#not my best art or writing but I had fun lol

[baybeered]

Cant believe disney cancelled the show before we got the hooty lore I crave.

Anyways, episode concept where it's an Indiana Jones parody that takes place after the main story and Lilith and Hootys museum opened.

Hypothetical episode plot below:

With the grand opening of their museum coming up, Hooty finds that Lilith has less and less time to spend with him. While she's looking for a main attraction to display on opening night, Hooty takes a nap and dreams of an old temple that belonged to the Titan.

Hoping to spend more time with Lilith, Hooty lies and says that the temple will have the best possible attraction inside, full of new info about the Titans lifestyle and diet (to be clear for comedic value he means like a health diet like the Titan was a keto nut or smthn) and stuff. Reluctant to leave but hoping to find a main attraction, Lilith goes on the adventure with him. They travel to the Titans skull and inside it's right eye socket they find a spiraling reverse-tower that goes deep into the ground. Exploring inside they find it's a bit of a labyrinth but Lilith is confident that she can lead them out with some landmarks she notes on the walls.

Not long into the reverse tower Lilith begins to lose hope about finding anything new and interesting that would draw in large crowds, as nothing about the tower seems to present anything new that they hadn't already found in Kings tower. Hooty begins to worry that their time together will be cut short and when looking down a long pit that presumably goes to the bottom of the tower he knocks off Liliths glasses then lies and says it was an accident. She begins to worry that she wont be able to find the way out without them and they agree to go down to the bottom of the pit. On the way down some of those fleshy guardian things begin to animate and Hooty has to guide Lilith into a saferoom where coincidentally the walls are covered in murals about Hooty and his past with the Titan (I'm not actually writing deep lore here, you decide what that past is lol).

Confronted by his past Hooty breaks down and Lilith comforts him, he admits that he lied about knowing what was inside the temple and knocking her glasses off, Lilith is upset but understanding and admits that she's been missing spending time with Hooty as well. They come to the compromise that Lilith will work healthier hours and that Hooty can be more honest with his feelings. They burst out of the room and with some of his memories about the temple returning to him he guides them down to the bottom of the pit safely, grabs Liliths glasses, and flies her out of there without her even having to use her landmarks.

When they get to the top he apologizes again and especially for having wasted her time "Sorry Lulu, we'll find something better for the museum." Lilith laughs and grabs his face, excitedly squishing it as she exclaims that when she got her glasses and was able to see again while they were escaping that the murals on the walls were exactly the kind of thing that she was looking for and they promise to return better prepared and more honest.

Cut a few weeks later to the opening of the museum, Eda Luz and King are standing dumfounded at the exhibit which reveals all of Hootys past with the Titan. The three of them look to the stoic and a little creepy pictures of the murals on display, then to Hooty as he does something silly goofy, then back to the murals. Luz mutters "Geez, what happened?" (in reference to why is he goofy now when) and the episode ends.

#toh #the owl house #hooty #lilith clawthorne #not my best art or writing but I had fun lol

[caelanglang]

Dazai and Chuuya’s relationship across alternate universes (part 2)

once more it’s me doing style and coloring exploration with soukoku as my muses once more, thank yall for the kind words from part one they gave me a lot of strength and motivation for part two <3

.

In an alternate universe they are…

Powerful cultivators from the Port Mafia sect: the Young Master, Dazai Osamu, and his right hand man Gravity Cultivator, Nakahara Chuuya. But after Nakahara’s sudden disappearance, and Dazai turning into the first ever demonic cultivator, the whole sect fell into chaos. Banished from the realm of martial arts, the grandmaster of demonic cultivation and his demonic familiar now wander across the five realms as cultivation partners known as Double Black. (Danmei cultivator setting level of angst and adventure)

“You can’t… you can’t be with me, the demonic energy around me is too much for a human body… you can’t stay with me, Dazai.”

“Chuuya, we both know that I’m way too inhuman to be affected by your energy.”

“Dammit, Dazai! Thanks to the cursed blood running in my veins— I am now at the brink of awakening into a mindless demon, and you’re still here prattling about your nonsense! Your body is just as fragile as a mortal one— no cultivator has ever withstood a demonic awakening!”

“Then I’ll just have to be the first one.” The bandaged man grinned smugly, as if he were talking about being the victor of a competition. “I’ll be the first ever demonic cultivator of the realm and turn you into my dog familiar!”

“You’ll get yourself banished, young master.” The fiery-haired man spat out the last words like venom in his mouth. They both know the weight of those words. “The whole realm will turn against you.”

“I’ll get us banished, and the whole realm will turn against me and my dog.” Dazai corrected. “Which is perfect to me because annoying you will always be better than dealing with the responsibilities those self-righteous cultivators always throw at me.”

They both looked at each other for a moment; a tense silence hung in the air that was only broken by a defeated sigh. “I’m never getting rid of you now, am I…”

The bandaged face cracks into a sincere smile. “Never.”

.

In another,

They were once roommates and academic rivals in law school. Bringing such enmity to their careers as professional lawyers, their court sessions would always shake the entire courthouse. Everyone knows how much Prosecutor Nakahara Chuuya, the guard dog of justice, hates Defense Attorney Dazai Osamu, the demon prodigy who would do anything to get a not guilty verdict. But only Chuuya knows that after the death of Dazai’s friend, Detective Oda Sakunosuke, during the Mimic Case he was handling, something about Dazai had changed. He no longer took up clients who were guilty; no longer forged evidence or bribed officials. Instead, he took up innocent clients that seemed too impossible to defend; he took the side that truly saves people. And deep down they both knew that they were partners in the pursuit of the truth with every case they took. (Whoooop it’s the ace attorney au for me)

“Chuuuuyyyaaaaaa~”

“What do you want from me, you bandage-waste-of-space?”

“I want you to take up the Weretiger Case.” A pause. “It has to be you.” A whisper.

The teasing atmosphere took a serious turn. “What about this case? You’re gonna be defending Nakajima Atsushi?! You idiot, all the evidence and testimonies point to him!”

“That’s the point, slug.” The man in a blue suit says as he lightly pokes at the shorter man’s forehead, earning a slap directed at his hand, which he quickly dodged. “Atsushi-kun is innocent, but all the evidence and testimonies say he’s guilty.”

Which is why I need you to be the prosecutor of this case, was left unsaid but understood by the other.

The prosecutor scrunched up his nose, unsatisfied by the explanation. “There are other prosecutors skilled enough to investigate this on a deeper level. Stop putting more work on my plate. I’ve been going overtime more often these days, just so you know.”

“Aw~ come on, you always go overtime, Chuuya.” Dazai grins, but something clouds over his eyes as he continues. “The headmaster of Atsushi-kun’s orphanage was the one who filed the case. Funny enough, he’s also the very same man who ‘went out for drinks’ with multiple people involved in this case.” His voice lowered, “At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the actual culprit behind the crime he’s filed against my client.”

Chuuya’s eyes widened. Back then, before Dazai changed for the better, he would always hurl the insult of ‘going out for a drink’ at Dazai for his dirty ways. They both know the meaning behind those words. He hates to admit it, but knowing the man in front of him for nearly a decade, he knows just how important this request is for Dazai to use that term.

“…… Fine, I’ll take that case.” He grumbles, trying to ignore the twisting feeling inside his chest as he sees the taller man beam at him. “If you don’t get that not-guilty verdict, I’m whacking your head with all the court records I’ll be gathering from my investigation!”

“Gotcha~ my dearest prosecutor!” Dazai winks. Smiling at his rival in court; his partner in pursuing the truth.

.

In yet another,

They were children who would never reach adulthood, and perhaps it was better that way. Despite being born into different eras, having lived different lives and dying different deaths, they had one thing in common: their fate to roam the land of the living as lost souls, barred from passing through the gates to the afterlife. But that’s alright; they didn’t mind being ghosts. To watch different kinds of sunsets as they fly through the sky; to pull different kinds of pranks on the living; to watch the changes of the world like how the living does with the changes of seasons—for the rest of eternity…... as long as they have each other to annoy and look out for nothing else seems to matter… (Summer Ghost and Harry Styles’ Two Ghost inspired I’m sorry not sorry)

“Oi, Dazai… I wanna ask you something, but I dunno if it’ll remind you of the time when you were still alive…”

The boy wrapped in bandages hums in response, letting the wind envelope his thin frame—a tiny speck in contrast to the clouds around him.

“Don’t you ever get tired of watching sunsets? I mean, I get that they’re all beautiful and unique but… we’ve been watching them for hundreds of years…” Everyday for the past centuries since they’ve known each other, Dazai would, without fail, drag him to the sky just to watch the setting sun. Chuuya always looked forward to it, but today his curiosity finally got the better of him.

Dazai glances over to his companion; something inside him itches to lie his way out of this. But after being together for centuries, wandering as lost souls around the world, Chuuya had long mastered the art of recognizing his lies.  He smiles softly as he drifts closer to the other. “Chuuya will you ever get tired of me?”

The answer was as natural and as definitive as the sun’s movements. “No. But that’s not the answer to my question.” The ginger haired boy rolls his eyes, “Look, if you don’t want to tell me, it’s fine.”

“I’m dead and have been so for centuries, Chuuya; nothing really matters at this point.” Dazai chuckles, “Just like how you’ll never get tired of me. I’ll never get tired of sunsets.”

A pair of bandaged arms gestures to the sky. “Look, when the sky is azure, they are like your eyes. When the sun starts to set, it goes pink like your cheeks, then goes orange like your hair, then goes red like your lips.” Brown eyes twinkle as he speaks, “then it goes purple and blue, like the bruises you hide under your sleeves; and then when night falls it the sky becomes decorated with stars like how freckles decorate your cheeks.

“Yes, sunsets are always beautiful and always unique; one could argue that many things in nature are like that. But, we’ve both seen how forests can burn down, and seas can dry up; mountains can collapse, and glaciers can melt.” Dazai turns to look at the other boy gaping at him, his own voice laced with fondness. “But sunsets are a constant in this world. And you know what else is constant in my world that the setting sun reminds me of?”

They both know the answer to that.

Chuuya stares back at the chocolate-haired boy. A feeling started growing inside his chest; he wasn’t sure what word could describe its movement. Twisting? Aching? Blooming? Beating? Oh, it’s beating. “... Y’know… if I were still alive, I’m sure my heart would be beating real fast at your words.”

“Whoa, Chuuya still remembers what a beating heart feels like?” Dazai marvels, a childlike wonder spreads across his face. “You died waaaay earlier than me, but you remember it better than me. Unfair~”

“Tch, just you wait, idiot Dazai! I’ll make sure that you remember how it feels like to have a heartbeat.” Chuuya huffed, the sunset light dyeing his cheeks pink. “So that you’ll experience what I felt when you said all that to me!”

Laughter like the sound of tiny bells echo across the clouds. They’re just two ghosts… trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat.

.

In a mundane one,

They were teenagers with a passion for music. Spending all the time they had messing around with instruments and lyrical word plays, they were later on scouted by big companies who recognized their talents. Debuting with a hit single and a record breaking album, they became known as the musical duo “Double Black”. They’ve always been known for their catchy songs about life and reasons to live, about corruption and sorrow, about the world and humans… And so it was a shock for the whole industry to witness them dropping an album with over thirty different love songs dedicated to ‘the love of their lives’ which they never once mentioned. (They only realized they were in love when they started writing about love, and it’s hilarious because they’ve been each other’s muse after all this time without realizing it)

“This is actually a really good love song.” It was rare for Chuuya to give an honest and straightforward compliment to Dazai; they both always prefer to stab each other with criticism after all. “Who did you write it for?”

Dazai stares blankly at the shorter boy in front of him. Brown eyes blinking slowly at him. “Who do you think I wrote it for?” He answers with a question.

Ginger curls frame a frowning face. “Dunno. I’m not the scheming bastard between the two of us, mackerel.”

“Well…… The title is ‘Sunset Man’... Who do you think is this sunset man, Chuuya?” Each word leaves Dazai’s mouth slowly and carefully, like he’s taming a wild beast approaching him.

Perhaps Chuuya lost his patience, or maybe he’s just too tired today to bother with this. He gives up his pursuit, muttering as he turns away from the other boy. “Whatever. Keep your muse to yourself. I just asked since you never wrote a love song before. But do bring that piece when we meet with our manager next time.”

He misses the frustrated face Dazai makes from the couch as he starts busying himself with dinner preparations. Ignoring the bugging feeling he gets for not knowing who inspired that Dazai to write something so sickeningly sweet and romantic. “A love song is a good change of pace though,” he forces out, trying to distract himself from his feelings. “We better start brainstorming concepts for our next album, maybe we can include that one if we get approval.”

Chuuya’s words were followed by a loud thud on the floor. 

“Oi, what’s wrong?” He turned back to see Dazai on the floor, groaning miserably, covering his face with both hands. “I swear if you hit your head and get even dumber than you are now, I’m kicking you out of this place.” Is what he says as he hurries over to the fallen mackerel, just to double-check if the fall was serious or not.

“Chuuya!” Dazai sits up all of a sudden, with a face that’s slightly flushed. “I’m gonna write another love song!”

“???” Chuuya was startled. “Okay?? Go ahead?? Whatever makes you happy??”

“The title…” Dazai looks at him directly in the eyes, wearing an extremely serious expression that further puzzles Chuuya. “is called ‘Idiots to Lovers, Slow-burn at the speed of 220k words’ what do you think?”

Chuuya smacks Dazai’s head at this, forgetting the latter’s fall from the couch just moments ago. “I knew it, you dramatic idiot! You were reading those cringey fanfics about us on the internet again, weren’t you! Stop rotting in fanfictions and start writing songs already!”

“But they serve as good inspiration for me~” The brown-haired musician whines. “Do you think someone who’s too busy babying a chibi dog has the chance to experience something romantic enough to write a song like ‘Sunset Man’?”

“Who’s babying who you whiny bastard!?” The other musician retorts, once more ignoring the feeling of relief that washes over him knowing that Dazai was using cringe works of fiction as inspiration for his love song instead of an actual muse—no, he is definitely not relieved by this piece of information, nor did he feel any better with the fact that said works of fictions are about them written in the twisted perspectives and assumptions of their fanbase about his professional relationship with Dazai. He definitely is not—

“Chuuya~” Dazai cuts his thoughts with a teasing voice, “wanna see who writes a better love song between the two of us?” 

Mischief and signs of scheming flash in his brown eyes, Chuuya’s heart skips a beat at the challenge.

“Bring it on, mackerel. I’m gonna compose love songs that are so sickeningly romantic that they’d make yours look like a cheesy pile of lyrics and notes.”

“The game is on, my chibi.” My muse.

In which two musicians decided to write love songs as a competition. Only to realize how easily it comes for them to do so, only to realize that they had a muse to always write about and associate love songs with, only to realize that somewhere along the lines of music that they’ve been in love with each other since a long time ago.

.

And in one other universe…and galaxy,

They grew up and trained together as space rangers, but time had warped their relationship into something as astronomical and as twisted and as dense as the celestial bodies in the galaxy. After years of turmoil, they’re finally reunited under the blaring emergency lights of a spacecraft—not as space rangers, but one as the emperor of the galaxy and the other as the general commander of the galactic fleet. (did y’all know that Dazai’s voice actor also voiced for Reinhard from The Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and guess what else do they have in common?? thEY BOTH LOVE THEIR RED HEAD RIGHT HAND MAN)

“Dazai. You have to leave. Now.”

“Now, now, Chuuya, that’s a really rude way to greet someone you haven’t met in years.”

“You idiot! Reinforcements are coming, at this rate, you’ll really get assassinated—”

“And get the peaceful death I longed to have? I sure could wait for it—”

“This isn’t the time to be joking, Dazai!” Glaring emergency lights dye the room bloody red, as the general’s grip on the emperor’s collars tighten. “You have to leave before someone else other than me finds you!”

“Chuuya, do you know of the legend about the stars?” Was the calm response to the angry voice. Dazai Osamu was talking as if he wasn’t standing inside a spacecraft that might as well be his coffin. “They say that each star represents a timeline similar to ours. If science were advanced enough, we might be able to get into a different timeline by flying directly into the core of the star.”

“What nonsense are you spouting right now?” Chuuya could hear his own voice shake with emotions he chose to label as anger. They both know that this isn’t the right time for idle talk. But they were once space rangers— fighters who were used to waltzing with death, a duo as unstoppable as a storm, before duties and responsibilities chained them down. This isn’t the first time they have had such moments while at the doors of death.

“I’m sorry I ruined our dream of becoming space cowboys.” The emperor of the galaxy whispered. It was a soft and quiet voice, but to Chuuya it was enough to silence all the blaring noises around them.

“You had promises to keep. I had responsibilities to carry out.” The general commander whispered back. “We both couldn’t let go. Space cowboys and bounty hunts be damned.”

A sad smile twisted its way onto the bandaged face. “And this time, the whole galaxy and duties be damned.”

Sparks of explosions waltz around the spaceship as a small spacecraft escapes into the empty void of space.

Dazai Osamu’s final lie. Nakahara Chuuya’s last promise

“In the next life, or perhaps a universe parallel to ours, let’s be the most legendary space cowboys the galaxy will ever see.”

Somewhere in the galaxy, the core of a star dies—collapsing from the force of gravity, giving birth to a black hole.

.

In another universe,

Human experiment test subject A5158 did not know if he was an artificial being or if there were really mermaids out there in the vast wild waters. No one bothered to tell him. Until the newest recruit, a young science prodigy, told him that mermaids did exist deep down the oceans. He thought that he was already content with having that knowledge— knowing that he wasn’t a lonely existence in this world. But that sense of contentment was immediately shattered when that very same young scientist, a boy, really, asked him: “Would you like to escape with me and see it for yourself?” (late mermay thingz aksjdhglasg)

A year after their grand escape, in a local town by the sea, sits the humble shack of a young fisherman. The townsfolk who passed by would always sigh and say “What a waste it is for a brilliant mind like him to spend the rest of his days throwing nets over the sea!”

Yet whenever they tried to encourage him to reach for greater heights in the world, the young brunette would simply chuckle and say, “A bird who flies into the skies will never reach the fish that swims into the seas.”

“Oh young man,” they would reply, “but the city is ever changing, and ever growing. Once you see it, surely you won’t miss the boring waters of this lowly town.”

“It’s not the waters that keep me by the sea.” The former scientist replies, “It’s my anchor, that has reached deep under these waters, that keeps me here.” A gentle smile lingers on his lips.

And later that night, he visits the town to distribute his ‘catch’—a variety of fish, many that could only be caught at the heart of the sea. “No way, Dazai-san! These are all extremely hard to catch, how could you just give it to us for free?”

“Don’t sweat on it.” He grins, “They aren’t that hard to catch for me.”

“Now that you say it, I actually haven’t seen you set up your boat to fish for the day. Yet you managed to get so much harvest today?” The townsfolk wondered.

“Well, there are some trade secrets I’d like to keep to myself~” He waves it off as he returns to his cozy shack and is welcomed by a salty splash to the face.

“You went out to get credited for my catch again, you sly mackerel.” A brilliant red tail lazily swims through a passage of water, one that Dazai had built into the shack so that the merman could enter anytime he wished.

“Chuuya~ they loved it! I wanted to make sure that me being a fisherman here would greatly benefit them so that they’d stop trying to convince me to leave for the city and what other nonsense, you should praise me for being smart!”

The merman rolled his eyes as he sighs. “They’re not wrong, though.” He ignores the betrayed gasp the man makes, “Try to live for yourself for once, Dazai.”

“Chuuya, I am living for myself! Can’t you see it? I’m shellfish-ly keeping this wonderful mermaid all to myself~”

“You’re impossible.” Another sigh, this time exasperated with fondness. “Like a damned barnacle sticking to me for the rest of my life.”

Hazel eyes that were once bandaged now shine as a pair as plans for the rest of their lives flash through them like a whirlwind of ideas. “For the rest of our lives.” He agrees.

.

…📖✍️… (part 1, part 2)

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd fanart #bsd skk #soukoku #double black #bsd dazai #bsd chuuya #alternate universe #art study #bsd dazai osamu #bsd nakahara chuuya #i had fun making these hope you had fun going through them too :3 #their dynamic will always be something special to me 😭 #they are partners your honor #part three in coming soon maybe #okay but soukoku in space concepts unlocked something emotional to me idk how to explain #i wanted to make these all angsty but for some reason they all ended up not so angsty??? #if you get all the references for these aus you get a cake from me lol #people in part one were reblogging about reading fics about the aus so i tried my best *key word: tried* to write bite size dialogues #please forgive my rustyass writing ;-; #if yall wanna expand on any of these feel free to reblog bc i’s read the heck out of it!!!!! #let me know in the tags which ones are your favs too! owo #my art

[icewindandboringhorror]

recent lounging babey images

#he's so floppy recently and I hope it's just the heat. I think wamr weather makes everyone floppy and loungy #a beauntifulle boye... #cats #STILL working on posting some drafts. finishing new poll adventure.. other things... It's just hard with the weather and other things going #on. I've had a few more doctors appointments and other things to do recently that have to be done in a time limit #so I hvae to use my extremely limited energy working on that instead of doing the things I'd really rather do. :T #Main focuses though are keeping up better with doing and posting costumes + sculptures as main creative things. at least finishing the #main poll adventure story. Reworking the game I kind of abandoned for a few years. keeping up with game videos and a few other side things. #Especially the game though. I've been in a really worldbuildy mood recently. I just wish that was easier to manifest into something. I've #now put the worldbuilding slideshow reading video on pause for a while because it's SOOO long to do #and I think I should prioritize making games and stuff instead. but still other things. IT's just kind of like.. I have a whole world and #everything very built and planned out but now.. what do I do with it? what's the best way to share that? factual slideshows just going over #the information like a dictionary? make it into a game? write short stories? do art attached to the world? etc. etc. ?? There are so many #potential avenues I end up kind of flip flopping between them a lot because none really seem more beneficial than the others and they all #seem equally enjoyable and also equally hard so. It's like?? I guess just do what the hell ever and hope I made the right choice in terms o #cost benefit and reward for my time lol. ANYWAY.. Also why I'm in my 'trying to make friends' era still because I think having other creat #ive friends can help you find direction like.. people will meet each other and then go 'hey lol just for fun lets start a project together! #and then like 5 years later it's genuinely become something. etc. having other people to help weed out ideas and start small creative teams #together and etc. I feel is a very beneficial part of networking or whatever but also I have the social capacity of a stale bread roll and #am also inherently unrelatable to seemingly a majority of people due to my hermit wizard swag (detachment from general society and hyper #focus on fantasy worlds in my head gjhghj) so trying to meet people as a grown adult with social issues is Very easy and fun (it is not) #even very basic things like my core communication style is so incompatible with a lot of people it's like.. hhhh... People in this modern #age have GOT to stop being afraid of phone calls and/or text that is longer than 6 paragraphs. Work with me here. I WANT to talk to you. bu #I do not know what your emojis mean and it's physically impossible for me to type less than 85 sentences. please.. hhjgjgb #AAANYWAY!! I am working on things when I can given the circumstances (SUMMER).. hopefully some costume pictures and stuff soon. :'3 #I've not forgotten about my art and etc. - as usual I just am bad at social media and also functioning if it's above 65F lol

[liquidstar]

a friend who'd wait :)

#im posting this very late because i was sort of weary of how it came out and ended up messing w it until it was like 4am oops. #and i have plans tmrw so... oh well! i did my best and ill put it out while i can! #and i tried to make the scene match barnard's colors lol #finn's ocs #finn's art #i know i said id do more sillay stuff with the simpler screentone only style but i had a couple more of these in me #and this is the first piece im making thats like an actual part of the story too rather than just setting stuff for fun #i wanna write something to go with it too but for now ill just sort of briefly explain the context in the tags here: #barnard has a pretty bad case of OCD and his compulsions have made it difficult to make friends in the past #he was never outright bullied or anything but people just didnt really have the patience to deal with it #he has compulsions that include stuff like walking through doors until it feels right and needing things to be perfectly aligned #which in group settings has lead to people having to wait for him to finish his rituals and join them #they might find it tolerable at first but eventually they grow impatient and hes just... not invited to stuff anymore #but juno is a newer member of the guild who ends up frequenting the same library. hes also kinda a little weird #and they dont become fast friends or anything but just sort of naturally spend time in the same place #though they never plan meetups they eventually fall into a routine. around the same time theyd just both be at the library #and read next to each other. and maybe talk a bit. and eventually they end up walking back to the guildhall together #since theyre going to the same place after all. and juno always waits for barnard outside the door #eventually barnard asks if this bothers him. juno kinda just tells him 'of course it does' without any malice or anything. just a statement #barnard is surprised and apologizes and juno says not to. but the next day juno doesnt show up at the usual time. #barnard assumes hes committed somekinda more by bringing it up. he ends up staying there late reading to get his mind off it & not ruminate #but when he leaves juno is in fact still waiting for him down the hall (see pic) having collected a bunch of books literally abt ocd #he fell asleep bc barnard stayed later than expected. and hes an eepy guy generally. and also one very bad at expressing himself #but now barnard gets that juno's 'of course it [bothers me]' had the implication of 'but its worth it' which no friend has previously done. #and from the interaction juno was also able to understand that this isn't something barnard just does for the hell of it so. he studies. #and checks a bunch of stuff out because he thinks it could help his friend too (theres ocd workbooks and such- i remember working w them) #and thats the point where they became more ''friends'' than ''pleasant library acquaintances'' #from there on they also do get into juno's problems. whole other bag of worms. but this specific scene is more about bernard from his pov #sorry about when i said briefly explain. i lied </3 #but compared to the whole sequence im picturing its brief so shhh

[victory-cookies]

bro I’ll never again be able to do it like I was doing it in high school

#I just read through my final essay for AP lang and the closing statement I wrote for my law class’ mock trial and they’re both such bangers #like genuinely the writing in both is better than what I could do today (to be fair at that time I had just taken a year of ap lang #and that had made me really really good at essays) #and like my valedictory! that shit ruled! I was told it was the best valedictorian speech most of my teachers had heard in a decade! #I was thriving! #Ok I wasn’t fully thriving but still. I had a 96% avg and was consistently churning out stellar work #plus I still had friends lol. uni has not been kind to me in that way #I miss it tbh. Like I defo had my ups and downs but god I was just such a different and better person then #I didn’t skip a single class in high school. Nowadays I skip half my lectures. #I just found out my com class is done with marked attendance so you bet your ass I’m gonna stop going to that! #like high school me could have never. high school me had 100% in bio 97% in physics and 96% in chem #and was looking forward to a career in stem. lol #anyway I’m just reminiscing #when I think about my childhood I get painfully nostalgic. When I think about high school I just feel sad that I’ve fallen so far #I miss being a good student who the teachers all liked who was in clubs and sports and leadership and the arts #and I recognize I could become that again if I really worked at it #but idk. something’s changed #I think I’m burnt out first and foremost. And then I just don’t care as much anymore. and as a result I’ve really stopped trying as hard #and it’s too bad #bro what happened to this post I was just gonna poke fun at myself for writing better in grade 11 than I do now years later #and then I had to get all sad about it

[alfheimr]

My Favorite Cheap Art Trick: Gradient Maps and Blending Modes

i get questions on occasion regarding my coloring process, so i thought i would do a bit of a write up on my "secret technique." i don't think it really is that much of a secret, but i hope it can be helpful to someone. to that end:

this is one of my favorite tags ive ever gotten on my art. i think of it often. the pieces in question are all monochrome - sort of.

the left version is the final version, the right version is technically the original. in the final version, to me, the blues are pretty stark, while the greens and magentas are less so. there is some color theory thing going on here that i dont have a good cerebral understanding of and i wont pretend otherwise. i think i watched a youtube video on it once but it went in one ear and out the other. i just pick whatever colors look nicest based on whatever vibe im going for.

this one is more subtle, i think. can you tell the difference? there's nothing wrong with 100% greyscale art, but i like the depth that adding just a hint of color can bring.

i'll note that the examples i'll be using in this post all began as purely greyscale, but this is a process i use for just about every piece of art i make, including the full color ones. i'll use the recent mithrun art i made to demonstrate. additionally, i use clip studio paint, but the general concept should be transferable to other art programs.

for fun let's just start with Making The Picture. i've been thinking of making this writeup for a while and had it in mind while drawing this piece. beyond that, i didn't really have much of a plan for this outside of "mithrun looks down and hair goes woosh." i also really like all of the vertical lines in the canary uniform so i wanted to include those too but like. gone a little hog wild. that is the extent of my "concept." i do not remember why i had the thought of integrating a shattered mirror type of theme. i think i wanted to distract a bit from the awkward pose and cover it up some LOL but anyway. this lack of planning or thought will come into play later.

note 1: the textured marker brush i specifically use is the "bordered light marker" from daub. it is one of my favorite brushes in the history of forever and the daub mega brush pack is one of the best purchases ive ever made. highly recommend!!!

note 2: "what do you mean by exclusion and difference?" they are layer blending modes and not important to the overall lesson of this post but for transparency i wanted to say how i got these "effects." anyway!

with the background figured out, this is the point at which i generally merge all of my layers, duplicate said merged layer, and Then i begin experimenting with gradient maps. what are gradient maps?

the basic gist is that gradient maps replace the colors of an image based on their value.

so, with this particular gradient map, black will be replaced with that orangey red tone, white will be replaced with the seafoamy green tone, etc. this particular gradient map i'm using as an example is very bright and saturated, but the colors can be literally anything.

these two sets are the ones i use most. they can be downloaded for free here and here if you have csp. there are many gradient map sets out there. and you can make your own!

you can apply a gradient map directly onto a specific layer in csp by going to edit>tonal correction>gradient map. to apply one indirectly, you can use a correction layer through layer>new correction layer>gradient map. honestly, correction layers are probably the better way to go, because you can adjust your gradient map whenever you want after creating the layer, whereas if you directly apply a gradient map to a layer thats like. it. it's done. if you want to make changes to the applied gradient map, you have to undo it and then reapply it. i don't use correction layers because i am old and stuck in my ways, but it's good to know what your options are.

this is what a correction layer looks like. it sits on top and applies the gradient map to the layers underneath it, so you can also change the layers beneath however and whenever you want. you can adjust the gradient map by double clicking the layer. there are also correction layers for tone curves, brightness/contrast, etc. many such useful things in this program.

let's see how mithrun looks when we apply that first gradient map we looked at.

gadzooks. apologies for eyestrain. we have turned mithrun into a neon hellscape, which might work for some pieces, but not this one. we can fix that by changing the layer blending mode, aka this laundry list of words:

some of them are self explanatory, like darken and lighten, while some of them i genuinely don't understand how they are meant to work and couldn't explain them to you, even if i do use them. i'm sure someone out there has written out an explanation for each and every one of them, but i've learned primarily by clicking on them to see what they do.

for the topic of this post, the blending mode of interest is soft light. so let's take hotline miamithrun and change the layer blending mode to soft light.

here it is at 100% opacity. this is the point at which i'd like to explain why i like using textured brushes so much - it makes it very easy to get subtle color variation when i use this Secret Technique. look at the striation in the upper right background! so tasty. however, to me, these colors are still a bit "much." so let's lower the opacity.

i think thats a lot nicer to look at, personally, but i dont really like these colors together. how about we try some other ones?

i like both of these a lot more. the palettes give the piece different vibes, at which point i have to ask myself: What Are The Vibes, Actually? well, to be honest i didn't really have a great answer because again, i didn't plan this out very much at all. however. i knew in my heart that there was too much color contrast going on and it was detracting from the two other contrasts in here: the light and dark values and the sharp and soft shapes. i wanted mithrun's head to be the main focal point. for a different illustration, colors like this might work great, but this is not that hypothetical illustration, so let's bring the opacity down again.

yippee!! that's getting closer to what my heart wants. for fun, let's see what this looks like if we change the blending mode to color.

i do like how these look but in the end they do not align with my heart. oh well. fun to experiment with though! good to keep in mind for a different piece, maybe! i often change blending modes just to see what happens, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. i very much cannot stress enough that much of my artistic process is clicking buttons i only sort of understand. for fun.

i ended up choosing the gradient map on the right because i liked that it was close to the actual canary uniform colors (sorta). it's at an even lower opacity though because there was Still too much color for my dear heart.

the actual process for this looks like me setting my merged layer to soft light at around 20% opacity and then clicking every single gradient map in my collection and seeing which one Works. sometimes i will do this multiple times and have multiple soft light and/or color layers combined.

typically at this point i merge everything again and do minor contrast adjustments using tone curves, which is another tool i find very fun to play around with. then for this piece in particular i did some finishing touches and decided that the white border was distracting so i cropped it. and then it's done!!! yay!!!!!

this process is a very simple and "fast" way to add more depth and visual interest to a piece without being overbearing. well, it's fast if you aren't indecisive like me, or if you are better at planning.

let's do another comparison. personally i feel that the hint of color on the left version makes mithrun look just a bit more unwell (this is a positive thing) and it makes the contrast on his arm a lot more pleasing to look at. someone who understands color theory better than i do might have more to say on the specifics, but that's honestly all i got.

just dont look at my layers too hard. ok?

#process #art tutorial #unsure what else to tag this as. if this does not post properly i will cry.

[horrorartsworld]

Clingy ass Valentino…HEAR ME OUT PEOPLE!PUT THE PITCHFORKS AWAY!

He just adores his little pornstar so much,he buys her whatever she wants.her dressing room might be more expensive than an art museum

New nails? Done.Wanna get your hair done? He’s already given them his card

She just gets so used to being spoiled that she’ll start to get bratty when he won’t get something,and then that leads to a brat being out in her place…(IF YOU KNOW WHERE IM GOING)

I LIVE FOR THESE KIND OF ASKS!! EATING THIS SHIT UP FOR BREAKFAST HONEY 🤭🤭 Also can you tell I have fun writing for Valentino…it’s DISGUSTING

⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊ ⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊ ⁺

spoiled rotten

clingy valentino/spoiled pornstar f!reader

warnings: smut obviously, HEAVY brat taming, oral (m receiving), rough dom!valentino, brat!reader, unprotected p in v, spanking, grinding, face fucking, orgasm denial, creampie, pet names, daddy kink, lots of dirty talk cause when doesn’t val talk dirty lol, soft valentino??? at the end

A low strum of a knock is heard against the door of your dressing room where Valentino now stood with it all the way open. “Doll?” His voice following shortly after, sounding a bit tired though it still had the alluring presence that was always intoxicating.

Huffing, you see his tall stature from the reflection of your large vanity mirror, ducking his head as he came through the doorway not bothering to wait for some kind of gesture from you to come in.

Red eyes immediately catching the new things you’ve bought probably in the last week or days even.

Various articles of clothing with high price tags still on them strung and obviously thrown onto a big luxurious pink sofa that sat on one end of the room, an assortment of shoes adorning the other with plentiful shelving space to display most of them, and lets not forget the jewels that you had laid out like magazines on your coffee table that were so sparkly they hurt when he glimpsed at them.

All of it was making Val very overwhelmed and most importantly uneasy. It was like you were gonna run him dry of all his hard earned porn money, seeing you spend it all so carelessly only to buy pointless things that you think is cutesy or fun in the moment, but that feeling would always subside when the girl he adorned more then himself would give him the time of day….and of course you knew this all too well once you became spoiled.

Taking advantage of it when you could to get the things you want, wearing tight little mini skirts that would show your panties when you bent over or putting on your big doe eyes when he was being even a bit hesitant with your request. It was always the best too when you’d catch him in a big meeting, your delicate figure sauntering into his office letting his colleagues gawk at you in the new outfit you’d bought that showed just about every inch of your assets, causing Valentino to almost loose his shit seeing them look at you and he then has to deal with you quickly, shooing you off with his card in your hands to get whatever your little heart desires.

Which is the exact reason why your hair and nails were always done at almost every shoot, making some of the other girls quite jealous of you seeing the princess treatment you got from Val that they very much lacked, but who were you to care? You the porn studios sweet little prized possession and nobody could change that.

“What do you want?” You hiss annoyed while applying mascara to your long lashes, taking your gaze away from the tall moth man as he approached you, large hands resting on your shoulders, giving a small kiss to the top of your head.

“I just wanted to check in before your shoot..make sure everything’s okay with my favorite little estrella,” He rests his chin on the top of your head, his chest rumbling with a low purr as he spoke watching you so prettily apply your makeup in the mirror. “Well the shoot is just gonna have to wait tonight, i’m going to a party at the club,” You say nonchalantly as if nothing could persuade you not to go.

Val raises an invisible eyebrow at you. “Party? Oh no baby you gotta be here, the men banking on this is gonna pay us millions to distribute it..” He pauses for a moment standing up straight to take out his box of cigarettes before continuing, “…besides we both know your closet would struggle if you missed out on this kind of opportunity..”

Gawking at him in the reflection you couldn’t believe the insult he just threw at you, making you act dramatically by throwing your chair back letting it clatter to the floor as you turned to face him. “Listen here Valentino..This industry would be nothing without me and this cunt between my legs, now if i want to go to a party i’m going to go to that fucking party! Whether some perverted pricks like it or not, they can reschedule for all i give a fuck!!” You spat then stomping away from him till you were on the other side of the room where you flipped through different pairs of bottoms on a rack, not believing how unfair he was being towards you when you’ve worked so hard to get where you’re at. The scent of his now lit cigarette clouding the air made you feel like you couldn’t breathe, a low tsk is heard from behind you till that feeling of your breath slipping from your airways got more prominent until you were tugged back making you fall onto your ass.

“Don’t forget who owns you..” He snarled, the coolness of the metal collar that had suddenly appeared around your neck reminded you of the soul contract he had over you, the feeling leaving a bad taste in your mouth, along with the vice grip he had on the end of the chain that he just pulled to make you fall.

“Matter of fact turn around for me..”

“Valentino..i-i didn’t mean-“ You try to apologize, but you were cut off by another tug on the chain, this time more harder than the last making you choke.

“I said turn around now.”

You quickly turn around, resting on the backs of your heels on your knees, looking up at the moth man with a gaze akin to that of a deer all while he towered over you. To your dismay your look of innocence only turned him on more, letting go of the chain that held you till it dissipates in mid air and the coolness of the collar is gone, wasting no time as he undos the large heart buckle sat at his midsection and pulls down his white dress pants till they’re pooling at his ankles. He was already so hard that when his cock sprang free your eyes immediately met his leaky tip that was a deep purple from its usual color, he then takes it in one of his hands and taps it against your lips. The pre smearing into your freshly applied lipstick.

“Open princess..” Val cooed through gritted teeth, the end of his cigarette wiggling in his mouth while he spoke.

You start shivering when you feel his claws racking against your scalp, too caught up in what was happening Valentino presses the back of your head down on his cock forcing the tip to push past your lips, taking him in your mouth fully without a moment to adjust and it immediately hits the back of your throat earning a soft gag from you and a low chuckle from Val. Once you catch your bearings from the unexpected sensation, you began to bob your head like the pornstar you were, sucking and licking like you were starved.

“Mmm..that’s my good girl..daddy’s good girl huh…” He hums out a gruff moan, a hand snaking its way down to caress your cheek that was full. Your eyes flutter up at him catching him in such a sinfully good angle that made you whine against his cock, cigarette barley hanging from his lips, the buttons on his shirt opened showing off his rather lean built body, muscles flexing and the white fur around his neck fluffing up when you used you flicked your tongue against a vein in a certain way getting him closer to his already building orgasm. “Taking it so good aren’t you baby? It's okay, hhpmh..you don't gotta talk with your mouth full, I know you fucking love worshipping daddy’s cock..”

The tears start pouring down your face, ruining your mascara in the process as his words along with the filthy sounds of you sucking him off made your cunt throb with an unbearable need. You scoot closer in attempt to grind against his leg, whimpering when the heat from his body, combined with the friction from his leg and the fabric of your panties rubbed deliciously against your sensitive clit.

"M gonna cum doll..Swallow for me yeah? Every last drop, do you fucking hear me?” Valentino growled suddenly his frustrations over taking him, putting out his cigarette(finally) as he fisted your hair proceeding to take control completely, bucking his hips relentlessly into your mouth as he face fucked you. Drool leaking down your chin as you tried to continue your grinding against his leg trying to match his speed until he came down your throat. Pulling you off his dick with a little pop to let you swallow, Valentino lightly tapping your chin, letting red smoke spill from his mouth as he leaned down to your level. "Atta girl…lemme see."

Seeing that you obediently swallowed his seed, he roughly yanked you from your position on his leg, eyes disapprovingly glaring down at you from behind his sunglasses. “You think you can get off on my leg without permission?” He scolds like an owner to its pet. “If you’re gonna cum cariño, it’s gonna be with you squirming on my dick.”

“B-but..” You sniffle, only to be silenced by Valentino with just a finger signaling you to. He then throws you on the couch not caring about the high end clothes still on it, crawling onto of you shortly after.

“Shhh not another word,” He shushes you, leaving kisses down your neck feverishly, while his hands worked at pulling down your skirt and panties in one quick motion. Slamming into you before you could even mutter out a protest like the brat you’ve grown to be. One of his hands reaching above you to hold onto the arm of the couch as he fucked into you with a dizzying rhythm, pounding relentlessly into your cunt just like he did to your mouth. “Fuck princessa, I should just let them record us…Millions of sinners seeing you get your brains fucked out by the man who really owns you…owns this pussy..”

“Y-you own this pussy daddy…” You babble out, whimpering when he hit that particular spot that drove you crazy to the point your clit swelled.

A primal instinct ignited in Val when he heard you say that, making his thrusts stutter for a minute until he started fucking you like an animal once more. “Say that again baby..”

You were too focused on the pleasure that you didn’t hear him, earning a good smack to the side of your ass snapping you out of it with a pitiful whine.

“Tell me who owns this pussy..” He husked in your ear for another time.

“Mm daddy does..” Valentino could tell just by your voice and the way your cunt was sucking him in that you were getting close, and it only excited the man more for what he deviously had planned. Pulling you closer to your orgasm by adding hand to rub circles at your soaked clit. “Yeah he fucking does..”

You let out a meek moan at his prideful exclamation and the overwhelming feeling of pleasure that was coursing through you. You should’ve known better that this would’ve been the outcome of your little tantrum from earlier, but secretly you loved the punishment. Being used like a fuck doll for Valentino to use. Your mind going dumb on the thought causing your cunt to clench with your needed climax, a pout forming on your messy lips.

“G-gonna cum, please Val!” You practically begged feeling your tears come up again.

"Not until l've had mine, princessa." He huffed breathlessly, burying himself deep inside you with one finally thrust, wings fanning out and fluttering while he spilt his cum all inside you.

The feeling of being filled made you desperately want your own climax so much more, but he quickly pulled out of you, killing that mood within an instant, leaving your legs shaking and your lower stomach aching for release.

"I changed my mind," Valentino said with a smirk, but there was a hint of admiration dotting his red eyes. "I think you don't get to cum today. Not even at work i’m rescheduling the shoot for another day since you decided to show your ass.”

He began to clean himself up, picking up his pants from the other side of the room and slipping them back on. You wanted to pout again, especially because he was basically back to being so unfair, but you knew better to not otherwise that would result in another denial of your orgasm. Once he was back to his normal overly sensual self, he turned to you, red eyes having a more stone cold look in them with his lip curled seeing you still shaking on the couch. You had been rid of your panties and mini skirt, leaving you just in a skimpy little top that was jostled around by Val with one of your tits hanging out of it. Makeup smudged and battered, along with the consistent drip of Vals juices and your arousal from your used hole falling onto a unworn dress that was nestled under your bum.

"Now what do you remember from today?" He asked one set of hands on his hips as the others were crossed over his chest.

The way Val stood over you so authoritatively made your core throb once more, but you tried to push it to the side as you gathered what ever thoughts you had of the lesson he seemed to try to teach you just now.

"I need to remember my place and not talk back," You mumbled quietly.

"And?" Valentino added quizzically raising his chin to tell you to proceed.

"To listen to you." A smile pulling up at the corner of your lip as you knew he was fucking with you now.

"Good girl…Also, you might want to get that dry cleaned cariño," He gestured to the dress underneath you making you look frantically till you saw it.

“Oh whatever!” You say rolling your eyes playfully giggling at him.

#☆⋆｡𖦹 my writings #☆⋆｡𖦹anon’s #☆⋆｡𖦹 valentino #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel fanfic #hazbin imagine #hazbin hotel smut #hazbin valentino smut #hazbin valentino #hazbin valentino x reader #hazbin hotel valentino #valentino x reader #valentino smut #valentino

[thecapricunt1616]

Allspice (c.b oneshot)

♡ O.S Inspo: Forever & Always - Fearless (TV) ; "Was I out of line, did I say something way too honest, made you run and hide like a scared little boy?" ♡ Pairing : CarmyxAFAB Reader as little physical description possible | She/Her pronouns used, NO use of Y/N :)

♡ Summary: You have a very successful Culinary Review blog, the social media manager of one of your new hometown restaurants 'The Bear' has been dying to get you out to try their food. But since the EC is a bit of an overzealous competitor, you end up having to go back for round 2- you end up having a delicious dinner, and a free show.

♡ W/C: 4,381

♡ Posted Date: 03/18/24

♡ A/N: FIRST THING: I am HORRIDDDD at writing Claire- I'm much better at writing Carmy cause were alot more similar- so this Claire isn't gonna be CRAZY canon, but I think she got the job done. Anyway- EEEEEP!!! Here is my VERY FIRST ONE SHOT EVER!! Inspired by my amazing, wonderful, PRECIOUS FLOWER @daysofyellowroses that can be found here :) AAAAA!!! My precious Rose I hope you enjoy this, It could ABSOLUTELY have a part 2 if y'all like it. I ended it here cause I'm sooo wordy and I didn't want it to turn in to a multi-chap. fic by mistake...but ofc if y'all want more just tell me and ill get RIGHT TO WORK!!! I really hope this comes off how I saw it in my head. There's no smut/sexy stuff, just mutual pining and flirty teasing, I hope thats ok!! aaa here we goooo!!! Enjoy <3

♡ Warnings for BTC: Swearing, Drinking alcohol (Literally it LOL)

➵ 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭 ♡

Being a Food Critic wasn’t an easy gig, as much as people wanted to believe it’s simply going to famous restaurants, trying their most popular dishes- and giving your opinion, it was much more then that. 

Each and every aspect of the restaurant was under your review, from the second you walked in the door, you were judging everything. From the atmosphere, to the music, to the decor, to the comfortability of the furniture all of it, was to meet your expectations if the owner of the establishment wanted a good review.

Today was finally the day you'd review one of the restaurants that had sent 3 requests for you to feature a review of them on your blog. 

The Bear. Interesting name, you thought.

With the rugged name- you’d assumed a more millennial hipster-New American vibe. But when you’d arrived- you were quite…impressed? That instead of leaning into that all too common aesthetic, it was more of a classy, comfortable vibe. 

They’d not even had bear art, anything of the sort. It was pure comfort, mixed with subtle class. The kind that spoke to the cost of the dishes- but wasn’t in your face obnoxious. The only ‘Bear’ was the little golden bear embossed into the leather menu you’d been handed when seated at the table. 

The way you did your reviews was…a tad unusual - some chefs in the industry called it ‘unfair’ but you called it…the fairest things could be. Instead of telling them when you’d be swinging by for a review since where’s the fun in that you’d call, make a reservation under some random name, and they’d know you’d accepted their offer when the review had been posted on your blog. 

It felt most honest and fair because you were one of the most renowned food critics in the country right now. If they knew you were coming- any EC with a brain would spend the night before your arrival, prepping the entire restaurant and staff - assuring they’d be on their best behavior to try and squeeze a higher grade out of you.

 But you were just a reader once upon a time, years ago- when you realized in culinary school that the making of the art didn’t interest you, it was the observing. Food wasn’t just about taste, but rather the whole experience. And if every famous food critic you’d taken interest in back in the day- never got a true experience due to their notability? You’d never have gotten into this field. So, you were most keen on keeping things fair. 

A woman with mousey brown hair comes up to your table, dressed in the typical waitress slacks and black button up shirt. “Hello! Welcome to The Bear. My name is Sam, have you dined with us before?” she asks. 

You sit up in your chair, peeling your eyes from the menu. You give her a small kind smile “I haven’t” you replied, urging her to continue her script. 

“Well welcome in, we're so happy you chose to spend your evening with us. So for our menu” she opens it in front of you. “Here” she points “are our wine options, fabulous selection this month. Then we have draft beers right next to it. On the following page” she points “all of our craft cocktails, then this,” she points in the bottom corner. 

“Our house cocktail - Just called The Bear. It’s wonderful, if you like old fashions you’ll love this - made with Bearface Triple Oak Whiskey.” She said and you nod. 

 “That please. That’s what I’ll start with” you said and she nodded. 

“I’ll get that right in. But quickly, just so you’re aware” she flipped the page and pointed. 

“These - are the dishes of the month. Each crafted by one of our two head chefs, they change monthly so if something calls to you I recommend you try- because it won’t be back” she said. You raised your eyebrows a bit in surprise and nod. 

“Thank you” you said and she gives a nod before heading off to the bar to put in your drink order before heading off to tend to other tables in your section. 

Having an alternating menu intrigued you, for such a high end establishment- one with a Michelin star at that- implementing such a menu would consistently have their star at risk. One dish, one app, one drink- that was not up to par and it would be revoked. You guessed the owners of this place liked living on the edge, as if being in this industry wasn’t already being constantly on edge. 

You gaze over the menu, the Chilean Seabass sounded like a fair assessment. Seafood was quite difficult to get right, especially in the springtime before peak season, and you’d be able to judge the consistency of the chopping and such because there was a fresh tomato corn salad that came with it. That was your rule when you came to judge restaurants, one main course, and one dessert.  

You’d felt like the main courses were the true stars of the show anyhow, and it would be unfair to muck up your palate with an app that was usually something easy to get right (since they were usually fried, covered in cheese, or some kind of carb). And the dessert usually showed the restaurant's creativity, which you loved to see, so 2 dishes was your max. 

The waitress returns with the cocktail, setting it down with a napkin under it. “Here you are, now- have you decided on a starter?” She questioned and you shook your head. 

“Straight to the good stuff, I’d like the Chilean Sea Bass please. And for dessert,” you flick the page and your eyes settle on the words savory cannoli - hmm, imaginative indeed. “And uh- The Michael Cannoli?” You said, shutting the menu and handing it to her. 

She nods with a smile, jotting down the order into her notepad before taking the menu and holding it to her chest. “That will be out soon as possible. Enjoy your drink” she said and headed back to the kitchen. 

You sit back sipping the cocktail and humming. She was right, much like an old fashioned, but floral notes. Almost…chamomile? Yes! That was it. Very interesting.

You slipped your iPad out of your bag, opening up your journaling app and grabbing the pencil out of the little sleeve. You quickly snapped a picture with your phone of the drink, airdropping it to yourself and adding it into the entry and writing;

‘To start; ‘The Bear’ house cocktail- initial thoughts ; not too sweet, strong (but not overpowering), chamomile? Some kind of herbal tea flower’ 

You take another sip, letting the flavors sit on your tongue a moment before swallowing. “Mmm!” You hum to yourself, finally realizing where the herby taste beneath the chamomile was coming from that gave it that oaky piney taste. 

‘Angostura bitters- will confirm!!’ You wrote just as someone approaches your table. You look up to see a man, short brown hair, stubble. He was smiling, holding a plate. 

“Hello! Here we have Arancini with our house-made pesto, courtesy of Executive Chef Carmen” he placed the dish in front of you next to your iPad. Your eyebrows furrowed slightly, looking up at him, scarcel confused. 

“Wrong table” you murmured, thumbing the dish back in his direction lightly. He cleared his throat awkwardly. 

“Nope- ah, he- he said this table.” He replied. It did smell fantastic, and any other day you’d never deny delicious, deep fried balls of risotto dipped in smooth, decedent pesto- but you’re working right now and it’s not fair. 

“Well, you can tell him” you lifted the dish, offering it back. “I have a system. And I’m unsure how he realized that I’m coming here, tonight, but I dislike cheaters. And he should know if he’s read my blog- I don’t muck up my palate with grease before I try the main course.” The plate was so close to him now it was nearly digging into his chest.

He nodded quickly, taking the plate without another word and briskly walking back to the kitchen. You sat back in your seat with a slight scoff. 

He thinks he can win you over just like that? How did he even know you would be here?

You picked up your pencil once again, adding a note. 

For the chef; Arancini smelt delicious. Didn’t order it, so I didn’t taste it . Presentation wise; 7/10. Pesto looked like it was spooned in the dish a tad bit messy to me. 

You smiled to yourself, you knew he’d read the final review once it was posted. And since he wanted to be a little cheater and get a overall higher score since he was trying to weasel you into trying extra dishes- you’d kick his ego down a few extra pegs for fun. 

You sat, nursing your drink, adding extra little notes here and there, as well as editing a blog post about Ghost Kitchens you’d been working on and how they were ruining the mobile order industry on the side. You were so engrossed in the work, that you hadn’t even realized someone had approached your table until they cleared their throat awkwardly. 

Your gaze slowly travels up, seeing a blue apron covering a white shirt, tattooed hands holding- your meal? Your eyes flicker up to his piercing blue ones. “Chilean Sea Bass” he sets it in front of you. You snort a laugh. 

“Hm.” You look around before back at him “These people” you motion to the restaurant. “Other patrons. Which meals of theirs did you bring out- Chef?” You accentuate the last word, it was all too uncommon for a chef to personally bring a meal out to a table. 

You swore even in the ambient lighting, his cheeks flushed slightly. “You- uh- you declined, my Arancini. Why?” He asked, holding his hands behind his back, the position making his already toned and tattooed arms appear more muscular. It makes him all the more impressive he has all these tattoos and still made it in this industry. I can only imagine the shit he got for them. 

You raise your eyebrows in surprise at his boldness. “Because that’s Cheating. Mr.Berzatto. I’d assume you know my work well. Considering you know what I look like, so- why try to cheat? You know how I feel about appetizers. It’s a scapegoat.” You shrugged, locking your iPad when you realized he’d been peeking at the notes. 

“Messy” his eyes narrow. He scoffs a bit, alluding to the note you’d written a short while prior “Messy?” He asks again, you laugh a bit.  

“Mmhmm! Oh, was it you chef? Wow…I mean- now that I think about it” you shook your head, now just messing with him since you see how much he was dying to impress you. “I could’ve sworn- the pesto it just..was too loose. Overblended maybe? That’s why it was impossible to plate without making a mess.” You shrugged, cutting up your fish carefully and spreading the vegetables with your knife to observe the cohesivity of the cuts. 

He scoffs, “too- too loose?! W-y’know what. No. No. It- you’re gonna try it.” He demands and you look up at him, nearly laughing at the seriousness of his tone. 

“That depends. Bring me a pesto worth trying and I’ll think about it. Now” you wave him off casually “I can’t work with the chef over my shoulder. So- Shoo chef don’t bother me” you teased and he shook his head. 

“Game on.” He muttered, heading back to the kitchen.  

You smiled to yourself, the Arancini absolutely isn’t going into the review. But you’ll humor his ego by trying it.

You cut the fish thoroughly, checking the texture and the evenness of the seasonings slathered on the skin, writing little notes as you go along. The cuts of the vegetables were pristine. Nearly perfect. The only misshapen pieces were clearly cosmetic defects of the vegetable. The chef that cut these was immaculate with a knife. 

When you took your first bite, you nearly moaned. The fish was buttery, the skin was crispy, slightly spicy, tangy, the flesh melted in your mouth. The risotto was so cheesy and buttery and wonderful. You could eat this meal every night for the rest of your life and never get sick of it. It was the best Sea bass you’d ever tasted. 

You opened your iPad again, jotting down notes about the flavors, the mouth feel, all the usual points you hit in your review. 

This meal is a 9.2 out of 10. 

You write at the bottom. Very fair score, you never had rated something as a 10. Something being a 10 would be- you don’t even know what it would be. But it would be what the score says, perfection. And while this dish was wonderful, and very very good- it was not perfect. At least to your heavily trained palate. 

You finished what you wanted out of the meal, pushing the plate to the side and not soon after, Carmen was back at your table. He placed the plate in front of you, 3 perfectly circular Arancini discs were placed equal distance on the plate, and truly beautiful pesto, sat in the dish alongside it. It frankly was immaculately plated. 

“Unbroken pesto. Sorry again, about the last one.” He said, watching you carefully. You hum as you grab your fork, splitting one of the discs and digging out some of the risotto. 

“Could be firmer.” You said, eyes flicking to his. He nods, clearing his throat a bit. 

“It’s not- uh- it’s” 

“Fresh” you finished for him, raising your brows and he nods. “So- since you’re frying it. You cook it for about..a minute- maybe forty seconds less than you usually would.” You said, daintily taking the bite off your fork. 

“Heard..” he nodded, waiting for your reaction. You hummed a bit. 

“Great balance of parm and butter though. I’ll give you that. Neither overpowers the other, that’s hard to do considering the notes” you added, cutting up the crust and tasting it. 

“Mm-“ you scrunch your nose and his face visibly drops. “Mm-mm…no- not peanut oil…why would you do that? It totally overpowers the breadcrumb with this like…cheapy taste. I’d say it would be way better if you fried it in sunflower oil” you added, digging out more of the risotto and dipping it in the pesto before having a bite and humming. 

“This though” you point at the little dish of green sauce with your fork. “This is great.” You add and he nods. 

“Ok-yeah…ok…” he nods, rubbing his hand over his chin. “Thank y’for trying it.” He said and you nod. 

“I’ll be back for a fair assessment. I think I’ll pass on the cannoli tonight, and just get the bill. Thank you” you slipped your pencil in the case before putting your iPad in your bag and holding your hands on the table in front of you. 

“Y-y’re coming back” he said, sounding slightly surprised. 

You shrugged “well- you clearly want a full review based on your behavior tonight, Chef. So I’ll humor you. I won’t tell you when of course, so just pray that it’s a day like today-“ you paused, looking around. “Where things seem to be running…alright.” You sat back in your chair casually with a small smile. 

“I look forward to your review.” He gave a nod and headed back to the kitchen. 

It was 3 weeks before you’d decided to return back to The Bear spring had quickly turned to early summer, and you thought you’d given enough time for your little conversation with the head chef to slip his mind. 

It was 9:20, 40 minutes before closing. You did promise to come back at a random time, and no time is more random then a Friday night less than an hour before the kitchen closed. 

You pulled open the door, stepped in and headed up to the host stand where the same man that originally offered you the Arancini stood. “The picky critic returns.” He said, tapping his pen against the reservation book absentmindedly. 

“She does” you smiled a bit. 

“Well lucky f’you cousin said you get a table any time, right this way” he leads you to a booth near the back, where you had a perfect view of the restaurant. Much cozier then before, right next to the doors of the kitchen where you could hear the back of house crew buzzing about. 

“Same cocktail as last time?” He asked and you raised your brows in slight surprise as you sit. 

“No waitress?” You asked, getting comfortable and setting your iPad down next to the empty plate. 

“She’ll be over, just figured a friendly offer couldn’t hurt” he said with a small smirk. 

You roll your eyes playfully. “House cocktail please, and thank you. But don’t count on kindness boosting your hospitality score-“ you stop, realizing he never gave you his name. 

“Richie” he said, sticking his hand out to shake. 

“Richie.” You repeat, giving him your firm professional shake. 

“House cocktail comin’ up” he said and headed back to the bar. You mulled over the menu, lemon chicken picatta, that sounded like a perfect dish to judge this time around. 

A few minutes later, Richie returns, setting the glass down in front of you. “Waitress should be by momentarily, enjoy your meal” he said, heading back to the host stand. 

A bit after the waitress came to take your order, the restaurant had begun to die down. You were going to be the last person served tonight it looked like, since in 5 minutes they would stop seating people. 

You added additional notes to your section about the cocktail, getting a better photo of it for your blog when you hear a bit of commotion up front.

You look up, to see a woman with curled brown hair in navy blue scrubs, her hands on her hips, talking with Richie with a frustrated look. There were tears in her eyes, you couldn’t help but tune in to their conversation. 

“Richie, please let me see him- he- he hasn’t said anything and I…I just need to hear him say it to my face. Please!” She begs, tears were streaming down her face now. 

Richie looks around nervously, tugging her to the side so they weren’t standing right in front of the host stand. You lean over just a bit- not so much it would be noticeable, but enough your nosy ears could continue to pick up what was being said.

“Claire. You shouldn’t be here…I’m sorry- he told me-he said that..that you can’t come here anymore. It’s too much and he will apologize when he can find the words. But he can’t. So please before he sees you. Leave” he said softly, attempting to soothingly rub her arm and she jerks away like his touch burned her skin. 

“Fuck you, Richie. Get him. Now. I’m not working on his time anymore. This is my time now. I’ve waited around enough for him. I’m done waiting. Either get him yourself? Or I swear to god I’ll go in that kitchen and embarrass the fucking shit out of him” she hissed. 

Your eyebrows raised, shit. Whoever fucked her over should at least be warned. 

He snorts, clearly amused before stepping back and raising his arms in defeat. “Have at it ClaireBear.” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You think he’s gonna take kindly to you startin’ w’him in his house? Be my guest.” He shrugged, going back over to the host stand. 

And then it clicked. She’s here for Carmen.  

She laughed dryly, sarcastically, like a woman who’d had it. “You think I’m scared? Richie? You think I’m scared of little Carmy who couldn’t even check out a library book by himself? mm?” She goads him, arms crossed, chest heaving with rage. 

His head snaps back to look at her, brows raised in shock. “Kid- I really think you should go calm the fuck down, because Y’re not gonna like the way that this conversation ends w’him- at all.” 

And with that, she shoves open the kitchen door. You couldn’t just sit there and not watch- this was the juiciest drama you’d ever been privy to in person, and this means he’s single. You slightly curse yourself for being so giddy that this means the sexy chef would likely be on the market. 

Your foot catches the door before it closes, leaning against the frame. She storms in, eyes frantically darting over the kitchen. 

“Carmen.” She barks, the entire kitchen stops moving and looks at her, as if they were in shock and awe someone would ever raise their voice to him in such a way. 

He rounds the corner, holding a pan of focaccia dough that he nearly drops at the sight of her. He blinks a few times, squeezing his eyes shut as if she’d disappear when he opened them again. 

“The fuck are you-“ his eyes meet yours, his face going pale quickly, he looked white as a sheet. “Leave.” He orders her, slamming the dough down on the counter. 

“Leave?!” She laughs coldly, “you’re gonna tell me to leave?! You’re a fucking pussy Carmen. A pussy. Y’know- it was charity giving you a chance. Pity work.” She spits and you blink a few times, taken aback by such harsh words. 

Is she serious? She thinks anyone could believe dating a super hot, ripped, talented, chef prodigy - that was charity work in any sense of the word?

He scoffs, “Charity?” He chuckled dryly. “Claire- you begged me to fuckin’ be with you! You-you-y’re a fuckin gnat! Claire! You- all you do is-is fuckin’-” he runs his hand through his hair, his chest heaving in anger, “You dont know me, Claire! Alright? There- And I-I-I don’t want you i’m-i’m sorry-” 

She laughed, shaking her head, tears streaming down her face. “You-” she whispered, her chest shaking with a sob. “You- fucker- I- I gave you a chance…” she whispered and gripped her wrist sadly. “I- I was there for you, Carmen- when no one else could fucking stand you.” she croaked.

“And I never asked for you too- please- just…leave me alone-” he shook his head. “Leave. Please…just-pretend we never happened, it was a mistake, Claire.” he breathed, clearly utterly defeated, and It sounded like he’d told this girl these same words multiple times. 

“M-Mikey would be sick- Carmy, he’d- he’d hate who you’ve become…” she said meekly, and with that- something behind his eyes snapped.

“Claire I’m not DOING THIS I SAID GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FUCKIN’ RESTAURANT. WERE OVER. YOU ARE NOTHING TO ME! YOU MEAN NOTHING CLAIRE!” He roars, the veins in his neck popping out, angrily and aggressively pointing to the door. “OUT. get the fuck out. G-get out, b-before I-I-I fuckin- holy fuck” he finds his composure once more, even though his breath was still ragged from his outburst, flicking his hand next to him his entire body trembling with panic. 

She looks to her left and right, she’s not that- 

Your thoughts were quickly proven wrong, when you see she was stupid enough to grab a pan off the stove to whip at him. 

“Aht!” the spanish woman standing a few paces to the right said, quickly grabbing the arm with the pan and twisting it behind her back. “Drop it.” she hissed. 

Carmen looks between the two of them, utterly in shock. “Y-y’were gonna hit me?” He asked her, face twisting in rage. “Fuck you. Fuck you Claire.” He seethed, taking the pan from his employees grasp and tossing it in the sink with a loud clatter. 

“Get the fuck out” you told her, grabbing her from the handle of the woman who’d stopped the assault, shoving her towards the kitchen door and into the front of the restaurant. “Y’re a fuckin crazy bitch.” You laughed dryly, giving her a hard shove for good measure. 

“Oh and who are you” she straightened herself out, pushing her bag up on her shoulder. “Doesn’t matter. Glad to see that Carmy still needs someone to protect him. I’ll gladly give up that spot.” she said, causing you to laugh. 

“Oh my god- you are pathetic. He just spelt it clear as day sweetheart- you are over. O-v-e-r. He doesn’t want you babe! And no, he doesn’t need my protection- I was enjoying dinner and apparently a show until you went batshit bitch.” You snip, plopping back down at your booth. 

She scoffed “he doesn’t want anyone. The only thing he wants - is to remain miserable. Good fucking luck, whoever you are.” She said before stomping out. 

“Yo she was really gonna throw somethin?” Richie asked as he walked over. Thankfully, it was just you, him, and the bartender in the front of the restaurant.

You nod “thankfully she didn’t realize I was there- Carmen would have had a nasty burn, and a concussion.” You said, taking a large sip of your drink. 

Carmen comes out, eyes meeting yours immediately. “Fuck- I- don’t worry y’re meal is comped and don’t…don’t worry about a review, i’m sorry- I-I guess it wasn't in the cards f’r us to be featured on y’r blog... I’m really so sorry… Shes- ah..” he rubs his arm nervously, trying to find the words. 

“A woman scorned” You teased, and he snorts a laugh, nodding a bit.

“Hell hath no fury, right?” He joked, sighing a bit. “It’s uh…it’s my fault I guess…I uh- I should’ve dealt with that…I've been putting it off” he said and you nod a bit.

“You off the clock?” you looked at your phone for the time, 10:07. 

“Shit- fuck- sorry- I’m so sorry- give me like- I was making y’r food…and then-” you shook your head, stopping him.

“No- No…I was uh-Asking to see if you maybe wanted to..have a drink with me? Not-not like…professionally…” you shrugged, stirring your half full cocktail with the bar straw that floated in it. 

“Sure- uh…sure- I’d like that lemme..lemme go change, i’ll be right out” he nodded, heading back into the kitchen.

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[houseofripley]

HEYY

Can you do a rhea x fem!reader story where rhea and reader are in Highschool and have both had feeling for eachother for the longest time and both haven’t confessed but all that changes because rhea ask reader to prom and they end up kissing and it leads to something else (ifykyk😏) (smut n a lil bit of fluff too🙏)

Starry Prom Night

Rhea Ripley x Fem!Reader

WARNINGS: 18+ SMUT, Kissing, Vaginal Fingering, Cunnilingus, Scissoring, Praise, Cheek Cupping & Kissing Galore, INSANE PLOT BUILDING FOR NO REASON LOL SORRYYYYYY IM A YEARNER (im serious this is like 67% plot building)

WORD COUNT: 3,731

A/N: this is just pure sapphic yearning on my end LMAO anyways anon i had so much fun writing this even though its all over the place!!!

also can you tell where i got impatient with all the plot building lol

“Rhea, I seriously don’t know how many more of these cheesy signs I can’t take. I think I’m gonna go insane.” You grunted, rolling your eyes to the back of your head. 

Prom season was in full swing. It was third period and you had just witnessed what had to have been the seventh promposal of the day. This year would be the mark of your and your best friend, Rhea’s senior prom. Senior prom was a date thousands of dreamed about, wanting to show up and show out one last time before waving goodbye to their highschool years. 

Every girl except you and Rhea. You both despised the thought of prom. Why would any sane person spend hundreds of dollars on an outfit just to spend their night drenched in sweat in the school gymnasium? 

Fuck that!

“Romeo O Romeo! Will thou spend your Saturday night with I, drinking punch next to the locker rooms?” Rhea mocked, elbowing your arm. 

You shook your head, pressing your lips together trying to keep your laughter silent. The commotion of classmates was soon drowned out by thoughts as your eyes met Rhea’s, causing your tightened lips to curl into a small smile.

Rhea’s blue eyes never failed to warm you. Everytime you gazed into those beachy eyes you were brought back to the day you first met the girl. Seventh grade, first period, language arts. A quiet blonde girl sporting a Pierce The Veil shirt was assigned to sit next to you. Nobody knew anything about the girl besides the fact she had just moved basically across the globe. You spent the entire period thinking of what you could possibly say to her, because what do you even say to a kid that was just relocated from South Australia all the way to some shitty suburban town? 

“Cool shirt.” 

And it fucking worked somehow. You were immediately attached to her hip. The two of you grew closer with each day that passed. You were inseparable. She was everything to you. Sleepovers every weekend. ‘Study’ sessions that were spent play fighting with each other. Singing pop-punk songs at the top of your lungs till your throats were raw. Dying your hair the same shade of blue at three in the morning. She was even at your side while your parents scolded you the morning after for said blue hair. 

Jesus Christ. Lost in her eyes again? Snap out of it already! 

“Yo, Alice in Wonderland, you okay?” Rhea playfully questioned, breaking your trance by poking at your thigh.

“Just…thinking. That’s all.” You softly chuckled. You were telling the truth, you were just thinking. Just thinking about her. Thinking about her touch, her hands, her pierced nose, her lips, her stupid cool shirts. 

══════⋆☆⋆══════

“Jesus, someone’s eager to get out of here.” You laughed, trailing behind Rhea who was booking it over to her small black Lexus.

“Dude, can you blame me? It’s like everyone has some sort of prom fever. I am not letting it catch me.” Rhea complained, ducking into the vehicle. 

You made your way to the passenger side of the car before hopping into the seat next to Rhea. “I counted eighteen of those damn signs today.” You babbled, resting your arm on the center console before trailing on, diffusing the topic, “Anyways, let’s go thrifting or something. I don’t wanna go home.”

Rhea shrugged in agreeance before pulling out of her parking spot. She knew things were tough for you at home. You had recently come out as lesbian to your parents. They weren't unsupportive but they weren't exactly supportive at the same time which had built quite a bit of tension in the household. You came out to Rhea just about two years ago, who was more than supportive. She was your number one defender, always there to threaten whichever classmate that dared to ridicule you.

You knew absolutely nothing about Rhea’s sexuality. Hell, even Rhea knew nothing about her sexuality. She only knew one thing, that she liked you. She didn’t even know when she caught feelings for you, it was like the sentiments were there since the moment you first spoke to her. She hoped as time went on the flutters she’d feel for you would pass on but recently she couldn’t seem to even push the mere thought of you out of her head, it was killing her.

The drive to the nearest thrift shop was comfortably silent…silent if you ignored the Black Veil Brides cd Rhea had blaring…

Entering the store the pair of you let out scoffed laughs as the first thing catching your attention was a large display of second hand dresses. Shaking it out of your heads and ignoring it at first you carried on to wander the isles, grabbing whatever caught your eye to try on later although you’d inevitably end back up to the racks of long dresses. You weren't a big fan of dresses but you wanted to waste as much time as you possibly could, so you decided to browse the gowns with Rhea. 

She pulled a deep maroon dress, the form fitting glittered bodice was paired with a looser, more freeing skirt. “Try it on!” Rhea pushed, shoving the dress into your arms.

“I’d look so stupid in this.” You gave Rhea a bewildered look.

“Oh c’mon just try it!”

“Rhe’ when have you ever given a shit about this stuff?”

“Dude you’re the one that wanted to waste time here…” Rhea playfully scorned, diverting your question.

“Urgh, I hate when you’re right.” You huffed, shuffling towards the dressing room. 

“How ridiculous do I look?” You pouted, opening the door of the changing room before shuffling to the closest mirror.

Rhea stood behind you, peering over your shoulder as you silently studied yourself in the mirror. You looked at Rhea through the mirror as she opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself in her tracks. “I mean it’s cute but where in the world would I wear this?” You shrugged, adjusting the straps as Rhea chewed on her cheeks.

“Wear it to prom.” Rhea timidly broke her silence.

“Why would I go to prom, Rhe’? First of all it would be so lame and second of all I’d have nobody to go with. I’m just gonna put this back.” You mumbled, turning to make your way back into the changing room.

 A hand grabbed your wrist, stopping you in your tracks. “Go with me…” Rhea blurted out, sounding scared of her own words. Her statement caused you to turn to face her with a puzzled expression, Rhea herself even looked surprised at what she just said. Fearing your rejection she quickly added on, “Ya know, like as a joke and stuff. We can make it not lame…”

“As a joke?” Your heart that was skipping beats just seconds ago was immediately let down. 

“Yeah. It’s just a stupid idea we don’t hav-”

“No, let's go…as a joke.” You interrupted Rhea’s nervous deflection. “We’ve got nothing better to do.” You shrugged on watching Rhea’s anxieties fade into the distance as her classic cheeky smile crept upon her face.

After you swapped out of your dress you returned to Rhea who was holding up a silky black dress with a deep slit in the skirt. “This’ll work. I’m too lazy to try anything on.” She chuckled while shrugging.

“That's ballsy Rhe-Rhe.”

══════⋆☆⋆══════

Tonight was the night, you were sat atop Rhea’s bathroom counter, finishing up your makeup while Rhea was shuffling around her closet searching for a pair of shoes. It had been four weeks since Rhea ‘asked’ you to prom and you simply couldn’t keep your mind off it. Although you two planned this whole thing as a joke, something shifted ever so slightly between the two of you, maybe it wasn’t a joke, who knows. Rhea had your heart in your throat at every moment and you were the topic of every thought that popped into Rhea’s head. More than ever the both of you were head over heels for each other, just terrified the other wouldn’t reciprocate those shared feelings.

Your parents were completely unaware you’d be attending prom. You had informed them you were staying with a friend before immediately storming off to Rhea’s house. Rhea’s parents hadn’t a clue either, they were under the impression tonight would be just another night of the two of you doing nothing for hours then sneaking out to go for a drive at three in the morning. There truly wasn’t much reasoning behind this secret, you guys just wanted to have this night for yourselves without pestering parents. 

“Urgh! At this point I’m gonna go barefoot!” You could hear yet another pair of shoes be tossed to the floor. You slid off Rhea’s counter, stepped out of her bathroom and over to her closet. She was already in her dress tearing through a pile of shoes on the floor. “What has gotten into you Rhe’?” You leaned against the doorframe laughing at the fact that Rhea of all people was stressing over shoes. 

 Rhea rolled her eyes ignoring your banter. “Would it make me a hipster if I wore converse?”

“Oh absolutely, I dare you!” 

“You know I will,” Rhea retorted, picking up a black pair of the canvas shoes.

You chuckled before turning to return to the bathroom, letting Rhea know you were gonna change. You got into your dress with ease up until you came to the zipper on the back. You groaned in annoyance, reaching behind to your back attempting to wiggle the zipper to no avail.

“Rhe’, can you help me real quick?” You asked while popping your head out the door.

“Hm? What’s up?” Rhea turned around and questioned before making her way up to you, trying to keep her gaze from falling down to the hand placed on your chest, keeping the dress from completely slipping from your body.

“Zippers stuck,” You pouted, turning around. Rhea’s hand swept across the base of your neck, sweeping your hair to the side. You watched her through the mirror as she began fumbling with the metal, ultimately getting it to slide up your back.

After an awkward exchange of bashful looks the two of you finished getting ready in each other's company. You sat next to Rhea slipping into your shoes while she tied off her converse, took a handful of polaroid pictures together, then eventually snuck out Rhea’s window to begin your hike to the school.

══════⋆☆⋆══════

“Ouu! Ripley’s got a date!” Was whistled out by a classmate as you and Rhea made your way down the congested hallway, making Rhes roll her eyes.

“Shut up dickhead! We’re here as a joke.” Rhea rebutted, flipping the guy off as she carried on down the hall. 

Here as a joke but her flushed cheeks and sweaty hand gripping yours told a slightly different story.

“Dickheads always running their mo-” Rhea muttered, stepping into the crowded gymnasium.

“Shh. It’s fine, you shouldn’t worry about them.” You cut off Rhea, giving her hand a squeeze as you examined the starry night themed room. The area was dimly lit by blue leds and strings of fairy lights. Blue curtains decorated with paper stars draped over the majority of the walls while an array of tables adorned with bottles of fairy lights surrounded a dance floor full of teenagers.

You both seated yourselves near the stage where a live band was playing. Your legs pressed against one another as you fell into an array of conversations. Thirty minutes had managed to sneak by before your meaningless conversation was cut short by your biology teacher.

“You girls gonna sit here and chat all night? Go dance!” 

“But dancing is lame, Mr. Brown.” Rhea groaned while you both turned to face the man.

“I promise you that in ten years you’ll regret not doing anything at your senior prom. Seriously, go dance!” Your teacher stood behind you giving his words of advice. Rhea peeked over to you looking for your opinion. You gave her a ‘why not’ shrug before rising from your seat.

“But I don't even know how to slow dance.” Rhea whined to herself under her breath as she stood up. “If we have to dance, we’re dancing in the corner cause I’m gonna look stupid.” She stipulated.

You guided Rhea over to a secluded section of the dance floor near a wall, reassuring her that you also had no clue on what you were doing. 

“We’ll just do what everyone else is doing, Rhe’.” 

“I think this right,” Rhea unassuredly giggled with a racing heart, taking a hold of your left hand while wrapping her free hand around your waist. You shook your hair to cover your flushing cheeks as you brought your right hand to rest on her shoulder. The pair of you began swaying to the music while trying to hold back laughter, both in slight disbelief at your current situation. Prom was the last place either of you ever expected to be attending.

You were already trailing back into the pit of those sapphire eyes, drowning out all external noise you missed Rhea humming about how beautiful you looked. You were too occupied taking in the essence of your childlike crush to take notice of the grip Rhea had on your waist tightening. You were fully prepared to stare into those eyes all night, but Rhea was eager to run a risk.

A set of warm lips fell onto you abruptly, pulling you by the waist into a desperate kiss. All five senses rushed over your body, sending a rush of adrenaline through your bloodstream, placing you in awe too shocked to move.

Rhea forced herself to pull away, letting a sigh of relief out before the panic settled in, “Shit. I, god I’m so-”

Your thoughts had just now grasped what just happened.

This was a kiss that spent years in the making…you were not just gonna let it end like that.

Your hand slipped to the back of Rhea’s head, pushing Rhea back into the kiss, forcibly putting an end to her apology. She immediately fell back into your lips, closing her dilated eyes. While her tongue slid across your bottom lip begging to deepen the kiss, her hands slid up to cup your cheeks. Time slid away as the two of you fell into each other in your isolated corner of the gymnasium.

Rhea pulled herself from your lips breathless, her parted lips forming an open smile. She wanted more. You attempted to collect your thoughts while catching your breath. Both of you were attempting to draft a response while gazing into each other, because what do you say after tasting your best friend of five years?

“Cool.” You nodded

Rhea shook her head scoffing out a laugh, still making an attempt to regulate her breath. She took grip of your hand, giving it a squeeze before beginning to pull you into the hall without speaking a word.

“Wher-”

“Just follow me!” Rhea cut you off, rushing through the halls as she dragged you behind herself, both of you trying not to stumble over your dresses. 

She halted in front of the nurses office before fiddling with the keypad on the door, “God bless modern technology,” She muttered, managing to get the door open as you watched in disbelief. “Don’t even ask.” She chuckled, scanning the hall to make sure you were in the clear before tugging you into the room.

Once Rhea’s foot forced the door shut her lips directly got to work pinning themselves to your neck, nipping at the delicate skin. 

“Shit Rhe’, there might be cameras.” You pushed through a stunned whine. 

“There's none…” Rhea couldn't even pull her lips away from your skin as she spoke, “Wouldn't stop me either way, I’ve waited too long for this.” She grunted, dragging her kisses to your collarbone. “Now please tell me I can keep going.”

“I don’t think I could ever tell you to stop.” You pulled Rhea’s face to meet your eyes, whispering your confession. There was no need for Rhea to open her mouth, the look on her face alone told you that was exactly what she needed to hear.

“You have no fucking clue how long I’ve waited for this.” Rhea growled, grasping your cheeks as she pulled you over to the nurses twin sized treatment bed. 

She brought her legs to straddle over you, lowering her chest to hover over you. Rhea was attached to you like a dog, her lips were sloppy against yours as her hands snuck to pull up the skirt of your dress. 

Rhea brought herself between your legs, in a rush to finally get a taste of your core.

“Please…I’m begging you, please don't make me wait more than I already have.” Rhea looked up at you pleading.

Your heart was in your throat as you fervently nodded. “I wanna hear your voice,” Rhea begged, whispering out your name.

“Rhea, please just do anything, I need, I need you.”

With that said she hurriedly slid your panties down your legs, tossing them to the foot of the bed. Rhea was making it clear that tonight was her time to shine.

“Fuck, you’re perfect…” Rhea murmured, awed at the sight of your soaked cunt. Her arms tangled themselves around your legs. After years her tongue finally made contact with your delicacy, she preached a string of curses, finally getting what she was after. You propped yourself on your elbows to catch the sight of Rhea exploring your brand new world. You could feel a smirk between your legs as her eyes met yours, thirstily watching you watch.

“Tastes so good.” Rhea praised, sweeping her tongue through your folds before bringing herself to round your clit. You chewed on your cheeks to hush the moans escaping your throat as Rhea wrapped her lips around your sensitivity, allowing her to lightly suck at your skin. Your legs made an unsuccessful attempt at wrapping around Rhea’s head only to be overtaken by her hands, prying them open, giving her full access to devour your aching heat. 

The stealthy addition of two fingers into your emptiness was only amplifying the wobbly knees her mouth alone had created. Her fingers began steadily massaging into you, causing an arch to form over your back. The mixture of Rhea’s roaming tongue and grinding digits already had a knot forming in your stomach.

“Fucking Christ Rhe’, where the fuck did you learn all this.” You struggled out through moans. Rhea let out a soft chuckle as she continued to take your clit into her mouth, rolling her tongue piercing over your sensitivity.

Rhea gave your cunt one last kiss before she brought herself to face you. Now that Rhea had finally gotten a taste of your mouth she couldn't get enough, she had to return for more. Your lips once again blended together, your moans now slipping into Rhea’s mouth as her fingers curled inside your core. 

“God, you sound so beautiful.” Rhea admired, pressing her warmed forehead against yours while her digits continued toying with your clenching walls. Her thumb was soon added to the mixture of pleasure as it rubbed rhythmic circles over your bud. 

“Rhe’, I want to feel you against me,” You opened your eyes, pulling from her kiss while your hips rolled against her working digits. “Please.”

Rhea nodded, her eyes full of adoration, she’d do whatever it took to please you no matter if it took minutes or hours. She let her fingers come to a declined pace before withdrawing from your warmth. She stood up, licking her fingers clean before riding her dress up her legs and dropping her panties. She rushed to return to the bed pulling your leg into the air before propping a leg of hers next to your hip.

Rhea settled her heat against yours, letting out a heavy breath. She gradually started rocking her hips against you, mixing your slick together. You watched as the new sensation of pleasure washed over her, causing her jaw to drop open and her eyes to roll to the back of her head. 

“Just…just like that.” You whimpered as you began to grind your hips at a matching pace, chasing towards your climax. Rhea’s arm clung to your leg that was situated in the air for support as the sound of quiet moans and the rustling of dress fabric bounced around the room. 

“Feels so good, fuck.” Rhea quickened her motions, moaning out the nickname she created for you through heavy breaths.Rhea pushed herself further against you chasing her own high as you squirmed beneath her grinds. 

“Rhe’, I’m gonna cum.” You whined out, reaching for a hand to cling to. Her hand met you halfway, instantly taking you into her grip she pulled you up to meet her face. She was back to those oh-so passionate kisses she could now never get enough of. “Please, Rhe’!” You cried against her, her movements bucking against your cunt.

Rhea nodded into your kiss signaling for your release, her own climax just seconds away. Your series of moans brushed against Rhea’s lips as your orgasm washed over you, hers quickly following. Muffled whines echoed around the room as Rhea’s thrusts against you faltered.

After riding out your highs together, Rhea squeezed herself next to you on the tiny bed and rested her hand on your thigh, giving it a soft squeeze. “I swear to god if you say cool.” Rhea looked over at you giggling. 

“Unfair!” You joked, resting your head against Rhea’s chest. You both fell into silence simply taking in the moment, reflecting on everything that had just happened. Rhea peppered small kisses to the top of your head as you toyed with the fabric of her dress.

“We should probably get outta here before somebody finds us.” Rhea suggested, breaking the silence.

“Wanna go dance again?” You teased as you turned to face her.

Rhea quickly shook her head, “I’m never gonna dance again. I was so bad.” She laughed, “How about we go find a parking lot and makeout under the stars, hm?”

“I seriously would have never expected you to be all smoochy, Rhe’.”

“Look, I have like five years of kisses to make up for!”

#this one is such a mess sorry lol #i fear i yearned too much #rhea ripley smut #rhea ripley fanfic #rhea ripley #rhea ripley oneshot #rhea ripley x reader #rhea ripley fluff #rhea ripley fanfiction #wwe x reader #wwe smut

[johnbleepingzoidberg]

UNTITLED EVIL LUIGI AU COMIC THING | Page 1 of (???)

First | Prev | Next

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Luigi’s been acting weird lately-- and Bowser’s concerned. When Luigi vanishes one day without any warning, Bowser begrudgingly turns to Mario for help, meeting him at a (humorously petite) cafe in Mushroom Kingdom to discuss what’s been going on. Old rivalries die hard.

The cafe has really good liability insurance, don’t worry.

(A/N under the cut)

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bear with me as i try to find my footing with this LOL, i am by no means a professional comic artist. i’m writing (or attempting to, at least) a comic based on my Evil Luigi AU-- read the original post/see the original art my looking thru the #my art tag on my blog! this is a bowuigi AU, so the relationship’s pre-established and Luigi, up until he ran away, had been ruling Koopa Kingdom alongside Bowser and navigating that fun new king life.

i have no idea what to tell yall to expect other than the fact that this will be very inconsistent in literally all senses of the word :’) but hey, im tryin my best-- i havent done any sort of comic in a long time and im having a lot of fun with this so far. if anything it’s good practice. right now i have at least a few pages planned out, but im not sure how quickly ill be able to draw them out, especially since i’ll be working full-time again soon. so see this as a bit of a teaser for things to come/an experiment to measure interest in the idea. :D

#bowuigi #bowser x luigi #bowser #mario #super mario bros #super mario #evil luigi au #bowuigi comic #my art #mine #coloring this was a beating so dont be surprised if the style drastically changes LOL #though now that ive kinda figured out how to do it maybe the next page wont take so long #IDK #POINT IS IM HAVIN A GOOD TIME #cant believe this fuckin crackship is whats finally pushed me to try to make a full comic #love it for that lmaoooooo #also sorry if passive aggressive mario isnt your cup of tea. i completely understand that sentiment #and i know that in canon mario would probably be totally 100% supportive #but........theres gotta be a little bit of tension in here somewhere u kno #it's for narrative purposes :') #they work it out i promise #bowsers trying his best to be better. in this house we love characters that try to right their previous wrongs #also if you saw me delete then repost this no you didnt #jk i did because i changed some stuff around #and also im paranoid that editing posts after you post them will mess things up in terms of traction and visibility but thats probs just me #edit: i had linked the original au post but i think putting the link hid this post. SIGH tumblr why

[poetrysmackdown]

hi hiii i wanted to say that your account is so refreshing to see, esp with the passion you have for the arts. as someone who's been meaning to read (and write) more poetry, do you have any recommendations? some classics that everyone and their mothers know? perhaps some underrated pieces that changed you? or even just authors you like, I'm very open to suggestions :]]

Hi! Thank you so much for this kind ask :) So exciting that you’re looking to delve deeper into reading and writing! I had to take a little time to answer this because my thoughts were all over the place lol.

For a review of notable/classic poems/poets, I honestly just recommend looking at lists online or, hell, just binging Wikipedia pages for different countries’ poetry if that’s something you’re into, just to get a sense of the chronology. I read one of those little Oxford Very Short Introductions on American Poetry and thought it was pretty good, but online is quicker if you’re just searching for poets or movements to hone in on. Poetry Foundation also has lots of resources, in addition to all the poems in their database. I guess my one big classic recommendation would have to be Emily Dickinson (<3), but really the best move is just to find a poet you already enjoy and then look around to see who their peers were/are, who they were inspired by, who they’ve maybe translated here and there, etc. and follow it down the line as far as you can.

For some personal recs, here are some collections I’ve really enjoyed over the past two years or so. Bolded favorites, and linking where select poems from the book have been published online. But also, if you want a preview of a couple poems from another of the books to see if they interest you, DM me and I can send them over! You can also feel free to pilfer through my poetry tag for more stuff lol

Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon trans. Don Mee Choi

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo

DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi

Hardly War by Don Mee Choi

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier

Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Mouth: Eats Color—Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-Translations, & Originals by Sawako Nakayasu

The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam trans. W.S. Merwin and Clarence Brown

The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright

This Journey by James Wright

God’s Silence by Franz Wright

Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (the translation I read was by Alfred Corn—I thought it was great, but idk if there are better ones out there!)

DMZ Colony, Hardly War, Dictee, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, and partially Whereas are all book-length poems with some prose poetry and varying levels of weirdness/denseness/multilingualism—if you were to pick one to start with, I’d say do Don’t Let Me Be Lonely or Whereas. Mouth: Eats Color is some experimental translations of Japanese modernist poet Chika Sagawa, with other translations and some of Nakayasu’s original stuff mixed in—it's definitely a bit disorienting but ultimately I remember having such fun with it, as much fun as Nakayasu probably had making it. It’s a book that emphasizes co-creation and a spirit of play, and completely changed my attitude towards translation.

If you’re less interested in that kind of formal fuckery stuff though (I get it), can’t go wrong with the other books! Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings is the one I read most recently, and it’s great—Harjo also featured in Round 1! Franz Wright also featured, and God's Silence is the collection which "Night Walk" comes from. James Wright (father of Franz) is one of my favorite poets of all time, though his poetry isn’t perfect. Even so, I’m honestly surprised he’s not doing numbers on Tumblr—Mary Oliver was a big fan of his, even wrote her "Three Poems for James Wright" after his death.

I mentioned in another post that one of my favorite poets is Paul Celan, so I’ll also recommend him here. I read Memory Rose into Threshold Speech which is a translated collection of his earlier poems, but it’s quite long if you’re just getting to know him as a poet—fortunately, both Poetry Foundation and Poets.org have a ton of his poems in their collections. There’s also an article by Ilya Kaminsky about him titled “Of Strangeness That Wakes Us” (!!!!!) that’s a great place to start, and is honestly kind of my whole mission statement when I’m reading and writing poetry. Looking at the books I’ve recommended above, a lot of them share feelings of separateness or alienation—from others, from oneself, from one’s country, from language—that breed strange, private modes of expression. That tends to be what I’m drawn to personally, and that’s some of what Kaminsky talks about.

Sorry of the length of this—I hope it's useful as a jumping-off point! And if you or anyone ends up exploring any of these poets, let me know what you think! If folks wanna reply with recommendations themselves too that'd be great :)

#ask #not a poll #i originally was going to link to previews of the books directly on this post but for some reason I suddenly feel very paranoid about #copyright LMAO. ik this blog is already like copyright infringement central but I feel like I can at least make an argument for the polls #being fair use lol. in the way that i could not for the pdf previews I made. (i also have a full pdf of hardly war if anyone wants lol) #and i know it's not entirely rational bc this is tumblr and nobody looks on tumblr. but i'm not used to having this many followers lol so i #admittedly just getting anxious about silly things #but please please feel free to DM me! or send an ask off anon #discussion

[sungbeam]

nonidol!lee hyunjae x fem!reader

your best friend hyunjae ain't no romeo, but you're still in love... so let's hope he doesn't find out you wrote a whole play about him!

▷ genre, warnings. bffs2l, fluff, angst, comedy/humor, swearing, college au, pining, hyunyn r kinda franchise movie buffs, shirtless hyunjae......, slow burn-ish lol, if ur a theater kid i am so sorry, stress and academic pressures, mentions of a bitter ex-friendship and ex-relationship, sabotaging and low-key terrorizing by an ex-friend, kissing, insecurity, lots of jargon i looked up and hope i'm using correctly, massive leaps in time and multiple chapters that span one day 💀, denial is a river in egypt so ig hyunjae's in egypt

▷ total wc. 30.9k (i actually overshot this one r we surprised 0_0)

this is the fourth installment of the love in unity series! this can be read as a standalone, but there will be references to other fics, and all prev and future yns will be referred to as __!yn !! i do recommend reading at least one of the prior storylines ;')

a/n: mmmmmmmmmm idk what to say but have fun bye!!! AND REBLOG FOR GOD'S SAKE REBLOG PLEASE—

EPISODE ONE (PILOT): ONE ON ONE

“HAVE you always wanted to be a playwright?”

The question caught you off guard as you glanced up from your tablet screen, the white blue-light contrasting sharply against the warm amber radiating from the small, battery-operated lamp seated on the plastic folding table. There were a couple of technical issues going on behind the curtain at the moment, so the transition to the next person auditioning would be delayed by a couple minutes. In retrospect, it was nothing, but when you were already a couple weeks late behind schedule, a couple of minutes was everything.

A young and bright second-year student sat to your right in the middle rows of the university performing arts center nosebleeds. She was peppy and eager and passionate—all the things that you sometimes saw yourself as when you were her age. Her name was Bae Sumin, and she wasn’t here to audition, nor was she here for you. She was actually here to interview a few of the dancers for the winter showcase in representation of the university’s premier newspaper called The Daily. She had asked if she could sit in for a few of the auditions and observe, maybe ask a few questions; who were you to refuse an eagle-eyed undergrad who reminded you so much of yourself?

“Oh, well,” you began, eyes flitting to the velvet curtain where you saw a man in a dark baseball cap—Lee Jihoon—give you a swift thumbs up, “kind of. Playwriting was my first love, but it eventually turned into screenwriting over time.”

“So why choose playwriting for your capstone instead of screenwriting?” Sumin followed up, as you and her attention turned to the spotlit stage where your next auditioner walked out onto.

You knew the answer to that; you really did. But the audition was beginning, and though he was introducing himself to you, you couldn’t quite get your head in the game. Why did you choose to write a play over directing a film? You quickly murmured an answer to the second-year beside you as the student onstage had gotten so nervous he dropped his copy of the script on the floor. “I guess, when it counts, you always go back to your first love.”

— ✶

It was times like these where you really valued a good, strong cup of coffee.

“—I’m gonna stop you right there.” The poor kid—you really did feel bad for cutting people off sometimes, but you swore it was wholly necessary—froze like a deer in headlights. You stood up from your chair and began making your way down the aisle and into one of the rows that were closer to the stage. “Michael, is it?”

Michael, the student on stage who had been auditioning to play the role of a Napa Valley wine salesman, bobbed his head in affirmation.

You dipped your head. “Okay, Michael. Let me ask you: what is your motivation for this scene as a wine salesman? Because, if I’m being honest, dude, I’ve counted like… four different ways you’re playing this character.” In this singular scene alone. Your head was spinning from stress, and his mannerisms felt right for the role, but his acting itself just wasn’t hitting the mark. (If that even made sense, but your initial thought when he first walked onto stage gave you the aura of a business major.)

“Um,” he stammered, scratching the back of his head, “my motivation is to… sell wine?”

“Sell wine, and? What else?” Please pick up on the lines. Please tell me you read the other lines of this character.

He rifled through his packet of stapled script papers, clammy fingers flipping through and his eyes racing over lines. He probably printed out multiple sheets to audition for multiple parts in case this one fell through. “Oh! I, uhm, I’m supposed to eventually lock Alex and Kai in the wine cellar.”

“Because…” You prompted.

“Because… my boss is the… second cousin of the bride’s uncle?” He quickly added on, and you could see the cogs in his brain turning like rent was due (your rent—your rent was due—oh shit), “Wait! Wait! And Uncle Lee overheard the ex-boyfriend plotting to get Alex alone, so he asked me to hide Alex, and I do it because I want to get promoted.”

You punched the admittedly sky-high ceiling of the performance art hall. “Bingo. Now give me desperate, ass-kissing wine salesman, Michael.”

Michael did indeed give you a desperate, ass-kissing wine salesman. He did so, very well, in fact, that you declared that you were done for the day. Because you definitely were. If you saw any more people and heard the same lines of script over and over for any longer, you were going to commit murder. At least, not without filling your stomach first. When Michael was done and scurrying off stage, you caught one of the sophomores working with Jihoon—you thought her name was SW!Yn—and asked if she could have the house lights turned on.

You trudged back up to your original seat up in the nosebleeds and found that Sumin had disappeared off somewhere. However, she left a baby pink-colored sticky note on the table for you to read: I realized that I have an actual job to do, but watching you work was so cool. Thank you for letting me sit in! x, Sumin. She’d scrawled her phone number below the message line in case you were up for a proper session to let her pick your brain, and you felt yourself smile as you tucked the note into the back of your phone case for later.

“Yn-ie!”

You settled into your seat, an eyebrow cocked in blatant amusement as you watched your best friend, Lee Hyunjae, leap down from the stage and bound up the aisle to where you were. “Where’ve you been for the past two hours?” You mused as you began packing your things away into your backpack at your feet. Hyunjae had come in with you early this morning at seven, and for the three out of five hours you’d been conducting callbacks and auditions, he had been seated beside you to keep you (relatively) sane and to give you his opinion.

He, of course, had not been allowed to sit in for Kim Younghoon’s audition, because that was favoritism. Hyunjae tried to convince you by saying he would be even more judgmental of Younghoon, but you had effectively booted him out of the auditorium. After that, he disappeared to god knew where, and Sumin replaced him.

“I’ve been around,” he said to you casually. Instead of coming into the aisle were you were, he went up one more row. “I’ll tell you about it at lunch. Hungry?”

You patted your stomach, leaning back in your chair and stretching your limbs over your head like a cat. “Yes, sir. I can go for a buffet and a half right about now.”

“Oh, a buffet and a half?” He chuckled. He came up behind you and wrapped his arms over your upper half and rested his chin on top of your head. Your heart skipped about a dozen beats then; his embrace was always very warm. “So that must mean you're resuming this train in the afternoon, too.”

“Glad to know you pay attention.”

“Hey!” He squawked indignantly, no doubt jutting his bottom lip out in a Younghoon-esque pout. “I do pay attention to you.”

You made a face that he couldn’t see, but he could feel you pat his hands. “Sure, buddy, sure.”

Cleaning up didn’t take too long, as you reassured (more so reminded) Jihoon that you would be back at around 3 o’clock sharp. If he or Chan weren’t in to turn on lights and the like, you were certain you could hold your own. You and Hyunjae agreed on heading over to one of the closer restaurants on the Ave, only a few minutes’ walk from the performing arts hall. It was a cozy sort of cafe that served really good wonton noodle soup for both winter and summer days (Hyunjae always teased you for drinking hot soup on hot days, but it was something you had done since you were a kid).

Once the two of you had settled in a booth tucked away into the corner of the establishment, you were both swift to relay your orders to the waiter. Saying you were starving would be an understatement.

“You know, there are just some people who I can’t understand how they’ve made it so far in the program,” Hyunjae said to you as you squeezed a wedge of lemon juice into his glass of water. “Thank you,” he beamed boyishly, accepting the lemony beverage to sip. “—I mean, I’m sure they got in somehow, and like—I have no right to judge, but at this point, shouldn’t you understand the basic principles of design?”

You gave a meager bob of your head, taking your own glass to repeat your actions with a new lemon wedge. “They should if they’re all graduating in one quarter, too.”

“They’re all doing capstones,” he confirmed.

You offered him an amused smile. “Well at least you know that you’re doing okay, then.”

Hyunjae sighed, leaning back against his booth seat. His gaze flickered out the window for a second, then his lip curled upward as he returned his attention to you. “I guess so. Oh!”

He straightened and leaned forward again, bracing his forearms onto the table so he inclined himself toward you. “I was gonna tell you all about my backstage adventure!”

You chuckled. “Do tell, Jae.”

“Well, we begin our adventure with collecting dance kids like Pokemon—”

You sputtered around your straw, nearly snorting water from your nose and you swiftly slapped a hand over your mouth. Hyunjae’s eyes lit up as he laughed, but he was reaching over to hand you a napkin from the dispenser on the table. “I did not expect you to say that,” you managed to croak through your miserable laughter.

Hyunjae wagged his eyebrows at you. “What can I say? I am hilarious.”

“One out of a dozen times.”

“One out of one.”

“One out of ten.”

Hyunjae simply smiled. He could do this all day. “One out of one.”

But so could you. “One out of ten.”

He leaned closer. “One out of one.”

Not one to be beaten out by your best friend, you inched closer with a slightly narrowed gaze. “One. Out. Of. Ten—”

“Order of wonton noodle soup and an order of dan dan mian?” Both you and Hyunjae shot apart, heat crawling up to your cheeks, and you wondered if it was obvious to the bored-looking waiter setting your food down on the table. You passed a glance across the table at Hyunjae, but as always, he seemed practically unfazed. In fact, he was grinning like a madman.

You sighed, rolling your eyes. When the waiter disappeared and left you and Hyunjae to your own, strange devices, Hyunjae took a pair of plastic chopsticks from the collection on the table, wiping the pair down, then handing them to you. You thanked him as you accepted the utensils from him and wiped down a soup spoon for yourself.

As the two of you began digging into your separate dishes—with Hyunjae dipping a spoon into your soup and with you reaching over to pluck a couple pieces of minced pork from his bowl—it seemed that a silent truce about the matter prior had come to settle.

Hyunjae suddenly cleared his throat, gesturing with the hand that wasn’t using his chopsticks. “So as I was saying earlier—I found Juyeonie somewhere—I can’t remember. And then we found Sunwoo. The poor kid was just wandering around like a lost sheep; he was looking for Changmin, so we all went searching for him. And then Younghoon caught up with us—how’d his callback go, by the way?”

You swallowed the bite you had in your mouth before answering. “He did great, as usual. But you’re not allowed to know more than that.”

He sent you a playfully unsatisfied deadpan. “Hmph.”

“Hmph, back at ya,” you teased. You arranged a perfect spoonful of noodles, soup and wonton, carefully blowing on the surface. “So where did you guys end up finding Changmin?”

"In a closet."

You lurched, furiously holding back your snort as you closed your mouth around your bite. Bad. Idea.

Hyunjae didn't bother hiding his giggles as he watched you struggle to chew and swallow your bite of food. "You okay over there?"

With a glare that needed no extended interpretation, you wrestled the food down your throat. "I hate you."

"Hehe, whatever you say," he sang. "He was technically in a dressing room, but same thing. He was miserable, dude. Looked so perturbed."

You scoffed. "Perturbed? What is this? The Fast and the Furious?"

"Hey! Leave my man Vin Diesel alone!"

You cocked a brow at him as you slurped noodles into your mouth. "No." And then you added, "There is literally no reason for there to be so many Fast and Furious movies."

He huffed at you. "You know, that's exactly what people say about all franchises. What would you say if somebody came after Star Wars or Marvel like that, hm?"

"I'd murder them, and you'd help me hide the bodies."

A beat passed. "Touché."

Your lip curled in mild satisfaction. "Okay, so why's the squirrel feeling so down in the dumps? Something about that ex of his?"

Hyunjae motioned vaguely with his free hand. "Ex dance partner. Apparently, it was this whole thing that happened in high school, but I didn't get all the details."

"Ah," you replied. "I'm sure a good cup of coffee can get him to perk up just fine."

"Agreed." Hyunjae's eyes went skyward as a thought occurred to him. You couldn't help but admire the definition in his jawline as he did so. "There was something weird that happened."

"Oh?"

He quirked his mouth to the side and a crease formed in his forehead. "Yeah… we were talking about your play, right? And I was agreeing with Changmin that the whole thing was my favorite because you wrote it—"

Oh. You nodded your head indulgently, expression set in a way that seemed like you were incredibly invested in what he was saying. In reality though, your insides were flaring and you could feel the sweat dripping down the back of your neck.

"—and they just looked at each other? Like that thing you and I do when we know exactly what the other person is thinking, but I didn't get it." Hyunjae wrinkled his nose, reaching for his water. "Wondered what that was about."

You averted your eyes to your bowl of soup, trying to get ahold of yourself. "Yeah," you laughed, and you hoped it didn't sound as nervous as you thought it did, "I have no idea what that's about."

He simply shrugged then. "It's probably just something stupid," Hyunjae mused, then chuckled. "Just my friends for you. Silly geese."

You cleared your throat. "Yeah…silly geese, for sure."

And you were going to have a talk with those silly geese.

EPISODE TWO: LET'S ROCK 'N' ROLL

THIS was not your first rodeo, and it certainly would not be your last. It was approximately two weeks later, the Saturday at the caboose of Spring Break, that you found yourself standing in one of the first few rows of nosebleeds with your hair pulled up and out of your face and a packet copy of your script in hand. The entire acting cast sat in a sort of half circle mass on the stage with their own copies of the script. Today was Script Read-Through Day—as well as an intermittent fitting day.

Thanks to the efforts of your fellow workaholic, drama nerd classmate Kim Hongjoong, a handful of costumes for the entire play had been completed over the length of Spring Break. You'd asked your cast to find time over finals week and Spring Break to get a quick fitting done by Hongjoong and his team, and luckily, all of that had gone smoothly.

Now, it was your turn to lean in.

"Let's get down to business, everyone!" You said with a clap of your hands to capture everyone's attention. Your eyes roamed over the faces of the people who were selected and your heart thundered in excitement. This—this was just one part of the rush you lived for. You didn't bother to suppress your grin. "Thanks for being on time and making it back here; I know I cut your break short, but we're on a very tight schedule. Can we start with going around and introducing ourselves with name, year, major, and role?"

The circlet of introductions began at Cha Eunwoo, the young man in your year who you selected for the role of Kai, the main male lead. Younghoon was cast as Ryan, Kai's best friend, and the guy who was marrying Choi Miyeon's character Lily. Minatozaki Sana was playing Alex, opposite Eunwoo. You had been surprised Younghoon hadn't auditioned specifically for the role of Kai, but you were content that he'd gone for Ryan instead—a simple chemistry reading with the four main leads the week prior had confirmed to you that you'd made all the right choices.

The main cast also included Jung Eunbi, Jung Yerin, Choi San, and Dong Sicheng, another close friend of yours. All in all, you had been incredibly lucky with the ending line up of cast members, and the supporting cast, too.

The read-through carried along smoothly—well, mostly.

“—why, of course, dear Prim! It mainly trickles down to a few… specific details—Yn,” said San as he abruptly broke out of character. Everyone’s heads shot up from their scripts, including yours, as you watched San’s hand air-gesture to an invisible beard on his face. “I’m getting one of those weird old man beards, right?”

There was a murmur of chuckles throughout the group, and you gave him a small smile. “Of course, you are. I asked Hongjoong for the perverted-looking ones, specifically.”

He grinned, nodding. “Nice!” He thought about it, “Wait…”

Younghoon coughed up a laugh. “Shall we continue?”

You inclined your head in affirmation. “Thanks, Hoon. Yes, let’s get back to it. We were at Uncle Lee’s line about ‘specific details’.”

San had been selected to play the character of Uncle Lee, the role quite literally taken from the original Shakespeare play yours was based upon: Much Ado About Nothing. Your thesis play, the biggest project you would ever conduct in your undergraduate years, was called Jasmine. The storyline centered around ex-somethings, Alex and Kai, who were Maid of Honor and Best Man to their best friends Lily and Ryan, respectively. Because of Alex and Kai’s troublesome past, they acted like they hated each other, and Lily schemed to make them finally see eye to eye—as a wedding gift to herself, of course. She also convinced a party of characters to get in on the plan with her. It had all been very fun for you to write, and you imagined that the actors up on this stage now would make it all the better when they brought it to life.

With the read-through completed, you began splitting up groups to begin chemistry exploration readings. While you ushered Sicheng, Eunwoo, Sana, and a couple of the key supporting cast members onto stage, everyone else hopped down and scattered into the nosebleeds so they could get to know their fellow cast members more intimately.

You stood in the second row of the audience in the smack middle, one arm crossed over your stomach and the other propping your script up for yourself. Younghoon settled on one of the seats next to you, a small smile appearing onto his face as he folded his leg over the other. "Why hello Miss Director."

You hummed good-naturedly. "Why hello Mister Groom. Not up to saying hello to your fellow cast members yet?" Usually he was good about introducing himself to everyone; he was quite the charmer.

"I told the lovebirds I would pay attention to their chemistry reading for pointers," he grinned, eyes sparkling beneath the dim lights. "Kai's nervous about it."

"Ah," you voiced, glancing back to the stage where Eunwoo and Sana began interacting with Sicheng and the others on stage. "Awful nice of you, Ryan. Where's your darling bride?"

He gave you a show of wistful glance as he turned his eyes toward the ceiling and propped his cheek against his fist. "My beloved? Well, she is working her magic for the wedding. I told her—" he leaned forward onto his knees then, gesturing with his hands, "—I told her, darling! This is your special day. Anything you want is what I want. You should have seen the smile on her face—a daisy in bloom, Miss Ln.”

An amused expression fixed upon your face, you tipped your imaginary hat to him. “I think you should go find your bride, sir, before her plans get out of hand.”

“Her plans could never get out of hand,” he dismissed with the flick of his wrist.

“So you’re a Yes Man now?” You replied, your brain racking for the one part in the script you had written with this exact dialogue.

You saw the recognition flicker in Younghoon’s eyes. “That’s what love does to you, my friend. It’s not the same as those tally marks you always draw in that notebook,” he replied swiftly, gesturing to your script like it was the notebook that Kai was supposed to keep. “Say, you’ve never told me what those were for.”

Pleased, you arched an eyebrow. “That’s not the line, Hoon.”

You saw the moment he snapped out of character. He smiled, the kind of Younghoon trademark everyone could recognize and become spellbound by. “I don’t have the entire script memorized yet, Yn-ie.”

“I bet you have at least half of it memorized.”

He opened his mouth to remark something when someone hollered, “Oy” from the stage. Both you and Younghoon turned your attention to Eunwoo, who had captured both of your attention. He threw his arms open wide with a teasing grin. “Ryan, you’re supposed to be watching my back, man!”

Sana shot him a scowl. “Hey, if you get a second in this duel, then I get one, too. Lily!”

“As much fun as dueling you and winning would be, Alex, I’m not stuck in ye old days—”

“Your savior has arrived!” Everyone’s heads whirled in the direction of the doors at the back of the auditorium. There was a good handful of people who began filing in through the doors, with a very familiar blond at the helm of all the madness. Reminiscent of that one fiery Elmo meme, your best friend had his arms raised with an ear-splitting grin on his face.

Kevin Moon, one of the people amongst the masses, rolled his eyes as he passed Hyunjae to enter the auditorium. “They’re rehearsing, man.”

Choi Chanhee was swift to follow his friend. “Yeah, Hyunjae,” he teased with a grin.

You fixed your friend with a confused look. “Uhm… Hyunjae, what’s happening?”

Hyunjae jogged down to where you were, leaving his army of… people? behind. “You said you needed volunteers to help you prepare set pieces, right? Well, I told you I’d recruit some people and—” He made a wide, sweeping gesture toward the large group of people now simply crowded at the back of the room, awaiting instructions. Kevin and Chanhee sent you boyish smiles as they waved in greeting. “—I did!”

The lightbulb went off in your head. You couldn’t believe you forgot. “Oh, my god. You actually listened.”

Hyunjae wrinkled his nose. “Hurtful.”

Younghoon laid his head against his arms over the back of his seat with a teasing gleam in his eyes. “Aw, how romantic.”

Hyunjae pointed to his lanky actor friend. “Is he in character?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Your head shot over to Younghoon just as his eyes met yours. The man shrugged with feigned innocence, standing up to greet Chanhee and Kevin as the other two began slowly leading the army of volunteers down to where you all were setting up. You wondered how on Earth that man’s partner could stand his impish antics.

Hyunjae slipped into the row with you with a wince. “Aish, I can never figure out when he’s in proper character or not.”

“He is,” you blurted. You knew for a fact that Younghoon hadn’t been in character, but Hyunjae didn’t need to know that. Ignorance was bliss, after all. “But that’s besides the point—Jaehyun—”

He flashed you a smile, bringing his hands up to make a jazz hands gesture. “Uh oh, that’s my name-name. I either did really well or screwed up big time.”

You laughed, pressing your free hand to your forehead. “You did really well—”

“Yes!” He cheered while punching the sky. He laughed, bumbling over to you with arms open wide to embrace you. You simply could not escape him. “You’re welcome.”

You lightly punched his chest. “I never said thank you. But thank you. I appreciate it a lot.”

He let you go, lightly patting your head. A warm wave of energy made your nerves feel fuzzy at their synapses. “You don’t have to thank me for doing this for you. By the way, YH!Yn is on her way over; she’s just coming back from her internship.”

Younghoon suddenly, out of nowhere, appeared in the row again. “I heard YH!Yn’s name,” he chirped with a smile that looked like a heart. He waved his phone screen around, as if you could actually read what was on his screen, “Yeah, she said she’s on her way now.”

You nearly melted. “Oh, really? She doesn’t have to if she’s uncomfortable, Hoon. I know big crowds make her anxious—”

“Ah, it’s all good,” he said. “She’s happy to do it, really. It’s not that big of a crowd here, and you’re her friend, Yn. She wants to help out.”

“Speaking of more friends helping out—” cut in Kevin with Chanhee in tow (where did all of them pop up from, goodness), “—Cobie just texted that he, Sangyeon, Juyeon, and JC!Yn are all on their way, too. What’s the plan for all the set pieces then, Yn?”

All eyes went to you, and you felt your heart swell with love, pride—quite literally every happy emotion there was. This whole project had plagued your every waking and unconscious thought for months now. The pressure for this production to be good… there were too many people watching you now. But as you led your friends and your supposed army of volunteers to the backstage area, you felt like there was no way you could fail.

Right?

— ✶

You were cleaning up for the night. Your throat ached and exhaustion wore at your bones from the very extensive day you and everyone else had. Almost the entire cast and volunteer and tech crew members had cleared out by now—your friends had all decided to get dinner together, and you would all head over once you had finished with your business here.

You hiked the strap of your bag over your shoulder with a haggard sigh as you passed beneath the ghost light hanging backstage that signaled that Jihoon was practically done for the night. You caught a glimpse of the man hustling down the corridor and you called out to him.

“Hey, Jihoon-ah! I was hoping I could catch you on your way out.”

Jihoon glanced up from his phone, his slight smile illuminated in the pale blue-light of his phone screen. “Ah, hey, Yn-ie. Good first rehearsal today?”

You fell into step with him as you both maneuvered the dark backstage corridors together. “Yeah, actually. I’m very proud of everyone’s progress so far. I was so stressed about being a couple weeks behind, but… I’m lucky I have such a good group of people here.”

He hummed, nodding. “Definitely. That one—your Hyunjae—”

Your heart stumbled. “Hyunjae? What about him?”

“It’s nothing, but I thought I should mention that I heard a couple girls gossiping earlier—”

You nearly stopped in your tracks, and you felt something crawl beneath your skin. “What’d they say?”

Jihoon glanced over at you, maybe a bit surprised at how sharp your tone was, but he continued on smoothly, “You know that I don’t like involving myself in that petty drama, right? But they were volunteering with the set pieces and stuff, and they were talking shit about him. The usual, like, cocky, arrogant bullshit. Something about wondering how you put up with him all the time.”

You felt your heart drop into the pit of your stomach. “Jesus,” you swore. “Who were they? I’ll deal with them—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said to you, firmly but not unkindly. The two of you had stopped in the middle of the corridor now, your voices hushed yet harsh still. “Hey, Yn—I took care of it. I don’t tolerate that shit in my theater, you hear? You have a lot on your plate, so I didn’t want you to worry, but I wanted to make sure you knew.”

Breathe, Yn. Your eyes shuddered for a moment. Hyunjae wasn’t always as well-mannered around other people as he was around you and his friends. He was like that for good reason—there were some things in one’s past that shaped who you would become, and unfortunately, that was one thing that you hadn’t been able to protect him from back then. So hearing something like this? You felt awful.

You finally gave Jihoon a nod. “Right, yeah… thanks Jihoon. Really.”

He nodded back. “Of course. Does that happen often?”

You rubbed the place between your eyes where an ache had formed. “No—I mean, he’s just got a front he puts on, but it’s not often. Maybe those girls just witnessed him on one of his bad days. He—” You shook your head.

“I get it; no need to explain it to me,” Jihoon murmured. He gently guided you toward the door out into the main auditorium where Hyunjae said he’d be waiting for you. “He’s a good kid.”

“I know. He’s great.” I love him.

When the two of you emerged into the darkened auditorium, the only light present was the one from Hyunjae’s phone. Your best friend glanced up from his screen, pocketing it away as he stood up to meet you. “Hey, everything okay?”

You and Jihoon exchanged glances. You met Hyunjae’s eyes, your smile small. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”

EPISODE THREE: WE’RE ALL JUST TRYING TO KEEP THE STAGE LIGHTS ON

IT was Monday evening when you determined that you had reached the point in time where everything would only escalate from here. There was something about seeing the backstage crowded with techies that made everything seem ten times more real. Your day had begun an hour or two earlier than the actors’ as you came in to meet Jihoon and Bang Chan about set pieces and creative direction. When your actors had come in, rehearsal commenced by working through the first act of the script and creating a deeper understanding of motivations and purpose.

On Saturday, along with the chemistry explorations, there was also a moment where you had to sit everyone down and give them a better understanding of what this project even came from. (There was a real inspiration to the story, but there was no way you could expose yourself like that, especially in front of Hyunjae.) There had been yet another run through of the script, with some of your actors switching up the way they played their parts just slightly. That same experimentation would continue today.

You were in the box with Chan and a couple of his underclassmen peers as the few of you were discussing the matter of spotlights and the like. It was early in the rehearsal process, but it definitely killed to be early.

You heard a slight commotion as the doors at the back of the auditorium opened.

“You got it covered in here?” You asked Chan, already one foot out of the tech box.

Chan flashed you a dimpled smile and a thumb’s up, and you were on your way out and toward the sounds of newcomers. You could already make out the figures of your friends Park Jihyo and Wen Junhui from where you were running up to them.

“YN!” Jihyo squealed as she rushed to come bury you in a hug.

“Oh my god, thanks for coming, you guys,” you gushed, crushing yourself to her.

Jun scurried over, wrapping his limbs around the two of you, as well. The two of them had quite literally insisted on coming to this rehearsal as your sanity check, which you deeply appreciated. Well that, and the fact that Jihyo was helping you manage the finances for this project, as well as any sponsors who came through to support the play. You had never been good with that stuff, but luckily, your econ-business-major friend was. (Jun was always there for moral support; him being versed in acting also helped, too, with directing when you couldn’t.)

The three of you immediately got to work, and you were finally able to return to your own actors as the lot of you worked through the first couple of scenes of act one.

“What do you suggest we talk about?” Eunwoo asked from stage left where he and Younghoon lingered with their scripts in hand. They were standing opposite the stage from Miyeon and Sana, who were supposed to walk onto the stage from the right like walking into a restaurant. The main focus of the scene was supposed to be Miyeon and Sana, but because Younghoon and Eunwoo were still onstage, they had to act like they were actually doing something even if their microphones wouldn’t be activated.

Younghoon gave a shrug and an easygoing smile. “What do you think Kai and Ryan talk about?”

“Kai feels like the kind of pompous jerk who speaks only in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Sylvia Plath.”

“That could be an interesting dynamic,” Jun chimed in.

You lifted a shoulder in agreement. “I say ‘yes’. Let’s just see what this looks like—Eunwoo, play that; Younghoon, play the exact opposite.”

Younghoon sputtered a laugh, but he saluted, understanding your directions (somehow… it was probably because you had worked with him for a long time over the course of both of your academic careers). “Aye-aye.”

You made a waving motion toward stage right where Miyeon and Sana were poking their heads out from behind the curtains. “Ready? Action.”

It turned out that the overly smart version of Kai was not what the scene needed. After a couple of new directions to Eunwoo about this little thing, you eventually settled on a nice in-between that reminded you awfully of a certain someone…

Lo and behold, you heard the doors at the back of the auditorium open up once more. You didn’t turn your attention away from the scene playing out before you, but you had an inkling of who had entered the sphere of the dramatic.

It wasn’t until the brunch scene had finished, you pursed your lips, nodding. “I like that.”

“I like it, too,” Jihyo said, paired with a nod from Jun.

You flipped through your script, asking for the actors taking part in the next scene—the bar scene—to come to the stage. “Uhm, let’s see… I need all of the main cast, barring Kai and Alex, to the stage. I also need Bartender 1 to come out, as well.” You waved your hand around toward the middle of the stage. “Make a little cult circle or something—yes, Younghoon, you have to stand next to Miyeon, silly goose.”

It was now that you finally turned around to confirm your prediction of who had joined the crowd. Just a few rows up from where you and your friends were sat three eager faces. Presently, it was Hyunjae, Eric, and his girlfriend, the former of which greeted you by raising up what looked like an iced caramel macchiato. God bless.

You hustled up to where they were, making grabby hands at the frost drink. “Thank you,” you sighed, accepting the drink and straw from him.

“Aye! Hyunjae!” Younghoon hollered from the stage. “Where’s my drink?”

Hyunjae cupped his hands around his mouth. “The kid has it!”

“I’m not a kid,” Eric sulked as he attempted to cross his arms over his chest while also not spilling the iced americano he was in possession of.

“That’s right!” EC!Yn mused, then added, “You’re my baby.”

Hyunjae wrinkled his nose at the lovey-dovey young lovers. “Oh, now that was awful, EC!Yn,” he groaned. He nudged your elbow from where you stood next to his seat. “Wasn’t that gross?”

Your brain was filled with caramel and caffeine. “Leave them be, Jae. At least they have someone to be gross with.”

Hyunjae mocked a face of offense, and Eric and his girlfriend slipped past you two in youthful giggles to go deliver Younghoon’s drink to him down at the bottom stage. When the two of you were left alone, Hyunjae pressed his cheek against his fist as he peered up at you. “How’s today been so far?”

You finished your sip, swallowing down the sugary, caffeinated goodness. “It’s been alright so far. I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Well,” he sighed, “I knew you were probably going hours without water, so I thought I’d at least bring you something pleasant.”

You sat down on the floor beside his aisle seat, silently offering him a sip of the drink he had treated you to. “You know me too well. And what do you mean? You did bring me something pleasant.”

Hyunjae took a ginger sip of the drink then pushed the cup back toward you. He grinned, flipping a lock of imaginary hair behind his shoulder. “Ah, you mean me—”

“I meant the kids,” you teased as you smiled around your straw with a look that was hardly innocent.

He deadpanned at you. “Never letting my head stay in the clouds ever, huh, Miss Ln?”

“Someone has to keep you humble.”

A soft laugh fell from his lips as he shook his head, then pressed his lips to his knuckles. “Well I guess if it's gotta be anybody, it should be you. Then again, that Chanhee keeps me on my toes, too."

"Weren't you the one who said he had no ass first?"

He let out a snort. "I only speak the truth."

"That you do," you agreed.

Hyunjae flicked his phone screen on for a second to catch the time and grunted. "Ugh, I have to go meet with my group members for a project in Public Infrastructure."

Your lips curled downward. "It's literally the first day of the quarter—you have a project already?"

He huffed sharply out of his mouth, sending one of his longer bits of bangs flying upward. "That's what I'm saying. Professor is insane this quarter, especially for putting me in this group. He said he picked our groups for us because we 'don't always get to choose in the real world'." He made a face. "Somebody has hurt that man, and we are paying for it. Pretty sure the people in my group don't even like me."

Your chest ached at that, and you leaned your chin onto his arm rest while he settled his head against the back of his chair. "I'm sorry, Jae. I know group projects are hard with strangers, but maybe they'll be cool with you? Are you just a little anxious maybe?"

"Dunno," he mumbled, picking at a stray thread on the red seat. He raked a hand through his hair, shifting. "I'm just dreading it, I guess. I just have that feeling y'know?"

"Yeah, I get that." You bumped your hand against his, mustering up an encouraging smile. "You're gonna be okay, Jae. I believe in you."

Hyunjae collected himself enough to smile back. "I can always count on you, Yn."

"Of course," you said, as easy as breathing air. You exhaled, "What are best friends for?"

— ✶

You found yourself seated in the darkness of the auditorium seats, the ghost light of the stage your only company. The ghost light was a single bulb that hung from mid stage in order to prevent any mishaps or accidents from happening when one had to stumble about in the darkness of the theater. It was a single part of theater superstition, as well as a sign that Jihoon and Chan had gone on their way for the night, leaving you to lock up. You'd been given charge of empty theaters before, and frankly, the peace and quiet was something you needed.

The time was nearing nine o'clock though, and your stomach growled at the thought of going back to your warm townhouse shelter for some pity ramen.

You finally shut the lid of your laptop, slipping it into your bag so you could stretch your aching limbs. You popped a couple joints as you did, then reached for your drained cup of iced caramel macchiato.

The rest of rehearsal had gone reasonably well. You were making progress, and that was the important part. Eric and his girlfriend had left a little before Hyunjae had in order to go get dinner together. Hyunjae had understandably been reluctant to leave, but he basically convinced you to let him call you while he made his way over to his project meet up location. You were directing as he did, but he didn't seem to mind and listened quietly with the occasional humorous comment.

You hoped he was doing okay.

Just as you slung your bag over your shoulder, typing out a fast text to Hyunjae to ask about how it went, your ears picked up the faint sound of creaking wood.

You froze, your head whipping around the very empty theater for the sound.

You heard it again—it was the slow, haunting creeeak, like someone was taking a deliberately drawn-out step. The hand around your phone tightened as you turned your gaze to the stage. The ghost light hung eerily in the now-quiet hall, its amber light creating a circle of light beneath it like a beacon for creatures of the night.

Creeeak… creeeak…

"Jihoon?" You called out. "Chan? Is that you?"

The creaking stopped; a shiver crawled down your spine.

"Is someone there?"

When you were met with silence, you pressed a hand to your forehead, speed-walking up the aisle of the theater and out into the lobby. Swiftly locking all the doors behind you as you made your exit, you figured you were probably just hearing things.

As you deposited your empty cup into the trash bin just outside the theater doors, you received a reply from Hyunjae. The performance hall door thunked closed after you twisted the lock mechanism into place.

With no more than a glance at the dark windows, you turned on your heel and made a beeline for the bus stop.

EPISODE FOUR: IT'S ALWAYS THE DARK AND STORMY NIGHTS

FRIDAY night brought an onslaught of the sky's wrath in the form of a storm. Rehearsal had progressed decently, and while you did appreciate how hard everyone was working, you had to remind yourself that you couldn’t rush the process if you wanted a phenomenal end product. You just needed to have faith in the people you were working with.

Nearly everyone had gone home by now, barring yourself, Jihoon, Chan, and a couple of undergrads they were keeping around to show them the ropes. You were in the backstage area packing up your things to head out for the night. You could hear the voices of your peers echoing slightly through the bowels of the theater, but none of them were too near to your location.

The hairs on the back of your neck suddenly stood up as you reached for a page of script cues that one of the techies had left behind on a stool.

You straightened, your eyes scanning the backstage area. All the lights were on tonight since Jihoon and Chan were still here. The ghost light was not your only companion tonight, and yet…

There had been a feeling creeping up on you this past week… something unsettling like you were being watched. Perhaps it wasn’t you specifically being watched—it was more so that you were never truly alone when you knew no one else was here with you. There was something bothering you about the shadows of the theater lately, and they had almost never been anything but comforting.

You had to visibly suppress your soul from jumping out of your skin when you heard that goddamn wooden creaking sound.

“Yn-ie?”

Your heart did about five cartwheels and a barrel leap as you whirled around to find Chan coming in from the other side of the curtain. He noticed your jumpiness and concern fell over his features. “Hey, you good?”

You usually weren’t so much of a scaredy cat, dear god. You let out a laugh, though it sounded more nervous than you liked. “Yeah—no, yeah, I’m fine. Just a little antsy, is all.” Yeah, that’s it. You slung the strap of your bag over your shoulder and walked over to Chan to bump fists with him in greeting. “You and the others wrapping up?”

Chan’s eyes swept over you and his mouth quirked into an expression that told you he didn’t believe your “I’m fine” bit at all. But he was never one to pry where he believed to be crossing a line. “Not really, actually,” he sighed, cupping the back of his neck above the headset hanging there, as the two of you moved back into the main auditorium together. “We just realized that some of the speakers have been left on for the past week. They seem to keep coming on even though we turn them off; just outdated tech, I guess. But we’re trying to see if we can fix them before considering getting new ones.”

The hammering in your heart subsided for a moment as your brows pinched together and your brain switched into work-mode. “Really? Okay, well, let me know if I can do anything to help—that is weird.”

You eventually said goodnight to everyone left in the performing arts hall as you let yourself out through the front doors. The rain seemed to have subsided from earlier, and the night was left with dark cumulus clouds looming above your head, and rain-soaked streets that smelled heavily of metal and petrichor. A cold, biting wind swept past your face and nipped at your extremities as you pulled your jacket around you tighter.

The walk to the bus stop wasn’t an awfully long one, but…

You stopped.

You swore you just heard a clattering sound from just behind you. Your attention went to a collection of trash cans sitting only a few meters behind you. When no animal revealed itself to be the source of the noise, you clutched your small canister of mace into your fist.

A tingling sensation crawled down your spine, and you turned on your heel to start walking faster toward the bus stop.

There weren’t many street lights posted in this area of campus, but if you could just get—

“YN!”

You nearly screamed when someone grabbed you by the shoulder, and you lifted the can of mace up in between you and the person.

“Shit, Yn. It’s just me!” Hyunjae slapped his palm over yours and shoved the nozzle of the mace can down and out of his vision. He wrestled your body to a stop, anchoring you to reality. “Holy shit, honey. Shhh, calm down. It’s just me.”

You furiously inhaled and exhaled, your chest rising and falling as you pressed a hand to your sternum. “Lee Hyunjae, what is wrong with you?” You growled. Had it been him this whole time?

Hyunjae dared a cheeky smile. “Well, I just saw you from down the street and I thought you saw me, but you kept walking. I guessed you were just in your head tonight, so I thought it’d be fun to surprise you.”

“You don’t grab a girl in the middle of a darkened, abandoned street and yell in her ear to surprise her.” Your eyes were hard as you reprimanded him; he was your best friend, yes, but you nearly had a heart attack right then. Your nerves were so on-edge that you just couldn’t joke with him at this moment.

He winced then. “Ah, when you put it like that…” He pressed his lips together, eyes taking in your tense form. There was something else in your face other than annoyance at his stupidity—something that troubled him. His voice grew soft, his touch even softer, as his hand cupped the back of your shoulder in a warm hold. “Hey, everything okay? I’m really sorry for doing that; it was stupid of me.”

You huffed a sigh and avoided his eyes. “This isn’t the first time I thought someone was watching me,” you confessed lowly, so not even the wind could hear you.

Hyunjae’s eyes widened when you said that, and he was swift to wrap an arm around your shoulders and gather you against him. His gaze surveyed your surroundings and the shadows seemed to dance in his view; his breath hitched. “Let’s get you home,” he murmured then, “I’m parked nearby.”

EPISODE FIVE: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

THE next day, Jihyo, Jun, Jacob, and Kevin were seated deep into the nosebleeds within the dim areas of the theater. Straight ahead, you and Hyunjae stood in the first few rows of seats as the actors were doing a run-through of the first act of the play. Hyunjae simply sat in the seat next to you, but you were doing your director thing. It wasn’t out of the ordinary at all to see you two so close, but something had shifted overnight from the last time all of them had seen you and he interact.

“Remind me again why you guys are here so early?” Jihyo’s question was directed toward Jacob and Kevin as she sipped on her morning cup of coffee. Everyone in the row was armed with their own cup of caffeinated brew, too; that was simply what being awake at nine on a Saturday morning called for.

Kevin peered at the other two from around Jacob. “His girlfriend and Chanhee are grocery shopping.”

Jun snorted. “Are they roommates? Why’s Chanhee grocery shopping with JC!Yn? Sounds a bit random.”

“They’re with her roommate and Changmin, too,” Jacob replied with a joking roll of his eyes. “Kevin’s just petty that they’ve never thought to extend the invitation to us.”

“Hey! You always hint at wanting to join them, too. It’s not just me, good sir.”

“I asked once, and when she said no, I never asked again—”

“—he’d only say that because he’s been scorned by love,” Younghoon lamented from the stage, his arm braced along the back of Miyeon’s folding chair. Props were still being finalized between a couple options, but Jun had found a bunch of folding chairs in a closet that you could use for the bar scene. Everyone’s attention moved away from invitation-less friends to friends playing pretend. He made a dramatic gesture, clutching his heart, then straightening with a laugh as he teased his friend who wasn’t in the scene. “I still think it’s stupid that he and Alex never worked out.”

Eunbi’s eyebrows flew up to her hairline as her hand, holding a water bottle that would later be replaced with a drink glass, froze in mid-air. “I’m sorry? This is news to me. Since when did Kai and Alex even have a chance at ‘working out’?”

Miyeon let out a delighted gasp. “Oh, where to begin?”

Yerin piped in with a lazier gesture with her water bottle. “They weren’t always sworn enemies, y'know. Once upon a time, the ‘lovebirds’ were actually lovebirds,” she chuckled at her own joke—or, her character’s joke.

Younghoon explained, "Their parents pretty much pitted them against each other since the end of middle school. They used to be friends, actually, and they were top of their class in practically everything. Except…"

"Academic League?" Eunbi guessed with her brows twisted. "I remember hearing about something like that."

"Yeah, I mean," Miyeon added, "something happened in junior year and it's been like that since."

"What happened in junior year?—"

Jihyo watched the performance with narrowed eyes, her body leaned forward onto her knees. "This sounds awfully familiar."

The three boys turned their heads her way. "What do you mean?"

She shook her head, eyes fluttering. She made a face and cocked her head to the side in thought. "Okay, maybe it's not exactly like what I'm… Jun, you remember when Yn told us about—you know?"

"That she almost confessed to Hyunjae? Ow! I'm sorry!" Jun yelped as Jihyo slapped his shoulder, hard.

Jacob and Kevin exchanged wide-eyed glances. "She almost confessed to Hyunjae? When?"

Jihyo sent Jun another hard glare, to which he sheepishly raised his hands in surrender, before replying, "Yn said offhandedly once that in junior year of high school, she was almost going to confess her feelings to Hyunjae, but then suddenly decided not to."

Kevin leaned his chin onto his fist. "Huh…"

"I don't know how I didn't even notice this before when I read through the script," Jihyo thought aloud. "Alex and Kai are Yn and Hyunjae—just…with a different ending."

All four heads turned to face forward once more, except, their attention zeroed in on you and Hyunjae. YH!Yn had appeared beside you, most likely updating you on the progress of the massive prop project she was working on for the play. You listened to her report intently as Hyunjae sat next to you, his head leaned onto your shoulder as he played some game on his phone. It was far too soft, far too—there was no way you based this all off of your own experience with Hyunjae, right?

In fact, it was possible.

As YH!Yn let you know that she would have to buy a few more PVC pipes from the hardware store, you assured her that she would be reimbursed for those expenses.

“—I know how busy you are—”

YH!Yn smiled sweetly as she cut you off, “Oh, no worries at all! I’m happy to help, as Hoon said before. Plus, this is a lot more fun than my internship; feels like a little creative project I get to nerd out on.”

You grinned at that sentiment. “Ah, I totally get that. Well, I won’t keep you from it any longer. Thanks again.”

YH!Yn gave a brief goodbye, then stood up to head back out to the backstage area where she was putting together the portable fountain she was building (you had given her a list of possible “show-stopping” prop ideas you had and she had picked the fountain). As she left, you watched as she passed by the bottom stage to catch Younghoon’s hand. Something like yearning ached in your chest. One day…

The mass weighing on your opposite shoulder stirred as he let out a noise of surprise. “Huh?”

You glanced over at him as best you could, then flashed Younghoon a thumb’s up to signal him that you were paying attention now. “Huh what?”

Hyunjae sat up straight, his nose scrunched, eyes pinned to his phone screen. “Didn’t you have a friend named Ellie in like, high school?”

Your lips curled into a slight frown at the name; it definitely rang a bell. “I did, what about her?” You asked. The sounds of the dialogue happening on stage faded to glorified background noise as you leaned over to peer at Hyunjae’s phone screen. There, he had a new text thread pulled up with an unknown number introducing herself as Ellie, a “classmate of his from high school”. Not only were you frowning, but your forehead creased, too. It had been ages since you had last been in contact with her. The two of you had been the best of friends before you drifted apart.

To be honest, you had no idea how the two of you drifted apart so easily when you’d been so close to her, but you ended up getting closer to Hyunjae anyway. You chalked it up to differences in interests, but maybe now you could get some answers. Well, that was depending on why she was texting Hyunjae.

“She texted me,” he said, holding the screen between you two. “Recognize the number?”

You could barely remember your own number. Shaking your head, you lifted your gaze back up to the stage where your actors had already moved through most of the scene. “Nope. Might be a new one since it’s been so long. Wonder how she got your phone number.”

Hyunjae blew out a puff of air as he laughed—you saw him begin to type out a response from the corner of your eye. “How do people not get my number at this point,” he grumbled under his breath.

— ✶

It wasn’t until you were seated in the booth of Junhui’s favorite Chinese restaurant on the Ave that he and Jihyo ambushed you with The Question™.

“So when were you going to tell us that the play was about you and Hyunjae?”

Your movements paused, then resumed so you could properly settle into your seat. "At least let me order first."

To their credit, your friends withheld from further questioning until the waiter had come by to take the table's order. When she had gone and was out of earshot, Jihyo pounced, whipping her head over to you and placing a hand on the table between you. You realized suddenly that you were trapped between her and the wall.

"Spill."

Your eyes widened a smidge, intimidated. "How did you guys figure it out? I mean, it's not that obvious, is it?"

Jun shook his head. "Nah, not really. Ji was just on five shots of espresso this morning apparently."

Jihyo sent him a pointed look. "I was not on five shots of espresso…" She murmured, "It was two."

"Okay, five shots, two shots—" Jihyo flapped her hands around as she angled her body toward you. "It was the bar scene and they were all talking about Alex and Kai. And I thought that the bit about junior year sounded really familiar."

"I can't believe you didn't confess to him back then," Jun feigned a disproving shake of his head while clicking his tongue.

You leaned your face against the palm of your hand with an unpretty fwump. "Guys, the play is basically centered around the idea: what if I had confessed to Hyunjae and it went wrong?"

"Just ten times more dramatic," Jun pointed out.

"And," Jihyo added, "their roles are switched. Kai's the one who confesses to Alex in the play, and it's Alex's ex who makes a grand showing at the wedding festivities to cause trouble. Yn doesn't have an ex."

"Uncalled for," you grunted.

Jihyo gave a charmingly beautiful smile that could make all the world fall at her feet. "You love me."

"You're lucky you're cute."

Jun sipped on his water. "I'm right here."

You and Jihyo bursted into giggles, the sound like twinkling bells. Jun sighed softly, but you saw the corners of his lips lift up into a small smile. For a moment, you had forgotten what the topic of this conversation was.

You sobered slightly, your hands reaching for your water glass to take a gulp, then nurse it between your palms. "Have you ever heard the saying that we always try to recreate our first heartbreak in order to rewrite how it ends?"

Jihyo and Jun quieted. They peered at you with eyes that could peer straight into your soul if you let them. That was why you couldn't exactly meet their eyes as you tried to articulate your thoughts behind writing this whole mess. "I mean," you pursed your lips, "it wasn't a heartbreak; it was never a heartbreak. My heart hadn't been broken because how could it be broken if I never even let it. You know?"

"That's not how a lot of hearts are broken, Yn," Jun murmured with a sincere depth to his dark brown eyes. There was something so soulful about them. "Most are broken in silence."

You huffed slightly. "That was a great line."

"I know—"

"Ahem," Jihyo said, reigning the both of you drama geeks back into the realm of real talk. She leaned over to wrap her arms around you, her head resting on top of your own. "So you wrote this… to conquer your fears? To comprehend your feelings?"

"To imagine, to wish, to dream," you added. It was quite sad, really. You couldn't quite think of writing anything else when the time had come to start drafting your thesis. "We write what we know best."

"I thought Hyunjae was basically there throughout this whole process," Jun said, his elbows resting on top of the table as he gestured vaguely. "How has he not figured out that Alex is him?"

You gave a shrug. You couldn't imagine how he hadn't yet figured it out, but it wasn't exactly the most obvious thing. You would soon rather go missing than Hyunjae ever figuring out the truth behind the play's inspiration. Whenever he asked you, it was always "I was so inspired by Kenneth Branuagh and Emma Thompson's rendition of the play" and "I wanted to spice up an old, timeless play and give it a kick of Today". He believed that you were writing a play based solely upon the themes of childhood manipulation, academic pressure, and miscommunication. And you were—just not only those things.

Your thesis would have never been accepted if you'd only presented a skeleton of a play about your nonexistent love life. All of the additions and embellishments to the story had come easy as you pieced together the plotline. But the two main characters had never changed.

With that now settled, the food arrived at your table. (What a brilliantly timed, cosmic coincidence!) You and your friends thought it best to move onto other topics of conversation. Somehow, you had reached the topic of your recent week of weird feelings. Not just about Hyunjae, but about the strange feeling of constantly not being alone. You'd even explained the entire debacle from last night, with Hyunjae scaring you then rushing you home.

Jihyo and Jun both replied appropriately: "Girl, what the fuck?"

You brushed it off with a nonchalance that was not convincing. (Then again, you were never an actress yourself.)

The rest of dinner progressed relatively smoothly, and when the check had come and gone, you wanted to offer a mint to your friends.

"—shit," you swore as you dug around in your bag. When your hand came up empty-handed, you brushed that same hand through your hair. "I left my Altoids in the theater."

Jihyo finished signing her bill, tucking her card away. "Oh? Well, let's go get them."

Jun bobbed his head as he shouldered his coat on. "Yeah, it's no problem, Yn-ie."

"Really? You guys don't have to; they're just min—"

"Nonsense!" Jihyo chirped. She stood up and out of the booth, giving you the space to slip out after her. She then linked your arm with hers, then hooked her other with Jun's. "Power in numbers, my love."

You could do nothing but agree—wholeheartedly. The way your heart rate slowed when she insisted that she and Jun would accompany you showed just how grateful you were. You probably wouldn't have even gone to retrieve them tonight, but waited until Monday instead. They were just mints, after all, but you were appreciative nonetheless. Even for a small item, they would be by your side.

The journey back to the theater was a brief one as Jun drove the three of you back to the performing arts center and pulled into the space right by the stairs up to the hall. You recalled leaving them on one of the dressing room tables in the back corridors, so you used your student ID to buzz into the back hallway of the performing arts building.

You and your friends' voices hushed as you all crept into the dark, abandoned building. When the door closed behind you all, you turned your phone flashlight on to guide your way toward the dressing rooms.

"It should be in one of these rooms," you told your friends as you entered the hallway of doors. You located a familiar number and pushed into the room, swiftly retrieving the teal-colored metal box of minty sweets on the vanity table.

The door closed softly when you slipped out.

"Hey, how's YH!Yn's fountain project coming along?" Jun asked as the three of you began to make your way back toward the back door.

"Oh yeah!" Jihyo perked up. "How's that going? She's so badass for that."

"Isn't she?" You gushed. "Do you guys wanna see her progress?"

There was an obvious answer to that, and the three of you made a hard one hundred eighty degree turn, swerving back down the corridor from which you had just come from. Your conspiratorial giggles echoed within the rafters and bowels of the theater, as if you were pixies from A Midsummer Night's Dream, frolicking through the forest in which they dwelled.

When you reached the vicinity of the backstage area, your footsteps faltered.

It was still dark.

You frowned, slowly stepping into the backstage area.

"Yn? What's wrong?"

Jun said it before you could, "Huh. The ghost light's not on."

Indeed, the bulb that was supposed to be on when no light was, was pitch black. A cool breeze drifted down your spine, making the hairs on the back of your neck and your arms stand up.

"Could Jihoon or Chan have forgotten on their way out?"

"You know Jihoon's not one to forget."

You drifted away from your friends as you slowly stepped into the backstage area. Your flashlight shone toward the walls first as you aimed to make your way toward the lights panel. It would be an easy fix—

Your heart dropped clean into the pit of your stomach.

The light of your flashlight illuminated the absolute chaos.

Setting and backdrop pieces that had been painted by volunteers, articles of clothing collected for people's costumes, scripts left behind torn out of their staples—all of it was flung about and scattered over the backstage floor. It was like a tornado had swept through the area, and you knew your friends were seeing what you were seeing now.

You held your breath for so long you were pretty sure you were imagining the hands shaking you.

Somebody had come in and took their rage out on your play. But who, and more importantly, why?

EPISODE SIX: PHANTOM OF THE PERFORMING ARTS HALL

"WHAT'S up with the ghost light anyway?"

There was a group of you gathered by the stage of the performing arts hall, the house lights having been turned on after you'd made a call to Jihoon and campus security. Along with Jihoon and campus security, however, Hyunjae, Juyeon, Eric, and Younghoon had also appeared. You had shot Hyunjae a text about what had happened and he'd rushed over with his friends—you felt awful about pulling them away from whatever they were doing, but Hyunjae didn't say anything about it.

You sat on the edge of the stage next to Jihyo with Jun and Hyunjae standing by you both on the floor of the auditorium. Well, Hyunjae stood in front of you and you leaned your chin on top of his beanie-covered head while the lot of you waited for whatever security pulled up from the limited amount of cameras. Jihoon had disappeared somewhere to make a call—you would hear from him, too, soon.

The question had been posed by Juyeon, who sat next to Eric and Younghoon in the first row of nosebleeds.

Jun dragged a hand down the side of his face, then rubbed his mouth. "Ah, it's uhm, old theater superstition," he replied. "Usually, backstage crew leaves the ghost light on so anybody coming in doesn't trip on anything or accidentally get hurt or, y'know—break anything."

"It couldn't have just gone out because of the power then?" Hyunjae asked.

Younghoon shook his head. "Usually it runs on the same electricity that every other light runs on. I've never been in a theater where the ghost light just randomly goes out, and there weren't any power outages today either."

"The problem isn't even about the ghost light," you said. Everyone's eyes flickered over to you and Hyunjae. Hyunjae patted one of the legs you had on either side of his upper body as a means of consolation or comfort. "It's about the props and costumes. We're just lucky that they were just scattered and not properly damaged. We would've been set back another week at least."

Eric perked up. "Maybe it's the ghost of Shakespeare haunting the hall!"

A snort fell from your lips as you mused, "Shakespeare in the park?"

Hyunjae cleared his throat as he prepared his best rendition of the Iron Man line: "Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?"

As the two of you shared a giggle and fistbump, the other remaining members of your party sent you strange, confused looks.

Younghoon gave an eye roll. "Oh dear god, you two really are meant for each other."

You caught Jun and Jihyo whip their heads toward you, but before anything else could be said, Jihoon was hustling back into the auditorium from the lobby doors in the back. He brushed the hair out of his eyes as he jogged over to where all of you were gathered, those signature bags under his eyes prominently featured. Oh, you definitely felt terrible.

"What'd they say, Jihoon?" Jihyo asked first.

Jihoon tucked his hands into his pockets as he joined the loose cult circle. "Security found that the locks on the front of the hall were picked open, so they wouldn't have gotten a record of somebody's card being used. Cams picked up someone dressed in black, but they knew where the camera would have gotten a clear shot of them. But because there wasn't anything officially damaged, there isn't much legal action we can take."

Juyeon offered quietly, "Breaking and entering."

Jihoon gestured to him. "Right. Breaking and entering, but that's about it." He pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes. "It wasn't just a prank or whatever. At least, I don't think so. What do you think, Yn?"

You swallowed, straightening slightly. "I don't think so either. I mean, I don't think any drunk pranksters would go through the trouble of picking open a lock. Even a sober one."

"Maybe a spiteful classmate," Jun suggested with a meager shrug. "Some people are ruthless."

"If there isn't much we can do, or much security is willing to do," you muttered, "then we should call it a night. We just have to take pains to lock everything up every rehearsal now."

Jihoon nodded sharply. "Right. Pains, but necessary ones."

"I'm sorry this happened to you," Eric frowned. A murmur of agreement echoed from everyone else in the group.

You pursed your lips. "It's okay, I—it's not okay, obviously, but I'm glad no one's hard work was properly destroyed. That's all that matters." Even if your nerves were a little shaken. Who could have done this?

The remainder of your time spent in the theater was picking everything up and putting them in their rightful places. By the time the group of you had finished locking everything up, the night had slipped away into its proper depths. Everyone was ready to get the hell out of here and go home to their beds, and Jihoon was certain to show you the ghost light being turned and sustaining for at least a couple minutes before the two of you were the last out.

Juyeon, Eric, Younghoon, and Jihoon said their goodnights and goodbyes, already departing their separate ways to go home. You lifted your head up to find where Jihyo and Jun were waiting for you when you saw Hyunjae standing closer to the entryway of the hall. He gave you a sleepy smile, opening up his arms for you to walk right into.

"Tired?" He chuckled, the sound creating a soft vibration in his chest as you shoved your face into his pretty-smelling sweater.

"Mm," you grunted. "You didn't go home with Younghoon?"

"Nah. I wanna go home with you."

In any other context, in any other situation, that would have meant something completely different. You swallowed, wrapping your arms around his frame. With a nod, you screwed your eyes shut and swept away those wistful thoughts. "Okay, fine."

You didn't know why you kept doing this to yourself. But he was your best friend, and tonight was… a lot. A friendly sleepover was something you needed—at least, that was what you were telling yourself.

— ✶

Being the oh-so courteous guest he was (especially since he practically invited himself over), Hyunjae let you take the shower first. You shared a townhouse a bus ride away from the university campus with two others whom you knew from rooming with them your first year of college. You had lucked out with the random roommate assignments that year, and the three of you weren't the closest nor best of friends, but you found great housemates in each other, which was just as valuable.

You had your own room and ensuite up on the topmost floor, so you and Hyunjae had a bit of privacy and wouldn't bother your friends below. You had finished with your shower a bit ago, so you were settled on your bed, flipping through emails and ensuring no important ones had ended up in the spam folder.

When you heard the door open from the bathroom, you glanced up, but returned your gaze back to this one email about a sponsorship that needed to be added to the playbill later.

"I accidentally grabbed the wrong shirt."

You hummed in question as you quickly forwarded the email to Jihyo, then looked up. A laugh sputtered out of your mouth as you took in Hyunjae taking up the space of your doorway. He was in a pair of his own sweatpants that he often left here, but instead of one of his t-shirts, he must have accidentally grabbed one of your tops. It was a Hello Kitty one you'd found in the back of your closet awhile ago, and fit you pretty nicely, so it looked strained on Hyunjae.

You flopped onto the bed, rolling around in your own laughter. "Jae!—your tits don't fit in that, honey."

Hyunjae's mouth stretched into a grin, his tongue darting out for a second. His dirty blond hair, damp and curly, hung slightly in his eyes over his forehead. "Oh, shut up."

To your detriment (you deserved this, you really did), he then smiled (more like, smirked) as he casually lifted the top over his head.

Your eyes widened just as your entire body lit up on fire. "Hey, woah there! Dude!" You jokingly covered your eyes—your whole face—with your hands as he flicked the shirt off, straightened it out, then stalked over to your closet to swap tops.

Hyunjae rolled his eyes as he ripped another shirt from a hanger and came to take a seat on the edge of the bed. "You've seen me shirtless before, Yn. Calm down."

No. How could you just calm down—? It was nearly impossible when you saw the way the muscles in his back rippled as he yanked the new, white T-shirt over his head. With muted sadness, you watched as the toned muscle on his stomach disappeared beneath the fabric.

Damn.

"You're drooling."

Your eyes darted up to where he was grinning down at his phone screen now, only looking at you from his periphery where you were still lying on the bed.

You huffed, rising onto your knees and hoping your embarrassment wasn't plain as day. But you subtly swiped your thumb across your lower lip to make sure you weren't actually drooling. This is your best friend, Yn; control yourself. "Loser."

"Child."

"Chicken."

"Weirdo."

"Nerd!" You shot back, making him laugh as you draped yourself over his back and tucked his head under your chin. His wet, cold hair tickled your skin, but it was a welcome sensation.

You peered down at his phone with him from your perch. "Who's that?" You asked as he opened up a new text notification from a new number.

You were scanning the message the sender had texted while Hyunjae huffed. "Another of your suitors, milady," he drawled sarcastically.

The message said something like "would she be interested?", the "she" referring to you.

Hyunjae typed out: In you? Probably not.

You let out a gasp, hitting him playfully on the (muscle of his) shoulder. "Hyunjae!"

He snickered, exiting out of the text chain, then deleting the number. "What? I'm just being honest. I feel like every dude who's interested in you goes through me to ask and it's so lame."

You absentmindedly watched as he opened up Instagram and started brainlessly doom-scrolling. "Maybe it's 'cause you've so clearly friendzoned me," you muttered incoherently under your breath.

"Huh? What was that?"

"Maybe it's 'cause they see you as the gatekeeper," you amended, leaving him to climb off your bed and step into the bathroom to prepare your toothbrush for use.

You could hear the incredulity in his voice. "Gatekeeper? Pfft, no way. They're all just cowards; they don't deserve you if they can't ask you out to your face." After a second, he added, "Hey, I don't gatekeep you!"

You made a face at yourself in the mirror as you brushed your teeth. "Uh-huh."

"That's not reassuring, Yn-ie."

You poked your head out of the bathroom and made eye contact with where he had rearranged his position so he sat up against the headboard. "I was just agreeing with you," you teased, then retreated back into the bathroom to finish up your night routine.

"No, you weren't, you menace."

You flicked the lights in the bathroom and bedroom off and rolled onto the bed next to him. The two of you laid facing each other in the dark, your bodies kept to your own sides of the bed and blanket. You both were propped onto your sides, one arm tucked beneath your head.

"I don't gatekeep you," he said into the silence, his voice lowering to match the volume of darkness. He poked your cheek with a finger, as if he could stamp the declaration there.

You gave a small smile. "Okay, Jae." A thought suddenly occurred to you as you broke your stare-down to twist around and grab your phone from the nightstand to see if Jihyo and Jun had said something to the group chat. "Oh, by the way, did you ever figure out what Ellie wanted?"

Hyunjae shifted so he was on his back now, one hand still braced behind his head and the other resting on his stomach—but his eyes still watched you. "Something about a random high school project from senior year. She couldn't find the file for it and wanted to draw inspiration from it or something."

"I didn't know you had a project with her in senior year," you said offhandedly, shutting your phone off and replacing it onto the nightstand. You sighed, slipping further beneath the covers and closer to Hyunjae.

He drew you close, tucking you beneath his chin this time. "Yeah, it wasn't really important. Nothing to worry about."

"I wasn't worrying."

You could already feel yourself drifting off into dreamland, the exhaustion in your eyes making your eyelids close like valance curtains at the very front, lowering to mask the backstage magic from the audience. Except, the magic were your thoughts rocketing into the realm of the fictional. For a split second, you thought about somebody being in your position with your best friend one day. Would it hurt to think about then as much as it did now?

You couldn't exactly think about that future right now. Hyunjae, you liked to think, was far from letting anyone new into his carefully-maintained walls. He had been hurt by people before, and you'd be damned if you didn't protect him from that ever happening again.

You thought Hyunjae had fallen asleep until you felt his thumb brush against the back of your shoulder. "When have I ever friend-zoned you?"

Your heart stuttered in your chest for a moment, but it wasn't enough to wake you up completely. As you drifted off fully, you convinced yourself that you had imagined him saying that. You were both awfully tired, anyway.

EPISODE SEVEN: OH SHIT, WAS MY MIC ON?

TWO whirlwind weeks had flown by. You could hardly even soak in the moments of this last undergraduate project before it all began to blur together. The only ways you were able to properly tell time were crossing out calendar dates and—

“Oh my god, oh my god! Get it out, get it out!”

You, along with everyone present in the main auditorium of the performing arts hall, came to a screeching halt as a flurry of squeals erupted from somewhere deep backstage. You and the conductor of the pit orchestra exchanged concerned expressions before you were making a beeline for the fastest access point backstage. Younghoon and Eunwoo were swift to accompany you, and though you had a sinking feeling you knew what this was, you held your grimace for when you confirmed your suspicions.

Over the past couple of weeks, the feeling of being watched had not faded from the back of your mind. You tried to adjust rehearsal schedules so that they were a little earlier in the evening, but people had lives and you simply could not inconvenience them based on someone trying to scare you. Plus, with the spring season flying in swiftly, the sun retired a lot later, which gave you some peace of mind, at least.

But over that same time, the person meddling with your show had ceased to cease. One day it was sky blue fabric strewn all over the main stage; another day it was peacock feathers left in the projection box; there were cables missing from tech, headsets changed to radio channels. Somebody was clearly pulling out all the stops to ensure that this theater and production was full of old theater superstitions and bad luck, either to scare you or the people you were working with (or both), and frankly—it was working. To an extent.

You stormed into the back corridor of the performing arts hall, the supporting cast and tech crew all sprinkled about the hallway, anxiously watching you and your friends pass by them toward one of the larger dressing rooms.

“What is going on?” You demanded as you entered the dressing room. There was a small gathering of people gawking at something—the dressing room vanity mirror. The breath left your lungs at the sight.

The surface of the mirror was vandalized, the infamous word “Macbeth” scrawled all over its reflective plane in red lipstick. Some of the product had begun to melt from the heat of the lightbulbs around the mirror and dripped down the mirror like blood. It would have been a comical prank if this wasn’t a theater. You felt a stiff, cool breeze run across your skin.

Somebody was really trying to fuck you over, huh.

You shoved down a swallow. “Somebody get me some Windex,” you croaked. When nobody moved, you repeated yourself, forcing a bit more strength into your voice.

Chan appeared in the room, his own eyes pinned to the subject matter upon the mirror, as he handed you a bottle of Windex and an old rag.

You snatched it out of his hands with a “thank you”, then marched up to the mirror. With shaky hands, you began scrubbing away at the word written over and over on the mirror. You heard Chan corral everyone out of the dressing room and back to their original activities. All your senses had dulled by now, and you felt Younghoon gently pry the rag from your hands so he could reach the spaces that you couldn’t.

“Who is doing this?” You voiced to the now sparsely populated dressing room. You sat in one of the dressing room chairs with your hand pressed to your forehead with Younghoon, Chan, and Jihoon present. Eunwoo had gone out to calm people down, but you knew that this was going to draw a line for some people. It was a known superstition not to utter the name of the notorious Scottish Play in a theater, and it had just been named about a couple dozen times on the mirror behind you.

Your friends could offer no suggestions.

Your pride took an even bigger hit when you decided to cut the remainder of rehearsal for the day; you were certain there were at least a handful of people who were scandalized by what just happened.

“Are you okay, though?” Younghoon asked you for the third time as the two of you watched people leave the performing arts hall from the base of the nosebleeds. “I know that you’re not usually so… swayed by superstition.”

You could only give a stiff shrug. “I’m not,” you agreed, “but this is going to be the biggest project and production of my undergrad career. I don’t—I can’t take any chances.” You smoothed a hand over one half of your face. “God, I’m just tired, Hoon. I’m so stressed, and cutting rehearsal short today—we’re gonna be set back another day—”

“Hey,” he soothed, grasping you by the shoulders so you would look him in the eye. He offered a kind smile, “You’re doing great, Yn. I can’t imagine the pressure you’re under right now for this to go perfectly, but I think you have to have a little faith in all of us, including yourself. One rehearsal is not going to make a difference in the long run. We’ve got a lot of talented, hard-working people who will sleep this mishap off and come right back to make up for lost time.”

He squeezed your shoulder. “And whoever’s been doing this? They’ll get their due karma.”

You let his words soak into your brain. You needed this; you needed those words said to you. With a nod, you and Younghoon deigned to head out with everyone else. Jihoon and Chan were swift to shut the theater down for the evening, as well.

As you and Younghoon stepped out into the early evening, the sky still glowed a buttery yellow swirled in purpley-blue. There was another breeze wafting by, but instead of the chills you got before, it was slightly warmer and made you inhale deeply. The air out here made your lungs less constricted, you realized, and maybe you’d been stuck in that theater for too long lately. This would be good for you, as well as everyone else.

“I think me and some of the cast are gonna get together to go over some scenes at the grove,” said Younghoon as he peered down at his phone screen. “Wanna come with?”

You brushed a strand of hair from your face, a decision coming to surface. “Nah, I think I’m gonna take a walk. Get some fresh air.”

Younghoon passed you a brilliant-sort of smile that gleamed in the golden hour light. “Alrighty, director. Sounds good. Have a good night then, Yn-ie.”

“Yeah, you too. Thanks for today, Hoon.”

You and Younghoon parted ways there, and while he traveled down the stairs toward east campus, you traveled northward toward the quad. The quad, a place most known for the cherry blossom trees that bloomed in the early spring, was no doubt full of people taking late afternoon strolls in the temperate spring climate. It was the perfect environment for you to relax and let some of the stress and pressure fade from your pulsing temples.

There were no longer cherry blossom flowers blooming upon the dark branches, but healthy, dark green leaves. Even if they were shades of pink, they were still beautiful nonetheless.

After making a full loop around the quad lawn’s perimeter, you made a detour down one of the side pathways that were lined in trees that yawned toward its partner on the other side of the pathway. It was noticeably quieter and less populated here, and for once, you actually didn’t feel like you were being watched.

You were walking for only a few minutes in the serenity when you saw a pair of people standing in a clearing of trees just to your two o'clock. You stopped, a familiar blond haired best friend catching your eyes.

"What the fuck is your problem?" Was what you heard from Hyunjae, and you almost marched right up to them to defend him.

That was, until you saw the girl's face.

You hadn't recognized her at first because she had her back facing you and she had changed her hair. But it wasn't difficult to recognize your old friend, Ellie, the one who Hyunjae said had contacted her. Your eyebrows furrowed in utter confusion. Why were they together right now? You thought Hyunjae had said weeks ago that she was just trying to get ahold of an old project they'd done together in high school.

Ellie placed her hands on her hips, her facial expression stony and unreadable. "Can you think rationally for a second and listen to me all the way through? That's what you agreed to when you said you'd meet me."

Huh?

You pressed your side against the nearest tree trunk, your heart thundering your eardrums.

When Hyunjae said nothing, Ellie continued, exhaling sharply, "Okay. As I was saying earlier, do you even know what the play's about? …No. Look at you; can't you see? You don't even know what it's really about."

"Of course, I know what it's about," Hyunjae sneered. "It's about how academic pressure and miscommunication can ruin relationships—"

Ellie laughed, the sound mirthful, and yet carried an air of malice that made your skin crawl. This wasn't the Ellie you remembered… "That's funny, oh my god! You really don't know what it's about."

"What are you going on about?"

"I think you should ask her," she said with a smile. You peered around the tree, feeling utterly stupid like one of those characters from a teen drama eavesdropping on their lover and their nemesis. "Ask her, Hyunjae. I'm sure she'll tell you what it's really about when you mention that I told you she st—"

"Yn?"

Oh, for fuck's sake. You nearly jumped out of your skin at the sound of Jihyo's voice from behind you. You quickly grabbed her and dragged her down behind the tree trunk next to you. When she sent you a look that told you she thought you were completely deranged, you pressed a finger to your lips.

She indulged you, thank god, and followed your lead as you crept around the tree trunk again.

"It's cute that you have so much trust in her," was what you heard Ellie say next.

Jihyo squinted as she tried to identify the girl. "Who the fuck…?"

You kept your eyes glued to the pair before you, but muttered to Jihyo quickly, "That's Ellie. Old friend of mine from high school, but we drifted apart. Haven't talked to her since."

"She and Hyunjae are friends?"

"No, I have no clue what's going on." Yet, your stomach twisted and churned and you felt bile crawl up the length of your throat.

A muscle feathered in Hyunjae's jaw, but he couldn't seem to get himself to say something.

Ellie looked upon him pitifully. "One day, she'll drop you, too—when she finds someone better. That's what she did to me, y'know? I don't know why she went to you, though. You are awful. I've heard all the stories."

You saw red.

This time, Jihyo had to grab a fist full of your shirt and yank you down next to her to prevent you from clawing Ellie's vocal chords clean out of her throat. Because you would have.

Anything—you would've done anything to never see the flash of shame, hurt, and anger across Hyunjae's face when she said that. It was like she'd slapped him, clean and hard. Your chest ached as you watched his hand tighten into a fist at his side.

"You don't know anything about me," he said icily.

And it was over all too soon. Ellie said something to Hyunjae, but it was too quiet to hear. When Ellie left her own way, Hyunjae stalked off in a different direction, leaving you and Jihyo where the two of you remained hunched behind the tree.

You made to get up, but Jihyo pulled you back down again. "Ji, I have to go make sure he's okay—"

"I know you do," she told you firmly while keeping you seated down next to her. "But you're not in the right headspace, and neither is he. You need to breathe, especially after today and whatever the hell that was."

When you sent her a questionable look, she explained, "I bumped into Sana on my way to the performing arts center and she told me what happened. Then Younghoon told me you went on a walk and I just tracked your phone to here."

Your jaw dropped. "You tracked my—"

"Shhh," she shushed you, pressing a finger against your lips. "That's besides the point! Are you okay, Yn? For real."

You leaned back onto your palms, a frown coming up to your lips. "Everyone keeps asking me that lately."

"It's a valid question."

That was fair, you supposed. You released a sigh. "I mean… not really? I'm just stressed, and I don't even know what to think or how to comprehend what we just witnessed." Your brain was buzzing with every one of Ellie's biting words. What had she meant by all of that? She sounded so bitter, so malicious… What had happened?

Jihyo pressed her lips together, sitting down properly onto the grass. "What was that? Did you and Ellie end on bad terms?"

Your brows creased together and you absentmindedly scratched your jaw. "No," you murmured. "Not that I remember. It was just like we drifted apart over time. At least, that's how I remember it. I dunno."

You blew out another breath of air. Ellie and you had both been really good at what you did—theater, writing, all of the works. You two were a dynamic duo; if people now claimed you were a prodigy, then Ellie was your twin. In a way, you could probably say that your characters from the play you wrote almost mimicked yours and Ellie's creative abilities and technical prowess, but just in different spheres. While the love story was based upon you and Hyunjae, the foundation had been from you and Ellie.

But it eventually faded, that friendship. You figured that was just how things worked, as unfortunate as it was. You both moved on, and you found Hyunjae.

You relayed all of this to Jihyo, your friend listening to your words intently.

"—but I've never carried any ill will toward her," you reiterated at the end of your spiel. "I truly haven't heard from her since and she hasn't reached out either. I don't know what could have caused her to tell Hyunjae all of that."

Jihyo pressed her mouth to her knuckles as a thoughtful frown graced her porcelain features. "Hm, yeah. It's curious, for sure. What were they saying before I got here?"

You gnawed on your top lip. "She kept insisting that he didn't know what the play was really about and that he should ask me."

"Huh."

"I know right." You carded a hand through your hair. "I'm screwed."

"Only if he actually works up the guts to ask," she countered. "Though, I think you should beat him to it."

You cocked your head to the side in question. "What do you mean?"

She lifted her shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. "Y'know—like you have to confront him about meeting with Ellie. You can't keep this from him; I know you."

Yeah, she was right. It would eat at you if you let that guilt swirl in your stomach. Plus, all of those things Ellie had said to him… you hoped he was okay. Dear god, you hoped he was okay.

(But the question now, you supposed, was who would bring it up first?)

EPISODE EIGHT: EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT SHE'S THE BO-BO-BO-BOSS

FUNNY story: it took a week before you and Hyunjae could even have a proper conversation, in person.

With the quarter well underway, there was little to no time to stop and smell the flowers anymore. This had now become a race toward graduation, meaning that everyone was focused on their own problems. The “pranks” had dulled down, but they were, by no means, completely gone. There were always the occasional cord missing, or that dreaded creaking noise in the wings on late nights.

You’d grown used to it by this point, and so had your peers, luckily. The conversation between Ellie and Hyunjae sat in the back of your mind at all times. You always knew it was there, but you had so many things to worry about. Act two was just about wrapping up though, and so, play progress was chugging along well on schedule.

You really did have nothing to worry about—maybe it had all been jitters. Maybe it would all just finally go smoothly.

Friday night rehearsal was a little slower tonight since everyone had been here since noon. You’d all practically spent the entire day together, having lunch first, then diving into proper rehearsal. It had been a rehearsal full of laughs and a good time, and by the time Hyunjae stepped foot into the performing arts hall, you felt that you could take on anything. Even the conversation that needed to take place.

“Hey, you said you wanted to talk to me about something?” He said as the two of you stepped into the privacy of the sound booth, the tails of laughter still lingering in the air from the scene he had come into. You were currently rehearsing the directions of the first scene of act three, where Younghoon’s character was going through a full-on “groom-zilla” mode while Eunwoo’s character couldn’t stop talking about Sana’s character. It had been a full one-eighty character swap between the two friends.

You licked your lips, trying to press your smile down a little. “Oh, yeah. I was taking a walk, like, a week ago—and I saw you and Ellie talking.” You figured it would be better to just air it out right away; there was no need to beat around the bush. You lowered yourself onto the edge of one of the tables inside the booth, the air turning stuffy from the insulation inside the box. Crossing your arms loosely over your front, you watched as Hyunjae’s mood shifted, his body shuffling as he sought a comfortable position against the wall by the door.

Hyunjae cleared his throat, head ducking as his hand cupped the back of his neck. “Oh, really? You saw that?”

“I heard what she said to you—”

His head whipped up at that.

“—and I can’t believe she said that,” you said, those dagger-sharp words echoing in your mind from what Ellie had said to him about his own character. “Are you… are you okay?”

Hyunjae’s eyes widened a millimeter. “Am—am I okay?” He stammered.

“Yeah, I mean, she said that you were awful and it was…” You shook your head with a haggard sigh. “I’m sorry she said all that to you.”

“Thanks,” he exhaled, peering over at you through his eyelashes. He looked so small for once. “I—” He huffed air out from his nostrils, leaning his head back against the wall as he struggled to find the words he wanted to say. “Is that all you heard though?”

No, I also heard her insist you ask me what the play is about. You blinked, your own voice seemingly trapped in your throat. Why couldn’t you just own up to it?

But he must have taken your silence as you saying that you hadn’t heard anything else, so he gathered his wits to ask you, “Yn, what’s the play really about?”

The breath left your lungs. “You know what it’s about, Jae. You were there while I wrote it.” Please don’t make me say it. Please don’t make me say it. Because a part of you knew that if he pushed, you would give. You would tell him because… how could you not? If he wanted you to be honest with him, then… oh god, would you really? Would you risk this little secret of yours and ruin a friendship? Either way—it could go either way.

His tongue darted out for a moment as he carded a hand through his hair; he took a couple steps toward you. “I know, Yn. But—Ellie kept on insisting that I ask you what the real idea behind the play is. And she—and she,” he laughed, the sound disbelieving, “she said that you stole the idea from her, which is crazy! I know it’s crazy, because I watched you labor over this thing for months.”

She what? All thoughts except for one left your brain at that moment: why in the world would Ellie tell Hyunjae that you stole the idea for Jasmine from her? You didn’t remember ever seeing this kind of work from her before. “I didn’t steal anything from her.”

“I know,” he replied again, placating you. He now stood right in front of you, but your eyes raced back and forth about a mile a minute as you mentally went through the things you remember ever writing with her. You couldn’t remember; you couldn’t think. Why would she say that? “So I just wanted to ask,” he said slowly, his words drawn out as he leaned down slightly so you would look him in the eyes, “what is the play really about? The real meaning.”

There were pros and cons to telling him. On the one hand, you could spew the same surface-level bullshit that you usually did, but you had a feeling that one wouldn’t work this time. On the other hand, you could tell him—the truth. That was the worst pill to swallow. It could end in utter catastrophe or it could end in your wildest dreams. But what if, when he didn’t feel the same about you, had to let you down easy and your friendship would never be the same ever again? You couldn’t bear losing him, you just couldn’t. You loved Hyunjae…

“Yn, you’re scaring me,” he said with an anxious laugh.

You met his eyes then. “You don’t trust me?” You blurted before you could stop yourself. Those words, that tone… it sounded to you like he really was starting to believe what Ellie told him.

Something flashed across his face, and he was racing to defend himself. “What? No, of course I trust you. I just—I just want to know what the real meaning behind the play was about; that’s all!” And if you can’t tell me, then what else am I supposed to believe? “Yn, come on, honey—please—”

“It’s about you.”

All breath left him. You saw the way one hundred and one emotions flickered through his eyes; all of thoughts racing about at once as he tried to comprehend. “What? I don’t—I don’t understand.”

You balled your hands into fists in front of you as the frustration suddenly bubbled to the surface. “I wrote it about us, Hyunjae,” you told him. “Alex is based on you, Kai is based on me. I’ve been in love with you since junior year of high school, and that is what the true premise of the play is about.” Your hands were shaking now, gesturing between the two of you in stiff, constrained motions like the feeling of your chest’s range of movements at this time.

You watched it dawn on him, watched him swallow—hard. “Yn, I’m sorry—”

“Jaehyun.”

He shut up immediately.

You pressed your fingers to the space between your eyes. For a second, you swore you could feel tears tickle the insides of your eyes, and you blinked them away, inhaling deeply to get your body to calm the fuck down. Why were you crying? There was no reason to be crying right now. “Can you—” you stumbled over your words for once, “—can you give me some space. I can’t… I can’t think.”

He obliged you, backing up a few steps, and you said fuck it. “Hyunjae, I need space. Please.”

You thought you saw hurt flash across his face, but you just wanted to be out of his eyesight. You couldn’t bear to feel those soft, sympathetic eyes on you. You couldn’t bear the weight of his “I’m sorry I don’t feel the same” right now.

“Okay,” he said, though barely audible.

It took a minute, but he left and you were finally able to suck in a large gulp of air. You strode out of the sound box and realized that everyone on stage was either looking your way, or had quickly turned their heads to pretend they hadn’t just seen that silent argument take place through the sound box window.

Your face and neck were on fire, but you swallowed your pride and returned to your rightful place in the middle aisles of the floor seats. You picked up your script from where you’d abandoned it by your bag. “Right,” you said, your voice shaky until you cleared your throat. (Your hands were definitely still a bit wobbly, but that wasn’t your greatest concern right now.) “Where were we? Scene one, right?”

Everyone slowly began making their way back to their original positions, but Younghoon walked up to the bottom stage and lowered his voice to say, “Yn, we can take a break if you need one. Take five, then reconvene.”

He probably knew what just went down in the sound box. Yet, you found yourself shaking your head. “No, it’s fine,” you assured him, un-reassuringly. “I can do this, Hoon.”

He frowned at you then—those damn, soulful eyes—but nodded, respecting your decision. Like everyone else, he returned to the original position his character was in at the top of the scene.

I’m sorry, his voice seemed to echo in your ears. A part of you ached at the thought of that stark hurt on his face, but you were hurting, too. Why would you send him away like that?

You blinked, your head clearing. “Okay, everyone. Let’s see it.”

— ✶

A few hours later, you finally had everyone wrap up for the night.

“Thanks for all your hard work today!” You exclaimed as the actors and techies began swarming the stage to put props away. You climbed up to the stage, too, jumping onto one of the backdrops that Younghoon was wheeling backstage to help him direct it through the heavy folds of the backdrop curtain.

Younghoon shot you a smile from the other side of the prop. “Well, Miss Director, nice work today.”

You returned the expression wholeheartedly. “Thanks, man. The same goes to you; I appreciate all your hard work today. And that idea for the wedding sequence was absolutely brilliant.”

He chuckled at that, and the two of you worked together to slot the prop onto the cart with the rest of the ones that were just like it. A couple of stagehands then moved the assembly line along and rolled the cart down the hall to lock up in one of the dressing rooms. “I like to think I’ve been to enough weddings at this point to know how to spice them up.”

“Ah, that’s right,” you mused along with him as the two of you began walking down the backstage corridor to where you knew his partner was hard at work with that miraculous fountain. “I remember something about yours and YH!Yn’s first proper outing being to your cousin’s wedding?”

Younghoon threw his head back with a hearty chuckle at that. “Your memory serves you correctly then,” he confirmed. “Well, it wasn’t our first proper outing together. Technically, we met at an outing—”

“What do you think they were arguing about? It looked like they broke up or something.”

The line caught you off guard, and your footsteps faltered. Younghoon gave you a confused look, eyebrow arched. Your ears strained to eavesdrop on the conversation happening in one of the open dressing rooms you just passed by.

“No way that they were dating! … okay, I guess that would make sense why she put up with him all the time,” a second voice scoffed. “Maybe she finally got tired of his bullshit and cut him off.”

“That would make sense as to why he got out of the theater so fast. I went to their high school, and even after Hyunjae left, the year above me still talked about him—”

Your hand slammed against the doorframe of the dressing room, effectively making the two stagehands inside jump in surprise. They gaped at you with wide eyes, lips parted in shock as you addressed them with a carefully-made blank expression. “Let’s not go sticking our noses where they aren’t appreciated, yeah? Worry about yourselves, thanks.”

The two bowed their heads, apologies crawling from their mouths, and you turned back into the hallway where Younghoon was waiting for you.

You resumed your walk down the hall, and your friend casted you a side-long glance. “Thanks for standing up for him like you do,” he said to you. “I don’t know what happened today, but…”

“It doesn’t matter what happened today,” you said to Younghoon with a small exhale. You gave him a smile, even though you knew it wasn’t convincing. “I’ll always stand up for him.”

“Even when he doesn’t deserve it?” Younghoon joked with a laugh.

Your smile curled a little wider. “Even when he doesn’t deserve it.” In reality, you knew that he deserved to have someone stand up for him. Whether that be you, or Younghoon, or even Jihoon—you knew that everyone deserved to have someone watch their back when they weren’t around. You might have pushed him away earlier this evening, but that would never stop you from continuing to protect him. It was simple, really; you loved him.

EPISODE NINE: ARE DRAMA MAJORS ALWAYS SO DRAMATIC? WAIT, DON’T ANSWER THAT.

“I don’t understand why we couldn’t have done this in the grocery store like you guys always do,” Hyunjae grumbled as sounds of livelihood raged all around him: pots and pans clanged to the sizzle of food on the stove, the TV played some random American murder mystery show on low volume, and Hyunjae was sandwiched in between two others on his and Younghoon’s apartment couch.

Chanhee, who sat on the other side of Juyeon (who was on one side of Hyunjae), snorted. His nose was in his phone as he scrolled through Instagram, but didn’t look up as he replied, “As if we’d let you into Grocery Aisle Therapy. That’s exclusive admission.”

“That’s true,” Jacob chimed in from Hyunjae’s other side, as the man spooned a generous helping of Frosted Flakes into his mouth, “I tried.”

“And if even Jacob was denied entry,” Sangyeon mused from the kitchen as he turned off the stove and hood range, carrying over a bowl of the fried rice he had made for himself. Haknyeon skipped behind him with his own bowl and his cheeks were already full of the delicious food. Eric and Sunwoo were swift to follow their friend’s lead and raced into the kitchen to get a helping for themselves.

Changmin made a face from where he sat on the floor below Chanhee and Younghoon. “Not for lack of trying. You should’ve seen JC!Yn try to resist his goo-goo eyes. Bleh,” he gagged.

“I admire her tenacity then,” Hyunjae sniffed. “Not everyone can resist Jacob.”

Jacob beamed.

Kevin narrowed his eyes at Changmin. He sat just a few spaces away from the glasses-wearing menace, but carefully cross-legged and cradling a bowl of popcorn in his hands. “You say that when you literally pined after your girlfriend like an angsty teenager for three years.” He feigned a face of contemplation, then added, “Oh wait, you actually are an angsty teen—aye! Dad, Changmin hit me!”

“I am so sick of this family,” Sangyeon mumbled under his breath as he collapsed into the armchair adjacent to the sofa-sectional everyone else flocked upon. “Enough, both of you. Why were we all called here, again?”

Eric slid back into the living room on the polished wood floors in his socks, then perched atop the arm of Sangyeon’s armchair as he feasted upon his bowl of fried rice. He carefully lowered each spoonful of rice into his mouth so he wouldn’t dirty the fluffy cardigan he now wore. "Hyung's in trouble with his lady lover."

“Lady lover?” Sunwoo echoed with his face scrunched up like he just ate something sour. He had taken the spot between Kevin and Changmin to hopefully stop one from kicking the other again (hopefully).

"You're so judgmental."

"And you're—"

Sangyeon massaged the migraine pulsing in his temples away furiously with a clear grimace. "Shush, children. What did you do this time, Hyunjae?"

Hyunjae's jaw dropped, an image akin to one particular Pikachu meme. "Why am I immediately assumed to be the one at fault?"

"You summoned us all here," Haknyeon said with a shrug. "And Younghoon hyung said that it looked like you and Yn-ie suffered a break up in front of the entire main cast of Jasmine."

Hyunjae threw a displeased glance Younghoon's way; the tall man grinned sheepishly as if saying "what was I supposed to do—lie?" Hyunjae stared down at his lap, fidgeting with his fingers and the watch on his wrist. "It wasn't a break up…"

Kevin made a disapproving noise. "Oh, we know."

Hyunjae glared down at the top of Kevin's head. "Rude."

"Okay, so explain what happened," Juyeon prompted.

The man in question sucked in a breath. Where to begin? Someone muted the TV, so Hyunjae and Younghoon's apartment descended into a coat of silence. Everyone waited for Hyunjae's response.

Hyunjae decided that there was only one logical way to start. He began when he first received a text message from the elusive 'Ellie', your supposed best friend before him. He couldn't believe you had a soulmate other than him, but it only mattered that you two had found each other—not that that mattered—

He went through the entire spiel: Ellie had texted him about some project they worked on together in senior year of high school. He hadn't known why she would even care about something dumb they'd done in high school especially when she was a fourth year in college like the rest of you. But she had asked politely and he wasn't one to just dismiss someone when it was a simple, innocent request. However, when he had finished with this little task, he should have stopped there.

Their conversations eventually escalated from innocent "oh, you remember when…" to "if we meet, you have to agree to hear my side of the argument." He remembered her exact words: "You'll be very shocked to hear the truth" regarding your business with the play. He wanted to look out for you like you always did for him (and screw it, he was curious), so he obliged Ellie and met with her.

That had been one of many mistakes he made. The biggest mistake was what went down at the theater a couple of days ago. And now? He had just made you confess to him, he had broken your trust, and he didn't know how he was going to make it up to you.

(He had to admit though, that once he finally got space to think about what you said to him, there was something about the prospect of you being in love with him that gave his heart a lively kick-start—)

Chanhee reached over Juyeon's head and swatted Hyunjae's neck like there was a very large mosquito there. "You dumbass!"

Hyunjae yelped, his hand reaching up to rub the aching place furiously. "Ow!"

"Deserved," Kevin sang as he tossed a handful of popcorn into his mouth. "That was super not cool, man."

"You don't think I know that?" He rolled his eyes.

"Yes," everyone chorused together.

Cue his next set of eye rolls.

"Hyung," said Sunwoo as he shifted so he faced Hyunjae. His eyes squinted up at him, his curly bangs falling into his pupils as they usually did. "How could you not see that she was in love with you? You have to be blinder than a bat."

"You've been hanging out with SW!Yn too much," Changmin teased.

"Hey, don't bring her into this and taint her good name! Even she saw how perfectly enraptured Yn-ie is."

Changmin opened his mouth to make another unnecessary comment, but Sunwoo slapped a palm over his friend's mouth.

"I guess that leaves one question," said Juyeon, finally, after a long stretch of his silence.

"And what's that, Juyeonie?" Sangyeon asked.

Juyeon pursed his lips together in a slight pout. "What else? Are you in love with Yn, too, Hyunjae?"

Oh—

Hyunjae's thoughts careened to a stop when he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He maneuvered around on the couch cushion to retrieve the device, his heart pounding in anticipation—but that emotion was immediately swapped out with utter disdain.

His friends observed this flip with great interest. "Who—"

An indignant spark lit Hyunjae's dark irises as he furiously typed something to the sender and promptly blocked the number.

Jacob and Juyeon, who were able to peer over at Hyunjae's phone screen, both widened their eyes in scandal. Jacob grinned, lifting his hand to delicately hide his snickers. "Well that answers our question."

Hyunjae sulked, swiping through his contacts, then blocking Ellie's number, too. He should have done that so damn long ago.

"It was some guy asking if he knew if Yn was free in two weeks—"

"And she's not," Hyunjae grunted, shoving his phone back into his pocket, then standing up to go get Sangyeon's fried rice in the kitchen. "These fucking guys, man. Like, what the fuck am I gonna do? Hype you up to her? No way in hell—" He scoffed, slapping a spatula of rice into his bowl with a strength that the bowl, rice, and utensil didn't deserve.

He couldn't believe that one stupid, little thing the two of you had done in freshman year of college had led to this spam of dudes flooding his inbox for you. If he had half a mind, he would declare that you weren't on the market anymore and that you weren't even interested in seeing any… body…

The thought marinated in his head for a moment as he slowly chewed the fried rice. Why did he want you "off the market"? You were his best friend, but you weren't his to covet or shield or speak for. You weren't his.

You weren't… his.

"Oh my god, you can actually see the neurons firing in his brain for once."

Hyunjae plopped himself back into his original place on the couch. "I hate you guys."

"So you've realized that you're in love with her?" Younghoon asked exasperatedly, his hands splayed out on his legs like he was begging to the cosmos.

Hyunjae made a face and pretended that his heart wasn't palpitating and that a drop of sweat wasn't dripping down the back of his neck right now. "What? Of course not," he said through a mouthful of fried rice.

One could hear the collective exhale of disappointment all the way to your townhouse.

— ✶

It was Thursday evening when you found yourself walking out of the performing arts hall after yet another rehearsal, and coming face to face with the person who had become one of your greatest problems over the past month.

Your hand stopped in midair from which you were brushing the hair out of your face when you and a young woman made eye contact. She was seated on one of the benches facing the entryway of the performing arts hall, her attention lifting away from her phone and to you. The sky remained alight and streaked in its dazzling sunset colors, and yet, the sight of her made everything feel grayed.

She smiled at you. "Ah, you're done."

Something crawled beneath the surface of your skin. For a second, you thought it was disgust, but upon further thought, it was really something bittersweet. You swallowed, adjusting your hold on your bag strap. "Can I help you?"

"Do you remember me, Yn?"

"Of course, I do, Ellie." How could I forget you?

Ellie's smile shuddered and you suddenly couldn't read her face. It was strange seeing her four years into the future. You remembered catching glimpses of her in the hallways, her sweet smile and button nose, the freckles sprinkled across her cheekbones like kisses from the sun. "I guess that's one thing out of the way."

Her biting words to Hyunjae appeared in the forefront of your mind. "What you said to Hyunjae—"

"Was true," she cut in. "And based on the fact that he blocked me a few days ago, I'm guessing that something happened between you two." Her lips curled upward, "How does it feel to know he actually doubted you? If I'm being honest, it makes me fucking sing, Yn!" There was a shiver-inducing giddiness to her voice and you wondered if this was all a joke. It would be a cruel joke, but anything would be better than this.

Could she see the horror on your face? "Ellie, we were friends," you managed to say.

She pressed her lips together. "We were friends until you decided that we weren't."

"What are you talking about?" You threw back at her. "We drifted apart—"

"You abandoned me," she quipped. The smile was gone now, her mouth set into a taut line. "You left me to rot."

Your heart dropped into your stomach. About a million things flashed through your mind, but most of all, you came to a very fast epiphany: you'd always thought she was happy. "Ellie," you said, slowly, softly, "I'm sorry that you felt that way. Really, I am so sorry."

"I've made sure you feel that way."

"But you should have left Hyunjae out of this."

Ellie laughed and the sound was harsh. "This isn't about your stupid best friend, or whatever. This is about you and me. I can't believe you thought—how could you prefer him over me? Why did you stop talking to me, Yn?"

You were so confused. All this time, you had thought that yours and Ellie's friendship ended on a mutually neutral ground. You thought that you had just drifted away from one another from the eventuality of time. Was that not how she saw it this entire time?

The end of Ellie's question took on a raspy undertone, the gleam in her eyes less so that of anger, but the melancholy underneath. You wanted to make things right, but you didn't know what that was.

When you had yet to say anything except for letting the breeze waft past your face, she let out a scoff. It was a somewhat embarrassed sound, her eyes skittish. "You know that my parents always compared me to you. Constantly. You remember what you said to me?"

You swallowed. "'They can compare all they want, but you'll always be enough for me.'"

"I didn't want to bother you when we 'drifted apart', as you say," she continued on with a huff. "And then I saw you and Hyunjae, and the way you looked at him—god, I knew right away, Yn. And I was so bitter. Just so, so bitter." She shook her head. "I've been thinking about this for a long time."

Dear god, you hadn't known this whole time. You'd wished you had known. You didn't know what you might have done differently—maybe not have been so blind—but… what if you couldn't have saved that friendship? Was this always meant to happen in the grand scheme of the universe's stage?

You made your way toward her and she simply watched as you stopped a handful of paces away from her. “I didn’t mean to drift away from you or to make you feel like I was replacing you in any way.” For a moment, you were quiet, and you inhaled a deep breath to query, "What made you suddenly want to confront me after so long then?"

She peered up at you, a mixture of sadness and something sharper in the reflection of her irises. "You didn't have to keep getting better and showing off. I just got sick of living in your shadow when you weren't even there."

You bristled at that. “What else could I have done? I’m sorry you felt that way, really, but I had a lot of pressure on my shoulders, too. I wanted them to stop expecting more from me, but each time I did something right, they kept pushing for more. And I—”

“I just wanted my friend back!” She exclaimed.

The words died on your tongue, dissipating in the tense air between you two. The fight left you then, seeing the hard break in her expression, a sliver of the girl you remembered from so long ago. What happened to her? She’d been poisoned by whatever feelings were locked inside her, and you supposed that it was only inevitable that those same feelings would one day be unleashed. You wished she didn’t have to confront you this way. "So you thought lying to Hyunjae would have done the trick?" You finally murmured.

"You didn't figure out who's been messing around with your production all quarter?"

The question caught you off guard, but you were quick to catch on nonetheless. Your breath hitched as you stood there, stunned. "That was you?"

A nod.

"All of it?" Disbelief struck you clean across the face and you felt like you'd just been slapped. A new level of anger boiled in your blood; all of those nights you spent creeped out of your mind, the extra stress from all the superstitious bullshit—

"This is our last act," she said, her tongue darting out for a moment. "I don't want anything else from you after this."

You couldn’t believe she would go through all of this trouble—all for what? All to prove what? It was utterly childish, preposterous, dramatic. “Good,” you asserted, as firmly as you could muster, “I don’t want anything from you either.”

And there was a split-second where you saw a crack in her expression, truly. Before, when you’d seen that bit of melancholy seep through, it must have been purposeful. Perhaps it was to draw some kind of sympathy or guilt from you, but after she admitted to doing all of that crap to you and your peers, you weren’t about to lean into that, old friend be damned. Of course you felt bad that she had felt like that for so long. You pitied her. But it didn’t mean you had to forgive her; not for this.

Maybe this was it though: all she wanted from you was for you to feel as helpless as she had, but you simply couldn’t feel that way. All that you could feel was cold fury.

“Fine,” she cleared her throat, straightening. “I hope you learned your lesson.”

You let out a scoff, the sound making her eyelids shudder. Your teeth grated against each other as you closed yours and her “final act”: “And I hope you’ve learned yours. I hope I never see you again.”

You turned brusquely on your heel to walk away before you did anything rash. But a sudden thought appeared on the tip of your tongue, and you found yourself stopping. When you glanced back at her, she was watching you leave with an emotion you couldn’t quite detect. The two of you had been such good friends, and… you really wished you could understand her position better. “I just don’t understand why you went through all this trouble. If you had just—texted me, called me—” You made a gesture with your hand then let the limb fall limply to your side, “You could’ve just said hi.”

You left her behind after that, purposefully this time. Did people like Ellie deserve their chance at redemption? Maybe when the dust had settled, but for now, you hoped she received her due karma.

EPISODE TEN: GOOGLE, DEFINE DRAMATIC IRONY.

THEY said that a terrible dress rehearsal marked a production for a brilliant opening night. As Michael, the wine salesman dude, forgot his fifth line of the rehearsal; as the tech staff in the box forgot their second lighting cue of the night; and as Hongjoong continued to have to fuss over San’s Uncle™ beard for the third time, you were trying very hard to keep that saying in mind.

Weeks had passed—you didn’t know how many, maybe five, maybe two, maybe an entire year—but that entire time, you didn’t feel Ellie’s presence haunting you anymore, nor had you heard from Hyunjae yet. He was busy with his architectural capstone project, anyway, and you felt that you both needed to take this time to yourselves to focus on more important things. (You thought this as if your friendship with him didn’t mean the absolute fucking world, but you were pretty sure you were seconds away from setting this building on fire so—)

The dreaded Tech Week had descended upon the cast and crew of Jasmine. Not only that, but it was also Finals Week, meaning everyone in this room was just as stressed out as they usually were, except, five times more. It made for a great rehearsal, clearly.

“—remember that as soon as she says ‘fine!’, you have to be out here to pull the rug out from beneath her feet,” you instructed the stagehand, who looked a millisecond away from passing out right there on the stage.

When they nodded their understanding, you turned away with a migraine pounding away at your temples. You just had to get through one more act, and you could call it a night. Opening night was literally in four days, and you were trying not to yearn after your best friend and feel guilty about pushing him away—and then there was the guilt that had slowly bubbled up over the past few weeks from what happened with Ellie. Maybe it had been all your fault—

“Yn, your eye is twitching.”

“Huh?” You perked up from where you were seemingly glaring a hole in the ground of the nosebleeds. Younghoon shot you an amused, yet mildly concerned look from within the winds of the stage. “Oh, sorry. Can we take it from the top of act three, please? One more act, people; let’s hang in there.”

That latter bit was more for you.

By the end of rehearsal, everyone was just as happy as you were to head home. Today was Monday, the beginning of the week, and yet you wished it was Saturday already—graduation. Now that was the light at the end of the tunnel.

Younghoon held the door open for you as the two of you exited out the front doors of the performing arts hall. When you murmured a thank you to him, he fell into step with you easily. The walk to the bus station seemed impossibly long with the ache in your legs.

Younghoon released a low-sounding whistle. “So…”

“Hm?”

“Are you coming to Cobie’s surprise birthday party tomorrow? I know it’s finals week and tech week, but it’d be nice to have that little break beforehand.”

Oh, right. Hyunjae’s friend Jacob was having his birthday party—well, it wasn’t him who was hosting, but his girlfriend. She had organized all of it, and had even had the good will to extend an invitation to you. At the time, you couldn’t find it in you to say no, despite the knowledge of your busy month at the forefront of your mind. But even now, you found it hard to really formulate a concrete response. The uneasiness was creeping up on you again.

“I dunno, Hoon…” you said lowly with a wince. “Maybe I should just catch up on sleep, y’know? And plus, I don’t want my feelings for Hyunjae to ruin the mood or anything. I’m kind of a Debby Downer right now,” you laughed pitifully.

Younghoon’s mouth curved into a frown. “Yn, you’re not a downer. You’re stressed and you have a lot of burden on your shoulders, but… I think something carefree will be good for you, no? Maybe you should at least stop by and say hello to people—take advantage of Hyunjae having to be in charge of providing free booze for everyone.”

You glanced up at him, meeting his kind eyes. “I’ll think about it,” you promised. You were probably too tired to think logically about going anywhere else but your bed at this moment.

Younghoon nodded. “Okay.”

As the two of you carried on down the stairs now, the bus stop in sight, you gathered your wits about you. “How is… how is he, by the way?” You asked.

Younghoon peered at you with something akin to gentleness and sympathy. “He’s… I think he’s okay.” He squinted one eye as he looked up toward the night sky, the thoughts meandering about his head. “You just have to give him some time. You know how stubborn he is,” he joked.

You could only give a shallow nod at that.

Not one to let a friend leave him so upset, he nudged you with the back of his hand. “Hey, don’t worry too much about him, okay? You have a lot on your plate right now, and you deserve to have your head in the game, okay? It’s all gonna be okay.”

“You always have such a way with words,” you laughed lightly as you wiped a tear from your eye—whether it was from emotions or just being plain exhausted, you couldn’t tell.

He smiled again then. “If I wrote down these words, I’d be stealing your job, Miss Director.”

Your laugh was a little brighter at that note. “Okay, Actor Extraordinaire. We’ll see about that.”

The two of you shared a laugh, and when you reached the bus stop, Younghoon waited until the bus came by to pick you up. It wasn’t yet deep night, but he was a gentleman all the same. You climbed up into the bus, scanning your transportation card as you went, then sat by a window to wave to Younghoon.

When the bus pulled away from the curb and away into the night, Younghoon pulled out his phone to the text chain with his partner. He’d come to a decision then, and as hungry as he was, he figured he could channel this annoyance into confronting one certain man by the name of Lee Jaehyun.

younghoon’s phone: love, i think i’m going to be late for dinner

beloved mastermind: i’ll save u a seat &lt;;3

— ✶

The lights beneath the swimming pool glowed an ethereal shade of fluorescent blue. It reminded Younghoon of a mermaid's cove with the way the light waves reflected off the ceilings of the building to create scales on the rafters. The emptiness of the indoor swimming pool was offset by the thrashing of flesh against water as a lone swimmer stole lap after lap across the great blue.

Younghoon lowered himself onto a steel bleacher and watched Hyunjae bolt from one end of the pool to the next, hardly taking the time to breathe air, like he breathed chlorine and water instead. The familiarity of the smell—warm stone, pungent chemicals—sent flashes of Younghoon's own days on the high school swim team to his mind.

At last, Hyunjae took his final lap, his breathing coming out labored as he swept a hand up his face and through his hair. His locks slicked all the way back, and his chest rose and fell harshly as adrenaline pumped through his veins and his lungs fought to consume oxygen without asphyxiating on it.

Hyunjae clambered his elbows onto the deck. "How'd you—know I was here?" He managed to say, nodding his thanks as Younghoon handed him the water bottle at the other end of the bench from him where Hyunjae's duffle bag sat.

Younghoon gave a meager shoulder shrug. "I know you too well not to," he said. The two were both swimmers, and where else would swimmers go to put their head somewhere else and to escape the world?

Hyunjae couldn't argue with that.

The two friends were quiet for a minute as Younghoon let Hyunjae catch his breath. There was something troubling about seeing him so tense, even after pumping out so many laps. The exhaustion didn't seem to outweigh the conflict warring in his mind.

Finally— "Hyunjae-ah, what are you doing?"

Hyunjae blinked up at him, perplexed. "Huh?"

Younghoon leaned his cheek against his palm, elbow resting on top of his knee. He fixed him with a stare. "What are you doing?" He repeated.

This time, the message seemed to have been delivered successfully. Hyunjae licked his lips, his gaze averting away from Younghoon. "Did you come here just to scold me?"

"No, I came here to tell you you're being an angsty teen."

Hyunjae scowled, his lips pressed into a pout. "No, I'm not."

Younghoon rolled his eyes just as his stomach grumbled in protest at him not going straight to meet his partner for dinner. Instead, here he was, trying to talk sense to a wall. "You're so childish sometimes."

He quieted. Hyunjae leaned his head against the meat of his forearm, eyes fluttering closed against the warmth of the heated pool deck. "How is she?"

"She's not good, but she's also not bad," Younghoon replied. He sighed, leaning forward onto his forearms for a more comfortable confrontation position. His lips pulled into a line. "Stressed, of course, but I think that was a given."

Hyunjae rubbed his eyes. "I fucked up, Younghoon."

A solemn nod. "I'm glad you see it now."

"This isn't a joke."

"I'm not saying it's a joke."

Hyunjae squinted at him. "Sometimes I don't believe you."

Younghoon smiled cheekily. "Well, sometimes you have to pick who and what to believe."

That hit a nerve, even if Younghoon didn't mean it to. Hyunjae immediately thought of yours and his last conversation. He couldn't get the image out of his head of the look of betrayal on your face when you asked him if he didn't trust you. He'd been stupid to be so curious, but of course he trusted you. He'd always trusted you. Who else could he trust but the very person who always protected him and was by his side? So why did he have to go and be so stupid?

He backed away from the wall for a minute and simply stood in the middle of the shallow lane as if the water could give him wisdom. "I," he began, then sighed, "I miss her a lot. I've wanted to text her, to call her so many times." He smiled, but it wasn't a happy one. "I think I just don't know what I would say."

"An apology would be a good start," suggested Younghoon.

"Right…" That was obvious, and yet, it was always the most difficult step. Would you let him come back into your life after a reveal like that? Feelings were such fragile, fickle things.

His heart sank at the idea of losing you forever though.

One day, she'll drop you, too, those damned words replayed over and over in his head like a broken record. —When she finds someone better… I don't know why she went to you, though. You are awful. I've heard all the stories.

Once upon a time, Hyunjae hadn't always been "awful" or dogged down by other people's negative testimonials about his attitude. So what if he had been "scorned by love" as you so lovingly put it one time? That experience had been enough for him to shut down all access points, keeping you sheltered in with him. It was hard for him to think of wanting to be with anyone else… but you.

He didn't mean to latch onto you so tight, but perhaps he had grown so dependent on you all this time. You had never given him reason to doubt how much you cared—god, why had he been so stupid?

Younghoon watched Hyunjae's inner conflict through the windows to his soul, glowing with the cerulean blue of the chemically altered pool water. "Hyunjae, do you love her?"

Of course he loved you. That was out of the question. But this was a different type of love that Younghoon was referring to, and it called for something much larger in the grand scheme of things.

That kind of love—what a frightening prospect, he thought. But didn't you make everything so much less frightening?

EPISODE ELEVEN: PLACES, EVERYONE!

"YOU stole my boyfriend, by the way." Hyunjae huffed as he set down the last two grocery bags he had helped bring up to the apartment from Juyeon's car.

JC!Yn barely batted an eyelash at him as she swept past to organize the utensils and cups set out on the breakfast table. “You snooze, you lose, Lee,” she teased with a sing-song tone.

From the front door, Sangyeon bumbled in with a clean, crisp white box, as he whistled a happy tune under his breath. JC!Yn greeted him at the entryway, thanking him profusely for picking up the cake, then taking the box from him so she could transfer it to the fridge for safe keeping.

“Chanhee says that he’s bringing his best friend, so he wants everyone to—I quote—‘not be embarrassing’,” Changmin snorted and giggled loudly from the couch where he relayed the information from his texts with Chanhee.

“That’ll be difficult for you,” CM!Yn quipped back so fast that Hyunjae couldn’t even suppress the high-pitched laugh he let out. Not that he wanted to suppress it; he had to admit that Changmin’s girlfriend was just as much a menace as her boyfriend was.

As Changmin’s jaw dropped and he pounced on top of her to tickle her into submission, Hyunjae averted his gaze elsewhere. He pulled his phone out, leaning against the granite kitchen countertop while he read Younghoon’s latest text notifications.

bread face: we’ll be there soon

bread face: i think i saw kevin and jacob a few cars behind us at the intersection, so i’m making haknyeon step on it

hyunjae’s phone: lol i was gonna chastise u about texting and driving hoon

bread face: tch pls, i’m better than that 🙄

bread face: i would at least make yh!yn do my texts for me 🤪

Hyunjae glanced up just in time to see JC!Yn’s front door open to reveal Chanhee and Eric, along with their plus ones. He tongued the inside of his cheek, thinking offhandedly at the fact that so many of his friends had found people to be with. It felt like they were all growing up far too fast; even as a fourth-year in university, it was unimaginable. Where would they all be in ten years? Where would he be?

He hoped, at the very least, that he might see you in his future—one way or another. As long as he could pull his shit together and finally talk to you.

hyunjae’s phone: almost everyone’s here btw r u guys close??

bread face: yeah, pulling up one block over so they don’t see hak’s car

bread face: hey, do yk if yn’s coming today?

Hyunjae’s thumbs hovered over the keyboard, then he typed in the clear answer: no, not a clue. I have a feeling she won’t be here though.

He tucked his phone away, looking over to see that JC!Yn’s roommate, Kei, had just stepped out of her room with a finished “Happy Birthday, Jacob” banner. “Hey, you need help with that?”

— ✶

The party was well under way, and suffice to say, the surprise party had been an entire success. Because Jacob was definitely not a fan of being jumpscared, it was good foresight that everyone was just in sight when he and Kevin opened the door. He had no clue that his partner had organized this for everyone and that everyone else was in on it. (Even Eric was able to keep the secret in the wraps, no doubt with the help of his significant other.) Almost all of his friends had brought along a plus-one, minus the singletons (himself, Juyeon, Kevin, and Sangyeon—though, that was still debatable) and Haknyeon and Sunwoo who’s significant others weren’t too close with the group just yet. It was a marvel that Younghoon’s girlfriend decided to come, too, but she said she would probably leave early anyway.

“You’re so sad-looking,” said Juyeon as he hopped onto the island counter next to Hyunjae. The two of them could scope out the whole apartment from this vantage point; the mood seemed to be at an all-time high, despite it being an incredibly stressful week for everyone.

Hyunjae made an indignant noise and he lifted his plastic cup of soda to his lips. “Pfft. I’m not sad-looking.”

Juyeon gave a meager shrug. “Every time you see someone and their partner, you look like your puppy just got taken.”

“That’s—” he stammered in protest, “—that’s not true. I—I just keep thinking about my arch capstone, that’s all! School is ruining my life.” The lie was so stark that even Hyunje winced to himself.

“Ah, well, I can relate to that,” his friend sighed. The two gazed out at the party, their ears perking up when they heard Sangyeon say something about him and Jacob needing to step outside for Jacob’s birthday gift—whatever that meant. Hyunjae and Juyeon exchanged strange looks with one another, before bursting into laughter.

Not even a few minutes had passed before Jacob and Sangyeon walked back into the apartment with everyone’s curiosity piqued. Jacob had on the best poker face that he could muster, his lips pressed together but a muscle in the corner of his mouth twitching upward like he was either trying not to laugh or smile.

“Well?” Kevin was the first to voice. He, along with everyone else over at the couch, leaned over the back of the furniture, their eyes wide like dogs waiting for a treat. Hyunjae and Juyeon probably looked similar from their perches.

“He asked for proof of my girlfriend,” Sangyeon said as he closed the front door behind him.

Hyunjae snorted, catching a slight glare from the eldest in the room. For however long, their friend group had an ongoing inside joke that Sangyeon pretended to have a “secret girlfriend.” It was only because Sangyeon had never once provided concrete proof, and maybe it was because he purposefully withheld it, but Hyunjae simply couldn’t understand why. Thus, the hilarious teasing of their eldest friend. Nonetheless, Hyunjae and everyone else remained curious as to the truth.

“Well then?” Juyeon pressed, “What’s the verdict, Cobie?”

The smile on his face really couldn’t be suppressed anymore, and it looked so close to a smirk. Jacob grinned, strolling over to the couch to resume his place between his best friend and girlfriend. “No comment.”

The room erupted into a loud groan from seemingly everyone. “What kind of answer—”

Even Sangyeon looked frustrated and his eyebrows furrowed together, paired with a slight parting of his lips. “Birthday Boy has so much audacity today. Dude, I literally showed you—”

At the sound of the doorbell tone, everyone paused. Hyunjae hopped off the counter, chirping, “I’ll get it!”

No one was opposed to Hyunjae opening the door as everyone else engaged in a battle of wits commenting on Jacob's refusal to confirm nor deny the existence of a future Mrs. Lee Sangyeon. Hyunjae reached the front door and peered through the peephole curiously—then stiffened.

You stood on the other side, your hands fidgety as you played around with the little gift bag in your hands, no doubt for Jacob.

He could hardly believe his eyes—you actually came.

He opened the door without much else left to do. Your gazes clashed in the front threshold of JC!Yn's apartment, your breaths leaving your lungs at the sight of the other. Hyunjae swallowed; he hated this tension, hated the way he couldn't just wind his arms around you as easily as he had done before. The palpitations of his heart were teetering on dangerous territory, and he chalked it up to the fact that he was nervous he might be making you uncomfortable.

"Hey, come in," he murmured low but soft, stepping aside to give you space. He barely registered the background noise at this point.

"Thanks," you said back, your voice barely audible. You stepped out of your shoes and nudged them toward the massive pile by the shoe rack, like an ocean of footwear wherein one must play a matching game in order to leave. You coughed, "Uhm, is there a place where I can put this?" You lifted your gift bag half-heartedly.

"Oh, I can put it—" he automatically reached out for it, and when his fingers grazed against yours, the two of you jolted, "—away," he stammered. You let go of it so he could quickly grab hold and make his very awkward escape.

He dipped into JC!Yn's room where all the presents were being stashed, allowing himself to soak in a bit of quiet, even if he could still hear the muffled party just outside the room. That had to be the worst thing ever. Why was he so jumpy around you? It couldn't be that you professed your being in love with him, right? He wished it wasn't like this.

He needed to talk to you, damn it, he needed to fix this—

But when he emerged from the room and into the main living space, he saw you chatting with YH!Yn and Kevin and Changmin. He watched you smile at them and laugh and look way less awkward than you'd been with him just a minute ago. He remembered what this week was, what Friday was.

Opening night: the culmination of months' worth of blood, sweat, and tears.

He'd been there for you since the beginning of it. He couldn't see you fail, and this was the first time he'd seen you not stressed. He didn't have the heart to ruin that for you right now.

So instead of marching up to you and requesting an audience, he made his way over to a few of his other friends to join whatever conversation they were having. He would fix things when you didn't have five thousand other things to worry about. Today wasn't about him, after all.

EPISODE TWELVE: CALL TIME, BABY!

TONIGHT was the night. You thought you were going to throw up, to be honest, and you gently sipped on an iced caramel macchiato to keep your energy up. Perhaps the caffeine was making you just a little jittery, but it was probably the nerves—

"Yn!"

"Yeah, what's up?" You exclaimed, stopping in your tracks and just barely dodging the pair of stagehands hustling a backdrop past you.

Jihoon gestured wide with his arms. "Where are you going? Preshow's in seven minutes."

Oh, right. Your eyes widened in incredulity at your absentmindedness and practically jogged over to Jihoon and the other end of the corridor that led back toward backstage, instead of wherever the fuck you were off to… "Sorry," you muttered, waving vaguely to your head, "dunno what's up with me right now. Is everyone ready? Everything in place?"

He nodded, his eyes leaving you for a second while someone said something to him in his headset. "Ugh, shit. We can't find SW!Yn—ever since she got that boyfriend of hers—"

Your hands flapped between the two of you as you nodded your head vigorously—yeah, it was definitely the caffeine. "She's probably in the sound booth with Chan and the others. She's not that boy crazy."

Jihoon made an unconvinced expression, but bid you farewell nonetheless. He probably knew more than you did, but that was expected since you weren't exactly a long-term staff member working backstage. Jihoon ran a tight ship; there was no way anyone would risk a Jihoon stare by saying hi to their significant other.

You held your head in your hand and set your drink down on one of the stools by the edge of the room so it wouldn't get knocked over. Tonight was Opening Night—the night. Tonight, there was a full house, including your friends and family, everyone at school, and about a dozen or so industry experts. The latter weren't just here for you, but for your acting peers, as well. This was a critical night for everyone. It absolutely had to go right.

You shifted the headset on top of your head and made your way back down the corridor. You were far too antsy to just stay in one spot.

"—can one of you go check Jess's hair and makeup—no, don't just rip it, hon, that's not how it works!" You recognized that anguished cry anywhere, and you peered into the dressing room Hongjoong and a swarm of other busy people were.

"What's going on?" You asked.

Hongjoong's head whipped around so fast you were surprised he didn't get whiplash. "Yn, thank God! You know how to braid?"

"Jess still needs hair and makeup?"

"Yes, one of my people had to call out sick—thanks Yn-ie!" You were already on your way to find where Jess was before he had finished his sentence. You'd hardly even processed the fact that one of the costume staff had to call out sick—that wasn't your main concern right now—you literally had less than five minutes to locate Jess and yeet yourself backstage.

The sound in your headset sparked to life. "Sound to Yn, Yn to sound. Can you hear me?" Bang Chan's voice echoed into your ears.

You narrowly got beheaded by a portion of the wedding arch coming down the hallway. "Loud and clear; fuck, it's a mess back here, Chan." God, your head hurt and the play hadn't even begun yet.

"Hey, man. Take a little breath, okay? Yeah, there you go."

You sucked in a very large breath of air. The adrenaline was pumping through your veins and your hands suddenly felt very cold. "Hyunjae usually helped me through opening nights," you exhaled, your head swerving left and right as you checked each room for Jess's presence. "Where is she?"

"I know, Yn," he said gently. "You can do this though. I know you can. You've been waiting for this for four years—hell, even longer than that."

Your head bobbed up and down as if he could see you—oh shit, was that her you just saw?

"He's probably sitting in one of those velvet seats, absolutely pumped for you."

"Even though I completely fucked up our friendship?" You choked out, flagging Jess down. The poor girl looked frantic as she was trying to finish her stage makeup while also braiding her hair. There was no way she could do both, but you admired the attempt. You began to help her out with her hair as she used her phone as a mirror.

"I don't know what happened, Yn, but he loves you too much to not be here tonight."

It was suddenly very difficult to swallow.

"Preshow in two. Are you ready for this, Director Ln?"

You finished the braid, snapping the elastic with a crisp thwip. Tapping Jess to let her know she was good to go, you made an immediate reverse maneuver to backstage. You took a deep breath in once more—held it—

Get your head in the game. Chan was right—you'd been waiting for this for far too long, worked far too hard. You needed to put faith in your abilities and your peers. "Let's do this."

When you returned to the main backstage portion, you found techies ready to go, as well as your main cast. You caught Younghoon's eyes, silently asking for him to round up Eunwoo while you got Sana and Miyeon. Quickly, the five of you met in the middle.

"Everyone feeling okay?" You asked them, making eye contact with each and every one of them.

There was a buzz about the air, both nervous and excited. You could feel it in the way your hands shook, but you reminded yourself this was what you lived for. Someone, probably Chan, gave you the one minute warning.

"We're gonna do great out there," Younghoon affirmed.

"And when in doubt," Miyeon chimed in, "just improvise."

A small chuckle rang out, and you could hear the countdown in your ear. You had to go out on stage and greet everyone.

"Okay, I got my cue," you said to them. "Break a leg, everyone. Chins up, alright?"

"You too, Yn," Younghoon said to you with a pointed look.

A smile graced your face then, and something settled within your chest—finally—something like a calm. "I will."

— ✶

The only reason why Hyunjae knew how expensive flowers were was because he was well-versed in the nature of presenting you with them after each production you'd completed, whether that be through theater or film. It was all standard practice, and he couldn't believe Sunwoo had the audacity to argue with him and his girlfriend about when to send flowers backstage.

Flowers were to be withheld from reaching the actor, staff, or director until the end of the performance. It was just one of those other superstitious things.

So here he was, sitting shoulder to shoulder between Juyeon and a stranger, with a lap full of vibrant blooms in what he thought were the best seats in the house: the lower balcony seats. They were probably his favorite place to get a proper view of the stage while also not being as high as the top balcony and seeing the top of actors' heads. Maybe it was the child in him that liked anything concerning the balcony.

The play had been going strong for the entire run time. You had come out on stage at the very beginning to welcome everyone and thank them for coming tonight. All the relevant information about the play could be found in the playbills that were handed out at the door, and he had instinctively flipped through each page until he could confirm your name and Younghoon's were there. That had definitely brought a smile to his face.

But even now, as the play was coming to an end and the main characters ended up happy together, Hyunjae still couldn't get the smile off his face.

At curtain call, all the actors lined up on stage to take their bows. When you came out to gesture to your acting peers and take your own bow, everyone in Hyunjae's row, especially himself, stood to give you the standing ovation you deserved. Hyunjae's eyes watered as he whooped and cheered and whistled as loud as he could since the flowers made it difficult to clap.

As he and everyone else sat back into their seats, he had to sneak a hand up to delicately wipe his right eye.

"That's my best friend," he said to no one in particular, his laugh watery but proud.

The woman next to him heard him, though. "She's incredible."

Hyunjae smiled at her, then turned his head toward the stage again where you were corralling the main cast in a massive hug onstage. "I know; she's amazing." I love her.

— ✶

The entire performing arts hall was in a state of utter pandemonium. Both the auditorium and the backstage areas were swarmed with people trying to get out of the building, trying to find their friends, and a butt load of other things. You and all the cast members began helping backstage crew take everything down and lock them up; after all, they would need to be preserved for the next two performances of the show that would carry on through the first couple of weeks of summer. Opening Night was only the "presentation" of your thesis.

Tomorrow was Commencement Day—there were a great handful of you graduating literally tomorrow, including yourself, and so you'd all resolved to go home and save the celebration for another night.

As you wandered through the corridors and dressing rooms, you were sure to congratulate everyone for their hard work tonight. Your cheeks ached from smiling, pride singing through your blood, as well as the lingering adrenaline. But you couldn't deny that you were relieved that the night had gone, and gone well.

Friends and family members of the cast and crew began trickling into the backstage area, so the space to roam lessened considerably.

Unbeknownst to you, Hyunjae had rushed back here faster than his friends could stop him, antsy to finally congratulate you and let you know how proud he was and how great the play was. He craned his head over the sea of people, half his bouquet no doubt squished, but he was still determined.

There—he spotted the blazer you wore on stage—but you were all the way at the end of the corridor. There was no easy way through the people, and who knew if you would leave before he could get to you.

"Yn!" He hollered over all the noise.

Like clockwork, your head whipped around from the stagehand you were speaking animatedly with in search of who had called your name. You locked gazes with him, and there was a softening in your features.

(In a crowded room, all I'd see is y—)

His heart leapt and his legs jump-started into high gear, murmuring out sorries as he maneuvered his way toward you. There were tears pricking at his vision; he never cried for anything or anyone, but you'd been the only one to draw such emotion from him. You were the only one who deserved that emotion.

"Jae, you're here," you breathed out, but then somebody tapped your shoulder and nodded in the direction from which you came.

He saw the concern on your face, the sense of responsibility, and yet the reluctance, as well. "Call me when you're done," he said. He mustered a smile, pushing the flowers into your dumbfounded hands. "Promise to call me."

You managed to nod. "Yeah," you swallowed, "thanks for coming tonight."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world."

EPISODE THIRTEEN: ALL THE WORLD'S OUR STAGE

A couple of hours later, you'd managed to express your gratitude to nearly everyone and their mother for their work and help, as well as convince Jihyo to answer any calls that came in regarding the play tonight. It was a big ask and you had been reluctant to ask that of her, but you also knew you needed to talk to Hyunjae.

You made your way out the back door of the performing arts hall and into the warm, early Summer night. There weren’t too many people still around since the only handful of people left in the performing arts center were all older staff members and faculty. You spotted Hyunjae leaning against the wall by the staircase, his gaze lifting from his phone when he sensed you coming toward him. A small smile curled onto his lips, and you realized how much you missed the sight of it.

“Hey, sorry you had to wait for a while,” you said as you approached.

He tucked his hands into his pockets. “No, don’t worry about it. The play was—it was incredible, Yn. I’m really proud of you.”

Those words struck you even harder than you imagined him saying he loved you back would have. It meant a lot coming from other people, but it meant the most coming from him. “Thanks,” you rasped, the emotion shining through your voice, and you had to consciously reign yourself in. “I’m really sorry for what happened. I shouldn’t have pushed you away like that, and I know that my confession was kind of unexpected.”

“You shouldn’t have to apologize for that, Yn,” he said gently, his teeth biting down on his lower lip slightly. “I’m the sorry one. I mean, it was so stupid that I even entertained the idea of Ellie being remotely correct. It was a breach of trust and I crossed a boundary that I shouldn’t have. For that, I’m so sorry.”

You motioned to the path leading down the stairs and toward a path even you knew not where it would lead the two of you tonight. Hyunjae heard your silent suggestion, and the two of you began descending the stairs together, side by side. “Maybe I thought I wasn’t ready at that moment,” you confessed, “but maybe it was what needed to be said, you know?”

When you glanced over at him, you found that he was already looking back at you, clinging onto every word that came out of your mouth.

Your heart rate was still rocketing into the atmosphere right now, but you knew that it wasn’t from the play. “I think that I needed to say that—no matter if I was ‘ready’ or not. I don’t think I would have ever been ready, but…” Your foot hit the bottom step of the stairs, and you turned on the ball of your feet to face him, guiding the two of you down the path and away from your normal direction toward the bus station. “Before you say anything, just hear me out, okay?”

Hyunjae gave a nod, and your heart stuttered in your chest as you forged onward. “You don’t have to affirm my feelings if you don’t feel the same way,” you said, returning to your normal position at his side, “I think that was why I’ve been so afraid of telling you all this time—that you wouldn’t feel the same. That, and the fact that I was scared that telling you would absolutely wreck our friendship like it did these past few weeks.”

From beside you, Hyunjae managed to keep quiet, but his voice was also jammed inside his throat. It was filled up with all the things he’d wanted to say to you first, all the things that he wanted to say in response to what you were telling him now.

“Ellie confronted me the week after our fallout.” Hyunjae stiffened—had she done anything to you? “She told me that she was the one behind all the ‘pranks’ or whatever throughout the play rehearsals.”

“Yn, those weren’t pranks,” Hyunjae couldn’t help but cut in, “it was plain sabotage.”

Sabotage. You’d come to fear labeling her actions with that word, simply because you didn’t want to believe that that was her true intention. You struggled to swallow, stopping in the middle of the walkway. The two of you faced each other then, his eyebrows pressed together in shock and anger and every emotion in between. “She told me she did it to get back at me.”

“For what?”

“I abandoned her,” you told him. That emotion on his face shuddered like ripples in a pool of water. “It’s neither of your faults either, but I guess what I thought was drifting away from her and becoming closer to you, she saw in a more malicious light. And she said that she’d been sick of living in my shadow despite not even being in my life, and I’ve just been thinking about that for a while.” You said you’d be there for her, that she’d always be enough for you… how ironic that you’d been the one to drift away.

Hyunjae peered at you, a mess of things going through his head. You couldn’t imagine what he was thinking about right now, but you knew he was never the best at expressing his emotions and vulnerabilities.

It was okay, though. He didn’t have to say anything. “In that moment, I cut off all ties with her,” you clarified, “when she told me it was all her doing. Now, I just feel a little sad; I wished she would’ve just said hi to me.”

Hyunjae wet his lips, grasping your shoulders to get your attention. “You know you didn’t deserve any of that, right? All that shit she gave you? I mean, she pretty much terrorized you, Yn, and I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

You wondered—no, you knew—he was probably beating himself up inside for the argument the two of you had, too. The combined force of all of those tough conversations, as well as the pressure from the play… “I’m okay, Jae,” you reassured him. This time, you even believed what you said. “I’m shaken, no doubt, but it’s something that will pass with time.”

In this lighting, he was beautiful, ethereal. The amber streetlight casted a heavenly glow upon him, and made his eyes glimmer like the moon off a still body of water. You’d written something like that description somewhere in the original script, and you realized just how intimately you’d projected your reality into the lines of that production. Perhaps one day, you’d have the strength to point them all out to him.

A thought suddenly occurred to you in the silence, and your eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Oh my god.”

“What? What’s wrong—”

“I never got to see your finalized capstone project!” You gasped, your hands flying to your mouth in scandal. “Shit, the showcase for it was yesterday, wasn’t it? Oh shit, I’m awful—” For as supportive as Hyunjae had been with your final project, you had neglected to even think about his thesis these last weeks. Guilt coursed through your body in waves and you wanted to screech—

“Hey, honey,” he chuckled good-naturedly, “it’s okay. You were busy; don’t sweat it.” He bit his lip again, but it did nothing to suppress the shit-eating grin on his face. “Wanna go see it now? I’m sure they haven’t cleaned everything up yet.”

Your heart skipped for a new reason now. “You’re gonna break into the architecture building?” You laughed.

“It’s not breaking and entering if you have access,” he said in a “duh” tone, waving around his student ID.

As the two of you made a swift reverse back up the stairs from which you’d come from, you gaped at his ID card in disbelief. “I can’t believe they gave you clearance.”

He wrinkled his nose at you. “Why wouldn’t they grant their top student clearance on his last week?” He sniffed jokingly.

The pairing of dialogue and execution made a giggle sputter out of you, the sound making Hyunjae’s chest feel warm and fuzzy. He hated the tension that had wrapped itself around the bones of his ribcage, but those vines were slowly loosening and blooming into something familiar, and yet new.

The trek to the architecture building was well-worn by both you and him. You hadn’t been by the architecture building in awhile because of your busy schedule, but you used to always pop by to either walk him to lecture or to come visit him while he was working. The building was built in a Greco-Roman style with columns and arches, and beautifully carved marble murals and statues around the perimeter of the roof. You knew that the building style in particular was never Hyunjae’s taste, but you remembered when the two of you had toured the school in your senior year of high school, he had been awestruck nonetheless.

Just as he had said it would, his ID card slid against the panel outside the front doors to the architecture building and came up green.

The two of you, feeling just like you were kids again, giggled as you crept into the darkness of the foyer. Hyunjae grabbed your hand without thinking and dragged you down the right hallway toward one of the larger conference-style classrooms on the ground floor. He didn’t bother turning on any lights in case security came by and saw, but there was a conveniently-placed streetlight right outside the window anyway.

“There’s my masterpiece,” he said quietly, a sort of jitteriness coming through his voice.

You let go of his hand so you could inspect the model he constructed. The feature piece seemed to be the massive clear dome on the top, as well as the smaller, surrounding establishments. “It’s amazing, Jae. This is so cool.”

He almost looked shy as he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest and watched you. “Ah, thanks. It’s, uh, a proposed model for a new performing arts department.”

Your head turned to him then. “No way.”

“Yes way,” he smiled. “I don’t know if it’ll get taken up by the board or not, but I gave them my whole spiel yesterday.”

“You’re gonna give me the spiel, too, right?”

Hyunjae made a face, feigning reluctance, but you were already dragging one of the chairs over so you could sit for his little presentation. “I mean, I guess I remember enough to do it again.” He took up his rightful place right next to his model, in front you, and cleared his throat to give you his speech.

The speech went wonderfully; you cheered as quietly loud as you possibly could. Your face was split by a bright smile that you were sure was enough to power the lights in this building if you really wanted to. If the board didn’t take up Hyunjae’s proposed new model after that, then you were about to send a strongly worded letter to the dean.

Hyunjae took on a boyish sort of smile after the moment had come and gone. “Hey, you wanna see something cool?”

“Cooler than this?”

“Pfft,” he dismissed nonchalantly, “you flatter me. But yeah, actually. Come on—it’s on the second floor.”

You quickly shoved your chair back into place and followed Hyunjae as he practically ran out of the room and up the stairs to the second floor. He had far too much energy for it being around ten o’clock at night, but when you saw the absolute glow on his face when he took you from project to project, gushing and nerding out about all the clever designs, you didn’t have the energy to even question his energy. There was something utterly contagious about hearing him talk about his major with such passion; you were so glad he had found a home in this field.

When the two of you finally let yourselves out of the architecture building, it was probably around an hour later. Your body ached with exhaustion, but your brain was abuzz with activity. You had missed this, missed him so much. For the first time in a very long time, you had never felt this carefree before.

“Can you believe we’re actually graduating tomorrow?” You asked him as the two of you walked toward the direction of the street your town house was on.

Hyunjae snorted. “No, not at all,” he said with a shake of his head. “Well, I’m actually so glad that I’m finally getting out of here, but it’s kind of scary, too.”

You gave a nod, then tilted your head back to breathe in the comfortable, night air. There were stars up in the sky tonight. “Yeah, I get that. Like, where will we all be, y’know?”

“Right.”

“But I think that the unknown in general will always be scary,” you added. “In the end, we’ll always know that everything will turn out okay.”

“And if it’s not okay, then it isn’t the end yet,” Hyunjae replied with a pointed look.

“Exactly.” You had a few options lined up for you after graduation, but you’d told yourself beforehand that you would deal with all of that after commencement day. After months and years of working nonstop, you deserved a little rest before fully stepping into the adult world. Wow, what a scary thought, indeed. "I'm proud of you, Hyunjae."

He had to stop himself from breaking down right there. "I'm proud of you, too, Yn."

The walk home was quiet, but it was as if a layer of film had been laid over just you and Hyunjae. The white noise of the night became somewhat calming for you, and you felt yourself sinking into a state of serenity. You had confessed your love for him already—he finally knew how you felt—but funny enough, that was freeing.

That had been your biggest secret, and finally being able to lift that burden from your chest was… it was good. Everything was good now.

Hyunjae softly said, "I know that you probably have so much to do after graduation tomorrow, but we've always wanted to go on a road trip cross-country."

When you looked up over at him, he could read the excitement glittering in your irises. "You're right! Man, that conversation was so long ago. I mean… I won't be so busy after graduation, not immediately. I want time to enjoy freedom with you," you laughed, lightly punching his shoulder.

He chuckled, your words soaking into his skin like sunlight on the first warm day after a harsh winter season. "I think it'd be nice, just the two of us." He couldn't wait.

There was an earnestness in the way you looked at him then. His thoughts had been all over the place before, but now, they were beginning to clear. "I think that'd be nice, too."

Your townhouse was now in sight, and a distinct feeling of anxiety rose in his throat. It was bitter-tasting, the way he dreaded leaving you for the night even if he would most definitely see you again tomorrow. He didn't know why inviting himself in like he usually did was so difficult now, but suddenly, you were both standing in the middle of the entryway and you were getting your keys from your bag.

It was late; he shouldn't keep you up. You'd had a long day.

"—you tomorrow then. Thanks for tonight, Jae."

He wrapped his arms around you just as you hugged him, his face pressed against the crown of your head and yours pressed into his shoulder. He didn't want to let go, but it was late—

"Good night," he said, nearly inaudibly.

"'Night," you said, going into the house and closing the door.

Maybe it was the physical, literal visual of you closing the door on him, but the epiphany hit him like a bus.

EPISODE FOURTEEN: AAAND THAT'S A WRAP!

YOU were about five steps from dropping to the floor and sleeping for about five years. Of course, you could not do that because you literally had to wake up to graduate tomorrow, but right this moment, you were so excited to just face plant into your pillow.

Tap!

The first time, you hadn't even heard the tiny noise as you shuffled into your attic bedroom and set your bag on the floor at the foot of your bed.

TAP!

Actually, you hadn't even heard it the second time—

BONK!

"What the…" Your head whirled around toward the window. You could have sworn you heard something hit the window pane. Cautiously, you walked up to the glass and peered out into the darkened street. It was a little difficult to see given the contrast between the light of your bedroom, the dark of night, and the fogging acrylic pane—

You nearly screeched as a small pebbled hit the window, right where your face would have been. What the fuck—?

Immediately, the hairs on the back of your neck stood up. Could this have been Ellie trying to spook you again? No way, right? Plus, wasn't Hyunjae just walking by?...

Oh, wait.

With a huff of indignation, you wrestled with the latch on the window pane just as another tiny rock came flying at the glass. "Hold your horses," you muttered, finally managing to haul the dusty window up. You only ever really opened this window during the warmer months, and so you hadn't used it since probably late fall quarter.

You stuck your head out the window, and surprise surprise, Hyunjae was tossing another piece of ammo up and down in his palm, down at street level. "What is wrong with you?" You stage whispered.

His mouth curved into a frown, head tilting, eyebrows furrowing. "What?"

"What," you repeated firmer this time, "is wrong with you?"

"I needed to get your attention," he shrugged.

"You couldn't just text?"

"Isn't this what Romeo did?"

Clearly, someone hadn't been paying attention when you were studying for your classes on Shakespeare in both high school and second year of college. "No," you quipped, "and Romeo was stupid."

Hyunjae sighed, reaching up to cup the back of his neck, dropping the pebble in his hand to the ground. "Okay, so maybe I'm not some Romeo—" You weren't quite sure where he was going with this.

He started walking around, pacing the sidewalk in front of your townhouse since he couldn't stand directly below the window (your roommate would kill him if he killed her azaleas). For a moment, you were ready to go down there yourself and shake the words from him, but it seemed he was able to snap himself into focus.

"I just… it's taken me a long time—god, it always takes me a long time to come up with the words for this type of stuff," he stumbled over his words, and you felt yourself grow increasingly tender. He was never good at wearing his heart on his sleeve. "And my friends have been saying it this whole time—hell, I've probably been aware of it unconsciously this whole time, too! But you know how I am. I'm too damn stubborn to cave, even to myself."

You let him continue on without breaking his monologue. Though you couldn't be too sure what this was, your heart still galloped in hope.

"Yn, I'm—" he said, head tilting back to meet your eyes so you could see those beautiful irises of his, "—I'm in love with you, too."

This was really happening, huh? Your fingers curled around the window sill and you opened your mouth in an effort to say something, but then you closed it. The words and the thoughts were there, but it was so foggy in your mind that you couldn't even string the words together yourself either.

You watched the hope, the light, gradually fade from his expression, even if he wasn't actively trying to show it. "Please tell me to go home if you're not gonna say anything," he said to you next. "I know you're tired, but god, I just stood here and realized I wouldn't be able to sleep if I didn't tell you. I know it's selfish, but…" He lifted his hands in sort of a helpless gesture, his hands then falling limp at his sides.

Finally, you found your voice. You cleared your throat, then asked quietly, albeit a tad nervously, "This—this isn't just because you feel bad about what I said about not reciprocating, right? I mean, higher levels of excitement and arousal can be misattributed to feelings sometimes—"

Hyunjae shook his head. "Dear god, no. I've just been… I've just been really stupid, so, uhm, maybe I am like Romeo?"

You fought the smile on your face, but it seemed you lost the battle. "Silly goose," you teased, laughing as you shook your head. "You ain't no Romeo, Lee Jaehyun, but I've never wanted anyone but you anyway."

He broke into a laugh at that, the sound echoing in the streets, and it sounded like, if one could bottle up pure delight and release it to the world. "You're so much better at this than me."

"Clearly."

"Well," he bit his lip, his smile impish, "can I kiss you to make up for it?"

Oh, there went your heart—there it went, carrying you down the stairs and out the door—you would have leapt out the window if you were physically able (you weren't). Your heart carried you all the way outside again until you arrived in your best friend's arms, his face, his smile illuminated in the soft glow of the streetlight.

And he held you so tight, you couldn't tell if that beating at your chest was his heart or yours. The two of you wasted no time in pressing your mouths to the other, tasting the other's smile in one more way than you'd ever done before.

It felt, at that moment, that this might have marked act three of one part of your life—but act one of the next was just beginning.

Perhaps it was true then: when it counted, you always went back to your first love.

a/n: heyy thank you for reading thru!! i hope u enjoyed and if u did, pls do consider commenting, reblogging, or sending an ask :] we do love a bit of humility in the end ayo :3 the original plan is to go for sunwoo's next o7

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#the boyz x reader #lee hyunjae x reader #hyunjae x reader #the boyz drabble #the boyz drabbles #the boyz fanfic #the boyz imagines #the boyz scenarios #the boyz oneshots #hyunjae imagines #hyunjae scenarios #hyunjae drabbles #hyunjae oneshots

[f1daydreamers]

𝐟𝟏𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬' 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

WELCOME to my page, I actually created this Tumblr account 3 years ago and never used it, I recently found it but rather than deleting it, I figured I’d ‘recycle’ it and just use it as a page dedicated to fanfics.

REQUESTS are open and you may submit your own asks but read below to see what I write, don’t write and also what I do not tolerate on my page. I only write for a specific set of people, again, read below to see who they are. Suspense lol.

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Rules for Requests

My content will NOT cover topics such as smut, sexual assault, incest, violence, abuse, disabilities, or self-harm. I also avoid including any suggestive references to blood or weapon fetishes in my work.

I ALSO don’t write driver x driver or footballer x footballer, and not many works, if any at all, will take a male readers’ perspective.

…

The drivers I write for currently are: Lando Norris, Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, Oscar Piastri, Mick Schumacher, Charles Leclerc, and Alex Albon.

The footballers I write for currently are: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jude Bellingham, and Declan Rice. (Such a variety ik)

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𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐚 𝟏

Charles Leclerc:

- A Dulcet Evening ~ You and Charles have a few weeks to yourselves before Baku, it’s Friday and you go to pull him off of the simulator when you instead see him playing the piano.

Lance Stroll:

- A Weekend or Two: Completed

Summary: Asking the driver of the team you work for to attend a wedding with you as your fake date is possibly one of the dumbest ideas you've had ever.. but also one of the best.

• Part 1

• Part 2

• Part 3

• Part 4

• Part 5

• Part 6

• Part 7

• Part 8

Oscar Piastri:

- My Muse ~ Oscar is a visitor at your first art exhibition - not exactly his scene - but it’s one that he contributed to financially to help you out, an upcoming artist he’s taken a bit of a liking to.

Max Verstappen:

- Rain Now Run ~ Being caught in the rain without an umbrella isn’t fun, but when you’re with Max? Fuck it.

- Expanding Our Horizons ~ Seeing your boyfriend play with his nephews stirs emotions inside of you. While it may be the first time you and Max have acknowledged it, it may also be the last.

Lando Norris:

~ Coming soon!

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𝐅𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥

Trent Alexander-Arnold:

- Little White Lies SMAU ~ You’re a tease, asking for things you supposedly already have. Trent catches on... eventually.

Jude Bellingham:

~ Coming soon!

#f1 masterlist #lando norris #max verstappen #lewis hamilton #charles leclerc #alex albon #mick schumacher #f1 imagine #f1 drivers #oscar piastri #football #liverpool fc #jude bellingham #trent alexander arnold #declan rice #real madrid #arsenal fc

[thebunnybabyblog]

"Tear you apart" 18+ Snape x reader

This is just pure smut so be warned! No one under the age of 18 should venture any further! Run away now you are not welcomed to read this please go play roblox or something :)

Age is not told in this but reader is 18+, Snape is whatever age your headcanon prefers. This is a female oriented one shot so specific terms will be said here that apply to that! Also don't even say a thing about her nickname this is soooo not a shamless insert for myself, def not 👀

the song "tear you apart" by she wants revenge is what inspired me to write this. please listen bc god it makes my head go brrrrrrrrr when i listen to it lol with that please enjoy and tell me what you thought! lots of love! 💕

Potions had always been your best subject. There was just something about the skill and craftsmanship that made you feel so compelled to learn as much as you could. It was like art and science all in one. The precision and dedication that it took to make something with so much value to the wizarding world was vastly impressive to you, but what really sealed the deal was the man that had taught you all that you knew.

Severus Snape was a god to you. The poised mysterious genius who seemed to be able to look death right in his eyes and laugh in annoyance. The way he just glided around school with so much power and command sent shivers down your spine. Always wanting to be in his good graces and never a means of annoyance like most students. You wouldn’t call yourself a know it all teacher's pet who would tattle acting as the school yard spy but truly as an admirer and helping hand.

You made it clear that you admired, appreciated and respected him and his immense wealth of knowledge. It’s not like you didn’t respect all of your professor's knowledge because you really did but he was just different? Part of it was how bad you felt from the vast amount of disrespect he received. Of course you understood that kids are difficult to look past tone and attitude but if you did your work and listened when he spoke and spoke only kind words to him, he was kind to you.

Over the 7 years at Hogwarts you grew a pretty decent relationship with him. Of course it wasn’t like you skipped down the hall hand-in-hand but he had gained a level of trust and mutual respect for you. To the point he had offered you to be an assistant of sorts to him, nothing major but since you had expressed after graduation you wanted to work at being a professional potioneer and owning your own shop one day, he let you come two to three days a week and help him with different tasks. It would always be a surprise that day on what you were doing. It could be organizing and taking stock of the store room, observing and taking notes of class projects of lower grades that were brewing (as some potions could take days or weeks to brew) or even grading first to third year assignments. All the while you'd be free to ask questions and just chat really.

You had really cherished these meetings but your social group really never understood why you were even wanting to be there. For them it seemed like a punishment.

“You had to organize the storeroom?!? What did you do wrong to have to do that??” They’d exclaim in shock and then be in total disbelief when you said,

“It wasn't a punishment, it was actually quite fun! He showed me some rare ingredients that you can only get on a full moon on the tallest mountain in the Himalayas every 6 1/2 years!”

None of it ever seemed like a chore; it was an honor. This man, with such great skill, had taken you even the tiniest bit under his wing. I guess people just couldn’t understand how such a bright and bubbly person would want to spend time in a dark gloomy dungeon with the dungeon bat himself. But you knew he was just misunderstood and it didn’t help that you found him to be the most beautiful man you had ever laid your eyes on.

To you he was the definition of tall, dark and handsome. His tall looming body, dark midnight eyes that looked straight to your core, chiseled features that seemed to be carved out of the most precious white marble. He was more than just looks, he was powerful, knowledgeable and what people didn’t seem to see but he was quite funny and gentle. The way he treated his work as if he was Michelangelo diligently and painstakingly painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling upside down on his back. He was just brilliant to be around and absorbing even a speck of him was a gift.

You couldn’t lie to yourself though, you were down bad. The type of bad that made you find yourself absentmindedly drifting off to space only to come back down to earth and see you had doodled all over your notes with little drawings of hearts with SS in them and sketches of his striking features or kicking your feet and going red when he pops into your mind while in class because he said something that just rolled off his tongue in just the right way that made you fantasize scenarios in your head.

A crush was truly an understatement at this point. If he asked you to be his pet you would be at his feet curled up in an instant. Never making it too apparent though as to never show him any type of actions that would threaten your ability to continue this precious opportunity to learn and just be around him, or so you thought.

Friday was your easy day and your most favorite day of the week. You only had one class and that was of course advanced potions at the end of the day and a day where you always stayed after to help out. Today was especially good because it was a day when everything just went well. Snape had shown the class how to brew amortentia, the most powerful love potion. Not only was it an exciting lecture and potion to brew but it got your head to brew all sorts of things as well.

“Gods I wish I could give him a drink of mine! I’d do anything for him to feel even a slight bit like me, the way I do for him!” You thought into the void of your mind. You couldn’t help to doodle while you waited for the last few minutes of the class to count down, not like you were leaving but just waiting for your afternoon Friday treat to roll around. Your little delusions were helped by the fact he had actually praised your work when he was making his way around the classroom before the class was over.

“Very good work Miss [last name], excellent pearl color and the smell is just right. You will make a fine potion master one day” he said in a smooth silky voice. You were lost in every word that rolled off his sharp tongue. It felt as if you had drank this entire cauldron, gulping it down like a man who was stranded in the desert who finally found water.

“Thank you sir!” You squeaked out, kicking your feet enthusiastically underneath your table. If only people could understand how good his praises felt, the chokehold they held on her heart.

“Alright class it seems our time is up, most of you really need to pay more attention when I’m up here teaching… this is a powerful potion that needs to be respected and I saw many glaring mistakes that certainly should have been avoided… I will expect a report on my desk about the history of amortentia by Monday morning sharp. If I didn’t tear your potion to shreds in my walkthrough you are excluded.” The class filled with annoyed groans and frustrated sighs and a few looks were shot your way since they knew the “dungeon bunny” (your unofficial nickname your friend would poke fun at you with) was exempted once again. It wasn’t your fault you enjoyed potions, that's what Hogwarts was for, to find your passions and excel and it did help when you were in love.

The class cleaned up their areas and one-by-one filed out of the room looking a bit defeated by the sudden addition of weekend homework but you stayed behind ready for whatever task he was willing to give you today.

“Great lecture as always professor!” You said looking up to him with a soft smile.

“Thank you Miss. [last name], it’s a shame not everyone is as devoted to potions as you and I.” he replied back to you in a smooth tone. For him to put you and him into the same category made your heart thump in your chest. His praises made your hair stand on end as if caught in an electrical storm. A blush was surely visible on your face when your brain was able to comprehend his kind words.

“Oh! I am nothing compared to your dedication, you are a god compared to me!” You spouted back not even thinking, making you blush harder.

“Oh. My. Gods. I did not just say that, what a loser, I must seem like such a fangirl. He's your professor, not an idol.” You barked in your head, now thoroughly embarrassed. Pulling yourself out of your thoughts when you heard a soft chuckle escape from his throat.

“I guess I should take my place up in the heavens then” he said as he made his way back around to his desk “today if you can, I would appreciate a walk through of the storeroom and make a list of anything that is running low. Will that be something you can help take off my plate today?” He asked in a way that sounded like silk.

“Of course professor you don’t even need to ask!” Gods you were pathetic and you knew it but you didn’t care an ounce. It felt so good to be of service, to do anything he asked of you. You were his devoted little bunny and hopped when he said hop. You’d never admit it to your friends but you loved being called his dungeon bunny because gods it really was so fitting for how you felt. And if it meant spending ages looking through every tiny vial in that room you would do it on your hands and knees to be around him.

Making your way into the room you began to look through the endless rows of ingredients. You knew this was going to take a long time but it was worth it. You had been working for only about 15 minutes when you felt a cold rush of air against your back behind you, not thinking much of it, only that it was just a draft, you didn’t even turn to look. It wasn’t until you heard the door click shut behind you locking you in the small room.

“Umm professor, did you close the door?” You said still bent over looking at vials in the cabinet below you before turning around.

“Yes” he replied

You jumped at the sound of him right behind you. He glides and somehow makes no noise when he walks, some people think he casts a charm on his shoes to keep them silent. You spin around and are now in very close proximity to him. Your breath is stuck in your throat and you push yourself up against the shelf. The vials behind you raddle as your back hits the wood. You look up to his looming figure and he looks down at you with his sparkling black eyes and his equally raven black hair falling around his face.

“I’m quite sorry, did I frighten you?” He says with a sly smile.

“Oh umm no hehe of course not.” You say with your eyes closed with an embarrassed smile slapped across your face.

“Oh good I would be awfully sad to scare off my little dungeon bunny.” His words slapped you across your face.

You look up to him in shock, eyes wide and heart pounding out of your chest, “d… dungeon bunny?!? How does he know about the nickname my friends call me?” You think in a panic.

“You scream it quite loud in your head all the time. It’s not hard to miss.” He replies to your thought. As if your eyes weren’t wide enough they were bigger now, you now understood he had the ability to use legilimency. The thought of every embarrassing little thing you have thought about him over the last 7 years bounced around in your mind. You were in utter shambles over how embarrassing you had been without your knowledge. Especially since you never were shy to let your daydreams run amok in the dirtiest ways you could think of.

“You enjoy being my bouncing little bunny don’t you?” He questioned as if he was a predator circling and taunting its prey.

“I….. I umm… I-“ was all that you were able to stutter out. A deep chuckle rumbled up through his chest and you felt his cool breath on your face as he loomed over your shanking frame. You couldn’t help to smell the smooth smell of spearmint and honey on his breath sending your head spinning.

“Does cat have your tongue, little bunny? Usually you have so much to say up here.” He said as he tapped a finger melodically against your temple. You felt your knees wobbling under you and you couldn’t help to just look up at him like a deer caught in headlights as you white knuckled the counter behind you.

“You're usually such a good girl and speak when spoken to”, grabbing your chin and squeezing your cheeks with his long slender fingers. “Now I will only repeat myself once more,” his tone stern and filled with authority. “I said you enjoy being my little. Bouncing. Bunny. Don’t you y/n?”

“Y… yes” you shyly mustered out.

“Yes what?” He commanded as he squeezed harder

“Yes sir!” You practically shouted, trembling in his grasp.

“See that wasn’t hard was it?” Leaning down to be eye level with you all the while still holding on to you tight.

“N… no sir.” You couldn’t help but feel like putty in his grasp. You wanted to be devoured, like you said before, if he said hop you would hop and you meant it.

“You know even if I couldn’t hear your detailed perversions every time you laid eyes on me you are quite obvious and oblivious to your surroundings.” He released your face and leaned in close to your ear. His hair tickled your skin as it cascaded over your cheek.

“Your little love doodles are very cute, you think I don’t notice them as I walk around the room? You’re lucky I don’t punish you for being off task so frequently but you are always such a good girl I can’t bring myself to punish you.”

You were overheating with your skin flushed pink, you felt a bead of sweat roll down the side of your forehead.

“Hmmm It is getting pretty hot in here, why don’t you take off your coat?” He hummed, pulling back from your ear. His fingers found their way under your lapels and slid your jacket off your shoulders onto the floor.

“T..thank you.” Not even sure why you were thanking him but it felt so good too.

“Such a polite girl, seems like someone needs a treat.” Taking your chin back into his grasp, he leaned down and planted a soft kiss onto your lips. Still in utter shock and disbelief from what was happening you just looked at him wide eyed but in an instant you shut them and sunk your weight into his hand. You grabbed onto the side of his robe for support and let out a moan that shocked you both. You could feel him smile against you and his left hand sneak to your waist and pulled you close into him.

Your eyes shot open when you felt him hard against your stomach taken aback by just how large he felt under all of those dark clothes. “Gods his cock is huge!” You couldn’t help but scream in pure lust loud in your head, immediately looking up to him in terror as you might as well have just said that out loud. Somehow his eyes grew darker than they naturally were and you knew it was game over. He was about to devour you whole.

You looked away fast in utter embarrassment but his hand snaked its way through your hair and pulled your face back to his and whispered once more into your ear, “I want to fucking tear you apart.” He said, so sharp it pierced through your body like flying arrows across the battlefield. Before you knew it the hand in your hair pulled you to the ground and you were on your knees faced with the serpent trapped behind his wool trousers.

“Now be the good little bunny you are and set your God free” he said as the hair he had in his fist fell free from his grasp.

Filled with nerves, your trembling fingers slowly reached up and skated across the black wool, hesitating for a moment once they touched the cool metal buckle of his belt. You looked up as if making sure it really was alright. He returned your wordless question with a light smile of reassurance. You slowly slid the leather belt out of the metal and grasped the button that was behind it and slipped it through the hole and pulled the zipper down. He sprung free from his prison and slapped his stomach with a snap.

You gulped hard, this was the first time you had ever seen a man in this way. You had seen one once before when a Gryffindor boy got a little too drunk at a party and thought it would be a good idea to whip it out as a laugh but it was nothing like this. Snape's cock was powerful and hot with desire, just as dominating as the man it was attached to. You could feel the slickness building between your legs as you looked up to him practically drunk.

“You look so beautiful down on your knees for me I wish you could see just how beautiful you look, all flushed and doe eyed looking up at me.” His words poured over you like honey. You craved his praise and you’d do anything he wanted to get it.

“Thank you professor! I… I’d do anything for you!” You cried out to him bouncing on your knees. You were passed the embarrassment, hell the embarrassment was fueling you. You didn’t care what you looked like, you just wanted to do whatever he wanted, that's all you’ve ever wanted to do for him.

“Oh I know I’ve heard you so many times lost in thought wondering how I looked under my robes,” his hand began to work the many buttons of his coat and he slipped it off onto the floor with yours. His white linen shirt flowed free around him as he worked up that as well. Soon his torso was bare and you eyed the pale skin that hid under it. You could see his scars that scattered around his smooth form and wondered how they felt.

He reached down, holding out a hand to yours. With a slight hesitation you placed them in his and he placed your hands on his stomach. Your fingers began to wonder, exploding the milky smooth skin you had dreamed about. A soft moan escaped him as your warm touch moved around his cold body. You couldn’t help but look up at him in amazement.

“Gods you’re just so pretty.” He said looking down at you with hooded eyes. You just couldn’t take it any more. You needed to touch his cock that had been staring you in the face far too long. You moved your hands down past his belly button following his little happy trail down to the base. Looking up to him one last time for permission, he nodded a gentle yes.

Grabbing the base, he was rock solid in your grasp. A huff escaped him and he slightly pumped into your hand. This sent your body into overdrive losing all sense of your humanity; you were just his slave to his desire. You worked your hand up and down his shaft not even able to touch your fingertips together as you pumped him slowly.

He reached out a hand and placed it on the top of your head and looped some hair around his fingers and pulled your face close to him. He smelt a mix of smoky body wash and sweat. He filled your nose with his scent and it made your eyes roll in the back of your head as you sniffed him in.

“Open that pretty little mouth of yours I can’t take this anymore.” He growled in pure need. Without hesitation you opened yourself for him and his tip was past your threshold before you had time to process. The precum that had began to gather on his tip spread across your tongue as he snaked himself into you. You couldn’t help but moan as your senses were attacked with him.

“Fuck your sweet little mouth feels better than I could have imagined.” He spit out. Your arms wrapped themselves around his thick thighs for support as he filled your mouth with his needy cock.

“You don’t even know how long I’ve waited for this moment. Fuck…. Take my cock. Just like that, you're such a good bunny for me.” You practically cried out in pleasure to the praise and the vibration only sent him into a craze. He began to frantically assault your throat, making you gag around him. The room filled with the sounds of your complete surrender to the man that now laid claim in your throat.

Tears filled your eyes and fell over your flushed cheeks, he reached a hand down and his fingers moved gently over them wiping away at your tear stained face. He pulled them to his mouth and took a long lick of his fingers, humming as he did so. You were practically crossed eyed looking up at him.

He pumped himself in you a few more times and released your mouth with a loud pop. You coughed out desperately for air but were sad that he had released your throat.

“As much as I’d love to cum down that pretty throat of yours it would be such a waste to put it there our first time.” “First time?” You thought. That implied this wasn’t going to be some one time event that you would think about over and over for the rest of your life on a loop.

“Oh you sweet little thing. You think I’d let you get away from me that easily? I’ve waited so long fighting with myself for a very long time. There is no way I’m letting you escape me.” His voice deep and raspy you trembled below him. Grabbing the collar of your shirt he pulled you back to your feet and placed his hands firmly around your waist and lifted you to sit upon the counter. You were practically face to face now, though he still had a bit of height on you even at this level.

His thumb brushed over your bottom lip and he pulled you back into a deep kiss. You found your arms sneaking in under his shirt and wrapping around his back pulling him close in. This kiss was pure sex and filled with fire. He pressed his body between your legs and his cock rubbed hard against your cotton panties. You could help but moan into his mouth with the sudden sensation shocking your wet core.

His right hand left your face and he made the journey down between your thighs. The feeling of his fingertips brushing against your soaking wet pussy made you jump. He pulled away from the kiss and now looked you in your eyes the way you asked his consent with yours earlier. You couldn’t help but look away for a moment embarrassed but you quickly moved your gaze back to him and nodded with the most precious lust filled face.

Before you knew it his slender fingers were hooked into your panties and he slid them all the way down in one large motion. The air was chilled against the sopping wet mess you had under your skirt. He slipped your panties into his back pocket.

“You're never getting those back by the way” he chuckled out. “Now since it’s only fair I think it’s time we take this tight little top off?” He backed away and looked at you. It only took you a moment to understand he wanted to watch you do this part.

Your shaking hands made their way up to the top button and began to slowly slip them out. He hummed in anticipation as you revealed yourself and the pretty baby pink bra you had hidden underneath your shirt. The shirt joined the pile of accumulating clothes on the stone floor below you. His hands reached up and began to wonder around your plush supple skin. His touch made your skin send goosebumps over your body. You let out soft whimpers as his nail softly scraped along your bra's edge.

“Please” you moaned out

“Oh she speaks? Please what my dear?” He says against your neck.

“Please sir, I can’t take it please just touch me!” With your desperate cries he sunk his teeth into your neck kissing and sucking soon to be deep red hickies into your skin. You cried out in a mix of pleasure and pain as he sneaked his hands behind you and made your bra fall to the floor where it belonged. Your breasts were exposed to him and the air and the mix of that made your nipples rock solid. His large hands began to knead into them with vigor and equal desperation. He easily found your nipple with his mouth and sucked and nipped. His deep moans filled the air and mixed with your high pitched squeals.

As his mouth sent attacks to your left breast and his left hand tweaked your right, his free hand found its way to your soaked pussy. It’s like he knew exactly how to curl his fingers around your clit to send shocks through your body. Your hips rolled desperately against his hand to feel him as much as you could.

“If only you could see how desperate and needy you are right now. Humping your dripping little cunt against me. Does your god feel good against your pretty pussy? Hmmm?” His words cut through you like a knife. All you could do is crumble under him in pleas and desperation.

“P…please please please, I need you, please fill me up I can’t take it anymore.” Tears filling your eyes again.

“Well if you beg me so nicely how could I say no to that?” With no warning his cock was pressed against your slit and plunged deep inside you. You cried out in pain as he was still against you.

“Shhh I’m right here I won’t move until you’re ready ok?” He said in between kissing away even more tears on your cheeks.

You were a mess under him but this was the only place in the entire world you wanted to be. For seven years you dreamed about him and wanting him so desperately to fill you up and here you were getting exactly that. You clutched onto his back sending your nails deep into his flesh. He couldn’t help but move forward slightly into you from the sensation. You let out a moan and tightened around him that made him moan into your neck.

“Please move” you breathed out. You didn’t have to ask him twice; his hips moved with a sudden urgency that even shocked him. As if on autopilot he moved in a primal need into your center and filled the room with sounds of him slapping against you. His hands gripped your waist hard, unbeknownst to you both, would leave behind bruises the next day.

His pace was slow at first but over time with the growing moans that escaped your mouth he began to move faster and more erratic.

“Fuck your pussy feels so good around me. Your cunt is sucking me in so eagerly.” He said through gritted teeth. His words made you clench harder around him. “Tell me how does my big cock feel inside you?”

“Hmgmmhh-“ is all your mouth manages to get out between his powerful thrusts. He grabbed the hair in the back of your head, snapping you back to look him deep in his eyes. “What did I tell you about speaking when spoken too? Don’t make me have to punish you when you’ve been so good for me.” He growled down at you.

“You feel so good! Y..you make me feel so full, I’ve n..never felt like this down there before.”

He paused and looked at you, you whined at the sudden stop. “Is this the first time you’ve had someone inside you?” He asked in disbelief. You panicked afraid that he would want to stop with your lack of experience.

“I’m sorry! Is that a problem? I don’t want to disappoint you!” You said, shaken. His eyes widened and immediately placed your face in his hands.

“Oh gods no! I’m just shocked someone as breathtakingly beautiful as you hadn’t had a line of boys trying to take you to bed with them.” A soft smile looked down on you and you nuzzled yourself into his touch.

“I have always just waited in hope that ummm it would be you.” You said looking away.

You could feel him throb in you as that escaped your lips. Without warning his hips snapped in you at a frantic pace once more.

“What a sexy little nymph you are. I am going to truly lose my mind.” He grunted as he pumped you deeper and deeper with each passing thrust. His fingers slipped down and found their way to your clit once again. Your moans filled his ears like prayers. Begging for a release that you were desperately in need of.

“Please sir I-I’m so close.” Your face found its way to his shoulder as you cried out.

“D-does my pretty bunny want to cum for me? Have you been a good girl? Should I allow you to cum all over my big cock?” He asked into your hair.

“God please, please let me cum! I’m begging you please!” You screamed out.

“Fuck, cum on my cock while I fill you deep with mine!” He shouted back at you. He plowed into you at dangerous speeds, hitting your cervix with every lightning crack of his hips. Circling faster around your clit with his thumb. You could feel yourself on the edge so close to your sweet release. With one final snap of his hips you lost all control coming undone around his throbbing cock. Squirting all around him unaware you were even able to do that.

When he felt you release around him that’s all he needed, “Fuck fuck fuck take my cum, fuck!”and shot load after load of his hot cum deep into your pussy. Grunting like an animal as he reached his glorious climax that he has dreamed of for so long.

You both stayed in this wrapped position for what seemed like an eternity panting and gasping for air. When you both found your breath he planted sweet gentle kisses all over you. You giggled with each one he bestowed upon you.

“Gods I’m going to keep you locked down here forever.” He said between kisses.

“You’d have to pull me out of here to get me to leave.” You replied back and planted a gentle kiss on his swollen lips.

“Well that would never happen,” he said looking over you sweetly.“Now let’s get you in my chambers so we can get you right in the bath because you are one dirty bunny.”

“Yeah your dirty little bunny.” You giggled into his ear and with that you were whisked out of the store room and through his chamber door off for more of your wildest dreams to play out before you.

#severus snape #fanfic #pro snape #snape smut #smut #student teacher #god kink? #first time #snape x y/n #snape x you #snape x reader #i lit was kicking my feet giggling making this stoopid thing #i love it tho

[sugarpasteltmnt]

I've been compleatly OBSSESED with neon void so far!!! It's by far my favorite fic of any I've read!! After every chapter I have to take a second to do the happy stimmies because you write all of the scenes so well. Whenever I see a new update I clear the next hour for reading it and the subsequent geek out sesion for how AMAZING it always is. You write extremely well, you convey the characters so acurately, the fight scenes are creative, the way you write Leo's perspective is AMAZING, love the font changes, the angst PALPABLE, and just over all I love everything you're able to do with this concept. The way you can see Leo's mental state deteriorating through out the fic is just *chefs kiss*. There's so much I love about the fic that I can't possibly list everything.

Also the established difference between teleporting and portaling is so great, it adds to the pure panic that void causes for the boys aside from, y'know, crazy dude capable of beating Big Mama within an inch of her life and STRAIGHT UP OFFING a buch of other yokai. It does wonders for establishing him as a threat even though he technically isn't for the turtles. Plus I'm sure that once they find out who Void really is, it will add a bunch of tension since they'll need to stop Leo from literally SCATTERING HIS ATOMS ACROSS SPACE.

AND THE CHAPTER PREVIEW ISTG I've never gotten so much serotonin from being in this much pain ;0; The gif is perfect to set the mood, I can't wait to see what happens. You're ablility to choose just the right thing to stab so many people directly through the heart is nothing short of super-natural. BUT PLEASE give the boi some happiness, if not for his sake, for mine-

ANYWAYS this is all a VERY long way of saying, I absolutely love this and I had to draw the silly boi being the silly boi. I needed to draw him happy for the health of my heart ;-; (don't worry though, I'm working on some tasty angst right now)

Can't wait to see where everything goes, GOOD LUCK TO CASEY but there only six chapters left so we're getting to the end game now >:D

Please have a wonderful rest of your week :D

THANK U SO MUCH ;w; I’m so so happy that my fight scenes are followable/enjoyable, and tho they are a binch to code I’m so happy you enjoy the funky fonts and formatting ;w; i know reading blocks of text can be intimidating/tiring for readers, so i try to break it up to help with the pacing and sprinkle in some fun, spooky fonts as treats 🩵

Something i really, REALLY loved about Rise was the fights. Not only was the animation amazing, but it was always so creative. I try my best to make the fight scenes as silly as the boys can be, while utilizing their adaptive skills to use their surroundings to their advantage.

And bruh trying to balance Leo’s insanity in a believable way has been such a (fun) challenge so it makes me so happy to hear you like it 😭🥺 and I’m so glad people seem to like the ‘teleportation’ gimmick I’ve got going on (and that it hopefully makes sense omg)

(And i will admit I’m a little proud of my chapter previews because they are so fun to write, and i like to reassure readers that 1) i have a plan and 2) I’m keeping myself accountable to finish LOL)

Also aksdlaskdhaksdh thank u for this art this part especially is SENDING ME WHEEZE 🤣🩵❗️

#he is so SILLY!!! #akasdaksd THANK U SO MUCH I LOVE IT #you translated this moment so well LOOOOL #I’m glad that my attempts at comedic moments are funny to others lmao #he’s my silly little guy your honor #tnv asks #pastel prattling #tnv fanart #the neon void tmnt #rottmnt #the neon void #tnv tmnt

[bloomingdog]

Acolyte

word count: 2.7k a/n: hii i'm going through a depressive episode and this is my fic about soap with a depressed reader cos he's my babygirl. might expand on them idk i love soap i wanna keep writing for him

Johnny is a friend of Kyle’s, and Kyle is a friend of Farah, who is your friend. And Johnny, or Soap, is here because Kyle invited him since he had “nothing better to do”. And it’s alright, he’s fun and a little loud, he talks over people but always apologises. You were a little nervous to meet him, having been promised a get-together with people you were already well-acquaintances with, but the tears in your eyes, from laughing, that is, dismiss all previous nerves.

“And then he-” He’s cut off by his own wheeze, it’s been going for a couple of minutes; him and Kyle trying to retell a story about their captain, but they keep getting interrupted by their own laughter. You don’t think it’s that funny, if anything their reactions are the thing that make you all go into hysterics. It’s hard to feel sorry for all the other patrons. 

You feel drunker than you really are, save for Farah, you only had two to three beers each. It’s the kind of silly drunkenness induced by being with friends. The forgotten UNO cards on top of the table shake as Johnny’s fist hits the table trying to catch his breath.

And the pub’s playlist keeps playing every top #1 hit from the last 20 years. And at some point you’re all performing a rendition of smash hit “500 miles”. And you’re getting giggly with sleep. And Farah’s driving you home. And she’s asking you about Johnny, which makes you giggly all over. And she’s telling you he’s single. 

And then it’s morning. And there’s a message from an unknown phone number.

“Hey. This is Johnny. 

Just wanted to let you know I had a blast last night, loved meeting you :-)” 

It makes you smile trying to figure out what to write back. Why is it so hard to sound nonchalant while also a little interested in getting to know him? 

“So did I!

Haven’t laughed that hard in a while lol”

That’s cool, right? It’s half a good response at the very least, since you get a response back.

“Wanna meet sometime?”

Oh, that’s good. At best, you get a little attention and maybe a lay, at worst you get a new friend. You keep texting throughout the day, you two fit like a puzzle piece: talkative, extroverted and active. He sends you a picture of a squirrel he saw earlier on his morning run, you send him a picture of your cat back with the caption “my asshole son” to which he replies “don’t be mean to him”. Those little interactions keep getting exchanged. On Monday, you send him a fun fact about a shark that had a virgin birth. Tuesday, he’s telling you about his fear of dogs. Wednesday is the perfect occasion for a picture of your cat, Gus, sleeping in a funny position. Thursday, your phone pings with a string of texts ranting about Glasgow City. Friday you’re texting Johnny that you’re at the restaurant you’re meeting at, a hole-in-the-wall that mastered the art of oily food and crispy chips, he replies he’s running late.

“I’m so sorry for making you wait.” Is out of his mouth before any greeting. “Are ye hungry?” It’s more a conversation starter than an actual question.

“It’s okay! No worries.” You’re just happy to be hanging out, not bothered by his tardiness. 

The two of you sit and chat, you learn he has a tattoo of a revolver but won’t say where. He laughs at the face you make while imagining where it would be. “Don’t be dirty!” He chastises, it’s within the law that you steal one of his chips as payment for the teasing. You ask where does Soap come from.

“A’m good at cleaning.” It’s a short answer that explains enough, you’re not keen on pushing the topic any further. Luckily, he changes the topic rather quickly, it looks like he’s not a big fan of silences. “Tell me aboot Gus. How’d you get him?” 

“A colleague’s cat had kittens, she was trying to find them homes, Gus was the only one left, runt of the litter you know?” He nods, listening, interested in what you have to say. “Kept pushing and showing me pictures of the guy until I caved. When I took him home he wouldn’t stop screaming, I think he might be part siamese, they’re really vocal. So, he kept me up all night, I thought he was sick or something, I even took him to the emergency vet, turns out he’s just a dickhead.” He smiles at the insult. “A very cute one, though.” You add, it’s hard not to love him even if he wakes you up at 6 a.m. on the dot.

 “Can I meet him someday?” he might if you’re lucky enough.

You might as well thank every saint, divinity, and omnipotent being for your luck tonight. He accompanies you home, only because “he’s a gentleman”, according to him. The kind of gentleman that kisses you dizzy and gets invited into your flat.

You text Farah about the events of the evening before falling asleep, it’s not kiss and tell if she’s your best friend. And in the early morning you’re both woken up by an angry Gus, whose side of the bed has been stolen by a guy that almost doesn’t fit in it. You’re cuddled on his side, one leg over his.

“Gus-Gus….” It’s a groggy mumble of displeasure, you know he only wants to be beside you, but the hour doesn’t help your mood. Still, you move away from Johnny so he can jump onto your chest for cuddles.

“He does skirl alright.” That morning voice might actually be the death of you.

“Told you. He’s an asshole.” A breathy laugh makes his bare chest move as he turns to face you.

“He’s real cute though.”

“Are you not tired?” The early morning light peeks through your window, the sun isn’t even out yet and you can’t imagine anyone that is appreciative of being woken up so early.

“Naw, no’ really. ‘M used to it.” 

It feels weird, good weird, to have him in your bed like that. Barely a week since you met, and he feels so close, more like a friend than a one-night stand, more than a friends-with-benefits. He checks the time on his phone before speaking again.

“Ye want breakfast?” Your eyes are closed again, hugging Gus close to your chest, hand moving up and down his fur but not doing much to pet him. His call of your name is answered by a groan, it makes him chuckle. He scoots closer to you, you can feel his arm coming up for Gus to sniff and the cat readjusts himself so his head is closer to Johnny’s. “Hi”.

Oh but the warmth dissipating from his body is to much, that and the soft noise of Gus’ purr drives you to fall asleep again. You only half dream, a mixture of images that won’t make any sense once you’re awake again, which happens rather soon as the bed adjusts and you feel a hand run through your hair. 

“Can I make tea?” His voice sounds softer than earlier, you nod, opening your eyes just a smidge to look up at him.

“Biscuits in the cupboard…”That’s as much as you can muster now. “Wake me up when it's done?”

“Course.” 

He left with Gus following behind, but you can’t seem to fall asleep again. That was…rather intimate. Your stomach feels hot and your chest tighter. Shooting your eyes open you’re quick to grab your phone again, Farah replied an hour ago.

“Wooo! Good for you”

“You’re gonna have to tell me everything about it btw”

“Farah”

“How pathetic is it to have a crush on your one night stand?”

Oh you don’t like that, calling him a one night stand, feels too impersonal, rude almost.

You’re getting out of bed, into your restroom and to the kitchen. 

“Good morning” He leans against the kitchen counter where your meds are,he’s looking at his phone waiting for the kettle to boil, clad in his boxers from last night, hair a mess and body soft under the morning light. Even though it’s the same body it feels so different from last night, scars, bigger and small, litter his body, it’s muscular and soft at the same time, big pecs a tad too inviting and a tattoo on his forearm. Reaching for the pills would mean standing next to him, probably brushing against—no, touching him, and that makes you nervous. Oh. You’re embarrassingly down bad. 

He stayed the entire weekend, Friday through Sunday. Next week it was picnic and football. You’re convinced any major team would be jealous of your 1-person teams and 5 meter field. He’s good, but you’re full of fear as he chases you for the ball, it’s the predator-prey kinda adrenaline that makes you score. 

“Yes!” 

“Offside! Offside!”

“What do you mean offside? There’s no one I can pass the ball to!” In fact, there’s not even a goal. You grab the ball and go back to him, looking straight into his eyes in fake defiance. 

“Talking back to the referee? That’s a red card.” He looks so handsome like this, standing tall and unmovable, even if only joking, and you let him know via a quick kiss to his lips. He’s pulling you back to his lips not even half a second after, deep and slow, giggly. “Bribin’ me, huh?” You let out a soft, happy, sigh and kiss him again.

“Wanna go home?”

You tell Farah everything over a cup of tea and a piece of cake, of course. And she laughs at you, not in a mean way at all, only friendly and amused, still you hit her arm.

And the following week it’s film night. This one’s more spontaneous than the others, it’s been a tough week at work, you want a quiet evening and some company so you ask him if he wants to come hang out, he replies saying that he’ll be there in 30.

It’s the two of you, your favourite take out, Gus-Gus sitting on the back of the sofa and Fargo on the TV. He’s not paying as much attention to the film as he is to you.

“What?” You say, turning to look at him.

“Ye’r a beauty.” You smile shyly and kick him on the leg with your foot slightly. “A’m serious. I like you a lot.” A big smile grows on your face, and it’s enough confirmation for him to know you feel the same.

Or at least he thought so. There are no plans for this weekend, not for lack of trying, that is, Soap’s been trying to text you all week, it’s a big shift from your daily texting. He misses the little life updates you send him. Tuesday, he thought you might just be busy. Wednesday he stops trying to contact you, did he do something wrong? Went too fast? Are you ghosting him? What did he do that was worth the silent treatment? Thursday, he tries calling you, multiple times. Friday all rational thoughts have left his brain, did something happen to you? Are you okay? Christ, what if you’re dead? He texts Farah, swallowing his embarrassment.

“She’s okay, I think.”

“Going through a bit of a depression episode at the moment.”

“She’s going recluse, I know she wouldn’t mind a bit of help.”

“I have a spare key to her flat if you want to come get it.”

The string of texts floats around his mind, spare key in hand in front of your front door. He’s been inside before, but he was invited in, this feels invasive, but Farah trusted him, and she knew you best. He sent you a message before showing up, the last bit of chivalry he can offer before showing up in your home, it went through, and he hoped you read it even if you didn’t reply. 

He calls your name upon entering, no response. Gus comes running up to him to headbutt his legs and meow, a quick look lets him know his water bowl is clean and automatic feeder full, that’s a good sign. His voice trembles as he calls for you again. 

“You know where she is?” Great, now he’s speaking to the cat, and he meows in response, great, an actual conversation with a cat. Gus takes off and squeezes himself into a room with the door ajar, your bedroom. He knocks before entering, not expecting a response. The room is dark except for the light coming from your laptop, empty and half-full glasses taking up most of the space on your desk, chair full of unfolded clothes and a doughnut of blankets on the bed.

“Go away.” The doughnut speaks. His heart breaks at the sad, much softer than usual tone of your voice.

“Love.” The pet name slips from his lips, he notices but doesn’t attempt to correct himself. He walks closer until he’s sitting next to you. “Can I help you?” 

You shake your head no, or what’s visible of it. “Go away, I stink.” He chuckles.

“That’s fine, smell better than the lads in base.” It’s a pathetic attempt at humour, you still shake your head no.

“You don’t have to do anything.” You don’t sound sad or angry like he thought you might, it’s emotionless, almost like an automatic generated response.

“But I want to. Want tae tak’ care o ye” He wants to make everything better, wants to fix everything, wants you happy and energetic and smiling. It’s silly how much he cares for you after barely a month of knowing eachother, scary now that he’s admitting it out loud. He pulls down the blankets for a full view of your face, his hand goes to your hair, it’s tangled, he’s careful not to pull on it. “Am gunna run you a bath.” It’s not a question, you laugh slightly and he smiles, realising what he said. “Didny mean it like that, c’mon.” 

He helps you up from the bed and into the restroom. From your seat ion the toilet, you observe the way he turns on the tap and rummages through your cabinet, trying to find something to put in the water, you assume. “The orange bar in the back.” He halts, looks for a second and comes up with it, he leaves it on the sink while he turns off the water, you grab the bar and crumble a bit of it into the tub. He looks at you and gets up, you take it as your cue to undress and get in. Johnny comes back with a change of pyjamas and underwear and leaves again. You can hear him moving around and making noise, talking to the cat in occasion, while you clean yourself, when he comes back it’s to put your dirty laundry in the hamper. You don’t know why that’s the thing that makes you break and start crying. As soon as he notices, he’s on his knees next to you, softly caressing your cheeks and moving your damp hair away from your face.

“Whit’s wrong?” 

“I don’t want you to do this.” Is no reply to his question. “I don’t want you to have to do this.”

“M’eudail.” He starts. “It’s okay.”

“No it’s not!” You look up at him” I’m so sad all the fucking time and I don’t want you to have to deal with that, it’s not fair to you, you know? I don’t want you to have to take care of me or put up with me.”

“But what if I want to? Wanna take care of you, wanna put up with you.” You shake your head no, looking back down.

“Johnny, I’m so much. I get so clingy and stupid.” 

“That’s fine by me.” There’s no deterring him. He lifts your head up by your chin to kiss your forehead, bright blue eyes staring at you. 

And you realise how ridiculous this is. You’re crying in the bathtub, your friend-situationship is on his knees next to you, again, crying in the bathtub. You let out a sigh and nod.

“Okay.” 

#cod mw2 fanfic #cod x reader #soap x reader #john mactavish x reader #john mactavish x you #john soap mctavish x reader #john soap mactavish x you #johnny soap mctavish x reader #johnny soap mactavish x you #soap x you