(on ao3)
Before Yoohyun even opens his door, Junhwan’s raising his head, ears flicking. Yoohyun eyes him; while he can’t hear anything himself, Junhwan’s ears are still sharper, so he trusts him—but whatever emotion his daemon is feeling, it isn’t alarm. If anything, it reads as pleased surprise.
Yoohyun opens the door to hyung’s laughter and understands immediately. His and Junhwan’s footsteps are cat-light as they enter their house, padding silently through the living room towards… Is the sound coming from the Horned Flame Lion’s enclosure? Yoohyun’s told hyung not to go in there unsupervised for a while! …But hearing him still laughing like that, he can’t be too angry. Not when the little beast has apparently managed to achieve what he hasn’t in the last two days. A curl of jealousy flares inside him, Junhwan’s lips pulling back to bare his teeth in the start of a growl as he presumably arrives at the same thought, but then there’s a soft, breathless giggle-snort from noona and that-
That makes them both very quiet.
They slow down as they get closer. Hyung isn’t immediately visible through the glass walls of the enclosure; Yoohyun dares to get closer, keeping to the side with some of the thicker foliage, and peers through the gaps.
Ah. There. Hyung’s lying on his side on the soft grass, the Lion perched on his hip and staring wide-eyed at… Noona, who’s up on a tree?
Yoohyun doesn’t understand. What’s so funny? He squints at the Lion, who’s doing… a grand total of precisely nothing. It’s just staring at noona and swishing its tail back and forth, the tip occasionally flicking over hyung’s side. Is it tickling him? But hyung isn’t ticklish, as far as he remembers… And even if he was, what’s noona laughing about? She’s halfway up one of the trees—Yoohyun takes a heart-stopping second to study it and make sure it’s not a Gillotinae, even though he knows objectively that she wouldn’t be stupid enough to get close to those—and peering down at hyung, wearing a silly smile.
She shifts as he watches, turning to jump across to another tree close by and scrambling up its branches. “Reckless,” Junhwan mumbles almost inaudibly, and Yoohyun agrees. There’s something almost childish about the fumbling, uncontrolled way in which she climbs. Like she’s not used to all her limbs being where they are. He remembers it from back when she’d first settled—for two weeks after that, Yoohyun and Junhwan had watched her jump off high spots and panic because she’d forgotten she couldn’t fly. (She was a cat, she’d always landed on her feet, of course, but that hadn’t stopped Junhwan from moving to catch her. Just in case.)
She’s climbing really high right now, actually. Yoohyun frowns as she clambers to the top of one particularly tall tree. Shouldn’t that be stretching their distance limit? Even if hyung’s Awakened now? She barely seems to notice, and the same goes for hyung, who continues lying there, watching her affectionately. Noona crawls out to the edge of the branch closest to hyung, peeks down at him, then hunches down and—
Her feet lift off the branch. Yoohyun and Junhwan lunge for the door. There’s rustling of cloth and grass and fur and creaking hinges and then—
And then, Yoohyun and Junhwan are staring at hyung lying on his back on the ground, noona pillowed safely on his chest and the Lion on his knees, all three of them staring back.
“Yoohyun-ah?” Hyung sits up, noona hopping up to his shoulders and winding around his neck. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Yoohyun blurts. It was only in case— “Nothing. Are you okay?”
“I… Yes…?”
“Okay.” Yoohyun nods quickly. “Good.”
There’s words at the tip of his tongue—be careful, didn’t that pull hurt, why are you in here when I said—but he never gets to say any of them, because noona narrows her eyes at Junhwan and says, “Well, in that case, let them talk, I-wanna-play-tag-you’re-it!” and flings herself at him.
Junhwan bolts entirely on 17 years’ worth of reflex, and noona chases him in circles around them, yowling when he goes too far from hyung for her to follow. Hyung snorts when Junhwan sheepishly approaches them again, only to dance away from noona’s batting paws.
“Oh, that’s no fair,” hyung wheezes, and coaxes the Lion off his knees before bracing his hands against the ground, pausing for a moment (…?), then rolling to his feet—no, foot, all his weight is on his left leg (??) for a split second before he relaxes, balanced once more. “Let’s give her a fighting chance, huh?” he says, and Yoohyun's eyes belatedly flick up from his leg to his face when he starts jogging after Junhwan. Noona gleefully gives chase with the new extension to her leash, and Yoohyun’s forced after them as they cross to the far end of the enclosure.
There’s a pleased smile on hyung’s face as he goes, childish glee in noona’s cackling as she runs, and Yoohyun watches them for a moment before deciding to drop it. He can bring up the question another time; it hardly seems fair to ruin their fun now.
He can't stop himself from smiling as he follows.
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Fuck me. my mom is experiencing loads of long covid symptoms and i just. i can't even offer tips/help, bc if i mention covid, she immediately shuts down the conversation and denies we ever had it. and i want to scream, bc she's obviously ill and keeps saying "im just having trouble getting over that virus haha" and its so ridiculous!
i know its prbly like her way of coping with y'know, giving me covid and endangering the other immune compromised ppl in the house by letting my brother go out unmasked constantly to classes w/big groups but talk about biting off your nose to spite your face. im so pissed and i feel like i don't even have a right to be bc she's obviously fucked herself over n is already suffering. i hate this.
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ramble about anxieties with psy that got longer than i inteded so its going under the break
my sibling pointed out that we should be careful with melody's character at the risk of falling into stereotypes of black and trans women being seen as annoying/loud/too much but like she is just such a Real Person to me that if we toned her down to try and avoid those stereotypes it would feel Wrong to me? like to me she is not a stereotype she is just a person who is having fun. and the thing is everyone adores her for it, no one except psy thinks she is annoying or Too Much, they love her. but like that is such a major concern to me that i was sure we were gonna get hate mail the second her chapter dropped (so so thankful that everyone seems to love her as much as we do and that that did not happen lol) and now that someone actually pointed it out (my fucking SIBLING no less) i am so anxious about it all over again when i had previously gotten over it and decided 'no, she's not a stereotype, she's a human with many multitudes!'
toning her down and making her "nicer" or whatever seems like. worse.
it's just this loop of like. okay but we wrote her that way and we didnt have to. but shes such a real person in our heads. but shes NOT a real person shes a fictional character and we can write her however we want.
idk i dont think it is an issue like i think she is good. i think you just gotta see that shes a very complex individual, as are all of the characters in psy. it would be even worse to make her Perfect and Nice and Never Does Anything Wrong to avoid making a black trans woman look bad on screen. like shes not perfect despite everyone she knows seeing her that way. and her seeing herself that way as a coping tool i have said too much
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