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pillowspace · 2 years

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Sun & Moon Fic Recs

Press the read more for recommended FNAF:SB fics with a major focus on Sun and/or Moon!

Current number of fics: 43

Last updated October 24th, 2023

To be updated (with announcement and by my own personal choice, please don't request fics to be added to the list. Recommending me fics to check out is allowed however!)

Word count and chapter count are only accurate so long as I update the list accordingly. Check the original for accuracy

If you are the author of a fic, you can ask your work be removed from the list. Everyone should be comfortable

No sm//ut

Table of Contents - 1. Animatronic Daycare Attendant Fics, 2. Other Roles or Species AU Fics, 2a. Other Roles, 2b. Other Species, 2c. Other Species (Mer), 3. Updates

Animatronic Daycare Attendant Fics

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Solar Lunacy by BamSara | @bamsara

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader, Glamrock Freddy & Reader, Glamrock Chica & Reader, Montgomery Gator & Reader, Roxanne Wolf & Reader

You weren't a technician, you weren't a security guard, you weren't a daycare assistant. You're just an employee. Staff. The ‘jack-of-all-trades’ employee with mediocre at best skills and specialty in none, tasked with doing miscellaneous jobs that robots couldn't do and human staff couldn't care to. The job is unpredictable, but it pays good and it's relatively easy.

Except for the part where all the animatronics are more sentient than you thought, and you're roped into a mystery surrounding the Daycare Attendants, who are bit too curious about you for your liking.

You don't think this was in your employee contact.

M | Words: 225,814 | Chapters: 16/?

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Saturday Insomnia by BamSara | @bamsara

No Archive Warnings Apply, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader

The animatronic tuts at you. “No, silly, not for us. For you.”

You raise an eyebrow.

Sun places one hand on his chest. “The Sun and the Moon, and…” He points to the shirt’s design, and then to you. “-and the Earth!”

It takes you a moment to process, but when it dawns on you, you fight back a snort unless you want to make an ungodly noise in the middle of the quiet thrift store. “Oh god. That’s corny. Like, REALLY corny. That should be a crime.”

Sun just hums and nods as you revel in his ‘genius’, arms reaching out to take the bundle of clothing you’ve been holding and carrying it for you. “There’s nothing wrong with the clichés. You’re just jealous because we’re as clever as ever.”

------

A comfort fic showing domestic life with the Daycare Attendants. Set somewhere in the future timeline for Solar Lunacy, but can be read stand-alone.

M | Words: 9,061 | Chapters: 1/1

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copper cogs rusted through by Borashore | @paper-lilypie

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon & Reader, Sun & Reader

A year after the fire, Fazbear Entertainment graciously announces its plans to reopen the grand Pizzaplex installment bigger and better than ever, causing a stir amongst everyone nation-wide, including your small, mundane town, set in the outskirts of anything modern, luxurious or relevant. As a mundane civilian of said town with other things to worry about, you barely wink an eye. Rent is a constant nuisance to meet, one of your jobs might get terminated, raising three siblings zaps both time and energy, and coming to terms with the fact you never grew up to be somebody in life becomes an impossibility every other day.

Nonsense like Fazbear Entertainment has never been something to think about.

That is… well, until you mistakenly bring one– sorry, two– of its titular characters home and add more problems to your list.

Can’t catch a break, can you?

M | Words: 37,458 | Chapters: 3/11

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Twin Animatronics With Too Much Time on Their Hands by aug325, CephalonGhost | @dana-chan-the-control-brain @twinanimatronics

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon & Sun, Moon & Reader, Moon/Reader, Sun & Reader, Sun/Reader, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Daycare Attendant & Reader

Takes place after the three-star princess quest ending where Sun and Moon are the only intact animatronic left.

Fazbear Entertainment decides to capitalize on that and try to make money off the daycare again by making the dual animatronic into two. Clearly no problems arise from this because robots can’t suffer mental or emotional trauma, right?

Sequel to: Lofi Beats to Capture Children to.

M | Words: 226,447 | Chapters: 26/?

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Lofi Beats to Capture Children to by aug325 | @dana-chan-the-control-brain

No Archive Warnings Apply, Daycare Attendant/DJ Music Man, Moon & Sun, DJ Music Man & Moon, DJ Music Man/Moon, DJ Music Man & Music Man, Vanessa A. | Ness & Daycare Attendant, Vanessa A. | Ness & Moon, Vanessa A. | Ness & Sun, Vanny & Moon

The Daycare Animatronic was different from the Glamrocks. They didn't match the 80's austenitic, and their drastic shift in personalities.

Sun seems to be a nervous trainwreck who sobs to pieces if left alone for five minutes.

Moon seems intent on punishing anyone they deem a "rulebreaker"

And with Moon's inherent violent tendencies, it almost seems they were made with the intention of capturing intruders of the Pizzzaplex first, and being a Daycare Attendant second.

Who made these things? What kind of messed-up person was the guy who made them...

Why make the Daycare Attendant and the NightTime Security for the building the same animatronic?

It just doesn't make sense.

Moon was the head of security of the entire Pizzaplex at night. It was only natural they had to meet the 'bouncer' of the Dance Floor eventually.

(Or: A small stupid fic about Moon and DJMM becoming frens and goes into details of Sun/Moon's origin. The Glamrocks also appear and be frens. Eventual child death to come)

This is a Direct Prequel to "Twin Animatronics with too much time on their hands" So I recommend giving it a read <3

T | Words: 151,036 | Chapters: 16/?

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Visions (Or Lack Thereof) by DeeplyJuniper, Glitched_and_Unnamed | @sleepyjuniper @azure-aura321

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon & Sun, Daycare Attendant & Gregory, Glamrock Freddy & Gregory

This place is not like he remembered it. Neither is Sun; his brother seems panicked and shaky- and relieved to hear him.

To Moon, this all seems like some elaborate prank. One minute he was doing his job, watching over the children, and listening to Sun from their shared consciousness. The next, he opens his eyes to find the place he loved and cherished has fallen into disrepair. Abandoned. Rundown. His brother says it's been months.

He doesn't remember what happened in-between.

G | Words: 100,459 | Chapters: 14/?

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Permission Slip by thedemonsurfer | @thedemonscrawler

No Archive Warnings Apply, Daycare Attendant & Gregory, Glamrock Freddy & Gregory, Gregory & Sun, Gregory & Moon, Moon & Sun

Gregory gets dumped off in the Daycare as a 'lost child'. When he shows back up after closing, convinced that the security guard wants to hurt him, Sun decides to do whatever is needed to help him escape the Pizzaplex. This turns out to be a much bigger ordeal than anticipated.

Freddy is on lockdown. Chica is eating garbage. Roxy is talking to herself. Monty is tearing apart anything that moves.

There is a rabbit in the Pizzaplex.

Something is wrong tonight.

T | Words: 165,760 | Chapters: 13/?

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I see you, Sundrop! by ShiraCheshire | @shirajellyfish

Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Moon & Sun & Original Character(s), Sun & Original Character(s), Moon & Original Character(s), Daycare Attendant & Original Character(s)

With nowhere else to go, Riley returns to the place they spent their childhood- Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex. When they discover that something is very wrong with the animatronics, they're forced to take shelter in the Superstar Daycare.

Considering that their favorite hobby is analyzing and understand how animatronics work and think, Riley is thrilled at the chance to get to know the Daycare Attendant. Too bad everything had to go wrong first for them to get here. At least they're safe in the daycare, right? No health and safety hazards here in the Superstar Daycare absolutely none no siree.

AKA mostly a whole lot of playing with and getting to know Sun- As long as the lights stay on, anyway.

(Not a fan of longfics? Looking for something shorter but still satisfying? Chapter 11 and chapter 32 both work as early stopping points if you wish)

M | Words: 462,502 | Chapters: 103/?

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404: Personal Space Not Found by CrazedAuthor | @crazedauthor

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon/Sun/Reader, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Glamrock Freddy & Reader, Glamrock Chica & Reader, Roxanne Wolf & Reader, Montgomery Gator & Reader

Being an anxious mess one bright light from a breakdown wasn't easy, nor did it grant you many friends. Still, you were getting by as a hermit only leaving your apartment to go to class. That all changes when you start working at the Pizzaplex as a staff member. Working in close proximity to such advanced robotics? It was every future engineer's dream. Working for such high pay in this economy? It was enough to make a poor college student cry. Despite the change in routine, you're content to go through with it, thinking you'll blend into the background and disappear, never to be noticed by human or animatronic alike...

You thought wrong. The Daycare Attendants and the trouble that surrounds them will RUIN YOU.

T | Words: 81,109 | Chapters: 7/?

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(it was, in reality, not fine.) by bones_of_a_rabbit | @bones-of-a-rabbit

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon & Sun, Sun & Reader, Moon & Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader, Daycare Attendant/Reader

You're the new tech/repairman at the Fazbear Mega Pizzaplex, unfortunately. Your first task? To make the Daycare Attendant into two separate animatronics. It's an amazing opportunity, really, and there is nothing you love more than getting a chance to really work with such tech! The only bad part is that you don't know how to tell anyone that you just might be in over your head. (You are extremely in over your head.)

(Just a silly feel-good fic, AU where there is no Security Breach, no William, no murders, etc. Sun and Moon fall in love with you, a well-meaning but honestly naïve and easily-overwhelmed little dummy)

(BTW THE TITLE IS MEANT TO BE A RUNNING JOKE FROM THE FIC there isn't gonna b some big angsty plot twist. most likely)

G | Words: 99,238 | Chapters: 10/?

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Ventura Highway by MadameMiz | @madamemiz

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon/Sun/Reader, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Moon & Sun

You are an idiot who, in the eyes of the law, just stole a multi-million dollar piece of AI animatronic technology from a highly controversial company.

Now a fugitive, you weigh your options, and with few choices available you decide going on the run is your best bet.

Time for a road trip.

T | Words: 28,356 | Chapters: 6/?

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The Night Shift by Certified_Handler | @certified-handler

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon & Sun & Reader

You expected there would be plenty of changes when Fazbear Entertainment purchased the childcare facility where you work. What you didn't expect was everything that came after...

M | Words: 214,610 | Chapters: 44/44

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(and when you speak) angels sing from above by ranchdiip

Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon & Sun & Reader, Glamrock Animatronics & Reader, Glamrock Freddy & Sun

“Fine,” you spit. You’re still shaking, but the fear is mixed with anger now, a bitterness that follows all of life’s unfair balances. “Fine. Whatever. I won’t tell anyone that Fazbear is letting a criminal run free and paying for his treatments to boot. But what the fuck do you want me to do about this thing?”

“Work on it,” Margaret says. She doesn’t acknowledge your barb, probably for the better. It still burns you. “Figure out how you can decommission the Naptime Attendant without damaging the Daycare Attendant. It’s the Naptime’s that turned violent, and we can’t return the animatronic to the public until it’s gone.”

“You want me to get rid of the half that saved a little girl,” you scowl.

“I want you to get rid of the half that put a man in the hospital.”

“I’m not a software engineer, Mag.”

“You are, now. If anything happens to you, tell me. You know I’ve got your back here.”

You’re starting to wonder if that’s true.

—

Last week, the recently debuted Daycare Attendant put a man in the hospital. Corporate has decided it's your problem, now.

M | Words: 30,251 | Chapters: 6/?

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First They're Sour, Then They're Sweet! by lunargalaxies | @smallergalaxies

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Moon & Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader, Sun & Reader, Moon/Reader

You’re one of a handful of night time security guards at the pizzaplex, and a certain animatronic has taken a…liking? to you. At least you think so, it's hard to tell when he almost never talks to you and just follows you around on your shifts. If it wasn't so creepy, you think it could actually be a little cute.

T | Words: 16,030 | Chapters: 10/?

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Our Orbit is Elliptical by Sycopomp | @sycopomp | in association with @madame-mongoose

No Archive Warnings Apply Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Moon & Sun, Moon & Sun & Reader

The Daycare Attendant is very protective of his role in the Superstar Daycare; he was made for this job, after all, and he finds it insulting that management seems to think he needs help. They insist on saddling him with human assistants, over and over, no matter how many quit. Not that he does it intentionally, of course... but if they can't handle the stress, then perhaps they aren't fit to be working with children. Hmph.

You are the new Daycare Assistant at the Superstar Daycare! Despite some reservations, you're determined to do your best and prove-- mostly to yourself-- that you deserve to be here. You're inspired by Sun and the ease with which he gets along with the children, and you hope to impress him with your go-getter attitude and unflappable confidence! (Even if both of those things are about as flimsy as construction paper...)

aka: Sun is passive-aggressive to his new assistant, whom is so determined to do a good job that they're too oblivious to notice.

T | Words: 15,337 | Chapters: 1/?

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Holding the World by StarvingMe | @anangelcalledinquisitor

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon/Sun/Reader

You were new, dressed in your little uniform, jacket, slacks, collared shirt peeking out, plastic little nametag with your name scrawled in large, friendly letters.

(Pregnant Reader AU with Automatons)

M | Words: 99,699 | Chapters: 27/27

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rises the moon by paris_23 | @paris-23

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon/Reader

You hear a door creaking, but it isn’t enough to pull you from your spiraling panic, hardly even grasps your attention. It isn’t until you hear a bell jingle that you force your head up and your eyes open. And it’s… Moon. He’s standing in front of you, watching as you quiver and stare up at him, tears staining trails down your face.

He sits down next to you, criss-cross, not touching you but still close. His voice is raspy, just like always, but softer, quieter, as he says, “Poor thing, out here on their own. Should know not to wander in the dark alone, little lamb.”

---

Moon helps you through a panic attack

G | Words: 2,451 | Chapters: 1/1

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Stare at the Abyss; It Might Look Back by characcoon | @characcoon

No Archive Warnings Apply, DJ Music Man & Sun, Moon & Sun, Sun & Reader, DJ Music Man & Reader, Glamrock Freddy & Gregory, Sun/Reader, Moon & Reader

You blink at the offended new light source aimed at the far wall of the pit, flickering constantly and making your eyes hurt. You smack it in your palm until the batteries move back in place and the light stops flickering. You point it up and down the well again, considering your options of going forward or going home, putting all the cards at the table so you can make a decision.

Turning around, wanting to pace for a bit since it helps you think better, you're greeted with a whole thing standing right behind you.

The color quickly drains off your face and you get cold, holding your breath for dear life as the light from your torch illuminates a face. Round like a dinner plate, singed and cracked, with a Cheshire smile stretched from one side to the other, black eyes that seem to suck the light out of the torch, framed by a shredded, poorly patched up blue hood. You don't feel like moving the light or your eyes away from the animatronic, so you can’t see the state of the rest of its body yet.

The thing isn’t moving. Neither are you.

T | Words: 27,900 | Chapters: 11/?

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Don’t spare your gaze by acrylicArtsy | @inazumaneko

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon & Sun

With a huff, the daycare attendant sat up fluidly, and began heading to the sink to wash off what glue he could.

He was halfway there when the smell had hit him.

At first, he was confused. His systems halting, trying to place what this new thing was. He was getting multiple results at once, and it was almost dizzying how quick the sensory notifications came:

Barbecue, fireplace, fireworks, chimney,

Smoke.

What was happening? Why did he sense smoke? What could be causing this?

Fire. below. MOVE.

—————-

Or: Sundrop realizes the building is on fire, escapes, and tries to figure out his purpose in the big scary world.

(Active updates)

T | Words: 45,671 | Chapters: 14/?

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To Err Is Human by TheNerdyBirdy14 | @birdy-boogaloo

Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Moon & Sun, Moon/Sun/Original Character(s), Moon/Sun/Original Male Character(s), Moon/Sun/Reader, Daycare Attendant/Original Character(s), Daycare Attendant/Reader, Glamrock Animatronics & Original Character(s), Glamrock Chica & Original Character(s), Montgomery Gator & Original Character(s), Glamrock Freddy & Original Male Character(s), Roxanne Wolf & Original Character(s)

Jack Harley just wanted a nice, simple job that paid well. He was sick of working two other jobs to make ends meet. So when Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex began looking for someone to manage the Daycare area, he leapt on it. It was just a little mechanical work and playing with kids, right? Shouldn't be too hard.

But there's something going on under the surface: animatronics with way more intelligence than they should have; secrets that come out when the lights go down; and to top it off, a virus with a vengeance infecting it all.

Is there a way to fix it all? Or will he be another victim broken by the company's dark past?

//OC-centric, slow burn romance, giving the animatronics the happy ending they deserve, plot fixes, short chapters\\

M | Words: 87,171 | Chapters: 16/?

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Celestial Syzygy by Pterolem | @echoingkarma

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon/Reader, Sun/Reader, Moon & Sun, Glamrock Freddy & Reader, Montgomery Gator & Reader, Glamrock Chica & Reader, Roxanne Wolf & Reader, Vanessa & Reader

You're the human staff of Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex, and one of the only two you ever seem to see, there to be a comforting and familiar face for the guests... and just to do what you're told. At your side are several very tall animatronics who mostly want to help you settle in.

Mostly.

Good luck, reader, and please enjoy your time working for Fazbear Entertainment. Don't forget all those waivers you signed when you started working for us! And forget what you hear or see in the night; its not relevant to your job :)

M | Words: 70,541 | Chapters: 18/18

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you move to dayshift but aren't paid any more, go figure by tuzesdays | @tuzesdays

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Moon & Sun & Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader

You never, never wanted to be on dayshift. All those children running around, being loud and messy and eugh... but that's what corporate scheduled you for, and they're the ones that write your checks, so. You weren't expecting to get along with the daycare attendant, but that doesn't mean you want to stay on dayshift just to hang out with them.

Too bad you can't back out now.

T | Words: 121,367 | Chapters: 21/?

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So(u)l by Strawbubbysugar | @strawbubbysugar

No Archive Warnings Apply, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Moon & Sun, sun and moon/reader, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Montgomery Gator & Reader, Eclipse/Reader

It will take every single sign the universe can throw at you to realize that you are capable of being loved. Specifically, by an animatronic daycare attendant.

Check out @strawbubbysugar on Tumblr for art related to the AU, and to participate in polls to decide what happens next!

NR | Words: 134,362 | Chapters: 70/70

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What's It Called When Light Hits a Prism? by TooManyPsuedonyms

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon & Sun

The PizzaPlex has been running--and the Management needs a new operator for one of their salvaged animatronics.

You are just trying to live independently, so of course, you'll take the job.

You have no idea what you're in for. Granted, you never really know what you're in for, but this can't be much different than working with regular human people... right?

M | Words: 161,198 | Chapters: 39/?

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Other Roles or Species AU Fics

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--- Other Roles (machines in total alternate circumstances. This may include former daycare attendants if the primary role has changed. Former daycare attendants who have more so only lost their role do not go here, they still go in Animatronic Daycare Attendant Fics)

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Sleuth Jesters by NaffEclipse | @naffeclipse

Archive Warnings Apply, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon & Reader, Sun & Reader, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Eclipse/Reader, Eclipse & Reader

M | Words: 174,134 | Works: 15 | Complete: No

- Due to being a whole series rec, here's the first work details:

Share the Cuffs by NaffEclipse | @naffeclipse

No Archive Warnings Apply, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon & Reader, Sun & Reader

“If I may, Detectives, I believe that the score is set at a tie on how many times you’ve both let me slip away under your watch.” You grin at the sun and moon like faces of your opponents in this game of cat and mouse. The narrow slice of Detective Moon’s gaze becomes threatening, where Detective Sun curls and uncurls his fingers in anticipation of whatever scheme you’re concocting.

Detective!Sun & Detective!Moon x Vigilante!Reader (SFW)

T | Words: 4,084 | Chapters: 1/1

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Bethroned by Strawbubbysugar | @strawbubbysugar

No Archive Warnings Apply, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Moon & Sun, Sun & Reader, Moon & Sun & Reader, Moon & Reader, Moon/Reader, Sun/Reader

The Human Kingdom of Porphyal has long been at war with The Kingdom of Atomata, a strange land filled with sentient automatons. The cause for the start of the bloodshed has been lost to time, but it will soon be drawing to a close with the arranged marriage of the Heir of Porphyal and the Heir of Atomata, set to be wed when they reach of age, uniting the Kingdoms in peace at last.

Though it is uncertain if the temporary truce will last long enough to see this come to pass.

NR | Words: 58,168 | Chapters: 34/?

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Ghost in the Machine by Qwille | @venomous-qwille

Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Moon/Sun/Reader, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Moon/Reader, Sun/Reader, Eclipse/Reader

You are not strong in the Sight. To you, the supernatural has become the background noise of a mundane and lonely life. You have no interest in becoming involved with ghosts.

But they have every interest in you.

When your eccentric great uncle offers you a job fixing the ‘jewel’ of his collection—the original Fazco Daycare Attendant—you expect a challenge, sure. This was undoubtedly going to be the biggest project of your life. You expect pain, mistakes, and late nights aplenty, and you expect an excruciating learning curve.

You do not expect the other Daycare Attendants.

This is a story about love and memories, about secret things and ghosts.

How can you know what to live for when the world you were built for is gone?

M | Words: 69,063 | Chapters: 7/?

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--- Other Species

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Apology Flowers & Blooming Hours by daunsun | @daunsun

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader

Google Maps knew some of the most niche places, really. Oh, you need a very specific kind of food? Here’s a location five minutes from you! You’re looking for a pot of a particular kind of flower and have never explored the area around your apartment complex outside of work? Great! There’s a flower shop two blocks down! Of course, that exact question is what led you to the looming brick shop in front of you. It was a rather quaint place, sure, but it was on one of the busiest streets in town, meaning you only received stares for standing in front of the flower shop and getting in the way. According to your phone, the place was called Daylight-Goodnight Blooms. You figured it was called that because of its night time delivery service, which apparently isn’t a common thing for stores, especially flower shops.

It's not everyday you see a grinning and smiling talking sunflower. Neither is it everyday a grumbling moonflower shows up to your doorstep with... a bouquet? Things were already stressful enough, so surely you were losing your mind, yeah?

(An AU I made that apparently people liked, so I'm writing a tiny fic on it I guess. I have a bunch of ideas. >:D )

T | Words: 9,868 | Chapters: 2/?

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Bug Love by TheOHNOCorral | @theohnocorral

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Moon & Sun, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon & Sun & Reader

Sun and Moon are what remains of a vast pantheon of gods. Only able to save themselves by making a pact with each other and binding their bodies together and the moon and sun themselves. They watch over what is left of the vast forests they once protected. They know that one day they will waste away, unable even to hold on to each other.

Now here you are. Things haven't gone exactly the way you'd hoped but you've got another field position and it's looking up from there. Now if you can manage to keep catching bumble bees, not eat anything poisonous, and make the mortgage, you'll be fine.

Curious that you always catch more bees than anyone else on the study. Curious that you never get ticks, or chiggers, your bag never rips open, you've never been stung, never fallen in the woodland brush. You think you're just lucky for a while. Then you step on that hornet nest. Well. You'd always had a thing for local cryptid lore.

G | Words: 43,561 | Chapters: 17/?

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Cryptid Sightings by NaffEclipse | @naffeclipse

Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Sun/Reader, Eclipse/Reader, Daycare Attendant/Reader

Perhaps this would scare a person, being all alone in the woods in the dark, but not you. You’re too intertwined with the paranormal and inexplicable. It’s in your blood. That doesn’t mean your heart won’t pound with terror when you face something with fangs and hungry eyes for flesh, but you don’t run away, and that’s what matters most.

You will face the monsters.

Cryptid!Sun/Moon x Cryptid Hunter!Y/N (SFW)

M | Words: 253,823 | Chapters: 21/21

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Celestial Sundown by clutterspace | @pillowspace

Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Sun/Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Eventual Moon/Reader, Eclipse & Reader, Eclipse/Reader

There was something slumped beneath a tree, and you had no idea what it was.

The sunlight shone brighter where it laid, despite the leaves above not differing from any of the other foliage.

It was such a small thing to notice in comparison to everything else, but it brought a small hysterical giggle out past the lump in your throat as it finally clicked in place what you were seeing.

It was a god.

────

You are a peasant living in the middle of the woods, Sun is the god of day you brought back home with you, and Moon is the god of night tucked away in the Celestial Realm.

T | Words: 83,805 | Chapters: 7/?

- hey! Celestial Sundown is my fic! My followers recommended that I add it to the list

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--- Other Species (Mer)

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For in Safe Horizons by Anonymous | @horizonandstar

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Moon & Sun & Reader, Moon & Reader, Sun & Reader, Moon/Reader, Sun/Reader

It was supposed to be a normal expedition like any other, but something goes wrong and the ship crash-lands. Now you’re stranded on an ocean planet with no way of going home. How long can you survive until you can call for help and leave this planet?

For the first time in your life, you’re alone.

As alone as one can be when two alien creatures follow you around, anyways.

T | Words: 28,630 | Chapters: 8/?

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The Sea Jesters are Real Science by MatosaurusRex, sixty_nine13 | @frizzybearprteam

Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Sun & Reader, Moon & Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon & Sun & Reader, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Moon & Sun

You stare into the glass. At first you see nothing, just a greenish-blue landscape, peaceful and ordinary. There is nothing special about it... Or so you think. As the seconds pass, two figures become more and more visible, slowly growing from two distant dots to two large figures, easily two metres tall. The two creatures stare at you, and you raise your hand, slapping it against the cold glass that holds the creatures trapped. These two beings, which until now had been considered to be legends, raise their hands to clasp yours as well. The most wonderful living beings in the world stand before you, separated by thick glass, suffering every day at the hands of greedy people.

How long will they resist this?

((This fic was inspired by Tumblr shenanigans and merMAY! Thank you all for inspiring us to create this <3))

T | Words: 121,792 | Chapters: 27/?

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Celestial Omens (that really like Fishsticks) by BamSara | @bamsara

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Moon & Sun & Reader, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader

When you are ten years old, you find two creatures, bloodied and injured, trapped a net on the beach near your home. You save them, make friends with them, and return them to the sea, leaving you to wonder later if your friends with the Sun colored scales and fins that shone like the full Moon were real or imagined up by a childhood of loneliess.

Time passes. You hear stories of monsters, Sirens in the water, one that is a good omen if spotted, promising your safe voyage as long as you respect the rules of the ocean, and one that sinks ships and eats people for fun. Just folktales meant to scare children.

A decade later, they return the favor, though they don't plan on leaving you so easily this time.

(A 3-part Sun & Moon x Reader fic for Mermay.) (Title subject to change)

T | Words: 23,822 | Chapters: 2/3

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Song for a Siren by SolarRush | @solarrush

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Sun & Reader, Moon & Reader

As a kid, ever since you attended your first show at the Faz Aquarium and Research Center you were determined to become like the mer handlers you admired. Now fresh out of college, you've made it to your first day at the ARC!

It's not quite as....glamorous...as you expected.

An abandoned exhibit and its inhabitants stir up questions about Faz Corp's true intentions, and you find yourself caught in the middle. Can one person change a bleak future, or will you be sleeping with the fishes?

T | Words: 23,162 | Chapters: 4/4

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I Watched You Become a Stranger by IcedMetalTea | @icedmetaltea

No Archive Warnings Apply, Moon & Sun & Reader

You work at one of the few aquariums cleared to house merfolk as a handler for twin mers who live in a sort of petting pool targeted at kids, as they've proven to be harmless to humans through the years. You spend your days taking care of them and supervising their interactions with the public.

You arrive at the exhibit for your early morning shift and, as you prepare for the day's visitors, the automatic door to the room malfunctions and slams shut while you're inside. You find yourself trapped with no sources of food, and the two creatures who have a very big appetite.

T | Words: 6,748 | Chapters: 1/1

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Scars and Scales by intistone | @intistone

Graphic Depictions Of Violence, just platonic stuff ye, Family Fluff - Relationship, Sun & Reader, Moon & Sun, Moon & Sun & Reader, Moon & Reader

You were doing fine as a diver, despite the nosy neighbor/best friend and dog that was certainly going to be the end of you. All was well, in a weird way

Then the storm came.

And the tides rose.

And you met a monster

Two of them actually, and they were anything but.

You have no idea what to do, no idea how to help, and clearly no idea now broken they are.

But you can't keep them safe forever.

Your past is catching up to you faster than you think.

NR | Words: 163,547 | Chapters: 14/?

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Fish Out of Water by Imagine_Darksiders | @imagine-darksiders

No Archive Warnings Apply, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Sun/Reader, Daycare Attendant & Reader, Moon/Reader, Moon & Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader

'What you're looking at is...

Well, quite frankly, it's impossible.

There's a face hanging above you, Lovecraftian in proportion – taller and wider than you are long, with features about as adjacent to a human's as one could possibly get.

For the first few seconds, you remain frozen to your spot, unblinking, half expecting the grinning visage to fade away as sobriety takes you back into its safe, sense-making embrace.

A pair of milky, white eyes peer down at you, hanging in the expanse of yellowing skin, like twin pools of alabaster paint. You'd hesitate to even call them eyes, but then, the damn things b l i n k.'

M | Words: 26,589 | Chapters: 4/?

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Within a Sun and Moonlit Cove by shadow_oblivion

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Moon & Sun & Reader, Moon/Sun/Reader

You witness two mer hatch, and spend the entire summer with them. But at the end of that time, you get the mer to the sea before your family moves away. 20 years later, you are in desperate need of a break from your busy life. Taking a vacation to where you lived when younger, you fondly remember the two tiny mer, and hope they are doing all right wherever they are.

When you wander the shore near your hotel, during the day or at night, you start to find little trinkets here and there, along with an occasional dead sea creature. You might dismiss the odd sight as coincidence, until the items start to line the shore in the direction of a secluded cove in the distance.

T | Words: 40,981 | Chapters: 12/?

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Pisces Caelestis by S_V | @sortvaniliekrans

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Moon/Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader, Sun/Reader, Glamrock Freddy & Reader, Roxanne Wolf & Reader, Glamrock Chica & Reader, Montgomery Gator & Reader

Underneath the glowing eyes, a great maw opened to hiss at you, baring several rows of needle-like fangs, wicked looking and sharp and also glowing in the blacklight. As the thing hissed, the cries started up again, more frantic this time, and accompanied by- it almost sounded like scratching?

And it was coming from behind you.

The bleeding creature had never been the one wailing.

NR | Words: 76,588 | Chapters: 13/?

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In Deep Dreams Between the Waves by NaffEclipse | @naffeclipse

No Archive Warnings Apply, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Daycare Attendant & Reader, Eclipse/Reader

You see a fish, but the fish isn’t really a fish, because he looks up at you with big yellow eyes, wide with fright. Large black pupils dart around frantically. He’s small, less than half your size, which surprises you. You know mers are supposed to be big sea monsters that sink boats or cause storms, but you don’t see a monster. You think of a baby while staring at his chubby round face, creased with fear, and his small tail.

Mermaid!Eclipse x Reader (SFW)

T | Words: 55,644 | Chapters: 5/5

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Song Fish Amid the Stars by NaffEclipse | @naffeclipse

No Archive Warnings Apply, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader

A pang hits your heart, going out to the little fish struggling to escape the cruel and entrapping lagoon.

But they look like mers. Sea monsters.

Mermaid!Sun & Mermaid!Moon x Reader (SFW)

T | Words: 69,362 | Chapters: 6/6

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Crush Depth by NaffEclipse | @naffeclipse

No Archive Warnings Apply, Daycare Attendant/Reader, Eclipse/Reader, Sun/Reader, Moon/Reader

You stare out the forward viewport—the window. The sub’s only window. Blood splashes against the thick glass. It is human blood. It fills an ocean on Moon FZ-87. The atmosphere is dark and barren, speckled with the ghostly light of stars that have been gone for decades.

This is the last view you have of anything above the blood ocean surface. Futility sinks roots into your ribs.

DCA x Reader (SFW)

M | Words: 25,182 | Chapters: 10/10

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Updates

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Sleuth Jesters by NaffEclipse was added to the list, categorized under Other Roles! - 9/30/22

Celestial Syzygy by Pterolem was added to the list, categorized under Animatronics Daycare Attendant Fics! - 10/13/22

Cryptid Sightings by NaffEclipse was added to the list, categorized under Other Species! - 10/24/22

you move to dayshift but aren't paid any more, go figure by tuzesdays was added to the list, categorized under Animatronic Daycare Attendant Fics! - 11/2/22

Pisces Caelestis by S_V was added to the list, categorized under Other Species (Mer)! - 5/23/23

So(u)l by Strawbubbysugar was added to the list, categorized under Animatronic Daycare Attendant Fics! - 7/14/23

Celestial Sundown by clutterspace was added to the list, categorized under Other Species! - 7/14/23

Bethroned by Strawbubbysugar was added to the list, categorized under Other Roles! - 10/22/23

Song Fish Amid the Stars by NaffEclipse was added to the list, categorized under Other Species (Mer)! - 10/22/23

What's It Called When Light Hits a Prism? by TooManyPsuedonyms was added to the list, categorized under Animatronic Daycare Attendant Fics! - 10/22/23

Crush Depth by NaffEclipse was added to the list, categorized under Other Species (Mer)! - 10/22/23

In Deep Dreams Between the Waves by NaffEclipse was added to the list, categorized under Other Species (Mer)! - 10/22/23

Ghost in the Machine by Qwille was added to the list, categorized under Other Roles! - 10/24/23

#five nights at freddy's security breach #sundrop #moondrop #fnaf sun #fnaf moon #sun fnaf #moon fnaf #fnafsb #five nights at freddy's #fnaf sb #fnaf daycare attendant #the daycare attendant #fnaf naptime attendant #the naptime attendant #i haven't finished reading all of these fics but i have read a good amount to confidently put them on the list #please let me know if an untagged author has a tumblr blog! i must have missed it #also let me know if i got any details wrong and didn't notice #fnaf security breach

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starcursedluvrs · 1 month

Text

"TALK"

I suguru x pregnant!reader

“And I’d be the immediate Forgiveness In Eurydice. Imagine being loved by me.”

part I of suguru x pregnant!reader (this isn’t completely canon compliant, and will probs be 3 or 4 parts and will go up to December 24th, 2017 on the current JJK timeline).

summary: you loved suguru more than anything in this world. and you could argue he felt the same for you. actually, he would end the world for you. so, he took you with him the night he defected, and you happily obliged. however, in the midst of the chaos of leaving your life behind, two little lines appear on a certain test causing you to rethink your entire plan.

A/N: heyyy!! i'm arden!! this is my first try at ever posting the fanfic I’ve written so please enjoy! I started this specific fic as a hobby back in December, and I finished it a little over a month ago (I’ve just been kinda nervy to post hehe) so here goes nothing! likes, reblogs, and comments are highly appreciated <3

MINORS / AGELESS BLOGS DO NOT INTERACT. YOU WILL BE BLOCKED.

warnings!: SPOILERS FOR GOJO’S PAST ARC. THIS IS A PREGNANCY FIC! 18+. nsfw. f!reader. suguru and reader are over the age of 18. explicit sexual content. unprotected sex/oral (f!receiving). breeding kink. fingering. creampie. pregnancy. unplanned pregnancy. lactation kink. mentions of child abuse. cute domestic fluff hehe.

wc: 14.5k

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September 2007

4:27 PM (16:27)

“Wait…so what are we doing again?” you asked, riding atop one of Suguru’s many curses. You were straddling the pink alien-looking curse, legs dangling off either side. One of Suguru’s large hands held your waist steady while the other controlled the motion of the cursed spirit. His chin was buried in the crook of your neck, so that he had easy access to press kisses into your skin.

Suguru left a line of sweet pecks down your shoulder before answering.

“This village in the sticks was reported to have kidnappings and abnormal deaths. Shouldn’t be anything unusual,” he said nonchalantly.

You leaned back against him so that you could look up into his honey irises, pouting. His hand left your waist, moving comfortably behind him to support both of your weight.

“Then why did you ask me to come along? Seems like you could handle it yourself, you’re a special grade. I’m only a semi grade-one,” you reasoned, reaching up to play with his stray bangs. He grabbed your hand before you could reach his neat, inky bun, pressing light kisses into your knuckles.

“Well, if all goes well, maybe we can find a hotel or do something nice. Charge it to the school and say it took longer than we expected, so we get to stay somewhere overnight without waking Satoru,” Suguru replied, smirking a bit on the last line of his speech.

“I like the way you think, my love,” you beamed, melting into his touch.

…

January 2007

You and Suguru had been in a committed relationship for the past nine months, and friends for even longer. You started secretly fucking around at the beginning of your third year at Jujutsu High. You had always been attracted to him, but given your tiny class size and the complexity of Jujutsu Society, you didn’t want to cause any drama or make things weird between you two.

Well, life doesn’t always go to plan.

Especially that one night at the beginning of your third year when you, Shoko, Satoru, and Suguru broke into Yaga’s liquor cabinet, stole two bottles of sake, and got a little handsy. With your judgment impaired, you might have let it slip that you thought Suguru was very attractive and often wondered how his sculpted body would feel beneath his Bontan pants and uniform shirt. The thought was reciprocated by the raven head.

One thing led to another, and the next morning, you woke up in a tangled mess of inky black hair and bedsheets. Suguru just held you, keeping your body close to his, whispering sweet nothings into your ears. It was nice, you did not have to say anything to fill the comfortable silence that had fallen upon you two.

Eventually, he placed a kiss on your forehead and started to pull his clothes on from the previous night.

Last night. Was last night a mistake?

Should you have let Suguru taken you out to dinner or something before he fucked you into tomorrow?

“Wait…Sug hold on.

What does this mean?

For us? Our friendship?” you asked in a panic before Suguru reached the door.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to,” he replied in his calm, collected tone, looking at the floor with his back to you.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you sat up, still covered by the soft sheets, pulling your knees into your chest, slightly offended.

“Just that we don’t have to make a big deal out of this if we don’t want to. We also don’t have to do this again if you don’t want to. I know this could complicate things if we keep at it,” he paced around to face you again, the distance still rather daunting.

“Okay.”

“Cool.”

The comfortable silence from before slowly turned awkward.

“Um…thanks,” you offer.

“…for…what?” Suguru inquired.

“Last night. It was…fun,” you flashed him an unsure smile.

A deep rumble came from his chest as he chuckled, “Yeah, let’s see how much fun you have walking today. See ya in class,” before leaving the room.

“SUG-“ you called after him, blushing at the cheesy line as he left the room, disappearing back into the cocoon of sheets.

…

March, 2007

You tried to keep your distance from him. Being a child of the Kamo clan, you were probably destined to be forced into some relationship that benefitted Jujutsu society, and not your happiness. This was just one of the many things that you hated about Jujutsu Society. Therefore, Suguru was all that more enticing to you.

You found yourself perched on Suguru’s desk the next week. Your legs were spread wide, held apart by his large hands to assure you didn’t squirm around too much and get away from him. Suguru was lapping at your folds like a man starved. He dragged his tongue up and down your slit, and worked his way up to your clit, giving it a little kiss and suck.

“Ngh Suguru. More.” You moaned, bucking your hips up to his face.

“That’s not how we ask,” he replied, pulling away.

“Suguru. Please.”

“What happened to complete sentences?” Suguru pressed one of his large thumbs to your nub, holding pressure, but refrained from moving it.

“Fuck YOU Suguru I-“

“That’s what I’m trying to do, doll. You’re just not behaving.”

He started to swirl his thumb around gently. It wasn’t enough to make you cum, but the pleasure was still intense.

“Suguru please, I need som-something inside. Fingers. Yours. Please.” You croaked out, your head going dizzy with pleasure.

“Awww, what’s wrong? Can’t think straight?” He said, plunging his slickened digits, adorned with a few silver rings, right into your core.

“At least you said please, so I guess I’ll let you cum this time,” Suguru voiced in that smooth, sultry voice of his.

He started moving those two digits back and forth in a “come here” motion, not giving you a chance to adjust to their circumference. A lewd squelching noise filled the room as he continued his ministrations. “You’re being such a good girl for me, taking my rings and fingers so well. Yeah, you like that, don’t you?”

You let out a loud moan, and Suguru immediately pushed his thumb in your mouth for you to suck on. That way, you wouldn’t draw attention to any unwelcome visitors who might be walking the halls of the school.

“You don’t even have to answer with that pretty mouth, your body is answering for you. You’re so tight. Gods, you’re gorgeous.” he whispered into your ear.

He put his mouth back on your clit to suck, and added a third finger. He kept thrusting it in and out, hitting that sweet spot that had you seeing stars, as if he had your g-spot memorized.

If Sugru ended up drowning in your juices, he would die a happy man. He absolutely loved lapping up at your sweet pussy, the earthy scent intoxicating to him.

Soon, you felt the familiar coil in the depths of your belly start to come undone, and your cunt fluttered around Suguru’s fingers, the stimulation becoming too much.

“Come apart f’me. I got you love. I got you. Cum f’me,” Suguru commanded in his pussy-drunk haze.

You let go as your orgasm washed over you, relishing in the pure bliss as Suguru helped you through the aftershocks. When you came to, he captured your lips in a hungry kiss. You could still taste your essence on his tongue.

The next night, you were folded over the same desk as he pounded into you with his fat length. The bathroom stalls. The pantry. Behind the bleachers at the field. You could not get enough of each other.

You and Suguru both fell hard and fast for each other. His unwavering sense of morality, intelligence, and kindness towards others drew you even further into his grasp. The way he spoke, his scent of freshly done laundry, his loyalty to his friends; these were all things that you loved about Suguru Geto. He was one of a kind.

As Jujutsu Sorcerers, you were well aware that your tomorrow was not guaranteed. Suguru made you feel alive, which, to you, was worth more than any amount of fame or glory that your clan could bestow upon you. He truly wanted to make the world a better place for you, and any future you might have together. On the third month of your official relationship, you confessed your love:

“Suguruuuu,” you giggled as he kissed up your neck.

You had been laying in Suguru’s bed, in the midst of a heated makeout session. Your back was pressed flat into the mattress, knees at an angle, and feet flat against the soft duvet. Suguru was positioned right on top of you, in between your knees. He held your face in both of his hands, and your arms clung to the back of his head, getting lost in the inky strands.

“I love you.” He whispered, as if he was telling a secret.

In lieu of an answer, you brought his head down into a deep, passionate kiss. Your tongues danced together for what seemed like forever and no time at all, until you broke the kiss and said, “I think I may love you more.”

“Unfortunately, doll, that’s simply not true. I’d end the world for you.”

You were hopelessly in love with Suguru Geto.

…

May 2007

“You have a list of baby names picked out? Dude you’ve been together for like a few months.” Shoko taunted, a cigarette tucked between her lips, clicking away on her silver flip phone.

“Oh, come on Ieiri, I think every person has a baby name list.”

“I don’t.” Shoko deadpanned.

“You’re a lesbian who has no desire for kids,” you shot back.

“Touché. I do have a cat name list, though, if that counts,” Shoko added.

“I think it does.” you replied.

“Ugh, fineee, gimme the list,” said Shoko, already grabbing the journal out of your hand. After scanning through the list of names, Shoko looked up at you and burst into laughter.

“Ok, you cannot name your kid Shigure. Or Kyo. Or any character from Fruits Bask-“

“Yo, WHO’S having a kid” interrupted the lanky, white-haired person with blacked-out sunglasses and a mischievous smile. Suguru appeared next to Satoru, holding a basketball, running to kiss you hello.

“NO ONE’S having a kid,” you replied.

“Ok, wait I need to know, do either of you have baby name lists? I feel like every person has them.”

Satoru sighed, and thought about the question for a second. Suguru sat on the ground and started rolling the basketball in the dirt.

“I haven’t even thought about baby names. To be honest, kids are kinda hard to have when you’re a sorcerer. You have to go on missions and then come home and change diapers, no thanks. Like, what if it poops on you? Also, I kinda wanna spite the old geezers in my clan.” Satoru added.

“You raise an excellent point, Gojo. This is one of the reasons why I love being a lesbian. Less of a risk for accidents,” Shoko took a drag from her cigarette.

“I can’t be the ONLY person here who has a list,” you sighed.

“Lemme see that-“ Satoru said as he grabbed your journal from Shoko’s grasp.

“…These are just Fruits Basket and One Piece charact-” Satoru snickered.

“Wait Satoru, have you read the new One Piece chapter yet? I heard it’s crazy.” Suguru cut in.

“Oh, no not yet, I haven’t had a chance to get the new volume,” Satoru whined.

“What are you doing right now? Wanna go pick up some coke from the vending machine, then get to that bookstore in Shinjuku and grab a copy?” Suguru explained with excitement.

“Honestly, a coke sounds amazing right now. Either of you wanna come?” Satoru gestured to you and Shoko.

“Nah, I think we’re gonna go steal some of Yaga’s booze,” Shoko informed.

“Yeah, he’s on a mission for the next day or so. Might as well take advantage of it,” You said, a little defeated and disinterested.

“…’kay see you guys later then.” Satoru said in a sing-songy voice.

Suguru walked up to you, pressed a quick peck on your lips, and said, “I’ll be back. Love you.”

But that wasn’t all.

Under his breath, so that no one else could hear, he whispered, “Don’t think this conversation is over yet, doll,” and walked away as if he hadn’t uttered anything. Your stomach was filled with butterflies and you felt your cheeks go hot as he walked away.

…

Later the same day, May, 2007

You were sitting on Suguru’s lap as he twiddled on his PS3 controller playing one of his games. Suguru was sitting on the floor, his legs criss-crossed while you leaned against his back, feeling his warmth though his clothing. You were sporting one of his large white t-shirts, wearing only your favorite pair of panties underneath.

“Sug?” You question softly, turning around to face him.

“Yeah, doll?” He replied not looking down from his game.

“So…about that comment earlier. Why did you say the conversation wasn’t finished yet? And which one? About the One Piece chapter? Or the baby names? I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable asking that question, I was ju-“

Suguru paused his game and looked at you, a smirk on his face.

“It did the opposite of making me uncomfortable, actually. It made me feel a little more normal, or as normal as we can be given our lifestyle. I have a baby name list too.”

Your heart fluttered. Of course he did.

“I saw the list over Satoru’s shoulder. And we actually had one name in common.”

“Which name?”

“Riko.” He replied softly.

His answer made you happy and sad all at once. You wish you didn’t have that name on your list. Riko Amanai had meant so much to the both of you. She represented the freedom that you could have from Jujutsu Society, as well as everything that was broken and corrupt about it. Riko’s death is what radicalized the both of you. She set you both on a path to work towards a better world.

For a moment, you thought about what your life would be with Suguru had you not been Jujutsu Sorcerers. You would probably get married as soon as you graduated, get a job somewhere. Buy a cozy house in the countryside. Make home cooked meals, have children, adopt some dogs. You would grow old together and not have to constantly worry about the fact that you could die a gruesome death in the morning.

You were lying down on your side now, your back against Suguru’s chest. Suguru moved a hand under your shirt, to your stomach, slowly rubbing circles, drawing you out of your trance.

“I love your tummy, it’s so cute” Suguru sighed into your ear.

You giggled.

“What’s so funny about that, love?”

“I’m sorry that just sounded so funny in the moment.”

“I don’t think it’s that funny, especially when my baby’s gonna be in there one day.”

He said it so nonchalantly and matter-of-factly that you thought you had misheard him. You blushed, hoping you didn’t mishear.

“SUG-“ you turned around and gave a playful slap to his arm.

After a pause of giggling from the both of you, Suguru just couldn’t let the topic get away from you.

“Ya know, I think about it a lot,” he continued.

“Think about what,” you questioned.

“Think about what our future would be like. A house that is actually full of love. And little feet running around.”

“Tell me more,” you said against his lips.

“Maybe we’d live in a really remote village away from everything Jujutsu related. We could get a little farm, raise some sheep, horses, chickens, crops. We could add to the world instead of just taking.”

“Why do we have to wait for the future to do that? Money isn’t the issue here,” You answered, referring to the handsome compensation you receive for such a risky career path.

“True, I could just fuck a baby into you right now.”

“I was talking about the house, and you knew that.” You shot back, a laugh escaping your chest at an attempt to be serious.

“That’s another thing I think about.”

“What?” You were taunting him now. You wanted to see where this was going.

“You, your tummy all round with my baby. God, you look so good when you’re stuffed full f’me,” Suguru slurred. From the dim light of his paused video game, you could see that his pupils were blown with lust. He kissed you hard and messily, tongue intertwining with yours.

Suguru removed your (his) shirt and started to kiss down your body, landing at your breasts, hovering right over a nipple.

“These would look so good with milk. So pretty and soft,” he purred, taking a nipple into his mouth.

The warmth of his mouth felt so good against your pebbled nipples, you couldn’t help but let out a moan. He licked and sucked until you were a drooling, wet mess underneath him.

“You like this, huh. Baby, I’ve barely touched you. And you��re already this worked up?” He taunted, moving to give attention to the neglected nipple.

“What else?” you slurred, ignoring his question. He still hadn’t admitted it.

“Everyone would know who you belonged to. All because of me.” He continued, releasing the nipple from his mouth.

His words sent shivers down your spine, and you felt your arousal start to pool uncomfortably in your underwear. You needed them off.

“Suguru, what do you want?” you asked the obvious question, just wanting to hear him speak more on the topic.

“I wanna stuff your pretty cunt full of cum ‘till you can’t take any more, doll,” he grumbled, grinding his impressive erection on your clothed cunt.

“Wanna get you pregnant so bad,” he continued pressing feverish kisses down the length of your body. “You’ve been asking a lot of questions about what I want.” He made his way to your panties, “But, before I take these off, I need to know what you want.”

Your hole was clenching around nothing at his words, you were getting rather impatient.

“Please touch me.” You whined.

“Hmm, I have been touching you my love,”

“Sugu- stop t-teasin-nghhh.” you moaned as one of his thick fingers started moving in a circular motion on your bud. Soon, one finger became two, and he moved them from your clit to your slick folds, swirling the juices around, occasionally ghosting your eager cunt.

“Suguru gimme your dick,” you begged.

“Baby, one, you can ask nicer than that, where are your manners? And two, I have to get you ready to take me first. Gotta make sure I can fit the most amount of cum in there as possible,” he let out a small moan on the last word.

“Open your mouth, doll,” he commanded.

You complied, opening your mouth as he stuck his two slickened fingers in, pushing them as far back as they could go. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see a dark stain forming on his gray sweatpants. He must have been impossibly hard.

Your moans and gasps vibrated against his digits, and when he thought you had been teased enough, he finally offered you the sweet relief of his fingers filling you. Definitely not as large as his cock, but they reached the parts of you that you could not with your own hands. Suguru started thrusting in and out, curling his fingers along the way, hitting your g-spot with brutal precision.

“Sug-nghhh, I’m gonna-”

“Shhh baby, you can let go for me, I got you. So good f’me.”

With the thumb of his hand, he lightly stroked your clit, and you felt the familiar heat bubbling in your core. After a few more thrusts, and praises from Suguru, you were cumming all over his fingers. He helped you through your orgasm, your head full of wool as you came down from your high. Suguru brought his drenched appendages to his mouth and sucked, cleaning your fluids from his fingers.

“If only curses tasted this good. I can’t get enough of you.”

In your post-orgasm clarity, you realized that your boyfriend was still clothed. That wouldn’t do. You sit up, rummaging through sticky sweats and underwear to pull his dick out. A long strand of precum dripped from his tip, breaking away as you pulled him out of his boxers. His penis would never fail to surprise you; he was of average length, but so thick, you could barely close your hand around him. You wrapped two hands around his cock as your mouth watered at the beautiful sight before you. But, just as you were about to taste him, two of his strong hands pushed you back against the bed, forcing you off of his dick.

“What was that for? I wanna suck you off,” you pouted.

“Sorry, doll. We can’t waste any cum,” he said as his nose ghosted against yours.

“But I just wanted to make sure, you never said it out loud. Do you actually want this? Can I actually get you pregnant? Don’t wanna pressure you if it was just a kink.” He looked into your eyes with concern, needing your verbal confirmation to continue.

“Suguru. Put a baby in me.”

You think you broke your boyfriend after saying that. He let out a grunt from deep within his chest and grabbed a pillow from the pile that fell off the bed in during your earlier activities. He placed the pillow underneath your lower back and whispered choruses of “I love you,” on your skin. Suguru’s fingertips traced over your skin, eventually grasping your legs, throwing them over his shoulders.

“I don’t deserve you, doll.” He pressed a quick kiss to your nose.

“This is called a mating press,” Suguru explained as he grabbed his cock and lined up with your twitching hole. “I did some research as to what position would get you pregnant the fastest, and I think this one has a good success rate.” He sounded so methodical in his explanation, which was so in character for him. Of course your Suguru would do research into this. He would do anything for you to make you happy. And you would do the same for him.

When he pushes the head in, you both gasp at the contact. He kept sliding in until his balls slapped against your ass and your pelvic bones met. There was such little resistance, and you let out a sob as he bottomed out.

“You ok, baby? You’re taking me like such a-a, nghhh- good girl. Feels like heaven in your pussy. My pussy.” It was so attractive when he got possessive over you, your ovaries felt like they were about to burst in more ways than one.

“Sugu- ngh- move-“

Instead of moving, he licked the inside of your upper thigh, dragging his tongue impossibly slow to tease you.

“NGH- plea-ahhh please,” you could feel tears pricking in the corner of your eyes. He made it so easy for you to fall apart.

“Good girl, look at you using your words,” he sounded wrecked, his voice gravely with arousal. And with that, he began moving. At first, his thrusts were slow and deep; you could feel every vein and ridge on his dick. His balls slapped against the fat of your ass, creating an embarrassingly loud clapping sound that bounced off of the walls. It felt delicious.

You weren’t just having sex - he was making love to you. It was emotional and sensual. The tears you felt earlier spilled over on to your cheeks as Suguru picked up the pace, his cock pistoning in and out. He kissed your tears away as you muttered broken moans of both his name and explicits.

Suguru’s grip was surely going to leave bruises in the morning. One hand was holding your body in place around your waist, while the other kept your leg over his shoulder. He let go of your leg for a moment as he grabbed another pillow that was somewhere in reach, and gently slid it under your hips so that he could reach you at a deeper angle. Your vision went blurry. He was impossibly deep, you thought you could feel him rearranging your intestines.

Finally, his thrusts started getting sloppier. You knew Suguru was close.

“Gonna fuck my baby into you,” he half moaned. “Fuck, love, I’m close. Want ya to let go first,” and with that, he moved his possessive, bruising touch to rub your clit. After a few rotations around your nub, you let go, your vision going white as you came hard, your cunt clamping down on his cock.

The vice grip of your pussy is what finally sent him over the edge, and Suguru began to fill you up with his thick load.

“Thank you, baby, thank you,” Suguru chanted, like it was a prayer, and you were the goddess who was receiving his offering. You laid like that for a while, him still inside, your hips tilted up to keep his cum inside of you. He left a trail of kisses down your sweat-drenched neck as his cock softened in your walls.

After about fifteen minutes, you felt Suguru starting to fill out again, his body gearing up for round two.

And then three.

And then four.

You lost count of how many times you had cum that night. Your tummy sported a small bump with the amount of Suguru’s seed trapped in your womb. You were so full that you couldn’t possibly take any more. And Suguru loved you like that.

Of course, he loved you always, but this was different. He took one of his large hands and gently massaged your sore, slightly swollen belly, pressing wet kisses all around.

“I hope our baby looks like you,” you whispered into the crown of his head.

“I was just thinking the same thing. I hope our baby at least has your eyes. I get lost in them sometimes,” he responded. “Ya know, your eyes are probably my favorite part of you, besides your tummy. And your beautiful brain. And every other part of you.”

“I love you so much, Suguru. I don’t think I can put it into words. You’re such a good man, so good to me. You’re gonna be the best dad one day,” you confessed.

“Hopefully, that day will be soon,” he smirked, “I’m gonna go get you water and a hot washcloth to clean you up. Want anything to eat?”

You smiled back at him and shook your head, blowing a kiss to him before he left.

You expected yourself to be more freaked out by his comment, “hopefully, that day will be soon,” but you couldn’t help but feel excited. Life as a Jujutsu Sorcerer was so unexpected, you never knew when a mission was going to be your last. You decided it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a little mini Suguru running around, allowing the three of you to finally have the family that neither you nor Suguru ever did.

…

August 2007

It was a disgustingly hot day outside. You were so sweaty, you felt your clothes sticking to you, and the humidity felt as if you were walking through a sauna.

Since it was so unbearably hot outside, you and Suguru decided it would be a nice day to go to a water park. Of course, that meant Satoru and Shoko had to tag along.

You and Suguru were in charge of packing, as the other two would not have chosen enough food or towels for your journey. They would probably also forget things like sunscreen and umbrellas, opting to fill your beach bags with bottles of booze and sweets. You and Suguru were practically the parents of the friend group at this point; sometimes the other two would even refer to you as “mom and dad.” Suguru would give you a smirk any time this happened, reminding you of the conversation you had back in May.

After you fought Satoru on the fact that he could not in fact take an entire box of ice cream mochi to the water park, you were set to leave on your adventure. The four of you and your bags all piled in the car of an assistant director. Excitement and easy conversation flowed through the vehicle, as all of you relished in the relief of the cool air conditioning.

Shoko sat in the front, smoking a cigarette, choosing which CDs to play, while you sat in the back with Satoru and Suguru. Suguru, being the gentleman that he is, gave you the seat behind the driver’s side. You tried to resist, explaining that he and Satoru would have more leg room if you just sat in the middle, but Suguru insisted.

The four of you finally arrived at the water park about an hour and a half later.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

As you walked through the wooden gates, the park was swarmed with families, teenagers, and college students. There were colorful slides entangled in each other at the center of the park, with a lazy river surrounding it. To the left, there was a wave pool with people attempting to surf, and to the right, there was another large pool with buckets of water that would dump on patrons randomly. The lounge chairs were spread throughout the park, and it seemed like the entirety of Japan had come to this one water park to beat the summer heat.

“Ok guys let’s stay together and try to find some lounge chai-”

“Shoko! I’m gonna beat you down those slides, ready?” Satoru screamed with glee, like a young child.

“Hold on, lemme finish this,” Shoko replied, motioning to her cigarette.

“NO! We. Are. Going. To. Sit. Down. Let’s just stay together, it’s a madhouse here,” You put your foot down.

“If I wanted to be mothered, mother, I would have gone home for the summer,” Shoko rolled her eyes at you. You just ignored her, too bothered by the heat to even come up with a good comeback.

“I sent out a curse to go find us a spot - wait. Where’s Satoru?” Suguru chimed in.

“Let’s be logical about this. Where is the nearest ice cream stand?” You asked.

“Ha, there he is,” Shoko nodded her head towards the nearest ice cream stand. In the line of children, there was one with white hair who was almost as tall as the stand itself. Bingo.

You marched over to the line, and went to tug Satoru by his ear back to the group. Alas, his Infinity was on, and you could not touch him.

“Oof, I would not wanna be him right now, that one has a temper,” Shoko joked, as she put her cigarette out over the trash can next to them, watching you and Satoru argue. In that moment, Suguru couldn’t help but stare at you, taking in how beautiful you looked against the summer sun. You were glowing, radiant, even as you berated his best friend.

“I haven’t seen you look at someone the way you look at her.” Shoko broke Suguru’s thoughts, pulling him out of his trance.

“Yeah.” Suguru responded, smiling.

“Wow, you didn’t even try to deny it,” Shoko smirked back. “OOooo someone’s in looovee,” Shoko teased.

“I am. And I’m so lucky. I love her more than anything in the world,” Suguru said with a content sigh.

“Ok, now you’re just gonna make me vomit, that’s so sappy,” Shoko stuck out her tongue, making a fake gagging sound.

“It’s true,” Suguru responded, still in his trance.

“What if I can treat her better than you,” Shoko teased.

“Maybe,” he said, the slightest flicker of insecurity in his eyes. “I don’t think I deserve her sometimes. She’s not as tainted by curses and cursed energy as I am. She’s not the one who absorbs curses day after day.” He looked tired. Shoko noticed the bags under his eyes, but just as she was about to say something, you came running with Satoru’s wrist in your hand, pulling him with an ice cream cone in his hand. The ice cream was beginning to drip everywhere.

“I can’t believe they only had vanilla. What a ripoff,” Satoru sighed, annoyed.

“You dumbass, you didn’t even get napkins!? How am I supposed to call you a functioning adult, you’re literally about to turn 19, and you didn’t even get napkins?!” You berated him again.

“Oh, looks like the curse found a place for us to sit. It’s keeping the area clear so non-sorcerers aren’t determined to sit there,” Suguru interrupted.

You all walked towards a little spot in the shade with three lounge chairs and a table. You figured you would just share your lounge chair with Suguru and sit in his lap. Or he could use your lap as a pillow and you could braid his hair. Either worked.

Just as you were setting out your towels on the chairs, you heard a PLOP and crying following after. A little kid had slipped and fallen down on the concrete. He used his hands to break the fall, and the skin of his palms were broken a little bit, blood splintering through the cracks. He started hysterically crying.

“Oh no, sweetie! Are you okay? Where is your grown up?” you rushed over to the kid.

“I think I packed a first aid kit in the bag, let me get it,” Suguru added.

Of course he did, that man was prepared for the end of the world.

Suguru took an antiseptic wipe from the kit, and bent down so that he was at eye level with the kid.

“This is probably going to sting, but it will feel better I promise. Your bathing suit is dope by the way, I love the colors,” Suguru cooed at the kid, trying to calm him down.

“You remind me a lot of my little brother, his name is Noritoshi. He’s really brave. Are you brave like him?” you added.

The child stopped his hysterics and let Suguru clean him up, listening to both of your kind words. He nodded his little head of pink hair at your question and pointed towards an elderly man slowly, but frantically making his way over to the kid.

“Yuji! What happened?” the old man asked.

“I falled and getted a boo-boo,” the kid, called Yuji, sniffled.

“He slipped and hurt his hand, we have some antiseptic disinfectant and bandaids though, so we fixed him right up,” you told the man as he got closer.

“He was really brave,” Suguru added, smiling down at Yuji.

“Thank you, so much. You two are very kind,” the man said in a monotone voice. Though his voice showed no emotion, his eyes did. His eyes looked tired, but definitely grateful to the kindness of you and Suguru.

“Feel better, dude!” Suguru yelled to Yuji as his grandfather led him away.

After about an hour of tanning on the lounges with Shoko, you looked to see where the boys went. It wasn’t very hard to spot the two best friends, as they were acting like children, making big waves in the lazy river. On Suguru’s shoulders, you noticed something: the kid with the pink hair from earlier.

Suguru and Satoru were having some sort of chicken fight with him, all three of them laughing and having the time of their lives.

“You are hopeless,” Shoko rolled her eyes, a new cigarette in between her lips.

“What do you mean?” You replied.

“Don’t play dumb, I know what you’re thinking,” she smirked back.

…

September 2007

“Suguru, you look like you’ve lost weight, are you okay?” Satoru asked, as he twirled a pencil in midair with his Infinity technique.

“Just tired,” Suguru responded.

Over the past few weeks, Suguru had developed dark circles and bags under his eyes. He looked pale, and was often exhausted. Not too exhausted for you though, apparently.

It seemed the two of you spent more and more time together holed up in one of your rooms when you weren’t on missions. It was just so nice in your own little world, away from everything. You didn’t have to care about who lived and who died. You only had to focus on each other.

Satoru attempted to carry on the conversation.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“You probably won’t see me for a while again.”

“Yo, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I need to get out of here. Both of us do. We’re not fit for Jujutsu Society.” Suguru said, referring to the two of you.

“Ha, ha, so funny.” Satoru sarcastically added.

“It’s not a joke.”

“What do you mean? Dude, you’re a special grade, you seriously think they’re gonna let you quit?”

It was true. The elders wouldn’t just let Suguru run away and walk free. If he was not with Jujutsu society, he was probably against it. And letting a special grade sorcerer and his grade one partner roam free would pose a threat to the stability of the elder’s iron grip on the status quo of Jujutsu society.

He’d have to get the elders to denounce and force you out.

So, here you were, flying with the man who was your boyfriend, your one and only, on the back of a curse, headed out for a mission, and hopefully, some much needed seclusion with Suguru.

…

7:03 PM (19:03)

You and Suguru decided to split up for the mission. It had been reported that there was a sighting of two possible curse users and a separate cursed spirit. Thus, Suguru wanted to deal with the curse users, and you to deal with the curse itself.

You exorcized the curse with ease, using piercing blood to slice the monster in half. There were a few other lower level curses, which you could have eliminated with your eyes closed. It seemed too easy. If Suguru was sent on this mission, there had to be something else, another factor. After a few minutes of patrolling for any other cursed energy residue, you decided to find your way back to Suguru.

You found him standing outside of a small house on the outskirts of the village. He seemed out of it; he was staring right at the door, but did not enter. As you approached, you saw the strong cursed energy residue leading from the door.

“Sug, I exorcized those curses. I know you hate the taste of swallowing them, I didn’t want to make you do that if you didn’t have to.” If Suguru heard you, he showed no acknowledgement.

“Suguru?” You pinched the sleeve of his white collared shirt.

“Dude? Did you hear me?” You squeezed his thick bicep, pushing your manicured nails into his skin, effectively bringing him back from whatever plane of reality he was on.

“The locals in the village told me this is the home of two little girls, twins. Their descriptions match the ones for the curse users. So…” He insinuated, leaving the rest for you to figure out. His amber eyes were dark and cold.

“Oh.” You said. You and Suguru had both been through a lot and hated Jujutsu Society. You and Suguru had your incident with Amanai a little over a year earlier, and your uppity clan kept you from your mother, a heartbreaking decision by the family head in order to give you the best possible chance of becoming the leader of the clan. A position which you despised.

Over the past few months, in the afterglow of sex, you two would lay there, embraced in each other's arms, dreaming of a world without curses, without clans, without people to produce those curses. “Monkeys,” as Suguru referred to non-sorcerers, from which curses were created. In your and Suguru’s fantasy world, you wouldn’t even have a reason to use curse techniques. You could get married, have children, live a peaceful life without fear of a curse coming to take that happiness away.

The bottom line is you knew Jujutsu Society was unfair, but never would you think you would be asked to harm a child. What was wrong with these people? You thought of your little brother, Norotoshi, who was also six years old. He was supposed to be your “competition” for the title of family head, but you never really wanted to fight him. He was just your sweet little brother.

How could you harm someone that is the same age as your little brother?

A wave of nausea ran through your body as the reality of the situation dawned upon you. Suguru kneeled down on the floor with you, rubbing your back and holding your hair back as you vomited.

“Shhh, I got you.” He wrapped you in an awkward embrace on the floor, and pressed a kiss to your sweat-sheened forehead. “It’s going to be okay. I have a plan.” Suguru’s entire demeanor changed in an instant. He smiled, but there was no emotion behind his eyes, and his voice sounded like it was coated in honey.

His behavior was strange, but helped you to feel more at ease. Suguru gave you some hope to cling on to.

…

8:46 PM (20:46)

You were both sitting on the stairs leading up to the front of the house. You were leaning on Suguru as he brushed a hand over your hair, occasionally placing a kiss on the top of your head. You had finally finished sobbing into Suguru’s chest after an hour, the teardrops staining through his white collared shirt. You felt so many emotions. Anger at the broken system. Hatred, for the Jujutsu Society elders. Confusion, for what would happen once you committed to your plan. Grief, for the people in your life that you would lose. Betrayal, from the society that was supposed to protect people. Suguru sat with you and validated your feelings, making you feel like you and your emotions were the only things in this world that matter.

The plan was simple. You were both going to defect.

Both you and Suguru were sick and tired of the way the world functioned. You were sick of watching comrades, comrades who were teenagers, who were children, die.

During one of your late night conversations, Suguru once said,

“If being a Jujutsu Sorcerer is like running a marathon…

What if what’s at the end of that road…

Is a mountain of our fellow sorcerers’ dead corpses.”

In that moment, Suguru had played it off as some dark joke, but part of you knew that he was right.

As for the plan, you two were to wait until some of the elders of the village led you into the small house, as they apparently kept multiple locks on it to keep the supposed dangerous young girls at bay. Then, you were going to take the young sorcerers on the back of one of Suguru’s curses and run to Kyoto and find somewhere to stay for the night. Suguru said he would “take care of the rest.” You trusted him with your whole being, even if that meant him ending the lives of a few non-sorcerers. It would serve them right for causing the very existence of curses.

…

9:01 PM (21:01)

The two elders from the village arrived shortly after. You took Suguru’s hand and shared a reassuring glance, his thumb rubbing gently over your hand as if to say, it’s going to be okay. Shaking with exhaustion, anxiety, and some of the nausea from earlier, you slowly made your way up the stairs as the elders parted the shoji doors. The building seemed to be one long room with some sort of wooden cage at the end, almost like the house was made to hold animals at some point.

The building was dimly lit, but you could see the outline of two small figures huddled together in the center of the wooden cage. Your stomach turned once again, and you tightly squeezed Suguru’s hand.

“What is this?” Suguru firmly questioned, his free hand going up to brush his bangs away.

The two of you stepped closer to the makeshift prison, and the two small figures were shaking. As you made your way towards the children, they had obviously been beaten. They were covered in dry blood, scratches and bruises. They both had one black eye.

How could these children, these SIX year olds, legally be kept like this? THESE were the scary curse users that were terrorizing this village? It was disgusting.

“My grandchild was on the verge of death because of these two,” spit the woman who led you in.

“These two use strange powers and often attack the villagers.” defended the other man in your presence.

Suguru dropped your hand and squatted down to be at eye level with the girls, pinching his nose bridge between his pointer finger and thumb.

“So you mean to tell me that you monkeys think that these little girls, these children are responsible for the incidents that have been occuring, is that correct?” Suguru grumbled, his voice icy and dangerous.

“I already dealt with the cause of the incidents, they’re innocent children, what is wrong with you people,” you cried. You were full of rage, tears threatening to spill from your eyes.

One of the young girls, clutching a well-loved stuffed animal, bravely spoke up and declared, “We didn’t mean to hurt anyone on purpose, they were trying to-”

“SHUT UP YOU MONSTERS!” The elder woman screamed.

“Your parents were the same. I knew we should have killed you when you were born,” the man added.

“Exactly, twins are bad luck. We should have known better,” the elder woman snorted.

Suguru looked down at the girls and whispered something that would not have been obvious to someone who did not know him as well as you did, “It’ll be okay.”

He started drawing a curse from his arsenal of cursed spirits, and gave you a nod. The signal to go ahead with the plan.

That same silky smooth, almost frighteningly nice, voice that Suguru only used when he was especially angry.

“Let’s step outside for a second, shall we?” Suguru tutted, producing the same pink cursed spirit you flew on to get to the village. He walked out the door with the two older adults and shot you a glance.

I’d end the world for you.

It was the same expression he bore when you confessed your love for each other, all of those months ago.

The girls immediately stood up when they sighted the curse. They were terrified, understandably so. You moved towards the thick metal lock of the wooden cage and knelt down.

“Hey girls, I’m not going to hurt you, I’m here to help. You’re safe. I know it must seem so scary right now, but me and the other man you saw me with are going to get you out of here.”

You told them your name, and assured them that you were like them. Using your piercing blood to cut through the thick lock, you explained to them about your technique and talked to them about your little brother to keep them (and yourself) calm.

As soon as the lock broke, the girls ran to you and hugged you tightly. They were shaking, crying, and clinging to your body. A series of thank you’s flooded from their mouths, and you kissed the top of their heads, attempting to dry their tears away.

“The pink curse over here is going to take us to safety. Suguru, that man who’s talking to them, is also a sorcerer, and he’ll meet us wherever we get to.” you explained.

You sat the girls on the curse side by side, and then climbed in back of them to make sure they did not fall. Using Supernova, you blasted a hole through the roof, and the cursed spirit started to levitate off of the ground. Quickly, you gained altitude and left the village behind. You covered the girls eyes as you looked back, just to see what was happening. The entrance to the house was ablaze and you could make out Suguru’s cursed spirits crawling throughout the village.

Shit. Well, there wasn’t any turning back now.

…

The Next Morning

Overnight, you had flown the girls to a small hostel on the outskirts of Osaka. You purchased a small, private room for the three of you to stay in.

As the sky turned from a deep purple to a ombré of orange and blue, nausea from the previous evening returned in full force. You held yourself over the toilet as you threw up what felt like your entire gut. You stayed like that until you heard four small feet walk into the bathroom behind you.

With the light properly shining on them, you got to see how truly filthy they were. The girl, who called herself Mimiko, had short brown hair that was knotted, matted, and crinkled with dry blood. Her sister, Nanako, was not faring much better. Her blonde curls were also matted, and there was crusted blood left on her forehead. They both were covered from head to toe in bruises, had dark circles around their eyes, and seemed to be alarmingly skinny.

“Um… are you okay?” Nanako asked. You took a deep breath, happy to focus on something other than your churning stomach for a moment.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I think it’s just nerves.” You answered.

“Let’s worry about you two, I’ll run you a bath, then we can go to the 7/11 across the way and pick up some food. Sound good?” You declared.

Mimiko’s stomach rumbled. “I think your belly answered for you, Mimiko,” you chuckled softly.

…

While the girls bathed, you went down to the Lost and Found of the hostel and grabbed a few items that looked like they would fit the twins: some hoodies, leggings, and a skirt. You also fixed yourself up, washing the vomit out of your mouth and splashing your face with hot water from the sink.

Once the girls looked decent enough to go outside without raising suspicion, the three of you ventured out to the 7/11 across the street.

The smell of food was a welcome scent as you walked up and down the rows of food, snacks, and other items. You grabbed whatever you thought a few six year olds would like, and on your way to the cashier, something caught your eye. A row of 100 yen pregnancy tests and other feminine care products. Whether it be a metaphorical gut feeling or the actual nausea that had persisted for the last few days, something told you to purchase a stick to pee on, just in case.You snuck the test into the pile of items you and the girls were purchasing.

When the three of you got to the hostel, the girls scarfed their food down, and you tried to take little nibbles and sips of water. You put the twins down for a nap.

You tried your best not to think about Suguru. You didn’t know what to think of him anymore. The man you spoke to the previous night could not have been your boyfriend. The Suguru you knew would never kill without a point. He would never just murder an entire village of people.

You hoped and prayed that you were wrong. That he didn’t actually harm anyone and just showed off his curses to teach the people of the village a lesson.

Wait.

What if he was killed?

It was all so confusing. You loved Suguru. He’s the one person who seemed to have love for you, besides your younger brother.

Noritoshi. A pang of guilt wracked through your frame, heightening the gurgling of your stomach.

If he murdered those non-sorcerers…you would have been deemed an accomplice.

So…

What would he think?

Your baby brother?

Would he be okay?

He’s a boy with an inherited technique in the Kamo clan. But would people look out for him? Would they keep him from your mother as well?

In your spiral of thoughts, you noticed the 7/11 bag on the counter and remembered the supplies you bought earlier that day. You grabbed it as quietly as possible, as to not wake the girls, and stepped into the bathroom, clutching the goods inside. Your hands were shaking from lack of food over the past day and a half, but as carefully as you could, you retrieved the pregnancy test from the bag.

The box was small, but felt so heavy in your hand.

Why not? It probably won’t be positive, you told yourself.

Why do I have to convince myself it won’t be positive, you thought.

You know what, it will get my brain off of Noritoshi and Suguru for a bit, you reasoned, pulling apart the tucked in top of the box.

After you fully unwrapped it, you read the directions, and followed suit. You put the test in the cup on the sink of the bathroom, and walked out to see the clock in the room. You waited five minutes until the results developed.

Wait…this was probably a bad idea.

What were you thinking?

This was so stupid why would you go and do this in the first place?

You needed to get some air, your chest felt tight. You felt the nausea creeping back again.

Suguru, where are you?

You grabbed a room key off of the counter and slowly walked out into the hallway, desperately trying to keep yourself from waking the girls. One of the first things that caught your eye in the hallway was a vending machine.

Maybe some soda would help settle your stomach?

You walked over to the machine and plucked a few coins from your pocket, listening to them clink through the slot. You selected a Ginger Ale and Coke, reasoning that if you didn’t drink it, Suguru would when he got back.

If he got back.

No. You can’t think like that.

You took as long as you could getting back to the room, stepping on every other square of the carpeted floors, trying to ground yourself back to reality somehow. You arrived at the door a few minutes later and opened the door.

The windows in your room were wide open, allowing a little breeze to blow the curtains. You dropped both bottles of soda.

You had locked the windows before leaving the room. You made sure of it.

You panicked, running for the girls to make sure they were okay. Alas, they were sleeping soundly, no new scratches or blood on them.

You turned your attention to the bathroom, where the door was closed and you heard some rustling.

Slowly making your way towards the door, you lined up your piercing blood technique, in case you were about to be attacked.

“Baby, is that you?” you heard from the other side of the door.

“Suguru.” You didn’t know if you should be more frightened or relieved.

Part of you wanted nothing more than to run into his arms and kiss the scratches and dried blood away from him. Other than that, he looked relatively unharmed. His usual neat bun was not apparent on the top of his head, instead he let his hair hang loose, his bangs tied up in a messy half-up-half-down. He was dressed in all black, a dark oversized crew neck and baggy black sweats. As insinuated by the dark bags under his eyes, he didn’t look like he had eaten or slept in the past day or two.

“Whose blood is that? Yours? Or someone else’s.”

“That’s one way to say hello.”

“Answer.”

“Doll, what’s wrong?”

“Suguru, are you okay?”

“My love, I took care of everything. We’ll be safe for the next few days, alright. We just have to lay low for a little while.”

“Suguru, answer me.”

“Shhh, everything is okay, doll. Your body's working overtime right now, and the pregnancy hormones can’t be helping.”

What?

You stared at him. No way.

“That test is your’s, right?” he questioned, his face filled with concern. “It’s positive.”

You stared at him, then at the test. It was.

“I- I’m gonna be a dad,” Suguru’s face cracked into a sincere smile.

He picked you up and spun you around, planting kisses all over your head and face.

“And you’re gonna be a mom! To my baby. Our baby. You’re gonna be the best mommy, you're so good with kids.”

You stayed silent; you were still processing everything that just happened.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” he cradled your face gently in his hands.

You stood frozen, thinking of words to say, but they never made it out of your mouth. Your vision went blurry with water, and the churning feeling you had been trying too hard to suppress returned to your stomach. You gagged, running over to the toilet.

As you held yourself over the bowl, your body felt like it was trying to expel all of your organs out through your mouth. Suguru leapt to your side and held your hair back as you threw up, rubbing soothing circles into your back.

“Shhh, baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out, this is just one of the best things that’s ever happened.” Suguru cooed.

You took a deep breath and wiped any stray vomit from your lips with the back of your hand.

As you hurled your guts out, you felt his large, warm hand, rubbing circles on the small of your back. The other of his hands went to hold your hair out of your face.

You stayed like that for about an hour, just sitting there, pondering your impending motherhood.

Mother.

You were going to be a mother.

It simultaneously freaked you out and surprised you. Suguru, the person you loved most in this world, actually got you pregnant. Of course he did. He always stuck to his word.

When that man was committed to something, he was going to have it. He was possessive, territorial even. That made him all the more dangerous, but it wasn’t him you were afraid of or for. You were afraid for the rest of the world.

I’d end the world for you.

His promise echoed in the back of your mind.

“Sweetheart, it is going to be okay. I think I may have gotten too overexcited and freaked you out. You don’t have to keep it if you don’t want to, I’m here for whatever you need. But, thank you. Thank you for this precious gift.”

It was a gift that forever linked the two of you together.

…

September 2007

You found her waiting on a bench in the center of Shinjuku, trying to find something in her pockets, probably a lighter for her cigarette.

“Hey, need a light?” Suguru asked, offering out a lighter.

“Hi,” you waved shyly.

“If it isn’t the criminals, trolling girls who smoke?” Shoko replied

“Just testing our luck I guess, '' Suguru joked.

“Mmhmm, well, I’ll go ahead and ask. Any chance the charges are fake?”

“No, unfortunately not

“Then I’ll ask another question, why?”

“To create a world of only Jujutsu Sorcerers,”

“We don’t want anymore of our comrades to die,” you doubled down on Suguru’s point.

“Ha, that doesn’t make sense, but whatever,” Shoko said, picking up her phone and dialing a number. Someone on the other line answered.

“Hey, Gojo?

Yeah, found ‘em.

Shinjuku.

No way, I don’t wanna get killed.” She said before quickly hanging up.

“Do you have the thing we talked about?” Suguru asked before walking towards the area his best friend was said to be.

“Yes, I’ve got her,” Shoko looked into his eyes,

“Okay, I love you,” Suguru said, placing a kiss on your forehead and walking off.

Shoko put her cigarette out.

“Shoko I’m okay, just, um, okay how do I put this…”

“Dude, spit it out, you're scaring me.”

“I’m pregnant.” you blurted out.

“Shit.” the mousy brunette replied.

“No, it’s okay, really, I’m happy, we’re happy, just…scared - ”

“Did you not use protection? You of all people? The mom friend? Well, now, I guess literal mom friend,” Shoko put her hands in her hair, scrunching it out of stress, “And you’re a fugitive! Both you and Geto have been sentenced to death by the elders. Jesus Christ Y/N, how the fuck are you going to raise a child as a fucking criminal.”

“I’m sorry Shoko, I-I couldn’t,” your last word was muffled by the huge lump in your throat. You knew Shoko of all people would rip you a new one, but you didn’t expect it to hurt this much. Tears clouded your vision, and you were sobbing so violently, that you started to choke on the snot and water running down your face. People were staring.

“Woah, dude. Shhh, it’s okay, I’m here now,” Shoko reached down to wipe some of the snot off of your face with the sleeve of her uniform. “Come on, let’s go get you cleaned up, I have some supplies that I brought in my bag.”

Shoko grabbed your hand and led you into the nearby metro station. You rushed past the crowds of people, until you made your way into the gate. Shoko kept leading you further underground until you reached a room that was sectioned off for mothers and infants.

“Get inside, we shouldn’t be bothered in here for a while,” Shoko stated, her tone gentle. You walked in, and she locked the door behind you.

The room was small, but cozy. There was an infant changing table to the right, and to the left, there was a small blue couch with a table next to it. There were a few blankets packaged in sanitary wrappers laying on the side of the couch, and the room was decorated with pastel flowers all around. You felt completely safe for the first time in a while.

“Sit,” Shoko commanded. You complied and took a seat on the couch.

“I got one of those portable ultrasound things from the infirmary. I don’t know why we have these things but, hey, it’s coming in handy.”

“How did you know to bring an ultrasound kit with you?” you asked suspiciously.

“Oh, Geto told me to bring one. So, I kind of already figured you were pregnant, or you had some kind of internal bleeding. But with the way he was being so secretive, I figured the former.” Shoko replied, fiddling with the machine. It looked like a tiny foldable computer, the probe attached to a wire that fed into the screen.

She KNEW???

“If you knew, then why the fuck did you make me say it out loud?” you demanded.

“Because I needed to be sure this wasn’t a trick or something to kill me,” she shot back, “If ya didn’t know, your boyfriend -”

“Fiancé -”

“Fiancé, whatever, killed an entire village of people.”

“I know, but he did what he had to do. We’re trying to make the world a better place, a place without curses, so you don’t have to keep seeing people die.” You refuted.

“I’m not talking to you about this right now, I’m here to make sure you and the fetus inside of you are okay. You chose your path, and I chose mine. I’m not trying to change your mind, what’s done is done. I don’t support what you two did, but you’re still my best friend. I’m here for you,” Shoko finished and scooched on the couch to give you a hug. You were crying again, fat tears streaming down your cheeks.

After five minutes, you two finally parted, and Shoko reached into her bag to produce some supplies. She pulled out sanitizer, a bottle of gel, a pair of gloves, and a little blue cloth. Shoko sanitized her hands, and gave some to you as well. She then put the pair of gloves on and asked you to pull up your shirt to reveal your abdomen. Finally, she tucked the blue cloth into your pants, so that the gel would not get on it.

“This might feel cold. I also don’t really know if I’m doing this 100% right, so, you should probably find someone with a medical degree and not just reverse curse technique to look at you,” Shoko added, the usual banter reappearing between you two.

She squeezed some of the cold jelly-like substance on your abdomen. You winced at the uncomfortable feeling. Shoko took the end of the probe and started gently pushing it around on your stomach. After about a minute, something appeared on the little screen.

Woah.

That’s your kid. Your and Suguru’s baby. You started crying again.

You loved them already, and only wished Suguru could have been here to see this.

“Yeah, there’s a whole-ass kid in there,” Shoko confirmed.

“As opposed to a half-ass kid?” You joked. Shoko laughed.

Next, Shoko reached into her bag, producing a thick textbook. She turned to a page that was marked by brightly-colored post-it notes.

“Okay, based on this development textbook, you’re probably about 9 to 10 weeks along. Can you use your technique and give me a blood sample fast?”

9 to 10 weeks.

That’s a lot farther along than you thought.

You took a deep breath. “Okay,” and slowly produced a handful of blood from your palm, dropping it with a PLOP into the test tube Shoko held out for you.

“I’ll run a test on this once I get back to the infirmary at school, I just wanna check your hGC levels to make sure they’re good. But in the meantime, start taking these,” she produced yet another item from her bag. “They’re prenatal vitamins. Also, I know Geto has to have some connections somewhere with doctors. Have him find one for you. I can check on you once in a while, but not all the time or it will get suspicious. I love you, but I’m also an eighteen-year-old who doesn’t have a medical degree yet. I’ll leave first with Satoru to make sure there aren’t any sorcerers around so that you and Geto can escape. Stay safe and healthy, please,”

“Safe and healthy, coming from the chainsmoker?” You joked.

Shoko rolled her eyes as she gave you a final hug, exiting the room, leaving you alone with the bag of medical supplies and textbook.

…

Mid January, 2008

As the months passed, you did not think it possible, yet you fell deeper in love with Suguru. He doted on you and the twins constantly, spoiling you with gifts, having his followers help construct a lavish living space for you in the back of the monastery. Mimiko and Nanako shared a large room, their western-style four poster beds were adorned with silks and all of the stuffed animals they could desire. They had large walk-in closets full of dress-up gowns and expensive designer brands.

“Only the best for my girls,” Suguru would say.

As for you, he had a beautiful master suite built, the double walk-in closet filled with comfortable, yet elegant, maternity clothing and a California king bed dwarfing the rest of the room. The walls were painted white with navy and gold accents throughout the room.

When he was not tending to his cult, Suguru also kept you close to him as much as possible. Sometimes, he would even have you sit with him as you both tended to his followers throughout the day, him consuming their curses and you collecting their money.

Though he saw you as an equal, he was still overly protective and territorial of you now that you were carrying his child. He would sit you down on his lap in front of your followers, his hands caressing your now-evident baby bump, proclaiming to both you and the people in the cult that you were a goddess among mere mortals. When the monastery was empty, sometimes he would just sit and hold you, breathing in your scent. You would sit like that for an hour sometimes, him feeling the baby kick against his large palms, trailing kisses up and down your nape. You would curl yourself up as much as you could to put your ear to his chest, his heartbeat drumming with excitement.

When you weren’t helping Suguru, you were with the twins. Playing with them, going on walks, teaching them little things about the world that they missed while living in that cursed village. They were really excited to have a new sibling and talked about all of the clothes they would dress the new baby in. You had to remind them, of course, that the baby was not a doll. They also threw out name suggestions, but you had to tell them that unfortunately, “Princess,” and “Hello Kitty,” were not appropriate names to call their soon to be baby sibling.

At the end of your long days tending to the needs of non-sorcerers that were actually useful to your cause, Suguru would have you both change out of your robes and start to cook dinner while you played with the girls. True, he could have hired someone to cook for your little family, but he wanted to take it upon himself to make sure that you were getting all of the nutrients and rest you and the twins possibly could.

You somehow succeeded in carving out a nice life for yourself under the harshest of circumstances. Sure, it wasn’t the utopia you and Suguru had always imagined all of those nights back at Jujutsu High, but you had a little family of your own and were working towards a better, safer world.

…

After he finished tucking the girls into bed one night, you curled up with Suguru on the couch, your head tucked against his chest, and knees in between his hips, using him as a body pillow. One of his hands was around you and the other was used to cradle his head on the arm of the couch as you both laid there.

None of your pre-maternity pants fit you anymore, so you threw on a pair of Suguru’s gray sweats and a white t-shirt. You practically lived in his clothes at this point.

He started rubbing small, gentle circles on your swollen belly, seemingly in awe of your changing body. If you ever got insecure about your stretch marks, or how much weight you gained, he would make you stand in front of the mirror in your shared chambers, kissing every inch of your body. In the shower, he would take the time to wash your hair and help you shave. He wanted to let you know that you weren’t alone. Suguru was right there the whole time.

You felt a fluttering in your stomach where he was rubbing your belly, and Suguru gasped, breaking the serene silence.

“Hi, baby,” he whispered to your bump. Joy flashed through his tired eyes as his lips curved into a dopey smile. Then, he leaned up to press sweet, wet kisses into your neck.

“The most beautiful woman in the world. How did I get so lucky?” Suguru cooed.

“You’re stunning,” he continued, pulling you into a deep, passionate kiss.

Since falling pregnant, you were sensitive to the slightest touch. Your fiancé was sensitive to the slightest glance from you. Your sexual appetites had grown increasingly insatiable.

From his words and kisses, you could feel yourself drenching your underwear. As Suguru’s tongue continued to slither into your mouth, you absentmindedly started grinding against his muscled thigh, the friction feeling delicious on your clit.

“Ngh- Sugu- p-please touch me. No teasing. Need you,” you moaned.

“Do you need my fingers? I bet I can take you right now from how soaked you are,” he purred.

“Don’t care. Want something inside,” you whined.

“Lemme check you first. Don’t wanna hurt you.” And with that, he felt your soaked, clothed cunt through your pants and underwear. You were so wet, that a dark, sticky patch was starting to form on your sweatpants. You nearly ripped the pants off of you in the midst of your carnal need to have some part of him, any part of him, filling you.

Suguru got right to work, stripping you of the layers concealing you from him. After a few circles on your clit, he sunk his middle finger into your cunt. There was no resistance; he was able to sink his finger all the way down to his knuckle. So, he added a second finger, which you took just as easily.

You felt relieved to finally have something for your fluttering hole to suck on, but you needed more. You needed to be stuffed to the brim, completely full of him.

“Suguru I need you inside,” you gasped, your cunt continuing to clench on his thick fingers.

“Whatever you want, my love,” he replied, slipping his fingers out. You almost cried at the loss of contact, but you knew you were about to be rewarded tenfold. Suguru pushed his sticky fingers into your mouth as he rearranged the two of you. You licked his fingers clean, and he let out an unrestrained moan at the way you deepthroated his digits.

Suguru sat you up, and scooted himself against the back of the sofa. He took his length out from his underwear, letting it smack his stomach, the tip weeping precum. Suguru removed his fingers from your mouth and used the remaining spit to cover his cock; a makeshift lube for the two of you. While he stroked himself, you climbed up on his lap and attacked his mouth with fiery, desperate kisses.

He helped you remove your top, and then shed his remaining clothing articles. When he took your top off, you could tell that Suguru’s thoughts about the day had gone out the window. Suguru always had a fascination with your tits, now even more so that your tits had grown at least 2 cup sizes since pregnancy. He took one of your pert nipples into his mouth, sucking softly and grinding up into your wet heat, letting a grunt rumble through his chest.

“Love, please,” you cried out, tears threatening to spill down your face.

With your pleading, he helped you to climb on top of him and lined his cock up with your greedy cunt. You slowly sunk down on his dick, feeling every ridge and vein inside of you. You both hissed as he breached your tight hole.

Finally, you thought.

Suguru resumed his sucking on your nipple, moaning around your soft mound, sending vibrations through your body. You were so overstimulated and sensitive that you felt like you were about to cum right there and then.

He could feel that you were close by the death grip you had on his cock. So, he reached one of his large hands down from your waist and found your clit. You sunk your nails into his wide shoulders in response.

“Give it to me,” Suguru growled on his way to give your other nipple the same treatment.

The coil in your tummy snapped, the sensations driving you hard into your climax. Suguru moved to nibble on your earlobe, whispering what a good girl you were.

As you came down from your high, Suguru’s hands moved down to your bump, staring in awe.

“I told you I love this tummy,” he commented, his large hand splaying across your bellybutton. He pressed his forehead against yours. “I think it’s so beautiful, that your body submitted to mine.”

“Mr. Geto,” you said with a fake gasp, sarcasm dripping from your voice, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re getting off on my predicament, you pervert.”

“Touché,” he smirked. “I think it’s hot your body is going through all of these changes, just because of me. You’re mine,” he growled out the last words.

“I’m yours,” you confirmed.

“Suguru, I’m tired, I don’t know if I have the energy to ride you like this.” You realized he still hadn’t cum yet, he was probably in pain with the deep arousal he felt.

“Okay, I’ll carry you to bed and we can finish there,” he pressed a kiss to your forehead and slipped out of you, your juices trailing behind in a sticky string where you were formerly connected

He then picked you up, bridal style, and started the short walk towards your room. The cool air felt sensitive against your hot pussy and swollen clit, your arousal and cum now rolling in small beads down the back of your thighs.

He set you on your side on top of your California king mattress, covered in fine fabric sheets. Then, he took one of the large decorative pillows and pushed it in between your knees to allow him easy access to your cunt. This position would also allow some relief to your aching lower back. Suguru knew you loved it when he massaged your back, so he started there, pushing circles into the sore muscle and kissing up your spine.

His erection rubbed up against the back of your thighs, rendering the both of you delirious.

When you both couldn’t take it anymore, he finally slipped into your warm, wet heat again.

“How would you like me to fuck you, love?” Suguru questioned.

“Slow and deep. Wanna feel all of you,” you drooled.

“Mmm, sounds perfect,” he responded, pressing wet kisses into your neck. With that, Suguru started a long, deep thrust into the depths of your pussy. You felt every part of him; every ridge, every vein. You made a sound that you didn’t even know could come out of you.

Suguru picked up the pace a little bit, leaving little whimpers and groans in your ear as he rutted into you. Suguru was usually pretty reserved during sex, but he recently started to be more vocal for you. It spurred you on even more, made you even more aroused, which felt impossible at this point.

“I love it when you whimper-nGHH,” you moaned, as Suguru punctuated the end of your sentence with a particularly harsh thrust. The sex started to feel desperate, animalistic almost. Suguru felt something primal within him snap. He needed to fill you, to stuff you so full, he would watch his cum leak out of your pussy.

“Suugguuhh-“ you felt your second orgasm of the night closing in on you.

“Cum with me, doll, lemme fill you, ngh, u-up,” he grunted, moving a hand down to toy with your clit. “You look s-so good, full of me. Ngh- your tummy all round, tits all plump, making milk for my m-my baby,”

For some reason, that sent you over the edge, clamping down on his cock and coming hard. Your cunt sucked him in with a firm grip, and you could feel that he was close too. As he continued to fuck you through your climax, his heavy balls slapped once more against your thighs, and he came with a gasp, a series of, “I love you’s” and “Thank you’s” flooding from his mouth.

He fucked himself through his orgasm, and finally collapsed into the mattress. After a few minutes, Suguru pulled out, watching in awe as his release dripped out of your hole. His fingers traveled down to the mess the two of you made and swiped his pointer and middle fingers through your folds.

“I probably sound like a broken record, but I don’t know what I did in my past life to deserve you,” he said, kissing the top of your head, moving both of his hands to rest on your bump again.

“C'mon, let’s clean you up, doll,” he said, trying to drag you out of bed. But you were already fast asleep.

Suguru smiled to himself, running to the bathroom to get some warm compresses and clean towels. When he finished cleaning you up as best he could, he made his way to his closet, where he fetched his favorite graphic t-shirt. He handled you with more care than he would a butterfly or a flower as he dressed you, and headed to the bathroom to clean himself up.

After he deemed himself decent enough, Suguru walked over to your sleeping form and bent down to the level where your belly was. He criss crossed his hands and rested his chin on them.

“I love you and your mommy so much, little one. You’re so loved already,” he whispered, reaching one of his hands towards your belly.

Suddenly, he felt a small fluttering beneath his hand. Suguru smiled, his eyes alive with pride and wonder.

…

The next morning, you awoke to the smell of something delicious.

And four little feet running across the floor.

“Shhh, Nanako, you’re gonna wake up Kamo-san,” Mimiko warned her sister.

“It’s okay girls, I’m already up,” you sighed, yawning. “You girls sleep good?”

“Yeah. Can we get crepes today?” Nanako asked, changing topics rather quickly.

“It depends on what time me and Suguru get done at the monastery, but there should be enough time. The baby has been craving some chocolate,” you chuckled.

“I have a new name for the baby,” Mimiko declared, starting to climb on your bed.

“Oh, yeah? What?” You scoop her up and bring her into your lap somewhat successfully.

“Peach. Like the princess,” Mimiko said, matter of factly. She looked down right proud of herself.

“Mimiko, that’s a fruit. I think it should be Sparkles,” Nanako responded back to her sister.

“Well, we’ll have time to think about what the baby’s name should be, but for right now…I think we should eat some breakfast and see who can get dressed the fastest,”

“Geto-san made some breakfast,” Mimiko stated.

“And I helped,” Nanako exclaimed, attempting to have her voice heard in the conversation.

“I helped too,” Mimiko scolded with jealousy.

“Why don’t you girls go help set the table too and I’ll be there in a minute,” you said, pressing kisses to their foreheads.

“Fineee,” Mimiko rolled her eyes playfully.

You freshened up, brushing your teeth and wrapping your body in a luxurious silk robe Suguru had purchased for you.

As you made your way down the long corridor and into the kitchen, you could hear the sizzle of something cooking. You turned the corner to find Suguru, shirtless, standing over the stove of your enormous kitchen. You decide to sneak up on him, letting your finger creep around his waist as you pulled him back into a hug. You couldn’t press yourself flush against him, as your stomach got in the way.

“There’s my girl,” Suguru cooed.

“You’re making breakfast?” You beamed with tears in your eyes at the stack of American-style pancakes next to the stove. For some reason, this small gesture was making you really emotional.

“Of course, baby. I let the chef take off this morning to spend some time with my beautiful girls before I have to head over,” he replied, snaking his arm back to grab on to yours and place a kiss on your palm.

It was so domestic. It was so normal.

“Okay, order’s up. Mimi, Nana, will you help me put these on the table?” Suguru asked.

“Yes Geto-san,” Mimiko sang as she skipped towards the tower of the fluffy, golden deliciousness.

“Thank you, sweetie,” Suguru whispered, giving her hair a ruffle.

…

After the pancakes were eaten, and the syrup had ended up on the faces of the twins and Suguru, you pried the girls out of their seats to get dressed for the day. You and Suguru headed back to your quarters to change into your robes.

As you let the luscious silk fabric cascade off of your body as down to the floor of your shared closet space, you felt the presence of your fiancé behind you.

“Hi,” he smirked into your shoulder, starting to press kisses up your neck.

“Hi,” you whispered back.

One of his large hands reached down to your bump, caressing it with the lightest of touches.

“Can I listen to her?” He asked like a giddy child.

“My love, you never have to ask, you’re always welcome to,” you beam as he excitedly makes his way towards your protruding bump. “Baby’s been hanging out towards the bottom today if you want to feel them move,” you added.

“Hi baby girl, this is your da-”

“Baby girl? What makes you think the baby's a girl?”

“What makes you think she’s not?” he quipped, his usual banter-like tone making you giggle.

“As a wise man once said to me; touché.” The two of you fell into a comfortable silence, soaking in each other’s presence. After all, slow moments like this would be rare when the baby arrived.

Your peace was disrupted by a loud knock at the door.

“Geto-sama, Kamo-san, there is someone here to see you, he says it is urgent” you heard Suguru’s assistant shout through the door.

“Tell whoever it is that they have no right to request my presence. I will meet with them when I am in my proper attire,” Suguru snapped.

“Of course, master. It’s just… this kid…”

“No exceptions, I don’t care if it’s Satoru fucking Gojo himself, whoever it is can wait,” Suguru pressed, getting annoyed now.

“Yes, of course, I wi-AHHHHHH,” a blood curdling scream erupted from the other side of the door, followed by a loud thump.

Sensing danger, Suguru leapt into action, putting himself in front of you and summoning a curse. “Who’s. There,” he demanded.

Blood started to leak under the door and into the marble tiles of your room.

Suddenly, the door flew open to reveal the collapsed assistant on the floor, covered in her own blood. Next to the body, there was the figure of a small boy drenched in the scarlet substance.

“Noritoshi?” you questioned, tears filling your eyes.

…

END OF PART I

dividers by @bunnysrph

#geto #jjk #jjk geto #jjk suguru #jujutsu kaisen fic #suguru smut #suguru geto smut #suguru x you #jjk x reader #geto suguru x reader #geto suguru x you #jjk spoilers #gojo satoru #shoko ieiri #fem reader

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songsbygumi · 2 months

Text

If the sun refuse to shine

| Gojo Satoru x reader

Summary- The first and last time Gojo Satoru called you 'wifey,' and the few moments in between.

Warnings - Angst, canon events, use of the pet name "wifey" so if that makes you cringe pls keep scrolling, first fic ever xd and ofc poor used of the english language, no mention of readers name.

A/N- this is my first fic ever in english so I really tried my best, heavily inspired by intro (end of the world) by Ariana Grande. Thanks to my beta Fatima (biggest Megumi fan), finally this can be read as gender neutral if you don't mind the pet name mention in the warnings, enjoy

It was a hot summer day, the first time Gojo Satoru called you "wifey," though you didn’t even notice, head too deep in your book.

“Lame,” Suguru murmured, loud enough for Gojo to hear, followed by Shoko’s laughter. Yet, Gojo stood tall, brushing off his friends' mockery.

“Wifey!” he repeated, this time louder for you to hear. Your face lifted from the pages to meet his intense blue gaze. “W—What?” you stammered, your words stumbling out as your cheeks flushed.

Gojo's smile widened, his eyes fixed on you, appreciating your embarrassment. “What are you reading?” he inquired, laying his head in your lap, and guiding your hand to his hair, inviting your touch.

“I thought they weren’t dating” Haibara interjected a couple of meters away from the couple, a confused expression on his face. “They aren't” Nanami clarified.

Since that summer, the pet name stuck around like second nature. Every time it escaped Gojo’s lips, you couldn't help but turn to see his grin and his eyes already locked on you.

So, as Nanami had declared years ago, you weren’t dating. Of course not, but there was an undeniable magnetic pull between you two. It was sweet and comfortable, the feeling that makes you blush whenever Gojo glanced at you during important meetings (don’t bother asking him what they were about, as he only remembers the way your hair touched your face), elicited butterflies in your stomach with his smile, the unspoken gratitude when you hug him after a long mission, clinging to him for the entire night, accompanied by the feeling in his chest the next morning when you are making breakfast in one of his t-shirts, and of course, you can't forget to mention the goodbye kisses before having to leave for too long that taste sweeter than the usual ones.

Satoru and you have been in love for too long now. You had orbited each other for years, supporting one another through thick and thin. Whether it was the loss of Haibara or Suguru's descent into madness, even that time where he came home with two clueless children. You were there, you were each other's constants.

You have been through a lot, the scary lonely nights when he was sealed away from you keeping you awake every night, with endless thoughts of what could have been different and wondering if you could ever get to see him again, the ghost of his touch haunting you every day until you saw him again.

“Don’t do that to me again” you demanded, crushing him in a tight hug. “Never again, love.” He kissed your head and hug you back.

The first night he was back in your house, the words “Nanami is dead” slipped from your mouth, and for the first time since your best friend's passing, tears flowed freely, comforted only by Satoru's presence as you mourned.

The days that followed were slow and filled with sweet moments. You cherished every opportunity to hold each other, every kiss on your skin, and every gaze filled with love, silently acknowledging the inevitable, but neither of you dare to mentioned it.

On the 24th of December…

Your mouth was dry, your chest tight, your hands cold and sweaty. "He is the strongest" you repeated in your head, seeking reassurance. “Are you okay?” Satoru asked, holding your hands together. “Yeah, fine” you tried to smile, but it felt wrong, knowing he could see through it.

“Gojo Sensei!” Itadori's energetic voice made you tremble slightly. Satoru released your hand with a final squeeze. “Your cursed technique is in the way,” Itadori continued saying while you started to lost touch with reality, your feet rooted to the spot, eyes welling with tears., “he’s the strongest” you whispered, clenching your fists so tightly it hurt.

“Wait!” your voice was drowned out by the chants cheering Satoru on. “Toru, wait!” you tried again. “TORU” this time his head turned around searching for you. “Wifey?” he asked, trying to spot you. “Toru, over here” you raised your hand. “This way, Sensei” Yuta guided Satoru's attention towards you, and you offered him a reassuring smile.

“What’s wrong, wifey?” He brushed a piece of hair from your face “You wouldn’t be doubting me now, would you?” he chuckled. “Shut up, Satoru” you playfully swatted his chest, but a sob escaped your throat. Satoru sighed, cupping your cheeks. “I will bring Megumi back to you, I will bring back our son, wifey, I swear everything will be fine, we will…”

"Ask me," you interrupted. "Ask me, Toru." His face showed confusion for just a second, and your heart thundered, just to relax when understanding flooded his eyes. "If you ask me now, the answer will be yes; it has always been yes." He smiled sadly, kissing the top of your head, your nose, and finally your lips.

He pulled away smiling and you tried to chase him back. “Not yet, wifey” hand on your cheek, stroking it. “So, I really hope the answer will still be yes when I come back” he smiled cheekily at you and removed his touch from you. “I come back.”

You caught Satoru one last time, kissing him with fervor. There were so many words left unsaid, so many experiences left unlived. “Please God, let him come back to me” you prayed silently, releasing him. “I love you, Toru” you whispered for his ears only. “I love you more” That was the last thing he said to you.

The world stopped right in front of your eyes. There would never be a white dress or Satoru's blue eyes locked on you with a smile as you walked down the aisle, Megumi beside him as his best man. There would never be happy family dinners with Megumi trying to hide his grin at Satoru’s antics, no more lazy mornings in his embrace, or Satoru pouting whenever you denied him something. And there would never be another "wifey" leaving his lips. You watch it burn.

the sun stopped its shine.

#moonswrites #gojo x reader #gojo satoru x reader #reader x jjk #jjk drabbles #jjk fanfic #jjk imagines #jujutsu kaisen x reader #satoru gojo x reader #jujutsu kaisen x you #gojo satoru x you #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #gojo x you #gojo angst #gojo satoru imagine #gojo satoru

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drarry-mini-bang · 5 months

Text

Fest rules

What is this fest about?

Drarry Mini Bang is a collaborative fest in which writers and artists come together to create fanwork. The writers will submit their detailed concept for a fic, and artists will claim one or several (up to you!) to create an art piece.

Who can participate?

You must be at least 18 years old at time of signing up.

We also expect you to treat everyone taking part, including the mods, with respect.

All work must be your own, and we do not allow any kind of fic or art produced with AI.

You may register as both a writer and an artist, but due to the collaborative nature of this event, you cannot make art for your own fic. All the matching will be done through the claiming process, therefore we will not allow pre-made collabs between artists and writers.

What are the requirements for writers?

Writers will need to write an original fic of at least 10k.

The fic needs to be a stand-alone, unpublished fic. You will be asked to submit your fic concept with an estimated word count, a list of tags and possible warnings/triggers and the rating of your fic. If any of these details change after you’ve submitted your concept and before preview day, you need to let the mods know asap. If something changes after the teams have been announced, please talk to your partner and let the mods know if there are any issues.

Please do not share details of your fic before you are matched with an artist. You can share small snippets and talk about your story after the teams have been formed.

Your fic must be complete and has to be beta read before the submission deadline. Should you need an extension, please let us know as soon as you can.

When you fill in your sign up form, you will be given a chance to decide what type of art you would like to receive for your story.

We will cap writers at 25 participants, but we will open sign ups for pinch hitters. We will try our best to find everyone an artist to work with, but due to the collaborative nature of this event, should we not have enough artists, the people whose fics have not been picked might have to be dropped.

What are the requirements for artists?

You can create a variety of original fan work based on the story your writer is working on:

- illustrations, both digital and traditional (they don’t need to be in colour)

- moodboards (at least 6 elements)

- plastic arts (including embroidery and origami)

- playlists (a minimum of 10 songs)

- fic binding

- podfic

We will ask you to create a minimum of one art piece based on the story your writer is working on. If you would like to work with more than one writer (which would make us extremely happy), please let us know in your sign-up form.

There is no cap for artists.

What kind of rating is allowed?

Any rating is allowed for both art and fics, but please tag your work appropriately.

We support SALS (ship and let ship) YKINMKBYKIO (your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay) and DLDR (don’t like – don’t read), so we will not tolerate any shaming.

For this fest, we will not accept any works that contain darker themes or tropes that are usually covered by the "Dead Dove" tag. If you have any doubts about specific content and would like to know if it will be accepted, please do not hesitate to contact us.

If your work is rated Mature or Explicit, the characters involved must be at least 18 years old (Hogwarts 8th year fic are therefore acceptable with any rating).

What is the schedule for posting?

Sign ups open for writers and artists: 20th January

Sign ups close: 18th February

Deadline for fic concepts and details to be submitted by writers: 18th February

Fic concepts sent to artists: 24th February

Artists claim: 27th February

Teams announced: 2nd-6th March

First check-in: 6th April

Second check-in: 11th May

Last check-in: 8th June

Submissions due: 2nd July

Posting begins: August

Do I need to keep my creation secret?

You can share your WIPs only after the teams have been announced.

This fest is not anonymous.

What if my partner ghosts me or is being rude?

Please let us know and we’ll speak to them. This is a collaborative event - ignoring your partner causes unnecessary stress and anxiety, and we will not tolerate any rudeness or abuse.

We also ask that you stick to deadlines, because we don’t want anyone to be let down and end up without a partner. If you think at any point during the fest that you need to drop out, please please please let us know as soon as you can, so that we can find someone to replace you.

I still have a lot of questions about this, how can I contact you?

Send us an ask, a DM or contact us at and we will gladly answer.

Your mods @orange-peony, @pato-roldnart, @bubble-gumhead

#rules #mod post

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faithshouseofchaos · 3 months

Note

Could you do fic for Mark Webber with wife reader (no age gap)? She found a few of an old video when Mark slipped on the podium after finishing in second place at the Brazilian Grand Prix, the last race of his F1 career - Sunday 24th November 2013. And she teases him about it. Just something fluff and cute. Add something if you'd like too. Tag me later!! Thanks!! :))

Mark Webber x Wife!Reader

Short and fluffy

Tagged— @amatswimming @ashy-kit @astraeaworld @alwayzbeenale @a-casual-romantic @67-angelofthelordme-67 @badassturtle13 @bblouifford @bbtoni @barcelonaloverf1life @charlesf1leclerc @crashingwavesofeuphoria @clowngirlsstuff @dark-night-sky-99 @dudenhaaa27 @eugene-emt-roe @embrosegraves @faithshouseofchaos @f1ln4dr3cl16mv33 @hangmandruigandmav @hollie911 @hrts4scarr @ironcowboycopnickel @jeffs77 @kimiracing07 @lightdragonrayne @lollypop90907 @laura-naruto-fan1998 @ladymarvel27 @moss-on-tmblr @norrisleclercf1 @natailiatulls07 @oconswrld @otako5811 @purplephantomwolf @pear-1206 @scotlynaurora @toasttt11 @vellicora @venusisnothere @vivwritesfics

You were laying in bed scrolling through Instagram reels waiting for your husband Mark to come to bed when you saw a video that caught your attention. The video was a podium celebration from the Brazilian Grand Prix back on November 24th 2013. The video started out with Sebastian spaying his champagne every first and then Mark and Fernando joining in.

Sebastian was off to the side spraying his champagne while Mark was spraying Fernando and laughing. Fernando scurried over into a corner trying to get away from Mark who sprayed some Champagne on his back before he turned away and slipped. You laughed out loud seeing Mark jump like nothing happened.

You continue laughing as you rewatch the video over and over. The video is hilarious and always puts you in a good mood. You keep watching the video and laughing until you hear the bedroom door open. You quickly hide your phone under the blanket and play it cool as Mark walks into the room.

"What are you laughing about?" Mark asks as he walks toward you. You smile and giggle a little as if nothing is wrong. You put the covers over your face and pretend like you were just sleeping. You decide to tell him the truth... "Oh, I was just watching one of the videos you have on Instagram."

"What video?" Mark asks as he lays down next to you. He wraps his arm around your waist and nuzzles his face into your neck. You smile and sigh, glad to be back in his arms. You decide to show him the video again and turn on the phone to show him.

"This one!" You say with a giggle as you hand him your phone. Mark grabs your phone and starts watching the video. He chuckles and rolls his eyes, but you can tell he thinks it's funny too. You keep watching together and laughing quietly as Mark nuzzles back into your neck.

"You know this video is almost 10 years old right?" Mark says with a slight grin on his face. You grin back and nod your head. "Yeah, I know. But it's still hilarious!"

"It is pretty funny," Mark says with a chuckle. He looks over at you and smiles. "I can't believe you watched it over and over. You're so funny." He gently squeezes your hip.

“Can you blame me though you just jumped up like nothing happened” you said smiling.

"Yeah, I guess I did." Mark chuckles as he gives you a little pinch on the side. "But it was better than falling flat on my face like Fernando."

“That’s different he was drunk”

“Hey, the floor was wet. I didn't mean to slip” Mark says.

“I don’t see Oscar slipping and falling” you say teasingly.

Mark leans in and gently kisses your cheek as he pulls you closer to him. "So why did you watch the video over and over? Were you missing me?" He asks playfully to change the subject. You lean into him and rest your head on his chest.

"Maybe I was missing you a little bit," you reply as you lay your head on his chest. He kisses your head and wraps his arms around you tight. "Good. I'm glad you missed me because I missed you too." He whispers into your ear.

You smile and sigh. You can feel his heartbeat through his chest, it's comforting. You slowly slip your arms around his neck as you melt into his embrace. You close your eyes and take a deep breath as you try to savor every moment of this moment with him.

#mark webber #mark webber x reader #mark webber x you #mw2 x reader #formula one x reader #f1 x reader #formula one imagine #formula one x you #f1 #f1 x y/n #formula one x y/n #formula one x oc #formual one

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rouiyan · 10 months

Text

𝘞𝘌’𝘙𝘌 𝘕𝘖𝘛 𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘓𝘓𝘠 𝘚𝘛𝘙𝘈𝘕𝘎𝘌𝘙𝘚 [ 𝘭.𝘮𝘬 ]

⧏ back to teaser || redirect to playlist ⧐

marks manages to land himself in a forty-two hour drive across the country with his archaeology major ex-girlfriend in the passenger seat. but for the duration of the whole ride, the only thing he can think about is that one twitter meme that states that “a majority of archeologists are women due to their natural ability to dig up the past.”

✧ photographer!mark lee x (fem.) archaeology major!reader ✧ exes to lovers, road trip au, referenced college au ✧ genres — fluff/angst, hurt/comfort ✧ word count — 25.2k

✧ disclaimers — profanity, mentions of food, legal (u.s.) alcohol consumption, they make out like once, emotional insecurity and vulnerability (i.e. several panic attacks, social anxiety), possible terminal illness (not of mcs), generational conflict, y/n cries a lot, mark sucks at parking

✧ caveat — this fictional plot is set in present-day america and does not accurately reflect the locations referenced. furthermore, this publication is not an endorsement of the brand or the product featured. all credit is given where it is due. (sources linked upon conclusion)

✧ author’s note — happy 24th birthday to my dear mark! note that the first scene is the exact same as the teaser, so if you've read that already, feel free to skip over! also note i half-assed the proofread so please let me know of any typos, plotholes, and other stupid stuff that i forgot to adjust. as for myself, you can catch a little update on the past two years of my life at the end of this fic so for now, enjoy!

「 DAY 00, 01:42 PM 」 — CUPID DABBLES IN BURNT TOAST

"oh, come on. i thought you were nicer than that!"

it's at times like these where mark is led to think that haechan only considers him as his very best friend for three things. his toaster, his car, and then of course, how easy it is to torment him.

he’s experienced enough to know that the guilt he feels is really only a direct result of haechan's guilt-tripping antics. and so he responds sarcastically, "yeah, nice enough to save a girl from a week of being in close proximity to the person she hates most in the world."

the toaster dings and haechan catches the two pieces of toast in their flight. he sticks one in his mouth, breaking off a bite, whilst turning to toss the other onto his friend's plate. chewing roughly, he leans back onto the counter opposite of mark, watching in contempt as the latter spreads jam across the burnt slice of bread.

haechan points a finger and juts it in his direction, offhandedly commenting, "i'm starting to think that it's you who hates her," a fact that both friends know isn't true. and because of that, mark doesn't make a big deal of denying it. "i don't hate her. i'm just..." he trails off and haechan takes the opportunity to craftily stage his intervention.

"not trying to make her uncomfortable?"

"yeah, i guess."

"not wanting her to hate you more?"

"there's that too."

"not over her?"

"hey, not cool."

a passage of silence elapses as mark sets the butter knife aside in exchange for his orange juice. gulping it down, he gets through two thirds of the glass before haechan perks up again. "actually, i think she still has a thing for you."

mark sputters, barely swallowing his drink before it could hurl out his disbelieving mouth. trying to smooth over his show of defiance, mark recovers a nonchalant expression as he deadpans, "there's no way. you know better than i do that she fucking hates me."

haechan takes another bite, aware but indifferent at how the crumbs have been gathering at his feet. his eyes trail absentmindedly to the clock on the wall behind mark, but only briefly for the hands are far past where he'd expected them to be. shoving the last of the toast into his mouth, he rushes to gather his belongings whilst uttering to his bewildered company, "shit, i'm gonna be late. pack it up."

obediently downing the rest of his orange juice, mark grabs his half-eaten, jam-slathered, burnt-to-a-crisp toast in one hand as the other reaches for his car keys on the way out. the unbearably hot sun of an early summer afternoon only hurries mark further along to his car, his wishes that he had worn shorts instead of jeans already too late to come true. but once both car doors have been shut and seat belts have been strapped, haechan carries on with his agenda without missing a beat.

"just give her the ride, mark. she'll keep you company and, i don't know, make sure you're not falling asleep at the wheel. and plus, she said she'll split the toll and gas fees."

mark shoves the last bite of toast into his mouth, the charred-ness of it procuring a nice crunch. even after he swallows, it takes him a second to respond. and though his answer is still far from budging, it sounds more like a justification, as if he needs convincing of his own opinion. "tell her it's cheaper to just catch a flight. and faster too."

exasperated, haechan retorts under his breath, "that's the same thing i told you," to which mark gives a raised brow, not catching what he said. instead of repeating, haechan only says, "just take her. you guys need to make up anyways."

that renders mark quiet for the rest of the ride as he tosses the thought over in his head. it's a thought that he knows he's been pushing away for far too long, hoping one day it'll become redundant enough to simply forget about. unknowingly, mark begins to speed a little, his turns become a little tighter, and when the traffic light signals red, the nose of his car is pulled daringly close to the car in front.

mark parallel parks shoddily in front of the archeology department building four minutes earlier than google maps had estimated. his best friend looks over at him expectantly and that in itself is enough to squeeze the reluctant words right out of him. "fine, i'll think about it."

haechan's face lights with a satisfied glow as he swings his backpack over his shoulder, making his way out of the car as quickly as he can. and just before mark can think to wish him good luck on his last exam of the spring semester, haechan blurts out the one crucial detail he had neglected to bring up until now.

"thank god, because i already told her you said yes."

「 DAY 01, 07:48 AM 」 — ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

the trunk of his beloved subaru crosstrek slams shut from behind. mark winces. the car door of the passenger seat slams shut shortly after. mark winces once again, but doesn't venture to comment on it. instead, he comments on something else entirely. "so why am i picking you up from the hospital?"

you roll your eyes, traces of hostility already to be found in your expression. "as if that's any of your business." you position the tote bag you brought up front by your feet and the contents inside clank against one another. mark gives you a questioning look, thus questioning, "what’s in there? rocks?"

instead of answering with what he would assume to be the same thing you said prior, you simply huff and lean back into the seat to fasten your seat belt. mark does the same, then hastens to shift the gears from park to drive. "you ready?"

lips set into a firm line, you're staring straight ahead when you say, "ready to get this over with." mark takes that as his cue to start the forty-two hour drive across the country, past barren lands and hilly roads, trading the smog of new york for the smog of los angeles.

the drive begins with a screeching hour of silence, all of which you’ve spent scrolling on your phone. and when you finally look up from your screen, the city view outside has already mellowed into sprawling countryside. mark takes this new development as a window of opportunity to spark up conversation, although you beat him to it nonetheless. “how many stops are we taking?”

he clears his throat for fear of a cracking voice and gathers his scattered thoughts to form a response. “about two or three times a day.”

“and how many days are we gonna be on the road?”

“three to four. i’m thinking we should take a few overnight stops as well. and also,” there’s a break in his sentence where he stops to scrunch his nose, “i might want to stop at random points to shoot some pictures. is that fine with you?”

you take your eyes off the road momentarily to get a good look at mark. he has a hand on the wheel and the other propped up by the window adjacent, eyes held forward all the while. looking back ahead yourself, you give in with a slight hitch of indignation in your otherwise colorless voice. “sure, why not.”

mark refers back to a time where the silent air between the two of you would sit comfortably and thinks of how he might have brought about conversation back then. he tries, as he might, to do the same with this scenario, catching the moment before the prolonged silence warrants it too late. “so what’s your business in LA?”

surprisingly, he spots less bite in your tone the more you speak. “my sister asked me to be maid of honor at her wedding next week.” mark’s automatic response comes out first as a laconic, “oh nice” but he follows up quickly after with an inquiring, “is it...is it still jaehyun? or is that a thing of the past?”

“it’s still him. they’ve been engaged for a while, remember?”

mark nods in agreement. he even remembers that exact phone call you received from your sister on the day your freshman year finals ended. sat across the couch, he can even recall the way you tried to motion the whole conversation with your hands to him while on the phone with her, your excitement on full display when you later hugged him tight since he was the only other person in the room.

he bites down on his bottom lip at the thought of the memory that’s still fresh in his mind. time seemed to pass more quickly for him now that it wasn’t divided into semesters and school years. taking a glance over at you, mark can’t help but think that while college life turned out to be unsuitable for him, it had done wonders for you in just the past year.

with little to no trace of the temper you initially harbored, your voice is about as neutral as it gets when you take your turn in questioning him. “what about you? what are you doing in LA?”

his answer is simple, really. his plan originally focused more on capturing the sights along the way to LA rather than the city itself. but seeing as how you’d expressed wanting to make the trip as curt and necessary as possible, he acquiesced for the lesser truth. “i’m just planning on taking some pictures and meeting some friends there. it’s a change of scenery too, i guess.”

the prospect of conversation eased in difficulty the more it steered in the direction of friendly small talk and catching up with one another. his career and his career-related decisions were always somewhat of a prickly topic, after all. his parents scorned him for it, calling it “easy money” that would just as easily come and go. his friends always said he just got lucky in the industry. and his old professors had shook their heads when he told them about his plans to drop out.

to mark, you were the only one who had ever cared to really understand his relationship with the passion that was now his life’s work. and because of that, his answer comes most naturally when you ask him, “what’s still keeping you in new york, though? i mean, you’re not there for school anymore and you’re not exactly a street photographer either.”

and without a thought to spare, mark blurts out, “you.”

what a perfect way to kill a perfectly fine conversation, he thinks in the midst of the grand silence that follows. red creeps its way up from his next to his ears until he’s flushed clean with embarrassment and terrible terrible regret, the only consolation being that your eyes seemed to be glued up ahead and not at him.

although it seems you’ve since dropped the conversation — seeing as how you’ve checked your phone five times in the last five minutes — you still make it your job to clear the air for any future attempts at conversing. after all, you’re going to be stuck with him for the entirety of the next three days. and that’s at the very least.

“mark, i don’t even want to know what you meant by that, but can we just keep our distance as…” you pause when you realize there really isn’t an appropriate label to describe your relationship with him. what do you call someone that you know really well, but aren’t on talking terms with, and have a long history of romantic instances with?

at the three-second mark in your hesitation, he lends a hopeful suggestion, “as friends?” and it’s another three unsure seconds spent on your end — unease on his — until you finally give in with a sigh and a small, albeit resolute nod. “as friends.”

he’s going at almost a hundred miles per hour on the empty road when you noticeably look over at him in time to catch the quirk of his lips, before he reassesses with a nod of his own in confirmation. with the first of (what you’re sure will be) many awkward exchanges passed, you reach a hand into the backseat to draw forth a thin blanket. “alright, i’m going to continue sleeping then.”

“mhmm,” he hums, watching in the corner of his eye as you lower the seat back. the position you assume, curling into the blanket, is as familiar as it gets and mark is reminded of countless road trip memories that he has never bothered to unearth. he sighs. “go ahead, we got all the time in the world.”

and after making sure you’ve fallen fast asleep with your slowed breathing and occasional snores, mark slows the car to a cruising 70 miles per hour.

「 DAY 01, 10:33 AM 」 — MORE THAN I THOUGHT

“keep right to stay on the i-81 south.” you slit an eye open, wide enough to see that the road ahead is blanketed in a gleaming white. the sun must’ve parted from the clouds. you close your eye in an attempt to fall back asleep. but just before you do, the automated voice from mark’s phone perks up again. “keep right to stay on the i-81 south.”

annoyed and disgruntled, you shrug the blanket off of you and, this time, crack both eyes open. sitting up in your reclined seat, you rub at your eyes and realize two things. one, the car is no longer moving. and two, you’re in the car alone. suddenly alert, you jab your finger into the ‘cancel’ button on his phone just as it continues its mantra of “keep right to sta—” and grab your own phone as you make your way out of the car.

the car itself is parked haphazardly in front of what is labelled to be a colon and rectal surgery building, with half the whole vehicle outside of the designated lines. but just as you begin to question mark’s motives, you turn to see a vast expanse of water on the opposite side. there’s small islands and clumps of trees jutting out and just across you can see a rise of buildings in the distance.

approaching the road that separates you and the riverbank, you bring a hand to shield your eyes from the light of the sun which you have yet to adjust to. and sure enough, through the blinding haze you make out a figure on the other side of the road, unruly black hair scuffed by the wind with a giant camera held at his hip. his other hand is held in the same shielding stance as you, and even his posture alone is enough to tell you that it’s mark.

both hands now cupping your mouth, you yell out a resounding, “mark!” just as a truck whizzes by but when the body of it passes, the man is revealed to be looking back at you with a silly smile plastered across his face. he holds the heavy film camera with both hands now, as he rushes up the slight grassy incline and jaywalks casually across the street.

you’re about to scold him for not even looking out for any incoming cars but up close, he only grins harder. mark is less than five feet away when he thinks to enlighten you, his beaming smile quickly growing sheepish, “google maps told me to keep right but i stayed on the right for so long, i ended up exiting the highway altogether.” his free arm gestures outwards in exclamation while he beams, “but look where we ended up!”

the sincerity of his bright eyes and bright smile puts a dampener on the tension, so much so that you even venture to joke, “the upmc pinnacle colon and rectal surgery center?” whilst pointing back to the sign. “you’ve no idea how confused i was when i woke up.”

“sorry about that. we’re in harrisburg now. so i’m guessing this is the susquehanna river.”

you shoot him a surprised look, “nice. almost halfway through pennsylvania.”

he ducks his head, a small smile adorning his nod in agreement, “yeah almost.” mark likes this new development of mood you seem to be in. chipper? not exactly. but much more pleasant than before? absolutely. he knows from personal experience that it’s the sleep. good sleep and good food do that to you. and thus he suggests, “should we get a quick brunch before getting back on the road?”

your eyes ignite a glow — rival to his — at the sound of brunch, though you have enough patience to consider, “did you get all the pictures you wanted already?”

mark nods once again, even though he isn’t even through a fourth of his first roll of film. he figures he’ll have plenty more opportunities to use it up down the line. plus, he likes the little smile on your face way too much to be the one to deny you what you want. and so he rushes to get his equipment back in their travel straps and he clambers back into the driver’s seat, all to careen his way about four blocks down to the mcdonald’s (but only after you’d shaken your head whilst he was pulling up at the wendy’s).

he orders drive through and you’re pleasantly surprised when he turns to ask, “same as usual?” and though you’re sure your usual order has changed at least once or twice in just the last year, you nod anyways. mark pays at the till and you’re handed a sausage burrito with large fries. as you’d supposed, it’s not your most up-to-date order but at this point, almost anything will get your mouth watering.

at your first bite, you sneak a glance over at mark. his head is bowed over the egg mcmuffin in his lap, hands clasped lightly together as he says grace. looking away, you give an unprompted chuckle under your breath in remembrance of his faith, new memories ringing up old habits in the back of your mind.

the next time you place a glance towards him, there’s crumbs littering the lap of his jeans and sauce smothered around the curves of his mouth. and when he looks over at you, an eyebrow raised in question at the sudden onset of attention you’re giving, you pay little mind to the fact that you have to stifle yet another chuckle in exchange for simply tossing a napkin his way.

sitting here in the passenger seat of his car, you can’t help but think that there must be something inherently wrong about spending time with an ex. especially when the two of you parted on terms that seemed somewhat insignificant, though only at the surface of things.

for the most part, mark was a good boyfriend. and the mark that sat to your left doesn’t seem any different than the mark you knew back then. maybe he got around to shaving his stubble a little closer and cleaning up his car a bit more often, but he wears the same carhartt jeans, eats as clumsily as he always had, and still drives his car as if he had extra lives to spare.

from his nose scrunches to his dutiful faith, the mark you’re sat next to now is undeniably the same mark you fell in love with what seems like ages ago.

and as he backs out of the parking space, almost reversing straight into the car opposite, you catch the uttered “shit” that falls so casually from his lips. the same lips that you could never get enough of against yours. the song that’s blaring from the speakers is a favorite of his, you know that best, and it has him humming lightly with the same voice that once serenaded you to sleep. his fingers drum incessantly on the steering wheel as he waits for a red light to turn green, the same fingers that once struggled, but succeeded against all odds, in learning how to braid your hair.

you swallow thickly and think of how unfair this has come to be. it feels impossible to have to sit with the fact that you revoked his license as your boyfriend, but now have to regard him as just a friend. it’s the same as holding someone you once held close at arm’s distance. and it’s like trying to purposefully forget the name of your favorite show, or your beloved dog, or even your own name.

all of a sudden, you feel like you’ve been caught in a fervid windstorm so strong that it threatens to uproot whatever reasonings had kept you grounded, amplifying whatever feelings lingered in his wake. except, the only thing you have left to hold onto is the realization that although the mark in the driver’s seat is the same mark you fell in love with way back when, he’s also the same mark that broke your heart without even a single word said.

「 DAY 02, 01:17 AM 」 — MARK LEE SMOKING?? (100% CLICKBAIT)

a bout of carsickness hits you at seven in the evening, right after sitting in at a roadside diner that served mashed potatoes that were suspiciously tinted green. but even after he pulled over so you could throw up on the side of the road, you’d implored mark to keep on driving until the two of you were at least at the outskirts of illinois. and that had happened on three separate occasions.

reluctantly, he’d kept his promise and poorly parked his car in front of relax inn, the closest and cheapest place that google maps could turn up. located in marshall, illinois with a striking two-star rating, it had everything you needed: free parking, shitty wifi, and even complimentary breakfast. or, it had everything you needed except two separate and unoccupied rooms.

you had been surprised, at first, when the man at the front counter had only charged mark $58. but that was after he had conveniently left out that the amazing deal was actually for only one room, not two. sighing, you drop your bag to the ground in resignation at the sight of the single queen-sized bed. despite the stiff sheets and musty smell, it still stands to look inviting after ten hours, give or take, of almost nonstop driving.

with only two stops taken for restroom breaks or gas fill-ups, you figure that either one of you has reason enough to claim the bed. there is a thought of mentioning how the two of you had slept side by side with no sexual implications many times before but it’s fleeting, dismissed, and gone within seconds.

instead, you begin drafting your argument, pulling out the persuasive points of your monologue about why you were more deserving of the bed. sure, he’d driven the car the whole while, his eyes must be strained and his ability to concentrate and energy have probably been rendered null. you, on the other hand, could pull the motion sickness, weak composition, nauseated passenger princess card. yeah, surely that’d do the trick.

your opening lines are right at the tip of your tongue, ready to win over a hefty opponent, when you turn to see that mark has already situated his belongings on the ground by the couch. wary of how you’d been standing there for a good two minutes completely unmoved, he looks your way and very plainly comments, “you take the bed. i’m fine with the couch.”

and suddenly you feel very supremely guilty for having even thought of going into a full-blown verbal altercation for a slightly more comfortable place to rest. you now think about thus commencing a full-blown verbal altercation over the slightly less comfortable place to rest, if not to ease your guilty conscience, then just out of politeness. but you digress because after all, mark is way too nice and you’re way too in need of a good night’s sleep. even if it’s just slightly better.

laying in bed, scrolling on your phone, you recall that this is how it’s always been with mark. that at one point, you became too tired of always trying to be the nicer person out of politeness when mark had the kind of genuineness you’d find in about one of a million persons. sometimes, a simple exchange of things like who should get the bed could blow itself out of proportion without either of you meaning for it to have gone that far. you came to the conclusion long ago that fights about who was the nicer person weren’t necessarily fights on character, but rather just fights like any other. and choosing to let mark carry through with his niceness — accepting the last french fry, taking his jacket when it was chilly, and now letting him have the couch — didn’t mean you were inconsiderate. in a way, it was a compromise of its own to allow him the opportunity to be of service to you.

you think of showering the following morning for it seems unlikely that you’d depart the comfort and looming sleep the bed provides. squirming around, you tuck yourself under the blankets but before you could fully relinquish your body to the confines of sleep, a soft rustling by the edge of the bed coaxes your eyes to open a sliver.

mark’s squatting so that you’re right at eye level with him. his hair is mussed more than the wind had done and wet at the tips, sticking up in several places that seem to defy the laws of gravity. with an elbow set on the bed, he peers at you over the screen of his phone, eyes wide and set in the frame of his black-rimmed glasses. he doesn’t whisper though his voice comes out so low, you wouldn’t be able to tell much of a difference anyways. “sorry, i know you’re tryna sleep. just wanted to ask when you’d want to wake up tomorrow.”

repositioning to face him, you smush the side of your cheek into the pillow and the unease in mark’s face ebbs away. half alseep and a good amount dehydrated, your throat is scratchy when you pass it back to him, “what do you think?”

mark scratches the back of his neck with his free hand, “i, uh well… maybe six...?” and he traces your eyes as they find the clock on the nightstand. it reads 2:02 AM and he seems to share the same thought as you. “...thirty? six-thirty?”

you close your eyes, already losing your grasp on what he just said as you mumble out the last of your thoughts, “okay, we’ll grab breakfast downstairs and leave at seven?”

whatever he responds with goes in one ear and out the other. and it isn’t until he wakes you up, bright and early at 6:20 AM, that you remember the conversation even happened. in reality, you roll around in bed, trying to find another sweet spot that will lull you back into sleep, for about ten whole minutes. by the time you’ve given up, gotten out of bed, and begun collecting your garments for the shower, it’s 6:30 on the dot. it doesn’t even register in your mind that mark had accounted for your scheduled morning bout of grogginess until you’re out of the shower with a clearer head.

you sit across from him at breakfast and he passes the black pepper when you spoon your scrambled eggs. he offers to go refill your orange juice at one point and at another he apologizes adamantly for accidentally nudging your foot under the table. it’s only after he takes your empty plate with his back to the clean-up counter that you really bother to take a good look at him.

he must’ve skipped his morning shave, for his stubble is visible though not much more than a mere shadow. there’s a silver chain at his neck, one with a dangling cross pendant, and it sits prettily atop his plain black pocket tee. mark leads the way towards the front desk to check out. you notice the way he swirls the both the room key and car key around his fingers, his straight posture when he walks depite the heavy backpack mounted on him, and even the worn-in outline of his wallet from the rear pocket of his jeans.

and when he mistakens the pristinely cleaned glass door for a wide opening, resulting in a blooming red splotch on his forehead, you take the time to consider his big endearing head, and his big boyish eyes, and his big sloppy smile. you laugh along with him, but perhaps for more of a different reason. mark may have a big head, but at least it’s filled with good and godly things.

seconds later in the parking lot and you think to rescind those same regards. mark may be nice but there’s no way you’ll be the one to compromise on this one.

you’re fully in the seat and ready to get the car going, except mark is standing right where the door should be closing with his arms crossed and a foot hiked up on the frame of the car. his stance is a plain show of defiance, as are his firmly-stated comments. “i’m not letting you drive. you were vomiting everywhere just last night.”

“give me the keys, i need my redemption arc to happen right now.”

mark only tilts his head in disapproval, eyes boasting a look that emanates something along the lines of ‘are you kidding me?’ you press your lips thin in consideration, realizing that this has turned out to be harder than you’d bargained for. eyeing the keys hanging loosely from his left hand, you decide that your efforts were going to amount to nothing if not by way of force.

when you lunge for the keys, mark takes that you’re attacking him or something of the sort, throwing his hands out in front to block. in the three seconds the debacle had taken to unfold, the sharp end of the car key had scraped the length of your inner arm, nicking your skin clean apart. much to your chagrin and his relief, you end up in the passenger seat anyways.

mark wipes diligently at the long cut with an alcohol pad, whilst you use your unpunctured arm to search for where he’d claimed the first aid kit with the bandaids would be. you look away from the glove box to find his unimpressed disposition, and you hold the gaze until he meets it. but he only meets it for a split second before ducking his head back down to the red-stained alcohol pad, muttering low but loud enough for you to catch. “god you’re a mess, y/n.”

you return your attention to your search for bandaids, eyes rolling far into the back of your head. “i already admitted defeat. do you have to rub it in?” to which he responds with but a fleeting laugh. and by the time he can come up with a, “there we go, all clean,” you’ve conjured four bandaids for him to top it all off.

as mark busies himself with finding the most appropriate arrangement that would cover the length of the cut, you shove the first aid kit back to where you’d retrieved it in the far corner of the glove box. it’s then that the streak of red that was presumably tucked behind it catches your eye.

by the time mark returns from discarding the wipes and bandage packaging, it’s already too late for him to stop what’s to come. the red box — at first glance, what looks to be a sizable pack of cigarettes — had already found its way into your unsuspecting hands.

「 DAY 02, 07:09 AM 」 — BROCKHAMPTON SATURATION II, TRACK #16

when haechan first introduced his sophomore photography major best friend to you back in freshman year of college, he had described him as the guy with no emotional depth. and you had shaken his outstretched hand anyways, awkwardly laughing along even though you had no idea that it was an inside joke between the two of them.

you laughed again on christmas day, same year, same joke. however, you still had yet to figure out what it meant when haechan had gifted your new boyfriend the card game, cased in a brilliant red box. he had said something along the lines of “maybe this’ll get him to dig deeper” and your group of friends, most of whom had known mark since high school, seemed to find it funny and fitting.

the game itself, you knew; it was a popular drinking game among your college friends. you had played it several times yourself at more intimate gatherings, the reflective conversational prompts amounting to several instances of sob fests, tissue shortages, and long hugs. it was good for heartfelt conversations, and apparently mark wasn’t one for feelings. put two and two together and that made enough sense for you to laugh along and move on without much thought.

but well over two, almost three, years later, you wonder why it’d been shoved into the back of his glove box, the plastic wrap still intact and pristine. it’s as if mark had quite literally buried his feelings into the depths of this car, subsequently forgotten and later dug up by his girlfriend turned ex. life’s a funny thing, because only now as his ex-girlfriend do you understand what the gag gift meant in the first place.

looking out upon the barren gas station, you feel restless standing in the face of ten — bordering eleven — hours of driving beside mark of all people. but when he slips into the seat beside you, freshly washed hands wiping themselves down the length of his jeans, you begin to think of a better, or at least more interesting, way to pass the time. holding the box of cards out for him to see, your bouncing leg finally comes to a still as you suggest, “wanna play?”

mark regards the box with a joking manner, and while his casual, “yeah, why not” might prove his act of nonchalance convincing, you like to think you know him better than to look past the way his eyes had lingered, or the hesitance set in his brows, or even the readjusting of his position. he starts up the engine and moves the gear out of park as you fumble with the plastic wrapping. a small tear later and you’re peeling back the packaging, throwing small glances at mark’s way whilst he throws unsure glances at the box of cards.

two minutes back on the i-70 west, you’ve shuffled the cards until your fingers began to feel sliced through, and only then did you deem it time to begin. fanning the deck out to your left, you gesture for mark to select his first pick. he shakes his head and wordlessly gestures back at you to make the first move, a lick of his lips giving his uncertainty away.

shoving the rest of the deck into one of the cup holders on the middle console, you read along as your other hand sets forth in finding your phone. “wildcard. press shuffle on your music library. explain the first song that comes up!”

phone in hand, you look over at mark inquiringly, “me or you?” and if you had to guess his next words, there’d be no doubt that it’d be a stiff and uttered, “you.” almost taking glee in his squirmishness, you pull up spotify on your phone and click into your mess of a “liked songs” playlist. mark passes you the carplay cord and you plug it in, pressing the shuffle button apprehensively after the beep indicates it’s been connected.

heavy piano chords pan out from the speakers and a smile is slow to spread across your face as you come to a realization of what song it is. for better or for worse, mark seems to know as well, retracting his gaze from the road for less than a second to meet your eyes. there’s a sort of ‘ahh’ in them, an understanding, an underlying fondness.

in the heat of the summer…

“do i really have to explain?”

you know that you should be my boy.

“give it a go at least.”

in the heat of the summer…

“well…”

you’re so different from the rest.

you find yourself at a loss for words. amongst many other things that arise in this moment, your train of thought does its best to rationalize. why was this song still in the playlist? simple, you forgot to take it out. it’s only normal that things get buried with time. why can’t you just say that to him, then? simple, because then it’d be so easy for him to brush it off as a lame excuse, a cover-up, as to how plainly you still held onto your relationship. what the fuck are you feeling? panic. doubt. frustration. longing.

panic at the thought that he would read into it too much. doubt at the thought that there were other reasons for why you’d let this song gather dust in your playlist. frustration at the thought that there was only you to blame for this situation that you’d gotten yourself into. and longing. longing that had sat untouched for the same amount of time you’d decided to shove your feelings away instead of confronting them. longing that had since settled into your flesh and bones, going unnoticed. longing that, at the first chords of this song, had you casting your eyes downwards from the road ahead.

hastily, you grab for your water bottle, taking steady but large gulps. suddenly, your throat had become too dry. swallowing thickly, you wonder why the lump in your throat refuses to fall back. your breathing becomes noticeably haggard while the thing lodged in your throat remains. at the slightest indication of mark’s head turning your way, you snap your own in the direction of the window to avoid his questioning gaze.

biting down on your lip, your eyes fall closed even with the sprawling hills unfurling just outside. the sun is climbing to its height, as is your sudden onslaught of emotions that drowns out all noise except the sound of mark humming along to the song. you are numb, you are deaf, you are void of everything except his voice.

“do you remember?”

reverberating through you, it’s all you are able to feel.

“do you remember last summer at the lake?”

mind emptied, it’s all you know.

“it’s one of my favorite days, i’ll have you know.”

body capsized, it floods you. and it fills you to the brim until you can’t take it anymore.

“isn’t it funny that all my favorite days have been spent with you?”

and when it overflows, it comes in the form of tears.

your vision blurs and the wetness on your cheeks is quickly pulled into a pool at the edge of the seat. closing your eyes is a daunting task, even then, because you know just what you’ll see. you make the mistake of trying to blink away the tears, making them fall far faster than they had before. but for what it’s worth, it had been a favorite day of yours as well, albeit bittersweet.

the water was emerald green and the grass was knee-high. the sun rested overhead for almost fourteen hours a day and you had a tan comparable to that of a professional-grade spray. the wind was light though unrelenting, apparent in the way the clothes strewn across the clothesline were at the cusp of being carried away. everything under the sun was warm to the touch. the rocks, the grass, the water, his skin.

you snap your eyes open and only then do you notice that the car has come to a stop, pulled over to the side of the road. your hand is pressing into your forehead and the tears are still running free when you care to peer over in mark’s direction. both hands resting on the wheel, his eyes emanate in concern, lips pulled tight as if an apology was attempting to push past from within. it’s hard to pinpoint your finger directly to it, but there’s something about his expression that ticks you off so greatly that you regard him for less than a second before slipping out of the car.

the first inhale of fresh air makes the stuffiness inside the car feel like you had been breathing in water. the wind, just as it had been that day, is light though unrelenting, and it dries clean the tears in your eyes. your body sags and you give your weight into the side rails of the road, sitting against it and heaving thorough breaths to bring you some peace of mind. if you stared at your surroundings for long enough, the short grasses growing beside the road would grow long and the valleys in between the hills would carve out an emerald lake. the warmth would find its way back to you, but it’s far from pleasant and rather close to burning, scorching even. you fist and unfist your hands, recoiling from even the thought of it.

instead, you focus on the way the roughened wood of the rail nips at your skin through the thin spandex of your shorts. when you shift your position, the metal that accompanies it is hot to the touch and the uneven pavement beneath you is riddled with its fair share of pebbles and wood chips alike. taking your time, you come to pay more mind to your breathing, allowing the intakes to fill up your belly rather than your chest. the sky is a clear blue, the single cloud is pear-shaped, you can count up to seven peaks in the hills, and there are four dirt patches within your line of vision. it’s these little things that ground you.

seven minutes past. you hear a car door open you but you never hear it close. footsteps stop maybe three feet from your left but they never step any closer. he says, “whenever you’re ready,” but he never says anything more.

and perhaps that’s what hurts the most.

「 DAY 02, 01:56 PM 」 — LITTLE CRAZY LOVE SONG, MARY OLIVER 2014

“what’d you say?”

“nothing much, really—”

“well, you obviously said something if she’s voluntarily passed out for the last six hours.”

static crinkles on the other end and mark looks around at the endless stretch of trees surrounding the lone gas station. the signal is clearly not having its best moment here in the thick of the forest, but he rejoins anyways.

“i brought up last summer…” he trails off, hoping that just the season would provide enough context to tell of the situation without him explicitly having to name it as terrible, godawful, and no good whatsover. to be frank, mark wasn’t expecting understanding and empathy when he dialed haechan’s number. hell, he wasn’t even expecting to receive encouragement and good faith. perhaps all he wanted was recognition for the bad deed he’d committed and someone for him to bicker out his frustration with. and surely, haechan delivers just that.

“mark, you whole-hearted idiot. wh—”

“okay but in my defense, i thought we were having a momen—”

“i think only you were having a mo—”

“it just slipped out, i swear it wasn’t on purpo—”

“how the fuck did you think she’d react to your sappy bullshi—”

“—but it’s all cool now.”

the other end goes flat after mark’s statement and he thinks it’s owed to the faulty service, until haechan sputters in disbelief, breaking the quiet at an ear-splitting decible, “cool? you call that cool?!” mark furrows his brow at his friend’s overuse of emphasis whilst he busies himself with retrieving his credit card one-handedly. he knows that somewhere along the line, he fucked up. and he thinks he knows exactly where but at the same time, mark isn’t quite in the headspace to own up to it. so he retaliates.

“it’s like you set me up for failure.”

haechan justifies, “hey, it’s not like i did anything wrong. a friend needed a ride and i found someone who could give her just that.” but mark can hear the sarcasm in his voice and he decides he would rather confront his friend than question his ex. “i highly doubt she’d be down for a forty-two hour drive over a six-hour flight. what the fuck did you even say to convince her?”

the younger doesn’t waver when put in the spotlight. in fact, he gives it away as if it’s all just a fun prank on his end. and that’s not to say that isn’t at least partially the truth.

“i told her you already agreed to take her, same thing i said to you.”

smart as ever, he hangs up before mark’s initial surprise gets translated into brute annoyance. the silence after the disconnect tone hits him almost immediately and thus, he finds himself standing in the middle of an empty gas station, in the middle of the eerily quiet city of winona, missouri, which is sat at the edge of a brimming forest where nothing but trees run on for miles and miles on end. there’s a town & county supermarket in the same plaza and a rundown dollar general down the street he’d passed to get here.

it suddenly feels as if he’s the only person alive in this whole wide world, trapped inside his four-walled mind with no one to talk to except his regretful self. more than confronting his friends or even you, mark has known for a long time that he feels the most social anxiety whenever he’s left to confront himself. he tries to shake the thought, pocketing his wallet as he makes a beeline for the supermarket across the desolate parking lot. it’s far on foot and with each step, he descends down into the depths of despair, digging up all the times he must’ve made you uncomfortable with just his presence. for once, he doesn’t think it’s such a wonderful thing to be alone in the world with the person he loves most.

seven hours of almost straight driving is bound to make a person go at least a little insane, as mark wonders if he even remembers the last time he saw anyone other than you. he grabs a bag of popcorn, a charcuterie box, and a gallon of water at the supermarket and only at the cash register, manned by a live and tangible human, is he freed from the confines of his tortured mind.

gas filled to the max and provisions restocked, he’s once again met with the struggle of having to close the car door as quietly and undistrubingly as humanly possible. you’re still very much asleep and the last thing he wants is to jolt you awake when your latest memory of him is how he’d insensitively instigated a panic attack at barely seven in the morning, albeit unintentionally.

after he closes the door with exemplary caution and barely a thud, mark lowers his guard with a sigh in relief in tow. though in this fleeting moment of mindlessness, the very next moment he’s dropped his keys on the center console. wincing, he watches as the clattering elicits a stir on your end, fluttering eyelids, and then — to his utter horror and dismay — you wake up.

mark plays it cool, or so he thinks, by letting out a low “oh shit” to make sure you know of his accidental mistake. rubbing your eyes, the first glance you place his way isn’t strictly a glare, but it might as well be with how you barely acknowledge his stilled presence. mark waits until you’ve had a couple sips of water in your system and a full routine of arm stretches before speaking up carefully. “how’d you sleep?”

you look his way and tiredly blink a few times before saying, “fine.”

back at square one, he thinks. mark hands you the bag of popcorn and charcuterie box and reaches over to drop the giant water jug into the back seats. you eye the bag and the box confusedly, then the blanket draped across your knees that you’re sure wasn’t there when you fell asleep, and then finally your surroundings.

“what time is it?”

“about 2:20.”

“where are we?”

“missouri. just outside the mark twain national forest.”

you eye the landscape beyond the windows where you’re met with the parking lot, a few commercial structures, and a shitload of trees. you turn back towards mark, “are we on schedule?”

he nods. “we’re actually ahead of schedule. we were supposed to be just out of illinois right now.”

you give him a tight-lipped smile that does little to ease the tension. removing the blanket, you make a move for the door and mark thinks that this must be it. you’ve had enough of him, you’re tired of tolerating his presence, and you’ve set your mind on walking the rest of the way to los angeles. it’s a rather immature thought but he entertains it for a split second regardless. the second half of the second is spent coming up with a hastened, “wait.”

you’re halfway out the door when you look back over your shoulder, a left eyebrow cocked in question. mark doesn’t have anything on hand to say, so he blurts out whatever question he had first in queue, “why… why did you agree to come?”

fully out of the car, you stand facing him with one hand resting on the car door and the other situated on your hip. in your freshly awakened state, you cock your head at the absurdity of his unprompted question. there’s a trace of thought pooling in your eyes before you answer rather nonchalantly, “i wanted to see how you’ve been.” the words hang in the air, waiting for mark to process them, and when he does it’s as if he’s had the wind knocked out of him. breathily, he recites a quiet, “oh i see,” and then you shut the door square in his face, leaving him with only an equally quiet, “i need to use the restroom, be right back.”

mark thinks back to why he himself had agreed in the first place and he’s not sure how much of a role haechan’s little ruse had played anyways. he appreciates the honesty with which you answered because it gives him the space to be honest with himself as well. he’d agreed to go because a part of him wanted to see how you’d been doing as well, but he’d also agreed to go because a part of him simply just wanted to see you. the little stunt that haechan had pulled was just the tip of the iceberg of reasons that led to this whole ordeal, and mark thinks — or at least hopes — that that had been the case for you too.

when you return, freshened up and looking more lively than you had in hours, mark’s more prepared than the last time he’d thrown a haphazard question your way. you’re fastening your seat belt when he asks, “since we’re ahead of schedule, do you wanna go for a drive around the forest?”

he sees where it starts, slow in the upturn. what looks like the beginnings of a frown blooms into an easy smile. it doesn’t reach your eyes, but it doesn’t need to for mark to know that you mean it. “around?”

he smiles too, quick with a flash of teeth and a breathy chuckle. “in, i mean. in the forest.”

you let your head retract to facing frontwards, leaning back into your seat as you nod, “sure, let’s go.” folding the maroon blanket into your lap, you follow mark’s pointed finger until your eyes set on his backpack shoved under your seat. “there should be a map in there. can you be my guide?”

for a second, he thinks he’s being too greedy with your patience but your easy smile flattens to show complacency. “i can do that,” and you salvage the map from the front pocket of the mess of his backpack. seeing about an inch-thick stack of maps in the same compartment, you look towards him with your smile now edging towards a knowing tease. “you planned for this, didn’t you?”

mark shakes his head fervently though he can’t find it in himself to audibly deny. after all, number two on his bucket list is to visit all the national parks and forests the country has to offer. how could you have expected him to resist when passing by a city that sat directly under 1.5 acres of forest land? and with the extra time to spare, it was a given.

you have the map crinkled open on your lap as you load up the top destinations with your phone in hand. mark’s excitement seems to be rubbing off on you; his giddy smile lends into your glittering eyes, his drumming fingers on the steering wheel translating to your bouncy leg. twenty-four minutes north — one right turn and one left turn — later, you’ve successfully navigated the both of you to alley spring and mill, a three-story red statement with a clear turquoise spring tucked behind.

the summer heat licks at the nape of your neck when you first open the door. you grab the blanket, the charcuterie box, the bag of popcorn and — with a thought spared in consideration — the stack of cards shoved into the cupholder after tucking your phone into the waistline of your shorts. the rush of water grows louder as you approach, the uneven pavement ebbing off into scuffed dirt and then brustling grass further down the stretch. pausing a good distance away from the decades-old structure, you hear a sigh in wonderment coming from behind.

mark’s mamiya rz67 weighs down one hand, the other raised to his brow to deflect the glare of the sun. he has a sort of satisfied look to his face, one that only grows as he makes his way to catch up to you. “good find,” he comments, tearing his gaze away from the sights to meet your eyes. pride snuggles into the corners of your smile and you duck away from his stare.

“lemme go find somewhere for us to settle down for a bit,” you hold up the blanket in gesture and then wave him off with another smile, “you go do your thing, don’t mind me.”

there’s a few people here and there coming in and out of the mill and a few more along the skirts of the spring, but you manage to find a quiet spot along the water with some trees to offer a decent amount of shade. it’s much cooler down here, where the spray disperses itself fresh from the water and into the air, and you drape the blanket over the mildly damp grass. spreading the contents of the charcuterie box across a napkin and pouring a portion of the popcorn into the now empty box, the setting begins to look as if it were all planned and not, in fact, an impromptu day trip that fell in motion less than a half-hour ago.

slipping your shoes off, you ease into the spot, appreciating the clear air while you can. if you shield your eyes, you can see mark in the distance with his phone held up to the red building to check the light settings. he takes a shot there in that position, and you swear you can hear the ka-shink! of his shutter even from this far away. nibbling a corner of brie cheese, you watch him closely as he jogs in a zig zag across the plot to find another interesting shot to frame.

mark gets six or seven more in before he rounds upon where you’re sat, having finally found the alcove of shade you’d claimed. he’s still holding his camera with one hand, the size of his palm making the five pound camera seem small. in the back of your mind, you can still recall the weight of it from a year ago as mark demonstrated how to advance the film for your first try at a shot. you remember how difficult it was to get the hang of medium format photography, much less the bothersome large format that mark used to haul around wherever he went.

“may i join you?”

snapped out of your momentary reminiscence, you glance up at mark as if you hadn’t even seen him coming your way. at the nod of your head, he takes his spot across the blanket with his legs criss crossed. the seconds tick away while your eyes trace the lines of his hands, moving familiarly to load a new film stock into his camera. the delicacy of his movements, the steadfastness of his grip, the roughness of his knuckles, and the baby soft pads of his fingers.

there’s nothing to do with his hands when he’s done with his camera so he resorts to fiddling with the folds of the blanket and occasionally reaching for a grape. mark looks a little lost, if you are to be honest. or at least, it seems as if he’s unsure of his presence; too scared of breaching boundaries thus he shies away from interactions altogether. his patterns of behavior are nothing new to you. and though there was once a time where you’d despise having to always be the one to coax him out of his shell of insecurity, you aren’t nearly so distressed to do so when there’s no strings attached, no long withheld feelings that come with it.

“when should we get back on the road?”

mark looks up at you in surprise and relief floods his face when he realizes no sign of annoyance in your expression. as if he were taking a firm hold of the hand you’d extended, he responds kindly, “it’s best if we go before five, so we can take our time on the road.”

you check your phone and the time reads a quarter past four. scrolling down your notification screen to see if you missed any important messages, you find about four consecutive texts from haechan, sent just before you woke up from the six hour stress nap you inadvertently took.

【 2:06 PM 】 bro u good? 【 2:06 PM 】 mark told me what happened 【 2:06 PM 】 should i beat him up for u? haha 【 2:08 PM 】 call me when u get a chance ;)

shutting off your phone, you retrace your attention back to mark. he’s the spitting image of a kid whose one and only friend didn’t show up to school today, hence he had to sit at his own table during lunch. you chuckle under your breath at the thought and he happens to hear, giving you a raise of his brow to which you only shake your head in dismissal.

so badly do you want to just clear the air — his newly uptight demeanor being a nightmare to get along with — but you know better than anyone how avidly mark avoids confrontation at all costs. to bring it right to his front steps is just asking for uncalled-for frustration. you zip your lips, and eye your surroundings, hoping for a topic of conversation to jump out at you.

sure enough, the red boldface catches your eye and it lingers. who says confrontation is the only way to subdue the tension? sometimes all you need is a little fun. and what’s better than a game to do just that? you place a hand atop the deck and wait for mark to recognize your intentions before softly suggesting, “your turn?”

the expression he dons is a bit squirmish as he reaches for the cards, but you can tell that he’s glad his careless words hadn’t ruined the game for you forever. his fingers make quick work in shuffling them neatly and, face down, he draws one from the pile at random.

“what do you think is the hardest part of what i do for a living?”

mark glances up at you from the card expectantly and you’re thrown off guard for a moment. “i answer? i did the last one though.”

he only laughs, “yeah i know. but even if i wanted to answer, i couldn’t. you don’t have a job.”

“oh that’s right,” you smile, masking a tinge of embarrassment at your late realization,” okay, i’ll answer it then.”

you cross your legs like his and pluck a grape for your fingers to play around with. momentarily in thought, you realize that there’s not much to the question, not when pertaining to mark and not when asked to you.

“the thing is, i’ve seen a lot firsthand. and i think you know what i’m going to say.”

it’s his turn to be thrown off guard with wide eyes and a hand to his chest, “i do?”

nodding, you pop the grape into your mouth to give leeway for your thoughts to string into words. shortly after swallowing, the words follow in suit, “i mean, you love your job and from what i remember, it pays your bills. which is great, it’s really great.” careful with your next words, you approach them with caution, “but at the same time, i think — and correct me if i’m wrong — i think...it’s put a strain on some of your relationships.”

mark doesn’t look the least bit surprised. in fact, you’re sure he’d known the answer the second after he read the question. hardly disappointed, he smiles wide when your eyes brim with uncertainty. reassuring you, “you’re right on point,” and then nudging you along, “i still want you to elaborate on it though.”

“okay,” you smile back at him, mostly in relief, “i know this is pretty personal, but since you insist…”

and so you trailed on about what you knew. on how his job drove a wedge between him and his parents. on how they told him it was one thing to chase after your dreams, and a whole other to let your dreams crush you. but to him, dropping out of college didn’t make those two semesters a waste of time and money. rather, he thought that going to college in the first place made it easier for him to realize it wasn’t the path he wanted to walk. there were always going to be times where he wouldn’t be able to make ends meet but that was nothing to him if he could have the support of his friends and family to do what he loved most.

you knew very well that a “strain” was a light way to put it. his parents cut him off at nineteen when they realized he wouldn’t be returning to school. as most parents would be, they were worried but unwilling to financially support their son who they no longer believed in. his mom still brings stacks upon stacks of tupperware kimchi and side dishes each month and his dad still passes money under the table at family dinners. but for some reason, they could never look him straight in the eye.

“do you ever feel like they betrayed you?”

“no, never,” he declares almost immediately. “it’s easy to think that they did. it’s harder to really feel that way when i know how much they love me. it’s just that we value different things.” mark says it so convincingly that you nearly dismiss the suspicions behind your question. when you meet his eyes and they are dark and glossed over, you start to believe them a lot more than what he’d just said.

seeing his pain resurface as if it were there the whole time, you’re reminded of the guilt you carry for breaking up with him at perhaps the most vulnerable point in his life. knowing that mark could never blame you for it, you blame yourself in his place.

looking down from his gaze, you hold your left hand in your right, imagining it as his, and hope that just the thought of wanting to hold his hand offers him some comfort, in some sort of cosmically significant way.

「 DAY 02, 10:34 PM 」 — TOMAYTO TOMAHTO

mark drove past the ‘welcome to oklahoma’ sign at 7:30 PM. between cherokee and muscogee nation, he considered stopping at tulsa for the night instead of oklahoma city, the capital. it was around 9:00 by then and you were still fairly energized; he took from that to continue even though it was you who slept through the day, not him.

in your search, etrip.net claimed holiday inn to be $19 for a two person room, seemingly a ‘too good to be true’ deal for a four-star hotel with an indoor pool. you booked it anyways — though only after confirming that he was fine with sharing a room — and keyed in the address into google maps for mark to follow.

when you look out the window less than a half hour to your destination, it’s near pitch black, save for the distant outlines of buildings behind large fields of what you assume to be grass. the two of you are just outside the city and when you roll down the window; the air is rather cool and crisp for a summer night. there’s a truck in front of your car with a shipment of fresh tomatoes and the scent of them wafts sweetly in the dawdling air.

basked in a comfortable silence for the first time during this whole trip, you feel that summer break has finally started. the days are long and long gone are your day-to-day worries about when this assignment is due and how much this exam will affect your grade. in hindsight, they were all passing worries, things that never irked you for long enough to be significant. and now that you had finally made peace with it all — moved on, and slowed down — the world seems much more pleasant, less frantic, and more at ease than you remembered. it’s quiet and you’re happy.

glimpsing to your left to check how mark’s holding up, the first thing you’re met with are his wide, frenzied eyes. you trace his line of sight whilst venturing to ask, “you good?” before noticing the oblong shape that’s been planted straight into the dead center of the windshield. upon further scrutiny, there’s a redish secretion that’s oozing down the glass.

“y/n...what the fuck is that?”

the two of you are stunned in your seats, frozen at the thought of what it could possibly be. (a hockey puck! a donut! a scoop of ice cream! a bloodied body part?!) though soon enough, your conscience returns in time for you to register it as a tomato, straight from the truck ahead.

“holy shit,” mark mutters, and he begins to slow the car down and away from the alleged source. a second hits, (“fuck!”), right where your head would have been if not for the window. the third and fourth follow shortly, splatters sounding more like fist-sized rocks under the sheer force of impact. mark sees you ducking and dodging, this way and that, and his blood pressure sky rockets as a huge portion of his side becomes slathered in goop.

both of you are screaming at this point, mark has no way of knowing when the road will curve, and he’s still going seventy miles per hour, occasionally speeding faster whenever a jolt of adrenaline hits too hard and he loses fine control of his foot on the gas pedal. “roll up the damn window!” and your fingers fumble around for the button, almost opening up the whole door in the process.

you swerve your head right after the window’s safetly shut to see if anyone’s tailgating. “pull over, mark. there’s no one behind us.” and when the car comes to a stop, the two of you are panting uncontrollably, despite having barely moved for hours. there are no thoughts running through your mind — absolutely none, zero — when you turn your head to meet his eyes. and the second you do, the two of you burst into laughter, in utter disbelief at what just happened.

still breathless at the thought, your hand comes to your mouth in belated shock. the aftermath is disastrous. cautiously opening the door, you can spot remnant tomato juice dripping from the bottom edge. mark rounds the car twice in inspection, only to find that every last corner of his precious subaru crosstrek is coated in a sheen of red except for the back, bottom, and some of the top. the meager stack of napkins you saved from earlier in the day does the best they can, sweeping off most the meat but none of the juice. the scent doesn’t seem so sweet anymore when it’s all you can smell from a mile away.

you notice that mark has been standing in the same position for the last four minutes, unmoved with both hands on his hips, sweat gleaning from his brow, and a distant look in his eyes. you fear speaking up will spook him into tears. luckily, he speaks first.

“y/n.”

“yeah?”

“can you find the nearest coin-op car wash on my phone?”

“okay.”

“i’ll…” he trails off into a breathy laugh, that kind of echoed laugh that makes you want to give him all your hopes and dreams, support and love. “...i’ll be here for a bit.”

you clamber back into the passenger seat, careful not to transfer any of the liquids indoors. his phone is mounted on a stand and you pry it off, wondering how you would get past his passcode. you key in his birthday, a reasonable first try, but the lockscreen doesn’t budge. pressing your lips thin, you try to recall what his password had been way back then. mark was never one for unnecessary changes; he held onto his possessions and habits stubbornly.

after an aha! moment comes a moment of doubt. to get the code right was one thing, but you weren’t sure how you’d feel if it was indeed unchanged. shrugging off the hesitation, you press in the four numbers anyways, and sure enough it unlocks.

dumbfounded, your hands drop into your lap and your vision stills, zoned out on the curve of the steering wheel. it’s hard to really understand what you’re feeling and it’s even harder to discern mark’s intentions behind keeping his passcode set as your birthday after all this time. the signs have been there—and you had kept to avoiding them—but now is the first time you’re facing the possibility that mark still has feelings for you. and even just the thought of how it doesn’t disturb you greatly warrants extra precaution on your end.

mistakes are made so that they won’t be repeated.

you repeat the sentence to yourself perhaps five times over, and carry on with locating the nearest coin-operated car wash station as per his instruction. mark got in the car five minutes later with a small smile on his face. “it is what it is,” as he had put it. with only thirty minutes left, the car ride resumes in silence though this time around, there’s nothing comfortable about it. the man next to you is humming along to some john mayer song, oblivious to your disconterting mood that was induced solely by him (and partially by you, if we’re to be crystal clear).

deciding not to get too worked over it, you fixate, instead, on playing word games with haechan. time passes quickly as you win most of the rounds, half the time wondering why he’s even still awake when it’s already fairly late in his timezone. you make a mental note to call him when you get settled at the hotel, sooner the better if anything.

mark manages to hum along to every single song that comes up on the radio, sometimes even singing with a full voice and vibrato. you’re partially relieved that he’s no longer so on edge around you, also aware that now it’s you who’s way too in over your head. figuring that it wouldn’t be much of a problem once you call it a night, you move past your concerns and finally take a glance up from your phone.

marvelling at the ever-changing landscape on the other side of the window, your mouth falls agape at how the bare grasslands have since given away to streets among streets of buildings. you can peer even further down, where the city lights of oklahoma city make out a twinkling night sky, replacing the stars with their light pollution. devon tower stands the tallest and most discernable of the skyscrapers and for a second, your troubles melt away as you fall captive to The Big Friendly.

long past rush hour, the streets downtown are jam packed with both cars and pedestrians, forcing mark to brake every other second. the city night life in oklahoma feels warmer than the busy new york city had ever been. flourescent signs flash bright in invitation for you to enter, people flood the streets, swarmed with laughter and filled with good food. you keep a smile to yourself as this tedious road trip begins to feel a little more like a long-anticipated vacation.

marks pulls up at the coin wash station you’d found for him earlier. with it being a ten minute’s distance from the city’s main streets, the surrounding areas are quiet at this slow hour. when you reach over to unbuckle your seat belt, a hand comes to stop you and with a patient smile on his face, mark simply tells you, “wait here, i’ll clean it up real quick,” as he slips out of the car.

given no time to react much less disagree, he shuts the door behind him and you end up sitting in the car by yourself, watching mark as he busies around with his coins and then gets to hosing down the red streaks striping his car. presumably, they had dried in the wind. what a sight his car must have looked like, rolling through the city streets as if it’d been dunked in ketchup.

you get the idea then, while you’re idling around, to call up haechan quickly while you have the moment to yourself. if you could be curt with him, beat around the bush like the annoying little brat you are, you’ll have no problem with wrapping up the call within the next five to ten minutes it takes for mark to get the car scrubbed and shiny.

the phone rings a whopping total of seven times before he picks up. you put him on speaker and the groggy voice you’re met with is a telltale sign that you’ve freshly awoken him. “the fuck you want? i just fell asleep, you cow.” at least he went to bed, you think, whilst turning his loud ass voice off speaker and bringing your phone to your ear.

“woah, no need to be so vulgar. you’re the one who told me to call you.”

you hear a scoff coming from the other end. at his next quip, his voice is no longer groggy, now boasting a new tone of feisty. “yeah. i meant when i’m actually awake and willing to answer. bye, i’m hanging up now.”

“hey,” you whine, “you’re awake and i’m free right now so let’s just get it over with. what did you want to talk about?”

there’s a clear pause of deliberation on his end, only for less than three seconds though. “how’s it going with mark? i heard he made you cry.”

you sigh into the receiver, fingers having found the rim of your water bottle and decidedly tracing the cap around and around. “so he told you everything, i see. he just brought up some bad memories and i got overwhelmed in the moment. it’s all cool now.”

the line goes silent for while longer and the blasting hose outside just happens to shut off at the same time. you look up from your water bottle and through the shower of water, mark’s peering in with a sponge in hand, gleeful eyes greeting you hello. you give him an absentminded wave in return with your free hand.

usually, haechan had too much to say about everything but to your surprise, he only ponders with a lilt, “...it’s all cool?”

“it’s all cool,” you confirm. mark sweeps his sponge-equipped arm across the length of the windshield, the thick lather of bubbles building a wall between you and him. but just as his fingers dot two eyes and a big smile into the soap for you to see, haechan synchronizes, “so you guys are getting along?”

mark peeks into one of the holes to see you smiling as wide as the playful smiley face he’d drawn, the same one that was now at the mercy of the drooping liquids. contradicting your ear-splitting grin, you remark offhandedly, “we agreed to be friends.” and after a beat, you fill in the missing blanks, “for the sake of this trip, i mean.”

“friends…” haechan seems to have his panties in a twist today, for he’s pausing at all the weird moments, saying all the weirdest things. you can almost imagine the shake of his head as he cryptically states, “that won’t do.”

“what won’t do?”

the hose water is turned back on as mark directs it right at the windshield this time. you almost shriek in surpise, barely catching the click of his tongue that haechan gives. after dousing the windows clean, mark reaches for the snow broom to shimmy off the remaining water droplets. going row by row, he gives you a sore attempt at a wink when you meet his eyes. you supress your giggles as haechan’s dissatisfied voice soars past your ears without much thought.

“how can you be just friends with him when you still like him?”

you’re in no mood to be taking him seriously, so you end up saying the first thing that pops into your mind. “i’m pretty sure he’s the one that still likes me.”

“well you’re not wrong there.”

mark throws in another silly face — a really blown out toothed smile — and you decide then that you should probably end the call soon before haechan drags you into another discussion of who’s still hung up on who and who’s still in love with who. you decide then that, for tonight at least, you want to set aside the messy feelings and just have fun. because that’s what’s easiest when you’re with mark lee.

momentarily forgetting that you’re still on call, you hastily ramble out a quick, “hey i gotta go, something came up,” and the eye roll that haechan’s sure to give is predictable as it is true. “fine,” he deadpans, “talk to you later. or not, i don’t know maybe something will come up and i’ll forget about you for two weeks.” and with that, he hangs up right as mark reenters the car, eyes all shimmery and filled with glee.

“you have fun out there?”

he messes around with a few wet tips of his hair. “a lot of fun, actually. you should help me out next time.”

your heart races messily and mercilessly at the thought of ‘next time,’ so much so that you only have enough mindpower to muse absorbedly, “maybe i should.” he gets his seat belt buckled and you cap your water bottle after taking a long swig.

“so…” mark starts whilst pressing the start engine button, “who was that on the phone?”

“haechan wanted to know if we were ripping each other’s hair out yet.”

mark chuckles, reversing the car out of the small lot. his eyes tell you he knows that a lot more than just that was discussed, but he resists prying to a certain extent. “so what’d you tell him?”

“well...” you take a moment to admire his side profile, his one hand resting casually on the wheel, and the gentle way his lips curve into a smile when you say, “i told him that i still have a full head of hair.”

「 DAY 03, 12:00 AM 」 — YOU ARE MY SOUVENIR, MY PROOF THAT I WAS HERE

what etrip.net forgot to mention was that the $19 you happily gave away was actually just a reservation fee, and not — as they had deceived you into thinking — the actual price of the room. you direct a sheepish smile towards mark as the bright-faced young man at the front counter charges $124 on your card. evidently, the internet is why you have trust issues.

the hotel sits right in the belly of downtown oklahoma city, with the touristy bricktown district only two blocks away. you’re given a card key to a spacious room with a queen sized bed draped in a crisp and plush duvet. from the updated appliances to the chic furniture and decor, every corner of the room smelled like fresh lemon verbena.

“i guess this is what you get when you pay top dollar.”

mark nods dazedly, but at the mention of money, he snaps out of his haze. “here,” he fishes out his phone from his back pocket, “i’ll transfer you the $62.”

you recline into the white lounge chair in the corner of the room. a ding! sounds from your bag that you’ve set on the floor besides you, signaling the transaction. eyes now closed in respite, you direct your “thanks” towards no one in particular.

there’s no couch this time, despite having paid a ridiculous amount, so mark sets himself atop the left side of the bed. he rummages through the front pocket of his backpack until he draws forth a thin booklet with a giant OKC in bolded yellow on the front. as he remembered, there’s a checklist list on the second page that covers all the must-do, must-see activities and locations that oklahoma city has to offer.

mark looks up at you, then back down at the book, then back at you and back down at the book. he knows you well enough to see that you’ve yet to fall asleep. but give it another two or three minutes and the snores will catch up to you. but before those two or three minutes round upon him, mark decides that he has nothing to lose. if you want to come, you’ll come. if not, he still has a whole city to plow through in one night.

“hey.” there’s a hand on your shoulder and it’s shaking you lightly. distantly, you think that you’ve entered a state of lucid dreaming. a second after, the voice returns to say, “y/n, wake up,” and you’re conscious enough to recognize it as mark’s. willing your eyes to open, he’s hovering right above you with apprehensive eyes. “let’s go out.”

still not quite awake and still unsure of what you just heard, you blurt rather obtrusively, “what?”

“i mean...i mean like let’s go out out,” and he gestures to the window to make his point clearer. “we can get late dinner, or really early breakfast, or just walk around for a bit.”

not very convinced, you only frown at him. in turn, he’s prompted to ramble on further. “okay, but when’s the next time you’re visiting oklahoma?”

“like… never,” you drawl out slowly. mark nods fervidly as if there were a right answer and you were at the precipice of discovering it. impatient or in sudden fervor, he exasperates, “exactly! so you should make the most of tonight and see what it has to offer.”

he’s like an overly enthusiastic salesman and you decide that even if it’s just to please him, there’s no harm in playing tourist for a few hours; you could sleep as much as you want on the road anyways. you give in, “okay fine,” and watch as he pumps a fist not-so-covertly. “gimme like five minutes to change first though.”

by the time you meet him at the lobby, mark’s switched out his tour guide booklet for his phone, having loaded up all the destinations in preparation. the warm air outside is breezy to a fault and the wind picks up your hair and sloshes it this way and that. mark is quick to laugh but equally quick to tuck the wandering strands behind your ears. unknowingly, you blush and when you don’t break the stare, he breaks it for you. the tips of his ears are red when he looks away.

the first stop — a touristy jazz club — is closed for renovation, and the next one that you guys attempt had rebranded into a strip club. unease begins to nibble away at mark’s intial excitement, as his exhaustion and embarrassment collide to dampen his mood. the sidewalk crowd doesn’t care to part for two, so mark grabs hold of your wrist, leading you towards what he hopes is the final destination for the night.

mark finds his composure being built up and chipped away by your presence in the exact way he’d expected it to even before this whole ordeal of a trip. he can avoid your careful eyes and feign ignorance towards your attempts at civility, but he will never be one to deny to himself how much he still cares, how much he has always and will always care, about your opinion of him. it’s in the littlest ways that he hopes if not to impress you, then to make you smile at the least. mark doesn’t endeavor to lie to himself about that — that he wants you to smile and that he wants, even more so, to be the reason behind it.

he thinks he’s done a rather good job of accomplishing that tonight. from afar, “the flea” is but a green box with brick facing and a short line abutting the entrance. but upon entering, the ambiance of the bar feels rather like an old school arcade, with low ceilings and dimly colored lighting. it’s littered with games from pool to cornhole to connect four, and people are drunk and having fun. mark glances at you to gauge your liking, and supresses the urge to pump a lame and loser-ish fist at they way your eyes glisten in response to your lively surroundings.

he’s not sure if he’ll ever get the courage to apologize for the consequence of his thoughtless ramble from earlier in the day. and he knows that an apology is what you deserve. but in his own selfish and self-serving way, he hopes that this one night of drinking and games will at the very least make up for your soured impression of him.

you order two beers at the bar and amble over to mark, who’s found himself a spot at the darts corner. handing him the drink and taking a swig of your own, you query with a cocked eyebrow in the direction of the board, “wanna bet?”

taking the drink from your hands, mark deadpans, “you suck at darts.”

mouth full, you quickly swallow before laughing aloud, “maybe i got better, you never know.”

mark rolls his eyes in disbelief, but concedes nevertheless, “so what’s on the line?”

you take a quick scan around the room in consideration when a girl standing on the opposite side of the room by the pool table catches your eye. but not because she’s looking at you. feet crossed at the ankles and left hand swirling a half-emptied margarita, she has her sights set square on mark. a small smile dawns upon your face, and you turn back towards him. “you lose, you get her number.”

once glance around the room and he, too, knows who you’re talking about. maybe his heart sinks a little. and so he laughs. maybe he wishes you wouldn’t be so quick to write him off with another person other than you. mark takes a sip of his beer, and looks around the room once again. maybe he doesn’t mean what he’s about to say. “you lose, you get his number.” maybe he wants you to know that he still likes you, at least a lot more than the guy by the bar with the sleazy smile.

you take a look at him yourself and decide that he wouldn’t be too bad of a punishment. some part of you felt the need to distinguish you and mark as two single friends who were just hanging out. the barrier needed to be defined after how it’d been ebbing between the extremes of exes and more than exes the whole day. it’s hard to say that you don’t like mark at this point. and that while any other guy could make you feel things, it would never amount close enough to what mark made you feel.

but it’s even harder to say that you would want to get back together with him.

mark decides on a 200 point game and whilst you get off to a good start with two 20-pointers, mark beats you out by almost a hundred point margin to sum up the game. today, he feels up for admitting the truth to himself, for he knows well that he had tried his best to lose. but any further effort on that attempt would have made it obvious, as there was no conceivable way for him to out-lose your constant 1-pointers without suspicion.

he watches as you down the rest of your beer before gesturing in the direction of the bar. he smiles back when you mouth, “i’ll be back,” over the blaring music. he knows why you’re being like this. he knows that it’s mostly his fault. he also knows that you’re doing this to protect yourself, that it’s not a means of punishing him. but mark accepts his punishment anyways, looking onwards as you approach the guy with a tap on his shoulder. he watches as the guy’s eyes rakes your figure in delight, sets a casual hand on your waist, smiles along to your cheesy pick up line.

but mark tears his eyes away before the guy can smash his greasy lips onto yours, or before you respond in kind. even seeing him lean in made mark sick to the stomach. he goes to retrieve the darts from the board and when he returns, you’ve returned too. “got it,” you show him the contact and number in your phone, “and i got a smooch on the cheek too.”

a small, “ew,” is all he can muster in his confusion of equal relief and disappointment. mark keeps you close for the rest of the night. you suggest many times that he go talk to this girl, or how that girl looks like his exact type. but you don’t seem to understand that mark only wants to talk to you and that you’re the only person in this room, or even in the world, he’d consider to be his exact type. you are nowhere near the understanding that mark has never felt this unlucky to be spending the night with a girl he wants but has lost the privilege to have.

you’re tipsy, with an arm linked with his and your head on his shoulder, as he walks the two of you back to the hotel. mark can’t tell you — at least not in this state — how he’s thought of trying again at least a million times. he’s come up with a million scenarios of how he’d somehow loop himself back into your life and slowly regain your trust for him. a million times over, he’d lost the confidence to follow through, always so sure that he would fall in the same patterns of negligence and immaturity. even so, he’s never wanted to try as much as he does right now.

he places your shoes by the bedside and slips off your dirty socks to add to the laundry. rummaging through your toiletries bag, he comes upon the micellar water and reusable cotton pads. he swipes it across your sleeping face to collect the makeup and extra debris, then washes the two pads and clips them on a hanger to dry. mark is dutiful in drawing the covers up to your chin, in pulling your hair back from your face, in everything a boyfriend would do.

mark is sober when he sets his lockscreen as the only thing he has to remember oklahoma city by: a photo of you, smiling at him.

「 DAY 03, 8:21 AM 」 — HIS APOLOGY

“what is the hardest truth you had to face this year?”

you place the card to the back of the deck after reading the question aloud. mark takes his eyes off the road for a split second to glance at you. fiddling with a used toothpick with your fingers, mark wonders when you started flossing after years and years of ignoring your dentist’s nagging. yesterday, he noticed you were using a different chapstick brand than what he remembered as your go-to. you wear your hair up more often, and you frequent warm-toned clothing as opposed to your routine neutrals.

the more time he spends around you, the more mark realizes he’s never felt this distant from you. in barely two days time, he’s been surprised by how much you’ve changed in the relatively short duration the two of you spent apart compared to the time you had spent together. mark’s even more surprised by how little he’s changed in comparison.

the thirty seconds you’ve taken to formulate a response — to decide your terms of vulnerability in just how much to divulge — weren’t nearly enough for mark to be prepared for what you were about to share.

you don’t look at him when you speak. with your eyes set on the passing hills just outside, your voice breaches lowly into the air and across the car, right to mark’s utter confusion at the first of your words.

“i’ve learned that no amount of love goes wasted. i’ve learned that bad, unfortunate, terrible things happen to good people everyday, most of the time for no reason.” when you next blink, there’s a thin film of tears that gloss your eyes. “i’ve learned that the same bad, unfortunate, terrible things can happen to the very people that you love, and that sometimes there is nothing you can do about it.”

he thinks he can hear your breaths, or some similar rhythm pulsing in the thickened air, taut with tension and the fragility of your words. two beats pass, then four, before mark confirms it to be your now labored breathing. it stops shortly after, and you continue speaking to your best ability, which even then amounts to very little. “i’ve learned…”

mark turns to look at you for a little longer than he should, and the composure with which you held your head gives out, the weight of his gaze somehow heavier than that of your circumstances. he’s never seen you like this. he doesn’t know what’s your reality, and that this car, this trip, this moment, is your escape.

“i’ve learned what it means to grieve for someone before they’ve even passed.”

he doesn’t know that you’re running on stolen time. he doesn’t know, wasn’t there, never saw how your mom had given your hand a squeeze, feeble but certain. how she faults her poorly-timed illness. how she struggled to sit up to give your grief-stricken, heartbroken body a hug and a kiss goodbye, regretful she might never be able to rejoice in her daughter’s marriage, and yet grateful that at least her other daughter can rejoice in her stead.

when you find it in yourself to lift your head upright, mark takes in another glance at the puffiness around your eyes and the streaks running down your cheek to your neck. he knows he should free a hand to locate the tissue box or offer that hand in support but he can hardly breathe, much less move, when you start speaking again.

“it’s my mom. her cancer, it’s relapsed.”

for a few seconds, all he can hear is the white noise of his car tires on an endless expanse of road. it’s like your words dissolve into the noise, refusing their impact on his own ears, richocheting between reality and his imagination. mark holds so still that he might as well have stopped breathing, or thinking, or being.

it’s only when he hears a sob escape from you that his gravity returns to him out of a sense of realized necessity. a sort of certainty courses through his veins when he pulls over the car. there’s barely anyone on the road to witness him exit and circle around to your side. mark moves with conviction when he pulls your door open, unbuckles your seat belt, and embraces you whole. neither of you register the tears leaking from his eyes nor the way his hands shake ever so slightly, because his expression has been set straight, and his body sturdy for you to lean on.

forehead pressed to his chest, you’re gasping for air and making all sorts of incomprehensible sounds of anguish. you weren’t sure of where your strength had come from to confide in him like that, after you’d dutifully dedicated yourself to a trip detached fully of worries beyond your control at home. but you know it now. in the way he pats down your hair, rubs circles into your back, holds all the same grief-stricken, heartbroken pieces of your body together like glue, you know that it’s because it’s mark.

he doesn’t yet know what he’s saying but it’s coming out of him anyways. “i’m sorry. i’m so sorry.” he panics even more when you’re shaking your head in his arms, your hitched breaths unable to let forth any words of disagreement. but mark shakes his head too. you don’t know.

you don’t know how much it hurts him. from his heart, in his bones, through every fiber of his being he feels it. his apology.

“i’m sorry for not being there when you needed me most.”

you make up for your loss of words by looking up at him, finally. his mask of placidity folds, first at the seams with the furrow of his brow, but then in full as his face scrunches into what can only be described as indescribable heartache. his shirt is fisted in your hands as you sob, “how could you… how could you have known?”

mark shuts his eyes because he doesn’t think he has it in him to bear witness to the misery written across your face. his heart hammers inside his chest, unpromising of any relief any time soon. he holds you together, closely, closer, until there’s hardly a hardly a point of separation between the two of you.

your question rings in his head, because it makes no sense, because it only makes him feel worse about the last year he’s spent alone, because even without you by his side…

“i should have just known.”

only now do you realize that your trust in mark is the one thing that could possibly nullify your entire messy history. in hindsight, it was obvious. you knew that if you told him, he would make it his duty to make you feel better. you told him because maybe that’s precisely what you wanted to feel. and maybe you needed mark, more than anyone, to hug you like this and to convince you that everything was somehow going to work out. because maybe, just maybe, you would begin to believe it for yourself.

「 00:00 」 — AMARANTH

it was something that you didn’t think was possible. to live with someone, to inhabit the same room, sleep in the same bed, and yet, to be so distanced to the point at which you were strangers.

sometimes he’d leave a mug on the kitchen counter, lukewarm coffee left idle. other times the tv would be left on when you got home from class, or the shower was wet when you stepped in. it was these small things, like traces of a ghost, that reminded you of your relationship with mark, or what was left of it.

on the off chance that the two of you would meet face-to-face, he was always reserved to himself. a few small apologies, maybe a peck to your lips, and always a search for reassurance — that you would’t leave him, that you wouldn’t understand where he was coming from, that you knew he wasn’t doing it on purpose.

the it was complicated. on the surface, the it was his absence in the physical sense. despite dropping out from college and having a suddenly abundant amount of free time, barely any of that time was spent with you. despite moving in to your apartment after being cut off financially from his parents and being forced to move out of the school dorms, the it was him rarely being at home. mark was always out on some unnamed errand, or to shoot at some far away location, hours away from anyone and anything.

but under all that, the it was his inability to face himself and his future head on. the it was his latent realization that there were consequences to his impulsive and headstrong decisions, more than he had the foresight to think of, more than what he was capable of dealing with at the time. the it meant that he was incapable of putting any of these feelings to words, and even more so unwilling to say these words aloud to you.

mark didn’t know how to tell you he was lost without feeling like he had lost the one thing that was left of him — his dignity. he had held his head high when he’d passed word around that he would quit school, certain that it wasn’t the right path for him. he had held his head high when he had left his parents’ house, his childhood home, after his own father had gotten on his knees to beg him to just finish up his degree, to hold out for one last year. but he couldn’t even admit to himself, much less you, that he didn’t know what to do with himself after all his bravado had worn off.

it was an adulthood thing, he’d much later come to understand, his own version of a dramatic coming of age movie where he needed to lose himself in order to find himself. and it led him to the job of his dreams: somewhere between a full-time photographer and a part-time influencer, traveling the world, capturing it on film, documenting his process and growth journey for others to be inspired by. ever so passionate and devoted to his work, mark poured his whole into perfecting his craft. and only when he emerged atop the hill he had climbed all by his lone self — without a degree and without the support of his peers and parents — did mark realize that he had lost the one person that would have supported him through anything. you.

but the damage had been done. at that point, there was no such word in the english dictionary that could remediate the month and a half of unexplained absence. in response to his silence and refusal to confide in you, you had withdrawn from the relationship yourself, having given up on getting him to clue you in and having to deal with your own problems as well.

it was too late for mark to say anything about it, far too late for any verbal apology to make up for it all. mark figured that his actions would speak louder than his words ever could.

at the height of summer, the sun couldn’t have shone brighter. it was that day where you had come to understand that mark’s place of refuge had never been the apartment you thought you’d both called home; it was the lake. the emerald lake would have a special feature in the photobook that mark would publish months after the two of you had broken up. in his captions, he’d write that it was there that he would turn to when his thoughts overwhelmed him, when he didn’t have it in himself to face the world.

and it was beautiful, in the most heartbreaking way, to see for yourself that in his most vulnerable state, he had turned to these waters and these winds. it was most beguiling, in the most earth-shattering way, to watch as he submerged himself bare in the water, to realize that he could never bare his heart to you, didn’t know how to, didn’t want to, didn’t care to.

he didn’t understand how badly you wanted to love him for everything that he was. he was too proud to let you see the worst parts of him, too proud to let you love the worst parts of him.

to him, the water was a symbol of renewal. to bring you here, where his heart lay, meant that he was opening back up to you, urging to you enter his waters. to you, it was a symbol of cleansing. to enter the water where you were beckoned meant washing off all the grief and bitterness that had accumulated towards the tail end of your relationship. you hadn’t yet figured out where you stood with him, if you still loved him, or if you even knew him well enough to say that you still loved him.

it was ill-fated timing, really. your mom was diagnosed with hodgkin’s lymphoma, not even a week after what mark believed to be the turning point of your relationship. you had called him from the hospital, voice thick with affliction, rambling about chemotherapy and medical bills and breaking the news to your sister and everything else that had brought your world to a standstill. and yet in the midst of all your despair, mark could not for the life of him string together a single sentence.

later revealed, her cancer was at an early stage, so one round of chemotherapy was enough to quell it into remission. it wasn’t, however, easy on your family in terms of the financial burnden and emotional turmoil that steadily built over her four months of treatment.

all of this, mark would only hear of through haechan, for your relationship had ended the moment you had hung up that call.

blocking his phone number and social medias was the easy part. the hard part was convincing haechan to let mark move in with him. it was completely and utterly stupid and unreasonable, according to him, to end a fully committed relationship just because the guy couldn’t formulate a response to your trauma dump. “why?”

“because he’s emotionally constipated,” was the easy answer with an easy counter that haechan was sure to give, “but you knew that even before dating him.”

you sighed. however impossible, you could hear his impatience over the phone. it was enough to get you to be fully honest with your best friend. “he can’t talk to me. he can’t be honest with me. he can’t look me in the face and say ‘i’m sorry.’ tell me, hyuck,” your breath picks up and you’re mere seconds away from sobbing, “tell me, how am i supposed to come home from the hospital everyday and tell my sob story to a fucking wall?!”

later that day, haechan came over to your apartment to pick up all the belongings of your ex-boyfriend. you had dumped him because your life was in no state to house someone who didn’t know how to shoulder a burden. you had dumped him because, for the sake of your well being, you could no longer put up with his inability to communicate openly with you, to tell you what he was feeling, to tell you to ease your worries, or even just to tell you that he loved you.

but even now as you’re sat in the passenger seat of his car, if mark told you he didn’t love you anymore, you probably wouldn’t believe it.

you know it in the way he looks at you, with eyes so tender and attentive to your every motion, ears perked at every intonation, and heart worn bare at the foot of his sleeve. these were all made fact from the moment you first stepped in his car, when the simple idea of seeing him still made you apprehensive and guarded.

but with how low your defenses have since dropped, there’s no reason left to deny that mark wouldn’t believe you either if you told him you didn’t love him anymore.

and you can’t say it’s any sort of impulsive feeling, or an effect of loneliness that’s gotten the best of you. it’s evident to you now that the mark beside you is not the same mark you fell in love with. he is a result of your breakup, the one thing that he could not bury away with the rest of his feelings. the one thing that, if he ever turned to the lake for refuge, would only haunt him in the form of the memory of you that day. he could not run from the torment of losing you, because it had consumed him whole.

the mark beside you gave you your space when you needed it, and held you close even when you didn’t know you needed it. he still is awkward in responding to your questions, but he responds nonetheless. he apologized.

he’s not the same mark you foolishly fell in love with, overlooking his weakness until it ruined your relationship. the mark beside you is someone you have the choice of falling in love with, in full admiration for his growth and strengths, so much so that it begs the question:

what do you do when the reason you broke up with your ex no longer exists?

「 DAY 03, 12:47 PM 」 — WILL YOU GO ON A DATE WITH ME?

“thank you.”

mark jolts in his seat, though he keeps enough of his cool only to answer somewhat lamely, “uhh… for what?”

“for comforting me.”

mark doesn’t look over at you. he can’t. he’s afraid of what you have to say, of what’s to become of your fleeting friendship, of the boundaries he’d overstepped. so he merely brushes it off, hoping you don’t read too much into his actions to feel uncomfortable about it. “oh that? it was nothing, no need to thank me.”

but you look over at him, and continue to, for seconds or even minutes on end. the profile of his face is perfect to you, round eyes, the slope of his nose, an equally boyish and nervous smile playing at his lips. you could almost cry, again; this time at the irony of how your break up was so ill-fated by time, but your reunion so auspicious.

“it was not nothing to me. it was… everything.”

now he looks over at you with curious eyes, but you just shake your head slightly. “it just meant a lot to me. that’s all.”

mark returns his gaze up front. he’s still nervous, afraid, and ever so conscious of you, but at the very least, he’s glad that he seems to have successfully communicated his care for you. in silence, you’ve spent the last three hours switching between playing sudoku on your phone and annotating a red-covered book titled all about love by bell hooks with a pink pen.

until a few seconds ago, mark hadn’t had any insight whatsoever as to how you were feeling, whether you wanted more space to yourself, or if you wanted to just put it behind you and move on to cheerier conversations. and with bated breath has mark awaited some sort of sign that you were doing okay. now, as if given the green light, he sighs in relief and begins to speak, almost a little too eager to be able to strike conversation with you again.

“we’re almost halfway through texas now. well, the tip of it.”

the view just outside is completely flat for as far as the eye can perceive. blocked with only two colors, the vivid blue sky is completely void of any cloud, just as the dirt ground is void of any plant. seeing the landscapes change restlessly before your eyes over the past few days has felt like putting your life on double the speed, and the constant and unchanging blue and brown just outside feels like a welcome contrast. in all the flurry of this trip, you yearn for a moment to reorient yourself. and so you ask, “where are we staying tonight?”

“not sure yet, but if you want to you can look up some hotels in new mexico.”

you ponder the suggestion to yourself before suggesting an idea of your own, “how about we go camping? i saw your gear in the trunk.”

it’s gradual and awfully subtle, but you watch intently as the corners of mark’s lips upturn into a small smile. you even take note of how the sunlight from outside catches in his eyes, a small glint that gives his whole countenance a boyish radiance. he chuckles under his breath, simultaneously spotting a sign on the right side of the road. there’s almost a singing undertone in the way he says, “wanna take a break somewhere, grab some food, and plan something?”

you notice that the smile is still on his face as he sits across from you at a wendy’s in the middle of amarillo, thirty minutes later. in the same plaza there happened to be a taco bell and a denny’s, with an ihop and mcdonald’s across the street, inciting a fifteen minute heated debate as to which would make you less likely to vomit all over his car. in reality, there was no right answer. they were all wrong, but mark lee isn’t usually one to win arguments.

he has a few travel brochures splayed on top of the table, though he spends more of his attention typing into his phone and scribbling down notes on a yellow post-it. while he put himself in charge of finding a suitable camping spot somewhere in eastern new mexico, mark put you in charge of something you couldn’t mess up, and something you thought was too easy for the high paygrade of your company.

you did it begrudgingly and anyways, opening up the notes app on your phone, not all that happy to be left with the comparatively more boring job of coming up with a list of things to buy. with some on-the-go food options and a blanket on the list, you contemplated what kind of alcohol would most appropriately suit the occasion, looking up from your phone in time to catch mark as he did the same. briefly, your eyes met across the table.

he knows you both thought of the same thing. you must have.

he’s the only one who knows he didn’t actually need to study for any of his finals that semester, with most of them being projects and the only outlier being a general education psychology course. but mark was at the library every day and night with you, knowing you were scared shitless for your first week of finals as a college student. you were in two completely different majors, with no overlapping classes or even departments, and yet he was there, quizzing you on your human anatomy or art history notes. you’d get all in your head about the answers, rethinking and doubting yourself. and then you’d look up at him, eyes meeting across the table just the same as now, and you’d say the correct answer.

and there was that one time, in the complete silence of the top floor of the main library, where mark had slipped you a post-it note, eyes attentive and lips pulled into a line as he watched you read over his penned question. and as always, you had said the correct answer. i would love to go on a date with you.

just like back then, you smile at him brightly and fondly from across the table. mark looks taken aback for a second, either reeling or pleasantly surprised by thought of the memory. he takes a bite of his burger, chews a bit, then swallows roughly. you look back down at your screen and quickly type ‘soju’ before setting your phone down, figuring something stronger than beer would be able to get more truths out of you that wouldn’t escape so easily when sober. seeing as how this trip had you revealing more than you expected, even going as far as confiding your most vulnerable self to mark, you wish he would let go of some of his own thoughts as well.

mark sets his phone down too, as you rummage through your bag to find the red box you’d taken from the car. he watches as you set it on the table and after recognizing it, quips almost incredulously, “you still wanna play? after all that?”

“well i was thinking i could use a break from answering.”

“you want me to answer?” he quirks an eyebrow up, and you pass the set of cards over to him. barely shuffling, he draws a card at random and his eyebrows move again, this time to furrow as he skims the question. mark reads aloud, “how old do you feel, emotionally?”

it’s a question that you yourself can’t answer for him, even if you wished to. there’s no way for you to tell what kind of changes had occurred between then and now, but at the very least you know that he’s years wiser than the mark that once sat across from you at the library. and that thought alone pulls at your heart incessantly.

after giving the question some thought, mark answers in all the ways you least expect him to.

“i feel like i know nothing.”

and he doesn’t bother to elaborate further.

“what?”

mark laughs a bit. it’s evident that his thought was underdeveloped, and so he develops it some more, “i feel like a newborn baby, but like… really smart.” he continues to make no sense, so you laugh at him. and then you’re both laughing. it’s sweet, really.

he had spent so long in that library with you, dutifully studying for what would be the easiest final exam of his life. mark reread his psychology notes so many times that week that they would be forever ingrained in his mind. but to you, the next thoughts he shares are completely out of the blue.

“you know like crystallized and fluid intelligence?” he pauses to laugh some more at the quizzical look you’ve thrown him. “like crystallized is like accumulated knowledge and stuff like facts, while fluid intelligence is like problem-solving and reasoning or something.”

now he really needs you to stop laughing because it’s infectious. “and what does that have to do with anything?” your laughter is especially infectious to him, because he really can’t bring himself to stop laughing despite the point he so desperately wants to make.

“just let me finish my thought, okay? and then you can laugh all you want.”

at that, you stifle your laughter by pressing your lips together, and all mark can think of is how cute you are. he pushes past that thought and does his best to sound like he’s not stupid.

“i mean like, i feel like i have a bunch of crystallized intelligence from being in the world for so long, but at the same time i have zero fluid intelligence. like i’m a newborn baby with all the knowledge in the world, and no idea what to do with it.”

and you catch on immediately, “so basically like… adulting? like facing the real world after being coddled your entire life?”

mark isn’t laughing anymore nor was anything he said that stupid, but he has this stupid dopey smile on his face. because if there’s one person that can comprehend his thoughts so completely and so easily, even as he uses the most unorthodox methods to explain them, it’s you. always you. only you.

and just like that you understood it all. the months he spent in solitude after dropping out of college weren’t spent alone, they were spent facing the real world. you had always been so bitter that he would rather endure those rough moments by himself than shoulder his worries with you, but you understand it now. and he didn’t even need to say much at all. mark had needed space to figure out himself, for himself. he needed to unlearn everything that people and society had told him about who he was, what he was good at, bad at, should or shouldn’t do, and for once, spend time to get to know himself. after all, how was he supposed to be in a relationship with you if he didn’t even have an idea of who he was?

sitting across from him now, you can see in full how mark’s grown into himself, his passions, and his work. he’s facing the world still, and will always be, but he is confident instead of prideful. he isn’t ashamed of what he doesn’t know, for he will learn in due time. he isn’t afraid of failure, because he knows he’ll only grow from it.

it’s astonishing how these past few days have brought everything into a full circle. in hindsight, the messy break up was really just what the situation called for. and this impromptu reunion turned out to be a miracle of timing, to the degree at which the both of you can’t help but think…

right person, right time.

「 DAY 03, 10:12 PM 」 — MY DREAMS COME TRUE (WHEN I’M WITH YOU)

you found it strange, but didn’t think too much of it.

it was like there was some foggy haze over everything, like a honeyed film that made your world a little sweeter, softer, and more precious. you had spent almost a full two years juggling your classes, extracurriculars, and family and relationship issues, flitting between school and home and the hospital and then repeating it all over and over until you couldn’t even trace when you’d gone a bit insane. to you, it was something between a secret orchestration of the universe and an answered prayer to find yourself out here, surrounded by cicadas and under the scorching sun.

to him, it was everything he could have asked for, and more.

sumner lake state park had his favorite hues of greens, blues, and browns. and you were grateful, for mark frequently paused your impromptu hiking trip to shoot on his camera, leaving you moments to catch a breath and take in the views along the lakeshore.

the sun had set at half past eight. that was almost two hours ago, and two hours after the two of you had luckily scored a spot at the eastside campground. whoever made the original reservation would forever have no clue as to what they helped achieve by simply not showing up.

it was like a dream, except you were awake. it was like a movie, except you were the star. it was like a book, except it wasn’t all about love. it was all about mark lee.

he has one hand holding his mug and the other on your thigh. again, there’s the glint in his eyes, this time sourced from the small campfire he’s made. the summer night is hot enough, but mark had insisted. “for the ambiance,” he’d said, “for the memories.”

this is how the memory will go. for whenever you think back to this moment, you will always remember the glow of the fire reflected in his eyes, the buzz of cicadas, the sound of the lapping lake, and his hand on your thigh.

you take a swig of your soju, face scrunching at the initially bitter taste. setting your mug down, you lean back on the palms of your hands and look up towards the sky. it reminds you of the color pencil set you used to use as a kid, the black you’d always confuse for a dark navy and the dark navy you’d always confuse for the black. and dotted with a white color pencil were the stars, shining one by one, all too similar to the light in his eyes.

the water of the lake reminds you of him. the leaves of trees he’d dedicated countless rolls of film to reminds you of him. the singing of birds, as soft as his mindless humming, reminds you of him. the sweetness left by the soju in your mouth reminds you of him.

maybe the world felt a little lighter on your shoulders when you were with him, and everything seemed a little brighter because of his bright eyes and carefree smile. he makes you feel like you’re a kid whose imaginative color pencil drawings of her dreams spin off the paper and turn into reality. like a kid who, in her heart, only has space for hope for the future.

and you think, that must be what it means to love someone. to see everything in a different light, to see only the best of situations, of people, of the world around you. and ultimately, to love the world, everybody in it, every thing ever created, because you love him.

and so when he draws the next card, it’s the most ridiculous question ever.

“how did you get over your first love?”

you laugh a little, then gulp down the rest of the soju in your mug. wincing at the taste, you decide that it would do no harm whatsoever to be a little more honest with mark. compared to the first day you stepped in his car, back into his life, you now have a very good idea of how mark had changed, how he knew how to handle your feelings with care this time around. it’s a newfound trust, and you plan on exercising it.

looking him straight in the eye, you cock your head a bit to the left as if considering the thing you already knew you were to say. “i don’t think i’ve ever gotten over you.”

mark has no reaction. he just stares at you for longer and longer, until you tilt your head to the other side and he seems to remember that time hasn’t stopped for him. suddenly he’s also downing the rest of his soju, throwing his head back and gulping it down thickly.

truth be told, he used to be intimidated by the honesty with which you always spoke, but he thinks he gets it now. whether it be with other people or with himself, mark feared that the truth about his feelings, his pridefulness, or the nature of his insecurities weakened him. but at the end of the day, what good has avoiding the truth done for him? it was through losing the most sincere person in his life that he realized being forthright and overcoming the fear, the uncomfortableness, and sometimes the displeasure of being honest, made him all the stronger.

and it’s with these thoughts that mark is able to muster up the courage to regain your gaze with all the softness in the world. maybe it had a little to do with the alcohol in his system, but the words seem to slip right out of him. “i don’t think i’ve ever gotten over you either.”

you hold your gaze for only a few moments longer, for shortly after processing his words you break out into a grin so wide, mark can’t help but think the alcohol’s gotten to you too. and then you’re laughing a bit — whether out of relief or bewilderment, he can’t tell — but he’s glad. mark is glad to hear your honest answer, glad to give an honest answer back. he watches as you fully recline on the air mattress in the trunk of his car, looking onwards adoringly. there’s really no way to tell if he’s feeling this giddy because he’s drunk or because for the first time, there is no need to suppress his feelings for you. mark suspects it’s both, at the same time, in full effect.

he grabs another card, reads it for all of two seconds. mark leans over to where you’re peering up at him and, smiling fondly, he tells you to, “close your eyes for a sec.” you think of the campfire, the cicadas, and the lake, but when you recall this night in memory, this exact moment is what you remember most vividly.

it was bound to happen. you just didn’t know it’d happen like this.

the air mattress isn’t uncomfortable, per se; it’s just that it feels hot against your skin. chills run down the length of your spine, but it isn’t the doing of the wind from the half-open windows. it’s mark lee and his lips on yours. his hand comes up to your arm feverishly, barely grazing it, and more chills ripple from wherever the rings on his fingers ghost your skin.

mark stops for a moment. takes a breath. looks back up and peers into your eyes. he kisses you again.

you don’t know what to do except kiss him back. he has both hands on you now, the one on your arm and the other one on your neck. and he keeps kissing you, lips molding to yours with slips of his tongue here and there, gentle and prodding. he’s scared. for what exactly? he doesn’t know. maybe for his life.

his life, that you seem to be holding in your hands, the same hands that are now making their way around his waist. mark can’t breathe. the skin at the back of your neck is warm and soft to the touch, but he already knew that. he’s known it for so long. everything about you is familiar to him like a well-worn book or the lines of his favorite song. the sound of your voice is so low when the briefest of groans escapes you, but to mark it’s almost predictable. this is the you that he knows, the you that he couldn’t forget, the you that he lost.

mark can’t breathe, and so he stops kissing you. he mumbles an embarrassed, “i’m sorry.” he buries his head into your shoulder. he thinks he loves you. he knows he does.

but he can’t bring himself to say it out loud.

out of fear, he can’t tell you he loves you. it’s not the same fear that held him back from sharing any vulnerable side of himself with you, but instead the fear of losing you. even as you admit your lingering feelings and kiss him back like you’d never stopped, mark is filled with the fear of how overbearing he’d be if he fully leaned into his desire for you. he can imagine himself, in this same moment but in a million different universes, and in each one he messes up.

in one, he moves too fast by saying the words but he’s got the timing all wrong, and all of a sudden his feelings are a burden to you whose own feelings lack the depth of his. in another, he never says them at all, and this night marks the last of any intimacy he’ll receive for the rest of his life. in all of these universes, he knows why he kissed you, but he doesn’t know what you meant when you kissed him back. in all these universes, he wants, more than anything, to do right by you.

“sorry for what?”

mark lifts his head up to look you in the eye, and when he still fails to say a word, you tease him a bit to lighten the suddenly dour look on his face. “for kissing me? really?”

to your delight, he chuckles at that and shakes his head lightly.

you can tell he has a lot on his mind, but his neck and ears are flushed red and you don’t mean to use his inebriation to pry the words out of him. you pat the empty side of the bed, “lay down, we should get some sleep.”

slowly and cautiously, he moves to the spot next to you. laying down flat on his back and staring at the darkened ceiling of his car, mark wonders if this is the universe where nothing happens at all and he misses his chance completely. he sinks into this feeling and almost lets it consume him whole when he realizes he’s the only person who has the ability to change that.

the blanket the you bought earlier in the day has been discarded by your feet, the summer heat imanent even in the dead of night. you don’t know how to process what just happened, and you don’t get a chance to. a warmth is felt along your side before you realize mark’s arms have found their way around your waist, bringing you closer to him. he nuzzles his face into the sleeve of your shirt, eyes closed and humming in satisfaction.

his voice is barely discernible when he mumbles, “i’m sorry if that caught you by surprise.”

the sound of cicadas chirping just outside fills the space between his apology and your forgiveness. “it’s okay. i didn’t mind it.”

mark shifts his position a little. he places a small kiss at the base of your neck. “do you mind this, then?”

though his eyelids remain heavy and all his words are slurred together, he’s more alert than he has been all day. he doesn’t hear your small laugh so much as he feels it pulse against him, and it fills him with much joy. perhaps this has been his superpower all along, changing his universe in small and big ways, however he desires. perhaps, as long as he is true to himself and honest with his feelings, he will always find a way to have you close by his side, feeling every rise and fall of your breath.

that night, in the brief moments before sleep overcomes him mark decides that he will create a universe where you are his, happily, rightfully, and fatefully.

「 DAY 05, 1:44 AM 」 — JUST TELL ME YOU LOVE ME

number three on mark’s bucket list — the one he made in his sophomore year of college — is to one day visit the svalbard islands. located in the arctic circle, the northernmost town in the world, called longyearbyen, goes about half a year without sunlight during its dark season. it is there that mark wishes to undergo the challenge of photographing in almost complete darkness, something he’s never quite been able to catch the hang of.

number four on his bucket list is to start a company that produces camera gear for his own needs, and for the needs of the many people he’s inspired with his work. number five on his bucket list is to buy an old ass subaru manual transmission wrx and fix it up until it’s perfectly to his liking.

out of all these ambitions listed on his bucket list that mark had told you about way back then – the previously mentioned visiting of all the national parks and forests, shooting in svalbard, starting a camera gear company, and owning a wrx — he’d neglected to tell you what tops his list at number one.

after two years, his bucket list remains unchanged, even the mystery number one: to complete everything on his list with you.

when you had asked a few days prior why mark hadn’t bothered moving out of nyc as it no longer served his needs, he had said you were the one reason he couldn’t part with the city. it had made you frustrated as to why he kept you in the equation even after your relationship came to a close, but more so confused as to why he still held you to such importance.

you had spent the many months after the break up working hard at keeping your life together, removing all emotions, situations, and people that stood in the way of your priorities at the time, which were school and family. while that still holds true for you, mark’s priorities hadn’t changed either; you have continued to be a priority of his to this very day. and only now, when he’s right in front of you, do you realize this.

maybe it had been your insistence on moving on from him that you believed all his actions were nothing more than displays of his latent guilt. he’d send boxes of protein drinks to your front door, salves and balms for cracked skin, and woven hats for your mom who was undergoing chemotherapy at the time. and for you, there’d be the occasional uber eats ramen or chicken noodle soup that would arrive at your doorfront unprompted, and especially right at the times when you were up studying all night.

under suspicion, you had stopped complaining to haechan whenever you were feeling particularly tired or hungry, and the late night meals that were sent to your house lowered in frequency, and weren’t as punctual to your needs. mark wasn’t outright with anything, never showed up himself, or contacted you personally, but he wasn’t exactly discreet either.

only you, haechan, and mark knew your door code, for you hadn’t bothered to changed it after he moved out as there was no apparent need to. after the lightbulb in your kitchen went out and you had asked haechan a favor to buy you one at the nearest hardware store, you came home later that day to find it already fixed. knowing haechan was also busy with school and wouldn’t go to such lengths without further bribing, you had surmised it was mark and decided to put it to the test. the next time when your shower faucet started leaking, you mentioned it in passing to haechan and before the end of the week, it was good as new.

could it have counted as breaking and entering? that’s debateable. but you were aware of it and yet did nothing about it, rendering it legal at the very least. back then, you had given the vitamin supplements he had sent to your house to your mom, eaten every meal he bought you, and accepted all his covert services without a second thought, because you were firm in your belief that any form apology sent your way was useless in repairing the relationship you had put to a stop. you might as well accept it, move on, and wait until the day mark was no longer ridden with guilt, and no longer felt the need to perform such acts out as a result.

that day never came, and it’s evident to you in retrospect that he did nothing out of guilt, but everything out of care, for your health, your well-being, and safety. his care, simply, for you.

it’s evident to you in the way mark exceled in his role as the passenger princess the entire day. after he lost another argument to you, you finally found yourself behind the wheel which, somehow, felt like the safest seat in his car. he fed you snacks, kept you entertained, put on all your favorite songs, and navigated the both of you safely to the white sands national park in new mexico.

mark kept an extra pair of sunglasses in the central console of his car. mark also had facial oil blotting papers in the glove box. in the trunk, there was an extra pair of sandals in your size, and a set of two fold-out camping chairs. the way he never stopped caring, it was as if you never broke up with him.

there is no city in the world that mark would rather live in, if you are not there. there is no national park he would ever visit, if you are not with him. he would freeze to death in the northernmost city in the world, without your warmth beside him. he would run his company to the ground without your input, and his favorite wrx becomes just another car without you in the passenger seat. all his life goals lose their meaning in your absence. this is how it’s always been for mark. this is why you are a priority to him.

even with his sunglasses on, the white sands were exceptionally bright. for the duration of 45 minutes, mark had guided you along the dunes drive, a scenic eight mile drive through the famed gypsum dunefield. the road conditions were harsher the farther you went along, and so he instructed you into the nearest parking lot, and swapped seats with you before going on. mark held your hand while driving, and he also squeezed it whenever he inevitably hit a bump here and there, as if in apology, as if it was his fault.

mark had kissed you again, with nothing but the white sands and blue skies in the backdrop. he’d taken pictures of you, using up his most expensive film stock on your priceless smile. he’d paid for the motel too, knowing you hadn’t initially wished for the trip to be more than three days, but wanting you to stay for yet another.

all of this has you wondering if you have it in you to care for him the way he cares for you.

you wonder how much importance he holds to you, how much of your heart you’d be willing to give to him, where your love for him would take you if you set it free.

as it turns out, your unanswered questions would be answered in the wee hours of the following morning. this is after mark had driven another six hours to ensure you would be able to make it to los angeles by the day after that to help with last minute preparations for your sister’s wedding.

you are in miami, a city in which — up until the last hour of your life — you had no idea existed outside of florida. you are in arizona, a state in which you would never have had a reason for visiting, if not for mark lee.

you are in a room, at the two-star rated el rey motel. and now you are in the bathroom, dimly lit by the dispersed light of a plastic water bottle placed atop your phone flashlight. you are in the bathtub, and though the water’s no longer hot, the temperature maintains its warmth from the heat emanating off your body. alongside mark lee’s.

it’s a forced darkness; the single lightbulb was out, and the early hour meant the motel staff had already retired for the night. with only one weak light source, the darkness of the room sets a tension so high that both of you are afraid to speak, much less move. but you put it upon yourself to break the tension, as it was your idea in the first place. bathing together.

the silence and the darkness combined makes it so every movement and every breath is unmistakeable and pronounced. the same applies to the sound of your voice when you start to speak, “thank you.”

all of a sudden, mark repositions himself. you can barely see it, but you hear the water sloshing and you feel it move about you. he’s sat across the tub, and you find it fascinating that even without light, his eyes still manage to shine. looking into them, you resume, “thank for everything you did, after we broke up.”

you can hear him swallow. the more you talk, the more you feel the tears pricking at your eyes, your emotions rising as you continue to speak, “and thank you driving me across the country, and for always being considerate, and for apologizing, and for…” your voice lowers to a bare whisper, “...everything. for everything you have ever done for me.”

“you don’t… you don’t have to thank me for anything.”

whereas your tears are at the precipice of falling, you notice that mark has begun crying. they’re silent, the way his tears roll down his left cheek. the water around you shifts, ebbs and flows, as you move closer to him and reach a useless wet hand to wipe his tears. you keep your hand on his cheek. and again, mark finds that he can hardly breathe, “i did it all… i did all of it, because i…”

mark breathes a sharp inhale, the air struggling to squeeze past the three words that remain lodged in his throat. he’s twenty-four now, and he’s still scared of the dark. but by no means is he scared of the monsters under his bed. without light, a camera has to resort to longer exposure times to piece together a full picture. without light, the human eye has to dilate to capture more of what is right in front of it. if his exposure is set too low and if his eyes fail to dilate, all that will remain will be a blurry image, uncertainty as to what was, nothing when there was actually everything.

here in this bathroom, where there is nothing but you and him and a million unsaid truths, mark finds that he is terrified of losing what’s right in front of him to the darkness. again, he is most fearful of losing you.

both of your hands now cup his cheeks, bringing his face in line with your own. he has his arms around you, and you can feel his fingers pruning on the skin of your waist. you think you have an idea of what he’s about to say, was about to say, but you’re scared he won’t say it. with nothing but a thin veil of air between your noses, you decided to help him overcome his fears.

“i think we feel the same way about each other.” please say it to me.

mark blinks, breaks the stare, looks away, upwards, to the side, “we can’t possibly feel the same…”

he sounds almost exasperated, in the most diminished sense, but you push again, “even then, i don’t mind,” just tell me you love me.

“we can’t possibly feel the same…” mark returns your gaze again, and you watch as his pupils dilate, “because there’s no way you love me as much as i love you.”

the veil of air between your two noses lifts as you lean in for a kiss. a small one. one that says, i will always love you.

of all the things water could symbolize, the water in this bathtub surrounding the two of you represents life, the life that was breathed back into your relationship. this is owed to truth, which is a funny thing for it often hides in plain sight. a year ago at the lake, where the sun had touched every surface on the face of the earth, it had not bothered to dig deeper than that. it is only in the darkness that the truth has nowhere to hide. and if mark had been fearful of the dark moments ago, it is for this reason that he isn’t anymore.

「 DAY 06, 1:18 PM 」 — LIKE WE JUST MET

the trunk of his beloved subaru crosstrek slams shut from behind. mark winces. the car door of the passenger seat slams shut shortly after. mark winces once again, and complains rather brashly, “can you not do that every time you get in my car?”

“you’re late. we’re late. can we just get going already?”

mark huffs, turning his attention to the front because the both of you are at fault. you, for not treating his baby with love and care. and him, for picking you up almost twenty minutes after he was supposed to. the wedding venue was an hour away including traffic, and now mark had only forty minutes to not jeopardize the state of his new old relationship.

he’s all but broken your neck by the time you arrive — only five minutes late — after accelerating and braking as aggressively as was necessary to get you to your destination.

while you collect your belongings, mark exits the car, straightens out his tux, and makes his way over to your side of the car, pulling the door open for you. you meet him with a glare while clambering out the car, “you’re lucky nothing’s started yet.”

with you as the maid of honor and with him as just your plus one, he spends most of the time idling around and mingling with acquaintances he hasn’t seen in ages, whilst you headed to the suites of the beachside resort to help your sister get ready. mark is shocked, more than he has been in the past week, to find out that you hadn’t told a single relative that you’d broken up with him in the first place. still, he plays his role as “boyfriend for almost three years” quite well.

throughout the rest of the day, mark notices a few things.

1) you like the venue, a lot. a summer wedding on the beach, with pastels and flowers and the wind in everyone’s hair. and since you’d commented on these things more than once, mark made sure to commit it to memory for future reference.

2) your sister made a face at you before turning around and throwing the bouquet, which you caught. did everyone think he was supposed to propose right then and there? he doesn’t know, but something about the way your sister had regarded him the whole night makes him nervous. as in the “meeting the in-laws” kind of nervous.

3) lastly, you were more beautiful that you were yesterday. but also, yesterday you were more beautiful than you were the day before. mark had recognized this ongoing phenomena ever since you’d stepped in his car, and it doesn’t seem like there’s a cap to his admiration for you. at this point, it’s like he’s just waiting for any day now where it gets out of hand and he does propose.

it’s on the dance floor where this last point becomes very apparent to him. you’re laughing at everything he’s saying, eyes beaming up at him as he sways you this way and that. when he leans down to plant a kiss to your forehead, mark swears the smile you give in return could save lives with just how radiant it is. he feels a bit silly, like he’s gone a little crazy, but mark knows that the next wedding he’s going to will be his.

and it’s as if your minds communicated on a frequency that only the other could hear, as just the next moment you whisper in his ear.

“us next?”

✧ author's life update — honestly who knew i would get back into writing ff... basically i graduated from high school, got into a few t20 colleges, lost a parent to cancer, gained a parent, lost two best friends, broke up with my long term boyfriend, got my license, turned legal, AND saw the dreamies in concert. so if anyone's wondering why i left.... i'm just glad to say i'm so bored that i'm back. and yes this fic is mostly a self-indulgent account of what i wish my relationship and family life turned out to be but the moral of this story really is: if you're emotionally unstable, seek professional help before relying too much on your s/o. unless they are, of course, mark lee.

sources wnrs card game wnrs free deck (shhh) upmc pinnacle colon and rectal surgery center brockhampton saturation ii track 16 one star relax inn review little crazy love song alley spring mill the flea holiday inn at ok my fav tea that got me thru this wendy’s in amarillo sumner lake state park svalbard wikipedia things to do at white sands national park new mexico el rey motel

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