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buckyskorpion · 5 years ago

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11 hours - part two

Pairing: Biker!Bucky x Reader

Summary: bucky is the mystery you can’t wait to solve. if you can get out of his bed long enough, that is. a biker au.

Warnings: gang-typical violence, sex scenes, alcohol mentions, probably more to come so stay tuned

A/N: thank you guys so much for the incredible response i got to part one!! it made me so happy so thank you. let me know wha yall think of this bit, we’ve got some plot going on which i always enjoy. i wont be taking tags for this so please dont ask.

title taken from 11 hours by wet | playlist

part one

You don’t hear from Bucky for a while after the party. It’s disappointing - you’re self-aware enough to admit that. But you also aren’t stupid enough to expect anything else. Bucky asked you to that party as a favour, you got a one-night-only special being in his life and you’re not expecting anything else.

You had hoped it wouldn’t have impacted your nightly rendezvous, but those had stopped too. You suppose Bucky decided not to trust you after all.

Almost three weeks later and you’re at work, thoughts of Bucky barely a buzz in the back of your head compared to the job at hand. You’ve always been able to let your work consume you, and it pays off in your line of business. Being a private investigator requires attention to detail, lateral thinking, and a questionable moral compass. Your patented paranoia doesn’t hurt either. Your dad tells you every time you visit that he wishes you’d get into something more stable, something less dirty, but you’re not really good at anything else. Considering the majority of your clients are partners trying to figure out if their significant other is cheating, it also pays well for quite minimal effort.

Quick rule of thumb for aspiring PI’s: they’re almost always cheating.

Today is one of those clients. You’ve tailed the guy in question to a tattoo shop in Red Hook, which is already a red flag. He’s an investment banker and buys Louis Vuitton cufflinks for his ugly work suits. He stands out like a sore thumb in this grungy neighbourhood. You snap a few photos of him outside the store, very obviously checking left and right for a tail before entering the place. People suck at being subtle, you’ve come to realise over the years. And at being observant, because all you’ve bothered to do to hide is sit at the cafe across the road and pretend to be taking photos of the latte art on your coffee.

Entering the tattoo parlour is a no-go, even if your grunge aesthetic would fit in with the clientele more than your straight-laced prey. There are other ways, though. You leave some bills on the table and cross the street into the alley beside the tattoo shop, wrinkling your nose at the dumpster smell. There’s a fire escape which you can reach if you stand on the lid of the offensive dumpster in question, leading to a window you hope will get you some insight into what Mike Shorditch of suspected-cheating fame is up to. Maybe he has a tattooed, lip-ringed young girlfriend he meets here? Or a heavy-set biker boyfriend? Or he just wants a tattoo and his wife is as paranoid as you are.

Squeezed uncomfortably between the bars of the fire-escape, you manage to aim your camera lens at the window and zoom in - jackpot. It’s a small window near the ceiling of the high-roofed shop, letting in minimal light to ruin the dark aesthetic of the place, allowing you a somewhat clear view of the shop inside. It’s really nice, you notice, and they have good taste in music. Slowly Slowly bleeds minimally through the glass and you try focus your lens on the faces inside, catching Mike among them like a unicorn in a goth reunion. He’s talking to someone, waving his hands around dramatically while the guy he talks to towers over him, arms folded over a ginormous chest.

You know that face, you realise as you aim your lens a little higher. The shock burns, almost makes you drop your camera and fall off the fire escape you’re precariously lying on. It’s Steve, blonde head unmistakeable as he glares at your target and dismisses whatever Mike says to him with an eyeroll. Without questioning it, you snap a few photos of Steve’s imposing figure - so at odds with the friendly, downright cuddly man you met at the party a few weeks ago. Just when you thought you’d gotten rid of thoughts about that night, they show up at your work. How is this possible?

None of this sits right with you. This strange coincidence, the weird behaviour at the party towards Bucky and his friends, Bucky’s general evasiveness and the feeling you get of being watched just being around him. Nothing is adding up and you’ve never been the kind of person to leave well enough alone. You snap photos of the shop, as much as you can - Steve’s tattoo sleeve that had been hidden under a jumper at the party, the stencils lining the walls, the locks on the front door, the counter where a scrawny kid in glasses bends over what looks like genuine high-school homework and ignores the adults in the shop. There are too many variables - you have to start making sense of one of them.

The easiest thread to pull is Mike, and he’s the one you’re being paid to solve, so it makes sense to start there. Clearly it isn’t cheating his wife should be worried about, but the meeting he’s having with Steve and the others doesn’t look like a friendly catch up with friends either. His personal cybersecurity is poor enough you figure you’ll be able to solve that particular mystery easy enough.

Bucky and his friends, however? That’s going to take a bit more digging.

***

According to Mike Shoreditch’s bank records, he owes somebody a lot of money. You get this from an account his wife doesn’t even know he has, believing all their money goes into a shared account with a completely different bank. Mike has a lot of secrets but cheating isn’t one of them - the print outs of his secret bank account statements and the pictures of him at Steve’s tattoo parlour would be enough for you to close the case and get your money. But you don’t. Not just yet. You have your own itch to scratch, now.

You’ve taken to watching the tattoo shop’s comings and goings, snapping pictures here and there. Steve comes in at ten in the morning, ready to open the shop up by lunchtime for customers and doesn’t close it until midnight. His customers are the usual sort you’d imagine at a rough tattoo shop in Red Hook - heavy set guys with full sleeves and chest pieces, grungy couples who probably live upstate but are rebelling against their trust-fund parents, random walk-ins who’s nerves you can sense from across the street at what’s become your usual table. There are a few, though, who stand out. Leather jackets and motorbikes they park in the alley beside the shop, using the back entrance you snap a shot of one night once they all went home.

You’re not jumping to conclusions just yet, you’ve learnt the hard way from doing that, but you’re also not stupid. Whatever Steve is into, whatever Bucky is by association a part of, there are some shady looking people involved as well.

It’s one of those days where you’re watching the shop from the cafe, camera left on the table in favour of devouring an almond croissant and cataloguing the people you’ve now dubbed regulars at Steve’s as they enter the shop. You should probably be doing your actual job but you can’t bring yourself to, too caught up in the shady business across the street from you. Absorbed, in fact, so you practically jump out of your skin as your phone rings and you send it flying to the pavement with an errant elbow.

You pick up without checking the ID, and boy was that a mistake. Heart pounding painfully in your chest, you answer, “Hi, hello, hi, this is (Y/n) speaking,” all in a rush.

A familiar, honey-warm laugh rumbles down the phone to you and your previously racing heart all but stops beating. Bucky says, “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

Does he know? Had Steve caught you spying and called Bucky asking why the random girl he brought to a party that one time was stalking him? You glance around the street, half expecting Bucky to be standing behind you and catching you red-handed. He’s not, of course he’s not, you’re just losing your mind a little bit.

“No, no, sorry,” you say, running a shaky hand through your hair. “I’m at work. What’s up?”

“I won’t keep you long,” Bucky says, sounding amused, and you hate how the rough catch of his voice through the phone all but erases the suspicions you have for him, warning you to stay away. You had missed him, is all. He says, as if plucking the thought from your brain, “I was missing you.”

“Yeah?” you ask, glad he can’t see the grin you send to the table. “That why you disappeared after the party?”

“Let me explain over drinks?” Bucky asks, dodging your jab with ease. No, no, no, don’t be stupid, he’s bad news and you’ve got the proof, don’t-

“You’re paying,” you say instead, silencing the smart side of your brain.

“Always do,” he says, which is blatantly not true but whatever, “Nine at Joey’s?”

“See you there,” you say, and hang up before you can do anything else stupid.

You bury your hands in your hair, leaning your elbows on the table and letting out a frustrated sound probably inappropriate for a public place. How are you going to go meet Bucky and pretend you aren’t, essentially, investigating his best friend? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you use this to get more answers, full-stop some of the question marks that have been playing havoc with your head all week.

And sex. You’re not going to pretend you won’t be ending up in Bucky’s bed again, shady secrets be damned.

***

Joey’s is a divey, underground bar you absolutely adore, and you’ve met Bucky here multiple times. He introduced you to the place, actually, a week or so into meeting up him. He’d laughed at how excited you were over the movie posters they used as decor behind the booths, the bartender who squeezed fresh apple juice into your shot of Jameson, the dirty bass-heavy music you eventually convinced him to dance with you to. Bucky is clearly trying to win you over by meeting you here, and you can’t say it’s not working. Just a little bit. You’ll still make him work for it.

Bucky’s got a booth at the back when you arrive, two whiskey apple’s already waiting on the table as he stands up to greet you. He pulls you into a hug, not letting you set the tone at all, but you can’t find it in you to mind as you’re crushed into his chest and he rests his stubbly chin atop your head. He smells nice, reminding you of spiced rum or something else warm and comforting, and his hands feel real nice as they dip under your top to press against your bare skin. Had you really missed him this much? You squeeze him tightly, ignoring the thump of your heart as he starts rubbing circles into your back, and you stand there in his arms for far too long to be appropriate.

Pulling away, though, feels like you’ve lost something.

Across the booth from you, now, Bucky slides a drink towards you with his usual cheeky grin. You roll your eyes at him, popping the straw in your mouth and looking out at the bar so you can pretend not to pay attention to him. He bumps your foot under the table but you ignore him, hiding your smirk in the rim of your glass.

“Doll,” he says, exasperated, and reaches across the booth to place his giant hand on the arm you have resting on the table. You look at him then, scrunching your nose up at the pet name which makes him smile. His eyes crinkle up at the sides, all soft and blurry blue, and you feel yourself forgetting why you’re supposed to be mad at him in the first place.

“What,” you say, mimicking his tone just to watch his jaw clench. His frustration is hot, what of it? You love winding him up like this.

“Brat,” he retorts, and oh, that makes you feel something you probably shouldn’t, all low and coiled hot in your belly. “Did you think I was avoiding you?”

“You were avoiding me,” you correct, raising your eyebrows at him. He hasn’t let go of your arm, now taking to rubbing his thumb back and forth across the leather of your jacket. You refuse to let it melt you.

“I was away,” he says, eyes sparkling. He’s practically laughing at you, which is- rude. You huff, barely believing him, and he says, “I was! Did you want me to tell you I was going or something?”

“No,” you say, rolling your eyes at him. You sigh - he’s right, what did you expect? Nothing, and yet you were put out anyway, but that’s a problem you’ve got to deal with on your own. Bucky doesn’t owe you anything and he knows it. You relax, finally, putting your drink down to cover Bucky’s hand with your own. You smile, say, “I’m just messing with you, Bucky.”

“Sure you are,” he says easily, but you know he doesn’t believe you. It’s dropped, then, forgotten as you sit there staring at each other in the dim light of the bar. You really had missed him, even if you still barely knew him. His stubbly jaw, the close-cropped sides of the new haircut he’d gotten since you’d last seen him, the glint of his dog togs against tanned skin disappearing under his t-shirt. The swirl of his chest piece peeking out from the neckline, and you can fill in the blanks because you’ve seen what’s under that t-shirt. You’ve traced your tongue over it, as well as every other inch of him you’re trying to memorise in case another month passed before you saw him again. If you ever saw him at all.

“What?” you ask when you realise he’s starting to smile at you, holding back a laugh. He shakes his head, looking down to pick up his drink and take a sip. You lean back, retracting yourself from his grip and folding your arms across your chest - he’s making fun of you, you know it, but you don’t know why. He does laugh then, also leaning back in his seat and regarding you with that head tilt that infuriates you.

“Nothing,” he laughs, eyes saying the opposite. “It’s just- it’s nice to see you.”

“You going soft on me, tough guy?” you tease, but he sobers at your words, the smile dying on his pillow-plump lips. He stares you down, that deep thing that reminds you how easy it is to get lost in him (if you aren’t already).

“Maybe I am,” he says, and that surprises you. You had been joking, but the heady way he’s looking at you turns it serious. “Would that bother you?”

You shake your head, not trusting yourself to say the right thing. You don’t even know if that’s a good response or not, but you’ve done it now and Bucky nods, downs his drink, all without ever breaking eye contact with you. You get the distinct feeling you’ve just agreed to something you don’t entirely understand, entangling yourself further into Bucky without even trying to. Given what you’d been uncovering about his friends the past week, you should know better. You should leave.

But you don’t. You lean across the booth, coming to him this time, and peel his hand off his glass to entwine your fingers with his. The cool metal of his signet rings offsets the warmth of his palm against yours, and the way he grips your fingers tightly signs the deal. Bucky is too enticing to stay away from, and you are too tired of trying to.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” you ask, but it’s not really a question. You watch his eyes dart across your face, tongue flicking out over his lips, stalling for time. You wonder what he’ll say. My friends run dodgy business deals out of a tattoo parlour? I’m involved in that, too? I’m dangerous, I’m a liar, you should stay away?

“I’m a mechanic,” he says. You try not to show your disappointment, but still, this is information you didn’t have before and you’re greedy for anything. “I have my own shop in Queens. Natasha helps me out, helps me run it. I’ve been obsessed with cars and bikes and shit since I was five.”

You smile at that, imaging little Bucky running around a car yard trying to convince his dad, or whoever, to teach him how to drive even if he couldn’t reach the pedals yet. You imagine him now, the hand you’re holding all greased up and elbow deep in a car’s guts, maybe with his shirt off and sweat dripping down his back. You’ve got to see that one day before you die, you decide right then. That’s too hot to just stay in your brain.

“Your turn,” he says, shit-eating smirk in place like he can read your mind. You blush, despite yourself, and scramble for something to say that’s not I’ve been investigating your friends all week and it’s not looking too good for them.

“My dad,” you blurt out, and Bucky give you a funny look like he thinks that’s your fact - you have a dad, isn’t that something. You curse yourself for starting this, you could’ve gone with anything and you said ‘my dad’? But you’re here now, so, “He raised me on his own, like, I don’t know my mum at all, but he always said he wanted me to have something of her so he taught me Russian. She taught him, apparently, and he taught her English. Now it’s like our secret language.”

“Russian, hey?” Bucky asks, and he seems far too surprised for the anecdote you’ve just given but you suppose it is the first actually personal thing you’ve told him. He doesn’t seem off-put by it, though, like you have expected him to be because you don’t do personal. In fact he just leans closer, almost unconsciously, baiting you to tell him more.

“Yeah,” you say, compelled to keep going. “We’d leave each other notes around the house in ‘code’, y’know, but it was just in Cyrillic. Thought it was so cool.”

“It is cool,” Bucky says, smirking at you again, “You’re cool.”

“Fuck you,” you laugh, kicking his ankle under the table but immeasurably grateful for the tone change. You don’t know why you’ve just told him that. You don’t know if you’ve ever told anyone that - Russian isn’t exactly a handy language to know. You feel drunker than you should be after a tiny bit of whiskey, high on the rush of unleashing a secret. Drunk enough that Bucky unlatching his fingers from yours to grip your wrist tight, a bit bruising, tugging you close, makes you flush from your scalp to your toes.

Bucky looks at you, dark and heavy, and asks, “Want to?”

You nod, throat suddenly very dry, and Bucky tugs you out of the booth without another word. Usually you wait a bit longer before getting on Bucky’s bike, have a few more drinks, maybe dance a bit if you can coax Bucky into it. Not tonight. You’re both on the same page - it’s been too long and you need his mouth on you about five days ago.

He pushes you into the apartment by the shoulders, rough enough you stumble but you’re quickly righted as he strides through the door after you and grabs you by the hips. Bucky crushes his mouth to yours, swallowing your needy whine with soft lips and velvet tongue as you fist his t-shirt and drag you both backwards, going and going until your back hits a wall. His palm slams into the drywall by your head but you don’t flinch, only groan as he smudges his spit-slick mouth across your jaw and down your neck. Bucky bites down, sharp teeth on soft skin, and you rake your nails down his stomach as payback for the mark you’ll have later.

“Off,” Bucky grumbles as he shoves at your jacket, getting it stuck at your elbows and trapping your arms by your sides. He seems to like like this, eyes flashing something dangerous in the dark of his hallway. You hold his eyes, heart thrumming something wild in your throat at being caught, pinned, vulnerable. With Bucky, though, you like that.

You want to reach for him but you can’t, so you wait for him to come to you. Kissing you breathless, hand fisted in your hair, other undoing the front of your jeans. God, you wanna touch him so bad but Bucky has you in his grip, yanking your head back to kiss that same bruised spot. He sucks another under your chin as you cry out, pinpricks of pain-turned-pleasure bursting at the base of your scalp.

He gets his hand in your jeans, in your panties, runs two fingers down your cunt so easy with how wet you are already before rubbing bruising, slow circles on your clit. Your whole body jerks against Bucky’s hold on you, his thighs bracketing your body into the wall and his hand still fisted in your hair. Your mouth drops open in a soundless moan and you feel, rather than hear Bucky laugh against your throat. All executive function has diverted to the radiating ache of pure pleasure from Bucky’s fingers on you.

Bucky lets go of you hair only to press his hand on your throat, cold rings digging into your burnt-up skin and pressing you back into the wall. Long fingers tilt your jaw to look at him, increased pressure warning you against looking away, but you don’t want to anyway. Bucky’s eyes are dark like a sea storm, molten blue, and he squeezes his grip just once before saying, “Still think I’ve gone soft?”

Jesus christ, but you can’t answer him like this - not with your pulse thundering against his palm and the way he picks up the pace on your clit, making your thighs shake with the effort of holding yourself up. Bucky grins, boyish and crinkly, and it’s so at odds with the way he slides his two fingers down and pushes into you, twisting to the knuckle, that you think you might be losing your mind. Unravelling, Bucky pulling at the threads, and the only thing holding you together is his hand on your throat.

“Bucky,” you say, his name a broken breath as you start to lose focus. Everything’s hazy, glassy, your toes are going numb and tingly so you know it’s coming, building tight in your stomach as he rubs his fingers back and forth inside of you. At his name Bucky makes a sound almost like a growl, pressing his body against yours and somehow further into the wall. You need that contact, the press of his muscles holding you up as it gets harder and harder to breath with the heat coiling up inside of you. He presses his forehead against yours so all you can see is blue edged out by black, claiming your every breath and moan, drawing you in deeper and deeper because you’re his, now. There’s no way back from this.

He presses his thumb to your clit, thrusts his fingers deeper into you, mouth parting with yours as you moan as if he means to swallow the sound. You’re there, you’re right there, and then he kisses you so soft you might’ve imagined it and you’re coming, your whole body clenching up and whiting out while he finger fucks you through it.

Trembling muscles come to leant against the wall, barely holding yourself up as Bucky extricates himself and allows you room to breath. He gently tugs your jacket all the way off, freeing your arms to come up sluggish and heavy around his neck, holding on. He laughs, just quietly, letting you nuzzle your way into the side of his neck and breath in that warm honey Bucky smell as you try and regain mental functions. It’s hard. You think Bucky’s just blended up your brain with a swizzle stuck and sucked it out through a straw.

“C’mon,” he says, gravel rough, and nudges his nose against the side of your head. “Not done with you yet.”

“Hmph,” you say, but let yourself be picked up under the ass and wrap your legs around his waist as he carries you to his bedroom. You press a kiss to the skin of his neck you can reach with every second your body comes back online, digging your teeth in a little when he squeezes your ass as he walks. You’re both still fully clothes, basically, but you don’t plan to be for long. You’ve got tattoos to kiss and a dick you want anyway Bucky’ll let you. You’ve got all night, after all.

***

It’s late, you should be going, but you steal a few more minutes lying on Bucky’s chest. He’s sat up against the headboard, trying to braid little pieces of your hair with the cutest look of concentration on his face. The way he goes from dirty to dork always makes your heart do complicated things in your chest. You’re drumming your fingers on his chest, right next to his dog tags, and before you can overthink it too much you pause your drum solo to pick them up.

Bucky doesn’t pause in his hair-braiding but you can feel him watching you as you turn the worn metal over in your fingers. They’re well loved, a bit bent in places and the letters starting to rub flat but you can still read it. His birthday, March 10th, and his name. You’d never thought to read these before - they always seemed part of Bucky’s past, something you weren’t allowed into yet. But tonight has made you bold, and you run your thumb over the letters of his name so you can memorise the feel of them.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” you mumble, words half said into his skin. Bucky hums but doesn’t respond, so you say, “I always knew no mother could look at their newborn child and call it Bucky.”

“Watch it,” Bucky warns, but without any real heat. You don’t ask what the tags mean, which war he fought in, when he got back. You lay them back on his skin carefully, straightening out the chain, before turning in Bucky’s arms to prop your chin on his chest piece and look at him.

“I should go,” you say, as you continue to lie there with legs tangled and Bucky’s hand now resting idle, cupping the back of your head. He bites his lip, strokes his big hand down the back of your hair and making you close your eyes for a second. You’re enjoying his touch too much, you’re getting too close for a man you don’t know. A man who you know has secrets you probably don’t want to uncover, but you can’t stop yourself.

“You could stay.” Bucky’s words hang there, suspended in the space between you. He’s never said that before. You never thought he would say that, ever. Bucky looks at you, face unreadable, and you don’t know why you feel sick to your stomach all of a sudden but you do. There are lines being crossed that you can’t backtrack from. You’re not ready to make that step yet.

“Not tonight,” you say, and it’s not a no but it’s not what Bucky wants to hear. He withdraws his hand from you, letting it drop uselessly to the bed beside him. You take that as your cue to go, rolling off the bed and dressing silently with Bucky’s eyes burning a hole in your skin.

You’re pulling away, trying desperately to regain some distance and control from his man who already has you swallowed whole, he just doesn’t know it yet. Even still, you can’t stop yourself crawling back on the bed and straddling his lap, holding his face in your hands as you kiss him. You want him to remember this - not you saying no, but the way your body will always say yes to him as he holds your hips and keeps you there, kissing you back as desperate as you feel.

But now you know you have reason to climb through the laundry room window that night and sneak away from Bucky’s apartment building, that you’re not just being paranoid because you’ve got photos to prove it. It’s that thought alone that makes it bearable to leave him, even if your heart is begging you to stay.

Part 3

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sleepypeaky · 5 years ago

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amore?

michael gray x italian american male reader

wc: 1.5k

warnings: mentions of death, scars, you know the drill

request: My gay italian ass self would LOVE a Micheal Gray fic, but like, not sure he would like a guy who's italian after that fucking Luca incident.. and I dont know if you write for mlm..

a/n: I hope you enjoy! idk why i made it so long but when i get a plot in my head i mean,,,,,

also i always try not to describe the readers features so everyone can be represented and i full mean for that when i say early on that michael sees him as italian. I personally dont look italian besides my nose- somehow the like 2% irish overrided it- so obviously this is a little off but i didnt know where to fix it

1927

Michael sat in his desk chair facing the window.

He was in New York City, he was the head of this branch of the company.

But he still felt like something was missing. Naturally, part of that feeling was from the fact that he had been exiled from his home. But the other was something else, boredom maybe, depression, loneliness.

He sighed and turned back to his desk, where his meetings planner was open to the days page.

His first meeting was a clandestine one, booked under a guise of what it really was. It was always intriguing, Michael thought, running a company that was a front.

What he knew of this client was they were attached to one of the city’s hundreds of speakeasies, what these prohibition inhibited Americans called their secret pubs. And he assumed the client was coming to purchase some quality booze from the Shelby Company Limited.

What he he didn’t expect was who they were going to send.

Normally the heads of the pubs sent someone to broker the deal in their place, a tall weasel faced man usually, who reeked of alcohol from every pore.

Instead, when his secretary opened the door, an incredibly striking Italian lad strode through.

You weren’t expecting to see a man like that behind the desk. You figured it’d be some slimy old guy getting rich off of the illegal cash. Not a charming and incredibly handsome British boy.

“Uh hi, I’m Michael, Michael Gray.” He held his hand out to you and you shook it.

“I’m (y/n) (l/n).”

He offered you a seat.

“You’re not from around here are you?” You said.

He chuckled, “What gave it away?”

The deal was done in barely a half hour. But somehow you both found yourselves at lunch.

“So how did you find yourself in, well, this line of work?” Michael asked.

“Well it’s pretty simple, there’s always work for people who don’t mind taking risks.” Michael smiled at that. You continued,

“but I could ask you the same question.”

“Well lets say that this is one of the less illegal ventures of my family. And as you put it, risks are lucrative.”

“Ill cheers to that.” You smiled and raised a glass.

The lunches happened again, and then again.

Soon you were meeting daily, making up further excuses for getting to know each other.

“My family is, well, its complicated...” Michael chuckled one day as you were at lunch.

You smirked, “Michael, i’m Italian. My family is fucking nuts, trust me, your’s is no worse than mine.”

With people who had said that to Michael in the past he had laughed along and said sure, he was sure you meant it. Probably not in the same way, but he was in no position to argue.

“I might work in the illegal pub world, but some of my family is fucking nuts,” You began. “My parents are fine, they came over from Italy before the war and brought my grandma, who i’m convinced my grandma used to be a spy or something in Italy. At least 3 of my cousins are working for the mob. It easy work for us, we’re all connected to one family or another between here and the old country.” You noticed a dark look on Michael’s face, a typical reaction “Dont worry, not the big guys like the Black hand, we don’t mix with Sicilians, they think they’re better because they live on an island.”

You went on for a bit more, just basic family outlining. And then it was his turn.

Michael went into the abbreviated version of his past (how he was taken and adopted) and the Shelby’s endeavors- the betting to drugs, smuggling, alcohol. Eventually he got up to the Changretta execution and John.

“John was killed by the Black hand in December ‘25.”

“Stronzi, I’m sorry.” You cursed.

He rubbed his right shoulder, “Yeah, after that my cousins decided to take down the boss, unfortunately I made some stupid decisions that could have ruined the plan and ended up exiled here.”

He took a weak bite of food. You tried to lighten the mood.

“Well, you weren’t kidding when you said you’re family was complicated.”

You both laughed.

Shortly after this lunch you were both walking back to his office when a group of black clad men passed by on the street. They passed by without issue, but you saw that Michael paled and clenched his jaw. They were blatantly Black Hand. You saw he was rubbing his right shoulder again, nd you now figured it was a nervous habit. You endeavored to take his mind off it and started a new conversation.

About a month following this, you had brought Michael to the bar where you worked. You danced to the jazz and drank heavily, both getting caught in the energy of the decade.

You ended up back at his office, now the only ones there, and he cracked open a hidden bottle of Shelby malt.

Now both of you were on several glasses of liquor from the night, you found yourself floating in and out of conscious perception. Though you came to, suddenly, when you realized your lips were quite incriminatingly interlocked with Michael’s.

Your inhibitions lowered, you continued gladly. And before anything progressed you both passed out drunk on his office floor.

You didn’t talk to him the next day. Mostly because your hangover was so severe you thought you would have permanent brain damage, but also because you were not sure how to proceed.

It would be easy to pretend like nothing had ever happened. To blame it on the booze, or just claim you didn’t have any recollection of the night. That was also gnawing at you, what if Michael didn’t remember?

It would be easy to just move past it, but did you want that?

Michael still felt the slight pressure in his head after 2 days. He rubbed his eyes and put the cigarette back to his lips. He was sitting in his apartment contemplating. He knew what he wanted, but did he want to risk it.

The door buzzer rang as he stumped the cigarette out. Who was calling at this hour? He took his pistol from the table.

He walked along the passageway to the door, he unlocked it and looked through the crack.

His heart skipped a beat and he released his grip on the gun.

“I got your address from your secretary.” You said. “I hope that’s o–”

Michael cut you off by pulling you inside and kissing you against the shut door. You gave in to surprise and kissed back, pushing him through the hallway.

Without breaking you unbuttoned your shirt and let it fall in your path. He broke for a breath of air.

You kissed him again and began to unbutton his shirt. He pulled back quickly to say something, but it was too late. You had already seen them.

Two knotted scars on his right shoulder.

“Michael what-”

“I didn’t want to tell you.” He looked down. “I was scared.”

Still in shock you watched as he finished unbuttoning his shirt. Low on his abdomen were two more scars.

Suddenly in your mind you connected the signs, talking about john, the Sicilians, and the instinctive rub of his shoulder.

“They shot you too.” You said in a barely audible whisper.

Michael only nodded.

You walked forward and reached a tentative hand out to one on his shoulder. Tears prickled your eyes. You walked around to his back, you hand trailing over the soft skin before finding the exit scars from 3 of the bullets.

Michael turned to face you.

“I didn’t think you’d ever find out.”

You nodded.

He put his hand behind your head and guided it back to his.

“What do your parents think?” Michael asked later.

Your head was tucked in the curve of his neck, your arm laying over his bare chest, playing carelessly with the sheet draped over it.

“My dads not really invested around to care, i think he knows but it’s just brushed over. Ma still thinks that maybe if she pushes the right Italian girl at me i’ll change. But honestly?” You laughed. “You’re catholic, she’ll be over the moon.”

Michael smiled and threaded his fingers through your hand.

“What about you?” You moved back a little to see his face better, “Does anyone know?”

Michael let out a deep breath, the one that normally proceeded any talk referring to his family.

“There was always so much going on that i didn't have much time to process, much less let anyone else see it. There were girls, i wont lie. That may have thrown them off. Even now, i think there is so much actual bad going on that what i do wouldn't make any of them bat an eye.”

“Is this what you want?”

He looked at you,

“I didn’t know until now.”

You breathed.

“And?”

“More than anything.”

And he kissed you again.

☾ ✧ ☾ ✩ ☾ ✧ ☾ ✩ ☾

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☾ ✧ ☾ ✩

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#michael gray #michael gray x reader #Michael Gray imagine #michael gray x male reader #male reader #peaky blinders x male!reader #Peaky Blinders #mlm #michael gray x male!reader #ididnt know how to fucking end thissorry fdlgksjdflgkjdflkgd

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many-gay-magpies · 4 years ago

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@honeyseungz @loabivey so that uh. that mini au that you had like a very small rb thread about yesterday (well over a few days ago now that im posting this). well uh. um . actually you know what im just gonna let you read it yourselves

so. heeseung, jay, and sunoo are all brothers. wether its actual brothers or just "brothers" by blood bond or whatever idk. but, regardless, they're brothers. im thinking that like, at first they aren't vampires, theyre just regular dudes yknow? (and just a forewarning, a lot of this isnt gonna be as compliant with the enhaverse theorizing we've done so far, it's just a little brain worm i wanted to play around with, throwing a little bit of enhaverse crumbs in here and there)

but anyway. they're not vampires, im thinking theyre just like... adopted/found family brothers, probably orphans or something. regardless they love each other a lot and its great. personality-wise everything is super different, but just for plot conveniences, heeseung, jay, and sunoo are the yunmeng trio (heeseung as wwx, jay as jc, and sunoo as jyl respectively), and jungwon is lwj.

the three brothers meet jungwon, probably brought together by this Big Fantasy Evil, maybe something involving the vampire queen as a character? idk. there's some big evil shit going down, and the three brothers somehow end up with jungwon and HIS big bro, who im imagining is jake (basically the lan xichen in this situation—very soft, kind, gentle; the vibes are right). both of them are vampires, not that our three orphan bois know that. they get caught up in the danger, and vampire bros jake and jungwon coms to the rescue.

now, a little bit of personality-mapping here: jay is outwardly very loud, fun, temperamental, and sarcastic, generally very much like he is irl; but inside, he's intensely loyal, protective, and loving, with a HUGE soft spot for the people closest to him. sunoo is very sweet, sensitive, and kind—the walking hug of the three brothers, who is certainly not without his bite and wont hesitate to talk back to anyone who hurts them. aggressively and without mercy. also he makes them soup for comfort and is generally best boy. heeseung is very goofy, playful, free-spirited, and bright, but insecure and sensitive underneath it all; generally a loud annoying mess of a boy. pure chaotic neutral and a gremlin if there ever was one. jungwon, on the other hand, is... not. he's nervous, quiet, cautious to a fault and intensely righteous, always standing up for what's right and refusing to waver from his chosen path. very lawful good vibes. he, naturally, is more than a little put off when jay, sunoo, and heeseung's chaotic ass come crashing into he and his brother jake's once-peaceful (ish) lives. and it doesn't help that heeseung is a... huge flirt, and apparently deadset on making jungwon his friend. fuck.

jungwon... doesn't know what to do. and it would all be so much easier if heeseung were dumb or stupid or unattractive or just a total asshole—but he isnt any of those things. he's beautiful, smart, insanely witty with a brain faster than any jungwon's ever seen—he can't help but admire him. but on top of that, he's wreckless as hell, unpredictable, and pushy, and gives jungwon heart attacks way too much for his liking. he doesn't even have a heartbeat. he's fucking dead.

it eventually comes out that jake and jungwon are vampires; the brothers are surprisingly cool with it. not the craziest thing that's happened to them.

the five boys get closer, staying together as they fight their foe (which im becoming increasingly inclined to make the werewolves), and through a series of convoluted events, jungwon learns that heeseung is not only gorgeous, smart, talented, and funny as all get-out, but also sensitive, caring, insecure, and thoughtful... and heeseung, who's only goal had been to break through the nervous and straightforward outer shell of his young dongsaeng, does just that. and jungwon, naturally, starts to fall in love.

somewhere along the line, though, things go wrong—as they were bound to do in an au loosely based off of the untamed. something happens to heeseung; he's fatally wounded after saving jay's life, and disappears, nowhere to be found. his brothers eventually assume the worse; that he's gone forever. but the queen finds him, takes care of him, nurses him back to health. turns him.

when he comes back, nothing's the same. the war is still going, and his brothers thought he was dead—but he isn't. but he's... different. jungwon and jake are quick to realize that he's been turned, how, they dont know—but they talk to him, teach him, try to help him, jungwon especially. of course he does; he's in love. heeseung, of course, is dismissive; doesn't take it seriously. ill be fine, whats so bad about this? or, perhaps, he doesn't let on just how hard he's taking it; fearing vulnerability more than he fears being a vampire.

inevitably, though, heeseung's wrecklessness leads to doom—he lets his bloodlust overtake him, relishes in it, no matter how much jungwon had warned him against it, pleaded with him to take caution. he says it's usefull—says he can help them take out enemies, help them win this war. jungwon warns him that he could end up getting more than he bargained for. heeseung doesn't listen.

heeseung helps them win the war; practically wins it for them. hes happy, bitterly, until he isnt. he's happy, until he sees his brother—sees sunoo. blood-covered, pale-skinned, drained.

no.

heeseung is broken. jay even moreso. jay yells at him; yells and yells and yells and yells. curses him out, tells him he hates him, tells him he's nothing but cruel evil—he doesn't mean it, of course, but no one knows it then, not even him. now he is only angry; so, so angry. heeseung, wrought with guilt and shame and grief, flees—hides himself somewhere secluded, does the closest thing a vampire can possibly do to death, the equivalent of a thousand-year hibernation. none can find him, he's made sure of that. in his guilt and shame and anger he stews, asleep, for hundreds, thousands of years.

after the anger passes, jay is more than anything in mourning—for heeseung as well as for sunoo. he has a realization, that being that, when, inevitably, heeseung comes back, he doesn't want him to be alone: even if he'll have jungwon and jake, it won't be the same as having his brother. so jay pleads, cries, begs for jungwon to turn him—so that they can search for heeseung together, so that when heeseung comes back, he'll have jay waiting for him, too. so, reluctantly, jungwon gives in and turns jay—after which he helps him deal with his newfound immortality and vampiric status—helping him handle his bloodlust and helping him learn how to feed. over the centuries that heeseung is gone, jay, jungwon, and jake grow even closer (j line eyyy), inseparable as they search for heeseung and even outside of that. jungwon and jay are the closest, jay growing a colossal soft spot for the boy and not hesitating to take him under his wing and protect him with all he has (initially, sort of as a replacement for protecting heeseung, but eventually jay's affection for jungwon grows into something all it's own). to be clear, no love triangle bullshit here, only sickening-sweet platonic soulmates jaywon and a jungwon that is still achingly in love with heeseung.

(okay for anyone thats actually watched cql/read mdzs, yes i KNOW lwj and jc did not get along at all and kind of hated each other but. this is my au i do what i want, and if i want to add soft jaywon into the mix then im fucking going to, goddamnit)

OKAY TIME FOR SOME WACKY SIDE-PLOT MADNESS

so. sunghoon. how does he fit into all this? how does he end up being the one to trigger heeseung's "resurrection"? how does heeseung GET resurrected in the first place? well, not to worry, you're about to find out! and i am too because i'm just figuring this out as i go along baybyyyy

sunghoon, im thinking, is a friend of jake's (lets throw some jakehoon in here too bcs why not), either from before everything went to shit and heeseung went and isolated himself, or sometime during the numerous centuries jakewon spent looking for heeseung with jay. either way, sunghoon is this boy who jake is friends with and cares about a lot, and is also maybe kind of in love with. while jaywon spend most of their time looking for heeseung, jake spends his with sunghoon—finding himself often alone, now that his little bother is going off on his own adventures.

in a situation quite similar to heeseung's, sunghoon probably gets fatally injured somehow and is near death, but jake, not wanting him to die, decides to turn him instead. niki is also involved, and it's a sort of package deal, because before meeting jakewon, heeseung, and everyone, they were their own little thing; not unlike jay, heeseung, and sunoo's brother's triad. they were both probably orphans, niki being the much younger one, and as such sunghoon took him under his wing and never looked back. when jake turned sunghoon, niki was basically like "m8 what the fuck" and demanded he be turned too, not wanting his sunghoon-hyung to live on forever while he grew old and died. jake, also having a soft spot for niki, was like "fine alright" and turned him too. so, now their little vampire coven numbered five, and all was (moderately) well.

or not.

the thing was, jake hadn't anticipated how powerful sunghoon would be—there's nothing in life that anyone's found yet that would indicate a person's level of power once turned, so jake had... pretty much no way to see this coming. but, anyway, sunghoon was... really, really powerful. like, insanely powerful. all the abilities vampires were said to have in legends, the likes of which were previously reserved for just legends, he had them; flawless teleportation, mind control, shape-shifting, the whole bit. and on top of that, he was controlled—insanely good at monitoring himself and keeping tabs on his own instincts. one of the most self-sufficient, well-mannered vampires jake had ever seen. it was... frankly insane.

the problem? the queen. this is where she comes in, because she's played a part in all the boys' transformations, albeit indirectly—when jake and jungwon first turned, it was she who turned them. she could sense sunghoon's power, and she wanted it for herself. jake and jungwon had done well at avoiding her, even forgetting about her for a while; but what she wanted, she took, and take she did. it was sunghoon she took: luring him to her in small increments and then all at once, taking control of him, turning him into a mindless puppet. sunghoon had always prided himself in control, and without it, havoc wreaked: bodies dropping left and right, people being killed seemingly at random, their only purpose being to instill fear and paranoia.

now, niki had heard tales, before, from his hyungs but also from regular townspeople to whom the legend had gotten passed down, of heeseung, and how great and terrible he was. heeseung, the townspeoples' folktales said, had been insane, unstoppable: a mad genius far too gone for redemption. niki also knew from his hyungs' fond stories that heeseung, more than evil, was kind and caring; he was loyal, and powerful in his loyalty, and niki thought that if anyone could save his sunghoon-hyung, it was heeseung.

so niki went on a journey. without telling jaywon or anyone else (and thus causing quite the panic), he spent years searching for heeseung, everywhere jaywon had thought to look and everywhere they hadn't, and twice more for good measure. and, by some stroke of luck, either due to his own sheer force of will of something else entirely, niki found him: locked away in an old castle that never quite seemed to stay put, constantly phasing in between realities. it made sense why no one had found him before then—he didn't want to be found. desperately, in fact.

but niki, too, was desperate. he enacted a ritual that was said (by jake, so of course it was to be trusted) to wake any vampire that had gone into hibernation, and, miracles continuing to work for the bitter young boy, it worked. heeseung awoke—startled to find himself staring into the face of a very teary, very angry (visibly) sixteen-year-old.

confusion passed, things and motives were explained, and heeseung (although bitter at having been woken up, and still riddled with enough guilt to last 1500 lifetimes) attempted to patiently tell niki that he had no fucking idea how to help sunghoon whatsoever. niki pretty much said "well you better fucking find a way because you're not going back to sleep now, the world's about to fucking end. also jay and jungwon-hyung have been looking for you for literal centuries, do you know how pissed theyd be if i went out looking for you, found you, then came back empty-handed? really fucking pissed is how much. also sad. did i mention sad?" and heeseung, notoriously weak and also kind of (read: very) in love, is just like "...jungwon? jay?"

so niki brings heeseung back to the others, the return journey taking a long enough time that the two become significantly close to each other, heeseung's long-forgotten big brother instincts (tm) kicking in around the younger vampire. niki has to basically drag heeseung out of the castle by his teeth, because as much as he misses his brother and jungwon, he's still so incredibly guilty, and completely convinced that he isnt worth love or life whatsoever and that jay still hates his guts. and, jungwon... he doesn't even want to think about jungwon. how he failed him. how he let him down. but, niki slowly works through the insecurities, bit by bit: assuring heeseung that, no, even though jay will definitely rip him a new one once he sees him again, he'll also cry and hug him for at least 24 hours because he misses him like hell and heeseungie hyung you have no idea.

they weather a lot together. storms, mental breakdowns, bouts of blood-starvation so severe heeseung thinks he'll lose it again: but they're there for each other. they hunt, talk, keep each other warm, and in it, form an unbreakable bond. niki had heard tales of the legendary lee heeseung, who wiped out entire armies in two seconds flat and comforted his friends when they were sad and annoyed jay to the very ends of the earth: but what he's faced with is a man with more insecurities than niki has hairs on his head—and he has a lot of hairs on his head.

by the time they make it back to the coven's home, heeseung has grown sufficiently attached to the enigma that is niki, and has almost completely but it out of his mind that he's here for his old friends, too. he's only doing this for niki: it's a fact he's comfortable with. so when they reach the front steps he just... freezes.

i have a very clear image of it in my head—jungwon, jay, and jake sense niki's presence, in some weird vampire-y way. it's been around 10, 15 years since he left at this point, so of course they rush out to greet him, ready with scoldings and lashings about how stupid he had been (after, of course, making sure he's unharmed and alright)—but it all dies on their tongues as soon as they see who's with him.

frozen. everything is frozen.

i imagine it's a lot like lulu and artzyy's post. jungwon is the first to move, stepping forward and whimpering out a broken "hyung", and all heeseung's guilt and avoidance is forgotten in favor of cradling jungwon to his chest, holding him close and whispering reassurances into the crown of his head, wonnie, im so sorry, hyung's so sorry; i didn't mean to leave you for so long, i'm here now, its okay. and of course then jay comes in, crying and screaming about how the fuck is it okay, how can it ever be okay, how could you just not mean to leave us alone for 1500 years?! how the fuck do you just expect to waltz back into our lives like nothing ever happened and pretend its all okay?!? and then he hits him, and hurts him, tries to make him feel even an inkling of the hurt he was made to feel for the past fifteen hundred years—but then punching him turns into fisting hands into the back of his shirt and sobbing into his neck and holding him so tight he wouldn't be able to breath if he had the need to and please, please don't leave, why would you leave, you asshole, why did you leave?

so yeah. things happen. reunions are had, tears are shed. some indirect heewon love confessions probably happen later on in the form of very intense devotions of life and self and all that. "walking on the single-log bridge in the dark really isnt so bad" you know the whole shbang. meanwhile jay salty in the background just like "cant you just say you love each other like normal human beings jesus fucking christ"

jayseung's relationship (or the reigniting of it) is, well, rocky. they're both conflicted—jay even more than heeseung. because, the thing is, heeseung killed sunoo. as regretful as he is, that doesn't make it any easier to forget. but he's back, and alive, and in one piece, and he isn't leaving, and jay knows it wasn't really his fault, he wasn't in control—but he killed him. he killed their brother. and it WAS his own stupid fault for losing control in the first place, for not listening to jungwon, so what the hell is jay supposed to think? he flip-flops between being intensely grateful that heeseung is back and okay and finally with them again, and then remembering what he's done, giving him the cold shoulder and not speaking to him for hours on end. and all the while, heeseung is riddled with guilt, and shame, and grief he'd suppressed for far too long; niki's stubbornness combined with jungwon's unwavering support being the only things keeping him from bolting into oblivion all over again. all in all, it's a difficult time—but they get there. eventually.

naturally, they save sunghoon. what else is there to do? they defeat the queen, break her control over their friend—and then jakehoon have their own teary reunion, not unlike heewon's, and sungki have theirs, not unlike jayseung's (although with a... considerable decrease in cursing and conflicted emotions, and a lot more immediate sobbing). they're a mess—sunghoon is traumatized, heeseung is traumatized, jay and niki are traumatized, they're all just fucking traumatized. jayseung will probably take a long time to get back to the way they once were, if it's even possible—there'll always be an empty space there, something gone, something missing, and it's one that can't be filled. jungwon barely lets heeseung out of sight or touch alike, and heeseung isn't much better off. jay's always been the more touchy one out of the three of them; but after years of missing, of longing, there's plenty of time to be made up, and heeseung is just... so, so soft, and warm, and being held by him is the loveliest thing jungwon's ever known.

AND NOW A SUNOO THING, BECAUSE THE IDEA OF ENHA LIVING HAPPILY EVER AFTER AS OT6 WITH SUNOO JUST FUCKING DEAD DOES. NOT WORK FOR ME

so like. sunoo isn't dead, or he doesn't stay dead, or not the soulless-unmoving kind of dead anyway. you know how necromancy and fierce corpses exist in donghua and shit? well they exist here too because fuck you and also i said so. i made myself sad and now im making it happy again goddamnit.

anyway. after he dies, sunoo gets found by the queen, too, and because she's all-powerful and whatnot she fucking necromances him—figures he'll be useful later. as he is, though, he's basically nothing more than a puppet; like wen ning and song lan were when they were being controlled. his soul isn't... gone exactly, just imprisoned, prevented from being able to come forward and command his body.

so. sunoo is still partially alive, and the boys (jay, jake, jungwon, sunghoon, niki, and whatnot)... don't know that. i imagine that for pretty much the entirety of the centuries that heeseung is gone, sunoo's status as a necromanced fierce corpse goes entirely unknown to them, and it's only after heeseung is brought back by niki that he starts to resurface. i imagine they realize it in a sort of tense, action-filled scenario: the boys have gone to investigate another attack, thinking it's sunghoon, but as it turns out the queen has had TWO undead corpses running around doing her dirty work instead of one. and one of them is sunoo.

heeseung and jay, of course, are stunned. they cant believe it's real; it isn't real, it can't be—and yet.

a lot of angsty plot stuff happens—i dont have the energy or enough shits to give to figure out what. the thing is, the queen only kept sunoo this long and brought him out as a tactic to lure heeseung, make him weaker; and it probably worked. in the midst of both fighting against sunghoon and fighting to SAVE sunghoon, heeseung is bent on saving sunoo as well, and there's probably a lot of very angsty talk wherein there are disagreements about who's life, really, is more important in this situation, and if heeseung is just trying to make up for what he did to sunoo. regardless, heeseung ends up saving sunoo and bringing his soul back to the surface. what he doesn't expect is for sunoo to forgive him—fully and wholeheartedly. and it feels wrong, because no, you should be angry with me, you should hate me and want to hurt me like i hurt you; but sunoo is just... happy. happy that he's back, happy that heeseung is back, happy that they're all together again. and its conflicting, to say the least. even moreso because sunoo isnt stupid—he didnt just act like heeseung was an innocent who did no wrong; he knew he had been wreckless, knew he was at fault, and he forgave him still. loved him still. that was something heeseung... hadn't been prepared for.

like i said in the last part, they save sunghoon; how, im not sure, but they save him, probably with a fair bit of sunoo's help, and they're together again. only the tiny difference here is that sunoo is with them too. sunoo is back, and the gang has yet another undead bestie to teach the ropes of being a vampire to. things are awkward, obviously, especially between the original brother's trio of heeseung, sunoo, and jay; because sunoo is his usual sweet and kind self while jay believes that he should be more angry at heeseung for killing him, heeseung agrees, and jay has some very conflicted feelings about how self-depricating his hyung is being (because like... yeah you killed sunoo and im supposed to hate you but you're not supposed to hate yourself, you idiot, what the fuck?)

(also like. if we're gonna take some more crumbs from cql canon here im gonna go ahead and say sunoo's death was at least somewhat self-sacrificial, even if it was heeseung that ended up causing it in the end)

(i kind of love how jiang cheng-y i made enhaverse jay here to be honest)

(okay this has been in my drafts WAY too long because ive been waiting for some miraculous Other Detail i need to add to pop up in my mind, but honestly i can just add anything else i think of in a reblog afterwards, this bitch just needs to see the light of day)

#magpie thoughts #magpie writes #??? kind of ???#enhaverse #enhaverse theories #ALSO kind of???#enhaverse writing #enhaverse aus #the untamed/cql #the untamed spoilers #idk but just to be safe ig .

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skswriting · 5 years ago

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(dis)connected

Rating: T for suggestive content Pairing: Jeongguk/You Words: 12,359 Summary: You don’t know if you and Jeongguk will join the group of people who have married one of their connect partners, but what you have right now is fun and carefree. Yeah, you like him, and it seems like Jeongguk likes you, but the two of you have never physically met up, and neither of you have brought it up. You’ve thought about it, but you always chicken out at the last moment, and he’s never even hinted at it, so. But you’re not worried about it today. You just want Jeongguk to come back. Who could possibly be at the door? AN: okay so i want to point out to everyone IMMEDIATELY that i originally had a different idea on how i wanted this to go (i.e. cheating which is not something i like writing about/reading) and decided that because i DONT like that i wanted to change the plot HOWEVER... because of this some of the dialogue i think in the beginning kind of still alludes to this? i think i caught most of it, but god knows im shit at rereading my stuff so im sure i missed something. i also think i really started lacking towards the end and for that, i apologize, but i still hope you all enjoy it! Warnings: there’s the beginning of a strip tease at the beginning, and of course when i write there’s always cussing, there’s also some pretty severe miscommunication (in my opinion, y/n is definitely an idiot but we all have our dumb bitch moments), there’s a small scene about an almost panic attack, and there’s mentions of a car accident that leads to a hospital stay but i don’t mention too much about the implications of that if things like that make you uncomfortable. i think that’s it

You sigh as you flop down on your bed, feet aching and back sore. It’s been a long week and you just want to relax, letting your body melt into the mattress. The city is still sounding out around you, horns honking and the occasional voice drifting up to the window you left open to let as much natural air as you can in. Gumdrop is staring out the screen, chittering at the pigeons roosting on your fire escape.

The loud vibrating of your phone causes you to groan as you kick your heels off, reaching into your purse to grab it. You know who it is without looking at it and while you’re excited to talk to him, you’re still exhausted.

“Hi baby,” Jeongguk greets softly when you answer, the sound transmitting through your earpiece clearly.

You can’t stop the slow exhale you let out, melting even more at his voice, “Hi, Gguk-ah.”

“Oh no, you sound tired. Long day?” Jeongguk asks and you can almost picture him biting his nails.

“Yeah,” you say simply and he hums in understanding.

“We don’t have to connect if you don’t want to, we can just talk like this: old fashioned,” he teases and you laugh a little, slowly getting to your feet.

“No, I want to, I miss you,” you say honestly and you can hear the smile on his face, “Let me get changed and I’ll login.”

“Wait,” he hurries to stop you, just as you’re reaching for the hem of your blouse, “Can I… can I watch?”

You can’t stop the surprised laugh you let out, “Gguk-ah, that’s naughty,” you say, even as you reach for your eye inserts, located right next to your pleasure-morph (i.e., dildo). Priorities.

Jeongguk sounds unashamed as he coos at you, “I can’t help it that you’re so pretty. I’m logged in. Figured we could spend some time in my room today? Unless you wanna stay at yours, I’m good with either.”

“No, yours is good, I like the way it smells,” you admit, wincing at the small sting of the inserts as you blink them in, getting comfortable.

Your vision slowly fades as the nanotech slowly works its way into your system, gradually bringing up the virtual login screen. You hum as you see Jeongguk has sent you an invite and you click it, the bits of Jeongguk’s room and Jeongguk himself starting to pixelate in. You can’t help but reach out and touch him, even if the nanos haven’t yet reached your fingers so you can’t yet feel him yet. But he comes to you, little by little, until his warm skin is right under your fingertips, his smiling mouth meeting yours as he kisses you softly. Lovingly.

“Hi baby,” he says again, a mere murmur really, pulling you close to him as he breathes you in.

Just like that all the exhaustion in your body leaves you as you slump into Jeongguk’s strong embrace, nuzzling against his neck as you hug him back.

“Hi Gguk-ah,” you whisper, head spinning from moving too quickly after logging in.

He’s quiet for a moment, humming a soft tune as he pets at your hair, rocking the two of you from side to side. He holds you until you pull back first, kissing your forehead and then your mouth again, hand sliding down to grip the nape of your neck.

When he lets you step back, his grin turns into a pout as his eyes slide down your form, landing on your feet.

“You already took your heels off,” he whines, tugging childishly at your shirt, “you started without me.”

You cackle as you bat his hand away, letting your hair out of your ponytail and immediately snapping his attention back to your face.

“I didn’t think I was going to have an audience,” you chide and he huffs, crossing his arms as he plops down on his bed.

“You know I love watching you get undressed. It’s like… watching a present unwrap itself in front of me.”

You roll your eyes, popping the first button of your blouse. Jeongguk licks his lips at the hint of breast he sees and you shake your head at him.

“As many times as you’ve seen me naked, you still act like this,” you sigh out, like it’s an inconvenience, even going so far as cocking your hip out, “Honestly, Jeongguk.”

“Baby,” he whines, leaning back on his hands, “leave me alone. It’s not my fault you’re the hottest person I’ve ever seen. Get naked!”

You shake your head good naturedly, moving your hands back to your chest when he chimes in, “Wait! I wanna guess what you’re wearing underneath.”

“It’s nothing special,” you furrow your eyebrows, popping another button just to be contrite.

“Shut up, it’s always spec- oh shit, I see black. Oh God, is it the lacy one? Or the one with the sheer strip on the cups and the little jewel in the center? Fuck, that’s a good one,” he groans and you laugh when you see his cock already starting to get hard, chubbing up in his sweats, “Are you wearing matching panties today? I think I’d lose my mind.”

“Why don’t we find out?” you purr, a lick of arousal shooting through you when you see him shiver at your tone. You pop another button.

“Baby,” he gasps, hand flying down to his cock, cupping it in his hand, “Don’t tease.”

“I’m not teasing,” you pout, popping another button. You have two left, but the way you’re holding your shirt together won’t let him see under it yet.

He bites his lip, squeezing his hand around his cock as you undo the last two. You turn around, giving him a look when he whines softly, the look softening into something coy as you let the blouse slip down your shoulders until it flutters to the floor, leaving you in your bra and skirt.

“Lemme see,” he practically begs.

You hum as you pretend to consider it, tapping a finger against your chin as Jeongguk gets to his feet, approaching you slowly. He kisses the top of your head and then your temple, eyes closed as he trails kisses down your neck, biting at your shoulder. His hands come up to cup your tits and you finally moan, his fingers tweaking your nipples through the material.

“It’s thin,” he comments, eyes still closed, sucking a mark into the dip of your collarbone, “It has to be the sheer one.”

He groans when he opens his eyes and sees he’s right, kneading your tits faster as you shake in his hold.

“Feels good Ggukkie,” you pant, reaching up to thread a hand in his hair.

“Keep going,” his voice has dropped a little, hands insistent as they roam over your tits, fingers dipping into the cups to roll your nipples between them directly.

“Any guesses on panties?” you’re breathless, Jeongguk’s eyes gazing down the slope of your breasts and stomach to the way your other hand is teasing the waistband of your skirt.

“Not matching,” he says, almost immediately, “Or you wouldn’t be asking.”

“I wouldn’t?” you grin, pressing your ass back into his cock.

“No,” he sounds confident, as he reaches up to your back and undoes your bra, running reverent fingers down your arms to help you take it off. The full heat of his hands on your sensitive tits has your back arching, “Is it the green pair with the lacy back and little bow on the front? The pair that make me want to eat your ass like a sundae?”

You giggle, turning your head to nose under his jaw, “Let’s see. Undo the zipper.”

He breathes out heavily against your wet skin and causes goosebumps to scatter. He hisses when his own hand brushes his cock in search of your zipper, but he finally manages to tug it down, and the sound is almost deafening. You have a hold of the skirt still so it doesn’t fall immediately, even though it’s tight enough that that wouldn’t be an issue. But you know Jeongguk is a dirty cheater and would try and shove it down.

Jeongguk makes a confused sound as you step away from him but you smile to yourself, glancing at him over your shoulder as you shimmy your hips, the fabric shifting down until-

“Red,” he breathes out, mouth dropping open as he gapes at you.

He groans as you continue to shimmy your hips and push the skirt down at the same time, letting the material pool around your feet as he gets a great look at your ass. Because you’re wearing a thong.

“You’re so hot,” he says, almost to himself, “God, look at you, like a fuckin’ wet dream.”

Despite yourself, you blush.

“This isn’t what I had planned, but c’mere,” he commands and you listen, turning around and padding your way to him.

His arms slide around your waist and turns you smoothly at the same time, crowding against you until you fall onto his bed with him on top of you. You whimper when the hard planes of his body press entirely into yours and your legs fall open to let him settle more comfortably between them, cock rocking up against your leaking pussy.

“Wanna fuck you,” he groans, attaching his mouth to the side of your neck, “Is that okay? Are you okay with that?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” you chant, “Want you to fuck me so hard I forget my own name.”

Jeongguk growls, reaching down to tug your panties to the side as he reaches into his sweats to carelessly pull his cock through, when a knock sounds out. You both stop, Jeongguk pushing himself up to look confusedly at the door.

“Is that- is that logged in or real life?” you pant, trying to catch your breath and bearings from the 180 change in mood.

“Real life I think but… I wasn’t expecting anyone,” his face shines with sincerity and apology as he turns back to you, ‘Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

You pout, sliding a hand down your stomach and thumbing your clit, eyelashes fluttering, “Hurry up or I’ll start without you.”

He responds with a panicked look and a hurried kiss, before he reaches quickly for his eyes as another knock comes, “This could not have been worse timing!”

You giggle as he unlinks, his nanotech disappearing in a blink. Contrary to your teasing, you don’t play with yourself. You do settle yourself more comfortably in his bed, burrowing into his pillows as you kick his blankets to the end of the bed so your skin is pressed against the cool material of his sheets.

This… thing… with Jeongguk isn’t weird so much as it was unexpected. Connecting by all means isn’t weird and is in fact revolutionary, allowing people to meet up and hook up (“connect”) through a sort of VR world, where only consensual sex is allowed and there’s no worry about pregnancy or diseases. A lot of people even tend to meet their spouses through connecting now. The sex toys are fantastic and you’ve clocked many hours with your pleasure-morph with it set to Jeongguk’s specifications (he’s told you with no discretion that he doesn’t think he’d survive without his pleasure-morph of your own sweet cunt. His choice of words, not yours.)

You don’t know if you and Jeongguk will join the group of people who have married one of their connect partners, but what you have right now is fun and carefree. Yeah, you like him, and it seems like Jeongguk likes you, but the two of you have never physically met up, and neither of you have brought it up. You’ve thought about it, but you always chicken out at the last moment, and he’s never even hinted at it, so.

But you’re not worried about it today. You just want Jeongguk to come back. Who could possibly be at the door?

You don’t get your answer because Jeongguk’s room disconnects, the bed sinking down and disappearing beneath you. You blink at nothing, the login screen flashing in front of you as you try to gather your bearings. You hesitate in disconnecting, confused as to what happened. Maybe Jeongguk accidentally disconnected in his haste to get back to you? But, after a minute of hovering in nothing, a little ball sinks in your stomach, and you disconnect yourself, letting the nanotech draw back into your eye inserts before you remove them.

You’re laying on your bed, still dressed, Gumdrop still yelling at the pigeons on your fire escape. The city is still moving down below and it’s disorienting to you, for some reason. You keep expecting a message from Jeongguk, as you disrobe and shower and make dinner and wash your face and get ready for bed and-

Nothing comes in. You settle into bed, feeling quite pathetic as you check your phone in an almost obsessed fashion, but there’s nothing. Gumdrop curls up near your face and you appreciate her awareness, petting through her fur to hear her sweet purrs. The little ball has only grown.

There’s nothing in the morning, or in the afternoon, or even for the next three days. You feel the worst the first day, still riding the high of the sudden disconnection, and by the third day you’re just… sad. Being ghosted by Jeongguk was not a thought you had ever entertained. You figured if you and Jeongguk ever stopped disconnecting it would be because either of you met someone or just got bored. But just to be dropped like this cuts more than you thought it would.

As you’re playing with a laser pointer with Gumdrop, your phone chirps. You’ve resigned yourself to not hearing from Jeongguk and it’s probably just Seokjin sending you pictures of his dinner again, so you’re not eager to get up and check it when Gumdrop is having the time of her life.

You remember to look at your messages as you plug your phone in for the night, and it’s like someone kicked you in the stomach when Jeongguk’s name pops up.

from: ggukkie ♡

Please just give me time, baby, please.

You sit there for a moment as Gumdrop claims the middle of your bed, purring as she makes herself comfortable because honestly, what the fuck does that mean?

“Yeah fuck him,” Seokjin says easily the next day when the two of you are meeting for lunch.

“Seokjin,” you chide and he shoots you an unimpressed look from over the top of his rice bowl.

“No, fuck him,” he says a little more vehemently, “First the unexplained disconnection, which, by the way, can physically make a person sick, and then he ghosts you, the most cowardly thing you can do, and then he sends you that vague ass text? What the fuck does that even mean? Give him time? For what? To get his foot out of his ass?”

His voice has started raising in his anger and even though it’s slightly embarrassing, as people throw him confused looks, it’s completely overshadowed by the appreciation you feel for him. Seokjin has always been fiercely protective of you and had actually beat the fuck out of one of your ex-boyfriends when he started becoming abusive.

“I know,” you sigh, glancing down at your own food and realizing you’re not that hungry, “I just… I just want to know why.”

“Closure,” he nods, sagely, before loudly slurping up some noodles.

You nod, deciding you at least want one of his dumplings. Seokjin must realize how terrible this whole thing has made you feel, because he doesn’t even try to stop you, and it makes you smile almost sadly.

from: ggukkie ♡

I understand you’re upset, but please just let me explain.

It’s been about a week since his last text and a week ago, during lunch with Seokjin you would have jumped at the chance to let Jeongguk explain. Now though, you’re mad, and you don’t want to hear it. You’re too old for childish games, especially with someone you weren’t even officially dating, and you’ve decided to let it go. You swipe his message away, deciding that instead of connecting you’re going to go out to an old fashion bar. You’re not planning on hooking up with anyone, because you’ve stopped taking your birth control since it started really messing with your hormones, but you want to enjoy the vibes.

You text Seokjin asking if he wants to meet you, but he apologizes and tells you he already made plans with his family. He sends you an encouraging selfie and you laugh, but you make it your lock screen because it’s a really good picture of him.

The bar is about half an hour from your apartment and it’s surprisingly packed considering the popularity of connecting. But you guess sometimes you can’t beat face to face interactions. A few people give you once overs as you walk in and you give them polite smiles in return, but now that you’re here you just want a drink.

The bartender serves you your drink quickly and you smile at him as you turn in your seat, surveying the space. A lot of people are walking around, taking advantage of the darts and pool tables set up, laughing and drinking with their friends. It’s nice to see. While you’re an advocate for connecting, even with your unsavory disconnection with Jeongguk, it still lacks intimacy. You and Jeongguk have connected all over the world, logging into a beautiful hotel in Paris and a quaint little house in the suburbs of Japan and a skyrise apartment in New York, went snorkeling in the Bahamas and hiked to Machu Picchu and went on a cruise to Alaska, all in the time you connected.

But none of it was real. You sigh heavily as you take another drink while the bartender passes by and catches it.

“Rough day?” he asks, stopping in front of you with a few bottles in his arms.

“No, it’s just been… yeah, a rough day,” you end up going with, followed by a small self-deprecating laugh.

“Do you want something else to drink? Something a little stronger?” he asks, nodding at your almost empty glass.

“No, same thing, please. I’m just looking to relax, not get shit-faced. I really don’t want to deal with a hangover,” you grimace and he laughs, throwing his head back and almost losing his balance. You worry about him for a second, but he quickly straightens himself, turning an almost blinding eye smile on you.

“College kids come in here and blow through a hundred dollars just in liquor and it makes me not miss my partying days. Let me stock these and I’ll get you a refill.”

He’s cute. You’re not interested, in the slightest, but you have eyes and you know he’s cute. He throws you a quick wink and hustles off, talking to someone just down the bar. You nurse the last bit of your drink, enjoying the music and chattering behind you, letting yourself sink into the atmosphere.

“Jeon Jeongguk!”

You pause for a moment, glass raised halfway to your mouth. No way. There’s no way life works like that; you’re not so lucky to get your serendipitous moment. You turn to look at the woman who’s just stormed into the bar, mouth twisted into a fierce scowl. You try not to be conspicuous and only follow her with her eyes, trying to see where she’s headed. It has to be a different Jeon Jeongguk, it just has to be-

Your breath catches when you see him. It is him. Jeon Jeongguk. Your connecting partner, who ghosted you almost two weeks ago, and who looks super unhappy sitting in a booth by himself. He looks even unhappier to see the woman, his face morphing to match her scowl.

Your breathing has quickened as you watch them, the woman sliding into the booth across from him and flinging her hands around. How did you not see him when you walked in? You may have been slightly distracted, in your night of slight grieving, but you know you gave the place a once over when you arrived. You’ve spent two weeks mourning the lack of Jeongguk’s presence and then cursing his existence. How could you have missed him?

You have to leave. You have to go right now, before he somehow sees you. You don’t want to talk to him, you absolutely cannot talk to him. If there’s one thing you know about yourself, it’s that Jeongguk’s doe eyes would make you commit unfathomable sins. If he looks at you now, in this moment in time, in this place, you’ll cave.

You have to go. You have to leave-

You stand hastily; too hastily. The man sitting beside you, who’s been pounding back beers like it was his last day, is standing too and you run right into him, sending the both of you tottering.

“Sorry!” you gasp, trying to straighten him and yourself as you realize how loud your collision had been, “I’m so sorry! I was just trying-”

The guy is grumbling at you, eyes bloodshot as he glares at you, and the hair on the back of your neck is standing up. Not at the look the guy is giving you, you could care less about him, but because you hear angry shuffling behind you. The voices are whispering rapid fire at each other and you think you can hear what sounds like hands gripping at clothes and quick footsteps and-

“Y/N…?” his voice sounds exactly the same as you remember.

Your eyes squeeze shut, heart slamming into your ribcage. You feel bile rise to your throat as your fight or flight instincts kick in, and you want so badly to run, to not look at him and pretend this isn’t happening. You’re so close to doing it, to running out of the bar and away from him, but you can hear a little voice in the back of your head that sounds suspiciously like Seokjin. “Fuck him.” The more you think about it, the more you agree: fuck him.

You turn slowly, to see Jeongguk standing just a few feet behind you, eyes impossibly wide and fingers twisting the hem of his shirt. He’s dressed casually, more casually than you, and you’re not sure if it’s a trick of the light, but his cheeks look a little sunken in. The woman who had charged in after him is standing behind him, fuming, physical steam almost coming out of her ears as she tries to get his attention.

“Jeongguk,” you say, your tone much more cool than you feel.

Jeongguk must be able to tell because his eyes bounce around your form, seemingly unable to figure out where it’s safe to look, “How, um… how have you been?”

“Jeongguk,” the woman behind him hisses, reaching out to grab at his arm, and he roughly shrugs her off, sending her a fiery glare over his shoulder.

“I’ve been better,” you say, a tad cold, “I would ask how you’re doing, but I don’t honestly care.”

He flinches and immediately grows desperate, reaching out towards you, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Y/N baby, please, just let me explain-”

You smack his hand away from you and the hurt on his face is so palpable it manifests in your own chest, “I don’t want to hear it, actually. I’m over it.”

You’re aware that the three of you are starting to cause a scene, the woman still trying to get Jeongguk’s attention and Jeongguk resolutely ignoring her, entirely focused on you. You’re getting a bit embarrassed by all the attention, but you realize this is something you need. Seokjin had said it best: closure.

“I don’t blame you, I don’t! But please, baby, just-”

“Stop calling me that!” you snap, “You - you lost that right, Jeongguk. Do you know how foolish I felt? After we disconnected? Three days, Jeongguk, wondering and worrying if you were okay, and when you do text back it’s to ask for time? Time for what?”

You run a quick hand through your hair, huffing out a laugh when you pathetically feel tears spring to your eyes, “I deserved better. I understand we were just connecting, or whatever-”

“No!” Jeongguk lurches towards you, a seemingly mindless reaction because he seems surprised by it, but recovers quickly, “Don’t say that, please. It was more than connecting for me, you have to believe me!”

The woman behind him lets out an indignant huff, apparently tired of being ignored and watching whatever is happening between you, “That’s enough Jeongguk, honestly. Do you hear how pathetic you’re being right now? Let’s just go home and talk about us and-” she reaches for him, again, but Jeongguk bodily dodges her hand.

“Ina, take a fucking hint!” he growls, turning on his heel to stare her down. Ina rears back, eyes widening in shock at the vicious tone he’s taken with her, “What part of “we’re not getting back together” do you not understand?”

Her face clouds over and she snarls out, “How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?!”

Jeongguk’s laughs, but there’s absolutely no humor in it, “Sorry? You cheated on me! You can’t say sorry for that!”

“Hey!”

The handsome bartender from earlier is leaning threateningly over the bar counter, his cellphone in hand, “Take it outside before I call the cops for a public disturbance.”

Ina looks like she’s about to snap something at him, but you stride over to the counter as you pull some money out of your purse, thankful that Seokjin had been an old man and paid you back for buying his lunch with cash. Who even carries cash on them anymore?

“I’m so sorry,” you say in a quick, hushed tone to the bartender, “Keep the change, a tip, we’re leaving now.”

“Are you okay?” he asks you, quickly, before you can leave, stopping you with a gentle hand on your wrist, “Do you need me to call you someone?”

You realize you’re shaking, and you give him a genuine smile at his concern, “I’m okay, thank you.”

He doesn’t let go for a few more seconds, but finally nods, watching the three of you intently as you stalk out of the bar, Jeongguk following desperately behind you and Ina stomping after him.

“Y/N, can we please-” Jeongguk tries but you continue to stalk down the road, “Please!”

“Jeongguk, just leave her alone, it’s obvious she doesn’t care about you!”

The words fly out of your mouth before you’ve even thought about them, “Don’t you fucking tell me how I feel about Jeongguk! You don’t know me! You don’t know anything about Jeongguk and I’s relationship and from what it sounds like,” you spit out, glaring at her, “you don’t care about Jeongguk either.”

You didn’t realize how close you’d gotten to Ina until Jeongguk is stepping between you, hands held up placatingly. You wonder what you’re hearing until you realize it’s you, that you’re panting heavily, almost like you’re about to have a panic attack.

“Baby, look at me,” Jeongguk says softly, “It’s okay, don’t worry about her, just look at me, focus on me. Regulate your breathing or-”

“Jeongguk,” Ina says behind Jeongguk and Jeongguk turns sharply to face her. It makes her mouth click shut with an audible click.

“Ina, shut your goddamn mouth,” he growls, sending a fearful shiver down your spine at the absolute malice in his voice. When he turns back to you, his face has smoothed back out and his voice has softened, “Count as you breathe, let’s do four counts okay?”

Jeongguk talks you down, holding eye contact as he walks you through the counts, not touching you but his hands clearly available if you need them. It’s a little embarrassing, but it’s not something Jeongguk hasn’t seen before.

“There we go. Feeling okay?” Jeongguk asks sweetly, eyes tracing over your face like he can’t get enough of it.

“A little tired,” you admit, before you take a conscious step back, “I should probably go home.”

The desperation returns to Jeongguk’s eyes at the deliberate space between you two and the way you’ve closed your body off to him with your arms crossed in front of your chest. He ignores Ina standing behind him, who hasn’t said anything since his outburst but hasn’t left either.

“Yeah, it’s late,” he says, voice resigned but the sadness evident on his face, “Do you want me to order you an Uber?”

You shake your head, pulling your phone out to do it yourself, and Jeongguk doesn’t take his eyes off you, ordering his own Uber.

“Y/N,” he says, and you brace yourself for more begging, but he just says, “Would you… would you please let me know when you get home safe? I won’t even text you back or anything, I just- I just need to know you get back okay.”

You look at him for a moment, really look at him. In the bar you had been eager to get away from him and so you had noticed the sunken cheeks and the casual clothes, but now, you really take him in. His hair is longer, curling cutely around his ears as he pushes it out of his eyes. His tattoos are real, not a customized skin he purchased for connecting, and though most of them are hidden, you can see the ones inked across his knuckles and on the back of his hand. His eyes are round and sparkly in the shitty street light, boring holes into you as he refuses to look away from you.

This is the Jeongguk you’ve been connecting with for weeks, months, with the sweet eyes and sweeter voice, and you can feel the love you have for him throbbing almost painfully in your heart, desperate to understand. Desperate to ask why?

You give him a minute nod, letting him know you’ll do that, and he doesn’t even try to hide the relief on his face.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, raking his hands through his hair again. You realize how oily it is and you wonder if he’s been taking care of himself properly.

Your Ubers arrive at the same time and though you don’t want to, the sadistic part of you lingers for a moment, digging through your purse with a thinly veiled excuse at making sure you have everything, to watch them leave together.

They don’t. Jeongguk opens the door for Ina and gestures her inside. She looks smug, like she’s won something, and you wish you could see the look on her face when Jeongguk shuts the door without getting in. He gestures something to the driver and the Uber takes off, and you get a sick sort of satisfaction seeing a brief moment of absolute incredulousness on her face as she passes under a lamppost.

You turn to look at Jeongguk, who’s watching you with his hands shoved in his pockets. You feel so confused and you’re so tired from the rush of adrenaline your almost panic attack had given you, that you can feel tears welling up again.

“What about you?” you ask, voice shaky, and Jeongguk frowns at you.

“I’ll just get another one. Please go home, it’s late and you sound tired,” he steps closer, hesitantly, and you allow it.

“I am tired. I’m so tired, Jeongguk,” you sigh, wiping some moisture away from your eye, before you open the door and slide inside.

You don’t look at him again, as the door shuts softly. But you’re weak, and you’ve always been weak. As the car pulls away from the curb, you turn in your seat to see Jeongguk standing under a solitary light, watching your car drive away with his hands still in his pockets, and you cry.

By the time you get home, you’re so exhausted you can barely keep your eyes open. You do a half-assed job of cleaning your face and you don’t bother putting on pajamas after you undress so you just crash onto your bed. Almost all the tension in your body flooding out of you as you sink into your duvet.

You glance at your phone, plugged in on your bedside table, and drag it to you. You sent him a simple text, just a home, and there’s a little read checkmark beneath the phone. He said he wouldn’t text you back and he hasn’t and even though he kept his word, it hurts, and you cry again.

You didn’t drink so you wouldn’t have a headache but unfortunately, crying yourself to sleep has left you dehydrated and with puffy eyes. You thought you were over it but seeing Jeongguk in person last night had just smashed that little glass jar you were trying to bottle your feelings in and you don’t know what to do. And what the fuck was Ina’s problem?

You lay in bed, staring at the ceiling as you toss your phone back and forth in your hands, deliberating. A few texts couldn’t hurt, could they? You have questions, and you want answers to them. Closure. He said he wanted to talk, so, you’d let him talk.

Hopefully you’d come out of it in one piece.

Your text is simple enough, just I have questions, and it warrants an almost immediate response.

from: ggukkie ♡

Of course baby whatever you want to know, ask

Now that he’s opened the door, you’re drawing a blank, because there’s so much but how do you ask? How do you ask him why you weren’t good enough?

from: ggukkie ♡

Can I call you?

That feels like too much, like you’re opening yourself up to him for him to take advantage of you. But… you press the phone icon before you can second guess yourself and you’ve barely gotten it up to your ear when it connects.

“Y/N…?” he asks, almost sounding afraid, like someone is playing a trick on him and it’s not actually you on the line.

“Jeongguk,” you greet and he lets a deep exhale out in response.

“Sorry, I just… need a second,” he whispers, voice shaky, and you wonder for a moment if he’s crying, or close to it.

You don’t say anything and the silence stretches on, burrowing under your skin and pricking at your nerves, your heart beating wildly in your chest. You hear a few sniffles on his end and it confirms your fear, that he’s crying softly to himself.

“I didn’t think you’d talk to me again,” he finally admits, still whispering, voice stuck in his throat, “I thought watching you leave last night that that was it, that it was officially over for us.”

His words have your own tears springing forth and you’re so tired of this, this game you two have been playing for the past few weeks.

“Why?” you sob out and Jeongguk breaks down on his own end.

“Baby, please don’t cry,” he begs but it makes it worse, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Gumdrop meows loudly from the living room and you hear the jingle of her collar as she pitter patters down the hallway to you, spurred on by your cries. She’s already purring by the time she jumps up on your bed, headbutting into your hand to pet her.

“Who is she?” you ask, hands curling into your comforter.

“Ina’s no one,” he’s quick to assure you, “She’s an ex, and an ex for a reason. Ina doesn’t mean anything to me anymore.”

“She doesn’t seem to think so,” you bite out, “She followed you to the bar and she must have followed you for a reason.”

Jeongguk is silent for a few moments and your heart plummets. Finally, he lets out a shaky sigh.

“My brother got into an accident, that day,” he finally says, voice void of any emotion.

It feels like someone crushes your heart with a sledgehammer, knocking the air out of you. You don’t say anything, can’t, and Jeongguk continues.

“The knocking was, um… my mom,” Jeongguk stops for a moment, choked up, “She came to get me, so we could go to the hospital. It was a pretty serious accident and we’ve been trying to clear up a lot of things with insurance and his work.”

“Gguk…” you cry, pressing a hand to your eyes as Gumdrop cuddles up in your armpit, purring up a storm.

“Mom and dad have been staying with him as much as they can,” he continues, “and I’ve… I’ve been taking care of his daughter.”

You feel awful. This whole time you’ve assumed that he was ghosting you, when really he had been dealing with some serious family issues and you… had been a complete asshole to him about it.

“Is Jeongyun okay?” you croak out, turning onto your side and curling around Gumdrop.

Jeongguk is silent for a moment, before he says softly, “He suffered some pretty serious spinal injuries and they’re… they’re not sure if he’ll ever be able to walk again…”

“Oh Gguk-ah,” you sob, pressing a hand over your eyes like that’s going to staunch the tears.

“Yeah…” he says simply, because what else do you say when your entire world is crumbling down around you?

“How’s his daughter?”

“Confused,” he says, “she’s only six and we haven’t let her go visit him, so she’s constantly asking where her dad is. I’m just… not sure what to tell her, and I don’t know how to explain the situation to her.”

“That’s understandable,” you assure, “I couldn’t imagine trying to comprehend how hurt my dad was. What’s her name?”

“Iseul,” he tells you, and you can hear the smile in his voice as he says it, “she’s beautiful, and funny, and smart. Looks a lot like Jeongyun.”

“And… and her mom?”

“She decided she couldn’t handle taking care of a child and she and Jeongyun decided it was best if she wasn’t around at all. The agreement works for both of them, I think she moved out of the country for her job actually, I’m not sure. Iseul doesn’t seem to care, but we’re waiting for her to start asking about her one day, especially now that she’s started school.”

“I’m glad things have worked out for them. It’s good to hear that their split sounds amicable,” you say softly, patting at the residual tears on your cheeks, running your fingers down Gumdrop’s spine.

“Yeah,” Jeongguk heaves out a heavy sigh, “it’s been tough. We all try to pitch in to babysit Iseul when Jeongyun has to work, so I see her a lot.”

“Are… are you with Iseul now?” you ask, wondering if you’ve put Jeongguk in an uncomfortable position demanding answers when he’s trying to take care of his family.

“No, mom and dad watched her last night. But moms dropping her off tonight so they can go to the hospital.”

You hum, letting the silence drag on. It’s almost nice… nostalgic in a way that memories shouldn’t feel only being two weeks old. But it almost feels normal, like how you and Jeongguk used to talk. If you had known Jeongguk had lived close by, you might have asked to meet in person sooner, but you had grown so comfortable in what you two had that you hadn’t wanted to rock the boat. Now, you kind of wish you had.

You can’t help but ask, “What does Ina have to do with all this?”

Jeongguk groans in disdain and you want to laugh, as you can imagine the arm he has thrown over his eyes, “She’s a pain in the ass. Mom must have told her mom about the accident and Ina must have thought this would be our way of "reconnecting."”

Jeongguk huffs and you smile a sad little thing as he continues, “Our parents have been friends for years and they finally introduced us at the start of college when they learned we got accepted to the same one. We didn’t date immediately, we actually didn’t start until our senior year and well… you heard last night. She cheated on me.”

You frown on your end, and he continues, “It’s been a few years and I’m over it, but I guess she’s not. I don’t really care though, I have no interest in being with her.”

You nod, aware he can’t see you, but unsure of what else to say. He’s answered all of your questions and now you just feel like a fool. All of this could have been avoided if you had just asked, but instead, you had let yourself make assumptions and caused yourself, and Jeongguk, unnecessary pain.

“Baby…?”

“Sorry, I’m here,” you whisper, pressing a soft kiss to Gumdrop’s head, thankful for her support.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, softly, almost like he’s afraid of what you’re going to say.

“I’m thinking that I’m a fucking idiot,” you chastise yourself, and Jeongguk hums in discontent over the line.

“You’re not an idiot,” he counters and you snort a self-deprecating sound, “it’s okay, I understand-”

“Shut up, it’s not. Gguk-ah I’m so sorry, I should have- I don’t know what I should have done. Listened? Gave you time like you asked?” you’re back to crying, softly this time, frustrated with yourself.

Jeongguk coos at you, “Baby, it’s okay, I’m not mad. I just… I just miss you.”

“I miss you too,” you admit, “so much.”

“If- If you have time, I’d like to connect-”

“No,” you cut him off and he trails off, heaving a sigh.

“Ah, sorry, I must have misunderstood-”

“I want to see you, in person,” you finish and he trails off again, “we have to live semi close to each other, if we were at the same bar last night, right? I’d like to actually see you again, if you’re okay with it.”

“Okay with it? Baby, I’d love to see you in person again. Tonight, if you want,” Jeongguk offers and you’re surprised, to say the least.

“But, you’re going to have Iseul tonight,” you remind him.

“And? Y/N, I don’t think you realize how much you mean to me. I wanted to introduce you to my family one day anyway, why not start with her?”

You’re quiet for a moment, and Jeongguk misinterprets the silence, “If you don’t feel comfortable with it, we can meet up somewhere-”

“Do you want me to bring anything?” you interrupt, and you can practically see the smile on his face.

“I don’t go out with you for one night and all this shit happens,” Seokjin gripes in your ear piece and you giggle, bundled up on the subway as you head to Jeongguk’s apartment.

Jeongguk doesn’t live particularly close to you, but it’s not a long subway ride. He, apparently, had picked that bar because he thought it was far enough from his apartment that Ina would leave him alone. And well, that didn’t exactly work out for him.

“Yeah it was a wild night, I’ll say that,” you agree, purse snug in your lap. Jeongguk had told you not to worry about bringing anything and you feel vaguely weird being empty handed.

“Are you sure about this?” Seokjin asks you, “About giving him another chance? I don’t think he’s lying but…”

You smile, always appreciative of your best friend, “I am. I should have just heard him out in the first place and these past two weeks would never have happened. I’ve missed him, so much Jinnie.”

“I know, I just worry about you. I’ll still fight him if you need me too! I haven’t been going to the gym for nothing you know,” you can just imagine Seokjin exaggeratedly flexing his biceps and you laugh, perking up when you hear the announcement for your stop.

“I know and you’re getting so thick I think I’m starting to find you attractive,” you tease, fighting your way off the train.

“Starting? Ha! You’ve always found me hot, don’t even try to lie. Hopefully Jeongguk knows he’s always going to be second fiddle when I’m around.”

You roll your eyes good naturedly, “How does Mina put up with you?”

“I dick her down good enough that she can ignore anything else I say. Also, I cook. Do you know she got mad at me the other day? Told me I’m trying to fatten her up so no one else will want her, as if she still wouldn’t be the hottest babe in town, honestly.”

You smile at how in love Seokjin sounds just thinking about his girlfriend, “You are so dramatic. I’m going to go before you wax poetic about Mina’s ass.”

“Hey, I love her for more than just her body! Did I tell you she beat me at thumb wrestling the other day? She also kills all the bugs I don’t want to touch. She’s going to be the mother of my children all while being a boss bitch at work. Oh! She’s applied for a promotion and she’s a shoe in. If she doesn’t get it, I’m going to burn her work down,” Seokjin drones, sounding so serious for a moment you don’t doubt that he will.

“I’m sure she’ll get it, she’s so good at her job! They’d be dumb not to give it to her. I’m going to check in with her later, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay? It’s half-priced smoothies, don’t forget!”

Seokjin makes an exaggerated moaning sound and you laugh, hanging up on him. It’s a ten minute walk to Jeongguk’s apartment from the subway and the closer you get, the stronger the butterflies in your stomach stir. It’s not nervousness, but excitement. You’re so excited to see Jeongguk you think you’re going to be sick.

HIs apartment doesn’t have a buzzer, so you walk in and up the stairs. Thankfully, he only lives on the second floor, so you aren’t wheezing by the time you reach his door. You bite your lip as you ring his doorbell, immediately hearing what sounds like someone running.

The door swings open quickly and you barely have time to open your mouth before Jeongguk has hoisted you into the air, crushing you to him.

“Oh,” you gasp, arms wrapping tight around him as you’re knocked off your equilibrium for a moment, “Gguk-ah, what-?”

He has his face buried in your neck, staying still in the doorway and leaving you two looking like a couple of idiots to anybody who could potentially walk by. But you don’t really care about that when you register how warm he feels under you, his hair brushing against your nose and smelling like strawberry shampoo. His sweatshirt is soft in your hands and you run a hand up and down his back when you feel him shaking against you slightly.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he whispers wetly into your skin.

You squeeze your eyes shut, feeling the tears well up in them as you hold onto him tight, glad to be there too.

When Jeongguk finally sets you down, his eyes are red rimmed. He’s close to tears but he’s smiling, his hands coming up to frame your face and tilt it towards him.

“Hi baby,” he sighs, eyes darting across your face, thumps sweeping under your eyes lovingly.

You thought it would feel weird, seeing him in person, actually seeing him instead of connecting. But it doesn’t. Nanotech is advanced and the body under your fingertips doesn’t feel any different in the flesh than it did simulated but knowing it’s Jeongguk, that it’s really him, causes your heart to beat faster.

“Gguk-ah,” you smile, though you’re a little embarrassed at how intently he’s staring you down, trying to hide your face.

“Aw, is my baby getting shy?” he teases, pulling you closer to him so he can shut the door, “That’s so cute.”

“Stop,” you whine, letting Jeongguk help you out of your windbreaker and step out of your shoes, as he laughs at you.

He pulls you farther into his apartment, which looks so clean you think you could eat off the floor. Jeongguk leads you to the living room, softly pushing you down onto his couch and practically diving onto you. You squeal a little as you two bounce and it morphs into a giggle as Jeongguk wraps tight arms around you, turning his head so he can place his ear right on top of your heart.

It’s a position you’ve been in many times with him. Jeongguk is an avid post-coitus cuddler, wrapping himself like an octopus around you as he basks in the afterglow. He liked the closeness, he told you once, the retained intimacy afterwards that helped with his headspace. You never minded because you like cuddling too, and you like running your hands through his hair and brushing soft fingers down his cheek and neck.

Jeongguk sighs heavily on top of you and you can feel the tension slowly easing out of his body, his arms going lax and his slow blinks, staring unseeingly at the TV.

“You look tired, Gguk-ah,” you say softly and he hums into your neck, pressing the softest kiss against your skin.

“I… didn’t sleep well, last night,” he admits and your heart aches, knowing you were the reason, that you were adding unnecessary stress to his already stressful situation.

“Take a nap, baby,” you encourage, and Jeongguk glances up at you. Jesus Christ, those eyes; they hold the entire galaxy in them, “I’ll wake you up before Iseul gets here.”

“Mom’s dropping her off at five,” he mumbles, already starting to drift.

You kiss the top of his head, squeezing him a little as you say, “Okay, I’ll wake you up half an hour before then. Sleep.”

Jeongguk doesn’t say anything, but the smile on his lips is sweet.

It’s a good two and a half hour nap, and you spend the time just (a little creepily, you’re willing to admit) watching him, eyes tracing over his face like you can’t get enough. And you truly can’t.

Connecting is safe, for sexual reasons, but there’s still the chance that people alter their connecting appearances. Jeongguk hadn’t done that and you can’t believe that he’s actually this handsome, all tan skin and toned muscles, hair a deep chestnut color and eyes as big as a doe’s. You thought he must have purchased some sort of skin or body modifications, though you believed he was truly handsome, but this is a whole other level. You hope he’s not disappointed learning you hadn’t customized yourself, either.

Jeongguk snuffles against your skin as you run your hand up and down his back, under his shirt, skin warm under your palm. He’s starting to wake up, without you having to disturb him, and you smile as you kiss his temple. He smiles sleepily, blinking loving eyes up at you.

“You’re still here,” he rasps, voice scratchy from disuse.

“Of course,” you whisper back, pressing a kiss between his eyes, before nuzzling your noses together, “of course I’m still here.”

He hums happily, basking in the kisses you scatter across his face, making exaggerated sounds as you do.

“Time to get up,” you remind him, “Your mom is going to be dropping Iseul off soon.”

“She has a key, she can let herself in,” he grumbles, burrowing further into your arms, trying to mold himself to you so there’s no space between you.

“Gguk-ah,” you laugh, smoothing some hair behind his ear. He still looks tired so you don’t push it, “your hair has gotten long.”

“Mhm. I’ve never had it this long, but I think I like it.”

“It suits you,” you gather some of it up in your hands and snicker a little, “look, apple hair.”

Jeongguk just smiles a little wider, letting you mess around with his hair, not even fighting you as you wrestle the hair tie off his wrist.

“Man bun…” you murmur to yourself, snapping the hair tie in place, “you look like an e-boy now.”

Jeongguk pinches your side in retaliation as he finally starts to stir and stand and you squeal, squirming away from his hands. You watch him stretch upwards, his fingertips brushing the ceiling as he cracks his back. You let your eyes linger on the strip of skin that shows when he stretches, knowing the ink on his hip is hidden beneath the waistband.

Jeongguk doesn’t call you out on your gaze, but he does smirk at you as he muses up the hair that you didn’t put up.

“Want something to drink?” he asks, scratching at his stomach as he starts towards the kitchen.

“Sure. Water, please,” you request and you see him nod as you sit up on the couch, wiggling your feet under one of the couch cushions.

Just as Jeongguk hands you a glass, there’s a knock on his door. Before he can even say anything, the door is opening and a soft, little voice is calling out, “Ggukkie!”

A wide grin blossoms on Jeongguk’s face and he turns around just as a little body barrels towards him, knocking her face against his knees a little roughly.

“Woah!” Jeongguk wobbles a little from the force, “Hey, Itsy.”

This must be Iseul. You smile as she lifts her face to beam at her and you can see the family resemblance.

“Gguk, can you help with these bags?” it must be his mom calling out from the doorway.

You’re up before Jeongguk can address her, patting his shoulder as you pass by. Iseul gets a little shy and hides back in Jeongguk’s legs, barely reaching his waist, peeking up at you in curiosity.

Jeongguk’s mom gives you a startled look as you take some bags out her hands, giving her a small smile, “Here, let me help you.”

“Oh, thank you…”

She’s delivering groceries and you take them to the kitchen, helping her pile them on the counter before you shoo her away, “I can put these away, go see Gguk-ah.”

She surveys you for a moment, but you’re adamant and she eventually concedes. Jeongguk’s apartment isn’t that big, so you can hear what she says when she reaches him.

“Gguk, who is that?” she’s trying to ask quietly but her voice gets back to you anyway.

“Mom, that’s Y/N, I’ve told you about her,” he laughs a little and you smile to yourself.

“Y/N?! And you didn’t tell me she was here?! Gguk, I would have brushed my hair!”

He laughs louder at her, “Mom, you look fine, and I’m sure she doesn’t care.”

“Still…” you can only imagine the pout on her face from her tone of voice.

She mainly brought quick dry goods, so once those are put away and you store the milk, you’re done. You’re a little hesitant about going back out to meet them, but you’ve avoided talking to people long enough.

Jeongguk’s mom offers you a brilliant smile once you exit the kitchen, and hurries forward to take your hands, “Y/N! It’s so nice to meet you! Gguk has told me so much about you.”

You blush a little as you take her in. She looks tired, probably from the stress of her son being in the hospital and trying to navigate that situation, but you can see the resemblance to Jeongguk, mainly in the eyes.

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” you cut your eyes to Iseul, who Jeongguk is now holding in his arms, and decide to not say anything about Jeongyun, “I hope it’s okay that I hang out with Gguk-ah and Iseul today.”

“Of course! I wish I could stay and chat, but I have… something to do.”

You nod, completely understanding, and she continues as she squeezes your hands, “But I’d love for us to have dinner together someday, all of us. Anyone Gguk is so smitten with is someone I want to get to know.”

“Mom!” Jeongguk whines, making Iseul giggle.

You’re surprised when his mom pulls you into a hug but you lean into it, as she rocks you two in place for a few seconds, “I have to get going now, but we’ll talk about that dinner.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” you tell her honestly and her smile widens, if possible.

She turns on her heels to press a kiss to Iseul’s cheek and then Jeongguk’s, “You behave yourself.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she does,” Jeongguk nods at her.

“I was talking about you,” his mom teases and Iseul giggles at her, patting at Jeongguk’s arms to let her down, “I’ll pick Iseul up later tonight, make sure she eats dinner before I do.”

“I got this mom, go,” Jeongguk nudges her along gently and she lets him, giving you a little wave before she’s out the door.

Iseul is a sweetheart. She’s a little shy around you at first, but she warms up quickly when she sees how comfortable Jeongguk is around you, making you a trustful figure in her eyes. She has a bad habit of sucking her thumb and trying to talk around it, but she’s a cute kid that has Jeongguk wrapped around her little finger.

She insists on helping you two cook dinner, which means she sits on the counter and demands to taste test every few minutes, happily swinging her feet. Jeongguk keeps sneaking little kisses, even though you reprimanded him the first time for PDA in front of his niece. Iseul doesn’t seem to care about that, but she does demand her own kisses that Jeongguk willingly covers her face in.

Iseul wants to take a bath and Jeongguk doesn’t hesitate, leaving you two in the living room to draw it for her.

“Ggukkie is a good uncle,” she suddenly declares, snuggly settled in your lap and twisting the ring on your finger.

“Yeah? You guys have fun when you’re together?” you ask her gently, stroking a hand through her hair. It’s long; you wonder if she’d let you braid it once she was out of the bath.

She grins as she leans into your touch, “Yeah, Ggukkie is fun. He lets me stay up past my bedtime and eat ice cream when gramma says no. He’s also the only one who will play airplane with me.”

You hum, hearing Jeongguk padding back to the living room. Iseul perks up at the sound and slides off your lap, tugging on your hand to pull you up.

“Okay Itsy, let’s go.”

You’re surprised she wants you to go with her, but you help steady her as she shucks her clothes off before she practically swan dives into the tub.

“Itsy, careful!” Jeongguk scolds, settling down on the floor and pulling you down beside him, “If you break your neck, gramma will have mine.”

She grins at him, smacking the water a few times before she turns a sweet gaze towards you, “Y/Nie, will you wash my hair for me?”

You’re soaked by the time Iseul has decided she’s done, letting you wrap her up tight in an oversized, fluffy towel as Jeongguk brushes gently through the tangles in her hair.

“Iseul, can I braid your hair?” you ask and she gasps, clapping her hands.

“Yes! Daddy can’t braid.”

You do two french braids and braid them into each other in the back, before you roll it up and pin it in place.

“When we let it down when it dries, you’ll have the cutest curls.”

“Princess curls?” she asks, tilting her head in the mirror as she looks at herself, “Can I have my tiara?”

“Your tiara isn’t here, babe, it’s at gramma’s,” Jeongguk informs her, hoisting her up into her arms, “c’mon, let’s get you dressed. You should still have some pjs here.”

“Pjs? It’s not even bedtime,” she frowns, but doesn’t put up a fight as he walks out of the room.

“So? There’s never a bad time to wear pjs,” he argues with her, and you snicker to yourself as their bickering tapers off as they enter his bedroom.

For a little girl who claimed it’s not bedtime, her drooping eyes deceiving her. She looks adorable dressed in some Ponyo pajamas, something Jeongguk proudly claimed he picked out for her. She’s curled up in Jeongguk’s lap, sucking gently on her thumb as she tries to pay attention to the cartoon he put on for her, snuggled under a blanket he had wrapped around them. You’re watching them fondly, the way Jeongguk strokes from the nape of her neck down her spine and then back up. The way he’s humming softly and pressing periodic kisses to her forehead.

She doesn’t last long under his ministrations, her eyes drifting shut one more time and not reopening. You watch as her body goes lax in his hold and her breaths even out, her thumb slowly falling out of her mouth.

“Works every time,” he smiles, standing up gently so as to not jostle her, “I’m going to go lay her down, I’ll be right back.”

You smile and nod, watching him turn the corner of the living room. You clean up the toys Iseul has strewn around the room, folding the blanket back up and turning the TV off. You check the kitchen, just to make sure the dishes from dinner are actually done, and just as you turn back into the living room you see Jeongguk standing in the middle of it, back to you and hands in his hair.

You’re not sure what he’s doing but you’re quiet as you sneak up behind him, before you wrap your arms around his middle. He jumps and turns his head towards you, bottom lip caught between his teeth.

“You okay?” you ask quietly, not wanting to wake Iseul.

“I- yeah. I um, thought you had left,” he says, just as quietly, if not more, almost like he’s afraid to admit it. Your heart pangs for him, aware of what you’ve done to him.

“I’m not leaving, not this time, not again,” you promise him and Jeongguk grabs ahold of your hands, holding them to his chest like a lifeline.

You stand there for a few moments, just holding him to you, breathing him in softly. You’ve been such an idiot.

“I’m really sorry, Gguk,” you start and Jeongguk goes rigid in your arms, “that I was so selfish and never let you explain.”

“Y/N…” he breathes out and you shake your head against his back, letting go of him so you can slowly turn him to face you.

“I didn’t mean to make your trauma about me,” you reach up and place your hand on his cheek, trying to convey to him how sorry you are, “I made an already shitty situation that much more difficult and I am so, so sorry Gguk-ah, that I was so selfish, and that I didn’t stop to think about you at all. About what might have happened and about how you were feeling. And I just- I can never make it up to you, but I can start by never leaving you again.”

Jeongguk places light hands on your waist, eyes hooded as he stares down at you. His eyes trace over your face, a small smile on his face.

“I love you,” he tells you and you start crying, “Aw, baby, don’t cry. Is me loving you really that bad?”

He’s teasing you and you push his chest lightly, though it doesn’t even phase him, “Shut up! H-How can you say that after what I’ve done?”

Jeongguk hums to himself as he pulls you to him, letting you bury your face in his neck as you sob, “You may be right, in that it was selfish, but I guess, in a way, I understand.”

You’re shaking your head but he’s shushing you, tangling his fingers in your hair, “Jeongyun’s accident made me realize that life is short and that anything can happen. Being away from you for so long is not something I ever want to do again. I can forgive you for the past two weeks, as long as we agree that we have to talk, about anything and everything that bothers us. You can’t shut me out like that again, okay?”

You blubber into his neck, nodding your head, wrapping your arms tightly around him. Jeongguk holds you, seemingly content to just have you with him. He’s humming to you, like he was humming to Iseul, and you don’t know what the song is but it’s soothing. When you pull away from him to wipe at your face, he does it for you, pressing kisses after the tears are gone.

“No more tears, baby,” he tells you, before he kisses your mouth, your lips fitting together snuggly, “there’ve been enough tears in the past few weeks, I can’t bear to see anymore.”

You nod and he wipes the last few dripping tears off your face, pressing more kisses to your face as he sways you both back and forth.

“Can’t believe I had to take care of two babies tonight,” he teases and you splutter, pushing at his chest again.

“Don’t make fun of me!” you whine and he laughs, loudly, before you shush him, reminding him of Iseul.

“Why did you clean the living room up?” he asks, leading you back to the couch.

He doesn’t have to push you down; you sit down and make grabby hands at him and Jeongguk eagerly goes, smiling happily as he settles comfortably on top of you, threading your fingers together and pressing a kiss to the back of your hand.

“I figured since Iseul was down for the night, I’d leave,” you explain.

“No,” Jeongguk pouts, “didn’t you just tell me you’d never leave again?”

“I-I meant your life and you, I didn’t mean… your apartment!” you sound a little scandalized and Jeongguk grins against your skin, scraping his teeth across it.

“Nope, too late, you live here now. I’ll call my landlord in the morning and get you added to the lease, rent is due by the fifth.”

You just laugh at him, bundling Jeongguk in your arms and trying to smother him in your chest. He takes it in stride, biting tiny marks into your skin that he admires in the low light.

With a small kiss to your sternum he says, “I’m serious, you know.”

“About what?” you ask, brushing his hair from his eyes. His bun is still in tact, but it’s getting loose and you tighten it for him.

“About moving in. You could, if you wanted,” he says, no trace of humor in his voice, “tomorrow, if you wanted.”

You blink at him, toying with the tuft of hair on the back of his head, unsure of what to say. You finally come up with, “But my lease isn’t up for three more months.”

“Then in three months,” he says, immediately.

“You don’t think that’s too… fast?” you ask, tentatively, keeping a hold on Jeongguk’s hair so he can’t turn his head and look at you, though he tries, “We’ve only just physically met.”

“I feel like I’ve known you forever,” he mumbles, “don’t let me guilt you into anything, but just think about it. If you don’t want to, just renew your lease, I’ll understand. But I want you here, with me. I don’t care that this is the first time we’ve actually met, the things I feel for you don’t exist in the vacuum of connecting. They’re real and they squeeze my heart so tightly sometimes I feel like I’m suffocating. I don’t wanna be without you.”

You tuck your face into his hair, wetly telling him, “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I ask for,” he squeezes you in return.

You hold each other until you hear his front door opening, and you panic, not wanting his mother to see you two wrapped around each other. Jeongguk whines at you, keeping you held down in place.

His mom laughs when she walks into the room, Jeongguk pouting petulantly up at her while you give her a wide eyed stare.

“Iseul sleeping?” she asks tenderly, shutting the door softly behind her, “Is she in your room?”

Jeongguk nods, “Yeah. She’s been asleep for about half an hour now. She ate dinner really well and took a bath. Her hair is still probably wet.”

She hums as she pads down the hallway and you immediately start poking Jeongguk in the stomach.

“Get up you ridiculous oaf!” you hiss, trying to push him up, “Your mother is here!”

“This didn’t bother you when Iseul was in the next room!” he retaliates, and his octopus arms somehow find space to tighten even more around you.

“She was sleeping!” you counter and you continue to push at him, but you do nothing more than tire yourself out and he doesn’t even budge an inch.

“It’s fine. She’s walked in on my jerking off before, so this is pretty tame,” he says, casually, and you groan.

“I hate that. Why would you tell me that?” you complain, collapsing back onto the couch.

You can hear Iseul and his mom coming back down the hall, Iseul’s little voice laced with sleep still as she recounts exactly what Jeongguk had told her.

“I hope she doesn’t rat me out about the ice cream,” he suddenly whispers, body going rigid for a moment as he thinks of the ass reaming he could get if she tattles.

“Did you have a fun time with Ggukkie and Y/Nie?” his mom asks quietly, stopping in the living room with Iseul tucked securely in her arms.

“The bestest time,” Iseul nods, grinning at the two of you, patting at her gramma’s arms to be let down.

Jeongguk finally sits up to accept her hug and you take the opportunity to quickly sit up, crossing your legs underneath you. Jeongguk gives you a disgruntled look, even as he pulls Iseul into his lap and presses a kiss against her temple.

“Glad I got to spend time with you today, Itsy,” he tells her, booping their noses together and she giggles, “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“M’kay. Bye Ggukkie, love you.”

“Love you too, baby,” he smiles softly at her, setting her gently back on the ground.

To your surprise she toddles over to you, climbing clumsily into your lap and wrapping her arms around your neck.

“Bye, Y/Nie,” she sleepily kisses your cheek and you practically melt against her.

“Bye Iseul, sleep well, okay? I hope you like your princess curls in the morning,” you tell her, kissing her cheek in return, and she smiles happily, patting at her hair.

“C’mon baby, we have to get you home. You have school in the morning.”

Iseul doesn’t fight it, just goes back to her gramma and lets herself be bundled up for the weather.

“Okay, gotta get munchkin home. I’ll see you two later. And Y/N, I was serious about that dinner.”

You grin at her, nodding, “I was too.”

She grins back at you and waves. Iseul copies her and waves too and when the door closes, the way Jeongguk body tenses has you springing up. You’re glad you did because Jeongguk pounces on the cushion you were just sitting on, looking surprised when you’re not there.

“Hey!” he turns to you, “Where are you going? Come back.”

“Gguk-ah, I have to go home,” you say placatingly, “Gumdrop is waiting on me.”

He pouts as he follows you to the door, almost completely plastered to your back. He hinders more than he helps as you put your windbreaker and shoes back on. He’s still pouting when you finally shrug him off, letting him pull you into a frontal hug.

“Now who’s the baby?” you tease, thumbing at his lower lip that he bites lightly at. You act affronted but still accept the kiss he gives you, even if it lingers, “Gguk-ah I really do need to go.”

“Fine. But come back tomorrow.”

“Gguk-ah, I work tomorrow,” you laugh, chiding him a bit, “we can have dinner tomorrow, okay? You can come over and finally meet Gumdrop. I just want you to know that if she doesn’t like you, though, we’re over. Her word is law.”

Jeongguk lets out a disbelieving laugh, pulling you into another kiss, hands framing your face sweetly. You smile as you indulge him, pressing repeated kisses against his willing mouth. You internally roll your eyes when you feel his hand creeping down your back, settling on your lower back.

“Okay, stop trying to distract me I have to go now,” you admonish, pushing him away from you as he looks very close to stomping his foot.

“Damn, I was hoping the longer I kissed you the easier it’d be to get you out of your clothes.”

Now you really roll your eyes and Jeongguk laughs at you, “Fine, fine, fine. Dinner, tomorrow. I’ll meet you at your apartment. What kind of treats does Gumdrop like?”

“Treats? Why?”

“Gotta bribe her to make sure she likes me,” he shrugs and you scoff, “Text me when you get home, though. Are you taking the subway back? Should I drive you home?”

You shake your head, smiling, “No, Gguk-ah, it’s okay. I’ll text you when I get back.”

He nods and finally lets you go, watching with a frown as you open the door.

“Don’t worry Gguk-ah, I’ll see you tomorrow. I promised I’d never leave you again, didn’t I?”

He nods, still frowning, but you understand it’s going to take him some time to heal from this, even if he has forgiven you. You can’t begrudge him for that, but you can only try to assuage his fears.

“Tomorrow,” he nods, final.

Gumdrop absolutely loves him, which is almost insulting, except you can’t fault her; you kind of love him too.

#bts #bts fanfiction #bts x reader #jeon jungkook #jeon jeongguk #jeon jungkook fanfiction #jeon jeongguk fanfiction #jeon jungkook x reader #jeon jeongguk x reader #bts x you #jeon jungkook x you #jeon jeongguk x you #rating: t #skswriting

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murdershegoat · 6 years ago

Note

in an ideal world how would you want lena and kara to come back from the fallout of lena's confession/betrayal

ok i think i would ignore crisis happening lol but let’s say we pick up after all that shit and lena is still big mad and still plotting the mind control thing

only kara doesnt tell alex bc shes gay bc she doesnt want lena to get in trouble. i know what youre thinking, ‘sho thats dumb stop being so fucking stupid why wouldnt she try and save the world like she normally does she knows lena is doing something bad’ and i wanna say valid i am fucking stupid,,,, but maybe she doesnt think lena’s idea is evil? she doesn’t know what lena’s full plan is, not yet anyway. and she knows that lena will never try to inflict pain the way lex did. lena is angry, lena hates her, lena trapped her in the fortress of solitude.

but lena isn’t evil.

kara knows that. she knows that on every level, every facet of being. lena is not evil. lena does things for the betterment of society. lena must have a plan for this, somehow. she waits to see what happens.

jonns brother finally reveals lena’s plans for myriad and why she had kept him captive. the deo gears up immediately, ready to fight there way into l-corp, ready to arrest lena luthor. kara stands in front of them. tells them if they go after lena, then they’ll be facing kara and they all know kara will beat them, every time. alex asks her what the effword she thinks she’s doing. kara says ‘im doing the right thing’.

she flies to lcorp to warn lena and protect her. lena tells her to leave and kara says she wont. she sees the hope/eve hybrid and she just sort of sadly looks at lena.

‘why did you do this to her?’

‘she betrayed me once. this way it wont happen again. now leave. before i mind control you, too. i wont hesitate.’ her voice shakes, though, giving her away.

‘dont you get it?’ kara says. ‘i’d already do anything for you.’

lena falters, just for a moment.

‘why aren’t you stopping me? this is the type of thing you usually wax poetically about.’

this time kara falters.

‘maybe.’ she hesitates. ‘maybe i’m tired of expecting the best in people.’

lena laughs, but nothing about the situation is remotely funny.

‘giving up on humanity already, supergirl?’

kara shakes her head. ‘i think i trust you more than i trust them, that’s all.’

‘that’s ridiculous. i trapped you in the fortress of solitude. i used kryptonite on you, knowing how painful it is. i hurt you.’

‘i hurt you first. you were angry. i betrayed you.’

‘so you’re just doing this to get back on my good side? dont be so transparent, supergirl.’

‘i’m doing this because i love you. and it might not be in the way you love me but--’

‘what do you mean in the way i love you?’ lena’s eyes narrow. her heartbeat speeds up, kara notices.she panics.

‘i. uh. nevermind. you dont love me, anymore. im just being stupid.’

‘what. do you mean.’

‘im doing this because i want humanity to be better--’

‘i dont believe you.’

‘- i need them to be better.’

‘do NOT lie to me, kara.’

kara’s shoulders droop. ‘im doing this because im in love with you.’ she pauses, and then repeats herself, this time just a fraction more confident. ‘im in love with you, lena.’

‘no youre not.’

kara laughs softly. lena isnt laughing. they both feel sick.

‘what youre doing. i know you, lena. if you think this is the right thing to do, i’ll protect you, i’ll support you doing it. but if you’re doing this because i was a fool and i hurt you--’

‘dont think so highly of yourself.’

‘if youre doing this because you think any other person would do what i did if they were in my shoes... they wouldn’t. people are braver than i am - humanity is braver than i am. i pretend to be some superhero and i run around all day in this ridiculous outfit and i think im helping people but what good is that if i hurt the person i care about most in the world? if im just a scared little girl who would rather lie to her best friend than be honest with her? people are better than that. they’re better than we give them credit for.

‘but if you think - if you think deep down that this is the right thing to be doing, then you have my support, even if you don’t want it.’

silence settles between them.

‘youre right.’ lena finally says. ‘people are better than you. that outfit is stupid. and i dont want your support. but. youre also wrong. we loved each other in the same way. but not anymore.’

tears prick at kara’s eyes. ‘you loved me?’

‘more than anything. and then you broke my heart.’

‘i will never stop being sorry.’

‘i know.’

‘and i will never stop loving you.’

lena squares her shoulders. ‘i know,’ she says, as though she’s been in this exact situation before, as though once you’re in love with a luthor it’s impossible to stop.

they don’t fight the deo that day. lena finally agrees to stop her research and keep it all in the fortress of solitude - neutral ground - out of the hands of the government and out of her hands, as well. there is no dramatic showdown, no huge 'i forgive you’ arc. kara saves lena’s life several times because such is the life of a luthor. slowly, lena realises that granting forgiveness is so much easier than holding onto hate. slowly, it ebbs away and she’s left with her feelings for kara - not exactly as they were before, but pretty damn near.

and then one day kara arrives home and lena is on her couch. kara sits beside her.

‘that supersuit is ridiculous, but the pants are better than the skirt.’

‘i know,’ kara smiles.

‘and people are good,’ lena says. ‘but so are you.’

‘some days i’m not too sure about that.’

‘well i’ll be sure enough for the both of us,’ lena says with a small smile.

‘and what about the other thing?’ kara asks. ‘how we loved each other in the same way? because i didnt like. i still. have, uh. feelings. for you. big, very important feelings that i dont want to overwhelm you with but that would be pretty great if you felt as well. but i dont want to pressure you or---’

lena cuts her off, not with a kiss, but with a hand. a hand that threads carefully and intertwines their fingers together. she squeezes.

‘let’s talk about it over dinner?’

#sorry #too long #long post #supercorp #lena luthor #this got away from me #kara danvers #supergirl #minific #Anonymous #asks

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stevengrantshubby · 4 years ago

Text

okay, okay okay, okay. so here i go, idk if there will be a point in this but im gonna write it up anyways. so follow me down this weird half thought thur path or whatever

okay, so we know that tfatws takes place 6 months after endgame, long enough for things to no longer be new and the problems with what the avengers did (or undid if you prefer) are really setting in, not even a full year. the people who came back from the blip have only had 6 months to figure out whats going on, where their families were if they still had them, ect, ect and only 6 months for the people who were left behind to “adjust” to having everything ripped away from them. i do wonder about a lot of things from this time, but i doubt that we’ll get a ton of concrete answers about it.

anyways.

when we see sam in the opening action scene hes very confident and self-assured. hes in his element so to speak. hes strong, smart on his feet, and we see sam use his new wings as a shield multiple times which to me feels like either a kind of statement that sam doesnt need the shield or to show that he would be really good with the shield, it feels important somehow considering who important the shield becomes in the show.

also, the military guy tells sam that once the LAF get across the tunisia boarder its supposed to be a no-fly zone so to speak which is why it was important for sam to get him before which hints that not everywhere got rid of boarders. like, tunisia is in northern africa and when we meet the flag smashers later theyre mostly in eastern eurpoe and also torres makes a comment about things not being better during the blip and his american (im pretty sure) so again where these things are happening in relation to boarders and the like it still makes me think about how the world worked through the blip, but again probably wont get concrete answers.

also in this episode we see the first instance of sam being recognized for who he is by a man from tunisia (who im going to consider a character of color tho im not sure if this is considered accurate in the real world) and not recognized by white american men, this happens in episode two as well.

while the shield sort of becomes the super important symbol, we are also shown in this episode that steve has been kind put on a pseudo god-like position. yes, its a joke to ask if hes the moon of all places, but the whole “looking down on us”/”watching over us” feels a lot like the christian capital-G God. he has been put on this kind of pedestal by the people who really didnt know anything about him and also bucky (but hes been hanging by a thread for a while it seems so its a little different) in contrast to sam.

sam has a lot of respect for steve. he calls him courageous, righteous, and hopeful. the best in us because these emotions are supposed to inspire “good works” as it were. sam then states that the world needs new heroes for the current times and that symbols only have meaning because of the people who give them meaning. and upon my rewatch this feels sam want to preserve the meaning that steve, his friend, imbued into the shield but also wants to move forward. i do think that the fact that sam is a black man who is not treated very well by america plays into his decision as well, i also think the fact that we hear the lines from endgame:

- it feels like it belongs to someone else.

-it doesnt.

is important. right now im thinking that the shield is essentially meaningless because steve is gone for all intents and purposes and he dropped it without a second thought. like i get it, in terms of what the show is doing and like i said, how people who dont know steve would probably react but even so many weeks later it sits weird. even the dora milige left the shield behind even though its made of stolen vibranium, cause its just a thing. anyways...

rhodey, after the speech, parrots back at sam that they do live in a different time, but he thinks that this different time does require someone to carry the shield.

then we meet sams sister and his nephews. sam and his sisters relationship does hold a lot of tension between them but theres still so much love there as well. its very normal, reminds me of tension that i feel between myself and some of my family members and that i see between different family members as well.

sarah wilson is a black woman who, like many black women I know, have been holding things together the best she can with (seemingly) not much help. we know that sam left after their father died (i dont remember if their mother is also dead), he couldnt handle it as stated, so he went off and fought. but in being gone he sarah ran the business the best she could. shes also a widow, not sure when that happened but y'know thats there too.

but ii think that how sam feels about his familys home and boat in contrast with how he treated the shield kind of. sam references the boat as their familys legacy (sarah also calls their dad a 'giant' and that not mattering to the bank and probably others) and he doesnt want to let that go no matter what. however both of these are acts of preservation on sams part, just in different ways. he tried to let one go while desperately trying to hold on to the other, one to be put in stasis and one to move forward, grow, passed down ect, ect.

now sam really only tries to get involved with the flag smashers because he theyre super soldiers. and i guess youd call this the inciting incident part of act one.

now the next three episodes are very intertwinded in the plot and what kind of world sam would be becoming captain america in. sam makes an off handed comment that sharon, zemo, and bucky are more worldly than him but thats true. and he does have to...learn, is the best word i have. i mean, the most he can do right now is “make a call” as he puts it which really isnt a lot considering whats been going on.

and to backtrack (sorry if this is all over the place) we do see sam constantly empathizing with the flag smashers and more specifically karli consistently throughout the show. if they werent super soldiers hed not have crossed their path the way that he did. throughout the show, well before episode 4, sam is really focused on like where exactly the super soldiers are coming from, the fact that the flag smashers are stealing money, and food, and medicine he doesnt really care.

when he has his heart to heart with karli the main problem that he has honestly, is the murders (and i do wish that there was distinction made cause that is important, but i know that in show sam probably doesnt know that karli blew up a building with people tied up in it like we do but its important that we know that), when he says that the killings wouldnt make the world better just different along with karli saying “theyre roadblocks on my journey and id kill them again if i had to” (which is 1. very dehumanizing, 2. she says 'my' and not 'our', and 3. she didnt have to kill these low level workers) is more a restructuring of power instead of dismantling it.

like theres a lot here but my minds not connecting fully.

i know the show isnt over so ii dont really have a conclusion (i honestly havent even said half of what I took notes about) but its like 4 am here and I gotta go to bed. And I dont want this ti be multiple parts right now I just needed to get this outta my system lol.

part 2 whenever

#tfatws #the falcon and the winter soldier #sam wilson #//these is really bad actually lol dont read it im tired

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consultingsister-aa · 5 years ago

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“apparently, I joined this hellsite on 26/03/2012 at 1:26:45 PM“

eight years ago i created consulting-sister because i thought alexa chung looked a little like benedict cumberbatch. that was it, that was my basis from creating a blog that has since inspired me to study english and creative writing at universtiy, allowed me to meet the most creative, hillarious and amazing people from all around the world & developed me as a writer and creator. i will never deny that roleplay is a hobby, but to say it is just a hobby cuts it a little short. writing celia really has shaped my life and i am lucky to call some people i have met on this site my best friends, some of whom i have now known now for nearly a decade. i am lucky to say i have had very few bad experiances on this site and the good ones have always outnumbered and outshone them and that is really down to the people i have met. thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting and writing with me; from my o.g’s to my new followers, and now for some shout-outs...

i wish i had a better way of doing this because i know your url in a list of other url’s can feel a little disingenuous but i mean this from the heart; i find you all so inspiring. from the snippets of your life ooc i get to learn about, to your character's creation or interpretation. whenever you come up on my dash or i get a lil notification from you it’s just THE BEST you all light up my life. you inspire me to be better, to work harder, to strive and improve so i can be half as brilliant as you. and i know i will have missed people bc i’ve tried to do this by memory, but tbh even you’re not here and i follow you, that’s how i feel; i’ve learned to really tailor my dash to people to who inspire and delight me, so thank you to all my mutuals for making my dash a better place

@a-kitten-with-claws / @ericbrandonrp / @borneofash / @theholisticdetective / @warrioroflondonbelow / @sovietorphan / @quietresistance / @babyunwin / @winebleeds / @nikolacvna / @presidentviktorpetrov / @predacious / @thrylcs / @strangerinourmidst / @diabolicaltendencies / @gunmetclgrey / @alreadybrcken / @thepropertyofalady / @youngprofessorx / @givenwork / @rcsethcrn / @cocainumking / @fangsforhire / @bestvictim / @requiescatiinpace / @stillhavespots / @strawpolls / @carnivoruse / @irritablefacade / @vespxr / @xqueenofscots

@mcneyhoney SOPPY MY GREATEST LOVE!! i think how i feel about you was summed up last night, after like eight sentences to each other my face already hurt from laughing. honestly, everyone else can suck it bc this stupid virus is STOPPING ME FROM GOING TO DUBLIN AND HAVING A BAR CRAWL WITH YOU THEY DONT KNOW PAIN. without you, my blog would never have lasted this long, you’re my best friend and i love you so so much. you inspire me, you’re so clever and creative and im crying bc you will never know how cool you are to me. just know i would write pegging smut with no one else, ever and i think that sums up my feelings for you. my gay feelings.

@theasteriae big ol’ heart eyes emoji to the woman who is my twin / actually just me. never seen us in a room together, have you? no honest, you have brought celia back to life; our ships, our threads, our verses! talking to you is so easy, we’re on the same page about everything; we can just read each other minds. i swear to god you’re my rp soulmate, you have brought every muse and every plot i have ever wanted to life, with such magic and talent. your writing style is just... uGH *CHEF KISS* everything i love. i LOVE YOU.

@ingeanue / @dilkos ma bitch. my person. my princess di, if you will. we are the epitome of having to stay best friends bc we know too much about each other aND IM OKAY WITH IT. I know you’re off living your best life but do come back soon so we can go back to bullying amb and marko and you can get back to bullying me bc im old and don’t know trends. for now i shall go back to reading all out old stuff and your drabbles that make me cry so much and your legacy will live in on like two verses i created with cee just for you.

@seavillain / @pentiimento my long time bae! putting up with me and cee for too long, you deserve a medal. your talent and love for jacob makes me wanna cry, always, i am SO excited about all our upcoming threads, i’m already daydreaming about marriage verse okay. you’re so lovely and so good to me, thank you for always being a pal!!! i love you.

and finally... @hellsbraveknight who i will always put on my anniversary post even though you’ve not been on in three thousand years, although always a good reminder to message you on Facebook to say how much i love you which i shall now do.

#( i. ooc )#these always make me so happy but so ANXIOUS IN CASE I MISSED SOMEONE #i love you all is the ....vibe though so I LOVE YOU ALL

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homespork-review · 5 years ago

Text

Homespork Act 4, Part 2: Flight of the Paradox Groans

BRIGHT: Remember Spades Slick being bizarrely aware he was in a comic, back in the Intermission? Buckle up, things are about to get even more fourth-wall-breaking. Appropriately, this starts by the comic focusing on an actual fourth wall, which activates to show...Andrew Hussie.

Hussie’s MS Paint avatar notices the audience watching him, laments that his side of the wall doesn’t have an off switch, and then recaps the first year of Homestuck.

Now, in all fairness: The recap is thorough, full of links, and explains things fairly well. It’s quite long, but given how much territory it has to cover I’m not sure it could be any shorter. So it does its job well, and it’s a boon if you’re getting lost with the plot.

As for the author insertion...on this occasion I don’t mind it. It comes across as tongue-in-cheek, but framed more as the author talking to the reader than as the author inserting himself into the narrative. It’s definitely very Homestuck.

Anyway, AH gets back to work, and after a couple of false starts we return to John!

John is still flying around with his jet pack. GC trolls him to offer him a world map of LOWAS and tell him she feels awful about killing him, although in literally the next line she tells him that technically he never even died so she doesn’t understand why he’s so upset. John understandably finds this disturbing. They have a brief nonsensical discussion about Jesus/Jegus, and then John agrees to go take a look at what’s on the other side of his Second Gate. Yes, on the advice of someone whose previous advice got him killed.

CHEL: Almost a shame we didn’t set up a Too Dumb To Live count, but then to be fair that was a separate timeline and he’s probably not thinking of it as something that “really” happened. This is supported by his later dialogue.

FAILURE ARTIST: The word Jegus is really popular in the Homestuck fandom, used far more often than it is in the canon. Gets quite annoying, in my opinion. Actually, a rather Jesus-like figure does appear, but he’s not called “Jegus”.

CHEL: Yeah, I think only Terezi, John, and Dave ever use the term, but it somehow became latched onto as an actual term used by trolls in general, even though in canon it isn’t.

BRIGHT: Fortunately, this time GC appears to be playing nice. John flies though the Second Gate and emerges...into LOLAR?

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie does an amusing trick where he has what looks like a loading screen for a flash but it’s actually a still image eternally at 2%.

BRIGHT: Yes, it’s LOLAR. John promptly crashes into Rose’s house, smashing through a wall and into her bedroom, where Rose is still snoozing in her knitting pile. Apart from briefly being stuck upside down, he does not appear injured by this collision.

Rose has somehow slept through the commotion. John decides to let her rest and borrows her computer to talk to Dave.

The first one he talks to is actually Davesprite, who points out how moronic John was to listen to GC again. No arguments here! Then he explains how the Gate system works: Odd-numbered Gates, above players’ houses, lead to somewhere on their planets. Even-numbered Gates lead to other players’ planets, exiting over their houses. Normally they aren’t meant to go through even-numbered Gates until the houses are built up, so they don’t fall to their deaths, but fortunately John has a jetpack workaround. So far Davesprite is living up to his promise of being straightforward.

John realises he’s talking to Future Dave, and asks “do you think i could talk to the real dave for a second?”

...ouch, John.

Davesprite goes off on a tear, ranting that he is a real Dave — arguably the realest Dave, since he’s been running around LOHAC for months trying to get enough information to save everyone. John apologises sincerely.

CHEL: This won’t be the last we hear of this theme, though.

EB: i think i pissed off your future self. TG: what did you do EB: i said he wasn't the real dave. TG: ahahahahaha EB: i think i might have really hurt his feelings though! TG: pff TG: dont worry about it EB: why not? TG: cause i wouldnt give a shit TG: and hes me

BRIGHT: Not a hundred percent sure I believe Dave, there.

CHEL: Dave uses John to snoop around Rose’s room and get the captcha code for her journals. Classy, Dave. Not a SLAMMER point, however, as this does come back to bite him very soon.

Rose’s dreamself has awoken on Derse, the purple planet, and flies across to the opposite tower. Dave’s dreamself appears to be awake, sitting upright in his computer chair; the room is entirely an unsettling bloody red colour apart from the SBaHJ cartoons on the walls, and… oh shit, there’s Lil Cal again, now in a long purple nightdress and hopping around the room on his own. If Rose was having nightmares because of dreamself issues, I can only imagine how Dave’s nightmares must look. Rose throws a ball of yarn at Dave’s dreamself, alerting him, and causing the awake Dave to pass out.

Back in Rose’s room, it seems that Charles Barkley quote was not misattributed:

FAILURE ARTIST: Another SBaHJ reference in the book quote. Is that where Dave got it?

Still, I don’t recall this book ever coming up again. Just another item that seems like a Chekhov's Gun but isn’t.

CHEL: John feels guilty about opening his birthday gift from Rose, but reasons that it’s technically now his anyway, so he does, finding another bunny, this one black and filthy-looking except for the pristine knitted purple patches repairing it, though its shape is eerily familiar.

The gift in this box is a resurrection. I used your present to thread life anew into a tattered heirloom. As long as I can remember, its black, greasy appendages have been tethered limply to its ratty, porous carriage. Too delicate to wash, too dear to discard. I used to love this rabbit. Now he's yours. I trust you'll find this to be adequately sentimental. Happy birthday.

Oh my gosh, awwwwww. Even if you don’t ship them romantically how can you not love their interactions? Definitely one of the comic’s strong points. Also I need to go hug my childhood teddy bear.

John puts the bunny back in the box again and the box in his sylladex, freeing Casey the salamander while he’s at it. And let’s just take a minute to feel utter horror because dead John still had Casey in his sylladex, so the best option is that she died too, and the worst is that we have an And I Must Scream situation on for a baby salamander. Gah.

FAILURE ARTIST: Thanks, I’d never thought of that and I never want to again.

You aren't actually sure if she is a girl though. You don't even know if salamanders can be girls. Aren't they hermaphrodites or something?

CHEL: No, for the record. Though some frogs can switch from one to the other.

FAILURE ARTIST: Casey is very popular as a name for an OC child of John (often having Rose as the mother).

CHEL: John answers Rose’s Pesterchum, upon which GA is half-heartedly sending antagonistic messages. John answers on Rose’s account, saying that Rose is asleep, which GA takes for Human Sarcasm, prompting John to pretend to be Rose.

GA: I Should Figure Out How The Viewport Feature Of This Application Works GA: So I Can See What Such A Primitive Creature Looks Like TT: haha, well i know what you guys look like. TT: you look kind of like... TT: howie mandel from little monsters.

Wait, how does he know? Am I forgetting a point at which he saw them?

BRIGHT: I always assumed that he was just goofing around and his guess happened to land in the right ballpark, but thinking about it, I’m not sure the kids ever express surprise at the trolls’ appearance.

CHEL: John, pretending to be Rose, talks about how awesome John is.

GA: He Is Either The Leader Of Your Party Or You Hold Whatever The Human Equivalent Of Mating Fondness For Him Is

CHEL: Both. Both is good!

FAILURE ARTIST: Knowing what we do of troll culture later this is an odd statement. Heck, it’s just an odd statement. Maybe this is why people think trolls don’t do friendship.

CHEL: John apparently confuses GA by saying it’s because Rose is thoughtful and John appreciates his gift, and suggests GA talk to John.

TT: why don't you pick the time that will make the most complicated mess out of everything imaginable?

GA sounds very annoyed, and leaves, intending to have the conversation with John that she had previously. We see her, GC, and the horns of AT and an unknown troll in the grey room, now revealed to be a computer laboratory. For some reason she chats via Pesterchum with another troll instead of just walking over to talk to them. This new troll is twinArmageddons, an appropriate name for the circumstances, who type2 iin yellow text liike thii2; he is, as it turns out, the hacker guy GC mentioned earlier. TA is busy setting up the network and seems irritable in general, and is not willing to help GA work her viewport.

TA: iif ii 2ee one more 2narl of wiire2. TA: kiind of juttiing out and beiing tangled or whatever. TA: ii am goiing two perform 2ome 2ort of athletiic fuckiing 2omer2ault off the deep end and get a call from the pre2iident or 2ome 2hiit.

Nice callback, but trolls, as we’ll later find out, don’t have presidents.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 14

GA wonders why TA doesn’t want to talk to her, and TA complains that he knew in advance the trolls were doomed and no one believed him. He refuses to troll the humans himself but is setting up the system so the others can in order to get them to leave him alone. GA asks again for help, to no avail.

TA: iif you cant fiigure 2hiit out by fuckiing around you dont belong near computer2. TA: kiind of liike wiith regii2tered 2ex offender2 and 2chool2. TA: iif you move two a new town you have two go up two your neiighbor2 door and warn them about how 2tupiid you are. TA: and giive them a chance two hiide all theiir iinnocent technology. TA: and vandaliize your hou2e.

Ooh, a threefer plus one! Tacky simile for the Problematykks. As for WSP, we’ll later find out that 1) trolls kill all their criminals, 2) trolls don’t give a shit about the welfare of their children, and 3) trolls don’t appear to actually go to school. These two counts are neck and neck in the lead now!

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 17 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 17

BRIGHT: As with much of Homestuck, the trolls give the impression of being made up as Hussie went along. That’s not entirely a bad thing -- it certainly makes the comic pretty unique -- but it does lead to some out-of-place slip-ups.

Anyway, GA chucks her F1 key at TA’s head and then starts poking him. We also see CG in the lab.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think I recall GA/TA were a popular ship before we learned more about GA. It does seem like they have a Rose & Dave dynamic going on.

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Rose and Dave have a dance party to Dave’s music while accompanied by some crows and Lil Cal, who keeps teleporting around the room. Rose eventually gets tired of Cal’s shenanigans and hurls him out of the window, to the relief of many.

FAILURE ARTIST: The flash originally included music by Bill Bolin. In fact, it was his unfinished music being included here that caused all the drama in the first place.

BRIGHT: Time for some random interludes! First up is Maplehoof the pony, who is following Rose’s mother through a large cave which, judging by the grist lying around, recently contained very dangerous monsters.

FAILURE ARTIST: Apparently pets can collect grist for their masters...and know what grist is despite being a normal(?) animal.

BRIGHT: First Mom, and then Maplehoof, stand on a transportaliser platform and disappear. Second is Dad, who has just acquired a replacement shoe and hat (which showed up in the walkaround game, way back at the beginning of the Act), when he encounters a familiar-looking stranger with a Colonel Sassacre book, who leads him to another transportalizer platform. Both of these interludes do become relevant later, but at the time they seem a tad unnecessary.

Meanwhile, John uses Rose’s alchemiter and a code Davesprite gave him mid-rant to produce a truly epic hammer called FEAR NO ANVIL. It’s far too big for John to wield, but fortunately he can use the scaling upgrade on the alchemiter to reduce it to a more useable size. ...wait. When did Rose’s alchemiter get a scaling upgrade? Dave and Jade added a lot of modifications to his, but Rose’s should be the original edition. Sigh.

EB: so what is this? EB: the thing the code made... TG: really powerful hammer EB: how do you know? EB: i thought you couldn't use hammers. TG: i cant TG: better be though TG: got it from hephaestus EB: who's that? TG: really tough to kill dude EB: you killed him for it? TG: nope EB: how'd you get it then? TG: shenanigans EB: ok.

...and we’re back to sprite evasiveness. Davesprite is being less than forthcoming here, although it’s less obvious than with Nannasprite because it superficially imitates John and Dave’s bantering.

CHEL: Now, this would be a good way of keeping us interested if we were eventually going to see how he did it, and also they have a time limit, so not going off into a long anecdote would be understandable. However, we’ll see how his evasiveness level proceeds in the future.

BRIGHT: Dream Rose and Dave see John using Rose’s alchemiter on Dream Dave’s computer. Rose wakes up.

FAILURE ARTIST: It is interesting how early Homestuck avoided having characters have face-to-face conversations. Would have been unique if it kept up throughout the entire comic.

BRIGHT: Back in the meteor, GA hassles TA into opening the viewport on her computer. This turns out to be as simple as clicking on the point in Rose’s timeline that she wants to see. No wonder TA was frustrated!

Of course, by this point, the only one left in the room is Rose, now awake, and the young salamander. Rose hurries to catch up with John, but he blasts off to explore before she can reach him, taking her mutated kitten with him.

CHEL: John renames Vodka Mutini to Dr Meowgon Spengler, and Rose renames Casey to Viceroy Bubbles von Salamancer. Interesting link to the themes of identities which are starting to crop up, though it’s not really a direct analogue. The animals are the same animals with different names; the alternate timeline characters have the same names and superficially the same identities, but are they really the same people after their new experiences?

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Lil Cal inexplicably lands on a stray rocket board, catching the attention of AR.

You're not sure which laws are being broken, but it is probably a lot.

AR follows Cal to yet another transportaliser, and they both dematerialise.

We jump back to John, who spies a boat on one of the islands dotting LOLAR and lands to investigate. He follows hoofprints in the sand into a subterranean hallway filled with monsters. Fortunately his new hammer has time powers, which stun the monsters long enough for John to kill them. Further on, he finds the transportaliser Mom used. John, naturally, stands on it, and is transported to a meteor in the Veil.

Actually, it’s not just a meteor; it’s one of the laboratories where the Skaian troops are produced. John, along with the cat and Maplehoof, finds a bunch of chess guys being grown in glass jars on a giant podium. Most of them are the standard carapaces we’re familiar with, but there are also a few larger pieces, apparently based on knights and rooks. He also finds a JUNIOR ECTOBIOLOGIST’S LAB SUIT, and another of those strange house-shaped sets of monitors.

On Prospit, PM is preparing to board a shuttle to Skaia when a COURTYARD DROLL sneaks up behind her. Unaccountably, she fails to notice him, despite the fact that he’s wearing a hat larger than he is. CD successfully pickpockets the White Queen’s ring, and PM departs for Skaia, none the wiser.

CD radios the DRACONIAN DIGNITARY to report mission success, and is told that he doesn’t need to keep wearing his ridiculous outfit, per orders from Jack Noir, who is now going by the SOVEREIGN SLAYER. CD says he’d rather keep wearing the outfit. Apart from the sword-through-the-chest part, it is a very nice outfit, so I’m with CD on this one.

Catastrophe is averted by Jade delivering a flying kick to CD’s head and following up with a very efficient smackdown. Her robot body replicates this back on Earth, beating the stuffing out of her mummified grandfather. Jade retrieves the ring, and puts it on her fingers to remind herself to give it back to PM later. Unfortunately, this doesn’t cause Jade to sprout wings and tentacles. Seems the rings don’t work on humans like that.

Meanwhile, in a Timeless Expanse, a WARWEARY VILLEIN is getting tired of the battle between Derse and Prospit. The next animation is called “WV?: Rise Up” and it’s one of my favorites! When I first read Homestuck I had to watch it a few times before I understood what was going on, but it is a very neat video.

Watch on YouTube

The Battlefield has been prototyped three times, and is now spherical. The forces of Derse and Prospit meet. The usual carapaces with swords are backed up by larger pieces -- some of them very strange -- and by battleships clashing in the sky. In the chaos, WV, who is farming peacefully on Skaia, has his home and farm burned down. He raises a flag and addresses the troops of both armies. Elsewhere, Jack Noir appears, flying over the Battlefield in search of the Black King.

WV rallies the armies and tells them that their real enemies are the monarchs, who are responsible for the war. Encouraged, the Dersite and Prospitan troops band together and march on the Black King.

Meanwhile, PM has reached the White King and discovers that she no longer has the White Queen’s ring. The White King listens to her and hands over his scepter, which seems to represent Skaia and serves a similar function to the Queens’ rings. Behind a nearby hill, the Hegemonic Brute radios somebody to report the transfer.

As WV and the united armies reach the Black King, Jack arrives and slices the Black King’s scepter in half, nullifying its powers and turning the Black King back into a normal carapace. PM is attacked by HB, who knocks the White King’s scepter out of her hand; it falls down a waterfall. Jack Noir beheads the Black King and turns to WV, and the animation ends.

...okay, much as I love it, I have to admit there’s a glaring question here: Namely, the kids started playing the Game less than a day ago and Dave’s kernelsprite has been prototyped for a few hours max. The second prototyping made the Battlefield more complex and the third took it into its current form. That’s a very short time to instigate a cross-faction revolution, organise the troops, and march on a monarch. For that matter, how long has WV been a farmer? The inhabitants of Derse and Prospit have obviously been doing their thing all the kids’ lives, but the Battlefield was supposedly a static, rudimentary space until John entered the Medium, so what gives?

Then again, the timeline in the Medium is supposed to be distinct from the timeline on Earth, so maybe that explains it?

CHEL: An interesting point is also raised by WV’s revolution. Namely, Derse is presented as a kingdom of darkness and evil by the game, while Prospit is presented as good. However, while PM is good, WV and AR are demonstrably not bad people either. In this animation, we see carapaces of both sides apparently don’t want to be involved in the war and are willing to rise up against the Black King. The rank-and-file carapaces on both sides, it seems, are decent people who are just following orders. (Not to mention very cute.) Jack Noir and his gang are nasty pieces of work, except CD who’s also just kind of going along with it, but there’s nothing saying white carapaces couldn’t also be… And is that a Problematykks point, presenting the black-coloured people as bad and the white-coloured ones as good? I know they’re chess pieces, but still.

This raises the question, however, what’s Derse’s motive? Are its rulers and archagents simply destroying for the evulz? I wonder. I also wonder how much Skaia itself is involved in this and how aware it is. Skaia is called the crucible of creation, and it’s responsible for the creation of the carapaces too. References are made to it “seeing” and “knowing”; it’s quite possibly sentient, though maybe not sapient. On top of that, SBurb is specifically a game, and a game needs an objective, and an adventure-type game needs enemies. Derse, it seems likely, was created and presented the way it is in order to give the players something to battle against even if its people don’t want to be their enemies. No wonder WV’s pissed!

BRIGHT: Yup. Hmm, thinking about it...the imps and other enemies we saw attacking John’s house early on were obviously Dersite, but the ones we’ve seen in Rose’s seem to be Prospitian, if anything? The colour scheme looks that way, at least. But Nanna said earlier that Derse was the enemy, nothing about Prospit.

Perhaps it has something to do with Rose being a Derse dreamer, while John is a Prospit dreamer? But in that case I’d have expected it to come up in the text. Instead it just goes unremarked.

Rose goes on a massive alchemising spree and ends up creating the Thorns of Oglogoth, a pair of wands.

The needles seem to shiver with the dark desires of THE DEEP ONE. Any sane adventurer would cast these instruments of the occult into the FURTHEST RING and forget they ever existed.

Instead of throwing the wands away, Rose takes on the enemies camping all over her house, with style.

Meanwhile, Dave goes on another, less visibly productive alchemising spree.

GET ON WITH IT!: 18

FAILURE ARTIST: The SBaHJifier could be considered productive in that it provides foreshadowing cartoons. Wish Dave’s Brain in a Jar came up again.

BRIGHT: Once he’s done creating smuppet variations to disturb the monsters encroaching on his house, he sits down to take a look at those two journals he copied from Rose earlier. One of them is called ‘MEOW’, and is literally just those same four letters, repeated over and over in different orders. The second is ‘Complacency of the Learned’.

There is no way to adequately recap the beauty of ‘Complacency of the Learned’, so we’re just going to show the whole thing:

Frigglish bothered his beard, as if unkinking a hitch in a long silk windsock. A more pedestrian audience would parse the exhibit as nervous compulsion. Behavior to petition contempt among the reasonable. He was however not surrounded by the reasonable, but the wise, a distinction in men that would forever be the difference in history's garland of treasured follies. As a matter of fact, his cadre of fellow wizards were all putting similar moves on their beards as well. The practice would evince thoughtfulness - sagacity, even - if they didn't do it all the time. Standing in line at the bank. Shooing squirrels from bird feeders. Few occasions were safe. Zazzerpan inspected the clue. A single piece of evidence cradled in his coriaceous old man palms. It was a human bone, not striking in the tale it told alone so much as that told by the thousands like it festooning the marshy soil of the mass grave. The grisly expanse bore the texture of a decadent dessert, like one of Smarny's formidable custard trifles wobbled out on wheels for the holidays, to the dismay of a small nation. "You're certain of this?" asked Frigglish. Despite what he was doing with his beard, he was, in fact, immersed in meaningful contemplation. "I am afraid I am becoming more so with each terrible tick groused by that gaudy timepiece slung around your neck." In case it wasn't clear, Frigglish wore a clock Zazzerpan didn't care for. It was magic. "The massacre of Syrs Gnelph was not as written." "What has you convinced it was the hand of our disciples in this blackness?" Executus chimed in. "I believe... I..." a fat face stammered, eyes darting with the guilt of a thief in the throes of an unraveling alibi. "I can summon a... more pressing line of inquiry..." No, Smarny. Nobody was in the mood for a sticky bundt loaf just now. Zazzerpan's ears fell insubstantial to any line of inquiry, pastry-oriented or otherwise. His abstruse contour carved a pondering shape in the fog carpeting centuries-dead. His eleven contemporaries too embraced the muted consternation of their great Predicant Scholar. Few wizards kept sharper adumbratives or read them with such lucidity. When Zazzerpan treated men with silence it was seldom unrepaid by the wise and reasonable alike. It was harrowing to entertain. Zazzerpan the Learned's storied Complacency of Wizards was marked for grander descendence. Disciples hand-picked, vetted by Ockite the Bonafide and tested by Gastrell the Munificent. The twelve sweetest, most studious children a pair of elderly eyes could give their sparkle. Not the ragged guttersnipe so oft-harvested by the common Obscenity, those vituperative little beggars with hearts to corrupt as dropped bananas brown. That these chosen youngsters would turn was not merely unthinkable, but something of a roundhouse to the temporal bones of the Upper Indifference's high chamber of Softskulled Prophets. His wisdom-savaged brow pruned further with recount of his many lessons to wouldbe successors. Lessons to advance humanity's elucidation and prosperity, an outcome this bleak trail now painfully obviated. There were few puzzles The Learned could not suspend and dissect in the recondite manifold beneath his extremely expensive pointy hat. Daring to pitch his cherished pupils in with the foul melange of history's rogues, the heretofore abstract scourge that built up civilizations with ungodly magic and tore them down with joyful malice, would prove an intellectual trespass to make his calcium-deficient bones quake. And more daring yet was the only question that now mattered. Could a bunch of bearded, scraggly old men in preposterous outfits hunt them down? He didn't have an answer. Only a simple observation so blunt and uncharacteristically jejune for the lauded sage it was breathtaking in its selfevidency. "We're going to need more wands." (Wow. Think of something better.)

Wow.

Dave is understandably intimidated by this, and decides to stop reading for now. He puts his copy of the SBURB Beta in the notebook to act as a bookmark, and leaves both books in his room for later.

Then he checks in on Rose, who is burning her version of the MEOW book.

CHEL: Dave inquires about the wizard story.

TG: i thought you hated wizards TG: whats the deal with that TT: I like wizards. TT: What I don't like is my mother's obsession with feigning interest in them to antagonize me. TG: oh man thats so messed up TG: that you think that TG: she probably digs wizards for real just like you and youre blowing shit out of proportion like pretty much always

Once again, we see exactly how fucked-up Rose’s relationship with her mother is. Mom Lalonde has somehow managed to raise a child in such a way that Rose interprets everything her mother does as an attempt to mock and provoke her.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 16

TIER: The Lalondes are pretty damn dysfunctional as a family unit, and considering the zany nature of early Homestuck and its world's weird logic that is saying something indeed.

CHEL: As for the MEOW book, it turns out the gods from the Furthest Ring informed Rose while she was sleeping that the book’s contents are highly dangerous and must be destroyed. Said gods dwell in the sky above Derse; Dave’s never heard or seen them, but Rose points out his dreamself is always wearing shades, listening to music, and distracted by Cal.

TT: You're the prince of the moon. TG: ........ TT: I'm sure they've been meaning to seek a royal audience. TG: ..........................

Davesprite chats to Rose next. She protests at being spied on by two people, but Davesprite asks her why she burned the codebook. She didn’t need to in the future, but according to her future memories of the gods absorbed from her future dreamself, Davesprite appeared to make it relevant by traveling to the past. A sinister and familiar face watches through Dave’s window, soon proving to be the Draconian Dignitary, while Dave and Davesprite awkwardly spout elaborate mixed metaphors about how safe they are, until Dave, embarrassed, says "so i guess ill go back down and burn that book".

As any savvy reader could guess, he’s too late. The prompt suggests that he should go back in time to stop the books from being stolen, but, well...

It looks like you already tried that. GORE GALORE: 10

Dave looks completely undisturbed, but whether he is undisturbed is a different matter. He flings the corpse out the window into the lava, claiming it would freak Jade out.

John, in the lab, presses a button, causing the first monitor to depict his town, shortly before his birth. There is a Betty Crocker factory and a shopping mall, neither of which are in the town now. Zooming in locks a target over Nanna Egbert, who is taking a stroll with Dad. A meteor looms; this looks like it’s going to go very badly, considering the target lock, but it hits the factory instead. When John presses the glowing blue button, a PARADOX GHOST IMPRINT of Nanna is created; refer back to Rose’s experimentation in the lab and the green slime blobs. This time, the slime is sucked into a tube.

The next monitor does something similar with Grandpa Harley on his ship, and the next the same with Bro Strider, who stands over a meteor crater on an unseasonably warm day; something of an understatement, as the sky is the same lurid red and the sun the same glowing spiral that they were during the Strider bros’ battle even though it’s December. Bro is, regardless, prepared for the occasion with a small pair of outrageously awesome shades. What he needs these for will soon be revealed.

The fourth monitor goes back to John’s home town, a gigantic crater where the factory once was. In the shopping mall, Dad Egbert stands outside a joke shop, while Nanna apparently remains inside, busying herself with a tall bookshelf, a ladder, and a rather hefty unabridged joke book.

Mom Lalonde, clutching the infant Rose and wearing a rather snazzy long Jaspersprite-pink scarf, has come to town to study the meteor impact at the request of Grandpa Harley while he explores elsewhere. Unfortunately, now is the time a meteor chooses to strike Nanna’s location, destroying the shop.

An old mother lost today, but a new son gained.

Wait for it.

Mom Lalonde flees, dropping her scarf, which Dad Egbert picks up and slightly creepily sniffs. The monitor continues tracking her, and John captures her paradox imprint too, starting the machines whirring away...

Four babies abruptly appear on the pad, already diapered and bespectacled and old enough to sit up unaided. Convenient, no?

When the kitten jumps on a green button, the slime is blended in pairs; Nanna’s and Grandpa’s, and Mom’s and Bro’s. More blinking lights ensue, and another four extremely familiar-looking babies appear.

BRIGHT: I will say this: These kids are adorable.

While babies clamber over him, John vaults up his echeladder to the rank of Ectobiolobabysitter, acquiring one million Boondollars in the process. This automatically converts itself to a Boonbuck, the weight of which smashes his Porkhollow.

Finding out just what is going on here will have to wait, as the comic takes a brief detour to a battleship navigating the Medium nearby. There’s someone very familiar at the wheel…

An old man has much to do before he returns to Earth, dies, gets stuffed by his adopted-yet-biological daughter-slash-grand-daughter, and stuck in front of a fireplace.

Also aboard the ship are Dad Egbert and Mom Lalonde. Dad returns Mom’s scarf, and the two of them hold hands as Grandpa Harley pilots the ship towards Skaia.

We return to the lab, where John has his hands full with the babies. One of them has managed to break one of the paradox slime jars from earlier, but appears uninjured. Also, CG’s trolling him again.

CHEL: CG makes mention of the ULTIMATE RIDDLE, but John is confused because CG hasn’t told him about that yet. He uses an ableist description in explaining.

CG: SEE I KIND OF PAINTED MYSELF INTO A CORNER. CG: I STARTED TROLLING YOU AT THE END, JUST BEFORE THE RIFT. CG: AND THEN JUMPED BACK A LITTLE. CG: AND NOW I GUESS I'VE BECOME RAILROADED INTO WORKING BACKWARDS HERE. CG: UNLESS I WANT TO DO THE SORT OF DUMB SCHIZOPHRENIC HOPPING AROUND LIKE THE OTHERS. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 18

… why wouldn’t you just hop right back to the start and work in a linear fashion from there?

TIER: Because CG excels at making things complicated for himself and is fundamentally rather stubborn and set in his ways/actions. Like he's made his bed, he's gonna lie in it.

CHEL: Anyway, CG banters with John for a bit, and then informs him that he (John) has arrived in the Veil and created infant versions of the players and their guardians.

EB: so they are like cloned copies of us? CG: NO. CG: THEY ARE LITERALLY YOU AND YOUR GUARDIANS. CG: PARADOX CLONES.

A paradox clone, we are informed, is A CORRECTLY CLONED DUPLICATE THAT WILL INEVITABLY GO BACK IN TIME AND BECOME THE ORIGINAL TARGET THAT WAS CLONED. The game worlds contain many clues hinting at the ultimate destiny of the players to create their own selves through the game, and the only way things could possibly go involved the players creating themselves, or else the game session would never happen.

CG: WHICH IS ESPECIALLY PATHETIC SINCE PARADOX SPACE APPARENTLY WENT TO ALL THIS TROUBLE TO MAKE YOU JUST TO HAVE YOU FAIL AND DIE. CG: REALLY THERE'S NOTHING MORE TRAGIC THAN THESE NULL SESSIONS FULL OF KIDS ENTERING THE GAME AND FULFILLING SOME COSMIC DESTINY SHIT JUST TO GET WIPED OUT AND LEAVE BEHIND AN EMPTY POINTLESS INCIPISPHERE FOR ALL ETERNITY.

Tragic and completely unnecessary, when there are millions of perfectly good humans already in existence who could just as easily create winning game sessions without this aspect of it. Here we see another aspect of Homestuck which hasn’t come up quite so clearly before; an extremely weird take on determinism. I’m not sure if this is meant as a parody of Chosen One plotlines or if Hussie just thought it sounded cool, but it’s uncomfortable. As it turns out, only clones created by SBurb have a hope in hell of winning the game, and even they fail most of the time. Regular people who enter the game to save themselves from the destruction of the planet will fail and die there, which honestly is not really selling this game as a good thing, since it’s what causes the destruction of the planet in the first place. I’ve had actual, legitimate, honest-to-God nightmares about this aspect of SBurb, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think many fans wish to play SBurb. There’s lots of fan sessions and fake GameFAQs and custom Lands. Yet in reality SBurb is not a fun time. This is cosmic horror. I think Hussie is sometimes playing it for horror and sometimes he ignores the implications.

Then again, some people want to live on the troll planet, which is straight-up dystopia.

CHEL: Again, it isn’t really clear what he’s going for. Is it supposed to be terrifying or did he just think it would be clever? Does even Hussie know what he was going for? While it’s not exactly a joke, I think it’s worth another point here:

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 17

It might be a joke. As I said, I could see it as a parody of or playing with the Chosen One narrative. In this case, literally only the chosen ones have any hope, for reasons that are not down to any merit of their own. But if it is, there isn’t really much made of it.

Of course, the reasons people want to live on the troll planet are reasonable when taken alone, but a) contradicted every alternate scene and b) not a fair trade for everything else that’s going on there. But we’ll get to that when we actually see it. And I admit, SBurb powers would be fun, but not worth the loss of my entire species.

TIER: To me at least it's fun in the same way wondering how I'd fare as a wizard during Harry Potter's years at Hogwarts, or a ninja in Naruto is. Fundamentally you'd rather want to never encounter this sorta stuff even if you get some swanky I guess powers, but the mental exercise of it is quite honestly, really fun. The game has quite a lot of interesting things to poke around with, from lands to quests to what your co-players are up to. And I'm def guilty of playing trollsona games, because the world presented is just really fascinating in its gruesome glory.

Never want to have to actually go through it, Lord knows I'd be dead within the first ten minutes if I'm super lucky, but stories about it are pretty neat.

CHEL: That’s true, but the paradox clones thing seems almost to be taunting us for having that mentality. We can pretend we’d be the super-smart strong competent ones who make it, but in this universe if we demonstrably have parents we’re doomed to die for nothing and there’s nothing we can do about it.

BRIGHT: Another fun thing about this is that it fundamentally isolates the players from the rest of humanity. If you think about it, unless they have children with a non-player, they are completely unrelated to anyone else on Earth.

CHEL: And they can’t have kids with a non-player unless something thoroughly horrible happened, because as is stated later SBurb specifically takes its players away and destroys their planet around the point of their puberty.

BRIGHT: Although I think John is actually related to Dad — as far as we’re told, Dad is in fact Nanna’s biological son, which makes him genetically John’s half-brother.

They also miss out on (going by how active the babies are) the first couple of years of life. Those two years are crucial in terms of brain development. SBURB probably controls for that, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there were negative consequences.

Oh, and if you’re a player, your existence means your civilisation is doomed. Lovely!

CHEL: And do the players ever feel any guilt or conflict over this? Do they hell. It doesn’t even occur to them, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t occur to Hussie either.

TIER: Welcome to the hell game that is SBURB; it's fundamentally pretty fucked up! It runs on a hellish scale of "things have already been predetermined" and I am Big Fear™.

CHEL: That’ll come up later, too, but there it’s obviously intentional nightmare fuel, and not at all a bad use of time travel as a story device.

CG, meanwhile, explains that he was the one to create his session’s players. With twelve of them it was a bit more complicated, but troll lineages are complicated anyway, and we’ll find out how later.

The babies are still getting all over the lab. Note that they're repeatedly referred to as "little pink monkeys". Then again, calling a non-white child a monkey really wouldn't be good.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 18

John’s infant self has latched onto the Sassacre book, while his infant Nanna is sitting in Dad Egbert’s old hat. Baby Bro is napping in the lap of Lil Cal; that baby’s braver than I am, I can tell you that. Baby Dave is sitting on Maplehoof, and baby Grandpa has found a pair of pistols. John does not take them away from him, or even seem to notice he has them.

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 7

BRIGHT: Earlier baby Bro broke one of the paradox slime cylinders and was sitting in it. John is pretty astoundingly bad at keeping babies away from obvious hazards.

TIER: That or the equipment is probably not sturdy enough to make it past an inspection into faulty management.

CHEL: But then he’s distracted by CG trolling him again, at least this time moving forward in time from the last conversation.

CG, like GA, apparently fails to grasp sarcasm...

EB: we had this great dare going. EB: to see who could be the least helpful and informative. EB: and you totally lost, dude! EB: you were hella helpful. CG: I WAS OBVIOUSLY JUST SPITING YOUR STUPID POINTLESS HUMAN DARE. [...] CG: ANYWAY, HOW COULD WE HAVE MADE A DARE IF I'M MOVING BACKWARDS ON YOUR TIMELINE.

… which is weird because moments later he uses it himself.

EB: do you even have elves? CG: YES, LET'S COMPARE WHICH FANTASY CREATURES THAT DON'T EXIST WE BOTH DO OR DON'T NOT HAVE. CG: WHAT A GREAT FUCKING IDEA, JOHN!

Hussie seems to waver back and forth a lot on whether trolls get sarcasm or not, in general. Since he’s contradicting himself with troll worldbuilding, that’s a point.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19

Banter aside, he informs John that the babies are sent to Earth via meteors during the Reckoning.

BRIGHT: How do they survive the impact? Some of those meteor strikes destroy buildings. Those are some ridiculously resilient kids.

CHEL: Cut to AR, who is still having fun on the rocketboard, until he runs into a frog temple atop a meteor. This is apparently horrifying and illegal by his standards.

You are going to throw whoever is responsible into the slammer. You always call jail the slammer when you are extra angry at crimes.

Inside, he finds an empty time capsule, like Jade’s, some complicated machinery, and a monitor screen showing a greyscale house with a very familiar bespectacled female infant and dirty old hat in it. The year depicted, says the monitor, is 1910. Enter none other than Colonel Sassacre himself.

Eight days prior, the orphan girl was taken in by an aristocratic southern colonel and legendary humorist. He recovered the young lady from a crater where a bakery once stood, operated by the man's wife, a notable baked goods baroness.

An explosion outside leads them both to a crater, where once stood the doghouse of the colonel’s pet, Halley, but before the Colonel can investigate further he’s shot through the heart.

This is exactly why babies should not be allowed to dual-wield flintlock pistols.

BRIGHT: I remain baffled as to how Baby Grandpa can even lift those things, let alone pull the triggers.

CHEL: Baby Grandpa crawls from the crater, and Halley the dog turns out to be alive.

The young boy has difficulty pronouncing the name though. Sounds more like "Harley" when he says it.

How does he know it? The colonel died before he even noticed the baby was there. Is baby Nanna speaking well enough to tell him yet? I guess he could be told later, as Sassacre wasn’t in fact their only sapient guardian...

Thirteen years later, the boy develops a taste for adventure. He and his guardian bid farewell. His sister is sad. She will be left all alone with the wicked pastry baroness. She can handle it, he tells her. He believes in her.

It isn’t clear why she didn’t go with him, or leave under her own power. They don’t seem to be imprisoned, as the panel depicts them outside on grass with no restraints or guards over them, so it’s not a matter of only one of them being able to get out. That’s a point for Nanna not trying and a point for Grandpa not bringing her:

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 9

That dog is also remarkably lively, considering it, unlike Bec, is an entirely normal dog, it was an adult thirteen years previously, and it’s somehow supporting the weight of an entire teenager on its back (again, please don’t try this at home, you can break the dog’s spine that way).

FAILURE ARTIST: As we’ve said, Colonel Sassacre is a thinly-veiled Mark Twain expy. The real Mark Twain died in 1910 at the same time Halley’s Comet was in the sky. It’s a cute historical gag having him be literally killed by a comet but it does muck up the timeline. Nanna must have been a senior citizen when Dad was born. Perhaps he’s adopted?

CHEL: The other option is that Dad is a senior citizen now, but surely John would have wondered why his dad is so ridiculously old. I think it’s just that thing in mainstream comics and cartoons where adults are split into Old and Not Old, and the parents are normal ages for parents but the grandparents would have to be in their hundreds going by the gags. See how Scrooge McDuck in the DuckTales reboot is over a hundred and forty years old yet his sister’s son is still a youngish adult.

AR notes that the appearifier is centred over Halley the dog, but hears someone coming. It proves to be the Draconian Dignitary. AR hides and watches, noting that DD is carrying Rose’s notebooks and Dave’s beta envelopes. DD keeps the MEOW book, but throws away the other items. Complacency of the Learned lands on the floor, and the envelopes land in the time capsule, which sets to bloom in four hundred and thirteen million years.

Meanwhile, John talks to CG while infant Mom Lalonde pets the mutant kitten. John asks if there’s any way to delay the Reckoning, but nope; CG warns him that the smallest meteors will start going in only a few minutes.

EB: ok, well you keep saying how doomed we are and how all this bad stuff happens sooner, but you never say why! EB: what happens in our game that's different from yours that makes things go so badly? CG: JACK NOIR.

The Jack Noir from the trolls’ game session allied with them and helped them dethrone and exile the Black Queen, while the one from the humans’ session, as you may recall, killed the Black Monarchs and gained their powers, and is currently rampaging through the Incipisphere. John asks if it’s the same Jack Noir, but CG explains.

CG: SO LET'S SAY YOU PLAY YOUR BANDICOOT AND I PLAY MY BANDICOOT. CG: THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME BANDICOOT, SAME APPEARANCE AND DESIGN AND BEHAVIORS. CG: BUT THEY ARE STILL COMPLETELY SEPARATE BANDICOOTS ON SEPARATE SCREENS. CG: SO WE BOTH HAVE OUR OWN ASS BANDICOOTS TO OURSELVES, THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT. CG: OUR JACKS ARE THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT TOO. CG: SAME GUY, DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOMES. CG: OUR JACK TRUMPED THE QUEEN, BUT GOT NO FURTHER. CG: YOUR JACK GOT THE BEST OF BOTH OF THEM, AND IS NOW SOMETHING HIGHER THAN A QUEEN OR A KING… EB: like an ace? CG: SURE OK.

The trolls don’t know what went so differently to cause the two Jacks to behave so differently, but CG doesn’t think it matters by now. John interrupts him, deciding to do yet another Con Air ending re-enactment.

Watch on YouTube

Recap: montage of Con Air posters and images to the tune of “How Do I Live Without You”. John hands the thoroughly disgusting Con Air bunny to the protesting baby Rose, while CG watches huffily on his monitor. Jade demands a toy too, so John hands her the bunny he received from Rose in an excessively dramatic fashion. CG frustratedly hits himself in the head. In scribbly crayon-like drawings, Casey the salamander performs a drum solo with glowing blue mushrooms for drums and the Con Air plane crashes. More Con Air imagery, John embraces baby Jade and the baby Lalondes while sobbing; GC points and laughs at him over CG’s shoulder and they have a slapfight. John imagines himself in Nic Cage’s iconic wifebeater and mullet and performs an air guitar solo.

TIER: Lemme tell ya, as someone who's only experience with this darn movie is whatever pops up courtesy of John this sequence is just a trip and a half. Possibly a higher number.

CHEL: Cut to end-of-act curtains; they open on the next page, declaring a PSYCHE; there are more pages to go.

Cut to Dave’s hands, covered in the dead Dave’s blood. I… guess he’s supposed to be staring at them in shock? It’s impossible to tell through his shades. For all I know he could be worried about the cleanup. GC trolls him and they banter creepily, with her demanding to know what his blood smells like and him taunting her about her blindness.

TG: just him and me TG: havin a see party TG: like a couple of eagle eyed bros peepin shit up into the wee hours GC: D4V3 GC: C4N 1 COM3 TO YOUR S33 P4RTY? TG: i guess but youll have to be careful not to stumble around bumping into all the gorgeous masterpieces hanging around everywhere TG: god so beautiful to look at with my perfect eyesight GC: C4N 1 L1CK TH3 P41NT1NGS? TG: yeah thats fine

Neither of them seems to take it particularly hard. If there was narrative around the dialogue, I think we’d get a better grasp of how Dave feels. Lacking much body language or punctuation, tone is a bit tricky to get.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s a character later who gets a lot of grief for insulting her blindness but reading what John, Dave, and CG say I don’t know how that character could be worse.

CHEL: AT, meanwhile, is trolling Jade, rather politely. He even takes time to ask if she’s having a good nap. She’s worried about John’s dreamself not waking, and AT scrolls into his view of the future timeline, but can’t find John awake, nor see into his dreams. Jade, however, will wake up soon, and she thanks him for this report. Unfortunately, when Jade wakes up she will be in danger, and AT can’t see any further. He tells her CG wants to talk to her about her exploding robot. He can’t see whether it exploded or not because there are a lot of explosions, but asking future Jade shows it did, and that she declared CG to be a pretty nice guy, which surprises AT since he doesn’t think CG is particularly nice. Jade says she thinks AT is nice too, and asks why he’s the only one who talks to her while she’s asleep.

AT: bECAUSE YOU HAVE A ROBOT, tO LET YOU SAY THINGS THAT HAPPEN, oN PROSPIT, AT: aND i'M CURIOUS, AT: bECAUSE THE ONLY TIME i EVER HAD FUN PLAYING THIS GAME WAS WHEN i WAS ASLEEP, AT: bUT NOW ALL OUR DREAM SELVES ARE DEAD, AT: }:'(

AT happily remembers his own time on Prospit, and we cut back to Rose, being trolled by GA despite the fact that Rose is obviously in the middle of an epic magic battle. The conversation is understandably chilly, and GA still hasn’t figured out that “Dumb Rose” as opposed to “Smart Rose” was John rather than a bizarre roleplaying scenario.

GC continues trolling Dave. He asks her how she operates a computer without sight.

GC: 1M SORRY D4V3 TH4T YOU W1LL N3V3R 3XP3R13NC3 TH3 S3NSORY BOUQU3T TH4T 1 3NJOY 3V3RY D4Y GC: TH4T 1 3NSCONC3 MYS3LF 1N L1K3 4 W4RM 4ND COMFY B4THROB3 M4D3 OF FL4VOR 4ND M3LODY TG: oh ok TG: so the dumbest and most far fetched explanation imaginable ok got it

Yes, pretty much. This brings me to a Problematykks point; GC is supposed to be blind, but it really doesn’t seem to affect her in any way at all. Its workaround is ridiculously convenient and effective, and while I’m not blind myself, I know many people with physical disabilities hate it when fiction does this. I know I would be pissed off if a piece of fiction showed an easy and convenient way to not have autism anymore. (Horrible, horrible memories of someone back in the days of Livejournal’s Fanficrants of a fic in which autism was somehow cured by having a foursome. I don’t remember how that was supposed to work.) “She’s a space alien” only goes so far in explaining it. Why even bother making her blind if it’s not going to affect her in any way?

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s the least blind blind person in media. Characters like Daredevil from Marvel Comics and Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender have a Disability Superpower but at the end of the day they still can’t do things like read printed text. GC has no disadvantages.

BRIGHT: She can apparently smell and taste photons.

Which raises the question why none of the other trolls ever show a heightened sense of smell or taste. If GC can learn to interpret smells as colours, her sense of smell must have been that strong all along, and there’s no indication in the text that she’s biologically more sensitive than her companions. Trolls must be better at following a trail than bloodhounds.

CHEL: Synaesthesia which makes one strongly associate colours with smells is a thing, and synaesthesia is generally the word the fandom uses to explain Terezi’s ability, but you still have to actually see the colours for that to work. If she was only mostly blind and was picking up blurry colour patches, I could buy it (and that is how the fandom tends to do it with human AUs), but not if she’s supposed to be completely blind, and she still wouldn’t be able to read text that way.

BRIGHT: Time for another animation, and for a hop back into the recent past.

Watch on YouTube

As the meteor locked onto Dave’s house approaches, Dave climbs up the tower to retrieve his cruxite egg from the nest his sprite made. Unfortunately the sprite attacks him, knocking him and the egg off the tower. Bro Strider appears on top of the approaching meteor and slices it in half with his katana; the two halves are diverted by the blow and strike different areas of the city. Dave’s fall is broken by a rocket board, which is presumably how Bro got up to the meteor in the first place. (How did he manage to aim it to intercept Dave’s fall? Wouldn’t it take longer to get from the meteor to Dave than it takes for Dave to fall from the top of the tower to the roof of the building? We shall never know.) The egg hatches, and Dave is transported into the Medium. There’s no sign of what happens to Bro.

CHEL: Yet more cartoon physics around the Strider bros.

BRIGHT: I don’t know if we mentioned this earlier, but although Dave and Bro live in an apartment block that presumably housed multiple people, only Dave’s apartment gets transported into the Medium. Everyone else in the complex is left to die on Earth. SBURB is sociopathic.

Elsewhere in the Medium, back in the present, Grandpa’s ship is approaching Skaia, with Mom Lalonde and Dad Egbert on board.

Down on Skaia, Jack Noir draws his sword and slaughters the army WV raised to march on the Black King. WV cowers, but Jack leaves him alive. He then uses the Black Queen’s ring to send some sort of giant red tentacle attack through Skaia, slaughtering Dersite and Prospitian forces indiscriminately.

CHEL: Are they tentacles? I always thought of them as some sort of lightning lasers.

BRIGHT: That makes a lot more sense!

In the ectobiology lab, as the clock ticks down to the Reckoning, the babies are teleported to asteroids around the lab. There must be an air supply in this asteroid belt — characters are consistently shown as being able to survive outside.

CHEL: Maybe it’s just the players’ natural badassery. Batman Can Breathe In Space.

BRIGHT: On Skaia, CD makes his way through Jack’s slaughter fest, which has now ravaged a sizeable chunk of planet, and hands him the White King’s sceptre. Jack raises the sceptre and initiates the Reckoning. The meteorites start to vanish into Skaia’s defence portals. In the frog temple, DD somehow combines the MEOW genetic code with a paradox clone of Halley, creating Jade’s guardian Bec. Bec’s creation damages the laboratory equipment in the temple.

Cut to Jade, who is snoozing peacefully while her dream self explores Prospit. She looks up at Skaia, to see Jack’s shadow passing in front of it. Jack launches his tentacle attack on Prospit, slaughtering the inhabitants, then severs the chain attaching Prospit’s moon to the planet. The moon begins falling towards Skaia.

Jack then flies to LOHAC, where he encounters Bro Strider on one of the turntable mesas. Unexpectedly, Bro is able to give Jack an even fight. After a few exchanges, he drives his katana into the mesa; some sort of golden light emanates from the crack, and Bro absconds.

Wait, how did Bro get onto LOHAC? How did he survive the meteor impacts?

TIER: The ol' "rule of cool". As long as something is sufficiently "absolutely kickass!!" the rules of reality and physics can go sit on the bleachers twiddling their thumbs for all they fucking matter. There's a reason early fandom pinned down Bro as an unorthodox but immensely cool older brother type guy for so long. Because with what little information was available before we got bludgeoned with "No actually he was the absolute fucking worst thing to happen to Dave and fucked him up for life" that was the general impression he gave off.

CHEL: This and the meteor splitting are yet more reason not to take Bro’s treatment of Dave seriously; this is a world in which ludicrous animesque badassery rules the day, and physically impossible feats of battle occur every five minutes. Forcing a child to go through extensive and excessive sword training in brutal heat in a precarious place, possibly every day, ought by rights to be normal there, and I can’t believe he was physically hurt by swordfighting when he survived a meteor collision as an infant. Besides, training that extensive quite possibly could be the only thing that would keep Dave alive in these circumstances.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18

BRIGHT: There’s a random Squiddles interlude, and then we return to Skaia.

John’s unconscious dream self has fallen out of Prospit’s moon as it plummets towards Skaia. Jade tries shaking him awake, and then slaps him, but to no avail. At the last moment, she throws him out of the path of the moon, and her dream self is then killed when it lands on her. Back on Earth, her dreambot overloads and explodes.

CHEL: Taking her tower room with it; Jade’s sleeping body plummets towards the earth.

BRIGHT: The moon leaves a gigantic crater in Skaia. John’s now-conscious dreamself hovers above it.

The babies vanish through the defence portals to Earth.

CHEL: Each takes an item with them. John takes the Sassacre book, Rose the first Con Air bunny, Dave rides Maplehoof, Jade takes the bunny Rose gave to John (which is in fact the Con Air bunny plus several years and repairs), Nanna sits inside Dad’s old hat, Mom takes the mutant kitten, Bro sleeps in the lap of Li’l Cal, and Grandpa dual wields the flintlock pistols he should not be allowed.

BRIGHT: Dave and Rose reach the Gates above their houses and set out to explore their Lands. We close on an eerie shot of Bec outside the frog temple on Jade’s island at night.

CHEL: Jade’s tower room is blown to bits, and a truly enormous meteor hovers over the scene.

Curtains close. End of Act 4. Before Act 5, we receive a message from Rose, via her GameFAQ.

[ZZZZ] Rose: Egress. This is my final entry. My co-players and I have made every earnest attempt, with occasional relapse, to play this game the right way.

Really? You haven’t been in the game for more than a couple of hours and Jade still isn’t in at all! Maybe consider that the fact that not all your players are in the game yet when you wonder why it isn’t working?

I have been meticulous in documenting the process to help our peers and successors through the trials should we fail. In my hubris I believed these classes were relegated to the Earth-bound, but in even this quaint supposition I was in error. Our otherworldly antagonists have assured us of our inevitable failure repeatedly, while the gods whisper corroboration in my sleep. I believe them now. I just blew up my first gate. I’m not sure why I did it, really. I am not playing by the rules anymore. I will fly around this candy-coated rock and comb the white sand until I find answers. No one can tell me our fate can’t be repaired. We’ve come too far. I jumped out of the way of a burning fucking tree, for God’s sake.

I can see her point. The game is horrible and should be stopped. On the other hand, I’d at least attempt to spend more than one day investigating it before trying to break it. Randomly destroying shit is more likely to make things much worse than anything else.

I have used a spell to rip this walkthrough from Earth’s decaying network, and sealed it in one of the servers floating in the Furthest Ring. The gods may disperse the signal throughout the cosmos as they wish. Perhaps it will be of use to past or future species who like us have been ensnared by Skaia’s malevolent tendrils. In case it wasn’t clear, magic is real. Pardon my egress. You’re on your own now.

This note is signed with a glowing multicoloured “RL” and revealed to be emitted from a purple box with an aerial, floating in space. It seems that’s how their internet’s still working.

FAILURE ARTIST: The internet seems to be a magical dimension in Homestuck and not something that’s part of physical infrastructure.

CHEL: Hours in the future, WV lands in the desert remains of Earth, wrapped up in John’s old ghost-patterned bedsheet, which is still white. A villein becomes a vagabond. In his memory, he tears up an effigy of Jack Noir… where’d he get it? Did the game create it for some reason? Anyway, John’s blanket falls on him from the sky as Prospit plummets; WV calls it a RAG OF SOULS. Adorably melodramatic.

John’s awoken dreamself gazes sadly at Jade’s deceased one, which for some reason isn’t actually under the rubble of Prospit and appears to still be three-dimensional. There’s no excessive blood splatter like with the dead Dave, which is good, not too over the top. He retrieves the Queen’s ring from her hand. Was he told at any point that it’s important? Because if he doesn’t know, I’m not sure robbing the dead is very heroic. He sees an image of himself flying over the battlefield in a large cloud above him; in the vision he’s near a castle, so he goes to seek it out.

On Earth, PM wraps herself up in an old Prospit banner. A mistress becomes a mendicant. In her memories, she has beheaded the Hegemonic Brute and is arranging a meeting with Jack Noir. He arrives and she presents the crowns; smirking evilly, he honours their bargain, and the Courtyard Droll brings her the green parcel. She brings it to the castle from John’s vision as he arrives there, hands over the box, and angrily walks away.

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s Honor Before Reason (maybe she’s programmed that way) but she has the right reaction. This is a lot to go through to deliver a package.

CHEL: Inside the box is a letter from Jade’s unknown pen pal, who writes in dark green and a distinctive jolly-hockey-sticks dialect, with a tendency to ramble off on tangents about movies and wrestling.

Anyway you should listen to jade from here on out john because she sure seems to know whats best for you. Whatever your adventure throws at you im sure shell tell you you can handle it. She believes in you.

And another letter from Jade.

even though its super late and you probably went through a lot of trouble to get it, i really hope this present cheers you up! you looked so sad while you were reading my letter. um... which is to say, the one you are reading now.

She explains that in her dreams she goes to Prospit and John’s sleeping dream self is there, and that’s where she gets her visions. She hopes he likes his present, and says her penpal is fun…

john i am REALLY looking forward to seeing you when you wake up!!!!! its been nice playing with my prospitian friends and all, but also kind of lonely knowing you were in the other tower sleeping and having lousy dreams. :( im not sure where i am when you are reading this but im sure ill make it down to where you are soon! (jeez how did you get down there??? oh well ill find out) i cant wait to fly around the moon with you and show you all my favorite places. itll be so much fun!!!!!!!!! :D <3 jade

Ow. I think this is the only time John cries in the entire comic.

A Single Tear(™) is a bit of an understated reaction to the death of one of your best friends who you just recently learned is also your twin sister, but to be fair, John isn’t left with very much time to react, as next panel Jack Noir’s sword is pointed at his face.

BRIGHT: John knows about dream selves and waking selves by now, I think?

CHEL: He knows they’re a thing but I don’t think he knows they count as backup lives. AT told Jade dream selves can die separately from regular selves but I don’t think anyone told John.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jack Noir wants the ring, but then he’s stopped by Jade’s gift: a robotic bunny wielding multiple weapons.

They line up for a fight.

Hours in the future, on a destroyed planet, AR wraps police tape around himself and becomes a Aimless Renegade. Before the disaster, he went to the Veil, where he found a sleeping John. He saves John by putting him on a rocket board.

Back to the robotic bunny. Jack Noir flies away from the fight. Grandpa’s battleship lands and Grandpa takes away Jade’s body. Mom and Dad disembark the ship and wave goodbye as it leaves. Grandpa cries a Single Tear as he transports Jade’s already taxidermed body. Did he have a machine?

CHEL: For that matter, why isn’t he helping anyone who’s actually still alive while he’s there?

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10

FAILURE ARTIST: Nope, transporting a dead body is more important.

Again going back, White Queen leaves Prospit. On landing, she becomes Windswept Questant and wanders the Earth. We go forward years later. She repairs the laboratory and meets up with AR, WV, and PM. WV’s homemade spear hides the ring.

John watches this scene through the clouds of Skaia. He looks at the ring in his hand. In another cloud, there’s Jade’s laboratory. We close in on it and inside is The Fourth Wall. It isn’t turned on, but we are still lead to Andrew Hussie, banging away on a computer keyboard as he recaps the plot for a second time.

CHEL: Which we shall do as well when we’re done with this section, because it’s insanely hard to keep track of everything.

FAILURE ARTIST: Andrew Hussie says Nanna’s comet landed 99 years before John’s “birth” so he has some clue about the age but still doesn’t see it odd that a woman that age has a son who is probably only in his thirties.

CHEL: As I said, it’s also possible Dad was really old too, but that’s never really suggested. Not to mention, since they were brought into existence as toddlers, shouldn’t the kids be noticeably older than the ages given for them? John should be biologically fourteen to fifteen by now and at that age that can make a visible difference. I know the art style doesn’t really give clues, but no one I’ve seen has ever pointed that out in fanfic either.

FAILURE ARTIST: Newborns aren’t distinctive looking and can’t really do the cute things toddlers do. People in TV and movies regularly give birth to six month old infants so it’s not strange.

CHEL: True, but this isn’t TV, it’s a comic, and they don’t have to use an actual infant as a prop here.

BRIGHT: Possibly it’s intentional. Among other things, we see the newly-created players survive short trips through vacuum, crash-land on Earth without even minor injuries, and handle weapons they shouldn’t be able to lift for another four or five years. This could work if players have superhuman abilities (that is, beyond the classpect system). If that was the intent then it really should be made more explicit, though.

Of course, what it really boils down to is that Homestuck runs off Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny, and occasionally breaks down on examination as a result.

On the whole this is a solid Act, I think! We have a lot of new stuff happening, more characters get introduced, and we find out some more about the trolls. It’s much less rambling than Act 1.

COUNTS ALL THE LUCK: 0 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18 CALL CPA PLEASE: 8 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19 GET ON WITH IT!: 18 GORE GALORE: 10 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 15 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 0 RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1 SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 1 SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS: 0 WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 9 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19 TOTAL: 127

#homestuck #Let's read #homestuck meta #reread #literary critique #sporking #Homespork

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