#up w as weird and fucked up feelings as me and my older cousins have.

[spacelesscowboy]

sorry but i still think it is so so crazy and insane to look at a child—ANY child, any teenager, ANYONE, but especially CHILDREN—and hit them. as a punishment or warning or whatever. that is so crazy to me. how could you ever look at a child and bring yourself to hurt them in any way shape or form??????????? that’s insane to me.

#emyrs.txt #tw childhood abuse #????? idk if this warrants that. but if i should more tags lemme know !! #YES. EVEN THE ANNOYING ONES. #spent. a great deal of time w my cousins’ friend the other day and she’s. technically 11 so. not a child in the technical sense. but anyone #under 17 to me is so so so young. (YES. i’m only 19. this isn’t bc i’m incredibly old and wise or whatever. it’s bc i’m old enough 2 see how #young i was then. if that makes sense. anyways). #and she was. SO INCREDIBLY annoying. and i have SO little patience and even less tact into how to get her to Stop. so i just smiled and #nodded and pretended that i wasn’t losing all of my patience. bc she is 11. and i remember being 11 & annoying. & being a kid means being #annoying anyways so whatever. #anyways. i hate thinking about my cousins and the kids in my family it makes me sick to stomach. #not bc their parents r abusive or whatever i just don’t think they’re getting the care and attention they need & i don’t want them to grow #up w as weird and fucked up feelings as me and my older cousins have. #also this whole thing is bc i was reading atla fanfiction and got sad about zuko. NWWNNDNDFN #literally i just can’t comprehend the idea of ever physically hurting a child. how do u live with urself afterwords. #i’m tired. this made me very sad. ok bye.

[withacapitalp]

Hidden Gem Friday

Hey guys! It's time for our second Hidden Gem Friday. If you don't already know the drill, here's how it works. You guys send me fics you like that have less than 2k hits on ao3 or less than 200 notes here on Tumblr, and I read them and put them out as reccs on Fridays. I also like to add in my own reccs, because there's some stuff I've read that just really needs more engagement. I really like doing this, but I have a few asks. If you read these fics, please leave a comment! Comments are the lifeblood of keeping authors invested in writing for a lot of us, and it makes us feel super happy to know people enjoyed the fics. Secondly, if you comment, let the author know where you got it from! I always love to hear I was added to a recc list. Okay Reccs under read more as always. If you want to see the others look at the tag #Hidden Gem Friday

Still So Much To Learn by BonitaBreezy recced by me. @bonitabreezy on here! 4k words (Complete)- Steddie

Summary:

Steve Harrington knows he’s stupid. Everyone has made that very clear to him. But sometimes it hurts to hear, especially from the people you love.

My Thoughts:

Ough you guysssss. Okay so I watched this being written, and I got it in bits and pieces slowly over the course of four(? maybe five) hours. It was so fucking intenseeeeeeee. This fic is really well written, and it deals with one of my favorite headcanons, and I really like that it didn't pull the usual route of 'Eddie is the only one who never calls him stupid'. I love that sm but like this is so much more realistic? These kinds of miscommunications happen allllllll the time, and we do things and say things we don't mean, and I just yeah everyone should read this one!!!!!

Go At Your Own Pace by Cardigains recced by @andrea-csenge 17k words (Complete)- Gen El focused

Summary:

“Write down three things,” Hopper says, ducking his head to catch her eye. “Three things you want to make happen this year, and we’ll do everything in our power to help you. How about that?” or New place, new school, not new but new-together parents—after last year, El is more than happy to let the world pass her by from the safety inside of their home, but her friends and family have different ideas. How they work to prove to El she is not alone and can succeed at anything she sets her mind to.

My Thoughts

This one is really really good. It's canon to season four ending, and I didn't even have time to doubt, because this El is so good. This is an El who is past the traumatic events, but still impacted by them. She feels older but still El? I love it. All of the characters are super realistic, amazing jopper, WONDERTWINS, it's all jsut really well written, and it floooooows god does this flow. It is awesome

uh-oh, love comes to town by 96 tears recced by @daysarestranger 13k words (Complete)- Steddie w side of Robin/Vickie

Summary:

It’s not like Steve thought Eddie would stay single forever, but he figured he’d have a girlfriend by the time Eddie got a boyfriend. So, when Vickie and Robin set Eddie up on a blind date with Vickie’s cousin, Steve figures he feels weird about it because he’s the only one without a date.But an annoying little voice starts telling him maybe there’s more to it than that. He just has to figure out what it is.

My Thoughts:

This one is so fricken sweet!! I love the way Vickie is characterized in this one, we don't see her a lot (except for people saying her and Robin didn't work) but this person took the time to think about it. There's also a good dollop of QPR stobin which I always love, and a badass little granny for Steve, but the main thing here is the awesome Steddie! It's really well written, you an see them doing this complicated little dance around each other and the ending is so so sweet. It's also really funny I laughed at least three times

down on the timeline by annabeeus recced by @silverysnake 6k words (Complete)- Steddie with Ronance and a little Jargyle

Summary:

In a slightly altered universe where the Demogorgon never became more than a D&D character - The Party are semi-famous Youtubers. Steve, one-half of movie commentary channel BLOCKBUSTERS, and Eddie, the leader of D&D channel THE HELLFIRE SOCIETY, can't help but start falling for each other after meeting through a mutual friend.

My thoughts:

I always wanna try to be honest with my thoughts here- I did not think I was going to like this story. The way it was formatted isn't something I'm used to and it threw me off, but I stuck with it and I'm glad I did! It's really funny, and I love the little references thrown in everywhere. You know when you can feel an author probably worked harder on something then they initially planned, and the result is fucking awesome? Yeah that's this fic. It's super cute, it's told in this really unique kind of outsider perspective, and I so so enjoyed it.

i wish i knew how (your eyes are like starlight now) by MacksDramaticShenanigans aka @stevethehairington this one is also a me recc bc it's my list! I can do as I please haha. 10k words (Complete)- Steddie

Summary:

“Mistletoe!” Robin cheers, and Steve’s heart stutters so hard in his chest that he thinks it might crack his ribcage and drop right out the bottom of his stomach. His eyes fly up, and, sure enough, there hangs one of the many sprigs hung all around the apartment. Small and inconspicuous, but unmistakable. That ridiculous little plant has no idea that it’s just turned Steve’s entire world on its axis. Across from him, Eddie’s eyes are trained up too, big and round and wide where they stick on the mistletoe. His lips are parted in surprise, and Steve can’t help but stare and think am I going to kiss those now? When Eddie finally tears his gaze from the plant and lets it flicker down to Steve, a pretty pink dusting blooms across the bridge of his nose and spreads into the apples of his cheeks when he finds Steve already looking back. Steve spares the mistletoe one last quick peek before he takes a deep breath and steels himself. This is it. He sticks his hands on his hips, aiming for casual, and asks, “What do you say, Munson?” Or, Steve makes a promise, Robin likes to meddle, and the spirit of Christmas strikes (out) again. And again. And again. (Until it doesn’t.)

My Thoughts:

Okay I'm going to be frank I may be biased bc I betad this fic, except I'm not because it's so goddman spectacular. I'll start with how funny it is. I reread it today to have it fresh in my mind, and it's hilarious. Secondly the reveal and the moment where Steve thinks Eddie doesn't want him is so quietly heartbreaking, but perfectly written. Characterization is awesome, I watched every iteration of this as it grew and grew into something absolutely magnificent, and I'm so lucky to have gotten to beta for it!!

#hidden gem friday #fic rec #steddie fic recs #steddie fic #stranger things fic rec #Steve harrington #Eddie munson #steddie #Jonathan byers #Nancy wheeler #eleven hopper #eleven st #robin buckley #ronance #QPR stobin #platonic soulmates steve and robin #platonic soulmates stobin #Liam speaks up

[barleyo]

Genuine question (if it's not too personal for you to answer) what got you so into incest? I found you through tt but it's been a min since I've been on there so idk if you've ever told your story. For me personally I've dealt w sexual abuse/assault from my brother & I think that's why ur writing doesn't bother me as much as it would if that hadn't of happened to me. But I'm also sure there's plenty of people interested in this content with out it being trauma related so I was just curious about your "inspiration" I suppose.

cw: incest, rant, kinda long ramble under the cut

Honestly, I don't mind answering because I am a HUUUUGE oversharer, I'm actually glad you asked because maybe if I answer, people will get off my dick about it :3 I am also a victim of incest! For three years I was sexually abused and repeatedly raped by my older cousin (him being 13 to 16 and me being 8 to 11). COCSA, or child on child sexual assault, is a tricky thing to deal with for me, and personally, it left me with more guilt and confusing feelings as opposed to the sexual abuse and grooming I've faced from adults. Especially because it happened via someone I was related to. I think a reason why it manifested into this dark interest is because I only recently told my mother what happened, which gave my mind time to twist it around and make it something sexual. I enjoy writing about it because, for me, placing it in a fictional context makes me feel like I have more control over the situation, and helps me ease the constant itch in my brain that is just dying to replay the scene of me being sexually violated over and over again. I can, in a weird way, replace what happened with my cousin with silly little sexy stories with fictional characters; it gives me peace of mind to turn something bad into something "good," i.e, a story. It gives me a creative way to siphon all of the trauma leaking out of my brain and make it something partially useful to other people.

I actually don't mind when people who haven't been victims of incest or other awful things enjoy dark content that uses those themes! I think it's human nature to enjoy the taboo, and even have a bit of an obsession with it. Our brains, in the modern day, are so obsessed with being politically/socially/emotionally correct that we stop ourselves from enjoying the dirtiest, most perverted things that we know we truly want to indulge in, even when we're alone! People can enjoy what they want. The beautiful part of being online is anonymity. If you want to read about parents fucking nasty with their (adult) kids, you can totally do that with no real-life consequences because it is online, not-real, fictional, made-up, make-believe, and pretend (all in that order.) If you want to call anyone who indulges in these communities and reads this shit awful people, guess what? You totally can! Because this is the internet and everyone gets to have an opinion, spread their agenda, and say what they want, within reason of course.

I hate to use this excuse, because truly, I understand that words hurt, but what I'm writing and what people are reading is all fiction! I certainly don't, and I hope most people who enjoy the incest/cnc/ddlg communities don't actually want to fuck their relatives, be raped, or be in pedophilic relationships.

Saying all of that, I'm going to continue to write nasty, depraved, incestous, rape-centered smut, because at the end of the day, that's what I want to do on my blog, and it's what makes me happy.

Thank you for asking. I'll be happy to answer any other questions that anybody has, even if they're hateful <3

#barleyxnighteye #cw incest #cnc k!nk #barley speaks #barley loves attention #rant post #mini rant

[haemosexuality]

under the cut there is an enormous rant ab me being too autistic to have friends

i would call this a vent but rn im like too neutral for it to be a vent. im just kind of relaying informstion. anyways i dont think i ever in my life Initiated a friendship. its always ppl that come up to me and insist on talking to me until we become friends, or like, friends that decide to Adopt me into their group. which means that during my life ive always only had friends i met in school (or online), and if i for some reason stop talking to that friend/group then i literally have 0 friends. which has been my current state for a few years now, i have 0 friends irl. and it also means that i have two paths my life can follow: i can continue the way i am, being a totally friendless shut in, for the rest of my life (as i no longer have the option to make friends in school), or i can. go out of my way to make some friendships so i am not utterly alone. i have no fucking clue how to do that tho. "just talk to people" doesnt work on me i am completely introverted, shy, awkward, antisocial, etc etc whatever. i am someone that tries my best to be as unnoticed as i can be. i dont go out alone. i dont talk to people. i try my Hardest not to in fact. i have a really long trial period for irl people until i can say im close to them or trust them or am friends. and while i am normal by tumblr standards i am definitely Not by like regular outside ppl standards and im also very aware of that fact. people who are too chronically online annoy me and i dislike them but the other options are (im aware of how saying this word makes me sound) Normies and like. im too far gone for that probably. idk how to meet people. or when i would have the opportunity to. im picky and scared and distrustful w everyone. my ideal friendship is someone who is very very similar to me but thats Hard to find irl. point is i was thinking and i see no future for myself where i dont have absolutely 0 friends. which is kinda sad bc. i dont want that. yknow i craze friendship and human contact and closeness like anyone does but im too weird and autistic and antisocial for that. thankfully i have a big family w lots of cousins my age who i love a lot and am very close with but we are all getting older and it seems like other people grow up like mentally but i stay a kid and that scares me bc i feel like soon all of them will start acting like Adults or Normal Teenagers Who Do Things Like Go Outside And Have Normal Interests And Other Friends Who Are More Like Them Than I Am and they will slowly stop talking to me bc i dont seem to grow and am weird. and then ill be alone again. i would also very much like to have a girlfriend one day but thats just, all the same problems i have w making friends but x5 bc not only will she have to be someone that enjoys being friends w me and that i enjow being friends with, but she will also have to find me attractive and fall in love w me. which. yeah. there is no easy solution to this. ig i will just be alone forever. and only have online friends who live in another country and will also eventually stop talking to me probably bc unfortunately friendships usually dont last forever ppl grow apart and theres nothing anyone can do to stop that. post ends

#this makes it sound like i Hate People™ but i like really really dont #i love other people. i love it when ppl r kind. i love being kind to others. i love laughing w someone. i enjoy doing things w friends. etc #i just. find it very hard and take a long time to get close to people. and can never fully feel comfortable around people im not close with #yknow

[bright-and-burning]

top 5 days of the year!

1. NYE!!! my extended family usually does our big winter holiday gathering on NYE, with competitions and a themed food thing (that is also usually competitive bc we are freaks) and so on (although as my and my siblings and cousins get older i’m reaaaally pushing for us to move the big night to like. the 29th or 30th. bc i looooove a party i love getting dressed up and going out with friends and doing like. normal people NYE. and i’ve only ever done nye w friends as opposed to family once, and it was 2020-2021 so mega covid lol)

2. friendsgiving/thanksgiving. thankgiving’s a like fucked up holiday in origin, but i am a big fan of hosting and gathering and a believer in food as love so you know i was out here in college baking 9 pies for a 60 person friendsgiving. also apple pie is my favorite thing Ever so its just the perfect excuse to have too much, and at my family’s like brunch (we dont do dinner, and brunch is Perfect. eat wayyyy too much food, go home for a nap, wake up and eat leftovers) we always end up talking abt awful things LOL. not in the way the memes are abt racist relatives, like as in we always end up on like. true crime type topics. like why are we discussing that unsolved string of murders in the area over bread rolls and cranberry relish.

3. some day in early may, like . may 5th. when you can lay out in the sunshine and everything feels amazing and the flowers have bloomed but you’re not quite at the sweltering heat of summer, so you can lay out on a blanket in the grass and read or draw or work on stuff without feeling stinky or sticky by the end of the day

4. st patrick’s day. the thing i miss most about college (aside from. the community. my friends. lol) is the wildly themed house parties, where you’d scramble to put together an outfit that combined like, the mafia and disney (an actual theme. i shit you not. we called it mickey mouse mafia house and it went sooo hard. i dressed as silvermist the like tinker bell fairy if she was also a mob wife. i had a friend dress as belle from beauty and the beast except she then strapped a nerf gun on). and st patrick’s day in america especially in college towns and ESPECIALLY where i live has a similar vibe of like. let’s put on themed clothes and get trashed. not as weird w the theme unfortunately but still

5. max fewtrell’s birthday. jk jk, i guess rewind a day and go w my birthday. i’ve had pretty uh universally horrific birthdays since i was like 11? but it’s one of my favorite times of year, the weather is lovely, and everyone’s looking for any excuse to go to the beach, so if it wasn’t associated w my birthday it would be brilliant (hence me saying max’s). i’m trying reeeeaally hard to just will power my way into good ones in the future tho

#ask #ask meme

[royalty-subway-headcanons]

Headcanons for Shieldbert and Sordward being cousins/related to Ingo and Emmet?

(It's an idea that always intrigued me, esp since they share a lot of similarities!)

I can see that being a possibility, like the SwSh twins being somehow related to Emmet and Ingo (I feel like cousins is more likely). They do indeed share a lot of similarities.

They both have at least one steel type Pokemon in their team. Sordward: Doublade, Bisharp. Shielbert: Bronzong, Klingklang. Emmet: Durant. Ingo: Excadrill, Klingklang (The fact both Shielbert and Ingo have a Kilngklang on their team is a bruh moment-).

They all tend to use the color blue and red for clothing options (maybe even the color black and white as well).

The SwSh twins are royalty and claim in every single sentence that they’re descendants of the first kings. Correct me if I’m wrong but in the Pokemon Black and White lore, wasn’t there like these twin heroes with the dragons or some shit? Emmet and Ingo are twins in Unova so yeah-that’s kinda sus fam.

They kinda have weird hairstyles, I don’t need to explain Sordward and Shielbert. But Emmet and Ingo have those gray things on the side of their face (looks like knives, you can barely miss it) and I’ve never seen people having that lifestyle.

They’re not really what you consider “normal”, since Emmet and Ingo have this muppet-ass looking face (they even act a bit robotic in the manga, but they’re still cool ;w;) when Sordward and Shielbert are just assholes and they have this need to mention that they’re royalty every time they talk with those dumb hair (definitely not cool, be nice).

The way they talk is also something that’s kinda oof, Ingo screams “BRAVO” any chance he gets, Emmet says things like “I am Emmet” or says words like “verrrrrrrrrrry”. Sordward and Shielbert talking all pompous like; hey, did we tell you that we’re royalty?

This one is something no one expected and has ever thought before, you won’t believe number 6 of this life hack I’m about to tell you; they’re twins.

(I’m sure there’s more points I’m missing, but you get it, hopefully)

I don’t think Ingo would be overly happy to come to the realization that he is related to those two. Like how can you tell everyone “listen, I’m related to these things, please don’t think less of me-”, now he has like three trouble makers to supervise, like looking away for a second could cause disaster. Wouldn’t be surprising that they test his patience at least every hour. But at least he finds Shielbert a bit tolerable. That’s a plus.

For Emmet, it would probably be a joy ride but also a bit of a nightmare realization (similar to Ingo, “why, I didn’t choose this path-”), but at least he has an excuse to terrorize the two everyday. And he would probably point and laugh whenever Sordward does something funny and gets in trouble (“haha dumb dumb idiot”). And throw Joltiks at Shielbert for the funny just to see him screech like hell and run.

I think the only thing that changes for Sordward is that he now respects the Subway Bosses more (or Subway Masters, never really knew the actual name) since they’re relatives to him. And whenever he fucks shit up now, he can use the excuse (like Emmet does) of “in my defense, Ingo left me unsupervised so-”, he can now flood all of the bathrooms with “barely” any consequences. Perhaps even going to jail afterwards, Ingo always has to bail him out-

I feel like for Shielbert it would be a waking nightmare, like he has a cousin that’s obsessed with bugs (and throws them at him) and harasses him non-stop. But he would also worry about their reputations, like just because he and his older brother fuck shit up, he doesn’t want others to assume Emmet and Ingo will also fuck shit up (or to have the same reputation just because they’re related). But nonetheless, he would be nice towards them (like a good boi).

I know this sounds like every single family gathering, but it’s true-

#pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon black and white #pokemon headcanons #headcanons #ask #shielbert #sordward #emmet #kudari #ingo #nobori #subway bosses #subway masters

[sunjaesol]

juke | human au | title: fearless // taylor swift

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

As they were walking up the front lawn of her childhood home, nerves wrecked her body. Even her hand, snug in Luke's, felt clammy and sweaty and suffocating. God, this was such a mistake — going home, not him. He didn't even realise what he had gotten himself into by falling for the youngest darling of the matriarch.

Or rather, she shouldn't have fallen head over heels for the swoon-worthy Luke Patterson, but she never really stood a chance.

But everything had happened so fast! One second banter easily flowed between them, warm and easy flirtatiousness without consequences, the next she was at IKEA helping him pick out a bookshelf while he somehow knew whenever she needed pizza and a good cuddle. They were very much in a committed relationship, something the Molina women very much frowned upon.

It wasn't as if they were all deeply scared of love and relationships, but the Molina family was a matriarchy. All women raised families on their own, no man to help. Divorced, cheated on, died, a donor, infertile and therefore adopting children — men were of zero priority.

So, coming home with her boyfriend whom she deeply loved? Definitely a risk. She was surprised he was still standing, that she hadn't scared him enough yet.

Spinning on her heels in front of the door, she shot him an anxious smile. "Are you... sure you wanna do this? We're, like, really intense."

Luke smiled, tender. "Do I wanna meet the family of my girlfriend? 'Course I do." When her expression didn't change, he added, "Jules, just 'cause they all did the 'no guy' thing, doesn't mean you have to follow that, right? And I'm not scared."

Oh, God. His courage was as admirable as it was stupid.

She chuckled, antsy. "You haven't met my mom though."

His smile widened as he dipped down to kiss her, gently, hands caressing her cheeks. For a moment, stress fled her system.

But then the door flew open.

"There you are!" Mom exclaimed, a glass of red wine in one hand and music booming over her shoulder. "And is this the boy toy?"

"Mom!" Julie grumbled, embarrassed to be caught kissing (God, she's twenty-three!) as well as putting Luke in a bad position.

First impression of him: seeing him kiss her beloved daughter on the doorstep. Great.

"Hi," Luke said, dazzling her with a smile while he stuck his hand out. "I'm Luke. And I'm, uh, older? So..."

"Meh," Rose trailed, lamely shaking his hand. "Still a boy toy. Anyway, come in! Food's warm!"

Following her mom inside, Luke shot her a strange look, like it was only registering now all her tall tales were, well, true. Shrugging with a sheepish grin, she placed their shoes and jackets in the wall closet and then made the agonising trek to the loud, jumbled chatter.

As expected, all the California-based Molina women were present. Which meant ten, including her, all staring at Luke like he was a weird specimen. Her hand squeezed his beneath the table in support, and he was finally squeezing back just as tightly.

Was it bad she felt some sick pleasure he understood how fucked he was? Probably. It seemed warranted.

When everyone had their plates filled, the interrogation began.

"So, Luke, how old are you?" Victoria asked.

"Twenty-five."

"Going around town with a twenty-three year old?" She sniffed. "Interesting..."

"Do you have any siblings?" Donna inquiried.

A wry grin ticked up his lips, sensing the irony of the situation. "I, uh, I'm an only child, actually. Mostly raised by my dad, 'cause my mom worked long hours."

Shoving a fork of meatloaf in her mouth, Julie withheld a guttural wince at his words. Luke Patterson was the poster child of everything the Molina's didn't like and she brought him in their cave.

"What do you do for a living?" Abuela croaked, peering intensely.

His smile didn't falter, but instead widened. "I'm in a band, but I also bartend a couple of nights a week."

"A band, huh?" Mom leaned forward, intrigued. "Has Julie told you I used to be in a band?"

"How can I not, mom?" Rolling her eyes, Julie added, "You'd tell him anyway..."

"I was in The Petal Pushers, the best protest punk-rock feminist group of the 90s." Her fist punched in the air as she spoke and Julie could imagine the fingerless leather gloves and purple streaks as she did. "What kinda... band do you have?"

Her endearing Luke didn't read the warning signs humble himself, so he enthusiastically perched himself at the end of his chair as he said, "Punk-rock too, actually! Yeah, we're really killing it right now at all the clubs."

She smirked. "I'm sure you do."

"What are your plans with Julie?" Elena asked, one of her cousins.

Both her and Luke froze at that. Shit. That... was not something they've discussed. A relationship of seven months was still pretty fresh, not ready for a confrontational talk about futures and plans.

He scraped his throat, briefly let his gaze flicker to her, and then uttered, "I'm, uh, a one day at a time kinda guy."

Julie cringed, not hiding it this time. To her, it was an alright, albeit lame answer. But to her family? Horrible. So, so horrible. Gah, she had to put an end to this!

Abuela scoffed, nearly choking on her hard seltzer. "One day? At a time? What is this, the 70s? My little girl deserves more than carpe diem!"

Mimi hissed. "Wrong, wrong answer, boy toy."

The questions kept shooting at lightning speed, each one more outrageous than the other, while Julie's grip on her fork tightened and tightened in anger.

"How many times a week do you shower?"

"What's your least favourite colour?"

"Do you pick up women? Is that how you make extra money?"

"What's your view on children?"

"Can you handle spice?"

"How did you even find our darling, huh? Did you lure her into that bar of yours?"

"Is Luke short for Lukas, or Lucrative?"

"Alright, enough!" Julie screamed, standing up with a stomp of the foot.

A hush crossed the table, aghast and surprised, her mother perpetually amused as always (too many in drugs in the 90s, she presumed) while Abuela feigned to be sleeping. 'Resting her eyes' would likely be the excuse.

"This is insane! Stop acting like this and start treating Luke with a little respect!"

From the corner of her eye, she vaguely noted he was staring at her, gobsmacked. He did well, given the circumstances, but she couldn't just idly sit there and let him take all this shit.

Mom puffed, leaning back in her chair. "We haven't been disrespectful, Julie."

"You have, mom! Can't I just have a boyfriend without—"

"We've invited him," she interrupted. "That's enough of a courtesy."

And before Julie could fire back, furious beyond belief, Rose added, "You know how the Molina cookie crumbles, honey. No men stay. Not for long, anyway."

That smug response made her explode. "Mom! Can you just for once—?!"

"I love her though," Luke quipped, shy.

The fight halted instantly, all ten women gawking at him like he just spoke a new language.

And he did, to Julie at least. Luke loved her? Even after all of this? She obviously knew he wasn't impartial to her, those seven months equalling tenderness and partnership like nothing she's ever experienced before, but... love? He was in love with her?

How could she abide by the 'Molina Women Rule!' rules when he confessed that, no hesitation or stutter heard?

And so, Julie's heart melted. "You love me?"

"Of course, I do," he whispered. "Why else would I be here?"

Elena nodded, sympathetic. "Good point."

Unable to stop her smile from becoming a dazzling, lovesick beam, she repeated his words with as much conviction as she could muster. "I love you too, Luke."

Abuela shot up from her sleep with a cough and a snicker. "Yeah, right."

Mom waved her glass around, congratulating them. For the first time tonight, her tone held kindness instead of poorly veiled contempt. "That's very sweet, Luke. Tell me in seven more months how you're feeling then."

Though Julie couldn't expect her to suddenly change her ways. Damn.

Mimi scowled. "We're letting 'I'm a one day at a time kinda guy' slide?"

Disgruntled chatter rose again, and that was her cue to go. Tapping Luke's shoulder, she mouthed home — something she hadn't done before and wasn't sure which apartment she meant either, but it left flutters in her chest regardless — and he nodded in understanding.

Oh, God. He loved her. That still hadn't set in.

"And if you'll excuse us, me and Luke are going," Julie continued. "Thanks for dinner, mom."

The woman laughed, baring all her teeth. She clearly had a fun time. "See you at Victoria's birthday, mi amor. And Luke? Who knows!"

He forced a chuckle at her remark. Awkwardly bouncing on his heels, he waved at all the ladies. "It was really cool to meet you all. Now– now I know why Julie's so incredible. So... thanks." A true smile appeared. "This was great."

No one said anything after that. Abuela gurgled her drink and her cousins prodded at their leftovers, mom peering at her like she was trying to find something. Sometimes, Julie and Rose were so alike, and other times, they were complete strangers. She liked that. It kept dinners like these exciting, she supposed. Mom seemed to think the same.

They bid goodbye one last time with a kiss on the cheek, and then they hurried out the door. A giggling breath left as the cool wind hit her skin. Luke was buzzing with adrenaline, unable to keep his limbs still.

Clambering in her car, the comforting quietude wrapped around them as the doors slammed shut. A beat passed. No one spoke.

"What the fuck," he whispered, horrified. "What the fuck. What the fuck did just happen? What the fuck—"

Julie squealed. "You love me!"

"That's what you got from that?!"

"Of course!" Her arms curled around him, teasing. "You love me!"

"That shouldn't be the most surprising thing tonight, Jules," he grumbled, though a playful shimmer sparked within his beautiful eyes. "I thought I was, y'know, obvious."

She shrugged, bashful. "It's always nice to hear, no?"

"Oh, man," he sighed, eyes flickering across her face as though he couldn't decide what to focus on, as though she was indescribably stunning. Her heart swelled tenfold at the thought. "I love you, Julie. So fucking much. Even with your crazy family."

Laughing, she reached forward and kissed his lips, fingers pressing in his neck and their silly grins preventing them from deepening the warm touch.

"Let's go," he mumbled, noses nudging, eyes hooded and pouring with the love she somehow hadn't noticed before. "Before they're ready for round two."

But before he could move away, she kissed him again, better this time, and cherished his sigh when they slowly seperated.

"I love you too," she whispered. "Like, a lot."

He grinned, breathless. "Good to know."

Victoria's birthday was four months later, and Luke attended as well. And also for Mimi and Elena and mom and Abuela and Donna and every other Molina member. And when Julie got surprised with a 24th birthday party, she figured out Luke and mom combined their powers to host it.

Molina women were independant and lived life by their own rules... which included Julie.

Loving Luke Patterson unconditionally probably made her the most unique Molina of all.

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

@bluefirewrites @blush-and-books @ourstarscollided @thedeathdeelers @pink-flame @constantly-singing @willexx @unsaid-emily

#juke #jatp fanfiction #julie and the phantoms #otp: i think we make each other better #how niche can I go?? *spins the wheel*

[doitjake]

The music in us - P1

Jake kiszka x reader

warnings: none.

Requests: “two rockstars meeting in a festival, and both bands hanging out cause they are both friends with the struts, then jake starts falling in love w this person because of their personality, talent and charisma, they start to match in the second day of camping at the festival and then the bands have to play in the same day, jake tells his feeling and the reader doesn’t know how to react.”

A/N:  this was an incredible request and I took a while to post it because I wanted it to be at least reasonable haha. this is the first part, i will probably post the second part on saturday or sunday. I hope you like it and if you want to see a specific scene in the second part comment here or you can send me a message / question!!

Requests here: https://forms.gle/6uMRSCzFvyR2FgZPA

Being in a band with your 2 best friends and your cousin is definitely awesome, until the first week.

"POPPY WHERE'S MY FUCKING HAIRBRUSH?" A super angry drummer was seen getting on the bus.

"Ana, can't you speak a sentence at a normal voice volume?" That was Lexa, our guitarist or our mother, whichever you prefer. She performs both functions very well.

"No, I can't." She walks over to Poppy and snatches her hairbrush out of her hand. "At least not when vocalists with superiority complexes steal my stuff." She walks to the small bathroom on the bus as Poppy showed her the middle finger.

Even inside the bus you could hear several bands doing sound checks and stages being finalized outside. We had arrived at the Summer Rock Festival a few hours ago, it would be three days of festival, we would perform on the second day, after our friends from The Struts and before the boys from Greta Van Fleet.

"Luke texted me, he and the boys are already heading to the bar." Lexa stands up fixing the bottom of her beautiful dress that looked like it was straight out of the 70's, "So if we don't want to be late our dear drummer had better get out of this fucking bathroom soon."

"Hey, no swearing, Mom." I walk past her grabbing my leather jacket from the seat. "Ana! Let's go!"

By the time Lexa and Poppy are outside I am trying to find my cell phone amidst a pile of clothes, Ana finally comes out of the bathroom.

"Cousins by chance, twins by choice." She pulls up the sleeves of her jacket, just like mine, smiling at me.

I find my cell phone and slip my arm over Ana's shoulders, leading us to the bus door.

"Did I mention I hate you?" I ask coming down the small staircase and find Poppy and Lexa waiting for us to go.

"Hm, I guess not today yet." She goes to Poppy's side and pats her chin. "Stop drooling, Poppy."

Lexa and I turn to where Poppy was looking and find the 4 boys from Greta taking their instruments off the bus, about 50 feet away from us.

"Fuck you, Ana," Poppy starts walking towards the exit of the festival, where there is an avenue full of bars, nightclubs, strip clubs and karaoke places.

In less than 10 minutes we had already arrived at the bar and before we even entered Jed already called us shouting. "Hey, girls! Over here!"

It was always really cool to hang out with the boys, we knew each other because of Jed and Adam being friends with Poppy's older brother. We joined them and other people from the crew and some other artists at the festival and less than 2 minutes later several bottles of beer were already on the tables.

I looked at my band mates, we spend so much time together that it is fun to analyze them socializing with other people besides ourselves.

Poppy was probably the most outgoing of us, everyone liked her, she was always nice and polite to everyone and it was amazing to see men with long beards and leather vests making fun of a girl singing rock and then Poppy shutting them up, either with her talent or her knowledge.

Lexa was so calm that it is still shocking to me to see her play and totally transform on stage. She had a 70's hippie style that matched perfectly with her long blond hair and delicate features.

And Ana, my band mate that I have known all my life, my younger cousin. Certainly the strongest personality among the four of us, her life revolved around music, and I loved that about her.

Oh, of course. There's me too, but I don't think it's worth describing myself too much. I'm probably too dull around them. I wasn't outgoing like Poppy, I wasn't charming like Lexa, and I definitely didn't have as much personality as Ana.

My God, what a depression. I need another drink, one stronger than beer.

"Hey, I'm going to go to the bar. I'll be right back." I speak to Lexa receiving a nod in response.

Reaching over I choose the only drink capable of cheering me up.

"A shot of Jack Daniels. No ice please" I speak loudly so the bartender can hear through the music of The Who playing at the bar.

"I always thought it was the guitar players who were more into whiskey" A husky voice came over the music right in my right ear. "I thought bass players were more into vodka"

And then the seat next to me was taken by Jake Kiszka, guitarist for Greta Van Fleet, well I definitely can't compare to Poppy on the subject of "GVF FANGIRL", but wow.

"What about the vocalists and drummers?" I asked as the bartender left the shot of Jack Daniels in front of me.

"Vocalists? Probably some weird drink and drummers for sure are the beer guys." He smiles and turns the stool around facing me "I'm Jake" He holds out his hand to you.

"Y/N" I hold his hand.

"The bass player who made my theory go down the drain." He laughs arching an eyebrow.

"Well, maybe I'm an exception.

"Yeah, maybe there was a glitch in the matrix." He turns to call the bartender. "May I imitate you?" He indicates my glass with his head.

"You're the guitar player here, I think I'm the one copying you." I smile at him and he reciprocates, and shit, why do I think I could stare at him smile forever? And then I feel an arm on my shoulders.

"So you mean my friends are friends, and I didn't know?" Luke leaned one arm on me and the other on Jake, clearly not sober anymore. "Come on over to the table, antisocial people, your bands are waiting."

Luke releases our shoulders and looks at us. "Or are you guys busy planning to pick each other up?"

I could feel all my blood rising to my cheeks in a second, and thank God I had already swallowed the whiskey, otherwise I probably would have spit it all out.

"Of course not Luke." I gave a nervous laugh praying that I could disguise my embarrassment. Which only increased when Jake tilted his head to the side looking at me and gave a weak laugh and then getting up to walk over to the table.

Now there were more people at the table, including the other three members of Greta, and I sat down between Adam and Ana. "Please dig a hole and stick me in" I whispered to my cousin.

"With pleasure." She winked and smiled at me, "But may I know why?"

With the music loud and our friends talking around us I had to lean 'round to whisper right into her ear. "I was talking to Jake Kiszka and then Luke came over and thought we were going to kiss and I looked like an idiot."

"You always look like an idiot, cousin." He whispered in response. "But you want to kiss him?" Ana smiled mischievously.

"Oh my god, I was just talking to him."

"Well, you should kiss him, he's handsome." She picks up her beer and offers me a bottle.

"You say that because you have a crush on his twin." I open my bottle as I watch Ana choke on her own beer and cast a quick glance at Josh. "Oh come on, you can't disguise yourself." I laugh slapping our bottles together before taking a long sip.

"I don't have a crush on him." Ana squirms in her chair uncomfortably. "He's the lead singer, he has several women after him, and he must have a superiority complex just like Poppy."

"He seems pretty cool!"

"Y/N! ANA!" Poppy's voice managed without louder than the music in the bar, causing us to turn around and find 10 pairs of eyes staring at us. "Are you guys deaf?"

As I run my gaze around the table I realize that all the boys' crew have left, now it's just us, the boys from The Struts and Greta Van Fleet.

"Hm, hey!" I reply before Ana has a chance to cuss Poppy out.

"We're going to karaoke, the bar closes early today." Gethin gets up from the table, being followed by his bandmates, Josh, Sam, Danny, Poppy and Lexa.

"I'm in!" Ana stands up.

"I'm going back to the bus, I don't have as much energy as you guys." I stand up grabbing my cell phone and wallet.

"Let's go together." Jake speaks and I realize that he was the only one who hadn't gotten up until now.

"Ok" I say trying to look calm and not knowing why I am nervous, like a teenage girl who likes the popular boy.

I say goodbye to everyone and when I pass by Ana she winks at me, in a not discreet way.

After we pay for our drinks, Jake and I head out onto the streets of Chicago to return to the festival.

"Excited for tomorrow?" Jake asks as we cross one of the avenue streets.

"For sure, tomorrow and our days will have the best shows!" I look at him. "I feel like I might faint just remembering that I'm going to see Steven Tyler live tomorrow." He throws his head back and laughs. "Now you think I'm some kind of crazy fangirl." I smile.

"Oh, of course not." Jake returns the smile by looking at me. "The chances of me passing out at the Stones concert are not small either."

"So, you're a 'fangirl' for Keith Richards?"

"Definitely." He laughs again shaking his head.

"Does that mean that for you 'team stones' is right?

"Well, it's certainly a tough contest, but yes 'team stones'." He turns to me with the corners of his lips raised. "Team Beatles?"

"And a George stan with pride." I smile and wink at him amused. "Okay, important question."

"Okay, speak." Jake runs his fingers through the strands of hair that fall down the side of his face.

"Pearl Jam or Nirvana?"

"Is there a right answer?" He asks and I arch an eyebrow at him. "Okay, hm, Nirvana."

"You had a right answer! And you got it wrong." I smile. "Come on, Eddie Veder is almost a God."

Jake laughs and brings his hands in front of his body in a sign of redemption. "I don't disagree!"

And then I realize that we arrived at the festival some time ago and are now facing my bus.

"Thank you so much, for walking me here." I say to him, climbing up the first step of the entrance stairs, almost standing the same height as Jake.

"You're welcome!" He gives me a smile and puts his hands in the pockets of his black skinny pants. "See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, sure."

You smile at him and Jake moves closer and deposits a kiss on your cheek.

"Bye!"

“Bye, Jake!”

#greta van fleet #greta van fleet fic #greta van fic #greta van fleet imagine #gvf #gvf imagine #jake kiszka gvf #jake gvf #jake kiszka #jake kiszka imagine #jake kiszka fic #jake kiszka x reader #fanfic #imagine #jake imagines #jake x reader #jacob kiszka

[internalsealpanic]

Cosmonauts

Summary: You always call Tim space related nicknames. No one knows why.

A/n: This is technically a follow up to Art Gallery Smile but it can be read on its own. This was posted on mobile so Idk how bad it got formatted. Will edit when I get to my laptop.

Warnings: mentions of panic attack and anxiety. No graphic detail but just in case. (Yes, I gave Tim anxiety. Fight me.)

Masterlist

Series Masterlist

“IT WAS ZOMBIE ADJACENT,” Roz protests, shoving another one of Tim’s fries into her gaping maw in a vain attempt to stop the petulant pout retching its way to her lips. You roll your eyes hard enough that your entire head follows along with their movement, taking a nibble of your own fries. Roz scowls, mouth twitching the way yours does (4 times to the left and 4 and a half times to the right) it was honestly the only way to tell that you two were related in any shape or form. 

“It wasn’t even close, you deep-fried stick of margarine,”

“It shambled, didn’t it?”

 

“So does Space Case over here when you don’t funnel enough caffeine into his system, what’s your point?” You bite out leaning back, slinging your arm over the back of the bench and over Tim’s shoulder making his breath hitch. Tim can feel his skin heat up. For once, he’s thankful for just how much Roz hordes your attention.  He’s starting to run out of excuses for the color of his cheeks. Not that you ever fell for any of it from the way you hummed every time he stammered out his excuse. 

 

Based on the way your hand flexes and not so subtly moves away, you noticed his flush but made no comment. Instead, you grin- all sharp teeth and cocksure and smug bastard- leveling your older cousin a look which roughly translated to ‘Checkmate, motherfucker’. Despite his apprehension, Tim can’t help the smile that twitched on to his lips. Your eyes flickered to him. It might just be his imagination but Tim was pretty sure he saw fondness chip away at your smug grin. Tim kind of wants to lean into your arm but instead, he leans forward pretending to pay attention hiding his smile in his hands. His face is gonna get tired from smiling too much around you. 

"It wasn't even close,"

"It was freaky looking,"

"Damn woman, you're being real judgy there,"

“Back me up here Duckie!” Roz screeches, shoulders hiking up making her look like a frazzled cat about to hiss pulling Tim away from his reverie. You roll your eyes all the way to the back of your head while Steph just snorts. Tim sighs. None of you have stopped calling him ‘Duckie’ or ‘Ducktective’ after that stint of being ‘Drake’.  Admittedly, it wasn’t his best idea but you didn’t have to laugh that hard and slap your knee. When you were done laughing, you vehemently protested the name change by wearing your precious, well-kept, one of a kind Red Robin hoodie for the duration of the ‘Drake’ thing. You had said it was to bring him back to his senses (sense of fashion).  Maybe you just wanted to fluster him. He certainly couldn’t put it past you. It worked. Oh, it definitely worked. Now, all he could think about was how nice you looked in his colors which inevitably lead him to think about how nice you would look in his shirts, in his clothes- Damn it. He’s doing it again. 

Roz clears her throat. It is loud and rough and it makes all of you wince despite the already loud atmosphere of the cafeteria. Really what does Roz expect him to say? One, Tim wasn’t fully paying attention. How could he when you two are smooshed together on a cramped cafeteria bench with you still wearing your Red Robin hoodie? Tim’s surprised he isn’t keeling over. Two- 

 

“See! Even our darling-” Tim’s brain short circuits. “Space Cadet can’t even defend your bullshit,” you laugh reaching over to Roz’s drink leaning a little too close to Tim’s face. He can almost feel the heat radiating off your skin. 

 

If I lean in just a little more, I could probably…

 

“It isn’t bullshit!”

 

“You’re right! Bullshit has more substance-”

 

“Sooooo, what’s with all the space nicknames for Tim? When do I get one?” Steph asks casually, popping another of Tim’s fries into her mouth. 

 

Has he even eaten any of his fries? It’s almost gone and he’s eaten at most one.

 

You choke making a pained noise, likely due to said carbonated drink going into your nostrils (and possibly your lungs), as you turn away. Your neck visibly red from where Tim is sitting. Based on the sparkle in Steph’s eyes, she can see it too. A manic grin spreads on Roz’s face wide enough that Tim legitimately worries that it’ll split her face wide open. A shrill sort of giggle escapes her which has you whipping your head to her direction to scowl at her. It does absolutely nothing to deter the sheer glee on her face as she sneers back to you. Some secret conversation passes between the two of you. Tim and Steph watch in slow motion as mortification creeps on to your face. 

 

Suddenly (not really), Tim’s thankful that his only sister is practically a saint. At least compared to the horror that is Roz. 

 

Actually, now that he thinks about it, you have a plethora of space-themed nicknames for him when you aren’t busy calling him whatever endearingly aggravating name Steph came up with that week. 

 

Cosmo

 

Space Case

 

Space Nuts

 

Rocket Man

Martian Manhunter

 

ET

 

Marvin (the Martian)

 

And your favorite, Cosmonaut.

 

At first, he figures it was because of his obsession love for Star Wars and Star Trek but no, that couldn’t be it since you had started calling him that long before you two ended up marathoning the entirety of Star Trek instead of working on your project. He can still remember just how engrossed you looked while watching as you hugged your knees to your chest leaning forward as you waited for the next episode to start up with bated breath. Your features highlighted by the glow of the laptop screen making it very easy for Tim to memorize the contours and angles of your expression. Yet another moment Tim really wanted to capture with a photo. You even did your mouth twitch thing without noticing.

 

 He really wanted to just keep an entire album of all the different expressions you made. Wait. That sounds weird. Does it sound weird? It probably does.

 

 Then again, maybe you called him those because of just how much of a weirdo he was. He couldn’t blame you if you did. But he found that highly unlikely. Sure, you can be mean at times (a lot of times) but you were too oblique for that. Years in customer service made sure of that. Your jabs were usually of the subtler, more needling variety. The type that makes you pause for too long.  Plus, you said every nickname with a fondness that made his heart skip a beat. It was like when you called Roz or Steph ‘Fucker’. Maybe a little warmer. Or he could just be imagining that. Probably. Hopefully not. It was hard to get the honey-sweet way you said them out of his head.

 

Maybe they were just jabs. Lighthearted one. They could have just had easily been comments on just how much he spaced out. Tim has a tendency to live in his own head and it shows especially when he’s stressed or tired or both. Sometimes he would completely shut down as a result of excess anxiety. He can still remember the number of times he had let his anxieties run rampant letting them drag him away from the moment. His breaths were too quick to back then. He felt like he was gonna faint but then you just smiled at him like you were there for him which as it turned out you were. You gently squeezed each segment of his fingers until his breaths slowed. Even when he did fully calm down, you didn’t relinquish his hand. You held them firmly in your own even as you looked entirely unsure of what to do and what to say. You didn’t whisper the usual ‘you’re ok’ or the classic ‘you’ll be fine’. No, you just sat there with him quietly. Letting his feelings ebb and flow as he needed them to. 

 

Tim really isn’t sure what he did to deserve even knowing someone like you but he would do it again and again if it meant being able to stick close to you. 

 

Roz, ever the agent of chaos, throws a conspiratorial smile around the table like a flail. You look like you’ve been hit by one.

 

“Sorry, Steph. You won’t get one,” she says glancing at you. Steph pouts before she and Tim follow Roz’s gaze expecting you to glower or snarl or get up to deck her. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. You just kind of sit there frozen and mortified with a face that simply says ‘Oh. God. This is happening.’. All you can really do is mouth a ‘fuck you’. This obviously pleases Roz. Say what you will about Roz, but there is abso-fucking-lutely no denying that she is petty as hell when it comes to revenge. Nothing is sacred to this woman. Nothing.

 

“Why’s that?” Steph asks innocently, smiling around her bendy straw also enjoying this rare chance to torment you. 

 

“I’m so glad you asked!” Roz answers her voice twisting into a horrifying facsimile of a daytime talk show host. You peel your arm away from the backrest and place your arms over your head and neck as you do in an earthquake drill bracing for impact. By the way, you were shaking, you’d think there was an actual earthquake. Your reasoning can’t be that stupid. 

 

“My dear Stephanie-” Steph scrunches her nose at the overly sweet tone Roz lathers on her name but makes no move to interrupt. “(y/n) only uses space-related nicknames for people they think are- and I quote- ‘waaaaaay outta their league’,” You let out a pained groan and Steph’s face unfurls as she lets out the loudest snort, loud enough to draw the attention of several tables around them. 

 

Tim’s mind is still reeling, still trying to process what Roz just said. 

 

Him?

 

Out of your league? 

 

Excuse him, isn’t it the other way around? 

 

What the hell? 

 

“Tim, for the love of Alfred, please unhear that,” you plead wetly, parking your head out just enough for Tim to see just how red your face has gotten. “God, please unhear it or I might just die,” Tim kind of didn’t doubt that you would. Steph somehow laughs even louder at this. Roz, not one to miss pouring salt in the wound, laughs along with her. You look like you wanted to implode out of existence.  You could certainly try but Tim seriously doubts the universe is kind enough to let you escape. 

 

Yeah, Tim’s brain has officially left the building. He’ll be back at 9 o’clock sharp tomorrow. Promise. 

 

“You mean to tell me that-” Steph chokes, unable to control her laughing fit. “-You’re telling me that you’ve been watching them pine for each other for over a year now and you just let them?!” Steph wheezes still holding her stomach.  

 

Roz looks offended and makes a whiny little noise. “Weeeell, technically I offered to wingman-”

 

“YOU WERE GONNA CHARGE ME FIFTY BUCKS,” 

 

“Hey, matchmaking is hard,”

 

“It isn’t worth fifty bucks!”

 

“You’re right! It is worth so much more,”

 

“God, I hate you,” you groan into the table. 

 

“God can’t help you now, kid,”

Tim frowns, mind backtracking to dissect the information. Apparently, his brain decided to clock back in. 

 

They knew. Even Roz ‘I don’t give a shit what you do as long as it doesn’t affect me’ Andrada, noticed. Was he that obvious?

A year? Wait. No. Over a year. They knew about this for over a year. 

Lastly, what do you mean each other?! As in mutual? Mutual pining? 

As if reading his thoughts, you ask “Wait… what do you mean each other?”

 

Roz blinks at you not entirely sure if you’re being funny. When you give her a look, she slumps back in her chair. “I’m related to a dumbass,”

 

“That you are. Speaking of dumbasses-” Steph whips her attention to Tim giving him a shit-eating grin.”-You said you were waiting for the perfect opportunity to ask (y/n) out, right?” Steph waves her hands doing jazz hands as she points at your still dumbstruck figure. She’s smiling as if she was the world’s best wingman at the moment.

 

 Tim suppresses a groan. “This isn’t exactly how I pictured it,”

 

Roz reaches into her pocket and produces a lighter. Grabbing the last of Tim’s fries and lighting it. “There. Mood lighting. Do the thing.”

 

“Ah yes, because surely the scent of burning potatoes is gonna sweep (y/n ) off their feet,”  Tim said flatly crossing his arms. He knows he’s definitely focusing on the wrong thing but as with all things it was easier to procrastinate. This is especially true when you’re afraid of the outcome.   

 

Roz huffs, waving the fry to extinguish it and muttering something about beggars and choosers. “Trust me kid that isn’t hard to do. Besides, did you not hear the part where I quoted (y/n) about you being ‘outta their league’,” You open your mouth to protest but slam it shut when Roz gives you a lopsided grin looking like she had a mountain of dirt on you which she likely did. He was definitely thankful that she has never met his family. He’s pretty sure Gotham wouldn’t survive. 

 

“How could I possibly be out of (y/n)’s league. I- I don’t- I mean- I’m not-”

 

Your body twists his way fast enough that he’s sure you either have whiplash or a twisted spine. Your eyes are set on him glowering as if he’d said something wrong. He’s pretty sure he didn’t although he did have a talent for putting his foot in his mouth. Your jaw is set tight, your teeth almost grind. He could see the tight hitch in your shoulders. He is 100% sure you’re going to deck him. 

 

“Do you want it listed alphabetically or what?”

 

“What?”

 

“Structure it like an argumentative essay. Speak nerd.” Roz instructs, earning her the full force of your glare. Your face pinches even more. Maybe this was the part where you implode. 

 

You suck in a calming breath before turning back to Tim. 

 

“Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, you are a fucking moron, and here’s why:” Taking another breath, you turn to face him fully your cheeks reddening but you press on either from pure unadulterated spite or determination. 

 

“You quite literally co-run a multibillion-dollar corporation. You’ve been doing that since you were seventeen apparently. You know several languages and you are not only fluent but proficient. You’re well versed in an insane amount of fighting styles. You are the smartest dumbass I know-” 

“Preach!” Steph jokes. 

 

“-You can basically operate any machinery I put in front of you. I have no doubt you can Macgyver one up if you fucking wanted. You could hack into any system you want just as a joke. You could probably throw the entire global economy into the toilet just for shits and giggles. Need I go on?”

 

Tim looks at you wide-eyed and speechless. You shrink a little as he continues to gape at you but you keep looking him in the eyes daring him to refute your claims. Really what was there to say? As much as he wants to come up with something witty to snap back at you, his chest is too crowded with warmth from the absolute sincerity of your voice. He knows you didn’t set out to make him fall deeper in love with you but he feels like he’s in free fall with your gravity pulling him downwards. Tim can feel the heat rising to the tips of his ears. 

 

You shrink again, your mouth twitching. “I-” Another calming breath. “I said too much. But my point stands!” The infinitesimal gap he felt between the two of you practically vanished. Still, he could do nothing but stare. Words fail him in the most inopportune moments even when you look so desperate for any kind of response.  You swallow thickly looking like you think you’ve ruined everything when the fact was you haven’t. Quite the opposite really. Tim feels like he could take on the entirety of Gotham’s rogue gallery right now. Still, his brain was drawing a blank. 

 

“Mood,” His brain has short-circuited and is now beyond repair. His palm is in his face before he even sees your reaction. You give him an entire speech about how great he is and all he can say is ‘mood’. Looking over at Steph and seeing her phone on her hands, he can tell she’s already transcribing the events to the group chat. Well, It can’t get any worse. 

 

You giggle snort eyes slamming shut from the force of your laughter. Joy suffuses throughout your tense body, loosening your tense muscles. “Thank you for proving my point,” you say between gasps.  

 

Tim falls victim to the infectious smile spreading on your face. He feels the warmth crowding his chest grow fuzzy. 

 

Now’s your chance.  

 

Tim takes a steadying breath. He rolls his shoulder back to straighten his posture. He waits for you to calm yourself a bit. When you do, he asks as confidently as he can “Are you free this Saturday?”

 

“No,”

 

Oh crap. He knew he screwed up. He feels cold seep into his feet.  

 

You shake your head at his panic. “I work Saturday, ET,”

 

“Oh, I-”

 

“I have all of Sunday off though,” A hum of excitement spreads through his limbs. “Name your time,”

 

“9 AM?”

 

You give him a look roughly translating to ‘You aren’t going to lose sleep over a date, so help me’.

 

“11:30?” He corrects. You smile and hum seemingly making the oxygen in the atmosphere disappear. He finds that he doesn’t mind, not when he feels like he’s floating on zero gravity. 

 

-------------------------------------------------

Bonus: 

 

Steph: Tim’s a dumbass😌🙃

Damian: Thank you for stating the obvious, Brown. 

Step: 🙄 Do you wanna hear about it or not?

Dick: 👀We’re listening…

Steph: (Y/n) made this whole speech about Tim and all Tim could say was 'mood' cycgu9c8ychic8td 5d8fcouv9ygpuv

Jason: F

Duke: F

Cass: F

Babs: F

Dick: F

---------------

Thanks for reading!!!!!

Taglist:

@idkmanicantenglish, @batarella, @batarella-mini, @birdy-bat-writes, @anothertimdrakestan, @founduebitches , @lucy-roo

#tim drake imagines #tim drake x reader #tim drake #batboys #step brother #wingmanning is hard #batfam #red robin #dc fanfiction #dc x reader

[ikassienatics]

𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐥 ↬ 𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐩.

summary: half the population survived the blip and that includes peter your boyfriend, while the other half was erased from existence just like you. five years later, the snap was reversed but the world you once lived in changes

warnings: angst but not really, mj being a really cool bad bitch, life lessons from michelle jones, peter moving on, endgame spoilers? but i know you've seen the masterpiece already, mj cursing a lot like a lot.

author’s note: y’all it’s been soo long since i wrote something and this idea popped inside my mind while watching infinity war for the hundredth time, and i just can’t help myself!!!! though to warn y’all, i’m actually not that proud with the outcome of this one, it felt like something is not right, like something is missing or whatnot. and if there’s probably a fic i wrote in which i disliked, this will be it.

a handsome god trying to invade new york is bullshit, a malfunctioned artifical intelligence trying to take over the world is too much. but a purple alien named thanos erasing half the population in your planet is full of shit. the world is a crazy place indeed, you thought you guys have enough, that everything is being handled with care, for fuck’s sake earth has avengers. but turns out, even the earth’s mightiest heroes can’t stop nor survive the snap.

everything happened so fast, one second every student in your university is standing happily inside the gymnasium as they awaited the announcement about the upcoming ball, then the speaker suddenly turned into dust, she fades away like she was nothing, like a bubble, turned into ash. then everyone panicked including you, you just saw a person turned into dust before your eyes, of course you will panic

then you stood up from your seat, taking your boyfriend peter with you as you both decided to run for the exit, then it happened to everyone too. they also started turning dust

then it was your turn.

you didn't really know how it was your turn, you just sensed it that you will fade away just like them, so you did what common teenagers would do. you clung in your boyfriend once you felt the tingling sensation inside your body. it was a scary feeling, and for some reasons the numb pain started fading away, like it find some way to connect with your brain to tell it that there's nothing wrong when technically, everything is wrong. like it was convincing your mind that you don't feel anything. you have never been scared like that before

peter was by your side when that happened, holding you tightly on his arms as if he's trying to stop you from leaving. but nothing stopped the snap, no one manage to stop the blip. not even the earth's mightiest heroes.

and now you're back, sitting alone on the bench with no peter by your side, you stood up from the bench seeing mj looking at her hands weirdly, only half the students inside the gym remains and the speaker on the front, the other half? your peter? they're not here.

rushing towards the tan lady, you approach her with your hear beating faster "mj!" she look up from her hands, eyebrows furrowed and seemingly as confuse as you are

"y/n?" she stood up before you can even reach her sit "what the fuck just happened?" she look around as well, everyone started reaching for their devices, calling their family to make sure they're safe and okay, some even rush towards the exit while some started crying

"i have no idea." you pursed your lips, you and mj are never close. you always get insecure because of the tall girl, thinking that she may have a thing for peter but she always assure you that she don't date boys, she prefer girls. so standing in front of her, let alone talking to her is still awkward for you, but there's no time for that

"did you just came back as well?" she asked you, reaching for her bag and hanging it around her shoulder, you nodded your head "i was actually wondering where peter was. . ." your eyes widen, she might think you don't care about anything but peter, or maybe she will think your ignorant because even after what happened, even if there's a lot to be concern about, you still ask for your boyfriend first "i mean, everyone, i was wondering where half of the students are."

"yeah, me neither." she grabbed her phone from inside her bag, planning to text her parents just like everybody else when she suddenly caught a glimpse of the date on her lockscreen "oh shit!"

your eyes widen "what? what is it?" even though you two were never close and you felt like overstepping a line, putting your nose in her business. you can't help but get curioused because of the expression written all over her face

"what the fuck is this." she showed you her phone and there you saw a 2023 instead of 2019, your eyes also widen in realization reaching for your phone as well and seeing the same thing in your lock screen, you even saw a couple of text and calls from your parents and friends five years ago

five years ago

what the fuck

you licked your lips, about to call your mom when you heard someone speak from behind you and mj "y/n?" the voice is familiar, turning on your heels, you came in contact with a person no other than ned leeds, one of peter's friends.

mj also turn her head making ned switch his eyes from you to her "mj?" he asks, still can't believe what he's seeing. ned changes a lot even after just five minutes, he grew a beard, his hair looks so fresh from hair cut and his body is more lean than before, he looks older. weird

"ned! oh my god." you run towards him, jumping in his arms and hugging him tightly, he did the same closing his eyes in the process and praying that this is not a dream, not anymore, no. this has to be real, everyone has to come back, this has to be the reality.

"hey, man!" mj nodded her head at the man in front fo you, he still looks confuse but not as confuse as the pair "what happened here?"

his eyebrows furrowed "you don't know?" the way he said those words made your heart clench, what really is happening? and where's peter? if ned is here, then peter must be somewhere near, knowing that guy. him and ned are usually always together, even in your dates ned has to tag along, not that you mind. you enjoyed it most of the time

"what? what do you mean?" you look back at mj "we just came back, what happened? why do you look older? did you just came back as well?" you bombared him with question

he shakes his head "no, half of the population survived." your eyes widen, then if half the population survived, does that mean peter survive as well? or maye he's also part of the snap? but where is he. you look back at your seat not long ago, expecting your partner to pop our of nowhere. but there's none, no peter.

"while the other half fade away?" mj continued or more like, asked.

"y-yeah." he nodded "it's been five years." so that's why it's year 2023 and not 2019? but how, how could it happened? why? who did this? you can't help bur ask yourself

"yeah, that answers our question." the curly brunette beside you spoke, referring to what you both just witness a while ago. biting your lip, you fidget with your fingers as you find the right time to ask him a question

"what are you doing here if it's been five years?" you questioned

"i helped my cousin get enrolled, then everyone just. . . just started to come back and i think of going here to see if both of you came back as well." he answers softly

you slightly smiled at him "w-where's. . . where's peter?" you saw how ned's body froze, how almost all the blood in his face dissapeared by your question, like he's suddenly afraid of something. his happy and chill personality faded just like the snap

"p-peter? y-yeah uhm." he clears his throat, you look down on his fingers and unexpectedly saw a ring in one of them

"you're married?" both you and mj said in unison, he look down on his hands as well before nodding

"yeah, betty and i you know. we made it work, aftee graduating i decided to take our relationship in another level." his eyes sparkles with joy as he tells you the news "she's. she's actually pregnant, two months."

"congratulations." you and mj both said

"and peter, uhm. he now lives in, he no longer lives with aunt may and he also. . . he's not an avenger anymore." you saw how ned had a hard time on telling you what he knows, the ned you knew not long ago is gone, ned usually knows how to compose himself immideately and maybe that's one of the reasons why him and peter fits each other perfectly, your boyfriend is an akward person, a weird one and he always stumble upon his words, while ned is more composed and often helped him.

"wait, what?" michelle gasp

while you stayed still, confusion erupts in your mind. how did it happened? why did peter left the avengers? he always love helping people, finding comfort in swinging around queens and fighting for those who cannot fight, and being an avenger? it's his dream, so why would he turn his back on a life he always wanted to have?

at this moment, you felt like you never knew peter anymore, or ned, he changes so much and you wish peter is still the same after five years even though you know it's impossible, many things can happen in those years, many things can change.

"yeah, after. you know, he got anxiety after the blip, he really had a hard time with keeping up so, uhm. yeah."

"wait, i don't understand a single thing." mj speak once again, trying to make the situation clear

you saw how ned gulped, as if he's about to spill the biggest tea there is "he just, shit happens. you know? and people change, how they see life, their perspective and peter. well, peter. he, he change. he's grown up now."

"like, how grown up?" did he move on?

"i can't tell you that, i'm sorry but he lives in." then he started tellng you the adress which you gladly wrote down on your phone with shaking fingers, imagining how peter would seeing you after five years, would he be happy, sad? or maybe he moved on?

god you don't want to think about it, peter moving on from his relationship with you? can that really happen? can peter really do that to you? no, no. peter won't do that, maybe ned is right. he changed but he's still peter, you refuse to believe that peter forgot about you, that he replaced you after being a part of the blip, because if tables have turned? if peter is the one who has been snapped and you're the one who survived? you don't think you can forget him or move on.

the trio was about to continue keeping up, but ned's phone started to ring and you saw a picture of a woman on the screen "sorry, wife calling." he turn his back on you quickly answering the phone while you and mj just nodded your head, giving him a chance to answer the line

"i always knew peter is a freak." she whispered beside you, trying to make the mood better as she started to see the doubt in your eyes "but a grown man? come on, just because he grow up and finally became a man doesn't mean he has to forget stuffs, you know?"

you slightly smile at her, nodding your head in agreement "you're right."

"anyways, i got to call my dad. you call your family too, they must be worried and confused. all this shit is probably all overt the news by now."

***

two days passed after you came back from the blip, everything you thought you knew? gone. it's like you never existed in the first place and you had a hard time keeping up, keeping up with the world you once knew. your parents on the other hand, they are more understanding than ever, letting you stay lock up in your room so you can think but occasionally asking you if you want to go on a family vacation but you told them you have to fix yourself first. your parents reaction when you came back is priceless especially your mom, she almost didn't want to let you go after embracing you if it weren't for your dad and you saw the longing in their eyes.

of course, their only daughter went missing five years ago then came back as if nothing happened.

you tried to read as many newspaper as you could, news from the last five years, trying to blend in once again. you felt sick thinking about the new society you are now stepping on. but even after those things, you have mj with you and you two became close, facetime here, facetime there. helping each other stood back up from their feet.

two days later, that's when you decided to visit peter, two days of dreaming about the guy, imagining what his reaction would be if you showed up in his door step, and a part of you wished you didn't came back after what you saw, after what you learned.

the house that ned told you was huge, it's white and there's a mailbox standing outside with a name 'parker' in it, it's more like a family house, a car on the garage and a small bike right beside it, a small bike? why does peter have a small bike on his house?

and if you weren't that stupid, you're going to be able to put the pieces together, the bike, the house, the mailbox, ned seeming like he's nervous about something. it all made sense especially when you knock on the door and it was opened by the one and only liz allen. the small bump on her stomach also didn't go unnoticable by you, and the small boy running around from the inside looking like you're boyfriend? yeah, fuck. you get it. he moved on, what else can you do?

nonetheless, she invited you in and you could have said no, but you didn't. there's a lot of question you want to ask peter, why? and how? but you're not going to blame him because of the decision he made. you fully understand it, that maybe his feelings for liz didn't really fade away just like he told you when you two started dating, or maybe he forgot about you. five years is a long road

and that's how you saw yourself inside the kitchen with peter sitting in front of you, the house smelled like home, like love, like family. his family, her family. liz was upstairs trying to give the both of you a time to talk while their son went out to play with some kids outside.

"you're married?" you asked, although it's obvious. you still want it to come out from his mouth. your voice came out like a whisper but you know he heard it, he only nodded his head in response, not knowing what else to say.

"you left me for her." you said once again

and that's when he spoke back "i didn't left you, you left me." his voice is deeper than before, more manly and he didn't stumble upon his words just like before, he looks like be know exactly what he's doing, what he's saying.

he's not the peter you once knew anymore, just like everybody else.

"are you blaming me for what happened?" you whispered shouted, not wanting liz to hear your conversation even though you know that peter will tell her later once you got out

"i'm not blaming anything on you, i'm just trying to explain that i'm not the one who fades away to dust, who left me with nothing for five years. what do you expect me to do?"

"i expect you to wait for me, i came back didn't i?" you saw how your vision started to get blurry, telling you that any time soon a tears will fell from your eyes.

"i waited for you but i lose hope."

"how could you do this to me?" and that's when a single tear drop from your eyes, then another. but you didn't do anything to stop it

"how could i? can you put yourself in my position for once? i was left with nothing for the past five years! i have nothing, tony was a part of the snap, may and i fell apart because all this shit! and liz? she's just, she's there with me. she stood by my side during those times and neither of us can't help it." and if your heart broke after finding out that peter moved on, now it's being shredded to pieces especially after what he just told you

"you find comfort in another woman."

"don't pretend like you will do this differently if i were the one who got snapped." you drop your palms on the table causing it to make a loud thump

"don't you there turn the tables, because if i were the one who survived and you're the one who does not. i will still wait for you no matter how fucked up everything is." you said angrily "did you ever loved me? or did you just used me to get over her? to make her jealous?"

"don't fucking change the subject." that's the first time he ever cursed in front of you, in those eight months of you two dating, no matter the situation, he never cursed or yell at you. yeah you fight often times but it didn't come this far, no yelling, no cursing, just a calm fight.

you wanted to be selfish, to steal peter away from liz just like how she teal him away from you. but you couldn't, you can't even think about it. you don't want to be the person, the woman who stole their dad away from them, you don't want their child to grew up without a dad, to grew up longing for a father.

"look, i know it's hard but believe me or not. i loved you." he said softly this time "but i have a family now, a family to take care of, a children to look after and none of this can bring back the past, none of this can bring both of us together just like before. you have to understand the situation that none of this is inevitable, maybe we're not meant for each other, maybe this is meant to happened, what matters right now is you're back and i have the family i always wanted, maybe not with you. but i'm happy now."

he held your hands from the table, soothing it gently to calm you down "i loved you, and i still do until now but not as much as i love her."

"you don't know how many men will kill just to be with you, you deserve beter and i wish you all the happiness in this world." he added, you look down on his hands, biting your shaking lips as you refuse to believe everything he told you

everything is just too much, it happened so fast. that your brain could not even keep up, but you have to accept the truth, the truth that the both of you are no longer the couple you were used to be. that he moved on and you must do the same

***

you lay down, facing the ceiling before sighing. even after two weeks, fourteen days, even after all those minutes passed you can't seem to get used to the world you were in right now. you're starting to drift away from your parents, not liking to go out and instead you prefer to self isolate yourself inside your room. but no one can blame you for your actions, it's hard. keeping up with everything, it's hard facing complicated things like this especially because peter is not by your side unlike before.

and for once, you just wanted to. . . you just want everything to stop for a while. everything, just. just to give you time to understand

if only it weren't for the snap, or what everyone prefer to call that 'thing'. if it weren't for that, then maybe you already graduated by now, maybe you're the one who's married with peter instead of liz. maybe

"i thought that if i acted like it didn't matter. it wouldn't." you said, eyes still focused on the ceiling as you tried to think about everything that had happened in the past ever since you came back from the ash

mj, who's quietly reading a book on the sofa inside your room decided to join you in your comfy bed, laying beside you and facing the white and boring ceiling as well. unlike you, mj asked for help. she started seeing a therapist to help her get better and to guide her in this journey where she's trying to fit in once again.

but you? you prefer to be alone no matter how many times your parents tried to talk to you or asked you if you need help, even if they kept their arms open for you, even if every person who survived the snap kept their arms wide open for those who didn't. you can't bring yourself to do it, to ask for help like mj. unlike you, mj handled all the problems like a champion, you never see any discomfort in her eyes ever since you came back. yeah maybe the first day, you saw how scared she was but now? she's getting better while you felt like you're getting worse.

you drift away from your parents, never answered or check your phone, you completely shut down peter and liz no matter how many times they tried to invite you like when their son celebrated his birth day. but you see yourself getting closer to mj

which is. weird

you never see it coming,

you never see any of this coming.

"it's okay not to be okay, you know?" she mumbled from beside you. closing her book and fixing her eyeglasses

"shit happens, we get sad, stress, depress, you name it. and that's okay, that's normal. everybody felt that too." she added

from the ceiling, you turn your body to face her before asking her a question "how did you do it?" she seemed taken a back but manages to compose herself right away

putting her other hands behind her head, she licked her lips before answering your question "how did i do it? i didn't do no such thing." it was a whisper, but because of the silence evaporating inside your room you manage to hear every letter that came out of her mouth

"i was scared, afraid after all this shit you know? and it made me think that feeling those things, that self isolating myself or being sad or what the fuck will not make anything better." she told you "like, if i cry in my room because i felt left out, will that make anything better? no right? if i stay in my room and get so emotional, will that bring back the past? will the pain bring back everything? no, that's why instead of being like the others, instead of following what i feel, instead of letting my fear take over. i just told them to fuck off, i go out, tried understanding the world more, have fun, be with my loved ones, forget the fact that i became an ash. because no matter how sad you feel, or how depress you've become. the world will not stop spinning for you, and because of that. might as well as spin with the world, you know what i'm saying?"

from her laying position, mj sat up completely facing you and holding your hand in hers "i know you're having a hard time, we all are. but don't forget that you're not alone in this. you don't have to be, you don't have to face all this shit alone because i'm here for you, your parents, your friends, peter. maybe not in the way you want him to be, but all of us will be here for you." she said sincerely

"i know it's tough, and it's probably much more harder in your case because of peter. but things aren't always going to be there, you know? nothing is permanent. i can't be sitting here with you forever because i have to go home or else my dad will probably burst out." you laughed at her humor "but i'm serious, sometimes everything is not meant to be that way. and i think that's what makes life special, nothing is permanent, because of that life teaches us how to cherish every moment."

"avengers fought with their dying breath just to give us a second chance, and i'm glad they did. we were all given a second chance to live in this world and i don't want to waste that."

that's when you realized how lucky you are, she's right. you were given a second chance, a second chance to live, to be happy. avengers bled for this, for all of you to return. you should live your life to the fullest, and that's what you're about to do

peter is one of the best things that ever happened to you, maybe he's not with you until the end but at least you manage to be with him and to feel the love from spiderman in the past.

maybe in some other life, in a distant universe, in an unknown world, in a small city, you and peter have your little love story going on, and you both are living there your happily ever after.

disclaimer: all publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. the original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. the author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

#peter parker fluff #peter parker angst #peter parker imagine #peter parker smut #peter parker #tom holland angst #tom holland fluff #tom holland smut #tom holland imagine #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland #marvel

[saebyeog-i]

bitter brews (i) | syh

“Johnny laughed again, eyes crinkling at the sides. Your mind wandered briefly to a half formed thought about how endearing that was. “Maybe so, but despite your efforts to make me an enemy, I think you’re actually a really good person. You even guessed my favorite coffee drink, so that has to count for something.””

genre | not quite a coffeeshop!au, (mild)slow burn, this thought about being an adversaries to lovers fic for six minutes

rating/warnings | a stupid amount of exposition about coffee plants, catch me throwing in the random recipes that have been my go-to for cooking during quarantine, is this angsty?, discussions of mental health issues {see tags for details}, overall mature content/themes {foul language, alcohol consumption, references & discussion of masturbation, awkward boners, future smut}, some soft moments, and some good ol’ tooth rotting waxing poetic nonsense fluff. Don’t expect too much out of this I just got tired of editing this part so I’m finally posting it.

word count | 19.6k (I meant for this to be a super long one-shot but it’s turning into a story in parts for the sake of ratings w h o o p s)

pairing | Johnny Seo x fem reader

writing playlist | Egotistic - Mamamoo, Black Swan - BTS, Sober - HYO, I Blame On You - Taeyeon, Heartbeat - BTS, Close to Me (Red Velvet Remix) - Ellie Goulding feat. Red Velvet

—

“So, what you mean to say is… you’re not coming? Like, at all?”

The bright yellow plastic of the rotary phone was slightly cool against your overheating skin, which was constantly veiled in a thin layer of sweat whenever you stayed on the farm property instead of the main house on the opposite side of the island. It was the first week of May, which meant it was already humid again. If it wasn’t the time for the daily afternoon rain showers, it might as well have felt like it was raining with how saturated the air was.

“I’m sorry, Bean, I just can’t get on a plane right now. I thought it would be fine it we stretched out the time between flights, but all my doctors are saying I need to just stay here between now and the birth, so…”

Your sister’s voice trailed off and you had to wait for a moment to be sure it wasn’t the poor reception for the phone call running across the four thousand miles that separated you— the four thousand miles that would continue to separate you for the rest of the summer.

You exhaled and twirled the aged spiral phone cord that could barely hold its shape around your index finger, staring at the concrete floor and scrunching your toes. “Well, I’m already here, obviously… do you… you want me to stay here then? Take care of stuff?” You asked hesitantly, already having a feeling of what the answer would be.

A crackly sigh of relief came through the other line. “Little Bean, you are the best, Yunho was worried about asking you to stay and man the farm for the summer harvest but I knew you would just offer! You’re the best like that, you know?” You gritted your teeth and forced a smile through, even though no one was there to witness it. “Okay, so we’ll ship out the supplies in the next few days. Yunho is gonna email you a list of delivery dates of materials for the projects he had planned for the summer and a few contractor contacts…”

Her voice warbled on, and you could only nod your head and vocalize an ‘mhmm’ every so often, listening to her rattle off instructions and information that you knew would be sent in an email too. You’d been looking forward to spending the summer with her— you hadn’t gotten a proper chance to visit for more than a weekend since she and Yunho had gotten married about two years ago— but it turned out this wouldn’t be it. You couldn’t blame her though; she was approaching the third trimester of her pregnancy. You’d do anything for her, even this, even isolating yourself on a farm for four months. Alone.

Not exactly the leave of absence you’d been hoping for from work, but it would have to do.

✧ ✧ ✧

This was supposed to be a vacation. A break. Some much needed time off, away from your job, your career, and your “normal” life. You told yourself over and over again you were looking forward to it. And besides, it would all be worth it, because of all the time you’d get to spend with your sister after so long.

And then she had to betray you by going and getting fucking knocked up, with twins no less.

Fucking happily married couples with their god damn healthy ass sex lives and family planning and wanting to raise children. What the fuck was that all about?

It had been so long since your last vacation. Years, in fact. So long, you had over two months of paid time off accrued at work, and back at New Years you’d made the preliminary plans to spend a month on the farm in Hawaii with her, bonding and just relaxing. Sure, it would require some manual labor for the business here and there, but mostly just to rest.

What a joke that turned out to be.

The farm in Hawaii. You know, the coffee farm your brother in law bought four years ago on a dare from your sister, because he said he could totally pull it off as a side hustle, and she said he wouldn’t be able to? Yeah, that one. Fast forward to today and the side hustle became a full fledged passion that roped in a good amount of the family into the business. Siblings, cousins, parents, all involved in different aspects of package design, social media marketing, distribution and wholesale— everyone except you, who stuck with your soul sucking job in advertising, the same industry your brother in law had since left behind.

The farm and roasting wasn’t an overnight success by any means, but in the last year the brand had really taken off in the craft coffee scene. After all, Kona coffee was well sought after, and one could only claim the name ‘Kona’ if it was grown on the same two thousand or so acres of land on Hawaii’s big island. You know, the same area of land you were living on for the remainder of the summer?

Right. The whole summer.

It was just supposed to be the month of May. And then it turned into May and some of June, when you’d asked your sister to make more concrete plans, and she kept brushing it off. And then the week before you actually got off the plane, you hadn’t booked the return ticket, because you were still waiting for her answer. And then the phone call, and now, this was… indefinite? No, that was being too dramatic; if anything, it would be up through the birth. Based on the number of projects Yunho had planned for the farm, through the remainder of the summer was how long everything would take. Just you and a little over five acres of land and the summer heat. The thought of an extended isolation had your breath catching in your throat, but the last thing you wanted to do was complain or call for help. Stubborn and proud, you wouldn’t have made the offer to stay if you didn’t mean it, if you didn’t think you could handle it. There was no way you were backing out now.

When Yunho had first bought the farm, it had been a rough first few years of refining the coffee plants that had been on the land and uncared for for a number of years, but the last two summers had provided a steady increase in the harvest yield. There was a small farmhouse on the property, with two small bedrooms, a shower, and a small kitchen and living area. A few miles down the coast was the nicer, newer condo that the business had bought, a multi-bedroom unit with some better amenities for when more of your family wanted to visit. It felt weird spending time there— it was too nice, too clean, and quite frankly you had enough to keep yourself busy with on the farm property, you’d rather not have to spend time driving back and forth every day. So you opted to spend most of your nights sleeping here, even though it meant only ceiling fans and no air conditioning.

The farmhouse had very shitty, very limited wifi and a grand total of three electrical outlets outside of what was used to power the oven and refrigerator. One of those outlets was, of course, dedicated to an espresso machine on the kitchen counter, which you had gotten acquainted with over the last two weeks. It was an older model and a little temperamental (the one at the condo was much nicer), but it was still from a decent manufacturer, and you could still use it to pulled a decent shot.

Most of the time you worked in silence, and most of the time you were never too aware of how much time had passed, other than when the sun went down and it was suddenly dark out. You weren’t always this absent minded, you swore— maybe it was a byproduct of being alone for so long—

A loud, high pitched whine filled your ears, followed by some scratching at the door that lead to the lanai outside. You sighed, standing up from the kitchen table and walking over to face the monster that had made it.

“What? What do you want now?”

Staring back at you from the the other side of the screen door was what you’d affectionally referred to as The Thirty-Three Pound Menace— the medium sized stray dog that your brother-in-law so conveniently forgot to mention had been living on the farm for the last few months. It had been waiting outside the farmhouse when you first arrived, and you’d learned from the neighbors that Yunho had taken a liking to the stray and had arranged for them to feed it in his absence. But now that you were here, taking care of the dog was added to your list of daily chores. It seemed to not want to leave the farm property unless actively accompanied by you, with the assurance that you’d be bringing it back with you.

With a roll of your eyes you hip checked the door open just enough to let the dog inside the house. It circled you several times, sniffing at your knees before sitting and panting, staring up at you expectantly. In the two weeks you’d been here, the majority of your conversations were between you and this, a being that couldn’t talk back. Maybe you liked it that way. “What, dinner? Fine, fine,” you grumbled, shuffling to the cabinet and pulling out a can of wet food.

Your meals had consisted of relatively simple dishes, but today you were cranky at the confirmation that your summer was not going to go as planned. Tonight’s dinner featured a bowl of cereal and a coffee mug full of cold white wine.

You ate in silence. You drank in silence. The only noise came from the hum of the ceiling fan overhead, and the occasional sound of the dog, cleaning its paws and laying by your feet protectively. Why it seemed so determined to win over your affection, you had no idea.

After sitting in silence with only your thoughts and the now sleeping dog to keep you company for what felt like hours and downing a second mug full of wine, you found yourself letting out a loud yell, startling the dog and waking it. In a fury, you pulled out the laptop you had for the sole purpose of checking once a day for emails from Yunho and connected it to the shitty, sub-par wifi with just enough patience to navigate to an airline’s website and search flights back to the states. You were looking for the cheapest, most reasonable one you could find. After all of five minutes of research and a quick round on mental math, you clicked on a date and hit the ‘book now’ button before you could second guess yourself, slamming the computer shut once the payment went through and shoving it away from you across the table.

“September 10th,” you grumbled out loud for only you and the dog to hear. Standing from the chair, the legs scraping loudly against the floor, you crossed the room and stopped in front of the wall calendar your sister had put up the last time she’d visited the farm just after New Years. You lifted a few pages and flipped forward to the month of September. Red marker in hand, you found the date and circled it rather aggressively, several times over. You looked down at the dog, watching you patiently with its head tilted. “You got that? I’m getting off this fucking island on September 10th.”

✧ ✧ ✧

The day your life fell apart came twelve days later just before nine in the morning.

Mondays were the delivery day, that’s what Yunho had laid out in his instructional emails to you. Your only source of personal transportation was an older jeep, one you didn’t enjoy driving, given that it had no top and needed some mechanical work done. So you’d made arrangements and had your groceries delivered on Monday mornings, buying mostly direct from another farm on the other side of the island, and they were always kind enough to act as the courier for whatever additional miscellaneous supplies you’d request, regardless of where they’d have to go to procure them.

There was a winding driveway that lead up to the house from the main road, and a larger, wider drive up a less steep hillside for larger vehicles for delivery. You were fully expecting the truck that lumbered up the delivery road and came to a stop just outside the barn which housed the massive coffee roaster and stored most of the processed green beans from harvest. Even though it had only been three weeks, there was a routine that had slowly been settling into place: the sound of the truck coming to a stop riled up the dog, the dog came running from wherever and started barking, you’d get your groceries and any other assorted items, the dog would get a treat because your delivery boy had a soft spot for the creature, and you’d pay for your goods. “Hey Jin,” you called out over the barking from the front of the barn, hands currently full with a sack of processed coffee beans you’d hoisted over your shoulder. “You can just leave the groceries on the porch, I’ll put them inside in a few. Did you manage to get me the bags of fertilizer and some wood stakes?” A loud thud sounded as you dropped the bag to its resting place on the concrete floor.

“I mean, I can go put these inside if that’s easier. And yeah, there’s ten bags to get us started, we can have more delivered next week if you still need ‘em.”

You whipped around to face whoever had just spoken, because that voice was most certainly not Jin.

He was tall like Jin, had wide shoulders like Jin, and his hair was kept just a bit long and looked ridiculously shiny and soft and like you could run your fingers through it like Jin’s. It was a lighter brown with some honeyed highlights running through it, compared to the dark brown almost black of Jin’s. You tensed, seeing him carrying a brown paper bag with a loaf of bread and the leafy green tops of carrots sticking out the top. He wasn’t looking at you, rather, he was far too occupied with bending down slightly and scratching behind the ear of the dog who was currently whining and wagging its tail at his feet. Some guard dog it was.

Without a second thought, you reached for the first sharp object you could find, which happened to be the box cutter you used to cut open the burlap bags the beans came back from the processing plant in. “You’re not Jin,” you said tersely, holding the utility knife by your hip defensively.

“Chill out killer, he’s harmless,” a more familiar voice called. Seokjin, your regular delivery driver whose family owned the farm you bought directly from, came into view carrying another two bags of produce and a small pile of envelopes. “Picked up your mail on my way up, the box was practically overflowing. Do you ever check that thing?” You’d first met Jin two years ago when you’d come to visit your sister and Yunho for a long weekend. He’d become a good friend of Yunho’s and was one of the people who would take turns feeding the dog when no one else was here.

Ignoring the unknown man, you relaxed your shoulders slightly and placed the knife down on the table behind you. “Thanks,” you grumbled, taking the small pile of letters from him. Admittedly, you hadn’t checked the mailbox since the day after you’d arrived on the farm, mostly out of sloth and spite. You sifted through the letters— mostly junk mail, with a few bills and notices relating to the business. You put those in front so you could look through them later, when you’d finished the physical work for the day. You tore one envelope open in particular when you noticed it was addressed directly to you and had your sister and Yunho’s Illinois address in the upper corner. It was a letter postmarked from two weeks ago, which struck you as odd, because what the hell would he bother writing in a letter that he couldn’t just send you in an email or a text or a phone call? You started reading aloud softly to yourself.

“‘My Dearest Bean… First of all I want to apologize for the change in plans, but with your sister’s condition her doctors just don’t recommend her traveling,’ God, he’s so dramatic she’s not terminally ill she’s just pregnant. Blah blah blah, I don’t care, you’re full of absolute shite, Yunho,” you began skimming through his lengthy pre amble, looking for the purpose behind the note. Without reading the middle you flipped the stationary paper over to see his handwriting covered the entire back of the page, too. “God, he’s so long winded. Oh, here we go, the very end— ‘I promise we’ll make it up to you, thank you for running the farm and taking care of Puppy, please be nice to Johnny and treat him well, he seems like a good kid.” You stared at the words written on the paper and looked up at Jin. “Who the fuck is Johnny?”

The man next to him cleared his throat and held his hand up. “Johnny! I’m uh, that’s me. You must be _____— I’ve heard a lot about you from Yunho! I’m Johnny Seo, it’s nice to meet you,” he said with a smile, reaching a hand out.

You eyed it but made no move to reciprocate the action. “Cool. You know Yunho. Lots of people know Yunho, he’s a huge fucking flirt, social butterfly of the century, the man never shuts up. Why should I be nice to you?”

He shifted on his feet and his outstretched hand retreated. “Oh. Uh. I’m uh, here for the summer,” he explained, sounding almost confused. “Didn’t— didn’t Yunho tell you?”

Your eyes bugged out and you looked over to Jin. “Jin who the fuck is this and why is he on my farm?” You whispered.

Your friend laughed. “You read the end of Yunho’s letter. I’m sure if you read the whole thing it would explain more. This is Johnny, and he’s here for the summer. He’s gonna help you out! I know the list of all the projects you need to finish this summer is lengthy, and plus look at the guy, he’s jacked! You could use the muscle for manual labor. More work for him, less for you, right? And look, the poor dog you refuse to give a name to even likes him!” Jin gestured comically at Johnny. You looked over, sizing him up some— Jin wasn’t wrong. The stranger was muscular on top of being tall, and under the capped sleeves of his tee shirt you saw his arms that looked the size of your head. The dog was still circling him, sniffing and begging for attention.

Johnny tried smiling again. “Yunho mentioned there was a lot of construction type work to do. I uh, had nothing else planned so he said I could stay on the farm for the summer and work in exchange for food and a place to sleep. I take it he uh, didn’t run that by you first, did he?”

Your grip on the papers in hand tightened and you felt your jaw tense involuntarily. “No, he managed to not mention that once to me. How did you even get here?” You hissed back.

“I picked him up at the airport this morning,” Jin answered calmly, “Yunho gave me a buzz a few days ago to ask if I could bring him here with this week’s groceries.”

“So he managed to arrange for him to get on a plane and secure transportation to the farm but couldn’t be bothered to call me and let me know?”

Jin only laughed, his eyes crinkling. “I’m pretty sure he knows you well enough by now to know that this would have been your reaction whatever way he told you.” Despite the kinship you’d felt growing between the two of you, Jin was Yunho’s friend first, and it only made sense that his allegiance would be to him first. Of course he’d side with Yunho on this matter. “And yes, like Johnny said I did bring a bundle of plant stakes and ten bags of fertilizer— they’re in the back of the truck bed.”

“Oh, I could get those—” Johnny started, moving to step towards the truck.

You could barely think straight. First they bailed on you unexpectedly to spend the summer on the farm alone. That was fine— you’d gotten that through your head, and had come to terms with that. But suddenly springing a plus one on you, without your consent? Absolutely the fuck not.

“Yeah. Don’t need help. Thanks,” you spat, grabbing the bags of groceries from him and brushing past, stomping your way back to the farmhouse.

Johnny stood frozen for a moment before stammering, looking from Jin to your retreating figure and back again. “I should— I should talk to her, right? Or do I—”

“Whoa, don’t think too hard there handsome, I can smell wood burning. Don’t stress about it. She’s just a little… touchy. Let me talk to her,” Jin patted Johnny on the back before heading up the path to the farmhouse after you.

You’d stormed into the house and slammed the groceries down on the counter and let out a screech of rage before picking up the receiver of the yellow rotary phone and dialing. Tapping you foot incessantly, you waited as it rang.

“He-llo~?” The singsong voice that came through the other end was far too amused with itself, more so than usual, and that’s how you knew he knew why you were calling.

“Jung Yunho you better be thankful you knocked up my sister because if it weren’t for the babies in her womb I would fly myself across the Pacific and flay you alive,” you seethed through gritted teeth.

In true unbothered fashion, your brother in law only laughed at your threat. “Ah, so I take it your employee has arrived safely! I’ll have to thank Seokjin for getting him from the airport. Can you give the Kims a pound of the special medium roast as a token of my gratitude?”

“No!” You yelled back, “No! I will not! I’m already beyond frustrated that I’m on this island alone for the entire summer, I’m doing this as a favor because we’re family! I’m not your slave, Yunho! Where was my warning, huh? When were you going to ask if I was okay with you sending some stranger to live in the same house as me, huh?!”

The familiar ache in your chest started to swell, and breathing became difficult. ‘Not now,’ you thought bitterly, ‘Please not right now-’

You curled your free hand into a fist and pressed your nails into your palm, hard, grounding yourself. Yunho’s voice on the phone blurred out and by the time his words started making sense again, you’d already missed what he’d been saying. “I’m not saying you have to like the kid, just show him some hospitality, yeah? You just said it yourself, you didn’t want to be alone this summer, and now you won’t be. I know you’re a good cook so that’s why I told him food would be included. Don’t worry, I’ve already sent some pre-payments to the Kims, so your grocery orders are doubled for the rest of the summer.” His voice went quiet for a second. You rubbed at your temple in frustration, squinting your eyes shut and forcing the mere thought of tears deep back into the recesses of your brain. “Bean? You still there?”

“Don’t get all pretend concerned, Yunho. And stop using my childhood nickname any time you want something from me.” Your voice was quieter now, the intensity of your emotions subsiding, but the betrayal you felt still running strong. “Fine. I’ll tolerate him. But there better be a case of wine in next week’s groceries to make this bearable.”

“Done and done! You’re gonna love him Bean, he’s really great. He’ll be good company.” The continued use of your childhood nickname from anyone other than your sister always gave you pause.

“I said tolerate not befriend. There’s a difference,” you clarified quickly. A knock at the door startled you, and you jumped and looked to see Jin standing by the front door, a roll of wooden stakes under his arm. You rolled your eyes and waved your arm to shoo him away, pointing at the phone pressed to your ear. “Look, Yunho, I don’t know what you’re hoping to see me get out of this, but if he drives me insane I can’t promise that he’ll walk away from this unscathed.”

His laugh echoed through the receiver and reverberated against your skin. “I just think it would do you some good to have some human interaction, that’s all. Your sister too. She says hi, by the way,” he added softly, “And so do the little ones.”

You scoffed. Yunho always brought up your sister as a way of diffusing your temper. He knew it would always work. “They’re still in embryonic fluid, they can’t talk and they certainly don’t have cognitive function.” Sometimes you wondered if even Yunho had that with the wild ideas that went through his mind.

“Ever the romantic, you are. You know, soon they’ll be able to think! And they’ll be thinking of their favorite auntie, and how much they can’t wait to meet her! So she can’t be arrested for murder between now and when they’re born, because babies can’t go to prison!”

“I’m telling your sister you said that,” you challenged. With an exhale, you did your best to let go of the frustration and tension inside and politely ended the phone call. You were trying to clear your head and collect yourself before heading back outside when you heard a yell that sounded all too much like Jin’s voice.

“What fresh hell—” you started, shuffling back outside in the direction of the commotion where you saw Jin, somewhat struggling under the weight of two bags of fertilizer, and Johnny, now with a baseball cap turned backwards on his head, easily hoisting a stack of four bags without slouching.  

Your eyebrow ticked up upon the realization that it was almost seventy pounds that he was slinging around like it was nothing. “Anywhere specific you want these?” He asked innocently, looking up at where you stood on the lanai just outside the door. You almost cursed him out when he blinked at you twice.

You pointed your left arm down the hill, the opposite direction of the way to the barn. “Shed. Next to the vegetable garden.” You wrinkled your nose at him. “And lose the hat. Or at least don’t wear it backwards. Makes you look like an ass.”

Johnny’s mouth hung open for a moment before he hummed and winked. “You got it, Boss! Come on handsome, if you can carry those good looks you can carry some dirt,” he called back to Jin, who was currently grumbling about how manual labor wasn’t a part of his delivery arrangement.

The hairs on your arm stood up on edge as you watched Johnny laugh deeply as he ambled his way in the direction you’d pointed. The thirty three pound menace next to you whined and wagged its tail, panting as it went from watching you to watching Johnny’s retreating figure. You looked down and made eye contact. “If I survive this, I’m going to kill Yunho.”

✧ ✧ ✧

There was no case of wine in the grocery deliveries the following week. The reasoning Yunho gave was that per Jin’s investigation, the liquor stores were all out of your favorite wine, so there was no point in sending you a sub par alternative. It was absolute crap, but you had better things to do than chew out your brother in law over the phone. Took way more energy than it was worth.

So far, Johnny was making good on his word and earning his keep. At first, you’d tried avoiding him as much as possible, intentionally waking up hours ahead of him and starting your day when the sun rose. You never made much noise in the mornings, the loudest thing you did was make coffee, and lately you’d opted for a pour over versus pulling shots of espresso. You weren’t personally one for breakfast, choosing just coffee and maybe a piece of fruit instead. This morning you felt a little hungrier than usual, so you thought you’d get yourself a bowl of cereal. Peering into your pantry, you saw that on the shelf where there had been a stash of cereal boxes, there was now nothing.

“Where the fuck are my cocoa pebbles?” You swore in shock, not realizing you weren’t alone in the kitchen.

“Shit sorry, I ate the last of those yesterday.”

You whirled around to see Johnny, still seemingly half asleep and with some gnarly bedhead, yawning and rubbing at his eyes. His lips were so perfectly pouty, one small part of your brain almost thought he looked cute like this.

But no, he wasn’t cute, he was a thief— he’d stolen all of your cereal stash. “Did you seriously eat through four boxes in a week?” You asked incredulously.

“It was three and a quarter! And yeah I don’t know, I’m always hungry and just one bowl of cereal isn’t filling enough, so I usually have two, or three...” He mumbled, voice trailing off as he rubbed a hand behind his head sheepishly.

You snorted. And then a thought came across you. “Johnny,” you said calmly, the feeling of his name on your tongue foreign and strange. Was this the first time you’d addressed him by name since his arrival? You couldn’t remember. “Do you not know how to cook?”

He hummed thoughtfully for a second. “No-pe!” He popped the p sound in the word. How was he this cheerful, even first thing in the morning? “I mean, I can like, boil water and cook pasta and stuff like that. I think I successfully grilled pork belly once, though it was probably doused in too much oil and too many spices. My college experience was funded almost exclusively on instant dinners and takeout for two years, and then for the second half one of my roommates was an actual chef, so, no one was allowed in the kitchen ‘cept for him.”

“Honestly, I am shocked that you haven’t perished in some tragically strange idiotic accident yet,” you sighed and shuffled to the fridge, pulling out a carton of eggs and a pack of bacon. You grabbed a frying pan from the cabinet under the stove and clicked the burner on, reaching for the oil bottle that lived on the counter top and drizzling some in the pan.

Johnny shuffled closer to inspect what you were doing and let out a gasp of appreciation. “You’re making me eggs and bacon?”

“I’m making me eggs and bacon,” you corrected, “But I guess I’ll make enough for you too,” you said as you peeled the strips off the packaging and placed them into the pan with a sizzle. You reached for a few eggs and cracked four into the pan directly, cocked your head at the amount of food, and then grabbed two more eggs and added them in before taking a fork and scrambling them all together, adding salt and white pepper to the bubbling liquid. You glanced up at Johnny, still watching you, slightly curious. “I don’t trust you. You say you’re an adult but you eat like a teenage boy still. There’s never any leftovers.” After a few minutes you flipped the strips of bacon over and then quickly chopped up a green onion and scraped it onto the scramble just before the eggs finished cooking.

Johnny watched you the whole time, and you felt only slightly uneasy under his gaze. When you turned off the stove after plated your food and stepping away to pour yourself some coffee and he didn’t move, you gestured at the pan in a fashion as if to silently ask him ‘What?’

“Oh!” He gasped out lightly, springing into action and plating the food for himself. You hadn’t bothered to sit down at the table, instead holding the plate in front of you as you leaned against the counter and ate. Johnny followed your lead, taking a bite and groaning audibly in enjoyment at he chewed. He smiled and his eyes shone, almost sparkling. You watched him curiously for a moment before he mumbled out “Your cooking is really good! It uh, reminds me of my mom’s. She’s a great cook.”

You kept your lips tightly shut at the apparent compliment. “It’s just eggs, you weirdo. Finish up and do the dishes. When you’re done meet me by the shed. Today you’re stripping off the old paint and removing any of the rotting boards and disposing of them,” you instructed while placing your empty plate in the sink. His tasks for the day were the next phase in slowly rebuilding the dilapidated shed on the west side of the property to make it useful for storage of all the tools you used to tend to the fruit trees and vegetable garden nearby.

He flashed a smile at you and gave a mock salute. “Aye-aye, captain, I am at your service.”

“Oh shut up,” you grumbled, downing more of your coffee before trudging off.

It was going to be a long summer.

✧ ✧ ✧

“I’m telling you Wendy, I’m going to need an alibi, I really am going to murder my brother in law.”

“What, for giving you live-in eye candy for the summer and hinting that he thinks you need to get laid?”

“Ugh, no, that’s not— hold up, you don’t agree with him, do you?”

The sound of your best friend’s laughter through the phone had you dragging your hands over your face and pulling down at your eyelids dramatically, as if she could see your reaction.

On Thursdays, you finished up your work for the day around 4pm so you could pull up a chair next to the rotary phone and make time for the weekly scheduled phone call with Wendy. She’d insisted on the arrangement after you went six days without texting her, which you’d insisted was because service was spotty, but she’d accurately called you out on being cranky and stewing by yourself.

You and Wendy had met during your freshman year of college. By graduation, you’d lived together for three years, and made a vow to move to the same city together post grad, hence why she was still your roommate now— or was, seeing as you were on the island instead of back in the two bedroom apartment you shared. There was a five hour timezone difference between Hawaii and Chicago, so you’d figured out a schedule that worked for both of you. The calls had a tendency to last for several hours, and depending on how much wine you’d drink while on the phone with her would include bathroom breaks and you inevitably swearing at whatever you were cooking for dinner than night.

“Honey, please. I love you. Dearly, and against all other advice, you’re my best friend— but you need to get laid. You haven’t been this tense since our last finals week of senior year. And clearly you’re not opposed to the idea of Eye Candy banging your brains out, otherwise you wouldn’t have described him as, and I quote, ‘dumb hot and stupidly ripped’. When are you gonna send me a photo so I have something better to work with?”  

“Okay but are you sure you’re not the sexually frustrated one here and you’re just trying to live vicariously through me?”

Wendy’s hum sounded through the line. “I mean, can’t we both be desperately horny and in need of getting some? It’s not ideal but it is possible. Plus, I’m not the one that didn’t pack her vibrator—”

You let out a whine interrupting her as you leaned back in your chair, swirling the wine in your glass a few times as you held the phone to your ear with your shoulder. “Shut up stop reminding me! I regret it but no I’m not letting you send me a new one, especially not with a guy living with me. Come on, my stories are boring, it’s the same thing every day. I wake up, I feed the dog, I tell him what to do and then I hide away doing my own chores. When are you gonna tell me more about that girl you were seeing— what was her name, Joo-something?”

“Nice try, we’re not changing the subject with my dating life. Seriously, babe, you should just think about it.”

“And what, make it awkward for the rest of the summer? No thanks,” you shot her idea down quickly.

“I’m willing to bet money you’ll cave before the end of the summer. Plus, who doesn’t love a good ol’ summer fling? And who says you ever have to see him again once it’s all over?”

As much as you’d loathe to admit it, Wendy had a bit of a point there. “Cute, but you and I both know I’m too high strung for a temporary fling. Plus, I’m not in the mood to catch feelings right now.”

“If I find a way to replenish your wine supply, would that help?”

You groaned dramatically once more. “Not with the sexual frustration, but with my overall wellbeing, yes, yes it would.”

Wendy squealed on the other end of the phone. “Ha! So you admit it, you are sexually frustrated!”

“Woman, when in the years that you’ve known me have I not been at least some kind of frustrated?” You acknowledged.

Your best friend laughed in agreement, understanding she wasn’t going to get much more out of you about Johnny, and began a lengthy and detailed story about her last three dates with a girl she’d met through a friend of a friend. As you listened to how her voice held a dreamlike quality to it when she talked about her, you couldn’t help the pang of jealousy you felt and a sinking feeling in your gut that you’d been lying through your teeth earlier, and that maybe, subconsciously, you did want to catch feelings.

Maybe.

✧ ✧ ✧

“So… is there a story or a reason why you’re here instead of Yunho?”

You lifted your head from your focused task of sorting out the peaberry beans from the regular beans. It was tedious, time consuming, annoying as all hell, and made you want a drink stiffer than the coffee that you were certain made up more of your body fluids than blood or water did at this point. “Yes,” you said curtly after studying his face for a minute, not providing any further explanation. Johnny had his hands in his pockets and pursed his lips, nodding for a moment where he stood in the entrance to the barn.

You had set up your mad scientist level organization for the process all across the concrete floor of the refinished barn. Over the last week, Johnny had finished replacing the boards on the siding of the shed, stained the wood, and sealed it with a protective coat. He even managed to remove all the broken glass from the windows without sustaining any injuries, which you hadn’t thought possible for him. This morning you had him weed the vegetable garden, prune back the hedges along the back side of the house, and clean the deck of the lanai. How did he possibly still have any energy left? He was definitely a harder worker than you’d first given him credit for— you shook your head, not wanting to continue a spiral on Johnny and any detailed thoughts about him.

Back to your task at hand.

The harvest had been divided into several metal basins of five pounds of beans each, and in front of each basin you’d placed two dishes on either side. The point was to be able to weigh how many beans ended up being peaberry from each five pounds of harvest, and to see if you could leverage a steady average from the yield and better plan for how many pounds of the limited roast you could advertise for and set the price per pound accordingly. You wore a face mask and nylon disposable gloves while sorting, and despite being an annoying task, after a while it became a way for you to zone out and let the hours pass by. When the dishes were empty and you first started sorting them, there was a distinct echo of the small beans hitting the metal dish over and over again, until enough beans were lining the bottom that it started to dull the noise.

“Sigh.”

A slight puff of air washed over you. Did he just say the word ‘sigh’ out loud? And was he hovering over your shoulder?

“Can I help you?” You asked, pausing your sorting for only a moment.

“Isn’t it my job to ask you that question? I’m not some layabout, I am trying to earn my keep, you know,” Johnny said in response, rubbing his hands together and eyeing the basin of beans in front of him. You were almost inclined to hand it to him. Over the last four weeks, you’d gotten a lot of decent work out of him, even if you did feel somewhat micro-manage-y half the time with the tasks you did give him. “Okay, how does this work?”

You groaned exaggeratedly and excessively, rolling your eyes. When you didn’t answer, he reached forward and plucked a single coffee bean from the basin and examined it closely. “Hey, this one’s funny looking!”

“Don’t touch them with your bare hands, that’s just going to waste them.” You swatted the bean out of his hand and then looked at your own gloves and sighed. “If you’re insisting on helping, fine. But you need sanitary gear to handle them. Go wash your hands, there’s masks and gloves by the sink,” you grumbled, standing up and taking off your own gloves to dispose of them and replace them with a fresh pair.

Johnny followed obediently, trailing behind you a little too innocently for someone of his size. “Yes, the beans still need to be roasted and that’ll kill any bacteria, but I just like to be extra cautious, okay? Because it’s a mutation there’s no rule to how much of a yield I’ll get with each harvest so I don’t like wasting even a single bean,” you reasoned, settling back down and folding your legs back at the now half-sorted metal bowl.

“So, we’re just sorting the weird ones from the normal ones?” He asked while picking up another peaberry bean, this time with gloved hands and a mask over his mouth and nose.

You took a quick glance and nodded to confirm that yes, the bean in his hand was one of the weird ones he should be looking for. “They’re called peaberry. Normally, a coffee cherry has two seeds in it, or beans. Those two seeds mature in the center of the cherry and you get one flat side and one side touching it. Sometimes people call them ‘flat beans’ but those are the ‘normal’ beans, as you said,” you explained, sifting through your bowl rather quickly. “But the peaberry ones only have one bean inside. The bean is round, so that’s where the name ‘peaberry’ comes from, because—“

“Because it’s round so it looks like a pea, oh I get it! That’s funny,” he laughed, examining the rounded bean in front of him. “Okay, got it, so we’re sorting the peaberry from the flat beans?”

“You proud of your new vocab words?” You snorted, listening for the well known tink of a bean hitting the empty metal bowls. He giggled in acknowledgement.

You worked in relative silence, a small rhythm growing between the two of you. Johnny worked at about half the speed you did, but you couldn’t knock him for it, as it had taken you a while to pick up the pace when you first started hand sorting like this.

“How do you even know Yunho?” You finally asked. Four weeks since he’d arrived, and you’d never bothered to get to know him well enough to listen to the full story of how he’d ended up here.

Johnny shifted in his seated position, clearly a little taken aback that you’d bothered to ask him anything, given your track record. “Oh. Met him in Chicago when I was home visiting. At a local coffee shop, where my buddy Jaehyun is the manager. I went to go bother Jaehyun at work and he was just, shootin’ the shit with one of his coffee suppliers who was doing a visit. That supplier was Yunho. Started talking about how he owned the farm where the beans were grown, and that he wasn’t going to be able to spend the summer out there like he’d planned, so he was looking for some reliable help to uh, take care of things. Mentioned someone else would be on site and in charge, but offered the whole ‘room and board in exchange for copious amounts of physical labor’.”

“And you said yes? Just like that, no questions asked?” It seemed a little too easy, but then again, Johnny had proved to be a little too easygoing.

He shrugged. “Well, yeah. That’s kinda the point of my whole year. Just, go with the flow.” You glanced over, but Johnny was looking down, focused on the task at hand.

You nodded and hummed and turned back to your own basin to continue sorting. A few beats passed by before you couldn’t help yourself— “You’ve said that before. ‘Go with the flow’, or that you ‘had nothing else going on’. What do you mean by that?”

Out of the corner of your eye you saw Johnny’s ears perk up, followed by movement of his cheeks implying the curve of a slight smile. “I’m on a gap year, I guess is what the kids would say. Or maybe sabbatical? Though it’s not like I have any tenure enough to qualify for the real meaning of the term. But yeah, anyways— year off from work. Not getting paid or anything, but, when it’s over if I want it, my old job is waiting for me.”

“How come? That seems so—”

“Impulsive?”

You frowned. “Yeah, exactly.”

“Yeah, exactly,” he repeated, but not in a mocking manner— it was in agreement. “I guess the best way to explain it is this: I was a huge workaholic. I’ve only had my one job post grad after studying business, and I woke up one morning a month before my twenty-fifth birthday and realized it was sucking the soul out of me. It was all I ate, slept, breathed, and it wasn’t even what I wanted to be doing with my life, I realized.”

His pain started sounding all too familiar. “What is it you wanted to do instead, then?”

Even under the mask covering the lower half of his face, his smile reached his eyes. “Photography. I got into an art school when I was applying to colleges, but it just seemed so… risky. I would’ve had to take out loans and instead I got almost a full ride for a bigger university, so I went for that instead. Studied business, managed to grind through undergrad and grad school in four years and walked out with a combined BS and MBA. Took classes every summer to make it happen. I think after graduation, I went back to my parents house and passed out and slept for twenty-three hours straight,” he laughed, clearly recalling a specific memory. “I felt really accomplished when it was over, and even had the job offer already lined up. But I wish I had had more courage to study what I was truly passionate about.

“So after an almost three year long stint at the company and a vested 401k, I decided to take a year off to just, travel the world a bit. I grinded so hard through college I never got the chance to do study abroad, so I guess I wanted to make up for that? I never used to act on impulse or follow my heart, so, that was the goal for this year. To do only that.”

His words struck you differently. This was a whole new side to Johnny that you really weren’t expecting— not that you had a particularly three dimensional view of him to begin with. “And your heart lead you here… to my brother-in-law’s coffee farm?”

He laughed again, trying to hide just how thrilled he was that you were actually engaging in a full on conversation with him. “Well, sort of. My year off started back in February, day before my birthday. Got on a plane and did a few months backpack trip around Asia. I had no clue what would be next, thought maybe Australia, maybe Europe, but when I got off the plane in Chicago to see my mom and regroup on my packing, I decided to go straight from the airport to surprise and bother Jaehyun at his coffee shop. That day I met Yunho. That was a little over six weeks ago. And now I’m here, with you.”

There was something about the way he said that that didn’t sit well in your stomach— with you, like it was a good thing, like he liked it. You didn’t deign him with a response to the end of his story. Like an extension of the current state of your mind, your hands were reaching, feeling around for something, but you were only met with the flat surface of the bottom of the basin.

You looked down to see the last of the metal bowls was empty. Somehow, you’d managed to sort through all twenty pounds of coffee beans. You pulled the face mask down under your chin as you stared at the metal surface for a moment before standing abruptly and turning on your heels.

Confused, Johnny called your name out after you questioningly. “It’s getting late and I’m hungry. You uh, bag up the peaberry and set it aside and then wash out all the metal trays,” you gave him his next set of tasks quickly to make your escape back to the farmhouse to put some distance between the two of you.

A little over an hour later, you’d put together a curry on the stove with some stew meat and a base that included apples, carrots, potatoes, and melted dark chocolate for a more mellow sweet taste to balance it out. You thought about the first time Johnny complimented your cooking when it was just eggs, and how he’d continued to compliment it with every new meal you’d make. You wouldn’t call yourself a chef by any means, thinking that enjoying your go-to recipes would be a more acquired taste, and were in the midst of serving yourself when Johnny came inside with the dog trailing behind him. You didn’t bother saying much, you never did when you’d finished cooking a meal; just a grunt acknowledging his presence and a head nod at the food before you took your bowl and went through the door to go sit on the lanai by yourself. Absent-mindedly, you whistled for the dog to follow you.

Johnny kept to himself that night, eating at the kitchen table, content with looking up out the bay window to see you hand feeding small chunks of meat from your bowl to the dog, even going so far as to pet its head. He shook his head to himself thinking about how you pretended to be so opposed to the dog, and how you still hadn’t given it a name, and smiled as he took another bite.

✧ ✧ ✧

At five weeks, you stopped watching Johnny like a hawk, and started giving him more lengthy tasks that you, quite frankly, just didn’t want to do yourself. Though, if you were being honest, every task you gave him was one you didn’t want to do yourself.

Such as his current one, which was to prep the ground for a new row of sapling fruit trees. You’d walked down from the farmhouse over the hill to the open area next to a row of lemon and guava trees where you’d set him to the task of digging a row of four foot wide, four foot deep holes. The week after next, Jin’s delivery would be a much larger one, and include a number of sapling fruit trees from his family’s farm— rambutans, limes, and mangos, to name a few. You wanted to make sure the holes got dug and the irrigation system set in place properly well in advance.

When you came to a stop at the end of the row of freshly dug holes in the ground you blinked once. Twice. A third time. The sight before you was impossible to comprehend. Because not only was Johnny finishing digging the last of ten massive holes having taken less than three hours to do so, but he had been digging them shirtless.

“What. What?” You asked, staring, eyes wide and brow furrowed.

“Huh?” He asked, looking up from the bottom of the last hole and swishing his head to get his bangs, matted with sweat against his forehead, out of his face. The sun had crested over to this side of the hill now and it was blisteringly hot out. Standing in direct sunlight, doing physical labor, obviously he’d worked up a sweat.

You had to tear your eyes away from the shine on his torso and return them to just his face. “Where the fuck is your shirt?”

He pointed to where a lump of fabric was off to the side next to a water bottle. “It’s fucking hot out, I was dying,” he reasoned.

“You’re hot,” you mumbled under your breath, turning on your heel to give yourself reprieve from the onslaught that was Johnny’s unexpected number of defined abdominal muscles that were usually covered by cotton t shirts.

“What was that?” He called, squinting up into the sun from the bottom of the hole.

“I said, put a god damn shirt on before you come back in my house,” you called back, already wrapping your arms around yourself and heading back to the farmhouse. “And dinner’ll be ready in twenty, so finish up,” you added, trudging off before he could respond.

What you would have seen if you’d turned back around was an open mouthed smile curl across his face, as Johnny hummed to himself at the joy he felt for this, the first time you’d bothered to warn him when dinner would be ready.

✧ ✧ ✧

Ever since you’d seen Johnny shirtless, you’d be restless.

Well, restless was the polite word. The word to better describe what you’d been feeling was… frustrated?

Distracted? Peeved? Worked up?

Horny.

The word you were avoiding was horny.

Wendy had been the one to get you to admit it during your last weekly phone call. You told her about the shirtless incident and the first thing she asked was if you had plans to throw out the washing machine and instead start doing your laundry on Johnny’s abs, which did not help your predicament any further. It was also Wendy who had pointed out that you’d been alone on this farm for almost two months with a dog and a man too pretty for his own good, and despite how he represented everything you were annoyed at in life at the moment, after seeing his half naked figure, it would only be natural for you to have been a little turned on. And a little turned on was exactly where you were— for the last week, you had been going on runs every night to release the excess pent up energy you suddenly had.

The last time you exercised this much you were still in college. Back then you went on hour long runs through the city with your phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ because it was the only way you weren’t constantly bombarded with an on onslaught of messages from classmates, friends, family, or your on campus job that took up way too much of your time. And now, you found yourself returning to old habits, this time because what, you were too proud to just rub one out like the rest of humanity? (That phrasing, too, was courtesy of your best friend, when she again reminded you of your failure to pack your vibrator.)

After another eight miles up and down the road outside the farm that ran along the island’s coast your legs felt like absolute jello when you finished, but your head was empty enough that you were able to return to the property and exist near Johnny in peace. You walked by the barn on your way up to the farmhouse, sticking your head inside briefly to look for him. You didn’t hear any noise, and didn’t find him at first glance, but didn’t think much of it as you went back inside.

The dog was already in the kitchen, so that should have been your first clue. You opened the fridge and peered inside, pulling out a number of assorted ingredients to make a lemon cream sauce for pasta with chicken.

You set a pot of water to boil, turned the oven on to preheat, and began melting butter, garlic, oil, and a variety of herbs in a sauce pan. That plus the low hum of the overhead fan meant just enough noise that you couldn’t hear the water running from the small shower on the other side of the house, and you didn’t think twice as the heat cast off by the appliances made you feel even stuffier post-run, and you peeled your shirt off your body and rolled the waistband of your shorts down an inch, pressing your bare feet flat against the hardwood flooring to try and get some semblance of cooling relief.

It was only a few moments later, with the water boiling and pasta cooking inside and the chicken already seasoned and in the oven, when you peered over the bubbling sauce pan and dipped the edge of your pinky into the mixture to bring just a taste up to your mouth. Just like you’d hoped, it was light and had a kick of citrus to it from the lemon, but not so much that it was overpowering. You closed your eyes and hummed in appreciation as you licked the sauce off, which, in retrospect, probably sounded far too much like a moan for your own good.

“Jesus fuck—”

And suddenly, you realized you weren’t alone inside the house.

You screamed at first from the shock of being startled by the noise, and then again when it registered in your brain that Johnny was standing in the kitchen, hair dripping wet, chest bare and abdominal muscles just as defined as the last time you’d seen them, face flushed in some sort of embarrassment with a bath towel wrapped around his hips.

Johnny was fresh out of the shower, nearly naked in your kitchen, clutching his clothes balled up in his left hand.

You scream again.

“What are you doing?!” You shrieked out, raising your voice over the dog’s excited barking at the commotion the two of you had begun making.

He stammered for a moment, clearly frozen in place. “I was just! You were gone, and I was done for the day, so I took a shower but I— I forgot my change of clothes in my room and these towels are small and just— Jesus why are you wearing so little clothing?!”

Your fury returned full force at the comment. “Why am I wearing so little clothing? You’re in a towel for fuck’s sake! This is my house, I live here! I should be the one asking you where your clothes are!”

“They’re here, in my hand!” He yelled back, waving the bundle around frantically. “I just said I forgot them when I went to shower!”

Your eyes bugged out of you head as your gaze traveled down, taking in the entirety of the figure before you and— oh.

“Are you… are you hard right now?” You asked in bewilderment.

The way the color drained out of Johnny’s face and the speed with which he moved the bundle of clothing to hold it over the space between his legs answered your question.

“Oh, my god.” Exasperated, you slammed your eyes shut and held your hands up by your sides. “What the fuck, John.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean— fuck, shit I made it weird— please don’t get mad, I can totally fix this,” he started spewing apologies, and you heard him take two steps closer to you. “Wait, were you looking at my dick?”

“Ah!” You spat out, turning away from him. His question was valid but you had no intention of acknowledging it. “Out! Get out of my house, go… somewhere else until that goes away or you can, I don’t know, take care of it!” You instantly thought of the implication of your words and then yelled again. “No— don’t— fuck, don’t do that! Jesus for the love of god don’t take care of it while I’m standing here—” you were stammering and beyond flustered. How the fuck were you supposed to talk to someone who had just gotten a fucking boner by looking at you, sweaty in a sports bra, while sucking a cream colored substance off the tip of your pinky?

You exhaled deeply, eyes still closed. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to go to your room. I am going to finish cooking my dinner. You will be absolutely silent until you hear me leave. I will be staying at the condo for the next week. You will either ration the leftovers or fend for yourself, I do not care. Got it?” You signed out again, eyes flicking open. Johnny held his bundle of clothes in front of his legs and nodded his head once, not bothering with any comeback before he shuffled to the guest room and shut the door quietly.

It took another twenty minutes for the meat to finish cooking and the dish to be full prepared. How you managed to keep your head empty and shut off your internal monologue during that time, you’ll never know, but you were thankful for it nonetheless. You packed two servings into a Tupperware container for yourself before shoving some clothes in a duffle bag and grabbing the keys to the jeep you hated driving. It was only about ten minutes down the road to the condo, but it was almost fifteen miles, so you figured this was the lesser of two evils. You whistled for the dog to follow you, and it was all too excited to jump in the passenger seat of the car. The farmhouse was now dry of liquor, what with Yunho not making good on his promise a month ago and your weekly wine dates with Wendy, but you knew the condo definitely had some spirits stashed somewhere in a cabinet. You were going to need that and a nice hot bath to destress after that encounter.

Meanwhile, Johnny sunk down on to the floor inside the guest room, his back pressed against the door. When he heard the sound of the jeep’s engine turning over, he sighed in relief and ran a hand through his hair. There were no better words to describe it: he was truly and utterly fucked.

✧ ✧ ✧

You stayed at the condo only for three days, and did little other than sleep, binge watch some TV since there was better electricity and internet here, and eat your way through slightly stale bags of chips and frost bitten freezer dinners that were months old. Because you couldn’t just open the door and let the dog out to run through the property for whatever exercise or bathroom needs it had, you had to actually walk it with a leash and everything. You paid less attention to how domestic the action of clipping the leash on to the collar you’d found in an unopened delivery package on the kitchen table was, and thought more about how slothful you’d felt over the last 60-odd hours of self isolation, especially after two months of working outdoors every day.

It was childish to keep hiding from Johnny. It’s not like you could prove that he’d gotten hard looking at you, and really, shouldn’t you take it as sort of a compliment? (Well, maybe you wouldn’t go that far.)

It was Monday when you returned to the farm, parking the jeep back by the barn and hip checking the door shut after the dog went running off in search of Johnny. It found him carrying pruned branches of trees down to the area where you burned excess brush, and you could hear the excited sound of his voice at the return of the creature as you walked slowly down the hill towards him.

“I missed you! It’s been so lonely without you, but I guess I’m glad your mommy had you with her, huh?” He cooed at the dog, rubbing its face in his hands after dropping the bundle of branches and flopping its ears from side to side. Hearing Johnny refer to you as a mother, even of the animal, had you grimacing.

“Ew,” you said, making your presence known. He stood up suddenly, possibly just a little embarrassed.

“Oh! You’re uh, you’re back.” You nodded, lips pressed together in a flat line. Your hands were full, carrying two takeout coffees from a shop down near the condo you’d stopped at on the way back. You’d forgotten how much the farm felt like a different planet, a different space in time almost, because of how isolated it felt. The act of ordering a coffee to go rather than making it yourself in the morning was equal parts bewildering and soothing.

You had no idea what compelled you to order an iced americano along with the cortado you’d gotten for yourself. You didn’t really know much about Johnny beyond the one conversation you’d had about how he ended up meeting your brother in law and crashing on the farm with you in the first place. But somehow, ordering the drink had felt right, and you thought of it as a potential peace offering to cut the tension.

“This is yours,” you said plainly after some thought, trying to remove any and all emotion from your tone.

He blinked a few times before taking three steps towards you and reaching his hand out to take the drink. He mumbled a soft thank you and sipped without bothering to ask what was inside.

“You’re just going to take the drink a stranger offers you, no questions asked?”

“Ooh!” His eyes perked up when he tasted the coffee. “I mean, I’ve never questioned any of the food you’ve made me so far, why start now? Besides,” he shrugged, taking another sip, “I trust you.”

You snorted. “That’s a stupid thing to do.”

Johnny laughed again, eyes crinkling at the sides. Your mind wandered briefly to a half formed thought about how endearing that was. “Maybe so, but despite your efforts to make me an enemy, I think you’re actually a really good person. You even guessed my favorite coffee drink, so that has to count for something.” He nodded to the paper cup in your hand. “What’s your poison?”

“Cortado,” responded curtly, ignoring his comments that were cutting a bit too deep for ten in the morning.

“Ah, a strong espresso pull with a balance of steam milk and a touch of foam. Nice choice. I can definitely appreciate one, but I’m a little too impatient and drink them too quickly— I think that’s why I love americanos so much, because it lasts a little longer.”

You tilted you head to the side, puzzled. “Wait. You… actually know things about coffee?”

“I mean, yeah,” he laughed, “What do you think I spent three hours talking with Yunho about the day we met? I did my time as a barista in college. Free coffee every shift was hard to pass up when you’re doing almost a double course load every other semester. I’ve always been curious about the growing and roasting process, and I know a lot of people do home roasting as a hobby but I just never made the time to explore it.”

Well, duh, you thought, that actually made sense. “Oh god, and here I’ve been making my lame ass bitter pour over all summer— you know how to pull a shot of espresso then I take it? You’ve seen the La Marzocco on the counter, how come you’ve never used it?”

He pouted his lips out in a flat line and shrugged comically. “Dunno. I mean, I’m a guest and a worker first, and it’s not mine, so, I didn’t wanna make any assumptions. But if this is an open invitation to use it, I’m more than happy to accept.”

You chewed on the inside of your mouth for a moment. You could feel it in the air as the hairs on your arms stood up slightly, goosebumps running down your skin. You hoped in wasn’t too noticeable. Maybe this was it— maybe it really was time to extend an olive branch and have more than half a conversation with him every four days. “It’s a little older and sort of temperamental, but it’s still a good machine. I’ll… show you the quirks tomorrow morning, or whenever you want something to drink,” you offered.

It was then that you discovered this: Johnny was not a great actor. He wore his heart on his sleeve. You figured this to be true because he could barely contain the smile that spread across his face, and the energetic nod he gave, and the mild soft exhale (squeal?) of excitement. You rolled your eyes gently and turned away, drink in hand. “When it cools down later after dinner, I’m roasting tonight. You’re welcome to join.”

You gave him the benefit of not bearing witness to the fist pump he made as you walked away.

Dinner that night was stir fried ground pork with carrots and zucchini from the garden served over rice. It was one of your comfort dishes, easy to make and easy to clean up after, since it used only two pans. As soon as you’d finished eating, this time sitting at the table together with Johnny, he’d cleared the dishes and got to cleaning up right away. You stretched your arms overhead and leaned back in your chair far enough to crack your back slightly with a loud pop.

“Oof, that sounded like it felt good,” he laughed from the sink. You hummed in agreement. “So what’d you do before this? Desk job hunched over a computer like the rest of us?”

“Mmm something like that. You may have been bored out of your mind in business, but I sold my soul years ago to work in advertising.”

“Why does that like, fit?” He asked, turning the water off and drying the pan you’d used for cooking by hand.

“You saying I have no soul?” You challenged.

He shrugged. “Hey, you said it, not me. We’re both just cogs in the machine that is late stage capitalism, I guess.”

You didn’t know how deeply you wanted to get into it with Johnny just yet. Maybe eventually, but, not right now. “Yeah, well, I was just a Project Manager, not like a Copywriter or anything. Did you know Yunho was a staff Art Director before he switched to the coffee business full time? We used to work at the same agency a few years back.”

Johnny snapped his fingers and pointed at you. “Ah, that’s right! I remember him saying something about that, made the same jokes about having no soul. You two are a lot alike for not being related by blood.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong; sometimes you wondered if you’d become closer with Yunho that you were with your sister at this point. “Enough about that. If you’re done follow me, it’s probably cool enough to fire up the roaster. I just want to do a test batch of like, five pounds with the regular beans to see how this year’s harvest takes to our standard roast,” you explained, heading to the door and slipping on your sneakers. “Don’t let the dog out, it gets scared from the loud noises and I don’t need it freaking out.”

Johnny dried his hands and followed after you to the barn. You flicked on the lights and went straight for the sink to pull your hair out of your face, wash your hands, and put on a pair of gloves and a mask. Johnny followed your lead, even going so far as to tie up the top layer of his hair on top of his head. “Hey look! It’s like an apple,” he bobbed his head from side to side to make the tiny ponytail move back and forth, and you couldn’t help but snort as you tried to suppress your laughter.

“Dork,” was all you said. You went to the storage racks to pick up one of the sorted burlap bags of beans and hoisted it over your shoulder to carry it to a metal prep table where you carefully opened it and began scooping out the green beans and pouring them into a bowl on a metal scale that had been zeroed out. “So  obviously you know that coffee is counted by weight in pounds. That monstrosity,” you jerked your head in the direction of the massive eight foot tall machine in the corner of the room, “Can handle up to twenty-five pounds of beans in the barrel at a time. Because it’s so big, it’s best to not do super small batches, otherwise you risk burning the beans. Since I’m going for five pounds, it’ll be okay, but if I was doing any less I’d use one of the table top roasters, since they have a smaller barrel.” You finished weighing out five pounds and handed the container to him to carry.

You continued explaining the full process of roasting and science behind it as you flipped switches, checked that the exhaust was hooked up properly, and set the dials for the heat and time on the industrial roaster before pulling the door to the funnel open and having Johnny slowly pour the beans inside. “God you’re a fucking giant, I always need a step stool to reach that high,” you commented as he made the reach with ease.

You weren’t kidding when you said the roaster was loud when it was running. Thankfully with the size of the machine and this batch, it was only eleven minutes of the two of you standing just a few feet away in case anything went wrong and you had to hit the emergency stop, holding your hands over your ears to block the sound. Johnny began jokingly exaggerating mouthing something out, and you felt almost like friends as you laughed at his antics. You were never the best at reading lips. Especially not Johnny’s, they were too full and distracting on their own for you to make sense of the mouth shapes. When the machine came to a grinding halt and the noise suddenly stopped, he was still shouting words and his voice echoed around the space in the absence of the noise, “I said, I think you’re— oh, wow, that was fast,” he quickly diverted, catching himself from finishing whatever it was he was about to say.

Your heart skipped a beat at the thought of trying to pry out of him what he was in the process of saying under the protection of the loud noises. You shook it off mentally and showed him how to remove the beans from the roasting chamber. “So you take them out like this, and then they’re still going to be warm for a while, so it’s best to let them rest for a bit. If you were to brew them right away, the flavor might not be what you’re expecting, so if you wait for them to sit for a few days, you’ll notice a considerable difference in the flavor profile—”

You stopped suddenly, a sound in the distance suddenly registering to you. You left Johnny standing there with the roasted coffee in hand and trailed to the edge of the barn and then you heard it more clearly— the sound of the old rotary phone ringing. “Oh, shit,” you swore and took off running back up to the house. The only person who had the number for the landline other than Wendy were Yunho and your sister. Wendy didn’t call you outside of your Thursday night appointments. You did the math in your head— it was the end of June, your sister’s due date wasn’t til the end of August, but early labor was always something you’d heard about, especially with more than one baby.

Hands shaking, you got to the phone on what could have been the last ring and panted out a greeting of Yunho’s name, already knowing it was him.

“Oh thank god you answered, I’ve been calling for the last twenty minutes, where were you?” He chastised immediately. You felt uneasy at the tone in his voice.

You stammered in response. “I— we were in the barn, I was roasting so I couldn’t hear the phone— what’s wrong? Is she okay?”

Yunho sighed out heavily and was quiet. “She’s going to be okay, but there was a… scare,” you could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “I don’t want to freak you out, but I don’t want to not tell you either. She slipped getting out of the shower, landed on her hip. Started having lower abdominal pain right after. We thought maybe it was going to be now, but, she’s fine. The doctors think they were phantom contractions? Whatever they were they’re gone now. The babies are fine, but she’ll most likely be in the hospital until the due date. If she starts experiencing any kind of contractions between now and then, though, they’ll want to induce labor.” You could tell he was still stressed and worried, but you nodded and listened as he explained some of the medical details a bit further. “Anyways, all this to say, the next time I call, it could be to tell you that you’re an auntie.”

From the moment you heard the phone ringing this late at night and calculated that it was almost two in the morning in Chicago, the tightness in your chest had been building. Listening to Yunho speak delicately about your sister’s condition was one thing— you thought it was a sigh of relief when he said that everything was fine, but then it was most certainly not fine when the gravity of his last words really hit you.

“Little Bean are you listening? Is the signal bad? I know the connection isn’t always great—”

You inhaled sharply as the pressure inside came to a head. “Yunho I gotta go,” you gasped out, barely able to make sense of thoughts to get the words out.

Before you could hear his rebuttal you slammed the phone on to the receiver to end the call and covered your face with your hands still in their nylon gloves. Despite standing in an open space, you suddenly felt like the room was spinning and the walls were closing in on you. Out, out, you had to get out—

“Hey, everything okay in here?”

Fuck.

Johnny was standing in the door, a look of concern on his face. You heaved into your hands and choked out a sob, feeling the wetness in your eyes building. No no no, everything was most certainly not okay in here. You shouldn’t have made eye contact, you should have known better, because looking at his face, his stupid perfect face and his genuine care for your wellbeing, it set you free falling over the precipice.

You were spiraling, and hard, and needed to land. It was instinctual, the way you cried out and ran pushing past him before breaking into an all out sprint down the hill to the fruit trees. Your legs barely kept up with the velocity of running at a decline, stopping short of tumbling and falling forward. The only thing that you knew to help this, the thing that had worked for you in the past, and you raced through the grove of trees for the larger one at the very end. It was one of the older trees, well mature and established with its root system, so you could always expect it to produce fruit.

But you’d harvested a large amount of the fruit in the last few weeks from the lower branches, and the only remaining fruit that would be ripe enough for your purposes was on the higher branches just out of reach. Over the sound of your pained sobs, you couldn’t hear Johnny’s approach or him asking what was wrong, your one track mind just trying desperately to jump and reach, fingertips barely brushing on the fruit you were reaching for.

“Hey hey, calm down, what are you—” he started.

“Shut up! Just shut— don’t tell— don’t tell me calm— calm—” you couldn’t make the words make sense, in your head you were screaming don’t tell me to calm down, but the act of translating that into words on your tongue was downright Herculean right now, it just wasn’t happening. Your knees began wobbling and standing too started feeling impossible. The tightness in your chest had expanded to reach your back, and though you were clearly still getting air by the fact that you hadn’t passed out yet, you felt like you weren’t breathing at all. You were crying outright now, tears wet and hot and painful as the sobs escaped your throat.

It didn’t take a genius to figure that you were trying to reach a fruit on a branch just above your wingspan. Johnny placed one large hand against your back gently and reached all the way up, fingers wrapping around what he assumed was the object of your fixation, before twisting and pulling to release it from the tree. “Hey,” he said softly, “This what you need?”

As soon as you made sense of the object in front of you you seized it from his hands, biting directly through the rind of the lemon. A muffled sob came out as your knees buckled and you sank to the ground. The bitter rush of citrus did part of its job, and brought your consciousness back down to earth. But your breathing didn’t steady, and your heart was still pounding, and the tears were still falling.

It wasn’t working, your grounding technique; not like it had the previous times, like the night you’d first gotten the phone call from Yunho saying they weren’t coming, and not like the time you bit into a lemon in the kitchen at work after first getting the phone call that your sister was pregnant, and even the time before that when she told you she and Yunho were moving, or when Yunho had asked you if he could marry your sister. If you were more with it, you would have thought for a moment longer about how all of your largest panic attacks of the last several years seemed to be linked to things about Yunho and your sister. Biting into a whole lemon had been your go-to for years, and suddenly, it wasn’t working.

“Fuck!” You cried out, spitting the lemon into your palms, “Fuck fuck fuck! Why isn’t it— why isn’t it working?!” Your words were absolutely frantic, and you were yelling at yourself more than your companion who, quite frankly, you’d forgotten was even there.

Until you felt a shadow pass over you in the moonlight and a pair of arms enveloping you in an embrace.

The top of your head was pressed against his chest and his hands found their way to the planes of your back and began rubbing soft circles. Softly he tutted out a shushing noise, voice barely above a whisper, steady. “Come on, let it out, I’m right here. I’ve got you, you’re not alone,” he said calmly, “You’re gonna get through it. Try to take a deep breath, that’s good now hold it as long as you can— okay, that’s okay, try again, try to hold on to it and let it out slowly this time.”

You’d never had anyone physically with you and help you through a panic attack before. You’d had them around people in the past, but no one had ever made a move to help you through it— not like this, not like him, not like he was doing right now by attempting to guide your breathing. The one time you had one in front on Wendy, you’d locked yourself in the bathroom and refused to answer her while you came down, and she never pressed you about it afterwards.

You had no idea how much time passed as Johnny held you in his arms, keeping a steady rhythm of his palms on your back and letting you cry it out into the fabric of his shirt, your hands wringing the material so strongly you thought you’d tear holes where your nails were.

One hand traveled to the back of your head and he stroked that too. “I’ve got you, I’m right here,” he said again.

After a longer period of silence, your ears stopped ringing and you could finally make out the chirping of the crickets in the night. You sniffled and rubbed the last of the trails the tears had left on your cheeks into his shirt, mumbling an apology into it.

“Don’t do that,” he said softly, keeping his voice low, almost as if he was afraid he’d scare you off if he raised it any higher. “I mean— haha, don’t apologize. It’s okay, whatever it is, it’ll wash out. If it doesn’t, it’s just a tee shirt, I can always buy another.” His tone was even paced and calm, and in pressing your ear against his chest you could hear the reverberations as he spoke.

The humid summer air was heavy as usual, even this late at night. You don’t know how long you sat there in silence, wrapped in Johnny’s arms listening to his heartbeat, but eventually you acknowledged that your heart was beating in time with his. Whether you liked it or not, he had been the thing to ground you, and not a stupid fucking lemon.

You shifted slightly, making a move to stand, but Johnny stopped you. “Whoa whoa, hang on lemme get ready— okay, hold on to my shoulders, that’s it.” Your fingers dug into his arms as he adjusted his legs and hooked one arm under your knees and the other around your back and stood up, taking you with him.

“Shit,” you mumbled out, head rushing at the quick movement and the realization that your legs were still bent over his arm, and Johnny was now carrying you. “Hey, heavy,” your words were still soft.

“Mmm, nah, nothing I can’t handle,” his response was easy, dismissive of your complaint, but not in a bad way. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to but— anxiety? Panic attack?” You sucked in a breath at the word. You hated that word. That word made you feel weak, even if it was exactly what this was. You dug your nails into his skin slightly on a reflex of bracing yourself, not with this intention of inflicting damage. “Got it. I get it,” he had approached the house and walked to the door, reaching for the handle with the hand under your knees. “I’ve had a few myself. Not recently, but back in college, maybe two or three? Don’t think they were ever as strong as that, though. I tried the lemon trick once, it actually worked pretty well for me. Didn’t make the next time I did a tequila shot all that fun though, couldn’t enjoy citrus for at least a month after that.” His soft laughter shook his chest and you leaned in further. Listening to his voice was comforting. It was keeping you steady. It made you feel safe, and in this moment, you were too tired to think about how you probably should have hated that. “Think you could swallow some water? Rehydrating is important.”

Your head nodded. “Okay, I’m gonna put you down now.” He used his foot to push one of the chairs away from the table and set you down on to the seat gently. The dog was immediately at your knees, whining lowly and attempting to give as many kisses as you’d accept. “Here,” he said gently, crouching down in front of you and holding a glass out. “Drink what can, but not too fast. There you go, that’s it,” his large hand clasped over your knee, thumb rubbing circles on the side. “Feeling any better?”

“Yeah,” you rasped out, voice raw from all the crying earlier.

Johnny smiled softly. “Good, that’s good. Okay, I think you need to get to bed, yeah? Or do you wanna take a shower or something first?” You shook your head. “Okay, just washed your face then?” You nodded. Your conscious monologue was returning, but bringing words from your mind to your mouth was still proving difficult. Johnny didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he offered you his hand. “Need help getting up?”

You answered by gripping on to his hand and using his shoulders to help you stand up. Johnny walked you to your room, holding his arm out for you as a guide. You were able to bear weight on your feet now, and though your steps were slow, you made it to the bathroom to wash your face and and change into sleepwear. Johnny waited by the door, averting his eyes for privacy for you, and returned to your side to help you into bed.

When he leaned over you to pull the sheets up, you reached for his wrist and asked, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

His face went blank before it softened into a smile. “Because. I told you earlier, didn’t I? You’re a good person. Should be simple as that, yeah?”

You didn’t have a response for him, only shifting deeper into the pillows. He turned off the light and retreated to the door frame. “Try and get some rest. Call me if you need me, okay?”

Your head managed a nod, and Johnny finally left, leaving the door to your room slightly ajar. You listened for the sounds of him milling about the house, his footsteps softly shuffling against the floorboards, a few mumbled words to the dog that followed at his heels, until you finally fell asleep.

When you dreamed that night, you dreamt of him, the sound of his voice, and the way your blood felt on fire whenever he looked at you and smiled.

✧ ✧ ✧

Johnny never asked you about the panic attack.

He didn’t bring it up, he didn’t ask what caused it, he didn’t even allude to it in any conversation over the next week. The next day he was just a little bit more gentle with you with the tone and volume of his speaking voice, but when you showed no signs of still be affected from the previous night, he let it go and didn’t bother you about it.

You couldn’t tell if you loved him or hated him for it.

Confusion on your feelings aside, as June came to a close and the morning of July 3rd came, you woke up to the sound of the espresso machine running. Johnny had very quickly proven that he was worth his salt as a barista, even though it had been several years, and had a very nice shot pull. He even figured out the steamer, which was the most finicky part of the machine, and had been making you cortados every morning. That’s what you were sipping now from a metal camper mug, as you walked with him to the shed.

“I think that all that’s left is nailing down that last sheet of roofing and then we’re done,” he hummed cheerfully, inspecting the building. It looked brand new, a marked improvement from the broken windows and bleached paint job it had sported two months ago.

Two months. Was that really how long he’d been here? You didn’t want to think too much about it, about how those two months gone meant you had reached the half way point, and that there were about two months left.

Two months…

“We should celebrate,” he said suddenly, and you looked up puzzled.

“We?”

“Sure!” He exclaimed, “I had no idea what I was doing. I just did what you told me to. This was one of the biggest projects for the summer, right? And plus, not that I care too much for the holiday, but won’t there be fireworks and stuff for the Fourth? Come on, this house has been dry for weeks, let’s go get some booze and live a little, huh?” He prodded your side with his elbow and began needling at you, saying huh, huh, huh over and over until you groaned and relented.

“Fiiiiiine, let’s go before the stores get crowded when everyone realizes everything’s gonna be closed tomorrow.”

The dog was less than pleased that you’d sent it back into the house when you picked up the keys to the jeep. Usually you took it with you, but this time you decided against it, since you weren’t sure how the liquor store would feel with you bringing the stray dog off leash into the store with you.

“All you, big guy,” you said to Johnny as you tossed the car keys at him.

“Aren’t you gonna ask if I know how to drive first?” He quipped back quickly while walking to the driver’s side.

“Nah,” you shrugged comically, hoisting yourself up by the frame of the car. You buckled yourself in and watched as he did the same and adjusted the mirrors for his height. “Besides,” you looked down to inspect your fingernails as if they were the most fascinating thing on the planet, “I trust you, or whatever.”

“Bit of a stupid thing to do, but alright,” he smiled, echoing your words back at you. “Kidding, I’m an excellent driver. Alright, co-pilot! You have the most sacred duty bestowed upon you—”

“Navigation?”

“No, music selection, duh,” he scoffed and handed you the aux cord and pulled out a cell phone you’d never seen him hold before. You stared at the device as he unlocked it and pulled up his music library. Johnny noticed your surprised expression out of the corner of his eye. “What, it’s not like I have a use for it out here. Your wifi sucks and I’m not about to rack up a huge cell phone bill, so it stays off in my duffle bag most of the time. Anyways, this is a test! Pick whatever your heart desires.” The smirk on his face was beyond mischievous as he handed it to you.

You sighed and settled into the seat and began scrolling. What to pick, what to pick…

Surprisingly, there was a decent number of songs you recognized, and one album in particular you were a fan of. You scrolled down the track listing to about the half way point and pressed play.

The sounds of The Killers and the familiar guitar chords that were practically sewn into your DNA began to filter through the speakers. Johnny smiled and started clapping as the car reached the bottom of the driveway and he flipped on the turn signal. “Oh my god, Mr. Brightside, excellent choice! Okay, you passed the first test. But do you know the words?” He teased.

You gasped in feigned offense as the lyrics came to the chorus, and as he accelerated up to speed you began to belt the words out as loud as you could manage. For once you weren’t thinking about how you hated that the jeep had no top while the wind whipped past you on all sides as Johnny sped down the highway. As the song played, the magic high of belting the words to something fifteen years old that were still imprinted in your brain didn’t seem to wear off like you’d expected it to.

“Alright, chop chop what’s next maestro!” He called over the sound of the wind as the song came to a close. You already had something queued up, something a little more recent, and you smiled as the words to the next song began filtering through the speakers, letting the music carry the drive and not belting along with it this time. You tried to not think too deeply about the lyrics of the chorus as it played.  

'Cause you're the last of a dying breed Write our names in the wet concrete I wonder if your therapist knows everything about me? I'm here in search of your glory There's been a million before me That ultra-kind of love You never walk away from You're just the last of the real ones

As the bridge played and you neared your destination, Johnny tilted his head towards you while keeping his eyes on the road. “Growing up, it was like, a badge of honor as a Chicago kid to have gone to a Fall Out Boy show when they still played the smaller clubs. I snuck into one when I was 16— it was an 18 and over show— felt like I was hot shit when I got away with it.”

“Don’t know why, but you don’t strike me as a Fall Out Boy fan,” you admitted. From your scroll through his music library, you saw most of their discography saved to his phone.

“Hey, I had my embarrassing wannabe emo phase too.”

“Had?” You couldn’t stop yourself from teasing. Johnny didn’t give a response to that one, and as another Fall Out Boy song played through the speakers you let yourself rest in a comfortable lack of conversation, instead sharing the music with him as he drove. It only took to the end of that third song to reach your destination and based on how he handled the drive and parking, true to his word Johnny was an excellent driver.

Johnny followed you closely once inside, his eyes scanning up and down the shelves of the tiny liquor store before he reaches and picks up a six pack of pilsner. “You ever try this one?”

Your nose wrinkles in disgust. “I don’t do beer.”

Johnny blinks twice in response and plops the six pack back down on the shelf. “Noted. What do you drink?”

“If I’m picking?” He nods. “I’m a slut for rosé or champagne. Any sparkling wine, really, it makes me feel fancy and you get to turn basic days into little celebrations.” You follow him as he walks down the aisle to where the selection of wine was shelved and starts looking through the options. “Hang on, you’re not gonna grill me about the beer thing?”

“You say that like your friends usually give you shit for it.”

You crossed your arms and shuffle your feet underneath you. “Well, yeah. Usually.”

“Then I would say,” he trails off for a moment, bending and squatting to see a label on a lower shelf before picking up two bottles of the same brand, “You need new friends. Or that your current ones need to learn boundaries, take your pick. How’s this look for one option? Since this is a celebration and all,” he says with a wink.

Leaning forward, you study the label on the bottle for a moment before nodding in approval. You agree to his point that since they were 15% off if you bought six or more bottles, it only made sense to buy more, and besides, “It’s not like you won’t drink them eventually when you’re on the phone with Wendy.”

Your eyebrows shot up at that. “How do you know her name?”

“I’m quiet not deaf, and you’re louder than you think you are,” he says matter-of-factly before heading to the cashier to pay for your selection. You bite your tongue then, hoping to whatever deity was watching you (and probably laughing) that he’d overheard one of the conversations that wasn’t about Wendy insisting you should bone him.

Johnny picks the music on the way back, opting for some Bleachers and Paramore now that he knew at least part of your music taste and how it aligned with his.

Your new selection of wine goes into the fridge as soon as you get home, and Johnny heads to the shed with a ladder in hand to climb on top and finish nailing down the roofing. You opt to help with this task, spotting from the ground and continuously yelling for him to ‘be careful’ and ‘you better not fall and break your neck while I’m watching’. It takes a little over an hour, and it’s late afternoon when he finishes, but when you climb the ladder yourself as he holds it steady from the ground to inspect his handiwork you have to say you’re impressed.

“You sure you never did construction work before? You’ve got shockingly good craftsmanship for a newbie.”

“My dad’s pretty self sufficient so he was always doing the handiwork around the house. Picked stuff up here and there from him growing up, but anything I didn’t know I could just look up on the internet.” You shoot him a pointed look. “What! I said your wifi was shitty not that I didn’t use it every now and again. There’s a YouTube tutorial for everything these days.”

Johnny insisted on cleaning up the last of the debris on his own while you worked on dinner— another pasta dish, orecchiette broccoli rabe, and while that was cooking you boil a pint of blackberries with water and sugar to make a flavored simple syrup. Since you were celebrating tonight, it only felt right to put in a little extra effort even to the drinks of choice. Kir Royales were typically made with a blackcurrant liquor, but it was a niche product you hadn’t found in the store, so the syrup and a slice of lemon for garnish would have to do.

While you waited for Johnny to finish up and take his shower (after the last time, you gave him plenty of space out of an abundance of caution whenever he showered), you started rummaging through the pantry cabinets and making sense of the dry ingredients you had on hand. You had time to kill, why not make a dessert with it?

You hadn’t talked about it much with Johnny, but you actually did enjoy cooking and baking. Something about spending time and energy making something and having someone consume it and tell you they liked made you feel good. You still remember the first time you made breakfast for a hungover Wendy in college and she raved about it for days, though you were pretty sure back then it was because the carbs soaked up the remaining alcohol in her system and stopped her from puking.

Dinner was finished when Johnny finally came out of the shower, this time fully clothed and his hair more dry. You explained that you’d gotten bored and made cookie dough but the oven hadn’t finished pre-heating yet so nothing was baked.

“Fuck it, cookie dough is always better than the cookies themselves,” he shrugged.

“But salmonella—”

Johnny held up a hand jokingly as he stopped your interjection and turned off the oven. “Still convinced that’s a myth parents made up to stop kids from actually enjoying childhood. Plus it’s hot as balls, chill the dough while we eat and then it’ll be even better after. Plus, you haven’t poisoned either of us yet, I think your track record is pretty good so far.” (There he went again, referring to you and him as an ‘us’.)

So you did just that, putting the cookie dough into the fridge and taking your dinner outside with the cocktails you’d made. You didn’t have any wine glasses here at the farm house— after breaking one stemmed glass during your first phone call with Wendy you’d moved the rest to the condo and replaced the drink ware with mason jars because the clean up was too annoying. Plus, you didn’t want to risk the dog stepping on stray shards of thin glass and getting them stuck in the pads of its paws. (You were still decidedly apathetic towards it, but that didn’t mean you were cruel).

So it was in the wide mouth Kerr jars that you poured your blackberry syrup and a half a bottle of champagne, after a comical exchange of Johnny insisting he wasn’t scared of the pop! that corks made coming out of pressurized bottles and the yelp he let out anyways when it happened as expected. The lemon slice garnish was more of an aesthetic touch than anything but you liked it nonetheless.When Johnny pulls out his phone for the second time that day and insists on playing music and making a dramatic toast before you could drink, you could only laugh and agree.

“To the best Boss I’ve ever had,” he said with a raised glass, “Even though you used me for cheap labor and to do all the hard shit.”

“Rude! I cook every day, look at all the chances I’ve had to poison you and how many times have I done it? Absolutely none because I am a saint and you know it.”

You weren’t sure if it was the alcohol, the music, the low hum of crickets, the starry night sky, or the summer heat that did it, but time flowed so easily, and so did the conversation and teasing banter. Over the course of one meal you’d exchanged more words with Johnny than you had in the whole two months you’d known each other. Two hours later and you’d finished all the dinner (of course there were no leftovers, Johnny was still Johnny, but the amount of manual labor he did in a day made sense of how much he usually ate, you’d come to realize). The bowl of cookie dough was now sitting on the step of the lanai and you and Johnny were side by side on the deck, looking out over the farm and taking the occasional spoonful of dough into your mouths. He was right— the dough did taste better than the baked cookies probably would have, especially after it had chilled for a bit. With the way the stars and moon were hung in the cloudless sky, you could see the soft glow of their reflection in the water beyond the highway and the cliff leading to the beach.

“You ever go down to the shore?” He asks suddenly, and it feels out of nowhere and like he’s inside your head because how else would he have known you were just thinking about the ocean? But then you register that Andrew McMahon’s voice has just crooned something about Venice Beach and the California summer in the music that had still been playing through the speakers of Johnny’s phone.

You hummed for a moment before answering. “Not really. I should make more time for it, but I rarely ever leave the farm, as you probably noticed. I know this place is paradise for so many people, the vacation destination on a lot of bucket lists, but I think my… circumstances made me bitter towards the island, conceptually speaking anyways.” You watched the water with a bit more focus as a few waves crested, but you couldn’t see enough of the shore to see them actually crash. “I know I don’t talk about it much but, I needed a break from my work too. That’s… part of the reason I’m here, why I was waiting for my sister and Yunho to come out. It’s a much less interesting story than yours, so I won’t bore you with the details,” you wanted to reroute the subject before any questions started getting asked, but deep down you knew Johnny wasn’t going to press you for anything you weren’t ready to share. He’d figured that much out about you anyways.

“Anyways, maybe you’re on to something, Seo. Maybe I should take some time to actually relax a bit, seeing as now that I’ve tricked you into finishing the most difficult and time consuming of the summer projects Yunho had planned,” you stuck your tongue out between your teeth jokingly in an effort to mask the vulnerability you’d briefly shown.

Johnny took the hint and changed the subject. “The Killers, Bleachers, Paramore, Fall Out Boy… not saying I don’t like your taste in music, but I’m surprised it’s your picks were so astoundingly pop-punk-rock. Woulda taken you for a—”

“If you finish that sentence by saying ‘country kinda girl’ I’m locking you out tonight and taking the cookie dough with me,” you warned.

He laughed and shook his head. “No, you strike me as too high strung to enjoy country. Like it’s typically too slow for your tastes, or something like that.”

“Oh I’m obnoxious about my taste in media, if you couldn’t already tell. I’ve listened to mostly the same artists for the last ten years. In high school I was that kid that thought making it known that I ‘didn’t listen to the radio pop main stream’ was a personality trait, whatever that meant.”

“Oooh, so edgy and mysterious, did she used to cut her own bangs too?” He giggled into his mason jar, taking another sip.

“Nooo, that was only one time and I swear it was on a dare and not because of a break up!” You jokingly wailed out, throwing your head back in exaggeration. “Although I do regularly trim Wendy’s bangs for her because she can’t be trusted with sharp objects. Knives, needles, scissors, none of it, girl’s a total klutz,” you took another sip and uncorked the bottle again to refill your jar. You held the remainder up for Johnny to see, silently asking if he wanted a top off to finish the last of the second bottle you’d opened.

Johnny was a big guy— tall and muscular, you were sure it would take him a bit more than a bottle or two of shared champagne to get him tipsy. That’s why you didn’t think too much of it as he stared into the reinvigorated fizzing bubbles as he quietly said, “I’d like to meet her someday. Wendy, I mean— you talk about her so fondly, she seems like a great person. Like she’s good for you in your life.”

Why did you feel a little uneasy at the way he spoke about Wendy? He had no idea what she looked like, it was only from the stories you’d been telling that he knew anything about her. And it wasn’t even the real her, it was just her as she existed to you, so what was there to be uneasy about? You were overthinking again, so you had to come up with an answer to fill the silence you’d created— “Yeah well, Wendy’s sick of dick, she’s very bisexual and I’m pretty sure she’s head over heels in love with this Joohyun she started seeing recently, she’s just too much of a chicken shit to tell her how she feels,” you hid behind you glass and drank deeply, not minding as the floating slice of alcohol soaked lemon rested against your nose.

“Sounds familiar,” Johnny said quietly. “I… can relate, I think,” he mumbled out, and you glanced over in time to see him place his now-empty cup on the wood beside him. “Sometimes you just feel the way you do and you don’t really have a reason for why, but you can’t even put it to words to the person it matters to.”

This time when your breath caught in your throat, it wasn’t because of a mounting attack, but in anticipation of what Johnny would do next. The space between you had slowly waned as you’d been drinking, your bodies inching closer to each other without you even realizing it, almost like the way the moon pulled the tide to the shore over and over again. When your eyes traveled from where his hand was pressed into the deck flooring up to meet his hooded gaze, you don’t really know what you were expecting, but Johnny’s parted lips shining slightly (probably from that last drink of wine) was not it.

You knew this feeling. This was when you were supposed to lean in, right? That’s how this usually went. Your hand shifted closer towards his for a moment and then pulled back, and the end joint of Johnny’s fingers flexed as he pressed his fingertips into the deck.

You didn’t lean in. Your heart was hammering in your chest far too loud for you to be able to do so; instead, you look away, his eye and his lips and his face and his everything suddenly too much, and your turned your cheek to him instead.

Instead, he leaned in, and for just a brief moment the crickets stopped chirping, the distant ocean stopped moving, the music stopped playing, and your heart stopped beating as Johnny’s perfectly pouty lips pressed against your cheek, and then your temple, and then your throat. And then his head tilted down and his nose brushed against your skin delicately, leaving a trial of burning in its wake, and time didn’t start turning again until the snort of his laughter broke the silence and he fell into your shoulder in a giggle fit.

It took all of your patience and self control to make your lungs continue to function as you listened to Johnny giggle so much he stopped making sounds until he was spewing out between fits of laughter ‘The bubbles make everything funny, why is everything funny with bubbles?’

‘Why indeed’, you wondered silently, letting the clearly tipsy Johnny rest his head on your shoulder as he continued his giggle fits, stroking the palm of your hand against his back as he’d first done for you under far different circumstances, trying to not think about how much faster your heart was beating while doing so, and how if your accelerated heart rate was from his proximity to you, you didn’t mind.

How long did you stay like that, in such a familiar embrace with Johnny? Long enough, it seemed, for the playlist on his phone to come to an end and for him to start dozing off while resting against you, his light snores the thing that finally made you disturb him so you could go back inside. It was late anyways, nearing midnight you said softly and you tried to wake him gently—

A surprisingly loud boom shook the sky followed by a burst of light and color. Immediately the dog inside woke up and started barking, and Johnny bolted upright, eyes darting around in search of the source of the noise that had disturbed his snoozing.

“Fireworks,” you breathed out, more to yourself than to him. “Guess it’s midnight already.” Johnny didn’t say much, but his eyes twinkled as he watched in earnest as a few more went off before you tugged on his sleeve and insisted that he needed to make his way to bed and sleep. There were sure to be more tomorrow, and he could watch them then.

You didn’t sleep for hours that night. After helping the mildly intoxicated Johnny to his bed, you sat on the floor of your room, knees pulled into your chest and a hand laying flat against your cheek where he’d planted his trail of kisses. “He was just drunk, he’s just a flirty drunk, that didn’t mean anything,” you repeated to yourself over and over again.

But something about the way Johnny’s lips felt against the apples of your cheek and the hollow of your throat when he’d been nuzzling against you stayed with you all night long, sending a shiver down your spine and igniting a flame where your heart lived. You pressed the heels of your palms into your eyes and inhaled deeply, breath shuddering on the exhale.

Against all your hopes and intensions, Johnny Seo had slowly chipped his way through your armor and into your heart.

You had to get him out. Fast.

tbc.

—

author’s note | Me: this first part is gonna be like, I dunno, 5k? 6k? Also me: writes 19,000 words. We call this ✨processing your own trauma through writing as an outlet✨ Originally this was going to be one really long one shot and then I decided to split it up for ratings purposes because I am a thirsty whore for Youngho. The ending is rushed but honestly I was so sick of editing and overthinking this lmaooo. No I have not spent a summer living in Kona working on a coffee farm. Most of my coffee knowledge is second hand from the time my brother in law bought a coffee farm and started a roasting business because my sister dared him to by saying “do it you won’t” (an exact quote I shit you not). There’s more to this story and uh I dunno I’ll maybe post it eventually if people don’t hate this one *shrugs*

#Johnny x Reader #Johnny Seo #Johnny Seo x Reader #Johnny Seo fanfic #NCT fanfic #NCT Fluff #NCT Angst #kinda lmao i dunno leave me alone #panic attack tw #mental health issues tw #anxiety tw #idk if i'm even happy with this or if I'm gonna go back and edit that last 5k i wrote tongiht w/e #shrugs this is fine #johnny: bitter brews #swamp witch writes

[seoafin]

tbh,, i havent read the raws of the interview yet, only the translated ver from fan-translator and b4 i start, i think that this will be just me talking in circle and in no particular order AND a real mess (my brain does weird things after exams) but uhh here we go

gojou collects talented people, and by doing so he finds the people he can most probably relate to, except that he can't, not really, because something in the universe shifted when he was born. and it makes me think of how he's always known it, that he is special, and he's proven it, time and time again— he wants to take in talented ppl and he does, but there rly isn't much he can do for them. for they are talented, more talented than the world can understand,,

but they aren't gojou satoru

gojou took in megumi, bc he knew megumi was strong, and would grow up to be someone even stronger, but gojou can't facilitate or encourage his growth, bc for all they're similar, they are so fundamentally different. ALSO,, while geto was in his life, gojou rly judged everything according to his understanding of geto’s moral compass. gojou wears a human suit and geto is how he learnt to wear it well 🏃

the dragonfly analogy regarding to geto’s response to gojo, who was shown wearing a dragonfly patterned yukata in HI arc,, i’m trying to not think abt the fact that dragonfly symbolized victory in jpn....pain. i quoted from a web here for more explanation : In Japan the dragonfly is known as the "victory insect", or kachimushi, because of its hunting prowess and also because it is known to never retreat. Dragonflies are agile and fast fliers and can even hover, but never fly backwards

and bringing this up again, matricide and patricide are 2 of the 5 worst act to commit in buddhism, and it was said that if u commit one of those act u’re going to spend a real long time in the deepest pit of hell before continuing the samsaric cycle (higher chances to be born as an animal after that probs)— this might be geto’s divine retribution. held no power over his own body and could be considered that he’s the same as those “monkeys” 💀

ALSO the fact that sukuna's interest is "eating" rly drives home his hedonistic philosophy of seeking pleasure for himself. and he’s a cannibal...makes me think if he’ll just chomp on ppl with the mouth on his stomach

randomly, to date i think he hasn't really called himself a human, shaman, or a curse, and has held himself apart from all 3, and we've also the intro of the cursed wombs so i wonder if he’s trying to become, or is, a different entity altogether

so onmyoji got mentioned in the interview and what they practice is called onmyodo and abe no seimei and kano no yasunori were the notable practitioners,, and the kamo in jjk is the same as irl who served the imperial court back then

maybe i was right when i said that the relation between the govt. and jujutsu elders are similar to how the shogunate and imperial court work (ie, the former holds the actual power) but... lets see later,,

and i cant believe that i actually nailed it on the analogy of jujutsu practices by religion,,, so mahayana buddhism, shintoism, and taoism is present in jjk along with their respective jujutsu practices...but between the 3, it shld (?) be taoism > shintoism > mahayana buddhism (which could took a path to pure land buddhism)

it’s weird that the number of curses are supposedly higher in jpn comparable to other countries when taoism was brought from china....tengen sus

so the zenin family tree is sth like :

brothers: [toji's dad] ; naobito ; ougi

so toji, naoya, and maki & mai are cousins of the same generation

[toji's dad] → jinichi (probs) ; toji → megumi

naobito → other brothers, naoya

ougi → maki, mai

but yea i’d call anyone who’s within/close or below my age range as cousins and others above 30 as uncles/ aunts LMFAO,, i dont rly memorize my own family tree 😭😭 especially since most call the other by honorifics instead of names : aunt, uncles etc or attaching said honorifics at the end of a name for an older sibling figure/ older cousins [but like ppl in my country also call the other who are older with sibling honorific even if we’re strangers,,, rly similar to korea’s hyung/oppa—eonnie(unnie)/noona but some uses more genderless honorific] (1)

tw // topic of incest, mentions of abuse

if anyone got the wrong idea when reading this : i am not glorifying/ romanticising incest(uous themes),, i’m looking at this with absolutely no lenses of bias even tho im rly against it

初恋 = literally : first love, or puppy love

恋 = romantic love/ deep longing

i literally don't know how else to put this...🧍and with language barrier...using a western interpretation of the eng word "love" to explain a jpnese term is not quite that simple, unfortunately

that thread omg,, i rly do understand how exactly someone could associated kindness with love bc of my upbringing, it was when i was slightly older that i was just...oh so its not like that orz,,, so the most plausible explanation would be that

but the problem is that,, akutami never specify when exactly she had a crush on them,, and when megumi answered todo’s question she had a “♡” reaction 😶,, uhmmm there’s rly no way to look past this if its this way or be in denial

i’ve seen some of "why wouldn't mai react that way after hearing megumi say he'd like someone who's compassionate when she's surrounded by men like naoya",, well I MEAN,,, that, but also mai probs admires that megumi grew up so well out of the clan, regardless of the fact that he had the foundation (10 shadows) to do so. imo she seems happy for him the way she can't be for maki, bc maki ultimately had to leave her behind

hate to say it but yea,, the 3 clans most likely still practice inbreeding in order to preserve their power and presumably their wealth too 😀

i had an idle thought abt it at first but i filed it deep in the back of my mind asap,, bc i ont wanna jump to conclusion abt this out of all things too early. it’s probably not even in jjk, but all those elite clans in other ani/mangas that produce powerful heirs and whatnot also do the same,,, but this way of (my personal) thinking was influenced when i first got into tsukihime (type-moon),,, i read abt the nanaya family background and found out that they practice that in order to keep their bloodline “pure” (to keep it short : they have an optical power),, and i had this kind of assumption ever since so there’s that

i’m,, convinced the zenins' inbreeding made it more difficult for them to get powerful shamans bc they got 2 jujutsu technique-less children with heavenly restrictions in the same generation: toji & maki

even more convinced that maki might be a bit stronger than toji bc toji could see curses without aid while maki can't so the pay-off must be higher,,, SJJASN IDK ,,, plus naoya sort of implies his older brothers are nothing compared to him, and idk if we should take that as his arrogance or that his older brothers rly are weak/powerless. it would make sense as to why naobito had a lot of sons, ig, as head of clan

i feel so bad that if one of the factors that can caused heavenly restriction is inbreeding,, toji and maki and mai had no say in how they wanted to be born but are scorned for it,, typical asian families projecting their traumas and ideals onto their kids but get mad when they realize that those ideals are ugly...😁😁😁

since the zenin are conservative,, i wonder if they still hold onto old jpnese dining traditions. where in ancient jpn, hierarchical relationships were made readily apparent even within families. a dining table where everybody sat down and ate as equals would be unheard of. rather, each individual is given their own table that indicates their status,,, someone who is not considered “strong” according to the zenin’s views most likely have no place at the table, and probs eat when those who are “strong” finished/ serve them when they are eating

if toji was tossed into a swarm of curses,, i dont think abuse during said time is below them,,,

the zenin clan was already great, but they further amassed power and strength by, what i assume to be, marrying and adopting powerful individuals into the clan 🤔 ,,, i imagine they're like the hiiragi but without doing what they did to shinya (ons reference)

BUT after all that, i like to think that since akutami’s a big horror fan, jjk might be an outlet to explore said topics or even darker ones, so i wouldnt be that surpised abt it. given that there’s more than enough “red flags” before this was dropped : a reference to “tale of hikaru genji” when a grown woman asked for gojou’s number in HI arc (out of all things); granny who transformed into the man’s daughter, sat on his lap and man just touched her waist; mei mei and ui ui ; and...this (incestous theme is in the novel btw)

lets not start with whatever the fuck in kubo’s head in the interview otherwise i’m writing paragraphs with every curse words possible,, those big 3 mangakas are so— UGH,, a planet w out (cis) men like him sounds real good rn 😌 if one of yall out there decide to do it,, pls hmu rly cant do this shit anymore

akutami said i like my men pretty and i like women who will step on my neck and spit in my face (I REMEMBERED TATSUKI FUJIMOTO’S INTERVIEW WHEN HE WAS ASKED ABT MAKIMA AND IT WAS SO 😭😭😭😭) but ykw,, love that for both of them <3

when i said 3 : one piece, bleach, naruto. aside from the blatant depiction/ characterize of women in those 3,, idk if some ppl arent aware yet but oda is friends with two (2) convicted pedos,, man...the major disappointment and disgust when i first find out abt it

anyways this is just my 2 cents (which i think rightfully belong to the trash can) so pls just take this w a lil to no grain of salt - 🐱

YEAH THE ♡ LMFAO I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST A “good answer ♡“ heart BUT NOW IM RE-EXAMINING?????

honestly i wouldn’t be surprised if the three clans practiced inbreeding. but ik people are going to be  😡😡😡😡😡 about it when the queen of fucking england is literally married to her (something) cousin. i’m not justifying it but like....love the double standards, just as always with the west 😍

DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THAT FUCKING PED* LIST THEY SHOULD ALL BE IN JAIL. JAILLLLL. it’s all so gross. that’s why i fucking hate when people look towards manga for positive representation because the chances of that are super slim to zero, especially since the industry is saturated with misogyny and ped******* and a lot of other gross stuff.

i think ppl forget jjk is a horror manga LOL so obviously it’s going to confront darker themes. the question is whether it’s going to be done tastefully or not......

#honestly I don't have high hopes unfortunately 😭 #but who knows I might be...pleasantly surprised #idk I don't have high hopes in manga nowadays so hmmm #anyway as always I enjoy ur thoughts <3 ❤️❤️ #hope ur doing well!!! #and getting all those genshin impact goodies #🐱 anon #long post

[ssatoritendou]

Hello, I like You

Pairing: kaminari/reader

Denki Kaminari

Word count: 1.4k

+ summary: You are Jirou’s cousin and you were visiting for the weekend. Kaminari falls in love with you when his eyes landed on you but he is too nervous to talk to you that where Shinso comes in. 

Genre: fluff

"Jirou I-I don't know if I'll fit in." "Nonsense _____. They'll love you. Don't be so nervous all the time." "Jirou I'm not like you. You are so blunt and out there. You're never nervous about anything." "You are one to talk. You are going to a performing arts school and you want to be a singer. I'm too on edge about sharing my music with anyone." "Mmm...whatever. I'm still learning how to use my voice without putting people to sleep." You said looking around the U.A. campus. Jirou your cousin had invited you to a party that 1A was having. You had been so busy with your school but you were able to get some much needed time off. "You would make a great hero _____," Jirou said nonchalantly. "You aren't the only one who thinks that. But then again others think I would make a great villain too." "I know. I know. You know I just want my baby cousin to be happy." She nudged your shoulder. "You are literally 2 ½ months older. Not that much of a difference." "I just like to tease you." The two of you approached a building label 1A. "Ok. They are kind of idiots, mainly the ones I hang out with." "That's just to soothe your ego." "Yeah...Wait, I don't have an ego problem. Ugh, never mind you. Our parties are usually mellow. Except for Bakugou, Kaminari, Kirishima, Mina, and Sero. Iida sometimes." "So they are loud people. Like your dad?" She nodded and pulled on the door. "Hey, guys this is my cousin, _____. She is spending the weekend with us." "Gorgeous." A black-haired boy said Sero you remembered. "You are pretty and are you sure you are Jirou's cousin?" a blonde boy known as Kaminari said.

Jirou had a scowl on her face and sent her jack's into each one of their ears. "Shut your faces." She said. "Trust me we are very similar. Except I don't play as many instruments as she does and I'm jealous because of it." You laughed. "I saw most of you guys at the Sports fest you did really well. Nice try Sero." His face fell down. "Don't remind me." Kaminari was laughing. "I wouldn't laugh Dunce you were flirting with vine girl before she knocked you on your ass," Bakugou said. I chuckled slightly. "Congrats on winning Bakugou." "I didn't win. Half n' Half passed out I didn't get a chance to beat him.” "Oh ok." You smiled awkwardly. "Is he always like this?" You whispered to Kaminari who was standing next to you by now. "Yeah. But you get used to his brut attitude and rude behavior. Usually, Kirishima is here to calm him down." "I think you did well at the festival. I mean you must be strong if Todoroki had chosen you to be on his cavalry battle team." You smiled at the blonde boy. He blushed a little. "Even though Jirou has told me several times you are just a stun gun with a battery limit." "Oh come on. I'm better than a stun gun. I'm strong than one." He started to flex his muscles. "You have the same brain capacity as a stun gun," Jirou said from behind you. "Whey!" Everybody said at the same time. You started to laugh. Kaminari pouted a little. "I think you look cute when you have that dumb expression on your face." "Uh-uh..." Kaminari was stumbling, he felt his brain short circuit. "You actually made him shut up for once. Thank fucking god sometimes I feel my brain cells dying when he talks. But then again I am the one listening to him." You heard a tired and dull voice say. "Cool you're that guy that can brainwash people," You said excitedly. "Wow, a person that doesn't think I'm evil. I'm flattered." "Evil? Oh people say things like you would be better off as a villain?" "You got it, sweetheart. What is your quirk?" "It's almost like a lullaby I guess. Whenever I sing people tend to pass out. People used to say stuff like I would be great for stealing things and getting away with it." "Hey if the hero thing doesn't work out and you decide being a musician doesn't fulfill your needs we can always pair up together and rob places." He said sarcastically. You laughed at the idea of being a villain. "I don't see why not." The whole time Kaminari was watching the exchange between you and Shinso. He slowly became jealous. "I'm Shinso by the way." He stuck his hand out to you. You returned the gesture. "_____." While shaking your hand Shinso could feel Kaminari gawking at the two of you behind his back. ”Kaminari do you mind helping me with something." He said to the blonde standing next to you. "Uh sure." They both looked at you. "It's fine. Jirou said something about showing me her room and setting up my mattress anyway. See you guys later.” You walked away and caught up with your cousin.

"You looked like an idiot just standing there while I did all the talking,” Shinso said rolling his eyes. "She called me cute." "Rudolph please calm down," Shinso remarked. "If you are nervous to talk to her you need to get over it she is only here for 3 days. Only chance buddy after Jirou won't let you near her." "That's easy for you to say Shinso! You don't give a fuck what people think about you." "That's not true. I would like people to think of me as a caring and nice hero and not a villain." "Well, you sure don't act like a nice person." Shinso let out an exasperated sigh at his best friend's overreaction. "She is just so...She is everything!" Kaminari shook Shinso’s body. "Alright then. You are going to hate me for this but you need to shut the fuck up. Now, what type of soda do you want?" "Mounta-" Kaminari felt my body go numb. He wouldn't. "For the rest of the night, you are going to act like nothing's wrong. You are going to act like the usual annoying self you are going to very nice to ____ and a little flirty. Like you always are but more directed at her than at 9:30, you are going to ask her to go outside with you and then ask her on a lunch date for tomorrow. Do I make myself clear?" Denki felt his head nod. This isn't the way he wanted to do things. Why did he have to be such a dunce and fall for Shinso's dumb trick?

"That was really funny Kaminari." You laughed at the joke he made about Jirou. "I'm going to get some food you want some?" "Sure thing pretty lady." You blushed a little and went to the kitchen. "What are you doing?" Jirou asked. "What?" "Kaminari is an idiot." She stated. "A cute one and a funny one at that, Emo Princess." "What did you call me?" "Kyoka calm down it was just a joke. I like him so what?" "But _____-" "Kyoka come here," You asked her to come in closer so you could whisper to her. "Listen I had a little crush on him since the sports festival." "You really have no standards do you _____." You stuck your tongue out at her. "He's nice and funny. I like him. Deal with it." You walked away with a bag of chips. "I got some chips if that's ok with you?" "That's perfect." The blonde boy replied with a happy smile on his face. "Hey, _____ I was wondering if you wanted to go on a date with me tomorrow?" "Really?" "Yeah, I understand if you think I'm weird." "Nonsense Kaminari I would love to go on a date with you." You hugged him. "Uh _____ what are you doing?" He asked when he snapped out of Shinso’s trance. "Um hugging you?" "W-why?" "As a thank you. I guess. You know for asking me on a date." "You said yes?!" "Uh yes. Didn't you just hear me?" "Haha. Um, Shinso brainwashed me to ask you out." "Oh, I see." You looked down disappointed. "That's because I was scared to ask you out myself. Not that I didn't want to! Tomorrow afternoon then?" "It's a date!" You kissed his cheek. He lightly blushed."A-alright then," He said nervously. You chuckled lightly at his nervous behavior because he was cute.

#mha #mha xreader #mha x reader #my hero academia #my hero academia x reader #my hero x reader #denki x reader #kaminari x reader #denki kaminari #denki #kaminari #kaminari denki

[gerberbabey]

sad saturdays | kiara carrera

2nd part of cocaine. this goes out to that one anon. 

masterlist | cocaine series : 1 | 3 

summary: Kie spends her Saturday inside. 

warnings: more of that gay shit, im high so the writing is bad (well the writings always bad), angst, cursing, mentions of depression, more of me being collectively obsessed w both Euphoria and Outerbanks

♫ Sad Saturdays by JOBA ♫

Kie wondered if perhaps she should call 911. Her chest was hurting so much that she was so sure it was a heart attack. She’d even stayed up at 3 AM  googling everything she was feeling and what it could possibly mean but she only ended up self-diagnosing herself with cancer. It probably wasn’t cancer.

“Kie...sweetheart?” her mom stood at her doorway. 

Kie hummed from where she was buried under her covers. 

“Baby, do you need anything?” 

“Mmmno...”

Kie waited for her door to shut before she peaked over her shoulder to see if her mom had actually left. Seeing that the woman was gone, Kie sighed and turned over to lay on her back. She tried to think about the last time she felt this terrible. Physically she was probably fine, she’d felt worse before (the pain in her chest really wasn’t the worst of it). Emotionally and mentally? That one was kind of hard to pinpoint. 

Her generation was practically founded on not being the mentally strongest. As fucked up as that sounded, considering how depressing shit was because of the older generation, she thought she was pretty justified in her thinking. She didn’t want to think too hard about it. 

“Fuck....” she mumbled as she felt her lip quiver. 

Kie sucked in her cheeks and tried to blink away the tears gathering at her eyes. 

She’d been in bed for 3 days now. Meaning it’s been 3 days since she kissed you and ran. Kie instructed her mom that if anyone came around she didn’t want to see them. Kie’s mom was reluctant of course, she didn’t want her daughter isolating herself willingly when she knew that being alone was something she’d struggled with before. But she followed her daughter’s wishes. 

Even if that meant turning you away more than once in the past three days. __________________

“Sexuality is a spectrum. It’s not like anyone’s 100% straight or 100% gay.” 

Kie made a face as she laid her head against your shoulder. The two of you had started binge-watching Euphoria as soon as all the episodes had gotten released and it was now 3 am and the two of you were well into the show. 

“There are people who are definitely 100% gay,” Kie argued and you hummed in response, trying to pay attention to both her and the show, “One of my cousins is 100% gay. Women do not and could not ever do it for him.” 

You paused the show as you realized you couldn’t multitask in this situation. 

“I don’t think she even really realizes what she’s saying Kie,” you explained once you noticed how bothered Kie seemed to be by the line. Kie didn’t even really understand it herself but she was heated. Kie wasn’t really one for staying in and watching shows. If anything your entire friend group tended to not stay in and do stuff like that. You and the boys didn’t really have subscriptions to streaming services (sometimes you didn’t even have working cable to watch TV) yet you had seen the trailers for the show and had insisted that the two of you watch it. Kie couldn’t really say no to you. 

“I don’t know, for a show that’s representing so much, that seems really out of place. I don’t know what the writers were thinking.”

“I mean Maddy’s a character who’s just trying to calm her aggressive abusive boyfriend down. I don’t think she herself understands what “Sexuality is a spectrum’ means. I don’t think the writers are putting it off as anything bad.” 

Kie could feel herself calming down as you spoke to her. You had that weird effect on her. 

“Do you get what it means?” the question came out before she could even really think about it and Kie felt her chest tighten up in instant regret.

As open as the Pogues were with one another, it was just different when it came down to deep shit. JJ despised talking about his dad, Pope rarely opened up about his anxiety and the pressure he felt, the topic of Kie’s year at the Kook academy wasn’t even an option, John B denied any negativity on the topic of his father, and you avoided even saying the words “mom” or “dad” when it came to your own parents.

The topic of sexuality wasn’t exactly a common conversation topic. 

Kie wasn’t sure what she was afraid of. Would you connect the question back to her sexuality? Would that connection reveal her feelings for you? Would you scoff at the idea of believing Kie loved you?

She knew that she wasn’t afraid of any type of homophobia. Especially not from you. 

“Yeah I mean remember when Kat was explaining it to her. She said at the end of each spectrum is gay and straight. Maddy probably just understood wrong cus her boyfriend’s an asshole. But yeah like sexuality is a spectrum,” Kie blinked at that, “I mean like I’ve never dated a girl but I’m not on the 100% straight part of the spectrum. If being gay was a choice, I wouldn’t like men at all.”

Kie didn’t really accomplish much that night. You were still opposed to the idea of love. You still didn’t know about her feelings. Nothing had really changed. 

But that night, Kie felt happier than she had in a while. 

________

Kie recalled the episode of Euphoria where Rue had gone through a depressive episode and it led to a kidney infection. Kie was terrified of the idea as a whole and had forced herself to get up and use the bathroom. 

Pushing the bathroom door open she dragged her feet as she made her trek back to her room. It was at the most a few feet but damn did it make her tired. Her head felt heavy on her shoulders and her body ached. She wouldn’t be surprised if she’d somehow caught a fever in the midst of all of this. She’d forced her body through an entirely different routine for the past three days. 

“Jesus Kie.”

Kie jumped at that and nearly screamed at the sight of JJ. 

“Shit! JJ what the hell are you doing here?! You scared the fuck out of me!” 

“Sorry jeez,” JJ put his hands up in defense, “We were worried and your mom wasn’t letting anyone see you so I snuck in through your back door,” JJ’s casual way of speaking left Kie speechless.

“What the fuck JJ....Don’t you have like work? Or something better to do on a Saturday than break into my house?” 

“Well I have today off actually. John B and Pope are both working and (Y/N)’s sick too so I don’t-”

“Wait what?” Kie backtracked for a moment, “(Y/N)’s sick?” 

“Yeah I mean I don’t know-”

“How do you not know JJ!” 

“I just-I don’t know, (Y/N) just said she was sick, why are you yelling at me?!”

Kie pressed her hands to her face in frustration. Even when you weren’t around her you were still somehow affecting her emotionally. 

“JJ I really cannot have you here right now ok, I need you to go,” Kie motioned to her door but JJ wasn’t having it. Kie hadn’t spoken to any of them in the past 3 days and he knew it had something to do with you. You weren’t telling him anything either but he was more observant than you thought. You had fallen off the face of the earth at the exact same time as Kie and the only time you responded to any of his texts was when you were telling him you couldn’t hang out with the Pogues because you needed to check on Kie. 

“No ok I’m not dumb, did something happen between you and (Y/N)? Are you two fighting or something?”

“No JJ-”

“Then what? Did someone break the fucking girl code?”

“NO!”

“Did she hook up with a guy you called dibs on-”

“I KISSED HER!” 

Kie sucked in a breath as she and JJ looked at each other in the eye. The shock was clear on his expression.

“I kissed (Y/N)...because,” Kie’s shoulders shook, “Because I love her. But she-she won’t love me back.”

“What...you don’t know that Kie,” JJ tried to soothe as Kie began to sob, her hands shaking. 

“I do, ok, I do know. (Y/N) has been...hurt so much, and I wish I could help her fucking love again, as cheesy as that sounds, but she has been pretty straightforward about how she feels about crap like that.”

JJ clenched his jaw and fidgeted with his hands. He was completely out of his element in this type of situation. He wasn’t exactly the best example of anything that regarded relationships or even opening up about feelings and here was his best friend venting to him about his other best friend. If he was being completely honest he thought he was going to have this conversation with Pope about Kie, not Kie about you. 

“I love her JJ...” Kie sobbed and JJ licked his lips then his eyes and attention flickered off to the side at the sight of movement. 

Kie turned at that and back into her room and nearly into JJ at the sight of you standing in her doorway. 

You bit at your cheek as you looked at the two of them. 

“Hey Kie....” 

part 3? 

#kiara carrera x reader #kie carrera x reader #kie x reader #outerbanks imagine #kiara carrera #obx imagine #outerbanks #fem!reader #f/f imagine #gaaay #euphoria references #the #sexuality is a spectrum #scene #jj maybank #pope heyward #john b routledge #madison bailey #x reader #reader insert #imagine #romance fic #angst fic #this is literally terrible HAH #outerbanks fanfiction #outerbanks fanfic #outer banks imagine #outer banks #outer banks fic #outer banks romance

[btxtreads]

Halfway There || Choi Soobin

➳ When feelings you thought have changed do a complete 180 in the midst of a total disaster.

↳ Pairing: Choi Soobin x Reader

↳ word count: 4.2k

↳ genre: fluff, angst?, medical au

↳ trigger warnings: mass shooting (NOT DESCRIBED BUT MENTIONED A LOT), mentions of suicide, panic attacks, multiple gunshot casualties, minor character deaths

↳Trigger warning note: PLEASE BE CAREFUL IN READING THIS FIC. IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED BY THE THINGS LISTED ABOVE--PLEASE DO NOT PROCEED UNDER THE KEEP READING SIGN. this is in no way romanticizing a shooting or anything mentioned in the warnings above--but this is a medical fic that takes place in an emergency room in the midst of a disaster, and i found that this situation is usually dealt with in the medical field would be plausible for the emergencies they would be able to respond to but still be able to interact with. 

↳ a/n: With regards to the general plot between Soobin and Y/N,,,, i had no idea what i was writing man i did this on a spur at 3am. Please be careful in reading, and please tread lightly. otherwise, enjoy this weird soobin fic i wrote because there are no soobin fics for me to read anymore hAHA pls send me some.

Screams, wheels on linoleum floors, beeping.

All those noises are tuned out by Y/N as she panted, two defibrillators in her hands.

“Charge again. 600 this time. You, move.” Y/N commanded, pushing the patient’s brother away. “No one near the patient. We ready?”

Beomgyu, Y/N’s best friend and co-doctor, nodded firmly. 

“Alright. Three, two, one.” Y/N said, voice alert. “Charge.”

The patient’s body lurched.

Y/N’s head turned to the heart monitor, cursing at the unmoving flat line.

“Shit, again. 800. Ready?”

“Yep.”

“3, 2, 1. Charge.” Y/N commanded, defibrillators firmly planted on the patient’s chest.

The patient lurched once more, and a slow beeping started.

Y/N and Beomgyu looked up at the heart monitor which now projected varying sizes of spikes—the patient’s heart was beeping again.

“Alright, he’s stable for now. Wheel him in, OR-5.” Y/N sighed, handing the defibrillator to a nearby nurse.

“Dr. Jeon is in, we’ll page him.” Beomgyu smiled, already on his pager.

As soon as the patient was rolled out of the emergency room and into the operating room, Y/N crashed into the spare bed.

“When will this end?”

“When your shift ends 4 hours from now.” Beomgyu chuckled, ruffling Y/N’s hair.

Y/N raised her head, pouting at him. “I just wanna go get some sleep, babe.”

Beomgyu laughed and pulled her up. “I don’t think we could, but what we can do is get some coffee at the Starbucks across the street.”

“You’re treating me?”

“You’re such a freeloader, but fine.”

“You have got to be kidding me right now.” Y/N groaned as she pushed the cafe’s door open.

There sat Huening Kai, her cousin and resident doctor, happily sipping on an iced americano next to Taehyun, his best friend from college.

Across them sat Yeonjun, one of the senior doctors of the hospital and next to him is Yeonjun’s best friend, Soobin.

Soobin.

Choi Soobin—she dreaded his entire existence.

Soobin, peacefully munching on a donut, heard the loud complaint from his seat and his eyes immediately darted over to the girl at the door.

“Y/N-ie!” Yeonjun greeted.

“Hey, Junie.” Y/N smiled politely, frowning at Soobin as she approached their table.

“Hey, troublemakers.” Y/N greeted, her hand landing on Hueningkai and Taehyun’s heads. 

“Your mentor teaching you how to slack, huh?” Beomgyu teased, walking towards the line.

“Actually,” Yeonjun raised his finger. “I am not their mentor.”

“All the more. Besides, you’re still teaching them to slack.” Y/N chirped.

“You’re one to talk, you’re here too!” Yeonjun whined.

Soobin chuckled, causing Y/N to shoot him a glare. “Can I help you?”

Soobin stopped abruptly, shaking his head softly.

Yeonjun and Beomgyu exchanged glances as Y/N started doting on Hyuka.

Soobin quietly stood up, excusing himself for the comfort room.

Yeonjun turned to Y/N and whined. “What’s your problem?”

“My problem is that you’re a fully-grown adult, a medicine graduate and a practicing doctor and yet you still act like such a child.” Y/N shrugged.

“Boo.” Yeonjun huffed.

“Yeonjun,” Beomgyu sighed. “He meant what’s your problem with Soobin?”

“What do you mean?” Y/N asked.

“They used to date!” Hyuka chirped from his seat, causing Y/N to turn over to him.

“Oh, yeah. They got it on all the time at their house, Soobin was there almost everyday then.” Taehyun giggled, silencing immediately at Y/N’s sharped glare.

“You what?” Yeonjun asked, his eyes wide. “Oh my god.”

“Still finding out your name is Daniel was a bigger surprise, Daniel.”

“My name is also Yeonjun. Both are my names.” Yeonjun groaned.

“Bad break-up?”

“No, kind of?” Y/N sighed, eyes locking with Soobin who just sat down. “Soobin just gave me a good wake-up call.”

Soobin frowned. “Look, can you get over it? It was almost six years ago.”

“Seeing my ex make out with my best friend the day after we broke up was seems kind of like a hate-you-for-the-rest-of-my-life material, doesn’t it, Binnie?” Y/N said, voice emotionless and smile empty.

As Soobin opened his mouth to answer his defense, six simultaneous beeps sounded out.

The six doctors exchanged glances before checking their respective pagers.

Code brown. Shooter at Seoul Community College. First patients ETA 10 min.

Years ago...

Y/N’s eyes watered as Soobin bit his lip, his head bowed down low.

“No, no.” Y/N whispered, her eyes leaking tears—but she didn’t sob. 

She was quiet, and Soobin thought that hurt more than anything else.

“W-Why?” Y/N asked. “You told me you wouldn’t give up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Soobin, you said you loved me.” Y/N looked up, locking eyes with him. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me.”

Soobin gulped, looking at the side.

Of course, he loved her.

Soobin actually thinks he’s never loved anyone more than he loves Y/N.

But he can’t.

Soobin loved Y/N—a bit too much.

Too much that he was willing to throw everything away, that he was willing to just drop everything to be at Y/N’s beck and call.

Too much that he thought that he might suffer for it.

He might stop paying attention to class.

Too much that he thought of proposing, dropping is course and getting married, getting her pregnant and starting a family and a business.

That wasn’t in his plan.

When he said he wanted to be a doctor, his family made a lot of adjustments—budget cuts, his older brother going to a less prestigious college to save money, his parents taking on multiple jobs—just to give him his dream.

And now, he was here and thinking of dropping it all for a girl.

So, yes. 

He did love Y/N, but he had to choose.

“I can’t, because I do love you, Y/N.” Soobin smiled sadly. “I have to love myself and my family more.”

“Soobin, I don’t understand. I don’t—just—tell me.”

Soobin only shook his head, any explanation he would offer would be useless.

“I’m sorry. I love you.”

Y/N, red-eyed and face swollen, finally found the courage to haul herself out of bed to get some food from a nearby cafe.

After a few hours of crying, Y/N fell asleep.

Waking up the next morning to an empty bed when she usually woke up on Soobin’s bare chest made another fresh wave of tears flow out of her body until she was out and had to reload—eat and drink.

As soon as she turned to the corner, her eyes fixed on her best friend.

Seo Yeon sat on the lap of a tall, brown-haired man practically sucking his face off.

What made Y/N stop was when they pulled away, Soobin’s face becoming visible.

Seo Yeon giggled before pressing a few kisses to his neck as Y/N walked over to them slowly.

“I thought you were busy Seo Yeon.” Y/N said, causing Seo Yeon to fumble off of Soobin.

“I-I was, Y/N-ie.” Seo Yeon mumbled as she stood awkwardly next to Soobin in his chair.

Soobin only sighed.

“Busy sucking the face off of the love of my life?” Y/N growled, out of character from her usualy calm demeanor.

Soobin’s head shot up, gaze soft but shocked at Y/N.

Seo Yeon pursed her lips. “Didn’t you guys break up?”

“You didn’t know that,” Y/N smiled dangerously. “I would’ve told you if you picked up the phone, but you didn’t. Did Soobin tell you?”

“No.” Soobin hummed, his gaze set on Y/N.

“Fucking snake.” Y/N chuckled, picking up Soobin’s cold brew and pouring it over Seo Yeon’s head.

Seo Yeon’s high pitched-screech sounded out as the beverage spilled over her head and stained her clothes.

Y/N turned her head over to Soobin, a menacing glare on her face as she hissed. “I thought you fucking loved me.”

“I did,” Soobin said, settling in his chair. “I always will.”

“Bullshit.” Y/N hissed before turning, pulling her hair in a high ponytail as she angrily stepped over to the cafe counter to order.

Soobin only sighed as the cafe’s door closed. “This was the only way to make you believe I don’t anymore.”

On a totally random Wednesday, Y/N found herself breathing heavily as she rushed from patient to patient. 

She, Soobin, Yeonjun, Beomgyu, Taehyun and Hyuka all pulled on their coats as soon as they read the pager’s message and bolted back to the emergency room to prepare for the incoming patients.

The last she saw, a running Hyuka was fixing the IV of a patient being wheeled to the operating room, with Taehyun pushing the bed and rambling about Dr. Kim.

Yeonjun was screaming earlier about joules—probably using a defibrillator.

Beomgyu crashed in on her cot earlier as she was giving chest compressions to a gunshot victim, stealing gauzes before bolting to the neighboring cot.

Y/N panted as she opened the next cot, empty.

Soobin entered right after her, sighing as he collapsed on the empty bed.

“That’s for the patient.” Y/N panted, readying herself to stand and move to the next cot before Soobin groaned, pulling out his phone to narrate the situation.

“The shooter’s daughter was bullied and killed herself. So, he came to the university and killed everyone he thought was responsible.” Soobin narrated, sitting up and breathing slowly. “He’s still shooting.”

“Shit, so more patients incoming.” Y/N cursed. 

“Definitely.” Soobin sighed as he stood and pulled the curtain open, only to be greeted with another patient—a gunshot wound on his chest, abdomen and leg.

“Oh my god.” Y/N gasped, waving the responders in.

Soobin immediately set to action, pulling out IVs and preparing the heart monitor.

“Dr. Choi, get a nurse.”

“There’s no time, and they’re all busy.” Soobin refused. “I’ll be your nurse for now.”

Y/N cursed before springing into action, taking the cords for the heart monitor to help him set it up.

“He’s got a weak heart beat and were losing a lot of blood.” Y/N hissed.

“Fuck, what’s your blood type?” Soobin asked, looking up at the patient whose gaze was hazy. “Sir? Sir!”

The patient muttered incoherently, causing Y/N to face him as his eyes closed. “Hey, hey. Stay with us.”

The patient breathed heavily before forcing his eyes open to let out another incoherent murmur. “Sir! Wake up!”

“Fuck,” Soobin said, turning to pull out a fresh batch of gauzes to press to the wounds. “Sir!”

Y/N cursed. “Fuck this.”

Soobin’s eyes widened as Y/N grabbed the man and shook him away. “Hey, buddy! Don’t sleep!”

The man blinked before softly muttering out. “Blood…O…Blood…Type of… O…”

Soobin grinned, turning over to Y/N and smiling softly. “Thanks, sir.”

“You gotta stay awake with us. Okay, buddy? We’ll get you out.” Y/N faced him. “Get the blood, doofus. We need at least 3 pints.”

“Roger.”

After Soobin and Y/N wheeled their patient into an operating room, leaving him to the care of Dr. Moon before running back to the emergency room.

At least 10 more patients were rolled in while they were occupied.

Y/N immediately bolted over to Hyuka, who looked panicked as he straddled a victim.

“Kai, get off, I’ll do it!” 

Kai pulled himself off of the patient, and Y/N immediately plopped herself over the body.

“Count for me, a hundred a minute. Ready?”

Soobin’s eyes fixated on Y/N as he dashed to another cot with a ma and a stab wound.

She never looked more beautiful to him than she did a while ago, saving a life right in front of him.

Several cardiac arrests and chest compressions later, Y/N found herself at a loss in the middle of the emergency room as patients were wheeled in continuously.

“Is it still on-going?” Y/N asked as Beomgyu rushed past.

“It’s an open fire now,” Yeonjun answered for Beomgyu.

“Fuck,” Y/N cursed as a patient was pushed to a cot next to her, a black ribbon tied to the bed.

“Doc, we need someone to call it in so we can use the cot for other patients.” The head nurse rushed, causing Y/N to purse her lips and enter the cot.

The patient was a young woman, seemingly in her mid-20s, and her soft face  made her look like she was just asleep—but Y/N knew better, she knew what the ribbon meant.

Y/N raised her watch, glancing at the dark lines forming numbers that would ultimately mark the last minutes of this girl.

“Time of death, 6:53 P.M.”

The nurse thanked Y/N, setting a blanket over the patient’s face before a quick transfer from the bed to a gurney was done and the nurses started to change the bedsheets for the next patient.

Soobin’s groan and Hyuka’s voice sounded from the cot across Y/N causing her to peek over.

Hyuka panted as he fluttered around the patient’s bedside.

“Hey, Hey! Minho, stay with me!” Hyuka hissed as he shook the body.

“Min Ho?” Y/N asked, walking forward. “Son Min Ho?” 

Y/N looked down at her and Hyuka’s childhood best friend on the cot, Soobin working tirelessly as he tried to do chest compressions.

“Y/N, can you press on the wound?” 

Y/N’s gasped, her eyes watering once more as she grabbed gauze pads and started pressing down on the multiple gun shot wounds on Minho’s body.

At the back of her mind, she knew that there was nothing they could do—he was gone as soon as she heard the flatline.

She didn’t know why her body reacted when Soobin pulled a black ribbon out of his pocket.

“No, No!”

Hyuka was silent, sitting down with a blank expression as Y/N shook her head.

“Choi, no, stop.” Y/N shook her head. “I can save him—I can save him!”

“Y/N.” Hyuka said softly, looking up at Y/N. “It’s over.”

“No, no.” Y/N gasped. “Not until I say so.”

“Y/N!”

“We’re not losing Minho, okay!” Y/N muttered, pulling the black ribbon out of Soobin’s hands and throwing it to the side. “No.”

“Y/N.” Beomgyu said as he entered the cot.

“No!”

Y/N climbed the bed, straddling Minho. “I can do this, fuck the heart monitor. Beomgyu, a hundred compressions a minute.”

“Y/N, stop it.” Beomgyu said, trying to pull her off.

“No? Fine. I’ll do it myself. Fuck you.” Y/N cursed at Beomgyu, her chest heaving fast as he pressed her palms on her friend’s body.

He was cold, but she paid no attention to it.

No, he’ll be fine. 

“One, Two, Three—”

“Y/N!” Soobin’s deep voice boomed as he forcefully lifted Y/N off Minho’s body and plopped her on the floor where she unceremoniously dropped.

Yeonjun and Beomgyu helped several nurses transfer Minho to a gurney for the morgue as Taehyun consoled a silent Hyuka.

“I didn’t—I could’ve saved him—I could’ve…” Y/N muttered, rambling over and over.

“Y/N?” Beomgyu asked as he stepped forward.

“Panic attack.” Hyuka suddenly said.

“Y/N, Y/N,” Soobin said, his fingers snapping in front of her. “Look at me. Count with me.”

“I c-could’ve saved h-him.” Y/N continued, ignoring Soobin. “He c-can still live, b-bring him b-back. I can s-save h-him.”

“Think about family, think about friends. Your house in the country, your relatives there, your neighbors—“ Soobin abruptly stopped at Y/N’s glare.

“No, okay. Don’t think about it. Hold your breath.” Soobin said, causing Y/N to breathe heavier.

“I c-can’t.”

“You have to.”

“I r-really c-can’t, C-Choi!”

“Fine.” Soobin hissed before leaning in and pressing his lips on hers.

Yeonjun, Beomgyu, Taehyun and Hyuka all froze, eyes trained on Y/N and Soobin.

Y/N slowly responded to the kiss before pulling away.

Soobin breathed heavily, leaning his forehead on hers as he closed his eyes.

“Wait—what?” Yeonjun muttered.

“What was that for?” Y/N asked silently.

“You had to hold your breath, and you weren’t.” Soobin said softly as Beomgyu started to usher the others (mainly Yeonjun, who stillw anted to peek) out of the cot. “When I kissed you, you held your breath.”

“Y-You can’t do that.” Y/N breathed out.

Soobin only shook his head before leaning back in, swiftly pressing his lips on hers.

Y/N let out a soft breath, leaning back and running her hand through Soobin’s hair as their lips moved in sync.

Soobin raised his hands to grasp her waist, pushing deeper and angling his head.

Y/N groaned and wrapped her leg around his torso, pulling him closer.

Soobin moved his lips down, kissing from her lips, to her jaw and proceeding to suck a mark on her neck.

“Soobin,” Y/N grunted, sighing.

Soobin hummed, pressing his lips to hers once more.

It was then that Y/N suddenly opened her eyes and pushed him away.

“No, No. This can’t be happening again, not after I just got over this.” Y/N said, groaning as she scooted away.

“Y/N, wait—“

“You hurt me.” Y/N said, turning over to him. “You broke up with me.”

“I thought it was best at the time.” Soobin whispered.

“I loved you.”

“So did I,” Soobin said, taking her hand and pressing a soft kiss on it. “and I still do. I never stopped.”

“Bullshit,” Y/N hissed, ripping her hand away from Soobin’s grasp and running it through her hair. “Stop saying shit you don’t mean.”

“How do you know I don’t mean it?” Soobin challenged, irritated.

“Maybe because I saw you making out with my so-called best friend the day after you left.” Y/N hissed.

“It was the only way to get you to believe that I didn’t love you anymore!” Soobin argued, standing up. “All these years, I never stopped thinking about you.”

“Bullshit, why’d you break up with me?”

“Because I was ready to drop everything to marry you!” Soobin said, his hands flinging around in anger. 

Y/N froze, speechless.

“I loved you too much, I thought maybe that’s bad for me. I was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” Soobin whispered.

“Then-Then, why?” Y/N asked as Soobin walked forward and pulled her in once more, leaning his forehead on hers.

Soobin sighed and pressed another kiss on her lips.

Y/N pulled away, breathing heavily. “Soobin, why?”

“Y/N, I never wanted to let you go, but the hardest decisions always seem like the good ones.” Soobin explained, tucking a stray lock of hair behind Y/N’s head.

“Oh,” Y/N replied, swallowing a lump on her throat. “Was i never a good decision to you?”

Soobin shook his head. “I don’t know. It was so easy to love you, maybe that’s why I thought you were bad for me.”

Y/N sighed and pushed him away gently. “No.”

“Y/N?”

Y/N stopped, opening the curtain to the cot and turning to face Soobin with pursed lips.

“You know, I wouldve done all that I could to hold on to you, but when I saw you with her, I thought you wanted me to go. It’s nice to know you didn’t.”

“I never wanted you to go, I still dont.” Soobin said, reaching out to grasp Y/N’s hand.

“I don’t believe you anymore.”

Y/N gave a sad smile, placing a soft kiss on Soobin’s hand before turning and leaving him alone.

Next to them was the distinct sound of a heart monitor flatlining.

Y/N heaved, inserting a tube in the patient’s chest after making a fast incision.

Y/N waited for a while until the patient stabilized.

“Keep him in observation. Once Dr. Seo clears up wheel him in and say he had tension pneumothorax.” Y/N yawned and patted the nurse at the back. “He’ll be alright for now.”

“Thank you, Y/N. I’ll take over now.” Taehyun says, ruffling Y/N’s hair as Hyuka enters the cot.

“Y/N, you look horrible.” Hyuka gasps, causing Taehyun to snort in laughter.

“Thanks, cousin. Nice to hear.” Y/N replied, voice laced heavily with sarcasm.

Hyuka held his hands up. “I’m just saying.”

“He’s not wrong,” Beomgyu sighed, entering the cots and leaning on the bed. “You should get some sleep.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“No, I’m serious.” Beomgyu raised an eyebrow. “You look like you’ll drop dead any minute. I’d rather you get a nap before you become an extra patient here.”

Y/N pursed her lips as she peeked out the cot, running her eyes through the emergency room.

It was a little bit calmer now, a stark difference from the chaotic messy room it was earlier.

“You guys will be fine?”

“We got it,” Hyuka smiled.

“Go to the break room, get some sleep.” Beomgyu pushed Y/N lightly. “We’ll see you in a few hours.”

“Okay, sheesh. Will do.” Y/N shook her head and started to trek her way to the second floor.

It was now silent, the break room situated between patient’s private rooms for peace and quiet while doctors take their rests.

Y/N entered the room silently, her eyes locking over a lone figure laying down on one of the bunk beds—an arm covering his eyes.

As she closed the door, Soobin sat up slowly.

“I was waiting for you.”

“Did Beomgyu and the others put you up to this?” Y/N sighed.

“No,” Soobin shook his head. “But Yeonjun sent me up to get some rest, and I knew it was a matter of time before Beomgyu sent you up, too. So, I waited.”

“So, you waited.” Y/N hummed. “Soobin, what exactly do you want from me?”

Soobin stayed silent as he stood up and walked closer. “I want you.”

Y/N turned abruptly, lips pursed. “You had me, you let me go.”

“Yeah, well I’m not making the same mistake again.” Soobin said, pulling her closer. “Y/N, I know I still have you.”

“Soobin.”

“Down there, in the ER,” Soobin asked. “You kissed me back. Was that real?”

“That was real.” Y/N replied curtly.

“And you wanted to kiss me, right?”

“Right?”

“And you still love me, right?” Soobin asked desperately.

“I do,” Y/N closed her eyes, feeling Soobin lean closer. 

“Y/N, I want you back.”

Soobin swooped down to plant a kiss on Y/N’s lips, but she only sighed and turned her head.

She walked over to a nearby bunk, shrugging her coat off. “It’s not that easy to forget everything, Soobin.”

“I never stopped loving you. It was always you.” Soobin said, following her and laying a hand on her waist. “Please, let me prove it to you.”

Y/N turned in his arms and slowly wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m scared of you—I’m scared you’ll turn around and go once you realize I’m not something you want.”

“No, not anymore. I know it’s you.” Soobin shook his head and placed his hands on her cheeks. “The greatest mistake of my life taught me that sometimes, the best decisions are the easiest things to do—and it’s so easy for me to say I’m in love with you.”

Y/N smiled softly at Soobin before leaning up to kiss him.

Soobin laid Y/N down on the bed, not breaking the kiss as he crawled on top of her.

Y/N pulled away and ran a finger across his cheeks.

“I’m supposed to get some rest, Dr. Choi.”

“So was I,” Soobin smiled, satisfied and happy as he plopped his body down next to Y/N and pulling her close.

Y/N lifted her head to place it on his chest, laying her hand above his heart.

Y/N smiled at the rapid beat of Soobin’s heart as he tightened his grip on her waist, burying his face in her hair.

“Soobin, what happens tomorrow?” Y/N asked, starting to trace abstract lines on his chest.

“I don’t know, baby.” Soobin smiled in her hair. “All I know is that it’s still you and me.”

Y/N smiled burying her head in his chest. “I still don’t forgive you.”

Soobin smiled, the pout in Y/N’s voice and the way she snuggled in his chest was a clear indication that somehow—even just a little—she did.

“I know,” Soobin hummed. “but I’m halfway there.”

BONUS:

The morning after the emergency, Soobin drove Y/N home.

He absolutely refused to let her go without at least one goodbye kiss—or three—demanding that she free up her night for a date.

He won her over by more kisses.

After seeing Y/N practically make out with Dr. Choi Soobin, the tallest bachelor doctor you can find in Seoul Medical Center, her roommates were shocked.

To say the least, various questions was thrown left and right about Soobin.

(“Does he kiss nice?” “Yeah, his lips are soft.” “How tall is he?” “6”2, but you can literally just ask him this.” “I thought you were dating Choi Beomgyu?” “I never was, but I guess I’m dating Choi Soobin now.” “Is his dick big?” “if it’s just like I remember, then it’s huge, yes, but I don’t see why you have to ask me this.”)

At exactly 5 in the afternoon, Y/N shot awake from the alarm she set.

“7pm. See you, babe. ;)” was the short text waiting for her—sent at exactly 3:30 PM.

Immediately, she dashed into the shower.

Afterwards, she took the best outfit she could find.

At exactly 6:48, she settled into her couch and waited.

As 7:00 sharp rolled in, there were three knocks on the door.

When Y/N opened the door, she was greeted with a bouquet of roses and a smiling Soobin.

“Hi, baby.”

“Hi.” Y/N smiled brightly, leaning forward and kissing him gently. “These are beautiful.”

“I know, just like you.”

“Cheesy.” Y/N hummed with a smile, placing another kiss on his lips before setting it on a nearby coffee table.

“I know you love it,” Soobin grinned as he intertwined their hands. “Am I forgiven yet, baby?”

“I don’t know,” Y/N giggled, wrapping her arms around his neck and biting her lip. “but you’re halfway there.”

#txt #tomorrow x together #soobin imagine #choi soobin imagine #txt imagine #tomorrow x together imagine #txt soobin #soobin #choi soobin #soobin fic #txt fic #soobin x reader #soobin x you #medical au #doctor au #txt medical #txt doctor #txt medical au #txt doctor au #txt x reader #tomorrow x together x reader #txt x you #txt imagines #txt scenarios #soobin scenarios #dr soobin #choi #yeonjun #beomgyu #kang

[hezzydaddy]

I have a bone to pick with men.

Growing up, “men” were not around in abundance.

Just Dad, two estranged uncles and older cousins but they were just boys.

Dad and I relationship was strained so boom; me and men/boys didn’t mesh well as I was weird to them and they made sure I knew it and I wasn’t invited around.

I became attached and in tune to the black, Christian, southern moraled, New Yorker women in my family and that, lead to female friends.

I learned a lot things from these women but since they had been abused and oppressed (as most women of the past (and present) were), they thought me what they knew; tolerance, getting more bees with honey vs sugar, tact, a respect they weren’t afforded and misplaced humility. These blessing/curse further separated me from the average male.

By the time I was dating I felt I truly understood women. I was young and naive but well intended.

MY RELATIONSHIPS ALL FAILED.

Why? I did what I was taught; I loved and respected women. Why didn’t it work?

A lot of reasons:

Emotions are weird.

-duh

The experience of the women I dated was not that of my family

-no one told me of the RAMPANT SEXUAL abuse 9.5/10 women (my numbers) experience BEFORE 18

-the boys/men in their lives have are giving them poor information or abusive or absent or the women are grooming their child with the intent of making a more moral clone

Many they saw day to day and like or are attracted to denounce the things I like sbd stand for and made women self conscious about being with me

It was a lot.

That drove me to figure out why women were no responding to me as I figured.

Shortly after, I immediately realized I knew nothing about women.

Pt 2

So I’m researching about women and why they are as they are.

To my dismay, everything seems to lead to men. The Mandate of Heaven superiority style complex that men are just better than women coupled with and inferiority complex as the system we have created makes us work and work for rewards and we outrageously made ourselves believe that enough hard work SHOULD GUARANTEE US THE RIGHT TO SOMEONE ELSES BODY/BEING.

So now, so now recounting my youth:

that tolerance? Teaching to tolerate abuse

getting more bees with honey vs sugar?

To avoid abuse or mistreatment with undue niceness as a defense mechanism

tact?

See above

But “a respect they weren’t afforded and misplaced humility”? I knew you that was fishy but I did it then learned later that you respect everyone but those that disrespect you, all bets are off but misplaced humility? Being modest unnecessarily? Not speaking on your skill or proficiency as your afraid of being seen as self-centered or not voicing your opinions/feeling/emotions/thoughts so people don’t feel like your being a bitch/asshole? A 100% dub.

Men have created a world we hate and women are watching us do it to ourselves and to them.

Now, women with sense or emotional intelligence are starting to not just be leery or afraid but are to the post of truly hating men for their either crimes against women/the world or their standing idly or even cheerin while other men wreak havoc yet claim to be different or well intended.

I didn’t even know I WAS AFFECTED. I didn’t realize I was taught homophobia, sexism, self loathing and so on; all this by subverted misogyny instilled in the women/girls by generations of abuse and DIRECTLY from men/boys

Now. I try to truly “be the change” and this shit is W A C K. Men don’t want shit to do with me as I’m either a simp or secretly gay and the women are on the same wave (some even say I like hoes since I’m for sexual equality)

The part that truly broke me was an unrelated post about dating. Men will take a woman out cause they like her or they want to try to see where it goes (yes men/people just want to fuck too but that not what I’m speaking on) and women just won’t cause they don’t like us.

Not in a personal way though. That’s what the surface answers said. It was a ringing agreement that “we don’t like y’all”. Not even personally, just men in general.

We. Don’t. Like. Men.

Do you realize how messed up you have to be to be a straight woman attracted to men? It’s really crazy. And the fact that I understand that now HURTS.

Outside of my immediate family, a woman “loving” ame?

Maybe. Depending on how fucked up men have been and if I’m smart enough not to be one of the causes of pain in her life, maybe.

“In love” with a me? Nah. You’d either have to be an idiot or “in love” to be in love with a man and if you are “in love” omg. I’m sorry for you cause based on our track record , we suck.

Men have so rarely been a real reputable source of love to the women in my life and those I’ve met and listened to that I just don’t like MOST men.

Like, idk here’s a analogy as a close.

Even if out of 1000 grapes 10 ARENT poison, to go grab a random grape and assume it’s not is poison is just not wisdom.

As a man, men suck.

#personal #text post #misandry #misogyny #homophobia #sexism #toxic #toxic masculinity #abuse