#footnotes my beloved come back to me

[fluffypotatey]

you will never meet an english major who's a bigger mla hater than me. that bitch is why i struggle so much with my fucking essay, you know what you did >:(

#gonna be a hater rn #ignore me its my process #everyone deserves better than mla can give you #why should i interrupt a solid string of thought with a fucking citation #why must i include this monstrocity on my paper #what about footnotes #heaven's beautiful creation #footnotes my beloved come back to me #you just place a number and mov on its that simple #docs and word will place a blank footnote on the bottom just for you as a nice reminder when you finish #mla???? you don't get that luxury #good luck trying to remember which things are citations and your own thought #fuck you

[spockandawe]

Here we go! I have some smaller books to share as well, but I've been absolutely VIBRATING with excitement to share a BIG one, and I'm going to indulge myself and post that today, then figure out words for the rest. Because I bound a new cnovel. Check it out, guys, I bound jwqs/clear and muddy loss of love :D

Let me indulge myself and backtrack a little! First, these are quarto books, so they're short. But I think these average a little under 500 pages each, and jwqs is a LONG book (my beloved), and this adds up to a total eleven inches of lesbians. More like twelve once they're in their cases. It's over a million characters in Chinese and I think the English translation comes in somewhere around 890k, it's HUGE

Making these books was SO FUN, I hadn't read jwqs and still haven't, and will probably read on my phone when I do. I don't have any exciting photos of the typesetting, but I knew this was an imperial succession story, and that made me nervous, those stories don't always click for me. Well, the process of typesetting and adding footnotes for this beast definitely confirmed that I'm going to have a good time with this thing when I have the time to read it, but there was also so much going on that only the vaguest of spoilers sank in. I went into an absolute FRENZY of typesetting, and after I printed, cut and folded it, well. That was one afternoon of sewing. You're looking at the reason I'm scrambling to make up a few hours of missed work, hahaha

After that, I needed cases. At the very beginning of march, I received a shipment of some FASCINATING bookcloth. It's called Duo, and it's made by layering a thin gauzy fabric of one color over paper of a different color. Depending on the combos, you get a really cool range of color-shifting effects. And they've gone out of production! But I was part of a group order to get some of the goods, and hadn't yet finished a new project. Reader, I went for it.

That purple and green is bananas!!!! It's so hard to photograph, this midnight picture of a few cases is one of my most successful attempts to capture the full range up close. Originally I'd been thinking of trying to evoke imperial gold, but I figured this was still the kind of drama and luxury suited the book, and also something something the hidden colors suited Qi Yan's character. I tied it back a little to the imperial gold with the endpapers, then titled them in silver foil, since the endpapers had silver in them.

But once the books were made, I felt like it wanted something... more. Something like a BOX!

And me, I chase novelty. A set this large would be tricky for anything clamshell, but a slipcase for all seven would leave books tipping all over if it was wide open, but putting walls between slots would be demanding in terms of precision and would risk similarly-sized books getting stuck in the wrong slots. Then I remembered learning about slipcases where you could put in a little insert to support the weight of the text block, and the concept SNAPPED into place.

Colors aren't going to photograph well at midnight, but I made the supports using the scraps and off-cuts from my endpapers, to tie it back into the bindings. The back of the case is lined in more of the duo, and the walls are lined with a faux leather bookcloth I like a lot, it feels buttery smooth and seemed like a good neutral material to tie the papers and bookcloth together. I listened to some of the DEEPEST layers from the nine-hour conspiracy theory iceberg video while I was working on this, haha, it was a TRIP.

And in the end, each of the supports is sized to comfortably sit in the smallest of the volumes, and evenly spaced, so I believe it will take the books in any order with no problems. It's easy to grab the books without having to cut notches into the walls to grab them from. And even though weight is less of an issue for quarto sizing, the books in here have their weight supported no matter what angle the box is at! I'm so, so pleased with how this concept worked out and definitely plan to do more with it in the future.

So there we are! Jing Wei Qing Shang! I had such a fabulous time with this project, and I'm so excited to get to share it with all of you. The story was fun to work with, the bindings and box were fun to make, and everything here came together just as well as I could possibly have hoped. I'm so proud of this, and incredibly, incredibly excited to show it to you!

#crafts #bookbinding #box making #oh boy what is this story tagged #jwqs #jing wei qing shang #clear and muddy loss of love #I'll pick one to stick with later 😂 #long post/ #so proud of this one!

[eoieopda]

FORCE QUIT // EPISODE III: SPIDER

somebody has to make sure you make it through the firefight alive.

pairing: lee minho x reader | series masterlist (3/4) | prev. episode series summary: it's 2077, and life's a fucking nightmare. corporate titans ate the state and shat it back out, leaving citizens of the new republic to fall in line, or fall to their knees. a reckoning is coming — where will you fall? au: series — dystopian, cyberpunk; episode — mutually-pining fuck buddies. ➢insp. by: cyberpunk 2077 + the true lives of the fabulous killjoys genre: smut + angst word count: 23.5k rating: 18+ — minors do not have my consent to interact. series warnings: violence (hand-to-hand, firearms, explosives), depictions of injuries (blood/bruising/burns), some characters have cybernetic modifications, class conflict + poverty, surprise - corporations are bad!, unethical medical/tech experimentation, self-indulgent references to non-skz idols, reader is afab and uses she/her pronouns. episode: above + combat leader!minho, disabled!hacker!reader, pov switches, time skips, reader has a prosthetic/cybernetic leg, loss of limb due to injury (not depicted, minimally described), ref. to hospitalization + recovery, sunshine/storm cloud dynamic, minho is kind of a dick, depictions of combat violence, minor character death(s), unprotected p in v penetration. a/n 1: this part required a lot more external resources than anything else i’ve written, so i’ve kind of… footnoted? what i used. see the note at the end of the fic for the list! a/n 2: each episode features a different member x reader pairing, but the plot is linear, so you'd need to read them (in order) to get the full picture! you can sign up for the taglist to be notified of the next uploads. thank you to my beloved @sailoryooons for beta'ing this and @jihopesjoint for being my emotional support internet wife even though she doesn't stan skz. ily both endlessly!

Yours is the Black Screen’s worst kept secret.

The irony of that isn’t lost on you. Professionally, your most marketable skill is your ability to lower others’ defenses; to build and break walls as needed to take what you want for keeps. With finesse few can imitate, you vault over boundaries. Unfortunately for you, you don’t personally have any of those.

You’ve always been this way — no poker face, no affinity for bluffing, no discernible self-preservation instinct — and just the same, you’ve always wished you weren’t.

Time and again, your cards are on the table the second they’re dealt. If that alone wasn’t shitty gameplay, you and that relentless optimism of yours raise the stakes, double down. There’s no hesitating before you go all in; and there’s no surprise when you lose it all, either. Nothing you’ve ever felt has shocked anyone because they saw it coming in the previous turn.

Like Seungmin, for example, who won’t stop rolling his eyes at you from the other side of the room.

“If I took a shot every time you looked up at the door…” He sighs, gesturing from your corner of the Hub to its entrance, “I’d have died of alcohol poisoning six times over by now.”

The grimace you don’t want to concede can’t be hidden, so you rein your gaze in and direct it back at the screen in front of you. You don’t absorb any of the information flickering in front of you, however, because Seungmin has a point. Any second you haven’t spent staring wistfully out of the room is wasted on glancing at the clock. 

It’s close to nine o’clock now, which means your not-so-secret distraction is due any minute.

That reminds me…

You check again, wondering how many minutes have passed since you last looked, only to learn that it’s been less than one. That’s when the reflex takes over. Without your permission, your eyes wander from the glowing, green digits on the wall to the door — just in case.

No dice.

Damn it.

In a feeble attempt to cover your chronic — terminal — hopefulness, you try to refocus on your work. All it takes is a few seconds of staring before your eyes glaze over again. That disinterest isn’t reflected in your rigid posture, though. Your brain may be a flat tire, but your body is a bow drawn back, ready to fire.

Anticipation is a hell of a drug, isn’t it?

Seungmin crosses his arms. From the corner of your eye, you can see the knowing look he shoots you. He may not speak his favorite words, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hear them, loud and clear.

Told you so.

“It’s kind of funny, actually,” he says instead. 

You know better than to be thrown off by his trademark, flat affect. This is the most amused you’ve seen the weaponsmith in weeks. The corner of his mouth even twitches slightly; it might be the closest he’s ever been to smiling. “He only steps foot in here when you do.”

With all the heat you can muster, you aim to warn him — to puff out your chest a little, just this once — but it just sounds like a whine. “Seungmin…”

As if on cue, light footsteps sound off from down the hallway, shifting closer with every muffled step and cutting your would-be bickering off in the process.

Even with Seungmin’s judgment focused elsewhere, you continue to pretend that the glaring, blue light in front of your face has garnered any amount of your attention. It doesn’t. It hasn’t and won’t, so long as you can feel the seconds tick by in your chest.

He snorts. “Like clockwork.”

Damn it.

For being as light on his feet as he is, Minho tends to drag them more, the longer the day lasts. You never point that out to him; he doesn’t need to know that you’ve noticed. That fact sits among the million others you try to keep to yourself, just like your ability to identify him by gait alone.

Besides, you think, he’d never listen if you begged him to slow down, even if it’s just for a night. Rest doesn’t feature on the short list of things Minho wants from you. Come to think of it, neither does advice or concern for his well-being.

“Well, well, well. Look who it is,” Seungmin sings out when the shuffling stops short. “You lost, hyung?”

The way your head snaps up has nothing to do with Seungmin’s mocking tone and everything to do with the flutter in your chest. You’d attempt to keep that a secret, too, but then Minho walks in, and it’s game set. 

He’s fatal with his tattered, grey t-shirt half-tucked into ripped, black denim; and you have to clench your jaw to keep it from dropping. Before your dry throat can choke you, you clear it, swallowing down the thought that Minho and his jagged edges are the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen.

It gets easier to get a fucking grip on yourself when Seungmin starts needling again: “No, seriously, are you lost? What are you doing here?”

Dark, cat eyes flick to you, then back to their target. Deadly, you think, just like the rest of him.

“Wishing you weren’t,” Minho responds without missing a beat. 

As usual, his tone is carefully balanced between bored and annoyed. You suspect that’s purposeful. A tactic. It leaves listeners in the dark about his feelings, so they have to guess whether or not they should run.

Nine times out of ten, they guess wrong.

This time, Minho deigns to give a hint. It’s quick enough that you would’ve missed it if you hadn’t been staring. Thankfully, his target sees the microscopic flex of his eyebrow, too. 

All that bark leaves Seungmin in a hurry, no bite to follow. With his tail between his legs and his palms raised in defeat, he skirts around Minho before slipping wordlessly out the door. 

You frown slightly as you watch him flee, although you sure as shit won’t mind his absence.

“Seungmin’s harmless,” you remind Minho quietly, although you don’t know why you bother. He’s never felt threatened in his life, as far as you can tell. You don’t necessarily hate it when he flexes that fact in front of you, but that doesn’t mean he should. “You don’t need to scare him off.”

Minho crosses his arms and tilts his head in a way that makes you only the slightest bit insane. “I’m not scary,” he rebuts matter-of-factly, as if that’ll make it true.

You make the mistake of looking him in the eye then. Like it always does in moments like this, heat immediately rushes to your face like a backdraft.

Like he always does, Minho senses the spike in temperature. To crank it higher, he meanders his way across the room to you, eyes glittering impishly all the while. Your heart thuds harder with each footfall. Stupidly, you wonder if he can sense that, too.

“In fact, I’m offended,” he corrects you as he closes in.

His palms press down against the opposite side of your desk once he reaches it. This close, you can read the mischief scribbled all over his face, which only serves to tear you in two — equal parts fucked up by his assertiveness and the rare playfulness that only comes in flashes, only with you.

Minho looms over you now, his hardened stare softening just slightly. Whispering through what almost looks like a pout, he adds, “And you’re mean.”

For a second, you think that the hand inching its way across the tabletop is seeking yours. Anticipation makes your fingers twitch. Try as you might, you can’t think of a single fucking thing you want more than to slip them between his. 

Proving once again that you’ll never read him right, Minho’s hand darts out to your side instead. You watch in slow-motion as he snags the bag of honey twists from its resting spot near your left forearm, which is nowhere near fast enough to catch him before he pulls away. Useless, your empty hand drops back onto your desk. 

You stare longingly at the stolen packet, so dejected that you really could cry, and mumble, “It took so much effort to get those.”

“It shouldn’t have,” Minho counters with a shrug.

He isn’t wrong, and you hate that.

The Black Screen’s demolition expert, Lee Jihoon, is as hard to crack as the shit he blows to pieces. His footlocker full of snacks — a rarity, given the whole everything going on in the world — is even more impenetrable. Charming your way through his stony exterior had been your only option to gain access. It took months, as well as unrelenting friendliness administered in small, persistent doses.

Just like —

Minho wouldn’t have wasted his time with flattery or nuance. He never needs to open his mouth to get what he’s after because his presence — from his stance to his intense, vaguely violent gaze — does all the talking for him. All he would’ve needed to do is blink in Jihoon’s direction, then he would’ve walked out of there with the older man’s treasure trove and the jacket off his back.

Having just been robbed blind yourself, you keep your mouth shut about that.

Shrugging once again, Minho throws down the gauntlet: “Finish your shit quickly, and I might decide to share them with you.”

How thoughtful.

If he’s expecting a verbal response, he won’t get one, you decide. The most you give is a disgruntled sigh. Dying star that you are, you collapse in on yourself, sinking deeper into your chair until you wind up as a half-crumpled heap on the desk below your monitors. It’s a perfect picture of abject failure, making this the only thing you’ve gotten right all day.

You don’t expect Minho to ask after your current state, so you’re not disappointed when he doesn’t. Or, at least, you will yourself not to be. In reality, your bated breath is held for a second or two before you remember who you’re dealing with. 

He does speak, though, which surprises you. Your first guess would’ve been that he’d give a hard pass on your dramatics and wander back out the door while your face was buried in your arms.

“Spider,” he sighs, and his tone is so gentle that it shocks the hell out of you. Intimate, almost, even if it is just a caricature. “Call it a night.”

More curious than cautious, you lift your head enough to blink up at him. Between his eyebrows, there’s a small crease that you don’t see often enough to competently translate. You stare at the tension there for a beat longer than you mean to before your gaze drifts downward to meet his.

See? Beautiful.

The second Minho sees your eyebrows raise slightly in question, a switch flips. He shuts the light off, irons out his expression. Whatever softness you found there is gone as quickly as it came.

He clears his throat, then huffs, “Come on.”

You frown and gesture to the screen ahead, pointing out the program you’ve spent all goddamn day working on to no avail. The silent protest doesn’t work on Minho. His stare only becomes more expectant the longer he levels it at you.

“Seriously. Fuck it.”

Having chosen the hill you plan to die on, you envision roots tying your unmoving body to the floor beneath you. Your frown deepens. No, you think emphatically, as if making your internal monologue shout will make him listen.

Minho tries again. “It’ll be here to ruin your day tomorrow.”

You don’t budge, and it pulls an exasperated noise out of him. Curling his right hand into a loose fist, he taps the knuckle of his index finger lightly against your elbow, like the contact will force your mental task list to shut down. 

“I’m bored.”

You know exactly what that means.

“Come up to the roof with me.”

Strike that.

“The roof?” You peep, hardened expression smashed to bits before you can blink.

Minho looks a little too pleased by your sudden concession. He even makes one of his own, chuckling slightly before he rolls his eyes and elaborates, “It’s nice out.”

It’s nice out, so you want to fuck me… on the roof?

The hand at your elbow pulls away and re-routes towards the back pocket of his jeans. When it returns to the space between you, there’s a dented, silver flask glinting in his grip. He shakes it, arches one eyebrow, and tops it all off with a wolfish grin that makes your stomach flip. 

“Stolen whisky tastes best in restricted areas, I hear.”

He nods his head towards the door, beckoning you to give in, and you’re on your feet without needing the invitation to be repeated. 

The sudden movement after sitting for so long means that your body isn’t as enthusiastic as your brain. A sharp pinch pulls a slight gasp out of you. That’s the extent of your own reaction, but Minho isn’t used to this the way you are. Alert eyes flick down to where your residual limb slots into your manufactured one, then back up to search your face. 

Once again, he asks without saying a word. You answer with a wave of your hand, “All good.”

Minho’s concern doesn’t immediately dissipate. To prove that you meant what you said, you snatch the packet of honey twists out of his unsuspecting hand and circle around the desk until you’re face to face. 

“If I’m on my ass for too long, my leg forgets how to leg,” you explain, grinning more out of triumph than reassurance. Then, you dangle your reclaimed prize from your fingertips because you are nothing if not a little shit. “I’m not a doctor, but I think science says that food helps.”

“Science says?” Minho snorts. 

You nod authoritatively, then you turn to the spare folding chair near your work station. Your jacket waits for you there, carefully folded on the cracked, plastic-coated cushion. Shrugging it on, you shove the honey twists in your right pocket and tease, “Sure does.”

The corner of his mouth tugs slightly upwards, and you swear there’s an affectionate smile threatening to break loose.

It doesn’t.

Instead, after pushing off his palms, Minho stands fully upright, nods his head towards the door a second time, and starts making his way towards it. You follow because you always do, biting back your lips to keep your giddiness to yourself.

As the pair of you exit and head down the hallway in comfortable quiet, you note his proximity to you. It’s always the same; he’s always close by but never near enough to touch. The edge of his shirt sleeve brushes against your arm, although his skin never does. 

You stopped wondering about that a long time ago, unwilling to figure out if this is a tactic, too.

Halfway to the nearest stairwell, Jeongin appears in a doorway. The room he emerges from used to be an office for the human resources department, back when the factory was operational — back when employers bothered with pretending to give a shit. 

Now, the room’s function lands somewhere between a bar and a bedroom. The latter only comes into play when the former makes staggering upstairs to the residential area too much of a hassle. From what you can see over the younger man’s shoulder, that’ll likely be the case tonight.

Jeongin gives you a cursory smile before directing his full attention to the man keeping cursory distance at your side.

None of it makes sense to you, all this effort spent to hide intentions. Maybe, you think, that’s why you’re so fucking terrible at it.

“Hey, hyung!” Jeongin chirps as the pair of you approach. He lifts his hand to wave, but it just looks like he’s shaking the deck of cards in his hand at Minho. “Do you want to —”

Without slowing down, Minho cuts him off mid-ask and at the knees. “No.”

And then his finger slips into the belt loop of your jeans, tugging you along beside him as he keeps up the pace. You’re gone before you can see Jeongin’s face fall, but you’re sure it does. 

Yours would.

When you reach the stairs, Minho matches your careful pace, albeit much less awkwardly. For as life-saving as the chunk of metal and carbon fiber on your right side has been, there’s at least one problem it hasn’t solved: going up steps is a bitch. 

To compensate for your less dynamic knee, your left leg takes stairs two at a time so you can simply step straight up with your right. And even though you’re a bit out of breath from the extra effort, you open your mouth to comment on what you just witnessed.

Minho stops you before you can start. Shooting you a look you know far too well, he sighs, “Don’t.”

You’re as good a faker as you are a listener.

“He’s just trying to —”

He releases his grip on your belt loop. It’s the only reason you realize he’d still been holding on. Stopping at the landing, Minho turns to look back at you. “Can’t think of anything I want to do less than sit next to someone and have to hear about their fucking day.”

Eyebrows raised, you stare up at him. This time, you don’t say a word, letting your expression speak for you.

“With the ever-present risk that I’ll be murdered by the state tomorrow, forgive me if I’m not wasting today by listening to shit I don’t care about.”

There it is, you think.

The combat leader’s insistence that his life will only end one way: too soon and bloody.

That unexploded ordnance drops heavy between you. You step over it, joining him on the landing, and you don’t look back. Just at Minho, who watches you carefully for a reaction; whose tension leaves his muscles when the slight, upward curve of your mouth says, I understand.

Together, you climb the remaining flight until you reach the thick, steel door leading out to the roof. It’s barely functional, like the vast majority of the factory, and can’t shut all the way. With more force than is even remotely necessary, he kicks it fully open. The thick, rubber tread of his boot thuds against the metal. It’s quickly drowned out by the strangled squeak of its hinges.

You’re at least slightly thankful that those hinges don’t explode into a cloud of rust.

On his way to the ledge, Minho grabs two empty buckets from the pile of discarded odds-and-ends near the doorway. The rest of the pile — mainly two-by-four planks too busted to rehab and similarly spent range targets — threatens to collapse without its foundation, but neither of you stops to fix it. He leads, and you follow, ultimately coming to a stop near the ledge.

“So?” 

His insufficient question is underscored by the two buckets landing mouth-down on the concrete with twin thunks.

You’re still blinking through your confusion when he unceremoniously drops himself on the furthest bucket and when he stretches out his leg to tap the remaining one with the side of his boot. Coincidentally, you’re still waiting for the rest of his inquiry when you sit — much more gently — next to him. This time, it’s you who moves, nudging your chrome knee against his flesh-and-bone.

Minho finally takes the hint and continues, pulling out his flask as he does. “How was your day?”

The whiplash makes your neck ache.

Remind me again about the last thing you said to me.

After taking a swig without incident, he passes the flask to you. You take your sip — small, cautious — and immediately let out some clownish, choking noise when the strong notes of wooden barrel hit your taste buds.

“Oh, that’s —” You cough, nose scrunching. Whisky-laced breath slips out of your teeth in the form of a hiss. “Absolutely wretched, I fear.”

For the first time all night, Minho’s mask cracks, and a full-fledged laugh tumbles out of his mouth, high and clear as it cuts through the otherwise dead air.

“It’s not,” he counters. Without taking his eyes off your pout, he lifts a hand to catch the flask that you toss at him. “You’re just childish.”

In recompense, you swat his arm. 

He lets you.

“Shut up.” Your distinctly childish comeback is breathy because, like always, your laughter isn’t something you can successfully hide. “Am not.”

Another swig, no further incidents.

“Think you need to be demoted. Maybe I should start calling you baby instead of Spider.”

The violent flutter in your chest doesn’t seem to care that what it heard isn’t at all what he meant. For now, you let it happen. You focus instead on his creased eyes and barely-crooked smile; drink them in as quickly as you can, knowing that your window is closing.

As rare as it is, levity looks perfect on him.

While your laughter ebbs, the wind kicks up slightly, bringing a chill with it. You pull your jacket tighter around you as you watch browned leaves spin in pirouettes near your feet. Their presence here is surprising, given how devastating the War was to the ecosystem, but it’s welcomed. It’s a reminder sorely needed: nothing’s ever truly fucked beyond repair.

Minho pipes up suddenly, “You never answered me, you know.” And even though his voice is low, it startles you.

He’s too busy fiddling with the cap of his flask to see it when you turn your head to look quizzically at him. He probably missed the way you jolted just then, too, which is fine by you. Your goldfish brain is still trying to recall what he asked that went without a reply.

When you remain quiet, he supplies, “Your day.” 

As it turns out, you’re just as stunned by his question the second time he poses it. Part of you wants to remind him that he could be murdered by the state tomorrow, just in case he wants to reclaim his wasted time. The rest watches as his absentminded fidgeting stops, and his head lifts to look at you — not impatiently, not sardonically, but with the tiniest bit of insecurity scribbled into his slightly furrowed brow.

Oh.

Now, you’re frozen into silence for an entirely different, entirely devastating reason: he wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t genuinely want to know.

A self-effacing laugh serves as a smokescreen for how fucking flustered that realization makes you. 

“Well, I had plans to go phishing, but they fell through.”

“Beach advisory?” He feigns a frown, making your lips curve upwards at the corners. “Those hypocrites at Thanotech really need to stop dumping their shit into the reservoir.”

At this, you laugh outright. 

This is the Minho that no one but you could pick out of a lineup: the one that will take a bit and run with it, who lets his guard down and catches you off yours. This one may not be yours — you know he isn’t, not really — but at times like this, when it’s just the two of you alone, it feels like he is.

“I’ll make sure to tell them you said so.” You pat his thigh, which tenses slightly in the second your palm rests on it. Redirecting your thoughts from where they’re headed, you pull your hand back and tuck it into your jacket pocket. “I really think they’ll listen if they know Lee Minho’s the one asking.”

His eyes roll in response, but the amused smirk he wears doesn’t dissipate. It’s still there when he slowly leans closer, making your breath hitch. His hand shifts closer, too, and your pulse hammers harder with every millimeter that’s cast aside.

There’s an old saying about where the shame should fall when a person gets fooled twice. You practically feel it collide with your thick skull when, for the second time, Minho turns the tables. He nearly turns your pocket inside out in the process, hand snatching the yet-untouched packet of honey crisps before you even know what’s happening.

Just like last time, you put up no fight when he settles back into his own makeshift chair with a smug glint in his eyes. A forlorn sigh is covered by the racket of plastic ripping, followed soon after by a faint crunch.

“Speaking of bait,” he snickers once he’s swallowed. “What are you dangling?”

You really want to hate him for that segue, along with all the rest of his committed atrocities, but you can’t. So, you offer up the only thing you still have: 

Technobabble.

“The plan is to sneak in a program to mine data. So long as nobody interrupts me —” You pause to shoot him a pointed look. “— I’ll finish coding it tomorrow and fire it off at some grunt in Ulsan’s fiscal department using a cloned, corporate email account.”

“You think they’ll fall for it?” Minho asks, curiosity piqued.

You flash a grin. “I know they will. Nothing spooks a low-level employee quite like an overdue, mandatory, cybersecurity compliance attestation.”

If you didn’t know better, you’d swear he looks almost proud when he hears about the form of your Trojan horse. It’s certainly what you feel blooming in your chest, especially when you pluck the crisp from between his unsuspecting fingers and pop it into your own mouth.

“Once the program installs, it’ll start reaping what they have access to,” you explain. “I’m sure it’ll be limited at the start, quarterly budget reports and such.” 

You shrug dismissively, then look down at your hands. There’s no way this is interesting to someone that isn’t you, but he asked, and you’re answering, and you can’t seem to stop talking. 

“But those point me in the direction of invoices and their line items, which gets me to payment accounts, recipients, and other shit they don’t want me to know. It’s a paper trail leading to a paper trail, honestly, but it’s —”

“— how you weave a web.”

It stops your brain in its tracks, leaves your would-be sentence to peter out. You can’t remember the last time anyone followed where your explanations led, let alone saw the importance of all the tiny, tedious steps you take. All the intricacies of your carefully plotted architecture.

With you stalled out, Minho finishes that thought where he left off. “Strand by strand.”

“Yeah,” you exhale, warmth creeping from your chest to your cheeks. “Strand by strand.”

You sit on that bucket on the roof for however long it takes for your ass to go numb, and then you sit some more. Hours, maybe a day or two — irrelevant, as far as you’re concerned. You have Minho next to you and a burgeoning sunrise ahead; and you’ll bask in the glow you’ve found there for as much time as you can.

Minho, it seems, has other plans.

He sighs and flattens his palms against his knees before standing, causing the bucket he’d been occupying to scrape against the concrete. The noise is what gets your attention, not the movement. You turn to look up at him. Your disappointment is more than likely broadcasted all over your face.

“Stay with me,” you whine before you can stop yourself.

Needy isn’t normally a word you’d use to describe yourself; you’re far from it. Now, though… In this moment, it might be written in blaring red letters on your forehead, judging by the extremely brief flash of surprise you see in front of you. It’s gone as quickly as it came. The twinge of embarrassment you feel sticks around to keep you warm.

Minho is quiet for a beat, like he’s got something to consider. Whatever he decides on, it makes his head tilt to the side. A devilish look takes over his features, washing from his narrowed eyes to his tilted lips. All mischief, he counters, “Fuck me.”

Why do those things have to be mutually exclusive?

You don’t voice your question out loud, even though you kind of want to scream it, because he holds his hand out to help you up, and instant gratification together feels so much better than waiting through a delay alone. So, you take his hand, just like he knew you would, and you follow. 

Back to the door, back down to the second level of the factory, back to your room in an otherwise unoccupied wing, until the door is shut softly behind you.

Every single one of your rendezvous has been different from the last. The time, location, everything varies, not unlike the version of himself that Minho lets you see. Even though the steps change completely from tryst to tryst, they still feel like they’ve been choreographed and rehearsed ahead of time.

For example, he’s never caged you against a wall and pinned your wrists one-handed above your head before, but your body reacts as if this is the sole position it was made to occupy in life.

His teeth nip at the side of your neck, and your head falls back instinctively. You don’t give a shit about the muted thump of your skull against the brick, but Minho seems to. 

“Watch yourself,” he murmurs, lips fluttering against your throat. Despite the muted volume, his tone carries an authority to it that makes even your chrome knee weak. “If you wind up with a concussion, I’m not explaining it to Doc.”

You gasp when his tongue flicks out to soothe the sting his teeth leave behind. Beyond desperate, you push up on your toes to bring yourself closer to his mouth. It’s further out of reach than you remember — it shouldn’t be. Barely a week has gone by since he last had you like this. 

Embarrassingly breathless already, you ask, “Have you gotten taller? What have they been feeding you?”

His knee comes forward slowly to nudge yours apart. You make room, letting his thigh press into the gap created. If his left hand wasn’t keeping you stretched up to your full height, you’d be riding that thigh by now.

“You know what I eat.”

Your eyes roll back. You’re not sure if that’s a reaction to his line or the way he clenches his thigh, shifting it further into the space between your spread legs. Either way, that taut muscle is only millimeters away from your cunt now; the low hum that rumbles from his chest says that he can feel the heat rolling off you in waves.

You want so badly to be able to touch him, cling to him, scratch your nails across his scalp and pull him in by his hair. You want him to touch you — really touch you — not just to tease you the way he is, threatening to mark you up with his mouth without following through. 

If you try to tug your arms down, will he let you?

Part of you hopes that he doesn’t. 

At least, not without consequences.

Minho can tell how fucking restless you are. You’re not surprised; you vibrate with want at a frequency he’s always been attuned to. Speaking any of it out loud would be redundant, so you save your breath. His fans warmth over the shell of your ear, pulling the hammer back: “What’s the matter, Spider? You don’t like being the one in the trap?”

You can’t help but tremble at that.

“Fine,” he tuts, finger on the trigger.

Your eyes widen in anticipation when his hand drops its hold on your wrists; and your arms fold slowly back down when he retracts. There’s a muted ache in your muscles from the strain they’d been put under. You can’t say that you mind.

His hands move next to his belt buckle, deft fingers making quick work of the metal before the two pieces dangle on either side of his zipper. That’s the image burned into your brain when he leans in close enough to kiss you. He doesn’t kiss you — he never does — but he finally fires at point blank range:

“Turn around.”

Bang!

It’s so unexpected that you don’t register it as real at first. Neither does Minho, whose demanding gaze stays glued to you. The noise comes again, louder than the first, and you hear the cry that comes with it through the door.

“Spider, are you there?”

Hyunjin.

It’s his voice, you know, but it doesn’t sound right at all. The air of self-assuredness he usually carries is long gone. Whatever’s replaced it sounds completely unlike him in a way that makes your stomach turn.

Minho puts distance between your bodies in the time it takes Hyunjin to push open the door. You notice that he forgot to address his belt buckle, but you suppose it doesn’t matter. The youngest among you is too visibly shaken to see it as he stumbles inside with red-rimmed eyes.

Oh, fuck.

Panicked, you shoot a quick glance at Minho, hoping he’ll see your alarm and know what to do with it. His eyes are locked onto Hyunjin, who comes to a stop in front of you; Minho’s expression is the definition of illegible.

Your hand lifts instinctively to Hyunjin’s shoulder. Apparently, that reassuring touch is all it takes to break the dam; to break him down into sobs.

“Hey!” You gasp, knitting your arms around his frame and hauling him towards you. His face slots into the space where your neck meets your shoulder, allowing his hyperventilated breaths to hit your skin directly. “Hey, it’s —”

You know better than to lie and say it’s okay. 

Minho may be fearless, but it’s Hyunjin that’s the least flappable in the entire group by a long shot. If you were to search back through the last decade, you wouldn’t be able to find a single moment where he seemed annoyed or anxious, let alone fucking devastated to the degree he currently is.

This is the farthest from okay things could possibly be.

You can’t tell if it’s heartbreak, nausea, or both that swells when you fill your fists with the back of his jacket and hold on tight.

From his spot two meters away, Minho cuts to the chase. “What happened to you?”

Hyunjin can’t answer, not at first. 

Maybe, you think, saying whatever it is out loud will confirm the reality of the situation. You don’t push him. Instead, you stop holding him long enough to pull him over to the far corner of your makeshift bedroom, where he drops down to sit on the mattress held off the floor by two wooden pallets. Despite his wiry frame, the force of his collapse makes the wood clatter against the concrete floor below.

When you take a spot beside him, it’s much less quickly, no more graceful. Hyunjin doesn’t mind the hand you place on his shoulder to keep yourself steady. If he hears the click at your manufactured joint over the sound of his own barely-regulated breathing, he doesn’t say so.

Still standing where he was left — where he left you, more like — Minho’s narrowed eyes hone in again on Hyunjin. The expression on his face is just as unreadable as before, and he still won’t look at you.

As much as that bothers you, your own feelings are never your first priority. You turn your head to look from Minho to Hyunjin, whose hands grip the black denim of his jeans like a lifeline. When the latter finally does speak, the explanation hemorrhages out of him, spilling and flooding until there isn’t much air left in the room to breathe.

Three things in particular hit you like a train:

The Bliss Beta is infinitely more insidious than you could’ve imagined — even for Ulsan — and its mass rollout is closer than you ever would’ve guessed.

You now have the data you need to find the servers running the Beta, which means there’s a chance that the way things currently are is the worst they’ll get.

There’s a guillotine blade looming over the Professor’s neck, and it’s your hand on the rope, obligated to let go. It’s your scale that’s tasked with weighing lives.

Nausea, you realize, almost too late.

You grab hold of the wastebasket near the foot of your mattress and squeeze your eyes shut while your honey twists leave you in a hurry.

He loves her.

He loves her, he loves her, he loves her, and there are fifty-one-million faceless reasons why he can’t have her. You feel the weighted stares of every single one of them on you when he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, silver datashard. It’s thin, flat with sharp edges, but it’s a bullet if you’ve ever seen one.

When Hyunjin places it in your hand, your fingers don’t close around it. You can’t even look at it without feeling faint; your body won’t accept the weight of it in your palm. You avert your eyes, praying that your object permanence disappears along with it. 

And then that reflex kicks in again, craving some semblance of safety.

Minho is already watching you intently when you turn your head his way. The relief you feel is immediate, and you don’t have the energy left to pretend that’s not the case.

You love him.

You love him, you love him, you love him, and this goddamn horror show you’re living through feels survivable while he’s around, even if it isn’t. 

Maybe, you think, if you live to see the end, his presence will help you hate yourself less for the things you’re about to do to get there. That’s been the case so far, anyway. You’ve got a decade’s worth of scorched bridges behind you, and the ash on your face has never made him see you any differently.

Hyunjin clears his throat, dragging you back into the moment you don’t want to be a part of. 

“She said there’s multi-level encryption on this thing,” he mumbles, voice weak. His hand envelops yours and gently folds your fingers over your palm, as if he knows damn well you won’t do it yourself. “I don’t have to tell you this, but be careful, Spider. One move too many, and we’re all dead.”

You freeze; he stands, wiping invisible dirt from the front of his jeans. Nothing he attempts will make him feel clean, you know, but you don’t fault him for trying.

Before he can take a single step back towards your door, you reach out and grab his hand, preventing him from leaving.

“Keys,” you croak.

His eyebrows knit together.

“Cryptographic keys — characters. Numbers, usually.” You shake your head to realign your thoughts. It doesn’t do much; your explanation still comes out sputtering. “Each encryption is going to have a different algorithm altering its data, and it’ll be faster if I don’t have to write a separate program to try and find the strings I need.”

Judging by his face, the explanation makes sense, but he still looks as if he has no fucking idea what the answers might be.

For the first time in nearly an hour, Minho speaks. The suddenness of his participation makes both you and Hyunjin flinch.

“Dates,” he offers gruffly. “Ones that are significant to the two of you, maybe.”

The suggestion cracks against your skull like a baseball bat. 

Of all the things you could’ve expected him to say in the presence of someone other than you, something sentimental didn’t even come close to making the list. Hyunjin, it seems, is just as startled by this — by the appearance of your invisible friend, who’s spent ten years refusing to let this side of him be seen.

You make a note to ask Minho where this idea came from. If there are any dates he holds onto, with no one the wiser.

Hyunjin’s brow furrows for a moment while he thinks. Then, the light bulb behind his eyes flashes.

Eureka.

Dashing now towards the door, he calls out to you over his shoulder. “I’ll make you a list,” he promises breathlessly before he disappears altogether.

Without Hyunjin’s voice to fill it, the silence of your room roars in your ears. You need to shrug it off you, physically; move around so that you stop feeling like you’re being hydraulically pressed. 

In a wordless request for help, you hold your hand out to Minho. The jury’s still out as to what you want when he takes it: to drag him down to you, to be hauled to your feet, or to simply have it held. 

For the first time — possibly ever — he doesn’t take it.

Well-practiced hands drop to his belt buckle instead of reaching out to you. He re-fastens it quickly, and over the clink of metal, he grunts, “Stop looking at me like that.”

You blink rapidly when that sucker-punch statement hits you. “Looking at you like what, Minho?” You ask gently, as if your excess will make up for his lack.

“Like I’m your future.”

And just like that, he’s gone without another word or a backwards glance.

Eleven days crawl by without you seeing or hearing from Minho. You struggle to keep count as they pass. You’re so preoccupied that there’s no real difference between them, leaving them all to bleed together. It doesn’t help that all ten nights so far have been more or less sleepless.

While you’d love to say that all your time awake has been productive, you’d be lying. Sure, you spend the vast majority of it with the bright light of your monitors boring into your retinas, but that doesn’t mean you’re actively engaging with the shit displayed there. Between your program and your spent brain, it’s your neural pathways that are most in need of re-writing.

“Goddammit,” you hiss when a shock jolts through your upper right thigh for the umpteenth time today alone. 

Halfway crazy from frustration, you glare down at your quad and see the remaining muscles there twitching violently. And even though it’s been over a year, your brain is still surprised to find that the source of your pain doesn’t exist at all.

That outburst from you certainly isn’t the first, yet it’s the one that catches Chan’s attention. Like you, he’s spent an unhealthy amount of his time in the Hub over the past week and a half, pouring over who knows what. It’s safe to assume that’s how he’d describe your work, too.

“Been especially bad lately, hasn’t it?” He asks, head popping up from behind a stack of files.

He probably doesn’t expect you to squeak out a laugh at the sight of him, but you can’t help yourself. 

“You look like a meerkat when you do that.” The frown you get in response only makes you giggle more, despite yourself. “Like an overworked, overtired, under-caffeinated meerkat.”

Chan works overtime to control his expression, steel himself. It doesn’t work. It never does, no matter how obnoxious you and your comrades are around him because at the end of the day, all he ever is, is fond.

He sighs as he sits up fully in his chair. “Spider.”

It’s funny, you think. He sounds just like your father when he takes that tone with you, although the name he uses is nowhere near the same.

“Talk to Doc.” Realizing he sounded more stern than he meant to, Chan’s mouth softens from a thin, straight line to a slight smile. He adds, “Please.”

And because you’re the best behaved of all his pseudo-children, you don’t put up a fight. You don’t roll your eyes the way Seungmin does, or do the exact opposite of what you’ve been told, like —

Don’t go there.

You just get up, ignoring the strong urge you feel to buckle at the knees and hit the floor, and push your chair back with the underside of your thighs. Chan sees the pained look on your face immediately and moves to stand up and help you. You wave him off.

“All good,” you lie through gritted teeth, bearing weight on your palm as you maneuver your way around your desk. 

Chan may not believe you, but he listens, nonetheless. While you guide yourself from your workstation on the far side of the room towards the door, you try very hard to ignore the thought that keeps ricocheting around your skull like a bullet, shredding whatever grey matter gets in its way.

There’s one person that line wouldn’t have worked on. 

It takes a considerable amount of time to hobble to Doc’s clinic, which is clear on the other side of the compound, but you eventually make it there without breaking too much of a sweat.

In a past life, the space was an employee locker room that featured shower stalls and toilets on one side, and numerous lockers and benches on the other. Jeongin tried his best, but the plumbing was fucked beyond repair; all the utilities were scrapped. Whatever useful parts remained were repurposed elsewhere, while the broken bits wound up in that pile of assorted garbage on the roof.

Don’t.

Due to the size of the space, there’d been a multi-day debate on what to use it for. In the end, the decision was made to give it new life as a makeshift field hospital because Minho was right. The tile and drainage system is ideal for —

Stop it.

When you push through the swinging, double doors and stagger inside, you learn that you’re not today’s only patient. On one of the cots up ahead, Doc’s nimble fingers work to stitch Scraps’ left eyebrow back together, while Felix paces in the background with his hands in his hair.

“I’m so —”

“Felix!” 

Scraps slaps her hands down onto her thigh. The sound echoes off the tile walls like a thunderclap, but she doesn’t flinch at the contact. Doc does, however. She freezes solid, needle-holder in hand.

If Doc is frustrated, she doesn’t show it. That bedside manner of hers is unparalleled. Her gentle voice sounds suspiciously like Chan’s when she pleads, “No violence until I’m done holding a needle near your eye.”

Scraps nods in acknowledgment, which only contributes to the panicked look on Doc’s face. You bite your lips to hold your laughter in as you amble closer and dump yourself onto a nearby cot.

“Seriously — stop apologizing,” Scraps calls over her shoulder. 

If it wasn’t for Doc’s gentle hold on her chin, you suspect that she’d turn her head to look at Felix outright. 

“I told you to raise the stakes, and you did. So, I owe you a gold star for being a good listener, I guess.”

The way he looks at her when she can’t even see him kind of makes you want to sob. That ache only grows when he puts his hands on either side of her head, leans down, and plants a kiss on her hair.

Meanwhile, Doc is muttering, “Please stop moving, please stop moving, please stop moving,” like those are the only words she knows. You feel as guilty as you do grateful; her distress is a sufficient distraction from your own.

“Done!” She chirps moments later. Relief washes over her in a heartbeat, releasing tension from every single muscle cell she has — like she’s successfully disarmed a bomb, rather than sutured a minor injury.

And even though she’s too polite to say it, you swear you can hear her thinking it:

Please leave now.

And they do. They fall into lockstep, with Scraps tucked under Felix’s arm and hers wrapped around his waist.

And you’re still staring at the door once it swings shut again, so lost in all your conflicting thoughts that Doc has to call your name twice to get your attention.

“You’re not due back in for another month or so.” She frowns. “What’s on your mind?”

As usual, you don’t know where to start. You don’t know how to turn the faucet on without overflowing the bathtub, either, so you just let it all pour out.

“Everything was fine — perfect, probably. Or the closest it’s going to get, I guess. Then — I don’t even know what happened, but he won’t fucking look at me now. Won’t talk to me, walks out of a room when I walk in, like he can’t even stand to ignore me in my presence.”

You suck in a breath through your teeth to make up for all the ones you skipped out on while you rambled on. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean you stop rambling.

“And I think it might be breaking my heart. I don’t know. I don’t — I don’t know what to do now. It’s very distracting,” you mutter, frowning. 

A laugh slips out to signal how uncomfortable you are with the sudden intentional vulnerability. It sounds more like the sort of hiccup that precedes a sob. 

“Stupid thing to fixate on when the world’s on fire, isn’t it?”

To say that Doc is taken aback would be an understatement. Her eyes go wide; her lips purse. She pauses for a moment before she ultimately whispers, “I meant your leg.”

You’d go dig your own grave out back if you could walk that far.

“Oh.”

Doc does you the favor of averting her eyes. She focuses instead on her lap, eyes widening without blinking, as if she’ll be able to see her way out of the conversation more easily that way.

Self-conscious now to the point of nausea, you play with the frayed edge of denim that lays over the end of your residual limb. You can’t help but wonder how many right-side pant legs you’ve chopped off over the last twelve months, and what those bits of fabric ended up being used for.

Maybe they’re in that pile on the roof.

“Is mirror therapy helping at all?”

You glance up at Doc. “Not as much as it used to,” you sigh. “I think my brain figured out I was trying to bamboozle it and threw another wall up. Those are all it has at this point — walls and holes.”

It’s quiet for a few moments. Now, you wonder if you’ve taken Doc out of her depth. You were her first — and thankfully remain her only — amputation. If anyone’s gonna stump her, it’s you.

You snicker at your own unspoken joke.

Get it?

“How much do you remember?” She asks, catching you off-guard. It was the fact that she asked you anything that surprised you, not the question itself, but she assumes she’s offended you. Quickly, she apologizes. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to talk about it.”

The truth is, the before and during are both incredibly vague. You know that you went with a small group to Ilsan, planning to fuck up one of WraithCo.’s supply lines, and that their ghouls caught wind of your plans. 

Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. The audio underscoring this montage in your mind is warped to all hell; the faces and voices are blurry, as if they’ve since been censored. Deleted, just like the lower two-thirds of your leg.

As for the after… All that comes to mind is pain, in one form or another.

Fighting off an infection, which left your waking hours in some fever-filled daze that only stopped when the various meds worked their magic and knocked you back unconscious.

Being bed-ridden for an eternity after that fever broke and the infection cleared, too exhausted and depressed to keep your eyes open. 

Aching all over as you forced your body to remember how to walk, too obsessed with your newfound crumb of independence to let anyone see you stumble.

Self-imposed isolation to hide the toll it’d all taken on you, and the frustration that came with knowing what you were doing but being unable to stop yourself.

“Nothing I wouldn’t mind forgetting,” you finally say.

Doc hums thoughtfully but offers nothing beyond a tiny frown. The part of you that wants to know why she’s asking is overrun by the part of you that fears what she’ll tell you; clearly, she’s similarly torn.

Add this to the list of things you’ll have to learn to live without.

Time continues to both slip and crawl by. Days are gone before you can blink; nights encase you in cement, trap you in place. You know it’s not a coincidence. You’re only alone after dark.

Still, it’s not all bad. You’ve certainly been more productive lately, whether or not you truly want to be. That’s not a coincidence, either. You’re capable of accomplishing quite a bit when the only person you truly want to talk to has no interest in listening.

If he did want to listen, you might tell Minho that he was right about the keys to the encryption being linked to dates. You could thank him, if he’d hear you out. Maybe you’d finally summon up the courage to ask where the idea came from.

What if…?

These little hypotheticals of yours only get more painful, the longer you steep in them, and you’re no good at reining your mind in when it starts wandering. It runs off in the same direction every time it goes — back to the night you finished peeling back all the layers.

You know there’s no point in imagining the ways Minho would’ve distracted you then because he didn’t. He was nowhere to be found; and you cried alone in your room, overwhelmed by both the relief of having answers and the all-consuming guilt of knowing what — and who — it cost to get them.

A familiar, prickling feeling at the corners of your eyes pulls you back to the present. You tilt your head back and blink rapidly to keep the dam from breaking. Part of you is proud. This might be the first time you’ve ever managed to keep your feelings to yourself.

“My halmoni always said that holding back your sneezes like that takes a year off your life.”

With a jolt, you snap to attention. Your neck does the same, head falling back down so quickly that your teeth click painfully against one another. The surprise — and the inadvertent scowl it prompts — melts away when you register Jeongin in the doorway.

You frown, although you laugh a little. “That’s horrifying, kid.”

If Jeongin sees you swipe the back of your thumb over your cheekbones, he doesn’t say so. He simply ambles into the Hub and finds his usual spot at the far side of the central table. 

“She said the same thing about being under streetlights when they burn out,” he tuts, taking a seat. He blinks through thoughtful silence for a moment before re-focusing newly-widened eyes on you. “Now that I think about it, she did die young...”

You would’ve loved to hear that theory play out, but the opportunity flies out the door as soon as Hyunjin walks through it. The comment you want to make about his surprising punctuality is swallowed down just as quickly as it bubbles up. His expression tells you that he’s not up for much of anything, let alone teasing. With a cursory nod, he acknowledges that he is, at the very least, capable of noticing his surroundings.

Unfortunately, you’re not capable of looking at him — seeing the state of him — without your bleeding heart cracking right in half.

Chan serves as a sufficient distraction, thankfully. He enters shortly after Hyunjin with both Seungmin and Doc in tow. He ignores the former’s nagging about who knows what and ushers the latter to the chair next to the head of the table. He doesn’t sit, though you wouldn’t have expected him to; he never does. Instead, he stands at the back of his chair with his eyes flicking expectantly over to the door.

In the time it takes you to cross from your workstation to your usual folding chair, the guest list doubles. Holding up the wall in the corner, Jihoon stands with his arms crossed loosely over his chest. To his right, Scraps sits on a rare patch of free space on Chan’s desk, legs swinging idly as they dangle; and to his left, you spy the cat-eyed girl whose name you still haven’t learned. All you know about her is that she works under Hyunjin, and they’re so in-sync that people have taken to calling them siblings.

You see no similarities between them now, however. She has light left in her eyes.

Several others filter in as the minutes pass, most of whom you haven’t yet crossed paths with. Well, you might have. Your days all run together; your short-term memory isn’t firing on all cylinders. You don’t take the opportunity to register their faces now, though. Your eyes only linger for the second it takes to confirm who they aren’t.

Chan turns his head to you, earning your attention. “Where’s —?”

Doc shoots him a look that interrupts his question before he can finish it. She knows what he doesn’t, after all: You’re currently the worst person to turn to for information on Minho’s whereabouts, even though you used to be the first.

Behind you, a heavily-accented voice chimes in, “He’s with little Yongbokie on an errand. They should be back soon.”

You don’t have to turn around to know who’s speaking. Sierra, as she’s known within the collective, has the sort of presence you can feel, even when she can’t be seen. It’s still unclear to you how she wound up a world away from the island she grew up on, but you’re glad that she did, and that she’s on your side. If she wasn’t —

Well…

Suffice it to say, there’s a reason why this foreign mercenary is called what she is — two reasons, actually, according to her native language — and neither bodes well for enemies. Specifically, there’s a mountain of bodies behind her, all of them hacked to bits by those blades she’s so fond of. 

Yeah, you think. Definitely better to keep her close.

“Just start without them,” she snaps at Chan, eye roll evident in her tone. 

Despite outranking her, Chan can’t hide the uneasiness that comes with being addressed by Sierra directly. You watch him swallow the lump in his throat before he clears it fully. “Everyone, listen up,” he says with the sort of gentle authority only he’s capable of. 

You can’t help the smile that tugs at the corner of your mouth. It’s such a stark contrast to the tone that goaded him to speak in the first place.

Still, a hush falls over the Hub immediately.

“I know some of you have heard whispers about this. I don’t necessarily trust that the rumors swirling are accurate —” 

Pointedly, Chan looks at Jeongin, who’s often the point in the relay where things go horribly wrong. The youngest never intends to pass on off-base gossip, but his attention span is about as poor as his audio processing. Jeongin ducks his head down; the tips of his ears go a dangerous shade of red.

“— so I’d like to make sure our record is straight.” Chan claps his hands, and as he rubs his palms together, he turns on his heel towards your side of the table. “Take it away, Spider,” he sings, beaming.

You turn your head quickly to the left and then to the right, searching for whoever the hell he’s truly cold-calling because it simply cannot be you. He knows better; he has to. For the decade you’ve worked together, you’ve hidden behind your screens because you don’t have the stomach for this leadership shit — especially not public speaking. It’s why you nominated him to run the show.

Eyebrows disappearing into your hairline, you stare incredulously back at him, silently begging him to pick the gauntlet back up.

Meanwhile, at least twenty pairs of eyes burn holes into you, like sun rays through a magnifying lens.

Fitting.

“Well,” you eventually manage to squeak out. “I — um… I spent the last month or so spelunking into confidential files relating to the — uhh — the Bliss Beta?”

It’s not a question. You don’t know why you made it sound like one.

Collapsing in on yourself, you knot your fingers on the table in front of you and stare down at your hands. “There’s a facility, it turns out, in — umm —”

“Is this going to take long? If it is, I can go and grab snacks.” Seungmin, from his spot across the table, smirks at you in such a way that you might — for the first time in your life — choose violence. 

That is, if his jokes at your expense didn’t have your nervous stomach churning even harder, sending bile up your throat.

That is, if a cold voice didn’t fly out of nowhere, primed to eviscerate Seungmin before you can even process your own reaction. 

“It’ll be a bit hard for you to chew after swallowing all your teeth, don’t you think?”

You hadn’t noticed Minho enter, but you find him easily now that he’s given himself away. He leans casually against the door frame with his hands in his pockets, leaving his tone as the only indication that he is, in fact, bothered. Everyone that had previously been standing near the door must’ve cleared a perimeter at some point — undoubtedly without being told to.

In response, Chan’s warning look is bifurcated, shot off to both men with equal, albeit subtle force. Seungmin’s face gives way to something apologetic. You can see it in his eyes that he thought he was being funny; that there’s no malice, only an inability to read a fucking room. To the contrary, Minho’s expression is pure venom, jaw set so tight that his teeth could crack.

He may have just interjected on your behalf, but he doesn’t look at you for more than a split second, as if he didn’t mean to concede even that much time.

And even though it feels illegal somehow, you keep your eyes fixed on him, as if you’ll catch another sliver of acknowledgement.

“In Cheongju,” you continue shakily. Your voice barely registers above a whisper, like you’re speaking to a single person, rather than a room full of them. “There’s a facility in Cheongju. All the servers currently associated with the Beta are operating out of there.”

Despite your anxiety, you manage to laugh. “They’re sitting ducks, really. Terrible planning from a security standpoint — either stupidity or arrogance.”

“Both,” Jihoon adds gruffly. If you’re not mistaken, he directs his next line at Seungmin. “Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

You know it wasn’t his intention, but you crack a tiny smile, nonetheless. “Comorbidities, aren’t they?” 

As soon as you say it out loud, your cheeks set to burning. You send a panicked glance to Doc and duck your head, like your fear of looking stupid isn’t on full display. “Please tell me I used that term correctly,” you mutter, feeling instant relief when she nods and a profound sense of comfort when she pats your still-clenched hands.

“So, what are we going to do about it?” Sierra cuts to the chase, as she often does. “Arson?”

Her eyes sparkle at the suggestion. You find yourself surprised that she’s offered something so tame. Only a week ago, her response to seeing a cockroach in the canteen was to shoot at it.

Not for nothing, you’re also surprised by how endearing you still find that little anecdote — but maybe you shouldn’t be. It’s not the first time you’ve developed a soft spot for someone so sharp.

Reflexively, you look over at Minho. You see his eyes flicker, like he’d averted them just in time to miss yours. It’s the only reason you have to believe that he’d been watching you, save for the inexplicable warmth you’d felt crawling up your neck.

You don’t know what to do with any of that.

“Destroying the servers would only be a bandage,” you sigh. “I want to fully eradicate the program itself, which means those servers need to remain intact — for now.”

“So, we do it like Daegu, then?” Felix suggests. Judging by his sudden participation, he’s overjoyed to have something to contribute to a conversation he wouldn’t normally follow. “We broke in and set up that…. thing for you, in that room that was like an…. air-conditioned microwave?”

You bite down on your lips to keep from laughing. It’s a miracle that he remembers the Thanotech raid at all with the concussion he sustained in the process. It’s even more incredible that he remembers the non-technical explanation you gave for the server room within that data center.

Shaking your head, you frown. “I need to be on-site for this one.”

“Absolutely not. Fuck no.”

Across the room, Minho now stands fully upright. His hands are no longer in his pockets; they hang at his sides, clenched tightly.

You can’t help the incredulous scoff you let out. Bold of him, you think, to write you off completely and then attempt to dictate where and when you get to exist. That slap in the face still stings, but you keep your tone as light as possible. 

“If something goes wrong, or if things have changed from the schematics I was able to access, I won’t be able to handle it remotely. I need to be there to troubleshoot.” And even though it goes without saying, you remind him anyway: “We’re not getting a second crack at this.”

“I know you don’t remember Ilsan, but I do,” Minho glowers, tone as dark as his eyes. The rest of the room falls into a charged silence; everyone is too tense to breathe, let alone speak. “I remember carrying three-quarters of your body out of Ilsan and spending weeks at your bedside.”

Just like that, the air in your lungs turns to cement. 

How do you admit to not knowing he was even there? 

And what the hell are you supposed to do with this information now that it’s reaching you for the first time — a year after the fact — in front of an audience? 

You try to start somewhere. “Minho —”

“No. I won’t do that again.” His voice is sharp when it cuts you off, but there’s a crack in the blade, so microscopic that you wonder if you’re imagining things. He clears his throat to try and keep himself even. “You don’t get to make that call.”

Here comes that prickling feeling again, causing tears to spring up at the corners of your eyes. You clench your jaw and try to wish them away.

It’s Chan that speaks next. “You’re right. Spider doesn’t get to make that call,” he concedes. Then, his expression turns to stone. “I do. She said there’s no way around it, so she’s going —”

Minho seeks to interrupt, but Chan raises his hand and stops him in his tracks. You want to argue, too, because you’re right here and don’t need to be spoken about, as if you’re not in the room. The leader plows through, unaffected.

“— and because you know what the stakes are, your only job is to keep her safe.”

If the anguished look on Minho’s face says anything, it’s that he wants nothing to do with the burden of keeping you — what’s left of you, rather — in one piece. 

The briefing continues after his outburst, but Minho doesn’t hear a word of it. It all flows past him, waterlogged and warped, without sinking in. He finds it hard to give a shit about that fact, though. 

Clearly, his input doesn’t matter. Worse, the sole order that’s been made of him is fucking redundant. He can’t imagine that the rest of them would mean much, so what does it matter if he didn’t pay attention?

He’s halfway out the door by the time Chan wraps up. Dodging eye contact, Minho turns to leave outright, to disappear somewhere and lick his wounds. One last lash manages to hit him as he goes: 

When you cross the room, you’re not headed his way. No, your quick steps take you straight to Jihoon.

Minho knows that he has no right to feel this bitter. He should be grateful that his pushing you away is having the intended effect — that you might’ve found someone other than him to lean on — but the relief he’s been waiting to feel is nowhere to be found.

It never is.

The quick fixes he’s gotten of you in back rooms and shadows didn’t satiate him, either. Cutting you out completely has only proven to be more of the same ache.

Unwilling to watch the consequences of his own actions unfold, Minho turns sharply out of the doorway. Automatically, his feet carry him down the hall, up the stairs towards the roof. His brain might tell him otherwise if it wasn’t currently swimming, but his body acts on its own, seeking out the last place and time where he didn’t feel like this.

It’s a bad call, he realizes as he ascends.

He’ll never be able to recreate a scene with half the cast absent. The stage directions are fucked now. There’s no reason to take the steps one at a time now that he’s alone, but he still does. Without context, his motivations make no sense; and his hands don’t know what the hell to do without a belt loop hooked underneath one of his fingers. They twitch in the absence of denim. 

With every step, he repeats his only line:

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And when he reaches that busted fucking door and kicks it with everything he has, no one looks at him with amused disapproval.

It’s all wrong.

Steel hits cement with a sickening clang that’s still ringing out as he stalks over to the ledge and drops himself down on a familiar, overturned bucket. Its counterpart sits unoccupied at his side. Minho can’t look at it, can’t get up to throw it off the fucking roof, can’t do anything except simmer in his rage because —

Your only job is to keep her safe.

He tilts his head back, closes his eyes, and shouts into the void above, “Fuck!”

As if he needs to be told. 

As if he hasn’t been trying to do exactly that for all the years he’s known you, driving nails further into his own goddam coffin with every second spent in your web.

Elbows come to rest on his knees. His face falls, too, until it drops into his palms. No matter how hard he tries to control his breathing, it comes out through gritted teeth, seething.

The fucking audacity.

Even if Minho hasn’t given you a reason to know better, Chan should. He’s seen better, firsthand.

Every time Chan stopped by the clinic to check in on you, he found Minho already sitting next to your glorified cot, watching your sleeping form like a hawk for any sign of distress. 

Chan didn’t need to ask how your hair ended up in poorly-executed braids because the unskilled hands that made them were wringing themselves at your side. He never needed to ask why, either. When you finally stopped thrashing through nightmares, you didn’t wake up to find yourself tangled in inescapable knots.

Keep her safe.

That’s the fucking problem, isn’t it? 

When his candle gets snuffed out — and he knows it will, can feel it in his bones that this is it — who’s going to keep you safe? 

Hyunjin doesn’t have the capacity — not anymore. Minho was there with you the night Hyunjin’s whole world exploded into pieces. You saw love, but Minho saw your future. He sees it every time he looks at Hyunjin, who’s still listless, still lingering on the periphery like a fucking ghost. Hyunjin will never be the same, and if Minho lets himself get any closer to you than he already has, you’ll wind up just as empty.

Then who?

Chan is too busy. Doc is just as preoccupied, and as kind as she is, she’s never understood you — not really. Felix and Scraps can barely manage themselves; you’ll fall through the cracks amidst their bullshit shenanigans. Neither Seungmin nor Jeongin can be trusted with anything —  or anyone — this important. They’re both fucking disasters in their own right, although Jeongin may eventually grow out of that. Changbin is too reclusive, and so is Jihoon; Jisung’s an anxious mess. Sierra is, at absolute minimum, insane.

And Minho may be the worst of them, but he tried his best for you. He’s still trying, even though that means keeping you as far away from him as possible.

“Fuck,” he repeats, albeit much less strongly.

That pathetic, choked-out word hits the air and dissipates quickly, leaving Minho alone in self-imposed exile. He stays there until sunrise, when the unoccupied bucket to his left becomes too visible to tolerate.

The next time Minho steps foot in the Hub, it’s much less crowded than the last. In fact, for what might be the first time ever, he’s beaten everyone else in. It’s no wonder; his stomach has been churning for hours now, and it was useless to keep laying in a bed he couldn’t sleep in.

Because life is far from fair, you’re the second to arrive. He doesn’t have to see you enter to know it; definitely doesn’t need to look up to confirm that it was your deliberate, slightly uneven footfalls he heard coming up the hall. It’s a reflex, though. His gaze lifts just in time to meet yours.

“Oh,” you peep, eyes bright despite the dark circles below them. “Hi.”

You seem startled to find Minho here ahead of you. Warranted, he thinks. The sunshine you cast on him isn’t, but you don’t try to withhold it — or maybe you can’t. As much as he loves that about you, it confuses the shit out of him and scares him just as badly. You either didn’t get the memo when you chose this life, or you don’t feel the crushing weight of it yet: 

Sparks like yours can’t last forever.

His voice sounds like gravel after last night’s anxious reflux, but he echoes you, nonetheless, “Hi.”

And then Chan walks in. He stops short when he sees the two of you, eyes flicking from your face to Minho’s with barely-hidden intrigue. Somehow, he misses the daggers Minho shoots at him with eyes alone.

“I re-routed everyone else to the vans and told them to load their shit. You ready?” Chan poses the question to both of you, but his focus is fixed solely on you. It lingers for a moment, settles in somewhere between the lines. 

Minho doesn't know what’s going on, but he does know that he hates whatever it is.

You nod. Whether that’s in response to what was asked or what wasn’t, he can’t say. Your mouth sits in a tight, straight line. That, Minho can easily translate to feigned confidence. You’re not ready; you’re not good at bluffing, either. 

He sees his window in that bit of doubt and tries to leap through it. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

It doesn’t sound as firm as he wants it to. If you listen closely — and you always do — it probably sounds like he’s pleading, which feels both alien and illegal to Minho. He clears his throat. “We can do this without you, Spider. I’m serious. Tell me how to get you set up for remote access, and I’ll —”

“I don’t know how many more times I have to say this for you to understand: You can’t do this without me. You need me.”

Despite what you say, there’s no heat in the way you say it. It sounds like you’re pleading, too — scratching at the door to be let in. He knows you well enough to catch the subtext; to know that you’re not just talking about the job. But Minho can’t make his mouth move. Likewise, he can’t turn away.

Stop looking at her like she’s your future.

Chan doesn’t have time for the thousands of things going unsaid, so he interjects with an exasperated grunt, “Vans.” He points to the clock before gesturing between you and Minho. “Ten minutes, or you’re both walking to Cheongju.”

Neither of you moves once he clears the threshold and disappears again. Say something, he tells himself. Say anything.

He doesn’t.

“You didn’t sleep last night,” you muse, eyes narrowing slightly with concern. It’s not a question. There’s no uncertainty in the way you look at him, although that’s nothing new. “I read somewhere that peppermint gum helps with reflux.” 

You shrug, like it’s simply a fact you’re sharing. It’s not. It’s the millionth way you’ve found to say “I love you” without using those words.

Minho slips off the empty workstation desk he’s been sitting on, dusts off the back of his jeans once he’s back at his full height. With a nod of his head, he gestures to your workstation. “Take what you need,” he advises quietly.

When he moves towards the door, you move forward into the room. Your paths cross in the middle, but Minho keeps his distance, too aware of that magnetism of yours to take any risks now. Upon reaching the door, he pauses and looks back over his shoulder to call out your name. As if you were anticipating it, you look up from the desk drawer you’re combing through.

He freezes for a moment, although he doesn’t mean to. You might be the only person capable of catching him off-guard. Once his brain stops lagging, he says only half of what he wants to: “Don’t forget your mask.

Hurriedly, like you really would’ve forgotten, you pull open a drawer and fish out a black gaiter, which you then tuck into the zippered pocket of your jacket. Instantly, Minho’s posture gets a little less rigid. Not for nothing, yours does, too.

“Thanks,” you sigh. The corners of your mouth raise slightly. From what he’s been hearing lately, this might be the closest you’ve been to smiling in weeks. Your reaction stops when you notice the way he’s halfway out of the room. “No need to wait on me. I’ll meet you in the loading dock in a minute.”

Minho stalls, feet unwilling to move, until you go back to gathering items. He nods once, as if you’ll even see his acknowledgment, then slips off into the hallway without you.

The loading dock he’s headed for is on the opposite side of the factory, but his anxiousness propels him there in half the usual time. His team is loitering around the two vans when he reaches them: one unmarked, one branded, both stolen.

Felix grins from the hood of the primary vehicle, where he sits cross-legged. He slaps his hands on the white metal below and proudly states, “I told you it would work.”

“Let me guess.” Minho looks over at Scraps. “You were the one who hot-wired them.”

She glances apologetically at Felix, then turns back to Minho with a shrug and a sheepish smile. “He tried his best,” she sighs. “If we had all day, he probably would’ve succeeded.”

At this, Felix’s grin droops into a cartoonish frown. “What do you mean probably?”

Minho rolls his eyes. “Enough — and go put a hat on, or you’re getting a full balaclava.” He points to the mess of blue hair spilling onto Felix’s shoulders. “If your fashion statement gets us pinged on a security camera, I’ll kill you myself —”

A laugh rings out behind him. He turns on his heel to find Sierra snickering at Felix’s reddening cheeks, both tattooed hands covering her mouth as she does.

“— and you know better,” Minho snarks, pointing straight at her. “Gloves. Now.”

Scraps’ eyes are as wide as the moon when Minho swivels back towards her. She doesn’t give him the opportunity to say it; she’s already shoving her decorated arms into the sleeves of a plain, black jacket and zipping it up as high as it’ll go. He hears relief leave her in a quiet sigh when his focus finds who he’s truly been looking for.

A few meters away, Jeongin is buried so far under the hood of the secondary van that his feet barely touch the ground. With his target now acquired, Minho crosses to the neighboring bay.

“Well?” He demands, “Did you find them?”

The younger one startles at the sudden questioning; there’s a dull thud when he smacks his head on the underside of the hood.

Jeongin groans, “Aigo,” and carefully ducks his head until it clears the obstacle above him. His cheeks are pink and smattered with both dirt and grease — and the mess only gets worse when he mindlessly wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his semi-blackened hand. 

“Behind the radiator on this one.” Jeongin then thumbs over his shoulder to the van Felix sits on. “That one was attached to the undercarriage, near the fuel tank.”

With a grunt, Jeongin exhumes himself from the engine compartment and hops to his feet. It’s completely unnecessary, but he drops the tracker he just detached onto the concrete and smashes it under his steel-toed boot. 

“You won’t need the GPS blocker anymore, so make sure to turn it off,” he advises. And he clearly didn’t learn his lesson thirty seconds ago because he taps one of his temples, leaving a dirty fingerprint behind. “Otherwise, it’ll interfere with your comms.”

Jeongin then blinks up at Minho like he’s expecting a pat on the head. 

Over my dead body. 

Minho instead points at the shards of plastic littering the ground. Affect flat, he tells his junior to clean that shit up, which is the closest he will ever fucking get to you did good, kid. The second Minho steps away, Jeongin drops down to hurriedly scoop the broken bits into his palm.

While he waits on the rest of the group — namely you — to roll up, Minho busies himself with checking supplies. 

The unmarked van will carry the backup team to a rendezvous point half a kilometer away from the Ulsan facility, just in case. For this reason, it’ll also carry the big guns, which — like the vans themselves — were nicked from corpo rats. The seats inside were gutted immediately to clear out a cargo area. The trip sure as shit won’t be comfortable, but six people and a few ammo bags will fit inside without much issue. 

Most importantly, there’s enough room for Minho’s crown jewel: a goddamn, motherfucking anti-tank gun. He’s been dying to try it out since the WraithCo. raid that brought it into his possession, but he has a sinking feeling that he never will.

Moving on to the primary van, Minho notes the logo emblazoned on the side. This one was harder to steal than its counterpart, but you stressed the necessity, and he made it happen. Now, when the infiltration team drives up to the facility, it’ll be under the guise of the outsourced IT company that Ulsan uses for routine maintenance. 

According to the data you managed to reap, Ulsan’s made two glaring security errors, likely because they assume they’re infallible — not handling their own shit in-house, and scheduling their tech contractors to pop by on the same dates every month. Both details were barely footnoted in the reports; anyone but you wouldn’t have thought twice about them.

Something twinges in his chest when his thoughts start wandering in your direction, so Minho shakes his head to clear them. It doesn’t work. Instead, it seems to summon you. You step onto the loading dock a few seconds later.

You’ve changed since Minho left the Hub. The lapse in time makes sense now that his eyes sweep over your frame. The black jeans you’re wearing now aren’t chopped halfway up the right side. In order to conceal that highly recognizable part of you, you struggled through the significant extra time it takes to get your artificial foot through the openings — and he didn’t have to tell you to do any of this, unlike the rest of the team.

It’s been so long since you’ve been one of the boots of the ground that he underestimated you. Clearly, he shouldn’t have because you haven’t skipped a single detail. The treads of your boots have been filed down; but the platform sole remains intact, concealing the brand and size, as well as your true height. Specially-designed black gloves cover your hands, so you can utilize whatever touchscreens and keys you come across without leaving your trace behind. Likewise, the gaiter you grabbed at the last minute rests just below your chin, ready to cover your mouth and nose.

His breath catches in his throat when he sees the long-sleeved black top hanging loosely and hiding your figure. He wants to ask if you remember, but he doubts you do. You borrowed it from him so many years ago that it might as well be yours now.

To stop himself from staring, Minho starts to address the group. “Now that our guest of honor has shown up —”

“We still need Jihoon,” you interject with one finger raised, gently asking Minho to wait.

“What?” Minho can’t keep the confusion off his face, and he can’t wrap his head around this curveball you’ve thrown. Incredulously, he scoffs, “It’s a covert break-in.”

There isn’t a single reason he can think of to include the demolitions expert in something requiring finesse.

You don’t respond with words; your eyes flick to Chan, which is enough of a hint. The two of you are planning something — keeping him in the dark about something — but Minho can’t figure out what or why. The leader doesn’t provide much in the way of explanation. All he offers is, “We need a driver and an extra pair of eyes,” as if that’s the whole truth.

Whatever.

The second Jihoon finally walks through the door, Minho immediately starts his briefing.

The main team — including you, Chan, Felix, Sierra, Jihoon, and Minho himself — will head straight to the facility. The reinforcements — Scraps, Changbin, Eunjae, Sunwoo, Hongjoong, and some fucker from Texas known only as “Cowboy” — will wait just outside the property line with range weapons, ready to party with any gatecrashers.

On site, Felix and Sierra will take out security at the gate; only two men guard that post at any given time. Meanwhile, you’ll slip in and disable the remaining security measures: cameras, mainly, although the alarm system is your biggest priority. To get everyone inside, you’ve cloned the badge of a mid-level researcher who, like the Professor, has authorization beyond the front desk.

From there, the interior group will divide into watchdogs and infiltrators. Given the relatively small size of the building, it shouldn’t take long to get you to the control room, where you’ll take a crack at the main computer housing the Beta’s program. If everything goes as planned, you’ll be in and out within 30 minutes.

Nothing ever goes as planned, though. That Ilsan mission was simpler with significantly lower stakes, and it was a fucking nightmare. Minho can’t think about anything else when he crawls into the back of the van next to you.

For over two hours, Minho has been sitting cross-legged on the floor of this godforsaken van. His brain, unlike his body, is wholly fucking incapable of staying still. No matter how hard he tries to ground himself, he can’t shake the chill running down his spine or the voice in his head. It just keeps repeating the same thought, over and over: 

This van will be missing passengers on the drive back.

“It’s your turn, Minho.”

His head snaps up. Instead of Atropos and her scissors, it’s Felix staring back at him, smiling curiously. Warmly. Minho’s pulse should ease up at the realization, but it doesn’t.

He clears his throat, although his voice still comes out jagged. “My turn?”

“He’s asking everyone what they’re going to do with their lives when this is all over,” you explain. Minho turns his head to look at you. For once, he can’t decipher the look on your face. You laugh when you squeeze his bent knee gently, adding, “Don't worry. I didn’t have an answer, either.”

But it’s not an answer that he lacks, it’s time.

Don’t you know that I’m already dead?

The van slows considerably, shifting from paved roads to gravel. Then, it stops entirely. Jihoon turns in his seat and squints through the holed, metal divider between the cabin and the back of the van. 

“Spider?” He calls out over his shoulder, and it’s no wonder he struggles to identify you. Everyone sitting in this unlit area is cloaked in black from head to toe. 

To help him out, you raise your hand and wave. Even if the dark gloves you’re wearing aren’t visible, your smile is. Your voice is just as bright when you chirp, “Over here!”

Minho sees Jihoon smile for the first time in all the years he’s known him. If he was anyone else, that flicker at the corner of his mouth wouldn’t count for shit; but Minho’s no stranger to steel or your uncanny ability to bend it. He knows your impact when he sees it.

“End of the line,” Jihoon reports. “The next time I stop, you’ll need to sneak out the side. I can see a camera positioned directly above the security vestibule, pointing downward from the left. The van will create a blind spot if you stay low to the ground.”

Now, Jihoon’s involvement is starting to make sense. He’s one of only four people who joined the Black Screen within the last year — after the Ilsan disaster, which led to the incorporation of masks into all field ops. Out of the entire organization, his face is one of the only ones that won’t tip off the guards.

Until the next news cycle, Minho thinks ruefully.

Once the driver is satisfied that the passengers are on the same page, he turns around and sets the van back into motion. Every dip in the uneven road below throws your shoulder against Minho’s; and every time you collide, he wants to wrap his arm around you to keep it from happening again. He doesn’t. Eventually, the opportunity disappears along with the faint crunch of gravel beneath the tires.

The brakes squeak slightly when the van stops a second time. Minho can’t hear the conversation Jihoon is making with the security staff from where he sits, just the slow-motion movements of you, Felix, and Sierra as the three of you inch the side door open and spill onto the driveway like molasses.

All Minho has left to do is wait — for you to come back or for shots to be fired. His pulse picks up when seconds slip by without either of those options playing out. 

It’s funny, he thinks as he pulls his rifle into his lap, that the thing bringing him comfort now is designed to take it away. His thumb hovers over the selective fire switch, flexing in anticipation. Any second now, all his best laid plans will explode. 

It’s only a matter of time until —

“All clear,” comes your voice through static.

Minho flinches. In all the tense silence, he’d completely forgotten about the earpiece he’s wearing. The breath he’d unknowingly been holding leaves him in a hurry, taking the tension in his shoulders with it as he deflates.

“Meet us at the fire exit on the northeast side. I shut off the emergency alert system, too, so we shouldn’t have any issues getting into that stairwell.”

Jihoon is already pulling the van around by the time you finish speaking. In a matter of seconds, he pulls up to the door in question and shifts gears to park. 

You’re standing in the doorway when Minho’s feet hit the ground, eyes crinkling when you see him with a smile he can’t otherwise see. He doesn’t know what to do with that, so he addresses Sierra first. She’s got blood on her temple, and Minho can’t tell whose it is. 

“You didn’t make a mess, did you?” He asks, frowning slightly.

“This is business, not pleasure, so no.” She rolls her eyes. The sigh she lets out reeks of disappointment. “Wrung out their necks like chickens and shoved their bodies into cabinets.”

Glancing quickly at Minho, Felix figures out where his leader’s eyes are focused. “Not hers,” he clarifies, nodding to Sierra. With the back of his sleeve, he reaches over and gently wipes the blood from her face, like he’s cleaning gochujang off a child. “Didn’t leave a trace, though.”

That’s all Minho cares about, so he asks no further questions. Instead, he checks his watch before looking up to check on you. He doesn’t pose the question, but you answer him, regardless; and when you do, you accompany it with your thumb raised.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“All good!”

You then gesture with that thumb to the stairwell over your shoulder and ask, “Shall we?”, as if you’re inviting him to dance.

“You two —” Minho points to Felix and Sierra respectively, drawing their attention. “Station yourselves along the main hallway. If anyone so much as pokes their head out of a doorway, blow it the fuck off. No witnesses.”

Both nod in acknowledgment, but it’s not enough, not when your life is in his hands. He glares expectantly at them, waits in silence until they get the hint.

In tandem, they repeat, “No witnesses.”

Good enough.

Wordlessly, Minho waves his hand and sends them on their way to the second floor. He doesn’t budge until he sees the tops of their heads through the window, disappearing past the landing. Seconds later, Felix’s voice sounds off in Minho’s ear to advise him that the area is clear.

He turns back to the three people standing behind him to ensure they’re ready to move in. The second he sees the pistol in your grip, his stomach lurches so violently that he really might vomit on his boots. 

It’s categorically fucked — so fundamentally, intrinsically wrong — that you’re standing here now with lethal force in your hands. Over ten long years, you’ve never fired a single shot in combat; never stolen the light from someone’s eyes while you’re staring into them. Still, no matter how nauseous the image makes him, the irony of it all can’t be ignored. 

You only know how to shoot because he taught you.

“Let’s move out,” Chan says when Minho doesn’t.

Minho takes point with you close behind him. Behind you, Jihoon follows with an inexplicable duffle bag strapped to his shoulder. By now, Minho knows better than to question what’s going on here. He wouldn’t get an honest answer if he did; and Chan makes no excuses for it as he trails after Jihoon up the stairs.

At the top of the landing, you tap Minho’s shoulder, prompting him to stop. When you gesture up ahead, his eyes follow, gaze sweeping down the long corridor towards the southwest side of the building. Near the end of the hall, a pair of glass doors interrupts the path to the server room, which sits further down on an intersecting corridor. Somewhere between that server room and the bulletproof barrier in front of you is your target: the main computer running the show.

All the signage he can spot declares the area secure and for authorized personnel only. You’re neither safe nor sanctioned, but the badge you pull from inside the neck of your — his — shirt will let you pretend to be. 

Lim Namseok, it reads.

That poor bastard will probably be dead before sunrise for the things you’re about to do. Minho doesn’t have any higher hopes for himself, but he wonders whether or not you’ll be able to sleep when this is over.

No, he ultimately decides. You won’t.

You keep glancing down at that man’s photograph, swallowing hard like you’re choking down an apology. Committing those features to memory, as if you’re obligated to remember each one of the creases in his forehead.

It’s not a question of if that face will pop up in your nightmares but when.

Minho’s both unwilling and unable to let you keep torturing yourself, so he shifts his assault rifle to his non-dominant hand and reaches out to you. Neither of you says a word as he gently removes the badge from between your fingers and lets the lanyard unfurl. You watch the ID flutter downwards until it rests against your chest; his eyes don’t leave your face.

“Come on,” he says softly. “There are fifty-one-million Namseoks out there that still need their asses saved.”

You don’t want to laugh. Your furrowed eyebrows inform him that you’re trying very hard not to, like your half-hearted glare will override the muted chuckle that slips through your mask. His attempt at levity worked, though. You start moving again when he does.

On the way to the first set of security doors, the four of you pass both of your lookouts, who’ve taken up posts half and three-quarters’ way up the corridor, respectively. Not for nothing, both look bored by the lack of action.

When Felix sees Minho, he complains, “Why is it always unpaid fucks like us who have to work on weekends? Shouldn’t these goons be here to justify their salaries?”

He’s not wrong. This place is a fucking ghost town, and although the datashard you combed through said this would be the case, the emptiness still makes the hairs on the back of Minho’s neck stand up. Whether or not he can put his finger on it, something feels off.

“Wouldn’t mind a desk job,” Chan muses, more to himself than to the rest of the group.

Minho leans into the assumption that he wasn’t meant to hear it. If he was, he’d have no choice but to point out that Chan hardly leaves his fucking desk as it is. So, to keep the peace, he keeps his smart mouth shut.

When several more meters come and go, the four of you reach the security checkpoint. With the badge back in hand and nerves evident in your tone, you hold it to the scanner and mutter, “Here goes nothing.”

Nothing is precisely what you get. No sirens wail, no trap doors give way to swallow you all down. The glass panels simply part with a click before sliding outwards along their respective tracks. Your shoulders sag with relief, unlike Minho’s. He carries tension in every single one of his muscle cells; and he only grows more rigid with each passing second.

To keep his pulse down, Minho counts each step he takes towards the control room. It’s an exercise in futility, of course. He’s a goddamn mess, no matter how hard he tries to hide it.

16…17…18…

Present moment excluded, he can only think of one other in which he’s ever experienced fear. Real fear, that is; the kind that begs his limbs to lock. It’s no coincidence that he can barely function now. How could he, with the common denominator trailing behind him like a shadow?

19….20…21 —

Suddenly, you hiss, “Shit!”

By the time he wheels himself around, you’re frozen in place with your pistol aimed through a doorway that wasn’t open when he passed it. A woman in a lab coat stands there with her hand still on the handle, eyes doubling in size when they land on you. Immediately, the coffee mug in her hand drops, sending both liquid and shards of ceramic flying. Both of her hands are in the air before the pieces can settle at her feet.

You fire once, panicked, and strike her in the upper arm. It’s a shit job, one that’ll give her time to call for help before she bleeds out on the floor, so Minho’s instinct takes over.

“Turn around,” he tells you. 

You do. 

From her knees, the woman clutches her bicep and begs Minho to lower his weapon. She still wants to have kids someday, she tells him, sobbing. She’s too young to die.

Unaffected, Minho aims at the space between her brows. “Aren’t we all?”

Bang!

Her body drops to the floor like a bag of cement, lifeless. Although the shot still echoes, it’s otherwise dead silent until you whisper, “I’m sorry.”

Stepping to the side to look at you, Minho furrows his brows. “Don’t be. We can’t leave witnesses.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t do it right,” you clarify, voice wavering but louder than before. “You taught me better than that.”

For a minute, he forgets where he is; loses track of the two people standing on eggshells behind you both. There’s definitely still a corpse lying two meters away, but all he sees in his peripheral vision is proof: You may have chosen this life, but this life hasn’t chosen you.

Despite the bullets and the viscera making a mess of the tile nearby, you’re still the person he met a decade ago — someone with the instincts to do what’s needed but too much heart to be swallowed by them.

He hopes you never change.

“There may be more people that we haven’t accounted for.” Chan’s reminder forces three pairs of eyes to focus on him. He urges, “We need to get this done. Spider, where’s the control room?”

With his gun and without a word, Minho gestures to an office several doors down from where the group currently stands. In giant, black letters, it states, “CONTROL ROOM”. Your answer would be redundant at this point, so you don’t bother giving it. Moreover, Chan can fucking read.

“Oh,” is all the leader says before the group presses onward.

You swipe the badge again when you reach the control room. As was the case with the previous door, this one opens without any theatrics. All four of you slip inside before they close on their own, several moments later.

As soon as he steps foot inside, Jihoon whistles. “Damn.”

Damn is right.

The room feels even larger than the dimensions he saw on the blueprints; and with the forced air flowing from the overhead vent, it’s far less welcoming than Minho expected. Halfway between an operating theater and an airplane, the crisp whiteness of his surroundings seem both sterile and stale. He’d wash the feeling off himself if he could, but he can’t, so his skin continues to crawl.

Consuming the back half of the room, a U-shaped desk boasts multiple monitors, keyboards, and switches. Minho has no fucking clue what any of this equipment is supposed to do — he doesn’t give a shit, either — but he sees your eyes go wide with that childlike wonder he’s always been stupefied by.

Your hands twitch, likely from a desire to touch every surface they can find, so you hold them close to your chest while you look around. After studying all the options at your disposal, you take a seat behind the monitor at the left end of the desk.

Jihoon asks what everyone else is wondering: “Is the main computer not the one in the middle?”

Normally, this is the sort of thing you'd laugh at. You don’t, though; you barely seem to have heard it. Transfixed, you simply mumble something about that computer being hardwired to the server room. Minho doesn’t catch the rest of your explanation, but he hears the words “temperature control” and “ventilation” before concentration makes your voice peter out mid-sentence.

The next few minutes pass by without you noticing. Nobody speaks, nobody breathes too loudly for fear of interrupting your train of thought. That’s not to say it’s silent; far from it. Your rhythmic typing takes over the room, and the effect it has on Minho is borderline hypnotic.

A siren song, sort of.

In response to its call, Minho’s mind picks up and races from the room you’re in — back to the Hub, where this all started; to the countless hours he’s spent just like this, watching you work. As mundane as those moments might be in the grand scheme of things, they’re still his happiest.

Maybe he’d count this moment among them if the Sword of Damocles wasn’t swinging so blatantly overhead.

Out of nowhere, you slam your fist down on the desk, startling everyone else enough to flinch. It’s not just the noise that has Minho, Chan, and Jihoon on high alert; it’s the fact that none of them have ever seen you explode like this.

“Goddamn it!”

Immediately, Minho rushes over to where you’re sitting. His eyes dart from your face to the screen, then back again, finding no obvious answers for your distress. 

“What?” He demands, “What’s wrong?”

Eyes glued to the monitor, you continue to mutter, “No, no, no —“

“Spider, talk to me. Tell me what’s going on, so we can fix it.”

“They fucking —” You smack the desk again, like hitting something will knock your thoughts loose. “Fuck!”

For a second, you let the rage simmer. Then, the defeat you still haven’t articulated settles in. You slump down in your chair with your face in your hands, forcing your breathing to slow. 

“They must’ve added it after the Professor defected. I can’t — It wasn’t referenced anywhere on that datashard, Minho. There was nothing.” 

All your panic is funneled directly into the palms of your gloves, making it difficult to decipher what you’re saying. Minho leans closer just in time to hear you cry, “They built a failsafe.”

Minho is out of his fucking depth. In fact, he’s drowning. 

“A failsafe?” He asks, “What, like a back-up program?”

“No, as in, any attempts to delete or alter the program data will invalidate the study.” 

Based on your phrasing, Minho assumes you’re quoting something directly. Swallowing back the acid rising in his throat, he opens his mouth to ask you what the fuck that means. Before he can hurl his question out, you look up at him with abject hopelessness in your eyes; and suddenly, he can’t speak.

“All of their research subjects will be purged,” you spit.

On the other side of the desk, Chan and Jihoon exchange a look — a grim one, but not one of surprise. They’ve arrived at the conclusion before Minho can leap to it, and they’re still talking without saying a single goddamn thing out loud. 

Minho can’t take it anymore. He shouts, “What the fuck does that mean?”

“If Spider wipes the beta, everyone with that chip goes with it,” Chan sighs. He scrubs his hands over his face until it’s red. “If they don’t drop dead immediately, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that their brains will be permanently and irreparably fucked as a result.”

Now what?

Now what?

Minho’s legs grow less steady by the second. He presses his palm flush against the desktop to keep his knees from buckling. He knows damn well it won’t make a difference; his spinning head will bring him down if his body doesn’t. Everything — including the pulse hammering in his ears — is simultaneously too quiet and too loud.

What the fuck was this all for? The time, the energy, the lives everyone keeps sacrificing to this fucking cause — any of it. 

All of it. 

What’s the point of fighting this hard if Ulsan will always be ten steps ahead?

“Minho!”

His head snaps in your direction only to see that you weren’t the one calling his name. He blinks, confused. Who —?

“Minho, they’re coming! Lim Namseok — terminated yesterday. His badge — it flagged —” 

Scraps’ voice comes shrouded in gunfire. The weak connection makes it even harder to hear her; whatever isn’t exploding is crackling due to the distance. Each word fizzles at the end, as if lit by a fuse.

“— to get out —”

Hand flying to his left ear, Minho presses down the button at the center of his ear piece. “Who’s coming?” He barks, “Scraps, what the fuck is going on?”

When she doesn’t respond, someone else takes over.

“It’s the fucking retention team. A sniper took Eunjae out before any of us even saw them coming,” Hongjoong yells. “They’ve got a unit on the ground and one in the air. I’ll try to shoot the chopper down, but you need to get out of there now.”

“Hongjoong, do as much as you can to tear them up, but don’t push your luck. If you’re outnumbered, fall back before we lose anybody else. Do you copy?”

He doesn’t get a response.

Jihoon moves closer to the door to listen for any incoming footsteps. Hearing none, he growls, “Who the fuck called the boogeymen? Don’t they only deal with defectors?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Chan waves him off, “They’re here, and we need to be anywhere else.”

Despite what he just said, the leader doesn’t move; doesn’t budge a centimeter in any direction. Chan simply glances across the room at you, and when you stare back at him, it’s with the same, eerie calmness. Some quiet resignation that makes no fucking sense under the circumstances.

“If I can’t kill the program entirely, I can make it inoperable long enough for the existing chips to be removed,” you say, like you’ve already had this idea in your pocket. “Force quit, so to speak.”

You don’t elaborate, leaving Minho’s frustration to drive him halfway out of his goddamn mind. Worse, you ignore the way he’s staring so fucking desperately at you and address the person standing several meters behind him. 

“Jihoon, did you bring the party favors?”

In response, Jihoon slips the duffel bag off his shoulder and holds it out to you. Only then do you move. Chan follows behind as you cross towards the door; neither one of you says a thing when you pass Minho, who’s still cemented in place.

“What the fuck are you planning?” He demands, although his voice shakes. “What fucking secrets have you been keeping, and why?” 

Once you secure the duffle bag on your own shoulder, you finally bring yourself to look at him. Above your mask, your eyes soften. They crinkle at the corners, as if you’re smiling, but there are tears brimming at your lash line, threatening to fall.

Please don’t look at me like you don’t have a future.

“For what it’s worth,” you start. Then, you sniffle, breath hitching as you try to get the rest out. “You’ve always had my heart. All of it — every stupid piece.”

And with nothing more than a nod to Jihoon, you’re gone, running out the door with Chan towards the server room before Minho can say a single word to you; before he can even think of chasing after you. 

In the blink of an eye, biceps wrap around him like a vice, pinning his arms behind his back and gripping tighter with every kick he tries to use for leverage.

“Spider!” Minho yells.

He fights with all he has to break free of Jihoon’s hold, to throw one or both of them to the ground, to get to you, but the older man doesn’t bat an eye. As if Minho weighs nothing at all, Jihoon begins hauling him back down the hallway towards the fire exit.

“You’re going the wrong way,” he grunts as he thrashes. “Let me — go —” 

Jihoon doesn’t say a word, doesn’t waste a breath, doesn’t stop pulling. Whatever strength he has left in the reserves, it’s wielded against Minho, not on making apologies. 

Minho bucks again, throwing all the weight from his legs to his back. It does nothing apart from exhaust him, but he can’t stop. He’ll never stop. 

“Spider!”

Close to feral, his anguished shouts devolve to desperate, growling noises. “I swear to god, I’ll bury you for this, Lee —”

He digs his heels into the ground to slow the older man’s momentum. His knees could snap at the force with which he’s resisting. He doesn’t give a shit if they do; he’ll crawl to you if he has to.

“I’ll splatter your brains against the fucking wall when I get my hands on you,” Minho spits. “I’m your commanding fucking officer!”

The next time he kicks, someone grabs him by the ankles to help carry his restless body down the stairs. Felix, judging by that pathetic, apologetic look in his eyes. Minho resolves to kill him, too, when he gets his limbs back. He’ll burn the whole goddamn compound to the ground for standing in his way; for letting you do this.

It should be me.

You’re the best of them, and they’re letting you die. 

It should be me.

They’re going to stand here, watching while you —

A sob he wasn’t prepared for bursts out of his chest in the form of your real name. With it, his threats dissolve into pleas, so goddamn pitiful in comparison to the violent way he still flails.

“Please!” He cries, voice raw. Making himself louder doesn’t make him heard. Incapable of doing anything else, he begs, “Please don’t let her do this. She’s all I have — All I want — Goddamnit, please! I need to get her out of there —”

So useless.

“I have to get her out,” he sobs with one final burst of energy rattling through otherwise spent limbs. 

The arms and hands around him still don’t relent. Over and over, he repeats his only thought in rapid succession until his voice gives out: 

“I have to get her out.”

Two seconds before they drag his body over the threshold, the whole facility shakes, like the earth below has opened up to swallow it down. Even from the opposite side of the building, Minho can hear shattered glass hitting the ground like sheets of rain. With the heavy, black cloud swirling over the southwest section of roof, he might’ve believed in some storm.

He might have.

But now, Minho sees the flames licking at the sky above, and he no longer believes in anything.

There are 244 kilometers between Cheongju and Changwon. By car, the distance flies by in fewer than three hours, assuming the expressways aren’t clogged with corporate commuters. All things considered, it’s not a trip that disrupts a person’s day. It’s straightforward, and above all, it’s easy.

What isn’t easy is crawling on your stomach underneath a blanket of smoke, only to drag half of someone else’s body weight with you down a flight of stairs.

There’s nothing straightforward about slipping through alleyways and ditches, trying to avoid nearby police blockades as they pop up; or attempting to conceal clothes that are singed in some places and actively smoking in others.

That distance does not fly by in three hours, even though the expressways aren’t clogged, because there’s disruption after disruption: 

Starting on foot, only to steal — and later dump — a car when the walk becomes unbearable. 

Wandering blindly without a working mobile, unable to access assistance or a map, and learning that your best guesses are wrong turns more often than not.

Avoiding phones in general due to the localized surge in cell surveillance, knowing even a coded message could wind up with you and any recipients dead.

Stopping repeatedly with burning lungs to check on someone in far worse shape than you, pretending not to hurt for their sake.

No, the estimates are all fucked. 

It takes twenty-one hours to travel the 244 kilometers between Cheongju and Changwon; and you feel the weight of every single one of them when you hobble through the front doors of the factory just to drop, exhausted, onto the floor.

News of your survival spreads like dandelion seeds throughout the compound. Within minutes, it seems, everyone you’ve ever made eye-contact with swings by the clinic to pat you on the back. 

One of them — Sierra, of all people — does you the greatest kindness of all: bringing you a change of clothes and then refusing to stick around for a chat. 

Half of them have never spoken to you before now, though you try not to hold that fact against them. 

Almost all of them throw the word “brave” around like it’s weightless. 

You know better.

What you did was useless in the grand scheme of things, and knowing that is heavy. Crushing, even, so much so that you find it hard to catch your breath. No, you’re sure, what you did was peak cowardice.

You need to get out of this clinic. You need all of these well-wishers to stop looking at you like some tragic hero. You need —

You push off the cot you’re occupying without giving it a second thought. The lightheadedness threatens to take you right back down again, but the feeling passes as quickly as it comes. You stay on your feet, even though you sway, by sheer force of will.

That’s it. There you go.

Doc gave you a once-over when you were first hauled in. Neither one of you truly felt like you were a priority. She may have been justifiably distracted, but in forming her expert opinion, she saw your bruised — not broken — body and declared you “good enough”. You take that glowing assessment at face value now and promptly discard the bit about “needing to stay for observation”.

Her primary concern is that you shouldn’t sleep with your concussion. Baseless, you think ruefully. You’ve been awake for two days and don’t see that changing any time soon.

Before you attempt to make a break for it, you glance at the far end of the clinic. There, a white screen stretches longways across most of the area for privacy, leaving two exits on either side. You don’t see the point of it; it doesn’t hide a thing. Two work lights shine so brightly from their spots by the wall that every movement in front of them is broadcasted on the thin, nylon divider.

As expected, the shadow puppet you’re looking for is still hovering around an unmoving mass in the center of the screen.

Chan.

He’s alive, even though he doesn’t look it. He’s talking, too, which is a marked improvement from the state he was in just a few hours ago. The morphine drip must be helping, you figure. Until now, he had a belt between his teeth to quell the pain, which would’ve kept him quiet.

Otherwise, there’s only one explanation for the corner he’s turned over the past few hours: The love of his life hasn’t left his side since he was carried into the clinic; and he knows she’s there. 

You’ve learned the hard way that both of those conditions must be met to make a difference. 

One without the other isn’t enough.

You can’t hear what they’re murmuring to each other, and you don’t want to. It’s theirs. Thankfully, their hushed tones give you the only confirmation you need: neither of your pseudo-parents will catch and scold you for leaving against medical advice. They’re oblivious; they’re fine; they have each other. You have —

Do you, though?

The person you want to see is coincidentally the only one in the entire compound that hasn’t come by seeking proof of life.

At first, you feared the worst; ripped your cuticles to shreds when the faces passing by weren’t his. No one mentioned his name or asked you if you’d seen him, as if there was no him left to see.

Then, you saw Jihoon walking around with his cheekbone stitched together. There’s some sick comfort in knowing that Minho at least lived long enough to beat his knuckles bloody. You’ve apologized to Jihoon three times now for the effect you caused, but he’s shrugged off every single one of them, like yesterday was just another day at the office.

Wasn’t it?

You creep out the door undetected and make your way to the nearest stairwell. The quiet throughout the halls in the factory isn’t comforting in the way it used to be. No part of the deeply familiar landscape is. 

It should be.

It’s the only real home you’ve ever known — one you thought for sure you’d never see again.

But every empty doorway you pass may as well have a body in it. You still see that woman and her unspent aspirations everywhere you look. You still hear the way she begged for her life before she lost it.

And when the stairs ahead finally come into view — ones you’ve taken a million times — they’re insurmountable. Your body aches automatically, like you’re still pulling Chan’s phantom weight out of the fire. That memory is muscle-deep now, you fear. There’s no getting rid of it.

At the landing, you force yourself forward. The siren song only you can hear is far stronger than the call of your own bed. It lures you around the corner whether or not you’re ready to follow it.

You aren’t, you realize as your steps continue automatically. The guilt threatens to eat you alive, and frankly, you’re prepared to let it. You deserve it. 

Somehow, despite your bullshit insanity and your numerous violations of trust, you still managed to skate through with a life left to live. Considering what you did, you figure it’s only fair that you pay this price — feel this fucking awful — for the rest of your unearned years.

Maybe. 

You don’t know. 

You’re in uncharted territory now because your plan didn’t include an after. 

As your footsteps draw closer to Minho’s room, it dawns on you that you don’t have a plan at all now. You don’t know what the fuck to say to him, let alone where to start. You wonder whether or not you should bother at all. 

If Minho knows you’re back at the compound, that means he made a choice not to find you. You have no right — none whatsoever — to take away his options a second time.

He’ll never forgive you, you tell yourself. If the roles were reversed, you’d do the same.

Maybe.

You don’t know.

You can’t take those hypotheticals and draw conclusions because Minho has never — would never — put you in the position you stranded him in. He wouldn’t hijack a mission you created or exclude you from a half-baked, shittily-executed contingency plan. He’d never force a friend to make some destructive, deathbed promise; wouldn’t have you dragged out of blast radius, kicking and screaming and fighting and spitting, just to drop you in a front-row seat.

He’s the best of all of you, and you did your absolute worst to him.

It’s selfish, walking up to his door now. You know it is. Despite that, you can’t make your body stop moving now that it’s started; can’t keep that boulder from rolling down hill. One last look, you tell yourself. That’s all you need. 

Even if he never looks you in the eyes again, this can be enough.

You raise your hand and reach out to the scraped-up wood with your knuckles leading the way. They’re dirty, you note, caked with soot in every crease. They shouldn’t be. You scrubbed them raw to get the blood and plasma off your skin. It’s possible — likely, even — that your brain is fried beyond fixing, and that you’re imagining things.

Maybe.

You don’t know.

You don’t hear an answer when you finally bring yourself to knock. No, you correct yourself, that’s an answer in and of itself. Acting selfishly once again, you don’t heed that silent reply. You don’t knock again, either. Heart hammering against your ribs, you wrap your hand around the knob and twist.

Part of you wants to laugh. Of course, his is the only door in the whole fucking factory that doesn’t squeak horrifically on its hinges. His tolerance level for annoyance has always been low.

Inching your way over the threshold, you call out, “Minho?” 

And once again, you don’t hear a response.

Standing now inside his room, you don’t see him — not at first. He certainly doesn’t see you. His back leans against the window frame while he slumps on the ledge, presumably staring off in the opposite direction through the glass. His defeated posture is as telling as the position he’s in. 

The Minho you know never sits with his back to a door. It’s too big a risk and too broad a target; an invitation for a nasty surprise. He’s said it a thousand times: whoever kills him needs to look him in the eyes.

This is what it looks like when a person’s given up, you think. 

This is what you did.

Throat thick, you call his name again. This time around, it barely qualifies as a whisper; all your breath is caught up in that tangle in your chest. There’s no way he heard it because you barely did. Really, you should —

“Fuck off,” Minho growls without turning around. “I won’t tell you a third time.”

His words don’t carry the same venom they usually do in circumstances like this. He just sounds hollow, and it devastates you so completely to hear the emptiness that tears start falling without your permission. You don’t move from where you stand, too overwhelmed to process both ambulation and falling apart at the seams.

The lack of footsteps tips him off to your ongoing, unwanted presence.

“When will you people give up? ” After slamming his left fist against the window frame, he pushes himself abruptly off the ledge to his feet. “I don’t want your goddamn sympathy. All I’ve ever fucking wanted is —” 

He wheels around then, fists clenched and ready to swing. All the air in his lungs leaves him when he sees you standing there. The rest of that thought is strangled, and it drops lifeless on the floor.

“You.”

You can’t guess what comes next: screaming, blame, silence, violence. You don’t even know which of those things would be worst — just that he’s entitled to all of the above, and you’ve earned the lot.

What you end up with isn’t an outcome you ever would’ve anticipated. It’s him, his quivering mouth, and his exhausted, red-rimmed eyes taking several steps forward on shaky legs. It’s a desperate bid to close the distance, and a look built on so many conflicting emotions that you can’t even begin to take inventory.

At first, your hammering heart tells you to back away; that he may hate you enough to hurt you. 

But he doesn’t.

He falls to his knees in front of you when his legs ultimately give out. Boneless, he crumples forward onto his palms until his head hangs low between his arms. From where you’re standing, it almost looks like he’s praying. That is, until you notice the way his shoulders shake.

Of all the people you’ve met in your life, Minho is the only one who seemed to be incapable of crying. Nausea swells now that he proves you wrong. It feels like a violation to see him this way, especially knowing that you’re the reason for the state he’s in.

Through a clenched jaw, he begs for answers you didn’t anticipate needing to give: 

“I’m hallucinating, aren’t I? I’ve finally lost my fucking mind?”

Oh.

Without a second thought, you fall to your knees, too. Chrome and carbon fiber scrape against concrete as you scoot yourself closer, and you pray that your proximity will be proof enough that you’re here.

It’s not.

“I left you for dead, and now I’m seeing ghosts. Is that it?”

Heartbroken, you try your best to get through, “Minho, no.”

Tentatively, you reach out to touch his shoulder, thinking that you might be able to ground him, even if you can’t comfort him. Before your fingertips find him, he senses your movement and lifts his head. Your hands automatically reroute to claim either side of his face, fingers sliding into unkempt hair. To your surprise, he doesn’t pull away. Instead, Minho studies your features intently, like he’s ruling out translucence; like his sanity is on the line.

Maybe it is.

More desperately than you ever have before, you drink down the sight of him. Beautiful, you think, even like this. 

Now that you’re able to see his face in full, you find it tear-streaked. Somehow less alarmingly, his right temple is scraped to hell and back, while his left is black-and-blue. It’s a perfect portrait of the fist that struck him. The darkest shades of indigo demarcate where the knuckles dug in deepest; and the scabbed, scarlet lines on his other side illustrate the state of the ground he fell to.

Gravel.

You have to stop yourself from asking who hurt him. After all, it doesn’t fucking matter whose name he’d drop. You already know who’s to blame. 

Nevertheless, Minho sees the question in your eyes, and he tells you, “I tried to run in after you once the bomb went off. After the fire started.”

Of course he did. What did you expect?

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, as if that’ll ever be enough. It doesn’t and won’t erase what you did, yet you repeat it anyway, “I’m so sorry.”

Opening your mouth was a mistake, you quickly realize. The dam breaks, and you can’t keep the words from spilling out. They all pile up, overlapping in time and urgency. 

Every word you say comes out in one breath; sputtered, as if your head has finally broken through the surface of rushing water. “I should’ve told you about the contingency plan, but I knew you’d try to take my place, and I couldn’t —”

“I couldn’t leave you there,” he swears, as if you left him with any other choice. “Even if I was too late to save you, I needed to bring you home.” 

Minho suddenly shifts, prompting your hands to fall from his face. To erase the distance he’s created, he sits back on his knees and pulls you into the space between them. You melt into his body when his arms wrap around you. Just as easily, you give in to the thousandth conflicting reason you’ve found to cry:

He’s never held you like this before.

With his cheek pressed to the side of your bowed head, you can feel his runaway tears. Though his voice wavers, his intentions are rock solid. “I fought like hell to get back to you. They had to knock me out just to get me into the fucking van. I didn’t want to leave you. I swear, I wouldn’t —”

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t stop the rollout,” you cry. “Keeping you in the dark was the only way to keep you safe.” You bury your face into the front of his shirt and repeat it even more emphatically, “Minho, I’m so fucking sorry.”

For a moment, he stays quiet. As curious as you are about his silence, you don’t pull away to look up at him. You think you’d rather actually die than sacrifice a single second of the closeness you walked through hell and back to find.

Eventually, without prompting, Minho does speak. His voice is so soft that his question hardly reaches you. “Why did you do it?”

You pause, unsure of which part of your explanation he wants repeated. If he’s truly asking you to start over from the top, you will. You’re prepared to rake yourself over those coals forever, but you doubt he has the time. 

“In the control room,” he explains when you don’t arrive at the point yourself. “You told me that you love me, and then you ran off to blow yourself up. Why did you leave without letting me respond?”

Once again, you’re thrown; so disoriented that you can’t find the starting line. There were several reasons for running out the way you did: fear that he’d stop you if he caught on too quickly, or that he’d follow before Jihoon could drag him to safety. More than anything, as you sheepishly admit, “I didn’t think you’d say it back.”

He goes silent again. His arms pull you even closer, though you didn’t think it was possible. 

“I think Medusa had it easy,” he confesses, sounding almost self-conscious for the first time in his life. 

Though you’re caught off-guard, you don’t interrupt him. 

He hesitates for a moment, then adds, “I think my curse has it all backwards. I turn to stone when people look at me, not the other way around.”

At this, you finally unearth your face from where it’s buried in his t-shirt. His body goes slightly slack without your frame to hold him up; the look on his face is just as deflated. 

Turning in your spot to face him, you frown, but you tell him the truth. “I’m not as good at reading you as I thought I was.”

“Say it again.” 

You blink.

Minho lifts his hand and cups your cheek. “Please,” he begs, thumb brushing over your skin. “Say it again, so I can get it right this time.”

You lean into his palm, allowing the warmth of it to radiate until you feel it everywhere — feel him everywhere. From there, as is always the case, the reflex takes over. “I love you. I think I always have.”

“I love you,” Minho echoes emphatically. “And unfortunately for you, I think I always will.”

It strikes like a pickaxe, sending cracks through a well-built wall. You swear you can hear the pieces of it falling. If you look closely, you can see the light as it rushes in.

There you are, you think. I knew you were in there somewhere.

He kisses you then, scrambling your brain so thoroughly that you almost forget it’s the first time he ever has. But he’s no stranger to you, and he proves it. Calloused hands maneuver you into his lap without resistance, without interruption, and lean arms snake around you as you straddle him, pinning you against his chest.

In an instant, you thread your fingers through his hair, hellbent on clinging to whatever parts of him you can get your hands on. That desperate grip of yours has always made him lose his mind; tonight isn’t any different. He groans into your mouth when you tug those strands now, proving that you’re no stranger, either.

His tongue flicks over your bottom lip, like he’s scratching at the door to be let in. You let him, let out some needy, mewling sound as he licks into your mouth to claim it.

Yours, you think. Yours, yours, yours.

When he unexpectedly pulls away from you, those little whines of yours only get louder. Kiss-bitten, Minho’s lips flatten into a thin line that indicates he’s fighting off a smile. 

“Spider, I know vulnerability is your thing,” he sighs. His left hand releases its hold on the bottom of your thigh. With it, he gestures to the other side of the room. “But did you mean to leave the door open for this?”

Whipping your head around, you confirm that you did not, in fact, close the door behind you. Heat rises to your face before you can stop it. No matter how thoroughly you rack your brain, you come up short. There’s no excuse— not even a bad one — for a cybersecurity expert being this abysmally accessible offline.

You’re in the middle of questioning your qualifications for the role you occupy when Minho gently pats the side of your leg, wordlessly asking you to leave his lap. With great difficulty and a dash of awkwardness, you do. Just as soon as you’re back on your feet, your body riots. All the exhaustion and soreness you’ve been ignoring screams for acknowledgement.

Minho must hear it. 

“Bed,” he murmurs, punctuating his instruction with a quick kiss to your temple.

Also a first, you note. 

Despite your long history of entanglements, you’ve never once ended up in his sheets. Your heart flutters involuntarily at the prospect; the fever-grade burning in your cheeks only gets worse. Thankfully, with his back now turned to you, Minho doesn’t see how eagerly you stagger towards the stolen bed frame in the corner. You hope he doesn’t hear the relieved moan you let out when you collapse in an aching heap on his mattress.

Across the room, the lock clicks. Footsteps follow so quietly that you would’ve missed them if you didn’t have his gait committed to memory. The person walking back to you looks unfamiliar, though — somehow. There’s no trademark sharpness at the edges now. There’s no want darkening his eyes, but something delicate that softens them.

It’s need, you realize when he comes to drape himself over you. It’s gentle, the way he compensates for your strained muscles and takes it upon himself to shed your clothes, layer by layer. And it’s trust, finally letting him see the way you exist on your own — with your artificial leg removed from the equation and set carefully off to the side.

After positioning himself between your thighs, Minho pauses. His forearms rest on either side of your head, caging you in against the pillow below. Time doesn’t seem to pass while he gazes down at you, and you certainly don’t mind the delay. Of all your moments, this one — here, with him —  is your happiest.

“In case it doesn’t go without saying,” he murmurs, nudging the tip of his nose against yours. “I forgive you for doing what you had to do.”

Blinking quickly doesn’t do much to dispel the tears prickling in the corners of your eyes. You bite your bottom lip and nod to the extent that you can. “Thank you,” you whisper.

“Do me a favor, though?”

“Anything.”

“Kiss me,” he requests, and you do.

When your mouth is finally on his, he rolls his hips forward with deliberate precision, length sliding through your arousal until he enters you, groaning. He maintains that slow, careful pace; coaxes you open for him until the stretch melts from pain to pleasure.

Eloquent as ever, you mewl with your lips still pressed to his. It’s muffled, of course, but there’s no context to miss. “Oh, my god.”

Once you acclimate to his size, Minho could ramp up the intensity if he wanted to. He doesn’t. He takes his time, grinds against you so perfectly that you’d never dream of rushing through this. 

At this pace, every stroke hits deeper than the last; each languid drag of his cock along your walls converts more and more of your thoughts to static.

It’s such a change-up from every other time you’ve wound up underneath him. Part of you wishes that you could scrap all those trysts and pretend that this is your first. In a way, you suppose, it is. There’s a drastic difference between being fucked by Minho and being loved by him. For obvious reasons, you don’t plan on going back to the way it was before.

His length grazes your g-spot, pulling a whimper out of you. Dizzy from the sensation, you don’t notice the way your cunt clenches down on him until he curses under his breath.

“Shit,” he moans, “Wish you knew how perfect you feel wrapped around me. I swear, I’m not leaving this bed as long as you’re in it.”

Another stroke hits you exactly where you crave him most. 

“Please,” you gasp, back arching off the bed. He leans in to capitalize on the length of neck you’ve left exposed; the heat of his tongue on your flesh drives you absolutely insane. “R-right there, Minho. Please, I’m so close.”

Other people have described Minho as defiant, but you have to disagree. He does precisely what you beg of him, angling each thrust to get you gushing around him. And even after he has you shaking underneath him, he refuses to slack off.

The orgasm he pulls from you is so overwhelming that you feel it tingling in your scalp, resonating down your spine until every nerve in your body is a live wire. You’re still somewhere in the stratosphere when Minho unravels, twitching and spilling inside of you until he’s got nothing left to give.

Spent, he pulls out of your heat, maneuvers himself carefully around you, and collapses at your side to catch his breath.

His eyes are closed when you regain enough motor function to turn your head his way. Across his forehead, stray strands of black hair stick to a thin veil of sweat. The slow rise and fall of his chest says he’s halfway to sleep, and with how hypnotic you find it all, you’re nearly there yourself.

Just a few more minutes, you tell yourself. It’s too hard to look away from him. You’d never had the chance to see him this way before, and you know better now than to waste it. 

“Please don’t ever stop looking at me like that,” he mumbles with his eyes still closed.

Your quiet laughter doesn’t prompt him to look at you, but it does spark the hint of a smile. “Like what, Minho?”

“Like I’m your future.”

while likes are appreciated, comments/tags/reblogs with your thoughts are really what make my brain go brrrtt.

series taglist:

@saintriots, @mal-lunar-28, @dabiscrustyfeet @ldysmfrst @obeythemasters @moni-logue

stray kids permanent taglist:

@variety-is-the-joy-of-life @sourkimchi

multi permanent taglist:

@jihopesjoint @bahng-chrizz, @/variety-is-the-joy-of-life

resources used

regarding prosthetic limbs: tiktok users @/bren_hucks @/footlessjo @/alex1leg @/bionickick; amputee coalition regarding hacking + world-building: gurps: cyberpunk guidebook by loyd blankenship

#stray kids #skz #lee know #lee know x reader #minho x reader #minho fic #minho smut #minho angst #lee know fic #lee know smut #lee know angst #lee minho #lino #stray kids fic #skz fic #stray kids smut #stray kids angst #skz smut #skz angst #stray kids series #skz series #jade writes #re: force quit #kvanity

[mrpenguinpants]

Telling genshin boys about Orpheus and Eurydice and asking them if they’d look back

My Faint Magnolia

— He wonders how many times he's heard you tell this story, and how many more he'll force you to recite.

— Dottore / Zandik

White magnolia flowers symbolize purity and perfection. [Masterlist]

I read one Wiki page so don't yell at me if I got anything wrong. Tbh, I don't really like how this fic turned out but it's been sitting in my drafts for years.

"The musician and prophet Orpheus fell in love with the beautiful Eurydice, only for her to die shortly after. Thus, he journeyed into the Underworld to plead with Hades to bring his beloved back. His wish was granted - but on the condition that he must not look back at Eurydice until they were both back in the land of the living. But Orpheus couldn't resist one glance, and Eurydice was lost to him forever."

"Fascinating. The seventh retelling adds to the suspense."

"Boo, you're no fun. Minus ten points," he hears you whine. The sounds of a book being tossed carelessly aside as ink-stained papers filled with formulas slide forward and brush against the sleeves of his arm. All are pushed away to allow you to sprawl your upper body over the desk so you can mope and continue to avoid doing any actual work. He can feel your gaze on him, patiently waiting for him to look up from his notes and give you attention, yet he continues to write making you huff in annoyance.

You're both supposed to be working on your assignments, so he has excellent reason to keep ignoring you to focus on his work. If anything, he should be annoyed at you, and he is, but it's a testament to how much he's come to tolerate you that he doesn't immediately get up and leave. Or deal with you in another, less unsavory way. Instead, he flips back through the pages of his notebook. A list of collected components of spare parts of a vast machine and smaller notes of their possible working principles and manufacturing processes. Diagrams and sketches of their possible construction and engines filled with footnotes and annotations. Not all of them are in his writing. He wouldn't dare use that atrocious shade of yellow that you seem to love so much.

"Can't we do anything else? I'm bored out of my minddd," you stretch the words out, effectively cutting his concentration in half with nothing but the sound of your voice. He can feel his eye twitch and his pencil's wood creaking from the pressure he's slowly exerting onto it. Your voice is muffled, which means you haven't picked yourself off the table yet, probably hunched over with your cheek against the table that will take another hour for you to pry yourself back up again. He can't wait for his future headache with your complaints about back problems, even though you're killing your own spine and his head. The sound of a pencil rolling back and forth fills the silence, and that's the last of his patience. He slams his notebook down, the pencil bouncing and dropping onto the floor, and the clattering of wood causes his frown to etch deeper. He re-opens his notebook to the page of the Khaenri'ahn machines found in Devantaka Mountain. There's an annoying doodle of a Ruin Hunter in the corner mocking him right back.

"Work."

His clipped voice has you quiet down. It's a good thing you have some sense of preservation and know that even though he indulges you frequently, there are only so many distractions he will let slip through. But the resounding sound of a chair scraping against the floor, papers being shuffled, and your footsteps tell him you're equally frustrated. He thinks he hears you mutter "rigid oaf" under your breath as your footsteps grow fainter. The silence should put him at ease, but it only serves to irate him further since you're the one who's causing him trouble when he just wants to work in peace and quiet. The worst thing about this situation is that he knows you'll refuse to talk to him unless he apologizes first for something he hasn't done wrong. But alas.

He lets out a deep sigh that sounds twice his age. Puspa Café should still be open at this time. If he leaves now, he can still catch up to you. With a sweep of the arm, he quickly gathers his papers haphazardly but still slides them into their rightful places between the meticulous sections of his notebook.

"Would you look back?"

He pauses when your voice sounds behind him unexpectedly. You sound a mixture of cheeky and skeptical, but the drumming of your fingertips against the back of his chair tells him that you are genuinely curious about his response. Maybe even a bit nervous to ask him such a ridiculous question too.

"The fatal flaw of Orpheus is he never stopped to consider the psychological cost of Hade's offer. To think "Do not look back" is an impossible sentence to think without simultaneously speaking the opposite. Every time you repeat, "I must not look back," you are forced to say: "Look back." But that is the weakness of the human mind," is the answer he supplies. He thumbs at the edges of his notebook, worn from all the years he's opened it but still in pristine condition. He doesn't like his things to be dirty. It makes his skin crawl.

"What? Are you above the human mind now? So you wouldn't be tempted at all?" you say with a hint of dumbfoundedness. He's sure you think that he won't give you an actual answer.

"No."

His answer is short but firm. He won't look back. He won't be Orpheus and lose his Eurydice so easily to temptation. His finger moves and tips the cover open, papers flipping until they stop in the middle of the book. Frantic scribbles of ink of his research on the rare disease of Elezar. He thumbs the page's corner until it creases.

"Hey, look at me."

The next page is on segments.

"Why won't you look at me."

The final page is on dreams.

""Please look at me Zandik."

He closes the notebook.

"I thought Orpheus couldn't hear Eurdicye."

He hears you laugh at his unempathetic reply. It's a hallow imitation. Then silence. It always ends like this. His mind dangling what he needs most only to take it away, making him question if you are even still there behind him. Just one look. Just one look to confirm what's behind him but he won't. He won't be a fool like Orpheus. Not until he's finished. So he does what he always has, removes any option he hates, and creates his own means.

+

He blinks awake slowly. The white ceiling of his laboratory stares at him back and the first thing his mind registers is that it's cold. His hand automatically moves to his side only to meet air. That's right, you're not here anymore. You haven't been here for years. The manifestation of the withering caused dark hardened scales to grow across your limbs. Slowly numbing the affected areas until you couldn't walk anymore, which progressed into fatigue and progressive nerve damage. Your last days were spent asleep in a coma surrounded by as many Nilotpala Lotuses as he could find. He closes his eyes again, but the sound of the heavy steel door grates against his nerves before he has the time to truly relax.

"You know you'll never succeed. You know why. Even if this one doesn't die, it won't be the same."

The voice isn't right. Another failure.

Dottore lifts his head to see your segment standing in front of him. That's correct. He can already see the beginnings of scales on the segment's arms. It's funny. He is capable of creating physical carbon copy segments of himself from different stages of his life and yet you, the outlier, it's never the same. A body is made, and a piece of his memories of you acts as the brain, but it's never the same. He knows why. It's because his memories of you are dying. His dreams are getting shorter, and fuzzier around the edges. He used to dream of seeing you, holding you, and he knows the next time he dreams of you, he may not hear your voice anymore. His own segment thoughts echo in his mind. Don't you think this is a waste of materials and time? It's time to give up. They don't understand, they can't dream.

He won't look back because he knows that as soon as he does, he will never dream of you again. Even if the next dream takes away your voice, the next takes away your presence, until he's left with a void of nothing. Even then, he won't look back. He has only dreamed of you every single night, regardless of anything. These are the only things he has left of you. Everything else was taken, stolen, or burnt. He isn't sure if the person he's constantly dreaming of now is actually you or a figment of his imagination that's begging to be free. But he won't let you go.

My doleful aria, tell me that story again tonight.

#genshin #genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin dottore x reader #dottore x reader #il dottore x reader #genshin headcanons #genshin impact headcanons #genshin imagines #genshin impact imagines #genshin dottore #genshin impact dottore #dottore #il dottore #genshin zandik #dottore headcanons

[nexility-sims]

𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐄'𝐒 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒 / ❛ boy crazy ❜ part 1 (@armoricaroyalty)

❝ The Lover's Gala was the Armorican Queer Front's biggest annual event and 2044 was the 25th Anniversary. The organization's communications team had spent months putting out stories about the gala and the celebrities and members of the royals family expected to attend, trying without much success to turn the event into a major cultural major. Overnight, Princess Zofia (and her new boyfriend) blew them all out of the water. It was only his second time in Armorica, and the first time they'd appeared in public together since the funeral. It was only natural that they landed on the front page of every newspaper in the country, the gala (and the work done by the AQF) a vague footnote after paragraphs upon paragraphs breathlessly speculating about the intimate details of the lovebirds' long-distance relationship. "

♥ shoutout to gabe for pitching this very fun idea, as well as for the title card, the contextual prose, and, of course, my beloved daughter miss zofia augusta st. fleur !!!!!!! she's my favorite barbie doll & has been for a long time :^) i guess i love and adore my son as well, but nonetheless. this is special in part because it's the first time i've written them speaking outside of a parody piece that will never see the light of day. anyway, enjoy this super premature dialogue-inclusive, full-color sneak peak of Them™

PART 2

TRANSCRIPT:

{Light music, overlapping conversations}

[Z] It’s gotten so long since December!

[R] Anything for you.

[Z] Anything at all? Promise?

[R] On my life.

[Z] So ... Can we leave then?

[R] Well, that’s actually your call—

[Z] Okay, let’s leave right now!

[R] We’ve been here for only a short while, Fia.

[R] Even less if you count the “restroom break.”

[Z] That was worth it, and no one even noticed.

{Knocking}

[Z] Occupied!

[Z] Anyway, Hannah’s still here. Even Pidge. Et cetera. We can go.

[R] They walked out ten minutes ago—Hannah with Hugo, Margaret following Arthur. All through a servant’s door. Very conspicuous.

[Z] Did they? Huh. So they did.

{Rui laughs}

[Z] Look, if we leave now, it’ll be perfect. It’s barely nine o’clock. We can go back to the city, change clothes, go dancing—!

{Imaginary club music thudding} [Z&R V.O.] Party all night—bet you don’t believe me, but we actually do have good clubs [Rui snickers] or, like, one I like a lot—then I get a cheeseburger—[no pickles]—right! Oh, remember that poor cashier in Nakawe? You sure told him. [“Plain” means plain.] My hero! Anyway, then you carry me and my sore feet to bed. Ideal night.

[Z] You can keep this on, actually. Maybe ditch the jacket.

[R] Undo another button or two?

[Z] Of course. [Soft sigh] You get me.

[Z] The rose is also a must.

[R] It’s for you—a keepsake.

[Z] Aw. Our first appearance and our first Valentine’s Day ...

[R] A sign, probably. Meant to be.

[Z] Romance novel worthy. I’d read it.

[R] The boxes are checked: excitement, fate, many graphic—

[Z] No! Erotic. {Repeats in Armorican} Memorize that one.

{Murmuring}

[R] Do you think I should’ve worn a tie this evening?

[Z] What?

[R] If we were home, obviously not. But, Armorica is ... People here seem to care a lot about unnecessary things. So, was that a misstep?

[Z] {Laughs}

[Z]  Pfft. Hugo didn’t even have his jacket on.

[R] {Scoff} I am not Hugo.

[R] I want to make a good impression—on your family, really. This visit is different. They’re all, for better or worse, paying attention to me.

[Z] Are you kidding? Mission accomplished. [Z] Trust me, they love you! Now, come on, let’s go already—!

#ahhhh happy v day everyone !!!!! #sorry to literally everyone else #but they are my favorites of favorites hands down #ch.zofia #ch.rui #part two Soon

[mythserene]

I'll Follow the Sun's 15 words in Tune In

Following along with AKOM I was struck by this page as I was passing it, so just out of curiosity I googled to see what I could find out about "I'll Follow the Sun" that would have been available before Lewisohn wrote Tune In, and what could Lewisohn have done with his prose for this song?

From Beatles Music History website:

"I wrote that in my front parlour in Forthlin Road. I was about 16," McCartney stated in an interview. This would date the song as being written as far back as 1958. He continues, "So, 'I'll Follow The Sun' was one of those very early ones. I seem to remember writing it just after I'd had the flu...I remember standing in the parlour looking out through lace curtains of the window and writing that one."

There is a recording in existence (available on bootlegs) of the early Beatles, known then as The Quarrymen, performing the song. The electric guitar arrangement features Paul, John and George on guitar with Stuart Sutcliffe on bass and presumably Tommy Moore on drums. According to McCartney, who purchased the tape from Peter Hodgson in 1995, the recording dates back to April of 1960 and was made in the bathroom of his home at 20 Forthlin Road during a school holiday. McCartney's recollection of the "middle eight" being re-written before they recorded it professionally is confirmed by this early rough recording, because the lyrics of this middle section appears to say "Well, don't leave me alone, I need you/ Now hurry and follow me, my dear." 

Tune In:

“I’ll Follow the Sun.” Paul came up with this rhythmic ballad alone, words and music, on his Zenith guitar.

There's a very good story and all we get is "rhythmic ballad on his Zenith guitar"? But all that about a John song that doesn't even really seem like a John song? 

It does get a bit more ink in Chapter 15 when Lewisohn talks about the bootleg, but I can't see anyone who loves writing about where songs come from as much as Lewisohn does passing up all the history of one of their most beloved songs that a bootleg even exists for. A bootleg with different lyrics, that he never mentions! There's just a lot on this song that he could've done so much with, and although I wrote before that I don't think Lewisohn is actually trying to settle scores, I am now genuinely starting to wonder.

Lewisohn on "I'll Follow the Sun" in the bootleg:

There’s also the earliest-available recordings of “One After 909,” “I’ll Follow the Sun” and “Hello Little Girl.” “One After 909” is clearly a diamond in the rough, polished by John and Paul’s attractive harmonizing. “I’ll Follow the Sun” is Paul alone, guitar and voice, save for someone (probably John) slapping a guitar case.

I'll say this, once you start noticing the attention to detail and real estate, you really start noticing. I had focused on the jealousy footnotes early on in my reading because it stood out to me so much, and once I realized how few were supported I was awestruck and started digging more, but I hadn't given thought or attention to the broader comparisons. 

Absolutely blown away, tbh. I am less enamored of the space comparisons in general because they're more subjective than just the, "What, he's saying Paul was jealous because he wanted to be out front and he hated Stu from a quote saying 'I was playing the drums with a broomstick between my legs and it wasn't easy"??" But although they're harder to point out, they are most certainly there, and there to a truly unpardonable extent. This one blew my ass away.

Honestly, WTF?

Since I referenced it, the "Paul's jealousy was stoked because he was unhappy because he liked exhibiting versitility and nobody looked at the drummer and did I mention he was jealous?" pages below.

#the beatles #lewisohn #akom #historiography #fine tuning #paul mccartney #john lennon #beatles #tune in #i'll follow the sun #the quarrymen

[turtleneck-crowley]

Wake up babes of the GO fandom turtleneck-crowley just dropped their most recent Magnus Opus🥰🥰🥰

Hey guys I am a eccentric genius artist of the century whose works will probably only be appreciated post mortem (self-diagnosed)

Im also very certain you would all blorbos me if I were a fictional character but alas I am a boring meat package that got birthed out of an afab physiology and thus a sack of mouldy potatoes might have been a more interesting source writing this post. (Pure hubris, part irrational resentment that you are all quite familiar with *cheeky hot wink*)

I happen to own a get out of jail free card called catch 22 which is crafted out of part sarcasm, part idgasinglefgtfoofmyfacei180dmycringethroughyearsofpainandselfrelctionthatim toocoolforyounow public image

(if you actually read that you deserve, well nothing actually except perhaps my condolences and a consensual pat on the back that implies my unlicensed diagnosis that you are in fact, not dyslexic)

Anyhow cracking on back to the sentence *sighs and rolls eyes with you*

(-I mean in the streets, not with you guys, here im babygirl with half a brain cell/true form), part wholesome idiocy, years of experience in masking, part looking presentable, part knowing how society and science and art works and trying to be in tact with my own sense of humanity as much as possible -at least to the point where I’m not breaking any humanitarian law…

And yes bitch the whole eccentric genius /madly passionate or passionately mad paradox catch 22 license holder is you af - want a gold star? ⭐️ (crowley ref) (affectionate banter)

Fact is tumblrinas like to heighten and balance their EQ and IQ agreed?

I’m hyper aware that you guys are smart enough to assess me as going through a manic phase that is on the verge of psychotic-having observed hints of madness in my recent posts deducing via your own experiences that I have gone through a strict diet of coffee, whiskey, smut that Neil Gaiman himself would tear his locks and Sir Terry Pratchett would roll in his grave, finished off with a nice slice of Hozier songs as dessert

(that’s on top of of a yet to be discovered food chain which I call the Antichrist diet footnote: please credit me after I die before my Tesla gets Edisoned

‘Tis actually a great alternative way to invoke a psychedelic experience in substitute of the more expensive and questionably unlawful way that is smoking crack *disclaimer not recommended for the faint hearted or those self-diagnosed as mentally stable)

You are perfectly correct! Here’s another gold star!!! ⭐️

In fact I am currently being yelled by my parents to come downstairs because I need to be dropped off to the asylum while I’m trying to actually do something that gives me joy (Joan of Arc eat your heart out) and I assure you I have eyes and witness my very legs , naked and hairy (and did I mention Im only wearing a slutty black bra and skirt that I wore as a swimming suit AND a pajama and now my back to the looney bin outfit?) leaving a perfectly good soup with baguettes as evidenced here

However, I would like to UNO reverse such a caring notion by giving you a purple heart 💜

and divert you with a fun little clip that displays our para social relationship that I am hoping has deepened through my superficial charm to portray our rendezvous as warm and familiar and human as our beloved Mr. Holmes and Doctor Watson:

No worries, Watson also came with the conslusion that the person he’s engaged with (more like to amiright- not us i mean, them, that’s where the analogy is cut off back into our real identities) is “not human”

Anyhow it might not be your cup of tea but at least hold the mug for a few minutes it’s worth it

Head fic: Gods of Sex and Idiocy

(If anything please see it as a game where we can title it better cause I’m shit at naming things - I call one of my plants Joe)

Hey Good Omens fandom

With the note of:

“who needs sane when you have creative”

-turtleneck-crowley

I have made a meta season 3 in my head and the stars have even sent me a playlist ??? (It’s the only one that seems to be downloaded on my wifi less phone)

Here’s the link:

Check out some of my latest posts

It’s really immersive and otherworldly

Down the rabbit hole and through the mirror you go 🐇🎩🪄

And what if season 1 is the ace route and season 2 is the sexual route so season 3 might be an aro route to defeating the enemy?

Ngk idk idc idgaf

I’m just like phone rn

(side note: why do I have the infinite capacity of taking pains (Sherlock reference) for being a mad artist instead of working on the next big physics formula answer? Good question: I’m actually just an emotional idiot aka sexy trash ✨ that’s addicted to blogging and I wouldn’t trade it for any other praise worthy status in the world 💜)

Honestly guys I sound like a sociopath but I’m really just very pained and fucked royally by circumstance that is too dramatic and gay for anyone except the loonies on tumblr to understand. I’m so disappointed by all this unjust pain and agony of the world- the children, the animals, the environment, the people that I have conditioned myself to display an eloquence so pungent it seems like I’m a cold manipulator. For if I ever showed myself for who I was to them- the judgers, the perverted, the scheming, I would surely be dead either by my own or someone else’s hands. Maybe I’m God and they just like tumblr and good omens and want to eat crepes in peace with the personality they split into 2 -preferably in Paris. Maybe they have been placed all the blame by the enemy and they are powerless to the human condition as you all are by an unknown enemy and is fated to be tortured in anxiety and pain invisible to all and the only infinite power they have is love that bleeds.

But I’ll give you and I both the peace of mind that I am an in fact just a mentally ill human whose life span is between the zones of expiration and fermentation, with a god complex, whom their closest people will never truly know how to care no matter how much they try- and in fact the more they try to help me the more they leave me in my original state- alone.

I leave you (no I’m not killing myself you idiot I’m going to the mental hospital to be molested by nightmares of demons - I literally experience it everyday- as they force me to take my sleeping pills which sinks me deeper into it-oh wait that’s kind of worse lmao) with this favorite piece of classical music of mine

Stay safe yall I love you

#good omens #crowley #good omens fandom #Spotify #aziraphale #good omens headcanons #catch 22 #my only talent is lying (aka calling madness creativity and convincing people I’m intelligent and attractive)

[rosewaterandivy]

Through Me Prequel - i. the hanged man

Summary: Steve may be slow on the draw, but hand to god, he's sure there's something ... off about you. Or, the three times Steve was a witness and the one time he wishes he wasn't.

Pairing: Steve Harrington x fem!reader, eventual Steddie x fem!reader in the series

WC: 5.2K

Warnings/Themes: cursing, criticism of religion (catholicism/xtiantiy mostly), religious themes, canon-typical violence, death, idolatry via smut, blasphemy, heretical notions, angst, occasional fluff (as a treat), Biblical & western literary canon and media references/allusions

A/N: This is the first of three prequels centering on the three main characters. If you're up on your tarot know-how, you can glean some info from the banner, etc. 👀 Special shout out to my beloved Jo (@jo-harrington) for looking this over way back when! If you haven't checked out As Above, So Below, wtf are you even doing with your life!?

Please do not interact if you aren't 18+.

Nota bene: Reblogging, commenting, and liking my work is always appreciated; reposting, however, is not. This (*) is a singal to check the footnote at the end!

Enjoy! 💜

Masterlist | Playlist | Currently Spinning:

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"I don't care how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. It's enough to know that for some people they exist, and that they dance."

— Mary Oliver, "Angels"

Wednesday, November 9, 1983

You first meet Steve Harrington on a cold day in early November. A feast day, memorializing one basilica or another according to your latest missive— it was hard to keep track, much less whether it was one to be observed. 

A shrill ring from the phone in the motel room, this side of too loud and unfortunately, it’s enough to rouse you. 

“What?”

“We have some concerns regarding a small Midwestern town, Hawkins, Indiana.”

Blearily you sit up, “Yeah?”

“Just a drive-by should suffice.”

A sigh, “Got anything else for me?”

The voice paused, as if annoyed by your tone. “We’ll be in touch, as always.”

The sound of the dial tone did nothing to elevate your mood. While presently not on a mission, you bided your time by locating relics and artifacts for future use. Yesterday’s attempt turned out to be more burden than boon— not only was the pawnshop owner a shyster but a gun-for-hire. So, no relic to be had and you had to disarm the guy, what a waste.

Luckily, Hawkins was only four hours drive from Lebanon and sounded like a pretty easy day. 

But no one bothered to tell you that a boy and teenage girl were missing.

Driving down main street, the town seemed fairly normal. But the gooseflesh running up your arms and legs told a different story. As did the telltale scent of bleach in the air, signaling the presence of some high-voltage electrical discharge— ozone.

Flipping on your police scanner, you were able to glean the address of a witness and potential suspect. Consulting the map on the passenger seat, you turn off the main drag and head toward the outskirts of town. 

In the driveway, there are two vehicles, one black sedan and one maroon BMW. Parking in front of the house, you grab a pen and a notebook along with a badge. After checking your hair briefly in the side-view mirror, you pull on a trench coat and knot it at the waist.

Walking up the pavement, you note the police tape against the double-doors and tire treads from other vehicles. Based on the number, you’d have to guess a party of some kind was thrown the night before. 

Three quick raps on the door.

“Police, open up!”

A harried, but well-kept woman opens the door. “Yes, can I help you?” She asks politely, with a slight tremor in her voice.

“Are you Mrs. Harrington?” She nods. “Very well ma’am. I’m Detective Constantine with Hawkins P.D. May I come inside?” You display your badge for her viewing.

Another voice sounds out from the house, perturbed. “Tell her to come back with a warrant.”

The woman’s eyes blow wide, hesitant to refuse her husband. Her mouth opens to explain.

You sigh, pocketing the badge and raise your voice. “Sir, considering that a girl went missing here on your property last night, I am well within my rights to search your home without a warrant.” You smile, trying your best to remain civil. “But I am more than happy to radio the Chief from my car to relay your sentiments.”

The sound of shuffling papers and a creak from an old office chair. The door opens wider, revealing a man, Mr. Harrington, bags under his eyes and tie loose around his neck. 

“I assure you, that won’t be necessary,” He says with a tight-lipped smile and opens the door wider.

With a nod, you enter, notebook out and pen ready. Assessing the home, you take a few cursory notes. Walking from the foyer to the living room, through the dining room and out onto the patio you stop— a young man in a pool chair grabbing your attention.

He looks dazed, staring at the covered pool. Legs pulled to his chest and chin resting on the tops of his knees. Dressed in a teal sweatshirt, sweatpants and socks you wonder how he isn’t shivering from the cold. 

In an attempt to gently alert him of your presence, you softly clear your throat. His head jerks upward quickly, panicked eyes locked on you. “It’s okay,” you say, sitting on a chair to his left. “I’m just here to ask you some questions.”

He nods slowly, eyes never leaving you. A dull buzzing rattling in his chest. 

Briefly consulting your notes, you lick your lips. “It’s Steve, right?”

“Y-yeah, Steve Harrington.”

“Great!” You smile and nod. “I’m Detective Constantine. Can you tell me about the party last night?”

He nods gaze fixed on you, on the hazy glow that seems to encircle your head; he blinks and scrubs a hand down his face; the image gone. “It was just a small thing, me, Tommy Hagan, Carol Perkins, and Nancy Wheeler.”

“And the missing girl?”

“Right, Barb Holland. Nance invited her.”

“Nancy Wheeler, she’s your girlfriend?”

Another nod. 

“Did you notice anything odd about Barb or anyone else last night?”

“No, not really. She didn’t, uh, seem to want to be here.” He frowns, brows furrowing, a slight tremor runs through him, from the cold or the shock, who’s to say?

 “I think she cut her hand opening a beer, maybe?” 

Jotting down a few more notes, you nod. “But didn’t make a call or say anything about making plans to leave?”

“No.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“Nance and I went inside, Barb stayed out by the pool. Didn’t hear anything from upstairs.”

Glancing up from your notes, you pause. Steve’s warmed up to you during the brief conversation, legs crossed in front of him instead of drawn to his chest. He looks tired, looks scared.

“Your room, I presume.”

He blushes at that, nods. Takes a tense breath in, inhaling the tangy scent and taste of newly forged metal - sharp and pure at the back of his throat.

“Can you point to where you last saw Barb?”

He does so, drawing your eyes to the far lip of the pool where the Harrington lot backs into the woods. There’s a tinge of ozone in the air, albeit fading, and a tang of copper. That’s to be expected from a cut on the hand, but the electrical discharge—

“There wasn’t a storm last night? Lightning or anything like that?”

Steve shakes his head, opens his mouth to say something when the sliding door opens. 

“He wants a lawyer!” Mr. Harrington shouts, “Steve, I told you to request a lawyer before speaking with the cops.”

Steve rolls his eyes and turns back toward the house, “It’s fine, dad.”

Before Mr. Harrington can get his panties in a twist, you decide to take your leave. Standing, you pocket your notebook with one hand and place the pen behind your ear with the other. Extending a hand toward Steve, you smile. 

“Thanks for your cooperation Steve.”

His hand clasps yours—warm and oddly familiar. “You’re welcome, I’m happy to help.”

Cocking your head, your eyes narrow to where your hand meets his. The feeling subsides, quelling any suspicions you may have had. 

“Mr. Harrington.” You drop Steve’s hand and nod to his father, “The precinct will be in touch should there be any further questions. Your patience and cooperation are appreciated.”

And with a turn of your heel, you walk away.

A few hours later, there’s another knock at the door.

Steve answers it, waking from a nap on the couch. Eyes slowly opening, mouth like dried cotton. 

The advil he’d swallowed earlier clearly did nothing to alleviate his headache, and the nap proved less than helpful. 

At least the buzzing had died down. The newfound shortness of breath, however, had lingered.

He pulls the door open with a huff to reveal none other than Chief Hopper and his deputy.

“Afternoon, Steve,” he greets, eyes scanning the entryway. “Your parents home?”

Steve shakes his head, rubs the sleep from his eyes. “A detective already stopped by, earlier today.”

Hopper’s lips pull tight. “Huh.” He nods to the deputy and they leave to assess the scene, “Well, s’it alright if was take a look around here?”

He sighs, growing weary. “Yeah, sure.”

“Get some rest kid,” the Chief says and turns on his heel to go.

Steve shuts the door and drags himself upstairs. Falls face-first into bed with hopes to sleep off his headache and exhaustion.

Doesn’t hear the phone ring or Nancy leave a message.

In fact, he sleeps for three days. Specters of light dancing behind the darkness of his eyelids, and wakes with dried blood in his ears.

Sunday, January 1, 1984

He recognizes the buzzing first, the reverberation lodged somewhere behind his ribs. Knows the headache is likely to follow and shoves his sunglasses on, as if that could possibly help.

Steve’s idling in the parking lot of St. Mary’s waiting for Nancy while she attends Mass. Something about a feast for Mary or the circumcision of the Christ-child, he stopped listening and looped the curls of the telephone cord around his finger.

Parents already gone after the Christmas holiday, never staying longer than necessary.

He’d hemmed and hawed at all the right parts, while scanning through the paper for showtimes. Circled Scarface— as if she’d see that, Silkwood— a maybe, if he’s being honest, and finally Terms of Endearment— god help him.

And now, it was 30 minutes to showtime, and she was running late. 

In the distance, he sees a bright flash of light. Hears the rattle and hum that follows.

Soon after, a black impala pulls into the parking lot. Correction, a smoking impala peels into the lot, sliding into a nearby parking spot expertly.

Well, that's new.

He watches as you exit the vehicle, slowly, casually, not with haste. Brushing the plumes of gray smoke aside flippantly, as if it wasn't cause for concern. A pair of sunglasses affixed to your face, frames and lenses dark resting on your nose and cheekbones. 

A tiny lift of your crimson mouth is all it takes to send the blood rushing to his head. You nod in greeting to the congregants as they exit the church, as they shake hands with the priest and visit in the narthex. 

You share a look with the priest, meaningful and urgent.

A tingling sensation as Nancy opens the door and slides into the passenger seat.

“Sorry about that.” She leans over to kiss him on the cheek, but Steve can’t stop staring at you.

Thank god for sunglasses.

“You okay?” Her voice is tinged with concern.

“Yeah, fine.” He says absently, shifting the car into gear, “Thought I was getting a headache but—”

“Another one?”

Steve sucks his teeth, he really doesn’t want to have this conversation again. “It’s not a big deal Nance.”

The tension in his neck and shoulders alleviated, a dull roar in his ears. 

Pulling out of the parking lot, they pass where you’ve parked. His sunglasses slip minutely, just enough for him to glance at you over the bridge of them.

Catching his eye, you send a redolent wink in response.

“Do you know her?”

He clears his throat, letting the pedestrians pass by. “Uh, maybe?” 

Nancy turns quickly, hazarding a glance, licks her lips while Steve clenches his jaw.

“Wow,” She breathes. “She’s—”

Steve speeds out of the parking lot like a bat outta hell. And Nancy never got to complete that thought.

Saturday, November 3, 1984

He doesn’t see you again that year, but Nancy does.

Saturday, June 29, 1985

The heat on this bus is oppressive. Offensive, even.

Even more so combined with the sweat 70-odd middle schoolers. The green ringer t-shirt with the unfortunate goldenrod yellow collar wasn’t helping things either. But, if you’d known all the particulars, you wouldn’t have taken the job.

Bagging hellspawn in the wilds of Wisconsin wasn’t worth dealing with a bunch of tweens who were hormonal and struggling to develop something called empathy.

They were mean in a scarily accurate and precise way.

“Okay twerps!” You raise a hand in the air, and count it off, “1, 2, 3, eyes on me!” 

You lean against the back of the seat, facing the kids as their conversations drop to a murmur. Clipboard in hand, you flip through the brightly colored papers before addressing them once more.

“We’ll be coming to our final destination of Hawkins, in a few moments.” You pause to wipe your brow, “Couple of things to keep in mind: take only your stuff and no one else’s. Locate your adult person, parent or guardian, and then…”

You wait as the bus hisses to halt in front of the high school. 

“Hey, sit back down Henderson, I’m not done yet.”

He grouses, crosses his arms and reluctantly sits.

“Right, so you find your adult and then check-out with me. Get it?”

“Got it!” They yell back and then it’s off to the races.

You brace yourself against the onslaught of tweens rushing toward the exit, clipboard clutched to your chest.

After the deluge, you scramble off the sticky plastic seat. “Thanks Larry!” You call to the bus driver and walk down the aisle, making sure no one left anything behind.

A radio crackles to life a few rows ahead of you.

“Dustin? Do you copy? Over.”

Rolling your eyes, you grab the hunk of plastic and thumb the call button. “Uh, roger that. Breaker one-nine. Henderson left his walkie on the bus. Over.”

Static and then.

“Shit.”

Shoving the behemoth in your back pocket, you step off of the bus, clipboard at the ready to check-out the campers.

Swamped with beleaguered kids and frazzled parents demanding medications and prescriptions, and mailing addresses and so forth, that you barley register the crackle and static from the walkie.

“Can you uh—” You wag a finger at an overly eager parent and pry the thing from your pocket. “What?”

“... Are you seriously mad right now?”

“Yes!” You sputter, rolling your eyes at the voice over the radio. “I’m kind of trying to do my job here.”

A laugh. “Funny, I thought you were a detective.”

You pale, a dull roar crashing through your ears. The voice is warm and melodic, slow like honey.

Handing off the clipboard to a junior counselor, you peer across the blacktop. And spy a figure leaning against the hood of a red car wearing black sunglasses. A smaller figure, jumping and waving at you in, of course, green and yellow.

“But then again.” The fuzz of static. “You were getting cozy with the padre, so maybe a change of pace. You a novitiate or just confessing?”

You refrain, with difficulty, from rolling your eyes.

“What’s it to you?”

Dustin whining when it clicks back on, “C’mon man.”

“Dinner.”

A scoff, “You wish.”

“Clearly.”

His response brings you pause, unusually forthright.

Lip pulled between your teeth, you leave him hanging for a minute and mentally sort through all the reasons why you shouldn’t.

Potential murderer - they never did find Barb Holland.

He apparently hangs out with Henderson—too many questions there to unpack there, but mainly: … why?

Already has a girlfriend, Nina… Nicole?

It would distract you from your work, but all work and no play makes you restless, and a little reckless. Speaking of which…

Pressing the call button down, you sigh. “Counter offer. I’ll allow you buy me a late lunch at the diner.”

You remember seeing a payphone somewhere around there and it’s public, so if it goes south you’ll have an easy out; you make plans to befriend the waitress, just in case.

The smugness radiates from his voice. “We have got to work on your negotiation skills.” 

A crackle of static. You make a big show of turning the walkie’s dial off and shoving it back into your pocket before going back to work.

Following the directions he’d sent down with Dustin when he collected his precious walkie-talkie, you pull up to a place called Enzo’s.

Scanning the parking lot, your lips pull into a scowl when you see him.

Ah. There he is. You slam your door shut. That motherfucker.

Grinning like he’s the cat that caught the canary and goddamnit, being that attractive when smug shouldn’t be allowed.

“This isn’t what I agreed to.”

“Huh.” He cocks his head, “You don’t say.”

“What’re you playing at Harrington?”

He shrugs, hands shoved in the pockets of his too-tight jeans. You make the mistake of keeping his hands in your eyeline, looking down as you do so, and audibly gulp at the sight. Those jeans sure are tight, aren't they?

“My eyes are up here.”

You frown, and he laughs. Walks you into the restaurant— holds the door, and pulls out your chair, like a real gentleman.

A waiter quickly stops by, taking drink orders and rattling off the specials. You glace around the dining room, feeling out of place amongst the off-the-shoulder tops and high heels. Crossing your Converse-clad feet on top of one another, you stow them under the table and out of sight.

At least you weren’t wearing the ‘CAMP KNOW WHERE ‘85’ t-shirt and shorts any more.

Small miracles.

“Oh,” You say before the waiter, Kevin, goes to his next table, “Is there a payphone around here? I need to make a quick call.”

“You can use the bar phone,” He points to the bar by the hostess station. “Chris will be happy to help you.”

“Thanks!”

Steve eyes you as you stand up to leave, “Better be local distance or Enzo’ll be mad.”

“Bite me.”

He sips his drink. “Only if you ask nicely.”

With a roll of your eyes you leave him at the table perusing the menu.

Rapping your knuckles on the bar top, you smile as the bar tender approaches. “What can I get you?”

“Kevin said I could make a call from here?”

“Oh, sure.”

He leaves to get the phone and slides it in front of you before assisting another customer. You punch in the 618 area code followed by the all-too familiar number and listen as it trills.

Murray, of course, answers on the final ring.

Asshole.

“Behold!” He crows, “She brings me good tidings of great joy!”

“I hate you.”

He scoffs, “Yeah, yeah. What else is new?”

You turn back to look at Steve, he, annoyingly, waves. You reply in kind, waving your fingers before flipping him off.

“Not cursed? Bloodsick? Howling at the moon?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Still a messianic specter, sorry to report.”

“Sooooo.” You drawl, “This is your way of telling me you’ve got nothing.”

“Uh, huh.”

“And there’s no news.”

“Yep.”

You sigh, resting your forehead against the smooth lacquered wood of the bar. No jobs, no prospects, just great.

“Where are you staying? I’ll give you a ring when I get something interesting.”

You hum and stand back up. “Dunno Murray. Was kinda counting on a job to get me outta this town.”

Chris slides a drink down to you. Tequila, if you had to guess. Down the hatch it goes. You nod in thanks.

“Well, call me when you’re settled. Who knows, a slow summer might do you some good.”

“Ugh.” 

You hang up the phone with a clatter and turn back to the table with a huff.

Under the evening sunlight scattered by a canopy of leaves and panes of glass, he rests his hand on your bare shoulder, squeezing ever so slightly.

Steve shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t be as cavalier with his hospitality and his attention. Doesn’t know you from Adam and has already offered up the guest room.

He’s not normally this sloppy. But after things had gone sideways in ‘83 and then gone to shit in ‘84, Steve found himself slipping. Always looking over his shoulder, wondering when you’d blow back into town.

The detective turned nun turned camp counselor (Dustin swore you made the best s’mores) turned… well, whatever this was.

Not such a mystery anymore.

There is heat. There is the frame of his bed cracking. Carpet burns on his knees and back. Damp hairs on the nape of your neck. Bruises and bite marks and scratches all over him and strangely none on you, but not for lack of trying.

When he holds your torso against his, you grip him right back, and the pressure makes him feel like he could snap in half. It is wild and ferocious, tension sparking like a snarling animal ready to pounce.

He doesn’t call you darling or baby or sweetheart because those servile names feel so discourteous to what you actually are (and it’s only an inkling, but if he’s right—). He only pants and grunts and whispers fuck, fuck, fuck like a prayer.

“Don’t hold back on me now, Harrington.” You laugh, licking the sweat dripping down into your mouth. “You’ve always been honest. Go on, tell me what you want.”

He fists your hair from behind, pulls a growl from your throat, tangles his legs between yours as the two of you lie on your sides and goddamn it, he fucks you like he could die tonight. The sound of your ass slapping the smooth plane of his torso rings like a bell through the room. Your fist finds a handful of his hair and wrenches him away. You hold him down and crawl on top with a low chuckle.

“Tell me what you want.”

It’s futile to fight you. You are faster and stronger and beneath you, in the vastness of his own room, you could swallow him whole and he would let it happen.

“I want you.” Steve breathes, raspy and raw, grabbing your shoulders in an attempt to pull you down. You bat him away and lean back instead, propping up on your feet, knees apart, showing him the entirety of your body. Gorgeous. Marble smooth. Hard as granite, but flecked with gold and dappled light.

Steve’s breath hitches in his throat.

You look cold in the way a statue might, but in the center where you are hot and wet, he could devote himself to forever. 

“I want you now.”

With a savage grin gracing the transcendent beauty of your face, you allow him this request. Steve Harrington, merely mortal, succumbs entirely to your touch. His body melts into yours, shudders with reverence for your power and gravity, and he feels like he could burst apart inside of you.

Your breath is all he can hear. Your sweat is all he can taste.

You are ethereal.

And he will worship you to the end of his days.

Thursday, October 31, 1985

The bells chime on the door of Family Video before he can say that they’re closed and yes, they’re also sold out of Ghostbusters and Beverly Hills Cop.

Robin had already clocked out, picked up by some friends from band for a Halloween party, so it was just Steve closing up.

Too distracted by counting the till to acknowledge the buzz in his chest, the tension melting from his body. A distinct lack of headaches for a few months now too.

“Steve.”

A soft drip on the floor, like a leaky faucet when he glances up.

And you’re stumbling on the carpet like it’s moving beneath your feet. You’re trying to give Steve a reassuring smile and only getting across a grimace. 

From what he can tell, at least.

Because you are absolutely, positively covered, head to toe, in so much blood and viscera it’s no longer red but black, dripping off of you like sludge where it hadn’t already dried. The whites of your eyes and teeth are visible, and that is not an image he necessarily wanted to have of you.

Ever, really.

“I’m alright, Steve,” You attempt. Your teeth are chattering.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Steve replies, shutting the register drawer with a flick of his wrist and shoving the deposit in the safe.

“This, uh,” You glance down at your current state, frowning.

“Not yours?” He guesses, stepping out from behind the counter, paper towels in hand. “Well, I’d hate to see the other guy.”

You rasp a laugh that quickly devolves into a cough.

“Yeah,” You say once you’ve recovered, “Totally nailed him.” 

He can see as you waggle your brows, underneath the layers of blood, dirt, and grime— dried blood pulling your skin taut as it moves. Steve sucks his teeth.

“I don’t even wanna know, do I?”

Delirium is definitely sinking in because you laugh, recalling the nail gun and the thunkthunkthunk of steel driving into flesh, muscle, and bone. The screams and wails, followed by the death-rattle. His hands are on his hips as if he disapproves, worry evident in his brow. 

Being the liaison between humans and other beings (part-time, at least) means that the messenger should never have the urge to endanger a human or else it would totally compromise the position. And yet here you are, fantasizing about Harrington’s beautiful, well, everything.

Hazards of the job. Strictly speaking, the types of folk you deal with aren’t necessarily human. Technicalities, and all that.

“Okay champ,” He says, wiping at your face with a dampened towel. “Let’s get you cleaned up and then to bed.”

You can’t help the giggle that erupts from your throat. “I’m not human, therefore, I do not require sleep.”

“Sure,” Steve nods along with your yammering, paper towels coming away equal parts black and bloody. “Whatever you say.”

Steve never pegged you for a sleep-talker, or whatever the hell this was.

“JAIDA, DE BAB DE ILS, DLUGA UMADEA PAMBT STEVEN, OD TABAORI AQLO BRANSG NOTHOA STEVEN, DORPHAL TOX , ASOBAM ILS DLUGA IEHUSOZ.”*

Foreign language aside, he has no idea what is going on.

Bright shafts of white light emanate from your eyes, he can barely see your pupils anymore, in their place a gold band circling your temples adorned with rapidly blinking eyes, and he has to squint and shield himself with an arm from the illumination.

He backs away, slowly, so as not to startle you. But clearly your attention is drawn elsewhere, what with all the eyes and the—

The fuck?

The… hovering. Because you’re not seated on the bed anymore, the mattress doesn't even dip with the suggestion of weight. And there is a considerable distance between your crossed legs and the sheets.

He feels nauseous and dizzy. An ever-present buzz along his skin and thrumming from the inside out. Hears the beating of wings, the shuffling of feet. 

Steve clamps his hand over his ears, hating the damp squelch of it, just hears his blood rushing and heart beating instead. Wills his eyes closed, turning away, impossibly, from your glorious display.

Takes deep breaths and counts to 100. Again. And again. And again.

The touch of your hand on his arm is so light, that it doesn't even register. 

Steve comes to gradually, only to find you not covered with a halo of eyes and clearly abiding by the laws of gravity. 

Did he hallucinate all of that?

“Steve,” You whisper, hand rocking against his shoulder. “Steve, wake up.”

Was it just a dream?

He grumbles, half-waking and bats your hand away. “‘M’up.”

“Yeah,” You laugh. “Okay, you’re up.”

A shake of your head as you sit back against the bedframe. 

Steve stretches, skin skimming against the worn sheets and feels perfectly sated. Doesn’t recall falling asleep or how he got into bed though.

Remembers seeing you at work, he was closing… Your bright eyes and teeth… And not much else. Maybe something about blood, if he concentrates.

“So.”

You’re seated a careful distance away from him on the bed. Legs fallen lazily onto themselves, hands open and resting against your knees, like one of those yogis he’s seen around town.

“You gave me quite the fright there.”

“Could say the same to you,” He counters, voice raspy with sleep. “What was—”

“Meditating.” You’re quick to answer him.

He arches a quizzical brow. “Meditating. Really?”

Bottom lip pulled and worried between your teeth. “It’s a form of introspection. Communing with your higher states of consciousness.”

“Riiiight. We’ll call it meditating. For the sake of argument.”

“What, you don’t believe me?”

He shrugs, rolls his neck and shoulders. “I never said that.” 

You squint, staring at him. Your hand comes up to grasp his jaw and slowly turn his head. Face remaining impassive, you cluck your tongue and rise from the bed.

“Stay there.”

The commands thrums through him.

Steve watches as you leave the room, heading across the hall to the guest bath. Hears the water running from the faucet, the wringing of a damp rag. Soft footfalls herald your return, plopping back on the bed and dabbing the washcloth against his jaw and ear.

A tap against his chin. “Other side please.”

You do the same to his opposite ear, humming to yourself under your breath. Thunder sounds in the distant night, a storm rolling through. 

Deeming it a job well done, you toss the cloth into the hamper. White terrycloth tinged rosy red. A cool hand turns Steve this way and that, your eyes darting across your handiwork.

“How’s your head?” You ask, voice soft.

“Fine.” Shakes his head, in proof, rattles his brain around. “No complainants.”

“Mmm.” You hum. “No migraines or auras?”

“Not for a while now.” He clucks his tongue, “But I didn’t tell you about those.”

Ah. Now he’s caught you out.

Your mouth hangs open, gaping like a fish. 

“Hey,” His hand settles over yours, warm and familiar. “It’s fine. You’re just … perceptive.”

A laugh, the rustling of wings somewhere. “Is that so?”

Steve pulls you toward him, the air punched from his lungs as your shoulder collides with his chest. You apologize profusely, rearing back and away from him. 

He tugs you back into his embrace, both arms settling around you and falling effortlessly at your hips. Feels a pleasant glow at your temples, sponges a kiss there. Catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, your image seemingly replaced with iridescent reflections of light. A crown of fire round your head. 

And is alarmingly at peace with it all.

Friday, November 1, 1985

The next morning you’d already left by the time he woke up. 

A glass of water, a crumpled scrap of paper, and business card were on the bedside table. He picked up the water, gulping it down readily and scrambled for his glasses. 

He grabbed the papers, the larger one seemingly covered in glitter, dust? Something golden getting all over his hands and sheets. Squinting because he never did get to wiping off his lenses, Steve read the business card first. Simple and to the point, nothing he didn’t already know.

The scrap of paper however, was beyond him. 

Well, shit.

He dials Robin, figures if anyone could translate, it’d be her. Then calls the number listed on the card as he waits for her arrival. 

An annoyed voice answers. “Ugh, this better be good, Harrington. I’m a busy man.”

“Yeah, who is this?”

“That’s not important.”

“What do you mean? How is that—” He sits up, cradling the phone between his shoulder and jaw.

“How did you get this number?”

“Uh, Constantine. How else?”

Whomever he’s speaking with roughly pulls the phone from their ear and mutters a litany of curses. Surprisingly few in English.

He takes a breath, waits for the conversation to resume.

“Okay, say I believe you Steve. How do you know Constantine?”

Steve arches a brow, devotes all of a few seconds to thought before saying, “Well, we’re uh, involved, I guess, and then she showed up to Hawkins dripping in blood last night.”

The next thing he hears is the sound of something smashing to the ground, quickly followed by a “Shit-cock dumbass motherfucking—” before the line drops dead.

*Highest God, of your dominion, give strong towers unto Steven, and govern your guard amidst Steven to look upon him, whom Thou givest mercy.

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington fanfiction #stranger things fanfiction #constantine!au #reader insert #fic: through me #steve harrington smut #Spotify

[euijoosorangeslice]

hiiii my favorite and beloved writer-nim!!!

i apologize this might be a little too specific, but i’d like to request a very very needy sub!harua with a freshman uni student s/o, who’s super serious about studying and might not always give enough attention to rua … 🫣

also, can i please be 🦋 anon, if you’re okay with it~

yes, i acc am on a computer right now so id the butterfly emoji looks odd that's why, but here u goo 🦋 anon.

patience is virtue shigeta harua x reader

warnings: sub!harua, he whines a lot, i think the reader is pissed off at harua, reader fingers him, handjobs, hair pulling, pussy eating

Great, another assignment due at 11:59. And it was already 10:00 pm. Not to mention that you had to do your art project before the next morning, and study for your literature test. You were hastily typing away on your laptop, drinking black coffee to keep you awake. Suddenly, your phone rang.

It was your boyfriend. God, you did not have the energy to talk to him right now. He was whining about how you hadn't fucked him in so long, and barely even touched him when he was around. Your surprised he wasn't already under your arm crying about your neglect. Either way, you picked up your phone. "What's up?"

"Y/n~...can I come over? Please don't say you're too busy studying!" He spoke really fast, and by the sounds of it he was already walking. "Fine. I am studying right now, so don't distract me okay?" You demanded, Harua humming in agreement. "I hoped you said yes, because I'm already in the elevator." You immediately hung up, sighing. He was so clingy.

------

You opened your door, your boyfriend flying into your arms. You sat down onto your chair, pulling out your textbook to study. Low and behold, Harua was sitting on your lap while you were studying. He buried his head in the crook of your neck. Out of nowhere, you heard him whimper and push down his hips.

"No. We're not doing this right now, baby. I need to focus." You immediately shut down his advances, making him whine. "I r-really need this. Can you please just touch me?" You ignored him, reading your textbook. He nibbled on your neck, you groaning in annoyance.

"Fine. You want to act like a slut then I'll treat you like one." You stood up, pushing him onto the bed and climbing on top of him. "Take your pants off rua. I'll give you what you want." He hurriedly removed his sweatpants and boxers, panting in excitement. You grabbed some lube off your bedstand, making his eyes go wide. "W-wait are we-"

"Shut up. You were begging me over text yesterday to finger you, and now when I do it you act all shocked." He whined, placing his heads behind his head. You put some lube on your index finger, slowly pushing into the tight muscle. "A-ah...Y-y/n that feels weird...," he whimpered, making you smile to yourself. "It's ok, you'll get used to it."

The slide became easier, speeding up your fingers as you played with his hole. His whines became moans, you using your spare hand to wrap around his cock and stroke him. He grabbed the bedsheets, moaning louder than before and slightly arching his back. "I-I'm gonna cum," he warned, you speeding up your hands. In time, he spilled over your hand and clenched around your fingers.

"W-woah. That was insanely good." He panted out, you ignoring him and cleaning off your hands. It was already 11, so you sat down at your desk and started to study again. He put his boxers back on, watching you read your textbook section and take footnotes.

"Hey, Y/n? Wanna watch a movie?" he suggested, you sighing again. "Maybe later. I have to keep working until midnight. You could help me with my art work?" Harua stood up from the bed, whining in annoyance. "Ugh, I don't wanna do school work! I just want to cuddle." "I told you I was studying."

You turned around in your chair, staring into Harua's soul. "Rua, i told you that I was gonna be studying. You always come over when I'm studying and complain when I don't touch you all day. It's always about what you want." Harua jutted his lip out, watching your eyebrows furrow. "Then how can I give you what you want?"

"Relaxation and quiet. And head." You finished, turning back around in your chair. "Well why didn't you just say so! I can eat you out if you'd let me." Harua crawled under your desk, pulling your panties off. You scooted to the edge of the chair, Harua licked your clit, hearing you hum in pleasure. Slowly licking circles and dipping his fingers inside of you. "I might as well return the favor." he joked, you giggling lightly and still focused on your work.

"Finally, all done with that. N-now Harua do you think I should I should use purple or yellow for the background?" You asked, Harua pulling away in annoyance. "You're seriously still doing that? Just focus on me!" He whined, attaching his lips to your clit again. You continued to work on the assignment digitally, sketching as you moaned in pleasure. "Fuck, rua. That feels so good." you moaned, looking down at your boyfriend's excited face.

Harua really got off on pleasuring you, slightly humping the edge of your chair while his tongue worked. You pulled his hair closer to you, mewling in pleasure as he sped his tongue up. "Y-yes! God Harua I'm gonna cum." You orgasmed on his tongue, slick dripping onto the bottom half of his face. You hadn't realized until Harua moaned as you were pulling his hair, that he had already came in his boxers. "Sensitive much?" You teased, Harua whimpering and pulling his boxers off. "Now relaxation and quiet."

Harua groaned loudly, standing up and taking a walk of shame to the bathroom to change,

#&team imagines #&team x reader #&team #&team smut #&team hard hours #&team harua

[mattoidmeerkat]

as the number #1 brain parasites truther on here, i'm curious on your feelings about the upcoming bobby plot. do u trust that they're gonna do right by our boy? or do u think it's possible the brain parasites might strike again? 😭

obviously i'm sooooooo excited to get more bobby lore, but there's just a tiny little part of me that's scared we might end up getting some bullshit ass story that's entirely ooc for bobby. ik he's been safe so far w/ the characterization, but idk man. i always get a little anxious when i hear a character's getting new lore drops

Not sure how I feel about that title. 😅️

I have been unhappy with a Bobby arc before. This was at the end of Season 5 after we had seen him struggle with being there for everyone, clearly heading to a breaking point, and then the resolution of his arc was basically a footnote in Eddie's storyline. (With Athena's visible concerns just being forgotten about completely.) This was the first time I was really disappointed in a storyline involving Athena and/or Bobby. (Sure, never dealing with any of his injuries considering his past has always been annoying, but this felt different.) I told myself it was the end of the season, and they just ran out of time to address Bobby's arc properly. The episode still annoys me, but I've made my peace with it because it left enough space for us to fill in the gabs. (There are some amazing writers out there who wrote their takes on how Bathena managed to go from 5x18 to 6x01, and I'm so grateful!)

Then Season 6 aired and that just felt very thought through. The setup for the Tanya storyline was great and 6x03 amazing. While focused on Athena, the story still showed and developed her relationship with Bobby as well. Hoover (my beloved) then also helped explore their new dynamic as empty nesters. We got episodes like What's Your Fantasy? showing us how comfortably they'd settled into their empty nest leading into the Wendall arc (that we all wished had been set up earlier for more emotional impact of his death) which really showed us how far those two have come together and individually. (Athena's approach to addiction and AA in Season 4 vs. attending a meeting with Bobby; Bobby trying to keep Athena out of his AA life vs. inviting her into his this part of his world)

The back half of Season 6 showed us even more of their development and growth. The blind faith in Recovery? Excellent. The adorableness and sexiness of Mixed Feeling? Perfect. The bitter-sweet anniversary in Love is in the Air? What an amazing way to show us how far they've come. Pay it Forward? *chef's kiss* We saw them really grow into a deep, stable relationship where they enjoyed spending time together not only around others but especially finally also just by themselves.

And then 7x01 happened. Abandon 'Ships. What a fitting title. This episode was no comparison to 5x18 because back then the end of the season productions stress and time constraints played a big role. None of that really applied here. They came off the longest hiatus ever. The actor's strike was still going on when the writers came back. It was the beginning of the season. There really was no other explanation for what they did with Athena, then they actively and purposely decided to put a plot they wanted to tell (Athena's increasingly erratic behavior confusing Bobby for what I assume was the laughs?) above who the characters were at that point in time. And that really struck me. This was the old showrunner coming in and just not caring about the previous episode(s) and season(s).

So now we are here, looking forward to (or bracing ourselves for?) this new Bobby arc at the end of an extremely condensed season, with them still filming much later than usual. With a showrunner who under much better circumstances just recently has shown that he will blatantly ignore established timelines and character development when it stands in the way of the particular story he wants to tell. (And I'm not saying he's not entitled to do that. It's his show.) So I'm setting my hopes and expectations very, very low. Because I'd rather be positively surprised by a brilliant continuation of Bobby's character arc than be deeply disappointed by another case of the brain parasites.

#911 on ABC #911 spoilers #not really but just to be on the safe side #Bobby Nash #Athena Grant #Bathena #brain parasites #sorry for the essay #I felt like context was necessary #but that's a loooot of context 😅️

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of a bachelorette party

10pm, sunday, aug 6, 2023

we're officially in the period of the summer that has been planned out since months and months ago, in the lead up to some dear friends' wedding; time is telescoping in a very odd way! after traveling the past two weeks, my re-entry was good but hard; i came back from my trip thinking i'd be all revitalized and looking around me with new eyes, which in a way i did, but then i was also pretty wiped. i didn't really want to spend all week hibernating, but i guess it was good to recharge my batteries since i also had five different party/gathering-type things (three this weekend, including the aforementioned bachelorette).

reading can't forget to mention finishing carmen maria machado's in the dreamhouse, which was gripping and devastating and still beautiful somehow. the experience of reading it was so...i couldn't stop once i got started, you know? short fragmented chapters, some funny, some incredibly sad. every once in a while there would be a detail or an allusion to something i could relate to, punctuating the intense surreality / unreality used to talk about the abuse with a sudden concrete reality that was. striking. loved the device of the footnotes, pointing out where certain things are matching up with folklore tropes? as a form of foreshadowing and ironic, devastating commentary? inspired. that's just one detail, but it's one i can sum up.

abrupt tonal shift and getting back to fantasy / adventure, a.k. larkwood's the unspoken name has been very engaging this week too. part one was...fresh but in a comforting sort of vein, with a young protag escaping a bad fate under the protection of a new mysterious mentor, who then helps her get an education, martial arts training, before he sends her out on a mission--reminded me of half a dozen beloved fantasy novels, with the addition of some fun details! for example, neither is actually described in much detail, but our main character and her mentor are clearly not Human; she has grey skin and tusks (my mind went right to a dnd-style orc?) and he has mobile, elongated ears, which seem to telegraph his emotions much like those in the goblin emperor and was an *immediate* delight to envision. just about a third of the way through this one now; it feels like a locked tomb book with a slightly different magic system, and i'm really enjoying it.

watching plane movies while returning home:

the battle of the sexes (2017) -- entertaining more because i didn't know the history and always enjoy the depiction of historical women's sports and sports teams; emma stone is great but has virtually no chemistry with either of her romantic counterparts, painfully straight energy overall. i was too entertained by watching steve carell and sarah silverman in their respective period hair and makeup . kudos to whoever was the tennis stunt doubles, it was legitimately fun to try and follow the games.

banshees of inisherin (2022) -- people who talk about the overdone stereotyped blarney-filled hollywood depiction of ireland in this one are missing the fact that it's an intentional (ironic?) depiction; see, the imprecision when it comes to year/time passing / calendars and whatnot. sort of waiting for godot-y in its heightened reality / absurdity. my lukewarm take is that it was definitely meant to be a play, and would have worked a lot better that way. not sure i'll watch it again, not sure i *got* it, but it will certainly live in my brain rent-free.

finished strange world (2022) as a palate cleanser-- i wanted to support it, the box office and overall reception to this was pretty disappointing but it's fine! like it's a cute kids' movie! you know, disney's first gay character, thinly veiled climate analogy lesson, absolutely gorgeous animation and colors, what's not to love.

the first three episodes of season 1 of the white lotus . hypnotizing like a train wreck, but i'll wait until i've seen more of it to give a real write-up.

listening you ever watch a viral video and then realize you're captivated by both the cute videos of people dancing and the soundtrack? (and recognizing the background scenery, and it turns out i was right!!) anyway i went and found these two tracks courtesy of just this experience, so thanks to youtuber thoraya i guess?

UPDATE: saw hadestown live today!!! the original broadway recording didn't prepare me for how much i would love it, how dynamic and captivating the live band and incredible ensemble would be-- and of course i was crying almost immediately, and was clutching my chest during 'wait for me' both times. but then again, the performance i saw didn't include this one instrumental track i love and had on my semester playlist all spring, so here:

playing finally got the cut-scene celebrating my community center completion in stardew, hell yeah. had two great dnd sessions; one campaign successfully defeated a monstrously-oversized jaguar and decided which faction we're going to attempt to win over first, while the other group went shopping and spent some downtime at base and gathering info on some individual plots! napoleon did exist in this world and was a gnome, and our organization assassinated him apparently??, also this just feels like a good time to mention that their resume also includes '1841 – Controlled controversy riots when “Dinosaurs” suggested as a creature alongside and separate from “Dragons” ', which sent us into absolute hysterics when the DM shared that.

making it's summer, so i crowdsourced a ratatouille recipe and could not have been happier with the outcome. saving it here for posterity!

working on i was very diligent with RA work this week, since it feels like i always neglect it over the summer for absolutely no reason, especially since it like. pays me. but i also have been using it as productive procrastination since i'm actively dragging my heels in sending the last few students their essay feedback and grade breakdowns from the summer course. it means confronting my judgments and math and possible mistakes from earlier in july, and trying to either defend or amend them as necessary, and i just have been. napping rather than actually do it. which is silly, and also stupid since i have actual work to be doing! just get this over with, and you can be free!

#ilcb #in lieu of a commonplace book #weekly roundup

[professionalfanatic]

The first time Wei Ying came to him, Lan Zhan had just woken up from the stabbing pain of his wounds that always seemed to escalate when it was nighttime. His brother hadn't visited him for the night yet. Lan Zhan didn't care about that. He didn't want anyone to visit him. Not when  they'd all bandied together, and had taken away the light in Lan Zhan's life.

He tried to reach for his water, biting back a groan when it was just a little too faraway. The wounds were still fresh, and even though the healers had done their best, Lan Zhan knew it would be a long time before he would be able to move. Go out of the Jingshi.

But then again, why would he want to? He closed his eyes, trying to bury the pain that bubbled into his throat at the memory of Wei Ying weeping, his beautiful silver eyes tormented, the scream of agony that had shaken the bloodied war field.

Wei Ying falling, and Lan Zhan, leaping forward to catch him, but useless, useless as he had always been, unable to hold on to the people he love. To protect the people he loved.

Wei Ying, falling, falling, like a beautiful angel from grace.

Why did the people Lan Zhan cared about, always left him? Why could he never protect them? Maybe that was his fate, to remain unloved, the curse of his family.

Without Wei Ying, what did Lan Zhan even have to live for?

Was it worth, living in a world where Wei Ying's laughter no longer rang?

That was when he spoke.

"Hey, Lan Zhan. Come on now. I know you're way more stronger than that,"

Lan Zhan's eyes widened as he looked up, gazing into those brilliant silver eyes he adored. His breathe caught in his chest as he struggled to speak.

"Wei Ying? " His voice was a hoarse whisper, as his eyes took in every inch of his beloved Wei Ying. Wei Ying, with his long black tresses framing his face, those mesmerising silver eyes, and the smile that had stolen his heart in the first place.

Wei Ying, whom he'd thought he'd lost forever.

"Wei Ying? " He repeated, unable to believe it was him.

Wei Ying's smile widened, his eyes crinkling into crescents. "Hello, my Lan Zhan. I told you, it wouldn't be so easy to get rid of me, hmm? "

"Wei Ying? How? You escaped? You're alive? " Lan Zhan couldn’t believe it. A small flame of hope flickered in his chest as he stared at Wei Ying desperately.

The words tumbled out, trying to know, to ask, how, how Wei Ying had survived. How he had sneaked into his room, uncaught. Why he was here. Why he wanted to be with him. Lan Zhan, the person who always bored Wei Ying, who always punished Wei Ying.

Wei Ying didn't answer directly. "I'm here, Lan Zhan. That's all that matters, right? " He giggled softly, and Lan Zhan felt the ice shard that had been lodged in his heart ever since Wei Ying's fall slowly melt. "And I'm here because I want to be with you. My Lan Zhan, "

His Wei Ying was here. Here. With him.

Because he wanted to. Because he cared for Lan Zhan.

"I can stay, right Lan Zhan? You won't punish me? " Wei Ying's voice so small. Lan Zhan couldn't stand it. Wei Ying's voice should always be loud exuberant. Brimming with life.

"Never, " Lan Zhan affirmed. He lifted a hand, the pain just a footnote as he traced the contours of Wei Ying's face. "Can never punish Wei Ying, "

His heart sang with joy when Wei Ying leaned into his touch, nuzzling his hand with a soft smile.

Lan Zhan was about to reply, when the door to his room opened, and Lan Xichen walked in, carrying his tray of medicine and food. He smiled at Lan Zhan, his eyes reflecting the sadness and guilt that Lan Zhan had become accustomed to.

"Wangji, I brought your medicine, " He told him quietly.

Lan Zhan looked away. The anger coiled in his chest, like a viper ready to attack. He couldn’t look at his brother. Xichen had joined hands with those murderers. His own brother. For days, after his punishment, whenever Xichen had visited with food and medicine, Lan Zhan hadn't spoken to him. He couldn’t, not when he knew that his anger could break apart what remained of their already broken relationship.

Better stay even more quiet. 

How could he forgive, when Xichen had joined the massacre that took his Wei Ying away from him?

But Wei Ying had escaped. He was safe.

Lan Zhan's eyes widened as he scanned the room, searching for his beloved. But Wei Ying had disappeared. There was not a trace of him. Lan Zhan didn't understand how he'd disappeared so quickly, but he was silently grateful. Lan Zhan didn't trust Xichen anymore. If his brother caught Wei Ying here with him, he'd betray Wei Ying to his sworn brothers.

Lan Zhan couldn’t let that happen.

No, this time he would protect Wei Ying with everything he had.

Xichen left soon after. He never stayed for too long, and Lan Zhan never asked. He was even more impatient that day, waiting for Wei Ying to materialise next to him again.

And he did, propped up near Lan Zhan, careful not jostle him, or agitate his wounds as he tended to them with the care of a mother attending her sick child.

"My hero, " Wei Ying murmured.

"Don't go, " Lan Zhan replied.

Wei Ying looked at him with shimmering silver eyes. Lan Zhan's heart clenched with fear. Surely, he must understand that this would be the most dangerous place for him. His uncle, his brother, his Sect, they all hated Wei Ying.

But Lan Zhan cannot live without that brilliant smile.

"I would have no reason to live, " He pleaded.

Wei Ying smiled again. "What about A-Yuan?" He whispered.

Lan Zhan stared at him. Saving little A-Yuan had been a secret no one knew, bar his uncle and brother. The little boy was secure here, as a Lan, as Lan Zhan's heir. As his son.

But Lan Zhan didn't want to raise him alone.

"He needs you too, "

Wei Ying just smiled again.

Lan Zhan would never get tired of that brilliant smile. He'd missed it, the joy and warmth that blessed the coldest winter night.

"Sleep, Lan Zhan, "

And so Lan Zhan slept, Wei Ying curled next to him, his hand on Lan Zhan's cheek.

It was the first night his sleep was unbothered by nightmares.

Wei Ying slowly began to make the Jingshi his home as well. He had his own sleep mattress near Lan Zhan, bottles of spice on a shelf, and jars of Emperor's Smile hidden under a loose floorboard.

Lan Zhan didn't mind. Anything for Wei Ying, as long as he didn't leave.

He began healing, with his brother's careful ministrations, and Wei Ying's free flowing love. Wei Ying was the joy of his days. He never left Lan Zhan's side, and he didn't mind the three years of seclusion. In fact, he grew to love the solidarity more and more, as he healed, and managed to move about.

Wei Ying shared his breakfast with him, lathering his portion with the many spices he'd managed to store. Lan Zhan didn't know how he managed to sneak around Cloud Recesses uncaught. Perhaps they needed to improve on security, but if it allowed freedom to his Wei Ying, Lan Zhan did not care.

"Lan Zhan, would you like some chilli too? That looks terrible, "

"Drink Emperor's Smile with me, Lan Zhan! Ooh, you're such a boring fuddy duddy!"

He played Wangxian to Wei Ying, blushing at the love that shone on his beloved's face. When he confessed the name, Wei Ying leaped into his arms, peppering his face with feather light kisses.

"Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan. How I love you! How can I live without you! "

Those words warmed Lan Zhan like the first rays of sunshine after months of chilling winter.

"Wei Ying, " He claimed Wei Ying's lips in a passionate kiss, breaking apart moments before Xichen entered and Wei Ying scampered away to his hiding spot.

3 years of seclusion passed in a blink.

Lan Zhan stepped forward again, as Zewu Jun's heir, the Second Jade of Gusu, Hanguang Jun. As A-Yuan's guardian, as the child he'd wished to raise with his zhiji. But little A-Yuan had forgotten his childhood memories. It broke Lan Zhan's heart that he couldn’t remember his beloved Xian-ge, and wished Wei Ying would meet him, but Wei Ying shook his head.

"Let him forget, Lan Zhan. He doesn't need to remember the pain and misery that was never his fault, "

So Lan Zhan let it go.

He took over teaching from his uncle, and trained the disciples. He attended weekly meetings over tea with Xichen and Uncle, both of whom tried to talk to him. Lan Zhan answered each question politely, but never lingered too long. He wasn't sure if he would ever be ready to forgive them. Any of them.

He graded papers, attended to the Sect matters. Traveled whererever the chaos was, and Wei Ying always appeared whenever they were alone. Lan Zhan wished he could yell his love for Wei Ying for the world to hear, but still, he was grateful for what he got. It was different when they'd travel far, far away, he'd be by Lan Zhan's side always. So he often travelled to farthest corners of the land, just so Wei Ying would hang onto his arm in public, chattering nineteen to the dozen.

"Lan Zhan, look, that pin wheel is so pretty! Can we buy one? "

"Lan Zhan, I want candies! Can I get candies? "

"My Lan-er-gongzi is the prettiest in the world. No one can match your perfection, "

Lan Zhan felt his ears burn, and muttered a shameless, before dragging Wei Ying away.

Then one day, he couldn’t find Wei Ying. The two had travelled to Hedong for a nighthunt. The hunt itself had been completed soon, leaving Lan Zhan to spend the whole week with Wei Ying. But he couldn’t find him. Not in their room, not watching the children play. Not playing the flute, and not staring running around the vendors in a haste.

Concerned, Lan Zhan asked their innkeeper, asking if he had seen Wei Ying around. Wei Ying had gotten close to him, often running down for a shared bottle of wine. But when he did, the innkeeper stared at him, his eyes wide, face pale, a look of fear shadowing in.

"Master.... there has been no one here, except you. Master has been staying here alone... "

At the hesitant words of the innkeeper, Lan Zhan felt his world rattle.

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

Wrote this on ao3, posted here too :)

#wangxian #fanfic #@Mialovesbl #sad #wrote this cause i wanted to be sad #wei ying #lan zhan #angst #coping #lan zhan sees wei ying #its just really sad #mdzs

[caffeinated-mistake]

there's something inherent in the act of caring for someone;

and in my endless old guard brain rot this takes the form of:

- nile helping booker with therapy/ alcoholism. essentially being the go-between for him and the others during his "banishment" (I don't think it would last the full 100, and I've seen some gorgeous fics on the subject).

-it is customary to cleanse with water or sand before praying salat (I'm basing this off of research and a fic that had extremely good research with footnotes and all); and in Christianity- assume the priest Nicolo canon- washing of feet and in general is a very devotional act. it's something the disciples do, Mary Magdalene washes JC's feet with her tears and dries them with her hair, so it's all in all a very Big Thing.

in my mind, Nicolo would wash Yusef's feet as like.... his little way of saying "you are everything to me, you are holy and divine and a gift and I would do anything for you if you only asked it of me".

because, in my mind at least, joe is the wordsmith. Joe gives the speeches and writes poetry, and Nicky uses acts of service to show his devotion. Nicky cooks food, and finds baklava with varied recipes, and cuts the guards hair (it started as him fixing Andy's horrible chop in the 1670s, and ended as a way for him to show his family he loved them. he spends weeks holed up with the shitty tablet nile insisted on, learning how to do braids and care for her hair, the same way he'd watched Yusef's mother care for his sister's until he knew how to comb out the snarls and sand his beloved got caught up in). I just think Nicky seems the type to show affection in being there for someone, and that with as much religious guilt as this fandom loves to give the man, it would be sweet to see it as a tie in to his love and devotion to Joe. because Nicky absolutely believes it was God or fate that brought them together, and that loving Joe is the ultimate good he will ever do.

.... idk I thought it was cute but I'm drunk

- Andy pushes people. she's brash and ruthless, and loves so fiercely. there's a reason Joe jokes (never to her face) that Andy is the momma bear of the group.

she has Nile train until her muscles are screaming and numbing and screaming again, several times over.

she takes guard duty at night, a vigil she has in the kitchen, around the entire safehouse, and ends outside each bedroom or in the common sleeping area, listening for quiet breaths.

she trusts her team to take care of themselves, of each other.

but they are all so young to her, ageless and once a god.

Andy pushes them because they rise to it, Nile better with the sword every day, her languages coming along well with nightly dinners where conversation only takes place in that week's dialect.

- Booker I feel like will have quite the complex after he's un-banished.

he goes out of his way to make sure their safe houses are Safe. he takes over learning everything he can from medical courses, emt training, textbooks; to learn how to take care of Andy in her new mortal state.

he spends three weeks researching proper nutrition and gets his hand chopped off the one time he tries to insist on a healthy alternative to sweets.

Booker spends months teaching Nile new languages, how to blend into a crowd, how to work in the underbelly of cities and make friends in unlikely places.

deep down, he knows he's trying to train her to take his place. And as much as she lacks the eye for detail and intuition of what changes to make to forged papers, she's learning. (Joe's the one to corner him about it, grappling and fighting and screaming until Booker quiets, in a close headlock, his back to Yusef's chest, and stills. Joe shushes him, and then says, animosity gone for the first time in a while, "you're my brother. I love you, and I'm so sorry we failed you. but we are a family, Book, we are a family.")

it's slow moving, but eventually booker admits his forgeries are better than Nile's. that maybe he should stick around a bit longer, until she has some practise.

#tog #the old guard #yusef x nicolo #nicolo di genova #joe al kaysani #yusef al kaysani #joe x nicky #tog head canons #head canon #andy the old guard #andromache the scythian #booker the old guard #sebastian le livre #nile freeman

[hillbilly---man]

I haven't been on here much in a few days (kinda just checking my notes and then leaving)

Sorry to my beloved friends who sent me messages that I never responded to 😬

My vitamin d levels are in the normal range now and I'm a little scared my doctor is gonna take me off my prescription supplements.. I've pretty much come to the realization that them stopping my scary leg cramps* was a placebo effect (everything seems to point to them having been an MS thing) but I'm terrified of them coming back so I think I'm gonna have to insist that he keeps me on them!!

People with multiple sclerosis are often recommended to take high doses of vitamin d anyway so if he insists on taking me off them I'll just tattle to my neurologist lol

*I'm putting the footnote in the replies bc it brings the mood of this post down 😂

#tbh i wish they'd give me more vitamin d #i take 50000 iu once a week which is a big dose but it only brought my level to like the 40s #but i dont wanna take it outside a doctor's supervision #(my usual disclaimer when talking about medical stuff: im not sensitive about it and you can make jokes or laugh at me #even in this case where i talk about stuff that makes me very anxious and cry)

[dont-look-me-in-the-eye]

“I can’t come with you.”

“You could come with me. With us. We could-”

“I can’t.”

“You can. You can change; people can change. It-”

“They hate me. You know they blame me for it. Who knows. Maybe they’re right. Maybe it is my fault, even under Their plan.”

“Why are you so Hell-bent on staying? I’m trying to help you, if you’d just fucking let me!”

“Because this is all that I can be.”

“I-”

“Maybe in another life, or in another world, we could’ve been friends. But this is our time, no? Isn’t this our world?”

“I don’t wanna kill you.”

“So we’re back to the problem again, aren’t we? I can’t leave, and you can’t stay with Them without me.”

“What’s wrong with ‘Them’?”

“Really, we’re two sides of the same coin. Only replaceable to those who use us.”

“They care about me.”

“They don’t.”

“How would you know? You don’t care about anyone, and nobody cares about you. It’s not like you have a life outside being a grade-a asshole.”

“These are the parts we play. You, the benevolent hero who sacrificed all. And me? I am the one who loses. I am the one who grovels and begs and scrapes their way through life. You know how they’ll paint it. You will be the gracious hero. The saviour of man. And I will become the villain. The footnote to your ascent. The tragic one who fell from Heaven.”

“Fine. Have it your way. You wanna say something before you die? Get in the last laugh?”

“I didn’t fall, you know. I jumped. Maybe because I was scared. Maybe because I was brave.”

They paused.

“And you’re wrong, beloved Son of Man. I do care about one thing.”

“What?”

“Take a guess.”

The Devil smirked, and threw themself on the blade.

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. The weather was always pleasant. Everything was, really. But for once, the beloved found themself wishing it was.

#bible fanfic? Idk how to tag this #inspired by @thebittercorvus’s story #writing #writerblr #rowan writes??? #for once lmao writers block’s been kicking my ass

[interlagosed]

Do you have any advice on the writing and structuring of research papers?

Also I just wanna say I remember you mentioned before that you deeply care about trans rights issues, wrote about it before and i think they got published as well? Regardless, I wanna thank you so much for this. I’m nonbinary (and for a while questioned if I were trans) so this means a lot on a personal level♥️ Seeing how much you care about it makes me hopeful and optimistic about the future♥️

that's actually exactly the paper that's getting published!!  💖 it's the least i can do in a world like ours. you have my undying support beloved!!

re: writing, i think there's a lot of ways you can proceed. you should always have an outline, no matter what! And even if you don't know how to structure it, you can never go wrong with A. INTRO; B. BACKGROUND; C. ANALYSIS; D. CONCLUSION. That's such an easy structure that you can tease as you need for your purposes!

Once you have that down, bullet-points are your best friend. I'll literally just braindump all my thoughts. If I think of sources to cite to, I'll add in placeholder footnotes with rough directions (this will save you so much time later down the line, PLEAAASE do this). this is a messy process because it involves me jumping around all over the place, but it helps. you'll start seeing other sections of your paper come together, and to make my life a little bit easier, i'll just title those sections according to the thesis sentence. Once I've got this much written down, I always generate a table of contents. Example (this is a paper i'm writing right now lmao):

It might seem like a waste of time, but this really keeps me on track. It's so easy to get lost in the weeds when you're at this stage of outlining, and it's really difficult to begin writing, but a table of contents always gives you a great bird's eye view of your own paper. So if you're lost, go back to the TOC; invariably, you'll start thinking of extra points to add to one or two sections. Your TOC is your compass! Don't underestimate the power of it!

Finally: TAKE. A LOT. OF BREAKS. DON'T hit your head against a wall. Get up and walk away. This means building some time into your writing plan to give you breaks, but i promise you'll go back into it so much more refreshed. similarly, if you don't have a lot of time, breaks are even more important. that sounds counterproductive, but you cannot afford to let your brain overheat. it's better to take a one hour break if it means you'll write up a storm for half an hour, as opposed to writing a paragraph over an hour and a half.

I have a lot more I could say but this is already getting long lol so i hope this helps!!

#hibi answers #hibi academia