#I really need to think of a name for this AU..

[ammckk6262]

Albus i'm sorry....

dear god Albus Potter do you utterly haunt my thoughts

Just… Albus in the cursed child, for as mixed as people seem to be on it… Albus as the certified middle child who doesn’t have the cloak, doesn’t have the map, who doesn’t even have a family name?

Can you imagine little Al (not yet Albus because that’s a name he truly goes by once he has Scorpius) tucking himself into the cracks of the door as he hears his parents talking, hears his dad say it would have been better to know they were having two boys so they could have just called him Sirius

Al, getting teased by his invisible brother, yet seeing so distinctly that his father chose James over him for their family legacy

Al, who grew up on the filtered advice of a distant, out of reach mentor who he could never live up to. Not like James with his fun, his humor, or Lily with her love and her girlhood.

(Albus, who will hear Cedric called the spare and understand far too well what it’s like to be of secondary importance)

Al, who out of all his siblings looks the most like his father, a reflection to every family friend of what harry went through and an eternal reminder to himself and the world that he will always be his father’s legacy (he will look in the mirror for most of his adult life and see his father before he sees himself)

Al, age 11, seeking comfort on the train platform as everything changes around him and getting another lecture about bravery that he doesn’t feel he has

Al becoming Albus on that train, when the boy who would become the most important person in his life actually asks him, asks him what he wants to be called

Albus, under the sorting hat, struggling but thinking about who he wants to be outside of his family’s legacy and getting put in Slytherin for it

Albus, who grew up on war stories and hogwarts hyjinks staying up half his first night because he’s afraid of his peers, but doesn’t want them to know that because he so desperately and conflictingly wants to both fit in and stand out

Albus, who is bad at flying, humiliating himself in front of his peers, because he isn’t harry but isn’t Quidditch player Ginny either… Albus, who all the adults see as Harry’s extension; Albus, who struggles with charms like Lily never will, who can barely make his matchstick silver under the blue eyed portrait in the room, who struggles to parse through the moving and unequal words of wizarding textbooks, who attracts bullies like flies and doesn’t yet have his mother’s hexes to fight back

Albus, struggling to write that first letter home, to tell his parents and little sister that he’s different from them; Albus who doesn’t even get to tell them because James tells them first

Albus, who doesn’t get a green scarf and hat until after the first snow, unable to parse if it’s the color, the fact that he’s the second born, or maybe just that it’s him that made it come later than James’ had

Albus, who goes back home for Christmas and faces his father’s disapproval for befriending a Malfoy, his father’s distrust and attempts to assure his morality for befriending someone harry assumes cruel and antagonistic

Albus, having to hold awkward conversation with Rose and Ron and Hermione, because neither of the kids want their parents to know they’re not talking (they find out eventually, and though they’re nice about it, Albus knows they’ll always put Rose’s feelings first)

Albus, who is suddenly assumed more malicious and problem causing than he ever was before, who suddenly is seen as a prime person to scot the blame off to when things go wrong

Albus, who gets chosen after his sister (“just like her mother!”) during the family quidditch match; who gets meaningful looks from his Uncle Percy; whose Christmas sweaters are no longer red but never green; who suddenly cant seem to talk to his uncle ron anymore, someone who used to understand what it was like to be James’ brother

Albus potter who stradles the line of too Potter for Slytherin and too Slytherin for his family.

Albus Potter, who’s ambition has been squashed out by bullies and disregard and distrust, struggling to find his identity in a house and world that is still in the midst of undoing decades as an indoctrination machine…

[orellazalonia]

His Soft Spot

Summary: You’re a sunshine-hearted barista in a dangerous city, all smiles and soft edges. Unaware that the quiet, brooding man at your café table is the most feared name in the local mafia. But when Bucky Barnes starts carving gentle moments into his brutal world just to be near you, even he begins to wonder if someone like you could ever love someone like him. (Mob Boss!Bucky Barnes x Sweetheart!reader)

Word Count: 2.1k+

A/N: Been wanting to do a mob AU with this pair for a while now. I finally got to it, and they’re so cute! (Imo lol.) Happy reading!!!

Main Masterlist | His Sweetheart Masterlist

The corner coffee shop was nothing special. Chipped counters, secondhand mugs, and a bell above the door that only worked when it wanted to. But you loved it. The soft clink of ceramic, the low hum of conversation, the smell of roasted beans.

You’d worked there for a little over a year now, always opening at 6 a.m. sharp, rain or shine. Most of your regulars were kind, or at least kind enough. Grumpy people in suits needing caffeine, half-asleep artists sketching in the window, moms with strollers and tired eyes. And then… there was him.

He wasn’t a regular in the traditional sense. He never came at the same time, never stayed too long. But you noticed him. Of course you did. Broad shoulders under expensive coats, a deep-set frown carved onto his face, and stormy blue eyes that rarely met anyone else’s. He always sat in the corner booth, never used his name, and always ordered a plain black coffee with two sugars.

You’d started calling him Quiet Guy in your head.

And he was. Quiet. Still. Intense. He didn’t smile, not once. But he tipped well, never complained, and never forgot to say thank you even if it came out in a low, quiet murmur that barely reached above the hiss of the espresso machine.

You didn’t think he noticed you much, not really. Especially not the way you always added a little extra whipped cream to his coffee, even if he didn’t ask for it. Not the way you smiled at him even when he didn’t smile back.

To you, he was like one of those paintings you stare at in a museum. Sharp, beautiful, and just a little sad.

Meanwhile, you were just the girl behind the counter. Apron stained with chocolate syrup, hair tied in a messy bun, a bandaid on your knuckle from an unfortunate knife-vs-avocado incident. Too smiley, too soft, too… naive, according to your friends.

But Quiet Guy never looked at you like you were silly. Never talked down to you and never flinched when you ended up rambling about your new cookie recipe or your dream of maybe, someday, opening a bakery with pastel tiles and big sunny windows.

If anything, he listened.

Really listened.

But it wasn’t until the third week of October that he spoke more than a sentence.

Rain was pouring that day. It was real ugly rain that soaked your shoes and stuck your hair to your face. You were closing up, locking the front door and tugging your jacket tight, when you saw him outside. No umbrella. No coat. Just standing there, rain dripping down his face, his shoulders hunched like a man carrying something heavier than water.

You hesitated. Then, without thinking, you held out your umbrella. “You’ll catch your death out here,” You said, half-joking, half-worried.

He looked down at it, then at you. For a moment, he didn’t move. Then he spoke, voice gravelly, “You always this kind to strangers?”

You smiled, sheepish and soft. “Only the ones who don’t complain about the coffee.”

A ghost of something flickered at the corner of his mouth, almost a smile as he took the umbrella, his fingers brushing yours.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” He said, eyes lingering for just a second longer than they should have.

You watched him walk away, the umbrella bright yellow against the gray street.

You didn’t know you’d just handed protection to the most dangerous man in Brooklyn. And he didn’t know he’d just started falling for someone who wore bandaids with cartoon fruit on them.

You didn’t see him for a week after the umbrella incident.

The streets were rougher than usual that week. There were more police on the corner, more closed signs on family-owned businesses, and more whispered rumors behind half-lowered blinds. You heard someone mention the O’Rourke deal and someone else murmur about a warehouse fire that wasn’t an accident. A few people joked nervously about the mob running wild lately– Who’s in charge now, anyway?

You didn’t pay too much attention to that kind of talk honestly. Not because you weren’t curious, you were. But you’d grown up in this city. Danger was background noise like sirens or subway screeches. You learned to stay in your lane, smile when it was smart to, and never ask too many questions.

Besides, you had your own problems: the espresso machine started leaking, your paycheck bounced for the second time this month, and you accidentally burned your fingers on a pan of fresh croissants.

You were wiping the counter, cursing under your breath and cradling your wrapped-up hand, when the bell above the door jingled.

He was back.

And this time, he looked different. More tired like he hadn’t slept. His coat was darker than usual, collar turned up high. There was also something stiff in the way he moved, like something hurt under the surface.

“Hey,” You said, immediately smiling despite the nerves fluttering in your stomach. “Rough week?”

He looked at your bandaged fingers first.

“What happened to you?”

You blinked. “Oh. Just being clumsy again, it was the pastry tray versus my hand. The tray won.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, like he didn’t find that answer as harmless or humorous as you did. He stepped forward, slow and quiet, placing a twenty on the counter.

“Black. Two sugars.”

“Same old?”

“Some things don’t need changing.”

You bit your lip to hide the smile that tugged at your mouth. He was… oddly comforting, even with the way he made your stomach flutter and your thoughts skip.

You turned to prep the coffee, carefully working around your bandaged hand, when he spoke again.

“This neighborhood isn’t safe lately.”

Your back stiffened slightly. “I mean… it’s never really been safe, has it?”

“Worse now,” He huffed. “Too many people trying to prove they belong at the top. They’re reckless.”

You glanced at him over your shoulder. “You sound like you know something.”

He didn’t answer that. Instead, he said, “You always walk home alone?”

“Sometimes,” You admitted. “I usually take the back route past the laundromat. It’s better lit.”

He looked genuinely displeased by that. “Don’t.”

You blinked. “Don’t… what? Walk home?”

“Don’t go through that alley again.” His voice was low and serious, like it wasn’t a suggestion. Like it was law.

You nodded slowly. “Okay. I won’t.”

You set his cup in front of him. He didn’t take it right away. He simply looked at you and for the first time, it didn’t seem as guarded as usual.

“You ever wonder why no one messes with this place?” He asked.

Your brows knit together. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, two blocks down, there’s a diner with bullet holes in the glass. There’s a liquor store that got torched. But your little coffee shop? Untouched.”

You looked around like you were noticing it for the first time and he wasn’t wrong.

“I guess we’re lucky,” You said, quieter this time.

He finally took the cup.

“Not luck,” He murmured. “Some places are off-limits.”

Your stomach did a slow flip. Before you could ask what he meant, he slid a small piece of paper across the counter. His handwriting was sharp and deliberate. There lied a number.

“If you ever feel unsafe,” He said, “Call. Don’t hesitate, just call.”

You looked up at him. “What should I save it under?”

He met your eyes, and for the first time, he smiled. Small, crooked, but real.

“James,” He said. “But you can keep calling me ‘Quiet Guy’ if you want.”

And then he was gone, the door jingling behind him, a gust of cold air in his wake.

You flushed, knowing he must’ve overheard you talking about him to your colleague. You stared down at the paper in your hand now and thought, James. Huh.

You didn’t know that name came with weight. You didn’t know that in certain circles, that name made grown men flinch. And you definitely didn’t know you’d just become the softest secret in James Buchanan Barnes’s world of blood, power, and control.

You never really called the number.

Not that day, not the next. You stared at it for a while. Once during your lunch break, once before bed, but you never dialed. You didn’t need to since nothing had happened. The streets were loud, the rumors kept circling, but your world stayed small, safe, and ordinary.

But something changed after that.

The Quiet Guy – James – started coming in more often.

Sometimes in the early morning, when the city was just beginning. Sometimes in the quiet lull between lunch and dinner. He never stayed long though, but he started talking more. Asking questions and not the kind people ask just to be polite; it was the kind that meant he was actually listening.

He’d ask about your recipes, about the books you liked, whether you preferred cats or dogs. One time he even noticed the way you hummed to yourself one of your favorite songs when you were focused, and he asked what the song was.

You told him it was nothing.

But the next day, he left a little radio on the counter when he left. It was old, scratched, but with the exact song loaded onto a USB inside.

You didn’t ask how he got it. And he didn’t ask what you thought of it. But you smiled a little bigger the next time he walked in, and that was enough.

Then, one afternoon, he came in without a coat. No shadows under his eyes. Just him. Solid, real, and standing in front of you with a calm you hadn’t seen before.

“Are you free Friday night?” He asked, like it wasn’t a question that made your heart trip over itself.

You blinked. “Me?”

“Yeah. You.”

You smiled. “I mean– yes. Yeah, I’m free.”

He nodded, like he’d already planned everything. “Wear something warm.”

You didn’t know what to expect.

He picked you up just after dark in a sleek black car you didn’t recognize the brand of. His jacket was pressed. His shirt was ironed. And when he offered his hand to help you inside, you hesitated just long enough for your cheeks to flush.

He noticed but he didn’t tease.

Instead, he said, “You look beautiful,” like it was the only truth he knew how to say.

You didn’t know that three hours earlier, he’d been standing in a warehouse near the docks, quietly threatening a man with a broken nose not to let a whisper of trouble near your neighborhood tonight. You didn’t know that Bucky had postponed a weapons shipment and moved a backroom poker game three blocks east just to clear the air around you.

All you knew was that the rooftop he brought you to had a string of soft, glowing lights, a space heater, a tiny table with mismatched chairs, and two steaming paper bowls of your favorite takeout.

You gasped when you saw it. “Is this…?”

“I remembered you said you liked the dumplings from Ling’s.”

“I didn’t think you were listening.”

“I’m always listening.”

You sat, half-nervous and half-stunned, watching as he poured you a cup of tea from a little thermos he brought himself. It was clumsy, imperfect, but somehow… it made the gesture sweeter.

“Why up here?” You asked curiously.

He shrugged. “I don’t like crowds and it’s quiet.”

“Do you always go to this much trouble for dinner?”

He hesitated. “No.”

You looked up at him and found he was already looking back.

There was something different in his eyes now though. It wasn’t cold or guarded. It was more like a storm had passed and left something warm in its wake.

You ate slowly, talking about everything and nothing: your favorite cartoons as a kid, the weirdest thing you’ve ever baked, your theory that the city pigeons are evolving to become smarter than humans.

He laughed at that one. Actually laughed. It was rough and low, a rare sound that made your chest ache in a good way.

Later, when the wind picked up, he moved closer. His arm barely brushed yours.

“Cold?” He asked.

“A little.”

He draped his jacket over your shoulders like it was instinct and maybe it was.

You glanced down at your tea, heart pounding, and asked softly, “James?”

“Yeah?”

“Why me?”

He didn’t answer right away. You thought maybe he wouldn’t but you’d asked anyways.

But then he said in voice low and almost vulnerable, “Because you're the only good thing I don’t want to ruin.”

You didn’t know what to say to that. So you reached for his hand and to your surprise, he let you hold it like he didn’t want to let go. It all felt like the beginning of something neither of you could name just yet.

[tsuy4n]

Okay so I’ve been obsessing over the Saja boys these days. Hyperfixation. New brain rot unlocked. Absolute serotonin. And after reading all these chef's kiss stories on here, my delulu brain said:

"What if Artist!Fem!Reader x Saja boys?"

And no, I don’t mean reader who just likes drawing.

I mean full-on webtoon artist. Sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, hasn’t seen the sun in days—that kind of artist.

The kind who sees hot people and thinks, "great bone structure. Gonna draw that."

So here’s the ✨vision✨:

Reader isn’t romantically impressed by the Saja boys. At all.

They try to flirt?

"You’re shaped like a Pinterest pose reference. Mind holding that flex for a sec?"

They're shirtless?

"Nice lighting. I need to sketch your obliques."

They do the sexy wink?

They're out here looking like gods and MC’s just collecting them like rare anatomy models.

"I’ve seen better. Your symmetry’s a little off."

How'd she got involved? Well, she didn’t even mean to meet them, really.

She just took a low-key staff job which is some basic behind-the-scenes work. Water duty. Carrying gear. Sweeping up glitter. Whatever pays rent.

But then:

Accidentally walks in on them mid-magic ritual.

Mistakes it for a stage rehearsal.

Doesn’t scream—just critiques the lighting and poses.

Becomes a walking enigma the boys can’t stop thinking about.

THEN her apartment burns down. Rent’s out of the question. And after a lot of suspicious looks and internal debates, one of the Saja boys goes:

"You can stay with us. Temporarily."

So now she’s:

Working for five hot demon idols

Living in their house

Still not impressed.

But wait—it gets worse (better.)

She thinks they’re just dramatic, overly aesthetic idols until she finds out:

They’re literal demons.

And their enemies? Obv the Huntrix which she thinks is another group that has... some similar name to that kpop group.

[Y/n]: "Like— Like Demon slayers?!"

YES. SHE STANS HUNTRIX. But she knows 2...

She has fanart. She follows a fancomic. She thought Mina, They said Mira but she thinks they mixed the name—pink hair, dual-scythe (technically a guandao, but whatever), was fictional.

Sneak Peek Scenes for Flavor:

1. The Huntrix Fangirl Reveal

The boys are bandaged, battered, and mid-complaint.

[Y/n]: "WAIT YOU FOUGHT MINA?! THAT'S SO COOL???" Abby: "She almost took my arm off!" Baby: "She stole my favorite jacket, too!" [Y/n]: *casually flipping through her webtoon collection* "Wait. The one with the dual-scythes and pink hair, right??"

Roman: "…Yeah, why?” [Y/n]: *eyes sparkling, playing along* "OH MY GOD YOU FOUGHT THE MINA?? SHE’S SO COOL!! I LOVE HER ???"

Dead silence. Mystery: *barks once in betrayal* JINU: *eye twitching* "You… stan the person actively trying to kill us?"

[Y/n]: "Okay first of all, she's not trying to kill me. Secondly, have you seen her design? Iconic. Her color palette? Perfect. Her character arc? Chef’s kiss. The drama. The trauma. The hair."

She pauses.

[Y/n]: *softly, reverently*: "She’s everything I wish I could draw." Abby: "You’re sleeping outside."

2. The Abs Incident

Abby: "Go ahead, babe. One-time offer to touch perfection." [Y/n]: "Okay." *Touches abs with terrifying focus.* [Y/n] *nods* "Good texture. I’m using you for a villain character. Thanks."

3. Rumi’s Breakdown (Huntrix Squad)

Rumi: "THEY’RE DEMONS! HOW CAN YOU STAY AT THEIR PLACE?! Not with just one—but all five?!!" [Y/n]: "Really? Wow.” Mira: *narrows eyes* "…You don’t look surprised." Zoey: Are you in cahoots with them?! Like—were you so BEWITCHED by their faces?! Because SAME. But also, betrayal??? [Y/n]: "Oh no, I’m freaking out inside. I just… this is PEAK webtoon content. Enemies to lovers potential. I’m living in someone’s AU."

4. When She Meets Mira

[Y/n]: "Oh my god. You’re real." Mira: "And you’re the artist who’s been drawing me in armor and… cat ears?" [Y/n]: "It was for the Patreon tier okay please don’t kill me."

5. Late-Night Kitchen Chaos

She just wanted rent money 😔Now she has demon roommates, stan wars, and probably develops an accidental crush on the villains.

Baby: "Most girls would kill for a moment alone with me."

[Y/n]: *without looking up from her sketchpad* "Can you move? You’re blocking the fridge light. I’m using it to shade your clavicle." Baby: "…Do I at least look cool?" [Y/n]: "Yeah. You’ve got the perfect bone structure for a mid-arc character death." Baby: "????"

And somehow, that’s still not the weirdest part of her week.

✨ [Y/n] doesn’t flirt. She doesn’t swoon. She just humbles the boys like it’s her side quest. ✨

On the side note: When I get into it imma start writing! (I’m into it.)

[gldrushh]

MY KINK IS KARMA | | KTH (m)

"Your boyfriend is wimpish, toothsome when he needs to be, self-sacrificing and you would've liked a hero to spend a breezy simple life with but proves to be he's not everything he excuses himself as, proves that he's selling down the river. His boss, whereas, is none of these things but worse, in a compelling-compelling way."

➵ PAIRING Idol!Taehyung x fem!reader

➵ GENRE Idol au, enemies to lovers (?), boy obssesed, smut

➵ W.C 50k (this was supposed to be pure porn sigh..)

➵ WARNINGS kim taehyung or he who shall not be named (yes he's a warning), loser boyfriend, neglecting, oc gets stood up multiple times, consuming alcohol, lots of it, loser boyfriend is taehyung’s manager, oc hates his ass, like unadulterated loathing,murder fantasies,he's chill and smug like that, also obssesed,mature language, chaotic girl group, jk pulls a jackson wang, the whole gang is here, fangirling, yoongi is short :p,mentions of throwing up, mentions of cheating, crying, slow build up, sexual tension, banter, obsessed! taehyung, smoking, sharing a cigarette, buff! tae, flirting, tae speaks french, props to his duolingo membership <3, revenge scheme, oc is out to get, explicit content, dirty talking, brat oc, brat tamer tae ayee, lil spanking here and there, praise kink, size difference, fingering,cum tasting, finger sucking, edging, oral (f! Receiving), face riding, multiple orgasms, dom!tae, mirror sex, he likes to make her watch, big dick! Tae, penetrative sex, protected sex, and that's a wrap I think :D

➵ A/N: SORRY SO SORRY i promise it wasnt in my plans to ghost you!! I was going to release this one shot on the day tae and joon got back AHAHSJAHS but I got a little shy about this fic and I still kinda am. Now about this fic, I didn’t used to a big fan of idol aus, maybe because I thought there wasn't much artistic freedom in that universe but guess what? There's free fucking will and I used it to make this big self indulgent baby 😼😼 probably should have added that as a warning because it's self gratifying as it gets girls 😔🙏 writing some parts of it made me really think twice about posting it or not because it's certainly not the work I could be proud off or something that reaches up to a caliber I have set up in my self loathing mind but it also made me giggle OH did it 🤭😜 like trust me when I say I had to take a minute to myself whenever it came to writing Taehyung’s dialouge or his mannerisms. That's a man OBSSESED and it may not come across in big neon letters because I love me some subtle infatuation and I really really hope I did the trope justice. Speaking of tropes, I know I tagged this as enemies to lovers but it's mostly one sided hatred so don't come at me for that and please don't take it too seriously haha <3 the last section is unedited becuz i'd literally jump of a clif if I have to edit any more 😓💗 love you, have a good time reading and pls tell me what did you think of it?? Should I be making more of this vibe? Feedback is always always appreciated!!

| MASTERLIST | WATTPAD | AO3 |

Wax is made of organic compounds you wouldn't be able to name with a gun to your head but what you would tell was that, it also contained your wearing patience that made a mocking sound with every drip: the candle had burned halfway down, and he still wasn’t there.

You didn’t need to check the shining silver wrapped around your wrist. Your wineglass had already gathered precipitation twice over, the bottom of the flute damp with waiting. The feiriness of the flame casted shadows against the wineglass, all rippled red and wet. It almost looks romantic. If someone were sitting across from you. If he were sitting across from you. The waiter had stopped pretending not to notice and now gave you the kind of pitiful glances reserved for women with romantic delusions or no sense of time.

But you had time. That was the whole point of tonight.

The above-named waiter had smiled like he was in on something private when he lit the match and said, “Celebrating?” And you’d smiled back, a little flustered, and said, Yeah. I guess I am.

You don’t feel like celebrating now.

You swirl the warm wine in your hands that you don't even like anyway, but you make a face that looks like you’re on the verge of tasting something rich, something worth all this waiting, when in truth it’s a defense mechanism of some sort. Something to do with your hands that should have been held and kissed. Too dry. You judge ruefully. You only picked it because he likes it.

Even when it's supposed to be about you. Tonight is about you. A rare, like rare-rare personal triumph that came in the form of an offer letter with your name printed in ink that precieved graver than it should. It will the inception of a title bump. A salary hike that would finally fill the remaining fifteen percent of a jar you had named: trip to greece. A right set of circumstances you had earned after weeks of late nights, caffeine abuse, and grinding until your bones felt hollow. You’d spent the whole morning grinning into your toothbrush, rehearsing the announcement. The breed of joy you can’t help but choreograph when it was about a milestone as big as that after you’d finally closed that deal. Got your name attached to something worth bragging about. He said you’d celebrate. Said he’d be there to toast to your achievement with the same kind of urgency he reserved for phone calls from idols. Even picked the place — God, he picked the place.

But now you’re sitting in it alone, dodging glances and wondering if you should’ve worn something less “I’m someone’s girlfriend” and more “I’m the whole fucking meal.”

Because while you may feel like a whole meal most of the times. It's a very casual number of times you feel like a girlfriend. What isn't a casual number is when you check your phone and it flashes right back at you. 8:37 PM.

He was forty minutes late.

And you could swear you had checked your phone fifty times in that length, even had memorized what you saw in the fifty times, you did: one new email with zero new messages. No calls. Your phone’s screen is a galaxy of just unanswered calls. Four, five, six if you count the one that went straight to voicemail.

You don’t, but you remember the sound. The robotic please try again later feels more honest than he’s been in days.

You try again because someone has to do the trying after all.

Calling: Hajoonie 🩷🩷

Ring. Ring. It drones again and again and again.. You tap on the angry red button with force more than needed because if you'd have to hear to that sound any more, you'd spare yourself of the theatrics and just smash it on the ground of this expensive restaurant.

You focus on what's in front of you, rather than what's not. Check the menu even though you’ve already ordered, the way people do when they’re trying not to look lonely. You fiddle with the edge of your napkin, press the clean one over your phone screen, a random thing, really, but that's what dolorous people do when they are trying not to look dolorous.

Theres a twinkle of panic when you start to run out of them, after counting the petals of the rose flower, situated in a vase, as expensive as the nails you got done. Should you do a re-over? Maybe you will get a different number than thirty two this time. Maybe you didn’t got it right the first time? You're just about to, when your phone buzzes, once.

Finally. You were two minutes away from someone tearing up over how pathetic you look.

You hold it in your hands, gentler this time, with more care, and when you read the caller id, your heart jolts, thought it's not in the way when he first said said the l word to you, or when he got you the purse you've been eyeing with hopeless eyes from his first paycheck. Not in the least, actually, it's

not any kind of relief- recognition, mayhap. Comes after a stable three year love affair. More like the way you feel when your foot misses a step but your brain already knew it would.

You snap it up. “Where the hell are you, Joon?”

"Y/N, I— God, I’m so sorry," he exhaled, the background noise already too loud, a obtuse, chaotic bustle you knew too well. "Something came up with the boys— with Taehyung. I swear I tried to get out of it, but it's really important, I—"

Your perfectly manicured red nails dig into the soft fabric of the napkin. “What?”

"He—uh, it’s kind of urgent. I have to be there.”

Your eyes shut slowly, lashes trembling. “Are you serious right now?” you whispered, voice razor-sharp despite the volume. “You promised. You looked me in the eye this morning and promised you’d be here.”

“I know, I did, and I meant it,” he babbled. “But I—I’m so fucking sorry, babe, they really need me. It’s not a normal night. there’s a situation with the sound tech, and he’s panicking, and— It's a whole thing."

A whole thing.

You want to laugh. You almost do. But it comes out as a sharp exhale instead, as you open your eyes and look around the restaurant. You view as a paranoia mode of a camera would: The couples toasting. The waiter avoiding your table. The candle welling wax made up of your ended endurance, putting up the act of as if it’s weeping for you.

You lean back in the chair, press your fingers to your temple. “Of course. Of fucking course it is.”

“Babe, please don’t be like that. I wanted to be there. You know I did.”

You’re about to bite back, when exactly did you stop being a priority and start being a placeholder,  even if you know the answer, the exact date, heavens, when you hear what is the most aggravating sound.

"Joon-sshi."

That voice. That empty headed, unwitting, greatly vexing voice.

Deep as if a hollow well would be when you say something ridiculous for it to echo back. Leveled enough that it could iron a wrinkled shirt, hot and fast. Fucking smug because it has ever right to (or so he thinks). His voice, slicing through the call like a machete that is unapologetic about whatever comes in it's way. The vocal equivalent of an expensive whiskey poured over a fire nobody asked to be set.

It pearls casual bidding, cushioned but sharp, sharp enough that it doesn’t ask for diligence. It assumes it like a ceo expecting standing ovation just because he entered the room. You hear it in variety shows, in fan compilations, in your hallway on rushed mornings when you’re trying to get a goodbye kiss and he’s halfway down the stairs already while you were busy tying your shoes and praying for a civil goodbye.

You knew it so well that you didn’t even need to see his face to imagine the annoyance etched into it. The burnished voice that was built to be beautiful and custom made just to madden you in the same breath belonged to one man and one man only, Kim Stupid Taehyung. A name that boiled your blood. A man that spiked your nerves as if you had swallowed down a live wire.

“Seriously? I told you I need that list now. We’re behind.”

And just like that, your boyfriend’s voice is smaller. Scrambled, submissive in that way he only ever got around him. “Shit—he’s calling. I’ll text you later, okay? I’m so sorry—please don’t be mad.”

Something bitter amplified in your mouth. And it's not the wine anymore. It has never been the wine.

You don’t get the chance to say anything. You couldn’t if you wanted to. If you would have opened your mouth, you would have screamed. Something like "You and your Kim Taehyung can go choke on his tech list!"

Heat crawled up your throat, all the way to your temples. People around you blurred as your thoughts tunneled into a familiar black hole.

Kim Taehyung.

Of course.

It was always Kim Taehyung.

You hate Kim Taehyung.

There’s no real logic to it, not when you’re being honest with yourself. But there it is, this raw little wound that carried a little infection with and turned it into something worse.You don’t hate him because he’s famous.You don’t hate him because he’s talented, or loud or has enough money to make it up for it and more.

You don’t know him enough for that, not really, never seen him person or had his gnawing charisma touch you through a distance even, you only know his voice; that empty headed, unwitting, greatly vexing voice. Prechance his schedule too for godsake. How he needed too many people to straighten his tie, hold his venti iced caramel macchiato, but made with oat milk instead of regular milk, added an extra shot of espresso for that kick and drizzle some extra caramel on top. And not to forget, a pump of vanilla syrup blended in with ice held down to keep it from getting too watered down. He probably needed your boyfriend for that too. He needed him for many things, always at his beck and call because that’s what this job is about, isn't it? Passionate art requires finding the vibe and running after it, at even four in the morning apparently. The endless excuses gone round and round his name like satellites. Passionate art, your ass. You hate him with the kind of bitterness that has layers: resentment stacked on frustration stacked on exhaustion. You hate the way he takes up space in your life without ever having to be in the room.

He had this way of swallowing Hajoon’s time like it belonged to him. Ever since your boyfriend became Kim Taehyung’s manager, you'd been in a three-person relationship, except the third wheel was a global superstar with a schedule more sacred than God’s while you're just another fleeting name in the schedule that gets crossed out in red ink.

This wasn’t the first time that had happened. Not even the tenth (you're keeping count). It was just the latest and every single number that adds up, also adds to your loathing.

You could still remember last spring, standing outside a theatre in the rain, makeup running and heels killing you, only to get a last-minute text: “Taehyung’s rehearsal ran late. So sorry. Tomorrow?”

Or the time he’d invited your boyfriend on a “quick trip” to Jeju for a shoot that turned into a five-day disappearance — radio silent that included no texts, no calls of even informing you whether he's dead or alive. And when they’d finally returned, he said that Taehyung had said that time flies when you're working. You’ve listened to him make excuses in every register of apology, from bashful to exhausted to just plain numb.

And now, here you are. Sitting alone in a restaurant with his favorite wine and cold fries.

You close your eyes. You breathe once, twice. Your phone is still in your hand, thumb ghosting over the last call.You don’t even consider reasoning or finishing the fries, only lift a hand to signal for the check.

Because you’re done.

You’re done letting this job, this man, this life play second fiddle to someone else’s. Especially his. Not tonight. Fuck that.

As the waiter walks off, polite and wordless, you pull your phone back up and open the group chat: Witches Who Wine, a name born in blood pact and bottomless mimosas. You’d earlier declined. The one that’s been buzzing with drunken selfies and glitter emojis since seven.

Earlier, you sent a regretful “Raincheck, girls. Girlfriend duties.”

It had felt responsible at the time. Sweet, even. Embracing that you were choosing stability over chaos, embracing you were the kind of woman who got celebrated over dinner and candlelight by a man who couldn’t stop looking at her.

Now, you typed:

“Hajoon bailed. Plans back on. Where are we drinking, ladies??"

The replies came fast like an avalanche.

[LARA]: WHAT?! HE BAILED?

[JIA]: noooooo. again???

[SAFIYA]: girl drop his ass we have shots lined up and glitter everywhere

[LARA]: WHERE IS HE I JUST WANNA TALK. with my fists.

[JIA]: You told him it was your celebration night, right?? You reminded him??

You blink at that last one, because, yes. Of course you did. You reminded him last night, this morning, this afternoon when he sent you a thumbs-up emoji and a “Can’t wait, babe.”

He could at least have the decency to cancel for himself. But no.

He let the one that wears silk shirts and smirks like he knows he has a leash around your boyfriend while he watches him obey do the honors.

[JIA]: just come over. we’re already tipsy. safiya just tried to kiss the bartender.

[SAFIYA]: he flinched.

[LARA]: so did we.

Your friends, for all their dramatics, mean well. But they’ve got the wrong villain.

Your boyfriend isn’t the real problem. Well he is technically. But he’s also predictable. Spineless. Hiding his light under a bushel and sugar-mouthed and easily tugged in whatever direction the golden boy points.

[LARA]: Don’t think, just get here. We already ordered that ugly sangria you love.

[JIA]: You owe us shots too. Plural. We saved you a booth and a sparkly crown.

[LARA]: Also your tits look amazing in that brown top you were gonna wear tonight. You're wearing it, right?

[JIA]: Wait i thought it was green

[SAFIYA]: No it’s brown she wore it to my birthday and made my cousin stutter

[LARA]: EXACTLY.

You tip the last of the wine into your mouth, it still tastes like disappointment, but the buzz that follows is warm and insistent. Insistent that you go and have the time of your life.

You type:

"Yes. Yes I got the brown top on which made safiya's cousin sutter. Lipstick’s still perfect too. Be there in ten 💋"

You have friends. You have heels. You have a face that looks fantastic under bar lights. You’ll go out. You’ll drink. You’ll laugh too loudly. You’ll just dance until your muscles ache and your chest is lighter.

You are not an afterthought.

The club smells like citrus and hidrosis and possibility.

A little dictatorial perhaps, granted you smell it the moment you step in. Temperature bandaging around your knees, bass thudding in your ribs like someone knocking to be let in. Altaria is packed, bodies glittering under pulsing lights, and your friends are already halfway drunk, half-sticky with sangria and stubborn lip gloss, wedged into a booth that should only seat four.

They scream when they see you.

A harmony of “Girl!” and “Oh my god!” and “Look at you!” rings out across the booth like gospel.

Lara practically climbs over Safiya to hug you, arms flung tight around your shoulders, perfume and tequila catching in your nose. “Oh the audacity of that man-” she gasps, pulling back to stare at you like you've just announced a felony. “You look like that and he bailed?”

“Please let me key his car,” Jia adds, sliding a pink drink across the table toward you. “I’m serious. I’ll even Google how to spell something dramatic.”

Safiya wiggles a tiny plastic crown between her fingers, slipping it onto your head. “To your promotion. Raise your glass.”

You do. You have to. They clink theirs against yours, and the moment presses in, frames you in and the joint giggling, the element, the tiny sting behind your eyes that you refuse to let spill out. You don’t wanna come off as pitiful on the night where you should be anything but, when you're surrounded by glitter and noise and people who love you so loudly.It burns like validation.

And for a while, it works.

It fades and fades and fades until it works.

Pulls you into their chaos, that's just compulsory for sisterhood. And you should be unable to picture the word without mentioning the thousand attempts at blurry phone selfies just to get one aesthetic one, the dancing to decade-old pop hits, the game where you all list your worst kiss and Jia wins when she describes a guy who meowed mid-makeout. You laugh at lara’s drunken flirting with the server (he is flustered and trembling and clearly gay, not catching on the hint that she's for the girls too, which makes it even funnier).

You drink too much too fast. You’re halfway between giddy and feral, clutching a fourth drink and a fifth reason to forget.

Lara’s on your left, knee pressed against yours. She smells like oranges and expensive perfume and she’s too beautiful to be comforting but she tries anyway. Her glitter eyeliner is slightly smudged and it suits her. Jia is across from you, chewing the straw in her sangria like it personally offended her. Safiya is already halfway gone, resuming her story about how she almost hooked up with a bartender but forgot she was still wearing her Invisalign.

You tip your head back and knock back another shot. The ice clinks against your teeth like a tiny applause.

"God," you mutter, licking lime from the side of your hand, "I should’ve just come out with you from the start."

“Should’ve dumped that man two months ago,” lara says, her voice equal parts affectionate and judgmental. “Seriously. He’s like rice cakes, bland and barely functional.”

“You know,” Jia starts, leaning in like she’s revealing state secrets, “you really could just… break up with him.”

The table becomes deathly still. The music doesn't. It's some pounding club remix of a song you once loved but now just feels like a headache with a bassline.

You blink. And then something clicks loose in your jaw. It's not like it has never been suggested or your boyfriend’s name hasn't been paired with a loads of "You should leave him" but it has been a while since you had so much to drink.

“Oh my god,” you say, and it sounds like a laugh, except it’s not. “You guys don’t get it. It’s not just Joon.”

Lara raises a brow. “Please don’t say ‘it’s me.’ We know that's far from the truth and we’re not letting you do this drama tonight or ever."

You slam your shot glass down a little too hard. “It’s him." The way you say him is a snarl adorned in lipstick. "Kim stupid Taehyung."

“Ohhh,” Safiya says like she’s watching a fuse light.

Lara points up a finger like a child asking permission to speak. "I take back what I said about your boyfriend." Your brows shoot up. "That he's boring. I think him working under south Korea's pride and honor is really interesting."

Jia leans back. "Really interesting. His boss is really interesting."

Safiya stirs the ice in her glass with the straw. "Shame Hajoon never lets us meet him. Or the hotter one with dimples."

You throw your napkin at her. "His boss is cockblocking our relationship. Ending it, if anything, actually. He’s in everything. I swear he’s got some kind of sixth sense. Any time I have plans with Joon? Suddenly it’s, ‘Tae needs this, Tae’s freaking out, Tae forgot his fucking sunglasses and now we’re all gonna die.’ And Hajoon just goes like some errand boy."

“You know what it’s like?” you say, gesturing with your hands, already a little wild. “Its embarrasing. So embarrassing. It’s like dating a guy who’s secretly married to someone else. But the other person is tall, hot, famous. And so, so self important. I swear to god, he thinks the sun rises and sets on his profile.”

Jia whistles. “I mean… it is Taehyung.”

You whirl on her. “Don’t.”

She lifts her hands, placating. “Sorry. Go off.”

And oh, you do. Glass clutched like a lifeline, tiara threatening to fall off your head. Grandeur already on the floor so there's nothing left to loose.

“Everyone loves him, right? He’s so talented, he’s so artistic, he has depth, blah blah blah. Well guess what? He also has no fucking respect for boundaries. He doesn't give a shit that he has my boyfriend enslaved or maybe hypnotized. I don't know."

“He is kind of hypnotic,” lara mutters into her drink.

You turn to her sharply. You don't care that he's carved from marble and dipped in Versace. He has ruined everything. “Lara. You're supposed to be on my side."

“I am,” she grins, clinking your glass. “I just also have eyes.”

You groan, slouching down in your seat. “God. I hate him. I hate that he’s in every conversation. I hate that I know his voice better than my boyfriend’s now. I hate his stupid face and how it's everywhere and his stupid, stupid…”

You trail off, realizing your mouth is still open, mid-sentence. The girls are watching you. Smiling like they know something you don’t. Which is insulting, really. You are the wronged party here. You are the woman left alone in a restaurant with a melting candle and cold fries. You are the girlfriend with lipstick wasted on an empty seat. You are-

“…I hate him,” you finish weakly.

“Sure you do,” lara says softly, dragging a finger through the salt on the rim of her margarita. “So much that you’re obsessed.”

Your head snaps toward her. “No—what? No. No, no, no.”

Jia’s already snorting into her glass, Safiya is ducking like she’s dodging a flying object.

You glare at all of them. “It’s not that. I’m not obsessed.”

“Okay,” lara says, suspiciously agreeable, sipping slowly.

Jia leans forward on her elbows. “You said his name like twenty-three times in the last five minutes, though. I counted.”

You sputter. “It’s not—it’s not like that. I don’t want him. I want my boyfriend back. Like he was before he started working for he who I shall not name. We were good. Normal. He remembered birthdays. He texted back. We had sex that didn’t get rescheduled for a backup dancer rehearsal!”

"Your boyfriend who's only interesting because of who he works for. That’s cute,” lara says, deadpan. “But also… lies. There's no way you both are not thinking about Mr cheekbones in the bedroom. Hajoon is not enough to spice it up."

You gape. “Excuse me?"

“Just hypothetically,” Safiya chirps.

"You guys are disgusting."

“And you’re in denial,” lara says, raising her glass.

You huff, cheeks burning. It’s the alcohol, probably. Or the lights. Or the fact that there are times when you think about him. You don't count how many. It doesn't matter if you've hated him the whole time, right?

"Fine. It's more of a murder fantasy." You mutter.

"Where he has you pinned down?" Jia asks innocently. "Beause same."

You gasp, mortified. “NO. Stop it.”

They erupt in laughter, the whole booth shaking with it, and you cover your face with your hands.

This is a mistake. Coming out. Drinking. Talking about him. Because it brings your dignity to an end and to a conclusion that you don't wanna give the benefit of doubt. That Maybe they’re right. Maybe there’s a line between hate and something else, and maybe you’ve been tap dancing across it for months.

But you don’t want to think about that.

So you think about smothering him with one of his own stupid silk scarves.

And since you'd let these sadistic thoughts in, in the first place. You let them go a little wild too. Imaginably, in public too.

Smashing a pie in his face.

Yes. A cream pie. Banana, maybe. A flavor he’d probably have strong opinions about. Somewhat humiliating. A lot whole sticky. Maybe he’s in the middle of giving a Very Serious Interview, saying something about creative control or the burden of artistry or whatever poetic bullshit he spills like he invented suffering, and then BAM! Pie ik his full face.

He would blink slow with his mouth open. Meringue on his perfect lashes.

You’d stand there, triumphant, arms crossed. Maybe you’d say something cool like “This is for every fucking dinner you’ve stolen from me, you time-sucking peacock.” then walk away while never breaking eye contact because you'd want him to see and acknowledge.

Or — okay — maybe it’s more violent sometimes.

Like pushing him into a koi pond.

You don’t even know where the koi pond came from, but it’s there. Lush garden surrounds and the tranquil museum courtyard envelops. And he’s wearing something expensive — linen, probably. Designer as you and everyone else would except yet it would be something that makes everyone turn and stare, and just as he says something snide and smug, you grab him by that overpriced lapel and shove.

Right in.

He flails with a loud splash for special effects.

You feel so good in this vision. Calm. Peaceful. Like a war general watching her final enemy fall.

You desire.

It’s laundry day.

Which is to say, it’s a day off. Your day offs come in a diversity. Last Sunday...fuck you can't remember. This sunday, howbeit, smells of detergent and damp cotton and a little bit like lemon because you spilled your candle while reaching for a sock behind the couch. It's a type of array where the floor is scattered with warm, wrinkled heaps of your own productivity and you’ve convinced yourself that folding things is a spiritual exercise.

Your playlist is somewhere between defiant and nostalgic. Beyoncé yelling about self-respect, then Norah Jones gently reminding you that you are, in fact, lonely. It’s a whiplash thing.

You’re cross-legged on the floor,in your baggy home shorts, knees to chest, tugging a fitted sheet into some approximation of a square. It’s a long weekend. Or a short one. You’re not sure anymore. They all blur together.

So well that you don't even notice when the door creaks open. Or you just pretend you don’t. That you don't see him.

Hajoon. The absentee boyfriend. Today’s featured guest star in: Please Forgive Me, Baby.

He has come to embody the role, he has come prepared with flowers. Of course he has flowers. They’re not even the cheap kind this time. Tulips, you think. Or maybe he googled “I fucked up” and picked the first bouquet suggestion.

You don't get up, neither do you look up. You keep folding. Badly.

“Hey,” he says.

You hum in reply. Not a mean hum. But not a friendly one either. Something between I acknowledge your existence and say another word and I’ll cut the sleeves of your shirts in a criss-cross way.

He hovers. Shifts his weight like a nervous intern. “I’m really, really sorry,” he starts. “I know I messed up. I was an idiot. I should’ve been there.”

“But you weren’t.”

“No.”

You fold a towel like it owes you money.He comes over, kneels across from you, places a careful hand on your ankle. And you think that only if he had thought of this carefulness before, he'd here with flowers just because. But your thoughts and you, sometimes don't align, so you don’t move either.

“I should’ve picked you over—” he catches himself, clears his throat. “Over work. I just… I got caught up again. I didn’t mean to bail. Especially not that night. I know how much it meant.”

"Did you?"

He winces like it physically hurt. “Okay. You're furious. I deserved that.”

You look back at the dryer. The silence stretches like gum. He sighs.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me right now,” Hajoon says. “Just let me make it up to you.”

"And how are you gonna do that? What if it comes between your errands?"

He flinches. That’s new. Usually, he deflects. Laughs a little. This time, he just takes it.

"I'm sorry, Y/N. Please just listen to me."

You raise an eyebrow but don’t reply.

“There’s… there’s an event this weekend.” He shifts, awkward, like he’s not sure if this is the right time to mention it. “It’s a listening party. For the new album. Jungkook’s, you know him? The youngest one? He's hosting it at the studio loft, but it’s like..fully catered, private, some press, but mostly just close circle people. And I was invited.”

You blink at him. “Okay?”

He swallows. “With a plus one.”

You look at him, one brow raised yet again. “And you want me to be your arm candy?”

“I want you to come with me,” he says. “To celebrate something with me for once. I want to show you off. Properly.” He traces circles on your calf. "Will you let me do that, babe? Let me make up?"

Your first instinct is to say no. Out of spite. Out of principle. Because this entire idol-shaped job has eaten half your relationship and still wants dessert.

But…

You’ve never been to one of their parties before. Hell not even to his workplace. So this whole showing off thing feels flat to you. You turn this over in your head like a coin. Glint. Weight. Intent. But the rumors you've heard are tempting. Oh, they are Glamorous. Lavish. Free champagne. Rooftop views. Gold-plated hors d’oeuvres that you pretend to understand. You’re not a fan of the world — but you do like a little spectacle. You do like heels and dresses and glittering places where people look at you like you matter.

And because you’ve spent so long hearing about this world from the sidelines that part of you wants to see if it’s really as ridiculous as it sounds. Maybe sip something from a crystal glass and pretend you don’t know what it cost.

Still, you have to play it cool.

“Can my friends come?”

He blinks. “What?”

“My friends,” you repeat, looking him dead in the eye. “Lara, Jia, Safiya. I’m not going in without my pack. And they like the group. It’d be a big deal for them.”

He hesitates, like he’s not sure he has that power to pull that, but then nods. “Uh—yeah. I mean, yeah. If they’re okay with signing NDAs.”

You bite back a grin. He said yes. Of course he said yes. Guilty people, and your boyfriend was one hell of a guilty man, would scrape dirty off a three thousand square feet lawn with a spoon if the desire to purify themselves of that is strong enough.

You'd like to belive that for him, it is too when you finally look up at him, arching a brow.

“I’ll think about it.”

He sags like you just handed him oxygen.

“Still mad,” you say. But your voice is softer now. Less ice, more mossy.

“I know.”

You glance back at him, tilt your head.

“But you’re making up for it.”

His whole face brightens, like a kid who just found out the punishment’s being lifted. He doesn’t move to touch you.

“Don’t fuck it up,” you say, and toss him a clean shirt from the basket.

He catches it with a grin. You let him lean in and kiss your temple. You let it feel a little like forgiveness.

You have habitually, always been on to prefer night time over mornings. Early mornings are nice too because they closely similar to the segregation of the dark sky, where sun and moon blink at each other. Doesn’t beats the former though.

It's a flurry of neon flash, on Saturdays. Colorful star-like-lights taking over the whole of the city, on the rest of weekdays.

Tonight, it's too much. You knew it would be. You just didn’t know how much.

The elevator doors part like a curtain and you step into a room that looks less like an event and more like a fever dream manifested by someone with too much money and too little sense of restraint.

The ceiling’s strung with Edison bulbs shaped like teardrops. They flicker warm, flattering light across every sleek surface and high cheekbone. The floor’s a herringbone wood polished to a shine that threatens to reflect your thoughts if you look down too long. Exposed brick walls, brutalist furniture, and vinyl booths arranged like museum exhibits. You espy that it's a look of modern minimalism that only the rich can afford to make look careless.

It smells like vanilla, white musk, and champagne mist. If the words: luxury and aloofness and contracts had a smell, it would be this. And something underneath it all. Cologne, sweat, the heat of nerves just under the skin.

There’s no red carpet, but there may as well be.

Everyone’s dressed like they knew they’d be photographed, magical silhouettes and glittering details, statement pieces skimmed over delectable nonchalance. Too many people are wearing sunglasses indoors. There’s ambient bass threading through the room, sultry and self-assured, just like the man whose music it celebrates.

You don’t know Jungkook, but you get him from this space. From the custom scent diffusers, the soft glow of film cameras on tripods, the tray-passed hors d’oeuvres so tiny they feel like a joke.

You’re in a black slip dress that hugs just enough and what it doesn’t is draped in the denim jacket you grabbed at the last second. Your friends flank you like bodyguards, looking like different kind of unaware.

Lara’s in a blood-red two-piece with her hair slicked back, a look she went for when she was trying to get laid. Safiya’s practically see-through in a mesh blouse and sequined pants, halfway to an afterparty already. Jia’s in glitter boots and capturing every moment like she’s the official documentarian of your reckoning.

And Hajoon, dressed in a tailored jacket and that rare sheepish smile, keeps glancing at you like he’s waiting to see if this counts as absoulation or just probation.

You haven’t decided yet.

He’s been clinging to your side all night. Part guilt. Part presumption. Like he wants the whole room to see you and know you're with him. And you let him because a small, treacherous part of you likes being a prize sometimes. Especially in rooms where the stakes are stupid high and nothing is real except the flash of a camera and the clink of ice in a glass.

“Come on,” he says, fingers brushing your lower back. “Let me introduce you.”

You nod once, you'd like to meet the people who are a group of what'd you just made up in your head; sold their souls to stand in the shadow of multiple stars, (no harm meant) you can pretend. You can be charming. Just long enough.

He leads you through a maze of press assistants and studio people. A woman in chunky boots talks to a man with purple eyebrows about lighting design. Someone else passes with a tray of glasses shaped like perfume bottles.

You pass a silky curtain you’re pretty sure is hiding a private recording booth, a whole lighting rig hanging above it like a halo.

The first people you meet are benign.

“This is Chul,” he says, gesturing toward a guy in a sweater vest with half a headset tucked under his jaw. “Props coordinator. Always bailing me out when I forget which box the custom mic sleeves are in.”

Chul offers a friendly wave, eyes darting between you and the champagne like he’s calculating the weight of the room.

“And that’s Seojin,” Hajoon continues. “She handles most of the press logistics.”

Seojin is tall, thin, glossy. Her smile is tight but not unfriendly. She appraises your outfit once and seems satisfied. She doesn’t comment on your presence — merely nods at Hajoon’s introduction only becausw it's a formality. As if she already expected someone like you would appear eventually.

She turns away before you can thank her.

Next is a short man with a clipboard and hair dyed a pale green. Hajoon barely gets to say his name, Sangwoo, you think , before he’s muttering something about timing and the rental van arriving without the riser extensions.

It’s strange. The people here don’t talk the way your coworkers talk. There’s no chatter about lunch or traffic or the weekend. Everyone looks at everyone like they owe each other something, everyone talks with everyone; coded. Shorthand for a world you’re not quite part of.

Your boyfriend, though levitates like a local and you'd expect nothing else. He's a man here who knows which hands to shake and which not to, whose shoulder to touch and who to call sunbae. It’s like watching him speak another language. One he never teaches you.

There’s Minae, who runs digital content, and who immediately compliments your dress before asking if you’re single in front of your boyfriend. She’s clearly three drinks in already, her lashes tipping dangerously close to her cheeks every time she blinks. When she says that you're too pretty for this one, lara with her all too overwhelming charm slides in with an: "am I pretty too?" The rest of you resist the urge to facepalm. Minae on the other and very contrary hand, chuckles a breathless chuckle. All her focus on the brunette with stars in her eyes.

Though all of this, you too focus. On how somehow, somewhat, this isn't all too bad.

It’s flashy. Frenetic. A little unhinged in a way you kind of like. There’s too much perfume and everyone talks like they’re mid-episode on a show you haven’t watched, but you’re starting to get the monotony of it.

A little like clockwork, a sound of tick-tick you didn’t have a liking to but tolerated for the sake of peppiness of it all, spoke to you on the first date, alone. Might you add, that you had left a little bit of impression too. He couldn't speak a full coherent sentence when you saw the first time, had him stopped in his tracks and all.

So it's a suprise when hajoon does that thing again. Literally halts. Dead in his tracks.

In front of a woman whos tall- statuesque, really. That low-key brand of Gorgeous, you don't mind admitting to yourself. Sharp collarbones, sharper eyeliner, a pantsuit tailored within an inch of its life, it could've been stitched to her bones. Her lanyard reads “logistics,” but it may as well say “don’t fuck with me.” in big bold letters. Maybe it's your habit of trying to put people in a drawer that squares them in limited or weirdly specific characters (you know it's a bad one) but she has the air of a girl who once stole your charger in college and never gave it back, but made you feel like the asshole for asking. Jesus. You've got stop.

“Y/N, this is Bora." Hajoon says, voice going smooth at the edges, that press-conference tone he saves for moments when he’s trying to impress. "She runs most of our on-site coordination. Couldn’t function without her.”

Bora turns.

She smiles. With full teeth. All of them perfect. Friendly enough to pass inspection, but you’ve seen that smile before. It’s the version that lives on corporate brochures and social media bios. The smile worn by girls who never lose their temper, because they’re too busy winning and taking what they want, when they want. Her eyes catch on yours and hold.

She steps forward. Extends her hand. Her nails are immaculate — almond-shaped and the color of blush wine. You shake it out of reflex.

"Bora, this is Y/N. My girlfriend."

“Oh,” she says with a laugh, low and sugar-sweet. “So this is the girl who finally gets him to show up on time.”

Hajoon chuckles. “That’s her.” Her tone is warm and she doesn't bother laughing at her own joke. Was that a joke? Okay. Okay.

You nod, lips parting into a smile that feels functional. You don’t trust her. You don’t know why, but you don’t.

Her? You? You think it over and over again but heart flicks only once. And it tells you that it’s nothing. Hearts are trusting.

She lingers a second too long. Her eyes slide over you, not , but curiously. Like she’s trying to find the catch. The why. The how.

You know girls like her. They remember everything. And she’s definitely remembering you. Her eyes flick over your shoulder, over your friends, back to Hajoon. The corner of her mouth lifts, just scantily. You can't pinpoint if she’s thinking something you wouldn’t like or break into tears over.

She gives you the time and benefit of dount when she lingers too long. She laughs when she doesn’t need to. She doesn’t touch Hajoon, but she doesn’t need to. It’s in the way she angles her body, the way he doesn’t quite meet your eyes when she jokes again, calling him “sir” sarcastically. The way he chuckles and mutters, “You’re the one who runs the place, not me.”

She waves him off like it’s an old joke. Something only they get.

And then, because maybe she knows you’re watching too closely, she looks at you. Her smile softens. Reveals pity. Some people just arrive with a sense of prelude.

You hate that most of all.

Before you can pin down the nauseating twist in your gut, Hajoon’s already guiding you away. His fingers skim the small of your back again like punctuation.

“She’s just intense,” he whispers. “Work mode. Don’t worry.”

Which is the worst thing to say if you want someone not to worry.

And something about the curve of her mouth does bothers you. You don't know why. Just that you clock it. Quietly. Internally. The way you clock exits and weak wine.

The girls show up just in time to interrupt.

Lara practically materializes at your elbow. “This is what you’ve been hiding?” she whispers. “Christ. It’s like Versailles had a baby with Spotify.”

Jia appears next. “I think I just saw a marble ice sculpture of Jungkook’s face.”

“It’s real,” Safiya confirms. “I licked it.”

You bury a laugh in your glass.

A commotion near the back of the room makes a sound.

Having said that, a commotion is not the right word to describe when it debuts, they don’t enter like a movie cast all at once, no spotlight and chorus as you would have expected.

You spot the man of the hour halfway across the room, posted near a soundboard station with one hand around a glass and the other curled into a pocket. Black shirt, unbuttoned just enough, loose on the shoulders, as if he got dressed by thinking about air. The tattoos swirl out from under his sleeves like ink in water. He’s listening to someone speak but his gaze is darting.

Hoseok's mid-laugh when you see him, sunglasses on top of his head, leaning sideways into someone else’s story. He moves like he’s music itself, like tempo runs under his skin.

Jimin’s close behind, ghosting between clusters of people. He’s silver and silk, all fluidity and elegance, nodding to guests with a smile just shy of wicked. He’s so beautiful that makes your brain short-circuit for a second, he's what you’ve just seen something your nervous system wasn’t designed for.

Namjoon takes the longest to notice. Or maybe he’s just the most subtle. He’s in conversation with someone in a crisp gray blazer, gesturing with one hand, thoughtful and deliberate. He laughs at something, rubs the back of his neck, and then turns. You catch his face fully for the first time.

They’re not together in a pack like you'd have expected. They extent to a limitless, shimmering sky.

And then Hajoon is pulling you forward

“The boys are over here,” he says before you can even turn. “I can bring you guys over.”

Your friends, already half-buzzed and vibrating with filtered excitement, light up because for them, they’ve just been offered a VIP pass to heaven.

“No way,” Jia hisses.

“You’re joking,” lara breathes.

Safiya grabs your wrist like it’s a lifeline while mouthing oh my god oh my god as if prayer might help, and Jia is trying to fix her hair mid-step.

They hover behind you as Hajoon brings you over. The boys are — unfortunately —stupidly attractive in real life. Now when you get a clear look of Namjoon, he looks like he walked out of a cologne ad that rivals the oldest's version. Hoseok’s already grinning like he knows a secret. Yoongi barely nods but it feels like a bow.

They greet you like you’re someone, which is probably part of the charm. Idol magic.

“This is my girlfriend, Y/N,” Hajoon says. “And these are her friends- lara, Jia.." He pauses, glances at you awkwardly for a brief second like he's asking for help or bracing for the impact of some kind of punishment from you because there's no way he forgot your friend's name. Best friend's name. Idiot.

"Safiya." You jump in before her face can fall. "He's terrible with names."

The girls mumble variations of hi and holy shit and we’re fine, thank you, so fine.

Namjoon asks how you’re enjoying the night. Hoseok compliments Mina’s outfit. Jungkook flushes a hint of pink when a collective congratulations for his album is spoken out loud and safiya looks like she might actually combust.

And you smile, gracious and composed. Atleast you try. You can see the faint shimmer of Jungkook’s under-eye highlight. You can smell Jimin’s cologne.

It’s a lot. But you manage.

"Hajoon-sshi, never shuts up about you.”

You smile again, because what else do you do when one of the most famous men in the country is shaking your hand with dimples that could murder with, double- barreled friendliness that makes you want to tell him your secrets. “I’m sure he exaggerates.”

Jimin tilts his head. “Definitely not. You're the one who made him cry when he forgot your anniversary, right?"

“Jimin-sshi.” Hajoon groans, face red.

You blink. “He told you that?”

Hoseok laughs. “We heard it. He was inconsolable.”

You catch Hajoon’s eye. He smiles, sheepish.

And just like that, something inside you thaws. Invaraibly by a degree.

“It’s really nice to meet you all,” you say, because it’s the right thing to say, and you are currently functioning entirely on instinct and adrenaline.

"Really nice." One of the girls add.

Seokjin beams. “You too. Hajoon’s one of our favorites, by the way. He’s a total lifesaver."

“He also has terrible snack taste,” Yoongi says. “But we’ve forgiven him.”

Laughter rises up, light and easy. For a moment, you almost forget your nerves. Because they’re funny. And not the over the board funny, It comes off easy to them, kindness comes off easy.

Jia is flushed. “Congratulations, by the way,” she blurts to Jungkook. “On the album. It’s insane."

He blushes. Blushes. “Thank you. Please enjoy yourself."

Safiya looks ready to melt through the floor.

Eventually, the moment fades. Doesn’t last long. Nothing golden does.The boys wander off in pairs, pulled away by studioheads and stylists and producers. The girls flock back to your side, still breathless.

“Did you see Seokjin's outfit?” Jia hisses. "I saw nothing else but that."

“I didn’t even blink,” Safiya says. “I’m too stunned.”

Lara sips her drink. “Yoongi is shorter than I thought, but it’s working for him. It’s all working for him.”

You’re still processing.

The wine’s working too, and the lights are low, and there’s a strange feeling in your ribs like you’ve walked into someone else’s movie. Feels as if you’re not just in the room, you’re part of the pixels that make up the ambience.

It's overwhelming. You're not sure how one can make a living out of this, of being tbis marshallsd, of being this seen, this on all the time. . How one can breathe, even. You can barely maintain eye contact with the barista when your name’s misspelled on a cup; how do they manage this?

You couldn't have been here for a more than a hour and you already feel floaty. Flaccid, that isn’t entirely unpleasant, but definitely not normal either. As if your limbs are operating on a delay, still trying to recalibrate from being in the blast radius of status, beauty, and whatever volatile charge comes from standing too close to a reality that was never meant to include you. Your brain fumbles, rewinding the scene with all the clumsy finesse of a dropped tape recorder, replaying glances, tones, shifts in posture that must’ve meant more than they let on.

You let out a breath but even that feels too loud so lean your weight against the cocktail table. It's draped in something black and ravishingly silk.

You sip your drink. Smile to yourself when you catch lara around the corner hanging off around the content manager you met just minutes ago. She’s high on proximity, her pupils blown wide with it. Safiya’s comparing the shade of Jungkook’s lip tint to a fruit that doesn’t grow in your hemisphere. Jia looks like she just lost her religion and found it again.

This is good. You're having a pleasant time. Your friends are having a pleasant time.

Until something twitches at the edge of your memory. Was it memory? was it an observation?

That creeping thought finally pierces through the buzz. Wait.

Six.

There were six.

You count again, lips moving. An uncanny whisper of movement. You don’t know how you missed it.

Except... maybe you do.

Maybe you didn’t miss it at all. Maybe you muted it. Maybe you folded it into the background noise the second it reached your ears. Much like static. Very much like self-preservation. Developed selecting hearing for a moment there because there was a name too.

There was a name.

Something one of them said. Something just under the music, a passing remark folded into a compliment meant for Hajoon. You try to scrape it back. Rewind the moment. Seokjin had been speaking, something about Hajoon being essential. Someone else chimed in. You think it was Namjoon, or maybe Jungkook, saying:

“Good pick on Taehyung's part. He's got a good eye.”

That’s it.

And it registers now, belated and prickly. You’d tuned it out. Of course you did. It’s laughable, really. The way your body chose to keep the peace when the moment someone says his name, your brain switches off. You name it muscle memory. But it could also be survival instinct. And the primal knowledge that a name can curdle a whole night if you let it. While your mind filed away the omission.

The face you’ve been dreading. The one you’ve cursed in your sleep. The reason you almost didn’t show up tonight at all.

And he wasn’t here. And all the stars were alligned. And all was right in the universe.

You look around for confirmation.

He wasn’t in the group you met. He wasn’t hovering nearby. You were secure in your belief that a collection gasps of he just walked in would have followed too. You would’ve felt it; that particular flavor of atmospheric change he brings with him, whetted and exact. You’d have known, the shift in barometric pressure, the interference that clings to your neurons and doesn’t let go. The voice you know too well, molten steel with knive sharpened. The name that tastes of vinegar every time you say it, and you say it often. So you'd know.

He really wasn’t here. Which tracks. Of course, he’d skip his own friend’s party. Or maybe he’s late. Maybe he’s allergic to punctuality like he is to personal boundaries. For people like him time bends differently since they clearly don't have respect of it. Or maybe he’s already come and gone, and the universe just spared you the fallout.

You exhale, long. Unpacking a suitcase full of tension you didn’t know you were carrying. Somewhere deep in your chest, a locked muscle unclenches and thanks you for the mercy.

Hajoon slides in beside you again, glass of champagne hovering near his mouth, eyes all sparkle and hope, gets him one inch closer back into your good graces through this whole ordeal that is a grand, glittery olive branch.

You lean into his side, casual. "Didn’t see...your tae yet?" You ask, because you can’t not. It comes out breezy. Offhand.

He glances down, surprised by the question before he looks around, like he half-expected to find him behind a ficus.

“Taehyung?” he echoes.

You nod. Yes, he who shall not be named.

“Off-duty tonight, apparently. Said he wasn’t sure if he’d make it. Probably laying low.” He says. "You know how he is."

You hum. You don’t. Not really. But you’ve spent enough time seething in his shadow to make up your own conclusions.

Off duty. Right. Still, your eyes scan the room one more time, just in case. A surprisingly wise decision on his part. He only spared himself from the embarrasment in his own bandmates party. So you plan to keep your peace and your boyfriend tonight too.

Alas, you can only have it all before someone — some twenty-something in black denim and a lanyard swinging like a pendulum — approaches with a slightly panicked look and Hajoon’s name half-formed on his lips.

“Hyung,” the kid pants, half-doubled over with his hands on his thighs, hair damp and sticking to his temples. “Sorry—sound crew’s losing their shit over the back-lounge mic feed. Something about the press audio not syncing right. They said they tried to ping you—five times, I think."

The words fall out in a rush, tripping over each other, frantic and full of a bad conscience. He says five, but you can tell by the way he won’t meet Hajoon’s eyes that it’s probably more. Potentially ten. Potentially enough to take your boyfriend away.

Hajoon exhales through his nose. The sound is barely audible, but it echoes anyway, through the bones of the moment, through the space you occupy beside him. You don’t need to look up to know he’s already halfway annoyed. Guilty? His irritation blooms in the shift of his weight, in the flex of his knuckles behind your back, as though weighing whether to pull away entirely or hold ground. Feasibly both.

“Right now?” he asks, like there might be another option. Asks it like the rhetorical density of someone already calculating the cost of interruption.

The runner hesitates, eyes darting toward the corridor behind him where shadows of movement flicker and vanish. “They’re melting down.”

Hajoon hesitates. It almost seems like it's for dramatic effect. You can feel it on him, the feigned reluctance. Feel him preparing the apology, not the words themselves, but the posture of them. It hovers at the corners of his mouth, teeth pressing into thought, mouth pulled thin. There’s no remorse in it, nonethless, the apology is curling at the corners of his mouth before it’s fully formed.

“I can come right back,” he says. “Fifteen minutes. Maybe less.”

You almost roll your eyes. Not because you think he's lying but because fifteen minutes turns into forty. Forty turns into never mind, just go home without me.

And maybe a few days ago, you would’ve folded your arms and dared him to choose. Another moment to keep score. You don’t do that tonight. You don’t call him out. You give him a soft shrug. A little smile that doesn’t reach your eyes. “It’s fine. Go.”

He leans in, brushes a kiss against your temple, a flutter thing, gone before you can even decide how you feel about it. “I owe you.”

You hum. “Mhm. Keep the tab open.”

And then he’s gone, flesh peeled from the frame of the moment. Grooved into the mass of bodies, ingested whole by noise and colored light. One blink too slow and his back is already someone else's, indistinct and moving. The crowd does not opposes him, shoulders belonging to glittering bodies and bad decisions open for him without hesitation. His absence walks away before you get the chance to apperceive it properly. Before it earns its configuration.

He moves through crowds with that easy-breath peridiocity that suggests he belongs more to movement than to restfulness. More to them than to you.

And just like that, you’re solo again.

Empty-handed and bare-shouldered- Unattached.

Empty-handed and bare-shouldered- Unsupervised.

Everything around you surges forward, and you remain perfectly still, there’s nothing in your throat but salt and silence.You edge toward the periphery, toes brushing the spill line of the room. Where the light flickers but doesn’t touch. Where the music swells and bruises the walls but doesn’t crawl into your skin. You imagine what you must look like from above, drifting toward the rim, toward the places where no one dares to notice anything too tenous. While your group of girls (havoc I sequins) are scattered like confetti.

Jia is dancing now — on the actual dance floor, in a sea of glitter and swaying silhouettes. Her boots flash under the lights. She throws her head back laughing, some guy in a turtleneck and too much confidence attempting to keep up with her steps.

Safiya is talking to someone near the catering section — maybe flirting, maybe arguing. It’s hard to tell with her. One hand’s on her hip and the other is spearing a cherry tomato off a toothpick like it insulted her mother.

Lara, as always, is missing. You scan the crowd for a glimpse of red but instead catch her exiting a side hallway, shoulder-to-shoulder with Minae, the digital content manager from earlier. They’re laughing, low and conspiratorial, and Mina’s got that subtle half-smirk she wears when she’s decided to keep something to herself. You let her be.

There’s something freeing about the anonymity here. The lights are low, and the music is louder now, bass thudding like a second heartbeat in your chest. You drift along the perimeter, your heels clicking a slow rhythm over polished tile. You accept another drink from a server. It bumps up fizzy. It turns up pink. Something you don’t have to name. You don’t ask what’s in it. That’s part of the fun. Not knowing. Not caring. (Some of the time, it is. And you say that with all precautions took care of.)

Eventually, your path leads you to the lounge side of the floor. Past the floral arch near the DJ. Past the velvet ropes draped over low-lit staircases. Past a corner where someone famous is pretending not to be famous while arguing about streaming rights. It’s less crowded here. The velvet couches are sunken and soft, little groups curled into them like petals around a flame.

The crowd thins out here. The sound mellows.

It’s cooler, too. A reduced amount of throat-choking cologne, fewer elbows in your side. The air smells feebly of melting ice and broken promises, probably vodka, possibly floor cleaner. You cradle your glass against your lips and take a sip. Sweet, cold, suspicious. The taste clings to the roof of your mouth in that way syrups do when they’ve got pharmaceutical derangement of power lust. You swallow anyway. At this point, hydration is hydration.

You have no plans to dance, you're not feeling it. There’s a part of you that still hasn’t forgiven your shoes for existing, and the beat impressions an accusation rather than an invitation. You're satisfied with it nestling somewhere inside your thorax, warming you the way wine does, gradually, dishonestly.

You stare ahead, trying to look occupied but vaguely important. It's a difficult balance, one most people fumble by the first hour. Your eyebrows lift occasionally, your mouth hovers near a smile. You even nod once at no one. Masterclass. Topper, you could've been, if someone didn't turn up in your sideways and made you want to run in circles until the loss of face wore off.

“You’re not with the label, are you?”

You turn, eyes adjusting to the source. He stands there, taller than expected, with that soft-focus face they breed in casting rooms. Brushed-back hair, that only exists in idol genetics or drama leads undone tie, an earring catching the light like it’s been waiting all night to be noticed. A smile so polite it might actually be genuine. Friendly within reason that isn’t threatening, yet somehow still feels practiced. For all you know, he came with the furniture. For all you know, he’s been here the whole time, waiting for a line.

You're a woman with theories waiting to spill out but you're also a woman with many talents so you oversee them all at once while also managing to utter out. “Sorry?”

He chuckles, mouth tugging upwards. “Sorry. That came out weird. I just meant—I haven’t seen you before.”

“It did,” you agree, but your tone is light. You’re not mad. You’re just surprised. No one’s talked to you tonight that wasn’t paid to or pretending not to know your boyfriend. A bold choice. A choice you're thinking you admire.

“I just meant,” he says, still smiling, “I haven’t seen you before.”

You angle your head, enough to let your earrings swing forward. Small weights on delicate hinges. “Do you make it a habit to keep track of everyone?”

He laughs again. This time, less apologetic. “No. Just the interesting ones.”

You raise a brow. “Is that a line?”

He shrugs with a grin so flashy, it could classify as something you would note aside and overanalyze till you've reached to one reoccurring culmination that you need better hobies than overthinking. A heathly one, most preferably. “Only if it’s working.”

You sip your drink. It’s not. But it’s a valiant effort, and in this economy, effort counts for something.

He pretends to look wounded. One hand on his heart, the other cradling his glass like it’s the only constant in his life. Winces. “Harsh.”

You allow the moment to hang, loose and golden, like fairy lights that haven’t short-circuited yet. “Y/N.”

He sticks out his hand. “Sangmin.”

You shake it, out of politeness, out of boredom, out of habit. His grip is good. Palm is warm and fingers are steady. No limpness, no clamminess. The bar’s low, and he clears it.

He smiles. “Nice to meet you, Y/N-who’s-not-with-the-label.”

You glance sideways, scanning for cameras or people pretending not to eavesdrop. “And you are?”

“Former trainee. Now an occasional singer. Sometimes dancer. Full-time mascot, depending on who you ask.” he says as if narrating a bed-time story.

That draws a laugh out of you before you can stop it. “That’s oddly honest.”

He leans against the railing beside you, drink in hand. “Honesty’s underrated.”

You nod. "True, that."

The conversation drifts into easy banter. He asks how you’re liking the party. You say it’s beautiful. He agrees. You say it’s loud. He says it’s always loud. He tells you a story about tripping on a camera wire during a rehearsal and breaking someone’s ankle. You raise your brows. “Their ankle?” He winces. “Yeah. Not my finest hour.”

And the truth of it is; it’s nice. He’s nice. Funny, even. Bothersomely so. The ease of it, of his voice that has a soft-spoken allure that slips out between sips of whatever he’s drinking, the way his sentences land on the floor between you like coins: unsubstanial, eye-catching and never heavy enought to bruise. A clever theif would take great advantage of that because his smile doesn’t ask anything of you. His eyes don’t crawl. And that should be comforting, but in some twisted, tired corner of your chest, it feels worse. Because this could be something. He could be something and that sounds inviting, when you give regard to the attention he gives you, where you don’t have to earn by vanishing parts of yourself.

It would take almost nothing to tilt this into flirtation. You would work a little on your smile and reshape your unit of speech just right, take a sip longer than imperative. Could sink into the clearance he’s offering without ramification, owing to the fact that men like him never ask, they come with tidy intentions and open palms. They don't come with an entourage or an aftertaste.

But your blood doesn’t reach for him, so you don’t. Because you’re not here for that.

Because your boyfriend, who hasn't looked at you properly in days, is still somewhere inside this building, elbows in cables, lungs full of static, cursing at machinery with the conviction of a prophet. The air around him probably smells like copper and stubbornness. You can picture his shoulders already, hunched and wired, chasing perfection with shaking hands and a deadline no one asked him to meet. He’s the reason you’ve spent the last hour smiling politely at people who might never know your name properly and won’t say it. And even if he deserves to be punished for it, for dozens of things, for all of it, you won’t be the knife. You won’t be the thing that you are inherently not.

So you smile. But you dull it with your eyes. You sip your drink, but only because your hands need something to do. You let Sangmin speak — witty, harmless, charming Sangmin — and you nod at the appropriate beats, but your solidity stays pressed into your heels.

You stay where you are.

You say. “My boyfriend,” without flinching. “He works with the group.” When he leans a little closer, elbows resting on the edge of the lounge railing. “So if you’re not with the label, and you’re not a reporter, and you’re not secretly here to pitch a demo... who are you here with?”

You’re not the type to go looking for trouble.

Even if it’s standing beside you in a perfect shirt, making you laugh like nothing matters.

You crave for a distraction from that and it comes in the fashion of a text message.

Your phone buzzes with a little tremor in your hand, screen lighting up like a jolt against the warm, dim haze of the lounge.

You glance down with the mildest sigh, thumb swiping across the screen with practiced detachment, only to freeze at the message lighting it up. Shit. That wasn't the distraction you meant.

[safiya:] emergency. jia’s throwing up in the bathroom. she drank something w dairy i think. help?

The screen lights up in your hand, and at first, the words don’t register. They stall for a second, indefinite at the corners, stubborn in the glow of your phone screen, smearing into background noise. Blame it on the cocktail fogging your bloodstream, or the hundred moving pieces around you: tinsels catching in fake candlelight, voices climbing on top of each other, the sound of a laugh that isn’t yours clamorously too close to your ear. Ends when, reality seizes, Glitter loses its glint. Music overlays inward. The dalliance hanging between you and Sangmin deflates mid-air. Safiya’s words, your friend’s, aren’t long, but they’re enough to lance through whatever artificial calm the evening had built around your shoulders.

You barely finish reading when you mutter, “Shit.” It escapes before you can pack it down.

Sangmin straightens slightly beside you. “Everything okay?” He’s attentive now. Alert even when there's no need him to be. His voice has edged out of flirty and into rigorous.

You force a smile that doesn’t reach anywhere. “Friend emergency.Like a real one.”

“You want help finding them?” His expression shifts, subtle but immediate. He offers help without posturing.

“No,” you say quickly, already stepping back. “Thanks, though. You’ve been… really sweet.”

“Anytime,” he says. A tilt of his glass like a farewell salute. Jeez. You’d laugh if your pulse wasn’t in your throat.

You murmur something like a goodbye, barely audible over the bass, before ducking through the crowd with narrowed eyes and a racing heart. Body tense and forward-leaning, pace picking up without warning. Your heels slap the floor, too fast for elegance, too slow for panic, caught somewhere in that in-between speed people only use when they’re chasing clarity. You’re dodging limbs and cocktail glasses, highlighter-streaked shoulders and half-spilled secrets, all of it flexuring away from you in waves. It’s a cartoon version of what it was ten minutes ago, voices rubbery, lights too sharp, music melting at the confines.

The hallway feels longer now. Louder. The clicks come faster. The party’s music muffles and distorts as you turn a corner and push through a crowd, moving like someone with a mission,which you are. You pass a stylist laughing too loud, a guy adjusting his bowtie in a mirror, someone accidentally spilling champagne that smells too floral. All of it, noise.

All of you, instinct. Blisters when your phone buzzes again. This is messier. This is what did she say? and how bad is it? and god, how far did she get before she texted?

[safiya:] we’re in the second-floor bathroom. back hallway. jia’s on the floor.

Of course it had to be dairy. Jia’s lactose intolerance is the stuff of group lore. And of course she’d think the mousse was vegan just because it was “foamier.”

You find the stairwell, a close-mouthed back corridor lit by cooler lights. As soon as the party noise dulls behind the wall, your adrenaline kicks in sharper.

The second-floor bathroom isn’t hard to find. The door is cracked, music muffled behind layers of expensive soundproofing. You knock once and slip inside.

“Hey,” you call, already tugging your jacket off.

Safiya’s crouched by the sink, holding Jia’s hair back. Jia herself is hunched over the toilet, looking pale and miserable, makeup streaked and dignity somewhere down the drain.

“Oh, babe,” you say softly, dropping beside them. “You okay?”

Jia mumbles something that might’ve been, “Never eating dessert again.”

“She’s burning up,” Safiya says, brows furrowed. “And I can’t get lara to pick up. Her phone’s on DND.”

“She left with that content manager woman,” you mutter, digging into your bag for a napkin or some tissues. “Minae? The one with the bob and the designer clipboard?”

“God, I knew it,” Safiya huffs. "It's like she gets off being reckless."

You dab gently at Jia’s forehead. She’s sweating now, shaky and miserable but not in danger. Not thus far. Her breath’s steady. Her eyes flutter.

“Think she just needs to get it all out,” Safiya murmurs. “But I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“I’ll kill whoever made that mousse,” you mutter, brushing a hand down Jia’s back. “Or at least file a passive-aggressive complaint.”

You glance around, noting the neatly folded hand towels, the stack of fancy soaps, the porcelain sink that looks like it cost more than your rent. The absurdity of handling real shit in such an unreal place; it grates and comforts at the same time.

“Okay,” you murmur, trying to steady your own voice. “Stay with her a sec. I’ll go get water or ginger ale if they have any.”

"O-okay." She nods, shoulders relaxing.

You slip out of the bathroom like you’re walking through water.

The passage feels dissolvent now, air dense with all the words you didn’t say. You push a palm over your forehead, feel the warmth building under your skin, and wonder if it’s sympathy sickness or just frustration curling low in your gut. The worst part is you can’t blame Jia. Not really. She’s the soft one and you say that with documented proof of that one time when cried at a commercial and she still believes in horoscopes.

Your heels echo through the corridor as you walk towards the hallway spits you into another corner of the venue, this one unfamiliar, all wood-paneled doors and golden sconce lighting, like the architectural equivalent of whispering. Everything feels a little inarticulate here. Like you’ve slipped behind the curtain of the night and crashed in its quiet, unsupervised heart.

The party tucks beneath you now, flattened into a low, quaking throb that doesn’t so much speak as it vibrates, deep in the hollow between bone and breath. The music no longer reaches your ears in any clean, decipherable way. It’s washed-out, guttural, absorbed by walls and fabric and distance, reduced to a genesis that hitches itself to your chest and rides every exhale, as if a secret.

You don’t know where the catering crew disappeared to. Whether they’ve set up shop in a closet-sized prep station behind some satin curtain or if there’s a staff kitchen buried somewhere in the maze of corridors, guarded by stress and stainless steel. You don’t know if there’s a vending machine kinetic in it's opertion, in a forgotten corner, stocked with warm soda and crackers designed to outlive civilization. You don’t know, and at this point, you don’t really care. steady hands, firm jaw, no time for collapse. The crisis manager, the de facto medic, the girl who always knows what to grab when someone’s bleeding metaphorically or otherwise, is here now, and she’s got the wheel in a death grip.The part of you that runs crisis control has surfaced in and refuses to log out.

You spot someone near the elevator, clipboard in hand, wearing the haunted eyes of someone paid too little to care too much, and you slide into their eyeline before they can disappear into usefulness. “Sorry,” you say, swallowing the rest of your breath before it breaks apart. “Do you know where I can find bottled water? Or soda? It’s for someone upstairs.”

They blink at you, startled, as if you’ve spoken a spell in a language reserved for emergencies. They were expecting a headset, maybe. Most definitely from an official. Instead they got a girl in heels and unfinished mascara, looking halfway between guest and ghost. “Uh—check the prep station near the west corner? Just past the photo booth. There’s always extra stuff stored back there.”

You thank them before they can ask who you are. Your heels resume their mindless candace. Though defining it mindless would be a contradiction on it's own.

Because the longer you’re away from the bathroom, the more you start thinking. You don’t want to- this is supposed to be simple but your thoughts mutate away from the simple task of fetching a drink. Keep a friend alive, make sure she’s breathing through whatever hell clawed its way up her throat. Return. The distance from the bathroom grows, and with it, the space for your mind to spiral. Your brain won’t shut up, now. Won’t let you have that peace cause its so inconveniently wired for emotional noise, keeps dragging you somewhere else.

Hajoon still hasn’t followed up. You’d texted him, told him where you were. You told him emergency triage, and if that wasn’t enough to get his feet moving, what is?

You turn the next corner, pass a cluster of interns half-hunched over a light panel, then veer off toward a hallway marked “STAFF ONLY.” The rope is halfway slipped already, forgotten or ignored. You lift it with one hand and step through, no hesitation. There’s a kind of freedom in crossing boundaries that no one’s watching.

The floor changes under your shoes, softer now, something ductile or carpeted, dulled at the edges.

The hallway branches once. Then again. Everything here smells faintly of cleaning supplies and flowers that died too expensive. You keep left. You pass a storage room door half-cracked open.

There’s a linen cart parked haphazardly against the wall, as though someone meant to wheel it somewhere and then simply forgot how to follow through. Its wheels are crooked, one half-swallowed by the seam in the tile. Cloth napkins spill from the top shelf, un creased in places, crumpled in others, some folded with care, others balled up like someone gave up mid-shift. The cart smells unclearly of starch and lemon polish, though the scent is old now, faded. It shouldn’t register as anything important. It’s background, set dressing. But your steps hesitate all the same. Something in your gut makes you pause- it's not dread that mimics one of the many classic horror, not instinct either. It's marginally a pause. What it is, is one of those micro-moments when your brain forgets what the next step is supposed to feel like, and in that blank space, everything else happens.

You wouldn't have noticed, except you hear it. It's suprising that you hear it at all. Not at first obviously. Even-handedly a sound that feels like it shouldn’t be there, the sound being the slightest rustle of movement. You're still taken aback from the fact that you heard it before you even sum up what's in front.

There’s a door ahead of you, it’s half-open. Few and far between to be an invitation, but enough to make you wonder whether it was meant to be closed at all. Light spills through the narrow gap and pools on the floor in a long diagonal, slicing the hallway in half. It has that fluorescent, salubrious tint that makes everything beneath it look more exhausted than it already is. It paints a harsh stripe across the tile, across the napkins that have spilled out and frozen mid-collapse.

It should be nothing.

Keyword: Should be.

But your stomach twists because it not nothing. You hear it before your eyes have caught up to the chassis of it, voice seeping through the thin air, delicate in tone but heavy in intention, that unnervingly lacquered pitch women use when they want to sound wounded while making do with the peaked ends. Too close to a whine to be professional and too retiring to be a whisper held between teeth.You know that voice. From an hour ago and a handshake held too long.

“—don’t know why you brought her.”

You stiffen calcifies, muscles wrapped in an invisible brace of knowing before thought has the chance to intervene. Notwithstanding as it dawns upon you. There is no alarm in your blood, only a slow, curling recoil, a heatless burn under the structure of your bones, only happens when your body recognizes a truth faster than your brain allows. And in that second, divulgence feasts on it, on this limited space which inhabits, too much light and too many truths.

Inside, there’s a shuffle of feet. You assume Hajoon’s feet because his voice is right behind. Tired it sounds.You know the articulation of Hajoon’s steps by heart. You’ve counted them. On staircases. Sidewalks. Your apartment floor. It’s him. It’s absolutely him. And this is definitely a moment you were never meant to witness, unlike those ones.

“Bora, come on.”

You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t.

The thought spirals like a siren in your head, acute and shrill, but your limbs won’t respond. Your name—well, her edited version of it—still floats between the syllables like a ghost. It hovers in the stale air, waiting to be dissected. Examined. Embalmed. It follows that, Hajoon is right there, sufficiently beyond the narrow slit of the door, sufficiently close enough to see if you lean another inch. The thought loops inside you, blinking red, warning you off like a flashing exit sign in a building that’s about to go under.

You shouldn’t stand on the edge of a threshold holding your breath like a child in a horror film. But your feet carry you the last few steps anyway. You stop at the edge of the door. Your body does what it always does: disobeys in the ways that matter. You drift those last few steps forward, against reason, against self-respect, against your own better judgment, which has never won a single fight with your curiosity. You stop before the door, which is, predictably, ajar. Drawn by a magnetism you hate yourself for responding to, step into the slice of light spilling out, allowing you permission. You lean, carefully, slowly, not with intent to spy, but because gravity is a cruel thing when verity is involved.

But you can’t not hear. Some truths calcify on impact.

“You knew I had to,” Hajoon’s voice replies.There’s strain there, but no outrage. “You knew she was coming.”

“No, I knew you invited her. That’s different.”

Something inside you hollows, it's not a feeling of being stabbed but more like a scoop. It happens when someone’s hand just reaches in and takes a part of your stomach out. The distinct sensation of absence, of a piece of yourself being removed so gently you might’ve missed.

And then she replies, and her tone slips even further into something sugary and rehearsed, a voice performing vulnerability without ever being touched by it. “Is she really worth this whole scene? You don’t even look at me anymore.”

Your breath catches in your throat as Bora’s shadow moves. Her heels click lazily against the tile; catlike, the gait of someone who knows they won’t be interrupted. She enters the sliver of your view, the sleek line of her calf, the shimmering hem of her dress, the glint of earrings swinging arrogantly near her throat. You hear the brush of her hand against fabric and you know exactly what part of him she’s touching. You imagine the press of her palm over his chest, the lean of her body into his. It all happens in your boyfriend’s silence. And in that silence, a occurence too hefty to explain.

Your heartbeat rises in your ears. Hajoon doesn’t say anything. That’s what terrifies you. Guts you. The relevation that this isn’t new. This isn’t some messy misunderstanding begotten in champagne and ambient lighting. This isn’t just some bad timing and worse boundaries.

She knows how close she can stand. He knows not to push her away. Her encroachment and his compliance is perfection.

You don’t realize when your hand finds the doorframe, only that it’s there now, clutching the edge with a grip so tight your knuckles pale, fingers curled in as though the wood might be the only thing keeping you upright the floor. Your weight has shifted forward, barely perceptible, but enough to feel how precarious your body has become. There’s a dizziness curling at the corners of your vision, the faint, reeling you until, the floor doesn’t just spin outright but diagonals the whole hallway, sluggish and silent, until every step forward feels steeped of jeopardy.

Her voice floats closer, closer than it should be, caramel-coated and too aware of itself, dripping with old secrets cladded up as affection. “You never used to hesitate,”Bora says, purring the words confidently. Comes from years of being let terribly close, terribly often. “Remember that night in Jeju?”

Your stomach turns with such violence that your throat tightens to contain it, not quite because of the place but because of the specificity. You hate how specific it is. How casually it falls from her mouth like it was theirs, like it still is. And you’re the stranger here, the interloper. Your mind flinches against the image, desperate to resist its outline, but it sculpts itself out anyway. Sand underfoot, spending nights which rewrote everything you had spent years wasting your ink on.

“I remember, baby.” Hajoon murmurs. Three words form bruises under your skin, one by one, swelling inward, He never called you baby in years of your relationship. In that soft voice, to be exact, immensly soft to belong to anything except regret or concede, and yet there’s no regret in the accentuation.

You want to laugh. Hardly because it’s funny, nothing about this is funny, but because the absurdity of the pain has reached a point of detachment, the way your mind sometimes offers humor when the body is close to collapse. You want to cry, too.And part of you wants to throw the door wide open, break the performance into pieces, shove the truth into the light and force him to look you in the face while it burns. But your body refuses to do any of it. You remain exactly where you are, stuck in a moment too excruciating to interrupt, a bystander in your own devastation. You’re the frame that flickers on screen before the plot pivots.

You press your knuckles against your mouth, the skin there soft from earlier, now dented under pressure. The contact is painful on purpose, in the best interest of you because you need the grounding. You need the reminder that you’re real. That this moment, for all its cruelty, is happening, and you are standing inside it.

Inside, Bora sighs, and the sound is so pleased with itself you almost swerve. “You shouldn’t have brought her if you didn’t want me to do this.”

There’s no reply. And the silence, this time, is deafening. Deeply, fatally familiar.

You hear a shuffle, drag of fabric, potentially a foot dragging closer to another, following the sound of movement you don’t want to identify, a insufflation exhaled that sounds mightly satisfied, getting intimate, too sure of its position and of this delicious game. You don’t want to imagine what’s happening in that pause. You don’t want to wonder how the bated breath you hold hostage anyways, speaks like your brain, atrocious in its survival instincts, paints the picture anyway, and your body responds with a sickened tightness that has nowhere to go.

Your breath catches so sharply in your throat you think it might scratch you from the inside. You feel stupid. You feel stupid.

You told yourself this was just you overthinking, that Hajoon was tired all of the time and started to perpare for the older times when you will be older too and he'll get worse but you'll be there. Distracted, mayhaps. Pulled a hundred directions by this event. You gave him excuses. You always did — so eager, so stupidly loyal — gave him that room.

And the part that stings the most, makes you want to claw his betraying heart out, is that he let you, let you build that little myth Took advanted of the room of uncertainty you gave him. Gods, gave him so much room to disappoint you. Over and over. Until all he had to do to keep you was nothing.

Padded every missed text with understanding. Gulped down every late night, every unexplained absence with that stupid stupid smile. You rationalized his silences, handed them over with thought too. Made up for them in your head. Built a cushion out of benefit-of-the-doubt and laid down in it, eyes closed, telling yourself it wasn’t what it looked like, because you loved him. Because you chose him. Because love, as you were told, is supposed to be work.

From both fucking sides. It didn't function so when you alone did the work and never asked if he was doing it too.

And now you’re here. In this hallway. Listening to the soft undoing of your entire relationship through a half-open door and the giggle of a woman who never saw you as a threat.

The humiliation feels cinematic,doesn’t come all at once, but ponderous; seeping, viscous, with the heft of something that’s been waiting a long time to be acknowledged. It rivulets into you with the same progression as dread, thick and sticky as honey spilled across cold tile, where every inch it spreads becomes harder to scrub clean. Fills your ribs, then slips deeper, into the squishy discomfort of your sternum, and you know without needing to be told that this is a hurt that's gonna stay, will make a home.

Your body already knows what your mouth isn’t brave enough to say. You were so oblivious.

You think back to every red flag you plucked from the air and re-dyed white, into a color you could live with. The nights he came home later than he said he would, the smell on his collar (not yours, never yours) smelling faintly of something exceedingly floral to be your detergent. The half-sentence that rarely ended with an i love you, even when you had made it very clear on the early on stages of your relationship that you liked being told that you were loved, that too often. You think about all the things you chalked up to stress, to work. Every thing everyone around told you to reconsider, tried to warn you in gentle silences and wary glances, their voices cautious with pity, never saying the thing outright but circling it like buzzards. Because they knew probably. They knew.

You were the only one who refused to sit with the pattern of it. You just didn’t want to listen. Because to listen, to truly listen, would’ve meant accepting what you’ve always suspected in the nooks and crooks of your gut. Because if you listened, you’d have to admit it.That maybe it wasn’t just his job or a global popstar keeping Hajoon from you. Maybe Hajoon wanted to be kept.

You feel sick.

And suddenly your body revolts against the thought, stomach tightening as odium coils innermore and flourishes beneath your abdomen. Your mouth goes dry, the taste in it metallic and sour, and you swallow down the spasm, in hopes that it might buy you a few more seconds of composure. Your molars ache, clenched so tightly together that your jaw begins to pulse. You suddenly remember the first night he told you he loved you, how his voice cracked as if the words startled him too, you didn't even dare think about, or how that maybe he hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

Was that a lie too?

Or did he mean it then?

Does it even matter now?

But those questions come with their own claws. So you don’t answer them. You don’t try, press the heel of your hand to your eye before the tears can fall, as if you could shove the tears back into their ducts through sheer will alone, refusing to let them fall here. You will not cry in this hallway. You will not give this place that power. So you don’t cry. You don’t let your anger catch fire and drive you through the door with fists full of questions.

But you think about it.

Lords, do you think about it.

You think about how it would feel to crack the illusion open, to make them both look at you, really look. You picture it in flashes- your fingers curled in Bora’s silken collar, dragging her back two steps just to see if her voice stays as sweet when it trembles. You imagine staring Hajoon dead in the eye and asking him if this is worth it, if she’s worth it, if it was all just a game to see how far he could bend your bones before they snapped.

You want to interrupt. You want to step inside that room and let the breath you’ve been holding slice through the air like glass.

You want it to be loud. Messy. Unforgettable. But your body won’t let you, again.

You’re still standing in the same spot, though you aren’t entirely sure how. Breath shallow, limbs made of rust, you feel distant from your own being,every joint stiff and unreliable, as though they were never made for movement. Your fingers are locked around the thin strap of your clutch, knuckles aching from the strain, but still, you can’t let go. Your knees buzz with a numbness that teeters too close to collapse, and you know, without testing it, that if you tried to walk away too quickly, you’d falter, legs would fold in on themselves, dragging your self-esteem down with you.

As if it hasn't already fallen so far, in the narrowest depths, probably making it's way to the seventh circle of hell, every time your mind plays it on a loop. The select few parts run on and on, and the implications that came with when Hajoon didn’t refute her. While you were left in the hallway, on the other side of the door, invisible.

And it’s in that invisibility that you forget yourself entirely. Forget why you’re here, what you’re holding, what you promised. The scene overtakes you, pushes you out of your own context. You are not the friend on a mission to fetch water for her shaking best friend anymore. You are not the responsible one, the stable one, the friend who had her life sorted out, the moment she was out of college with a fixtures on her side, all the time and not one who's witnessing the slow infidelity of your relationship in a quiet, candlelit corridor. Except the reminder comes. Sounds like ting. And reads like urgency and concern all at once.

Your phone buzzes against your thigh, a single jolt. But it ricochets through you like thunder, breaks away the trance.

You blink hard, pull yourself out of the daze like yanking the string of a broken marionette. Your fingers fumble against the screen.You don’t know how long you’ve been gone, only that it’s been long enough for concern to find you.

[safiya: everything okay? what's taking so long??]

The words feel like someone cracking a window open in a burning house.

And in that small, merciful moment, you remember the things that matter, try not to waste away at people who shouldn't have in the first place. If you would have, it wouldn't have taken you so long to remember who you are.

You swallow hard. The lump in your throat feels alive, not figurative, a snarling beast with claws scraping against your insides, trying to claw its way out through the thinnest part of your chest. The taste of it is sharp, astringent, nauseating and it's as overwhelming as a broken heart.

You shift and move.

It’s a small step- barely a shuffle- but the sound paraphrases in the tight space.

Inside, everything falls placid.

Like prey sensing danger.

You hear the soft scrape of a heel. A breath catching follows up that results in the slow, cautious creak of movement. They heard you. It's the only answer that makes sense in a moment that has your mind in pieces. They heard you, and for the first time, you’re no longer invisible.

Panic rises like heat in your throat, replacing the cluster. Your body kicks into survival mode, muscle memory taking the wheel with foot on the pedal, before they can come out. Before they can see your face. The car kicks into ignition and it turns. So do you. Fast.

You move like a current, wind-slipped and sharp. Your heels barely touch the tile. One foot, then the next, then the next. You duck around the corner just as the storage door creaks open behind you.

You don’t look back.

You can’t afford to.

Because if you see them now- if you see him- you’re not sure what will survive the encounter.Your pride, your restraint, the tight seal you’ve managed to hold around your devastation, all of it would shatter. And you are not ready to fall vulnerable in front of them.

Your pulse races like it’s sprinting ahead of you, trying to outrun the shame.Your heart races, anything but in beats, but in gallops, hurrying and zooming, trying to put as much distance as it can between you and what you heard, what you saw, what you now have to carry.

You press one hand flat to the wall, desperate for contact with something unmoving, presumably cool, the tiles are cool. You lean into them with the full weight of your trembling shoulders and try to slow the shaking in your chest. You don’t know how long you stay like that, listening, waiting, cursing the damn universe, back to the corner, ears straining for footsteps that never come.

But no footsteps follow. No voices chase you.

Maybe they think it was nothing.

Or worse, maybe they know exactly what it was.

You straighten, finally. Shake out your shoulders like you’re resetting them on your frame. Willing the bones to don’t feel foreign inside your skin. You glance down at your phone again. Safiya’s message blinks back at you like a lighthouse in fog.

You type back:

[omw.]

It’s all you can manage.

You don’t even realize you’re crying until the first tear hits the corner of your lip, warm and sharp like betrayal distilled.

You scrub the tear away with the back of your hand, rough and rushed, by its nature friction alone could erase what you saw, as though maybe if you wiped hard enough, the memory would peel with it, lift off the surface of your mind and dissolve somewhere into the air behind you. The sting lingers, anyway, heartbreak nests where it should. And somewhere down the corridor, from a place your feet no longer remember how to reach, laughter drifts upwards. It wafts through cause it has every right to, unaffected and unbothered, the fluky soundtrack of people who haven’t had their insides rearranged by the sound of someone else's name spoken too tenderly. The absurdity of it settles in your chest like lead, that the world is still turning.

You push open a random door at the end of the lobby and exhale like you’ve been holding it for a year. A folding table sits near the back wall, crowded with plastic water bottles and packets of mints, and behind it, a server looks up, startled but not alarmed, the way people do when they’ve seen enough parties to know when to mind their business.

You blink. “Water, please?” you say. Your voice doesn’t sound like yours.

He hands one over without question. You nod in return, a stiff, graceless gesture meant to approximate gratitude, and clutch the bottle so tightly that the plastic creaks in your grip.

You feel the crispy cold of the bottle in your hand. It sweats against your palm, a sharp contrast to the flush still radiating from your face. You feel the chill of it in your bones, grateful for the shock. Pain, at least, is something you know how to hold.The world around you feels loud again, even though you’re moving through a quieter section of the venue. The dull thud of bass somewhere beneath your feet. The muffled laughter of strangers who proude the sound of the clink of glassware. Every sound scratches.

Your feet start moving before your brain catches up.

First one foot, then the other, and then your body begins to catch on, muscles remembering the purpose even if your mind hasn’t fully returned to it. Left. Then right. Then forward again.

Back to the place where your friends are waiting. Where your absence must be starting to bloom into concern. Back to the bathroom, where Jia is still hunched over porcelain and Safiya is probably pacing, biting her lip, thinking you’ve gotten lost in this maze of flashing lights and secrets.

The steps are small. Practiced. But your body is still off-kilter, like the force field has shifted slightly out of sync. The party’s glow pulses in the walls around you, muffled and amber hues, but you feel none of it. Each step feels disconnected from the last, like your legs are acting on instruction rather than instinct.You are aware, in the strangest way, that you are walking. That you are moving through space. That you are passing through light and shadow. You feel everything and nothing. You could be gliding. You could be drowning. You’re not sure which would be more forbearing.

Nonethles, you try to hold onto the task. Just give them the water. That’s all you have to do. Just get to the bathroom. Just—

But the walk is long. And your mind won’t cooperate. It's franternizing in a way that plays everything that happened back there again and again. That sing-song tone that was viscous, tunes in and out, how it still manages to cut through the unbearable, monstrous silence.

You were good.

You’d always prided yourself on being composed. Reasonable. You weren’t the jealous type. You weren’t the skeptical possessive girlfriend. You’d never demanded keys or passwords or explanations. Love, in your definition, if was true, it needed no surveillance. Needed not to feel like a rope wrapped around a neck, except it did now.

And the person who held the end of it was the one you told yourself to trust. Told yourself it was the job. That the industry was brutal, demanding, parasitic. That he was a victim of it too, just trying to survive in its current. You gave him space, understanding, flexibility. You let him treat you like an supplementary information because you believed it would pay off. That this, tonight, was the beginning of him showing you off.

And he was infact. Just not to the right audience. God knows not to the right audience. The abashment of sits high in your throat, making it feel lodged yet again. The discomfort of it (or so you'd like to belive) manifests itself in a new wave of tears. They’re not falling gracefully now, they sting, angry and sudden, pooling along your lashes before you can wipe them. Still you wipe your cheek with the back of your hand again.

When you do, you become aware of how your eyes are rimmed with betrayal and your hands are shaking and your entire face feels cracked like porcelain that’s been dropped once, twice, too many times.

You round the corner to the hallway where the second-floor restroom is. You can hear feeble voices inside that start to come off as not so softened. Makes you pause just outside the frame. Look at yourself in the polished reflection of the fire extinguisher box in case your own hand failed you but that has been one of the many things that has not. Eyes glassy. Nose red. Lipstick worn off at the corners. You look like someone who’s unraveling. Methodically, even.

You can’t walk in like this.

Jia is in the feels, Safiya is perceptive. One look and they’ll know something’s wrong. And once that happens, the dam will break and you’ll start crying in front of them. And you'll cry ugly.

And right now, you can’t. You just- can’t.

Just as you're about to turn away, a woman in a slate-blue dress steps up beside you. Mid-thirties, elegant. One of the guests, you assumed. She gives you a polite smile, one hand reaching for the door.

You step in front of her before you’ve even decided to speak.

“Sorry—excuse me.”

She stops, brows raised in mild surprise.

You hold the water out, trying to steady your voice. “Could you… would you mind giving this to the two girls in there?One’s in a pink dress. One’s holding her hair back. They’re my friends—I just need to step outside for some air.”

The woman blinks once, then nods, smile softening into understanding.

“Of course.”

You hand her the bottle and add, “Please tell them I’ll be right back. I just—yeah. I’ll be back.”

She gives you a look. The kin of one where women give each other a type of laconic solidarity when they recognize something. Two words starting with the same letter. The thin line in between. Then she disappears inside, and you’re left alone again in the corridor. Alone again, the hallway exhales with you. Shallow, breathy, reluctant to hold what it’s just seen. The silence afterward is dense, thick with ghosts of hands and things not taken back. And you-still holding yourself like glass, too fine for touch-let it all soak in.

Your body wants quiet. Soundlessness is subjective, seclusion is primary. Somewhere you can let your face drop out of its composure, somewhere you can drop the mask of the girl who’s just fine.

You think about going home. But the apartment that basically gives off the odour of a once lasted relationship with a shoe rack that holds heels and loafers despite how it was shaped just for boots, a kitchen that never for once stopped smelling like raspberry jelly will make you all the more disordered. Speaking of ill, you also just can't leave your friends with no explanation at all. Disappearing for an hour or so is one thing, leaving entirely is another.

So you extract the idea from your mind whole. And since intuition has been the reason behind some very important unveiling, you chose to follow it once again. This time you distinguish it as a palace of carved panels and red rope that seems increasingly untethered from the celebration it’s supposed to contain. You follow the curl of tawny sconces as they dim behind you. You don’t have a direction, not by any means. Merely this straight urge to be elsewhere. Away from mirrors and pity and the way your voice will shatter if anyone dares to ask what happened.

The air changes again- the assuage of walkway giving way to the softer allay of space. You blink, slow, and find yourself facing tall double doors cracked just enough to tease a sliver of moonlight. You follow it like a moth and press a hand to the cool wood and ease it open when you've reached.

The balcony is mostly empty (or so you think). It's mostly meant for people who duck into here when their dates say too much, or when the music says too little. You don’t belong here for those reasons. But for a second, you let yourself pretend you do. Pretend is all that you can do, after all. Pretend is all one can do when no place reaches out like it's own.

You step out into the night.

The breeze is soft, carrying the perfume of late-blooming things that represent the late of march and early on days of may. There’s a railing with ornate curls, and a small potted tree beside it. You lean against the edge like a ghost at a masquerade, hidden in plain sight. Far from a invisible ghost, righteously misplaced.

The skyline shimmers in the distance. City lights doing their best impression of stars. Because the sky is unkind tonight. Clear and full of stars. One of those nights that dares you to feel small.

You close your eyes.

It should hurt less than it does. You should be angry, you think. Fury has a vibration, a tempo, that is not entirely senseless, that you could move to. But all you have is this ache. This underdone, expanding bruise of disbelief. That Hajoon, your Hajoon, the one who texted you goodnight from studio floors and once cried during the middle of your anniversary dinner because you surprised him with a scrapbook - that Hajoon had someone else’s lipgloss on his cheek.

And he let you walk into that party wearing your best, heart in hand, eyes wide and bright like you weren’t already being laughed at. The fact alone that he could ever be this savage measures up higher than the mere word spurning. Your fingers tighten around the railing.

You breathe. In. Out. In again.

He cheated on you.

You say it in your head, then again. Try it out. Grant it to parrot.

He. Cheated. On you.

How long? you think. It can’t have started tonight. The intimacy you saw take place takes time. That comfort is and that silence intertwines complexly.The way he let her talk over you like you weren’t even there. It takes a history. You sniff, furious.You want to rip out whatever pages it's sanctioned in. You want to punch someon-

— and the scuff of a footfall to your left startles you mid-thought, cracking clean through the violence of it. You breathe in too sharply and choke on the tail end of it, a hiccup caught mid-throat. The sound escapes before you can swallow it back, a soft, broken thing that snags in the night air.

You flinch, just barely, but it’s enough to pull you upright, palms peeling away from the ornate railing. The sound was soft; softer than it should be for how it lands in your chest. Impalpable, but undeniable. The categorical gospel is not the wind, nor is the sway of branches or the groan of old fixtures. It's plainly in a presence. A presence that exples in a dramatic, public way.

You turn your head.

In the first instance, it’s just a silhouette. Broad shoulders caught in a slant of moonlight, leaned casually against the far railing where the wall curves into the night. You hadn’t seen him when you first stepped out- he’s tucked into the darkness like he belongs there. You blame the sleek sweep of a jacket that gleams ink-black where the light touches and vanishes where it doesn’t. Depthless black, that's the kind of shade it is. He’s fidgetless against the opposite end of the balcony, arms folded, head tilted just enough that you know he’s looking out — not at you, seasonably. The night swallows him in patches, makes him blur into the dark, view as a conundrum, lets him melt into the obscurity. Only the gleam of a metal clasp or maybe the faint shimmer of a watch betrays the shape of him at all.

Your breath halts for a different reason now. This time in mortification. How long has he been there? How much did he hear of your inner voice that would sometimes refuse to stay just inside?

You should have known. Of course someone else would be here. This party is a haven for the overexposed, the adored and overworked — balconies are harbours, and privacy is a drug. You suppose you’re not the only one tonight with a reason to step away from too much attention.

You clear your throat, subtly, and swipe at your cheeks once more with the back of your hand, hoping whatever disaster your makeup has become is at least concealable under the night’s forgiving ink. You press yourself a little more into the corner, make yourself smaller.

“I’m so sorry,” you blurt, voice cracked and low-pitched but unmistakably sheepish. “I didn’t mean to… disturb you. I didn’t know someone was here.” you gesture vaguely toward the door as if it explains your presence, your unraveling, your trespass.

You’re already turning, embarrassment washing over you, warm and prickly, when you hear that voice. That empty headed, unwitting, greatly-

Oh come on!

Dwindling deep. Familiar in that unmistakable way, because it's the voice that’s been replayed in the background of your vehemence for months. Velour worn sharp.

“It's alright.”

There’s a haitus his mouth decides upon, and so does the surroundings with him like even the night is startled into inaction.

Your breath catches, shallow. Your backbone straightens, sharp.

He turns as if on cue.

It does not take place pointedly. An appropriate response that would be startled. No, not even that. But slow, like the metanoia of a thought that’s been brewing for too long. His face is in shadow, but the movement reveals the slope of his jaw, the lazy fall of dark hair over his brow. You can’t see the details, not in this light. But something about his presence is sharp in your periphery, like recognition trying to claw its way forward but tripping on the haze.

You retreat a step. Not far away, but enough.

"Stay." He adds, a beat slower that turns the night warm around him than it was a second ago.

He says it like it’s not a big deal, offering courtesy. But the sound of his voice reaches somewhere in you that you didn’t know was flammable. It scrapes gruffly, like a match. He hasn’t moved from his spot. Still standing there, half-shrouded. Watching, maybe. Or not. You can’t tell. But the certainty in his tone, unbothered, solid, undoes you in a different way.

You know that voice.

You don’t want to know that voice. But you do.

He who shall not be named. Of all people. Of all fucking anyone.

You don’t turn yet. You stare ahead, blinking hard, gathering yourself. That name has been the thread you tugged every time you felt distance growing between you and Hajoon before the awakening dropped upon you that he was actually not.

And now he’s here. On the balcony. With you.

Your throat bobs awkwardly, unsure what to say. Maybe you misheard. Maybe you’re imagining things because he was not supposed to be here. Your brain is playing cruel little games because tonight’s already stitched together from surreal fabric.

If it was any other time, hell had it been any minute before the past half hour, you'd have applauded the timing. Would have marched over to Kim Taehyung and said everything you wanted to.

Would have looked him square in the eye and asked if it felt good, demanding Hajoon’s time, his energy, his apologies, until there was none left for you. Would have told him, with teeth bared behind a smile, that he was the reason you ate cold fries alone on your own celebratory dinner.

You would have let it out. All of it. The slow rot of resentment you watered like a houseplant. The tantrum you tucked neatly beneath your tongue every time Hajoon said “Taehyung needs me.” You would have unspooled every sentence you rehearsed in the dark, every imagined confrontation sharpened over sleepless nights.

But this isn’t then.

This is now. And now you know the truth.

He didn’t bend Hajoon’s lynchpin until he broke. He didn’t whisper temptation or rearrange the tiles of loyalty under Hajoon’s feet. He didn’t need to because Hajoon walked willingly.

And you were too busy blaming the him to see it.

Now, stripped of that blame, that convenient villainy, you’re left with nothing but the naked awkwardness of this moment. The rage you’d once felt toward him feels foolish now. Juvenile. Like screaming at the moon for letting the tide pull you under. It doesn’t quite hold the shape it used to. You don’t know what to do with it. And so you stand there, stiff in the corner of the balcony, unable to move toward him, but unable to leave.

He hasn’t said another word. Hasn’t even looked at you again. He just exhales again. Smoke blooming from between his lips like it’s part of the night.

That’s when you notice the cigarette. You hadn’t clocked it before, but now you see the faint cherry glow at his side, the way it illuminates the curl of his fingers, the slow draw of breath. It looks romantic on him, of course it does. Doubles some tragic French film character leaning against the edge of ruin, too well-dressed to decipher publicly.

And as much you loved to make joke of comments under candid clips of this man that raved about some aura of his, you found yourself then just barely, just quick enough to pass as you scoot under the luminescence, catch a better glimpse of him.

His jaw is too sharp for comfort. His hair, mussed just enough to seem accidental, shimmers like ink under the silvered light. His lips (you don’t even know why you notice) are plush and parted. And his eyes, when they finally flick toward you, are darker than the night behind him. Flippant. Sleepy. Unfathomable.

He doesn’t speak. But he doesn’t look away either.

You want to look away. You do. But it’s magnetic, the stupid made up ambience around him. Easy in a way that demands nothing and everything. He’s not performing. He’s not even curious. Seems diserepctful but at the same time it makes you understand how someone like Hajoon could crumble under it. Why people orbit men like this and call it the law of nature. You’d scoffed at it before. Scoffed every time Hajoon said he just gets so intense sometimes, you know? like Taehyung was weather instead of a man.

Yet, you're not sure how understanding the possibility of it makes any difference to you. Makes any sense.

But how the hell do you share space with someone who’s been mythologized in your mind for so long?

Because now you’re sure. You know it’s him. You could draw the line of his nose from memory. The corner of his lip. You’ve seen this face on billboards, in moving gifs, in phone screens where your ex-boyfriend kept scrolling even during dinner.

Except now he’s real. Not flattened into pixels. Breathing the same air as you. You blink hard. Try to focus. To reroute your brain back into safer waters. But all it gives you is a memory.

Because this isn’t the first time you’ve spoken to him, is it?

It comes uninvited. Like most things do.

Back when Hajoon had just started as his manager. Everything was new then. Boundaries blurry. You still thought the industry was glamorous, not exhausting. You remember being home, hair wrapped in a towel, half a sheet mask on your face when your phone that was running a tutorial video paused on a frame. You'd have turned it back on if it wasn't for the name popping up on your screen at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. You had picked up without hesitation.

Except it wasn’t Hajoon.

"Good evening. This is Taehyung. Can you send a picture of the contract folder on Hajoon-sshi's desk? He forgot it."

You blinked at the screen, furrowed your brow.

"Sure, Taehyung. 😂 Joon your impersonation game is trash and that's tough considering you're trying to speak like the man you work for. At least commit to the bit."

The message pinged back too quick for someone pretending to be a important, busy man.

"It's actually me. Taehyung. Hajoon-sshi's busy with some stuff."

You laughed. Alone in your bathroom. Holding a spoonful of some face oil and scrolling up and down the chat.

"And I'm the CEO of Mars. Let me know if you need a crater named after you."

You had awaited hajoon finally breaking out whatever character's in.

"You're funny. Send the photo."

This wasn’t the tone a boyfriend of sixteen months should be talking in, you had thought. Unaware as ever. If only you had learned how that unawareness will end for you.

"If it’s really you, Kim Taehyung, send a selfie holding a spoon."

You hadn’t expected a reply.

But a few minutes later there it was. There it came.

A dimly lit photo that was non debatable who it captured. Grainy in a way that none of his chronicled, edited ones were. Sleepy-eyed. Hair in disarray. Wearing a black hoodie and holding a spoon between his fingers with the most unimpressed expression you’d ever seen.

You stared at the image longer than you’d admit. Tried not to cringe too much at the cataloged annoyance. And then you sent the damn contract.

"Told you. I commit."

You didn’t respond. You told yourself he was probably just weird. Probably forgot all about you two minutes later. He never brought it up again. Neither did you. But sometimes, the memory flickered. A weird little moment stitched into your timeline, half-unreal.

And maybe he doesn’t remember you. Maybe that moment was just a Tuesday to him. You'd love to take advantage of that before it gets any more lumbering here. You tuck your arms around yourself and inhale the smoke-laced air stretched thin across the span of a few meters and commodity that has you topid. Hovering at a cautious distance, two steps too far to be friendly and one step too close to be indifferent.

You didn't realize acting indifferent was something that Kim Taehyung had a copyright on until he moves again. Abundantly. A loosening of limbs, the slow unfurling of someone at ease in their own myth.

“I don’t bite,” he says, voice low, drowsy. Just on the edge of humor, like he’s saying it more for himself than for you. His head tips toward you, not quite looking. Still, he flicks the ash from his cigarette with a lazy hand, like he’s bored of his own invitation.

You swear it’s the wind at first. The words fold into the air too smoothly.

You know you should just offer a polite smile. A nod. Some kind of noncommittal noise that maintains distance. But your mouth, as always, has other plans.“Mm,” you murmur, under your breath, not even meaning for him to hear, “I doubt that.”

You don’t think he’s listening. But he is.

You catch it - just fairly - in the slight turn of his head, the way one corner of his mouth curves, slow and serpentine. twitch of lip, more ghost than grin. The kind of smile you don’t see so much as sense. Felt more in your knees than your chest.

Great. Now you’re giving him lines.

Then - like it’s a casual thing, like it costs him nothing - he speaks again. Doesn’t even glance at you this time. Tilts his head, exhales another cloud of smoke, and lets it wander up into the sky.

“Come closer.”

Um hello? What did he just say to you? Did he actually demand of you?

Though the words are simple; not barked; not begged, they still alter an insolence capillary of yours. You hesitate, the word itself making a heat rise under your collarbones. A place it had no buisness eliciting a reaction in.

Your body moves before your brain signs off. Not by a great deal, but enough to close the distance between polite and probing. The necessary for the chill in the night to fade from your arms. Proportionality to fall under the scent of his cigarette, sharp and spicy and soaked in something faintly herbal, like bergamot and smoke and warm resin.

But you catch yourself before you go further. Straighten your spine. Scupper your voice.

“I’m not doing what you tell me,” you say, and the words are sharp, snapped like a twig underfoot. “Just so we’re clear.”

That almost-smile on his mouth doesn’t move, but it changes. And to your horror, it even deepens. Grows snobbish in a way that’s unapparent but impossible to miss. It’s pompous. Infuriatingly so. That elusive tilt of his lips that makes you want to shove him and ask what’s so funny and maybe push him off the damn balcony just to see if the smirk stays midair.

He leans a little more into the curve of shadow, gaze flicking sideways. Meticulously near enough to make your pulse skitter. “I didn’t think you would,” he says, and the amusement in his voice is unmistakable now. “You don’t strike me as particularly obedient.”

You stare. You hate that your throat goes dry. Because that's a totally normal thing to say to a stranger when you've got a face like that, isn't it? "Excuse me?"

He takes another drag from the cigarette, watching the embers burn down like a timer. The tip glows in his fingers — elegant fingers, of course they are, long and unhurried in how they cradle the smoke. The ash hovers before fluttering down like snow against the stone.

“What do I strike you as, then?” you ask before you can stop yourself.

It’s too much of a question. It slips past your lips like a dare that has been sent rolling on a slippery path you didn’t mean to voice. But it’s out there now, and you can’t take it back. Idiot.

Taehyung doesn't answer right away. He just exhales smoke and thought at the same time, head tilted still back toward the sky as if the answer might be hidden between the tapestry of the stars. You find he’s giving the question the time it doesn’t deserve. It’s flamboyant. It’s aggravating. And, worse, it’s effective.

Your arms remain crossed, body drawn in like a bow pulled taut. You don't regret handing your denim to Jia but you wish the night was colder so the goosebumps could be blamed on temperature, not tension. But the breeze is tepid now. Brushed in his voice, his perfume, his stupid legendary presence that has no right smelling as expensive and ancient and fucking grounded as it does.

Finally, his gaze shifts.

And this time, he does look at you. Fully. Directly.

A slow turn of his head, the sweep of his eyes over your face with the exasperation of how he would read the fine print of something he’s already decided on. “What do you strike me as?” he repeats, softly. Then clicks his tongue once, like he’s disappointed with you for even asking. "Are you sure you wanna know?"

The words are quiet. But his voice darkens at the question. Your stomach twists, and you don’t know if it’s indignation or intrigue. You’re fairly certain it’s both. And before it permeates into a shabbier feeling that'll have you clutching your torso, you put out your blundering silence as a response that he takes willingly, haughtily so.

His mouth twitches again. Not quite a smile this time. Closer to mischief. He shrugs one shoulder, loose and languid, eyes still trailing somewhere over the skyline, this conversation’s just a side project evidently.

Whatever. If the unnerving diagonal beside you can go back to doing what he painfully seems most interested in, so can you.

The railing is back beneath your palms, familiar now, some dumb metaphor made real — edges cold, aloof chill biting. The edge of your heel nudges against a loose leaf caught in the wind. It flutters once, twice, then gives up and sinks to the floor. You almost envy it. The city is still sprawled in the distance, impersonal to your cognizing. Behind you, the door stays shut. Back there, you envisage, is too bright, too loud, too full of people who might ask what’s wrong and not wait for the right silence before answering for you. Out here, you only share oxygen with a man who has ruined half your calendar and all your curated patience.

Unbothered, broad-shouldered, draped in the kind of serenity that only belongs to cats and men who’ve never been told no. Taehyung’s jacket gleams where it catches the low light- some brand you’ll never afford and he probably didn’t pay for. His posture is too facile.

The rubescent of his cigarette hisses as he draws in again — as if every drag is advised, intented, abrasive. That mouth was made for sin or sermons. Hard to tell which one he’d preach first.

You glance over once. Quickly. Then regret it instantly.

He’s watching you. In a way he did after you threw your sharpest tone at him, just stood there — barefaced and unflinchinb —like he’d seen this particular performance from you before. Maybe in another life. Maybe in a dream.

The silence between you drones with electricity. It's not awkward, exactly. It’s too thick to be awkward. Too charged. Like the aftermath of lightning —  you don’t know if the flash already hit or if it’s coming, if this is clement or consequence.

Then, casually, the cigarette hand lifts again. He turns it between his fingers once, then holds it out across the space between you, his gaze flat and unreadable, offered to you with the same ease most people use to pass napkins.

"You smoke?"

The question cuts through the quiet like it’s been waiting there the whole time.

You scoff. "I don't smoke." Neither do you pick up addictions from strange men who talk like their only motive is to distress the already distressed women they corner in alone balconies.

“That’s a shame,” he says, still not retracting the offer. "You look like you need it."

You arch a brow. "I look like I need a way to a slow, tragic death?"

He exhales through his nose — amused. "No. You look like you need a distraction." Takes a pause before adding. "Do you not?"

You glance at the cigarette. Then at his mouth.

Unfortunate, really. That his lips have the audacity to look generous. He holds your gaze too easily for someone who’s done nothing but irritate you with a single smirk and a face blessed by nepotism from the gods. Your jaw ticks and to the degree that you'd like to believe it's from that or the persistence offer, you're sorely knowing of that's its a reaction that is spawned from how tempting it is, the silence that falls after his question. Not the offer itself — smoke never tasted good, no matter how poetic the film girls made it look — but the inaction. His inaction, in particular, that abrades against the raw wall of your morale. You hate that you’re thinking about it. Thinking about it too hard, the same way you think about late-night texts that go unanswered, or how many people have probably touched the door handle before you in a public restroom.

You turn your gaze back to the city. Your hand curls around the railing again. It digs in, sharper this time. Enough that the metal edge presses a whisper of hurt into your palm. Nothing lasts long against the pressure of being watched the way he watches — quietly, without ego, as if he’s already understood what you’re going to do.

Do you need a distraction?

Yes. Obviously.

But admitting is a type of yielding. Humans are never actually normal with such a thing, let alone letting yourself yeild in front of him — this man hewed out of tailored arrogance is a threat to your vanity. You’ve already had one of those tonight, and it ended with you biting down tears in a hallway, handing water bottles to strangers so your friends wouldn’t see your hands shake.

This, withal, would be an indulgence. A petty little rebellion. The kind of thing someone else would do in a story you’d never admit reading. Smoking with Kim Taehyung on a balcony where your relationship ended a quiet death only an hour ago. You want to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. You want to laugh so hard your ribs bruise from the inside.

But coversely, you stand there. Wound up. Too mindful.

And the longer you don’t move, the more you feel him waiting.

You steal a glance again. His arm hasn’t wavered, cigarette still extended, ember glowing low. There’s no impatience in him, and you only ever see that kind in people who already know the outcome. Kim Taehyung is a man who waits, who already lives in your answer and is just killing time in the silence before you catch up. Curious. Present. Patient in a way that suggests he’s memorizing the shape of your hesitation just to store it somewhere for later.

You sigh. A long, tight sound dragged up from the soles of your feet.

You take two steps toward him. The space closes, distance evaporating between you like heat on pavement. And he doesn’t move, doesn’t gloat — decently watches, that same unreadable interest rolling low behind his lashes.

You stop just shy of arm’s reach. With a single curl of your fingers, you take the cigarette from his hand.

His fingers brush yours for half a breath. Warm, dry, real and your dorsum locks up at the contact, pitter patter quick behind your teeth. You pretend it didn’t happen. You pretend very hard. The cigarette tastes bitter at the filter when you lift it to your lips. Not that you care. You’re not here for the flavor. You’re here because the world is ending and strikes as being only your world ending.

You inhale. Lightly.

It’s awful. Burnt and earthy. Makes your throat feel like someone wrung it out like a sponge. You cough once, quietly, turn your head away in ignominy, try to act like it was atmospheric and not your body rebelling against poor choices.

You make out the smile before you see it. It bobs up on the side of your face like a shadow. Bastard.

You exhale through your nose, eyes narrowed. "You're so charming. Does it always lets get you away from this habit of yours?"

"Mhm. What habit?"

He’s watching you, still. Closer now. Still tall, still shrouded in that stupid expensive shiny material. But something’s mutated. He looks less carved from figment and more human in the face — detail where there was once only silhouette. The curve of his mouth. The sleep in his eyes. The line of his jaw you could draw with a knife.

"Of having things your way. Is that not a habit? Do you not always get what you want?" You take another drag.

And maybe you’re imagining it — probably you are — but for once there's not a single trace of beguilement on his face or in his poorly lit stare that simmers. Drops to your mouth where your lips are wrapped around the cancer stick. He sees.

"Not always."

The filter burns a little hotter than it should between your fingers, but you don’t drop it. That would make a sound. You keep it pressed neatly against the edge of your breath and lean into the railing again. This time you don’t grip it. You let your arms rest there, loose, voluntary. It’s easier this way, to gather yourself in the flicker of things you cannot control.

“Not always?” you echo, casually, but it punches from your chest more bitter than intended. “Color me shocked.”

His hum lands soft against the back of your neck, something dulled and sun-warmed, but it still finds a grit. Tilts his chin toward the night like he’s listening to something in the silence that you can’t hear. Not a man in thought; no, that would be too benevolent. A man in leisure.

There’s no wasted effort, no shuffle or twitch. You’ve known performers, fidgeters, people who need to fill silences with breath or comment just to feel present. Taehyung is none of those. You swallow once. Your voice is back in your mouth, restless. He doesn’t match the versions of him that live in tabloids, in the pruned PR clips, in the way Hajoon used to talk about him with the slight awe of someone who’d just walked past a lion that winked. There’s nothing lofty about him. Not even in his smile, the rimple of the skin strecting around his eyes when they drift toward the line where the sky dominates over the buildings, The city’s to offer stars, and you can tell he’s still searching for them. He tilts his face up to the night, slow and unhurried, jaw catching a flicker of sallow from the railing light. There’s no revelation in his expression about what exactly he is looking for.

“It’s a lovely night,” he says finally, in that impromptu manner men do when they’re either lying or about to advance into nonsense. "Clear enough to see the Pleiades, if you know where to look.” his voice summoned.

The what?

You can't deny that there's a keeness he awakes in you, when he says that, speaking a language of his own. But you also can't deny that you have no interest enabling that, some things (Some men) require the right headspace and yours is certainly far from right. You're not some child, and you can do just fine without knowing about astronomical facts, so you don’t even nod along, as though you know what he's talking about and you've already found a pattern in the sky.

At the lack of your reaction, he does what wouldn't have predicted, because what even is your attention worth to a star (that he looks up) like him. He could sent a message to a group chat of people living and dying to keep him happy: hey who's up for some solar system facts? And atleast, four people would turn and listen with their head on their folded hands, whilst looking at him at like he had made the excellent geometries of the sky. You really wouldn't have seen him pressing from a long mile.

"Humor me and ask me what is that."

You are left with two options, one being add up another reason of fuming internally over this highfaluating wanna-be, assuming that you actually don't know what this is, while he does. Okay, he's not wrong on that but where's the graciousness when's it's needed? To save yourself for being any more miserable, you go with the second, suction smoke into your lungs and ask. "What is that?"

He lifts up a finger and starts to move it around randomly, until you notice he's not, he's actually following a cluster of stars with the tip of his index finger. “The Seven Sisters. Stars, technically. They don't always show, so we're lucky we are under the brightest star." You look up too and indeed, it shines bright. You're not sure about the lucky part. "Old story says they only appear on nights where something coffined comes to surface.”

You glance at him sidelong, cigarette perched neatly between your lips. You doubt if thats one of his fanclub astrology facts or he read that off a matchbox.

“It’s just superstition,” he says as if had the ability to read your thoughts. All the holy things above and beyond, you hope not. "When you need a direction on those nights. You can always look up."

The delivery is suspiciously straight-faced. You can’t tell if it’s sincerity dressed up as a joke or the other way around, but it sits in the air between you like something well-planned.

You exhale, slow through your nose. The filter tastes a little more bitter than before, or maybe your mouth does. “Are you fucking with me?”

His eyes don’t move from the sky, but the border of his expression ameliorates with amusement. The skin that was wrinkled, now crinkles up, and that's all. You’re puzzled, left in mystery if his motive was to annoy you. Confused over the decision of whether you should elbow in response too, twist the moment until it gives. But you don’t. Because the truth is, whatever it was, whether it was a myth or a dig or a gentle offering, you understood it. Quite possibly, needed it too. Either way, you don’t ask him to explain.

You resort to the secret third option of saying something you don’t mean to say. Your mouth opens before your sense of judgment can lace its shoes and declare your words thinly veiled as cavalier.

“I know an old superstition too,” you start, flicking ash off the edge of your cigarette, “that if two people share a smoke, they have to share a secret too.”

You don’t know where it comes from. Probably not a saying at all.Maybe something you read on a forum in college or saw scrawled on a dirty napkin in a bar bathroom. Probably from a place full of bullshit. God you are full of bullshit. But it slips out with the careless elegance of someone who isn’t bracing for repercussion.

Taehyung turns his body this time. Slow, one shoulder first, the leather of his jacket catching the light in a blink. His brows lift, just barely. He’s interested, but not performatively so. The barest cock of his head that's sharpened with intrigue makes you doubt. Wonder. You’re not sure why your heart climbs two rungs higher in your throat.

“A secret,” he repeats, as if trying the word on his tongue. “Do people actually do that? Are you fucking with me?" The wind presses his jacket against the lines of his ribs. His fingers tap once, twice, against the railing, deliberate. He smells like silk and smoke and the kind of cologne that’s expensive enough not to brag about itself.

You upraise your head, eyes fixed on a point in the city that doesn’t matter. "Apparently."

You puff out your cheeks and let the smoke linger there a second too long before exhaling through your nose. "And I'm not fucking with you." You say the terminal with an discomposing defensiveness.

The architecture of interest wraps around silence. You wait, not because you're impatient, but because you want to see what silence does to him.

He exhales, long and easy. “Alright,” he says, flicking the slag from his nail like he’s dusting off a layer of thought. “Go ahead.”

You glance over. “What?”

“Share yours.”

Your throat tightens around nothing. “That’s not how it works.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” you say, a little firmer. “The person who offers the cigarette doesn’t get to demand first blood.”

He grins. Oh this real bastard. “Mm. You should’ve thought of that before you lied about the saying.”

“I didn’t lie. I… embellished it up a little.”

His tongue presses briefly into his cheek. “Same thing, my darling."

The term lands heavier than it should. Unrehearsed. Wrong accent for condescension. You don’t bother correcting him. If anything, you portray as if you didn’t even hear him.

He tilts his head again, finally turning to look at you in full now. His expression is maddeningly unreadable. Eyebrows slightly lifted, but not mocking. Just open. He waits in a way that says: I have all night. Go on. Impress me. Surprise me. Burn me, if you want.

You scowl, faintly. The smoke makes your next breath hitch as it burns at the edges.A secret, he said. You shouldn’t have offered the opening. You thought you’d like the power in it, holding something sharp and choosing not to use it. But it only leaves your mouth dry and your head stupidly full.

Your mind claws through options.

Your secret would be too easy, yet too big at the same time. It sits on your tongue, hot and twitching. It thrashes to be named; this ugly thing. You could spit it out between your teeth and watch the whole balcony tilt with it. Splinter the mood and makes everyone start looking for an exit, even if their feet don’t move. It’s a secret with teeth and a jawline. It smells like cheap floral perfume and sounds like a whimper through a half-open storage door.

You could say it. You could torch the air between you both with it. My boyfriend cheated on me tonight. In the storage room. With someone I shook hands with. Maybe even while you were living in a delusion, or shaking hands with people who thought they mattered. And you don’t even know if he'll even care. If none of this would matter to him and it’s just your heart doing its pathetic little dance in a one-woman tragedy.

You could lie. God knows you’ve gotten good at that lately. You could say you hate cucumbers or that you still sleep with the bathroom light on.

But standing next to him, lying feels too pedestrian. You glance over at him, hoping his sufferance will start to look smug enough to punch. But no. He’s too relaxed for that. One wrist draped over the edge of the railing, the other hanging low beside his thigh, fingers marked with the last memory of the cigarette you just burned through together. He’s not even close enough to touch, but you swear if you breathed wrong, he’d hear it shift in your ribs.

Unfair. Unrelenting. Utterly exhausting.

You rake your teeth over your bottom lip and break the silence with something that tastes harmless. It isn’t, really, but it plays that way.

“I’m not your fan.”

His eyes flinch. Like a tick behind his lashes he forgot to tame.

You glance sidelong, watching his profile for the reaction, any reaction. The way someone checks the rearview after running a red light. “That’s my secret. Or one of them. I guess.” It’s barely louder than a whisper, but it lands with the weight of a bottle uncorked too fast. Immediate relief followed by a slow fizz of regret.

The pause that follows is the longest one yet.

You regret it. You don’t. You regret it again.

“I know.”

Huh.

The words are smooth. Soft, but pointed. As if you’ve confirmed something he’s always known but was waiting to see if you’d admit. You don’t know if you were excepting a bite to them, a sleek reveal of a bruised ego but what you were not was that slow, coiled calm that has no business feeling sexy in someone’s mouth.

Was it that obvious? Were you that obvious? You wait for elaboration on that but nothing comes.You watch his profile, the ridiculous slope of his nose, the glint of metal at his ear, you bracket for the assured curve of his lips but then again: nothing. He doesn’t clarify, doesn’t call you out, doesn’t accuse.

You can’t tell if he’s messing with you or if he means it — if he remembered your voice from a year-old phone call, if he recognized your silence tonight, if he sighted your stare in the reflection of the goddamn glass doors.

That sounds unreasonable so you don’t entertain the idea any more. "I'm not saying I hate you or anything." You add after a respite, withstanding, out of sheer principle. "In case you start thinking I'm some undercover journalist who's out to get you by making you slip up some horrible secret and ruin your career." You falter and your pupils dilate in some sort of enlightenment.

"Wait.. that does sound legitimate.." You breathe and he chuckles, chasmic. Straight from the core of his chest. Pretty.

You flush, hand tightening around the cigarette. "What I mean to say is that I mean no offense."

"None taken." That's all he gives you.

Another non-answer that sounds just close enough to a hum to pass for approval. It makes your eye twitch. The bluster in it is staggering. Like he’s heard every variation of insult and adoration and now catalogues them by scent.

“So you’re not bothered?” you ask.

“No.” For a second, the look in his eyes could melt paint from a canvas. “Should I be?”

You hesitate. You don’t know why you hesitate.

"No." You nearly choke on how dishonest it isn’t. You don’t want him to be bothered. You don’t want him to care.

And yet — there’s a morbid thrill in seeing if he will.

You angle yourself slightly toward him, careful not to break whatever tension is braided in the space between your bodies. The heat of him remains, even with a whole arm’s length untouched. You need the tilt of something else. So you pivot, words tumbling faster than thought.

“So,” you say, voice stripped bare. “Your turn.”

His brows lift, slow and unsurprised.

“For the secret,” you add, not giving him the chance to weasel out.

He considers. You can see it — the slight furrow at the edge of his brow, the twitch of his jaw, the progression of thought moving unhurried behind his eyes. The line of his mouth doesn’t change, but the solidity of it shifts.

“I need time,” he says at last, tapping the back of his fingers against the railing like it’s a piano.

“No time,” you counter, before he can wax poetic or poeticize wax or whatever the hell he’s about to do. “Actually, I’ll help. I’ll guess.”

“You’ll guess my secret.”

“Exactly. To speed things up.”

He sighs. Appealed, again, in that maddeningly low-key way that reads more indulgence than exasperation.

You straighten slightly, clear your throat. “You’ve got six toes on one foot.”

Taehyung shifts, and you hear the soft rustle of his jacket as he moves. One hand disappears into his pocket.You wonder if anything he does is ever clumsy. You want to see it. But to all appearances, no.

"You talk to plants. You whisper to them, atleast for the sake of dignity. Apologize when you forget to water them. You have at least one fiddle leaf fig in your apartment that’s seen you cry in a silk robe.”

He says nothing, which is infuriating in its own right. So, to punish him, you keep talking.

You tap your chin. “You cry when you're watching a Pixar movie."

As if to egg you on, he remains mum.

"You secretly hate the fame."

Oof.

“Okay..you’re secretly married to an heiress in Monaco but only out of obligation because her father saved your family from a blood feud—wait, is this why you smoke? To cope?”

You chance a glance at him then.

He’s still quiet, one brow slightly lifted, his mouth doing that thing again — where it thinks about smiling but chooses restraint instead. He hasn’t said a word. Just stands there, gaze unwavering, letting you dig your own grave with a shovel he probably forged.

"That's a hell lot of gusses. Are you sure you're not a fan?" He finally says. Dragged through just enough baritone to sound stuffy without needing help.

Not even close. But you lapse anyway, roll your eyes and resist the urge to melt into the railing beside you. You’ve been standing here too long, you think. Under this particular constellation of stars and scrutiny. Talking too much. Giving too much. Your mouth, again, has outpaced your sense.

"I'll pace myself." You mutter under your breath. His laugh is soft and bothersomely warm that sits like a pat on the head you didn’t ask for.

"Well?” you prompt, arms crossed now. Your cigarette’s been flicked away into the night, but the heat of it lingers at your fingertips. “Are you going to give me a real on--"

He cuts you off and offers. “I’ve been learning French.”

You blink.

That’s it? That’s the secret? You nearly threw your soul onto the balcony floor, and he came back with learning a forigen langauge?

You don’t hide your disbelief. You don’t even try. “That’s your big, mysterious secret?”

He shrugs. One-shoulder, elegant, unconcerned. “You wanted one.”

“French?” you repeat, deadpan. “Oh fuck off. That’s what you went with? That’s what you’re hiding from the world?”

His lip twitches and he whispers in a exaggerated manner. "You're the only one who knows."

Your face torsions into a grimace.

"See? That's why I didn't told anyone." The hand from his pocket slips out and he runs it over his jaw. There’s a ardency in his voice now, stretched and prearranged. “Because of that face you’re making.”

“What face?”

“The one that says I’m pretentious.”

“That’s because you are pretentious,” you say, eyes narrowed. “Learning French for fun?”

“Not for fun,” he corrects. "It's work. For Paris. I’ve got a event there next month.”

You groan in the quiet that returns,balmy and teeming.The metropolis hums below, ignorant of your little corner modeled out of smoke and shared breath.

You glance at him, brows pinched. “Say something in French, then.”

His head tilts, just slightly. “Huh?”

You square your stance, chin lifting, voice dipped in faux detachment. “Prove it, I mean.”

He blinks, slow. “Prove what.”

“That you’re not full of shit, Jesus."

His gaze slides across the space between you. Perhaps he was offened that you asked him to believe his nonsense. And you don’t believe that was anything but. A made up lie about how he has a hairless cat named Nietzsche and that would have charmed you more ‘I’ve been Duolingo-ing French in the dark.’

Then again, he had no reason to say something that would have entertained you. Why would he? You're no one. Not even his dedicated enthusiast that he feels bound to in some way. So, you beyond a shadow a doubt, don't expect him to even attempt.

“Je pense à toi plus souvent que je ne le devrais.”

Let alone say that many of words. They sky in ample, partly because of the tone, the tempo. Partly for the way it leaves his mouth already inflamed with meaning. The vowels roll soft in the back of his throat, mutilated just a little and for a brief, stupid moment, you forget you’ve just spent the last two hours being publicly, privately humiliated.

You blink, slow. “Wow. Okay. You're not lying but..?"

“But what?”

“What did that mean?”

The current tightens. Scarcely from the wind, in no manner from cold, but with pause. A single moment suspended by silence, thick and humming. You expect him to laugh, to shrug it off, to hand you back your question with a lopsided grin and a conveniently vague answer. You excepted a big headed translation of what he said, probably praised how beautiful his sternum is in the language of the romancers.

But the expectation that arrives is staining the moment. It thickens between you like honey slow-dripped over the edge of a knife. Definitely not the kind you can breathe through. You count five seconds. Then seven. Then forget to keep counting because definitely not when he eventunally moves. One slow step forward, a flux that cuts the space between your bodies down to a corruption.

Simply folds himself into your periphery. Doesn’t touch you. Doesn’t need to. The heat of him arrives before the shadow does. You can feel the slope of his body, the broadness of it, the made to measure frame of someone who was never taught to shrink. It sure does makes you do so.

You stand there with your neck craned, still leaning against the railing, still biting the inside of your cheek, still trying to remember what the fuck he just said. You told him to prove it. You hadn’t told him to make a meal out of it. But here you are, jaw locked and throat dry.

You lock eyes with him, by a nose. He’s taller up close — of course he is.He leans in a touch, eyes cutting toward the stub of a cigarette still between your fingers. Or what’s left of it. The lipstick ring, half-smudged, stares back up at you in a little flash of chagrin.

Before you can toss it — he reaches.

Two fingers, unhurried, brushing yours again as he plucks it from your hand. His skin grazes yours and you swear your breath stutters like a faulty wire. It’s warm. Calloused in the way expensive hands aren’t supposed to be.

He lifts the cigarette and turns it slowly, inspecting the end. The smear of your lipstick, the last traces of you still on it.He twirls it once between thumb and forefinger, then glances at you. “You said I have a habit,” he says. His voice is calm, low, threaded with that warm rust he never bothers polishing.

You say nothing. Your throat has turned treacherous.

He tucks it between his lips. Listlessly. Takes his time. Drags in smoke, hollow and full. Then he exhales through his nose.

“I’m starting to think you have one too.”

You narrow your eyes, jaw tight. “What.”

His next words come darker. A commodity less said than laid down in front of you.

“A habit of asking questions you don’t want answers to.”

Your breath hits you crooked. You press your lips together, try to will sensation back into your legs. The silence stretches between you again, full of heat and that despicable prescience that he hasn’t broken it, because he doesn’t need to.Your mouth stays shut. It's not used to being without an opinion. He’s taken that from you too, somehow. The only sound you make is a shaky exhale, quiet enough to be mistaken for wind.

Your gaze follows his to his wrist, where his watch glints faintly beneath the low light, that watch you’d mocked internally for being too shiny, too sumptuous-looking, too aware of its own importance. You don’t know what he reads in the time, but he makes a soft sound, a breath, maybe a sigh, latterly he shrugs. The shoulders of his jacket shift, roll, and then, before your body can react, he’s pulling his arms free.

That black, unbothered thing of a jacket, the one that smelled like amber and ash and subtle conceit. He holds it for a second in his hands, then swings it gently, stupidly, over your shoulders.

Your first instinct is to shove it off, slap his hand away, say something defensive that hides how everything in you is currently rioting.

“What are you doing?” you ask, voice splintered at the ends.

You don’t know what’s more disorienting. The unexpected gesture or the sheer weight of it. The jacket is heavy, still warm from his body, lined with something smooth that smells criminally luxurious, smoke and vetiver and a note you can’t name but feel in your knees. It swallows you instantly, hangs too wide over your frame, sleeves grazing knuckles you didn’t realize were clenched.

You stiffen, hands raised as if the fabric might detonate.

“No—no, I’m fine,” you protest, reaching to return it, but his hand catches your wrist, gently. Not holding you there, just… halting the motion. His fingers barely curve around your skin.

"I'm trying to be a gentleman." he says, eyes soft but voice gravel-edged. "I am a gentleman, actually."

You almost snort, but your throat tightens too fast for it to come out fully. Good thing, you decide. Otherwise, you would’nt have trusted yourself not to speak up on the think pieces, The fan-written fever dreams about how Taehyung held a door open once and that made him the reincarnation of chivalry itself.

Kim Taehyung, the article said, is a gentleman — he's out to get your poor heart because Kim Taehyung is the refined man of our modern times who asks before he touches, and never forgets a name.

You’d rolled your eyes so hard they clicked. You’d said aloud, to no one in particular, yeah, I bet. And yet here you are. Swaddled in the evidence.

Before you can launch into your next indignation, he speaks again — this time with a glint, a grin that blooms crooked at the edges and threatens to bring down whatever composure you’ve reassembled prior to disappearing away back to the glow.

“It was nice finally meeting you, ceo of Mars."

A/N: it does not end here!! tumblrs just shit and got me with its word limit but I will not be stopped and you can keep reading from here <3

[sylusgworl]

(INVOLUNTARILY) GAWKING ft. xavier

content: fluff, fem!reader, housemates!au, pre-relationship situation, reader is awkward, xavier tries at flirting (and kinda fails),

a/n: it's too hot outside to properly function so my brain birthed this fic, uh enjoy ig - wrote this in like 15 mins (my study break) so it yet to be proofread. wc: 857 . rbs are very appreciated <3

m.list

it is infact not alright when it's 37 °C outside (about 100 F) and you are living with a (male) housemate.

nope, you no way you were going full on nude in front of xavier, nope. you'd rather die from the heat. although, at some point the heat became so unbearable any insane thought became completely rational.

“ugh it's so hot,” you groaned while stretching on the sofa, the shorts and tank top feeling sticky against your skin.

oh, right, the ac refused to turn on for some reason, and the fan was broken, apparently one of its blades had snapped off and it just stopped functioning correctly.

xavier cocked his head out of his room, a pearl of sweat sliding down his temple until it fell in a bead down from his chin.

he had it way worse, his wide shorts just right above the knee and a white t-shirt... just the sight of that made you sweat.

“it's alright [name], i've just ordered another one, it'll be delivered in a couple of hours,” his soft voice angelically carried the glad tidings, except you felt even more desperate and exhausted.

more hours of that inferno.

you closed your eyes. maybe a short nap would help take you out of that dread. minutes passed and... nope it was too hot to sleep.

you sat up and headed for the kitchen. there, a sight made you stop in your tracks. an unexpected one.

xavier leaned against the counter, shirtless, while drinking a can of chilled soda. his toned muscles seemed to shine under the natural light of the sun, his adam's apple bobbing up and down with each sip.

he didn't seem to notice you, so that gave you a chance to observe him for a while longer.

he was attractive alright.

you'd been housemates for about a month, but your schedules never aligned in a way that you'd be that often in each other's presence, so you'd never actually paid attention to xavier's presence around you.

you just thought having a man as a flatmate had too many downsides for your liking, but still accepted him as you really needed someone to split the rent with.

“oh, you're here,” his calm tone slowly carried you out of your trance.

xavier put down his soda and turned to face you, but then noticed his bare chest so he crossed his arms against it and swiftly turned around, a faint blush tinting his cheeks.

“oh how long have you been there? i'm sorry, i didn't realise...”

“no no, it's alright haha... i've been here for a while, i didn't mean to stare,” you stretch your hands forward in a defensive way, “but! i was going anyway...” you trailed off and ran away in a jiffy, heart thumping and a familiar warmth in your face.

shit. did i just get caught gawking?

you bit your lip in frustration and closed the door to your bedroom before plopping onto the carpeted ground.

dignity gone, you started planning your move-out. because, how could you even face him after that.

desperation aside, two hours went by, and except for the heat and the embarrassing scene from earlier replaying in your head every time you closed your eyes, nothing eventful happened.

“[name]?” a voice called out to you, followed by a knock.

you hesitated but still got closer to the door. “is she asleep?” a voice mumbled from the other side, so you nervously opened up.

xavier's watchful blue eyes were the first to meet your surpised - not really - gaze.

your heart leaped to your throat, you cleared your voice. “y-yes?” oh god, how awkward.

“i just wanted to tell you, the new fan has just been delivered,” he pointed to the living room.

“i already installed it, i think the maintenance is coming to fix our ac in about a day or two,” he said, trying to keep a neutral tone while scratching the back of his head.

your eyes involuntarily jumped to his flexed arm and you had to call each and every atom of your self-control to avert your gaze and stop staring.

“oh! that's... great! yeah!” you answered, a bit to excitedly. you hoped it sounded as natural as possible, embarrassment from a couple of hours prior still holding you captive.

xavier nodded and turned around, walking a few steps. then, as if he'd remembered something, he stopped and turned around.

you'd only now noticed a small bag he was carrying in his hand. he then offered it to you.

“here, since i've put the fan in the living room, use this if it's too hot at night,” and off he went, as soon as you grasped it.

closing the door behind you, you unpacked the gift(?) only to find a mini desk fan. how adorable, you thought with a smile, thinking of xavier's attentiveness, as warmth spread across your chest from gratefulness... and maybe something else.

a small paper fell out, so putting the object aside, you opened it.

i'm sorry for making you feel embarrassed earlier. also, i didn't say you couldn't look, you can stare as much as you want.

you gulped. oh.

© sylusgworl - 2025, all rights reserved / i don't allow anyone to copy, repost on other platforms or sell my works.

[koyagifs]

you broke me first

pairing: mingi x reader x yunho au: non idol | exes | genre: angst word count: 3.6 k synopsis: not expecting to see mingi anytime again, you were shocked to see Yunho and mingi there. warning(s):

You stood frozen at the door, watching as Yunho helped a stumbling Mingi toward you. The night air was cool, the wind brushing against your skin as you bit your lip to steady yourself.

“I’m so sorry, Yn—” Yunho began.

You shook your head, voice flat. “It’s fine. Just… put him on the couch.”

Yunho gave a small nod and guided Mingi past you, careful and steady. Mingi groaned in protest, trying to lift his head, but Yunho gently hushed him, tightening his grip as he lowered him onto the cushions.

Your eyes followed them in silence, watching the way Mingi leaned heavily against Yunho, barely lifting his head. His voice was slurred, words catching on his tongue like they were stuck behind everything he never said when he was sober.

Once Yunho had settled him gently on your couch, he stood, rubbing the back of his neck.

“He wouldn’t stop asking for you,” he said softly. “I thought… maybe it’d be better if he saw you for himself.”

You nodded, not trusting your voice.

Yunho lingered at the door. “You okay?”

No. Not even close.

But you gave him the kindest lie you could muster. “Yeah. Thanks for bringing him.”

Yunho didn’t move right away. He just looked at you — that quiet, knowing look only someone who’s seen you fall apart can give. The kind that says I don’t believe you, but I won’t make you say it out loud.

He leaned against the railing beside your door, hands tucked into his jacket pockets as you turned your gaze away.

“I can stay if you want,” he said gently. “Everyone else is home. Mingi was the last stop.”

His voice was calm, careful. Like he knew you were seconds away from breaking if anyone touched you too softly.

You swallowed hard, the sound deafening in the quiet night. Tugging at the sleeves of your oversized sweater, you shifted your weight from one foot to the other, gaze fixed on the floor.

“I, uh… thank you, Yunho,” you murmured. “But I’m sure you’d rather get home. Change. Rest.”

Yunho gave a slow shrug, the corner of his mouth twitching with something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Pretty sure I still have some clothes here from the last time.”

Your breath caught.

The last time.

Before everything shattered.

He tilted his head, eyes softer now. “I can sleep on the floor, Yn. Or the chair. I just… don’t think you should be alone right now.”

And for a moment, you hated how much that offer made your chest ache. Because he was right.

You didn’t want to be alone. Not tonight. Not with him on the other side of the door.

Not with all these memories still alive in the room you never really stopped waiting in.

Just as you parted your lips to speak, a slurred voice cut through the air like a blade.

“Yn…”

You jumped slightly, your hand instinctively clutching your sweater tighter around you. Yunho’s head snapped toward the open door, every muscle in his body going still.

Another groan followed, softer this time, but your name lingered on Mingi’s lips like a ghost he hadn’t stopped chasing—haunting, unfinished.

You gave Yunho an apologetic smile, a weak thing that didn’t quite reach your eyes, then turned and stepped inside. But you didn’t close the door behind you.

You left it open.

And Yunho took that as a sign.

You sighed and slowly knelt beside the couch, brushing Mingi’s hair out of his face with gentle fingers. He leaned into your touch instinctively, like muscle memory—like his body remembered what his heart had let slip through the cracks.

Yunho looked away, jaw clenched as he slipped his jacket off and moved quietly to the other side of the couch, giving you space he knew you wouldn’t ask for but needed anyway.

“You know…” he said softly, “he still loves you.”

Your hand froze mid-air.

The words hit too hard, too fast—like they’d been waiting in the walls, waiting in your chest. You pulled your hand back slowly, the weight of them sinking deep as you pushed yourself to your feet and walked toward the kitchen, the silence cracking around you with each step.

Yunho followed quickly, pausing in the doorway just as he saw your hands shaking while you reached under the sink. You grabbed a garbage bag—anything to focus on, anything to not feel everything else.

But it was too late. He saw the tears in your eyes.

He moved without hesitation, stepping in front of you, his hands closing gently over yours, steadying them.

“Hey…” he whispered.

You looked up at him, face crumpling, voice barely holding together.

“Why did you bring him here?” you choked out. “Just… why?”

The hurt in your voice was sharper than any accusation. It wasn’t anger—it was grief. Grief for the pieces of you Mingi had shattered and the part of you that still, somehow, missed every broken edge.

Yunho’s thumbs brushed softly over your knuckles, grounding you in the midst of the storm.

“Maybe because…” he murmured, voice barely above a whisper, “I wanted an excuse to see you too.”

Your breath hitched.

“I’ll admit it was stupid of me to bring him,” he continued, guilt lacing every word, “but part of me hoped… I don’t know. That maybe you'd still let me in too.”

You gulped, blinking against the tears that clung to your lashes. Yunho’s hand moved gently to your cheek, wiping one away with the pad of his thumb.

“That’s not fair, Yu,” you whispered, voice cracking. “That’s so not fair. Not to me. Not to Mingi.”

His eyes didn’t leave yours. “And why are we worrying about his feelings,” he asked, voice suddenly sharper, more broken, “when you’re the one breaking down in your own home, taking care of the guy who made you this way?”

You didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Because even if you tried… you wouldn’t know what to say.

Yunho gently took the garbage bag from your trembling hands, setting it aside without a word. Then his fingers tilted your chin up, eyes locking onto yours with a quiet steadiness that made your breath catch.

“Why don’t you make some coffee for us?” he said softly, like he was offering more than just a drink. “I’ll take care of Mingi… and then maybe we can talk. Really talk.”

You hesitated, eyes searching his for any trace of hesitation—but there was only patience. Familiar warmth. The kind you used to lean on before the world cracked.

You gave a small nod. “...You can meet me in my bedroom once you’re done.”

Yunho’s hand lingered at your cheek for a second longer than necessary, thumb brushing your skin like a silent promise. Then he stepped back with a nod, disappearing into the living room where Mingi lay unaware of the weight hanging in the air around him.

And you turned toward the kitchen.

Still aching. Still unsure.

When Yunho stepped quietly into your room, he paused at the threshold for a moment, taking it all in.

The soft glow of your bathroom light spilled across the floor, a muted warmth against the stillness of the space. It smelled like lavender and something distinctly you—faint and familiar.

His eyes scanned the room, landing on the frame by your bedside. It made him smile at first—a candid photo of you and your niece, both laughing, your cheeks squished together like nothing in the world could ever touch you.

But when he reached for it, the frame slipped from his fingers, falling with a soft clack onto the wood floor.

He bent down quickly, flipping it over—and froze.

Behind the smiling photo, tucked like a secret, was another. A photo of you and Mingi. Your eyes closed, forehead pressed to his cheek, his arms around you like he couldn’t bear to let go.

Yunho’s breath caught. His fingers lingered on the edge of the frame, jaw tightening just slightly before he gently slid the picture back where it was and placed the frame upright again, face-down smile and all.

Then, he sat on the edge of your bed, hands clasped between his knees, eyes fixed on the floor.

“Uh… I found some of Mingi’s old clothes,” you said quietly, breaking the silence. “I’m not sure if they’ll fit, but—”

“Thank you.” Yunho’s voice was soft, but genuine.

You nodded slowly and sank down onto the bed, leaning back against the headboard, trying to steady your racing heart.

“I—uh…” you began, searching for the right words.

“Yunho,” you finally said, voice trembling, “I do appreciate you looking out for me, but… isn’t this wrong?”

He looked up, meeting your eyes with a flicker of uncertainty. “Wrong how?”

“You bringing him back here. He hates me, Yunho. And then on top of that… you—” you stuttered, the words catching in your throat.

Yunho leaned forward slightly, eyes steady. “I what? That I like you? I’m not ashamed of it, if that’s what you think.”

You blinked, shocked that he would admit it. Yunho noticed your shock and gave a small, awkward laugh.

“Wrong timing, I know,” he said quietly, “but Yn, I hate seeing you like this. So hung up on Mingi.”

You narrowed your eyes slightly, a sharp edge creeping into your voice. “We’ve been together for years, Yu. That’s not something I can just forget.”

Yunho shook his head gently. “That’s not what I meant.”

You looked away, voice barely above a whisper. “I know… but—”

Before you could finish, a harsh sound cut through the room—Mingi throwing up on the floor. You flinched, biting back the instinct to rush to him.

Yunho’s voice softened beside you. “I wasn’t lying when I said he still loves you.”

You swallowed hard, eyes fixed on the floor. “And why should I believe you? He hasn’t called me in months. He broke up with me.”

Yunho held his hand out for you, and you looked for a moment before lacing your fingers with his. His thumb caressing your palm as he looked at your interlocked hand.

" what exactly happen that night? Mingi won't tell me and i just... "

“It was a stupid fight—” you said, voice low and bitter with the weight of it.

FLASHBACK

The front door slammed behind you so hard the walls trembled, your favorite trinkets on the entry shelf rattling against one another as if even they were stunned by the rage in your body. You didn’t care.

Mingi was right behind you, steps heavy, his breath sharp, both of you clearly too far gone to be in the same room—but too stubborn to walk away.

“What the actual fuck, Mingi?” you snapped, yanking your earrings off and throwing them onto the table with shaking hands. “Seriously?”

He scoffed, throwing his jacket onto the couch. “What, huh? You act like I was kissing her or something!”

Your eyes flashed, hurt blooming in your chest like a bruise that wouldn’t stop spreading. “No,” you spat, voice breaking. “You were practically fucking her at that point with how she was grinding on you!”

Mingi’s expression faltered, but the anger didn’t leave his eyes.

“My god, Mingi,” you continued, tears building in your voice, “Have you been doing this every time you go out with them? Every time you’re with your little crew of dancers and producers and whoever the hell else makes you forget I even exist?”

He opened his mouth like he had a comeback ready, but nothing came out. Just that pause—that awful, soul-crushing pause.

And that was when your heart split in two.

You scoffed, breath catching, your steps faltering as the weight of his words hit you square in the chest. You sank onto the edge of the bed like your knees had given up trying to hold you together.

“You’re an asshole,” you whispered, voice shaking. “You know that, right?”

Mingi didn’t look at you. He just stared at the floor like it might offer him some excuse, some way out of the mess he’d made. “Then why are you still dragging me on, huh?” he muttered. “Let the relationship die already, Yn.”

Your mouth fell open.

And nothing came out.

Because there were no words for that kind of pain. No defense against the way it hit—the cold finality of it, the way he said die like this love hadn’t already been bleeding out between the cracks for weeks.

You stared at him, eyes wide and glassy, like you couldn’t quite believe it came from him.

The silence that followed wasn’t just heavy. It was shattering.

You sat there, trembling, the pain swelling so tightly in your chest you could barely breathe. Your voice cracked as you forced the question out, a last, desperate plea—like asking it might somehow rewind everything that had just happened.

“Did you even love me?”

Mingi looked at you—and for a second, just a second, something in his expression faltered. But then his jaw clenched, and his eyes hardened like he was trying to hurt you before you could hurt him first.

“I’ve never even loved you.”

The words left his mouth too quickly. Too cleanly. And the second they did, his heart dropped.

It was like something sacred had been broken in the room—something that could never be put back together, no matter how hard either of you tried.

You froze. The air left your lungs, the world tilting beneath you.

You didn’t scream. You didn’t cry. You just blinked—once, twice—like you were trying to convince yourself you hadn’t heard it. That maybe your heart was lying to you.

But it wasn’t. And neither was he.

At least… not in that moment.

And that was the moment Mingi realized—he hadn’t just ended a fight. He ended you. He ended everything.

You wiped the tear from your cheek quickly, fingers trembling as you stood from the bed like the air in the room had suddenly turned toxic.

“I—I need a minute,” you mumbled, voice thick and barely holding together.

Yunho started to stand, concern etched across his face. “Yn—?”

But you were already halfway to the bathroom, footsteps rushed, heartbeat thundering in your ears. You didn’t look back. You couldn’t.

The moment the door clicked shut behind you, you let out a shaky breath and braced your hands on the edge of the sink, staring down at the porcelain instead of your own reflection.

You could still hear his voice echoing in your head. I’ve never even loved you. You could still feel the way your heart cracked like glass—silent, sudden, and irreversible.

Outside, Yunho remained frozen, the shock of your sudden retreat clear on his face. He didn’t know what part of the conversation had broken you.

But he could tell— Something inside you had just shattered all over again.

Yunho exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through his hair as he stood from your bed, the ache in his chest twisting with frustration. He didn’t call after you. He knew you needed space, but someone else… someone else needed to be held accountable.

He made his way to the living room, his footsteps heavy with purpose.

Mingi was awake now, sitting up on the couch, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped. His head turned as Yunho entered, eyes bloodshot and hazy—but not enough to miss the look on Yunho’s face.

Mingi sighed, already bracing himself. “Let me guess. She told you.”

Yunho didn’t answer at first. He just stared.

That glare—cold, sharp, filled with the kind of anger that only comes from seeing someone you care about hurt—made Mingi shift uncomfortably.

“She ran to the bathroom crying,” Yunho said evenly, voice low but tight. “So no, she didn’t have to tell me anything.”

Mingi dropped his gaze, guilt flashing across his features.

“I fucked up,” he muttered.

Yunho scoffed, jaw clenched. “No. You destroyed her.”

Mingi sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “You don’t understand—”

“What don’t I understand, Mingi?” Yunho snapped, taking a step closer. “That you told the person who’s been there for you since day one, the one who held you down when you couldn’t even hold yourself, that you never loved her?”

Mingi winced, but Yunho wasn’t done.

“What, you couldn’t pass up the attention?” Yunho spat. “A few pretty smiles in a dark club, and suddenly the girl who’s waited through every late night, every missed dinner, every damn excuse wasn’t enough anymore?”

Mingi shot him a hard glare. “So you think you’re fucking perfect, huh? The minute I mess up, you have to swoop in and play her hero. Just so you can fuck her? She’s my girlfriend, Yunho. And you’re supposed to be my best friend!”

Yunho’s expression shifted—not to guilt, not to surprise, but to something colder, something deeper.

“I’m not trying to be her hero, Mingi,” he said slowly, voice trembling from restraint. “I’m trying to be there for her. The way you should have been.”

Mingi stood, fists clenched at his sides, eyes blazing. “So what? You think if I mess up, that gives you the right to just take my place? Sleep in my house, hold her hand, wait your turn like a fucking vulture?”

Yunho’s jaw tightened, his gaze hardening as he took a step closer, ready to fire back— but then footsteps echoed down the hall.

Both of them snapped their heads toward the sound.

You stood in the doorway, eyes wide and uncertain, frozen at the sight of Mingi standing, tension crackling between the two men.

For a moment, none of you spoke—only the heavy weight of everything unsaid filling the room.

“Yn…” Mingi whispered, his voice rough and hesitant.

Yunho took a step back, but his heart thudded painfully as you moved closer toward him—your presence quiet, but heavy with emotion.

Mingi’s jaw tightened at the sight, fists still clenched, his gaze narrowing—not out of anger, but fear. Fear that he’d already lost you. Fear that maybe, Yunho had stepped into the space he’d left empty for too long.

“I’m sorry—” he started, voice cracking.

You shook your head, lifting a hand to stop him before the words could sink in.

“Let’s not do this. Please,” you said, your voice trembling with exhaustion. “I just want to sleep. I have work in the morning, and I’m… I’m so tired. I can’t fight tonight. I can’t cry anymore. I just want silence.”

Mingi stood frozen for a moment, the words hitting harder than he expected. Then he gave a faint nod, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed down whatever apology he was about to say.

“I—I uh… yeah,” he mumbled, retreating quietly to the couch and sinking into it like the weight of everything had finally caught up to him.

Yunho turned to go to the other couch across the room, his movements slow, careful not to step on more fractured ground. But before he could take another step, he felt your fingers gently wrap around his wrist.

He paused.

Your grip wasn’t tight. It wasn’t pleading.

It was tired. And quiet. But it said everything.

“Stay?” you whispered, not looking at him—just staring at the floor like you were afraid if you met his eyes, you’d fall apart again.

Yunho turned back to you slowly, his expression softening. “Yeah,” he said gently. “Of course.”

And without another word, he followed you down the hall—leaving Mingi behind, staring at the ceiling, haunted by everything he should’ve said before it was too late.

You laid still on the bed, curled beneath the blanket, your back to Yunho at first—until you felt his gaze on you. You turned slowly, eyes meeting his as he lay on his side, facing you.

“You can sleep,” you whispered, your voice soft, cracked from the night’s weight. “I’m not going to break. I think I cried all my tears already.”

Yunho let out a breath of a chuckle, low and unsure. “I just… don’t judge me, but I used to imagine laying in bed with you.”

Your brows lifted, caught between surprise and something like amusement. You looked at him, and he froze, realization hitting him like a train.

“N-not like that!” he blurted out, eyes wide in horror. “I didn’t mean it like that—I just—”

You snorted softly despite yourself, the faintest smile tugging at your lips. “Yunho.”

He groaned, covering his face with one hand. “God, I didn’t mean it to sound creepy—just like… comforting. You know? Like this. Quiet. Safe.”

You were silent for a beat, then gently reached for his hand, pulling it away from his face.

He blinked at you, eyes searching yours like he was trying to memorize the quiet sadness etched there.

“It’s kind,” you whispered. “And right now… I think I needed kind.”

Yunho nodded slowly, something soft passing through his expression—relief, maybe, or something even deeper he hadn’t dared name.

He inched closer, careful, patient. When you didn’t move away—when your breathing stayed even and your eyes stayed on his—his hand lifted gently.

Fingers brushed along your cheek as he tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear, his touch featherlight, almost reverent. His hand lingered just a second longer, the pad of his thumb brushing against your temple, like he was reassuring himself you were really there. That you let him in.

He smiled—small, gentle, like he didn’t want to scare the moment away—and leaned down to kiss your forehead.

But just before he could, you tilted your head up.

And your lips caught his.

It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t perfect. But it was soft. Raw. Heavy with everything unsaid. A quiet surrender, wrapped in the ache of two people who had held back too much for too long.

Yunho froze for half a second, startled by your boldness—then melted into it, one hand instinctively cradling your cheek as if afraid you’d vanish if he didn’t hold on.

It wasn’t about forgetting Mingi. It wasn’t about replacing anything.

It was about you. Wanting to feel something that didn’t hurt. Just for a moment.

And Yunho—he let you.

[ashthesalamipiece]

hi! idk if u can do it or watched the movie but i feel like it would be really cute like a bakugou x reader tarzan au and it would be like fluff with some smut? ive been thinking about it and i thought it would be cute. it dosent have to be exactly like tarzan i js thought the prompt would be a good story katsuki beibg raised by animals(you can pick it dosent have to be monkeys) and finally meeting someone like him and he dosent really understand it. thank you! (can you add smut though? if your comfortaby with that but id perfer it with thank you again).

"Wildfire" – Bakugou x Fem!Reader (Tarzan AU)

Setting: Deep jungle, Bakugou raised by a pack of giant feline-beasts (think panther-lion hybrids). You're part of a scientific expedition sent to study the uncharted wildlife—until you find something unexpected.

---

You weren’t expecting to survive the storm.

Your transport was supposed to drop you and your team deeper into the jungle basin, but the crash landed you miles off course, isolated from the others. You were lucky to be alive—but alone. Almost.

Something had been following you.

It never attacked. Just watched. Stalked. Protected? You weren’t sure.

Until the night you wandered too far into the river basin and slipped down an embankment. You would've broken your leg—if it hadn’t been for the blur of muscle and gold-red eyes that caught you before you hit the rocks.

His skin was sun-kissed and scarred, hair wild like the jungle flame, barely clothed in tattered wraps. He was strong—feral, even—but he didn’t hurt you.

Just growled.

And then disappeared.

Now, he visits you. Watches. Closer. Closer.

And tonight, he speaks.

“You’re like me,” he says, voice rough like bark, golden eyes staring into yours as he crouches beside your campfire. He speaks your language—but haltingly, like he’s mimicked it from a distance. “But not same. You smell… different.”

You swallow. “I’m human. My name is Y/N.”

He tilts his head. “Katsuki.”

It’s the first word he’s said that doesn’t sound borrowed.

His name.

His body is strong and scarred, but you can tell he’s young. Your age. And curious—especially about you. You’d expected a beast. But you see a man behind those animal eyes.

And god, he’s beautiful.

“Do you live with… people?” you ask softly, fingers twitching on your lap.

He shakes his head, scowling. “No. Not people. Pride.”

“Lions?”

He growls. “Mine. Family.”

The jungle is quiet. And yet… your heart is racing. He's so close. You swear you can feel the heat rolling off him. Like a wildfire waiting to spread.

“You fell,” he says gruffly. “Could’ve died.”

“I didn’t,” you whisper. “You saved me.”

He blinks. And then, unexpectedly, he leans in close—sniffing your cheek, your hair, your neck. You shiver.

“You smell… soft,” he says. “Warm. Want it.”

Your breath catches.

“Want… what?”

His voice dips to a low, almost possessive growl. “You.”

---

It happens fast—because he doesn’t know how to be slow.

One second, you’re sitting by the fire. The next, you’re under him, back pressed to the soft moss and your shirt already tugged up, his nose dragging along your stomach like he’s mapping you by scent alone.

“Katsuki—” your voice cracks, but not from fear. It’s the intensity. He looks at you like he’s starved. Like he doesn’t understand what’s happening, only that he needs it. You.

“Tell me stop,” he growls into your skin. “I’ll stop.”

You don’t. You can’t.

“Don’t stop.”

That’s all it takes. He surges up to capture your lips, and it’s messy and wild—his first kiss, maybe. But when his hands find your thighs and grip tight, dragging you open beneath him, there’s a gentleness in how he watches you. Eyes flicking between yours, waiting for a flinch that never comes.

He’s hard against you, clothed only in rough wraps and instinct. Your hands thread into his wild hair as his lips trail down your neck, his tongue flicking against your skin.

You arch when he touches you—calloused fingers exploring like he’s memorizing what softness feels like. He growls when he finds how wet you are, rubbing your clit with tentative but focused strokes, learning fast.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “It’s you. This… is you.”

“Yes, Katsuki,” you moan. “It’s me. It’s okay.”

He doesn’t need more encouragement. He grinds against you, pulling at the wrap around his hips, hissing when your nails scratch down his back.

When he finally pushes into you, it’s with a groan that sounds almost pained. You gasp—he’s thick, and the stretch is deep, primal, hot.

You clutch him, thighs wrapping around his hips as he sets a slow, careful pace at first. But instinct takes over. Each thrust becomes deeper, harder. You cry out, but he hushes you with kisses, with murmured words you barely understand.

“Mine,” he whispers. “You’re mine now.”

And you don’t argue.

Because he’s yours too.

---

Later, when you're curled up beside him in the cool jungle night, your body sore but sated, he traces your fingers like they’re magic.

“I thought I was only one,” he murmurs.

“You’re not.”

He looks at you like that’s the first real truth he’s ever known.

You smile, brushing his wild hair back. “You’re not alone anymore, Katsuki.”

He buries his face into your neck.

And for the first time in his life, Katsuki Bakugou sleeps beside someone warm.

Someone who smells like home.

[try-again-bissh]

'Imagine Being Loved by Me"

Smoke x Annie x OC Sinners Fic

Modern AU 25+

For the grown and sexy only. I have been reading fic for forever and never written any but the Sinners brainrot and this insane heat wave that is hitting NY have finally gotten me! I have no idea how long this is going to be but I keep getting told to 'just write it bitch' so I am.

Happy Pride! Everyone is a little bit fruity in this one as a treat, if you don't like it I truly don't wanna hear it. I am Very Black, and Very Queer and I love black women so yall know what yall signed up for. I think that's all for now.

Warning: It's gonna be slutty. Threesome. The usual suspect supporting characters. Elias 'Stack' Moore, Pearline, Sammie Moore, That White Girl, Grace Chow, Bo Chow, Cornbread (his name is Corey now), Therese.

Word count: 2075

Enjoy!

Day 6 of 16

Cassie wakes up overheated but rested. She blinks her eyes open slowly squinting into the morning light. Her eyes flutter shut again, and she takes a deep breath. Shea butter, sweat, bergamot and sandalwood fill her nostrils and she sighs softly. It’s nice. There’s a weight on her shoulder and warmth along her side but she's too comfortable to open her eyes and look. The weight moves slightly and Cassie takes a moment to take stock of her body in the space between slumber and being awake. Her lips are raw, and sting slightly like she'd been licking them all night. Around her mouth, jaw  and neck are tacky, possibly from sweat. There are tender sore spots on her neck and chest. The blanket is chafing a tender spot on her breast, right next to her nipple. Cassie wonders what the hell that is. Mosquito bit maybe? She thinks distantly. She doesn't sleep naked for a reason maybe she left a window open.  The further into her body she thinks the more she is lifted toward alertness. 

Her pussy. Cassie’s eyes flutter open and she takes final stock. Her thighs are throbbing with a dull ache as is her lower back and her pussy is pulsing. Her thighs are tacky like she came multiple times and didnt get a chance to clean up, tender spots on the inside of both her thighs and even further down by her knees. 

Her first fully awake thought is “I got fucking ran through last night didnt I?” 

She blinks heavily into the light and can hear what sounds like plates clinking outside the door. Cassie looks down and is met with a sight she can only imagine would greet one on their first morning in Heaven. Annie was asleep on her shoulder. Her gorgeous full lips pouted in sleep, the artful braids from last night mused from more than sleep given the condition Cassie’s body is in. They are both naked, the covers slipping off Annie’s front revealing where her full breasts are slumped to one side of her chest. Cassie feels her jaw drop at the sight and also as last night comes flooding back to her. 

They fucked the shit outta her last night. Or she fucked the shit outta them? Everyone got the shit fucked outta them last night! 

It was definitely all three of them that stumbled back here after leaving Stack to close up the club. She can dimly remember pressing kisses to someone’s neck in the back seat of an Uber while her hand was rubbing and squeezing between someone else’s legs.  Cassie looked to her other side and noticed the sheets were left mused, she looked towards the door and could hear water running or maybe a pan sizzling. She breathe a slight sigh of relief, she really didnt need to fuck someone’s wife without permission…again. 

Her slightly panicked shuffling had woken Annie up, who moaned and rolled further into her. Annie’s leg that was thrown across Cassie's hips tightened and her eyes blinked open. Cassie held her breath as Annie looked up at her face. 

God her eyes. Absolute killer, she would never leave the bed if she saw this every morning. 

Annie’s eyes were slightly glazed and foggy but she smiled softly and leaned up to peck Cassie on the lips before rolling out of the bed and stumbling to her feet unconcerned with her nakedness. Cassie laid frozen as she watched Annie groan and fumble along the back of the door, seeming with her eyes closed till she grabbed a robe, much too long and big to be hers and put it on, then stumbled into the bathroom with it hanging open around her. The sound of the door shutting behind her jolted Cassie out of her daze, and she scooted to the edge of the bed clutching the sheet to her chest she began to look for her clothes. Shuffling through the clothes on the ground most of them seemed to be Smoke’s and Annie’s. How the fuck did they get her totally outta her clothes before even getting to the bedroom?!

Cassie stumbled over one of Smoke’s shoes as she shuffled to the other side of the bed to look for her clothes. In the bathroom the sink ran and she heard footsteps headed towards the bedroom from the hall. Cassie froze as both doors opened. 

Smoke stood in the doorway, steaming mug in one hand, navy blue durag tie tightly on his head, in a stretched out white wife beater and grey sweat shorts. Looking over him another memory of last night filters into Cassie's brain. 

She had pressed him between the front door and her body, Annie crowding drunkenly behind her as held his jaw and kissed him hard and wet. She remembers Annie’s hands fumbling the buttons of his shirt open in the minimal space between her and Smoke’s chest. Once his shirt was open Annie ran her hands up his undershirt and over his chest pausing to pinch and pull his nipples. The sensation caused his hips to grind into Cassie pressing the large bulge of him into her. She grunted and broke the kiss. Reaching down she hauled his wife beater out of his pants and too impatient and probably drunk to wait for him to pull his layers off,  she ducked her entire head under it to get her mouth on his chest. Smoke swore breathlessly reaching out; he pulled his shirt up to his armpits and held it out of her way as she sucked on his pecs and pressed her teeth into him and left bruises behind.

That's why it looks like that. Cassie gaze dragged along the many very visible hickeys and teeth marks on his exposed chest and up his neck. She prayed they weren't all her doing. 

In the other doorway Annie was shuffling sleepily out of the bathroom, too big and too long robe tied around her waist as she yawned. She blinked her eyes open and took in Cassie form, clutching their bed sheet like it would save her and then looked to Smoke who was already holding out the mug in Annie's direction. 

“Mm Lijah” she murmured, voice lower and rougher from sleep. She shuffled forward and took the mug from him, walking directly into his embrace she curled one arm around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder as her other hand brought the cup to her face. 

“Mornin’ baby.” He replied voice low and tone so soft, bursting with so much love. He curled around her, hands rubbing firmly up and down her back. It almost hurts to look at them. 

Cassie must have made a noise because Smoke’s gaze was drawn up to her and he blinked his heavy brown eyes at her and said “Mornin’ Cassie” in that same soft tone. 

Cassie cleared throat and said “Uh yeah good morning.” She pushed her locs back from her face and fiddled with the end of one. She usually was much more chill the morning after her hookups. But they were usually with one person and she was usually dressed and headed out the door by the time her partner of the night woke up. She wiped a hand over the corners of her mouth and her eyes hoping she wasn't covered in dry drool and eye boogers.

She felt wrong footed.

Looking at Annie and Smoke now, they both showed signs of the night before, Smoke’s eyes were small and red like he barely slept and even with Annie as bundled as she was Cassie could see hickeys on her neck (once large one on the nape of her neck lord)  and her hair looked like someone had fisted it repeatedly last night. Somehow they looked perfect, and Cassie was scared she probably looked like something someone dug up. Ran through. 

“There’s coffee, didn't know how you took it but there’s cream, sugar and all that. Breakfast is almost done, I was just coming to wake yall.” Smoke said he was slowly rocking Annie back and forth in his arms as she took random small sips of coffee with her eyes still closed.

“Her Highness isn't much of a morning person so don't expect much chattin from ha till she feels more human.” 

Annie reached down with the hand around his waist and swatted him on the ass, making him chuckle and smile sweetly down at her. She peered her eyes open and they shared a small kiss that left them both smiling. 

“You'll stay for breakfast wont ya Cassie?” Annie asked, her rich voice sweet and sticky. Both her and Smoke peered at Cassie, brown eyes big and hopeful. She doesn't understand how a man taller than her and a woman almost her height would both look at her from beneath their lashes but they were. And it was working alright. 

“Yeah, I could definitely eat. Uh thank you.” She stuttered out awkwardly. “Smoke, do you know um where my clothes ended up, they aren't in here?” Cassie gestured to the floor where his and Annie’s were still scattered. 

“Yeah, they in the dryer. We knocked over a vase last night and it seemed like you got the worst of it.” He released Annie and walked over to a tall mahogany dresser, opening the second drawer he pulled out a white t-shirt, then he opened the top drawer and pulled out something plaid. 

Walking back to Cassie, he stepped right into her space, taller than her for the first time since they met as she was barefoot and still trying to hide behind the sheet wrapped around her. “Trade you?” He gestured at the sheet, his eyebrow cocked yet he was smiling sweetly at her. Still hopeful. 

“Haha” Cassie said sarcastically, “The sun is out and the lord is watching, so no” She reached out to take the clothes from him with one hand, the other clutching tight to the sheets like she didn't trust them to hold to her body while his eyes were roving over her. 

He didn't let go of them when she pulled and she bumped into that wide, board ass chest of his. Smoke looked down at her heavily amused. “No trade then, but it still don't come free.” 

Cassie scoffed but didn't step back, the height difference between them was minimal but it did mean that she was right up in his face as he leaned ever so slightly down to peer at her. 

“Iight, what do you want?” she replied, trying to steady her voice and herself. He smelt good, she realized the bergamot and sandalwood smell was him, his breath smelt of coffee, he was warm and so solid along her front. The sun pouring in through the bay windows in the bedroom were doing absolute wonders for his skin. Fucking beautiful. 

“You kiss ha yet Ann?” He called over his shoulder, and Cassie's head snapped to gaze at Annie. She looked much more alert as she cradled her coffee and watched them with her head tilted to the side. 

“Yep, first thing this morning, I aint no fool.” She said, her eyes pinning Cassie in place. 

“That’s my price then, I would like some suga before my breakfast.” He titled his chin in Cassie’s direction, his other hand slowly snaking around her waist and bringing her in tighter against his body.

Cassie’s gaze darted back and forth between the two of them, both watching her expectantly. Annie's gaze warm and lazy, Smoke’s more eager and hot his eyes flitted between her own and her lips before making home there. 

“i haven't brushed my teeth yet, your suga will have to wait.” Cassie muttered softly. Smoke chuckled, squeezed her waist, he leaned down and for a moment  Cassie thought he would ignore her warning, she closed her eyes and waited for his lips to land. 

They did, warm and a little wet on her cheek and released her. “I'm good at waitin’” he said as he stepped back and headed for the door. 

“You can have first shower, towels, wash rags and everything in the linen closet in dere. Toothbrushes is under the sink.” Annie said, winking and following Smoke out of the bedroom. 

Alone in their bedroom Cassie took a moment to plop back on to the bed and wonder just what in the fuck she had gotten herself into.

Pls let me know what yall thought! <3

Title is from a Hozier song cause I am nothing if not a lesbian.

[booniebaby141]

Birds of Ratite

Ghost X Soap

After extensive research, I’ve come to the conclusion that Simon Riley would have a hyperfixation about birds, specifically Cassowaries because “They’re like fucking dinosaurs Johnny, be grateful they can’t fly, they can kick hard enough to break bones.”

Johnny will gladly listen to Simon yap about them for hours on end. I like to think when Simon runs out of Dad jokes to tell him during missions, he just rattles off fact after fact. Johnny can’t really complain, he does the EXACT same shit to Simon all the time; any time he gets first kit haul, he will prattle on about all the explosives, chemical compounds, and ammunition he got for the next demolition.

They will gladly listen to each other yap, especially in a high stress situation, where it could mean the difference between life or death…

~~~

“Bravo 7-1 to Watcher, just outside the safe house 2 Klicks North of the drop zone. Ghost is in critical condition! Knife wound to the abdomen, need medevac NOW!”

“Copy that 7-1, sending help your way.”

“Fuck, c’mon stay with me Sir.”

The two collapsed just outside the safe house, falling to the grassy field before leaning back against the safe house wall. Soap looked around aimlessly and desperately, watching as the sun peaked just over the horizon, illuminating his face, and his hands, now covered in the blood of his best friend as he kept a firm hold over the wound to prevent further bleeding.

Ghost almost wanted to laugh at the situation, being stabbed with his own knife by an opposing soldier was definitely not on his Task Force bingo card. It had been driven deep into his stomach before being yanked out as Soap flanked the man, dropping him to the ground while he still had a solid grip on the knife. The cut was deep and Ghost was starting to get delirious from the blood loss, he’d pass out soon enough if they didn’t get help quickly.

“Sir? Stay with me... Help’s coming L.T.”

“Johnny?”

“Ghost? I’m right here mate.”

He began to pull at the seams of his mask, trying to take it off in his weakened state when Soaps hands stopped him. It was an old promise they’d made to each other if they found themselves in a near death situation. They wanted to die seeing each others faces, their real faces.

“Simon no, stop. I’m not gonna let that happen, you’re gonna be fine. Quick, umm… How high can a cassowary jump?”

“What Johnny? Why?”

“Just answer the question, Sir.”

Ghost huffed raggedly but eventually wheezed out a struggled “7 feet.”

Soap nodded with a weak smile. “Aye, what’s the scientific name for them?” He continued to ask Ghost questions and keep him somewhat lucid.

Ghost realized what Soap was doing now, and he thought hard to try and stay awake until medevac arrived. “It’s *cough* it-it’s Casuar- *cough* casuarius johnsonii.”

They could hear the chopper approaching, Ghost rolled his head against the safe house wall, landing on Soaps shoulder as darkness approached the corners of his vision. “It’s cold Johnny…”

Soap propped him back up, getting in front of him and running his hands up and down the length of his arms in an attempt to warm him up some. “They’re landing now Simon, just a bit longer aye? Quick, tell me where they live.”

“Wha? Johnny?” Ghost slurred out, struggling to keep himself awake but he knew he had to, for his sake, and Johnnys.

“The cassowaries L.T, where do they live?”

“N-new *cough* New Guinea, and Aus-Australia.”

“Aye? Well I’m gonna take you there when this is all over, so you stay awake you big, broody, bastard.”

That got a slight chuckle from Ghost, which quickly turned to a fit of coughing and sputtering as the pain sharpened in his abdomen and the blood seemed to pour out at an even faster rate. Soap kept his hands placed firmly on the wound, watching as Ghosts head lolled to the side again and he grew quiet, uncharacteristically so even for him. He was so cold, so tired. In his half delirious state, the warmth of Johnnys hands gave him enough of an illusion of safety to start falling asleep.

“Ghost? Ghost?! Come on wake up Sir! Their wheels are down. Wake up you bastard! Come on, tell me their wingspan, what colours are they, anything Sir!”

The last thing Ghost remembered hearing before passing out was the frantic, panicked shouting of his teammate and the warmth of his skin, and the hurried thudding of boots on the ground as a medical team was pulling over a stretcher with Price in tow. He hears a faint conversation, something whispered, something upsetting, before being pulled up to the stretcher and the last bit of consciousness being pulled out of him.

The warmth never left however.

He wakes up in a hospital bed, Johnny’s hand clasped around his. He looks like shit, like he hadn’t left Ghosts side for a second to clean himself up. Still bloodied and stained, yet here he was watching over his lieutenant like a hawk.

“You made it L.T.”

“You fucking made it.”

Ghost didn’t have time to reply before strong arms were wrapped around his chest in embrace. He winced slightly as Johnnys weight pressed down on the bandaged stab wound, but eventually settled in a soothing silence as he held Johnny closer. He pretended not to hear the sniffles coming from his sergeant.

“I made it Johnny.”

The two remained that way for a while, Ghost looked around his hospital room to see the array of things left by his team. There were several cards surrounding a large bouquet of roses, hydrangeas, morning glories, and marigolds; all the colors of a cassowary’s feathers. There were some bottles of bourbon left by the Vaqueros, even Nik had brought a little mug with birds painted on by Soap. Inside the mug, Ghost noticed two slips of paper.

“What’s in the mug Johnny?” He asked suspiciously, to which Soap chuckled before briefly letting go to grab the tickets.

“I told you, you make it through this, I’m taking you to see them. Once you’re given the all clear from medical, we’re going…”

Ghost looked in awe at the two tickets, round trip to Australia with accommodations and a visit to the Taronga Conservation.

“Fucking hell, Johnny…”

“Ahh, don’t give me all the credit, Gaz helped me find the place and Price gave us the leave and got us a hotel. But I planned the rest. Got even more surprises in sto-”

Soap was cut off as Ghost pulled up his balaclava slightly to give him a kiss. Soap leaned into it, returning to his initial embrace and kissing right back, soft and gentle; what they both needed after such a close encounter with death. Talk of the trip could wait. For now, they simply needed each other.

“8 to 10 feet Johnny.”

“What Sir?”

“I never answered your question before, their wingspan is 8 to 10 feet.”

“Hah, guess we’re gonna see then aye L.T.”

“I guess we are.”

2 Weeks Later

“Watch out for the magpies Johnny, they’re even worse than Canadian Geese. Hey look up, a Masked Lapwing! And it’s a black shouldered subspecies, you usually only find them in New Zealand. Did you know that the only species of bird who can do…”

Soap listened with a smile although he did lose track at times as Ghost listed off every bird in the conservation he could see and had at least 3 facts for each of them. Still, it was good to see him back up and about, and back to his usual self. Although if it was a side of him rarely seen, Soap felt honoured he felt comfortable to show it to him. Both men nearly cried when they finally got to visit the cassowaries. Simon nearly cried because he finally got to meet his favourite bird in person, and Johnny because he finally got to watch Simon meet his favourite bird in person.

~~~

Just a silly Ghoap idea I had from a TikTok I saw on cassowaries. What else would they yap about? I just know Ghost and Soap are the AuDHD dream team of hyperfixation.

[nikito0x]

Time Travel Crack(-ish?) TGCF AU

Xie Lian accidentally travels to the past, taking over his own younger (child's) body.

He opens his eyes and he is very confused for a hot second, recognizing all his surroundings and wondering what in his husband's lovely name is happening, when, suddenly, he hears familiar bells and light is engulfing him.

Less than five minutes after arriving into the past, he has ascended. As a child.

Luckily he manages to mostly understand his situation and get himself together for long enough to consider his options and what he should do next.

Gods - gawking, whispering - surround him, child-like emotions overtake him and his rational mind comes up with the best solution he can think of on such a short notice.

Xie Lian jumps from Heaven back to Earth.

He will be known as the first child to have ascended. His legend will spread throughout the land. And, while mortal again, his prowess with spiritual energy will be unmatched. But that is for later. After he finishes crying about his missing husband.

When he lands back down to the mortal realm, tears running down his cheeks and a babbled explanation at hand about too many strangers surrounding him, the people and the heavens assume the poor kid didn't really know he ascended to godhood. In his eyes, he heard an earsplitting ringing of a bell, then got struck by what looked to be lightning, and finally got surrounded by a bunch of gawking strangers. Of course the poor kid got scared!

Everyone seemed a little dismayed at the misunderstanding, knowing that now he has jumped down he cannot go back to heaven unless he ascends again. But that's impossible... Right?

In the next years to come the prince would ascend a couple more times... And he would continue jumping down to the mortals... Again and again. But this time with a sack full of excuses.

"Doesn't heaven need their gods to be more educated before they are given this great responsibility?" He would question, three years after his first ascension, at the age of 10.

"My people need me more than heaven needs another god," He would declare, another three years after his second ascension, at the age of 13.

At his fourth ascension at the age of 15, the young prince would just groan in annoyance, turn around and stomp off towards the exit, chiding heaven itself, "I still have work to do, damn it! Leave me alone!"

The people of Xianle make a parade for each time the prince ascends, wondering when he will accept his rightful place. Temples are built in his name. Tales of his character and good deeds spread like wildfire.

With each ascension, Xie Lian's spiritual powers also grew to match. He could hear prayers, though he wasn't officially recognized as a god.

Jun Wu... Jun Wu is flabbergasted to say the least...

Xie Lian, in the meantime, prays for patience from his husband that isn't quite himself yet.

And little Hong Hong-er suddenly wakes from a deep sleep, quite confused, "...Patience??" He goes back to sleep.

What about the gods? What do they think of all this?

One thinks, "The prince's sleeping robes are quite exquisite. I should take note and acquire similar wears for myself!"

Another ponders, "How is the bell still whole if it falls every couple of years with his ascensions? Can a bell be in love with a living being?" The civil god starts researching.

A third one pathetically tries to spread rumors about the prince because he is jealous that this youngling ascended so young when he barely managed it in his 40/50's. He fails miserably.

A fourth one is tired of trying to chase him down so the prince would finally take over his godly duties. How do they miss him every time!?!?

A martial god wants to fight him to test her battle prowess.

Most of the rest? Well, they are deluded they'll manage to convince him to marry them once he ascends again and finally decides to stay.

Hong Hong-er suddenly feels the overwhelming urge to slaughter some gods. What is that number that floats around in his mind? 33? 35? Maybe he's imagining it...

And Xie Lian? He misses his husband. Feng Xin and Mu Qing think he's a good person & friend if a bit eccentric, praying to his non-existent husband and all...

As for Xie Lian's parents... Well. There is an old saying. If you cannot assuage the tide, then follow its current.

In other words. If you can't beat them, join them.

TBC?

[sylvieserene]

cannot be the only one who hates when people ship the fairy costume x shadow milk cookie. Like ship whoever you want, but the costume is made specifically for Purelily shippers. I don’t wanna be that person, but it’s like they’re asking for hate ☹️

I personally dislike it but because of a few things that ultimately traces back to the hypocritical nature of this fandom.

I think most folks know that this costume is probably the MOST hated set in the game and if you visit twitter, you...just won't like it in there to say the least. From hating to attacking, everything goes for that set.

It is hated by both ShadowVanilla + Elderlily shippers (ofc) cuz:

"It should've been EF!! THEY WERE ROBBED"

"If not EF then SM plz."

"PV is ugly. Get him out."

"Ew he's molesting WL."

"WL is the one carrying this set. It should've been just her."

"This costume set was a mistake."

"I hate this."

The list goes on.

Most folks do keep mentioning the fact that WL slayed etc which she did, the costume is really pretty and on surface level? Everything seems alright but if you dig a lil deeper on the said users, you'll find NO history of them even caring, let alone talking about her outside Elderlily or in a lot cases, at all.

The same people who hate PV just being there, the "ugliness" (yes, the word ugly is being heavily used when it comes down to him) that comes down with him and how he should not have been there in the first place are the same folks who rejoice when PV is drawn in that same "ugly-ass" costume with SM.

Same folks like, reblog and comment like it's the second coming of Jesus and treat it as some holy event lol

This hypocritical behaviour is vast and funny at the same time lol

What I find the most funny is, this costume came from an explicitly Purelily content, but suddenly none of it is good cuz it's about PV and WL and it should've been just her but at the same time, they'll drag PV's costume with them to ship with SM.

Now some ppl will say that "HEY THATS CUZ WL SHOULD SHINE ON HER OWN NOT WITH JUST A GUY."

But is it REALLY about just that?

Because if it is so, why does this costume set gain the hate? Why should it have been Elder Faerie?

Why do all these folks feel the need to keep mentioning how WL looks amazing but PV has to go but then at the same time, treat that very costume as the most beautiful thing ever when it's SM?

So is it REALLY about just the costume or WL or is it about a misogynistic view on WL and the urge to fit shipping agendas?

Because I'm willing to bet if it was EF, the costume set wouldn't faced any heat. Suddenly it being an AU scenario wouldn't have mattered and it would've been the ultimate "proof" that Elderlily is canon but since it's Purelily, it sucks.

Like someone who borrows your work but never credits you.

It’s just like someone copying your art project, using the parts they like, and then trashing your name when people ask where it came from.

Cuz that's exactly whats happening here.

The said-fans consistently hate this set cuz it's "ugly" but at the same time, when taken seperate, they suddenly love everything about it.

The same folks who felt it's "terrible" just a few moments back when tagged with WL and felt the overwhelming urge to keep writing how she slayed every other comment.

It's like that one meme where when a fan tears down a character all the time but, the moment they're called out, they say "But I like her too! I reblogged fanart once!" as if that magically excuses all the other behavior.

So the question is,

Do they even mean it?

Or they're saying so to not come off as misogynistic?

I personally feel it's the latter because they never talk about WL meaningfully beyond that. If you check, almost all their history is filled with ShadowVanilla and Elderlily content which isn't wrong but the way they show their concern as if it's affecting WL's very autonomy (when it's literally not) and how they're concerned about it is incredibly hypocritical.

Because these same ppl also have expressed posts and comments with thousands of likes and reblogs on how WL should've married EF and stayed in the Faerie kingdom forever.

Heck they even say that EF and WL got married in this AU set WHEN THERE'S NO EVIDENCE FOR THAT :D

Ultimately, I just really hate that folks who hate Purelily and this costume set so blatantly, get their attitudes changed in a sec when the narrative is changed to their agendas and would attack you aggressively if you say anything against that cultivated narrative but wouldn't hesitate in doing so to the Purelily community. Heck, they won't even THANK the ship for the beautiful set they love interacting and using for themselves let alone even talk about it outside of criticising it.

It's almost as if the word "Purelily" burns them if they say it.

They certainly would hate on it, not acknowledge its positives but def rip off from its positives.

So yeah, I personally hate this particular behaviour regarding the set.

Not to mention the mischaracterisation that accompanies it all.

Viridescent PV is labelled as just a simp and all his other personality traits are completely erased. Like even under the potion, he simply just proposed to WL, nothing beyond that. He didn't "simp", he simply proposed to the woman both of his dreams and love (literally and metaphorically) to be his wife, a person who through tears had to say that they can't be together forever cuz duty and reminds him of his as well which he accepts and starts wondering how he'll get over her in the morning.

Even under the potion, Viridescent PV def had his nuances and even a personality of that of a benevolent responsible king who just was in love with another who can't be his forever as well.

That's exactly the reason it's a tragic comedy because the situation is not only ironic but also happened due to what's a potion (which may or may not have been the reason PV is acting this way cuz it's the faeries who assume so, we have no idea if it's true cuz unreliable narrator)

But nope in CRK fandom, it's nothing but just a simp costume and reserved for simping. If it's with WL then bad but with SM? Very good!

So yeah, this is basically my thoughts on it.

TLDR, I don't mind if someone uses his costume for shipping it with SM, Idt its waiting to be hated on either but I really, REALLY hate it when they act like it's the worst thing ever when it's with WL when they don't even care about her outside shipping and are hating SOLELY because she's there with PV while also being self-aware that this may come off as misogynistic so actively doing damage control as well.

If you’re gonna use the aesthetics or symbols from a ship you don’t like, at least stop pretending that ship is trash. Don't profit off it and then spit on it.

It's really garbage behaviour.

[fishyaudio]

Raz, who's been your favourite design you've made for your anthro au? I have a feeling it's Saint lol

Your feeling is not wrong, she's a favourite to draw!

But if I had to choose one, favourite design ever out of the ten, it would be the one for Shine (aka Monk, I really need to start using the names I gave them all for the AU here as well, gahh)

It's a surprising choice for me, because when it came to in-game depiction + popular fandom interpretations of Monk, I never really liked the guy (not disliked, just didn't think about the character a lot and found others more interesting). I don't usually dig the "peaceful, kind, happy" archetype characters in media in general, it's just not my thing, and most "fanmade character extensions" of Monk I've seen just expanded on that alone. It's not that they're anyhow wrong! They're just really not my thing and it always itches me to introduce more contrast or flavor in personalities of that sort. It's suprisingly hard to write a character who is mainly just really pure and avoids conflict, at least for me. Unhinged beasts with weird morals are sometimes just easier to grasp bwahaha

And with that, since it's "character design" and not just "design" - that initially made me feel like designing and creating the anthro AU equivalent for Monk would be a neccessary struggle and when I'm done, I won't ever pay much attention to a character I'd consider a bit more flat in comparison to what I had planned for others. But the longer I sketched, more "what ifs" came to mind and I ended up with Shine - still the younger sibling, just taller and bigger than the scrawny, troublemaking, older one. Took advantage of Share (Gourmand) being his parent, so he takes after him in size and personality a bit more. That opened a really fun path to explore with him.

I've decided to link his pacifist mentality and kindness not to being childish and bit unwise, but to idealism, stronger sense of justice and an overall aspiration to be reliable and responsible. He's still young and naive, but it doesn't come from being childish and having a "kill them with kindness, no other options allowed" mentality, but rather from being an inexperienced, future leader with a lot of potential. One that's often being very harsh on himself when his mistakes or faulty judgement causes a slip-up or a situation escalated in a way he couldn't predict. Sometimes, things just happen and there was no way to foresee the consequences or avoid confrontation, despite how hard everyone tried, and that's also a part of life - that's something Shine would struggle to accept. He's naive, but not dumb. Even with that - it doesn't stop him from being a very trustworthy and quick-thinking individual. I like that about him!

And this is also what's reflected in the design - he's on the taller side, with a more blocky build. Flowy, loose clothes both make him look really comfortable and chill, visually suggesting that he's more laid-back, not active, not used to fights and messy situations, while also pushing the silhouette to be a one, sturdy shape even more. That just yells "you can approach and trust this guy easily" by looks alone. From smaller details - he has the monk symbol in a visible place on his belt -> wants to signal to others that he's not a threat and is always willing to talk things out or settle for a compromise. He doesn't have much more accessories -> doesn't like showing off and isn't desperate for attention. The only striking, busy pattern he has on him is the striped sleeve to match his sib - he values Ways (Survivor) a lot!

From other designs for the AU - March, Ways and Steps (Spearmaster, Survivor and Rivulet) are also my favourites for various reasons, but this post is already a yap session. Maybe next time, if anyone's curious.

Thanks for the ask! Gave me an excuse to draw them more!!

AU tag here!

[zepskies]

Oh my God wow, thank you so much, friend!! 🥹 It's amazing to me that you set aside the time not just to listen to this, but to have so much thoughtful feedback to share about it! 💕

This was my very first time hearing your voice, and I feel the need to point out what a pleasant voice you have, Alex! And I do mean this in the most sincere way, coming from someone who can be very very picky about what voices to listen to. I know this wasn't the point of the podcast, but I had to let you know :)

ehehe omg thank you!!! 🥰 I used to hate my own voice in recordings, so that makes me feel better. 😂

That's such an amazing compliment!! 😭 You know I try my best to get the characters' voices and mannerisms right, especially Dean because he's living in my heart for such a long time. I tried really hard in Smoke Eater too because that was my first full AU story ever.

ahhhhhh I loved Yellowstone!! Haha I think the reason I didn't go that route is because I didn't want to outright copy the show, but maybe now that I've finished watching it I'll come back to the idea of a modern cowboy AU for Dean.

Awww I love that, of course you're included!!! 💗💗

First of all, I found it very interesting that despite your own heritage, you grew up with a white reader in mind. Just goes to show how predominantly a white person is and has been the main character in so much of media that that's what your brain defaulted to.

yuuuup, that's what it was. Plus in school I was always the minority, especially because the families that went to my school were much wealthier than mine.

I also thought your discussion about what makes an OC an OC and where a reader insert stops being a reader insert suuuper interesting. Because that's a genuine question! Where does a blank slate stop being a blank slate, and how much character do you have to give to the reader role in a reader insert fic for the story still to work, right? I loved to hear your take on it, especially where you said that writing reader inserts is basically like writing OCs without giving them a name. - I had never thought about it that way! But of course, you're right. Because a reader that is an active participant in a story can't be a completely blank slate. They have to be assigned certain traits, not necessarily body-wise but character wise - if you're doing more than a drabble, imo. For there to be dialogue and a story that feels full, that feels alive, the reader has to have some sort of character to be a character.

Oooh thank you! Exactly! I know people tend to think of "reader" as a blank slate. But that only works for a drabble imo. Even in a longer one-shot, let alone a series, that blank slate is just a flat character with no personality, like in an otome game or something lol. Ultimately I get frustrated reading those characters, so I prefer to write and read reader characters that make active decisions in the story and have a personality, even if it's not "what I would do." Because even when I'm writing a reader character, she might have aspects of "me," but overall she's usually not me. She's a character, whether I give her a name or a physical description or not.

Which brings me to my next point: projectability is always a thing of perspective and the ability to put yourself into someone's shoes. As far as fanfiction goes, the reader insert genre tries to make that as easy as possible by offering a mostly blank slate (that is very often white-coded, unfortunately, but that's not the point I'm trying to make in this paragraph). I have seen people complain more than once about the character!reader being unrelatable because of certain character traits and/or backstories that were assigned to them, and I wonder: people, where has your media literacy gone? Do they not teach to adapt to a person's perspective via literature in schools anymore? Must all media cater exactly to your every taste, down to each very nuance?

Yeah, it's often white-coded because white writers aren't typically thinking of other races/ethnicities, even when they write a "reader" character. 😅 Also why sometimes those reader characters are very not relatable to me on how they speak and act lol. (Though this could also be because there are a lot of younger writers out here now, so that could be more related to age and maturity.)

I've def seen those posts that have readers complaining lol. I also think that's the case of people who are either young or not used to reading normal books, just fanfiction. Because 2nd person in the literary world is actually really rare. I try to make my stories and reader characters compelling, but I wonder if my stuff actually appeals to the younger demo of readers now (early 20s and younger).

I love how you give personality to your reader characters, Alex. Especially when it comes to your own representation. You said in the podcast that you were worried about how the traits you assigned to your reader in the Midnight Espresso-verse would be received by your audience and that you received great feedback. I want to reiterate that by saying how despite myself not having the same background as you, I could absolutely relate to the plus-size aspect of the reader, as well as her love for cooking. You said it so beautifully in the podcast, that this version of the reader is one that came from the intent of Dean having a (Latino) girlfriend that nurtured him in the same way he nurtures the people around him, and I fully 100% could relate to that as well :) Which might be my very complicated and long way of saying: Please do not worry about how much the reader can adapt to the traits you're giving to the character!reader. If most character!readers have been predominantly white for the longest time and so so many people that where not white made it work, then so can we white folks when we are given a reader that does not fit all of "our" typical criteria.

I appreciate you so much for this! 🥹🥹 Yes overall I've gotten way more encouraging and fun feedback than I ever expected for the Midnight Espresso-verse, certainly for that first story. I came at it with the thought that some women would relate to the plus-sized aspects, while other Latinas might enjoy the ethnic representation. And non-Latinos could maybe enjoy exploring a different culture if they wanted to dive in. I'm really grateful that you did!! 💕 And yeah that mutual "nurturing" aspect with her and Dean was 100% my favorite part about creating their relationship. 🥰

Yeah, honestly even if she's more OC than reader at this point, I don't really mind. I've loved writing every story in the ME-verse. Of course I've gotten a lot of wonderful responses from other Latinos on that series, but overall it's been my non-Latino friends who have supported me the most on that series. 💓💓

It made me very happy to hear that you're seeing more and more diversity within the SPN fandom these days. I've spent most of my time in the PPCU fandom this past year and all across it, but specifically in the Joel Miller fandom, there have been too many racist instances. It's great to hear that it's going better in other fandoms!

omg really? How so racist? That's so icky, especially for Pedro and his characters since he's such a sweetheart and very open about the joys and struggles of being a Latino and an immigrant in Hollywood 😭

Which brings me to my next point - the anon request you got that led you to writing Unravel Me 👀 Wow. I haven't read it yet. It was on my TBR list anyway, but hearing you talk about how it came to be and how much thought you put into it (understandably so) it's now an absolute must-read for me. (Sort of unrelated but still related: I've seen your playlist covers for the story, and - wow??? A masterpiece??? Visually, I mean?! The EFFORT. I'll be speaking about this in a second, but I needed to mention it now in case I forget! Gorgeous!)

Aw thank you so much for putting it on your TBR! 🥰 Even though I'm not 100% sure it was ready to be posted, I've done my best, even knowing it was going to be so niche that not a lot of people would likely read it lol. Honestly that's part of why I created those playlist covers -- to try and hook people with the visuals to get them to read the series. 🤣🤣

Though I did do playlist covers for Break Me Down (Soldier Boy x Reader), Lost on You (Soldier Boy x Supe!Reader), and Between the City & the Stars (1940s!Dean x Reader). I just love playing with that template. 😆 But also the music playlist for Unravel Me was so fun to put together, I knew I wanted to create those posters for Side A and B. It's really just a bonus if they manage to hook people and get them excited for the next part of the series. 🥰💜💙❤️

Another point that had me thinking a lot was the question about how much of an immigrant's identity should be kept and how much should be adapted to the country they've moved to also captivated me. I know US politics in regards to immigrants are ""problematic"" atm to say the least, and it's been a widely discussed topic over here in Germany for years now as well, especially with the heavy influx of immigrants over the past years. I can't imagine how complicated it must be, figuring out a sense of self that both fits to where you live and still keeps the core parts of who you are and were before coming to said country.

Oh God, yeah. It's always been a hot-button issue in the U.S., but especially now of course. Interesting that Germany has seen a big influx in immigration too. But yeah, I really dove into studying that aspect of being bicultural when I started reading short stories by Sandra Cisneros in high school and college. She's Mexican American and her works explore, through her characters, the nature of “los intersticios (the cracks)”—those spaces between the different "worlds" she lives in for being bicultural—all in effort to figure out her own inner identity.  

It is complicated. It's affected my own sense of self, my relationships within my own family, let alone friends, etc. And everyone's layers are different, whether they're a first, second, or third generation immigrant family.

I want to wrap this up by saying how incredibly impressed I am every single time I hear/read about how you prep for your stories. I think you are by far the most in-depth fanfiction writer that I know. You put so much research into it, and not just for The Honorable Choice, but everything you put out. I'm struggling to find the correct words to properly express how admiring I find it, especially for a story like The Honorable Choice where you take on the perspective of someone of a different ethnic background than you.

Wow, thank you so much, friend. 🥹🥹 The Honorable Choice was such a fun passion project, and scary too! lol I'm a nerd who genuinely loves the research, especially bc I love history. But it was also because I respect the cultures of Native Americans too much to get it wrong. I did my best to represent the Lakota tribe in the late 1800s to the best of my ability while still giving an entertaining love story, so hopefully it was authentic. 💗

You are an inspiration, Alex. Truly. Thank you for welcoming me into the writing space when I came back. Thank you for answering every question I had, and thank you for the work you put into all of your stories. To you, to your talent, your inspiration and work ethic, and to many more stories to come! 🩵

You've literally made my entire week so much brighter and are making me blush, lovely!! If I could be any small support to you then I'm so glad to hear it. 💕 People did the same for me when I started my blog over here, and I'm actually really excited to share a (hopefully) fun writing event soon with you guys!!

Racial & Ethnic Representation in Fanfiction

[🎙️ Podcast Interview]

Hey, friends! Sandra and Kasey, the lovely hosts of @idlingintheimpalapodcast — the podcast for all things SPN and fanfiction — invited me back on the pod for an interview on a topic that's very close to my heart…

With @rubyvhs, we talked about the fun moments and challenges about reading and writing fanfiction that represents specific racial and ethnic cultures, being bicultural/multicultural, the immigrant experience, and much more.

I offered my own experience as a Latina POC writing in the fandom space, specifically Supernatural and The Boys (and adjacent Jackles fandoms).

Check it out here: ⤵️

Interview Timestamps –

(Plus fic recs, SPN writer/reader shoutouts, and more! Links to all the fics we mentioned are at each time stamp.)

2:54 – When did you start writing fanfiction, and when did you join SPN fandom?

⟡ You can check out my first author interview with Sandra and Kasey over here. We chatted about Dean Winchester and Jensen Ackles’ early roles, the best and worst seasons of SPN, the joys and pains of writing Soldier Boy, and much, much more. For all the timestamps of key moments, fic recs, and SPN writer shoutouts, see this post (you'll find the link to the video there too).

6:18 – What is your ethnic, racial, and cultural background? (And how me and Sandra bond over “food and family” ties between Hispanics/Latinos and Italians.)

13:05 – The immigrant experience in America, what you take with you from the “Motherland,” the struggles of bicultural identity, my personal experience being a second-generation child of an immigrant family, and Sandra’s experience as a first-generation child of Italian immigrants.

16:58 – What do you look for when you’re reading fanfiction? (Canon-compliant, AU, romance, etc.) Does the length of a story matter?

19:52 – Bonus: The merits of drabble writing vs. long-fic writing.

25:54 – Have you ever actively searched for fanfiction that represented your ethnicity? (Whenever I do, it’s like finding gold.) Plus, the challenge of writing reader characters, the “gray area” of writing reader characters like OCs.

32:38 – The inherent “bias” of reading and writing reader characters as White. The concept of diversity being “cool” in popular media, TV shows, and movies is still pretty new.

36:36 – Why I started writing reader characters that might have a specific body type, race, and/or ethnicity.

Examples:

⟡ Midnight Espresso – Dean Winchester x Plus-size Latina!Reader

⟡ If I Stay – Dean Winchester x Plus-size!Reader

⟡ 10 ‘Til Midnight – Professor!Dean Winchester x Plus-size Grad Student!Reader

⟡ Unravel Me – Soldier Boy x Afro-Latina!Reader

⟡ The Honorable Choice & Outlander – Cowboy!Dean Winchester x OFC

40:14 – The fun challenges: like giving Dean a partner who takes care of him as much as he takes care of others in Midnight Espresso.

45:28 – The BIG challenges: like writing Soldier Boy being himself with a “person of color” (POC) in this new series, Unravel Me. What even is a POC? Where do you start with Soldier Boy, the Sandra-proclaimed “bowl of fishhooks?"

51:38 – Is there ever an element of fear when you publicly post a story that represents your culture, which is something very personal to you? What happens when you get haters in the comments?

1:05:33 – When and how did you begin to break out of the “ingrained biases” in your writing? (AKA: Always assuming my own characters are White.)

1:08:04 – When did you decide to explore writing plus-size!readers?

1:13:20 – What has your experience been in writing a race/culture outside of your personal experience? The Honorable Choice and Outlander, a western AU where Dean Winchester falls in love with a Native American Lakota Indian. (Shoutout to @jacklesversebingo!)

Plus, the ethical responsibility to “do no harm” when you represent different cultures, and answering question of not only can I write this, but should I write this?

1:32:42 – What advice would you give a writer interested in writing about a culture outside of their own that they don’t have first-hand knowledge of? How can a writer avoid cultural appropriation if their goal is cultural appreciation? How important is a sensitivity reader/beta reader for this effort?

1:40:35 – Final thoughts on diversity and representation of culture in fanfiction, whether it’s your own or someone else’s:

“Write what you know. Write what you can research. Write what you’re interested in. Remember that words have power, so be careful how you use them.”

1:45:30 – Sandra and Kasey’s outro: The importance of representation and diversity in fandom.

I hope you enjoy the ride!~ 💜

💗💗💗 Shoutouts to some of my beautiful friends and lovely readers who've supported my attempts to explore ethnic and cultural diversity in my writing:

@luci-in-trenchcoats @lamentationsofalonelypotato @waynes-multiverse @rizlowwritessortof @roseblue373

@tofics @deanwinchesterswitch @deanbrainrotwritings @deansbbyx @waywardlatina

@supernotnatural2005 @wayward-dreamer @spnwoman @waywardxwords @mostlymarvelgirl

@chevroletdean (shoutout to your 500 follower fic challenge at around 19:52 😘) @siampie @bettystonewell @wvffles

@iprobablyshipit91 @my-stories-vault @littlesoulshine @thatonewriter15 @jessjad

@deans-spinster-witch @winchestergirl2 @kazsrm67 @chernayawidow @jackles010378

@jollyhunter @leigh70 @foxyjwls007 @beakaleak32 @alwaystiredandconfused

[fluentmoviequoter]

in the lyrics

a social media AU: Tim Bradford x fem!singer!reader

yourusername added to their story

caption: and away we go stateside🫶🏼

aaronthorsen replied: still waiting on my VIP pass

-> yourusername: you can afford one

-> aaronthorsen: you know they're sold out... please?

-> yourusername: no :)

fan625 replied: I CANNOT wait to see you in L.A.😭

fanattics replied: Add a Louisiana show and my first baby is yours

sumerianrecords

sumerianrecords: @/yourusername turned London red last week♥️ you ready, America?

1.3mil likes, comments on this post have been limited

ii_sleeptoken: 🥁

-> yourusername: I think my next album needs more standard paradiddles... thoughts?

-> iii_sleeptoken: @/yourusername 🤺

-> yourusername: @/iii_sleeptoken we can share🥹

-> iv_sleeptoken: @/yourusername 🎸

lauv: what I'd give for a piece of that confetti

-> yourusername: come to the next show and I'll give you some👀

yourprivateusername made a post

yourprivateusername: memories from tour💕

1k likes, 44 comments

aaronthorsen: you're welcome for the last slide. where's my ticket?

-> yourprivateusername: notice it wasn't first

-> lucychen: @/aaronthorsen you're not her favorite, move aside

-> yourprivateusername: @/lucychen 😘

timbradford: Don't come home

-> yourprivateusername: k. @/angelalopez have an extra room?

-> timbradford: why are you like this?

aaronthorsen

caption: @/yourusername was the perfect end to a busy week

tagged: @/yourusername, @/wesleyeversla, @/angelalopez, @/timbradford, @/lucychen, @/celinajuarez, @/nylaharper, @/wadegrey, @/johnnolan

❤️ by @/yourusername, @/lucychen, and 23k others

lucychen: we need to do this every week

user99: I'm so jealous you got tickets

grumpycop: is Tim Bradford single? asking for a friend

-> user12: wouldn't he be cute with @/yourusername?

-> yourfan1: @/user12 WAIT OML

lunagrey: a whole wall of shirts yet I didn't get one

-> wadegrey: I left it in Tim's car

-> angelalopez: he did, I'll be his alibi. I also helped him pick it

ultimatefanofyours posted a poll:

Are 'Red' and 'Man in Black' about the same guy?

Vote: yes or no

15k votes

comments

pianokeys: better question is WHO is the guy

user5: I have a feeling she's dating someone we know about

-> fan14: the fun part is that it's none of our business babe

-> userloser: I've been saying Oli Sykes for years but no one listens to me

-> firstfan: @/userloser I was wondering if he was British too! weird that she's never done a US tour before now

fanzfan: listen to the lines in 'sleeping on the phone' and 'siren lights' then tell me she's not dating a cop

-> rosefan: she is friends with Aaron Thorsen

-> user12: I've been summoned. Now, I will present my essay on why Tim Bradford - a cop Aaron Thorsen knows - and our queen would be the perfect pair...

-> fanzfan: @/user12 fam where's the essay

yourusername posted to their story

sumerianrecords posted to their story

caption: @/yourusername and @/badomens sharing a studio?

user73 replied: I'll die if it's a duet do you want that on your conscience admin??

drumeo replied: us next?

-> sumerianrecords: I'll pass the message along!

fan100: takeover when???

timbradford posted to their story

lucychen replied: Tim you can't just post that

yourusername replied: I stand by what I said but I don't know why you're bringing it up

-> timbradford: you called me weird. YOU... called me... weird. and a pretty girl

-> yourusername: I'm dropping your name in the sumerian live and letting people doxx you

-> timbradford: weird

-> yourusername: I love you🤍

-> timbradford: I love you too but just text me I hate this app

-> yourusername: YOU STARTED- nvm whatever you want handsome

sumerianrecords started a live video: Hang with @/yourusername

comments:

-> fan40oz: oh to be as pretty as @/yourusername

-> user12: are you dating @/timbradford? would you?

-> fan1234: Is the Bad Omens collab really happening?

-> noahsvoiceiniv: knowing that you're friends with Noah makes me happy every time I remember it

-> user12: are red, man in black, siren lights, and sleeping on the phone about your s/o????

-> ii_sleeptoken: 🥁

-> fan1: oh he's back

-> iii_sleeptoken: 🎸

-> user6: she's collecting british metal bands like infinity stones😭

-> bringmethehorizon: are we gonna have a problem?

-> badomens: no tea and biscuits here fellas

yourprivateusername added to their story

caption: someone get these men out of the comment section or I'm going to lose it on live

timbradford replied: just tell them you're taken

-> yourprivateusername: you'd be the riot control babe

-> timbradford: never mind

-> timbradford: unless you want to

-> yourprivateusername: really?

-> timbradford: I've never cared

-> yourprivateusername: can we talk tonight?

-> timbradford: we can always talk

yourprivateusername added to their story

caption: I survived the sumerian live, someone reward me

aaronthorsen replied: sounds like tim's job

lucychen replied: you did so well!! I loved watching

yourusername

yourusername: the man in the lyrics, the man in my heart, the man whose hand fits perfectly in mine🤍

tagged: @/timbradford

2.2m likes, 6.4k comments

user12: I TOLD YOU PEOPLE BUT DID ANYONE LISTEN TO ME

-> fanzfan: I've believed you all along

-> yourusername: why am I shipping 2 strangers in my comment section?? ❤️ by user12, fanzfan, lucychen, and 112 more

fan23: can he fight?

-> fan901: can SHE fight?

-> aaronthorsen: yes and yes

kikehndez: that's not Dodgers stadium

-> yourusername: maybe you could hook us up then🙏

-> kikehndez: @/yourusername only if you agree to sing when we win

yourprivateusername added to their story

caption: someone asked if I'm *committed* to my boyfriend... look at these pictures. would someone who isn't in love keep these?

timbradford replied: yes. because you hate me

-> yourusername: *love

lucychen replied: umm... can I ss these?

aaronthorsen replied: You really know how to pick them

aaronthorsen replied: Please don't tell him I said that

memesaboutyourmusic

memesaboutyourmusic: not a meme, just the vibe I get from queen's boyfriend

❤️ by @/yourusername, @/carpartz, and 20k more

user12: and I love them for that

fan-8: listening to the older songs is so much more emotional now knowing she was talking about him😭 esp 'failed justice'

-> user4: RIGHT?! the 'oceans between us and my tears only flooded them' what happened to those babies????

-> fan27: @/user4 that was written during her Australia tour three years ago so they must’ve been dating or married but long distance

lucychen: @/yourusername

-> fan12: hi Lucy can I send you my pitch to be adopted by @/yourusername and the man she keeps posting pictures of

-> lucychen: @/fan12 that's the exact amount of respect he deserves and I appreciate it so yeah send it over

-> yourusername: @/lucychen who let you out?

-> lucychen: @/yourusername it's my enrichment time

yourusername: accurate, but he's the neck-breaking husband

-> fan12: WHAT

-> user4: WHAT

-> noahsvoiceiniv: WHAT

-> aaronthorsen: WHAT

-> timbradford: Why?

-> yourusername: @/timbradford because there's love in me <3 ❤️ by @/lucychen, and 120k others

2 weeks later...

sumerianrecords, badomens, and yourusername

sumerianrecords: 'because there's love in me' by @/yourusername and co-written by @/badomens is out this Friday

1.8m likes, 11k comments

fan12: we honestly should have realized it was a song reference

badomens: 🖤

yourusername: admin did you forget something?

-> sumerianrecords: that's up to you princess

-> fan40oz: @/sumerianrecords admin her husband might kill you

-> fan1: I'm scared

yourusername

yourusername: I flew to Virginia as soon as the American tour ended. In the past few weeks, I've learned a lot, written more, and made some friendships that will stand the tests of time and trials. Forgive me for being absent, but thank you to those of you who came out to the shows, those that have made my husband feel welcome, and those who made funny memes that brought me and my friends laughter until it was way too late and suddenly everything was funny. My new single 'because there's love in me' comes out this Friday, but if you don't want to listen to it, that's okay. Next Friday, another version will be released, but until then, I've got a flight to catch and sleep to catch up on. lots of love💗

3mil likes, comments on this post have been limited

sumerianrecords: a view almost as pretty as its photographer

lucychen: so excited to see you

fan12: both versions will be on repeat!! get the rest you need🤍

ii_sleeptoken: 🥁

-> yourusername: 🥁

-> timbradford: 🥁

[chubbybunny25]

Day 3: Arranged Marriage

have this oneshot (800+ words lol) for the vision i have for the jercy political marriage au i've been thinking abt since last yr. idk when i'll start working on it actually, but i hope you enjoy this.

@jercy-events

He looks like Luke.

That’s the first thing that Percy thinks of upon seeing the Roman praetor.

With those cerulean eyes—calculating, almost cold—along with his cropped blond hair and the scar on his lips, one would think he’s related to Luke Castellan.

But somehow, the similarities stop with the way they look. Percy doesn’t remember feeling uneasy with Luke’s presence upon first meeting him. If anything, all Luke radiated back then was trustworthiness. Sure, there was a mischievous glint in his eyes, but that could be attributed to his godly parentage.

Yet, this man before him—there’s something imposing, unsettling, with him. Even as a bearer of the Achilles Curse, Percy shudders at the thought that if this Roman so decides, he can definitely rip Percy into shreds. 

Percy steels himself. He can’t afford to be intimidated now. He’ll do anything—absolutely anything—to prevent another war from happening.

Negotiating peace with the Romans is the key to ensure Camp Half-Blood’s safety.

∞

“A wedding?” Percy springs up from where he’s sitting at the rec-room along with Chiron, Annabeth, Nico, Clarisse, Jake, Will, Drew, the Stolls, and the Roman praetors, Jason Grace and Reyna.. (she refused to say her full name).

“What? You’re old enough, yes?” Right. And there’s also their favorite goddess, Hera, who is “leading” (whatever that means) this meeting. “Too old actually. Back in the day—”

“Waitwaitwait! A wedding?”

“Yes, Perseus.” The goddess seems bored while she flicks her hand. “A wedding. Marriage. Union between two camps. Between the two most powerful demigods of this generation. You as the Hero of Olympus, and Jason as my Champion.”

A sacrifice, is what Percy hears.

He looks over the other man—Jason—across the table tennis table. His face doesn’t betray any of his emotions, so very far from his sister, Thalia Grace, who always makes it a point to let everyone know when she’s irritated.

The son of Poseidon wants to argue that Nico di Angelo can be more powerful than him, but the son of Hades has just been settling at camp, not even a resident there, mostly doing errands for his father for the past five years.

But Percy is not the kind to point fingers and pass the burden to anyone, especially to Nico; he took the Great Prophecy years ago for him after all.

So Percy Jackson does what he thinks is right:

He walks away.

∞

“What have you got to lose?” Percy spats when, during dinner, the son of Jupiter thought it would be a good idea to bring him food in Cabin 3. He doesn’t know what runs on Jason’s mind and somehow, that annoys Percy all the more. “You’ve trained for this all your life. You grew up at camp, for fuck’s sake! But I’ve got a life, Jason Grace!”

Percy really doesn’t. He never dated again after Annabeth; he doesn’t know what to do with his degree; he feels like a foreigner in his mom’s apartment now that she’s got a “normal” family.

But no one has to know that.

“You’re right.” Jason’s voice is calm—too calm, like everything before a storm. “Maybe I’ve got nothing to lose. But my camp needs me and I’m not the kind of leader to lead them to war. Good night, Percy.”

∞

Percy is having anything, but a good night.

Of course, he can’t sleep. No matter how tired he is, no matter how drained he feels. He knows he said too much, reacted on impulse. Again.

Jason doesn’t deserve Percy lashing out like that. No one deserves something like that—someone rubbing in their faces the things that life hasn’t allowed them to have. For all Percy knows, Jason has wanted to have a life, too.

Percy might not know exactly how life has been at Camp Jupiter, but by the way Jason Grace and his co-praetor carry themselves—that silent but powerful strength underneath those composed and observant gazes. That can only be borne out of rigid training.

The respect they have for the gods—their own parents who abandoned them to fend for themselves—is like their second nature. The dedication they have to keep the lives of future demigods.

Ugh, Percy feels bad for being such an asshole.

∞

“Thank you for your hospitality, Chiron.” Reyna says as she and Jason bids goodbye to the centaur. “Please let us know if Percy considers Juno’s idea.”

“For now, all we can do is to keep this a secret from our people,” Jason adds.

“I understand,” Chiron agrees. “It’s safer like that.”

As Reyna is mounting her pegasus and Jason summoning his storm-spirit, Percy comes running with a duffel bag in hand.

“Perseus, where are you going?” Chiron inquires.

“I’m coming with them,” the son Poseidon says matter-of-factly. “If you want me to consider this, I need to know more about Camp Jupiter and… Jason.”

Percy counts it a win to see Jason’s amused smile. So he knows how to smile, too.

“I’ll inform Lady Hera,” the centaur sighs, seemingly to resign to his fate of dealing with another Percy Jackson moment. He hasn’t even finished speaking when Percy calls for Blackjack.

[thequeenofthedisneyverse]

Saja boys AU (more explained below)

So, this au is like the same in canon but with a few minor changes. The Saja boys were born in like, THIS century. In the au all of them are in their early twenties so they are 2000's babies. All of them are 20-23/24 at the most.

They are still demons but just demons that were able to grow up alongside humans. All of them have their own families, like Huntrix, but were specifically chosen by Gwi-Ma to destroy the honmoon because they were born with the voice's to do so.

Here's the thing though, Gwi-Ma made that they're one and ONLY purpose. They could do things outside of singing but those were hobbies they wouldn't dare try to make into career's due to fear of Gw-Ma's....insanity.

Jinu was actually "raised" by Gwi-Ma though. Before being adopted, Jinu was an orphaned demon child on the streets (in the demon world of course, I'm still thinking of the world building, okay?!) with his baby sister until Gwi-Ma took an interest in him.

Of course, he uses Jinu's baby sis as a way to threaten Jinu to keep going, why wouldn't he? But Gwi-Ma doesn't REALLY need to do all that because he cares about his little sister and the rest of the Saja boys too.

The boys, other than Jinu, actually do have personalities in this I'm just workshopping them. One little fact though, Geon (baby) is the oldest out of all of the boys. He was born in December a few days before the ball drop hence why he's older, but he's never felt like the older brother of the group. Brodie more so behaves like the middle child than anything.

Let's get names out of the way (and I put them in the order they were born

Geon Lee - Baby

Jinu is still Jinu

Hyun-ki Han - Romance

Daewon Shin - Mystery

Won-shik Yoon - Abby (Yes, Abby is the youngest 'cause why not? I find that funny)

What ya'll think for now? My asks are open if you want to share thoughts or anything. I sent an x reader ask with this prompt and WAS going to wait for the writer to post the fic but I'm too impatient for that.