#like 'i wanna be part of the lambda chapter... :('

[windor-truffle]

λ.

for whatever reason my first thought when i saw this ask was "would it be possible to make that shape with your body?" before realizing no, it's probably not humanly possible...

[moonysbookshelves]

The Cadence of Part-Time Poets

The Cadence of Part-Time Poets by @motswolo

Have been working on this 10 volume set for the past few months now, and they are finally complete. My Magnum Opus. I have peaked and probably depleted all of my brain power.

Thank you to @motswolo for writing such a beautiful story. My brain chemistry has been favourably altered. Will forever flinch when I hear Queen, The Beatles or Bob Dylan. Love to you from western Canada (west coast best coast lets gooooo).

I also posted a TikTok Reel of these since posts here are limited and I love the insides as much as the covers, so if you wanna see between the pages, here’s that.

Also thank you @avisbindery for letting me scream and cry in your DMs while I read the fic. May you get some uninterrupted sleep now LOLLL.

Going to write a whole essay below about the ideas and details because uhhh I wanna yap bit!

So for starters, I wanted to make these binds look like magazines because of the epilogue where (spoiler) Tonya sees Remus in a copy of New Musical Express. But of course this fic is long, so I was like, what if I do multiple volumes? This very quickly spiralled into me painstakingly (finding publication-accurate fonts almost sent me to an early grave) recreating 10 different music-focused magazines from the 70s and 80s from scratch (thank you to Photoshop, Affinity, Procreate and Canva). Each volume features a unique cover, along with stylized typesets to match that display the songs for each chapter but in different designs. And then I went a little crazy and made a 45 sleeve and a cassette too, to really set the scene when I took the photos lol

While the covers display the dates pertaining to the contents of that particular volume (Sept 1975 for volume one, for example) I was thinking about what the magazines would say if they were really published when Marauders are traipsing about being spectacular and famous in the future. I sprinkled in details from the fic itself and fanon-ed it a bit, but that was the general inspiration :-) Tried to keep the photos used either faceless/obscured, or to use the fancasts on Mots’ Cadence master post. I also tried to use period-accurate photos but didn’t always succeed, so settled for photos of 4 member bands where I had to :”) But the general intent with the facelessness was that they could be implied to be Marauders. If you squint? lol. Just pretend. Pls.

Volume One: Based upon The Record Song Book. This magazine went on to inspire the typesets, since it publishes lyrics and such. The cover images are of Spacey Jane and David Thewlis.

Volume Two: Based on ZigZag, specifically the issue from July 1978 featuring Siouxie and the Banshees just because I thought it looked sick as fuck. I re-drew the abstract shapes and such in procreate. The cover images are The Clash and a young Gary Oldman. Lord he was foiiine.

Volume Three: Based on Trouser Press, November 1980. The cover images are a young Metallica, and my personal fav fan cast for James, Reiky De Valk. The film negatives are from a Bruce Springsteen tour, 1976.

Volume Four: Based on Gay Times (November 1984), a queer magazine from the UK because this volume contains Wolfstars first kiss hehe. Also hence Somebody To Love plastered all over the covers. The Front cover is Inhaler. The “4A” on this one is of course the boys’ dorm number, but I made the A the lambda symbol as this was a pride symbol in the 70s after Stonewall.

Volume Five: Based on Melody Maker. Front image is Alex Turner. All of the text on this one is pulled directly from the fic. The scene where they all drop acid and James jumps off the roof Almost Famous style had me hootin’ and hollerin’… until Tomny showed up hahaha :”)

Volume Six: Based on IT (International Times, Aug 1971). Front image for this one is Joy Division, and the back features Jane Asher for Lily

Volume Seven: Based on Record Mirror, June 1976. Front image is John Taylor of Duran Duran. Yum.

Volume Eight: Based on Rolling Stone. More vibes than anything for this one, but the quote still makes me laugh.  Front image is of Matt Hitt. Can you tell I photoshopped a cell phone out of this one? IDK. This photo just screamed ‘Remus’ to me so I had to use it. The back image is an old cigarette ad, but the photo is taken in Shepherd’s Bush.

Volume Nine: Based on Fusion magazine. Front image for this one is once again Inhaler. Oops. Back cover is our gals. Images are Jodie Foster as Cherry, Brenda Sykes as Mary, and Goldie Hawn as Lottie.

Volume Ten: Based on New Musical Express. You know why :”) These are all victims of fanon, but this one especially. I wanted it to be NME instead of the re-invented logos I’d been doing for all the rest, as I wanted it to look like the magazine the Sister gives to Tonya. I referred to an issue of NME from October 1979 for this and layered in fic references where it made sense to. The cover image for this one is (I think) Cigarettes After Sex. This issue also contains all of the B-Side chapters, and the Marauders song lyrics too just for fun :)

Slasher Chick: This is just my take on what Sybill’s zine could’ve looked like. Prob way off but I just wanted to have fun with this one since I had no cover to reference lol. The zine contains her little write-up and the interview, lifted straight from the fic :")

ok yap sesh over byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee lmfaooooo

[hungrydolphin91]

WIP Folder Game

Rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Tag as many people as you have WIPs. People can send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, then post a little snippet/preview or tell them something about it!

Thank you Jay (@lildoodlecat) for tagging me!! You have such hilarious titles for your wips, I feel like mine are more boring/straightforward by comparison 😅 luckily for me I recently made a list of all my wips and their words counts (the document word count, most of it is NOT prose) so I can just copy and paste it here. fair warning, there's quite a few, and some of them have been "on hiatus (i'll come back someday bet)" for years so i may have less to say about them if prompted. But without further ado here's the doc titles of all of my Tales wips!

Graces:

Grace richass hurt/comfort: 1456

Graces AU Compilation 2 Eletric Boogaloo (You Shape Me): 465

Graces AU of ambiguous definition but it's the same bullshit I always write (Training Wheels): 4982

Graces AUs in a jumbled mess (titled ones include: Seasons Are Changing; Lambda 2 Electric Boogaloo: There's Another One, Folks; Inside and Out. also a G/T Richass AU and a Psi POV story): 19,933

Graces Berzesty AU: 2285

Graces Chapters (Two Hearts Could Be One part 1): 47,862

Graces charcter reference and outline (Two Hearts Could Be One part 2): 92,690

Graces long fic: The Sequel (Two Hearts Could Be Two): 19,616

Graces rarepair Cheribert ideas: 2430

Zesty:

Living House AU: 15,857 (items with an * are wips under this same AU. Yes, they're all house-related puns)

*Room For Improvement: 4083

*Welcome Home: 5754

*Amazon Home: 951

*Shingles Virus: 2328

Joyride: 5339

Sormik timeloop angst: 1387

Innominat Returns (Falling Awake): 33,304

Zestiria but I dont have a name for it yet idk how to describe it either (personality nonsense): 1275

Zestiria ideas in a jumbled mess (featuring AUs such as human!mikleo, cult Elysia, noragami AU, Skyward Sword AU, that one kinky one): 14,695

Rose and Mikleo’s Day Off: 4185

Berseria:

Berseria But I Don’t Have a Title Yet (To Walk With the Reaper): 5453

Berseria Van Eltia Fluff (Maiden Voyage): 608

Bien-formant: 342

Diary of a Pengyon: 1579

Dotnw:

Dontw Polwiggle: 3115

Dontw Spur of the Moment fic (Didn’t Know I Was Lost): 1312

Vesperia:

Fighting of the Spirit: 1345

Ghost Trick Repede (Chance 4 a Big Reversal): 12904

Vespy nonsense of the self-indulgent kind (Angel/Demon AU with so many cliches you're gonna drown in them): 1471

Vespy Ooo (Without a Shadow): 6211

Xillia 1&2:

Eurydice: 378

Kind of a depressing mess (RIP Julius): 901

Notes for Leia (aka this girl has problems (and maybe a ghost) haunting her): 1153

Some kind of Xillia AU (ft. AUs such as spiritvessel!Jude and spirit!Jude): 4873

Sad fractured dimension stuff (jude's sister AU): 2091

Smol jude: 1281

Arise:

Werewolf!Law (You’re Running in Circles): 2332

Okay, that's all of them, currently! I really do write a lot for this fandom I just never finish anything ever so they stay stuck in my wips folder forever 😅 But anyone is free to ask me about these, in fact I will take your interest in my half-baked ideas as flattery of the highest form 💜

As for tagging others, I think Jay already snagged up my mutuals so I will open this up to literally anyone who sees this, Tales fan or no. And please @ me in it, I wanna see what other people are working on!!!!

[chidoroki]

182 Days of TPN - Day 157

Chapter 157: "The World is Mine"

I can't help but get Avatar vibes from this, at least towards the part when Jake recalls what Neytiri once told him about how "all energy is only borrowed and one day you have to give it back." It's a nice mindset and this scene would be very pleasant if there wasn't a human dying on the ground. Imagine trying to learn from your teacher and you just hear your kill whimpering and coughing as it struggles to stay alive as background noise. Kinda brings down the mood of this serene forest.

Sonju is the king they all deserve, even though I can't really see him take on such a role.

Hilarious that Norman says he can't carry Zazie when we see Ray do so by himself later in ch160. All those Lambda experiments made boss look like an adult but he remains physically the weakest outta the trio.

Well y'all are in for quite a surprise once ch171 & 175 roll around; not regarding Sonju of course but a certain someone else.

Yo, could you imagine how insane Leuvis could've been if we got the chance to see him in action with his second core? That would be amazing. And please, someone let Sonju know that his brother's first core was also destroyed by a human. I wanna see the shock on his face.

The adhesives were a good idea to slow down Legravalima at first, but now it of course becomes a hassle for Sonju to deal with. Talk about becoming what you eat.

She can be a limbo champion with the way her back bends.

Mujika, honey, what kind of inner strength do you have that you don't even flinch when something as terrifying as this is just seconds away from ending your life?

Favorite panel/moment:

Mhhhmm I just really like this panel of Sonju.

Apologies to him though because I will always find Legs returning his spear by piercing his arm funny.

[jungblue]

aphrodite in war | 02

pairing: jeon jungkook x reader

genre: comedy, fluff, angst, eventual smut / greek life, fake dating, roommates, lovers to enemies and back to lovers au

word count: 14,243

description: Everyone knew about the war that had been brewing on the edge of campus for the past two years. Sorority versus Fraternity; a showdown for the ages. However, when the escalating antics between them yields the consequence of possible suspensions for both chapters, the presidents of each house must come together to try and figure out how to end this battle... Which is kind of hard, considering they were the ones responsible for it in the first place.

note: here is an audio post of a beautiful song with lyrics inspired by AiW, which was written by one of my lovely readers!

→ part 01

Red, hot anger had curled its way around your bones, forcibly moving your limbs until you somehow found yourself standing in front of the Lambda house with a single pair of heart-covered boxers in hand; murderous intent leaving Jungkook’s voice indiscernible in the distance as you’d left him standing in front of the defiled Tri Delt house. Maybe he was telling you to wait for him while he began to pull down the rest of the countless pairs of boxers that were plastered along the outside of the sorority. Or maybe he was telling you to not go inside because it would only make it worse to have the furious president of Tri Delt waking up dozens of Lambdas at seven in the morning. You genuinely couldn’t tell what he was shouting as you ripped the front door of the fraternity open and stomped inside. 

It had been over two years since you had stepped foot inside of your neighbor’s house, but it was exactly as you remembered. Red solo cups and crushed cans of beer scattered around the floor as a telling sign that it was indeed the morning after a night of partying, two Lambdas passed out on the couch because apparently the staircase that led to their rooms had been an impenetrable obstacle in their drunken states, and the scent of weed encasing the entire house that seemingly never went away. It was all the same, and you hoped as you went down the hallway to the left, that held a portion of the bedrooms in this house, that a particular person’s room was also the same as it had been before. You banged your fist against the door, scowling as you waited for the person on the other side to answer. 

“What the fuck?” You heard someone say. The voice was scratchy from just being woken up but still recognizable as the person you were looking for; Jimin. 

You banged on the door again, your patience level laying at zero. 

You heard the bed creak and then footsteps began padding across the floor. “Uh, is this the cops?” He asked, probably to know whether he should hide a few things before opening the door. 

You rolled your eyes. “No, I’m not here to confiscate your coke. Now. Open. The. Door.” You spat each word out through gritted teeth. 

“Y/N?” Jimin asked before ripping his door open, revealing a mop of messy bed head framing his bewildered expression. He stood there shirtless, adorning only a white pair of tight Calvin Klein boxers that were doing absolutely nothing to hide his morning wood. 

“Oh, god.” You threw your hand up to try and block out its unavoidable presence. 

Jimin glanced down at himself before raising his head, smirking as he leaned against his doorframe, not even attempting to hide the piece of him that you were trying to avoid looking at. “You’re not exactly decent yourself there, Nips.” He pointed toward your chest. 

Your eyes widened. In your rage you had completely forgotten about the attire you had decided was appropriate to storm the Lambda house in. You immediately crossed your arms over your chest to hide the fact that you were wearing the flimsiest tanktop of all time in combination with no bra. 

“Plus, I’m in my own house,” He started again. “What’s your excuse?”

“Trust me. I would’ve loved nothing more than to never had to of stepped foot in this place ever again. But,” You paused, holding up the pair of heart covered boxers you had ripped off the Tri Delt house because you thought they were the most recognizable among the sea of plain solid blacks, whites, and maroons. “I have a motherfucking bone to pick with someone in this house.”

Jimin studied the piece of fabric that you held up before him before his mouth dropped open. “Fuck, did you sleep with Taehyung? I’m gonna knock his ass out if Jungkook doesn’t get to him first.”

Your face wrinkled in disgust. “Ew, no. There are about a million pairs of boxers all over the Tri Delt house and I’m trying to find out who did it, so thank you for letting me know. Now where is Tae’s room?” 

“Oh, thank god.” Jimin’s expression softened, as if he was relieved that his friend didn’t sleep with you; who they thought of as the devil incarnate. “But no, I’m not telling you. I had nothing to do with that. I went home early last night. But Jungkook can deal with it, just like you can deal with what your girls did.”

“What’re you talking about?” You asked, eyes narrowing. 

“Oh, you don’t know?” Jimin smiled. “Some of the guys texted me before I fell asleep last night saying that when they left Pub they found their cars with words written all over their windows in lipstick.”

Your eyes screwed shut, tongue jabbing at the side of your cheek as you tried to calm the colossal wave of anger that flooded through you for a second time in the fifteen minutes you had been awake. 

What a fantastic day this was turning out to be. 

“Are you serious?” You finally asked, voice a little bit louder than you’d intended.

“Yeah, so you might wanna check your own people before you come into someone else’s house and accuse them of things.” He shrugged. “Might save you some embarrassment next time.”

Heat rushed to your face. You were pissed, but that was only because you agreed with him. “Look—” You started, not really sure what was going to come out of your mouth, but it was the squeak of sneakers running along the wooden floor boards that stopped you. 

Jungkook was suddenly rounding the corner, a mountain of boxers filling his arm. “Y/N, what the hell?” He hissed before dropping them to the ground. 

“What? I was just trying to get to the bottom of this.” You held the heart boxers up one last time before tossing them into the pile next to Jungkook’s feet.

“Yeah, and how’d that go for you?” He pointed towards Jimin. 

“Well, I found out who those boxers belonged to… But…” You trailed off, not wanting to admit what you just found out. 

“But?” Jungkook asked.

“But, she found out that it was only payback for some of her members participating in a little bit of lipstick graffiti on Taehyung and a few other people’s cars.” Jimin smirked next to you as he revealed what you were too embarrassed to say. 

There was a small pause, and then Jungkook was laughing, like he couldn’t believe that this was actually happening. That even after the threat of suspension to these people, they just didn’t care. And you just wanted to understand why. Was it truly because they didn’t care or was it due to the fact that the failed relationship that had acted as the catalyst to this war still held hostility and therefore still felt unresolved. Either way it was an issue that you and Jungkook needed to figure out how to fix. You were already trying to think of other possible solutions to this mess when another door a few feet away opened, and the sleep-deprived face of Taehyung poked its way out. 

“The hell’s going on out here?” He slurred before his eyes locked with yours. “Whoa, seriously what the hell is going on out here?”

A few more doors throughout the hall began to open. Clearly this little altercation had been a little bit louder than you’d anticipated. All of the Lambdas faces twisted in confusion as they found you standing in their hallway for the first time in years. 

“We found your little boxer exhibit,” You finally answered. 

Taehyung threw his hands up. “Hey, I only did it because of the—”

“—Lipstick,” You finished for him. “Yeah, yeah, I got that part already.”  

“Some of us had been drinking and it pissed us off.” Baekhyun shrugged, as he had been one of the guys to join in on this little morning confrontation. “Sorry.” 

“I can’t deal with this. I have a million other things to worry about today.” You rubbed your palms over your eyes in frustration as you remembered the other issue you had to handle once the financial aid office opened for their half day, since today was Saturday. The mystery of your less than lucrative bank account and the implications that it had on your living situation hanging over your head. 

“Well, as a sign of my immense regret and an attempt to repair this terrible relationship between our houses, I do have to say you look great this morning.” Baekhyun motioned towards your minimally covered body. “If you ever wanna hang out—”

You rolled your eyes, deciding to not listen to the rest of the garbage he decided to spew, but it turned out you didn’t even need to tune him out because suddenly a voice sliced through the air like a razor. 

“Watch it, Baek.” Jungkook sounded cold, mouth set in a firm line as he stared daggers down the hallway. 

“Uhm, I’m…” Baekhyun started, an awkward air encasing everyone. “I just woke up. I’m mildly delusional. My bad, Kook.” He tapped at his head and raised his hands as an apology before shutting the door. 

There was silence, a palpable silence that had Jimin, Taehyung and a few of the other Lambdas that had opened their doors grabbing the back of their necks as they stared at the floor. But Jungkook kept his stance, arms crossed over his chest as he continued to stare at Baekhyun’s door. 

After only a few moments of this you just couldn’t take it. You clapped your hands together, trying to let the sudden burst of sound break the tension. “Come on,” You said, pulling at Jungkook’s shirt. “Let’s talk outside.” 

He nodded, finally breaking his glare down the hallway before turning towards Jimin. “Do you think you could give me a ride back to my place in a minute. I don’t have my car.” 

“I can, but why’d you Uber back here last night instead of your place?” Jimin asked, clearly not privy to the events that had transpired between you and Jungkook last night. 

Jungkook’s eyes found yours for a split second before returning to Jimin. “I met a girl from Chi Omega. I was gonna meet her at her place, but it fell through.” He shrugged, a lie so on the fly that it made you wonder how many times he’d done that to you since knowing him. 

“Gotcha.” Jimin nodded, seeming to perfectly understand. “Just let me know when you wanna go.”

“Thanks,” Jungkook said as he joined you in stepping over the pile of boxers still strewn across the floor. “And make sure everyone picks this shit up.” 

“Will do, boss.” Jimin saluted before shutting his door behind him.

After that you made a straight line through the house, not wanting to stand inside this place that held too many memories. You breathed a sigh of relief when you pushed the front door open, letting the fresh air wash over you — albeit the hot, muggy fresh air that reminded you of the fact that it was the end of summer and rain every single day was a constant. 

“I got all the boxers,” Jungkook finally said. 

“That’s great, but it still doesn’t change the fact that my members fucked up first. Plus, I have this financial aid bullshit to deal with.” You pinched the bridge of your nose, trying to flush the stress from your body. “What the hell are we gonna do?” 

Jungkook shook his head and sighed, because like you he apparently also didn’t have any solid answers, but before he could try to offer anything his phone began to ring. He pulled it from his pocket and eyed the contact on the screen. 

“Give me a second. It’s my new roommate that’s supposed to be moving in this week,” He said before answering. 

“What’s up?” He began. 

You stood there for a minute, watching the way Jungkook’s face began to slowly devolve as the person on the other side of the line spoke, and from the expression on his face, it did not seem like it was good news. 

“Are you serious?” Jungkook finally said, grabbing at his hair. “Like I’m happy for you guys, but rent is due next week and you were supposed to be moving in and paying half.” 

It seemed you weren’t the only person having issues involving living situations. 

“I doubt I’ll be able to find anyone this short notice. And if I can’t there’s no way I can pay rent in full this month and have enough to last me the rest of the semester.” 

After that the conversation on Jungkook’s end was mostly just grunts and short responses as he was clearly frustrated and already had his mind focused on possible solutions. 

“Alright, alright, bye.” He hung up the phone, pressing his hands against temples. 

“Well that didn’t sound good,” You said. 

“Yeah, my new roommate apparently worked things out with his ex-girlfriend, so instead of moving in with me, he’s moving back in with her. So now, I have no one to split rent with and am basically fucked.” 

That was actually very unfortunate, but even though you and Jungkook had experienced a somewhat understanding moment last night, it still wasn’t enough to completely erase the hostile relationship the two of you had engaged in for the last few years. So the comment that you replied with was already halfway out of your mouth before you could even think to stop it. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to convince some of your harem of girls to play roomie and split rent with you.” 

Jungkook turned to look at you, eyes narrowing into slits. “Yeah, I might do that actually.” He sounded pissed, clearly not finding any amusement in the comment that you admittedly shouldn’t have made. “And when you get kicked out of the Tri Delt house you should ask that guy from the soccer team if you can move in with him. What was his name? Hoseok?” 

You deserved the response, but it still didn’t make your blood boil any less. “Whatever, we can deal with our fucked up living situations later on. For now just try and think of a way to get our idiot friends to stay in line. We’ll see who has the best idea at Kappa Sig tonight. Did Yoongi tell you about the party? Are you going?” 

Yoongi was a mutual friend of yours and Jungkook’s from high school. He was also in a fraternity, but instead of Lambda Phi Epsilon it was Kappa Sigma, which was located a little further down Greek Drive. When the relationship between you and Jungkook ended he somehow managed to stay impartial and remained friends with the both of you, thankfully. 

“Yeah, I’m going,” He said simply, clearly still embittered from your joke. 

“Good, better start thinking then,” You said and then turned to head back towards the Tri Delt house; any progress you and Jungkook made last night seeming to snap in half as you left him behind. 

Yet, somehow you could feel him staring into your back, the lingering feeling not disappearing until you closed the front door to your house behind you. 

 —————-

You had spent the past half an hour nervously fidgeting in your bed as you waited for the financial aid office to open. As soon as the time on your phone read eight a.m. you immediately dialed their number. However, it was the first week of classes, and that meant that everyone and their mother needed to talk to financial aid, because unfortunately situations like yours were completely common. So even though you called the second they opened it was still a twenty minute wait before you finally heard a voice that wasn’t pre-recorded and asking you to press various numbers depending on your issue or question. 

“Hello. This is financial aid. How can I help you?” The woman on the other side of the line chimed.

“Hi, I have a question about my refund.” Your voice was high-pitched as it shifted into a mode that was more professional. “I received my refund on Thursday, and it was the correct amount. However, when I checked my bank account yesterday my refund had been completely taken out. I was just trying to figure out why that is.” 

She hummed in understanding. “Could you give me your student I.D number and we’ll see what’s going on.”

You rattled off your number and there was a few seconds of silence as the woman on the other side pulled up your information. 

“Okay, it says here…” She paused, presumably reading through whatever she was seeing once more. “That you will be getting your refund deposited back into your bank account, however, it had to be taken back out to adjust the amount. One of your scholarships informed the university that you and a few other recipients did not meet the new community service hours minimum they implemented to receive the scholarship this semester.” 

You felt the blood drain from your face, anxiety making your hands go shaky. “New community service hour minimum?” You asked, trying to understand what that was even referring to, because you knew nothing about the change in hours you were supposed to obtain. 

“Yes, they upped the amount. A few other students have already called to complain about this situation, but the office for that particular scholarship said that they sent an email out last year to inform you guys about the new amount that would be needed.” 

Email? You didn’t think that you ever received an email with any information about that. “Oh… okay… Uhm, I guess I’ll try and figure out what’s going on. Thank you.” 

You hung up the phone and immediately opened up your email app and began to scour through any undeleted messages from last year that you might have overlooked. And after a few minutes of scrolling, there it was, sitting in the depths of your inbox like some monster that was going to destroy you. You clicked on it as some sort of masochistic gesture. You already knew what it was going to say, so you didn’t know why you were even bothering to read it. And yes, there it was, written in bold print at the bottom of the email. A message that relayed the raise in community service hours needed. 

“Fuck my life!” You yelled, throwing a pillow over your face and screaming into it. 

Living in a sorority or fraternity was different than living in a regular apartment or house that wasn’t associated with the university. Instead of paying a monthly amount like a normal living situation, in order to live on campus you had to pay the full amount for the semester up front. Which basically translated to needing to fork over a couple thousand dollars all at once. Which, unless you were rich or incredibly well disciplined at saving money, scholarships and loans were the only option. That had been one of the reasons Jungkook decided to live at an apartment this year instead of at Lambda Phi Epsilon. 

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” You continued to yell into your pillow until your bedroom door was suddenly swinging open; a concerned Sana standing before you. 

“I’m sorry,” She said, walking to the side of your bed. “You totally could’ve been having sex in here, but the expletives sounded more like frustration than fun, so I wanted to make sure.” 

“It’s beyond frustration. It’s devastation.” You threw your pillow across the room to make your point.

“What happened?” She asked as she sat next to you on your bed. 

You took a heavy sigh and explained the entire financial aid situation to her, and ended with the consequence of your entire scholarship debacle. “So I’m not going to be able to stay here this semester. I’m gonna have to find a new place to live.” 

Sana’s mouth dropped, hand twisting into her hair. “Seriously? You’ve gotta move out?” 

You, Sana, and Jennie were best friends that had lived less than ten feet away from each other for the past three year, and you had all hoped for your final year to be the same. But hope was like that. It gave you so much to look forward to, only for it to end in a way that you didn’t at all expect. You had experienced that many times, unfortunately. 

“Yeah, looks like it,” You whispered, arm coming up to cover your eyes.

“No, it’ll be okay.” She squeezed at your arm. “I’ll text around today and see if anyone knows about people needing roommates.” 

“Thanks,” You said, offering a weak smile. 

“It’s not even something to stress over honestly. It’s gonna work itself out.” You could tell Sana was trying to be upbeat for your sake.

You nodded, but there were other issues besides where you were going to live. “But something that is apparently not going to work itself out is the failed peace treaty between us and next door.” 

Sana cocked her head to the side. “Wait… Did something happen? What did they do?” She sneered, having the same reaction as you from earlier this morning. 

“Plastered boxers all over our house.” Sana was about to go on a rant, but you informed her of the whole story before she could. “Because some of the girls wrote shit in lipstick on their cars at Pub last night.”

“You’re kidding me?” She slammed her palm down on the bed. “Who was it? I’m gonna kick their asses.”

The image that brought to your head actually made you laugh, which you were thankful for. You needed some sort of humor in your life on this miserable day. “I have no idea. I got a call from Jungkook this morning about the boxers and ran outside. I haven’t even had the chance to try and figure out who did it.”

“Wait… You were already here?” She asked. “You weren’t at Hoseok’s.” 

Oh yeah, you forgot Sana had left Pub last night expecting to not see you until some time later today when Hoseok brought you home. She still had no idea about Jungkook and that entire emotional disaster from last night. 

“Yeah, about that…” You definitely weren’t going to hide what happened, but you decided that you were going to sugarcoat it a bit. You didn’t like talking about your insecurities, even with your friends, so you decided painting it in a more positive light was for the best, because relatively speaking that actually had been a less hostile conversation compared to others that you and Jungkook had experienced over the years. “Because my bank account got emptied out from the whole financial aid thing, I just felt like going home instead of over to Hoseok’s, but I also didn’t have any money to Uber, so… Jungkook walked me home.”

Sana’s eyes widened, hands cupping either side of her face. “What?!”

“Yeah, he offered to walk me home.” You shrugged, trying to make it seem as though it wasn’t a big deal, but you knew that was going to do nothing to stop the onslaught of questions about to be thrown at you. 

“Wait, wait, wait, so did you guys talk? Did you argue the whole time? Was it just awkward and silent? Like tell me.” She moved closer to you on the bed, curiosity beaming off of her. 

“It wasn’t, uhm, bad actually.” You sat up, avoiding as much eye contact as you could manage without looking like a complete liar. “We talked and cleared the air on things. It was… enlightening.” That wasn’t a total fib. Certain feelings had been revealed, and yes, that might have ended up with you crying, but in the grand scheme of things that was a totally miniscule detail, right?

Sana’s expression twisted into that of bewilderment. “...Enlightening? What does that even mean? What became enlightened?” 

You shrugged, buying yourself time to try and think of some way to fumble through any sort of half decent explanation. “Just our feelings on everything that happened and how we felt. Nothing crazy.” 

She squinted her eyes, finger tapping at her nose. “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.” 

“There isn’t. We just understand each other a lot better now.” You knew the longer she pushed the higher the possibility of you cracking, so you decided to bring up the one thing that you knew would flood her mind with thoughts completely unrelated to you and Jungkook. “You’ll see at Kappa Sig tonight. We’re better with each other now.” 

Pink flushed to Sana’s cheeks at the mere mention of Kappa Sig, because in her mind Kappa Sig directly correlated to one of its members; Kim Seokjin, or one of Yoongi’s good friends. 

“I almost forgot about the party tonight,” Sana started. Mission success it seemed as she completely dropped the conversation from before. “Maybe love is in the air, and Jennie’s luck with Namjoon will rub off on me tonight with Jin.”

“Maybe it is.” You smiled. 

Sana gave you a strange look at your response, and you weren’t sure why, but you didn’t get the chance to find out before she dropped the expression and moved on to something else. 

“I’m gonna text Jennie and see when she thinks she’ll come home.” She began typing on her phone before looking back up at you. “You wanna go get lunch or something in a few hours? Get your mind off of the whole financial aid thing while we wait for the party tonight? My treat since you don’t have your refund back yet.”

“That actually sounds great.” Sana leaned in, hugging you before jumping from your bed and heading back to her room directly next to yours. 

You fell back flat against your bed, eyes wandering around your room. The pictures plastered across your walls of all of your friends and family. Posters of your favorite shows and movies. You couldn’t help but think about how in a week or so this wasn’t going to be yours anymore. 

Where you were going to wind up at in the end, well, that was a complete mystery.

———

JUNGKOOK’S POV

Jungkook climbed into Jimin’s truck, slamming the door behind him. He pressed his forehead against the dashboard, palms pressing at his temples to try and relieve even the tiniest amount of stress that was currently running amok through his head. 

Jimin jumped into the driver’s seat a minute later, whistling at the sight of his friend in such a rough position. “You good, man?” He asked. 

“Do I look good?” Jungkook asked, sitting up against the seat. “I’ve gotta find a new roommate in the next week, act like a goddamn babysitter between forty-two grown adults, and worry about Y/N storming around the Lambda house now apparently.” He paused, clenching his hands into fists. “So, no, I’m not good.”

“Kook, just take it easy.” Jimin reached over, squeezing at his friend’s shoulder. “There’s gonna be a ton of people at that party tonight, and I guarantee you at least one person there needs a place to stay or at the very least knows someone who does.” 

Jungkook nodded because he agreed that there were always people looking for places to stay. “What about the other two things?” 

“Oh, you’re fucked on those. I don’t know what to tell you.” Jimin laughed as he hit the gear into reverse. 

“You sound surprisingly calm about that, considering the chapter will be suspended if me and Y/N don’t figure out a way to make things okay between everyone.” 

Jimin shrugged as he pulled out of the driveway. “If I had come out last night and seen my truck covered in lipstick, would I have been pissed? Sure. But, I would’ve just told you so that you could tell Y/N, and she could deal with it. The fact is, that’s how I am, but everyone’s different and you two can’t control that many people without some sort of miracle.”

Jungkook sighed, banging his head back against the headrest. “A miracle, huh?”

“Yeah, a straight up miracle,” He repeated as he drove past the Tri Delt house that was no longer covered in boxers. 

Jungkook’s eyes drifted to the far right window on the second story, a small twinge budding inside of his chest. Words from that night almost two years ago pushed their way to the surface as they never failed to do. 

“It’s nothing that you did… I’ve just been having these… thoughts.”

“Thoughts? What, thoughts of cheating on me? Of being with other people?”

“No! I mean, it’s not how you’re thinking. It’s just… You’re the only person I’ve ever dated, Y/N, and I don’t know if…”

“Oh, I’ll finish it for you, Jungkook. You don’t know if there’s someone better. Just fucking say it instead of going around it like you have been for months now.”

“I don’t think there’s someone better. I’m not ending this because I met someone else. I’m ending this because I can’t look at you and say I love you everyday when I’m having these thoughts, because it just doesn’t seem right. And I’m not saying that I don’t love you. I still do, but that doesn’t stop me from having these feelings of doubt about whether this is the last relationship I ever wanna have, when it’s the only one I’ve ever been in. I can’t just sit there and look at you when I know I’m thinking these things. I can’t do that because I care about you so fucking much, even if you’re looking at me right now like you hate me. I don’t want you to hate me.”

Jungkook wished he could permanently scrub that night from his head. There was so much crying, so much blame, so much anguish, from having to end things with someone that he truly did love. He hadn’t stopped loving you. That wasn’t why he broke up with you. He ended things because he wanted to be sure that the one experience that he’d ever had was the right one. And he knew when he took that risk that he could be throwing away something that was perfect. But he couldn’t be sure until he knew.

He had dated a few people in the two years since that night, and he had found some great relationships with some great girls — but nothing that had lasted. None of them ever felt as if he could see himself with them for years and years to come, and wasn’t that the whole point of dating? And of course, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if he had never ended things with you. He thought about it every time he saw you actually. You wouldn’t know that, and no one around him would know that, because there was always something hostile coming out of someone’s mouth. Jungkook had hurt you, and he understood that, but it still didn’t excuse some of the things that you had accused him of over the years, and after a month or so he had gotten tired of playing polite and matched your antagonism; insult for insult, sneer for sneer. 

He wasn’t sure if they could ever fully reconcile. The words had been said and there was no taking them back. He thought last night was actually a step in the right direction, with you revealing why you acted the way that you did. But still, he wasn’t sure if things could ever be civil between the two of you. The embitterment ran so deep on both sides that it seemed almost impossible to even try. 

Jungkook remained lost in these thoughts when through his haze he heard Jimin speak a name that had him fearing for half a second that his friend could read his thoughts. 

“Y/N?” Jungkook asked. 

“Yeah, what actually happened last night?” Jimin glanced over, one brow arched. 

“Uhm, what do you mean?” 

“When I asked about why you were at the house and not at your apartment, you looked at Y/N.” Jimin slapped one hand to his chest. “Don’t think I didn’t notice.” 

Well, he had only looked at her for all of half a second, so yeah, he had kind of hoped that no one would notice. But unfortunately, someone did, and that happened to be his nosy ass best friend. 

“Y/N got stuck at Pub last night with no ride because financial aid fucked up her refund, and she couldn’t get a ride, so I walked her home. That’s it.” Which was true. He had done exactly that, but simply failed to mention the crying and sentimental admissions. 

“So why didn’t you just say that when I asked?” 

Jungkook ran a hand through his hair. He really didn’t want to reveal any of the details from what you’d told him last night, but he knew Jimin wasn’t going to stop asking until he at least told him something of substance. “Because there were other people in the hall listening, and I didn’t want them getting the same ideas as you right now.” 

Jimin smirked. “Oh yeah, and what am I thinking?” 

Jungkook shook his head, turning to look out of the window. “I’m not even gonna say it.”

“Any talk of feelings or gushy bullshit?” Jimin chuckled, clearly joking, but Jungkook hesitated before answering, and that was all his friend needed to assume whatever theory was being crafted inside of his head. “Oh, Jesus, did you guys actually talk about your feelings? Oh my god, did you guys kiss? Fuck?” Jimin was looking at Jungkook frantically now, like he needed the answers to the questions being proposed in his favorite TV show. 

“You’re truly the biggest gossip I’ve ever met.” He leaned back in his seat, arms crossed over his chest as Jimin pulled into his apartment complex. “It’s sad.”

“Your lack of answers is making me lean towards you guys fucking. And if that happened,” He let go of the steering wheel for a second to motion at his head as if it was exploding. “I’m gonna lose my goddamn mind. Like I get it, sex is sex, but after everything she’s said about you since you guys broke up, I just…” He trailed off, shaking his head in disappointment like he had already decided that the two of you had definitely hooked up.

“She said that shit in the beginning because I made her feel terrible about herself, so she wanted to make me feel terrible too. I’m not saying that it’s right, but at this point we’ve both said shit we regret and didn’t mean.” He tried to make it seem more casual by shrugging. “And we didn’t sleep together. Chill out.”

Jimin’s expression was skeptical as he pulled into the parking space in front of Jungkook’s building and unlocked the doors. “Still, something definitely happened, because otherwise you would be talking about how she was acting like a bitch, but you’re not, which means that you weren’t acting like an asshole, which in turn means that something went down, because the last time the two of you were anything less than pissy to each other was when you were still dating.”

Jungkook simply placed a hand on Jimin’s shoulder, forcing a smile. “Your conspiracies are unmatched, my friend.” And then he was climbing out of the truck, shutting the door, and waving his friend goodbye without even looking back. 

However, that didn’t stop Jimin from rolling down his window as he began to back out of the parking space, throwing his final sentiment to the wind. “You guys getting back together was the kind of miracle I was talking about.”

———-

It was currently ten p.m. and the scene on Greek Drive was about two dozen or so Tri Delts making their way towards the most well known party frat on campus; Kappa Sigma. 

Kappa Sig was the blueprint for the types of fraternities that you see in various movies or TV shows. There was never a time when your shoes weren’t sticking to the wooden floors due to the constant barrage of alcohol being spilled by various drunken patrons. Each member had an actual mini bar set up in the corner of their room, which in the next few weeks, once football and tailgating started up, would be the most popular place to score some free drinks — if you were a girl that is. Kappa Sig was also fairly stereotypically frat in who it allowed entrance into its castle of alcohol and sex. Basically, if you were a girl, you were good. If you were a guy, well it was complicated. Usually it was a no go, or you were asked to pay such a ridiculously high cover at the door that no one in their right mind would pay it, or the easiest way: have a friend who had sway within the house. 

So fortunately for you, Sana, Jennie, and the rest of the Tri Delts, it was a non-issue. However, unfortunately, Yoongi, a good friend of yours and Jungkook’s, happened to be the president of Kappa Sig, and therefore Lambdas were allowed free reign. No cover charge and no being turned away, which meant tonight was bound to be interesting. 

“Jennie, hold my hand until we get there.” Sana didn’t even wait for a response and instead opted to simply interlock their fingers. “I need good luck in the crushes-actually-approaching-and-showing-interest department.”

Jennie laughed, swinging their arms back and forth between them. “Well if you can get even half my luck, it should be a good night for you.” 

“Oh, wow. Way to brag, bitch,” Sana said, throwing a hand over her heart. “We’ve got Mrs. Already Dick Whipped over here.” 

“I am not!” Jennie yelled. “He just…” 

“Lasted longer than sixty seconds?” You finished for her with a purse of your lips. 

She pointed at you. “That he fucking did. That and so, so much more.”

Sana groaned next to the two of you. “Ugh, I want that. I haven’t had good sex in months.”

“Well, even if things don’t happen with Jin tonight, there’s gonna be plenty of guys here,” You tried to remind her. 

“Uh yeah, lots of Lambda guys,” She reminded you right back. 

You shrugged. You didn’t like that it had become this sort of unwritten rule that Tri Delts and Lambdas couldn’t get together, but when everyone was pranking or fucking with each other’s stuff, it was kind of difficult to look past that just for the sake of a hookup. 

“Well, Kappa Sig boys for you tonight it is then.” You motioned towards the top of the driveway, the party seemingly already completely started. 

The music was blaring and there was a fairly long line of people waiting to get in, but it only took a couple minutes for you to move through the line and pass over the threshold and into the scene of dimmed lights, packed bodies, and endless alcohol. 

You knew you had a lot of things to worry about, but after the absolutely horrendous two days that you’d had to endure, between suspension threats, disastrous house meetings, crying in front of your ex, the boxer and lipstick fiasco, and financial aid meltdowns, you just wanted to be able to relax and have fun for a single night. You didn’t think that was too much to ask for, and the vodka bottle currently staring at you from the kitchen, seemed to be calling you and saying they were the perfect place to start in order to make that fun, relaxing night come true. 

Once everyone got into the house, the girls broke up into their mini groups of close friends. You motioned to Sana and Jennie to follow you to the kitchen so you could get some drinks. It took some effort but the three of you eventually managed to make your way through the crowd that couldn’t bother to idle anywhere else besides around the counter of various alcohols and plastic cups. Each of you quickly made a sufficiently strong cup of vodka combined with whatever random mixers were available. 

“Okay, now let’s find a comfy couch that isn’t covered in vomit stains to camp out on and get plastered.” You pointed towards the living room, where a majority of the party goers were. 

“A couch without vomit stains?” Jennie clicked her tongue. “That’s a tall order for Kappa Sig.”

“Indeed.” Sana giggled, pointing towards some of the few empty places to sit in the back corner. 

You made your way over there, exchanging hellos with a few people that you knew before plopping down on the couch, all three of you spilling a few splashes of your drinks on each other; not even a drop of alcohol in your systems yet. 

“Well this is a great start.” You laughed, taking a large gulp from your cup that had you grimacing. “Jesus, this cheap ass Pinnacle. Come on, KS, get your shit together.” 

“Well excuse the fuck out of me.” The voice came from someone you recognized immediately. 

You turned around, a wide grin plastered across your face. “It’s okay Yoongi. I still love you even though you’re making us suffer with cheap booze.” 

He sauntered over, sitting down on the armchair beside you. “Well, you’re lucky you’re one of my very good friends or I wouldn’t bless you with my own personal stash.” His smile was devilish as he pulled up a bottle of Tito's vodka.” 

There was a collective gasp from you and friends. “Wow, keeping the good shit all to yourself.” 

“Hey, didn’t I just say I was gonna help you out?” He twisted the cop off and motioned for the three of you to hold your cups out, and one by one he filled your cups up to the very top. “Be wise with this power, friends.” 

“You know, Yoongi,” Sana said from across the couch. “I’d be totally willing to not take advantage of your hospitalities if you’d wanna help me out in another department.” 

“Jesus, Sana!” You already knew where she was going with this. “You’re willing to drink rubbing alcohol instead of Tito’s just to get a good word in to Jin?” 

Sana simply shrugged, zero shame in her methods. 

Yoongi laughed. “Put a good word in? I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Appreciate it.” She raised her cup to his and they cheered in the hopeful union of Sana of Jin. 

Yoongi opened his mouth to speak, but something near the front of his house caught his eye. “Also, can we try to have no brawls in the house tonight?” 

“Huh?” You were confused until you followed his line of sight, a mob of Lambda boys entering the house one by one; Jungkook leading them all. 

“No fighting,” Yoongi reiterated. “Or no more Tito’s for you.” 

You rolled your eyes, taking a sip from your drink that was currently ninety percent vodka. “You haven’t heard? We’re cordial now.” 

“Cordial? A Greek Drive miracle, I guess.” He stood up from the armchair and motioned towards the guys. “I’m gonna go say hey to Kook.” 

You nodded. “Okay, I’ll catch up with you later.”

Yoongi had managed to stay good friends with both you and Jungkook throughout this entire process. You hated the fact that the three of you never got to hang out together anymore because of the tension between you and Jungkook, but, hey, that was life. 

“Don’t forget our deal, Yoongi!” Sana shouted as he started across the living room. 

“I got you, girl. But just so you know our bedrooms are right next to each other so be mindful.” He lowered his hands to the ground, silently saying to keep the volume down. 

“You’re the best!” She said, kissing her hand and throwing it out to the party host. 

“Someone might be getting lucky after all.” You squeezed at her thigh before standing up. “So while you celebrate that, I’m gonna put more mixer in this drink so I don’t blackout by midnight.” 

“You act like you don’t do that every other week.” Jennie laughed. 

You squinted at her. “Rude.” 

“Love you,” She said, making a heart shape with her hands as you made your way back towards the kitchen. 

You gave small smiles as you passed more people that you knew that had just arrived at the party. You glanced towards the door, the Lambda boys still congregating there. You couldn’t help your eyes from catching on Jungkook. He was standing there, grinning at everyone who approached him. He was the type that could be friends with anyone. A bright light that everyone gravitated towards, that no one ever found boring. You bit the inside of your cheek at the gnawing though that never failed to enter your head anytime you saw him. And it was like he could sense that pull, because then he was looking at you, giving a small nod of acknowledgment. 

A tiny, insignificant nod. At its very best, that was what your relationship was now, and that made you feel incredibly empty. 

You screwed your eyes shut for a second, shaking your head, trying to force those things from your head as you finally made it to the kitchen and poured a little bit of the first soda you could reach into your cup; just a little bit. 

And the party continued on like that for the next hour or two. Laughing and smiling with your friends and then hunting Yoongi down to steal some of his personal alcohol, all while catching random glances of Jungkook. It was fun and your buzz was well in effect by the time it was once again the moment to go find Yoongi.

You asked Sana, who was currently talking to Jin in the corner of the living room, if she had seen him. Apparently a very good word has been put in and two seemed to be hitting it off. 

“He went out back.” She motioned towards the sliding glass door. 

You offered a hum of thanks and left them to mingle alone as you made your way to the door and pulled it open. You searched the tiny groups of people that were standing around, not able to find Yoongi anywhere until you noticed two occupied chairs sitting in the distance. One was Yoongi and the other… Well, of course it just had to be Jungkook. 

You took a deep breath, taking a sip of your drink before walking out to the secluded area beneath the giant tree where they were chatting. You did a little run in the last few feet of approaching them before kneeling down next to Yoongi’s lawn chair. his body slightly hiding Jungkook’s. 

“Hello, my spirit bearing friend.” 

“And if it isn’t the spirit stealer herself,” Yoongi said as he grabbed your cup and poured a shot or two inside. “I already had to get another handle of Tito’s from my room. You’re killing me tonight.” 

“It was a bad day.” You poked your bottom lip out as an apology. “I’m sorry.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad.” He motioned towards your cup that he had filled up multiple times already tonight. 

“Well, I fucked up something with one of my scholarships, so now I’ve gotta find a place to live by the end of next week because I can’t afford to stay in the Tri Delt house.” You shrugged, the alcohol making the daunting situation seem less serious than it actually was. “So yeah, bad day.”

“Are you serious?” Yoongi said at the same time that Jungkook leaned forward with this concerned look on his face before saying, “Wait, what?”

“No… It’s, uhm, fine.” You glanced at the ground and began awkwardly scratching at your temple. “I don’t wanna ruin the mood for tonight. I’m gonna start looking for roommates tomorrow, so if either of you guys know of anyone.” You pointed your cup towards both of them with a shrug, trying to make it seem casual. 

Yoongi nodded, and then suddenly a smile was creeping across his face. You knew that expression well. It was the expression he’d made when you were all sixteen and drunk and decided that going to the rope swing down by the lake (the alligator infested lake) in the dead of night was a perfectly sane idea. Or when it was your senior year prom and he convinced you and Jungkook that an impromptu beach trip a few hours away would be fun, and it might actually have been if any of you had thought about money, hotel reservations, or just any sort of planning in general, but you didn’t, so it essentially became a three drive only to end up at a  Denny’s in a beach town instead of your hometown. The point was, you had seen that expression many, many times, and it was one that he made when a bad, impulsive idea started creeping through that brain of his.

“Whatever it is, no,” You said as you pushed some of the leaves and sticks off of the grass so you could sit down. 

“You don’t even know what I’m gonna say!” He exclaimed. “It’s a brilliant idea actually.” 

“Yeah, we know that face anywhere.” Jungkook moved his chair forward slightly so that the three of you were now sitting in a triangle, facing one another. “Ideas that come from that face are never brilliant.” 

Yoongi smacked his lips. “Well, that’s offensive.” 

“What’s offensive is almost getting eaten by alligators because you convinced us by using bogus gator attack statistics,” You pointed out, and Jungkook chuckled at the memory. 

“But, we didn’t get eaten, so it’s fine.” He shrugged. 

“Whatever.” You rolled your eyes. “So what’s this plan cooking in your head right now?” 

The devilish expression returned once more as he began looking back and forth between you and Jungkook. Oh, this was not good.

“Well, you said that you need a place to stay, right?” 

“...Right,” You said hesitantly, not completely sure where this was going until he turned his sights towards Jungkook; the phone call you’d overheard from earlier in the day flashing through your mind. 

“Yoongi, you idiot—” You started to say, but he was already spewing the other half of his grand plan. 

“And Jungkook needs a roommate!” He shouted, clapping his hands together like he’d just invented the surefire way to cure a hangover. “It’s perfect!”

There was a pause between the group, complete silence save from the chatting going on closer to the house — and then there was uncontrollable laughter. You and Jungkook doubled over at the most ridiculous proposal that you’d ever heard in your entire lives. 

Because it was totally ridiculous… Right?

“Why are you guys laughing?” Yoongi asked, looking genuinely confused. “That solves literally all of your problems.”

You caught the tear that was escaping out of the corner of your eye. “Yeah, it’s a great idea in theory Yoongi, if me and Jungkook didn’t have issues.” 

“I mean you guys are sitting here right now with each other.” He motioned between the two of you. “And there’s no fighting going on like there usually is. Plus, you said your houses were cordial now. I thought that meant you guys too.”

You and Jungkook glanced at each other, the amused smiles from Yoongi’s scheme faltering slightly. It had been a long time since you guys had been like this with each other. There was the talk after Pub last night and now you were here, just sitting and laughing with a mutual old friend. It was nice, you had to admit. But living together? That was just totally absurd. 

“Yoongi, that’s…” Jungkook trailed off, shaking his head, but not saying anything concrete. “And it doesn’t actually solve all of our problems… Our houses aren’t as cordial as we were hoping they’d be, even after we told them about President Kwon’s suspension threat.” You had texted Yoongi about the suspension fiasco yesterday and you were sure that Jungkook had done the same. 

“Wow, your members really are fucking idiots.” Yoongi laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “You guys have way more pull than you realize.” 

Your brows furrowed. “What do you mean?” 

Yoongi held one finger up as he sipped from his cup, like he was about to drop some serious knowledge on the two presidents who had no control over their houses. “College kids are like toddlers. They need guidance. Before you guys were sort of like their big brother and sister whose lead they followed because they liked you and thought you were cool — that’s how you guys became presidents after all. Which means now you’re essentially like their parents.” 

You snorted at the idea, but it wasn’t the craziest analogy. You remembered when you were a freshman and first joined Tri Delt. The president back then felt like this motherly figure who you could go to for anything. It was hard for you to think that other people now saw you that way, but maybe they did and you hadn’t fully noticed yet. 

“You’re laughing, but I’m serious,” Yoongi started again. “Okay, so you guys told them they needed to get their shit together, right?”

You and Jungkook both nodded.

“And like I said, you guys are like their parents — their divorced parents who they respect but feel the need to defend depending on whose side they're on.”

Again, you and Jungkook just looked at each other, a tiny piece of understanding falling into place. You and him had just been two people who didn’t work out. You thought it was a simple issue, but you just never realized what the consequences of that would be. People choosing sides. Defending each other’s actions. Getting even. 

It was a mess. A mess that needed to be fixed somehow. 

“Well that’s nice to know,” Jungkook said, breaking you from your thoughts. “But it doesn’t actually help us fix anything.”

That was true. Just because you knew why everyone had so easily fallen into this feud didn’t change the fact that something needed to change. Something had to be done… And as you glanced over at Yoongi, his expression that signaled bad ideas returned once more. It let you know that he had an idea or two about what could be done. 

“Well, maybe you guys could reverse the divorce.” He shrugged. 

It took you a second to grasp what he was trying to say, and then you were sputtering and ripping the bottle of vodka from your friend’s hand. “You’re cut off.”

Jungkook scoffed, an incredulous look adorning his features as well. “Seriously, what the fuck did you smoke, dude?” 

“Nothing!” He grabbed the bottle back from your hand. “Strictly liquor tonight.”

“Like the roommate idea was one thing—” Jungkook started. 

“Oh!” Yoongi cut him off. “So you didn’t think Y/N moving in was the worst idea ever.”  

“I… I…” His mouth was closing and opening, like he truly didn’t know what to say. “Like as a last option it wouldn’t be the end of the world.” 

“What?!” You said, a little louder than you’d intended, but you couldn’t help it. He was actually considering the idea of the two of you moving in together? “Us? Living in the same house?”

Jungkook shrugged. “I mean it’s better than you being homeless and me being broke.”

Your head was spinning, and you didn’t know if it was from the alcohol or that this insane idea was actually being proposed in a semi-serious manner. 

“See, this is perfect!” Yoongi sat the glass bottle down on the grass and reached out to grab at yours and Jungkook’s arms, yanking you closer together. “Just pretend to get back together. If you just said it, no one would probably believe you, but if you guys actually move in together, no one would think that you’d go that far just to get everyone to stop fighting. The Great Greek Ruse! It would be the best story of all time!”

This was crazy. This was absolutely fucking crazy, and you knew Yoongi was half-joking with all of this, but you could tell that there was little bit of hope gleaming off of his eyes. 

You grabbed Yoongi’s face on either side, forcing him to look at you. “You. Are. Fucking. Plastered.” You said each word slowly and deliberately to try and penetrate through the haze of drunkenness to get to the part of him that held actual common sense.

“Yes, I am in fact plastered.” He grabbed your wrists, his excitement only seeming to multiply. “But I would argue that the most logical solutions to problems come from being drunk. There’s no hesitation that an idea seems ridiculous, because everything seems less ridiculous when you're fucked up.”

You fisted your hands through your hair. “You’re crazy. Literally crazy. Jungkook, tell him he’s crazy.” You looked at him for confirmation, but he just sat there, pursing his lips like he was… thinking. Like he was actually considering it. “Are you serious?” 

He threw his hands up in a defensive position. “No, it’s completely crazy. It’s just… Do you have any better ideas?”

“I can’t believe we’re even talking about this right now.” You scoffed, falling back flat against the grass and throwing your hands over your face. “Even if we did try to be that stupid and lie to everyone, they would never in a million fucking years believe that we would ever get back together. We fought in front of them literally yesterday!” 

You peeked through your fingers and Jungkook held an expression that made it seem like he wasn’t so sure that was true. “I don’t know about that. All I did earlier was tell Jimin that we talked last night and two seconds later he had gone off on some tangent about how disappointed he was in me for sleeping with you again — and I corrected him that we didn’t, by the way.”

“Oh, fuck Jimin then,” You hissed, going off topic from this insane fake dating ruse. 

“Come on, you know how it is. Sana and Jennie would act the same way. It’s like Yoongi said, the Lambdas defend me and the Tri Delts defend you. That’s literally how this entire mess started.”

You sighed, sitting back up and raking any stray pieces of grass out of your hair. You didn’t say anything, because you truly didn’t know what the correct response was. Sure, you knew that you needed to figure out a way to not get your chapters suspended… But this idea of pretending to get back together? You tried to imagine the reactions, but you just couldn’t, because again, this was fucking absurd. You were about to verbally reiterate this point once more when Jungkook continued. 

“Look, all I’m saying is that when we broke up they saw how bad our relationship got and they decided to defend us. Maybe if we pretended to get back together, just for a little bit, they’d finally back off because the entire reason they started fighting in the first place wouldn’t even be an issue anymore.” Jungkook shrugged. He fucking shrugged. 

“Do you even understand what pretending to get back together entails?” You began waving your hands around and pointing at your head, because maybe it would help get the point across somehow. “It means acting like we actually want to be together in public. It means no flirting or going home with people on campus or at parties because someone we know might see us. Would you actually be willing to go through that much effort?”

There was a pause and Jungkook just stared at you for a second, and then he started… smiling. This small, sad sort of smile. “What could it hurt to try?” 

You scoffed, and scoffed, and scoffed, because you just couldn’t form words. You had explained it as best as you could, but neither he nor Yoongi seemed to get it. This meant… hugging, touching, kissing, just to prove to people that this was real. That you weren’t lying. That you wanted to be with him… And that he wanted to be with you. 

You knew you hadn’t said anything in a minute or so, just lost in the details and implications of this scheme. You were only brought back to reality by Yoongi, speaking his piece once again. “Y/N,” He started, his voice quieter than it had been when he was excitedly explaining the idea before, “The worst thing that happens is they don’t believe you. But if you actually pull this off, you guys could save your chapters.”

Your mouth went firm and straight. The worst thing that could happen was the members not believing you? You had to stifle a laugh as you glanced towards Jungkook. No, that definitely wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Not by a long shot. You knew why Jungkook didn’t see this as a terrible idea. He had nothing to lose, but you did.

However, in the end, you thought maybe the risk was worth it. Maybe this fucked up scheme could save you guys somehow.

“Uhm,” You finally started, clearing your throat to try and push your emotions back down into your chest. “So in the scenario that we actually tried this ridiculous plan… How would we go about telling everyone?”

You were staring at the ground, so you didn’t see what expression Jungkook’s face shifted into. You weren’t sure you wanted to know. Was it relief from having a shot at mending the relationship with your members? Or was it regret from you feeding into this idea that he hadn’t actually been taking seriously? 

“Well,” Jungkook started, and you still refused to look at him. “First of all, did you say anything about our talk last night to anyone?”

“Not really. I told Sana that it was ‘enlightening,’ and basically said the same to Jennie. What about you?”

“I told Jimin that we talked about our feelings.” 

You couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I’m sure he took that very well.”

“He was surprised…” Jungkook paused. “And I think that’s a good thing.”

You finally turned to look at him. “Why’s that a good thing?”

He stood up from his chair and held his hand out to you. You just stared at it for a second, confused at the kindness of the gesture before grabbing it and letting him help you up. He didn’t drop your hand even after you were standing up right, less than a foot of space separating you. 

“Because I think if our best friends look genuinely shocked by what we’re about to do, then it might be a lot more believable.”

Your face twisted in confusion. “Uhm, what’re we about to do?”

Jungkook pursed his lips, hesitant as he opened his mouth to reveal what he was thinking. “I think if we’re gonna pull this off, we need to… show them, not tell them.” It was instant, the way your hand trembled in his. Immediately he was squeezing around your fingers, silently trying to reassure you. “We don’t have to do this. It’s probably not even gonna work… But again, it’s just something to try.”

You knew you didn’t have to do this. You knew it was probably smarter not to do this. But some small part of you wanted to do this. Some stupidly hopeful part of you. 

You sucked a deep breath in through your nose and gave your bottom lip one hard, painful bite. “Fuck it, Kook.” You shifted your hand in his and interlocked your fingers. “Let’s do this.”

His eyes widened, the nickname slipping past your lips like the past two years never even existed. And then he was smiling, this pleasantly surprised smile that you hadn’t seen directed at you in what felt like an eternity. 

“I know it was my idea, but I can’t believe this is actually about to happen.” Yoongi was standing next to the two of you, hands holding either side of his face, like he was about to witness the ruse of the century. 

“Ready?” Jungkook asked. 

“I guess I am.” You shrugged, motioning towards the house. “Let’s do this.”

“Deep breath,” He said before inhaling, and you followed without hesitation. 

“Deep breath.” You nodded after you let the air slide past your lips. 

And then he was pulling you towards the house, hand in hand, the only thing keeping you from devolving into a panic attack was the way he kept squeezing your hand. 

You were approaching the fractured groups of people that stood outside of the sliding glass door, and all it took was one person to notice the two of you, and then suddenly people were pointing and staring, confused expressions appearing like a line of dominos, but you didn’t see any Lambdas or Tri Delts yet thankfully. Though, you knew that wasn’t going to last very long. 

You ignored the attention as best as you could as Jungkook opened the door and led you in through the back of the house. 

“So what exactly are we gonna do?” You whispered to him as you got closer to the living room; the main room of the house, with the most prying eyes. 

He slowed his walk and dropped your hand before placing his palm on your lower back as he continued to usher you forward into the wild circus the two of you were about to create. 

“I’m…” He paused as he pushed through the brush of people blocking the hallway until you were standing in the heart of the party. The lights in the house were all dimmed, but you still felt as though there was a bright, blinding spotlight on the two of you. 

“You’re gonna what?” You asked, looking around to find Lambdas and Tri Delts lounging in every corner. You started to fidget, wringing your hands and gritting your teeth until you felt someone lightly grabbing your jaw and forcing you to look at them. 

“I’m gonna kiss you,” He whispered, hand dropping to cup the side of your face. “I’m gonna kiss you right now, okay?”

Your eyes widened a little, mouth parting. You knew earlier that was what he’d probably meant when he said to ‘show them,’ but now that you were actually here in the moment, with him so close to your face that you could feel his breath hitting your skin… You were freezing up. 

“I’m going to,” He said, leaning in closer. “If you changed your mind just push me back, because I’m really about to kiss you.” 

A small voice in your head replied that you really wanted him to, as sad as that was. But you kept that thought to yourself as you closed your eyes and said, “Do it.” 

His gaze dropped to your mouth and then he closed the gap, a gap that hadn’t been closed in over two years. His lips warm and soft, just like you remembered, suddenly pressing against your own. His hand slid to the back of your neck, the other coming to rest on your hip, the familiar motion in familiar places tugging your fingers like a magnet until they were twisting at the front of his shirt. 

You knew that this kiss needed to be believable. It couldn’t be over the top, like you were trying to put on a show, but it also couldn’t be stiff, like the two of you were forcing it. Which technically, you were forcing it. It was pre-planned and clinical… But it didn’t feel that way. 

You knew every tilt of his head before he decided to move, every light brush of his tongue before it met your own, every touch of his thumb before it grazed along the column of your throat. You knew everything. You remembered everything. And you wished you could say that there was at least one thing that was different. You wished you could say that when he hummed against your mouth, your stomach didn’t twist. But unfortunately, you couldn’t say that. Because it didn’t just twist — it warped into this undistinguishable, untangleable shape; one that you didn’t think anyone could ever hope to be able to unravel. 

It was getting tighter and tighter, tying a knot around your lungs. You thought you’d have to pull away, gasp for air, and maybe ruin this whole charade the two of you were putting on, but all you needed to do was try and focus a little less on Jungkook kissing and touching you, and you’d be able to hear the buzzing chatter that was already surround you on all sides. Your names being shouted in unison breaking you apart.

You pulled back, breath heavy and uneven as you stared at his mouth, and you were at the very least happy that he looked just as uneasy, his eyes dark and hooded and reflecting something that you couldn’t pinpoint. But you weren’t able to just sit there and stare at him forever. You had to face the consequences of what you’d done, and when you turned to face the congregating mob of Lambdas and Tri Delts, complete shock resting on every single one of their faces, you knew this wasn’t going to be easy.

“Y/N?!” People were shouting your name, dozens of them, and you couldn’t tell who they were, but your eyes were locking with two particular people whose voices pulled you straight to them; Sana and Jennie. 

“Jungkook, what the hell?!” Someone else said in the distance. 

“Okay, literally what the fuck is going on?” Everyone was saying something along these lines to the point that it was just a sea of expletives and confusion, but it was Jimin suddenly climbing on top of the one of the couches that caught the entire room’s attention. 

“I fucking knew it!” He yelled, shirt half-unbuttoned and clearly intoxicated as he jumped up and down on the cushions. “I knew something happened with you two last night, you bitch ass liar!” The upside to that proclamation was that it made this entire scene seem a whole hell of a lot more believable. 

“What happened last night?” Jennie asked, concern embedded in her features as she and Sana pushed to the front of the crowd. 

You couldn’t blame them for these over the top reactions, especially your best friends. They figured that you would tell them anything, and you would. If you actually managed to pull off this ruse, you were going to tell Sana and Jennie the details immediately. But you had to admit, Jungkook was right. Having your best friends raw reactions was making this seem more realistic and not as far-fetched. 

You glanced at Jungkook for a second, giving a small nod that said they were just going to have to improvise this as best as they could. 

“We… There was more to the talk last night than I told you,” You said, finally responding back to the random questions being thrown in every direction. 

“Yeah, I wanted to tell you, Jimin,” Jungkook started. “But it happened so suddenly, and I knew a lot of you guys weren’t going to understand, so we wanted to talk about how we were going to go about telling you guys about this,” He said as he grabbed your hand and interlaced your fingers once more. The small gesture had people gasping as if that was more damning than making out. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sana rattled off, hands tangling in her hair like her head was about to overheat. “You guys are back together? Y/N, you didn’t say shit about this when I talked to you this morning.”

“I… we’re not back together… yet.” You squeezed his hand, silently telling him that you knew what you were doing. You thought saying you were completely back together was less believable than saying the two of you were simply talking again. “We’re just working through things, and I didn’t wanna jinx it when I was talking to you this morning, but I was going to tell you.”

You could see the hurt flashing through her eyes at you not telling her the truth, even though it wasn’t actually the truth. You wanted to pull her in and apologize, but she would know the actual circumstances soon enough.

“This is in-fucking-sane,” Taehyung said as he also stepped to the front. “Talking? If you’re doing that, you’re basically already back together.”

“Fuck, is that why you got pissed at me for making that comment about Y/N this morning, Kook?” Baekhyun shouted from the back. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know!”

This was actually going a lot better than you had anticipated. All of these tiny coincidences of what you had told your friends or the way the two of you had acted since yesterday were building up to be a pretty convincing lie. 

“You’re fine,” Jungkook shrugged. “You didn’t know — but now you do.” That last part came out a little more harsh; a believable act from the Lambda president. 

“I just don’t get it,” Joy said from somewhere in the middle of the crowd. “You just called him a lying piece of shit literally yesterday.”

Your jaw clenched. This was the part that had worried you the most, the fact that only yesterday the two of you had portrayed a relationship that wasn’t even slightly cordial, and now you were trying to say you had jumped right back into almost being in a relationship? It was a leap, but you were going to have to convince them to take the jump. 

“I know I said that,” You started, clearing your throat to try and sound louder and more confident. “But I only said that because I was feeling hurt. We ran into each other after everything that happened yesterday and apologized. We ended up hanging out the entire night and texting all day today, and… and we talked about things that we haven’t talked about in a really, really long time.” That part was true at least. “Honestly, we weren’t going to say anything for a while, because we thought it would be too sudden for you guys, but we’ve been drinking and we kind of just forgot about how you guys might react. I’m sorry it happened like this.”

Everyone was quiet for a second. You looked around and found a slew of people that belonged to neither house recording this entire debacle. You weren’t sure where the two of you should go from here. Should the two of you stay together for the rest of the night or should you go talk to your friends? You didn’t know the best route to take. However, you and Jungkook had to be the luckiest people in the entire world, because you had a friend like Yoongi, who not only gave you ideas that were so crazy that they just might work, but also could get you out of any hiccups that his said crazy plans might run into.

“So everyone knows about the happy couple now?” Yoongi threw his arms around you and Jungkook, a beaming smile staring out at the crowd of stunned Tri Delts and Lambdas. “Perfect, because I’m shit at keeping secrets.”

“Wait, you knew?” Jennie asked. 

“Yeah, they were both texting me this morning about all of their gross, mushy feelings.” He faked a gag for good measure. “You guys know I’m friends with both of them so they wanted an impartial opinion. Plus, as their very good friend I’ve wanted them to get back together since they broke up, so I may have pushed them along in the right direction.” You weren’t sure if that was what Yoongi actually felt or if he was just saying it for whatever reason. Either way, you were actually happy because it was only adding to the air of believability. “So instead of standing there like you’re devastated, maybe seem happy for this newly rekindled love?”

“Give us a minute,” Johnny said, his tall head poking up from the crowd in the back. “We’re in shock.” 

You finally let yourself look at Jungkook again. He was already waiting for you with a small upward tilt of his lips. To everyone else it probably just looked like a smile between two people who were reconciling, but to you it was a sign of victory. The two of you did it. They believed you — at least for now. 

“Okay, can we at least talk to you in private?” Sana asked, now that the crowd was starting to disperse to simmer over this newfound information. 

“Yeah, let’s talk.” You nodded and then turned to whisper into Jungkook’s ear. “I’m telling them the truth, but no one else.”

“Yeah, I’m telling Jimin and that’s it,” He murmured. 

“Okay,” You said and then quickly pressed a small peck to his lips before dropping his hand and immediately getting dragged away by your friends before you could say a single word. 

You spent the next half hour explaining to them every detail of the Great Greek Ruse Yoongi had cooked up, and by the end of it they were completely slack jawed before disintegrating into a fit of laughter at just how insane the two of you must have been to try and pull off something like that. 

Your only response to them being that there were only a few things in life that could end a war that was saturated in as much hostility as the one between the Tri Delts and the Lambdas; love being one of them — even if it was fake.  

 ———---

The party continued on after that. Your friends not allowing you out of their sights as they bombarded you with every idea that danced through their heads about how to keep the ploy of yours and Jungkook’s fake relationship up for as long as possible, and how the two of you were going to go about hooking up with people without everyone finding out. You were actually thankful for that, because you and Jungkook hadn’t gotten a chance to work out the logistics of how you were going to act in public. 

You simply listened as Sana and Jennie amused themselves with this situation that their best friend had gotten themself involved in when you felt your phone buzz in your pocket. You pulled it out, Jungkook’s contact flashed across the screen with a text. You should probably get around to changing his contact name from ‘Jungkook the Jackass’ in case anyone ever caught a glance at your phone. Meet me out front, the text said. 

“I’ll be right back,” You told Sana and Jennie as you lifted yourself off of the couch. “I’ve gotta talk to Jungkook.”

“Tell your lover I said hello!” Sana chuckled, no longer having that hurt like in her eye from earlier now that she was in on everything. 

You quickly moved through the crowd of people that was now beginning to thin as the night got later and later before stepping past the front door. You looked around for a second before you noticed Jungkook standing at the base of the driveway waiting for you. He spotted you, motioning for you to come down. You wondered what he wanted. Probably to just gloat in relief that their idiot plan actually succeeded. 

“Hey,” You whispered as you decided to stand a little bit closer to him than you normally would just in case anyone was watching. “What’s up?” 

He looked around, presumably to make sure no one was in ear shot, and when he found that the coast was clear he turned towards you, an ecstatic grin staring at you. “I can’t believe that actually worked.” 

“I can’t either. Yoongi was right. They really are like toddlers.” You laughed. 

“Yeah, I mean we don’t know for sure yet if this is actually gonna stop them from fighting, but I saw some of the members who I know have had issues in the past actually talking, so I think that’s a good sign.”

“Yeah, I saw them too.” Lambdas and Tri Delts who had pulled some pretty spectacular pranks on one another seen speaking in what looked to be a respectful manner? A complete miracle. “How’d Jimin take the news?”

“Oh, he thinks it’s completely hilarious.” Jungkook chuckled. 

You smiled. “Sana and Jennie think the same.”

“I figured they would. Though seeing them that pissed off was kind of funny.” He paused, looking off into the distance before shoving his hand into his pockets. “But anyways, the reason I called you out here was to give you this.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and made a fist in front of you. You opened your palm to receive whatever he was trying to give you; a single key suddenly falling into your grasp. “I have a spare in my car, but that’s the key to my apartment — or I guess our apartment now.” He laughed, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck. 

You had been so focused on the fake dating aspect of this predicament that you had almost forgotten about your living situation. You held it up between the two of you. You couldn’t believe this was actually happening. You were about to move in with your ex, while everyone except for your best friends believed that you were back together. 

“Are we really gonna do this?” You finally asked. 

“I don’t see why we wouldn’t be able to make it work. I think the past two days showed that we can be around each other and not act crazy.”

You agreed that things had definitely shifted, and not just because you had to pretend to be in a relationship now. You wanted to think that you could make it work, that you could put your petty, bitter ways behind you.

And when you told Jungkook that you felt the exact same way about making things work before leaving to go home for one of your last few nights in the Tri Delt house, you truly meant what you had said to him… But sometimes situations happen, and as they say, old habits die hard. 

--------

three days later

You were completely out of breath as you climbed the stairs to your new apartment building, about a dozen duffle bags filled with your various belongings were wrapped around your body as you tried to keep your phone smashed between your shoulder and your ear. 

“Why’d you decide to move out early?” Jennie whined from the otherside of the line. “Did you wanna get away from us that bad?”

You tried to muster a laugh as you attempted to make it up the final few steps without passing out. “Of course I wanted to stay longer, but both of my classes got cancelled, and I’d rather just get it over with than have to deal with it on a Friday like I was going to.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” She huffed. “But I’m still not happy about you having to live with the devil’s spawn.”

You tsked at her. “Hey, we’re all trying to get along now, remember?” 

“I know… But I’m still acting like a bitch to Jimin, I don’t care,” She added quickly. 

“Well, that one I’m okay with.” You chuckled. “But I just got to my apartment, so I’ll call you back in a little bit, okay?”

“Okay, talk to you later.” And then the line went dead and you were fishing for the key that Jungkook had handed you outside of Kappa Sigma on Saturday night. 

You couldn’t believe it had only been three days, but in those three days things had been going okay, actually. There had been no incidents involving either the Tri Delt or Lambda house, and after the everyday, non-stop antics from the past few years, that was as close to divine intervention as you could get. So yes, you could say that maybe you had developed a slight bit of optimism. Everything was working out at the sorority, you actually had a place to live — things truly were going well. But you should’ve known that when things were going well, Jeon Jungkook was always there to throw a wrench in your happiness, because as you wiggled the key inside of the lock and pushed your way inside, the last thing you had ever wanted to see in your entire life was staring right back at you. 

Your ex-boyfriend, who publicly was once again your actual boyfriend, whom you still had occasional feelings of longing for, was currently balls-deep in a girl on his living room couch — which was now also your living room couch.

The door slammed against the wall before you could stop it, both of their terrified faces suddenly turning to you as they immediately yanked a blanket over their naked bodies. 

“Jesus Christ, Y/N!” Jungkook yelled. “You said you were coming Friday!” 

You couldn’t help it. The tiny, petty demon you had tried to squash down in size over the past few days was suddenly bubbling over at the flare of emotions ricocheting inside of your head. Your teeth gritted together, eyes cutting daggers across his skin as you forced a saccharine smile as fake as this relationship. 

“Well, honey, I’m home now.”

[just-like-playing-tag]

A totally self indulgent compilation of my favorite works on this blog of the year June 13, 2020 - June 13, 2021

2019-2020

The following lists are all in chronological order according to the date each post was first published.

Top 10 panel edits:

#1: It's our first morning

Date: Aug 20th, 2020 Time: ~ 2:18 h I really like how this one turned out!!! The 2020 Emma b-day edit has a lot of major panel redraws, but this is probably my favorite. I I really enjoy how I made the shadows work!! And the ear banfage looks pretty neat. Nice!!! Immagine

#2: Norman birthday edit 2021

Date: Mar 20th, 2021 Time: ~ 2:21 h Awww, soft Norman :') There was a bit to redraw, but I think everything turned out pretty neat!!! I believe everything works out fine. Though looking back at it, the part of the ID I added is definitely top small :')

#3: Manga dub: Yuugo gets knocked out

Date: Mar 27th, 2021 Time: ~ 5:05 h Here start the Manga Dub redraws to which I gave my everything ahah. This one turned out nice! I think the shoes turned out particularly good eheh. I like how Yuugo's clothing lineart- for the texture, I wanted to go for something heterogeneous, but I'm not fully confident in the final result. Gilda looks very rushed but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#4: Manga dub: Yuugo makes his dramatic entrance

Date: Apr 5th, 2021 Time: ~ 4:02 h This is pretty cool!!!! The coat took ages to redraw, but sis it turned out perfect!!! I'm very proud of this.

#5: Manga dub: RayGildEmma hug!!!

Date: Apr 9th, 2021 Time: ~ 1:31 h Awww, a beautiful panel I was really happy to have the chance to redraw. Taking into account what there was to redraw, I'm actually surprised with how little this took! Ray's backpack was a pain to make, but I think it turned out fine. I'm very happy with Emma and Ray's heads!!

#6: Manga dub: Formalities

Date: Apr 12th, 2021 Time: ~ 5:31 h It is not always easy to give sense to Demizu's perspective, but I do my best!!! In this I am *so* happy with how Don and Ray turned out, they look neat! The background on the other hand... It took hours to make ahah. I'm not fully confident in the perspective, but I'm happy with the details I've added- I really did my best to make it look like athe other manga panels and I think it paid off!!!

#7: Manga dub: We may be weaklings, but we're still alive

Date: Apr 30th, 2021 Time: ~ 1:37 h This little Emma is so cute!!!!!! I think the redraw turned out pretty perfect. I'm really satisfied with how this one turned out, and it's such a cute little Emma!!!! She's so brave and optimistic, I love her. It's a shame this panel didn't make it to the episode :')

#8: Manga dub: Goldy Pond Gang

Date: May 7th, 2021 Time: ~ 8:44 h lmao This is probably the panel redraw I'm the most proud of ever :') Just think everyone turned out very nice!! The ceiling is not exactly perfect, but it still works somehow. I'm very happy with how Gillian's back turned out!! I don't really like the fading effect on the right, but 8h in I got pretty tired of working on this ahah

#9: Manga dub: This is Goldy Pond

Date: May 21st, 2021 Time: ~ 1:29 h I'm very glad for how the Manga dub has been challenging me to learn to redraw backgrounds, something I had quite literally never tried before. It can be a little frustrating, but it's so satisfying to see the final cleaned piece!! With this panel, I also learnt to use copy and paste, which is something I had never done before beyond texture

#10: Manga dub: Good morning doctor

Date: May 21st, 2021 Time: ~ 3:42 h This is another background that turned out pretty good!! That one Norman is one I knew I would have had to fully redraw sooner or lager- the background was a bonus ahah. I'm very happy with the final result!!

Top 5 edits as whole:

#1: The Promised Neverland manga ending edit

Date: Jun 14th 2020 Time: ~ 12h 41min (5h 45min of cleaning panels in the edit + 5h 37min of cleaning panels that didn't make it to the edit + 1h 19min of resizing) + time spent cleaning panels I've deleted the file of so I can't see lmao This is overall very nice!!! The concept of an Emma evolution through her back is cool, and I think overall the edit turned out very aesthetically pleasing. The concept idea came to me while I was working on the 2019 Emma's birthday edit, a long time before the manga ending announcement- back then I wouldn't have imagined using it in occasion of the manga ending, but I think it ended up making a nice tribute. The colors add a nice touch, since so far my edits had always been black and white- it makes a sweet closure. To make that edit I selected 76 panels of Emma framed from her back; I plan to make other versions of that edit using the discarded panels eventually!

#2: Emma - Chapter 181: Beyond Destiny

Date: Jul 12th 2020 Time: 2h 57min My last edit for the manga 🥺🥺 I think this one is my very "manga ending edit" because to me it really signed the ending of weekly chapters and their weekly chapter edits. It makes me a little sad to look at it, but it's also, I don't know, kinda sweet to see how I grew both in my panel cleaning and as a person since I first started my blog. I'm glad I got into TPN!

#3: Emma birthday edit 2020

Date: Aug 22nd 2020 Time: 8h 54min This one turned out so well!!! Though I used the same concept for all the trio edits, I think this one is the best one. The two panels on the left / two panels on the right alternation combo never fails ahah. The colors are nice (shout-out to my sister for making me a palette), despite the fact that it was hard for the lighter ones to make them work with the images without having those disappear. I'm very satisfied with the panels I chose for this, I think they work really good together! Also, it got me very happy to read everyone's comments saying they liked the fading effect in the last panel :)

#4: Emma + Eyes Close Ups [1/?]

Date: Jan 24th 2021 Time: 5h 55min This one was really nice!! Another idea I got when working on the 2019 Emma birthday edit I was glad to finally execute. Started the edit in September, finished it in December. I'm overall very happy with how it turned out... I hope I will be able to make more in the future!

#5: The Promised Neverland Parallels → (9/?) » 114 // 122

Date: Feb 23th 2021 Time: 5h 7min (panel cleaning only) Aaaaahh I really like this one!!!! A parallel I love very much, and I'm really happy with how the edit turned out. All the hair redrawing looks neat!!!! The gif is maybe a little excessive, but I think overall it's a nice edit. I like it!!! Fun fact, I completed it on August 26th 2020, but I couldn't find the right moment to post it ahah.

Honorable mention: The Promised Neverland Parallels → (5/?) » 08 // 16

Date: Aug 30th 2020 Time: 2h 52min (Second picture cleaning only; I deleted the first picture art file so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) I don't have much to say about this one except!! It turned out very nice!!!!! Love the pen lmao.

Top 10 analysis:

Too many analysis,,

#1: Post chapter 181 Emma analysis

Date: Jul 9th 2020 Mmmh a nice analysis. I think it was important for me to put down in words what I think of Emma's characterization and the manga ending, so I'm happy I did it!

#2: A long Oliver analysis because I love him very much

Date: Dec 6th 2020 What can I say I just love Oliver tons 😔😔💕💕 This was very fun to make!!!

#3: TPN s2 previsions

Date: Jan 14th 2021 Really love the effort that went into this + me proving that 11 episodes GP could have possibly worked + it's just a lot of fun to read again after s2 ended pffft

#4: More s2 delusional previsions lmao

Date: Jan 27th 2021 I think the points and previsions I made where pretty neat!! In my defense, it was pretty impossible to predict the anime would have ended with this season. I always feel honoured when friends and Anon ask for my opinion, I'm like "you wanna know what I think? Wow. I'm flattered (◍•ᴗ•◍) " Thank you to anyone who ever sent me an ask!!

#5: Why Emma not wearing pants is 𝕨𝕣𝕠𝕟𝕘

Date: Jan 29th 2021 Really proud of this!!! Pants Emma is important!!!!!

#6: Post episode 5 manga Emma analysis

Date: Feb 4th 2021 A depressed analysis, but a necessary one 😔

#7: Norman analysis

Date: Feb 12th 2021 I love him!!!! And I'm happy I eventually got to put down in words what I love about his character. The day I posted this ww3.readneverland was in maintenance so I couldn't use the volume scans for it- the thought of that post having fan edited and fan translated scans still haunts me

#8: RayDon rambles

Date: May 12th 2021 I had a blast writing this and like. It's likely the post of mine I reread more often of them all. I love this ship tons!!!!! I'm satisfied with how I put down in words what I like about them. I LOVE THIS SHIP

#9: Chapter 58 analysis

Date: May 23th 2021 I've wanted to express this concept since like the first time reading the manga- I'm so happy I finally did!!!! This concept is one of my absolute favorite things about tpn- the feelings that people are good. The concept that kids who got to live in an healthy and supportive environment will always be inclined to kindness and altruism, because humans are just inherently good. From the Three Character Classic: “people at birth are inherently good”. I want to have faith and courage to hold on the goodness in myself, and to hold on the goodness in the world, no matter how difficult it to do that (Chloé Zhao).

#10: Norman and Lambda squad relationship analysis

Date: May 24th 2021 I think this was a pretty sharp analysis and I like what I did with it!!

Other stuff:

#1: Krone birthday edit

Date: Jul 15th 2020 This edit is so good ;; Like not perfect since it was my first attempt at coloring gifs but still I believe it turned out so good ;;;;;; The time and effort that went unto this is crazy, but... Maybe I'm happy to have dedicated time to something I like for a satisfying result.

#2: Get to know my ship- Wolfpack Trio

Date: Aug 24th 2020 Uuuh a good post. A good ship.

#3: Gilda + blank glasses

Date: Aug 27th 2020 This is such a cute nice compilation!!! I love looking at it. A few panels are missing but still :')

#4: Apollo Ray AU

Date: Sep 7th 2020 (Though it was written Sep 2nd 2019 lmao) I'm so happy I finally gathered the courage to post this 😭😭 I really enjoy what I did with this AU, so this one and its other installments are all posts I have a lot of fun rereading. More than everything, I was astounded and overjoyed by the positive response it got: that gave me tons of confidence to put my ideas out there, no matter how unique they sound!!! Here's to hoping I will be able to post my RayEmma Hadestown AU, by other big AU from late summer 2019 :')

#5: TPN timeline project

Date: Dec 2nd 2020 This is like. I don't know it's a lot ahah. Arguably the project I'm the most proud of ever making. I'm just so happy of all the months long hard work and of the final result!! The post didn't receive much response (though the ones I got were extremely kind and sweethearted so that totally makes up for it), but in the end I don't really mind? I'm just so proud I accomplished that idea :')

#6: TPN calendar

Date: Jan 4th 2021 A nice sum of the tpn timeline + everyone's birth dates!!! I really like how it turned out visually. It's a cute little tpn calendar!!!

#7: Ray smiles compilation

Date: Jan 17th 2021 Ray's smile. That's it that's the post :')

#8: Trans Oliver headcanons

Date: Jan 24th 2021 MMMH really like this headcanon I think about it a lot

#9: Thoma and Lani theory

Date: Jan 28th 2021 I really don't want to brag but this is the best joke I've ever made :')

#10: My TPN AUs

Date: May 10th 2021 Ok you gotta admit those are very good AUs, I'm glad to have made a list out of them!!!

#11: Ranking Emma promotional art outfits

Date: May 16th 2021 This is one people seem to have liked a lot which makes me happy ahah. I'm glad to know we can all agree Emma deserves more pants outfits!! Please stop it with the gendered clothing :') This is the post I want to be remembered for

#12: TPN musicals AU part 2

Date: May 20th 2021 A GREAT POST I can't stretch enough how happy I am with those character-song associations. I hope I have time to make a part 3 in the future!!

#13: TPN Drive folder

Date: May 30th 2021 This was born as a way for me to have all the tpn extra contents easily accessible, but I'm happy to have shared it with people- I hope it will turn out to be useful to others too!

#14: TPN s2 recolorings

Date: Jun 12th 2021 A more diverse children cast is good for the soul :')

That's it, this year was really fun!! Thank you to everyone who supported me through it, I can't express how grateful I am for all the kindness and validation I received. Here's to many more months in the fandom!!! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*.✧

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep14

Do you ever wanna just watch two little girls who are actually 100+ year old witches beat the absolute SHIT out of each other for 20 minutes straight? :)

Anyway, thoughts under the cut. Plus Umineko spoilers.

Part of this might just be because I’ve been high on painkillers for a few weeks now [long story short, I’ve got a lot of dental work that needs done], but this is perhaps the most entertaining episode of anime I’ve seen all year, lol. Not even in a jokey ironic ‘so bad it’s good’ way.

I feel like this is going to be the most polarizing episode of this whole show, because for better or worse it really crosses the line between Higurashi and Umineko, so whether or not you’re a fan of that whole trajectory the story’s been taking will really change how you feel about this.

Though to be honest I think on one level people are ignoring how Higurashi has always had a lot of these things in it. For one thing, the concept of the fragment space and ‘game boards’ has been a thing since Minagoroshi, and we’ve always had stuff like Hanyuu being a literal god who can manifest in the real world, and the existence of the mythical sword was hinted at in Matsuribayashi and then expanded upon in Kotohogushi. This episode also directly referenced the over the top rooftop fight scene from Tsumihoroboshi, which was just the start of Higurashi having lots of fun and silly fight scenes, like the fights between the club members and the military in Matsuribayashi, or the whole fighting game spin-off arc thing. Even in the VN there was an intentional shift from horror and mystery to high-octane fight scenes fueled by the power of friendship and miracles.

Obviously on the other hand there’s definite Umineko stuff going on here, but in general this feels like a pretty natural progression for this series to take.

Anyway, this was absolutely worth the wait, and it goes a long way toward making up for how bad the pacing in Sotsu has been thus far, lol. I still think they could have cut this down by at least two or three episodes, but still. As a climax to this whole conflict between Rika and Satoko, it was really cool.

Sort of like how Nekodamashi had it’s rollercoaster death montage, I really loved how this whole episode transitioned between fragments in increasingly seamless and surreal ways. The use of transition cuts between scenes was honestly really cool, and made it way more dynamic and engaging than it otherwise would have been to basically have an entire episode spent on one fight scene.

I think a lot of people are hung up on the exact logistics of how the fragment-hopping worked in this episode, but I don’t really think you should read into it too much. It basically operated on dream logic and heightened emotions. In the first few fragments Satoko might have waited a bit before attacking Rika, but it very quickly became one continuous sequence of events for all intents and purposes, with how their back and forth dialogue and their exact movements transitioned from one fragment to the next.

Basically it ended up becoming a fight between voyager witches who have become totally divorced from reality and just hop from one fragment to the next whenever they please.

I was wondering how they’d follow up on the gun scene, since it created this stalemate where they both know what’s going on and thus have no reason to surrender, but I really like how they decided to take this. I know a lot of people have been wanting more of a drawn out battle of wits between them, but the whole concept of them just getting into an endless fight with each other now that everything’s out in the open is extremely entertaining to watch.

It does make me even more convinced that it was a bad idea to have Nekodamashi happen in Gou, though. The immediate resolution to the cliffhanger was more anti-climactic than most people would have wanted after so much time spent leading back up to it, and the whole tone and pacing of Nekodamashi would have flowed very seamlessly into this. It also would have fixed the issue of the last two episodes being almost entirely recaps if this was instead the first time that we saw the Nekodamashi loops.

Anyway, there’s been a lot of debate about whether or not we might get a third season or some other kind of continuation to this, and I think this episode makes me way more convinced that it’s actually just going to end here, whether people like it or not. I think I’ve already said that there’s literally nothing the story needs to do anymore except have Rika and Satoko hash things out with each other, and that’s exactly what they’re focusing on now. Maybe they could spend time recapping Satokowashi, but that’d be extremely pointless. And at this point it’s pretty clear that one way or another the other club members just aren’t going to be very important to this story. There’s a bit of a loose end with their teenage selves showing up in the OP with new outfits, but that might be as simple as an epilogue scene set back in the Matsuribayashi fragment or something, and them looking ominous might be a red herring.

Also, in a more meta sense, there’s certain stuff the staff are doing and saying that make this seem like the finale of the whole series, like how in a couple months they’re going to release a congratulatory book compiling all the official artwork and interviews for Gou/Sotsu, or how they recently released a compilation CD of all of Ayane’s Higurashi-related songs, or how [I think] the artist for the Gou manga said on Twitter that the new chapter that just came out will be the last one to come out while the anime’s airing. We’re also getting two new Higurashi manga arcs starting soon, along with the reveal that the Gou manga will diverge from the anime and go into a new answer arc called Higurashi Jun.

So in general it just comes across like everything’s being wrapped up with Sotsu. I can see why people would be disappointed if we don’t get more, but with how the story’s been going, there’s just not really much material left to work with. Also, we know from TV listings that there at least won’t be a direct continuation in the next season, so if we get anything more it wouldn’t happen until January at earliest, and at this point I’d rather things just wrap up here instead of having to wait even longer to get the actual ending, lol.

I guess we won’t know how things will end until next week, but we really seem to be barrelling headfirst into this being Bern and Lambda’s origin story. Which has been pretty obvious for ages now, but this episode in particular really cements it. This whole fight is really similar to the one they have in Episode 8, and you can see throughout the episode how they’re embracing their looper/witch personas and becoming divorced from reality. You can even see the foundation for how Bern and Lambda have a twisted love for each other based on the fact that they’re basically the only people who can actually understand each other, and they’re so detached from reality that the violence between them is more like a sign of affection.

I feel like this is also going to end up tying into the miracle that Hanyuu is waiting for. At the moment we’re in a situation where it seems like they’re stuck in an infinite stalemate because they’re in a fight where neither of them wants to lose, but neither of them wants to win if it means permanently killing the other. So it seems like there might not really be any way out of this, but if they’re able to truly forgive each other and embrace their identities as witches, then they can basically step away from this entire conflict and just enjoy being with each other. It seems impossible for this to end with either of them ‘winning’ and things going back to how they used to be, so it could certainly be called a miracle if they both decide that they’re OK with that, and they take a third option where they can both be happy in a way that neither of them would have predicted at first.

This could also lead to a situation where Rika is able to ascend to a higher level by letting go of her human side once and for all, which could give her the ability to appear in the part of the fragment space where Eua and Hanyuu are, so she can save Hanyuu from getting killed by Eua’s spear.

And on that note, the whole bit with Hanyuu at the end actually reminds me a lot of the idea of logic errors in Umineko. I think people kinda over-use that term when it comes to stuff in this series where it doesn’t really fit, but that scene was actually extremely similar to the whole set-up where Battler got stuck in a locked room that he couldn’t come up with an answer to get out of, and he had to wait for the ‘miracle’ of Beatrice awakening so that Kanon could arrive and save him. Hanyuu is in a position where she’s already committed to flying straight at Eua, but the spear is right in front of her face and about to kill her once time starts again, and she has to wait for a ‘miracle’ to happen to change her fate. Which is also a lot like how in Matsuribayashi she almost got shot by Takano, but a miracle happened and Rika was able to divert the bullet. So it’d make a lot of sense in general if in the next episode we see Rika show up there and save Hanyuu.

And considering how Featherine acts in Umineko, I could honestly see Eua sticking to her word and rewarding Hanyuu if a miracle like that actually happens and saves her. So even if it’s anti-climactic, this might end with Eua accepting her loss and backing off, and maybe not even doing anything to punish Satoko for losing in her fight against Rika. Which is part of why I think the whole lingering threat of the ‘world without Rika’ might not even lead to anything and might just be a vague threat towards Satoko that never materializes.

Other than that, I think the last episode will probably also involve us going back to Matsuribayashi and seeing what sort of ending Rika and Satoko’s ‘human selves’ get once their ‘witch selves’ leave them behind once and for all. Which will probably just be along the lines of Rika going to the Saiguden to check up on Satoko, and them heading over to the cafe where the other club members [and probably Satoshi as well] are waiting for them, and it’ll just end on the note of them presumably working things out between each other peacefully.

Along those same lines, I think that the whole story of Gou/Sotsu will also get somewhat recontextualized as being a sort of deranged power fantasy that Satoko came up with in her head while visiting the Saiguden. I don’t think that’d be intended to devalue anything that happened here, but it’d be like how Umineko presents enough narrative framework for a non-magical interpretation of everything, while at the same time still acknowledging the value of the magical interpretation.

While I remember, I’m curious to see how the manga version turns out, since it’s clearly diverging a fair bit from the anime. It might just be an alternate take on the story concept, but at this point I think it might be presented as an ‘earlier loop’ of Gou/Sotsu, with how it’s been implied that Eua and Satoko have met before without Satoko remembering it. So maybe this whole series of events has repeated over and over again, presumably with Satoko ‘losing’ each time so things get reset, and Gou/Sotsu is the final iteration of that loop where they’re finally able to achieve a miracle.

I feel like the manga version is probably gonna end up being closer to what people wanted out of Sotsu, since it seems to be going in the direction of Rika knowing everything without Satoko knowing that, so they can have more of a drawn out conflict between each other as Rika tries to figure out how to win. Which is one way to take the story, but I still like how the anime ended up doing it, even if it could have been paced a lot better. I also think that the manga isn’t exactly a straight improvement over the anime anyway. There’s stuff it does well, but there’s stuff it doesn’t do well, like how the whole Nekodamashi arc feels extremely weird in the context of Rika not remembering her deaths [or at least not being given a clear reason for why she can suddenly remember them], her not deciding to go for five more loops before killing herself, and Satoko apparently not having any idea about Rika remembering her deaths, which seems to defeat the point of Nekodamashi’s rapid-fire death loops.

Either way I’m curious to see how Jun goes. I assume that we’ll still get some version of Satokowashi out of it, but I think that unlike with Sotsu they’ll spend much less time on answering the damashi arcs, and I also think at this point that the answers to them won’t be exactly the same as they were in the anime either.

Also, we recently found out that two entirely new Higurashi manga arcs will start in November, called Oniokoshi and Hoshiwatashi, which seem to be collectively referred to as Higurashi Rei, using the kanji from ‘the Reiwa era’, since it seems like the idea of these new arcs is that they take place in the Reiwa era. Oniokoshi seems to be about Keiichi’s son and a new mysterious character, while Hoshiwatashi seems to be about two entirely new characters, so I’m really curious to see how their stories pan out. I’m particularly excited about Oniokoshi since it’s being drawn by Natsumi Kei, who’s basically the primary artist for the Umineko manga, so that kinda makes me biased towards it, lol. And even though there’s basically nothing to go off of except for one preview image, it looks like it might go in a bit of a gay direction, which would be really neat. But we’ll see how it goes.

So yeah, I guess at this point with where things are going I’m gonna be really disappointed if we don’t get something like an Umineko remake after this, lol. It wouldn’t be very satisfying if it just ends on the note of ‘go and read the Umineko VN’ or something.

[angels-heap]

Peeping your tags, got any spare Lauren headcanons you could share ˁ˙˟˙ˀ

Oh god, I have enough extremely niche and specific Lauren headcanons bouncing around in my head to write at least two fics, but since I have decided not to write them for Fandom Bullshit Reasons, I’ve been shoving as many of them as possible into The Ghost in You instead.

But without spoiling that fic too much (or making anyone who hasn’t read it feel compelled to do so), here are a few miscellaneous tidbits from my mountains of unused fic notes and outlines:

Lauren worked in the Sector C cafeteria at Black Mesa, and that’s where she met Barney (and eventually Gordon, aka “Ponytail Guy,” the new guy from AnMat who only drank black coffee and never talked to anyone). Barney took Ponytail Guy’s reputation as a challenge, and thus, a beautiful friendship was born.

She liked to dance to old-timey jazz music and also had a bit of a houseplant hoarding problem. Secretly, Barney suspected that the main reason she moved in with him was that his dorm had windows to let in natural light.

Like Barney, Lauren was a huge conspiracy theorist. Unlike Barney, she thought the weird shit going on at Black Mesa was way more interesting than aliens and cryptids. She was able to take advantage of the relative invisibility her service job afforded her to snoop around during her off hours. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that.

Lauren’s behind-the-scenes meddling almost definitely prevented Gordon from being transferred to the Lambda Complex (and possibly disappearing under mysterious and highly classified circumstances) prior to the resonance cascade. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard to know if that was a good call or a very, very bad one.

As I mentioned in the tags of this post, Lauren 100% picked up on the subtle homoerotic tension between Barney and Gordon pretty quickly, even though they were both deep in denial. Alas, she ran out of time to encourage them to act on it. Her thoughts on the whole situation ranged from “hilarious” to “kinda hot,” depending on the context.

Case in point: She and Barney once got really drunk together and decided they should both get one “hall pass” to sleep with another person, no questions asked, without it being considered cheating. They wrote their choices down on little pieces of paper and swapped them. Hers was Leonardo DiCaprio. Barney’s was Gordon. He later denied this, but unbeknownst to him, she kept the paper.

Bonus! I managed to find an old outline file for The Ghost in You. Enjoy(?) these snippets of half-written/half-outlined backstory that didn’t make it into the final draft of Chapter 10:

Gordon then proceeded to reveal Lauren’s best-kept open cooking secret to an astonished Barney. (“She just used Lawry’s instead of regular salt in recipes and put it on everything! How did you never pick up on that? You literally shared a kitchen, Barn! She kept the bottle in plain sight!”)

“She was kinda the black sheep of her family,” Barney continued; if he’d noticed his friends’ concern, he chose not to acknowledge it. “She grew up pretty comfortable”—Gordon briefly interrupted with a snort, suggesting that that was an understatement—"but her folks cut her off when she decided she didn’t wanna follow in their footsteps and become a soulless fuckin’ lawyer. She wound up getting a sociology degree at the University of New Mexico because it was the only place she could afford on her own, and…” He trailed off and narrowed his eyes. “Gordon’s makin’ his ‘sociology isn’t a real science’ face, isn’t he?”

[Alyx] also couldn’t help but giggle at Gordon’s absolute disgust for the way Lauren and Barney had shared some kind of cookies called Oreos. (“He’d lick all the cream off and then hand her the soggy cookie part and she’d just pop it into her mouth! It was barbaric!” “Pssh… how is that different from how you and I shared cupcakes at office parties, huh?” “Are you… are you telling me you didn’t scrape the icing off of those with a knife!?...”)  

(Much like the infamous movie theater “handjob seats” in It’s Only Natural, the Oreo anecdote was, unfortunately, based on an insane thing I actually witnessed in my real life.)

So, there you go. You asked for headcanons and you got the ghosts of my abandoned WIPs. I hope this was at least slightly entertaining in some way. And thank you so much for giving me an excuse to ramble about this!

[drunklander]

Drunj!Der Yells About Outlander

Thoughts on Ep. 504

Let’s make this one quick, because tbh I really dgaf about Alicia and Isiah and I’m almost done with Maas’ new book so if any other’s in the Maaslander squad wanna chat about it, I have feelings.

They’re really dragging this Bonnet thing out, aren’t they. I mean, the books did too, but they could have, ya know, AdApTeD. Le sigh.

Hallo the house is the olde timey version of texting “here” when you get to your buddy’s place.

This episode could really be titled Men Suck.

I mean really. Roger? The Browns? Bonnet? Even fucking Elijah Ford manages to suck and we never even see him!

Jamie doesn’t suck much in this episode. Which is a nice change of pace for him. But he’s been headcanon’ed beyond recognition so whatevs.

Fergus doesn’t suck. Fergus is always the exception who can hang with the ladies because he’s cool enough to be in the good squad.

I just fucking love Fergus ok.

As someone who *hates* shopping, back in the day shopping seems like my exact version of hell.

Also, like, have these fuckers not learned their lessons about not communicating? They don’t need to fucking tell everyone the whole truth, but come the fuck on. They can at least give the Ridge Squad a heads up to not fuck with rando Irishmen who may show up.

I swear, they’re all so dumb it hurts.

Also, Bree, girl. You’re talking to an old Scottish lady. Maybe don’t shit on the Irish in a way that also directly applies to her.

Alicia was Mr. Darcy’s daughter on Ripper Street, right? She looks super familiar.

I’m offended on Fergus’ behalf that they’re wasting so much of his whisky with that leaky stopper, tbh.

Ah, toxic masculinity and patriarchal bullshit. Right up there with rape as my FaVoRiTe way to demonstrate that ye olde times sucked.

It’s like dialed to 11 this episode so obvi I spent the majority of it rolling my eyes.

The Jamie and Claire with the baby stuff was solid though.

And thank fuck they refer to her as Bonnie. Like, Diana is notoriously bad with names, but come the fuck on. Alicia Brown and Alicia Beardsley in like the same few chapters? THERE ARE A LOT OF NAMES IN EXISTENCE, DIANA. IT’S OK TO BRANCH OUT A BIT.

Every time something like this comes up, I remember that there’s another random Randall but like as a first name, I think, in the Gathering Without End. Because of course.

Fergus should really be a fucking diplomat. I mean really.

I am approximately 1000% over sing-alongs with Roger. Can we hang the fucker already so he can’t talk anymore?

Yay freedom! You know what goes well with freedom? An incestuous throuple. You do you, Beardsleys.

“You’re 14.” “Uh, I am clearly in my mid-20s.” “Nope, 14.” “Cool cool. Message received.”

“Congratulations, you work fast milord.” I JUST FUCKING LOVE FERGUS SO MUCH.

Seriously, this show needs more Fergus. Also more Fergus, Bree and Marsali bonding. Like, if we’re gonna have an episode about randos, we clearly could have better used the time to have the Fraser kiddos bonding.

“When in Rome...” STFU, Roger. Cosplaying your way through history like you’re on a fieldtrip isn’t cute. It’s fucking annoying. And you wonder why Jamie doesn’t like you. You are an eminently unlikable person.

Roger would def be the guest the hosts in Westworld want to kill.

The only good part about this side-quest is that there’s so much of Jamie telling Roger he sucks. And really, I’m here for any and all of Roger being told he sucks.

Ok but literalol at how badly Caitriona/Claire knocked over her mug. She like put it down fine and then tipped it over.

Oh hey, I wonder who that rando doctor who gives the weird advice is.

Lucinda is a cinnamon roll.

“Beauchamp, Randall, Fraser, now Rawlings? Ye have another husband I should ken about?” “Well, not yet, but you know your buddy who’s in love with you? Well...”

Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp Randall Fraser Randall Fraser Grey Fraser is a very respectable name.

DON’T MAKE FUN OF THE DRINK OF FERGUS’ PEOPLE, BROWN MAN.

Literally the whole time in Brownsville all I could think was fuck, I really don’t want them to do the ABOSAA bit with them next season but I know they’re gonna and I already don’t want to waste time doing fucking recaps.

I’m bored.

Fuck there’s still half an hour left.

“What sort of man would I be if I allowed a lady to sleep out with the militia on a cold, dark night?” Idk, the kind of man whose people kidnap and rape a lady? *preemptive rage intensifies*

I know I should be freaking out that Bree’s freaking out that Bonnet kidnapped Jemmy, but all I could think of is the old podsa ads for SimpliSafe.

The Ridge needs SimpliSafay.

I fucking hate this storyline with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, but I fucking love Marsali.

Omfg I know it’s Brownsville but them all being Browns is fucking like GoT shit. Like, diversify your gene pool, y’all.

Ok, glad there’s finally a Marsali and Bree scene. But I still wish they could hang and like chat about stuff like pals.

That being said, MARSALI IS A FUCKING SAINT AND I LOVE HER SO MUCH.

And of course, more violence against women. Because we can’t go two seconds without reminding the audience that the past is Bad and Dangerous for women.

Also, is Marsali still preggo? Which baby are we on? What time is it? How much longer is left in this season episode?

Cute of Claire to be like hey, Rog, Jamie’s trusting you with me! His favorite thing! Like Jamie’s not actually trusting Claire with his daughter’s dipshit husband.

Oh hey, remember how Brianna can draw Bonnet fairly accurately? Sure would be nice if there was a way to, idk, show those pics to folks on the Ridge. Just spit-balling here, but like, maybe giving folks a heads up would be a good idea. Kind of like how she fuCKING COULD HAVE DRAWN ROGER LAST YEAR BECAUSE TALKING ABOUT HER BOYFRIEND IS A NORMAL THING TO DO WITH FAMILY AND THEN WE WOULDN’T HAVE HAD ROGERGATE AND OMFG THE DUMB. IT HURTS SO MUCH.

Claire just fucking yeeted that baby lol.

For real though, literalol at Jamie like taking his coat off and being all dramatic as he prepares to... play DDR.

omega psi chi phi upsilon tau sigma rho pi omicron xi nu mu lambda kappa iota theta eta zeta epsilon delta gamma beta alpha

Drunk!Claire is back!

I fucking love drunk!Claire. So does Jamie.

The scene where they talk about raising the baby together is adorable. But also, like, Jamie, you’re grandparents now. All the good parts of parenting with none of the shitty parts! And y’all have been through enough shit in your lives that you deserve all the fluffy grandparenting!

“And Marsali and Fergus... Well, I’m sure they will keep the Ridge sufficiently populated if that’s what you’re worried about.” “ Yeah, that lass is with child every time Fergus lays eyes upon her.” WHERE IS THE LIE THO.

Joking aside though, they’d better keep giving Marsali more stuff to do than spit out babies. *aggressively side-eyes a certain author who DiDn’T lIkE wRiTiNg AbOuT kIdS*

Good on them for tweeting out the suicide prevention hotline. Literally the least they can do.

I’m barely really trying to give a shit about Alicia and Isiah, but alas, idgaf.

Literally the only good thing about this whole story line is Isiah being like “step the fuck off, you raging hypocrites” to Roger and Jamie.

[maximumsnow]

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, HLVRAI - Fandom Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Gordon Freeman, Tommy Coolatta, Dr. Coomer (Half-Life), Bubby (Half-Life), Benrey (Half-Life) Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical swearing, Basically an au exploring what if HLVRAI followed Half Life a little more closely, Au where there isn't a betrayal in that one spot, Mainly was wondering what would happen to the others if they hadn't been in on it., Some things change some don't, Title is subject to change because I got nothing, Oh also this is sort of intended as a not a game au Summary:

Anyone who knows original Half-Life knows that the ambush happens in that spot no matter what. What would have happened if the ambush was as rough for the others?

After the encounter with the weirdly nimble soldiers, figuring out where to go next was not an easy task. Especially since Gordon’s companions apparently got hung up at the sight of moths. To be fair, he wouldn’t have expected moths to hang out after all the explosions either, but the problem was that they were all wasting ammo trying to hit tiny targets.

WAS THAT A GRENADE LAUNCHER?

He dove out the way as Tommy’s gun flung an explosive towards the bugs fluttering near a light. As the smoke cleared, he tried yelling, “THEY’RE JUST MOTHS!”

More explosions were all he got for his troubles.

Overcome with the sheer ridiculousness, he couldn’t help but break down laughing as he heard Dr. Coomer yell something about tranquilizing them.

Tommy stopped shooting long enough to forcibly hand Gordon something, and it wasn’t until it was in his hands that he realized that it was yet another human skull. “If they’re-if they’re just moths, then how do you explain this, Mr. Freeman?”

… You know what, given everything else, sure. Why wouldn’t there be killer moths that stripped human corpses to the bones? At the rate things were going, that would only rank at number fifteen on the top twenty list of messed up things he had run into today.

Given that the dang things were apparently still unharmed despite all the bullets and grenades, he was grateful when Bubby called for Gordon to meet him on the platform. By the time he got there, Bubby was already pulling a SURFACE ACCESS lever.

Or was trying to.

“Uhhh, want some help?” Gordon offered as he got closer.

“No, dumbass, I’m fine.”

Arguing wouldn’t do anything, so he turned away to keep an eye on the others. Coomer was already nearby, and if Bubby wouldn’t let Gordon help, then Coomer could take over when Bubby inevitably got too frustrated.

Tommy and Benry joined them after a few minutes, and Gordon would have been more concerned over Tommy’s frightened expression if that hadn’t been the default look ever since this whole mess started. Still, he felt the need to ask, “You good, Tommy?”

“Y-yeah Mr. Freeman. The moths aren’t- They’re being mesmerized by the lamp and ignoring us for now.”

“That’s good.” He reached over patted Tommy’s shoulder. The contact was brief, but Tommy’s tension visibly eased. Which was really good since the taller scientist still had a death grip on his gun.

“You didn’t want your doughnut?” Benry suddenly asked in his deadpan tone.

“… What? Doughnut?” Gordon was already tired of this conversation and it just started. He didn’t even know where the security guard had seen a doughnut.

Just the mention of it, however, reminded him that he could really go for some cheap fried dough right now.

“Yeah, Tommy handed it to you earlier.” Benry threw something at Gordon’s feet.

He looked down at the object and yelled in frustration, “THIS IS A SKULL!”

“It’s got like. Holes in it. Doughnuts have holes.”

“Uggghhhh. That’s not how that works! Doughnuts are made of dough for one thing-”

His rant was cut off by Coomer excitedly yelling, “Let’s go! You can eat your pastry after we get out!”

Gordon sighed and kicked the skull away before following the others back down the ladders. For many reasons, he was glad to get out of that open space, but the hallways ahead felt quiet.

Too quiet.

“Surface access!”

Until his companions decided to play some sort of word game that he couldn’t begin to guess the rules of. “Surface assess.”

“Surface asses! Let’s go!”

… Okay that one got a chuckle out of him.

The chattering turned into background noise as they walked through the hall, and while he was a little frustrated that they were making noise, another part was grateful that their nonsense made this whole horror show bearable.

Going through this alone would have sucked, and it was hard for the horror to set in when he was forced to listen to Inane Comments FM at any given moment.

He was shaken out of his thoughts when Coomer loudly announced, “This will cut down our travel to the Lambda Lab by about three hours!”

By this point, he didn’t really put much stock in Coomer’s time estimates, but he played along, “Th-that’s the whole thing! The entire duration.”

There was a door leading off from the hallway, and Bubby had no hesitation in going straight towards the medical station that was visible even from where Gordon was standing. The others filed in behind him with Gordon bringing up the rear.

Benry chose that moment to say, “Oh look a TV with Blu-Ray!” Which caused everyone else to throw in comments on the topic. Even though there was nothing of the sort nearby-

The lights went out.

“Annnnnd the lights are out. Who knocked out the lights? Who’s fucking with me?” Gordon was more exasperated than worried. This would be right up their alley, even though he had no idea what the prank was going to be.

“Uhhhhhh, What the hell? What’s happening?” Bubby’s voice was a lot more nervous than it should have been.

“Oh, it’s DARK in here...” Thank you, Captain Obvious. Gordon’s money was currently on Benry being the culprit, if the complete lack of surprise was anything to go by. If he was more generous, Gordon would cede that Benry’s deadpan delivery could have also been a cover up for surprise, but he just wanted to get out and not blow a vessel with how much the guard stressed him out.

“Has anyone seen Mr. Freeman?” Wait, where was Dr. Coomer if-

Gunshot.

The bullet didn’t hit him.

But something warm and liquid did.

“SHIT-” Was all he was able to yell out before something hard slammed against the back of his head and knocked him face first to the ground. As soon as he down, whatever attacked him continued hitting him. He tried to curl up as if that would protect him from the onslaught of punches and kicks and who knows what else was hitting him.

“What are you doing!? We just wanna go home!”

“Let go of me you damn boot boys!”

“Help me, Gordon!”

The Science Team’s voices barely cut through the haze in his mind, and he tried so hard to hold onto that. If they were having this much trouble, he had to get back up and take the lead…

There was another gunshot, and the sound made his head scream in pain. It took him way too long to figure out why he wasn’t feeling the agony of being shot. He jolted up and screamed, “GUYS?” Before something else connected with his head, and he blacked out.

[swooncraft]

Write Weds - Cordate Pt 3

Chapter four here, is where everything started falling into place. I had found a clear understanding of our protagonist, Cordate, and found the rapid fire voice and style that was needed for this novel of action.

Tongue and cheek~

But hey, I had a blast writing this.

[Ch. 04]

As I raced over the blocks to circle around I updated Tourn through texts. We were use to having the disadvantage and working around using the team channel in case our opponents could listen in.

The buzz of the wine was wearing off. A headache seeped back into my head. I waited at the edge of the alley that lead back to our objective.

I stopped a woman strolling on her merry way, “'Scuse me, coul' I buy your hat? Sunligh's given me a migraine.”

The lady stopped and gawked at my bandages. “W-well.. I supp-” Before her words finished I shoved a bank note in her hands and took the sun hat from her head. She fumbled for words as I walked down the ally towards the lion's den.

“'Ere we go,” I said to the team channel while tossing my file into a dumpster. As I unbuttoned the top two buttons of my dress shirt someone stepped into the end of the alley. It wasn't a member of 9's team, 13 Hiro. “We s'uck in crossfire?”

Regency responded, “Yah. Our mission is smack in the center of the Hiro's and Lambda's game of capture the flag.”

“Opportunity shines, Quarda!”

I smiled gripping my crowbar, “Someone's en my way. Any 'ssist'nce?”

“We're pinned down pretty tight, Cord.” Right as Regency bluffed, Tourn shot me a text confirming he'd be there in a few moments.

“Shit,” I scowled as I pulled my ear bud out. The act was very necessary. “You're from Lambda, right?”

His grin was almost audible, “Tag's Lucite.” I liked the radiant way his blond hair nearly glowed in the sunlight, and his vivid green eyes. Lucite was tall and well dressed. “Heard you keep taking hits. You can walk away.”

Sometimes, being an adult can be worse than being a high schooler. Gossip is an incurable plague, but something you can fight. So I began pacing forward.

He responded by pulling out a quarterstaff. “I really don't wanna hurt a cripple. Go on home. Your team will understand.”

Like the meme goes, 'obvious troll is obvious.' Fuck him and his third rate compassion. At least it fueled me to strike with more force when I was in range. Lucite parried with his quarter staff. I cursed and attacked again. All of my rage and frustration wouldn't put Darth Maul in his place though. I changed tactics to put a little distance between us and nearly took one to the chin as I tried shifting gears.

“It's not gonna work,” Lucite huffed through grit teeth as he advanced his attack. The assholes in Sand who knew their way with a weapon were all arrogant. “We know you can't win with force, but whatever you're trying to come up wUGH-” A blur of black and leather dropped him to the ground.

I began to snort, thinking Tourn had arrived. But Tourniquet doesn't wear tight leather or weigh roughly a hundred pounds.

9 sat on her haunches over my opponent. “Don't espect uh thax,” crooked crowbar at the ready, I braced myself for her action.

For a long moment she only sat there staring at our common enemy. Then I saw it. Something clicked in her that turned her into a monster before she even moved.

9 leaned down and bit the bastard's ear off. I gawked as she spit it out and put it in a pouch on her belt. Very slowly and deliberately she turned her head up towards me. “That's the consequence. Right?” she wiped her mouth keeping her nearly black eyes on my sunshine irises.

I had seen a lot of things since joining Sand, but that was the single scariest thing. 9 was a psychopath. The question was obviously in her if she should or should not take that man's ear. There was a reason she was after me, but I didn't know why. All I could rationalize in those brief moments was that she was still upset about loosing her teammate, 7, when Vizy and Ani retaliated.

I steeled my resolve as best as I could. My fingers regripped the crowbar. I think the cold sweat gave me away because 9 smiled, “You should go home and rest, Doki.”

Who the fuck she thought she was, I had no clue. But her taunt caused a chemical reaction in my brain that made my blood pump. As I moved to act on my impulses two bursts smacked against the leather of her outfit. A disgruntled noise escaped her lips as I barely caught a glimpse of the two rubber bullets that ricocheted off of her shoulder and back. The next instant 9 rolled to her feet and withdrew. No matter how crazy she may have been, she knew her chances when she saw Tourn. Her exit was topped with a bow before she left our sight.

“Uhhgg, God, what happened?” Tourn stared at the victim.

“Crazy bi'ch,” I breathed, wiping my brow. The sunlight was burning a larger migraine straight into the center of my head. I didn't even notice my hat had fallen off. “Sta's?”

“We've gotta get the team out. Even with our noob, that's only enough leverage to get out safe.”

“Nah. No, no. We're gonna take e'rything.”

“Cord,” Tourn was a little more worried than frustrated, “We only need to-”

“Viz 'ould take it all! We're doing 'is.”

“You can't even talk straight, Cord!” Frustration won over the worry. Or so I thought, “Fuck's sake. How is your head doing?”

I grabbed my hat off the ground and shoved it on my head. Right in Tourn's face I stared hard. I wanted him to know this was happening. We hadn't had an upper hand in a long time. I wasn't giving it up, and the team shouldn't either. No matter how small the advantage, in my aching mind it just meant we had a level playing field.

Tourn threw his hands up. “Fine. Fine!”

Good. I stomped off in the direction of our teammates.

Neverland, California is filled with blocks, and entire neighborhoods in a couple places, of empty buildings. It segregates us from the citizens most of the time. Though, when we do cross the boundaries, like I mentioned before, they pretend not to notice. It's a perfect sandbox for our big game of cops and robbers.

Upon arriving to the store room of an abandoned market, Regency and Elbo told us they had taken out a stray Lambda trying to pass through. That was convenient. It made our odds even better. But something about a decent team like Lambda being spread out and unorganized bothered me.

Regency also added that he was sure both of our opponents were using Perks. “It was easy to tell Lambda used one. They ran smack into us expecting someone else, bugged out and retreated. Our objective's right next to the base they're defending. Can't say what the Hiro's got, but it's making Lambda crazy.”

His statement made me glad I wasn't the only one to notice the oddity.

My skull felt like it was splitting in half, but I bobbed a nod. They were in a bind. Given the same stacked odds, I'd be freaking out as well.

“You know,” Tourn broke the pause, “There's probly vigilantes on the way. Fucking Lambda's aren't great at playing quiet. When we f-” his words cut off when we heard someone moving up to the door.

“Could be the noob,” Regency hissed as Elbo got in position.

As soon as the footsteps neared the door sounds of a fight broke out. Elbo exploded through the door. Three men were in a tousle. Fear sparked in their eyes as Elbo charged them.

Mars made the best move, by shoving one to Elbo, followed by smacking the other with what looked like a tricycle tire. The absurdity reached all of us in Royal We. Regency barked a laugh and jumped out to make the fight end sooner.

“Must have been desperate to come for you guys,” Mars mused as he twirled the tire on a finger. “With the one I took down on my way here, that makes three?”

“You took one out by yourself?” Blame Regency's Britishness for not believing him.

Mars arched an eyebrow, “Yeah.”

“Four,” Tourn nodded adding Lucite to the count. Shaking Mars's hand he asked, “You're the noob?”

“Yeah, it's ah-” he glanced to me, “Mars. And I think I've proven myself to not be called a noob.”

Regency shook his head, “Beginner's luck. Wait 'til shit really starts happening.”

Mars rolled his eyes as Tourn addressed Regency's and my concern, “Desperate. Seems that way. We haven't seen them lately. Could be poor tactical adjustment when we appeared.”

I thought it'd been less than a month since we were up against Lambda, but regardless, Tourn's thought was realistic.

“Quarda, I like your hat!” I smiled and tipped the brim to Elbo. “Looks bad on you, but still nice hat.” He gave me a thumbs up as I sighed.

Back to business, “Ther's leas' three lef'. Elbo, Regens' an' me take th' base. Chourn, Mars, do our mission.”

The others looked to each other. Regency started to say something but Tourn cut him off, “I think we can do this.”

“Fast to get out before Vigilantes come,” Elbo nodded.

Regency added something with his British accent and Mars picked a few items from the downed opponents.

My head was going to explode if we didn't finish soon. Walking took most of my focus. The guys agreed that I would stay back and keep communication open in the chance our team channel was actually tapped.

If you asked me a year ago if I'd be able to run around town three days after a concussion I'd have laughed at you and told you how I'd do everything possible to stay off my feet, and help myself recover faster. There I was though, Doing everything possible to stay on my feet. To contribute.

Before parting, Tourn gave me a pill. He's good at reading people even if he's terrible at talking to them. We both knew that by the time it would kick in the dust would probably be settling, but it was still worth it either way.

With there being little I could do, I did what I knew. I found a security camera, pulled my hat off and bowed gracefully to the Voyeurs. None of us knew how many eyes were around the city until we raided the Scorekeepers. That's what those first dozen rooms were, just walls of monitors and recording equipment. They didn't miss a street, and it proved to be beneficial. The Voyeurs love it or else Sand wouldn't gain two new teams each year.

Placing the hat back on my head I realized how right Elbo may have been. People would love an underdog, and Royal We could be a hell of a team to root for. The viewers just needed to see we still had the spirit of the champions we once were.

The guys were already inside the warehouse. When I got through the door there were only two Lambdas, both had their hands up and were arguing to each other. Regency shut them up with a chunk of rubber to each man's thigh, “Christ, shut up. Where's your last mate?” I expected more elegance from the Brit, but I do suppose we were very likely strapped for time.

“Our.. Our last 'mate'?” Leader of Lambda shook his head, “You-They took us all out!” Leader was a well built man. His height was deliciously accented by athletic muscles, pretty brown eyes and a type of bedhead I had grown to like.

“So it's only the two of you?”

“You really don't understand the situation!” Leader was nearly panicked beyond reason.

I stepped forward, “We do. You los' uh roun'.”

“No. Look!” he reached for his pocket and nearly lost his arm as Elbo restrained him. A Navipalm fell from his hand.

I picked it up. Before needing to ask he told me the code to unlock it. The map was already opened on it. What was being displayed took me a moment to comprehend.

“See?! See!? They're everywhere! Then we charged into you guys! GG well played!”

The map showed a few dozen copies of the six 13 Hiros all around the area. The majority scattered around the warehouse, a dozen played strategically through the alleys, and a good number around their own base.

Regency looked over my shoulder and whistled.

As surprising as it was, it didn't seem like that big of a deal compared to being down three players for the past few months. It did get me to thinking about how many different types of Perks there were that I didn't know of.

Elbo took a little longer than he should have to take the queue to let the guy go, but he did at last.

My eyes flicked to Regency. He was an accountant in his old life. He fell just a little short in situations like this. What it was he fell short in was assertiveness-no. Confidence? No, no.. Strategy? As he inhaled to say something it hit me. His approach to people was terrible.

To quell a ramble of accented syllables from wasting our time I slunk past Elbo. Concentrating on each step, and the decisiveness of each sway of my hip. I poked at Leader's phone. Looked up, tipping the hat to reveal a sultry smile. Hiding the face splitting pain behind my eyes. Speak smooth, I screamed in my mind. “So raise your white flag,” I purred holding his phone up with the surrender page open. He swallowed and shifted on his feet as I moved closer. From my peripheral vision I saw his his teammate calm down as their nervousness evolved in unison.

Large yellow eyes looked up to his as I pressed our bodies together. “Go gather your team and take a week off,” the cell passed between our hands. I breathed him in, reaching up to whisper into his ear, “It's obvious you need the R 'n R.”

Don't mistake the act, the situation simply called for quick convincing. And I couldn't think of anything else that would get through to scared men as quick. It helped that he was handsome, but anything more than acting wouldn't have gone so smooth.

We are all lonely creatures in Sand. Relationships are hard to handle. I've heard stories of civilians dating burglars and the suspicion of what we do for a living being too much for the relationship. Some of the guys get hookers, I've heard that some of the female players don't mind being casual with their teammates. There's a couple teams that have working relationships between two teammates, but that can be a tricky.

Vizy and I had had a solid relationship. He was my first and only.

The seasons that passed since the last time I was with Vizy was too vast. So, maybe I played it too well with a hot breath in Leader's ear. And a gentle grip on his shirt. And with the flush that was spreading through my cheeks. Because he went rigid in more than one way. Just possibly I played it too well because Tourn cleared his throat as I slid down from my tip-toes.

I pulled the brim of my hat down, daring a glance at Tourn. We had a thing between us, but I couldn't follow through to be more than friends because I was still hurting over loosing Vizy. At least, that was the excuse each time we had moments that could have crossed the line. But there, in that moment, I crossed a different line, and it was obvious that Tourn wasn't happy with my act.

Everyone was frozen in the room except for Mars who had missed the event by a second. He caught on to the atmosphere in a moment, but must have not cared, “So, what's the deal?”

The Lambdas moved, “We're going...”

Regency stepped in their path, “Hold on, where's your flag?”

Leader pointed to what looked like a management office at the end of a simple set of stairs overlooking the floor of the warehouse. Tourn didn't let his eyes off of Leader as he left. The other Lambda mumbled a good luck as he opened his phone, likely to find his downed teammates.

After the door closed Tourniquet looked to me, “What the fuck was that?”

I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow, “Was called for.”

“Right, Cord. That's exactly what we needed.”

“No'h now, Chourn!” I expected the pulsing in my head to grow, but the Oxy seemed to be kicking in.

“Will you two just have angry sex and shut the fuck up,” Regency exclaimed as he made his way to the stairs. “This whole team does nothing but argue and it's all cause of little miss bandages. Half of the time one of us wants to take her side, then the other doesn't, and vice versa. It's a fat lot of-” the door to the office slammed behind him, but we could still hear his muffled ranting.

“Okay, I don't get it,” Mars held up his hands holding in chuckles, “but that was damned funny.”

Elbo stomped over to our newbie, “It was! Lots of stupid like this all the time. I am Elbo. Is good to have you!”

Tourn and I exchanged a look as Mars found one of Elbo's massive hands to shake, “Pleasure's mine, Heavy!” After realizing his mistake of shaking hands with Elbo, Mars shook out his nearly broken hand, “So, Tourn and I got that bag from the other warehouse.” We all glanced to the duffel bag Tourn was carrying, “What's in it?”

“A lot of bullshit. Some codes that can get us different goodies. And cash,” Tourn replied.

“Then it's like Christmas. Instead of socks we get... Codes?”

“These codes are way better to get than socks,” Tourn smiled, “You ever buy a digital copy of a game, or expansion?”

Mars nodded with a shrug.

“It's no different. The codes are single use and will get us stuff like Perks, and weapons.”

I had taken a seat on some boxes while Tourn explained what capturing objectives can do for a team. Elbo felt the need to start doing pull ups on an exposed pipe.

Regency emerged from the office with a coal gray folder in hand and a shit eating grin, “What's that saying? 'If I were a betting man'?”

Mars nodded, a smile growing on his face, “What would you bet?”

The Brit waved the folder, “I'd bet this is as far as we get without any trouble.”

He was right. There was no doubt the Hiro's were still ready to put up a fight. And they were a high caliber team because they knew how to fight and work together. Don't get me wrong, Royal We can throw down, especially Elbo, but we were not only out skilled, we were out numbered. Five to six.

We didn't even get the chance to head to an exit. An Asian accent spoke through the door after a light rapping. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Elbo pulled a plank off of a pallet and moved towards the door. Regency finished stuffing the folder in our new duffel bag and zipped it up. Tourn grimaced an held his hand over his pistol's holster like a cowboy at high noon. Mars grinned, ready for more action.

We all waited.

The pounding on the door made my subsiding headache flare. I was done. Come hell or high water, shit was going to happen since they came to us. And after, either way the spat could go, I'd get some peace and quiet.

Tourn and Mars moved to stop me until we heard the muffled accent from behind the steel door, “I only want to talk. I am alone and unarmed.”

We all paused. It could have been a bait, trickery to get us into a trap. But the consequences were a drop in the bucket to the tsunami that my new headache was raging.

Tourn read me and simply said, “Don't.”

Mars looked between us.

Regency cursed under his breath.

Elbo was ready to bash skulls.

Not only did I open the door, but I flailed my crowbar at the fucking Hiro. It did nothing, I missed the first hit, and he caught it on my second swing. Rather then disarming me he just held it as I struggled to take it back. That was 13, strong in all senses; physically, in resolve, spirit, and mind. The fine lines of his angular Asian face placed him around his late 40s. 13's deep brown eyes carried a wisdom within them that was rare to a game filled mostly with 20somethings. The only hair on his head was his eyebrows and a short goatee.

13 stared each one of us down, “Let me speak.” He was as unarmed as we could see. The nun-chucks he keept at the hip of his martial arts garb were missing, but the naked eye is easily deceived. Same went for his solo status. The fishy part, the truth in his words, was the coal gray folder in his other hand.

Elbo was the first to say anything as everyone stood tense, “Allow China man to speak.”

The Hiro's eyes narrowed, “Not that it matters to you, but again, I am Japanese. I thank you, though.” His gaze turned to me, “Can I let your weapon go and simply talk?”

I said nothing. Visibly relaxing were words enough.

13 nodded his head and released his grip on my crowbar. He shoved the folder at my breast. I gripped it haphazardly as I walked backwards, not letting a single breath of his go unnoticed.

“I give this to you. As... Insurance.” I disliked how 'insurance' sounded in his accent. “Let us begin anew. We hope this marks your comeback, and will be ready for your rise.” His words were directed at me, but I didn't know what he meant.

Tourn stepped  between me and 13, “I don't trust this. It's been a long time now, she-”

The Nippon raised a hand, “You don't have to. You already won,” 13 motioned a hand to the folder I was given. Then his expression grew thoughtful, “I do have words of caution, Royals. Some of the burglars will not play like we will.”

Without another word he turned and walked off. 9 stepped out of the alley he paced down and watched us carefully. One by one the four other Hiros emerged from the landscape and followed their leader.

Our victory was bittersweet.

[confusedunit]

Universe of Unreality - Chapter 9

Chapter 9 -  "We're in this together."

Dr. Freeman dreams. The Science Team make a plan. Bubby talks with Tommy. Gordon doesn't say goodbye.

While Dr. Freeman sleeps, he dreams of falling.

Over and over again, he falls, before returning to where he was just standing. He's somewhere that's vividly familiar, but indistinct, blurry as if he lost his glasses. It's bright, he thinks, reaching out to things he cannot touch, hands just missing as he tries.

He's trying to move somewhere else, somewhere that's almost within reach, if he can just make a few jumps. He hears the sound of splashing water, grass blowing in the wind. The ground squishes under his shoes like mud. He needs to get over there. He's not supposed to be here.

"Help!" He cries out, as he leaps and falls again. He stumbles as he returns to his previous spot. "Someone, please!"

A musical sound plays from over the nearby mountain, and as he turns he sees a large figure slowly loom over both the mountain and himself. The song gets louder, and something large and bright heads right for him-

...

Dr. Freeman startled awake, as the song from his dream kept ringing in his ears. Where was he? He glanced around quickly, relaxing as some things came back to him. He was in Black Mesa. There had been an accident. He had his team, his Science Team, by his side.

Quite literally, in that moment. At some point during the night, Bubby and Tommy had joined Dr. Coomer and himself in the corner of the room, turning their resting huddle into a cuddle pile. Bubby was pressed up against Dr. Coomer's right side, head on his shoulder, both his arms tightly wrapped around his one. Meanwhile Tommy had leaned against the wall next to Dr. Freeman, sides lightly touching each other.

He realized slowly that the song was still ringing in his ears because it was still being sung, by the alien pretending to read across the room. Benry flipped through the pages of his paperback, but wasn't even really looking at the words. It looked more like he was zoned out, flipping the pages out of habit as bubble-like orbs poured from his lips. They were all shades of blue, and felt comforting even just to watch and hear.

Benry blinked once, looking over to Dr. Freeman. "oh. sleepman's awake. it's like...4am bro. gotta get that snooze cruise goin back to sea."

"You're singing." The words are slurred with sleep, but they fall out of his mouth before his brain decides to think.

"...yeah and?"

"It's beautiful."

"...." Benry glanced away for a moment. "...thanks." He quickly looked back. "...let benry help you please?"

"Sure." He smiled sluggishly. "How...how d'you wanna...?"

Benry closed the book, and quietly made his way across the room to sit right in front of him. "song, uh...helps. can i help you? please?"

He nodded. "...Yeah. Thanks, Benry."

Benry shifted from side to side, before he closed his eyes and started to sing.

The first orbs that came were that same blue, and as they circled and bumped against Dr. Freeman he felt himself relax, let go of tension he didn't even know he was holding. Next came the gradient bubbles, some sort of blueish color to a green. He remembered that the colors meant something, but in that moment he couldn't remember any translations. "...Blue..."

The singing stopped. "blue, uh...tommy'd translate it as, uhm. 'blue like at dawn, means feel calm'. it's...not quite right, but translating colors to lame human language doesn't work so smooth."

He laughed. "And the...bluegreen? ...Teal. Teal to green?"

"healing beam. that one works clear." The singing started again.

He slowly blinked. "...You're healing me?"

He nodded.

"...Thank you."

The singing didn't stop this time, but he did smile, a single bubble of yellow floating up from his mouth.

He closed his eyes again, letting the song carry him back to sleep.

...

When Dr. Freeman woke up a few hours later, his head felt the clearest it had in days. He could think, focus, he didn't feel like he was pushing through a fog anymore. He still hurt, and he imagined that would remain, but to have his mind back in crystal clarity...that alone set him more at ease.

He looked around, smiling as he saw the rest of his group up and moving about. He cleared his throat. "Can, uh...we have a Team meeting?" He smiled wider. "Benry included. You're part of the Science Team now, bud."

The others returned, sitting in a circle on the floor.

"Good morning, G- Dr. Freeman! You seem to be in good spirits!" Dr. Coomer grinned, knee bouncing until Bubby rested his hand on it.

"I am. I feel a lot better now, actually. Which kinda brings me to why we need to have a meeting." He took off his glasses, trying to clean the dust off of them.

"Here, Mr. Freeman! I'll do it!"

"Thank you, Tommy." He handed the glasses over. "So...everything's gone to hell here. Sector C is in trouble, and who knows the state of the other sectors. So." He ran a hand through his hair. "...What's the plan?"

"We need to get to Biological Research." Bubby spoke, adjusting his own glasses. "There's information there that is vital for Dr. Coomer and I to obtain, before we leave this goddamn place."

"Okay, Biological Research department. Where is that?"

"It's...on the other side of the facility."

"But!" Dr. Coomer grinned again. "If we can make it topside, maybe we could travel above ground to get there! That would shave off hours of time!"

"Alright!" He pumped his fist in the air. "That sounds like the start of a plan to me. Any other stops we need to make?"

"U-uhm," Tommy held out the glasses. "My dad needs us to- to get to-

"we gotta get to lambda, bro." Benry spoke up. He looked antsy. "it's important. gotta go. mandatory field trip."

Tommy gave the other alien a look, eyes glowing lightly as they flipped through a few colors.

Benry sang out a few colored orbs in response.

The other three sort of looked between each other, not knowing if it was a good idea to interrupt.

Tommy finally sighed, eyes returning to their non-glowing yellow. "We're- we're talking about this, later."

"yeah. sure. whatever, bro." Benry shoved his hands into his pockets. "whatever."

"...So...is that a yes, on the-"

"Yeah, Mr. Freeman. We gotta- gotta go to the Lambda Complex!"

"Okay. In that case, I have a question."

"Go for it, Dr. Freeman. We're all ears!" Dr. Coomer nodded.

"Does anyone know where we can find a non broken laptop?" He pushed on before the others confusion could grow too much. "I've got, well...okay, this sounds crazy as hell, but trust me, okay? I think I know how to shut down the anti-mass spectrometer, but I need a laptop to be able to do it. It needs to have two consoles in the main room, and...and the bottom one is busted. So we need a laptop that we can hook up where the console was."

Bubby's eyebrows raised. "You want to shut it down?"

"I mean, we gotta, right? That should stop all the hostile creatures from teleporting in, and should stop the place from shaking itself apart. Then, hopefully...more people can get out of here. We can all evacuate and get the hell out of dodge."

"But- but Lambda is all the way across, even further than Biological Research!" Tommy wrung his hands. "How...how are we gonna get back?"

He thought for a moment, before it hit him. He grinned. "The tram! I remember reading on the walls, the tram map. There's a tram line that runs directly from Lambda to Sector C! I always wondered why the hell the reactor complex had a direct link to Anomalous Materials," He noticed Tommy's flinch, but didn't say anything. "but now that just works in our favor!"

"And if the trams are still out, genius?"

He looked over. "Then we'll adjust the plan accordingly. Right now, this is what we've got, Bubby."

"Darnold has a laptop." Dr. Coomer spoke up, his tone lower than usual. "He may be able to assist."

"Darnold? Who's Darnold?"

"He's, uh- a friend, Mr. Freeman! He's in the- the old Cybernetics lab, right by Lambda!"

He clapped his hands together. "Perfect! Then we'll make our way topside to get to Biological Research, cover ground on foot to get to Cybernetics, head through the facility to the Lambda Complex, and then catch the tram back to Sector C and fight our way back to Anomalous Materials to stop the apocalypse!"

"You make it sound so easy. You know it's going to be hell out there, right?"

"Yeah, Bubby, I know. But this is what we can do." He gave a nervous smile. "...If you're all down for that?"

"Oh fuck yeah, I'm not leaving you behind."

"We can do this together, Dr. Freeman!"

"Nothing- nothing will stop us, working together!"

"sounds like a plan, bro."

Dr. Freeman smiled, slowly pushing himself to his feet. "Then let's get the hell out of here."

-

Tommy sighed, rubbing at his temples. Progress had been so good...until the personnel tram that almost threw Dr. Freeman into the toxic waste, and encountering more toxic waste, which had led to finding the entrance to the reactor, and...

"We're not fucking going in there! Dr. Coomer, listen to me- I have a hazard suit, right? Even if I had my damn helmet, if I went in there? I'd die! Radiation would cook me to crisp! Let alone you all, who don't have any protection!"

"i don't know if that's what rads do, man."

"Dr. Freeman, I literally cannot explain to you why, but we really do need to get into that elevator and go up."

"Well, Dr. Coomer, I like you guys too much to fry you to death!"

God, he was so tired, and they'd just started. He'd moved back away from the others, to try to get some distance from the yelling. He knew he could just convince Dr. Freeman that it was fine, but he really just wanted to sit down. He needed-

"Here. Looks like you need it."

He looked up, surprised to see Bubby standing in front of him, holding out a can of Sprite. He gladly took it, cracking it open and taking a sip. "...Thanks."

"Don't mention it." He sat down in front of him. "I'm well aware of the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal, though yours seems more severe of a dependency, to already be hitting you."

"Alien genetics." He shrugged. "Curse humans and their...their addictive substances, right?"

He laughed. "Yeah. Humans fucking suck." He smiled a bit. "Coffee's still good though."

"Always preferred soda. Coffee's so- so bitter."

"Yeah, I get that."

They sat quietly for a while, as the other three talked in the distance.

"...Tommy."

He knew this was coming. "Hey, Bubby."

"I'm not...I'm not gonna ask about tests. It doesn't really matter, and I know you'll probably tell us later. So..." He looked up at him. "...What's the plan at Lambda?"

"...Well, you remember the portal, last time?"

"Yeah. How can I forget?"

"Well, my- my dad said he should have a way to get us out of here by the time we...we reach Lambda. Or at least, have an idea."

His eyes widened. "So we need to get to Lambda to meet up with your dad."

"Basically? I think? I don't...entirely know his plan." He finished the soda, setting the can next to him. "My turn."

"Oh shit."

"Why do you need to get to Biological Research?"

Bubby looked away, before taking off his glasses to rub at his eyes. "...They did something to Harold. He can't...when he tries to remember certain things, it causes him pain. I want to find his records, and figure out what the hell they did to him. And figure out a way to undo it."

Tommy's eyes widened. "That's why he- he can't..."

"Process what we're saying about reality, yeah. I think so, at least. Not one hundred percent sure, but...it lines up at the moment."

"So why Bio?"

"That's where they did the cloning work. That's why I got to see him so much."

Tommy nodded. "...Okay. I'll do whatever I can to help Dr. Coomer be okay again.”

Bubby slid his glasses back into place. "And in return, I'll do whatever I need to once we meet up with your dad."

The two smiled at each other, before a yell echoed through the hall.

"Benrey!! I swear to god if you jump in that shit- BENREY!"

They scrambled to their feet, running back down the hall.

-

Gordon woke slowly, feeling groggy, as he often did when he fell asleep on the couch during a movie. He smiled though, as he looked down at Joshua, who was curled up on his chest fast asleep.

Joshua was always clingy, that was sort of something Gordon had gotten used to by then. Even at a young age, Joshie would cry and panic if Gordon was running late from class, if he took too long to come home. Separation anxiety, his doctor had called it. It was why he'd stayed with Gordon, when their dad had moved.

It was also a bit part of why he hadn't been over to see his mother in months. Joshua hadn't had a flareup like that since Gordon lost his arm, but out of nowhere a nightmare had hit the young kid, and he'd been petrified for the rest of the day. It ended up working out, as that was the day that friend of a friend had come to Gordon's house to give him the laptop and the game disk, even if it had taken him weeks to finally get to playing around with it. Joshua had taken priority. He always did, in Gordon's life.

He sighed quietly, before gently nudging him. "Hey, Joshie. Gotta wake up, bud."

Joshua whined, but woke up, sliding off the couch as he yawned. "Sleepy..."

"I know. Go get teeth brushed and dressed, okay? I think your mom's gonna take you out for breakfast." He slowly sat up, wincing as he rubbed at his right arm. He'd forgotten to take off the prosthetic that night, and it ached.

"...Will you come to breakfast?"

"I'm sorry, buddy, I can't. It's a mom and you breakfast, like when you usually see her." He gently ruffled his hair. "But I'll give you a big hug before you go."

They parted ways to get dressed, and after Gordon was ready he set a coffee to brew. As Joshua came out of his room, the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it!" Joshua called, scampering down the hall to open the door. He laughed. "Mama!"

"Oh, Josh, look at how big you've grown!" She lifted him into her arms, laughing as well. "My baby boy..."

Internally, Gordon winced. He was glad that Joshua could have interactions with his mom, he just wished...well, he wished for a lot of things. He walked over. "Hey, Cassie."

"Oh, hello Mr. Dyson." She gave him a look.

He didn't rise to the bait. "Gordon."

"Right, Gordon. Of course." She immediately returned to ignoring him, setting Joshua down. "You ready to go, Josh?"

"I...yeah." He picked up his backpack, his old stuffed dog poking out of the top of it. The fur was orange, except for one leg, which had been torn years ago and was now replaced with a green limb instead. He called it his 'Gordie', and always felt more comfortable when he had to be away if he could have the plushie with him. Gordon took gentle care when repairing it, always.

"Hey, Joshie." He smiled, as the young boy turned. "Here, gimme a hug."

Joshua ran up, hugging him tightly.

He hugged him back just as tight. "It'll just be a week until you see me, okay? But I hope you have fun with Cassie." He gently set him down. "Ready to go, partner?"

He shook his head hard. "No-"

"Josh, we do need to get going...we're going to have a nice breakfast, and go out today!" Cassie grinned, though to Gordon it felt harsh.

"Hey, Joshie, look at me." He held out his hands, smiling as his brother took them. "You're gonna be fine. And I'm gonna be fine too. I hope you have a lot of fun, and I'll see you next week."

"...Okay..."

"Joshua?" He smiled a bit more. "I'm not saying goodbye. I'm just saying 'see you soon'."

Joshua relaxed a bit, at the familiar phrase. "Not saying goodbye, just 'see you soon'."

"Have fun, buddy." He stood up. "And you can tell me all about it when you get home!"

"Okay! See you soon!" He waved, as he walked out of the house.

"See you soon, Joshua." He waved, before slowly shutting the door.