#somehow i’m still not only attending the show but also posting art for it. what the fuck.
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please do not discuss my fancy nightgown
#personal#IM INSANE IM CRAZYYY INSANE.ASYLUM#cycle goes thus:#draw LLL art -> gets convinced to post it -> posts it -> has a panic attack at work -> the cast like and comment on it ->#have another anxiety attack#somehow i’m still not only attending the show but also posting art for it. what the fuck.#something deeply wrong with my brain#and i know the deep rooted cause of my art insecurities but unfortunately i can’t beat up a stage magician i saw in like 2003#*leans over seductively* hello ladies who’s having an insecurity fuelled crisis tonight#but i also got a cute little post traumatic stress / anxiety combo hit today so i’m more delicate than usual#whatever goodnight folks stay writhing
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I posted 2,869 times in 2022
That's 1,575 more posts than 2021!
161 posts created (6%)
2,708 posts reblogged (94%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@thigholstercas
@likeaclassic
@wigglebox
@mattzerella-sticks
@green-blue-heller
I tagged 2,649 of my posts in 2022
Only 8% of my posts had no tags
#destiel - 648 posts
#lol - 358 posts
#cockles - 302 posts
#beautiful art - 223 posts
#dean winchester - 218 posts
#beautiful gifset - 212 posts
#jensen ackles - 167 posts
#wow - 164 posts
#😭😭😭 - 147 posts
#beautiful fic - 116 posts
Longest Tag: 139 characters
#i'm also undecided whether soldier boys definition of raising his sons to be men would have included the beatings his father couldn't be...
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
129 notes - Posted November 29, 2022
#4
I honestly don’t care if Jensen and Misha have never actually seen each other naked (I don’t believe that to be true, but if I were to be proven wrong somehow, I’d accept it)… what keeps me in the cockles dumpster is their complete devotion to each other. They love each other deeply, and respect each other, support each other, develop each other in sooo many ways that so few ever get to experience, and I just think that love is beautiful 💙💚
178 notes - Posted November 15, 2022
#3
Sometimes I wonder if we (as a fandom) have over-analysed scenes to the point that we’ve forgotten what we were actually watching.
Most of our favourite parts of Supernatural, the mothership as it were, are our favourite bits because they’ve been analysed and broken apart and put back together so many times that we can create this bigger picture that is further moulded by our own headcanons and fic plots and playlists. And that’s what makes Supernatural great.
I’ve seen a lot of #thoughts on The Winchesters now that the pilot is out, and I know that not everyone thinks it was a winner - the jokes were cheesy, the CGI looked terrible, it didn’t feel right, whatever else - but I’d argue that’s because it’s being compared to the Supernatural in our heads, not the Supernatural that aired on television.
I’ve said it before and I still believe it with my whole heart… Supernatural should just be a mediocre watch and forget network television show, but it’s not because of the passion of the people it sweeps up under it’s spell and the little bit of extra magic each and every person who gives it a little love sprinkles on top. This new passion project just needs the same magic.
231 notes - Posted October 13, 2022
#2
Some new information has been presented to me by a friend who attended this past weekend's Supernatural convention in Las Vegas. Cue too many coincidences for me to not talk about it...
Last night, after the con had ended, I received this picture of the Las Vegas Eiffel Tower lit up in blue and green:
This morning, Misha Collins himself, has drawn attention to the very same structure by nose-fucking it with a thinly veiled sex joke.
See the full post
396 notes - Posted March 8, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
“YOU HAVEN’T SPOKEN FOR HOURS”
I’m sorry, what? You’re telling me that Cas just sat with Dean while he drove to process the loss of his brother for hours in silence?
😭😭😭
461 notes - Posted August 13, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
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seven hundred and one
description: seven centuries and you always seem to bump into hyunjin at least once in every one of them
member: hyunjin
genre: fluff, childhood friends to lovers au, slow burn (technically it is), historical au, vampire au (vampire!skz, implied incubus!hyunjin idk yall decide), witch au (immortal!reader), a sprinkle of established relationship towards the end, implied fem reader
word count: 10.3k
warning: explicit language, mentions of blood, murder, death, trauma, arson, suggestive (i turn 19 & suddenly i get brave lmao)
note: hyunjin playing a thousand years on his post-mucore vlive that happened to fall on my birthday did things to my feelings + took a lot of liberties w the history & nature or vampires if that’s okay + if the narration is confusing just tell me lmao + established relationship au’s in detail makes my head spin ew cheesy stuff
zero
You have always been a traveler even in 1319 when you were still twelve and mortal. Being born and raised into a coven of witches at a time when witchcraft and other non-conforming practices were punishable by death, you naturally had to be for your own safety. Growing up, you had to move from village to village with your family, helping villagers in secret as your main source of income then leaving before word would inevitably and uncontrollably spread; thus leaving you with little to no room to grow intimate attachments with people who are not kin.
Not that you minded the last, anyway, because your mother would always remind you that you can always go back after some time. Korea was vast, then, but there were only a few places you could go to in a cycle. Then, you met Hyunjin.
Hwang Hyunjin has always been a prince, but especially in 1319 when he was still twelve and human. Besides his undeniably regal looks and naturally graceful disposition, he was also a noble in King Taejeong’s court. Of course, you’ve already forgotten his exact title at the time after centuries of living but you do have an inkling of a memory wherein he mentioned something about being related to the king somehow—this said memory being the first time you met him.
You don’t remember all the specific details now but you’re quite certain that you moved to the capital Hanseong in the first place because your mother’s services was requested by the king himself to treat one of his daughters, the only time the monarchy acknowledged you. You can also faintly remember being allowed to wander on your own at the marketplace right outside of the palace courts on the day you arrived only because you competed with your cousins over who can unpack their belongings the fastest and won.
Even now, over seven hundred years later, you’re still thankful that Chaeyeon and Chaeryeong somehow forgot some of their bags in your carriage that day or else you would’ve missed bumping into Hyunjin completely.
He was receiving his chosen bouquet of carnations from a flower stall at the market entrance when you approached, the bright colors of the display chrysanthemums initially catching your eye. As you asked the stand owner about the blue flowers, you noticed that Hyunjin didn’t seem to have any intentions of paying, prompting you to stop him from walking away to ask, “Aren’t you going to pay for that?”
Hyunjin momentarily froze in his steps before turning around to you with raised eyebrows, his head slowly turning from you to the pink flowers in his hands. After this brief pause, you then heard him laugh in amusement for the first time, confusing you further in the moment. “I, uh, I don’t have to. It’s—it’s free for me.”
Ever the curious child, you then asked next, “For you? Why?”
Hyunjin would confess to you later on, some time when you briefly met at an art exhibit in 1880s Spain, that he only entertained you because no one has ever asked him such question in a long time when you did. Because of his status, people both inside and outside the court would leave him alone to do whatever he wants and so he thought it was refreshing that you did otherwise when you first met. He also mentioned something about finding you cute in the fashion of your time but you always dismiss this in embarrassment. You were only seven, for crying out loud.
And so, taking a step closer to you, he then lifted the bouquet up to the level of your faces after he leaned down to your height and, with a mischievous smile, loudly whispered to you, “I’m from the palace courts—an important person to the king!”
Hyunjin still insists at present that he did tell you exactly what his title and relation to the king was but every time you challenge him to tell you what he said, he would clumsily steer the conversation away to something else. Besides this, you have always agreed that you furrowed your eyebrows deeper at him in response and replied, “Still, you should pay. Earning money is difficult these days.” which piqued Hyunjin’s interest in you further.
“I will,” He assured you smoothly, bringing the bouquet down after and turning to the stand owner. Gesturing to the chrysanthemums you’ve been eyeing, he then continues, “if you let me pay for your chrysanthemums. The reason why I couldn’t pay is because my money right now is too big, anyway.”
You protested against his offer politely, reasoning out that you had no intention of buying, but with Hyunjin’s status as a noble also came a persuasive charm to him. “Didn’t you just move here? I can tell with the travelling hanbok.” He pointed out to you, already gathering the best-looking chrysanthemums before he could even hear you say ‘yes.’ You started showing signs of giving in after some five minutes of friendly banter, prompting his optimism. “Consider this as a welcoming gift!”
You had no choice but to accept the flowers in the end with the promise of giving him something in return when you meet again around the palace courts after briefly mentioning your reason for moving to the capital. Holding your bouquet on your left hand to mirror Hyunjin’s bouquet on his right, you then extended your right hand to him before you could part ways. “I’m Y/N, by the way.” You then introduced yourself, already too focused then on thinking of how to repay Hyunjin. “In case I forget and you want to look for me.“
“Hwang Hyunjin. I would definitely not forget but really, you don’t have to repay me.” He smiled as he took your hand in his, reluctantly letting go only when older passersby gave you curious looks. “I just hope you have a good stay here in Hanseong!”
You then made a bracelet out of one stem of the chrysanthemums almost a month later as payment, preserving the petals inside transparent beads with an enchantment that would prevent them from losing their vibrant blue. By this time, you have been seeing Hyunjin almost every day around the palace grounds and with this, he has been slowly piecing together the entire reason for your court presence. With the bracelet, you indirectly confirmed your true nature to him and he wholeheartedly accepted you with a hug behind the hallway pillars.
“Your secret is safe with me.”
You‘ve been best friends ever since, even when you had to leave two years later. At present, Hyunjin still wears the bracelet—even when you insist in making him a new one.
“I like it.” He always tells you whenever you would bring it up. “I liked it then, I like it now, and I’ll like it forever.”
“It’s ancient.” You would scrunch up your nose in response. “You could literally sell it at the local museum.”
“Well, that says a lot about your age, doesn’t i—ow! Ow, I won’t say that ever again just sto—ya, stop hitting me!”
seven
Your family briefly returned to Hanseong five years after your stay to attend one of the elder princesses’ wedding, the same princess your mother has been tasked to treat when she was hired by the king. You were eighteen and almost ready to part with your coven in the event that your mother will ask when you turn nineteen in the fall, having grown particularly proficient in brewing potions after you first left the capital. Hyunjin, on the other hand, became a more prominent public figure in the courts at nineteen as talks of the king appointing one of his sons as crowned prince become more frequent, thus initially making your first reunion awkward.
“Should I address you as Your Highness?” You asked between your teeth as you carefully curtsied back at Hyunjin, glancing on the corners of your eyes in case the passing servants were sparing you looks. “I don’t really know how these things work.”
“No, no need, I don’t think anyone really cares.” He chuckled with a shake of his head as the two of you then simultaneously stood up straight. Looking around the two of you after, his grin then grew wider when he looked back at you before he engulfed you in a hug, startling you— even more when he lifted you up slightly from the ground and spun you once. “Oh, Y/N, I missed you!”
“Y-Ya! Hyunjin, p-put me down, someone could see!” You scolded him instinctively while frantically looking around for any signs of his or your relatives. “Hyunjin!”
“Don’t mind them!” He countered back at you, burying his face into the crook of your neck with a deep inhale after putting you down. “I missed you. You haven’t written since late Spring!”
You shrugged, feeling strangely cold when he pulled away after. “I’ve been—well, we‘ve been busy. It’s the summer so a lot of people are asking for us and most of my cousins, um, parted with us after my last letter.”
“Oh.” He frowned, having thought of it negatively at first. “I’m sorry about that.”
You remember distinctly shaking your head reassuringly at him over his apology, waving your hand dismissively in front of him at realizing that he misinterpreted. “No, it’s alright. When you turn nineteen, you’re given the choice as tradition—most of my older cousins just so happened to choose parting ways with us.” You then explained, even giving him a small smile. “It’s nothing personal. It does give us the younger ones more work, though, hence why I couldn’t write.”
With your explanation, Hyunjin then smiled. “Oh, oh, I see.” He muses. “Then, I’m glad we meet again after a long time! I really was starting to worry you were taking longer to reply!”
“Well, we’ll be staying here for two weeks—that should be enough time to catch up.” You then matched your smile with his, following him to the palace gardens when he offers you to, ‘for old time’s sake’ he reasoned. “Then at the end of the week, we get to attend a wedding! Honestly, I’m really excited, I’ve only ever seen weddings from afar when my aunt would perform rituals for good weather.”
“Then you’ll be in for a great time! Weddings are absolutely lovely, especially here in court!” He promised you that afternoon before proceeding to recall to you the countless weddings that have happened within the confines of the palace courts in his life.
Only, the wedding somehow ended in catastrophe when the day actually came because of a group of hired assassins who managed to get to nearly every one of the royal family in attendance including Hyunjin.
“Hyunjin!” You cried for him amidst the stampede and the fire that has somehow started from one of the guest tables, Chaeyeon and Chaeryeong tugging you in the opposite direction by your arms and waist waist and preventing you from running back to his bloodied body. “Hyunjin!”
“Y/N, no, we have to leave!” Chaeryeong scolded you countless of times that night, tears streaming down her own face in fear as your mothers and aunts ushered your entire coven to retreat back to the woods. “We have to go!”
“B-But Hyunjin!” You insisted in between sobs every single time, your attempts at escaping your cousins’ grasps becoming weaker and weaker until they eventually managed to reunite you with the rest of your coven after. “We can still save him—I can save him! He’s still conscious, for God’s sake!”
Hyunjin received two fatal stab wounds to his chest and stomach that night as one of the assassins’ last few victims before fleeing because of the fire, pushing him on his stomach to the ground in his own pool of blood. Even with the fear and panic coursing through your veins and your blurry vision as you navigated your way through the chaos, you knew that you could heal him quickly with the right enchantments and potions and that you could carry him with you all the way to the forest where your needed herbs could possibly be available but your cousins wouldn’t listen to you, forcing you to abandon your friend that night for your own sake.
You remember vividly, even to this day, this particular image of Hyunjin seemingly dying on the ground, eyes pleading you to follow your cousins as he clutched his chest and choked on his own blood, because it still gives you nightmares every night despite the assurance that he was eventually saved. Hyunjin laughs at you over this now but whenever you would scowl and hit him in the arm for making it seem as if he thinks of his human death as a joke, he would immediately pull you into his embrace and apologize.
“I’m sorry.” He always whispers in your ear at present, stroking your hair and hugging you significantly tighter each time. “It’s just that it’s all in the past now and I’ve let it go way back. I just hope you do too because I’m still here—and I’ll always be.”
“I don’t think I can—not in a hundred more years, I think.” You would frown in response, also recently acquiring the habit of gathering fistfuls of his shirt in the process. “It’s too—it’s too—“
“I understand. Shh. I’m sorry, again...”
nine
In the event that a family member turns twenty-one, your entire extended family gathers to perform a ritual on the full moon after their date of birth in order to grant them immortality which can only be broken by willful death. It was an ancient and seemingly controversial tradition unique to your family, the elder generations were close and wanted to be close with everyone in this fashion.
When you were younger, with your innocent sense of adventure, you’ve always looked forward to being the recipient of this particular ritual at the thought that it would give you more time to explore both in and, hopefully, out of Korea. But when it came to the first full moon after your twenty-first birthday, you felt nothing but dread throughout the entire night.
“I just think it’s meaningless!” You cried into Chaeryeong’s shoulder once you’ve managed to return to your lodgings, pulling your knees closer to your chest as the two of you sat in your bed. “Why should I continue living when I have nothing to look forward to anymore? When someone else deserved to live?”
Chaeryeong still feels guilty about it even at present, often apologizing to Hyunjin whenever she would come across him, but she felt this feeling the heaviest in this moment hundreds if years ago as she stroked your back comfortingly. “I’m so sorry, Y/N...I know anything I can say right now wouldn’t make you feel better or make what happened right but I’m so sorry. It was you or him and Chaeyeon and I had to make a choice.”
“But w-we could’ve—we could’ve s-saved him!”
“I know, I know, and I’m sorry...”
“Hyunjin, my best friend—“ You sobbed until morning despite Chaeryeong’s pleas for you to sleep. “My Hyunjin, he’s gone because of me.”
And until morning, Chaeryeong kept an eye out for you in case you did something to yourself as you mourned. “None of it was your fault. If anything, it was mine.” She told you over and over again until you fell asleep at sunrise. “Y/N, please...”
Chaeryeong and Chaeyeon ended up watching over you closely for the two months that followed, wary of your actions until you confronted them again about it and assured them that you weren’t thinking about doing something else that could potentially harm you.
You then completely parted ways with them after.
eighty-eight
You have already travelled the entirety of Korea on your own once when you unexpectedly meet Hyunjin again. Eighty-one years after his supposed death and with a new king already on the throne, you‘ve almost forgotten all about your childhood best friend because of the passing time that it completely startled you when you saw a glimpse of his face in the crowd of a village somewhere in Pyongyang.
He smiled at you from afar in the brief second your eyes first met, even subtly tipping his hat as he walked towards you from the opposite direction which effectively froze you in the middle of the street.
Shaking your head in thought, you frowned and look away at the seemingly random remembrance of the past. You’ve always thought then that you’ve already forgotten most of your childhood, especially those that ended in tragedy, and so you instantly felt a wave of disappointment in yourself at suddenly seeing a familiar face of the past in the crowd.
But when you looked up and see that Hyunjin has already reached you on your spot, your breath got caught in your throat and your eyes began to sting in the moment as tears threatened to fall at the sight of seeing your best friend’s smile again in person. You then instinctively held out a hand to touch his hanbok. “Y-You—y-you’re—“
“I-I’m alive...” He stammered out almost in the same fashion as you, his grin only growing bigger after the longer you stood frozen in front of him. When you don’t respond immediately in prolonged shock, he then lifted you up in a hug, planting your feet right on top of his this time as he pulled you impossibly closer to him. “I missed you, very, very much. I thought I’d never see you again.”
It took you a long moment to hug him back, making some passersby look. “I thought I—I thought that I’d never see you again.” You reply once you find your voice again, warily lifting your hands up to his shoulders as if he might disappear. “How are you—h-how are you alive?”
Pulling away briefly to examine his face, you then added, “A-and you look the same...”
At first, Hyunjin only shook his head at you, still overwhelmed at finally seeing you again to care about explaining. “I’ll, uh, I’ll explain everything later.” He whispered to you, pressing his forehead to yours and closing his eyes as he sighs in relief. “Please, just...let me hold you for now.”
After this scene in public, Hyunjin then took you to the lodgings where he was staying at with his friend, Seungmin, whom you would eventually came to realize was the vampire who saved him that night along with the fact that your best friend was now a vampire himself. “I was passing by the palace grounds on the way to a safe passage to the next village.” Seungmin elaborated further on Hyunjin’s story over a cup of tea and buckets of crying. “When I saw the fire, I got curious and approached then I saw Hyunjin trying to crawl out to safety so I helped him up, took him to the forest, and turned him.”
Seungmin would also tell you much later on, when you meet again by chance centuries later in 1930s Thailand, that he also didn’t know first-aid at the time so his immediate alternative was to turn Hyunjin in panic, having seen another friend of his, Chan, do it in a similar extreme emergency situation. Hyunjin also laughs at this at present, especially when he first found out, and you’d let yourself giggle occasionally but you always make sure to thank him sincerely after, even when he always assures you that it’s nothing. “You helped me reunite with my best friend.” You would tell him, your voice always low enough so only Seungmin would hear even with Hyunjin’s enhanced hearing. “You didn’t just saved him that night, you saved me too—just eighty-one years later—so thank you.”
And so, you ended up travelling with the two for almost a hundred and fifty years, eventually meeting Seungmin’s other nomadic friends while helping Hyunjin adjust better to his new lifestyle and developing skills. You only had to forcibly part ways after because your mother sent you a letter all the way from Xinjiang, China, requesting for your presence at a family member’s funeral.
“The mourning period for our family is is fifty years,” You explained to the two on the morning you had to leave them. You were staying in Beijing during this time in 1657. “and she was my mother’s favourite sister, I have to be there for her, especially.”
Hyunjin had a slight frown in his face until you left on a horse-drawn carriage that day but he straightened it out into a thin line and pursed his lips once: when he came to hug you goodbye as you were packing, wrapping his arms around your waist in a back hug. “Write to me, please?” He pleaded over your shoulder. “If we really have to be apart again for a long time, then at least write to me.”
You nodded at his request, swiftly turning around to prperly hug him back. “I will, promise, just tell me where you’ll be next.” You instructed him, pulling away after to hug Seungmin goodbye. “Please take good care of yourselves and always be careful.”
“We will.” Seungmin assures you sincerely, having grown fond of you in a familial way over the years. “You take care, too.”
“I’ll see you again very soon!”
Hyunjin received a letter from you almost two months later, thus beginning your hundred years long correspondence.
three-hundred eighty-eight
When the fifty-year mourning period for your family ended, your mother asked you to stay with her longer, prompting you to write to Hyunjin that you’ll have to extend your time away before being free to meet him again. Simultaneously, Hyunjin began writing to you about his and Seungmin’s adventures with Chan, Minho, Changbin, and Seungmin around Asia, especially the possibility of him and his friends of the same nature forming a coven amongst themselves and how he had somewhat developed a vampiric gift, the latter of which he couldn’t write to you about explicitly until you accidentally met again in person a month before your extended stay was over.
Well, you’re still not sure at present if you really did meet in person at the time because, besides some subtle inaccuracies in the memory itself, there would be times at present when Hyunjin would insist that you did and times when he would deny it completely in embarrassment. “You know, maybe you were just fever dreaming me up, then!” Hyunjin would tell you now whenever he feels like denying it as a slight blush creeps up his cheeks, coughing awkwardly in between and making sure to run as far away from you as possible. “Or maybe—ha!—did you have a crush on me as early as the 1600s? You know, they do say that distance makes the heart grow fonde—ow!”
But dream or not, this memory is still burned at the very back of your head even hundreds of years later and it’s embarrassingly awful that all of your telepath and clairvoyant friends either joke or complain to you about it from seeing fragments of it replay in your thoughts often.
In this memory, you met Hyunjin in your house at Xinjiang while your mother was away to run errands. You consider this as one of your biggest hints that this was a dream since Hyunjin and his friends were in Laos until you met with them halfway later on along with the fact that he appeared in your bedroom of all places when you have long made it a habit of placing all kinds of protective charms in this particular space of yours.
“H-Hyunjin?” You called out for him when you saw his reflection in the mirror as you worked on your desk, glancing over your shoulder with a fond smile on his lips. Turning around, you then jumped up from your seat and right into his arms, laughing in disbelief when you felt him encircle his arms around your waist. “Hyunjin! When did you get here? How did you get here? I thought you’re in—”
His laugh that followed still echoes at the back of your head occasionally, even more the feeling of his lips pressing a feathery kiss on the fabric draped over your shoulders. “Doesn’t matter, I’m here.” He dismissed with a sigh, pulling away from the hug after in order to gently cup your face in his hands. Tilting his head down slightly to level with your eyes, a smirk then formed on his lips as he studied your features carefully and added, “I missed you. You look even more beautiful than when we last met.”
Hyunjin insists that you’re exaggerating this part but his closest friend and current roommate, Jeongin, is a mind reader and the poor boy accidentally sees through your thoughts that it isn’t every time he brings it up, making everyone in the vicinity feel awkward and embarrassed. It also doesn’t help that, in this memory, you’re quite sure that Hyunjin surprised you with a kiss after, urgently crashing his lips onto yours and backing you up to your desk.
You always make sure to keep it in a part in your thoughts that Jeongin can’t read but, besides your genuine shock, you initially didn’t pull away from the kiss because of the feeling that the gesture somehow affirmed your previous doubts on your almost four hundred years-worth of feelings for your best friend. You didn’t kiss him back with as much force as he did, even when he almost drew blood from biting your bottom lip or when he smoothly slipped his tongue in your mouth as his hands took hold of yours on the sides of the desk, but you thought a lot about him in the moment—mostly about how you were questioning your feelings for him prior to when he appeared out of nowhere.
It also definitely didn’t help that he kept whispering ‘I missed you so much’ in between gasps of air too. It still makes your heart melt to this day (and Jeongin disgusted whenever he passes by you and accidentally hears your thoughts. “Can you two please just stop being horny over each other all the time? It’s been 700 years.” “Yang Jeongin, get back here!”)
You realized, as Hyunjin moved to trail desperate kisses down your neck, that maybe you did have a crush on your best friend and it was okay even if it was just because of the longing to see him after years or the loneliness of eternal life. You liked him a lot, maybe you even loved him as early as this moment you’re not even sure anymore but you’ve always been certain from that this very moment, you never wanted to be apart from him for too long.
But it still scared you after a while, even when you already felt assured over your previous qualms, and you unknowingly pushed him away because of this, right as he tugged on your clothes and snaked a hand up your dress. “Hyunjin, stop!” In a wave of fear, you pushed him away with an enchantment, making him fly all the way across the room until his back hit the opposite wall. “S-Shit, I’m so sorry, I—“
In response, you remember him shaking his head reassuringly. “It’s fine, don’t worry.” He assures you, his voice just barely above a whisper. “It’s just that I—nevermind, I should be sorry. I’m so sorry, Y/N...”
Before you could even say anything else, however, he vanished into thin air right in front of you, leaving you even more confused than before.
When you do actually meet Hyunjin and the others a month later, you couldn’t bring yourself to confront him about it somehow even when you were quick to notice that he was avoiding you after Minho proudly boasted to you that he started training Hyunjin to navigate other people’s dreams. Besides the fact that it made heat rise up to your face alarmingly that Changbin started joking about you trying to lure all vampires within the vicinity into sucking your neck dry, you also didn’t know how to approach Hyunjin in the case that you had to inevitably tell him your feelings. Though you had a clearer idea of your feelings then, you still weren’t ready to confess it to him yet.
So, reluctantly, you had to part ways again because of this, you coming up with a lame excuse to see your cousins all the way in Europe at the thought that you wanted to think your feelings through again while also giving Hyunjin his much needed space. You ended up leaving the group in 1763 somewhere in Shanghai, a hundred and nineteen years after the incident.
“Ah, I don’t think I’m suited for the coven life anymore.” You pointed out awkwardly at Hyunjin as you hugged him last at the ports. “It’s just—not the same, I guess. I think I have to travel on my own for a while...”
Even with the awkwardness, Hyunjin still hugged you tightly anyway and even planted a familiar kiss to your shoulder. “Write to me again, okay?”
“Always.” You assured through the frantic beating of your heart. You notice him catching your hand in between the two of you when you pull away from the hug, almost rendering you speechless. “I’ll see you when I see you. It’s just goodbye for now.”
Jeongin once spilled to you one day that of all the similar situations after that Hyunjin has let you go after seeing you again, he always thinks about this one in particular the most and how he should’ve asked for you to stay; and you hit the younger boy with one of your books in response for snooping. But still, it has also made you start wondering lately if things would’ve changed if you parted ways differently then.
“Yes, it’s goodbye for now.”
four hundred ninety-nine
The next two hundred and four years would then be spent in an unconscious game of cat and mouse between you and Hyunjin. Whenever Chan and Minho would let him, he would follow you by your letters around Europe and Africa and he would more often than not miss the opportunity of approaching. When he did manage to catch up with you, you would go to lunch with him and show him around the place you’re staying at until the tension eventually died off as you occupied yourselves with other things.
Hyunjin first saw you again in Crete in 1818 when you started to learn foreign forms of witchcraft, missing the chance to approach you only because you disappeared from his watch because he chickened out last minute from recalling your previous incident in his mind. He would then see you again in 1825 Austria, studying the stars with Chaeryeong and a friend, Yuna, until he missed you by a boat ride to Egypt, then again in 1861 Congo when he would got in the wrong carriage and somehow ended up in in Algeria.
You eventually noticed, of course, how his return addresses seemed to pattern yours but you never brought it up until you he first caught up with you in 1884 Spain, when you went to the same art exhibit and ended up talking for hours until the tensions from almost a hundred years before completely vanished. “Are you following me?” You asked him teasingly mid-conversation as the two of you observed the Spolarium. “You have accumulated wealth from 400 years and you spend it by following me?”
Hyunjin froze instinctively, an easy giveaway from him in your years of knowing each other. “What? No! I’m just—ya, you’re not the only one who can like travelling!” He quickly denied until you giggled in amusement, making him confess everything truthfully later on over lunch.
You then ended up dedicating two hours to recounting all the times you almost met, laughing at almost every one of them because of Hyunjin’s undeniable clumsiness. By the end of his tales, he’s pouting at all your teasing in defeat as he asked, “Can’t you really live with us again? We’ve all moved back in Korea, you know—well, except Seungmin since he’s back in his trying to get all kinds of educational degrees in the world phase again.”
You didn’t want to admit it to him then up until now but you’ve thought about the exact same thing countless of times in your travels. Learning new skills and travelling the world has always been something you thoroughly enjoyed, you are a traveler after all, but you also couldn’t deny that you’d miss seeing Hyunjin more than anyone else you’ve met in your whole lifetime.
Without you knowing, you’ve realized that somewhere in between the correspondences you’ve managed throughout the centuries and the frequent meetings around the world, you’ve completely fallen in love with your best friend. You were sure of it then.
However, before you parted ways again three years later to head further West while Hyunjin had to hurry back East for sneaking out from Minho this time, you answered his question with, “Let me think about it.”
And, surprisingly, he understood. When you wrote to him from Brazil six months later, he replies with a long letter detailing his adventures halfway across the world in New Zealand as well as Middlemist’s Reds pressed in between the papers—one you would scold him later on once you found out that they were extremely rare.
“Where did you put those rare New Zealand flowers, by the way?” Hyunjin asked you just last week, almost as if he remembered at the same time as you.
“It’s somewhere.” You mused absentmindedly over your cup of coffee, hand instinctively going up to fiddle with the pearls on your ears where you discreetly hid the flowers.
six-hundred eleven
When you met Seungmin by chance in 1930s Thailand, you immediately asked him about one of the earliest models of the 35 mm film he acquired from his own travels and the photos he took. Since Hyunjin was in California with Jisung, Jeongin, and Felix while Chan, Minho, and Changbin stayed behind in Korea, Seungmin showed you how the film worked by letting you see the photographs he took of your friends, especially Jeongin and Felix who were still new to their family at the time but you’ve immediately welcomed as your little brothers. The photographs mostly depicted them candidly in their day-to-day and though you have countless of similar photos now in your own smartphone, you couldn’t help but tear up at seeing these photos in particular at the time.
“Hey, don’t stain my photos now, the film’s expensive.” Seungmin chuckled as he patted your shoulders comfortingly with one hand while the other took the photos from your side of the table. “What’s wrong?”
You sobbed into his shoulder that afternoon, attracting the attention of some passersby at the restaurant you had breakfast together at. “I-I, uh—I missed everyone.” You told him, the first time you ever confided in someone else these very thoughts. Not even Chaeryeong, whom you would stay with every five years or so, knew this. “It’s just—it’s so lonely now and I...I love travelling but it just feels empty now—”
“Then come home. Come home when you think you’re ready, we’ll all be waiting for you—Hyunjin will be waiting for you.” Seungmin finished your thought for you gently, momentarily removing his hand from your shoulder to separate Hyunjin’s photos from the pile. Passing them to you again, he then adds, “If it makes you feel better, you can keep his photos if you want but for a little request.”
You then left Thailand to live with your mother in India four years later with Hyunjin’s photographs tucked neatly in the pages between his letters you’ve collected over the years in an enchantment pouch, acquiring them from Seungmin in exchange for photographs of you he would pass on to Hyunjin later on.
Along with the other photographs you would collect of Hyunjin and your other family and friends, these particular photos now line up almost all walls of your apartment in Seoul.
Hyunjin, on the other hand, though you’ve never confronted him about it, keeps your photos in his wallets and at the back of his clear phone case. Every time someone from the art gallery where he works in would ask him about it, he would always say that he DIY-ed them with his grandparents’ film and a coffee staining technique he got from YouTube.
six-hundred forty-eight
Your mother willfully passed away in 1967 by ingesting a concoction of poisonous herbs you reluctantly helped her make. She was 2,022 years old and surrounded by all of her daughters in her deathbed on that fateful Sunday morning—some of whom you’ve only met when you came to live with your mother again. Your relatives then came a week later for another 50 years of mourning and, as one of the elder daughters, you were tasked in helping cater to everyone in the time that you had to be secluded from the world in old rituals and traditions; thus, halting yet another plan of reuniting with Hyunjin.
It impacted you greater this time, not only because your mother was the one who passed away but also because you’ve already planned on returning permanently to Korea and reunite with Hyunjin this time. After six hundred years, you’ve finally sorted out your feelings for your best friend and fifty more years of being apart suddenly felt too long with this.
And, as if he had read your thoughts, Hyunjin visited you in your dreams on the night before you would enter into the fifty-year mourning period. Having gained more experience in honing this gift of his by this time, he somehow managed to fashion your dreams into happening against the backdrop of the familiar 1300s Korean landscape.
You dreamt of approaching Hyunjin at a flower stall in front of a marketplace akin to when you actually first met. Instead of having his back turned to you to pick on the carnations, however, he was waving at you with his arms outstretched for a hug, hanbok and everything.
“How did you do all this?” You asked in disbelief as you hugged him back, taking in all the detailed scenery from his shoulder. You knew that, in the real world, he was back in Korea by this time and helping Seungmin set up his own film company, easily giving away the dream nature of your meeting. Still, you touched all of the flowers and the fabric of his favorite red hanbok anyway, marveling at how his gift has grown since the last and only other time you experienced it.
“Lots of practice.” He shrugged with a proud grin, reluctantly letting you go after to take a good look at you. “I didn’t do anything weird to practice though, I mostly just terrorized Jisung in his dreams.”
You scoffed at him, hitting his chest playfully. Looking around again and even chuckling at how your dream was even filled with people, you then commented, “It’s beautiful.”
“I thought you needed some cheering up after what happened with your mom.” He explained, picking up a handful of carnations from the stall. Passing them to you, you were quick to notice how he didn’t let go of your hand after, prompting you to encourage him by lacing your fingers together. “I’m so sorry again. I’m sorry I can’t be with you right now, too.”
“It’s okay.” You assured him with a shake of your head, mustering up a smile. “Just reading your e-mails and receiving your photos were already comforting for me.”
"I can hop on a plane right now, if you need me.” He offers only to receive more assurance from you otherwise. “Are you sure?”
You nodded, finally letting go of his hand after. “I’m sure just...let me dream with you right now.” You confirmed, earning you an understanding nod from him. Smiling at this, you then asked, “So, what do you have for me here?”
Hyunjin then led you around your dream for the entire night, happily taking you to places you frequented when you were still children. You ran around the palace grounds, recounted village stories, ate popular foods of your time period, and laid in the grass of the palace gardens until you had to leave for an early start of your day when you suddenly felt someone shaking you awake from the physical world.
Reluctantly, you parted ways at the marketplace at the end of your dream.
“See you in 50 years?” He smiled sadly at you as you bid your goodbyes, awkwardly standing in front of you with his hands on his back. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
You nodded with a hum, a stray tear suddenly finding its way down your cheek. “I’ll come home in 50 years, I promise.”
Hyunjin’s eyes widened at this, his mouth hanging agape as he stuttered, “W-Wha—?”
Before he could even coherently form his thoughts, however, you’ve already reached up to his cheek for a kiss before disappearing, leaving him alone in his own thoughts.
Before you could enter isolation with the rest of your family in the morning that followed, you then made sure to e-mail Chan and Seungmin instructions to arrange your flight back to Korea in 50 years, asking them to not tell Hyunjin towards the end of your long message.
six hundred ninety-eight
You returned to Korea on February 18, 2017 just as Chan and Seungmin have arranged for you, moving into one of Minho’s old apartment buildings where you still live at present. Following their further instructions, you then spent a whole month visiting all of your friends in their respective homes all around Korea (even Jeongin whom you met right under Hyunjin’s nose by visiting him in their home while his roommate was away for work) with your money you’ve entrusted Changbin to manage for you until you returned. You made sure to meet Hyunjin last, timing your reunion right on his 719th birthday.
Your closer group of friends threw him a surprise party in Gangnam on this year, renting an entire hotel building for yourselves and your other friends from all around the world. When you met Hyunjin that night, you had helped Felix bake and deliver his seven-tiered birthday cake for him, casting a spell on the candles so that they would explode in colorful fireworks and dust sprinkles all over the red velvet cake before they eventually fade. You eventually made your presence known to him when Jisung and Minho turned off the lights to the halls as he made a wish, standing next to him when he opened his eyes.
“Happy birthday!” You greeted him with a sheepish smile, laughing nervously when he jumped back in surprise.
Hyunjin, however, quickly recovered from his initial shock and lifted you up the ground easily, moving the two of you away from the cake so he could spin you around twice in a hug. “You’re here!” He exclaimed happily to your shoulders before putting you down, hugging you even tighter now that you’re stationary. “You came!”
“I’ve actually been here for a month.” You confessed bluntly, hugging him back by his shoulders. Your friends all cooed and gushed around you, eliciting heat to rise up your neck again (especially when Seungmin took out his camera to take photos) but Hyunjin only moves you away from everyone, still hugging you close. “I, uh, I moved in Minho’s old penthouse and everything. I’m staying this time.”
At your last revelation, only then did Hyunjin pulled away from you, his hands moving down to your elbows as his eyes widened in disbelief. “R-Really? You’re staying this time?”
“Permanently.” You answered with a smile, chuckling when he releases a relieved sigh and turns to everyone, happily telling them of your plans to stay. “I told you I was coming home.”
“That was what you meant?” He repeated, earning him a nod from you. With that, he then hugged you again. “I’m glad...finally.”
You then spent the rest of the night catching up with everyone at the party but most especially the birthday celebrant himself whom you couldn’t seem to get off of your side throughout most of the night. You ate, drank, sang, and danced with until early morning, until Hyunjin pulled you away from the naturally dying festivities to watch the sunrise with him at the rooftop.
“I wondered why you’ve rarely replied to my messages on social media lately.” He frowned at you once you’ve reached the rooftop, settling on a random bench with the perfect view of the rising sun. “You could’ve told me you already arrived! I wanted to show you the gallery I’m working in these days!”
“I’m still getting used to social media!” You defended yourself with a chuckle, pinching his cheeks and pulling them up to a smile which immediately makes Hyunjin laugh. “And I wanted to surprise you! I planned it with Chan and Seungmin 50 years ago—actually, even way back with Seungmin when we met in the 30s.”
Hyunjin raised an eyebrow at you with this. “Hm? You did?”
“You remember when Seungmin and I met in Thailand in the 30s?” You asked, Hyunjin nodding along in response. “Before we exchanged our photos, he sort of talked me into it. I figured that I was getting tired of travelling for a really long time and he assured me that I can come home when I want to...that I can come home to you and everyone else...”
Next to you, Hyunjin smiled as you spoke, the side of his face glowing faintly in the oranges and pinks of the early sunlight as he sat with his body turned completely to you. When you trail off with your words, he then muses, “Yeah, you can always come home to me...I missed you so much.”
“You always say that whenever we reunite.” You point out without any hint of malice in your tone, pulling your legs up to the bench and pressing them close to your chest.
“Don’t you miss me too?” He frowned teasingly, poking you on your sides.
“Of course, I missed you too. I missed you everyday when we’re apart.” You assured, shrugging. “It’s just...”
When you turn to Hyunjin, your eyes widened when you realized that he has leaned in closer to you, pressing his forehead to yours when you finally meet his gaze again. “Can I confess something?”
Speechless, you could only muster a weak nod then.
“I’ve always missed you, even from when you first left me when we were younger because I’ve loved you even then.” He whispered just inches away from your lips. “I’ve loved you and waited for you for almost seven hundred years.”
You thought he’d kiss you after his declaration but he only looked up at you in anticipation after, as if he was expecting you to say something. Caught off-guard, you let a brief pause pass by first before replying, “I-If you’ve always had, then why did you let me go each time?”
“Because you’ve always been a traveler.” He answered, slowly closing his eyes and leaning in again. At this point, it felt as if he was only waiting on you to lean in on your own accord, the realization knocking out the air in your lungs. “And I’ve always hoped that you’d come back to me forever when you wanted to, if you wanted to—and now here we are.”
“Here we are.” You repeated slowly, finally closing the small gap between the two of you with your hands going up to his hair.
Unlike when Hyunjin first kissed you centuries before when you were still unsure of your feelings, this particular kiss was slow and almost feathery against your lips but somehow it also felt similarly urgent and heavy, bearing all of your hidden emotions of seven hundred years. Hyunjin only deepened the kiss when you whispered ‘I love you’ to him when you first pulled away to catch your breath, smiling uncontrollably when you kissed him again.
“I love you too.” He replies when you have to catch your breath again, pulling away completely this time so he can gaze down at you fondly with his hand on your cheek never leaving your side to pat your head affectionately. “Always.”
Hyunjin didn’t ask you to be his significant other afterward, not even when he took you home, but you both agree that there was an unspoken agreement between the two of you that day, especially when he didn’t leave immediately after dropping you off, preferring instead to trap you in between himself and the back of your front door while peppering kisses all over your face.
“Still not cool, though.” Jisung teases every now and then at present, making Hyunjin roll his eyes every time. “You could’ve at least been a little more romantic with a confession or something! You’re from the 1300s, for crying out loud! Didn’t you guys court people and stuff?!”
“But we’re in 2020 now.” Hyunjin has resorted to replying to this lately, even doing as much as chucking something at the younger boy (often Seungmin’s baseball bat for some reason). “Anyway, I’ve known Y/N for 700 years. It’d be even more uncool when you say you’ve pined over each other for 700 years and have only been dating for a year.”
“Yeah so better start now than never, ri—ow, Y/N! I’m trying to defend you and you hit me with a pan?!”
Without anyone knowing, however, Hyunjin did formally asked you to be his significant other when the summer came, sending you all of your letters for him by the traditional post. The delivery man looked at you weirdly when he arrived at your doorstep, there were seven boxes full of old all kinds of envelopes and bundles of papers after all, but you only smiled sheepishly at him and tipped him extra.
“Ya, why did you send me all of your letters?” You feigned complaint at Hyunjin once he arrived at your place and successfully helped you getting all the boxes in your living room. “The shipping company probably thinks I’m stealing museum artifacts right under their noses or something.”
“I thought it’d be cute to do send it traditionally!” He pouted before pulling you down on your sofa next to him and opening the first box. “I didn’t even know it was gonna arrive today!”
“What are we doing with all these anyway?” You asked, carefully picking up a random envelope. “You know some of these could break from the air, it doesn’t take a Chemist or a Curator to know that.”
“Ah, yes, but I did got these scanned on a hard drive in case they do break! We have to keep up with the times, Y/N! I’m going to have to scan yours one of these days.” Hyunjin grinned proudly as he swiftly swapped your envelope for the chronologically correct one. “Now, we’re going to look through these letters in the right order!”
As it turns out, Hyunjin had hidden his original unsent letters in between the letters you gave him, reading them aloud to you and using them to ask you to be his significant other. “We could’ve been dating ages ago!” He commented playfully in between the more intimate ones, giggling when you frowned or tear up in response. “Ah, Y/N, don’t cry please! Shh, it’s okay, baby, I’m reading these to you just how much I love you, okay? Don’t cry...”
“T-That’s exactly why I’m c-crying!”
“So, does that mean, you’re, you know, you’re saying—”
“You didn’t even have to go through all this trouble!”
Hyunjin still teases you for crying then, mostly because he feels proud that you think he outdid Changbin’s lavish proposal to his fiancé in the Maldives with this gesture.
seven hundred one
Though most of Hyunjin’s family of vampires have had and/or currently have their own history of relationships, Changbin is the first of Hyunjin’s coven who announced plans of getting married. His fiancé, Haseul, insisted; something about having waited 900 years because they weren’t ‘as lucky as some people.’
You know she’s subtly hinting at you, even going as far as winking at you from across the room when she repeated the words at rehearsal dinner earlier this evening, but you only rolled your eyes at her playfully, dismissing the thought.
“Why did you even sleep for 900 years? I still don’t understand.” You asked her after once you’ve gotten her alone, sharing a bottle of champagne on the side of the dance floor while giggling at Jeongin and his date trying to out-fluster each other on the dance floor. The DJ Chan hired has long shifted the songs from lively EDM tracks to slower love songs so, with everyone assuming that her and Changbin are busy dancing together, no one would bother the two of you for a while.
Haseul only shook her head as she chugged down champagne straight from the bottle, making you wonder if older vampires really just act as casual as she and Changbin do by default. “It’s really complicated stuff, the practice probably died down when you were born.” She waved her hands frantically in front of you, pretending to stumble after and laughing when you don’t fall for it. You’ve had enough experience living with the boys to know that vampires don’t get drunk with alcohol. “Anyway, that’s not the point! Point is, don’t wait for a sorcerer to curse you with ancient blood magic and make you sleep for 900 years before you decide on taking a big leap in a relationship like getting married! Do it now, especially now while wedding fashion still looks cute!”
You only pouted at her, taking the bottle from her hands and refilling your glass. “You know how I feel about weddings.” You pointed out in a smaller voice, effectively turning her teasing smile into a serious thin line. “And it’s not like we actually need weddings. It’s just an old ceremony that doesn’t even hold up much for us since we’ll be spending the rest of forever with each other, anyway.”
“Yeah, but...you know...” Haseul opened her mouth to counter your argument before pursing her lips at seeing your now downcast expression. “...Sorry, I...that was insensitive of me.”
You glanced over at her for a moment, furrowing your eyebrows before mustering up a reassuring smile and a shake of your head. “I—no, it’s fine. It’s just—I respect weddings for people who want them...I think I might even want them for myself if things from the past didn’t turn out the way they did. Because of that, I don’t think I’ll be in one myself...maybe if Hyunjin wants to but I don’t know how he feels about marriage or how he feels with how I feel about it...does that make sense?”
Haseul really wanted to tell you right there and then that Hyunjin personally asked her to ask you about it in exchange for him to tone down his groomsman’s speech at the wedding next week. Instead, she only slung a comforting arm over your shoulder. “I get what you mean. I wasn’t sure about how to bring up marriage to Changbin at first, too—being in a relationship even when I woke up a century ago.” She comforted you with a lighthearted chuckle towards the end, rubbing small circles on your shoulder blades. “But whatever you and Hyunjin decide to do together, I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end.”
But still, the thought lingered at the back of your mind for the rest of the night, especially when Hyunjin asked you to dance later on.
“What’s on your mind?” He asked you curiously once you’re facing him again after twirling you once. “You know you’ve had that same thinking look since you and Haseul started drinking champagne. What’s wrong?”
You looked up at him from your daze, eyes widening momentarily as you processed his words. When you regain composure, you shake your head and answer, “N-Nothing, I’m just, a bit sleepy.”
Hyunjin frowned slightly, slowing your movements. “Must be the punch, I knew we shouldn’t have let Felix put in that weird blood mix on it.”
“There’s blood on the punch?”
“Type AB, I think—”
“—What? Gross!” You scrunched up your nose in disgust, making Hyunjin laugh.
“I was just kidding, at least now you’re awake!” He pointed out in between laughter before going back to being serious. “But seriously, what’s wrong?”
You took a moment to respond, eventually settling for a sigh. “Haseul just talked to me about marriage...”
“Oh.” Hyunjin mused out loud and you’re quick to observe the way his expression falters ever so slightly, as if expecting the worse out of your next words. “What did she say?”
“She just told me again how marriage and other ‘big leaps in relationships’ need to be timed correctly or something.” You answered, pursing your lips in between. “So I told her that yeah, I agree, but I don’t know how I feel about it on a personal level.”
Hyunjin’s gaze then softened from the corner of your eyes. “Is it because of what happened before?” He asked carefully, tucking the loose strands of your hair behind your ear.
“A bit, yeah.” You nodded. “But if you’re—i-if you think otherwise, if you want to get married or something, then I’ll be okay.”
“I’m only following you, Y/N.” He reminded you, halting the two of you from dancing altogether as he becomes much more sincere with his words. “Whatever you want to do, I’ll follow.”
You smiled up at him appreciatively, lacing your fingers with his in between the two of you. “I was hoping it’d be the other way around, you know how indesicive I could be sometimes.”
“But do you want to get married?” He asked nervously after, slowly inching the two of you away from the dance floor now and into a quieter area on the sides of the hall. “Or...anything of the sort?”
“Maybe...I don’t know...” You frowned, more to yourself in frustration.
But Hyunjin only nodded in understanding, patting your head before pressing a kiss to your temple affectionately. “It’s okay, I understand. Don’t beat yourself too much over it, okay?”
-
Now, a week later, while you and Hyunjin were spending the Saturday afternoon in his bed, he suddenly pulls you on top of him so you’re laying on top of his chest, taking out a single blue chrysanthemum from his bedside table. “I bought this last week and asked Jeongin’s new friend to preserve it with an enchantment.” He hurriedly explains before you could even scold him for suffocating a flower inside the drawers of his bedside table. “Hear me out first.”
“What’s this for all of sudden?” You ask curiously, taking the flower and picking on the petals as Hyunjin then lifts you up with him while sitting up straight, moving you to straddle his lap.
“I’ve just been thinking...mostly about what Haseul said.” He explains, his hand then moving over to something else in his bedside drawer. “...and, of course, she has a point, I’d take someone’s word for it especially if they’ve been asleep for a huge chunk of the years humans have been on Earth but I also know that we’re a little different from her and Changbin because of what happened in the past.”
You’re immediately rendered speechless from the very start of his speech, even more when he finally finds the velvet box in his bedside drawer. Opening it in between the two of you, you wanted to laugh at the way an extra copy of the keys to his new apartment peeks out from the cushions supporting the main purpose of the box, a ring with a simple round cut diamond and two sapphires, but you end up crying first before chuckling, easing Hyunjin’s own nerves.
“Is the key really that visible? I thought I hid that pretty well when Changbin and I picked this up.” Hyunjin pouts, briefly turning the box in his direction to examine it properly and take the key out before directing it to you once again with a chuckle. “Anyway, as I was saying, marriage is cool and all but it’s not like one of us is being chased by a psycho sorcerer like Haseul so we can definitely take our time if we eventually want to.”
“But still, a little reassurance wouldn’t hurt so...will you move in with me?—or just wear the ring, come over more often, and maybe tell me you love me more than you usually do; that’s also fine.”
You hit him on his shoulder with a laugh, making him lean his head back in laughter too at his own silliness. “You really aren’t that romantic when it actually comes down to it, Jisung was sort of right.” You muse out loud, taking out the key from the cushions.
“Ya!” He protests, taking your hand anyway and sliding the ring on your finger. “If it was still the 1300s, I would’ve had to ask people’s approval, carved ducks, and everything and it would’ve taken forever! It’s been 700 years so cut me some slack here!”
Still, no matter how much you laugh after, you say yes anyway but not without making him promise that he’ll re-do his ‘proposal’ again so Jisung would stop roasting him about it.
“I will, I will,” He assures dismissively, pulling you in for a kiss. “when you’re actually ready to marry...or say cheesy vows in front of everyone, whichever you prefer.”
“That’s going to take 700 more years.” You joke against his lips with a giggle, making him scrunch up his nose in disapproval.
“Fine, I guess I can wait a little more.”
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The life of You
[AO3]
Words: 3619
You and the traveler accompanied by his floating friend were nearly close to your final destination. Passing through the entire Liyue, taking a short stop to relax a bit here and now. Enjoying the view at the marvelous land. It never stops to amaze you how beautiful the sunsets are when you can observe how the sun is disappearing behind the mountains.
Liking more Monds as it was a more free and easy going country. The green everywhere was easy on your eyes and overall didn't remind you all that stress tied to business. However you have to admit some parts of Liyue are way too pretty. Perhaps one day you could visit those pretty spots with your friends.
Having a nice walk and observing the never stop to amaze you lands. Some special kinds of flowers and herbs grow only here. Animals you can't see in the anemo Archon domain. Simply put, this is an experience one has to feel and see at least once in their life.
You made sure not to wander too far away from the main road. Being pressed by time and distance was one thing. Being lost in the middle of somewhere was another. You sure knew your way in Liyue but mostly around habited areas. Not really have spare time to explore the land in detail.
Sometimes you had a short trip around here and there, in presence of other people. Those trips were mostly to bring you and your employees closer and take a break from all of that exhaustion.
It's really sad how people in Liyue are different from people in Mondstadt. They are always in a rush, stressed out and business is always on their minds. However they are also willing to help with anything related to their field of expertise.
Can't choose between this and that? Or not sure if this would be a good deal? Well you can be sure they will shower you with advices. However be aware of smooth talkers. They know a lot and know how to make one agree and probably buy more than they were willing at the start.
After all it is all just a part of the never ending flow of contracts. Tied to mora exchange and customer's satisfaction. You were sometimes thinking if Liyue being mostly yellow has something to do with currency. This color is so dominant here, everywhere. One would think leaves and grass is dying but it was healthy just like everywhere else.
Mora is yellow, Liyue is land of contracts. Money is flowing in and out. This surely can't be coincidence, Morax must have been really smart back then.
You guys were close to Harbor's gates, a few more steps and you could see the entire city. One side enveloping it with azure blue sea, ships being docked in harbor. Supplies being carried out or in, depends on the ship's purpose and destination. Also there were smaller boats as well. Those were personal ones, more than for transport they were for amusement of their owners.
You often heard about wedding proposals being made at those cute boats. Also there were people who used those boats for business, they transported people between north and south Liyue. It was sort of a trip one could say.
Hearing amazed 'wow' from your companions, turning to them with a smile on your lips.
"Just wait for the night. Then it gets super pretty but also really hectic. As that's the time where citizens are really free from their responsibilities and can enjoy free time."
"Paimon can't wait to see all those stalls with delicious food!"
You chuckled at her remarks. Not needing to spend too much time with them to know the floating girl is easily manipulated when it comes to food. Just a mention of it and she is all yours. When you said about local specialities her eyes were beaming with excitement.
By the look at Aether's expression, that was just a normal thing he got used to. As he had to get used to Paimon's big mouth. On your way here, to be more precise when you passed the middle part of Liyue. You came across some beggars. Asking for spare coins. You are still unsure about being glad for what Paimon said or not.
If it weren't for her you two might have got robbed. It turned out to be a bunch of treasure hoarders, not poor beggars barely living. When they found out both of you are carrying weapons and can channel elemental energy. They rather backed out of the trouble.
"Well then, let's head down. Shall we?"
And so all of you slowly descended down, crossed the city's gate. Passing through streets and making sure the two are following you. Getting lost here is quite easy.
As you arrived with one day spare, you could have just breathe out and rest for today. The rite will be held tomorrow. The question is what now? Turning to your companions.
"I'm hungry, fancy to get some food?"
You didn't have to ask twice. Especially when it came to Paimon who was just excited flying around. Checking on stalls and observing various things. The street you were in was mostly for small merchants, selling their handmade goods. Be it art, jewelry, porcelain or those cute paperweight things. Often having sea and boats inside of them.
Moving to the next street which was purely dedicated to kid's enjoyment. Various toys shops and things which sometimes were too inviting even for yourself. You can just silently applaud those toys makers. If an adult like you has a hard time then what about the kids?
Quickly making your way to the small square which was dividing enjoyment shops from more practical ones. Such as herbalists, perfumes, food shops and also some kid's forbidden places. Starting with bars and ending with places you rather not want to think of ever entering. Otherwise you'd die in shame.
Leading the way to your favorite shop. Knowing your friends probably won't know how to use chopsticks, it will be better to grab some finger food. Sweet dumplings, regular dumplings filled with various things, fried meat. Heck they even sell fries here which you thought it would be only in Mondstadt.
Once you have all of your food, you have moved to a quieter place. A park with a lot of ponds, lotuses in, fish literally swimming under your feet as you were crossing via the small bridge. Sitting in the least busy place. It was just afternoon and there were already enough people to make you feel uncomfortable. Luckily you are used to crowds now.
With stuffed bellies you guys were barely able to move so you decided to sit around for a bit more. You explain them basics about the city. Like where to go if they'd need this or that. How to avoid being scammed. Liyue might be the land of contracts, one still has to negotiate about prices. People will always try to nudge prices in their profit.
"Paimon wonders. We have been around every major street and miss y/n told us about important places but..."
She scratched her head.
"Where's your business?" Tilting her head to the side while making 'hmm' noise. Which immediately Aether joined in.
You didn't plan to show them the building where your now middle sized company was residing in. For some reason you felt uneasy about showing your friends. You still didn't like the fact of inheriting it but at least it's in better shape than before.
As the previous owner was barely able to sign contracts and fulfill her duties. It was slowly fading, many employees had left the company. Also there was a debt written in its name.
You didn't know why exactly you just didn't turn away and leave. It was none of your business. It was her mess. But somehow you decided to stay and help. It was awkward, especially meeting the dying woman. But you hold back your grudge and remarks.
You knew it won't be an easy task especially after seeing what has happened in a very short period of time. First of all you needed to gain some trust from the remaining employees. To them you were nobody. Well. It wasn't far away from reality.
You were just a teenager who wanted to train and become a guardian of the city. Perhaps later on find somebody to get laid with and have a happy family. More happier than you had. But that all was taken away or so you thought.
However as the time passed you realized something. One can still be a guardian without having the title. When the debt collector came everyone was scared and shaken. There was no doubt about it might end up pretty bad for everyone present including you. But you played it smart, managing to convince the debt collector about giving you a bit more time.
It was the last chance you will get, he said before leaving. You were shaking and felt like vomiting. But at the same time proud of your smooth talk to get your through it. One thing you could thank to a certain bluenette.
Since that day you got more trust from employees. It no longer being just the assistant who stood by you, willing to help. With a young mind and great ideas you managed to slowly but surely get the company back to functioning. Guided by your assistant who happens to have enough experience to actually lead the company. But for whatever reason she was not named as the next successor.
You never felt any hateful feelings from her or desire to take the post from you. If anything she is keeping everything under control and is really modest. Admitting just half for her effort no matter what you said.
It took over three years to fully recover for the company and be able to compete with others. Or at least partially. No longer being in debt and haunted by the Fatui agents. However to prove the company's worth you had to make a bigger showcase. Everyone was able to attend and observe. Enjoy the food and drinks. The event cost quite a bit but in the long run it turned out to be very worth it.
Eventually getting more offers for material, more interest from not only people from Liyue but also from Inazuma. However that didn't last long as it one day became completely locked away from the world. You really liked the direction where everything was going, nearly forgetting about your life in Mondstadt.
Warming up to people, growing fond of them. It was no surprise to see you spend time after work with some of your employees. Going to a tea house or dinner. Despite you being overly busy you still found some free time to hone your swordsmanship. You still wanted to be able to protect the weak.
One night after a very long and tiresome week you found yourself staring at the clear night sky. You just finished one of your training. The sky was so nice, the stars being so bright. You wondered if they are looking at the sky right now. If you do see the same thing.
You were one of those people who were forced to grow up and become an adult quickly. Acting like a grown up despite being still pretty young and inexperienced. If it weren't for Mrs. Yue you'd be doomed. Also many others who often offered help. You liked those people but never admitted it aloud.
When one day supplies didn't arrive in time, nor any message about delay. You got worried about what could have happened. The road which you chose was relatively safe and there were loaned guards for the cart. Something inside of you was telling you to take a look at it.
Taking your trustworthy sword, leaving a message for Yue who happened not being present at that moment. So when she arrives at the office she would know. There was also stated if you don't return until noon, she will have to alert Millelith.
Just as if you knew. It didn't take long until you found a damaged cart and unconscious guards. However your people were missing, supplies being destroyed. Looking around and noticing tracks.
The further you follow the more you know you are being lured into a trap. When you entered a place covered by an obvious illusion, you knew there's something really wrong and you just couldn't leave it be. Finding your way around, coming across cocoons. Hearing silent cries coming out of them.
Just when you tore through one of them and saw one of your employees. You realized what made those cocoons. Freeing them out. They were exhausted and pale. However fear allowed them to push forward and retreat from that place. But you did not.
You knew the thing might attack again. Somebody else who won't be that lucky as your people. Giving them a reassuring smile, saying that you will be alright and they should have enough time to get back to cart. With some luck Millelith will be there already, taking care of them.
Turning back and running deeper into the weird hive. Just then you realized how much naive and stupid you were. Risking your life just like this. Could it be bravery? Or just being a complete fool? Probably the latter. Your sword skills were impressive however facing the beast proved you were not strong enough.
You could feel how your life energy was leaving your body during the encounter. You will die here. But you didn't care. You were devoted and wanted to protect. You got poisoned in the middle of the fight. As the poison was slowly spreading across your system. Fingers becoming numb.
You were half accepting the truth of never making it back. To never see any of the people who you consider close to you. To never see your employees' faces. Or never held a party to celebrate somebody's birthday. Or never be able to chase your dreams.
Just when you thought 'that's it I die here' you felt intense energy surging through your body. You could feel how it was encouraging and empowering you enough to rise up, avoid the fatal hit. It was like just all the fatigue has left your body. The poison was no longer effective.
Swinging your sword, a wave of elemental energy being released. It cut through the beast's thick shell. It surprised you to see what happened but not letting it take over. You thought of channeling more of this weird yet powerful energy. It felt cold but at the same time warm. It might be because your body is getting confused over all of this elemental power, flowing through you.
As you rushed forward with cry, your blade met with the beast's arm. Cutting it off like it was a butter, following to its face. You cut through the entire thing, leaving a crystal like pattern behind. Was it ice? The beast has fallen with a loud and dull noise.
Looking around, the place was covered in icy fragments. Surely the place didn't look like this before. Glancing down at your hand as you felt something appeared in it. A turquoise orb with a snowflake symbol, socketed into a silver frame with a pair of small wings on bottom at each side.
You knew what it was. Taking a hold on it and looking up. You never thought of ever receiving your own vision. Never feeling worthy to have one. Yet the cryo Archon thought otherwise.
You did not remember how you got out of that place or what followed. Your body was exhausted and all you know is you will live to tell the tale. Whatever happened you just pushed it away, thinking it was the remaining strength you had, carrying you to safety.
Finger snapping brought you back to reality. Making you realize you had spaced out. Giving apologetic smiles to your already worried companions.
"Gosh. We thought you got possessed by something! We kept calling for you but you didn't respond!"
Poor boy. His voice was worried and by the expression Paimon was making she was not feeling any better.
"Ah yes. I uh... Something crossed my mind, sorry about that, haha!"
Your eyes dropped down as you nervously fiddled with your fingers. They really want to see your workplace. Letting out a sigh. This had to come eventually. It's not like being ashamed or something, just feeling nervous.
"Alright then. I'll show you, with some luck we might catch up with my assistant so I could introduce you.~"
meeting with yue, talking about the stormterror, skip, rite and inspection, later the day meet traveler talking with tart and be not so nice cuz he fatui have some not really warm talk between you two, offering aether new clothes, then leaving after yue cuz you were going to tea house lol
The building was quite far away from the center. Hidden between two bigger ones, making it look smaller than it actually was. The receptionist was already gone. However people from security who were counting their last minutes for today greeted you with a bow. You motioned to them and kept walking with your friends right behind you.
"So this is the main hall where clothings get sewed together, the opposite doors are where all the fabric cutting happens. And the last door at the end of the corridor is the warehouse. We have another one on the upper floor, but that's for cleaning items only."
Leading them around, letting them inside to check stuff from close distance. You even met somebody who was going home late, wishing them a nice evening.
As the building seemed to be quite small from outside, there were many rooms inside. And even more things stuffed in.
"What's this room for?"
The blonde asked while he stood in front of the nameless door. Whilst you just chuckled.
"Some call it a relaxing room, others a sleepy room. It's just to assure nobody gets overly overworked. I know some people stay here until evening despite their work hours ends in mid afternoon."
Both Aether and Paimon's lips are curling into an 'o'. Probably they did not expect to come across such a room like this. They followed you to your office. Well the office you shared with your assistant.
When you opened the door you found the lady sitting behind the table. She looked up and her eyes sparkled with joy. Getting up and coming closer to embrace you as always.
"Welcome back Lady y/n! I did not expect you to come this week!"
You returned the embrace as it was something you always do with her. She was like a close friend to you despite the age difference between the two of you. She might have two kids around age of 10 but she is still looking so young and pretty. Also she loves to spoil you like you are one of hers.
"Mrs. Yue this is Aether and his friend Paimon I told you about during my last visit. Aether, Paimon this is Mrs. Yuefeng, my assistant and probably the main pillar of this company."
It was hilarious to observe how the two of them didn't know the greeting here. Trying to mimic what Yue did.
"Welcome at Qingshan Clothing! You are indeed very cute as Lady y/n said, hmm maybe too much."
Your eyes glancing between her and Aether, mouth partially opened to say something. Coughing away the awkwardness.
"Please don't mind it. Everyone's cute in her eyes. At least everyone who is younger, which is practically all of us."
"Mmmh! Indeed! You are cute kiddies. I can't believe you are the ones who saved Mondstadt from the Stormterror. You look so innocent but you know what they say. Don't judge a book by its cover."
Yue giggled at her own remark. She was always like this, it was hard to believe such a nice lady like herself can deal with rough business so flawlessly. You glanced over at the table, noticing the mountain of paperwork.
"Well it's getting late. How about you go home my friend? I told you several times not to stay overtime."
It felt weird to actually lecture a woman who could be acting as your mother but you had no choice. She smiled at you with a tired face.
"I hate to break it to you but this is urgent and has to be done by tomorrow morning. We were stressing about finishing the order in ti-"
"And that's exactly why I order you now to pack your stuff and go home. Relax. Enjoy kiddies and your husband. I'll finish it."
You gave up on having the entire evening free but oh boy you hated people working overtime. Why people can't just chill out. Always in stress and rush.
"But Lady..." She didn't finish her sentence. Your expression was more than serious.
"Very well. Thank you, I'll treat you tomorrow for some tea. Oh! The rite! We could go there together and after it ends we will crash at our usual spot!"
Well not like you had something against it. You came here mainly because of the rite. Everything else was just convenient enough, happening along the way. Entrusting Aether with Paimon to Yue's care. As she could take them to an inn. Observing how they disappeared behind a corner. 'I hate this work so much... I wonder if Diluc also has to deal with stuff like this or has people for it.’
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#genshin impact#genshin x reader#diluc x reader#kaeya x reader#genshin impact x reader#f!reader#genshin diluc#genshin kaeya#genshin impact diluc#genshin impact kaeya#diluc#kaeya#fiery series#what could go wrong?
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One with the Star
Gif not mine
Pairing: Doyoung x Reader
Genre: Strangers to Lovers, Fluff, College
Note: This is my first ever au so please bear in mind that I’m still learning. Inconsistent updates for this series, so please be patient with me. I’ll try my best to update regularly. :>
Word Count: 1.3k
Summary: You developed a crush on the school band’s vocalist and somehow got close with him when your friend, Jungwoo, joined them. You’re too shy to make a move and so you are more than happy to be friends with a star like him.
CHAPTER 1
next chapter
As someone who prefers to just lay in bed on a weekend and do nothing productive at all, it's a surprise to see yourself in the Freshman Night that the school organized. Is it the college thrill or is it the fear of missing out? or maybe it's just an abrupt change of heart? nonetheless, the first 30 minutes of the celebration already convinced you that you chose the right decision. The vocalist of the opening act definitely caught your attention and made you stay the night and just skip your weekend movie marathon date with yourself. You were so ready to just drop everything that you got from the buffet table and watch him sing an unknown song to you but luckily, you maintained your composure and sat on a table while quietly observing the vocalist.
"Hi! Mind if I share the table with you?" diverted your attention from the stunning man that you were watching just a few seconds ago and you had no choice but to force yourself to focus on eating to avoid embarrassment from the man in front of you or at least you tried because your ears were still listening to the man's angelic voice and wondering how can someone look THAT good and have THAT talent, how crazy.
You never intended to initiate a conversation with anyone but thanks to Jungwoo's special ability to connect with people, you blurted out words more than what you expected when you decided to attend the party and you spent the night hanging out with him. Eventually, you found out that both of you are taking up Mechanical Engineering — just from a different class, his educational background (and of course, it means that you shared yours too), that he aspires to be a singer on the side, and somehow you found out about the man of your night's name: Kim Dongyoung, a 3rd year major in Performing Arts Department. Apparently, Jungwoo aims to be a part of Dongyoung's band since they amaze him so much even wayback highschool that ultimately became a goal for him to enter the band when he steps in the college life. You wish him luck and told him that you should see him on stage on the next party to which he manifested excitedly.
—
On your 2nd month being a college student, a lot happened and with a lot, it means a lot of requirements and deadlines to pass and numerous sleepless nights. You weren't really aiming to be the top of the class and you just wanted to maintain having good grades but college is really testing your capability and patience. Luckily, you got closer to Jungwoo even more and you stick with each other most of the time. You were both working on your projects together especially you were both in the same field. One day while you were both completing a requirement, he asked you to join him on his auditions for the school band — NCT. It was as if dead butterflies came to life when you heard the band's name for college stressed you out so much that you totally forgot about the stunning man that you saw on the freshman night. Of course, you didn't express your delight in fear of being embarrassed but you said yes, after all you will still accompany him .
That same night, you somehow found a leisure time and searched for Dongyoung's social media accounts and you stumbled upon his Instagram account. To say the least, he was active in posting photos and they all showcased his features that you didn't really notice when you saw him. You slept with a lot of new favorite photos and a smile on your face.
—
Hearing Jungwoo practice for his audition piece made you fall for him even more but in a platonic way if that even makes sense. His angelic voice suits Dean's Instagram so much but there were times when you just suddenly think of Dongyoung's account when he sings the piece. It's safe to say that you developed a crush on Dongyoung but you were neither gonna admit it nor make a move. You're happy by just thinking about him and you look forward to seeing him more on stage — with Jungwoo as their member of course.
You still have a lot of pending requirements to finish but you didn't have any plans facing them right now for you wanted to show your full support to Jungwoo. The band is urgently in need of another vocalist for the past member already graduated and they need a new recruit to perform with them on the Sports Fest week and you were so sure that Jungwoo will be accepted, you just know it.
The audition was held on an open space somewhere that people often pass by and so anyone can hear those who are trying to be a part of the band. Hearing the other students who are also hoping to be a member of the band definitely made Jungwoo (and you) nervous at some point but you encouraged him to not be swayed by them for he has the capability to surpass them. You were jittery when his turn was near but of course, as usual, you didn't make it obvious for you know that Jungwoo's talents. The fact that Kim Dongyoung aka your crush is just a few meters away isn't also helping. Naturally, he will be here to screen those who are trying out too, right? But maybe it was the nervousness from Jungwoo's audition that made you forget about his certain presence in this audition and you were mentally scolding yourself for that.
The moment that Jungwoo's name was called by Taeyong, the band's leader, for his turn, everything happened quickly in a blink of an eye. You didn't have much time to process everything that happened but in conclusion, Jungwoo got the role and he's now part of NCT!!! You both hugged each other out of joy and excitement only to be cut off by another member named Jaehyun.
"Hey Jungwoo! Wanna have lunch with us? Your girl can join us." was what he offered but both of you of were startled when he thought that you were his girlfriend so you two immediately denied the assumption to which they complied, or at least you thought. You were also supposed to reject having lunch with them and let Jungwoo hang out with the band but the band insisted, Dongyoung included, that you join them too so you didn't have a choice but to sit with the five men you are eating with right now.
They introduced themselves one by one from Lee Taeyong, the leader, Kim Dongyoung or Doyoung, for he prefers being called Doyoung instead, Jung Jaehyun, a 2nd year major in Mechanical Engineering too, and finally Mark, who's a freshman too. Basically, you were just talking about how their group was formed way back high school that's why Mark is a part of the band already. They also complimented Jungwoo a lot and that they've been searching for exactly someone like him and that made you smile out of pride but it was soon your turn to be interrogated. They asked for your name and how you met Jungwoo, your high school life and all the basic information including your (non-existent) love life. They also apologized that they mistook you as Jungwoo's girl but proceeds to tell you that you both look good together. Of course, you tried to explain that you were just platonic and Jungwoo agreed but they were adamant so you just let them be besides, Doyoung is in front of you so you just went with the flow to not leave a bad impression on your crush after all.
You all separated ways when it was time for your next class although for sure, you will see them more often in the upcoming days since they ordered Jungwoo to bring you along during practice and knowing the man, he won't leave you alone until you agree.
—
You were halfway through your class when your phone vibrated indicating a notification from your social media accounts. You got curious so you checked it for a split second only to see that someone followed you on your Instagram account.
"@do0_nct is now following you."
-------
CHAPTER 2
*** chapter 2 is now up :)
#nct#nct 127#nct scenarios#nct imagines#nct au#doyoung fluff#doyoung au#doyoung x reader#jungwoo#taeyong#mark#jaehyun#nct u#nct 2020#nct fluff
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[SK8] at all times, at all sides
Rating: T
Word count: 7409
Summary: Kaoru is shaped by the choices he makes and the people surrounding him. And through the years, Kojirou was there in one way or another.
Note: AO3 link. This was posted a while after Kaoru’s birthday, as a character study of sorts, birthday by birthday. I make the assumption that in the present day, Kaoru and Kojirou are 27-28 years old.There is a brief mention of alcohol at age 20, and Kaoru is a bit drunk at age 26.
15.
Kaoru gets two additional piercings on his left ear on his fifteenth birthday.
The first one, at what is considered a normal place for an earring in the middle of the earlobe, was done as an impulsive act of brashness to show off to his friends at school at the beginning of the year. He likes the attention. The family name attached to him makes people gasp when they see him with holes in his ear, but he would be lying if he said it didn’t bring him some sort of satisfaction. It’s kind of ridiculous and entirely too stiff an attitude to be offended by some nails stuck into someone else’s skin, as if it changes who he fundamentally is. Besides, piercings are cool.
So Kaoru gets two additional piercings, a helix piercing and another one in the earlobe, and Kojirou whistles.
“You sure your parents won’t cut off your entire ear for that?” he asks, his gaze appraising Kaoru’s new look.
“I’ll live with only one ear, then,” Kaoru answers, shrugging. “What do you think? I look cool, right?”
Kaoru gestures to his ear, grinning and looking at Kojirou expectantly. He knows that he must be acting like a child who got permission to eat a second candy after dinner, but it’s his birthday and he feels he can be excited for what is, essentially, a new approach to his lifestyle. He paid for these piercings with his own pocket money (and money earned through foolish bets and challenges, and he’s thankful that most skaters are stupid).
Kojirou hums, his face pinched in intense concentration. Kaoru rolls his eyes.
“That’s a yes or no question, Kojirou.”
“Let me give you a complete review of your new fashion style, impatient bastard,” Kojirou says.
“I don’t need a complete review! They’re just piercings!”
Kojirou always takes forever when asked to give his opinion on any topic, be it about his younger brother’s latest baseball game or the best suited color for a piece of garment Kaoru’s mother has decided to wear for an important meeting. It’s utterly unnecessary and a waste of time—Kaoru isn’t asking Kojirou to write an essay about his piercings.
“Just answer the question,” Kaoru says, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Well, if you like your piercings so much, maybe show them off more?” Kojirou sighs. “I don’t know, you have more hair than any human being is supposed to have. It hides the piercings.”
Kaoru snorts. “Complain to my mother about that.”
But Kaoru entertains the idea.
16.
Keeping his hair long is a simple matter of preference. There is no rule in his family stating that its members should have a specific length of hair, so why not? Very few boys and men have it this long, and Kojirou always asks him why he bothers taking care of such a useless physical feature when all it does is getting into his way when he skates. Kaoru admits he does have a point, but he likes his hair.
Kaoru is currently tying it into a ponytail, lazily skating on the sidewalk around their neighborhood. Kojirou is skating at his side eating an entire soda flavored Garigari-kun popsicle, shoving it into his mouth and crunching into the ice because he likes having brain freeze.
“Hey, it’s your birthday next week,” Kojirou announces, like it’s the most thrilling event of the week. “Did you plan something? Wanna go explore some new skating areas?”
Kaoru flips his hair over his shoulder and shrugs. Kojirou is looking at him curiously, almost intently, and that makes Kaoru raise an eyebrow.
“Nothing special, but it’s also on the same day as some renown calligrapher from Tokyo visiting our studio. So yeah.”
“All the way from Tokyo? That sounds important.”
“Maybe. I didn’t really pay attention.”
Simply thinking about all the formal procedures that will take place in his house and the fact he will have to be on his “best behavior, please, Kaoru” is pissing him off. He’s not interested in hearing about the works of this supposedly famous and talented calligrapher bestowing upon their modest family his knowledge and wise advice. Kaoru doesn’t even know why he still attends the calligraphy lessons when he’s pretty sure he’ll go into computer science or something. His parents are always on his case about maintaining his posture and improving his strokes every day, and at some point Kaoru started obeying to make their noisy demands stop. He doesn’t genuinely hate the art itself; he simply thinks that his time is better spent elsewhere. What does calligraphy have when computers can do much more fascinating stuff?
Kojirou is nibbling at the popsicle stick, eyeing him with that critical look he often gets when he considers throwing paper balls at Kaoru in class, or when he thinks that Kaoru needs a snack to calm down, like some fucking animal he’s trying to tame—Kaoru hates that somehow, food always works.
“You want to ditch?” Kojirou asks as neutrally as possible, but Kaoru hears the sympathy in his voice. Which is appreciated, but unnecessary.
“No, I was actually thinking of scandalizing my parents by cutting my hair and having it cropped short,” Kaoru says with a half-feral grin. “Like, strands of hair sticking everywhere and impossible to make it look presentable.”
Kojirou almost stumbles on his skateboard, even though it’s a straight line and he wasn’t even pushing with his feet on the concrete.
“What?! But you never shut up about your hair!”
“You fucking liar, I only ever say I like having it long!”
“Yeah, that still makes it stupid! Why would you cut your hair if you like it long?”
“Because hair grows again?”
“Not as fast as you’d think, if you even thought about it before blurting out you want to get a bowl cut.”
“Disheveled and rowdy haircut, not a bowl cut, you idiot!”
They make a turn at the corner of the street, expertly avoiding a kid walking her dog and dodging the woman carrying groceries behind her, not without getting scolded for skating in residential areas (or skating at all) but those are words that go in one ear and exit in the other. Kaoru smiles to himself and kicks into the ground to get more speed, jumps and flips his board in the air before landing on it again with minimal risk of smashing his face in the concrete. He lifts a fist in the air with a whooping cry.
“Oh hey, that was a good one!” he exclaims, giving Kojirou a radiant grin.
“You mastered this trick long ago, why are you so excited?” Kojirou grumbles.
“Because it felt nice, that’s all. Be happy about the small things in life, that’s what you keep saying.”
“Sometimes I feel you’re purposely throwing back my words at my face only when it’s convenient for you.”
“I always listen to you, even if it might come as a surprise.”
Kaoru laughs, spinning his board and continuing on a straight line, ahead of Kojirou. Today’s weather is pleasant and he can’t wait for the end of the school year at the end of the week to go skating all day. It will come with more calligraphy practice, but at least he will have time for his other hobbies too. And if he can’t focus on anything at home, he can still go to Kojirou’s place and bother him all day.
“Then don’t cut your hair!” Kojirou shouts, catching up to him.
The lines on Kojirou’s face are weird, all upset and a bit worried, and that’s not an expression Kaoru is used to see when they’re talking about haircuts, of all things. Maybe when they’re doing their geography homework or when they’ve spent one hour practicing tricks and got more bruises than actual results, but not hair.
“What’s up with you?” Kaoru asks, slowing down. “It’s just my hair. It’s a good prank.”
“You’re going to look like a bird’s nest for at least three months, you okay with that?” Kojirou retorts.
“That’s not the worst thing in existence. And if I recall, you told me last year I should show off my piercings more, so having short hair would effectively do that.”
Kojirou groans and drags a hand across his face, almost looking defeated.
“Just style it in a way that makes your piercings visible, then,” Kojirou adds. “You… have nice hair.”
Kaoru blinks. Kojirou looks straight ahead, his posture stiff, determined not to turn his head in Kaoru’s direction.
“I have nice hair,” Kaoru repeats.
“Yes.”
“You don’t want me to cut my hair because it looks nice?”
“Yes.”
“That might be the most honest compliment you’ve ever said to me.”
“Shut up, I’m never complimenting you ever again!”
Kojirou speeds up, but not before Kaoru catches a glimpse of his reddening ears. The situation is starting to make even less sense, but seeing Kojirou so flustered over nothing is piquing Kaoru’s interest and his lips stretch in a wide grin. Kaoru joins Kojirou in their less-than-recommended skating speed.
“Okay, but you’re being weird!” Kaoru shouts over the sound of their wheels scratching against the ground. “Was that an offer to style my hair?”
“I’m not talking to you,” Kojirou mutters.
“You’re the one who suggested it, you can’t drop the topic!”
It’s almost comical to see two teenagers loudly arguing about a pointless subject while skateboarding and avoiding any obstacles they come across, as if being on a board is the same as walking. Passersby shoot them quizzical looks and a lot of adults are clearly not approving their noise level.
They end up skating all the way to the playground near the elementary school of the neighborhood, where a few kids are playing while their parents are watching over them. There is a skating park farther away, but people are already using it and Kaoru doesn’t like skating with people not part of their crew unless he’s looking for a fight. So they keep skating around, at a lower speed because colliding with children won’t exactly look good on either of them.
“Fine, keep being stubborn, you asshole,” Kaoru grumbles. “I’ll get another piercing.”
Kojirou finally jerks his head towards Kaoru, his expression a lot less constipated and more curious. “On such a short notice?”
“I’ll find a way. And even if I can’t get it done before my birthday, it will still be infuriating for my parents.”
Kaoru taps at his lower lip, not missing the way Kojirou’s eyes follow the movement with rapt attention.
“I wanted to get a lip ring, anyway,” he says.
There is something simply enthralling in a lip ring—the light catches on it, and people are immediately in admiration when they see it. Not everyone has the guts to get one, after all.
Kojirou slowly nods, tearing his gaze away from Kaoru’s face.
“If you want,” he says. “I don’t see any problem with that.”
“You’re so weird today.” Kaoru rolls his eyes.
“You’re the weird one, obsessed with piercings.”
“You just wish you could be as cool as me. Race you to my home!”
“Damn it Kaoru, stop cheating!”
Kaoru ignores Kojirou and launches himself at full speed to make his skateboard pivot and turn around, going back from the way they came. Kojirou is still yelling at him.
Kaoru doesn’t manage to get his lip pierced before his birthday, but he does sweep the left side of his hair behind his head and keep it in place with a hair clamp, leaving his earrings in plain sight. To the calligrapher’s credit, upon seeing who the supposed Sakurayashiki heir is, he makes only the vaguest noise of shock before getting into business. Kaoru smiles all throughout the visit.
17.
Kaoru’s seventeenth birthday remains one of the most special days of his life.
He got gifts, snacks and high-fives from various people whom he cares more or less about (the crew bought a cake but Kaoru only got a thin slice of it because they are greedy bastards), while Kojirou bought him a book on AI that was way too expensive even if he has a part-time job salary (Kaoru wrestled him to the ground when he recognized the book).
Adam takes them skating in a place they’ve never explored before.
It’s beautiful. Exciting, captivating and alluring, making them use all their senses to turn at the right time, to ride down a hill without losing control, and to feel the full path reverberated through their bodies in shock waves. Skateboarding is fun, but this is on another level entirely—it’s like sliding on the edge of a cliff, giving heart palpitations but also an intoxicating feeling of a game that needs to be beaten, whose ending is all worth these efforts.
The three of them are skating as if wings sprouted on their back, uncaring of the world outside of their little bubble of thrills. Kaoru watches in fascination as Adam seems to fly across the track, smooth in his skating and unconcerned with the bumpy road. The wind seems to be an inconsequential factor in his descent in the slope, moving along with it and never straying far from the road. It’s subjugating, it’s beautiful, it’s freedom.
“Watch where you’re skating, idiot!” Kojirou yells right next to him, startling Kaoru out of his reverie.
Kaoru crouches low and makes a sharp turn, avoiding a rock that would have sent him sprawling. He straightens and keeps going at a controlled pace, glaring at Kojirou.
“I know what I’m doing!” he grunts.
“You almost smacked that wall with your face,” Kojirou points out with a glare of his own. “Stop getting distracted.”
“I’m not distracted,” Kaoru snaps back automatically.
But the look Kojirou is giving him is indescribable, so foreign on his face and even more so as it is directed at Kaoru. There is something brewing in the air and Kaoru doesn’t like it, doesn’t want a chasm opening between them because of a stupid argument, but he doesn’t even know what made Kojirou so irritable in the first place.
Adam is waiting for them at the end of the path, watching them arriving at a sullen pace with a raised eyebrow. Kaoru stops right in front of him and plasters a smile on his face, much more eager to talk about they’ve come here for.
“That’s an amazing place! Skating here is so fun, we can make a challenge out of a lot of things in this mountain.”
“Yes, the turns are different and there are many slopes that we need to be careful of,” Adam agrees, smiling. “I truly believe we can accomplish a lot, if we do it together. I want to create a special race here for skaters to push their limits.”
Adam looks at Kaoru, then at Kojirou—the glint of mischief and of confidence reflected in his eyes is the same as the one that pulls everyone in his orbit, making them give their all to become the best. It’s a look that Kaoru feels inextricably drawn to, enamored with the unbridled possibilities he imagines behind words that promise a paradise of freedom grander than anything they’ve ever known.
“You both have skills that will be useful to establish this race,” Adam continues. “People are following you and your skating is among the best. I said before that you guys were special, and I mean it.”
Kaoru does not preen, but the shivers that course through his body as Adam opens his heart are ones that feel pleasant, almost addictive. His grin splits his face in two.
“You can count on us, we’re going to create the best skating race in existence,” Kaoru assures. “Right, Kojirou?”
“Yeah, of course!”
Kojirou’s earnest tone is almost a relief—he’s clearly as excited about this race as them, and Kaoru would have been seriously worried if that wasn’t the case.
For the first time, the joyous expression on Adam’s face seems to be born out of sincerity plucked from the deepest corner of his heart. It suits him; it makes him look even more radiant than usual. Kaoru can’t look away.
“It’s decided, then,” Adam says. “The three of us, inaugurating the “S” race. Together.”
On that day, when Kaoru turned seventeen and his mind was filled with nothing but skateboarding, he thought that this is what belonging felt like.
18.
Sitting perfectly straight, legs tucked under him, Kaoru picks up a brush, dips it into ink he has carefully ground, presses it against the sheet of paper and splashes black trails all over it. The ink drips outside of the frame and stains the tatami floor of the study he hasn’t bothered to protect, littering everything in dark, angry marks that resemble the work of a child throwing a tantrum.
There is no word, no poem written on his paper. Half of the inkstick is grossly used up, its tip almost falling apart, like it wasn’t deemed worthy of being respected as one of the treasures of calligraphy. Kaoru is filling the paper with nothing but emptiness.
It’s not even rage moving his arm like a possessed demon. It would have been easier to deal with, if it was rage; handling it requires minimal effort, as he can mindlessly let his heart wreak havoc upon anything his hands come into contact with, or he can scream all the grievances he’s bottled up to clear the space occupied by unpleasant thoughts. Rage is physical, in and out, and Kaoru’s had years of practice getting rid of it.
But this is not rage that nudges him in the direction of destroying a perfectly good piece of paper with expensive ink and an even more expensive brush, tarnishing their quality and the noble use they are destined to. It’s cold and quiet resignation, trapping him in his own mind as he lets himself be selfish one last time and act out in childish anger.
Kaoru’s eighteenth birthday is spent alone, grieving his dream of ever cutting ties with family traditions. He hasn’t touched a skateboard in months and he hasn’t tinkered with his AI program in even longer. There was no point anyway—Kojirou has other things to focus on, and Adam left.
Kaoru was a fool to think he was strong and resolute enough to follow a path that is not written with the same deep ink as the one he’s used all his life.
20.
“You can legally drink now, congrats.”
“Great. I can sip my alcohol in the presence of guests and pretend I’m enjoying their company when all I want is getting drunk.”
“That’s not very professional, soon-to-be Sakurayashiki-sensei.”
“You’re one to talk, I bet you’re consuming way too many beers at those parties. Has gaining muscle mass made you lose brain cells?”
“Hey, you four-eyes, that was uncalled for!”
There is something moving behind Kojirou, a door opening and someone poking his head inside, and Kojirou turns his head to rattle off a few words in Italian before facing the camera again. Chin resting in his palm, Kaoru is watching with a raised eyebrow Kojirou’s roommate rummage through Kojirou’s dressing, before retreating back into the corridor.
“Does he make a habit to walk around your shared apartment half-naked?” Kaoru asks.
Kojirou laughs, waving his hand. “He was looking for a clean shirt, he forgot to do laundry yesterday. I told him he could borrow one of mine.”
“I’m surprised you still find shirts your size with the way your body’s taking the shape of a gorilla’s.”
“Just admit you’re jealous of my perfect muscles.”
Kojirou makes a show of flexing his bicep and Kaoru snorts.
“Yeah, I’m so jealous of that gorilla body that is unnecessarily big.” Kaoru deadpans.
“Believe it or not, it makes skating a lot more fun too,” Kojirou adds with a smile. “More power in the legs to do tricks.”
Kojirou looks...satisfied with the direction his life is taking. Kaoru is happy for him—studying abroad in culinary school and discovering a whole new culture seems to be the change of pace Kojirou needed. Sometimes Kaoru wishes he could also skate in the places full of pipes and curvy roads that Kojirou shows him, but he has to make do with the familiar tracks he’s skated on all his life.
“I upgraded Carla to calculate distances faster and to automatically record what she sees,” Kaoru says with a hint of smugness.
“Your AI having a girl’s name will never stop being weird,” Kojirou groans. “Why haven’t you chosen something normal like “Ghost Voice” or “Robotico”?”
“An AI is not a robot.” Kaoru pinches the bridge of his nose, already tired of having to repeat this for the umpteenth time. “Your Roomba is a robot. Carla recognizes many more things than the shape of your apartment.”
“Then program Carla to clean my apartment too.”
“Carla isn’t a vacuum cleaner, you dimwit!”
“That’s a big shame, maybe you should also create an AI cooking for you!”
Kaoru opens his mouth to reply something scathing, then snaps it shut. On the screen, Kojirou frowns.
“Don’t,” Kojirou warns.
“We have enough resources and data to program an AI that creates recipes from a list of ingredients,” Kaoru says anyway. “If we implement it into a robot, with the correct code and careful adjustments, then maybe it will be a decent cook.”
“If you start making a cook AI I don’t want to heart about it,” Kojirou mutters.
Kaoru rolls his eyes. “Do you think I have enough hours in a day to focus on another project? Carla already requires my full attention.”
There is no need for him to say that calligraphy practice is what he does most of the day, if he’s not attending courses on speech or on business. It’s his life now; he chose to become the next Sakurayashiki calligrapher and he can’t back down now. Not that he’s ever fully considered leaving calligraphy behind for one of his better, more interesting hobbies—and this was exactly the problem. He never untied his hands from the string tethering him to a brush.
“You always want to work on something, so I’m expecting anything from you when you’re bored,” Kojirou says with a smirk.
“Maybe my next project will make gorillas like you shut up.”
Kaoru is twenty years old, discovering every day new aspects of himself in a professional environment, but one thing that never changes is the comfort of simply existing as himself when he talks to Kojirou.
22.
Kaoru spends a couple of years simmering in feelings he doesn’t acknowledge.
He isn’t someone who takes the time to reflect on his own feelings, negative or positive. They simply happen and he decides on whether to act on them—which has been true since he was a child, throwing tantrums when he didn’t like the task he was asked to do, kicking someone he didn’t agree with as a teenager, and deflecting when answering journalists’ questions that would force him to look deep into his heart. He lives in the moment and tries very hard not to burden himself with useless thoughts and regrets he can’t act upon.
He doesn’t dwell more than necessary on his choice to inherit the family calligraphy studio, because it will lead to nothing productive. He has perhaps harbored ill feelings towards calligraphy in the past, but they’re not so visceral he can’t execute the job he’s been trained for since he could hold a brush. Sometimes he thinks he could have rejected everything he’s been taught and disappoint his family for the rest of his life, but he immediately chases the thought away and decides that suffering through a successful career of calligrapher appears to be a small sacrifice compared to the headaches that would have come with removing himself from the Sakurayashiki studio.
He’s a full grown adult, by society’s standards. He shed his sweaters for yukatas and took off his piercings with reluctance, feeling like he ripped off a part of himself that’s been with him forever to fit into a mold he’s accepted as his new normal. Those were remnants of his old, carefree life that he abandoned, and it’d be preposterous to wish for things to have gone differently.
At least he has his AI—a new spin to a traditional art that is resistant to change. Carla is efficient, impressive and shocks people into admiration; Kaoru has upgraded and improved the code as many times as it required, making her compatible with every device in his possession so that she could accompany him in all his tasks. Skating became a game of precision, detail and finesse, aiming for perfection beyond what the average mind would think of. Calligraphy is enhanced and magnified, the digital aspect adding beauty in an art that is almost exclusively done by hand. Incorporating technology in his otherwise boring job undoubtedly made his days easier and more fun.
Kaoru isn’t dissatisfied. He can do better, but he could have done worse. However, if there is one thing that makes him antsy it’s the realization that he’s seeing less of Kojirou with each passing day, and he would have never thought it would leave a growing ache in his chest every time he thinks about it.
They have their own lives to live. It’s part of growing up—and he hasn’t completely lost his best friend yet.
25.
They have been wandering the streets of Paris for exactly ten minutes and Kaoru is already starting to regret his decision.
“It’s not that hard to read a map,” he seethes, trying to grab Kojirou’s phone.
Kojirou lifts the device higher and turns his back on Kaoru, stubbornly keeping his eyes riveted on the screen.
“I’ve got this, stop distracting me,” Kojirou says.
“The metro station is right there, let’s just change itinerary, stupid gorilla!”
“You want to take the metro when we could explore the city on foot?”
“The probability of getting shitted on by pigeons is way too high for my liking.”
This gets an undignified snort from Kojirou, more amused than mocking though Kaoru knows not to assume when every one of his words can be thrown back at his face later on.
They do end up taking the metro. They can go anywhere in Paris by bus or metro, making it extremely convenient to find their way but it gets overwhelming really fast—the metro lines seem to be full of people at all hours of the day, according to Kaoru’s extensive research before their trip, and they are nothing like the monorail they have back in Okinawa. Most passengers are focused on their phones, while others are taking a quick nap, which is not that different from what they’re used to.
“It can’t be worse than the Tokyo rail lines,” Kaoru mutters as they’re being shaken by the train doing a particularly sharp and violent turn.
“You’ve never been to Tokyo,” Kojirou replies with a raised eyebrow.
“I did last year for a meeting.”
“And that single trip was enough for you to get the full experience of the infamous rush of Tokyo’s Yamanote line?”
“I wasn’t saying I used the Yamanote line, imbecile. All trains are crowded. I think you wouldn’t have been able to squeeze in with your gorilla body.”
“At least I’m not at risk of going blind when someone knocks off my glasses by pushing me around in a crowd!”
“I always carry a second pair of glasses with me to avoid this kind of incident!”
It’s probably a good thing that this line of metro makes the same level of noise as a tractor revved up at full power, because their arguing is by no means quiet and people are starting to stare at them. But as soon as Kaoru glances at them, they avert their eyes and pretend they weren’t gawking. Typical.
March weather is terrible. Their trip lasts one week, and there is an equal number of sunny days and of cloudy days, with high probability of rain. It shouldn’t be normal to have a changing weather so unpredictable that it makes planning for their day a real pain in the ass. Kojirou is already complaining about the sun beginning to leave space for clouds at merely eleven in the morning, and Kaoru silently agrees with the sentiment.
The food is good, at least.
“Reminds me a bit of what restaurants looked like in Italy,” Kojirou says around a mouthful of beef. “Maybe I can draw inspiration from those recipes.”
“It’s not Italian cuisine,” Kaoru points out. “Unless you intend to make a mixed menu.”
“Of course not, but the flavors can be useful.”
Kojirou is examining his piece of vegetable like a scientist observing an experiment under a microscope, as if it could give him the secrets of its cooking time or the spices used for it. Kaoru lightly kicks him under the table, and Kojirou hisses.
“Stop being weird and eat your food.”
“Do you really have to hit me every time you want to make a point?”
“I’m not hitting that hard.”
The other way around is more likely to happen; Kaoru won’t ever admit it but he doubts that Kojirou feels more pain than Kaoru does when he hits him. Those muscles are ridiculous and entirely unnecessary, honestly.
They take pictures at the landmarks and get mad at the long lines and narrow their eyes at the price of various food and drinks they stumble upon. They’re not short on money, but drinking a cup of café au lait at twice the price of what they can find in regular coffee shops doesn’t leave a good taste in their mouth. Kojirou uses the knowledge from his time in Italy to make educated guesses on whether they’re paying something at an unreasonable price or not—he looks a bit too smug doing so but Kaoru lets it slide for once and allows him to play the role of the brain for this specific aspect of their trip. Kaoru can at least trust Kojirou’s judgment when money is concerned (even if his intuition can be skewed sometimes).
“It’s only because it’s your birthday trip that I’m putting up with your need to visit museums,” Kojirou says, waving at the multiple pamphlets they gathered after three days of sightseeing.
“Having some culture ingrained in your mind is nothing but beneficial for you,” Kaoru retorts evenly.
Kojirou rolls his eyes, clearly not interested in that conversation, and gets up from his bed of their hotel room. It’s past midnight but they’re still wide awake. Sharing one room would be awkward or embarrassing for a lot of people, but Kaoru has known Kojirou half his life and it would be ridiculous to feel self-conscious now, when they’ve seen each other in various states of undress and wakefulness. Perhaps the only complaint Kaoru will voice that he didn’t have when he was thirteen is that the older Kojirou gets, the louder his snoring is (as if the noise level grows with the wideness of his body).
“Hey, Kaoru.”
Kaoru looks up from tomorrow’s schedule displayed on his phone to come face to face with a giant box of pastries and Kojirou’s bright grin. Kojirou is holding the box one-handed, slightly bent forward, like he would a tray to present his dish to his most loyal customers.
“Happy birthday, four-eyes,” Kojirou says on a light tone.
“Must you call me names when you’re wishing me happy birthday?” Kaoru scoffs, but he eyes the pastries with unconcealed interest.
They went to a bakery in the afternoon for a snack, buying a croissant, a pain au chocolat and a pain aux raisins because they apparently lack self control when it comes to cheap baked goods—but for some reason Kaoru missed the moment Kojirou acquired this box of pastries.
“It’s past midnight,” Kaoru reminds him.
Kojirou shrugs. “We’re grown adults and on holiday, I don’t think it’s much of a problem.”
“There are six different pastries in this box.”
“Nobody’s saying we should eat all of them right now, moron. Save some of them for tomorrow.”
They end up eating three pasties, one half each, while arguing about the pros and cons of buying smaller portions of different sweets over getting an entire cake for a birthday, as well as the point of starting celebrating said birthday at midnight instead of simply waiting for morning. They’ve had these conversations before, at Kaoru’s or Kojirou’s birthday over the years, but it seems they never grow sick of repeating the same arguments even when the topic is stupid.
It’s like a well-oiled machine; pushing on one button always leads to the same result. Kaoru and Kojirou argue because this is what they’re used to do, a response at their lips even before they hear the end of the other’s sentence. What comes out of their mouths takes the shape of banter but Kaoru, even though he usually ignores it, notices how at ease he is in these moments.
Kojirou invited him for this trip even if he didn’t have to, and bought pastries to share at midnight like they’re holding a small party. His face is illuminated by his generosity and his big heart that finds a way to carve itself in his eyes.
“Let’s go skating tomorrow afternoon, it will be fun,” Kojirou suggests, mischief and plain desire to have fun glimmering in his gaze.
And Kaoru can’t say no.
They brought their boards, like they did when they traveled to Los Angeles. It might sound like a waste of space in their luggage, but nobody has a say in what they consider fun. Kaoru had to change Carla’s battery for her to fall under airport regulation, which was a hassle on short notice (Kojirou dropped a plane ticket on Kaoru’s lap a week before departure, and Kaoru shoved back money at him but it somehow ended back in his hands after a few minutes of jostling) but definitely worth it, because there’s no way he will skate with a lower quality board.
On March 27th, when Kaoru turns twenty-five years old, he almost resorts to a more physical solution to win petty squabbles against skaters in another country, a behavior he was prone to display when he was seventeen. But he’s an adult who is traveling for leisure and isn’t foolish enough to ruin the trip by punching someone when he can skate away and show off with a few tricks involving exact calculations and perfect angles, so this is what he does—after Kojirou, admittedly, forced him to remain calm, as though he was his impulse control when Kojirou is just as quick to rise to a challenge.
Maybe the difference is that Kojirou isn’t a cocky bastard like Kaoru is. Debatable, but Kaoru won’t deny that he loves the feeling of achieving something flashy or impressive. Getting into trouble for it is always worth it, especially if Kojirou is there to live it with him. It’s never the same without Kojirou—they might bicker and have more arguments then actual conversations, but Kojirou’s a warm presence enveloping him in a tight hug he can never quite shake off.
The trip to Paris isn’t half-bad, and it’s full of memories with the person he trusts the most.
26.
Kojirou is very, very still when Kaoru finally stops fighting with himself and leans his head on his shoulder, completely wasted after drinking too much wine at this event gathering too many important people to talk to and drink with. The taxi is silent and all he can hear is the screech of the wheels on the asphalt.
“Rest until we reach your home,” Kojirou says, something akin to laughter in his voice.
“Hm.”
Kaoru registers the words coming out of Kojirou’s mouth, and judges them acceptable before closing his eyes and letting himself be rocked by the car drive. In his drunken haze, when he called Kojirou to be picked up, he forgot Kojirou lent his car to his little brother; remembering such an essential detail would have saved them a lot of trouble, but Kojirou called a taxi and is now sitting with Kaoru in the backseat instead of going back to his own home. What an idiot.
Kojirou helps him into his apartment, grumbling as his elbows hit the walls and his feet get caught in stray shoes in the genkan that Kaoru eventually wanted to sort out and put away. They manage to get to the couch, and Kaoru collapses on it without grace and lets out a long groan, draping an arm over his eyes.
“I’m not drinking at this sort of event again,” he complains.
“That’s your fault for not limiting yourself,” Kojirou sounds unimpressed. “You always say you’ll stop drinking but you keep doing it.”
“Half a glass with each guest is customary. Beyond that is called showing off.”
“So you’re showing off, stupid four-eyes.”
“Shut up, gorilla. I have something to prove.”
Kojirou’s sigh is filled with such apparent exasperation that Kaoru immediately realizes how petty and ridiculous he just sounded.
“On the day of your birthday, to top it all,” Kojirou says. “Do you need babysitting?”
“You are not going to babysit me,” Kaoru snaps. “I’ll just go to sleep.”
“Yeah, and you’ll start bitching tomorrow morning because you forgot to drink water and take a shower.”
“I’m not that incompetent, you giant brainless idiot.”
Kojirou doesn’t deign responding to his insult and slides behind the kitchen counter. Kaoru drops his arm and watches him rummaging through the cabinets with too much confidence for someone who doesn’t live there. Kojirou comes back with a glass of water and two slices of bread that Kaoru usually eats in the morning when he’s too lazy to make breakfast.
“You probably didn’t eat much, since your robophile brain was wired on ingesting wine.”
“I just said I don’t need your help,” Kaoru mutters.
Kojirou ignores him and deposits the items on the coffee table. He then sits down next to Kaoru, causing Kaoru to shift further on his side of the couch because of his needlessly big body.
“Do you have to sit so close to me?” Kaoru grumbles, leaning forward to snatch the water and the bread, pretending that his world didn’t start spinning as he did so. He takes a few sips of the water.
“Your couch isn’t large enough.”
“It’s your body that’s not average size, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“You’re suspiciously coherent for someone who says he’s drunk.”
Kaoru shrugs, foregoing manners as he speaks and munches on the bread at the same time. “My mind is clear, my thoughts aren’t confused in the least.”
“Right. What time is it?”
Kaoru looks at the time displayed on his TV box, sitting on the stand pushed against the opposite wall of where they’re sitting. He squints at the numbers, slightly blurry despite his glasses still resting on his nose. He has no idea what time it is.
“Eleven forty-seven,” Kaoru announces.
“No, it’s twelve forty-seven,” Kojirou snickers. “Finish that, take a shower and go to bed.”
“And you’re going to stay here and take up space in my apartment?”
“Well, if your event hadn’t run for so long, I would have spent some time with you anyway since it’s your birthday. So I might as well stay until you fall asleep.”
Several things get jumbled in his head at that moment, and Kaoru stares at Kojirou in disbelief. There’s something funny and warm happening in the pit of his stomach.
“You have nothing else to do,” Kaoru asks, or accuses—he doesn’t know how his voice comes across.
“Just go to sleep, Kaoru.”
Kojirou takes the empty glass from Kaoru’s hands and puts it on the table. He then tugs Kaoru upright, holding his wrists in a gentle and careful grip, as if Kaoru will break if he’s not handled in the most delicate manner. Half of the second slice of bread is lying abandoned in the plate, but Kaoru doesn’t particularly mind as he realizes, with strange clarity, that this isn’t unpleasant to be taken care of like this. Kojirou is smiling at him with his most genuine expression, and Kaoru has to look down to avoid his gaze, embarrassed and fulfilled and relieved all at once.
28.
It’s been a long time coming, Kaoru thinks as his fingers tangle in Kojirou’s hair and he brings him closer, always closer to him. The night is warm and too uncomfortable for a spring day, but the heat twisting his stomach is from something entirely separate. His lips meet Kojirou’s endlessly, like this act alone will make him absorb whatever Kojirou is willing to give to him for safekeeping. It’s the first time they’re kissing and yet it feels like they should have been doing this for years now, hiding under the shade of a tree or behind a rocky wall to share a private moment together, in a pocket of time that will burst only when they decide to drop all pretenses.
He knows it’s been a long time coming, because Kojirou is laughing against his lips, and when Kaoru cracks an eye open he sees how open and fond Kojirou’s face is. Kaoru immediately wants to close his eyes again and to stop noticing how luminous everything has become.
“We’re so dumb,” Kojirou says.
“You are stupid, for holding back all those years,” Kaoru retorts.
“Yeah, now it’s my fault for being considerate of your feelings towards me.”
“If you believed for one instant that I’d cut ties with you, then you’re more foolish than I thought you were.”
Kojirou still has hi arms wound around Kaoru’s back, and when he shrugs he presses Kaoru closer to himself. There is no anger and no regret in his eyes or his posture, as though nothing in the world would strip him of the bliss he’s currently being filled with. Kaoru finds himself drunk on the sight.
“I didn’t think that, no. I was just too scared of doing anything that will cause a shift in our relationship.”
The words sound strange, once Kaoru hears them spoken out loud. Kojirou is the one constant in his life that never changed, a shadow at his back and a light guiding him. They’ve both seen each other at their worst and their best, tending to bruises and squeezing a shoulder in comfort or riling each other up as part of their routine. Kojirou is an entity that exists at Karou’s side, full of familiarity and overflowing with kindness that doesn’t need to be voiced.
Kojirou is stupid for ever having hesitated or doubted the strength of their bond. But Kaoru is stupid, too, for simply taking what Kojirou was offering without ever giving back properly.
“We’re never having this conversation again,” Kaoru warns, tugging at Kojirou’s hair and pressing his forehead against his. “I trust you, Kojirou. I always have. This isn’t going to change.”
Kojirou is clinging to every one of his words, looking at Kaoru with the most enraptured expression he’s ever shown. Like this is a dream that cannot be real. Kaoru scowls.
“Don’t look so surprised, gorilla. That’s not a secret.”
“I’m not surprised, I’m simply enjoying that you’re saying it at all,” Kojirou laughs.
“You never say anything pleasant about me either.”
“You’re the one who barges into my restaurant and half the time demand dishes that aren’t even on the menu, and I still cook them! I’m being nice enough!”
“What else would you do in a restaurant, muscles for brain ape?”
“I don’t know, cook a dish I have the actual ingredients for?”
Kaoru’s lips are pulled upward despite everything, his heart as light as ever in Kojirou’s presence. The ease surrounding them remains the same, electric veil sealing them in their own brand of intimacy they wouldn’t trade for anything else.
It feels effortless, then, to switch to a less barbed attitude but still retaining playfulness. Kaoru brushes strands of hair out of Kojirou’s face, and Kojirou runs a thumb under Kaoru’s eye.
“It’s my birthday at the end of the week,” Kaoru whispers, locking eyes with Kojirou. “Take me somewhere nice.”
“Bossy as ever,” Kojirou sighs, though his voice sounds like contentment and bliss contained in a space called home.
Kaoru smiles.
#matchablossom#joecherry#matcha blossom#kaoru sakurayashiki#kojiro nanjo#sk8#sk8 the infinity#kaoru is like 'i know i have feelings but i'm making the decision of not seeing them'#i'm fascinated by his change from punk high schooler to stoic adult#i also have more thoughts about kaoru+calligraphy relationship that i'll eventually write down#when i have the time o(-(
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where the arch meets
I have not read King of Scars so I do not know anything about the plot therefore some information about Nikolai could be outdated. This is also the first time I've ever written for this fandom so hopefully I did the characters justice. My friend and I watched S&B and were talking about ships and I said I wanted to see Kaz and Nikolai together which then prompted whatever the hell happened here, please enjoy!
CW: mentions of blood, mentions of gambling
There are no spoilers for the S&B show
masterlist; my links
[image has alt text]
Kaz stares out the window, a glum look on his usually stoic face. Ketterdam was alive, unusual joy spinning itself in the streets as the city busies itself for the arrival of the one and only King Nikolai Lantsov. The festivities of the "Peacekeeper" as he had been so lovingly named, had started three long days ago. Every day that Kaz wakes up to popping streamers, and the litany of ballads associated with the King's ever growing list accomplishments, is a day his stolen peace gets ripped from beneath him. He's not even sure why the King is so popular. He can't say he was anywhere near impressed enough at their brief meeting to warrant the five different ballads about those hazel eyes alone. Kaz looks down at the papers littering his desk, crow club books and bank statements for his various 'assets', communications between the various councils in Ravka and Ketterdam, and the most recent letter from Inej, smelling of the sea.
Their friendship is something of a mystery to the world but between them she is the rock that kept him steady. Even now, with her sailing the high seas content to her freedom, he can feel the unwavering quiet of her. Briefly, he wishes she were here. She would make him laugh, tell him to stop being so glum about the brown-eyed, blonde haired king if he insisted on doing nothing about it. He wouldn't let his amusement at her teasing show, but later in the safety of his room, this room, he'd let a rare smile show. He misses their quiet friendship most of all. But she is happy on her ship with her crew and he has shit to do. He always has shit to do.
The thought, stark and unwelcome, snaps him back to the present. A scowl replaces his faraway look as he shuts the window to the new round of baudy tunes drifting up and straight into the headache knocking at his skull. He sits back down harder than he intended, and winces at the pain that lances down his back and into his leg. He can hear Nina, chastising him for not putting on the salve, for not resting. But he doesn't have the time. He can't do something as normal as rest. He has a city to run. Or at least the underbelly of a city to run.
The statements stare at him but the numbers swirl like melting ice-cream in a bowl, and he wants to throw the pages in the fire in frustration. But he has never acted on emotion, and he will not start now. So he pushes away from his desk, cane already cool under his fingertips, and makes his way to the floors of the crow club.
The passage muffles the sounds of chips cluttering on a table, and glasses set down hard on the wood, and shouting when someone wins, loses, almost gets decked for supposed cheating. But as soon as he steps past the doors, nodding at the two guards he'd posted at this entrance, all of that chaos surrounds him. There is no hush as he steps into the room, no blanket of fear or anger or anything. They don't even know he is there. They won't until he makes himself known. Spending years with his Wraith had taught him some things, even with the click of his cane. He looks to the corner expecting to spot Jesper; his heart, as it had done every day since they had all parted ways, clenched upon seeing the empty space where his sharpshooter was supposed to be. The disappointment doesn't stop his eyes from travelling to the table closest to the kitchens— or as the Nina lovingly called it, the muck hut— where Wylan was usually hunched over notebooks or losing to just about everyone, except maybe Inej, in a game of cards.
He misses them. He'd never tell them, would never let it so much as flash across his face, but he couldn't stop his heart from the same onslaught. He felt it every day. Every time he looked to his window and Inej wasn't perched atop it. Every time he walked to the gambling tables and Jesper wasn't leaning over it, brown eyes shining with hope. Every time he wandered the corridors of the club hearing Wylan's flute. When he decides to put salve on it's because he hears Nina's voice, sees her frown, as she tries so hard to heal them. He even misses Matthias but that is a road he doesn't allow himself to go down. A failure he cannot yet acknowledge. His trip down memory lane ends abruptly when a man with a hood over his eyes, shadowing his face, steps up to him.
"You Kaz, Kaz Brekker?" The voice is rough, almost too rough, but the lilting accent is familiar. Before he can place it the man is talking again.
"I want to speak with you, about a deal."
Kaz tilts his head, resting gloved hands on his cane as he takes the figure in. "Liar."
The man sputters jerking back, and just briefly he catches a glimpse of golden skin and something shiny pinned to his coat. "It's urgent!" The man's voice is not so rough, and that accent, charming in a way, bleeds through more and more.
"I'm not available for deals." It is not true, but he wants to see how they'll react, what they're capable of if he says no.
"You'll like this one." The roughness has been replaced by arrogance. And the world opens wide for Kaz.
"Come," He turns, already limping towards the doors and his rooms beyond. "Don't say anything until we're behind closed doors"
It takes them exactly one minute and twelve seconds to get to his study. As soon as he hears the door click behind him, he lifts his cane and with brutal precision he rips through the clasp at the man's chest and watches the coat land in a heap on his wooden floor. Letting the crows head of his cane fall back into his hand he finally looks up. "What are you doing here King?" The question holds more exhaustion than he's willing to admit.
"What?" The King of Ravka grins, beautiful and bright and full of arrogance, "You aren't happy to see me?"
And Kaz wants to tell him no and piss off and leave me alone, but his heart is pounding and there is blood rushing between his ears and he doesn't really remember what breathing does, how it works. Because this is the first time he's ever seen Nikolai. When they met all those years ago he was Sturmhond, the privateer. Since then Kaz has only seen posters, and art. But none of them, not a single one, has ever done the king justice. He is........ he is magic.
"Oh come on," The blonde is laughing. It sounds like water. It sounds like peace. "You can't expect me to act like a stranger after all the letters we've sent." Yes, the letters. The updates King Nikolai had requested about Ketterdam, about the barrel, about the illegal smuggling of grisha to work as slaves. Those letters. "What?" The King looks at him speculatively, amusement sparking in his hazel eyes— they suit him so much better than the green of Sturmhond. "Volcra got your tongue?"
“Didn't know you would be in town," Kaz manages to grind out. He hopes it sounds like irritation and not infatuation.
"The six million posters and seven ballads about my adventures aboard the Kingfisher were not notice enough?" That grin is back. It is ruining him. "Oh dear, next time I'll be sure to add floating parades to the mix."
"That's tomorrow." He glowers. He doesn't think the blonde could get anymore insufferable. He is wrong.
"Do you have plans to attend then?"
He ignores the question, the tease. "What are you doing here Lantsov?"
"I'm here for the festival Mr, Brekker."
"I mean here." He motions to the room, to him. "What are you doing in the Barrel, in my club—" He wants to say 'in my room'. He catches himself.
"I came," Nikolai steps a little closer. There's still do much distance between them, practically an ocean, but Kaz can feel the tension wrapping around his lungs. He wants out. He wants closer. He wants, he wants, he wants....... "To visit a friend Mr Brekker. I don't exchange letters detailing my failed attempt at diving through the sky with just anyone." Oh saints he's going to die. He's never going to survive this. His face is a brick wall, a crack where his frown breaks through.
"You are a busy man King, busier even, than i am." He wants to applaud himself for the steadiness of his voice. "I doubt that you had time to just pop by. So what do you want, Nikolai?"
There is a flash of something in those beautiful eyes, and he wants to chase it to the ends of the earth. "Must we always have an ulterior motive?" The voice is quiet, but it is filled with curiosity and emotions Kaz doesn't have the ability to unpack. "Is it not good enough that I wanted to see you Kaz."
The Underboss of Ketterdam becomes a rain, becomes wind, and earth, and gold. He sits down on his desk, uninterested in the groan of the wood as it tries to carry his weight. Nikolai looks at him, soft and open, all that charm hidden- packed away for a moment far removed from this one. Somehow the distance has shrunk between them until there is only two steps, maybe three before their bodies can collide. He knows Nikolai would not come closer, but some part of him wants the king to try. Wants to see what would happen. He shoves that part so far down it got to hell before him.
"Say something," The blonde whispers.
"How long till they realize you've snuck off?" The bark of laughter that escapes the king is like jurda straight into his bloodstream.
"We have an hour tops."
"Let's go." He throws a new hood, midnight blue and embellished with golden thread, at him. It's his own. He doesn't have time to find another. Nikolai puts it on, fastening the small gold clasp at his front, and Kaz has to remind himself to breathe when he sees how beautiful those colours are against that golden skin. It looks a thousand times better on Nikolai than it ever had in him.
"Where are we off to then?" The blonde asks, his familiar charm steady through his features once more. "You're not intending to kidnap me and sell me to the highest bidder are you?" Before he can even start to ignore the question Nikolai is carrying on. "I have to tell you I won't make a very high bid. I seem to have botched myself a little when I turned into one of the Darkling's little pets. I think my di—"
"Shut up will you," He snaps, black eyes scanning the club as they walk through it.
"A little tense Mr Brekker," He can hear the grin. He doesn't know whether he wants to slap it or stare at it. He keeps walking.
They're outside and it's just started to drizzle and he has the brief thought that maybe he shouldn't be making the king of Ravka gallivant in the rain. But then he catches a glimpse of Nikolai's expression, full of wonder and glinting with excitement and he can't turn back even if he wants to.
"Kaz," Saints he loves the way the blonde says his name. "I really think it's better if I know where we're going, sake of safety and all that."
"We're going to the docks."
"You're not intending to drown me, are you?" There is no concern hidden behind the question, only delighted amusement.
"If I had intended to be rid of you Nikolai," Kaz turns his head, stares at the man, "I would have done it the second you walked into my club."
"Even though you didn't know it was me?"
It's his turn to smirk, and he revels in it. "I know everyone that comes into my club, King." The title reverberates in his throat. He catches the flash in the royal's eye.
"Why are you taking us to the docks?"
"I want to show you something, privateer." The strangled noise he hears in answer makes him force down the smile threatening to erupt.
The rain is at that awkward stage where it's more than a drizzle but less than a downpour. The kind that seeps into your clothes, makes your bones wet before you can even feel it on your skin. But they're almost there, he can see their destination clear in front of him. They are quiet, a rare thing for Nikolai he thinks, as they walk. Every now and then he glances to his companion who is always staring at the world in wonder. Like every corner produces a new kind of thrill. Like he'll be able to collect them all and bottle them for his journey home.
"Why are you staring at my pretty face?" The subject of his hidden amazement asks. "You've never been one to appreciate beauty Mr Brekker. If you did you'd have commented on my lovely violet wax seals at least once." He fights the urge to roll his eyes at that. The wax seals were the least interesting thing about the letters. He usually ripped them open like a mad man, clawing for the content inside and reading it as if it were going to disappear before he could get to the, 'fondly, Nikolai Lantsov' at the end.
"I have more interest in the contents inside."
At that the King does roll his eyes, "Oh yes, the ever so interesting reports about dock lookouts and safe grisha arrivals."
"It's my business."
"Mhm" Is all the blonde has to say.
They step onto the docks, and the tap of his cane, louder, more prominent on the wood, rings slightly in his ears. It's a comforting sound. One he has come to rely on to keep him steady. Especially when there's a king walking in stride with him, a king who kind of looks like the sun just before it disappears over the horizon. A king who scents his letters with lavender because he wants people to know calmness. A king who has never touched him but always stands close enough that he can feel the heat of him.
He recognizes the marker that tells him they're in the right place and then he motions for Nikolai to stay behind him. "Its small so we'll have to be close together." He says quietly.
"Are you okay with that?" The question is so gentle, so full of worry it almost buckles his knees.
"I'll manage."
"Kaz," He sounds hesitant, he sounds worried. "You don't have to force yourself to do something for me."
"I'm not, now come on before it disappears." And then they're stepping into an alcove only slightly bigger than a coffin and they're so close and there's so little air. But still Nikolai is not touching him and the leather of Kaz's gloves is warm against his skin. There is no part if him exposed to the elements, except his face. He takes one breath, takes two. The king is looking at him with concern, it is swimming in his features.
"Look up." Together they tilt their heads, and as the weak sunlight, bogged by rain, sinks to the floor the gems buried in the stones of the roof above them come ablaze. Crimson reds, and sapphire blues, and forest greens, and golden yellows. The light fractures and morphs and dances around them, like coloured stars.
He had discovered this wonder in a burning rage, trailing blood down the docks. He'd beaten up a man who betrayed their gang- dirty work for the boss- but half way down the docks he'd thought he was being followed and he slipped into this little alcove. He comes back every chance he gets.
"This is—" For once King Nikolai Lantsov is speechless. "How did you even find such a thing?" The hood had fallen off his head when he looked up so every angle of his face is on sharp display. The miserable lighting only made him more golden as if he was defying the weather simply by existing. And the gemstones reflected in his eyes, turning them every shade of rare rainbow. One of three Kaz had ever seen in Ketterdam.
He just raises a brow. "We should be getting back, I'm sure they've already sounded the alarm."
The blonde snorts, "They're used to it by now."
"Oh you sneak off to visit all your friends?" They step out carefully, making sure not to disturb the structure or get caught in the act.
"Feeling less special?"
"Wondering if maybe you should pay your guards more."
They bicker all the way back, about everything, trading wit and meaningless insults in equal measure. Kaz insists on dropping Nikolai off at his lodgings and Nikolai insists he doesn't have to despite leading them towards the building he's staying in. When they finally arrive, it is with a sense of longing for more that settles between them. More time, more laughter, more traded quips, just more.
"Goodbye Mr Brekker." The King bows his head.
"Nikolai." He nods.
"Come visit me in Ravka soon." It's the line he prints in every letter, no matter how far apart their replies are, or how many other things they have going on. Kaz never acknowledges it. He won't put that kind of hope into them. He must stay here. He must work.
But today, with happiness bubbling under his skin, he cant help but let loose a small smile and a dangerous promise. "I'll try."
And fading under the bustle of people is a small golden plaque on the floor of the alcove. "To those we love, and love unconditionally." A bigger promise, one that has lasted through time itself.
"That's all we can do Kaz," Nikolai smiles. "We try."
#Kaz x Nikolai#Nikolai x Kaz#Kaz Brekker/Nikolai Lantsov#grishaverse#The grisha trilogy#six of crows duology#shadow & bone#six of crows#Kaz Brekker#Nikolai Lantsov#TLYJ writes#soc#s&b
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Tattoo
Summary: You have been thinking of getting a tattoo for sometime and inspiration strikes on a spontaneous date with your boyfriend Ethan, who supports with your tattoo from design to after care.
Warnings: The Fluffiest of Fluff
A/N: Figured it was a good time to post fluffy!E before the vid tomorrow. <3
You always went back and forth on getting a tattoo. When you were much younger, it wasn’t your thing. Why would you mark you body with something permanent? You changed your clothes 15 times before going out because your shirts didn’t look right with your boobs. How would you decide on a tattoo?
As you got older, you realized that tattoo’s shouldn’t only be viewed as something you wanted to represent you for the rest of your life. They could be moments, like remembering a first road trip or the album art of the band of the first concert you attended. Tattoos could be used to mark the story of your life.
Ethan, your boyfriend, was part of your inspiration to get tattoos. You started dating around his first couple tattoos, back when you were still unsure about them. Seeing his leg sleeve grow, especially the tattoos that represented memories you both shared, made you want to do something special. You especially enjoyed tracing his tattoos with your fingers and laying soft kisses on them during your intimate moments. He would often play with your hair absentmindedly, enjoying the attention. You wanted to share this interaction in reverse as well.
After months of research, you couldn’t find a tattoo that spoke to you. Ethan always urged you that sometimes you just need inspiration from the world, not from Instagram or Pinterest. You took it with a grain of salt eyeing some of the sillier tattoos on his leg. The fears of younger self came rushing back to you about making a mistake.
Then, one night, Ethan had this wild idea to go camping.
Uh huh, Ethan Dolan, camping, outside, willingly, without his twin brother. You kept checking his temperature the entire drive to the campsite. Ethan laughed, holding your wrist firmly, but not too tight as to hurt you. He looked at you, allowing the Tesla to take over the drive and leaned in to peck your lips.
“Trust me, when we get there, you’ll understand.” He said to you.
“I dunno...” You said, hesitantly, smiling as you pulled your wrist from his grasp to hold his hand. Your fingers interlocked and he brought the back of your hand up to kiss the back of it. He didn’t break eye contact and you chuckled.
“Now you’re just showing off.” You said, gesturing to the auto pilot with your free hand.
Ethan shrugged smugly, giving your hand another squeeze before fiddling with music playing the car.
By the time you arrived, the sun was about to set in a couple hours. You recognized the area from pictures Ethan had showed you from a video where he and Grayson went camping without technology. Unlike Grayson, Ethan had no intention of roughing which was easy to tell thanks to his glamping setup. Your tent was luxurious, way too big for two people and Ethan had brought enough blankets and pillows that they could be a fort all on it’s own. For dinner, he had made vegan meatballs with spaghetti and tomato sauce. He also made pancakes that he tried to pass of as crepes for dessert.
“It’s all I can make...” Ethan confessed, looking away embarrassed as he placed the pot of sauce on the logs of the campfire, next to the meatballs wrapped in aluminum fall.
“Thankfully, it’s my favorite.” You said, sitting in the spot next to him, checking on the meatballs to make sure they didn’t burn.
It was so quiet and spacious. After eating and chatting, you took a break before dessert to explore. Ethan led you up and down a few paths, holding your hand at the steepest points. You watched the sunset from a high point, your breath taken away. After taking a few nature shots and photos of each other, Ethan leaned in for kiss. His hand rested on the back of your neck and you deepened the kiss by getting close enough to sit in his lap. Your arms wrapped around his shoulders as your lips massaged his, gradually getting more rough. His tongue tapped at your lips and you parted them to grant him access, both of you now breathing deeply to keep from breaking the kiss. While it only seemed to seconds, you could see the sky was starting to lose it’s orange hue.
“We should head down,” You said breathlessly, breaking the kiss.
Ethan pulled back only slightly, your foreheads still chuckling, his hazel eyes looking chocolate brown in the dark as he stared deeply at you.
“You’re right.” He smiled, “We can do plenty more of that later.”
You giggled and he extended his hand to help you stand up with him. The descend was a lot scarier with less light. You were clinging on to him, but you were also aware he was scared and clinging out to you. It was the blind leading the blind with a chorus of “What was that?” “Where are you?” “I’m scared.” and just pure screaming. By the time you reached the bottom, following the light and smell for the weakening fire at your campsite, you were both laughing with relief.
You enjoyed your “crepes” with fruits that Ethan had packed in a cooler along with the cold beverages you had to drink. While you were chatting, you noticed, Ethan look up at the sky. You were about to follow suit when he grabbed your chin. He turned you to look at him and your breath caught in your throat. Every now and then, your mind was catapulted back to when you first started dating. When your brain was still processing all of his handsome features, his cut jaw, his full brows, his large expressive eyes, his pink lips, his shinning smile, his soft, brown locks...everything that made him breathtaking. With the campfire light shining his face, it all seemed to look brand new again and you loved it.
“Don’t look yet, I want to show you something.” He said, and you nodded.
He could have said anything to you at that moment and you would have nodded. Ethan chuckled.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” He asked, biting his lip softly.
“No reason...” You smiled, pecking his lips. “So, what do you want to show me?”
“Let’s clean up first.” Ethan said, gesturing to the stuff around you both.
You both divided and conquered cleaning up the campsite. The final step was to put on the fire. You decided to take on the task while Ethan got the flashlight ready to go back to your tent. You turned off the flashlights to not attract bugs as you entered. Despite the tent being large enough that you could stand, you both somehow managed to trip over each other. With lots of laughs and fake bickering, you finally closed the tent and turned the flashlight on.
“No turn it off.” Ethan said, not wanting to ruin the surprise.
“Oh okay...” You said hesitantly, laying back on one of the larger cushions. You turned off the flashlight. “Come here and cuddle me.”
“I will, I promise.” Ethan said, his voice at a distance that told you he was still standing up. You heard him unzipping something and you saw that he was moving the top of the tent. There was a plastic covering on top, similar to a sun roof on a car. From your position, you swear you could see the whole galaxy. The rich deep purple and blues of the sky speckled with diamonds filled you. It felt like your heart was going to burst. Ethan crouched down and gently patted the cushioned floor for you. He finally found your arm and laid down next to you pulling you closer to him. As your eyes adjusted to the darkness, Ethan studied your face as you stared incessantly at the sky like a kid watching cartoons.
“Are you crying?” His voice had a teasing tone, but he was whispering like he does when you cuddle at home.
“A little...” You admitted, snuggling into him. “This is so beautiful. Thank you.”
“I thought this would be a great way to show you how I feel when I look at you every day.” Ethan said, unable to make direct eye contact.
“God, E that was so corny.” You teased, but still inching closer for a kiss.
“Yeah...I know.” He agreed before closing the space between you to continue you where you left off on the mountain.
A couple of weeks later and you were at the tattoo parlor. You had decided on your tattoo based on your camping night together. You couldn’t stop thinking about those stars, and how they looked from that little sky roof. You wanted to get a similar view, but add to it, with some trees lining the area around the sky. After a few consultations with the tattoo artist, you decided a rectangle shaped “frame” on the side of your ribs designed to show a starry night in a pine tree forest. The coloring was going to be black and white, so it had a spooky element that Ethan really liked as well. Now, was the moment of truth.
As you signed the waiver, Taylor, your tattoo artist, smiled at you. They looked exactly how you wanted your first tattoo artist to look, friendly, edgy, and have really cool rainbow hair and even more rainbow tattoos.
“Are you sure about this?” They teased. “I mean...this is a pretty intense tattoo for your first.”
Ethan, who’s leg was bouncing up and down next to you, perked up at the words. “Taylor, is right, Y/N. The ribs really hurt. You should go for somewhere with more cushion.”
“I want the ribs.” You said, standing up with more confidence than you actually had.
“Alrighty,” Taylor said, “Come over when you’re ready. I’ll show you one final stencil and we will get this party going.”
Ethan stood up, giving your butt a light squeeze. Your eyes widened and you looked around to make sure no one saw.
“What do you think you’re doing, mister?” You asked, turning to wrap your arms around Ethan’s neck.
“Checking which places have the nicest cushion for this tattoo.” He grinned before kissing your forehead. “Jokes aside, I’ll be here when you need me.”
“I’ll be fine.” You assured him.
You were not fine. You were so close to crying, but your dignity wouldn’t let you. There were certain spots that hurt more than others, and your jagged breathing always revealed which ones the tattoo gun had just hit. Ethan was beside you the entire time. He was constantly giving you water, wiping your forehead, holding your head, kissing the top of your head and coaching you through it.
“It looks so sick, babe.” Ethan said, as he walked over to see how the tattoo was coming along. “You’re gonna love it. I’m actually pretty jealous.”
You let out a hum, which you had been doing for awhile now.
“You alright, hun?” Taylor asked, looking at you. “If you want, we can stop and finish another time.”
You shook your head quickly. “I...wanna...finish.” You huffed out.
“She’s a tough one, Tay.” Ethan grinned, making Taylor smile as well.
“I can tell.” Taylor said, before focusing back on their work.
Ethan sat down on your other side, dipping his head to look at you since your head was bent down. He rested his forehead gently on yours and you moved your head closer to him, taking in his scent.
“It really looks amazing, Y/N. Reminds me of that night.” Ethan said, his voice soft and full of nostalgia. “But, it’s also so you. I’m so proud of you, baby. Your first tat.”
You hummed again, trying to smile. He continued to pat your head and speak to you softly. Soon, Taylor announced you were done. They helped you stand up, Ethan steadying you from behind. You turned in the mirror and your eyes started to water. It was everything you hoped for. It looked great with your skin tone, even with the redness for the fresh tattoo.
“I’d hug you, but you know...” You laughed softly.
“We can hip bump on the other side.” Taylor suggested and you left as you turned to hip bump them.
Taylor wrapped you up and Ethan helped you to adjust your clothes. He practically carried you to the car. He didn’t want to hurt you, so he was very careful with you the entire time. He convinced you to spend the first half of your healing process at his place so he could take care of you. You agreed, mostly because you were so exhausted and the thought of sleeping in his large bed and soft sheets was appealing. He helped you to take off your clothes and clean up before helping you into bed for a nap.
Ethan spoiled you during your recovery. He helped you in and out of bed, waiting on you hand and foot. You loved the attention. Even when being intimate, Ethan was incredibly careful of your tattoo. When your tattoo was a lot more healed, you almost wished you had a bit more time with Nurse Ethan.
“It looks amazing, babe.” Ethan said, when he walked in on you getting dressed. You were in your bra and shorts, about to put on a t-shirt. “Come here.” He said, pulling you to the bed. He sat down and motioned for you to lay across his lap as he traced your tattoo with his fingers. This was exactly how you imagined it, no it was better. Your eyes began to feel heavy and you closed them, while Ethan continued to admire your tattoo.
“I love you, baby.” Ethan said, kissing your side.
“I love you too, E.”
#ethan dolan#ethan dolan x reader#ethan dolan scenario#ethan dolan blurb#ethan dolan imagine#dolan twins#dolan twins scenario#dolan twins fluff#dolan twins imagine#dolan twins blurb#r-writes-fic#fic-tattoo
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. 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠
&&. ( kwon sihwa ), the ( 23 ) year old ( daughter ) of the prime minister of ( south korea). she is often confused with ( moon gayoung ). some say that she is ( resentful & dishonest ), but she is actually ( responsible & loyal )
biography. profile. pinterest . kwons.
( template credit: @lubsofrph )
♡ . *cowboy vc* howdy and yeehaw, i’m nai ( but you can call me whatever you like, i also accept the nicknames clown, cowboy clown, naicha ( bcs milktea is life) and i’m bringing you kwon sihwa for some juicy drama and petty girl energy dsdndns i haven’t joined a rp for quite a while, so i apologize if i’m a little slow with some things. ( grandma needs help .... ( i am grandma ) )
anyway, i’m super excited to be here, bcs you all seem to be such lovely and sweet people and i’d love to write and plot with all of you bcs i’m a greedy bitch dndnssn ! if you are interested in plotting 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 this post ( do ppl still do this ??? ) or simply shoot me an IM ( if u prefer discord we can also plot there ), below u will find a short summary ( if i manage to write one ) and some hcs ( or u can read her bio, but also don’t bcs i wanna rewrite it snddsdd ) ! i love u muahh 💕
♡ . sihwa is the second and youngest daughter of the south korean prime minister and has been pretty much ignored like half of her life ( if not more -- )
♡ . sihwa likes to blame that on her older sister yihwa. blame it on her being insanely jealous or just starved for the recognition and love of her parents but this is probably the main reason sihwa started to grow apart from her sister ( and might as well resent her ... sometimes ... often ...)
♡ . in fact there wasn’t much of a sibling rivalry when they were young. quite the contrary was the case and sihwa adored yihwa. ironically, she loved to be called the shadow of her sister because naive little sihwa thought it was meant as a compliment, meaning that she was always by her sister’s side -
♡ . when she grew up, she finally noticed that being called the shadow of her sister, was never meant to be a compliment. and finally the realization set in that her parents favored yihwa over sihwa ( big yikes ).
♡ . truth to be told, sihwa used to be a pretty confident kid. honestly, she knew her worth and was always proud of her academic success. that is why she jsut couldn’t grasp the fact that their parents were pushing yihwa while completely ignoring every of her achievements. it did not only hurt her ego ( buhuuu ) but also her (coughs) feelings.
♡ . consequently, she tried to be even better. perfect to be precise. however, nothing she did seem to satisfy their parents and she pretty much gave up the idea on being the perfect daughter.
♡ . here comes her rebellious phase. if she couldn’t get her parents attention by being perfect she did the opposite and rebelled against everything her parents wanted her to do. it was a silent cry for attention no one seemed to notice.
♡ . she pretty much continued being this way until yihwa left and the veil over her parent eyes had been lifted and suddenly she wasn’t so invisible anymore.
♡ . she barely had time for feeling betrayed by her sister. in some twisted way she felt like yihwa left sihwa for her passion ( although their relationship had been pretty bad since long time ago ) but this thought was put aside pretty quickly as she grabbed the opportunity right in front of her. replacing yihwa but also proving that she can do better than her.
personality ( this is me somehow trying to sum up her personality
although sihwa doesn’t appear to a particularly emotional person, her actions speak louder than words. despite, being pretty calculated when she wants to, knowing what to say and how to act in order to get what she wants, her actions are all fueled by her emotions. she had pretty much remained her vulnerable core ( which she likes to deny ), however, as she grew up she learned to hide it.
sihwa had always been pretty opinionated ( which probably disrupted the peaceful family dinners quite often ), it’s is difficult if not impossible to change her views on something. if she had formed an opinion about something or someone she won’t let anyone convince her that she is wrong ( don’t even dare to mutter that she is wrong - ). however, this is probably what also makes her loyal and if someone is on her good, side she won’t give up on them ( since her opinion rarely changes ) and rather believe her self than the opinion of some random person.
headcanons/ additional info bcs they’re fun and i want to show how petty sihwa can get ....
- sihwa attended cheong-a art school, a prestige music school known for producing several well-know musicians. due to her stage fright, sihwa messed up her audition and several points were deducted. however, kwon yijeong made sure that no one would know about his daughter’s imperfect auditon and made sure that every video material would be deleted and that sihwa would enroll.
- sihwa had often been labelled as a gifted kid due to her acadameic performances. this led her to believe that she had to be good at everything else as well. it made her impatient and she often gets frustrated if she isn’t good at something immediately. which is also the reason she almost gave up playing the cello
- sihwa is petty. really really really petty. especially when it comes to yihwa. it was only because of her sister, that heels became an essential piece of her wardrobe so she can be taller than her sister to assert her dominance or whatever she is trying to do. although, she is naturally taller than her sister without heels, she has that irratonal fear that she might encounter yihwa when she is wearing heels but sihwa isn’t. so she has no choice but to wear heels all the time.
- sihwa owns a black cat. she called her milk because she thought she would be creative by calling her the opposite what she looks like. however, many people seemed to have thought the same. this realization is something which sometimes keeps her up at night.
- talking about her cat. at first she wanted to adopt a white cat. but when she heard that black cats are not as often adopted as other cats she felt bad for the cat bcs somehow she related it to herself and her own experiences ( rip ).
- sihwa had some kind of emo/goth/scene kid phase ( reference: pinterest board --> back then lol ). it was her own form of rebellion and in fact she managed to annoy her parents with it. rumors among the staff say that rarely any family portraits of the time sihwa went to high school exist because it was also the time she had her ‘rebellious phase’. some even claim that if there are some photographs, baek shikyung had hired a professional to photoshop a smile on yihwa’s phase as she looked pissed in every of the portrait.....
#hshqintro#thank u for all the ppl who messaged me i will get to the IMs in a minute dddnsdsd#also#thank u ume for coming up with such a interesting wc sdnnsdsd if u see this i love u#also not me acting as if i accomplished something by getting the og/canon sihwa url SCREAMS#look at me trying to sum up her personality as if she hadn't changed personalities like three times in her life --- I --#this got long... *sky castle vc* WE ALL LIE#its almost 1am here so if there are any spelling/grammar mistake lets blame it on that and not on my illiterate ass ---
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Sen Çal Kapımı 1 - Episode Recap
To be honest, this series of posts is mostly going to be a fashion roast. But DISCLAIMER! I really do love this show and Turkish TV in general, it’s just my preferred mode of media analysis is to pick things apart. 😂And I need everyone to know that I am very pro-women, and believe people should be able to dress how they want and not be judged for it or be looked down upon for it. But oh my god this wardrobe department/costumer needs to be STOPPED. I also have zero credentials to be talking about fashion, but will that stop me?
I’m going to make these posts assuming you’ve watched the show, and just comment on whatever comes up. There will be spoilers. Let’s go!
We start off with a voiceover from Eda Yıldız, an A+ romcom trope. (It wasn’t until my rewatch that I remembered that Eda used to do VOs at random intervals, and I’m kind of glad she stopped tbh.) She is a strong woman who wants to get her education and become a landscape architect/designer. She was all set to do that until- dun dun dun! - Serkan Bolat destroyed everything.
Check out that dart board of a man (and this is the only time we see that photo there). And these outfits are probably the most normal and reasonable clothes she wears in the show. She’s a beautiful young woman, who was a college student, and now works outdoors as a florist. 10/10 outfit.
Of course that transitions us into an epic slomo of Serkan exiting his private jet. He of course begins to berate his assistant on the phone in a way a friend described as reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada.
@teamnick‘s commentary back when she first started the show.
Serkan returns to his office for the first time in 2 months after working on business deals in London. Chaos ensues: Miranda Priestly is baaaaaaack.
See... here we have some good fashion choices! We meet the girls for the first time, while they try to sneak off to their graduation without making Eda feel bad that she won’t be receiving her diploma. Melek “Melo” is dressed in a sweet dress with a bold, romantic color, which captures her personality perfectly. Ceren, the rich daughter from a family of lawyers, looks a bit more high-fashion. The dress is short but it has long sleeves and no cleavage so it works out to be chic and elegant. Fifi is unapologetically herself with her full-black, punk wardrobe. Eda is again dressed in a pretty, but casual outfit. Nicely put together for her lower-middle-class lifestyle and her job as a florist.
Enter: the plot device to get our protagonists together. Serkan’s face says it all.
We are then introduced to the main couple’s respective cars. Serkan has his 2020 BMW (though the show blocks out the copyrighted branding) while Eda’s beat up SUV is clearly unreliable. What’s that? Another plot device being introduced? I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Also, I just noticed this, but for someone as uptight as Serkan, I’m surprised at how fun his suit jacket lining is. If I’m not mistaken the pattern is of a bunch of rainbow fish. #Snazzy, but they seem out of character?
Plot highlights:
Eda learns she can come back to school and finish her final year, but she’s lost her scholarship and will have to pay. She can’t.
Serkan gives his talk at the graduation (?)-- Is his talk just for architecture students? If so, why are Ceren, Fifi, and Melo there? We’ll never know. I know, I know... it’s all for the ~plot~
Eda calls Serkan out in front of everyone for taking away the scholarship that she earned from his company, Art Life. He is confused but unrepentant. She refuses to tell him her name.
She tries to deface his car with lipstick after keying the side (we never hear about the damage to his car after that). He catches her and wants to call the police, so she impulsively handcuffs them together with the plot devices from Selin’s wedding invitation sitting on his passenger seat.
They then have to go to Serkan’s urgent business meeting with an out-of-town client. Eda drives while they’re handcuffed together. Bickering ensues.
What is this? Foreshadowing? Symbolism?? Eda’s last name “Yıldız” is the Turkish word for “star” so... file that away for later.
One of my favorite parts about watching Turkish dramas is the experience of trying to decipher the fan translations. Add to the fact that Turkish only has 1 pronoun *chef’s kiss*
Eda refuses to take the elevator to the 15th floor (we’ll learn about her claustrophobia later). Serkan is equally as stubborn, saying she owes him for screwing up his day. But he has met his match in Eda with regards to stubbornness. They take the stairs.
More highlights:
First instance of fake dating - they need to hide the handcuffs from his client so Eda pretends she’s his girlfriend and a fellow investor.
The girls track Eda’s phone to the hotel and try to find her by asking around the premises.
Eda charms the client into selling his land to Serkan.
We learn that Serkan is allergic to strawberries and has a lot of health anxiety. He’s a very tightly wound person.
Serkan says “Mashallah,” translator hears 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
Engin brings way too many people to open the handcuffs and chaos ensues.
I feel like nothing can do justice to the comedy of 58:45 to 1:00:00 with Fifi using a bobby pin as a lock pick. The dramatic editing is 👌🏼
Leyla gets fired for somehow causing this drama??? And she is so happy to leave that stressful workplace omg, we don’t deserve her 🥺
Serkan and Eda go their separate ways, Eda prepared to never see her enemy again, but of course her phone and purse are still in his car so she has to go to his office at Art Life and confront him again.
Serkan has found out that Whoops, Art Life did cancel the study abroad scholarships to cut costs, but his CFO did it without telling him. And Serkan is pissed, but I think mainly about the fact that Eda did have some (SOME) grounds for yelling at him in public.
Leyla then explains the nonsensical reasoning behind her being fired-but-not-fired and still working. (Spoiler alert: she never goes anywhere and she is my favorite side character to this day).
Eda: “How can I piss Serkan off?” Leyla: “Find a mistake he’s made and he will fixate on it forever. But you won’t find anything.” Eda: “Hold my beer.”
Eda walks into Serkan’s office and his meeting. She gets her purse back and they fight about him not being willing to apologize for ruining her life and education. He refuses and says she owes him an apology for embarrassing him in public (no, dude).
He wants to give her back the scholarship and make it all go away but she rightly tells him that it won’t fix her broken pride from begging the company and her university for a second chance. But somehow her calling him a heartless “Robot” is what gets to him???? And he short-circuits. Eda walks out triumphant.
~dRaMa!~
MEANWHILE
Melo, as well as being a perfume sales girl, also works as a flight attendant and wants Eda to cover her shift (we’ll get into how that doesn’t make sense in a minute)
Eda says no, she’s going to meet her boyfriend, Cenk, who she hasn’t seen in months and has just returned from Italy.
Enter: Selin. Serkan’s ex who he dumped a while ago and is now engaged to the heir of a hotel empire. Serkan doesn’t like this. The two of them grew up together and are set to each inherit 50% of the holding company that Serkan’s father currently runs.
Right away Selin serves us with a gender reveal level color scheme. Personally not a fan. They confirm that Serkan is coming to her engagement party tomorrow.
Meanwhile Eda meets up with Cenk. Her outfit is still reasonable and cute for her character. He looks mildly like a hobo and doesn’t seem to have anything going for him (I know he’s a throwaway character but the two of them really don’t have anything in common).
This creeper keeps staring at them, but Cenk tries to explain it away and says he’s busy and can’t meet her again until the day after tomorrow. Eda is disappointed but accepts this. Creeper girl remains and remains a red flag to viewers, but apparently not to Eda.
Cut to later that evening, and of course our broody main man enjoys astronomy in his free time (???) idk what he’s charting and to what purpose but okay?
Eda finds a mini first aid kit in her purse that Serkan put there before returning it. Queue montage of them treating their respective wrists for handcuff-related injuries. #couplegoals
Of course we also needed a sepia-toned flashback to earlier that day when the handcuffs contrived their faces to get too close together. #romance
Finallyyyyyyy it’s morning again and a new day.
Since Eda can’t see Cenk (good, he’s so boring), she agrees to fill in as a flight attendant for Melo, who’s side job is for a private plane company.
Now. This should not be a thing. Eda was in college to be a landscape architect and now works as a florist for her aunt... Where has she learned any relevant skills to work as a flight attendant?? Presumably nowhere. And I really don’t think a private plane company would be so easygoing about just having a random person fill in to cover for her friend?
But does this show care about that? What do you think...
Also, instead of the standard white shirt, black skirt uniform requirements, the girls decide that this skimpy dress and heels is fine? Hmmm
Also lol @ Melo for assuming that the client who wants jasmine tea and fruit salad is probably a woman. And her telling Eda that the PRIVATE JET COMPANY would in fact have its own tea was very random and unnecessary.
Back at the Bolat house compound, we meet the parents: Aydan and Alptekin. We’ll see them again later. Selin’s engagement party is today.
Meanwhile Eda is just.... being a flight attendant, I guess??? And who could possibly be the passenger she has to take care of? Take a wild guess. Of course it’s Serkan Bolat.
And of course that tiny dress (THAT ALSO HAS A LEG SLIT?? WHY?? I really don’t need to see her vagina) looks very practical and professional... not! (Hande Erçel is a gorgeous human, and the dress looks good on her, don’t get me wrong. BUT THIS IS SITUATIONALLY INCORRECT ATTIRE). Also him just folding his vest and then social distancing from it... K? 😂
Eda panics and doesn’t want Serkan to see her and runs away back to her seat pod thing - Serkan takes issue with his fruit salad for ~plot reasons~ (EDIT: I’ve been informed that it’s because there was a strawberry in his fruit salad and since he’s allergic, of course it needed to be fixed. Why doesn’t the plane have a note of that??) and comes back to find this mystery flight attendant.
Eda is very stressed out about this encounter and is also starting to have a panic attack because, surprise, she’s also claustrophobic.
After Serkan calms her down, they have a cute/civil conversation for the rest of the flight.
When they land, Eda realizes they’re on an island 2h45min away from Istanbul and she isn’t sure what to do with herself (How did she not already know where they were going, as the FLIGHT ATTENDANT??? So may red flags with this private jet company).
Serkan convinces Eda to come with him and she can hang out at the beach while he’s at Selin’s engagement party.
At the engagement party we finally meet Selin’s fiancé Ferit. He’s sweet and non-threatening and clearly insecure about Serkan being Selin’s ex.
This dress/skirt outfit Selin is wearing isn’t terrible, but it doesn’t scream rich socialite to me. Anything with feathers seems... a bit tacky/too showy? Like someone pretending to be rich? Idk, this outfit isn’t one I’m going to really take a stand on.
Does this engagement party warrant being a 2h45 min flight away? No. They try to explain it away as the couple wanting to have something small and private, even though they also invite the press?? But okay whatever, as long as Serkan and Eda cross paths again, I suppose.
Kaan Karadağ has been mentioned a couple times in passing, but now we finally meet our “villain.” Ferit’s friend, and Serkan & Selin’s childhood acquaintance, who has it out for Serkan bc he somehow bankrupted Kaan’s dad? Idk and I don’t really care but tl;dr they’re enemies.
Another thing I love about Turkish dramas is the censoring. Like, they’ll allow alcohol to be on screen, but they won’t say the word and they’ll just blur out the bottle and any liquid that we’d assume is alcoholic 😂
In the evening, Serkan is tired and wants to leave and Ferit snidely jokes about how Serkan is too picky to have a fiancé of his own. Serkan flashes back to 1 entire day ago when he and Eda pretended to be dating at his business meeting, and says that actually he is engaged to someone and then peaces out.
Serkan finds Eda on the beach, and they are preparing to leave when a crowd of people (Selin, Ferit, and Kaan mainly), arrive to get a peek at Serkan’s new “fiancé.” Eda very reluctantly plays along (good thing she has that unnecessarily sexy “work” dress to help her look the part) and Serkan notices that for the first time ever, Selin is jealous of another woman. #drama
After they finally escape the crowd, Serkan makes an annoyed Eda an offer: Pretend to be his fiancé for the 2 months leading up to Selin’s wedding so he can get them to break up and prevent Ferit marrying into the company. In return, he will pay all the fees to help her complete her last year of studies in Italy.
Eda refuses, stating that she doesn’t want anything from him, and besides she has a boyfriend (Sure Jan; Cenk is such a joke). They have it out and then fly back to Istanbul. But of course the gossips at the engagement have spread the news of Serkan’s new woman so the paparazzi corner them at the airport when they land.
So glad that we got to see this random mechanic find out the news (???)
They escape the cameras and Serkan takes her home, saying that Art Life has a press conference tomorrow, and she should come so he can save face and tell everyone that she was his assistant accompanying him for work to the party. Eda agrees.
It should also be mentioned that Serkan still doesn’t know her name at this point?? She refused to tell him and Engin still hasn’t sent him the names of the scholarship candidates so it’s a bit miraculous that their relationship was at all believable.
The next day, Cenk wants to meet but Eda has to go to the press conference. The girls come too for whatever reason, and Melo is convinced that Cenk wants to propose. Eda just lets that fantasy take hold (why tho?), and Cenk shows up unexpectedly right before the press conference and takes Eda into the nearby hotel’s cafe so they can talk.
Eda seems ready for a proposal (they haven’t seen each other or really communicated in months??) but Cenk wants to break up. Eda is shocked (???) but then Cenk mentions that he has a new girlfriend from Italy that he adores, and oh by the way, it’s the creepy girl from the other night who also happens to be here right now?
Okay fine, I guess??? Cenk: “She’s doesn’t speak Turkish” Girlfriend: *clearly a Turkish actress*
Eda is upset that he brought his jealous girlfriend with him to break up with her and says something about how actually, she’s seeing Serkan Bolat now (maybe it’s just me being someone who doesn’t follow tabloids, but are business people really that popular in every day society where everyone knows who they are?). Cenk laughs at Eda, saying that everyone wants to be with Serkan Bolat, and that she’s bluffing.
Eda makes an impulsive decision, and walks away, over to where Serkan has started the press conference. And seals their fate as fake dating in the public eye.
Queue confetti. No really.
And there we have it. That’s the episode!
In all seriousness, it’s a pretty great pilot, especially for a romcom. It hits all the right beats, includes enough tropes, and tells us a lot about what we should expect in the episodes going forward. And no matter how much I make fun of it, I really do enjoy this show! It’s been such a nice distraction from Current Events. I’ve spent a lot of time watching these episodes just saying “oh my god” out loud to myself as I watch all of the cute/romantic gestures that give me a lot of second hand embarrassment (I forget that PDA makes me kinda uncomfortable 😂).
There wasn’t actually that much terrible fashion in this episode, which I didn’t notice until my rewatch. If I continue with this series of posts, I’m hoping they’ll end up being less plot-centric, and more about the situationally inappropriate outfits and strange subtitling choices.
See you next time?
#was this a good use of my time? you decide 😂#should I do all the epiosdes? I want to get to the really bad outfits#episodes#sçk recap#sen çal kapımı#mwtd#thescorpioracer#sck#sçk#sen cal kapimi#sen çal kapimi#eda yıldız#serkan bolat#kerem bürsin#hande erçel#edser#1. bölüm#Maya watches Turkish dramas#long post#turkish drama#turkish dizi#dizi
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A Castle in the Forest
Percy x Vex’ahlia, Chapter 11, 2942 words,
A Modern AU, in which Vex is a park ranger taking over the Alabaster Sierras post, and finds much more than she bargained for.
Read on AO3
----------------
Vex had succeeded in evading Vax’s questions about the bow.
She hadn’t really given him the option to speak at all. After resting for the night, her exhaustion had melted away and left all the space for anger. She’d driven out on her truck, not on the motorcycle, but that was only because the bike wouldn’t go on the snow very well. She’d just wanted to get to one of the temples fast.
They let her walk right into a fucking trap. They hid this from her and she could have died. There is going to be a scar on her shoulder, even with the healing she’s received. She wants to scream at all of them.
What if she’s not the first one to get hit by whatever the fuck the fiend is capable of doing? What if there are bodies literring that castle, bodies of innocent people who walked in on a fiend and died because no one fucking warned them?
Her rage carries her through the whole drive, until she stops in a furious screech of tires not far from the temple and basically runs to it. It carries her as she slams her whole body into the door and it bursts open. She doesn’t care about the bruises she’ll have after this.
She’s lucky, she guesses. They’re all there. Pike, and Grog, both priests and Cassandra. Somehow, the latter’s presence is no surprise. They were acting a little weird about everything, after all.
“What the fuck is up with the thing in the castle and why did none of you bother telling me about it?” Vex roars.
She can feel her hands shaking as she balls them into fists, trying to canalize her anger at least somewhat. She’s a professional, she can’t go and yell the heads off of clergy. Or maybe she can. Maybe she needs to, right now, because they let her walk into an incredibly dangerous situation.
Grog is still holding up his axe. He doesn't look specifically aggressive but she knows he’s ready to defend his friends against her if necessary. She appreciates that, even in this situation.
“You saw him?” Cassandra asks, standing up. “Does he… look alright?”
Vex blinks.
She wasn’t expecting this. Cassandra seems concerned, but more about the thing than about the fact Vex was in close contact with it and could have died.
“He’s a smoking fiend in the shape of a humanoid and I don’t know what kind of shit he packs but it made a hole in my shoulder. A big one!” Vex snaps back. “That doesn’t sound alright to me.”
Cassandra’s face hardens in as neutral of a face as Vex has ever seen. Pike reaches for them, gently putting a hand on their arm, beckoning them to sit back down.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Pike says quietly. “Do you need more healing?”
Vex shakes her head. “No. I have a couple of Healing Spells, and my brother gave me a potion. I’m fine.”
She’s mad that they’re showing concern, when they should have told her this was a threat. Pike and Grog make it all worse. They knew, when they took down the Barbed Devil, that it wasn’t the fiend Vex had sensed. And yet, they let her be fooled, let her believe that she’d done her job correctly.
“Lady Vex’ahlia, I think you should sit down,” Father Reynal says then, with his serene priest façade that Vex wants to smash through right now.
Grog gets up to bring another chair and they all stare at her until she moves and sits down at the table. They all settle back down.
There’s a large file on the table, closed and title-less. Vex raises an eyebrow. Father Reynal takes it and pulls it off of the table, away from her prying eyes and wandering hands. Smart of him. Suspicious too. Vex is on high alert and everything right now is a threat.
“I’m not a lady,” she mutters.
“I know,” Father Reynal nods. “But I’m being polite.”
Vex rolls her eyes. “Cut to the chase. What the fuck is going on here? What is that thing and why didn’t you tell me?”
They all settle back in their seats, all tense, all very unwilling to talk. Vex isn’t budging until she’s given answers though. She’ll camp here and harass them until they crack. She doesn’t give a fuck how long it takes.
“We didn’t tell you,” Keeper Yennen starts. “Because there was no reason for you to know. The fiend cannot walk out of the castle, the trail had been condemned by our work, and the secret tunnel was… well, secret.”
Vex sighs slightly. “Until Keyleth told me about it.”
“Our dear Keyleth is not skilled in the art of deception,” Father Reynal adds then. “We should have expected this would happen. But we couldn’t take you into account when all of this started. Your predecessor, Ranger Regae was not… exactly zealous. He was either oblivious to what was happening or didn’t care enough to stop it. All the contrary to you, my lady.”
“Not a lady,” Vex repeats. “Please stop calling me one.”
They nod as well. “Apologies,” they mutter. “Now. As for your other questions…”
Cassandra bristles. “His name is Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III,” they rattle off without even blinking. “Depending on which succession law you follow, he’s either Lord of Whitestone, or just my brother, in which case I am Lady of Whitestone.”
Vex takes a second to take in all of what she’s just been told. The De Rolos are not all dead. At least two remain. She’s staring at one of them, and the other is the thing in the castle. And they’re all covering it up.
“What happened? Because that’s not a person in there anymore,” Vex points out. Cassandra flinches at that.
Well… The eyes flashing to blue and the humanoid voice could belong to a person. The part that had yelled her to run… that could be a person.
“We don’t know exactly,” Cassandra continues, despite her flinching and obvious uncomfort. “We know that he’s been possessed by a fiend. Which I’m guessing you sensed and came in contact with.”
“Do you know how he came in contact with the fiend? What kind of fiend it is?” Vex crosses her arms.
“He.. came back to Whitestone with the fiend already with him. I haven’t been able to get more details from him.”
Every time Cassandra or anyone else says something, it just adds more questions to Vex’s plate. Where was he before coming back? Why had he left in the first place?
“As for the kind,” Father Reynal interjects. “I haven’t gotten to see it up close since he became possessed by it the way he is now, but from Keyleth’s description, it seems like a demonic creature. Perhaps a shadow demon of some kind.”
Shadow demons are more difficult to take down than barbed devils, but they’re not… impossible. Between Keyleth, Pike, Grog and the others, they should have been able to take it down a long time ago… Though it isn’t just a fiend. It’s also Cassandra’s brother. That changes things, she guesses, for all of them. There’s a person trapped in there, the one that made it so Vex could get away.
That’s the thing with possession. There’s always someone else than the creature involved in it.
Vex sighs heavily, putting her hands over her face. “You haven’t told any sort of authority, I’m guessing?” She asks.
“They’ll just… kill him to take out the creature,” Pike points out. “None of us want that to happen. We want him safe. As safe as possible.”
“Or they’ll fuck up the barrier we put up and he’ll be free to roam and probably kill more,” Keeper Yennen adds. “That’s another one of our concerns, and one of the reasons we didn’t tell you. We’re aware rangers have some spellcasting abilities and we did not want to risk you messing with the barrier.”
Vex huffs. “Well, I can’t promise I didn’t do anything but I don’t think my encounter with it fucked up your spell.”
They all fall quiet then. As she looks around the table at these people, these people of faith, of knowledge, of ability, it suddenly dawns on her the mess she’s gotten into. There’s a nobleman possessed by a fiend, with a weapon from the nine hells that shoots holes into people. They’ve been dealing with it for who knows how long, and they’re not getting anywhere. They seem at a standstill.
It’s all terrible. She should run away now. Grab Vax, pack her bags, and never come back to Whitestone again.
She’s not going to succeed at her job here, not when the fiend in the castle is much stronger than she is, not when there are people who won’t let her deal with it quickly and efficiently because it would mean murdering someone. Not that she would murder someone to do her job, but… it’s just another thing to think about.
She should give up and leave.
But where can she go? She can’t go back to Syngorn. Syldor’s made it incredibly clear in the letter she read yesterday. It was only yesterday but it feels like weeks. The emotional distress and the encounter with the fiend, or Percival de Rolo… It all seems so far away.
So she has to stay, and she has to deal with this somewhat. Because there’s no way she can go back to her life when she knows about the thing in the castle. No way. She’s too… stubborn.
“I have many questions,” Vex starts after a moment. “And I want you to answer them to the best of your abilities. If you want me to help in this matter, you’re going to have to be straightforward with me. Honest. If I catch you in a lie, you’re fucked.”
She doesn’t really think she’ll tell any authority about this, but she is going to use every bit of power she has to get her way and get the answers she’s desperate to have.
“Fine,” Cassandra nods. “I think that works with us.”
Vex doesn’t reply that they don’t have a choice anyway. She’s not that big of a dick.
“My very first question,” she moves forward. “How did you know my last name?” She stares at Father Reynal, with his chestnut eyes.
He sighs heavily and takes out the folder that had been on the table when she came in. He slides it over the table towards her and she takes it, and opens it.
Everything. They have everything. They have her grades and report cards from the schools she attended in Syngorn, from the noble general educations to the specialized ones, to the ones from her training with the TWC. Things on Vax as well. And then the Shademurk. Reports on the fire, a copy of the report she wrote for the TWC about what happened. Pictures of her and Saundor at the official parties he dragged her to, both because she was the ranger attached to the Shademurk, but also because she was his trophy, and he wanted to show her off.
She remembers the specific day this photo was taken on. She remembers the pretty green silk dress with the completely open back, almost the exact color of his skin. He’d insisted she made her hair in a way that uncovered her ears. He’d made a braid of vines that wrapped around her neck in a necklace. He’d called her perfect. She’d been the only non-fey in attendance, and all eyes had been on her, and on him, because he’d brought her.
She’s smiling in the photo in front of her. It was taken when she was already tipsy on sweet and heady fey wines. That was why she was smiling so much. The evening hadn’t been pleasant. Some sort of anniversary of something where she’d obviously been there for people to stare at, for Saundor to have. He had not let her move out of his side all evening, arm wrapped around her waist, hard as stone, unmovable. Possessive. She’d already known better than to try and break his hold on her, it had been months after she’d realized he was much, much stronger than her. When he decided to hold her, there was no getting out.
She slams the folder shut when it gets to more details about the fire.
Her hands are shaking when she looks up at the priest in front of her.
“Why?” She asks. Her voice is weak. It’s shaking, it’s ugly.
“We had to know who you were, who had replaced Regae. If you’d be a threat for us and Percival,” Father Reynal explains. “I’m sorry.”
He’s not. It’s obvious he’s not. Vex gets it, but it doesn’t qualm her anger and betrayal. She grabs the file in her hands. “I’m keeping this.”
None of them deny her that. Good. She would have exploded if they did.
Her mind is swimming. The pictures of those nights in the Feywild, the reports on the fire and her escape, the fiend, the trapped noble, her father’s hatred of her, these people… all of it was too much. She needs a fucking break. But they won’t let her have one.
“I need to go for a moment,” she says. This time her voice is steadier, and she’s so incredibly glad.
“You have some decisions to make,” Keeper Yennen nods.
Vex stands up. She’s not as shaky as she expected she would be. “I’ll be telling my brother all of this. You’ve involved him.” She points at the file. “Non negotiable.”
Cassandra looks a little uncomfortable at that but says nothing. Good. She’s getting Vex to help in saving her brother, Vex is involving hers.
This is too much to deal with alone, anyway. She needs Vax by her side with this. Despite everything, she needs his presence, she needs him. They’re both unsteady and neither of them are the rocks the other needs, really. But they’ve got each other and that’s at least something. It would be horrible if they couldn’t have each other.
She walks out of the temple with barely a word. She can’t do the goodbyes and everything else right now. She can’t pretend her mind isn’t full of questions and fears and anger. She needs to take time with all of this.
It’s hard. A part of her feels for Cassandra, and even the rest of them. She can understand why they did what they did, why they hid it from her, from the world. But she’s still so deeply angry about all of it.
And the file just made it so fucking worse. It’s all there, all the things she wishes to forget, all the things she prayed there were no traces of. She hoped the fire of Shademurk destroyed all evidence of her presence there, of the months spent in Saundor’s thrall.
Just like the memories and the scars she bears, just like the bow under her bed, it’s not going to go away this quickly. She should have expected pictures to be taken of the parties, she should have expected the reports to exist somewhere in the system.
What kind of research power did they even have, to acquire such information from her schools in Syngorn and the TWC?
Fuck. She gets into her truck and punches the leather outside of the wheel, cursing out loud. She puts the file down on the passenger seat and exhales. She needs to calm down. Her hands are shaking and she needs to be calmer to drive home, or she’ll drive herself into a fucking tree.
She would have thought being researched would be the worst part. But the worst part is the memories of Saundor the research brings. She’s fought so hard to put this behind her, she’s spent months bothered by horrible nightmares, every time she fell asleep. She’s better now, but this is a lot to deal with.
She really thought she was going to be safe from him now that she was hundreds of miles from the nearest portal to the Feywild. But the memories will not leave her and the scars are still obviously on her skin.
She can’t be safe. Not when she has her memories intact and his bow under her bed. It hasn’t been long enough. Maybe she’ll be done with him in a few years, or a few decades. Hopefully it will fade away faster than what her father did.
Falling from Syldor to Saundor was to be expected, now that she thinks about it. She was desperate for approval from some sort of authority figure and Saundor was that. And he had her wrapped around his little finger within days of meeting him.
Gods, she loved him. At least somewhere in the middle. Not at first, no. It had been all for comfort and pleasure. And then… at the end, it had been fear and hopelessness. But she had loved him in the middle. She’d worshipped him.
The great powerful Lord Saundor the Forsaken.
Her forehead hits the leather covering the wheel and she sighs heavily. She’s so tired. Her fingers find the key and turn it, sending the engine roaring on. The radio turns on with it as contact is made. It’s still on that pop channel since they went for a groceries run whe Vax arrived.
It feels like it happened weeks ago. The onboard calendar says it’s the 28th of Cuersaar. Vax has been in Whitestone for three days.
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L!Joker x Reader: Dogs
Note: pure fluff, v short, and super inspired by a post I saw awhile back about the three (? I think three) Rottweilers being loyal to J and all that. Also I’ve been busy working on this other project that I kinda let this one have not-as-great quality, but it was cute so there. Double also, pls forgive formatting, both the shitty paragraph spacing and the lack of italics. Tumblr fucked up the format and I don’t feel like fixing it lmao
Warnings: like, swear words? And some graphic descriptions of violence? But that’s it, not too sinful
In the dwindling hours of the day, dusk heavy on the horizon, you trudged home. Exhaustion plagued your body, the frigid air and harsh winds further driving your desire to get home. It wasn’t far from your work, only a few blocks, but it was on days like this that you cursed yourself for not taking a car. Even the thick mauve sweatshirt you wore couldn’t keep the cold away.
You had been out since 8am, almost 10 hours ago by now. Your throbbing head told you that cooking dinner tonight was a no-go, and so you’d stopped to pick up some warm comfort food. A treat for you, and a nice little surprise for J.
He’d been away all day yesterday, leaving before dawn and never returning. It did worry you a bit, but J had disappeared for much longer in the past, either running a scheme for days on end, or staying at his other hideout — an abandoned warehouse just outside of the city limits — to avoid leading whoever was after him this time back to you. Still, you worried, your mind racing with every bad thing that could’ve happened, like a kid whose mother was taking too long at the store. J knew this, though he continuously tried to convince you he would always come back. He knew your anxiety was far too engrained into your very being to not imagine the worst case scenario, but he still tried, if for no other reason than the hope that his constant reminder would dig itself deeper into your psyche than the anxiety.
But that had yet to happen, and so J had taken to other means of calming you. Keeping you informed was first and foremost. He’d call to tell you where he was, or text if he was in a rather boring meeting with mob bosses. He’d perfected the art of maintaining eye contact and taking part in the particulars of the conversation, while simultaneously writing a text with his phone under the table. Always a new phone, always a new number, but he had yours memorized, and you knew who it was when a message from an unknown number popped up.
That’s why, despite the apartment being empty when you left this morning, you knew he was there, waiting. It had only been about ten minutes since you’d left, so, by the time you headed home, he’d been there all day. Alone. You hoped he had caught up on his sleep, but you knew him better than that. You knew he was too bored sleeping alone, as wild of a concept as that seemed. No, instead you’d probably come home to see parts of makeshift weapons on the coffee table, or maybe the kitchen torn apart like a rabid raccoon had broken in.
At least he’d be home, you thought.
Finally standing in front of your door, you couldn’t unlock it fast enough, your feet aching, begging to be given some reprieve.
“J?” you called out as you entered.
You heard him say something, his voice too quiet to make out anything legible. Just as you were about to ask what he’d said, a massive black form sprinted towards you. Screaming, you dropped the bag of food on the floor, holding your hands out to stop whatever it was.
You eyes were screwed shut, but nothing happened. At least, not what you expected. Instead, you felt something prop itself on your shoulders. Hot breath hit your face, smelling of peanut butter. If that hadn’t given it away, the hassling sure as hell did.
Opening your eyes, you were met with the dark glassy eyes of a Rottweiler, standing on his hind legs, front paws gripping your shoulder.
J said something, this time louder, though you still didn’t hear him through your shock. The dog jumped down and ran back to the living room.
Ripping yourself from the frozen stance that you had been put you had been stuck in, you followed the Rottweiler.
On the floor sat J, his coat and blazer off, sleeves rolled up. There were strange stains on his pants. Peanut butter. Several dog toys lay around him, and two giant buckets of dry food and water sat in the corner. Most surprising, however, were the two other dogs that sat next to him.
J hadn’t looked up to greet you, busy filling some kongs full of peanut butter, seemingly the only treat he had for them.
“Uh, J?” you said, mouth agape at the sight.
“Hiya, doll,” he said, finally looking up at you, “I like that color on you.”
You had no idea what has happening, you didn’t know how to react. All you could really do was laugh.
“What the fuck is happening?” you asked.
“Uh, peanut butter time?” he said, as if it was obvious.
“J, why are there three massive dogs in our apartment?”
J sighed dramatically, “Well, I was just attending a little meeting with the Russian guy. And, wouldn’t you know, somehow he got locked up in their cages, and they just ripped off his limbs and ate him! Really fuckin’ weird cowinky-dink.”
Your eyes widened, “You fed him to his own dogs?”
J looked up at you in disbelief, “Didn’t ya listen to the story, doll?”
“Right, because you’re known for telling the truth.”
J growled, “...I’ll feed you to the dogs.”
“Ha,” you said, knowing full well that J would rather feed himself to the three than put your life on the line.
You left J on the floor as he passed out the stuffed kongs, taking the food out of the bag and setting it up on the table. Well, you were, until J turned around and watched you with an eyebrow raised.
“Uh, doll, I’m eating with them,” he said, as if it were obvious.
“...What.”
What the hell is happening?
“I’m building trust with these guys, I gotta show ‘em that not everyone is an abusive prick.”
You were silent for a moment, staring at J. Compassion was not a common experience to have with him, at least, not for other people. Towards you? He was very compassionate, even if he showed it in his own gruff way. But anyone else was lucky if they didn’t get the business end of J’s blade shoved through their throat.
Then again, that was still the case. He hated people, despised their selfishness and callousness, especially after experiencing that evil when he was still young and innocent. But animals? They were pure, only acting on nature with no societal influences. They were loyal as long as you were loyal to them, something that couldn’t be said for many people. That was one of the things he liked about you, your loyalty. You knew what he did, even if you didn’t know specifics. You knew he killed people, tortured them, destroyed the city and disrupted “society”. Yet you stood by him, loving him without question. Why you did, he’d never fully understand. But you did.
Instead of just bringing J his food, you brought your own, as well.
“I still wanna eat dinner with you,” you said, sitting down next to him.
“Aww,” J said, his voice mocking.
As soon as the containers were opened, the dogs abandoned their treats and sat around the two of you. Their eyes bored into you, pleading for a bite. Having all three of them up close now, you could see their bones, and thick scars that broke through their fur.
J tossed food at each of them, all three catching it mid-air.
“Good boys,” he said, reaching out to them and scratching around their face and neck.
“So, I assume they’re yours now?” you asked as you ate.
“Ours, bunny. They’re guard dogs, they’ll protect ya from, uh...bad guys.”
“Like you?” you asked with a smirk.
He grabbed his chest, feigning pain, “Shot to the heart, doll!”
———
After dinner — which J pretty much ate as much of as the rottys, giving them most of his food — you showered and got ready for bed, too tired to stay awake any longer. J stayed in the living room, working on a new idea, and, you had assumed, training the dogs. However, it seemed as though he was testing them now that you were home. Everywhere you went, you had three massive shadows following you. They stayed in the bathroom while you showered, laying next to the door, watching you. It felt as though they were ready to both protect you from an intruder, and come to your aid if you slipped and fell.
J couldn’t have trained them that much by now...right?
Once out, they practically escorted you to your bedroom. You got in bed, laying on your usual side. The three followed suit, taking up J’s space. One snuggled up by your feet, resting his head on your legs, staring up at you, while the other two did their best the lick your face. After the first few swipes, your face had practically been rewashed.
You laughed as they licked, “Oh, you’re so sweet! Thank you, thank you! Sweet babies!”
“So, am I gonna have to actually sleep in the dog house, now?”
J stood in the doorway, watching you laugh and love on the dogs. He mouth twitched, a quick smirk gracing his features when he saw the look of pure happiness on your face. It wasn’t something he got to see often, most of the time your happiness being qualified by some cloud of negativity. Depression, anxiety, self-loathing...it was a welcomed sight to see your unhindered smile.
He said a quick command, something in Russian that you couldn’t understand, and the dogs jumped off the bed. It was only then that you noticed three massive dog beds lining the wall next to yours.
“They’re so sweet,” you said to J, watching them curl up, getting as close together as possible.
“Yeah,” he drawled, climbing into bed beside you, “that guy got what he fuckin’ deserved. He kept them hungry, beat them, locked in cages too small for ‘em...”
You could see the anger rising in J’s eyes, his jaw clenching with malice as he stewed in his thoughts.
You reached out and took his hand, “They’ll have a good life now, J. We’ll spoil them.”
J looked over to you, “You know, that one that was at your feet was actually a service dog. Saw it in the papers the Russian kept. He’s trained for depression and anxiety.”
You perked up, “Wait, so I can take him around with me?”
“I’d want you to take all three, in case someone wanted to mess with ya and I wasn’t around. Bu-t you can have him with you at work and all that.”
The thought of having a dog to stay by your side at all times — and two more to come home to — was already making the knowledge of J leaving again much more bearable. That night, you fell asleep wrapped in J’s arms, him squeezing you far too tight to his chest as always, feeling invincible with your boys by your side.
#joker#joker x reader#l!joker#tdk#heath ledger joker#im sorry its short and shit quality#all of my creativity has been going towards my script and my brain was hurting itself writing this#it was supposed to be a nice little break#but fuck me in the ass it was NOT#also forgot that they were rottweilers and not dobermans#so if you see doberman in there its my bad because im stupid
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It seems nowadays I can’t make myself to post here except for recently watched movies. Since Japan is pushing out most postponed anime movies in the last few months of the year, there is lots to watch. This time I had an adventure in Akita again. Well, I watched two movies with only one showing per day again, and of course the last bus left before the second movie ended, so I had to trek to the train station two km away. Okay, this time it was supposed to be downhill, so I thought it would be a piece of cake, but I had an uncomfortable surprise. I took a shorter way, which was supposed to go all the way through the suburbs… but: after a while public lighting ended! Just like that! It was in the evening and completely dark without any light except for the rare crossings. Like, what?! It’s not like it was an uninhibited area, it was full of houses! Seriously, sometimes I don’t get these things. Japan is bad at public lighting in general, and I’m using a flashlight all the time when it’s dark so I would see better, which is ridiculous. This situation also makes many drivers use the high beam of their headlights blinding me (and each other) all the time – it’s supposed to be forbidden if others are on the road, but well, Japanese are often reluctant to use something as basic as the turn signal, so why am I surprised :/ So yeah, I conquered the hill in the dark with a flashlight, and I don’t care to repeat the experience. If it was anywhere else than Japan and rural Akita I would not have dared to do it at all, and even like this I felt like having to rush to get it over with.
Anyway, movies. The first one was the 20th anniversary movie to DoReMi, Majo minarai wo sagashite. I can’t say I was the generation of the original anime, but I occasionally watched the first two or so seasons on German TV, and I always thought it was a perfect series for kids with great art style, roundness, gentle colors and backgrounds, and without the kitsch and otaku baiting of others, like the Precure series. The anniversary movie, however, was a mixed bag. The visuals were great and in line with the original. The story… well, it was obvious from the trailers that it would not be about the original characters, and in fact it was a bit meta, as the original DoReMi was an anime series in the narrative and we followed three fans in their adult lives, each of them facing and overcoming a crisis. The story was a bit didactic, relied pretty much on stereotypes and tropes, and the ending was too idealistic, but it was okay overall. There was a bit of magic as well – or a series of coincidences and dreaming, depending on your interpretation. But above these all the movie was literally a pr flick for domestic traveling! The girls were constantly traveling and sightseeing, which was kind of made into anime pilgrimage, although aside from the first location nothing was really DoReMi specific. They go to Kamakura, Gifu, Onomichi and of course Nara and Kyoto ^^;;; Not like the latter two need anymore pr, but whatever… Anyway, it was a strange thing about this movie. Also, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that this story could have worked with the adult versions of the original cast…
The second movie was The Legend of Hei. I know it has been out with subs for a while, but somehow I have difficulties watching things that look like anime, but don’t speak Japanese. I know it’s not a problem with the Chinese language per se, as I’m quite used to it from Chinese classmates, but maybe it’s the fact that I don’t understand it? Or that with those visuals I expect it to speak Japanese and the dissonance is too big? No idea, but I have been missing out on a lot of Chinese anime because of this, so I just had to watch this with Japanese dub - it was a great dub too with Sakurai and Miyano. The movie was nice, the visuals were great, although the flatness of the characters’ coloring needed some getting used to. I loved Xiao Hei’s antics, his cat-like behavior and the straight-faced humor all though the movie. Also, this discrepancy of traditional clothes and nature in the beginning, which makes you feel like they are in a different world, mixed with metropolitan, high-tech China was fun. It was a good movie with many great things that make up for the otherwise simple narrative.
That’s all, no idea when I will feel like posting again - well, I do have some other movies on my list so there’s that. As usual I won’t have any Christmas, which is not surprising, but just like last year we will work through the New Year as well :/ This thing about not giving us any compensation for all the holiday we are working through still bugs me a lot – especially since I only have like 12 days of paid leave a year… Another bad news is that I won’t be able to go to Kyoto in January for the postponed conference, only researchers from Kansai can attend irl, which sucks. I was really looking forward to spending five days there, and I would have attended even in the current situation. Kyoto is not that bad and Akita is almost like “corona, what?”, so with all the precautions it would have been okay… So, as a “revenge”, so to speak, I’m considering to organize a six-day trip for March instead, I’m just waiting for the government to extend the travel support till then. It will be pretty money anyway, but I need it, this was the first year I didn’t go to Kyoto at all :(
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Do as the Romans Do
A @captainswanmoviemarathon fic by @snowbellewells
((((I made a first attempt at creating my own fic art, but for whatever reason, I can’t get it to post in my story. It’s on my page, but for whatever reason, I can’t get them both in one!)))
Hello there! Welcome to my little Roman Holiday-inspired AU for the @captainswanmoviemarathon! There were some scenes from the original movie that I was simply too enamored with not to include, so those I am sure you’ll recognize those, but I’ve also let this version of Killian and Emma wander off on their own when they wish to change the script a bit. I’m envisioning this being about three parts - today’s shorter introduction to set the scene, a larger part two with the bulk of the plot, and then a shorter conclusion to wrap things up. We’ll see how it goes (or if it grows on me beyond that!) Please enjoy, and I’d love to hear what you think…
Part One
*Press Release*
From the Royal Italian Embassy this 4th of September, 1953, Princess Emma Ruth Nolan, Crown Princess of the small nation of Misthavia, only child of Queen Margaret Mary Blanchard-Nolan and King Consort David Nolan visits us here in Rome for a brief stop on her first solo goodwill tour.
Already, she has made stops in Copenhagen, Prague, Vienna, and Geneva, and will attend a state dinner, tour local businesses, preside over a medal ceremony, christen the children’s wing of a hospital, and hold a press conference in her three days here before heading on to Paris and London to complete her journey across Europe. Lucky indeed are those who have an invite to one of these events and will have a chance to meet the Princess in person!
The receiving line outside the embassy dining room had long since passed from lengthy to trying and on to interminable as Emma prayed her empty stomach would not begin to grumble aloud before she was finally able to find a seat at the head table and at last enjoy the hard-earned meal. As always seemed to be the case at these formal events, meeting “just a select few” somehow turned into glad-handing with a neverending line of people she would never remember or hope to keep straight from one another.
To think she had initially been excited about this particular event! At least she had thought there might be the chance for some entertainment and dancing after dinner. Now that she stood in one place for so long, she was regretting the posh new heels she had paired with her full-skirted ballgown for the occasion. If she ever got to move from her spot again, Emma was not at all sure that her feet would actually support forward motion any longer; they might well be broken inside the three-inch heels.
Hoping to do so without being noticed, Emma stealthily shifted most of her weight onto one foot, lifting the other slightly beneath her skirts and flexing her toes in the hope of bringing feeling back to the extremities. She bobbled a bit, but thankfully her press secretary, and closest friend since nursery school, child of palace staff or not, was standing beside her. Surreptitiously, Emma caught Ashley’s arm to steady herself. The other blonde made no comment, merely offered a reassuring sidelong glance and tiny smile without the disapproval that Emma knew she would have received from the Countess on her other side - a retired former nun who had been her main chaperone and minder of all the etiquette and behavior since Emma’s first official public appearance years go. The Princess could practically see the woman’s pinched disapproving mouth, admonishing eyes and warning tone - even in Mistress Blue’s absence.
The end of the receiving line was at last in sight, and Emma let out a breath that she hoped went unnoticed, trying as hard as she could not to let her eyes roll back in her head at the momentary relief she had gained for her aching feet. Intending to put the first one back into its pretty little torture device and flex the other similarly, she continued blindly offering her hand to the passing dignitaries, murmuring greetings and shifting to her other side gingerly.
Unfortunately, just as her foot returned to its shoe, a flashbulb went off unexpectedly and much closer than any had been so far. She blinked, momentarily blinded, and her balance wobbled; the hidden empty shoe tipped over on its side before she could slip her toes back into it. This made her dip unexpectedly to the left, and she felt herself falling, despite all her natural grace and her practiced poise. Cheeks already flushing, Emma’s tongue was too tangle to call out, knowing her one bare foot and her impatient lack of polish was about to be exposed before she even hit the floor. A gasp escaped Ashley on her other side as she realized too late what was happening and tried to catch Emma’s hand, but instead, what arrested her fall was the interception of two warm, firm hands at her elbows, halting the topple which had seemed inevitable only seconds ago.
Suddenly braced by the solid forearms in a lean, handsomely suited man standing there before her, Emma blinked, reorienting herself to the fact that he’d spared her a rather embarrassing incident, she wouldn’t be humiliated on all the gossip shows that evening.
“Th - Thank you, Sir,” she breathed tremulously, quickly fishing her toes into her shoe and righting it at last before straightening and looking up to meet her rescuer’s eyes.
Bright, crystal blue met her inquisitive green as she did so, a twinkling of mischief enlivened his expression even further against the heavy dark brows and the rather rakish appeal of his unshaven cheeks and jaw. For a moment, the breath nearly rushed from Princess Emma’s lungs again - for a completely different reason.
A gentle chuckle rumbled from this undeniably handsome stranger’s chest as he dipped his chin in the slightest of acknowledging bows. “Think nothing of it, your Majesty. I’m simply glad I was here.”
She nodded in mute agreement, wincing again at how she’d nearly made herself a laughingstock. It was one of the things she hated most about her life as a monarch - one silly mistake, unimportant in the grand scheme of things, could undo or overshadow so much good, so much hard work in a mere instant.
With a rather devilish wink, the man before her, bowed his head over her hand, now more delicately cradled in his own larger one and place and brazen kiss to the back of it, his whiskers prickling her skin and sending tingles all along her nerve endings. “After all, it isn’t every day one finds a princess in his debt,” he murmured silkily.
She blushed brighter, knowing they were beginning to hold up the line and draw curious attention now, but not wanting him to move on. “Is that so?” she replied with equally humored stealth.
“Indeed.” He sketched on more quick bow, then added, “Killian Jones, at your service, Princess. And if you are safely in your shoes once more, I suppose I must be going now.”
Her eyes widened even as her fingers released their grip, and he slipped on through the line, while she extended her hand to shake those of the last few people behind him. He had known what happened all the time! Why did that make her heart beat even faster than it had been already?
~~~*
That night, after a long bath, with her hair brushed, nightgown donned, and her legs tucked under the blankets, Princess Emma still felt her fingers tingling from the remembered grip of Jones’ hand, even as she listened to the Countess’ long list of the next day’s engagements. Emma tried not to shudder as she noticed that once again nearly every moment was spoken for, every word and action, and even thought, seemed already determined for her. That near-fall and the following encounter had been the most excitement she could remember in her meticulously programmed, rote, respectable, predictable life of duty.
What would it be like to simply walk out of such an event, as Jones and all the other attendees had done, and have it simply be over? To return to a normal life? To determine what one wanted to do for oneself, and have no watching eyes to judge or weight the following movements. She could hardly imagine such freedom.
When Emma was finally left alone for the night, she knew she needed to sleep. According to the schedule that had just been droned into her ear, she had an early morning before her. Yet, sleep felt the furthest thing from her mind. Eventually, she threw the covers off and hopped back out of bed, crossing the sumptuous room provided to her by her Roman hosts and gazing out the window to the River Tiber below in the distance. Music and lights reached out to her beguilingly despite the hour, and she wished she could be in the midst of whatever celebration was happening there, a part of the laughter and dancing and raucous joy she could only imagine from the echoes that reached her.
It was not an unprecedented longing, but one that struck her more acutely than ever this night. She was going to have this experience while she had the chance. Mind made up as abruptly as the moment presented itself, Emma flew from the window to her suitcase, quickly shedding her nightgown and putting on her most understated skirt, blouse, and espadrilles. With hardly a look back, shew as soon perched on the window ledge, preparing to climb down the fire escape of the old, sturdy building she was staying in without risk of alerting any of her numerous attendants and guardians.
‘Just one day to herself, to live as she chose,’ Emma vowed, closing her eyes for a moment and then surging forward. ‘Then it’s back to what’s expected, what I’ve always known will be my life…’
As she reached the ground and then slipped through the embassy gates out into the night air and the excitement of a foreign city, Princess Emma Ruth Nolan felt like someone else entirely. Like someone who could breath freely for the first time in her life.
Tagging: @captainswanmoviemarathon @teamhook @revanmeetra87 @jennjenn615 @kmomof4 @searchingwardrobes @whimsicallyenchantedrose @tiganasummertree @lfh1226-linda @optomisticgirl @spartanguard @laschatzi @resident-of-storybrooke @darkcolinodonorgasm @stahlop @hollyethecurious @winterbaby89 @thislassishooked @shireness-says @thisonesatellite
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Diakko!Odyssey AU
Most recent update: 8/28/2020 I added the comic of them meeting and also wrote a little snippet under the Diakko section
Welcome all. This post will officially be my master post of the Odyssey AU which will be updated as time moves forward so that I can link all of my related art to it. Yes I will not be posting multiple separate Updates in text posts how it’s traditionally done, but instead there will be information with each art and then a link back to this post. This is to avoid clutter since I hardly post on this blog anyway so it wouldn’t be fun having to scroll through all of my “OH ALSO THIS HAPPENS!” to get to art. Also I keep changing my mind on a lot of things in the AU so disregard information under the arts anyway as I will be posting here what is actually relevant.
Another key thing: I will be avoiding spoilers as much as possible until they are either shown in art or stated explicitly like I do in posts because I am the absolute worst at surprises. But anyway fear not for spoilers. Things said here are things that should be hinted at/known already. (and also I hardly know anything but maybe I will in due time)
Without further ado..
Introduction
What is the Odyssey AU?
The odyssey au is an alternative universe combining both Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Little Witch Academia into this (very random) adventuring story that takes place in ancient Greece. I guess I can’t say that it’s random since one of my favorite things about both ACO and LWA is the ties/references to mythology with the former obviously more rooted in the mythology and the latter just fun easter egg references.
The general premise is that Diana is a misthios(mercenary) who travels with Akko, a shapeshifter, across Greece to find the answers pertaining to her origin.
The first art post: Diana and Akkoros
While living her life as a misthios, Diana searches for the answers pertaining to her origin and superhuman (described as “magical”) abilities along with Shapeshifter Atsuko, who commonly uses her powers for flight, but is not shy to switch to animals more suited for combat.
But I don’t know what Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is?
That’s fair and understandable. Honestly my AU diverges a lot from the game so I don’t think knowledge of ACO is exactly necessary it’s just fun to understand the connections if you know them. Basically the key things you need to know from ACO as of now is:
Kassandra (the protag) is known as the Eagle Bearer because she has an eagle that is known as the “eagle of Zeus” throughout the game. And they adventure together and Ikaros (the eagle) can hunt n kill things and See things and tbh he’s rly just a cool eagle but not a shapeshifter or anything lol
Kassandra is a Mercenary (misthios) which is basically a for Hire fighter/person who will p much do anything for money (if they want to do it)
Kassandra is usually referred to a demi-god because of her powerful fighting abilities in which I mean yea she literally has powers and can blast people like a billion miles away (im jk but-)
Kassandra can tame animals (which ones depending on your skill level). You can tame uhh wolves, lynx, leopards, lions, bears. This is where my ‘shapeshifter’ idea began and it pretty much fit perfectly since Akko’s favorite spell is the shapeshifting one.
Other than this, the most important things to know for this AU is just,, general mythology,, I guess? Or history? General history of mythology and how people worshipped/acted in accordance to the gods. And I’m not saying im going to be historically accurate obviously, nor even mythologically accurate (if that’s even a thing lol), I’m just here to have a good time and enjoy my gay mercenaries while talking about gods/goddesses as if I even know (thankfully I have my gf who is way more interested in mythology than me to help me)
I’ve only played like half of the Atlantis DLC after beating the game so whoopsie. I honestly really wanna replay everything now that I have this AU just so I can focus more on details and what I can yoink.
Characters
Diana
Art:
Diana’s sketch-dump though she really needs a new one.
Diana in wheat field
Diana is the main protagonist of the story, but they pretty much both share the spotlight anyway. Her goal is to find out why she has certain powers (which I have officially decided, finally...) that aren’t exactly human. Since being a misthios was an easy way for her to travel and make drachmae, she chooses to do it while on their journey. Dammit I came up with her lore but as per the rules of this masterpost I can’t write about it until it’s out smh.. Ah I forgot that I already spilled that she is a goddess/demi-goddess (haven’t decided which yet) so yea that’s the Tea.
Described as very beautiful, there are rumors of her that state she is a pathway to Elysium (despite many people not deserving to go to Elysium). She is also known for her stoic face and a red bird that follows her around.
Diana is only found smiling with Akko and keeps buying Akko clothes despite her outer grievances each time Akko destroys something.
Diana was there with her mother at Chariot’s speech/performance.
Diana is skilled with any weapon.
Akko
Art:
Akko sketch-dump
Akko is a shapeshifter who travels with Diana across Greece in search for her idolized Chariot. Trusting both Diana’s skills and powers, Akko decides that Diana is the best choice to help achieve her goal as they adventure together.
Orphaned at a young age, Akko is, at first, very unfamiliar with how exactly to use her powers because there was no one around to teach her. She uses a bird most often because it is her first and most skilled transformation, but eventually learns to use stronger animals over time. Also eagle-vision is much more useful to Diana when they’re scoping the grounds anyway.
Like all shapeshifters, Akko has a symbol on her neck that signifies what she is. Due to the high prejudice against shapeshifters, Akko stays an animal to avoid being known, and also does not transform in front of others unless to kill them. If she has to be a human, Akko commonly wears a hood to hide her neck.
Akko is one of the last shapeshifters to exist, and, despite Chariot being rumored to have finally been murdered, she still believes Chariot is alive.
Akko was with her parents when they all attended Chariot’s final speech/show and here began her dream.
Akko can use a dagger if she needs to.
Side-characters
Akko’s Parents: Shapeshifters who were murdered when Akko was a young age.
Chariot: A shapeshifter who somehow had a voice and power that even normal people listened to. Akko idolizes Chariot because, despite the hate against shapeshifters, Chariot was well known and was an activist for shapeshifters despite the danger upon her head. Chariot mysteriously disappears one day for reasons unknown, and everyone but Akko assumes she was finally murdered.
Shapeshifters
Shapeshifters are defined as humans who possess the ability to transform to any animal at will. Unfortunately, because animals were seen as less than human, shapeshifters were defined as “punished by the gods” and so many decided shapeshifters needed to be removed from the world for sin. This causes a massacre of shapeshifters to the point that they are instead a rarity.
Shapeshifters do not transform with their clothes, and so either destroy them or lose them depending on their transformation.
All shapeshifters have a symbol on their neck which is what is used to find them. They can also be found by their human personalities/characteristics when they are an animal.
If weakened, shapeshifters return to their human form and cannot transform until they are stronger.
Diakko
Art:
Meeting (Comes with a 500 word story!)
Misthios!Diana and Shapeshifter!Akko Sketch-dump
Diana and Bear!Akko
Fancy Diakko (the first continuity error lol)
Diana and Akko adventure together and do all of their quests together as a rag-tag chaotic duo. God I’m so excited for this section I wish I could make art FASTER but anyway:
They meet at about 17 years old but the main story takes place when they are 18+
The two get off to a wrong start when Diana saves Akko’s life. Because Akko is a shapeshifter, she’s high in value to kill probably by some cult idk but there is always a bounty on her head. When Diana saves her, Akko assumes Diana only did so to steal the drachmae from the original perpetrators, but Diana really just leaves her alone afterwards. Confused, Akko legit just starts tagging along LMAO she finds Diana interesting and so follows her and Diana’s just like what the fuck but eventually she gets over it. They become powerful assets to each other as Diana can now scope the skies with Akko and Akko is pretty much protected under Diana. Then when Akko gets much stronger Diana gets extra manpower and protection too.
Akko enjoys staying in her human form to spend time with Diana.
Diana keeps buying Akko clothes just because it makes Akko happy (and also, despite Akko uncaring because her transformations are so frequent anyway, Diana doesn’t want her to be naked??)
Diana is easily persuaded by Akko and puts Akko’s interests first (feeds her first, considers what Akko would want, etc.)
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the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
ikemen vampire: temptation through the dark
theo van gogh / mc | T | [ ao3 link in bio ]
The challenge seemed pretty simple: to try to befriend the university bookshop’s most sour employee, Theo van Gogh. As a literature major with a boatload of book recommendations on her back, it ought to be a simple task indeed. But as she uncovers what lies between Theo’s pages, the more she finds it harder to become closer to him without having to put the feeling directly into words. What can she learn from Theo about what it means to stay—and how can she teach Theo about what it means to let go? | written for ikevamp big bang 2020!
[ masterpost for all chapters ]
CHAPTER 5 OF 22
It’s not on purpose.
Theo isn’t intentionally testing her determination or anything of that sort. He just can’t wrap his head around her persistence.
He doesn’t purposefully make himself hard to contact to shrug her off. It’s just that he’s not as fond of social media as the next person. Sure, he does have accounts for the biggest names in the industry—Instagram, Facebook, the works—but he doesn’t use them regularly, or posts on them at all. The easiest and more surefire way to contact him, really, is through the usual, plain old messaging app on the phone, or maybe through a call.
(And he’s not so sure about giving her his number so suddenly.)
He doesn’t give the most roundabout answers to Arthur’s questions to keep her hanging. He just doesn’t want Arthur sticking his nose in business that isn’t his to begin with. He doesn’t find any reason to tell his coworker anything about their book exchange, even if—after Arthur’s admission—this entire friendship began with his orchestration.
He’s not doing it on purpose.
He knows how easily this could lead to understandable frustration. Maybe even the vague feeling that maybe he’s only attending their little book exchange sessions at the Grove because she gets Vincent to tell him. Maybe she won’t have the patience for him. Maybe she’ll just drop it.
But she doesn’t.
And that makes it even more confusing.
“Why are you taking this so seriously?” Theo asks one day, after they’ve handed the next week’s books to one another. He’s looking at her with a stern gaze, as if calculating every minuscule twitch on her face.
She only shrugs her shoulders and looks up at him innocently. “I’m having fun, aren’t you?”
As if the extra steps he’s making her take are not wasted time. As if she sees that she’s already slowly melting ice. It’s not that Theo is shunning her—but it’s safer like this, keeping her at a distance. Theo has his own priorities, and all arrows point to Vincent. The least he can do is make sure the books he lends are good; make sure he has the appropriate insight to bring with him. And she, in turn, sends every pass-the-message text (to Arthur, to Vincent), leaves all the notes in between lent and borrowed books, shows up to every meeting with that unbeatable smile on her face.
And in truth, Theo isn’t sure where this is going. Theo isn’t sure what she’s going to do to him, why they’re doing all this. But for now, he’ll just let her keep on doing this. For now.
They just both have a good feeling about it.
--
There is a certain art of choosing books to recommend to people. There is, of course, the matter of having a certain level of being well-read, as choosing from a hundred books allows more elbow room than choosing from ten.
But she knows better; there is more to it than just that.
If there’s one thing she is absolutely sure about the world, it’s that books—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, name it—all have the ability to bring people elsewhere. It’s magic she wishes she could have in real life. Sneak in between the pages and find yourself transported to an entirely separate timeline of the universe where these things happened. Slip a hand at the center-point and find yourself in a different world, where things are different.
Wouldn’t that be amazing?
But it’s not just about the bringing into, but also the bringing with—what do the books carry with them that will be useful to the reader? Which of its commendable qualities will match the receiver? Is it its storytelling, the way it weaves each character through their growth and journey? Is it the message, the core of it which it carries throughout the text through every plot point that happens? Is it the imagery, the space between the real and the imagined, where the infinite possibilities exist?
This is the tender part. This is the part that feels the most raw.
Romance has never been at the top of her priority list. She’s no newbie to it, but it’s just never been the most important thing in her life. It’s never been on the list at all. Getting into a relationship, the dating scene, being romantically attached to people—she understands the joy of it, she’s definitely dipped her toes into the water, but it isn’t what she wants right now.
She figures choosing books for people is the closest she can get to that feeling for now.
It’s not only Theo, of course—sometimes Arthur asks her for some recommendations too, and sometimes Dazai does, as well. To her it’s nothing more than a way of showing her affection, a little, “I had you in my thoughts,” as she matches a book to its recipient. It becomes more than just another title, not just another author.
She clutches the book Theo’s lent her for the week close to her chest as she crouches in front of her bookshelf to browse her own collection. She thinks, matching their theme to her heart: which book would best suit Theo’s needs? Which things might he benefit from hearing?
Pulls a book out from the shelf and wonders—which one would grace his life with a little bit of stardust?
--
That week, Theo asked her to “lend me the book you wish everyone would read at least once”—and when she answered with “no, that’s impossible, I can’t lend you 39 books at once?”—he clarified, “the one you’re still coming to terms with.” And that’s a really odd way to describe a book you’d want everyone else to read—Theo himself knew that—but somehow it made perfect sense to her, and the week later she hands him the small bound book.
She had passed onto him Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.
An interesting choice, really, for that book to have fit under the said category, but Theo’s stopped trying to make sense of the surprises she brings up for him at this point. The book isn’t really lengthy—this particular volume is less than a hundred pages long, and it only took Theo a good hour to go through the contents, even while relishing every word of it. (She does the opposite, speed-running every book as fast as possible, because she “can’t be patient about what happens next”, a concept he cannot understand—“The book is not leaving, why don’t you enjoy what is written?” “I can’t wait! I need to know!”)
It’s not a complicated book.
But it sure has complicated feelings.
So he kind of understands why she had chosen that one.
Theo has a complicated relationship with love. Not that he’s had any sort of traumatizing past relationship or a lingering resentment for an ex, but there was just something about the concept of romance that doesn’t sit…right with him.
It’s not that he doesn’t know what it is, he does. There are books he loves—books he is very thankful for having found in this lifetime. There are food he loves, food that fills his stomach with warmth and makes his heart flutter and makes him feel like maybe world peace is achievable, and it’s in a spoonful of this creamy sugary pancake after all. And most importantly, he loves his brother very much; would like to see Vincent do great things in the future, or, if not that, then at least be happy, and live the life he wants to live—that’s what love is, isn’t it? To enjoy something wholly for what it is, and what it does to you. To want the best for a person.
His problem with love is he doesn’t know what to do with it.
In the same way that he still loves his parents even if they don’t understand why he’d go through such lengths for Vincent. In the same way that he still loves the people who’ve left him behind in the past, friends, old lovers, even when his heart was still pouring. And isn’t that what love is? To love something wholly for what it is, what it does to you, to forgive it of its mistakes and shortcomings?
Even when the cost is yours to bear?
What to do with a love that can live in his heart when the other no longer wants it?
Theo reads Neruda’s poetry book once. And then reads it again. And then reads some of his other books for good measure.
--
It’s pretty common to find Arthur walking around the campus with his hands in his pockets and the many eyes of adoring (or maybe loathing) girls on him—for all the understandable reasons. Today was a little different though, because he is outside the Arts Building in the late afternoon, reading some sort of a flyer.
“Arthur!”
He hastily keeps the flyer into his bag as she jogs up to him. “Hello, little miss. Nice to see you around.”
“What’re you doing here?” she asks, trying to peep into his bag.
Arthur, instead, pushes himself off the wall that he’d been leaning on, smoothly slipping his arm around hers. Months of friendship had gotten her used to him being touchy; she lets him. “Labor of love. Walk me back to the bookshop?”
She’s not surprised, but she asks anyway. “Are you on your shift?”
“It was an important errand to run, no need to be so incensed,” he says, half-laughing. “Let’s go back before your boyfriend has more than words for me.”
Pinching Arthur’s arm, she quips back: “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Why, that’s exactly what he told me! You know you don’t need to keep it a secret from me.”
“You’re the absolute worst, Arthur.” The two of them fall into an even pace walking down the sidewalk. She relies on the silence to get them there, but there is something about the biting intrigue that snags her. “…What did Theo say?”
Arthur smirks. Openly. “Curious suddenly?”
“He doesn’t exactly talk to me about things like this,” she huffs. “It’s just books and literature with him.”
“That just means you haven’t cracked him.”
She pouts. “You’re not supposed to need to crack people.” She tugs at Arthur’s sleeve, insistent. “C’mon, tell me. He has to have told you something, right?”
Confidently, Arthur says, “Theo tells me everything.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“I suppose my information is subpar, then, so why should I—”
“Arthur!”
“Yes, yes, okay,” he says, finally relenting. “He won’t say it to your face, but he really enjoys spending time with you, little bird.”
Her face lights up like a little sun. “Really?”
“Oh, dear. Whatever will he feel, ratting him out like this—”
“Please, we all know you do not care because we are your source of entertainment,” she says, elbowing him. “…I was doubting it, honestly, but that’s a relief.”
“He never stops talking about your book club, actually.”
“No way.”
“Always masked in a complaint, but always about it all the time,” Arthur says, watching the smile grow on her face. “You’re a good influence on him, at least he’s not brooding away in a corner all day long. The customers have enjoyed his new, refreshed presence. All the lovely girls coming in now, what a joy.”
She squeezes his arm as they round the corner. “Why do I feel like this is going exactly according to your plan?” Arthur does not attempt denial.
--
Theo does not stop asking for poetry books.
Only because he knows that even if she doesn’t voice it out loud, she’d want to lend him poetry books anyway. She, on the other hand, changes genres every week. Poetry, nonfiction, YA fiction, children’s fiction. She jumps from Ariel to A Little Life to The Girl Who drank the Moon to On Earth we Were Briefly Gorgeous. She has so much to say and so much to ask.
It’s just about driven Theo insane.
(It’s a good thing he enjoys her company.)
He won’t admit it, of course, but he shows up anyway. He frowns at every text she sends Vincent but he’s there. Every single Saturday. Reads every stray fast-food receipt note she slips in between the pages of the books she returns. Spends time on the books she lends him.
Ah, what did he get himself into?
Whatever.
Today, he’s brought with him Kerouac’s On the Road because she asked for a book that made him want to go away.
“Why am I not surprised that you brought me a Kerouac?” she asks while taking the book into her hands. She always holds them so gently. “His style is so interesting, though. Is it a shame to admit I’ve only read his poetry?”
“Only a little,” Theo says, but he’s joking because the corner of his lip is curled up ever so gently.
She flips the book to read the summary at the back. “Beat Generation, huh.”
“They wrote about liberation,” Theo says, sounding somehow defensive of his choice of a book. “Gritty and maybe even sloppy writing, but they wrote about freedom. Breaking the norm, finding yourself, facing the reality… doesn’t that fit your criteria of making one want to go away?”
She turns to him curiously. “Have you ever wanted to go away, Theo?”
He doesn’t turn to her. “I’m more the kind of person that stays.”
“Well, being a househusband isn’t bad work,” she comments, to which Theo snorts. “You know, I’ve really found that you have some sort of… classical, helpless romantic kind of aura on you.”
That makes him turn towards her. “What.”
“I mean, the books you’ve lent me—they all have some sort of romantic quality to them, you know? No matter how serious they get. I’m still recovering from A Little Life, you know.” She laughs. “Plus, all you’ve been asking me to lend you is poetry. Have you perhaps changed your mind about poetry?”
He narrows his eyes. “I don’t see how that makes me a romantic.” He sighs. “I didn’t think lowly of poetry, it just wasn’t my priority,” Theo clarifies. “We agreed to let the borrower decide the genre of the book but you’re so insistent on poetry that I’d rather take what you have instead of asking for something else. You’re pretty annoying when you’re insistent.”
She doesn’t deny the fact that she’s always saying about how she already has a poetry book to lend him every week. “I’m not annoying,” she says, pouting. “Geez, Theo, all you need to do is be honest and say you love poetry now and it’s because of me.”
“Is this a cause of yours? Getting people into poetry?”
But then, the banter stops. She falls silent for a moment that feels too long. Theo feels like he has to take back what he says, when, “Yes, something like that,” she says, softly. “They’re like love letters to the universe, I think they’re great.”
“That’s an interesting take.”
She frowns. “Do you not like love letters?”
Theo shrugs. “They’re classical.”
“That’s a non-answer,” she huffs. Holding her palm upward to the sky in a gesture, she says, “I just think they’re neat. It’s like a different experience in every book, every collection. You ever get a feeling that some poems find you, instead of the other way around? Like you were meant to find it at that exact moment?” Theo lightly shakes his head. “Really? Maybe you’ll experience it with some of the stuff I give you.”
He doesn’t know what’s hiding behind that serious expression, that other reason she’s so attached to poetry that she isn’t quite ready to say yet. He can feel it though. He doesn’t have the right to ask yet.
Instead, he raises his eyebrow and says, “You seem awfully confident.”
“I’m planning to make you read hundreds and hundreds of them, so it’s just a matter of numbers,” she says with a grin. “C’mon. Have any of the books I’ve given to you at least had a poem that resonated with you?”
And Theo pauses. Resonated, that’s a heavy word, it carries a lot with it. One could wish what they create would resonate with a lot of its consumers, whether that’s paintings or poetry or philosophies, but it’s not an exact art, and sometimes it’s all just a question of luck. Theo hesitantly shakes his head. “Not that I can think of,” he says. Thinks of the lines he’d copied out of the books to be remembered later. They were good lines, but hardly ones that resonated.
She hums, not sounding too put down by his answer. “Well, that just means we have to keep looking, right? I hope today’s at least gets some emotion in your face, Mister-Statue-Face-With-No-Feelings.”
“Hondje… What did you just call me?”
--
That day, he gives her his phone number.
--
She doesn’t know why everyone keeps asking her about it.
Sure, she had a crush on him, but it was really only entirely out of aesthetics. There was no denying he was hot, but he’s rather rough on the edges and has a rather sharp personality to be someone would want a boyfriend out of. Really, at this point, all she wants is to hang out with him and maybe reads some of the books he reads. Again—she doesn’t have space for distractions right now.
But everyone keeps asking her about it. Non-stop.
When she goes to the bookshop and Theo is at the back, Arthur comes up to her and asks her how The Friendship is going—as if it were something more special than just your regular old friendship. Most of the time she doesn’t know what to tell him, because somehow all he ever says to her after hearing about it is a small hmm like the answer didn’t quite fill in what he wanted to hear. Well, Arthur, sucks to be you, but you’re not hearing what you want to hear, she says to herself. Arthur’s a secret sucker for romance, the playboy that he is, and she’s not giving him a show.
But it’s not just Arthur. Vincent, too, asks her regularly. And considering she spends a good amount of time in the café he works at, the questions aren’t exactly that avoidable. She’ll order her drink and a pastry and Vincent will go, “is Theo being nice to you?” or any other variation of that sentence. (Somehow that feels like Vincent knows Theo is just mean in general, and that’s a kind of relief she doesn’t know how to explain. If his brother thinks he’s regularly mean, maybe that’s really just who he is, and also kind of forgivable.) Of course, she can’t exactly tell Vincent that Theo isn’t being nice to her, but oppositely, Theo isn’t really being mean to her either. He’s tolerating her every attempt to annoy him—or really, not annoy him, just hang out with him—and he hasn’t pushed her away exactly, so it must be going alright, right?
Of course, Dazai is curious as well, despite his earlier misgivings with Theo. (Dazai’s had bad experiences with business majors and romance in the past.) He’s not as persistent as Vincent and Arthur, but every chance he gets—say, an offhanded remark about a book or the bookshop, any little topic he feels he can reasonably steer towards the direction of Theo—he does ask. He asks in the way a friend would be curious of a new relationship—it is one, just not romantic, she insists—all full of worries for said friend. She appreciates this in many ways, because she knows Dazai can give her advice that will be very valuable to her. Still—the attention the thing pulls is kind of ridiculous, to her.
It doesn’t end with Dazai though, and at this point, it’s just going to be a long laundry list of people who are looking for gossip between her and Theo when—there really isn’t any. Despite being a literature major, she’s actually part of the campus’ local astronomy club, because why not? Stars are neat and she can’t quite catch up with the rest of the astrophysics majors that is actually with her, but the stargazing with the telescopes definitely makes it worth it. It’s just that Dazai is friends with their club head for a reason or another—a graduate student in astrophysics, Isaac Newton, and when Dazai knows there really isn’t any much harm, he runs his mouth, so—Isaac’s asked her at least once about Theo as well. Luckily Isaac is more on the awkward side—and they really aren’t that close quite yet, club aside—so he asks once, sees her reaction of despair and exhaustion, and never asks again.
She wonders if Theo gets the same barrage of questions as she does. From Arthur, for sure, but—Theo doesn’t exactly talk about other friends of his. Maybe they just haven’t gotten close enough for him to bring them up. Besides, whether or not people ask him about them or not, he’s sure that he already knows about the little crush—he’s just playing at it. Playing for what, she doesn’t know, and somehow, she’s fine with that.
That was all it was ever meant to be, anyway—a passing crush, a nice face, a sight for sore eyes, something to fall back on to refresh herself after long days of pushing her mind to the limit, working herself to exhaustion.
He was meant to be a breather, not a distraction.
To be friends is more than enough.
She screams into a pillow and grins.
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