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[mastersoftheair]

an interview with kai alexander for airmail news

[kim-seungmine]

moonlit

title: moonlit

characters: fem!reader x lee minho (lee know) of stray kids feat. bang chan, kim seungmin, hwang hyunjin, kid!yang jeongin

genres: exes to lovers au, romance, angst, based on eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, chan’s one sided love if you squint real hard, bff!seungjin.

warnings: cursing, mentions of drinking and food, mentions of insecurity/emptiness, minho is lowkey a flirt (and smooth af), this one is WORDY, sometimes nonlinear (flashbacks marked in italics, phase 2 completely happens in the past), lots of inner conflicts, watch me repeat the same words again and again.

word count: 14k

synopsis: after a nasty breakup, you have lee minho clinically erased from your mind... only to be reminded that while memories can be erased and forgotten, feelings will always demand to be felt.  

Phase 1: Awakening

You clamp your shaking legs together, desperately trying to look like you’ve got it all together. The carton box on your lap feels heavier with each passing second as you wait for your name to be called. When the receptionist finally tells you to enter the consulting room, your head is full of him. His laugh, his voice, his touches, his smile, his empty promises, his lies, his last words…

This is why you’re doing this. You want him gone.

“Miss Y/N, please have a seat.” The doctor, Seo Changbin, motions at you to sit at the back of the room. A nurse places a tripod in front of you, setting the camera so it will capture your whole body. “Your sessions will be recorded, and we will keep all the recordings as archive. These recordings are confidential unless they’re needed for national security purposes. And, of course, if you wish to get your memories back in the future.”

Dr. Seo smiles, the calming tone in his voice doesn’t match the weight of his words. “You… you can restore the memories back?”

“I can’t,” he answers. “Patients are usually able to remember some past memories when triggered. And at least you will be reminded of why you want to do the erasure procedure in the first place. There are a lot of patients who regret doing this, and the last thing we want is to get sued because people make the wrong choices for themselves. I’m sure you have already read that part on the consent form.”

Great, you’re going to stop him from messing with your head by letting strangers literally damaging your brain.

“I won’t sue you. Let’s get this over with.”

“Sure.” Dr. Seo points at the camera. “Now, tell us everything, starting with who you want to erase.”

You grip your box tighter, as if to check if all the things inside still cause you pain no matter how many times you’ve seen them. You could have done this the normal way—crying, cutting your hair, even turning to God for help.

The thing is, one of these days the pain is going to swallow you up, and then you’ll be left with nothing. Nothing but an empty shell.

You should have been able to do this the normal way, but you’re too weak. Can’t you be weak for once? You can, right?

Clearing your throat, you stare at the lens. “Lee Minho.”

“Lee Minho,” you repeat. Louder. Clearer. “I’d like to erase Lee Minho.”

Chan finishes his beer in one gulp while you’re still struggling to open yours. It’s a shame, really—you drink almost every week, he drinks twice a year. He tosses the now empty can to the trashcan before opening another with ease, handing it to you. Mumbling a quiet thank you, you take a sip and watch him tear a pack of dried squids open.

“You’ll never go to those parties again,” he says. “I didn’t know my parents invited you because of that.”

You shake your head. “It’s fine. They meant well.”

He pulls his hair in frustration. “I can’t believe they said that in front of everyone! You must’ve been so shocked. I’m sorry.”

You grimace, the unwanted attention was indeed quite embarrassing. Enough to make you politely reject the next time Chan’s parents invite you to another gala. Mr. and Mrs. Bang have always been supportive of their eldest son, letting Chan started his own business instead of taking over the family business. Chan’s mother had called you a few days prior, asking you to accompany her son since it would be a good opportunity to “build connection and expand your business.”

You and Chan did exactly that, so it wasn’t like they were lying. But Chan’s parents also used the opportunity to try to convince the two of you that you’re match made in heaven.  

“Can we drop this?” You glance at your watch, stretching your limbs before rising from your seat. The traffic light turns red and you signal at your best friend to walk faster. “I keep getting flashbacks of CEO Kang’s son laughing at us.

Chan follows suit, placing his hand at the small of your back before crossing the street. You let out a relieved sigh when you reach the warm subway station. “Kang Younghyun has more embarrassing incidents than ours combined,” he scoffs. “This is nothing compared high school. No worries.”

“You sure you don’t want me to take you home?” he asks as you train is arriving. “I should’ve brought the car instead of letting my parents drive us to the party.”

You click your tongue at him. “Then you’ll miss the last train.”

“I can take a cab home. You always fall sleep on the train it’s giving me headache!”

“Bang Chan.”

The train stops and opens its doors. “Fine,” he mumbles. “Just don’t fall asleep.”

“No promises!” you tease, stepping into the train a second before it closes. You wave at Chan until he disappears into a small dot before choosing the seat beside the door. The train is almost empty; standing near the door is a high school student listening to an online lecture and sitting across you is…. the most attractive man you’ve ever seen in your life. He meets your eyes for a second before shifting his attention back to his phone again, leaving you slightly disappointed.

You despise socializing at parties but you want the Hottest Man Alive to talk to you? Y/N you’re so pathetic.

The sight of a bundle of name cards inside your purse is what gives you a reality check, various names and faces are popping up in your mind. Only now you feel how exhausted you are, parties and talking to a bunch of strangers have never been your thing. You take your platform heels off just as the train makes its stop, one of them almost hitting Hottest Man Alive as a result.

Apparently God has decided to make you the embarrassment icon of the day.

“I’m so sorry!” you panic, about to reach your flying heel when he stands up and picks it up. He silently places it in front of you before pulling out a card out of his pocket.

“It’s okay, just check out our café when you have time.” Hottest Man Alive slips the card into your palm, rendering you speechless with his bashful smile.

Oh, you’re not going to fall asleep at all tonight.

You run your eyes over the black embossed letters once more, trying to calm your erratic heartbeat as you mentally convince yourself that he does want you to pay his café a visit. Your whole life has always been normal, so alarmingly calm and peaceful it makes you question your whole existence. Sometimes it feels like you’re living in someone else’s dream, foreign and temporary. Uncertain and insecure.

Last night was… weird, to say the least. You’ve never felt that attracted to someone before, not even your ex-boyfriends. In that moment, you felt unstoppable, carefree, happy… everything that wasn’t you.

Sadly, that moment didn’t last long and now you’re back to your overthinking self. What if he was just playing with you? Will he find you desperate or, God forbid, easy if you actually show up at his café? But what café owners don’t want a new customer? Besides, you’re bringing Chan, so Hottest Man Alive (or Lee Minho, according to his name card) is getting two new customers. If anything, he will be thanking you and hoping you will come again, just like any normal business owner.

“Hey,” Chan calls out to you, knocking on the car window. “We’re here, daydreamer.”

You shove the card back into your wallet, met with Chan’s confused eyes when you finally open the door. “You okay?” He cocks an eyebrow. “You look so out of it.”

Chan knows nothing about your encounter with Hottest Man Alive; he would’ve freaked out if he knew you wanted to visit a café because a random (handsome) stranger told you so. “Just thirsty. It’s so hot,” you mumble.

Eat Here Café gives off the homey atmosphere that immediately calms your nerves. You quickly scan the whole building, looking for any sign of Hottest Man Alive. You feel lighter yet bummed that he’s not there, except for some photos of him with a group of children pinned on the wall.

You choose a table near the cashier. “I’ll order. What do you want?”

Chan shrugs. “Any kind of cake.”

The puppy-like part timer greets you with a smile when you reach the counter. “Good afternoon, what would you like to order?”

“Injeolmi bingsu and Coke, please. Oh, and a vanilla cake!”

He repeats your order politely and you decide that you like the boy, taking a glance at his nametag that says Kim Seungmin. You never really pay attention to part timers before, but this one is remarkably efficient, polite, and very very cute (in a “I’d like to adopt him!” way).

You drop some cash into the tipping jar, the twinkle in Seungmin’s eyes feels so rewarding that you’re ready to put it into your “little things that made my day” on your journal later. He hands you the buzzer with a bright smile. “Please wait for your order!”

“Your stingy ass never gives such a generous tip. Did he flirt with you or something?” Chan marvels—loud enough to get Seungmin’s attention—when you return to your table. There are times when you regret being Chan’s business partner, but you realize that you’ve invested so much of your time and energy into building the company. That, and Chan is actually a dependable friend when he’s not trying to ruin your image.

Chan gets your order after the buzzer vibrates, digging into his cake right away. “Whoa this is good!” he exclaims. “How did you find this place?”

“…Instagram.”

“Do you think they hired a branding consultant already?”

You shake your head. “They post pretty regularly but I don’t think so.”

Chan’s eyes sparkle. “Do you think we should ask to meet the owner or something?”

“Hey Seungmin, iced Americano please! And remind me to pay your bonus later.”

The faintly familiar voice stops you from answering, your eyes wildly searching for the source. And there he is… the one you’ve been dreading to meet and also the one you’ve been yearning to meet. Lee Minho saunters into the café with his charming bunny smile and soft eyes, earning everyone’s attention except for Seungmin who’s still taking orders.

Seungmin only replies with a short hum, not taking his eyes off the cash register. You glance at Minho, mentally surprised by the way he doesn’t seem to be bothered with how Seungmin treats him.

“Quit staring before you start embarrassing yourself,” Chan warns you in the most boring tone. “I think he’s the owner.”

You almost spit out your drink. “I’m not staring!”

Minho exchanges some words with Seungmin before focusing his attention to all the customers. Your bingsu is melting, but you still follow his every move through your peripheral vision, not knowing whether you want him to recognize you.

“You really came!”

Chan points at himself, then at you. “Us?”

Minho shifts his gaze to Chan like he didn’t even notice the dimpled man was there whole time.

“Ah… y-yes,” you stutter. “This is very a nice café.”

One look at Chan and you know there’s no way for you to hide anymore. “He invited me!” you quip. “I mean, us.”

“Do you have anyone handling your social media accounts? Planning the digital marketing? Creating ads?” You have bombarded Minho with questions before Chan says anything, skipping the whole small talk step in “how to smoothly intrigue clients” manual.

Seungmin arrives with Minho’s iced Americano, putting the tall glass in front of him with no words before smiling at you and Chan. “Does any of you want anything else?”

“Yes, please,” Minho interrupts before you can refuse. “Please order whatever you want, it’s on the house.”

“Pulling the boss card, huh?” Chan jokes. “Then I’ll have orange juice.”

“Y/N?”

You didn’t have a chance to try the vanilla cake Chan ordered because he inhales food instead of digesting them, but the chocolate ice cream looks beyond tempting—

Minho chuckles. “How about our vanilla and chocolate ice cream?”

“Did I say that out loud?” you mumble to yourself, but proceed to thank Minho for his suggestions and tell Seungmin you’d like to have those. Minho flashes you a soft smile, almost making you melt on the spot if it weren’t for Chan’s leg kicking yours.

The conversation continues without any embarrassing incident. Chan lets you do all the talking, only adding further details when necessary while Minho asks you challenging but intriguing questions you answer passionately.

The so-called meeting ends with Minho promising to sign the contract by next week and Chan shaking your hand under the table, both confused and impressed.

“Is that why your employees are so relaxed around you? Because you just want everyone to eat and live well? I swear Seungmin didn’t even try to curse discreetly when you told him to wipe the counter for the 5th time,” you ask.

Minho laughs as the said boy exits his station, backpack slung across his shoulder. “Yes I’ll transfer your money after our guests leave. Don’t you dare remind me again!” the former yells playfully before the part timer opens his mouth. Seungmin bows to you and Chan before scowling at his boss. “You’re the one who told me to—nevermind. See you tomorrow, hyung.”

“I really like that boy,” you coo when Seungmin closes the door.

“I treat them as my friends,” Minho says. “I decided to do this because I just want to help everyone, including my employees. I don’t want Eat Here to be one of those expensive, pretentious cafes. I just want everyone to eat what they want, that’s why we have all sorts of things here. Combination of Eastern and Western, stuff like that. But this is still business, I have to do things to keep it running, right?”

You’ve met a lot of people with beautiful visions, but you’ve never met someone who wants something so simple yet complicated like Minho. It’s been quite a long time since you’re genuinely excited for a project, and now you know why Chan didn’t freak out upon knowing that you met Minho on the train.

“You guys can do whatever you want,” Minho adds, waving to a pair of part timers clocking in. “Are you going back to the office?”

Chan stretches his limbs. “Yeah,” he groans. “Gotta make sure our intern doesn’t jam the printer again.”

Your phone rings the moment Chan finishes his sentence. ”You jinxed it! Hyunjin is calling.”

“Whatever it is, wait until we’re back!” you whisper-yell at your intern.

“But noona, the printer—”

You give Hyunjin no chance to blabber about one specific printer and end the call. Minho giggles at your antiques, and you don’t have the energy to stop yourself from admiring his pretty features in the most obvious ways possible.

Chan pats your back before grabbing his phone and stands up. “I guess that’s our cue to leave.”

“Take these.” Minho writes your name on one of the paper bags, handing them to you with a big smile. “For everyone at your office. Thanks for reaching out to us.”

You peek inside the bag that has your name scribbled on it, not surprised to see both vanilla and chocolate ice cream inside—it’s the clear bottle that you’re curious about.

“Bye! I’ll send you the gym’s contact later!” Your best friend slash business partner waves at your new client slash crush from the driver’s seat. You take out the bottle, it’s filled with sikhye.

Your favorite drink, but Minho isn’t supposed to know that.

“Everyone deserves a fresh start. Don’t let anyone from your past haunt you. Start Erasure now.”

Minho mutes the television, heaving a sigh as he recounts his fateful meeting with you yesterday. The world has always been rather weird, he would say, but nothing defeats meeting his ex-girlfriend—his first love—who has no recollection of your time together. He heard from his former classmates that you sent them a message a few years ago, informing them that you would undergo the erasure procedure. According to his friends, you specifically told them to “never ever mention Lee Minho’s name or ask you about the procedure.”

You’re back in his life now, happy as ever, and the last thing Minho wants is breaking your heart all over again. He no longer owns that special spot in your heart, you owe him nothing. He left you insecure, disappointed and soulless, and now it’s his turn to be haunted by all the questions and what ifs in his mind.

His phone vibrates as soon as he flips the signage open, your name flashing on his screen. “Hey Y/N what’s up?”

“Minho I can’t multitask so please give me quick and accurate answer. I’m at the traffic light in front of Lotte now—”

“You need to turn left.”

“Okay… didn’t know my non-existent sense of direction is that obvious — damn, let me change lanes.”

Minho suppresses a chuckle. You’ve always been bad with directions.

“Turn left once more, and you’ll find us. We’re right across the first G25 store on the street.”

He steps out the café to welcome you when he spots a white Kia arriving. In contrast to his horrifying memories of teaching you to drive, you manage to parallel-park your car smoothly in 10 seconds, stopping Minho from offering to help you park your car.

“Sorry,” you grimace. “I suck at directions. Last week was the first time I went here and Chan was the one driving so I wasn’t really paying attention… and before you ask, no I can’t use GPS while driving. I barely managed to dial your number.”

Minho lifts his hands. “I was just going to say hello.”

“Oh, good! People always judge me for that!”

You don’t let him respond as you point at the photos on the wall. “Tell me about them!” you request. “Our photographer Hyunjin is going to be here any minute, and we’ll give this corner a special attention. Your customers need to know this.”

Minho scratches his head bashfully, the glint of admiration in your eyes is making him a bit dizzy. It’s been a long time since you looked at him like that. “Uhh, okay. These are the kids I’m supporting, they live in Africa,” he starts. “I hope I can visit them someday, but they’ve been sending me letters, saying thank you... telling me about their days and all.”

“Wow!” you marvel. “How does it feel? To receive such lovely letters?”

“Honestly, it kinda makes me feel like a parent,” he replies. “It feels wonderful.”

Moving onto the next set of photos, his smile grows wider. “I teach these kids dancing, sometimes taekwondo. They’re all very sweet, especially the maknae, Yang Jeongin.” Minho points at a boy with contagious smile. “He can be a brat sometimes, but everyone loves him.”

“Is this an orphanage? Can I meet them?” you blurt out.

“Of course! You’ll love them to bits.”

“You have to come back with Y/N noona!”

A few weeks later, Minho took you to the orphanage. You played with the kids all day and watched him teach them dance. You thought the kids wouldn’t like you as much, but now they’re trying to persuade you to stay the night.

“Aww, of course I’ll come back. Be a good boy, and we’ll be back sooner than you thought!”

Yang Jeongin, the youngest boy in the orphanage, has done everything to make you stay. If it weren’t for your “adult responsibilities,” you would have caved in because nothing could beat his puppy eyes and hopeful smile.

“Alright, go back inside, everyone. All of you need to sleep.”

The kids grumble at Minho’s command, slowly walking back to the main hall. After making sure no one sneaks out to follow you, the two of you make a stop at a nearby park that Minho claims to be the perfect place to admire the moon.

“Okay, you’re not lying. The moon does look pretty from here.”

The man sitting beside you smirks in satisfaction. “I never stay too long but I always like spending time here. Now that I think about it, you kinda resemble the moonlight.”

The switch of the mood has you cackling. “Aren’t everything about the moon associated with werewolves and murders? You’re expecting me to fall for such a lame pickup line?”

“That’s not how I see it.” Minho disagrees. “I think you’re radiant, bright but not blinding. Take it as a compliment.”

The word radiant strikes you light a lightning, forces you to face the harsh reality that you’re doing a really good job in hiding the hollowness inside—all the lingering questions and uneasiness. You’re far from being the light Minho admires.

“Trust me, I’m not radiant whatsoever.”

Minho stiffens, observing you carefully until you feel brave enough to look at him. At first, you see pity in his eyes, but it morphs into something that feels too good to be true. You find tranquil in his gaze, so serene that you nearly let your tears fall.

He reaches for your hand, interlocking your fingers together before pulling you up from your seat. “I’ll tell you whenever you’re being the moonlight that you are,” he promises, his voice is a perfect mix between sincerity and mischief. “Prepared to get sick of me because I’ll remind you everyday.”

Just because most people often cross the line doesn’t mean that being able to exert self-control when needed is something to be proud about, but Minho has always thought of it as his positive trait.

He’s going to cross it out of the list today.

His hand is still holding yours tightly, chatting away with a lopsided smile on his face. And yours. This wasn’t what he intended to do, but life loves to play God and tests him the moment he thinks he knows what he’s doing. Giving you his name card on the train has spiraled into taking you home hand-in-hand, peppering kisses on your temple when you become too cute to handle (which is almost all the damn time) and falling in love with you all over again. What happened in the subway impulsive and dumb, but he couldn’t control himself. He wanted to see you again, he longed to talk to you.

Minho just wanted a second chance to be good to you, but will things ever be enough? How will he make things right again? Providing you free coffee and say thank you for your visit? It was a selfish wish he shouldn’t have acted upon.

“We must’ve crossed paths somehow. There’s no way that we’ve never met before!” you say, swinging your intertwined hands happily.

It’s too late. History repeats itself, but Minho’s too far gone to stop. He’s trying to feel it, the need to exert self-control—he can’t.

“I didn’t come home often,” he lies, every word feels like knife stabbing his heart. You hum in response, a yawn escaping from your mouth as both of you are nearing your unit. Minho watches you enter the door password, mouthing the numbers silently, 2 3 0 9. Your grandma’s birthday. It’s always been your password for everything—phone, laptop, even Minho’s old apartment since you were the one who set it for him. It stays with him until this very day although he no longer lives in the same apartment.

You tug at his sleeve. “Come on in.”

Your stuffs are pretty much the same, if not exactly the same as a few years ago. The only things missing were those related to him. Polaroid photos of you together, the umbrella he left at your place, the mug he…. wait.

The purple mug Minho bought for you is sitting on the kitchen counter, causing him to nearly trip over his own feet. Did you forget to get rid of it before the procedure?

“Let me go change first,” you tell him. “Feel free to grab any snack. There’s cold water and beer in the fridge.”

He can barely answer as you disappear into your room. Memories start flooding his mind, it feels as if he finally finds all the folders with your name on them that he tried so hard to bury, stashed in the deepest part of his heart.

Those memories were so painfully beautiful he has to bite his lip to prevent his tears from falling.

“Oh that’s my favorite mug!”

You’re back, dressed in the black loose T-shirt you always wear during summers. Minho’s eyes automatically dart to your left shoulder, spotting the hole on the shirt that exposes a part of your shoulder.

Another thing that hasn’t changed. Another thing that makes you the you he knew. Another thing that diminishes his self-control into nothing because you have no idea how much he loved to—

“Minho?”

You cradle this face softly, wiping the tears he didn’t know he shed. Confusion and panic reflected in your irises. “Is everything okay?”

“Huh?” He touches his cheek before attempting to laugh. “Something probably went into my eyes...”

“Let me see.” Before he refuses, you’ve taken a step closer, gently blowing into his eyes. “Better? Want some eye drop?”

Minho shakes his head, removing your hands from his face and plants a kiss on your forehead. Another mistake that feels so right. “I guess I’m just tired. Is it okay if we chat some other time?”

You mumble an okay, following him to the front door. When he turns the door knob, you reach for his hand. “Hey,” you murmur, slowly examining his face. Minho tries to read yours in return, sensing your hesitation. He waits for a good minute patiently, letting you form words in your head.

“What are we? These things we’ve been doing… what do they mean to you? Does this mean we’re…”

You let out a frustrated sigh, more directed to yourself than him, and Minho understands what you’re talking about. He tightens his grip on the knob, desperately begging himself to stop all of this. You don’t deserve another heartbreak when you’ve done everything to continue living.

You’re a whole new person, yet you remain the one he adored. How can you be so different yet familiar? How can you be so… dearly you?

“Minho, does this mean that we’re—”

Minho throws his arms around you, burying his head into the crook your neck before slowly trailing his lips towards the exposed part of your shoulder. You have no idea how much he loves leaving kisses there, on that particular spot. As strange as it sounds, it gives him the strength and hope he needs. Minho never told you this; you’ll never be able to imagine how happy and relieved he currently feels when he plants one, two, three, countless kisses that set his whole being on fire.

“We are,” he whispers, dropping one last kiss before pulling you even closer, enveloping your body in his embrace.

There’s only one thing in Minho’s head now: love. He can only think about loving you better than before, and in this moment nothing can stop him from doing so because whether he likes the old you or the new you doesn’t matter anymore.

Minho just loves you, and he doesn’t want to think about anything else. Not even his selfishness. And especially not your future heartbreak.

“You’re so precious, Y/N. You’re so precious to me.”

Hyunjin is the only one at the office when you arrive. He’s busy with his camera, changing its setting every now and then before capturing random things on his desk. You and Chan were on the fence about hiring him at first since you’re just a small company and he’s a student with high expectations. However, Hyunjin turns out to be the one of the most eager apprentices ever, and you’re going to bawl your eyes out when his internship ends next month.

“What are you doing?” you ask him, only earning a distracted “Huh?” as an answer.

“Hyunjin, don’t forget to go over the photoshoot details with me before we leave later, okay?”

He lifts his head a little this time. “Okay. Let me just finish trying out this new technique Seungmin taught me.”

You chuckle, snapping a photo of your intern yelling at his camera when he messes up. Sending it to Chan, you write, “We should give him a raise.”

Your phone rings a few seconds later, frowning when Chan’s urgent voice greets you. “I’m inside my car. Can we talk?”

“Whoa, relax. What happened?”

“Y/N, please. Just come out for a sec.”

No one wants to start a fight with Chan when he’s talking in that tone, so you inform Hyunjin you’re stepping out for a bit. Chan’s sedan is parked right in front of the building, his conflicted face prompts you to enter the car right away.

“You told me there’s something weird about Minho but now you’re dating him? And you’re hiding it from me?” he deadpans without waiting for you to close the door.

“I didn’t mean to hide it from you,” you murmur. “I just don’t know how to explain it.”

Chan sighs in exasperation. “Why do you think you owe me an explanation?  I’m your best friend, not your mother. How is Minho different from any other guy you’ve dated that you really tried to keep it a secret from me?”

You gulp. “Things between Minho and I… it’s different. I thought I knew what liking someone felt like, but after meeting him I realized I knew nothing about it. Everything feels so overwhelmingly wonderful and insanely intense I think I may fall apart if I start talking about it.”

Your best friend gives you a knowing look, but says nothing as he stares at a random stranger walking down the street. “And I know you’re not really fond of him so I was trying to look for the perfect timing to tell you. Sorry.”

“I just want to keep you safe. This guy knows small details about you that even I didn’t know. Are you sure you never met him before?”

He pauses, taking a deep breath before adding, “Did you do that erasure procedure?”

“How am I supposed to know?” you snap. “Isn’t forgetting about the whole thing the point of the procedure?”

“You love him, don’t you?” Chan’s voice is soft this time, but his words hit you right in the gut you have to stop yourself from flinching. Hearing someone say that they love you is scary, admitting that you are in love is a hundred times scarier.

Taking your silence as a yes, Chan turns on the engine. “Look, the last thing I want is seeing you sad. It breaks me, more than you know. So please consider trying to find out the truth. How are you going to love him if you don’t trust him? How is he going to love you if he keeps you in the dark?”

You lean your head against the window, watching your best friend dialing Hyunjin’s number to tell him that both of you will be back after lunch.

“We better be quick,” Chan says. “Hyunjin’s terrified he will have to answer Mr. Song’s call again.”

“We should definitely give him a raise.”

“Oh we will,” he snickers. “If he survives Mr. Song’s call.”

“You’re cruel.”

For the first time in your life, you feel like a ruling queen inside your island instead of a trapped princess. You know every nook, every secret passage, every hidden treasure that nobody else has ever explored. Everything feels real for once, you’re in control and you want to stay here forever.

Eat Here has gained more regular customers since you and Chan started handling its social media accounts, and the face-splitting grin on Minho’s face whenever a new customer pushes the door open makes you feel proud and giddy at the same time.

You weren’t able to witness your Hottest Man Alive greeting his customers happily today, but you promised to pay him a visit at the café. It’s a few minutes past 10, meaning the café has closed for the day, so you were prepared to see everyone cleaning up. To you surprise, there’s nobody inside when you arrive.

“Minho?”

Your boyfriend waves from inside the pantry. “Coming!”

Moments later, he comes out with a tray of food. Gesturing at you to take a seat, he places a bowl of potato salad, a pot of kimchi jjigae and some side dishes. “Wait, let me get some more.”

You recall your phone conversation 2 hours ago, vaguely remembering telling Minho that you haven’t had dinner. When he serves the last batch of side dishes and a bottle of sikhye, you tease him for being so sweet.

“I’m not being sweet though?” He pulls out a chair for himself, watching you eat with content eyes. “You said you were starving, so I prepared you some food.”

You shrug, letting him pour sikhye into your glass. “I just never expected that you’re someone who…”

“… cooks?” he finishes for you. “I just did the bare minimum. Do you really want to see me being sweet?”

“Is that a challenge?”

Minho clears his throat, the way he stares at you makes you fidget in your seat. Only God knows what’s inside this man’s mind. One second he’s nonchalant and cool, then he’s Mr. Flirty and makes you all swoony.

Patting his thigh, he smiles at you. “Come here baby.”

You shake your head in fear of completely losing your sanity. “No. What are you trying to do?”

“Being the most romantic boyfriend ever. Come on.”

Minho tries his best to suppress his laugh as you finally settle yourself on his lap, not sure whether you should rest your head on his shoulder or peck his lips or marvel at how firm his thighs are... damn it Y/N, what are you? 17?

Although you’re just sitting there like a log, Minho looks unbothered and reaches for the chocolate cake. He slices it into smaller bites, taking a piece of it with the fork before telling you to open your mouth. “If you still want ice cream then we can get some on the way home.”

“I’ve had enough ice cream for today. I went to this cute ice cream parlor with Chan.”

You take the plate from him, stuffing yourself with the rest of the cake. Minho’s soft pats on your shoulder and the sweet taste of chocolate seem to flush all the initial awkwardness from your system.

Another hour passes with you curling up on Minho’s lap, the latter listening to your little speech about how grateful you are for vending machines as if you’re talking about world peace. Your back hurts and his thighs ache but the way your head nestles in the crook of his neck and the way he pecks your cheek every few minutes are enough of a spell to trap both of you in this exact moment, where lies, doubts and regrets cease to exist.

You wake up with a jolt, reaching for your water bottle on the bedside table. It’s surreal for a dream to feel that real—it almost felt like a memory, something distant but present nonetheless. You’re sure that was the younger Minho you saw in the dream instead of the one you know, and before you come to a realization that it’s currently 2AM, you’re already dialing his number.

He picks up on the fifth ring. “Hmmm my moonlight, missed me?”

His sleepy voice causes you to blush, definitely not seeing that coming. “Nothing.” You wince at your parched voice. “I just had a dream.”

Minho lets out a low laugh, you can hear him sitting up on his bed. “About me?”

“Well… yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

You sink into your bed, heaving a sigh you forget to hide. “It’s complicated.”

“Was it a bad dream?” Minho’s voice is firm but oh so calming that you start recounting every detail you can remember. He listens to you attentively, humming once in a while, and your muscles are all relaxed now. Minho is here, listening to your bullshit in the wee hours of the morning. Minho is here, calling you his moonlight with the most caring tone ever.

“I miss you,” he declares the moment you finish talking. “Can I come over?”

“All of sudden? Minho, it’s 2AM.” You glance at the clock. “Wait, it’s 2:18 now.”

“Then I’ll be there at 3AM.”

“But—”

He hangs up, and you just sit there until Minho enters your room at 3AM sharp, taking in your dumfounded state before plopping himself onto the bed and pulling you close. “I’m here,” he sweetly says and you can only nod, eyes boring into his as he runs his thumbs along your cheekbones. “I like you, exactly the way you like me. I like you more.”

You shake your head, burying your head in the crook of his neck to hide your red cheeks. “It was just a dream,” he adds, enunciating each word like a mantra. Closing your eyes, you repeat his words again and again inside your head, traces of pain from the dream still crawling up your skin as Minho’s sweet praises lull you to sleep.

“I’m sorry but that’s classified information. We cannot mention anything about our patients.”

“But she did the procedure because of me! I’m the one she erased!”

“That only gives us more reasons to forbid you from obtaining any information. It’s our policy to protect our patients, especially after the procedure is done.”

Minho wonders how this sullen kid managed to land the job, but bites his tongue before he really gets kicked out. He takes one deep breath before pleading at so-called receptionist (his name is Kim Seungmin but he could care less) once again. “May I at least know whether she was in so much pain?”

Seungmin fixes his glasses. “People her age mostly spend their money on traveling or whatever cool things they want to do, but she chose to have her memories manipulated so she wouldn’t have to remember you. I think that’s enough of an explanation.”

It’s no big deal, Minho tells himself. It’s normal for people to have the Erasure procedure thesedays. In fact, it’s become so normal that no one bothers to talk about it anymore. Erasure is simply another way to move on, just like Love Alarm is another way to detect love. If you decided that your memories together weren’t precious enough to keep in your heart, so be it. If he hurt you that much but you chose to erase him instead of confronting him, then it’s your loss.

Exactly. Was he that bad? Did he hurt you that much?

“Excuse me, Sir?” Seungmin is already standing by the door. “I think it’s better for you to leave.”

“Alright.” Minho lifts his hands in defeat, starting to feel bad for the poor boy who’s just trying to keep his job. “Hang in there, kid.”

“Congratulations, you just earned a VIP pass to Hell.”

Eat Here is doing well, the kids he’s supporting are starting school soon and he finally gets to return the feelings of the girl he loves the most but yes, Seungmin is right. The gates of Hell are open for Minho.

“Right,” he scoffs. “As if you didn’t greet people with a smile and convinced them that erasure was the best solution for all their problems.”

Seungmin grits his teeth; talks about Dr. Seo Changbin’s Erasure Centre are never easy for both of them. For Seungmin, it reminds him of all the pain, rage and guilt he thought he was used to seeing. For Minho, it reminds him of his selfishness and failure to make you happy.

“The erasure did help a lot of people though,” the puppy-eyed boy trails off. “It’s been years yet I’m still torn between wanting the procedure to perish and thanking it for saving lives.”

“Maybe it does save people. But then there’s Y/N.”

“And you,” Seungmin adds.

Minho chuckles. “And you.”

“Are you just gonna wait until she realizes that those dreams actually happened?”

A long silence looms over them until Seungmin slides a clear CD case along the counter. “I guess it’s time to reveal how I risked my life for you the day I quit my job there.”

A label with your name is plastered on it along with the logo of the centre. It’s the answer to all his questions when he first met Seungmin. The sole proof that everything between the two of you happened.

“I can get sued anytime,” the part-timer warns jokingly. “So use it well, and don’t cry. She said some hurtful things, but you deserved it anyways.”

“Do you think it could last another hour?”

Hyunjin snaps one last photo and tells the models to get a 5-minute break. “Do you want an honest answer or an intern-can-make-anything-happen answer?” he whispers at you while checking his shots.

You’re currently at a photoshoot in Gyeongju with a client you desperately need to impress, but your clumsiness just had to choose today to get in action. Chan was almost furious when you told him you left all the cameras’ charging cables at Minho’s apartment.

“So we’re fucked up,” you conclude. “How many outfits are left?”

“Including this one… three.”

“We’re so fucked up,” you correct yourself, approaching Chan to relay the expected bad news when a familiar car arrives at the villa. You barely hear Hyunjin muttering, “God is a male… for today…” before rushing to take the black duffel bag from Minho’s hand. He only smiles when you tell him he’s getting all the hugs and kisses later.

The photoshoot continues smoothly; allowing you, Chan and Hyunjin actually breathe after 5 hours trying to make the cameras’ batteries last as long as possible.

“I’m so sorry Chan,” you sigh.

He lets out a weak chuckle. “It’s fine. The problem’s solved anyways.”

“No thanks to me.”

“Thanks to you.” Chan glances at your boyfriend who’s leaning on his car, watching you from afar. “Minho brought the chargers, but you were the one who made him drive all the way here. You need to stop underestimating his feelings for you.”

You let Chan’s words sink in, eyes meeting Minho’s in the process. For a split second you forget about everything’s that’s been bugging you, wanting nothing but to lose yourself in his affection for you.

“Do you trust Minho now?”

Chan puts his hand inside his pocket, exhaling softly. “I know he’s crazy for you Y/N, I’m not dense. But does that mean he’s being honest with you?”

Hyunjin snaps one last photo that marks the end of the shoot, giving you a reason not to respond to Chan, jogging towards the models instead. “Thank you, everyone!” You bow to them. “There are some snacks left inside so please eat before you go, or you may take them home.”

You can still feel Minho’s eyes on you, following you wherever you run with the sweetest kind of fondness that makes it hard for you to question him. He’s like a prince who comes from another kingdom after crossing the long bridge and fighting in the wild forest. He stands there in front of your castle, waiting for you to deem him worthy of your love, of you.

How do you say no to that?

But how do you know if he sees you the way you feel he does?

After that night, you’ve had other dreams—the ones you never told him—each dream etched itself into your mind, filling in the empty spaces slowly but surely. They become a part of you so naturally that you’re convinced you somehow lived them.

“What are you thinking about?”

Minho has just finished loading the last box of props into Chan’s car trunk, now waiting for you to break your train of thoughts with an amused smile. You barely hear Chan and Hyunjin saying goodbye before they enter the car, leaving the two of you alone.

“Y/N?”

“Yeah?”

Minho’s smile is long gone, his expression mirroring yours: confused, lost, a bit scared. “Are you okay?”

Even your 18 year-old self knew what to do then. A bit late, but she did it. The thought of embracing her as a part of you is making you nauseous, the acknowledgement of having a past you don’t remember is disturbingly scary.

“Those dreams... they were real, right? Those are my memories.”

Your stomach churns when Minho nods, surprisingly calmer than you expected. He pulls out a CD out of his bag, carefully slipping it into your hand. The thin plastic feels heavy in your hold, the world as you know it crumbling at the realization that this Lee Minho was the same boy who had your heart in his palm and broke it.

“I tried to picture this situation in my head every single day, but never had the courage to actually tell you. I’m so sorry Y/N. For everything, then and now.”

Lee Minho, the one who sees you as his moonlight, was also the one whose heart could never be yours.

“I’m Lee Minho. We’re both from Gimpo, and we met at high school. We were best friends, then sometime during 11th grade we started dating. You were this amazing, lovely girl who wore your heart on your sleeves, and I was the asshole who failed to realize how blessed I was to have you.”

Minho pauses to look into your eyes, the sorrow in his orbs triggers the tears you refuse to shed. “I became your boyfriend because I didn’t want to lose you,” he continues. “I was stupid, wasn’t I? Stupid and inconsiderate. All I had to do was tell you how I felt…”

"B-but why?” you sob. “Y-you l-lied to me, Minho. Again.”

“I did. Fuck. I did,” he admits. “You have every right to never ever forgive me. But Y/N, I never meant to play with your feelings. I was too late, but I loved you then. I love you now, and I don’t think I’ll be able to love anyone else even if I try.”

Phase 2: Forgotten Days

“A mug?”

Minho hums as an answer while copying your English homework in a speed of light, failing to answer your questions about why, out of all things he could buy in Japan, he decided to gift you a mug. You let out a huff when he leaves your next question hang in the air (“How did you know that I needed a new mug?”), but lets him be since the bell will ring in 15 minutes.

The purple mug is quite heavy and somehow that makes your heart flutter. Minho gave all the other classmates green tea Kit Kats and keychains, but he was willing to fit the bulky mug into his tiny suitcase for you.

You don’t know what’s going on inside his head most of the time, for all you know he could’ve bought the mug because he forgot to buy something for you and decided to grab the first thing in sight. It’s just a little gift, something you should just appreciate without thinking too much about it, but you can’t help but wonder. Sometimes you feel sorry for yourself for overanalyzing Minho’s every little gesture, trying to guess how much he likes you.

“I’m done!” Minho exclaims, returning your book before grabbing his wallet. He finally looks into your eyes, smiling at you as he ruffles your hair. “Gotta grab some snacks. You want anything? Strawberry milk? Chips?”

When he comes back with both although you told him you only wanted chips, Minho argues that he knows you’ll get hungry in the middle of lessons. Again, it shouldn’t feel so special, but he’s looking at you now, you and no one else. Lee Minho is like an enigma, but at times like this, you bask in his bright smile and everything is forgotten.

Summer is the enemy you’ve managed to beat every single year, but combine the scorching heat with excruciating cramps and you don’t stand a chance. You peek into the practice room once again, but Minho is still practicing his dance routines, his phone laid neglected at the corner of the room. The supposed-to-be 30 minutes practice turns into an hour, and you decide to just wait outside since you don’t have energy to go home on your own.

The door opens when you’re on the verge of passing out, luckily someone has caught you before you collapse on the floor. “Y/N,” Minho’s voice forces you to open your eyes. “What happened?”

“… cramps…”

He lifts you and dashes to the infirmary without saying anything else, yelling at some other students to “fucking move!” while trying not to trip over his undone shoelaces. You try to tell him that you’re alright, just a little tired from enduring the pain but he gives you no chance to talk.

Minho finally stays still after kicking the infirmary’s door to no avail. He makes no other attempt to open the door, slowly making eye contact with your drowsy eyes. You love seeing fire in Minho’s eyes, especially when he dances or plays with his friends. This is the first time Minho sees you with such intensity, but this is not the passionate flame you’ve been craving to see. This fire is destructive, painful. It breaks your heart that he’s looking at you like this, like you’re the source of all unfortunate events that happens in his life.

You feel like you’re the unfortunate event in his life, and the thought is enough to make you break free from his bruising grip, pushing the door open yourself.

“Go back to practice,” you tell him, sitting on one of the beds. “I’ll lie down for a bit then go home.”

Minho rummages through the medicine cupboard, taking a painkiller pill and fills an empty glass with warm water. “Drink this, I’ll take you home.”

“I’m fine, Minho…”

He shakes his head. “You’re sick and I’m taking you home.”

Too weak to argue, you swallow the pill and let him walk you home. Minho keeps his hand around your shoulder the whole time, not even bothering to check his ringing phone. He doesn’t talk to you either, and at this rate the silence is more concerning than your cramps.

“Can you go up on your own?” he murmurs when you reach your apartment building. “I have to go back to school, but I’ll stop by later.”

You only nod, about to wave him goodbye when he reaches for your arm. “Wait.”

Minho cups your face, pressing his lips on yours and stealing your breath away. Soon, he starts kissing you harder, but his lips still feel cold against yours and he still feels so faraway even when he’s gripping your waist like his life depends on it.

“Minho,” you manage to rasp, cradling his face to stop him from planting another kiss on your lips. He opens his eyes, staring at you with those beautiful eyes that, sadly, never really shine for you. “Your friends are waiting.”

Still panting, Minho gives you a nod before pulling away. The fire you saw in his eyes earlier has died out.

As you watch him walk away, you finally realize that you’ve been asking yourself the wrong question. It’s not about how much Minho likes you, it’s about whether he likes you at all.

If Minho could choose only one person to be with for the rest of his life, he would choose you. He enjoyed watching movies with you, he loved sending his silly selfies to you, he always wanted to end a tiring day by talking to you all night long.

He can still do that, you’re still his friend. The only difference is that he can hug and kiss you and tell other people that he’s yours. Minho doesn’t know why he lets the words “boyfriend and girlfriend” change the dynamics between the two of you, but it’s too late to undo everything.

“Can we just be friends again?” he repeats the question in his head over and over, yet he can never voice it out. The look in your eyes will be too devastating for him to bear, and he will you lose you forever.

“I’m outside,” he tells you over the phone, trying not to flinch at your excited “Oh!” 

A few minutes later, you step out of the elevator, walking towards him with big steps.

“Feeling better?” he asks, noting the way your eyes light up at the question.

“Hmm. I took a short nap and it’s gone.”

Minho sighs. “Don’t wait for me next time. If I take too long, you can just go home. I’m sorry that I let you wait around like that.”

The last sentence causes you to lower your gaze, seemingly self-conscious with the fact that he forgot you were waiting for him. “Bought you some ice cream,” Minho says, trying to distract you from your thoughts. “Chocolate, vanilla, mint choco, it’s all there.”

“As an apology?” you half-tease, the tinge of sadness in your voice causes Minho’s heart to clench a little.

He quickly pulls you into his arms, resting his chin on the top of your head. “Yes and no,” he murmurs into your hair. Part of him is relieved when you don’t question his answer, only humming against his chest before wrapping your arms around him. It’s so easy to make you happy and it angers him. You’re too kind. Too patient. Too loyal. You’re too in love with him, and it hurts not being able to feel the same.

But as the warmth of your body starts to comfort his senses, Minho realizes this is where he wants to be. He wants to be with you, no matter what the labels are. “If you miss the last bus you’re gonna have to walk all the way home,” you remind him, voice muffled since neither of you wants to let go.

“One more minute,” he replies, fingers playing with the hole on your shirt. He places one feathery kiss there, a silent promise that he’s going to try his best loving you. The one promise that could have made you stay, but it remained unsaid until the day you left him.

“Surprise!”

Minho lets out a yelp, coughing up confetti that you pop right in front of face. His parents, standing a few steps behind you, are giggling at their son’s reaction. “I thought you had to go somewhere with your mom!” he exclaims, the surprise in his eyes is now replaced by confusion and… annoyance?

You quietly step aside, letting him shake off the confetti as you’re trying to find your voice. Minho’s parents don’t seem to notice the tension, laughing and explaining that they invited you over for the family birthday dinner.

His mother ushers both of you to the dining room where the feast awaits. “After all this time you still haven’t introduced Y/N to Soonie!” she protests jokingly while the said cat is purring at you. Coming over to Minho’s house without his knowledge sounded like a terrible idea right from the start, but now you really wish you had turned the offer down. The birthday boy only pats you on the back before telling you to sit down, and you spend the rest of the dinner conversing without ever looking at each other in the eyes. That’s no surprise, what surprises you is the fact that you don’t even bother trying to get him look at you.

After 2 years, you’re finally tired of waiting for Minho to love you.

“Soonie doesn’t usually like strangers,” Minho says as you’re walking to the bus stop. “But he really likes you.”

“Do you?”

“What?”

“Like me. Do you like me?”

Minho chuckles. “What kind of question is that?”

Words are bubbling inside your head, all emotions threatening to spill out you have to literally swallow them down. It feels like the world has come to a stop—the realization that your world has been revolving around Minho all this time makes you feel queasy.

“Y/N?”

You want to explode. You wish you can explode. There’s nothing you want more than taking out every piece of your broken heart, count all of them and show him how much you’ve been hurting. You thought your love was enough for both of you, but the bigger your love grew, the farther the distance between the two of you became.

Minho keeps his gaze on you as you’re mustering up courage to ask the most heartbreaking question. “Why?” you quiver. “Why do you pretend that you like me? Why do you bother doing that for 2 years?”

“I-I like you. So much,” he stutters. “Just not in the same way you like me…”

Blinking your tears away, you return his tormented gaze. “Then why did you let me like you alone? Every fucking day you let me wonder how much you like me, if I mean anything to you… I wait for you, convincing myself that you must’ve liked me if you chose to be my boyfriend. But it’s just a game to you, isn’t it?”

Lee Minho has always had his own way to love. You’ve seen him showering those around him with love in ways that seem so ordinary that people often take it for granted. But you see and feel everything, including hints that your feelings have always been one sided. You bury all those hints, telling yourself that he only needs time.

That time never comes, and you have run out of lies and excuses and hope to cover up for both of you.

Phase 3: Chasing Moonlight

The Queen lived under a spell all this time, believing that the foreign kingdom was her whole world while she didn’t even have a home to begin with.

But the ruins of her castle—the only thing that’s left of the kingdom she tried to understand her whole life—will become one. She’s going to build herself a new kingdom, one that she knows by heart, and call it home.

“Noona!!! I’m going home!!! Don’t stay there too long!!! You’ll get sick!!!”

You tear your gaze from the cloudy sky as Hyunjin shouts at you from the ground. You dismiss him with a little wave, forcing a small smile so that the boy will leave instead of going back to the rooftop.

“He’s right,” Chan adds. “You’ve been here for hours.”

After showing up at work with puffy eyes and hoarse voice, Chan attempted to send you home, but you insisted to complete some of your tasks before breaking down during lunch after Hyunjin accidentally revealed that he would meet Seungmin at Eat Here.

So here you are, finally sated after crying all the tears you had left at the rooftop during the remaining working hours.

“I’m fine,” you croak, cringing at your own voice. “You can leave.”

“And let you stay here until you’re all stiff and frozen?”

“Just let me be pathetic for one more day.”

He furrows his brows. “You’re not being pathetic. After what he’s done to you, weeping is the least you should do.”

You let out your first laugh of the day. “I surely wept.”

Looking incredibly relieved that you haven’t lost the ability to feel other emotions than sadness, Chan continues, “Wanna talk about it?”

“Do you know what hurts the most?”

He takes the longest time to think, but shakes his head at the end.

“The fact that I’ll probably never see him again.”

“That’s supposed to be a good thing, but go on.”

“Should I give him one last chance? Or should I just hate him until I die? What’s the right thing to do? What should I do to heal? What should he do to heal? All these questions are driving me insane.”

Those questions are the easiest to answer, so you expect Chan to sigh and tell you to snap out of it, but he just smiles at you. “What do you want to do?”

“Huh?”

“Have you tried answering your own questions? What you want to do is what you’re supposed to do. It’s easy, my dear friend.”

“I want to…”

Your mind wanders to last night, recalling that agony on Minho’s face that mirrors your own. A small part of you wants him to suffer for the rest of his life, consumed by guilt and the sheer horror of being erased from someone else’s memories.

“I want to curse him out.”

Chan playfully smacks your head. “You didn’t do that?”

“My mind went blank, then I started crying. That wasn’t cool at all, I know,” you huff. “I should’ve told him to go to hell or something.”

“After that? What do you want to do?”

You bury your face into your palms, ignoring the teasing tone in Chan’s questions. “The last time we talked, you were Lee Minho’s #1 hater. What happened?”

“I just wanted him to be honest with you. I never hated him,” he tells you softly. “Do you?”

You may never get all of your memories back, but the ones you can remember are enough to know that being with Minho used to be a silent torture. He was a thorny rose, beautiful yet unattainable. You wanted him so much you refused to look down and see your bloody fingers. The thorns were stuck there for the longest time, eventually infecting your soul until you were too weak to heal yourself.

But he’s not that boy anymore. He’s just Minho who listens to all of your rambles and actually keeps all those details in his mind. He gives you the warmest hugs and the most sincere kisses. He stays by your side, and you will always want him to stay.

When you finally lift your head to answer Chan, he gives you his reassuring smile that never fails to make you feel better. It’s the first time he’s talking about Minho without a frown, and you hope it’s a good sign. “Like I said,” he sing-songs. “Do what you want to do.”

The sound of footsteps approaching prompts you to curl yourself into a ball, trying to make yourself as invisible as possible under the dining the table. Jeongin manages to push the heavy door open after a few tries, mumbling that you’re not going to take the “king of hide and seek” title from him. You can’t help but giggle at his determination, waiting for him to find you while he’s scanning the whole room.

“Minho hyung!”

You stay still, not wanting to fall into the 5 year-old’s tricks so easily… until you hear Minho’s voice calling the little boy’s name. “What are you guys playing? Where’s Y/N?”

“We’re playing hide and seek,” Jeongin answers, his eyes still as sharp as a hawk. “I’ve found everyone, only Y/N noona is left!”

Minho hums. “Want me to help you find her?”

You don’t hear Jeongin responding, but the next thing you see is a pair of pretty eyes staring into yours. “Found her,” Minho murmurs.

Jeongin pulls you out with a huge grin on his face. “I knew you were there! Thanks for helping me, hyung.”

Minho ruffles the boy’s head before gazing back at you. “If you’re thankful, can I borrow her for a second? We just need to talk, then she’s all yours.”

You can’t find the strength to say no, hoping Jeongin will somehow be clingy this time. “Are you guys fighting?” he asks instead.

“Do you think we’re fighting?”

Jeongin nods, his sparkly eyes turn gloomy. “If I let you talk, will you make up?”

Minho glances at you. “I don’t know… I made a huge mistake.”

“Did you make her cry?”

“Yeah,” Minho confirms, voice thick with remorse and you’re not sure how long you can pretend to be okay in front of Jeongin.“I’m a bad person, aren’t I?”

You crouch down, pinching the boy’s pout with an endearing smile. “I promise nothing bad will happen. Can we go outside now? I’m sure everyone is waiting for you.”

Still a bit sullen, he links his hand with yours and lets you lead him out, Minho trailing behind the two of you. Once you’re back at the garden, Jeongin whispers into your ear, “I’ll always be your friend, noona. I won’t hurt you.”

“Of course you won’t,” you laugh. “I’ll join you soon, okay?”

Minho turns to you as soon as Jeongin goes back to his friends, studying your expressions carefully. You want to tell him so many things, yet the only words you can produce are, “Fuck you, Lee Minho.”

You feel slightly lighter when Minho says nothing to defend himself, sitting on the grass before gesturing at you to do the same. It fuels your need to let out the pain you previously sealed inside your heart, ironically basking in his comforting presence as you do so.

“The whole time I felt like something was missing. You knew that, then went on hiding the rest of the puzzle pieces and left me there, incomplete. Just like that.”

This isn’t your first time baring your heart to Minho, the last time you did it you were left with such immeasurable pain that erasing a part of your brain—your soul—sounded like a better choice. You wait for the sadness and rage to take over your mind, but the storm never comes. You wonder what makes it different until Minho shifts to look at you in the eye.

Minho is looking at you with those pretty eyes like you’re the only one he can see. It’s not just a sweet dream you tried to dream of every night when you were 17. You’re no longer the only one who’s wearing your heart on your sleeves.

“Am I doing this because I feel guilty or because I genuinely want to be with you?” he begins. “Believe me Y/N, I spent months trying to find the answer and justify what I did, but I guess you can never exactly separate those two feelings.”

His confession is bittersweet; you know it won’t end all your personal battles. You still have to fight them, help yourself to understand why you are thinking and acting the way you are. The gaps have been filled, and now you have to be the one who define yourself.

“I thought I could just treat you better for the rest of our lives. I was sure my love would be enough to heal you. That was very stupid and selfish of me, and I’m sorry. You’re free to hate me, push me away, ruin my life… the decision is yours. But I don’t wanna hide how I feel anymore. Not from you.”

You’re still pondering his words when Jeongin comes to check on you, making sure Minho isn’t making you cry again.

“No, Jeongin, I’m fine. Look? I’m not crying!” you reassure the pouty kid.

He beams at you with his toothy smile. “Really?! Did you make up? Friends have to forgive each other!”

“I know, sweetheart,” you coo. “And yes, we made up. Friends forgive each other.”

Minho shoots you a surprised look, but you ignore him until you convince Jeongin that he can continue playing. “I don’t know whether we can go back to what we were,” you tell him, gazing at the clear sky. “I still need time to process everything, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t ever see you again. So we can be friends, if you want.”

He chuckles, eyes sparkling and hopeful. “Hi. I’m Lee Minho.”

“I’m Y/N,” you reply. “Anyways, Lee Minho my new friend, how did you know that I’m here?”

“Your scary friend Bang Chan told me you’d be here.”

“So you think Chan is scary.”

Minho does something that’s between a shrug and a shudder. “He’s always shooting daggers at me how do you not notice?!”

As you and Minho spend the rest of the day laughing and enjoying the sun, you rediscover the magic of following your heart.

It’s heavenly.

To Minho, there are only okay days and good days. Bad days almost never happen, but today is a bad day. Everything started from Eat Here’s fruit supplier sending them the wrong strawberries, then Seungmin called in sick minutes before his shift started, and now he has to deal with a couple whose order hasn’t been processed since 40 minutes ago.

“I apologize for the inconvenience. We’re processing your order now and it will be on us. Jisung, we need another 2 glasses of lemonade—”

“We need our food, not—”

Minho’s lips stretch into a thin smile, the kind of smile he hates because you once said you could sense that he was faking it. His business smile is the only that can save him now, so he ignores the fact that you’re watching the whole chaos and says, “It will be on us. You’re going to need more drinks while waiting.”

After making sure that he’s appeased the angry customers, Minho goes back to the small table at the corner where you’re waiting for him. He can no longer mask his fatigue and annoyance when you lay your eyes on him, all he wants now is to hold you in his arms and sleep everything away. He knows he can’t ask you for more, he’s already getting more than he deserves since you agreed to be friends with him again.

He’s undeniably the luckiest man in the whole galaxy, but it’s human instincts to always want more. There are days when his longing for you is too much to handle, and today is one of those days.

His train of thoughts is interrupted when a cold glass is pressed against his cheek. “Minho?”

“Huh?”

Your eyes crinkle knowingly when he focuses his eyes on you again. “I want to listen to you ranting but I really need to go now. Chan needs me back at the office.”

“Okay,” he answers rather brashly. “Thanks for stopping by.”

Minho almost pouts the way Jeongin does (that pout always gets him) whenever the two of you are going home, luckily he stops himself just in time, opting to wonder what will happen if he tells you that he wants you to stay just a minute longer instead.

You make your way to the door, but not without stopping to give him one last advice, “You better not complain that everything is annoying every 5 seconds if you want that new guy to last more than a day. He’s been looking like a lost quokka!”

Your “warning” came out a bit too loud than you expected. Of course, it reaches Han “that new guy” Jisung’s ears and Minho hopes he remembers to give the poor kid a slice of cheesecake for free after his shift ends. You flash him an apologetic smile, turning to Jisung to convince him that his boss isn’t as bad as he seems before your phone rings.

“He’s harmless, Jisung, just make him iced Americano everyday, praise his cats, and you’re good. Okay, I have to go now or I’ll be jobless in an hour! Byeee!”

Minho’s mouth has curled into a lovesick smile at your antics, waving at you until you close the door of your car. The way you naturally calm him down surprises him everytime, it’s like you’re unaware of how much power you have over him.

God, you really own every inch of his heart, don’t you?

Second chances are overrated.

People change, but once you pay attention to them a just a liiiitle more, you realize that they’re still the same. Lee Minho believes he doesn’t deserve any second chance from you, yet he finds himself seeking forgiveness the moment he looked into your eyes again. As selfish as it sounds, Minho wants your love. Nobody else’s, just yours.

He tried to fill in the empty space you left with other people, but none of them fit. It was always too much or too little, punching him right in his gut for ever thinking that what you two had was too much, that you were too much.

Seeing you fast asleep in his living room with Soonie, Doongie and Dori is another reminder that you were never too much.

You were, and still are, his everything.

Dori opens her eyes before jumping out of your arms, making you stir. Minho quietly strokes your hair to lull you back to sleep, but soon your eyes flutter open as well. “Hmmm look who’s here… the hottest man alive,” you mumble.

Minho points at himself. “Not that I’m surprised, but thank you.”

Your sleepy smile and the breathy chuckle that comes after make his stomach flip. It’s just a simple reaction, something you probably didn’t realize doing, but it feels breathtakingly intimate and loving to Minho. A small part of you that only him can see, something that will cross his mind sometime during work, making him wish time to pass quickly so he can rush back home. To you.

Damn, he promised himself not to let him picture a life with you as the love of his life, but look at his defense crumbling right in front of you because of a mere smile.

You seem to notice his dilemma, lips forming another smile. Opening your arms, you whisper, “Come here.”

The voices in his head are drowned by your request, it’s echoing inside his head like a deathly spell. You have him in your embrace nanoseconds later, curling your hands around his neck as he completely succumbs to his longing.

Minho’s head buzzes with the need to tell you that he loves you, wants you, and misses you to the point that he almost asks you to please please please please forgive him and take him back.

“Okay.”

He lifts his head from the crook of your neck, eyes flickering to yours. You chuckle at his reaction, cupping his cheeks with your warm hands. “Say that again.”

“Say… what again?”

Minho blinks up at you, tiny groans of regret escaping his lips when he realizes that he just spilled everything out loud. “I’m sorry,” he sighs. “I wasn’t supposed to say that. I know this isn’t about me, but—”

“Did you mean it, though?”

“Of course I did,” Minho says. “But I want to go according to your pace.”

“If I didn’t want the same thing I wouldn’t be here, Minho.” Your voice is as sweet as honey, hypnotizing him into dropping his hopeless pretense. “I’ve built a new home that truly feels like home. It’s probably just a small house, filled with everything that makes me me. But it feels like a beautiful kingdom, and it’s not complete without you in it.”

You don’t have to say it; the way you hold his gaze with such a raw, pure sincerity and the way you asked him to be with you as if he’s the best person in the whole world are enough to let Minho know that he’s all forgiven.

Feeling a tug at his shirt, he meets your expectant eyes once again. “Are you going to continue staring at me like that until we fall asleep?”

The last traces his fear for disappointing you melts away as you start stroking his hair. “I love you,” he rasps, unconsciously leaning in until his lips brush over yours. “My precious moonlight, I’ll do my best so you won’t ever have to erase me again. I love you, Y/N, please don’t leave me.”

You barely manage to nod before Minho finally crashes his lips against yours, not giving you any chance to steal a breath as he lets his feelings overtake himself. He explores every part of your lips like a madman and you accept whatever he gives you, trying to keep up with his feverish kisses and letting him know that he doesn’t need to hold back.

The sudden urge to see you encourages him to pull away. Minho says nothing for a while, only looking into your eyes with silent adoration. Still breathless, you prop yourself up to reward him with a chaste kiss on the tip of his nose, the sweet gesture causing Minho to attack you with a series of playful smooches.

“How long do you think this will last?” you ask in between kisses, giggling when Minho switches your positions, you’re now lying on top of him.

“This?”

You pinch his cheek. “I gotta admit it feels kinda nice to hear you saying please so many times.”

Minho arches an eyebrow at your cheeky remark. “Is that so? Wait until you find out how much I like hearing you beg.”

“Minho!” you exclaim, dropping your head on his chest to hide your flushed cheeks. He wraps his arms around you, ready to make you even more flustered before accidentally locking eyes with his cats. You lift your head when you feel his body stills, following his gaze.

“Oh no,” you murmur. “The kids saw that, didn’t they?”

He smiles sheepishly at each of them, somehow feeling like he’s gotten caught by his parents. “This kind of thing happens when you love someone,” he attempts to joke. “So get used to it, okay kiddos?”

You nudge his chest with your chin. “God, you’re shameless.”

“They’re cats!”

“Then why are your ears so red?!”

Minho tuts. “That’s it. We need to do this more often so they’ll get used to it.”

As he silences you with another searing kiss, Minho almost malfunctions at how addicting and comforting it is to have you as his again. It’s impossible to fathom all of his feelings for you into words, yet he still hopes you’ll feel every single one of them.

And you do, because Minho is yours. Entirely yours.

“How did you pass your driving test? Did you bribe them or something?”

Hyunjin doesn’t bother to answer Seungmin’s accusation, eyes glued to the road.

“Watch it,” Minho warns monotonously while you’re gripping his hand, too scared to witness the younger trying to drive. Seungmin shrieks in horror when Hyunjin hits the break almost too late. He glares at the passenger seats where you and Minho are seated. “Hyung can you just take over? Or at least switch seats with me?”

“I can’t.” He points at you. “Y/N is scared as hell and I’m not gonna let you hold her hand.”

Hyunjin curses under his breath when several other cars pass him. “Give me a break! This is my first time driving at the highway,” he argues. “And I was supposed to borrow Chan hyung’s car! Driving your car makes it even ten times scarier!”

“Hey, what’s wrong with my car?!” your boyfriend protests.

The three men continue talking over each other, causing you to roar, “SHUT UP!! Hwang Hyunjin, if you take your hands off the wheels you’re gonna die before you even scratch the car!”

Twenty painful minutes later, Hyunjin succeeds in parallel parking the car with the help of a very frustrated Seungmin. The two boys are heading to the orphanage right away, leaving you and Minho alone for your little date.

Minho opens the trunk, setting it up quickly before pulling you to sit beside him, handing you one of the toasts he packed this morning. “Whoa, the moony park is even more beautiful during the day,” you muse, leaning your head on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Minho agrees. “Should we come here more often at this hour?”

“It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re with me.”

Minho snorts at your cheesy answer, but you still sense his wary from the way he keeps glancing at you from time to time. “Is this about the erasure recording you found in my room yesterday? Is that why you took me here?”

“I’m just wondering why you’re still keeping it. I thought we agreed to destroy it,” he says, doing his best to conceal his uneasiness. You initially thought it was a great idea to forget it ever happened, but no, you’re not running away. You want to accept all the consequences of the decisions you have made, especially this one.

“We did, but then I realized I didn’t want to. I don’t want to erase anything anymore, Minho. I want to live life as it is. It’s a memento from the most important period of my life, and while it hurts, it’s a part of me.” You throw your arms around him, squeezing his body until he turns to you and return your hug. “It’s also a reminder that what we have is stronger than anything, don’t you think? I erased you and I still fell in love with you again. Like an idiot.”

Relief washes over you when Minho chuckles, carefree and amused. “You’re not an idiot,” he teases. “You just have an exceptional taste, and I’m way too irresistible. Let’s face it, you were already crazy for me even before I gave you my card.”

“No I wasn’t! I just thought you were attractive!”

“I am the hottest man alive.”

You sigh. “You’ll never let me live it down.”

“No,” he affirms. “Because you’re right. It’s time to stop trying to forget our past. I’ll never forget the fact that you’re calling me the hottest man alive, just like I’ll never forget how much I’ve hurt you. And how much I’ll always try to make it up to you.”

You laugh at his comparison. “I honestly can’t tell whether we’re having a serious conversation or just trolling each other.”

“It’s my talent, baby. Life is always fun with me.”

Although the park has become more crowded and your boyfriend is never big on PDA, you have no choice but giving him a kiss on his cheek. “You don’t have to do anything for me,” you whisper. “Just love me.”

“Hmm.” His lips stretch into a loving smile, the one smile reserved for your eyes only. “That I do.”

Minho isn’t a prince charming who sweeps you off your feet. He is your wandering prince and you’re his moonlight, illuminating his gloomy world. You show him that he doesn’t have to wander for the rest of his life, that he can call you home and stay.

And Minho will always be with you, showering you with the love you deserve. He’ll be the one who fight the demons for you and with you, he’ll be the one who reminds you over and over again how strong and precious you are whenever you lose faith in yourself. Together, you are moonlit. Together, you are complete.

[al-pomegranate-seeds]

The hands they held

“Roman looked at the flower shop that set itself across the street from his tattoo parlor. How weird. He was almost sure the building had looked as boring as the other empty buildings in the street when he closed the shop the night before.The front of the small building was not as covered with vines and flowers that surely didn’t grow together as it was now, of that he was certain.“

Pairings: Logince, DLAMP in later installments

Urban fantasy

Tags: Fluff, Getting Together, Genderfluid Logan Sanders, Flower Shop and Tattoo Parlor au(but make it magical(not the first one to do that but I feel proud))

Warnings: Food mention(it’s Roman listing out some food and then they mentioning it after some times)

Characters: Roman Sanders, Logan Sanders, Remus Sanders, Dot(Cartoon Therapy)

Archive of Our Own: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27705440

Roman looked at the flower shop that set itself across the street from his tattoo parlor. How weird. He was almost sure the building had looked as boring as the other empty buildings in the street when he closed the shop the night before. The front of the small building was not as covered with vines and flowers that surely didn’t grow together as it was now, of that he was certain. The visuals were right up his alley, though, just the right amount of dramatics one needed in their life to make it interesting. A big sign sat on top the glass doors, displaying the name “Berry’s Flowers and Herbs”.

And then, as he was lost in thought admiring and trying to see if he recognized any of the flowers, a man almost as tall as Roman himself, with deep brown hair and brown skin, wearing a simple black polo with jeans and a gardening apron, opened the door and put up a sign saying “OPEN” in dark blue letters, before turning around and inspecting the streets, and then looking directly in Roman’s direction and – holy shit.

Roman was in love.

Before we continue telling the story, let’s lay down some facts about our current favorite boy. First, Roman and Remus’ mother was an elf. Second, elves, besides a long lifespan and a somewhat inflated ego, have better working eyes than most humans. Which is how, even a street away, Roman could notice the beautiful sharp angles of the man’s face, the gorgeous silver shade of his eyes behind his square glasses, and the adorable glittering freckles that covered his face, his neck and his arms.

Roman kept gawking at the glittering man like a fish as he went back inside the shop and closed the glass doors.

“Ooooh, sweet, that’s closer than where I buy.” Remus’s voice sounded suddenly, startling Roman out of his daydreaming.

“Oh, cool.” Roman said automatically, before turning to Remus, who was cleaning his hands with a rag. Roman decided to simply not ask how he had gotten them dirty. “Hey, Rem.”

Remus imeddiately squinted. “What the fuck do you want?”

“What? Can’t a man just call his bro by a nickname to show his brotherly love?”

“You do that by calling me Trash Man, you only call me Rem when you want something, what the fuck is it?”

“Oh I wasn’t going to ask for anything, I was just going to ask if, I dunno, you maybe needed some more ingredients, maybe the ones you have are running out or something, I could maybe go pick it up for you...” Roman trailed off.

Remus just kept squinting at Roman for another 20 seconds, before flicking his eyes to some point behind him. Roman turned, only to see the man from before pushing a table on wheels with flower vases to the front of one of the big glass windows, before going back inside.

Roman could tell he was staring as the man went back inside, and when he looked back at Remus, that shithead smile was glued to his face like a dry face mask.

“Oooh, you got a cruuuuuush?” Remus said in a sing-songy voice, and Roman didn’t even have the energy to pretend to be mad, so he just kept staring at his brother’s face. “You know, now that you mention it, I think I’ve used up all of my marigolds, and I’m close to running out of rosemary...”

Roman immediately perked up. “So maybe, your very selfless and very helpful brother could pick some up for you?”

“Ah, yes, my brother who has no ulterior motives besides being helpful, of course.” Remus said, grabbing one of the sketch books before ripping out a page and writing something down. “Ok, there’s more than just what I said, I need some alyssum and some chrysantemus and some dandelions...”

“Ok, noted.” Roman said, grabbing the paper and scanning the list without actually reading it. He already remebered only the dandelion out of the flowers Remus had mentioned.

As Roman was heading out by the door, Remus screamed “Use protection!”

“I’ll murder you!” Roman screamed back cheerily.

He wasn’t prepared to enter the shop.

As soon as he step foot past the door, he realized the air felt different. It wasn’t exactly pleasant or unpleasant, but it was distinctly different than the air around human populated cities. Roman was almost sure he could hear little bells, and it felt like the air was caressing his skin. The walls were covered in shelves with different plants displays, the floor was a magenta and indigo checkered tile with golden edges that somehow managed to not be obnoxious, and the ceiling was entirely glass with golden metal swirls. The space was well lit, all of the flowers in perfect display.

“Salutations.” Sounded a voice, and Roman immediately looked back to the counter that sat at the back of the store, behind which he could see the glittering man and wow, he was even more beautiful up close.

“Hello there!” Roman said, managing to hide the fact that he felt distinctively out of breath at the sight that laid before him, which he wasn’t completely sure wasn’t a hallucination.

The man’s glittering silver freckles were even more visible from this close, and Roman could also see some that were smaller, less glittery but just as breathtaking, and he also noticed that the man’s hair also glittered slightly.

“...Can I help you?”

“Oh. Oh! Yes, yes, my brother sent me to buy some flowers, and-“ he started before realizing he didn’t actually know what to say after. “...and here is the list. With the flowers.”

He dramatically handed the list over to the man, who simply grabbed it and started Reading. A couple seconds passed before he raised an eyebrow.

“A...Kiss?”

“Whut. Wait.” Roman hastily grabbed the paper and quickly scanned the list, eventually finding the “kiss” item with a heart dotting the i. “Oh, that motherfucker knew I wasn’t going to read it, I swear this is just a prank – “

“Not to worry. Let’s simply ignore this and I’ll grab the flowers.” The man said, and set to do just that, quickly scanning the shelves and putting the flowers in clear plastic rolls.

Roman managed to stay silent for about five seconds.

“So, I don’t remember seeing the shop here yesterday.”

The man seemed to be startled for a bit, before answering “You wouldn’t have, we moved in during the night.”

“Hmm.” Roman hummed before looking for something else to say. “We?”

“...Yes. Me and my parents. My mother and I run the shop.”

“Oh, marvelous, so it’s a Family business! You know, me and my brother run the tattoo parlor across the street, we do tattoos with various magical properties. You should come visit, my name is Roman, I use he/him pronouns, and my brother is Remus, he/him pronouns too.”

“...Logan. He/him today.” He – Logan – said, turning to the dandelions. “Are you always such a conversationalist when buying flowers?”

That made Roman pause.

“Oh, um, I hadn’t – Am I making your uncomfortable?”

“Not to worry, I am simply not used to such...Friendly customers. But this is pleasant.”

Roman sighed relieved.

“I am not opposed to visiting your parlor, if you’ll have me.”

He simply smiled.

“Well hello there!” Roman said, opening the glass doors and spotting Logan behind the counter, like last time.

“Salutations, Roman. They/them today.” Roman nodded, leaning on the counter.

“So, how’s the day going for you, Specs?”

Logan went a few moments without answering, probably because of the nickname. “Pleasant enough. A few customers have come by. None of them was unpleasant.”

“That’s indeed pleasant.” Roman turned around, leaning on the counter with his hips now, looking around at the shop, and noticing the flowers on his left looked more perfect than a lot of flowers he had seen in his life. “Hey, Logan, did you do something to those flowers over there?”

Logan seemed to perk up a bit. They fixed their glasses before answering. “Indeed. Those are flowers I separate for decorations, I enchant them to stay alive for longer. This enchantment can mess with cooking and potions, however, so I always ask before picking them.”

“Oh, that’s cool. I hadn’t thought of that.” They stayed silent then, Roman zoning out as he looked at the flowers and spun his necklace on his finger. “Hey Specs, how old are you?”

“I – Well.” Logan started, before pausing and thinking more. “I’m forty years old, technically, but I’m a fairy, so I haven’t grown beyond being what humans would consider twenty five to twenty nine.”

“Oh, you’re a fairy?”

“Well, quarter fairy. My father is half fairy, my mother is human. They had me when mother was twenty  seven years old, and I grew up in the same speed as a human until I was around twenty four years.”

“Marvelous. I’m half elf. I’m thirty  four years old, and yeah, basically around that age. I would still be a teenager if both of my parents were elves.”

They stayed in silence for a few minutes.

“Roman, do you...Do you like outer space?”

“Well, yeah.” Roman said, before turning back to Logan. “I don’t know a lot, but I think it’s fascinating.”

“Would you...” They swallowed, then, sounding nervous. “Would you like to hear about it?”

“Of course. Tell me everything you know.”

Logan smiled, then, with barely restrained excitement, and Roman felt like he could listen to them for hours if they would always smile like that.

“Hello there, my favorite nerd!” Roman said, entering the shop with his his arms spread and holding a paper bag.

“Salutations, Roman. She/her today. Do you bring anything besides your dramatic entrance?” Logan said, with a small smile that never failed to make Roman lose his train of thought for a few seconds.

“I sure do, Smarty McSpecson, I bring sustenance!” He laid the paper bag on the counter. “It’s a bowl of goose stew with mushrooms, fruit salad with honey, aaaaaaaand pork filled buns.”

“Sounds delicious. I’ll have the buns.”

“Marvelous! I’ll eat some of the stew. I’ve got homemade mayonnaise too, if you’d like to add it.” Then he went to open the bag.

“Wait. Mother will take over the shop for this afternoon, so I’m free in ten minutes. There is a small kitchen in the back, and I think it would be pleasant to eat on a table instead of this counter.”

“Oh, that would be cool.” Roman said, trying to play it cool. It almost felt like she was inviting him on a date, but surely that wouldn’t be it? Logan was just nice like that. She was also very direct and probably would be forward in asking for a date. Yeah.

“Come on, it’s behind this door over here.” Roman then followed Logan into the aforementioned door, finding a small kitchen that seemed to be decorated with a light yellow color scheme. All the counters and cabinets were light yellow, the counters having white tops, the fridge and the stove were both black, and the floor tile was white. The kitchen was pretty small, only wide enough to fit a small round table and two chairs, and there was a floor to ceiling rectangular glass window behind one of the chairs.

“You can sit down while I get mother, I’m sure she won’t be incovenienced to come down ten minutes early.” Logan said while getting some plates and bowls from the cabinets, then laying them on the table.

“Ok. I’ll be here waiting.” Roman said, sitting on the chair facing the window. He may or may not have been thinking about how gorgeous Logan would look framed by the window and the plants outside.

Logan stepped into a door that led to a white staircase, leaving Roman to think and analyze the small kitchen.

Now that he had the opportunity to pay attention, he could notice little things he hadn’t noticed when he first entered the kitchen : the white countertops were stained at some spots with some sort of colorful pigment, there was a black paper on which someone drew constellations with white crayon, and there was a clear glass cookie jar filled with dried flowers on one counter.

About five minutes later, Logan came back with who Roman assumed was her mother, a chubby, dark skinned lady with short black hair wearing a beige argyle sweater over a white button up and beige skirt, plus a pair of red glasses and bright red lipstick. He noticed Logan seemed distinctly more glittery around the face.

“Oh hello there dear, you must be the famed Roman!” The lady said, rushing over to him and grabbing his hands. “I’m Dot, this one’s mom, I’ve heard so many things about you – “

“Mother...” Logan said with a warning tone, her voice not managing to hide her embarassment.

“Oh Logan talked about you so much, you’re every bit as handsome as she described – “

“Mother!” Logan exclaimed, and now her face was shining so much it looked like it was encrusted with tiny gems. Roman was almost hipnotized enough to not realize that was probably her way of blushing.

“What? It’s true! He’s as handsome as sherpherd pie!” Dot responded, and Roman was as confused as he was flattered.

“Mother, that’s not – forty seven years of marriage, and that’s what you pick up of father’s vocabulary?” Logan said, bafflement not being able to hid the awfully fond tone of her voice.

“Oh don’t pick on me, you know I’m telling the truth.” Dot said, before looking at the shop. “Oh dear, I better get started on that shop running thing.” She said, before kissing Roman and Logan’s cheeks and stepping out into the shop, closing the kitchen door.

They stayed silent froma few moments before Logan sighed.

“I love my mother, but she can be a bit overwhelming. I hope she didn’t bother you too much.”

“Oh, she didn’t bother me at all. So, um, as handsome as shepherd pie?” Roman asked, still a bit baffled by the term.

“It’s an expression father uses. It’s an equivalent translation coming from the faery language my father’s specific nation spoke. It’s a bit outdated, but it was used most often to describe someone the person was attracted to. Of course,” Logan said all of this while grabbing the cuttlery and sitting down on the other chair. She paused while adjusting herself on the chair, before continuing with a fondly amused smile. “she wasn’t hitting on you, don’t worry.” Logan went to grab the pork buns, while murmuring to herself low enough that, if Roman wasn’t part elf, he surely wouldn’t have been able to hear it. “Not for herself, at least.”

“Not for herself?” Roman asked. Logan’s eyes went wide as saucers, and she almost dropped the bun she was holding.

“Oh you – you heard that?” Logan asked, adjusting her glasses (which Roman had noticed was a bit of a tic of hers). Her face, that had gone back to the normal amount of glittering, suddenly was shiny enough that Roman wanted to grab her face and kiss her senseless.

“If it’s any comfort, I only heard because elven hearing is a stronger than humans’. But seriously, what did you mean?”

“Oh, it’s nothing important, it’s silly, it’s just – mother is certain you have been flirting with me, you see, and no matter how much I tell her she’s being foolish, she won’t quit putting these thoughts into my head, and I swear it wasn’t on purpose, I didn’t even felt like these before but then she mentioned it and I couldn’t stop thinking about how handsome you are and how nice you are and how you made an effort to befriend me when we had just moved in and I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t have any energy to go out and make friends – “ she was rambling now, her speech getting more fast paced and anxious the longer Roman went without saying anything.

Well. She seemed to think Roman wasn’t interested. He had to do something about that.

Logan was gesturing wildly with her hands, moving them up and down in an effort to calm herself, so Roman grabbed one of them in an effort to effectively distract her.

“So,” he said, laying their hands down palms up on the table and drawing tiny circles on the wrist. “I most definitely was flirting. I most definitely think you are very handsome and very nice. And I most definitely think you are as handsome as shepherd pie.”

Logan was silent for a few moments before saying, with a slight breathless note on her voice, “...oh.”

“Yeah.” Roman said, before bringing Logan’s hand up his mouth and kissing the palm.

Logan giggled. She honest to ghosts, real as magic, giggled.

“So,” Roman said, putting their hands back on the table. “do you want to try this?”

“I – most definitely.” She answered, nodding quickly with a smile on her face.

They started eating, then, and nothing changed but the hands they held and the soft smiles.

@tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors 

[meetthetank]

Beast Code Chapter 1: The Twilit City

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Category: F/M Fandom: NieR: Automata (Video Game) Relationship: 2B/9S (NieR: Automata) Characters: 2B (NieR: Automata), 9S (NieR: Automata), Original YoRHa Characters (NieR: Automata) Additional Tags: Transformation, gothic horror, Android Lycanthropy...sort of, Inspired by Bloodborne (Video Game), Everyday i get closer to just writing a Bloodborne AU

Summary:  Break the vicious cycle with tooth and claw. Unleash the beast within and destroy your chains. But the strength to defy fate comes at a grave cost. Will it be enough, little doll? Or will you succumb to despair once more?

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31546982

The assignment to the Twilight Belt comes as a shock to 2B and 9S. Rarely, if ever, are YorHa units sent to this border of perpetual daylight and eternal night. Conditions are always reported as unstable by the infrequent scans by one of the other satellite bases that orbit earth, too dangerous to deploy scanners by themselves, and too depleted of resources for the Council to care about. The mystery surrounding the strip of permanent twilight goads curious operators and scanners alike to comb through files searching for nuggets of data, image or video files, anything they can get their hands on. All but a few pieces of data reveal tantalizing scraps and clues to the puzzle of the Sunset Belt. Photographs of dead machines with toothy, gaping maws that split their spherical heads in two and minerals warped in peculiar shapes. According to one of the situation reports from a scanner that had been sent there, there was an eerie, foreboding feeling about the place; that strange and frightening sounds would echo across the landscape and that he felt close to a forbidden barrier that separated this world from another. Though the file and its contents are now treated as a human “ghost story”, many androids, including 2B and 9S, believe at least some portion of the tale.

9S relays this story to 2B as they descend to Earth’s surface, his chattering easing some of 2B’s trepidation. The pair had fallen into an easy rhythm over the course of several assignments to Earth, most of which involved retrieving data from lost servers buried in rubble or clearing out an area of machine lifeforms. Despite her outwardly cold demeanor, 9S wormed his way past all of her defenses, forming a strong, solid relationship with the battler android. His voice is a centering point for her and assists in ignoring the gut churning possibilities of what could be waiting for them below.

“...What do you think, 2B?” his voice crackles from the comms system inside her flight unit.

“Hm?” she shifts her head to the side, glancing at his jet black flight unit cruising beside hers.

“What do you think made the target go rogue?”

She bites her lower lip. There are a thousand possible answers as to why a normally punctual, efficient YorHa Battle unit would suddenly stop responding to command and not checking in at required times. Only a few of those options were machine lifeform related complications.

“We’ll find out when we arrive, 9S.” she says curtly, eager to shut down the conversation, “Focus on landing protocol.”

He sighs, a sound of annoyance and frustration, “Yeah, yeah.”

“One affirmation will-”

“Fiiiiiiiine.”

The final phase of their descent is spent in silence. They pass through the Earth’s atmosphere in streaks of fire and light towards the border of day and night, and a continent that humans called Europe. Even as they descend, the outlines of ancient, massive structures come into view. Both androids are used to the thick vegetation eating away at the remains of human structures, but here the trees are gnarled, twisted, and void of leaves or blossoms. Their branches reach to the crimson sky and permanently setting sun like bony hands in prayer or a stag’s antlers. As 2B and 9S set their flight units down a few miles away from the outskirts of a sprawling, ancient city. It amazes 9S, as he exits his own unit, that the buildings are in such good condition considering the millenia that have passed it by. Great spires of countless cathedrals pierce the heavens, casting an ominous, looming shadow over the otherwise barren landscape. A well worn cobblestone road, lined with rusted iron lighting fixtures long since burnt out, leads into the city proper. 

2B and 9S stand at the precipice of this ancient beast of stone and metal in awe of its size, and terrified of what might lurk within. A hoarse bird’s caw, jolts the androids back into awareness, 2B drawing her katana and prepares for battle.

“Heh,” 9S laughs, trying to calm them both down, “Just a raven, 2B.”

“What?”

“A large black bird. Harmless to us.” He doesn’t tell her about the chill he gets down his spine as he watches the corvid gaze down at them with beady black eyes, or how humans saw these birds as ill omens or prophets of death.

They begin the trek into the forgotten city. 2B doesn’t put Virtuous Contract away.

Pod 042 alerts 2B to the presence of an unidentifiable android signal, marking the location on both hers and 9S’ map. Since the area has yet to be properly mapped out by satellite imagery (as inaccurate as that process is) only a vague street layout is available through a very low power scan. They have no way of judging what might block their path to the target beyond featureless grey masses depicting buildings, rubble, large trees, or whatever else may lie in wait. Their target, represented by a small orange dot on the map, appears to be near the city’s main gate and inside one of the larger buildings. 2B refuses to admit it to herself, but she’s relieved to not have to delve too far into this labyrinthine city.

“I’ve never seen the sky this color…” 9S muses as he stares up, transfixed by the blood red sky and orange sun hanging low.

Though hauntingly beautiful, she won’t deny, 2B keeps her gaze fixed on the wrought iron gate ahead of them. The heavens disturb her; they are the color of death. Of war. And the sun is… wrong. 

She snaps at 9S to keep focused as they approach the gate to the city. Though scans indicate there are no machine lifeforms, or any lifeforms beyond their target, she’s learned from countless combat assignments to not rely totally on what the support unit reports. She’s encountered and seen machines that mask themselves from scans or camouflage themselves in the environment, and in a place like this anything could be hiding in the shadows just outside of view. 

The iron gate lies ajar, worn from millennia of neglect. Clouds of rust particles burst from the hinges as 2B shoves it open further, the metal grinding against itself with a horrible grating shriek. The sound makes them both wince, and they slip through the partially opened gate as soon as they can.

Standing inside the city gates, 9S can’t shake the uneasy feeling that claws at the back of his mind. The great ancient human structures loom above them, and though he knows that the buildings themselves aren’t alive, he can’t shake the notion that he’s being watched by them. The windows are dark, but when he passes by the light of the setting sun reflects off of them, giving them the illusion of intelligence. Suddenly, 9S feels as if he’s inside a cave, or locked in a room with no exit. Suddenly… He finds it hard to breathe. 9S tugs at the collar of his jacket as if it's tightening around his throat. His synthetic lungs fill with air as much as he can take, then he releases it moments later. It calms him, if only a little.

2B’s gaze is fixed ahead on the building Pod 042 marked as the rogue android’s hiding place. It’s a much smaller structure than the others that choke the sky, but its reach stretches across the streets like a tree’s roots. Judging by the well preserved signs that hang from crumbled doors it looked to have multiple uses. 9S commands his own Pod to run scans on the words and symbols for later analysis. 

“The target’s in here…” 2B murmurs, holding her free hand up in a tight fist, signaling 9S to stop behind her.

This portion of the sprawling building is similar in structure to the massive spires above. It has the same pointed section on the roof, but much smaller in scale, and similar symbols decorate the exterior. A cross, winged humans, various flowering plants, and a number of human figures bowing their heads or supplicating themselves to the winged humans.

“This must have been a place of worship,” 9S muses aloud.

“Focus.”

He nods. Typically 9S argues with his partner about the necessity for recording data like this, or excuse his wandering attention to his designation as a scanner, but he knows the danger within the house of worship, or rather, he doesn’t know. Neither one of them knows what this rouge android is capable of. 

2B presses her hand against the wooden doors to the chapel and pushes it open as slowly as possible. It groans in protest, dust falls from its hinges and frame, but it swings inward. A rush of warm air washes over them carrying the scent of stale incense and dead machines. Clouds of smoke billow out of the doorway, rising into the red sky like twisted fingers. 2B enters first, sliding in sword arm first. She motions for 9S to wait for a moment, then commands Pod 042 to switch on its flashlight. 

9S peeks his head around the door, keeping a few paces behind his partner. He switches on his own Pod’s flashlight to illuminate more of the pitch black interior. Long wooden benches are pushed up against the walls, opening up the center space. Ornate candle holders, rotting books, charred incense burners, and pieces of artwork among other things 9S has no name for are scattered across the ground, each one a priceless human artifact that could fuel hours of study. Yet it’s not these that hold 9S’ attention, but the statue at the far back of the chapel, and the figure kneeling in front of it.

It looks to be made of some kind of marble, a pristine white stone that has been sheltered from time and the elements. The subject is another winged human, this one wearing splendid armor and wielding a great spear. Beneath them, a grotesque, writhing beast bares its teeth and claws at the warrior as the blade pierces its throat. 9S has never seen anything like it in person, and very few records of these kinds of sculptures remain at all. It’s both horrific and beautiful at once. He wonders what the human who made this saw that inspired it. Did creatures like these roam the world during their time?

2B steps in front of him, Virtuous Contract at the ready. The figure in front of the statue rises to their feet as the Pod’s flashlights center on them. A cloak made of feathers conceals most of their form but they appear to be a female android, perhaps a YorHa model. Though, if that were the case it would have been in the mission briefing. That is, unless... 

The android turns her head to the side, glaring at the pair over her shoulder.

“So, Command sent the wolves, did they?” She asks, a distinct rumble in her voice.

2B raises her blade and keeps her gaze steady. She hears 9S also ready his weapon, the golden katana Cruel Oath. 

Lazily, the android turns her body to face them. Her clothes confirm her origins; there’s no mistaking the sharp white embellishments and black velvet of a YorHa uniform; however each piece is ripped, tattered, and stitched together with other scraps of clothing or… animal hide. 

The rouge android drags the blade of a bloodied top heavy sword between her fingers, cleaning the gore from it. “It doesn’t matter, dog.” Her eyes shine with a strange, purplish light that refracts around her collapsed, twisted pupils. “You will fall like the rest.”

It isn’t until the rogue android rushes forward, sword raised, that 2B sees the corpses of YorHa units piled in front of the statue, and the blood that soaks it.

She dashes backward and shoves the bewildered 9S out of harm's way. The android’s bloodied sword crashes into the stonework floor, sending thousands of years of dust into the air. 2B lunges, her katana poised to take advantage of the enemy’s opening, but she sidesteps much quicker than anticipated. The rogue’s fist slams into 2B’s chest, distorting her internal sensors and throwing her off balance. 2B watches in horror as the rogue drives her sword towards her, but a golden flash knocks the blade away. 

“2B!” 9S shouts, brandishing Cruel Oath. “Are you okay?!”

She shakes her head as if it would clear the internal errors from her vision, but she assumes her battle stance next to her partner. “Fine.”

Both androids launch into an assault on the rogue, attacking in tandem. Despite 2B’s scrambled sensors, she and 9S have an undeniable synergy that comes with countless missions. 2B forces the rogue back with singular, powerful blows, while 9S jabs at any opening he can reach from the sides. However, even with their combined might the rogue deflects and maneuvers out of the way of each attack as casually as one would flick away an insect or step around a puddle. She looks to be expending no effort at all as she dances around the two YorHa. Anger and frustration rises in 2B, culminating in a harsh growl. She mimics the rogue’s tactic from earlier, rushing forward and feinting with a crushing overhead strike that is easily dodged but allows no time for recovery. She slams her fist into the rogue android’s face, sending her stumbling backwards. Before 9S can dive in with a horizontal slash the rogue dashes backward, putting crucial distance between her and her hunters.

The rogue android lowers her gaze at the pair, sizing them up, taking stock of their abilities and assessing their weaknesses. 2B watches her eyes dart back and forth between her and 9S, then linger on 9S. Sensing the rogue’s motive and deciding at that moment that the outcome is unacceptable, 2B dives in front of the strike meant for 9S. The rogue’s sword slices cleanly through her chest, coating the rogue’s clothes in splatters of fresh blood. The battler falls to her knees, clutching the wound with one hand while supporting herself on her sword. 

“No!!” 9S screams and lunges at their target. “2B!!”

“Hm. Interesting.” The rogue murmurs, easily deflecting the scanner’s wild strikes.

2B watches through blurred, error obscured vision as 9S drives the rogue back. If she didn’t know any better it’d seem that he has the upper hand, but the rogue’s eyes glint in a way 2B recognizes all too well. She’s baiting him. 

9S slams his blade against the rogue’s, pressing all of his power and weight into the strike. It’s the moment she had been waiting for. Suddenly she pulls back, letting 9S’ weight fall forward and forcing him off balance. She kicks his legs out from under him then shoves him into the floor. 9S lets out a startled, choked gasp as his weight and the force of the rogue’s attack cracks the stone floor, sending up more clouds of dust into the air. 

Clutching her chest, 2B roars and charges at the target with blinding speed. When she sees the smirk twisting the rogue’s lips and the pointed iron rod in her grip, it’s too late. With a flash of her crowfeather cape, the android meets 2B’s charge with her own, the skewer aimed at her wounded chest. 2B tries to divert her body away, but the momentum is too strong. It’s just enough to roll her body to the side so that the spike pierces clean through her shoulder, clear of critical systems. 

The pain, however, is agonizing. 

It’s different from the injuries 2B has suffered in the past. Countless machine swords, spears, and axes have torn through her body and of course all of those injuries hurt, but they were manageable. When the iron bar rips through layers of cloth, skin, carbon plating and frame, and synthetic muscle fibers it's as if her shoulder has been set on fire. She clenches her teeth, muffling a scream to a low growl. Her hand wraps around the skewer, close to the wound itself. Instinct tells her to tear it out immediately, but she knows that without treatment doing so would only worsen her condition. 2B doesn’t get to make that decision, unfortunately. The rogue grabs hold of the end of the iron rod and twists it side to side, driving it further into 2B’s shoulder. 

2B sinks to her knees and tries to hold back the cries of agony. Her injured arm stops responding to commands and lies limp and useless against her side. She swats at the rogue android with her weakening other arm, desperate to escape from this torment. Her strength fades along with her vision; it becomes impossible to even hold herself upright.

She must not fall, she must not… she must stay strong, she must stay alive.

She will not allow him to die… 

Not for the sake of a monster like her….

9S leaps into the fight as the rogue android prepares a killing blow. A flurry of Pod fire, sword strikes, and furious movement all blur together into a white, gold, and black haze. She fights to stay awake, she fights to stand, but her body begins to shut down non-vital systems and conserve as much energy as she can. First her tactile sensors switch off, leaving her in a numbing cold. Then her hearing, quickly followed by sight. A warning flashes across the last vestiges of her vision that she is entering a forced shutdown state, and despite her audio sensors being deactivated, she swears she hears 9S cry out for her.

….

….

…….

………

……….

……..

….

2B opens her eyes to the blinding, sterile white of hacking space. This itself is not shocking. Oftentimes she would run diagnostics on her critical systems when in a forced shutdown, both to manage critical systems and to keep herself busy. 

But now, in the distance, there is an anomaly.

A single figure, black as night, approaches her. It’s shape is human up till its head, which sports pointed ears and a long snout like that of a dog or wolf. It looms over her and leaves a black, fragmented mist in its wake. But most troubling of all in this world of stark monochrome is its eye…. or what 2B believes is an eye. In the center of its lupine face is a strange geometric sigil that emits a highly saturated purple light. It feels… malicious. The thought itself is insane to 2B. Light cannot possess intent or emotions, and yet… 

“This is an unacceptable outcome.” A voice booms in her head. Somehow she knows it is the entity speaking. 

2B opens her mouth to respond, but instead of words, thick crimson fluid leaks from her throat.

“You will die. He will die. You cannot abide by this.”

She shakes her head. Droplets of blood fall to the pristine floor. The entity is right. If she has any strength left, 9S will live.

“Stand, little doll,” the entity commands, “Stand and unleash y-...Be——…..d.”

The entity’s voice becomes warped and distorted with audio glitches, yet 2B understands its words with frightening clarity.

“Take-......l-...s within.” 

It holds a hand out to her, offering her something she can’t quite make out. The shape in its palm is amorphous, colorless, and flickers with lines of jumbled code. Somehow, she knows this piece of herself in intimate detail, yet cannot remember what this does or what its relation to the entity is. 

But it promises strength enough to save 9S.

2B reaches out and takes the code in her hand… 

….

………….

…………………………

………………………………………………………..

Her eyes snap open. A current of raw energy runs through her body, electrifying every nerve and sensor within her. She shakes with each pulse of her circulatory apparatus as a new, terrifying strength takes hold. 2B rises to her feet, flexing her hands, legs, arms. One arm’s movement is restricted by the iron bar still stuck in her shoulder. She tears it out with little effort, casting it to the floor. The rattling, hollow sound echoes against the stone chapel. 

The rogue’s head snaps up from her combat with 9S, who is barely able to hold his sword. Something in her expression changes. She kicks 9S and points her sword at 2B, her arms shaking in a way they had not before. 

2B lunges forward, her sword raised high. The rogue raises her own sword to deflect, but 2B’s newfound strength breaks her guard with one mighty strike. With blinding speed 2B slices through the rogue android’s body. Her crowfeather cape flutters to the floor, soon followed by her arm. The rouge android staggers back, an expression of shock and horror twisting her face. 2B drives her sword through the rogue’s chest, forcing her back further. Instead of drawing her sword back for another strike, a terrifying feeling takes over 2B. She leaves the sword inside the rogue’s chest and tackles her to the ground. With her bare hands and horrible strength, 2B delivers blow after blow to the android’s chest, shoulder, arms, head, and abdomen. Each piece is reduced to a pulp of flesh and metal one after the next until nothing remains but scrap. 

2B throws her head back as she straddles her victim, a horrible, twisted grin plastered across her face and arms outstretched. Her body feels wrong… horribly wrong, yet for the first time since she can remember, her chest is light. She gazes up at the morbid sculpture with an emotion she can’t quite describe. It isn’t the same as a combat high, she is intimately familiar with that heady rush. This is something akin to… euphoria. A laugh begins to bubble up in her throat-

“2B?”

She’s forced back to reality by the 9S’ voice, right beside her ear. Suddenly, the terrible strength from moments before fades from her body. Her arms go limp by her sides, and it becomes hard to sit upright. Even breathing is laborious. 9S wraps his arms around her shoulders and tugs her gently, laying her head and shoulders against his chest.

“I’ve got you. We… I think we’re safe.” His breathing is uneven and ragged, much like 2B’s. He swivels his head back and forth, searching for any lingering threats as quickly as possible. “Pod, run a scan for machine lifeform or android signals in the immediate area,” he commands.

Pod 153 is silent for a moment, then emits a grating, hideous garbled noise. Words try to break through the audio distortions but neither 2B or 9S is confident it isn’t simply what they wish to hear. 

“Alert:” Pod 042 begins, “Interference from unknown source is preventing accurate scans of the surrounding area. Proposal: Relocate to an elevated aaaaaaa…..a-r-....rrr……”

The same audio distortions come from 042, mingling with 153’s until they both cut off, leaving the androids in silence. “Pod?” 9S calls to the floating support unit. “Pod, respond. ... Pod?”

2B mutters weakly to her own Pod, but it's the same as 9S’. No response at all.

9S pulls up a small data screen, map data, from what 2B can tell. Or… where map data would be. Instead, there’s a blank, grey screen and a little message box that reads No Data. 

“What the-...” 9S whispers, flipping through different screens at a frantic pace. “Where-... There’s… all the data is gone!” he shouts, “No map, no signal scans… I can’t even connect to the Bunker…”

“We’re stranded…” 2B muses aloud.

Silence passes between them. Only the ominous wind passing through ancient wood and stone reminds them that the world hasn’t stopped moving around them. 

“We should move to a higher area, like your Pod said.” 9S suggests, rising to his feet. “Can you stand?”

When 9S offers a hand out to her, 2B takes it without thinking. His touch, even through his thick gloves, calms the beast pacing inside her. 

Beast? 

…..What does that mean?

2B rises to her feet, her hands lingering in 9S’ for a moment longer than she normally would. There’s a fog in her head that distorts her equilibrium. She leans on 9S for support, to which he wraps his arm around her waist and positions himself under her shoulder.

“I got you.” He says with a small smile.

2B feels just a bit lighter.

They exit the chapel and make for higher ground. 9S rationalizes that if they simply continue up stairs or inclines they would find a space clear of whatever is interfering with the Pod’s satellite connections. Perhaps it’s the fog that creeps across the cobblestone streets or the odd angle of the sun (not that it makes sense to 9S or 2B but they have to consider all possibilities), or perhaps it’s something beyond that. There’s a strange, eerie feeling about this city that neither can explain, and neither want to talk about. As if there’s a presence constantly watching over them.

They climb the stairs of one of the massive sprawling religious buildings. From what 9S assesses, it seems to have one of the tallest spires in the city. Only a larger time-keeping building looming in the distance is larger. If he could reach the top he should be far enough above whatever is interfering with the Pods. When he relays his plan to 2B who only nods, her eyes unfocused and breathing shallow, worry starts to lace its icy fingers through his chest. Something is wrong with her. 

9S’ first instinct is to prepare a data backup with the bunker, but the Pods are both out of commission for the time being. His next is to contact command and ask how they should proceed, to the same conclusion. Climbing the spire is the only course of action he can take, but first, he has to make sure 2B is safe.

He leads her through the castle of worship, now supporting most of her weight. That… frightening show of strength must have exhausted her power supply. There are plenty of well preserved wooden benches that stretch across half of the main worship chambers, at least it would be more comfortable than the stone floors. Under watch by the countless grotesque statues that sit in the rafters, 9S helps 2B onto a long bench, laying her on her back. She hisses and grinds her teeth as she moves. She must have sustained internal damage from that fight… 

“I’ll be right back,” he promises, “I’m going to go to the roof to get a clear signal.”

All 2B gives in response is a slow nod. He lingers by her side before leaving, a moment longer than needed.

Now alone in this spacious, hollow, human structure, 2B takes stock of her condition. There’s pain in her shoulders, particularly her right arm. Her legs are tight, most locking up from the strain of the previous battle and trekking up to her current location. Her back, as well, is tense beyond discomfort. It spasms and jolts if she breathes too hard. At least these are injury related, explainable. The black wolfman with purple eyes lingering in the corners of her vision, is not. 

She sees the entity in the shadows, lurking just out of view. 9S walks right past it, not even sparing a glance at the tall, gangly creature. It doesn’t respond to 9S either, instead focusing on 2B and only 2B. 

The sight of it makes her stomach turn. She tries to close her eyes, but the glowing, purple sigil is burned into her vision. With a groan she digs her knuckles into her eyelids as if she could carve the hallucination out of the air. Defeated, 2B lets her arms down once more. One hand touches the cool stone floor, decorated with elegant mosaics, and she suddenly realizes how warm she is. According to the warning messages displayed in her vision her body temperature is ten degrees above normal levels. 

“Pod,” she groans, forcing herself to sit up, “retrieve water from storage-”

“Report: Mail notification received from Command.”

The monotone voice of her support unit shocks her. Pod 042 had been silent up until now due to whatever interference was in the area, and now it’s getting messages from Command? 9S must have established a connection from the roof.

Her heart sinks. If that’s the case he would contact her. The first thing she’d hear would be his voice.

She opens the message, dreading its contents.

Subject has accessed confidential records. Eliminate the Target.

At the top of the spire 9S takes in the view of the entire city, the wind rushing through his hair. It’s breathtaking. It’s unlike anything he’s ever seen. The sky dyes the entire urban sprawl red, as well as the mountains on the horizon. His pulse races as he drinks in the terrifying awe of what the ancient humans were capable of, hoping to remember every last detail of the buildings, the streets, and the magnificent sculptures that litter the city. It’s all so well preserved that he feels as though a human might appear, walking down the cobblestone streets as if nothing were wrong. As if they didn’t go extinct. 

Reluctantly he draws his attention away from the splendor of humanity’s ruins, and shakes away the creeping emptiness that comes with that line of thought. He can’t think about that now. He and 2B are stranded. 9S produces a holographic terminal that mirrors Pod 153’s settings menu. Pod’s diagnostics on his end show buildup of foreign material in and around certain receivers, something that 9S expects, but that is only part of the problem. It seems that the atmosphere in this place is clogged with various chemicals and particles that make satellite transmissions more difficult. Considering all of the decaying metal and stone it’s no wonder that there’s so much particulate in the air. Once Pod’s receivers are clear 9S has Pod 153 hover just above the spire’s tip. It stays suspended in the air, the small light on the top of its body turning on and off at regular intervals.

“Connection established.” Pod 153 announces moments later. “Proposal: Contact the Bunker for support.”

“Great! Set up a relay connection for Pod 042 as well.”

“Affirmative.”

9S opens a data screen laden with information and begins composing his message to Operator 21O. With an unreliable connection a live call would be too risky, a simple text based message won’t be distorted or cut out. He records a brief message, attaches a transcription of his words, and sends it to the Bunker. Hopefully 21O would send something quickly-

A flash of movement in the streets below catches his eye. Something running on all fours... “Pod… run a scan for machine lifeforms…” He says, a chill creeping up his spine.

Pod 153 floats down to his side. “Alert: Multiple machine lifeforms detected. Proposal: Regroup with Unit 2B.”

“But-” 

That thing didn’t look like a machine…

“Alert: Anomalous signal detect-”

Pod 153’s words are drowned by a horrific, mournful howl that reverberates through the entire building. 9S clings to the ornate decorations on the spire and covers his ears with his free hand. His body runs cold. He’s never heard a sound like that before. Nothing the machines make comes close to that. The pain and sorrow in that noise is something that no animal could produce either. That left only one possibility…

Another roar wracks the building from within… 

2B clutches the sides of her head, the data screen long dismissed.

No…

Her chest strains under her panicked breaths. 

No.

She hadn’t been watching him. She hadn’t been keeping track of his questions and behavior…

No… No.

And now she…

No no no no no .

She has to…

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

NO.

She will not do this. Not again. 

Her skin feels… tight. 

She will fight off every single goddamn android Command sends until there are none left but her and him. She will not be a part of this cycle again. Her hands curl into fists as a surge rushes through her body, alighting her nerves with energy. With power.

A shadow moves across the stone floor of the castle of worship. The entity, its form inky black, its sigil emitting a baleful purple light, glides towards her. It bathes her in the highly saturated light, a light not even shielding her eyes can diffuse. It bores into her core, it peers into her mind. It speaks into her mind.

“You will not allow this to happen.” Its voice echoes off the hollow shell of where humans once sought God. “But strength comes at a price, little doll.”

The entity plunges its claws into her chest. Heat explodes throughout her body to the point where she fears she might self-destruct. The boiling tendrils of this ethereal monster sink into her artificial heart and her Black Box. Something activates, or… unlocks, and suddenly she feels… confined. Her body… it’s too small….

“Time to pay the toll…”

It rips its claws, now writhing shadow-like whips, out of her chest, then vanishes. 2B’s vision is obscured, but not by warnings and error messages, by blood. Red veins pulse on the edges of her sight in time with her heart. Each beat sends waves of heat, electricity, and agony through her body.

“Stand, little doll. Stand, and unleash your beasthood.”

A scream forms in 2B’s throat, but it cannot break through her swelling throat and gritted teeth. She takes frantic, shallow breaths. Her limbs shake, her fingernails dig into the stonework floor. It’s so hot… 

2B rolls onto the floor and rips away her tight uniform. Far too tight. Parts of her dress were already beginning to tear as her muscles swell. Blood trickles from various wounds where her skin has split, revealing the thick, synthetic muscle cords that lie beneath. Her blindfold is next, but removing it does not help her vision. One eye is unfocused, blurring all of her vision.

She drags her fingernails across her body and lets out a deep, animal snarl when she tears into her own flesh. Looking down at her hands, she recoils at the sight of long, black claws that split her fingers down the center. Skin falls from them in long strips to the point where the mechanical joints of her hands are exposed.

Something snaps inside her, somewhere in her upper back. She howls in agony, in sorrow, as her spine lengthens, twists, and grows too fast for her body to maintain. Her insides are compacted and grind against each other, sending sickening vibrations throughout her. Her throat finally opens up, allowing her to breathe. She watches as puffs of steam escape her mouth into the warm twilight air. 

Another crack and something explodes out of her lower back. Her balance is thrown off and she falls forward, smashing her face into stone. Another snarl, this one combined with the gnashing of fangs. Her mouth warps, splitting out of her face into a muzzle. Eyes follow, one swelling to fit its now spacious socket while the other stunts and refuses to change. She claws at the peeling skin of whatever she can reach, spilling more of her blood in the process. Everything hurts, everything itches, but oh god the power feels so good.

A growth springs from above her unchanged eye, weighing her head down and hunching her body over. She supports herself with one enormous hand, the other scooping the wires and tubing that spills out of her torn stomach and forcing them back inside her abdominal cavity. The twisting extension of her spine, a tail, thuds against the floor and counters the weight of her head. 

2B shakes the mane of bloodied, white hair from her functioning eye, turns her head to the sky, and roars.

[dragonladdie]

Xeno-Hiraeth

Warning: The following document delves into topics such as (systemic)racism, classism, colonization, (implied)genocide, and slavery. This is not to promote, justify, humanize, or normalize these things in any way, shape or form, and, quite frankly, the opposite of the story's initial message.

The author does NOT approve of such things. If you think any of the above is justifiable in ANY manner, you can leave right now, thanks.

Lore

Xeno-Hiraeth was the first ever planet made by the Seraphs, a race of divine entities with the power to create entire galaxies with the simple flick of their wrist.

There are four sapient species on this ancient planet: The proud dragons, the reclusive lungs, the gentle sphinxes, and finally, the mageia, the first Beings, and made in the Seraph's image.

Not only is Xeno-Hiraeth the first world, it is by far the largest. It is infinitely larger than our Earth, and far more magical. It's teeming with wild magic and a myriad of magical and strange creatures. At its center is Cor Meum, seven continents surrounding the Heartland. The Heartland holds the Capitol, where the Queen resides.

As previously said, there are four sapient species of Xeno-Hiraeth. You would believe the mageia would rule the world, as they were the first Beings, and are made in the Seraph's image. You would be correct, but, millions of years ago, when all but one Seraph suddenly vanished from the cosmos, the mageia fell into chaos.

The mageia waged war on each other, dragging the other three races with them. This started the Cold Age. After thousands of years of distrust, chaos, and all-out war, the remaining Seraph could no longer speak to their people.

They ended up turning the world over to the dragons and lungs, giving them a secret gift that allowed them to reunite the world again. They were supposed to rule the land together in order to retain at least some form of unity. But, another thousand years later, after high tensions, the dragons and lungs turned on each other. The lungs ended up breaking from the dragons and went into hiding, making dragons the singular dominant species of Xeno-Hiraeth.

Sphinxes are a somewhat independent species, and try not to get involved with the other three species' affairs. They normally exist in one of twelve clans, but few unlucky sphinxes live their lives as personal servants and slaves to dragon nobility, and are treated as wealth statuses rather than individuals.

Geography of Notable Landmasses

Heartland

The Heartland is the central continent of Cor Meum. A vast valley surrounded by mountains, and at its center is the Capitol, the largest metropolis in the world. The Capitol is mostly inhabited by dragons, and is also where a good 60% of dragons in Xeno-Hiraeth live. The Heartstone Palace is both the tallest and largest built structure in Cor Meum as well, and it's tallest tower can be seen from miles in any direction. The Heartstone Palace is the home of the Queen and their family.

Makatu Valley

The continent just North of Heartland is a combination of floating isles and mountains. It's the home of the longmas' kingdom, Sahar. Mistiko, the capital city for Sahar is located between one of the two largest mountains on Cor Meum, known as the Twin Peaks. Instead of sitting at the foot of the two mountains, the city actually stands on the top of a huge floating aisle, just above their peaks. It's only accessible by airships and flying.

Rama Forests

The continent of Rama sits upon a rich iron mine that stretches down and out for miles. Even though they have a seemingly infinite amount of it, every scrap of metal is treated graciously, and no amount is wasted. On the surface are lush forests on the foot of a small mountain range. The capital city, Stonehill, sits on the base of said mountain range.

Taiao

The continent of Taiao is a combination of forest and open plain, perfect for the diverse population of Alam. Taiao has bountiful lands to raise crops, and thus there are countless farming villages across the continent. The "capital" of Alam is called the Thicket, which is a town surrounding a huge tree. Inside the tree is the High Sage and their council, made up of all sorts of backgrounds.

Vjetar Plateau

The Vjetar plateau is located at the furthest Northeast point in Cor Meum. The only way up is by flying, airships, or making your way up Zephyr's Road, a dangerous foot trail filled with predators and rogues. Atop the plateau is a flat, lush steppe occasionally dotted with rich forests. There is a small patch of frigid mountains to the north, and the west drops off into the sea. The soil is adequate for the nation's agricultural needs, and produce farms are the majority of what you will find when exploring the land. The capital city of Gisa stands in the middle of a windy meadow.

The Sear

The Sear is a scorching desert to the West of Cor Meum. The farther center you go, the hotter the sun beats, and the taller the sand dunes stand. But, smack in the middle of the desert, springs the Blessing Oasis. It's the largest oasis in the Sear, and most of the qilin population lives here.

The Wai Peninsula

The Wai peninsula is home to Ngaru, the native kingdom of the kelpies. To the Northern entrance to the peninsula are swamps, marshes, bogs, and mangroves. Then, there's the Iridescent Jungle. Though it's a gorgeous sight to behold, it's filled with dangerous animals and man-eating plants. Then, once you finally make it out of the jungle, you are rewarded with a calm, tropical paradise. The capital city is located on the shore, along with the Summer Palace. But, during the winter and fall months, the royal family retreats to the Underwater Palace. A secret entrance on the surface is provided for non-kelpie visitors.

Kahore Mountains

Nihil, the native kingdom of the nix, is based underground and in the mountains of Kahore. The entirety of the continent is just mountains that stretch almost completely off the Eastern coast of Cor Meum. The capital city of Covert lays below the surface of Titan's Maw Summit, the largest mountain in the world.

Ledas

A combination of icy plain and taiga to the north of Cor Meum. It is mostly unexplored by the other Beings, and is occupied by the Fa and Noh sphinx clans.

The Barrier Mountains

Several oceanic mountain ranges that erupt from the water, and surround Cor Meum. There is presumably nothing past these mountains, only open ocean. However, all voyages that set out past these mountains never return. Rumor has it that beyond these mountains lies the secret home of the lungs.

Additional landmasses

Within the Barrier Mountains are several other small islands, whether they humbly sit on the water or float above it. None of them are big enough to be marked fully as continents, however, and most of them are colonized by dragon villages.

General Society

The Queen is a hereditary, gender-neutral title worn by the ruling dragon. It's passed on from parent to oldest child, but it's not unheard of for the crown to go to one of the Queen's spouses, siblings, or even a trusted Council member if either they believe their children aren't cut out for the job or die before they have any.

The King is the first spouse of the Queen(the King is also a gender-neutral title). The King acts as an advisor to the Queen as well as a companion, and is incredibly influential. Consorts hold no political power, but may hold certain influence as well, depending on their background/actions outside of the palace walls.

The current Queen is Nefriah, and her heir is her first son, Valo. She has one spouse, King Solan. Their other children are Naika, Naseem, Kasigo, and Vanja.

That being said, there are no gender roles in Xeno-Hiraeth! Gender identity and expression is something that is a personal preference, and is figured out during childhood(all children are referred to with they/them pronouns at first, unless they choose differently later on). Androgyny is the dominant gender expression, and no individual would be made fun of, judged, or barred from certain tasks/jobs for their gender identity and/or expression, or lack thereof.

While the Queen rules over both dragons and mageia(and to some extent, the sphinxes), it's the Omnis-Sovereign who carries out the laws to the mageia. The Omnis-Sovereign is typically a longma mageia who not only rules their own kingdom, but the other kingdoms as well. While all kingdoms have their individual leader or leaders, they all answer to the Omnis-Sovereign, and the Omnis-Sovereign answers to the Queen. The current Omnis-Sovereign is Jerome.

The Prophet is the religious leader of Cor Meum, and secondary advisor to the Queen. Their job(supposedly) is to make sure the will of the Seraph is followed. They also are responsible for keeping the Queen in check. They are hand-picked by the Queen themself, and serve until death. The current Prophet is Rek'yen.

The Queen's council consists of the King, Prophet, General, Treasurer, High Mage, Archive Keeper, Charter, and High Judge. King Solan currently doubles as the High Mage.

There is an unspoken racial hierarchy amongst the mageia, in order of preference of the dragons; the longmas, the re'em, the dryads, the perytons, the qilins, the kelpies, and then the nixes.

Disabilities are not usually an issue in Xeno-Hiraeth. Non-verbal and/or deaf beings are taught some form of sign language, or given a slate to write your thoughts down. Blind individuals are taught to use their other senses to make their way around, and/or given a guide(whether they be a Being or familiar), or a cane to feel around with as you step. For those with lost limbs, there's a number of different prosthetics to choose from, and there are special prosthetics for different jobs and activities(including wings!).

In regards to technology, think steampunk-esque. Tech such as robotic prosthetics, arcane-powered machines, airships, explosives, and simple firearms such as pistols, bayonets, and shotguns are craftable items.

Tharcanas are enchanted items, all with differing abilities. Some examples would be a piece of jewelry that immediately returns to the owner of it's ever stolen, a small orb that gives off light when needed, a flute that puts listeners to sleep, bracers that give the wearer super strength, etc.

Being Biology & Info

Dragons and Lungs

Dragons and Lungs have a rather… chaotic biology, to say the least. While they can't be classified into several distinct races, almost every dragon or lung family has something unique about their pedigree. For example, some families may be able to grow plant life on themselves, or breathe fire, or have insect-like wings, etc.

Curiously enough, some dragons and lungs have similar features, such as some dragons having manes down their topline, and lungs having small, vestigial wings.

No matter what their features are, dragons are the largest species, standing at around 7-8 ½ feet at the shoulder. They are typically scaled, with at least one pair of wings, and at least one horn.

Lungs, on the other hand, are only slightly taller than the average mageia, but have long, snake-like bodies. They have fur and/or scales, with a mane down their topline/around their head like a lion. They usually have at least one horn.

Mageia

Mageia are huge creatures(the average mageia is about 6 ½ feet at the shoulder) with a canine-like head filled with sharp teeth, front paws(or claws, or talons) back hooves(can be one toed or cloven) a horse-like mane, and a lionel tail.

The mageia have seven races, each with their own unique features:

Longma biology

Pure longmas are mageia who share a common ancestor who was half dragon. All Longmas have at least one horn and draconic wings.

Pure longmas always have:

draconic wings

at least one horn

Longmas can have:

scales somewhere other than the topline, wings, and tail

scales along their topline

serpentine tails

draconic fins

Additional info

Famously pompous and devoted to individualism, Longmas are proud, innovative, and fiercely passionate.

Traditionally classist, recent years have seen the ladder to success grow more accessible, but the line between nobility and commoners remains distinct and nearly impossible to cross.

Longmas consider themselves the ideal and dismiss other mageia as uncultured, barbaric entities.

The gap between Sahar's civilian classes is significant, with the nobility sitting comfortably at the top of the ladder. The Nobility are revered, or at the very least begrudgingly respected, by the lower classes. Their political significance is rivaled only by their implied wealth, which may or may not be as grand as an individual noble claims. Nobles are the only longmas who have surnames, portrayed by their House. While there is some wiggle room for wealthy commoners to rub shoulders with the elite, they are unlikely to be accepted as an equal.

Re'em biology

Re'em are readily identified by their horns, which range from the traditional single spiral to jagged monstrosities, sometimes made of gemstone and metal.

Pure re'em always have:

horn(s), typically on the head.

Pure re'em can have:

Horns made of minerals such as precious gemstones, metals, glass or rock

Gemstone/metal attributes

Additional info

The re'em of Lux are proud people, known for their prowess in battle. Thus, friendly sparring is a common pastime for young re'em, though older re'em enjoy the activity as well.

When a re'em dies, a replica of their horn is carved and shaped from the same gemstone/metal that their real horn was made from. Simply painting a clay sculpture is an alternative to those with simple keratin horns.

Although the re'em have a reputation in other kingdoms as being uneducated, simplistic brutes, intellectual prowess is lauded, and complex, strategy-based games are enjoyed in households.

A single back hoof stomp is a more "aggressive" greeting, and thus is conducted by soldiers and rowdy adolescents, the harder/louder the more impressive.

Dryad biology

A pureblooded dryad is identified by the plant or animal life that thrives from their body. Plant life usually goes through seasonal changes or stagnates at full bloom, but there are always anomalies. A depressed or sick dryad usually suffers from wilted, or even withered growth.

Pure Dryads always have:

plantlife (or plant-esque, such as coral, bark, rocks/minerals/gemstones, etc.) growing from their body

Dryads can have:

extra hair (such as an extended mane down their top line).

antlers.

gemstones.

bark or rock like texture on their body.

Additional info

When hunting and farming, no part of the plant or animal goes to waste. Anything one does not eat is made into jewelry, tools, or simply fertilizer for the next batch of crops.

Outsiders are welcomed, but watched carefully. The dryads of Alam are hospitable and friendly to all, but won't hesitate to give you the boot if you choose violence.

The native mageia of Taiao live in peace with the environment, never taking more than what they need. Wastefulness, in any capacity, is not tolerated. What you take from the land is a blessing, and should be treated as such.

The High Sage is the religious leader of Alam. They interpret signs seemingly sent by the Seraph themself, predict the success of the next year/harvest, and make sure traditions are followed, and outdated ones are updated. The Council are the political leaders, and do most of the paperwork, overseeing official events, recounting population, distributing resources, etc.

Peryton biology

All pureblooded perytons will have at least one set of wings. Feathered wings are the most common, but there are plenty of individuals who sport wings reminiscent of bats, and rarer still are the individuals who grow insect-like wings.

Pure perytons always have:

at least one set of wings(wings can be feathered, bat-like, or insect based)

Perytons can have:

feathering on the body.

feathers in place of a mane or tail.

more than one set of wings.

Additional info:

The perytons are proud, loyal, and cunning, and reside in a nation shrouded in mystery. While often misunderstood, they have a rich history and culture that defines them.

There is so much freestanding land in Vjetar that it is commonplace just to petition for a small plot to build on, and more often than not, it will be granted.

Most families in Sirocco are rather large, as couples generally have anywhere from three to seven children.

The Divine is the kingdom's spiritual leader, acting as the conduit through which the last Seraph makes their will known, while the clerics act as the kingdom's clergy and healers. While the Divine rarely leaves the Holy Temple of the Seraph, and never leaves the great city of Gisa, Clerics live all throughout the nation and assist where the Divine can not.

Qilin biology

The Qilin is immediately recognizable by the presence of body scales and antlers. This race is almost entirely resilient to heat.

Pure qilins always have:

at least one antler, though typically two.

scaling somewhere on their body.

Qilins can have:

antlers that resemble various different deeror antelope.

Additional info

Qilins of Hariq are hardy survivors, a family of mostly nomadic individuals joined together by their mutual love and respect for every member of the Sear.

Humble, accepting, and naive, these gentle mageia are trusting of others to a sometimes dangerous fault. Though they make up the smallest population, they are not to be trifled with: every member has received some form of combat training, and their desert home is a frightful place to wage war.

The traditional qilin would die for their virtues and the safety of another.

Deeply spiritual and fixated on being one with and coexisting with the world, the qilin ways are mystical and rooted in their religion.

Kelpie biology

Kelpies will always possess two forms that they are able to shift between: a land form for traversing terrain, and a water form that allows them to swim and breathe underwater. The aquatic half of a kelpie can be based on fish, cetaceans, octopi, seals, or any other marine creature.

Pure kelpies always have:

a land form.

a water form.

Kelpies can have (in both forms):

fins and scales.

a fishtail.

stingers, tentacles, barbels - anything that correlates to their aquatic animal(s) really.

bioluminescence.

Additional info

Kelpies are famously the most accepting of outsiders, and thus hybrids are not a rare sight in Ngaru.

They are skilled soldiers, fishers, and sailors, but extremely superstitious. Angering the last Seraph is said enough to damn you and your family for generations.

While they are accepting of outside races, they stay as distant as they possibly can from the other nations, and try not to get mixed up in their politics.

As a collective community, Ngaru generally works together to keep themselves in check to prevent interference from the dragons.

Nix biology

Though they lack the fantastical features of their counterparts, there is beauty in simplicity. Rare genetic mutations can give this race additional eyes or even visible auras.

Additional info

Since nixes lack any interesting features, they're seen as boring, tasteless individuals, which is far from the truth.

They're secretive and selective on who they let into the Underground, and fewer ever get to see the capitol city.

The nation is built on a sense of community, and secrets rarely stay hidden for long.

A lot of nixes travel the continents of Cor Meum in hopes of finding wealth elsewhere, and it isn't uncommon to find a travelling Nix merchant setting up shop in the streets in a completely different continent than their own.

Hybrids

Opinions on hybrids vary from kingdom to kingdom. In Sahar, Lux, Sirocco, and Nihil, hybrids are frowned upon or at the very least judged, but in Alam, Hariq, and Ngaru, it's not as much of a big deal. Still, most hybrids are vagabonds, finding their place elsewhere, outside the binary kingdoms.

There is a rumor floating around that off the shore of the Wai Peninsula is a floating isle that is a safe haven for hybrids and wayward beings of the like, conducted by a longma with strange abilities and a gun-slinging nix. They're referred to as the Devil's Duo. Urban legend says that they're a pair of adopted siblings who took control of a ship that once hauled kidnapped sphinxes to slavery. Now, they recruit runaways and misfits, looting and raiding unsuspecting ships, whether they be in the water or the air. This group of misfits is called the Vindicators. The Duo's true names are unknown to all but this group.

Sphinxes

The Sphinxes are felines about the size of an Earth horse, with wings and talons like birds. They naturally belong to one of twelve clans, and usually communicate in a series of both feline and bird-like sounds(such as, but not limited to: chirps, hisses, meowing, cawing, roars, etc). This language is referred to as Dimali colloquially amongst the Sphinxes.

The Sa Clan

The vast desert sand dunes are occupied by the Sa, the smallest of all the clans. The Sa sphinxes closely resemble sand cats, but with a more slim face. They have longer fur that sprouts between their toes to protect their feet from the hot surface sand. Sa culture surrounds on how precious water is, treating water wells as sacred locations. The Sa worship snake spirits, and have elaborate hunting rituals for the rare giant serpents of the Sear.

The Ri Clan

The Ri are a very reclusive clan, preferring to hide deep in their forests surrounded by ancient trees and spirits. They are typically much smaller than the average sphinx, and display dark colors with rich reds on their fur. They have small, "kitten-like" faces with mildly fluffy tails. The Ri are adept with magic, often hoarding their secrets from outsiders. It is said that they have a close connection with the lungs, which is where they derive their magical knowledge.

The Tas Clan

The Tas live in the tropical rainforests of the Wai peninsula. They're the most colorful and vibrant of the sphinxes, with an endless range of fur colors and patterns. Their wings are similar to cockatoos. These sphinxes have a special fondness for feather and fur dyes, and can produce every conceivable color(including UV reactive and glowing dyes).

The Fa Clan

They occupy Ledas, the snow covered isle to the north of Cor Meum. This clan is nomadic, wandering their large territory to hunt and sustain themselves. They're the only sphinxes that hunt whales, more specifically the ivory B'Eshuul whales. These sphinxes have long, white fur and are similar to Norwegian Forest cats. They are so similar physiologically to their slightly southern neighbors, the Noh, that they might be considered a subgroup of them.

The Noh Clan

To the southern part of the Ledas are the vast pine forests, the home of the Noh Clan. Like the Fa, they have long fur and resemble Norwegian Forest cats, only their fur is more darkly colored. Both are also large, tough, and cold-resistant. With dark colors, keen instincts, and incredible strength, they make excellent hunters and warriors.

The Wen Clan

The sphinxes of the Wen occupy an island southwest of Cor Meum dominated by ancient red trees and volcanic activity. While they tend to be more disconnected from the other clans, it's not entirely by choice. There are many rumors about the Wen that make even dragons fear them. From their close connection to volcanism, to the idea they are spirit possessed, or possibly immortal. Tall and graceful, the sphinxes of this clan bear pale fur and sleek, noble eyes. They also have unique feather arrangements and tufted ears, which adds to their exotic profile. They have a knack for creating delicate and beautifully crafted jewelry and adornments.

The Fen Clan

The Fen sphinxes occupy the coastal cliffs of the Vjetar plateau and the islands surrounding it. Characterized by their bright orange colorization, they are shipbuilders and explorers. Having mastered the art of navigation, they bring goods and news from distant islands that are untouched by any of the four Beings. Sphinxes of Fen have more narrow, elongated wings similar to seabirds. This clan has close ties to the Noc, who have provided star charts to them for generations.

The Noc Clan

The Noc are loosely based in the mountains around the continent, mostly nomadic and nocturnal. The sphinxes of this clan are very owl-like, with large eyes and wings built for stealth. They are known to be great astronomers. They are often traders of secrets and information.

The Pel Clan

The clan of Pel occupy a large swath of land between the Sear and Taiao. Tricksters at heart, they are fond of poisons, venoms, and weaving. Mythology for the Pel surrounds storms and lightning, and the most impressive thunderstorms can be found in their territory. Though they're tricksters at heart, their elixirs are mainly used for medicine crafting. They are excellent runners for their species as well, mastering the art of long distance travel.

The Ku Clan

The Ku Clan make their homes in the northernmost point in the Sear, and their territory is a mix between red canyons and pine forests. They tend towards a rusty red color in the canyons, but to the north their coat coloring is grey and ticked. The typical Ku home is an elaborate, carved out chamber in the canyon walls, often with multiple chambers. After many generations of the practice, masonry and stonework are common skills. The Ku territory is rich with salt deposits, which is mined and sold to generate some of the greatest wealth amongst all the sphinx clans of the continents.

The Mal Clan

The sphinxes of Mal inhabit the dense mangrove and marshes between Wai and Taiao. They're the largest clan next to the Fa and Noh, with short fur in different shades of brown, and large, webbed wings. These sphinxes have the unusual ability to breathe underwater, and have developed fins on their topline, webbed talons, and a fish-like tail. Even though they're big clunky, these fins make them surprisingly aerodynamic, making them some of the best fliers amongst the sphinxes. They worship fish and water serpent spirits, and have a deep connection to the winged snakes of the swamps called amphipteres.

The Lin Clan

A mysterious, secretive clan who dwells in perpetual darkness beneath the surface of Cor Meum. They are very much bat-like, with large, beady eyes, huge ears, and bat-like wings that have finger-like appendages at the top to help them grip the cave walls. Their patron spirit is the Iron Root Spirit, also called the Mirror Tree. On the surface, it looks like a normal tree, but its roots take form to grow another tree seemingly growing from the cavern ceiling. Stories say that it talks to all of those able to listen, and will sometimes bestow the iron legs of their ancestor, Diersha. Rumored to be extinct, the Lin Clan spends their days mining and crafting prosthetics, unbothered by the world above… and blissfully ignorant of its current state.

Enslaved Sphinxes

Sphinxes that are owned by dragon nobility. Most are born into slavery, while others are clan sphinxes kidnapped by slave traders. Those who are born into slavery do not typically have any specific features to any one clan, but rather a cluster of hybrids of sick, selective "breeding" over generations. Many have grown accustomed to this life, and keep their heads low in order to survive. The existence of these slaves are exactly the reason why most sphinx clans keep far away from the other Beings.

[fourangers]

Kakashi’s exposé

Dedicated to @rivaille-plisetsky that suggested the prompt: 

Post-War shenanigans with Kakashi being the only one with knowledge of their relationship

So here it is! I hope you’ll like it. SNS, with a tiny bit one-sided Sakura --> Sasuke, and sex insinuations. Comedy and it’s a lil to the side of crack.

AO3 link

==.==.==

Somehow, some way, it just clicked. Maybe it was due to exhaustion, or Sakura's confession still fresh in his mind but Kakashi witnessed the way Sasuke was looking at his best friend/rival/nemesis, how affection warmed his black eyes mixed with longing and burning intensity and it was just…oh. Oh. OoooooOooH.

Everything made sense now. It's no wonder he was so desperate to cut off his bonds with Naruto and why it brought him so much pain to do so. 

Kakashi just stood mildly shocked as his eyes followed his previous students' behavior, from Sakura's relieved smile, Naruto's wide beam and Sasuke's gaze constantly trained towards the blond nin. 

Ah…to be young and naive.

⏤.⏤ 

Kakashi had a hard time feigning surprise when he saw both boys tucked together, blissfully sleeping on the small bed at the hospital. Sakura, on the other hand, was so happy about Sasuke's return that she didn't connect the dots yet.

The next few months was a cumbersome process of finding solid proofs about the Uchiha's massacre tying with Konoha's higher office corruption, since the elders were eager to throw Sasuke in jail while he was still recuperating from his wounds. Fortunately Naruto called Shikamaru for help as they searched in the archives with Tsunade's permission. 

Soon enough all the guilty were charged for conspiracy in ethnic cleansing and thrown behind bars. Sasuke also spent some time in jail for multiple attempts of murder against the 5 kages, but thankfully due to his contributions in ending the latest ninja war and Naruto’s constant nagging with Tsunade, he was set free.

Naruto and Kakashi both expected that Sasuke would bolt out of Konoha the second he was unchained. However, much to their puzzled astonishment, the last Uchiha had decided to settle down. He even took the chuunin exams with Naruto as some sort of proof that he desired to get back being a Konoha citizen. As if there was something(someone) that rooted him to the ground.

When Sasuke reached 18 years old, Kakashi gifted him a special Icha Icha book with prim pride.

Sasuke glanced at the title, glared his ex-teacher with his face bright red, and promptly hid when they noticed Naruto’s chakra close by. Several comrades joined in afterwards, some were part of the rookie nine, other were Sasuke’s current teammates, all gathered to celebrate his birthday.

Through the course of that night, wherever Sasuke would go, Ino and Sakura were on his toes once again, vying for his attention. It was a confusing realization for Kakashi, that even if Sakura was now an accomplished medic-nin and jounin, she would revert to her pre-teen self once Sasuke was around. Kakashi simply observed in between sips of sake while Sakura fussed over Sasuke with her doe-eyed expression, and Sasuke tolerated her presence with the smallest furrow on his handsome face. Black eyes flickered towards Naruto’s back, before he exhaled a heavy sigh, calling Sakura much to Ino’s annoyance.

On the next day, the news about Sasuke and Sakura dating was the talk of the whole town. Or rather, how Sakura was running behind her beloved wherever they go, emerald eyes glimmering like a little girl winning the affection of her idolized popular boy.

This is bizarre; Kakashi concluded watching the one-sided interactions. Those youngsters were just too much for him sometimes.

Naruto swore that he welcomed this new development with open arms, really, like…really. He’d accept no one else but Sasuke, if he was going to lose Sakura’s hand to another man. But Kakashi could notice the tightness of his grins whenever team 7 would reunite, but whether he was jealous over Sakura or Sasuke, no one would ever know.

Months have passed and Sasuke was slowly entering a dangerous territory, returning to his personal darkness that few could reach. Maybe it was due to Sakura’s impatience that their relationship got stuck since day one, or how she finally broke the illusion that her idol was just a regular man, so she was currently much more content spending her time with Ino nowadays. Maybe it was because his friendship with Naruto was becoming strained over the days. Maybe the Hyuuga’s heiress bold approach towards his best friend was grating Sasuke’s nerves.

Kakashi sighed. They were so much cuter back when they were little genins.

But Kakashi was; he hoped, wiser now. The accumulated experience he built up all over those years brought him a wider scope about how he should handle human emotions and its complexities. He wouldn't make the same mistake he had done before, unlike last time when he failed talking some sense to pre-teen Sasuke. 

He stood up, hopping on the direction towards Naruto’s house.

⏤.⏤ 

One year later… 

Konohamaru cleared his throat, knocking on the door. He heard grumbles, quiet steps and then the door was pried open with a pair of glaring eyes.

He gulped. “Good morning. Is Naruto-niichan nearby?” 

Sasuke thinned his lips, turning around. “Cooking breakfast.”

Konohamaru gave a brisk nod, striding towards the kitchen and being greeted by Naruto’s wide gin.

“Hey Konohamaru! ‘Sup?”

“Naruto-niichan! It’s your first day in the Hokage’s apprenticeship, are you excited?”

“Sure am! Man, can’t believe that Tsunade-baachan is going to pass the torch to me, I thought for sure they were going to choose Kakashi-sensei that⏤”

“Oh? Talking about me?”

Konohamaru and Naruto shrieked when they heard Kakashi’s sudden chime, Sasuke stood leaning on the wall unimpressed. 

The older man said. “Ah, here I was coming here to congratulate my former protegée, and all I hear is Naruto-kun talking behind my back. You’re hurting my fragile heart.”

“Can’t you knock on the door like a regular person? You almost gave me a heart attack dammit.” Naruto complained, rubbing his chest. 

“Another reason why I’m questioning Konoha’s decision to make you the next Hokage. I assumed the prerequisite for such an important job was to master basic moves like noticing someone’s chakra when they are close by, dumbass.” Sasuke scoffed.

“Say what, you asshole⏤”

“As much as I’d love to get down the memory lane watching you boys bicker, I’m here to give you a gift, Naruto.” Kakashi placed several books on the table. “My entire Icha Icha collection. All signed by Jiraiya-sama.”

Naruto stared wide-eyed once the information sank in, picking up one book as if it was the most precious thing in the world. He leafed through pages, smiling fondly when he read Jiraiya’s message. They let Naruto take his time browsing through the books, even Sasuke curbed his usual teasing barb too.

The Uchiha nin seemed to realize something, coughing. “Well, since Kakashi already gave you his present, I suppose I should also give you mine.”

Naruto’s eyes were narrowed and suspicious. “And what exactly you’re gonna give me, bastard?”

Sasuke smirked, throwing his arm around Naruto’s shoulder and directing to their bedroom. “You’ll enjoy it, for sure.” 

Konohamaru and Kakashi watched as Naruto was dragged by Sasuke. Konohamaru muttered. “Well, I guess I’ll wait here until they are done. I was also gonna give Naruto-niichan my gift.”

Oh. “Ooooh, there’s no need for you to wait this long Konohamaru-kun. You can give him once we’re in Konoha’s headquarters.”

“What? I can wait a little, I mean⏤”

Kakashi patted the younger nin’s shoulder as he hurried them to the exit. “I have a feeling they are going to take a while, so we better go.”

Several months had passed and Naruto was beginning to get used to the hectic schedule of being Tsunade’s apprentice. The assistants were also smoothly adapting with his working style too, most comfortable with his friendliness.

The rare exceptions were when Naruto’s best friend would go to a long term mission, and the sunny personality will cloud to a petulant pout. 

“Naruto.” Everyone jumped startled from the familiar baritone voice, swiveling their heads to see Sasuke perched on the window.

Naruto instantly brightened up, turning back to face their assistants as he declared. “Hey guys! Sasuke is here so I’m gonna go ok, ‘s gonna be really quick I swear. Be right back, be right back!” Both Naruto and Sasuke disappeared in a cloud of poof.

The assistants shrugged, some even rolled his eyes while they resumed their work. 

⏤.⏤ 

How odd it was that whenever Sasuke was around though, Naruto would always blink out of their eyes. For someone who wore neon orange outfit and had bright golden hair in midst of an ocean of dark heads, Naruto could disappear without an effort. 

Saeko rubbed her shoulders while she searched the aforementioned blond nin, seeking his signature. She’s way past her prime to be able to find a strong shinobi like Naruto-kun. 

Fortunately for her, she spotted Kakashi from afar, calling him. “Kakashi-kun!”

Kakashi acknowledged her with a nod.

“Have you seen Naruto-kun? I really need his signature to authorize a new mission.” She sighed.

Kakashi chuckled. “Well…in case you can’t see him, I guess you could look around and try to find Sasuke instead.”

“Ah right…Uchiha-kun right.” Saeko shook her head. “They are almost attached to the hip.”

“Right.” 

“Such a beautiful friendship between those two boys, right?”

Kakashi stared the old lady before settled with a hum.

“They need to settle down and find a good ladies in their lives though.” She quipped with chiding tone. “Why are they taking so long to get married, I wonder. Youngsters those days are in no hurry to build a family, they are exactly like that Yamanaka girl; living with her best friend Haruno-chan.”

Kakashi hummed absentmindedly once again.

Almost as if he was reading their minds, Sasuke exited the toilet in front of them, licking his lips as his finger wiped his mouth.

“Ah, Uchiha-kun!” Saeko tightened her steps, approaching him. “Have you seen Naruto-kun anywhere?”

Sasuke glanced at her back, then gazed Kakashi’s amused eyes, shrugging. “Behind me.”

“Behind y⏤?” Lo and behold, the future Hokage opened the door a little breathless and disheveled, hand combing through his golden hair. 

His cheeks were tinged red but he soon recomposed himself when he saw the old lady. “Oh hey, Saeko-san, Kakashi-sensei! Why are you⏤”

“Naruto-kun, you’re going to be the death of this old woman, I swear!” Saeko interrupted him, shoving the papers on his face. “I know that Uchiha-kun is your best friend but do you really need to have him next to you 24/7?”

“I’m sure that Naruto-kun would happily perform his tasks as the Hokage apprentice, normally…” Kakashi muttered. “But I guess Sasuke just missed him too much.”

Sasuke glared, rolling his eyes. “I’ll see you soon Naruto.”  

Saeko concluded that their friendship is really one of a kind, watching Uchiha-kun’s back as Naruto was signing her papers. Gossip around town said that a female shinobi might disrupt such cozy relationship, even though Sasuke kept turning down every date request. There was a bet about which man would find a girlfriend first, however, Kakashi almost zeroed his bank account with the belief that his former students wouldn’t find any girl whatsoever.

Every female shinobi dedicated their time to seduce either the last Uchiha or the future of Hokage of Konoha. This also meant that they were thinning Sasuke’s very limited patience, their constant pestering wouldn’t give them some time for themselves.

⏤.⏤ 

“Naruto-niichan! Wow, you lucky dog!” Konohamaru chirped when he spotted his friend in the corridor, punching the tanned arm playfully. “I can’t believe this⏤!”

“Believe what, Konohamaru?” Naruto questioned. 

“Haven’t you heard? Tomoko Saiyuri, the most gorgeous woman of all Konoha is actually going to ask you on a date!”

“He’s not interested.” Sasuke grunted.

“Oh, c’mon Sasuke-niichan, I know you might be sore because she chose Naruto-niichan instead of you, but there’s no way Naruto-niichan wouldn’t be interested because⏤”

“But he’s not interested, he’s not available, he won’t do anything with her.” Sasuke hissed.

“Uh, yeah…Konohamaru, why would I be interested?” Naruto squinted his eyes puzzled. “I’m honored, honestly, but where did you get the idea I would⏤”

“You know that this is your fault right.” Sasuke snapped towards Naruto. 

“What?” Naruto grumbled.

“You give too many openings, people are still thinking you’re available.”

“Uh…wait, Naruto-niichan, does that mean you’re actually seeing someone⏤?”

“Wait, don’t put the blame on me, asshole. Where in the hell did I show that I’m available?”  

“Well, you’re such an oblivious dumbass, that you wouldn’t realize yours and anyone’s feelings even if it’s right under your nose.” Sasuke muttered under his breath. “Maybe this is the reason why everyone is also blind about us.”

Naruto stared for a while with his jaw slacked, before blurting out. “We live together, I thought everyone knew.”

“Most think we’re just roommates, some still believe that you’re guarding me while I’m on house arrest.”

“What? We share a bed.”

“They think we didn’t find a good house with two bedrooms.”

Konohamaru interjected tentatively. “Um, Naruto-niichan, what exactly are you talking about⏤?”

Naruto however, couldn’t listen to him, blue eyes still trained towards Sasuke. “I don’t get it, we haven’t seen anyone else so far ever since we decided to live together, I thought⏤”

Sasuke sighed. “They think we’re just taking our time to find a girl to settle down.”

Naruto nodded numbly, scratching his head. “Oh. Is that why Momiji-san wanted to cook me some obento?”

Sasuke grunted, his glare darkening. “And you almost fell for it, hook line and sinker.”

Naruto gazed back, studying the Uchiha’s activated Sharingan. Everyone was staring with growing confusion until Naruto snorted. “Are you jealous Sasuke-chan?” He laughed.

“No, absolutely not.” Sasuke promptly defended himself, raising his chin. “I’m staking my claim, that is all, since someone else is not making any effort over this relationship.”

“Awwww⏤you’re really jealous!” Naruto grinned.

“I’m not jealous, usuratonkachi, I just feel like you should have made everything clear to everyone so I can avoid all those troublesome harpies and⏤” When Sasuke saw the determined blue eyes, he tensed but all of a sudden, Naruto grabbed him and hoisted over his shoulder.  "Naruto, what the hell are you doing, I swear I'm going to fry your sorry ass if you⏤Naruto⏤!" The door slammed shut.

Then, silence. All ninjas on the vicinity didn’t know whether they should intervene whatever skirmish because Naruto was going to be the Hokage, but still, since he’s the future Hokage, he didn’t need anyone to defend him, right?

Their thought process was interrupted when he heard a moan. But not any moan, it was specifically Sasuke’s moan. Every face was colored red. As the moans and groans were increasing in speed and volume, the shade of their blushes were darkening, and everyone froze on the spot. 

A constant thumping noise joined in, eliminating whatever doubt they might had out of the window, in concern with the activity they were doing in the Hokage’s office. The banging grew faster and louder, that at this point everyone in the building could hear it out.

A guttural scream ripped from Naruto’s voice, that made all women fan to themselves and all men shuffle uncomfortably. Another pregnant silence reigned in the building, until Naruto opened the door beaming ear to ear, holding Sasuke’s hand while the latter was scowling, limping his steps.

“So!” Naruto proclaimed cheerfully. “As you can see, Sasuke and I are unavailable for any possible dates at the present and future moment. We’re pretty busy screwing each other, after all.”

“I am screwing you next time, usuratonkachi.” Sasuke grumbled darkly.

Naruto chortled, unaffected by his threat. “He’s so sweet right. I can’t ask for any better boyfriend.”

Sasuke kicked his legs. Naruto retaliated by slapping hard his back. As their skirmish was growing more violent, everyone scurried away from the couple.

Those two are insane.

(Kakashi later appeared in Konoha’s headquarters, ready to collect his money from the bet. It’s more than enough to secure a very nice retirement. The news about Naruto and Sasuke’s relationship reached to Tsunade’s ears but she was wholly unimpressed. She did punch her protegée to seven foot below ground for soiling her office though.)

[l-sincline]

Cybernetics- Cyberpunk!Sonic AU- Chapter 3

Amy Rose has been working tirelessly at her broken down booth for as long as she can imagine. Ever since Tails left their work to join forces with the revered hero of Mobius, ‘The Blue Blur’, she’s grown lonely and desperate to make her life exciting. A strange customer comes in one day asking her to fix his cyborg arm, what she didn’t know was that he would be the catalyst for a brand new life.

AO3 Tags:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Amy Rose/Shadow the Hedgehog, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Amy Rose (Sonic the Hedgehog), Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles “Tails” Prower, Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik, Rouge the Bat, Whisper the Wolf, Cream the Rabbit, Knuckles the Echidna, Badnik (Sonic the Hedgehog), E-123 Omega, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Angst, Slow Burn, Partners in Crime

AO3 Link

Previous/Next

Amy struggled to follow her mystery customer that weaved through the crowd with ease, it was now no surprise to her that he had managed to sneak up on her the first time they’d met, he practically floated through the crowd. Ducking and weaving through the tightest of spaces and the closest of people, while she clumsily followed with quiet ‘excuse me’s and ‘sorry’s. As she trailed behind him, she took this chance to take in the rest of his appearance in the light of the street lamps. His cloak was heavy, practical, and it was a deep gray with only a few tears and ragged edges. The only other thing she could really see at the moment we’re his shoes, and they looked about as mechanical as his arms. They looked heavy, but he seemed to have no problem walking in them despite their strange metal material. Maybe she’d ask about them if she got the chance, but he seemed to close up at any topic surrounding himself aside from when he’d told her his arms were custom made. 

She’d been so focused on trying to figure out his shoes that she hadn’t noticed they’d traveled out of the outer ring of the city. Now, instead of dirty streets and flickering street lights accompanied by the mass of people, they walked among street lamps in better condition and shops with some neon signs flashing in the windows, there were even a few cars parked on the side of the road, though they weren’t as upper class as the cars she’d seen in magazines and they seemed to be quite old, perhaps from a time before Earth had come to attack Mobius. There were significantly less people milling about in the middle ring, and she finally found herself able to catch up to her mystery customer. 

“I haven’t been to the middle ring in a long time- it seems like it’s cleaned up a bit more though. My friend works here now.” She started enthusiastically, wanting to have a conversation. 

“Wouldn’t you be here more often to visit them then?” He opted to ask more about her friend, which deflated her slightly, but at least he was talking. 

“Ah, well, I’m not allowed to know anything about where exactly he works and he’s constantly on call so... I can’t really just pop in and visit.” 

“What’s he do?” 

Amy paused, she doubted she was supposed to just go around spilling the beans that Tails was the Blue Blur’s personal mechanic, and thought she felt slightly bad to lie, she reminded herself that she would just be saying a partial truth, and that the mystery customer himself hadn’t exactly been spilling his guts to her either. 

“He’s a mechanic too, just on call all the time instead of having working hours.”

“Privately hired then...” he responded, more to himself than to her, but she ‘hmm’ed in confirmation anyways. 

After that, she chose to look around at the buildings they were walking past. A few bars, some convince stores, a reclaimed food place, and eventually they walked by a mechanics. The shop was large, and it had a neon sign in the front with the shops name- it was much nicer than her little booth, Amy could hardly imagine how nice it would be to work in the middle ring, and even past that how amazing it would be to work in the inner ring. Her thoughts were interrupted as she nearly bumped into the mystery customer. 

“We’re here.” He gestured to the building they stood in front of. 

It was a little rustic, made of brick, and without any windows showing the inside. A neon sign hung on the wall next to the entrance that read “Lions Den” in a bright blue. 

“Looks real inviting.” Amy announced sarcastically, this seemed to get some sort of good reaction as he snorted quietly in response. 

He stepped past her and opened the door, pushing it open wide enough for her to follow him in without having to touch the door. The inside was much different from the outside. She stood next to him in awe as he tried to wave over a waitress. It was slightly packed by all sorts of mobians, some cyborg some not. But the most impressive part of it was how it so easily echoed what she imagined the Inner Ring of the city looked like. 

The tiles on the floor were mirrors, as was the ceiling that was lined with bright blue neon lights. The bar was plexiglass, back lit by more bright blue lights as the people at the bar drank neon drinks with straws that glowed in the black light. There were rounds tables that were dotted randomly throughout the large room, mobians sat at them and drank and ate happily, occasionally pointing at the large ProjScreens that took up some blank space on the wall, projecting a live game of whatever sport was currently going on in the Inner Ring. Booths lined the wall with the same flowing plexiglass, but the seats were made of some plastic-y, metallic material that shone in all the light. 

Amy felt something smooth to the touch grab her arm and tug her in a different direction, and soon realized it was her mystery customer dragging her along to follow the waitress that was seating them. They got sat at a booth, and it was when she was handed a menu on a ProjScreen that she got to get a good look at the waitress. It was stunning, a fully automated Android was serving them. She mostly ever saw robots, ones with wheels that looked more old time-y, but the android in front of her had the exact same shape and build as your average Cat mobian. Her metal was a sleek black, and her eyes glowed blue as she handed the man across from Amy his ProjScreen menu before folding her hands behind her back once more. Her tail swished soundlessly, no metal grinding or clinking. 

“May I get you both started with something to drink?” Even her voice seemed perfect. 

“We’ll both have the Strawberry Lights.” He responded. “And some time to look over the menu, please.” 

“Of course. I’ll be back with your drinks, shutting off your ProjScreen menu will alert me that you are ready to order.” She informed before turning and walking away, blending perfectly into the chaos of the bar as she went to get their drinks. 

“Ordering for me?” Amy teased. 

“Well, I’m paying, and I think it’s fun to guess what you’d like.” He shrugged, pushing her ProjScreen towards the wall so she wouldn’t be able to look at it as he swiped through the projections on his. 

“Would it be out of line for me to ask if you plan on keeping your hood up the whole time?” She asked. He paused. 

“...Yes.” He finally replied. 

“Is there at least something I can call you?” Amy pressed, it was getting a bit strange to continue to call him her ‘mystery customer.’ 

“You can come up with something if you want.” He offered. “Seems fair, since I’m making a game out of ordering your food.”

Amy ‘hmm’ed in thought at this, quickly becoming distracted by her own thoughts as she ceased to listen to his muttering as he scrolled through the menu. Mystery customer was a no, she was trying to get away from that. Cloak boy? No, that was dumb. She could do some iteration on Cyborg but that was probably tacky, especially to a man who hid both his cyborg arms. 

“Myst! Spelled with a Y to be cooler.” She suddenly announced proudly, crossing her arms over her chest with a smug smile. 

She could feel his eyes boring into her own, before she could even worry that he thought she was strange again, he laughed and shook his head. 

“Sure.” He relented, shutting down the ProjScreen menu. 

Amy wasn’t sure what to say afterwards, so she was glad to see their waitress heading back over to them with two drinks in hand on a tray. She almost ‘ooh’ed out loud at the sight of them as the cat Android elegantly set them down on the table. 

“You’re ready to order?” She asked as she reached over the table and collected the ProjScreen menu ‘Myst’ had put aside earlier before grabbing his as well and holding them gently. 

“The flamed mango on the compact milk bread for her, and the enhanced beef stir fry for me.” He spoke loudly enough for his voice to be heard over the chatter of the restaurant. 

“Of course, enjoy your drinks while you wait.” She bowed her head slightly before walking away. 

Amy looked back to the drink and inspected in with interest. The bottom of it was bright pink, and it had a slushy like texture to it, the rest of the fancy glass was filled with what seemed to be some sort of clear soda, sitting at the bottom of the soda was a darker pink syrup that she assumed was strawberry flavored as well as the slushy. One strawberry was artfully poked onto the rim of the glass, and the metal straw poking out of the glass was also pink. She looked over to see ‘Myst’ using the straw to poke at the drink and stir it up, so she began to do the same. Eventually it got to a point where it seemed it would be fine to drink, so she did. She was first hit with the strawberry slushy, quickly followed by the strawberry infused soda- it was pretty good. 

“Wow- good guess on the drink. I think I’ll be happy with the dinner then too.” She commented. 

“I’m glad you like it, I don’t come here often but it’s what I usually get.” He replied. 

“Really? You seem so dark and mysterious I’d assume you’d get like something squid ink based, honestly.”

“Squid ink doesn’t sit well with my stomach.” He defended incredulously. “Besides, you just said yourself that this is good.”

“Okay okay!” She giggled before taking another sip of the drink. 

“So what was that woman talking about earlier? The prototype? For what?” He questioned suddenly. 

Amy was unsure if this was his way of starting a conversation or if he was genuinely after this information. Did he have something against Whisper? The previous thoughts of how she knew nothing about him flooded back into her mind and worried her. 

“Why? Do you know her?” She shot back, a bit more biting than she’d intended. He leaned back in the booth seat and shoot his head. 

“No- sorry. I know I must seem untrustworthy to you, I was just curious. I don’t know who she is.” He replied, almost reading her like an open book. She took another small sip of her drink before responding again. 

“Her name is Whisper, she’s a weapons mechanic. Ever since my work buddy left I’ve felt a little more vulnerable so I wanted to have something to defend myself with. I chatted with her a bit and put some units down for her to make me a prototype, she agreed that she would give me the prototype and let me finish it if I paid her extra.” 

“Feeling vigilante-ish?” He asked, maybe she could even say he sneered. 

“Gods no.” She responded. “I’m defending myself, that’s all. That’s more of Tail’s thing.” After the words of defense had spilled from her mouth, she zipped her lips into a straight line, she hadn’t meant to name drop. 

“Tails...?” He echoed quietly, as if he was thinking about something. 

“Yeah- he’s just a friend of mine, sorry, gosh, I shouldn’t have said his name as if you’d know anything about who he was.” She attempted a quick cover up with a bout of short, nervous laughter before covering up said nervous laughter with taking another, larger sip from her drink. 

“It’s just an interesting name is all.” He responded calmly before reaching for his drink as well, clearly still thinking hard on something, which didn’t ease her nerves, but he at the very least seemed relaxed. “Can I ask more about the prototype?” 

“Sure.” She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. 

“What kind of weapon is it?” 

“A collapsible hammer.” She started. “The hammer itself is hollow, so when I fold the handle away I can take out a strap and turn it into a side bag and store things in it, but even though it’s hollow it’ll be made out of a strong metal so it doesn’t break easily and can still hit hard.” Amy explained. She was pretty proud of her idea, though it was quite simple, she loved it dearly, and thought it had a touch of her personality and would work well for her since it could double as a heavy duty duffel bag. 

“That’s creative.” He complimented. “I’ve never seen anything like that, it seems like it would work well for you.”

“Thanks- I designed it myself.” Amy smiled slightly and took another sip from her drink, the only other person who she’d told about her weapon was Whisper, who after being around weapons for many years was thoroughly unimpressed with its simplicity. It was nice to hear someone say her design was creative. 

“Your food.” The cat waitress’ voice suddenly cut in, setting the two plates of food down on the table. “Enjoy your meal, I will be back to collect the units when you’ve signaled your done by pressing this-“ she gestured to a button at the top of the table. “-button.” She walked away just as elegantly and quietly as she’d arrived, and Amy’s attention was directed back to the table when she heard the clinking of utensils and ‘Myst’ declare, “Time to dig in.”

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-zelda-fan]

LinkedUniverse Fanfiction Ch. 15: Painting the Town

Stop! You’ve Violated the Law!

So, you’ve stumbled upon this original post for my Linked Universe fanfiction. That’s okay, it happens to everyone. As of March 2021, I’ve uploaded the entirety of this fanfic to my Archive of Our Own page. Along with finally giving the story a name–Oops! All Links: A Linked Universe Story–I made substantial edits to some of the chapters. These range from minor stylistic revisions to fixing a gaping plot hole that kinda completely broke the character conflict in the earlier chapters. I also renamed and renumbered (but not reordered) the chapters. Specifically, this is now Chapter 17: To Sell a Butterfly (Pendant).

The AO3 iterations of these chapters are the definitive versions. So, if you would like to read this fanfiction, please do so on AO3, right here. With this embedded link. Hehe. Geddit? Link?

Note: My screen name on AO3 is FrancisDuFresne. Yes, that is me. I am not plagiarizing myself.

Anyway, for posterity’s sake, the rest of the original post is below the cut.

It’s finally here! Wow! ... If you thought the long wait would end with a chapter the scale of “Fire,” you’ll be sorely disappointed. Sorry, folks. Still, now we finally get to see more of Selggog and the Links’ quest. When we’re talking my fan narrative, what can beat the hijinx of the Heroes of Wind and Twilight? Word Count: 1576

“So why’d you come with me, instead?” Wind asked.

Twilight looked down to his friend and shrugged. “I didn’t want to sit around waiting for Wild to find weapons he liked. Potion shopping beats that, at least.”

Wind glanced upward at passing shop signs as they walked down one of Selggog’s many busy streets. The others sent them to resupply on potions. Hyrule had finished the last of their stock following their skirmish with the Hinox. The two of them had been searching for an apothecary for the past half hour.

The elder of them sighed. “We should ask someone.”

“Where’s the fun in that, though?” Wind countered. He was jovially bouncing about on the balls of his feet with each step. “Having absolutely no idea where you’re going makes it a little adventure!”

“Aren’t we already on an adventure?”

Wind frowned. He clasped his hands behind his head and looked up. White, fluffy clouds dotted the otherwise clear sky. “Yeah, I guess,” he said somewhat dejectedly. Then, more chipper than before, “Well, it can be a side quest. How about that?”

“’Side quest?’ Kind of a silly name for it.”

“Yeah? Well… I like it.”

Twilight let out a bark of laughter. “Maybe it’ll stick.”

Some passersby knocked shoulders with the Links as the streets became busier. “Ack!” Wind grunted. “You know,” he called out to someone ahead who had rammed into him, “wouldn’t kill you to say sorry!”

“Shhh,” Twilight hushed sharply. “We don’t want—“ he was cut off by someone bashing his shoulder—"unneeded attention.”

Wind rubbed his shoulder and looked up to his friend. “You think they’re always this in a rush?”

“Dunno. I’m not used to city life.”

“Yeah,” Wind said. He thought back to Windfall Island, which he used to think of as a metropolis. “Gotta say this place is a bit bigger than I’m used to.”

Twilight patted his pockets. Satisfied everything was where it should be, he glanced at his partner. “Just make sure no one filches anything. You have your wallet, right?”

With a pffft, Wind checked his own pockets over. “Of course I d—”

A pause. “Wind?” Twilight asked. He stopped walking.

The youngest hero looked up at his friend with a sheepish smile. He raised his arms in a guilty sort of half-shrug. “Wind,” Twilight said slowly, “Don’t tell me you—”

“Yep.”

“By Ordona…” he cursed, smacking his forehead. He thought that over. Why did I just hurt myself? I didn’t do anything wrong. He promptly smacked Wind on the back of the head.

“Ow! What the heck?”

“What did we tell you?!”

“To watch out for pickpockets…” Wind admitted with his head hung, kicking at a pebble on the road.

“And did you?!”

Wind looked up.  His wide eyes seemed to burn with anger Twilight had never seen. “No, Twi!” he shouted back. “I didn’t! So can you stop yelling at me and making me feel like crap so we can go find it?!”

Twilight was about to fire back, then paused. For all Wind had been through, he was still just a kid. He sighed and looked around. Some people had stopped and were staring at them. “Well?” he called out to them.

They shrugged and went back to bustling down the street on their errands. When Twilight turned back to his friend, he found him breathing deeply with his eyes closed. “Hey,” he began, “I didn’t mean t—”

“Stop,” Wind interrupted. He opened his eyes and met Twilight’s gaze. “Just because I’m cheery most of the time,” he whispered. Twilight could barely hear him. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings like everybody else.”

“I—”

“Just remember that.”

Twilight had never seen the youngest Link upset enough to yell. He really had struck a nerve. “Okay,” he said. “I will.”

Wind’s expression softened. “Thank you. Now let’s find my wallet. What’re we gonna do?”

“I would suggest we ask Sky to borrow the Master Sword for its dowsing ability.” He considered this. “But even if it was willing to help, there are so many wallets in this town that it probably couldn’t pick yours out of the crowd.”

A thought struck Wind. “What about your wolf sense?”

Twilight looked around. The streets were packed with people going about their business. He remembered how the residents of Castle Town reacted to seeing his beastly form. “No. I don’t want to scare all these people.”

“Fair,” Wind replied. “But what else can we do?”

“Uh…” he muttered, wracking his brains. “I… I don’t know.”

Wind’s jolted to attention as if shocked by a yellow ChuChu. The sudden movement made his partner flinch. “What if I just earn back all the money that was stolen?” Wind suggested, thrusting his arms down, palms up, as if pointing out something totally obvious.

Twilight’s brow furrowed. “That might actually work…” he admitted pensively. “How much was in there?”

Silence. Well, at least between the two heroes. The townspeople were loud and rowdy as ever. “Um…” Wind said, clearly stalling. “Not too much.”

“Don’t dick around with me. How much?”

“About two-fifty?”

“That’s a lot of smashed pots,” Twilight joked, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms. “How do you plan on earning that much?”

The young seafarer dug in his pouch and pulled out a necklace. “I’ve got some treasures I can sell. How many people here would buy a chintzy necklace with a butterfly pendant?”

“With this many people, hopefully at least a couple.”

“How much should we charge?”

“How many do you have?”

“Seven.”

Twilight nodded. “Anything else?”

Wind shook his head. “Some trinkets, feathers, a lot of junk.”

“Right. Well, let’s get started.”

“Hoi!” Wind called out to the crowd. “Beautiful butterfly necklaces here! Twenty-five rupees apiece!”

No one walked over to them. The crowds just kept moving by. Undeterred, Wind repeated his sales call even louder. This turned some heads, but nobody came. He tried once more. The second-floor shutters of a nearby building slammed open. A disheveled old man in a sleeping cap poked his head out. “Quit yer yapping!” he shouted down to the Links. “People are trying to sleep!”

The two heroes glanced at each other, paused a moment, then shrugged in unison. Wind hooked his thumbs on his belt and shifted his weight to one leg. “Guess that’s out the window,” he said.

Twilight let out a frustrated sigh. If he had just been more careful, we’d have potions by now, he thought bitterly. No, stay focused. We need to figure this o—

“Oh!” Wind exclaimed, again startling his friend. “Let’s find a shop that will buy some of my stuff!”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure most shops won’t buy off strangers. They’re trying to sell their junk, not buy yours. Think how fast they’d go bankrupt.”

Wind shook his head. “No no no, I mean a treasure teller! Someone who deals in treasures. There was one on one of the islands I sailed to. I’m sure there’s one around here.”

“Alright,” Twilight said, “how are we gonna find one? Search every street? That didn’t quite work for the apothecary.”

“Look for a sign with a rupee on it,” Wind replied, scanning the street for such a sign. “There’s gotta be one aro—OH! Look!”

Wind pointed out to the building directly across the street from them. Sure enough, the storefront had a multitude of rupees painted all over it. Twilight sighed in relief. “That was easier than expected.”

“I wouldn’t get too excited. We have no idea what they’ll offer for my stuff. These guys can be fickle.”

“Right.”

The two heroes crossed the street and entered the store. The walls were covered in a bizarre wallpaper filled with celestial bodies and distorted floral patterns. The shelves immediately drew their eyes. Treasures and spoils lined the perimeter of the store. Everything from golden statuettes to fine china to jewelry to precious stones rested upon the shelves. A beaded curtain hung in the doorway between the store and some back room.

While Wind marveled over the treasures, Twilight strode to the ornately-decorated counter. It was adorned with an equally beautiful silver bell. He gently tapped its button. A soft, pleasing ding rang out. No one came after a few seconds, so he rang it again, a little harder this time. He strained to hear any movement in the back room but was left wanting.

By now, Wind had refocused and walked up beside his friend. They glanced at each other. A look of confusion and mild annoyance passed between their eyes. Wind shrugged. “Hello?” he called slightly louder than the second bell ring. Nothing.

“Oh, come on,” he grumbled with a huff. He hooked his thumbs in his belt again. “Maybe no one is here?”

Twilight shook his head. “With this kind of merchandise, the door would have been locked tight.”

“So why the heck is no one coming?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Alright, here goes,” Wind said with resignation lacing his voice. He cupped his hands over his mouth. “Hoi!” he yelled. “Is anybody here?!”

Nothing. The hairs on the back of Twilight’s neck stood on end. His eyes narrowed. Honing his wolf senses had carried over somewhat to his Hylian form. Something didn’t sit right with him. “Quiet down. This doesn’t feel right.”

Just then, a drawling whisper came from directly behind the young heroes. “No need to be afraid, dearies…”

[ncfan-1]

ncfan listens to The Magnus Archives: S1 EP017 (’The Bone-Turner’s Tale) and S1 EP018 (’The Man Upstairs’)

Body horror and another episode that reminds me of Ito Junji’s work. Not a good pair of episodes for people with weak stomachs.

No spoilers past Season 1, please!

EP 017: ‘The Bone-Turner’s Tale’

- Sebastian’s gushing about the power of books is kinda sweet, though the power we see displayed in this episode is anything but. (And I happen to have in my possession a few books—not first editions, of course—that have outlived the societies that produced them, so I get the wonder on that account.)

- And Michael Crew (mentioned in ‘Page Turner’) has snuck another Evil Book into an innocent Chiswick library. What the hell, man?

- And we get static when Jonathan reads out the title of the book—‘The Bone-Turner’s Tale.’

- Jared Hopworth sounds like a piece of work, though the fact that he still seems so fixated on a guy who was his friend and now he seems to want to believe he hates is a little… sad. I doubt Sebastian felt much, if any, sympathy for him, but I suppose that as a listener, I can feel sorry for him. Or, at least, I feel sorry for him now. All sympathy dies soon.

(And I’ve since learned that I was mishearing the name ‘Gerard Keay’ as ‘Jared Key.’ Personally, in Sims’s voice the names ‘Jared’ and ‘Gerard’ sound frankly identical, but okay. I’ll call him ‘Gerard’ from now on to avoid confusion.)

- And we have an intermission and our first proper introduction to Elias, where he proceeds to tell us just how badly Jonathan’s first attempt to interact with a statement giver went. And that the creepy, creepy Lukas family is one of the Institute’s patrons. I’m sure that’s not a bad sign at all.

- “I’ll… be more lovely.” No, you won’t.

- Yes, I’m just sure Martin’s off sick. Normal sickness, being shut into your apartment by a living hive of flesh-eating worms.

- Sebastian, I understand not wanting to create unnecessary drama, but it might be better to tell your coworkers if someone’s harassing you if you think there’s any chance he might drag them into it as well.

- It’s odd that Jared would walk off with the book even if he seems a bit frightened by it. Some sort of compulsion, perhaps? Or maybe he’s run into Michael Crew before and recognized a book that had once been in his possession.

- The thing with the poor rat is the reason why I will not be revisiting this episode, not unless I just do a big re-listen of the series in general. It’s also the thing that completely evaporated my sympathy for Jared (Even before we saw what he did to his mother). That was his pet, an animal without any significant ability to hurt him in its own defense the way a cat or a dog could. It probably trusted him unhesitatingly, didn’t even consider Jared might hurt it until he did. And I know a lot of people don’t like rats, but tame rates make for really cute, cuddly, affectionate pets. I do mean affectionate—they have the same capacity for empathy and bonding with owners that cats and dogs possess. And Jared did that to it. I will not go out of my way to listen to this episode again for the very simple reason that animal cruelty, especially cruelty towards your pets, turns me right off.

(I probably would have scooped the rat up and taken it to the vet once I realized it was a tame rat. Of course, given the state it was in, probably the only thing the vet would have been able to do was euthanize it so it wouldn’t suffer any more than it already was. But I can understand Sebastian not wanting to pick up a strange animal.)

- I can understand Jared’s mother taking her anger out on Sebastian. It’s probably a lot safer being angry at him than at Jared, considering the new skill Jared’s picked up. I note we never see her again after she presumably steals the book to take it back to the library. I doubt that bodes good things for her fate.

- We get static again when Jon reads out the title of the book.

(I listened to the first episode again today, and there was static when Jon read out the “Can I have a cigarette?” spoken by the entity of the episode, too.)

- I was curious as to whether pseudo-Chaucerian tales were a thing, and sure enough, it turns out that during the Medieval era it was for a time the fashion to write pseudo-Chaucerian tales in an effort to “finish” The Canterbury Tales. Some people decided to add on to the Cook’s Tale, which Chaucer died before he could complete, or to write new ones whole-cloth. One is called The Plowman’s Tale, another is called The Tale of Beryn.

- It’s a pity the thing with the rat affected me the way that it did, because the rest of the story is quite engrossing.

- And ‘The Bone-Turner’s Tale’ is so evil it makes other books bleed. That’s… definitely something.

- And we get static when Sebastian describes the books bleeding.

- Sebastian pointing out how ambiguous it is as to whether the bone-turner is traveling with the other pilgrims or if he’s just following (stalking) them feels… right, for this kind of series. Horror thrives on ambiguity, on puzzles where there’s just enough empty space or there’s a couple of pieces missing, so we don’t know what the whole picture is supposed to look like.

- The fact that the technical quality of the prose is mediocre is oddly hilarious. Because, you know: evil book that gives people the ability to manipulate bones.

- More static when Sebastian quotes the book.

- Why am I not surprised it’s a Jurgen Leitner book? From now on, I’m just going to assume that any weird book that shows up in this series is a Leitner book.

- The description of Jared’s “modifications” is excellent. Especially the extra limbs and the ribcage modified to be a mouth. Pushing the boundaries on what counts as human, aren’t we?

- I wonder how Jared was running. Was he scuttling along like a giant spider, or something?

- I do wonder what the cops (and the library staff, for that matter) thought about the bloody books. How do you look at something like that without having some kind of comment?

- And Jonathan is predictably rather ill with the thought of another surviving Leitner tome having slipped through the cracks.

- Yeah, Jared attacked and mangled Sebastian so severely that he died, and had a closed-casket funeral. I really doubt Mrs. Hopworth is still with us.

EP 018: ‘The Man Upstairs’

- Here’s another one that reminds me of Ito Junji’s work.

- I understand that in the U.K., the floor numbers in buildings go top-bottom, instead of bottom-top. At least, that’s the impression I’ve gotten. So the fact that Toby Carlisle is said to live on the first floor I take to mean that he lived in what in the U.S. would be called the second floor.

- The smell Christof associates with Toby in the beginning—a combination of pavement after rain on a hot day and spoiled chicken—makes me wonder when exactly Toby started nailing up the meat. Did he start small at first, so that you’d only notice if you got a whiff of it through an open window or door? Or was it his association with the entity in question that made him smell like that—did he just carry the odor of decay with him wherever he went?

- It’s interesting that Toby did the hammering meat onto the walls once every two weeks, on the dot. Did he have a schedule he had to keep to?

- The description of the carpet in front of Toby’s door… ick.

- Interestingly enough, I think we got a little bit of static when Toby said “What do you want?” Do the distortions extend to human agents of the entities we’ve seen in the series?

- Oh, God, I’ve finally figured out what the viscous, off-white liquid seen in the episode is. It’s liquefied fat, isn’t it?

- The plumber’s visit… You know, my senior year working towards my anthropology degree, the washing machine in the dorm above the one my roommates and I lived in broke down and flooded the upstairs dorm—and ours, too, eventually. I can’t begin to describe how fortunate I feel right now that the only thing that came pouring out of the light fixtures in the kitchen was soapy water.

- The interior of Toby Carlisle’s flat, this is what reminded me of Ito Junji’s work. Can’t you just imagine him drawing something like this? I’m pretty sure he has drawn something at least vaguely similar to this before; I’d go and check, but that would require me to look at it again, so no, thank you. (I think it was in a oneshot manga called ‘Greased.’ Only vaguely similar, but way too similar for me to want to look at it.)

- The description of the flat is actually quite good. Probably the only reason I can deal with it is because I don’t have to look at or smell it.

- Was… Toby trying to summon some kind of meat entity with this nailing up meat all over his flat? Was that why the meat thing with all the eyes was in the kitchen? And I suppose it just sort of winked out of existence when it realized it had been spotted.

- “It opened its eyes. It opened all its eyes.” I’ll… just leave this here.

- It’s interesting that the cops, the fire department, and the hospital all give such different accounts. I would have liked to see what the inconsistencies entailed. I feel like that could be very telling.

- I’m glad Christof got some counseling.

- I think the stinger in this episode is the best one up so far. Where was Toby getting all the meat?

[zoegmiller]

Duty

Sitting vigil for her Queen’s ritual gives Orochi plenty of time to reflect on Duty, and the manifold meanings that word may take.

it’s new smut from me and @otorosegarden and what’s this, it takes the shape of MATERNAL FIGURES NEEDING REASSURANCE OF THEIR FEMININE QUALITIES?? you don’t say?? 😮

Read On Archive of Our Own!

For all her beauty, her certainty of statecraft, her equanimity of judgment, and her leadership and poise that beamed like a beacon over all she oversaw, the Queen of Hoshido…

Was not a morning person.

Indeed, the otherwise magnanimous Queen Mikoto was not an easy riser—it was one of the many foibles Orochi had become accustomed to, over her years of service. Four days prior, on the dawn of their departure for the barrier ritual, she had pulled her downy blanket up over her head, and, quite simply, refused. Only through a grueling effort of her retainer's wheedling and cajoling, and ultimately tugging by The Royal Wrist, was Queen Mikoto convinced to rise.

Not that Orochi could blame her—it’s not as if she could’ve handled the responsibility waiting on that looming mountaintop. But bit by bit, Orochi had the Queen’s hair up, her robes on, her makeup impeccable (to be sweated off within ten minutes of climbing, of course), and they were on the road. Seemingly possessed by the very spirit of indolence, the Queen had spent almost half the climb itself toted up the winding mountain paths on Reina's muscular back, snoring gently along with the cheep-chirps of the songbirds.

But, Orochi supposed, the Queen would have sufficient work to do.

Or so Reina told her. The ritual came but once every ten years, and so this was Orochi’s first attendance of her Queen’s most sacred duty.

In many respects, the shrine was no different from the dozens that dotted Hoshido. Its bright red gates welcomed visitors with a spring where they cleansed their mouths, hands, and feet. Of course, what visitors it saw were few. To reach it, visitors had to make a lengthy trip through dense forests, then endure an arduous mountain climb up its hewn steps, and the view at the top was truly magnificent!

That was what Orochi was currently trying to convince herself of; by the dusk of the first day, the static vista of pine trees, unchanged by the encroaching autumn, had become…

Well, it’s not that Orochi minded standing watch. But who decided that sacred duties had to be so utterly… dull?

Reina didn’t seem bothered. From dawn to dusk, she stood, immobile as a post, no matter what jokes or catcalls Orochi threw her way.

Soldiers could be like that; duty, conviction, that kind of thing.

In one particular respect, this shrine was quite different from its ilk. At the center of its grounds, within the hall where remains of ancient dragons were housed, was a carefully arranged garden. At the center of the garden, a pond barely deep enough to wet your ankles. And at the center of the pond, a small island, just large enough to host a spur of rock like a talon reaching skyward, in turn just big enough to host that jagged scrawl of an opening that offered entrance to its hidden, holy depths.

By the second day of her vigil Orochi was sitting, slumped against one of the grand gates. By the third, she was taking short naps between watching the paper fortunes, good and ill, tied to an ancient maple flutter in the breeze. By the fourth morning, she’d read her lifelines for the dozenth time, and the result was the same: she’d die here, out in this unkempt wilderness. Not of hunger, not of exposure, but of boredom.

It was late evening, when Queen emerged, coughing away dust and shivering like an infant. Nearly four full days in that cramped crevice, and she had not held together well. Her hair was loose. Her clothes muddied. Her nails... an absolute disaster.

Dragging herself from the mouth of the cave, barely wider than her shoulders, like a newborn babe, Queen Mikoto stood on shaky legs, shook a meagre fraction of the dried pine needs from her clothes, and declared, with all the queenly bearing she could muster—and surely not a hint of sarcasm, not a HINT.

"The people of Hoshido are safe once more.”

And promptly collapsed.

Orochi was beside her Queen in a flash, through the gates and past the tended rock of the garden, splashing through the pond, her muddy steps unslowed.

Stupefied, the Queen groaned out her exhaustion, smiling placidly as she stroked her cheek against the ground. The pine needles were far more comfortable than one would expect.

Orochi cradled the Queen in her lap, cocking her head at Reina’s approach. “The baths, take her before she…" Before what, Orochi didn't exactly know. "I'll make some soup.”

Reina smirked, almost sadly—after all, the diviner was still young—and noted, with a pointed look, the leather tie in Orochi's elaborate hair.

"Help her onto my back,” she said.

Orochi lifted her groggy mistress, put a shoulder beneath the woman's arm, then up to the tall knight's frame. Reina carried her as if she weighed nothing. Orochi bowed a quick thank-you, and then rushed off to the building where the shrine's priestess lived, with Reina trudging behind her.

The Queen nuzzled into Reina’s broad shoulders like a kitten. A kitten whose fortunately blunt fingers clawed ineffectually at Reina's soft leather jerkin, whose thighs clenched lazily against Reina's sides. Her breathing was slow, but steady. She was clearly exhausted, and her robes still damp with sweat. Reina bore these things without complaint, blowing the errant strands of her Queen's hair from her eyes whenever they cared to list there with the movement of boots and bodies along the path back to the shrine maiden’s complex.

To Orochi's displeasure, the "baths" were little more than a stool, a bucket, and a huge wooden tub. But the thick walls held the bare wind's chill at bay, and the stone floor was comforting and cool to the soles of the Queen's feet. Reina set her down, gently, on the stool, and held the woman's pale hand until Orochi arrived with the soup. She insisted on feeding the Queen a sip at a time, until the Queen, roused with life, seized the small bowl, brought it to her lips, and drained it to the bottom, throat trembling with each ravenous gulp.

"Thank you, dear. If you would return this..." She handed the lacquered bowl to Reina, who nodded, donned her sandals, and walked from the baths.

The heated water sent steam through the cool air, and Orochi disrobed her Queen as she had many times on many other nights. Mikoto shivered, though hardly perceptibly, except to the trained eyes of her loyal retainer. It was a trial keeping watch in the early autumn night outside the cave; Orochi could only wonder what it was like to spend sleepless nights within it—and marvel, perhaps, at the fortitude of the woman who did it, and now took pains to mask her exhaustion, and sat with such impressive posture even when a rickety stool was forced to serve as her throne.

"I had no idea how hard this would be for you.” Orochi spoke softly. “I apologize for my carelessness in rousing you, and dragging you here." Her tone was formal—more formal than she had used with the Queen in months. "Please forgive me, I knew not my foolishness.”

The steam seemed to rouse Mikoto more than the soup. Once she'd suffused her lungs with it, a hint of color returned to her sallow expression. With heavy lidded eyes, she smiled, squeezing affectionately at Orochi’s forearm.

"Why should sitting in a cave be tiring, eh?" she asked, her head lolling downwards a bit, and her matronly body shivering despite the warmth of the steam. "But there's a reason why I'm only asked to perform this duty every five years, Orochi.”

Orochi replied with a staggered nod. Naked together, she was found it impossible not to look at the woman's curves—the barest hints of the slivers of age on her hips and stomach, but no less pale and pretty for those small signs of a life lived in service of her country.

"Don't stare at me like that," Queen Mikoto chided, reaching to conceal herself—to hide her body, its sagging flesh. Her heavy breasts gently swayed, as she fidgeted with imaginary lapels of an invisible robe. "I must look absolutely dreadful."

"You are absolutely beautiful!" Orochi said, immediately, without a hint of dishonesty on her face or in her voice. Orochi found her heart tugged—she longed to look so beautiful when she was the Queen’s age. She longed to have such regal grace and bearing!

The hand atop her arm was warm, thrilling with life despite the Queen’s pallor and exhaustion.

"Come, silly Queen. Let's get you ready for the bath."

Orochi set to soaping her Queen's back, her shoulders, her neck. Her heart rushed as she tangled her hands in the hair to clean it of pine needles; she had to gasp, as her fingers swept over the Queen's hips.

That was her cold reminder. She stilled her shaking fingers with a breath, and recalled the image of Reina standing guard beside the cave. Stoic. Honorable.

Pure.

With the crack of cold water against her back the Queen shot bolt upright with a yelp of surprise—which quickly morphed into a giggle of nostalgic pleasure. Suddenly awake, her face regained its regal cast as she let a sigh escape her, and her muscles unwound. "It always makes you feel like a young woman again, that first splash of cold mountain water."

And, of course, Orochi apologized for the sudden discomfort of the rinse, taking the woman's hand immediately, she held it to her, as though that might replace all the warmth she'd just stolen.

"Come.” Orochi smiled, with a shy look towards the corner of the room. “Into the bath, then you can sleep as long as you need, and I promise I won't wake you a second before you're ready."

The slight shivering of her calves betrayed the weakness that lingered in the Queen’s bones; the barest weight rested Orochi’s bracing arm, as they slowly walked the few steps to the bath.

She slunk into the tub and quickly sank beneath the warm water. A groan of pleasure escaped her. Her breasts only barely crested the surface of the water. They hung a bit, with her age, nipples light brown, soft, and large. Slight wrinkles creased her skin, here and there. Proof of a life of hard work Childrearing or ruling, both took their toll on the body.

Reflecting on the ritual, the Queen asked, "Do you ever tire of a life of servitude?"

"A life of servitude? I... I’m sure I wouldn’t phrase it that way.“

The Queen rested her arm upon the rim of the tub, and her cheek upon that. Her eyes glistened thoughtfully. "Don't mince words, speak to me as if I weren't your Queen. Speak to me as a friend."

With her face pale and her hair dark as shadow in the sallow light of the room’s single oil lamp, she appeared like a seductive ningyo Orochi had tricked in this tub. Captive, but still capricious.

The oil lamp flickered. Orochi remembered the weight of the Queen's touch on her arm, felt her words in her heart.

"Even friends rarely speak such things so freely." She took a breath, her eyes captivated by the light off of Mikoto's skin. Her toes curled. "You are dearer to me than any friend, Lady Mikoto, or even any lover.” Her courtly poise was absent from her staggered breath. "And I would serve you, in every way, for the rest of my life, if you would let me. I would..."

She wished the lamp would snuff itself out, and mask the redness in her cheeks and the quickness of her breath, the way the feathery hairs rose along her neck. For years, she had served the Queen. For years, she had kept those words, and more, pent up inside—but Mikoto did not need a diviner to see what lay within her heart, perhaps.

The wisdom and kindness of the Queen were famous throughout Hoshido.

“You do have a lover, don’t you? That young kunoichi.”

“Kagero?” Shock compelled Orochi to spit friend’s name into the open air before her mind caught up with her. Of course the Queen would know about Kagero. She seemed preternaturally aware of every other goings on in her court. Deeply, badly, Orochi blushed, biting her lip. “At times…

The swish of water, as she adjusted herself, and Orochi’s eyes were draw to the pale legs, crossed beneath the shivering surface of the water. The Queen smiled as any mother would if they were trading stories by the communal well. “Only at times?”

“Well, with her it’s never quite…” Orochi frowned. “We’re not a normal couple, that’s for certain.”

“In this world, there are fewer normal couples than there are abnormal, I think.” A cant of her head, and a sad little smile upon her lips. “The relations of any court are difficult, dear. Treasure what you have, whatever it is, lest you wake up one day and find it gone.”

Then the Queen exhaled. And she kept her eyes straight ahead, into the darkness, for a time.

Where speech should’ve come, Orochi could find only pain. The empathy of watching her Queen buffeted by old wounds, barely healed. But when she opened her lips, there was nothing. No sound, hardly even air.

Orochi’s hand, lithe and deft-fingered, slipped into the hot water, brushed softly against the Queen’s hand as if moving on its own. She tugged her fingers back in that instant—but, with an incalculable sort of a smile, and the clutch of fingers around a wrist, Queen Mikoto kept Orochi's hand beneath the water for a moment longer than even Orochi's noticeably flagging proprietary would allow.

Upon seeing her gaze reflected in the Queen’s eyes, she slowly touched her, gently, once more, and regained her capacity for speech—albeit a feeble one. "I make a better servant than friend, much less a lover, I’m afraid..."

Mikoto’s long hair, freed of its adornments, floated atop water like inky tendrils. Her eyes are wet and large, as if to take in the whole of Orochi’s soul.

Instead, the Queen indicated the large, flat, black stone near the tub, and guided Orochi to stand her up. "If you're to be a servant, dear, then by all means let's continue your service.”

Dutifully, Orochi toweled her dry, and wrapped her hair. Queen Mikoto sighed, lifting her arms when instructed, and enjoying the softness of the towel and the gentle, yet firm, stroke of Orochi’s hands behind it. She rested a cheek against her shoulder, breathing warm air against her own skin. Here and there, her body sagged. With every one of Orochi’s touches, she became more and more aware of it, but found, for some reason, these corporeal fears stung her not quite as sharply, in the moment.

She relaxed face-down on the slab, pillowing her head into her arms. “Just as you usually do, please.”

Orochi pursed her lips with worry, as she knelt atop the slab, knees to either side of the Queen’s. “You’ve gone through an ordeal, my Queen, I thought perhaps—”

The Queen turned onto her side, reached up, and silenced Orochi with a touch of her index finger to those worried lips. “Mikoto. Tonight, I’ll be Mikoto.”

Perched atop Mikoto’s legs, with a full view of Mikoto’s generous breasts, still slightly damp, their ordinarily plump nipples crinkled from the mountain chill, Orochi, for some reason, couldn’t bear to disagree.

“That’s my girl.” Mikoto softly laughed, offering an affectionate pat to Orochi’s cheek. She lay back down upon the slab. Her shoulder blades flexed like cobras primed to strike, bold contrast to the coquettish wiggle of her plump rear.

"Don't spare any effort, Orochi. I want you to have me screaming, by the end of it."

A toothy grin overcame Orochi. ”It would be my duty and my pleasure."

A glistening tear of clear spring water rolled down the cleft of her ass, to parts obscured by darkness and fulsome flesh. At the sight of this, Orochi swallowed.

Reina always said that—duty.

And, in the back of her mind, she knew Reina to be right.

But as she straddled Mikoto’s rump, she couldn't keep duty in her mind, couldn't manage to maintain the lesson she was taught. Her hands found the Queen's shoulders—so tense, so taut—and began their work. She squeezed gently at first, then harder as she felt her liege's shoulders give, felt their tension melt, heard the approval in her throaty voice.

“Orochi,” Mikoto murmured into her arm. “You’ve always been so… wonderful… at… this.”

She shivered in pleasure just to hear Mikoto make such sounds, to say her name. The heat beneath her stomach rose and spread in fiery tendrils beneath her skin.

Giving oneself over to relaxation after so many days of effort too time, but they worked their way there together. And weakened as she was, it would take more than an ordeal of isolation to fell Mikoto’s wry spirit. Playful, and never one to sit still for long, as the massage returned Mikoto’s strength, so too did her mood blossom. And soon, Orochi felt a soft tickle.

It was the traipsing touch of Mikoto’s toes against her back…

“Ah!” Orochi stammered, gripping fistfuls of Mikoto’s sides, her spine straightening.

“Oh, am I disrupting your work?” Mikoto asked, with the hint of a matronly chuckle, muffled by her hands. If the dig of Orochi’s nails into her skin bothered her, she gave no outward indication of it. She was serene as a well-fed fox.

“N-not at all,” Orochi replied, kneading her fingers slowly over Mikoto’s flesh.

"Ahhh," Mikoto wistfully sighed, biting down on her lip. “Orochi, you truly are a treasure.”

Her hands curled into fists. Her legs spread. The mild aroma of her seemed to shiver in the air like damp heat on a summer day—piquant, and promising something new, something better.

Duty, Orochi reminded herself, duty.

Soon, Mikoto was more sounds than sense, nearly trembling, trapped beneath the slab and Orochi’s unyielding touch. Her shoulders. Her flanks. The small of her back. Then, there was the capricious walk of Mikoto’s toes, all along her back. They seemed to highlight each vertebrae of her spine. Each corded, eager muscle. It was all Orochi could do to concentrate on her work, and that word—duty—was lost to her.

“That Kagero is a lucky woman…”

“Kagero?” The name surfaced Orochi from the hypnosis of watching Mikoto’s long, dark hair sweep along the slab with the subtle motions of her body. She tilted her head. “Oh, I… well… she’s…” Her fingertips dawdled in sweeping lines along the swell of Mikoto’s regal hips. “Never actually asked me to do this.”

“Then I’m the lucky one…” Mikoto murmured. With a blind hand reaching backwards, it took a grope or two before she was able to grip and shake affectionately at Orochi’s thigh. “To have a woman like you all to myself.”

Orochi’s hard squeezed so hard in her chest she thought she’d faint—though she wasn’t sure if it was Mikoto’s words, or the emphatic wriggle of her hips that sent an eye-pleasing ripple through her fleshy rear.

She relaxed slightly, knowing the dampness on her thighs had spread, tangible, against Mikoto's legs. Put it out of mind, she commanded herself, even as Mikoto’s shoulders rolled and shook before her, even as her skin warmed beneath her commanding touch, and the pinkened handprints all over Mikoto’s back were evidence of Orochi’s presence, in this moment, she hasn’t noticed, and she won’t, and even if she did…

Once more, she worked her hands downward along Mikoto’s back, along the muscles beside her spine, the strained ones that had kept her upright for the last four days. They shuddered reflexively at her lightest touch, and Mikoto had instructed Orochi to be firm. So firm she was. She ground fingers, palm, and wrist against these troubling spots, and soon discovered the surprising pleasure she derived from each and every sound.

Eventually, she could delay no longer. Her hands reached her Queen's buttocks, soft and generous with age. When she touched them, and Mikoto’s legs further spread beneath her, and her soft request came like a whimpered autumn breeze…

“Orochi…”

The light of the oil lamp was dim and distant. Orochi couldn’t be sure it was tears, she saw glistening in Mikoto’s eyes…

But she could endure the pretense no more. Her first two carefully trimmed fingers found Mikoto's damp, clean folds, and ever so gently teased, then pressed forward against, her lonely Queen's heat.

Mikoto’s legs parted, gently, gracefully. She was past ready, Orochi’s ministrations all along her body had seen to that. Her hips flexed upwards, the motion drawing Orochi's fingers deeper into the sticky sap of her core.

"Oh my dear, dear girl..." The lonely Mikoto intoned, accepting the gift of Orochi's touch.

Mikoto's beckoning voice was all Orochi could ever have needed. The fear in her body drained away, replaced by surging confidence and long-repressed desire. Her fingers struck boldly forwards, inwards, felt her mistress and—now—lover's heat around them, so warm from the bath she felt she might melt.

In a way, she did.

One wonders if even the normal, stately, and reserved Mikoto could hold back the sounds, and shivers, and sways of her body, much less the depleted one that lay beneath Orochi, cleaving towards her missive touches. Her legs flexed, testing the confinement of Orochi's around them. Out came a panther's purr against the stone, when she found that she was truly trapped.

A perceptive, capacitive lover, Orochi’s hips slid backwards, more room for Mikoto’s legs to spread. In all things, a Queen’s comfort be must be prioritized.

This left Orochi vulnerable, of course. When she relaxed back, she brought the heat and dampness of her own pent-up cunt right against the delicate, soft skin of the Queen's soles, as if to use her body to say what her lips would not: that Mikoto was her Queen, the Queen she would read disasters for, the Queen she would fight off wild dogs for, and that she loved her Queen beyond love.

The Queen whose… toes splayed and tickled along the inadvertently offered warmth of Orochi’s cunt.

“M-mikoto…” Orochi gasped. The name had slipped out. Even with the Queen’s Own permission, still it felt wrong to say it. She hadn’t meant it… She… She… She…

“Orochi,” Mikoto whispered, reaching back, squeezing.

With reverence, she began to thrust into the center of the most beautiful, most beloved woman in all of Hoshido. She could smell the lust on her, and for a moment entertained that she was the first woman to touch her so, since all the tragedies. So bolstered, she made sure that she was worshipful, reverent of the woman that protected them all.

But, reverent as she might be, she was still Orochi, and, emboldened, she pushed on her knees backwards, trapping her Queen's legs between her calves. Mikoto was known to be generous, but this generosity was beyond even Orochi's dreams—and she had had many, so very many, even before entering the Queen's service. Years of longing, and of desire, and clenched-fingers-on-blankets and between her own lips, it all rolled up and out of her throat and sang to the night in praise of full, requited love.

Orochi’s eager touch devoured Mikoto’s warmth, slipped over skin a decade younger than hers, still taut and firm with youth. Velvet in texture, and terrifyingly wet. Mikoto’s breath held in her lungs, and her world span round and round. Fresh tears stained her cheeks, and she was bereft of even the scant protection of her ceremonial make-up.

What a horrible thing, to think of yourself as attractive; to be so comely that such a beautiful girl would desire you.

A soft whimper, in her throat, followed, with the gradual build of Orochi inside her body. She fluttered like a blossom on the wind.

"I've been so lonely..." She whispered, shaking. "I've had no one." Her fists squeezing in front of tear-shaken eyes. Welts birthing along her palms. "None but you two, watching over me..." The soft wheeze of her breath, such little energy in her. All these things, the bath, the massage, even the soup—the strength they restored was ultimately facsimile. And here, the Queen knew herself to be weak.

It might have been hard for the curvy, triumphant monster—this bold and brassy woman that called herself Orochi—to hold back, to restrain the ardor that poured forth. But if any force could do that—call her to action, tempt her to arousal, or restrain her completely, or even all three in the same heartbeat, it was the voice of her Queen. She couldn't see those tears, but she could hear them, smell the soft salt in the air permeating the steamy bath. Lust had a heady smell, an overwhelming one, it was true, but lust was pale simulacra—the oil lamp in this chamber, in the face of the full moonlight that streamed from the barred window.

"We love you, my Queen."

The gentle flat of her hand tender against the Queen's rear.

“All of your people do. But we, Reina and I, with all our hearts and our bodies and our souls..."

Her fingers moved in rhythm with her words, providing the strength her fearful, weakened Queen lacked.

"We love you more than life, and we will protect you..."

The heat between her thighs made it hard to speak, hard to think—but that was a retainer's job, was it not? To match her Queen perfectly.

And a diviner's job, to know what she would need.

"We will protect you, and we will love you, and will keep you from such loneliness..." A tear, down her own cheek. "Until your heart is full again." With exquisite gentleness, Orochi's lips found Mikoto's soft, beautiful rear, and placed a sweet promise there. "I so swear it."

"Please..." The queen shivered beneath these many things. The kiss. The caresses. The silken slide of bodies. Her stomach quavered with each breath, her body heat sapped away by the stone, brought down somewhere deep in the earth beneath this holy place, yet infinitely replenished by Orochi above her. "Orochi..." She swallowed... "S-stop..."

And when she did, paralyzed with fear of mistake, Orochi found the face of a wanly smiling Queen beckoning her with the quirk of her lips, and the stains of tears down her cheeks.

She took her by the wrist...

And guided her to spoon her gently, atop the slab. Orochi's full breasts against her back. Their hips met, and molded. And, with fingers entwined, Mikoto slid Orochi's touch down every inch of her trembling stomach.

"Please..." She swallowed. "Tell me I'm still a woman, not just a mother, not just a queen."

Orochi's breath caught in her throat at the request, at the vulnerability of her Queen—no, of this woman, Mikoto, and nothing more—both ferocious and wan against the curve of her belly. She'd given so much...

Orochi's lips kissed through Mikoto's dark fall of hair and then, as though the Queen were a commoner, she gave Mikoto a nip on her neck, and sucked hard on her delicate pale skin, hard enough to leave a faint purple mark behind.

Mikoto gasped. Such impudence!

...well, truthfully the thought never crossed her mind. What better signifier of their common status, of her vulnerability, her morality, than the singing wound upon her neck. Her sex, open and vulnerable, but Orochi had no need to assault it. Merely the clit was enough, as Mikoto's sheepish, fragile gasps echoed through the small bathing chamber, and surely out into the halls and gardens of the shrine—lucky then, there were only two other sets of ears in the whole compound to hear them. The shrine’s priestess was isolated by duty, of course. And Reina? Who would she tell. The only two people she spoke two were in this room.

"As my Queen, you are regal and wise. But as a woman, just like me.” She nearly fainted at the audacity of those words. “You are beautiful. I want you, more than I have wanted anyone, and for so long..." Her forefingers closed on Mikoto's large, pearly clit, tugging gently, her skin lubricated by a Queen's own honey. Gently she massaged Mikoto, working her fast, and faster, almost possessive, as Mikoto's scent suffused the room. "You are a woman." In her mind, she frantically cried MY woman! But she knew some desires better left unsaid—perhaps the saying so would be redundant…

Orochi nipped again, this time at Mikoto's ear. Orochi's curled, thick muff pressed against Mikoto's rear. "We'll love each other as women love each other, Mikoto..." The word was practically blasphemous—but there was no line between mistress and retainer any more. The heat blurred their bodies, their shared passion messing their thighs.

For a Queen, lonely or no, to hear those words…

Mikoto shook in Orochi’s embrace, pawing a hand backwards, linking fingers through thick tresses of Orochi's hair and joining them together as fully as their meager, physical bodies would allow. Relishing the warmth of breasts and body against her back, burrowing back into that comfort, and curling a possessive leg around Orochi's, because her physical trust was not as deep as her mental, and still she feared this escape.

Orochi's fingers, soft from a life of reading cards, caressed Mikoto's clit, her other hand scooping, reinforcing one of Mikoto's large breasts, teasing at her nipple. Her right leg looped over Mikoto's, trapping the woman against her body. What greater symbol of her place could Orochi give her?

Her lips never relented, as though she could transfer her strength into the older woman's body through sharing of heat. Another little purple mark, then another. Purple—it was Orochi's color, after all. The air was thick with desire, and Orochi's hunger finally got the best of her as she began rutting against Mikoto's rear like a beast. Two fingers on the woman's clit, two more roaming fingers between her folds, splaying wide, and reminding her that though a body might be a prison—especially the body of a Queen—it was a body still.

"Cum, Mikoto..." She urged, her lips against the woman's ear, sharing strength and security with words as surely as she did with touch. Fingers broke through, as the barriers of loss and sadness and station crumbled, as Mikoto clenched around Orochi's fingers and grabbed at her hand and tilted her head back and cried up and out, into the night, soaking the black stone beneath them.

For long moments, Orochi held Mikoto there, just listening to the woman's steady breath—stronger now, more vital, than when she'd entered the bath. When Mikoto had recovered enough to move again, she’d said nothing, merely stroking at Orochi’s arm around her stomach, and humming, off-key, a bar or two of some long-forgotten song from a distant memory.

The peaceful lullaby brought a smile to the diviner's lips, before the creeping realization set in of all she'd done.

"My Queen!" She murmured, and reflex tightened her arm around Mikoto’s stomach. “M-my apologies, for..."

Yes, surely… it was only reflex that was to blame, for how closely she held Mikoto to her.

It was only a moment before she realized that exhaustion had claimed Mikoto in full, that she had closed her eyes and fallen asleep in Orochi's arms as if she were some comely maiden overcome by post-martial bliss. She was so peaceful there, asleep with lips parted, and eyes barely closed. The tremors of tension in her body and along her face had stilled, replaced with the serenity of total release.

The diviner held her there, reveling in the feel of Mikoto's warmth, her softness, her weight, sealing these myriad sensations into her mind. Orochi felt as if she were floating on the ocean. She could almost the lap of water at her ears. The smell of saline in her nose. And each swell of Mikoto’s breathing lofted her along the sine of a gentle wave. It was so easy, to fall into these moments. She had imagined many of them already, so many times, and thus she surprisingly comfortable with their passing now, from dream into reality.

But dreams do end, if only temporarily, and after a while, Orochi swam her mind back from that foggy, sea of wonderful fantasy. Carefully, ever-so-carefully, she extracted herself, donned her yukata, and peeked out into the night.

Reina stood by the door, stoic as always.

“I’ve already got her futon prepared,” she intoned. Entering the chamber, she proceeded to wrap the Queen in a robe. The knight lifted her like a treasure, like a bride, and was just past the doors, when she turned her head. "I'll see to the Queen. You...” Reina, a smirk on her scarred face, gave a little sniff of the air and sent Orochi's heart straight into her stomach. “Need a bath."

And with that, Reina and the Queen disappeared into the night, and Orochi slunk towards the tub—then paused.

She could live with the scent of her love, of her Queen, on her for another few minutes.

[burberrycanary]

They sort of break up on February 17 and definitely get back together on March 15. They barely talk between “the Valentine's Day massacre and the ides of the March,” he jokes later, sitting next to her in a booth at Pop’s and hoping that she’ll slide closer to rest her head on his shoulder like she used to.

She doesn’t. But she takes his hand.

Betty strikes a bargain with him in the first week after they’re official again: they won’t celebrate his birthday as long as they start skipping Valentine's Day, too.

It was never about Valentine's Day, he wants to say. But then it was never really about his birthday either.

—

Last week’s snow lingers on the north edges of buildings and in dirty, packed-hard piles near the ends of driveways. Over the last few days the air has lost the worst of its damp, brutal edge. By the trailer park fence, small purple and white flowers spill down the side of rotted out wooden planters abandoned long ago.

He’s walking past the faded Sunnyside Trailer Park sign when his phone vibrates in his pocket. A hot-cold rush coils up tight in his chest when he sees Betty’s name.

Jughead swipes to pick up and says, “Hey.”

Read it on AO3 or below the cut.

I had so many season 2 bughead feels and nowhere to put them so I wrote this. Many thanks to my amazing, amazing betas, @soyforramen and @bewarethesmirk <3333

I Leave This at Your Ear

They sort of break up on February 17 and definitely get back together on March 15. They barely talk between “the Valentine's Day massacre and the ides of the March,” he jokes later, sitting next to her in a booth at Pop’s and hoping that she’ll slide closer to rest her head on his shoulder like she used to.

She doesn’t. But she takes his hand.

Betty strikes a bargain with him in the first week after they’re official again: they won’t celebrate his birthday as long as they start skipping Valentine's Day, too.

It was never about Valentine's Day, he wants to say. But then it was never really about his birthday either.

   Last week’s snow lingers on the north edges of buildings and in dirty, packed-hard piles near the ends of driveways. Over the last few days the air has lost the worst of its damp, brutal edge. By the trailer park fence, small purple and white flowers spill down the side of rotted out wooden planters abandoned long ago.

He’s walking past the faded Sunnyside Trailer Park sign when his phone vibrates in his pocket. A hot-cold rush coils up tight in his chest when he sees Betty’s name.

Jughead swipes to pick up and says, “Hey.”

“Jug.”

He thinks stupidly of repeating, hey, then thinks of asking if she needs something—except he gets a flicker of warning that the question would come out wrong, like she needs a reason to call.

The quiet fumbles along between them. Background noise filters over the line: a confusion of distant voices and a single muffled car horn.

“Practice just finished,” Betty offers. “V’s giving me a ride home. She’s calling a car.”

He's never bothered to work out the details of Veronica’s endless supply of mysterious black cars. They’re just part of the Veronica Lodge brand of magical realism: best simply accepted.

But the oddity catches at him, since Betty has never liked asking for favors and, though it’s cold out, the sky is a clear sweep of blue.

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah, of course.” He can hear Betty blow out a steadying breath. “I took a fall at practice. It's nothing, just a few bruises. I could walk home. I’m okay.”

But her voice is too flat as though, after everything in the last six months, she is no longer calibrated to register this scale of hurt.

“The more you say you're fine, Betts, the less I believe you.”

She gives a short, breathy laugh, the one that tends to land between a giggle and a scoff.

“Jug, I’m fine. The fall looked worse than it was. But if Veronica wants to drop me off at home, she can. She'll feel better.”

Jughead pictures her standing on the top of the steps leading out of Riverdale High in the cool cast of afternoon light, waiting for a car she doesn't want. But then he considers how observant Veronica can be when she isn't distracted and how far Betty will stretch the edges of I’m fine.

What kind of fall looks worse than it is, he wonders.

“You're really all right?”

“Yeah. I was just calling to say hi. Hang on.” Muffled voices overlap and then Betty's back on. “I should go.”

He nods to himself. “Okay. I’ll call you later.”

A silence spins out to fill the space where Betty would have once given an easy hum of agreement or, near the end, one of those mournful I love yous.

He's about to hang up when he hears her voice again.

“Hey, Jug.”

“Yeah?” Another pause stretches out, but this one doesn't feel so heavy. He knocks the side of his boot against the wooden post holding up the trailer park sign.

“This weekend.” She trails off. A choppy truck engine approaches and fades along the unseen road that runs south of the trailer park. “My parents will be gone some. They’re leaving Friday after work.”

Before, inviting her over would have been like nothing. Jughead arranges and listens to the words in his head twice before he can manage, “Want to come over?”

A handful of heartbeats lurch past before Betty gives a quiet, firm, “Yes.”

   He calls her after school on Wednesday from the Red and Black’s office-slash-darkroom, tipping his chair back and staring at the silver coffeemaker she’d brought over that he’d kept on using most school days even when they weren’t talking. He hasn’t turned up any new leads. Nothing about the fundamentals of Southside High has changed and his classes are boring, so he tells her about the new, unexpectedly high brow graffiti that repeats down all the lockers in the main hallway: but is it art? but is it art? but is it art?

Betty doesn’t call on Thursday, but just after eleven she texts him good night with a moon. He watches the typing dots cycle and cycle and then disappear. Nothing else shows up.

  Friday morning she texts: 9:30 ok?

For an insane moment he debates whether he should text back yes, sure or great.

He presses his forehead against the kitchen cabinet door, hard, and goes with a thumbs up emoji.

   She knocks at about quarter to ten. Jughead takes a breath and, after a moment of deliberation, leaves his beanie on the arm of the couch.

When he opens the door, Betty is staring back down the battered steps. The yellow wash of the porch light turns her a little bit golden and her profile is sharply defined against the surrounding dark. He tries not to think too hard about the last time she was here, how that ended, just how many nights he’s wanted to open the door and see her like this.

“Hey, you.”

She looks up and smiles. “I got Pop’s.” She lifts the white takeout bag towards him.

He shoves down saying I love you, because the words would come out as a joke, and closes his fingers over hers instead of taking the bag. He tugs her a step closer. She tips her face up so he bends down and kisses her, thinking the words in a fast, dizzying loop.

She pulls back with one last brush against his mouth and, after a perfectly dragged out pause, says, “It’s just Pop’s.”

Jughead huffs out a laugh, kisses her forehead and takes the grease-spotted white bag.

“Come on in.”

   They eat at the kitchen table off of the paper wrappers. She got him two cheeseburgers, two orders of fries and a strawberry milkshake.

Betty eats her burger fast but picks at her fries as she tells him about school, about the voicemail she got from Polly, about Kevin’s steady hook up and sorta-maybe boyfriend that he’ll talk about only using waspish cynicism or TMI designed to bait her into shutting the topic down.

Betty frowns at her fries like she wants to help Kevin with this problem of being a little fucked up by life and doesn’t know how.

Jughead presses his knee against the side of her leg because she’s already helping more than she knows, but Betty flinches away. “Sorry. Cheerleading.”

The fall.

“I didn’t know it was that bad.”

She shrugs. “I got off pretty easy.”

“‘It could’ve been worse’ wasn’t really the standard I had in mind.”

Betty regards him from across the table and finally says, “Okay.” Only, because she’s Betty Cooper, she has to add, “But I’m—”

“I get it.” He reaches out to steal one of her fries even though he’s not even done with his own yet. “You’re okay.”

She absently tilts her bag of fries towards him a little bit more.

   He gathers up the paper wrappers and empty milkshake cups while Betty gets the small pink gym bag she left by the door.

That tethered draw, which can sometimes pull him in so tight, leads him down the hall after her and deposits him with a shoulder propped against the bathroom door that she’s left open as she unpacks a little transparent travel bag that holds a crinkly green packet of wipes she uses to clean her face, a few small bottles and a toothbrush.

Betty takes off her makeup with a white cloth that leaves her skin faintly pink. She tugs the elastic out of her ponytail and rubs her fingers against her scalp, shaking her hair out into waves that settle around her shoulders. He’d stand here and watch her brush her teeth if that didn’t cross the line between a little weird and full on creepy. So he retreats into the kitchen. He closes his laptop but leaves it charging on the kitchen counter, double-checks the deadbolt and then stalls out in the boxy area between the kitchen, the living room and the front door.

He still has some condoms left from before. He assumes she came over for sex, but—Jughead stares up at the ceiling and thinks, What the fuck do I know?

  He trades places with her in the bathroom to brush his teeth, sliding past her.

When he’s done and opens the door, she’s leaning back against the wall of the narrow hallway, less than two steps away.

All he wants to do is take those couple steps forward, to get back to that lost place where he wouldn’t have thought twice about any of this.

Maybe if she wasn’t banged up, they’d crash into each other with the blurred out rush that comes so easy between them. But what he’s got right now is this: Betty nudging the flannel off his shoulders as he kisses down her neck, Betty tugging his t-shirt up and off as he straightens, Betty staring at his shoulders and chest.

He brings his arms up against the wall to box her in and slows down leaning into her, dragging the motion out so that when he kisses her again she’s smiling a little into the kiss.

Betty’s hands slide down his sides and she tucks her fingers in between his jeans and his hips.

They’re barely even touching and the crazy spun out slowness of what they’re doing twists up how much he wants her tighter and tighter. He thinks he might crawl out of his skin with this frustrated, banked down desire that’s amazing and terrible all at once.

Jughead drops a hand to touch her breast through her sweater and opens his mouth over hers. Her tongue flicks over his lower lip like she knows what he wants but is going to give it to him one piece at a time. And she does bit by bit until at last he’s got her tongue in his mouth and his hand under her shirt and he needs her to not be wearing so many clothes.

He pulls back, skims his hand down the hard curve of her ribs to the edge of her sweater and raises his eyebrows. At her nod he strips off both layers, sweater and cami, and gets his mouth on the soft, warm swell of her breast just above where her bras always cut in a little.

He hears, “Bed. Bed, Juggie, c’mon.” Her voice is pitched so low, rough with how turned on she is, and the sound is like getting kicked in the chest. He wants to scoop her up, his hands under her thighs, her breasts pressed up tight against him, but he remembers her flinch in the kitchen and grabs her hand instead, pulling her back towards his bedroom.

She backs him up against the open door, her lips and then teeth against his jaw, making him lift his chin up for her so she can suck a mark onto his neck. She works at his fly, fumbling because she won’t step away far enough to manage the button on the first go.

He wants her naked—bra, jeans, shoes, panties, all of it. He unclasps and drops her bra, cups both her breasts, pressing in on her nipples because that makes her shoulders draw back and her spine arch.

She uses one foot to push down the stuck leg of her jeans, turning slightly. He sucks in a breath between closed teeth. Dark patches of bruising run from the point of her hip all the way down her right thigh.

Betty kicks her jeans to the side. “It looks worse than it is.”

“You keep saying that,” he reminds her as his hand hovers over her right hip. He settles the pads of his fingers against her black-and-purple skin but she doesn’t tense or flinch. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

Her eyebrows pull together at that.

Betty slides her hands over his stomach and goes up on her toes to press a slow, careful kiss against his mouth.

When she steps back, she nods towards the floor lamp, wanting the lights off. She’s only let him try a few times with more light and each time she’s had trouble coming. He wants to turn on every light in the room, in the whole fucking trailer, to see her spread out naked for him. He can’t understand how she could look like this and find anything to feel self-conscious about. But he reaches over and kills the floor lamp before twisting on the tiny bedside reading light with the dimmer bulb on low.

Jughead sits next to her on the bed and traces his hand up her arm to her shoulder, letting his eyes adjust to the glow of the dialed-back lamp and the fainter light from outside that curls in yellow streaks around the edges of the curtains.

He pulls a condom out from the box tucked under the bed frame and he leaves it on the edge of the bedside table, mostly to reassure her before she has to ask. He kisses her as she sinks onto her elbows, following her down until he’s braced over her and she's lying back on his faded blue-gray sheets.

He takes her in: her pink nipples and pale skin, blonde wavy hair spread out around her face and that gorgeous mouth that he wants to kiss and fuck and have touching his body however she wants and—

She twists and reaches for the side table. The motion creates an amazing dip-flare-curve of her waist to her hip to her ass.

She tears open the packet and rolls the condom on him.

Betty’s hands settle on his hips. Her knees spread for him. And he’s got to kiss her as he leans his weight on one arm and gets between her thighs. He slides his other hand down over her stomach.

Betty shivers under him.

Jesus fucking Christ, he thinks.

He wants to last, to make this so, so good for her. He wants to feel her arch up as her body tightens and flutters around him. But it's been a long goddamn month and he misremembered how unreal getting inside her is, that hot tight slide, how soft and small and strong she feels under him.

Her legs shift up higher around his waist. Her hand cups the back of his neck and her mouth opens for a blur of messy kisses until she’s so far gone all she can do is press her mouth near his. That cut-off edge of a whine creeps into her breathing on the exhales. Her eyes keep fluttering close when he gets the angle just right only to blink back open to watch his face.

And that’s it. He just can't, can’t slow down or hold back. He gets so deep into her, forehead pressed against her cheek, and everything slams through him all at once. He feels, horribly, almost like crying as Betty presses a line of kisses along his temple while her palms smooth up and down his back.

He pulls himself together at least enough to stop shaking while he ties off and tosses the condom, then gets her off with his fingers curled up into her and his thumb on her clit and his tongue in her mouth. He drags one long kiss along her jaw and presses his mouth against the sensitive skin under her chin when she bows up off the bed for him, flushed and lovely and somehow still his.

He leaves his fingers curled inside her, kissing her mouth, her neck, her face, until she nudges him back with a hand on his chest and a funny little lick across his lips that he thinks she expected him to dart back from. But hell, whatever. She can lick him for all he cares.

They pull apart. He wipes his hand on the sheets he’ll have to wash anyway. When she gets up to use the bathroom, her bruised side is a livid smear of deeper color even in the dim room and the shape imprints on his slow, sex-dazed brain like the lingering afterimage of a camera flash in the dark.

Betty slips back under the covers and curls up against him, in his bed, wrapped up in his arms. He can’t bear to put words to the raw mess that opens up inside his chest as he falls asleep pressed close to her again.

  His dreams are strange, but not unhappy.

When he blinks his eyes open, all he’s left with is a jumble of fragmented images that get lost in the morning half-light.

Betty’s palm is fitted against his arm just above his elbow. She’s sitting up with his other pillow between her back and the wall, reading a dog-eared Sam Shepard anthology—The Unseen Hand and Other Plays. He doesn’t know if it’s hers or a library copy.

Betty is wearing the same pale blue sweater as yesterday but has her legs tucked under the blankets for warmth. He watches as she props the spine of the book against her knee and painstakingly turns a page with her thumb.

Under the covers, he slides his hand over to touch the backs of his fingers to the smooth, warm skin of her hip where the line of her panties cuts high up, skimming over the darkest part of the mostly purple bruises.

She blinks and glances down at him, so fucking beautiful with her messy hair and bare face. In the hazy morning light, she looks as soft-edged and irrecoverable as a happy memory.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

He yawns. “Morning.”

She bends down and kisses the corner of his mouth. “You can sleep some more, if you want.”

What he’d like is to make up for last night, maybe even go down on her if she’d let him, but he’s not picking up that vibe from her at all. She seems calm and content. So he shifts forward and presses his face into her side, feeling the warmth of her body through the thin material of her tight sweater, and drifts in and out for a while with her hand slowly moving through his hair.

   They get up around ten, since that’s as late as Betty can stay in bed—a solid hour more than he was expecting.

He dumps grounds and water into the coffeemaker on autopilot.

Leaning her unbruised hip against the counter, Betty tugs the sleeves of her sweater further down over her palms and presses her fingers into the fabric rather than her skin. Her knuckles don’t turn white.

He divides his attention between the coffee brewing and Betty’s loosely closed fists.

Jughead puts one spoonful of sugar in Betty’s coffee and leans over to kiss her with all the aching, torn up softness he’s got left before passing her the mug.

“So.” He pulls back and turns to get his own cup of coffee. “I’ve got eggs or cereal. Without milk.”

He's eaten breakfast at the Coopers often enough, those huge plates of pancakes and bacon and breakfast potatoes served out on complicated matching sets of dishes, to brace himself against the flash of shame that heats the back of his neck. The kitchen around him feels abruptly so alien and he’s hit with the memory of that left-out food and rotting dishes smell from visits over the summer when his dad had hit rock bottom again.

He blinks and the memory vanishes. The kitchen is clean, has been for months now.

“I’ll do eggs, you do toast?” Betty offers.

In the light falling through the gauzy curtains, Betty’s hair glows with that cinematic Grace Kelly magic as she peers into the fridge. He wants to wrap his arms around her and press his face into the long curve of her neck.

“Sure,” he says and reaches for the loaf of Wonder bread.

It’s not really a very equitable division of labor as Jughead puts bread in the toaster but doesn’t push the lever down yet. He slumps back against the counter with his coffee to watch Betty stir the eggs, looking so just like herself in the old blue sweater, tight jeans and ponytail that her bare feet stand out with a vivid underscore.

Timing the toast just right flips into a kind of game as he lets his finger hover above the lever. He takes his best guess.

Betty scrapes the eggs onto two plates and sets the pan in the sink to soak. A moment later the toaster dings.

Close enough.

They eat at the table, his back to the door.

“My parents aren’t at a conference,” Betty says out of nowhere.

He looks up. Betty is frowning and running her thumb along the handle of her fork. The stamped metal silverware has sharply defined edges and she’s pressing hard enough to turn her skin white. He touches the back of her hand and laces their fingers together so that their joints form an interlocking row.

Jughead watches her face and waits.

At last, Betty laughs, a hard, unhappy sound. “There just aren’t that many journalistic retreats in Rockland County, Jug. I think it’s become a sort of dare to her, a game of chicken, how crazy of a retreat she can come up with.”

“You know where they really went?”

Betty shakes her head and squeezes his fingers before pulling her hand away. He goes back to eating while she pushes her eggs around on her plate.

Betty swaps their plates as soon as he’s finished and he eats most of her breakfast, too.

Waste not, want not as his mom used to say with that lost, angry look in her eyes.

He washes the plates and egg pan while Betty showers. He probably should, too, once she’s done.

He isn’t going to. He doesn’t even bother to call himself out on why. He pulls on a clean sweater and jeans with ripped out knees that make Betty’s eyes drift down with the occasional distracted glance as she bites her lower lip. He doesn't know if it’s just the look or if the torn fabric makes her think of what he’d get down on his knees to do for her.

The shower cuts off.

   “Want to watch a movie?” Betty asks from the living room. She’s already got his laptop on the coffee table with the power cord plugged behind the couch.

She knows he’s going to say, “Yes.” What she may not know is that he’s going to spend a good ten minutes kissing her first with her settled warm and close in his lap.

He pulls away enough to stare up at her but leaves his hands spread out along her lower back under her shirt. Betty plays with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“So what’s the shortlist, Film Snob?”

You pick three, I choose. He can’t even remember when that became their movie thing.

He thinks of that dog-eared copy of Sam Shepard, of Betty turning the page with one hand. How her wrist pressed against the open page to pin the book in place. How he briefly lost all this.

“Okay. Blade Runner, Maltese Falcon or Chinatown?”

Betty tilts her head and her eyes go a little unfocused as she weighs the options.

With a shrug she says, “Chinatown,” and shifts off his lap to curl up against his side as he reaches for his computer.

   Roman Polanski may be a piece of shit but Jughead can’t bring himself to stop loving this movie.

   Halfway through, Betty takes his hand. As she skims the tips of her fingers along the side of his thumb, her gaze catches on the series of bad, mostly-healed cuts. But she presses her lips together in a tight line and looks back at Jack Nicolson driving through the claustrophobic Hitchcockian orange groves with that ugly white bandage on his nose.

“Betty. Ask me.”

Her eyebrows shoot up and she turns towards him, gazing up at him with those huge, sucker-punch eyes. She doesn't say anything for a beat, like she’s waiting to see if he’ll snatch the words back.

Her eyes drift over his face before she says, “How’d it happen?”

“I had to knock glass out of a broken window. Wrapping your hand in a shirt works a lot better in the movies.”

Her thumb slides just below the deepest cut. “Most things do.”

The wry twist to her voice makes his chest contract with a ripple of unexpected laughter.

“Why were you knocking glass out of a window, Juggie?”

He goes still.

You don’t get do-overs. Jughead knows this. But you can fuck the same thing up over and over and over again until there’s nothing left for you to love or fuck up or even walk away from.

“‘Cause that was the safest way out. Ghoulies were upstairs. We—” He forces himself past the pause. “Sweet Pea, Toni and I were snooping around somewhere. We didn’t want to get caught.”

Betty nods once. He braces himself for more questions—for his stubborn, ruthless Betty to pull the whole story out of him. But all she says is, “I’m glad you got out all right.”

After so long evading first her questions and then more and more often evading her, he shouldn’t feel this sour rush of disappointment when she lets the rest go that easily.

On the laptop screen, Jack Nicholson is knocked out and there’s no objective, god’s-eye view. He’s knocked out and takes the audience with him as the camera fades to black.

   The movie lurches through its flurry of final revelations that go nowhere and hurt the wrong people as the powers that be churn indifferently forward.

  The credits blur past.

“Want to watch another?” Betty asks, sitting up to stretch out her spine in a rolling curve.

He kisses the high point of her shoulder and thinks, Man up and take the chance. Moving slow enough to telegraph his intent, so she can stop him without forcing her to make a big deal out of it, he shifts forward and kneels in front of her. He tugs her to the edge of the couch with his hands cupped behind her knees, watching her face to see if she’ll go for this or if she’ll turn him down.

A dark pink blush spreads over her cheeks and across her forehead. Her eyes go wide but she doesn’t look away or tense up or ask him to stop.

   They have sex on the floor in front of the couch because he was feeling lucky enough to slip a condom into his back pocket.

The come down lingers. Sunlight slants in through the gaps where the curtains aren’t drawn together. His knees ache a little from the carpet and his forehead rests on Betty’s shoulder. Her hands can be so gentle sometimes that he short-circuits and all this hurts.

Betty draws his face up and kisses him like she wants him again even though he hasn’t even pulled out of her yet.

He deals with the condom and they stumble towards the bedroom, only to get hung up kissing in the kitchen because Betty sitting on the table puts their mouths at just the same level.

Back in his room, she shoves him down on the bed and they fuck again. He falls asleep with his face pressed against Betty’s neck as she traces meandering lines along the arm he’s wrapped tight around her waist.

  A little after four, Betty repacks her small pink gym bag, including the toothbrush, because the world is heartless and requires that she do things beyond have sex in this trailer.

Jughead leans his shoulder against the narrow span of wall next to the front door and stares at Betty's mouth, glancing up to catch the soft, bright look in her eyes, and waits for Betty to kiss him.

Her fingertips land against his cheek. He leans forward into her touch.

[centeris2]

Chapter 10: Do You Wanna Catch a Mermaid?

When Kili returned from a stint at sea, he was pleased to hear the number of sightings of the mysterious red sea monster had dropped. He took that as a sign that she was being more careful, and it seemed that interest in the creature was finally dying out. He did not see any reporters or any of the scientists during his few days on shore, and he was grateful for that.

The first day after he had gotten back, Tauriel was nowhere to be found. He was both glad she was staying away, but also sad that she wasn’t around. The next day was the same, but the third day proved better. Fili claimed he was what had brought them luck, as he had joined his brother on the third trip out to find her.

Tauriel was happy to see them, and presented them with gifts as she always did: an odd lump of something completely covered in barnacles and other sea materials for Kili, and a smooth rock with markings scratched into it for Fili. When they cleaned off the lump later that night they found an old pocket watch, no doubt washed overboard or from a wreck.

This time they had a surprise for her though, and she was delighted to see things from their world. For hours they were entertained by throwing a Frisbee out over the water, Tauriel chasing and leaping from the waves to catch it with either her mouth or her hands, and when they tired of that they flew a kite. Based on the excited chirps from Tauriel they decided that she was enjoying herself immensely. As night fell they showed her one last thing before they headed back home: a candle. She didn’t squeak or flick her tail in excitement, instead she grew still, staring at the flame once they had lit the wick. She was fascinated, studying it, reaching for it carefully to feel the heat, but avoided touching it. With clouds overhead, there weren’t any stars to see, so she was content to watch the flame dance as the candle slowly burned down. Kili and Fili entertained themselves by studying her in turn, particularly the dots of light that were easier to see in the darkness of night. When the candle had burned itself out they bid her farewell and returned to shore.

“I wonder if it can be repaired,” Kili mused to himself a few days later, looking at the watch Tauriel had given him. Fili, in turn, had some of the rocks that Tauriel had given to them and was studying them. Dolly knew them well enough to not ask about why they had so much random stuff out on the table they were eating at, but she still raised an eyebrow when she brought them their food.

“Take it to a shop and see, maybe a pawn shop or a jeweler could do it? Have you noticed the scratches on these rocks?” Fili asked, comparing two rocks in his hands. Kili pocketed the watch for later, looking at Fili’s hand.

“Yeah, what about them?”

“Is she etching into the rocks? They look like letters or something,” Fili pondered, indicating to the two in his hand, “notice how some of the markings are the same?”

“I hadn’t until just now,” Kili admitted, now looking closely at the rocks Fili and brought along. He had looked at all of them before, but never compared them to one another. Seeing them side by side, he did notice repetitions in the markings.

“A written language?” Kili asked, not that his brother would be able to answer.

“’Lil Durinsons!” the booming voice startled them out of their conversation, and they looked up to see Greg Radake beaming down at them.

“Hey, Radake, heard you’ve been doing well this season,” Fili greeted the older fisher, wondering what had brought him over to their table but offered him a seat.

“I was, but now my little helper is gone!” he explained, taking the seat next to Kili.

“Your… little helper? You had a greenhorn on board?” Kili asked, not remembering hearing that. He knew a few of the captains had taken on new crewmen this season, but didn’t realize Radake had one as well. Radake shook his head and nudged Kili.

“Not after last season, I mean your mermaid!” Kili paled and Fili glanced between them quickly, nervous.

“Mermaid?” Kili managed to ask, trying to think of when someone might have seen him and Tauriel together. Had he been followed and not noticed it somehow? Had someone taken a joy ride in a plane and flown over and seen them?

“That human barracuda you told me about. At first I thought it was going after my fish, but then I realized the thing was herding the fish closer to me! Like those dolphins around Mexico or somewhere down there,” Radake explained, nudging Kili again with a grin.

“Did you ever find that mermaid after I pointed to that old map?” he asked when Kili did not immediately respond.

“Ah, no, I didn’t actually,” Kili finally recovered enough to speak and Radake laughed, thumping him on the back.

“Guess the red devil took a shine to me! Wonder where that big eel got off too. I thought for sure you knew where it was, what with those brats claiming the mermaid that saved them had said your name or something darn close,” the veteran fisher wondered out loud and Kili glanced at Fili before looking back at the older man.

“Did they hear her say my name?” he remembered overhearing them talking, but he thought he heard them not remember what she had said properly.

“I heard ‘em talking and dropped your name, they said it sounded right,” Kili’s stomach tightened.

“Well they were also stupid enough to be caught out on the ocean in a speed boat before a storm, they probably got banged up and don’t have the sharpest memories anymore,” Kili pointed out, trying to figure a way out of this mess. Lucky for him, Collin and Bran walked over. Kili was happy to see them together again, the past few months had been awkward but whatever was going on between them had slowly been worked out.

“’Sup?” Bran said with a wide grin.

“I’ll leave you youngsters to your shenanigans,” Radake said, standing up and moving so that the two younger men could sit down.

“Alright, old man, don’t bust a hip!” Fili retorted, to which the older man gave a hearty chuckle and a final wave.

“You collect rocks now?” Collin asked once the four were seated and settled. Kili and Fili looked down at the rocks, forgetting that they had them out on the table still.

“Something like that,” Kili replied while Fili shoved them back into his bag. Bran gave them a perplexed look and Collin simply shrugged it off.

“I see you’ve taken up a new hair style,” Bran commented, touching the braids in Kili’s hair.

“Well if the Vikings wore braids, so can I,” Kili said in defense, Fili snorting a laugh into his hand before he changed the conversation.

“Haven’t seen you guys in a while, you’ve been working other ships?” Fili asked and the two nodded.

“Sally needed someone to replace their greenhorn from last season,” Collin explained, and Bran gave a more pointed look to Kili.

“Got something to ask you, Fili you’re invited too,” he added with a glance to Fili, “do you want to go out again?”

“Out where?” Kili asked after a moment of not understanding.

“With the marine biologists, Dr. Yandell told me Dr. Mazziotta thought they might be getting more funding, which means they can finish repairs on the sub and go back out,” Bran elaborated and Kili shook his head.

“No way. I’m not getting into one of those things again,” Kili shook his head, not only did he not want to be in a submarine again, he also didn’t want to be involved with trying to find Tauriel with them.

“Not even to try to find those things again? We’d be rich and famous if we brought back a live mermaid!” Bran tried to entice his friend, but Kili continued to shake his head.

“Well, when Collin and me are rich and famous we’ll get you a car or something,” Bran said with a shrug, respecting Kili’s refusal.

“What about you, Fili? Want to catch a mermaid and be on national tv?” Collin asked. Fili, like his brother, shook his head.

“I’m okay earning a living here, not chasing sea creatures,” Fili replied before moving the conversation in a different direction before Kili started shaking from nerves, “didn’t something exciting happen on Sal’s ship?”

“Oh shit!” Collin started with a laugh, “so first we get out there and turns out someone hadn’t refueled the ship, so Sal was livid-“ Collin recounted the tale of the last few weeks of his life, Kili giving his brother an appreciative glance. He tried to pay attention to his friends, but now he was second guessing himself. If he went out with them, he might be able to sabotage their efforts of finding Tauriel, or any other of her kind. But the thought of getting back into a submarine made him break out in a cold sweat. Whenever he thought about being in the submarine again, he just remembered the walls closing in, the banging and the pressure and the cold realization that he was going to die. Even though he had survived, he didn’t think he could ever get into a vessel like that again.

[jimins-crooked-tooth]

Apartment 504 - Chapter 1

Summary:

Mark eyed the glass in Jackson’s hand and hesitated.  He didn’t know this man. The only time he’d ever talked to him was once when Jackson was intoxicated past the point of coherence, and once after both had returned home at the same time. This man was so loud, so sporadic, so unpredictable, and so unlike anyone Mark would ever want to be around.

But still, after a timid look into Jackson’s hopeful brown eyes, Mark met Jackson’s glass midway, the clink of glass and a shared smile between the two kicking off the start of the night.

More Chapters

[Chapter 1]  [Chapter 2]  [Chapter 3]  [Chapter 4]

Also read on Archive Of Our Own:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/11292225/chapters/25263081

Growing up, Mark was a shy kid.  Throughout all his years in school he was the student who sat in the back of the classroom listening, observing, absorbing. That’s not to say he wasn’t an excellent student, because he was—A’s and B’s year after year; he just wasn’t one to raise his hand to answer questions in class or get involved in student council or drama club like the rest of his fellow classmates.  He liked alone time—in fact, he thrived off alone time.  His parents were always getting on him about “putting himself out there” and “trying new things” and “meeting new people” but that wasn’t the type of person Mark was.  He was much more content sticking to being an introvert.

However, Mark’s introverted tendencies sometimes posed problems for him. Social situations were often a struggle for him to persevere. For instance: parties? Definitely not Mark’s thing. He would prefer to be cooped up in his bedroom playing video games, watching movies, listening to music, or catching up on some much-needed sleep instead.  Mark and people were like peanut butter and pickles—they didn’t quite go together.

But while Mark had never been much of a people-person, a couple of years ago in high school he had managed to befriend someone (or rather be befriended by someone).  It was during Mark’s second year of high school when he met Jinyoung in World History class.  History wasn’t one of his strongest subjects, so he tended to avoid those classes at all costs, but he needed a certain amount of history credits in order to graduate and he wanted to get them done early in his high school career rather than later.

It was the end of the school day and history was his second to last class that semester.  For whatever reason, this particular time period that the class was learning about was confusing the absolute hell out of Mark and it was really beginning to take a toll on his grades and his mental state.  He spent hours every night reading through his textbook and trying to find information for his homework online, but it was no use—he just wasn’t retaining any of what he was learning.  A unit test in the class was quickly-approaching and his lack of understanding was going to be of no use to him when it came time to take the test. He was frustrated to say the least.

At the end of class, he stared blankly down at the study-guide in front of him, fingers laced through his dark hair pulling harshly at the roots. “Tug any harder and your hair might fall out,” a quiet voice said from his right. It took Mark a moment to realize the comment was directed at him and he quickly glimpsed to the side to meet his classmate’s dark brown eyes squinted slightly in amusement.  He huffed and turned back to his paper that mocked him more and more the longer he stared.  He ignored the quick screech of chair legs sliding against tile floor as the boy to his right pulled his seat closer to Mark’s desk.  “Anything I can help with?” he asked.

“Sure. Take my test for me this Friday?” The boy beside him chuckled a bit under his breath, clearly unaware of how serious Mark was being and how desperate he actually was.

“Hm, I’m not sure that’s something I can help with.”

“Then, I’m not interested.” Mark’s words came out a bit harsher than intended and he immediately felt a pang of guilt in his gut. “Sorry,” he sighed, relaxing his shoulders a bit and leaning back sluggishly into his chair.  “Just a little frustrated and a lot confused.”

“It’s okay,” the boy said. “I get it. Tensions are high and this is a hard unit.” Mark nodded in agreement and clicked the pen in his hand absentmindedly.  The bell rang overhead, startling Mark slightly. Usually Mark spend the majority of the class staring at the clock on the wall above the classroom door, waiting for the period to end, but this encounter with his classmate distracted him from the task, causing the loud ring to make his heart jump momentarily.

Mark stood up and began packing up his belongings to head to his last class of the day, but was stopped when a hand was placed on his textbook before he could pick it up.

“Before you go,” the boy started, “I’m pretty good at history and I have a good grasp on this unit. Why don’t we meet up and study before the test?”

Mark’s eyes widened a bit at his words.  This had never happened before.  Mark was an introvert.  That meant he didn’t talk to people, and people didn’t talk to him.  He’d said a total of twelve words to this boy, so what made him think he’d be willing to meet up face-to-face to study?

Mark swallowed and stared blankly at the boy before him. “Um…”

“Here,” the boy said, placing his phone in Mark’s hand.  “Put your number in and I’ll let you know when I’m free this week.” Reluctantly, Mark typed his number into his classmate’s phone and handed it back to him when he finished.

“Mark, huh?” the boy said, eyes skimming over the contents of his phone screen. “I’m Jinyoung. I’d shake your hand but my arms are a bit full,” he said, eyes flicking down to the books clutched against his chest.  “Anyway, talk to you later. Try not to detach the hair from your head.” And just like that, Mark left World History class for the ump-tieth time that semester, only this time, with a classmate’s phone number and the potential of a first real friend.

. . .

“MARK! COME HELP ME WITH THIS GODDAMN TABLE!” Jinyoung yelled from the front room.  Mark tossed his notebook onto his bed and rushed down the short hallway to the front door where Jinyoung stood holding a solid wood table, arms straining to keep a grip. Mark hurried over to him and lifted some of the table’s weight off of Jinyoung’s arms, helping to set it down in the middle of the living room floor in front of their black leather couch.

“Christ,” Jinyoung panted, massaging his shoulder with one hand and wiping the sweat from his forehead with the other.  “My arms feel like they’re about to fall off.”

“Maybe this is your sign to start working out,” Mark winked, dodging the incoming swat aimed for his chest. “No, but seriously. Why didn’t you just wait for me to come down before bringing this up?” he asked, gesturing towards the coffee table at his feet.

“Maybe because you were dilly-dallying while I was actually trying to get shit done,” Jinyoung huffed, rolling up his sleeves.  “But we’re done now.  Everything’s all moved in, so we may as well start unpacking.”

“Way ahead of you,” Mark said, side-stepping Jinyoung and stalking back down the hallway to his new room.  His friend walked up behind him, peeking over his shoulder to glimpse into the bedroom. The floor was flooded with things—clothing, shoes, boxes, school supplies, and just about anything else imaginable.

“So, while I was downstairs moving all the heavy furniture, you decided to unpack all your things?” Mark shrugged and picked up the notebook on his bed. “Figures,” Jinyoung muttered, exiting the room, and leaving Mark to his own devices.  He skimmed over the contents of his notebook, occasionally crossing things out as he found them in the pile of things strewn messily all over his bedroom floor.

Over the next couple hours, Mark spent his time arranging his room, moving furniture, hanging pictures on walls, organizing his closet, and putting away all his belongings in dressers and on shelves.  As he was finishing up, a knock sounded on his door, followed by the familiar face of his roommate.

“Looks good,” Jinyoung complimented, eyes scanning the room and nodding approvingly.  “I just finished my room.  Why don’t we work on the living room?”

Mark stood, brushing his sweaty palms off on his knees and followed Jinyoung out of his bedroom. The transition from the one room to the next was quite stressful to say the least.  Mark had just finished getting his bedroom put together, satisfied with the outcome, only to walk into the living room to see boxes stacked tall and furniture scattered about.  He breathed a sigh and closed his eyes momentarily, already beginning to dread the new task at hand.

A loud thump sounded outside their front door followed by a voice shouting, “GYEOMIE, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? TURN THE GODDAMN SOFA.” Mark opened his eyes and turned to face his roommate who was already mirroring Mark’s confused expression.

“I’M DOING THE BEST I CAN. WOULD YOU SHUT UP FOR FIVE SECONDS AND LET ME FOCUS?”

A moment passed with more yelling and bickering. It seemed to peak Jinyoung’s interest because he approached the front door and opened it slightly to peer out into the hallway. “Do you guys need some help?”  There was a brief exchange of words before Jinyoung waved Mark over to the door, asking him to come out and help. Mark rounded the corner to see two boys, both equally frustrated, standing in the hallway, a couch turned upside down between them. The boy closest to Mark had stark black hair, sweaty bangs brushing across his forehead and complimenting his deep brown irises.  Mark’s eyes were drawn to the boy’s prominent cheek bones and porcelain skin, a freckle dotted about an inch below his right eye.  His height was something Mark envied, something Mark wished he had. Looking down the hallway on the other side of the couch, stood a younger-looking boy with sandy-brown hair and tan skin. His cheeks were much fuller than the other’s and his lips were plump and pursed.

“This asshole,” the boy furthest away started, gesturing towards the other one, “doesn’t know how to follow simple instructions.”

The taller one rolled his eyes and groaned. “Bam, this hallway is too damn narrow to move the couch like this! It’s not my fault it’s not working!”

“Here, we can help,” Jinyoung interjected, already reaching out to grab one end of the sofa.

Mark and Jinyoung helped the two maneuver the couch down the rest of the hallway and through the door of the apartment across the hall from them.  After setting it down in the middle of the living room floor, Jinyoung offered his and Mark’s help in assisting the pair to move the rest of their large furniture inside.  Mark sent Jinyoung a look that said, “Seriously?” and his roommate shot him one back that he could only imagine meant, “Don’t be a douche.”

So, a half hour later of moving more heavy furniture than Mark would have liked to have moved, the two residents across the hall thanked him and Jinyoung for their time and energy spent helping them move in.  Mark had come to find that the tall boy with dark hair’s name was Yugyeom and his roommate’s name—well, rather nickname—was Bambam. The two were first-year college students, Yugyeom majoring in dance and choreography and Bambam majoring in fashion design.  Mark was a bit surprised that the two were moving into an apartment so early in their college careers rather than a dorm, but according to Yugyeom, the two had been saving up money from their jobs over the past couple years to afford off-campus living.

“I’m not really into the whole shared bathrooms and showers thing,” Bambam explained. “I’d rather just pay more money to have my own space.”  Mark understood as he, too, hated living in a dorm his first year of college.  There was so little privacy and space and everything was shared and there were always too many people around and, ugh, Mark hated it.  But now he didn’t have to worry about any of that. He and Jinyoung had finally moved into their own place where they had ample room to live and more privacy in one room than in an entire dorm put together.

“They seem nice,” Jinyoung said, closing the front door behind Mark.  Mark shrugged and headed over to the counter bar to unpack one of the multiple unopened boxes.  “You don’t get an opinion, Mark.  You don’t like anyone.”

Mark tsked. “It’s not that I don’t like anyone, it’s just that I prefer to be alone.”

“Or with me,” Jinyoung added.

“Yeah, or with you,” Mark smiled.  He spun around on his heels slowly and took in the sight of the disheveled living room, sighing once again before sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room.  He looked up at his roommate standing in the doorway and patted the spot beside him on the floor. “This place isn’t going to unpack itself.”

. . .

Mark’s eyes drooped tiredly as he yawned and pulled the blanket on his lap up over his shoulders.  The light from the television screen flickered in the dark room, illuminating the space enough to maneuver through the living room with little hassle.  Mark glimpsed at a sleeping Jinyoung sprawled out on the couch perpendicular to him and gently nudged him with his foot.

“Jinyoungie. Wake up. You’re going to wake up tomorrow with a sore back if you sleep here tonight.” Jinyoung grunted in annoyance and rubbed his eyes with his palms.  It took him a couple minutes to fully get up and walk to his room to prepare for bed, Mark following close behind.  Mark changed into an old pair of sweatpants and stumbled into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

As he made his way into the kitchen to grab a glass of water, he heard a pair of keys jingle outside their door, followed by a long string of curse words.  Mark turned off the kitchen faucet to listen more carefully, taking the toothbrush out of his mouth and setting it on the counter to approach the front door.  The jingling of keys ceased, and a loud knocking on the door ensued.  Who the hell comes to someone’s door at one o’clock in the morning.

“Jaebummieee,” a raspy voice slurred on the other side of the door. “Open uuup.”  After a series of more knocks, a very puzzled Mark opened the door, peaking out only to meet the most beautiful pair of brown eyes he swore he’d ever seen. “You’re not Jaebummie,” the stranger said.

“Uh, no.  I’m not,” Mark said, blatantly, avoiding the eyes of the man standing before him.  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Um, I live here,” the man stated matter-of-fact, stumbling a bit over his own two feet.

Mark opened the door a little wider, stepping into the light of the hallway and looking in each direction for some sort of explanation. “Uh, no, I think you’re a bit confused,” Mark stated.  “My roommate and I just moved in today.  I’m certain this is our apartment.”

“Hm.” The man thought for a moment, supporting his weight on the doorframe as he swayed back and forth.  “Okay. I’ll go find my apartment, then,” he said with confidence.  He took a couple steps in the direction (Mark assumed) he came from and watched as his legs betrayed his body, giving out every couple steps and making it very difficult for him to walk down the long corridor.  He stopped about two doors down from Mark’s apartment before bracing himself with one hand on the wall, doubling over, and retching all over the floor.

“Jesus Christ,” Mark muttered under his breath, leaning his shoulder into the doorframe and massaging his temples. This man is a mess. But as much as he disliked confrontation, this man was obviously incredibly disoriented and extremely intoxicated.  Mark would hate to find out later if something happened to him on his quest to ‘find his apartment.’

Mark walked down the hallway and rested a hand on the stranger’s shoulder as he wiped his mouth with his hand. “Come inside,” Mark said, a dash of annoyance clear in his voice. “I’ll help you find your apartment.”

Mark guided the man inside, closing the door behind him, and lead the two of them into the bathroom.  Jinyoung exited his room and ran into the pair mid-way to their destination, eyes wide in surprise.

“Who is this? What are you doing?”

“I’ll explain later,” Mark huffed as the stranger’s weight seemed to increase with each step they took.  By the time Mark got him to the bathroom, he was practically carrying him.  He set him down in front of the toilet and shoved his head over the bowl for the man to continue his hurling, only this time, not in the middle of the goddamn hallway.

Jinyoung watched the events unraveling before him half in disgust, half in just utter confusion. “Uhhh, okay. Let me know if you need anything, I guess.” Mark nodded and Jinyoung headed back to his bedroom, leaving Mark and this… person alone. As the man heaved into the toilet, the undeniable scent of sour liquor lingered in the air, making Mark want to gag. He took a minute to get away from the stench, walking to the kitchen to pour a glass of water for the person in his bathroom. Upon reentering the room, he noticed the man was no longer regurgitating alcohol and instead had his face pressed tiredly to the porcelain toilet seat.

“Here.” Mark handed him the water and a damp washcloth before taking a seat on the ledge of the bathtub.  He watched the man down small sips of water, wiping his mouth with the cloth after each little sip.

“Thank you,” he breathed, seemingly a lot more sober now than he was before.

Mark nodded and shifted uncomfortably. “So, um, do you, like, have somebody I could call to come and get you?” The stranger handed Mark his phone and said, “Jaebummie,” before laying his head back down on the toilet seat and closing his eyes, one arm holding his stomach. Mark scrolled through the contacts on his phone until he found the name he was looking for. Upon calling, a concerned voice answered.

“Jackson, where the fuck are you?” said the person on the other end. “Youngjae and I have been looking all over the goddamn planet for you.”

Mark cleared his throat awkwardly and ran a hand through his hair, unsure of how to handle the situation.  “Um, hi, so, uh, I’m not Jackson, but I guess this person with me is.” He glimpsed down at the sobering man on his bathroom floor, cheek pressed heavily against the toilet.

“Wait, what? Who is this?”

“Um, well, my name’s Mark but, uh, this guy came to my door, saying it was his apartment, but it’s not, and, well, um,” Mark met the stranger’s brown eyes again, “now he’s on my bathroom floor.”

The man on the other end of the line groaned. “Goddamn it, Jackson,” he cursed. “I’m sincerely sorry about all of this.” Jaebum apologized. “Will you text me your address so I can come get him?”

Mark sat awkwardly on the side of the tub for a few minutes after texting this Jaebum person his and Jinyoung’s address, intentionally avoiding the gaze of the other person in the room.  He cleared his throat and twiddled his fingers absentmindedly, hoping this Jackson person’s friend would get here quickly so he could get out of this extremely uncomfortable situation and finally go to bed.

“Your name is Mark?” the stranger asked, sitting up slightly to adjust his posture before resting his cheek back on the seat.  Mark nodded and waited for the man to say something else so he wouldn’t have to. “It’s not a very Korean name,” he added.

“Neither is Jackson,” he replied, wiping his sweaty palms on his t-shirt before he realized he wasn’t wearing one. Embarrassment washed over him and he crossed his arms over his stomach, hoping the man in front of him couldn’t sense his discomfort.

“Touché,” Jackson snickered, lips turning up into a gentle smile and dark brown eyes meeting Mark’s again.  “You’re cute,” he said, and Mark’s heart skipped a little in his chest.

“Oh, um, what?” he stumbled, thinking he’d heard him wrong.

“I said I think you’re cute,” Jackson grinned.  

“Oh, o-okay. Thanks, I guess…” he trailed off, looking down at his lap to avoid further eye-contact, even more intimidated now by the other’s forwardness. Mark racked his brain for an explanation as to why he brought this man into his apartment when he easily could have just closed the door and gone about his business, but he found none.

A good ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door and Mark went to answer it.  He was greeted by a tired face, the look of a man who’d just had enough.  “Are you Mark?” he asked and Mark nodded. “Hi, I’m Jaebum.  You talked to me on the phone.  I’m honestly so sorry about this.  Where is he?  I’ll get him out of your hair.”

“Oh, uh, this way,” Mark said, waving Jaebum inside and leading him to where a blacked-out Jackson lay unconscious on the bathroom floor.

“Fuck, Jackson,” Jaebum sighed, scratching the back of his neck, and squatting in front of a comatose Jackson.  “He just got back yesterday from a summer trip to see his family in China, so my other roommate and some of our friends threw him a welcome home party.  Looks like that’s never happening again.” He looked up at Mark.  “Thanks for taking care of him until I got here.  We seriously owe you one.”

Mark waved him off. “It’s not a big deal.  I just didn’t want him walking out into traffic drunk or something while he looked for his apartment.”

Jaebum laughed a little under his breath.  “Well, he wasn’t too far off from finding it,” Jaebum said.  Mark sent him a confused look and he added.  “We live right next door.”

omg okay so welcome to my first markson fic. let me know what you all think! xoxo

-mia <3

[ricepips-blog]

60 Minute Makeover

(I apologise for the length, I've been distracted today and I've just decided to throw this out there...) 60 minute make over Tom Paris creates another new idea to keep staff motivation at a high. Whilst scrolling through the ship's archives, he comes across an Ancient Earth TV programme called "60 minute make over" The premise is simple. A house is chosen (usually with a family in desperate circumstances) and a team move in and redesign their home in less than 60 minutes. Tom watches hours of episodes and he is hooked. He decides it would be great for the crew to attempt to redesign a fellow crewmates quarters in 60 minutes. The Captain agrees and names are randomly assigned to everyone taking part. Paris and Torres, sneakily fix some of the results, purely for the opportunity of betting it would encourage. Harry gets Seven Seven gets Tuvok . Tuvok gets Harry. Neelix gets the Doctor. The Doctor gets Neelix. Paris gets B'Elanna (she scowls at him for this) B'Elanna gets Tom (she punches his arm for this!) Chakotay gets Janeway. Janeway gets Chakotay. To his credit, Tom hides his amusement well, though he quickly bangs out a selectively crew wide betting pool entitled "Will he search her knicker drawer?" Harry shocks everyone with a resounding message,"Or just her knickers?" Tom reprimands the young ensign, he reminds him that vulgarity never gets anyone laid. The date is set for the challenge the following Saturday and everyone is abuzz with their plans and designs. Some people worriedly mention their least favoured colours and materials whilst others are just excited to see everyone's reactions. Chakotay is quietly confident he knows Kathryn well enough to redesign her quarters in a way that will make her happy. During their weekly dinner, she presses him to reveal his ideas, flirting outrageously over the wine and candles laid out on the table. Chakotay merely smiles coyly and tells her she will have to wait and find out. Kathryn's frustration with him grows and she even tries to order him into telling her. Chakotay laughs at her and moving into her personal space as he leaves her quarters merely whispering a, "Goodnight, Kathryn" his breath gently blowing the tendrils of her loosened hair around her ears. She groans in frustration as the door closes. The truth is, she wishes she hadn't signed up for this stupid challenge. She has literally no idea what to do with Chakotay's quarters (except sleep there, she thinks) and is worried about what will happen in the challenge when she stands there like an idiot with nothing to offer. She's also slightly angry with him for agreeing to take part in the first place. Why does he want his quarters redesigning when he's already got them perfect (in her eyes) anyway? Damn him and his irritating smile! Saturday dawns and the challenge begins. Everyone involved rushes around to the quarters they are redesigning, uniforms discarded in favour of work clothes. Over the ship's system, the computer merrily chirps the start of the competition. Tom is elaborate with his designs. There's lots of bright colours and cheap plastic involved, the replicator whirring happily with each command. He plays loud 20th century pop music to aid his creative juices. B'Elanna is brutal in her work. She attacks each wall with gusto, cursing in Klingon as she goes. She makes use of paint and her hypospanner and brutally punishes Tom's quarters. Harry works with shaky hands, taking time and care with his efforts. During the replication of his materials, he also replicates a protective vest in case Seven resents his troubles. Seven is methodical. She completes the task in 26 minutes and 25 seconds and is back at Astrometrics by 30 minutes. Tuvok is contemplative. He works with calmness and practicality. He too completes the task within the required 60 minutes and indulges himself in some meditation. Chakotay gets straight to work. He has stepped down to trousers only and he works solidly. He's planned all week and though not part of the rules, has been preparing things in advance. He approaches the task with love and affection, every detail carefully thought out. As the end of the challenge approaches, he adds the finishing touches and feels a warm swell of satisfaction. He's certain Kathryn will love it. Kathryn meanwhile has stood in the centre of Chakotay's quarters for 24 minutes looking lost. Finally, inspiration strikes. With a mad dash she races around, flustered and stressed and just makes it in time. Everyone reconvenes on the bridge and Tom leads the way to explore each creation. Harry's efforts are first up. The doors to the Cargo bay and Seven's accommodation swish open to reveal....pink. Everything is garish pink, right down to Seven's regeneration pod which is delicately adorned with fluffy pink lights. Seven raises an eyebrow. "The colour is offensive." she states. Harry's face falls, "I thought a bit of colour might brighten it up." Seven realises her reaction was perhaps not in keeping with her humanising lessons and she forces herself to add, "I'll adapt. I thank you." Tom whistles at Seven's restrained reaction and smirks at Harry, mouthing, "Pink?!" at him. Harry turns a dark shade of red and shuffles his feet. Tuvoks quarters are next. Seven leads the way with purposeful strides. As the door opens there are a few gasps of unrestrained horror. Seven has dismantled everything she deemed, "unnecessary" and left the bare minimum. Namely one chair and a bed, a single unlit candle remains on the floor. "It is....efficient." Tuvok states, his Vulcan restraint pushed to the limits. "There's no need for frivolous furnishing. Simple is the way," Seven states. "Indeed." Tuvok replies, his reaction clearly perturbed, even if he would never admit it. Tom quickly moves the group on, sniggering with Harry and B'Elanna as they leave. Harry's quarters are next. Tuvok keys in the code and steps back. Harry moves in and looks about himself. Nothing seems different. Except his furniture has moved about. "Your quarters were not conducive to a clear mind. I have moved things in order to make use of the natural flow the environment requires. You will find your music will improve." Tuvok explains. "err, thanks, Tuvok." Harry says, disappointed at the lack of pink. Tom guffaws and leads the group onwards. B'Elanna's quarters are next. Tom elaborately unveils her new living space. B'Elanna gapes in horror. Tom has turned her living space into a 1950's style diner complete with leatherette booths and a jukebox. The only colours are red and black. The language is rather blue. She moves towards her bedroom and yells a series of harsh Klingon curses as she spots the heart shaped bed and red velvet furnishings. Tom tries desperately to appease her, B'Elanna shoves him hard and calls him a pig. She's also currently regretting her own choice of furnishings for Tom's quarters. The Captain suggests they move on before B'Elanna kills her best pilot. B'Elanna growls under her breath all the way to Tom's quarters. She steps back as the doors open to reveal.....a 1950's style diner complete with leatherette booths and blue and white tiles. Tom looks at B'Elanna. She shrugs. She smirks. He smirks back. They move closer. Harry recognises the signs and quickly suggests they leave them to their differences. Seven takes the opportunity to announce this activity is irrelevant and decides to return to work. Tuvok concurs that he has had enough furnishings and departs back towards his own quarters. Harry makes a quick escape, not wanting to be anywhere near Tom's quarters when things really kick into gear. This leaves Chakotay and Janeway standing together outside Tom's door both looking a little bemused. Chakotay leans closer and smiles, "We didn't get chance to share our creations with each other." Kathryn flushes at the closeness and replies, "No, I guess we didn't." "Shall we?" Chakotay suggests. Kathryn gives a short nod and he steps aside, signalling her to lead the way. As she walks past, she feels the comforting presence of his hand on her lower back. As they reach Chakotay's quarters, Kathryn stops and turns to him, nervously glancing about herself. "I...struggled with this," she admits. Chakotay cocks his head to one side and gazes at her, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I apologise if it's not something you like," Kathryn adds. Chakotay smiles, "I'm certain it'll be lovely." Kathryn huffs and turns back towards his door. She keys in his code, (Chakotay smirks at the fact she uses his actual code rather than her override). The doors swish open and Chakotay feels his jaw fall slack. What was once his living room, gently decorated with artefacts from his former life, has now been transformed into what can only be described as a jungle of large, lush green plants. There's a path leading from the door that draws Chakotay forward. He walks slowly, breathing in the fresh scent of lung breathing plants. He hears the sound of water running and peering through the foliage, he spots a simulating waterfall. There are small chairs dotted about and Chakotay realises they are placed perfectly to enjoy the natural beauty of the plants. The pathway opens out into a small clearing where his dining table now resides, the replicator blinking nearby but decorated with dark red flowers and further greenery. His artefacts can be found, positioned in places to enhance their own natural beauty and only adding to the spectacle before him. Until now he hadnt heard Kathryn behind him but he turns to her, gaping in awe. Kathryn flushes, "You hate it," she sighs. He steps closer to her, "Are you kidding? I love it!" Kathryn's head snaps up and she searches his face for any signs that he is joking or trying to be polite. "You do?" "Of course! It's magnificent! But....where did you get the idea?" Kathryn looks around and flushes slightly, a shy smile pulling at the corner of her lips. "I wanted to create something that would help you keep in touch with your heritage. You have often spoke of the impact your visit to Central America had on you as a child, I wanted to try and recreate that place," Kathryn explains. "I wanted to create a sanctuary for you. One that isn't all technology and Starfleet but something that is just....you." Chakotay feels his heart soar at her words. The fact she recalls their early conversation of his experiences with the Ancient Rubber Tree people, he had no idea she had held onto that story all this time. This act gives him real hope for the future. "I am honoured, Kathryn," he says honestly. "This must have taken you far longer than 60 minutes. Are you sure you haven't cheated? Fiddled with time again?" His eyes glint at her with humour and Kathryn can't help but laugh. "Sadly, I didn't, but why I didn't think of that, I've no idea!" she grins at him. "Actually, I probably wasted most of that hour stood here with no idea what to do! Inspiration finally struck me and I only just managed to finish in time. It's not exactly how I wanted it all to turn out, but...." "It's perfect as it is, Kathryn," he says softly. "Thank you." Kathryn smiles and pats his chest, "Well you can hardly tell your Captain you hate her designs for fear she'll bust you down to Ensign," she jokes, hoping to alleviate the building tension in the air. "I'm being honest Kathryn. I'll only ever be honest with you, always." Kathryn smiles softly and reaches for his hand. He takes her offer and squeezes it, smiling back. "Now, I think we need to visit my quarters and see what you created," she quirks her eyebrow. He huffs slightly and pulls her back towards the doors of his quarters. A short walk and they are stood outside Kathryn's door. Chakotay runs a hand through his hair, "I hope you like it," he says, genuine concern flooding his features. "I'm sure it's perfect," she smiles, patting his arm. She keys in her code and steps inside. Suddenly her senses are overloaded. Her quarters are nothing like her quarters. Instead she steps back in time to New Earth. To the place where for too few days, she knew what true happiness was. There's greenery everywhere, flowers and that wonderful scent that belonged only to that planet. In the corner, tomato plants grow and she feels tears pricking at her eyes as she sees the painted image of the monkey on her wall. Something draws her forwards towards her bedroom and she gasps as she sees the beautifully carved wooden headboard adorning her bed. She looks to her right and sees her bathroom door ajar and she knows. Knows it in her bones. She moves forward as if in a dream and sure enough, there is the bath he had lovingly made for her. She turns back, mouth open. "Why?" she breathes. He looks embarrassed and shuffles his feet. "It made you happy," he says simply. Her mind races back to that night. Their last night before Tuvok returned for them. The night that started with a bath and ended up in her bed, his body over hers. The memories flood hard and fast. The heat, the passion, the love. "Chakotay," she breathes. He steps closer, "I miss you, Kathryn," he says softly, "I can't forget that night." She swallows hard, "I can't either," she admits. He moves closer again, "You looked so beautiful that night." She feels her chest pound and closes her eyes, "Chakotay...." "I know, we can't..not in the real world, but here..." his voice is barely there. "But here..." she repeats, her mind whirling. "It's not Starfleet. Not here. You're not Captain. I'm not your Commander," he adds. "We're equal," she finishes. He moves into her space and reaches his arms around her. "I love you," he whispers. She closes her eyes and leans into him, "I know....I..." "You love me too," he breathes into her hair, "here you love me too." "Yes," she answers. He claims her mouth and she falls once more into the pure and heady sensations of him...

[jahaanofmenaphos]

Art by the awesome @tommieglenn!

Of Gods and Men Summary:

When the gods returned to Gielinor, their minds were only on one thing: the Stone of Jas, a powerful elder artefact in the hands of Sliske, a devious Mahjarrat who stole it for his own ends and entertainment. He claims to want to incite another god wars, but are his ulterior motives more sinister than that? And can the World Guardian, Jahaan, escape from under Sliske’s shadow?

Read the full work here:

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TUMBLR CHAPTER INDEX

QUEST 01: THE TEMPLE KNIGHTS

QUEST SUMMARY:

After a troll attack on Burthorpe, Jahaan’s superiors take an interest in him and send him off to Sir Tiffy with the aim of making him a Temple Knight. However, it’s not as easy as signing on the dotted line…

CHAPTER 3: AS RUM CAN BE

When Jahaan made it back to the inn, he wasn’t surprised to find Ozan still fast asleep, and still clutching onto Coal. After eating about two and a half bar stools last night, the little troll had clearly worn himself out.

Ozan also had to go to Port Sarim, so against his better judgement, Jahaan decided to disturb the slumbering beast.

It wasn’t pretty, but an hour later, they were ready to depart.

“Arrggg it burns!” Ozan cried, shrivelling up like a prune as soon as the sunlight hit him. “I’m blind! Blind I tell you!”

Smugness taking over him, Jahaan smiled down at his suffering friend. “I won’t lie to you - I’m enjoying this. Now come on, we’ve got to make it to the docks by evening.”

Gradually, Ozan recovered as they walked through the city and towards the gates. Unfortunately, in their slightly dreary state, the pair of them forgot the wanted sign on Ozan’s head. This caused the two of them to snatch up Coal and make an abrupt dash away from Falador, running long enough and fast enough to outrun the White Knights that began to pursue them.

Collapsing against the tree, the two men doubled over, gasping for breath through raspy throats. Ozan pushed himself off the bark and immediately fell over, toppling to the ground, groaning in pain.

Mercilessly, Jahaan kicked him in the side. He tried to get some words out, but his breathlessness decided against it.

Ozan mumbled something into the grass. Jahaan kicked him again.

“Alright, alright, I’m coming…” Ozan grumbled, dragging himself to his feet. Jahaan allowed the younger man to rest on his shoulder as they limped along.

The rest of the journey was rather uneventful, and gladly so. Port Sarim wasn’t far away at all, and the roads were fairly well-travelled, so it was pleasant to see the comers and goers travelling that afternoon too. Ozan was well-behaved when it came to the merchant carts, apart from one from a glassblower, all the way from the Kandarin region. From his wares, Ozan spotted a petite purple and green flower ornament, impeccably crafted. With ease, Ozan negotiated him down to a reasonable price. The man’s smile was blinding when he finally held his purchase delicately in his hands.

“It’s Ariane’s favourite colour,” he explained, proudly. “I don’t like to give gifts that wind up dead within a week. This’ll last longer than an actual rose.”

Even Jahaan was touched at the gesture. “I’m sure she’ll love it.”

Ozan had to pass Coal over to Jahaan to stop the troll from trying to eat his new trinket; it took a spare pair of gloves to sate the little troll’s stomach, but the two enjoyed watching him munch away eagerly at the battered leather.

It didn’t take too long before they reached Port Sarim. Having since expanded beyond a simple small fishing town, Port Sarim had become a haven for travellers, tourists and merchants alike. Jewelry stores bought and sold gold, magic and rune shops were dotted around the outskirts of the town, and even a battleaxe store managed to make its way into the fray, if you’re partial to such a brutish weapon. After all, you never know when you might need a big axe.

Port Sarim was also home to the biggest jailhouse in Gielinor, one that Ozan had frequented so many times he might as well have a loyalty card. Jahaan himself had ended up there one time, side by side with Ozan, but had managed to pick the lock and escape when a lazy guard was on duty. Honestly, the place had the security of a bird cage compared to the fearsome dungeons in other regions of Gielinor.

Naturally, the main attraction for Port Sarim were the docks themselves, providing cheap and convenient travel to many places across Gielinor. Being the largest port in the world, you were only a collection of coins and a few hours on the serene away seas from being on another continent. The clear blue waters of the sea splashed gracefully against the port walls, magnificent ships floating in the calm bay.

On the North Dock were the monks that chartered ships to Entrana. The holy island of Entrana was free to travel to, as long as one didn’t carry any dangerous equipment on their persons. It was a Saradominist colony, but in an attempt to expand their ‘flock’, followers of a handful of other religions were allowed to visit. No Zamorakians, though. That was very strict. Having never tried to sail there, Jahaan didn’t even know if he’d be permitted.

The Centre Dock was home to the Lady Lumbridge, in dire need of repair. Once a formidable ship, it was in tatters compared to its former glory. It was a miracle the crew managed to sail it back from Crandor in the state it was in. While the common stories say a bad storm battered it to pieces, the crewmen swear up and down the damage was caused by dragons. Jahaan was among the scarce few that believed their tale.

Also on the Centre Dock were the Void Knights, sailing those who wished to fight against the pest onslaught on the Outpost. Valiant soldiers sailed there every day to stem the tide of the invasion.

The Southern Dock was the most versatile, allowing for travel to many other ports across Gielinor, spanning multiple continents and islands.It was on Jahaan’s bucket list to travel to every single available destination, from the haunted city of Port Phasmatys, to the ogre encampment of Oo’glog, all the way to the western point of the world with the elven port, Port Tyras.

On the West Dock, pirates made an honest living sailing ships to Brimhaven, where access to other parts of Karamja was possible. This would be where Sir Tendeth was coming from. Jahaan had yet to sail to Karamja, but he’d heard the horror stories. Prior to its colonisation, Karamja was overrun with savages who partook in deadly murderous rituals to their gods. Many of these tribes still took over a large portion of the continent, known for attacking any outsider that ventured too close to their camps, usually with a poison-tipped spear. Needless to say, the pirates were known as the civilised ones in comparison, and that was saying something.

While they waited for their respective ships, the two men - and troll - decided to spent the hours in the next best thing about Port Sarim: The Rusty Anchor Inn. Because Port Sarim is such a major travel hub, the inn's customers were very diverse in background. Whilst sailors and workmen were its main market, many temporarily visiting the Port also stopped at the inn. The inn was popular amongst pirates, who were generally welcomed despite their violations of maritime law. The wide variations of ales and the splendid bar food was what kept The Rusty Anchor as popular as ever; the chaotic pub floor was crawling with guests from every corner of Gielinor.

Despite the hangover, Ozan ordered a pint of rum, justifying it as ‘chasing the dragon’. Shaking his head with despair, Jahaan ordered a fry-up and a glass of water.

Before long, Ozan’s ship to Catherby was ready to depart, and Jahaan waved him off from the dock. Coal waved a tiny little arm back too, which was delightfully cute. They’d promised to see each other again very soon, Ozan saying he’ll made a trip back to Falador in a fortnight or so to see Jahaan as a prestigious Temple Knight, and to allow Coal to spend some time with his OTHER father.

Two hours later and a call was made saying that Shippy-McShipFace was sailing into the West Dock, so Jahaan went out to greet Sir Tendeth. From descriptions he’d heard previously, he was looking for a small, black-haired gentlemen. Unfortunately, almost everyone who left the ship seemed to fit that description. On his tiptoes, Jahaan tried to see over the crowds for anyone who carried themselves like a knight, though potentially still uncover as a pirate. Eventually, Jahaan resorted to calling out his name, his heart filling with relief when a man shot a look at him from the gangplank. He was wearing a cream and brown striped shirt with baggy cotton pants, a pirate’s hat atop his head and an eyepatch over his left eye. A steel scimitar rested in a sheath at his hip.

The man’s right eye was wild and flitting erratically; he checked looking over his shoulder, and practically jumped out of his skin when someone accidentally nudged into him.

Jahaan tried not to let that phase him as he met the man at the end of the dock.

“Sir Tendeth,” he greeted with a humble bow. “Sir Tiffy sent me to you to find out about a possible attack, and to escort you back to Falador. Are you worried pirates are planning to attack Falador?”

Instead, Sir Tendeth flinched backwards, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “Who are you? Are you one of them? I’m warning you, I’ll kill you, I will.”

The knight’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, and Jahaan lept backwards, his hands up in a calming gesture. “Sir, calm down! One of whom?”

“Them!” he insisted, growling. “They’re coming for us all. Judgement from the gods, I say! They’re going to burn us all!”

At this point, people were giving Sir Tendeth a wide berth, quickly hurrying past him without making eye contact.

Okay, pirates don’t exactly have that M.O… Jahaan thought to himself, curiosity growing. To Sir Tendeth, he suggested, “Why don’t we have a drink to calm your nerves a tad, eh? Some rum, perhaps?”

At this, Sir Tendeth seemed to soften slightly, mumbling, “Yes, rum… rum is good…”

Once Jahaan got Sir Tendeth settled at the bar, buying him a round of the strongest rum, the knight’s nerves seemed to calm significantly, and Jahaan felt the courage to say, “I’m a little confused… from what I gathered, you went undercover as a pirate, and they’re planning to attack the mainland… with fire?”

Taking a large swig of the rum bottle, Sir Tendeth pushed off his eyepatch and rubbed underneath. “Pirates? No lad, pirates attack ships, not cities. I was following intel on a much bigger threat. One that's a danger to fortified cities, ships, pirates, sheep farmers, old men wearing party hats... everyone!”

Suddenly, a loud, ear-piercing screech is heard from outside.

Jahaan’s throat became dry. “What’s that noise? Why am I filled with an intense feeling of dread?”

Sir Tendeth grabbed ahold of Jahaan’s hand and shook it manically; his huge eyes didn’t dare blink, and his skin had turned as white as a sheep. “They’re here! They found me! We’re all doomed, I tell you!”

Before Jahaan could go and investigate, the front door to the pub - along with most of the front wall - was smashed into rubble by a large fireball that fell from the skies. Jahaan just about managed to avoid being burnt alive by diving over the bar counter, but smoking debris from the explosion still rained down on him, covering him in a thick layer of smouldering wood and ash.

Fighting past the ringing in his ears, Jahaan tried to listen out for that haunting screech over the sounds of chaos and confusion, but it wasn’t possible - they all blurred into one frightening melody.

Coughing violently, Jahaan pushed himself up through the rubble, managing to get to his knees before he called out, “Sir Tendeth!”

The smoke impaired his vision, seeping into his eyeballs as well as his lungs. “Sir Tendeth, are you alright?”

A hand shot up from over the other side of the broken bar counter. “I-I’m fine… I just need a minute…”

Jahaan pulled himself to his feet, peered over the bar counter, and confirmed that Sir Tendeth was indeed unharmed, aside from a view bruises here and there. However, he was shaking like a leaf.

After a deep breath, Jahaan braced himself to survey the damage. Unfortunately, those closest to the door when the fireball struck hadn’t managed to escape in time. Others further out were wounded, being tended to be any lucky enough to come out relatively unscathed. Three men were already hurrying back and forth with buckets, trying to extinguish the fire.

“I’m going to go out and investigate,” Jahaan declared.

“Y-You go r-right ahead,” Sir Tendeth stammered, hugging himself. “I-I’ll just… um…”

With that, Sir Tendeth huddled into himself back on the floor. Poor bloke looked traumatised.

Climbing over the destruction, Jahaan struggled past the smoke and ash to make his way outside. There, the extent of the damage really unfolded; wooden buildings were engulfed in flames with people rushing around desperately trying to put them out, while others tended to the wounded and nursed their injuries. The glorious port town of Port Sarim had been broken in half. Almost all of the ships had been attacked by fire - now, the Lady Lumbridge definitely was beyond repair, and its crewmen mourned its loss.

Jahaan saw a sailor leaning against one of the more sturdy buildings, dousing himself with water from a well, and approached him. “Excuse me, did you see what happened?”

“I were walking along, minding me own business, when something chucked a ruddy-great big fireball at me!”

Gasping, Jahaan pressed, “Did you see who did it?!”

The worker replied, “No, I were too busy writhing in pain.”

“I see what ‘appened,” a voice from nearby called out. Turning to the left, Jahaan spotted a somewhat scorched pirate - Patchy - taking a gulp of dark liquid from a bottle, sitting on the ground and clutching his leg. “Ow, me bones! Arr, I'll likely be needing a peg-leg now.”

“Oh, that’s terrible!” Jahaan fretted.

Shrugging, Patchy replied, “It ain't so bad - they be quite teh fashion with us pirates.”

Considering this, Jahaan commending his ability to see the silver lining. Then, he asked, “So, you saw who did this?”

“Arr. Dragons, I tell ye.”

“Dragons did this?”

“Aye, they be bony dragons,” the pirate affirmed, taking another swig.

Jahaan inquired, “What, like a wyvern?”

“Nah, these stood tall like men. Taller. And I swear one of ‘em said something,” the pirate explained, soothingly rubbing his bruised leg.

“Where did they go?”

“The forest way, I tell ye, but don’t you’s be going after ‘em, lad!”

“I won’t,” Jahaan lied, quickly making his way towards the forest to the east in the hopes that they were still there. Now, what he was going to do if he did confirm there were, indeed, dragons attacking cities, he did not know. However, he needed to see it with his own eyes first…

Heading into the forest, Jahaan made sure to be as light-footed as possible as he ducked for cover between trees, trying to be stealthy as to not to alert anyone of his presence. As soon as he heard gruff voices coming from deeper inside the forest, he proceeded with increased caution, nimbly creeping through the undergrowth.

Before long, silhouettes emerged from between the leaves and branches that were protecting Jahaan from being noticed, and the sight sent a cold chill up and down his spine.

Just like the pirate’s description, the creatures did indeed stand upright, like men, though slightly taller. They were svelte, olive green scales defining their limbs elegantly, but the way their features were sculpted… they didn’t look like they were born - they looked like they were carved. Their tucked wings were as delicately decorated as stained glass, but razor sharp at the edges, terrifying to behold. Both of them seemed to be wearing some sort of tunic, black with gold trimming, with an unfamiliar symbol centre on their chest. One of them wore a navy blue hooded cape that draped loosely over his lizard-like skull. The other’s cape was crimson, its hood resting downwards, allowing the mohawk of feathers atop his head to blow in the stiff breeze.

They didn’t look like any dragon he’d ever seen - well, he’d seen two, so the bar was low - but they were certainly… dragon-esque.

“Grah! Rage subsides for now. Destruction eases the pain,” the creature’s voice sounded like it was ingesting gravel as it spoke.

“Yet rage continues to build,” the other one contributed. “Someone must still be using the Stone of Jas.”

The first dragon-like creature roared. “Then we should attack more. More shall suffer. Mass destruction will ease pain.”

“Yes! But we must also continue our search - we must find the Vosk. The False User.”

“Soon, Sithaph,” the first dragon assured. “The Kalist will bring us to him. The False User will suffer as we suffer.”

The two of them ascended to the skies, screaming as they entered the clouds and faded away into the horizon.

Jahaan fell back against the tree he was hiding behind. “Attack more?” he muttered to himself. “This is bad. I need to go back to Sir Tiffy.”

It took a LOT of persuasion to get Sir Tendeth to even step outside the ruins of the bar, let alone make his way back to Falador. In his paranoia, the man was convinced he heard that haunting screech at every turn, thought he saw their swooping shadows above him constantly. To be fair, the knight hadn’t been back on land for more than half an hour before the port was attacked, so he had just cause to be terrified.

Despite it being night time now, Sir Tiffy was still waiting by the pond, a fresh cup of tea in hand, enjoying the evening air.

When he saw Jahaan and Sir Tendeth approaching, he almost spilled his tea in excitement, quickly setting it down before a spillage could occur.

“Tendeth!” he exclaimed, jollily. “You tough ol’ cookie, I knew you’d make it back!”

However, Sir Tendeth didn’t even look Tiffy in the eye, vacantly staring off into the middle distance as his bottom lip quivered, unable to form a single word.

Sir Tiffy crinkled his brow. “What’s wrong with him, old chap?”

Jahaan winced, scratching the back of his head. “He’s… a little shaken. Long story short, the threat Sir Tendeth was pursuing turned out to be dragons. They attacked Port Sarim almost as soon as he docked there!”

Tiffy’s mouth fell open. “Dragons!” his wild gesture knocked the tea cup over, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Are you sure, my lad?”

“Yes sir,” Jahaan confirmed. “And not just any dragons - they were weird, bony, almost humanoid. And they spoke! I followed them through the forest, and they talked about attacking again!”

“I say, this is absolutely dastardly! The creatures you speak of, they sound familiar. They sound like dragonkin. Legends of the Fourth Age talk of such creatures. They've not been seen in my lifetime, though, and I've been around for a good old while, what?”

Tiffy stood up and decisively announced, “We will go to Falador Castle and bring this information to some of my most trusted companions. The circle should stay small for now, old chap, until we know exactly who - or what - we’re dealing with. Don’t want to incite a panic now, do we? Are you with me, lad?”

Saluting, Jahaan exclaimed, “Yes sir!”

DISCLAIMER:

As Of Gods and Men is a reimagining, retelling and reworking of the Sixth Age, a LOT of dialogue/characters/plotlines/etc. are pulled right from the game itself, and this belongs to Jagex.

Previous chapter / Next chapter

[giancarlonicoli]

Newsonomics: Inside the new L.A. Times, a 100-year vision that bets on tech and top-notch journalism

It’s a few years behind its East Coast brethren in New York and Washington. But tens of millions in new investment and ambitious digital plans are showing a path back to its former prominence — and beyond.By

KEN DOCTOR

@kdoctor

March 27, 2019, 2:05 p.m.

Look past the view of the 105. Beyond it is the unfolding of the 21st century, delayed but now in full force at the Los Angeles Times.

That’s my big takeaway from a visit to Patrick Soon-Shiong’s new temple to next-stage journalism. Last summer, he moved his just-purchased L.A. Times (whose lease was expiring) to one of the sprawling L.A.’s least glamorous addresses: 2300 E. Imperial Highway, El Segundo, CA 90245. (Google’s satellite view is revealing.) That move stirred some newsroom complaints early on, though the new address seems to have receded as an issue as Soon-Shiong and editor-in-chief Norm Pearlstine have laid out their fast-paced, if still incremental, visions of a new Times.

The visions are big enough, but they stand out even more dramatically in a newspaper business still cutting its way to the future, looking to mergers and acquisitions as a short-term lifeline in the cash-poor trade. Like The New York Times and The Washington Post, the new L.A. Times wants to tell a contrarian story: Investment in the daily press underlines a deep belief in the power of journalism, optimism that it can make both readers’ lives and their democracy run better amid the gobsmacking rate of political and technological change.

“So my concern was editorial, the newsroom. That was my very, very, very first concern,” Soon-Shiong told me in a two-hour interview. “I knew that that’s where I needed to go as my first and highest priority. My second priority now is the business model, but the business model, sadly — and I don’t mean this to sound in any way arrogant — has to be consistent with this next generation, not with the past generation,” says the 66-year-old Soon-Shiong. He’s put his money behind his ideas, taking a loss of about $50 million this year as he marches the Times forward.

Soon-Shiong has been a man of some mystery in the news trade, his entry having been midwifed clumsily by one-time Tronc chairman Michael Ferro. In our wide-ranging interview — to be published in full here tomorrow — the med-tech billionaire connects many of the missing dots that have characterized coverage of him over the last several years.

The Times’ turnaround from those bad old days (actually quite recent!) of the Tronc/Tribune/Ferro reign is nothing less than remarkable.

The Times’ newsroom had unionized as Tronc’s tragicomic handling of its properties reached a denouement, and Ferro made Soon-Shiong an offer he figured he shouldn’t refuse. Soon-Shiong believes that had Tronc/Tribune kept title to the Times, it would have cut as many as another 100 jobs in the newsroom in short order.

His June 2018 purchase stopped any new cuts in their tracks.

Norm Pearlstine, one of America’s top editors whose career had been built at The Wall Street Journal, Time Inc. and Bloomberg, inherited a newsroom of about 440, including part-timers and contractors. That still ranked among the largest in the country; The New York Times counts 1,550, The Washington Post about half that number.

Want a number that symbolizes the Soon-Shiong era? That 440 less than a year ago stands today at 535 newsroom employees.

Many in the business thought that Pearlstine, 76, would play something of a caretaker role — a short opening stint to help orient Soon-Shiong in this business and then stepping aside to pick a younger successor. But Soon-Shiong told me Monday that he’s signed Pearlstine to a new multi-year contract extending his term as executive editor.

“When Norm agreed to come out of retirement and become the executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, we were thrilled,” he said. “He has a long, impeccable track record as a journalist and as a media executive. He is truly enjoying the challenge of guiding the L.A. Times through the transition and positioning the company to succeed. As part of that, he is developing a diverse team of managers and possible successors. We are moving forward in a very positive direction and Norm and I have agreed to a multi-year extension of his term as executive editor. I could not be more pleased.”

How does Pearlstine now look at this almost unique turnaround opportunity? “I’m a little bit torn because I don’t think I’ve ever met an executive who did a turnaround who looked back and said, ‘I went too fast,'” he said. “So the pressure intention is to want to move quickly. But that said, I think we need a pause to just catch our breath and integrate…If you think about [Soon-Shiong’s] ambitions and what the brand lets you do, we need to do additional hiring as we roll out some of these products that we think will induce people to pay for content. What we’ve done over the last eight months has been to fill critical vacancies that had resulted from either layoff, buyouts, or attrition.”

Pearlstine described his Times journey so far in depth in two additional hours of conversations. (We’ll run a transcript of that interviews, like my one with Soon-Shiong, later this week here at Nieman Lab.)

It’s not just the number that matters — it’s also the kind of hires Pearlstine is making, near the top of the newsroom and throughout it. In leadership, he lured away from the East Coast both The New York Times’ Sewell Chan, who heads the news desk and is also responsible for audience engagement, and Slate’s top editor Julia Turner, who is creating the Times’ playbook for upping its arts and entertainment game. In this hiring binge, Pearlstine aims to do both the basic blocking and tackling required to heal an ailing news enterprise and to draw from the new world of digital journalism. His key hires of food critic Bill Addison from Eater and Peter Meehan from Lucky Peach signal an appreciation of journalism that comes from beyond old “newspaper” formulas.

But even that almost 25 percent headcount increase in less than a year marks just the beginning of the Times’ expansion ambitions.

Behold the fifth floor

Among the projects soon to get more attention is on the fifth floor. There, Soon-Shiong says, about 100 new staffers — about 80 of them still to be hired — will operate what he calls a new transmedia operation. The idea — in video, TV, audio, VR, games, and plain old-fashioned social management — is multiplication.

The strategy: Even as fundamental newsroom resources are being rebuilt, magnify their impact across all the means of distribution and audience engagement that technology now enables. Which will work and which will prove to be experiments to retire? Soon-Shiong is the first to say he’s not sure. (A previous transmedia company he backed, Fourth Wall Studios, closed in 2012.) But while his optimism about applying his Nant medical tech to journalism was sometimes lampooned when he first bought into Tronc three years ago, he’s undaunted in explaining tomorrow’s potential.

Take another number: 157,000. That’s the number of digital subscriptions the L.A. Times has today. It’s roughly doubled over the past two tumultuous Times years. The growth rate is significant, as is the fact that it’s more than any other “local” daily in the U.S. But Soon-Shiong sees it as just the first handhold on a towering mountain. He wants to get to 1 million quickly and has a stretch target of 4 million over the next four years.

That quest for fast scale helps explain the Times’ decision to become a major partner of Apple in this week’s launch of the Apple News Plus subscription package. It’s another step in increasing reader revenue. Both The New York Times and The Washington Post declined to join Apple’s service, it makes more sense for Soon-Shiong’s paper. The L.A. Times wants to do everything it can to get “discovered” by new readers, and it has much less to fear from the cannibalization of existing direct digital subscribers. Says Soon-Shiong of the deal: “Apple News editors will be able to curate current and recent coverage from all of our sections…We are delighted to be one of just two U.S. newspapers selected to participate at launch and to share in the revenue from the premium subscription service, which will help fund our journalism.” (Some content, such as the paper’s archives, won’t be accessible through Apple News Plus.)

As for Soon-Shiong’s stretch goal, New York Times CEO Mark Thompson’s recently setting of a 10 million subscriber total by 2025 is instructive. Thompson had laid out that seemingly impossible number two years ago, but back then, he didn’t put a date on it. Now, having reached 4.3 million total subscribers, no one laughs at the 10 million aspiration anymore. That tells us a lot about the digital news business and all the ground Soon-Shiong’s paper will have to make up quickly.

How far is his paper behind The Washington Post or that other Times? (“You mean The New York Times,” he notes several times in our conversation, as if to emphasize there is another Times back in the national media conversation.) Jeff Bezos faced a similar challenge when he bought the Post six years ago, and the paper’s ascent since then has surprised even the most skeptical about the chances of journalistic rebirth. (Amazingly, when Bezos bought the Post, its newsroom staff was smaller than the L.A. Times’.)

Figure the L.A. Times is 6 to 10 years behind its East Coast models, the “papers” it once called its brethren and would like to again.

As it retools, the L.A. Times faces new competition — including from that other Times. The New York Times is intently focused on California, home to 40 million people. It has more digital subscribers in California than in the state of New York. Its California Today newsletter is its Trojan Horse into the Golden State, competing with the L.A. Times’ “Essential California” newsletter. Even as the L.A. Times works to maintain its claim on food coverage, The New York Times went and hired its first-ever California restaurant critic.

Maybe the meaning of the geographic identifiers in these two “newspaper” brands will be something quite different in the years ahead.

Why the long turnaround?

Why might it take the L.A. Times a half decade or more — and continued reinvestment — to enjoy success similar that of The New York Times or The Washington Post?

While any keen Angeleno will tell you that the Times’ troubles began when the Chandler family sold it (and the rest of Times Mirror) to Tribune Company in 2000, it’s been the past decade that inflicted the most pain to what was once one of the most powerful and influential of American press institutions. Certainly, the Chicagoans who ran Tribune — and often tried to run the Times from Chicago — never quite got it right, but it was the seizure of Tribune by bottom-feeder financier Sam Zell in 2007 that sent it into a deepening tailspin.

Throughout it all — Zell’s reign, his five-year “bankruptcy from hell,”Tribune’s split into newspaper and broadcast companies, new management, and then the company’s second legal seizure by the arrivisteFerro in 2016 — the Times resisted. That resistance was both staunch and at times comical. The L.A. Times newsroom would come to be known, rightly or wrongly, as the toughest room in the country.

Amid the turmoil, the L.A. Times was more a punchline than a setter of the news agenda, even though its newsroom through the years (and still today) has produced among the highest-quality newspaper reporting and writing in the country.

There was the midnight firing of publisher Austin Beutner by then-CEO Jack Griffin — who himself was dispatched just five months later by Ferro. Who can forget the three-month tenure of Lewis D’Vorkin as editor-in-chief, after longtime Timesman Davan Maharaj was axed? Or Maharaj’s secret taping of Ferro, chronicled in David Folkenflik’s watchdog reporting on Tronc excess for NPR and giving us the wonderful headline: “Tribune, Tronc And Beyond: A Slur, A Secret Payout And A Looming Sale“? Or the cameo appearances of serial CEO Ross Levinsohn and his sidekick Mickie Rosen in the farce? It all makes the Times’ breakout true-crime podcast Dirty John seem fairly tame. (Anyone written the Times’ screenplay yet?) Keen industry observer Tom Rosenstiel calls the Times, at the time Soon-Shiong bought it, “the most degraded major metro in the country.”

That environment is just part of what Soon-Shiong inherited when he decided to buy. (Ferro had given him a weekend to decide whether he wanted his hometown paper so much that he’d pay a half a billion dollars for it — not allowing him to do much due diligence. In our interview, Soon-Shiong also tells the story of how he entered into a “partnership” after a first whirlwind weekend courtship.)

Soon-Shiong, Pearlstine, COO Chris Argentieri, and the emerging new order of management also inherited a broken technology stack. As Tribune/Tronc reeled for a decade, it had both centralized its operational systems and technologies — and failed to sufficiently invest in them to keep them up to date.

Argentieri describes what taking back the Times from Tronc/Tribune meant operationally: “Tribune operated with a number of functions shared across the company over the last couple of years — well beyond your typical shared services of finance, IT, HR. More than just the back office — so consumer marketing, circulation, national sales. Really, in Los Angeles at the end of Tribune’s ownership, we were essentially left with the newsroom and local advertising — and virtually everything else, including manufacturing, distribution, was all centralized.”

As Soon-Shiong told me, “With regard to the technology, I found it was non-existent. Not even…to fix. Just non-existent. I worried about the systems to the extent that I was worried: Could I run this paper with these systems that are so archaic?”

So even as the L.A. Times became “independent,” it remained — and still remains, roughly through the end of this year — stuck in part on aging, fatigued systems. Observers who wondered why Soon-Shiong signed a “standstill” agreement in January — allowing Tribune to commit to a merger or sale without his assent — have their answer. It was all that old tech that the Times still needs to publish (until its fast-paced plan to replace it all is complete) that was responsible. Soon-Shiong agreed to the standstill — which should make it possible for Tribune to merge with a McClatchy or otherwise sell itself — and in return got his “transition services agreement” extended until June 2020.

There are still many decisions to be made as the clock runs toward that date. Among them: Will the Times keep or replace Arc, The Washington Post’s fast-emerging new newspaper platform standard? Does it believe that Arc can rise to the occasion and help power Soon-Shiong’s expansive vision for the Times?

Overall, says Argentieri, the Times is “probably 40% there, I would say, through transitioning of services.” The big remaining piece, he says, “is to stand up our own traditional IT infrastructure — so our own HRISsystem, our own ERP system, our own infrastructure from a hosting standpoint. All are underway and will happen in 2019.”

Argentieri notes the unique perspective Soon-Shiong brings to the beleaguered newspaper industry. If Jeff Bezos brought the best consumer marketing chops, Soon-Shiong brings his own highly profitable experience.

“Nant [Soon-Shiong’s collection of tech enterprises] brings a pretty deep understanding from a technology standpoint. It’s a little different than how certainly we had looked at things…They look at things from fiber in the ground all the way up through the technology stats. Most, particularly legacy media companies have looked at IT as a major cost center, and put every bit of investment they could make into ‘digital business.’ We’re trying to look at it more holistically, because storage is cheaper, the infrastructure, there’s more things you can do today to have a site and app load faster, and all that leads to better user experience — where we just wouldn’t have focused on moving an infrastructure off servers in a data center in Chicago to somewhere else.”

After the buy and the building, $50 million

All of this transition — in hiring and in technology — comes at a hefty price. Which brings us to the third noteworthy number about the Times: $50 million. That’s the amount Soon-Shiong will have spent on the new Times in his first year of ownership.

How much more investment may be possible? Says Soon-Shiong: “I’m willing to continue to make an investment and collectively, as a collective, to work together” — mindful of the first contract with the News Guild, which unionized the place the week before he took title.

Like most other people of great wealth — Soon-Shiong’s fortune has been reported at over $7 billion — he’s not one to throw money around. Like Bezos, he’ll invest, but “he’s focused on where every dollar goes,” one insider says. As at The Washington Post, good ideas can get funded, but they’re approved by Soon-Shiong on an initiative-by-initiative basis.

How has that tough (and “abused,” as Soon-Shiong puts it) newsroom responded? Conversations with several staffers suggest a wary optimism — about as good as it gets in any newsroom. When the first union contract is concluded, staffers will see raises that mark a clear departure from the experience of their brethren at other dailies, including those still residing within Tribune. Those raises should add up to at least a 10 percent increase over the next three years.

“For staff who are over scale, they would see a 5 percent raise in year 1, 2.5 percent in year 2, 2.5 percent in year 3 under the company’s offer,” says Matt Pearce, a News Guild leader at the Times. “So in other words, pretty much the worst you can do is a guaranteed 10 percent raise across three years. It’s not quite enough to get us to match the pay standards at our East Coast competitors, and doesn’t repair the 10 years the newsroom went without regular raises, but it’s a decent bite out of the apple.”

For those who had been “underpaid,” the impact will be greater. “The company’s last/best/final offer on pay creates a series of pay minimums that would lift up some underpaid staffers fairly dramatically — in some cases, we’re talking raises of 30 percent or more on ratification,” says Pearce.

In addition to wanting a piece of the intellectual property action involved in Soon-Shiong’s multimedia adventures (which Soon-Shiong discusses in our interview), the contract addresses the usual issues: severance, jurisdiction, and seniority. It could be a month or two away from completion.

The guild, representing a workforce still recovering from shellshock, wants to add another clause to the new contract, one on “successorship.” Pearce: “So the contract survives, in the hopefully remote scenario that Patrick decides to sell the paper sometime in the next three years.” Just. In. Case.

Not yet defining the new L.A. Times

If you are reading this hoping to hear the new Times’ leadership clearly outline its strategy for the years ahead — sorry to disappoint you. Ever since Soon-Shiong bought the Times and pledged to rebuild it, people have been wondering about the big strategic questions.

Will the new L.A. Times be more national, expanding still further a fairly robust and re-energized D.C. bureau? More global, seizing the opportunity of the “Asian century” and its spot on the Pacific Rim? More California-centric, seeing a “nation” of 40 million to serve? Or will it be happy to focus on dominating the large and wealthy southern California market?

In other words, what category does the Times fit in now — or will it fit in in a few years? Is it America’s largest local newspaper in the country or its smallest national one?

(In Monday’s keynote, Apple split the difference, calling it “the country’s largest metropolitan newspaper and a rising star.”)

It’s both and neither at the same time, and that makes classifying it tough. “It’s probably safe to say if we’re trying to get to a million digital subscribers over a number of years, we will start with local. But we’ll have to evolve into California stories that have a global relevance,” Argentieri told me. (Former publisher Austin Beutner hired Argentieri, a magazine veteran, back in 2014, and through all the Tronc turmoil, he somehow managed to keep his head down. He widely receives plaudits for his steady hand.) “I think we’ll reach a point of penetration with people that are, you know, ferociously into local content, and we’ll have to go beyond that in some areas that travel better.”

The reality is that the Times is creating the building blocks that could easily be used across multiple strategies and target audiences. For now at least, instead of worrying about classification, let’s watch what’s in at the new L.A. Times. Its ownership is only nine months old, but Soon-Shiong talks about a 100-year vision — there’ll be plenty of time to classify later.

POSTED    

March 27, 2019, 2:05 p.m.