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junghelioseok · 3 years

Text

clandestine. | 03

↳ forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest.

◇ jungkook x reader ◇ smut | fluff | brother’s best friend!au ◇ 9.2k [3/6]

notes: this will likely be my last update of this fic until the new year, because i have two (2!!!) other fics that i’m planning to post in december, including another jungoo one, so! please look forward to those, and enjoy this chapter in the meantime!

warnings: jk’s massive noona kink: a recurring yet warranted warning, me absolutely fucking up everything about korea’s geography probably, semi-public? fingering???, jungkook....... shall we say, rocks the boat, there is one (1) dick pic but no one’s complaining

⇢ 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06

Monday - 11:27am

Kim Taehyung added you to the group: the great escape!!!!!! 🏝🚗💨

[11:27am] Taehyung: let’s gooooooooooo!!

[11:27am] Jisoo: ???

[11:28am] Lisa: go where?

[11:28am] Taehyung: parks lake house this weekend! we’re going on vacation!

[11:28am] You: hold up tae, we haven’t even asked our parents if we can have the house yet

[11:29am] Chimchim: oh yeah lmao

[11:29am] Chimchim: u wanna go ask noona??

[11:29am] You: nope

[11:30am] Chimchim: ugh, fine

[11:30am] Chimchim: u big baby

[11: 31am] You: 🙄

[11: 37am] Chimchim: they said yes!

[11:38am] Taehyung: LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

[11:38am] Minho: sweet 👍

[11:38am] Taemin: tight

[11:39am] Jungkook: dope

[11:40AM] Jisoo: you’re all idiots 🙄

Tuesday - 2:34pm

[2:34pm] Chimchim: i’ve secured the van

[2:34pm] Chimchim: for the trip i mean

[2:35pm] Taehyung: noice

[2:35pm] You: 10 people aren’t gonna fit in mom’s van, chim

[2:37pm] Jungkook: i can drive too

[2:37pm] Chimchim: 👍👍

[2:37pm] Chimchim: see? nothing to worry about

[2:38pm] Jungkook: yeah noona, nothing to worry about. nothing at all.

Wednesday - 9:49pm

[9:49pm] Taehyung: oh my god we need FOOD

[9:49pm] Lisa: you’re just realizing that now?

[9:50pm] Taehyung: shut up

[9:50pm] Taehyung: i have a cooler

[9:51pm] Lisa: and ice?

[9:51pm] Taehyung: ………… i will buy some ice

[9:52pm] You: there’s a grocery store on the way up that we always used to go to, we can stock up there

[9:52pm] Taehyung: 👍

[9:54pm] You: you also better remember to bring your own towels. and more than one change of clothing

[9:54pm] Taehyung: 👍👍

[9:55pm] Chimchim: yes, mom

///

The day of the trip finds you standing in the foyer, rifling through your purse to make sure you have all the essentials. Off in the distance, you can hear Jimin sprinting around frantically, catching the briefest glimpse of his ruffled blond hair before he disappears again into the depths of the house.

“Chim, I swear to god. Why didn’t you pack earlier?”

“I did!” your brother whines, poking his head out from the living room where his suitcase is lying wide open, belongings scattered in every direction. “It’s just that—oh, fuck. Do you have my toothbrush?”

“Why would I have your toothbrush?” you deadpan.

He ignores you, and not two seconds later, he lets out an excited shout. “Never mind! I found it!”

You sigh and rub your temples. The trip hasn’t even begun, yet you’re already feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on. “I’m going outside,” you call to your brother, who grunts in acknowledgement. Opening up the front door, you drag your suitcase out onto the sun-drenched porch, relishing the welcome breeze that caresses your cheeks and whispers through your hair.

The rare moment of peace is broken almost immediately by the rumble of a starting engine—the sound shuddery and wavering before it finally evens out into a steady, mechanical purr. It’s coming from nearby, and your gaze immediately travels to the neighboring driveway where a beat-up sedan sits, torn between exasperation and amusement when you see Jungkook waving at you from the driver’s seat.

“I’m coming to pick you up!” he calls through the open window, and you hold back your laughter as he reverses out of his driveway, rolls ten feet down the street, and pulls into yours.

“Was that really necessary?” you ask once he’s parked.

“Of course it was,” he replies, hopping out to grab your suitcase. You watch as he pops the trunk and loads it inside, and blanch when you realize what that means.

“Wait a second. Am I riding with you?”

Some emotion flashes across his face, but he wipes it away before you can identify it. “Would that be so terrible?”

It’s been one week since Taehyung’s party, and Jisoo’s warning still rings loud and clear in your brain. Still, you feign nonchalance and tamp down the uptick in your heart rate, offering him a shrug. “Just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”

He grunts. An awkward silence settles over you as he adjusts your suitcase in the trunk beside his, and you distract yourself by fiddling with your purse strap until he slams the lid closed.

“So…” you start after a few seconds. “Are we picking anyone else up?”

“Yugyeom,” Jungkook replies, opening up the driver’s side door and climbing in. Hesitantly, you make your way over to the other side of the car, wondering if there’s any way you can avoid sitting in the passenger seat without looking like a total weirdo.

“Oh! Jungkook’s here already?” Jimin exits the house at last, lugging his suitcase and a smaller backpack. He shoves both into the backseat of your mother’s van before coming over, frowning when he sees you hovering near the trunk. “Why are you just standing there?”

You make a face at him. “We’re waiting for you, dumbass. Who’s riding with you?”

“Tae, Minho, and Taemin,” your brother replies. “Didn’t you see the group chat this morning?”

“I muted it days ago,” you admit. “You guys were annoying as hell.” Then another thought strikes you, your brain belatedly registering the names Jimin listed. “Wait, what about the girls? Aren’t they coming?”

Your brother rolls his eyes. “Jisoo’s working as a camp counselor this summer, and Lisa has other vacation plans. Maybe if you hadn’t muted the chat, you’d have known that.”

He has a point, though you aren’t about to admit that. You’re also wise enough not to inquire about the third member of the trio, remembering Jisoo’s revelation at the party. It’s no surprise that Chaeyoung isn’t joining you for the weekend—you’d want to avoid extended periods of time with your ex-boyfriend too. At the thought, your gaze reluctantly flits back over to the ex in question, who raises an expectant brow when he catches your eye.

“Ready?” he calls out the open window.

No, you want to say. But Jimin has already clambered into the van and slammed the door shut, and Jungkook’s car is blocking the van in the driveway so you suck in a deep breath and slide into the passenger seat beside your dark-haired neighbor.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Jungkook nods and throws the car into reverse. One hand splays across the wheel while the other comes up to rest on the back of your seat, and your breath hitches when he cranes around to check his blind spots, his face suddenly too close for comfort.

He’s playing with you, you tell yourself firmly, leaning back until your back’s pressed against the door and you can safely breathe again. Chaeyoung. Think about what he did to Chaeyoung.

“Hey, I made a roadtrip mix,” Jungkook pipes up all of a sudden. He grabs his phone from where it’s resting on the dashboard, tapping at the screen until the first strains of a melody filter through the car speakers. “It should last us the whole way.”

You perk up when you recognize the tune. “Oh! I love this song.”

Jungkook watches out of the corner of his eye as you bob your head to the beat, before smiling down at his lap. “Yeah. I know.”

///

Yugyeom lives on the other side of town, in a sprawling, winding neighborhood that sends your brain—and your phone’s GPS—into a complete and total tailspin. “Wait, wait—hang on. I think you missed a turn. You must have.”

Jungkook’s face crumples in confusion as he slows the car to a crawl, drawing a few irritated honks from the cars behind you. “There weren’t any streets back there, though.”

“Are you sure?” you ask, twisting in your seat to get a better look. “The directions said to take a right in… oh, fuck, hang on. We’re not even on a digitized road anymore, apparently.”

Jungkook heaves a sigh, but when you glance up at him, he’s wearing a grin. “Come on, Noona. You’re supposed to be my navigator. I’m depending on you.”

“I only know how to get us to the lake house, not Yugyeom’s,” you sniff defensively. “This is way beyond my pay grade.”

Jungkook chortles and reaches out, extending an open palm. “Can I see your phone for a sec?” You nod, handing it over, and he clicks his tongue as he turns it upside-down—rotating it a full three hundred and sixty degrees before returning it. “We might be lost,” he declares.

“Gee, you don’t say.”

He chuckles again. Picking up his own phone, he swipes a thumb across the screen before handing the unlocked device over. “Here, call Yugyeom. Put him on speaker, yeah?”

You hum in acknowledgement and scroll down in his contacts until you find the other boy’s name, clicking it open. A photo fills the screen as it rings—clearly a group photo from the way it’s cropped, zoomed in on Yugyeom and the ridiculous face he’s making.

“Is this from graduation?” you ask curiously.

Jungkook blinks and tears his gaze away from the windshield. “Huh?”

“Yugyeom’s contact photo,” you clarify, tilting the phone screen so he can see. “He’s got robes on.”

“Oh.” He looks away again, cheeks flushing. “Yeah. It’s lame, I know.”

You shake your head. “Don’t say that. I think it’s nice.”

Jungkook doesn’t get a chance to respond, but it’s impossible to miss the grin that crinkles his face and settles there. There’s a staticky hum as the line connects, and then Yugyeom’s voice is filling the vehicle, sounding as if he’s just rolled out of bed.

“Whaddaya want?”

“We can’t find your fucking house, man,” Jungkook says bluntly, turning onto a street that you’ve driven down at least three times by this point. “Where do you live?”

On the other end of the line, Yugyeom sighs. “Okay, okay. What street are you guys on?”

That gives Jungkook pause. “Uhh, Cedar Street? Oak Avenue? It has a tree name.”

“Neither of those streets exist, dude.”

“Birch Boulevard!” you exclaim. “We’re on Birch Boulevard. I saw the sign a while back.”

“Ah, okay. You’re close, then. Do you see a sign for Linden Lane?”

You glance around until you alight on a signpost. “Yeah.”

“Turn right onto it. Then take the first left, go past the cul-de-sac, and another left. Do not pass Go, and do not collect two-hundred dollars. I’m the fifth house on the right.”

He ends the call before you can ask him to repeat the directions, and you send Jungkook a helpless look. “Did you get all of that?”

“Besides the overused Monopoly joke?” Jungkook asks.. “Yeah, I got it. Right, left, left. Fifth house. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get there.”

And true to his word, you arrive at the house three minutes later. Yugyeom is standing on the front step with rumpled hair and a duffel bag at his feet, and you snort when he throws open the car door and flops across the entirety of the backseat.

“Rough morning?”

“Stayed up late packing,” he says by way of explanation, his eyes already beginning to drift shut. Jungkook immediately turns the music up, and you giggle when Yugyeom shoots upright at the bassline that’s now shaking the entire vehicle. “I’m up, I’m up! Jeez, man.”

Jungkook just sends him an innocent grin in the rearview mirror. You turn the volume back down to a reasonable level as Yugyeom directs Jungkook onto the best route to take out of the neighborhood, and it isn’t long before you’re merging onto the highway that leads toward the coast.

You’re just beginning to get comfortable, staring out the window at the passing cityscape, when your leg vibrates with an incoming text notification. Glancing down, you see that Jungkook’s phone has slipped between your thigh and the seat, the screen lit with a new message.

[10:21am] Minho: gonna be at the store in 10

“Minho says they’ll be at the grocery store in ten minutes,” you relay to your companions. “We have a little longer to go. Probably another half hour or so.”

“We wouldn’t be so far behind if Yugyeom didn’t live in a fucking labyrinth,” Jungkook remarks, but a glance at the young man in the backseat reveals that he’s drifted off despite your earlier stunt. Rolling his eyes, he turns to you. “Can you text him back, Noona?”

You nod and hold out his phone so he can unlock it with his thumb. “Hey,” you say once you’ve hit send on the message. “Do you have a contact photo for me?”

Jungkook stiffens slightly, his gaze skittering between you and the road. “Oh. Uh, yeah, I guess I do. But it’s nothing, really. It’s kinda lame. But you… you can look at it if you want.”

Curiosity piqued, you scroll down until you find your name, tapping on the image beside it. The photo is from several years ago, during a family trip to the lake house with the Jeons. You are no older than fifteen, your arm slung around a fourteen-year-old Jungkook as the two of you stand knee-deep in the lake, wearing swimsuits and bright smiles. In the background, you can just barely make out a blurry Jimin mid-splash.

“I remember this,” you murmur, zooming in on your smiling faces. “That was a fun summer.”

“Junghyun was grumpy the whole time,” Jungkook recalls with a laugh. “But we had a good time, didn’t we? We practically lived in the lake that entire week.”

“Or that old canoe.” You grin, taking one last look at the photo before locking his phone and handing it back to him. “Remember? We’d always row out too far, and our parents would scream for us to come back before we fell in and drowned.”

Jungkook snickers. “As if I’d ever let you drown. I’m a great swimmer.”

“Are you saying I’m not?”

He backpedals immediately, realizing his mistake. “Hey, don’t twist my words. I said nothing of the sort.”

“That’s what I thought.” Giggling, you turn to look out the window, propping your chin in your palm as you watch the scenery flash past. “And I want that photo, by the way. Send it to me?”

“As soon as we get to the store,” Jungkook promises. “Speaking of which, we’re getting close. Keep an eye out for the exit for me?”

“Deal.”

///

Jimin and the others are waiting in the parking lot when you arrive, perched on and around the van as they watch Jungkook expertly maneuver the car into a neighboring parking space. “Took you long enough,” your brother says once the engine is cut, hopping off the hood and landing lightly on both feet.

“We’re here now, aren’t we?” you snark as you join the others hovering near the grocery store entrance. Jimin makes a face at you, and you stick your tongue out in response. After a quick huddle—wherein you form a very haphazard game plan—everyone disperses. Jimin grabs a shopping cart and heads inside with Taehyung and Minho, the latter of whom is trying to clamber his way into the cart to hitch a ride.

Sighing, you grab a shopping cart of your own and scan the interior of the store for the produce section. They’ve rearranged the aisles since you were last here, but you quickly find what you’re looking for and begin picking your way over when Jungkook materializes at your side.

“So, what are you thinking for food?” he asks, nudging you away so he can push the cart in your stead.

You allow him to take over, gesturing toward your destination. “I know my brother,” you tell him dryly. “He’s going to buy meat and completely forget about everything else. And I don’t trust any of you to buy a single fruit or vegetable.”

“I like fruit and vegetables,” Jungkook defends.

“You like everything,” you correct, flashing him a teasing grin before leading him into the produce section.

Grocery shopping with Jungkook turns out to be surprisingly pleasant—comfortable, even. He proves adept at finding the ripest fruits and greenest vegetables, and when you ask him to find some apples, he trots off immediately and returns with a handful of sweet potatoes in addition to your requested fruit.

You raise an eyebrow. “What are you planning to do with those?”

Jungkook feigns offense, slapping a hand to his heart. “That’s cold, Noona. Don’t you think I can cook?”

“I’ve never seen you cook in my life,” you respond. “How am I supposed to know if you can or not?”

“I can,” he promises. “And I’ll prove it too, if you let me.”

You get the feeling he’s not just talking about cooking anymore, but he doesn’t give you a chance to answer. Dropping the apples and potatoes into the cart, he flashes you a crooked little smile before turning toward a display of cabbages, leaving you to wonder at what exactly is going through his head.

///

It’s nearly one in the afternoon when you arrive at your family’s lake house. The last stretch of the drive takes you through the forest along a winding, narrow road, but Jungkook is a capable driver and you know the way well enough to warn him about any upcoming hairpin turns. Piling out of the car, the three of you make quick work of putting the food safely into the refrigerator. By the time you’re finished, Jimin and the others have arrived as well, lugging their belongings inside and setting them inside the entryway.

“So who’s sleeping where?” Taehyung asks, glancing around the house. It’s modestly sized, with a living area on one side and a combined dining room and kitchen on the other. Three bedrooms and a bathroom branch off of the hallway between them, ending in a back door that leads out to the lake. Through the window, you can see the water glimmering in the sunlight, hazy and golden.

“We’ll have to share,” Jimin says. “ If Noona takes one room, that leaves two bedrooms and the pullout couch for the rest of us.”

Jungkook tilts his head. “Rock, paper, scissors?” he suggests, drawing a chorus of groans.

“I always lose!” Jimin complains. “And Taemin cheats!”

“Do not!”

Laughing at the indignant expression on your brother’s face, you decide to leave them to it and head to your bedroom with your luggage in tow. The room is just as you remember it, with a bed tucked against one wall and a dresser on the opposite. There are three doors in total—one that you just entered through, and another that opens into a small closet. The third leads to a bathroom—shared with the bedroom on the other side of the wall that usually belongs to Jimin. Vaguely, you wonder who will be sleeping there tonight, before setting your suitcase on the bed and unzipping it.

“Fuck!”

You jump at the sudden shout, poking your head out into the hallway to see what’s causing all the commotion. Yugyeom is kneeling on the floor with his head down, a crestfallen Taemin standing beside him. Meanwhile, Taehyung and Minho look supremely pleased with themselves, and you see why when they grab their bags and practically skip to the master bedroom across the hall, collapsing onto the king-sized bed.

“Have fun on the couch, losers!” Jimin singsongs, grabbing Jungkook by the wrist and dragging him into their newly won bedroom on your side of the hallway. “Lake in fifteen minutes, so get changed! Last one there’s in charge of dinner!”

The door slams shut behind him, and you roll your eyes before turning back to your opened suitcase and pulling out a book. There’s a perfectly shaded spot beneath one of the trees along the water, and you fully intend to capitalize on the last few hours of daylight before the sun begins to set.

Minho is the only one outside when you exit the house, standing on the dock in a pair of green swim trunks. He waves at you cheerily before cannonballing into the lake, and you squeak as the resulting splash sends water splattering across the front of your shirt.

“Sorry!” he calls when he resurfaces, shaking his hair out like a wet dog.

You wave off his apology with a laugh, settling down onto the soft grass at the base of your chosen tree and opening up your book. The other boys trickle out of the house one by one, but you barely notice. It isn’t until a triumphant shout pierces the air that you finally glance up to see what’s causing all the commotion, your gaze immediately landing on Taehyung standing on the back steps of the house.

“Trust me,” he says, unbothered by his apparent tardiness. “You don’t want me to make dinner.”

Minho pulls a face and straightens up from where he’d been floating on his back. “You know, he kinda has a point there.”

Murmurs of agreement all around. Taehyung gives Jimin a smug smile, who scowls from where he’s sitting at the end of the dock, his bare feet dangling over the edge. “So what now? Do we have to play rock, paper, scissors again?”

“Nah, I’ll do it.”

Every head whips around to face Jungkook, yours included. He’s standing a short ways from where you’re sitting—his approach so quiet that you hadn’t even heard him arrive. The last time you checked, he’d been diving off the dock with Minho and Yugyeom, water pooling in his collarbones and dripping down the ridges of his taut abdomen each time he resurfaced.

Not that you’d been looking, of course.

“Really?” Jimin looks aghast at his best friend’s declaration. “You can cook?”

Jungkook scoffs in disbelief and plops down beside you, leaning back against the tree trunk. “Why does everyone in your family seem surprised by that?” he asks, his lip jutting out in a petulant frown. “Do I seem like someone who can’t cook?”

“Yes,” you tell him honestly, marking your page and letting the book fall shut. “Don’t take it personally, though. Men only learn how to cook in college when they have to start fending for themselves. And sometimes, not even then.”

The noise that leaves Jungkook’s mouth can best be described as disgruntled, but he doesn’t press any further. Instead, he peers over your shoulder to get a look at the cover of your book, mouthing the title to himself before glancing at you. “Haven’t I seen you reading this before?”

“Probably,” you admit. “It’s an old favorite.”

He hums, slouching back against the tree again, and when you look over, you see that both his eyes have fallen shut. With his mouth parted and his dark lashes resting on his cheeks, he looks years younger than he is—and so much more like the Jungkook you used to know.

“Tired?” you whisper.

“Long drive,” Jungkook whispers back, his head already beginning to loll. “Lemme sleep, Noona.”

Smiling to yourself, you return to your book and leave him to rest.

///

“So, what are you even planning to make?” Jimin asks, swinging his legs. He’s seated atop the kitchen counter, taking up the majority of what precious little space there is to begin with, and Jungkook sighs deeply as he’s forced to dodge around him yet again to peer into the refrigerator.

“You’ll see.”

“I don’t think you even know yet,” Taemin pipes up from the doorway. The other boys are in the living room playing Mario Kart, but Taemin and Jimin have selflessly pulled themselves away from the game to help their friend in the kitchen—or so they say. As far as you’re concerned, they’ve been nothing but a nuisance thus far, but you don’t voice that particular thought aloud.

“Ramen doesn’t count as making dinner,” Jimin points out snidely when Jungkook pauses too long next to the box of ramen packs. “Anyone can boil water. And you don’t get to add an egg and call it fancy, like you usually do.”

“My ramen is delicious, excuse you,” Jungkook retorts, pointing a spatula at him. “And that’s not even what I’m making, so fuck off.”

Jimin shrugs, but shuts his mouth nonetheless. You take the opportunity to throw some pork belly at him, the meat wrapped neatly in paper and tied off with twine. “Here,” you tell him. “You could at least make yourself useful and start grilling the meat.”

“Okay, mom,” your brother grumbles under his breath, hopping off the counter. He and Taemin head out to the back porch where the grill sits, and you join Jungkook at the stove where he’s staring thoughtfully at an empty pan.

“Try twisting the dial. I’ve heard that helps.”

Jungkook snaps out of his daze and turns to you. “Huh?”

“The stove. It won’t light itself, you know.”

Chuckling, Jungkook twists the dial as instructed, adding a drizzle of oil to the pan. As it heats up, he turns and selects a knife from the cutlery drawer. The sweet potatoes he’d insisted on purchasing are already washed and peeled, and you watch as he begins to slice them, your gaze automatically flitting down to his exposed forearms, his muscles flexing with every movement.

“Hey, Noona? Can you do me a favor?”

You blink, tearing your gaze from the branching veins lining his arms. “What?”

Jungkook, thankfully, doesn’t seem to notice your distracted state. “Can you put the rice in the microwave?” he asks, and you can’t help but giggle.

“Why?” you tease. “Are you still scared?”

“Of course not,” he retorts, but you don’t miss the wary look that flashes across his face when you plop the rice inside and go to punch in the cook time.

The remainder of the cooking goes smoothly. Jimin and Taemin return with the grilled meat, and Jungkook rebuffs your offer to set the table, leaving his position at the stove to lay plates and utensils down on the table himself. “I’m just about done, anyway,” he tells you, gesturing at the plate of glazed sweet potatoes on the counter. “Sit down and relax, Noona.”

“Fine,” you relent, taking a seat. Jimin takes the chair beside you, and Taemin plops down on his other side. Jungkook sits down just to your left once he’s finished laying out the food, and for a brief, insane moment, you almost think that he’s going to repeat what he’d done at his graduation dinner. But the dark-haired young man remains on his best behavior, keeping his hands to himself under the table, and you aren’t sure whether you’re grateful or disappointed.

The meal flies by in a flurry of laughter and conversation. Jungkook discovers that his glazed sweet potatoes have adhered to the plate, and sends everyone into hysterics when he promptly starts spinning it around like a steering wheel.

It’s a good night. And at the end of it, you go to bed warm and content, with a belly full of food and a smile on your face.

///

You awaken to the sound of chirping songbirds and gentle waves lapping at the shore the next morning, thoroughly rejuvenated after an undisturbed night’s sleep. Stretching your arms overhead, you yawn and bask in the comfort of your bed for a few more moments before getting up and heading to the bathroom, thankful that you don’t have to fight anyone for sink occupancy. The toilet seat is even down, which comes as a welcome surprise, all things considered.

Before long, you are back in your bedroom, rifling through the contents of your suitcase. Belatedly, you realize that you’ve packed only one swimsuit—and a bikini, at that. Cheeks warming, you pull the two pieces out, holding them up against your body. Has it always been this small? You don’t remember. All you know is that Jungkook has two fully functional eyes, and there’s no way that he won’t be looking at every inch of skin you choose to expose.

In the end, you settle on wearing the bikini beneath a flowy, floral kimono-style robe, tied at the waist to form a makeshift dress. The ensemble reaches just past your knees and is sheer enough to still show skin, but you no longer feel as self-conscious going out into the view of your companions and that’s a victory as far as you’re concerned. Checking your reflection one last time, you adjust your sash before opening the bedroom door and heading down the hall for some breakfast.

Unsurprisingly, the kitchen is empty when you walk in, tiptoeing past a still slumbering Taemin and Yugyeom on the pullout couch. You savor the quiet as you start up the old coffeemaker, pulling a mug from the cabinet and rinsing it out to get rid of any lingering dust. The weather app on your phone promises that it’ll be a clear, cloudless day, and a glance out the window confirms it. Silently, you debate whether or not to crack a window.

Your musings are interrupted by the arrival of Taehyung, his brown hair sticking up at all angles. Blearily, he trundles to the fridge and grabs the orange juice, seemingly two seconds away from chugging it straight from the carton before you clear your throat and push a clean glass toward him. You think you hear him mumble a thank you.

As the morning wears on, the others slowly begin to trickle in. Breakfast is a disorganized affair that leaves bread crumbs all over the counter, and nearly causes a fight when everyone seems to want their eggs cooked a different way.

“Look, if you wanted your egg soft-boiled, you should’ve made it yourself!” Jimin grouches to Taehyung, the t-shirt over his head muffling his words. Everyone else is already in the water, splashing about, but you’re seated on the end of the dock with your brother and Taehyung, who looks thoroughly unfazed behind his tinted sunglasses.

“Maybe if I knew how to soft boil an egg, I would have.”

“Google exists,” Jimin says, finally freeing himself from the shirt and tossing it aside.

Taehyung nods sagely. “Exactly. So why didn’t you use it?”

Jimin is beginning to look positively murderous, so when Minho swims over and taps your submerged ankle, you are beyond grateful for the distraction. “Hey. What’s up?”

“Are you gonna swim, or are you gonna sit onshore the whole time?” Minho asks, raking his wet bangs out of his eyes. “The water’s not even cold, so get in here.”

Pointedly, you wiggle your toes. “Feels pretty cold to me.”

“Okay, fine. It’s cold.” Minho grins. “But you get used to it.”

You sigh at his easy admission. “All men do is lie. How am I supposed to believe you?”

He raises a brow. “Do I need to pull you in and dunk you under?”

“I will kick you if you even try,” you tell him, standing up and shrugging off your robe. An audible hush falls as the gauzy material pools around your ankles—Jungkook stops wrestling with Yugyeom and trying to dunk him underwater, and Taemin pauses mid-splash, his hair drenched and dripping.

It’s Minho who breaks the silence first, letting loose a low whistle of appreciation. “Damn, {Name}.”

Jimin grabs a shoe from the pile on the dock and chucks it at him, hard. “Dude, that’s my fucking sister!”

“Ow! What the fuck, man, that’s my shoe!”

“Quit ogling my sister!”

“I’m not!” Minho yells, just as Jimin chucks the other shoe and hits him square in the mouth. “Okay, I’m not anymore. Sorry, okay?”

Once he’s sufficiently sure that Jimin is done attacking him, Minho turns to you. “I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything. You know that, right?”

“I know,” you reassure him. “Honestly, it was kinda good for my self-esteem. And I don’t need you defending my honor, or whatever it is you think you’re doing,” you add, glancing over at your disgruntled brother.

“Men are pigs,” Jimin sniffs. “I won’t apologize.”

You ruffle his hair good-naturedly. “I know, Chim. You’re right.” Then your smile turns mischievous. “I won’t apologize for what I’m about to do, either.”

And then you grab him by the arm and drag him into the lake, the cold water submerging you in an instant and stealing the breath out of your lungs. You’re both gasping by the time you resurface, blinking water out of your eyes, and you squeal when Jimin takes the opportunity to splash you again.

Hours pass—the sun rising higher overhead. Around noon, Taehyung disappears inside the house and returns with an assortment of snacks and sandwich fixings, ushering everyone over for an impromptu lunch on the dock. You dip your feet into the water as you munch on a bag of chips, and Jungkook plops down beside you with a juice box in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other.

“Wanna go for a ride in the canoe after lunch?” he asks, jabbing a thumb back in the direction of the house. “I found it in the garage.”

You laugh. “Really? I thought for sure we got rid of that thing. Are you sure it hasn’t sprung a leak?”

Jungkook’s face crinkles into a grin. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see, huh?”

You grin back and raise your cup, the lemonade inside swishing around. “I’ll hang on to this, just in case I need to start bailing water out.”

Lunchtime winds down gradually. Jungkook polishes off his sandwich and trots off to fetch the canoe, waving off your offers to help before disappearing around the corner of the house. You watch him return a few minutes later from your seat on the end of the dock, resting your weight back on your hands and swirling your pruney toes in the water. He’s stripped off the loose white tee he’d donned during lunch, his golden skin cast in shadow by the canoe perched across his bare shoulders, and your gaze trails from his bulging biceps down to the ridges of his abdomen. The muscles flex with every step he takes, and you hastily take another sip of lemonade in an effort to combat the sudden dryness in your throat.

With a grunt, Jungkook comes to a stop at your elbow, heaving the boat into the water. The impact sends ripples across the lake and the butterflies in your belly into a frenzy, and you nearly fall off the dock when Jungkook touches your shoulder gently.

“Ready to go, Noona?”

You nod, not quite trusting yourself to speak. Jungkook holds the boat steady with one hand while offering you the other, and you gratefully grasp it as you step off the dock. The canoe rocks dangerously when Jungkook clambers in after you, but quickly steadies when he picks up an oar and jabs at the dock to push off into the lake. The glimmering expanse of blue water stretches before you, and you relax as you let your fingers dangle off the side of the boat, watching ripples form beneath your fingertips.

“I can help row,” you say after a few moments, casting a glance over at Jungkook. He’s settled into a rhythm now, the veins and tendons in his arm flexing with each movement, and you’re suddenly very aware of how close he’s sitting.

“You—” Jungkook says, fixing you with a playful stare, “—just enjoy the ride, yeah?”

Shaking your head, you smile and turn back around to admire the view. Sunlight reflects off the rippling water, lending a golden iridescence to the glittering blue depths. In the distance, the opposite shoreline rises up, crowned with rocky outcrops and majestic dark green pines.

With a start, you realize how far away you’ve gotten from the other boys. The shouts and laughter from the house are quickly fading into the background, and you nervously turn to look at Jungkook as he rows you even further.

“God, my dad would freak if he saw us right now,” you remark, trying to diffuse the sudden tension that’s settled. “I mean, we don’t even have life jackets. He’d lose his mind.”

Jungkook hums. He stops rowing, his hands stilling on the oars, and you’re just about to ask him what’s wrong when a warm hand glides up your thigh.

“You think you could maybe stop talking about your dad, princess?” Then he smirks. “Unless you’re into the whole daddy kink thing, because I’d be down to explore that at some point if you want—“

“Jungkook!” you hiss, scandalized.

“Yes?” the young man in question hums, his face the picture of innocence. It’s hard to muster up your vocabulary when he’s looking up at you with those wide doe eyes, but you somehow manage to prevail over your malfunctioning brain.

“We’re in public!” you whisper, glancing back at the shore where your brother and his friends have started an impromptu game of water polo.

Jungkook smirks crookedly at you. “Guess you better not scream too loud, then.”

And then, before you can open your mouth to protest—before you can even try to call his bluff—he’s slipped his hand into your bikini bottoms and found his way to your clit. Your entire body spasms when he presses into it experimentally, and the resulting snicker that escapes him is nothing short of infuriating.

“Careful,” he coos, laying his free hand on your thigh, his thumb rubbing nonsensical circles into the soft skin. “Don’t wanna rock the boat, now.”

Then he returns his attention to your clit, pinching the nub just to watch you jolt in his grasp and soothing you with a gentle kiss to the knee afterward. Your skin warms beneath the plush of his lips, and the pleased smile that curves them is all the warning you get before he sheathes a single finger in your clenching core. “Jungkook—” you gasp, shoving uselessly at his bare shoulders, but you can’t keep the edge of desire out of your voice. You can’t hide the growing wetness between your legs either—wetness that he most certainly feels as he slips another finger inside, pumping into you with ease.

“God, look at you,” he murmurs, his eyes trained on the way you clench around him. “So pretty like this. So pretty, getting fucked by my fingers. I could do this all day.”

“We—we don’t have all day,” you whisper. The last syllable dissolves into a moan as Jungkook eases a third finger into your cunt, and you scrabble to ground yourself when he picks up his leisurely pace. One hand settles on the edge of the boat, your fingernails digging into the wood, while the other finds Jungkook’s bicep. His arm flexes beneath your grip with each snap of his wrist, and you keen when he crooks his fingers just right and sends stars skittering across your vision.

He knows that you’re getting close. You can tell from the growing furrow between his brows and the hard set of his jaw, and you can tell that he won’t stop until he gets you off. Concentration etches across his face, and you gasp when his thumb finds your clit again.

“Oh, fuck, Jungkook—”

“That’s it,” he rasps, digging deeper and thumbing roughly across your bundle of nerves. “Cum for me.”

And you do. With one final flick of his wrist, Jungkook sends you hurtling over the edge that he’s so effortlessly built, a cresting wave of pleasure overtaking your body and spreading through your veins. Your leg kicks out instinctively, rocking the canoe dangerously in the water, but Jungkook catches you by the ankle with his free hand and presses a kiss to the inside of your thigh. He shifts his weight until you’re steadied once more, and only then does he ease his fingers out of you, raising them to his mouth to lick them clean.

“Think we can sneak away so I can fuck you properly?” he asks.

Your cheeks heat up at the lewd display, warming even more when his words register in your muddled brain. “Oh my god, Jungkook.”

“That’s exactly what you’ll be saying when I really get my hands on you,” Jungkook agrees. Flashing you a mischievous grin, he drops his hand over the edge of the boat, letting the turquoise water wash away any lingering fluids. “What do you think? The backseat of my car isn’t half bad…”

“I will literally push you into this lake,” you tell him, trying and failing to hide a disbelieving laugh. “Why are you such a perv?”

“You like it,” Jungkook defends immediately. “‘Sides,” he adds, casting a wary glance at the shore where Jimin and the others are still fully engrossed in their game, “I wanna kiss you while I fuck you. It’s not as good like this.”

At that, something dangerously close to affection blooms in your belly, winding its curious tendrils around your heart. Swallowing the feeling down, you pick up one of the oars instead, handing it over to him before hefting the other. “Come on,” you murmur. “They’re gonna get suspicious if we’re gone too long.”

Jungkook hums. “Yeah. Probably.”

And then he raises the oar you just handed him, lifting it until the paddle covers both of your faces, and boldly plants a firm kiss on your mouth.

“I’ll row us back,” he declares casually when he pulls away, as if he hasn’t just stolen all the oxygen from your lungs. As if your lips aren’t burning where he’s kissed you, your cheeks hot beneath his gentle exhalations. As if you aren’t positively thrumming with the desire to pull him back in, and maybe take him up on his offer to fuck you in the backseat of his beat-up sedan.

“Yeah,” you say instead, your voice hoarse. “Let’s go.”

///

What few remaining hours of daylight you have, you decide to spend inside. Jungkook gets roped into the water polo match as soon as the two of you return to shore, and you take the opportunity to slip into the house and clean yourself up. Safely locked away in the bathroom, you strip off your damp bikini bottoms and toss them in the sink. The top follows, and you give both a quick wash, doing your best to ignore the remaining slick from your orgasm that stubbornly coats the material.

Once everything is washed and hanging up to dry, you step into the shower. Warm water soaks your hair and slides down your back, and you tilt your head back to let the spray wash your worries away, relishing in the rare moment of peace and quiet.

By the time you’ve toweled off and gotten dressed, you can hear the boys beginning to traipse back into the house. From what you can make out, they’re making dinner plans, and you poke your head out curiously when Jimin mentions you by name.

“What are you saying about me?” you ask, narrowing your eyes accusingly at your brother.

Jimin whirls around, his cherubic face a perfect picture of innocence. “Nothing! I was just talking about your fried rice and how good it is…”

“You’re trying to get me to make you dinner,” you sigh. “I knew it.”

“No, we’ll help!” your brother promises. “I swear, as soon as I get out of the shower, I’ll chop all the vegetables.”

“Sure you will,” you snort, brushing past him and heading for the kitchen.

Much to your surprise, the kitchen is already occupied when you arrive. Jungkook and Yugyeom are at the counter—the former poised with a knife at the ready, about to slice into an onion. The latter is digging through the cabinets, and both turn at the sound of your footsteps.

“Hey,” Yugyeom says. “You probably know where the bottle opener is, right?”

You nod. “Left of the sink, second drawer down.” Then you turn your attention to Jungkook, peering curiously over his shoulder. “What’s the onion for?”

“Dinner,” he replies, flashing you a crooked little smile. “We’re making fried rice, aren’t we?”

Your heart skips a beat in your chest and races to catch up, thumping erratically against your ribcage. It’s hard to ignore the warmth blossoming in your belly—near impossible to ignore the butterflies that have made a home there—but you somehow manage to school your expression into something passably neutral and busy yourself with the other vegetables on the counter. “I see Jimin got to you, too. Is the other cutting board clean?”

Jungkook nods, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the dish rack. “Washed it last night, yeah. It’s all yours, Noona.”

You hum and skirt around Yugyeom to grab the clean board and another knife. Chopping vegetables goes a lot faster with two people, and Yugyeom does his part by cracking open two bottles of beer and plunking one down next to each of you before opening a third for himself. “Hydrate,” he orders, and you roll your eyes before picking it up and taking a sip.

It doesn’t take long to finish making dinner. As promised, Jimin joins you as soon as he’s out of the shower, plucking the knife out of your hand and nudging you aside so he can finish cutting the vegetables. You fire up the stove and drizzle some oil into a pan, and smile when Taehyung brings you the container of leftover rice and a large serving bowl.

“You know what we should do?” Minho asks as you’re all sitting down to eat. Yugyeom’s opened more beers, and Jimin’s brought out the wine as well. Jungkook is spooning out fried rice for everyone, and you accept the bowl he hands you with a murmur of thanks before looking at Minho expectantly.

“What should we do?”

“Go to the beach,” he replies, tilting the remainder of his beer back into his mouth. “It’s only an hour away, isn’t it?”

“Closer to half an hour without traffic,” Jimin corrects. “But, yeah, we should go. That would be fun.”

By the time dinner is finished, you’ve finalized plans to drive down to the beach in the morning. “Remember, we’re leaving at ten,” you tell Jimin, elbowing him in the ribs. “That means you have to wake up before ten.”

“I know!” your brother whines, rubbing the spot where you elbowed him with a grimace. “Jeez, Noona. I’m good at waking up. It’s Jungkook and Tae you have to worry about.”

“Says the punk who takes hour-long showers,” you snark. “What are you gonna do when you have to pay your own water bills, huh?”

“Shower at your place,” he replies smugly. “You can’t turn me away. I’m your brother.”

“Please, that’s exactly why I can turn you away, you little mooch.”

“You love me!”

“Really? You wanna test that theory?”

The remainder of the evening passes in a blur of booze and board games, unearthed from the closet in the hall. Despite your collective agreement to go to bed early, it’s past midnight when you finally bid everyone goodnight and crawl underneath your covers. Shutting your eyes, you will your brain to settle and your limbs to relax, and you’re on the verge of drifting off when your phone suddenly buzzes. Lazily, you roll over and snatch the device off the nightstand, taking in the late hour before your eyes flit down to the new notification and go wide.

[1:02am] Jungkook: IMG_497

You freeze, thumb hovering just above the message. Even when your screen goes dark again, you can’t erase the sight of his name lighting up your phone, the attachment sitting there like a taunt. You shouldn’t open it. You can’t open it.

But curiosity gnaws at your belly, fraying the edges of your resolve. Slowly, you wake the screen, watching as Jungkook’s name fills it once more. You hesitate, bottom lip finding its way between your teeth.

And then your phone buzzes again, several times in quick succession.

[1:04am] Jungkook: i miss you, noona

[1:04am] Jungkook: miss your pretty face

[1:04am] Jungkook: miss how tight your pussy felt around my fingers

You drop the device as if scorched. It takes several moments to gather your wits again, but when you do, pick up your phone, clicking on his name and scrolling up to the attachment. In the darkness of your bedroom, you watch with bated breath as it downloads.

“Fuck.”

The expletive slips past your lips, unbidden, but you can’t help it. Jungkook stares out at you from the photograph illuminating your screen, his eyes hooded and his lips curled into a devious smirk. He’s in the shared bathroom between your bedrooms, and even though it’s dark inside, the flash of his camera is just enough to illuminate the distinctive palm tree patterned shower curtain behind him.

But, you aren’t focused on that.

No, your focus is zeroed in on the foreground of the photo, where you can perfectly make out the head of Jungkook’s cock, sticky and leaking copiously from between his fingers.

“Fuck,” you repeat, louder this time.

And as if reading your mind, another text flashes onto your screen.

[1:07am] Jungkook: wish your pretty little pussy was stretched around my cock right now, princess

You aren’t sure what possesses you to send the response you do, but your thumbs are moving before the more rational side of your brain can catch up and stop you.

[1:07am] You: why don’t you come over and make it happen then?

You’ve only just hit send when the bathroom door swings open, revealing Jungkook standing there in nothing but sweatpants. His face is illuminated in the stark white light shining from his screen, his eyes dark and his smirk even darker. Every movement drips with intent, from the way his lips quirk upward to the way he saunters over to join you on your bed, dropping his phone somewhere amongst the rumpled sheets. The room goes dark.

And then…

“Hey, princess.”

His lips are at your ear, hot breath caressing your cheeks and sending shivers down the length of your spine. The mattress dips beneath his weight as he joins you, a hand finding your bare thigh before sliding up to grasp your hip. Only an oversized t-shirt and a thin pair of cotton panties shield you from his roving fingers, and you can tell from the pleased curve of his mouth that he isn’t going to let either stand in his way. One hand slips beneath the hem of your shirt, dancing along your ribcage, and you let out a breathy gasp when he trails up and skims along the soft skin just below the swell of your breasts.

“Been thinking about you all night, you know,” Jungkook whispers, pushing up your shirt and peppering kisses along every inch of newly revealed flesh. “Been thinking about how pretty you looked, cumming around my fingers, and how much prettier you’d look cumming around my cock.”

Your shirt is long forgotten by this point, tugged overhead and thrown carelessly over his shoulder. Jungkook hauls you closer, slotting himself between your spread legs, and you shiver when he presses the pad of his thumb against your clothed clit, the material uncomfortably damp as it clings to your folds.

“Jungkook—” His name escapes you in an airy whisper. “Please.”

Even in the darkness, you can see the satisfied, self-assured tilt of his lips. “Such a good girl for me,” he croons, leaning down to press a kiss to your waiting mouth. His free hand comes up to cup your cheek while the other remains between your legs, and you gasp sharply when he digs his thumb a little harder against your clit, circling the sensitive bud.

Jungkook seizes upon the opportunity to slip his tongue past your lips, licking into your mouth with unrestrained ardor. Your panties are peeled away, the cottony material disappearing right alongside the pressure of his thumb, and the inadvertent whine that escapes you has him chuckling darkly in his throat.

“What is it, princess?” Jungkook rasps, his voice dipping several pitches. “You have to tell me what you want, remember?”

You clutch at his wrist weakly, tugging it back between your legs until he finally indulges you and resumes his lazy revolutions around your clit. “Want you,” you whisper. “Want you inside me.”

Jungkook lets out a pleased hum, rewarding you with a single finger that he slips into your sopping entrance, your juices aiding the smooth glide as he curls it up in search of the spot that’ll have you seeing stars. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” you agree shakily. “But it looks like you are, so why don’t you let me help you out?”

Jungkook chuckles softly, his lips ghosting across the swell of your cheek. “Oh, yeah? And how exactly do you plan on helping me?”

Slowly, you reach down, letting your fingers graze the sizable bulge in his sweatpants. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? Me, stretched around your cock?”

A low groan escapes him when you give him a firm stroke, your fingers barely meeting around his length. “On your back,” he commands hoarsely, nudging you backward until you’re nestled into your pillows. Freeing his erection from the confines of his sweatpants, he settles comfortably between your spread legs, the mattress groaning in protest at the shift in weight.

“Wait,” you whisper, grabbing his wrist. “Did you hear that?”

His face scrunches in confusion. “Hear what?” he asks, as if he’s never heard that particular string of words before. “Are you sure it wasn’t just—”

He stops mid-sentence, and you both hear it again—the unmistakable creaking of bedsprings from next door. “Shit!” you hiss, scrambling back on the mattress until you’re nearly pressed against the headboard. “Oh, god. That’s Jimin. He’s going to kill you if he finds you in here—”

On the other side of the wall, the door to the shared bathroom opens, the light flickering on and illuminating the crack beneath your door. You hear your brother cursing sleepily under his breath as the toilet lid clatters open, and nearly shove Jungkook off the bed in your haste to get him out of your room.

“You have to go,” you whisper frantically, herding him toward the door that leads out into the hall.

Jungkook hurriedly pulls his pants back over his hips, and you can practically see him willing his erection to go away. “What am I supposed to say if he asks?”

“I don’t know! Pretend you were going for a glass of water or something!”

With a final push, you shove him out of your bedroom, leaning against the door with a relieved sigh when it clicks shut behind him. You hear Jungkook shuffle off just as Jimin flushes, and cast a prayer up to any deities that may exist as you listen to him wash his hands. And it seems your prayers are answered, as quiet descends over the house once more. Off in the distance, you think you hear Minho snoring.

Letting out another sigh, you return to bed, crawling beneath the covers and getting comfortable. And when sleep finally takes you, you dream of Jeon Jungkook.

#bangtanarmynet #jungkook #jungkook smut #jungkook scenarios #jungkook x reader #bts smut #bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bts fic #bts fanfiction #jeon jungkook #bts #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #lia writes

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inkedstarlight · 3 years

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Bittersweet: Chapter Twelve

Summary: With the New Year comes new changes: Azriel and Elain are now together, Nesta and Cassian have a moment, and someone new enters the mix. Notes: This was the longest I've gone without posting new content, but I'm back in the groove. I'm officially making Sundays my upload day, so look out for that! There will be a new chapter every week. I already have the next couple chapters written, and it will be a lot more consistent now. Read it here on AO3! Warnings: very brief mentions of PTSD and sexual assault Bittersweet Masterlist

January

It was the third week of the desolate, grey month of January. The snow arrived quickly and ruthlessly. The city of Boulder was coated in a thick layer of knee-deep snow, its surface glittering under the sun enough to blind a passerby. Nesta embraced the winter, but there was nothing more she hated than a frozen ground paired with a sunny sky. Going outside bundled in multiple layers only to return home a sweaty mess. It was a suffocating feeling, to be wearing a heavy coat under sunshine.

No, Nesta preferred the unforgiving version of the coldest season. She knew how to dress; she knew what to expect when she stepped outside. It was predictable. Easy.

With the New Year came new changes. To start, Elain and Azriel were now dating, which came as a surprise to no one. When Elain sidled up next to Nesta in the kitchen on New Year’s Day and bashfully told her that she and Azriel were officially together, Nesta just levelled her a look as if to say, No shit, Sherlock.

As much as she despised the fact that their lives were becoming inextricably connected with Feyre's little group, however, Nesta was happy for her sister. Azriel treated Elain like she walked on water. of course, in Nesta's mind, no one would ever be good enough for her sister. Azriel was just managing to wiggle his way over Nesta's impossibly high standards for Elain, the bastard.

He had been spending time at their apartment quite a bit. At first, he and Nesta didn’t speak much. They would both stare at their phones in silence when Elain went to the bathroom or checked on whatever was in the oven at the time.

It wasn’t until the day that Nesta returned home from work to see Azriel playing with Minx in the living room did they 'bond.' When Nesta made her way into the apartment, Azriel explained to her that Elain was switching over the laundry in the complex’s basement. She merely nodded, her piercing stare falling to Azriel's ankles where Minx was rubbing against. She could hear his purrs from where she stood. The fucking traitor.

Nesta watched them play before they began to talk about animals, which turned into shitting on Cassian (Azriel was most certainly joking, but Nesta’s jabs were 100% genuine), which then turned into complaining about the frequency of their little family dinners. Turns out Azriel isn't exactly a social butterfly but Nesta figured that out pretty quickly. When Elain returned with laundry basket in hand, she found Nesta showing off the tricks she’d taught Minx to Azriel, the latter of whom was quite impressed. And that’s how Nesta realized that she and Azriel had more in common than she would've guessed. They both preferred to be in the background, not drawing too much attention to themselves. To Nesta's delight, she also realized Azriel had just as sharp a tongue as she did. The only difference was he knew how to control himself. Although Nesta would never admit it, she could learn a thing or two from Azriel.

But all this was heavily dampened by the fact that Cassian kept worming his way into her life. She supposed it was normal to run into your neighbors, but she had a sneaking suspicion the man somehow memorized her entire schedule. Wherever she turned, he seemed to be there. The elevator was like their rendezvous spot. Nesta was tempted to take the staircase just to avoid him, but her stubborn ass refused to change a thing for him. Even if it was just two flights of stairs.

Cassian had caught her several times in the past weeks. She thought back to a few run-ins that she hadn’t managed to stop thinking about.

“It’s full,” Nesta said dryly, not bothering to look up from her phone. She knew who it was. Who else would go out of their way to enjoy her warm and welcoming presence?

Nesta was just getting back from a short shift she'd picked up at Rita’s. The elevator doors had been closing when Cassian’s foot shot out to stop them.

Cassian looked around at the empty elevator, his eyes finally landing on Nesta. “I think I can squeeze in.”

Nesta looked up from her phone to glare at him. He was wearing a maroon crew neck and medium wash jeans that were rolled up at the ankles. She spied a golden chain around his neck that just slightly peaked out of the sweater. She wondered if it was a cross. Was he religious?

Nesta caught herself before she could think more about it. She didn’t care; she had no interest in getting to know this man. And she knew the feeling was mutual.

She just cleared her throat and looked down at her phone once again, determined to ignore his presence.

Unfortunately, Cassian was just as determined to make his presence known.

Eyes glued to her screen, Nesta did her best to stay as still as possible as she felt Cassian walk into the elevator. She was standing at the back corner, practically a part of the wall herself. Instead of stopping where there was plenty of room, however, he kept walking until he was right next to her. He leaned back against the wall, and Nesta caught a whiff of his cologne. It was warm and fresh and purely male.

She clenched her fist. He smelled good.

She hated that he smelled good.

"Calculating something?" he asked quietly. Nesta detected the amusement in his voice and restrained herself from putting him in a chokehold.

But she followed his gaze that was looking at her phone screen. Brows furrowed, she too looked at the screen.

Fuck.

Nesta hadn't even realized she'd been staring at the calculator app this entire time. When Cassian had gotten into the elevator, she'd opened a random app, a last-ditch attempt at looking busy so he wouldn’t bother her. That plan had clearly failed.

And with her shit luck, she opened the fucking calculator app.

"Yep," she cleared her throat again, scrambling for something to say. "Just figuring out how much it would cost to hire a bodyguard. You see, I have this stalker -"

"Is he handsome?" Cassian feigned ignorance, his lips twitching upward.

Nesta gritted her teeth at his interruption. "No, he's actually - "

"Charming, rugged, good-looking?" Cassian ran his eyes up and down her body and whistled in astonishment. "Wow, you must really like this guy."

She was going to punch him in the gods-damn throat. “You’re an asshole.”

He just stood there smiling at himself, eyes sparkling with mischief. His dark hair was loose, falling at his shoulders. It looked as though he’d been running his hands through it all day. Nesta’s fingers twitched.

She could acknowledge that Cassian was a good-looking man. She wasn't blind, though she would never admit that to him. His head was big enough as is. That being said, there was no appeal beyond his thick hair and fit body. It was a shame, really. Not to mention that Nesta was unable to look at a man with anything other than cynicism after everything that happened with Tomas.

Nesta stopped herself. She didn't need to think about that right now.

Coming back to reality, Nesta realized she'd been blatantly staring at Cassian this entire time, and it hadn't gone unnoticed. He chuckled deeply and angled his body so he was fully facing her. “See something you like, sweetheart?”

Nesta crossed her arms and snorted. Classy.

“Unfortunately for you, my appetite for arrogant meatheads dissipated during college.”

“Oh?” Cassian repeated with a smirk that Nesta wanted to slap right off. “And pray tell, what’s on your menu now?”

“Just the sweet satisfaction of destroying a man’s masculinity.”

Cassian stared at her for a moment before throwing his head back with laughter. Nesta rolled her eyes just as the elevator dinged. She took the opportunity and quickly raced for the doors.

He was still laughing when the doors closed.

Nesta inwardly groaned at the memory. She’d acted like a dolt, but at least she’d gotten the last word in.

The next time they bumped into each other, however, things weren’t quite as playful.

Nesta couldn’t sleep. She’d been tossing and turning for hours, Minx shooting her glares every time she moved. But sleep refused to come.

With a frustrated groan, she rolled to the side of the bed and checked her phone that was charging on her nightstand.

3:38am.

Fucking ridiculous.

Nesta couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten a good night’s sleep. She’d been having nightmares nearly every night for the past few weeks, only managing to get about four hours of sleep at most. It was enough that she could function during the day and go to work without passing out. Nevertheless, it was exhausting.

She did her best to untangle herself from the comforter and get up without waking Minx. He was sleeping at the foot of the bed, his entire body stretched out like dough. As she got up, she gave him some love. He didn’t even budge; he was a heavy sleeper.

Nesta couldn’t help but feel jealous.

Rubbing her face, she padded out to the kitchen slowly and poured herself a glass of water. She drank it slowly as she leaned against the counter.

After fifteen of staring into space, Nesta made her way to the fridge and opened it, the soft light glowing on her face.

She stared into the fridge for another ten minutes.

With a resigned sigh, Nesta slowly padded back to her room and closed the door behind her. She lazily pulled her long hair into a messy updo. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her laundry bin. It was overflowing.

She checked the time again. 4:17am.

Fuck it, she thought to herself as she bent down to pick up the laundry basket.

Nesta heaved it into her arms, grabbed the detergent, and made her way down to the complex’s basement where the laundry room was. She was wearing a grey sweater that completely swallowed her body and baggy sweatpants. Her slippers were cat themed. She couldn't care less.

After dumping her dirty clothes into the washing machine and starting it, Nesta sat on top of the empty machine to the left of it. She crossed her legs in her lap and put her hands in her face.

Gods, when was this going to end?

She would almost prefer a nightmare over this. It was the silence that was insufferable. With nightmares, she woke up, stayed awake for a couple hours, and finally fell asleep once her body calmed. But this? She didn’t trust herself to be alone with her thoughts for the entire night. It was never a good thing.

She was just sick of it. The exhaustion, the darkness, the loneliness. Her father’s death still gnawed at her every day. She hadn’t summoned the bravery to read those damn journals. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t know if she’d ever be.

And then Tomas. That horrible memory still surfaced several times a day. She couldn’t shake it; she never felt safe, even when she was in her bedroom. She hated it. Hated the lack of control, the loss of strength. She felt powerless. And without that, what did she even have?

The sound of footsteps disrupted her from her thoughts. Her head shot up as a body filled the doorway to the laundry room. It was Cassian.

He, too, looked like he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep. He looked comfortable in his Nine Inch Nails t-shirt and dark joggers. In his hand was a dryer sheet.

He stared at her. She stared back.

Neither of them said anything as he walked over to the washing machine to the right of the one her clothes were in. Nesta watched with half-lidded eyes as Cassian switched over his load of laundry to the dryer, swiping his card to pay for the cycle.

Once his clothes were tumbling around in the dryer, he straightened and faced her where she sat.

Nesta couldn't put her finger on it, but he seemed different. Not because it was the middle of the night and he was tired. No, there was something else. She just didn't know what.

“Can’t sleep?” he broke the silence, voice rough with exhaustion.

Nesta pursed her lips and nodded, looking away. She expelled a shaky breath. “You?”

Cassian seemed slightly taken aback by her question, but he hid it well. He took a few steps closer. There were still a couple feet between them, but now he was standing in front of her with his hands in his pockets.

“Me neither," he murmured, his hazel eyes capturing her grey ones. "Sometimes I don't even bother trying anymore."

They both got quiet. Nesta didn’t know what to say; his vulnerability scared her.

It was strange. To have a conversation with Cassian without banter, without insults being thrown back and forth. Nesta didn’t know what to think of it.

"I could be deported any day," he admitted, so quietly that Nesta almost didn't hear. Then he added, his voice breaking slightly, "I don't want to go."

Nesta watched him as he looked to the dirty tiles of the laundry room floor. Her lips parted slightly and before she realized what she was doing, she was talking.

"I have nightmares every night. Today was the first time in two months I haven't had one. A strange part of me would rather have horrible dreams instead of this silence... and that scares me."

Cassian was staring at her now, his eyes flaring. He looked like he wanted to move closer, but he remained where he stood. He simply nodded at the piece of herself she'd just shared with him.

I see you, is what he seemed to wordlessly say to her.

A strange feeling of deja vu washed over Nesta as they looked at each other. She couldn't place it, but this - talking with Cassian - felt familiar, like it had happened -

The washing machine next to Nesta dinged, signaling that her clothes had finished. She pulled her gaze from Cassian's and hopped off to switch her clothes over.

Cassian merely watched. Then, they both waited in a comfortable silence until their laundry finished drying. Cassian's finished first, but he waited until Nesta's did to walk her back up. They didn't share a word, but something intangible transpired between them.

And even though Nesta still wasn't able to fall asleep, the silence felt a bit less scary the rest of the night.

---------------------------

“Are you excited for the semester to start next week?”

Nesta froze from where she stood washing the dishes when Elain posed the question.

Next week? That couldn’t be right. Nesta counted off the days in her head.

To her horror, Elain was correct.

It was nearing the end of January. She knew she’d had to return to Pryth U after winter break, but Nesta thought she’d have longer. Longer to get over what had happened, to figure out how exactly to avoid him on campus. She thought by now… she thought she wouldn’t be scared anymore.

She was wrong.

“Nesta?”

Nesta peeled her eyes away from the soapy knife that she was clutching tightly in her hand to find Elain peering over at her with a concerned look.

“Yeah,” Nesta forced out, despite every fiber of her body screaming otherwise. “Can’t wait.”

She continued throughout the morning as normal as she could be, even though she was shaking. When noon hit, Nesta called out to Elain who was lounging in the living room waiting for Azriel to come over.

"I'm think I’m going to go to the gym." She willed her voice not to shake.

"Okay, have fun!" Elain exclaimed from the other room.

Nesta had purchased a gym membership to Illyria last week, a pathetic effort at getting out of the apartment more often. She hadn't gone once yet. And either way, her only real plan was to use the hot tub. She couldn't remember the last time she exercised, and she had no intention of changing that.

After getting dressed and grabbing her bag, Nesta headed out.

The drive was quick; the gym was only a couple miles away. Once Nesta parked, she made her way inside the complex.

She forced a tight smile as she approached the woman who was working the front desk, scanning her membership card and continuing forward. Her mind was racing, and she prayed that there wouldn't be many people there. It was a Tuesday afternoon. She doubted it.

Nesta was weaving her way past the space dedicated to boxing to get to the locker rooms when she heard a familiar voice ahead of her.

She instinctively turned her head to see who it was, only to find Cassian standing next to a punching bag, his face breaking out into a grin as he talked to a very beautiful woman.

She was small, several inches shorter than Nesta. Her copper chestnut hair was pulled back into an elegant ponytail, and her hands were on her hips as she attentively listened to Cassian speak. She seemed captivated by whatever he was saying, probably some bullshit meant to charm her.

Nesta didn't think twice as she discreetly did a 180 and started walking the opposite way, desperate to avoid him especially after the night in the laundry room. That'd been the last time she'd seen him, and she didn't want to talk about it. Not with him or anyone else. Even though she'd opened up to him, that didn't mean they were friendly. In fact, it was the complete opposite. She was determined to keep him at arm's length now. Nesta had cursed herself the morning after those events had transpired. She was so stupid to tell him what she did. It was just because she had been severely sleep-deprived, and she had felt bad for him. It wouldn't happen again.

So, she slowly slinked away, praying to the Gods that he didn't notice her.

Her plan was going smoothly until she heard her name.

"Nesta?"

Her shoulders stiffened. Fuck.

She brought herself to a painstaking stop and turned around to see Cassian jogging over to her.

"Hey," he greeted as he approached. He seemed cautious, like he didn't want to scare her off. "I didn't realize you went to Illyria."

"I don't," Nesta replied quickly. He waited for her to say more, but she just blinked up at him.

"Well," he drawled, looking back at the woman he had been talking with. "I'm just about to start a training session." Ah, he works here. She wondered what he did in his free time. "Do you want to join? The first session is free."

Nesta looked to where the woman was methodically wrapping her hands in what looked like Ace bandages. She was more stunning than Nesta originally thought. She wouldn't be at all surprised if Cassian hooked up with his trainees. Especially if they looked like that.

"No, I'm - "

But Cassian wasn't having it. "Gwyn!" he called out, gesturing her to come to where they stood.

"What the hell are you doing?" Nesta hissed, her heart rate spiking as she watched the woman, Gwyn, make her way toward them.

Cassian ignored her, continuing to smile. The bastard.

As Gwyn made her way over, Nesta did her best to put on a friendly face. She was pretty sure she was just grimacing.

"Hi! I'm Gwyn," she introduced herself with a bubbly voice. She looked Nesta up and down. "You must be Nesta. I've heard a lot about you."

Nesta threw Cassian a sideway glare. He'd been talking about her? No doubt complaining about her horrible attitude.

Cassian winked at the look she gave him before turning to Gwyn. "Gwyn, why don't you tell Nesta a little bit about what we do while I go get some equipment from the back? Then we can get started."

Nesta opened her mouth to object, but Cassian was gone before she could even blink. Groaning inwardly, she reluctantly faced Gwyn who was smiling softly at her.

"Well, I assume you know that Cassian is a trainer," she started with an awkward laugh.

Nesta stared at her.

Gwyn continued to smile despite Nesta's coldness. "He actually created this program, Wings of Resilience, a couple years ago. He offers discounted training lessons for people who deal with PTSD. It's helped a lot of people. Cassian mainly teaches kickboxing, but in the past he's taken in some older veterans who aren't really able to do high cardio activities, so he guides them through yoga practices. Everyone here adores him," Gwyn giggles and leans in. "Especially the older ladies who come in every week for their exercise class."

She kept talking, but Nesta was no longer listening. The room suddenly felt tiny, the air stifling. What Gwyn told her triggered her fight or flight instincts. She didn’t know why, she just knew she couldn’t breathe, and if she didn’t leave now, she was going to have a full-blown panic attack in the middle of a room full of people.

“Are you okay?”

Nesta’s eyes shot up from her shaking hands to see Gwyn take a cautious step forward, her eyes wide with something that resembled concern. Nesta nearly let out a hysterical laugh. Gwyn and Cassian - they were such good people. How did they even pretend to give a shit about someone like Nesta?

"I-I need to go,” Nesta blurted, eyes scanning the room for the nearest exit.

"I know it's a lot to consider," Gwyn said quietly. She looked down at her feet. "But it's really helped me."

No, no, no.

Nesta didn't even realize she had started running until her lungs were burning from the exertion of energy. She ran and didn’t stop. She caught a flash of someone – Cassian’s – face as she sprinted past the lobby and outside, but she didn't look back. She couldn't.

The cold air was harsh against her lungs. She welcomed the burning sensation, gasping for more oxygen. Before Nesta could comprehend what was happening, she was spilling her guts on the sidewalk until she was dry heaving.

Passersby looked at her with disgust as they walked past, but Nesta couldn’t bring herself to care.

When there was nothing more to come out, Nesta wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and straightened herself. Every muscle in her body screamed. How she was able to stand, she had no idea. Nesta beelined to her car, locked the door, and speeded out of the parking lot before anyone could run after her.

------------------------------

That night, Nesta received a text from an unknown number.

Nesta, I asked Cassian for your phone number. I hope I didn’t overstep your boundaries. I just wanted to let you know that there will be a spot here if you want it. Please think about it. Gwyn

Her first instinct was to delete the text, cancel her membership to Illyria, and never face Gwyn - or Cassian for that matter - again. There was no way she was going to show her face in that gym again.

But despite everything, Nesta found herself saving Gwyn’s number into her contacts before she fell asleep.

------------------------------

tag list (let me know if you want to be added/removed):

@sjmships @sleeping-and-books @sirgwaines @books-for-sure @blowing-mikey @b00kworm @wineywitch202 @drielecarla @liquifyme @gisellefigue08 @theoverlyenthusiasticwriter @loysydark @stardelia @sayosdreams @maastrash @superspiritfestival @courtofjurdan @ireallyshouldsleeprn @thewayshedreamed @booksstorm @laylaameer01 @rainbowcheetah512

#nessian #bittersweet #nesta archeron #cassian #acotar #acomaf #acosf #a court of thorns and roses #a court of silver flames #my writing

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sexykatsuki17 · 3 years

Text

His stomach problem

Disclaimer) this is my first time writing a story on Tumblr. The illness Bakugo haves is made up it came from my imagination without further ado I hope that you enjoy the story)

Waking up to an upset stomach wasn't unusual for Katsuki Bakugo. He’s been having belly issues for a week now and just yesterday his stomach was very fussy and achy during class. Being diagnosed with (Gutkiutom Acyimgni) was hard for Bakugo to deal with. And because of it he missed 3 days of school so far because of flare ups and today was one of those days.

Thursday 8:38am

Bakugo was in his bathroom his stomach was cramping and he just felt sick. Throwing up was what his stomach decided he should go through that morning and his stomach was gurgling. There was no way in hell would Bakugo go to school like this after Bakugo finished he laid down on his bed and just rubbed his aching stomach.

Ooh fuck Bakugo moaned before getting up walking back to the bathroom

Kirishima was walking to Bakugo’s room and he knocked as he was waiting for Bakugo to open the door he heard Bakugo puking. Baby? Kirishima said he knocked again and again until he heard the door unlock and kirishima walked in and he saw Bakugo’s bathroom light on he slowly approached. What do you want? Bakugo asked rubbing his stomach I came to see if you were ok because you didn’t eat breakfast what’s wrong with your belly? Kirishima asked don’t, Bakugo paused before he belched loudly.

“BUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!’’

Ooh Fuck Bakugo moaned softly since you wanna be nosy I have a Stomach condition and sometimes I have flare ups Bakugo said looking down at his feet. Kirishima looked at him and he gently lifted his chin so that Bakugo could look at him what? Bakugo asked kirishima smiled at him giving him a gentle kiss Bakugo kissed back before moaning loudly as his stomach gurgled loudly and aggressively

“GUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLBBBBBBBBBBBEEEEEE-GGGGUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEE!!!!!”

Bakugo’s eyes rolled in the back of his head as he belched

“BUUURRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!”

Ouch Bakugo moaned rubbing his stomach and throat. Aww, what’s your condition called? Kirishima asked you know what I just wanna be left alone Bakugo said Kirishima looked at him just as Bakugo left the bathroom to lay on his bed. I’m sorry Katsuki I’m not leaving you alone not when you’re in so much pain Kirishima said.

Bakugo took a deep breath and he finally gave in have you eaten? Kirishima asked. Nah I’ve been in the bathroom throwing up all morning Shitty hair Bakugo said rubbing his still aching upset stomach. Right sorry that I asked kirishima said here take your shirt off kirishima said Bakugo rolled his eyes but did so. Kirishima took a cloth and he began to wipe Bakugo’s sweaty stomach, back, throat, and chest Bakugo moaned.

Kiri? Bakugo said yeah kirishima said you still wanna know what’s going on with my gut? Bakugo asked yeah kirishima said. I have a condition called Gutkiutom Acyimgni and it makes my stomach ache and just feel sick Bakugo said Awww, I’m sorry about that kirishima said. Bakugo rolled his eyes yeah sure everyone says that I would’ve thought you being my boyfriend and all you…. oh shit Bakugo was cut off by a loud powerful belch.

“BBBBUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEECCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!”

Kirishima gently rubbed Bakugo’s back fuck Bakugo said I’m sorry baby kirishima said Bakugo looked at him just as his stomach began to gurgle loudly. Damn it why must a flare up happen now? Katsuki asked kirishima couldn’t say anything because he didn’t know what his boyfriend was going through but he could imagine it was painfully annoying.

Is there anything I can do to make you feel better? Kirishima asked yeah can you plug in the heating pad? Bakugo asked taking his black skull shirt off I sure can sweetie kirishima said. He plugged it up as Bakugo laid down kirishima laid it on top of Katsuki’s belly who moaned out of comfort. The gentle heat put Bakugo to sleep kirishima smiled at Katsuki before he left for a while.

After a few hours later Bakugo felt better he was glad that he had a flare up around kirishima because Kiri was so carrying and he never once left his side for anything. Kirishima was glad to have a boyfriend like Katsuki so strong and very compassionate about how he feels. Basically whenever Bakugo had a flare up kirishima would always be by his side to help him.

#stomach gurgling #stomach-noises #katsuki bakugou #kirishima ejirou #belching #abdominal cramps #my story

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mimik-u · 4 years

Text

Flower Child (Chapter 13): Blue (III)

Goodness, I'm nearly a year and a half late, but here we are—Chapter 13 of "Flower Child." First of all, I want to give my sincerest apologies for the delay... I mentioned this at the start of my fic "Facets," but the simplest and truest story is that my muse for writing Steven Universe and, well, writing in general petered out for a long time and has only recently returned. But, because it has recently returned, I wanted to begin to make good on a promise I made to you guys so many months ago—that one day, I would finish this story. So let's do this. <3 I'm ready now.

(1) I read through the previous twelve chapters, lmao, and half-loved and half-hated my writing, but the point of that exercise, beyond getting acquainted with the plot of "FC" again, was to also do some quick grammar and flow revisions, so a few of the previous chapters should read just a little better than maybe they had before.

(2) Fun fact! Chapter 13 is pretty interesting because some portions of it were actually written over a year ago; it was an incredible challenge for me to work with what I had as a 2019 writer versus what I've learned as a 2020 writer.

(4) Someone asked on Tumblr a long time ago if there was a playlist I worked with in writing this story...

(5) And finally, and most importantly, this chapter is incredibly heavy, dealing with themes of suicidal ideation and extreme depression.

Please be cautious while reading if these are topics that are triggering to you!

The shiny, black town car eased to a stop at the pull-through entrance of the hospital, drawing the gazes of passerby on the sidewalk. An older lady in a wheelchair, a group of what appeared to be college kids in scrubs, a scraggly-looking patient who’d obviously escaped the confines of his room to light a cigarette—they all stopped and stared as the back door of the overtly fancy car was pried open from the inside out, as a metal cane preceded a woman who quite looked like she needed it.

Blue Diamond unfolded into the light of day, trembling.

Because it was hard.

It was so hard.

To be here.

(To be.)

She wanted to collapse where she stood, dissemble and dissolve away one piece of herself at a time; she leaned heavily on the head of her cane and lit upon the sole pair of eyes that weren’t looking at her—or, really, her Lincoln. The man named Greg Universe stood next to the automatic doors with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring at the ground, all but boring a hole into it. When the sliding doors opened and closed at his backside, they appeared to be ripping into him, piece by miserable piece.

“I’ll call when I’m ready,” Blue murmured to her valet before shutting the door and slowly hobbling over to Greg.

Clank.

The onlookers glanced away as the town car drove off, resumed their lives and cared not for yet another broken person in their midst. The hospital was full of them as it was. Perhaps they were even broken themselves—very probably they were.

Blue Diamond did not care to know.

Clank.

I’m betraying her, she thought, she was always thinking. I’m leaving her behind. I’m betraying her. I’m—

Clank.

The clanking did the trick, catching Greg’s attention and only half-holding it. He lifted his head slowly and mustered a smile that must have been agony. It wobbled on his lips and very nearly disappeared in his bushy beard. It pulled at him—all over. He looked like a Picasso gone wrong, an abstraction of a man stretched too far.

“Hey, just in time.” He gave a shaky little laugh that rather sounded like a sob and then somehow kept talking, his entire physiognomy alive with his nerves. “Steven’s so excited to see you again. He hasn’t stopped talking about ya since this morning, which is kinda nuts because he was so tired yesterday, but this is a good thing, and so we should really go up and see him now because—”

She cut across him; it was a quiet act, a merciful one. “Greg.”

It was just his name, a singular syllable, a sound, but even that was enough.

Mr. Universe’s face fell into geometric disarray.

“No use hiding it, huh?” He half-wept, half-laughed again, scrubbing a hand over his face and bringing up his shirt to soak up what was left.

“No,” Blue Diamond whispered, her hands tightening on the head of her cane. “It’s scrawled all over you, I’m afraid.”

“Figures,” he said hoarsely. “I’m a mess.”

“No more than I am.” She pried one of her hands away from the other and gestured loosely at her entire body with a wry smile. “If you’re a mess, then I am a dereliction.”

It wasn’t a contest; it was the truth.

Four years of grieving had wasted her.

Blue Diamond was skeletal.

Broken.

Greg took this in and considered; his smile that really wasn’t a smile resolved itself into a quiet, aching sort of frown. It tugged his face downwards; it tugged at the hollows of her chest. She’d seen him only a little over a week ago, and yet today, he looked as though he’d aged a hundred years in the span of eight days. There were bags under his eyes and sunken dunes in his cheeks.

There was a little boy in a hospital bed.

There was a disease.

It was killing them both.

“How do I do this?” He asked the ground. “How did you—” But he stopped short; his breath hitched.

It was a highly personal question after all.

It was no short wonder that Blue’s cane didn’t snap beneath her grip.

“How did I do it?” She returned softly all the same. The slight breeze stirred the strands of hair poking out of her silvery braid.

Greg nodded mutely, the desperation in his face tangible. She could reach out if she wanted and touch his hurt, the very heart of it, and all of its dimensions. (She didn’t want to.)

“To be entirely truthful,” she murmured, “I’m not sure that I ever did.”

ii.

It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, and it was also 2:38AM, the very moment when a police officer had the audacity to come to their door and tell two mothers that their daughter was dead, gone, and never coming back. His expression was a gathering bruise, and his words were like bullets, striking right between the ribs.

Blue Diamond couldn’t breathe.

In the darkness, she sat on the edge of Pink’s bed and dragged every mouthful of air inwards like it was painful; her chest heaved with the awfulness of it, the punctured horror of leaking lungs.

Her child was dead.

Oh, God.

Her child was gone.

Why, oh, why, oh, God, my God?

And she was never coming back.

Goddammit.

In the coagulated darkness, Blue clutched her daughter’s favorite sweatshirt close to her chest; it was black and ratty, full of holes and little tears. A small alien logo perched on the chest, grinning up at her from depthless eyes.

They used to fight over this particular number.

Constantly.

“You’re a multibillion dollar heiress.” Blue would pinch the bridge of her nose and try not to raise her voice above an acerbic whisper. “Would it inconvenience you to buy some nicer clothes?”

Pink was unsparing in her retorts, wicked and witty, face upturned in a haughtiness to match her mother’s own.

“Would it inconvenience you to get off my ass, Mother? It’s just a sweatshirt.”

“Pink!”

And on and on.

The fabric was cold between Blue’s long fingers, still scented with Pink’s favorite perfume.

They were going to bury her today, mere hours from now.

Last week, they’d been fighting over this shirt.

On and on and never again.

The funeral… mere hours from now… less than three… but how could that also be true when it was only 1:52AM and Pink Diamond was coughing her last, strangled breath on a dirty pavement outside a bar on 9th Avenue?

Blue Diamond hadn’t been there, but she forced the words on the detective’s report to come to life in the theatre of her mind’s eye anyway. By the time the paramedics had arrived, Pink was all but gone; she gasped, and she coughed, and her brown eyes marbled in one final supernova of emotion. They tried to resuscitate her, but the damage was too extensive.

She’d fought back, the officer had said. (He thought it was a consolation to them.)

The proof was caked in her nails and scratched all over her arms, but it’d been three against one.

She was a lion, and they were men; she was a twenty-one year old girl, and they were men.

In the darkness, unraveling, Blue Diamond’s face dripped onto the sweatshirt, onto the alien smiling up at her with a black sliver of a mocking grin. She did not register—she did not care to register—the slow creaking of the door opening inwards.

Amber light strained from the hallway to find and reach and touch her but didn’t quite make it.

Yellow Diamond was a shadowy figure in the doorway.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” she scolded, and yet, she moved into the room anyway—the hypocrite—her sharp heels muffled in the carpet. Stiff and forbidding, she came to stand in front of Blue, arms crossed over her chest, a frown crossed over her face. “It’s not healthy for you, Bl—“

But Blue cut across her. It was not a kind act; it was a precise incision—cold and surgical—three inches long and just as deep. “Our daughter is dead, Yellow.”

The shadowy figure recoiled but did not bite.

Even now, Yellow couldn’t bear to be seen as vulnerable, couldn’t bear to give one damn inch.

“I know that, dammit,” she muttered to the wall. “Dammit—do you not think I know that?”

But Blue had no pity for her, no shred of any emotion left except for the vicious tangle of grief; it tangled in her fingers, which sunk deep into Pink’s shirt, and it tangled in her cold eyes, leaking down her pale face and salting her anemic lips.

“Then act like it,” she hissed.

The exhortation bruised the air.

It demanded a reaction.

On its hands and knees, it begged for a response.

And yet, the shadowy figure said nothing. She didn't move her clenched fists.

She could not face Blue in the eyes.

Coward.

Hypocrite.

(Mourner.)

(Mourning.)

She simply left, staggering out of the room on precariously high heels, and Blue simply stayed, conflating the hours and the days and the minutes.

Later that day, they buried their daughter in a mausoleum, a gazebo—in a cemetery slathered in golden sun.

iii.

Greg explained the details as best as he could on the way up to Steven’s room. It was hard to find him a kidney because his blood type was O negative, which meant that he would only be able to receive a kidney from a Type O donor. And though he’d been on the waiting list for months now, and though he’d recently been moved to the top of the list given his worsening condition, it was still anyone’s guess as to when a kidney would become available.

(“If,” he could barely choke out, “we can even get one at all.”)

After slowly making their way across an expansive skywalk, they finally arrived at a pair of double doors labeled Truman Ward. The sun pierced through the tall glass windows and lit upon Blue’s sunken face, and Greg’s red eyes, and her metallic cane, and his wobbling lips—as though it was doing them a favor by doing so.

Greg reached behind her and pressed a button on the wall, alerting someone on the other side to their arrival.

“Listen”—he ran his hand along the back of his neck as the doors slowly parted open in welcome—“I’m going to go back to the room for a bit and see if I can get some paperwork done. Feel free to stay as long as ya’d like. Visiting hours don’t end ’til eight.”

Blue stared at him.

Every moment—every hour, minute, and second with this child was precious nowadays, and here Greg was, lending her time out of his own.

She felt the gift of what he was offering deeply.

(She could have never found it in herself to be so generous with Pink.)

“Thank you.” She swept a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I… I appreciate you allowing me to visit him.”

But he only shook his head and urged her through the doors with a pinched smile.

“If he’s happy that you’re here,” he shrugged, “then I am, too.”

And with that, he waved a last goodbye, and the doors folded to a close again with her on the other side of them.

Room 11037.

Walking became a monumental task as the clinically white hallway stretched out before her, lengthened by her mind, twisted and contorted into an obstacle she had to surmount.

It should have been just a hall.

Clank.

The memory of Pink burned bright behind her eyelids, stained there permanently by principle but stamped in starkly with assistance from the harsh fluorescents overhead. She was laughing, always laughing, in these flashbulb reminiscences, her freckles coalescing and then expanding across the bridge of her nose like the bellows of an accordion.

Clank.

But it wasn’t just Pink, though it always would be.

Clank.

It was Steven now.

Clank.

A ghost she chased, as opposed to the one who perpetually haunted her (who mercifully, who cruelly stayed.)

Clank.

But he wasn’t a ghost just yet, right? He was still here and still fighting—did that not count for something? Didn't his heartbeat, the very state of its continued existence, teach her to hope?

Clank.

But hope was such an awful word—so empty, brimming with meaningless sensationalism.

Clank.

(Maybe it was the vestiges of her long dead religion, but she wanted to hope anyway.)

Clank.

Hope was such an awful word.

Clank.

Room 11037.

The door was decisively closed.

A tall woman with bicolored eyes leaned against it, her dark lips corkscrewed into a frown.

Blue Diamond vaguely remembered her from the cemetery but couldn’t quite place a name. She could place an expression, though, and was surprised to name the one on this stranger’s face as disdain. Disdain rolled off this mysterious woman in waves, from the resolute clench of her jaw to the iron way that her arms were folded across her chest. It burned in her eyes. It seemed to languish inside of her, seething just under a facade of smooth skin.

She was a monolith of quiet loathing.

Blue squared her rounded shoulders in a manner she thought to be composed; her hands trembled on her cane nonetheless.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” She asked it quite politely, even as the walls were harsh and white around them. She used to command rooms by the authoritative nature of her voice alone, and now she struggled to keep it together long enough to face a singular woman in front of a singular door.

“It’s not you specifically,” the woman replied, impressively put together, admirably composed. If her electric blue eye was cold, the brown one simply burned. Both were bruised underneath with tired shadows. “It’s what you stand for. It’s about the morals that Diamond Electric doesn’t have.”

“You’re an activist,” Blue surmised quickly, almost flippantly. Activists were challenging DE all of the time, and activists were always losing. Before Pink… she’d largely assumed that these sorts of protesters simply had no logical case. After Pink, she had had much more consuming thoughts on her mind than petty lawsuits against their multibillion dollar company.

“A Crystal Gem,” she corrected tersely, “but that’s not what I want to talk to you about.” Her gaze slid subtly to the doorway behind her, and Blue understood her at once.

“Steven,” she whispered.

The woman nodded.

“Steven,” she agreed, and her voice cracked as she said it, splintering into thousands of little pieces and struggling to regroup. When she swallowed to compose herself, it was almost as though she was swallowing the shards. “He likes you, and I can’t… I won’t begrudge him that.”

In the way that she said it, it was almost like she was convincing herself most of all.

“There is an implicit but there,” Blue parried softly. “You won’t begrudge him that, but.”

Again, the woman nodded, the gesture slow and measured, as though she was working something out in the tiny motion. When her squared chin came up again, her mismatched eyes were bright, intense with quiet pain.

“But don’t hurt him.”

It was a reasonable demand, but the implication behind it stung immediately and anyway.

She inhaled sharply and scrambled to defend herself, to salvage the punctured wound, but the damage was already done. Her voice came out more broken than it did cold.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“Maybe not intentionally,” the Crystal Gem said, shaking her head. “Most people never really intend to hurt someone… but it happens. We get caught up in our emotions. We get selfish. We get distant. And then we hurt people.”

It struck Blue Diamond at that very moment that she hadn’t even deigned to ask the woman’s name.

“So, all I’m saying is don’t hurt him.” She unfolded herself from the door and stepped aside. “He likes you.”

iv.

Two days after the first anniversary of Pink Diamond’s death, a doctor shined a light in Blue Diamond’s glassy eyes and waited for a pupillary response. When he received one—an involuntary but nonetheless reactive blink—he unceremoniously clicked off his pen light and straightened up into the unfriendly darkness once more.

In the sparse incandescence bleeding in from the hallway, Yellow Diamond cut a shadowy figure by his side, her usually tidy hair rumpled from all the times her fingers had become ensnared in it that day.

Her tie was loose, and lines had already begun to etch themselves beneath those hawklike eyes of hers.

Soon, they would become permanent fixtures, marked there by time and age and grief.

For now, though, they were only suggestions.

Hints of what was to come.

(So many sleepless nights.)

(How many haunted days?)

“Well?” Though the CEO tried hard to strangle her voice into a whisper, the sharpness of the syllable was still the loudest sound in the room. Subtlety had never quite been this woman’s strong suit; she wielded her words as though they were gavels to proclaim on the heads of all who dared to cross her path.

“Catatonic depression,” the doctor replied, just as succinctly, replacing his pen in the pocket of his lab coat. “The staring, the lack of movement, the loss of appetite, the elective mutism. All textbook symptoms that point to the fact that your wife is still grieving, Mrs. Diamond. Frankly, I’m worried for her health.”

The shadow on his left scowled at this diagnosis, and she fidgeted, and it was apparent by these two idiosyncrasies alone that she was scrounging deep for some incisive rebuttal against the truth that laid like a breathing corpse directly below her.

“Then what, pray tell, do you intend to do about it?” Her voice exceeded its former intentions of quietness. “That’s the problem. Now what’s the solution?”

“Well, I admit her to the hospital and start her on an intravenous Lorazepam treatment. It’s a sedative. It’ll assuage some of her anxiety and relax her muscles to prevent spasming.”

“Yes, and then?”

They were talking about her as though she wasn’t even there.

It was a fair enough assessment.

“And then what, Mrs. Diamond?” The doctor stared at her incredulously, shoving both of his hands in his pockets. “With all due respect, I can treat your wife’s physical symptoms from sunup to sundown, but that’s not touching the heart of what is truly debilitating her. She’s grieving, ma’am, and she needs psychiatric treatment beyond what I can provide as a private doctor and you can provide as her spouse. We discussed this the last time I was here.”

“And the time before that—yes, I know,” Yellow Diamond laughed humorlessly, the sound half-mad in her constricted throat. “Because you stand there, like an imbecile, and tell me that there’s no underlying medical cause to this?!”

She jabbed an accusing hand at Blue Diamond, whose oceanic eyes were wide open and unseeing, silent tears slipping from the corners of them and falling sideways across her face. There was an untouched tray of food on her nightstand. There was a lankness in her unwashed hair. There were pill bottles accumulating like a grotesque collection next to the alarm clock.

And there was an air, an atmosphere, an oppression of silent decay.

The funereality of it was undeniable.

An uncomfortable wooden chair stood next to the bed where Yellow Diamond had been sitting vigil for the past two nights since they had visited the cemetery on the day of the anniversary.

Blue Diamond’s keening sobs had sliced the autumnal air.

Her daughter was dead.

Gone.

Never coming back.

She stared at nothing, it seemed to Yellow and the doctor; she languished in the visions of Pink that seized across her mind with every dripping second of consciousness.

“Depression is an underlying medical cause, Mrs. Diamond.”

The doctor’s voice softened.

Minimally.

For the first time since the house call had begun, his lanky silhouette jerked a little, as though he wanted to place a hand on the CEO’s shoulder, but thought better of it upon seeing something forbidding in the other’s expression.

“And she’s tired, ma’am. You both are.” Look at you, his rust colored eyes seemed to say. You’re both historical wrecks to a long dead ghost. “You can’t take care of her alone… moreover, you shouldn’t have to.”

But the doctor had finally overstepped one prying comment too far, and he must have known it immediately, because he took a step back from the golden eyes glowering at him in the darkness of that dusty bedroom.

Yellow Diamond’s entire face transformed, twisting itself into facets of shattered rage.

She was feral.

(Wounded.)

Apoplectic with fury.

(Grieving, she was inconsolable.)

Dangerous.

Goddammit, she was on fire.

“Do not ever deign to tell me what I can and can’t do when it comes to my wife,” she snarled, all pretense of quietness long gone, devoured in the hurricane of emotion. “Get out! OUT!”

“Mrs. Diamond, please—“

“I SAID OUT! OUT!” She shrieked, harshly shoving his shoulder with the flats of her palms. “GET THE HELL OUT!”

The doctor did not need telling again; he fled the room as the force of Yellow Diamond’s dismissal stoned his back.

Blue blinked slowly as a shaking hand suddenly clasped her arm in the wake of the carnage, the imprint of a steel wedding band carving itself into her flesh.

That hurts, Yellow.

She blinked again, the words swelling on her tongue and dying there unrestfully.

That hurts.

The warnings of Steven’s guardian standing sentinel on top of her frantically beating heart, Blue Diamond turned the knob to Room 11037 and pushed inwards until the door reluctantly gave way to a sight she had forgotten to steel herself for in-between the guilt of moving on and the agonizing action of doing so.

Steven himself.

Dwarfed in a hospital bed.

A mere wisp of the boy who had sat with her on the balcony only three days ago and stuffed his face with little chocolate cakes.

Her prodigious mind working far ahead of her paralyzed body, she frantically tried to recall his text from yesterday, what it had said about his condition, if it had indicated anything about his current state at all. But he had only told her that he had passed out and ended up in the hospital again. The boy had said nothing about the extensive tubing and the wires that ribboned and scissored his entire body in streaming colors. Lines crisscrossed each other and tumbled over and under and around his blankets.

She saw the bottom of an empty catheter bag at the edge of the bed.

And the bruises like angry embers pulsing up his arms.

Somehow, amongst all the other things she was absorbing at precisely the same time, she noticed that next to a vase of elegantly arranged sunflowers, there was an inelegantly arranged tray of hospital food.

Untouched.

He had texted not a word about the yellow pallor of his skin.

He had used exclamation points—exclamation points!—to indicate his excitement.

Blue Diamond could not shake the notion, the very absurd idea, that he had lied to her somehow, had drawn her here under false pretenses.

(This was not the truth. She had estimated at what she was getting herself into and crossed the line into getting herself into it anyway.)

“Hi,” Steven Universe said sheepishly, his cheeks flushing darkly. He was caught, and he knew it. “It’s good to see you again, Blue.”

The seconds dripped between them.

The heart monitor on the wall counted them out.

One…

Blue’s plump lips parted slightly.

Two…

Her hand shivered on the head of her cane until the sound of it rattled the clinically quiet room.

Three…

She couldn’t do this again.

She wouldn’t grieve for another dead child.

One had been too much—one had almost killed her.

Four…

God, and there were still days where she wondered if it still would.

Without thinking, desperate for relief, Blue turned away and braced her free hand on the door, drawing in harsh, ragged breaths that scratched at her beaten lungs, that bled them anew until they were leaking.

Who was she to believe that she wasn’t falling apart at her seams? How delusional was she to hope that a boy with a flower would be the difference between her saving grace and her inevitable dissolution? Was she so naïve to overlook the contours of his illness and think that his determination would be enough to save him from the eternal truth of this world? Was she so weak?

Death didn't discriminate between the old and the young, the sinner and the saint.

Pink Diamond was only twenty-one years old.

Steven Universe was a child.

“Blue!” Steven pleaded. “Wait, please don’t go. I—”

“I cannot look at you, Steven Universe," she cut across him, her voice low and fractured. Hot tears stood in her eyes, suddenly blurring her hand against the smooth door. “I’m sorry, but I cannot bear to see…”

“Can’t bear to see that I’m dying?”

He didn’t just refuse to mince the word; he stabbed it into her back so remorselessly that she gasped sharply. She glanced down at her chest and half-expected to see it lodged there, poking out, her beating heart speared on its tip.

“People can skirt around the word all they want,” Steven laughed bitterly, “but there’s no other word for it… without a kidney, I’m gonna die soon, Blue Diamond. I’m dying right now. I think I’ve been dying all this time. And everyone… all they wanna do… is look away from me. Pearl, Garnet, my dad…”

He sniffed.

“They keep looking away, and I’m so tired of it… I-I’m exhausted.”

The door felt cold against her palm.

Icy.

On the balcony, two days ago, she accused Yellow Diamond of shoving their daughter away in a drawer with the rest of her useless items.

In an arctic hospital room, Blue Diamond was ready to consign a boy to the same grave her daughter was buried in…

… but dead children couldn’t talk.

Dead children couldn’t be tired.

They were simply dead.

“So, please, Blue Diamond… please don’t look away.”

The seconds dripped between them.

The heart monitor on the wall counted them out.

One…

Her eyes were wide with the horror of everything, of it all, the senselessness, the depravity, the nihilistic revolutions of this awful, uncaring world.

“I had a daughter once,” she whispered to the door. “Her name was Pink Diamond, and she was… she is… my everything. She had a smile wider than this planet could ever hope to contain… and she very much liked to laugh.”

She had never talked about Pink to anyone other than Yellow before.

Even evoking her name felt like blasphemy.

Two…

A second passed, and no lightning fell from the sky to strike her dead; she supposed her own self-flagellation was the punishment and the eternal damnation alike.

“I looked away. Yellow and I both did. She wanted more from life, and we wanted to contain her life into… into a little box that could fit on the shelf with all our other trophies. She was our accomplishment, you see, our legacy.”

Three…

Blue Diamond’s hand fell away from the door, so she could bring it up to her mouth in a futile attempt to dam the sobs that racked her shoulders.

Four…

“We looked away. The night that she… she—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word aloud. She wasn’t brave like Steven. “We thought she was in her room, and I didn’t tell her that I loved her that night because we had argued… I thought I’d get the chance the next day or the day after that because we argued all the time. It was normal for us.”

On and on and never again.

When was the last time Blue Diamond had said those three words to her daughter?

These past four years, she had scoured her brain for the answer, but the answer was as elusive as the phrase was from her mouth.

For the simple truth of the matter was that she hadn’t said it very often.

In all her vast intellect, she had always assumed that it was assumed.

Implied.

Understood.

You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

I love you, she could have said.

You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

I didn’t want you to, she would have replied then. I wanted you to collect dust with all the rest of our awards and certificates. I wanted you safe, where I could see you. I wanted to quantify the entirety of your life and itemize the particulars. I wanted you to always be mine.

I love you.

I looked away.

An oxymoron.

A tragedy.

Five…

“So if I look at you, Steven Universe,” she murmured, screwing her eyes closed tightly against the pain, “really look at you, then I have to face that truth again—that I loved someone once… and I looked away… and now she’s… gone.”

And that was the immutable truth of the matter, the conclusion she circled around to no matter how many times the Earth continued to revolve away from the day since Pink Diamond had last existed on this world.

Four thousand revolutions later, and this would still be what it came down to in the end.

Her daughter’s blood was on her hands, staining them crimson, veining her lifelines with the guilt and the awfulness and the unbearable, crucifying shame.

And her daughter’s blood cried out, You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

And every time she so much as looked at her own palms, that was the only echo she saw written across their hollows.

Those last words.

Unanswered.

Unfinished.

Undoing and undone.

Six…

“But… I’m not gone yet,” Steven argued softly. His voice fought to be heard over all the machinery keeping him alive. “I’m here.”

He must have moved because blankets shifted somewhere behind her.

Dead children didn’t move.

Dead children weren’t here.

They were simply—

Seven…

Eight…

Nine…

Ten…

Do it, she commanded herself.

Look at him.

But Blue Diamond was frozen, and she was statuesque; she was a calcification barely anchored on the foundation of her cane. One false move and she would crumble entirely.

The safest bet on her own survival was to limp away and dare not look behind her lest she turn to salt and dust.

Someone else could clean up the carnage.

That woman who stood at the door—she’d do it—Greg Universe and the boy’s other guardians, too.

Don’t hurt him, that same woman had also said. He likes you.

Eleven…

Twelve…

Thirteen...

vi.

It was wash day.

For nearly a year and half after Pink Diamond died, Yellow would force Blue out of bed every few days for a bath or a shower—usually a shower because it was becoming increasingly hard for the CEO to lift her wife in and out of the tub.

Today was a tub sort of occasion, though.

Date night with the Diamonds.

The presence of death was always with them, though, an intrusive third wheel.

With a slight groan, Yellow lowered herself into the warm water behind Blue, steam rising around their naked skin like curling smoke. Once upon a time, this used to be a favorite pastime of theirs, a chance to reacquaint themselves with each other and their bodies… but now the gesture was simply hygienic in purpose, asexual and quiet.

It was always quiet in the Diamonds’ penthouse suite these days.

Silent.

“Is it too hot?” Yellow asked, her voice as gentle as she could wrangle it. Somehow, at the same time, it was still edged with the trappings of harshness. “I can add some cold water?"

She waited briefly for a reply that would never come.

Blue stared limply at her knees, pulled up awkwardly as they were to her chest. Her sensitive skin had already reddened in a couple of places where it was touching the water. There were pink fingerprints wrapped around her armpits where she’d been handled into the tub.

“I think it’s too hot. You’re getting a rash.” A well-manicured hand flashed out from behind her ear and knobbed the far left tap. There was a quick murmur and then the steady hiss of cold water.

“There,” she humphed satisfactorily. “This’ll feel better.”

The running stream answered its assent.

Blue Diamond did not say a word.

She hadn’t in days now, maybe even weeks; time was irrelevant to her, and the words would not come.

There was only a dullness in her head, numb and numbing, like an icy compress coiled tightly around her thoughts.

Yellow didn’t think so, but this was better than the alternative; this was the far superior solution to the problem, the pain, and the pervasiveness of the ghost who was their daughter Pink Diamond.

Because when the analgesic of her own catatonia faded, and some of the feeling tried to seep through, her chest would unfailingly tighten, a vice squeezing hard upon her weary heart.

She couldn’t breathe.

Her child was dead.

“I…”

The sound came from behind her, guttural and choked, as though the speaker was fighting hard against the noise and losing the war.

“I’m so tired, Blue.”

It was an admission, and it was a copout.

Both of them knew that Blue Diamond wasn’t registering a single word.

She heard them—yes, this was true.

But they came to her—they landed softly—like distant echoes; she did not feel the pain of them, the visceral agony; at the present moment, she did not even feel her own pain, the grief and the scalding water and the grief.

Because it was always the grief she was trying to repress.

Everything else was just ancillary.

“You don’t know, goddammit, you can’t know, how exhausted I am.” Yellow Diamond’s voice shattered in the tub.

And her entire body hitched.

As though to keep that from breaking, too.

“You exhaust me, Blue Diamond. You exhaust me every single day. And you don’t even know it, goddammit. Who are you? What the hell have you become?”

The question was delivered to her backside, where it slipped down her tall, curving spine and into the water, splashing there with the delivery of the tap. With a violence that was almost cruel, Yellow reached from behind her again and flung it back into an off position.

There was quietness then.

It was so still, that it was disquiet.

It was always quiet in the Diamonds’ penthouse suite these days.

Silent.

Blue continued to stare blankly at her knees.

There were red patches on her skin.

Her child was dead.

After a moment’s hesitation, her breath heavy on the back of Blue’s long, slender neck, Yellow Diamond gathered her silvery hair gently in one hand and grabbed the comb on the side of the tub with another.

She was careful as she maneuvered its teeth through damp, lank strands.

She always was.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Blue.”

That was what Blue Diamond’s note would say merely a few months later.

I’m sorry and I’m sorry and I’m sorry.

Love always, Blue.

But that was the crucial thing, wasn’t it?

Sorry was not enough; love was not enough.

Because if love had been enough, Pink Diamond would still be alive.

vii.

In a hospital room pierced through with golden sun, Blue Diamond turned around and faced the light of day, her heavy braid swinging along with the slow, deliberate motion.

She wasn’t looking away, Steven Universe.

She was staring straight at him—at his sunken face and his tubing and at the catheter bag and at the sunflowers.

The boy was dying, but he was not yet dead.

It wasn’t much.

At the very least, though, it was something.

He was not gone, even if he was going.

He was here.

In this moment, in this very ephemeral second.

The heart monitor on the wall attested to that; it counted his heartbeats; it pleaded with her to have hope.

(Hope was such an awful word.)

“Those are beautiful flowers,” she whispered. Her cane clinked against the tiled floor as she carefully drew closer to observe them better.

Their petals were tall and spiky, assaulting the air with attentiveness and regal magnitude.

They vaguely reminded her of Yellow.

With a light finger, she tried to prop up one that was beginning to droop beneath the weight of all its brethren, but the moment she withdrew her touch, it fell again, sighing listlessly.

Poor thing.

“But not quite as pretty as that hibiscus you bequeathed me.”

Steven’s eyes, edged with the trace remnant of his tears, were wide and dark, full of velvet and silvery stars.

“You don’t still have it, do you?” He asked, incredulous and rather pleased.

He played a little with his hands on top of his blankets.

He tried to tamp down his hope for an affirmative with an unconvincing casualness.

Blue Diamond’s smile bruised her lips.

“I placed it on my nightstand, sweet boy, so I could look at it everyday.”

It took a second, but the irony of that word choice was not lost on either of them.

viii.

Yellow Diamond placed the failed suicide note on her nightstand for Blue to see and know that she saw. They didn’t talk about it afterwards.

How could they?

What was there to say?

It remained there for a few days afterwards, shriveled and guilty-looking next to the alarm clock; every time she opened her eyes, she would see it and feel its quiet condemnation. She would close her eyes against its glare and wait for sleep or numbness one to wrestle her into the dark.

One day, she woke up, and the paper was gone again.

The realization drew a frown across her wrinkled face.

When she thought about getting up to search for it, and mustered the appropriate will to get out of bed, apparently, many days had passed in the interim.

A month.

She only recognized this upon surveying her bathroom on her way to the toilet; she couldn't find her shaving razor anywhere.

One night—the day, the month, the year undetermined in the abscessed haze of her mind—a dull ache throbbed through Blue’s hip, growing in intensity and sharpness with each passing second that she laid on the wounded area.

There was a part of her, not entirely inconsequential, that invited the pain. For after all, suffering was the only victory the woman had left in the entire world; she wrestled with it nightly, and she embraced it. She made it her new lover and exchanged an oath that only death would do them part. She didn’t shoot herself, or cut herself, or swallow a handful of pills that would surely do the trick.

She laid on her bad hip and convinced herself that she deserved it.

But that night—whatever night that it was—the agony was unbearable, pulling at her all over.

With a groan that wasn’t voluntary, Blue wrested herself into some semblance of a sitting position and looked for her phone so that she could call Livia for an ice pack, but it wasn’t on the bedside table as it usually was… and since it wasn’t in its usual position, she had no clue where she had last left it.

If she wanted relief, she would have to brave the kitchen herself.

She wanted relief, and the guilt of it half-immobilized her.

So she sat there for a couple more minutes still and endured the stabbing ache before finally coaxing herself upwards into the dark night of the bedroom.

Assuming her cane in one hand, Blue crept silently towards the door and out of it, where the hallway stretched out before her like a cavernous tunnel, all the lights extinguished.

Even the telltale glow of lamp warmth that usually emitted from the study across the hall was gone out, which meant that Yellow had likely succumbed to sleep on the couch within.

A twinge of something bothered Blue’s sternum at the thought.

She limped forward anyway and all the same, lifting her cane off the floor to keep from making noise; the wall was her guide in its stead, the pads of her long fingers moving along its smooth planes until she reached the end of the archway, where she immediately intuited that she wasn’t alone.

In the moonlight that wept into the living room through the tall windowpanes, Yellow Diamond was a stark figure sitting on the edge of the couch, leached of all her color. Her blonde hair, her silky pajamas, the leathery musculature of her corded neck—all of it was leveled by blinding whiteness.

Illuminated.

Vulnerable.

Exposed.

When her wife swallowed, she could see every line in her powerful jaw working through the peristaltic motion.

In the shadowed hallway, Blue Diamond stood still, even though the sharp pain in her hip demanded attention.

For this moment, this night, this moonlit haunting did not belong to her—even though most of them usually did.

She understood, somewhere in the mire of her own head, that to disturb this scene would be sacrilege. So she watched, and she waited.

Yellow Diamond was holding something between her sharp, angular hands.

With a jolt, she realized that it was Spinel, a stuffed pink cat who had been Pink’s favorite companion once upon a time. Her left ear was still stained from the tea Yellow had once accidentally dripped on it during a princess tea party.

Washed it though they had—several times over—the spot was stubborn; Spinel had been permanently marked.

“S’okay, Momma,” Pink had only said, grinning up at them both from gapped teeth. She had hugged the toy to her chest. The affected ear brushed against the side of her freckled neck. “That just means she’s one of a kind."

Yellow’s fingers were wrapped around the cat’s plush stomach tenderly; she stared at it from depthless, ancient eyes.

It struck Blue Diamond—then and there—that she wanted something more from this vignette; she wanted Yellow to say something. Selfishly, she desired a confirmation for what she had already so trenchantly inferred.

She wanted, she desired, she longed, she needed to know that her wife was broken, too.

It was a horrible hunger, an itch that felt terrible to scratch.

But Blue Diamond was voracious.

Sometimes, maybe even oftentimes, she could be cruel.

After a long while, though, Yellow Diamond only placed the cat down on the coffee table and stared out into the irradiated night with her hands templed below her sharp chin, lost in silent thought.

She looked older than she ever had in all of their collected years together.

She was only fifty-four.

ix.

They talked—for a long while—as the sun slipped away from the sky, sunset coming in fragments through the slats in the window blinds.

Blue Diamond held Steven’s hand, the one that didn’t have so many IVs in it, and rubbed smooth circles against his wrist.

“Pearl does that, too,” he smiled at her softly through hooded eyes when she began. “It’s nice.”

They talked about everything, and they talked about nothing.

He told her about his favorite show, which seemed to be about morose breakfast items from what she could vaguely surmise, and he talked to her, very quietly, about his disease.

It was rapidly progressing, far more quickly than his nephrologist had anticipated.

“Those chocolate cakes we shared on your balcony,” he admitted with the air of a child waiting to be scolded, “I may have accidentally puked them up in your toilet. Sorry..."

“It’s of no consequence,” she returned with a small, sad smile.

And this was very well true.

She wasn’t the one who had to clean it after all.

They talked about everything, and they talked about nothing.

Blue told him about the sunrise yesterday, how all the colors had seeped together in a swirl of delicious color, and she talked to him, very quietly, about Pink.

“In the best of possible ways,” she mumbled, the sound caught in the column of her throat, “you remind me of her sometimes. She smiled at everything, even when there wasn’t exactly something to be smiled about.”

“That’s a very pretty way to put it.” Steven wriggled a thumb from beneath her palm to stay it against the side of her hand.

“Yes,” she nodded gently, “I suppose so.”

When it was time for her to leave—a team of nurses had come in to administer Steven’s evening medicines and check his vitals—she pressed a kiss against his forehead.

Very light and very soft.

“You didn’t look away,” he whispered against her cheek as she withdrew. His breath was sickly sweet with disease. “Thank you, Blue.”

She froze, meeting his eyes.

There was hesitancy, and there was consuming grief.

The scribble of guilt.

Scrawled all over her face.

“I wanted to, though,” she breathed. “If we're being technical... if we're being fair... I think the impulse counts against me.”

“But you didn’t.”

Steven’s chapped lips tilted into the beginnings of a smile.

“And that’s what matters, right?”

She brushed a stray curl off of his clammy forehead and thought about Pink and Yellow and all the things she did and didn’t do.

She loved them.

She looked away.

“Yes,” she told Steven Universe.

Yes.

Alone, Blue Diamond slowly crossed the skywalk, her silvery hair crowned in all the colors of the sunset, a phone pressed against her ear.

Her cane struck the tiled floor with each shuffled step forward.

Clank.

The dial tone droned rhythmically—bzzt and bzzt and bzzt.

Clank.

She felt her heart work its way up her throat, clambering up its fleshy rungs. The immensity of what she was doing transformed her nervous system into a network of beating, pulsing neuroses.

She was ready for this, and she was not.

She could do this; she half-hoped that she wouldn't receive an answer.

Clank.

And then—

“Blue?” Yellow Diamond’s low voice threw its instinctive panic across the line. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Because this was new.

And yet, achingly familiar.

So many years of having not sought Yellow out—all those weeks, days, and months—were well-established patterns that were not easily overturned and undone.

All those collective hurts—hundreds of them, thousands.

Four years of misery sat between them like four hundred thousand miles.

Blue Diamond swallowed thickly, stopping dead in her tracks as the spillage of people continued to swarm all around her like a package freed of its contents: doctors and patients and sundry other visitors. She was the eye of their storm, and yet, she was just another broken person in the midst of so many other broken people. She was separate from them, and yet, she was their intimate kin. The contradiction seemed untenable, unworkable like all the rest.

Her fingers tightened on the head of her cane.

“I’m… I’m fine, Yellow,” she began. “Please don’t worry. I just had to… I wanted to tell you something. Are you busy?”

On the other end of the line, somewhere in a giant, yellow skyscraper at the edge of Empire City, there was the sharp intake of breath.

And the hesitant beginnings of a fearful reply.

It was a start, though.

And that was what mattered, right?

Yes, Blue Diamond thought to herself.

Yes.

#bellow diamond #blue diamond #yellow diamond #steven universe #garnet #greg universe #s: steven universe #mimik-u #flower child #holy shit - i can't believe i wrote this

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hadeswh0re · 4 years

Text

Never Bakugo x Read

OK HELLO! This is my first attempt at anything like this so I tried kinda hard but I hope you enjoy it.

Angst to fluff btw :)

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His voice echoed in your head, over and over again the same sentence. Like it was on a loop. “The truth is I never loved you. But you can’t really blame me, can you? You can only blame yourself. I mean look at you.” It was like someone ripped your heart out of your chest and stood on it and kept standing on it until you no longer felt the pain of heartbreak or the sadness anymore. It was an unusual feeling, being numb and all. But why know? Why did Katsuki Bakugo have to break your heart after all these years?

You met him a year ago, in your first year at the prestigious hero school, UA. It wasn’t your typical romance either. You both had one common goal, which was to be the best hero you could be. However, you had your differences because while he tended to be the aggressive hothead, you were a lot more laid back. Both on a level playing field. That was till the Sports Festival, where you came so close to becoming in the top three, but just couldn’t make it after facing severe injuries in your battle against Katsuki. He visited you in the hospital every day until you were allowed out.

But now what was happening, why such a sudden change. It was his eyes that you noticed first, the ones you loved so dearly had a different shine in them. They seemed a dull crimson compared to the vivid carmine you got use too. They lit up every time he won a fight, or when he got the answer right, or when he sparred with you. They danced with joy when you laughed. And just the same, they dulled and blurred and were not the same.

‘I don’t love you anymore.’

You stuttered, not knowing how to react, ‘Katsuki, where did this come fro-, why do you-, what did I do wrong?’. Maybe it was the overwhelming shock, or maybe the stress of what you could say next. Maybe it was the thought of no longer having him in your life that set of that panic in your mind and the thoughts accelerating inside her mind. You wanted them to stop, halt for a split second, and just enough for you to breath. Each breath that manages to get through was coming through in gasps. The room span and you felt your knees weaken, a sick feeling in your stomach. The panic started off simple until it was like being plunged into ice water surrounding each limb and organ. Creeping higher until it passes your throat. Then your nose. Then eyes. It was very much like drowning. Not breathing until that last second. That second where life seems like its slipping from your grasps is when you breathe in. Flooding your lungs until dark is all you can see.

That’s when it stopped. You wake up as if its an emergency as if you were never asleep in the first place. You’re heart beating fast and buzzing in the brain, like starting a car with jump-leads. Excepts now your brain and your heat were the dead battery. Dead beyond repair. But when you bolted upright, it all came into perspective. You were not with Bakugo, but swimming in a pool of your own sweat, pulse coming down slowly to its normal pace. You looked at the clock flashing 3:38am, usually after a nightmare you’d just go back to sleep. But this one was new, this one scatted you more than any other nightmare you faced. So you did the only thing you knew to do.

Slowly peeling yourself off your bed, you wrapped a blanket around your shoulders and opened the door to leave your dorm. It was a brisk evening, the hallway dark and mysterious. Not like you needed light to make your way to your final destination, it was imprinted into your brain. Before you knew it you had made it outside of the infamous Katsuki Bakugo’s door. Knocking on the door, you realized that this was a mistake. He was your boyfriend but you still didn’t want him seeing you like this. At your weakest. But by the time you turned around to leave, his door swung open.

‘Wtf Y/N, do you know what time it is.’

All you could muster through your croaky voice was, ‘Please don’t leave me. Please’

His face softened when he saw how red and puffy your eyes really were, And before you knew it you were pulled into his chest, hearing his soothing heartbeat.

‘I will never leave you.’

#bnha fanfiction #bnha headcanons #bnha imagines #bnha x reader #bnha bakugo katsuki #bakugou x reader #bnha bakugou #my hero academia x reader #my hero academia masterlist

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honeyedhoseok · 4 years

Text

Hanami Pt. 1 | The V2 Series

Genre | just messy, messy angst

Word Count | 4.5K

Warnings | Y/N has lots of anxiety in this chapter, be warned! LOTS of pining, mentions of depression, etc. Basically just Y/N wallowing.

Summary | You and Hongbin head downtown to meet the rest of your friends in celebration of the cherry blossom festival.

A/N | This is slight filler. But! It’s pretty important for what’s to come. Sorry if it seems redundant. It took me forever to pump this out, so I hope you enjoy, nonetheless <3 also, the answer to who is holding hands in the image teaser is finally solved!!

Read the rest of the V2 Series HERE!

Yeonwoo | Picture Message Received [11:28 AM]

Yeonwoo [11:28AM] I’m downtown!!! Cherry blossom ice cream!!! You guys need to try this

Hyejin [11:34AM] Yeonwoo, it’s not even lunch time yet?

Yeonwoo [11:36AM] And? I’m already drinking, too :) the bars opened early. look at this thing!!

Yeonwoo | Picture Message Received [11:36AM]

Yeonwoo [11:37AM] it’s called a Royal Orchid, isn’t it pretty?

Y/N [11:38AM] holy fuck, I want one!!!!!!!

Yeonwoo [11:40AM] come downtown!!! Let’s all meet up

Hyejin [11:41AM] I’m down!

After placing your phone on your nightstand, you roll over in bed, taking in the sight of a peacefully sleeping Hongbin beside you. His hair curls cutely around his temples, his mouth slightly agape at the deep sleep that has overcome him after getting home later than usual the night before.

He was only awake for an hour or two last night—long enough to heat up some leftovers in the oven and shovel them in his mouth—before he was trudging off to bed to sleep in on his upcoming day off.

You hate to ask him, but you want to meet your friends downtown and since he didn’t have work—

“Stop staring at me like that,” he murmurs with a dry throat, one eye creaking open to stare at you humorously. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Your mouth falls open. “How’d you even know I was looking?”

“I could feel it,” Hongbin says, a smile splitting his face in two. “You look like you’re about to apologize for something.”

You hate that he can read you so well. “Well—I know it’s your day off,” you begin, watching Hongbin’s expression to gauge his reaction before you push further, “but Yeonwoo is out at the Cherry Blossom Festival and I was wondering if you wanted to go check it out?”

“Sure,” he agrees easily, yawning. “Why are you acting like you’re afraid to ask me out?”

Hongbin reaches out to caress the side of your face gently, hooking a finger under your chin to bring your mouth down to his for a chaste kiss. “Are you getting shy on me in our old age?”

You return the soft press of his lips, but roll your eyes. “You’re older than me!”

“Taller, too.” He grins, stretching his long limbs with a groan. “I just need to shower and then we can go.”

“Really?” You say, grinning. “I’ll get dressed!”

You hop out of bed, walking over to your dresser to pick out an outfit. A few moments later, Hongbin sidles up behind you, arms wrapping around your waist as he nuzzles his face into your neck.

“You sure you don’t want to join me for a shower first?” He murmurs, placing a kiss on your shoulder.

Your stomach stirs at the intent in his words, and you let out a breathy laugh. “I’m already clean,” you protest. “I took a shower last night before bed.”

“I can help make you dirty again,” he suggests, nose ghosting up the juncture between your neck and shoulder. “Hmm?”

Goosebumps arise where Hongbin’s breath floats over, paired with light kisses that have you closing your eyes as he continues his persuasive assault. Just as you are about to give in, Hongbin’s hands traveling south from your waist and under the long t-shirt you wore to bed, his phone vibrates on the nightstand.

Loud buzzing noises fill the room and your eyes re-open, the desire fizzling out of your system just as quickly as it entered. You sigh, removing yourself from his embrace and returning to finding your clothes as Hongbin slinks away, leaving an apology whispered against your skin as he places a final, soft kiss on your shoulder.

You won’t let a badly-timed phone call ruin your mood, though. At least Hongbin had agreed to come out at all, right?

While Hongbin is in the shower, you find yourself indulging in your new habit of unhealthily checking Taehyung and Yeseul’s social media accounts for any updates.

Today, along with hundreds of others in the city—and soon to include you and your friends—they are enjoying a day off to participate in the festivities of the annual cherry blossom festival. Downtown was going to be buzzing today with street vendors and food carts and just general fun, which is why you wanted to go. It was no wonder that Taehyung and Yeseul would be out doing the same thing, but you roll your eyes at the post anyway.

Despite seeing posts similar to these in the past few weeks from both Taehyung and Yeseul, it still turns your stomach. A little less, now—you’ll admit that much—but not because you’d come any closer to being okay with Taehyung completely moved on and living his best life after your—

What were you even supposed to call it? A falling out? A break up? For two people who weren’t exclusive, it didn’t seem right to call it that, even though the pain was so reminiscent of previous heartbreak you’d experienced.

You stare at the photo for a while, letting your eyes trace over Taehyung’s soft locks, his pretty brown eyes and eyelashes, his tanned skin, his lips pulled into a cute smirk, the sleeves of his shirt coming down a little on his hand making a peace sign, the curve of his jaw. Tears prick at the backs of your eyes but you refuse to let them blur your vision, cradling Taehyung’s picture on the screen in your hands for just a little while longer as you settle into your longing—hoping that one day it won’t be so hard to see him like this. Hoping that one day you won’t feel so nostalgic when a picture of him pops up. Hoping that one day—and if it came soon, you’d be okay with that—that you won’t wish you could go back to the peaceful day at his apartment before everything fell apart.

You and Hongbin arrive downtown just as Yeonwoo gives you her updated location: a snow cone cart near the water. When you walk up, she’s ordering a Dragon Blood flavor in their largest size while Hyejin stands beside her, contemplating all of her options on the menu board with furrowed brows.

Yeonwoo’s eyes light up. “You’re here!” she says, walking over to pull you into an embrace. “With Hongbin!”

“I’m here,” he says cheerfully, returning her hug with small pats between the shoulder blades. “It’s been a while, right?”

“Yep,” Hyejin says, joining your group off to the side as she pockets her wallet. “Now Yeonwoo and I can third wheel like old times.”

You roll your eyes as Hongbin chuckles, feeling his hand find the small of your back. “Do you want a snow cone?” he asks. “My treat.”

You nod and he gets in line, leaving you with your reeling friends.

“So, how’s everything?”

The intent in Yeonwoo’s voice is hard to hide, and you try not to get annoyed by it. After your embarrassing break down in her car concerning Taehyung, she’d been periodically checking in on you to make sure you weren’t spiraling again.

I’m fine, I promise, you’d texted her just recently.

In reality, you were definitely spiraling, just not where anyone could see it anymore. Being up to date with Taehyung’s escapades on his Instagram hurt, but somehow soothed the ache of emptiness inside you—it was almost enough just to see his face, see him smiling and happy even if it wasn’t with you. Almost.

“Everything’s fine,” you respond, grinning. “I finally convinced Hongbin to do something with me on his day off, so this is the best day I’ve had in awhile.”

“Aww,” Hyejin coos. “Cute, you’re like an old married couple.”

You grimace at the comment, but force out a stifled laugh. “Something like that, yeah.”

You glance to where Hongbin is in line, talking with the street vendor about the most popular flavors on the menu. He looked good today, you had to admit: his dark hair falling into his eyes as he dipped his chin in thank you to the vendor, his outfit a casual pair of jeans and a t-shirt that you hadn’t seen him in in so long you forgot he owned such clothes, the perfect smile he threw your way as he headed over, two yellow snow cones in his hands.

He offers you one. “He said the pina colada was good,” he says. “I hope that’s okay?”

You shrug, taking a bite out of the rounded top. Hongbin watches you with cautious eyes, but when you give him a smile while you crunch on the shaved ice, his face lights up happily. He takes out his phone to snap a quick picture of his own cone before having a taste.

Something stirs in your stomach as you watch him, a warm feeling that has been dormant for a while.

“Should we walk?” Yeonwoo asks. “I’m waiting on a friend to join us, they should be here in a little.”

Hyejin laughs a little at the statement but when you look at her, she shakes her head in a way that lets you know she’ll tell you later.

The four of you set out, walking beside the riverfront for a little while. Cherry blossoms litter the ground and there’s a happy air that settles above you in the atmosphere—for the first time in a while, you actually feel good.

Maybe it’s the outside air, maybe it’s the sugary sweetness of the snowcone in your hand, maybe it’s the way Hongbin’s fingers brush against your own at your side a few times before he finally catches them, lacing them through his and smiling down at you.

The way your heart flutters at the action is surprising, but not unwelcome.

“Look at those!” Yeonwoo says suddenly, pointing over at a vendor whose booth boasts a collection of hand-made wire flowers, the petals covered in resin in various shades of blues, pinks, and reds.

She leads your group over, stooping in front of a display of the fake flowers in a small dirt-filled pot on the ground.

“How much?” Hyejin asks the woman manning the booth.

“Four dollars each,” the woman says, giving you all a warm smile. “Or fifteen for the pot.”

“They’d be perfect for my coffee table,” Yeonwoo murmurs. “Should I get them?”

She looks up at you for affirmation, making you chuckle. You can tell from the look in her eyes that she’s made up her mind, she just wanted someone else to tell her it was a good idea, too.

“I mean, yeah—“

“We’ll take them.” A voice behind you chimes in, reaching over the table display to hand the woman a twenty dollar bill. Both you and Yeonwoo turn around to see a grinning Jungkook handing the woman the money. “Keep the change,” he adds with an incredibly charming smile.

It’s been a long time since you’ve seen Jungkook—his hair is longer, but it looks good, somehow. And he’s broader like he’s been working out his upper body, particularly his chest and shoulders. His eyes flicker to yours and his mouth droops for a fraction of a second before he’s focused back on Yeonwoo, and he gives her a cheeky grin.

“They’ll go good in the living room,” you hear him murmur to her as he hands her the pot of flowers. She grins up at him and he envelops her in a soft hug, his lips at her ear as he says something you can’t hear but has Yeonwoo giggling and red in the face.

Hongbin sidles up beside you, scaring you out of your transfixed gaze on Jungkook and Yeonwoo.

“Jungkook, how you been, man?” Hongbin says, holding out his hand for a shake. Jungkook takes it, keeping one arm lazily draped over Yeonwoo’s shoulders. She shrugs it off after a few moments, looking uncomfortable with the way you and Hyejin’s eyes keep roaming her every move.

You can’t help but wonder what Jungkook is doing here, and more importantly, if Taehyung is anywhere in the vicinity. Goosebumps arise on your skin at the thought, and you wrap your arms around yourself. You find yourself thinking of the social media posts you’d seen throughout the day.

Jungkook had commented on Yeseul’s instagram update, you remembered that much. Was he meeting them here? Was Taehyung coming? Was he bringing Yeseul? Were you going to have to see them together? Your brain clouds with thoughts, so much that Hongbin has to say your name three times before you hear it.

“You okay?” He asks, looking at you uneasily. He brushes a few stray hairs back from your face. “You don’t look so good, baby.”

“I’m fine,” you say, swatting his hand away. You don’t mean to do it as angrily as you do, and the look of hurt that crosses Hongbin’s face has you backtracking, choosing to grab his hand and intertwine your fingers through his instead. “Sorry.”

“Have you guys eaten?” Jungkook asks. “I passed a cart on the way over that was selling smoked turkey legs and they looked really good.”

“Nope,” Yeonwoo replies, popping her lips on the ‘p’ at the end of the word.

You raise your eyebrows at the statement, knowing surely from the text messages in your group chat that Yeonwoo had been snacking since she and Hyejin arrived downtown this morning.

“Lead the way,” Hyejin says, gesturing for the two to lead at the front of the sidewalk. She joins you and Hongbin behind them, completely content with being the fifth wheel with the way a smirk settles onto her face.

“What’s that thing you wanted to tell me?” you whisper to her, eyes darting to Yeonwoo.

“I can’t tell you right now,” she replies, shaking her head. “But isn’t it obvious?”

You purse your lips in thought. You were getting more curious by the moment—what was obvious?

You remembered that a while ago, you’d thought Jungkook and Hyejin were going to be a thing, but Hyejin was never interested in him. What was he doing now? Were he and Yeonwoo getting close because they were discussing theories on you and Taehyung, why both of you were probably acting weird lately?

Your stomach turns at the thought, and you focus on breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth for the rest of the walk to the food cart. Jungkook keeps bumping into Yeonwoo’s shoulder as you walk, making her giggle and push him away. Hongbin is silent beside you—probably still sulking about you pushing his hand away earlier—and Hyejin is only interested in her phone for the time being. The group atmosphere feels off now, and you can’t tell if it’s your imagination everything is really as tilted as it seems.

The most important thing on your mind at the moment was whether or not you could get Jungkook to talk about Taehyung without it being too obvious; maybe you could pull him to the side at some point, or mention Taehyung in passing—

“Y/N, do you remember when we came to the Cherry Blossom festival and spent the whole time looking for a place that sold the drink we saw someone holding on their instagram story?” Yeonwoo says, turning to look over her shoulder at you with a grin.

You nod immediately. “We searched everywhere,” you say, shaking your head at the memory.

“So you never found it?” Jungkook asks. “What did it look like?”

Yeonwoo gives him the general description of the drink from what she remembers, and Jungkook does some searching as you all stand in line for the food cart.

“I’m going to grab us that bench over there,” Hyejin says. “Y/N, come with me so I don’t have to look like a loser sitting by myself.”

You let Hyejin pull you out of line, yelling at Hongbin to get you a corn dog before you’re too far away. Hyejin sits in front of you on the wooden bench, pulling out a powder puff from her purse before she speaks.

“So, are you playing dumb right now?” Hyejin asks. She was always one to get right to the point. “‘Cause I’m kind of confused.”

You watch her inspect her reflection in a small heart-shaped mirror that she also pulls from her purse, feeling your pulse quicken in your veins.

“What?” you manage to say after a few moments. “What do you mean?”

“You know that I know, right?” Hyejin says. “About everything.”

This is what she wanted to talk to you about. So Yeonwoo was discussing your secrets—not with Jungkook, but with Hyejin; which meant she’d figured it out.

Your stomach clenches at the thought and somewhere in the back of your head you now have a slight headache forming. You should have known you couldn’t trust Yeonwoo, or anyone, for that matter, with such a sensitive subject as Taehyung—why did you ever think it was a good idea to show your emotions in front of her that day at the cafe?

Hyejin looks over her mirror at you, raising an eyebrow as she waits for your answer.

You blow out a long breath, hands gripping onto the edge of the table, fingernails digging into the splintered wood to keep you grounded.

“You do?” you say weakly. “Hyejin—”

She snaps the compact shut suddenly, eliciting a sharp clap that makes you jump in your seat.

“They’re kind of cute, right? I mean, I know that we had a small thing a while ago, but it never went anywhere, you know? I like him better for her,” Hyejin says, looking over to where your friends stand in line.

Your eyes follow hers, looking at Jungkook and Yeonwoo in line for a few moments before it registers.

“Oh,” you breathe out, finally putting the pieces together. “Oh my god.”

A giggle bursts from behind your closed lips, followed by another until you are full-on laughing at the situation. Hyejin wasn’t talking about you, she was talking about Yeonwoo—and the thought makes you so happy a tear rolls down your cheek at your hysterically-induced laughter.

Hyejin smiles at you a little, laughing a little out of spite, but her eyebrows furrow slightly as she’s unable to understand why the situation is so funny to you. After laughing way too hard for way too long, you finally straighten up, wiping tears from the corners of your eyes as Hyejin watches on.

“Yes, them—” you clear your throat, stilling recovering from laughing as you nod in the direction of Jungkook and Yeonwoo’s backs, “they’re cute together—but as in, like, friends?”

“What? You are not this fucking slow, Y/N” Hyejin snaps, slapping her hand down on the table.

You blink a few times, still not understanding.

“Oh my god,” Hyejin groans. “They’re dating, Y/N. Jesus.”

“Yeonwoo and Jungkook?” you say incredulously.

Hyejin nods in a way that screams “duh,” but you don’t have time to be offended by her demeanor.

“Since when?”

“I don’t know. A couple of weeks now, I think.”

“How come no one told me?”

You look back to where your best friend is standing in line, and suddenly, you can see it: the way Yeonwoo’s shoulder nudges innocently against Jungkook’s, down to where Jungkook’s knuckles brush against the back of Yeonwoo’s hand, just itching to grab it and show her some cute affection in public.

“God, Yeonwoo was right,” Hyejin says, her voice full of pity. “You really have clocked out from the world around you lately.”

You have to fight the urge to send a biting remark back. The comment stings, but you know it’s also true.

“Yeonwoo said that?” You ask, teeth sinking into your bottom lip. “What else has she said?”

“About you?” Hyejin asks, raising an eyebrow. “Nothing, really. She’s kind of been in la la land lately with Jungkook around.”

“Oh yeah?” You reply weakly.

For some reason, the news hits you a little harder than you expected. Had you really been so caught up in your own problems that you hadn’t noticed anything around you?

“Listen, we’re all going through stuff. I get it,” Hyejin begins, and you can already tell that you’re not going to like what she has to say. “But Yeonwoo and you are supposed to be best friends—like the real kind, stronger than any of us—and for you to just cut her off because you want to fight your battles on your own? Well, it’s—she’s hurt, Y/N.”

You look down at your fingernails, at the chipped paint that remains on the bed from weeks of neglect. Your eyes threaten to well up with tears but you hold them back, even though you’re sure Hyejin can see how close you are from the red tint to your cheeks and nose.

“She’s trying—well, we both are, I guess. But Yeonwoo is really trying to be there for you. Please tell me you see that?”

“Of course I do,” you say quietly, and the stinging feeling behind your eyes doubles as you finally hold Hyejin’s gaze. “There’s just some stuff that’s not worth dragging other people into, you know? I don’t want to burden her with all my mess.”

“What kind of mess?” Hyejin asks, quirking an eyebrow. “Are you in debt or something?”

“What?” you say incredulously. “No! I’m not in debt, oh my god. Well, I am—what person our age isn’t—but that’s besides the point. This has nothing to do with that.”

“I was going to say, I can help you organize your finances, Y/N. All you have to do is—”

“Hyejin, no,” you say, laughing a little. “I’m fine, my finances are fine.”

You two grin at each other and the smile on your face feels genuine. The weight pressing on your shoulders for the last month feels a little less like a crushing weight, if only for a few moments. You still weren’t sure if you could ever indulge fully into your burdens to Yeonwoo, but it was nice that she seemed ready to listen if you ever did.

The rest of the group joins you two at the table then, sitting down cardboard trays filled with fried goodies that make your mouth water. As you reach towards Yeonwoo to pinch a piece of funnel cake off, her eyes meet yours and you give her a small smile. She returns it, and you consider that another win.

You float through conversation with your friends, attempting to catch up on small things you missed with Yeonwoo and Hyejin after removing yourself from your group chat. Hyejin had recently taken up a new kickboxing class that she claimed was doing amazing things for her obliques, and Yeonwoo was getting into gardening but was killing everything she touched so far.

“Hence, why I bought the flowers for her,” Jungkook adds in, throwing a teasing smile Yeonwoo’s way. “If I come over to another sad-looking flower pot—”

“Hey! That wasn’t my fault!” Yeonwoo insists, laughing. “I told Taehyung I thought my green thumb was black and he insisted I try a succulent—”

“—that you still managed to kill!”

Every giggles at their banter, which quickly fades as your boyfriend mentions the one person who could ruin your good mood.

“Speaking of Taehyung,” Hongbin says, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Where’s he been lately? I haven’t seen him around as much.”

Somehow, across the table, Jungkook’s eyes meet yours. He stares pointedly at you, almost in a taunting demeanor, and the funnel cake on your stomach sours a little at the eye contact. You too look at each other a little too long—you, trying to figure out why he is looking at you so pointedly, and Jungkook, waiting on your answer—before Hongbin laughs.

“What? Is he out doing something we can’t know?”

“No,” Jungkook says, finally redirecting his gaze beside you at Hongbin. “He’s out with his girlfriend a lot lately—someone from work.”

“Girlfriend?” you and Hongbin ask at the same time, though your tone is a little more disappointed and little less surprised than Hongbin’s.

“Yeseul, right?” Yeonwoo asks. “I think we saw them together the other day downtown—at the cafe, remember, Y/N?”

Her tone is ginger, dancing lightly on the subject, and you’re appreciative. You do a nod-shrug combination at the comment, feeling Jungkook’s eyes on you once more.

“Ah, so that’s why he’s not around as much anymore,” Hongbin says, chuckling. “Well good for him. Why didn’t you tell me, Y/N?”

Jungkook chuckles, and you’re sure it only sounds mocking to your ears because of your mixed emotions about the subject being discussed.

“Well you just found out, right?” Jungkook interjects for you.

“Oh, yeah,” you say. “The other day, like Yeonwoo said.”

Jungkook hums, quirking an eyebrow at you as he crumples his napkin up in his hand before tossing it back on the table. Your eyes follow it as the conversation fades, replaced by the rushing in your ears suddenly. Every time you thought you could get away from talking or thinking about Taehyung, he came right back somehow to make you feel hollow all over again.

“I’ll be back,” you say quickly, swinging your legs over the side of the bench and standing up. It feels like your limbs are buzzing with energy, and you walk away from the table before anyone can ask where you’re going.

The sun is setting now, and the proximity of the waterfront to the food cart is reachable in just a short walk from the table. You head over, sitting down on a bench and pulling out your phone. No one at the table seems to be suspicious of your exit except for Jungkook, who quickly looks back at you over his shoulder for a second before returning to the conversation.

You pull up Instagram—a coping mechanism and an anxiety booster at once—and type in the familiar characters of Taehyung’s username before clicking on his profile. There’s nothing new on his story or Yeseul’s and so you head back to your home screen. At the top, there is a list of people who have recently updated their stories, with Jungkook being the first.

You click on it, seeing that it was just posted within the last minute or so, and a picture of two hands clasped tightly pops up. You look up at the table where your friends sit, watching Jungkook show Yeonwoo the picture to which she gives him a shy smile, shaking her head at how cheesy it is.

It is cheesy, but it’s also cute. It makes a sad feeling stir within you, one that makes you wish you had someone to post cheesy pictures of—and although Hongbin sits just a few feet away from you, conversing with your friends in your absence, you know deep down you don’t want it to be with him.

No, your mind stays—as always—fixated on the one person you can’t have, the one person who doesn’t want you anymore, the one person who you waited too long to realize you had, and then they were gone for good. It’s pathetic, really. The way your eyes dare to prick again at just the thought of him. The way mentioning him makes you remember every good thing about him and why you were so hooked on him all these years—it had nothing to do with the physically exciting details of your secret relationship. You were just in love with him, plain and simple.

Always had been, it seemed.

#taehyung x reader #bts x reader #kim taehyung angst #taehyung scenario #kim taehyung scenarios #bts angst #bts fics #kim taehyung fics #taehyung smut #taehyung x reader smut #taehyung x reader angst #bts scenarios #the v2 series #hanami #part one #honeyedhoseok

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bowling-for-killjoys · 4 years

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Update: The post claims to have been made at 10:33PM. I would like to call bullshit.

Update #2: HE DID IT AGAIN FOR FUCKS SAKE (see bottom of post)

Update 3: okay well. We tested adding stuff to my own story to see if it glitched like this and it’s looking like it did. Everyone go home, he’s fine.

Hi Mikey time travelled again and I don’t know how anyway I’m going to bed goodnight y’all can deal with the chaos.

EDIT: okay I decided I should explain or it’ll bug me. Mikey posted on his story today at approx. 11:04PM for me, that’s 3:04PM in LA(??). I messaged my friend SECONDS after he posted.

And here’s literal proof from @/mcrupdates1 on twitter that his post went up the same time we saw it

So who wants to tell me why at 12:38AM. Mikey’s story says its been up for 2 hours. WHO.

Guys he did it again

Okay so the final post on his story was made at 00:07am for me. 4:07PM for LA. We know this as fact, I watched the post when it was in the minutes and counted back, in fact I literally saw the post when it was still in the seconds. It was made at 00:07am NO QUESTION.

So I wake up this morning and check again, something isn’t right. Something is SERIOUSLY not right. Because the latest post now says it was made 9 hours ago. here’s where it gets a little tricky to follow so if you need clarification, lemme know.

So the first three posts got taken back by half an hour. I assume maybe this post had too. Meaning it would claim to be posted at 11:37PM, so at 9:37am it would change if my theory was correct and lo and behold:

At 9:37am it changed from 9 hours to 10 hours. Putting the posts “original” posting time at 11:37PM the night before. Thank you, and goodnight.

#mikey way #mcr #my chemical romance #I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT FUCKING MEANS

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caskett-happened · 5 years

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a pretty great love story

hello ladies and gentlemen. today i am going to just type something out for you all because i don’t really feel like i have another place to put it. so, my girlfriend haley and i have been together for a year and a half. we have gone through a lot together, from being teammates and hiding our relationship, coming out to her family, and doing long distance. we have gone through a lot. i thought our relationship was a forever thing. we loved each other so much and we were going great until the end of january. that is when she told me that she wasn’t “feeling it anymore.” what did that mean? that was the start of our 7 week long downward spiral. she was drowning in school and work and a long distance relationship. she had to cut something off, and because i wasn’t there, i was the easiest thing to cut off. a few days after she sent that text we broke up officially. there were days when we didn’t talk, but we continued to text and talk and try things out. but there was very clearly something missing. she came up to visit for mardi gras a few weeks ago. things were good, but they weren’t the same. we fought and didn’t spend much time together. when she looked at me, i saw the love in her eyes, but when her eyes would move away from me for just a moment, i saw the doubts so clearly. it was a representation of what distance had done to us. there was love in her heart for me, but when she couldn’t see me or look at me every day, it was clear she had doubt and couldn’t do it. a day after she left i asked her for zero communication between us. that lasted 3 days, i wanted to talk to her. i wanted to give us a chance. a week after that, i asked for the same thing. i am someone who needs black or white, either we are together now and forever, or we are done. that was this monday. i asked her not to talk to me. she sent me one text. she called me once. i blocked her on everything. it was hard and terrible. i told everyone that i was absolutely done with our relationship until she showed up at my doorstep. that was what i had deserved. i told my counselor, my friends, and my parents. if that happened, it would make things right. on friday, i woke up and i had so much hope in my heart that she would show. i was so sad, i was talking out loud to god asking him to take it away. to take away the hope that she would be here. i opened her spotify at around 5, i saw she was listening to our music for the first time in forever. i had hope. i made it a point not to open the app again for an hour, if she was still listening, maybe she was driving. i opened it an hour later, and she was still listening. i couldn’t check for 5 more hours because i couldn’t take the disappointment of her not being listening to music, that meant she probably wasn’t driving. the entire night, i kept feeling that she was on her way. there was a full moon and i thought that it was made for us to have a night together. i got into bed at around midnight. i finally opened the app. she was still listening. all day, i thought there was no way that she wasn’t on her way. i thought that she would be in between midnight and 2AM. it was 1:30 and i couldn’t sleep. i got up and left my room and went to the bathroom. i just sat there trying to take my mind of it. i opened her app and the music had stopped. my heart dropped and i thought i had given myself so much hope and now it was shattered. i felt it so clearly and it wasn’t true. i opened my phone to send her a text. i said “you had been on spotify all night. i was praying you were on your way here.” i sent it to her at 1:36am. the first time i had reached out in 5 days. i still felt like she was on her way here, because i wouldn’t have sent it if i knew she was at home, still 8 hours away from me. two minutes later i heard my garage door open. i knew exactly who it was. but i couldn’t open the bathroom door just yet because i couldn’t face reality. the reality that it might not be her and that i would have to let go of that hope. then i heard a knock on my door. i opened the bathroom and there she was, flowers & a bag in hand, with a full face of makeup, the nicest dress she owned, in my house - 8 hours away from hers - at 1:38am. she had 7 bouquets of flowers - one for each week she let me slip away. three roses for the words “i love you” and for the three options we had moving forward. she had a speaker for the music she wanted to play. she had pictures that went with the words she was saying. she had our promise rings that had been off our fingers for 7 weeks. and most importantly she had a 25 minute soliloquy to say everything that was left unsaid over the last 7 weeks. there was so much hurt and pain, but she came to say she was all in and she would fight until i told her to stop. i won’t make excuses for either of us and the pain caused over the last 7 weeks, but i will be the first to tell you that was the most amazing and romantic thing anyone has ever done for me. it was better than any 90s romantic comedy. the best part is that she’s my girl and this is my life.

i love you @dorydegeneres

#:))))))#racel #very happy #my friends suck but very happy

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prettymuchsempiternal · 6 years

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10,000 Hours Song Pref.

So guys, I’m kind of working on a song pref series for Prettymuch, not all the songs are pm songs but here’s the first! Hope you like it, this is my first time writing for the boys and I’m a little rusty cause I haven’t written in so long so.. be nice please?

“Nights on nights on nights

Days on days on days

Clockwork, light work, homework

We don’t take no breaks.”

It’s Friday night and finals week is 2 days away. As if things couldn’t be more stressful and upsetting, Nick flew all the way here just to see me but I’m so stressed about potentially failing my chemistry final that I can’t really even spend any time with him. I hear a vibration and gratefully look away from my flashcards.

“Hey baby girl, how’s the studying going?” The message reads.

You’d think that after a year of being with him I would feel less giddy when he called me baby girl but the feeling never ebbs.

“Well, my head hurts and the words are kind of blurring together but apart from that? Terrible.”

“I’m coming over.”

“Babe, I don’t want you to come over just to sit here while I study.”

“Too late, I’m already in my car. I’m going to go get some snacks. See you soon.”

I roll my eyes at the comment but smile anyway.

“Besides, I’d rather sit with you while you study than to not be with you at all. Plus I can help you.” He says a minute later.

“Oh yeah? How are you gonna do that?”

“With incentives for questions you answer correctly ;)”

Oh man… something tells me I’m not going to get a lot of studying done tonight.

“We gon’ get it right, get it right, baby.”

“Brandon how are we supposed to have a relationship if every time we actually get the time to see each other we fight?” I cry to him. Here we are again, doing the same shit we always do. With Brandon and the boys always working to build their careers, him and I don’t get to see each other too often. When we first met they hadn’t come out that they were a boy band and we got to see each other almost everyday and practically never fought but now things have changed. Every time it’s something different. Sometimes it’s as small as leaving a pile of clothes on the floor and other times it’s about a picture or video of him holding a fan a little to close for my liking or in this, and most, cases he works all the time. You’d think that when we finally had the time to be together he’d want to be with me but he’d apparently much rather spend time with his computer and sound system.

“The long distance is apparently putting too much strain on our relationship we can’t keep fighting like this B, I can’t keep fighting like this. Maybe we should just give up, stop trying. Quit while we’re ahead. Maybe it’d be better for both of us to just move on.” I say, wiping the tears from my face, only to have them replaced by more.

At this, his face drops, “Give up and stop trying? Move on? What are you talking about? We can’t give up. Y/N I love you. I don’t want to move on, there’s no one else I want to be with. No one I want to try this with other than you.” He walks over to me, cupping my face in his hands. “Y/N you’re all I want. But if this is what you really want, if this is what will make you happy then that’s what we’ll do. I’ll give you up right now if you don’t want to be with me anymore but I really, really don’t want to. I know I’m bad at showing it sometimes but you’re the love of my life. We’re going to get it right, we have to.”

“Take you deeper than the ocean

Have you all in your emotion

Making hours out of seconds.”

“Babe, do you have to go back?”

“I wish I didn’t, Z. No part of me wants to go back and to school but I have to.”

It’s 3:38am and I’m lying down in bed with Zion, cuddled up and trying not to think about how the day after tomorrow I’ll be flying away from him.

“You could always take a semester off.”

I look up at him for a moment before he says, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding I just don’t want you to leave me. This is the most time we’ve ever spent continuously together. I still can’t believe you’ve been here all summer… I can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like without you here sleeping next to me.”

I kiss the corner of his jaw, “I know. But I have to say that it’ll be a lot easier to sleep when I don’t have to fight an actual tree for the blanket.”

“Oh please! You’re the blanket hog. I just try to hang onto enough to cover my body. “

“Your body is too long!”

“Fight me.”

“Nah, I’d have to record it and I don’t want to embarrass you in front of all the BEANZ and the boys. Cause I’d win.”

“Girl please,” He rolls his eyes.

I just smile up at him, trying to memorize the curve of his jaw, the way his dreads fall across his face and the light in his eyes when he looks at me. It’s not that I’ll never see him again but we won’t be able to physically be with each other for months after I leave because he’ll be going on tour. Face time just isn’t the same. He sees the tears welling up in my eyes and his own smile drops, “What’s wrong?”

My smile grows just a little, “I’m gonna miss you so damn much. “

“I’m going to miss you too baby,” He says leaning down to kiss me.

When we break apart I look at him again, or stare is a better word I suppose. He grins, “Are you stunned by how dashingly good looking I am?”

“I love you Caleb.”

His smile falters before widening to a full on Cheshire grin. “I was supposed to be the one to say it first, way to ruin my plans.” He playfully rolls his eyes.

“Oh there was a plan?” I tease.

“Oh yeah, I was going to surprise you with breakfast in bed tomorrow and confess my undying love for you.”

“I’d like to see the day where you wake up before I do.”

“Oh she’s got jokes. But I’m serious, I love you Y/N. I really was going to tell you before you left. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. No one has ever really connected with me on the same level as you. No one gets me the same way. This sounds so cliché and I hate saying it because of that but no one makes me feel the way you do.”

I look at him for a moment, a slow smile growing across my face. I lean in to kiss him, slowly and gently, before pulling away and snuggling into his side.

“I don’t think anyone has ever loved anyone as deeply as I love you.”

“I’ll put in the time if you let me

I’ll fill up your mind with some memories.”

“Austin we’ve been playing this game for over 6 months and nothing has changed. This is the perfect time for the both of us to just move on.” She sighs, letting her head drop down into her hands.

Y/N and Austin have known each other for about a year now and have had feelings for each other for just as long. They really never attempted to hide them, everyone knew they liked each other, including them but neither of them ever made a move to define their relationship. The beanz constantly asked if they were dating and the answer was always no but that didn’t stop them from shipping them and in some cases, hating on Y/N. Y/N never had much of a problem with their relationship dynamic for the majority of its duration but lately she’d been feeling like maybe Austin didn’t ever make a move toward becoming official with her because he didn’t actually want her like that or see her as girlfriend material. To make things even worse, Austin just found out that management wants the group to go on a press tour for their album before their tour so instead of being gone for 5 months; he’s going to be gone for 8. And he’s leaving next week.

“What game? What are you talking about? Who’s playing a game?” He asks.

“You like me, I like you, you know it, I know it, the boys know it, our families know it, hell even the beanz know it. We cuddle but only if it’s just the boys or us. Sometimes in public you’ll put your arm around me but when people ask you tell them that we are just friends and that you don’t think of me like that. You won’t really give any girl the time of day or you ditch them to be with me but you always tell people that we aren’t a thing and you’re single. And sometimes you just look at me like I’m everything you want, not just physically but like you don’t ever want to leave my side. When I come over or you come over you say hi to me by kissing me on the forehead and call me babe and baby but yet, you always introduce me as just a friend… If you don’t want to be with me like that that’s fine but Austin, I can’t keep doing this. I’m not going to push you into being my boyfriend when that very much seems like something you don’t want, if you don’t see me as girlfriend material then that’s fine. Breaking things off would probably just be the best decision for the both of us because I can’t be the girl you keep close until you feel like you’ve met someone worth your time. Maybe you’ll meet someone on one of your tours; maybe you’ll meet someone on this tour. We can’t keep each other from living our lives. We’re not together anyway, not really, maybe this is our sign that we should put an end to… whatever this is.” She says, her voice cracking at the end. She sniffles as Austin looks down at her sitting on the edge of his bed from his perch on his desk, his mouth slightly agape. The silence settles around them, his gaze never leaving her tear streaked face. After what feels like 2 full minutes of silence Y/N eyes drop to the ground and she gets up wiping at her face with her sleeve, “Glad we had this talk.”

“Y/N wait,” He croaks out grabbing her arm. She stops but keeps her head down, not daring to look at him. “Is that really how you think I see you? As just some girl to fill a void until I feel like I’ve found ‘the one’ or something? “

Y/N just stands there, saying nothing with her face turned away from him.

“Y/N look at me. Please,” He pleads. When she doesn’t comply he slides off the desk to stand in front of her and takes her face in his hands. She closes her eyes before he can make her face him and he watches the tears flow down her face with his own building in his eyes.

“Y/N, the last thing I think of when I see you is just some girl. I would never think that about you, you’re so much more than that okay? I, God, Y/N you are the girl. You said I look at you’re everything I want and that’s because you are, baby. Will you please open your beautiful eyes and look at me?’

She keeps her eyes closed a few more seconds but slowly opens them and rests them on Austin’s face. She could hear his voice shaking but she’s still surprised to see that his cheeks are wet from him own tears.

“I want you in every way possible, okay? But I’ve seen first hand with myself and the other guys what a relationship can do to someone when you’re in the position I’m in. I don’t want you to go through that. The loneliness, the hate, the paparazzi, the jealousy planted by paparazzi, I don’t want that for you. I just-“

“Austin,” She interrupts, “Don’t you think I already go through all that? Don’t you think I get lonely when you’re off on some tour or going to London or wherever to shoot a music video or when I go to visit my parents? We spend basically every moment that we can together, of course when I’m not with you I’m lonely and I miss you. And if you think not having the label of your girlfriend is saving me from hate then you’re sadly mistaken and you should probably log in to your social media accounts a little more often. Like I said, we’re together as much as we possibly can be and the beanz know, or at least theorize that we have feelings for each other. Austin you aren’t saving me from anything by keeping me labeled as your friend okay? Just save the bullshit. If you don’t want me to be your girlfriend then you don’t want me to be your girlfriend that’s fine but just let me go.”

“When did I ever say I didn’t want you to be my girlfriend?”

“When did you say that you did?”

He sighs, his shoulders slumping. “You wanna know why I’ve never tried to make us into an official thing? Because I’m scared Y/N, you’re beautiful, so fucking beautiful and I can’t look at twitter or Instagram without seeing at least a dozen comments about how ugly I am and how prettymuch would be better without me and how you would never actually be into me so why would I ever think that you would want to be with me? You’re so out of my league that it’s comical and I never wanted to push my luck. I figured that if I tried to really make you mine that you’d say no. And that I’d lose you and I just really didn’t want to do that. I can’t imagine not having you around so if having you around meant that you weren’t really going to be mine then I was willing to live with that.”

“Are you serious? I’ve been so completely transparent about how I feel about you. I get that people on the Internet are bitches and they get you down but I don’t give a fuck about what they have to say, all right? There is not a single person on this planet that I would rather be with right now or any other time than you. And fuck anyone who says you’re anything less than fine, baby. You are a fine, multitalented man that deserves so much better out of this shitty world than what you get and I-“ She stops.

“And you what? “

“I just hate to hear you talk like that about yourself. I’m not going anywhere okay? “ He wipes away any moisture left on her checks with his thumbs and searches her face before saying, “I know we aren’t together, not really, but I think I’m falling for you.”

She turns her head and kisses the inside of his palm and says, “I already fell. Now ask me to be your girlfriend so we can make the most of the week we have left together. We’ve got memories to make.”

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kaybih12 · 3 years

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Day #30 (02/20/21)

This is my final post for my consumption blog! Today I woke up at 5:30am to get ready for work that I had at 7am. I woke up feeling under the weather and I sat in my bed for 20 minutes before getting ready. My body did not feeling like moving at all. But this morning I kept it simple and took my time getting ready because all I cared about was being comfortable while I’m sick. I left the house around 6:30am, I walked to my bus stop which is 3 or blocks away from my house and that took 9 minutes. I got on the bus at 6:38am and I made it to my job at 7:55am. We opened the store at 8am and it was crazy busy during that time. I was moving from the place to place, boxing donuts, taking orders and making drinks. Everything was moving so fast and I didn’t realize how much time has passed. Around 9:30am when things were finally slowing down, I made myself a chocolate milk from scratch. I made it with whole milk, mocha syrup and vanilla syrup.

Chocolate Milk from scratch - Glam Doll Donuts

I didn’t eat anything during that time I was working and I wasn’t feeling that hungry. But I knew I was going to buy some food once I clocked out of work because I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to cook because of how ill I was feeling. Also last minute I decided to get a covid test done at the Minneapolis Convention Center at 12:30pm just to make sure I didn’t have Covid. I left work at 12:02pm and took the bus at 12:07pm to head towards downtown to get to the Convention Center. The whole ride took at least 10 minutes and I made it the Convention Center at 12:20pm. I did my saliva test and I finished my appointment at 12:35pm. Then after that I walked to Chipotle that was located on Nicollet Ave. That walk took 7 minutes and I made it to Chipotle at 12:40pm. I bought myself a steak bowl with white rice, black beans, pico, cheese, sour cream and lettuce. The total for my meal was $8.88. I after Chipotle I walked to the nearest bus stop and took the bus to head home. I got on the bus around 12:55pm and I made it back home at 1:25pm. Prior to making it home, I stopped by my location convenient store/gas station and bought me a Minute Maid Lemonade drink. The total cost was $2 and I payed with cash.

Walk to the Convention Center after work

Steak Bowl - Chipotle

Minute Maid Lemonade - Convenient store/Gas station

After eating my food and my beverage I took a nap at 2:30pm and I watched a little bit of planet earth to help fall to sleep. I only wanted to take an hour nap but I ended up taking a 3 hours nap. I woke up 5:30pm and I felt a little groggy, but I guess my body needed to rest. But After that I my friend face timed me and we talked about our day and I worked on homework while I was talking with her. I started face timing her at 6:30pm and we are still face timing now at 8:30pm while I’m typing this blog post. But overall I spent most of my day being occupied with work and napping, plus a little bit of traveling from home to work, work to the Convention Center and Downtown to home.

Total Money Spent

Steak bowl - Chipotle - $8.88

Minute Maid Lemonade - Convenient Store/Gas Station - $2.00

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sight-seeking · 7 years

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Day 3

June 24th, 2017 Saturday

4:30am: I wake up and am utterly confused as to why I’m up so early. But I do not question it, and instead, as the kids say, “go with the flow.”

5:10am: I load batteries into my camera as I plan to do go on an exploration.

5:41am: The best time to go exploring is super early, when it looks like it’s about to rain. London is absolutely, beautifully quiet right now. I go through Hyde park, taking a deeper look of all the things I walked past the day before. I’ll have to walk around like this always. There are pigeons everywhere and they come in all colors.

As I walk around the lake I see swan, casually nesting at the water’s edge. I hesitantly take pictures of them. Swan are just geese is disguise. And we all know that geese are the true embodiment of evil. Well, everyone except Canada (joke.) But these swans are so chill? I am amazed.

I walk up to Kensington Palace and take pictures. The highlight of my trip arrives, only a day into arriving. I catch the perfect picture of Queen Victoria, in her carved glory up on her throne. There, on the top of the statues head, is perched a bird.

I don’t care what anyone says, seeing a bird sitting on the head of Queen Victoria made all of what happened the day before worth it.

7:08am: I get bored of the park and start walking into the city. I get lost for a bit in a Kensington neighborhood, but I use the navigation maps to find my way. It’s nice to have guides throughout the city. I really need to get an oyster card.

I learn how to hire a bike. You can ride it for 30min, but you must bring it to a nearby station or you get charged 2 pounds for however late it is. I ride around to the Serpentine lake and river. I take pictures on the bridge and breath in the early morning air. I admire the birds.

*I saw a cute bird’s nest in the middle of the river and I had to admire it’s construction

7:38am: I go back through the park and find the princess Diana Imperial fountain. I take a few pictures, of course. As I leave the fountain, I see two monks in orange robes walk around with smartphones and earbuds. It could be for language translation, or for Spotify. Either way, the sight amuses me.

8:11am: I am in the kitchen, finally sitting down to eat breakfast. They have cereal, (British) biscuits, and toast. There’s also juice and coffee. It’s quaint and all but in my mind, I’m longing for eggs and bacon.

9:00am: I head out to go to the British museum. I go to the Gloucester street station, get myself and Oyster card. It takes me about 20min and 5 different stops before I figure out where I’m going. One thing I find humorous about London: If you’re not careful and walk-savvy, the cars will run you over, no hesitation. These are some ridiculous drivers!

20 minutes as noted, I exit the station and look about. A homeless man walks up to me and ask me for money. My anxiety kicks in and I worry that this is a pickpocketing attempt. I politely tell him I can’t help. He politely walks away and I feel awful. A minute later, a young lady tries to sell me something. I can’t understand her through her accent, so once again, I politely decline. My pace quickens. Why must I look so approachable? I think I have the opposite of RBF.

Through either luck or naivety, I end up at the British library instead of the British museum. It’s huge, and there are people crowd around in the square out front. They check my bag on the way in. I take a moment to get my Barings straight, admire the tower of books located in the center, and watch the people milling about. I still don’t have a sim card, I’m relying on whatever guest wifi is available to really use my phone. I log into the wifi and figure out how to get from the library to the museum. This time I try to take a bus. I like the double decker buses, they move quickly, and everywhere has something interesting to see.

2 minutes later, after realizing that I’ve taken the wrong bus, I end up in Camden Market, the wrong borough. But I’m not disgruntled, It’s amazing! It’s the best kind of tourist hub. There are souvenir shops and chain restaurants everywhere. Cheaply-made, overpriced souvenirs mind you. But it’s just so cool to watch! People from all around fill the streets, everyone speaks a different language. I take it all in, excited. I note a conveniently located pizza hut and then make my way to the nearest tube station. By this point I trust the trains more than the buses.

(But not the train stations. I can’t remember which, but one of them had a flight of stairs that was 193 steps! I saw people crowded around the lifts but I was impatient. My stubbornness proved valuable. As I plowed up the stairs, I went past older, less shapely tourists who leaned against the walls sweating and panting. I made it up to the surface triumphant. Still, my feet and the rest of me deeply regret that choice.)

Somehow, I then end up at the London Covent Garden Market. I’m confused, but I don’t complain. It’s beautiful! There’s flowers decorating all the building. There a lovely restaurants and good smells everywhere. There are also tourists here. But this market is a bit classier than in Comden town. Old women sit in swinging chairs adorned with white flowers. People carry around heavy bags of shopping. Instead of loud music pouring through stereos and speakers, there are live street musicians. They sing romantic songs. I’m enthralled.

As I walk through more of the shops, I notice street performers doing magic tricks. One man in particular was only wearing union jack underwear and socks. There’s a large crowd around him. He plans to lie down on a bed of nails. I stand around for a minute, take a picture, and go on my way. I smell German frankfurters nearby and I want one so badly! But I’m at loss for time, and the day is only moving further away. I have to go.

10 minutes, a tube ride, and some walking later, I end up at the British museum. It’s even bigger than the library! Once again, I go through a line and bag check. They let me in, unsuspecting. I have a big backpack! I could be dangerous. But no, they take a glance at me and think, “She looks like a world-wary, naive child. She’s fine.” They are not wrong.

I try to take a picture of the museum, when two girls ask me to take a picture of them. I oblige. They were laughing and saying, “We saw your jacket, and it said ‘Georgia,’ so we were like, ‘She speaks English!’ We were so relieved.”

I blush at my own un-intentional Americanism. I have failed to assimilate properly.

After I help the girls, I then enter the ginormous, historic building. It is magnificently classy on the inside. I feel under-dressed. If I wasn’t trying to be practical, I would be more tasteful in my attire. Oh well. I go up the stairs and notice a nice little food court down below. I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m starved.

I spend about an hour and a half traveling back in time. I begin in Mesopotamia, and explore into Nubia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. I take pictures of things that interest me, namely gold embellishments and miniature carvings. I have so much admiration for the craftsmen who created them. And, dead people. I take a lot of pictures of those.

(More photos to be added in a later post)

Many tourists move in the way, so I must time photos as best I can. I gasp every time I see an artifact that I recognize, either through art class or by my own personal scours through art books. Seeing what I’ve only seen in books before…It makes this trip come to life for me. Every punishing mistake is made up for by the value of what I am free to discover.

I take a break from ancient Rome and go to the food court. By now I’ve reached that weird point of hungry where I’m not even hungry any more, just wanting. I buy a coke and a chocolate muffin and eat outside on the steps. Since I’ve already been through the bag line I can go into the museum easily. I don’t finish my muffin. It takes like chocolate, and looks lovely, but it’s kind of plain—like England (joke.) I put in my backpack for later. After resting my feet, I notice a sign that says, “Do not sit on the steps.” I glance at the hundred or so people sitting on the steps. I snap a picture of the sign for the humor of it all, then go back inside.

I admire the remains of High Egypt and Rome for another hour. Tourists pour around the Rosetta stone like it’s made of gold. People from various countries all come for this one item of glory and historical significance. I am determined to take a picture to prove what I have witnessed. One tall man stands in front of me for what feels like ages. But, as soon as he moves away, I slip a picture in. which such a treasure in cache, I am close to calling it a day. But I realize that it’s only about 3pm. I still have time to do one more thing (that includes getting lost.)

I look at my map and I suddenly realize that Hyde Park is only about a mile away from Buckingham Palace.

3:45pm: I head to the palace.

4:30pm: I am at the palace.

A lot happened in between those two moments but they were the same, familiar shenanigans that had been taking place all day. At this point my feet were screaming and the hunger that I had thought didn’t exist was now lashing out at me. I took the liberty to go to the Queen Victoria monument and sit on a ledge. Then I snapped pictures to my heart’s desire. It felt good to rest a moment and take everything in. With every new monument, more and more people seemed to pour in, trying to take a piece of the same-life changing experience. They walked around with selfie sticks and bantered with friends or family. I take a selfie, and then instantly regret it. I’m not neat and put together. I’m tired, and weather-worn, and the camera takes up on all of this.

There is no sign of the Queen. I am utterly disappointed by this circumstance. (I shake my fist in anger!)

I sit, studying the statues of the monument. A man, by a lion, holding a hammer. A woman, by a lion, holding a scythe. I studied the Black, Roth-iron gates embellished with gold, and the union jacks in the wind, and the water, streaming from the fountain. I just wanted to be there all day.

But food was at home. So, I had to leave.

4:50pm: I called it a day and start working my way back to the hostel. So much walking is involved. I’m nearly in tears from the soreness. The sky tries to rain, and then decides not to. As I walk across the street to Hyde park, I hire a bike and pedal most of my mile-long journey home. After a wrong turn or two, I find my way.

5:50pm: I’m finally back. I make myself a cup of tea and I sit down to finish my chocolate muffin. People are starting to cook dinner. My mind goes back to the pizza hut. I’m longing for American food, or something like it. Something familiar after a day of getting lost and meeting strangers.

6:00pm: I love Astor Hyde Park but something in here is making my allergies flare up and I don’t appreciate it. The same thing happens on the tube. My nose and eyes have been watering uncontrollably. I grab a hundred paper towels from the kitchen and take an internet break.

7:41pm: There is no pizza hut near me. I could go to a local place but…ugh. I give in to my nervousness. I’ve been in the company of strangers all day, I need something familiar. I would have to take a bus to get to one at a reasonable time. To pizza, or not to pizza?

8:00pm: To pizza.

10:30pm: TWO AND A HALF HOURS. I CANNOT. FIND. A PIZZA HUT. It should’ve only taken 30 minutes at most. The closest on was at the other end of Hyde park. But?? I can’t find it. I did not ask for much. All I wanted was a simple, chain store, pizza. I walked and biked for hours. That is all. I’m too far away from any other pizza place, and I’m too weary to ask for directions. I find a McDonalds and order from there. I wanted the pizza too much, and the universe said no. I still have to walk two miles from the park to get home. Five minutes into leaving, I realize I forgot my straw and condiments. I go back for the straw, but then I don’t bother for the ketchup. I’ll survive.

(Also, there was a festival going on in the park earlier? I don’t know what was going on but there were a lot of English girls with flower crowns and people were playing music and drinking a lot so I assumed it was a holiday. All I know was that I felt awkward walking through and had to take a sharp detour around them.)

10:49pm: I had left when it was daylight, not it’s darkness. I should be glad that I don’t get kidnapped. I probably would’ve been too tired to fight well. But at that point I was saltier than my fries so if anyone had tried to touch me, I probably would’ve sucker-punched them in the face. To add insult to injury, while I’m half way across the park, the bag in my hands rip in half and the contents within fall to the ground. The sandwich is safe in its cardboard container. But…the fries…

England…why….

11:00pm: I’m in my room, on my computer. Someone in the building next to us set off fireworks. I can see the lights through the windows of my ceiling. They fill the sky, and then boom loudly into the air, dissipating.

I decide it’s time to go to bed.

#Day 3

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waywardmoeyy · 7 years

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In Good Company

Cas x Reader

Word Count: 959

Warnings: slight mention of violence, implied depression/fear of sleeping, light fluffiness.

**Sorry for the cheesiness. This is what happens when I write late at night. Enjoy.

You stared up at your ceiling, the orange light from your alarm clock giving the room an eerie glow. 3:38AM. Wonderful. It looked like you were in for another sleepless night. This would be the third one this week, and it was Thursday. But sleep was for the weak, right?

You slowly sat up and slipped your legs over the side of your bed, letting them hang there for a minute. That last case really got to you. Vampires recruiting children, or anything involving children, was a big no-no in your repertoire. You couldn’t help but hurt for them. Even though they would be okay, you couldn’t help but think about the mental scars and years of therapy they would need. Especially now that they know the monsters they had nightmares about were very real and around every corner.

Not a very settling thought.

You finally pick yourself up off the bed and head for the door. Your door opened silently, thankfully, since Dean and Sam always seemed to hear you move around at night. The last thing you wanted was an interrogation at nearly four in the morning.

One of the small lamps on the large map table was left on, guiding you as you headed for the kitchen. Once there, you flipped on the light. Your eyes strained as you adjusted to the intense fluorescent glow. You opened a cabinet and grabbed your favorite mug. A cup of tea sounded wonderful.

And lonely.

Your chest ached at the thought. Sure, waking Sam and Dean would end in an earful of nagging and overwhelming concern. They cared about you like a sister. That thought alone comforted you a bit. However, the loneliness was a bit much to handle at times. Like tonight.

You silently prayed that this sleepless phase would end soon as you dipped the teabag into the mug of hot water. Chamomile was meant to relax, right? Hopefully its marketing ploy had some truth to it.

You sighed as you leaned against the kitchen counter, pulling your mug to your chest. The warmth radiated through your shirt sending soothing comfort through you. As you took a sip, you heard a whooshing sound come from the map room. You rolled your eyes as you imagined Dean or Sam about to march through the door.

“Hello, Y/N,” a low, grumbly voice greeted from the doorway. You peered up in disbelief to see Cas gazing awkwardly at you, as usual.

“Oh, hey there Cas.” You shifted your weight, avoiding eye contact. What the hell was he doing here?

Cas shuffled closer to you, a concerned look painted across his tired face. “I heard you… praying.”

Shit. Your brow furrowed as you realized you had actually prayed. “Oh, yeah,” you mumbled. Embarrassment shot through you. You could feel your cheeks flush.

“You sounded sad. I was afraid you were in danger.” Cas leaned against the counter beside you, his azure eyes darkened with worry.

“The only danger I’m in is losing my mind,” you responding, chuckling at your own sarcasm.

Cas tilted his head. Oh yeah, sarcasm and angels generally didn’t mix.

“Your mind is a figurative—“

“Forget it, Cas. I’m sorry you intercepted my whining. I’ve just been having a hard time sleeping since that case with the vampire children. I guess I’m just sensitive.” You sighed, taking another sip of your quickly cooling tea.

Cas’s sapphire gaze was fixed on you, making your skin tingle. Cas was a good friend. Childish at times, minus the jokes, but good. You knew that every emotion he was capable of experiencing was sincere, especially concern. It was one all of you experienced more than you cared to admit.

“Well, if it helps, the children are well. Their lives should return to a relatively normal routine soon.” Cas’s voice was soft, almost silky.

“I know, Cas. But there is something within me that can’t let it go. Their lives were turned upside-down.” You lowered your head and sighed. Damn your feelings.

“But that doesn’t mean you need to turn yours upside-down. That isn’t going to change anything for them and it’s surely isn’t going to do you any good.” He leaned closer to you. The small space between you buzzed with an intense energy that made your stomach flutter. You leaned your head on his shoulder. “Thanks Cas. Thanks for caring.” You turned your face towards his, your nose grazing his chiseled jaw.

“Of course, Y/N.” His voice was barely a whisper. You could feel his entire body stiffen as you pulled yourself closer to the angel.

In a second, he stood in front of you, his muscular body pressing yours into the counter. Your lower back ached as the counter’s edge pressed into you, but you didn’t care. You smiled up at the beautiful blue-eyed being. He quickly wrapped his arms around your waist, his face hovering just inches from yours. His lips curled into a slight smile before gently pressing against yours. You could feel every muscle in your body relax. All of the thoughts of the children, of everything, just floated away. Your hands snaked up his rock hard front and grabbed at the edges of his trench coat, pulling him harder against you. His soft lips danced along yours before he deepened the kiss. He lifted a hand from your waist and gently ran his fingers through your hair. He let out a deep sigh as he pulled away, his eyes locked on yours.

“I’ve been waiting to do that for a long time,” he murmured from his lightly swollen lips. You smiled up at him. Your cheeks heated. “Are you feeling better?” He asked innocently.

You nodded. “Yeah, I think I just needed some good company.”

#castiel #castiel x reader #cas x reader #supernatural #castiel fluff #one shot #smut

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savannahovara-blog · 7 years

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Road Trip Day 1 ✌

6:21am - Woke up

6:30am - I was so tired at this point because I haven’t been sleeping well since the pregnancy but I could barely keep my eyes open so I rushed in the shower before anyone eles could go in.

6:47am - I got out of the shower and got dressed. I didn’t do a lot of makeup because we would be in a hot car all day and I wasn’t up to it.

7:00am - I blogged while everyone showered and got ready for the road trip. I made sure everyone was getting ready and had all their things.

7:15am - I started to feel better and tried to eat. I had some toast and oatmeal Oscar’s mom made for us.

7:38am - At this point we were cleaning up the house before we would leave it for almost 2 weeks.

8:15am - We went by my parents house then went to Walmart to buy some car games for the kids and some travel size tolietries.

9:07am - WE ARE ON THE ROAD !!!!🚗

10:59am - I fell asleep and so did Layla (Oscar’s sister).

11:30am - Oscar’s mom hopped in our car and they started singing horribly. I felt really sick still and I threw up on the highway 😷. So embarrassing.

12:45pm - We took a break and stopped by IHOP but I didn’t have the appetite for anything but a lemonade.

1:11pm - We were back on the road and still in California but soon to be in Arizona in just a few miles. We would be in Phoenix in 2 hours.

4:36pm (3:36pm) - We took a bathroom break in Phoenix, Arizona.

5:00pm (4:00pm) - I went to the other car where Greg (Oscar’s dad) was driving to sleep since it was only Liam (Oscar’s youngest brother )there’s.

7:21pm (6:21pm )- I finally woke up and Oscar was in the car with me. It was getting dark and I was getting hungry. We were almost to New Mexico. We changed our plans and we will drive to midnight since the boys have plenty of energy. Well Oscar’s not but his mom will start driving pretty soon.

9:30pm (8:30pm) - I went back to Oscar’s car and it was only me, him, and his mom and we had a very good conversation. About the baby and how our life is going to change. We bought some snacks and went back on the road.

11:11pm (10:11pm ) - At this point we were in New Mexico at our hotel. I was so tired I fell asleep just after being there for 20 minutes. I just helped put all our stuff away and got ready for bed then we had to figure out our sitting arrangements then I was straight to sleep even though they were loud. Goodnight 😊😊😊

#roadtrip #pregnant

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jessicakehoe · 5 years

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These Celebs Are De-Stigmatizing Mental Illness

Many campaigns have worked to normalize the discussion around mental health (Bell’s Let’s Talk and CAMH’s One Brave Night among them). But one thing that really reaches the masses is when a celebrity speaks out about his or her struggle to spread the message that it’s OK to have mental illness; it doesn’t make you weak.

Anyone who has ever suffered from depression or anxiety—whether temporary or chronic—knows the feeling of wanting to crawl into bed and stay there until things seem OK again. And somehow when these celebrities who seem to have it all come out and say that they actually don’t have their shit together, it is encouraging to us. By focusing on their health, it normalizes the conversation and gives us the courage to take care of ourselves (and be vocal about it). One can’t help but wonder whether more openness could’ve helped musical wonders of the past who turned to addictions and those who had publicly documented breakdowns.

Below, see the celebrities who are helping to fight the stigma against mental health by being open about their own struggles. Want to learn more about mental illness? Here are 5 myths about anxiety and depression, and information about different types of treatment.

Selena Gomez

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I have a lot to be thankful for this year.. My year has been the hardest yet most rewarding one yet. I've finally fought the fight of not 'being enough'. I have only wanted to reflect the love you guys have given me for years and show how important it is to take care of YOU. By grace through faith. Kindness always wins. I love you guys. God bless

A post shared by Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) on Nov 24, 2016 at 6:21pm PST

In August 2016, Selena Gomez announced that she would be taking a break from her career to deal with anxiety, depression and panic attacks associated with lupus (an autoimmune condition from which she suffers). She made a return to the spotlight in November at the American Music Awards, where she delivered an emotional, heartfelt speech, briefly touching on her battle with mental health issues.

“I had to stop because I had everything and I was absolutely broken inside. I kept it all together enough to where I would never let you down but I kept it too much together to where I let myself down,” she said. “If you are broken, you do not have to stay broken.”

The songstress also opened up about her issues with mental health in the April 2017 issue of Vogue (which she covered). “Tours are a really lonely place for me,” she told the magazine. “My self-esteem was shot. I was depressed, anxious. I started to have panic attacks right before getting onstage, or right after leaving the stage. Basically I felt I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t capable. I felt I wasn’t giving my fans anything, and they could see it—which, I think, was a complete distortion.”

She revealed she spent 90 days in a mental health facility in Tennessee, surrendering her cell phone and taking part in various forms of therapy. And while Gomez is the most followed person on Instagram, she told Vogue she no longer has it on her phone, and an assistant has her password.

“It felt like I was seeing things I didn’t want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn’t want to care about,” she said. “I always end up feeling like shit when I look at Instagram. Which is why I’m kind of under the radar, ghosting it a bit.”

Camila Cabello

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#BGT here I cooooome !!!! gonna b singing #cryingintheclub woooop

A post shared by camila (@camila_cabello) on May 30, 2017 at 5:06am PDT

Former Fifth Harmony member Camila Cabello made headlines in September 2016 after she left the stage early during a performance under the guise of a wardrobe malfunction. She later revealed, on Snapchat, that the cause was excessive anxiety, even tweeting, “just wanna sleep for 3 days.”

Cabello had already been open about her struggles with anxiety prior to the incident, however, telling Billboard that 2015 was a “low” for her, personally.

“I was having terrible anxiety, nonstop. My heart would beat really fast the whole day. Two hours after I woke up, I’d need a nap because my body was so hyperactive,” she recalled. “I was scared of what would happen to me, of the things my brain might tell me. I realized the stuff I thought was important isn’t worth my health. Now I write in a diary every day, work out and meditate.”

In March 2017, the Cuban-born star revealed to Latina magazine that she also deals with obsessive compulsive disorder. “It was just totally out of control,” Cabello told the magazine the magazine of her OCD. “I would wake up with a super-accelerated heartbeat and really negative, intrusive, compulsive thoughts. I was so inside my head, and I didn’t know what was happening.”

She continued, “I totally understand now, being in it, why there shouldn’t be such a stigma on mental illness, because it’s a pretty common thing for people. But you can get help. If you’re dedicated to making it better, you can—because I’m in a much better place now. I started reading books about it and it really helped a lot when I understood [the illness], and that [the thoughts I was having] weren’t real. Sometimes you have to remind yourself to slow down and take care of yourself.”

Zayn Malik

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A post shared by Zayn Malik (@zayn) on Aug 14, 2018 at 10:01pm PDT

In June 2016, former One Direction member Zayn Malik cancelled a U.K. concert due to anxiety. He made the announcement on Instagram, writing, “Unfortunately, my anxiety that has haunted me throughout the last few months has gotten the better of me. With the magnitude of the live event, I have suffered the worst anxiety of my career.”

Later that year, Malik revealed in his memoir, Pillow Talk, that panic attacks have stopped him from performing on more than one occasion. “I just couldn’t go through with it,” he wrote. “Mentally, the anxiety had won. Physically, I knew I couldn’t function. I would have to pull out.”

And while a member of his team offered to say he was sick, Malik insisted on being open about his struggle. “I was done with putting out statements that masked what was really going on. I wanted to tell the truth. Anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of; it affects millions of people every day,” he explained. “I don’t want to say I’m sick. I want to tell people what’s going on, and I’m not gonna be ashamed of what’s happening.”

Cara Delevingne

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The more we embrace who we are as people and rely less on our physical attributes, the more empowered we become. Beauty shouldn't be so easily defined. It is limitless.

A post shared by Cara Delevingne (@caradelevingne) on May 3, 2017 at 8:38am PDT

In 2016, Cara Delevingne took to Twitter to reveal she took a break from modelling due to depression. “I suffer from depression and was a model during a particularly rough patch of self hatred,” she explained. Later that year, she told Esquire she had been struggling with mental illness since she was a teen, more specifically, after she discovered her mother’s drug addiction.

“I was suicidal. I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I realized how lucky and privileged I was, but all I wanted to do was die,” she told the magazine, adding a six-month break from school and medication might have helped save her life at 16.

However, Cara stopped the meds at age 18, saying “I get depressed still but I would rather learn to figure it out myself rather then be dependant on meds, ever.”

Adele

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Auckland / Mt Smart Stadium / Mar 25

A post shared by Adele (@adele) on Mar 25, 2017 at 9:41pm PDT

Despite being a 15-time Grammy winner, Adele still experiences stage fright. In March 2017, she admitted to her New Zealand concertgoers that she may never tour again, due to the ongoing issue. “Touring isn’t something I’m good at–applause makes me feel a bit vulnerable. I don’t know if I will ever tour again,” she told the audience. “I get so nervous with live performances that I’m too frightened to try anything new. It’s actually getting worse. Or it’s just not getting better, so I feel like it’s getting worse, because it should’ve gotten better by now.”

Lady Gaga

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🎉🎂

A post shared by Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) on Mar 28, 2017 at 2:18pm PDT

While Lady Gaga has been open about her struggles with depression and anxiety, it was only last year that she revealed she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after she was raped at age 19. “I suffer from PTSD, I’ve never told anyone that before,” she said on the Today show in December 2016. “But the kindness that’s been shown to me, by doctors as well as family and friends, has really saved my life.”

More recently, Gaga opened up about her mental health struggles in a conversation with Prince William, as part of the royal’s Heads Together #oktosay series, which aims to end the stigma with the help of celebrities.

“For me, waking up every day and feeling sad and going on stage is something that is very hard to describe. There’s a lot of shame attached to mental illness. You feel like something’s wrong with you,” she told the Duke of Cambridge via FaceTime. “In my life, I go, ‘Oh my goodness, look at all these beautiful, wonderful things that I have. I should be so happy,’ but you can’t help it if, in the morning when you wake up, you are so tired, you are so sad, you are so full of anxiety and the shakes that you can barely think.”

But despite her hardships, Mother Monster told William “the best thing that could come out of my mental illness was to share it with other people.”

“I feel like we are not hiding anymore, we’re starting to talk, and that’s what we need to do really,” she said.

Demi Lovato

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A post shared by Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) on May 9, 2017 at 2:42pm PDT

Demi Lovato is one of the most vocal mental health awareness advocates in the biz. The former Disney star, who has battled drug and alcohol addictions, bipolar disorder, self-harm and an eating disorder for years underwent rehab in 2010 and in 2013. Now, Lovato is much healthier and is committed to ending the stigma against mental illness. In 2015, she launched the Be Vocal campaign as a way to encourage individuals struggling with mental illness to talk about what they’re going through.

“I think the more people vocalize what they’re going through—their experience or just simply educating themselves so that they can learn more about what they’re talking about—that’s going to be the key to creating a conversation about mental illness and making it more understood,” she told HuffPost. “There’s a lack of compassion for people who have mental illnesses and there’s a lot of judgment. Once you make people realize that mental illness can happen to anybody—and it’s not anybody’s fault—then I think they’ll become more understanding of what mental illness really is.”

Jennifer Lawrence

Photography by Steve Granitz/WireImage

Jennifer Lawrence opened up about her struggle with anxiety in 2013, telling Madame Figaro that she began experiencing symptoms as a preteen. “When my mother told me about my childhood, she always told me that there was like a light in me, a spark that inspired me constantly,” Lawrence told the magazine. “When I started school, the light went out. It was never known what it was, a kind of social anxiety.”

She eventually went to seek help from a therapist and turned to acting as a form of self-therapy. She also revealed to the New York Times that she manages her anxiety with the use of prescription meds.

Emma Stone

Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage

Oscar winner Emma Stone told Rolling Stone in 2016 that she experienced bouts of anxiety and panic attacks as a child. “My anxiety was constant,” she said. “I would ask my mom a hundred times how the day was gonna lay out. What time was she gonna drop me off? Where was she gonna be? What would happen at lunch? Feeling nauseous. At a certain point, I couldn’t go to friends’ houses anymore–I could barely get out the door to school.”

She did reveal, however, that therapy and acting, specifically improv and sketch comedy, is what helped her work through it. “You have to be present in improv, and that’s the antithesis of anxiety,” she explained.

Chrissy Teigen

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My stoop buddy

A post shared by chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) on Apr 29, 2017 at 6:47pm PDT

Chrissy Teigen is never one to hold back, but she shocked fans when she penned an essay for Glamour on her struggle with postpartum depression. “I couldn’t figure out why I was so unhappy. I blamed it on being tired and possibly growing out of the role: ‘Maybe I’m just not a goofy person anymore. Maybe I’m just supposed to be a mom,'” she wrote, later adding “postpartum does not discriminate.”

Months later, Teigen finally saw her family doctor, where she got her diagnosis. She began taking antidepressants and is on the road to recovery. “I’m speaking up now because I want people to know it can happen to anybody and I don’t want people who have it to feel embarrassed or to feel alone. I also don’t want to pretend like I know everything about postpartum depression, because it can be different for everybody. But one thing I do know is that—for me—just merely being open about it helps.”

Troian Bellisario

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Thanks @coveteur I truly am a creepy eavesdropper. 😉 (📸 by @weston.wells )

A post shared by Troian Bellisario (@sleepinthegardn) on May 10, 2017 at 6:53am PDT

In November 2016, Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario revealed via a voting PSA that she struggled with an eating disorder when she was younger. She said it was early detection and mental healthcare that saved her. “If I had just been shunned to the side as not having ‘real problems’, I don’t know that I would be living today,” she explained. “I just want to make sure that everybody has the same opportunity for treatment that I have, and I think that we have to make sure that our government invests in those programs.”

Now, Troian is sharing her story on her struggles with anorexia in her upcoming film Feed, which she wrote and directed. “It was not easy; it was like engaging with an addiction,” she told Interview magazine of revisiting her story, adding that working on the film was “like poking a sleeping dragon.” “One of the things I really wanted the film to explore was that once you have this relationship, once you have this mental illness or this disease, it never really goes away.”

And just like many others who suffer from mental illness, Bellisario says she feels like no one truly understands what she went through. “Still to this day, I couldn’t get anyone—even the people who loved me the most, even my boyfriend or my mother or my father—to understand what that experience was truly like for me,” she said. “It was about my eating disorder, and I found there were so many people who thought that it was about losing weight or being skinny, and I couldn’t quite get them to understand that it was about control on a very, very literal level.”

Gina Rodriguez

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My beautiful friend @antonsoggiu came to visit from Norway and he included me in his magical art. TEN SECOND PORTRAITS. It's always great to be in front of his lens but this time it was just me. Bare and exposed in the streets of la. No makeup. No styling. Just me. I suffer from anxiety. And watching this clip I could see how anxious I was but I empathize with myself. I wanted to protect her and tell her it's ok to be anxious, there is nothing different or strange about having anxiety and I will prevail. I like watching this video. It makes me uncomfortable but there is a freedom I feel maybe even an acceptance. This is me. Puro Gina.

A post shared by Gina Rodriguez (@hereisgina) on May 26, 2017 at 12:08pm PDT

Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez got candid about her struggle with anxiety in a moving Instagram post. “I suffer from anxiety,” she captioned the video, which sees her makeup-free in a New York Yankees cap. “And watching this clip I could see how anxious I was but I empathize with myself. I wanted to protect her and tell her it’s ok to be anxious, there is nothing different or strange about having anxiety and I will prevail.”

Ariana Grande

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A post shared by Ariana Grande (@arianagrande) on Nov 6, 2018 at 7:11pm PST

In British Vogue’s July 2018 issue, Ariana Grande opened up on her experience with PTSD after the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing. “It’s hard to talk about because so many people have suffered such severe tremendous loss. But, yeah, it’s a real thing,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever know how to talk about it and not cry.”

In November 2018, the singer/songwriter dropped a single titled “thank u, next,” dedicated to all of her exes, including the late-Mac Miller (who died this past September of a drug overdose) and ex-fiancé Pete Davidson, which resulted in fans wondering who her therapist is. “Therapy has saved my life so many times,” Grande tweeted in response. “If you’re afraid to ask for help, don’t be.”

Sarah Hyland

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Velvet dragon scaled 🧜‍♀️ dripping in 💎 for the #goldenglobes @instylemagazine #instylewbglobes

A post shared by Sarah Hyland (@sarahhyland) on Jan 8, 2019 at 9:29am PST

Back in December 2018, Sarah Hyland opened up about experiencing suicidal thoughts after her body rejected a kidney donated by her dad. The Modern Family star, who has had a slew of health problems her whole life, appeared on Ellen and spoke about her depression.

“After 26, 27 years of just always being sick and being in chronic pain every single day—and [you] don’t know when you’re going to have the next good day—it’s really really hard…” she said.

“I would write letters in my head to loved ones of why I did it, and my reasoning behind it, and how it wasn’t anybody’s fault,” the 28-year-old revealed, adding that she was “very, very, very close” to taking her own life.

When asked how she overcame her suicidal thoughts and depression, Hyland said that she confided in a close friend (“I finally said it out loud to someone… just saying it out loud helped immensely, because I kept it to myself for months and months at a time.”) who urged her to see a therapist.

The post These Celebs Are De-Stigmatizing Mental Illness appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

These Celebs Are De-Stigmatizing Mental Illness published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

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lindyhunt · 5 years

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These Celebs Are De-Stigmatizing Mental Illness

Selena Gomez

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A post shared by Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) on Nov 24, 2016 at 6:21pm PST

Camila Cabello

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#BGT here I cooooome !!!! gonna b singing #cryingintheclub woooop

A post shared by camila (@camila_cabello) on May 30, 2017 at 5:06am PDT

Cabello had already been open about her struggles with anxiety prior to the incident, however, telling Billboard that 2015 was a “low” for her, personally.

Zayn Malik

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A post shared by Zayn Malik (@zayn) on Aug 14, 2018 at 10:01pm PDT

Cara Delevingne

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The more we embrace who we are as people and rely less on our physical attributes, the more empowered we become. Beauty shouldn't be so easily defined. It is limitless.

A post shared by Cara Delevingne (@caradelevingne) on May 3, 2017 at 8:38am PDT

However, Cara stopped the meds at age 18, saying “I get depressed still but I would rather learn to figure it out myself rather then be dependant on meds, ever.”

Adele

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Auckland / Mt Smart Stadium / Mar 25

A post shared by Adele (@adele) on Mar 25, 2017 at 9:41pm PDT

Lady Gaga

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🎉🎂

A post shared by Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) on Mar 28, 2017 at 2:18pm PDT

But despite her hardships, Mother Monster told William “the best thing that could come out of my mental illness was to share it with other people.”

“I feel like we are not hiding anymore, we’re starting to talk, and that’s what we need to do really,” she said.

Demi Lovato

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A post shared by Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) on May 9, 2017 at 2:42pm PDT

Jennifer Lawrence

Photography by Steve Granitz/WireImage

Emma Stone

Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage

Chrissy Teigen

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My stoop buddy

A post shared by chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) on Apr 29, 2017 at 6:47pm PDT

Troian Bellisario

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Thanks @coveteur I truly am a creepy eavesdropper. 😉 (📸 by @weston.wells )

A post shared by Troian Bellisario (@sleepinthegardn) on May 10, 2017 at 6:53am PDT

Gina Rodriguez

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A post shared by Gina Rodriguez (@hereisgina) on May 26, 2017 at 12:08pm PDT

Ariana Grande

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A post shared by Ariana Grande (@arianagrande) on Nov 6, 2018 at 7:11pm PST

Earlier this week, the singer/songwriter dropped a single titled “thank u, next,” dedicated to all of her exes, including the late-Mac Miller (who died this past September of a drug overdose) and ex-fiancé Pete Davidson, which resulted in fans wondering who her therapist is. “Therapy has saved my life so many times,” Grande tweeted in response. “If you’re afraid to ask for help, don’t be.”

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