever happened in the world, including the worst night of her life when she was forced to marry Ramsay and he raped her.

Hey Brann, I know it's not your fault that Jaime Lannister pushed you out of a window, and your dad got beheaded, and Theon fake-torched you, all setting you on a fan-least-favorite path toward becoming the Three Eyed Raven but—you totally suck! Someone else can tell Jon he's a Targaryen if it means you having to be all weird to your sisters now that you're finally, gloriously, wonderfully reunited. In this extended high school analogy I've been drawing, Brann is the kid who took one philosophy class at the community college for extra credit and thinks he knows everything now. You don't know shit, Brann!

Okay, fine, Brann knows some shit, and is obviously intended for some higher purpose in this game of thrones or he surely wouldn't have been—quite literally—dragged through all seven seasons. I just wish that purpose was being a nice supportive brother to his super-survivor sisters, which brings us to…

ARYA IS BACK AT WINTERFELL AND SHE SPARRED WITH BRIENNE AND MAYBE THEY CAN GO LADY-ARMOR SHOPPING TOGETHER NOW, WHAT'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD?!

As it turns out, the already disparate Stark children have become even more contrasted with time and (grueling, awful, traumatic, painful, oftentimes unbelievable) circumstances. Sansa, who was a pretty girl who wanted to marry a prince, is now the Wardeness of Westeros' largest region with a keen political mind and a dude who would fucking love to marry her that she's constantly mocking. Arya was a tomboy who had a real good time at her afterschool swordsmanship lessons, and has since grown into a stone-cold assassin who cuts people's faces off and magic-pastes them onto her own face, then feeds those recipient of the face-cutting to his own family, and then also kills that entire family. Brann has turned from a boy who liked to ride horses into Westeros' creepy Miss Cleo, and also, he no longer goes by Brann, and also, is a pretty constant dick to the women in his life.

That all kind of made me love their reunions even more though. Arya saying, "Do I have to call you Lady Stark?" as her first greeting to Sansa was incredible. Sansa replying, "Yes," very much in the way of Old Sansa, but then turning around and hugging Arya and bonding with her about how much pain they've lived through and how everything they used to know is dead except for each other was even better. And Sansa telling Arya that "Brann has visions," in the same tone of voice you might warn a guest that your little brother has recently gotten really into making his own chainmail was EVEN BETTER.  There was also Jon all the way over at Dragonstone being all "She's startin' to let on" when Tyrion says that Sansa is smarter than she lets on—love those two, sure hope Littlefinger doesn't turn them against each other and shatter my heart into a million pieces!

But simply the best was watching those three rough and tumble Starks wheel and walk their way back from the Weirwood tree and into their home at Winterfell, down a couple family members, not really sure of who they've become, and probably on the brink of being murdered by ice zombies, sure…but they're also together—three lone wolves restored to a pack—and, for now, they're alive.

Of course, it is hard to ignore all that side eye Sansa was giving Arya as she sorted that out that Lil' Sis super-duper was not kidding about having a murder list. But Sansa isn't on said murder list, and hey, she also once fed a dude to his (canine) children, so maybe this girl gets it. Maybe everything will be fine and once Jon and Dany save the world, they can all go in on a family beach house together and parasail on dragons. Speaking of…

THAS-A-MUTHAFUGGIN-LOOT-TRAAAAAAAIN

I've always thought of Weiss and Benioff as kind of cool young dudes who were surprisingly hot and surprisingly married to Amanda Peet (which I would want to brag about in Emmy speeches too, no shade). But for some reason, recently, they've started to seem more and more to me like kind of clueless dads who, were we ever to see their legs in the after-show interviews, would be wearing pristine New Balances with loosely fitted light-wash jeans.

I don't know if it's because I recently fell into a deep dark YouTube black hole where I watched clips of a panel where Sophie Tuner and Maisie Williams interviewed B&W and just keep making fun of them for being old (of note, Sophie Turner is really funny). Or if it's because they're quite literally getting older and making this show where they have to spend three million dollars to light 20 real people on fire in order to make it look like 1,000 fake people are being lit on fire has probably aged them an extra decade.

But mostly I think it's because now that they're out from under the shadow of GRRM they can stop pretending they're dead inside and let their TV pathos flags fly, and that alone makes them seem a lot less hard than they used to. Them talking about how Dany and Jon it's so obvious Jon and Dany have developed feelings for each in the cave scene was just adorable. Guys! They've had like, two conversations, and neither one has made a single inappropriate "bend the knee" joke which they obviously would if they were two real life 19-year olds falling in luv in a cave.

All this is to say that, I am so thankful to them for bringing GoT to my television, but truly, only two dumb dads could have taken this insane, explosive, dragon-fueled battle and called it…"The Loot Train Attack." Or as I prefer to call it: the mutha fuckin' LOOOOOT TRAAAAAAIN!!!

There is nothing that I can personally write that would make the battle where Dany brought dragons to a sword fight at the counsel of Jon any better than it already was, so I'll be brief: It is in episode 4 of season 7, at the end of the Loot Train—LOOT TRAAAAAAAIN!—battle, as Jaime charges Daenerys with a giant spear, that it became clear just how impossibly complex this web of character has become. It used to be impossible to root for anyone because they were all either evil or definitely going to die in the next episode exactly because they weren't evil. No more.

I had no idea who I would choose to live and die between Jaime and Dany. And that is perhaps unique to me because in this game of thrones, everyone can choose their own winner and we can all be simultaneously right and wrong. Just as the people of Westeros are born into certain houses, we all have our allegiances. But the time is coming for us to also make important choices, because things can only be happy reunions and convenient river dives and spare Sand Snake killings and flirty-cave-fun-times for so long. Sides will be chosen, alliances will be made, and main characters will start getting their heads chopped off again. Weiss and Bennioff might be out dads, but if TV has taught me anything—and it has taught me literally everything—it's that tough love is the most rewarding form of parenting.

And also that women always keep their bra on during sex—except for right here on H-B-O!

#game of thrones #game of thrones recap #loot train attack

[tialovestelevision]

Invasion

Crest of the Stars is based on a trilogy of Japanese science fiction novels by Hiroyuki Morioka. These novels essentially resurrected the then-dead genre of sci-fi in literature in Japan, and they’re considered very influential. This is a work of relatively-hard military science fiction, though it occasionally falls into the absurd.

Unfortunately, the anime is rather difficult to watch now - it’s been out of print on DVD for a while, with Bandai showing little interest in reissuing it, and it hasn’t been picked up by any of the streaming networks. Still, if you manage to find a copy, it’s very much worth watching. This is anime science fiction at its very best, and the visuals and drama are breathtaking while the characters are charming.

Without further ado, I present Crest of the Stars.

1. The episode opens with a scene set in the month of Closna, second day, Imperial Year 952. This scene is performed in unsubtitled Barohn, the language of the Abh Empire. A ship is entering battle, firing torpedoes into planespace. We see the sensor readout of the enemy, with three of the four torpedoes hitting and destroying targets. But they are still badly outnumbered. The captain gives an order, and the ship turns its main gun toward a hole appearing in space. They fire the main gun, and the scene ends.

2. “Long ago, when the star system known as Sol was the only home of mankind, unusual particles of great mass and energy were discovered. However, nobody knew what the source of that energy was. Maybe it was a white hole. Or perhaps something from a different dimension or space. One theory was that a hole opened in the wall that separates this universe from another. These theories were no more than superstitions, falling far short of being hypothetical. Yet research on the use of this energy continued. Eventually, this new energy sourse allowed humans to emigrate beyond the Sol system. Humanity then spread across the whole galaxy.” That bit of narration is in subtitled Barohn. We are shown the Uanon Propulsion Interstellar Immigration Vessel, Leif Erikson. It explodes in orbit of a planet. Opening theme, which is EPIC and shows images of star-forming nebulae.

3. “The Landing. Day 57, First Season, Year 172.” Crest of the Stars pays a lot of attention to places and cultures. The opening scene was aboard an Imperial ship, so it used the Imperial calendar; this new scene is on the planet Martine, so it uses the local calendar. Where the Leif Erikson was, there’s now a hole in space, and a ship just emerged from it. We’re looking at the system defense control room. The ship hasn’t responded to communications, so they’re sending one of their defense satellites to engage with it. The satellite fires a few laser blasts and does no damage, then the ship fires back and destroys it easily. A bureaucrat in the control room drops his coffee mug to the floor, and it shatters. These people are fucked.

4. There’s somebody looking out a window and giving orders on the phone. This is the President. He tells them not to mention the failure of the planetary defense system until after the investigation.

5. A child is outside, looking up at the hole in space. He’s narrating for us, telling us the name of the planet and asking if he ever missed it. A woman tells him not to open the window, because he’s letting the wind in. A fleet is coming out of the hole in space. As each ship emerges, a bubble of energy fades from around it. That’s hundreds of ships. We’re now on the bridge of the command ship, where a blue-haired man is being told that they are entering the sord - the hole in space. His attache says that he looks troubled; he says that this is work that is far short on glory. The ship enters the sord and emerges in normal space in orbit of Martine.

6. I’ll get the physics of FTL flight in this setting out of the way now so I can talk about them without explaining things bit by bit as I go. The uanon particles that produced the energy were, in fact, gateways to another dimension, and drew their power from that dimension. When left idle for long enough - when nobody used their energy - they would explode, forming a sord. So when early starfaring humanity used uanon-powered ships to colonize the galaxy, they brough with them the key to creating FTL travel among colonized worlds. The uanon-powered ships were either generational ships or sleeper ships. The universe the uanons drew power from is called planespace, and it’s two-dimensional. To enter planespace, a ship projects a space-time bubble around itself. Within this bubble, physics work the same way they do in normal space, and the bubble itself can “roll” along the surface of planespace. Since planespace is “smaller” than normal space, a ship can cross vast distances quickly, but if its space-time bubble were to fail, it would immediately be subjected to the physics of planespace and destroyed, because normal matter can’t exist in planespace. Now that’s out of the way.

7. “The Landing. Day 81, First Season, Year 172.” So 24 days after Martine was discovered by the scout ship, the Imperial fleet has arrived. There is an evacuation order in place for the capital, and people are running and being told to follow instructions from officials. Evacuations are… hectic… things, especially when it’s a whole major urban area being evacuated. They’re being sent to shelters. The woman from before is looking for the boy, Jinto, who has gotten lost in the crowd. The government is deciding what to do about the fleet, which has identified itself as coming from the Humankind Empire Abh.  Its name is more grandiose in Japanese, and even more grandiose than that in Baronh, so I’ll be saying “Abh Empire” or just “Empire” most of the times I refer to it. The government is trying to negotiate with the Abh, but the Abh have rejected the offer and will be making an announcement. Jinto is running through the streets, and he looks up to see the lights of the Abh fleet.

8. A bureaucrat has entered the Presidential residence. He’s pretty senior. He has a top secret briefing book, “The Report on Former Transmission Record: The Mankind Reich ‘Abh.’” That’s printed on the book in English. Given the attention paid to language in this show, that makes me think the people of Martine speak English. The use of “Reich” as the translation for “Empire” is an interesting choice, don’t you think? Someone else points out that the commander of the Abh fleet is a diplomat as well, and the Crown Prince of the Empire. The senior bureaucrat asks what he’s like; the guy speaking says not to be surprised when you see him. A woman says he’s nothing to be concerned about, because he looks like a harmless elf. And the commander calls.

9. Elf, yes. Harmless, no. This is a face that means business. The woman says that the Abh never get old, are all beautiful, and claim to be descended from people from Earth. They just adjust their genes. The Abh commander says that his will and that of the Empire are the same, as far as the people of Martine are concerned. The system will be surveyed by the nobility, with the Emperor being their lord until a noble is chosen. The Emperor is busy, though, so a magistrate will be appointed. A magistrate who will also have little interest in the planet. “In any case, a ruler or magistrate normally does not get involved in the details. The reason for this is that we feel that governing your world is the furthest thing from being elegant.” The senior bureaucrat is understandably angry about this - after all, not only are they being conquered by an invader they can’t touch; they’re being conquered by an invader they can’t touch and who doesn’t actually give a fuck. They’re mobilizing the military, but the Abh say they won’t hesitate to destroy the planet. The Empire spans more than 20,000 systems. People don’t believe that the Abh are as powerful as they say they are, but the fleet in orbit has more ships than Martine has missiles. The President remembers how easily the Abh destroyed the defense satellite. Everyone is looking at him. He is President Rock Lin, and he has made a decision.

10. But first we go back to Jinto, who’s trying to get into his house. He has to use the override on the door, which involves climbing on a trash can to reach the override handle. No, wait… not in. Out. He’s watching the Abh ships fly by overhead, streaks of light above the atmosphere, energy erupting from the sord. Very pretty image. The whole Abh invasion has a beauty to it that’s hard to describe. Admiral Abriel orders his ship into a lower orbit. “I had no idea, back then, on that day…”

11. “The Landing, Day 87, First Season, Year 172.” Almost a week since the Imperial fleet arrived. President Lin has surrendered to the Abh Empire. Seven years later… Jinto, now a teenager, is on a space station. He’s riding an elevator, while a shuttle arrives. He’s in Abh clothes. People are looking at him like he’s terrifying, but around him, life is happening. He’s been on the station for seven years. We flash back to him as a child on Martine.

12. The senior bureaucrat from before is Teal Clint, and he just found Jinto staring at the Abh fleet. He’s been looking for Jinto. Jinto apologizes, but Teal yells at him and tells him to come. They’re going to the President’s palace, which Jinto refers to as “My father’s place.” So he’s the President’s son. Jinto runs after Teal, who is angry. Jinto asks if Teal is angry at him. They’re in an elevator now, going to a car. Jinto asks if they can beat the Abh, but Teal says there’s no war. Jinto asks if they’re surrendering; Teal punches the wall and says yes, Rock decided to surrender. Or sold the planet out. He made a deal with the Abh, a bad deal. Teal is very angry about the deal, in spite of being in favor of surrender. He apologizes for taking his anger out on Jinto.

13. They’re in a car now. There’s going to be an announcement about the deal, and everyone will find out about Rock’s deal and how he betrayed Martine. That’s why Jinto has to hide in the Presidential residence. People are going to be angry, and might throw rocks at Jinto, or beat him up. Or bomb his window. Jinto is worried about Rinna - Teal’s wife - because lots of people know he lives with Teal and Rinna. Teal says he contacted Rinna and she’ll be able to take care of herself. She’s already evacuated, but was worried about Jinto. Nobody can know about the deal until the announcement. “Not even me?” Jinto asks. “Well, well, already acting like a member of the privileged class,” Teal says. Jinto asks what Teal means; Teal tells him to turn on the holo. It’s a news broadcast. The announcement is in one minute. “It was a very long minute.”

14. Teenage Jinto on the space station, trying to smile nicely to an old woman. The old woman is having none of it. She’s staring daggers at him. The shuttle docks. Its docking port opens, and a very pretty Abh woman in a military uniform emerges.

15. It’s the announcement! We get the full name of the Abh commander, “Lord Dusanyu, Prince Abriel Nei Limzale Balke.” The deal was to allow the citizens of Martine to use the Abh star lanes for trade and travel, and to promote someone from Martine to the nobility as the ruler of the planet instead of bringing in an Abh noble from outside. They also handed over the codes to the space defense system. Teal thinks that means the Abh were worried about their defenses. People are asking who the new ruler is. Teal says everyone already knows, but they want it spelled out. Jinto asks if it could possibly be true. “All right. It’s who you think it is. Rock Lin will rule our star system” Rock didn’t even consult Teal, his executive secretary and best friend, about the deal. People are angry and demanding to know where Lord Lin is; they are told that Rock is on an Imperial ship heading for the capital to be granted his title formally. Teal says that’s why the announcement was delayed. Jinto wonders if Rock will return; Teal says he couldn’t return if he wanted to. He thinks the Empire will have him killed, and that it serves him right. So that makes Jinto next in line as lord. Now he’s being mean because he’s angry and betrayed and the actual target of his feelings isn’t there but a small child connected to that target is so he can feel better but also guilty by taking his feelings out on the child. Jinto is crying, and Teal apologizes and says he’s having a hard time keeping control of himself. Jinto asks if, when Teal told Rinna to evacuate, he told her about the deal. Teal didn’t, because it was a secret. “That day, I lost my home. My home, and perhaps my family as well.”

16. Teenage Jinto on the deck of the starbase. He came to this place t o learn about the Abh - their language, their culture. He’s now on his way to the capital to attend military school, but he’s never met an Abh. This will be his first time. Episode end; closing credits with pictures of Jinto growing up. It’s clear that Jinto was far closer to Teal and Rinna than to his own father… all his family shots are of the Clints.

Overall: There’s so much I love about this show, but I think for now I’ll talk about the visuals. It’s actively beautiful - maybe not in the quiet almost-watercolored way Sweet Blue Flowers is beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless. It’s grand, and sharp, and hard in most places. Hard enough that, when it’s soft - Jinto’s face, Rinna’s posture, the Abh girl’s economical grace - that really stands out. And the Abh fleet shots - both from space, where we can see the dark ships against the blackness of space, and from the ground, where the ships and their shifting formations look almost like dancing meteors in the night, show just how lovely hardness can be.

Martine, meanwhile, is such a… mundane… place. They have planetary defense satellites and laser cannons, but they also drive cars that would have, apart from the holo terminal and windshield HUD, looked at home in the 1960s. To give Martine those visuals while putting them opposite the Abh drives home just what the Abh are. We know little about their culture, this early, but we know that they are both wondrous and monstrous.

Which is driven home by the way people on the space station regard Jinto, in his Abh clothing. He looks a bit odd in it, like a toad one day donned a suit and went to work at Goldman, but simply dressing like an Abh marks him as one of them. As one of those genetic gods who bring disaster wherever they go.

But that’s worldbuilding! I’ll talk about worldbuilding on another entry.

#crest of the stars #invasion #sekai season 1 #season 1