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missorgana · 3 years

Text

can’t say anything to your face

pairing: bucky barnes/sam wilson

fandom: marvel cinematic universe

rating: teen and up

word count: 7779

warning: swearing, alcohol, brief mention of death

summary: Bucky loves Sam, and he tells him so, in his own way. (mostly canon compliant sambucky pining)

(my longest fic yet??? since TFATWS is still taking over my life, here’s some more sambucky fluff slash angst. they’re everything to me. this thing is a bit self-indulgent too, after the idea from this tweet! so all thanks to twitter user @/SAMBUCKY616 for this concept, even tho my danish is probably not the best interpretation jgdjd.... oh well! and thank you to Cat / @wendigostag as always, because you convinced me to write it and beta read and just..... ur perfect. mwah! hope you all enjoy this???)

read on ao3

A remnant that sticks with Bucky, still sticks with him after he’s rid of the Winter Soldier for good, is the language.

The only good thing, really. He could live without every one of the screams he hears in his dreams and lifeless bodies imprinted on his retinas, but that sticks on too, real tight. Being fluent in more languages than he imagined to be is bearable.

Not exactly bearable, though, not when many of them are tainted with those memories that he tries to distance himself to when he’s awake. He’s learning. It’s harder at night, when there’s darkness and stillness and no distractions from what creeps up on him every time.

French is hard. He knows every word to express the chaos in his head, but he can’t pronounce them. German, too. Russian, Spanish, Mandarin. He’s especially fond of Arabic, which is also particularly difficult for him to dig up from his brain, not because he doesn’t remember it, but because the screams in his head get too loud for him to think.

It’s a shame.

There’s one exception in his, quite frankly, extensively large vocabulary, and that’s Danish.

Bucky doesn’t know why this language in particular was something the Winter Soldier (he usually tries to think of him as a separate entity altogether, because, well, it hurts less) needed, given that, as far as his memory reaches, it was never used.

And this is why he finds himself drawn to it.

Of course, English is what he speaks on a day-to-day basis, and it feels… mostly normal. But somehow, Danish becomes a thing of comfort. Or safety, more likely.

He’s pretty sure his pronunciation sounds like absolute hell, the words sometimes more harsh than he intends, making him want to turn himself inside out in embarrassment. All these feelings, they’re difficult to describe.

Especially the ones relating to Sam Wilson.

Sam.

Sam, Sam, Sam. He’s the only other constant visitor in the back of his mind, and whether that’s a good or a bad thing, up for discussion. A welcome distraction or… something more painful.

Yeah, this feeling is a hard one. Maybe it’s because it’s more than two decades since he’s felt it, or maybe he knows, deep down, that he hasn't ever felt it at all.

Since they met, he’s sworn that he hated him. But he doesn’t. It’s so bleeding obvious he might as well get it tattooed on his forehead.

Annoying, positive, calm, vulnerable, perfect Sam. Perfect- ugh, yes, it’s the only word left for him to describe him. It makes sense, like a lightbulb flicked on in his head and since then it hasn’t stopped shining.

Bucky doesn’t really know how this happened. Why or when. Maybe it came to him in that final battle, finding himself living and breathing, and the very first person he saw, first of anything he put his eyes upon, was Sam.

Or maybe it already dawned upon him in Steve’s awfully cramped car, where Sam wouldn’t move his stupid seat up.

Regardless, along the way, his habit of mumbling to himself in the Danish tongue in frustration or anxiety has developed into a way of letting things he doesn’t want his… co-worker to hear flow through, and out into the wide world, without any worry.

If he says what he wants to yell at the top of his lungs, in a way Sam would understand, that could only be the last drop into the oblivion of hating the universe.

He won’t feel that way. Sam is so… good. Bucky isn’t. He deserves better than that.

It’s easier this way, he tells himself. It’s fucking easier. He has a hard time keeping his rage toward himself inside, but he does it.

And that’s exactly what he does, when their reunion in the airport has them at each other’s throats again , and as Sam goes on ahead, refusing for him to follow (of course, he does follow, anyway), and Bucky can’t help himself.

“Jeg skal være sikker på at du kommer tilbage.”

He utters the words through slightly gritted teeth, not realising how his breathing picks up too quickly until the other man glances back at him from the entrance of the aircraft, “What did you say?”

It’s the first time he’s not cursed at himself, and Sam’s response makes him jump in his skin. Honestly, the realisation of the words only settles afterwards, and he knows there’s no way he understood it. Not only is Danish one of the least widespread languages, so the chance of Sam even being aware of it is less than microscopical, but his voice is also in a steady fight with the wind. Lucky for once, huh.

“Nothing,” he lies. Sam doesn’t look convinced. Bucky adds, “Talking to myself. I’m still coming with you.”

The sounds are too loud around them, making him all the more eager to get inside. One of the many wonderful side effects of the aftermath of being brainwashed? Massive, stubborn headaches.

Funny enough, the pain might just be getting worse when the man in front of him visibly sighs, “Suit yourself.”

…

Going after the Flag Smashers, getting their asses handed to them, a certain thorn in his eye showing up, it all goes too quick for Bucky to fully comprehend.

In the end, Sam saves his life, because it’s Sam. Sam, who put his trust in him when he didn’t know him, when he had absolutely no reason to, and yet he did. He’s been spending a lot of time scared that the other man will come to regret it.

And it’s when they’re off the road and the world stops moving, and suddenly, Bucky’s looming inches above Sam’s face, grass grazing and tickling their faces. Or he’d probably feel that, if he wasn’t biting his cheek so hard that he might draw blood.

Sam groans but doesn’t move an inch.

I want to kiss you so fucking bad, Bucky wants to say. But that would be the stupidest and most reckless decision of his yet. Instead, he swallows the words and tells him, “Could’ve used that shield.”

Sam’s grip on his arms tightens, “Get off of me.”

The other man’s voice is strained and he pushes him off, leaving him to stare at the sky with a certain feeling of numbness.

He’s prepared for a long walk back from wherever they’ve ended up, too, Bucky’s not really paying attention to the surroundings besides the road and Sam relieving the tension that’s built up between them (far from uncommon with them, he’s got to admit) with his usual joking jabs.

He didn’t welcome his apology for Redwing much. It’s true, he hated that droid, but that doesn’t mean he’s not sorry… although, deeper inside of him he knows he’s saying sorry for totally different reasons.

I’m sorry you got hurt, is what. I’m sorry you had to pull me out of the fire that I got us into.

“What’s going on in that big cyborg brain of yours?”

Bucky sighs non committedly, he’s heard this one before. “It’s computing.”

And Sam laughs, softly and with a warm tinge that makes it hard for him to keep walking like he doesn’t care. The man next to him tries to be smug, and in the past these pokes at him would get him riled up and walk away without sparing it another thought.

It’s different now. He looks at his smirk for just a second before turning his head, and it’s fine, he won’t notice, stop worrying.

Sam doesn’t hate him, he’s realised. He realised that a while ago, admittedly, but what’s more important to the pressing in Bucky’s chest, Sam doesn’t fear him.

All this pain, hurt and confusion, the Avengers torn up from the inside and running from the government for years, and yet, there isn’t a hint of resentment in his steady voice, his deep brown eyes or the way he falls into step with his own body. Sam makes that joke because he’s a smug idiot who doesn’t let defeat bring him down. Maybe, he even makes that joke to get a smile out of Bucky.

The man at his side doesn’t hate him anymore. In fact, he’s not sure he’s ever hated him in the first place.

“You know what?” Sam says in between his breathy laughs, sounding like he just discovered a lost treasure, “I can see it! I can see the gears turning.”

If Bucky had it in him, he would dare to smile. He would dare to join his laughter, but he doesn’t. It’d probably come out sounding all wrong, anyway.

Which is why he keeps his shoulders tight and gets back on track with what happened, and Sam follows suit. Sometimes he’s convinced the other man can read his mind. And because their arms move in synchron, within a distance where he could so easily reach out for his hand and feel what it’s like to hold it, his thoughts start running along with his mouth.

“Hvorfor gav du slip?” Bucky keeps his eyes glued to his feet, determined to keep the question to himself only, “Hvis jeg var modig nok havde jeg kysset dig.”

Sam’s voice returns to him, “Hm?”

“What?”

His co-worker laughs again, but he furrows his brows and suddenly it’s not that exact warmth that Bucky might’ve just allowed himself to feel safe in. Like the man next to him sees something in him no one does, not even himself. He’d like to know whatever secret Sam’s unlocked about him behind that look.

“You’re so weird sometimes, man.” he’s told, but there isn’t a single shred of judgement painted on any of the syllables. Sometimes.

…

“What was rule number two again?”

It was a stupid question, because Bucky knows. Those rules have been repeated too many times for him not to repeat it to himself whenever he needed to silence everything around him.

Don’t do anything illegal. Don’t hurt anyone. I am no longer the Winter Soldier. I am James Bucky Barnes.

Then why, after a failed mission, after meeting that fraud who thinks he can just take on the shield like it’s nothing, after his therapist put him and Sam through a conversation that led nowhere at all, does he feel like he just broke that rule?

Of course, he’s been bending the rules a bit.

Of course, he knows why he’s feeling like this.

True to his word, Sam waits for him outside. “When we’re done, we both can go on seperate, long vacations, and never see each other again.”

The warmth that radiated off of the other man earlier that day had vanished somewhere unknown, and the pressure on that last part made it clear. That’s what fills Bucky with the type of guilt and regret that makes him want to rip his own skin off. He’s all too familiar with that feeling already.

He doesn’t blame Sam one bit, obviously. Well, he’d still like to grab that shield from John Walker and shove it somewhere the sun doesn’t shine, but the anger he’d misplaced on his co-worker, it vanished as fast as it had first arrived.

Sam is so fucking good, it almost makes him want to cry.

Sam trusted his heart, trusted what he believed was right, and he didn’t know the government was going to snatch that opportunity and hand the shield over to some nobody who doesn’t know what it stands for. Hand it over like they had any say in the matter.

Bucky didn’t doubt Steve’s decision for a second, and Bucky didn’t- doesn’t doubt Sam. Especially now, he looks at him in the evening glow and understands why Steve trusted him when he trusted no one else. Bucky trusts him. He hasn’t been this confident about anything in ages.

But because his stubbornness never fails to take a hold of him, Sam doesn’t know that.

The other man notices him coming and is already walking. He doesn’t look him in the eyes anymore. Why would he? It’s not like he earned it.

Bucky tries hard to breathe around the lump in his throat.

And he doesn’t even bother hiding his contempt around Walker anymore, while Sam keeps him tied to reality, a hand on his chest that causes everything in him to freeze, until the malfunction can’t make him do anything other than turn around and walk away.

Down to business, that’s what they fucking talked about.

Bucky has an idea and he’s gonna get it out and make it a reality, and, surprisingly enough, Sam agrees. We go deal with it.

It makes for another long walk. But now it’s long and painfully silent. Fan-fucking-tastic.

He steals glances at Sam too many times for it to be considered casual, or fleeting, and he memorizes his fingers tapping his thigh mid-walk, his jawline, every single eyelash that’s blinking hard, a habit of his when he’s stressed, Bucky’s noticed.

Their movements aren’t synchronised anymore. It’s sort of poetic.

He doesn’t realise he’s muttering it to himself, “Undskyld.” because he doesn’t have the courage to hear Sam’s answer, “Undskyld.” because he knows there’s no way the man next to him is going to forgive him, “Undskyld.” because he doesn’t deserve his forgiveness.

He’d overstepped the boundary. Whatever progress they’d made in this weird dynamic of theirs, whatever closeness became a tangible size, is wiped clean from the slate because he was pissed. But it had nothing to do with him. Steve had, but the shield doesn’t. Sam doesn’t need him to tell him that.

“That some sort of mantra?” is what breaks him out of his head.

Sam’s got an eyebrow raised, his hands absentmindedly reaching for something, phone most likely, given they have to move fast.

“What do you mean?”

So the other man slows down and tilts his head, “What you just whispered to yourself.”

Yeah, Bucky’s a horrendous liar. And he can’t feign ignorance around Sam. He can’t fake anything, his body language, his thoughts, his emotions. He wished they’d shut the fuck up for a minute.

He sniffs, shrugs, pondering on the easiest way to get out of this confrontation, if you can even call it that.

“No.”

“Didn’t sound like English.”

“‘Cause it isn’t.”

Sam looks terribly kissable right now. Not because of the streetlights or the faint noise of traffic buzzing around them, but because he’s standing under the moon, almost glowing. Bucky imagines his stupid, addictive smile, and how the moon doesn’t stand a chance compared to his beauty.

He wishes that he could lean over and the man wouldn’t push him away. He’s a tragic romantic.

His co-worker also has that expression on his face that tells him he’s too drained for snark, probably incredibly close to calling it a day. Actually, he expects him to speak, but five seconds pass, and his whole demeanor shifts, and then they’re walking again.

Once again, Sam seems to know him better than he knows himself. We go deal with it. Never see each other again. It sounds great, sounds perfect, sounds ideal, he tells his internal voice, because if he repeats it enough times he might just convince himself to believe it.

It’s not like the thought of Sam never looking at him, never speaking to him and never, ever, wanting anything to do with him again makes him want to scream until he’s got no air left in his lungs. That would be ridiculous.

…

Things happen, and at this point, Bucky just comes to accept it.

It’s almost become a bitter-tasting routine. Something bad happens, his plan backfires, something worse happens, it goes too fast for him to comprehend, so he’s been attempting for the last months to only focus on the moment.

The moment and the memories creeping in the shadows. They’re the hardest to keep at bay.

And at the moment, he’s seated on Sharon’s couch in her luxurious apartment in Madripoor, she’s telling them what to do, because their plan didn’t exactly work, Zemo’s wandering around like the cockroach he’d let out, and Sam’s taken his fucking shirt off.

So Bucky keeps his look square on his drink.

If he keeps his posture, trains his attention on Sharon’s voice, maybe he’ll avoid feeling so flustered.

He’s become pretty accustomed to faking it, admittedly. Not exactly a good thing to lie to his therapist, he’s well aware, but that’s a problem for when this is over. Dr. Raynor, she just… she couldn’t understand him.

That’s not her fucking job, he reminds himself. Her job is to help him move on with his life. Put the past behind him, get a fresh start. Talk about his feelings. “You have to talk about it,” she’d told him. “You can’t ignore your trauma. It’s dangerous.”

She’s right, but like he told her, he’s fine. Totally fine.

And that’s not what he’s struggling with right now, anyway. He hadn’t let Raynor in on anything about Sam apart from ignoring his messages, because these feelings of his are surely one-sided, and besides, Bucky doesn’t think he deserves it.

Being in love, he thinks it’s called. Or maybe he’s just not ready for it.

“Try to blend in.” Sharon’s voice calls in the distance. Her smile is incredibly smug for some reason.

It doesn’t faze him that Sam’s trying to get his attention, and that she leaves the room, until the other man’s sitting next to him (now fully dressed, both to his luck and disappointment), making it, like, 200 times harder to ignore him. And he’s examining him with those all-knowing eyes of his.

Sam can read people pretty easily. Or maybe it’s just Bucky. Or maybe he’s just too obvious, that anyone could read him like an open book.

“Bucky.” is what he says, and Bucky simply nods tightlipped, but apparently that doesn’t serve as sufficient acknowledgement for Sam, because he places a hand on his shoulder.

He feels sort of pathetic for not knowing how to breathe now. Such a simple touch. A friendly touch. A gesture. Yet he can’t think of anything else.

Out of the corner of his eye, Zemo’s watching them and opens his mouth, but the man next to him beats him to it with, “Didn’t you hear her? Go.”

The hard tone always sounds wrong in Sam’s whole being.

And the man looking at them accepts the defeat, surprisingly enough, seeping out of the room faster than Bucky could blink.

So, they’re alone. Cool. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, besides keep drinking. Keep drinking, don’t say anything stupid, don’t hurt him more than you already have.

When he finally chances a look at Sam, he seems… troubled.

He’s not sure if it’s his imagination playing tricks on him, or if he’s stupidly hopeful, but somehow, it feels like the other man’s got something on his mind. What that is, who knows.

The hand on his shoulder hasn’t left.

“Hey,” he starts, barely a sound, more a whisper, perhaps in fear that Bucky would startle and hide away, “I won’t force you to talk about it- or, well, anything.”

Did Sam just stutter? That was definitely his imagination. He’s just… he’s so… warm. Comforting. Beautiful. Bucky’s hand is getting clammy around the glass.

And when he looks at the man again, his big eyes are utterly sincere, so much so that Bucky would rip his heart out and hand it to him if he wished.

He’s not sure how well he’s doing with controlling his face, careful, not to offer any tells.

How would Sam react if he kissed him, right now? If he made a big, dumb love confession? He doesn’t even know how to describe his feelings to him, so it’d probably be clumsy. Messy. And his worst fear of all, that the man next to him would push him off in confusion, or embarrassment, or disgust.

Bucky can’t risk it.

Sam sighs, “I’m just worried about you.”

That makes him frown, and his co-worker looks back in bewilderment. He should stop doing that. Stop looking at him like he means something to him.

It’s the look that pushes the question out before he can think, “Why?”

Sam just seems tired. Not tired of your shit, but rather tired of you talking yourself down, kind of. That’s what he gets from his face, anyway.

“Come on, Buck.”

“I mean, aren’t we supposed to never see each other again?” he then asks, but it comes out more blunt, and sharper than he intended.

Sam retracts his hand. His shoulder aches to follow it.

“Mmhh.” is all the other man’s voice comes with. He folds his hands in his lap, stares at it for a while like it’s the most interesting thing on the planet. Why, oh God, why does he look like he just got his heart broken? “Yeah, I did say that.”

He’s only seen that expression on Sam a handful of times. Once, when Steve gave him the shield. Two, when his friend- Torres, that was his name, mentioned something about Afghanistan and Sam promptly jumped out of the open shaft without a warning. Three, when he’d pushed him off of him in the field. What does it mean now?

Bucky’s brain plays all his words over and over, but doesn’t know how to process them, or analyze them, or come to a natural conclusion. So he downs the last drop of whiskey, “Jeg har brug for dig.”

Geez, that was blunt. He guesses it's thanks to the stars he chose the right language to blurt that out, and Bucky proceeds to release the tight grip on his glass, about to get up and follow Sharon’s order, but Sam’s looking at him again, and as he established forever ago, that makes him weak in the knees. His entire body, actually, now that he thinks about it.

“Is that- that the same language?” Sam asks. Bucky’s awkwardly frozen mid-sitting, mid-standing, listening. “You know, you were talking to yourself. Outside the station.”

He’s right. He always is. So Bucky nods.

“It’s a saying.” and that only makes it the other man’s turn to frown, understandable. Not the most creative excuse, but now he’s gotta run with it, “Like ‘Don’t give up’, or whatever.”

He recognizes every look in Sam’s eyes, jotting them down in his memory in fear of forgetting the only person that makes him feel human. His co-worker is tying him to reality. Yep, another revelation, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

This is the I don’t believe you for a second look. “That’s what you said? ‘Don’t give up’?”

Bucky snorts, “Nope.”

And so they both stand up, and from the other man already steps ahead of him, it’s clear he’s ruined another conversation. Like Sam gave up on understanding him altogether, and it makes him feel sick, because he isn’t exactly making it easy for him.

Look at me, Bucky hopes. Just look at me again. Please.

And Sam does. “And here I thought we were beginning to get along.”

…

Sam’s sigh is all too heavy for Bucky not to notice.

He thought he’d distract himself from Zemo’s annoying presence and annoying private plane by polishing his hand, but suddenly, the man in the other row looks painfully hopeless.

Sam can’t be that. It’s all wrong. He’s supposed to be made of sunshine and full of hope. He makes Bucky have some sort of hope.

“You okay?” he finds himself asking. He’d even put a hand on his shoulder the same way the other man did back in Madripoor, but it feels a little too personal when he remembers the third person in the room.

By the way Sam jumps just half an inch in his seat, so subtle you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking closely, Bucky can only guess he’s surprised he’s the one initiating conversation, for once.

“Yeah,” he answers, but it doesn’t sound all that true. “Just thinking about all the shit Sharon had to go through.”

That’s the thing about Sam, because he cares, cares like he’s pouring out his heart on everyone and saves nothing for himself. He cared about Bucky after knowing him for a day. He had a hard time believing it, but it’s true. And it’s what he likes- loves… loves about the other man the most.

Sam continues, “And Nagel referring to the American test subject like… like Isaiah wasn’t even a real person.”

Bucky feels stupid for nodding along. He should be saying something, or he feels like he should be making up for weirding him out back in Sharon’s flat, or apologise for yelling at him in the shootout, or anything. Apologise for breaking out the douche who’s plane they’re currently in, most of all.

See, talking seems easy, but it’s not when the words are overthinked as deeply as he does himself. Maybe that’s why him and Sam are as they are. Or maybe it’s in spite of that.

When Sam talks, he means every word. His voice is hushed, and he’s leaning into Bucky’s space now (which may or may not make him panic) to make sure Zemo stays out of their business. Not that they both don’t know he’s not going to do that, obviously. Again- his fault.

“Maybe I should’ve destroyed it.” takes him by surprise, though.

In his mind, in his inner voice of logic that he never listens to, he instantly understands why Sam says it, and agrees. There’s a lot of people in this world Bucky’s wronged. There’s a lot of people he hasn’t, but he still longs to help, or somehow feels guilty for. He still wants to change things. Isaiah is on the top of the list.

Which list is Sam on top of?

He’d not thought about his feelings like that before, but it hits him like it hit him back in Madripoor. He’s the only one I have left is replaced with He’s the only one that makes me feel like this so easily. Lightheaded and aching for his company, his attention, whatever else Sam will spare him.

Instead of agreeing with him like his brain is telling him, though, his pride kicks in and circles back on The shield is yours, Sam. You fucking perfect asshole.

And Bucky’s not gonna take the shield, it’s bullshit. The other man knows it’s bullshit, and the look they share is a silent agreement that it’s bullshit.

Mysteriously, the cockroach owning the plane disappears to the bathroom, or whatever.

Maybe he’ll put his hand on Sam’s shoulder now. That would be meaningful. Would prove to the man that he cares, and he knows that Bucky cares about Isaiah, and the shield, and the mission, but he doesn’t fucking know that he cares about him.

But once again, his stomach drops and he keeps his hand to himself. Stupid.

It’s when the other man leaves his space and opts for leaning against the window that he has time to wonder about Sam fully, and why he hesitated back there. They shouldn’t see each other again, but he hesitated.

Does he regret saying it? No, that’s crazy.

It’s for the best, Bucky figures. He supposes he shouldn’t mourn the loss before it’s even happened, but it already seems like he’s reaching out in the darkness for Sam, who’s better than he’ll ever be, who deserves better than to drag him around like this, and it’s like he’s already gone.

Fuck, he really should talk with Dr. Raynor about that.

And the man he can’t stop looking at would probably have that concerned look on his face if he heard Bucky putting himself down like this again, out loud.

Sam wanted to talk to you that nagging voice tells him, for the millionth time. Why didn’t you let him?

He can’t figure out what he would’ve said if he could go back and change it. Stay completely silent? That would annoy Sam. Take that love confession by the horns? Sam would let him down in the nicest, most gentle way ever, he’s sure.

That wouldn’t hurt that much, but his chest always gets a little tighter when he lies like that. It would hurt endlessly more.

Bucky does come back to reality, eventually, when a door clicks shut and Zemo’s talking to his friend (servant? pilot? who gives a shit), and his co-worker's breathing has evened out.

It’s probably more than a little creepy to watch him sleeping. Hm. But peace rests over him and it, somehow, stretches its wings towards himself as well, regardless of Sam’s position with his neck and half laying on his arm that doesn’t look comfortable in any shape or form.

“Jeg ville følge dig til verdens ende,” Bucky says. It’s barely a whisper to himself, to shut up his head crying out loud of possibilities, because what if Sam wanted him to stay? What if in some miraculous alternative universe, he felt the same way? It’s a daydream, is what it is, “hvis du bare ville give mig lov.”

…

He clenches his fist, unclenches, clenches.

Sam seems worried. Bucky can’t see him, since he’s turned his back towards him and faces the window while gaining the feeling back in that vibranium arm of his, but it radiates off of him.

Maybe he does need the space his co-worker’s giving him. Or maybe he just needs a drink and a hug and a chance to sleep. Who knows?

He hasn’t hugged anyone since reuniting with Steve. Well, unless you count Sam saving him as a hug, which he doesn’t.

It’s when he turns around again that the other man is, first of all, a lot closer than he expected him to be, secondly, giving him a small, tense smile. But it doesn’t look uncomfortable, in fact, the effect is exactly the opposite, and Bucky can’t help but return it, gratefully.

He doesn’t think too much about this smile not being forced, like the ones he’s gotten used to doing in public. Sam doesn’t need to know that.

Bucky also is, for once, two steps ahead of his co-worker, answering the question he doesn’t have time to ask, “I’m fine.”

Not easily fooled, he knows the man watching him from the couch looks wary, but Sam’s probably too shocked by the fight and Zemo’s escape to argue. He himself knows he is, which doesn’t help his guilt. But what point is there in guilt anymore? It’s not like he can un-let him out of prison.

He sits down with reasonable space between them. Significantly further away from each other than back in Sharon’s flat, not close enough to touch.

Truth be told, Bucky’s still processing it. Zemo’s escape, he accepted that easily, and it’s probably the least surprising thing he’s experienced in a while. When Ayo removed his prosthetic, that was something else.

And his friend left without another word. What could she have said that made the case anymore clear, really?

They don’t trust him, and despite the overshadowing thought of No one trusts me, Nothing’s changed, Not even myself, it’s hard to blame Shuri, or T’Challa. They saved his mind, saved his life, and he’ll be in debt to them until his grave.

Bucky understands them, he does. He does. He wouldn’t trust himself.

But a little sliver of his stomach still wrings itself inside out of… betrayal? He doesn’t know if that’s the right word, but it’s sufficient for now. Of not being told. Of not knowing everything there was to know about this thing that was a part of his body now. Still feels partially alien, a separate entity altogether.

But there’s no anger to be found. Instead, he lets his attention fall upon Sam. As always, “Are you okay, though?”

The shorter man furrows his brows. Smile’s still intact. “Depends on your definition of okay.”

Of course, he makes another bloody joke, at a time like this. Bucky snorts, and his co-worker looks all too pleased to have it succeed.

Sam glances back, seems like he’s seriously considering the thought of a drink that Bucky’s too exhausted to fulfill, but apparently decides against it, “I didn’t know you were so sentimental, Buck.”

“Can you shut your face?”

Why does it feel exceptionally good to laugh when Sam laughs? Doesn’t surprise him, the feeling he supposes are metaphorical butterflies in his gut doesn’t, either.

The other man’s keeping his eyes in his lap again, picking at the skin around his fingernails and, for the first time ever in the time he’s known him, looks nervous. It’s strange, but so endearing, and he’s so, so pretty.

Funny, that word endearing, Sam’s strong arms could wrap around him as easily as they could take several people out if he wished, which- okay, don’t think about that right now. The imaginary sensation of the other man’s skin against his and Bucky’s face buried in the crook of his neck, that is.

He feels lighter. Sam always knows what’s needed after a shared experience like this. Does he know him too well?

What Bucky does know is that the other man stands up, and instead of heading towards the door, he passes him on the way to pick up their jackets. A hand on his shoulder again. Gracing it more than a steady grip, but still.

He doesn’t stay for long, but his fingers glide down his arm a bit. The touch is the softest thing possible, ghosting over him like Sam doesn’t want him to notice.

But he does. A shiver runs down his spine.

It’s so faint that it disappears as unexpectedly as it comes, and his co-worker’s already at the other side of the room when he finally gains the courage to raise his chin.

Sam’s attention is taken by his cellphone, so Bucky decides to speak, “I don’t blame you, ya know.”

A beat before he notices, snaps the phone shut, tightens the hold on his jacket just a smidge, “For what?”

“The shield.”

“I thought you did.” he replies, because yeah, that’s what he said literally minutes ago. He doesn’t look offended, though. Good.

When Bucky can’t find the sufficient words, he nods. Licks his lips. Then tries something, “I’m an asshole, I know.” and grimaces at himself, “I’m too stubborn. I’ve been listening- I listened to you. I put all this shit on you… I’m trying to apologise.”

The other man smiles again, not tense anymore. Not gripping the jacket like it’s lifeline anymore, either. He slips it on instead.

He just wants Sam to know, so badly, that he cares. This is a start. “Sorry. I can’t believe my apologies suck, too.”

The silence is calm, it’s maybe ten, fifteen seconds tops. Just enough time for his insides to freak out before the shorter man hands him his own jacket, and then offers him a hand to pull him up. Act cool. Act fucking cool, Bucky.

He also wishes he could cling to Sam forever, but that would be the direct opposite of cool.

“It doesn’t,” he tells him, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, pats his arm a couple of times to get the message across, he guesses, “Thank you. And thank you for having my back. You know, I think this communication thing could work, if we really tried.”

Stop being so ridiculous. Stop being so fucking dreamy. Seriously.

Bucky doesn’t roll his eyes, and if he looks lovestruck right now (he’s fairly sure he does), he’ll just have to feign ignorance later if the other man notices. This feels… yeah, you guessed it, good. Tingling in his chest a little. A lot.

He doesn’t even care that the man in front of him reaches for his phone when it rings, controlling his neutral tone of voice when he says, “Tak fordi du stolede på mig.”

Bucky’s fairly certain the words go unnoticed when he puts on his jacket, but of course, Sam covers the microphone and reaches him with a promise, “One day I’ll figure out what it is you’re whispering to yourself about.”

…

On the water, the 2am darkness enveloping him and reminding him just how alone he is, Bucky has time to think.

Mere days ago, the government’s very own Captain America murdered one of the members of the Flag Smashers, and in an eerie and familiar haze, all he and Sam could do was watch. So did Karli. So did numerous regular citizens with mobile phones.

And before Bucky could break and chase Walker down (because let’s face it, a government putting him in the suit? Bucky doesn’t trust those superiors for a second), his co-worker’s got a hold on his wrist and tells him he needs to go check on his sister.

When he follows along, Sam doesn’t complain.

Maybe, possibly, the other man even invited him. It’s not like he’s got anywhere else to be, and it seemed like, for once, Sam didn’t know what to do. A timeout is necessary, he said.

That’s an understatement.

Bucky just hopes that Karli and the rest of the Flag Smashers did the same and got the hell out of there. The shorter man’s got her number, so he suspects he told her so himself.

And Zemo? How the fuck is he supposed to know? The world’s gone to absolute shit, and they’re stuck in the middle in some kind of limbo.

Add Bucky’s unresolved feelings for his co-work- friend? Friend.

Surprisingly enough, Sam’s sister didn’t seem particularly surprised that her brother brought someone along.

Sarah’s a heaven sent. She smiled brightly and hugged him with one arm like they’ve known each other for years, juggling things out of crates on the harbour like it’s nothing. Witty, albeit a tad more serious than Sam, and she doesn’t take his shit for a second.

Her sons were more overwhelming, but Bucky’s not used to being around children, mind you.

They ran to him in excitement, speaking over each other, and he took a step back, because those creeping memories of the soldier and the fear of hurting someone again is rooted too deep to disappear.

Sam patted his back, though. It’s fine. You’re fine.

The boys also couldn’t take their eyes off his left arm and convinced him to lift them both when they bet he couldn’t. They surely know how to drive a bargain.

It’s funny, how much they liked that thing. Makes him think he could get used to the extension himself, eventually.

Sam’s family is so… normal. They’re warm and excited and hard-working and hilarious. He likes the way the other man looks around here, even more bright than usual, domestic and bantering with his sister for a living. They remind him of his own family. He won’t think about that.

But it’s the third night he spends in their home, after another one of the best dinners he’s ever had in his long life, amusing the boys with superhero stories until they’re exhausted and sent to bed, that Bucky wakes up in a cold sweat on the couch.

There you are, nightmares. It’s been a while.

It’s not surprising, of course, but he’s been avoiding sleep until the point of passing out, lately.

And Bucky didn’t know where to go. He didn’t want to rummage around in the kitchen he’s been too kindly invited to for alcohol, which they most likely didn’t have lying around anyways, as well as risk waking any of the family sleeping blissfully unaware.

But he also couldn’t stay, he was itching to move.

So, here he is. He found his way back to the harbour, and Sam’s family boat, not even dressed in more than his t-shirt, banged up jeans and boots, but the cold is a welcome distraction.

Would be good if he had a bottle of whiskey too, but whatever.

It’s times like this he’d rage inward on himself. Curse his head, curse his feelings. Curse his fucking decisions and stubbornness. Curse Walker and Zemo and Hydra. Curse the shield and curse Steve.

Yeah, it’s too much. He really should let Dr. Raynor in on this, if he gets a chance to go back to his regular sessions, that is.

The staggering quiet almost invites him to yell some of that rage out loud. Until, “Thought you might be here.”

Bucky would’ve sprung up and grabbed whatever could be used as a weapon nearest, if he didn’t immediately notice the tenderness in Sam’s voice, noticeably hoarse. He doesn’t know what to answer, but the other man sits down across from him, looking exceptionally soft.

You’re a goner, Bucky Barnes.

The silence between them is nowhere near awkward, but he feels like breaking it regardless. “Sorry I woke you.”

Sam huffs, and he imagines he’s rolling his eyes, “You didn’t.”

Hm. He scratches his neck and his chin. The cold is suddenly becoming a problem, so he wraps his arms loosely around himself. The other man’s doing the same, despite wearing a sweater.

“Nightmare?” he asks, eventually. Bucky nods.

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.”

Is this the end of the conversation? God, he has no idea how to continue, anyways.

He’d ask about it. Ask Sam what he’s seeing behind his eyelids at night, and if it invokes the exact same kind of pain he feels himself. Ask him about the Air Force and how his world changed and came crashing down. Ask him about Riley, who he only knows by name and a single photo.

Bucky can’t get the words over his tongue. Instead, he just wonders why he’s here in the first place, why Sam’s still sticking around with him and why he was allowed into his life.

Well, he followed him first. But he doesn’t feel like he deserves the peace he’s been given the last few days, or Sam’s nephews looking at him with wide eyes and zero judgement. Sam looking at him with zero judgement. Fuck.

He clears his throat, “Do you wanna talk about it?”

He’s adjusted his eyes to the darkness now, and there goes the shorter man looking at him, not intensely but just… looking, the way that makes Bucky’s stomach jump in loops and urge him to stand up and kiss him already.

Sam shakes his head, smile timid but sure, “Another time. I’ll let you know.”

Oh boy, does he know that feeling. They’ll talk about it, eventually. He’s not ready himself, but one day he will be. He hopes so. “Me too.”

The boat’s swaying subtly, a sliver of moonlight is touching Sam’s hand on the railing and Bucky thinks he might fall into an non-existent black hole.

On the contrary, the other man is slightly shivering from the ocean wind. He shouldn’t think about what it’s like to hold him. They’re friends now. Friends. Friends.

Still doesn’t stop him from sealing the deal to himself, “Jeg elsker dig.”

Like he hasn’t known all this time. Since that day they reunited, since before. Bucky’s painfully in love with someone he’ll never have the courage to tell, openly and upfront, anyways. Maybe he’ll get over it.

It does take him a few minutes before he notices Sam’s soft smile, worn like his heart on his sleeve, second nature and drawing everyone in with ease, turning into a shirt-eating grin.

Weird. Whatever. Wait-

“Really?” he asks him.

Oh my God. Oh no. Oh fuck.

Bucky’s eyes must widen to the size of fucking teacups. He’s never been this eager to get up and move out of a situation before till now, “Sorry?”

Sam notices his unease before he even finds it himself, “Bucky.”

“Oh my God.”

“Bucky-”

“I have to go.”

Doesn’t get very far. Five inches maybe, before the shorter man stops him in motion. Bucky could easily shake his hand off, but he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t. Sam gets under his skin every time.

His thumb caresses his wrist, “I want you to stay. Can you stay?”

Fucking fuck. Bucky gulps the embarrassment down and relaxes his stiff shoulders. Or tries to, at least. His ears are ringing.

“Will you look at me?” Sam then asks, and how could he refuse anything from that man?

Takes some courage, of course, but he has to. Take the rejection already. Come on. But when he turns around his friend doesn’t seem disgusted, or disappointed, like he fully expected him to.

“Stop looking at me like that.” he finds himself saying, before he can shut his stupid mouth up. And Sam looks absolutely desperate, “Like what?”

“Like I mean something to you.”

Kiss me. I wish you would kiss me. Sam’s perfectly formed lips are still in a smile, not small, not a grin. But just right. And then a hand is touching Bucky’s cheek.

“That’s the thing, you idiot.” the shorter man tells him, “I can’t exactly stop it. But if you want me to-”

“Have you known all along?” he interrupts with. Feels like laughing at himself. God, that would be beyond ridiculous, wouldn’t it? Saying everything on his mind, not knowing his friend heard every word of it. Secret’s out.

There’s another hand finding its way to his face, “I didn’t. Google helped me- uh, after Madripoor. Took me a few tries with the spelling before it gave me a clue. And, well…”

“My pronunciation is pretty sloppy.” Bucky’s circling around what’s happening. Why is he doing this? Because it’s too good to be true, probably. Please don’t be a dream.

Embarrassing, then… then the warmth against his cheeks. Then the impossibly soft and meaningful eyes not escaping Bucky’s for anything. Then his heart beating too fast, like it’s going to crawl up his throat and escape his vessel.

Sam shakes his head with a laugh. Heartily, caring, “Do you mean what you said? You love me?” to which Bucky laughs himself.

“Yeah,” he feels weak in the vocal chords, but gets it out, because he has to, “‘Course I fucking do. Is that okay?”

“It’s more than okay.”

And there, on Sam’s family boat in the middle of the night, wind rushing behind his ears and his breathing too loud like everything isn’t quite real, Bucky smiles like his life depends on it. Because the man in front of him deserves to know. He needs him to know. And fuck the world. “Will you kiss me now?”

Sam’s smile is so fucking pretty, it’s the best thing he’s ever seen. He looks at him like he’s special, and he feels it. Feels everything deeper and deeper, “I thought you’d never ask.”

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jazy3 · 4 years

Text

Grey’s Anatomy Season 17 Predictions - Part 2

I think they might choose to kill or write off Jackson in the upcoming season as the character hasn't had as much to do since April left and his relationships with Maggie and Vic were complete disasters that went nowhere. The majority of fans were not a fan of Maggie and Jackson, myself included, and most people could not care less about Jackson and Vic especially after the devastating loss of Lucas Ripley in Season 2 of Station 19.

Winston was just upped to a main character which means that Maggie will be moving on with him and that they’ve planned that out. They wouldn't have upped him to a main character after one episode if they were planning or putting her back together with Jackson. Jackson has also been spending more time on Station 19 lately between dating Vic and helping Ben out with the PRT mobile surgery truck so it’s possible they could be leaning towards moving him over or writing him off altogether.

It’s also worth noting that Jesse Williams, who plays Jackson, was away for multiple episodes in season 15 and 16 because he was working on other projects and was supposed to be on Broadway at the end of Season 16 before everything was shut down due the pandemic so it’s entirely possible that the actor may have asked to be written off so that he could pursue other projects full time. That being said, all of those other projects are likely now on hold due to COVID-19 so the actor might choose to remain on Grey’s a while longer as a result. I like Jackson as a character so I would be a bit sad if he left. Which brings us to our final and most likely choice: DeLuca. And not just because I don’t like the character. I think he’s the most likely candidate because at this point the character has just run his course. The writers have rewritten and reinvented his character multiple times and it’s just not working. They’ve done their best, but DeLuca was never intended to be anything more than a side character and suddenly forcing him into the spotlight didn’t change that.

The rewrites and added backstory over the last two seasons were supposed to give the character more depth, but instead they fell flat and as Krista Vernoff herself as outright stated in interviews a large part of that was because the actor played the character very differently than was intended and so the writing came across differently than they had envisioned. At a certain point you have to cut your losses and I think his time may have finally come.

I saw someone on Twitter point out that with Carina moving over to Station 19 full time DeLuca no longer has any meaningful personal connections to any of the other characters on Grey's and I realized that they’re right. Both of his ex-girlfriends, Maggie and Meredith, are moving on with other people and his ex-girlfriend Sam moved to Switzerland to avoid deportation at the end of Season 14. He was friends and roommates with Arizona until she started dating his sister at which point he moved out and while they remained friends afterwards Arizona also exited the show in Season 14 when she relocated to New York.

He ruined his friendship with Link in order to get with Meredith and prior to that he destroyed his friendship with Jo when she went back to Alex and then again when he tried to assault her at Joe’s Bar last season. He was previously close to Amelia when she got diagnosed with her brain tumour and she mentored him in neurosurgery. But he dropped neurosurgery as a speciality after Sam left and they’ve had very little screen time since.

He was friendly with Richard for a while, but that ended when Richard realized he was dating Maggie. They became friendly again after the two of them broke up, but then all of that ended when he started pursuing and then dating Meredith. And that’s it. He's not really close with any of the other characters and the other residents can’t stand him. Bailey and Catherine flat out hate him and half of the Season 16 finale consisted of the other characters talking about how much they hate him both to his face and behind his back.

Andrew and Carina haven’t had much screen time lately and with her moving to Station 19 full time they’ll have even less. I think it’s also worth noting that they’re not that close. There’s also no reason for them to up Hayes to a main character if they’re not planning on having him and Meredith date and end up together as I'm not sure what his storyline would be otherwise as I feel like they've told all the pediatric stories they can with Alex, Arizona, and Addison already.

It’s also worth noting that Hayes was created and introduced as a character while Alex was still on the show. Alex’s departure was a surprise to both the writers and the fans which means Hayes wasn’t created to be a replacement. Having the character be on the show full time only makes sense if the plan is for him to date Meredith. Because otherwise they’re spending a whole bunch of money and time to give us something we already had and that just doesn't make sense. I can also see how writing off DeLuca would have worked at the end of Season 16. In what was supposed to be episode 21 of 25 we saw DeLuca having what looked like a breakdown during which he finally seemed to realize that something was wrong and accept Meredith’s help. My guess is that had they been able to film the rest of Season 16 as planned we would have seen him enter treatment and get better, perhaps with some kind of time jump involved, and return to the hospital only to be killed off in the explosion stemming from the crossover on Station 19. That way the character would have been redeemed and then killed off in a dramatic and shocking fashion. While the explosion storyline won’t be happening as originally planned, they can still carry out this storyline within the first few episodes of Season 17 with a different catastrophe. Or they could choose to write him off by having him undergo treatment and then leave to do a fellowship with Dr. Riley, the diagnostics expert from last season, in California. Or they could have him enter treatment and that’s the last we see of him. With Carina moving to Station 19 that wouldn’t surprise me. I'm also really interested to see how the show handles the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s possible, and I’ve seen people on Twitter speculating about this, that the character death that was supposed to be the result of an explosion might be changed to be a COVID-19 related death to incorporate the pandemic and call attention to how it can take out anyone which if done right could be really interesting. Krista Vernoff said during a podcast recently with the Hollywood Reporter that incorporating the pandemic won’t be all death and despair and that, “There’s joy and fun to be had in people who are quarantining away from the hospital especially for the doctors who, to protect loved ones, crash elsewhere between shifts. As we have seen in real life many of these doctors aren’t going home to their families. They’re getting Airbnbs and living together.”

Which seems to indicate that we’ll see the fictional doctors of Grey Sloan Memorial doing the same. My prediction is that either Meredith’s house will magically expand once again and the entire cast will crash there or we’ll see them all rent a house or an Airbnb together. Which honestly sounds hilarious! Can you imagine Tom and Owen having to share a bathroom?

Krista also said that there are a lot of possible stories to tell due to the fact that so many elective surgeries are being cancelled or postponed right now which means the doctors on Grey’s are going to have to find something else to do with their time. Watching them try to deal with that boredom in contrast to the death barrage of COVID cases should be interesting. So there you have it. Those are my predictions for the new season so far! I can’t wait to see what happens.

Until next time!

Part 1: https://bit.ly/3jtSZVi

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psycho-slytherin · 4 years

Text

Strangers ch. 41

Two weeks after finding the photo, you’re not doing well. Yoongi’s determined to change that.

Pairing: Idol!Yoongi x Actress!Reader

Word count: 2.3k

Genre: fluff, angst, idk anymore?

|mlist|

<–– Prev Next ––>

“Y/n, you do have to go to class.”

You gulp. You’ve been dreading this call- and Yoongi is staring at you. “I know, Mom.”

Your mom sighs over the phone. “Are you planning on dropping out? You’re still registered for classes.”

You wrap the blanket tighter around yourself, refusing to look at the other person in the room. Yoongi’s sitting quietly, waiting for you to finish your call. “I-I’m not dropping out!”

“When I agreed to let you go to Seoul Arts, it was with the promise that you’d keep up your grades and partially support yourself with a job.” Your mother’s tone is sharp. “And, Y/n. Not or.”

You bite your lip, your hand trembling to the point where you almost lose your grip on the phone. “I’m acting- I’m making money.”

“For now. How far can you go without a degree?”

You inhale sharply. You can feel that familiar tightness spread throughout your chest. “Yes, Mom.”

“Oh, here you go again. Don’t ‘yes, mom’ me. I can’t fix your life for you, Y/n. You’re lucky I’m friends with the dean’s friend’s boyfriend’s sister. How else would I have found out you haven’t been to class in almost two weeks? It’s not like you would talk to me about these things.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“I’m serious, Y/n. I even tried calling Lisa to ask what was up with you, since you never answer my calls.”

Lisa. Your throat feels tight, and suddenly you can’t breathe. Luckily, your mother doesn’t notice your silence:

“I mean, she didn’t answer, but still! What about your exams, Y/n? You’re going to have to repeat the year! You might as well just come home.”

Your eye twitches at her words. “No.” You’re not going to go home– not now, not ever, and especially not while Lisa’s still missing.

You hear her click her tongue over the phone. It’s a sound more familiar to you than your own name. “Can you at least tell me why you haven’t been going to classes?”

You look up and meet Yoongi’s eyes. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m sure it is,” your mom says huffily, and you fight the sudden urge to hang up. “Well, that won’t do. I’m cutting you off.”

You blink hard, your throat dry. “What?” Surely it’s an empty threat– even with Moon Over the Sea, you can’t afford rent and the Seoul Arts tuition on your own. Your mother has to know that. “Mom, you can’t–” Yoongi must hear the anxiety in your voice because he catches your eye, asking a silent question.

“I can and I will, Y/n. Because this is what you wanted, right? You’ve done nothing but push me away.”

You can feel that yes, Mom on the tip of your tongue. And yet… “Because you were suffocating me!” You explode. “God, you’re even cutting me off just to control me, ‘cause you want me to crawl back home and admit I need you. You know what, Mom? You have the worst timing. Cut me off– maybe I will drop out, but I’m not coming home. I have bigger things to worry about.”

“Y/n L/n–” But you don’t hear the rest of her words, because you hang up with as much force as you can deliver to a touchscreen. Despite the blanket wrapped around your shoulders and your space heater on full blast, you feel the cold in your bones, and the muted panic that accompanies the familiar sensation.

“Y/n?” Yoongi says gently, sitting on the edge of your bed.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” you whisper, curling up on your pillows.

“I wasn’t going to ask. I was just hoping you’d eat something.” He motions at the takeout he brought over hours ago, and which you’ve left untouched. You’ve barely moved at all, and if you weren’t such good friends with Yoongi you’d feel embarrassed for him to see you in this state.

Despite the fact that you’ve eaten nothing today, your stomach churns at the thought of putting the food in your mouth. “I’m not hungry.”

Yoongi sighs, pursing his lips. “Okay. Want to go outside?”

“It’s late.”

“That’s never stopped us.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“You haven’t been in the mood for more than a week.”

“I-” your head drops to rest on your knees. “She’s still missing.”

“I know, Y/n.” Yoongi reaches out gently, as though you’re a frightened deer, and begins rubbing calming circles on your back. “But living like this… you’re not helping anyone.”

You feel tears filling your eyes. “I’m not helping anyways. She’s missing, and I’m useless.”

“Thanks for bringing this in, Miss L/n,” Detective Kang said, sliding Lisa’s laptop into a labelled evidence bag. You felt a rush of guilt. Did it count as obstruction of justice when you were only trying to find out what happened? Yoongi had copied the photo to his phone- was that breaking the law? “So, has Lisa tried to contact you again?”

You shook your head. “Radio silence. I’ve tried calling and texting dozens of times– nothing’s getting through.”

“Okay. Please let me know if you hear anything from her. Adults aren’t considered as high-priority as missing minors, but…” Detective Kang stared intensely into the distance. “We’ll find your friend.” He turned away with the laptop under his arm, and at that moment you spoke up.

“There’s something else.” What was the redheaded girl who pushed you into the river doing on Lisa’s laptop? If she knew Lisa was connected to you… it meant that your best friend could be in real trouble.

Detective Kang was eyeing you curiously. “Go ahead.”

But if it turned out to be nothing… you would be in trouble for messing with her computer. And– shit– so would Yoongi. “Nothing. Slip of the tongue.”

“Alright. Ms. L/n, I’m sure Lisa is safe. The most important thing is that you leave this to the professionals.”

And now, two weeks after turning the laptop in, there’s been no word from Lisa or Detective Kang. After unlocking Lisa’s computer during that movie night, you began seeing the redheaded stranger around every corner, and leaving your apartment has become more and more difficult; what if she finds you and tries to finish what she started? All you know is that Lisa and the redhead are connected, which puts both you and your best friend in danger. After all, the first time the stranger attacked you was before you and Yoongi’s fake relationship. Who knows what she’d do now?

You’ve stopped attending classes altogether– leading to the argument with your mother– and you know you should return, but you can’t bear to go back to the place where you and Lisa spent so much time together. You haven’t even begun looking for a new manager.

“Want to watch a movie?” Yoongi says eventually, clearly noticing you’ve gotten lost in your thoughts again.

“I’m good.” You rub your eyes, suddenly exhausted. “You should go home, Yoongs.” If your mother really has cut you off, you’ve got a lot to think about– and some choices to make. For some reason, Yoongi remains motionless.

“Do you remember the last time you didn’t take care of yourself, Y/n? You ended up in the hospital.”

His words send you tumbling back to the night, that night when you fainted after kissing him. The boys had visited you, and then Lisa stopped by, and then you were discharged, and…

“We wanted to deliver a message,” the redhead had said. “A message from the rest of us: you’re not welcome.”

And the push, the water, the cold, the blood, the cold, and Yoongi…

“Y/n!” You’re jerked back to the present when you feel a callused hand rest on your own. “Hey, take a breath. You’re safe.”

Are you?

Yoongi continues. “I just meant I was worried about you, dork. You’re not eating. I don’t want you to pass out again.”

You look at Yoongi, and you can’t help but long for the relaxed days before, well, everything. Before Lisa disappeared. Before you got messed up in the head. Before Twitter decided it wanted your blood. When you and Yoongi could be yourselves and enjoy your friendship without so many invisible barriers.

Although before… you admit to yourself, I was lying to him. Now you’ve told him the truth, and everything’s gone wrong.

“I wish…” You slump forward to rest your forehead on his shoulder. Even though you haven’t left your bed today, your limbs feel drained of energy. But Yoongi’s warm, and he smells like cinnamon. “I wish we could go back.”

“Oh, Y/n-ie.” Yoongi resumes rubbing your back, his hands and voice impossibly gentle. “I wish I could take your pain away.”

“No, I-” you swallow thickly. “You’ve done so much for me, Yoongs. If only I were stronger.”

“After everything you’ve been through, the fact that you’re still here makes you stronger than I’ll ever be.” He chuckles as though he’s touched on some inside joke.

“What’s so funny?”

“Just reminds me of some lyrics I’m writing. I think you’ll like-” Yoongi’s interrupted by his buzzing phone on your covers. He glances at the screen briefly, then does a double take, his eyes widening. “Ah- I gotta go.”

“O-Oh.” You watch as he stands quickly, nearly knocking your curled-up form over. “Is everything alright?”

“Yep.” Yoongi pauses. “Just a BTS meeting. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? Please eat something.”

You bite your lip. You know his work is important, and you can barely believe he’s even managed to spend this much time with you when he’s so busy being a part of the biggest band in the world. Still, to be alone again in such a silent world… You grit your teeth and force a smile in response to his hurried farewell. The door clicks shut behind him and before long, your only companions are the yet-unending stream of notifications. They’ve gotten better, but you’ve long since accepted your status as ARMY villain:

@k-news: according to #MOTS costar @cutie-jeongyeon, @yourname has missed three days of filming. Trouble in paradise for #YoongiAndYn?

@superarmylockXO: torn between wanting yoongi to be happy and wanting to protect him from @yourname hzksdfkskdf #YoongiAndYn

@jinswitchybitch: why is anyone still hating @yourname lmao even @captainkookie21 left her alone so let them date #IdolsArePeopleToo

@namtiddieswhore: I’ve stayed out of the #YoongiAndYn discourse so far but no one can tell me @yourname is not totally toxic for #SUGA! She’s using him for fame I want to vomit :,( still excited for #MOTS tho

You’re too tired to summon the anger that you used to respond to that hater on the last day you saw Lisa, the anger that nearly led you to hit Jeongyeon. You’re too tired to feel anything except cold. And when your eyes at last flutter closed, your dreams are filled with swishes of dyed red hair, rushing water, and Lisa’s whispers.

~~~

Yoongi has barely stepped out of Y/n’s apartment before he presses his phone to his ear. “Hey.”

The reedy voice of an old friend makes him smile. “Hey yourself, Gloss.”

“You know that’s not my name anymore, D.” Yoongi chuckles as he walks out of the front door of Y/n’s apartment complex, spotting the car already running on the darkened street. He slides into the car and the chauffeur nods at him, waiting for a direction.

“Yeah, as if I’m gonna call you Suga.”

“Yo, you said you got what I needed?” Yoongi asks D.

“Hell yeah. Man, it’s been ages since I got to do shit like this, thanks for the call.”

“Thank you, dude. I’ll send the money to your account tonight. What’s my location?”

D tells Yoongi the address he’s been waiting for, and the chauffeur pulls away from the curb. “Gloss, bro, why’d you want to know? Who’re you fucking around with?”

“Nothing important… but I’ll throw in an extra five hundred if you can track a phone number for me.”

“Sheesh, man, whatever you want. I remember when you didn’t even have fifty to throw around, let alone five hundred.”

Yoongi smiles. “I’m the same kid from Daegu, D.”

“I know that… how about the rest of the world?”

“Text me when you’ve got what I need. I’ll send you the number.”

It’s nearing midnight by the time Yoongi tells the driver to stop, about a block away from his goal. The address is close enough to the edge of Seoul that single-family homes have begun taking over apartment buildings. He pulls a mask over his nose and mouth, his glasses and hat completing the incognito look.

“Get ready to leave as soon as I come out,” he instructs the driver. “And if I’m not back in half an hour, call the bodyguards to come find me.”

The driver nods affirmative, and Yoongi takes a deep breath. He has to do this- for Y/n. The couple minutes he takes to walk from the car to the front door are all he needs to reassure himself of that. He knocks three times on the door, checking that the address is the same.

The door at last swings open, and a sleepy voice rings out. “The fuck…? It’s so late!”

Yoongi breathes a sigh of relief. The girl who answered the door matches the photo on his phone. Dyed-red hair, thin lips, double eyelids. So it must be…

“Hello.” Yoongi places a heavy hand on the door to keep the girl from closing it on him. “Nice hair. You must be Seoyeon… and I think it’s time we chat about a mutual friend.”

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cynicalrainbows · 4 years

Text

Reverse Psychology

Apparently I’m not done writing fics about the queens + ducks?

I’m having a bad day anxiety-wise (undeserving of sympathy because it was fully brought on my the hubris of me telling someone that I was actually coping with the lockdown fine) so I decided to write some drabbley-plotless-stuff.

(Does anyone else get those days where you’re sort of in a bad mood but you’re not sure why and you kind of just want to fully indulge it, or is it just me and now Kitty?)

(Just to be absolutely clear about how this universe works- in this universe, Duckie, aka @the10amongstthese3s , is the duck. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. It’s just how things are.)

Sitting at the kitchen table, Kitty let her head fall forward and groaned.

There was no response. This, admittedly, wasn’t exactly unexpected, due to Kitty being the only queen in the kitchen, but she still felt a little jab of annoyance.

Why was no one there to witness her general fed-upness?

Sitting up a bit, she tried groaning slightly louder, this time dropping her head into her folded arms for better effect.

She stayed still, counting. One-andtwo-andthree-andfour-

She’d never usually gotten past six before someone was asking her what was wrong- whether it was Jane, all warm concern and offers to make her a cup of tea- or Anne, who currently favoured tugging on her ponytail as a way of getting her cousin’s attention. The other queens were usually just….around, if not all, then at least a few.

Today though, the house was empty, save for Cathy, who had yet to emerge from the writing-nest she’d constructed the night before (having taken up Anne’s suggested solution to the final wife’s terrible quandary of being tired of writing from her bed AND her desk chair AND the sofa AND the table. The construction of the nest had stripped the communal living room of cushions and demolished the once-orderly airing cupboard but the collective relief of the queens at seeing Cathy engage in anything that took her away from her laptop was enough to keep anyone from raising a single word of protest.)

The others had disappeared on various errands of their own, leaving Kitty feeling an odd mixture of restless and wearied, not quite sad, not quite annoyed but altogether out of sorts and at a loss of what to do.

And no one was even doing her the courtesy of being around to witness her suffering.

Kitty wondered whether it was worth turning to twitter to vent her frustration with life in general at the world. (The fans were always pleasantly eager to join her in support of whatever mood she was in, although she did have to admit that there was always the risk of things going a bit too far. Jane had had to take her aside for a Serious Talk about social responsibility after the last time, although Kitty maintained it wasn’t really her fault. She’d only been mostly joking about being curious about what weed was like, and she’d DEFINITELY not expected to wake up the morning after to an inbox flooded with teenagers over-eager to help satiate said curiosity. As far as she was concerned, the policewoman who’d gotten in touch with Jane was just being a snitch.)

‘The ducks back-’

Kitty was interrupted in her hunt for her phone by the entrance of a sleepy-looking slightly dishevelled Cathy, Aragon’s big cardigan dwarfing her and an empty coffee mug in hand.

‘What?’

Cathy deposited her mug in the sink and turned the kettle on and pointed out of the kitchen window into the back garden.

‘The duck. The duck is back.’

‘What- Oh!’

Following Cathy’s pointing sweater-paw, Kitty’s eyes lighted on the mallard from the previous week investigating the seed packets Jane had left out with its beak.

‘What are you doing anyway? I heard groaning.’

‘I hate everything today-’ Kitty tried another dramatic flop and Cathy giggled.

‘Fair enough. Any particular reason I can help with?’

‘No. And it’s not funny. I am SO bored and there is NOTHING I want to do.’

‘Sorry Kit.’ Cathy straightened her face. ‘Is the kitchen off limits or can I still get coffee?’

Kitty considered for a moment. ‘Coffee’s fine. But it’s not moping. It’s existential despair.’

‘Oh snap!’ Cathy held up a hand for a high five and Kitty automatically returned it, before considering that high fives were utterly inappropriate for despair. ‘Do you want coffee?’

‘No.’

‘Hot chocolate?’

‘No.’

‘Wow you really are in crisis.’ Cathy tilted her head. ‘You know, they say watching wildlife is meant to help with that. And fresh air. You could go have existential despair in the garden, it might make you feel better.’

Kitty shook her head. ‘No. You sound like Anna. SHE tried to make me go on a run with her….’

‘Ok. Sorry. I shall get my coffee and leave you to your existential crisis in peace. As long as I’m still allowed in the kitchen. I feel like I’m going to want to get a crumpet in about half an hour….’

‘Thank you. And getting a crumpet is fine as long as you promise not to try to cheer me up.’

Cathy held up her right hand, littlest finger crooked. ‘Promise.’

Kitty hooked it with her own and they shook on it. ‘Thank you.’

‘No problem.’

Waiting for the kettle to boil, Cathy moved to lean against the sink and watch the progress of the duck, and Kitty found herself watching too.

‘No entourage-’

‘Oh they’ll be around’ Cathy shrugged ‘If they aren’t already. They’re never usually without some of their ducklings at least- Look, there’s one in the heely-’

A small cheeping brown and yellow ball of fluff poked its head out of one of Anne’s discarded mud-covered heelies (‘And you said I couldn’t skate in a rainstorm!’ ‘I never said you COULDN’T, Anne- I said you SHOULDN’T’ ‘....Oh.’)

‘Oh yeah…. What’s it doing?’

‘Duck stuff.’ Cathy started spooning instant coffee into her ‘EAT. SLEEP. READ. REPEAT. Mug- after four spoons, Kitty gave her a pointed look and Cathy huffed and tipped the fifth spoonful back into the jar. ‘Top secret, probably. Not for the likes of us.’

Kitty abandoned her phone hunt.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well-’ Cathy looked at her. ‘Just that no one actually really knows what ducks spend their days doing- no one really follows them, no one checks up on them- I know wildlife people would SAY we know but….’ She gave Kitty a Look. ‘Do they really? Has anyone ever actually watched to see how a duck spends it’s time?’

‘I mean….’

‘No.’ Cathy answered herself. ‘They haven’t. Or probably not. I haven’t googled it or anything. Just- I think it means that we’re not meant to know. Forbidden knowledge. Too much for our tiny human minds to comprehend.’

‘Right, that’s it-’ Kitty pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘You can stop.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t what me, Lady Parr, I know your tricks. You’ve reverse-psychologied me into really wanting to find out- even though I KNOW the answer is probably just walk around and peck at stuff…. And now I’m going to have to go sit outside in the sun and fresh air and watch this duck rather than wallow here like I wanted-’ Kitty pulled on her shoes morosely. ‘And it probably WILL cheer me up because you know how I feel about ducklings- and I specifically SAID I didn’t want to be cheered up!’ She wrenched open the back door and glowered at Cathy one last time before yanking it shut.

Cathy smiled serenely and helped herself to a crumpet.

#six #six the musical #six the musical fanfiction #sixfic #six fanfiction

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romancing-lady-whistledown · 3 years

Note

Just wanted to comment on your last post - there was no frustration and drama for me when I was watching Elu and Skam and Skam France before I made the huge error of looking for the fandom and joining it. Now I realise it was a big mistake, I have to constantly block people on Tweeter for hating on my faves and I've come to really hate another remake which I only didn't care about before having to deal with its stans. So I totally understand what you're saying. Me, I wish I'd never joined.

So this got long af so I’m gonna put it under the cut lol

Oh I absolutely feel you, when I say frustration and drama, I am refering to the live-watching experience and all the fandom drama that comes with that. I have a very polarizing feeling about being in the online fandom personally. For me the positive aspects have been so big that I can’t say that I wish I’d never joined personally, but especially if the positive aspects I’ve experienced haven’t been part of your fandom-experience I definitely see how you can get to the point where you wish you never joined in the first place, especially in the past year, because the negative aspects...they’re rough, and they do make the experience of the actual show different from if you just watched it on your own or you watched it as a casual viewer in the country it’s airing in, rather than as a part of the fandom on Tumblr and/or Twitter.

I watched the original Skam as a casual Norwegian viewer, I was in a Facebook-group with other casual Norwegian viewers, there was never any drama about anything, not the clips, not the characters, not the actors and not the creators of the show. It was just watching the clips, often someone commenting about how the clip was cute, funny, sad ect, and then everybody moved on with their day. There would sometimes be a thread with questions like “Where do you think William is?” or “What do you think is up with Even?”, but it was always very casual. Sometimes I think the online fandom forget that the majority of the remake-viewers are the casual local viewers, the ones who only casually watch that one remake as a show on it’s own, not as a part of the “Skamverse”. The international Twitter/Tumblr-fandom is just a little part of the people watching the show and the opinions we see here don’t necessairily reflect those of the more casual audience (as one can often see in for example reaction-videos on Youtube where the reactors watch alot of shows at the same time and might not even blink at something that might’ve been a big deal in the online fandom).

Being a casual viewer worked so well for me with Skam, the whole viewing experience was very chill and enjoyable. I did the same thing with Skam France S1 and S2, I watched the first episode of every remake, and Skam France was the only one I felt compelled to continue watching. It wasn’t the most exciting experience plotwise since it was just the exact same as the og, but I love the cast, I love the French language and it was overall pleasant and fun enough that I kept watching both seasons all the way through. As someone who has no attention span for TV-shows, the fact that they did keep my attention without anyone to push me to keep watching is enough for me to not concider them bad in the way alot of people do. Not very exciting after having watched the og, sure. Do I prefer the og S1 and S2? Yes. But bad? I personally wouldn’t say that. If I came into the fandom before I started watching on my own I know I would’ve been told to either skip S1 and S2 or skip Skam France altogether, and that obviously wouldn’t have been very good advice in my case, although it might be for someone else. That is why, when someone shows up on Tumblr saying they wanna start watching the remakes and ask for advice, I never ever tell them not to watch a remake. I could be robbing them of something that might deeply touch them, just because it didn’t touch me.

This brings us into one of the aspects of being in the online fandom that can be both really positive and really negative, that being the way it can affect your experience of the show itself. On the positive note, there’s no way I could’ve gone through Skam France S3 in the casual way I went through the original Skam or S1 and S2 of Skamfr. No way. Having someone to talk to about all the amazing moments with was an actual need for me. Hell, two years later and I still need that. Not to mention the fan art and fics that has kept Elu alive for me ever since S3. There was this whole detective-work in the fandom about finding Eliott’s Instagram during S3, finding out about the Instagram-posts David and Niels made about the S3 clips, being in the online fandom actually added to the experience of watching S3 for me, and even now almost two years after S3 I’m left with some actual friends, friends that aren’t even in the fandom anymore but who I still talk to almost daily, as well as some lovely bloggers who are still invlolved in the fandom and who’s blogs I prefer to visit rather than visiting the tag.

But then there’s the negative side of this. While being in the online fandom certainly can add to the experience, it can also affect it negatively. That was what happened with S5 and S6 for me, to the point where I had to switch between staying completely off Tumblr and delete the Twitter app from my phone. While S5 had a couple of plotlines I didn’t like, it also had alot of amazing moments when it actually was dealing with the main theme of the season. S6 did not give their plotlines the proper exploration and conclusion they deserved, but on the other hand the reason why that was so frustrating to me was because I found those plotlines so interesting and actually wanted to see them explored properly. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have cared if the plotlines were dropped out of nowhere, like ofc it would’ve been weird but if the whole Tiff-plot suddenly disappeared I wouldn’t complain. While they were flawed and nowhere near the level of S3 for me, I did enjoy so many of the clips and Skamfr S3, S5 and S6 are the only remake-seasons I have downloaded on my computer knowing I will rewatch them regularily. If I didn’t overall enjoy them, I wouldn’t wanna rewatch them. I don’t hate-watch anything. I could barely get through Skamfr S4 (a season I genuinely didn’t like) and I could not get through Wtfock S4, (which I liked even less). So the flaws Skamfr S5 and S6 had didn’t turn the seasons as a whole into trash for me, but I know they did for alot of people and going to the tags while in the middle of the live-watching experience couldn’t just be a bummer, it could almost transfer some feelings and opinions that weren’t my own onto me just from seeing them repeated so many times. I appreciate nuanced discussion, which does include constructive criticism, and there was alot of that too, but there were also alot of posts that I would not concider that. In this case, when I got some time and distance away from the live-watching experience and got the space to think for myself, I realized that as often is the case, my feelings about the seasons weren’t black and white, or in this case, masterpiece vs trash. Yes, I don’t like certain plotpoints (like the love triangle and car-scene from S5 or the Tiff-plot and the overly rushed conclusions to the otherwise interesting plotlines in S6), but that doesn’t mean that I personally think S5 or S6 as a whole are trash, not when the good episodes and clips were as good as they were to me personally. The online fandom experience has also, just like for you, completely turned me off from another remake that I otherwise felt neutral about and at one point even liked, which really is a shame.

So yeah this turned into a long ass essay just to say, the online fandom-experience is a true mixed bag for me. Although the positive experiences I’m taking from it, mainly the lovely and talented people, the friends I made and the full Skam France S3 experience, ultimately made it worth it for me, I can totally see how, especially if you didn’t have those experiences, you would simply wish you never joined. When it’s a pain, it’s a pain.

#ask #skam france #skamfr

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allie1804-fan · 3 years

Text

Please Assist Me (Chapter 18)

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Ch6apter 10 , Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15 , Chapter 16, Chapter 17

Warnings: Explicit Content

He Said

At last in January of 2021, the schools opened and we felt like there was more every day normal going on. There were a few more restaurants open with outdoor service too so Sophia and I had the occasional lunch out together when he had free time. I was training hard though so I didn’t have much free time which meant we tended to need to stick to Hollywood rather than driving out to the coast off the beaten track and that was our first mistake. Sophia had been my assistant for almost 2 years now so it wasn’t odd for us to be seen together but as there was almost never any other women seen with me, Cheryl alerted me that pictures started appearing in gossip rags, putting 2 and 2 together based on their (correct!) reading of intimate gazes and body language.

She Said

In the new year, a few photos started to come out of me with Keanu online and in gossip rags. The publicity wasn’t hugely invasive and I wasn’t too bothered by it - my family and friends knew the truth so this only really attracted random contact on social media from acquaintances being nosy rather than any real invasion at first.

My first direct experience that the attention was getting invasive came one day at the school pick up. I had noticed a man hovering at a distance from the gates who I was pretty sure wasn’t a parent. My attention was torn away when my kids came out but as I turned to take them to the car, I saw a teacher cautiously approach him and after a brief exchange he turned on his heal and left. That’s when I spotted the camera slung over his shoulder. A couple of days later, pictures of me and the kids were published on-line on a gossip site. The kids’ images were a little blurry but still, I was furious.

He Said

“Fuck!”

I’d just clicked on my phone on a link Sophia had sent to me for a photo news site showing pictures of her and the kids at their school gate. Some low life pap had tracked them down and deemed them newsworthy because of her link to me that had been emerging more and more frequently of late.

I forwarded it to Cheryl and asked her to arrange an urgent call with her and my lawyer to work out an action plan. Then I called Sophia, nervous that I might be in for a tirade of Spanish insults.

“Hun, you OK?”

“No, I’m not OK. Que pendejo insoportable!”

Here we go, I thought!

“who me?!”

“No, no, the photographer, this isn’t your fault!”

“kind of is though isn’t it?”

“No, I won’t let you take the blame – but we have to stop them. The kids need to be kept out of this right?”

“Yeah, I’m waiting to hear back from Cheryl. I asked her to arrange a call with the lawyers. I’ll let you know when they can set it up OK? And I’m sorry, even if you say it isn’t my fault, it wouldn’t be happening if we weren’t in a relationship.”

She sighed.

“We’ll figure it out, OK, I just, I need to keep them safe”

“I know, I know sweetheart”

We managed to issue a cease and desist order on that particular photographer to not take further photographs of the children and put out a general statement asking the press to respect their privacy but that did seem to have the effect of making them more thirsty for pictures of Sophia and I – we were still game. As pictures circulated of us eating out or on bike rides, this apparently spawned a trend of what I understand are called “Trolls” seeking out Sophia on social media to send her hateful messages to ‘leave me alone’ and to stop ‘trying to wheedle her way into my life’ and ‘get her grubby Latino hands on my money’. And, she said, if they didn’t do it directly, there would be comments underneath her photo on fan sites with people expressing their disgust at my choice of romantic partner. On top of that, there was a lot of denial - people saying that Sophia was and could only ever be my PA – just like Janey they said. Good grief the world really had gone to hell - why did who I was dating even matter?

Apparently there were many people being kind and saying it was nice that I’d found love and that she was beautiful, might give me the babies I’d missed out on etc etc but I could see the comments of the trolls weighed on her mind and lodged there far more than anything positive. Eventually I said she should really just follow me into the social media free wilderness. She could keep an active messenger service for group chats with friends and use a cloud service to share photos of the kids with our parents but for her sanity, she needed to drop Facebook, Instagram and Twitter before she went insane!

She Said

I knew I shouldn’t get drawn into looking at what Keanu’s fan base were saying online but the curiosity was hard to control. I actually only started getting drawn in after the trolls started tracking my down and sending me abusive DMs. That made me want to know if there were any positive voices or if these nasty people basically spoke for the whole of his fandom. I found myself wasting so much time going down rabbit holes trying to find out who these people were but there was no way to do that really.

When my general tetchiness finally got too much and Keanu said I should join him in the 1990s and get off social media, I knew he was right but at the same time it was infuriating as I had got so used to using it for sharing news, family photos, jokes etc as well as using all the messenger tools to connect with my friends. After all the isolation of 2020, this new isolation felt like a kick in the teeth but I felt so childish to think that way and didn’t dare say anything to Keanu. Having never been on social media, he just wouldn’t get it! After about a week though, I had to admit I felt better and admitted that his way was probably the sane option – after weeks of anxiety, I finally felt free from the worry of silly people out there who didn’t know us personally having an opinion about whether we ‘should’ be dating.

Happily, we also had a trip to New York to look forward to - Keanu would be starting filming on John Wick 4 and we were heading there as a family with around a week free to enjoy the city together before he would start on set.

The kids were beyond excited to be flying, not ever having done so before. They each had a little pull-along case and we booked first class so we would have as little time as possible milling around in the public spaces at the airport. I was sure there’d be paps about - we couldn’t ban them from taking our photo altogether even though we’d asked for their privacy to be respected so I was desperate to minimise their chances.

When we got to LAX, it was literally minutes after we’d got into the building when a fan approached asking for a photo. Keanu started to try and explain that he was on his down time with his family and would they mind if he didn’t take one today but he hated the crestfallen look on their face and he quickly suggested that we split up and meet up in the lounge. I rummaged through my bag to get his ticket out and handed it to him with a pointed look at the woman before heading off to check in with the kids, not caring that my silent displeasure might make it online somewhere to be used as evidence of what a bitch I was!

We went on through to departures and waited a good half hour before he showed up.

“Hey Keanu why did you take so long” Eva whined.

He chuckled.

“Sorry honey, but I guess it’s because ‘I’m Duke Caboom, Canada’s greatest stuntman’ he boomed, tickling her sides “and sometimes that means people want to say hi and take a photo so it took a while to catch you up.

“Oh OK” she said matter of factly not at all phased by that idea. I guess she knew how excited Julie and Miranda’s kids had been when they zoomed with him when he was in Berlin so it made sense to her even though Toy Story 4 was the only thing she’d ever seen with him in so she had no idea just how truly famous he was!

“You’re too good to them” I said, still a bit put out that we’d already been separated for a while right at the beginning of our trip.

“Yeah, but it never ends well if I’m an ass…. I mean not nice and you’ve got to remember that I’m usually ‘so high’ on a screen and seeing me in real life is exciting …. to them at least” he said cocking an eyebrow at me as if to say that I no longer saw him as special.

“You’re exciting to me too silly!” I said, relenting a bit from my sulk.

He squeezed my hand.

“Don’t worry, I’ll try to give off some ‘stay away’ vibes in New York so we can all hang out like real people.

“I know, I’m being a bitch, I just wanted this to be, you know, normal”

When we arrived in New York, we had a car waiting so were quickly away from the airport and managed to pass through it without being bothered. On the journey, the kids were pressing their faces against the car windows to see the famous sky-scrapers and there was much anticipation of getting to his apartment to see how their bedrooms looked. We’d arranged to have them decorated and bought new duvets and drapes which Keanu’s maid service had taken care of putting up for them. We got take out pizza for the first night and once again I felt safe and cocooned from the outside world of fans and paparazzi.

He Said

It was strange that Sophia and I had been together for not much short of a year before the public interest in me, and its impact on living our lives, really became a pain in the ass and the source of some conflict between us. I had to remind myself that I’d been living this way for about 20 years and had learned to just allow a little extra time in my day for stopping for a photo. It only affected me when I was on my own so I had to learn to see if from her point of view - it was a shock to her system basically. She’d been my PA for 2 years but we had rarely needed to conduct our business in the public eye so she hadn’t even experienced the attention when we weren’t dating – it was all happening in the context of her being my significant other and with the backdrop of the online trolls and the need to protect her kids.

I guess it would have happened much sooner if I hadn’t been away filming for almost 5 months shortly after we started dating so we’d had an extended time of being together but with no-one outside of friends and family knowing. I tried to tell her we should be grateful all this hadn’t started sooner. I’m not sure that was the right thing to say!

My celebrity did have some advantages though and in New York I’d managed to arrange a private tour of the Empire State Building and rink side seats at a Rangers game. Those earned me points but we weren’t so lucky in Central Park. My apartment isn’t far from there so we headed out for a walk one afternoon, ending up in in the Conservatory Garden figuring that this would be a nice place to be by some water but not where most people would be like Bethesda or the model boat pond.

We’d bought some sandwiches on our way (my time to enjoy the pastrami, pickle and Russian salad I so love) and settled on a bench to chill and rest the kids’ legs when I saw a guy across the other side of the pond raising his camera. It was clearly a Pap with a long lens. I’m normally not a hot head but it was such an intrusion to our pleasant afternoon that I handed Sophia my sandwich and marched up to him.

I was striding fast, not caring much that my stance was clearly threatening and some people idling by the pond scuttled out of my way. The Pap, surprisingly stood his ground until I reached him, squaring up to him.

“Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing? We’re just having some private time as a family and you come along determined to ruin it!”

I was yelling and drawing the attention of others by the pond but I didn’t care.

“hey man, you’re fair game” he responded brazenly.

“Yeah that’s right, I, me, I’m fair game, me not them ,now get the hell out of here”

He was a short weasel of a guy and I was towering above him. He soon thought better of trying to take a picture and scurried away. A woman a few feet away spontaneously clapped!

“Good for you Keanu” she said.

I blushed, coming down suddenly from the adrenaline of the confrontation. It has been a long time since I’d even spoken to a Pap. I usually just ignored them, occasionally putting my hand in front of my face to ruin the shot. It generally wasn’t worth antagonising them but this dude had pushed it too far.

I thanked her and returned to the bench. Sophia handed me back my sandwich while the kids eagerly asked why I’d been shouting at the man. I explained as best I could and I think they were grateful that I just wanted their mom and them to enjoy their time without strangers photographing them.

A couple of days later, Cheryl let me know that the guy made a claim on-line that I’d assaulted him – no actual legal claim was made, I guess because he knew it was bullshit. That was quickly proven when people quickly came forward that they had witnessed it and no such thing had happened. I wondered if the lady clapping was one of them.

She Said

After the Central Park incident, I was so proud of how Keanu had stood up to the paparazzo but we still made a decision to do most of the tourist things without him after that. I couldn’t see us being in Time Square, The Lego Store or the M&M store with him alongside us comfortably. And that was strange and a little sad for me to be back to the single parent feeling, having experienced some very cherished family days.

Our time to go home was fast approaching and I was keen to get one day just for the two of us. Luckily I have a cousin in New York who wanted to spend time with the kids and they offered to take them on the boat trip to the Statue of Liberty for the day. We made the kids breakfast and handed them over to my cousin with backpacks, ready for their adventure.

We just had coffee ourselves as we were planning on a brunch out for ourselves later after some us time between the sheets!

The minute the door was shut, Keanu was pulling me by the hand back to bed.

We quickly shed our pjs, climbed under the covers and started to kiss

Keanu soon reached down and started to gently tease my folds. I moaned into his mouth thrusting myself against his fingers.

A thought came to me and I pulled back and asked

“Can we um, try something today ?”

“Mmmm - what?”

“Well you know your movie, Siberia? “

He nodded

“Well, I watched it while you were away and, um that thing with your thumb ....”

“Oh you want that do you?” - a wicked grin spread across his face

“Well we can try that lots of ways ….. so, we can try that from behind. Get on all fours for me”

I obliged and I felt him slip his stiff cock into me, my folds parting with a pop. He was moving very slowly, then after a few thrusts as I was moaning softly, I felt his wet fingers reach around to gently tease my clit. He did it just enough to make me moan louder but not enough to make me cum. Then he pulled out leaving me bereft

“What?” I cried out

Then he rolled over on his back and pulled me onto him.

“And then there’s lady on top”

I happily sank down on his cock and started to ride him. I was groaning but at the same time I could hear my voice quavering as I neared orgasm once more. He licked his thumb, this time, re-enacting the Siberia moment making me throw my head back in pleasure. I was about to lift off, my voice raised in pitch but again he stopped me before I could, holding my hips to stop my movement.

The he flipped me over onto my back and straddled me, making me wait a few moments as he played with my breasts and smoothed his hands down my sides .

“And finally we can try man on top”

“Will you do that thing ?” I asked

“What the thumb ?”

“No, well yes, but first the thing where you lift me onto you”

“Oh like our first time?”

I nodded, glad he remembered.

He obliged lifting me onto him, pulling me up, ensheathing him slowly so I could feel every vein of his rigid cock and he could feel every ridge of my tunnel.

I was wailing by now each time he pulled me up then released me – I could feel his cock getting even harder when he asked simply

“Ready?”

I just whimpered and nodded my agreement.

He Said

I was so close to coming, I needed to really focus to give her everything she deserved.

I manoeuvred her fully onto her back and encouraged her to lift her legs up over my shoulders.

This allowed me maximum access to thrust in all the way to her cervix and pump in and out.

I could already feel the beginnings of her orgasm, her pussy pulsating around me. It was as if she was a beautiful flower, attracting me with her petals then sucking me in, holding me there in a vice like grip to take what she needed from me. It was primal and all encompassing

As I felt the ripples get more intense, I managed to balance on my left hand and free my right hand, lick my thumb and circle it over her clit.

That was it, it was all over for both of us. She clamped around me, her legs quivering and I shot my hot load inside shouting out as she screamed “yes, yes oh god, yes”

My thrusts gradually slowed, I was still moaning and fighting to catch my breath. I eased her legs down and lay on her just holding my weight off her by resting on my elbows. I gave her a sloppy kiss before easing off her onto my back. I still couldn’t speak. and just squeezed her hand. Tears leaked out of my eyes and I gulped, looking across, I found her in a similar emotional state.

“Wow that was - god I don’t think I’ve ever, ever come so hard”

“Me neither - love you so much Mr Reeves”

“Why do you always call me that after really great sex?”

“Dunno” she chuckled “maybe to give you the respect you deserve for making love to me so, so ….”

“What?”

“So masterfully, so beautifully”

“Mmmmmmm”

“Let’s have a snooze before brunch yeah?”

“Mmmm”

I think she was almost asleep already as she turned away and I spooned behind her, holding her warm breast in the palm of my hand.

@fortheloveoffanfic @kindainlovewithk’eanu @omg-imagine @iworshipkeanureeves @fics-not-tragedies @ficsnroses @keanureevesisbae @penwieldingdreamer @witty-wallflower @paperplanesandwallflowers @bitchyslut99 @ladyreapermc @toomanystoriessolittletime @fanficsrusz @keanuficfiles @bitchyslut99

#keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves fanfiction #keanu #keanu reeves #romance with boss

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atlas-of-a-human-soul · 5 years

Text

The wrong girl, pt. 9 (E.D.)

Summary: Unlike Ethan who is done with life, Grayson who is calling every lawyer they have on retainer, Y/N is actually prepared to do the work and make this nightmare end, before it ends her and Ethan’s chance at love.

Warnings: angst, violence, swearing, slight fluff

The Wrong Girl - Masterlist

Defeated, the three laid in different positions all over Ethan's room, each doing their own thing.

Ethan desperately searched for all possible information on what his ex spilled, shocked to find Jack joined in, accusing him of assault.

Grayson argued with their lawyers, going overtime on strategic plans for resolving the issue.

Y/N, however, didn't search any information about anything. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest, head tilted to the side as she stared at Ethan Grant Dolan, wondering just how much more catastrophes can they survive before they break. She watched the boy she loves - a little bit broken, a beautiful disaster, just like she is. And that's when she hatched a plan.

Texting Jack, she pushed herself off the ground, determined not to let anyone hurt her turtle man.

"I have to go. Do something. Just, uh, don't do anything stupid." She leaned down, letting Ethan grab her forearm as he pulled slightly, wanting to keep her with him.

"I don't want you to go." Mumbling, Ethan stopped breathing altogether once Y/N pressed her lips against his and unlike him, it felt like she breathed him in, overwhelming her senses with Ethan and the vanilla musk that he loved to drown himself in.

"I won't be out for long. Okay?" Brushing her nose against his, she smiled, pecking his lips once more as her hand moved down his cheek, sensing his nod more than seeing it.

"I love you." Ethan whispered meekly, wanting more than anything to keep her at his side and protect her from the world especially since her name is dropped in the media more than once as his long term fling...even the name itself contradicts the statement because no fling is long-term, that's already a relationship, a love without bounds and he was certain it could survive this disaster. He had to believe it could.

Without saying it back, Y/N pecked his lips once more for good luck, walking away as his heart fell. He didn't exactly expect her to say it back although she told him she feels the same way, but he knew he has to earn her trust, to truly know she can count on him. He has a lot to make up for, but it doesn't mean it didn't sting not to hear her say the words when he did. Even as a small mercy now when he is in a disastrous position.

Y/N on the other hand is a woman with a purpose much too big to think about the I love yous or who has to rectify their past mistakes.

On her way to a meeting point, she texted Kyle and the crew, checking they're in position as she couldn't have Jack suspect anything.

Once confirmed, Y/N walked with her heart in her throat, hoping this works out. There’s a lot riding on her plan, more than she’d like to admit. She and Ethan deserved a chance at a real relationship, a proper attempt to be who she knew they could be.

Upon arrival, she noticed Jack to already be in place, not alone as she assumed it would be.

"Oh, look! Trash is here!" The annoying shrill tone of Ethan's ex girlfriend already made her skin crawl more than words. Y/N couldn’t help but wonder how the hell did Ethan force himself to listen to this plastic human being talk, let alone scream in the bedroom - he must have been seriously off his rocker to be with her for a year.

"Don't talk about her that way." Jack grumbled under his breath, wanting to protect Y/N even if she's not his anymore. He might have chosen to go back to his ex, cheating on Y/N in the spur of the moment but Jack really did love Y/N. He spent a year absolutely enchanted with every little thing she did, the good and the bad. She was like that song you always smile to, the one that lights up your spirits without a fail. And it hurt like a bitch when she left him for someone else...even if he did cause that himself.

"God, is her vagina magic or something?" The obnoxious girl rolled her eyes in disgust, her lips pursed and her arms crossed.

"I'm here to help you take Ethan down. He deserves all he gets." Y/N smirked, reaching out for Jack's hand, shamelessly holding on. He doesn't fight contact. In fact, he intertwines their fingers and smiles, feeling his heart flutter.

"He already fucked up, huh? That was fast." Jack chuckled, turning toward Ethan's ex with a smile. "Told you she's cool."

"Yeah, so, what lies do you have out there on him and what truths that can damage his reputation?" Y/N moved closer to Jack, leaning her head on his arm like she used to do when she's tired, expecting the brat before her to speak.

"Well, I have a DNA analysis that says he's the baby daddy. Took me months to fake this, but it will pay off. Also, told the fans he cheated with you, but it was me who did, hence the baby. Oh, and Jack told everyone he hit him, but Ethan only told him to stay away from you. Did I get everything?" She giggled to herself, cradling her pregnant belly, as if showing it off. Y/N had to stop herself from actually rolling her eyes at the woman, hating every moment spent in her proximity. If she wasn’t pregnant, Y/N would gladly slap the smirk off her face.

"I wanted to bury him, but I'm not so sure he deserved all of that." Jack said gruffly, seemingly disgusted by the woman he took up an alliance with.

"So those were all lies? Ethan isn't the dad?" She turned from the pregnant witch toward her ex, "and Ethan never hit you?" Y/N repeated for good measure, not knowing if it was clear the first time.

She didn't know Ethan, Grayson and thousands of fans all sat down in shock of the news, watching the live stream Kyle and the camera crew all broadcasted on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat at the same time, making sure the truth is spreading just as fast as the lies.

"And I'm Ethan's girlfriend, not his fling." Y/N smirked victoriously, stepping away from Jack, giving him a disapproving look, shaking her head in disappointment.

Ethan screamed back home, unable to hide how happy and proud he is of his girl, but most of all, freaking out about the fact she called herself his publicly. All he could think about is not being free of the PR mess that loomed over his head like a knife ready to strike, but about the fact she truly does love him.

"I've been his best friend for years. I've loved him for years. And he is my boyfriend now. I suggest you talk to the real baby daddy and Jack...I have no words. I can't believe how wrong I was about you." Turning on her heel, Y/N wanted to leave. To return home and curl up with Ethan after asking him to fuck her brains out so she stops thinking altogether. She just wanted to feel Ethan, hear his voice and have his hand run up and down her back as she felt his heartbeat under the palm of her hand.

But Jack reached out, grabbing her by the elbow, his eyes screaming hurt and desperation as he yanked her toward him, his free hand latching onto the back of her neck, pushing his lips onto hers without permission. Desperate people do terrible things, but so did those cornered without a way out. However, no matter how hard Y/N tried to push him off, struggling to get away, she was no match for a man of Jack’s statue.

Kyle didn't even hesitate, rushing out from behind the bushes, forcing him to let her go, landing a sickening punch to Jack's left cheekbone, effectively dropping him to the ground.

"Don't you ever come near me again!" Y/N cried out, wiping her mouth furiously, feeling sick to her stomach before running in the opposite direction.

"Are you okay?" Kyle rushed after her, the other guys joining them as she tried her hardest not to cry. It felt as if her lips are burning, poisoned, still dripping with invisible blood he caused her mentally more so than physically.

"Just take me home, please. I don't think I can drive." She asked, knowing Kyle is a kind soul and he would save her if she asked him to. And she wasn’t in a state to drive, her entire body shaking, turning numb as she scratched at her skin, feeling like his hands are all over her, dreading what would have happened have they met somewhere private with less prying eyes.

All she wanted was to be away from prying eyes, thinking how at least the truth is out there now and they can't touch her man anymore. Not without a public nightmare.

"Just take me home. Take me to Ethan."

Tags: @accalialionheart @fallinginlove-16 @xalayx @heyits-claire @dolandolll @godlydolans @dolanstwintuesday @ethanhes @peacedolantwins @blackpinkdolan @dolandrabbles @softiegrant @inlovewithethandolan @graydolan12 @reblogserpent @dominantdolan

#ethan dolan #ethan dolan x reader #dolan twins #ethan dolan imagine #ethan dolan fanfiction #ethan dolan fic #ethan dolan fanfic #ethan dolan fluff #ethan dolan angst

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hungline · 5 years

Text

my memories still go to that cafe

pairings: yoonkook, side vmon and care bear line, past namkook genre: fluff, light angst, coffee shop au, post-break-up au, rated pg13 warnings: alcohol, jeongguk being thirsty a/n: my fourth commission for marigold! words: 12000

summary: "Holy shit," Blondie whispers under his breath — almost quiet enough that Jeongguk could pretend he never even heard him — as his face slowly flushes a darker red by the second.

Jeongguk has quickly learned that you can tell a lot about a person from their coffee order. Or their tea order, or whatever it is they order from the coffeehouse Jeongguk has been working at for two months now.

He isn't really a barista because Seokjin does not trust him as far as he can throw him with the expensive coffee machines yet, but Jeongguk does not mind being an over glorified waiter either. People are sometimes really mean to him for no other reason than that they are having a shit day and one of the baristas somehow managed to get their order wrong when Jeongguk knows that the order is perfectly correct, but Mingyu and Minghao always make it up to him with a meal anyway even if he wasn't the one responsible for the “wrong” order so it's all okay. Plus he is not the only waiter and that helps too.

A couple months ago, it might have wrecked him — the shitty customers with their shitty attitudes — but after he and Namjoon cut off all ties, nothing can really hurt him as much as that did.

Namjoon was older than him and he wanted something Jeongguk knew he could never give him so he had decided to end their relationship, but still hoped that they could be friends. Jeongguk knew that Namjoon was heartbroken and while there was enough guilt for him to end things altogether, he wanted their friendship to work again. And it had for a short while until Namjoon somehow got it into his head that Jeongguk was already dating again and then, well, the article on Namjoon's blog was all that Jeongguk needed to realize they could never really be friends again. It hurt like hell because Jeongguk was still a bit tender from the deaths of his grandfather and uncle and having to help his mom get through them back to back, but he couldn't fathom any more hurt on either of their ends. It would have turned into something even more ugly and awful and Jeongguk didn't want to end up hating Namjoon when all was said and done.

Of course, he had still loved Namjoon then, but now, it does not feel like that at all anymore.

Yugyeom keeps telling him he should just go and let his inner hoe wreak havoc across mankind, but sex is something that Jeongguk does not take lightly and he really doesn't want to somehow end up running into Namjoon at a club or something. One drink would be all that it takes to get Jeongguk back into his bed, except Jeongguk doesn't love him anymore and he does not want to start loving him again either. Sex isn’t going to solve anything for him and would only make matters worse.

Still, even without the sting of his last relationship, Jeongguk would find it hard to find just about anybody attractive enough to sleep with. Plenty of attractive people come into the coffeehouse, some even supermodel status with looks that could rival that of Seokjin's, but they do not capture his attention.

Not the way that one blonde man who comes in every Thursday and Friday evenings to order an iced Americano does anyway.

Mingyu and Seokjin both make fun of him for how he tenses and bumbles around every time Blondie comes in, but can they really blame him? Blondie has eyes that could pin just about anybody in place and hands that could carry the world. Jeongguk doesn't know anything else about him but from watching him, he thinks he has a pretty good idea about what kind of person he is at least. Seokjin says he doesn't get how Jeongguk finds him and not Seokjin attractive instead, but Jeongguk does not want to jump into bed with his boss for a large number of reasons that do not necessarily have anything to do with Seokjin being his boss.

(Besides, Seokjin can talk himself blue in the face, but it will never be enough to convince Jeongguk that his boss isn't seeing both of the cute dancers who drop by frequently to flirt with Seokjin like it's nobody's business.)

But, again, Jeongguk does not even know Blondie's actual name. And even if he did, he has no idea what he would do with the information anyway. It isn't like Jeongguk would just look him up on Facebook or something and add him as a friend. That's absurd.

Although, it isn't like Jeongguk also would not try looking him up on Facebook and stalking him if Blondie happens to keep his profile public either. That is if Jeongguk is lucky anyway and Jeongguk has the worst luck anyone could ever have so he feels confident in betting on the fact that things could never go that smoothly for him.

Right now, he is content with just this. Admiring from afar, from very far away.

And then, suddenly, one day, Jeongguk is much too close for comfort and he has no idea how to get back to where he was before. Or if he even wants to.

It starts out like any other day.

Autumn has finally fallen away to reveal Winter's cold touch lingering in the air. Jeongguk has wrapped himself up in his favorite sweater and scarf and gone to the library after Yugyeom had sexiled him again. He left their apartment in his usual work pants since he figured that he could just walk to work once he is done at the library because it is not that far away.

It is quiet here in between the stacks of books and sounds of keyboards clacking away, as quiet as a library should be and when Jeongguk goes to check his Facebook, he finds a surprise he wouldn't have expected in years.

Namjoon has left him two new messages.

Jeongguk only blinks, quickly exiting out of the tab to avoid doing something stupid like reading and answering his messages. If he is going to read what Namjoon has to say after so many months, Jeongguk will wait until he is in the privacy of his own room in case he starts crying again. Yugyeom won't like it, but Yugyeom never liked Namjoon anyway so that is to be expected at least.

Mostly, Jeongguk just wonders when Namjoon decided it was time to unblock Jeongguk because after checking twitter, tumblr, and his blog site, Jeongguk can see all of Namjoon's posts now. He wants to dig and be nosy, see what his ex-boyfriend has been up to these past few months, but Jeongguk does not want to do this right now. He quickly checks to make sure that Namjoon is still blocked on all his accounts and then blocks him on Facebook before he closes his laptop.

Now he feels itchy and raw all over and his mind just won’t stop thinking. The quiet that had comforted him before is now suffocating and Jeongguk needs out. He packs up and decides to walk to work with his headphones blaring a new anime soundtrack in his ears to help muffle the beats of his own erratic heart. He knows he is going to arrive too early for Seokjin’s liking, but Seokjin will still let him clock in anyways. His boss is nice like that sometimes.

Jeongguk gets to work quickly and changes into the rest of his uniform in the bathroom when Seokjin side-eyes him for being so early. He won't ask about it yet, but the elder has known Jeongguk long enough to know when he is being bothered by something so he nudges Jeongguk in the side when he emerges from the bathroom and hands him a lemon muffin.

"I bet you haven't eaten anything yet," Seokjin murmurs, pulling them towards an empty table while Mingyu takes a customer's order at the counter. "Eat this before your shift. It's your favorite and Gyu's making a hot chocolate for you, too. You came in really early today, Gukkie."

"Hyung, you didn't have to do that," Jeongguk says in response, still not used to how Seokjin can turn from a childish flirt to a thoughtful hyung in a mere matter of seconds. "But thank you."

Seokjin only grins, pushing Jeongguk into his seat and leaving the muffin in front of him on the table as he heads back to the counter where Mingyu is setting down a cup. "Anytime."

Jeongguk shifts in his seat as he waits for Seokjin to return, pulling his sweater from his bag to put back on over the top half of his uniform. He has tons of white button-ups at home and an extra one kept here in his locker for when someone spills their coffee on him, but Jeongguk hates doing laundry so he would rather avoid any and all spills when he can. He feels warmer now with his sweater back on and when Seokjin returns with the hot chocolate and slides into the seat across from him, Jeongguk already knows that Seokjin is going to prod into his private life whether he wants him to or not.

"So," Seokjin starts with when Jeongguk has started unwrapping the muffin. "Wanna talk about it?"

A shrug is what greets the elder's question and Jeongguk knows he should feel weird about his boss wanting to know about his life, but Jeongguk has never been an hour and a half early to work before. Seokjin was bound to ask questions.

Seokjin sighs, tapping his fingertips on the table. "Gukkie, you know that I don't mind you coming in early, but it has never happened before and I just want to make sure you're okay. You looked out of it when you walked through the door and I was worried."

Now Jeongguk feels bad, but once he takes a bite of his muffin and watches the way the tense line of Seokjin's shoulders goes loose, he feels better. "I didn't mean to worry you, hyung. I'm sorry."

Seokjin brushes his apology away, obviously waiting for what Jeongguk is going to say next so Jeongguk lets out a breath and takes a sip of his hot chocolate before he says, "I was at the library before and I didn't realize until I had logged into Facebook that I had never blocked my ex. I kind of, just, panicked and left. I didn’t realize how early I would be. Sorry."

"Jeongguk, kid, you don't need to apologize for any of that," Seokjin shakes his head, reaching out to clap a hand on Jeongguk's shoulder. "Shit happens and I am not one to judge somebody else's life."

Jeongguk wrinkles his nose, brows scrunched together as he takes another bite of his muffin. "That's a lie, hyung. You bitch about the customers and their orders all the time."

A laughs bursts out of Seokjin in response, his face flushing a delicate pink that stirs something in Jeongguk's chest he thought might have died with Namjoon. "Shut up and eat. I'll let you start your shift a half hour early so you get the rest of this hour to finish eating, brat. Minghao is behind the counter with Gyu right now, but Seokmin will be clocking out halfway through your shift and Junhui should be coming in soon after that.

"Okay, hyung. Thanks," Jeongguk murmurs, ducking his head so he won't have to see just how pretty his boss is.

Seokjin smiles and claps his shoulder again, standing up to go check on Mingyu. "Anytime."

Jeongguk resists watching him walk away, feeling something uncurl in his chest when he finally realizes that maybe he is capable of finding someone easily attractive again. Maybe not enough to have him romantically inclined, but Seokjin is handsome. Probably more handsome than any man alive actually.

(Possibly more handsome than Taehyung even, Namjoon's boyfriend and Jeongguk's old metamour.)

The lemon muffin and hot chocolate are calling to him, so Jeongguk pushes those thoughts aside as he finishes eating, glad when he has not spilled a single thing on him. Seokjin rolls his eyes at him from the back room and Jeongguk goes to join him, taking his sweater off and leaving his things in his locker.

"Done already?" Seokjin asks, brow raised in question.

Jeongguk nods, beaming when Seokjin only shakes his head at him and waves him back towards the front. "Have at it. Clock-in now and I'll let you off half an hour early if you want."

"I'll stay until closing," Jeongguk says back, already heading towards the computer in the back to clock into work. "If that's okay."

Seokjin waves his hands again, chuckling under his breath. "It's fine, Gukkie-yah. Go on and get to work, Gyu-yah expects there to be a rush soon."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Jeongguk responds as he finishes up on the computer, lifting one hand in a salute for Seokjin.

Seokjin rolls his eyes and shoos him out of the backroom, leaving Jeongguk to the frenzy that is the coffeehouse. He avoids spills as often as he can, but almost all his white button-ups have faint coffee stains along the cuffs and no matter the amount of bleach Jeongguk uses, they will probably always be there.

Mingyu was right about the rush and Jeongguk loses himself in it, almost forgetting that it is Friday until Blondie steps into the coffeehouse and Jeongguk feels the air rush out of him in a loud whoosh that startles the nearest customer. He flushes and apologizes, avoiding the counter until Blondie has finished ordering and has sat down at a table before he approaches it again and tries to act normal. Mingyu snickers, blowing kisses at him as he picks up a latte and takes it to the correct table.

He returns a few minutes later, finding a glass of their mineral water waiting for him and raises a brow at Mingyu.

"Table seven," Mingyu says without really looking at the counter, too focused on the machines behind him. "Minghao's taking his break and I still need to get three other orders out first, so give them the water and tell them it's an apology for their drink taking so long."

Jeongguk nods, wincing internally at how good of a barista Mingyu must be if he has never given an order late before, not even during one of their rushes, but is now. Mingyu presses a button on one of the machines and Jeongguk takes that as his cue to go convince table seven not to murder him.

It's only when he looks around for a table with the number seven on it does he realize that Blondie is sitting at table seven.

Blondie is typing away on his laptop, legs crossed one over the other and his black earphones in as he focuses on the screen before him. He is wearing all black today, but no sweater or jacket is in sight and Jeongguk finds himself frowning at that before he takes a deep breath and slowly approaches the table. He can do this, he assures himself. Just put the water down, explain about the wait and back away. Easy peasy.

Except it isn't that easy because nothing is ever that easy in Jeongguk's life.

Just as he has stepped up towards the table, Blondie looks up and meets his gaze, the first time he has ever done that before and Jeongguk knows he is blushing, but what is even more surprising is that Blondie is blushing right back as they continue to stare at one another. Jeongguk almost stumbles, the glass of water still held securely on his tray as he tries to think about why the hell he approached the table in the first place.

"Holy shit," Blondie whispers under his breath — almost quiet enough that Jeongguk could pretend he never even heard him — as his face slowly flushes a darker red by the second.

Jeongguk swallows and slowly puts the glass down, sweating when he realizes he can't keep his eyes away from Blondie's. "Um."

They stand there staring at one another for a few moments that feel like centuries until one of the machines starts whirring loudly and Jeongguk startles, stepping back and ducking his head quickly. "Sorry for the wait. Your order should be up soon, but please enjoy this free mineral water on the house."

Before any more can be said, Jeongguk presses his tray to his chest as he rushes away, feeling like he is hyperventilating when he can still feel Blondie's eyes on his back. "Oh, my god. Oh, my god!"

Mingyu laughs at him when he makes it back to the counter and presses Blondie's usual order of an iced Americano towards him. Jeongguk freezes when he realizes that Mingyu set him up, the asshole.

"Dude!" Jeongguk hisses at him. "What the hell!"

"You were never going to make a move so I thought we should do something to make him notice you," Mingyu grins back, still laughing even as he turns back to the machines again. "Go bring him his drink, Gukk-ah. Yell at me for it later when there are no customers around to hear you."

Jeongguk should be angry, but nerves are strangling him, so he wordlessly takes the cold drink and walks back to Blondie's table. He flushes again when he realizes that Blondie is still looking at him, still flushed red, and has now completely abandoned whatever he was doing on his laptop. His walk falters for a split second and then Blondie turns an even darker shade of red and forcibly pushes his attention back on his laptop in front of him while Jeongguk approaches his table.

"Iced Americano," Jeongguk says as he puts it down beside the untouched glass of water. "Hope you enjoy it."

Jeongguk turns to go before anything more can be said and practically runs back to the counter to grab the new drinks Mingyu is setting out. "Table four. Two more coming up for table six."

"I hate you," Jeongguk mutters at him as he takes the drinks.

Mingyu smiles after him, pitching his voice loud enough for the whole coffeehouse to hear. "Feeling's mutual, Jeon Jeongguk!"

"Oh, my god," Jeongguk whines under his breath when he sees Blondie's head whip around in Mingyu's direction, unabashedly taking notice of Jeongguk's name.

Someone needs to help Jeongguk get through the rest of this day or Mingyu is going to end up in a body bag and Seokjin is going to have to help him bury it by the end of his shift.

"Your lover boy came in yesterday," is what first greets Jeongguk when he comes into work on Sunday.

"What are you talking about?" Jeongguk asks, pausing in his stride towards the back room.

Mingyu grins at him mockingly before he looks back towards the machines even though Jeongguk knows he should be hustling to the back room to drop his bag off in his locker since he's cutting it too close for the start of his shift. Jeongguk heaves a heavy sigh and levels a glare at the back of Mingyu's head before he continues towards his locker after another moment has passed.

It isn't mentioned so explicitly again during the day, but when they are cleaning and closing up, Jeongguk has to endure an earful of Mingyu's retelling of how Blondie came in the day before and asked about Jeongguk then left without ordering anything when Mingyu told him he wasn't working that day. Seokjin chimes in as he locks up that Blondie actually looks familiar to him now that he's paying attention and Jeongguk spends his entire walk home ignoring the ache in his gut that wants him to ask his co-workers to spill everything they might know about Blondie.

Jeongguk texts Seokjin when he gets home and receives a good night in return, but stays up until two contemplating whether he should finally open Namjoon's messages or not.

He doesn't and by mid-morning on Monday, he has forgotten all about it in favor of helping Yugyeom get rid of his latest one-night stand who won't leave their apartment.

Apart from on Wednesday when the dancers come in again and flaunt themselves at Seokjin for almost two whole hours, the level of gay panic in the coffeehouse is pretty null.

(Of course, Jeongguk will not deny that his boss is an idiot if he really thinks he isn't dating the two dancers, but not his circus and not his monkey, so it definitely is not his problem.)

Seokjin hires a new hand Thursday morning and blows up Jeongguk's phone by lunchtime to get him to come in early. When Jeongguk does show up, almost everybody working at the moment looks beyond relieved to see him and he does not know if that is a good thing or not.

"Kid, I need you to clock-in as of yesterday. The new hire is a disaster and keeps spilling everything. I'm losing business fast," Seokjin corners him in the back room to say, his eyes wide and frantic. "Tell Yerim she can go home early."

Jeongguk shrugs and unlocks his locker to put his bag away. "Alright, hyung. Finally, you hired a girl, you sexist."

Seokjin dodges the punch Jeongguk aims at his shoulder and grins back at him, albeit weakly. "Only guys have applied to work here, not my doing or my fault, kid. Now go."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Jeongguk mocks a salute and clocks in afterward, wincing as soon as he steps out of the back room.

Yerim has dropped two glasses and the sound of glass breaking scares Jeongguk but it is also enough incentive for him to grab the broom and dustpan leaning on the wall behind the counter before immediately pushing the new hire away and cleaning it up himself. She walks away and comes back with a bag for him to drop the broken pieces of glass into and soon enough the floor is clear again and Seokjin has settled the customers down again.

"Follow me," Jeongguk says as soon as he has stood up again, motioning Yerim towards him as he walks to the back room once more.

Once there, he hands her the bag and crosses his arms over his chest, regarding her. "Throw that in the dumpster out back then clock out. Seokjin-hyung said you can leave early today."

She is young, probably around his age and pretty, but girls have never interested him. She's flushing a pale pink from what he hopes is embarrassment and wears a black pencil skirt with black tights underneath. Her white-button up is sporting three different stains and Jeongguk fights back another wince at her appearance.

"Because I'm so bad at this, right?" She asks, nodding her head before he even gets the chance to open his mouth. "Yeah, I'll leave early. Did he tell you what time I need to come in tomorrow... if he still wants me to come in tomorrow?"

Jeongguk uncrosses his arms and sighs, shaking his head for more his benefit than hers. "He hasn't said anything, but I'll ask while you're doing that and then come tell you. Alright?"

She nods and walks towards the back door, leaving Jeongguk to run a hand through his hair. He shakes his head again and walks toward the counter, picking up his tray before locating Seokjin near the bathrooms.

"Hyung," Jeongguk calls out, walking briskly over to his boss. "Yerim wants to know if you still want her to come in tomorrow. She seems pretty upset so maybe you should talk to her instead."

Seokjin sighs and lets his head bang against the wall with a dull thump that makes Jeongguk wince in sympathy. "Yeah, yeah. She's still in the back room, right?"

Jeongguk shrugs. "She should be. I told her to throw away the bag of broken glass first before she clocked out, but you can wait for her in there."

"Cool, kid. I got this, you go wait on these tables. Please, don't break any more of my glasses, I can't afford that."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

Seokjin manages another weak grin at that and shoos him away before he walks to the back room himself.

After that, Jeongguk does not really pay much attention to anything else except working and distracting everyone from how awful Yerim was on her first day. Not to say that Jeongguk wasn't bad on his first day or that Seokmin wasn't either, but Jeongguk has never managed to break a glass before — not even on accident. He does not know on what basis Seokjin hired Yerim on, but he does know that it is not any of his business so he focuses on his work, on greeting and bidding the customers a farewell and is already halfway through his shift when he remembers that today is Thursday.

Because the bell over the door jingles and Jeongguk looks up to find Blondie standing there, staring right at him.

They both flush at the same time and Jeongguk immediately turns away, grabbing the order from the counter and getting the table number from Minghao before he shuffles away and Blondie approaches the counter as soon as he is done.

Jeongguk focuses on his work again, or at least tries to, but finds it hard to focus when he can feel Blondie's gaze burning holes into his back. Minghao doesn't rib him for it the same way Mingyu would if he was working today, but Seokjin is glaring at him and Jeongguk remembers why he should be on his top performance after the one Yerim put on. He winces internally and picks up Blondie's order from the counter, depositing it on his table with no problem and a polite "Enjoy your drink!" before he runs off again.

Seokjin's glare only seems to intensify then and Jeongguk gulps as he remembers how he laughed in Seokjin's face the day before when the dancers came around. Seokjin grins at him maliciously and Jeongguk feels his heartbeat spike in fear of what the elder might do.

"Jeonggukkie! Take your break!" Seokjin yells from behind the counter.

Jeongguk winces and turns his puppy eyes on him. "Let me work through it, hyung."

"No," Seokjin says with a grin that is much too happy for Jeongguk's liking. "You did that yesterday and you know I only let you do that once a week. Tough luck, kid."

"But hyung!" Jeongguk whines as he approaches the counter, pouting when Seokjin swipes the tray from him. "Hyung!"

"No buts! Take your break, kid. Minghao-yah already made your hot chocolate and I'll buy you another one of those lemon muffins you like so much," Seokjin says, already ringing up the muffin and passing the hot chocolate over to Jeongguk.

Employees never have to pay for their drinks when they are working, but Jeongguk could have bought himself the muffin just fine. He wants to argue about this, yet he finds himself taking it as Seokjin pays and levels him with a steady gaze that means he is about to say something Jeongguk will hate.

"Thirty minutes, kid. Go crazy."

"Thirty—!"

Seokjin puts a hand up to cut him off. "You worked through your break yesterday and you came in two hours early today, Gukk-ah. Take your thirty minutes and eat something, kid."

From a childish flirt to a thoughtful hyung. Jeongguk really wishes he could hate that Seokjin is his boss of all people, but he cannot deny that he appreciates his kindness anyway.

"Alright, thirty minutes," Jeongguk bites out, spinning on the spot with a pout on his lips as he ignores everyone else in the coffeehouse and marches his way over to an empty table in the corner.

He has just unwrapped his muffin when a shadow passes over his table and he looks up, meeting warm, brown eyes he is quickly becoming familiar with.

"Hi, do you mind if I sit with you?" Blondie asks in a rush like if he says it fast enough, Jeongguk will be less likely to say no.

Jeongguk shakes his head and quickly jabs an arm out to the seat across him. "I don't mind."

Blondie smiles at him and sits down, his usual laptop missing but the smell of his iced Americano is unmistakable. Jeongguk takes a sip of his hot chocolate when silence settles around them and tries not to focus on how awkward things just became.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Seokjin smirking over at them, but Jeongguk ignores that and takes a bite out of his muffin. Blondie clears his throat and Jeongguk wonders if he is going to say something to break the awkward silence, but Blondie only ends up taking a drag on the straw of his drink instead.

Jeongguk almost wants to roll his eyes at the entire situation, but refrains and decides he'll be the one to start the conversation.

"I'm Jeon Jeongguk. What's your name?"

Blondie blinks at him as if he never expected Jeongguk to speak up first. He recovers quickly though and smiles, knocking the breath right out of Jeongguk's lungs once more. His smile is that pretty. Somebody up there wants Jeongguk dead, don’t they?

"Yoongi. Min Yoongi."

"Cool," Jeongguk nods, picking at his muffin now. "What is it that you do? I've usually only seen you with your laptop every time you come in here. Why don't you have it with you today?"

Maybe Jeongguk should not have said that much because most of it makes him look like some kind of stalker, but Blon— Yoongi only smiles wider and takes another sip of his drink, looking pleased about Jeongguk noticing him.

(Honestly, who wouldn't notice Min Yoongi? He's so breathtaking and stunning and demands all of Jeongguk's attention whenever he comes into the coffeehouse. The man looks like Autumn and Winter had a demigod baby and he was the end result.)

"I'm a producer. I usually come here to work on some of my newer tracks, but I generally just do it all from home or at the studio," Yoongi says in a rush again, flushing all the way down to his collarbones when Jeongguk only blinks owlishly back at him.

"Oh, that's cool," Jeongguk offers him an encouraging smile. "Any songs I might know?"

"Depends on your music taste," Yoongi says with a shrug, still smiling and flushing a brilliant red. "I think my most popular last year was Wine."

Jeongguk slams his hands down on the table, shocking everyone within a ten-foot radius. "You work with Suran!"

Yoongi recovers quickly from his shock and offers another tentative smile that makes Jeongguk feel a bunch of fuzzy things he cannot even begin to explain. "Yeah. You a fan of hers?"

"Definitely. So, I guess, that makes me a fan of you, right?"

"Sure," Yoongi stutters out, his smile wide and bright and leaving Jeongguk's heart racing. "You could say that, yeah."

Jeongguk laughs, taking a bigger bite of his muffin and groaning when a chunk falls on his shirt. He would probably feel embarrassed if it had not resulted in Yoongi giggling at him and Jeongguk's blood sizzling through his veins.

After that, the conversation is easy. Yoongi grows more and more confident with each passing second and soon enough he's explaining the very basics of how to produce a song while Jeongguk listens with rapt attention as he eats the rest of his muffin and drinks his hot chocolate which has now gone cold. Yoongi uses his hands a lot as he speaks and Jeongguk finds himself tracking them, only stopping when he catches the tiny smirk on Yoongi's mouth and flushes at being caught.

Jeongguk has honestly forgotten how to do it from being out of practice for so long, but somehow, he's flirting with Min Yoongi. A usual shy waiter is now flirting and laughing with a very hot and serious music producer who Jeongguk is sure has hundreds of people wanting to be with him and he is the lucky one that Min Yoongi has decided to pay attention to.

He pinches himself a few times just to make sure this is not a dream and sighs with relief each time. Yoongi keeps talking for the rest of their conversation and once Jeongguk's break is over, he goes red again and stutters as he asks for Jeongguk's number.

Jeongguk feels his heart do black flips in complete and utter joy and enters his number into Yoongi's phone, winking at him before he stands up and takes his tray back from a very smug-looking Seokjin.

Later, Jeongguk will be mad about this probably, but for right now, he is much too happy to care.

"So he asked for your number and that was it?" Yugyeom asks for what feels like the nth time.

Jeongguk sighs and checks his hair in the mirror. "Yep."

"Dude."

"I know, Yuggie. Trust me, I know," Jeongguk says in response, having heard Yugyeom's commentary on this too many times to count by now.

Yugyeom shakes his head and Jeongguk grins at him in the mirror. "Let's just forget about this for now and have fun at the club. Bet you'll have guys drooling all over themselves trying to get into your pants when we show up."

Jeongguk laughs, not sure whether to take Yugyeom's words at heart or not. "No one is getting into my pants tonight, Yuggie."

Yugyeom only shrugs and offers him a suspiciously innocent smile. "Never say never, my guy."

The club is hot and crowded.

Jeongguk feels he would be more inclined to dance if three people hadn't already hit on him. If he were to join the throngs of people grinding against one another, there is no doubt that some creeper would try whipping their dick out on him right in the middle of the dancefloor. Jeongguk would very much like to avoid that at all costs tonight.

He sticks close to the bar and watches Yugyeom navigate his way through the club. He loses sight of him a few times, but Yugyeom's bright blue hair is hard to miss. Plenty of people have bought him drinks, but Jeongguk had sent them right back without even pausing to think about it. Automatically denying advances from anybody is habit by this point for him.

Before, it was because Jeongguk was taken and now it is simply because Jeongguk isn't sure he would like to be dating anyone at all. It is confusing being him.

What is even more confusing is when Jeongguk's phone vibrates and he pulls it out to find a text from Yoongi greeting him.

i didn't peg this club as your sort of scene

Jeongguk blinks at his phone, unsure of how to react. His thumbs are moving of their own accord though and there is not much Jeongguk can do to stop them.

you're here???

He frowns down at his phone, taking a sip of his drink as he waits for a reply. He has just set his drink back down on the bar when someone steps up beside him, invading all of his personal space rules and that seriously will not do.

Jeongguk opens his mouth to cuss out the motherfucker who dares bother him when he looks up and finds a familiar pair of brown eyes that peek at him behind a long set of bangs.

"Hyung?" Jeongguk manages to choke out, his arms flailing as he tries to grab onto Taehyung's own. "Holy shit. Please never do that again."

Taehyung grins at him, the boxy, squarish one that Jeongguk had not realized he had missed to this massive of a degree until now. "Sup, Gukkie-yah? How have you been? I miss you."

Just like a punch to the gut Jeongguk is flailing about again, trying to come up with something that will get that sad note out of Taehyung's voice. Maybe it is the tiny bit of alcohol in his system or maybe it is the longing Jeongguk has been harboring ever since his break up with Namjoon, but he doesn't want to let go of Taehyung just yet.

"Oh, god, hyung. You don't know how many times I wanted to call. How many times I—" Jeongguk sputters, falling short when Taehyung merely throws his arms around him and hugs him so tightly Jeongguk can barely breathe.

"Dude, you don't have to apologize to me. I get it. You were both hurting, but Joonie-hyung asked me to give you space and I thought that was what you wanted, but now I realize I should have just bugged you anyway," Taehyung says, his voice still as soothing as Jeongguk once confessed it to be. "Now you're stuck with me. Hyung can deal."

Jeongguk feels on the verge of tears if he is being honest, but he isn't going to be honest enough to admit that so he clamps down on the emotions trying to choke him and murmurs, "But he's your other half, hyung."

As much as that fact used to hurt him, it was true. Namjoon and Taehyung had been made for one another. Even if Taehyung was okay with Namjoon dating other people — okay with Namjoon dating Jeongguk of all people — and supported him through it all, Jeongguk had always known that he was never going to be as important as Taehyung. He knew that and had eventually accepted it because Taehyung was too good of a person to hate. He smiled almost all the time, ran up to random dogs on the street just to pet them, and he had welcomed Jeongguk with open arms once Namjoon finally introduced them. Jeongguk couldn't hate Taehyung even if he tried. (And he had and that had failed spectacularly.)

Taehyung shrugs, the motion feeling strange when Jeongguk can feel it with them being pressed together so tightly. "But he isn't everything I value in this world. You were my friend while you two dated and you'll be my friend after, too. As long as you're okay with that, I mean. I wouldn't want to force you to do something you don't want to do."

"Hyung, you have no idea how much I want that," Jeongguk laughs, pulling back from their embrace to look Taehyung in the eye. "I've really missed you."

"Of course, you have. Hard not to miss me," Taehyung grins back at him, letting his arms fall back to his sides.

Jeongguk slaps his arm, his amusement falling away when he thinks of the unread messages Namjoon sent him. "Hyung?"

Taehyung leans toward him again to hear him better over the new song that has just started playing. "Yes?"

"Do you know why Namjoon-ssi messaged me?" Jeongguk says all in one breath, loud enough that he is certain the girl beside them had heard him even over the loud, thumping music.

"Wait, what?" Taehyung asks, his eyes blown wide in confusion.

Now Jeongguk feels confused. "He didn't tell you? He messaged me on Facebook a while ago... I hadn't even realized he'd unblocked me until then."

Taehyung scratches the back of his neck, still looking unsure when he says. "Well, I didn’t know he unblocked you and he never told me anything about messaging you either. Did you read it?"

"No, I was too scared to open it. Still am really. I don't want to get sucked back into things with him," Jeongguk tries his best to keep his tone polite, all too aware of the fact that he's talking to Namjoon's boyfriend. "Sorry, maybe you wouldn't get it since you two are together right now."

"Nah, Namjoon-hyung can be a pain in the ass and I know that first hand. Don't worry about how I feel though, I'm your friend and that means I'm here to let you complain about any dumb guy you want to talk about whenever. We should get lunch sometime and talk shit about Joonie-hyung. I bet it'll be good for you," Taehyung says with a grin that could blind the sun.

Jeongguk feels a knot loosen in his chest with Taehyung's words and he smiles back, nodding his head and raising his voice so Taehyung can hear him over the new song playing. "Sure! I'd love that. Thank you, hyung."

Taehyung pats his back. "Anything for you, Gukkie-yah. I have to go now though, but it was great running into you again. I was already on my way out when I spotted you and I had to come and say hi. I'll text you about lunch soon?"

"Sure," Jeongguk replies. "That'd be great. Get home safe."

Taehyung gives him another hug and walks off towards the club exit where he joins a tall man Jeongguk would probably be able to recognize anywhere.

Namjoon.

Of course, Jeongguk thinks to himself, Taehyung would never come to a club by himself no matter how outgoing he is. Of course, he and Namjoon came here together and spotted him together.

And yet, when Namjoon looks up and their eyes meet, Jeongguk doesn't feel like he just got run over by a truck. He doesn't feel anything.

Huh.

Taehyung and Namjoon walk out and Jeongguk turns back to the bar, taking another sip of his drink. His phone vibrates in his pocket and he pulls it out again, studying the screen closely.

yeah, i'm friends with the dj, it's her first big gig. who was that you were talking to?

Jeongguk blinks, looking past the crowd of people on the dance floor and squints at the person behind the turntables. He can’t really make much of the DJ except for their short bob of hair swishing as they move. To the side, Jeongguk recognizes Yoongi’s blonde hair and wide shoulders almost immediately.

He waves and smiles when Yoongi immediately waves back at him.

do you know everybody who happens to be in the music business?

Jeongguk keeps his eyes on Yoongi, watching him lean towards the DJ before he quickly edges along the sidelines of the dancefloor.

i wish. if i knew iu, then my life would be complete and i could die happy

Jeongguk puts his phone back into his pocket and orders another drink when he realizes his is empty, waiting for Yoongi to step up beside him at the bar. He can feel butterflies fluttering about in his stomach and his hands are sweating, but his nerves are steady and when he feels the press of Yoongi's hip against his upper thigh, a grin spreads wide across his face.

"So you're a fan of IU, too?" Jeongguk says as he turns to face Yoongi.

Yoongi smiles back at him, leaning closer so Jeongguk can hear him. "Who isn't?"

Jeongguk shrugs. "Don't know. Can't think I've ever met someone who genuinely didn't like her."

"Actually, I think I can say the same," Yoongi admits easily, his shoulder bumping into Jeongguk's arm.

His new drink arrives and Jeongguk shoots it back, ignoring the burn of the alcohol sliding down his throat. Nothing like a little bit of liquid courage to keep Jeongguk on his toes around a guy he finds himself extremely attracted to. Yoongi gets himself a club soda and sips appropriately from it as they talk some more.

Jeongguk finds himself leaning into Yoongi's personal space, Yoongi's hand warm on the small of his back as he orders another drink. He is on his fourth by now, at least, and he feels a bit dizzy but for right now, he’s okay.

His phone buzzes again and Jeongguk lets Yoongi pull it out of his pocket and read it to him.

hot guy alert! going home with him and if i don't get back tomorrow by 1pm, call the cops. i'll share my location with you when i get to his place so you can storm the castle

Yoongi is laughing halfway through the text and Jeongguk has to swat at him three times before he gets through the entirety of it without snorting. Jeongguk had not expected for Yugyeom to go back to the apartment with him tonight anyway so the text doesn't come as much of a surprise to him. But, still.

"Now I have to take a cab home by myself. I'm too broke for that," Jeongguk groans, taking his phone back to send Yugyeom some eggplant emojis.

Yoongi laughs at him, pressing in closer when he says, "Then let me take you home. I came in my car."

Jeongguk pauses, his mind going a million places in a second. Did Yoongi just proposition him? Is Jeongguk actually considering it?

Aw, hell.

"Sure," Jeongguk leans in as well, taking care to make sure his voice is husky when he speaks directly into Yoongi's ear. "I'd appreciate that."

Jeongguk doesn't know anything about cars, but Yoongi's is nice and shiny and probably a make that was released this year.

The last time Jeongguk was in a newish car was back when he was six and his father had just bought another car. His father has had the same car since and living in the city meant that Jeongguk walked, took a cab, or rode the bus to get wherever he needed to go.

Yoongi's car is like a dream and Jeongguk's mind wanders as he watches Yoongi's hands on the wheel.

God, his hands are beautiful. Jeongguk could write poetry about them and poetry has never been a part of his many talents.

"Take a left here."

Jeongguk settles back further into his seat, murmuring directions to Yoongi as the streets pass by. Yoongi's stereo is playing music, but the volume has been turned down so Yoongi can hear him and it feels ambient. Is that how the word is even supposed to be used? Jeongguk doesn't know.

The car ride is quiet though and Jeongguk can feel the butterflies in his stomach fluttering about again. He's nervous, but also excited. It shouldn't make any sense, but it does because he's going to get into bed with Yoongi.

Yugyeom was right. Jeongguk should never say never.

They arrive quickly enough and Yoongi parks a few spaces away from the entrance of Jeongguk's apartment complex, turning to face him as he kills the engine. Yoongi hasn't been making flirtatious comments since they left the club and as soon as they were back out in the fresh air, there had been at least five feet between them at all times since then. Maybe he needs a sign from Jeongguk to know that he wants this too. Jeongguk feels jittery, but in a good way and he isn't going to let this opportunity pass by.

Sex isn't easy for him, not by a long shot, and yeah, he might be disappointed by the fact that Yoongi wants to get into bed with him first, but Jeongguk wants it. He hasn't wanted that in a long while. Maybe this is what he needs to finally put Namjoon and his old heartbreak that he never feels anymore in the past for good.

Or maybe it isn't what he needs and is instead just a trainwreck waiting to happen, but Jeongguk wants it anyway.

"Do you want to come up?" Jeongguk asks, hoping that Yoongi doesn't notice how breathless he sounds.

He must though if his raised eyebrow is anything to go off of. "Your roommate won't mind?"

Jeongguk shakes his head, vibrating with his excitement now that Yoongi has expressed more interest. "He sent me his location a while ago and it's clear across town. Trust me, he won't mind."

Yoongi smiles at that. "I might fall asleep here, just as a fair warning. Loud places like clubs always tire me out."

"That's fine by me. My bed is big enough for us both as long as you don't mind sharing," Jeongguk responds with a grin.

His hands are sweaty and his smile is probably a bit too wide, but Yoongi just nods and undoes his seatbelt. "Sure, kid. I'll spend the night."

Maybe Jeongguk should be worried about the fact that he really doesn't know Yoongi enough to be extending this offer, but he did it and Yoongi accepted so there's no going back now. What's done is done.

Jeongguk nods back, his seatbelt already undone as he opens the car door and steps out onto the sidewalk. Yoongi climbs out of his car and joins him, pressing a button on his car keys so the shiny vehicle chirps as it locks. Jeongguk takes the lead and punches in his code for the front door before holding it open and letting Yoongi in first. They take the elevator up to the third floor and Jeongguk slides his key in easily, holding the door open for Yoongi again.

"Welcome to my humble abode," Jeongguk jokes, grinning from ear-to-ear as Yoongi steps inside and immediately slips his shoes off.

"Can't see anything, but I'm sure it's nice," Yoongi murmurs, his voice but a mere rumble until Jeongguk flicks on a light switch and the living room is suddenly bathed in warm light. "Oh, never mind. It is nice."

Jeongguk makes sure that the door is locked before he kicks his shoes off as well and herds Yoongi towards the couch. "Thanks. You want anything to drink?"

Yoongi perches on the couch, inclining his head as Jeongguk wanders into the kitchen. "What do you have?"

"Water, soda, sweet iced tea, beer, some vodka if you want that," Jeongguk says after opening the fridge.

"Water's fine then," Yoongi responds and Jeongguk nods, grabbing a water bottle and a can of Sprite for himself.

He walks back to the couch after and sits down on the other end, placing his drink on the coffee table Yugyeom insisted would make their apartment look like two struggling college-aged students weren't letting their lives be a complete mess. He grabs the remote as an afterthought then hands Yoongi his water, Jeongguk's smile full of nerves.

"Wanna watch something?" Jeongguk asks, waving the remote control in his hand around.

Yoongi smiles and nods. "Sure. I don't watch much TV anyway, so put on whatever you like."

The TV flickers on soon after and Jeongguk flips through the channels, trying to find something he thinks Yoongi would like. Yoongi only opens his water bottle and takes a sip before placing it on the coffee table beside the soda can while Jeongguk continues his search.

His search yields no results and Jeongguk decides his night is going to be awful until his eyes catch sight of a very familiar face on the screen.

"Do you mind if we watch this? My friend actually plays a minor role in this drama and I haven't had the chance to check it out yet," Jeongguk asks, looking to Yoongi for his reaction.

"You're friends with an actor?" Yoongi asks.

Jeongguk shrugs. "I met him before he his acting career started to take off, but yeah."

Yoongi grins, nodding his head again. "Then let's watch."

Jeongguk smiles and grabs his soda before he settles into the couch, eyes on the TV screen. Yoongi reaches out for his water bottle and finally relaxes into the cushions while he watches the TV. Jeongguk wants to reach out and touch him, but even he knows that you can't just jump into bed with someone. You have to work up to it, set the mood, and make sure all parties are willing before you do.

So he drinks his Sprite and keeps watching the drama, smiling and pointing at the screen when Taehyung shows up again. Yoongi smiles back at him, commenting on his lack of lines and his expressions while Jeongguk waits with bated breath.

He has no idea when Yoongi is going to make his move and it's making him a lot more than nervous. Maybe anxious would be the best word, perhaps? Although, Jeongguk doesn't quite feel anxious. He feels nervous and expectant, sure, but not anxious.

Excited, too, in more ways than one, but he can keep his hands to himself until the time is right.

So he waits, eyes trained on the screen while his hands sweat again. He sips on his soda and tries to concentrate on the episode, on following the plot, but finds that he cannot.

Yoongi isn't even doing anything, but he is distracting as hell.

Jeongguk can be patient when it comes to the important things though, so he focuses on the drama playing and waits.

And waits.

...And waits.

"Do you—?" Jeongguk's question dies when he turns and faces Yoongi.

Yoongi is curled up on his end of the couch, asleep. His mouth is parted open slightly and the water bottle is in his lap but in danger of falling. Jeongguk lets out a breath he had not known he was holding and reaches over to grab Yoongi's water bottle, placing it back on the coffee table.

He leans back into his own end of the couch and studies the older man, his nerves dissipating gradually. He thinks of everything that happened tonight and slaps his forehead, grumbling to himself for being so stupid.

When Yoongi had asked to take him home, he had really meant taking Jeongguk home and that was it.

Jeongguk is disappointed, but he also isn't. He is kind of relieved about being wrong because it means that whatever they are working up to, it won't be something as baseless as friends with benefits. Maybe Yoongi even intends to actually date him.

(And maybe Jeongguk would be okay with that.)

He turns off the TV and stands, stretching his arms up over his head until he hears bones crack. He still has his club outfit and makeup on, but Yoongi hadn't even bothered dressing up for the club. He's in joggers and a hoodie that makes Yoongi look softer than usual and has Jeongguk's pulse thrumming in his ears.

He picks Yoongi up then, carrying him bridal style to his bedroom. He promised Yoongi a bed, after all, and the couch would be an uncomfortable place to sleep even if Yoongi is quite shorter than him. He lays Yoongi down on his bed and fixes the sheets around him, resisting the urge to smooth down Yoongi's blonde hair. How attractive can one man possibly be?

Jeongguk shakes his head and rummages in his drawers, looking for something suitable to sleep in. He doesn't really have a pair of pajamas like Yugyeom does, but he finds one of his white T-shirts that are on the softer side and a pair of gym shorts he usually never wears to the actual gym and disappears into the bathroom he and Yugyeom share.

He washes his face and changes, leaving his dirty clothes in the hamper hidden in his closet when he walks back into his room. Yoongi hasn't moved one inch, but Jeongguk makes sure to step carefully and remain quiet as he plugs his charger into his phone. He walks back into the living room and finds his spare charger for the phone Yoongi left on the coffee table while they were watching the drama and turns off all of the lights. Once that is done, Jeongguk goes back to his room and slides into the other side of the bed, turning so he is facing Yoongi.

There is ample enough space between them, yet Yoongi is so close that it is hard for Jeongguk not to reach out and touch him. He isn’t wearing any cologne, but Jeongguk finds that Yoongi’s natural scent is heady enough to make him lean closer and take a deep inhale before he returns to his side of the bed with a content sigh.

It is dark in Jeongguk's room, but Yoongi is pale and stands out enough for Jeongguk to focus on him as his eyes adjust. It is late and Jeongguk should sleep even if tomorrow is his day off from work and he intends to sleep in anyway. As long as he is up by noon to make sure Yugyeom makes it back alright, he will be okay.

He wants to keep studying Yoongi's face and carefully committing his features to memory to draw later, but sleep is calling and so Jeongguk answers.

In the morning, Jeongguk wakes up to an empty bed that is still warm.

He grunts as he remembers the night before and sighs, thinking it was all just a dream, then starfishes in the middle of his bed and buries his face in the pillow that holds Yoongi's scent the most. There is rustling and murmurs that Jeongguk can vaguely hear but it doesn't grab his attention enough to pull him completely away from unconsciousness. Someone pats his head and whispers something he can't make out, but he's asleep before they can even finish their sentence.

He wakes up later at around ten-thirty and sighs at his empty bed once again.

Maybe it was all just a dream after all.

Jeongguk grabs his phone to check the time and finds he has three new messages from Yoongi.

work emergency, sorry!

And then,

sorry for leaving without a proper goodbye

last night was great. thank you for giving me an excuse to leave the club early and for letting me fall asleep. i needed it. i can order you some breakfast to make up for leaving if you'd like?

Jeongguk feels like a schoolgirl with his cheeks flushing pink and his heart hammering away in his chest as he types out his response and sits up once he has hit send.

ubereats me some mcdonalds. i love those sausage egg mcmuffins with cheese and hashbrowns and my mother hates me for it lol

Yoongi responds twenty minutes later after Jeongguk has showered and gotten ready for the day.

your food is outside, you'll either have to buzz them in or go down yourself to get it

Jeongguk shakes his head but puts on his slippers and takes the elevators down to the ground level and quickly spots the UberEats delivery woman. She hands him his food and he smiles at her, thanking her, then disappears back into his apartment complex as he takes the stairs up to his floor this time.

i owe you my life, my savior. thank you for the food!

He eats and cleans up the kitchen, checking the time again. It is almost eleven and he shoots a text to Yugyeom, asking if he is awake yet. His phone chimes with an incoming message and he swipes his fingers across his screen, reading the new text from Yoongi.

it’s no problem. has your roommate gotten back yet or will you have to storm the castle soon?

Jeongguk grins, already knowing that he is about to spend the entire day texting Yoongi and lazing about the apartment. His chest feels the lightest it has ever felt in a long time once he realizes it.

no, but i would make a great knight in shining armor, wouldn't i?

He laughs when Yoongi's new message lights up his phone.

without a doubt

The next day before work, Jeongguk gathers up his courage and opens up Facebook on his laptop.

He unblocks Namjoon quickly before he can think better of it and clicks on the unread message notification.

And then he stares at his laptop for a while, trying to register the words that should make sense to his brain but do not.

Suddenly, he starts laughing so hard he's gasping for breath curled into a ball on the floor and clutching at his stomach desperately by the time Yugyeom comes into his room to check on him.

"Bro, have you gone insane or something? It would suck having to find a new roommate because I had to put you in an asylum," Yugyeom asks, tickling Jeongguk's sides and stepping out of the way of the foot that Jeongguk kicks his way.

"The—!" Jeongguk tries, pointing at his laptop when it becomes clear that words are not going to be his friend right now.

Yugyeom rolls his eyes but sits down at Jeongguk's desk and reads what is on the screen of his laptop anyway. "Oh, dude. This whole time it was just spam? Are you joking?"

"I wish!" Jeongguk manages to get out past his breathless chuckles, his fit of laughter starting to die down.

"Well," Yugyeom says as he stands and walks towards the door. "At least you know that chapter of your life is done and over with now. If it wasn't, you would be in tears for a very different reason. It's good to see you happy again, man."

Yugyeom walks out then and Jeongguk hears him banging around in the kitchen a few seconds later. He hadn't realized he was over Namjoon until now, not until two nights ago actually, but now he is one hundred percent sure.

He sits up and sighs in relief, feeling steady and sure of himself again.

He really is over Namjoon after all.

Jeongguk deletes the messages and unblocks Namjoon on everything else. He grabs his phone and drafts a text, looking it over for a few minutes before he decides that it will do and presses send.

i'm free to do lunch next tuesday if that's an okay day for you, hyung. and i checked out the messages from namjoon-ssi. they were spam. i'm okay and i think i've finally gotten past all that, but i'd still like to talk some shit about your boyfriend. just to make sure it's all out of my system, of course.

Taehyung's response is immediate and delights Jeongguk a lot more than it should.

next tuesday works! of course. let the shit talking commence!

Next Thursday finds Jeongguk at the coffeehouse again on his day off.

It has been a slow day and there is only one customer in the place at the moment waiting for their to-go order. Mingyu hands it to them and Jeongguk watches them walk out while Seokjin is flushing a bright pink in a corner of the coffeehouse as the two dancers croon at him, trying to woo him with a summer love song Jeongguk can't quite place. But he is smiling and holding their hands while they do it so Jeongguk figures that now would be the best time to act like a little shit.

"Hyung, why do you get to make goo-goo eyes at your boyfriends during work and I don't even get to flirt with any of the customers without you threatening to cut my paycheck in half?"

"Because they're my boyfriends and I'm your boss, you brat!" Seokjin yells back at him, face going from pink to red in a flash. "I'm allowed to."

"Aw, sweetheart, you know just what to say to make a guy swoon," one of the dancers says while rubbing his brown hair into Seokjin's cheek.

The pink-haired man nuzzles his face into Seokjin's neck and laughs when Seokjin sputters. "Babe, are you ever going to introduce us?"

Seokjin grumbles, glaring at Jeongguk then at Mingyu who is smirking and making faces at him from the counter. "That shithead over there is Jeongguk-ah who is so dedicated to being a server that he comes in even on his days off."

Jeongguk smirks at him, shooting finger guns at Seokjin's boyfriends when they wave at him. "Pleasure to meet you both."

"That asshole behind the counter is Mingyu-yah who is the greatest barista this world has ever seen. He never gets an order out late. Ever. Not even during a rush. I have no idea how he does it," Seokjin says as he points at Mingyu, his tone of voice changing from annoyed to amazed. "He has to be an undercover god. That is the only explanation."

"Hi! Not a god, but it's great to finally be introduced to you both. You've been coming in here for months trying to flirt with Seokjin-hyung and I almost thought it wouldn't work," Mingyu laughs, laughing louder when Seokjin glares at him and flips him the finger. "I'm glad to see that it did. Finally."

"Asshole," Seokjin huffs out, his ears and neck now as red as his face.

He points to the pink-haired man with a smile that makes Jeongguk want to gag. "This is Jimin." Then to the taller man on his other side. "This is Hoseok. They are my boyfriends."

Jimin giggles and pokes Seokjin in the side, giggling even harder when Seokjin makes a squawking sound and tries to hide behind Hoseok, only to be poked by him as well. Jeongguk laughs at his boss, walking over to the counter where Mingyu is snickering and orders a hot chocolate and lemon muffin.

"So, when is Lover Boy coming in?" Mingyu asks once Jeongguk has paid and gotten his change back. "You wouldn't be here on your day off unless he asked you to meet him here or something."

Jeongguk only shrugs, laughing when Seokjin squawks again and starts yelling about how inconvenient dating is. "In a few minutes probably. I got here earlier than I thought."

"Ah, so it is a date! I knew it!" Mingyu shouts, reaching over the counter to shake Jeongguk by his shoulders. "Why didn't you say anything earlier?"

"Because it isn't a date?" Jeongguk tries, pushing his thumbs into Mingyu's wrists so he will let him go. "He just asked me to meet him here because he wanted to talk about something. I don't think that counts as asking me on a date."

Mingyu rolls his eyes and tries shaking him again, laughing when Jeongguk steps back and swats his hands away. "It's a date, shut up."

"You shut up!"

"You!"

"Give me my hot chocolate already! You don't want this to be the first time you get an order out late," Jeongguk gripes, reaching over the counter to shake Mingyu instead. "I'm not worth your perfect record."

Mingyu grins, pushing him away as he steps back towards the machines Seokjin still won't let Jeongguk touch. "Shut up. Your hot chocolate is almost done, I'm waiting on the milk to finish heating up right now, asshole."

Jeongguk laughs at him. "Thanks, Gyu-yah."

"Yeah, yeah," Mingyu throws over his shoulder as a machine beeps and he focuses on making Jeongguk's hot chocolate instead. "Just take it and claim a table for you and your date because it is definitely a date."

His hot chocolate is done so Jeongguk takes it along with his muffin and sticks his tongue out at Mingyu, turning to pick out a table Yoongi would probably like best. He's debating on a corner table or one by the front windows when the bell rings over the door and Seokjin stops squawking in light of the new customer. Jeongguk looks up to find Yoongi walking in, smiling at him like he's the best thing Yoongi has seen all day and flushes a bright pink as his heart tries to beat its way out of his chest.

"You're so gone, it's not even funny," Mingyu whispers behind him, laughing when Jeongguk turns his head to shoot him with a glare he is sure Seokjin would be proud of.

Jeongguk turns back to face Yoongi though, smiling again until he realizes Yoongi is staring at Hoseok and Jimin. Yoongi shakes his head and comes to the counter, bumping his hip into Jeongguk's leg as he orders and pays then squeezes Jeongguk's hand before turning to face Seokjin and his two boyfriends.

"So this is why you two recommended this place to me, isn't it? Because your boyfriend is the owner," Yoongi grunts, walking over to where the trio is standing by the corner of the long counter that is directly facing the back room. "Assholes."

Hoseok grins at him, motioning towards Seokjin's face. "Can you blame us? We want everyone to see just how pretty our new boyfriend is."

"He's the prettiest," Jimin adds on, poking Seokjin's side to make him squawk again. "And the jumpiest. Don't you agree?"

"Whatever you two say," Yoongi rolls his eyes and sticks his hand out for Seokjin to shake. "I'm Min Yoongi and I wish you good luck with these two. They're a menace."

Seokjin shakes his hand, dropping it when Hoseok pokes his other side. "I'm Kim Seokjin and please take care of our Jeonggukkie or I will gut you. He's my best server!"

"I'm the only one you like!" Jeongguk shouts at him, stepping forward when Mingyu shoves him towards the others.

"Untrue! I like Seokmin-ah more than I do you, you brat!"

"False!" Jeongguk yells, sticking a finger in Seokjin's face. "You like me best! Admit it already."

Seokjin shakes his head and points toward one of the corner tables on the other side of the coffeehouse. "Go start your date and leave me alone or I'll fire you."

"Hyung! You wouldn't!" Jeongguk shoots back, grinning when Yoongi rolls his eyes at them both and stalks off towards the counter for his drink and then the table Seokjin had pointed to.

"I wouldn't, but I would cut your paycheck," Seokjin says easily, smirking when Jeongguk steps back in false shock. "Go to your date, brat. Leave me and mine alone."

Jeongguk shoots him finger guns and walks backward, months spent swerving through the tables letting him do it without knocking things over. "Gotcha!"

Seokjin huffs and squawks, running behind the counter when both his boyfriends poke him at the same time for being a mean boss. Jeongguk laughs at him, grinning at Mingyu when he turns and then lets his smile soften once he catches Yoongi's eye.

"Things always like this when your boss is around?" Yoongi starts with, brow raised in question.

"Not a chance. We'd be out of business if it was," Jeongguk chuckles as he unwraps his muffin. "So, what's up? You said you wanted to talk about something."

Yoongi nods, setting his drink down on the table then steeples his fingers together. "I actually wanted to ask you something. It's kind of important and I didn't really know a better place to ask than here."

Jeongguk nods, taking a bite out of his muffin and quickly chewing it before he swallows. "Then shoot. I'm all ears."

He blows onto his hot chocolate and takes a tiny sip, setting it down on the table as well before he grants Yoongi his full and undivided attention. Yoongi is starting to flush, his cheeks turning pinker by the second. He takes a deep breath and Jeongguk almost wants to reach out touch him, reassure him that he can ask whatever it is he wants to, but something tells him not to so he keeps his own hands in plain view on the tabletop.

"Do you want to go on a date with me this weekend? We could do dinner and a movie or play some mini-golf. Whatever you'd like to do," Yoongi says slowly, his cheeks a bright pink and the shift of his gaze nervous.

Jeongguk blinks at him, his heart picking up speed as he continues to stare. He honestly never thought this was going to ever happen to him again — not after Namjoon — but he's past that now. He knows that he is and Yoongi is a really great guy, who is kind and wants to date him. Forreal date him and it isn't even a question whether or not Jeongguk wants to date Yoongi. He has been ready to start dating again, he is sure of that as he is sure of anything else, but Yoongi is sitting in front of him, nervously waiting for an answer and Jeongguk almost feels bad for letting him get the chance to doubt anything between them.

Jeongguk finds that the right answer to Yoongi's question is already on the tip of his tongue so he smiles and reaches out, taking one of Yoongi's hands in his own.

"I'd love to."

#yoonkook #sugakookie #yoonkooknetwork #btswritingcafe #btswriterscollective #kwritersworldnet #kwordsmiths #btsguild #betareadernet #bts #angst #fluff #p:yoongi/jeongguk #f:mmsgttc #m: fic

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dumdeeedum · 5 years

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“The Magicians” Alice/Quentin/Eliot Love Triangle? Que? No, let’s stop the fuck right there...

I’m so frustrated with how bad Wednesday night’s episode of “The Magicians” was and with how bad this entire season has been, especially with how poorly they’ve handled anything to do with Alice, Quentin, and Eliot. I mean, generally I’m frustrated with how bad this show can be way too often but I’m going to try to keep my thoughts as organized as I can.

I want to preface all of this by saying that no, I don’t believe they’re still pursuing Eliot and Quentin because they’ve still given me no reason to. I just wanted to express my thoughts on these rumors of a love triangle and who knows, they might go that way, I don’t work there. I just know that for now they’ve set things up in a really poor way and I don’t see a true Eliot and Quentin outcome happening for a while if at all.

First I gotta reiterate this in case it isn’t clear: this is not a well-written show for me, it’s a fun show, to be sure, but not a well-written one. They have too few episodes to get away with the amount of dicking around they do and it’s clear they have no direction even when they have source material to draw from, and that’s a bad combination and a big problem. And those are just some of its issues.

A show like “Black Sails,” for example, had about 8 episodes per season and made good use of every minute of them because that’s how you tell the story you want to tell when you have limited time and can’t fuck around with filler. Very similar situation with the show “Spartacus” with a similar number of episodes per season to “The Magicians” and they wrapped it up in 4 seasons. But I tend to think 4-5 seasons is the limit before a show loses focus and goes downhill anyway.

It has also become clear to me that Sera Gamble has no interest in doing anything progressive. She wants to be one of the boys, play the game and get ahead which is her prerogative but at this point people have to come to terms with the fact that she’s always been a White Feminist(tm) and quit fucking around like she gives a shit about equity for marginalized communities or even visibility. All of the bullshit to do with Sera Gamble has been known for years now, too, so I’m not even sure why anyone would be surprised that she sucks at this point. I’m sure she’s sitting somewhere right now unable to understand where she fucked up and why because she doesn’t have it in her to accept criticism and it shows. Last I heard she’s still going after people on twitter for not liking the outcomes of her dumbass decisions as a show-runner; bitch, grow up!

You know what would be truly radical in this series? Stop having these women live for these men. Julia is off losing her autonomy to a man, again, Kady is about ready to allow herself to die because she misses her boyfriend, Margo is ditching the plan to save her best friend over some super mediocre, joke of a man she can do better than without even trying, and Alice is once again in Quentin’s orbit and having nothing to do for herself. Yay, feminism? You’re fucking kidding me, right?

And now I’m hearing people saying that they’re trying to set up a love triangle in season 5 between Eliot, Quentin, and Alice and I think the idea of this disgusts me more than if they’d just drop Eliot and Quentin as a pairing altogether after the massive fuckup that was the latter part of this season. How obtuse do you have to be to think a bisexual love triangle would be appropriate queer representation given our social climate? But here’s the thing, they’re playing on your intelligence if they do this, again, and I’m about to explain why.

Yes, it’s going to get lengthy because I’m going to be discussing the show from a social but also from a narrative standpoint, but you know me by now.

Don’t get it twisted, what they would ultimately be doing if they went this route is giving us even more straight representation while under the guise of bisexual representation given that Alice and Quentin are now back together, as a straight couple whether you think Quentin is bisexual or not. And that’s what matters when it comes to queer visibility. We’ve gotten straight Quentin pairings now from seasons 1-4 and they’ve yet to have Quentin explore any same-sex romantic partnerships or even fantasies other than the nonsense with Eliot because those were blink and you miss them moments.

And here’s the insidiousness of all of this and I really want people to think about this: They would use this as an excuse to still appear as though they were doing right by their queer audience while once again only really exploring one facet of Quentin’s supposed bisexuality, the more palatable one, while ignoring the other, more taboo one and calling it bisexual representation. That is not good bisexual representation, at all, how can it be?

And god forbid you raise a stink over these poor attempts at representation because then you get accused of hating and bi-phobia and of erasing Quentin’s bisexuality and blah blah blah. And, really, bisexual, where? Where are we going to get this exploration of Quentin’s sexuality while he’s dating Alice again and Eliot is somewhere in the sidelines dealing with the aftermath of being possessed by a being who murdered people using his body?

Can we stop with the intellectual dishonesty? Can we stop accepting these insults to the intelligence of the lgbtqa community?

And no, don’t even pretend the idea of a poly-amorous relationship wouldn’t be a fucking absurdity given their history. Quentin and Alice broke up because Quentin fucked Eliot and Margo. One of the people involved in that betrayal would be one of the last people Alice would want to share her boyfriend with. And that’s if she would even be OK with a poly-amorous relationship to begin with because the idea seemed to disturb her when her parents were doing it and frankly, not everyone is poly-amorous, in fact, most people aren’t.

Unfortunately, that’s just part of living in a heteronormative society where people, as a whole, just aren’t evolved enough yet to have explored other types of relationship dynamics because of the restrictions society has placed on them and it is what it is. The polyamory argument doesn’t even belong in the same space as the bisexuality argument because it makes bisexuality seem like a life choice as opposed to something people are born as. I’d say it’s less realistic, right now, to have everyone OK with sharing their significant others with everyone than to have a person identify as bisexual! Most people don’t have the self-confidence or the conditions to improve their self-esteem enough to even explore poly yet, and some people just aren’t into it and that’s their right, but I digress.

It just seems like everything that should have been happening in this season would instead be happening next season if they went this route and the only difference would be that they’d have made it palatable for their straight, homophobic audience by having Alice on Quentin’s dick the majority of the time they should be using to explore Quentin’s sexuality. When would they have time to give Quentin the important moments of introspection he needs to figure out whom and what he wants? Even his getting back together with Alice was very abrupt and didn’t seem like a well thought out decision on either Quentin’s or Alice’s part. Why couldn’t they just be single for a while if they were going to waste season 4 and work on this in season 5??

But this is just what they do by now because they can’t write a good romance. Straight shit gets put on the fast track in an absurdly unrealistic way, everyone’s in love in 5 minutes, smart, beautiful, boss bitch women date mediocre men when we’d never see it the other way around, and anything queer gets a couple of seconds of screen-time at best before someone is killed off, or they add a woman to the mix for no good reason, or we have to do a 50 year montage with no actual romantic intimacy to establish tha they’re even romantically interested in one another, blah blah, woof, woof.

Here’s a good question for those of you bi-Quentin-stans: None of you think it odd that while these creators kept alluding to exploring a canon male/male pairing with a bisexual character Alice and Julia, two women whom have exclusively dated men, have still had, to date, a longer, more sexually charged make out scene than gay Eliot and a supposedly bisexual Quentin ever have? Not to mention that the only time we explore Quentin’s sexuality in fantasy it’s some super fucking trite women making out for his pleasure fantasy.

No one thinks about why that is? No one thinks that perhaps it’s because depicting lesbian situations for the male gaze is a super common thing to do in media and is another one of those things that allows creators to pretend they have queer representation when really they’re trying to draw male views by exploiting the women of their series? It seemed pretty obvious to me as soon as I saw it but I haven’t fucked around with critiques of this shit in a long time and I don’t let this shit slide.

So now if they went the love triangle route in season 5 how would that work?

We’ve gotten a story line where not only was Eliot right that Quentin wouldn’t choose him when Quentin has the choice, but Eliot is going to have to come back and see this shit and deal with it on top of whatever massive trauma being possessed like this would inevitably cause. Do we really see Eliot saying anything to Quentin after that knowing what we know about Eliot’s way of handling shit? 4.5 leaves us thinking that maybe Eliot now sees that perhaps he shouldn’t have been so quick to reject Quentin and that perhaps Quentin would have chosen him and that Eliot wasn’t right to suggest he wouldn’t and yet here we are. And knowing what we know about Eliot would he try to get between that?

I actually think they’d done a good job closing the chapter on Alice and Quentin when Quentin told Alice he didn’t love her anymore and closed the book and I think they could have explored a really good friendship between them after that! That should have been when Alice and Kady did their own library thing and became more fully-fleshed out characters in their own right and when Quentin started exploring his own options and realizing he would choose Eliot even if at the time he thought Eliot wouldn’t choose him. Because this is something he should have been thinking about anyway!

There seems to be a pretty big issue that no one is considering about 4.5 and it’s a result of this ret-con having been handled so poorly so they couldn’t do what really needed to be done with the aftermath of it. The rejection conversation was really fucking poorly done because it was such a short, almost throwaway scene! We have Quentin get his memories back and immediately jump to wanting to be with Eliot and Eliot rejects him, for very good reason, in my opinion. Quentin seems a little bummed about it and then the scene ends. But from what we know about episodes 3.5 and on, Quentin hasn’t given it another thought. It didn’t even come up when he talked up Fillory to the plant so I really reject the premise that it was so traumatic for him to be rejected by Eliot that he didn’t even want to talk about anything to do with Fillory. Unless he’s even more immature than I thought it seems really unlikely that being rejected would eliminate all the other good shit in Quentin’s mind that relates to that lifetime, like, I don’t know, his fucking wife, his son, his grandchildren!? Miss me with that and stop excusing the shit decisions they make for Quentin in this show.

Was the idea here that they continue to go this route where everyone is expected to consider Quentin's feelings but he isn’t expected to consider theirs? Quentin has a habit of being inconsiderate dating back to season 1 (For Julia, his best friend, not getting into Brakebills was her punishment because she wouldn’t fuck him, Alice shouldn’t be upset that he cheated on her and Quentin doesn’t have to respect it when she tells him to back off, etc.) and the reasoning is always that Quentin’s got a low self-esteem and depressive issues but that’s not good enough now with 50 years of life experience under his belt. It’s especially not good enough when it comes to a man whom he’s known an entire lifetime through good and bad. So why didn’t they have him even consider what Eliot said to him and the validity of it?

Eliot explicitly says to Quentin that he knows Quentin so he knows how this would turn out, and Eliot was right! But somehow when Eliot rejects Quentin it isn’t incumbent upon Quentin to consider why Eliot would do that even though Quentin knows his own dating history and that he’d had a wife in Fillory? We’re just supposed to accept that Quentin just took the rejection at face value without even really listening to the wording or thinking about where Eliot might be coming from? Neither his nor Eliot’s problems or desires in the real world have suddenly disappeared just because they got their memories of Fillory back and Quentin knows that. Eliot made that point when he rejected Quentin, in a way, so isn’t there more to consider here? It’s especially egregious for this to be Quentin’s take away when we remember that Eliot didn’t have a husband in Fillory so Eliot was always there for Quentin and Quentin’s son and even Quentin’s wife in ways Quentin couldn’t be there for Eliot. How could it be as simple as “in the real world, you don’t do it for me” by Quentin? That’s just dumb.

A better scene would have had Eliot qualify his rejection to a man he spent 50 fucking years in love with so that Quentin could consider Eliot’s feelings on the subject before jumping to conclusions or even making a decision about them. And Quentin could have taken a moment to discuss Eliot’s insecurities if he really wanted to be with him or even just understand them. But instead the takeaway is more “poor victim Quentin isn’t special.” That’s just bad writing!

And what about Eliot? What does he get in all of this if they went the triangle route? Would they then allow him to explore a non-toxic relationship of his own or would he be sitting by like a dog and watching this shitshow of a romance between Quentin and Alice for however long it takes before they give us a sprinkling of Queliot? And who will be there to support him when his best friend is off fucking around with that loser Josh and Quentin is back with the girl that Eliot was afraid Quentin would choose over him? This effectively leaves Eliot alone to handle shit the way he’s always handled it and that’s just bad for his character after all the development he’s had.

What kind of queer representation is this going to be moving forward? We barely got Eliot this season, will he just sort of be there next season and have just as little to do as he had this season? He has nothing more to do in Fillory so where will they stick him now?

Narratively, everything that’s happened post 4.5 has really fucked the ability for an Eliot and Quentin pairing to work unless they double time it in season 5 and I don’t see how they can when Quentin is with Alice again. The show-runners have really gone out of their way to erase anything having to do with Eliot and Quentin as a couple to the point where it makes 3.5 and 4.5 seem like alternate universe versions of the show that don’t fit into the rest of the series. It’s clear to me at this point that they’re trying to move past the idea of Eliot and Quentin as a couple so even a triangle would seem really bizarre in light of that.

I’m not seeing it, I’m really not and as much as I know people want to hold out hope that Eliot and Quentin will happen I just feel like at this point the show would be trying to run out the clock without giving them anything substantial the same way they did this season. Everyone’s obviously free to do what they want with that but realistically I would hold out and not give them ratings until we see if they give us something that isn’t insulting bullshit.

#the magicians #queliot #eliot waugh #quentin coldwater #alice quinn #representation #lgbtqa representation #representation matters #media #television

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