#and i want to write some stuff but its in a place internal monologue that could toe the line between views of the actual character and ooc

[raspberry-gloaming]

Gallifrey fandom who remembers better than me - do we have examples of Romana seeing timelords as superior to humans, specifically, and where (like which ep and at what point can i find them)?

[wishforged]

welcome to the very long postscript to Steal Ahead, a persona 5 fanfiction, that I doubt very many people will read in full but I have chosen to write anyway for my own self-aggrandizement.

before proceeding, please take note that in the following, I reflect on my writing decisions in some detail. reading these notes may color your perception of the story. if you prefer for the author to be dead, I'd advise stopping here!!

introductory thoughts

this fic is titled after a lyric in the song "Tape Song" by the kills.

pretty self-explanatory, right?

I started writing this fic because... well, that was 5 years ago and since then I've gotten a concussion at least once and my memory is kind of bad in general but I can still confidently say goro akechi is my favorite character in the world. a lot of post-vanilla fans might not completely understand the degree to which goro fans were imbibing copium before all the additional material royal gave us-- goro's story ended very ambiguously, and a lot of things about him and his relationship with Ren were left up to our little fujoshi imaginations to ruminate over and decipher. I couldn't help but want to give him a future in my own way.

I also really wanted to write a SUPER SLOW BURN LONG TERM YEARS-LONG EPIC AKESHU LOVE STORY!!! it ended up being a little different than what I envisioned lol but I think it's still true to my original aspiration, which was to create an intimate, realistic, friends-to-lovers dynamic between the two of them. I hope you enjoyed it...

one of my major influences was In Good Company by weialala. yes, it's a naruto fic, one that I've held dear for many many years. weialala's internal monologue for Sasuke and how she deals with questions about his life, as well as her take on Sasuke and Naruto's relationship, goes beyond Naruto canon in an incredible way that really influenced how I wrote Goro and the slow burn romance in this fic. I highly recommend checking the fic out if you're a naruto fan!! sorry if you're not and this revelation gave you psychic damage.

I outlined this fic pretty heavily, keeping a google doc with a timeline of events spanning the four years over which the story takes place. that didn't stop me from changing things and adding stuff up until the last minute, though. I also struggled to keep the timeline straight a lot because I made the questionable decision to start the fic two years after canon left off and I can be kind of dumb.

a look into my struggles/twisted mind. my outlines tend to be quite rough.

in the rest of this post I talk about several things in the fic, like Goro's disability and mental health, how Ren is portrayed, and the original characters, with some behind-the-scenes thoughts.

"redemption"

when it comes to characters who have Done Stuff Wrong, there is a lot of discourse to be had among fans about how they can Atone for their crimes. these arguments often touch a lot of nerves-- in my opinion, because our contributions to this discourse are influenced by how we think about crime and rehabilitation in the real world.

I live in a country where the carceral system is incredibly brutal and discriminatory, abuse of incarcerated people is routine, and the goal of incarceration is not rehabilitation but the infliction of suffering upon those deemed "criminals" by the state. this has shaped my beliefs about incarceration as a form of punishment. to put it simply, I am not a fan. and in a fictional context, I find the idea that a character in a work of fiction can "do their time" and have all their guilt and sin magically removed to be a cop-out.

this is just me and these are just my own thoughts of course. again, I think questions about crime and rehabilitation in fiction are influenced by our thoughts on these concepts in the real world. for that reason and many others this is quite a personal story that draws on my own personal philosophy in its telling (as half-baked as that philosophy may be bc im not a super genius who has all the answers). whether that is a flaw or a feature is up to you as a reader to decide.

in this fic I wanted to explore how to move forward after you have done something horrible. it was hard, because in this story and perhaps in life, there are no pretty answers and no perfect ways to make up for doing the things Goro did. I settled upon an "answer" that reflects one of my deeply-held beliefs: we do what we must after tragedy, and what we must do is move forward, rely on and be there for those we love, and try to do as much good as we can.

original characters

as stated in the tags of the fic, I wrote in OCs so goro could have actual relationships and friends. I tried to gift each one with their own unique personality and some depth! a lot of the OCs are women, maybe because I find it easier to write women lol. sometimes I feel like a lot of female OCs in fic can lean towards being misogynistic caricatures -- I'm not really blaming writers for this as much as I am blaming Society; fanfic deals in tropes and when you constantly see the trope of the bitchy secretary, the shallow seductress, etc. in the media you consume it becomes second nature to unconsciously replicate it, even if you identify as a woman. this is why IMO as a writer you need to make a conscious effort to do things differently (and read more books) although I'm sure there are a lot of ways I come up short...

one of my favorites is cleo which is funny because she only shows up for a handful of scenes in the last chapter lol, and maybe it's recency bias but I spent so long working on the last chapter she feels like my own child... I feel like her first name doesn't make sense for a Japanese-American person to have but I got attached to it lmao.

I actually do think I gave the Kato family too many problems, what with Kagami's illness and Taku's behavior -- I think I kinda reference this at one point by having Goro wonder what kind of a fucked up Dickensian family this is lol. I have some other self-critical thoughts on how I wrote them but I'll keep that to myself... still love them a lot though. I really enjoy messy but loving sibling relationships in fiction so I had to put one in here too.

(fun fact: like Goro, Taku was going to be Deaf, which is why Kagami comments that Goro is "like my brother" during her first appearance in chapter 1. when I decided to go another direction for Taku's character, I changed this to mean Goro and Taku have eyes that are the same color.)

shout out, also, to Hirakawa, who seems to be something of a fan favorite judging by the comments. she was a blast to write lol and I really love her relationship with Goro.

ren

I consider the Ren in this fic to be my Ultimate™ portrayal of him that is the closest to how I see him as a character. my most popular p5 work is The Next Time Around, an AU fic where Ren is an older adult that I wrote when I was a teenager (more than five years ago) (lol) (😔) and although I do have pride in/affection for that work and the Ren in it, he is a far cry from the way I imagine Ren today. (for one thing his name wasn't ren in that fic. lol)

being a silent protagonist, Ren is a tricky character to get right. I was very active in the p5 fandom space on social media for several years before I basically completely stopped paying attention to it, but like many others, in those early days I absorbed parts of others' portrayals of Ren into my own. I actually think that's quite a lovely thing about silent protagonists-- everyone in a fandom space kind of works to build the character together. yes, sometimes the portrayals that attain the most popularity are flattening or flanderizing, but ultimately, it's kind of fun to build a Frankenprotagonist. until you're writing a fic which prompts you to really sit down and think about what a true-to-canon portrayal looks like and how to make it also true to Yourself and what you really believe the character to be. (it's hard)

in Steal Ahead, Ren is superstitious and avoidant and quite bad at expressing his feelings. he's a charismatic anti-authoritarian, a middle child, and a neat freak with a strong, stubborn sense of justice. he's full of contradictions and flaws, and he's healing in his own way from the events of p5 proper, struggling with returning to a mundane life when for a short, glorious while, he was extraordinary. (hence the shoplifting subplot in chapter 2. fun fact -- that was originally supposed to be smoking but then I decided to change it. I forget why but I'm sure I had a good reason, probably. don't smoke, kids! or shoplift if you think you might get caught. kidding etc)

Ren argues and bickers with Goro quite a bit in this fic which I enjoyed writing. though they share many similarities, they're very different people -- I thought it would be only natural for them to clash sometimes, though they always come back to each other.

this Frankenren is composed of a bunch of headcanons, a lot of which were influenced by/shamelessly stolen from friends. I love him very much. thanks to everyone who helped me build my Ren along the way!

disability

goro has a disability in this fic-- single-sided deafness-- which I included because I felt it was unrealistic for him to have escaped from the engine room with no lasting consequences. I was pretty conscious of portraying it respectfully and realistically so I did my research on the condition. this source was helpful as a personal testimonial from someone who has this condition about how it affects their life.

by the way, goro's hearing aid in this fic is a CROS hearing aid, which is designed specifically for people with single-sided deafness.

one of my favorite moments in the fic is the brief conversation Goro and Ryuji have about their respective disabilities in chapter 2 -- it's short, because I didn't think either of them would really be enthusiastic about opening up to each other at that point lol, but it's nice.

I welcome criticism of how I handled this part of the fic from anyone in the Deaf community -- I'm not perfect and don't have firsthand knowledge.

mental health

obviously goro is not doing great mentally in this fic for many reasons. I have written a lot of goro-centric fics, but this one required really tapping into the headspace of a flawed person who has been traumatized & manipulated and is dealing with immense depression and guilt while recovering. like many (most?) writers I draw from my own past experiences and emotions while writing, which made this a particularly taxing fic to work on, and is definitely one of the reasons it took so long to finish 🥲

other than that I'd say one of the most difficult things was being realistic while avoiding melodrama, and portraying a real story of recovery/imparting positive messages without being too cheesy, which made some of the self-help book sections hard to write.

if you relate to goro's depressive thoughts in this fic, I hope it can be an affirming story for you. I also hope you're taking the time to reach out to people who can support you and practicing self-care.

the ending

I actually don't have a ton to say about the ending because I'd like to leave it up to interpretation. however, I will say that the ending is not the original one I had in mind when I started the fic. I'm not sure how people will react to it (if you've been following this fic maybe you'll just be happy it got an ending at all LOL) but I hope it didn't feel like it came out of nowhere.

concluding thoughts

compared to my other p5 works, this one isn't as popular even though I do consider it my best, which I will admit is disheartening. the release of p5 royal also created a new canon in which this fic does not take place, which I imagine certainly doesn't help. despite this, I got some lovely long, thoughtful comments and even occasionally saw people on social media discussing how they enjoyed this fic despite it being unfinished, which always made me super emotional. trust me, in those 4 years that this fic was lying dormant, each new comment motivated me to crack open the Google doc again and ultimately finish this work. let this be a testament to the power of comments and the ubiquitous egotism of fic writers. or writers in general, actually. thank you so much for your kindness!

if you actually read all of this, thank you again! I do like talking about this fic so feel free to ask questions or give feedback via my ask box, retrospring (linked on twitter) or ao3 comments.

I just ran a word count on this and it's like 2.5k words. good lord. bye

[coldresolve]

hi, anon who asked about your writing process here 👋

i have returned from the trenches (university tests) to ask some specific(ish) questions.

1. how do you choreograph fights? they're quite easy to follow along, exciting/unique, and still maintain a sense of realism, all of which i tend to struggle with.

2. how do you write renee's internal monologue, especially when it comes to his little panicked moments and varying pacing?

3. how do you build and release tension so effectively in the story itself? obsessed with the "Renee stops running" part

4. how do you switch perspectives fluidly?

ik it's a lot of questions, but this is the condensed version so i count it as a win (?)

my favourite way to procrastinate recently has been annotating mm and i just. need to understand how your writing brain works a little. thanks :)

obligatory 'writing is subjective so take what you find useful and discard the stuff doesnt apply to you' and 'im not an expert in anything, this is just the shit i try to keep in mind' and 'i may sound disjointed as hell cause its 4am 5am and i cant sleep' etc

under a cut for mercy reasons

writing fight scenes

things you need to set up for your readers: character drives and aim with the fight itself, the stakes of losing, and how it all ties in with your wider story

things for you to keep in mind: how much fighting experience your character have, how your character's state of mind affects their behavior, their relationship to violence and/or how far they're willing to go

subverting expectations will keep people on their toes. this can be as simple as changing the stakes of the fight midway through, or having a character do something that isn't typical for them (which you should set up before so it doesnt feel too out of place)

make each (or most) impact/s mean something. getting kicked in the side of the mid-thigh will make a character limp for a bit; a hard enough hit to the liver will make anyone crumple; etc. dont make your characters, no matter how badass theyre supposed to be, immune to this, since that would erase the stakes entirely

fights are usually chaotic and short-lived. depends on what genre you're writing, though

give your characters (short) moments to react to what their opponent is doing/trying to do. dialogue is cool, but keep it sparse. people generally don't prioritize clever quips when theyre beating the shit out of each other. sometimes a simple "motherfucker" is enough

im bad at this one but characters using their environment during fights is fucken nice and helps with immersion

fights are more or less just a string of reaction-action over and over, and it can get sort of repetitive going back and forth to describe every punch, since it removes your reader's ability to imagine or read between the lines. meanwhile, if you never go deeper than 'they exchanged blows', you lose all sense of atmosphere - it's not supposed to feel like a detached news report, you want your readers to be there. so writing fight scenes is basically a balancing act in detail - how much to show, how much to suggest. whats the right answer? there is none, sorry. no two authors will have the same approach, but both can pump out riveting shit with wildly different approaches. its something you learn over time. im personally in the lots-of-detail camp

people will tell you that sentence length matters, but thats bullshit imo, it's just about using flow effectively. a good example of what i mean: short sentences make the pace seem quicker, but run-on sentences in particular have this neat thing where they can make your readers almost out of breath by the end of it, which is also pretty useful when you're writing something high-tension.

there's tons more shit than this but my brain is a puddle of goo, so

renee's internal monologue

ayyy! internal monologue is your opportunity to shovel around the grey matter of your characters, its the Good Stuff imo. in the case of mm, the plot is largely driven by character development, so its been hella important to me to express why each character (except davin) does what they do, what thought process lead them to change their minds, and in renee's case - the flaws in his reasoning, the lies he tells himself, and how he reacts when those things no longer help him cope with what he's done

pacing is sth im insanely mindful of but unable to effectively put into words lmfao. if you mean renee's entire internal arc, it follows the narrative tension in the story; renee is the protagonist, he's the one driving the plot forward. as for pacing out any internal monologue itself, i try to have it follow somewhat of a 3 beat structure with setup/elaboration/conclusion (most of what i write happens in 3s), but some monologues have veered off if i felt like it was called for (it's a vibes thing). flow is important: one thought has to lead to the next, and it has to reach a "logical" conclusion (whatever the character decides is logical at that point of their arc). it has to be relevant to the plot obv, and the atmosphere also has to compliment the scene/chapter it exists in. otherwise, yeah, like. theres not much of a difference between pacing a normal scene and pacing an internal monologue

building and releasing tension

idk if you saw it but i made a whole post squeezing mm into a model for narrative tension here

so ok, listen. this is all wishy washy and means nothing, except it means everything. its the entire structure of your story which is pretty important, but like also its just a vibe thing. the reason you've heard about setup/payoff in writing advice circles is because of the build and release of tension. it's a pacing thing. if you set something up without having a payoff down the line, unless you're writing a mystery and your setup is a red herring, your readers are gonna come away disappointed. it's about what rhythm you've established and how an average person might expect it to continue. we're making music here. if you payoff something (payoff is a verb now) without having set it up previously, you've essentially just smashed all the piano keys in the middle of claire de lune with no warning. and you can do that, but you have to know that that's what you're doing, otherwise its gonna sound like you smashed all the keys solely to keep your audience on edge, even though it adds nothing to the song itself. this is all pacing. everything is pacing, including tension

building and releasing tension is about making music. you typically start out low and then you gradually turn it up. and you might have a moment where it gets a little low again but now the audience knows its been up there before so there's more intrigue, you've set an expectation. and then you build it and you take it a little further than the last time. you add harmonics maybe, if harmonics are your thing. you keep teasing the climax. that sounds like sex and to be fair music is kinda like sex. so is narrative tension. you add a funky little kazoo in there an the crowd definitely did not expect that, but if you've got a vision, you might just pull it off. it's about atmosphere. you're not just setting up for the grand finale, you're setting up a hundred tiny peaks along the way, meeting each as you go. it's like you're walking toward the harvest while hauling the plow behind you. (that made no sense. kinda like sex.*) (*= i'm ace). and then eventually, bam, cymbals and headbanging and shit. if you've done your due diligence in the gradual buildup, that release feels earned

switching perspective

i may be stupid and/or just kinda tired but i dont understand this question rn lmfao. ig i just treat it like i would going from any one scene to another

in conclusion

thank u for the questions. apologies for making it weird. in my defense, it is very difficult to explain pacing, and also its 5am now

[decepti-thots]

1, 8 and 12

"the character everyone gets wrong"

moving over to exRiD for this one. arcee is imo subject to this a lot, despite fannish sentiment around her being overall very positive. i suspect a part of this is that the segments of idw1 fandom i hang out in either haven't read much or all of exRiD and/or do not read it as often as other series like MTMTE, so she tends to be subject to a lot of 'flattening' into her most iconic, meme-y characteristics. fun murder lady who likes murder! yay! but the thing is that the popular perception of arcee in a lot of circles is perpetually stuck in what she started as, not where she was ultimately taken. arcee's arc in the latter parts of idw1 are about the ways she grows out of and beyond the original concept of her as Scary Violent Lady TM, and about finding personhood for herself beyond that. by the time you're a dozen or so issues into phase two, that entire concept of her is being questioned and developed by the comic! it would perhaps bother me less if that entire original presentation of her wasn't so heavily rooted in phase one's (trans)misogynistic portrayal that we're ostensibly all on the same page about being bad, and the later stuff that is largely ignored wasn't a direct attempt to work with and rectify. (this has gotten better in the past 3-4 years, though.) i don't think anyone is deliberately leaning into that, it's just a side effect of most folks in the places i hang out not being overfamiliar with the actual canon stuff. but. well. it does make me a little sad. she's got such a compelling arc! i would like to have more enthusiasm for it, as opposed to making fun jokes about her stabbing people. (on the plus side, discussing this before has persuaded at least three people i know of to read exRiD and they told me they loved her in it, so!)

"common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about"

anyone who thinks exRiD is light on character work, as per the above, is wrong. sorry. it has great character work! the division of 'MTMTE is for character stuff, exRiD is Plot TM only for dudebro nerds' is incorrect, and unfortunately remains a common sentiment. barber did not do it the same way that roberts did, but exRiD is intensely interested in its characters and barber has spoken at length about how interested he was in digging into character dynamics. if anything is barber's signature, it's his extensive use of internal character monologue, even! yes, he also really likes doing convoluted plots- and it's fair that is simply a turn off for people- but the perception he doesn't care about characters or interpersonal relationships is very unfair. this man did not do All That with thundercracker for people to write that off.

"the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them"

i did this question previously for aileron but also! also!! more people need to give some love to idw needlenose. as with aileron, it's not that people DISLIKE him, it's that he is great and i want more people to understand this. he's got a complicated cross-faction sibling relationship with tracks! he's a gay widower and it's really sad!! he's a hardcore True Believer in the decepticon cause and imo a wayyy better exploration of what a generic non-high-command decepticon is struggling with in the aftermath of the war ending as a real believer in the cause than stuff like the scavengers that gets more play in fandom. but he gets way less attention as idw exploring that, unfortunately. i love him so much, please join me in the needlenose stan corner.

[nogenrealldrama]

Hi! Love the excerpts of your work that you've shared here. Do you have any advice for someone just starting to dip their toes into writing? Fanfic, or just generally? Thanks! :)

First of all thank you for reading and I'm so, so happy you liked my snippets :D

Second of all: Ummm giant disclaimer that I have almost nothing actually published to my name, so altogether I also consider myself a new writer. But I love to rant about writing anyway so here goes:

Don't listen too much to writing advice. When I first tried writing, I would spend way too much time on writing advice blogs. Many of them aren't that good, to be quite honest. And even for the good ones, there is such a thing as right advice given at the wrong time, or at the wrong place in your writing journey. If you're an overthinker, reading too much advice can make you start worrying about small things, and/or not have the confidence to try something wild but important on your own. Frankly, all it really comes down to is: 1) Having a vision, 2) Writing the vision down, 3) Noticing the ways your writing falls short of the vision, and 4) Tweaking things until they reach the level of imperfection you can personally live with. For me, writing advice is best searched for to apply to the specific issues I have in Steps 3 and 4. I apply any advice only in so far as it helps me get closer to the vision in my head. putting the rest under a cut because it got long - sorry!

2. Be uncompromising about writing things that bring you joy.

Kind of similar to #1, but it's doubly important when you're really just starting out. Or when you've been writing a while but always find it hard to begin. Double that importance again when what you're writing is fanfiction, because then you really have no genre definitions or deadlines or publishers or any other actual reason to compromise your vision. You already have some amazing ideas, and for each idea there is probably a feeling or a vibe or a message that you want to capture. Give yourself time to get lost in that feeling, to really indulge in it. And then write it down in its full glory, even the parts that might make you cringe a little from how dramatic or vulnerable they are. If there is a way to make your story more indulgent, do it. Because it will keep you writing. And if you really think it's too much, you can always edit stuff out before publication. You know, after you've actually written the story down. The thing that made me start writing in the first place was a giant longfic/possibly trilogy Canon Divergence rarepair plot idea that is still not finished, and on paper that's pretty much the last thing one should start their writing journey with. But if I stopped myself from writing that in favour of forcing out some oneshots, I never would've written anything at all. Give yourself permission to write exactly and only the ideas that make you excited to write.

3. Bonus advice that might or might not be useful to you, but it was ground-breaking in helping me write the way I want to write - in this excellent post, @little-hermit-crab56 makes a point that dialogue is a dance. I'd take it further/in a slightly different direction and say that storytelling as a whole is a dance. Juts like a dance, dialogue feels most dynamic when you allow it to go back and forth a little, to have short breaks and pauses here and there. I think the same can apply to an action sequence, or a bit of internal monologue, or an emotional trajectory of a whole scene. Just like a dance, it's less about the exact movements (e.g. describing precisely what happens in an action scene) and more about the rhythm of the back and forth (e.g. describing just enough to let the reader know that the protagonist is winning, but then - oh no! - the villain has the upper hand, but then the protagonist gets lucky and they're winning again). I swear that with enough skill to set up the right back-and-forth, even a character tying their shoelaces for a page and a half will feel dynamic. You can alter that rhythm, make it faster or slower, more dominated by "ups" or "downs", but even a little contrast can elevate a plot beat or an emotion more than I had initially thought possible. Of course, there is no need to simplify the "ups" to being good and "downs" to being bad - the back and the forth can both be morally grey or both similarly convenient/inconvenient to the protagonist. They just need to be meaningfully different. You can zoom this out even more and apply the back-and-forth to character arcs, or dynamics between characters, or entire plots. (The three act plot structure is, IMO, simply a choreography for a satisfying back-and-forth). In a longer work, you can have many "dancers" doing their own back-and-forth simultaneously, at multiple levels of the story structure. In a oneshot, you can have one or several backs-and-forths distilled to the most dramatic steps of the dance. In my experience, the whole thing gets quite addictive once you start seeing it.

[lanaevyssmoved]

please keep the afhiri/gale stuff coming I’m Very Invested!!!

OUUGHH.. THANK YOU.... maybe i could share the outline for SOME of their fic. since it wont be until like next year that its readable because i have two issues. 1. ooo what if i did it THIS way instead.. and 2. i must finish it before i share any of it

fic takes place 3 years after the events of the game !!!!!!

afhiri is not officially moved in with gale but spends all their fucking time at the tower anyway when at waterdeep. moved in without making it official essentially because the officially pushes afhiri away

the start has afhiri returning from an adventure to find gale isn't home, so they spend their time busking on waterdeeps streets and sleeping in alleyways (refused a key to the tower when offered) until gale returns..... when gale returns afhiri takes notices and charges him at full force. he lets afhiri know he found something and wants to show her it. they return to the tower and he closes everything up and reveals an artefact to her from deep within a lost crypt

a large part of their relationship is afhiri's fascination and interest in his magic and his research - not because she loves power but because she thinks its cool and pretty. so gale seeks to constantly find new ways to impress her - even though a simple fucking fireball can still do that - he needs to outdo himself and convinces himself it's for them

upon fucking with the artefact, gale is possessed by Something that was trapped within it. and afhiri doesn't realise. cue chapters of afhiri not understanding why gale is different, gale internal monologues and intellectual (and sometimes not) debates with whatever is possessing him, and this being pretending to be with gale to essentially fuck with and control afhiri

i never explored The Horrors with afhiri - they're essentially immune to everything that happens in the game. not even what happens with gale traumatises afhiri in any way because afhiri didn't like him like that during that time. just thought it sucked bro. also maybe wanted to stab mystra because she's a cop

afhiri isn't even the one that saves gale from the possession - tara is, who recogonises it's not him immediately and saves the day. and afhiri still doesn't realise. when gale is happy to be free again and reaches for afhiri, they retreat away.

unfortunately during the Hurt ArcTM, afhiri is killed. dw the clown is rezzed but. it is hard on afhiri (this is where we get the only candor scene in the fic <3)

so the next part of the fic after The Horrors is an exercise in learning to trust again. helping afhiri understand what happened and being gentle with them. we had the hurt here comes the comfort

it is only after this happens that afhiri wants to get serious with gale. this is when AFHIRI proposes to gale. knowing how immensely important this moment is, gale agrees to everything she says. afhiri wants to be married. just be married. no wedding day, no being engaged. lets just be married now. he agrees, he deals with all the paper work the next day. they're married now :) . you have to know i cried when writing this scene :D

however during the Comfort ArcTM gale is unfortunately struck with some hubris. as he is wont to do. the realisation of how fragile their lives are. how afhiri is going to out live him. how easy it is for him to hurt her, what if this happened again? he can't have that, he can't have any of this. afhiri can't die, and he can't die and leave afhiri alone. obviously they need to fix that.

during this part of the fic gale convinces afhiri to seek immortality with him - and through his pursuit of immortality and has more hubris caused thoughts where he once again thinks of divinity, thinks of ascension. if they're gods, they can't ever be harmed. that's the only way to make sure they'll be together for eternity

[for-gilded-cups-are-empty]

Katalepsis after live-read thoughts collection

So, now that im caught up about in time for book 1 to end, i am just regurgitating half-thoughts ive had along the ride, doing some retrospection and working my way through all the stuff i still want to draw.

I think thats one of the big things i really noticed and appreciated about katalepsis. Theres just drawability to it. I havent decided yet if its Hungrys writing style in general, the genre, or most likely, a characteristic of Heathers that got me to figure out i can use my laptop as a drawing tablet. Heather in her internal monologue just has a real appreciation for spaces.

A space is rarely a backdrop to do a scene in, the places and buildings and dimensions are characters to heather in a way that just makest a lot of sense for someone who grew up seeing the personified spirits of the everyday world as well as the varied wilds of Outside.

When the Stairwell trap is sprung, theres a very real feeling of betrayal, the willow house has forsaken raine and heather, who previously thought it a sanctuary.

We later learn that the space was bound, artificial, forced to act against its inhabitants in a way a house usually would not, which fits some themes that come up waaaaayy later.

I originally thought this would just be a quirk of heathers, some flavor to her thought processes, but it really did get picked up as an actual story beat, not just an aesthetic, with the soul of edward lilburnes house.

The Outside places are a bit more metaphorical about this, but strangely more clearly alive as well. The Library is an extension of the catalogue, wonderland is dominated by the eye. Ooran Juhs Projected space is his own physical gullet. Carcosa is the stage of a living play. The very first outside space we get to properly see is on the back of some giant creature, hairs and all.

Theres just Personality to every place that keeps them all so very, very vivid.

Ive been planning to draw wonderland ever since the mirror incident at the very beginning of the story, and in a very funny way, as ive drawn other stuff along the way ive been training for wonderland and the eye along with the cast. I really want to do it justice.

Staying on said cast for a bit, ive already talked about raine for a good bit, but theyre all amazing. I was always happy to see that an arc or a few chapters would become a cast members designated backstory time, because i really do want to know more about them and how they work as people. After about the middle point of the story though, those moments and how they connected became pretty hard for me to keep track off

For a reader who was along for the ride since the start, having to wait between chapters as they come out, the pacing probably works way better than it did for me.

I found myself really wishing for more time with the spookycule in each stage of development it had. Early katalepsis with just raine evee and heather is probably where it was the closest to ideal for me, in terms of just vibes i enjoy and things to keep track of.

I dont want to be too analytical, im bad at that, but for example we only see the fractal used to banish a sharrowford cult servitor once.

There could have been way more time spent in the twilight of magic, the street level zone, where every accidental slip outside is a moment of grand terror, and heather learns to live with the idea that the spirits are real.

For someone who gets called “Shaman” a lot later on, we only really see her asking a spirit for directions once (the wrecking ball hands gorilla), where i was expecting that to become a very integral bit of her kit as a character. I love the cephalopod changeling we got instead, but i do feel there could have been a heather who learned to work with her non brain pain vomit inducing abilities for practical reasons, at least for a little while.

After that comes the Messenger demon and maisies message. Knowing the rest of the story, i love that the primary motivation set up here has jack and shit to do with Ed or Alex. This isnt a story about killing the bad guy, its in a very serious way a story about love and that is what should motivate the characters.

Ed and Alex really are just invaders to the story, who grasp at threads that should not concern them at all, with their meddling eventually causing the collapse of Alexs portion of the cult under the Eyes gaze.

I dont quite know how much actual space is in between Kimberly and Zheng joining the household, but this is really the part of the story where just a lot happened at once. We get both badger and sarika, the entire abyss transformation and zheng so very close together.

During the time of the dead hands there is actually some breathing room though. Mostly because set dead hands keep us consigned to a breathable atmosphere for a bit.

The other big stretch of story that i wish lasted longer is the post proposal journey with sevens and saldis through carcosa. Given how time works outside, that whole stretch of time could have really stretched for a while without threatening the maisie limit, and i do wish that some of sevens later character development had happened in here, since i didnt quite know what to think of her after they left the palace, whereas right now in the end she is one of my favourites. I still dont know what i think of the king in yellow being in this story at all, but thats a me issue.

Yeah, so given that most of the smaller thoughts ive already posted in the liveread chat, i guess ive now covered my two big thoughts. I love how katalepsis treats spaces, and the only thing i had any problems with was the pacing, which tbh might just be because i didnt take my time when reading at all.

Time for even less structured thoughts now, just a rapid fire of things that come to mind after reading:

I hope we eventually get a perspective on the worlds cosmology from a mage fully unconnected to the vaguely interconnected british underworld of mages, im very curious how deeply different interpretations of outside, the abyss, demons and beyonders a person might have if they never interacted with the humunculus wars environment. The abyss beeing wet and aquatic seemed to be a general truth, to edward, zheng and even lozzie, until we met taika for example. I want to see more of that.

I said earlier that sevens has become one of my favourites, which is kinda stupid since most characters are my favourite at something by some measure, but Raine and Evee are still the two that are the most meaningful or connected to me. Ive already gone into maybe too much detail on how Raine just works in a way that ive never seen portrayed in anything for some reason. What i havent really realized until about now is how similar evees struggle is. There is that same need to feel useful. They both define their fundamental self via a skill that is in some way repulsive to them for whatever reason, and must cling to another to point them in a direction where they feel they can use it to do good. Evee has to feel useful, has to justify her presence and her dangerous knowledge to herself to some degree, and helping heather is how she does it for now.

The fundamental difference i think is that Raine chose to define herself that way, as knight errant, as supporter, while evee feels any other option to act on the world was taken from her by her mother. This mostly takes the form of her physical disability often stopping her from acting in time, reaching places, but also stopping her anorgasmia seemingly stopping her from loving in the way she thinks is correct (at that point of the story at least. Both of those are changing of course, mostly thanks to Praem).

It kind of lines up with Kimberly in a funky way, since she essentially decided not to use sorcery to justify her presence, both in the house and the story, but still remained around and appreciated, as a sort of in universe counterpoint to evees negative view of herself.

Thats all i can think of for now, i dont actually now how to end this, this isnt a sotry analysis, i have no conclusion except that im glad i caught up so close to the end, because im excited to see all of us react to whatever crazy shit is going down live!

[this-should-do]

i cant keep my mouth shut about this publically, it is crazy how badly they fumbled halo 4,

like i just got done playing all of halo mcc in less than a wekk, and after going thru everything where at worst the plot felt like a surprise when i got to the end of the game becjz it was so short in the mainlines, or a really cliche divorced man and woman plot, they were always really fun and coherant

but halo 4 jesus christ, the plot felt really bad on so many levels, cortanas arc just felt like it was doing a "ooo scary multiole personalities" ableism, the whole chief is the worlds specialist boy prophecy plot without it even being plot relevant outside one instance becuz of how fast the game goes since they didnt tie it in with the actual climax of the game, and also how badly they keep retconning cortana after the many different directions and strings the ither games left for her, and what the fuck was even up with humans being space faring over a millenia ago, and the way the flood tied in directly co tradicts what the lrevious games set up, and the villain was just so oit of place in the schema of what the halo games are like wow one guy instead of the main antagonist being the ever churning cogs of war and how zealotry forces people to fight eachother rather than those that act as a ruling class (tho ofc theres lits of american militarism exceptionalism inherant to the series so it cant go super hard on that but i can pick up a few pieces) so the villain ehose there for like 5 minutes total in the 8 hour runtime (beat the game in one sitting) and just the everything and the ending just being wack, and theres also issues with how humans vs covenant tie in with the forru ners it just muddies everything really

and god not to mention how ass the ending fight was, completely ofrcing you to fo stuff against the instinct that comes from years of syandard end gight training from even the past halo games, u Have to piddle your way like a pussy killing every enemy you see or you die, and the weapons you have in that section are way worse than other weapons you would normally have access to and the enemies Need headshots or they just dont go down plus the everything of how the prometheans function as enemies that just make them a slog to fight, like halo 4 had some highlights but the games writing really just bogs it down, like it couldve been good cuz it showed eveidence that they really wanted to lean into how being groomed as a child fucked uo spartans and how they viee themselves as people and what theure allowed to feel and bond with others, but there are like one or two total lines about it across the game and then they lay it on way too heavy at the end of the game in a cutscene that it just feels out of place and the callback to the one line about it in an internal "monologue" of chiefs just felt cringe more than anything like, somehow halo3 with its cortana visions felt more effective as a exploration inobtrusively to plot progression of the game of how chief places the worth of others over his life even at the cost of his own if it comes to that and just shows more effectively how fucked his past is as delivered in a expositional way yhan what halo 4 had becuz it was integrated and paralleled the gameplay and was a consequence of the continuous plot of 2 and 3 rather than being 2 whole moments of woag emotions dump that didnt tie in with the story, plus while it was cool having the cool opening cut scene at the beginning of 4 with the whole look child grooming and indoctrination, that plot with the stuff going on with halsey and whatever was going on there just didnt have any closure on her end and the execution of the idras abouy spartans humanity just falls flat, like argh,, 4 sucked ass overall

[emberwood-if]

small update (11/24/2022)

I am almost done with the first draft of chapter two! I knew the coding would be pretty intense but I didn’t realize how branch happy I am. Every time I finish a sequence of dialogue or add in some internal monologue I just want to keep writing more choices and more branching options which makes the story more meaningful and detailed, but a one page scene could be, like, four pages of just coding so I’ve been trying to find a balance of adding what I want but cutting things out that are not exactly needed to progress the story.

On top of that, Chapter 2 is nothing like chapter 1 in the sense that it expands the world into the town of Emberwood and we meet all types of side characters and such. Chapter 1 and the prologue were easier because it felt very contained, but Chapter 2 is when the antagonist comes into the picture and MC is thrown headfirst into the drama of these side characters and the main plot, so I’ve been really careful in making sure every piece is in its rightful place (hence the slow coding). This is a story where, depending on your choices, you may not get all the information or different information, which can make me feel the sense that I’m writing two separate main plots ahaha it’s fun, but a lot of work. (This also explains my inactivity, I’ve just been focusing on writing for now)

I’ve finally implemented the stat system and have fixed the relationship stats and all the bugs in chapter one, and have added a bit more to thicken the scenes. this update will be the last time I touch the prologue and chapter one lol. I am a bit of a perfectionist who is never satisfied soo yeah bad combination. 🫣

Alex’s rival route will be added in chapter two, while Dani’s will probably be chapter 3/4. There’s been a lot of hidden stats added, a lot of overlapping relationship stats and personality changes and such. I’ve been really proud of the work so far! I hope you guys like it !

Because of this, i will likely be looking for beta testers sometime this week or the next :) and they will become the first people to read chapter two, woo!

Also, we’re almost at 1.5k <3 thank you! With all the convos I’ve had with you guys and stuff, it doesn’t feel like I made my intro post just two months ago, it always surprises me how enthusiastic you guys are ! Thank you :,)

that’s all for now. Nothing too interesting but yeah, bye bye <3

[wayslidecool]

top 10 best spongebob episodes?

okay, so i'll come forward and say i probably can't give you a top 10. i haven't been caught up with the show for a few years now, and it's been a long while since i've seen most of the episodes, even the ones i do enjoy. so instead what i'm gonna do is give more of a generalized "i remember these episodes being pretty damn good". will probably go out of my way to highlight more niche picks. so uh, these aren't my top 10, just ten episodes i like that i felt like talking about.

all this is under the cut because i don't wanna flood peoples' dashboards talking about Sponge Bob lmao

so first thing first, let's get some of the obvious picks out of the way: i think pretty much everyone knows that pizza delivery (s1, ep 5a), band geeks (s2, ep 35b), graveyard shift (s2, ep 36a), krusty krab training video (s3, ep 50b), and chocolate with nuts (s3, ep 52a) are some of the series' best. probably others i'm missing but like. everyone loves those episodes, countless people have talked about why they're great, i don't think there's much i could say that hasn't been said by other people and said better.

so let's highlight some others that i personally found really good that i probably can say more about!

tea at the treedome (s1, ep 1c)

man, talk about coming out swinging. this episode is part of the very first block and i think it is so, so strong. i think what makes this episode work so well for me is how they handle spongebob, how he so badly doesn't want to disturb his new friend that he becomes completely passive and can't even ask for water is so good, feels very relatable. i love the way this episode handles his internal monologue, showing his increasing desperation up until he inevitably snaps. ("I NEED IT!") it's so so good, such a good showcase of his character.

patrick's also great here! he hits such that nice balance of "well-intentioned stupidity" that defines all his best appearances. the way he sees spongebob slowly breaking down and tries to remind him to stay classy ("when in doubt, pinky out!"), eventually coming in himself to show spongebob things aren't so bad and immediately being proven wrong, it's all just so good.

my only real knock against this one is that for sandy's debut episode, i feel like she doesn't really get to do a lot. which is definitely a pity, but i dunno, i don't wanna hold it against this episode too much because they definitely give her some great episodes later on, and this episode otherwise nails the character writing.

sb-129 (s1, ep 14a)

this is a really high-concept episode to put in the show's first season, don't you think? honestly i think this is an episode worth checking out for the spectacle more than anything. don't get me wrong there's some killer jokes, the joke about everything being chrome in the future, the way squidward inadvertently ends up inventing jellyfishing, there's some good stuff, but let's face it. the real reason you come to this episode is for its sheer scale. idk about you, but i can sort of give or take "caveman humor".

but man, this is an episode that goes places. i mean, in eleven minutes, we get a snippet of the future, the past, and the nowhere dimension (the last of which i'll go over a bit later on). on one hand, it kinda feels like the episode has to rush through them all, but on the other hand, it doesn't feel like any of these time periods are meant to be all that fleshed out. they mostly exist to provide an interesting setpiece, deliver a few jokes, and then move the story to the next place. i could see an alternate longer version of this episode feeling like it drags on a bit too much.

and man, that nowhere dimension. i love that scene so, so much. it's surreal, it's memorable, it's a bit unnerving, and it adds so much to this already high-concept episode. that scene's probably the highlight of the whole thing to me (and MIGHT be what elevates it to a personal favorite) but i'd definitely say the whole thing is worth your time.

dying for pie (s2, ep 24a)

i think this is another of those episodes everyone can sorta agree is one of the best, but eh. i wanted to talk about it anyway because yeah it's just that good. i think spongebob and squidward are probably the best character duo in the entire show, and this is probably the best example of said dynamic. i really like how the plot is set in motion by squidward's carelessness, how his apathy is what forces him to realize how much he actually cares about his neighbor. what i love even more is the balancing act they play with the spongebob-squidward dynamic, the way they're still able to keep spongebob a bit annoying to squidward while still letting squidward genuinely care.

besides all the character stuff, man is this episode just funny. the absurdity of the pirates selling pies that are actually bombs, spongebob's sweater of tears, "Eleven times?!", spongebob's bucket list including showing squidward to everyone wearing a salmon suit and open heart surgery? yeah this episode has a lot of heart (hehe!) but never is it at the expense of the episode's comedy.

the only thing i could maybe see someone holding against this episode is that spongebob having not eaten the pie is kind of an ass pull but like. the writers aren't gonna kill off the main character, come on. and besides, i think the twist ultimately serves the episode well, i think getting that scene of squidward expressing his exasperation over everything he had to go through really reminds us why we love this dynamic: no matter how much squidward secretly cares about spongebob, spongebob's always gonna be a little bit annoying to him. d'awwwww.

squid on strike (s2, ep 40a)

speaking of good spongebob/squidward episodes! this one is so, so underrated i think. it's not really one of the show's most quotable episodes, but at the same time, i kinda think that works in its favor, if that makes any sense. jokes aren't as good if you know they're coming, so an episode filled to the brim with really good jokes that aren't especially quotable ends up hitting just as hard on rewatches. it might not have the same staying power as something like band geeks or chocolate with nuts, but because of that it manages to always surprise you with just how funny it is.

and to make it clear: this episode is hilarious. mr. krabs trying to charge his employees for things like "existing" and "breathing", spongebob's idea of getting more from his job just being getting to wear a comically oversized hat, the general cluelessness of both spongebob and the population, spongebob taking squidward's anticapitalist metaphors a bit too literally, there's a lot of good material here. probably also helps that this is the episode where squidward says "Nobody gives a care about the fate of labor as long as they can get their instant gratification." so true bestie.

i think what buoys this episode beyond just its great jokes is once again how it nails the characters. spongebob loves his job, sure, but the only thing he loves even more is his good friend squidward, so of course spongebob will become more passionate about the strike when mr. krabs insults squidward! so much so, that he's willing to dismantle the establishment, board by board! and conversely, the one thing that could make squidward give in is the idea that he might be on strike with spongebob forever. as i've said. spongebob and squidward are the best dynamic on this show.

nasty patty (s3, ep 44a)

this is probably the darkest episode of the entire series, and i love it SO much for that. like, i wouldn't say it's unreasonably dark, they make it apparent from the very first line of the episode that the health inspector doesn't actually die, but we are still looking at an episode of a children's cartoon where the main characters are thoroughly convinced they've murdered an innocent bystander and spend the whole episode trying to cover it up. and it's hilarious.

i think the juxtaposition of such a storyline with a character as innocent as spongebob is what really elevates this episode for me. ("The dark deed you requested is done, sir.") the whole episode ends up becoming this exercise in just how long they can keep up the central joke before the characters inevitably find out what's going on, especially with the multiple fake-outs! i love how there's multiple instances where the health inspector briefly regains consciousness, only to be immediately knocked out again. so good.

and as a result of that structure, it manages to escalate so well, with how they bring in the police and manage to keep coming up with situations where they have to keep the not-so-dead body just barely out of view. the scene where spongebob stuffs the health inspector in his hat (pictured above) is probably the highlight of the episode to me, it just so perfectly illustrates how silly this story manages to get.

fear of a krabby patty (s4, ep 61a)

so most people agree that the series went downhill after the first three seasons. and they'd be right! the first three seasons are absolutely the show at its peak and the show never managed to recapture its glory days in the seasons that followed. but it's not like they flipped some switch and the show was suddenly bad. hell, if anything, "fear of a krabby patty" (the very first episode after the movie!) might be one of my all-time favorites. in fact, and this statement may sound treasonous, but i think i like this one more than their other 24-hour adventure in "graveyard shift". yeah, i said it! bite me!

of course, the krusty krab being open for 24 hours with spongebob and squidward being forced to work the full shift is about all this episode has in common with that one, as the stories go in pretty wildly different directions from there. i love the way plankton is integrated into this episode. his "dr. peter lankton" schtick is so funny in how obvious his intentions are, leading to some killer therapy jokes and a couple instances of being crushed by a piano.

another highlight of this episode is its distinctive animation style! c.h. greenblatt has a very recognizable art style, you can usually easily tell which episodes he boarded (like dying for pie up above!) but you can especially tell with this one. actually, between its loose, expressive animation and its zippier pacing compared to the classic seasons, this almost feels like sort of like a post-sequel episode? i wonder if this episode would be all that different if they made it in season 11. i don't mean this in a bad way, for the record -- i think this episode manages those traits really well.

mermaid man & barnacle boy vi: the motion picture (s4, ep 67b)

i don't really have much to say here i just think this one's funny as hell. it's not like it thrives off these intricate character dynamics, or this elaborate well-plotted story, its plot is just a vehicle for a flurry of ridiculous jokes that all end up hitting for me. you know that thing where you see some bad movie and are like, "i could do better than that!" despite having no filmmaking experience? that's the central conceit of this episode, and it works to hilarious effect.

this episode may not thrive off of intricate character dynamics sure, but i still think it uses its characters very well. it does a good job finding everyone's role in making the movie, from spongebob as director, squidward as the makeup artiste, sandy as the pyrotechnician ("Did somebody say BOOM?!"), plankton as the boom operator ("Did somebody say BOOM?!") and of course, pearl as the boatmobile. it does such a good job putting every character in a position where they have extremely high, extremely unearned confidence.

and that's really just where this episode succeeds! it's not complicated, you throw dynamic characters in a ridiculous situation and mine the comedy gold. helps that this episode has some killer running gags.

boating buddies (s6, ep 109a)

yeah, let's throw a controversial pick on here, why the hell not. so to make things abundantly clear: i do not in the slightest think this is one of the best spongebob episodes ever written. i also totally get why most people hate this one, and i don't think it's unjustified! that being said, when i was watching through season 6, i found this one of the funniest episodes of that season, and after thinking it through a bit, i think i understand why.

i'm not gonna try and dance around the argument that this episode ramps up spongebob's creepiness to absurd levels, or that it's unreasonably cruel to squidward, because it does and it is! HOWEVER. a lot of those criticisms seem to be under the assumption that, like most episodes, we're supposed to root against squidward and for spongebob. and like, that is clearly not the case here. this is very much an episode told from squidward's point of view. squidward doesn't like spongebob, so this episode will show us spongebob's worst side. squidward can't catch a break, because we've all had those days, right? this is an episode that puts the audience in squidward's shoes, and shows us why he's the way he is.

and i dunno, i think when you watch the episode under that pretense, it ends up working! or, at least it does for me. again, i can totally get why someone wouldn't like that characterization even if they understand the perspective this episode is written from. but to me, it ends up making gags like spongebob being able to hear squidward breathing from his house, or the drawn-out blackboard gag set to an orchestral score work that much better. throw in a frenetic boating scene towards the end with that surreal laboratory sequence for a bit of extra energy, and ultimately it ends up being an episode i enjoy. it's definitely not gonna be for everyone, i wouldn't necessarily highly recommend this one, but if you're gonna watch it, at least try to do so with the writers' intentions in mind.

planet of the jellyfish (s8, ep 169b)

you know, for as long as the show's been on the air, it doesn't feel like you really get those big, outside-the-box episodes all that often. spongebob is a show with a comfortable status quo, rarely deviating from its usual character dynamics, locations, and stock stories, so when we get something like this "invasion of the body snatchers" pastiche, it ends up standing out a lot more among its peers.

i think they made a good decision with this episode to keep spongebob oblivious about what's going on just long enough to mine that for its comedic potential, and no longer. if you had that eat away at much more of the episode, i think it could've dragged, but we get the best material of spongebob's obliviousness (like his awkward conversation with the jelly squidward, or seeing the jellien attempting to bite him and assuming it just wants popcorn), and after that the story lets spongebob find out, lets the story move on, and start building the suspense

i think that the monster movie pastiche does a good job giving this episode a unique flavor, it ends up feeling a bit higher stakes than a lot of spongebob episode, while also using this opportunity to riff on the genre and make a lot of silly and offbeat jokes, like the jellies kidnapping spongebob's spatula for some reason, spongebob freaking out about all his friends being kidnapped... and some random incidental, all the jelly clones hissing at a dude for ordering a patty with mayo (which turns out to be their weakness!), it feels like it does a good job making the most of its genre parody.

krabby patty creature feature (s11, ep 222a)

oh hey, another b-movie monster movie pastiche. look, i'm not gonna beat around the bush. i'm a sucker for these things, okay? in general, season 11 is probably one of my favorite seasons of the later part of the show's run, i think it generally does a good job feeling fresh with a mix of new character pairings, offbeat story concepts, and a handful of genre pastiches. like this one! truth be told there's absolutely other S11 episodes i could've picked that'd give this list more variety (squid noir would probably be my next choice, consider that an honorable mention) but listen. monster movie episodes are fun, okay?

compared to planet of the jellyfish, i think creature feature is generally a bit more frantic, really thriving from the sense of urgency the story concept provides. less suspense, more action! unlike the previous episode, this episode puts spongebob at the center of the action right from the start, letting him see the situation unfold and ultimately become the one tasked with stopping it. perhaps you miss out on some of the jokes about spongebob's naivety, but the increased tension more than makes up for it. plus we can now use that time to show how the mayhem is effecting people around town, get gags where bubble bass complains about the cheap promotional stunt, or a cop complaining about the zombie apocalypse interrupting his break. good stuff!

this is another episode where i think i have to give a shout out to the animation. i know some people complain about the recent seasons being overanimated, which is a complaint i definitely feel for some episodes, but i think this episode uses its really expressive, really fluid animation to great effect, really selling us on spongebob's terror with these big expressions. i also gotta shoutout some of the character designs for the patty monster versions of the characters, you can tell the animators working on this episode had to have a blast with it, and i feel like the end result really pays off.

and... that's it for the episodes i feel like talking about right now! is this the Cream of the Crop? probably not, but they're all episodes i've enjoyed, and it's nice getting to sit back, elaborate why i like these episodes so much (even if it's been pretty time-consuming LMAO). thanks for asking!

[ivymarquis]

Apex Predator Ch 1

Pairing; Jacob Seed x F!Rook

P:P; All plot for this chapter

Word Count; 5653

Tags; Character Death (and subsequent revival each time), Kidnapping, Character Injury, Hurt/Comfort, Drug Use, Canon-Typical Violence, Knife Use

Summary;  The Deputy has a secret, and Jacob makes it his mission to bring her to heel.

Remember how I said I’m writing some dark stuff and I don’t want to hear any complaining about it? Yeah, this is it. There is no redemption arc to be found here, nor are healthy dynamics. This will be a match made in hell :)

Placed under the cut because I am a menace, but I am a considerate menace.

CC, or Rook as she was called around the station, wasn’t actually all that great at her job.

Now, yes she’d been perfectly serviceable in her position of Junior Deputy of the Hope County Police Department.

When the mantle of Hope County’s Savior had been foisted upon her, however? Not gonna lie- she sucked at it. 

 It was the hidden truth only she knew about; as far as anyone else knew she always got the results she set out for when she went to blow the Seed’s shit sky high.

The first time she died hadn’t been that long after Dutch had turned her loose- a trio of peggies got the jump on her because she wasn’t paying attention while scavenging a ranger station. Next thing she knew she was coming to with a blinding headache and blood splatter on the wall behind her that definitely wasn’t there when she’d first entered the room.

Not-dying was surreal; She could remember clear as day turning to see the trio who’d been standing behind her, one with their pistol pulled out. There was no monologuing- only a brief exchange before they pulled the trigger, CC seeing the flash of the muzzle bright against the starlight, and then it was dawn and her goddamn head was threatening to split in half.

CC didn’t realize what had happened at first- why would she? The only absolutes in life were death and taxes. She was very much not-dead, so she must not have died that night in the ranger station.

And then somewhere between her blowing up John’s silos and burning Faith’s Bliss fields to the damn ground a fire fight broke out and a bullet found its way between CC’s ribs.

Able to kill her attackers but unable to call for help, she staggered to the road clutching the bleeding wound. Her vision blurred, numbness creeping up as a chill settled deep in her gut. At a certain point she realized her time was up and she was going to bleed out on the side of the road.

Unable to fight the inevitable she slumped against a tree, staring down the roadway hoping some do-gooder on an ATV would pick that exact moment to cover that stretch of road.

No one came.

Hell, at that point Jacob Seed himself could be the one to stumble across her and she’d have no complaints. 

The chill creeped further up her bones and CC was tired. Her clothes were soaked in her own blood and her fingers were frozen and her eyes were so damn heavy. Every time she blinked it took more effort to open her eyes than the last.

Her eyes slipped shut and CC wasn’t cold anymore.

Once again the next thing she knew the sun was rising and there were two Cougars in front of her, inquiring what happened and if she needed help.

Confusion overwhelmed her (there was an intense disquiet in her gut screaming at her something was wrong) and she offered up no fight as they dragged her to an intern who couldn’t find a scratch on her despite her being soaked in her own blood.

So calling it not-dying wasn’t entirely accurate. There were no witnesses thus far so CC had no idea what happened to her body between death and reanimation, but one thing was for certain- she didn’t stay dead.

The knowledge that she somehow was able to resurrect herself did not lead CC to be bold or foolish in her endeavors- She might not stay dead, but she was still capable of dying which was incredibly painful the two times she’d done it.

At the very least, CC may not have been all that great at being the Savior of Hope County, but she learned from her mistakes and the intervals in which she died became less and less frequent. 

She’d also effectively turned herself into the fucking cryptid of Hope County.

The chatter on the Peggie radios was always fun to listen to; more than once she’d heard broadcasts made about her death, the hope that the resistance would crumble without her to spearhead their efforts. That chatter devolved into absolute chaos when she was spotted blowing up another outpost the next day.

The Heralds all wanted her head, wanted her squashed like a bug under their boot.

Joseph wanted her brought into the fold, and the three Heralds might acquiesce to that, but CC knew the desire was still there. 

John would happily carve her up like a Thanksgiving turkey given half a chance- he’d nearly drowned her in the Henbane and likely would have if not for Joseph’s intervention. 

Faith couldn’t stand CC. Claimed she was spoiled and petulant like a bratty child fighting the guiding hand of a parent who only wanted the best for her.

Jacob- well, CC hadn’t gotten into much trouble with him yet, but surely her number was coming up on that one.

At the moment, she was taking a breather from the mayhem she’d been causing to fish. Keeping an eye peeled as she cast her line, CC leaned against a tree near the shoreline as she watched the lure bob in the water.

Fighting a holy war was not for the faint of heart- a task she’d never thought herself capable of attaining, and yet finding herself rising up to meet it anyway. Not that she had much of a choice.

It was hard to let others go off on the suicide mission that was tackling the Seeds. No one else knew her little secret but CC did. The guilt would eat her alive.

CC couldn’t save everyone, but by God she would do what she could.

The lure lurched under the water, the exhausted deputy wrestling with a decently sized fish who was destined to become her lunch.

Unseasoned fish was not exactly the best thing she’d ever eaten, but it was food and sated the hunger gnawing at her. Finishing her meal and cleaning up after herself, CC contemplated her next move.

She’d been so busy harassing John and Faith, leaving the Whitetails alone- Trying to gather up the scattered pieces of a Resistance.

Eli, if she could find him, had been drumming up his own in the Mountains and giving Jacob hell all the while.

That was what she needed. But he was elusive- the location of the Wolf’s Den was the biggest kept secret of the Whitetail Militia, and something she needed to find if she was going to get a hold of the man. Being public enemy #1 on Jacob’s shit list (though CC no doubt would soon be competing for that spot) meant he was as reclusive as Dutch. He wasn’t going to tell her over the radio where to find him.

Maybe she’d luck out and find some Whitetails while exploring the mountains. She’d definitely be able to piss off the eldest Seed brother while she looked.

As much as CC tried to not let the whole not-dying thing go to her head and not take stupid risks, it was hard to ignore that little voice in the back of her head that told her ”Fuck it, what’s the worse that could happen?” Dying was an agonizing endeavor, but ultimately one she could bounce back from.

The second CC stepped foot over the boundary dividing the Whitetail Mountains, her mistake was in thinking that Jacob would be content to let her cause a certain amount of mayhem before trying to capture her like his siblings had.

No sooner than she was evaluating her options on how best to earn Eli’s attention, CC was completely unaware that she held the Soldier’s full and undivided attention.

At least until an arrow embedded itself in a tree 6 inches to her left.

Heart lurching in her throat, CC startled like a deer, bounding forward blindly. With no idea where she was running to and only an inkling of what she was running away from, the panic washed over her with the realization that she’d made a horrible mistake. 

Jacob wasn’t waiting for her to get under his skin like John or Faith. He was going to nip the problem that was Deputy Carlotta Crawford right in the bud before she got the chance to cause him problems.

Well, She thought to herself, He’s certainly welcome to try at least.

The sound of another arrow being released from a crossbow whistled through the air, CC grunting with exertion as she begged her legs to keep going. Her hip was on fire, struggling to keep her footing steady on the uneven terrain.

The voices of the hunters rang out behind her- bickering amongst themselves, unable to distinguish what they were saying but able to hear the tones of their words.

One more shot rang out, pain exploding in her thigh. 

Staggering to a halt, CC’s world spun and turned green as her gaze dropped to her legs. Much to her surprise, there wasn’t one arrow but two embedded in her. The one she’d felt land in her thigh, and the other in the opposite calf. The nerve damage from an accident years ago paired with adrenaline meant she hadn’t even felt the first one.

The exposure in Faith’s region had increased CC’s tolerance for Bliss- the reason she was able to keep going with the first arrow. Two Bliss arrows though? That would be enough to bring anyone to their knees.

CC’s legs gave out from under her, the ground rushing up to meet her.

Rolling to her back, everything was green, sparkles dancing off the corners of her vision.

“I told you I didn’t miss that second shot.”

“How the hell was she able to go that far with a Bliss arrow in her leg?”

“You’ve heard the stories. Woman doesn’t know how to lay down and die; Figure we’re just lucky she went down with the second arrow in her. Now come on, Jacob’s waiting.” 

Her stomach rolled as her vision swam, helpless to do anything as one of the men hoisted her up over his shoulder.

Hallucinating that a jackalope was following them, there wasn’t much CC could do other than watch her bunny friend as they trekked through the woods, CC deposited into the back of a truck parked on the edge of the road.

Staring blankly at the ceiling, she’d swear she could feel the weight of the jackalope pressing on her chest.

More chatter from the hunters reached her ears, CC’s head rolling on reflex to look at the man who spoke. The red balaclavas hid any distinguishing details from them, not that she was going to be remembering anything of the trek.

“Jacob’s at the Grand View getting ready to prep the next group of prospects for the Trials, we’ll take her there.”

A wave of nausea rolled through her gut and CC wished she’d vomited on his jacket when he’d been carrying her.

Eventually the truck slowed to a stop, CC once again hoisted over a shoulder as they pulled her out of it.

It felt like a pyrrhic victory when her stomach rolled again, and her upper body held upside down over his shoulder made it no hardship to get her previous wish. Preening at his sound of protest, CC’s eyes pressed closed to try and stop her head spinning as he grumbled and started walking on.

“Jacob, sir- we have her.”

“Is that so? Place her in the chair.”

Once again her world spun as they placed her where instructed, settling limply with her head lolling back. The arrow in her thigh was down closer to her knee, the pain dulled but still present as she shifted to find a spot where the arrow wasn’t pressing against the edge of the chair. 

Eyes opening, CC couldn’t help but giggle on nervous impulse when she forced her head up. Jacob fucking Seed had sparkles around him.

“Leave,” the order was short and left no room for argument, his gaze leveled on CC as the two Chosen left. “I’ll admit, Deputy, I was expecting more than you from all the trouble you caused my siblings.” 

Were CC in her right mind, she’d be offended that he was insulting her size and fire off some quip right back at him. However, considering she was currently high out of her mind, her focus shifted to the jackalope grooming itself in the corner until Jacob moved again and she looked at him.

His eyes drifted down, and even as disoriented as CC currently was, she felt like a rabbit caught under his predatory gaze. “Must have caused quite the ruckus for you to need to be hit twice with the Bliss arrows. You’re not going to turn into an angel on me now, are you?”

Her heart had kicked into overdrive the second he’d looked at her like something to devour and showed no signs of stopping. It took every ounce of will power to focus on him as he spoke and not her horned companion who was currently sitting in a corner grooming itself.

“No, you’re not going to do that. You’re going to sit right here and be a good girl while they bring the others in.”

The room was spinning again, CC’s pulse racing as he crooned at her.

“We’ll start simple, how about that?”

Despite having no idea what the fuck he was rambling about, CC heard the implied cue and nodded her head in agreement.

“Good, deputy- that’s real good. What do you say to getting those arrows out of your legs and you sit there and let the Bliss work its way out of your system. Think you can handle that?” 

She nodded again, not entirely processing his words. The jackalope was moving around the room, CC’s gaze flicking from the predator in front of her to the creature behind him. His gaze was intense- too much for her to be dealing with in her current state. She was just glad he was content to do all the talking. She was entirely too out of it to string a sentence together, anything she’d attempt was likely just a garbled collection of noises. Maybe he wasn’t just cracking jokes about the Angel thing- this was an incredibly shitty amount of Bliss to be under.

He took another step forward and her heart lurched into her throat again, the fear palpable in her eyes. 

“I’m gonna step out for a second and find a medkit so we can fix up your legs. You’re going to sit here and not do anything stupid. We clear?”

He could have been saying anything and CC still would have nodded. 

He pulled away from her space, turned on his heel and took two strides before turning back to her. 

“You’re pretty bright eyed for two Bliss arrows; how about we keep you honest, hm?”

CC sure as shit didn’t feel bright eyed- disoriented and nauseous, but not bright eyed. Still she nodded along with him like “keeping her honest” was the best idea he’d ever had. 

As it turned out, that entailed binding her wrists and ankles with the rope that was secured to each arm and the front legs of the chair. Not that she’d be going anywhere. The room had only barely stopped spinning and even as out of it as she was, CC knew she’d probably collapse into a heap on the floor. She already had two arrows embedded in her legs- she didn’t need to add to her current injuries. 

Staring blankly at the wall ahead of her with Only You scrawled across it, CC had no idea how much time had passed before the door opened again. It could have been minutes or hours. She was just starting to feel herself calm down under the influence of the Bliss when the hinges on the door squeaked.

Her heart started racing again, discomfort and anxiety twisting in her gut as Jacob reappeared. 

Her jeans, she knew, were soaked in her own blood from the weeping wounds.

“Let’s see what we can do about those arrows,” his tone was too  helpful- damn near chipper. 

Or maybe her apprehension had more to do with the way once he set the medkit on the table holding the projector, his hand drifting to his thigh to pull his Bowie knife out of its sheath.

Jacob Seed with a knife in hand was not something that screamed “Good news!” to CC. The anxiety shifted to panic; being captured, restrained, drugged and alone with the cult’s beloved Soldier was quite possibly the worst scenario to come to fruition.

She’d had her run ins with John and Joseph even before Eden’s Gate completely lost it and started their holy war- Jacob had never been involved in those (Also how the fuck he managed that before all this started, because there was no way he’d gotten this many Chosen after the Reaping started, which meant he’d been operating completely under everyone’s noses the entire time), keeping to himself in the mountains. She’d only ever had a scant handful of interactions with him. No one had paid much attention to the old soldier who spent his time in the abandoned Saint Francis Veteran’s Hospital.

That CC was quickly realizing, had been a major mistake on everybody’s end. The rumor mill had been running wild with Jacob’s methods of conditioning recruits to be loyal to the Project, and she was starting to realize that there was a decent chance no one had embellished anything.

The full gravity of the situation couldn’t quite settle, the sheer volume of Bliss in her system keeping most of it at bay, but enough of it crept in for CC to struggle and whimper in a hopeless attempt to free herself before he got any closer to her.

The only thing she succeeded in doing was rattling the chair, the legs scooting slightly against the flooring underneath him.

Jacob chuckled, a low sound that made her stomach flit in a manner she absolutely decided to blame on the Bliss.

“Now what are you struggling like that for? I haven’t done anything,” yet was the unsaid word that seemed to hang in the air, CC’s brain wheeling like a car struck in the mud- spinning in place and unable to gain traction no matter how hard she tried.

“You need those arrows pulled and your legs treated, and the first thing we’re going to have to do is get those pants off of you.”

Yeah that did not help the panic screaming at her to do something to free herself.

Her wrists were tender, the rough material of the rope abrasive on her skin. For all her struggling and thrashing they held fast, keeping her tethered to the chair.

He was standing in front of her now, hand reaching out to grab her by her jaw, thumb on one side and forefinger on the other- the slight squeeze was all she needed to freeze in her tracks.

“You need to sit still, or I’m going to cut you. You’d be amazed at how sharp this knife is.”

The term fear based aggression came to mind as CC tucked her jaw to catch Jacob’s thumb between her teeth. It was the only thing her rational mind could come up with to explain why she’d attempt to do something so fucking stupid while trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and completely helpless.

The taste of blood filled her mouth about the same time as her ear started ringing, vision distorted even further than it had been with the Bliss.

The blood in her mouth was hers. Her reflexes were sluggish from the Bliss. Mentally, CC was able to more or less keep pace with what was going on around her. Physically? Everything was like moving through water.

Jacob had had plenty of time to snatch his free hand away only to wind it up and backhand her. 

“You’re going to learn very quickly, Pup, that I am not my brother. You will behave, or there will be consequences. Got it?”

CC’s head stayed turned to the side where it had landed from the force of him striking her, eyes on the jackalope in the corner. She couldn’t even find it in herself to be annoyed at the stupid nickname he’d designated her with.

One of his feet struck out, knocking into the chair and threatening to overturn her. “You with it enough to try and bite me, Pup, you’re with it enough to answer me.”

She nodded on reflex, flinching violently when his hand traced her jaw again. Her thigh was throbbing from all the jostling, kept at bay from the Bliss but still nagging at the corners of her awareness.

“I won’t hold it against ya, Pup. John did say you were a stubborn little shit. You play by the rules, you don’t get punished. You fuck up? I address it and we move on. Now hold still, you’re agitating the hell out of that arrow in your thigh.”

Again with the nickname.

The Bliss was still strong in her system, the drug making it incredibly appealing to just… check out. Nothing good was going to happen from Jacob dressing her wounds and she didn’t want to be here. She’d been fighting to keep her head above the proverbial water but there was nothing she could do to rectify the situation. If she couldn’t remove herself physically, allowing herself to go mentally seemed about as good an option as any.

 He kneeled before her, CC trying her damndest to keep her heart from lurching out of her throat. Fingers tracing lightly across her thigh, she could feel them gauging at the wound near her knee. I hope he washed his hands, the thought idly crossed her mind. It’d be a miracle if she got out of this without her injuries becoming infected.

The sound of his voice reached her, far away and hazy. Soothing her as his free hand moved from her thigh to the opposite calf. Her squirming stopped as he did- she knew that he was touching her, but couldn’t feel it. He was talking to her about her injuries- gauging where the arrows were embedded in relationship to bone, arteries, tendons and ligaments.

“Think you lucked out, Pup. Given they’re both bullet points, we’ll be alright to pull them out- neither one is lodged where anything major should be.”

She didn’t check back in until he brought the knife up to her abdomen. That got her attention even through the Bliss.

“I meant what I said- Sit still so you don’t accidentally get nicked. But these are coming off so we can treat your injuries once the arrows are pulled.”

Even if Jacob genuinely thought cutting her pants to expose the skin around the arrows was the best option, CC distantly noted that there was nothing stopping him from starting at the hemline of each leg and working his way up to where the arrow was, rather than starting with the waistband and working down.

He’d warned her not to jump, but it was difficult to sit still with the sheer efficiency at which he went to work. He wasn’t rushed, wasn’t in a hurry- this was a man intimately familiar with his weapon, knowing just the right angle and pressure needed to make the fabric rend underneath his blade- and he wasn’t going to slow himself down for her comfort.

But it still scared the hell out of CC. The only outlier in the equation, she jumped at the sensation of fabric giving over her thigh. She almost didn’t feel the way the edge of the blade bit her. It wasn’t deep, the blood welling softly. He backed the blade up enough to not let it cut her anymore, sliding in a smooth motion down her calf. Going back to where the arrow was, he then severed the thin piece of fabric on one side encircling the arrow, effectively freeing her right leg.

“You’re going to have to do a better job of listening to me, Pup. When I tell you something, it’s for a reason.” His tone was lighthearted, an air of Well that’s what you get about him. Not gloating, but not remorseful either. He had, after all, warned her.

The second attempt was smoother. CC shut her eyes, struggling and failing to keep herself from flinching at the pressure of the knife against her left thigh. It didn’t cut this time, a more restrained response. Much like with the previous leg he placed the knife, tested the amount of tension needed to make it work, and the blade slipped through the fabric like butter.

“Better,” was all the commentary he made.

Her pants hanging in shreds underneath her, she decided it was easier to simply keep her eyes shut. Small mercies, at least she’d scrounged more conservative underwear, the black boy shorts hiding more than what she’d been wearing the last time she’d had the luxury of changing her clothes.

Jesus, she had to be high out of her mind to even have the bandwidth to worry about her underwear in this situation.

She could hear him stand, a sound that she could only assume was him resheathing the knife, and rummaging- through the medkit, maybe?

This whole situation was becoming too much for her to deal with (Deranged cult leaders cutting off her clothes while under the influence of home-made drugs was not a subject covered in the police academy, thank you very much), and the appeal of just letting the Bliss take her was mounting by the second.

Which was all well and good until one of his hands gripped her thigh, encircling the area just above the arrow. That got her fighting through the Bliss enough to force her eyes open, realizing his other hand was gripped around the shaft of the arrow underneath her leg. It would be easier to not be cognizant of what was about to happen to her, and yet like someone realizing they were about to crash a car with nothing they could do to stop it, she couldn’t pry her eyes away.

“You know, we’re going to have a talk about how you’re as awake as you are later. You should be staring in a corner at nothing right now.” 

She certainly wanted to, but for whatever reason she reacted funny to Bliss. It wouldn’t hit as hard as it should. Her heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest from the stress, and she was certainly sluggish, but she still knew enough of what was going on.

Mumbling something completely incoherant (in her head she wanted to tell him to go fuck himself), his only answer was an amused chuckle.

“Sit still; I’ll make this quick,” he instructed, the grip on her knee tightening to ensure her leg stayed still.

It was odd, watching something happen to her that she knew should be painful, but being unable to process the pain. The Bliss kept her out of it enough to not feel the arrow being pulled back out the way it had entered her. She jolted more out of apprehension of pain than anything she actually felt, the movement stabilized by the iron grip on her thigh. The blood had clotted enough she wasn’t dripping it everywhere, eyes unfocused as he moved to doctoring and dressing her injury. 

After her thigh was bandaged he moved to the opposite calf. Once again, she did a better job of listening the second time. Equal parts from now knowing the Bliss was taking care of the vast majority of the pain, and the nerve damage to her lower left leg ensuring she didn’t feel a single thing as he removed the second one.

“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he spoke as he finished wrapping her calf. CC jolted, unaware she’d zoned out and as far as her brain processed Jacob had gone from being knelt before her to immediately standing and reaching out to grasp her face. “Easy, easy-” he soothed her like a spooked animal, ignoring how she flinched when his fingers brushed his face. “Don’t worry, Pup- you’ll learn the rules soon enough. But for now we need to get started,” he turned his head, clearly looking at something or someone else but CC couldn’t find the energy to track where he was looking. “Peaches! Bring in the others.”

CC felt like no sooner had she blinked then she was suddenly no longer the only captive in the room. She’d hoped now that the Bliss-soaked arrows were out of her system she’d finally start to sober up but luck was not on her side today. 

She could only half focus on Jacob as he gave his speech over his powerpoint presentation. The Bliss made her feel awful; the room was spinning again, her vision glassy and unfocused when he strolled over to her and dragged her chair forward a few inches towards him. If that was supposed to intimidate her into paying more attention, she didn’t know what to tell him- it felt like all she could do to just keep breathing her heart racing. Her chest hurt, she was breaking into an off and on cold sweat, her left arm was-

Suddenly CC felt more sober than she had for the last…. However long she’d been here.

A heart attack at 32 was unlikely, but given the stress and the sheer amount of Bliss in her system- Oh fucking hell.

CC thrashed against her restraints, the motion far more sluggish in real life opposed to what she thought she was accomplishing. Other than further abrading the skin on her wrists, all she earned was a glower from Jacob.

Her vision distorted in a way that had nothing to do with the Bliss, Jacob a blur as he grabbed at her chair again. “You want your freedom? You’re about to have to show me how badly you want to live.”

She couldn’t string a sentence together, reaching out to kick at him. Something- anything- to make him realize she needed help. Were she in her right mind she’d realize that he wouldn’t give a shit, but even having died twice previously her brain was still hardwired to not let that happen, even if it meant trying to solicit Jacob fucking Seed of all people for help.

“We’ll have to work on that attitude of yours, honey. You certainly refuse to just lay there, don’t you? You were doing so good there for a second but you keep interrupting me and we’re going to have a problem.”

He just thought she was finding the energy to protest- of fucking course.

CC’s eyes rolled to the back of her head and she slumped back against the chair as he continued on with his speech.

By the time he pulled out the music box, CC was gone. It wasn’t until he realized that the captured whitetails were thrashing against their bonds as expected but the deputy was deathly still that he went back over to her chair, eyes focused on her chest waiting to see the rise and fall of her ribcage. Seeing there was no movement, his hand reached for her neck, two fingers pressed against her throat to feel for a pulse that was no longer there.

“Fuck!” he cursed in frustration, knocking over her chair in a last bid to get a response from her. 

She was too loose in how she landed, neck rolling like a ragdoll with no resistance to it.

Joseph was not going to be happy about that. This was a headache the eldest Seed didn’t need, leaving the room with no concern for the two thrashing Whitetails. 

 - - - - -

CC should have figured that eventually, with her luck, she’d find herself in such a shit situation. 

Reviving from the dead was all fun and games until she revived with her wrists still bound and her two companions from earlier dead. 

Assuming at some point that someone would enter the room, if for no reason other than to clean up the corpses, the dread twisted tighter and tighter in her gut when no one ever came. As the sun set and raised again, CC tried once again to thrash against her bonds. God damn did Seed know how to tie a knot. They didn’t budge an inch. She couldn’t leverage herself to break the chair either, topped over on her side. 

Holy shit- what was she supposed to do? She didn’t know how any of this worked; the whole dying and coming back thing. People could live, more or less, about 3 days without water. Was she going to just be stuck in a perpetual loop of reviving only to die from dehydration and do it all again? The same 72 hour cycle playing over and over and over-

Day 2 post-revival and CC was barely conscious when the door finally opened. The room positively reeked but she’d grown desensitized to the stench yesterday. Glazed eyes tracking the three Whitetails, she barely had the energy to muster a groan of protest when the one who’d picked up her chair toppled her over again in shock at the realization she was still alive

Fuck it, what was one more concussion at this point?

The words spoken to her went in one ear and out the other. Her brain registered the phrase You’re with the Whitetails and that was all she needed to know. They weren’t Peggies on clean up duty- she was going to manage to escape to give hell another day. 

She was essentially dead weight as the two men dragged her out, despite her grand plan to blow up every wolf beacon she could find once she’d recuperated.

Fuck Jacob Seed.

[alexjcrowley]

Watched The Extra Man (2010) and was pretty disappointed, not going to lie. I'm more sad than bitter about it. Let me explain.

When the movie started, I thought I was in for a treat. I genuinely thought this would have been a movie ahead of its time talking self expression and gender identity, it would have been one of those things I can tell people "it was far ahead". But, for me, it didn't do.

Let's start by talking about exploring gender identity/self expression. Now, I have just one problem with this point: I wanted more.

The premise of the movie is that it's a story about this guy, Louis Ives, who has an internal conflict with his gender identity, we could say. It felt to me like at some point, while writing the script, the screenwriters got way more interested in the character of Henry Harrison and derailed the movie. The scene with Louis at the bar was great, I loved that scene so much, I wish there could have been more scenes like that! The movie went in a very different direction than what I thought also in regard of Louis's personal journey, to the point I'd be inclined to say at the end of the movie things got more confused than when they started. I am not an expert on gender identity, I couldn't comment and that's why I won't comment on the way they represented Louis's internal conflict, what I can say is that I would have preferred much more time dedicated specifically to that subject and less to...I am sorry, but unlikable side characters.

Let's discuss the side characters, at least the main ones.

Mary is at best a poor stereotype of an animal activist and your classic "pretty girl will make the loser do stuff for her while she hangs out with the cool boyfriend". She is incredibly unlikable and this unlikability brings nothing to the plot. She is just horrible to Louis and this doesn't make Louis grow or anything, she is just there to do and say what everyone who has ever watched 5 romcoms can easily predict. She turns decent 10 minutes before the movie ends, it doesn't count.

Gershon Gruer, I have just one question: did we really need him? I guess he was a comic relief, but he didn't make me laugh, so. I preferred him when he just cycled. And he had the play in the end? Felt lazy.

Lois and Meredith were fine, actually. I liked Meredith a lot, and I liked her monologue about her childhood, but since you only ever seen her in that 10 minutes of the movie, it felt out of place. Like when someone who's drunk tells you their entire life because they're drunk, even if you don't know them. Good to know, Meredith, but what is this thing about your past meant to add to the plot?

Vivian was also fine. Very basic, but not bad.

I wished I could have seen more of Miss Hart.

And now, let's come to the real beast: Henry Harrison. The point is, I know what they were trying to do with Henry Harrison. It's an archetype I personally love. From Count Oliver straight out of the Alan Ford comic books to Monsieur Gustave in Grand Budapest Hotel, the impoverished aristocrat is one of my favourite type of characters (don't @me for "Gustave wasn't an aristocrat!", the concept of this kind of character is someone who tries to keep alive/uphold an old faded lifestyle they cannot afford in the name of an ideal, Zero at the end of the movie says something like Gustave had always been a part of an era already faded long time before). Fanny Button from BBC Ghosts is also a good example of this archetype.

Usually, this character is inherently funny, something about being overly formal and quaint and old fashioned. They make for great side characters. But Henry Harrison, this guy, he is unbearable. I mean it. I am sorry if some of you love him, you won't like what I have to say and you may prefer keep scrolling, but I need to talk about this guy. Yes, the fallen nobleman is usually a funny character and they can easily get on other characters' nerves, but they shouldn't get on the audience's ones. His entire comedic persona comes from being racist, homophobic, sexist and frankly a bit disgusting a lot of the times, also an absolute asshole. And as much as "having outdated beliefs" (let's put it very kindly like that) is a staple trait of the fallen nobleman, he is just irritating! The whole joke is that he is a terrible person. I can find him peculiar in the first 10 minutes he is on screen, then he just becomes a nuisance.

And that's the second problem with him: his screen time. This guy eats up an unbelievable part of screentime. At some point you forget it's a movie about Louis's conflict with wanting to dress up as a woman and it just becomes a movie about how poor Louis has to put up with this other guy. And you know what, since the title is "The Extra Man" maybe I am the dumb once, after all Henry, not Louis, is the extra man, I shouldn't be so surprised so much of this movie is about him. But he truly is a character hard to stand.

I am not one of these people who can't get interested in a story if the characters are "evil", if they're morally corrupted. Hell, Hannibal and Succession fan here, so. But the point is, in a show/book/movie/whatever where the main guy sucks, you need to give the audience a reason to care about him. Not even to like him, but at least to care. I don't give a fuck if Henry dies the most painful death ever. The guy I care about is Louis, who fades like a shadow in comparison to Henry.

"You don't understand, it's the Gatsby-Nick Carraway metaphor" no, no, I do. The point is in The Great Gatsby is fine becausr Nick doesn't really have any interesting situation going on for him (on the contrary, Louis has this complex relationship with his gender identity) and Gatsby not only is not an ass but he's also an interesting character. You want to know what happens to him, you want to unravel his mystery. I just wanted to hit Henry in the head. "His heart was broken" is a very lazy mystery to deserve an hour and 15 minutes of waiting to be discovered. Again, like Mary, he turns decent in last 10 minutes of the movie, and now, I am no screenwriter, but I honestly don't feel like calling that character growth. Henry Harrison feels to me like a bad copy of a boring copy of the fallen nobleman archetype. He could have been written so much better.

So basically I have beef with how they wrote characters and the way they divided up screen time. The acting is not bad at all, the movie is not badly directed, but I can't say it was memorable. Same for the cinematography.

The Extra Man looks to me, in most part, a movie that it's there, extra in the sense that it's not needed. It's a movie. It's not the worst movie. But, especially because it had an interesting premise, it comes out as excruciatingly mediocre and bland.

And I am you don't even know how sorry about it. I wanted this movie to be good. I really like cinema, I have watched movies that are considered to be slower and more boring than what The Extra Man is supposed to be, but I had a hard time finishing it. Not even my love for Paul Dano could save this movie. And I liked Louis as a character, I was invested in his story.

I am writing this knowing NOTHING about how this movie was received at the time and how it's considered today. If some of you disagree with me, because maybe Tumblr and Danonation have decided this is actually a masterpiece, please, don't kill me/insult me. If someone liked this movie I am genuinely curious to know why, I'd love to hear other people's opinion.

[n0bamak1s]

whisper of the heart- megumi fushiguro x reader

summary: you begin to take notice of the name “megumi fushiguro” on all the tops of your library checkout cards. a semi-retelling of whisper of the heart featuring you and megumi. (genre: fluff, high school au, meet cute)

warnings: none! except maybe slightly ooc megumi

word count: 3.2k

a/n: hi everyone! ty all again for being so patient with me publishing this. i’ve been very busy with college apps lately, but i’m gonna try to keep this blog as active as i can while balancing it with school life. anyways, i had a lot of fun writing this, but i’m definitely not used to writing megumi, so feel free to leave feedback ^^ i also changed some details from the original movie and left it a bit open ended, so feel free to let me know if you want a part 2!

“who the hell is megumi fushiguro?”

your gaze was fixed on the faded ink reading the now all too familiar characters. the characters spelling out a name that managed to keep showing up on the yellow tinted checkout cards tucked into the books you borrowed.

nobara glanced over your shoulder, inspecting the piece of cardstock tucked between your fingers. wrinkling her nose in disgust, she plucked the card from you, holding it closer to her face.

“whoever it is, they have terrible handwriting.” she stuck her nose up, turning back to you with a playful smile. “i don’t know how you managed to get ‘megumi fushiguro’ out of that chicken scratch.” a face of mock distress crossed her features as she did air quotes around the name, as if she couldn’t believe such a delicate name would be given to someone with such handwriting. she’s always had a tendency to be a bit over dramatic about trivial stuff like this.

with nothing more than a huff in response, you snatched back the card, tucking it neatly back into your library book. your fingers grazed the worn down cover for a moment, gliding along the slight tears around the corners and the stiffness of the yellowing pages.

‘i wonder how many of these creases came from megumi fushiguro?’

“whoever it is, it seems like that name shows up in every book i check out in the library.”

nobara kicked a rock as she walked, leaving a small cloud of dust around her feet. “maybe you’re just imagining it. you always stay up so late doing whatever the hell it is you do in your free time that you’ve probably begun to hallucinate.” she nudged you playfully, eliciting a dead pan expression from you.

“i’m serious nobara. i mean, i’ve never really believed in fate but there’s no way it’s completely coincidental!”

she raised an eyebrow, as if to say you can’t be serious. “i think you’ve been reading too many romance novels, for all you know this person could totally be just some weird old guy with nothing better to do than visit the library.”

“hey!” you acted as if that last bit was a personal attack on you, and knowing nobara it probably was. “i’m not saying this megumi fushiguro person is my soulmate or anything, i just think it’s a very strange coincidence.” you shrugged off your backpack as you talked, putting away your book. noticing the suspiciously light weight of your bag, you rummaged your fingers around for a moment to find that your sketchbook had gone missing.

crap.

nobara turned to you, perceptive as ever of your suddenly altered demeanor. “forget something again?” it was almost annoying sometimes how well she knew you. was it really that obvious?

“just my sketchbook,” your hands rifled through your bag one final time to make sure you really didn’t have it “probably left it on the park bench or something, it’ll just be a minute to get it.” you turned to her with a sheepish smile, silently pleading her to follow you there. she stared blankly at you for a moment, probably having one of her internal monologues about how lucky you were to have her as a friend, before rolling her eyes and following suit.

“this better be quick, i have places to be you know!”

“no you don’t.” you turned around before you could meet her melodramatic glare.

behind you, you could hear her huff of dissatisfaction, though she made no move to leave, reassuming her position next to you, giving you a gentle nudge as she brushed next to you.

as you walked, the sunlight peeking between trees framing your pathway began to warm your face, highlighting the ends of your eyelashes and the tops of your cheeks with the warm glow of the first hints of summer time. for a moment, you closed your eyes, letting yourself be enveloped in it, before your fleeting thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a bike coming in your direction. you felt as if you’d jump out of your own skin in that moment, hearing a “move out of the way!” from a husky, disembodied voice.

it probably looked pretty ridiculous how you jumped out of the way, kicking up a fleeting cloud of dust as you avoided the sudden presence of the biker. grounding yourself, your eyes flickered up to the source of the voice, being met with the gaze of stormy blue eyes, framed by long, dark eyelashes that nobara would most definitely be envious of. taking in the boy’s whole figure, your eyes were drawn to the messy black hair atop his head, formed at the ends into contradictorily gentle looking spikes. the sleeves of his white button down were rolled up taut around his forearms, leading your gaze to his hands wrapped tightly around the bike handles.

oh, right. he’s still biking.

you turned your focus back to keeping to your side of the path momentarily, before the sight of your name written atop the sketchbook peeking out of his bag came into your field of vision as he continued to move past you. before you had time to think rationally, you turned to his now retreating form, breaking into a jog, kicking up a few more dust clouds as you did.

ignoring nobara’s incredulous calling of your name, you tried to call to the boy who had no intention of slowing down. “excuse me!” you cupped a hand around your mouth, hoping to project your voice louder. “hey!” the irritation in your voice was clear, but you breathed a small sigh of relief as the bike slowed to a stop, and the spike headed boy turned to your direction.

after an awkward moment of your continued jogging to him while he stood with a blank expression, you stopped in front of him, an accusatory look grazing your features.

“i think you have something of mine.” you tried your best to imitate the confident attitude you always admired from nobara, placing a hand on your hip and using the other one to point to his bag. his gaze followed the direction of where you pointed, his eyebrows raised while the rest of his face remained stagnant.

“oh, this?” he tugged the cardboard covered sketchbook out of the pocket it had been placed in, examining the cover. his eyes flickered between your name written in the top corner, and your currently annoyed looking face, as if he was playing some sort of word association game. you simply nodded in response, anticipation clear in your actions.

as he held out the sketchbook to you, he leaned down so his face was closer to you, as if to tell you a secret, voice low and eyes trained on you. “you should be more careful next time. you’re lucky i’m nice enough to not just steal this from you right now.”

you didn’t have an explanation as to why your heart began to race.

taking your silence as a response, he pushed it into your hands, his fingers brushing against yours gently. “nice drawings by the way, i recognize your friend over there from the portrait you drew of her on the first page.” his face remained stoic as he pointed at nobara, who was tapping her foot in boredom.

face warm from embarrassment, you snatched the sketchbook from where his hands lingered on it, muttering a bitter sounding “thanks” before stalking over to nobara once more, who looked relieved that she’d finally be able to go wherever it was she was going to.

“what an asshole.” you glared at him over your shoulder as he biked away, your gaze lingering a second too long for someone so insistent on hating him. nobara shook her head in response, clearly annoyed at your own obliviousness after witnessing the whole interaction.

a smug smile crossed her soft features. “maybe that’s megumi fushiguro.”

you raised a brow as you glanced at her. “as if!”

despite your insistence on your distaste for the mystery boy, he managed to have flooded your thoughts. ‘he must be using sorcery or something to keep himself on my mind, weirdo.’

still, you couldn’t deny how just a few more of your portraits were accented by ocean blue eyes, or pointed ends to the different mops of hair you sketched. how did you manage to keep attracting mystery people into your life?

when you returned to the library, you gripped a thick science fiction novel, the pages brushing your soft fingers as your marched it up to the checkout counter. as the librarian wrote the date on a small piece of cardstock, you took note of the fact that your name would be the first one there. had megumi fushiguro missed out on this one?

a pleasant smile stretched across your face as the librarian handed the book back to you. scrawling your name at the top of the checkout card, your eyes flickered to a stamp of ink beneath the slot for it.

donated by fushiguro.

of course it was.

the library door squeaked quietly as you pushed it open, one hand on the door, and the other placing your new book in your backpack. zipping it up and throwing it over your shoulder, you were met with the feeling of a dog sniffing your leg. your eyes trailed down to a dog almost akin to a small polar bear brushing its nose against your calf. reaching your hand to scratch softly against the back of his head, you coo gently at the not-so-little little guy.

“what’s got you all by yourself buddy?” an involuntary smile creeps onto your face at how he calms at your pats.

wordlessly, obviously considering this is a dog, he turns and walks a few steps forward, before pausing and tilting just his fur covered face toward you, egging you on to follow him just as you had the other day with nobara. you considered for a moment, before shrugging and giving in to his pretty minimal amount of convincing. nobara would be out getting lunch with maki today anyways, so you could use something to do today. after all, it could be fate.

it was almost as if you were one of those people who walked their dog without a lash, but in reality, it was more like the dog was walking you as it lead you down tall, sidewalk-lined hills and through parks filled with young parents having picnics with their children and couples going on walks. you wondered to yourself if this was a worthwhile excursion, was he just leading you to a dead end, or worse, was he some dog trained by a gang to lure people into danger?

after walking a few minutes more, you found out the spot you were being lead to was, in fact, even worse then both the possibilities you’d been brainstorming in your head, when you were met at the bottom of another hill with the stoic expression of that spike head. his eyes softened at the sight of the dog, a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips that quickly vanished as he met your gaze, his eyes hardened in contrast with the bashfulness that shone on his cheeks.

“oh, you found him. thanks for that.” he cleared his throat awkwardly, shifting his gaze back to the dog. you shifted your weight from one foot to the other. to be fair though, what did you expect you’d do when you found where the dog was leading you?

“i should probably go.” your usually collected demeanor had been replaced with that of a puppy with its tail tucked between its legs. with a stiff wave, you took your leave, turning on your heel.

“wait.” his voice wavered, as if trying to catch himself before he spoke. “i can walk you home if you want. it’s the least i can do after you got him home.” he forced a smile onto his face, though it made him look more constipated than inviting. what happened to the snarky, aloof boy who had handed you your sketchbook just a few days ago?

still, you nodded, lips pressed into a line that you hoped resembled somewhat of a smile. surely, you should have been more worried about his sudden change in demeanor, but the relieved expression on his face seemed to soothe your nerves a bit. he assumed a spot next to you, tucking his hands in his pants pockets.

“your little buddy there lead me all over the city trying to find you, so i don’t exactly know how to get home from here, but maybe you can just lead me to the library.” you turned so you faced him, now aware of the close proximity between you two. nobara would probably laugh in your face if she could witness the moment you paused, stunned by the eye contact he made with you under his thick eyelashes. had you been perceptive enough in the moment, you may have noticed the blush creeping up his face. he nodded his head, which was already tilted down to face you fully, with eyes hazy and lips slightly parted.

“it’s just this way, i’ll show you.” he removed his hand from its pocket to point up the hill that had brought you to him in the first place. you gripped the straps of your backpack and faced in the direction he pointed to obediently, hoping to ignore the weird tension in the air. what could you talk to him about?

before you could continue your internal dilemma, he cleared his throat again. “you seem to like the library a lot, huh?”

by god was this boy terrible at small talk.

“i guess i do, but i don’t know how you came to that conclusion considering i only just brought up the library.” you cocked an eyebrow as you looked at him, probably sounding more annoyed than you’d intended.

he smiled knowingly at you, a hint of disbelief on his features as he raised his eyebrows. “i guess you wouldn’t know since your nose is always buried in a book, but i see you there like every day.”

your eyebrows furrowed so they practically touched, trying to rack your memory for seeing him in the library. “i’m sure i’d be able to recognize you if you did.” you were completely oblivious to the implications of how memorable you found him that laced your statement.

he shrugged nonchalantly. “believe it or not. i even tried sitting down in front of you a few times, but you were always too focused on your books to notice.” his smile was almost bittersweet as you waited by a stoplight. before you could respond, he continued. “it’s kind of admirable though. i think it’s nice that you’re so passionate about your books.”

you took a chance to look at him, really look at him, for the first time since you’d glared at him biking by. he held your gaze, eyes gentle. there was absolutely no way this was the same boy carrying your sketchbook in his bag from a few days ago.

“well if you think i’m so nice, what was with you trying to be all smart about my sketchbook?” ever the stubborn one, you were.

he shrugged his shoulders, shoving his hands back in his pockets. “you really should be more careful of your stuff. i was just letting you know. it’s not like i would have put in that effort for just anyone’s sketchbook. i guess i was just trying to make sure you wouldn’t lose it again. sorry if i offended you.”

the way he was blushing would have made any bypasser believe he’d just asked you to marry him.

“it’s just…” he continued “after seeing you in the library all the time, i thought you were really impressive. i thought if i tried to return your sketchbook, i could impress you too.” he kicked a rock that touched the edge of his sneaker.

“why would you wanna impress me?” your obliviousness was excruciating for the poor boy, though it was completely sincere on your end.

“you know, for someone so smart, you really are dense.” he pursed his lips, feigning annoyance. “and here i was thinking i was so obvious.”

at this point, you were nearing the library, and suddenly desperate to continue this conversation that you would have been dreading at the start of this walk.

“when it was obvious you weren’t gonna look up from your book, i tried checking out as many books as i could to get on your radar.” his smile had a weird hint of sadness behind it. you stayed silent, piecing together facts in your head.

“recognize the name megumi fushiguro?”

oh.

it pained you for a moment to know you’d have to tell nobara she was right.

“you’re megumi fushiguro?” your eyebrows shot up in surprise, mouth slightly agape. he seemed to stifle a laugh at your expression.

“i mean, what were you expecting?” he looked a little too smug for someone who was too scared to talk to you in the library.

“some weird old person, probably.” you shrugged, still with an incredulous look on your face. “i’m glad it wasn’t though.”

“oh?” he really did have a nice smile. “i guess you’re glad it was me then.” even he was unsure of this sudden confidence.

you pondered his question for a moment, but your body moved before your brain did, nodding your head slowly. he seemed to loosen up then, hands out of his pockets again, making you aware of how close you stood to him with the way his fingers brushed yours every few steps. a slight sadness filled your being as you stopped in front of those squeaky library doors that suddenly seemed so uninviting.

“i’ll tell you what then,” he started confidently, juxtaposing the bashful way he avoided eye contact with you all of a sudden “come to the library again tomorrow, and i’ll meet you there. really meet you this time, not just walking past your table. i can show you my favorites there and you can show me yours, it’ll be…fun.” he looked up almost worriedly for your reaction, slightly angry at himself for his sudden shyness, you seemed to have quite the effect on him.

there was a beat of silence, and he almost cut the tension in the air by taking back his request and booking it back home. before he could fully hatch his master escape plan, you reached over to grab his hand, his slender fingers lacing through yours. you gave it a light squeeze, and swore you could feel him jump a little at the contact.

“i’d like that a lot,” you looked in his eyes, which had gone from defensive to doe like in just your five words “megumi fushiguro.” he loved the way his name sounded coming from you. his anticipation cracked into a smile as he squeezed your hand back, and you prided yourself on getting to make him smile again.

“i’ll see you tomorrow, then.” he leaned down slightly as he said it, reminiscent of how he had scolded you about your sketchbook just a few days ago. you nodded in response, unable to stop the giddy smile stretching across your face.

tomorrow couldn’t come any faster.

[from-the-clouds]

Kiss Me More (Part IIII) - Zemo/Reader

Masterlist | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | 

Summary: Reader ponders the decision they made after meeting Zemo in Riga. Series now complete!

Words: 5.2k

Warnings: Kissing, marijuana & alcohol abuse, heavy angst & depression, small reference to suicide, implied casual sex, yearning

A/N (also check out A/N at end when finished reading): This is it, everyone! I was going to end this completely differently originally, but after some thinking --  and some light peer pressure from ya’ll, I did something a little different. I did fight with this part the most out of all of them, so I hope it’s still good. Please enjoy. And thank you for all the love on this series, it’s been so fun to write! Also I was listening to this song while writing this.

---

The incessant buzz of her alarm clock jolted her out of her dreamless sleep. Fumbling in the dark, she slapped the top of it, hitting the snooze button and looking at the interface with bleary eyes. 

4:00 A.M. It stared, indifferent, back at her tired face. 

She groaned, squeezing her eyes shut and lamenting, bargaining, half expecting the clock to turn back time when she opened her eyes again. Unfortunately, it did not. With a huff, she threw back the covers and stretched, disturbing the orange cat that slept in the empty spot next to her where her husband used to lay. 

Snorting, the cat lifted its head to look at her as she climbed out of bed before curling back up in a ball where her feet had been. 

“Don’t mind me, just getting ready for work so I can feed us,” she said, grumpily, then in a moment of repentance, affectionately scratching her behind the ears. 

She had always been a night owl, so she didn’t think it would be possible to ever get used to waking this early. No human was meant to function at this time. It was the one part of the job she hated most. The rest of it was manageable, though it was still work. 

Setting about her morning routine, she showered, made coffee, and donned her uniform. Eating a day-old bagel and nursing her coffee on her tiny balcony, she looked out over the darkened horizon. It was far too early to even enjoy a sunrise. 

There was a saying, time heals all wounds. After her husband died, she’d heard it a lot. It was a saying she had come to find true. But it’d been well over a year since she’d left Helmut, alone in that swanky hotel room, and it still hurt like it was yesterday. 

“I understand,” he’d murmured, and she felt the ghost of his kiss on her forehead, arms around her waist, even now. She shivered, not from the chill of the morning air.

She’d left her old life behind, all of it. Sam and Bucky, too, about a month after their time in Riga. She couldn’t look them in the eyes after what she’d done.

But, she was proud of what they’d accomplished. They’d defeated the Flag Smashers. Bucky seemed happier, more at peace. Sam had accepted his role as the new Captain America. John Walker seemed to have faded into irrelevancy. All the loose ends had been tied up in a pretty little bow.

Except for hers.

Which is why she moved, sold all the stuff in her tiny NYC apartment, and packed her car full with what she couldn’t bear to part with, some photos and momentos from a different lifetime. Her car didn’t stop until she hit the Atlantic Ocean, on an island just south of Charleston. All but undiscovered by tourists, the residents in the sleepy beach town kept to themselves, and she could go about her life in peace, undisturbed. 

She couldn’t just run away from her problems, that was why she’d left Zemo. It seemed counterintuitive, but in her mind, it made sense. The problems would catch up to her, like they always had. The dissatisfaction she had with her life, with herself, was always going to return. And she knew she had to be alone to deal to face it head on. Like a wounded animal, crawling into the woods, there were only two ways things could end here; either she’d heal and come out stronger, or eventually she’d die. And so far, the healing part wasn’t going great. 

Each day was a matter of convincing herself that she’d made the right choice. Especially now, as her eyes burned, fighting to stay open against the inviting embrace of sleep. 

Despite it being dark outside, the bakery was bustling already when she walked in the service entrance. It smelled amazing, as always. Sweet and warm, a cacophony of aromas, baking bread, fresh coffee, sugar.

She set about the usual preparations to open up, packaging orders for the regulars, sweeping the floor, wiping down countertops. Once the place was open, she didn’t have to work the register, as she prepared batches of dough in the back for proofing, to be baked the next day. 

Before, she’d been a terrible cook, but she’d grown comfortable in the kitchen after learning to bake. There was something satisfying about working with her hands, at this point she’d memorized all the recipes and the work became second nature to her. Now, she always had fresh bread and pastries in her kitchen, although they were the slightly disformed, ones the shop owners deemed too ugly for the glass display cases. Daylight was cherished, even if she barely saw it inside the shop. Because while she was awake, busy with work, her thoughts remained pleasant.

At night it was the hardest. Things got quiet, lonely. When she got home, she poured herself a drink. Cheap whiskey, the kind that came in a plastic bottle and burned on it’s way down. She had never been much of a drinker before, she was now. Her thoughts were more manageable after a drink. Especially because she was usually thinking of Helmut. 

It was often that she wondered what he may be doing, and those thoughts usually ended with the image of him lying in the sun, poolside, on some island in the Pacific Ocean, drinking expensive champagne with a supermodel. It wasn’t a particularly comforting thought to her, and yet she was plagued by some variation of it every night. 

Sometimes, she’d humor herself, and imagine what they might be doing had she decided to stay with him. Unfortunately, thinking of that was more upsetting. She wanted it, selfishly, though she wasn’t willing to admit it.

When she was younger, it had been so easy to block out the pain, to just press forward, no matter what. Much to her dismay, it didn’t get easier as she got older. Years of watching those she loved in pain, years of being in pain had taken a toll on her resilience. She wasn’t the strong woman she once was, she was weak.

That night, one drink had turned into two, into three. Wallowing in her own self-pity had become second-nature, she felt like Hamlet, lamenting her circumstances, a constant turmoil monologuing in her brain. But this night felt particularly worse, for some reason. 

For the record, she had been doing better. But she was all-too-familiar with how grief worked, pulling her back down the dark side of the mountain, where she was forced to fight her demons over and over again. At some point, they were going to win.

It was a funny thing. Despite the loss of her husband, who she had loved dearly, his death had been easier to accept. Final. She couldn’t bring him back. Helmut on the other hand, was still out there, an open wound that could never fully heal.

Before she knew it, she was four drinks in, at her bedside table, fumbling through the bottom drawer, until she found what she was looking for.

Back on her couch, she stared at the card in her hand, the hastily written phone number on it, an international line. Helmut had given it to her, the day she left, stuck it in her purse while she wasn’t looking. She didn’t discover it until she had returned home.

It had been months since she last did this, pulled the card out of its hidden place in her drawer, placed it on the coffee table in front of her next to her phone, and considered dialing it. It had been a frequent occurrence when she first moved here, when she couldn’t find a job and spent most of her mornings either hungover, or stumbling home from rendezvous with men whose names she wouldn’t remember, and she wouldn’t care to, because there was only one man she really wanted. She could only hope he’d be as close as one call away. But she never called. 

I mean really, he’d probably moved on by this point. If she was going to call, she should have done it months ago, when there was more of a chance that he’d give a fuck. 

She considered this a setback. But she’d made her way halfway through the cheap bottle of whiskey, it was the drunkest she’d been in ages and she was curious. She didn’t know whose number it was, who’d be on the other end of the line, and never knew why Helmut would want her to have it to begin with.  

At this point, she wasn’t capable of good decision making. In general, it hadn’t always been her strong suit. So why did doing the right thing matter now? It didn’t, she decided. 

Taking a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle, she ensured she wouldn’t remember what happened next, at least not clearly. 

The phone rang twice before someone picked up. “Hello?” she didn’t recognize the sound of the man on the other end of the line immediately, so she didn’t answer. All she had wanted to do was maybe hear Helmut’s voice, he didn’t even need to know it was her that was calling. 

“Hello?” the man repeated, and she realized it wasn’t completely unfamiliar. The grandfatherly, comforting tone wasn’t her former lover, but someone close to him. And she supposed that wasn’t terrible.

“Is this Oeznik?” she asked. 

“It is,” he said after some hesitation. “May I ask who’s speaking?”

Truthfully, she was shocked she’d allowed herself to go this far. This was a bad idea. If she stopped now she could get off without doing any real damage. But just as she was about to hang up, she heard her name, muffled, on the other end of the line. 

“H-How do you know it’s me?” She raised the phone back to her ear. 

“I thought you sounded familiar,” Oeznik chuckled, low and soft. “Helmut told me you might call.”

“He did?” she squeaked. “Yes, although it was awhile ago. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I uh….I….well….” she managed. “I guess I just….I guess I wanted to see how he was doing.”  Her words flowed together like the liquor she was drinking, she knew she sounded drunk.

“Good, since we last spoke,” he said. “I don’t hear from him much these days...maybe every couple months. As you might imagine, he’s trying to keep a low profile for the time being.”

She nodded. Perhaps Zemo was as lonely as she was, hidden away in some cabin in the middle of nowhere. Though she had to imagine it looked much nicer than her current place, and maybe he had better company than a portly orange cat that begrudgingly liked him. “I understand.”

“How have you been?” he asked.

It sounded stupid, but she realized it was the first time someone had asked her that. Sincerely. Checked up on her. Even if she was the one who had dialed the number in the first place.

“I’m good,” her voice cracked. “Just keeping busy.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “Helmut always had such nice things to say about you.”

“Really?” she couldn’t stop herself. 

“Of course, would you like me to let him know you called?” 

“No, no...I wouldn’t want to bother him,” she choked on her words, something catching in her throat.

“Are you sure you’re alright, dear?”

“I’m okay, I just….” she felt tears prick at the back of her eyes, lowering her voice, since she didn’t think her normal register would come out as anything other than a whine. “I think I made a horrible mistake.”

“What’s the matter? What did you do?”

She shook her head, shaking the tears loose and now they were lining her lashes, threatening to spill over. However, she managed to make the next words she spoke come out clearly. “Nothing, I just...it’s really stupid, I really shouldn’t have called.”

He sighed on the other end of the line, and she felt like, despite her attempt at staying calm, he could still see that she wasn’t somehow. “It seemed Helmut was awfully sweet on you,” Oeznik’s words next came hesitantly, calculated. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but he told me if you ever called, to help you with whatever you might need, no matter the ask.”

Oh God, what had she done? A sob left her, one she couldn’t control, and she clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle any more. Her tears were flowing freely now, tracking down her cheeks and along her chin. She wiped at them clumsily, clearing her throat. 

“That’s very kind of him, but you can’t help me. I’m so sorry to bother you, please just forget I even called,” she forced a smile on her face so that hopefully he could hear it. “Goodbye.”

She hung up, horrified, and within seconds had deleted the call log from her phone. She’d been thoughtful enough not to memorize the number, and the lighter she used whenever she smoked sat in front of her. Without a second though, she burned the card, watching the paper blacken and disintegrate, until it was all but a pile of soot on her Wal-Mart coffee table. It was a fair punishment, and ensured she’d never get the chance to embarrass herself like that again. 

And then she cried, sobbed into a pillow next to her, until her tears ran dry and she wore herself out, falling asleep on the couch alone. When she’d wake the next morning, the only evidence of her actions would be a throbbing headache and a dead phone. 

She wouldn’t remember the call.

----

Life went on, as it always did. It had been about a month, and since that night she grew more indifferent, remembered how to ignore heartbreak. For now, she was stuck in her purgatory, waking up before the sun and falling asleep before it set, smoking joints, drinking cheap liquor, and going on the occasional date with people who she didn’t really like, tourists who would leave after a week and wanted temporary company. 

Despite everything, she partly believed things were getting better. Maybe they weren’t, but the possibility that someday they would seemed feasible. And that was enough, for now. 

On her days off, she’d walk to the beach and lay on a blanket, reading a book until the sun dipped below the horizon and lit up the sky in hues of pinks and purples. She found a record player at an antique store and began collecting vinyls, listening to obscure artists whose albums she found in the $1 bin. It wasn’t so bad. Life wasn’t so bad. 

She took a shower after work. Tomorrow was her off day, and she wasn’t sure what she had planned besides maybe watching a movie and getting stoned. Maybe she’d try going to the beach. The weather was getting warmer, and she could even go swimming if the water wasn’t too cold. 

Exhausted from her day of work, she laid down in her bed, still in her robe, her hair wrapped in a towel around her head. The sun was setting outside, the windchimes she’d hung outside slowly clanging together, birds singing in the warm spring air. Her cat hopped on the bed, offered an affectionate trill and curled up at her side, purring, in a rare display of affection. A cool breeze drifted through the open window. And for the first time in over a year, she felt content. Closing her eyes, she savored the moment, committed it to memory, so she could recall it the next time she was drunk-crying in front of her TV. 

She fell asleep slowly, so slowly that when she woke, startled by something in her kitchen clattering to the floor, it felt like she hadn’t even been sleeping at all. The clock next to her red 11:31 p.m. and it was pitch dark outside, the cool breeze from before had grown stronger and her bedroom curtains were billowing, wind whistling loudly through the apartment. Her cat had left her side, and she frowned, shivering in the sudden cold.

Pulling the towel off her head, she made her way over to the window with the intention to close it, sleepily, lazily, until she heard something else. A creak in the floorboard. A heavy footstep in her kitchen. That wasn’t just her cat. 

Some kind of muscle memory was ignited then, an ancient instinct that called to her from a different lifetime. Darting across the room, the gun she kept was in her hand, stealthily pulled from its hiding spot beneath her mattress. Truth be told, she never thought she would’ve needed it. Anyone looking for her would be smart enough to kill her in her sleep, not be so foolish as to wake her first with their heavy footsteps. 

A dark silhouette stalked through her kitchen, moving slowly. It was a man, she assumed, based on his broader figure, and lack of coordination. In her experience, women were often stealthier without trying. He took another step, the floor creaking below him, shuffling on bargain linoleum. 

Staying low, she crept forward, ducking stealthily behind furniture, avoiding the spots on the floor she knew made noise. It didn’t appear the intruder had a weapon, in fact, it seemed he was bumbling about, searching for something. A burglar, and a bad one at that. An island full of vacation homes owned by rich doctors and they thought they’d find valuables in her shitty apartment?

It wasn’t until she was standing directly behind him, gun aimed at his head, that she finally spoke up. 

“I believe you’ve come to the wrong place,” she said flatly. “Whatever you’re looking for, it’d be in your best interest to leave empty-handed.”

Her eyes were still adjusting to the dark, but the intruder froze, arms slowly raising in defeat, empty-handed, as he turned around to face her. In the dingy room, she couldn’t make out any of his features, could only see that he was clad in all black.

“Unfortunately, liebling, that wasn’t my intention.” 

She would’ve recognized that voice anywhere, though the endearment he’d used was enough to clue her in. Hitting the lightswitch with her free hand, she was face to face with the man she’d spent the past year trying to purge from her memory, Helmut Zemo. 

Her gut twisted, her mind raced, but the only thing currently bubbling up, over the surface of every other emotion was the pure, seething rage left behind in the wake of fearing for her life.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she stepped towards him, gun still raised, fuming. 

“Hey, hey!” he staggered backwards, hands raised, eyes averted. 

“I thought you were a fucking robber!” she hissed. “I thought you were here to kill me!”

“Lower your voice,” he scolded. “You’re going to wake your neighbors.”

Taking a deep breath, she realized she still had her gun trained on him and she lowered it, clicking the safety and discarding the weapon on the countertop. “What the fuck?” she asked. “What the hell is wrong with you? What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I didn’t know you had such a mouth on you,” he smirked, but she wasn’t finished, and she glowered at him. 

“You broke into my apartment!” she growled.

“I had to be sure I was in the right place.”

“Yeah? You couldn’t have knocked first?”

He nodded, eyes trailing down to her hands, which were trembling, she hadn’t even realized. He seemed to understand what he’d done then, and she flexed her fingers, eyes locking with his. “I suppose...you may be right,” he said, surrendering.

She felt the rage subsiding as she took in his appearance. He looked not so different from the last time she’d seen him, except a fair amount of stubble covered his jawline in a short beard. He was still devastatingly handsome. Zemo’s dark eyes, filled with longing, drank her in, tilting his head as his gaze shifted to her lips. It was like she could read his mind, she knew what he wanted, what he was thinking. And her body was going to betray her if he kept it up.

Despite everything, she was still upset. Upset and embarrassed, as the light was doing an unflattering expose of her tiny, cluttered apartment, full of mismatched furniture and water-damaged wallpaper that her landlord refused to replace. It probably gave the prison cells that Helmut had spent years in a run for their money, and was in stark contrast to every other aspect of his life.

“What’s this?” he asked, gesturing to the empty liquor bottles on her countertop, stowed in her trash can. “Have you been drinking?”

“Not tonight,” she quipped, on guard. Had to be. As much as some old instinct told her to throw herself into his arms, press her lips to the underside of his jaw, and let him envelope her in the comfort of his embrace, she knew she couldn’t.

“Hmm,” he brushed past her, frowning, looking disappointed, as he made his way to her living room. 

“How did you find me?” she asked, eyeing him wearily.

“I’m a wanted man, I trace every call that comes into my estate,” he said over his shoulder. 

Helmut was taking inventory of the cramped space, staring at the photos she’d hung in a collage on the wall behind her couch, with a few watercolors painted by her late husband. One in particular, that he was focused on now, was from her wedding. Of all the memories she chose to hang, this one was her fondest, her former partner was all dark curly hair falling into deep blue eyes, and she was the portrait of a blushing bride, wearing a dopey love-drunk smile, gazing at him, ignoring the camera. 

“You looked so beautiful on your wedding day,” he said, turning over his shoulder to look at her. He was so out of place here, standing in her living room, for a moment she thought he might be a hallucination, some physical manifestation of the heartbreak she’d experienced. “Although that doesn’t surprise me.”

She flushed, suddenly self-conscious in her thin black robe and still-damp hair. It occurred to her that she wasn’t looking her best, which made this whole situation that much more disconcerting. However, the compliment disarmed her slightly, and the anger she felt began to dissipate, slowly. She was going to offer him something to drink until her cat, who had been absent through the chaos, suddenly jumped up on the back of the couch and promptly hissed at him in an attempt to defend her territory.

“Pumpkin, be nice,” she said, although it was mostly to placate Helmut. Pumpkin never listened to her. 

Helmut let her sniff his hand, and she was stunned when the cat rubbed her face against it. Of course, Pumpkin would like him of all people. That made sense. Then again, she supposed it made them not so different. He turned away to look at the rest of the room. “I see you haven’t kicked that bad habit you told me about,” he gestured at the ashtray full of roaches on the coffee table. 

“Did you just come to my place to insult me?” she asked, putting her hands on her lips and feigning confidence. She could’ve rolled over and cried and told him how much she missed him, how many nights she’d spent crying over him, and while all of it was true, she felt indignation was the better option for her self-preservation.

“That’s a good question,” Helmut turned to face her now, hands in the pockets of the leather jacket he was wearing. Completely inappropriate for the weather here, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care. “Why do you think I’m here?” he asked.

She shrugged, feigning indifference. “I don’t know, but you shouldn’t be.”

He snorted, his frustration evident, and she saw a glimpse of the man that so many feared, the side that had earned him his dangerous reputation, that had him locked away in a high-security prison for nearly a decade. “I didn’t come all this way for nothing, draga, we’re going to have it out.”

“Fine,” she said, lacing as much venom as she could into her words to prepare herself. “Then get on with it.”

He stared her down, and the expression her wore startled her, something sparkled in his eyes, mischief, relief maybe? It was insulting. Like he didn’t take her seriously. But there was something else there, too, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but it was wiped from his visage before it registered.

The tension in the room dissipated slightly when Zemo sat on the arm of the worn couch she’d bought from a yard sale, and she winced. “I spoke to Oeznik the other day,” he said flatly, snorting, eyes focused on a stain on one of the rugs she owned. “He told me he had the pleasure of speaking to a friend of mine about a month ago.”

Frowning, she tilted her head, her eyes meeting Helmut’s. Something in her brain sparked a memory she’d once dismissed as a dream after a particularly bad night of drinking.

“He was concerned, you see, because this friend didn’t seem to be in the best state of mind,” Helmut rose from the arm of the couch, stalking forward slowly, and she couldn’t move backwards, not even if she wanted to, as he could pin her easily against the front door. His voice grew louder, faster as he went on. “He said she was crying, slurring her words, he told me he thought maybe she might be-” Helmut cut himself off abruptly and closed his eyes, clenching one of his fists, a look of distress on his face as he took in a terse breath. “I won’t finish that thought, but you’re a smart girl, you can imagine what I’m getting at.”

Swallowing hard, the phone call came back to her in pieces, the tears, sobbing on the phone to a man she hardly knew. It was the night she finally admitted to herself she’d made a mistake, even though she’d already known it, deep down when she left him in the hotel room. 

“Please forgive me for breaking in tonight,” Helmut said. “But I couldn’t bear the thought of you not answering the door, I needed to see with my own eyes that you were okay.”

Exhaling through her nose, she looked at the floor. “It’s not like that. I had too much to drink.” she said, keeping her voice as steady as possible. “It was just a bad night.”

“Then tell me, what was the horrible mistake you made?” he asked, stepping closer. He was close to her, now. So close. And his proximity made everything more difficult.

God, if only she could remember exactly what she’d said, the only thing that came to her were the emotions, desperation, sadness, grief. It was all too much, and he was threatening to bring them all back to destroy her again. 

“I shouldn’t have called,” she said, shaking her head. “And I’m sorry. What do you want me to say? What do you want from me?”

“What do I want from you?” He asked, tilting his head, his eyebrows pulling together. “Do you have any idea how worried I was? How hard it was to sit on a plane when all I wanted to do was be here? With you?” His hand rose to cup her cheek, stopping just short of her face when she flinched away from his touch.

“Please stop,” she managed, the burn of tears behind her eyes almost menacing. The last thing she needed was to cry in front of him. “You’re undoing everything.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked. 

“You’re….you’re here,” she murmured weakly, wetness seeping, glossing over her pupils. “I only have so much capacity for pain right now, if you touch me now, you’ll ruin everything.”

No one ever had this kind of hold on her, she’d never bent her rules to appease anyone else, and she’d gone toe to toe with super soldiers. He was just a man, and yet, he terrified her. 

“You really want me to leave?”

She couldn’t answer, but one tear escaped, sliding down her cheekbone, and she sniffled. 

“I’m not the one who did this to you,” his thumb, swiped along her face gently, wiping it away. He’d touched her, just barely, and she was reeling. 

“I know,” she stuttered, gasping. “I know it was me, but I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“You are so stubborn.” His expression softened as he looked upon her, his thumb tracing underneath her jaw, tilting her head upwards to look at him. Malleable, she obliged. “I’ve thought about you everyday since the night we spent together. You’ve plagued me. That can’t be a coincidence. Are you really happier this way? You must be honest with me.”

She shook her head, blinking out fresh tears. “No, I’m not. I just thought...by the time I realized I made the wrong choice, you’d have moved on. People like us don’t get to be happy.”

“Says who?”

How could she refuse him anymore? This would continue to go on until she gave in. And from the beginning, she wanted to give in. There was no use in fighting the inevitable. The small point of contact -- his hand on her chin -- radiated impressive warmth, and she could feel every part of herself being attracted to him, quelling some ache deep within her. 

Reaching up, she clutched at Helmut’s palm, which didn’t last long, because he pulled her into his arms, nestling her head underneath his chin. She melted into his embrace, finding solace in the warmth of his solid frame. 

“Come home with me,” he coaxed softly. 

“I will,” she murmured, surrendering to the comfort of his presence. “But you have to let me bring Pumpkin.”

He chuckled, warm and amiable, the vibration of his chest echoing in her own. “Of course, you’ll bring Pumpkin,” he murmured into her hair. Oh, how she had missed hearing him laugh. They could’ve stayed that way for hours, and she would’ve been content, but he pulled away, hands on either side of her face as he studied her.

Unable to hold back any longer, she leaned in to kiss him. It was chaste at first, all the memories of her last night with him came flooding back quickly when he parted his lips to deepen the kiss, but she didn’t want that quite yet, just needed a moment to process this. The simple comfort of being held by him, kissed by him, was more than enough for now. He’d been waiting for this, she could assume in the way that he responded, pulling her impossibly close so she was engulfed in him.

Her stomach flipped, a warmth blossoming in her chest as he pulled away, their foreheads touching. “Oh, I missed you,” she sighed, shivering as his beard tickled her neck, his mouth on her sensitive skin.

“And I, you,” he murmured. His eyes studied her, carefully, up close, and for the first time since meeting him, she really let him see her, teary-eyed and vulnerable.

She would never let him go again. 

---

A/N: So here we are! I know it’s been a ride, but I’m really excited for these two. However, I don’t feel like I’m done writing for Zemo yet. If ya’ll have any headcanons, thoughts, questions, requests, etc, feel free to drop them in my ask box or shoot me a DM. I’d love to talk more about him. I also would be down to write more oneshots based around this series, because I am sort of like….okay, they obviously have a connection, but they don’t know that much about each other, and I may or may not have a light future already mapped out for them. I might do an epilogue at some point even. But if you have anything you’d like to add, let me know!

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[lil-tachyon]

Genuine question: do you have any tips for sci-fi worldbuilding? I always seem to zoom in too far; that is, I'm really good at little details but big picture is often hard for me, so my universes often feel a little empty.

I'm not a very good writer but I'll try to answer the best I can.

I think ultimately what sells worldbuilding is presentation: it's much better to conceal than to reveal. When you're coming up with a setting you'll probably end up with copious notes on the history of the world, the relationships between characters and factions, the physics, metaphysics, and (possibly) magic systems of the universe. This is stuff you need to know for the setting to maintain its own internal logic. However, much/most of this does not need to be explicitly told to the reader. Two reasons for this:

1) When you allow the reader to fill in the blanks with their imagination, they become more involved in the story and you can play with their expectations later on. In the mind of the reader, the world you've created becomes larger than what you've actually written

2) Suspension of disbelief. When you supply the precise rules for how magic or an FTL drive works, the reader might say: “that couldn’t work” or “what about all these implications that are never addressed?” Examples: old-timey sci-fi featuring outmoded or incorrect physical theories as central plot points or Harry Potter magic where you “can’t make food” but you sure as hell can turn inanimate objects into animals that could then be eaten. If instead of saying “Here’s how FTL travel works” you show people interacting with teleportation devices that have just a hint of underlying logic to them- well that’s just a bit more palatable (and harder for the reader to find plot holes). Read Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series and the bits about the Mirrors of Father Inire for a real good example of this.

This (to my understanding) is what they mean when they say “show, don’t tell.” When you reveal a world through character dialogue, fragments of in-universe writing, descriptions of settings as seen through the eyes of people who inhabit them- it’s much more organic and engaging than descriptive monologues on history and politics from an impartial narrator.

So back to your point about “little details”- I actually think this is a great place to start when worldbuilding. In my opinion, the little details of a world are the most interesting bits. You can imply a lot with a little and make a world feel bigger than it is. But for your own, behind-the-scenes knowledge, you’ll want to work backwards, asking yourself questions about the kind of world in which your little details could exist. I can’t find a source for this so I could be wrong but I swear I read once that Frank Herbert figured out a lot of the tech for Dune just because he wanted to have swordfights in his far future science-fantasy tome. Ask yourself questions and you’ll find the answers are usually pretty interesting. I actually prefer this way of working out a setting to starting with a big picture and extrapolating the details from that- it’s hard to figure out every possible consequence of your initial choices. But both ways work!

I do this sort of question-and-answer, working-out-the-logic-and details of a setting in handwritten notes and doodles in a real cheap notebook. Keeps everything loose and low-pressure. I can cross stuff out, I can write stuff in the margins, I can make maps and character sketches all in one spot and don’t have to worry about anything being perfect. It’s very liberating. Some people may prefer other methods. Whatever presents the smallest barrier to you, you know, actually taking the time to write out the setting, is the best method for you.

As for coming up with worldbuilding ideas- just steal them. Now obviously I don’t mean plagiarize someone else’s work. I mean don’t be afraid to make your influences obvious- if that’s what you like, then that’s what you like! There’s a good Tom Parkinson-Morgan (KSBD, Lancer, Icon) quote that gets to the heart of what I’m trying to say here:

“I think that my influences are pretty on my sleeve but I like to think I do at least a decent job of amalgamating them into something original” [source]

The more you work on something, the more it becomes your own, even if you’re taking heavy, heavy influence from others. So much of ATLA was obviously sprung from the creative team’s interest in Ghibli movies and the Century of Humiliation/East Asian historical geopolitics. Book of the New Sun has clear references to H. G. Wells and Jack Vance. Hyperion features the Martian “John Carter Brigade” and a hacker named “Cowboy Gibson.” The influences are obvious but the worlds still feel real, alive, and not at all derivative.

A last point that might be helpful- a good understanding of genre conventions and the history of the genre in which you’re working can be invaluable. I heard a good take to the effect that the more established a certain convention is within a genre, the less suspension of disbelief (and, consequently, the less explanation) is necessary for the reader. So, for example, if you’re writing a space opera, you really don’t need to explain why there are spaceships and ray guns (although it’s always helpful if you, the creator, know the answer to that why question). Similarly you don’t need to explain the presence of elves and dwarves in high fantasy- they’re there, people expect them. It’s the unique things that will require an explanation, and how you go about explaining them I’ve already outlined above.

Some personal world building gold standards are:

Avatar: It just gets everything right

Evangelion for the way it works with genre conventions, makes them feel even more believable (all the work that goes into showing the massive resource and manpower investment into making the EVAs work), and then subverts them

Hyperion / Fall of Hyperion for synthesizing basically all the major subgenres and literary movements of 20th century sci-fi and then telling a kick-ass story with the world it builds out of them (negative points for retroactively ruining everything in Rise of Endymion)

Anyway, hope this helps and if anyone has some notes or criticism for me, please let me know! I’m really not much of a writer, I just read and draw a lot.

[jeonjeonggukenergy]

May 31

summary ~ on the last day of your senior year living together, you're still fighting your feelings for your roommate jungkook. before you can fully move out and move on, he makes a pretty significant scheduling error. #and there was only one bed

genre ~ fluff, smut / roommate!au, college!au, bit of crack/fake texts

wordcount ~ 5k

warnings ~ smut (18+), blowjob (oral: m receiving), nipple play, marking, penetrative sex, cumplay (sort of oral: f receiving), jungkook just goes hard as expected BUT IT'S SOFT? this is just super cheesy and cute with some hopefully hot smut

a/n ~ surprise oneshot! and they were roommates? and there was only one bed? this is all my fave tropes wrapped into one, i had a ton of fun writing it and i hope yall enjoy :')

~ read on ao3 ~

You walked up to your apartment door just as a boy from the class below you walked out—with a wave, a "see ya, Jungkook!" and what appeared to be the last piece of your roommate's bedframe.

"You...sold...your bed?"

"Well, sort of. I borrowed it from that guy for the year while he was studying abroad. So now I'm giving it back to him. Since I'm staying in the city for my new job, though, I wish I could have just kept it. Now I have to actually buy one," Jungkook lamented.

"I mean, okay, but why didn't you just wait to give it back tomorrow when we move out?"

"What do you mean? Today's move-out day. I was just waiting for my brother to get off work to help get all my stuff out of here. I was kind of wondering why you hadn't packed up more, but you've always waited til the last minute to pack for things." Jungkook grinned, recalling your friend group’s spring break trip.

Momentarily distracted by his dig, you defended yourself quickly before returning to the subject. "Hey! At least I always get it done in the end. Better than packing too soon and accidentally giving away your bed a day early. Your new lease doesn't let you move in til the first day of June, right? It's May 31st."

Jungkook's pretty doe eyes went comically wide. "31st? There is no May 31st. It's June 1st. Because yesterday was May 30th. Right?"

"Oh my gosh. You're joking. You have to be joking," you tried not to laugh as you pulled up your Google calendar. "Here, look," you turned the phone around to him. "May 31st."

"Shit," he breathed, pushing the soft shock of hair back from his frozen face. "What did I do?"

You took your phone back, already distracted by your texts as you reassured him. "Don't worry, it’s funny but it's no big deal, I'm just messing with you. You can sleep on the couch for tonight, you'll be fine."

Jungkook grabbed your wrist, making you look up from your screen in surprise. In sitcom-esque slow motion, he swiveled his head sideways and you followed his gaze to the living room, realizing—

"The couch was his too. I gave it back."

"Oh my gosh," you muttered, shaking your head down with a smile. Feeling a little braver on your last full day as roommates, you finally gave Jungkook the warning that had almost slipped out plenty of times over the year. "Jungkookie...you're really lucky you're so cute. Otherwise you wouldn't get away with nearly as much as you do in life.”

"I..." Jungkook dropped your hand, grinning at the usual nickname but unsure how to take the half-compliment. "I'm so sorry. I can't believe I forgot about a whole day, I usually double-check my calendar. I can just take the floor for tonight, I guess? I'll go unpack my blanket again. Sorry, I don't want to be an inconvenience."

"No, no," you cut him off—against your better judgment, but determined to ignore your superficial attraction to him to be a good friend and roommate. "Don't be ridiculous, just sleep in my bed. I mean, if that's okay with you of course. It'll definitely be more comfortable than the floor." He nodded rapidly, eyes still wide but mouth perfectly flatlined like an emoji. "Okay then. No worries. Let's eat, I got us takeout for our last night but it's getting cold."

At the mention of food, Jungkook made a beeline for the plastic bags hanging on your arm, and soon you were back to normal—well, sort of. Eating slightly reheated noodles on the living room floor instead of the couch, you giggled over one last Friday night K-drama episode together and reminisced over all the best memories from your year as roommates. You missed the coziness of your couch more than you thought you might, or maybe you just missed the snuggles you'd shared in its corner on countless nights like this one.

Jungkook had always been cutely touchy with his close friends, but it had taken a while for you two to get comfortable. You had to admit you'd gotten spooked when you first met him, disappearing behind your door after a quick "hi, nice to meet you!" and furiously texting your friend and former roommate Jin in distress. He hadn't warned you the new guy he'd found for your apartment was, in your own words, "stupid hot." Jin had laughed you off, saying it hadn't even occurred to him because he just saw his former soccer teammate "JK" as a kid. To be fair, it probably truly had slipped Jin's notice—he barely believed anyone who told him how objectively attractive he was. But Jin was a good enough friend to both you and Jungkook that he took charge of dissolving the initial tension, immediately bringing y'all over for a "double housewarming" dinner party at the cute new place he now shared with his fiancée. (Thank goodness he'd finally listened when you'd told him she found him attractive. Even if it cost you a roommate of two years, you'd happily take credit for that relationship.) That first invitation had felt suspiciously like a double date, but Jin's cooking and hosting skills broke the ice nicely enough. After that, it only took a few more dinners and video game nights to initiate you into their casual rhythm of hair ruffles and backhugs.

Currently, Jungkook had his arm around you to offer a neck rub while you rested your head on his shoulder, hoping he couldn't feel your pulse beneath his fingers. "Ah, you're going so hard," you half-protested.

"I always go this hard! You never complain," he shot back with a teasing grin.

"Nah, come on, you're gonna leave a mark or something. At least check," you lifted your head, sweeping your hair aside. "Is it all red like Jin always gets?" you joked.

Facing away, you had no way of seeing it, but Jungkook's face had gone red too. "Uh...no, it's fine, it's fine." He glanced back to the TV and turned it off, noticing the episode had ended. "Sorry though, I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm gonna go shower and get ready for bed."

"Hey, no, it's okay!" You tugged on his shirt as he got up, wanting to reverse whatever you’d done to make him seem so uneasy. "I'm not actually hurt or mad at you or anything, I was just messing with you. Again." You smiled lightheartedly, and his face broke into a soft nose-scrunch at the reassurance.

"Okay, good. I was gonna shower anyway though—so uh, see you in bed I guess?"

"Yeah same, see you in bed," you laughed, trying to maintain the ease in your facial expression until the moment he left the room, upon which your internal monologue immediately turned into "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."

You couldn't help thinking about Jungkook in the shower. And not even in the usual way that you couldn't help thinking about Jungkook, in the shower. As much as you hated to admit it, Jin was probably right about your feelings for your sweet, dorky roommate going beyond just physical attraction, or friendship. Jungkook was kind, respectful, smart, athletic, artistic, funny, really hot, and you already got along well enough to live together: he really was the ultimate boyfriend material. You were both pleasantly moderate introverts. He shared your same favorite dramas and brand of instant ramen. Even your parents loved him—wait, did they want you to date him too? A strict follower of every social rule that dictated not dating roommates, coworkers, best friends' exes, exes' best friends, etc., you had simply never allowed yourself to consider the possibility until now. You played back your conversations with Jin over the year and considered the sheer amount of the funny stories you told him, or situations where you asked for his advice, or surprises he'd helped you plan, or simply glowing, grinning descriptions of something new you'd noticed, that all ended up being about Jungkook. He'd never even had to bring him up. Damn Jin for being such a good listener.

~

Almost an hour later, when you were already in bed, Jungkook politely knocked on your door. He always took long showers, and tonight you couldn't decide whether you were thankful for the extra time to prepare yourself or even more stressed from the extra time to overthink.

"Come in," you called quietly. Jungkook shuffled into your room, toe-socked feet making their way to the side of the bed you'd rolled over to clear for him. Cautious, he climbed in, and you stayed safely facing away from each other for a while, winding down for the night on your phones like you both normally did in your separate rooms. So spaced out that you couldn't even detect Jungkook's additional body heat, you felt the chill of the air conditioning instead and kept adjusting the blankets to try and achieve maximum insulation.

Jungkook eventually spoke his first words since he'd entered. "Am I hogging the covers? I'm sorry."

"Oh no, you're totally fine, if anything I'm taking up more than you. I'm just always cold, so I usually sleep in, like, a three-layered burrito. But it's fine! Really, no worries."

To your surprise, Jungkook rolled over, propping his head up on an elbow to look at you. "Well...I...we could..." he started, swallowing when you turned to face him. "I mean, you could wear socks! Like I do!" He pulled a foot out from under the sheets and presented it to your face, cackling.

"I think the fuck not," you snorted, shoving the foot away and falling slightly on top of him as you both lost your balance in giggles. "You couldn't catch me dead in your weird-ass socks."

"That's the secret, though!" he insisted. "That's how I stay warm."

"You are warm," you realized. One of your hands had ended up on his chest, the other arm tucked in the side of his torso, and both were burning up. You supposed you'd settled into similar positions on the couch before but you'd never noticed just how much of a human furnace he was. Maybe it was because he hadn't been wearing his toe socks.

Neither of you said anything for a second. You could feel his heart beating at a slightly elevated but respectable rate, and while you wanted to pull away, if only to spare your own nerves, you also...didn't. You were too scared to stay like this, but too scared to move too. Jungkook seemed similarly stuck, blinking down at your hand on his chest, but eventually he unfroze to reach over it and drag you fully onto him by your shoulder. You simply let him handle you, not making any additional moves but silently enjoying the heat he seemed happy to provide. His hand spread over your back to press your torso to his, radiating heat through your thin t-shirt, and you suddenly grew self-conscious that you were braless. But of course you were, who wears a bra to bed? You were fine. This was fine.

"Are you okay? Is this warmer?" Jungkook asked, as gentle as his touch.

"Yeah! Yeah, this is fine," you responded, the answer muffled by your mouth's placement all too near to his neck. You could sense the heat coming off his skin from there too, but it contrasted with the mild coolness of his still-damp hair. It smelled faintly of floral shampoo, and the scent suddenly amplified all your nerves as the implications of how close he was hit you from head to toe. Even the soft fuzz of his socks brushed your bare legs, now intertwined with his. You weren't exactly small, but the warm solidity of Jungkook’s body under you made you feel fully enveloped by him. Though he'd shared a fair amount of skin with you through the course of your friendship, the intimacy of sharing your bed took every touch to another level, and being pressed so flush against him felt unbearable. You couldn't possibly process a whole year of pure pent-up physical attraction right now, much less any other feelings that may or may not have grown with it, especially when you knew he had no reason to feel anything back. And you were roommates. You just needed to sleep it off and then you could both move, and move on, in peace. Hopefully the odds of ever being stuck in a bed with Jungkook again would go way down after tonight.

Not bothering to get up and turn off the weak string of lights above your headboard, you just slowed your breathing and attempted to drift off to sleep. Pretending the deeper breaths weren't so you could get a better whiff of his soft, flowery hair, you laid still for several minutes, successfully ignoring your body's instinctual response.

Eventually, though, it became impossible to ignore his.

~

Jungkook wasn't that hard, okay. He wasn't a teenager; he thought he could control himself around you enough by now that he could just enjoy this last night without giving anything away. He almost felt bad when you invited him into your bed, sensing your reluctance and knowing it was his own fault that you'd had to offer in the first place. But he knew you wouldn't have asked if you weren't truly okay with it, and that confidence gave him the tiniest swell of hope that maybe you were a little bit more than okay. While Jin refused to give away any real insight into what you thought of him, he'd been teasing Jungkook for six months about his crush on you, eventually convincing him to try making your friendship into more once you both graduated and moved on to different roommates. He had just been planning to bring it up in a much better way than the semi that you could definitely feel against your thigh. You had both been silent about it for over five minutes, though, long enough that he could cross his fingers that you were already asleep. He probably didn't have to worry about a thing.

~

"Jungkook?"

You had finally worked up the courage to stop pretending you’d fallen asleep. You felt him freeze up under you—the defined abs that covered his tiny waist tightening, solid chest muscles contracting, and his thighs tensing to trap yours between them, all at once. You froze too, attempting to speak again but no sound coming out.

"_____, guess what!" he blurted to cut you off. Which was good, because you had absolutely zero plans for what to say after that.

"What?"

"It's after midnight," he said, jolting up to point to the digital clock on your side table. "It really is the first day of June now. So, according to the lease, we're officially no longer roommates. Crazy!"

"I mean...yeah," you affirmed, confused. "But also, we're literally sharing a bed right now. In the same room. So until that changes, I would probably still call us roommates." A little too amused by your own clapback, you raised your head to peek into his wide eyes and smiled, a big one that scrunched up your whole face.

And his dick twitched. Yeah, there was no way you could not notice that.

Before you could even finish your gasp, Jungkook spoke again. "I like you. I'm sorry. I like you. I didn't want to say anything while we were roommates because I didn't want to make you uncomfortable, and I definitely didn't mean for this to happen, I'm sorry. You can totally not like me back and it's fine. I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to tell you like this, I just...I like you. A lot."

Shocked into silence for a second, but galvanized by his unnecessary apology, you responded without thinking for once. "Don't say sorry. You don't need to apologize, it's okay. Oh my gosh, I had no idea. I really had no idea. I, uh, I think I like you too? Shit, okay, I thought you were really hot from, like, the day you moved in, and eventually it became more than that but I didn't want to make anything weird because, yeah, we’re roommates, so I pretty much tried to ignore it all year. But then Jin made me realize that you're basically all I think about—or talk to him about, shit, I must have been so annoying—"

"Jin? JIN?" Jungkook grabbed his phone from the side table and wasted no time in blasting off the last meme in his camera roll. You propped yourself up in his arms, both giggling at Jin's quick shot back.

Looking at him now, a big cheesy smile on his face even as he stirred under you, still a little hard, you nodded as if fully understanding for the first time. "Yeah. I like you too."

As he set down his phone and brought his hand around your back again, his smile faded into a smirk. "Wow."

"Yeah...wow," you echoed, nervous and awkward again. You felt your face grow warmer as he looked slowly to your lips, then back up to meet your eyes.

"Can I kiss you?"

Blinking, you shifted your weight back down onto him, bringing your face close enough to hear his intake of breath as your hips brushed his dick. "Can you do more than that?"

"Fuck," he whispered. "Yes."

Jungkook snaked one arm down to your ass and one arm up your back to the nape of your neck, holding you close as he kissed you for the first time, fiercely. He didn't waste another minute hesitating now that he knew you had both wanted this for a year. Passionate but not aggressive, he teased the seam of your mouth with the tip of his tongue and you instantly opened for him, gliding your tongue over his smooth bottom lip as his flicked up to the sensitive roof of your mouth. Squeezing your ass to guide your hips down in small circles against him, he tensed his other hand slightly into your hair and you moaned at the competing sensations. Jungkook broke away to absorb every beautiful noise you made as he discovered you, heavy eyes finding yours before he rolled over to pin you to the bed and bury his face in your neck. He smiled into your skin when you moaned again from the satisfying pressure of his full body over you, and carefully rolled his hips into yours as he covered your jawline in tender kisses. One of your hands carved through his thick hair. As you dug the fingertips of your other hand into his prominent back muscles, you suddenly realized you were both still fully clothed and you really, really did not want him to be. Tugging his t-shirt over his head and throwing it aside, you paused before letting him do the same.

"Wait. Take off your socks. I can't believe I didn't make you do that before any of this. I really just almost had sex with someone wearing toe socks. Kill me," you whined over-dramatically.

"Come on, that would have been hilarious. What a first-time story!" Jungkook said earnestly. "Sure you don't want me to leave them on?"

"Please take them off. Please," you only half-jokingly begged.

"You wanna take 'em off for me?" he teased, wiggling a foot in front of you.

"Fine, whatever it takes!" You flung his sock across the room, reaching for his other foot below the covers to get rid of the other one.

He fell on top of you, giggling again, but as soon as you shut him up with your lips he snapped out of it, eagerly deepening the kiss while his warm hands traveled up under your shirt. Smoothing over the curves of your torso and reaching up to firmly grasp your breasts, he moaned into you and you whined back as his thumbs brushed your hardening nipples. He was incredibly physically precise, each movement graceful yet sharp and intentional. You felt deeply lucky to experience this dimension of him, the most perfect and natural expression of his contradictory nature. Equally loving, giving, overachieving, and sensual—with a side of weird socks and Gen Z meme literacy—that was your Jungkook.

"I can't believe this is happening," Jungkook murmured as he pulled your shirt over your head. "I can't believe I get to see you like this. You're so—ohhh." He trailed off, taking in the fully naked glory of your top half for the first time. His head immediately ducked to your chest, sucking dark bruises into the low-lit hollow of your breasts. You squirmed under his hold on the dip of your waist, whimpering, but the grip of your hands in his shiny black locks let him know you didn't really want him to stop. Grinding against his now rock-hard dick, you eventually couldn't take the friction anymore and reached down to try and pull off both of your pajama pants at the same time. Jungkook just laughed.

He paused to help you out, rolling off of you to take care of his own sweatpants, and you kicked off your pajama pants and underwear as Jungkook slowly let his erection spring free above his waistband. You'd never thought a dick could be pretty before, but it honestly made sense that his would be as perfect as the rest of his body. "Fuck," you swore softly, mouth watering. Jungkook raised an eyebrow at you, and you scrambled to lick the tip as if on instinct, eliciting a much more emphatic "Fuuuuuck!" from him. He spread his legs to let you crawl between them, holding tenuous eye contact as you smirked at his sensitivity. Teasing a single finger up his shaft, you followed its path with your tongue and he let out a deliciously high, shaky moan.

"Please," Jungkook choked out when you approached him, lips pursed. He praised you breathlessly as you tightened a hand around his length and began to sink down. "You feel so good already. Fuck." Closing your eyes, you hollowed your cheeks to accommodate his generous size and dipped your head, sucking him in as far as you could go. He was so responsive, you learned what he liked quickly, and savored each whimper as you stroked his balls gently or swirled your tongue over his slit. You licked all the way from his head to the base and he cried out. Bringing a hand to the back of your head, he didn't quite hold you down, leaving enough slack for you to move if you wanted to, but you submitted to his touch and stayed a second with nearly his whole length in your mouth. And then you swallowed.

"Stop! Stop, please, or I'll cum." He pulled you off by your hair, bringing your forehead to his as you realigned your bodies. "You're so good for me," he professed warmly. "I wanna be good for you."

"Then fuck me," you surprised him by answering bluntly. "Please, I want you so bad."

Jungkook groaned, arching his hips up against you and coating his dick in your wetness. Bringing himself back under control, he pinned you under his thighs and reached down to open you up with a finger. You felt so much more relaxed with him than you had with any previous boyfriend or hookup, and he slid into your entrance fairly easily. You moaned right away when he brushed his thumb over your clit, and he responded with a muttered "Fuck it, you’re so wet already," pulling his finger out and stroking it up your folds as he lined up.

"You're on the pill, right? For your periods," he confirmed.

"Yeah, of course. You really think I'd let you hit it raw otherwise?" you shot back teasingly, trying to hide how touched you were that he remembered from a few months ago, when he'd driven you to pick up your prescription since your car was in the shop. That was your Jungkook.

"No," he said sheepishly. "You're smart."

You smiled up at him fondly, ruffling his hair. "You're smart too. And sweet. And hot. And your dick is enormous. It's kind of unfair."

"Unfair!" he protested. "How can I be unfair when you're perfect?"

"Perfect? Shut up," you dismissed him. "Now I know you're lying. You cheeseball."

"I'm not lying! You're perfect for me."

"Oh, so you're just a hopeless romantic. Where did that come from? What am I getting into?" you fussed playfully.

"Okay, we can make fun of each other later, like always, but right now can I just get into you?" Jungkook pleaded, directing you back to the task at hand.

"Oh my gosh. I can't believe this, you're worse than Jin. That was actually pretty impressive—" Surprised, you half-laughed, half-admired his wordplay, but were silenced by both his lips and his first few inches gliding into you.

Not yet breaking your kiss, just absorbing your moans into his mouth as he stretched you out, Jungkook eased himself all the way in. He drank in every detail of your body's response to keep careful track of your comfort. You tilted your ass up against him, absorbing the fullness of his big dick immersed in your walls, and he froze. "Pretty impressive?" he whispered.

"Jungkook," you breathed back in pure pleasure, too overwhelmed to sass back.

"Can I move?" he asked sweetly.

"Fuck. Yes."

Jungkook's brows narrowed as his eyes turned darker, and he snapped his hips up into yours once, twice, before setting a fierce pace that had you crying out with each stroke. He hadn't lost touch on your clit the whole time, and he began to circle his fingers to pleasure you there too, building up an almost unbearable tension throughout your whole body.

"Fuck...fuck! Jungkook!" you chanted. His eyes overcame their fluttering to meet yours. Jungkook stilled, then ground down on you in one big, slow, circle, drinking in your blissed-out expression.

"Harder?" he whispered. Jungkook loved a challenge.

"Sure, harder. Why the fuck not," you keened, high-pitched and desperate. He could split you in half at this point, leave you unable to walk for days, and you'd love it.

Jungkook made a small, delighted noise at your eagerness, kissing you quickly before flipping you over and positioning you on all fours, sheathing himself in you again. He ran his hands along your torso to clutch your breasts from underneath, holding himself up against you with solely the strength of his thighs and his core. Pulsing his hips into you carefully, slowly, to let you get used to the deeper angle, his fingertips skimmed your nipples tantalizingly, warming you further. He dropped one hand to prop himself up and slowly traveled the other down to your center. The lustful, elated exhale you let out when he rubbed your clit made him snap his hips forward, tilting you into the bed before you could engage your thighs to push back against his. Your continuous moans encouraged him that you were enjoying this just as much as him, loving how he remained fully attentive to your pleasure while pounding into you to pursue his own high. He fucked you like a high-intensity workout, pushing his unreasonably built body to its limits of speed and strength. You couldn't help wishing you'd taken him up on more of his offers to hit the gym together, but he seemed to get off on your breathlessness, wanting to give you his all and push you past your limits too. His fingers working as quickly as his hips, heat swelled up inside you, and when you felt sure that the tension in your core was about to break, you turned your head to cry out to him.

"Jungkookie, Jungkook—nhngh, I'm gonna cum."

"Ahhhh," he moaned. "Me too, _____. You feel so amazing, ahh—you're so perfect for me." The praise warmed your heart and your core, and soon you came around him with a long, drawn-out whine. He fucked you deep through each spasm, sending you into hot, heady overstimulation as he shuddered and emptied himself into you. When you finally collapsed under him, legs sore and shaking, he pulled out of you gently and lowered his lips to your lower lips with great care. Jungkook meticulously kissed from your swollen clit to your entrance, soft as a whisper, and you breathed out in overwhelmed bliss as his tongue emerged to tenderly nudge every drop of his cum into your opening. The gesture of aftercare, just as soothing as it was inexplicably hot, bloomed an affection within you that almost made your heart hurt. You rolled over, stretching your legs out, and he looked up at you from between them. His hair was a beautifully sweaty mess, and he smiled in sweet satisfaction with your wetness adorning his chin. That was your Jungkook.

"Don't go anywhere," he said softly, kneading your thighs with his hands.

"Well, I have to do the whole pee-after-sex thing. But after that, where would I go? There's only one bed in this apartment now," you couldn't help teasing.

"Hey! If I hadn't given away my bed, none of this would have happened," he complained cutely, pulling himself up to big-spoon you. “Just stay with me.”

"I will. I know," you murmured back. "And I'm so happy you did." You shifted back, closer against him, and he buried his face in your neck.

"You know, I was gonna miss being roommates so much," he said thoughtfully. "But I'm so okay with not being your roommate now if I get to be your...your..." He grinned into your shoulder, suddenly too shy to say it.

You turned to face him, holding his pink cheeks in both of your hands and kissing his nose. Knowing this would be just the first intimate moment of many made you both flush with an easy, sweet joy.

"My Jungkook. You're my Jungkook."