#for now anyway. stages of grief are a circle or whatever that one try guy said
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my lastfm activity looks like a bomb has gone off
#we've got everything from swifty to the ham!lton soundtrack going on tonight helppp#just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss it. i hope you burn. or something#i wrote a one thousand word rant that will now sit in my drafts probably forever and i feel slightly better now#for now anyway. stages of grief are a circle or whatever that one try guy said
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“i’ve missed you, stupid.”
“…it kinda makes me sad.”
and it does. it makes me so fucking sad when i think about it. i’m grateful she let me table it for later. i’m grateful we don’t have to go into julien’s birthday grieving what we used to be. because that’s what it is, right? it’s grief. i grieve the girls we used to be—before life and uncertainty and love tore us apart, before i tore us apart. i could blame it on a million things, but it was me. i know that, i’ve come to terms with that. i was young and i didn’t know any better. i couldn’t understand the weight i was putting on her shoulders, but it was still me.
we laugh together now and it feels effortless. the way we play and tease feels so fucking simple, like we never stopped. like there’s not a void of years spent apart lingering between us that we still haven’t talked about. will we ever? i almost don’t want us to.
she’s still my best friend.
that’s the hardest part.
she’s still the person i want to tell everything to. anything good, anything bad, she’s the first i think of: “i can’t wait to tell taylor about this.” we’re still learning how to exist around each other and i’m patient. i can be patient if it means keeping her. but it is like a punch to the gut to think, sometimes, that we should have never been apart. i often think of the night before she pulled me on stage during the speak now tour—we were so little. we had no idea what we were doing but we were so full of love and hope and laughter. i remember our early days like that. i remember trying to teach my best friend how to head bang with me and dissolving into giggles and kisses when we realized that maybe she was just way too stiff as a fucking board to do something that was engrained in my warped-tour-bones.
but she tried anyway, and i think that’s part of the reason i won’t let the guys pull that’s what you get from the setlist to this day. it reminds me of her and that kind of nostalgic ache is what keeps me going. it’s like my life is just built up of weird, little mismatched puzzle pieces of memories like that one that spell out her name but i can’t get any of it to fit right so i just…
don’t.
i do what i can and hope it’s enough.
it never really is.
everything about her is just nostalgia and ache and grief and me drawing circles on the floor to keep busy between the next goodbye and whatever excuse we find for the hello that’ll follow.
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Step by Step / Mark Lee
step by step / mkl
pairing: Mark Lee x Reader
From an innocent childhood friendship to a juvenile high school rivalry to a forced pairing for a Psychology paper, it seems you and Mark just can’t avoid each other. But something’s a little different now.
genre: fluff, angst (a little bit), suggestive themes, childhood friends (barely mentioned!) to enemies to lovers, college!au
notes: lia yeonjun chan hyuck jeno all make tiny appearances
word count: 17.2k
hi!!! this is my first work nd I’m really excited to put this out I’d looove if you could give it a read :^) hound me on my inbox if u wanna i take anything
“Remember when we were best friends in fifth grade?”
His voice is a little quiet, and there’s a very obvious undertone of boredom, but you hum softly anyway, nodding, as if to question why you would ever forget. Fifth grade was a suburban brew of Star Wars marathons, figuring out the world, and Harry Potter merchandise littering your house. Fifth grade was lemonade and oatmeal, knitted sweaters, and sneaking into your mom’s vanity to swipe her makeup. And fifth grade was Mark—bright eyed, geeky Mark, with his Death Star replica and weird electronica music.
Mark, who had an affinity with Troy from High School Musical and Spiderman, and wanted to be just like them. Mark, who would show up grinning to your front door everyday, pie dish in his nimble grip. He was the one who had opened a lemonade stand at the corner of your block so he could buy you the Gryffindor scarf you’d been nagging your mom about the entire holiday season. He was the one who learned the chords to your favorite Jonas Brothers song and sang it to you each time you requested it.
“Yes, I do,” you answer instead, clearing your throat.
You attempt to push down all the memories that just ran through your head and adjust the grip you have on your pen. “Well,” Mark continues, “that was ages ago. Beats me why it ever happened.”
The timidity is replaced with a tidal wave of teasing, and the annoyance that had disappeared is beginning to crawl all over you. Again. You roll your eyes and pull up the slides your professor had assigned. “Beats me why we even ended up in the same university, let alone the same class,” you jab, “if you thought I forgot about how you outright failed our Spanish classes in high school, I didn’t.”
Your friendship with Mark had reached its unfortunate demise to the hands of middle school, where you had branched out with your interests and began to stick to societal (as societal as school can get) norms. He had joined the geeky, cool kids; you hadn’t joined a specific social circle, but you had a best friend, Lia, and you were generally good with everybody.
Somehow, despite you both being in good graces with everyone, you had a deep-seated dislike for one another that stemmed from an intense academic rivalry. Specifically, the competition to become school council president. That had ended now, seeing as though you were both in college, but the abrasiveness of your banter had never worn off.
“Oh, because you were so good at Physics?” he says, voice even. His brow is raised. “We all have our strong suits, you know. You’re one to talk.” You decide to pay him no mind, instead jotting down the criteria for your final project in Psychology 1—something about the stages of grief. You’re supposed to relate it to a different human process and show how they fit with one another.
It’s absolute fucking bullshit, and the fact that Mark Lee became your partner among a hundred students is beyond you. Absolutely beyond you.
He nears your screen, reading the content of your project, eyes squinted—you’d noticed his lack of decent eyesight years ago, but it seemingly hadn’t improved. “Relate the stages of grief…hold up, what? That’s difficult as hell. What are we supposed to do, lose a loved one?” You roll your eyes, turning to him. “No, Mark. The point is to find another process that happens gradually and relate it to this—denial, bargaining, anger. Get it?”
He stares back at you. “No.”
You groan audibly, turning back to your notebook. “This is impossible. Can we just switch partners so I won’t have to deal with you?” He smirks, kicking his feet up on the library table. Absently, you note how nice his sneakers look. Reclining onto the seat, he shuts his eyes as if to contemplate.
“I heard through the birdvine our professor’s the type to pair up people she thinks would look good together for shits and giggles. Girls and boys, boys and boys, you name it. Johnny”—he’s referring to a guy who’s a year above yours, studying Biology—“tells me over five couples have been born out of this class. Isn’t that nice?” You scoff, scrolling mindlessly through the slides to keep yourself distracted.
“It really is. A shame we won’t be adding to that list, because I can’t fucking stand you.” He laughs loudly, the vibration of it remaining in the deadly silent air. “I can stand fucking you, though,” he says, and then, before you can even blush, “All jokes. Don’t get your hopes up, ‘kay?” He’s quick to get up, just as flustered as you are at the uncharacteristic phrase that just left his mouth. He collects his jacket and jogs out of the library with a small, half-assed bye under his breath.
—
Lia’s eyes bore into yours. “He actually said that? I’m telling you, he’s some weird kinky guy under that whole cool geek persona. High school Mark would never have. Oh my god. He’s a furry—he’s a furry!” She flops back onto your bed, laughing. You poke at her waist in protest.
“It’s because he’s surrounded by too many weird classy fuckboys. You know, those that think that they’re all that because they haven’t roofied a girl.” You’re half-joking, and you’re really only referring to maybe two guys you’ve happened to see Mark with. As if to read your mind, Lia continues. “Hey, I heard some of them are okay. They’re not, like…those ‘nice guys’, if you get me.”
“I do,” you quip. “But I guess I’m just trying to find a way to justify the whole 360 in Mark. I mean, in high school, he was still nerdy—well, you know. Shy. But jump to sophomore year of uni and he’s suddenly some…” You rack your head for a proper term. “Sex god?” your friend asks, holding in a laugh. “Oh, eat shit,” you fire back, “really, eat shit. And while you’re at it, feed me some, too, because I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to turn in at the end of the term. Like, Jes—”
There’s a faint knock at the door, and then. “Lia? It’s—uh, it’s me, Daniel? Er, Daniel Choi.” Your wide eyes can’t possibly match Lia’s as she tugs on a decent-looking pullover and puts it on. As she swings the door open, you manage to sufficiently hide yourself under your duvet and attempt to hear their conversation.
“You know, it’s okay if you leave out the whole…saying your full name at the door part. Trust me…I know you,” she jokes, and you hear him laugh before you detect the crinkling of a plastic bag. “Chinese. Uh, I bought some extra for your best friend, because I’m not gonna pretend I don’t see the sentient blob on the bed.”
You pull the blanket off and smile sheepishly. “Hey, Daniel,” you say, “thanks for the food. I owe you an empty room next time, I swear by it. It’ll be easy, since I’m gonna be”—you heave yourself off the bed and onto the floor, where they’re both sitting—“holed up at the library for the next few weeks.”
Lia nods, chewing her chow mein, and then when she’s done, she explains to Daniel your whole huge Psychology end-of-term paper about stages and grief and whatever, oh also she’s partnered with Mark Lee, this guy that we both know from high school, and she dislikes his guts, oh you know him?
“Wait. You know him?” You repeat, and Daniel nods, ruffling his black mullet. “His room’s, like, three away from mine. He’s studying Theoretical Physics, right? Yeah, he’s always in his room doing school shit, but every weekend he’s out with the upperclassmen. He’s probably out now, ‘cause it’s Friday. How he even charmed them, though, is a mystery.”
Mid-dumpling, you roll your eyes. “Y’know, the hardest part is being partnered with him. But also, even finding what kind of gradual process to relate denial and anger too is weirdly hard. It feels like I could find something, but I haven’t gotten it…quite…” you trail off, your eyes landing on Lia and Daniel across you—they’re smiling softly at each other, and you distinguish their fingers interlocking quietly, as if you wouldn’t notice.
“…yet. Except maybe I have. How would you want to participate in my end-of-term paper?” Their gazes turn to yours, and you nod frantically. “Oh my god, I’m a genius! Seriously! Falling in love! Yes! It’s denial—anger—whatever, whatever! It makes perfect sense. The end is acceptance, too! Oh god, Li, it’s perfect. I will owe you for life if you help me out.”
“Wait, what? You dove straight into it, what—recap, please,” Lia asks, and you compose yourself before explaining giddily.
“Falling in love. It happens gradually, and we can compare it to the stages of grief. Seeing as you and Daniel are headed right there, we can use you as some test subjects. It’s not required to have respondents or subjects, really, it’s just an extensive paper, but it might help get the grade up. This is gonna be great, and if you ever wanna back out, you can, because it’s not mandatory.” Lia and Daniel meet eyes briefly, and then slowly, nod. “Okay, that’s pretty smart,” Daniel says, “I’m up for it. Are you?” Lia nods, slowly and hesitantly, and you smile widely. “You two just saved my Psych grade. I’ll be at Giselle’s tonight. Just…not on my bed.” You grab your keys and phone and bound out of your room, straight into the elevator at the end of the hall.
The elevator door nearly closes when a Converse-clad foot steps in, and your eyes rake up the figure, eventually landing on his face.
“Jesus fuck,” you mumble, “you must be kidding me.”
Mark enters the elevator with a small, teasing smile, hands tucked into his jacket’s pockets. “Hey, dude, what’s up? Was on your floor on my stop down to get some money Lucas owed me,” he says, “this is actually a godsend, because my genius brain found us a project idea. Relate grief to something else gradual? Easy as pie. Falling in lo—”
You cut him off before he can finish, “Falling in love, right. I thought of it first, earlier,” you say profusely, absently noting the pettiness in your tone. He whistles. “No need to get all possessive over an idea the previous classes have used before, man.” You continue, ignoring him. “Whatever. Lucky for our grades, I went the extra mile to get us some test subjects. Do you know the two Chois? Lia and Daniel?”
He nods once, “Yeah, their PDA on Instagram is fucking sickening, but I see your technique, and I like that—we get some extra data from their god awful PDA.” You nod once, and he continues. “It’s nearing 11 on a Friday night. Whose party are you headed to?”
“You’re welcome for the test subjects,” you gripe. “Anyway, I was so giddy about coming up with it, I just left them to…well, fornicate. As a compromise for being lab rats. I texted my…” you realize you’re starting to share too much to a guy you typically dislike talking to, and then there’s a silence in the air that’s painfully awkward.
“You texted your…?” Mark asks. “My friend, but she’ll be home at 1AM, so I’m out to kill time. No parties, just…I dunno.” He nods again, and then the elevator lets out a blissful ding. You step out simultaneously, and then he faces you. “Look, it’s freezing out, you’re in shorts and a puffer coat, and it’s three hours to 1AM, so I doubt you’ll get far.” You scoff at his words despite feeling your legs shake from the breeze outside. “I’ll be fine, dumbass.”
“Just concerned,” he says, in a tone that sounds more blank than annoyed, but he turns and heads toward the door anyway. He swivels back around briefly. “It’s in Johnny’s apartment. Just a couple people, if you get bored freezing.” He jogs outside then, and you inwardly appreciate the small gesture, but again, annoyance returns just as quickly. You linger a bit before heading out yourself, walking briskly to a local Japanese restaurant. You consider this an opportunity to have some me time, some rest after a shitty week in university. Lasting ’til 1AM alone and entertained would not at all be a problem.
You last one ramen bowl and head to Johnny’s apartment.
—
When Johnny Suh answers the door, he’s clad in a makeshift shower curtain gown of sorts, and is flushed and very buzzed all over. He hikes up the top to cover his chest and laughs profusely. “Did Mark invite you?” Behind him is a sizeable group of just about twenty people, which looks like forty in a cramped communal space. You’d been here before—Johnny likes to invite just about anyone to get stoned and listen to Kid Cudi on Fridays, and you had pushed Lia to accompany you before.
You distantly spot the kitchenette, the small living room, and then the two bedroom doors opposing each other. “The rule was to show up wearing something not marketed as clothing, but Mark didn’t follow the rules, so. Anyway, you’re off scot-free, too…” he pauses, “…if you take off the puffer coat. We’ve got heating, anyway. Free booze and weed, too.” You figure being in a flimsy tank top isn’t so bad—you’re sure half the people here are already getting laid or trying to, and nobody would really pay attention to you.
You shrug off the coat as Johnny steps aside to let you in, hugging it close to your body and navigating your way to the kitchen. The granite counters are filled with various bottles of booze, and you also note the cigarettes and blunts lining the island. You peruse the brands before settling on a sealed can of decidedly not-so-cheap-looking beer, and crack it open to take a swig. It’s warm and fucking disgusting, but there’s not much glitz in an “anything but clothing” off-campus college party anyway.
There are several people scattered among the living area, passing around a blunt—another group is playing suck and blow. You make your way over to the cheap couch on the far end of the room, taking a seat on the arm and stretching out your hand to claim the blunt. It’s Jae who passes it to you—Jaehyun Jung, an upperclassman whose infamy (for wearing nothing but toilet paper and running through campus) greatly surpasses him. “Who are you?” he asks, and you holler your name back over the Kanye West song playing in the background. “Mark invited me,” you tack onto the end as compensation.
He nods in understanding, watching you take a drag and pass it back to him. He only hands it back, saying, “It’s nearly done, just finish it,” and getting up to probably get some booze or another blunt.
You scan the area for a better place to cherish your weed, because you’re definitely not going to do it on the arm of a couch housing three couples making out to the high heavens. You spot an open window and a fire escape just beside the kitchen and walk over, ducking into the cool night air. It’s not quiet, it never is, and you treasure the peace that comes with the noise, closing your eyes and trying to milk the last few drags. All that is flushed down the drain when somebody kicks you out of your reverie and your last two drags are falling down, through the grills of the fire escape.
“What the fuck?” You look up to meet, of course, Mark’s gaze, teasing and mischievous.
“That wasn’t fucking funny, asshat. Get away from me.” You get up instantly, ducking back into the house and searching for your coat. It’s (very unfortunately) buried under a couple who have escalated from making out to borderline public indecency.
“Fuck it,” you mumble, swinging the door open and mentally preparing yourself for the cold once you get to the sidewalk, floors down. Mark follows suit, a laugh gracing the atmosphere around the two of you. “You know, I forgot how fun it is to make you pissed off. I did it all the time in eighth grade when I told our teacher you knew the solution to the Physics problems.” You’re fucking pissed. However petty, you’re fucking annoyed that you couldn’t finish the blunt, and you pay no attention to him.
He badgers on anyway. “Hey—it was a mistake, I wanted to say hi to you.” You scoff, finally turning—“Why? Because we’re friends? We’re not. We’re Psych partners, we came from the same high school, we share a couple mutual friends. But you and I are not friends, not objectively, anyway. Please, Mark. I only just re-acquainted myself with you today, but, like, you’re already so annoying!” You’re at the elevator now, and when the doors slide open, you step inside and let them close at once. You barely catch the unreadable look on his face in your annoyance, and you lean against the wall, shutting your eyes and breathing heavily.
How you’d even get to Giselle’s, or how you would wait out the remaining half-hour before she got home, was just up to whichever higher power happened to be witnessing you that night.
—
The door of your professor’s office closes with a saddening click. You stare back at her name, embossed on the wood in bold, in defeat, accepting your fate with a heavy heart. Just fifteen minutes prior, you had entered with a whole spiel prepared on how you just had to swap with somebody from your class so you wouldn’t have to work with Mark. This speech had occurred twice now—with your TA, and then once with your professor. This was your second chance, your redemption: so you prepared notes, you prepared convincing words—you had a point.
But your professor simply shooed you away, muttering how she didn’t have time for you because she was going to be receiving hundreds of papers in a few weeks’ time from a different class and she, quite honestly, couldn’t be bothered. You bite your lip, thinking back to the previous Friday—it was nearing two weeks since your small outburst at Mark. Since then, you’d expected to build a silent rapport of just working, observing Lia and Daniel, and then parting. And that was almost it. You would show up to your so-called “lab rat sessions”, cup of warm caramel latte in hand, and work.
Except Mark would constantly make noise, jeer, swipe your pen, and do other things that got on your nerves.
“You’re going to have to stop trying sometime,” Lia says, backhugging you. She’d been waiting outside. You let your head loll back onto her shoulder and whine. “Do you know when you’re so frustrated you want to cry? Yeah? That’s exactly how it is, Li. I can’t keep up with this for another two, three months. It’s like he’s not even, like, fuck, like he’s not even trying, y’know? We’re building the foundation of a pages-long paper. This isn’t some finals essay he can bullshit in three hours.”
You groan as Lia pulls away from you, whirling you around to face her. “It’ll be fine, I swear to you. I’ll help out, anytime you need it. I promise. If I start hating Daniel, I’ll even pretend like I’m in love with him. Head over heels.” You let yourself laugh and pull out your phone as you two begin to walk towards your dorm.
She tsks. “We’re gonna have a thing tonight, right? Like, a lab rat session?”
You nod, squinting over your calendar app. “Yeah, at around 5:30 to 6. It’ll be quick, but Mark and I are gonna have to stay behind to divide the work for the general paper and then start. Hopefully we can get some outlining done by tonight…so don’t wait up,” you sigh. She smiles apologetically, pinching your waist affectionately.
“Daniel and I will totally help you. He’s a Mark anti now. I told him about the party outburst thing.” You had sent her a slew of texts that night, and like every other story you had told (save for the most private ones), Daniel had caught wind of it. You’re half sure he was capable of blackmailing you at that point. “Good,” you shoot back, “I’m going to need all the anti-Mark force I can get.”
“Why?” You both turn to see Mark standing idly behind you. There’s a beat, and then: “You look like an inane stalker,” you retort, turning to continue walking. Lia follows suit—with the two of you, the vibe of the atmosphere would always come easy. If one was mad, the other would act mad, too.
“Hey,” Mark repeats, falling into step beside you, “why do you need an anti-Mark force? Tell me.” At this point, your nerves are on fire and your blood is boiling, and you’re beginning to envision beating him up on the quad. “Mark, it’s been great, but we’re going to our dorm, and in case you don’t want to catch a restraining order, I suggest you get off at your floor instead of following us like a creep,” you say sweetly, quickening your steps until he’s far behind you, smiling. Fucking asshole.
“I’ll see ya this evening, then,” he teases, and you grumble under your breath.
—
It’s 5:45 when Lia and Daniel leave the library—fifteen minutes early. You and Mark leave ten minutes later, hours before you were supposed to complete your task. You’re fuming, and for once, Mark has the decency to read the room and feel remorse.
The evening had started off well enough, though—Lia and Daniel had showed up, did their thing, described what was happening, and you and Mark had noted it down. And then, well. Mark spilled water all over your planner, which, in hindsight, was definitely unintentional, but in the spur of the moment, you could do nothing but your natural—everybody’s natural—response to getting something precious ruined. You began to cry. “What the fuck,” you sniffled, “is wrong with you?!” You had shaken the majority of water off your planner, but any and all dates had been smudged and bled, and you couldn’t bring yourself to forgive him. “I know I called you annoying, but this is too far,” you had said, watching his face go from teasing to genuinely sorry. “Dude, it was accidenta—”
“I don’t give a fuck—!” You quickly cut yourself off and wipe your tears when you see a young library assistant heading towards your table. Everybody composes themselves—Lia and Daniel straighten out the things on the surface and Mark sits up straight. “Hey,” he says. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but two students already came in with a noise complaint. We’re gonna have to ask you to,” he makes a gesture, “leave for now and come back tomorrow. Also, the puddle on the table…yeah. I’m really sorry.” He leaves, as if to make sure you have no other choice but to just go, and you slump back onto your chair in exhaustion.
“You two can go ahead,” you hear Mark say, “I’m really sorry about this. We’ll clean up and apologize.” Faintly, you hear them get up, and you feel Lia’s hand squeeze yours as she promises a text and food later. You let your eyes remain shut, drinking in the quiet, trying to calm your inner turmoil.
Ten minutes later, when you’re out in the cold November air, Mark finally speaks. You had cleaned up and collected your things in silence. “I’m really sorry,” he says, “it was an accident, for real. I know I tease a lot, but, uh, I’m being serious. I would never have done that on purpose. I see you write shit on that thing a lot, so…I know how much you like it. Treasure it…? I don’t—whatever it is, I’m really sorry. Like, really. T’was an accident. If you need me to pay for it…” You shake your head softly, hugging your damp planner closer to your sweater-clad chest. “It’s okay. Thanks, anyway. For helping. I’ll email you what you have to do. Bye,” you turn and begin walking in the direction of your dorm. The sun is beginning to set, golden orange hues casting a vast array of colors onto the landscape of the city. You sigh softly, heart heavy with annoyance and exhaustion, and speed up before you start having a mini-breakdown.
—
Stage 1: Denial|
Your cursor blinks back at you as you finish typing in your outline for the introduction. It’s early into November, but already, you’ve had to shut your window to shielf yourself from the biting breeze outside. Across you, Lia applies mascara and talks to you. “What are you up to?” she asks, face contorted.
“This godforsaken paper,” you mumble back, “just finished the introduction outline. I’m trying to give a loose definition for each gradual ‘stage.’” Shoving your Macbook off your lap, you get up to stretch. “Which I’ll probably find on Google Scholar, honestly. If you had to give me a definition—what’s denial?”
She hums contemplatively, wand on lash, and then pipes up. “I think it’s just a stage where you can’t face the fact that you’re interested in that person. Like, why them? With Daniel, he wasn’t really my type. So the whole denial was denying I liked him, because…well, yeah. But I think it differs. Some people deny it because they’re shy, or ashamed, or weirded out that they even like them.”
You’ve had your fair share of crushes before, and sure enough, you had denied them all. But that was high school—college, though, had only brought short-lived flings and one night stands; you were an overachiever, much too committed to your own prosperity to pay mind to anybody else for too long. (Except Lia.) So you hadn’t really experienced the whole boyfriend-in-university thing—not that you particularly wanted to, but you were just human; you were curious. Lia had gotten it, and it looked wonderful.
Speaking of—“So, a week without meeting Mark in person, huh? How is that going for you?” You scoff lightly, shaking your head as you pull your hair into a bun. “It’s going just fine. Dandy, actually. We work from our dorms and you and Daniel just update us. It’s a fine arrangement that I regret was not formulated sooner.” Lia nods in understanding, and you watch her pull on a top, mutter I’m out and head outside. For the fifth time this week, you’re alone in the dorm, with nothing but your Alexa playing SZA and your laptop. You pull it onto your lap again, staring at the boldface letters you had typed minutes prior: denial. You had no firsthand experience of being mature and going through denial; not in that way, anyway. You found it stupid that people even denied when it would be less painful to just admit interest.
You blow a raspberry as you research studies related to the term, bored out of your mind.
—
Two days later, you meet Mark again.
You’d also had the pleasure of, for a minute or two, meeting a friend of his, Donghyuck Lee from Economics. He’s loud and amusing and, from your viewpoint, undeserving of somebody as boring as Mark. (That’s from a minute-long intercation.)
At Lia’s insistence (and likely Daniel’s, too), you two met up to properly work and collaborate. In fear of being kicked out again, the four of you had chosen to meet somewhere else—a cafe off-campus affectionately named something along the lines of Saltwater Coffee. Naturally, after Donghyuck leaves, you find yourself sitting idly (awkwardly) beside Mark. “They won’t be long,” he says suddenly, “er, Daniel just texted me. They’re near.” You nod, pursing your lips, eyes trained onto your laptop. “We’re almost done formulating the denial stage and we can start outlining anger and bargaining. This’ll take about a week more—maybe mid to late November? Uh, I know it seems justifiable to slack off with the holidays,” you say, “but I really want us to finish this early. The due date’s in mid-February, so we can pass this on the 14th.” You turn to face him. “Get it? ‘Cause it’s Valentine’s Day.”
He nods. “Okay. No slacking. I get it. The Valentine’s is smart, too.” You nod back in silent understanding, turning back to type frantically into your keyboard.
You hear the door jingle and Lia’s small “hey, guys”, so you look up and offer a smile. “I’m gonna go order everyone some coffee,” Mark says beside you, getting up and shuffling over to the counter. Daniel joins him, and Lia takes a seat across you, her smile knowing and apologetic. “Everything okay?” You blow a raspberry, but smile, anyway. “It’s not so bad. It could be better, but no more banter, just very annoyed auras…? You get it. It’s just been tough trying to divert my focus to this and ignore all the annoyance I feel.”
“Totally, I get that,” she says, “but all the same, I’m glad he’s matured a little bit and lessened all the ribbing.” You smile at that, agreeing, and then the conversation spirals into one about both of your days—“Professor Callahan totally pops a stiffy over Professor Michaelson”, “Daniel tells me Joshua cheated. Yes, on Jess!”, “Mia dropped out the other day and nobody knows why, hope she’s okay”—before Daniel and Mark return, coffee cups in hand. Mark places one next to you, and profusely, you look up at him, who’s just about to sit.
“Thanks, but I don’t drink brewed coff—”
“It’s a caramel latte, the only thing you drink. Heard you say that to Lia once.” He takes a seat and pulls his laptop open.
You stare at him, taking the cup and bringing it to your lips. Sure enough, it’s caramel—thick, and foamy, and sweet. You look up at him again, but he’s busy on Google Scholar, perusing through journals and studies. You shake your head before turning to Lia, who’s already looking at you, expression mirroring yours.
Sweet, she mouths, but you purse your lips and choose not to acknowledge it. “Thanks,” you say quietly, and he hums to say you’re welcome.
Your eyes flicker to him. He’s wearing a knitted sweater, but he’s pulled it up to his elbows. He’s typing quickly, and he can use all his fingers, too (you fail miserably at that), and his brows are furrowed as if he’s stressed, or in a hurry. You’ve never really noticed this much of Mark before. It’s probably, you think absently, because you’re confused. Puzzled at the gesture that you didn’t expect—at all.
After an hour, he angles his laptop to yours. “Nailed the intro. High five?” You open the Google doc on your own browser, and sure enough, the word count has increased monumentally. You can’t deny his knack for writing. “There are a few discrepancies in grammar,” you say instead. “But…okay. This is good.” You ignore his hand, in mid-air, and continue researching.
Lia holds in a giggle, but turns back to Daniel, who, after fifteen minutes, turns to you and Mark. “Lia and I are heading out, guys,” he says, and Lia quickly tacks on. “Hey, if you need me to stay, I can,” she says quickly, but you smile and shake your head.
“This might take a while. Go ahead. See ya at the dorm, Li. Bye, Daniel.” Mark bids his farewells, too, and they leave you alone in the cafe. It’s nearing a three hour crunch when he abruptly gets up to stretch, a low grunt leaving his lips. “I’m exhausted,” he sighs, “but at least we’re nearly done with this whole denial thing.”
“We’re actually only just starting,” you state, “this is going to go through a lot of editing and proofreading.”
He chuckles and walks back to the counter to order something, and you shut your laptop to rest your eyes. Your glasses rest uncomfortably on the bridge of your nose as you breathe deeply. You lose track of time, and you open your eyes ten minutes later, fumbling to get up properly. There’s a panini beside your laptop, wrapped neatly in a tissue and laid on a plate. Mark’s is empty, save for crumbs, and he says nothing.
“Get up,” he remarks teasingly after a while, and you groan in exhaustion. “I am, I’m up,” you mutter, straightening your back and flexing your neck. Inwardly, you wonder if you should thank him for the panini that is obviously yours that you obviously did not buy for yourself.
Then Mark’s hand stretches out to take the panini, and he takes a bite. “Sorry,” he says, “I had to put my second sandwich in your space. This table’s a little small.” You hum back in acknowledgement, nodding once. “It’s, uh…all good,” you respond, voice small as you type into your laptop. Internally, your body fills slowly with humiliation and confusion, but you stay quiet, and that’s how the rest of the night goes: a silent, steady beat of keyboard clicking and the occasional question.
No banter, no nothing—it’s a godsend, yes, it is, but you can’t help but miss the abrasive, playful conversations the two of you had built up over the previous several weeks. But really—had you truly assumed he had bought you a panini? As if a coffee wasn’t enough? You felt at odds with yourself for even expecting such a gesture from the guy whose main habit was to annoy you to the ends of the Earth.
“It’s late,” he says, as if he’s reading your mind and knowing you’re absolutely mortified inside. “Let’s head home.” You nod, deeming the night’s work satisfactory—maybe even beyond, considering the amount of effort you both put into the output. You shove your laptop and charger into your bag and pocket your phone, lingering awkwardly and waiting for Mark to finish packing up. He’s particular with it—he has little sections in his backpack for the wires and chargers, and even his AirPods, and his laptop.
“Very organized,” you find yourself commenting offhandedly, your tone taking on a teasing edge. He glares playfully back at you.
“Sorry I don’t want my wires to break,” he shoots back, eyeing your flimsy tote bag, “unlike some people.” You roll your eyes and, against your strongest wills, a smile appears on your lips, albeit a small one. His eyes linger on your smile for a little bit before he clears his throat and zips up his knapsack. “Let’s, er, go. Thank Jesus we’re in the same building.” When you exit, the air bites at you despite the jacket covering your body, and you quicken your pace. “It’s cold as hell.”
“Ironic,” Mark says. You hide a smile.
—
That’s what November brings you—the next week and a half are composed of just slowly learning to get used to working with Mark again and going home late into the night, crunching to the max.
Your paper begins to take on more and more structure, and two out of the six days you’ve met, Mark has set down a caramel latte for you to arrive to. The acoustic music slowly phases into holiday guitar, and the coat rack at the entrance is weighed down more and more as the days pass, preparing to welcome December.
You and Mark work silently, save for the rare banter and eyeroll, and very gradually, the annoyance that had bubbled up within seconds before had sank down. You’re not friends, per se—it’s just that the frustration and exasperation had lessened considerably.
You were civil. That’s it. You won’t try to deny that you’ve been thinking about this a little too much—about what your “friendship” had become with Mark. You hadn’t snapped at him in days, and he hadn’t tugged at your ballpen in even longer. It wasn’t that you had cowered him into silence by crying over your planner—it may have instigated it, but his behavior was…different.
More calm, more sure. Less childish. He would still tease you, but not as much. It’s nearing mid-November now, and you’ve successfully done much of your introduction and denial, needing less and less of Lia and Daniel’s presence. (Which you’re sure they’re grateful for.) But being left alone with Mark isn’t as bad as you once thought—
“Hello. Earth to you,” you distantly hear, and you whip your head in the direction of the voice as you pace back to your dorm building. Mark stares blankly back at you. “What,” you mumble back. He quirks a brow before continuing. “I was saying, I think I need to take a rain check tomorrow. The, uh”—he clears his throat—“um, yeah.”
You eye him. “Okay…?”
He nods profusely, “Yeah, all good.” The walk continues in silence, the sun finally setting down behind the Manhattan skyline beyond you and the breeze taking on a chillier temperature. You sigh softly, fatigue overtaking you as you stare at the building nearing you. “If you take a rain check, just make sure you write it within the day or after,” you say, half-sternly and half-tiredly. He mumbles a “got it” and you both jog up the steps to the lobby, where you run into, by some weird twist of the day, a small group of anti-abortion protesters.
“Jesus Christ,” Mark mutters under his breath. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” You rub the bridge of your nose in your fingers, choosing to tune them out and instead maneuver your way through the door. Before you can even take a step, though, they’re all up in your face with pamphlets and brochures and a guitar. “Excuse me,” you grunt, trying to gently push them aside, but they only come on stronger. “A child is a child,” they say. “If you know anybody who’s—”
“Is this your new initiative? Preying on college students on school grounds, unaccounted for?” Mark asks from behind you. You turn to find he’s filming and stifle a laugh. “I’m surprised nobody’s kicked you out. Won’t be long, now,” he adds with a smile.
You tune out nearly everything else—it’s really just them telling Mark to stop recording and him retorting with equally snarky phrases. It’s not until maybe after a solid two minutes of back and forth that one of them, a weird middle-aged woman, pulls out a burgundy gummy bear from a bag and pushes it into Mark’s camera. He takes it from her and examines it, puzzled. “That,” she says matter-of-factly, “is the approximate size of a fetus. It’s big. It’s sentient, alive. What, I beg of you, what would you do?”
Mark squints at it. Then he pops it into his mouth, takes your hand, and runs straight to the elevator across the floor.
“There’s a bunch of anti-abortion people outside, it’s not cool!” He hollers to the receptionist before the doors close with a damning click.
There’s a beat, and then.
Both of you are doubling over in laughter. “Why the hell would y—why would you do that?! You’re insane!” The response is: “Because they’re not cool! They’re fuckin’ annoying! So I ate their baby!” There are tears in your eyes, your laughter so hard it’s nearing silent—Mark’s, though, is loud and annoying sounding, though you seem to not mind so much. The laughter subsides when the ding of your floor sounds and you straighten yourself up. Getting into a different position reminds you of the very there, very obvious brushing of your hand against Mark’s, which he’d taken just moments earlier, post-baby eating.
You freeze and jerk your hand away. “I’ll, um, go now,” you say, “I’ll see you tomorr—no, the day after.” Against your wills, you meet his eyes, and you’re surprised to find that he’s already looking at you, an unreadable expression on his face. “Okay,” he says, his eyes not leaving yours. Your heart beats faster at a very small increment, but you head out and semi-run to your room, swinging it open and leaning against it.
You look up to find Lia and Daniel engaged in a heated Monopoly match. You make no noise, mind (and heart, but you can’t tell why) racing fast. You watch them play for a second before they both look up slowly.
“You’re smiling like a goddamn idiot,” Daniel says. Your face falls immediately. “I’m, um, no I’m not,” you say casually, pacing over to your bed and flopping onto it. Lia laughs loudly.
“That sounded so freaked. Like we’re your mom and you just brought weed home kind of freaked.” Pause.
“Are you hiding something from me?” She rises from her spot to look at you, head in pillow and all, and you let out a muffled “no!”, probably too defensive for your own good.
It’s Daniel’s turn to snort. You look up and glare at him, “You’re getting too comfortable for your own good. You need to humble yourself, Daniel. What’s it again? Oh yeah, Yeonjun, right?” He rolls his eyes at the use of his Korean name and turns back to the Monopoly board.
Lia flops atop you, eliciting a grunt from your lips. “Are you okay? Did somebody flirt with you? Did Mark finally fuck off and leave you alone properly?”
At the mention of Mark, your heart races—you will it to stop, and audibly groan in the process. “What is it, you bitch?” Lia asks, tugging on a section of your hair. “It’s nothing, Li! Nothing, I promise.” She glares at you before walking to Daniel and covering his ears. Instantly, he begins to let out a chorus of Lalala, and deeming the environment safe enough, you let it slip.
“Mark and I held hands. But it—”
“You what?!”
“It really, really doesn’t mean anyth—”
“How can that not mean anything? It’s hand holdi—”
“If you would listen to the backstory you’d know!” She pauses, and then uncovers Daniel’s ears and knees him.
“Okay, get out. Monopoly postponed, Jun,” she says, pushing him out insistently. He barely collects his phone and keys before he’s out, but you swoon silently when you catch him pressing a short goodbye kiss to her forehead before actually leaving. She turns immediately, fire and curiosity awfully evident in her face.
She nears you. “Explain.”
And that’s what sparks the story of the weird protesters, Mark’s power move, and the unintentional hand hold that lasted a few moments too long. She nods the entire time, laughing, and then her face straightens out again. You can almost hear the gears in her head turning as she analyzes the situation, and then she nods once.
“Okay. Perfectly justifiable to freak out.” Another pause. “But why were you smiling?” You stare blankly back at her, head working impossibly quick to formulate a reply. You’ve taken too long now, judging by the way Lia is looking at you with the most shit-eating grin on her fucking face. You groan.
“You like him, you bitch!”
You shake your head, facing her. “I don’t, dude. Trust me. I just…it was a fun experience, so naturally I’d be laughing. And smiling. But I’m just not interested in Mark! I’m not,” you fumble, being completely honest.
You didn’t—not even if you looked in the mirror and asked yourself. But you couldn’t deny the feelings you felt in the ten seconds from the elevator to your room, your heart racing and your fist curling and uncurling. When you look at Lia again, she’s still smiling, flushed. “You like him,” she says into her palm, which she’s slapped over her mouth in disbelief. You stare back at her, your expression baffled. “If I did,” you begin, getting up to discard your shirt, “I’d have told you by now. It’s really not that big of a deal unless you make it out to be.”
After that, you and Mark spend nearly three weeks walking on eggshells around each other. While conversations are no longer avoided, and you could talk without getting exasperated or too embarrassed, finger brushes are frequent, and eye contact only makes you extremely nervous. You had worked until the second stage—anger—already, but you’d still been polishing the denial and introduction. Considering November wasn’t over and the paper was due February, you figured you were moving at an okay pace. Besides, a lot of your friends hadn’t even begun.
—
There are two instances where you rush home, mortified beyond belief.
The first when when you struck up a conversation with the cute, Australian barista. Scrawled in big penmanship on his name tag is Chan. You had brought up, in passing, how often you’re at the cafe and how you probably deserve a free drink. He replied with a low hum, and you dialed down your flirty tone, slightly embarrassed. But not really. You’ve rejected plenty of people before. It’s when you’re already paying for your drink that he replied, handing you your (for a change) iced matcha with a small grin.
“I’d have flirted with you weeks ago if you didn’t have your boyfriend with you all the time. He’s always buying you your drinks.” You spluttered for a good second, staring at him incredulously. “He’s not my boyfriend,” you finally said.
He had shrugged, nonchalant. “He sure as hell looks at you a lot for someone you’re not dating. And you do it just as much, if not more. I’m observant, by the way. Not a stalker.” You had taken your cup and paced over to the other end of the cafe, sat across Mark, cheeks heated.
He looked up, brow raised. You shook your head.
The second time was when Donghyuck graced you both with his presence. You quickly found out that he was a magnetic presence and you both shared similar interests. The energy you both created was both amusing and annoying to Mark.
Although you kept quiet mostly, you enabled Donghyuck’s incessant teasing, which annoyed Mark to the ends of the Earth. “You’re a dork. Isn’t he?” You look up and nod with a smile. Mark rolls his eyes, sending Donghyuck into a laughing frenzy. Mark just grunts and continues typing.
Hyuck had made a joke about how two Physics textbooks discussed why the sad man named Mark owns two of them and didn’t have a life, and you laughed.
You didn’t usually laugh, not around Mark, at least, since it was safe to say you didn’t have any source of entertainment in such a boring guy. But you laughed at the witty joke, and Donghyuck, without thinking much, had said in passing: “Mark, I guess you’re right about everything about her being pretty.”
Mark said nothing, typing. You said nothing. Nobody said anything, not even a sly Donghyuck or, from the counter, an even slyer Chan.
—
When you see Mark next, it’s three days later, and it’s, for the second time, in Johnny’s apartment.
Lia had asked if you wanted to tag along, and you found no harm in going. (“You’re going because Mark is” becomes Lia’s favorite phrase of the night, so much it’s spread to Daniel, who you’d succumbed to and spilled everything to hours prior.) The walk there has something boiling low in your gut and you’re quiet, in fear you might end up vomiting in nerves or saying something stupid. Lia teases you, but her hand clasping yours reassures you, and you squeeze it tightly.
You get there late—it’s past 1AM, and you have a sense of deja vu walking into the cramped space. It’s fuller this time—people are creeping into the bedrooms to smoke in private or do some other things, but suffice to say it’s crowded as fuck.
“Want a drink?” Lia hollers, and you nod over the music. Johnny’s neighbor is another upperclassman named Doyoung, though he’s mainly referred to as Doie by just about everybody around him.
You’ve seen his girlfriend call him bunny a few times, though you’ve long desired to repress that memory.
Judging by the fact that you can faintly hear a different song from the next room, the party has probably extended to Doyoung’s. There’s quite a gathering this week—the rich freshman who you’d befriended once before, Chenle, and his horde of friends are here; from Lia, who hands you a drink, you learn that Kun and Sicheng, two incredibly attractive juniors, are here, too—in Doie’s, though. The party only intensifies, which is hard, because Johnny’s apartment is very tiny.
Eventually, you find yourself in the bathroom, smoking a joint you’d grabbed out of the clammy hands of a tipsy Chenle and kicking a couple out under the guise that you’re Johnny’s cousin. Chenle had protested but eventually given in, pulling a new one out of his pocket.
The bathroom light is white and harsh, but there’s a very funky lamp at the corner. From your place inside the dry (and thankfully clean…looking) bathtub, you eye it. It’s a tall one in the shape of a glass of margarita.
You heave yourself up and find the switch, and then when it’s on, you giggle at the green light emitting from it. You have absolutely no idea why Johnny, Jaehyun, or their roommate Jungwoo (3J, as some call them) have a decorative, margarita-shaped green lamp, and in their bathroom nonetheless, but you shut off the main light and return to smoking your blunt. Deciding your ass aches far too much, you lean against the tile wall and cherish the smoke.
The door opens abruptly, and you curse, pushing it back closed.
“I have explosive diarrhea,” you say robotically, using the same excuse you did for the previous three couples that showed up.
From the other side, you hear a shrill laugh and sound of confusion. When you peer over the other side and see Mark, you groan and laugh. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I saw you come in. Like, twenty minutes ago.”
“I’m cherishing the party privately.”
Mark ushers himself into the dark space and shuts the door. He makes a show of locking it, as if to show you it’s possible to do so. The sound of it locking sends a wave of nerves up your spine.
“I didn’t lock it in case a medical emergency happens and they have to rush inside.”
Mark quirks his brow. “I doubt they would think to go inside the restroom and not panic and call 911, you know.”
You shrug in indifference and take another drag, reluctantly offering it to him.
He takes it, and you pause for a second to observe him. His hair, dark, and which usually covers his entire forehead like a broom or at least parts in the middle slightly, is now styled differently.
He’s in a fitting black shirt and blue jeans, and, upon your closer inspection, silver rings adorn his fingers. You will yourself to look down. It’s dark. “What’s that you’re holding?” You ask instead, trying not to extend your stare at his shoulders.
“Your puffer coat,” he says, tossing it to you. “Left it last time.”
“That time when you annoyed the shit out of me, right,” you retort.
“Yes, exactly that time. That was ages ago. Weeks ago. Look at us now.”
“Us now—what, still disliking each other?”
He laughs humorlessly, but doesn’t entertain you further. He turns to the lamp instead. “Do you know I was there when they moved this in,” he begins, gesturing to it, “Jae got it at some weird, awful flea market, and he had to buy some extra wiring to fix it or whatever. I was doing Physics homework. It was at the start of this school year. And I bet you didn’t know…” he bends down and reaches to the base of the lamp, pressing a button, “that it changes color.”
The room is bathed in red now, and you swallow. “Interesting,” you manage to say, despite the racing in your head. “Very,” he responds, taking a step closer to you. You gaze up at him. He’s tall. You breathe softly. You nod in agreement. You don’t know what to do. You want to punch him and kiss him and leave all at once.
You want to kiss him, oh God, you want to kiss him.
“Oh God,” you say softly, out loud. Oh fuck. Too much weed?
He inches closer, leaving the blunt on the rim of the sink. “Why?” He smiles a little and you smile back, nervous. He’s so close now, and he smells so good—like cologne and laundry and weed. You shake your head. “Nothing,” you mumble back.
He’s even closer now, eyes boring into yours. You adjust your strap, a nervous habit. He takes your hand and does it for you. “I like this song,” he says casually, like he’s not playing with the strap of your dress. “Do you know what it’s called?” It’s vaguely familiar to you, but you shake your head.
“It’s Jhene Aiko,” he replies, and you nod. You gravitate closer.
You stare at him. He stares back. “I’m high,” you say. You giggle. “I had a brownie and that blunt.”
“That’s a lot,” he says. “Don’t finish the blunt, ‘kay?” You nod back, and giggle again. In two seconds, your nervous mechanism has kicked in and you’re laughing like a psycho. “I’m high,” you repeat, and then he kisses you, effectively sobering you up.
Huh. He kisses you, effectively sobering you up. He kisses you.
You kiss back, shocked and relieved, deepening it, trying to get as much of him as possible. His hands are big and wide and warm, traveling all over you. You want him. Your arms wrap around his neck, pulling him closer, lips molding against yours deliriously.
“Want you,” you say when his hands play with the hem of your dress, teetering closer and closer to your core. “I said, I want you,” you whine, “now.” Mark only laughs, his hands under your dress and playing with the lace waistband of your underwear.
“I like how this feels,” he mumbles. “Wanna take a look.” You whimper, hiking your leg up and nodding. “Please, just…touch me,” you say breathlessly. “Please.”
“I will,” he says, voice calm. “You’re being good.” You can’t deny the noise you make at the praise, breathy and loud. You pull him in again, drunk for more, your hands raking through his hair. It’s dark, the both of you basking in the small red light. Mark hikes your dress up, inching it higher, slowly, until he sees the hem of your white lace underwear. He grunts and pulls at it. “I love this,” he says. “So fuckin’, Jesus.”
You giggle against the smile. He toys with your panties for a bit before finally pulling them down, watching them sink to your ankles. “Hot,” he jokes, and you laugh in disbelief. “Why would you even be joking abou—”
“Mark! Let’s go, it’s 2:30!” Donghyuck’s voice is just as loud and clear as it would be if you weren’t separated by a door. Jolted, you and Mark instinctively break apart and stare at the rattling door. “Maaaark,” he sing-songs, knocking to a beat. You stare at Mark, waiting for him to respond.
“I have explosive diarrhea,” he says. You stifle a guffaw, pulling your panties up.
He pouts, tapping your ass. “Bullshit,” Donghyuck says from outside. “I’m cooomin’ in!”
In the span of a minute, where you realize Donghyuck is not bluffing and in fact has a stolen bathroom key from Jungwoo’s bedside drawer, you manage to shove yourself into the bathtub and hide yourself with the curtain. Mark switches the light back on, much to both of your disappointment, and pretends to smoke the blunt you’d left on the sink fifteen minutes ago. Ergo: pre-kiss.
You find your phone on the bathtub floor and grip it, turning the brightness down. You have a plethora of messages and voicemails from Lia, five calls from Daniel, and an interesting iMessage of Donghyuck’s red, weed-induced eyes from an unknown number. It could be anybody, and that scares you.
The texts are all frantic, and they’re the last things that bring you out of your high and back to reality. Where are u, who u with?, u getting railed??!, Have you seen mark?
“Hyuck, if I actually did have a shitstorm coming out of my ass, you’d be so sorry for breaking in,” you hear Mark say. You sink lower into the bathtub, awaiting Donghyuck’s voice. “You were the one who suggested we go at 2:30, and you’ve been smoking weed for the longest time, dipshit,” he says, “now let’s go. I haven’t seen your Psych girl all night, so you can cry about it at home.” You faintly detect Mark protesting and then, “Let me just freshen up! Just go ahead.”
Reluctantly, you peek out and find Mark alone. You get up and fix your dress.
You’re sober now. The red lights are gone. It’s just you and Mark, plain and simple. Your feelings haven’t gone away, though. You’re fucking fucked. You want him to fuck you. Oh, fuck.
“Go,” you say instead, spluttering. “And I’ll see you. Tuesday.”
You leave first despite yourself, not turning around for even a split second, finding a worried (and then relieved) Lia and taking five consecutive tequila shots to down the nerves and denial bubbling in your system. She raises a brow, but you refuse to even meet her eyes, head and heart pounding impossibly fast. You want to kiss him again. So, so bad. But what the fuck did you just let happen?
—
Stage 2: Anger|
Lia hadn’t pressed, and you were nervous, but it was getting easy to diverge the details of what happened during Johnny’s party. You had instead opted to work alone, too much of a coward to even see Mark’s face. If you were being completely honest with yourself, you feared you might just kiss him if you ever saw him. So you spent days at class working, and then at your dorm working, adjusting your route to avoid, as much as possible, Mark or Hyuck’s buildings and that godforsaken cafe. You did text Mark, though, and the exchanges were brief, not even a “thank you” or “good morning” preceding them. It was awful.
Working alone forced you into a heavy load of retrospection. You would think deeply, like how you are now, spiraling into a series of questions where you studied the play-by-play of what happened in the bathroom, up against the wall. You liked it. A lot. But you couldn’t. You wouldn’t let yourself. Why it even happened…God. You mentally berated yourself for giving into it. Didn’t you hate him? Or at least dislike him? Didn’t you take pleasure in scolding him or fighting with him?
“You’re freaking me out,” Lia says from her bed. She’s been staring at you. “You’ve been lying on your bed staring at the ceiling for twenty straight minutes.” She walks over to you, flopping next to you, her arms winding around your body. “You can tell me anything.”
“I know,” you say, nervous. You gulp.
“Okay. If you’re n—”
“Mark and I kissed.”
She sits up and turns to look at you.
“Made out, more like. We were going to fuck if we didn’t get interrupted.” You’re mortified, refusing to meet her gaze. When you look up, her face is even, but you know she’s bubbling over with giddiness inside. “That is so fucking great, dude,” she replies. “Why are you so embarrassed?”
“Because it’s Mark,” you whine. “He’s not…I don’t know.”
She lies back down. “You’re overthinking this.” You laugh, poking her waist. “I know, but I just…I feel like he might not like me much anymore.” You recount the way you left him hanging, despite the lack of awkward air and the potential to talk and become something. She tsks but justifies it, because she’s so good at that, being a mediator, and you continue with your day quietly.
Your mind is always on it, though, his hands and his lips, and you’ve scoured Spotify for the song playing that he had commented on.
It’s called Pussy Fairy. You cannot make it up. It’s a weird title, but the song is heavenly, and you can’t deny when it’s full blast on your AirPods and your hand is creeping closer and closer there, trying desperately to replicate what you felt in that moment. When you’re not sated, ashamed and sighing, you resort to working on your paper. There are moments where both you and Mark are working at the same time, and you hate yourself for getting all flustered when it happens.
—
It’s a Tuesday, in the early afternoon, when you’re out of class and cleaning out the little litter in your dorm, repasting whatever decorations fell off, et cetera. You have the time, anyway, and it wouldn’t hurt to fix the place up a bit. You’re halfway into re-stringing Lia’s fairy lights when someone knocks on the door, jolting you. You curse under your breath, hopping off her bed to swing the door open and reveal—
“What is up?!” Donghyuck grins back at you. His hand is raised in a high-five invitation, which you hesitantly reciprocate. “Mark tells me you’re meeting today, and that I should come remind you, since it seems like you forgot. He says you haven’t texted all day. Since I was on this floor—do you know Jeno Lee? Do you know it’s so amusing how Mark, Jeno, and I all have the same surname? Anyway. I was here on your floor to remind Jeno about an Econ presentation, and Mark texts me and goes, if you’re with Jeno, then remind you—you as in you, you—to come meet me and work.”
He talks so goddamn fast. “You talk so goddamn fast.”
He just guffaws, high-fiving you again. “Well, you get my point, right? Meet Mark at the cafe and work is all he said to do. If you wanna.” You nod slowly, absorbing his words. “Tell him I’ll be a little late,” you say simply, and as you’re about to shut the door, he talks again, his voice quieter this time. “I know you were hiding behind the curtain.”
You pull the door open again, so fast a minuscule gust of wind washes over both of your faces. “You’re kidding,” you say, “you’re kidding.” You stare at each other for a second before his solem features break into a smile. “I am. Mark spilled everything to me, so I decided to trick you.” Relief and annoyance break over your system as you swat Donghyuck’s shoulder. “You’re a dick,” you spit. “You’re bringing a bad image to Econ majors.”
He merely laughs and closes the door himself, light brown hair fluffing with the severity of his laugh (cackle.) Slightly annoyed, you drag yourself to get dressed, dread building up in your stomach at the prospect of seeing Mark again. Not when your mind conjures up what happened everytime you just see his name. Or the word mark. You’ve been out of it since it happened, not even responding to your usual heated debates with the conservative Trump supporter in class. You suppose the best way to confront it is to simply confront it.
When you get there, though, it’s clear that confrontation would not be an option. Immediately, when you sit, the air shifts into something oddly familiar—the atmosphere between the two of you when you first got partnered up. Except now, Mark won’t even give you a pinch of attention, or banter, instead typing his questions into the document to avoid verbal conversation. (He is a fucking petty bitch, you’ll give him that.)
You stroll over to the counter, pout set on your lips. “Hello,” Chan says politely, and you just smile half-heartedly. “Lover’s quarrel?” He teases, and you roll your eyes. “He’s ignoring me,” you respond, watching him make you a latte. “And we’re not dating. We never were.”
“Mm, right,” he says, finishing and setting your drink in front of you. You laugh a little, taking it. “No. We weren’t. But I’ll update you.”
When you return, Mark’s looking at you, quiet as ever. You break his gaze and continue working, working and working until the sun sets, nestled deep behind the horizon. When you look up again, the sky is already dark, city lights providing solace to the place. You look at Mark quizzically, as if to ask him what time you should both leave, but he just shrugs. “Any time,” he states plainly, and huffing, you get up.
“I’ll go right ahead then,” you say, trying your best to sound annoyed and get your message across. He says nothing, watching you pack up your stuff and sling your bag over your shoulder, and then eventually, leave.
Daniel is the first to see you in your raged, annoyed state—you meet him in the elevator of the lobby, your blood boiling and your fists balled. Knowing you’re headed to the same floor, he presses the button, ruffles his hair, and then lets the silence take over. And then, “What’s going on?” You breathe deeply, turning to him with a tired look on your face. “Mark’s going on,” you mumble, “he was ignoring me the entire time. And to think he was the one who requested my presence! It makes no sense. Why would he ignore me when we can just talk about it?”
“About what?”
It suddenly occurs to you that Daniel knows about your weird feelings for Mark, but not how they culminated. You splutter. “Um, about us. Everything.” Daniel looks amused, but the doors open, and you thank them for the temporary exit from the topic. He stops you right outside, though, and pulls out two ticket, card-looking things. “Wait, um. Listen, Lia and I are going to reach our seven-month…anniversary, I guess, of, y’know, being a thing. I know it seems really small, but I want to give her a little something out of appreciation, so I got us a room at this ski lodge outside the city.”
“That’s so sweet,” you say honestly, “but I must admit, it comes on sort of stalker-y. Like you’re whisking her off out of the city.”
He beams even louder. “That’s why you’re coming. With Mark!”
You gape back at him. “Did you miss the whole I-hate-him thing that happened in there?” You jab your finger towards the closed elevator doors, disbelief written across your face. He laughs. “Sometimes you can’t keep hiding behind”—he begins walking to your room, and you follow suit—“emotions, like anger. When I liked Lia, there was a point where I was just pretending to alienate her so I wouldn’t have to face that I was starting to love her. Like her. And you know, she did it right back.”
“Oh, quit it,” you scoff, insistent. “You’re lecturing me like you’ve been married a decade.”
“That’s what I want,” he says, and you gag. “The first step to that would be ski lodge trip, so you’re coming!”
You’re in front of your room now, and you pinch his wrist as he reaches for the handle, gaining his full attention. “I’ll gladly go,” you whisper, “if Mark’s out.” Daniel just laughs, shaking his head. “No, no. An overnight trip would delay your paper severely. Plus, they have two beds per room.”
“We’ll be staying in the same roo—hey, Li,” you say, quickly cutting your angry rant off when she opens the door, her face confused (to say the least.)
“Mm, hey,” she says, ushering the two of you in. “How long were you two out there?” Daniel shrugs, ruffling his hair and then pressing a kiss on Lia’s forehead. You boo from your place on your bed, buried under your duvet. “You both suck,” you holler, “always sexing it up in a sacred space. AKA my room.” Lia just grins and jumps on top of you, drawing grunts from you both. Daniel seats himself on the floor and busies himself with his phone. “How was Mark,” she whispers into your hair, and you groan.
“Bad,” you respond, “I’m so annoyed. We’re back to square one.” She makes an apologetic noise and gets up with a sigh, adjusting the strings of her pullover and then hugging Daniel. You watch them. You want to kiss Mark again. Life sucks that way.
—
Predictably, Mark turns down the offer of the ski lodge. He’s polite about it, too, especially since he and Daniel have grown a little bit closer since the start of your project. Daniel is, by no means, a “Mark anti”, but he would participate in the ribbing sometimes. Still, he’s insistent on the trip, saying it’s the best way to welcome December and that the forecast predicts a nice, thick layer of snow. It takes a week and two coffees everyday for Mark to give in, under the condition that he buy his own room when you get there.
Which, honestly, really, you have no problem with. Really, you think to yourself as you unceremoniously shove a knitted sweater into your bag. Really. Lia, who had graciously accepted the surprise, watches you abuse your bag, shoving sweater and scarf inside like they want to murder you. “Relax,” she says after a while. You laugh, playing it off (not so) casually.
The drive up there, courtesy of Daniel and a borrowed Prius, is fun, and cramped, but still decent, considering it was just an hour long. You’re in the back with Lia, and Mark is in charge of the AUX, which, of course, comes with its own bout of jokes. You even find the heart to participate and laugh in a few, not daring to meet his eyes. But all his songs are so fucking good. Frank Ocean, Jhene Aiko, SZA, and smaller indie artists flow from the speaker under his phone. The car ride has its share of epic karaoke moments—Mark plays ABBA, and Queen, solely to make sure everybody is belting out to the high heavens.
You get there when the sky’s purple and orange and there are some skiiers scattered around, though, since it’s not the proper holiday period, not too much. You trek over to the main lodge and that’s where Daniel pays for his reservations, and he and Lia retire to their room and promise to get up for dinner. You’re, again, alone with Mark in the lobby as you both stare at each other, willing the other to get up first. He does, to buy his own room like he said he would, and you can faintly hear the exchange from your seat on their nice, fluffy couch.
“I’m sorry, sir. We’re renovating a majority of the rooms for the holidays. That’s why reservations were a prerequisite for staying here.”
Mark sighs. “Okay, right. I’m so sorry. Um”—it’s at this point that you go up next to him, polite smile on your face, ready to take the room key and fuck off—“could we just get an extra blanket, please? For one of the beds.” The receptionist gives a curt smile, handing over the keycard and nodding. “That’ll be one queen-sized warm blanket, then,” she hums, typing away. The receptionist beside her goes to the back, presumably to get the blanket. Mark nods, smiling. “For two queen-sized beds, it must be a big room for both of them to fit comfortably,” he comments offhandedly, fiddling with the card.
The receptionist chuckles. “There is only one bed, sir.”
Oh, God. “Oh, God,” you whisper. “One bed?” She nods with an eye-crinkling smile, like her words have not just rained hell upon the two people across her. “One bed and a sofa,” she corrects herself, reading the information on the computer by the desk. Not wanting to risk your last shred of sanity, you smile profusely, walking quickly towards your room which, thankfully, is on the same floor, at the end of the hall. It’s a small, quaint place that would be honest-to-God perfect if not for the fact that—
“There’s one bed,” Mark sighs, the truth clicking into place. “Daniel is a fucking shithead.” You drop your bag onto the carpeted floor, surveying the room with a scrutinizing gaze. It’s sizable—a bed, a couch, a window. There’s a small wooden desk that looks like its legs can barely hold its weight, and then another door, leading to the bathroom. It’s not bad at all. But you’re exhausted, the sun’s long gone, and your resolve is shredding away as the seconds tick by. “Take the couch,” you say dismissively, “or the carpet.” You make a beeline for the bed, but Mark’s arm wraps around your waist, effectively stopping you.
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod “Shut up and let go of me, dick,” you stutter out. Mark loosens his grip and you shove him off, glaring at him. He gazes back down at you, a glint of amusement in his eyes. “We can’t just make up terms without negotiation,” he says matter-of-factly, and you blow a raspberry. “Fine. Let’s negotiate then. I’m a girl and that puts me above you because chivalry isn’t dead, thus, boom, I get the bed.”
“I was in the uncomfortable passenger seat all day and my lower back hurts,” he counters.
“My legs are wobbly.”
“Bullshit. My back aches.”
“You already said that, it’s invalid.”
The back and forth only intensifies, your arguments growing more and more bizarre, until finally, your volume is so high Lia says she can hear it faintly, four doors down.
“The couch looks comfy,” you try, but Mark stands firm.
“Do you know what? The bed is big. It’s a big bed. And we’re not going to take up much space. If we divide the bed with the sofa pillows…” you pick up the cushions and line them up neatly along the middle, “…then we can sleep beside each other without having to make contact with each other.” He seems convinced, stepping closer to the bed and nodding. “Okay. I get first dibs on the shower.”
“Asshole,” you mutter, but you let him anyway. You’ve unpacked nearly all your things and he isn’t done yet, so you’ve resorted to scrolling mindlessly through Tiktok and laughing at just about everyone that pops up on screen. Mark finally exits after what feels like forever, and you keep your eyes trained on your screen to avoid looking at him. From your peripheral vision, he is very much shirtless. There are no words exchanged, the thickness in the air only building bit by bit.
—
Three hours later, post-dinner, post-abandoning the thought of working on your paper, you’re stumbling into your room after helping the very tipsy couple of the night into theirs. You’re beyond tired now, and you can tell Mark is, too, despite the lack of eye contact or communication between you. You don’t even look at him, brushing your teeth and removing your makeup and clipping your hair up into a bun. It’s when he does the same, and you’re both in bed, using your phones, that he finally breaks the silence.
“I’m not mad,” he says. His voice is even and calm, and you quickly shut your phone off and sit up, peering over the pillow boundary you had created. You look at him expectantly before he sighs and continues. “Why did you leave?”
You stand up, getting out, trying to increase distance. You’ve never really liked confrontation. “I was weirded out,” you spill, “and scared…? I guess with the nearness of being caught, and with all the lights on, I was just shocked back to reality.”
He sits up. “What’s reality?”
“I don’t—know,” you splutter, getting back on the bed. “Not kissing you?”
He laughs, and then it becomes silent. “Right. Let’s sleep, then.” Without another word, he pulls his lamp off, and only the white moonlight is left illuminating the both of you. Shucking yourself under the covers, feeling your heart practically thump out of your chest. You honestly think he can hear it, or at least feel it. Suddenly the boundary doesn’t do much. You turn away from him, nervous, and you can faintly hear his breathing even out. You shut your eyes for a second. When you open them again, he’s looking right at you. “Just checking to see if you’re asleep,” he says quietly. You nod. And then you lean upwards, just a touch, so your lips nearly brush slightly. “Night,” you say, before turning to sleep for real.
You’re not sure when. And how. Sure, you faintly remember digging your legs sleepily through the sheets to find warmth and tangling Mark’s in your own. But still—when you’re up, the pillow fort is at your feet, hanging precariously off the four post bed, and your back is against Mark’s chest. His breath fans lightly over your hair and you blearily register what happened overnight. His arm is slung over your middle, it’s quiet, and oh Christ, he is hard.
It’s fairly late. He’s hard. The antique clock mounted up on the wall tells you it’s around nine, which essentially gave you seven hours of sleep. He’s hard. You bask in the warmth of Mark for a while before your resolve solidifies and you gently push his arm off from its position on your hips. He only comes on stronger, wrapping fully around your waist, mumbling incoherence into your hair. He’s hard. You squeeze your eyes shut, summoning sleep to overcome you quickly, but it never does. Dread overcomes you as you feel your underwear grow damp.
“Mm,” Mark grunts, his hand around your waist loosening. You move away but his head suddenly lolls into the crook of your neck, his lips touching the side of it. You whimper. He’s a fucking asshole, even when he’s asleep. You pinch his arm, jolting him to half-awakeness, and you roll away, despite your body’s protests.
He blinks his eyes open. “Sorry, shit,” he says, voice deep and ridden with sleep. You’re fucked.
“It’s okay,” you splutter instead. “Just go back to sleep.” You faintly register that you sound just as exhausted as he does, and you bury your head back into the covers. Everything, plus the sound of his voice, has you dripping, and you breathe in deeply to poorly disguise a whimper. He chuckles, already half-asleep, from where he is, and it’s quiet for a few minutes before you realize he’s fallen asleep. Knowing Lia and Daniel will be busy for a while, you pull a spare pillow over your head and chant to yourself before falling back asleep, too.
When you awaken, the bed is cold and empty, and the shower’s running. You check the time to find only an hour has passed, but you’re much more awake now, getting up and knocking incessantly on the bathroom door. “Hurry,” you demand hoarsely, “I want to go skiing.” You hear a muffled okay and scurry over to your bag to find the pair of leggings you had packed for this. You also find your parka, and you pull off your shirt to clasp on a bra.
“Not that I don’t mind,” Mark says, eliciting a yelp from you as you tug a sweater on at record speed, “but generally, that kind of thing only goes unnoticed in nudist colonies. I could research some for you, if you’d—ow! I was joking, God!” You bonk him twice over the head with the Bible on the bedside table, your brows furrowed angrily. “You looked, asshat,” you say, collecting your things and locking yourself in the bathroom.
When it becomes increasingly evident that Lia and Daniel have no plans of exiting their room, you grumble and resort to skiing alone. But as you’re shuffling out, bundled up, you spot Mark leaning against the exit waiting for you. He looks up and tsks. “About fucking time,” he says, holding the door open for you. It’s not that cold out—maybe you’re just used to having snow and chilly weather, and so is Mark—so you barely shiver, walking around and looking for a good place to ski.
“Forget skiing,” Mark says after a few rounds. “Let’s go sledding. I have a thing.”
“A toboggan, you mean.”
“A funny word. Really, just say sled.”
You let up, anyway, the bright sky and cold ground sending serotonin right into you. Sure enough, Mark does have a nice, blue sled that he lets you on, and then the two of you are bolting down the hill at breakneck speed, laughing all the way. It’s quite a long ride, and you’re smiling and yelping so much the cloth you’ve used to cover your neck has ridden down, the cold air hitting your face harshly.
You land very ungracefully—the toboggan hits a small tree and sends you and Mark catapulting in the same direction, your hands clawing at the air for expense. You find Mark’s arm and cling onto it in the split second you’re in the air, landing on a clearing of thick snow. The arm you’ve clung onto pulls you closer, Mark grunting “be careful,” and when the whole fiasco’s over, you’re smiling like an idiot, and you’re right on top of Mark.
You’re not straddling him or anything, but you’ve just happened to land with your face a little above his. You can’t stop laughing, your face flushed and red with the cold air hitting your face. So you laugh. Why wouldn’t you laugh? It was a good day. A good ride down the hill. So you keep laughing until they’re reduced to giggles, Mark laughing right along as you pull down the covering of his mouth and tug his beanie off, ruffling your hands in his hair and dipping down to kiss him.
He kisses you right back, his lips cold but quickly growing warm with the friction. You smile into the kiss, your hands roaming all over his pink face. The kiss is giggly and light, your hands all over each other as the sunlight filters in through the thick trees overhead.
You pull away after a while. “I hate you,” you whisper. He presses a kiss to your jawline and lets it linger there. “You think I don’t?”
—
Stage 3: Bargaining, Depression|
You’ve begun to type the structure out when Lia tugs on your pajamas, her tone insistent and curious. “What’s up with you and Mark?” she presses, her cheek pressed to your stomach. You fervently hope she doesnt notice how your breathing quickens, and, keeping your voice even, you answer. “We’re…thinking about things.”
Which—you were thinking about things, to be fair. There were things to be thought and you had to think about them. It was a broad half-truth. It had been two weeks since the ski lodge thing, and you and Mark had decided it was probably best to shut the fuck up about everything you had done. (Everything meaning a few kisses here and there, and maybe a little more under the covers.) You’d hated yourself for hiding it from Lia, but you and Mark were actually feeling hesitant about moving forward with whatever you were. There was a lot of ambiguity and questions, and until you could clear it up yourself, you knew you weren’t ready to tell anybody else. You had talked about it already—clearly, the two of you were beyond jumping straight into a relationship after not liking each other that much and then becoming hesitant friends.
But it was, if you had to admit it to yourself, nice having that little secret.
“I’d want to tell Lia soon,” you tease, walking steadily beside Mark. The afternoon sun is warm on your heads, the snow falling intermittently. He turns with a small smile. “I’d want to tell Hyuck, too.” You scoff, burying your head in his chest. You probably look fucking disgusting. Around you, Washington Square Park is full of natives and tourists, and college students like you, all scurrying around and giving you that very much holiday feel.
He buys you a hot cocoa and hands it to you. “Are you heading home soon?”
You take a sip, your tongue hot. “If my ratty dorm counts as home, then yes.”
“Home is a feeling, not a place. Does your ratty dorm feel like home?”
“Kind of. Lia’s there. And so is the rat infestation in the ceiling.”
Mark nearly chokes on his cocoa. “You’re gross as fuck.”
You let out a loud laugh, your beanie nearly falling off with the bounciness of it. Mark reaches behind you to catch it, pressing a kiss to your lips in the process, soft and light and God, you like it. A lot. “Clumsy,” he remarks, pulling it back on and dragging a generous amount of your hair in front of your eyes as he does it. “It’s gonna be Christmas soon, and thank God we’re nearly done with this paper.”
“It was my genius idea to combine bargaining and depression,” you quip. “That’s my gift to you. Merry Christmas, Mark Lee.” He laughs at that. His laugh, you’ve noticed, is goddamn loud, and it’s a literal cackle, but he always looks so happy when he laughs. And buoyant. “You look stupid,” you say, but the smile on your face is undeniable. He glares playfully at you, taking your hand and walking you both in the direction of your building.
“New York in the snow,” he hums. “Always a great place.”
“It’s full of tourists,” you counter. Always disagreeing.
He chuckles and then, like clockwork—like how you’ve done it for the past six dates—you separate when you’re just shy of a meter away from the lobby entrance. Your fingers curl in search of his, and you jog up the steps, eager to get into the warmth of the building. The lobby’s pretty empty, save for a couple of students. Mark’s ahead of you, already pressing the elevator button and waiting impatiently.
“We’re alone,” he sing-songs, his eyebrows wiggling. The doors open right as you take Mark’s hand, and you look up to meet Daniel’s wide eyes. Then you look to the right to meet Lia’s.
Despite your inner turmoil, you remain nonchalant, pinching Mark’s wrist instead of holding it like you’d planned. “That’s why our professor fucking hates you,” you say, narrowing your eyes. Your heart is beating a mile a minute, but you muster a neutral expression, shoving your hands back into your pockets. Lia knows you, though, and her furrowed eyebrows and parted lips say everything—but you just shrug, playing off what they could have caught you doing. “Hey,” you say, walking into the elevator with Mark. It all blows over.
AKA: Daniel has to drag a curious Lia away from you, with a promise that you would converse later. You and Mark are alone again, in the elevator, your hands barely touching, laughs loud. It’s all blurry after that. You’re high on a laugh and the thought of a kiss—you drag him over to your room, hands in his hair, breathless, loose kisses. You’re both so exhausted, though, that all you manage to extend your energy to is taking your tops off and making out lazily to the songs you’d recommended to each other.
“Mm,” he says when one of your songs starts playing. “It’s a nice song.” You nod with a smile. “I know it is, it’s one of my recommendations. It’s called Softly.” He plays with the strap of your bra. “I’ll give it more of a listen, then. Also, a red bra to school? Whatever will the professors think,” he jokes lightly, pressing insistent, but soft kisses on your shoulder. You laugh, pinching the inner part of his arm and eliciting a swear from him. “I was joking! I know you wore this for me, stupid.” The wind whistles outside, barely audible from the half-open window across the room, overlapping with the music.
This all feels too real, now.
You pout lazily against his bare chest. “Get off before Lia gets in,” you mumble, your heart beginning to race. He does, for what it’s worth, rolling off your bed with a loud thump and tugging his shirt and sweater back on. You watch him (fondly) annoyedly, your hair draping over you as you get up to properly shove him out. “Out, out,” you chant, laughing, and he giggles, turning abruptly to poke at your waist.
“Shut up,” you groan, a smile on your face. There’s a beat, then he pulls you close and kisses you, running outside right after with a literal guffaw. You watch him, wrapping your fleece blanket around your frame as he runs to the elevator, sweater backwards and hair messy.
—
Doubts are normal. This you’re assured of, but your head pounds with the sheer amount of things you’re cramming into it. You squint impossibly harder, trying to get the nail polish into the crook of Lia’s nail. You’ve probably overdone it, judging by the way she jabs her knuckle in between your eyebrows, her face contorted in worry. “Are you…okay?”
You narrow your eyes, the inner debate of telling her raging on and on. The nail polish drips onto her fingernail, rolling onto her pant leg, and she yelps, but her eyes are still on you. “You can tell me anything,” she says, softer this time. You know she’s serious—you know you can. You always have. You told her about every fling, one night stand, pregnancy scare, bad grade, hot professor, and spoiled deli food you’d encountered since you ever became friends. She knew you. And you were so sure she knew what you were about to say.
Except you didn’t know what you wanted to say. Your feelings were a mess, and you wanted one thing as much as you wanted the other. You couldn’t place what you wanted, and if you had to narrow it down, you’d realize that you were scared of what you wanted. You were never really one for commitment, or a relationship, or really anything, for that matter. And the fact that you were so hung up on thinking about what you and Mark would become—Mark? It all seemed so dystopian, almost. Like you’d never expected it. Your friendship was a childhood bubble that popped in the span of your first high school semester, and that was that. But just two days ago you were being kissed all over by the same guy you’d had a cutthroat student council president competition with.
It seemed so absurd? Crazy? Those adjectives were a little over the top. Deep down, if you dug deep enough into the parts you didn’t even tell yourself, you knew what you were. And if anybody else were to know, it would be Lia.
“I’m scared,” you choke out, your voice shaky. “I’m scared and sad, and happy and angry, and I want this but I don’t.” You cover the nail polish, shaking your head. “This is all so new to me. I hate how much I feel, especially because it feels so wrong. You know me—relationships are just not cut out for me. They’re scary and new. And people in relationships turn all gooey. I’m scared that this won’t last, but I’m scared that it will, and I’ll be doomed to an eternity of bland, padlocked relationships. It’s weird. I could be feeling this way for anyone, but it had to be Mark? If only I didn’t hate him, then maybe we could’ve gone off on a better foot. If only this whole thing never fucking happened, right?”
“It’s okay,” Lia cuts in. “Being scared is okay. It’s part of the whole process. And nobody said you had to get along like conjoined twins in a relationship. They just go when they go and end when they end. Not every relationship starts as a high school sweetheart thing and ends with three kids and a picket fence. And I’m so sure Mark would be so understanding if you didn’t like him or if you chose not to continue.”
“You knew?”
She laughs. “Of course I knew. I know a post-sex glow when I see one, and I was blinded that morning at the ski lodge.” You groan, pinching her indignantly, hiding your face in your hands as she laughs out of view. “Okay. Take some time and think about it, but for now, I want to get my nails done, so.”
—
It’ll be a week before you come up with what you want, and the whole time you generally avoid talking about solemn topics with him in person.
It’ll be another few days before you finally talk to him personally—with your paper nearly finished, you suggest a meeting at the library. It’s just two days before Christmas Eve, and you know Mark’s going to be driving to Canada, so you want to snatch him away for your own personal time for just a second. The snow has all but thickened as you meet outside the building, the silence deafening.
“Hi,” he says, smiling. You know he’s probably picked up on your erratic, quieter behavior in the past several days, but you gulp and lead him inside anyways, to your favorite section. “It’s almost Christmas Eve,” he says, watching you stall, surrounded by Philosophy books from just about every century. “I know,” you say, hoping you don’t sound too nervous.
“You sound nervous,” he says.
“Do I?” you ask shakily, your voice taking on an unnaturally high pitch. “I mean, er. I guess I sort of am. I guess I’ve been thinking about everything lately—about you and me and everything that just happened so suddenly. Because—because it did happen so suddenly. I just…needed time? Yeah, time. To think about everything. Because it all happened so quickly, I…” you stutter. “I’m scared of these things. I’m not used to them. Relationships? Things that last longer than a couple weeks? I don’t like these.
I have something bigger I want to focus on and anybody who gets in the way just isn’t worth it. And it’s so weird how it was you out of all people I started thinking about it with. Usually I just have the rare fling and then they’re gone, and I’m not even mad. But you’re different. And I like it.
But I just needed time to find out if I really liked it. If I really wanted to try. I know it’s only been a few weeks, and I probably sound really fucking stupid, but you get me—you get me, right? And that’s how I realized—if it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I don’t know why I overthought it. I mean, it’s a good thing and a bad thing that I did. Like, on one hand, I got to really think about how this would play out, and on the other, I’d just end up spiraling. And it’s just weird. I hope you don’t know I hated you. Hate you? Hated you. I was just—it was all so juvenile. Everything just stemmed from that one awfully dumb high school rivalry. But other than that, you were always a cool…see what I mean? I’m kind of rambling—even if I thought I had planned this out. And. Yeah. I dunno. I fucking…I hate you, stop laughing.”
Mark smiles down at you—you’re busy pretending to read a Sartre book to look unfazed, but your flickering gaze says it all.
“Okay, stupid,” he says, bordering onto a laugh. “If that’s your way of saying you’re willing to give this a try, then I graciously accept. Should I be saying something equally long? I—is that how this works?”
You roll your eyes and kiss him instead, pulling him close, Sartre’s postulates dropping to the floor alongside your tiptoes.
—
Stage 4: Acceptance|
“Acceptance is just that. Just accepting that you love that person after weeks or months of all the other stages. With her, it was. Like. It’s the whole sitting down after silence, having some time for the revelation to set in before you realize you love them. Or like them? Well, love them, I guess. But I don’t know why you would be asking me this.”
You bury your head further into Mark’s shoulder, your eyes strained from how long they’d been trained onto your screen. You smile up at Daniel, thanking him for the input and beginning to type it in, watching Lia doze off on his shoulder. “We’re asking because we’re not quite there yet,” Mark hums, “it’s just February. It’s barely been two months.” You nod, watching Mark type where you left off on the document. Daniel snorts from across you. “You’re just about, I guess.” Mark chuckles, shrugging so your head bounces off his shoulder unceremoniously.
“Like I’d ever fall in love with that shitstorm,” he says pointedly.
“Oh, and I’d fall in love with this dickwad?”
“You’re perfect for each other. Bullying, but we all know Mark brought back gifts from Canada and that you stitched an initial onto his sweater.”
“To practice my embroidery. Also, I stitched Mark’s initial. M. Asshole.”
“Okay,” whistles Daniel, his hand unconsciously coming up to make sure Lia doesn’t fall off his shoulder. “But hey, you’re just about to submit this paper and I’m fondly remembering all the times you despised each other. And when you”—he points at you, devilish grin on his face—“started gushing to Lia about how he”—he then turns to Mark—“kissed you at Johnny’s party.”
“God, it’s not the time for that yet, we’re still a fresh couple,” you groan, burying your head in your hands. “You have so much dirt on me, Choi.” Mark just laughs, though, loudly, bringing the other cafe-goers’ attention to yours. He bites your shoulder to stifle it, eliciting a laugh from you. “I agree, there should be a certain time requirement for pre-relationship embarrassing stories,” Mark says, closing his laptop. Lia gets up at that point, already half-awake from the ruckus (AKA Mark’s laugh), pulling on Daniel’s sleeve. “Alright, and that’s my cue to get this girl some more coffee and then go.”
“Mm, I’ll come with,” you say, “I need a refresher before we leave soon, anyway.”
You walk in between them, your fingers laced in Lia’s as she squeezes them sleepily. They order first and then they’re off with a smile and a polite goodbye, leaving you to order your drink. You gaze up at the menu, and then down at—
“Long time no see,” Chan says with a knowing beam. “How is your not boyfriend boyfriend?”
“Well, he’s my boyfriend now.”
“See, I always know. What do you want?”
“An iced ca—how did you know?” You ask, tempted.
“It’s just…the energy? It was a hit or miss, but I kinda got that feeling that something was going to happen.”
“Hmm,” you hum. “An iced caramel then.”
“And a black coffee for her best friend!” Hollers a new voice that you could never miss, turning slowly towards the entrance to meet Donghyuck’s crazy eyes. He’s in a suit, which isn’t unusual given the sheer amount of presentations he’s had to do since the new year started. You roll your eyes but put in the extra cash anyway, much to Chan’s amusement. Hyuck nears you with a sly grin. “I hear you’ll be submitting your paper soon. I just want my name in there so I’m in your professor’s good graces.”
“She’s not even going to be your professor, Hyuck,” you say, taking your drink and smiling at Chan. You and Donghyuck both walk back to where Mark’s sitting, you beside him and Hyuck across the both of you. “Yes, but it pays to be in somebody’s good graces, I swear. See what happened? I got you two together. I orchestrated your entire love st—”
“Okay, now you’re just lying, Hyuck,” Mark says with a laugh, finishing up the first few paragraphs and closing his laptop. “We’re not even in love.” But his friend lets out a teasing smile, his eyes narrowed, and he gets up with a loud farewell and alibi about “being needed by my better friends.” You assume he’s talking about Jeno.
—
You walk to Mark’s room alongside him, thanks to the promise of his roommate, Jaemin, sleeping at a friend’s. Your fingers are intertwined loosely. The sun’s setting and Mark’s room is sheathed in beautiful shades of orange and pink, a vast array of dusk settling over the space. It happens quietly, but full of laughs, which is how it happens when you’re both tired and/or shitfaced. You do this a lot—a routine of sharing new songs or books you’d picked up over the week and then making out while they play in the background or while one of you read. It’s awfully, horribly, terribly fucking intimate.
“Your bra sucks,” he jokes.
You love it.
“Get better abs and we can talk about it,” you counter, poking his toned stomach. He really, fully guffaws at that, pulling you onto his lap and then tugging his guitar out from where it stands at the corner. You flop back onto his bed, watching him play—and then registering the familiar opening of the Jonas Brothers song you used to request nearly everyday. “Lovebug,” you muse with a smile, singing along to his voice, carried away. You’re sleepy and light, and you know deep down—in that space of yourself where you’re all but honest—that you were going to fall in love with him someday.
Later, when all you’re doing is hugging him as he reads your latest Philosophy requirement to you, he pauses.
“Is this the 21st century idea of love?” He asks idly, unclasping your bra and connecting the moles on your shoulder. You hum.
“It’s the Gen Z idea,” you say, connecting the ones on his bare back. “And this isn’t love.”
“Corny.” he smiles against your collarbones. You kiss his neck. It’s all very gradual.
—
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The Way
I’m writing horror again. I guess it’s that time, you know, that time that has nothing to do with Halloween or the seasons or whatever, that time when it just hits me for some reason. And just like I always do, I’ll say I don’t know why.
Even though I know why, and you know I know why.
Because the truth is always so much weirder and worse and more disquieting than any excuse I could make up for it, and sometimes I just feel the need.
Today I felt the need, and I couldn’t make it go away.
And so I sat down, and words I didn’t want to write were written.
.
8592 words
I would rate this Mature 18+ if it was a fic, strictly because of the subject matter.
Warnings: Death, mostly. Religious trauma, brief descriptions of abuse, mentions of mental illness, domestic violence, grief, familial dysfunction, religious abuse, emotional abuse, medical conditions, brief mentions of drug use/abuse, mild gore in reference to corpse decomposition, psychological unease and mild terror, child abuse (mental/emotional/psychological), brief allusion to physical child abuse, cult references, loss of faith, attempted murder, possible actual murder.
A Note: I love you guys, you’re always so quick and willing to be helpful and offer advice and suggestions and such, and I adore that about you. But on this piece of work I ask that nobody offer any theories about what happened to my brother - medical, criminal, or otherwise - and please no suggestions on things we could do to pursue investigation, that ship has long sailed. It’s been 23 years and he’s a cold case. We spent years trying to sort it out but in the end it’s just something that happened, and we moved on because we had to. There are a lot of open ends, a lot of question marks, a lot of suspicious details that never connected to anything - and we tried, we truly did. If anyone out there knows the truth, they’ve never shown themselves to us. We do have our theories, but my brother was a secretive person living a life none of us knew about, and the people he knew weren’t people we knew. Everyone involved is either dead or moved on or got away with whatever it was they did, and there are only three of us who still care. It’s over.
Until today, I’ve never put these events into words.
It was something I needed to do, finally.
This is PART ONE. There may not be a part two, unless doing this ends up making me feel better.
Please feel free to comment if you wish. As you can see, pretty much nothing triggers me. I just ask that you please refrain from the type of comments noted above.
And thank you.
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This is, regrettably, a true story. Nothing has been changed but the names, because the dead don’t like being talked about, and James was just enough of a shit to haunt me for it.
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----------
They made up their minds
And they started packing
They left before the sun came up that day
An exit to eternal summer slacking
But where were they going without ever knowing the way
They drank up the wine
And they got to talking
They now had more important things to say
And when the car broke down
They started walking
Where were they going without ever knowing the way
Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold
And it's always summer
They'll never get cold
They'll never get hungry
They'll never get old and gray
You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere
They won't make it home
But they really don't care
They wanted the highway
They're happier there today, today
Their children woke up
And they couldn't find them
They left before the sun came up that day
They just drove off and left it all behind them
But where were they going without ever knowing the way?
Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold
And it's always summer
They'll never get cold
They'll never get hungry
They'll never get old and gray
You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere
They won't make it home
But they really don't care
They wanted the highway
They're happier there today, today
You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere
They won't make it home
But they really don't care
They wanted the highway
They're happier there today, today
- The Way, Fastball, 1998
.
That was the year James died in his sleep.
Or that’s what they say, anyway. Asthma, the likely cause based on his medical history, our first and least disturbing assumption. Undetermined, the official determination based on the hastily scraped-together autopsy, the best that could be done under the circumstances. We tell people he had breathing problems, and they nod their heads and agree because they knew he did, and now he’s been gone so long that nobody asks. Most of the people who ever met him have long moved on or disappeared or died themselves, or just remember him as the enigmatic middle son from the Keithley family that nobody really knew very well. You know, the odd one, the one that showed up at meetings maybe once a year and smiled nervously but didn’t really talk to anyone and always seemed anxious to leave? The one who died under mysterious circumstances? That one.
He left the way he always came in. Quietly, unexpected, without anyone being aware of either his entrance or his exit.
But me and mom know some things, and she’s not talking. She probably never will.
So maybe it’s time I did.
December 1998. I’d gotten married two years previous and moved back to the family land with my new husband. He hated it there, but we had an affordable place to live. It wasn’t bad. He’d tell you otherwise. The land never sat right with him, but I’d lived there too many years to see it. I’d been fifteen when my father uprooted his large family from the city and hauled us out to the great back door to nowhere, and even though I’d left several times to wander elsewhere, I always came back.
I didn’t realize why at the time, at any of the multiple times. But now I know. That place gets you, and it holds you, and unless you’re goddamned devoted to staying gone you will always be pulled back. It took me till I was 49 to funnel the necessary amount of devotion away from the religious dedication I’d had jackbooted into me and turn it toward getting out, but against a great number of overwhelming odds I finally did it.
But this isn’t about that, not yet anyway. This is about my brother James, and how he went to sleep one night and found his own way out.
----------
It was snowing, had been for days, a bit unusual but not unheard of. The part of the state we lived in was notorious for extended ice storms and we knew a bad one was coming, but until it hit we played in the snow like it was a gift and we were deprived children who knew it was all going to be taken away soon. My brothers and I were adults but you wouldn’t know it, watching us sneak around in the woods staging elaborate commando attacks on each other. James was the best of us, a stealth king who could stand in the middle of a room for an hour without a single soul seeing him. Perception bias, he said. Your brain ignores me because I obviously don’t belong, like those puzzles where you circle what’s wrong but it takes you forever to find them.
He crept around in the forest scaring the shit out of people, dropping his long tall self out of trees, appearing from nowhere to administer a well aimed snowball to the face of whoever happened to cross his path and then disappearing just as quickly. We called him a wraith and it wasn’t a good natured jibe. We meant it. He made people nervous. He was the stealthy kind of quiet you associate with danger, and he knew how to do things an average person doesn’t ever have any need to know. It was a quiet cool that we admired him for, because none of the rest of us had it.
The religion we were raised in kept a tight lid on us, but me and James, we never really let it get into our bones. We were the smart ones, in retrospect. I went through the motions by force of habit and a sense of self preservation, doing what was expected and demanded of me, following the rules and making myself a perfect example of a young member of the church so I wouldn’t bring shame on the congregation and my family. But mostly the congregation. It was always more important than anything else. And I had behaving down to an art form, but mostly when people were looking. Usually also when they weren’t.
But sometimes, not quite.
And then I prayed for forgiveness about it later because God was supposed to forgive you if you asked him to, right? The tenet of willful sin being unforgivable never took root with me even though that was what the church conditioned into us through fear and constant repetition. They said it from the stage two nights a week and again on Sunday to hammer it home. Two nights a week and again on Sunday my head silently disagreed. God’s not like that. And then I did the praying for forgiveness thing even though I knew I was right, because I was disagreeing with the church, and the church was God’s channel here on Earth, wasn’t it? I committed a mortal sin at least three times a week on that subject alone, and though the dread of divine punishment was hardwired into me, I never could reconcile the concept of a loving and forgiving God destroying me simply for knowing better.
I’m not sure the comprehension of an overwatching deity ever actually established itself in James’ brain. A moral code, yes. But isn’t that what God is, really? Maybe he understood more about God and forgiveness than the rest of us. But he was considered an unapproved fringe member of the church because he couldn’t suffer people and noise and being looked at and he refused to preach, and he was soft-shunned as a result. Because if you weren’t all in to the point of being willing to die at any moment for your faith, you were as good as faithless.
And faithless meant condemned. And the congregation couldn’t be bothered with condemned people, regardless of their reasons for not having both feet in the water. The first and only option on their list was to put the person out and let them find their own way back once they realized they had nobody left in the world who cared about them.
James escaped that somehow. He was supposed to be shunned whole scale, but he wasn’t trying to convince anyone to leave the faith and he presented no threat to anyone’s strength of belief, and so far as anyone knew he’d committed no grave sins other than disinterest. So the rule that dictated we cast him out was bent enough to allow him to remain living on the family land, though at one point during a fit of overzealous righteousness my mother had tried to have a family meeting to vote on whether or not we were going to let him stay. I refused to vote and when I walked out of the house the meeting fell apart.
I’ve never forgiven her for that. Her son’s life being put to a vote with her presiding over the proceedings, vengeful and unfeeling and devoid of compassion on behalf of God himself. It takes my breath away, the anger, still to this day. The only thing I ever truly learned from my mother about parenting was a long and intensely detailed list of what not to do to my own children, and I suppose I should be grateful for that. It’s a bitter thank-you to have to give, but it’s something.
We knew James as much as he would allow us to, and not an inch further. Which meant the extent of our knowledge of him pretty much stretched to include the singular fact that he was different. What that meant, I still don’t really know - but it was there from the day he was born, that slight off-ness, the oddly off center calibration that you can’t really see so much as sense in a person. I know now he was likely on the autism spectrum and he walked through life seeing and reacting to everything differently than most of us, but that wasn’t a thing back then. You were just weird, or you weren’t. And I’m not convinced that was a bad thing for him, strictly speaking. But in the confines of our religion and our family’s devout and sometimes violent dedication to it, it took its toll almost daily.
He stood out, and he was very much a person who didn’t want to. He wanted to fade into the background, to not be seen, to not be known. And our religion didn’t tolerate that kind of nonsense, because we were commanded to be bold bearers of The Word Of God, and no exceptions were made.
None.
I’m going to stop calling it a religion now. I beg your indulgence as I shift to calling it what it is, because calling it a religion is an insult to actual religions that don’t destroy peoples’ lives with callous indifference and murderous glee.
We were raised in a doomsday death cult. There’s no other name that fits.
And we were trapped in it and its ugly cycle of neverending mental and emotional manipulation and abuse until we were adults, and some of us are still bound to it. My oldest brother worked his way up to the upper levels of oversight in the local congregation and was solidly entrenched in it until his death, which is a story for later. My youngest brother, the last remaining living blood sibling I have, is still deeply in it to this day and will likely never leave it.
I took the hard way out, three years ago, by walking away.
James, though. He took the easy way. He simply closed his eyes, and he was free.
----------
December 22, 1998. Three days before Christmas, though that meant nothing to us. The cult told us Christmas was a filthy demonic pagan ritual that was condemned by God, so to us the season was just a nice chilly time of year with lots of time off from work. We’d had an unusual amount of snow, the most we’d had in years. The roads were impassable and everyone was home except my husband, who worked close enough that his boss at the glass shop came and picked him up that morning with chains on his tires. Lots of windshields had shattered from the sudden violent cold that had struck the previous night and Scott had the only glass shop for sixty miles.
I think it must have been around noon, and likely my mother had sent my dad up the hill to see if James wanted to come down for the lunch she was making. He and his wife had split up against the strict rules of the church after a few years of suffering through an ill advised marriage, an important detail to this story that will come into the tale later, and he was alone up there at the top of the hill a lot. Sometimes he forgot to eat, or he got so busy that he just didn’t bother, so our mother always made something for him because even though he was in his 20′s he was still a kid who needed looking after and her zealous fervor against him had died down with time. I think he let her believe he was helpless because it worked in his favor and there was always lunch waiting for him in her kitchen as a result.
He was different, he wasn’t dumb.
We all lived on the hill back then with the exception of our youngest brother. He’d moved to the city with his new wife not long prior. The locals jokingly called the place a commune, and I guess they weren’t completely wrong. Thirty-eight acres of wooded land far beyond the city limits that we’d painstakingly spent years carving a livable space into, with five houses, all built from the ground up and inhabited by an extended family of well known culties from a well known cult. It’s almost comical, looking back on it, knowing now how they kept an eye on us for years to make sure we weren’t doing anything weird up there.
They should have run us off with pitchforks and burning stakes at the very beginning.
Things might have ended differently for us if they had.
----------
My grandparents lived at one end of the property, an old couple as simple and solid as salted soup, devoutly religious and devoted to the cult and very much cut from the can survive anything and probably will cloth like so many old country folks of their generation. They were waiting out the end of days up there in their little wooden house, expecting the final hour of this old system to come long before their own demise. I liked my grandmother, she had a sweet smile and fell asleep every time granddad started talking about the Bible and she paid me five dollars every Wednesday to drive her into town to get groceries, and years later, when she was dying, she told me she’d had a dream where she met my unborn son. I was four months pregnant and didn’t know yet that I was having a boy. She died before he was born, but to this day, fifteen years later, he tells me he’s sure he met her, he just can’t remember when.
I was scared of my grandfather. Not terrified, but there was nothing grandfatherly to him and I always suspected he never actually liked kids much. He’d once told us a story about the great Fort Worth flood that wiped out most of the city when my mom was a baby, and how he had told my grandmother to let go of my 2-year-old mother while he was struggling to get them across a rushing flooded creek in water up to their shoulders. My grandmother couldn’t swim. We could make another Ruthie, he said. But I couldn’t get another ‘Nita.
He said it proudly, like he was to be admired for his choice. I was young when he told that story, but it settled into me that this was evil.
Even when he was old as dirt and dying of a brain tumor in hospice care, he made me uneasy. I was never close to him. But for some reason, in his final days, he forgot who everyone was except me. I had been living in another state for years and he hadn’t seen me since before the tumor started taking his life. But when I walked into the room he turned his head and looked at me, and he mouthed my name.
He couldn’t speak. I don’t know what he was trying to say, struggling with words that nobody could hear. And I felt bad. I didn’t want to be the last person he recognized. My cousins adored him and had spent the last few years constantly at his side, and they were angry, maybe justifiably, that I was the one he reached for.
I didn’t want that at all.
I don’t believe he was a bad man, but he never spoke of anything except the cult’s interpretation of the Bible, and it was as tiresome as it was terrifying. Granddads are supposed to be fun. Ours quoted doctrine at us in a deep loud commanding voice that you couldn’t interrupt and you couldn’t tune out, and once he got going you had to just settle in and wait for him to run out of zealous steam. And then he would suddenly stop and command grandmother to turn on a John Wayne movie and bring him some ice cream, and it was over until the next time.
I know my mother resented him. She knew grandmother was the one that had refused to let her go, the one that had held onto her even though she almost drowned by the simple act of holding on. She knew her father had been willing to let her wash away and drown. That he thought she was interchangeable with whatever baby they would have next. How she could spend her entire life with that knowledge and not be deeply affected by it was something that never made sense to me, but now, when she’s in her 70′s and I’m in my 50′s, I finally understand. It affected her. She’ll just be damned if she’ll let anyone see it. And she had stood there in that hospice room watching him mouth my name with resentment burning in her eyes, though she would have rather died than let anyone know what it was for. He’d forgotten her weeks ago.
The house in the center of the hill was mom and dad. The homestead. The house we’d all lived in together, that we’d built with our own hands, the first thing that marked that wild overgrown hill as a place where people actually lived. A long path through the woods connected it to the grandparents’ house, and it was the epicenter of everything in our lives. James and I had lived in the upstairs rooms of that house until we both moved out and married our respective mates years later, a reprehensible act on our part that was never okay with my mother and that she never forgave either of us for. She’d wanted us all to stay. We can all live here together until the New System comes, she always said. That’s how the Bible says it’s supposed to be. We can all keep each other safe and on the right path until the end comes, and then we’ll all be here together forever.
A decade later when I sat up on the hill watching that house burn to the ground, there was as much relief as grief billowing into the sky with the black smoke. It was the end of an era, and it was far beyond time for it.
Nobody saw it but me. James was dead, had been for years. Robbie was dead now too. Dad was gone, so was granddad. Me and my youngest brother David were the last two left of the kids, but he had moved to a neighboring city when he got married and he has never seen things the way I see them. We were of different generations, we weren’t raised the same way, and he’d never experienced the abuse I lived with for the first half of my life. And he had dedicated his own life to the cult with all the honesty and lack of guile that I didn’t have when I’d made my own dedication vows at the too-young age of sixteen.
It was the end of an era, but apparently only for me.
James’ house was up the hill, past a clearing where my dad used to keep old cars that he cannibalized for parts. Our oldest brother Robbie, long married with kids of his own, lived at the bottom on the farthest corner of the land. And my house was on the slope to the west, built on the spot where we’d cleared off an old half-fallen homestead from the late 1800′s, dutifully paying no mind to the fact that a grave was nestled into the slope, right where the yellow daffodils grew. The cult told us superstition was tied up with the demons and false religion, so we didn’t have the built-in human instinct that tells most people to stay the hell away from certain things.
We just pretended it wasn’t there, and put no importance on it. It was just an old grave. The soil was good and the garden I planted next to it did well, though those strange daffodils always wound themselves through everything I put in the ground. My husband said something wasn’t right about it, but I didn’t pay any attention to him. He hadn’t been raised as devout as me.
My dad knocked on my door around lunchtime and I opened it. He backed up, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, the fancy leather coat the dealership had awarded him when he was designated a five-star Chrysler technician and given the state’s first and only license to work on the new Vipers that had recently rolled off the prototype line. It was a cool jacket. Made him look like the old pictures my other grandmother had shown me of him from the early 1960′s, when he was young and very much a product of a fancier era. He’d never stopped greasing his hair back and was still so thin that he and I wore the same size jeans.
I’ve never understood the look on his face when I opened the door. To this day I can’t sort it. It wasn’t a blankness like so many people who’ve seen death wear without awareness. It wasn’t grief. It wasn’t even shock.
He was sorry.
Those were the first words out of his mouth.
I’m sorry.
I stood there, not knowing what he was sorry for. It was cold. I couldn’t push the screen door open very far because of the snow blocking it. And my father was standing at the bottom of the steps James had helped my husband build, his hands shoved down far into his pockets like a penitent child about to get in trouble, telling me he was sorry.
James is dead, he finally said. He’s in his house. I went up there and he’s dead.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I do now - just now, this very moment in fact, I know that I was the first person he told. He came straight from James’ house to mine and told me my brother was dead.
I don’t know what I said back to him, I just remember sitting down on the top step and feeling the cold bite of the snow through my pajama pants. There’s a vague recollection of putting my face in my hands, and the embarrassing knowledge that I did that simply because I didn’t know what else to do. And dad just stood there, nervously stepping from foot to foot in the snow, because he didn’t know what else to do either.
I think I asked How at some point. He said he didn’t know. He had something in his pocket but to this day I don’t know what it was.
I don’t know if it was important. Something tells me it was. Or maybe it was just the eternally present handkerchief he always kept on him.
I’m sorry, he said again. He seemed to feel like it was his fault somehow. I’m sorry.
What do we do? I asked him. I’ve never felt more blank. What are we supposed to do?
I don’t remember what he said, other than he was going to get my older brother. I remember thinking that was a good idea. Robbie would know what to do. He always did. Brash and blustery and bigmouthed, he got things done while other people stood around debating how to do them. He would get on it, whatever needed doing. He would figure it out.
I went back in the house and dad walked away, headed down the path through the woods that connected my house to Robbie’s, hands still shoved deep in his pockets, the big retro vintage Chrysler emblem on the back of his jacket the last thing I saw before I pulled the screen door shut. I stared down for a minute at the mound of snow it had scooped into my livingroom, still with no clue what I was supposed to do.
No clue at all.
I kicked the snow back outside and shut the door.
----------
It’s an odd thing, watching the coroner’s van drive away with someone you know inside it. Someone you saw just yesterday. Someone who was alive. Someone who should still be alive but isn’t, somehow. And since there’s really no way to earn a ride in a coroner’s van without dying, there’s an awful unsettling sensation to it that you can’t get away from. The last time I saw James he was laughing that devious little laugh of his, his eyes red and bloodshot from the ever present asthma he’d suffered with his entire life. I don’t count the sight of the coroner’s van leaving the hill via our long steep driveway with his cold corpse tucked into a black zippered bag, because I didn’t see him. I never saw him. I didn’t see him dead in his house and I didn’t see them carry him out, I didn’t see them put him in the van. I didn’t see him later, when it was all over with. And if I try hard enough I can imagine that van empty, with that long black bag tossed crumpled in the back without a body in it, and James somewhere else living his life however the hell he pleases.
I hold onto that. Some days it helps. And some days I think I see him, walking by the side of the road or getting out of a car in the post office parking lot, and it makes me happy thinking he escaped. I see him in every hitchhiker, in every wandering traveler making his way down the interstate, in every tall thin man I glimpse from the corner of my eye as I go about my business in town.
He’s out there.
I hope he’s happy.
The ice storm hit the next day.
----------
For the next two weeks we were stuck on our hill. Power out, no electricity, no heat, no lights, roads iced over and impassable. We all piled up in mom and dad’s house, quietly grieving James, trying to stay warm. Most of the state lost power for days, including the city 150 miles away where his body had been taken to the state coroner’s office. There was no apparent cause of death, so the state ordered an autopsy.
His body had just been placed into cold storage to wait its turn when the power grid went down. And then, by some unholy stroke of nightmarish luck, the facility’s generators failed.
Nobody could make it in to work because of the ice. By the time someone finally got into the morgue the cold storage had been down for four days.
Six bodies melted, including James.
----------
No viable autopsy could be done, though they tried their best I suppose. The end report was obtained two months later. It was mostly inconclusive due to the long delay and resultant decomposition of tissue. There was apparent scarring on James’ heart, but it was old scarring and had nothing to do with his death. His lungs were scarred as well, but that was no surprise, he’d had severe asthma his entire life. There was no determinable cause of death, no inflicted trauma, no presence of illicit drugs as far as they could tell from the limited toxicology report they managed with what they had to work with.
No reason.
He’d simply died.
It seemed fitting, to me at least, that the end of him be enshrouded in an unsolvable mystery. He was a secretive person, intensely private. He would have loved knowing nobody had a clue what happened to him.
And so we drew our own conclusion as a family. He’d had an asthma attack in his sleep. There had been an inhaler next to his bed, but it was new and still in the box. He simply hadn’t woken up to use it. Dad didn’t participate in the drawing of this conclusion, his input kept stoically to himself, like he knew something the rest of us didn’t.
We pretended not to see it.
He and mom braved the last of the ice a few days later to make the 150 mile drive to see James one last time.
They came back different.
You couldn’t tell it was him, my mother said. He was melted, literally. It was like one of those science fiction movies where they melt you with a laser beam and you turn to goo.
Dad had nothing to say. He went to bed and stayed there until the next day.
You can go see him, mom told me. I’ll go with you if you want to go. But I don’t recommend it.
I decided not to go.
And so I never saw my brother dead. I never saw any proof that he was gone. He just wasn’t there anymore. There was no funeral, he was cremated and his ashes were sent home weeks later, and I went on with my life with the image in my head of James, alive, somewhere else.
----------
Dad was different from that day on. He’d always been stoic, terse, strict. My childhood had been spent in fear of him, an eternal dread of making him mad and feeling his temper erupt keeping me from showing any hint of a personality during my formative years. The cult had forced him to abide by the violent tenet of Spare the rod, spoil the child and there was never any risk of me being spoiled.
James being gone flipped a switch in him. He was nicer suddenly. Mellow. Kind. After the trauma wore off his humor discovered itself and he was funny. The dour angry demeanor fell off and revealed a man that I was sad never to have known before. He and I became friends. I could sense in his new attitude toward me that he regretted how he’d raised me and respected the way I’d always stood up and been my own person despite it. But my mother was falling off the deep end and for all the newfound easygoingness of my father, she counterbalanced it with an extremism born of the religious fervor of a mother determined to gain enough favor with God to see her dead child again. And she was going to make sure the rest of us did too.
We all had to get good and straight on the path, get completely right and stay that way, or we’d never see James again. He’d be in the New World and we wouldn’t, and how would she explain that to him? She and I worked together in a law office at the time and as she became more unhinged and unpleasant, I reacted by becoming more outgoing and accomplished. Our boss changed my work designation from receptionist to Executive Assistant and started teaching me how to do everything from filing papers at the courthouse to photographing accident scenes. I no longer answered to my mother, the office manager. I answered directly to the boss.
That didn’t go over well. She was a control freak with heavy untreated trauma, and the one person in the world she felt the most obsessive need to control was suddenly no longer under her thumb in a workspace where she considered herself the supreme authority. She countermanded every order the boss gave me and tried to load me up with general office chores that left me no time to do the important assignments he’d given me. I had no choice but to tell her she wasn’t my superior anymore.
She chose that day to have her nervous breakdown over James, jumping out of my car at a red light on the way home and storming angrily through a shopping mall with me trailing frantically along behind her, yelling for security to arrest me while I tried to get her to calm down. I ended up telling her she wasn’t the only person who lost James but that none of the rest of us were allowed to experience our own grief because we were too busy catering to hers.
She sat down on a bench outside the sporting goods store and glared at me with a cold hatred I’ve seen on very few other faces, ever.
I knew it would be you, she hissed at me.
That moment changed our relationship forever. It changed me forever. That was the day I decided my life was my own, that she not only didn’t have authority over me at work, she didn’t have authority over me anywhere else either. She could no longer dictate my actions, my behavior, my thoughts and feelings.
For this she disowned me. It was the first of several disownings over the next few years. I got used to it. We went to work the next day like nothing had happened, and I didn’t do a single thing on the task list she slapped down on my desk. It was a metaphor for the rest of my life, but I didn’t know it yet.
My husband and I moved out of state a couple of months later, away from that hill, away from her increasingly controlling paranoia and bitterness, the first of many small steps toward freedom.
As we were driving away with our trailer full of personal belongings behind us, he said one thing that I tried to argue against, but that somewhere deep inside I knew was probably right.
That land is cursed, he said.
----------
A few weeks before we moved my youngest brother came to town and we went into James’ house together. It was exactly like it had been the day my dad found him. The only thing that stood out as different was the bare mattress on the bed - the men from the coroner had wrapped him up in the sheet he’d been laying on and took it with them, leaving just the naked springform mattress James had bought for Jessica right before her final breakdown and their subsequent separation.
It took me a while to go in the bedroom, but I knew from the moment I walked into the house that I was going to end up there. I needed to see it, the place where James had closed his eyes and left us.
There was a small puddle of dried blood near the foot of the bed, brown and stained into the fabric. James always slept backwards, with his head at the wrong end. The blood had come from his nose.
I touched it. I don’t know why. It was dry.
He was gone.
----------
David and I laughed a lot that day. James had been funny in a way that was distinctly him, quiet and of few words, but those words had always counted. And as we sorted through his things and talked about him and moved some of his stuff into boxes to be stored away, I felt as much awed respect as befuddlement at what was around me. He’d never been a conformist, which I knew was why the cult had never gotten a firm grasp on him. He was unknowable and therefore unbindable. But his house was proof that he didn’t conform to any human expectations either, and nothing in it made sense unless you’d spent time around him.
There was an engine in the bathtub. I’m not sure what it went to. Another engine, in the beginning stages of disassemblage, rested on a blue tarp in the center of the livingroom floor, obviously the last project he’d been working on. There wasn’t much furniture - his wife had taken most of it when she left and it would have never entered his mind to replace any of it. Jessica’s cookware was in the kitchen cabinets, unused, some of it still in the original boxes, some not even fully unwrapped from their wedding shower years before. Jessica didn’t cook, she microwaved. David asked me if I thought it would be okay for him to take a glass Pyrex measuring cup because he’d broken his. I told him to take it. It had never been used.
I didn’t want anything, but knew I needed to take something. One of my husband’s solo CDs was sitting on the entertainment center and the cover, the cover I’d designed, caught my eye and brought me to the CD player to pop the tray open.
Inside was a CD single of The Way.
It was the only thing I took.
----------
My husband told me some time later that my dad and older brother had altered the scene before the police arrived. After the phonecall from me his boss had rushed him home and he’d gone up to James’ house without my knowledge. He’d thought it strange that he’d had to step around at least a dozen empty compressed air cans scattered haphazardly around the place as he entered, like they’d been used and tossed aside one after another. There had been several more on the floor around the bed. My father had told him to go back down and see how mom and I were doing, and when he returned to James’ house after the coroner’s departure, the cans were gone. Other than that he said things seemed different, but he couldn’t say quite how. Just not the same.
He told me my dad didn’t call the police until after he and Robbie had been in there at least an hour, alone with the body.
It’s not something we’ve talked about often, because there’s no satisfactory explanation for it that either of us can come up with. My mother says they probably didn’t want the police to assume the cans meant he was huffing compression fluid and accidentally killed himself, because Look at the shame and reproach that would bring on the congregation if anyone thought such a thing! We all knew he used the compressed air to clear the valves on the engines he was working on, all mechanics do, it’s common. Wouldn’t the police have accepted that explanation? Dad was the only one that spoke to them. They wrote down whatever he said, and then they left, and then the coroner came and took James away and that was that. My father, the most upright straight-and-narrow devoutly dedicated man I’ve ever known in my life, misled the police for a reason that he took with him to his own grave.
The only other person in the world who knew the truth about it took it to his grave too.
At the same time.
In the same car.
Four years later, on October 18, 2002.
----------
The big garbage bag of empty air cans and whatever else that was removed from James’ house that morning had been stashed in my dad’s garage and stayed there until a few weeks after he and Robbie’s joint funeral, when my mother asked my husband’s old boss to come and dispose of it. Scott was a man who knew people who could do things.
The evidence, whatever it was evidence of, vanished.
----------
The mystery around James never dissolved and eventually no one talked about it anymore, I guess because there was no way we could ever truly find out what happened without him here to tell us. There were a lot of details that we could never find a way to weave together into anything that made sense and a lot of it was probably inconsequential anyway. There was a girlfriend that he’d tried to keep hidden from us, a woman that was quite a bit older than him who wasn’t a member of the cult and therefore needed to be kept a secret. In the end she had convinced him to stop hiding their relationship and he’d bought her a ring. We met her all of twice before he died, and within days of his passing she left town with her brother and never came back, taking whatever she might have known with her.
James’ ex Jessica had sneaked onto the hill and broken into his house to put a dead raccoon in his kitchen sink a few days prior to his death. We were shocked when he told us she trespassed on the land often without anyone knowing, and my mother made my father fix the electric gate down at the road so that it wouldn’t open without one of three clickers in the possession of herself, my father, and me. James would have to come to her house and get hers any time he needed to leave the hill, an arrangement he agreed to because Jessica stole things from his house all the time, she would absolutely take a gate opener if she saw it.
He told us the gate wouldn’t keep her out though, and that she didn’t come in that way anyway. The only way to protect ourselves from her was to lock her up and he doubted even that would do it.
He died less than a week later, and twenty three years later we still don’t know how or why.
----------
We never felt safe on the hill again. Jessica was deranged in the worst possible way, we’d known it for a while, and James was her obsession. She’d threatened to kill him multiple times and had tried twice. We hadn’t known this, because James, big strong stoic Clint Eastwood type that he was, wasn’t about to tell anyone he was violently abused for years by a skinny little woman that everyone believed was not much more than a meek dormouse with shyness issues and a case of painful awkwardness. But we knew she was evil. We just didn’t have any proof.
The first thing my mother said after the initial emotional breakdown of finding her son dead was Jessica did this, I don’t know how but I know she did it.
I believe she was probably right. But if Jessica was anything she was wily and devious with a strong survival instinct and an uncanny ability to lie convincingly and draw sympathy onto herself. She’d convinced us for years that she was the perfect combination of sweetly harmless and endearingly clueless, but that only lasted until the day she called 911 screaming that James was beating her and then threw herself face first into a tree in their front yard and sat, calmly singing and coloring in a coloring book on the porch with blood running down her forehead, waiting for the police to arrive. The act she put on when they got there was one for the Academy, but the officers didn’t buy it.
James calmly rolled up his sleeves and showed them his scars where she’d burned him and slashed him with a kitchen knife. He pulled up his shirt and pointed out the marks she’d left on him with her teeth and nails. He hooked a finger into his mouth and showed them the empty hole where she’d knocked one of his teeth out with a baseball bat. One of the officers asked him why he hadn’t killed her and buried her somewhere on the land already.
She left in the back of the squad car, and my mother took James to the courthouse to get divorce papers started two days later.
Jessica came to his memorial service when we finally had it, several weeks after his death. She wasn’t invited but we couldn’t keep her from coming. She wore black like a widow and created a dramatic disruption complete with loud wailing and declarations of undying love, and afterward she stood to one side of the room, smirking at us with the kind of icy malice that you only see on the dangerously deranged, and then usually only in the movies. Several people commented in hushed voices, asking why she’d been allowed to come. At one point she started wailing They killed him!!, but everyone with the exception of her mother ignored her.
Her mother, who was still in our congregation, flitted around the room chatting with everyone, sobbing her heart out like it was her own son we’d just memorialized. She was an ER nurse and had been famously fired from her job at the hospital for taking locked-cabinet medications home by the purse load. She claimed she put them in her pocket to use on her shift and forgot to return them to the cabinet before leaving.
Jessica had been staying with her for a while.
----------
We fed the crowd at mom’s later that afternoon with my husband and his boss guarding the gate, making sure she didn’t try to come into my mother’s house. The police were called preemptively, and because this was a town of 300 with not much of anything else to do, a squad car was dispatched and stationed near the inlet to the main drive.
Jessica showed up not much later, like we knew she would. She drove past the police and parked a few yards down from them in plain sight, just sitting there by the side of the road, far enough away from our property that we couldn’t legally do anything about it. The officers got out and talked to her, warned her not to cause us any problems, and she fed them a woeful tale about being banned from her beloved husband’s memorial service and denied the right to say goodbye to him.
The officers knew there was no body at that service to say goodbye to. They also knew her.
My husband came up the hill and told us she was down at the road and that Scott was blocking the driveway with his truck to keep her out. I told my mother it was time to file a restraining order against her. She was living in fear and Jessica was known to be trespassing on our property frequently. No, she told me with tears in her eyes but not a sign of distress on her face. It was a look I knew, because my mother rarely showed emotion unless she was angry and the rest of the time it was this cold detachment. That would bring reproach on the congregation because everyone knows what we are. I can’t do that. I won’t let her win that way. I won’t let her cause us to bring shame on God’s name.
God’s name. I took it in vain that day.
More than once.
I was leaving in a few weeks, moving a thousand miles away. My husband and I weren’t going to be there to help her keep an eye out, and thirty eight acres of heavily wooded land is impossible to protect and easy to sneak onto from a hundred different directions, James had shown us proof of that.
God will protect us as long as we do the right thing and leave it to him, she said. He knows what she is.
I think it was just a coincidence that nothing terrible happened in the following weeks, because my faith was getting tenuous and a lot of prayers were going unanswered. But Jessica quietly disappeared back to her own world after a couple of infuriating weeks of putting herself in our paths every chance she got, and not long after that my husband and I moved away, and as we left the driveway for what we thought would be the last time he sighed and shook his head with the exasperation of a man about to say I told you so.
“That land is cursed,” he said.
I tried to disagree, though I don’t know why.
----------
Less than a mile up the road we passed a man walking. He was tall and thin and covered in the dust of a long journey with a ratty backpack strapped to his back, and as we passed him I caught his reflection in the side mirror.
It was James, I knew it in my heart every bit as strongly as I knew it couldn’t be.
He was walking away from the hill, toward the west. The way we were going. And I swear on whatever holy relic you wish to place under my hand that he raised his head and met eyes with me in the mirror, and he smiled.
.
Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold
And it's always summer
They'll never get cold
They'll never get hungry
They'll never get old and gray
You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere
They won't make it home
But they really don't care
They wanted the highway
They're happier there today
.
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UNTIL I’M OKAY (preview)
AUTHORS: @bottombeca & @snowbritt.
RATING: M.
PAIRING: Bechloe.
WORDS: 1,794.
ABOUT: Bechloe ‘Dead To Me’ AU.
This is purely a preview of chapter one, the entirety of which will be posted shortly. While this fic is based heavily on the show Dead To Me, it has been altered, adjusted and added to to create a Bechloe story and universe.
We hope you enjoy the below preview of our collaborative baby!
Warnings: Mentions of death and miscarriage.
***
All morning, there have been signs; signs that Beca shouldn’t be here. Firstly, Ryder’s cheeks had looked a little more flushed than usual. No, maybe he didn’t have a fever or anything, but Beca is not a doctor, he totally could be getting sick. Maybe she should’ve kept him home from school for the day, stuck around to take care of him.
Next, the Atlanta traffic, typically insufferable anyway, had been even worse this morning somehow.
It also doesn’t help that this isn’t necessarily voluntary on her part—court-ordered attendance doesn’t care about signs, or so the judge told her the last time she skipped.
And now this: a broken coffee machine. At least, Beca thinks it’s broken… She is positive there is no way anybody would try to pass off what she can only consider the sludge floating around in her styrofoam cup as actual coffee, right? Not that she has tasted it yet. Rather, she simply eyes it with a scrutinizingly raised brow, attention shifting distractedly to the view ahead.
If she has to endure cheap coffee and even cheaper cliches, at least there’s a view. The river will be a nice distraction when everything inevitably starts to get a little too weepy for her tolerance, she supposes.
Perhaps Beca is a little too caught up in the serenity of it all, in fact—the aforementioned view—because she seems to lose herself for the briefest of moments, at least long enough to bring the coffee cup up to her lips.
Instantly, she regrets it.
“Dude, what the—” She doesn’t know if she should choke it down or spit it back in the cup.
“That bad, huh?”
The voice to break into her quiet outburst is an unfamiliar one, though it comes from close enough by to have Beca’s attention drifting toward its owner. She is unfamiliar, too. Beca doesn’t register her own blank expression until the other woman speaks again.
“The coffee…” There is a distinct lightness to the nameless face’s voice, one that Beca really does not have the energy for this morning. “Kind of looks like you’re not enjoying it.”
“Oh, right,” Beca nods, tone disinterested. “Yeah. It tastes like shit.”
The melodic giggle to ring out from the stranger’s lips seems somewhat misplaced, all things considered. “Guess I’ll avoid it then,” she says, tucking a chunk of curled red hair behind her ear. She hesitates for the shortest moment, before pushing a bright, welcoming smile to her lips. “I’m Chloe, by the way. This is…” Chloe motions vaguely around them, “Kind of new to me.”
Beca is not here to make friends. In fact, she doesn’t even want to be here. Regardless, she nods politely in response to Chloe’s introduction—it is really not her fault Beca cannot control her temper, after all. “Beca.”
“Beca…” Chloe repeats in a breezy tone, almost as if trying to commit it to memory. “Pretty.”
Though Beca’s brows tug together slightly, she offers Chloe a small smile, one that definitely does not meet her eyes—then again, when does Beca’s smile meet her eyes these days?
Chloe’s wide gaze seems to be staring at her expectantly, as if awaiting a response. What is she even supposed to say to that?
Fortunately—if anything about this situation can be considered fortunate—a new voice cuts into their conversation.
“Ready to join the circle?”
If Jesse were here, Beca would make a mumbled comment to him about how semi-threatening the request sounds. But, he isn’t… And that is why Beca is even here at all. So, exchanging a brief glance with Chloe, whose subtle amusement appears evident, Beca sets down her cup of lukewarm sludge, before dutifully making her way toward an empty seat.
“Looks like we have a few fresh faces here today,” the previous voice announces cheerfully.
Beca glances up to the blonde wearing the neatly pressed Fallen Leaves t-shirt, taking note of the way she is now looking expectantly between Beca and the redhead seated beside her.
Taking no further prompting, Chloe sends a small wave toward the group, before introducing herself with a polite, “Hi. I’m Chloe.”
Following a brief silence, Beca registers the countless sets of eyes now training on her.
“Oh. Um, hi. I’m Beca,” she says awkwardly to the group, the distinct difference between she and Chloe’s greetings palpable. The way she straightens in her chair seems to display her level of discomfort, if the way the blonde shoots a sympathetic look her way is anything to go by.
“Well, welcome to Fallen Leaves,” she says, evidently taking over, “My name is Aubrey. As some of you know, I like to start out our grief group by sharing the loss that got me into this work.”
Beca braces herself for the first of what she’s sure will be many sob stories to come, though she takes comfort in the focus no longer being on her.
“During an acapella competition in college, under extreme pressure, I violently vomited on stage,” Aubrey begins to explain somberly. “My co-captain slipped in it and fell off the stage, breaking her neck in the process. It happened with the whole crowd watching, not to mention on live television.” She pauses briefly, giving the group a moment to digest the information and evidently ignoring the look of mild horror displayed across Beca’s face. “And I live with that every day.”
Shrinking back into her chair a little bit, Beca is beginning to regret everything that led to her being here today. She doesn’t want to talk about it with anyone—let alone someone who anxiety-puked their way into killing someone.
“Oh, my god,” Chloe murmurs sympathetically.
Aubrey presses her lips together. “Thank you. Is there a loss you’ve had that you’d like to share with us today?” Her gaze moves toward Beca briefly, though Beca is quick to shake her head in response.
“I do,” the voice beside her pipes up. The group’s attention, Beca and Aubrey’s included, moves toward Chloe, and Beca finds that she is grateful to lose the spotlight yet again.
Apparently, Chloe doesn’t share Beca’s disdain for all eyes on her. She looks comfortable enough as she shoots a small smile toward her audience. “Okay,” Chloe begins, straightening slightly in her seat. Just because she seems to be okay with the attention does not mean that whatever she is about to say is something she is comfortable with. In fact, it becomes quickly evident that it is not. “Well, um, my fiancé and I—ex fiancé—were trying to start a family. We tried a bunch of times, in fact,” Chloe explains, settling into her story.
Beca notes the way her gaze lowers, as if she is mentally disappearing somewhere else.
“About eight weeks ago, our baby died. It was sudden. Really sudden. I was…” Chloe’s voice gets small and strained as she wrings her fingers together.
Beca is about the least affectionate woman in all of Atlanta, but something about Chloe’s small voice and shrinking demeanor almost makes her want to reach out and settle a comforting hand against her shoulder. She doesn’t, of course; she just focuses her own sad gaze on Chloe as she continues.
“I was five months along, so we weren’t really expecting it, you know? Maybe we should have been. There were four before this. And the miscarriages… No one prepares you for how hard they really are. But this time, I guess I just thought we’d made it. That I was really going to have a family.”
Chloe is looking down at her hands, folded into each other to keep from fidgeting. “This time we’d set up the nursery. We hadn’t done that before, not since the first…” She clears her throat. “I keep coming back to this baby blanket that I’ll never get to wrap around my baby. Or lift it to my nose and breathe in her smell when I miss her.” She blinks a few times and looks back up, like she is coming back to the present. Beca notes that her eyes are a little harder to look into now. “So, yeah,” Chloe murmurs. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
That same somber expression, already familiar, has returned almost automatically to Aubrey’s face. “We’re here for you, Chloe,” she says, a genuine air to her comforting tone. “Let’s hear it for Chloe, guys.”
Like conditioned robots reading from a brief handed out before Beca’s arrival, everyone except for Beca, who is unintentionally watching Chloe, says in monotone, “We’re here for you, Chloe.”
Beca’s is the lone voice to say, much more personally, “That sucks. I’m really sorry.”
Despite the sea of eyes trained on Chloe, Chloe’s gaze lifts to meet Beca’s, auburn brows drawn tightly together. They seem to relax a little as she looks at Beca, though. Eventually, she just says, “Thank you,” quietly, a small nod of appreciation accompanying her words.
A moment passes between them before Aubrey speaks. “Thank you for sharing that.” While Beca may not be used to this, to people opening up so deeply and personally, Aubrey evidently is. It seems to be business as usual for her as she continues in a clear voice. “Last week, we started talking about the F-word.”
Instantly, Beca’s eyebrows jump up. She glances around at everyone else, but they don’t seem to find anything strange about this—something Beca finds strange in and of itself. Out of the corner of her eye, Chloe’s gaze catches Beca’s, and Beca notes that it looks as though she’s trying to suppress a confused chuckle.
“That’s right. Forgiveness,” Aubrey says. “Forgiveness can be really difficult. It can even take a lifetime. But no matter the circumstances, everyone is deserving of forgiveness.”
Beca can’t keep the indignant scoff from leaving her lips even if she wants to. Aubrey stops talking, her mouth slightly open in offense, while piercing eyes seem to narrow in on Beca directly.
“Do you have anything to share about forgiveness, Beca?”
Beca’s lips purse, armor falling briefly. “Yeah, I do,” she nods. “How do you forgive someone who hits your husband with their car and then drives away, leaving him to bleed to death on the side of the road?” Beca mutters flatly. “How do you forgive the person responsible for you lying awake every night, wondering how your boys are supposed to cope without their father? How do you forgive that?”
Wide eyes stare her way incredulously, but before anyone has the chance to respond, she leans back in her chair, closing herself off to further conversation. “You know what, I actually don’t want to get into it, so someone else can go,” Beca exhales sharply, trying to push her anger back into its usual box, stored up on the highest shelf where it belongs.
#beca mitchell#chloe beale#bechloe#bechloe fic#bechloe fanfic#dead to me#until i'm okay#bottombeca#collab:bottombeca#mine#mine:writing
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9x01: I Think I’m Gonna Like it Here
Errm, we forgot a season opener episode...so here’s 9x01 for your enjoyment :)
Then:
Heaven’s doors closed, kinda
Now:
Sam and Dean are on the road discussing the fallen angels, and how they’re going to tackle this new situation. Well, Sam is. Dean keeps driving until he tells Sam they have a far more pressing matter than that, or Metatron, or Cas. “You’re dying, Sam.”
Indeed he is. They’re not in the Impala. They’re in a hospital and Sam’s attached to a bunch of wires and machines.
The doctor gives Dean the bad news that Sam has severe internal injuries and his recovery is “in God’s hands.” Lol, it REALLY is. And ol’ Chuck isn’t going to let one of his favorite characters die! He does like to see them tortured though. Dean loses his shit, because, at this stage in the game, God isn’t playing.
He goes to the chapel AND PRAYS TO CAS.
He tells Cas that whatever happened, they’ll work it out. “Please man, I need you here.” Dean looks up and is shocked that Cas isn’t there. AND I’M EMOTIONAL. He has so far to go. But also, I feel so bad for him right now. Anyway, he gives it about 5 seconds before he puts out an open call to any angel willing to help.
Business angel, Tractor angel, and Helo all take the call.
Memory Lane Alert:
Sam continues to have a mental conversation with Dean in the Impala. Dean has a plan, and Sam just needs to hang on. Sam thinks he’s lying (and LIKE, is this his brain trying to rationalize death? Bobby shows up to argue yes.)
In Longmont, Colorado, on a lonely stretch of road, we find Cas. He’s walking and is overwhelmed with angel radio whitenoise.
For Cas Looks So Fucking Good In This Episode Science:
Also, a crazy driver that nearly kills him. The guy offers to give him a lift to a phone. Cas agrees, adding, “I would fly but I have no wings, not anymore.”
I need a moment.
Sam continues to deteriorate. I enjoy the snark in Sam’s mind that he saved Bobby from Hell. Anyway, Bobby and Dean continue to argue about whether Sam should or shouldn’t live. Bobby pulls Sam from the car and they land in a forest.
Cas’s ride drops him off at a filling station and gives him some money. Cas accepts it reluctantly, insisting he does eat. Meanwhile, a woman watches Cas from a car.
Cas reaches the pay phone, currently in use.
He doesn’t want to hurt the guy, but this is an emergency. The guy is very polite when he tells Cas to try and hurt him. Cas tries the old fingers to the forehead trick. Nothing happens. He tries the old whole hand to the forehead trick (isn’t that usually a smiting move? <nervous side-eye emoji>) The guy brushes Cas’s hand away and tells him that he’s going to finish his call, and then stab Cas. Cas walks away in a daze.
The woman from the car approaches him. She knows Castiel. She’s an angel named Hael.
A grief counselor comes to talk to Dean, but he’s not done fighting.
He realizes that he has the King of Hell in his trunk (not yet you don't ...I think I’ve used that joke before, but it never gets old.) Before he can get Crowley out of the Impala’s trunk, Business angel attacks. He’s looking for Castiel. Dean isn’t talking. Helo pops up and gets into fisticuffs with Business angel. He distracts him enough for Dean to stab Business angel in the back. Helo assures Dean that he’s here to help him, and then passes out.
Hael and Cas talk about the angels falling and life in Heaven. So many angels are afraid of this unknown new order.
Cas assures her there is nothing to be afraid of, and there is something better on Earth. Oh, you poor Humanity loving fool, Cas. He makes a case for Free Will.
Dean puts Helo in a ring of fire to interrogate him. His name is Ezekiel. And he is not here to hurt Dean or Cas. He’s here to help.
Sam and Bobby take a nature walk while Bobby chips away and Sam’s uncertainty of dying.
Dean brings Ezekiel to Sam.
Dean’s phone rings while Gadreel examines Sam. It’s CAS! Insert EXTREME HEART EYES HERE.
Cas briefly explains that Metatron tricked him, but Dean overrides Cas’s discussion of the angel apocalypse for a more pressing matter: Sam’s dying. Cas explains that he can’t heal him without his grace, but that also doesn’t matter! Ezekiel is a “good soldier,” according to Cas, so Sam’s in good hands. Dean warns Cas that angels are after him and he needs to get to the bunker, do not pass GO, do not trust anybody else.
The hospital shakes as another angel circles a vessel. Dean grabs a dry erase marker and starts scrawling angel warding all over Sam’s hospital room. He leaves Ezekiel there to heal Sam while he races through the hospital trying to clear it out.
Cas tries to extricate himself from Hael’s company. “This is your chance to help people. Help yourself.” Cas, you altruistic sunflower! Hael rewards this by whacking him across the head with a plank.
When he wakes up, Hael explains that she couldn’t let Cas go. She blames Cas for the fall but she can use Cas…
Dean confronts angels in the hospital, including the now-possessed grief counselor.
In Sam’s head, he arrives outside a cabin. Bobby tells him that the cabin will end his life and wishes him well when suddenly he is STABBED! Sam’s projection of Dean killed him. “Bobby was the part of you that wants to die,” Dean explains...uh...reasonably? He starts to punch Sam in rage, trying to get him to fight for his life. “I can’t help you if you ain’t willing to fight for yourself!” Sam...knows that. And...he’s not willing to fight anymore.
Sam heads for the cabin.
Real Dean is in his own pickle. Grief counselor angel hauls him around, demanding to know where Cas is or Sam’s gonna die bloody. Dean refuses to give up Cas. He’s bloody and exhausted, but blasts the angels out with a banishing sigil. He heads in to check on Sam. Ezekiel sits slumped in a chair. Between the banishing sigil and the warding, he’s incredibly weak and can’t heal Sam. There are “no good ways” to save Sam so Dean, being Dean, asks about the bad ones.
Ezekiel thinks he can save Sam by possessing him, but Dean knows that Sam would rather die than be possessed. Ezekiel brings Dean into Sam’s head so he can see how bad it is.
Dean witnesses Death talking to Sam. Death tells Sam that he played a good game! Sam asks for a boon from Death: he doesn’t want to come back. At. All. He doesn’t want anybody else to get hurt because they tried to save him. SAM BBY!
Dean “There’s Another Way” Winchester is appalled.
Cas is still trapped with an angel Heaven-bent on possessing him. He looks around at the tools at hand. An angel blade. An angel new to cars and driving. He puts on his seat belt. (Side bar: is this the first time any of our heroes has EVER put on a seat belt???) Cas hauls at the wheel, steering the car towards concrete barriers.
At the hospital, Dean unpacks the proposal. Ezekiel possesses Sam and they both heal together. When Sam’s better, Ezekiel leaves.
In a wrecked car, Cas wakes up from his second head injury in an hour or so. He unbuckles his seatbelt and stumbles out. Sprawled ahead of the car is Hael. She’s looking...really bad with her body snapped in some really unfortunate ways. Cas swears to help her - and all the angels. It’ll be his life’s work! “I’m one of you. I will never stop being one of you!” She tells him all the angels despise him. BRB weeping!
He tries to walk away, but she vows to reveal him to the rest of the angels if he leaves her. Cas kills her to save himself. So…...first day as a human? Not going super great.
Sam prepares to die. Dean stops him from leaving the cabin! (Dean apologizes to Death for not bringing cronuts. I forgot those were a thing!) Sam wants to know why Dean is even there. “You gotta let me in, man. You gotta let me help! There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.”
Sam says….yes to being saved. Dean transforms into Ezekiel and light fills Sam’s head.
Outside the hospital, Dean and Ezekiel walk and talk. Ezekiel reports that Sam’s in super rough shape. He also suggests that Sam not be told he’s possessing him. If Sam knows he’s possessed, he’ll expel Ezekiel and then die. Dean’s not happy with that plan, but he agrees to hide the truth from Sam. Adding icing to the cupcake of betrayal, Ezekiel promises to erase Sam’s memories of almost dying in the hospital. Oh dear.
Cas winds up at a laundromat. He’s bloodied and injured, and I guess these are just...normal laundromat experiences? It’s really sad! Unlucky Cas!
But I’m getting ahead of myself because the laundromat experience is also THIS. Lucky us!
Cas loads his clothing into the washer, but he has very little money. He steals clothing and uses his change to buy something to eat and drink instead.
In the car, Sam wakes up slowly. Dean asks him how he feels. Sam gets the dollar recap of the angels falling and NOTHING ELSE PERTINENT. Sam’s ready to jump back into the fight and Dean feels G R E A T about it.
Shirtless Quotey:
This one goes out to any angel with their ears on. This is Dean Winchester and I need your help
I would fly, but I have no wings
Let's go see the Grand Canyon, then
Anybody ever tell you you hit like an angel?
There ain't no me if there ain't no you
Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!
#spn recap#spn rewatch#spn 9x01#I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here#dean winchester#sam winchester#castiel#cas#gadreel#death#supernatural season 9
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Choose your side (Part 2)
Credence Barebone x Reader
A/N: I forgot to mention that this was an Soulmate AU, and I know I screwed up the first one, silly me.😅
We stepped into the opening in the wall, a narrow staircase heading down into an amphitheater filled with thousands of witches and wizards. Some were seated on the stone benches (or stairs?) and some were standing, ready for whatever that's gonna happen.
Credence was in awe and Nagini was nervous at a large number of people, she held on to Credence, trying to pull him back. " They're Purebloods, they kill us for sport!' I heard her warned him, with fear covering her words, but Credence continues on. She hesitated but she follows him.
Jacob walked towards a familiar blonde hair and blue eyes witch, "Queenie?" He whispered as he gets closer to her, but away from us. She gasped and turned around with a big smile plastered on her face. "Jacob! You're here, Hi!" She said squealing, as she jumps into his arms. "Oh, hun, I'm so very sorry, I shouldn't act like that, I love you so very-" She said as Jacob take her hands in his.
"And you know I love you too, right?" He asked
"Yeah" She replied, nodding.
"Great, let's get out of here," He said and tries to pull her to us, but she tugs him back. "Wait, wait for a second, I just thought..... maybe we could hear him out, you know, just listen, that's all." She said with a Sirius (get it?) look in her eyes. "W-what are you talking about?" Jacob asked, with disbelief as she pulls her into the seat beside her. Jacob looks around, nervously.
"It's a trap." I heard Tina said. "Yeah. Queenie, the family tree, it's a been bait." Newt said. " We should find a way out, now," I said, afraid. They agreed. "I go find Credence and Nagini, they're important," I said as Tina takes my hand. She was a sister figure to me so.... yeah.
"What are you going to do?" Tina asked Newt. "I'll think of something," Newt said as we set off to one side whilst Newt goes the other.
"I'm scared, Tina," I whispered to her. "I know, I am too." She whispered as we walk down the stairs, as Grindelwald walks on stage. The crowd begins to applaud and cheer as he stands on the center of the stage. We are caught in the middle, so we take a seat next to the others.
~Time skip cause y' all know what happened and I'm too lazy to type Grindylock's speech~
Credence breaks free from Nagini's grip, and walks through the tempting, blue flames, joining Grindelwald. I heard Grindelwald said, " Mr. Scamander, do you think Dumbledore will mourn for you?" He asked Newt as he throws a large burst of fire at them. Newt, Theseus, and Leta raise their wands and summoned a shield.
"Grindelwald! Stop!" I shouted and the fire subsided a bit to reveal me, Newt, Nagini, Credence, Theseus and Tina's eyes are now on me.
"(Y/N)......." Newt and Tina said as they tried their best to make their way to me, but the fire lashed, and block their way to me.
"(Y/F/N) (Y/L/N)....... Despised entirely amongst wizards because of your uniqueness........ unloved....... mistreated...you stood your ground and gave it all but they didn't appreciate it...... yet brave. So very brave." Grindelwald said as he walks out of the circle and towards me.
My breath hitched and I froze on the spot. Grindelwald stretched his hand and said, "Time to come home, you are needed here than with them. They're the one that used you and abused you, and because of that, your true power can't be unleashed. Not only that, they kept Credence from you-"
"If I join you, will you help me, unleash my true power?" I said, my voice sounding like a small child. "Of course, My dear. I will help you, in every step of the way," said Grindelwald stepping closer. As I walk towards him my hand outstretched, Tina shouted, "(Y/N/N)! Don't join him, please! He's evil!" I said, with tears rolling down my face, " GRINDELWALD'S RIGHT! ALL OF YOU ABUSED ME, IGNORED ME, AND USED ME! ALL OF YOU NEVER WANTED ME ANYWAYS! OTHER THAN THAT, CREDENCE IS MY SOULMATE! AND I'M NOT GOING TO LOSE HIM EVER AGAIN, WHERE HE GOES I GO! I'M SO SORRY TINA, BUT I LOVE HIM TOO MUCH TO LET HIM LEAVE MY LIFE! AND SOMETIMES ALL OF YOU NEVER CARED FOR ME, LEFT ME TO GRIEF ON MY OWN..... a-and that's why I'm leaving you guys."
In the corner of my eye, Grindelwald smirked and embraced me in his arms and whispered, "Unleash your inner power, (Y/N)." I let out a animal-cry and slip out of his embrace and burst in flames, Newt's eyes open wide.
My hair was floating and I began to float too... My once (H/C) has become like embers of fire !
When my feet touch the ground, I walked towards the circle, to Credence..........
#fantastic beats the crimes of grindelwald#fantastic beats and where to find them#fantastic beasts#credence x reader#credence barebone x reader#credence barebone#jk rowling#harry potter
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* all is full love.
hi there! call me artesia! i am 25, a lesbian living in the central timezone and am timezone friendly! my discord is honeytouched #0514 & my kik is syrupdoll.
i am a selective independent bill kaulitz roleplay blog looking for long term interaction with a roman reigns roleplay blog! plot lines i am currently interested in roleplaying are below. if you have read my rules & are interested in roleplaying with me, just shoot me an ask or hit me up on discord or kik. thank you for reading! now, onto the good stuff!
rules!
no minors. you must be 21+ or older.
since all of my past writing partners have been women i prefer writing with other women.
i love getting to know my roleplay partner! being able to establish out of character chemistry is vital to me. if we get along and enjoy each other’s company then our characters will enjoy one another’s company as well.
my writing style is advanced, prose/novella, third person and prefer the same from my partner.
on average my replies are paragraph length or longer and prefer a partner that offers the same.
i have been roleplaying for almost a decade! it has always been a private love of mine & i am glad to be returning to it.
communication is key! life happens and sometimes we are not available to roleplay. if i am unable to roleplay for whatever reason i will let you know, i ask for the same from my partner.
if you are uncomfortable or unsatisfied with a particular roleplay, let me know! i will do the same with you and i would be happy to work together with you to create something we both enjoy.
i am timezone friendly!
replies are daily, at least several replies per day. again if i am unable to reply immediately i will let you know.
in character conversation is welcome and encouraged! just like the writers themselves, it’s important our characters get to know each other as well.
i use tumblr for casual in character conversation between our muses. kik and discord are for roleplays themselves, although i am open to in character conversation there as well as long as they are in separate chats. i also love to use my roleplay blog as an aesthetic & moodboard space for my muse.
i do work weekends so saturdays and sundays may be slow reply days on my end.
what type of roleplay do i like?
i enjoy slice of life, drama, angst, romance plot lines!
smut?
i enjoy writing sexual scenes as long as it is part of the plot.
any limits?
no gore, abuse of any kind, most kinks.
anything else?
do not contact me if you have not read my rules or what muse i am wanting to interact with.
can i see your writing?
sure! feel free to view my works here.
plots.
i. a softer timeline - slice of life / au / drama / angst / slow burn romance
wrestling has never been a real point of interest for bill. all of that sweat, drama & chairs to the head and broken bones? he’d rather watch a marathon of pawn stars. maybe it’s because he’s never found any of those guys cute enough to pique his interest in something so boring, but one evening he gets invited by a friend to a house show in town and he decides to check it out. why not? never hurts to try something new.
plus, there’s drinks.
little does he know that sometimes it’s cream that curiosity gets the cat for when he sees him move around that ring for the very first time, that golden boy grin and that beautiful body slick in that burning crown of lights, bill thinks that wrestling might not be such a shitty sport after all. he wonders how in the world he could ever stand side by side with this guy. roman, he thinks, is his name. at least that’s what the crowd was chanting when he was on stage. it’s fitting somehow, that name for that face, for that body, for that man.
bill was never one to believe in fate– at least not publicly anyway, so nobody had any clue that he started wishing on stars, on feathers he found on the sidewalk, pennies on his door step, full moons & new moons, on flowers that bloomed in his tiny garden on his tiny patio. maybe that was what paid off for him, his having faith, his believing, in fate, in love, in awkward only in a movie kind of encounters, because one night in the parking lot in the aftermath of another brilliant house show the two of them meet, sharing cigarettes and twin flames, destiny smiling beautifully down upon them.
ii. grief work - post break up / drama / angst / au
“sometimes shit like this just happens, ro. we don’t always get it right the first time.”
sometimes we don’t. sometimes things just fall apart so that we can put ourselves back together again, so that we can put those broken things back together again. sometimes it’s with the right person, but at the wrong time. sometimes people have to walk away from what they have with one another so that they can come back together in the right way, stronger, healthier and ready to create something better together. knowing that doesn’t make the pain any easier to deal with.
it’s driving roman crazy with guilt, his heart breaking more and more each day knowing that bill is so close yet so far away. this break up has been the hardest, most painful experience of his life. he isn’t sure what to do with himself, with all of this grief and sadness. there isn’t anywhere, or anyone to pour it into, not anymore. he knows bill isn’t faring any better. each day he has to talk himself out of calling bill, checking on his social media or texting him.
life hurts without bill, it hurts a lot more than roman ever thought it would.
he knows he didn’t get it right the first time, but maybe, just maybe, he can get it right the second time.
iii. playing game. - smut / angst / drama / au / possibly romance
“gotta stop comin’ around here, kitty cat.”
mutually assured destruction, a game that’s lusciously familiar to the both of them. the two of them flit around the same, warped, hollywood brain rot circle of celebrity, though perhaps bill’s claim to fame is a little more… controversial than roman’s. naturally, they lock eyes at a party one evening and were both as good as gotten.
they keep this thing on the low, surviving each other with a few high altitude fucks whenever the stars align or whenever roman triple texts bill in the middle of the night after another party at some a list celebrity’s mansion. roman is a little worried that feelings might slowly be getting involved here, but from whose side, he isn’t quite sure, that geminian intuition of his failing him all of a sudden.
all he knows is that kitty is fast starting to sink his claws into the big dog, for better or for worse.
#indie rp#indie roleplay#independent roleplay#multiple paragraph#para#long term#email#messenger#tumblr#smut rp#submission
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Best Dear Evan Hansen Moments
This is a list I’m still working on but here’s what I have so far, from what I remember when I saw it and from the cast album.
When he dropped his cards during his speech and he just sat there on the stage and it was DEAD silent
In words fail when he’s singing that mini reprise of WTAW and he sings “worst” in the most heart-tearing way possible, you can hear his own self-hatred in his voice
All of sincerely me
How he sang in like 3 different octaves in for forever
When CONNOR PUSHES EVAN DOWN AND THEN WAVING THROUGH A WINDOW PIANO STARTS AND YOURE LIKE OH
When Evan spins around in WTAW and the lights turn on and they’re facing away from him
The dialogue in between verses of WTAW
All the foreshadowing in for forever that when you look back on breaks your heart
Having mike faist sing sincerely me
The dancing in sincerely me, including will roland in it
Ben Platt was even better singing live than in recordings
Literally the projections especially of Evan’s letter like ??? what an idea
Jared is literally hilarious and a very realistic teenager
The fact that the story was so realistic, like how Jared said that it sounds like they’re lovers which is exactly what teenagers would think of that, or just how brutally honest Jared was
The jazz band jazz thing – I feel like that’s the kind of thing I would stumble and say to my crush
“The only man that I love is my dad”
Hearing the orchestrations of waving through a window live
“Did you fall? Or did you let go?”
The ending wasn’t really resolved and in a way that’s how it was resolved. I’m so glad things were still a little strange between him and Zoe but they accepted each other as well
Evan telling Zoe he could get her a discount at Pottery Barn
“I don’t need you to sell me on reasons to want you”
“Try to quiet the noises in your head – we can’t compete with all that”
“I never thought there’d be someone like you who would want me. So I give you ten thousand reasons to not let me go”
Laura Dreyfuss’s smooth voice
Can we talk about the costumes?? Connor’s jacket and his nail polish and his skinny jeans, all of Zoe’s outfits and her backpack and the way she walked and carried herself, Evan’s pants and shoes
Addressing how the Murphys are rich and that they don’t really understand and whatever that line was about Cynthia getting bored as a rich mom and changing her interests or something?
How the Murphys had a family song, what a great idea, how they all felt about it differently but they’re sharing this tragedy
“Or girls we wish would notice us but never do” the little look at Zoe, the look down and the cough
Evan noticing things about Zoe in jazz band, seriously it’s so beautiful to watch someone you love playing music
Evan imagining that Connor comes and gets him and takes him to the hospital
On that note, Evan to Heidi “who do you think took me to the hospital?” getting mad that Heidi wasn’t the one…. IT’S NOT HER FAULT
The final set in the apple orchard
The inspirational video of Evan was him standing in front of a mustard yellow-type curtain in an auditorium I was like THIS IS SO ACCURATE for high school
The melody of: “But he kept it all inside his head”
Ben Platt literally sobbing and sniffling in Words Fail with very real tears and snot and spit like TOTAL DEDICATION and emotional investment
“I’m sorry I’m not enough”
At the end of Waving Through A Window when the backup voices cut out and Ben sings the final “whoa”
“You can reach, reach out your hand. And oh, someone will come running” WHY
The first chorus of You Will Be Found just the piano and silence and him singing. So gentle
Whenever Will Roland gets to sing alone
In You Will Be Found they’re in a circle around Evan with the spots on them but this time they’re facing him
Laura’s solo in You Will Be Found and then everyone coming in in harmony right after
RACHEL BAY JONES SINGING IN ANGER AND GRIEF AND CRYING AND I CAN’T
When Connor starts singing the beginning of For Forever near the end
Connor singing Disappear to Evan and him believing it and singing along with him and getting some hope? And I know this thought takes the form of Connor but it’s really a part of Evan that’s telling himself this. And by the end of the show you see how much he really doesn’t like himself but in this scene I have this hope where he truly doesn’t believe he deserves to be forgotten
The piano in If I Could Tell Her
Ben’s falsetto on that long sustained “I love youuuu” in If I Could Tell Her
“Heee thought you looked really pretty – er – it looked pretty cooool”
The melody on “but what do you do (when there’s this great divide)”
The orchestrations (especially the strings) of Waving Through A Window
When the scene is building up and you know Evan’s going to tell them the truth and YOURE LIKE I CAN’T WATCH I CAN’T LISTEN I CAN’T LOOK AT BEN PLATT ACTING LIKE THIS. Like listening again is LITERALLY painful
Falsetto “woooords fail”
HOooooooow in the world does Ben Platt do the song Words Fail EIGHT TIMES A WEEK
“And you want to believe it’s true, so you make it true. And you think maybe everybody wants it – needs it – a little, too”
“’Cause then I don’t have to look at it, and no one gets to look at it”
The smooth transition from Words Fail into a Waving Through A Window reprise
The short For Forever reprise at the very end
I cannot emphasize enough how much I love the melody of For Forever
The fact that Ben sings the first chorus of “For Forever” with falsetto, then the next chorus in full voice, then another time the octave down (in a different key?)
All of Ben’s hand movements and fidgeting and playing with his sweater or his shirt
The set for the final scene
The scoop in harmony in “miss you dearly”
Mike Faist really going all out in sincerely me
“And oh, someone will come running. And I know they’ll take you home”
“Have you ever felt like you could fall and no one would hear”
The last note of the show is (in solfege) “fa”, making it sound unfinished – but not in an unsatisfactory way. I think it makes it seem hopeful and like there will be things coming next and we don’t know what they are yet but we’re getting better at facing them
“Your mom isn’t going anywhere, your mom is staying right here. No matter what”
Rachel Bay Jones’s rocking emotional voice on Good For You
How the last “disappear” of the phrases are in unison
“Kinky!”
Anybody Have A Map? is literally so so great, it’s so catchy, it’s the beginning which sets us up for knowing that the parents are an important part of this show, and not to overlook how they feel. Heidi was the character I felt the most related to my life (not necessarily in myself) and she was so important and from the moment she started singing I was on board with this
“Goodbye, goodbye, now it’s just me and my little guy”
Laura Dreyfuss’s voice when she switches into singing a bit higher – the switch is so seamless and she does it with such grace and elegance. In Only Us, Requiem, all of that
The “oh”s at the end of Requiem
“No no I don’t really care anyway—“ “No no he said so many things I’m just I’m trying to remember the best ones”
WILL FUCKING ROLAND IN SINCERELY ME
The beautiful harmonies in the finale
The harmonies at the end of Sincerely, Me
“Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day, and here’s why: because today at least you’re you, and that’s enough”
I mean all of the sets with the blue windows/light coming through
Literally all the use of lighting like the squares that they stand in and the projections
“one of my closets acquaintances”
Every single lyric of Words Fail
#me#dear evan hansen#ben platt#laura dreyfuss#mike faist#will roland#kristolyn lloyd#michael park#jennifer laura thompson#rachel bay jones#alex lacamoire#benj pasek#justin paul#steven levenson
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Operation: Voltron
Part 12
Keith
(First)(Previous)(Next)(AO3)
Keith pinched the bridge of his nose, frustration making his head pound.
He has been trying to break Blue Lion for hours now, and every response was nothing but a bad pick up line. His neck hurt, and he desperately wanted to get some sleep. The press has been up his ass since the arrest three days ago, but he had orders not to say a word. Why, one might ask? Keith was clueless as to the answer, but orders were orders.
He should have never arrested Blue Lion.
It was like pulling teeth. Or bashing his face in with a hammer. Or both, but worse. As if he was talking to a brick wall. One that flirts with people who run face first into them. And he was so difficult to pin down in Keith’s mind.
They teach people when going into the police academy how to do a character assessment. If you're a good cop, and you're good at your job, an officer should be able to tell at a glance what makes a person tick. Originally, Keith failed this part of training. Back then, he was fresh out of college, still a kid in every way but the law, and his emotions drove his every move.
Well, more like anger drove him anyways.
It was actually Shiro who showed him the tricks to emotional management and character assessment. Made it fun too. Shiro sat Keith down in front of an interactive training program the military and police use. It puts you in a situation, and you had to decide the right time to draw your weapon and shoot. The first time they played ranked, Shiro scored 100 and Keith none. But Keith was also extremely competitive, and so he played the game a lot more, and eventually he just naturally picked it all up.
Workouts for the mind, as Shiro said.
Looking at Blue Lion now, Keith felt justified in calling the man a brick wall. He had tan skin, and blue, storm like eyes, dark and changing. There were a few scars marring his hands, tiny white lines. He was also short haired, which explained why hair was practically impossible to find at crime scenes. High cheekbones, but not dramatically pronounced, and a lazy half smile that was forever plastered on his face.
He was also consistently moving in someway.
Fidgeting with his hands, bouncing his legs, tilting his head. Like he had too much energy and not enough action. Also, maybe it was a trick of the eyes, but Blue Lion was shiny? Like, his skin was just... Shiny.
It was about three minutes into the silence where they stared each other and nothing else that Blue Lion’s smile dropped. He threw his head back dramatically with an open mouthed groan. “Okay, I’m officially tired of playing the game.” Blue said.
‘The game’ was a reference to his speech when he called Blue Lion out for a murder he didn’t commit. Because of course the man in front of him didn’t commit murder. Even the press knew better than that, despite not really being let in on the ploy. Allura’s idea, not Keith’s.
Damn politicians.
“Then tell me your name. Your real name.” Keith said. It was like going through the stages of grief trying to get information out of this guy. He denied the hundreds of pick up lines, despite some of them being pretty good. Almost made Keith smile, had it not been for stage two of grief. He had completely blown a gasket, and started yelling and slamming down on the table much like Pidge did what seems like forever ago.
Now he was at stage three, bargaining.
“Nah, how about a new game Kogane.” Blue said. He folded his hands underneath his chin with a smile that rivaled the cheshire cat’s. Those blue, blue eyes sparked with a dark mischief, one that had Keith just a little bit more on edge than he already was.
“How about chess? I know you keep it in a drawer in your office for your weekly meetings with Agent Reece Nicholson.” Blue continued after a moment without response, causing one of Keith's shoulders to jerk back as if going to draw his gun. He didn't like guns, he was much more proficient in bladed weapons, oddly enough. When he was younger, Keith took a kendo class, and absolutely excelled at it. Swords were just a more skill required weapon. Not to say he was all that bad with guns, he just prefers his swords and knives.
Keith scowled as he tensed and untensed his shoulders to release some of the tightness. “How do you know about that?” He demanded, slightly intimidated at the fact that Blue Lion knew about it. Reece was is old mentor and boss, and they get together every week, have a drink in Keith’s office, play chess and talk about things. Sometime keith asks for off the record advice on a case. Sometimes Reece tells him war stories from when he was overseas. Others it would be about family, friends, and even just a sunday night football game.
The meetings were private, sacred.
Out of literally anyone knowing about those meetings, why was it Blue Lion? Not Shiro, or Allura who seemed to know everything and say nothing. Not even Pidge the hacking genius. Did Lance flip Reece to his side? No, impossible, Reece was as hard headed as they get. No way would he sell out. So how?
“So many question Kogane. Not even one game?” Blue Lion asked with a pout, a literal pout, breaking Keith out of his circling thoughts. They met eyes, and another cheshire grin spread across Blue Lion’s face. Keith was wary about whatever plan was unfolding in the criminal’s head.
“Why would I do that?” Keith asked, genuinely curious. Blue Lion shrugged, and Keith’s eyebrows rose expectantly. Blue Lion folded his arms across his chest as he leaned back.
“Chess with a twist then?” Blue Lion said, his words lilting in a sort of question.
Keith felt his face deadpan before he could stop it, and his ears turn red. He’s just glad his hair was down today, most of the time he wore it in a ponytail. “I’m not playing strip chess with the likes of you.” Blue Lion spluttered in shock, the first true reaction Keith had elicited out of him. Then his head was thrown back in a burst of genuine laughter, one hand slapping across his eyes, and the other clutching his stomach for dear life.
He regretted everything.
He was on the verge of shrinking into himself or storming out or something when the laughter finally cut off with a few chuckles. Blue Lion leaned forward again, one arm moving backwards to plant a hand on his chair’s armrest, the other planting on the table, and the chains that were practically unnoticeable until they made noise clanked. The hand on the table pointed at him.
“Not what I was going for, but thanks for that,” Blue Lion paused to rake his eyes over Keith’s body, practically leering at this point. Keith was ashamed at the way his heart rate jumped a little. “Wonderful image.” Blue Lion finished, and they both leaned away from each other. Keith hadn’t even realized he had leaned forward a little.
“If you win a game, I’ll answer one question as honestly as I can without signing myself into prison with a happy face sticker. I win, you answer one of my questions. We got a deal Kogane?” Blue Lion said, holding his hand out for a handshake. Keith stared bewildered at it for a moment, thoughts racing.
Who the hell thought it was a good idea to make Keith the interrogator?
Oh right, Keith was.
Now, on a normal case, Keith would shake his head with a snort of a laugh and then say no as plainly as he could. But like he said before, the stages of grief. He really hoped Bargaining was his golden ticket. And he hoped depression and acceptance wouldn’t bite him in the ass for signing a deal with the devil. Keith sighed miserably.
“Deal.”
******
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#voltron#voltron au#voltron fic#lance mcclain#keith kogane#shiro#takashi shirogane#katie holt#pidge gunderson#hunk garrett#allura#coran#matt holt#modern!au#white collar!au#hawaii five o!au#zarkon#multi shipping#klance#shallura#broganes#fbi!keith#military!shiro#nasa!pidge#nasa!hunk#criminal!lance
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