#just kind of writing nonsense right now but it feels good to be writing consistently again!

[midnightsunnyday]

With Good Intentions (Chapter One) (Updated) ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

Masterlist A03

"Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works."

➥pairings: MC & Everyone ➥content warnings: not beta-read. We cook our stories like Solomon. Hurt/comfort with some humor. Using alcohol and food as coping mechanisms. Curse language. Mild violence. Mentions of suicide. Panic attacks. The brothers are kinda assholes in this story. And so is MC. Also, Diavolo is kind of suspect and so is Barbatos. ➥summary: after the events of Chapter 16, the brothers and Diavolo are forced to deal with the inevitable fallback of their actions towards MC, all while attempting to help them through their growing existential breakdown Or... what would happen if the MC didn't "serve as a bridge" for the brothers after lesson 16? How would their relationships change? And how would the brothers navigate their emotions without the MC's help? A/N: holy shit guys, when I say this story took forever, it took FOREVER. I had this idea in my head since early 2022, but due to some personal issues, it never came to light until now. I really hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please let me know how you feel about it in the notes. As always, take care.

Before all else, you were just your average, regular, no-name human. A statement in which you were fine, just perfectly fine, with admitting to.

You liked decorative mugs with cute animals on them. You were consistently outraged by the rising cost of food. You gave unwarranted opinions on topics that you knew little to nothing about. More importantly, you were wonderfully oblivious to your stake in the status quo, pursuing life as you pleased, unbound by fate or duty. On a flying rock in the middle of nowhere filled with billions of people, there shouldn’t be anything special about you. Until it was.

You sat there, peering out from yourself into a world that wasn’t quite yours. At loved ones that only mimicked those you’d left behind. You would’ve objected to all of this, the food, the drinks, the general merriment, if only you weren’t so tired, being dragged along without qualm into the common room to indulge in this nonsense. The celebration had only started, yet it felt as if you were trapped in time, watching the same scene for eons.

With great fanfare your death and all ones committed or attempted thereafter, were made completely inconsequential, the existential implications of one’s life being erased with the snap of a finger rendered irrelevant at the pop of a cork and the fizz of white champagne. One of the brothers spoke to you. Honestly, it was hard to tell which one. Everything was too bright, too loud. Some nonsense about wanting a muffin or other. You’d replied, yet were unsure of your words, as no part of you, not even your voice, felt like it belonged in this space.

Right, well, sure watching your mangled corpse be tossed down the stairs like a leaking bag of garbage to be disposed of might be traumatizing for the next person…no, forget trying to rationalize it. This was definitely traumatizing.

And this feeling. It was like dying all over again, slowly with each breath, but there was no urgency, no threat to twist and break your neck, no end to this "pseudo-death." It was your body who turned against you, a painful ache that gnawed itself from the depths of your stomach and came ripping, screaming, up, up, until the only thing that held it back was the clenching of your eyes. You sat with it. Struggled with it. Wondered if anyone noticed. But when you finally opened your eyes again, the same scene remained: a family—nearly ripped apart from centuries of pain, anger and regret—were laughing like it never happened. And you—still wallowing in what only lasted a few moments—were losing it.

You tried to steady your breaths. Tried enjoying the warmness of your tea. Distracted yourself with cookies, and cupcakes, and stories of failed schemes and embarrassing “childhood” photos. Maybe with time, you would learn to accept what seemingly couldn't be changed. Like with Belphegor, who nuzzled himself into the crook of your arm, dawning a face that made you realize, though with slight disgust, why it was easy to baby him. In time, you’d look back at this day, laughing away fear for awkwardness. In time, you’d find a way to raise your hand without clenching it into a fist to stroke the top of his head. But that time would only come once you allowed yourself to accept it all. This shitty prize, whether you wanted it or not, was yours. You were their family now, forever. Always in sight. Always fretted over. Always followed. The beginning, middle, and unforeseen end to the lives of the seven strongest rulers of hell. What good would it do to run ruin such splendor with your finite problems? For now, you should be happy. For now, you should be grateful. For now, you should breathe, relax, and just—

“Hahaha. There must have been so many things you’ve all wanted to do for Lilith over the years.”

“I’m not Lilith you insensitive asshole.”

The silence wasn’t sudden, because at first, it was hard to believe you’d said it. Like a misheard lyric in a song, everyone’s mind halted, replayed, then with clarity, lost it. Mammon and Leviathan gasped. Satan dropped his fork. Asmodeus covered his mouth. Belphegor winced. And Beelzebub, who never stopped eating, stopped eating. Even the flames from the fireplace seemed to dim slightly as if all the collective oxygen of this now incredibly warm, incredibly small room was sucked in and held. And as you stood there, fists clenched and teeth so tight they could crack brick, did you realize…

Oh.

Shit.

I could’ve sworn I said that to myself.

You waited, expecting a certain demon’s voice to rumble up from the quiet and reprimand you, yet Lucifer, like the rest of his brothers, did not speak, his mouth tight and twisted in not quite anger, not quite shock. Instead, he turned, with all the caution of a startled dog, towards Diavolo.

“I believe there’s been some miscommunication on my part,” Diavolo spoke. For a man that was just insulted to his face, he remained a bit too relaxed. “It was not my intention to offend you.”

"That's not the point!" You yelled again.

So what was the point? At the very back of your mind, beyond all the anger and anxiety, a thought struggled to form. It might’ve been inadvertent, yet your comment wasn't exactly misdirected. You didn't care being compared to Lilith, yet it wasn't what upset you. No, it was more complicated than that. Diavolo was unmoved, the shadows from the fireplace deepening the lines of his face, the mass of his body appearing larger in the dimness.

In the corner of your vision, a hand reached for you. "Hey, cool it, will ya?" Mammon urged, placing it upon your shoulder. "Everyone here knows you ain't Lilith."

You shook your head, hoping it would rearrange your scattered thoughts. "It's not about her."

"Eh? Whad'ya mean it's not about her? Didn't you just--"

"I know, I know!" You stamped down your foot. "It's before. Before the past. There were all of you. And Diavolo said...he said I had to come here, so I did and Barbatos took me to the door and...he took me to the door and..."

And there, like all fools who learned too late, did it dawn on you.

“Did you plan for Belphegor to kill me?” you asked.

Diavolo blinked. “Pardon?”

“Did. You. Plan. For. Belphegor. To. Kill. Me?” You pulled yourself from Mammon and stepped forward. “When you made me go to the past to check who let Belphegor out of the attic. Did you,” you gulped back a sob, “did you know I’d be in danger?”

Diavolo paused, and you envisioned the winding gears struggling behind his eyes. “I understand that the last few hours have been hectic for you," he said," perhaps it better if we continue this at another time?"

“I asked you a question.” Your voice rumbled, unsteady by the weight of your chest.

"And I heard it. Unfortunately," his smile was slight, "I feel no need to answer it."

"No need?" You weren’t sure whether to laugh or grab the nearest object and beat him with it. "Am I not worth an answer? The person you dragged down here and had killed isn't worth an answer?"

"I'm sorry, but I will no longer discuss this matter here." It wasn't long ago when Diavolo told you he could never lie, yet it seemed withholding the truth was another thing. You quickened your mouth to speak, yet Barbatos was far quicker.

“I believe the Young Master has spoken," Barbatos said, stepping into your view. “Regardless of what offense you believe occurred, I must ask that you refrain from continuing this outburst.”

“Or what?" You jabbed your finger into Barbatos's chest. "Will you tie me up in vines and drag me down to the dungeons?”

"Nothing of the sort," he said, brushing your hand away. "Yet your behavior is unbecoming, and furthermore, lacking in respect."

"Respect?" Your laugh was pained. "What do any of you know about respect? You think because you’re royalty you can just say and do what you want?” You swept your arm across the entire room. “You think you all can just say and do what you want and afterward just…fucking eat cake like it never happened? Huh?”

Some part of you expected them to act, to do anything other than sit there with those insipid looks on their faces. In some, like Satan, you could see the very bubbles of reflection beginning to float to the surface of their consciousness, eyes sharpened and red with stinging hindsight. Yet there were others like Leviathan, head tilted toward the ground as if contemplating burrowing himself beneath it. It only made you want to fill the room with your voice. Until it rang the walls of the House of Lamentation. Until it echoed out into the night. Until the entire Devildom could hear you screaming, “Say something you selfish bastards.”

“Oi, that’s enough,” Mammon called to you. “Let’s just calm down before we get ourselves into something we can’t get out of, yeah?”

“Mammon’s right,” Asmodeus said, yet not before peering toward Lucifer. “Just…forget about the party, ok? Go relax in your room.”

"With all due respect, that isn't your decision to make, Asmodeus." Barbatos turned to Diavolo. "Young Master?"

Everyone looked to Diavolo, his face pensive. It was insulting, really. That after all was said and done, now was the time that he considered your well-being. "I believe it best," Diavolo spoke, "that you listen to Mammon and Asmodeus."

You scoffed, face wet and heated. You'd gone a bit past the point of common sense. If this ended in your punishment, then so be it. Until then, you would not move. Not until you got your answer. Not until he and Barbatos admitted what they did. Not until--

"Enough of this, please." Lucifer was not the type to plead, something you, and everyone else for that matter, responded with various expressions of disbelief. "This was supposed to be..." he clutched his breaths as if catching himself from slipping into someone less than his title suggested. “Let’s not continue this further.”

It was the softest you've ever heard him speak, and the most tired he ever looked. The brother's confirmation of Lucifer’s words hung in the air, and with it, your bravado. You never expected them to get it. After all, how could beings that would never know the brush of death or time understand your feelings in this moment? Though you also never expected them to just…do nothing, either. It hurt you, in ways too tired to yell further.

You turned, silent, and moved. Into the halls and towards your room door, tossing it open before slamming it shut and locking yourself inside. Not that it ever kept anyone out. A great heaviness sat upon your shoulders, and you carried it towards your bed, allowing gravity to do the rest as you plopped face-first into your sheets.

Maybe I could suffocate myself in my sleep if I stayed this way? A grim thought. And, unlikely.

For a while, the only sounds were your own heartbeat and shallow breaths. Your room wasn’t far from the common room, so you supposed the shock from before hadn’t died yet.

Finally, with a voice carrying all the weight of a vagrant, Lucifer spoke, “Pardon me for stating the obvious but, I believe it best...that we all call it a night."

And no one, not even Satan, called him out on it.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me fanfic #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me diavolo #obey me barbatos #midnightsunnyday writes

[twoheartsoneclara]

my main boy five.  oh my boy.

i’ll admit, i think they dropped the ball with his writing this season.  aidan’s still turning out an incredible performance, and added a lot of nuance to his characterization despite quite frankly working with pretty much nothing.  go off, king.

i don’t know what to make of him being the founder of the commission.  granted, the commission is literally so fucking nonsense at this point, but it feels like it erases a.  LOT.  of the tragedy of five’s character.  it could possibly be tragic in a different way, but with the writers not doing fucking anything with it this season, it’s difficult to tell.  

a big part of his conflicts over the past two seasons have had to do with the fact that he fucking despises the handler, that the handler is just the one who was next in line after reginald, who saw him as a tool and used him to carry out her dirty work.  the whole “i don’t belong anywhere thanks to you.  you made me a killer.”  “you were always a killer.  i just pointed you in a direction.” and “i saved you from a lifetime of being alone.  you owe me.”  and his “i do owe a debt.  but it’s not to you.” is a key scene.  if the handler is right, that he was always a killer, then a huge part of his moral complexity is wiped away.

a huge part of what makes five compelling as a character is the conflict that he has with not enjoying being a killer and being made into one and being good at it anyways.  one of his biggest themes as a character and his driving force that’s been consistent behind his motives is what would you do, how far would you go, to save the people that you love.  and another key part of that is that he is a weapon and a killer, yes, but he was made that way.  that’s a theme across the whole series and the whole hargreeves family.  the same thing with viktor - their stories clearly parallel each others’, especially in season 1 with leonard and reginald.

the downright horror that we felt at the commission having left him in the apocalypse specifically so they could use his desperation against him and so that they could manipulate him into doing what they wanted becomes so moot when we learn that.  what?  he’s the one who created the commission actually?

and logically, it doesn’t make any sense from what we know about five as a character for him to just lie down and give up, not five as he is now or old old five.  they had to nerf him to make the plot work.  if there had been a bigger timeskip, it might have made sense but he’s still fresh off of the end of season 2.  this is the same man who literally while actively dying managed to turn back time to save his family from dying.  the same one who murdered a boardroom of people to try and get his family home.  the whole storyline about him accepting destiny makes no fucking sense.  the commission said “the apocalypse has to happen” and he said “fuck this fuck you” and utterly refuses to accept the idea of destiny.

they definitely attempted to somewhat justify it with the whole “no life spent going mad” and being just tired by the whole thing which like justified my man.  it’s definitely kind of the fallout of trying to run himself ragged for the past month.  and you can tell that aidan was trying so hard to make it work with the acting choices that he brought to the table, so again, go off, king.  

but at the same time again it’s been a month.  sure, it’s the month from hell, and he so deserves to go apeshit about it, but that’s fucking nothing compared to the 45 years stuck in the apocalypse.  like yeah he’d probably have a breakdown about it (as is his right) but it’s another core trait of five’s is that he doesn’t give up.  literally all of the plot of the entire show hinges on the fact that he doesn’t give up.  stopping the 2019 apocalypse?  five’s the only one who has knowledge about it from the beginning and shows up to stop it, and that’s only possible because he spent 45 years surviving the apocalypse and taking the deal with the commission so he could return home to stop it and save his family.  ending up in the 60s?  only possible because five took him and his siblings back so that they could escape the currently impending apocalypse.  them not fucking dying in that barn and making it possible for them to get back to 2019?  only possible because he rewound time while dying himself and managed to save them.

i understand them making allison the large driving plot force this season and tbh i’m glad they did!!  homegirl completely deserved her chance to shine and emmy fucking gave it her all.  (caveat: they definitely also fucked up that deeply on some points but by and large yes, allison did deserve to go apeshit).  and i also understand somewhat understand making the conflict between her and viktor - their dynamic has been pretty important for viktor’s story (as the second-most important character to the plot overall), and they managed to do something...half-interesting with that.  but they completely had to nerf five’s character to make all of that possible, which is just lazy writing.

on a petty note, give five mr. pennycrumb for fucking real, you cowards.  

#claire.txt #claire's tua thoughts #tua spoilers #five hargreeves #tua

[variousqueerthings]

Well, you don't steer the Tardis, you negotiate with it. The still point between where you want to go and where you need to be, that's where she takes you.

We've headed to Bill's second proper episode. The Doctor is in a somewhat non-dissimilar position to back in s3, but not spiralling into a series of suicidal urges (well...) -- in the sense that we're at "taking on a new companion is Not allowed because I'm sad (and in this case because the Master is being held in the cellar), but... well, wouldn't it be nice?" the difference between Bill and Martha is manifold, it's just interesting to imagine character change in the Doctor, who's consciously got not just Martha, but all of his companions in mind when he's interacting with Bill... and, possibly, Susan a bit, considering that picture in episode 1. Bill, to me, feels correct in being the final companion of this era, she ties a lot of emotional themes together going all the way back to Rose, and her greatest trait to me is all the questions she asks/the kinds of questions she asks

right now Bill is following the Doctor with the knowledge that out there in space, her almost-not-girlfriend-turned-puddle-creature is also hanging around...

sexism rank objectification (female character is ogled/harassed/turned into a sex joke by the doctor and/or a lead we’re supposed to root for and/or the camera): 10/10

sexism rank plot-point (lead female character is only there to serve plot, not to have her emotional interiority explored, or given agency to her emotional interiority): 7/10

interesting complex or pointlessly complex (does the complexity serve the narrative or does it just serve to be confusing as a stand-in for smart, this includes visually): 7/10

furthers character and/or lore and/or plot development (broader question that ties into the previous ones, at least two of these, ideally three should be fulfilled): 5/10

companion matters (the companion doesn’t always have to be there, but if the companion is there, can they function without the doctor– and overall per season how often is the companion the focus or POV of the story): 9/10

the doctor is more than just “godlike” (examines the doctor’s flaws and limitations, doesn’t solve a plot by having it revolve entirely around the doctor’s existence): 8/10

doesn’t look down on previous doctor who (by erasing or mocking its importance, by redoing and “bettering” previous beloved plotpoints or characters, etc.): 5/10

isn’t trying to insert hamfisted sexiness (m*ffat famously talked a lot about how dw should be sexier multiple times, he sucks at writing it): 10/10

internal world has consistency (characters have backgrounds, feel rooted in a place with other people, generally feel like they have Lives): 6/10

Politics (how conservative is the story): 5/10

FULL RATING: 72/100 (if I can count….)

this season, I tellya. I like this episode despite its flaws (flaws which come from some deeeply ingrained scifi tropes that are due a good Poking at)

OBJECTIFICATION: Woooo, we've done it! none of this Nonsense. also Bill's top is cute, and feels to me like something that didn't come out of a fashion catalogue -- I just mean by this that she's someone without a bunch of money, she'd probably have some Fits that she's really into and this gay top gives off that vibe

PLOT-POINT: Bill really engages with how she feels about travelling and the kind of adventures she's in (ofc we see even more of that in the next episode). in this one she's noticing that the Doctor runs into danger and tries to get her out of the way, and simply follows after, because she thinks there's something kind of destructive and lonely about that behaviour -- and this is what leads her to figuring out key parts of the plot as well

there's also this neat moment where there's a statue of perhaps Nefertiti and Bill stops and compares herself for a moment, and it feels very "I'm Black and I'm in space and I have both history and future" which is part of what her story is about -- before the Doctor she was very much floating from one day to the next, with all these questions she didn't have the privilege to be able to ask and have respected and answered. the Doctor really functions so often as a professor in their stories, being really indulgent with these questions, but still challenging her to figure things out for herself and letting her challenge him when she notices the flaws in his logic (or in the next episode, gaps in his truth)

COMPLEXITY: it's relatively easy to follow the twists and turns of this one, and they're quite good twisty-turns. the one thing I question is its ending, and a bit of its buy-in, but that's about Politics

I liked the feeling of this one though. I liked what it wanted to say, at heart, and I liked a fair bit of how it said it

CHARACTERS/LORE/PLOT: Bill's first own adventure. She's noticing that the Doctor has a tendency to run into danger. she's having some feelings about what the future of humanity might look like. it's not so heavy on Stuff outside of this, but that's fine, the point is really "how does Bill react to time-and-space"

COMPANIONS MATTER: yeah yeah yeahhhh! she really does! and it feels like a conscious choice to go from River Song's "we do as we're told" type line, to now where Bill really challenges the Doctor's limitations. and because she does, vital bits of the story are revealed, to us and to the Doctor

“GODLIKE” DOCTOR: I feel like I should have taken more notes on the Doctor's behaviour in this episode, because it's very much the oppossite of this/the Doctor is fallible, but I wasn't conscious enough about whether it's saying something about where the Doctor's head is at that he didn't consider that the colonists might already be there, and could have risked blowing them -- and the Vardy -- up. regardless, I think the Doctor is very happy to be travelling again and specifically to be travelling with Bill

PREVIOUS DOCTOR WHO: this episode is very self-contained, its narrative of colonising a planet because earth is [insert some kind of catastrophe that's not quite spelt out for us] doesn't relate to any other, similar episodes of the same, and I think it could have done. it's quite a popular theme (as we will get into)

“SEXINESS”: Bill is here to tell us we're post the need for stupid faux-sexy talk

INTERNAL WORLD: I think for where it is -- that is a "post"-colonised world, and I will absolutely be talking about that in the point below -- it's very well developed. the way also it threw the Doctor for a loop that the colonists were already there!

I am fascinated by how "post"-colonised is depicted via wheat fields. mono-culture harvesting is no good! (I may be overanalysing but that's the thing about "colony" -- it needs to be complicated as concept in modern scifi, it's well overdue for it)

I also noted in "previous doctor who" that it doesn't connect to any other narratives about Something Is Up On Earth so we must leave narratives it's done, so it's sort of ambiguous handwaved Reasons that bring them to this plot. perhaps if that was more grounded, their desperation would feel more real

but it works, the way the mystery comes together. the Vardy in the wall, the old spaceship full of memorabilia from earth, the shrine to the first dead, and the pods of sleeping people. I really like all that

POLITICS: oooooohohoo it's one of my favourite kind of stories, "everyone is people!" the way to win at the end is not destroying the robots, it's to acknowledge their rights to the planet on which they live. I also like that the majority of the colonists (we'll get to that word in a sec) are South Asian, until we get to gun-man-dude, who's not meant to be in the right. there's just a lot more casual and deliberately thought out diversity from the looks of things, making the future of humanity feel far broader

that being said, there are sooome elements to the whole thing that of course I cannot help but pay attention to- first of all, of course, the idea of colonists to begin with is always something complex that conveniently tends to pretend that wherever a colonist lands is empty before they arrive. that is the case in this episode as well, where the plot asks the audience to simply run with the fact that this planet was colonised, and we arrive to the story when "colonised" is its state, that's how we the audience first see this world. what it was before colonisation is not a part of this story

I really would be fascinated in Doctor Who moving forwards grappling with that idea of the implications of "colonist" because it's been the word habitually used in scifi for so long, without thinking about it, and although there are episodes that deal with immigration, with oppression of one species over another (notably, with humans over others), and with stripping resources without "considering" or perhaps caring for the consequences (and then there are consequences), the very concept of colonist isn't so challenged yet

actually if anyone can point me towards a science fiction story consciously writing on colonialism, which I'm sure there are, I'd be very interested

anyway, for this episode, one of the prime science fiction conceits that I would like to see challenged one day, is the "empty" planet just waiting for humans to populate it. maybe this episode has already been done, but not in nu!who, so again, if anyone knows an audio adventure, a classic story, a book, a comic, I'd be very interested

I also just watched Interstellar for the first time yesterday, so now I'm thinking about the popular narrative of "something's up with earth and it's so fucked, we have to go to somewhere else" which is... well, it's very colonialist, it's very Elon Musk and billionaires in space leaving the poor suckers to die, it's very defeatist, and dare I say it without going a biiiit into sentimentalism... it's very ungrateful to the earth, as narrative. it's time we complicated that "easy" shorthand for why colonialism must be done, the same as we need to complicate the "easy" setting of the conveniently empty planet

SO this story is not about the idea of colonialisation, but the Vardy (who have been helping to prepare the planet) are self-aware, and, according to the Doctor, were here first. I think the throwaway joke at the end lets down the story a biiiit, when the Doctor asks about discussing rental agreements for the humans being allowed there, and the Vardy then show a money sign and a ding effect

don't insert last-minute capitalism on a seemingly abundant world where everyone needs to learn to get along! I think this is partly a consequence of the episode needing to end and not having enough time, but I think drops the ball on that

however! tiny swarms called The Vardy who communicate with humans via robot interfaces are people! that society could become so in a particular Cyborg kind of way as long as it's not capitalist, but that's another discussion

FULL RATING: 72/100 (if I can count….)

this is a solid episode -- it's not perfect, and it kind of falls for "easy tropes" rather than real originality or challenge to concepts, but where it really really works is Bill, in my opinion

this makes a big difference to previous companions, where that's often been the point I've rated middly-to-low, because episodes have struggled to give companions something to do and/or a reason to care about what's happening around them

Oh Bill, you're so great

#im watching nu!who #im watching capaldi who #the measurement #episode smile

[misty-caligula]

S2E7

S2E8

Well, which is it, Lottie?

This is what I’ve been saying, exactly. Lott’s the most unreliable leader they could’ve possibly chosen, because she does not have a consistent grip on what It wants, it changes all the time. It’s not bad writing or whatever, it’s that she’s literally delusional. She’s absolutely confident in her perception of It at all times, and doesn’t realise that she’s being inconsistent. And what’s really worrying is that the rest of them don’t seem to notice it either.

Also the absurdity of the situation, Shauna’s killed Adam, Tai’s killed her dog and hurt her wife, Misty’s killed Jessica, Natalie almost killed herself, Van’s dying, and Lottie thinks she can solve all this death with... more death? How exactly? The REASON they killed Javi, the reason they hunted Nat, pit girl and who knows how many others, the reason they ate Jackie, was because they needed FOOD. LIFE. PHYSICAL, not spiritual, sustenance. They were solving death with death only in the way that we solve death with death every single day by eating in the food chain, if you took your food and killed it and then let it just rot you’d be solving nothing.

This isn’t a bug though, it’s a feature. The concept that they never really left the wilderness has been a recurring one all season, and here they are, putting it all together again. They’ve really never been able to reintegrate into society at all, none of them. This is where they’ve always belonged. And the only solutions they learned for their problems are ... insufficient. Self destructive. To the outside world they seem bizarre and nonsensical, to the ‘jackets they’re intuitive and familiar. And they DO argue, to an extent, but only to an extent. Almost like they feel like they are expected to argue, but their hearts aren’t really in it.

Because Lottie’s right. They DID survive last time. And they can’t say with any level of certainty that it wasn’t because of the Wilderness. That It didn’t hold them there and keep them safe, and follow them home and that It isn’t now hungry after being starved for 25 years. On the surface they do a pretty good job of pretending to be rational-minded, solid individuals. But you scratch that even the smallest amount and underneath they’re still free-falling, still absolutely adrift and just begging for the kind of certainty that It used to bring them.

I think this is a foreboding line. I think that IF they do go ahead and drink (I think there’s a 50/50 chance they do) that Lottie’s probably going to have the poison. I could be surprised on this, but that’s my gut instinct.

As a show that’s largely about trauma and the way that it follows you around your whole damn life, I think this framing is damn near perfect. Going through traumatic experiences - especially long, drawn out trauma, particularly while you grow up - teaches you how to live in a traumatic situation. It teaches you how to survive, how to subsist. It doesn’t teach you at all how to be healthy, how to thrive, how to be happy. Only how to not die. And it doesn’t teach you truth or stability, only what your pattern-seeking brain seems to suggest is working, and then in a life-or-death situation you just hold onto what’s working as tightly as you fucking can. You can’t evaluate it, can’t test it, you don’t have the space or the stability, you just clutch it like driftwood on the ocean.

Then, when you’re older, and you’re trying to live your life in a safer, calmer space, all you have to go on are these maladaptive behaviours and inside you’re just this scared kid forever, still clutching tight to them, because you know what it’s like to drown, and you just KNOW that the moment you let go the water’s coming back, you just KNOW it. Even when they hurt you, even when they’re actively dragging you down, killing you and causing damage to everything you care about, it’s SO hard to let go and trust that you can learn new ways to live, that you can let It go, that It won’t come looking for It’s pound of flesh.

I think that, deep down, every one of these women believed they’d find themselves back here one day. Back in this room, back in this circle, doing the sacrifice thing once more. I think that deep deep down none of them are really putting up a fight because none of them are really genuinely surprised. They never really bought that they ever got away in the first place.

#yellowjackets #long post #spoilers #s2e8 #trauma stuff #theories

[hawkewatching]

Dark Sun (Arthur Harrow x Reader)

Chapter 3: Dreamers in Midstride (5,172 words)

Previous Links: Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 (Please check chapter 1 for any warnings and tags if you're interested, they are the same here)

Rated Mature for dark themes and some strong language.

Summary:

“There’s no need for these games.”

There are forces at play higher than your understanding. And perhaps, higher than his too.

A/N: I'm so bad at using this site I keep forgetting and/or I'm too unreasonably nervous to post (go read it on AO3 if you have no patience there's a 15th chapter now), I'd like to extend my deepest apologies to anyone on here who is reading this exclusively on this platform please understand that I have severe social anxiety thanks <3 This chapter is wild because I absolutely do not write like this any more, this thing is like a year old, (and I caught at least one tense error that I corrected, I used to have a SERIOUS problem with keeping my tenses consistent that I don't think I have anymore, apologies if they're still out there) but hey I think it's probably okay, I'll try to be quick about posting chapter 4 to make up for it. I always wanted to space this out but never like this, my bad. Enjoy? :)

~~~

You had a dream that felt just a little too real.

This night was the perfect night for it. You never had a reason to doubt that what you saw was all fiction, you mind having painted a perfect portrait of the people you knew in your life. Yet still, you weren't able to shake it, clinging onto the memories of it even though you wanted to forget.

In this dream, you met the friends you had fallen out of contact with, the family members you barely saw anymore, but still wished otherwise, and the good people that you had wronged, all welcoming you back into their lives as if nothing had ever happened. This feeling was fantastic, everyone was happy, and you were all standing together. You were loved, and loving that.

You were in the middle of some dream conversation, the details of which were forgotten even from the moment you woke up. It was probably nonsense, but you felt happy.

You heard a voice ask: “Is everyone here?”

Before anyone can answer, your dream self felt (or the better term perhaps would be ‘acknowledged’) a hand grab you by the ankle, and with a scream, you were pulled through the floor into nothingness.

The shock woke you up, already in seconds you were in a cold sweat.

Sitting at the end of the bed, sideways to your feet was Harrow, already staring right at you. You noticed immediately that there was something behind his eyes this time. Concern. You didn’t know he had it in him. His mouth hung open a tiny bit, betraying that you had surprised him, for once.

The way he looked told you everything you needed to know. The scream was real.

“Are you alright?” For once, you welcome his soft questioning, and it brings you some comfort.

“Yeah. Just a bad dream.” You told half of the truth, unable to quite let go of the ideal world you’d been pulled out of, and still in shock. You were already recovering, though. You would be fine soon enough, with or without his help.

“What was it about?” He sounded curious when he asked, but his expression had returned to the same it always was, a little too distant to really be caring. Usually, he’d have nothing behind those eyes, but this time you swore you caught a glimpse of something.

He can’t hide it. He does care.

“Shouldn’t you already know? I’m waiting for your explanation.” You tiredly grumbled, deciding you’d rather not relieve the memory no matter how much he wanted you to.

You caught him smiling to himself as he looked away for a moment, his gaze drifting downwards. “Dreams are not representative of your soul. At least,” he finally looked your way, the smile all but gone, “not the sleeping kind.”

Your face furrowed, unsatisfied with that answer. “Okay, but can’t they still mean something? Dreams can be based in reality, can’t they? There were people in that dream that I knew, and they acted how I remembered them.” You surprised yourself with the passion you’d found disputing him. You already knew full well where this had come from, though. This was the first time he hadn’t given you a real answer.

He gave a defeated sigh. “The first rule of dreams is to never treat them as if they were real. I’ve learned that from experience.”

“What are your dreams like?”

Harrow can only give a warm smile, and he reached out his hand, brushing against your cheek. For a moment, you’re captured by the gesture, but you soon begin to notice that it’s his way of dodging the question.

The manipulative motherfucker.

He seemed to read your mind, and got his words in first. “I made you breakfast.” The smile he followed with cushioned his calculated blow.

“Breakfast?” Your confusion, unlike his emotions, was poorly hidden.

“It’s just toast.” He added modestly.

Only now did you remember to look away from his face, and sure enough, he had one hand still next to you, and the other further one grasping a plate with two slices of toast, which he brought towards you. They appeared to be spreaded with jam, but for your mind in a half-awake moment, they looked like blood.

“Oh, thank you.” You managed to slip out, tucking that morbid idea away back in your mind. Harrow gave you a grateful smile in return, carefully bringing himself to his feet. As always, he was accompanied by that sickly crunch that made you wince as if you’d heard it for the first time all over again.

Suddenly, perhaps brought back to reality by that horrible wake-up call, you were able to finally put your dreaming thoughts behind you and realise that he'd been watching you. Waiting for you. That made you feel uneasy. “How long have you been here?”

His answer was immediate, smooth and calming. “Don’t concern yourself with that.”

His delivery alone almost has the power to put your questions away, but you resist his efforts, raising an eyebrow. “I’m concerned anyway.”

He gave a dry chuckle. “As long as I wasn’t in your dreams, I was only here for a few moments.”

That doesn’t instil you with confidence, but when you finally touch your toast, it is still warm. Very warm, in fact. There must have been some truth to that statement.

When you look up from your plate, he’s standing by your door, ready to open but not quite ready to leave. For a moment, your eyes lock with one another, and he continues to linger, not daring to blink. You’re not sure what to give him, so you wait for his move.

But he never makes a move. He breaks the gaze and, looking conflicted, leaves without another word. You could tell he didn’t quite know what to do with you, wondering if, perhaps, you were the problem. You remembered what he had told you before: “If you give me nothing, I can’t give you anything either.” You had to give something to him.

He wasn’t in my dream. Unless he was the one that woke me up.

***

It had been a while since you had heard from Harrow, so much so that you were starting to get suspicious.

His absence was understandable, he was a busy man, since you had touched down the Alps you’d barely seen him at all, caught up in whatever he was working on.

And yes, you had now travelled halfway across Europe with him. This wasn’t special treatment, really. He had hand-picked a few of his most loyal followers to accompany him. People he trusted. You qualified for that, apparently, and when he had told you this, his gaze searing into your soul like a threat, there was no option to say no.

You knew for sure you were not the most loyal, and you didn’t quite know if he even trusted you, but what was clear was that he wanted you to be with him. You felt, almost, like his favourite, and the socially-starved attention seeker in you liked that.

But in light of that, you found it strange that he had left you to your own devices so quickly.

The cause comes first, I’d imagine.

He was too busy attending to the locals on his first night, which you also understood. Some of which appeared suspicious and… armed? You didn’t quite believe that, and chose not to. The rest were people like yourself, other, innocent cult members.

Goddamn, am I a cult member now? I don't know if I'm ready to accept that.

His presence to them was a rare occurrence, and a blessing. You remembered vividly how they had reacted to him, and from a distance during your evening soup you had watched those people listen to his every word as if they were his last.

All he did, it appeared, was be there. He was polite, but not much more. He was a part of their conversations, and he brought something to all of them. He was, to these people, their world.

So why isn’t he mine?

No! Don’t think that! You don’t need that.

You felt so embarrassed with your own thoughts. You only assumed it could be longing, something that you never expected to feel about him. He had promised to keep you close, made you feel special, and now it wasn’t so. You wanted him to keep that promise. You wanted him with you.

You remembered thinking something like that in the middle of your soup and nearly spitting it out at the idea. A couple of people gave you strange looks, but the only one that mattered didn’t see. That was probably for the best.

It was now morning, and quickly you were being faced with a problem. You were requested, no, required, to attend the ceremony, the very same one that had introduced you to all of this.

For a few reasons, you couldn’t bring yourself to go. One, you hadn’t bought into his beliefs. Not totally, anyway. There was a little bit too much implied murder for you liking. And speaking of which, two, you found the ceremony deeply uncomfortable on your first visit, and rathered you didn’t experience it again. You still didn’t know what happened to all those that failed judgement and at this point, you didn’t want to know. Blissful ignorance felt better than the truth in this world.

Lastly, you knew it wouldn’t further your goals in any way. If you wanted to see him again, it was best to catch him at another time. You doubted he’d notice if you weren’t there, attendance was supposed to be high. You were just one, in say, fifty. Your presence, or lack thereof, wouldn’t matter.

But a fear that Harrow wouldn’t understand any of those reasonings compelled you to at least consider still going. Even though every part of your mind was screaming not to. As it became more obvious that you were buying into all of this cult behaviour, you grasped at any last, desperate attempt to back out, even if you knew it was all futile.

You couldn’t help but pace around your room, the thoughts eating away at you. It was about half an hour until the ceremony started, and you supposed Harrow was probably gone by now. The location was not nearby, and he was one for preparation. In light of that, you felt a desire for some fresh, foreign air, and decided that a walk outside would clear your head.

With a sigh, you opened the door to leave, but you stopped mid-breath at the sight across from you.

Son of a bitch!

No, you couldn’t conceal the words in your mind.

“Son of a bitch! You scared the crap out of me.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Harrow replied. The way he leaned forwards on the cane, looking at you with watery eyes, certainly screamed apologetic, but the playful little smile he gave seemed to suggest that wasn’t quite true.

You began to recover from your scare, and after observing his lack of seriousness, you played along. “You could have knocked.”

His smile began to fade. “I wasn’t sure if you were in. If you were going to the ceremony, you would have left by now.” He had the energy of a scolding parent, and you imagined he got some kind of inner satisfaction from calling you out.

“Same goes for you.” You answered back.

He smirked, looking down for a moment as his fingers rubbed the cane. “I will be on time regardless of what happens.” His head suddenly bolted back up, gaze staring straight through. “What about you?”

You scoffed. “I’ll be there.”

His head tilted. “Will you?” His questioning is soft, and doesn’t pressure you.

“Of course.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t lie to me.” He added your name, slowly and deliberately, sending a shiver down your spine.

He knows. Of course he knows.

You weren’t lying to him. At least not intentionally. You decided to lean into that latter fact, unsure of what to do other than continue to feign innocence. “What are you talking about?” You asked.

A smile formed on his face again, soft and comforting. “There’s no need for these games. If you’re scared to go today, the least you could do is tell me. Let me help you.” There’s no anger even after knowing of your lies, just a compassionate air to him that you liked to see.

Lost for words, you stuttered your way into a reply. “I don’t know what to say-”

He took a step forward, breaking his gaze for a moment to make sure he did so correctly. “You don’t have to say anything.” Soon, he is back to staring at you, but that, and his assurance, strangely puts you at ease. “Just listen to me. I would like you to be there today. I would like to be able to see you while all of this happens. You are the living reminder that no matter what happens, no matter what I have to do, everything will be alright. That is more important to me than you may possibly understand.”

You didn’t quite expect that. All this time he had felt so distant, so outside of your world, but the idea that you were even a part of his, let alone so important to it? You’d never been like that to anyone before. It was exactly what you needed to hear.

You were lost for words, but tried to find them anyway. “I understand. It’s just-”

“Just what?” He interrupted, head tilting again, seemingly with impatience.

“I’m scared, alright?” You snapped, but soon found yourself holding back tears, overwhelmed by everything.

You didn’t really know what exactly you were scared of, other than just, everything. Scared of the mandatory cult activity, scared of lying to him and scared of screwing everything up somehow. That was something you knew you had to keep to yourself, and now it was out there for him to use as he pleased. That scared you the most. You actually cried at that thought.

Almost immediately he responded by moving in for a hug, which you did not reject. His soft words next to your ear made all your thoughts stop. You wanted him to stay there. “There’s no need to be. You are under my protection, and Ammit’s. From this point onwards, we’re going to make sure you never feel like that again. Can you accept my help?”

You felt yourself hold him tighter, trying to find the breath for words without your tears. “I don’t know-”

He cut you off, perfectly calm in complete contrast. “We’ll figure this out together, okay?” He doesn’t even hesitate before his next words. “I love you.”

At those mere three words, your mind threw away all of its doubts, and butterflies swarmed your stomach. The thought of him feeling that way filled you with overwhelming feelings that you didn’t quite know what to do with.

Despite everything he had told you, you couldn’t help but have moments where you forgot that he cared. He seemed too far away to get that close, surely. He always found a way to surprise you. You hated that. What you would have given to have every detail of his being in your mind so that you’d know how to play around him. So that he couldn’t trip you up like this. So that he didn’t make you feel this way. He made you feel truly loved.

“I’ll see you later.” You could hear his smile and feel his breath on the side of your head. You were all too familiar with the way he spoke to you there. It was his promise, or his hidden threat. He already knew that you would be coming. You would not disappoint him.

He didn’t give you time to talk that out or think it through a little, because before you knew it he was walking away, and not a single thought could linger in your mind as the sound of crunching penetrated it. Irked by the noise, you selfishly wondered if everything he did was to hurt you in little ways, before realising something darker.

He does all this to hurt himself.

***

You’d been here before.

Not literally, but standing around with a group full of strangers, trying desperately to buy into their mindset and just… not quite getting here. This was familiar. You’d been there weeks ago, the only difference was that the first time was on a cold London evening and this was a sunny, but still cold, midday in the Alps.

Only when you considered that did you realise that everything had happened so quickly. One impulse trip for answers and suddenly you’re on an alpine holiday.

Could be worse.

One key distinction to be made this time was that you felt safe. Last time, you’d been so afraid of sticking out, and anxious over the fact that you didn’t know what was happening. But this time you were fairly certain of how things would go, and you were now armed with the experience to blend in. To everyone else, you would just be a face in the crowd.

But you knew full well that Harrow was not everyone else. If he noticed you the first time, before everything had happened between you, on the second run you could practically feel him staring into your soul when he wasn’t even there. He had requested that you’d be here and you obliged him.

You weren’t doing this for yourself, not at all. You were doing it for him.

This would have been around the time that alarm bells went off in your mind again, but this time was different. You didn’t mind doing something for him. He hadn’t given you much of a choice in the past but this time, you felt as if you truly chose to play by his rules, rather than being tricked into his games. You could have told him no, but you had decided against it. In a sense, that was freedom, and the thought of it felt as if a great weight had been lifted off of you.

In this situation, you weren’t scared, and you knew exactly what you were doing. That was why, for the first time, you didn’t feel nervous when you heard that crunching. Even when the air seemed to shift, you still didn’t quite understand how he was capable of having such a presence, you stood your ground. You knew what was coming.

The people around you lowered their heads a little. You didn’t feel pressured by their bizarre antics, and did not follow suit. I was not that you didn’t respect their revered leader, it’s just that you couldn’t see things the same way as them. You liked Harrow. In fact, you probably liked him a little too much, but not in the same way. You didn’t want to place him above you. You wanted him as your equal.

You were not quite sure if you wanted yourself equal to him or himself equal to you. There was quite the difference.

When Harrow stepped up in front of everyone, only a few feet from you, once again almost as if taking centre stage for a one-man show of strange happenings, you could have sworn you felt his stare pass over you for half a second. You didn’t doubt that he was watching for your response, because you knew he wasn’t going to be surprised by your presence. He’d made certain you’d be here. The only thing he couldn’t control was your feelings.

“Good morning. It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? Almost like we’re in heaven. Only it’s not heaven, is it? Can’t you feel it too? The darkness, everywhere. All around us, sometimes hiding in our very hearts.”

How many times has he had to say this nonsense?

You observed the way he spoke, convicted, absolutely, without a doubt, but that soft-spoken manner of his hides it so well. The intensity, the insanity, is hidden behind layers that no one else seemed to be aware of. You realised that you knowing this at all was a gift given to exclusively yourself.

You should be grateful. But you’re more confused by why he would allow you to know this, or if he even did so knowingly.

“We’re here to make the Earth as much like heaven as possible. But before we begin, one among us isn’t fully within our cause. That changes today.” You recognise the way he calls your name, the veiled threat always in his voice now barely hiding. “Come.”

You felt your stomach drop. It was bad enough that he stared at you with pressuring intensity, but even worse when the crowd all turned to face you, somehow even less behind their eyes than Harrow ever had. He had a hand extended in your direction and the wind picked up his hair slightly, amplifying his threatening aura.

Run. RUN!

How you wanted to. How you wished you could in this moment. It might have been a combination of factors, from the pressure to your own nervousness to the fact that this man had a hold on you that you could not escape; or perhaps just one of those things, but you were stuck, and you had to obey.

You took a few cautious steps forward, gingerly raising your hand to meet him. His touch was soft, but cold. On contact, he gave you a small, friendly smile. “You’ve been observing, learning. Now, you’re ready.”

You knew that none of that was necessarily true, and he more than likely knew the same, even with the total confidence that he spoke of you with. He’d outmanoeuvred you with his words, again.

This is a trap.

He turned his gaze away from you and towards his silent audience. “Ammit is ready to accept you as one of her own.”

What does he even mean?

Your mind frantically tried to put the pieces together, but he made that much more difficult for you when you felt him grab your wrists, the contact rushing in all sorts of different, less relevant ideas. You would have welcomed it if you didn’t know exactly what he was doing, the clearest indication coming when the cane slipped between the two of you once again.

You vividly remembered the first judging, and how long it had lasted. You occupied your mind knowing that it would all be over soon. After a few moments, you were ready to let yourself go when you felt him grip you tighter, and saw his soft smile drop. Expressionless, and practically holding you captive, you felt panic seep in. Something was wrong.

In your desire to distract the awkwardness, and desperate to make it go away, you glanced away. The moment you did so, you felt him hold tighter still, even feeling one of his nails dig into your skin, causing you to wince.

“Look at me.” His words escaped in a low growl, so quiet that you doubted anyone in the audience heard them. “Don’t stop looking at me.” He sounded strangely aggressive.

You felt a tingling sensation on your arm, but your eyes were prevented from trying to see what was happening there, if anything, by the power of his words. His stare burned into you, not past you like usual, but straight at you, so strong you felt it would cut straight through. Those eyes were the only indication of anything going on in his mind. This was different. He hadn’t even looked like this the last time he tested you. Something about him was truly menacing.

Sure, he’d told you the same thing last time, but not like this. Before, he had demanded this of you, this time, for the first time, the threat had come to the surface. If only you could read that unreadable mind in the way that he could crack yours, because this moment scared you, and you were desperate for some clarity.

After what feels like an eternity, the wait causing you to feel your heartbeat in your own head, he lets go. You see green on his arm, the same result. His smile returned as if nothing had happened.

“This is the face of a good woman.” He declares, placing a hand on your shoulder in assurance.

Confused and overloaded by everything that had happened, you don’t react, but your eyes finally find the courage to glance away from him. They drift below to your right arm, and you’re shocked by an unfamiliar sight. Those damned scales had made their mark on you. The same as Harrow’s, facing the reverse direction. His own sign was now a part of you.

I’m going to be sick.

Your legs felt weak. You were now in for real. You didn’t ask for this, and despite everything, you didn’t think you really wanted it.

How did you not see this coming, you idiot?

And all of those things that Harrow had told you, how important it was for you to be here today, did that really mean anything? You remembered how much he had insisted that he didn’t force this judgement on people. And yet, he had just done that with a second thought. Had he really been honest? Did he care about you in that way? You weren’t sure what to believe anymore.

Overwhelmed by how you were now officially, for better or for worse, all in on the insanity, and most importantly, what you perceived as a total betrayal on Harrow’s part, you felt your eyelids become heavy. Your ears were ringing, but you could have sworn you heard him speak your name, but the context was lost on you. Before you could even wonder what was going on, the world went to black.

He said all of that to get me here. This was more than just a trap. He sealed my fate.

***

Have you ever had a dream that felt too real? That was the question Harrow had to ask himself.

He doesn’t quite know where he is, standing in darkness. The nocturnal kind, which he knows well. But it may as well be a dark void, and he knows that the location does not truly matter.

In a gust of wind and the blink of an eye, a figure appears in front of him. Someone he hoped to never see again. Staring somehow with those empty sockets, that great beak far too close to his head, once again in his dreams he is forced to confront his great tormentor, Khonshu.

His first instinct is to step back, and when his foot goes back towards the ground, it touches something different. He already recognises the sensation before he looks. The ground is now layered with an inch of blood.

“It’s not enough.” A deep voice scolds him, always so vague, but he knows exactly what he means.

Khonshu’s skull tilted with a ghastly click, and stepped forward, blood rising around them.

Harrow finds his voice gone, his mouth opened to reject the abuser, but no sound came out. He can only stand helpless as the blood rises to his ankles, then his knees.

“It’s not enough.” The moon god repeats.

It goes past the waist. The chest. The shoulders. Soon only his head is above the rising liquid, almost fully consumed. In another blink, the end of that beak is about to touch his face.

“It’s not enough!” Now the god shouts out, his voice echoing in the void, and persisting even after he’s submerged. For far too long, he is forced to endure the sensation of drowning, and even though he knew it to be a dream, it still felt uncomfortably real. He hated it. He wished for it to end.

In a flash of light, it was all over. His eyes snap open, but they don’t see what they’re expecting. He awoke in a bright, white room. He’s not in a bed, but in a chair, and sitting at a desk across from him is a man that he does not instantly recognise.

While he comes to his senses, he can’t quite see clearly for a moment. His mind is distant and it shows when he can barely hear the words being said to him. “Arthur, you alright?” The man asks, and when he chuckles, he finally recognises the sound. It’s exactly how he sounds. “Thought I lost you there for a moment.”

Sitting across from Harrow was, for lack of a better description, himself. He is not exactly the same, though. It may have been himself, but he was presented completely differently. Short hair, thin glasses and a goofy little moustache. The way he was dressed was somehow both smart and dorky. Harrow was grateful he didn’t look like that.

“What?” At first, that was all he was able to get out. Shortly after, a quiet “Who are you?” followed.

“It’s alright, I’m your doctor.” The doctor was the complete opposite of his patient, assured in the absurd moment. He gave a polite smile. ”If you need a moment to process things, that’s alright. I won’t rush you. You did just wake up.”

A small amount of confusion overtook Harrow. The information he was being given didn’t make much sense. Such is the nature of dreams, he supposed. “Where am I?”

The doctor scoffed in shock. “You really don’t remember? I suppose this isn’t the right place, or the right time. It’s not making sense to you yet, is it? That’s alright. We can work towards that.”

“I’m still dreaming, aren’t I?” That was the only explanation that made sense to him. Certainly none of this was real, was it?

“Dreams can be based in reality, can’t they?” The doctor raised an eyebrow. “I know you’ve heard that one before.”

Harrow recognised that line, but didn’t pay it much mind. “But this doesn’t make any sense.”

The doctor leaned forward in his chair, head tilting a little. “Because I am you? Because you’re talking to yourself?” His questioning had suddenly become more serious.

“We’re not the same.” Harrow was unfazed, and refused to play along. He wasn’t quite sure of his endgame, but chose to still stand his ground, wherever this would take him.

“You’re right about that. We want different things.” The doctor only gave a warm smile at that defiant answer.

“What do you want?” He asked, seeing no choice but to oblige the too-familiar stranger.

The doctor chuckled again. “To help you.” His answer was condescending, as if obvious.

Harrow gave him a suspicious look. “I don’t need help.”

The doctor gave Harrow’s own half-smile in amusement. “You’ve spent so much time trying to help people, have you ever stopped to try help yourself?” He sighed, leaning back in his chair. ”We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

#arthur harrow #arthur harrow x reader #moon knight #ethan hawke

[kisssatoru]

୨୧ ୨⎯ ABOUT ME ⎯୧ ୨୧

✎… i like to spend my off days reading or writing. sometimes i’ll jump back into an old show like supernatural or vampire diaries (shhh don’t judge me).

✎… i love to sleep, too! once, i slept like 16hrs straight? it was crazy. when i woke up, my entire body hurt but it was worth it (never felt better honestly LOL).

✎… as strong as i tend to come off, i am deathly afraid of confrontation. however, if i have to defend myself, i will. buttt…pretty girls keep the nails ON, okay (plus, my gf fights for me half the time so shsjsj).

✎… oh! speaking of which, yes. i am a lesbian and YES i want gojo to pound me until i’m babbling nonsense, crying and creaming all over his cock. we do exist, shocker. i just think irl men are gross lol. half are sloppy, hate women and are majorr cheaters. yawn. where’s the women!

✎… i like anything horror and sci-fi. from venom and jake from avatar to ghost face and big papa jasonnn (want them all to absolutely destroy me).

✎… my music taste is just a mix of everything. i’ve noticed as i get older, i tend to listen to more rnb/alt rnb and lofi songs. like pnd, nbdy, yo trane, summer walker, her, sza, bryson t, the wknd, 6lack, nobu woods, rohan, aaryan shah, etc! (notable mentions of tyler the creator, sabrina claudio, dvsn, jhene aiko, lvndvn, asiahn, etc). if it’s not rnb or lofi, i’ve got a lil classical on or even rock. i’m all over the place, but i’m now more of a vibe person heheh

✎… outside hobbies consist of playing tennis, traveling, shopping, swimming, taking scenic pictures (be on my photography bs sometimes—below are some pics i’ve taken btw), dog walking (used to do it all the time ughh can’t wait to get another dog and take them out lots), a little yoga (very relaxing), meditating, etc! (i’m a lil boring but i vibe with a lot of other things, just don’t feel like doing a whole lot all the time shshsj).

(first three are from cali, i miss the beach so much :( and the last one was from…idk but isn’t it niceee, love scenic pics)

✎… currently don’t own any pets (mom has a cat but she’s ofc not mine), but i do want to get a cute little frenchie, a pomeranian, possibly a poodle and def two cats! (thankfully my gf’s cool with lots of pets bc i adore them sooo much).

✎… i also love going to the movies, and eating different foods (one of my favorite foods is japanese/korean food—10/10 chance i’m obsessed but it hasn’t been proven yet so erm…yeh…). love me some italian and mexican food too, oo weeee (can also buss down on some african food, don’t get it twisted!).

✎… on cloudy/rainy days, i like to turn on some good kdramas or japanese dramas. sometimes i’ll find a good bl drama i like, too!

✎… oh, some miscellaneous things about me, i also collect figures, manga, books, etc! i like coffee, tea, rainy/cloudy days, fall & winter, stationary stuff, plushies, makeup (only some since my skin is sensitive to a lot of products hhh), press ons (iykyk), collecting japanese swords, plants, uhhhh and a lot of other stuff i can’t think of right now shjsjs

✎… this is a little collage i made to visually show what my kind of vibe is, ty for reading!

KISSSATORU © 2023. do not copy, modify, or translate my work, and do not post ANY works of mine outside of tumblr.

#navi: syia’s about me #sry this is so long hsjs #but can you tell how much i like coffee bc omg #🍰.syia

[mariyekos]

Estinien in Endwalker and Problems with Characterization

Otherwise summarized as: the Estinien we saw in Endwalker did not feel like the Estinien we had in Heavensward (and the DRG quests, and ShB, though StB he was barely in), and I'm breaking down why this is and why I personally did not enjoy it.

Someday I'll make a better post about this but whenever I see people comment on the problem with Estinien's character in EW I feel so validated... So I'll preface this all by saying this is fueled by my personal opinion. You're free to disagree. I'm sure there are things I prefer that many people do not, and I want to emphasize that I don't think Estinien in Endwalker was a wreck by any means (he had some fantastic moments that I absolutely adored when they got it right, and he very much served the story). I do however feel like his character in EW was not a good progression of his charcacter arc beforehand, even if his progression wasn't completely nonsensical/out of the blue and I get the logic behind it.

The tl;dr version is: his EW character was good for/worked well for the story of EW, but I don't think it was good for Estinien himself (as in his character consistency/arc, but we'll get into that below).

Overview of Estinien's Character Traits in HW and EW

What's the problem? Estinien is still Estinien, just...different.

I think the first time I really tried to express this was while talking with some of my friends while running HoH, so our minds were busy with other things and I couldn't fully expand upon my thoughts, but they didn't quite get what I was saying when I said Estinien felt "different" in EW (I was also trying not to seem like I was completely fangirling, because I like many characters, Estinien just happens to be my favorite. And the one I've studied the most. I have parts of his character I prefer, and parts I may write about more than others, but I feel like I generally have a good idea of his general character/emotions/vibes.). Their thing was that his EW portrayal was not out of the blue- he's shown most of those characteristics before. And I agree. However, EW toned MANY of them up to 10. For better or worse. EW, while an enjoyable expansion, got very tropey at times for better or worse. I enjoy cheesy things, I enjoy tropes, and some of what EW did was amazing. I laughed and cried and overall it was a wondeful experience! However when it came to Estinien, with a few exceptions, his trope-exaggeration felt...well...too exaggerated. He was different, and not in a way that felt good.

Estinien, especially in HW (plus the ARR DRG quests and some of his ShB appearances, though those aren't *that* long even if I really enjoyed them), was multidimensional. He was smart, he was witty, he was troubled, he was angry, he was combative, he was sincere, he was kind, he was thoughtful, he had moments of self reflection, etc. I can think of specific moments to illustrate all of those, which I may or may not elaborate on below, but for now it can all be summarized as: Estinien had several layers, and many of these required a lot of thought. Estinien was clever.

Estinien in Endwalker had several of these layers stripped away for the most part. Please note the "for the most part." Some moments shone through and made me remember the Estinien I'd been so entertained by and had grown to love. Others not so much.

He cracked jokes, but many of them were simplified, and many of the jokes he was involved in were not things you'd laugh at the subject of, but things you'd laugh at Estinien for. He mentioned his faults and that he was once troubled, but they often felt less like someone stewing over a problem and more like someone trying to give a motivational speech (putting a pin in this: he had some motivational speeches that I LOVED. He made good points, and as I will mention several times they served the story very well. However he suffered a bit from what I'd call Hope in late game FFXIII syndrome. If you've played it, you probably know what I mean. Excess of motivational speeches done to help other characters to the detriment of themselves as they're sort of placed into a box that they may have touched before, but used to be so much more than. By this Estinien worked almost as a prop, and while he was a good prop, that did not make him a good character).

His anger I actually thought was done well; he moved past this part of his life for the most part, but acknowledges it was once there, and on occasion it still slips through (I have very mixed feelings on the Garlemald scene with Y'shtola). He...honestly felt less combative? But in EW it was more like being defensive of himself because he was being made the butt of a joke (i.e. he was receiving personal attacks, indicating he has faults as a person at his core or purely of his own making) and less the HW case of being defensive because the way he'd been shaped was put into question (so, not exactly Estinien at his core, but who he'd been molded to be, and how much he let his core be impacted). He lost his combative side in anything other than self defense for joke moments, which when you solely focus on him being less combative makes sense because he's matured and calmed down, but when you focus on him being defensive just isn't flattering. He did calm down from his ARR and early HW self which I think was good. It just sometimes felt off.

How/Why EW Estinein Felt Like a Step Back, or the Regression of Estinien's Character

He still was sincere in moments, they're just proportionally fewer and often shoved into those Fifth-Motivational-Speech-of-the-Day (from a mix of characters, not solely him) moments, which lessens their impact by overload. He was still kind, and they did this well. Him being thoughtful was very Nidhogg-centric as I'll get to later, but in summary while it isn't *absent* he is no longer sigmificantly characterized as a thoughtful person and it is a much smaller part of his character (which is a regression from where he went from 2.X->early3.0->late 3.0->3.3). The self-reflection and thoughtfulness are merged together yet again, thus lessening them because he doesn't seem very capable of looking beyond himself oftentimes (the 6.1 scene was a good one, but again it's played as a joke).

And the first thing I said, about him being smart... I would not say EW Estinien is depicted as "smart." As in, that's not his defining characteristic. He could be smart from time to time, and he did have moments where he said or did something really intelligent and helpful, but that was not a *defining* characteristic. He wasn't a smart guy who sometimes lost his temper and did dumb things- it was more like he was a neutral or even kind of dumb guy who could pull himself together to do something smart. Thus is mostly because the number of times he said or did something clever did not majorly outweighs the times he did something decidedly unthoughtful. It's about proportion! And that is my biggest issue with him. It's like he regressed, throwing all that character development out the window. Maybe it's just because the Himbo became popular right before/during Endwalker, but man did I see way more people calling Estinien a Himbo than before and honestly I see why they might do that given his EW self, even if I don't think he quite fits the bill.

I want to reiterate that these things are mostly fine in moderation. A character who is never questioned and never opposed and always held up as the perfect paragon of virtue is not very interesting. I don't want Estinien to be that man- him getting questioned in HW and him eventually questioning himself in HW is part of what made me love him so much. However EW did it too much. I mentioned it above and I'll mention it again- HW was about the fault of the system, which Estinien was manipulated by but also submitted to. You can't say he wasn't complicit, as we saw him both participate unquestioning early on and then cling to the system even after the truth began to emerge, but I also wouldn't say he was entirely at fault. He didn't know. His family was killed. He had a reason to act as he did, even if it was forged on falsehoods. EW's treatment of Estinien was about the faults with Estinien alone. Over and over and over again. And while self-reflection is good in theory, it felt kind of poirly done (it happened so many times, and usually during a group "I messed up :(" event). Now I will say Estinien was one of the strongest, if not the strongest agent used to convey HW's message, while Estinien was not so much an active agent of the message as a supporter in EW. HW's story cannot be told without Estinien. Estinien's story cannot be told without HW. EW could remove Estinien for nearly every scene and be about the same save some of the Vrtra ones where you'd basically need an Estinien copy to achieve the same result. However, this does not excuse EW's treatment of Estinien as a constant joke. As a walking ball of faults. It just explains why it happened- he was often used as a prop more than a character.

Estinien in Endwalker honestly felt like an idiot at times. Not always. He shone in some moments. He shone really well in some momemts and they were great. However...most of my favorite moments with Estinein were actually the ones that were really about Nidhogg. His initial interaction with Vrtra is one of the shining moments of this. I really love exploring the misty boundary between Estinien and Nidhogg post 3.3, and I love the way they bleed into each other. I find it fascinating. I mentioned tropes earlier, and the "slowly overwritten by an older/stronger/divine being" trope is one of them. I want to explore this side of him more, but disproportionately to the attention it's actually given.

Still- my mind in these scenes was drawn to Nidhogg and the tragedy that was Nidhogg moreso the tragedy that is Estinien and his issues. There are parts where you cannot separate the two. They have common experiences. Estinien himself admits this in the infirmary scene at the end of 3.3. But Estinien is not 50% Estinien and 50% Nidhogg- so why did so many of his smarter/more thoughtful scenes get relegated to obviously-Nidhogg scenes? To me, it felt like the game was trying to make a distinction between Estinien-as-he-originally-was and Estinien-as-he-now-is-with-Nidhogg's-influence, and that distinction requires OG/pure Estinien to have been kind of dumb and only gained the thoughtfulness either from Nidhogg, or at the very least post-Nidhogg.

Do I think he got more thoughtful after the possession? Yes. Did he charge in and ask questions later in HW? So-so. Ysayle had to hold him back a few times. He wanted to. But he still had the restraint not to go kill crazy (grumbles about Garlemald scene again). He had those moments in the Churning Mists where he reflected upon his surroundings and thought as he compared what he saw to what he'd been taught and the implications of it all. He thought as he weighed what Hraesvelgr told him of the origins of the Dragonsong War against what he'd always believed, weighing what Nidhogg had done and why he'd done it and ultimately concluding that yes, Nidhogg had a good reason, but that didn't excuse what he'd done, and though it was the spilling of dragon blood that had begun the war, only dragon blood could end it. Only Nidhogg's blood. And, importantly, not the blood of every dragon. Just enough to earn peace. He would stop the cycle of vengeance. So to summarize all that rambling: Estinien pre-Nidhogg was not some thoughtless idiot. He wasn't a genius either. But he thought. Yet in EW it's often presented as an exception, or again solely for Nidhogg. In those moments I felt like Nidhogg was poking through, and while I loved it, I wish Estinien had been allowed to do that in other situations too.

Estinien in EW serves the story very well. The game needed someone who didn't get what was going on so that the game could have an excuse to explain things. The WoL served that purpose on occasion, but the WoL doesn't have much dialogue. So I feel like when the writers realized they wanted exposition, instead of having the equally-clueless WoL express how clueless they were, they relegated it all to Estinien. And yes, many times he shouldn't have known what was going on so I get it. But it's about proportion. The proportion or percentage of times he was clueless was so off that it just made him seem dumb or unobserved or uneducated and it frustrated me. In HW that was balanced between Estinien and Alphinaud for the big road trip, and even Ysayle got her time to shine occasionally. And with more scenes for each of them, it didn't feel overwhelmingly. It felt reasonable. Estinien didn't feel like a dumb or clueless guy- he felt like a normal guy who doesn't know every last thing in the world because who does? No one! Yet in EW he was among scholars. The only non scholars were him and the WoL. And with WoL being mostly silent...It was just too much. It served the story. It did not serve Estinien. That is my main conclusion of his EW characterization, though I'll elaborate more.

Examples of "Poor" Characterization in EW

I played Endwalker over the course of 3 days during Early Release. I took over 1000 screenshots, I've re-read a lot of the dialogue and watched cutscenes, and I read every bit of dialogue as it happened, but I went through it fast. My memory thus isn't perfect, and I'm sure if I went back through my screenshots I would fine more gripes. But three big ones come to mind: the hair tie, Y'shtola in Garlemald, and that one line about stabbing paperwork.

First, the hair tie. I came up with this kind of dumb explanation for it in a fic once, and it's not out of the blue based on that side story when he and Orn Khai went broke in Kugane. However, it still felt way too exaggerated. Why? Take the Orn Khai story- there Estinien is traveling with, essentially, a child, and it's basically his first time away from Ishgard. They run out of money and have to work. But there it seemed to me like poor planning on a trip that went way longer than expected because they went on a wild goose chase, and like something Orn Khai probably had a hand in. Of course it's entirely possible they went broke right away and that it was all Estinien's fault...but he's an adult. He's not an idiot. He probably should've figured out "oh, I'm getting swindled" or at least learned his lesson and been more careful in the future.

Which is the important point- Estinien's character arc in both the DRG quests and HW is about learning his lesson (and more complex things, but it's there in both). So...shouldn't he have learned his lesson in Kugane? Why did it take WoL running up to him after already buying the tie for him to realize it was overpriced and that he'd been swindled? The short answer here is that EW was very much into WoL pandering and so to score both on the WoL pandering and the funny-haha-Estinien-dumb comic relief, he had to mess up. Because of the side story, this is not out of the blue. But that doesn't mean I think it's good for Estinien. It serves the story, it sets Thavnair up as a foreign location where the WoL and friends don't have the renown they normally do, and it makes the people there more human.

But is it good for Estinien? No. 1) he should've learned his lesson. 2) in what world is Estinien so out of touch as to think a hair tie would cost that much? It just doesn't make sense. Sure he has no hobbies according to his Encyclopedia Eorzea entry so maybe he has a lot of savings from never spending his military salary, but come on. He has to know how much food costs. He has to know that a hair tie should not be that much more. That scene just made Estinien seem like 1) he hadn't learned his lesson, and 2) he's completely out of touch with society. I personally interpret him as not being a huge people person and yes he lived on his own for a while but again it's just exaggerated way too much. It's progression of his character in a way you could argue makes sense, but does not serve it.

Second, there's that scene with Y'shtola and killing the guys in Garlemald. I'm not at my computer at the moment and don't have my screenshots in front of me, but I think Y'shtola's line is something along the lines of "You're supposed to subdue them, not enthusiastically murder" to which Estinien kind of shrugs it off. Now I have mixed feelings on this scene as I said before. There are multiple ways to interpret the scene, and the interpretation of his "why" majorly impacts its read on his character.

The first time through I was really irritated because I felt like Estinien, having been in the military so long, should've been capable of listening to and following orders, and should have not only known how to subdue people without killing them, but also if he did do that, should've responded with more respect. He has restraint. I go back to the interaction with Vidofnir when Estinien threatens her but does nothing because of Ysayle- we've seen him in a situation where he has way more reason and drive to enthusiastically murder things and does not. So why here?

That gets to a later interpretation I had of the scene- what if Estinien was very enthusiastically murdering people and Y'shtola wasn't just exaggerating to make a point that he should be more careful? What if it wasn't because he was being careless/disregarding orders, but because he was having fun? This is a side that I like if you interpet the scene as a bit of Nidhogg showing through. We know via Estinien's zoomed in crazed smile in the Nidhogg kill scene that he can have a whole lot of fun killing something. Nidhogg obviously caused a whole lot of deaths and a whole lot of suffering. So if you consider that perhaps that bit of lust-for-violence resonated with or was amplified by Nidhogg, and then imagine that Estinien momentarily lost himself in it and started just going ham because he was having a great time and forgot that he wasn't supposed to be found that in the haze...well that's fascinating food for thought. I think that would be super interesting.

Except...Estinien's reaction to Y'shtola would then be...mixed feelings. Him shrugging it off could be him sort of giving in and accepting the feeling. He seems to have accepted Nidhogg being a part of him as of 5.5 (if anyone has read my essay on that lol), so I could get this. But I feel like even if he does have a lot of fun...he's never been a maniacle horny-for-murder guy. He should've been more respectful I guess. Or shocked by it. I don't know. As I said, I'm unsure on this scene. I get where it's coming from - Estinien loves to fight and we know he had happily killed things before - but him dropping back into that and being so nonchalant about it feels at odds with some of his other character progression.

So on the one hand I hated it at first. On the second, if I interpret it differently I think it's fascinating territory, but I don't feel like that interpretation is what the writers were going for. I think they were trying to show he was careless and irresponsibly violent. I can interpret it otherwise, but I don't feel like that was the intention.

Then there's that line about stabbing any paperwork that gets put in front of him. Or something like that. I think this made me the most angry of all. I know he doesn't seem to enjoy picking up papers when searching for the heretics and finding their hideout. But Aymeric mentions Estinien gave a detailed report to him in HW, and while it IS entirely possible it was a purely oral report, I had always interpreted that as a written report. By context, it seemed to me like a written report. Estinien was Azure Dragoon, and a soldier for many years before that. There is absolutely no way he got through all that without writing a single report. As he got higher up he probably got some more leeway, but he had to have written on his way up, and I doubt he didn't write anything as Azure Dragoon.

So there's that first gripe with it seeming like an exaggeration. But my problem here isn't (solely) that many of Estinien's more negative character traits have been exaggerated. It's what they do. Estinien saying he wants to stab paperwork? Sure Estinien cracks jokes. I really enjoy it when he does, and he has some clever ones. But thay specific line just makes him sound dumb. The sort of "write papers take much brain power me no have, head hurt to write, oh no, me stab instead, yes, grrrr." Estinien seems much more the macho man. The brawn to supplement all the brains between the rest of the Scions. Why can't he have both? To say that makes him seem like he's insulting the idea of writing and doing paperwork when he should really know the importance and just...

...

Final/Overall Thoughts.

I don't know. It all boils down to feeling like EW Estinien is much too often characterized as dumb, or thoughtless, or careless, or clueless, all for the sake of cracking a joke at his expense.

Jokes were made at his expense in HW. I loved how he went from "Oh these Moogle things are interesting, I wonder what's up with these" to "I want to strangle each and every last stupid flying rodents because I think they're making fun of me and they're definitely making me do menial tasks" was hilarious. It was a joke at his expense- it starts with misunderstanding and ends with being taken advantage of. But that comes from inexperience and never having dealt with the Moogles, not a lack of capabilities or thought. He's not dumb, just a little bit gullible (which he LEARNS FROM).

Endwalker is probably my 3rd favorite expansion, behind Heavensward and Shadowbringers. Its highs were really high, but its lows were very low. It had a lot of WoL pandering (Ex. Much of G'raha's character, which while present a bit in CT and definitely important to G'raha's character, felt so overboard I missed the Exarch) which could be fun, but sometimes came at the expense of other characters. It had some harsh, really well done scenes, but it tried to compensate by matching the hardness of that with super high silliness of something else to even out to a neutral, which while sometimes nice, other times felt like too much. That's Endwalker. Too much.

I said before that Estinien had a lot of scenes that I DID like in Endwalker. Him with the kids. The Mothercrystal everything (my eyes...). A few of his motivational speeches. Many of his Vrtra interactions. It goes on. Well. Not that much. But I just want to emphasize I don't think Endwalker was trash (I'd still probably give it an 8/10? Maybe 8.5) and I don't think Estinien's character was trash.

I do think that it was done a disservice. I think they quickly wrote down his character traits, compared them to the rest of the cast, and decided to focus on only a handful of them, particularly the more joke-worthy ones. By putting so much of the focus on only a handful of traits, it thus made him seem like an almost different character personality wise, and it wasn't very flattering. It was still Estinien at his core, but what I really loved Estinien for- and where his character seemed to be going by the end of HW and in 5.5- was mostly put on the back burner.

Games don't have to pander to me. They don't have to. Many of the things I love writing about for Estinien are things I don't necessarily want to see in the game, and certainly wouldn't want emphasized proportionate to how often I choose to write on them. But when the game not only goes away from what I like, but ALSO seems to go away from where it had been leading him pre-EW? That's where it feels like something went wrong.

So all in all...Estinien in EW was a character who served the overall story, not a character who served himself or the character arc that had been made for him. Estinien at his core, but wrong. Someone who had some especially great moments I'll think about and love for a long time, but had way too many bad ones to make up for and overtake that. I hope in the later patches he's allowed to distance himself from comic relief, because that's not the character he was made to be. It's something he can do, but not who he is. And EW really dropped the ball on that.

#estinien wyrmblood #estinien varlineau #heavensward #Endwalker #ffxiv #erurandomness #i have more thoughts but im writing this on my phone and my fingers hurt but i have raid in an hour so i need to go #also shoutout to drachenblood who is an amazing estinien and who spurred this whole essay #i didn't want to clog their mentions and i've thought so much about this since ew released and want to say more #but i've held back bc i want to do the topic justice. which i probably haven't with this phone typed post #but maybe someday i'll elaborate even more #not proofreadbecause fingers big hhrt #meta #this is version 2 i did some edits now

[yuzukult]

acquitted love || sjn & reader

title: acquitted love pairing: johnny suh x reader genre: fluff, angst, co-workers!au, lawyer!au, one-sided enemies to lovers word count: 8.7k warnings: some language/cursing, brief mentions of sex but there's no actual discussions or explicit conversations of the topic, but generally pg-13 prompt: you absolutely hate johnny suh. but when your boss pairs you two up together for one of the highest profile cases, you’re left working close with your enemy but he doesn’t seem to think that way of you. a/n: tada!! i wrote this for the @/ficscafe fic exchange event!! so @urlocalnctstan​ , hope you enjoy this !! i tried to write it according to what you put as your preferences, but honestly T_T it was so hard bc i was just not getting any ideas!! hopefully this is something you’d like :D enjoy !!

“God, isn’t he just… so attractive?”

Along with a click on your tongue, you feign a hit in Hyeri’s direction, whose reflexes have gotten so much faster in the past couple years of knowing you and it shows when she cowers underneath your arm. She gifts you that not-so-apologetic smile, full of mischievousness because she knows no matter how annoying she can be, you’ll still love her nonetheless.

“Why do you keep talking about Johnny? You know he’s banned as a topic of our conversations.”

Hyeri rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her white frilled blouse. You know that she doesn’t actually inhabit any romantic feelings for Johnny, but she has a problem of thinking without the usage of her brain when she sees a hot guy.

Not that you think Johnny is hot.

No.

“Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t think he’s at least an ounce of smokin’ hot.” She’s unraveled her arms by now, poking your shoulder incessantly to grasp onto your attention as you're tapping on the buttons of the copier machine. “I bet if you asked him out, he’d say yes.”

You briefly glare at Hyeri. “You realize that he and I don’t get along, right? He keeps finding stupid loopholes in the system to win his cases. He thinks with his heart, not his head, and sometimes, with whatever that thing was in his pants.” And, not to mention that he walks out the court with that big grin stretched from cheek to cheek, giving the ‘good news’ to your well-respected boss (who you desperately seek the approval of but that’s a different story for another time). And every single time, she gives him that nod of appreciation, that ‘nod of approval’ if you will, when it should be given to you and not to some asshole who fucks his way to victory.

“But he’s so hot—”

You narrow your eyes at your friend, and with a stern voice, you call out, “Hyeri.”

She shrugs. “Honestly, though, he’s hella smart. He’s got a job here, and works under your boss. It’s Park, Kim & Associates—notice how Park is first, because she’s a fucking genius. She only picks the intelligent ones to work under her. Why do you think I’m still working for Mr. Kim?”

Park Seohyun and Kim Gonghyun—one of the biggest lawyers in the region, decided to join together to build their own law firm from the ground up. They were both highly respected in their field; Kim Gonghyun spent years of his life being mentored by one of the most famous judges, and as for Park Seohyun, she was, simply put, admirable because of the obstacles she has overcome to make her dreams of working in law to be real. Being a woman, young, and beautiful, she’s had her fair share of encounters with people who disregard her potential, that is until she met Gonghyun—who, admittingly is an old man who seems like he’d be traditional, sexist, even, but he proves to also make people realize how wrong they are with their impression of him.

But, as Mr. Kim is getting older, he’s gotten a bit… lazy.

In fact, he’s been slacking so much that he’s gotten a new rep in the office—if he was your direct supervisor, or your supervisor was under him, you were on the side of the office where all the easier, uncomplicated cases were assigned. Which meant that there was a slight possibility that your talents and skills weren’t as sharp and exceptional as you thought they were.

And well, Hyeri works directly underneath Mr. Kim.

Hyeri doesn’t want a heavy workload, despite the fact that there’s a plethora of files on her desk, stacked up one onto another as tall as her PC tower, and they were all open and closed cases—needless to say that she didn’t mind it.

“Okay, but you got offered a position under Seohyun. Do you really think you’re not wasting your potential?”

Hyeri scoffs. “Never. At least, not now. I’m still in my twenties, I’d like to enjoy my youth while I can, for your information.”

You quirk a brow. “And does any of that pertain fucking Johnny? The hot guy, so you claim?”

She immediately has her hand covering your mouth and you scowl. “Shhhhh, he works here!”

You bite the flesh of her hand and Hyeri instantly retracts. “You think I don’t know my archenemy works here? He sits directly across from my office—I get the best view of the guy and I’m not even one of his fangirls.”

“You’re not gonna be one of those girls who claim they’re different because they don’t like him but then end up falling for him anyway… are you?”

Your hand goes up and Hyeri crouches down.

“Stop it.”

“Seriously though! It’s the classic e2l love story,” she has her hands gesturing in front of her like she’s making an imaginary rainbow, “Two lawyers, constantly butting heads, accept each other’s differences and learn to love—“

“The fuck is an ‘e2l’?”

“Enemies to lovers.”

“Are you high? Stop spitting nonsense.” This time, you’re waving the stack of papers that finish printing in front of her face. “Meet me for lunch later. But if you keep talking about my archenemy and I falling in love, you can kiss a free meal goodbye.”

Hyeri gasps.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Maybe. Just maybe, Hyeri might be a tiny smidge right when she says Johnny is handsome. Just a bit though, because she can’t get credit for something like that.

He’s dyed his hair this shade of brunette that sort of reminds you of roasted chestnuts on a cold, winter day, sitting inside of a cooker outside of your childhood home, baking along with some sweet potatoes your mom had gotten from a farmer’s market nearby. Johnny has this focused gaze attached to the screen of his monitor; there’s a dip in the fronts of his brows, lips tightened into a straight line, and constant switching back and forth from the computer while taking notes down in a book that’s laid open in front of him.

You wonder what’s running through his mind, or well, you’re more interested in what files he has sprawled out on top of his desk.

Truthfully, if it hadn’t been obvious enough, you weren’t quite a fan of Johnny Suh and it’s mostly due to his work ethic. He’d been notorious for his reputation of sleeping around—especially with the opposing side—so it’s hard to convince yourself that he didn’t win the case because of his actual capabilities, but it’s because he pulled some strings.

And Johnny doesn’t put much effort into denying it either.

Albeit deep down, you were a teeny bit envious of his confidence. He struts around the courtroom with ease, and when he presents his position, there’s no staggering in his voice—it’s always crisp and clean, weighted with nothing but credence, and never straying from his initial perspective. It’s never a lack of poise, it’s consistently the look he goes for; from the hand gestures and the furrowed brows, to the rhetorical questions in the end of certain statements that has the speculators and jury sitting at the edge of their seat, Johnny had a talent for performing in the courtroom, but that doesn’t mean anything when the way he gets to the success isn’t ethical.

Just at that moment, his eyes lift from the screen and meet yours.

There isn’t any hesitation when you scramble to grab the remote controller, and the shades drop over the windows instantaneously.

“Fuck,” you mutter underneath your breath, tossing the remote onto your desk and shaking your hands after. What if he thought you were admiring him? Maybe he didn’t see. Yeah. It was for a brief second, and with how close your offices were to each other, it would be common to accidentally lock eyes… right?

Interrupting your thoughts, the office phone rings and it nearly startles the living soul out of you. But before you reach for it, your head tilts to the side curiously because the extension number is familiar—it’s Park Seohyun’s, your boss.

What could she be calling for?

You don’t remember fucking something up—but to be fair, half the times, you never really know if you’ve actually fucked up until someone with steaming ears and a crimson face comes storming in. So… did you do something good? Again, you don’t think that’s right either, because other people would’ve made comments about it.

Deciding to swallow your nerves, you pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey!” Seohyun never fails to be bubbly, and you could never mimic her energy. You definitely had to be born with that kind of enthusiasm. “I have a favor. Hop into my office.”

Leaned back in her leather swivel chair, she had her fingers laced with each other while resting over her stomach. Johnny stands beside you (and you do your best to not look directly at him, especially after that weird staring thing), and you both feel like kids being lectured by parents from how still you are. Her office is huge, probably the size of both yours and Johnny’s combined; with ceiling to floor windows, cases of books that line the perimeter, not to mention the humongous ass couch that practically covers the other half of the room, and her desk was so wide, you estimate about four monitors would fit on there with still additional space for work. That wasn’t even the best part—the view of the city looks almost like a generic lockscreen of a Windows computer, and you’re not even sure why she goes home at night when she basically has a penthouse here.

“As you know, I have a favor.”

“Right,” Johnny retorts, mostly as a filler in the awkward silence. “So… what’s the favor?”

She pulls a box from her purse; square, black and made from a leather material with a lock pad stitched into it, something you’ve never seen before, and she slides the passcode in, then it pops the lid open. A key (a… very small one) sits in the velvety cushion, with nothing else occupying the space with it, and it looks comical. She uses this to open the very top drawer of her desk, and as she pulls using the handle, there’s another box inside, but this time, metal instead of leather, but still black.

What the fuck?

It seems Johnny shares the same thoughts, because he sneaks a glance over at you.

“You see,” Seohyun begins, pressing on the digital keys of the box until there’s a beep at the end and the case hisses open. “There’s a lot of security for this. Which means you understand the importance of it.”

Then, she picks up four manila envelopes and lies on the surface of her wooden top desk. “I have a family emergency to attend to this upcoming week. I’m boarding a flight tonight. So I’m leaving the Hwang v. Yoon case to the two of you.”

“Fuck—”

“The what?”

You and Johnny are sputtering out of shock. The Hwang v. Yoon case is the biggest case that the firm is involved in currently, and the only people involved in it have been Seohyun and Gonghyun. It’s been on every social media platform you could think of; from Facebook to Twitter, TikTok to Instagram—there’s even this weird website for emo/grunge teens or strange kids that like writing fanfic called Tumblr, and whatever that is, it’s discussed on there too.

“What about Gonghyun?”

Seohyun scoffs, closing the drawer and dropping the key back into her special box. Where do you even get a box like that? “He can’t handle this alone. So I’m kicking him off until I come back. I thought about letting the two of you work with him, but his ego is so inflated, it’ll get in the way of our chances of winning. It’s easier if it was just me and him, but seeing that things at home aren’t well, I’m going to need you two to step up to the plate.”

The room goes quiet. The only sounds you hear are the muffled noises of a typical bustling office outside the thick walls of Seohyun’s office, and at first, excitement rushes through your blood because Seohyun thought of you taking over a special, high profile case.

Albeit, another realization gets soaked up, and it’s that Johnny also came to mind, and that because it’s such an important case, the two of you would be… working… many… hours… together.

Maybe you should back out of it—but then again, this is such a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Imagine winning this— it wouldn’t be good for just the law firm, it’d be good for you too. Your name, in articles on these big fancy news websites, perhaps even on new channels, talking about how you, this amazing lawyer, won the Hwang v. Yoon case.

But then you’re snapped back into reality when Johnny leans over to take the envelopes from Seohyun.

If your name is on those platforms, so is Johnny’s.

God, this guy just ruins everything, doesn’t he?

“We’ll take care of it, Seohyun. You can trust us,” he says assuringly, a smile tugging on each corner of his lips with that dazzling gaze. “We’ll be at our best.”

Kiss ass.

If you had the option, you wouldn’t be spending your Saturday night here at work, in one of those conference rooms with a long table in the middle, a big projector that displays on the wall, and a random black leather loveseat couch that lines the one corner in case there’s too many occupants.

Especially since the person who’s accompanying you is Johnny Suh.

There’s probably a lot of people who would kill to be in your position (Hyeri being one of them), but you dread it. Not to be that person, but what’s so special about him anyway? What? He’s tall, has some muscles, long luscious hair that he can slick back with that sultry stare—wait, what?

“Alright, moving on…” From what? You guys just started? It’d been clear with Seohyun that the mornings would be dedicated to other cases, but nights would be considered overtime and where you’d zoom in your focus on Ms. Hwang’s justice. “Let’s take a look at the facts here.”

Johnny slips off his blazer, hanging it on the back of one of the chairs as you’re seated in another, leaning back comfortably with an arm resting on the table. He loosens the first few buttons of his dress shirt before folding up the sleeves, and that’s when you notice a little thing in the inner crook of his elbow—is that a fucking sunflower? Is that what he uses to reel girls in? That he’s soft enough to have a pretty little flower etched onto his gentle, silky and supple—

“Okay,” he says, interjecting into your thoughts with a laser pointer in his hand. He taps on the space bar of his laptop that mirrors what’s on his screen, but then, that’s when you realize what’s on the slides.

There’s a collage of pictures, mostly street, casually walking themed ones, but the common factor was that they were of Yoon Changmin, the man you guys were up against. They were all paparazzi-like photos, which begs the question, how did he get pics like this, and why did he get them?

“What’s the point of this?” you ask, voice laced with nothing but suspicion.

“We gotta get into the mind of the enemy.” You wanna get into the mind of your enemy, too.

You gesture to the one image of Changmin with an arm around his girlfriend and a finger up his nose. “Seems like he’s trying to reach inside of his head instead of us. These are just everyday pictures, Johnny. What’s that going to do for us?”

“Well,” he begins, turning to look at the wall of ‘evidence’. “You see—wait, holy shit.”

Freezing in the midst of reaching for your coffee, your head jolts in the direction of your partner. “What? What is it?”

“Holy shit,” he exclaims, “Hoooooooooly shit. Why didn’t I see this before? This changes everything.”

Furrowing your brows, you’ve given up getting your drink and dropped your hands onto the table. “Tell me, what is it?”

“This is a game changer.”

“Johnny,” you call out sternly, and his eyes link with yours before he instantly points to a particular picture with his red laser pointer.

“Look at that.” There’s pride saturated in his words, but when you look at what he’s indicating, your body slouches in disappointment.

Why the hell was he directing your attention onto Changmin’s thighs? Surely, there’s no denying that they were attractive—you recall that his alibi was at the gym that very night of the crime.

“What? He’s guilty for showing off his toothpick legs?” They were lean, you never said they were muscular.

“No,” he retorts, slightly irritated by your response as he rolls his eyes. “Look at his pants.”

“Okay…”

“They’re jean shorts.”

There’s a pregnant pause, but the expression on your face is so loud it can’t be hidden.

Johnny continues, “That’s a fashion crime.” He says it as if it’s an obvious fact known by many. “Not to mention that it’s fucking raw hem. He should be arrested.”

Suddenly, your opinion of him thinking too much with his heart dissipates because it seems like he’s thinking out of his ass instead. Did he win those cases out of pity? How did this guy even pass the bar? How about law school? How the hell did he even get into law school?

“I don’t think—”

“Listen, alright, just hear me out,” he’s got the palms of his hands resting flat on the surface of the table, doing his best to gain your full undivided attention. “Only assholes wear jean shorts. They flaunt that shit around like they own the place, but they’re horrendous pieces of clothing that should not be on a male’s body. I don’t care what you say, what your opinion is, because that is a fact.”

Puffing your cheeks, you feel at a loss. If Johnny is who you had to get this done, it feels like you’re not going to be finding much evidence any time soon.

“Okay, if… if that’s how you want to play it, then show me the evidence—other than those 2012 cut off denim shorts.”

He reaches over to hit his space bar again, then with a wink and a slide change, he leans closer to you and says with that deep, honeyed voice, “Gladly.”

You hate admitting when you’re wrong.

Ironically, you concede and will confess when you actually are, but it doesn’t mean that you enjoy it. For example, when Hyeri claims that the intern Mark had a crush on you, you quickly waved her off, stating something along the lines of, “I’m too intimidating; there’s better chances of him being scared of me than ever finding me attractive.” And then a week later, you owed Hyeri free lunch at that hip ramen place downtown because Mark had approached your desk that very morning with a bouquet of red roses flowers for you, a cheeky grin glued to his face with pools of hearts in his eyes, and ready to ask you on a date because it was the day after his internship had ended. Naturally, it wasn’t fun rejecting that poor college boy.

But, you won’t say you find Johnny interesting or handsome. Or that there’s potential when it came to possibly (just barely the slightest smidge) that you’d ever consider asking Johnny out. He’s your enemy here, you’ve mentioned that a multitude of times, and you stand firm on that very declaration, despite the fact that sometimes when he gets too close, your breath gets caught in your throat and you feel like you can’t get whatever’s lodged in out.

Albeit it’s not the whole “you guys are gonna end up together” comment that Hyeri makes and resulting in you denying it afterwards, it’s that Johnny might… be a decent lawyer.

He’s not the best one you’ve seen; the stupid revelation he had on the first day working on the case about the jean shorts is evidence for it, but it’s the days following that were slowly changing your perspective on him.

When you said, “He thinks too much with his heart more than with his head,” it was 100% correct.

When meeting with potential witnesses, you recognized that Johnny empathizes with people often; when they cry and start panicking from being overwhelmed, he's quick on his feet to put an arm around them, share reassuring words, and have them back to normal in record’s time.

And, well… you? You’re the one making them cry in the first place.

You don’t want to fully take the blame for being the cause of their tears, but people need to hear what’s happening, and the very detail that they can’t even handle this information probably means they’re not worthwhile as a key witness.

Johnny, of course, thinks otherwise.

He believes that these people should have a voice (although you’ve alluded that they might be more useless than helpful), and putting them on the stand with Yoon Changmin there would change the view of the jury to supporting Hwang Naeri.

“Listen, if we get these people to sign the form, we’d get witnesses and it’ll help Naeri,” Johnny claims, frantically moving his arms annoyingly as he talks, trying his best to express the gravity of the situation, “and maybe, maybe, money wouldn’t be how Changmin wins, but how he loses. We can’t have another person with jean shorts walking on the streets of our city like this—they deserve to go to prison.”

You scrunch up your nose. “Why does this always revert back to the jean shorts?”

“It always has to do with jean shorts,” he snaps back matter-of-factly. “Any straight guy wearing jean shorts with that much goddamn confidence has done some wrong in their lives.”

“Right, but I’m pretty sure that the crimes he did are mainly the reason why he’s being prosecuted against.”

“Jean shorts are the windows to the soul.”

“I’m almost 100% sure that eyes are the windows to the soul, but whatever. If you genuinely believe that the women we met today would benefit our case, then… okay. Let’s bring them to the stand.”

On the contrary to you, Johnny doesn’t have a hard time convincing witnesses to testify. You see the way that he works; those kind eyes directed at the participants, the pools of chocolate were sweet, saturated in nothing but tenderness and warmth, then he does that weird thing where he reaches for their hands and cups them before the words that escapes from his lips are enough to swoon them to stand in front of a courtroom.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s a method to his so-called madness.

Aggression and bluntness don’t work, it seems, because when you’re the one attempting to convince these people to go against the man that had done them wrong, they’re less willing to do it. Something about ‘moving on,’ and ‘not wanting to relive those memories again,’ but if it was you, you’d want justice. Then again, not everyone is like you, and not everyone thinks like you, and spending this abundance of time with Johnny is slowly getting you to ease into that perspective.

So… the initial impression you had of him may have been wrong.

And maybe, just maybe, you’re developing some feelings for him, just as Hyeri predicted.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

His abrupt personal question is enough to have the coffee spill into your mouth to slide down the ‘wrong throat’ because you’re choking, hand on your chest as you’re tackling to regain your breath again and Johnny only stares in disbelief, blinking blankly. “Are… are you okay?”

You glare at him through a hooded gaze. “Well,” you clear your throat once more. “Now, I am.”

“Cool.” He nods, retracting his hand so he could rub your back soothingly, deciding it’s best to stay away. “Are you going to answer my question?”

Quirking a brow, your head tilts slightly in puzzlement. “Why are you asking this?”

Johnny shrugs. “Isn’t it weird that we’ve hung out with each other for a whole week—stayed here for nights and we both don’t know anything about each other?”

Tapping your fingers against the wooden top table, you sigh. Maybe he’s got a point; after all, “Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer,” right?

“No, I’m single.”

Johnny’s face suddenly brightens, ears perked, and his body straightens its posture in his seat at this revelation. “Oh, uh, I didn’t know that. You seemed busy in your personal life, so I, uh… was just wondering.” He looked anxious, but you couldn’t pinpoint why. “I, um, I’m single too, by the way, in case you’re wondering.” You weren’t.

The plethora of cardboard and plastic boxes scattered across the table was a representation of the night. It’s been long, exhausting, and messy, mostly because it’s a Friday night, the hearing was on Monday, and the two of you were nowhere near close to having enough to present to the court. In fear of disappointing Seohyun, the two of you agreed to stay over the office for the weekend to cram work for the case. There’s no denying that the atmosphere is weirder on the weekends, especially since, well, no one really comes here on the weekends. Johnny had to use the bathroom earlier and ran into the cleaning lady and she nearly shit her pants because she didn’t think anyone was here, so she had music blasting in her headphones.

Johnny is… interesting. He makes you laugh—or well, want to laugh, but you don’t give him that sense of satisfaction—and he’s smart but in his own weird way. He’s not like the other lawyers you’ve met, or any of the law students you attended University with because he’s more lighthearted and free-spirited than the rest, taking life in strides instead of just overwhelming himself in the abundance of stress that work brings.

He’s entirely the opposite of you.

And maybe you could learn something from the guy, but there’s something in you that brews hatred toward him. Possibility that you resent how easy he makes being a lawyer seem when you’re struggling in your day-to-day life to make things work.

But it’s way too fucking hard when he’s just… like that.

Despite all of that, he’s very generous and kind toward you. On rough days, he delivers your coffee order, the one you always get because he remembers what you asked the intern to get for you the last time, and he’s good at identifying when you’re just having that kind of day. You eventually learn he has a photographic memory (fucking show off), so when he saw that crumpled napkin with scribbles of what you want in that dumb intern’s hand, it wasn’t hard to remember. Which, by the way, is how he’s able to get into the most prestigious school for undergrad, manage to pass the bar so easily, and get into law school effortlessly.

And knowing this information sort of angers you more.

You know this isn’t his fault—he’s been blessed with a trait that people desire, one that you also yearn for, but the lucky ones get handed a lot of things in life. You wonder if he’s the type of guy who wins girls easily after matching with them on dating sites because of this stupid ass ‘photographic memory.’ Does he sleep with them right after? Does it ever get serious?

You shrug your shoulders and shake your head. You shouldn’t even let these strange thoughts haunt you, especially when you don’t even like him.

He’s a spoiled brat who gets everything handed to him on a silver platter.

So you’re left counting the remaining days until the trial so you don’t ever have to work with Johnny Suh this closely again.

Okay, well, it’s evident that bad luck is glued to your side because after you win the Hwang v. Yoon case for your law firm with that asshole, Seohyun is so impressed. So goddamn impressed that she insists that all the high profile cases are to be given to both you and Johnny.

To work as a team.

Together.

Jesus, this is Hell for you.

Surely, the promotion and raise that came along with it was definitely a plus, but it has you wondering if it’s even worth it. He’s been your unspoken enemy since the first day, and although you think you’re pretty forthright about your hatred for this guy, he can’t seem to read social cues.

When you’re pushing the double doors into the conference room the two of you often spend working on cases in, you expect Johnny to be ready for another day. But strangely enough, Johnny doesn’t have his laptop out or any of the notebooks sprawled across the table.

“Um,” you slide the strap of your bag off your shoulder and onto the spare chair. “Did you come late or something?”

He takes in a deep breath like he’s been holding back something. “We need to talk.”

There’s worry inscribed into his features; from the crease in between his brows, to his pursed lips, and eyes soaked in concern, almost like he’s got bad news to share and it has your stomach in knots. Was it that the case was thrown out? It couldn’t be, right? You both worked hard, presented your stance to the point that the jury and the judge were in awe with your findings. Sure, you had to cover Johnny’s mouth right before he was about to go off in a tangent about jean shorts, but overall, it was a good win, a hard one to go back on and pull out the wrongs of it. So what was it?

“I’m quitting our partnership.”

You blink. “What?”

He gestures to the room with his hands as if there’s anything out to reference. “This thing. Our work. The big profile cases. The famous stuff. I told Seohyun that I won’t be doing it anymore and she can revoke the promotion and the raise.”

You’re still not catching on. “… Why?” Was it something you did? Yeah, you weren’t a big fan of Johnny either, but were you so bad that he decided to not go through with the raise because of you?

“Because,” he pushes his blazer back, hands sliding into the front pockets of his navy blue trousers. “There’s a policy put into place. Those who are on the same cases cannot have any personal relations with each other that extend past friendships.”

“We’re not even friends?” With confusion written across your face, your head tilts to the side. “I’m not… I’m not catching on here.”

“I like you.”

Startled, the words you want to say are stolen out of your mouth. You’re left with a mixture of perturbation and bewilderment, uncertain where to go from there because Johnny asked for the removal of both a promotion and additional money that could be so good for his career… and it’s all because he has a crush on you?

“You quit the best thing that could’ve happened to you because you like me?”

“Yeah,” Johnny states calmly, sucking in his cheeks for a brief moment. “Ain’t that romantic?”

You scoff. “No. Absolutely not. You’re insane! Why would you do yourself dirty like that? Use your head, Johnny, you’re constantly thinking with that stupid heart of yours, and hate to break it to you, but it won’t get you anywhere.” Combing your hair with your fingers, you let out a sigh. “Go ask Seohyun for the position back. Say you made a mistake and—”

“I’m not asking her for the position back.”

Johnny doesn’t make any sense to you. “What? Why wouldn’t you do that?

“Because,” he laughs in disbelief, not because he thinks you’re funny. “I’m not going to force myself to work with a girl that I keep falling for. That’s self-inflicting, you realize that, right? You’re amazing, but you can seriously be so dense sometimes.”

“I’m dense? You just told one of the best law firms in the city that you don’t want to work on the important cases anymore because you have a stupid crush on your partner!”

“If we were on a team with more people, maybe it’d be different. But it’s just us two. You think I won’t fall any harder? That’s not easy. Every time I see you working, I swear I could be hopelessly in love with you one day.”

Your heart stops for a second.

This is Johnny Suh you were talking about here. One of the claimed best lawyers in your office, one of the most intelligent people that Hyeri has ever met, and Seohyun evidently backs this up because she’s given him so much recognition for his work. He’s the guy who worked with you to win the Hwang v. Yoon case, he’s the one who brought up the stupid jean shorts that seemed so far-fetched at the time, but they were a crucial detail everyone missed—it so happened that when Changmin bought those dumb shorts, there was evidence of at least one of his crimes in that store from the security cameras.

Any cis-gendered male who wears jean shorts can’t be trusted, according to Johnny.

And candidly speaking? You couldn’t even deny that. Your past two ex-boyfriends both wore jean shorts and the one cheated on you and the other one was caught money laundering.

“Listen,” he begins, interrupting your foggy thoughts. “I’m not asking you to tell me you like me back. I’m telling you because you should know, and that I can’t go on any further without letting you know. I’ll, uh, be in my office. Seohyun said she’d find a replacement for me.”

Hyeri is his replacement.

She’s great company and does a good job of helping you with whatever you need, but that was just it. Hyeri followed you, she never led with you, just as Johnny does. Agreeing with everything you say, mindlessly trailing behind everything you do—Hyeri was smart, but she couldn’t figure out how to think for herself when it came to these bigger cases because she’s never been given such a responsibility. But you couldn’t even blame her because it’s what she was told to do under Gonghyun.

“You said that you think Maeri snatched the bracelet?”

“No, I said if you watched the security video that the jewelry store submitted, it clearly shows that Maeri snatched the bracelet. Not that I ‘think.’ The proof is right there, Hyeri.”

She nods, resuming back to her work on the computer. Truthfully, Hyeri felt more like an assistant than a co-worker, someone to bounce ideas off of and to see from a different perspective. And as much as you hated Johnny, he had decent points. He had ways of making you put yourself into the shoes of people you never thought you were; although the guy was obnoxious, at least he actually was… good at his job.

Deciding you can’t take it anymore when Hyeri asks for the tenth time that hour about your beliefs rather than her own, you abruptly stand from your seat.

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” you reply shortly. “I’ll be back.”

It was just a spontaneous thought. It’s after hours, and although there are some people who stay behind to get some work done, you had your doubts that Johnny would still be here. He seems to have a better grip on that work/life balance thing people talked about (unlike yourself), but it didn’t hurt to check his office, right?

It’s a good thing you went with it. Because right across from yours, there’s Johnny.

There’s one single lamp that shines over the tabletop of his desk, and the other sources of light in his office are from his computer screen and the ones from the city skyline from behind him. It has him seemingly angelic like this, so serene, calm, and collected, only focused on what’s laid out in front of him. The sun has gone down, people have gone home, but Johnny remains, hardworking as always, despite your previous observations that he’s a lazy, unprofessional guy who gets everything handed down to him.

With a knock on his glass door, he flinches, head raising up and eyes meeting yours.

Were his eyes always this sparkly?

Opening the door, Johnny drops the pen in his hand and crosses his arms before leaning back in his seat. “What’s up?”

“You’re here late,” you state the obvious, and Johnny only nods in return, without a rebuttal in sight. “You aren’t normally here late. At least, before the Hwang v. Yoon case.”

“Yeah, you’re right. But Seohyun dropped something on my desk this morning. Wanted to work on it. What brings you here?”

Inhaling in a deep breath of courage, your hands bundle up into a fist by your side. “Please come back.”

Johnny raises a brow. “What?”

“Come back,” you reiterate, this time, it’s less tense and releases with ease. Caving in isn’t usually this effortless to you, but something about Johnny makes you feel… comfortable enough.“Come back and work with me again. Yes, I’m not supportive of how you do things—”

“Then let’s go out on a date.”

You freeze. Legs rooted into the floors of Johnny’s office, you’re left immobile and diffident on how to react next. It wasn’t what you were expecting, although you weren’t quite sure what you were hoping to anticipate, but it most definitely was not this.

“I—”

“I said my terms,” he retorts, shutting the book in front of him before shuffling up from his seat. He’s leaving, you realize, and Johnny’s ready to head home for the night and you’re not sure if you could handle an entire weekend with Hyeri here. “And, I meant what I said. One date, and if it really doesn’t work out, I’ll stay on the case.”

Chewing on your bottom lip anxiously, the next words that come out are out of character for you. “And… what if it does?”

A soft smile tugs from each corner of his mouth. “Then we’ll figure it out from there. Promise.”

This is… awkward. It shouldn’t be, but yet somehow, it remains awkward.

You’ve spent weeks with Johnny before, and those moments were in a room, in the middle of the night, and alone. Hours and hours were dedicated to work, yes, but it was just the two of you and nobody else.

So why is it so weird being in a five Michelin star restaurant with him?

Maybe it’s the atmosphere. The dim lights, the white clothed tables in lieu of the scratched up wooden one back at the law firm, and instead of leather seats, there’s a neutral beige chaise cushion for the dining chair, slightly less comfortable because it doesn’t recline like the one in your office. Instead of an array of photos and evidence disseminated in front of you, there’s a laminated menu with a multitude of options of what to have for dinner.

Johnny gets the steak with mashed potatoes and string beans, and you order something similar but seared salmon for the main protein. The waitress offers wine, babbling on about the age of the red, where the vineyard is located, and the dryness to sweetness—to be honest, you could care less; you’d rather have gin and sprite with a squirt of lime. A couple glasses of that and you can almost guarantee that the night would end with a deep slumber.

Oddly enough, Johnny seems nervous. Ever since he pulled up in his midnight black Audi in front of your apartment complex, he’s been acting strange. He keeps wiping his sweaty palms off the material of his trousers, occasionally swiping off the droplets that fall on the side of his face.

“Are you… okay?” you suddenly ask, adjusting your dress in your seat. Deciding to go with a black silk dress with a slit up the leg and your hair let down, it’s not a look you often sport but since you’re going on a date (one you haven’t been on in quite some time), you figured it would be nice to at least play the part.

“I’m, uh, honestly, I’ve never really asked a girl out before.”

You quirk a brow curiously. “What? You’re telling me you never asked a girl out before?”

He lets out a bashful laugh with a faint nod, making an attempt to swallow his nerves after. “Honestly, I’ve always been asked out and not the other way around. Not to sound like that guy, but I never really had to put effort into trying for girls. They kind of just…”

“—Throw themselves at you?”

He beams. “Yeah! Like that. I don’t really know how to react half the time, but it makes the whole dating scene a little bit easier.” Geez, he called you dense, but he’s over here acting clueless.

Either way, it feels like whatever opinion you had about Johnny remained true. He never had to try when it came to the dating scene, and you could only imagine what that means for work and the relationships he has with the women in your career field.

“Mm, does that usually happen with work too?”

Befuddled, Johnny leans back in his chair. “What do you mean by that?”

With a shrug of your shoulders, you’re poking the meat of your salmon that falls off easily. After the first initial bite, the fish practically melts on impact when it touches the tip of your tongue, smooth like butter and bursting with flavor that couldn’t be described by any common person because it wouldn’t do the salmon justice. Johnny seemed to put a lot into this date, and you’re left pondering what the point of this was. Did he actually like you, or was he trying to get into your head? “Just seems like you get a lot of special treatment.”

“Are you jealous?”

“In what way?” you snap back.

“Are you jealous of me because I’m getting this so-called special treatment that you think I’ve always had, or were you jealous of the girls that seemingly got my attention?”

You’re left without anything to say.

It was a good observation he made because truthfully, you never saw it like that.

In actuality, you often saw Johnny as your rival. He climbed the ladder in the field with ease, and it wasn’t hard to quickly blame his success on the fact that he was a guy in a male dominated industry, but the fact that there’s a possible interpretation for your hatred may be from these feelings you might’ve been harboring for him this entire time… that can’t be it… right?

“I mean, look at where you are now,” you begin, trying to defend yourself. It can’t be true that the reason you’ve been bitter about Johnny was because of the girls that got his attention, and one of them not being you. “You got a high position from—”

“—From hard work,” Johnny interjects with his brows furrowed. “I didn’t get to where I was because I slept around, if that’s what you’re insinuating. I knew you sort of always hated me, but I’ve always admired you. I like your work ethic, I like your style, even though we’re both on opposite spectrums, I like the way you think and I wanted to know what it was like being partners with you. Getting to be on that case with you showed me more than just who you were as a lawyer, but who you were as a person. I like you, but I’m trying to put my finger on why you hate me so much.”

“So you noticed.” Sucking in your cheeks, your eyes trail elsewhere—from the fork that lays beside your plate, to the glass filled halfway with wine, to the little candle that sits in between the two of you that flickers the way he has your heart when he expresses once more how he feels about you.

“Yeah, of course I noticed. If you like someone, it’s kind to miss details like that about them. So… you really hated me because you thought I slept my way to the top, huh?”

“I mean…” shoulders dropping in exasperation, you run your fingers through your disheveled hair. “All those rumors—”

“Again, they’re just rumors. I worked hard to get here, you know. And I’m kind of offended that you thought of me that way.”

You scoff. “They’re rumors, Johnny, it’s kind of hard to ignore all the office gossip when that’s all you hear. Plus, it wasn’t hard to believe either, with the whole flirtatious act whenever you encounter anyone who’s breathing and has a vagina.”

“I wasn’t flirting.”

“You need a book for dummies that elaborates on what’s flirting or not, because Johnny Suh, whatever it is you do with your body language in front of that chick who sits by the front door.”

“You mean Siwoo? The pregnant one who’s married to her highschool sweetheart? Also, how do you not know our receptionist’s name?”

You throw your arms into the air. “How am I supposed to know her name?”

He tilts his head to the side, genuinely baffled. “Do you… not talk to anyone outside of Hyeri?”

Your silence answers his question.

“I… honestly, I don’t know if I should be offended or if I should be honored. You think I didn’t earn anything that I have now, you think that everything I have was handed to me. On one hand, it’s flattering that you think my looks and my bedroom skills could do that but at the same time… I’m offended because you think I’m incapable.”

“I never said you were incapable—”

“But you implied it.”

Hands falling onto your lap, it’s your turn to gulp. His words come shooting at you, but you’re without a shield to protect yourself, and with the new experience of working with Johnny, there comes the realization at times that Johnny is a hard worker. There are some things that he says and does that aren’t like the people you’ve encountered, and being put on new cases with Hyeri only proved it. He’s thoughtful in the sense that whenever you’d bring up your stance on something, he challenges you with what the defense might counter.

Johnny makes you want to be better. Not just against him, but to brush off the dust on your skills and enter into the battlefield of a courtroom to showcase them.

“Well, if you’re staying silent, I just want to say that I tried,” the crinkle in between your brows makes another appearance because Johnny is great at leaving you stunned and confused. “I really like you. I love how your head works, and I wanna be with someone like that but I also can’t be with someone who doesn’t respect me.”

Why is it that when you’re in that conference room with him, you’re not afraid and never running out of things to say, but now you’re empty handed?

“I’ll pay for dinner. Grab you an Uber. I honestly thought I could overlook those things, and maybe your perspective for me has changed, but I could see it on your face. It’s the same.”

After that date with Johnny, his life turns back to normal.

Yours? Not so much.

Candidly speaking, part of you missed working with Johnny. You were wrong about him, so wrong, and even when you wanted to apologize at the dinner for what you thought of him, the pride in you was like a vicious plague that blackened your insides, preventing you from ever saying those words.

Oftentimes, you’d still be able to sneak a glimpse of him in his office with that same look on his face—full of concentration and nothing else in his mind other than the task at hand.

The cases you have with Hyeri entail a head like Johnny’s. Someone who could question you, to protest against your stance when there could be flaws in it. It feels like deja vu each time you think about it, each time you open a new case file and Hyeri sits there, perched in that seat beside yours, eyes sparkling with what you have in mind next, instead of what she has going on in hers.

Although you’ve tried convincing yourself that maybe, just maybe, what you feel for Johnny is purely professional but when you see him standing by the water cooler with a couple of your coworkers, eyes mimicking the moon crescents in the skies, replicating the ways his lips curl in elation—it was beginning hard to believe that it was all platonic feelings.

So maybe you should be bold for once. Pull off that exterior that displays you as someone who isn’t just independent and assiduous, but someone who’s stubborn and aggressive in getting what they want—and not in a good way.

This time, you’ll show it in a good way.

Or at least, you’ll try.

Johnny is a routine kind-of-guy—he grabs an iced americano every morning at the coffee shop downstairs at the edge of the street, he does his daily 11:00AM drop-by at the water cooler to refill his Hydroflask (which was his prized possession, by the way), and parked in the same exact spot in the parking garage of your building, despite there being an abundance of places he could choose.

That’s why you decide to stand by his car after work that day. Bouncing on the balls of your feet, hands shaking because it’s your turn to feel anxious. That blazer that once fit so comfortably in the morning suddenly feels tight and hot in the afternoon, and the weather hasn’t even changed. Your bag slung over your shoulder weighs ten times heavier than an hour ago, and you can’t stop your jaw from tightening.

Before your thoughts could spiral off all the possibilities of what the outcome may be when you tell Johnny how you feel, he’s already standing there, feet away from you with that dip in the fronts of his brows that you want to smoothen out the crinkles of with the pad of your thumb.

“Hi,” you greet, faint and peculiarly different from your other approaches. “Um, I just… was waiting for you.”

“Hey,” Johnny says back, the first few buttons of his shirt already unraveled, his blazer hung over his forearm and the sleeves are rolled up. “I see that. What’s up with you?”

“Um,” your leg was jittery, hard to control so you spat everything you had to say out as fast as you could before he could see right through you. “I just wanted to apologize. For everything. You’re admirable, kind, and I wish I inhabited those same characteristics you have. I think professionally, you’ve got great ideas, one that could be implemented into mine and what we did together for that case was just… yeah. We could do something big if we put our heads together.”

Johnny nods in agreement. The relationship between you two work-wise was obvious, he knew that much. “And what about… outside of that?”

“I like you,” you choked, barely getting the words out. “More than just coworkers, um, I guess, more than friends but I’m not really sure since you walked out on our first date,” inhaling in a deep breath of courage, you continue on, “and I don’t know how you feel now after I’m standing before you like this, asking for another chance and that I’m sorry.”

He stares at you blankly, and it leaves you unsure whether or not he accepts your apology. “You know why we ended that date early.”

“Well,” you start again, “can we… start over and try again? I promise I won’t tempt you to end the date early this time.”

And with that, there’s the signature smile that Johnny sports that swoons girls, makes their knees weak, and heart clench but this time… it’s just for you.

“I’d really like that.”

#ficscafe #nct fanfic #johnny x reader #johnny fanfic #johnny suh #johnny nct #nct 127 #nct 127 fanfic #suh johnny #gyukultfics #idk what else to tag #hopefully this does well :|

[rapha-reads]

This is a Doctor Who rant because I'm tired of the negativity. And I want to see more female and nonbinary Doctors.

Granted, there are problems with series 13. Okay, Chibnall's writing is flawed and incomplete, sometimes inconsistent. But you know what ? Jodie had fun and she loved the character. I had fun watching most of the episodes and discovering new stories, new narratives.

Maybe I'm too good audience. Maybe I'm not objective enough. Who cares ? I love Thirteen and I enjoyed the overall feels of the last three series. And yes, okay, it's Daleks again on New Year's Day, but, hey, a Dalek episode doesn't have to be a straightforward Doctor V Evil storyline. We can still have fun with the squids.

I'm not going to say "stop whining, you negative nay-sayers". I'm just saying, "hey, you didn't like it, okay, but it doesn't mean that those who did like it are not allowed to enjoy it, and it doesn't mean that it was as a whole objectively bad". Come on, guys. It's Doctor Who. It's 58 years old. A story that rich, a universe that complex, can't please everyone, can't be everyone's cup of tea, and most importantly can't be consistent 100%.

Bet there are some Classic Who arcs that are completely bonkers, nonsensical and inconsistent with what came before and what came after. No, Doctor Who as a whole is not ruined. Yes, there are good things, interesting things in series 11, 12 and 13. Yes, you're allowed to enjoy it even when the loudest noise on Internet right now is from people who hated it. Yes, you're also allowed to dislike it even if it's your favourite show. Just. Be kind. That's it. Be. Kind.

#doctor who #dw #jodie whittaker #whovians #chris chibnall #dw series 11 #dw series 12 #dw series 13 #thirteenth doctor #female doctor #rants #rapha talks #rapha is being a whovian #if you liked thirteenth and series 13 : good for you ! #if you didn't like thirteenth and series 13 : good for you ! #if you come screaming at me 'why did you like it it's so bad' ? get the eff away #if you go to someone who didn't like it and start going on off them for disliking it : you're a dick and you need to stfu #just please PLEASE #can we enjoy the things we enjoy and dislike the things we dislike without it all turning into ww3 ? #why do we have to always justify and argue and defend our opinions #i'm not saying it was all good and perfect and no flaws #i'm just asking for people who dislike it to admit that there are good parts and good ideas and that 13th was good #just like i'll admit i'm disappointed in the treatment of for example swarm and azure #and also recognising that something is flawed does not take away from enjoying and liking it #can y'all be balanced and KIND FFS #this has been a whovian rant #thanks for coming to my ted talk #also read the guardian article jodie is really interesting and fun

[eeunoia]

ENHYPEN Mini series

E N H Y P E N as Campus Heart-throbs

pairings: park sunghoon x reader

summary: you’ve always been in love by sunghoon’s mysterious vibe. you loved everything in him and everybody knows about your feelings towards him. you think you’re happy enough as long as you can see Sunghoon but what happens when you discovered that you were sick?

word count: 8.7k

warnings: I’m no doctor, I’m not professional at these kind of stuff. I did some research but since i’m not that smart I might not make it so clear and might have mentioned some wrong things but please be considerate and just act like I know what i’m saying. lol

a/n: YOU HAVE TO READ THIS!! So, I’ve asked for opinions if whether I should make it a happy ending or nah, and since the opinions were in half, I decided to do both. Yeah, both. So, this one is the happy ending one, if you’re interested in reading the other version which is the tragic on, here. I just want to tell you that I cried writing that one. I decided to do both versions since I, myself can’t even choose what I wanted. I have ideas and plots for happy endings that obviously I cannot include in the sad one and vice versa. So why not make the two version, right? So everyone is happy!!!  🌸

tag list: @jakeysim @kpoppinandlockin @en-sun @f1iore @dilfhwa​ @rubyanne​ @enhappy @bunnylover0193​

Park Sunghoon

Class 3 - A - “The Ice Prince”

You watched Sunghoon did a perfect routine during his practice for ice-skating one day. While leaning over the railings holding a bottle of water and some light snacks, you waited patiently for the perfect timing to greet him. Your eyes settled over his black hair that’s naturally swaying with his graceful movements. His pale complexion that gives highlight to his now tinted red cheeks. His breath fogged out from his pink soft looking lips as he exhale. He’s always wearing this blank face and still look so ethereal.

A proud small smile appeared over his slightly red face as his mentor gives him compliments for what he just did. You can’t help but to smile as well. This is the rare moments where you see him make different expressions. One of the reason why you love going to his practices.

Sunghoon was given a 15 minutes break that quickly made you jolt a little at your position. Out of excitement, you wanted to go and greet him right away but you tried to contain it and just wait for him.

“hello, y/n.” being someone who’s often in the ice arena, people knew you already. You gave them a warm smile and waved a little before going straight towards Sunghoon.

He was busy fiddling with some of his stuff. With a bright smile you tried to approach him as silent as you can be. When you were near him, you clapped your hands.

“That was a good routine.” you suddenly said. It didn’t surprised him at all. He just turned his head towards your direction then furrowed his brows at you.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. You kept your smile then handed him the water and snacks that you’re holding.

“Water?” you offered. His eyes darted over at the one you were handing him. He sighed as he pursed his lips over at the side trying to suppress his emotions.

“I have one already.” and he even raised his hand that’s holding a water jug. You pouted and then offered him the snacks instead.

“How about snacks? I bet you don’t have it!” you quickly tilted your head to go and look over his stuff to check if there’s any snacks prepared.

He sighed heavily as he stared down over at you. He’s way taller than you so your head was just below his chin. He sniffed, nose starting to get a little bit cold because of staying around the ice rink for too long.

“y/n, you’re supposed to be in the class right now.” he interrupted what you’re doing making you pout a bit more then stand straight in front of him fiddling with the snacks you were holding. His eyes looked fierce as he stares right at you. Feeling kind of intimidated, you lowered down your head.

“How about you? You’re supposed to be in the class too but you’re here!” you even tried to reason out using some nonsense thoughts. You yourself find it a little stupid to say that but it’s too late to take it back. Sunghoon’s already furrowing his brows at you with annoyed look and confusion over his face.

“What? I’m excused because of practice, y/n! What are you even talking about?” he asked you that made your lips pursed more into a pout. You lowered your head.

“I just want to see you...” you muttered under your breath. It was just enough for Sunghoon to hear it. He let out a sigh as he raised one of his hand to massage the bridge of his nose before puffing out a more calmer sigh.

“Alright, you saw me already.” he walked towards his things and laid down his water jug beside his bag. You saw how his eyes darted over you right after. With a quick glance over his eyes, you quickly looked away. It’s not the first time he gave you those icy stares but it still gets you every time.

“Go to class now.” he commanded firmly as he stare at you. Sunghoon was used to your presence. You were always vocal about how you feel towards him so he clearly knows why you’re acting like this. He don’t want to be rude to you since you’re not really doing anything bad.

With a pout you raised your head up, gathering some courage to look right into his icy blank eyes. Butterflies in your stomach went crazy the moment you two met eyes. With a blushing cheeks your hand rise up showing him the snacks you were holding.

“At least take the snacks.” you were pretty consistent too. One thing about you is that you don’t give up so easily. Especially if it’s Sunghoon that we’re talking about. He just kept you going for some reason. You’ve never liked anyone this way and you don’t think you can ever like somebody like this.

Sunghoon sighed as his eyes looked over your now shaded red hand. Because its so cold, your hands now were freezing a bit and it’s red already. Without saying anything, Sunghoon just gently grabbed the snacks and placed it above his bag then moved inside the ice rink because his coach was already calling him.

Your smile grew bigger as you looked at him skating away from where you were. It was just a simple gesture, he didn’t even said anything but still, it made you so happy. To be acknowledged by him, it’s already enough for you.

You smiled brightly as you jogged towards Sunghoon’s table. He was already seated and was flipping through his books. Everyone else were busy talking with their friends and here he is busy fiddling with his text book. Typical, Sunghoon.

You knocked over his table to catch his attention and you succeeded because he raised his head and his icy blank eyes met your warm ones. You smiled showing of your teeth and your eyes smiles together with your lips. You excitedly waved towards him as he gave you those stares. Butterflies went crazy inside your stomach, as usual.

“Good morning!” you greeted him with a smile. He just stared right at you before nodding his head once. Your smile grew bigger and you started walking towards your table to put your things down. Your seat happen to be just beside Sunghoon that’s why you get so lonely whenever he’s not there because of training.

Your teacher arrived and the class soon started. Everyone settled down and silent themselves once she started talking about the discussion for today. You’re silent too but you pulled out something from your bag. With a small smile after glancing over Sunghoon’s direction, you saw how he’s seriously eyeing in front listening attentively. He looked so handsome while a serious face was plastered over his face.

You slowly slid in to his part a notebook. It caught Sunghoon’s attention so he stared down at it for a while before his brows furrowed even more.

“What is this?” he asked you sounding so confused. You gave him a small smile before you looked back in front.

“Notes. I took notes of the lessons you missed because of practice.” you said trying hard to be heard by your teacher.

Sunghoon stared over at the cute notebook and clenched his jaw. He was about to say something but you interrupted him.

“You can’t say no. Just act that I didn’t prepare it for you. Put that inside your bag and I won’t ever bring up that you accepted it.”

“You don’t need to do this, y/n. I can handle myself. The teachers can even provide me the notes, you know?” he didn’t sound upset, offended or anything. It’s like he’s just making you understand a point. You do understand, but you can say you’re a little stubborn.

It just makes you happy whenever you help him even in the smallest ways. You feel like your life had make sense. Sounds a bit weird but that’s how it makes you feel.

You rolled your eyes as you looked back at him. His eyes were already darted over at you so you can’t help but to blush as you stared at each other’s eyes. You can’t still stand it so you lost and looked away.

“I know that but now you won’t have to ask for the notes from them since I already made you one. And besides, isn’t it the thought that counts?” you suddenly turned your head towards him because you thought he’s not looking anymore but your eyes grew big as your nose touched each other.

Sunghoon was caught off guard too. He didn’t even realized that he was leaning so close to you. With both of your cheeks tinted red, you quickly move away from him gulping a bit too hard to get rid of the sudden lump over your throat. You’re not sure if someone saw what just happened but you’re too flustered to even care about it.

The awkwardness slowly grew between you and Sunghoon as the discussion continued. You tilted your head trying to scribble over your notebook. Sunghoon, on the other hand, was trying to catch up to whatever the teacher was saying. His mind was occupied by how close your face was to his tho. He didn’t know you have beautiful eyes. Were your eyes had always been that pretty?

As the discussion went on, the more the two of you slowly feel at ease. It slowly faded away and you two listened carefully to the lesson. Nobody dares to look in each other’s eyes again during the whole period. You feel like your heart will burst if you look at him so refused even though you badly want to.

Break came faster than you expected it to, maybe because you were occupied you didn’t notice the time. As you and your friend walk your way towards the cafeteria to have lunch, you noticed Sunghoon with his friends. They’re kind of loud and loves to goof around while Sunghoon watches them silently. He have this small smirk over his face.

He’s an introvert and just prefer to stick to his small circle of friends that made you interested to him even more. You’re curious as to how he is when he’s with those people he’s close to. When he’s with the people he cares and value. Your stomach turns just by thinking of caring Sunghoon, bet he’s so warm to those people. You can’t help but to feel a little envy.

“Watching Sunghoon again, huh?” your friend took notice of your eyes not leaving the quiet boy. You smiled at her and you started eating your lunch. Your table was just a couple of tables away from their group so you can hear them being loud and rowdy.

“He’s so cute, right?” you told your friend while smiling. She gave you a smile as well and nodded her head. She’s actually amused at how you’re so consistent with showering Sunghoon love. She feels bad too because she thinks the boy is just too cold and you don’t deserve that kind of treatment.

“Don’t you think he’s a bit too cold for you?” she asked you and your smile faltered a little bit but you were quick enough to put it up once again. You thought about it as well but you just can’t find anyone you can like other than him. You tried, but you just can’t seem to like anybody else other than him.

Your eyes dropped over to your food, “He isn’t called the Ice Prince for nothing, f/n.” then you smiled at her. She rolled her eyes as she chuckle realizing you have a point.

“I’ll serve as the warm one, he’ll provide the cold.” you jokingly stated that made her laugh. That actually made sense because you are a very warm person that people really just can’t help but to adore you. You’re always bright and positive.

You walked inside the Ice arena holding a water bottle at one hand and snacks at the other one. It’s weekend and you heard that Sunghoon’s gonna be here and since you have nothing else to do, you decided to drop by even just for a short time. You just want to see him doing short routines and maybe give him the things you brought with you.

As you enter, you already saw him at the rink doing some moves that you don’t know. It was graceful as always for your opinion but something’s just not right, he’s face looked so stressed out. He isn’t wearing his usual blank expression while he’s coach were telling him a few things. He ran his hands over to his hair once.

The frustration get a bit more clearer the more you approach the railings. There’s nobody else here with him practicing. He stopped at doing three amazing spins but despite that he looked unsatisfied. He slid towards his coach as he told him things that just made his jaw clenched. You’re a bit far from him so you can’t hear it but it seems like he isn’t happy about it.

He ran his hands over to his hair again as he nodded his head towards the coach. He tapped his shoulder once before he exited the rink off to somewhere. You watched as Sunghoon skate his way towards a bench to maybe rest. You pouted feeling upset now that he looked upset.

A big heavy sigh was the first one you heard the moment you approached him. He clasped his hands together as he rested his elbows over his knees. His eyes were pierced over to the vacant ice rink. He seems like to be in his deep thought as you watch his fingers fiddled a bit too furiously.

“I thought you want to keep your hands clean as much as possible? It won’t look clean if you bruised it.” you decided to let him know your presence.

He looked over your direction a bit surprised that you’re here. Well, you do often come during his practices but today is weekend. He didn’t actually expect you to be here at all.

You gave him a small wave and your signature bright smile and walked even closer. He just silently watch as you approach where he was seating.

“What are you doing here?” sounding a bit amused, it didn’t came out as a rude remark. It came out more of with curiosity.

You smiled again like as if you’re not smiling already then sat down over at the bench next to where Sunghoon was. “I came to see you practicing.” you were honest and direct to the point.

He let out a sigh and rolled his eyes looking away. “You should go, this isn’t really a good time to bother me.” he bit his lower lip after letting out those words. He was frustrated that he can’t stop his own mouth from saying harsh words. Sunghoon is cold towards you, but he never been so rude.

He was just so stressed out because of practice. With the competition just around the corner and all the pressure the people around him was giving him, he can’t keep himself calm down.

You pouted, you’ve never seen him this frustrated in all the practices that you’ve been present. It somehow upsets you because you don’t want him looking like this.

“Why? What’s going on?” Sunghoon furrowed his brows at you clenching his jaw as your soft voice slowly reached out over his iced heart.

He was about to tell you to go home and leave him be because he’s kind of getting alarmed by how you’re making him feel but he was stunned when your eyes met his. He suddenly got the flash back of your eyes in up-close.

“Are you okay?” you asked once again with worry all over your eyes. Sunghoon lost it. For weeks of being under so much pressure and heavy practices, this is the first time someone actually asked if he’s okay.

He lowered his head feeling something melting inside of him. You got worried seeing him like this so without even realizing it, you walked towards him and sat down closer.

“Is everything okay?” you asked again then gulped worriedly.

Sunghoon shut his eyes balling his fist. He was restraining himself to be close to you since he think it wouldn’t be good for the two of you but your soft voice and comforting aura doesn’t help him after all. It kept on sounding so comforting like as if something’s pulling him closer to you.

He looked at your eyes for a while before he glanced away seconds after. He gulped, “I’m so t-tired.” there’s something in his voice that you couldn’t explain. It hurts you to hear him like that.

“Then rest. If you’re tired, there’s nothing wrong with taking a break.” you don’t know what to tell him exactly because you’re not an ice skater first of all, then you’re not sporty as well.

He looked at you with his blank expression that made you a bit anxious. You probably sound dumb at what you said and it didn’t made sense to him at all. You sighed and pursed your lips before you starred over the snacks down at your hand.

“Look, Sunghoon. You might feel under a lot of pressure right now that’s why you’re pushing yourself to do so much. I understand that you want to do good and everything but you also need to rest. Physically and mentally, if you’re tired you need to at least take a break.” you heaved a sigh after telling him those words.

His eyes slowly trailed down to his hands that were now calmer than before. He do realized how the pressure stressed him out and did think it kind of not healthy for him anymore. But he doesn’t really have a choice, it’s not like he have anything better to do other than to practice.

He sighed and pushed himself up to go back to the ice rink and maybe practice a little bit more of those routines. You followed him silently as a brilliant suddenly came up inside your head. You stood up leaving the snacks and water back at the bench as you come near the railings to call for Sunghoon.

“Sunghoon!” You shouted his name. He was already half-way in the middle of the rink when he turned his head over at you. With a little hand gestures of him to come closer, he let out a sigh and with a blushing face, he did approach you.

You smiled as he came closer, “Do you want to like spend the day with me instead? We can do all fun stuff today so you can relax!” you told him. You’re not really sure if he’ll agree or what but you still want to try your shot. Honestly, you don’t have anything plan for today. You just really want to go at the ice rink to go and see him even just for a short time but since it worries you so much, you wanted to at least make him feel a bit better.

He stared at you for a while before rested one of his hand over at the railings. Your eyes darted it for a while and you blush when you noticed it inches away from yours.

“What will we do? And besides, I don’t think my coach will let me go today.” he said sounding a bit bored. You smiled and raised your hand showing him your pale palm because of cold. Sunghoon’s eyes noticed it and realized even when you’ve been here a lot of times, you must’ve been still not used too with the cold.

“I can ask for his permission myself! You can just wait for me here.” you told him excitedly. The fact that he didn’t really straight up rejected your offered hyped you up.

He can’t even say anything else with what you said. He’s used to about your pursuing skills but he can’t believe you can go as far as that just for him. You smiled at him, making him blush a bit. You didn’t noticed it since you turned around and walked towards where his coach is probably.

You did see him talking to somebody so you patiently wait for them to finish. When you saw them bidding good-bye’s with each other, you straight up went closer to him.

“Coach-nim!” you called him out. When he noticed you, he kind of looked surprised because it is weekend. He do know you for someone who likes Sunghoon and visit him here often.

“oh, y/n-ah! What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I came to watch Sunghoon, coach-nim.” you smiled at him. He smiled as well finding it amusing how hard working you are for Sunghoon.

“Really? But Sunghoon’s not in good condition today, tho? He kept on making mistakes with his routines.” he sounded worried for him too. You pouted feeling worried once again.

“About that... can I snatch him from practice today? I feel like he’s under so much pressure lately that it stressed him out too much.” you said with both hands clasped together like as if you’re praying.

His brows furrowed and did noticed that Sunghoon did look like he’s under so much stress lately. With a smile, he gave you a small nod. You shrieked in happiness.

“Maybe Sunghoon do need to relax to lessen his stress.” he said. Both of you walked back to the ice rink together. You listened carefully with his reminders with you. He asked you to avoid heavy activities that might cause injury to Sunghoon.

“Sunghoon!” he called out the boy who’s in the middle of the ice rink and still trying to do some routines. He raised his head and looked over your direction. He slowly skate closer and his coach talked to him and his eyes darted over at you. After their talk, he skates outside the rink and gather all his stuff.

“I’ll just change. C-Can you wait for a bit?” he asked glancing away for a while because he’s shy. You chuckled and nodded excitedly at him.

“Where are we going?” he asked you as he followed behind you cutely. You turned your head towards him and saw him starring at you like a bored child.

He’s walking so slow, cutely waddling behind you. With a sigh and after you rolled your eyes, you decided to walk closer to him and pull him by his arm. “Can you just follow me?”

You didn’t told him where you two will be going because you wanted to surprise him. As you made it to the building, Sunghoon starred at it innocently. It’s obvious he haven’t been there before which is a good sign. As you pull him inside, he realized you took him to a pet cafe.

He grew a small smile over at his face because he do want to go here but because he can’t find himself asking his friends to go with him, he didn’t had the chance to. And besides, he don’t want to go alone.

“Y/n!” the owner already know you since you’re often here. You gave her a hug as her eyes darted over the tall figure behind you. He have this blank expression with his face but he did bowed a little to show manners.

“Who’s this fine man with you?” her eyes gave the two of you those teasing look. Sunghoon glanced away as he scratched the back of his head feeling shy as you blush as well.

“U-Unnie, this is Sunghoon. Sunghoon, meet f/n unnie. She’s a friend and she owns the cafe.” you said. He bowed again, still looked liked a snob. Your unnie’s moth went ‘o’ as she realized it’s the guy you’re always talk about.

“Oh! He’s Sunghoon! The one you always talk about!” she blurted out even before you can stop her. You blush hard as that caught Sunghoon’s attention. He looked at you and saw how your face was so red.

Slowly, a small smile spread through his face finding you cute. Before your Unnie can spill more about you talking about Sunghoon, you asked if you two can go inside and play with the dogs. She did let you in and thankfully let the two of you play with them peacefully.

“So you talk about me with other people?” Sunghoon was suddenly in the mood to tease you. He said that while you’re seating beside him busy feeding the dogs that were hovering you around.

You blushed once again as you lower down your head. It made him smile even more, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarra--”

“Nah, that’s okay. I just hope they’re all good things.” he said that made you raise your head to look at him. He’s not looking at you anymore but he have this small smile over his face as he play with the other dogs.

“Aaaaaack! No! They’re everywhere! Where is it? AAAAAA Y/n help!” you can’t stop laughing as you watch Sunghoon do the VR thing. You’ve never thought you’ll see this side of him. It was so cute!

He reached over you trying to get a hold of your arm for support but you moved away making him scream as the zombie in the game kept crowding him. He was gaining attention the moment you two entered the place because he’s so good-looking, now he gathered attention because he screamed so much.

You were having the best time of your life just by watching him enjoy (?) the VR. When he finished, it looked like he lost his soul and that made you laugh so hard. His head snapped over your direction then marched towards you making your shriek in terror and ran away. But he scooted you pretty quickly and spun you around once both of you end up laughing.

“I told you I don’t like the scary one!” he told you but you were still busy laughing. He then broke into a smile as he watch you laugh heartedly. It was a fun scene to enjoy.

You two spend the whole day just randomly trying new stuff together. It ended pretty well and without even realizing it, you two just grew closer to each other. Time passed by quickly and after enjoying the day, Sunghoon decided to walk you home already. You two were just silently walking side by side but it wasn’t awkward at all.

With hands holding an ice cream, you two trailed the way over to your house. As you arrived, you turned to face him smiling. You can’t describe how happy you’re currently feeling. It was just overwhelming.

“Thank you for today, Sunghoon! I really had fun.” with full sincerity, you told Sunghoon starring at his eyes. You blushed as you saw how his lips formed into a smile. His hand then reached out to you then gently messes your hair. You were dumbfounded for a moment.

“I should be the one thanking you.” he shortly replied. With your cheeks still blushing like crazy, you smiled at him.

“Are you feeling a bit better now?” you asked curiously, eyes getting a bit bigger with anticipation. Sunghoon smirked as he find you cute with that innocent looking face.

“I feel so much better now.” and he smiled once again. Your lips fell open when he showed you those smile again. You can’t even count how many times he smiled today! You are so happy that you’ve got to make him smile. Is this how a Park Sunghoon warms up to people?

“I’m glad I could help.” you felt shy when you realized you’ve been starring so much. After a small wave, he told you to go inside since it’s late already.

Feeling a bit sad that the day’s finally over, you pouted as you turn around then started walking towards your house. You were already near the house when he suddenly called out for you.

“Y/n!” you were fast to turned back around waiting for what he’s gonna say.

Showing off his boyish grin, he told you, “Next weekend, do you want to skate?” your heart beat went crazy the moment you heard him say that. Is he asking you to hang out with him?

“That sounds so fun but I don’t know how to skate!” you ended it with a pout that made him chuckled softly.

“That’s fine, you got me beside you the whole time. You’ve got the best trainer with you.” and he even raised his fist cutely. Your smile got bigger, looking at him.

You raised your fist at mid-air too, “Yay! I’m excited!”

“You’re here.” he noticed you right away when you entered the arena. He’s the only one in the middle the rink and as usual, Sunghoon looked fine. The week passed by like a blur. With the exams nearing, everyone was busy and Sunghoon was busy with practices as well so he didn’t went to school that much.

“Hi.” you greeted shyly. You don’t know what’s up with you but you’re extra shy today. Knowing that he invited you to be here this time and that you didn’t come here uninvited feels so great.

He smiled, “Let’s gear you up first!” he sounded excited. Well he is excited. He really did had so much fun last weekend so he’s really looking forward to making you try skating. He skate towards the exit so he can go out of the rink and help you with the figure skates. He told you he’ll provide one so you won’t have to worry about it.

Sunghoon helped you wearing it, like literally he made you sit down and he’s the one who wear it to your feet. After that, you started feeling nervous again just by thinking of going inside the rink. But despite of the worried feeling, you were excited. Excited to know more of him by joining in one of the things he values the most.

“Okay, careful. I’ll hold unto you, don’t worry.” he was very patient as he guides you inside the rink. As expected it wasn’t easy, but having Sunghoon beside you sure helped a lot.

Step by step, he tried teaching you the basics. He told you how you can safely land to prevent injuries and what to do to keep your balance and so on. Slowly, you did some progress faster than you expected.

“Woah, you’re talented!” he exclaimed and right after he said that you fell flat your butt.

There’s a couple seconds of silence before you two broke into laughter. It didn’t hurt but it sure is embarrassing but making it as a source of laughter eases it down. He skates easily towards you to help you get up.

“Chase me down, y/n! I’ll buy you ice cream if you can touch me even for once!” he suddenly told you as he dash away from you. You shrieked at him but tried your very best to catch him.

He played with you pretty badly as he kept on skating fast when you just learned how to do it. With a pout you finally gave up. He chuckled finding you cute as he slowly approached you.

“Since you worked hard, I’ll give you consolation price.” he said with a smirk over his face.

“What is it?” you asked curious.

“Ice cream.”

You laughed, "Your price is ice cream and your consolation price is ice cream too?" you asked finding it funny. He just nodded his head like an excited kid.

When he near you, you smiled at him. “Why don’t you do some routines for me? I’ll be here and watch.” you suddenly suggested.

Sunghoon's eyes darted you and you saw something flickered into his eyes. He smirked as he ran his hand over his hair once.

“What do I get in return?” he asked you teasing. You pursed your lips in a pout trying to think of something you can bribe him.

On the other hand, Sunghoon was busy eyeing your puckered lips. It was so red like your cheeks because of the cold. He gulped trying to look away but his eyes trail back over to your lips for some reason. He tilted his head a bit trying to shrug off the taught.

“What do you want then?” you ended up just asking him. You can’t think of things to bribe him so you decided to just ask him. You’re pretty sure you’ll try and give it to him just to see him skate exclusively for you today.

He smirked slowly skating towards you.

“How about a kiss?” your smile faltered at what you just heard from him.

You even thought you heard the wrong thing. Are you that crazy for him that you actually misheard him asking you for a kiss? Aaaa. Unhealthy.

You shook your head a bit, “H-Huh?” you asked trying to make him say it again to be clear.

He smirked and made it in front of you. Feeling nervous you slid your feet away from him but he was quick enough to go closer. He leaned downward so your eyes will be at the same level.

"a kiss?”

Your cheeks turned so hot as your eyed starred intensely through each other. He showed you a boyish grin showing off that cute vampire teeth at the corner. You gulped, trying to show him it didn’t affect you that much even though you can feel your heart going crazy inside of you.

“O-Okay! A kiss in the cheek if you do the routine perfectly.” slowly leaning away you saw his smirk towards you.

“I didn’t say anything about cheeks. What do you think of me, a child? I want a kiss in the lip---” you were quick enough to interrupt what he was saying.

“Go on and start with it Park Sunghoon. I repeat, I want it to be perfect. I’ll be very strict.” you tried shutting off what he just saying. He chuckled finding it cute that you kept changing the topic.

He did a playful salute. “Yes, Ma'am.” and he swiftly skate towards the middle. Sunghoon felt at ease as he started doing the routines he’s been practicing for his next competition. He was completely into it when he started skating gracefully. Your mouth fell open as you watch his every moves. He’s very talented and it feels like he's really born to skate.

You can’t help but to feel a bit teary eyed when you saw him smiling while skating. He really do enjoy it so much. As he gracefully do everything without any mistakes, you just find your heart beating like crazy. It's like it’s rejoicing because the person who she belongs to.

Wiping off the tears away quickly before he can even see it, Sunghoon was smiling brightly as he approach you closer.

“How’s that?”

“Perfect.” you muttered right away. He smiled and leaned downward towards you.

You get it right away so you blushed furiously then sighed heavily trying to calm yourself down. He smirked as he tapped his cheeks where he wants you to give him a kiss. With another big sigh, you decided to lean fast to ease the racing of your heart.

But Sunghoon suddenly turned his head purposely causing both of your lips crashing into each other. Your eyes grew big as you became dumbfounded at the moment. He copied your expression making you feel flustered even more. He started skating away and you tried to catch him behind.

“Yah! Come back here!”

“Catch me first!”

And you two continued the day by just playing with each other in the rink growing closer and developing something special between the two of you.

As Monday came, you were early in school because you had to copy some notes in one subject that you happen to miss because of a club meeting. You're too busy with what you were doing that you didn’t noticed Sunghoon entering the room. Girls inside the room greeted him that he didn’t really bothered responding to. They were used to it tho, he’s naturally like that.

But what they didn’t expect is when he smiled a little as he approach the seat beside you. Finding you too occupied by what you were writing, he suddenly covered your eyes from behind.

You smiled after being shock for a while, “Park Sunghoon, i’m copying notes right now.” you muttered that made him smirk as he lets go from you.

“How did you know?”

“Your hands were too cold. How’s practice?” you asked. He's from practice and he went straight here for class that’s why his hands were cold.

He sat down beside you as he kept your eyes glued at you. It’s like there’s nobody else inside the room, it’s like it’s just the two of you. For him, you’re one of the few people he freely lets into his world.

You fished something from your bag then handed it over to him then you continued writing once again. Sunghoon looked over at what you handed him with confused eyes.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Hot packs. I bought them on my way here. I figured your hands would be so cold so I decided to buy you some.” you told him like it was nothing. But without you knowing, you just caught him off guard. You’re naturally caring but he didn’t know if he deserve something as great as this.

He didn’t even notice he grew attached to you. With a small smile he opened the hot packs and kept smiling like an idiot beside you.

The students around you were obviously amused at how you two were acting. The girls envied how affectionate he is towards you. They’ve never seen him like that. Suddenly, the Ice Prince is now warm towards someone. It sure is interesting.

The days continued like that. You two becoming more close to each other. You often spend time together and find it odd whenever one of you is not around. It’s like you two can’t be a part from each other anymore.

“Where are you going?” he asked when he noticed you rising up from your seat.

You looked at him and smiled, “I’m just going to the rest room.” you told him.

He gave you a short nod trying hard not to ask you if he can go and accompany you. He doesn’t want you to think that he’s a creep or something.

You hurried yourself to the bathroom when you feel a bit off. Lately, you noticed that you’re not feeling well. You often just shrug it off telling yourself that maybe it’s just because you didn’t have enough sleep or something. The moment you arrived at the bathroom, you felt yourself coughing so you did. It was a bit hard and made your chest ache a bit.

As you raise your head to look in the mirror, you were confused as you saw blood streaming down your nose.

Sunghoon grew so attached to you that’s why when you suddenly skipped class for almost a week now, he grew worried of you. He didn’t want to make you think he’s too clingy or anything so he tried really hard not to go to your house. Maybe you’re on a vacation. But without telling him? You often tell things to him.

Feeling so frustrated about it, he decided to approach your friend. He never talked to her but for you, he’ll do it.

“f/n.” he called her out with cold flat voice.

She turned her head towards him a little shock that Park Sunghoon is in front of her. The students together with her was dumbfounded as well.

“Uh, do you know where Y/n is or is anything happened to her?”

She felt something lights up inside of her that make her happy seeing how Sunghoon really warmed up for you. She realized that you really did melt the ice in him but she slowly felt a bit sad for the two of you.

She tried pulling off a smile for him.

“She was sick for days so she can’t go to school, Sunghoon.” she saw how he furrowed his brows. When it comes to you, he sure do shows a lot of expressions.

"why she didn’t tell me?” she shrugged her shoulder off.

“maybe she didn’t want to worry you.” he wasn’t convinced. He’s still furrowing his brows.

He clenched his jaw as he nodded at her, “Okay. I’ll just go and see her later.

”Her eyes grew big, “No! U-Uh, she’ll go to school tomorrow so you don’t have to check on her anymore.” even if she sounded a bit suspicious for Sunghoon, to hear that you’re finally going to school sure excites him.

He nodded and turned his back at her after saying a soft thank you.

“Sunghoon!” to hear your voice sure made him so happy but he made sure he didn’t show it. He turned around showing off a serious expression. 

His eyes trailed from your hair down to your feet. There you are, walking closer to him. He didn’t even realize how much he missed you until you’re now here again in front of him.

He rolled his eyes. “What made you think it’s a good decision not to tell me that you’re sick?” he asked you with furrowed brows.

You kept your smile, to see him again after so long just made you so happy. To see him in front of you looking so worried makes you somewhat happy because it just showed how he cares for you.

But it also makes you so scared. How come all of this is happening right after you became close to the person you love? You felt so guilty for making him grew close to you and seeing him getting attach to you just makes it even more hurtful.

Why does all of this have to happen after you melted the Ice Prince’s ice?

Sunghoon noticed right away that you’re unusually pale. Your lips aren’t as red as always and your face seems like it lost weight.

He raised his hand to cup your face, “Why are you so pale? Are you still sick?” he asked, worry lures over his tone.

Stopping yourself from crying you smiled, shaking your head lightly. “I’m fine now.” you lied.

“I have something for you.” you said changing the topic. He furrowed his brow as he looked down over the gift you prepared for him.

Since you’ve been gone for a week, you missed a lot of things including Sunghoon’s match. He did won and you were so proud of him.

“What’s this?” Sunghoon asked eyes glued over to the present.

You pouted, “I’m sorry I couldn’t attend your match.” you started feeling a bit more emotional. Starting to feel a little ache over your chest, you tried to dismiss the thought.

“It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re okay now.” he told you and brushed away some strands of hair away from your pale face.

He clenched his jaw while he examined you. He couldn’t tell what’s up but something sure is wrong. 

You smiled trying really hard to stop yourself from crying. You handed him the gift again making him raise up his head to you.

Your eyesight slowly became blurry as the pain in your body kind of became impossible to ignore.

As he looked back to you, his brows furrowed when he saw blood rushing down to your nose.

“Are you okay? Y/n!” he was fast enough to catch you when you lost consciousness. He tried to wake you up as he called out for help.

Your friend saw and quickly dialed your parent’s number. Everyone’s shock at what’s happening. Sunghoon was panicking as he stared at your unconscious self.

“Sunghoon, carry her. Let’s take her out of the building. We already called the ambulance.” Sunghoon looked up over to his friend, Heeseung

He nodded and easily carried you. As he ran while you’re over his arm, he doesn’t know how much fear he was feeling. To have you over his arm looking like that scared him so much. He doesn’t know what’s happening to you or what’s wrong. He’s never been this scared in his life.

“y/n! Hold on, baby.” he whispered eyes getting a bit teary and lips shaking.

All you can hear was muffled sound. You feel like you’re whole body was so heavy and that you’re in somewhere deep. Everything was dark but you sure can hear familiar voices around you.

You can hear your Mom’s soft cries, your Dad’s voice that’s trying to calm her down. But there were nowhere around. You can’t see anything but dark. It feared you.

“Y/n, sweetie.” you can hear your Mom called out for you.

As you feel warm hands gently massaging your arm, like as if some force pulled you, your eyes slowly opened to be greeted by a familiar room.

“U-Umma...” heads snapped towards you. You saw your Mother smiled warmly at you. She looked so happy despite  of the tears all over her eyes.

As you roam your eyes around, your heart pounded when you realized you’re back at the hospital. Where they kept you for a week... away from Sunghoon.

Sunghoon...

You were with him. And as if on cue, Sunghoon’s tall figure came into your line of sight. You saw his worried and at the same time relieved face. His eyes... it isn’t cold. It was like it just finished from crying.

Your eyes cried as you glanced away from him, guilty. Pain was all over your body but the pain in your heart for him was the one that stands out the most.

“I don’t want to be here! I wanna go home, umma!” You started crying loudly making everyone go in panic.

Your brother looked over Sunghoon and asked if he can call the doctor that he quickly agreed too. You fainted two days before and ever since, he can’t sleep properly.

When he was on his way back to your room, he heard you crying to your family. He stopped from walking inside deciding that he should go and give you guys some privacy. But before your feet can even move, he heard you mentioning his name.

“He can’t know about my condition, umma! Please, just tell him not to go here anymore! I don't want to see him! He’s just gonna be sad, it’ll hurt him. It’s my fault appa!” you cried hardly. He clenched his fist as he heard you say those words.

“I’m gonna die. I’ll leave him soon, it’ll break him.” Sunghoon’s eyes watered as he heard you say those words.

To hear that you’ve got Leukemia felt like his whole world colapsed, to hear it actually from you, just hits him too hard.

“Y/n! You’re not gonna die! We’re here for you. The doctor’s said you can still make it. Honey, you won’t die.” Your Mom told you but you just kept crying.

Your brother reached over your hand as both your parents hugged you, crying. You looked over your brother and it broke him. To see his sister at a state like this, pale and full of pain was hard for him. He’s not used to it.

“Oppa, i don’t want my ice prince sad. I don’t want to see him sad, please.” your plea hurts him even more. Sunghoon heard everything and he was sad as well. But that didn’t stop him from wanting to stay beside you.

He loves you, and if anything, this is the time where you need him the most. He won’t disappoint you.

Sunghoon didn’t visit for days. You kind of admit, you missed his presence. But you thought, it’s also for the best.

“Y/n, honey? Do you want to go at the rooftop?” you turned over your Mom and she’s smiling at you.

You lost weight pretty fast than expected. You‘re starting to feel your whole body to ache more often too. With a nod, you decided to go to the place in this hospital that somehow ease your worries.

Slowly, you and your Mom went over the rooftop. But after she opened the entrance, you already started bursting into tears.

There were cute decorations everywhere. Some of your relatives were there. As your Mom slowly guides you at the center, your eyes met a pair of familiar eyes.

The eyes of the person you’ve been missing.

“W-what are you doing here?” you asked towards him.

He smiled a little approaching you while holding a beautiful bouquet of red roses. Your eyes watered and so does the people around you.

“I love you, y/n.”

Of course you’re aware of what he felt towards you. That’s why you knew as well he’ll be so sad if he knew about your condition.

You tried smiling even when tears stream down your eyes, “Acute Myeloid Leukemia said no, Sunghoon. It said I’m all his.” you tried to say it as a joke.

He shed tears as well and it broke you. You didn’t know looking at him standing in front of you hurt. You're scared to leave this people around you.

“Call him out then, baby. Let’s beat him together. Let’s beat that cancer together.” your eyes looked over his hand that was reaching out for you. With eyes full of tears, you reached out for it.

Sunghoon pulled you into a hug as everyone cheered around you. He was happy to have you around his arms. He loves you so much that he’ll never leave you.

“I’m scared, Sunghoon.” you cried over his chest. He dropped a kiss over your head before whispering, “I know, but I’ll be just here for you. We’ll all be here for you.”

You nodded your head and that where it all started. That's where you’re fight with cancer started. You struggled a lot but he made sure he was there. He made sure you know he was with you in every trials.

It was decided that the only way to cure you was a bone marrow transplant. The doctor said that if the operation went well, you’ll be good. You’ll live. It wasn’t easy to look for a donor. You’ve waited and waited. And Sunghoon was with you all along. Months passed by and you’re love just grew even more stronger.

He stayed with you always and had proved his love to you. He was very patient at you and always make sure hat you’re well and everything. He was there to cheer you up every time you feel like losing hope, he’s there to make you happy, he’s there to calm you down and he’s there to keep you on fighting. You’re just beyond thankful for him.

Then it finally happened, with tears all over your eyes you called Sunghoon. He was in the middle of practice for a competition.

“Baby! Is everything alright?” he picked up right away.

“Sunghoon...”

His heart thumped in worry.

“Tell me what baby? You’re making me nervous right now.”

“The doctor called... She said I already have a donor.”

Sunghoon was silent in the other line. He was crying. This time, happy tears. It felt like all your wait was all worth it.

“You’ll be alright.” Sunghoon said to you while smiling. You’re already in your hospital gown.

“I’ll see you guys later.” you tried to look brave for all of them. Sunghoon smiled at you as he leaned forward giving you a smack over your lips.

“Come back to me healthy, okay?” he muttered.

You nodded your head and waved at them. You were taken at the room where they’ll perform the surgery.

“Are you ready, y/n?” your doctor asked you.

You nodded as you slowly felt your eyes getting heavy.

“Do you promise to get me ice cream after?” you pouted over at Sunghoon who’s leaning over the railings.

He nodded smiling at you with a cocky grin, “If you can beat me, baby.” and he slid his way towards you to give you a kiss at your lips.

You frowned at your boyfriend, “Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair here? You’re asking me to race you!”

He smiled at your cuteness and just shrugged his shoulders off. You rolled your eyes, surrendering.

You finally concurred cancer. Sunghoon did stayed with you and never left your side. He was so happy that you’re okay now and that he can spend the rest of his life with you. For him, to be given the opportunity of meeting you is just life-turn event. You were his happiness. 

When you started sliding through the ice, you were smiling at the thought you’re getting ahead of him only to be surprised when he hugged you suddenly.

"i love you, y/n."

You smiled warmly returning the hug. “I love you, Sunghoon. Thank you for staying beside me.”

He smiled, “Thank you for not leaving me and for fighting.” and he leaned towards you kissing you passionately.

main master-list

campus heart-throb teaser

#enhypenwriters #enhypen #enhypen scenarios #enhypen imagines #enhypen fanfiction #enhypen x you #enhypen x reader #enhypensunghoon #enhypen park sunghoon #parksunghoon #enhypen sunghoon imagines #enhypen sunghoon x reader #enhypen yang jungwon #enhypenjungwon #yangjungwon #enhypen lee heeseung #enhypenheeseung #leeheeseung #enhypen jay park #enhypenjay #park jongseong #enhypenjake #enhypenjakesim #jakesim #enhypensunoo #enhypen kim sunoo #kimsunoo #enhypenniki #enhypen nishimura riki #nishimura riki

[nb-n0v4]

Spamton headcannons/Lore

ok this is long as FUCK so it’s going under a readmore but basically this is some of my ideas of what Spamton was like before and during his fall from grace + it turns into actual like story writing like halfway through because I can’t keep a consistent writing style to save my life. Warnings for body horror and, uh, depersonalization I guess? Also my description of post-Mike Spamton is inpired by @7greentears version of him please check out their art it’s so good. also this isn’t proof read or anything so apologies

Ok so I headcanon that Spamton used to be an Addison like most other people do, but the most popular idea is that all of the people he was close to ditched him once he started making it big. Mine is sort of the opposite. So, the first thing of note is that, before he made his deal, Addison!Spamton had a stutter. Whether it was from a glitch in programming or whatever idk but it obviously made it difficult for him to do his job. I like to think that he was actually a used car salesman before he started doing telemarketing for whoever this “Mike” dude was. 

Once he started talking to Mike though, one of the first things that happened was that his stutter disappeared. Like a miracle! And Mike urged him to really step up his game in his original trade, lots of flattery and hype. He encouraged Spamton to start shooting really high and try and get in with the Queen, telling him that he deserved it. 

And at first Spamton was still cool with the other Addisons, cause they had been buddies for a long time and mostly they were happy to see him finding success! But Mike had been talking for a while about how they were obviously jealous of him, and they might even want to sabotage his career before he had a chance to really make it big. And Spamton laughs this off at first thinking Mike is probably just paranoid and trying to look out for him, cause him and the others have been friends for ages, no way him getting a little popular would split them up.

But then one night he overhears one of them kinda complaining a bit about how he feels like Spamton has gotten real flashy recently, and maybe he could be a bit less in their face about how well he’s doing yknow? And the others don’t agree with him but they don’t disagree either, and with how hard Mike has been insisting not to trust them, that’s really all it takes. He feels kind of sick about it honestly, he’s worked so damn hard to get here and it’s a miracle it even happened in the first place and he’s not trying to show off! It’s just he can do nice things for them now! He wants to do nice things for them. And there they are, being . . . ungrateful. It stings more than he wants it to.

So he ghosts them. Stops going to meetups, makes up excuses, ignores calls. If they’re not interested in being friends with a big shot that’s fine, because he doesn’t need them, he’s got Mike, and he’s just landed a room in the Queen’s castle, of all places! He can start mixing with the high life, where people won’t get bitter at him just for spending a little money.

But it could never last forever. Mike starts getting really, really pushy. Spamton starts losing sleep, sometimes even skipping meals just to keep up with the demands of his benefactor, and he can hear the ringing of that fucking phone in what little sleep he manages to get. And he won’t stop talking about something called a “keygen”, barely offering him any help and rambling about freedom and other banal nonsense. Spamton starts getting worried. Has his boss gone off the deep end?

The thing is though, Spamton is honestly pretty smart, and despite some programming flaws, he was made to be a salesman. The only thing really holding him back was finding the right script and the voice to sell it, and thanks to Mike, he’s managed to get both. He’s sure he can manage on his own, even if for some reason the phone calls stopped. After all, Mike helped, but he was the one who earned a place in the palace.

The work doesn’t let up though, and it’s really starting to take its toll on him. The worst part though, is that no one really seems to notice, or if they do, they don’t care. He’s gotten a few pitying looks, some polite enquiries about his health that he’s smart enough to know they don’t want him answering honestly. He had cut himself off from the people he really cared about ages ago. He realizes he’s made a mistake. 

He calls Blue, spends the first 12 minutes of the call apologizing before he’s told to get to the point. He tells him that he wants to apologize for, well, everything. He’s been a shitty person, and an even worse friend. He wants to try and make amends. Blue . . . agrees, because honestly, they had missed him, even if he had been getting a bit boastful. Spamton is so thankful he damn near cries on the spot but Blue advises him to save the waterworks for the others cause they may not be as happy to see him.

He thanks him and hangs up, ready to make amends with his friends and maybe even take a day, or a week, off. He’s damn well earned it at this point. And then the phone rings. He’s tempted to just ignore it, the phone call with blue left him drained and he’s starting to get a headache but muscle memory wins out and he picks up the phone, putting on a wide grin.

“Spamton G. Addison speaking! I’m delighted to get your call and even happier to be of service!”

“What are you doing?”

His grin drops as he hears Mike’s voice on the line. “Oh, it’s you.” He says, grin falling into a scowl. “Listen, I’ve been working hard and doing everything you say, and I think I’m entitled to a little bit of time off. I need to patch stuff up with people, burned bridges aren’t good for any salesman, and besides, I-”

“No.”

Spamton stops, shock that quickly turns to annoyance filling his face. “What. Do you mean. No?” His tone makes it very clear that he’s reaching the end of his patience. He’s already decided he doesn’t really need Mike anymore, he can sustain himself. He had been hoping they could stay at least cordial. He gets the feeling now that that won’t happen.

“Bring me the KeyGEN.”

Spamton quickly loses his patience. 

“I’ve told you a million times, the Queen keeps whatever the hell that thing is under lock and fucking key. I could phase through walls and I wouldn’t be any closer to getting it for you. If you want it so bad why haven’t you tried getting it yourself, huh? I haven’t seen you around here once.” He actually hadn’t seen him period, so he wouldn’t realize even if he did, but that was irrelevant.

“Bring me the KeyGEN.”

“I’ve tried! I’ve been trying! Ever since I fucking got here in between all the fucking phone calls you’ve been forcing down my throat I’ve tried everything I can to get my hands on it! You need to lay the hell off or actually give me a plan to get the damn thing!” “Bring me the KeyGEN.”

Spamton sneered in disgust. “No. This conversation is over.”

“Is it?”

Always one to get the last word, Spamton retorts. “Yes, yes it is. Goodbye, f-forever-” He stops, a hand creeping up to his throat. 

“Is something wrong?”

Mike is never emotive, his words are always mind-numbingly monotone, but Spamton swears he sounds almost smug.

“No, nothing is w-wrong, asshole, now d-don’t ever c-c-call me ag-again!”

His hand comes up to hold his neck. What the fuck was going on?

“I think you still need me.”

That fucker, he was taunting him, a hundred percent. Spamton grimaced, even as a cold sweat broke out across his forehead and back. “Yeah? W-well, I think I do-don’t! Ev-even if you give me this da-damn stutter back!” He slammed the phone down onto the receiver. This was a blow, but even if his speech impediment was back, he wasn’t washed up. If anything, it could get him pity points, and he had gained enough that he could coast for a while before finding another line of work if he had to.

The phone jumped off of the receiver.

Spamton went cold, and picked it up to put it back on, intent on throwing the damn thing out of the window. As soon as his hand touched the phone though, he froze. He couldn’t move, actually couldn’t move. His feet felt glued to the floor, and his joints were locked stiff. The only move he could make, his arm jerking like it was being pulled, was to put the phone to his ear. Mike’s voice droned from the earpiece.

“Do you remember our deal, the official one?”

Spamton’s mind raced. Of course he remembered. After the one off phone call, they had gotten in touch again to hammer out the details. One point now stood out to him starkly, and his heart hammered in his chest. He had written it off as the guy being eccentric but, when they made the deal, Mike had said, in an almost cheerful tone, the most emotion Spamton had ever heard from the man, You’ll be my little puppet. He had laughed it off. He was a fucking idiot. His hands were shaking.

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t think he could’ve, anyway.

It started in his hand, the one holding the phone, tingling, like pins and needles. Then it spread down his arm, to his chest. It worked its way up his legs, up to his neck, his jaw, his eyes. He still couldn’t move

He was a fucking idiot.

The feeling intensified, slowly getting worse and worse til he couldn’t stand it and then he felt, instinctively, he could move his mouth again.

“W-what, what are you doing to me.”

Silence.

“H-hey buddy, c’mon, I w-was just s-stressed, I di-didn’t mean it, I s-swear!”

Silence.

“I-”

Silence.

“I-it burns! Ow! S-stop, h-help me, It BURNS-”

Silence.

After too long he finally fell blissfully unconscious.

Hours later he awoke with a groan, pushing himself up. He had had the weirdest dream. He guessed the lack of sleep finally really got to him. He put a hand to his forehead at the killer headache that assaulted him. Then he froze, the click of plastic on plastic sending a wave of spine-chilling nausea through him. Shaking, he pulled back his hand. Where there had once been smooth, perfect skin, there was hard plastic-porcelain, interrupted by seams and joints. He swiftly brought up his other hand. The same sight greeted him. Jumping to his feet and trying to ignore the way the room spun, he threw himself in front of his mirror. And almost screamed. 

His white hair had gone pitch black, his eyes an unsettling yellow with pinprick black pupils. His eyes were surrounded by dark makeup, a mocking parody of the bags that had formed from Mike's endless backbreaking schedule. His jaw, open in shock and horror, hung too far forward on a hinge, and he could tell that closed, his mouth would be forever set in a horrific imitation of his wide salesman smile. Red paint dotted his cheeks like some kind of fucking doll, or clown. Even what he could see of his chest past his rumpled shirt had grooves and an unnatural shine.

The phone was still off of the receiver.

He was a fucking idiot.

Picking up the phone, he opened his mouth, to yell, to beg, to cry.

Only for no sound to come out.

He tried again.

Nothing.

“I’m sure you’re wondering what it is I’ve done to you.”

Spamton jumped at Mike's voice, and opened his mouth to do something, anything.

Nothing.

“I have needed a puppet for a long time. To get me what I want. You have failed.”

“[[what]] [[have]] [[you]] [[done to]] [[me]].”

Spamton choked on the words, his voice a horrible cut up parody of the one on the phone.

“Nothing that your own arrogance didn’t do already. Did you really think you could borrow my words and pay no price for failure. Anyone could see this was not a one-sided deal of help. You have failed to please me, and so this is adequate payment.”

“[[help]] [[me]], [[please]]”

“No.”

The line went dead.

Spamton stared down at the dead receiver for what felt like hours.

He dropped it and let it thud against the wall.

It only took a week after that for everything to fall apart. After all, what good is a salesman with no voice. He managed to steal most of the words he needed from the concerned and disgusted talk of the residents of the palace, everyone looking at him with barely disguised chagrin. His speech was a horrible mismatch of everyone around him and it put off everyone, including himself. He found out that the sick bastard had left him only his screaming from that night as the remains of his old voice. And then the advertisements started. Then the glitches, and the tics. Nothing of his body was his anymore. He couldn’t face anyone. He could barely face himself. He ran from the palace before they could evict him, an older rotary phone the only thing he took with him, a half-formed, desperate, sleep-deprived hope. When Blue came to the palace later that day, the only thing he found was the wall mounted phone in his room, hanging off the receiver. 

He needed his life back.

He needed his voice back.

He needed

He needed

He needed

Freedom.

#anyway that was long as shit lmao #if u read all of it hope u enjoy my attempt at coherent writing #but yeah to elaborate #I hc that spamton can only speak in borrowed words #even his voice usually isn't his he's just gathered enough of one particular voice for it to sound consistent #the word repitition and tics are mostly just me projecting bc I have ADHD lmaoo #but yeah our mans was literally transformed into a puppet #fucking rip #he ends up not patching things up with the addisons by the time the main game comes around just because he can't work up the nerve #to face them after everything #spamton #spamton g spamton #deltarune #deltarune chapter 2 #deltarune spoilers #I guess #my writing #body horror #existential horror to a little bit

[doubleca5t]

i know you’re not a fan of the citrus anime, but is the manga any good?

short answer: no

long answer:

if you spend any amount of time in the yuri fandom, you will eventually have to contend with Citrus. It’s one of the most popular manga in the genre, so it’s kind of unavoidable. And whenever Citrus comes up, you’ll usually hear from a lot of people telling you not to read it because the core premise of Citrus is two girls, Mei and Yuzu, falling in love shortly after becoming STEP-SISTERS, and the first few chapters involve Mei repeatedly sexually assaulting Yuzu (this actually goes the other way around at one point as well, though that doesn’t exactly make things any better). I am here to tell you that those people are wrong.

Let me explain.

Citrus is an infuriating 10 volume cocktease of a manga. What I mean by this is that reading Citrus, it gives you the impression that it could get really good like any chapter now, and then it just never does. The art is good, the main character, Yuzu, is super compelling and entertaining (and imo I think she’s the reason this manga has such a massive fanbase because she can be a Mood And A Half sometimes), it’s got some pretty strong emotional moments and a lot of good comedy here and there. But this is a situation where the whole is very much less than the sum of its parts. This manga has a lot of elements that are individually satisfying, but they don’t come together into a compelling narrative. I think there are two big overarching reasons why.

1) Citrus does not create and resolve conflicts in a satisfying way

A romance manga like Citrus is very much about the journey, not the destination. You know Mei and Yuzu are going to get together, it’s just a matter of how they get together and what sort of obstacles keep that from happening until the very end. This is why so many romance manga rely on tsundere/enemies-to-lovers scenarios. The harder it is for the characters to admit their true feelings for each other, the more you can stretch out the narrative and the more chapters of manga you can get out of it. A good example of this in the yuri world is Bloom into You, where the main characters have done so many mental gymnastics to convince themselves they either can’t love or can’t be loved that as the audience you’re like “shit, I know these two are gonna get together eventually but how the fuck are they gonna get out from this nonsense?”

Citrus has no goddamn idea how to do this.

A huge chunk of the first four volumes is spent introducing side characters who appear to be potential romantic rivals for either Mei or Yuzu. These characters  can be pretty entertaining in their own right, but all the dramatic tension around them falls consistently flat. The solution to every problem presented by these rivals is just talking to whichever girl they were interested in, because said girl (either Mei or Yuzu) was never interested in the rival to begin with. These arcs feel unsatisfying because the way the problem is resolved would suggest, on some level, that these were never problems in the first place. All of this could have been avoided if the characters had just talked to each other.

And this same problem rears its head near the end of the series as well, the worst example being the ending. Mei separates from Yuzu suddenly and in dramatic fashion because her grandfather is forcing her into what is essentially an arranged marriage. The chapter where we learn about this is legitimately emotionally affecting, with the slow build-up to Yuzu learning that Mei never wants to see her again. It gets you in a way that nothing else in this series really does. But then the solution to all of this is just Yuzu proposing to Mei? And the whole family just goes along with this?? Despite them being step sisters???? Like you’d think the problem here is that Mei’s grandfather is very traditional and conservative. Like he doesn’t just want her to get married before she took over the academy, he wants her to marry a specific person from a rich family that he chose. But no, apparently the step sister marriage is a-ok! which means the only real problem here is that Mei didn’t tell Yuzu about any of this shit until it was already in motion, which brings us to the second core issue:

2) Mei does not change or improve

Mei causes a huge percentage of the conflict in this series. And not only does she cause it, she causes it in exactly the same way over and over again. Mei’s big, defining character flaw is that she’s emotionally distant and bad at communicating. Because of this, Mei repeatedly conceals information from Yuzu for, at least as far as the audience can tell, no discernible reason, creating conflict that never needed to be there. This takes the form of the previously mentioned final chapters, the first volume or so where Mei forces herself onto Yuzu rather than just telling her how she feels, that whole nonsense with Sara, and so, so much more. Citrus runs on the logic of a corny 90s sitcom. Every problem is based on a misunderstanding or a miscommunication, so everything can be resolved if the characters just fucking talked to each other. This sort of storytelling can work if you’re writing a farce (like every other Shakespeare comedy was based on a case of mistaken identity) but in a drama it’s fucking infuriating.

It would be one thing if there was an arc where the core problem was that Mei doesn’t know how to communicate, and at the end of that arc, she realizes what the problem is and spends the rest of the series actively trying to improve. That would be fine. But instead, no matter how many times Mei is shown that failing to talk to her step-sister/gf causes nothing but trouble, she just... keeps doing it, either because Saburouta thinks that’s such an important element of her character that it’s not possible to change it, or because it’s a cheap and easy way to add conflict to a relationship where none would exist otherwise.

I think the final straw for me was when I tried reading Citrus+, which takes place after Yuzu’s proposal in the final chapter of Citrus. Within the first volume, Mei goes right back to her old tricks of being moody and evasive and leaving Yuzu to guess at what might be wrong. THESE TWO ARE FUCKING ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED, BUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP HAS BEEN STUCK IN THE SAME PLACE SINCE VOLUME 5 BECAUSE MEI CAN’T IMPROVE! At some point, it starts to feel like that line about the definition of insanity from Far Cry 3. You’re just doing the same shit over and over again expecting different results.

So to put it bluntly, it would be inaccurate to say that you shouldn’t read Citrus because it’s about a pair of step-sisters taking turns sexually assaulting each other.

You shouldn’t read Citrus because it sucks.

[calaofnoldor]

Sixth Time’s the Charm [4]

(GIF credit: @teamfreewill-imagine)

Characters: Sam x F!Reader, Dean

Words: 6,107

Series Summary: All the times Dean has tried to get Sam to admit his feelings for you. (Each chapter can be read as a stand-alone.)

Chapter Summary: You offer yourself as bait for a shapeshifter hunt. Things do not go as planned.

Warnings: canon level violence, language, idiots in love, mutual pining, huffy!sam, protective!sam, slight angst?, slow burn, fluff

A/N: i am SO sorry for the wait (story of my life) but to make up for it, look, 6k words! (yeah i’m sorry about that too, i don’t know what happened there.) written for @tvdspngirl314‘s birthday writing event with the prompt “You ever feel like that? Like you were just destined for someone?” which is bolded in the fic. this also fills a square for @spnfluffbingo​!

Square Filled: Rescue Mission

← BACK UP | MASTERLIST | SERIES MASTERLIST

The fourth time was all you. Dean barely had to lift a finger. The result, however, was far more traumatic than he had planned and rather emphatically revealed the magnitude of his brother’s feelings toward you.

Much like the previous attempts, there was a case: a shapeshifter going after women who conveniently happened to fit your description. The strategy was obvious, and you’d leaped at the opportunity to both make yourself useful and hopefully take the place of what would have otherwise been the next innocent civilian victim. But of course, Sam resisted at first.

“No. Absolutely not! We don’t know enough about this guy for you to just jump into his waiting arms, Y/N!” The fervent indignation in his tone and body language was palpable. Sam was rarely one to raise his voice or sport much of a temper at all really, but lately these heated outbursts seemed to be occurring more frequently, and frankly you were getting sick of it. The false hope they momentarily granted you through the notion that perhaps he cared about you as more than a friend was one thing. What’s more, the way his voice lowered half an octave combined with the sight of his flared nostrils, puffed chest, and straining jaw always seemed to have a sideways effect on you, in that it was impossible to keep your attention on his words alone. But boy did you try.

“Sam, how many times do we have to go through this? I’m a big girl; I can take care of myself. And your wrist is still healing so it’s not like you can call the shots on this one anyway. Besides, I’m not going in alone. You and Dean will be there for backup the whole time, right?”

“’Course we will, eh Sammy?” In a strange turn of events, Dean often appeared to be the one with a more jovial outlook recently.

Sam merely nodded and continued his heavy breathing. He glared down at his bandaged left wrist, the result of skirmish with a couple of wraiths, as if it were the root of all his problems. Then he looked up and through densely drawn brows, those magnetizing multicolored eyes pierced yours, his countenance bearing a charged and sullen expression of pensive exasperation as his jaw visibly tightened. You swallowed and could not for the life of you find the will to look away.

“So it’s settled then,” Dean proclaimed jubilantly, “Unless… you’ve got another reason you don’t want Y/N playing bait, hmm Sam? Maybe something you wanna share with the class? Or, you know, I could leave…”

“Dean, stop it. You’re not helping,” you quickly admonished before steadying your gaze back on the taller Winchester, “Look, Sam, have I ever let you down?”

“No. Never.”

“And do you still trust me?”

“Of course,” he responded immediately in a ‘what-kind-of-a-question-is-that’ tone, at which you simply raised your eyebrow to send him a reciprocating ‘then-what’s-the-problem?’ look.

“OK fine,” Sam huffed out a big breath, “But you’re not taking any risks! Anything seems off at all, just… promise me you’ll wait for me and Dean and keep us in the loop?”

His pleading eyes were so earnest and you’d truly never been able to say no to the giant puppy before, so you offered him a little smile and said, “Cross my heart.”

Sighing, Sam rubbed his face, looking lost in thought for a moment until he spoke up again, much more reserved and hesitant this time, “Do you still have that uh… ring from… that time?” Dean muffled a snort at his brother’s expense but you both ignored him, completely accustomed to his nonsensical teasing by now.

“Uh yeah, I- I think so.” The uncertainty in your voice was a lie. Of course you still had the ring you’d once used to pretend to be married to Sam Winchester. You may or may not have tucked it away in a special place for safekeeping.

“Good,” Sam nodded curtly, “I want you to wear it. It’s silver. I’ll wear mine too and Dean already has his. That’s how we’ll know that we’re still… ourselves.”

“OK, yeah that’s a good idea,” you agreed, trying your hardest not to linger on the memories.

“Well look at you two! Getting hitched again so soon-“

“Shut up, Dean,” you and Sam cut him off together.

When the meeting was adjourned and you were about to part ways to prepare for the upcoming hunt, something inside you forced you to call out his name, “Oh and Sam!” He turned around at once, questioning gaze somewhat urgently searching yours for a sign of what might come next. You stuttered though, feeling suddenly self conscious, so the next words you uttered were not much louder than a whisper, “Be careful with your wrist.”

Sam smiled, his dimples making your fingers twitch with the need to caress them. “I’ll be fine. You just look out for yourself. Remember, we’ll be right behind you.”

Somehow you both didn’t hear the groan Dean emitted as he rolled his eyes to the ceiling and prayed to whoever was listening, ‘Good lord, someone give me the strength to survive another day with these imbeciles.’

There was only one diner in the tiny Pennsylvanian town, and seeing as you were starving by the time you got there, the three of you were forced to make do with soggy fries and questionable milkshakes. As you ate, you went through your game plan once more, which essentially consisted of waiting until nightfall to visit the bar from where the previous girls had gone missing, while Sam and Dean shadowed you covertly.

Before you left, you took a quick trip to the loo and when you returned, Sam was stood outside alone, a broad smile upon his face.

“Where’s Dean?” you asked as you began to walk out the diner, expecting to find the older brother waiting impatiently in the parking lot by his precious car, but the Impala was gone.

“He went back to the motel, said he had something to take care of and that we should go scope the place out first.”

“But I thought we agreed to-“

“Yeah, well change of plans, you know how it is,” Sam replied casually with a shrug.

Little red flags started fluttering in your head, urging your eyes downward to locate the silver band on his finger. You frowned when you found it there untouched on his right hand; Sam almost never interrupted you, not even when he was absorbed in the foulest of moods.  

Apparently sensing your hesitation, he added, “I mean, he made a good point. Maybe if you familiarize yourself with the surroundings first, you’ll be able to take the guy out faster.”

Sam was still smiling at you, but it felt all wrong. You couldn’t explain it, but there was something missing from his rainbow eyes. The colors were all there, but they lacked luster and warmth, a delicate twinkle that you’d learned to associate with the beautiful, heroic yet self-doubting giant of a man. Never had you seen that breathtaking magic replicated elsewhere, nor had you ever seen Sam without it, which was why you were almost completely certain that the man before you was not the real Sam Winchester.

But weaving within you was a thread of doubt, insisting that you couldn’t just pull a gun on your best friend because of something as trivial as… a feeling? No, you needed to test your theory. And so, bracing yourself with a deep breath, you slowly reached out your silver-equipped hand to do something you’d grown accustomed to resentfully abstaining from: touching Sam’s bare skin. You aimed for the large target of his hand, deeming it the most inconspicuous of places (given that he was wearing his hunters’ uniform and the only other visible option would’ve been his face or neck), but Sam was faster. Just before you were able to graze his skin with your ring, he caught your wrist in his much bigger hand and pulled it away, twisting your arm until it was locked painfully behind you.

“You think you’re smart, huh?” the shifter snarled with a flash of its eyes, moving in real close as he used Sam’s immense size and his own superhuman strength to easily constrain you.

Even so, you stared up at him defiantly, unafraid, “Sam and Dean will be back.”

“That’s the plan.”

Sam’s sneering face and threatening voice were the last things you saw or heard.

You had no way of determining how much time had passed when you unceremoniously came to in what looked and smelled to be an underground sewer. As your senses sharpened and your muddled brain began to size up your current plight, you nearly scoffed at the clichéd style of your captor. Sat on a peeling wooden chair, manila rope bound your wrists together behind your back and tethered your ankles securely to each of the seat’s front legs.

Ignoring the ache in your head, you set about strategically testing the knots and the integrity of the wood. If only you could reach the silver blade in your boot. But your attempts were interrupted by the reappearance of the shifter, whose shoe hit something as he stepped before you. A metallic clang echoed through the confined space as a result and you followed the sound to find your coveted knife on the ground, far beyond your reach.

“Fucking hunters, always think they’re so clever, always one step ahead because it’s their game. Sure, we might be the monsters but you’re the predators! So let’s see how you like being the prey for once.” Shifter Sam’s upper lip curled up in a way that seemed so foreign to you as he leaned forward to rest his hands on either arm of your chair, caging you in.

The malicious glint in his eye left you with no qualms about affronting this being who, for all intents and purposes, appeared identical to the man you’d recently discovered you were in love with. Lifting your chin, you glared up at him brazenly, “If you’re so keen on being the predator then why am I still alive? What are you waiting for?”

“Why your knight in shining armor of course!” he exclaimed, backing up as he stood to his full height and gestured to himself with both hands. “You think it was a coincidence that all those women looked like you?”

The shifter’s narrowed eyes were alight with amusement and a ripple of fear surged through your body. You were in much deeper than you or the boys had anticipated, though years of practice helped you keep your voice steady and bold, “What did you do to them?”

“Oh, I gave them a fairly painless death, don’t you worry. They were just stepping stones on my way to you. See, the Winchesters owe me a girlfriend, so I figured I’d take the closest thing to theirs. But imagine my joyous surprise when I got into this big lug’s head and discovered that he’s in love with you! No, actually it’s more than that. He’s obsessed with you; you never leave his brain! Every other thought and memory is about you... Well, it’s either you or his brother, but oh, it’s gonna kill him to see you die before his eyes. I might’ve been able to replace my dead girlfriend, but I don’t think Sam here will ever come back from losing you.”

Stunned into silence, the stupid influx of misguided hormones pumping through your veins forced you to focus on maintaining a neutral expression as he rattled on.

“And you feel the same way, don’t you? So this really will be a double kill. It’s OK, you can let it all out. I might be a monster but I’m not one to deny the dying their chance for some last words. Besides, you can say it all while looking into the eyes of the man you love.”

“Fuck you,” were the only words you could trust yourself to spit out at him.

‘Sam’ laughed, but it was nothing like the laughs you normally pulled from him. It didn’t radiate like sunshine or replenish your soul with glee. Rather, it was chilling and conniving and despite the mimicry of Sam’s beautiful voice, you immediately decided that you never wanted to hear it again.

“Not feeling too talkative, huh? Or maybe you’d rather wait until he gets here in the flesh to make that anticlimactic confession of love? That’s alright, I can just tell you more about this dumbass’s feelings for you.” The shifter chuckled with delight, as if every word brought him nothing but pure joy. “Man, he loves you so much, it’s insane. I’ve never been inside the skin of someone so in love. And I thought I really loved my ex. Afterall, this whole revenge thing is for her. But I gotta tell ya, I’ve got nothing on Sam Winchester. Did you know he thinks you were made specifically for him? You ever feel like that? Like you were just destined for someone? Cause Sam does. That’s how he feels about you.”

“Why should I believe you?” you challenged, growing tired of the inadvertent response his words were eliciting. Your heart was pounding in your neck, core trembling at the mere possibility of Sam genuinely feeling the way he’d described. But you knew better than to trust a monster, and one who was in pursuit of maximal vengeance no less. Still, those rose-colored thoughts resonated within you, and you stumbled to dismiss them as they bubbled up, one after another like a game of emotional whack-a-mole.

Shifter Sam smirked, “Yeah, you’re a cynical one, aren’t you? You know everything he said in that marriage counseling session was true. You kinda hurt his feelings when you just brushed it all off. Even big brother Dean’s been trying to get him to confess his love for you. You must’ve heard them arguing about it at some point? They weren’t exactly being discreet.”

Choosing not to respond, you simply scowled at him.

“No? Still in denial? Perhaps you need details… You ever notice how he always sits across from you whenever you’re doing research? It’s because he thinks you’re gorgeous when you’re focused, and it gives him an opportunity to admire you without getting caught. And why do you think he lets you call him Sammy, huh? Yeah, he might not let it on but he fucking loves it when you do, makes him feel all tingly inside. And you remember that cop who hit on you? Captain Anderson, was it? Sam wanted to break the guy’s nose just for touching you. Oh and why do you think he asked you to move into the bedroom closest to his? It’s so he can keep track of your nightmares. He likes to keep you close because it makes him feel like he can protect you better when you need it.”

By now, your ‘neutral expression’ must have surely mutated to betray your shock, and you couldn’t have answered if you tried. The shifter didn’t seem to mind either way. In fact, he appeared to be having the time of his life.

“And it’s not all pure thoughts, let me tell you! Oh man, buddy boy here has dreamed up plenty of X-rated scenes with you, ranging from obnoxiously romantic to just plain obscene. You name a position and he’s imagined it, in high-definition detail,” he embellished, tapping an index finger against his temple, “His mind is like a library of pornos starring the two of you, although he’ll never get to live out any of his fantasies, will he? It’s a shame really; some of these are really hot... Ooh, I’ll have to borrow that one,” he said with closed eyes, as if a figment of Sam’s imagination was playing through his head in that very moment, “Maybe my girl and I can re-enact it while we’re still in your skins-”

“Shut up, just shut up!” you finally bellowed in protest.

Sam watched the bathroom door attentively after you’d disappeared through it, unable to contain the upward jerk of his lips when he saw you walking back out of it. Heartwarming relief had become his body’s intrinsic response to seeing you safe and sound.

“You ready?” he questioned when you made it to his side.

“Yeah, I’m good.” God, even the sound of your voice made him happy.

Once you got back to the motel, Dean plopped down onto one of the full-size beds, exhausted from the drive. Within a matter of seconds, snores began to fill the room, and Sam chuckled under his breath as he sat down around a wobbly table with you to continue your research on the shifter’s victims, hoping to find something else that linked them together or a clue as to where they might’ve been taken.

It wasn’t long before you inhaled a revelatory gasp and abruptly clutched Sam’s wrist to show him what you’d found. But your grip was harsh, causing him to hiss in pain and do something he’d never before done: recoil from your touch.

“Oh, I’m sorry, does it still hurt?” you asked nonchalantly, smiling up at him innocently.

Worse than the pain in his fractured wrist was what felt like sirens blaring in his head. You were always hyper-cognizant of his injuries and exceedingly careful around them, sometimes even more so than himself. Sam looked you over subtly, eyes landing on the silver ring still upon your finger. Perhaps his mind had been playing tricks on him and all that tender attention he thought you’d shown him was simply a mirage of his own wishful thinking?

“It’s fine, I just wasn’t expecting it.” Sam sent you a tight smile, to which you responded with a dazzling one of your own. It was beautiful but something about it felt off. In the past, you apologized profusely if ever you found yourself the accidental cause of his discomfort, no matter how indirect or insignificant the case, but right now there wasn’t a single speck of concern in your eyes. Indeed, the more he looked into them, the more he struggled to recognize the person staring back at him.

In a flash, Sam had you up against the wall, a silver blade held against your neck. He looked down to see the metal sizzling there, burning your flesh, and cursed himself for failing to notice sooner.

The noise woke Dean from his slumber and what he saw when he opened his eyes was equal parts shocking and amusing. “Whoa! At least wait till I’m out of the room! And isn’t that a little kinky for your first time?”

“Dean, it’s not her. She’s not Y/N,” Sam grit out, “She’s wearing the ring but she’s not Y/N.”

His brother’s brows knit together as he rubbed the sleep from his emerald greens. “Wha- How did you know?”

“She was acting… weird.”

Dean scrambled off the bed, making a quick call on his phone to ensure you really were missing. He paled when a robotic voice over the line told him the number he was trying to reach was no longer in service.

It was then the shifter decided to speak up, “You know, the real Y/N would have liked this, you pressing her up against a wall?” she murmured suggestively.

“Shut up. Where is she?!” Sam slammed her body against the flimsy motel wall once more and dug the knife in a little deeper. In his panic-stricken state, he barely registered her remark, being driven entirely by a one-track mind at present.

Shifter Y/N grimaced slightly, glancing down at the knife, “Maybe if you stop cutting into me with that, I might consider telling you.”

“How did you get the ring?”

“Oh, this little thing? You like it? It’s imitation silver, but otherwise nearly identical to the one on the real Y/N’s finger. You see, we’ve been following you for a while now.”

“Who’s we? Where did you take Y/N?!” he demanded incessantly.

“My boyfriend’s got her, but don’t worry, he looks just like you so I’m sure she’ll find her accommodations to her liking,” she retorted with a smirk.

Sam’s heart lunged in his chest and his mind began whirring with endless possibilities of escalating dread. Had you been deceived and captured by a shifter pretending to be him? Were you being hurt or tortured by someone who looked exactly like him? How would you ever be able to look at him the same way again? Of course, you’d know it wasn’t Sam but the damage would still be done. You would forever remember his face as that of someone who once hurt you, who tried to kill you. That is, if Sam could make it to you in time.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get to see her one last time. That’s actually why I’m here, to take you to her when the time is right,” the shifter added casually.

“I will end your miserable fucking life! Tell me where she is right now!” Sam roared before pressing the blade further into her neck, the veins in his forearms ready to burst through his skin.

“Hey, hey! Sammy, ease up! We need her alive, alright?” Dean bounded over to his brother and after quite the struggle, managed to assuage him enough to release his vice grip and replace it with silver chains that shackled her to a chair.

“Sam, maybe we should also be asking ‘why’,” Dean mused as he fastened the end of a chain against one of the beds.

With a shake of his head, Sam avowed through grinding teeth, “I don’t fucking care. I have to get to her.”

“And what if it’s a trap?”

“Then I’ll find her myself.”

Dean scoffed in disbelief as he turned to his usually wise and level-headed little brother, “Oh yeah, and how’re you gonna do that? Where would you even start?”

“I don’t know!” Sam exclaimed in exasperation. Then, after a pause of desperate deliberation alleged, “Shifters like to make their lairs in sewers, right?”

Taking a step closer, Dean maintained his challenging tone, “So what are you gonna do, just wade through the entire town’s shit and piss until you find her?!”

“If that's what it takes, then yes!” Sam looked like he was about to eat his brother alive.

“Aww, that’s so sweet,” shifter Y/N interfered from her seated position before them, raising her chin to meet Sam’s eyes, “Don’t worry, handsome, I can tell you she feels the same way. But unfortunately, by the time you get to her, I don’t think she’ll be able to tell you herself. In fact, you’ll probably hardly recognize her anymore… so you might want to keep me around, if only as a souvenir of your soon-to-be-dead girlfriend.”

Sam couldn’t contain himself anymore. Despite looking like a carbon copy of you, the evil gleam in the shifter’s eyes made her easily differentiable, and so Sam held back nothing when he lunged across the distance, knife in hand ready to do some real damage. However, Dean pounced with him, having predicted his brother’s violent eruption and felt his shaking wrath, knowing a little too well just how rash he could be when it came to you. Still, it took all of Dean’s strength to pull Sam back, sending him a stern but knowing look once he did.

“Sam, stop!” His low voice rumbled as he went into authoritative big brother mode, “Listen to me, you wanna save Y/N? Well so do I, but this is not how we do it! Now I know it’s hard, but I need you to calm down, alright?”

Sam’s massive chest was practically at his chin as he heaved ginormous breaths. Though his body language was still offensive, his hazel eyes were filled with fear and devastation when they looked toward his brother, “Dean, if I don't get to her in time, I’ll...” Clenching his jaw, Sam made a fruitless attempt to calm his tremoring frame and quell his tumultuous emotions. What would he do? Sam wasn’t even sure himself. All he knew was that every cell in his being was currently screaming at him to get to you, to make sure you were safe and soothe away any of your pain. There was nothing he wouldn’t give in that moment to simply know you were alright and to hold you in his arms. He knew you could look after yourself, but for once he had a terrifying feeling that even you were in over your head, that you might actually need him this time, and he’d be fucking damned if he let you down.

“Woah! Hey, hey! Sammy, look at me! That ain’t gonna happen, alright? We’re gonna find Y/N and we’re gonna bring her home in one piece, you hear me? We’re the Winchesters, man! We’ve faced the end of the world. What’s a couple of shifters got on us?”

‘You,’ Sam thought, ‘They’ve got you.’ But he appreciated Dean’s pep talk nonetheless and nodded in response as a fresh surge of determination swelled within him.

“Alright then,” Dean nodded as well, “Why don’t you let me give her a go?”

As Dean’s silver blade cut into the detained shapeshifter, Sam flinched with every moan and howl of agony. He knew it wasn’t you, but she still had your voice and your perfect face. Yet not a second was wasted on the feeling of relief when they finally managed to get a location out of her. Sam nearly tripped over himself in his haste as he snatched the Impala’s keys and his gun before flying out of the room with a jumbled order for Dean to stay with the monster.

“Well, if you’re not gonna admit your feelings for the giant lumberjack, I guess you’re right. Maybe I should stop yapping and get to prettying you up for that first and last date of yours, huh?” Shifter Sam prodded your cheek with a switchblade.

You said nothing. At this point, you had a sneaking suspicion that physical pain might be more bearable than the psychological torment your imprisoner had been so keen on. It was one thing for you to torture yourself by entertaining the slim possibility that Sam might return your feelings for him, but to hear such outrageous perceptions from a creature who could read the inside of his mind like a paperback novel, and conveyed with such tantalizing conviction… well, it just about broke you.

And knowing that the shifter was yearning to coax a confession out of you simply to cause Sam as much anguish as possible made you more resolute about your refusal to submit, beyond the need to protect your own sanity.

One shiner and a slash to the thigh later, however, you heard a loud clash. Shifter Sam paused his handiwork and began to turn around, “Could your knight be here ahead of schedule?”

‘Dammit,’ you thought. The Winchesters were usually capable of being stealthy when necessary but in case it really was the sound of them making a blunder or encountering some other form of resistance, you figured you’d buy them a distraction.

“Wait, wait! You’re right, OK? Maybe I do feel something for Sam, but even if I told him, I think you’re forgetting… This is Sam fucking Winchester we’re talking about here. He’s been tortured by the devil himself. You really think killing me is going do much damage?”

Your abductor had now given you his full attention, leering at you with a sly smile, so you continued, “Besides, you picked a fight with the Winchesters; don't expect to live to see tomorrow.”

Right on cue, a hulking blur of hair and plaid came barreling in, growling ferally as he grabbed the shifter and threw more than one brutal punch against what appeared to be his own face. The silver ring on Sam’s hand made contact with skin and his shifter counterpart groaned in pain.

You nearly forgot about your ceaseless work of untying the rope that cuffed your wrists together as your looked on in shock. Why Sam hadn’t just shot him with a silver bullet was beyond you. He was smarter than this. There was no need to drag out a monster’s death if a more efficient option existed. But as he continued to engage his clone in hand-to-hand combat, it appeared almost as if he was venting his frustrations on the shifter, as if he drank up every ounce of hurt he was able to inflict. But his high only lasted so long and shifter Sam soon regained his balance, making use of his supernatural invulnerability and superior strength.

“Sam!” you screamed as the shifter threw him across the room.

He tumbled up just in time as the shifter meandered over, “So nice of you to join us, Sam. You know, Y/N here was just telling me about-“

Sam didn’t wait for him to finish, choosing instead to tackle him to the floor with a loud grunt. While they wrestled on the ground, you worked furiously at the knots behind you, wincing with every hit Sam took though it was becoming hard to tell them apart.

When Sam finally drew his gun, the shifter was able to divert its barrel and a shot rang out futilely. Catching a subsequent elbow to the ribs had Sam falling to his knees and you watched in horror as shifter Sam once again gained the upper hand, sending the gun flying out of Sam’s grasp. The binding around your wrists was just about undone when Sam seized a stray rusty pipe and swung it against his counterfeit. Shifter Sam was incapacitated for a brief instant but quickly returned to form with some vicious hooks and a couple of well-placed knees.

With your hands finally free of their restraints, you staggered over to the gun, the chair still attached at your ankles. As you took aim, you shouted, “Sam, get down!” before you shot his mirror image through the heart.

Sighing, you slumped to your hands and knees whilst the real Sam sat up with his back against a wall, gaping at you with a look of awe. Yet before he even caught his breath, he was up and gliding toward you, cradling his left wrist at an awkward angle.

“Sam, your wrist!”

“It’s fine, are you OK?” he swiftly dismissed your concern, cupping your face with his good hand as he examined the darkening bruise around your eye.

You ignored the palpitations in your chest and placed a hand upon his wrist, “Yeah, I’m fine. He wasted more time playing mind games than anything. You know villains and their monologues,” you joked, trying to ease his tension and the deluded self-imposed guilt you knew he must’ve been brewing in.

As if to prove your point, Sam lamented, “God, I’m so sorry. I should have known. I should have gotten here sooner.”

“What? No! They were miles ahead of us, Sam. The whole thing was a set up; this was their hunt. How could you have known?”

Rather than replying, he released a breath and busied himself trying to help you out of your binding.

Back at the motel, after icing your eye and stitching up your thigh, you insisted on re-wrapping Sam’s wrist while Dean took care of shifter Y/N’s remains. But when the older Winchester returned and spied you and his brother sitting together on a bed through a crack in the door, he couldn’t resist the chance to exercise his espionage skills.

“How did you know she wasn’t me anyway?” you asked as you gently wound the ace bandage around Sam’s swollen forearm.

“I just…” He looked down at your nimble fingers upon his skin and smiled unwittingly at their tender touch, “had a feeling.”

Sam’s sunflower gaze locked onto yours for a frozen instant and something about his soft expression made you forget what words were, until he cleared his throat, “Did you um- did you know he wasn’t me?”

“Yeah,” you confirmed, smiling for some strange reason. Perhaps you were just glad to see his trademark twinkle return to those otherworldly eyes. “Pretty soon after actually. I… had a feeling too.”

Sam’s dimples made every ache in your body disappear as that twinkle glistened in full force, “And how’d you know which one to shoot?”

Well, that dampened your mood and brought you back to the task at hand, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you kept grimacing every time you used your left wrist?” Although your words had a bitter force behind them, the pressure beneath your fingertips never increased and Sam had almost completely forgotten about his pain.

You, on the other hand, were reminded of your struggle to reconcile with what had happened since his question prompted a restored and growing frustration.

It had been bugging you the whole time and you felt compelled to confront him about it because storming in alone with a bad wrist, ready to throw hands with an out-of-his-league monster was really not Sam’s style. Something must’ve gotten into him and with everything the shifter had told you, you couldn’t help but wonder. Nevertheless, you were a little afraid of how he might answer, so Dean had to lean in closer to hear your next words.

“Why didn’t you just shoot him?”

“W-what do you mean?” Sam stammered out after a pause.

“Sam, you have a broken wrist, but instead of sending Dean or using your gun from the get-go, you came in like a madman and went after him with your fists!” Your voice was full of incredulity though it also carried an undertone of anger.

As Sam picked up on that reproachful tone, you could almost feel the telltale signs of his puppy dog eyes coming on. “He used my face to deceive you, to hurt you. They manipulated us. I had to- ...I mean, he killed those women just to get us here. He had it coming!”

Your hopes plummeted. Of course, Sam was ever the righteous man. Why would you assume his brashness had been purely born out of a need to avenge you? Though regardless of his reason, you were still upset about his self-destructing behavior, “Yeah, but you had to have realized you were in no position to be the one to give it to him, right? I mean, you might’ve looked the same but he was juiced up on monster superpowers, Sam… which meant he was stronger and faster, not to mention uninjured, in his own territory, and apparently the only one with a sound plan.”

A breath of laughter left Sam’s lips though there was no smile on his face. Here he’d been on a mission to save you, but you were the one who’d ended up saving him, again. You must’ve thought he was comically stupid and pathetically useless. How could he possibly think he was worthy of you? “I guess I should thank you for saving my ass again, huh?”

“What?! No! That’s not what I mean. Sam, you’re the one who saved me! And I’m beyond grateful for it, really I am. I just wish you didn’t hurt yourself more in the process.” You finally finished up with his wrist wrap, securing the final ends with a clip, and letting your hands linger on his for longer than necessary, momentarily distracted by the disparity of size between them. Sam didn’t appear uncomfortable though, as his fingers twitched closer to yours and he made no move to pull away.

He couldn’t help but smile again when he noticed the sincere concern in your eyes that was previously absent in the shifter’s. “Yeah well, what was it you once said to me? ‘Your ass will always be worth it’?” 

“And if I remember correctly, you once told me you don’t do things on hunts that make your injuries worse,” you quoted him back with an arched brow.

“Yeah well, I guess this is payback. Now you know how I felt.” A playful grin made his dimples deepen and you clenched your jaw to refrain from gushing over the ridiculous cuteness of this ‘giant lumberjack’.

“You’re an idiot.”

“As long as you’re OK,” Sam answered assuredly, and you nearly melted when his free hand caressed your cheek for the second time that day, big thumb tracing a feather-light path below the purpled skin.

‘You’re both fucking idiots,’ Dean groaned internally from the other side of the door. He knew he had no choice but to up his game.

thanks so much for reading! feedback is greatly appreciated!

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TEAM IDJITS: @mrswhozeewhatsis @carryonmywaywardbucky​ @swiftlymoniquesblog @moosewinchester @sams-sass​ @thinkinghardhardlythinking​​ @jotink78 @winifrede @writingforthelonelysoul @turtletaylor98 @lyarr24 @deanwanddamons​ @peridottea91​ @tvdspngirl314​ @idreamofplaid​​ @samsgirl2020​​ @katwed​​

TEAM MOOSE: @paulaern​

#sam winchester x reader #sam x reader #spnfluffbingo2021 #allyswritingevent #protective!sam #huffy!sam #sam winchester x you #sam x y/n #sam winchester x female!reader #sam x female!reader #supernatural x reader #sam winchester fluff #spn #fanfiction #mini series #sttc #my writing #text

[sitp-recs]

(Perfect artwork for Modern Love, by @cambiodipolvere)

Today is the day of one of my favorite people! And I totally resent @tackytigerfic and Starry for almost sharing the same birthday, god the STRESS 😂 Tacky is my first and closest fandom friend. We clicked together so fast and easy that sometimes it feels like I’ve known her all my life, like we’re two dog moms living in the same neighborhood who happen to read fic in their free time. Despite our conflicting time zones and crazy schedules we manage to chat every other day, tagging and sending each other all kinds of stuff, coming together to cry scream about a brilliant fic we’ve just read or shaking our heads in embarrassment at every other unnecessary bullshit post. Tacky’s bright and wise energy uplifts my spirit even on my moody days, and makes me grateful for her friendship and for this fandom life. Okay so this got long and I had to put the rest under the cut:

It’s such a lovely and precious thing, to have someone with whom you can share every single thought that crosses your mind, your scariest, most embarrassing, petty or disturbing idea, without fear of being shamed or judged by it. I trust Tacky with all my heart to hear me out, share a joke or a piece of advice, even on the (rare) occasions when we don’t get the same perspective - that doesn’t happen often when it comes to Drarry, as we are taste twins!

Tacky my darling, you’re such a good person, and such an incredible friend. Thank you for introducing me to this lovely community, for being my safe haven and your unique self, with so many qualities I admire and feel inspired by: kind, witty, earnest, wise, and so very human. I love your humour and empathy, and your chill yet no-nonsense personality; I love your talent and how articulated you are; I love your passion for Drarry, and how you let this emotion inform the way you navigate the fandom and create for it. And god, but you’ve been creating some of the most beautiful content I’ve seen in these recent years! I’m permanently in awe of your ability to write Drarry in any shape, format or length, transforming even the most ordinary moment into an extraordinary and meaningful piece of character or relationship development. You know how you mentioned yesterday that some authors change the way you feel about a ship in a deep, definitive way? Well, you are that author for me. Your works made me fall in love with M-rated contemplative romance, and also allowed me to fall in love with Harry in a way I never thought it was possible before.

Some people - myself included - got to know you through the fun and intriguing A Lick and a Promise, others through the atmospheric and sensitive Modern Love, others through your contemplative and heartbreaking short form. Each story has its merits and purpose, and all of them share a Tacky trademark: the heartkick factor! Your talent has no limits and goes across different genres and tropes, that you explore with a bold twist full of personality and heart. And even more impressive is your consistency at always raising the bar - every new fic of yours becomes an instant fave and makes me think “wow I thought Tacky couldn’t get better yet here we are”. Seeing how your writing evolves as you find your narrative voice is a beautiful and humbling experience, I feel so lucky!

I’m really grateful for being active in the fandom at this moment in time, because that allows me to read and engage with your brilliant work, and to have you as a dear friend. I can’t wait to see what comes out of your beautiful brain next. It was an impossible job choosing a single fic to rec today, so I decided to do a belated Tacky reclist! Naturally these are my personal and biased must-reads, and I urge everyone to go check these beauties right now. Feel free to include your own favorites too, and don’t forget to leave them some appreciation.

Happy happy birthday my darling Tacky! This fandom life wouldn’t be the same without you. I hope you have the amazing day you deserve!

Between the Power Lines (2020, M, 3.2k)

The road trip fic you didn’t know you needed. I got utterly immersed in the heartbreaking quietness of this, feeling like a witness to an ordinary yet poignant love story. Such tender intimacy, such character development, such lovely American aesthetics with barely any dialogue. This is, IMO, the fic that reveals Tacky’s triumph in storytelling.

Even the Night (2020, M, 3.4k)

This fic has a surreal atmosphere, those Midsummer vibes unbelievably sexy and intoxicating linked to the sensorial experience of fumbling together in the night. Masterclass in tension building, a silky and languid dream-like affair.

Aim for my Heart (2021, M, 3.4k) - Harry/Draco/Ron

One of the most sensitive and stunning portraits I’ve ever seen of a poly/triad relationship, this fic packs so much character and longing! It’s a privilege to watch Ron and Draco’s tentative dynamics through the smitten eyes of the one person that loves them like no one else: Harry.

The Long Fall (2021, M, 3.6k)

I can’t even write about this tender domesticity without getting a lump in my throat. Best opening scene I’ve read in years, and a refreshing way to approach both mpreg and parenthood, painfully honest and lovely. This became an immediate comfort read for me, and it’s probably one of the fics I revisit the most.

Mortal Frame (2021, M, 6.6k)

This thrilling, fast-paced spy story left me breathless since the first paragraph, gods what an immersive ride! I’m so here for Drarry on the run, sharp and urgent with danger but mellowed by the silent trust and tender intimacy only Tacky can master. Major bonus points for the brilliant take on the Horcrux hunt plot line!

Last Offices (2020, M, 6.7k)

Oh, this fic 💔 I tend to avoid MCD but there’s something so deeply fascinating about body washing rituals that I caught myself mesmerized by this. I just couldn’t put it down, so emotionally compromised I felt. There’s a sort of strange comfort in the heartbreak of doing one last act of service out of devotion to someone. This fic inspired so many difficult but lovely feelings in me, and one of them was hope. Only Tacky could possibly achieve that!

Our Little Life (2020, M, 7.2k)

Inventive and singular, this story hit me straight on the solar plexus and left me speechless as I saw the (clever, magical and bittersweet) plot unravel. Such a fabulous take on alternate universes and all the angst potential behind it. Come and bask in the yearning melancholia of a short yet intricate and perfectly executed plot.

And One to Play (2019, E, 21k)

What a fun and delightful fic, I can’t have enough of pining Harry losing all sense of propriety when faced with a hot, competent and pragmatic Draco. This has fab dynamics, unhinged protectiveness, even more unhinged attraction between two idiots who can’t keep their hands off each other. A must-read for any Auror partners fan!

A Lick and a Promise (2019, E, 55k)

Hot, BAMF Professors carefully balancing a fuck buddies situation while solving a Hogwarts mystery, do we need anything else? I certainly do not. This fic is so fun and intriguing and immersive, with amazing supportive cast and a delicious get together feat secret shagging and oblivious pining. Love it!

Modern Love (2020, E, 61k)

My favorite read of 2020, this fic is a love letter to Drarry and will always hold a piece of my soul. Sensitive, wistful, tenderly aching and so very romantic, this is a Muggle Draco triumph with a superb Harry, exquisite slow burn and a side of suds comfort. I promise it will be impossible to listen to Bowie again without thinking of this love story.

Bonus: five stunning drabbles!

Something in the Way (2021, T, 119 words)

“Up,” he said, and Draco, sick with love, raised his arms above his head and allowed Potter to slide the jumper on him, big hands stroking it flat over Draco’s stomach until they both shivered.

Stir-Up Sunday (2020, M, 300 words)

“I want you always,” he said, tugging again on the fine curling length of it. “Is it okay to say that?”

Whalebone Arch (2021, M, 722 words)

“Are you still not talking to me?” Draco steered Harry towards the crisps. “Do I have to suck you off in the loo to cheer you up?”

Semiplume (2021, T, 923 words)

“Did you know,” Harry murmured, and he put his arms around Draco, fearless. “I’d be your mate. If you needed a mate, I mean.”

Relic Radiation (2021, M, 927 words)

“You’ll kill me,” Harry said, and Draco turned his face towards the darkened sky, lunar pale, his profile some stupid unearthly thing—a flaring blazar, a supernova—in the light from the kitchen window.

#drarry fic rec #Drarry reclist #happy birthday Tacky! #fave

[neonacity]

HYACINTHE | CHAPTER 4: JAEMIN X READER

SUMMARY: 

Na Jaemin is far from being your typical 20 year old. Instead of slaving through college, he wastes away his hours cracking safes. Weekends that should be spent partying with friends consist of illegal races on good days and small scale bombings on bad ones. 

Na Jaemin is far from being average, unless you consider being a member of Seoul’s top organized crime family normal. There is no such thing as a sense of normality and peace in his trainwreck of a life, so when he met a barista who was brave enough to call out his dangerous taste in coffee, he was like a moth to the flame. Everything about her is normal, which means she is forbidden to him, in all sense of the word. So why, then, does he always find himself at the front steps of her shop, breaking all his personal rules even if he wishes he could stay away?

A/N + Disclaimer: this is a side story to Black Daisies, my main mafia fic feat. 0T23. While the plot is based on the main story, this can also be read as a standalone fic. As usual, this is purely a work of fiction and in no way am I implying any member of NCT to behave the way I write them here. 

TW: crimes, heists, potential death, mentions of drugs and other illegal activities.

PAIRING: Jaemin x Reader 

CHAPTER 1 / CHAPTER 2 / CHAPTER 3 / 

FIC TRAILER

MASTERLIST

"Hi. Can I have one iced americano, no sugar, with an espresso shot, please?" 

 My hands froze and hovered momentarily on the drink I was preparing as I heard a male voice say that from the counter. I didn't turn around to check who it was, but my boss—who is currently helping me man the cafe today—was quick enough to dash the pit-pattering of my chest. He hooked the order slip on the board in front of me and my eyes immediately raised to read the name there. 

"One to-go, americano for Youngho." 

I sighed internally. Whether it be from relief or disappointment though, I don't really know. A part of me wanted to be in denial of my emotions, but I realized you can only go so far if the person you are trying to fool is just yourself. 

It's been almost three months since that night that I last saw Jaemin. I wish I didn't know the exact number of days that passed since then, but I do and I couldn't help it. Every little detail of what happened was still marked fresh in my mind, especially the feeling of hollowness that exploded in my chest when I woke up that morning to see them gone.

If not for the chip on the edge of the table left by Jeno as he tried to hold a half delirious Haechan down that night, I could have easily brushed off everything as a fleeting dream. But it isn't. It is a nightmare, at least in my part. 

He really meant it when he said he would leave me alone. 

There were no calls, no messages, no visits, nothing. It was like he didn't exist at all, the past year spent with him nothing but an imagined illusion. 

We were back to being strangers again, exactly like how he wants to. If you think about it, it's selfless of him to do this, but I hate it. I hate it with everything I have. 

Why? Because now I have to live through the feeling that I'm the only one suffering from all of that has happened. I couldn't watch the news anymore without thinking about him. For heaven's sake, I couldn't even get an iced coffee order without freezing like a statue because I remember him. I hate it. I hate every single moment without him, as much as I didn't want to admit it.

I placed the plastic cover over the finished drink with a soft sigh before turning to hand it over to the customer. At least I can still manage to put out my well-practiced, service smile. 

"Iced Americano for Youngho," I called out into the receiving area as I slipped a straw on the cup sleeve. A tall man looked up and walked over to me to receive it. 

"Thank you for coming to Brick and Beans. I hope you visit us again soon," I said in autopilot, my words so well-rehearsed that I didn't even have to think through while delivering them. The customer smiled at me before giving me a wink.

"I sure will. Thanks for this, sweet cheeks." He turned and left the shop, leaving me slightly confused. 

My attention was then called by my boss who had just finished wiping down the counter. The man—who really has been more of a father figure than an employer for me—gave me a warm smile and motioned me over. 

"Can we talk? I have something to tell you." 

I briefly glanced at the clock. It isn't my break time yet, but the store is empty so I guess it will be fine. I shrugged. 

"Sure."

"Grab a cake for you and me while you're at it," he nodded towards the pastry fridge before walking towards the nearest empty table. I wordlessly took two slices of basque cheesecake, his favorite, before following him. The man has a mean sweet tooth and we both know it.

He was silent for a little bit as he took the fork to take a bite of his treat. I waited patiently for him to speak, hands politely folded over my lap.

"I'm going to sell the cafe." 

I blinked and stared. I wasn't expecting that at all. 

"You're… what?" 

He sighed and leaned back against his seat. He looked a little sad over what he just said but he managed to offer me a small smile.

"I'm getting older. You know how much I love this place because I started it with my late wife, but I really can't continue to manage it anymore. My children, unfortunately, do not have any plans of continuing the business. And they've been asking me to retire, too." 

I nodded slowly, taking the news bit by bit. 

"Do you already have a buyer, ahjussi?" 

"I do. It is kind of strange, actually. Someone offered to buy off the franchise at such a perfect time. And for a very good price, too." 

That made me smile. I've had this job ever since I started college so it makes me a little sad that it's going to have a new owner, but I really am happy for him. I just hope whoever buys it off takes care of it really well. The old man loves this place to bits. 

I felt him take a hold of my hands from across the table. I looked up and was met with a fatherly smile. 

"Don't worry. You won't lose your job. The new owners said that they aren't planning to change anything here and I told them that they had to take you with them." 

That made me almost want to burst into tears. I squeezed his hand back in return. 

"Ahjussi... You didn't have to do that. I can always look for another job." Who am I kidding? I know it will be hard for me to land another sideline especially with all the financial hiccups I am already dealing with so this is really sending me over to the edge of tears. 

"Nonsense. You are part of this business. You've done so much for this place so you deserve this. Don't worry, they said yes to my condition." 

I gave his hands another squeeze and he answered back with a fatherly pat. 

"Thank you…" 

"You're welcome. Just promise me, when you become a doctor, you'll give me free checkups, okay?" 

"No, I won't. Because you will always be healthy and won't need my help at all," I said with a wrinkle of my nose. 

That sent the two of us laughing. 

"When will the new owners take over?"

"By the end of the month," my eyes rounded with surprise and he nodded in understanding. "I know, I know. It really happened too fast. I can't turn down the offer though. To be honest it was way beyond what the business is worth." 

I sighed. "Well… as long as you are sure about them." 

"I am. For now, I'll be here for a bit with you. I just need to enjoy my last days here. So just don't mind your old man, okay?" 

I grinned. 

"Only if you promise to give me a free cake every day you are here." 

He reached out to ruffle my hair. 

"Deal."

----

It was a slow day at the cafe so my boss decided to turn down the jazz music that usually floats from the speakers in lieu of the television volume. It was an odd hour in the afternoon and I found myself smiling as I watched him flip the channels over to look for a good show to watch while I dried some mugs. Just then, the overhead bell on the door dinged, welcoming with it a pair of uni-looking kids. 

My boss looked over, but I was quick to jump to action instead. "I'll take care of it," I mouthed to him, to which he gave me a smile before turning his attention back to what he was doing.

"Hi. Welcome to Brick and Beans. What can I offer you today?"

"We'll have one dirty chai latte and one irish coffee over ice. Make it to go. " 

The couple offered their names and I nodded as I punched their orders on my POS. "Would you like some pastries to go with that?"

"No, that's all."

"Got it, you can wait over there to the side. I'll have your drinks with you shortly," I said with a smile. The girl pulled the boy over into the receiving area to continue their conversation. 

"So what I'm saying is, we gotta go. Tonight is going to be epic. The bets will be high for sure. We can get some mean cash if we put it in the right car." 

The other gave a soft snort and started drumming his fingers against the wood of the counter. I let their conversation act as white noise while I worked behind the bar.

"I don't know. You're not even sure who is going to be there." 

"Jeno is in the line-up. That at least is confirmed."

I dropped the metal scooper I was using on the floor with a resounding clang. 

The three others in the room looked over to me as I hurriedly picked it up with shaking hands. I gave all parties a sheepish look before turning on my back to continue what I was doing. 

This time, I was full-on listening. 

"If Jeno's going to be there, then it is a goner. There's no chance for others. It'll be full-on suicide," the boy said thoughtfully. The girl, however, shrugged in reply. 

"They said the others might come, too. You know, to make the run a little bit more balanced," she offered. 

"You mean the seven?"

"The Four, at least."

"Oh shit."

"Uh-huh. So I'm telling you, we gotta be there man. If we can't bet then fine, but we have to see it. It’s been ages since they actually went on lane." 

I didn't really know how I managed to finish what I was doing, not with how hard my heart was beating in my chest. I'm not sure how many Jeno's there are in this part of town, but I am sure as hell that there is only one who is a member of a seven-piece 'group.' 

"Here's your order," I said thinly as I pushed the finished drinks over to them by the counter. The boy offered his card and I took it quickly, all the while thinking of what I should do next. The few seconds of me typing away at the terminal was the longest quarter minute of my life.

"Here's your receipt. Thank you for coming and see us again," I said, my voice a little weaker than usual. The couple gave a quick bow before turning to leave, drinks in hand. 

There are two ways this could go. I could let them out of that door and have my only possible chance of getting in contact with any of the boys leave with them. Or I could call after them and…

I whipped around to call out to my boss, my figure already halfway out from the bar. 

"Ahjussi, I'll be back in five minutes, sorry. I promise I'll be quick!"

He had barely looked up when I started running out the door.

-----

"Excuse me!" 

The duo looked back at me, then at each other in confusion as I tried my best to hurry up to them without landing on my face. God, why do they walk so fast? They were just a few seconds ahead when they left the shop! Thankfully, they stopped at my call, giving me a chance to skid before them as I tried to catch my breath.

"Um… Is there a problem? We paid, right?" The boy asked me with an odd look. I waved my hand before finally trying to answer. 

"Yes. I uh—"

Well, I obviously didn't plan this out clearly. How do I say this now without sounding like a lunatic? 

"I heard your conversation earlier. You were talking about Jeno."

The pair exchanged glances again, this time tinged with suspicion. It was the girl who answered this time. 

"Yes, we were. What about it?" 

"I… I just want—to maybe know where he is? You were talking about tonight's—"

"The drag race?"

I stopped for half a heartbeat before nodding. 

"Yeah. The race. I wanted to come, too, but I don't really know the address." 

The boy cocked his brow at me in blatant suspicion. It took all of me to pull out all the basics I learned from drama class back in high school to remain calm before his withering glare. 

"You know Jeno but don't know the address? That doesn't make any sense," he said as he crossed his arms over his chest. "If you've been in one before you should have been included in the text blast."

Oh shit. 

I could feel my palms growing cold from nervousness. Still, I tried pushing on. 

"W-well, I was invited before by one of them. But then things fell apart and I started not getting any of the...texts anymore," I said, not having the slightest idea of what I am saying myself. What's ironic though was that what I just blurted out was sort of a half-truth, too.

Apparently—and miraculously—it also made sense by the look of understanding that dawned on their faces. 

"I see…" the girl trailed off. She cleared her throat and looked at her friend before glancing at me again. 

"Look, I can give you the address, but promise me that you never got it from me when someone asks, okay?" She asked. The boy looked at her incredulously.

"Are you crazy? She was already shadow banned!"

She shushed him and waved her hand off to shut him up. "Look, this is a girl thing. Don't mess with it. Just go ahead to the car, I'll take care of it." 

He scoffed but stalked off towards the direction of the parking lot. 

She turned towards me again and pulled her phone from the pocket of her leather jacket. I watched as she unlocked the screen before showing it to me. 

"Do you have your phone with ya? Here, take a photo of this address." 

I swear I could almost kiss her. I scrambled to get my phone from my back pocket and didn't waste another second to take a snap of her screen.

"Thank you so much." 

She nodded in understanding before locking her phone again and shoving it into her pocket. "Hey, a girl's gotta stand up for another. Who was it? Was it Haechan?" 

"Um…" 

She didn't wait for me to finish. 

"Really, whoever it is among them, I can't really blame you. They're all cute, but they do need to be taken down a notch when it comes to girls. Those boys," she tsked. "Dangerous." 

Oh…

Oh. She thought I was an ex-fling who wanted to teach one of them a lesson by crashing the race. I let that sink in before a frown settled on my features. 

Well, aren't you one? The devil on my shoulder cackled at me sardonically. 

"Glad to have helped though. But remember, you didn't get it from me, okay?"

With a wink, she strutted off, leaving me staring at her retreating form. 

----

I told myself I simply wanted to see him again. 

I reminded myself that for the hundredth time tonight as I parked my car on a free space by a gravel road, my eyes roaming the darkness beyond. The place looked deserted, and I had to do one last check if I really put in the right coordinates on my map before finally turning off my engine. The road beyond was wide but uncemented and to its left is a half unfinished building with metal banisters reaching out to the sky like skeletal arms. I swallowed. Every little thing about the space beyond screams danger.

Which probably means I am in the right place. 

I reached out to zip up my jacket and pulled the hoodie over my head before getting out of my car. My sneakers crunched on the gravel as I made my way towards a low wall circling the building beyond. 

Just try and take a look. You don't have to talk to him. You can keep your distance. 

I repeated that in my head again and again as I approached what I assume to be the entrance. A part of me still wants to berate myself for doing this but I am too far gone to try and play the denial game again. I want, no, I need to see Jaemin's world.

The moment I passed through a crack on the wall, it felt like I stepped into a different world. It opened up into an even wider area, the shadows of a multi-lane road behind the abandoned building beyond. Milling around is a throng of people, some smoking, others sipping on red cups on their hands. Some cars were parked against the wall I just passed, their headlights on with music booming out of their rolled down windows. 

I tried to swallow the lump on my throat as I looked around. Already, I felt out of place in the crowd, but I steeled myself to push on, my hands digging deeper into the pockets of my jacket.

"Hey." 

I looked up to see a boy around my age wave at me. He was also holding a red cup and what looked like a bundle of paper. My eyes widened as that came into focus when he got closer. 

Money. 

Wads and wads of cash. 

"You put your bets already?" He asked as he stuffed the bills into a small belt bag hidden beneath his oversized shirt. He pulled his phone out then, unlocked the screen, and looked at me, waiting for an answer. 

"Uh…" 

He gave me an odd look.

"Who are you betting on?" He asked again. 

I gave the first name I could only think of. 

"Ja-Jaemin," I stuttered.

That earned me a low whistle from him as he typed away at his phone, probably to record my choice of 'player.' "I don't know, man. Dude seems pretty out of it lately, but whatever floats your boat." He stuck out his hand to me then, and it took me a few seconds to realize what he was asking for. 

"Oh," I scrambled to grab my purse. I was in the middle of pulling my card from my wallet when I saw his face. Slowly, I put it back to reach out for bills instead. 

"Cash only." 

I sheepishly handed him the last few hundreds I have. He took them, expertly flipping through each bill to count them off. 

"First time, eh?" 

I nodded. 

I watched as he slipped the money into his already overflowing belt bag, thinking that he would leave after that. Instead he nudged his head towards the direction of the building and motioned me along. 

"Come on then. At least try and get a good look at your first race." 

I blinked in confusion but ran after him as he started walking away. 

We stopped at the front row of the half ring of people that had already gathered in front of the abandoned rafters. Just then, a huge spotlight shone over the road behind it, driving everyone to erupt in cheers. Parked in a single line at the foot of the road are five cars, headlights opening one by one.

"Jaemin's the yellow one," the boy nodded towards the one occupying the third lane. I stared. I know next to nothing about cars, but I know enough to be sure that none of the ones in front of me now are something you can buy from your run-of-the-mill auto dealer. Lowered, with shining reams, and a low motor hum that reverberated to where I was standing, I could only briefly compute in my head how much each of those customized rides must have cost. 

I heard the boy beside me snort amusedly. "Your first race and you get to see this. I'm telling you, this happens once in a blue moon," he said with a smirk. I didn't say anything, my gaze never leaving the yellow car. 

Slowly though, I noticed the crowd's noise die down dramatically the same time that a petite form walked out from the building. The woman stopped in the middle of the road and raised her hand into the night sky, a small pistol in her grasp.

Everyone has gone so quiet now that you could almost hear a needle dropping. Just then, the resounding bang of a gunshot pierced the air. Few other large spotlights turned on simultaneously, revealing the snaking road ahead that was disguised under the darkness earlier. I gasped. The roaring sound of engines blared beyond and with a new uproar from the crowd, the cars were speeding ahead, leaving trails of light in their wake. 

My heart was beating so hard against my chest as I tried my best to follow the speeding cars ahead. I was only able to comprehend the real expanse of the road the moment each ride took over its lanes—the place looked more like an abandoned air dock field more than anything else. I was barely aware of my nails digging on the palms of my hands as my eyes switched from Jaemin’s car and the others, particularly on the deep red one that he was currently toe in toe with. The space between the two were a hair’s breadth away and I could almost swear their sides would collide any second. 

That went on until a curve on the road appeared. It was the last turn before the finish line and the crowd turned wilder as the nose of each car tried its best to take the lead. I didn’t even realize that I was holding my breath until the last second when the yellow one took over the inner space of the road before swerving successfully ahead.

Everyone around me erupted in cheers. I gave my own gasp, hands covering my lips before joining the rest.

Jaemin’s yellow lambo parked on the finish line, the rest of the race participants trailing behind. I watched as his door opened, revealing his beautiful wide grin and tousled hair. He was glowing, cheeks flushed from the adrenaline. I was so caught up in the image that I barely noticed Jeno appearing from the red car, followed by Renjun, Mark, and Haechan from the other rides. 

I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I watched with a smile as they huddled over Jaemin, playfully pushing and cajoling him for his win. They looked happy, carefree.

But it seems like they aren’t the only ones who were out there in the road. My gaze moved back to Jaemin's car when I saw his passenger seat open. As if in slow motion, a girl got out of it, wearing the same wide smile the others have. The group hooted at her as she joined their huddle. 

That’s when I felt as if time has stopped.  

The smile on my face slowly faded as I watched Jaemin wrap his arms around her before pulling her into a tight hug. 

---

A/N: Hey guys! This is going to be the second to the last chapter of Jaemin’s side story! I originally wanted to finish it in one go, but I thought it would be nice to release the epilogue on Nana’s birthday! So yes, that’ll be out on the 13th, lol. Thank you so much to those who have continued reading this side fic! <3

Chapter 5 (END)

Taglist: @negincho​, @springdaybreaks​, 

#nct dream #nct dream mafia #nct dream mafia au #nct jaemin #jaemin x reader #lee jeno #huang renjun #mark lee #lee haechan #zhong chenle #park jisung #nct angst #nct fluff #nct imagines #nct au #nct mark #nct renjun #nct jeno #nct haechan #nct chenle #nct jisung #nct-writers #nct mafia #nct mafia au

[a-pretty-nerd]

Self Indulgent Shigaraki Nonsense Part...6??

Tomura Shigaraki x Pregananant reader series

A/N: Dude I'm not even close to being done, I really love writing this series. It's a whole lot of fun to see Shigaraki have a normal domestic life with the reader. Like damn. I'm thinking of writing a one-shot where the reader doesn't keep the pregnancy and its reader and Shigaraki going through the motions of that in their relationship because I'd like some more diverse fanfic out there. Let me know what you think!

Warnings: Descriptions of childbirth. If you want you can honestly skip this part.

Your contractions started early in the morning. Around 2am you felt the familiar cramp in your stomach that pulsed. At first, you thought it was another false alarm. You had been having a lot lately, but they just kept coming. They weren't long, and they weren't super painful yet either. They just made you tense and pause for breath. You shuffled out of the bathroom and looked over to the sleeping form in your bed.

There the father slept peacefully. You gazed upon his gentle features tucked underneath layers of scaring. You had wondered if the baby would take after him. If they would have that cute little beauty mark on his chin. You suddenly realized You'd be finding out soon enough. You laid back down beside him and closed your eyes in an attempt to get a few more hours of sleep before you had to prepare.

Mostly everything had been prepared beforehand. Your Midwife, a kind woman by the name of Mae would be on call at all times. Once contractions started getting regular, you were to call her. Apparently, Mae was well known amongst villain and crime families. When Tomura first brought her, you were surprised there was even such a thing as a Villian Midwife. But the more you thought about it, the more it made sense. Underground villains and criminals needed their own help. Accountants, lawyers, employees, etc. With Villians becoming more and more popular, it was no surprise that you weren't the only villain family.

Mae was a professional, the best at her craft. She'd delivered hundreds of babies without issue and you would be her next case. She practically took over the house with everything she did. Helping to put together a nursery and everything you could have ever needed. You decided on natural water birth. Something that made Shigaraki unreasonably nervous. If anything went wrong, he was prepared to call every villain doctor he knew of. Hell, he'd send for you to be airlifted to the nearest hospital if necessary.

The pain woke you up again. The intense ache coursing through your body. You let out a strained breath as you sat up in bed. Your partner jumping to life with a jolt. You chuckled through the pain when you saw his wide-eyed expression.

"You okay?" He asked, his wide eyes filled with concern. You've never seen him so visibly worried before. So doting. You continued to laugh as the pain passed.

"Yeah it's just, the contractions, they're getting worse." You took deep breaths as you sat up in bed. Resting your head against a tower of pillows. Tomura sat up to get a better look at you.

"Should I call Mae?"

"Um...no I don't think that's necessary yet."

"Have they been regular?"

"Well, every ten or so minutes."

"I'm calling Mae." He turned away to get up and reach for his phone before you stopped him.

"No! Not yet. I can wait. I don't wanna bother her." His expression turned dark.

"I'm calling Mae." He ignored you, leaving the room to call the midwife. You huffed in frustration. Really, you felt fine. It was like a bad period cramp. There was no need to panic. "She'll be here in thirty minutes. I'm preparing the tub."

"No, Tomura wait, please. That's not necessary. I'm not even remotely close yet. Just hold on a few more hours." Tomura looked away and back down the hallway. He shifted from side to side before entering the room again and sitting on the edge of the bed beside you. His eyes glued to your thighs. He reached out a gloved hand and placed it on your knee, running his hand up and down your thigh.

"Don't try to tough this out." He told you.

"I won't." His eyes shot up to give you a knowing look.

"You need to tell me if anything goes wrong. If anything feels even the slightest bit off."

"I will. I promise." You reassured him. Bringing your hand to grasp his. He pulled his eyes away to look down at your hand and squeeze back.

"This is really what you want? It's not too late, Mae could bring it to be adopted. We could go home." Tears filled your eyes. No. You've come so far, done so much to prepare. You're not giving them up now. You shook your head.

"No. I can't do that. I've come too far for that now. That isn't my home anymore." You tore your hand from his to cup his cheek. When you looked back up, you could see tears forming in his ruby-red eyes. He looked scared. His bottom lip starting to quiver. "You are." You told him. He let out a defeated sigh and rested his head against your belly.

"You better not hurt her. You hear me? You better be good to her." He whispered. Your tears finally fell down your warm cheeks. You quickly wiped them away. You loving ran your fingers through his hair, petting his head. The sweet moment only to be interrupted by the sharp pain of another contraction.

"Fuck!" You cursed as your hand tightly grasped his shoulder. His attention snapped up to you, tears running down his face as he watched. Soon the pain passed as you took deep breaths. "Do you think, you could time my contractions for me?" You asked as it eased.

And so the hours upon hours of labor began. At first, Mae recommended you stand and move around to lessen the intensity of your pain. So now Tomura watched you shuffle around the house as you groaned and cursed. He timed every contraction, put the blow-up pool together, and set up towels by it, made you raspberry leaf tea because he read somewhere that was helpful.

He counted the seconds until Mae arrived. When the doorbell rang he promptly stood from his seat on the couch and quickly went to open the door. There stood the short old woman with a large smile plastered across her face. Her six arms holding a plethora of bags and boxes of necessities and pleasantries. She left one hand free just to greet him with a wave. He looked behind to watch the car with his own men drive away, and then again around the yard.

"Don't worry. There's no one but me, honey." Mae reassured as she pushed past him and into the house. You watched her waddle in as a contraction began to fade. Her attention leaving Tomura far behind and devoting it entirely to you. You watched Tomura grunt before looking back out the door to check one more time before closing and locking it. "I mean really, think about it. What woman in her right mind would use this time of all times to call the heroes on you. How cruel would I be!" She chuckled as she set her things down.

"You'd be a fool not to. A time like this would be perfect. We're alone and vulnerable." He growled behind her.

"And end my career just like that? No sir! I've worked too hard to get where I am just to let you dust me! Now let's see, you said on the phone contractions were regular?"

"Oh, well, not really. They're not that bad. Maybe every fifteen, ten minutes, give or take. Right?" You looked up at Tomura as he starred down with a cold expression.

"Her pain varies, but the timing is growing consistent." He corrected. You huffed in annoyance.

"Alright well let me just check the baby's heartbeat before we do anything else, okay? The last visit everything was fine, but we can't be too careful now can we, Dad?" She addressed him. A cold metal stethoscope glided across your skin as she silently listened. "Good, strong heartbeat. Everything looks good right now. Let's keep you active for now and monitoring those contractions, okay? Dad? How are we doing on preparations?" She turned back to look up at Tomura with an unbothered stare. He glared down at her.

"I've prepared the pool and towels. I'll add the warm water when we're getting closer."

"Oh good. That's more than most Dads do. You got a planner here don't ya?" She turned to you and smiled.

"Heh. He's a doomsday prepper." You joked. Tomura did not find this amusing, but Mae gave a kind giggle.

"Well, at least he's smart, huh?" She spoke as she shuffled away and back to her cluster of items. You looked up at Tomura and watched his expression soften as his eyes met yours. You gave him a kind smile.

"Something like that." His eyes narrowed on you for a moment, only to relax again when you chuckled at him.

Contractions came and went. Getting stronger and stronger by the hour. Now they were getting closer and closer. They started at 2am, it was now 9 at night. Tomura helped you undress to get you into the warm water of the pool he placed in the living room. Mae moving furniture aside and setting up her tools and everything as you stepped into the warmth of the bath. It allowed your tense muscles to relax, forcing a moan of relief from your lungs. Tomura knelt down behind you, his gloved hands never too far behind.

He watched you closely, all of his attention focused entirely on you. His right hand reaching out to rub soothing circles across your bare back. You closed your eyes shut as you groaned, another contraction grabbing ahold of you.

"That's it, good job. Don't forget your breathing, focus on your breathing. Dad, don't forget to do the breathing too." His eyes flashed up at Mae before going back to you.

"C'mon Y/N, breath with me." He instructed, his hand coming around to lay flat against your chest as you laid back against the pool. He felt your chest rise and fall with each deep breath. "Good. Again." He continued firmly. Another contraction struck, sending a jolt of pain throughout your entire body. You coiled back in pain, your face scrunching into a painful grimace.

"Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!"

"Okay! Okay! Let's check you again see how far you're along okay!? Just breath."

"Just breath." He repeated.

"I'm breathing! I'm breathing!" You shouted back in frustration.

"Okay we're getting close you guys, we might be ready to push here in a few minutes." You panted as the pain subsided again. Tomura's attention came back down on Mae.

The birth itself felt like a pain-fueled blur. An intoxicatingly painful bender of sounds and colors. You couldn't focus or think straight, the pain rattling your head in your own skull. He watched you bark and huff and cry out. Something he knew very well. For a moment it took him back to the long and painful Dr's visits. The pain so unimaginable he grows hot with rage at the idea you might be feeling even an ounce of pain at all. Pain he caused.

You swung your head back to plant it firmly on his shoulder, your hair wet with sweat and water. He holds your hand tight, willingly letting you crush it with your own strength. It's nothing to him. He presses his lips into your temple. Wishing with all his might he could go back in time and change things. You're panting, you're body is growing weak, your hand is losing its grasp. Your shoulders are relaxing. No. No. This isn't right. You're not supposed to be this weak now!

"Almost!" Mae's voice shouts with gusto. He rests his head against yours before he lets out a weak and exhausted sigh. His voice rattles in a sad and begging tone.

"C'mon Y/N. You're so close." He says softly. Your body coils back as he feels your muscles spring to life once again. Your lungs filling with air before you let out a shrill, horrific battle cry. Only for it to abruptly be replaced by another. Your body drops limp in his arms once more as he feels you panting. Mae gives a triumphant cheer and proceeds to tell you how well you've done. How it's all over.

"Hello, little one!" The old lady chimes brightly. Tomura keeps his eyes shut tight as he presses his head against yours. He hears their loud, harsh cry. He knows it's over. He knows there is no going back. Once he opens his eyes and looks at them, at that little monstrosity, it'll be all over. Maybe you'll see the truth when you see it. Maybe you'll finally understand and come home with him once and for all.

"Both of you, open your eyes! Look at him!" Mae orders. The harsh and intense pain subsided, left with a dull ache, renders you exhausted. You hardly feel you have the strength to open your eyes, much less move. You pull your head up, feeling the weight of it on top of your neck. Heavy and pounding. You pull your eyelids apart to look down, your vision blurry at first. The harsh light blinding you for a moment before the shapes you see sharpen and become reality.

"Tomura, look." You whisper. His hand squeezes yours, he's gently shaking. You turn to watch him slowly open his eyes, and turn his head. In Mae's arms, a rather small and wrinkly infant cries. It's nearly blue skin, changing as it screams. Its face quickly becoming red with expression. It's no monster. It's weak and helpless and unaware. It's so small, it's half the height of his forearm. Its little hands, balled into fists, swat at the air as its legs coil back to its torso.

"Say hello!" Mae jokes. With a weak smile and laugh you oblige.

"Hello!" You coo. Tomura relaxes as you look back at him with a kind and elated smile. His gaze never leaves the child as Mae prepares him to be placed on your bare chest. Its crying soon subsides as it curls up under your chin. It's crying being replaced with little huff and sniffles from you. He leans back and away to watch the two of you.

He's in shock it would seem. As he sits back to watch you, he feels a tightness in his chest. He feels a wave of somber relief wash over him. His thoughts were gone only replaced my emotions.

"Dad?" Mae calls to him. "Dad?" She calls again. The third time he turns his head to look at her with a wide-eyed expression. She chuckled at him. "Would you like to cut the cord?" She offers, bringing him closer and instructing him how. He does so, quickly turning his attention back to the two of you. You look so peaceful. So happy. His gaze trails down to his child.

He watches his balled little fists press themselves against your chest, its expression turning relaxed and calm. Its little head covered in a rich black mess of hair. What color are its eyes? He wonders.

You turn your head to look up at him with that sweet adoring smile. His heart raced in his chest. He is overwhelmed and yet at this moment, nothing is happening. Time has slowed and has become irrelevant to him. The way you look at him. He feels like he's done something right. Like he's being praised for a job well done. He feels wrong about it. He should be making you feel that way. So, he tries.

"A boy?" His voice is hoarse and shaking. You nod your head. "A boy."

"A healthy one at that! Those lungs!" Mae jokes again as her arms go about working to clean and manage the space. You gently run the pads of your fingers against his small little back. His skin is so soft and smooth.

"Give me your hand." You requested.

"What?" He spat in shock.

"Give me your hand." You repeat firmly, your fingers gently spelling out the word: Mom, on his little back. Tomura reaches out a gloved hand. You reached out and removed the glove, taking his middle finger and gently directing it to the baby's back. "Gently." You tell him. Pressing the pad of his finger to his son's soft back. With this, you gently spell: Dad, repeatedly. Until he understands and continues to spell it himself along the baby's back. Very careful, and delicate. Tomura rests his head on your shoulder as he continues, slowly drawing the word. Allowing for a safe and intimate moment between the three of you.

#shigaraki x you #mha shigaraki #shigaraki headcanons #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki imagine #my hero academia shigaraki #shigaraki x pregnant reader #tomura shigaraki