#and three weeks letter i got a letter saying 'there could be many underlying reasons for your symptoms. contact your local health clinic'

[feijoaaas]

i just.. really fucking feel a massive need to own a tv so that it can be on in the background at all times and while i am on the computer or phone, so that my dopamine can get dopamine

y’know?

[gukyi]

the art of the rom-com | jjk

summary: FILM395, the art of the rom-com, was supposed to be an easy a with one of your favorite professors, but it’s not. it’s actually a sisyphean torture that comes in the form of fellow film student jeon jungkook, who has no problem responding to every one of your discussion posts about the consumerist ideals underlying every romance movie with his own paragraphs on the beauty of love like the hopeless romantic he is. and when the two of you find yourselves partnered up for your final project, which is to create a short film on rom-coms, jungkook decides to take it upon himself to show you what love is really like.

{enemies to lovers!au, college!au}

pairing: film major!jungkook x film major!reader (female) genre: fluff, comedy, slight angst, this is literally a rom-com in fic form word count: 33k warnings: college alcohol consumption, discussion board posts, emotionally constipated characters, film major shenanigans, blonde jungkook who’s also in a hip hop dance troupe, miscommunication, if you hate rom-coms do not read this fic

a/n: i am so so so excited to share this monster of a jungkook fic (tho let’s be real, 30k is pretty standard for me now ;-;) with you all! this is basically rom-com trash, but it’s my rom-com trash, and i hope you all enjoy!

on a sadder, less exciting note: after this fic i will be taking an extended writing hiatus until at least the beginning of may. my semester is picking up and i unfortunately just don’t currently have any upcoming fics planned for you guys. i hope you understand!! maybe i’ll do a couple of ask games here and there to see if anything piques my interest, but other than that please do not expect major works of writing for a while. love you all!

500 Days of Summer is a movie you all have probably seen before. That being said, I encourage you to respond to this discussion board from a film perspective as opposed to a viewer’s perspective. How did 500 Days of Summer alter the classic narrative of boy-meets-girl? Do you think it was a smart move, on the parts of Webb, Neustadter, and Weber, to do so? Why or why not?

Jeon Jungkook on February 12th at 9:53PM

I thought that the change in the boy-meets-girl narrative that had been popularized by rom-coms of the 1990s definitely contributed to his popularity and its attractiveness towards viewers in general. The film makes it clear that the story does not have a so-called happy ending, but despite that, it still brings into discussion the idea of love and soulmates and true connection. And that’s important, because despite the film’s not-so-happy ending, it makes it a point to emphasize that those things are real. That love is real. I thought it was an excellent move on the parts of the writers and director, because they both broke standards in terms of happy endings in rom-coms and they stayed true to the message at hand. 

Y/N Y/L/N on February 12th at 10:29PM

I have to disagree with Jungkook. It’s obvious the movie is not going to have a happy ending because Tom is so obsessed with the version of Summer he has created in his head that he doesn’t even see who the real girl is anymore. It doesn’t have a happy ending not because they weren’t soulmates, or because their love wasn’t right. They break up because what Tom wants and what Summer wants are fundamentally different, and Tom just can’t accept the fact that Summer doesn’t love him the way he wants her to. In a desperate quest to keep her, though, he manifests this version of her and replaces the actual Summer with it, ultimately destroying their relationship. How could viewers ever have faith that Tom would eventually get his happy ending if the only proof of his commitment to relationships they have is him manufacturing a different girl to fall in love with?

When you walk into class, Jeon Jungkook is already there. 

He sits in the front row, the seat closest to the door in your puny little classroom, much too small for twenty-students to fit comfortably, let alone watch movies on the pull-down projector screen above the chalkboard. You’re convinced he’s chosen that seat just so he can grin at you whenever you walk in the room, always later than him because apparently, he has nothing better to do with his time than show up to class early and smirk at you when you arrive. 

As you shuffle past his seat towards your own—second row, middle of the room, centered with the lecturer’s podium—with your usual scowl drawn neatly across your face, Jungkook says, overly bright and cheery, “Good morning, Y/N.”

The sound of his voice alone is enough to make your nose scrunch up in further disgust. “Shut up,” you grumble back, stuffing yourself into your chair and pulling out your laptop. One row in front of you and five seats to the right, you see Jungkook chuckle. 

Glowering, you open up your Notes document for the class and try to avoid staring at Jungkook’s side profile, the way he’s slouching lazily in his seat, and what looks to be a lengthy paragraph on his computer screen, a task that proves to be particularly difficult because he happens to sit in the exact spot you have to look in order to see your professor enter the room. What the hell is he even writing, anyway?

He straightens up the moment she does, cheerful as always as she smiles at everyone. “Good morning, everyone.”

The lot of you respond with halfhearted smiles and waves. 

“I can just feel the enthusiasm radiating throughout the room,” she jokes, clenching her fists together in success. At least that gets a couple of you to laugh. “Which is great, because before we get to anything today, we’re gonna talk about the final project.”

You smile to yourself, immediately pulling up the copy of the syllabus you had downloaded to your desktop, scrolling right down to where she had outlined information about the final project in big, bolded letters. There are a lot of reasons you’ve taken this class, not the least of which is the fact that you have had Professor Pollack three times prior to this and she’s loved you in every class, but the final project was definitely one of the major selling points. 

Pollack pulls up a more detailed final project document on the projector as she steps out from behind the podium. “As you guys know, your final project is a thirty-to-forty minute short film involving rom-coms. You guys have a lot of freedom, it can be a rom-com, it could be a documentary about rom-coms, anything. It just needs to involve the topic of rom-coms somehow. I know a lot of you have actor friends who would be more than happy to have a star-crossed lovers fling or whatever. Go wild. Just keep it PG-13, because I can’t in good faith have nude bodies of your fellow college students on my screen.”

You snort to yourself. Makes you wonder how many times Pollack has seen sex scenes of college students on her screen before. Too many, probably. 

Unintentionally, your eyes drift over to Jungkook. He seems to be working on that hefty paragraph of his, typing something you assume is completely unrelated to the topic at hand and is further proof that Jungkook just doesn’t give a shit about anything involving this class. Whatever. You turn back to Pollack. 

“Good projects not only capture the essence of what a rom-com is, but also put their own twist on the story and bring into question the topics we discuss in class, like truthfulness, realistic portrayals of love, and viewer interpretation,” she continues, and with every word you feel heart beat faster in excitement. “I know you’re all excellent filmmakers. That’s why you’ve taken this class. But what I want you to do is get into the nitty-gritty of the makeup of a rom-com and distill it as much as possible. We’ll be watching them all in class during the last week. Yes, Celia?”

You all turn to look at Celia, who sits in the third row, second seat from the left. “This is a partner project, right?” 

Well. That’s the one downside. As much as you know that cooperation is an important life skill, you would much rather prefer to produce the entire movie yourself. But you love Pollack and you already know you’re on track to get a good grade in this class, so whatever. You’ll deal. 

As long as you can pick your teammate. 

“Yes,” Pollack affirms, “and with that excellent segue, I will now announce your partners.”

Shit. 

Pollack pulls out a folded piece of paper from her back pocket, like she had just come up with the arrangements on the morning train ride to campus, and begins reading. Slowly, as she ticks off names one by one, everyone begins to turn around, locking eyes with their partners and exchanging guess-it’s-us-two-huh? smiles. Everyone except—

“And lastly, Jungkook and Y/N.”

You freeze in place. You look up at your professor, eyes wide and shocked, because nobody knows better than her how much the two of you have been butting heads this entire semester. But when you meet her eyes and she smiles knowingly, shrugging her shoulders, you know you’re doomed. Hesitantly, almost like you’re scared to find out what happens when you do, you shift your gaze towards where Jungkook sits in the front right corner of the room. Only he’s not just sitting. He’s turned a full one hundred-and-eighty degrees just so he can smirk at you from across the room, a glint in his eye. 

Jungkook laughs at your cold-stone, shellshocked reaction. Like he knows how much you’ll hate this, and you know how much he’ll enjoy it. 

From here, you actually have a pretty good view of his laptop screen, brightness turned all the way up because he apparently doesn’t care who reads his screen. Or maybe he just likes showing off how much he writes so he can establish dominance over everyone else. Except you, of course. But when you look a little closer, you notice he’s got the class discussion board for the week up on his Chrome window, two paragraphs typed into the text box. 

Right above is your response to his comment. 

Is that what he was working on? His reply to your reply? Right now? He has the audacity to draft it right here, in front of you, where he knows you can see? He doesn’t even care that you’re blatantly staring at it. In fact, he actually seems to be relishing in it.

You’re so caught off guard by the contents of his computer screen that when you look back up at him on instinct, you catch a wink in your direction. 

Your fists tighten by your side. 

Class is rather uneventful after the whole partner fiasco, as Pollack transitions into your usual dose of a short lecture on the film and then a class discussion that goes absolutely nowhere because everyone is too concerned with the final project to care. Whatever you talk about, you will be hard pressed to know, because you spend the entire rest of the period scowling at the blank page of your Notes document as you try to formulate a way to convince Pollack to change your partner. Would she accept a dozen doughnuts as a bribe? A box is only ten dollars from Dunkin’.

When Pollack finally shuts her laptop screen and begins her weekly goodbye spiel, you are the first one out of the room. Hastily, you stuff your laptop into your bag, zip it up as best as you can (which means that the tops of your water bottle and umbrella are sticking out, but who cares), and shuffle out the room right as Pollack is bidding you all farewell, just so you don’t have to look at Jungkook’s stupid, smug little grin on the way out. 

Faintly, you remember Pollack saying something about getting your partner’s contact information so you can start working, but fuck that. Jungkook knows your name. He can find you. If you must spend the entire semester communicating through Instagram DMs, then so be it. You’ve communicated with men in worse ways. Like through LinkedIn.

There’s a small seating area half a flight down from where your puny little classroom is, a few tables and a bench that wraps around the wall, posters splayed out on the corkboard to the right, staples littering both the board and the floor it rests above. Nobody ever seems to use this, despite the innumerable posters advertising everything from dance troupe shows to financial literacy talks, which makes it the perfect place for you to brood and gather your thoughts. It’s also in the direct opposite direction of the exit. So that’s good.

Taking your anger out on your personal belongings (as opposed to that bitchass smirk on Jungkook’s face), you begin to shove your umbrella and water bottle into the pocket of your backpack, fighting to nestle them amongst your other worldly possessions, like your pencil case and what looks to be a small nest of receipts at the bottom of the back. No wonder it’s so clogged up down there. 

If anything gives you a sense of control, it’s cleaning. One by one, you pluck out the receipts from your bag, nose scrunching up as you try to remember every purchase you’ve made in the past three months. Plus, one of these receipts is from when you bought some dryer sheets from CVS, so that means the five inches of actual information are also accompanied by three feet of coupons that expired two weeks ago. Ugh, what a waste. 

“Don’t look so angry, you’ll have to get used to seeing this face a lot.”

You look up from where you’ve been inspecting an old receipt from a midnight McDonald’s trip to find Jungkook standing in front of you, backpack hanging loosely on his bomber jacket-clad shoulder and that same stupid grin written all over his same stupid face. 

“Can I help you?” You drawl. Great. Now Jungkook can add “saw all her receipts” to the list of embarrassing things he’s caught you doing. 

“Can I help you?” Jungkook fires back with a scoff, blonde hair bouncing as he jerks his head flippantly. “Looks like someone needs to take an Accounting class or something.”

“I’m just doing some spring cleaning,” you sneer. It’s February. “What do you want?”

“What, no ‘Hello, partner’? ‘So excited to be working with you this semester’? I’m hurt,” Jungkook says, placing a hand to his heart as he shakes his head disapprovingly. “I thought we had something good, Y/N. Isn’t that why Pollack paired us up?”

You’re pretty sure she just likes watching the world burn. 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” you chide, knowing that Jungkook already must get enough of a kick out of just seeing the annoyed look on your face. 

“Please, like I even need to. You think I don’t notice the way you stare at me during class? I know you must like what you see,” Jungkook flirts, just to be extra irritating. 

While he’s stroking his own ego, you tear off a piece of that CVS receipt, one of the expired coupons for Three Dollars Off Any Shampoo or Conditioner, and scribble your number on the back. The rest of the receipts you scoop up and dump in the trash can to your right before you zip up your backpack and hike it over your shoulder. 

“Here,” you say gruffly, shoving the paper against his chest as you head towards the stairwell. 

“How forward of you, Y/N, you know you could have just asked—”

Pausing right before you turn the corner and head out the door, you turn back to look at Jungkook, already exhausted from having to interact with him for five minutes. “And when you’re done jerking yourself off,” you say pointedly, “text me.”

You storm out the door.

[February 13th, 1:24PM]

Unknown Number: guess who ;)

You: Wow I have NO idea You: Keanu Reeves?

Unknown Number: haha very funny Unknown Number: it’s jungkook

You: Damn shame You: You done jerking off yet

Maybe: Jungkook: what makes you think i’m not doing that right now ;)))

You: You don’t have the coordination to text me and masturbate at the same time You: What do you want

Jungkook: ouch, harsh Jungkook: can’t i just want to talk to my final project partner? :D

[February 13th, 2:17PM]

Jungkook: alright fine Jungkook: just wanna see when you wanna meet up

You: Guess I don’t have a choice do I

Jungkook: unless you wanna facetime

You: Is that an option?

Jungkook: how about friday at 3 Jungkook: in one of the greene gsrs

You: You think you can manage to reserve one of those?

Jungkook: watch me

[February 13th, 2:21PM]

Jungkook: [screenshot sent] Jungkook: done

You: Do you want a gold star for all that hard work you just did? All that manual labor? You: Fine. See you then.

Jungkook: miss you already <3

Y/N Y/L/N on February 12th at 10:29PM

I have to disagree with Jungkook. It’s obvious the movie is not going to have a happy ending because Tom is so obsessed with the version of Summer he has created in his head that he doesn’t even see who the real girl is anymore. It doesn’t have a happy ending not because they weren’t soulmates, or because their love wasn’t right. They break up because what Tom wants and what Summer wants are fundamentally different, and Tom just can’t accept the fact that Summer doesn’t love him the way he wants her to. In a desperate quest to keep her, though, he manifests this version of her and replaces the actual Summer with it, ultimately destroying their relationship. How could viewers ever have faith that Tom would eventually get his happy ending if the only proof of his commitment to relationships they have is him manufacturing a different girl to fall in love with?

Jeon Jungkook on February 13th at 7:35PM.

You make a good point, Y/N, but I think you missed the whole point of the movie. It’s not about their breakup or the not-so-happy ending or even Tom’s problems. It’s about the journey they go on and what Tom learns in the process. If you watch the trailer then you’d go into the movie knowing they weren’t gonna last. The results of whatever Tom and Summer do to contribute to their eventual breakup should not come as a surprise to the viewer. The whole point of the movie is that they spent five hundred days together and Tom is now recounting those days to anyone who will watch. And you know who’s watching? People who want to hear a story. About love. And loss. And everything in between. Isn’t that the whole reason we watch romance movies anyway?

Sometimes, you wonder if the garishness of Professor Pollack’s shoebox-sized office is the reason not very many students attend her office hours. The walls are lined with movie posters taken from a theater going out of business, the shelves stuffed to the brim with Disney World trinkets and old film memorabilia. She’s installed these thick red velvet curtains along her single window, making the whole room look like some sort of 1950s movie lair. 

In a way, you suppose it kind of is. 

You hear the taps of her Converse shoes as they come down the hallway and round the corner into the office.

“You know, Y/N, I was surprised to see you signed up for my office hours when I logged in this morning,” Pollack says as she enters the room, handing you the coffee in her right hand as she takes a sip out of the one from her left. Last year, the film department bought a Breville coffee maker with the leftover funds from a movie showing fundraiser and it is, in your humble opinion, the best investment the department has ever made.

“Why? I see you all the time,” you ask, eyebrows raised. You and Professor Pollack are not lacking in social connection. She’s written you a letter of recommendation and she knows your coffee order. 

“The very first time we ever spoke outside of class, you sat down at my Starbucks table while I was eating lunch just so you could introduce yourself and ask me about my opinion on the Mamma Mia remake,” she deadpans. “We don’t exactly speak through official forums.”

Well, she’s got you there. 

“I know…” you begin, trailing off awkwardly as you take a sip of your coffee. It’s burning hot and scalds your tongue a little, but it’s nice. It’s been cold recently. “But I just thought we could talk… privately.”

Pollack rolls her eyes as she reclines in her chair, back hitting the padding of the chair with a thud. “Goodness, I wonder what you’re here to talk to me about.”

“Okay, please pardon my French, but what the freak, Professor?” You say, because the words have been sitting hot on your tongue ever since you walked into your office and you didn’t think sending an email that looked like:

To: tpollack@university.edu From: y/n@university.edu Subject: what the freak

Dear Professor Pollack,

What the freak?????????

Cheers, Y/N

would be very professional on your part. 

Pollack lets out this honk of a laugh, loud and sudden, shaking her head fondly. “Come on, Y/N. You must have known I would have partnered the two of you up.”

“I was hoping you’d let us choose?” You emphasize. 

“And miss out on what very well may be one of the best final projects of the class, produced by my two best students of the semester? Absolutely not,” she says, smiling knowingly at you. 

Even her sudden reveal that you happen to be one her best students this semester isn’t enough to soothe your worries and calm your anger. You’re honored, but you have bigger problems. Problems that start with ‘Jeon’ and end with ‘Jungkook’. 

Pollack looks at your beaten-down expression and leans forward, placing her coffee cup on the wooden desk in front of her. “Listen, Y/N. You’re an excellent student and one of the most talented filmmakers I’ve seen in a long time. Your discussion posts are detailed, well-written, and thought-provoking. I know that the two of you will make a great project.”

You scoff. “We can’t agree on a single thing.”

“Sometimes that happens in life, and you just have to deal with it,” Pollack says sagely. 

“So I can’t change partners?”

“Not unless you’d like to fail the final,” Pollack comments, shrugging. How rude of her to say such a thing, not taking the option to change partners off the table entirely but making it so that if you do, you’ll pretty much be shooting yourself in the foot. Or worse. 

You narrow your eyes at her. “That’s low.”

“That’s life,” she corrects. 

“Ugh.” You get up out of your seat, taking angry sips of your coffee as you desperately try to think of another way to get out of it. Are doughnuts still an option?

“I have full faith that the both of you will come up with an excellent project,” Pollack says like it’s some sort of consolation as she walks you to the door to her office. Yeah, right. You and Jungkook spend your free time making snide responses to each other’s discussion posts like it’s nobody’s business. You’re probably the only two people at your entire university that care enough to make replies to each other’s replies. Like Tinder from hell. “You shouldn’t be worried, Y/N.”

“I’m not worried,” you say, completely worried. “I just—I don’t know how Jungkook and I will get along.”

Pollack grins to herself. Does she know something you don’t? Is she up to something? She looks at you as you linger in the doorway, feeling utterly helpless after a meeting that accomplished absolutely nothing, and she smiles. 

“You’ll find a way.” 

Reserving a group study room in the Greene Library and Collection should not be some gymnastics act that involves a warm-up, practice, a routine, and song and dance. In theory, all you have to do is log onto the library’s homepage, navigate to the reservations tab, enter your name and ID number, pick a date and time, and profit. 

Of course, the demand for the study rooms does tend to outweigh the supply. There are over ten thousand students at your university. And only twenty rooms. 

And still, you have the unfortunate luck of being stuck in one of them for an hour and a half with none other than Jeon Jungkook. 

You see him coming into the library at 3PM sharp through the opposite entrance, a little surprised he didn’t show up ten minutes early like he does in class, just so he would have an excuse to complain about having to wait for you. Feeling a little threatened, you pick up the pace so that you can meet his lengthy stride, keeping an eye on his direction so you know which room he’s aiming for.

You arrive at Greene GSR #18 at the exact same time.

“So nice to see you,” Jungkook says, too cheerful, as you reach out to open the door. 

“Mmm,” you mumble in response as you enter the room, flinging your backpack onto the floor by your chair with a thud as you take a seat. The faster you start, the faster you can get this over with.

Jungkook, not at all outwardly discouraged by your clear disdain for him, rallies on happily. “So, what were you thinking for the project?” But he doesn’t even let you open your mouth to answer before he says, “Oh, wait, let me guess: a social commentary on the consumerist ideals that underline every modern movie and encourage the pursuit of an empty dream by abandoning concrete career and personal goals in favor of romantic fulfillment.”

You scowl at him, even though that’s exactly what you were thinking of doing. You’re almost positive Pollack’s had enough of seeing college students try to engineer the craziest fake dating scenarios they can imagine just for a class project. Why not do something outside of the box? 

“Well, then what do you want to do?” You challenge, already bristling. Like Jungkook has a better idea. 

“Maybe something that doesn’t scream ‘killjoy’ as much as you do,” Jungkook retorts easily. He opens his mouth to spit out something else but then rolls his eyes and shrugs, shaking his head. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have even asked.”

“Don’t pin this on me,” you immediately rebuke, pointing at him. “You’re the one who wants to make some sort of generic rom-com for our final project. Besides, I’m pretty sure every idea you even think of will have been done already.”

“Just because something is cliche doesn’t make it bad,” Jungkook says. “I swear, I don’t think you understand what the word cliche even means. A cliche thing, by default, is something that lots of people like. Therefore, it is largely well-received by the general public.”

“Oh, then that must mean that all rom-coms are deserving of a People’s Choice Award then, right?”

Jungkook frowns, getting exasperated. You aren’t much farther off. “I don’t know why you’re being so—so resistant! You know that romantic comedies are supposed to be fun, right?” 

“They’re not that fun to me,” you comment snidely. 

“That’s because you’re a stick in the mud who takes everything way too seriously,” Jungkook replies like it’s some sort of known fact. “Have you ever even been in a relationship?”

“That’s none of your business,” you tell him firmly. Who does he think he is, going around asking that sort of thing? Especially to you! Like you could care any less about what Jungkook thinks of your love life. Intrusive, much? “Besides, you asking that is exactly my point. Not everything has to be about finding love and searching for your soulmate or whatever bullshit like that. Some people don’t really care that much.”

“You act like wanting to find love and wanting to be successful are mutually exclusive,” Jungkook points out. “You don’t have to abandon all of your life goals just to find love, you know. It doesn’t have to be the most important thing in your life for you to even care about it a little. It’s natural for people to want love.”

“Then I guess I’m just a robot.”

“You sure are acting like one,” Jungkook comments easily. “What, are you about to ask me to pick out all of the pictures with traffic lights?”

“I’m allowed to have my own views on love, just like you,” you say. Isn’t that the whole point of your discussion boards? A forum where you can discuss these sorts of things through an academic lens? A barrier that keeps the two of you from going at each other’s throats when you’re engaging in the class material? It doesn’t take a genius, or even half of one, to know that you and Jungkook can’t seem to agree on anything in your FILM395 class. 

Jungkook scoffs. “What do you mean, ‘your own views on love’? As far as I’m aware, your view on love is that you don’t have one! What do you even think love really is?”

You frown at him. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Jungkook says like it’s obvious. “This project is about filming a short romantic comedy, about people falling in love with each other. How do you expect me to do that if we don’t reach a mutual agreement on what love is?”

You scoff. “There is no way in hell I am going to agree with you on anything concerning love.” Jeon Jungkook still thinks love is all rainbows and sunshine. Cries at the end of Love, Actually even though he’s seen it five times already. Believes in soulmates. Believes there are people out there that were built for each other. He flutters from one person to the next like a butterfly, even though he’s more like a moth drawn to any open flame within a five-mile radius. He’s convinced he’ll find his true love here, in college, just like his parents found each other. 

Yeah, right.

“Then what are we supposed to do, huh?” He says with an eyebrow raised. “We have a month to make a movie that’s fifty percent of our grade.”

“The social commentary is still on the table,” you point out. Sure, it’s not at all a romantic comedy, but it’s about them, which Pollack said was totally fine. Besides, she has been teaching you the entire semester, hasn’t she? She should know by now not to expect some cushy lovey-dovey story about two people who were destined to be with each other and can overcome all obstacles with their love. 

Deep down, a part of you wonders if that’s why she paired you up with Jungkook. If she’s had enough of the sappy love stories that Jungkook probably wanted to do, didn’t want to see another cynical commentary on capitalism in Hollywood.

“Wow, what a thrilling idea,” Jungkook deadpans. “Please, tell me more.” His voice is lifeless. 

“Oh, shut up. It’s not like your idea would be any better. Who would we even get to star in a rom-com we filmed? It’s not like the two of us could do it.”

You regret the words the instant they come out of your mouth. In horror, you watch as they sink into Jungkook’s brain, etching themselves into his mind as a lightbulb turns on, a bright idea popping into his thoughts. 

He opens his mouth, but you get there first. “No. Whatever you’re thinking, absolutely not. I am not starring in a rom-com with you.”

That is something you can say with one-hundred percent confidence. Something that you know will never change. 

“Just hear me out,” Jungkook pleads, looking a little desperate as he wrings his hands together, aching to spill the bubbling plan that’s been stewing in his head. 

You narrow your eyes in suspicion but lean back into your chair, a silent signal for him to continue. It’s not as if you have any better idea.s 

“Okay. It’s not a rom-com. It’s a mockumentary,” he says, something that (and you can’t believe you’re saying this) actually piques your interest. Moreso than anything else he’s ever said to you. “You think love is totally manufactured, right? That Hollywood creates the illusion of it to sell to people paying twenty dollars for a movie ticket?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s do that. Let’s prove it’s manufactured.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” It’s not like you can walk into a factory and ask them to make the “love” emotion for you. 

“We’ll be the stars.”

He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Like it’s your best idea by a long shot, the home run of all home runs, your golden ticket to an A.

You scrunch up your nose, hesitant. “Wait, I don’t know—”

“It’s perfect!” Jungkook exclaims, eyes wide with excitement. “Think about it. It’ll be a mockumentary of a stereotypical rom-com. Except it won’t be this big Hollywood production, it’ll be real life. And it won’t be between two paid actors with years of experience under their belt, it’ll be us.” His eyes are practically bulging out of his head, big brown eyes glinting with excitement.

“So what are we gonna do? Act out our own rom-com in an attempt to see if either one of us will fall in love with the other?” You say, an eyebrow raised. 

Jungkook shakes his head. “Not necessarily. It’s a mockumentary, right? So it’s grounded in real life even if it is based upon the stereotypical boy-meets-girl rom-com. It won’t be super scripted or anything. Think of it more like… a chronicle.”

You scoff. “Of what?”

“Of us,” Jungkook says easily. “Of the time we have to spend together to film this damn project anyway. I say that rom-coms are emblematic of the natural human desire for love, and that deep down love is the thing that makes us happy. You say that rom-coms are consumerist propaganda, or whatever it is you think they are—”

“They are, and you can’t change my mind about that,” you interrupt, just for clarity. Can’t have Jungkook thinking he’s going to somehow convince you otherwise.

“—so, with this project, let’s see which one of us is right. If the time we have to spend together, making this mockumentary rom-com, will really change how we feel about each other, or if it won’t.”

How you feel about each other? You almost laugh when Jungkook says it out loud. There’s no room for questioning in your mind when it comes to how you two feel about each other. Two desperate-to-please students with opposite views on the entire structure of a class and three years of experience arguing your points in essays under your belts. 

Jungkook believes in destiny, right? Then he must know that the two of you are destined to never get along.

“You should be a car salesman,” you joke. Jungkook’s certainly excellent at pitches.

“So, you in?”

You narrow your eyes, still a little wary of whatever it is Jungkook’s putting down. But it’s not like you have any better ideas. And the sooner you agree on something, the sooner you can get this goddamn project over with and never have to sit in class with Jeon Jungkook ever again. 

“Only because this’ll finally prove to you that not everything can be solved by finding love,” you say. It’s about as good of a ‘yes’ as he’s going to get out of you. 

Jungkook grins, mischievous as always. There’s certainly something else he’s plotting, you just aren’t sure what. Maybe he’s in cahoots with Pollack. “Or,” he begins, lips curling upwards, “you’ll just fall in love with me.”

You scoff. “Yeah, right.”

“Well, then I guess we’ll just have to see, won’t we?” He holds out his hand, palm facing up as he waits for your response, that devilish glint that you hate twinkling in his eyes. 

As if you’re going to fall in love with Jungkook. For this stupid project? No way. Just because it’s a filmmaking project doesn’t make it any more bearable than your other assignments. It’s a partner project. They are, by their very nature, excruciating. You’ll be surprised if you end this project and you aren’t even more irritated with Jungkook. Does he really think you’ll actually develop some sort of affection for him?

You take his hand on your own, palm pressed against his, and you eye him carefully. Just because Jungkook’s got something up his sleeve doesn’t mean you don’t. Finally, finally, Jungkook will see why love is stupid and manufactured and fake. Why it doesn’t bring people together but instead tears them apart. 

Maybe then he’ll leave you and your discussion posts in peace.

You smile up at him. 

“I guess we will.”

When Ruby Rhodes is not six feet deep in The Princeton Review’s MCAT test prep book, she can usually be found at the small bakery five blocks west and two blocks north of your little campus, a family-owned place passed down through three generations. It’s her favorite place, and yours, too, because the coffee is delicious and the pastries are even better. 

Plus, hardly anyone from your school ever comes here, which means the wifi speed is eons better than the Starbucks inside the main food court. 

She’s halfway through a tiramisu and a rerun of The Bachelor from two seasons ago when you sit down across from her. 

“Any good?” You ask, pulling out your laptop and squeezing it onto the tiny marble table in between the two of you. 

“The food or the show?” Ruby asks over a mouthful of cake. 

“Either.” 

Ruby swallows down the piece sitting on her tongue before responding. “The tiramisu is delicious, and The Bachelor is eh. I’ve seen this episode three times already.”

“Then why are you watching it again?” You ask, laughing. Does Ruby think something different is going to happen?

“Because we’re in between weeks right now and honestly, The Bachelor is kind of dry this season,” Ruby says with a frown. 

“You’ve got some tiramisu on your cheek,” you tell her, pointing to the left side of her face where the bright mascarpone cream sticks out like a sore thumb against her dark skin. 

“It’s just so yummy, I can’t help but stick my whole face in it,” Ruby jokes as she wipes her face with the napkin on her lap. The Bachelor rerun plays on in the background, and you can hear the gasps of the women through Ruby’s discarded headphones. 

You roll your eyes. “Why do you even watch that show still? You know it’s all crap.”

“Just because you think it’s crap doesn’t mean I do,” Ruby insists, playing out an argument the two of you have had plenty of times over the course of your friendship. “Watching it makes me happy. So I do it.”

“But it’s all fake,” you say, frowning in disapproval. “The couples don’t even stay together in the end anyway.”

“It’s a totally pre-constructed show, but it’s not fake in the moment. And I don’t expect the final couple to stay together.” She shrugs nonchalantly. “Believe me, I’ve seen enough Bachelor seasons to know those odds. I just like watching the ride. It’s cute.”

“You say that about everything.”

“That’s because everything is cute,” Ruby says pointedly. “I like seeing the good in people.”

Ruby’s always been the exact opposite of you in terms of worldviews. The embodiment of a real-life fairy. She puts butterfly clips in her hair and buys herself bouquets of daisies and lilies. She sits in cafes with her headphones in and sketches the people she sees outside the window. She’s studying to be a doctor so she can spend the rest of her life helping others. 

And you? 

Well, the Oscars have always been a bit of a long shot. 

The curiosity eating at you, you pose a question to her. “Hypothetically, if there were to exist a mockumentary on rom-coms and love, would you watch it?”

Ruby pauses for a second as she furrows her brows. Then she shrugs and says, “Only if the two leads fell in love at the end. Why?”

“No reason,” you say, looking away. 

There’s no fooling Ruby and her eagle eyes. 

“What is it?” She asks, a grin playing at her lips as she looks at you. “Come on, you don’t just ask me shit like that without a reason.”

“It’s for a final project,” you explain succinctly. No need to go into details. 

“You’re making a rom-com for a final project?” Ruby sounds about as skeptical as you did when you spoke to Jungkook. 

“It’s a mockumentary about rom-coms.”

“But… it’s a rom-com, right? Like, you’re going to be making a rom-com? Where people fall in love?”

Hopefully not. 

“Sort of?”

Ruby squints her eyes, trying to process all the information. You’re not surprised that she has to take a moment to think—you are certainly the last person on earth to ever admit to filming a rom-com. But, as you’ve stated, it’s not a rom-com. It’s a mockumentary about them. That distinction is vital.

“Wait, is this for that class with Pollack?” Ruby asks. “I remember you telling me you were taking it. You said this was a partner project, though, right? So who are you working with?”

Curse Ruby and her knack for remembering things. She’ll make a great doctor, that’s for sure, but right now you wish she would just forget things like everybody else. 

You sigh. “Jungkook.”

Ruby doesn’t need to think twice about who that is. “Wait, seriously? You’re working with him? Isn’t he the guy that responds to all your discussion posts?”

“Yes,” you say, rubbing your temples with your fingertips. You don’t even like thinking about him, let alone saying his name. The fact that he has to occupy any part of your brain at all gives you a headache.

“Damn, that sucks,” Ruby says, not feeling very sorry for you at all. “So you’re filming a rom-com with him?”

“It’s a mockumentary,” you specify, feeling yourself getting irritated. “It is fake.”

“Just like my shows, huh?” Ruby muses to herself, too analytical for her own good. 

“Listen, you don’t need to fall in love to make a mockumentary about it,” you say, refusing to consider any sort of alternative. 

“Don’t you?”

You sneer. “Just shut up and eat your tiramisu.”

Ruby lets out a laugh at that, this wonderful mix between a wheeze and a honk that makes you smile every time you hear it, even if it’s at your own expense. Ruby decides she’s had enough of mentally torturing you with the thought of feeling anything but extreme distaste towards Jungkook and goes back to her show, letting you brood in peace. 

You don’t need to fall in love to make a film about it. Just like you don’t need to be a masterchef to film Gordon Ramsey screaming at someone who undercooked chicken. You’re a filmmaker. You can make a film out of anything. Including love. Even if it is with someone like Jungkook. 

Can’t you?

Jeon Jungkook may be a disillusioned college student in love with the idea of love itself, but at least he’s not too shabby of a filmmaker. 

Funnily enough, it actually sort of surprises you that you’ve never encountered each other before. Especially considering you’re in the same major program at your school, a program that only accepts about fifty students per year at most. You suppose that in whatever general program classes you had to take in freshman and sophomore year you just never crossed paths. Plus, he’s a filmmaking concentration and you’re doing screenwriting, so it’s very possible that you would have just never spoken had the two of you not registered for the same semester of FILM395.

Huh. Imagine that. A life without him. 

Sort of makes you wish you had put this class off for one more semester. 

As the two of you kickstart your project, you both immediately agree that you need a third person’s help. You and Jungkook can do plenty, but you are only two people. And there’s nothing in the final project guidelines that says you can’t enlist other people to partake in the production. But you don’t need help with the filming and editing. You need help with the interviews. 

“Is this bedsheet good enough?” Kim Taehyung, a senior in the film program, asks as he’s Command-stripping a queen-sized black bedsheet to an empty wall in the living room of his tiny one-bedroom apartment. 

“As long as it fits into the frame,” Jungkook responds from where he’s standing behind the camera, set up on a tripod to capture a specific angle. “You’re not going to be in the shot anyway. You’ll just be asking the questions.”

“Good, because I look really ugly right now,” Taehyung says with a grin. You roll your eyes. Taehyung must know he always looks good. Even you can’t deny him of that. 

“This is ridiculous,” you say, seated on the singular couch in his apartment. You’re leaning on your elbow as you watch Taehyung fiddle with the bedsheet and Jungkook futz with the camera, the two of them repositioning themselves over and over again until everything’s perfect. “What are you even gonna ask us?”

“I came up with some… preliminary questions,” Taehyung says suggestively. “But I haven’t told either of you what they are so that your reactions can be more genuine.”

“Great,” you deadpan. 

“Wow, someone’s excited,” Jungkook comments snidely. 

“I know we agreed on periodic interviews for the sake of the mockumentary but I don’t know why we have to be so… so serious about them,” you say with a frown. 

“We have to promise to be honest with what we say, alright? Like, actually honest. This sets a guideline for the rest of our relationship,” Jungkook says like it’s no big deal. Like the foundation of your relationship isn’t the fact that the two of you have been engaged in discussion-board war ever since the semester began. 

“Our ‘relationship’?” You say with a scoff. 

“Do you promise?” Jungkook says. 

You roll your eyes. “Yes, I promise.” Whatever. “What do you even think is going to happen between us in the next few weeks?”

Jungkook smirks. “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

You don’t like the sound of that. 

Over the next ten minutes, Taehyung gets the sheet attached to his wall and pulls over two stools from his kitchen counters, old-timey wooden ones he got from a thrift store for five dollars a pop, one for him and one for the poor soul who has to be interviewed. You’ve agreed to do them separately but Taehyung’s apartment is only so big and you are only three people, which means that whoever isn’t being interviewed still has to be behind the camera, listening to the other person. 

Makes you sort of nervous about whatever’s stewing up inside Jungkook’s mind. Wonder what the hell it is he’s plotting up there. 

Once everything is settled, Taehyung looks at the two of you as he asks who’s going first. 

You turn to Jungkook, who’s already grinning. “Ladies first.”

For someone who has spent their whole life watching and making movies, being in front of the camera feels weirdly uncomfortable to you. You’re so used to being behind it instead, directing others as they move around the frame, telling them how to feel and how to act and what to say, that having the spotlight shone on you is like picking through your thoughts with a fine-toothed comb. 

You adjust awkwardly in the bar stool seat as Jungkook stands behind the camera, twisting the lens until he gives you the thumbs-up. Quite frankly, it doesn’t make you feel any better. 

“You ready?” Taehyung asks as he takes a seat opposite you, just out of frame. 

“Well, we’ve gotta start somewhere, right?”

“That’s the spirit. Alright, Jungkook, start whenever you’re good.”

“Okay,” Jungkook chirps up. “Three, two, one—” He points to the both of you. 

“So, Y/N,” Taehyung begins, his voice suddenly much clearer. He sounds sort of like a news anchor. It’s oddly fitting. “Are you excited to begin the filming for this?”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” You muse. 

“That didn’t answer my question,” Taehyung points out. Good thing the camera can’t see the way his eyebrows raise. 

“I suppose that there are worse things I could be doing,” you reason, which is about as good of an answer as Taehyung’s going to get. What was he expecting you to say? That you were thrilled to be filming this not-a-rom-com with your class nemesis? That you couldn’t wait to see what would happen?

“Loving the enthusiasm,” Taehyung jokes. You wonder what your classmates will think when they watch this back, hearing this unidentified deep male voice ask you and Jungkook questions about your relationship. “Let me ask you this: what’s your current relationship with Jungkook?”

“Uh…” you begin, nervous. Behind the camera, Jungkook has that same stupid, shit-eating grin plastered all over his face. You sneer. “It’s… it’s professional.”

“Can you explain what you mean by that?” 

“I mean we’re classmates. That’s the relationship.”

“That’s it?” You can hear the skepticism in Taehyung’s voice, almost like he’s egging you on to say something more. 

“We’ve had some personal disagreements on topics discussed in class. But yes, we’re just classmates,” you elaborate slightly. It’s not as if anyone needs reminding of that, anyway. They all see your discussion board posts. 

“And how do you expect that relationship to change over the course of this project?”

“I don’t think it’ll change at all.” It’s the easiest answer so far. Requires no energy nor brain power for you to think about it. 

Taehyung nods his head in intrigue. “And why’s that?”

“Because this is a project for a class, not a life lesson.”

“Who says it can’t be both?”

You frown. “Whose side are you on?”

Five feet away, Jungkook laughs. 

Taehyung chuckles. “Alright, moving on. What do you expect from Jungkook over the next few weeks as you start working on building your relationship?”

“I hope he becomes less unbearable,” you say, though you suppose that’s more of a general life goal than one that’s project-specific. But it would be nice if he became a little more… palatable. Just so you don’t have to feel the urge to sock him in the face every time you speak to each other. 

“‘Less unbearable’, excellent,” Taehyung repeats. “Anything else?”

“Well,” you say with a shrug, not sure what else to say. What do you want from Jungkook? Obviously the two of you are about to embark on your own rom-com adventure, no doubt most of it his doing, but it’s hard to imagine that he himself (or you, for that matter) will change. If anything, the rom-com setting will just exacerbate the worst parts of both your personalities. Like some sort of curse. “I guess I just hope that the project goes smoothly.”

“I hope that it does, too,” Taehyung says with a smile. “Okay, last question.” Thank God. This interview couldn’t have been more than five minutes, but it feels like an eternity to you. “Do you think you and Jungkook will fall in love at the end of this?”

“No.” You don’t leave any room for hesitation. “I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“We’re very different people with very different interests,” you explain succinctly. You’re sure Taehyung will grasp that once Jungkook has his turn and answers all the same questions. “He can try his hardest, but some things are just meant to stay the way they are.”

“Okay, thank you, Y/N, that’s all. I hope you found our conversation illuminating,” Taehyung says, his cue for the camera to stop rolling. You and Taehyung both turn to Jungkook, waiting for his signal, letting out a sigh when Jungkook gives you a thumbs-up. 

“Thank fuck,” you say, hopping off of the barstool happily. You head towards the camera, ready to kick Jungkook off of it, because it’s your turn to stand behind it with an annoying look on your face as you react to every stupid thing Jungkook says. You find that you’re actually sort of looking forward to it. Being behind the camera is where you feel most at home. Making faces at Jungkook is just a bonus. 

Jungkook’s still grinning that same goddamn grin when you approach him, making you narrow your eyes. 

“‘He can try his hardest’?” Jungkook teases, voice all high-pitched to mimic yours. “Sounds like a challenge.”

“Ah yes, my mission in life,” you retort easily. Maybe goading him on isn’t the best course of action, but you’re so confident that you won’t change your mind you find yourself actually anticipating his efforts. “Think you have what it takes?”

“Believe me, I do,” Jungkook says with a devilish glint in his eyes. 

You roll your eyes and kick him off the camera with a shove, pushing him towards Taehyung as he waits diligently on that chair of his. 

“So, Jungkook, same questions,” Taehyung says as Jungkook gets ready in his seat, fixing the blonde strands of hair that curl around the side of his face, framing his cheeks. 

“What? That’s no fair, he got to think about all his answers,” you exclaim, positively indignant. 

“Don’t worry, Y/N,” Jungkook says, voice sickly smooth, honey falling off his lips. “I’ve actually been thinking about the two of us for a long time.”

You pretend to throw up on Taehyung’s hardwood floor. 

As Taehyung promised, he asks Jungkook the same questions. And, as predicted, his answers about as far away from yours as the sun is from Pluto:

“Are you excited to begin the filming for this?”

Jungkook grins. “Yes, definitely. I actually took this class after hearing from a friend that the final project was a lot of fun.”

Taehyung beams. That friend was him. No wonder he was so happy to sign onto helping the two of you. 

“And how would you describe your current relationship with Y/N?”

“We’re soon-to-be-lovers.” 

“How forward of you.”

“Isn’t that my job?”

You have to stop yourself from bursting out into laughter behind the camera and ruining the interview. At least he’s not hiding anything. You’ll give him that. 

“So I suppose you expect the two of you to fall in love over the course of the project?”

“Yes, that’s going to happen.”

“And you seem pretty confident when you say that.”

Jungkook smirks as he turns to the camera. Or, more accurately, you. “Confidence is attractive.” 

You shake your head back at him. 

The rest of the interview falls pretty much into the same vein as the first few questions. Jungkook is so brazenly determined and hopeful and optimistic it actually pains you in a way, watching him make all of these promises both to you and himself that this project is going to turn out the way he hopes it does. His answers remind you of his discussion board posts, always looking on the bright side of every movie you watch, always finding the silver lining, the light at the end of the tunnel. A movie could be total Hollywood crap, filled with cheating scandals and misunderstandings and betrayals, and Jungkook could still find beauty in it. 

It’s strange. 

For the sake of you not actually throwing up in Taehyung’s lovely apartment, you tune out the majority of the middle of the conversation, having zero desire to listen to Jungkook wax poetic about your non-existent relationship like he’s saying his wedding vows. Only when Taehyung finally remarks that they’re on the last question do you finally come to again, ready to turn the camera off as soon as Jungkook finishes his answer. 

“Jungkook, do you think you and Y/N will fall in love at the end of this?”

“I do.” Wow, what a shocker. “I do, because I hope that by the end of this Y/N will have opened her eyes to the beauty of love, and will find joy in the feeling as something that makes her feel happy and warm. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure the things we do together are meaningful. And even if we don’t last, I hope that her memories of us together will be ones she can look back upon fondly and be grateful for.”

You purse your lips together. If only it were that easy. 

“Alright, cut,” you say, voice distant as Jungkook thanks Taehyung for his time and hops off the bar stool. “Thanks, Tae.”

“Anytime, you guys,” Taehyung says with a grin. 

Jungkook comes over to where you’re standing, possibly to grab his camera and tripod but most definitely to rub his obnoxious personality all up in your face. 

“You really think you’re gonna get me to fall in love with you, huh?” You muse, an eyebrow raised as you look up at him. “Just so you can prove a point?”

“Believe it or not, Y/N, but I actually think that all people deserve the chance to experience love and that happens to include you, as well,” Jungkook responds easily. 

The words put a sour taste in your mouth. “You think I deserve it, huh?”

Jungkook nods, face solemn as he looks at you, gazing into your eyes with those big brown ones of his own. It makes you feel something unfamiliar. Like he’s reading right through your chest, into your heart. You don’t like it. “Everyone deserves love.”

“You guys are coming back, right? So I can leave the sheet up?” Taehyung interrupts after he’s moved both of his bar stools back to his kitchen counter. 

“Yeah, we’ll be back,” Jungkook answers quickly. “Thanks for setting everything up, by the way.”

“Of course. Plus, this is a good background for my nudes,” Taehyung says casually, like he’s mentioning what he’s having for dinner. “Looking forward to seeing you guys again.”

“Us, too,” Jungkook says. “Ready to go?”

“Only because it means I don’t have to see you anymore,” you retort pointedly, grabbing your backpack from where it sits on his couch as you head towards the door. 

“Just you wait, Y/N,” Jungkook says as you leave Taehyung’s building, one of those old-timey Victorian houses that was converted into a whole bunch of apartments. “You’re gonna see that I’m right.”

“Really? About what?”

“About us,” Jungkook says. You come to the stoplight, where Jungkook keeps going straight and you turn right. 

“Us?”

Jungkook grins as you turn in the direction of your own apartment. And, just as the light turns green, he says, “Just you wait. We’re gonna fall in love, you and me.”

If he says so. 

“Hey! Y/N!”

You whip your head around at the sound of your name just as you’re opening the door to your local Starbucks, wondering who the hell is calling out to you at nine-thirty in the morning on a Wednesday. 

As it turns out, you don’t have to wonder too much, because the moment your eyes adjust to the blinding sunlight coming from the east side of campus you see Jungkook hurtling towards you, heavy black boots stomping down on the pavement as he rushes to catch up with you. 

“Can I help you?” You ask, thoroughly unimpressed, as you pull open the door, looking at Jungkook heaving beside you as he holds the door open for himself. 

“Just glad I caught you,” Jungkook gasps out between breaths. “Figured this might make a good scene for the movie.”

“It’s a mockumentary,” you remind him easily, getting in the line. 

“Whatever,” Jungkook says. “What do you normally get here? I don’t really go to Starbucks often.”

“Whatever will give me the most caffeine for the least amount of money,” you retort. 

“How efficient,” Jungkook comments. 

“You know that’s how I like to be,” you tell him with a pointed look. 

Jungkook mumbles his acknowledgement as he fumbles around in his backpack, fishing through the large pocket until he whips out his Canon, holding it out in front of him like he’s a dad about to film an embarrassing shot of his child. You look down at the camera just as he pans up to you, a confused frown written across your features. Jungkook laughs. 

“Do you really need to do that here?”

“I’m not even filming,” Jungkook says with a smile, like he just pulled his camera out so he could look at your unimpressed face through a different lens. “Look, you’re up.”

You turn around to find that the woman ahead of you in line has just moved towards the pick-up side of the counter, so you shimmy over towards the barista, ready to get this over with so you can dart out of the Starbucks as soon as possible. 

“Just a grande Americano, please,” you request simply, fingers grasping for the wallet inside your coat pocket. 

“Me too,” Jungkook chirps up from behind you. The closeness of his voice makes you jump, and suddenly you become keenly cognizant of how he’s practically pressed up next to you as he leans over towards the counter. You catch a glimpse of the debit card in his hand. “Here.”

“You don’t have to pay for me, it’s fine,” you quickly say, holding out your own card to the barista. 

“No, it’s okay, I want to. Here.” Jungkook pushes your hand away as he tries to stuff his card into the reader. 

“No, I won’t let you. I’m a big girl, I can pay for my own coffee,” you rebuke, feeling yourself growing oddly defensive. 

Jungkook sighs from behind you. “Oh, come on, you can’t let me do one nice thing for you?”

“Will one of you please pay, you’re holding up the line,” the barista asks in a desperate tone, clearly too overworked and too underpaid to be dealing with two bratty college students like yourselves. 

Jungkook manages to shove his card into the reader before you get the chance to do it yourself, pushing you to the side as he verifies all of his information and takes his receipt. Next to him, you seethe to yourself, feeling a personal loss even though you just got your coffee paid for. It’s not about the money. It’s about your pride. Never in your life have you wanted to so badly pay for an overpriced Starbucks coffee. 

You and Jungkook mosey over to the other side of the counter, waiting for your identical drinks to be made as you try and calculate how much longer you have to stand in the same room and breathe the same air as Jungkook. Seeing him in class, on your discussion board posts, and for your arranged final project meetings apparently isn’t enough, so now he has to invade your personal life, too. 

“What are you doing?” You huff out angrily, turning to Jungkook even as he holds his camera out in front of him, filming the Starbucks. 

“Recording our first meeting, obviously,” Jungkook says like it’s some kind of no-brainer. Like you were in on that from the moment he called your name out on the street. 

“What do you mean, ‘our first meeting’?” You scrunch up your nose in confusion. “We’ve known each other since the semester started.”

“I know, but…” Jungkook trails off unhelpfully, but you pick up what he’s putting down regardless. Right. This is supposed to be a mockumentary rom-com. And rom-coms always start with an introduction. 

The barista behind the counter calls out Jungkook’s name as he places two same-sized cups down at the pick-up station. The cup is burning hot, even with the little cardboard holder wrapped around it like a leg warmer, so you immediately move over to the station up against the wall with all of the sugar packets and napkins and little green splash sticks. Jungkook joins you without question, whether it be due to the fact that he doesn’t come here very often or because he just wants to keep invading your space, you couldn’t say. Grabbing one of the wooden sticks, you tug the plastic lid off of the cup and give the coffee a swirl. Watching you, Jungkook takes the lid off of his as well. 

“Are you just going to copy everything I do?” You deadpan. 

“Not everything…” Jungkook trails off suspiciously, looking down into his coffee like the two of them are conspiring something. 

“What are you talki—”

Without warning, Jungkook slams half of his body into you, and without a lid or one of those little green sticks, the coffee sploshes over the side of his cup and drenches the front of your exposed hoodie, hot liquid burning through the fabric of the hoodie and the t-shirt you have on underneath. You watch in horror as Jungkook plays it off like an accident, feet fumbling around on the hardwood floor like he had just tripped. But he didn’t just trip. He dumped half of his Americano onto the both of your fronts. 

“Jungkook!” You say instantly, resisting the urge to scream because you’re in a public place but feeling your skin go as hot as the coffee against your torso as you look up at him, fuming. 

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m such a klutz,” Jungkook says, somehow able to regain his balance, hold his coffee cup, and film the whole adventure all at the same time. “That was totally my fault, let me help you with that.” 

The camera is from his perspective, which you suppose is about as real as it gets for something grounded in reality like a mockumentary, but in this position he’s able to make conversation with his eyes, big brown ones wide as he tries to signify what exactly he means when he purposely spills coffee all over the two of you. 

You get it. You’ve seen enough rom-coms to know why he just did what he did, but you still find your mouth agape as you stare up at him, smoldering and angry and a little shocked he would dare be so bold, especially in the middle of a Starbucks coffee shop. 

“For God’s sake,” you say with an exhausted sigh despite it not even being ten in the morning yet. Unable to form any other comprehensible words, you settle for just pulling out napkins from the dispenser and dabbing the front of your hoodie as Jungkook looks at you apologetically. You can’t even tell if he’s truly sorry or just putting on another one of his shows. 

“I feel so bad,” Jungkook says, and you calm yourself down enough to nod. At least he isn’t blatantly laughing. “Can I pay for dry cleaning?”

“You’re really gonna offer to pay for my dry cleaning?” You ask, an eyebrow raised. 

“It was my fault,” Jungkook admits. Now that you can agree on. 

You shake your head. “It’s okay. It’s just an old hoodie, it’s no big deal.”

“I’m still sorry,” Jungkook insists, and the more he says it the more you actually find yourself starting to believe him. Even if he did just spill coffee all over you. “Here, let me give you my jacket—”

“That’s not necessary,” you say as he shrugs off his backpack and begins to remove the bulky denim jacket he’s wearing, fabric worn and soft from years of use. “Seriously, it’s okay, it’s just a hoodie.”

“Yeah, but now you have coffee all over your clothes and you probably have class soon, right?” He says, an apologetic smile lacing his lips. He tugs off his jacket and holds it out towards you. 

“Jungkook, I’m fine, alright? I appreciate your concern, though,” you assure him. You throw away the last of the coffee-stained napkins in your hands and reach down for your backpack, which you had taken off your shoulders somewhere in the chaos. 

Jungkook rolls his eyes, almost as if he was expecting resistance, and leans over you anyway. His arms extend outwards as he wraps his enormous denim jacket over your shoulders, the fabric draping loosely over your body. The damn thing was big on him, so on you it practically eats you up. You stand there, silent, as Jungkook adjusts the jacket on your torso, pulling underneath the hood of your sweatshirt as he makes sure it’s snug across your figure. 

“There,” Jungkook says. 

“Thanks,” you say, a half grin playing on your lips. The gesture makes you wonder if Jungkook really was planning on giving up his jacket this early in the morning for the sake of your movie. “That’s nice of you.”

“I hope it makes up for the fact that you smell like coffee now,” Jungkook says, a hand coming up to rub at the nape of his neck. 

“I appreciate it,” you say. 

“I have class, too, so I have to go,” Jungkook says, hoisting his backpack on his shoulders as he tucks his camera away. “I’m sorry again! See you around?”

Like you even have a choice. 

“Yeah, see you around,” you say as Jungkook darts off just as quickly as he arrived, rushing out the door before you have the chance to change your mind and give him his jacket back. 

When he leaves you, you find yourself at a loss for words. You stand there, lips pursed, coffee cold, as the weight of his jacket rests heavy on your shoulders. 

It smells like him. 

You should have known he would do something like this. Spill coffee all over the two of you, offer you his jacket, dash off like Cinderella at midnight. Like the opening of the world’s worst rom-com. The start of what is no doubt going to be the most unbearable final project you have ever done.

Plus, the other thing it’s ensured is a second meeting. How else is he going to get his jacket back?

And you know what the worst part is?

This is only the beginning.

This time after FILM395 ends lecture for the day, it’s your turn to catch Jungkook lounging around after class. 

He’s lingering around the outside of the building, scrolling through his phone, a heavy leather jacket resting over a flannel that goes down to his knees and a baseball cap sitting firmly on his tuft of blonde hair. He’s obviously not paying attention to any of his surroundings whatsoever, because he doesn’t even notice you exiting out of the door he’s standing by until you say his name. 

“Jungkook,” you say, arriving in front of him. 

“Wha—oh, hi,” Jungkook says, jumping at the suddenness of it all. 

“Here,” you say, holding out his oversized denim jacket in between the two of you. “Thanks for letting me borrow it.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were going to give it back so soon,” Jungkook says, looking a little surprised and… is he touched? 

“I was going to give it to you a couple days ago but I thought I should give it a wash first,” you admit to him. 

Instinctively, Jungkook brings the jacket up to his nose to sniff it. “Smells like lavender.”

“Yeah, it’s my detergent. Hope you don’t mind. It’s a little wrinkled—I let it air dry since I was worried it might shrink in the dryer.”

“Thanks,” Jungkook says, a genuine smile lacing itself across his features. It’s not one you see too often, and definitely not the kind of smile he usually flashes in your direction. Those are all so obnoxious, so full of himself. This one’s different. It’s appreciative. Kinder. Softer. In a lot of ways. “I was thinking, if you don’t have class now, do you wanna grab some coffee?”

You narrow your eyes. “Only if you promise not to spill it on me this time.”

Jungkook laughs, throwing his head back. “Okay, I got it. I won’t spill it on you.”

“Promise?” You prompt. 

“Promise.”

The walk to Starbucks this time is in relative silence, but neither of you seems to mind it very much. You aren’t dashing to catch up with each other and heaving snarky comments as you catch your breath. Jungkook even notices you shiver in the cool March breeze and wraps his jacket around you again anyway, although this time you make a mental note to make sure he doesn’t leave without it. Even though a lavender scent wafts off of the denim, it still smells a little bit like him. That boyish sort of aroma. You don’t think any detergent would ever be able to get rid of that. 

You and Jungkook both get americanos again because you’re predictable and creatures of habit, and Jungkook actually seems to quite like them. He pays and you don’t spend two minutes standing in front of the barista fighting over it. Jungkook seems so determined to pay the extra four dollars for your drink that you aren’t sure if it’s really worth arguing over it for the sake of pride anymore. What you and Jungkook put into making this project a success is what you’re going to get out of it. 

He picks one of the longer tables in the back of the study space, empty because it’s just after the lunchtime rush and most people have classes now, sets up the camera at one end, and you sit down at the other. 

“So,” you begin, not sure where to start because your coffee is too hot to take a sip from it. 

“So,” Jungkook echoes. 

Silence. 

You purse your lips in that awkward, I-don’t-know-what-to-say kind of way. “What do you want to do?”

Jungkook grins. “This is the part where we get to know each other.” 

“We already know each other.” You frown.

“Do we?” Jungkook poses, an eyebrow raised. “I mean, yeah, I guess we aren’t strangers, but I don’t know anything about you. Other than you’re a film major in a rom-com class who hates rom-coms.”

“I don’t hate rom-coms,” you object. “I just think it’s important to look at them from a critical lens.”

“Okay, whatever,” Jungkook says, shrugging you off. “The point is that we don’t know anything else about each other. Like, what’s your favorite color, for example?”

“Purple.” It’s an easy answer. You wore purple princess dresses when you were five, painted your bedroom lilac when you were ten, and still make sure to keep a purple highlighter in your pencil case now. “What’s yours?”

“Red,” Jungkook responds. 

“Cool,” you say, effectively ending the rest of the conversation.

Jungkook, sensing that same awkward silence, suggests something. “How about you ask me something now? We can go back and forth.”

You shrug. It’s not like you have anything better to do. “Alright.” You think for a moment, but then you have the perfect question. “Why film?”

Jungkook was clearly not expecting something so loaded, because his brows furrow, knitting themselves together as he begins to figure out a good enough answer. “Hmm,” he says, lost deep in thought. “I suppose the standard answer would be that I’ve always been interested in it, but I think I chose film because I want to be able to have the gift to tell other people’s stories. Being a filmmaker doesn’t just mean you stand behind a camera. It means you immerse yourself in the lives of other people to create something new. And… I don’t know. I guess I really like doing that.” 

You nod. 

For once, you understand him. Understand why he chose to major in film, why he chose to be in this tiny little program. Because there is so much out there, so much that you will never know, people you will never meet and things you will never see. And it’s a filmmaker’s job to make them turn into things you will see, people you will meet. Who knows the world better than the people who study it? The people who have devoted their lives to learning all its secrets?

“What about you?”

“Same as you,” you tell him. “Film is an art but it’s more than that to me. It’s a new way to look at the world. It’s several new ways to look at the world, depending on what kind of film you want to create and what kind of story you want to tell. I think it’s important to show people that all of the things they see in the media every day are not always reality. And that real people deserve to have their stories told, too. I don’t know. That’s what I think.”

Jungkook grins, a twinkle in his eyes. “Real people like us?”

“This project is different,” you insist. 

“I don’t think it is,” Jungkook says. “You said it yourself, we’re making this because it’s important to show people that the Hollywood entertainment they consume is not reality. This is. This is reality.”

You frown, kicking yourself in the shin because what was supposed to be a harmless conversation has now turned into an opportunity for Jungkook to try and convince you that you will, in fact, fall in love with him. You’ve dug your own grave and Jungkook was the one who handed you the shovel. 

“You’re not giving up, are you?” You say, shaking your head, flabbergasted. “Reality is the fact that this project is not going to make me fall in love with you. Nothing is.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” Jungkook warns. “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“You mean like spilling burning hot coffee all over me?” You ask, an eyebrow raised, a grudge still held. 

“We had to start somewhere,” Jungkook defends. “And you seemed to understand what I was doing pretty quickly.”

“It’s not the worst thing someone’s done to me,” you concede, only slightly. “Besides, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but throwing hot coffee all over me is not really a good way to start off your plan to get me to fall in love with you.”

Jungkook smiles. “All in due time, Y/N. All in due time.”

“I can’t believe Pollack actually paired us up together,” you say with a sigh. “You know she did it on purpose.”

“Of course she did.” It’s not really a surprise to either of you. 

“I met with her right after she announced our partners,” you tell him, “she said it was because she wanted to see what kind of project we would come up with. How we would address our… differing views on love.” That’s one way of putting it. A rather nice way, if you do say so yourself.

“Speaking of which,” Jungkook says, something suddenly flashing through his mind, “what do you really think about love? You know, other than it’s unrealistic and ruins people’s lives.”

“You make me sound like Ebeneezer Scrooge.” You frown at him. 

“I’m serious,” insists Jungkook. “Why are you so pessimistic about it? Have you ever been in love? Have you had bad experiences? You couldn’t have just developed this worldview over time.”

You scowl, feeling yourself getting defensive. “Well, maybe I did. Maybe that’s just what I think. Why do you care?”

“Because people don’t just hate love for no reason,” Jungkook exclaims. “Come on, there must be something.”

Your body stiffens. Who is he to be asking you this sort of shit? Why does he care so much? It’s not like it will have any effect on the outcome of your project. Not like you explaining yourself will change the way either of you look at the world. 

“What’s it to you?” You challenge. “Why do you love love so much? Have you ever fallen in love? Do you think it’s suddenly going to solve all of your problems?”

“I love it because I think it brings people real joy,” Jungkook answers simply. “It makes people happy and it’s beautiful. I love love and I’m not ashamed to say that out loud. I believe in it. I believe in love, and in destiny, and in soulmates. I want that. I think everyone deserves it.”

 You scoff to yourself. “You believe in soulmates?”

“I think we all have our people out there.” Jungkook nods. “Don’t you?”

You roll your eyes, arms crossed over your chest. This conversation has gone nowhere, and Jungkook looks as equally dissatisfied as you do. 

“I think love can make us do stupid things,” you tell him succinctly, if a little jaded. No need to say anything else. Your explanation is right there. “We’re just different, I guess. You and I.”

Jungkook blinks at you, eyes wide and a little desperate. Your conversation has remained stagnant and there’s almost nothing left to say. 

Almost. 

“Don’t you ever want to fall in love?” He asks, like it’s a last-ditch effort to get you to believe. 

You freeze. Let the words sink in for a moment. Before you push them out the door and toss them into the garbage. Just thinking about it gives you a headache. Puts a sour taste in your mouth. 

Quickly, you push yourself out of your chair and stand up, grabbing your coffee with one hand and your backpack with the other. “I have to go, sorry. I just remembered I’m meeting up with a friend to help her with a photography shoot,” you fumble out quickly, the legs of the chair screeching as you scoot them across the hardwood floor. “Oh, here’s your jacket, too. Thanks for giving it to me again. I’ll see you in class.”

You whip around and head towards the exit, and only when you’re outside of the Starbucks and passing by the window do you dare look back. Do you dare let your gaze drift back to Jungkook, who is sitting there like he still doesn’t understand you. Still can’t. 

You and Jungkook are final project partners and maybe, if you’re pushing it, acquaintances-slash-friends. But there are just some things better kept to yourself. 

We’re reaching the halfway point in this semester and, as you all know, I don’t do midterms. That said, I still want you to reflect on what you’ve learned, discovered, and thought about thus far in this class. What portrayal of love did you find the most realistic? The least? How have they changed the way you think about love, both from a personal and a film perspective?

Y/N Y/N on March 3rd at 6:08PM

Purely from a film perspective, I really did enjoy watching Juno. It was funny and raunchy and just the right amount of vulnerable. It certainly felt the most real. So far, no film in this class has topped it for me. 500 Days of Summer, on the other hand, was in my opinion extremely unsatisfying and left no positive impression. The ending was a bore and Tom had absolutely no spine. It was a shame, because the direction and production was actually quite good. 

I guess I’m starting to realize how real love is not pretty. It can make people just as sad as it can make them happy. Why don’t we show the sad sides of love, too? The sides where your room is covered with a pile of clothes because you can’t bring yourself to do the laundry? Where you cannot cook a meal because it reminds you of a breakup? Rom-coms are, obviously, not the most realistic. But why are there not more films that do cover what’s real? How can we love love if all we know is a lie?

Jeon Jungkook on March 3rd at 11:13PM

Of course, I thought The Big Sick did an excellent job of their portrayal of love, adult life, and the problems that plague us all in the twenty-first century. It was also just as emotional and touched on concepts of race, illness, and being in your twenties and having no idea what direction your life is going in. The Princess Bride, on the other hand, as much as I love it, I do think created a more circumstantial kind of love. Westley and Buttercup mostly fall in love because of their situations. But it remains a classic nonetheless. 

I’m satisfied with the way the film industry has produced rom-coms and handles love. The beauty of it is that love is different for every person who goes through it. It can bring the greatest joy and the most painful sorrow. We do not just figure out what love is by what we see on film. We see it in our real lives, in our parents, in our friends, in couples in coffee shops and cars and on sidewalks. We can love love because we want that joy for ourselves. Because we know that true love will be worth any heartbreak we endure. Is it not impossible for the portrayals of love in these rom-coms to not be real? The way everyone experiences it is different. The only way you can know what real love is, and what it is not, is if you fall in love yourself. 

Early on in your project development, you and Jungkook exchanged class schedules to optimize your productivity and skip over that stupid, terrible part of partner projects where you’re just going back and forth trying to pick a time that works for the both of you until you eventually settle on something ridiculous like eleven o’clock at night outside of the McDonald’s two blocks off of campus. 

It’s been working very well. Neither of you have adventurous-enough friends to invite you out on spontaneous picnics and restaurant dates that fuck with your pre-scheduled meeting times, and Jungkook already seems to have mastered the art of screaming your name when he catches you on the sidewalk so that you can film something. 

In fact, you’re actually beginning to wonder why you haven’t done this with all of your long-term partner projects. Send each other your schedules so that you can settle on a time in advance. No muss, no fuss. 

You and Jungkook are supposed to meet up again tonight, after the two of you are finished with all of your classes, to discuss what scenes you should be filming next. Edited down, you’ve already got about ten minutes worth of footage, but it’s mid-March and the project is due at the end of April. So you need to get this show on the road. 

The door slams shut behind you as you exit the business building, your film industry class having just ended a minute ago. You’ve got an hour to kill before your next class, just enough time to dash to the food court in the center of campus and grab something from the Japanese place in the back corner. You might even have time to browse the shelves in the bookstore if you’re fast enough. 

You round the corner to the main pathway through campus when a voice stops you in your tracks. 

“You’re just too good to be true…”

“Can’t take my eyes off of you…”

It’s not Jungkook. Instead, in the middle of the walkway are the Eighth Notes, one of the fifteen-thousand (you don’t know for sure, but if you had to estimate) acapella groups on campus. They’ve got mic stands and a table set up and everything. Maybe they’re promoting an upcoming show…? 

You almost breeze right by when one of them, the one in the middle of the group, points right at you, a lopsided grin lacing his features. You aren’t one to normally stop in the middle of a crowded footpath, but when, one after another, all six of the boys start pointing at you, you have no choice. 

“You’d be like Heaven to touch…”

“I wanna hold you so much…” 

“At long last, love has arrived…”

“And I thank God I’m alive…”

“You’re just too good to be true…”

“Can’t take my eyes off of you…”

Their voices are smooth like honey, warm and deep, romancing you through their mics as each one of them suddenly manifests a rose from behind them. Around you, people are starting to stare, gawking at you as they walk by. There’s even a small crowd starting to gather, and you swear you can see some people filming on their phones. The fact that this is happening in the busiest ten minutes of the day, as half the student body is walking from one class to another, isn’t helping. At all. 

The rest of them singing in the background, each one steps out from behind the set of microphones to hand you the rose, smiling their classic, old-timey smiles like those old jazz singers from the 1960s, until you’ve got half a dozen in your hands as they continue to sing. 

“But if you feel like I feel…”

“Please let me know that it’s real…”

“You’re just too good to be true…”

“Can’t take my eyes off of you…”

And then, suddenly, all of them are shutting their traps and turning to the left, looking down the pathway as the song begins again, but from one-hundred feet away. 

“I love you, baby, and if it’s quite alright, I need you, baby, to warm the lonely night…”

Your mouth drops. At the other end of the walkway is Jungkook, one of those wireless microphones in his hand, grinning as he saunters down the path like a prince at a ball, voice sweet and thick as the words dance off of his lips. 

“I love you, baby, trust in me when I say…”

Your eyes lock from opposite ends of the path, Jungkook stepping closer with every beat the Eighth Notes gives him. It sort of feels like your impending doom and a wedding proposal, all at once. By now a rather substantial audience has gathered, lining the walkway with their phones out, filming Jungkook as he waltzes past them, occasionally turning to capture your gobsmacked expression. 

Every step that Jungkook takes makes your heart race something fierce, cheeks warming in embarrassment, trapped in your least favorite thing in the entire world: a public serenade. You can’t really do anything except look at him in shock, feeling his steady gaze resting firmly on your figure, looking right at you. Into you. 

“Oh, pretty baby, don’t bring me down, I pray…”

Oh, pretty baby, now that I’ve found you, stay…”

Jungkook, on the other hand, is clearly relishing in this. In the spotlight. In the music. Or maybe just in the fact that you’re on the receiving end of his over-the-top advances. His grin is wide as he takes those last few steps, microphone gripped neatly in his hand, the lyrics warm and weighty as they tumble from his lips. 

“And let me love you, baby…”

One final step and he’s right in front of you, staring into your eyes, letting himself bask in the look on your face. He produces a rose himself—cherry red, like his favorite color—and holds it out in between the two of you. In the background, the Eighth Notes go quiet, leaving Jungkook on his own for the final line. 

“Let me love you…”

The words drift above your heads, disappearing into the sky as he lingers on them, on that last note, beaming down at you. He looks at you, so hopeful, so happy, so endeared, and what else can you do? What else, besides taking the rose from his hand and smiling back up at him? Who are you to deny him of that?

The crowd around you cheers when you do, applauding both Jungkook and the Eighth Notes, with whom he is apparently in cahoots, before they all decide that they ought to get on with their day and head to class. No doubt you’ll be on several dozen Instagram stories by nightfall. 

Only after everyone has dispersed do you notice Taehyung, who must have been here since the beginning, because he’s just turning off the camera dangling from his neck. Of course Jungkook got him to film. Other than your project, what else would this be for?

“Is that the best you can do, Jungkook?” You smirk up at him, only saying this because you can’t have him knowing that you actually kind of enjoyed it. 

“You’re still here, aren’t you?” Jungkook responds easily. “Thought I would do something spontaneous.”

“And now you’ve taken up ten minutes of my lunch,” you say, shaking your head to yourself. “How spontaneous, indeed.”

“How was that, Jungkook?”

Behind the two of you, the Eighth Notes are packing up, clearly more than happy to have aided Jungkook on his quest for so-called love and getting to promote their group in the process. 

“Great, thank you so much, Jimin,” Jungkook says to the one in the middle, the very first one to sing when you walked out of the door. 

“Anytime, dude. Glad we could help,” Jimin responds. He waves hi to Taehyung, too, as they store their microphones and go on their way. 

Jungkook bids them goodbye as they head down the path, smiling at all of them before he turns back to you, notices the distant, faraway look in your eyes as you twirl the rose between your fingers, press it to your nose to pick up its scent. 

“You gotta admit, I’m a pretty good singer, eh?” Jungkook says with a nudge to your shoulder. 

“You’re alright.”

Jungkook laughs to himself. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Don’t get a big head,” you warn. 

“Think I’ll have to sing for you more, now, hmm? Since you liked it so much?” He suggests, eyebrows wiggling. 

You roll your eyes. “Only if you can get Jimin and the Eighth Notes to back you up, again. Then maybe I’ll allow it.”

Jungkook grins. He’s far past the point of being deterred by your deadpan comments. If anything, they only encourage him more. But you, for obvious reasons, cannot give in. At least, not yet, anyway. 

“Okay, go eat your lunch,” he says, nodding as you begin to part ways. “I’ll text you later, okay?”

You smile. “Okay. See you.”

“See you, too.”

The moment you get back to your apartment you put all seven roses in an old vase filled with water. They brighten up your bedroom instantly, soft scent freshening up the air. And when you go to bed that night, it is to Jungkook’s sweet, delicate voice, like walking on clouds, like satin and silk, that you fall asleep.

“Good morning, Y/N,” Jungkook greets like always, smiling at you as you walk in the door for FILM395. 

“Good morning, Jungkook,” you say in response. 

Then, you take a seat right next to him. 

It’s an act that clearly catches everyone off guard, if the bewildered looks of your fellow classmates and Jungkook’s confused expression are anything to go by. Even Pollack, when she walks through the door, gets a bit of a shock, eyes widening when she sees the two of you seated next to each other. 

You suppose all the fuss is understandable. After all, you both sort of hate each other. 

Other than the sudden change in seating arrangement, however, the rest of the class goes off without much issue. Pollack lectures for an hour before you move into discussion, at which point it becomes a class participation free-for-all, with you and Jungkook almost definitely in the lead. Just because you’re now sitting next to each other doesn’t mean either of you are suddenly going to stop raising your hands to rebuke each other’s points. Some things never change. 

Sitting next to Jungkook is not as bad as you thought it would be. For one, he is, for the most part, a rather diligent student. Other than his occasional flicks to his email, an essay he’s working on, or your discussion board, he mostly sits and takes notes and doesn’t do anything else. That, you can at least give him credit for. And even though your elbows almost always nearly crash into each other’s when you’re raising your hands to respond to a point Pollack’s made, discussion isn’t so bad either. 

One of the perks of sitting directly beside each other is that whenever he says something stupid, or saccharine, or just overly unrealistic, you don’t have to just roll your eyes from the back of the classroom while you wait to be called on. You also get to kick his foot with your own, nudge your elbow into his side. And he does the same to you. You and Jungkook are like those neighbors in sitcoms that spend all their free time shouting at each other from opposite windows. Just because your seats have gotten closer doesn’t mean your viewpoints have. 

A notification pops up on your laptop.

[March 17th, 11:05AM]

Jungkook: wanna meet at the tables outside after class?

You look over at Jungkook with a frown.

You: Why are you texting me? We’re sitting right next to each other

Jungkook: because we’re in class obvs Jungkook: dont wanna be disruptive

You: Since when has that ever stopped you before?

Jungkook: haha very funny Jungkook: tables sound good?

You: Only since you asked so nicely :)

Jungkook: thoughtful as always i see

After class, you and Jungkook both hang around, waiting for each other to pack up your belongings so you can walk to the tables together. Everyone else seems to sense this weird, uncomfortable tension in the room, because they all book it out of the door much faster than either of you do. You’re almost convinced Jungkook purposely takes extra time to zip his backpack, just because. 

The tables are, as per usual, empty. But you don’t have a pile of receipts to spread out, this time. You and Jungkook take a seat at one of them as you pull out your laptops, ready to outline the rest of the project. 

“We should probably meet with Taehyung a couple more times, too,” you suggest as you begin to brainstorm. 

“Sounds good,” Jungkook agrees. “But we can’t meet at night on weekdays anymore. My dance group’s show is coming up and we have practice then.”

You stop typing and turn to him. “I didn’t know you were in a dance group.”

Jungkook shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “I don’t really talk about it that much.”

“You should.”

He looks up at you at that, eyes wide as he faces you. 

“I don’t know, it seems like something you should be passionate about,” you say. In the same way that you promote the Film Club to every freshman you know, force all your friends to mark that they’re Interested in your event pages on Facebook. Jungkook should want to tell everyone about his dance group. Doesn’t he love it? Isn’t he proud to be in it?

Jungkook doesn’t look like he knows what to say to that. So he doesn’t say anything at all. 

“We can meet on weekends too,” you say, adjusting to his new change of schedule easily. “This project isn’t as all-consuming as I thought it would be.”

“You mean I’m not as all-consuming as you thought I would be,” Jungkook corrects. 

You shake your head. “No, you are.” He laughs. “But yeah, on weekends is fine. You know my schedule. What else should we do, besides talk to Taehyung?”

It’s like a lightbulb goes off above Jungkook’s head. “Let’s go on a date.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “No.”

“What do you mean, “no”? It’s the natural progression of our relationship! It’s the next step in the rom-com! We have to,” Jungkook insists. 

“First of all, it’s a mockumentary, not a rom-com,” you say with a sigh, finding yourself having to correct him rather frequently. “Secondly, we are not in a relationship. I am not dating you and you are not dating me.”

“Okay, but at this point in rom-coms the two leads would definitely go on a date,” Jungkook says, punctuating every word for emphasis. “What’s the harm? It’s not like you’re committing yourself to a future with me.”

“Thank God,” you mutter. 

“Oh, shut up. You probably haven’t been on a date in years, anyway. Why not spend a night out?”

You frown at that. “Who cares if I have or have not been on a date?” Why does Jungkook care so much about the history of your love life? He’s always saying stuff like this, always telling you things as if you’ve never been in a relationship at all, don’t know left from right, black from white. Who is he to be making those assumptions?

“Please, Y/N,” Jungkook begs, looking desperate. “Just one evening. And then if it really goes terribly and you end up hating me again, then we don’t have to do another one.”

You sigh, shoulders slumping. Well, what else are you going to do? You don’t have any other ideas. And you’ve already spent so much time with Jungkook this semester, what’s another evening? Just something else to cross off of your list of things to film. Maybe you can get him to take a cute photo of you to post on social media. 

“Fine,” you concede. “One date. And I still hate you, by the way.”

Jungkook clearly does not believe you. “Really? You still hate me? I’m sure you do.”

“Okay, I don’t hate you. But still,” you relent again. Perhaps you’re just being oddly soft today. Too lenient for your own good. 

Jungkook grins, cheeks little round circles as his lips curve up. “I know you like me. You just can’t admit it to yourself, can you? Can’t take that blow to your dignity.”

“Don’t think so highly of yourself,” you chide. 

“Who knows?” Jungkook tacks on, just to be extra annoying. “Maybe you’re actually starting to fall in love with me.”

You scoff. “You wish.”

“Well, are you?”

Jungkook doesn’t ask the question the same way he’s asked all of the other ones. Doesn’t say it with a shit-eating grin on his face or that glint in his eyes. He’s asking because he’s curious. Curious if what he’s been doing has been working. Curious if this project is really accomplishing anything at all. 

Funnily enough, you find yourself wondering the exact same thing.

Silent, you pausing for a moment to think, chewing on the inside of your lip. Jungkook’s looking back at you, lips curled upwards as he waits for a response. Ugh, you’ll just have to give it up. What else can you say? “I guess…” you begin, hesitating. 

You aren’t sure why you’re so scared to respond. Maybe you’re just worried that things will change if you say something. If you tell him the truth. 

But it’s just Jungkook. He’s sitting in front of you patiently, waiting for your answer. What could happen?

You confess. “I guess you’re not so bad after all.”

Even though this is not the first time you’ve ever been out on a “date” (you’re using that word tentatively), picking out what to wear isn’t any easier than the last time. 

“Is black too, you know, sexy?”

Ruby shrugs on the other end of the video call. Her phone is propped up on her desk as she works on something on her laptop, glancing over every now and then whenever you prompt her to respond. “Well, that depends. Do you wanna fuck?”

“No.”

“Then it might be too sexy,” Ruby says easily. “What are you even doing? I thought you didn’t go out on dates.”

“It’s not a date,” you insist, although you’re not exactly sure which of the two of you you’re trying to convince. 

“You’re asking me what kind of sexy dress to wear for a night out with a guy. It’s a date,” Ruby reminds you, economical as always. “Who are you even going out with, anyway? You just called and asked me to pick between two dresses I have literally never seen you wear before.”

“That’s because I don’t go out on dates, which this is not,” you tell her, even expending the energy to stare into the camera to hammer your point home. “And it’s with Jungkook.”

Ruby shuts her laptop at that. You can hear the sound of her keyboard clacking as the lid hits them. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Do I need to remind you that this is not a date and therefore, you don’t need to be acting like I just told you I’m getting married.” You frown at her. “It’s just for our movie. Jungkook wants me to dress nicely, though.”

“Wear that nice summer dress you have,” Ruby instructs instead, shooing away the two much sexier options you’re currently holding in your hands. “Just put tights on underneath if you’re cold.”

“This one?” You ask, shuffling through your closet until you produce the gingham dress, plaid a pale yellow that matches gold jewelry rather well. 

“Yes, that one. I like that one,” Ruby says with a nod. “You look good in it.”

“I don’t know, I feel like it’s not appropriate.” You hesitate. It’s a cute dress, sure, but it seems too… casual. Too everyday. Jungkook’s taking you out to dinner, and no doubt he’s got something else planned for the rest of the evening. 

“I mean, you did say you had no plans on fucking him tonight,” Ruby reminds you coarsely. 

“I have no plans on fucking him at all,” you reiterate. “This is not a date. It is for our movie.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ruby brushes you off with a wave of her hand. “Wear whatever you want, but I like your yellow dress the most. It looks really nice on you. And if it’s not a date, then neither you nor Jungkook should care.”

“Ruby—”

“I gotta go. Enjoy your not-date!”

She hangs up. 

You end up wearing the yellow dress. Jungkook knocks on your apartment door just as you’re closing the clasp to your necklace, a gold choker your mother had gifted you for a birthday a couple of years ago. It’s nothing much. You grab a jacket on your way to answer the door, wrapping it around your figure as you twist the knob. 

On the other side is Jungkook, all decked out in black jeans and a clean-cut leather jacket, the black ensemble striking against his warm-toned skin and bleached, blonde hair. You hate to admit it, but he actually does look rather good. For Jeon Jungkook. 

“Hi—whoa,” Jungkook says, doing a little whistle when he sees you, eyes bulging out of their sockets. 

You chuckle. “‘Whoa’ yourself.”

“You, uh…” Jungkook stammers slightly, a hand coming up to rub at the nape of his neck. The movement lifts his arm up just enough for you to see the line of his waist, the seamlessness of his body. He’s always been rather fit. “You look nice.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” you chide, stepping outside and pulling the door shut behind you. “You don’t look half bad yourself.”

“Cleaned up just for you.” He grins. 

You press a hand to your heart dramatically. “I’m touched.” You begin walking down the hallway of your small apartment building, feeling your hands brushing by your sides due to how skinny the corridor is. At least, that’s what you assume. 

“Where are we going?” You ask as Jungkook opens the door to the passenger side of his car for you. 

He winks, that same gleam in his eye. He grins something wicked. “Don’t you remember?” He asks. “It’s a secret.”

The secret turns out to be a small Italian restaurant on an off-road in the center of town, a family joint with those plaid red tablecloths and dark wooden chairs. You’d never heard of the place before tonight, but Jungkook insists that it’s delicious and says it has a four-and-a-half star rating on Yelp, which is obviously gospel when it comes to restaurants. It’s so empty that he even has room to prop up the camera a couple of tables away to get that wide-angle shot of the both of you, two souls in a tiny little restaurant, enjoying a night out on the town. You’re sure that by the time production and post-production rolls around you’ll edit out most of your dialogue, but you like the idea of keeping in snippets of the audio, overlaying the scene with a soft instrumental. 

From a director’s point of view, of course. No other reason to romanticize your night with him. 

It’s nice. Objectively, it’s definitely one of the more exciting things you’ve done in a while, even if it’s just a dinner out in town, away from campus. It’s new. Adventurous. Jungkook convinces you to try his vodka shrimp linguine and you offer up some of your truffle-flavored gnocchi, which he devours happily. One thing you do learn is that no matter how much time passes, no matter how much food is on his plate, Jungkook eats and eats and eats. He never seems to fill up. This is one of those restaurants that pile your bowls high with pasta, give you at least three servings, send you home with to-go packages that will last you for days, and he still somehow manages to eat every last bite. He even has some of your leftovers. 

Jungkook pays because he insists and says that you shouldn’t fight on camera, which you have no choice but to agree to. However, you do look him up on Venmo and send him twenty dollars to cover your half of the bill, because the idea of him paying for you doesn’t sit right with you. It was fine with the coffee, a small token of repayment after spilling it all over you, but dinner just feels like too much. Like he’s carrying most of the weight and you aren’t shouldering enough. Like he’s putting in all of the effort and you are just bandwagoning off of him. 

And partnerships aren’t supposed to be like that. Jungkook isn’t supposed to do all of the work. You aren’t supposed to do nothing. You and Jungkook may not agree on much but you both know that you are equals. That what you put in is what you get out. 

It’s a lesson you think you learned too late, but you won’t make those mistakes again. You’ll get it right this time. 

“That was nice,” Jungkook says after the dinner. You’re walking through the park just across the street now, the sun having set and the streetlamps illuminating your path. The city has strung up lights along the trees, draped them over the branches like stars, like snowflakes. It’s picturesque. 

“Yeah.” You nod. “Thanks for taking me.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“How did you discover that place?” You ask, just out of curiosity. It’s not exactly the kind of restaurant that would be front and center on Google. 

“I went out on a date in freshman year there,” Jungkook admits, lips pursed awkwardly. “Yeah.”

“Did it at least go well?” You ask, trying to be hopeful. 

“If it did, do you think I’d still be here doing this with you?” Jungkook poses, an eyebrow raised. 

You chuckle to yourself. “You don’t mean that. I’m sure you’ll find your person.”

“You actually believe in that stuff now?” Jungkook asks you, skeptical. 

“I don’t know,” you say, shrugging your shoulders. “You do. I don’t wanna ruin it for you. Your person’s out there somewhere.”

“How do you know I haven’t already found my person?”

You stop in the middle of the path, feet coming to a halt on the pavement. Jungkook looks at you and you look back at him, letting his question sink into your skin, etch itself into your thoughts. He’s asking you because he wants to know. He looks so genuine, so patient, like he’s trying to find an answer somewhere in your eyes but you can’t give him one. 

“Wouldn’t you be able to tell when you did?”

Jungkook sighs. “I don’t know if it always works like that.”

You smile, soft and small. Musing, you say, “well, when you figure it out, let me know.”

“Do you think you’ve found your person?” Jungkook asks you. 

“You know I don’t think about love like that,” you remind him. 

“Well, how do you think about it?”

You gaze up at him once more, that same soft smile playing on your lips. Who is he to be asking you these questions, you wonder to yourself. What would the point be in answering him? It’s better if you just both moved on. Especially since stuff like this has no relevance to your project. 

“I don’t really think about love at all,” you say curtly. 

“I wish you did,” admits Jungkook. 

The look in your eyes is distant. “Yeah.” You wish you did, too.

“How about we do a couple of quick shots, right here?” Jungkook suggests, pulling out the camera. “Just here, the lighting’s nice.” He jogs back a couple of feet, lining himself up with where you stand, kneeling on the pavement with the camera held up to his eye. 

“What do you want me to do?” You call to him, feeling like a fish out of water in front of the lens, thumbs twiddling. 

“Just smile,” Jungkook requests simply. “Say hi to me.”

Sounds easy enough. Under the twinkling lights of the trees, in the haze of their warm yellow glow, you wave to Jungkook, smiling happily. You aren’t exactly sure what the purpose of these shots are, but you suppose you could always use some artistic frames in your movie. Grinning, you keep your eyes trained on him, on the way you can see him smiling back at you even from behind the camera. His eyes are covered, you can’t see those, but you hope they’re smiling too. 

“Okay, my turn,” you say when a little too much time has passed, when it’s just past the point of filming for the sake of a movie and more for the sake of something else. “Get over here.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you idiot.” You scurry over to Jungkook, taking the camera from his hands and pushing in in the general direction of where you were just standing. Situating yourself, you kneel right where Jungkook was, bringing the camera to your eyes. 

Through the lens, you can see the entire width of the pathway, the grass that borders it, the lights decorating the branches of the trees, and Jungkook, front and center. He looks like he has no idea what he’s doing there, waiting awkwardly as he gazes around, eyes drifting everywhere but exactly where you need them: you. He looks good like this, looks much taller, much more romantic. Like a real movie star. Like a model. His clothes make him blend in with the darkness of the night but his eyes are still shimmering, golden flecks twinkling, even from all the way over here. 

You have to admit it. He’s beautiful.

“Smile,” you say, pressing film. 

Jungkook grins your way. 

Afterwards, you give him his camera back and continue walking, turning the corner as you reach the edge of the park, ready to circle around the perimeter.

“How about we hold hands, too?”

“Excuse you?” You say, an eyebrow raised. 

“Come on, just for a second,” Jungkook pleads. “For the artistry. I’ll film us holding hands like all those Los Angeles boys do in YouTube vlogs.”

You look at him suspiciously. Is he sure it’s just for the artistry? “What a great example.”

“Please? Promise I always put hand cream on,” Jungkook asks, bottom lip turned outwards. 

It’s getting harder and harder to say no to him. 

“Fine,” you cave rather easily this time around. “Just for a minute.”

“Excellent.”

Jungkook lifts the camera up to his eye with his right hand as he holds out his left, palm facing the sky as he waits for you to rest your own in his. You narrow your eyes to the camera before your gaze drifts downwards to his open hand, almost like you’re afraid it’s going to jump out and bite at you if you get any closer. But it won’t, because it’s a hand. And it won’t, because it’s just Jungkook. 

The first thing you realize when your fingers intertwine with his is how big his hands are. They are massive. His left one dwarfs your own, wrapping around it securely, enveloping it like a king-sized comforter. The second thing you realize is how soft they are (he must not have been lying about the hand cream). The third thing you realize is the way they send sparks up and down your body, send tingles through your skin, shocks through your veins. You seize up a little bit at the feeling before your body finds it in itself to relax, letting the sensation wash over you like a wave from the ocean. 

It’s new. 

It’s strange. 

You haven’t felt that way in a long time. Felt those sparks, those jolts of energy. Like lightning has struck. 

Jungkook moves so that your hands are held out in front of you, making sure to adjust the lens just so he can get the exact right angle, but all you can focus on is the way your fingers interlock, the way your hand settles into his. 

You wonder what that means. 

The moment Jungkook lowers the camera you pull your hand away, overwhelmed and scared and shocked all at once. Like you’re afraid that if you reach out to him again, your whole body will freeze in place, shake like the wind. 

Jungkook looks at you, concern lacing his features. “You alright?” He asks, genuine and worried. 

You shake your head, willing those thoughts away. “I’m fine, I’m fine. You get the shot?”

“Yeah, I did,” Jungkook says. 

“And how do they look?” You ask because you can’t help yourself. Because you just have to know. 

Jungkook pauses, not sure how to respond. He chews on his lips like he’s running through all the possible answers, trying to figure out which one is right. You almost think he’s not going to reply at all, but then he smiles, and he says this: 

“Magical.”

It feels weird for you to be arriving at Kim Taehyung’s door without Jungkook by your side. Doesn’t sit right in your stomach. 

Of course, Taehyung is as hospitable as always, welcoming you inside with his signature warm grin as he sets up the bar stools by the bedsheet, which you assume he will just not take down until your project’s over. Hopefully he’s getting use out of it otherwise, shooting nudes or whatever it is he said he would do. 

“Thanks for having me,” you say, resting your backpack against the foot of his couch as you set up the tripod, arranging it in just the right spot. It’s not Jungkook’s fancy camera that you’ve got with you, just your own from a couple years ago, but it’ll get the job done. You couldn’t ask Jungkook to borrow his, anyway. You’d pass away before he found out you did this. 

“We might not use this footage,” you warn in advance. “I just figured it’s safer to film everything just in case.”

“Why wouldn’t you use it?” Taehyung asks, genuinely curious. 

“Because I don’t know if this conversation will really have a point,” you say nervously, fingers fidgeting with the settings until everything’s just right. 

“I’m sure it’ll be important,” Taehyung assures you. You’re not so confident. “Ready to get started?”

“Yes, everything’s all set up,” you say, concentrating on your breathing as you make your way to the stool. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Why are you so worried?

“So, Y/N, how are you feeling right now?” Taehyung begins. 

You sigh. “Confused.”

“And why is that?”

“I… I don’t really know what direction I’m going in anymore for this project,” you say, letting yourself be candid and honest because it’s just Taehyung, and because you may not even use this footage, and because Jungkook’s not here. He doesn’t know you’ve asked Taehyung to do this for you. He doesn’t need to. 

“And is this because of Jungkook?”

“Yes.” Another easy answer. 

“How are you feeling about him?”

“I’m…” you don’t know where to begin. “I’m not sure. I just know that something’s changed.”

“Your feelings have changed?” Taehyung isn’t reacting, just asking questions in response to your answers and pretending that everything is normal, that this is just another interview. 

“I guess they have,” you admit. Even just saying that feels like a weight off your chest. A small one, five pounds out of a thousand. But it’s a difference. “I… don’t really know how I feel about him anymore.”

“In a good or bad way?”

Taehyung told you he would ask tough questions, but you don’t know if you can answer these anymore. 

“I don’t know,” you say, feeling yourself growing desperate with impatience. “I don’t feel the same things about him that I used to. He’s different to me now.”

“Do you think he’s changed?”

“Something has.”

“Have you considered the possibility that maybe you’ve changed, too?”

You frown, caught off-guard by his question. No, you haven’t. You haven’t thought about that at all. Why would you? Your stance is the same. Your opinions on love haven’t changed. And neither have your convictions about this project, about the way it will end. 

“No,” you say, nose scrunched up. 

“Well, I’m no expert, but I think there might be something between the two of you that wasn’t there before,” Taehyung says, nodding. “I think that the ways the two of you have changed have brought you together.”

“I don’t know about that…” You trail off. You can feel yourself growing hesitant again, pulling back from saying too much because you’ve never been a very good speaker. Because you’ve always preferred being behind the camera to being in front of it. 

“Don’t you think you should tell him how you feel?”

You scoff. At least that’s got an easy answer. A no-brainer. “No,” you say matter-of-factly, obvious because it is, stern because telling him was never an option anyway. Why else does Taehyung think you’re here without him? “Jungkook said he would get me to fall in love with him and I told him I would never. How could I ever let him think he was actually winning?”

Taehyung sighs.

You haven’t seen Jungkook since your class on Wednesday. Granted, it’s only Saturday, but it feels like it’s been a weirdly long time. Like you’re so used to him barging into your life on the daily that there’s something off about even going three days without seeing him. Maybe it’s just because you’re nearing the beginning of April and your project is finally picking up steam. Between the two of you, you almost definitely have more than two hour’s worth of footage, but the hard part will be paring it down and turning it into a forty-five minute documentary. No doubt you and Jungkook will be spending a lot of time together the week before it’s due. 

Just out of curiosity, you text him. Because you have no idea what he’s been getting up to. 

[March 28th, 1:05PM]

You: Hey, do you think we need to get together sometime this weekend?

Jungkook: i don’t think i can Jungkook: it’s my dance group’s show this weekend

You: Really? You: You didn’t tell me

Jungkook: been too busy

You: What time is your show tonight?

Jungkook: 7pm

You: Sounds good, I’ll be there

Jungkook: oh Jungkook: you don’t have to

You: I want to You: I’ll see you there!

That night, you drop by the grocery store beforehand to pick up a bouquet of flowers. You haven’t been a performing arts show for years now, especially not one where you actually know the people performing, but flowers are customary. Or so you’ve heard. 

You don’t know a single soul who has plans on seeing Jungkook’s dance group either, but the theater is a ten-minute walk away from campus and you’re happy to make the trek alone, especially because you know you’ll find someone you know soon enough. Sometimes it’s nice to walk by yourself, letting the streetlamps above your head illuminate your path, a faceless figure passing by others. It brings peace. And it gives you time to sift through your thoughts, organize them into neat little piles and brush away all of the dust. 

Admittedly, you are not much of a connoisseur of the performing arts. You aren’t even much of a consumer. In another universe, under different circumstances, you wouldn’t blink twice if you heard that one of the dance groups on campus was having their show. But this is not another universe, and these are not different circumstances. 

Jungkook will be there. He is taking something he’s worked tirelessly on and presenting it to the world. Now that you think about it, it’s actually a lot like film. And if Jungkook has devoted so much time, put so much energy into this performance, what kind of person would you be if you didn’t go and watch his creation?

You pick a seat in the far back corner, the venue so cozy that even despite being the furthest away you’ve still got an excellent view, sit down, and wait for it to begin. 

[March 28th, 6:58PM]

Jungkook: hey are you here?

You: I guess you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?

Jungkook: always such a tease

You roll your eyes at that, turning your phone off and stowing it away in your pocket. Two minutes later, the lights dim. 

The moment Jungkook steps out onto the stage, you recognize him instantly. He’s wearing all black again, but it’s not the same skinny jeans and leather jacket he had on when he took you out to dinner. It’s a loose long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants that hang low on his hips, highlighting the blondeness of his hair, the red in his lips. He’s one of at least a dozen people on stage but he’s the only one you focus on, the only one who your eyes follow. Booming throughout the theater is a Drake song, the beat thick and low, but it’s background noise when compared to the way he moves, the way he twists and turns his body on stage, angles sharp and crisp. 

The whole song goes by so quickly that by the time you find it in yourself to blink the stage is already darkening as they move onto the next song, switching out the performers and changing the spotlight colors to a sultry red. Jungkook disappears for this one, vanishing behind the curtains and forcing you to pay attention to the performance as a whole instead of just him. But you have to hand it to his group: they’re excellent. You’ve been missing out. 

Jungkook returns with the next song, having had just enough time to change into an all-white ensemble. He’s easy to spot even with that ridiculous bucket hat on, blonde hair bouncing with every step he takes, every jerk of his body. You can see it all the way from where you sit, see the way he loses himself in the music, lets the rhythm radiate through his blood, lets his heart match the beat that booms through the speakers. This, all of it, the music, the dancing, the energy—it’s all his. It belongs to him. Jungkook may love film but he is passionate about this. It is something that must bring him all the joy in the world. 

The next hour and a half goes by quickly, the songs jumping from one to another to another, Jungkook dashing on and off stage, each time returning in a different getup than the one prior. Makes you wonder just how many clothes he has. But before you know it the final song is playing and every one, every single member is on stage, jumping and cheering and celebrating a job well done. And they should, because they deserve to. 

When the lights in the theater come on, nobody leaves. Instead, everyone rushes towards the stage to say hello to everybody, congratulate them on their performance and take pictures with their friends. That’s why everyone else is here, isn’t it? Because the people they care about performed tonight. 

Isn’t that why you’re here, too?

Jungkook has plenty of other friends already wrapping their arms around him, giving him high-fives and pats on the back, but you’ve got a bouquet of assorted flowers in your hands and you have no plans on bringing them home. So you squeeze your way through the crowd, push yourself in between bodies, and you shout, 

“Jungkook!”

Jungkook looks up instantly at the call of his name, the round shape of his lips curving upwards into a smile when he sees you. 

“Hey, you made it!” He exclaims happily. He’s so pumped on the adrenaline that he pulls you into a hug without either of you even realizing it, wrapping his arms around your torso and squeezing you tight for a few moments before the two of you remember just exactly who you both are. Quickly, you pull away, chuckling awkwardly. Jungkook scratches at the back of his head. “Thanks for, uh—thanks for coming.”

“Of course,” you say happily. “You were amazing.”

“What can I say, I’m a man of many talents,” Jungkook schmoozes, annoying as always. 

You scoff slightly. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Here, I brought this for you. It’s traditional, right?” You hold out the bouquet in front of you, pink plastic wrapping crunched up from where your fingers gripped the stems. 

“Wow, thank you,” Jungkook says, in awe as he takes the flowers from you, pressing his face into the petals instinctively. “No one’s ever gotten me flowers before.”

“Really?” You say, genuinely surprised at his admission. He’s never been given flowers before? Not even for a performance? You didn’t know that, either. “Then I’m glad to be the first.”

“You know you didn’t have to do that,” Jungkook says, though he looks grateful nonetheless. 

You shrug, acting casual. “Aren’t we supposed to be falling in love, or something?”

He grins. 

“Did you guys film this? Maybe we could incorporate it into the movie,” you suggest, thinking it might be interesting to add in glimpses into your normal lives, into the things you do when you aren’t trying to one-up each other. 

Jungkook shakes his head. “We did, but I don’t think we need to add it in.”

“Why not?” It seems like a perfect addition. 

Jungkook pulls out a single flower from the bouquet, a pale yellow daisy, and hands it to you. You smile your thanks, twirling the stem in between your fingers. 

“I don’t know,” he says, looking oddly soft, cheeks turning cherry red. He looks at you and it makes your heart flutter, quickens the drum of your chest. “I just think I’d like to keep this moment to ourselves.”

You suppose he’s got a point. You don’t think you’ll forget this night, either. 

The bouquet you gave him sits on Jeon Jungkook’s bedroom windowsill, bathing in the afternoon sun. Taehyung gave him some plant food the morning after you came to his performance, a little bottle that he can spritz into the water whenever the flowers look a little droopy. Jungkook adds some every day, determined to keep them alive for as long as possible. He also makes sure he’s got a rather heavy book or two, something he can use to press one of them when they’ve all shriveled up. 

It was really nice of you to come to his show, he thinks to himself. Jungkook can’t remember the last time someone outside of his group of close friends went to see him perform, not any of his past dates or even that one girl he was seeing semi-seriously for a couple months last year until she told him she wasn’t interested in him anymore. You’re the first one who’s made the effort, who’s told him that you would come and kept that promise. The flowers are just a happy reminder. 

As a celebration for completing their last show, Jungkook and some of the other juniors in his dance crew decide to go out the following weekend, determined to waste away their Saturday nights at a bar just off of campus where they can take as many shots of as many different types of alcohols as they want. The place even has soju, which makes Jungkook’s heart happy. 

Despite the temptation to drink until his brain is empty, however, Jungkook holds off. He’s got a lot of work tomorrow, most of it consisting of editing the footage you have for the project, and doesn’t really feel like staring at a computer for eight hours straight with a headache. So he limits himself. For the most part. 

“Who was that girl that came to the show?” One of his friends, Andrew, asks as he downs another shot of what is undoubtedly vodka, if the smell is anything to go by. “With the flowers?”

“Is she your girlfriend?” Jesse pipes up, red in the face from the alcohol in his system. He’s always been one to turn into a tomato after drinking. 

Jungkook chuckles awkwardly, shaking his head when the bartender offers him another shot glass full of soju. “No,” he says, forcing a laugh. “Just a friend.”

“I don’t know, you guys looked pretty close to me,” Andrew points out, like it wasn’t already obvious enough that Jungkook is head over heels for you. 

“She and I are working on a film project together,” Jungkook explains, though that does absolutely nothing to convince his friends of your completely platonic relationship. 

“Sounds fun,” Jesse says, swallowing another shot and wincing. “It was nice of her to bring you flowers. My girlfriend didn’t do that.”

“Shut up, your girlfriend is studying abroad in Paris right now,” Andrew says, giving Jesse a good-natured shove. “I’m gonna tell her you said that.”

“What, please don’t—”

“She’s not my girlfriend, guys,” Jungkook repeats himself, feeling his cheeks heat up the longer the conversation drags on. He chalks it up to the soju in his system and the fact that it feels like a sauna in here. “Seriously, we’re just friends. People can be friends and bring each other flowers.”

Jesse pumps his fist in the air. “Yeah!” He rounds on Andrew. “Where are my flowers, hey Andrew?”

The two of them start bickering as Jungkook laughs, shaking his head fondly. At least he’s not drunk, so he can remember nights like these, ones where he’s drinking with his stupid idiot friends, celebrating a show well done. 

Jungkook stays at the bar until eleven that night before he makes the executive decision to go home and sleep, because as much as he would like to party until three in the morning, he’s got a pile of work that’s telling him to be a real adult. So he bids his friends goodbye and begins to make the trek back to his apartment, passing by the row of frat houses on his way. 

Even though he’s out on the sidewalk, Jungkook can feel the ground rumble from the music, every frat on the block joining together to make some booming, bass monster. From here he can see the flashing blue and purple lights in the windows, see the brothers standing on the steps of each house and turning away whoever they deem unfit to enter. 

In a weird way, it makes Jungkook nostalgic. Reminiscent of when he was a freshman, when he would group up with all of the people in his hall and parade around the frat row on Saturday nights like they owned the place, getting drunk on shitty tequila and jumping until they sweat out their body fluids. He remembers those nights in flashes, bits and pieces that make up his memory of freshman year as a whole. Remembers kissing other girls, other girls kissing him. Remembers the way he would lock lips with them for a second and then forget about it by the next day. 

Jungkook wonders why he ever thought he would meet his soulmate at a frat party. 

He’s just passing the last frat house now, nodding to the guy on the step when they accidentally meet eyes, when he hears you call his name. 

“Jungkook!”

He whips around to see you on the other side of the road, waving at him excitedly while your friends all laugh, sending smiles Jungkook’s way. 

Jungkook isn’t exactly sure what the protocol is for a scenario like this, so he does what he thinks is right and waves back. 

“Come over here!” You shout at him, loosely gesturing for him to join your group. Jungkook is hesitant, not sure if that’s necessarily the best course of action because even from here he can tell that you’re drunk, leaning over to one side and giggling at nothing. But even if he isn’t sure what will happen he can’t help but fall into the way you’re beaming at him, waving excitedly because you saw him on the street and you wanted to say hello.

He’s never been able to resist you. 

“Hey, what are you doing out here?” He says as he jogs over, greeting the rest of your friends with a patient smile. 

“Went out with my friends,” you say. Jungkook can smell the alcohol on your lips. “And then I saw you, which made me happy!”

You stumble over nothing, shoes skipping as they drag along the pavement, and before any of your friends can react Jungkook is reaching his arms out, catching you before you fall flat on your face. Your hands press against his torso as he lifts you back to your feet, and all Jungkook can do is pray that you can’t hear the way his heart races, beat drumming in his ears. You giggle in his hold, disoriented but not at all uneasy, looking up at him as your eyes sparkle in the glow of the streetlamps. 

“Thanks,” you manage to cough out. 

“Sure,” Jungkook says, breathless. He stands you up and tries to let you go, but you keep your hands tight around his wrists. “I think we need to get you home.”

“Can you come with me?” You ask innocently, eyes wide. 

“Y/N…” One of your friends says, voice hesitant. She places a hand on your shoulder, looking concerned. Jungkook doesn’t take any offense to it, he doesn’t know your friends well and imagines that they would much prefer being the ones to drop you back at your place. 

You shrug her off. “No, it’s okay, Ruby,” you assure your friend, hand inching down Jungkook’s wrist until it rests firmly within his palm. “I’ll go with him.”

Ruby eyes Jungkook suspiciously and her gaze is so intense that it actually makes him doubt his ability to walk you home for a moment. But you seem intent on walking with him, and the sooner you go home the better, so Ruby relents and lifts her hand from your shoulder. “Alright, if you want to.” She keeps her eyes trained on Jungkook. “Text me when you’re back.”

“I will, I will,” you say, brushing her off and waving her away. “Let’s go, Jungkook. I’m sleepy.”

“Okay, come on,” he says. You smile happily at your friends as you say goodbye, cheerful and drunk and tired, all at once, and you begin to walk towards your apartment. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” you tell him, positively filter-less. 

“I’m glad I’m here, too,” Jungkook assures you. “What did you have to drink tonight?”

“Not sure,” you admit happily. “Just a lot.”

“I can tell.” Jungkook nods. “Were you at a frat party?”

“Several,” you correct him. “They weren’t that fun but at least the drinks were free.”

“Why were you at a frat party if you don’t like them?” Jungkook asks you, nose scrunched up. You certainly aren’t the kind of person to hide your distaste for things. That is something that Jungkook is intimately familiar with. 

You shrug. “It’s the cheapest place to get drunk.”

“Why did you want to get drunk?” This is seeming more and more out-of-character for you. Going to a place you despise, taking shots until you can’t walk straight, meandering around campus with Jungkook. All of these are things Jungkook could never in a million years picture you doing out of free will. 

Well, all of them except maybe the last one. You did come to his dance show, after all. 

You sigh. It’s thick and heavy and Jungkook has a feeling you won’t want to divulge any more. “I just wanted to forget.”

But the curiosity is eating at him. 

“Forget what?”

Your grip on his hand tightens. Jungkook fully expects you to dodge the question like you’ve dodged all of the ones prior, say something else to change the topic so you can sweep this discussion under the rug like all of the other ones you’ve had. But you don’t. 

Instead, you say, “You wanna know why I don’t love love the way you do?”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Jungkook quickly assures you. 

“I had better options than this place,” you say, voice hollow and empty. “There were better universities that accepted me. Ones with higher-ranked film programs and bigger scholarships. I could have gone to any one of them and been just as happy. Maybe more.”

“But you didn’t,” Jungkook clarifies. 

“My ex-boyfriend goes to school ten minutes away from here,” you say, words that are most certainly news to Jungkook. You had a boyfriend? “He and I dated all throughout high school. I thought I was gonna marry him.”

The words sound so sad. It sounds like they don’t even belong to you. Like you’re recalling the memories of a different person, someone you’ve killed and buried, someone you were certain you would never have to face again. Yourself. Your past self. 

“And then he broke up with me at the beginning of last year and it was too late to transfer out.” Your words are slurred and garbled, like all you want is to get over with saying them in the first place. It’s not a dramatic revelation. It’s not something you’re crying about, sobbing into Jungkook’s chest as you remember, miserable, a time where you were once happy. You just sound lifeless. 

Jungkook blinks at you expectantly, waiting for you to continue. It doesn’t feel right for him to speak up. Not when you’ve just revealed to him something so personal, so drunk that you probably won’t even remember saying anything when you wake up tomorrow morning. 

What is he supposed to do with this knowledge? What is he supposed to say? To do? It’s not like Jungkook can change your past. It’s not even as if he can change the near future. Your project is almost finished—the semester is almost over. And then you will return to the time where you never even knew each other. 

“You can say something,” you tell him.

“What do you want me to say?” Jungkook says. 

“Something to make me feel better, because now I’m sad,” you request simply. “Seeing you made me happy.”

“Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and smile, then,” he muses to himself. 

“No, please keep talking,” you plead, leaning into his body with your bottom lip puffed out, eyes big and round and desperate. “Listening to you gets me to stop thinking about this stuff.”

Hearing that, Jungkook says the first thing that comes to mind. And that is, “You don’t have to think about that stuff anymore at all.”

“Hmm?” You murmur into his chest. Jungkook sees your apartment building up ahead. Just another block or so. 

“Well, that was your old love story,” he begins tentatively. Jungkook’s almost fully sober by now but he feels like he won’t ever get another opportunity to say this, and maybe whatever soju is left in his system is enough to get him through this conversation. Enough for him to muster up the confidence to tell you what he’s been wanting to tell you for a while now. 

Even if you forget it by tomorrow. He knows this is his only chance. 

“And it didn’t have a happy ending, but that’s okay. Because ours will.” 

You’re just coming up to your apartment complex, the rusted gold doors of the entrance sticking out against the beige of the building and the sidewalk, shimmering in the light of the streetlamps. You pause right outside, taking cover underneath the red awning above your heads. Looking up at him, you blink expectantly. 

“How do I know you mean that?” You ask. 

He almost does it. 

Jungkook doesn’t really know what washes over him in that moment, what takes his heart and mind prisoner for a split second, grip tight and unforgiving. But he’s staring straight into your watery eyes, glossy and glimmery and glowing, lost in the way you press your lips together, the way you gaze up at him and wait for him to tell you what he’s always wanted to say, and he almost does it. His hands press at your sides, holding you close, like he’s afraid that if he lets you go you’ll vanish without another trace and this night will all have been for naught. 

But he doesn’t. 

He doesn’t for a lot of reasons. You’re drunk. When you wake up tomorrow, you will not remember this conversation. But Jungkook will. And if he does it, if he kisses you, if he presses his lips to yours it will be burned into his thoughts, carved into his heart, and you will be none the wiser. Jungkook can’t do that to himself. And he can’t do that to you, either. He will never take advantage of your company. He never has.

“Because,” Jungkook says instead, having hesitated for far too long. “I promise you.”

It’s good enough for him. 

He tucks you into bed at 12:17AM that night, feet padding along your hardwood floor so he doesn’t wake up your neighbors, guiding you to your bedroom and reminding you to text Ruby that you made it home safely. Jungkook’s never gotten a very good look at your place, and even now it’s hard to make out most things without the main ceiling lights on, but he doesn’t really want to snoop. Even though you invited him in, he still feels like he’s intruding. You’ve always been so private. There were a lot of things said tonight that Jungkook is going to have to reckon with. 

Once you’re curled up beneath your sheets, eyes drooping, Jungkooks turns off the light on your nightstand and nearly, just about nearly, presses his lips to your forehead. He manages to avoid doing that, too. 

Instead, he pulls up your duvet and heads towards the main room, making a beeline for your front door. But before he can leave the room, he hears you mumble out his name. 

“Jungkook?” You call, voice groggy. 

“Yeah?” He looks back at you from where he stands in your door frame, one hand on the knob, ready to pull it closed. 

You smile, eyes fluttering. “Thank you,” you say. 

Jungkook grins. 

The next morning you wake up with a pounding headache and three missed calls from Ruby, which undoubtedly means that something positively terrible happened last night. Unfortunately, you have no idea what happened at all last night, good or terrible, so whatever Ruby has to say will be news to you. 

Rubbing your eyes as you wrack your brain in the hopes of figuring out how you even ended up back at your apartment (when you swear you told Ruby you would stay at hers), you press on Ruby’s contact and call her. 

“Y/N? Hello? Are you there?” Ruby answers on the first ring. 

“I’m here,” you mumble out, words jumped and barely intelligible. You wince as your eyes adjust to the harsh blue light of your phone screen, squinting as you look at the time. 

Shit, it’s 11:43AM and you’re meeting Jungkook for coffee at noon. 

“Good, I called you three times last night after you texted,” Ruby wastes no time diving into her interrogation. 

“Why?” You ask, scrambling out of bed with your phone pressed between your shoulder and your ear. Your head throbs so you quickly take some Ibuprofen, splash your face with water, and start looking for something clean you can put on. 

“Because texting me ‘home’ is not enough!” Ruby exclaims. “Jungkook walked you home last night, I wanted to make sure you were tucked in bed and feeling alright.”

You frown. You don’t remember that. Granted, you don’t remember a lot of things, but you can’t recall Jungkook walking you back. You saw him last night? You didn’t even know. Scratching your head, a part of you vaguely pictures him standing in your apartment in the dark, resting against the door frame to your bedroom in the warm yellow light of the lamp on your nightstand. Can just barely see him tucking you into bed, placing the sheets over your figure and making you text Ruby that you’re home. You thought you were just imagining it at the time, but it must have happened anyway. 

“Jungkook walked me home?”

“Yeah, you insisted,” Ruby says. “You probably don’t remember, though.”

“No,” you say dumbly. 

“Well, I appreciate you texting me that you were home but I would have preferred something more explanatory,” scolds Ruby. “I thought maybe Jungkook was gonna do something.”

“Oh my goodness, no,” you immediately interject, pulling on your shoes and stuffing your laptop into your backpack. Just the thought of Jungkook doing something like that sends your stomach for a whirl. “He would never do that. I trust him.”

“I mean, I see that now,” Ruby points out. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” you promise. “Everything’s good.”

“Alright, if you say so,” Ruby says, still sounding a bit like an overprotective mother. You love her, though. You know she just wants the best for you. “Take it easy today, okay? You had a lot to drink last night.”

“I will,” you assure her. “I’m just on my way to meet up with Jungkook now. Getting coffee.”

“Make sure to eat, too,” Ruby reminds you. “And tell Jungkook that I said thanks for walking you home.”

“Anything else, Mom?”

You can practically see Ruby frowning on the other end. “Oh, shut up. I’ll see you, okay?”

She bids you goodbye just as you’re dashing out the door, your usual stride quickening so you make it to the cafe in time, not wanting to keep Jungkook waiting. You make it there in a record five minutes, pulling open the door frantically just as the clock strikes noon. 

Jungkook’s already there, of course, sitting by a little round table in the corner of the room with two americanos on the table. He waves when he sees you standing by the entrance, and the mere sight of him makes you smile, shoulders relaxing. 

“Hey,” you greet, a little out of breath as you settle into the chair across from him. 

“Hey,” Jungkook says back. “How are you feeling?”

“My head is killing me, but other than that I’m alright,” you admit, taking a sip of the drink. It’s piping hot but just the right amount of scalding, warming your insides after a night of filling them with pure poison. 

“Good.” He grins. “It’s nice to see your face.”

“Oh, yeah, speaking of which,” you say while still on the topic, “did you walk me home last night? I can’t remember.”

Jungkook nods. “Yeah, I bumped into you and your friends while I was on my way back from a bar.”

You wince. The fact that you don’t even remember that happening tells you enough. “I was super drunk, wasn’t I?”

Jungkook, nice as always, says, “I’ve seen worse.” It only makes you feel the slightest bit better. 

“Hope I didn’t say anything embarrassing,” you say, knowing you have a tendency to lose your filter almost entirely when you get wasted, letting any sort of mental reasoning fly out the door the moment you down another shot. And the thought of having told Jungkook something deeply humiliating or personal, or even him witnessing something stupid, makes you feel weirdly exposed. 

Jungkook freezes for a split second, almost like he’s buffering, like he’s about to say something but it’s just taking him an extra step to get the words out of his mouth. Then he takes a quick sip of his americano and shakes his head. “No, you didn’t. You were just very drunk. And clingy.”

“I’m so sorry you had to deal with that,” you apologize. You can’t imagine the hell you must have put Jungkook through last night. 

Jungkook laughs. “It’s okay. I’m glad we got you home safe.”

“Me, too.” You nod. You send a grateful smile his way. “Thanks for walking me, by the way. I really appreciate it. Ruby says thanks, too.”

“Anytime,” Jungkook says. It doesn’t sound like something that people say just to say it. The way that people say ‘anytime’ just so they can be friendly and amicable. He says it and he means it, says it genuinely and honestly, like it’s a real promise that he’s making. That he would be happy to walk you home again. No matter the hour. No matter how drunk you are. No matter what he’s doing. 

And that means a lot to you. 

“We should probably wrap up filming soon, huh?” You say, getting onto the topic at hand. Of course, the project is the whole reason you’re even talking to each other in the first place. “It’s due in three weeks.”

“Yeah, I was thinking of another outing? And maybe one more thing with Taehyung?” Jungkook suggests. 

You narrow your eyes suspiciously. “‘Another outing’, Jungkook? What exactly do you have in mind?”

He grins. 

This time, Jungkook is the one with the flowers. 

When you open your front door they’re the first thing you see, an enormous bouquet of an assortment of spring flowers in a variety of colors—pinks and purples and oranges and yellows—gripped neatly in Jungkook’s hand. They stick out against his otherwise rather formal attire, a simple black dress shirt and jeans, nice shoes that compliment his figure. Black truly is the world’s most slimming color, and Jungkook is no exception. He looks good. 

“For you, m’lady,” Jungkook says dramatically as he holds out the bouquet in front of him.

“How thoughtful of you,” you muse to yourself, grinning. You take the flowers and press your whole face into them, breathing in the fresh scent. “The one I gave you wasn’t nearly this big.”

“Go big or go home,” Jungkook teases. “You look nice, by the way.”

“You always sound so surprised when you say that,” you comment snidely, shaking your head as you grab your bag from the shelf next to your door. “What are we doing tonight, Jeon? Gonna keep it a secret from me like last time?”

“That depends,” Jungkook says knowingly. “Do you like secrets?”

“You should know what I like by now,” you remark. 

“Then prepare to be wowed.” He grins, taking your hand in his as he pulls you out the door. 

The restaurant you go to this time does not require a ten minute drive to the center of town. Instead, it’s a five minute walk from campus and actually happens to be a place you’ve been to before. It’s a busy little thing on a Friday night, waiters bustling about with trays in their hands, people laughing and smiling under the dim light of the chandeliers. You’ve only been here once, long ago, for a club dinner paid for by the finance chair, and for good reason. It’s not the kind of place cheap college students looking to get the most food for the least amount of money go to. 

“Isn’t this a bit out of budget for our rom-com?” You ask as the host seats you at your table, a little booth in the middle of the restaurant, lanterns resting on the corners of the seats. 

“I thought this was a mockumentary,” Jungkook jokes. 

“Yeah, yeah,” you say, resisting the smile that fights its way across your face. Trust you to make that sort of blunder in front of him. “I mean it, though. This place is expensive.”

“It’s manageable,” Jungkook promises. “I’ve been saving up. Plus, I thought you deserved a nice night out.”

“How generous of you.”

“Oh, come on, I know you’re excited,” he narrows his eyes at you. “You don’t have to act like a stone-cold robot anymore.”

“Well…” you suppose enough is enough. Jungkook can see right through you anyway, so there’s no point in keeping up this indifferent facade of yours. “Only because you’re treating me so nicely.”

“Just please don’t order the steak,” he requests simply. 

You laugh. “No problem. Maybe we could just share a couple of appetizers?”

Jungkook likes the sound of that. 

Luckily, this is not one of those restaurants where the appetizers cost an arm and a leg and are the size of your pinky finger. You and Jungkook split three different ones, happy to scoop out portions for each of you and indulge in them together. 

Dinner dates—of which this is only sort of one—are always awkward because you spend half of the time shoving food into your mouth, but you and Jungkook don’t seem to mind the silence at all. Only, Jungkook does look sort of like he’s holding back.

“Is this enough food for you?” You ask him halfway through, distantly remembering how he absolutely devoured a whole plate of pasta last time and still having enough room in his stomach to finish yours. 

“What do you mean?” Jungkook asks over a mouthful of vegetables. 

“You ate so much at the Italian place, I just want to make sure you aren’t still hungry,” you point out. 

“Oh.” Jungkook pauses, swallowing down the bite in his mouth. “No, I’m okay. Thanks for thinking of me, though.”

“Yeah, of course,” you say. You hesitate for a moment, not sure if you should say anything else. But what the hell, right? It’s Jungkook. It’s Jungkook and he walked you home when you were drunk, he gave you flowers, he let you borrow his jacket. And you feel as though you must return the favor. “Anytime.”

He smiles. 

Despite the pure ecstasy you both experience when eating delicious food, Jungkook makes sure not to waste this time and grabs a few frames of you eating with his camera. He always seems to have that with him whenever he’s with you, hanging around his neck or stuffed into his backpack or crammed into his pants pocket. Sort of makes you wonder just how much footage the two of you have of each other. 

He insists on paying but you send him some money anyway, just because letting him shoulder the burden of a place as expensive (for college students, at least) as this just doesn’t sit right with you. Whenever he receives the Venmo notification on his phone, Jungkook frowns and says that he’ll send that money back to you, but he never does and you can tell that he really does appreciate it. 

You don’t think you have any plans on stopping that for a while. 

The only downside of going to this restaurant is that there is no gorgeous, light-strung park in the vicinity the two of you can wander around. Just your campus, which you have no doubt walked a thousand times over, and the streets surrounding it, which you have memorized like the back of your hand. 

It almost makes you think that Jungkook is just going to drop you back off at your place and the night will end there, but you know better than to expect something like that from Jungkook. Instead, as you’re walking, you point out the cafe that you and Ruby always go to, see that it’s closing in half-an-hour, and Jungkook decides then and there that it’s your next destination. 

“You’ve never been here before?” You ask when you walk inside, eyes immediately drifting to the display of pastries beside the register. 

“I’m not normally on this side of campus,” Jungkook admits. “You’re the only reason I’m ever here.”

“Then hopefully after finding this place, you’ll have two reasons,” you say cheerfully. The baristas behind the counter know you on a first-name basis, are happy to help you out even though they’ve no doubt been working long hours and are ready to close up shop and go home. 

You split a tiramisu and sit at that same corner table you and Ruby always pick, empty now that it’s so late at night. Other than the employees, you and Jungkook are the only ones in here, a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the restaurant, filled to the brim with people, the smell of cooked food wafting through the air. 

 The tiramisu isn't as fresh as it would be bright and early in the morning, but you suppose that that just means you and Jungkook will have to come back. Besides, Jungkook obviously does not seem to mind, scarfing it down ruthlessly. You’re in and out just as they close up shop, the employees bidding you goodbye like old friends, sending you on your way. There’s not really much else either of you have planned for tonight, and Jungkook isn’t coming up with any new ideas as he checks his phone. Instead, you just begin to head back to your apartment, all wrapped up in each other. You place your hand in his own and feel yourself relax when he squeezes, a silent little reminder that he’s still here, and that so are you.

Funnily enough, holding hands feels natural to you at this point. 

“Tonight was fun,” you comment, breaking the quiet.

“Yeah, glad we could do this,” Jungkook agrees. “Makes me kind of sad to know that this thing is almost over.”

“What, the project?”

Jungkook shrugs. “Yeah. And the class. And the semester. It’s kind of scary. We’ll be seniors next year.”

You chuckle. “Ugh, don’t remind me. I still have no idea what I’m going to do after we graduate.”

“You don’t have to know everything,” Jungkook reassures you. “As long as you’re happy with what you have now.”

“Are you?” You inquire, looking up to meet his eyes. 

Jungkook beams down at you. “I am.”

The walk from the cafe to your apartment is short, just under five minutes, but it feels like it takes you an hour, footsteps slow and languid, like neither of you want the night to end. You hit every red light, round every corner, drawing out the evening for as long as you can. Unfortunately, there is only so much you can do on a five-minute walk, and before you know it, you’re home.

“This is me,” you say, stopping outside the gold doors of your apartment complex. “Thanks again for tonight.”

“Anytime,” Jungkook says, a common thread in your conversations. 

“Really?” You ask, skeptical. “Our project’s almost over.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to stop doing this,” Jungkook says. 

You narrow your eyes. “What are you implying, huh, Jungkook?”

“This.”

Before you know it, he’s wrapping one hand around your waist and pulling you in close to him, your palms splayed out against his broad, toned chest, pressing his lips to yours. You gasp a little into the feeling, somewhat shocked he would dare be so bold even after all this time, but find yourself sinking into the touch. He tastes like coffee and cream, like peppermint from his chapstick, like the wine you shared tonight. You cave into the way he holds you, hands wrapped around your body, palms pressed firmly against your figure. He holds you like he’s afraid to let go, like he’s trying to remind himself that you’re real and here and that you are kissing him back, like he’ll forget once the moment ends. 

But he need not worry about that. 

When you part, you don’t even bother wiping off the stupid smile on your face, kiss-drunk and filled with glee. It’s been a long time since you felt this way. And Jungkook makes you feel things you don’t even think you can explain. 

“How bold of you,” you comment, noses touching, barely an inch away from each other. 

“I figured I’d shoot my shot,” Jungkook says. He shrugs, pretending to be casual, but you can see the way he’s grinning, beaming, down at you. 

“You scored,” you remind him.

“How observant of you,” teases Jungkook in return. You pout a little at his playful mockery, heart fond. “Think we can do it again?”

“Hmm, I would tone down the ego first,” you say, already leaning back in to press your lips against his. 

“Never.” He smiles wickedly. 

It’s a quicker kiss this time, a short peck against his cherry red mouth, but it still makes your heart beat something terribly fierce. 

“See you soon?” You ask when you finally pull away, knowing that as much as you’d like to, you can’t just stand out here kissing each other forever. 

Jungkook nods, cheeks pink and warm to the touch. He looks so sleek in his formal black outfit, crisp button-down and slacks, hair all styled, but the way he’s grinning at you makes him look so young, so sublimely happy. It’s nice. 

“Anytime.”

“There’s my favorite couple!” Taehyung greets excitedly when he swings open the door to his apartment to reveal you and Jungkook standing on the other side. 

“What’s it to you?” You comment snidely as he lets you inside, the black sheet still taped up along his wall. It looks a little more wrinkled than when you last saw it. 

“Oh, nothing,” Taehyung singsongs. He definitely knows a lot more than he cares to tell either you or Jungkook, but whatever. The project’s almost over and he’s almost finished with university entirely. “You guys are just cute together, that’s all.”

“Like you even know the half of it.” You tell him with a roll of your eyes. 

Taehyung wiggles his eyebrows. “Ooh, do tell.” He grins that greasy, comic-book-villain grin of his as he starts moving his bar stools back to where the sheet lines his cream-colored wall. 

“Isn’t that the whole point of this?” Jungkook poses, making you laugh from where you’re seated on the couch, watching Jungkook set up his tripod in exactly the place he wants it. You smile at him as you recline against Taehyung’s poor old leather couch, so worn-down from use that the back cushions fold in when you press against them, and Jungkook peers out from behind the camera to blow you a kiss. 

You send him one back without even needing to think. 

Taehyung misses the whole scene, but no doubt he’ll be putting two and two together pretty soon. You and Jungkook agreed that for the last interview you would be questioned together, long before Jungkook actually managed to romance you off your feet, and there’s not a doubt in your mind that the two of you being interviewed side-by-side will make things much more interesting. 

Nevertheless, Jungkook sets up the camera and sends a thumbs-up your way when he’s ready, Taehyung sitting on the bar stool just outside of the frame with a couple of index cards in his hand. 

“Let’s do this,” you say, hauling yourself onto the seat. Jungkook does the same shortly after, scooching onto the one next to you as you stare at Taehyung, waiting for him to start. 

“Looking forward to this one?” Taehyung asks knowingly. 

You shrug nonchalantly. “Just a little.”

“Excellent. Shall we begin?”

You and Jungkook nod. 

“Alright. Well, this is presumably the last thing the two of you will be filming for your project. How are you feeling about it?”

“It turned out better than I thought it would,” you admit. It will come as a shock to no one that you did not have very high hopes for this project when it was first assigned. 

“Of course it did, I’m your partner,” Jungkook teases, poking you in your side. “Would you ever doubt me?”

“Always,” you say.

Taehyung chuckles. “Sounds like it’s been good so far. Did you enjoy filming it?”

You nod. “Yeah, it was actually kind of fun. Except for when Jungkook spilled coffee all over me, that was not cool.” You turn to face Jungkook directly, and all he does when you say his name is wink and point at you. 

“It was for the rom-com, I don’t know what you expected,” Jungkook said. “I gave you my jacket, too.”

“How gentlemanly.”

Taehyung chuckles, warm and low. “I’m sure Jungkook learned his lesson,” he muses. “What was your favorite thing to film?”

Not when I randomly texted you five minutes before I showed up at your door to make you ask me questions about how I feel, you think to yourself. Jungkook still doesn’t know, but you think you’ll put it into the movie just for the hell of it, so he’ll find out then. Find out that you were grappling with your feelings for him long before you ever let on.

“The serenade was a blast, a special shoutout to the Eighth Notes for doing that for me,” Jungkook says immediately. Obviously that is at the top of his list. “Plus, I just like seeing Y/N all flustered.”

“Shut up, you’re so annoying,” you chide. “I guess the serenade was kind of cute. I liked going out together, though. On our not-date.”

Jungkook objects to that instantly. “It was a date, Y/N!”

You look back at him, equally as scandalized as he. “Whose turn is it to talk?”

“Mine, actually,” Taehyung interjects. “Did you like going out together?”

You sigh a little, wondering if you’re really about to turn into a softie in front of a camera for a movie to be shown to your twenty classmates and professor. “Yeah,” you say, real and true because that’s what you agreed on, you and Jungkook. To be candid. To be honest. To say how you felt. Really. “It was really nice. I hadn’t gone out with someone like that in a long time.”

“And were you happy because of the project, or because of Jungkook?”

“Well,” you begin, not exactly sure where to start. “I guess, it’s like… you know, I didn’t even know Jungkook before this project. I mean, I knew who he was, he would always respond to my discussion board posts and object to everything I said in class. But I didn’t know him as a person. But as we worked on this project together, planning and filming and editing, I started to. And we did so many things together. And I guess I just really enjoyed the time we did spend as a pair.”

“Would you say the same, Jungkook?”

“Yes,” Jungkook says easily. “That’s what I wanted. To get to know Y/N, to spend time with her. I was glad we had this project. Otherwise, we might never have done something like this.”

“You both seem very happy.”

“I think we are. This project was actually sort of a blessing in disguise. I know him a lot better, now,” you say. “I’m glad that I do. He makes me smile, and laugh, and I always feel happy when he’s around. I don’t know. He did it, somehow.”

“Jungkook?”

“It wasn’t just me. Y/N and I did this together. We made this. This project. Us. It wasn’t just her, or just me. It’s ours.” Jungkook grins.

“Are you glad you did this project?”

Of course. It was fun, and I liked filming it, and I feel like I got something really important out of it. I know it’s just a short rom-com mockumentary, but it really feels like there was a happy ending, you know? A happily ever after.”

“You seem really certain about that.”

“Well,” Jungkook says with a little scoff, “what else would you call it?”

“As you can see, obviously Y/N fell head over heels in love with me thanks to this wonderful project—”

“Why are you always so full of yourself—?”

“Hey, you’re ruining the voiceover! As I said, as you can see, Y/N fell head over heels in love with me, but that wasn’t just because of my dashing good looks and amazing singing skills.”

“The ends of your hair look like hay—”

“It was because we were honest with each other, and because we spent meaningful moments together, and because we kept our hearts open. And I guess that’s the truth of it all, isn’t it? Love, romance, relationships? If you close yourself off, you’ll never get to experience them. But if you take every opportunity with an open mind, then you never know what might happen. Like falling in love with your discussion board nemesis.”

“Who, me?”

“Just let me finish, come on. There’s like one paragraph left. I know this was a mockumentary, not a scripted rom-com with professional actors and screenwriters and a whole team of editors. But that was the whole point. To make it real. And to make it between two people who aren’t just characters on a screen. We’re real people, and this happened to us. And it makes us happy. And it can happen to you, too. I think we all learn something every time we watch a new movie. Whether it be about loss, or promises, or other people. This time, we learned about love. Real love. How it can be rocky and strange and come straight out of left field. But also how happy endings aren’t just for movies and fairytales. We all deserve them. And Y/N and I found our own.”

“Are you gonna say it?”

“And so… they lived happily ever after.”

You look up at the screen, expecting to see the credits roll, but instead it’s a shot of the two of you kissing outside of your apartment building, a shot of you wrapping your arms around him as you press your lips to his. It lasts for only a few seconds, but you find yourself entranced in the moment, shocked that Jungkook somehow managed to capture it on film. He didn’t even have his camera with him that night. 

Pollack turns on the lights in your classroom as your fellow classmates applaud, all of them looking genuinely pleased that your rom-com had such a wonderful ending. Pollack herself looks rather proud, nodding to herself as she smiles at the two of you. 

“You filmed us kissing?” You hiss to Jungkook as your classmates clap, hoping the sound of it will drown out your conversation. 

“I got Taehyung to,” Jungkook whispers back. “Why?”

“I just… I thought that night was just for us.”

“The rest of it is. But I thought the kiss would be a cute way to end it. You know, happy ending and everything.”

Alright, if Jungkook insists. You nod, tensing up slightly. You hadn’t even noticed Taehyung down the street, standing behind some utility pole with the camera raised to his eye. Had Jungkook texted him in secret? Asked him to meet you outside of your apartment? Was he planning on kissing you from the very beginning?

You shake your head, willing away the thoughts as Pollack commends the two of you for a job well done. Jungkook and you stand at the front of the room for a few more seconds, getting stared down by your fellow classmates while Pollack speaks. The period ends just as she finishes up, the minutes changing the moment she closes her mouth. Within a minute or so, the whole class has emptied out, some of them congratulating you and Jungkook on the way out. 

“I’ll meet you outside, okay?” Jungkook says, eyes bright and filled with that same wonder he’s always got. 

“Yeah,” you say distantly, nodding to him as he disappears out the door. 

“You did an excellent job, Y/N,” Pollack praises, and it goes right to your head, if you’re being honest. “It was brilliant.”

“Thanks,” you say, suddenly rather shy. “That means a lot.”

“Don’t tell anyone else this,” she says, voice quiet, “but I was secretly hoping the two of you would fall in love.”

“Pollack!”

She laughs. “What? I thought you’d make a cute couple. And you do, so clearly it all worked out anyway.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s against the code of conduct,” you say, even though you know you can’t be too mad at her. After all, you wouldn’t have Jungkook if it weren’t for her. 

“Y/N, I’m tenured. I don’t care.”

“Wait…” you pause, eyes narrowing, “how many of your students have you set up with each other?”

Pollack grins. “I never reveal my secrets.”

Your mouth drops open. 

She chuckles, shooing you out the door. “Go on, go be with your boyfriend. You can tell him you both get A pluses for your project. It was excellent. One of the best I’ve seen in a very long time.”

“Thanks, Pollack,” you say, smiling gratefully. “You’re the best.”

She points at you proudly as you head out the door. “So are you.”

Jungkook is waiting by the tables where you always sit, half a flight down from your classroom. He’s leaning against the edge of them as he scrolls mindlessly through his phone, so engrossed in the Instagram explore page that he doesn’t see you walk up. 

“Guess what,” you say, getting all up in his face, just because you can. 

“What,” Jungkook says, an eyebrow raised. 

“We got an A plus on our project!” You exclaim happily, cheering. Jungkook laughs at your exuberant reaction, watches as you jump around, clapping loudly. 

“Hell yeah, we did that!” Jungkook holds his hand up for a high five, one you gladly take. Your palms smack together and the sound reverberates around the hallway. 

“You know, you and I—” you begin, placing your palms on his cheeks as you pull yourself in for a kiss, “we make a pretty good team.”

“Only because you’re so good at editing,” Jungkook says. You’re both not too bad, if you do say so yourself, but since Jungkook did so much of the filming you thought it would be better if you carried more of the weight when it came to post-production. 

“Says you,” you tease, pressing your lips to his button nose. “The happy ending thing was a nice touch, I liked it. Makes me feel like I’m in a fairy tale.”

“I’m glad,” Jungkook says with a chuckle, admiring the way you beam at him. “You know, I was really worried that you might think we didn’t have a happy ending after all, especially after everything.”

“What do you mean?” You look at him curiously. 

“Well, I just really wanted to make sure that we had a happy ending, because you’ve been through so much.”

You pause in place, eyebrows furrowing as you look up at him. Been through so much? Does Jungkook know something you don’t? Wait, no, did you… did you tell him—?

“You knew?” You ask, the realization piercing you like an arrow. “All this time, and you never said anything?”

Jungkook’s eyes widen. 

“How long have you known?”

He winces. “Since I walked you home when you were drunk. You told me.”

You did?

Shit.

“And you didn’t think that maybe you should have told me that you knew? Especially when I asked you if I had said anything embarrassing?” You cry out, indignant. “What, were you just planning on never telling me?”

“I was going to, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted to know that you had admitted all those things to me,” Jungkook admits, growing desperate. “They were really personal things, I thought you might react badly.”

“Oh, so you just decided to keep it a secret instead? Look how well that worked out.”

“What was I supposed to do, Y/N? I know you would have been upset.”

“Tell me!” You exclaim. “I asked you if I had said something embarrassing that night and you said I hadn’t. And I believed you. Better to have known then than now!”

“I’m sorry,” Jungkook says.

“I can’t believe you wouldn’t just tell me. Didn’t we say we would be honest with each other? But instead, you just let me assume that all of the nice things you did for me were because you actually cared, and not because you felt bad for me?”

“I don’t feel bad for you!” Jungkook shouts. “I mean, I do, but that’s not why I took you out on dates and gave you flowers and held your hand. I do care about you.”

“Oh, so filming us kissing was just because you actually cared, too, right?”

“I don’t know why you’re so hung up about that,” Jungkook points out. 

“Because I thought it was a private moment,” you remind him. “You hadn’t filmed anything the whole night. I thought we were just going out on a date like two people who cared about each other did. Us kissing was personal. But you texted Taehyung and told him to show up with his camera anyway, right? Because you were planning on kissing me from the very beginning. Because you knew, Jungkook. You knew and you had absolutely no intention of telling me.”

“Y/N, wait, I didn’t do those things just because I pitied you,” Jungkook says, reaching out for your hand. 

You pull away. “You didn’t? Then why did you film us kissing, then?”

“Because…” he flounders. You aren’t at all surprised. “Because—”

“Enough, Jungkook. I get it,” you stop him, shaking your head. “Everything we’ve done since that first date we had, when we went to the Italian place, everything since then—it was all played up. Because you felt bad for me. I had a shitty experience with love and you wanted to make me feel better. Whatever.”

“Y/N, it wasn’t like that,” Jungkook chases after you as you begin to walk down the stairs, towards the exit. “I didn’t pity you. I still don’t. I did those things because I care about you, and I wanted you to be happy.”

“Well, you got what you wanted,” you say, arms crossed over your shoulders as you push your way out the door. “I was so happy when I was with you.”

“Wait, Y/N—”

“Bye, Jungkook.”

The door slams shut behind you. 

“How many finals do you still have left? You finished your movie, right?”

Ruby is stirring herself a cup of earl grey tea as she sits down on the couch next to you, where you’re very obviously sulking as you scroll through the Feel Good Rom-Coms category on Netflix. 

“I just have a couple essays and a presentation,” you mumble out. “You?”

“Ugh, I still have all of my final exams to take,” Ruby tells you with a thick, heavy sigh. Clearly, she doesn't feel like talking about them now. Or at all. “The life of a biology major.”

“Hey, you’re the one who wants to be a doctor, not me,” you remind her crudely. “You better know your shit, or I’m never taking my kids to your practice.”

“Rude,” Ruby says. “There goes my family and friends discount offer.”

You laugh to yourself, a small smile inching its way across your lips. Ruby’s always known how to brighten your day, even when you feel like absolute shit. 

“What are we watching, hmm? I’m cool with anything.”

“I don’t know.” You shrug, flicking through all of the rom-com options and feeling very unhappy with all of them. “I feel like you’ve seen all of these.”

“Yeah,” Ruby says. “Whenever I’m not studying, I’m watching Netflix or The Bachelor.”

You nod. Maybe you’ll just settle on some old NCIS reruns and call it a night. 

“Oh!” Ruby exclaims suddenly, a lightbulb going off above her head. “How about we watch your movie? The rom-com you did with Jungkook! I haven’t seen it yet.”

“I don’t know…” You begin, the mere thought putting a bad taste in your mouth. For obvious reasons. 

“Come on, please? I really want to see it, you were so excited about it,” Ruby begs, getting all antsy as she climbs all over you, literally pulling your arm to get you to cave in. “It’s short, too, isn’t it? Like forty-five minutes long? We can watch whatever you want afterwards. Please.”

You huff out a breath. If it were up to you, you would move that film onto a flash drive and toss it into a dumpster on fire. But it’s not just up to you. Ruby has been asking you about it since the day you told her you were filming it, and now all she wants to do is see the final result. And it’s only forty-five minutes long. What’s that when compared to the rest of your life?

“Fine,” you relent, not wanting to fight about it any longer. “Let me get my computer.”

Ruby cheers. 

You bring your laptop over to your coffee table, turning off the ceiling lights as Ruby tucks herself underneath a blanket, hands warmed by her steaming cup of tea. You pull up the movie file and, taking a deep breath, press play. 

It opens with your first interview with Taehyung, a muted, royalty-free lo-fi hip-hop song playing in the background. You had edited it so that it would jump back and forth between your answer and Jungkook’s, highlighting the contrast between the two of you. It was mostly for comedic purposes, just because seeing you deadpan about how love doesn’t exist and then quickly switching to Jungkook wax poetic about it is amusing, but watching it now just makes you want to curl into yourself. 

You should have known that this would have never worked out. Should have kept that same jaded attitude. You let your guard down for one second and look at what’s happened to you.

The next scene that Jungkook shows is, of course, the moment he spills burning hot coffee all over you in the middle of the Starbucks, comedically panning up to your positively-flabbergasted face just to add to the shock factor. Next to you, Ruby laughs at the mishap, obviously amused by the fact that the two of you are now drenched in coffee and scrambling to clean up the mess. You try to focus your energy on how peeved you were at Jungkook after he did that, but get distracted the moment he films himself wrapping his denim jacket around you, placing it over your shoulders and making sure it’s just right. 

He didn’t have to do that, and the two of you both knew it. But still, he sent you off your class all bundled up in a jacket that smelled like him, smelled of that boyish aroma that you couldn’t get rid of, even when you put it in the wash with your lavender detergent. All of Jungkook’s clothes smelt like that no matter how much cologne he put on, always smelt woody and thick. It would consume you, that scent, a cloud surrounding your figure whenever you were near him. 

The movie keeps playing, and you keep thinking about how much of a fool you must look like in it now, all giggles and smiles as Jungkook sings Frankie Valli to you while he hands you a rose, that same sly little smile dotting his features. Hearing the song again makes you feel like you’re choking, like something’s smothering you, and you’re not sure what it is until you realize that it’s the sound of Jungkook’s voice. 

You haven’t heard him sing since he serenaded you. 

Then it’s your first date, the one Ruby told you to wear the yellow dress to (“Hey, I told you you looked amazing in it! Wow!” Ruby exclaims when she sees you). You remember when you edited this, putting the clips together of you eating at the restaurant, wandering around the park, posing underneath the trees, holding hands. You were smiling so hard your cheeks hurt while you were editing, grinning from ear to ear at all of the things the two of you did together. They were so picturesque, those scenes, so perfectly shot, so romantici—t did a fine job of convincing you that it was all real. 

You even put in the little clip of you and Taehyung talking. A mistake, now that you look back on it, of course. It was so vulnerable, so real, so candid and honest like you said you would be, and now it’s all blown up in your face. You must have looked like such an idiot to Jungkook when he saw this scene for the first time in class. You remember the wide-eyed look on his face when it popped up. Like he couldn’t even believe you had done this in the first place. 

Scoffing, you shake your head. You either. 

The rest of it you can hardly bear to watch. Just a wrap-up of your relationship, a compilation of all of the small moments you shared when you didn’t realize that Jungkook was filming, when you dared whip out your camera to shoot for a second or two. Little clips that jump from scene to scene, shots of you laughing and eating and skipping along campus as you held hands. It’s hard to reconcile the fact that it’s all over. 

You don’t even listen to the final interview, not bothering to pay attention to what you or Jungkook have to say when you were there, when you can recall every word he’s ever spoken to you at the drop of a hat. 

The truth is, you were always a goner for him. 

And look how well that played out. 

By the time the kissing scene comes up once more, you’re ready to set your whole laptop alight. 

The screen turns black as it ends, fading away into nothingness, the instrumental slowly disappearing alongside the image. You shut your laptop when it’s all over, a little too angry for your own good, but you wrestle the scowl off your face as you take a drink of water from the glass sitting on the table. 

“Wow,” Ruby says, speechless. She blinks at your closed laptop. 

“Did you like it?”

“I—I don’t even know what to say,” Ruby says, which is a first. “It was amazing, Y/N. Seriously. Gorgeous. Like, cinematographically? Stunning. The shit on Netflix isn’t even as good as that.”

Even if you did have to sit through your stupid movie one more time, the compliments make you feel a bit better. “Thanks,” you murmur. 

Ruby nods enthusiastically. “It was incredible. I’m just—I’m in awe. You and Jungkook have a gift, dude. It was seriously one of the best things I’ve watched in a really long time. And, like, not even in a cheesy, yucky rom-com kind of way. It was so… so genuine. So real. Wow.”

“I’m glad you liked it.”

“You’ll have to tell Jungkook, too,” Ruby says. “He did really well.”

“Yeah, he’s a great actor,” you say, a little too bitterly for your own good. 

“What do you mean?” Ruby raises an eyebrow your way. “I didn’t think he was acting at all. It looked pretty real to me.”

You frown. “It did?”

“I mean, yeah,” Ruby says with an honest nod. “I mean, you did tell me it was a mockumentary and not just a run-of-the-mill rom-com. So wasn’t everything supposed to be real, anyway?”

“Yes…” you trail off, unsure of the direction of this conversation.

“Well, if you ask me,” Ruby says, all matter-of-factly, “I’d say he definitely fell in love with you.”

Something rushes through you. Something warm and bright and full of energy. 

Hope. 

Even though you have finished one of your finals early, finals week is still just as much of a slog as it always is. Three essays and two presentations deep, you aren’t finished any of them and the due dates are slowly creeping up on you, ready to pounce the moment the clock strikes twelve. 

Eh, it could be worse. You could be Ruby and have six timed, proctored final exams on biology, anatomy, and chemistry. So you suppose you can’t complain too much. 

Finals week sees you all holed up in your apartment like always, but more so this semester than any previous ones because you don’t feel like going to the library and risking seeing Jungkook there. Or anywhere, really. Since you presented on the last day of classes, you haven’t spoken since, and hopefully you can keep that streak going forever. You had made it until this semester without ever crossing paths despite being in the same major, so hopefully that luck will follow you. 

It’s almost midnight when you finally decide to call it quits for the night, having at least gotten mostly through two of your essays (just have to edit and proofread!) and worked on about half of your two presentations. Sighing, you get up from your couch and stretch, feeling your bones crack from sitting in the same place for hours on end. 

You lean over to the floor lamp by the edge of the couch, ready to flick it off and head to bed, when you hear something outside. 

“You’re just too good to be true…”

“Can’t take my eyes off of you…”

You freeze.

The voice is soft and mellow, a little muted because it’s making its way through your wooden door before it reaches your ears, but it is unrecognizable. Even without the acoustics of the Eighth Notes, you know who’s on the other side. 

“You’d be like Heaven to touch…”

“I wanna hold you so much…”

“At long last, love has arrived…”

“And I thank God I’m alive…”

Unable to resist, you wander to your front door, basking in the sound of him, in the way the notes float through the air as if on clouds, dancing along the walls as they sink into your brain. He sounds so sweet, voice warm like tea on a cold night, just singing his song on this empty, lonely night. But it’s not just his song, is it? 

It’s yours, too.

You pull open the door. 

“You’re just too good to be true,” Jungkook sings, a honeyed melody that calms the waves of your stormy heart, “can’t take my eyes off of you…”

But just because he’s here, serenading you once more, doesn’t mean he’s going to get it any easier from you. You fight to keep the smile off your face, pressing your lips together as you narrow your eyes at him. 

“I love you, baby, and if it’s quite alright, I need you, baby, to warm the lonely night…”

“I love you, baby, trust in me when I say…”

He meets your eyes with his own, and they aren’t glinting in the way they normally do, the way that they do when he knows he’s doing something to grind your gears, when he’s got a trick up his sleep. They gleam like pearls as the dim glow of your apartment lights up his figure, warm yellow mixing with the caramel in his irises.

“Oh, pretty baby, don’t bring me down, I pray…”

Oh, pretty baby, now that I’ve found you, stay…”

“And let me love you, baby…”

From behind him, Jungkook brings out a single red rose, twirling it between his fingers as he holds it out to you. 

“Let me love you…” He trails off there, voice delicate as vanishes into the chilly night air, disappearing between the two of you. 

You can’t help but take the flower from his hand. What else are you supposed to do?

“So?” Jungkook asks, hopeful. 

“Don’t think you can just show up at my apartment and woo me back by singing to me,” you chide, even though he definitely can. 

“I’m sorry,” Jungkook says simply, because there really is nothing else to say. “I should have told you.”

“I watched our rom-com again,” you tell him. “I should have believed you when you said you cared about me.”

“I always did,” Jungkook says. “I just wanted you to know that love was real, and that it was there for you.”

“I should have known,” you agree. You look up at Jungkook through lidded eyes, musing to yourself. “You know what I learned?”

Jungkook tilts his head in curiosity. “What?”

“That love isn’t a feeling. It’s a person,” you explain, sighing pleasantly. “Love comes to us through the things we share with other people. That’s what it is.” Your thumbs twiddle in front of you, the pads of your fingers rubbing at the stem of the rose.

He takes a single step forward, reaching out to take your hand in his own. “And are you pleased with who you’ve found?”

You roll your eyes. “Just shut up and kiss me already, you idiot.”

Jungkook obliges without a second thought. 

There is no one to film you this time, no project to work on. There is only you, and there is only him. And there is only a lifetime that the two of you share, a story that you have told together, piece by piece, frame by frame. Your movie didn’t end once you finished editing. Nor did it end the moment the screen went black in Pollack’s class. It wasn’t even over when you watched it a second time with Ruby. 

No, it continues on. Forever and ever, so long as you are with him. There will always be something new to capture, to burn into a disk so you’ll have it for eternity.

He pulls you in for a kiss and it’s not the end of the film. It’s the beginning of a brand new part, a new installment in the series that is your life with him. That is the relationship you have created together. His lips aren’t the fireworks as the credits roll. They are the scene where the two characters meet for the very first time and know that they were meant to be. The scene that sets all of the other ones in motion. That is who Jungkook is. That is what you are sharing, right now. 

A brand new frame. 

When you part, you press your forehead against his, soft blonde locks framing his face as they tickle your face, dancing along the skin of your cheeks.

“You called it a rom-com,” Jungkook points out randomly, just remembering now. 

“Well, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know…” Jungkook says, pretending to think about it as he rocks on the back of his feet. “Did it have a happy ending?”

You bring your lips to his once more, arms wrapped around his neck as you clasp the rose between your fingers. You make a mental note to press it later. Something else to remember him by. Something other than your movie. 

Jungkook pulls you into him once more, hands resting firmly on your waist, letting his body press against yours as you stand there in the muted light of your apartment’s living room, letting the cool spring breeze wash over you. You smile against his lips, feeling your heart race when he grins back. 

“Yes,” you declare proudly. 

And so, they lived happily ever after. 

↳ thanks for reading! don’t forget to let me know if you enjoyed it!

[world-of-aus]

Family Matters - (Part 2)

Pairing: MobBoss Bucky! x Reader

Word Count:3,103

Warnings: no warnings that need to be counted for

Author’s Note: Hope you all enjoy chapter two, can’t wait for this series to really take off which it should in chapter three and onward. Thank you all for reading and as always my taglist is always open! 

Chapter 1 / SERIES MASTERLIST

Taking a breath, you brought a shaky hand up to the bronze door knob, you were reluctant to twist it knowing it would more than likely be locked. These doors were always to remain locked, regardless of whether your father was attending to his business or not, “I don’t need any rats snooping around my studies” he would hiss glaring at you and your mother, and as a child you never thought anything of it but as you grew, you were right to heed those warnings or suffer the wrath of your father.

You twisted the knobs a shiver running down your spine when the door squeaked open. The door continued to swing open on its hinges while you stood there frozen, breath baited waiting to hear your fathers booming voice, but it never came. Hesitant steps drew you further into the room, shaky breaths slipped past your parted lips as you took in your father’s secret. Cold, dark, and eerie were just a few of the words that crossed your mind as you stood in your father's grand, luxurious, private space.

Looking at it now you couldn’t imagine your father having a hand in all the things Detective Stark had accused him of. You knew your father though, the type of man he was, he wouldn’t ever be caught with the like of mobsters, murderers, the sin of the city. At least you hoped you would have known him enough, but you were beginning to wonder if you ever did know who your father truly was.

Taking in more of the room your eyes finally fell on the substantially grand expansive flat-topped red wooden oak desk. Your eyes were drawn to the massive wooden structure, but what really caught your attention was the strewn stacks of manila folders and various paper work thrown around the top of it. Your feet carried you towards the desk, body rounding it as you stood in front of where you father was sure to have sat many times.

Shaky fingers ran through the strewn paper work, brows furrowing the deeper you got into it, there was various letter of foreclosures, dubious amounts of bank statements, and even the occasional printed email. You weren’t sure what any of it meant, but from the various red-penned markings you could only assume it wasn’t something in favor of your father. Pulling up the plush leather rolling chair you plopped your tense body into the chair, rolling yourself forward as you sorted once more through the papers, your fingers gripping a foreclosure notice.

Dear Mr. Y/l/n,

This letter is a formal notification that you are in default of your obligation to make payments on your home loan, account #1234567. The current account holds the sum of 5,000 payable May, 27, 2020.

The amount has been overdue since April 27,2020, you have ignored multiple requests to make a payment or reconsolidate your debt.

Unless the full amount is received within 15 days, we have no choice but to begin with foreclosure on your home. We have given you more than adequate notice on this issue, and we have no other choice.

Please act accordingly,

Wilson Lending Inc.

Your brows furrowed deeper as you looked over the notice once more, this couldn’t be right, your father was never behind on his payments, and you would know, your mother was always on top of the finances in your house hold. Looking through more of the papers you stopped at what seemed to be an email,

Mr. y/l/n,

I’ve been nothing but a patient man with you, and frankly I’m growing tired, you wouldn’t want me to send my men to pay you a visit to you and your lovely wife, would you? Shame that your daughter is no longer in the picture, such a tragedy to lose a child. You have a week to get my money, that you’ve owed for seven years now, again, you either pay my money, or I'll find a way to collect, and I assure you Mr. Y/l/n, you won’t want me to have to come collect from you.

Your breath was caught in your throat, fingers stark white from the grip you had on the paper. Tragedy to lose a child, money, collect, you couldn’t fathom what you were reading. What in the world had your father done, what had he been doing under the roof of this house. You sorted through the next one, this one completely knocking the air from you, leaving you feeling more confused and worried than ever before,

Mr. Y/l/n

It’s a tragedy for me to be writing this email, but had I done this in person I can assure you one of us wouldn’t be breathing when it was over. Do you take me for a fool, did you not think I wouldn’t catch on to what it was you were doing? Working with the enemy, such a shame, I know you know this is unforgivable, you were witness to what happened to the other fellow who crossed me. It’s a shame though that you continued to do business with who you did, you’re the only one to blame for your fate. I would end this by saying see you soon, but we both know that won’t be the case. My condolences to your daughter.

The email after that was just eight words long, but it was enough to shake you to your very core.

I’ll be seeing you very soon Mr. Y/l/n.

You threw the papers down onto the desk, your body slumping into the seat, trying to figure out what the hell was going on here. None of these papers except for the foreclosure statement contained any sort of information that could help you to understand what it was that your father was involved with. None of the emails which were your main source of concern contained any sort of information of the sender, and seeing as it was printed there was nothing for you to further dig into. Why was any of this laid out here in the first place, was this meant to be found, did your father want someone to see this information?

The longer you set there and looked at those papers the more you wanted to scream, to cry, you were feeling just as lost and scared, fearful of the uncertainty as you did seven years ago. You were frustrated because you couldn’t understand what was going on, you couldn’t even begin to grasp the reality of your situation. You’ve lost your parents in a tragic accident, you’ve just found out your father worked for the mafia, or at least laundered for them it seems, and to add to all this it would seem that one of the men Detective Stark mentioned earlier wanted to collect from your father, but what was there to collect, your father was losing it all.

You could feel the underlying pins and needles of your nerves, what were you supposed to do, should you contact detective Stark, take him all this information and see what he can make of it? What if you did just that and he thought you had been lying all long, what if he accused you like he accused your father, what if he suspected you did have a hand in all this. You chewed on your lower lip in worry as you thought about the next worry, your mind going back to the emails, were any of those emails from Pierce, Rumlow, or Barnes, and was one of those the men that was going to collect. Thinking back to the first email, you couldn’t place why your father would apparently fake your death, unless you had a sibling you were unaware of. You were stumped and you were only growing more and more confused the longer you sat thinking on all this new information. You felt like your whole life was a lie, everything you grew up in and around was all fabricated to the lifestyle of your father.

You went to pick up the same papers but were jumping back into your seat when the office phone trilled on the desk. Your heart was beating wildly away in your chest, eyes wide as you looked at the noisy device. You stared at it unmoving, should you answer it, should you let it continue.  You weren't given a chance to make the decision as the incessant ringing grew quiet an eerie silence filling the office once more. You stayed staring, once again jumping as it trilled again catching you off guard, it seemed to have gotten louder the second time. With shaky fingers you reached out picking the corded phone up and bringing it to your ear,

“h-hello?”

“Good morning, is Mr. Y/l/n in?” the voice on the other line questioned.

You swallowed the lump in your throat, “No, I'm sorry sir, but my parents have been in an accident and they,” god you couldn’t bring yourself to say it.

“oh, I’m so sorry miss, wait did you say parents, are you Mr. Y/l/n’s daughter?” he questioned

“uh yes, I'm his daughter, may I ask what the reason for the call is?”

“oh yes right, well, I'm calling from Wilson Lending INC, I was needing to speak with your father, but since that won’t be possible,” a pause on his end an irritated sigh sounding through the line, “actually you wouldn’t happen to be y/f/n y/l/n would you?” he questioned.

“Uh yes actually that is me,” you murmured.

“that’s actually great, do you think you could stop by our office, there’s something I will be needing to go over with you, seeing as you’re the next of kin.”

“uh”

“great,” he cut you off, “I can squeeze you in for 30 minutes from now, so I’ll be seeing you here,” he chirped.

You could barely get a word in before the dial tone was sounding through the receiver, the call having ended abruptly. A loud sigh left your lips as you placed the phone back on the stand, your body slouching into the seat, what more news could you possibly take today you thought with a groan.

Thanking the driver your slid out of the seat, coat wrapped tightly around your shoulders as you looked up at the lavish building before you, Wilson’s Lending INC stared back at you in grey bold letters. A shaky sigh left your lips as you felt a sense of dread roll through you, taking tentative steps you pushed yourself to the revolving doors.

The office was quiet, the only sounds in the room was the tapping and clacking of a keyboard from the receptionist, sat a few feet in front of you. Having heard the door the woman looked up an almost bored expression on her unreadable features, “You can follow me this way, Mr. Wilson will see you now,” she mumbled. Your eyes darted around the room, but saw no one else was in the building other than you, “please,” she spoke up again, “follow me right this way,”

Trailing behind her she led you int a small office space, “right in here, Mr. Wilson is expecting you,”

Mumbling a quiet thank you, you watched her walk back the way she had brought you before turning your attention back to the office in front of you. Drawing further into the office you were met with a cheery smile and an ever chipper voice, “Good morning you must be Ms. Y/l/n, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” the man beamed as he stood from his desk to make his way over to you.

His firm was grip, his smile contagious, “Sam wilson,” he added, “owner of Wilson Lending INC, its in the name,” he grinned, “please come in take a seat,”  

“since I don’t want to take up too much of your time, I'd like to go ahead and jump into it,” he spoke up after you had made yourself comfortable in your chair. You nodded your head allowing him to go on watching him sort through the papers on his desk, “Firstly I extended my sincerest apologies that we have to be meeting given the circumstances, my deepest condolences miss, such a tragic thing to occur,” he murmured.

You wanted to open your mouth to question that last bit that left his mouth but he was too quick, “Now in regards to your home, as I'm sure you knew it is now being foreclosed because of your father’s failure to pay, because of this before we go through with said foreclosure we are looking to hand over your home to the other co-owner, he has informed us he is willing to take it,”

Your brows scrunched in confusion, “co-owner?” you questioned, “what do you mean co-owner, are you speaking of my mother?”

Sam chuckled shaking his head, placing down the files he had down in front of him, “Your father had a co-owner but it wasn’t your mother,”

You slumped in your seat slightly, “why would he need a co-owner, shouldn’t it have been my mother?”

He let out a sigh, rubbing at his head, “Ms. Y/l/n, your father had a co-owner because alone he did not qualify to even begin the process to home owning, with more challenging lending standards when it comes to an individual's credit score, debt to income ratio, it was easier to qualify with the individual your father asked to co-own with him.”

A frustrated groan left your lips, the web kept weaving around you, “so what does all this mean, why was I called in?”

“It’s difficult to walk away from a mortgage when you have more than one borrower,” he began, eyeing you to see if you understood, “your father’s co-owner has kept up with his half but your father just recently was unable to make the payments, due to this the co-owner was called upon and has agreed to take over your home,” he paused eyeing you again, “the thing is if a co-owner dies their share goes to the other owners, in the co-owner ship a TIC agreement was signed where each co-owner can pass along their ownership through a will, meaning the remaining tenants might end up sharing the home with someone they never intended to.”

“this still doesn’t explain why I was called in, I'm sorry Mr. Wilson but you’re just confusing me further,”

He rubbed at his temples, “what this means, is that on a will your father passed his ownership to you, so I can’t necessarily just give your father’s co-owner the home without your approval now,”

A hand rubbed over your face, “so then give him full ownership,” Sam raised a brow at you, “Look Mr. Wilson my parent’s and I had a fall out years ago, if I can be honest with you I barely even know anything about them it seems, so if that is the easiest way to settle this for my father then so be it, I don’t even reside here anymore, so I can assure you letting the house go to someone who is more suited for it will be the best thing in this case,”

He was eyeing you, studying you, it was beginning to make you slightly uncomfortable, “is there anything needed from me?” you asked hoping to finish this up soon.

“yes, actually you and the co-owner will need to meet, he will need to buy you out, and you will need to be there to sign over given that you won’t have a change of heart,”

You raised your hand, “I can assure you there will be no change of heart,” you murmured, “how soon can we get this done, I don’t plan on being here longer than a week, I'm just here to sort out my parents things and I'll be on my way,”

“If it makes things easier, we can come to you, that way you won’t be pulled from sorting through your parent’s things, though I'm not sure there is much more to sort through,”

You raised a brow at his statement taken aback by the change of tone in his voice, “excuse me?” you questioned.

He smirked at you then, “no, not a thing Ms. Y/l/n, well that is all I have for you at the moment, Mr. Barnes and I will pay you a visit later this evening to go over the legalities of all this,” he grinned shooting you a wink.

You couldn’t help but be taken aback by the behavior as you stood on shaky legs pulling your coat and purse tighter around you. In your fraught state you almost hadn’t picked up on the name he uttered, almost.

“Mr. Barnes?” you questioned the name bouncing around in your mind as your remembered Detective Starks words.

He was grinning again, “Yes, Mr. Barnes, the co-owner of your home,”

Your face paled, heart dropping in your chest, “Are you okay?” Sam questioned his grin never faltering almost as if taunting you.

You nodded your head shakily before you were stumbling back slightly, a feeling of not being able to flee fast enough washing over you. You could hear his laughter sound through the building as you tucked tail and ran.

Hailing a cab you ran back home, your heart thumping wildly in your chest, you couldn’t get off the cab fast enough, handing the cab driver your money thanking him quickly as you made your way up the driveway. You needed to leave, none of this felt right, none of it, and with the information Detective Stark had shared with you, and the emails you had come across, you knew you needed to get out and fast you should have never returned in the first place, you should have listened to your father. You had made your decision as you rushed up the steps of your home head down not wanting to be spotted by any of the neighbors or cars driving down the street.

Searching through your purse for the keys you gripped them tightly as you pushed them into the lock, a gasp left your lips as the door was pulled open taking your keys with it. A tall, bearded, honey blonde stood before you a glowering look on his sculpted features. A shiver ran down your spine, as you back up slowly, another gasp falling from your lips as you back hit a wall of muscle. You turned your head ever so slowly, eyes drifting up to be met with a nefarious grin, deep piercing eyes, and a wicked mind.

“hello y/n.”

Chapter 3

Family Matter’s Tag-list: @broco8 @spideyxxboi @scuzmunkie @person-born-winchester @jennisahoe @rougeone0911 @ilovesupersoldiers 

[elysian-drops]

I always deeply appreciated how you do introspection on your characters. As the precedent ask said how you made Draco three dimensional for exemple. Even the last chapter felt like a deep dive in Remus character and personality. You also approach Tom Riddle/Voldemort extremely well which is how I would have liked his character in canon to be, more political smart, more charming, two faced instead of the monologue villain. The chapter about Remus was also very in touch with who he is.

I dislike comparing artists works but have you ever read Charred Paws and Heavy Coils by UndeadArtist ? Because I feel like many of your characters are just as multi dimensional, human and realistic as hers. It’s a very refreshing take compared to taking an usually very canonical approach and try to make it as similar to the books as possible which fall flat because it doesn’t allow room for exploration and simply trying to imitate an author usually doesn’t bring more.

Also I don’t want to make this ask any longer than it already is (!) but I loved your head canons and have you got more under your sleeve?

Hi there!

Thank you so much for the kind words and feedback 🥺💕 I really enjoy doing deep-dives into characters, especially when they are so wonderfully twisted + complex like Tom, and it's always lovely to hear you enjoy reading them as well! I completely agree with you on the canon aspect— he was rather flat as a villain, wasn't he? 😅 But, then again, I suppose Rowling was writing for a younger audience and having a multi-dimensional villain is a big 'no-no' for the genre (didn't stop us anyway from adoring him though, did it? 😂😂).

I'm also thrilled to hear you thought the last chapter was very in touch with Remus!! Truth be told, that entire POV was one I decided on a whim 😅 I always thought Remus was an interesting character but he is so contradictory with himself. I mean, the man is stuck in a constant feedback loop of self-deprecation and self-loathing and so I was worried I was going overboard with his thoughts/inner-dialogue 😅 But, nonetheless, it’s wonderful to hear you enjoyed it 💕

In terms of your rec, I haven’t read it! I try to avoid reading other fanfics while writing mainly for two reasons: one, I don’t want to accidentally confuse their material and mine, and two, I feel I can’t devote myself fully as a reader while I’m also writing. However, I’ll definitely add her to the list if she’s getting that high of praise! I’m in agreement in that I like seeing new takes on characters rather than copying-pasting them from the canon material!

In terms of head canons, oh boy, do I ever 😂 I’ll post them under the cut because there are a few lol.

Tom:

Tom was a magpie child— he collected everything and anything he found of “value”. This included things from the other children at Wool’s (sweets he’d never dare eat, stuffed animals, socks without holes, etc) but also other more mundane objects people might have left behind on the streets— the odd button or two, polished rocks and shells from their beach outings, pretty shards of glass, marbles, newspaper articles he found of note, etc. In truth, his treasure trove cupboard was a mess.

Despite hating going to church, he quickly fell in love with how Latin sounded, particularly when sung— I believe this is why he didn’t protest too much being a choir boy.

Without a doubt too, he had a brief stint with Karl Marx and got in trouble with Mrs. Cole for espousing communism and trying to recruit (*cough* threaten *cough) the other children into joining him.

For a moment, before deciding on the path of being a professor and then a Dark Lord, he considered becoming a healer— he always had a fascination with the human body and its limits. Also, I just enjoy the idea that he came to Hogwarts bright-eyed and with more or less “honourable” ambitions (ie, medicine and teaching) and then having those ambitions become perverted and twisted a little more each time the Wizarding world failed him.

He chose the Ouroboros for his crest as kind of a little nod to his situation. The Ouroboros represents the cycle of destruction and rebirth— eternity— and shows that from destruction, one can experience rebirth (much like his form was destroyed but he was rebuilt from the person responsible for it). However, there’s also an underlying meaning. When the snake consumes its own tail (aka a piece of itself), it feels a sense of wholeness/completeness— much like how reabsorbing some of the horcruxes made him appear outwardly more “whole” (human).

Harri:

Harri absolutely loves the snow. Growing up, she never really experienced it (the Dursleys never bought her proper winter clothes so she wasn’t allowed outside often) but, when she got to Hogwarts, she spent almost everyday outside in it.

I really don’t think she thought too much about what she wanted to do after Hogwarts, truth be told. Her career paths kept changing on what she wanted to do, from Quidditch to teaching to becoming an Auror, and she really only clung to the Auror idea after so many people kept suggesting/pushing it.

She used to talk to snakes all the time in her aunt’s garden without ever realizing it was abnormal— that is, until she was finally caught in the act. After being locked inside for nearly a week and earning a few welts, she was terrified to talk to them again.

Much like Tom, she was also a “magpie” child. However, the biggest difference between them is that, while Tom collected things to “have” and to feel superior with, she collected things for sentimental value. Hedwig’s feathers, the first snitch she caught, her Hogwarts letter— mostly, they were things that reminded her that the Wizarding world was real whenever she was forced to return to the Dursleys.

Her handwriting is absolutely atrocious. She often has too many thoughts at once so everything comes out as chicken scratch— mostly because she’s rushing to get them down before they disappear.

She likes to use her wand to keep her hair up— much to everyone’s (especially Snape’s and Tom’s) horror.

Miscellaneous:

Bellatrix, without a doubt in my mind, is bisexual. Something about her just screams she’ll go either way and won’t even think twice about it 😂

Narcissa was the only one in her family not to be named after a constellation. In my head canon, her mother (Druella) always felt like an outsider among the Blacks (I also imagine her being blonde rather than dark-haired) and was more than delighted when she gave birth to little fair-haired, fair-eyed Narcissa. It was often a point of conflict in Narcissa’s identity growing up where she felt she never quite fit in because of this— and it didn’t help either her mother liked to say she was more “Rosier” than “Black”. Hence is why Narcissa was so insistent on naming Draco after a constellation, despite Lucius wanting otherwise.

Narcissa’s downtime hobby is floral arranging. One of her never-could-have-been dreams in life was to own a flower shop— however, she settles for making all of the bouquet arrangements in the manor.

Draco really, really can’t hold his alcohol— he’s such an incredible lightweight and everyone teases him for it.

Both Barty and Bellatrix were personally trained by Tom— hence is why he entrusts them with top-priority missions and views them as his seconds-in-command. However, who would win between them is a good question 👀 ((low-key would love to see Barty and Bella duel it out).

[one-leaf-grimoire]

“triad”

Chapter 8: the septad

In this chapter you can find discussion of fate, the Tree of Qliphoth, and... a moth goddess?!

AO3 link

Dear Lyra,

I’m sorry for being so out of touch lately. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely my fault, since this recent incident basically halted all mail movement around the kingdom. However, I got your most recent letter today, and I’m so glad that you and the others are safe! And it seems the town suffered minimal damage, and you were able to take down the one attacker all together. 

Anyway… I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now. I would have invited you all to my coronation, but it was all over so fast, there was hardly time to plan a trip. Plus, the castle and capitol is still in shambles, so it wouldn’t have been fun. Don’t worry- I’m alright, with many friends and advisors by my side. I’ll have time to be sad once the situation has stabilized, whenever that will be.

Please write back soon. I miss you.

Love…

My pen pauses above the page before I sign my name.

Should I tell her… about the baby?

After a moment, I move again. My name appears, then is quickly concealed as I fold the letter up. 

“Are you almost done?” Marx pokes his head into my office, just in time to see me press my finger into a disc of wax and start to heat it up. “Oh, you are. You wanted to head out soon, right?”

“Right!” I watch the wax melt, then shake the excess off of my finger. “As soon as you send this off, I want to leave.” I grab one of the seals sitting on the desk, the official seal of the Wizard King, and press it into the wax. “Hopefully this won’t take long… they either have the information I need or they don’t.”

I stand up, holding the sealed letter out for him to take. Marx quickly receives it, waves his hand, and sends out a signal. Within seconds, a small portal appears at his side; belonging to one of our many postal mages downstairs. He throws the letter inside, and that’s that. “There we are. Now, where’s Adeline?”

“She’s delivering orders to the squads,” I tell him, motioning for him to follow me out of the office and down the hall. “She’ll be back soon, we’ll probably run into her on our way out.”

“Oh, good!” Marx smiles a little, his eyes narrowing. “You know, I’m sorry for being so hesitant about her… she ended up being very efficient and hard-working. Although, I can’t blame her-” He glances over at the back of my head. “She’s devoted to you entirely… as far as she’s concerned, you saved her life.”

“Well, that’s what a good leader should do, right? Find talent, in unexpected places, and bring it into the light.” 

That’s what Julius would have done, anyway.

Just as I predicted, we run into Adeline a few minutes later. She skids to a stop in front of us, out of breath from her previous chore, but a big smile appears on her face as she spots us. “Your majesty! And- Marx!” She quickly bows her head out of respect. “I’ve completed the task you gave me!”

“Please, no more your majesty! I like you enough that you can call me by my real name.” Adeline looks up in time to see me shoot her a little wink. “Thanks for doing that, now come on!”

Adeline quickly joins my side, and before long the three of us reach an open window. Marx immediately winces. “Oh no… you can’t possibly-”

“It’s the quickest way! Come on!” I grab his hand and hold the other out to Adeline. “Hold on tight, alright? It’ll just last a couple seconds.”

Her eyes widen, but she nods quickly and takes my arm. Without another moment passing, I turn back towards the window.

“Flame Creation Magic: Sun God’s Leap.”

Tiny wings burst to life around my elbows and ankles, fluttering delicately but with more power than ever before. This is my only flight spell, and when paired with my time acceleration, there’s no way to travel any faster. 

“Here we go!”

I push off the ground, and the three of us shoot off out of the window. Marx and Adeline both hold on tighter, Adeline letting out a little scream of surprise. Land and air courses past our bodies, faster and faster, the feeling so familiar. I can remember it… just like it was yesterday. The first time Julius showed me his power… I was going to be late coming back to the base, and he just swept me up and- in a moment, we were there.

Those simple days… what I wouldn’t give to have them back. When my biggest worry was whether or not Julius liked me back. 

Because… of course he did. It was so obvious, even back then… we were meant to be together.

A few seconds later, we crash down to earth, a little less elegantly than usual since I have two passengers. The moment I let go, Marx stumbles away, extremely dizzy, but Adeline keeps clutching at me, stunned and dazed by the experience. “W-W-Wow…” she stutters, blinking owilishly. “That was… really… cool…”

“Ah, thanks-” I cut myself off when I realize just how… close she is. Adeline is a good few inches taller than me, and having her pressed against me like this. “Ah- er- Adeline-” I feel my ears start to heat up. “Do you think you could-”

“OH! Sorry!” She lets go and steps back, seemingly back to normal. “Thanks for the ride… now…” She turns to look around. We’re standing outside a small town, a very humble town in the middle of nowhere. This place is close to the border with the Heart Kingdom, the land fertile and rich with natural mana. This is where the remnants of the Simulcian race live… where my family lives. “This is the place?”

“It sure is.” I suck in a breath, a little worried about what was to come. “Now.. don’t be frightened by them. They’re going to be nosy, and they don’t really understand personal space,” I explain as we start to walk. “They’re all brothers and sisters, making them my aunts and uncles.”

“Right… and, what exactly do we need from them again?” Adeline asks.

“They could have information about the Devils- don’t you remember that big lecture I gave you about it yesterday?”

Adeline laughs nervously. “Oh, right… ah, to be honest, there was so much information, and I’m sure I forgot some of it-”

“Nevermind, I’ll tell you later.” She’s honest though, at least…. I sigh heavily.  About most things. I can’t help but remember our first meeting, that look of surprise on her face, and those words-

“Your eyes…”

Well, if she was off-put by these eyes of mine, then she’s got a big shock coming…

“OH! LOOK! IT’s OUR NIECE!”

And… here they are.

A small crowd of people run up to us as we reach the town. All of them look a bit like me, with slightly varying shades of hair. However, all of them seem to be about my age, and all of them have the same, empty black irises. When they were united into Septads, those eyes glowed an eerie blueish white. “Hey guys… long time no see?”

A few pairs of hands immediately grab my arms, just like I anticipated, and start to drag me away, all chatting all at once.

“A visit from our Wizard King!”

“The first Foreign Wizard King!”

“This is a great victory for the Simulcians!”

“The first non-human Wizard King!”

“We’ll have to build a statue of you next!”

Luckily, they ignore Adeline and Marx, who jog behind us. Adeline looks a bit worried about me, but Marx is used to this by now. “Hmm? Statue?” I repeat, still trying to get used to this newfound hospitality. 

“Oh, right! Come look at our most recent project!” one of my uncles says excitedly. “We had to put it on hold after the attack, but it still looks great so far!”

Huh? I wonder what it might be-

We turn the corner to enter the “town square,” and the hands finally release me. “Don’t run off like that!” Marx scolds, hurrying up to my side with Adeline. What? It’s not like I had a choice! I almost respond, but Adeline catches my attention when her eyes widen. “W-what is that supposed to be?”

Hmm? I turn to follow her gaze, finally spotting the unfinished statue in the middle of the square. It’s made of wood, part of it painted dark blue, but it looks like it’s been on hold for a long time. I recognized the figure immediately. “Oh… this is your deity, isn’t it?”

“Yep!” an aunt answers in unison with a few others. “Aren’t they beautiful! Simulcia, in all her glory…”

The populace of the Clover Kingdom tends to believe in God. Churches and convents are located in almost every town, and most people worship in their own homes. My mother made me and my cousins go to church every week, but I never really absorbed any of it. Maybe I was trying to emulate my father, who never joined us for worship. Little did I know, even he must have had some underlying allegiance to… her. 

If the concept of God is ridiculous to me, then it’s even harder for me to believe in Simulcia. According to my family, she was a giant woman who took the form of a moth. Parts of that are evident on the statue; her inhuman face, her tall, feathered antennae. She had wings, too, but they haven’t gotten around to carving those yet. Her two giant eyes are painted black. The finishing touches are her marks, seven of them, carved into her palms, her knees, her stomach, her heart, and finally, her forehead. Apparently she broke into seven parts upon her death, and is the “mother” of all Simulcians. I’m not exactly sure how accurate all this is…

“A… a pagan god?!” I look over to see Adeline staring at the statue again, looking very distrubed. “You didn’t tell me they were pagans!”

“Pagan?” I repeat, for some reason finding this kind of funny. “Adeline, it’s fine… they’ve been worshipping that goddess longer than the Kingdom worshipped their God.”

“I know… but-” Adeline finally looks over at me. “Their?”

“Ah, You know, I don’t believe in God or that thing- I mean, Simulcia. So what does that make me?”

Adeline opens her mouth to answer, but she can’t. She’s probably lived a very sheltered life... I chuckle before turning to my family once again. “Well, if it isn’t too much trouble, may we stay for lunch.”

“Of course!!! We’ve got plenty of potatoes!”

“Oh… great!”

The Simulcian Colony works day in and day out, using all their mana to produce nutritious crops… mainly potatoes. The crops get sent out to poor areas, so the operation is going full throttle now more than any other time. The potatoes are good, I can’t deny it, but they taste earthy, almost tangy. But they’re moist and rich in mana, so I don’t complain when it’s the only thing I’m served at lunch. The whole town is extremely communal, so everyone is gathered here to eat. There’s about 40 of them living here, all chatting together in small circles as I sit down with Adeline and Marx to eat.

“With respect, we didn’t come here to socialize-” Marx reminds me, glancing around, clearly a little uncomfortable.

“I know, I know, I’m going to ask right now,” I whisper, turning to smile at some of my aunts as they suddenly come and sit down near us. “Hi! So, about this visit-”

“Is this about the Curse in the Heart Kingdom?” one of them cuts me off, already chewing a mouthful of food.

I blink, a little stunned by the quick response. “Kind of… wait, how do you even know about that?”

The aunts share a little look, holding back a chuckle. “You didn’t feel it? My, your human genes are really strong, aren’t they?”

Huh? I repress a frown, a familiar sense of unease permeating my heart. Marx gulps quietly, and Adeline stares at me like I’ve grown another head. They had to bring it up now, didn’t they? Ah- I clear my throat. “So, Simulcians can sense Devil Curses?”

They all nod in unison. “Yes! We just know it’s there, not anything else though.”

“Oh, well…”

I quickly explain the situation to them: the Attack in six months, the Devil Megicula’s link to the Heart Kingdom, and Zagred’s reaction to me. “Hmm… a link between SImulcians and Devils…?” One of my aunts taps her chin as she thinks, her eyes not betraying her inner thoughts. “Well… we wouldn’t know anything about that off the tops of our heads. That would be ancient knowledge… because the last time we would have contacted Devils is during the last opening of the Tree.”

The phrase catches my attention. “Tree? What Tree?”

“The Tree! The Tree of Qliphoth!” Even the name sends an unpleasant shiver down my back. “It was millenia ago… but the channel between this world and the underworld was opened, and Devils reigned destruction upon the Earth!” My other aunts nod along in unison. “However, I don’t think our history went back that far… we didn’t move to our island until after… huh…” Her brow furrows in concentration as I stare in shock, not sure what to make of this new information. The Tree of Qliphoth… that sounds bad. How come I’ve never heard of it before? If Devils really reigned destruction upon the world, that should be big news… unless it was so long ago that it was erased from written memory… and yet…

“So…” I catch the attention of my aunts once I speak again. “You knew that… you’re able to subconsciously delve into Simulcian history, right?” I smile a little, feeling hopeful. “If you remembered something about the Tree, then Simulcians must have been around during its opening, right?”

To my surprise, they shake their heads. “Not necessarily… I thought you would understand by now.” My aunt motions out the door, towards the time square. “Our power comes from our shared consciousness… her consciousness. She broke herself apart, but she still exists in us. In you.” She reaches out and grabs my shoulder. “Your Dyad… a Dyad concentrates the entire consciousness into two people. She was a goddess of fate, and her power concentrated fate into you and Julius…” Her voice trails off as she feels me tense up at the mention of that name. “I’m sorry-”

“No, no, it’s fine!” I shake my head and give her a smile. “Tell me more… do you think I could tap into that history?”

“Maybe…” Her eyes light up. “Maybe, if you get into a Septad, you can uncover the information you seek!”

Uh oh- The last time I entered a Septad, it didn’t end well… You probably remember. Well, if it’s the easiest way to get information…

“Fine, I’ll do it.”

I feel someone tug on my sleeve, and I look down to see Adeline looking up at me with concern. “Um… I don’t really understand what any of you are talking about, but… uh… is this… safe?”

… oh, Adeline… I don’t have any idea.

“Yeah, sure!” I give her a thumbs up. “I’ve done it before, don’t worry!”

Well, that’s not a lie.

Adeline’s worry melts into a smile. A very… cute smile.

She was worried about me…

“Good! I’m sure you’ll be fine!”

My aunts take my hand and drag me away. The rest of them have already stood up, clearing an area in the middle of the room. Six women already stand there, as if they knew what we meant to do. I recognize them immediately- they’re the six Simulcians that I was forced to synchronize with, to form a Septad. Just seeing them, and being close to them… I feel a spark of mana in my forehead, as if it yearned to be together with someone again… anyone. 

“...hi…” I laugh awkwardly as I shed my cloak and pull out my Grimoire. “Can I do it? So I can break it when we’re done.” I don’t expect to get trapped again, but I’m not taking any chances.

The six of them nod all at once, giving me identical smiles. These six were together for years, and now they operate like they’re all one unit. “Ok… let’s go then.”

My Grimoire floats up, and I utter the spell.

“Dyad magic… Septad Creation!”

All at once, our marks start to glow, and I feel the mana start to cycle around. Faster and faster, so fast that it seems to inhabit us all at once. It’s not nearly as powerful as a Dyad, but I still have to plant my feet into the ground and will my hands to keep from shaking. The other's eyes start to glow a whitish-blue, the same light overtaking my own vision. The room melts away, and then-

Darkness.

This place… is really the mind of an ancient goddess? I don’t get it… so she really did exist?

...are you here?

There’s not even a whisper of a soul left. Just an empty mind, pinned here against the tides of time and space, entrusted to a doomed race of people.

But… are there memories here?

The earth quakes, and I feel the bond start to slip.

What?! Already! I’m not that weak, I should be able to last longer than this!

FInally, the tremor stops. 

Good… now… someone…

Show me a Devil.

I’m not sure what I expected to see, but a scene finally fades in. I look around, spotting the setting sun over the mountains to the west. There’s buildings close by, familiar buildings.

This is… Raque?

But, there aren’t any devils here! This is modern day… I need something farther back in time! So-

I’m cut off as I hear a familiar voice.

“Look at it… the sea… it’s so beautiful.”

I turn towards the source, and spot two people sitting in the sand, staring out at the dark waves. The blackness of the water, so deep and mysterious, so cold… just like their identical black eyes.

This is… this…

It’s the Dyad. My grandparents. They sit here, hand in hand, staring at the sea.

What is this… are they supposed to be the Devils? Or is this something completely unrelated-

“Oh! Look!”

My grandmother’s gaze is caught by something to her right. She points, and both my and grandpa look.

“I see…”

A moth flits towards them, riding the sea breeze with delicate grace.

“That’s it then… it’s her.”

A moth… 

Simulcia?

The moth continues its slow approach.

“So… that’s it, then.”

My grandpa’s words echo in my ears. The scene melts away once again.

“Our fate.”

The void begins to shake once again. I try and reach out to the others as they tremble away from me, farther and farther, stretching our link so far it might snap.

Wait! What’s wrong? Why is this hurting you?

I can’t reach them. They disappear, and a blinding light shoots through my body.

I don’t understand… what was that supposed to mean?

I blink, and I’m back in the room with everyone. I almost fall over once my consciousness is restored, but Marx and Adeline catch me. “Oh god! Are you alright?”

“Huh? Yeah!” I nod vaguely in response to Adeline’s question. “I don’t get it though, I…”

My voice trails off as I spot the other six women. 

All of them have fallen to the ground, crumpled into little heaps. And each one of them holds their face in their hands, tears and sobs flowing freely.

I watch in silence, my mind reeling from this sudden turn of events.

Wait… so… the reason the bond was broken was because they were being hurt… not me? But why? 

One of them lets out a shriek, and inhuman, emotionless scream.

Why… w-why…

I know what they saw within me. They saw the void: a deep, insurmountable gap, one that I’m slowly but surely sinking into. A darkness deeper than any on this earth, a cold more piercing than a thousand knives. 

But… I don’t see it.

As long as I keep my sight fixed on the light above… as long as I keep moving forward… I will drag myself out.

So… for now… I won’t look down.

It takes a while for things to settle down, so we just sit awkwardly until the others stop crying and return to normal. “I’m sorry… we ruined that bond,” one of them says, glancing over at me. “I don’t even remember what was so sad… but all at once, I felt like I couldn’t breathe at all.”

“Oh… I-I’m sorry… I don’t know what that was either.” I smile awkwardly and glance at Marx, who still is staring at the ground with a pained expression on his face. Adeline still looks confused. “Well… I guess we shouldn’t try again?”

“I mean, we probably can.” Another one sits up to look at me. “But… we could all feel it; the storm of emotions inside you. You need to learn to quell that storm, to travel to its eye… only within that calm will we be able to fully sink into our consciousnesses.”

I feel a pang of anger. “Quell my storm? I don’t know about that, I think I’ve been handling everything pretty well, considering the circumstances, right Marx?”

There’s no answer. “Marx?” I look over to see him looking like he’s a deer in the headlights. FInally, he shrugs. Great… “ANYWAY- how am I supposed to do that any more than I already am?”

“Meditation!” one of my uncles pipes up. “If you do a little every day, you should be able to clear your subconscious before entering the Septad.”

“Ooh! I meditate all the time!” I look over as Adeline of all people speaks up. “I can teach you, I know I can!”

For some reason, that idea makes me a bit nervous. “Oh…. okay. Well-” I cross my arms and scowl. “I don’t know if it’ll be any help. It kept showing me a scene from just a few years ago, I need something from back when the Tree of Qliphoth was being opened!”

A few of the Simulcians exchange glances before looking at me again. “That might be impossible… you see, no matter how hard we try, it’s still her mind. She only shows us memories she deems important to us.”

“Important to us?! WHy- AH!” My bottled up frustration suddenly bursts out, for just a moment. I ball up my fists under my robe as I keep talking. “I don’t know whether to believe any of this shit anyway… I mean, it all sounds good, but really? A moth goddess is telling me that my grandparents’s little love scene is more important than the DEVILS?!”

My uncle shrugs. “I don’t make the rules… but the sooner you go back, with a clear mind, the sooner it will all be answered.”

I feel a hand on my arm, and once again it’s Adeline, giving me a calming smile. “I got this, okay? When I’m done with you, you’ll be able to do this with no problem!”

…

“You can do this! I know you can. You’re the strongest person I know, after all!”

For some reason, her words do the impossible. I feel a strange… peace within me. For a brief moment, the void ceases to scare me.

“...ok. I’ll do it.” 

I let out a deep sigh before looking back at my family. “Thank you… we’ll be back soon, is that okay?”

“Of course!” They all answer at once, a little enthusiastic. “We can’t wait to see you again!”

“Good!” I manage to smile. “Marx, Adeline… lets go.”

We leave soon after, but those brief moments within the Septad still stick with me. One sentence in particular circles my mind, the soothing, accepting tones of my grandmother’s voice springing up more and more questions in its wake.

“That’s it then… our fate.”

Next time! Chapter 9: the long night. Adeline begins her crash course in meditation, but derails it when she starts talking about the stars. Maybe... maybe there IS something special about her. :)

[dear--charlie]

Dear Charlie,

I haven’t written to you in a long time, it’s been over a year. A lot of stuff has changed but I can’t really say for the better. I’ve written and rewritten this too many times and I don’t feel like telling you all the bad shit that’s happened because it would be too much. I don’t feel like explaining all of the things that got me to this point because nobody cares. I guess the gist of it, as it always is with me, is that I’m sad. I’m so fucking sick of having to say that but there’s nothing else. A lot of the time since I’ve first written to you, I’ve been sad. All the contents of the letters I’ve sent you have been about me being sad. I wish there was something else for me to tell you and I wish I wasn’t running out of ways to say the same thing. I guess I can give you the short version, if that’s possible, about what’s happened.

The last time I’d sent you a letter, I had stopped taking my medications. I didn’t like how I felt on them because they made me feel like a zombie, even though I’d been on them for almost four years (I’m angry it took me that long to figure it out, but that’s another story). I stopped taking them completely cold turkey — no weening or tapering — and hadn’t talked to my therapist in months because she closed her practice (another different story).

I was manic after they were out of my system, so I thought I felt better. When I went back to school in the fall, I ended up spiraling about a month into the semester and barely ended up passing my classes. I’d be too depressed to leave my dorm or really do anything that wasn’t lying on my bed and staring at nothing. It might’ve been the worst depressive episode I’ve ever had, but I can’t really say that because this time I didn’t go to the hospital for swallowing four bottles of pills (even if I’d been planning it). Either way, I dropped out of college.

At the time, I just thought I’d withdrawal for the spring semester. I told my family how shitty I was doing — well, just my brother because he was the one who talked to me most when he’d drive me back to campus after weekends home — and they said that I should do whatever I need to feel better. They didn’t say it, but I think my parents were angry.

I’ve been living at home since. I got a new therapist and I’ve been seeing her for about six months. Recently, she had me book an appointment with the psychiatrist she works with and, let me tell you, having a competent psychiatrist makes it all the more obvious of how incompetent my last one was. Seven years of therapy, medications, and hospitalizations but I could never get a solid diagnosis that felt right until now. It took him a thirty minute session and the notes my therapist gave him — he had a diagnosis by the time I finished explaining my history of mental health. He thinks I have Bipolar Type II — I didn’t even know there was different types but, after he explained, it made a lot of sense to me. I know it might take a while to find a medication or three that can even me out. We’ve already tried one prescription and that ended up making me feel worse, but at least he knows his shit.

There’s other stuff I’m leaving out, either because I forget or I don’t feel like going into it, but that’s the gist. I know the last letter I wrote talked about Jack. Rereading it now makes me feel stupid and talking about it makes me feel weird, but I don’t love him anymore. It’d be downplaying it and invalidating to myself if I said I never loved him at all, but I do feel that way. Things are good with him though, we’re still friends and nothing’s really changed. We kind of just pretend that the whole “I got high one night and confessed to being madly in love with you over text at 3 am” thing never happened and, I have to say, I’m glad.

Everything else is pretty much the same, so I guess this is gonna sound like every other letter I’ve sent. Except, this time, I don’t have the energy to make it sound beautiful. I did that a lot, I know. I would type out every ugly thought in my head and tried use words so beautiful that maybe people reading would forget how horrible what I said was (if people could even stomach to read such depressing shit). I wish I had the energy, I really do, and I’m still going to try; it might not work, but it’s entirely possible that it never did.

You ever talk to your siblings and find out they’re way less traumatized by the way your parents raised you than you are? Because I did recently. My sister and I tend not to talk about personal stuff, but the conversation sparked up anyway. It turns out that, of the three of us, I’m the only one who has a constant, underlying resentment for our parents. I already knew it was different for my brother because he only started living with us when he was sixteen, but I didn’t know that it was different for my sister.

She forgives them for way more and gives them the benefit of the doubt whenever she can. I’ve never been able to do that, at least not for about ten years. I know she has different experiences than I do too, but I thought that she was angrier than she is. That’s just me, I guess. Her relationship with them is good, if not great now; her and mom are the closest they’ve ever been and she’s in an alright place with dad since she was stuck in Virginia for a few months during quarantine. I feel like I’ve never been in such a bad place with them. Ever since I started talking to my new therapist, I’ve started realizing how fucked up the way they raised me was and that it still manifests itself in the things I do. How do I not resent them after that?

She suggested having the three of us sit down with my therapist and talk about it — and that’s just about the last thing I wanna do, but it’s gonna end up happening because I don’t want to hate them. They aren’t bad parents. It’s hard for me to say that, but they aren’t. Lately, since I’ve started thinking about all this, it’s been difficult. I have a really short temper with them now, the littlest things they do can piss me off and it’s next to impossible for me to be in a good mood around them. This didn’t used to happen. Who can say if they notice too? You’d think they would pick up on a sudden, negative change in their kid’s behavior but, then again, they were oblivious to the fact that I was depressed until I told my gym teacher I was going to kill myself.

It can go one of a few ways — either they surprise me by acknowledging what they’ve done is horrible and apologizing whether they remember doing it or not, they cry and make me feel guilty, or they defend what they’ve done and we’re left off in a worse place than before. Either way, they’ll know how I feel and I don’t care for that shit at all. She suggested I write a letter and is holding me to the fact that I wanna do this before the month ends (except I forgot that mom’s going on a week-long vacation starting Monday and then dad is going on a different vacation the same day she gets back, maybe I’ll just do it separately, it’ll probably be easier that way).

The thing is…I feel like, even if they did apologize, I wouldn’t stop being angry. They’ve traumatized me in ways I don’t know if I can heal from and I’ll never know what it’s like to not live like that. What makes it worse, at least to me, is knowing that I’m the only one. They didn’t treat either of my siblings the same way they treated me. I’m the only one they first started calling a slut at age ten. I’m the only one they accused of being pregnant each month  I’m the only one whose stuff they went through and journals they read. I’m the only one they accused of doing drugs for trivial shit like an empty ziplock bag under my bed or going to a costume party. I’m the only one whose messages they’d “sneakily” read. I’m the only one they instantly and consistently assumed was doing something wrong and then punished because of it. I’m the only one they shamed about their weight or humiliated after puberty started. I’m the only one whose interests got made fun of or invalidated when I got excited about them. I’m the only one who was (and still is) held to ridiculous standards for school, even after it was known that I was mentally ill. I’m the only one they’d complain about not having friends, but turn around and refuse to let go to a friend’s house when I’d ask. I’m the only one they’d get angry at for being depressed.

I’d still be angry if I knew they did that to my sister too, because that’s just a fucked up way to treat a child, but it makes me even more angry that it was just me. Because, what the fuck? I never gave them a reason to not trust me. Shit, the craziest thing I’d done as a kid was make a “potion” out of rainwater and berries in the backyard (and it’s not like that’s an exclusive thing, I know tons of people who did that too). The craziest thing I’d done as a teenager was want to die, but that was after all this had started — even if it wasn’t, that’s not an excuse, they shouldn’t be mad at me for having mental health issues.

But, I’m still dealing with the repercussions of all this. I can’t think about sex without feeling so guilty I want to hurt myself, I can’t see them near any my things without being paranoid they’re going to go through them, I can’t fucking do or say anything when I’m around them without being worried their reactions will be to humiliate or try to punish me. I’m twenty fucking years old and I still think like that.

So, I don’t want to talk to them. I know I’ll never stop being angry without an apology (if I can stop being angry at all), but that’s the thing about instilling communication issues in your child because they’re so afraid of how you’ll react that they decide never to share anything at all — they don’t wanna talk to you about anything! I don’t wanna talk to them but I know I have to, because my therapist said, eventually, I’ll hit a wall that will prevent me from ever moving forward with them. I already see it happening, but I’d be lying if I said that helps at all.

Love Always, The Reversed Star 07 | 24 | 20 P.S. yeah, I’m using a new pseudonym again

[kt757559]

COVID-19 : Contract of Employment Nightmare: Summer 2019 Employment Contract vs Summer 2020 Employment Contract :

From April 2019 – August 2020, I worked as an electrocardiogram Technician and administrative assistant at a Cardiology clinic. My summer 2019 contract of employment was professional, coherent and explicit. The contract went as follows:

The contract was a bi-lateral contract. The cardiology clinic and I entered into a bi-lateral contract in April 2019. We exchanged mutual promises to perform and gave consideration for these promises. The offeror was the clinic for which I worked, and I was the offeree. The contract was a four-month binding contract. The intention of the contract was to establish the rights and responsibilities of the employee and the employer and define the obligations of both parties. The drafted contract of employment was the offer and I had to sign the contract which was my acceptance. I accepted and acknowledged all of the terms of the contract. I expressed my acceptance by signing the contract on my first day of work. I was to be paid $15/hr for 8 hours a day/ 5 days a week. My contract began April 30th and ended August 30th. The office was closed the first week of August, and I was not to be compensated. The contract may be have been terminated by either party given 14 day’s written notice.  Throughout my employment, there was in fact one post-contractual modifications, the duration of the contract. I was granted to leave for University one week before my contract ended. While the clinic allowed me to leave one week prior to my contract ending, I abstained from working and claiming compensation. I also had to sign a “Confidentiality Agreement”. At the clinic, I had access to over 50,000 patient charts and files and dealt with very sensitive patient information. The confidentiality agreement stipulated somethings as follows: “I also understand that should any of these conditions be breached, I may be subject to corrective action including, but not limited to, termination of employment, contract termination, or other action appropriate to my association with the clinic…” Should I breach the contract (i.e share confidential patient information, fail to perform my duties) the clinic may execute their power to terminate my contract. On the contrary, should the clinic breach the contract (i.e fail to provide compensation or 14 day’s written notice of termination of employment) there was no provision in the contract which states that I may exercise an action against them, however I may seek damages as they breached their end of the contract.

Then…came COVID-19 Pandemid

At the end of April, 2020 I got an email from my old manager which stated…

Was this an offeror of employment? No…this was merely an invitation to treat.

I showed up to the office the next day. The clinic provides life-saving medical procedures for patients with cardiovascular disease, one of the leadings causes of death in Canada and worldwide. Many of the patients at the clinic are the most vulnerable to COVID-19. There was no written contract. No terms were stipulated and there was no signing of a terms of employment or confidentiality agreement. Nothing was contractually secure due to the realities of the pandemic early in late April/ May. They had no time to draft contracts that were specific to the circumstances the pandemic. My manager simply said to me, is your banking information the same and can you start at 8am? This could be construed as the offer of employment and my acceptance was arriving at work at 8am every morning and acknowledging that I was able to work for them during the summer. I had worked at the clinic for the past two summers, 2018 & 2019. Both summers, my contract began on April 30th, and ended on August 30th. I worked for four months both summers. This summer however, the clinic did not specify the duration of my employment or my compensation.

By referring to the course material in the fall semester, there are several legal questions and scenarios which can be analyzed from this summer:

First, if I received the email on April 15th. If one construes this email as an offer of employment, if I did not respond or see the email for a week or two, would the offer have lapsed or expired?  

Second, if I recveid the offer of an employment early in April and I responded to the email and accepted her offer. However, the next day after I accepted my offer of employment, she emailed me, saying I was not needed for two or three more weeks at the clinic, would it be possible to invoke the doctrine of promissory estoppel?

The core elements of promissory estoppel are: 1. A + B must be in a legal relationship 2. A must make a promise (a) intended to alter that legal relationship and (b) intended to induce B’s reliance on that promise 3. B must prejudicially rely on that promise 4. It must be inequitable to permit A to go back on that promise

Three weeks later, if my manager decided to rescind the offer of employment, could it be said that there was detrimental reliance? In those three weeks, I could have applied for the CERB benefit, rejected or accepted other offers of employment and refrained from seeking other employment opportunities, especially in the healthcare field, for which I have relevant experience.  

As seen in Combe v Combe, promissory estoppel cannot be a cause of action, but it can be part of a cause of action. I could sue for breach of contract and use promissory estoppel as part of cause of action.

There is another scenario where I could potentially invoke the doctrine of promissory estoppel, a leave of absence at work for COVID-19 / isolating for symptoms related to COVID-19. I had a Cardiologist come up to me once, saying “don’t go and get COVID-19, or the whole clinic will have to shut down”. If for some reason, I had to take time off work to get tested or isolate for COVID-19, and my employer said that they would not enforce their strict legal rights to terminate my employment and my job would be waiting for me after my two-week isolation. After the two weeks, I find out that my employer has found a replacement for my job, could I invoke promissory estoppel?

An example that Denning used in Combes was that of the Ministry of Pensions. Soldier claimed pension from injuries. The war officer wrote to him that “your disability has been accepted as attributable to military service”. By relying on the war officer’s letter, the soldier refrained from seeking further medical opinions and more evidence that will strengthen his case against the Ministry. The promise was to accept the disease as war related. He relied, by not taking any more steps to substantiate medical evidence. The part of the cause of action: is that he relied on it. This can be potentially analogized to

On September 27th, 2020, the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit was enacted and provided $500 per week, for up to two weeks (available in two one-week periods), effective until September 25, 2021 for workers who are unable to work because they contracted COVID-19, self-isolated for reasons related to COVID-19, or have underlying conditions, are undergoing treatments or have contracted other sicknesses that will make them more susceptible to COVID-19.

Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit (CRSB)

Lastly, I would like to explore the potential implications of the doctrine of privity. Before I started work, I signed no medical liability forms. Especially at this early stage of the pandemic, many of the elderly patients, of which there were many, were completely isolated and many of them admitted that “this is the first time I have left the house since March”. If they contracted COVID-19 at the clinic, would they have legal recourse? Probably not, but it is worth considering for the purpose of this assignment.

For example, let’s suppose that before entering the clinic, the patients were required to sign a liability release waiver.

COVID-19 Liability Release Waiver “I acknowledge and accept that there is a risk that I could be exposed to COVID-19 while attending at the medical clinic. I acknowledge and confirm that I am willing to accept this risk as a condition of attending the clinic. I agree to release (Insert Name of Physician) from any and all causes of action in respect of any personal injuries or other damages which may occur or arise as a result of exposure to COVID-19.

If they contacted COVID-19 at our clinic, would they have legal recourse against myself or the clinic (as the contract was between the physician and the patient)? As per London Drugs, does the limitation of liability clause either expressly, or impliedly extend its benefit to me or other employees of the clinic?  As per the decision in London Drugs, The limitation of liability must expressly or impliedly extend to the benefit of the employees seeking to rely on it and the employee seeking the benefit must have been acting in the course of their employment. Although I am not expressly mentioned in the liability release waiver, the waiver does mention “attending the clinic”. This can be construed as impliedly protecting any employees who work at the clinic.

[ms-maj]

Thrill Me, Chill Me, Fulfill Me

It only took three weeks to get six songs in, it’s cool. This one ended up being way harder than it needed to be. Song(s) that make you want to dance- Time Warp (or really any song from Rocky Horror). 

This is also the part where I heap copious amounts of gratitude at the feet of @theheavycrown​ for making this cohesive and also for the PERFECT graphic. She is best. 

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Jughead tried to get comfortable in his white boxer shorts and undershirt— he’d drawn the line at tighty whities—but without his beanie, he felt exceptionally exposed. 

Betty looked at him, wearing nothing but a thin satin slip and a bra that looked equal parts uncomfortable and sexy as hell. “I did no such thing. You were a willing participant when we discussed…”

“It’s hard to say no to you when your mouth—” her finger came up to silence him. 

“We’re here for Kevin, remember? It’s his first performance outside of Riverdale High and we promised we’d support him,” her finger lingered on his lip until he nods, smirking she slowly dragged it down until his eyes narrowed and he nipped at the tip.

Jughead could say, without question, that The Rocky Horror Picture Show was not his scene. He’d seen the movie, or parts of it, just once and decided pretty quickly that there was a reason it was a cult classic. He’d heard that it wasn’t the film, or the show, per se, but the event. The spectacle was what made it so special. Sitting in an auditorium full of half-naked people who ran the gamut of ages did not assuage his initial fears. Nor did the prop bag in his lap. (Why exactly did one need a rubber glove AND playing cards?)

But, Betty’s easy smile made being there just a skosh more palatable. The theater was dark, intentionally, he was sure. It was atmospheric, the din; the fraying curtains, the worn seats, the broken lights lining the aisles and running across the spanse of the stage. It had the faint underlying smell of decay he associated with places people refused to let go of. It lingered in every corner bar or old department store. It was the dirt and the dust embedded so deeply into the fabric of a place that removing it was practically sacrilege to the patrons. 

He could understand the appeal, wanting to preserve a piece of history as it was remembered. Just looking around at the crowd with their many costumes, some presumably older than himself, would attest to that. 

And being the cinephile he considered himself to be, he thought that being part and parcel for one of the biggest cult events in history would be more…

(Finish below the cut or on AO3)

“You made it!!” Kevin sashayed up the aisle to where they were seated. Betty, in all her scantily clad glory, leaned over him to stand and greet their friend. She did not return to her seat, just perched herself prettily on Jughead’s lap.

Kevin looked every bit in his element. Of course, if you were playing Dr. Frank-n-furter, you’d have to be damn good, and completely confident in yourself. He was assuredly both of those things, with his stocking-clad legs and red pumps. His black-gloved hands rested against his corseted waist as he apprised the group.

“I love that Archie looks the most uncomfortable even though he and Veronica are the only two in your group that are wearing actual clothes,” Kevin laughed as Archie flipped him the bird from their end of the row.

It had somehow been decided, if he remembered correctly between Betty and Cheryl, that the couples would be dressing as Brad and Janet, through the various stages of the film. Veronica and Archie got wedding Brad and Janet, Toni and Cheryl were dressed like the mannequins from the end, and he and Betty, underwear. 

“Who’d have thought Jughead Jones would come to Rocky Horror as anything but Eddie?” Betty threw her head back as his arms tightened around her midsection.

“Those Veronica’s pearls, Kevin?” 

“Of course,” he winked back. “I hope you’re ready for this, especially you virgins!” Before Jughead could question him, Kevin was headed back toward the stage and Betty was sliding off his lap and back into her seat, an indecipherable look settling onto her face. 

“Hey,” Jughead started leaning closer to Betty, “what does he mean virgins?”

She shrugged innocently. “Guess we’ll find out.” She pointed to the center of the stage where Kevin was now standing.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, non-binary and gender-fluid friends, and my sweet, sweet transvestites, welcome, to Rocky Horror!” Kevin transformed on the stage, he owned it, he was Frank. 

The crowd whooped and hollered.

“It’s been brought to my attention that there are several very special virgins in our midst tonight,” he said, stalking across the stage toward the side of the theater they were seated at. 

“What are you gonna do to ‘em, Frank?” Jughead heard yelled back, a smattering of voices throughout but most surprising, three from right next to him. 

“We’re gonna pop your cherries real good tonight, virgins!” Jughead could feel the blood drain from his face, stark white aside from the crimson lipstick V that adorned his cheek.

“Betty,” he said lowly. “Please tell me this scarlet letter isn’t going to lead to my very public humiliation?” 

“C’mon Jug,” she cajoled from beneath the thick veil of her eyelashes. “You like a little humiliation.”

He growled without meaning to. “I like to be the one doling it out, Elizabeth, you should know that by now.”

Her soft hand landed on his thigh. “Maybe you’ll just have to make me pay for it then.”

Eyes narrowed on the half-naked marvel next to him, he ran his tongue ran across sharp teeth before his mouth settled into a ravenous smirk. The words in his throat died as the house lights went down and the spotlights hit the crowd. 

“All virgins—those of you who were marked upon coming in—please make your way to the stage!” Kevin’s voice cut through the haze, snapping Jughead back to the present and making him painfully aware of the torturous glint Betty’s eyes had taken. He noticed more than a few people making their way to the stage. Veronica had stood pulling Archie up behind her, inching their way toward him; the aisle.

“We’ll see if you’re smiling later, poppet,” Jughead didn’t miss the way Betty shivered when the words hit her. He let Veronica and Archie pass before standing, raising a warning brow to his girl and stalking toward the stage. 

He could hear them: Betty, Toni, Cheryl, cheering for them as they hit center stage, but with the spots firmly affixed back to the production, he could barely make them out in the audience. 

“Look at this collection of delightful little V’s. Aren’t they just the cutest?” Kevin was wedged between an ever-increasingly anxious Jughead and Archie who, fully clothed, was enjoying being in the lights. When Jughead scowled in response to Kevin pinching his cheek, Kevin moved down to Veronica who preened under his attention, much to the delight of the crowd. “Don’t they just look good enough to eat?”

A chorus of delighted cheers ran through the audience.

As the lights followed Kevin down the line, the crowd became a little easier to discern. He could feel Betty’s eyes on him, even before he could fix her location. From the stage she looked absolutely in her element, shouting out random things along with Cheryl and Toni, looking way too comfortable in her underwear. He hadn’t been too happy about that if he was being honest. No one else was supposed to see her that bare, and yet, the possessive pride that swelled in him when she caught every passerby’s eye was enough to let him overlook punishing her for that particular offense.

Her smart mouth was another story. And so was this. Whatever this was.

And then he felt it. Something awkwardly large, not firm exactly but not soft either, something that prickled at his skin and pulled at the hair was thrust between his knees.

What he saw when he looked down is red. A balloon. A glance down the line assured him that he wasn’t the only one in this particular predicament.  With the quirk of an eyebrow and an impressive flourish, Kevin produced a giant hatpin; his eyes took on a wicked glint and he was standing at Jughead’s side. 

“Time to get rid of those pesky ol’ cherries!” Kevin paused and faced the audience. “One! Last! Time!” They all shouted in unison.

The ‘pop’ of the balloon Jughead was prepared for, even if he did jump a little. The moans from Kevin as he went down the line and took care of the rest of the balloons were also anticipated. What came most unbidden was that Jughead seemed to actually be enjoying himself.

It was probably because the whole process wasn’t half as humiliating as he’d imagined it would be. Or maybe he was just realizing he was one minute closer to being back in his seat. One scene closer to excusing themselves from their friends. Just a few more hours before he and Betty were back in their quiet little apartment (quiet until he had her screaming that is).

The newly devirginized were released to the raucous crowd, Jughead walking back with much more fervor than he’d gone up with. Maybe it was the ritualistic nature of the whole thing. The cherry popping or the dressing up or the audience participation lines that so many of the patrons knew. He only knew that the energy was palpable, it flowed through the space like electricity, crackling and sparking all around him as he finally sat back down. 

Betty was watching him from the corner of her eye, he could see her jaw clenching from biting her cheek, presumably to keep from smiling. “Something amusing, Elizabeth?” 

Their eyes finally met the moment the opening number began. She shook her head. “Nope,” the pop of her ‘p’ struck him like lightning.

“That’s good to hear because we’re already at ten when we get home, poppet. Five for knowing what was going to happen here and not telling me, and five for how much you enjoyed it,” Jughead sat transfixed, watching the graceful curve of her neck stretch as she sucked in a ragged breath. “Now watch the show.”

Her pretty, pink tongue slipped between plump, pastel lips as she turned her attention back to the stage. Before long, she and Cheryl and Toni were tossing lines out with the best of them, helping their virgin friends with their prop bags and truly embracing the spirit of Rocky Horror.

“So! What did you think?” Betty asked as soon as their feet hit the pavement. Archie and Veronica were doing the Time Warp as they walked out the door with several other revelers, Cheryl and Toni, now wrapped in heavy robes, were singing their best Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me’s, all-in-all he’d have to say the night was a success.

He stopped, wrapping his arm around her midsection and pressing his large, flat palm against her stomach. “It was something.”

Leaning back into his embrace, she turned to their friends and asked them the same.

“Well,” Cheryl started, tossing her crimson locks back behind her shoulder. “It’s Rocky so, I can understand how the production value could look like it costs less than a Jan Terri music video—”

“Get Down Goblin is a classic!” Archie interjected from behind, dancing his way into the circle. 

Cheryl turned to Archie, crimson-tipped fingers menacingly pointed in his direction. 

“Be that as it may, Ginger Rogers, I was simply stating a fact.” 

They kept at their squabbling for a while, the four of them sniping back and forth with no real venom until they grew bored of it. Jughead was just happy that the attention was finally off of him and his girlfriend. His hand crept higher, pressing her tighter to him as it came to rest fully on her ribcage, the other played with the band of her slip, fingers fluttering against the soft skin there.

Leaning up, Betty’s mouth landed at the juncture of his neck and ear. “You ready?”

The heat of Betty’s breath juxtaposed with the cool October air left trails of goosebumps down his already exposed skin. “Yes,” his voice had taken on a gravel-like lilt as the hand at her hip squeezed tightly. 

“Then let’s split, my creature of the night. I wanna be dirty.”

“Hot patootie, bless my soul,” he loved how it felt when she laughed pressed up against him. “Now tell our friends goodbye so I can take you home and remind you how good girls behave.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before he had turned them down the sidewalk and toward the subway station. It wouldn’t be long now before they got a taste of just how much pelvic thrusts could drive you insane. However, if that was insanity, Jughead Jones wanted no part of being sane. 

[rufousnmacska]

Goodbye and Hello - 7

Manon and Dorian said goodbye in Orynth. But for them, saying hello again is only a matter of time.

fanfic master list (includes the link to my fics on AO3)

Previous chapters:

Part One: I Wish…

Part Two: Another Day

Part Three: Those Two Words

Part Four: Breakfast in Bed

Part Five: Waiting

Part Six: Confessions (smut warning)

***

Part Seven: Old Friends

A knock at his door broke the heavy silence Dorian had been enjoying for the past hour. Flinching at the sound, he left a long streak of ink across the letter he was writing. He swore, and as he tried to sop it up with a handkerchief, a young page stuck her head into the room.

“A visitor, Your Majesty. Lord Westfall suggested you’d want to see him. Even though he has no appointment.”

Dorian smiled. The page, Kalla, was a stickler for etiquette and rules, and he suspected Chaol had employed her specifically for that reason. Dorian was always glad when someone else was on the receiving end of her disapproval. He nodded for her to show the guest in and was surprised to see Aedion enter his office.

Aedion glanced warily at the young woman as he walked past her. “I will be sure to arrange an appointment the next time,” he said in apology, then cringed as the door was closed just a little too loudly.

Dorian stood quickly and came around from behind his desk. “I can get you some bandages for the daggers she just shot at you,” he said, holding out his hand, a little unsure if or how the greeting would be taken. “It’s good to see you Aedion.”

The male gripped Dorian’s hand firmly. “Your Majesty.” His greeting lacked any mockery that might have been there in the past. With a deep laugh, he added, “I think I will survive. Barely.”

Waving towards the back of the room, Dorian offered Aedion a seat next to the large stone hearth. As he sat, Dorian got them each a glass of wine then joined him. Curiosity threatened to overtake him, but he forced himself to be polite and not pepper Aedion with questions. “This is a surprise. I’d thought the winter had already sealed off Terrasen.”

After taking a sip of the wine, Aedion said, “Not quite yet, but soon. We are on our way to visit Eyllwe. A mix of business and pleasure.”

“We?” Dorian prompted.

“Lysandra and Evangeline are with me.” Before Dorian could ask, Aedion said, “We’re taking the slow, scenic route since Evangeline gets seasick. We just got to the city this morning. They’re visiting old friends, so… I thought I’d do the same.”

Dorian had never thought of Aedion as a friend. An ally, yes. At least, since shortly before the war. But they’d never been friendly. He didn’t begrudge Aedion his hatred of Adarlan, or its previous king. He couldn’t even blame the general for disliking him. For far too long, Dorian had sat passively by while his father brutally conquered most of the continent.

Hearing the term now, he studied Aedion. More surprising than his presence and his offer of friendship was his demeanor. He was calm, composed. None of the underlying fire and ferocity that so characterized him before the war. Dorian had no doubt that it was still there, ready to be called upon when needed. But it no longer seemed to simmer just below the surface, threatening to rear its head at the slightest touch.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important,” Aedion said, breaking the somewhat awkward silence. He looked back at the large desk, overrun with stacks of papers.

Dorian thought of the letter he’d been writing. And blushed in a way he hadn’t since he was a young boy. The heat in his cheeks was due to a rather racy book of poetry he’d found the other day in a newly opened book shop. So many of the poems made him think of Manon that he bought the book and was now copying some of the lines into a letter to her.

“Judging from your expression, I did interrupt.” With a grin, Aedion said, “You know, I’d pay good coin to see Manon Blackbeak’s reaction to opening up a love letter.”

The redness grew over his face, but Dorian laughed. “We have that in common then, because I’d pay to see it too.” He knew he was taking a bit of a chance with this letter, especially since none of the others contained anything this risque. If nothing else, he thought she’d laugh. And that was a reaction he’d do anything to see.

“Have you seen her since…Orynth?”

The male’s hesitation was no puzzle. He’d meant to say since the war. Since she’d lost her entire family. Since he’d lost Gavriel.

Dorian hadn’t spent much time with Gavriel. Chaol thought highly of him. And while that certainly added to his opinion, Dorian had already grown to respect and admire the fae male during their time in Skull’s Bay. His quiet strength and steady presence. Dorian realized that was what he was seeing in Aedion now.

“I have actually,” he said. “We just met at the Ferian Gap.” Aedion raised a questioning eyebrow. “About the aerial legion we’re developing.” Those Ashryvver eyes didn’t blink and Dorian felt himself flushing again. “And trade agreements. Borders. All that… stuff.”

Aedion nodded, a smirk sliding across his face. “And you’re following up with some bawdy correspondence to solidify your agreements. And stuff.”

“I fear you know me too well,” Dorian replied, earning a hearty laugh.

Falling quiet, they booth watched the fire for some time. Just as Dorian was about to offer him more wine, Aedion asked, “How is she?”

Again, his meaning was clear, and the concern lacing his words made something warm ache inside Dorian’s chest. He’d gathered as many bits and pieces as he could about those long days of siege and despair in Orynth, understanding nothing he’d been told would do justice to what Manon, Aedion, Lysandra, and their forces had experienced. The fear and fatigue, the loss and grief, the never-ending dread of the army waiting each morning to destroy them.

“She is doing well,” Dorian replied, giving Aedion a grateful smile. “Still adjusting. But she’s keeping busy. Training the new aerial legion is a positive step I think.” Aedion nodded, genuinely glad to hear. “And, how are you?” Dorian asked.

The male’s eyes flicked away, back to the fire. Dorian wasn’t sure if he’d answer, but after a few moments, Aedion said, “Adjusting.” With a quick smile, he added, “It’s good to have the others around though. Lorcan and Fenrys and Rowan. They knew my father the best. They have endless stories.”

A smile crossed Dorian’s face as he thought of what Orghana had told Manon. Stories honor the loved ones we’ve lost. “I imagine you could write a few books of their adventures. I’m sorry you never had the time to know him.” A stirring deep inside prompted him to add, “And, I’m sorry for all my father did to you.”

Aedion met Dorian’s gaze. As before, he was surprised when there was no blaze of emotion. Instead, he was met with the thoughtfulness of an older man. They were all so much older now, he supposed, even though only a few years had passed.

With a slight nod of thanks, Aedion said, “And I’m sorry for blaming you for your father’s deeds.”

“I deserve some of it I think,” he answered, forcing visions of the collar from his mind. And failing.

Dorian had never gathered the courage to ask Aedion about that time. He could have sought out details after the castle was destroyed. But he knew no more than that the general had briefly been imprisoned. Which dredged up some particularly horrific dreams that Dorian couldn’t dismiss as just dreams. The sounds were too clear. The smells too pungent. He’d done those things to real people. Had he done them to Aedion?

As if reading his mind, Aedion said, “You saved me. Do you remember that?”

He shook his head, unable to speak.

“Before Aelin rescued me, I was in the dungeon, dying from an infection. You came to see me.” When Dorian winced, Aedion clarified, “Just that one time. You came to gloat if I remember correctly. I thought you didn’t notice the wound, but just as you left, you ordered a guard to get a healer.” With a grim smile, he added, “Which pissed me off. You screwed up my well laid plans to die before I could be used as bait.”

Huffing out a humorless laugh, Dorian asked, “I saved you so you could be publicly executed?”

“Well,” the general said with a shrug, “yes. But another way of looking at it is that because of you, I lived to see Aelin again.” Growing more serious, he continued, “I knew at the time it wasn’t really you, Dorian. But looking back on it, I can’t help but wonder if there was a piece of you, the real you, responsible for that.”

Dorian looked back to the fire, swallowing hard to contain his emotions, and to keep from arguing with him. To keep from admitting how powerless he’d been against the valg.

“You survived it,” Aedion said. “Just like I survived dark periods of my life. If you can, use it for something good. So it never happens again.”

It was as if the male had been reborn in some way, Dorian thought. Or perhaps, he’d just never been allowed to see this side of Aedion before. Hoping to bring some levity to the conversation, he narrowed his eyes and said, “I’m not sure how I feel about you becoming so…optimistic.”

Aedion laughed, standing to get more wine. “Something else we have in common.” As he walked by Dorian’s desk, he nodded towards it and said, “You should deliver it in person. Surprise her with it.”

Glad the contents of the letter were obscured, Dorian joined him, smiling at the thought of Aedion giving him relationship advice. Not that the male didn’t have expertise in this area. It was just that in matters of love, he’d always placed Aedion in the category of rival. This new friendship was strange indeed. But, happily welcome. Aedion filled his glass and they silently toasted.

“It’d take me forever to fly to the Wastes. Besides, I only just got back from the Ferian Gap a couple of weeks ago. Chaol would throw a fit if I left again.”

“Just use a wyrd gate.”

The wine glass almost fell from Dorian’s hand. “Excuse me?”

“A wyrd gate.” Aedion drew out each word before leisurely emptying his glass.

“Yes, I heard you. What the hell do you mean by it?”

Since Aelin had destroyed the keys and the way between worlds, Dorian had never tried to contact Gavin. He told himself it was because it would no longer work. But part of him was afraid. Despite all he’d been through, all the progress he was making, Dorian was still stung by doubt. Fearful that the old king would look upon him and see nothing but disappointment.

“Aelin used them to bring the Wolf Tribe and fae to the battle.” Face incredulous, he asked, “I thought you knew that?”

Godsdamn him. To hell with friendship, Dorian wanted to strangle the male. No, he wanted to strangle himself for being so stupid. “My gods. I’m a fool,” he moaned, dropping his head into his hand. “I could use them to be with her right now!”

“Do you know how to do it?”

“Yes!” Dorian growled, his face still covered. Then, after a second or two of thought, he said, “No. I was able to use the wyrd marks to contact Gavin a few times in the afterworld. Is it different to open gates between places in our world? Are the marks different?” He knew they must be, just not how.

“Yes, the marks are different. Aelin taught me how to open a door to a place. Or,” Aedion paused dramatically. “A person.”

Dorian sank down onto his desk, knocking a pile of papers over. “So stupid,” he repeated, as Aedion laughed. The male had the good sense to stop when Dorian shot him a nasty look. Still grinning, he slapped Dorian on the shoulder.

“I can’t speak for other instances, but in this one, you can lighten up on yourself. You’d need to know the entire alphabet to make a door to a specific person or place. And since Aelin barely knew how to do it for that final battle, I’m betting you aren’t fluent in wyrd.”

Dorian nodded in confirmation and released a long, heavy sigh, still angry at himself for never once considering the possibility of using the wyrd marks to visit Manon. Aedion’s assurance didn’t boost his mood. But his next question did.  

“Would you like me to show you how to get to your witch queen?”

 ***

The winds above Blackbeak Keep had always been treacherous. Manon remembered the thrill of riding them as a witchling. The sharp air whipping through her hair, the heart-stopping drops and dives, the rare warm updrafts that carried her into the clouds. Now, with a full grown wyvern instead of an ironwood broom, they were even more dangerous. Behind her, the two Crochan sentinels she’d agreed to bring along were having trouble remaining steady. New to wyverns, the winds threatened to do them in. If she hadn’t been so stubborn and impatient, she would have listened to her great-grandmother and waited until spring to come here.

Signaling to the other witches to follow her, Manon pulled on her reins and guided Abraxos to land.

She shouldn’t have doubted him, high winds or no. He landed smoothly on the largest balcony available, the one that led into the keep’s great hall. The same hall she’d walked through so many times.

As the others landed on either side - clumsily but without injury - she could see herself all those years ago. Strutting between the crowd of whispering Blackbeaks, a new red cloak drapped over her shoulders and a Crochan heart in the box she carried. Her grandmother watching her, unsmiling, sitting like a queen holding court. The memory stood out because at that time, the Ironteeth witches did not have queens.

How had she been so blind? So stupid?

Of course, she had been privy to her grandmother’s ambitions for retaking the Wastes and installing themselves as rulers. But she’d never once considered the lengths to which the matron would go. Allying with valg to destroy the world? And she never truly realized how precarious her own position was until she’d been sliced open by her grandmother’s iron nails.

Blind. She’d been a fool.

This guilt was nothing new. But she should have expected it would hit harder when she’d decided to come here.

The Crochans were waiting for her orders, so she told them to stay on the platform. Scouts had reported that the keep was empty. While that could have changed, Manon wasn’t sure what might be left inside, and the thought of finding Ironteeth trophies with a pair of Crochan witches at her side… It was nothing they needed to see.

Perhaps she’d have the place burnt down after she was done.

The thought eased the tremors inside her chest as she entered the hall. Dark and cold from long dead fireplaces, the place looked foreign. Like something from a bad dream she’d had lifetimes ago. She glanced to the end where the matron’s throne still sat, then turned her nose up at it and continued walking.

Luckily, the keep had not been looted. The few Blackbeaks who’d flown from here to join her grandmother in battle had left quickly. No doubt expecting to return soon, victorious and weighed down with the spoils of war. But that had not happened. So Manon was left alone with a keep still filled with the items of everyday life.

She and the Thirteen had taken the rooms of an entire hallway in the eastern wing, and she was drawn there as if pulled by a thread. Gliding up the stairs, she made no sound save for her thudding heart.

Just at the head of the hallway, she hesitated. Maybe the rest of the place was basically intact, but that was no guarantee that the Thirteen’s rooms hadn’t been ransacked. Especially after they’d left the clan.

There was only one way to find out.

Manon pushed at the first door she came to, Lin’s. Looking inside, she sucked in an icy breath. The room was in disarray. The bed was overturned along with two chests, their clothing strewn across the floor. She could see faded patches on the walls where broad swords and bows would have hung on the now empty pegs and hooks.

The same held true for some of the others’ rooms, and Manon supposed that with so few witches left here when they’d first been summoned to the Ferian Gap and then Morath, only weapons and essentials had been taken. Perhaps her luck would continue.

Slowly, Manon pushed the door open into Ghislaine’s rooms. While the witches had taken the weapons, the books still lining Ghislaine’s walls had been laregly overlooked. Breathing a sigh of relief, Manon walked all the way in and turned in a circle to survey the damage.

Like the others, the room had been trashed. Any weapons or treasure kept here were gone. Instead of bows and swords, shelves covered the walls here. Some books were still upright and in place while others had been pulled off and thrown on the floor. Whoever had searched it had learned quickly that there was nothing useful to war hidden among the shelves.

But the books were the treasure. Then and now.

Manon bent and picked up a few that lay haphazardly against the foot of the bed. Blowing off the coat of dust, she placed them on a table. She had no idea if there would be a book here to interest Dorian. Hell, she had no idea what his reading interests even were. But she was confident she’d know when she found it. So, beginning with the books from the floor, she began to stack them on whatever surface was available, spines out so she could see the title.

It didn’t take her long to find one that might work.

Most of Ghislaine’s books were histories or treatises on magic or nature. There were several on the constellations, a few guides to wildflowers and plants, even a thick volume on the history of the Southern Continent. She sat that one aside for herself. But there were many fictional stories in the mix.

One contained what looked like a variety of myths and legends, each chapter a different story with heroes and heroines, fearsome beasts, and evil villains. As she flipped through the pages, Manon wondered how these tales might compare to her own life story. Another book, surprisingly, appeared to be a romance. She found more, all tucked behind a monster of a book that contained potion recipes. Ghislaine had been smart to hide them. If she’d been caught with these, she’d have seen more trouble than if she’d been caught plotting to take over the clan.

In the end, she had four books she thought Dorian might enjoy, and three for herself. Though, no fun reading for her. They were to help her in her duties as queen.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. All of the books, along with the few odds and ends she’d found in the others’ rooms, were going back home with her. Where they’d serve as the start of a new royal library for the witch kingdom.

It took forever to pack the books and haul them back to where the wyverns were perched. But when they were done, Manon found herself wishing she had more to do. Anything if it meant she didn’t have to enter the one suite of rooms she’d passed by.

Abraxos released a soft howl, as if he knew what she was avoiding. Manon stepped up to let him nuzzle her hand. “I know,” she said. “I need to be brave. Like you.” He replied with a hot breath of air. “Wait here,” she told her sentinels. “I’ll be back soon.”

A few minutes later, she stood outside Asterin’s rooms, hands balled into tight fists to keep from shaking.

Drawing what felt like every ounce of courage she had, Manon opened the door and walked in. Turning in a circle, she took in the room, not much different than the others. A bed, chests of ransacked drawers, racks and hooks that used to hold weapons. In the far corner, a door hung partly open. Forcing herself to breathe, and walk, Manon looked inside.

Old clothing was thrown on the floor of the tiny closet. Even an old pair of boots with the toes worn through. And there, practically hidden in the corner, a dark ironwood broom.

Manon reached slowly for it, wondering if she’d be able to feel Asterin in the object’s magic. When her fingertips brushed over the handle, she realized how silly that notion was. She felt nothing more than a surface polished smooth from decades of use.

Witches were responsible for carving their own brooms upon reaching maturity. It wasn’t until Manon picked up Asterin’s broom and held it in both hands that she remembered this was not her cousin’s first broom.

This one had been made during Asterin’s time with her hunter. When she’d been in love. When she’d been pregnant.

Not for the first time, Manon wished she knew where that cabin was. She had a vague idea, but even that idea encompassed an entire forest. Perhaps it didn’t matter, as she had no body to return to the place Asterin held close to her heart. She had the broom. But she already knew it would be going home with her.

Sitting down on the bed, Manon ran her hands over the handle, admiring its sturdiness, its power. There was a dull pulse of magic to it, as there was to all witch brooms. It just held no distinct sense of Asterin.

“Your Majesty.”

Manon looked up to see one of the sentinels standing in the open door. She made no effort to brush away the tears filling her eyes. The witch made no effort to hide that she’d seen them. Which, strangely, made Manon feel better.

“We’ve loaded the wyverns,” she said in reply to Manon’s encouraging nod. “However, the winds are picking up. Sybil said we should either leave soon or spend the night.”

Standing, Manon said, “We’ll go now. Head back and secure everything. Make sure the books are covered well in case of wet weather. I want to be at the Ferian Gap before nightfall.” The sentinel disappeared and Manon took a final look around Asterin’s room.

Despite the tears, Manon found herself ready to leave. Nothing of Asterin lingered in this place. The same held true for the others. With the possible exception of Ghislaine, who was so connected to her books they were truly a part of her.

She strode down the hall, paying silent respect as she passed each door. Asterin’s broom in one hand, and a small bag in the other. It contained all the remnants she’d found of the Thirteen. A small, sharp arrow head made by Vesta, a worn whetstone used by Sorrel, a wooden figurine of the Three Faced Goddess carved by Imogen. Lin, who so outwardly hated her mother, had kept a miniature portrait of the witch under her mattress. From the Shadow’s rooms, swatches of a dark, two-toned fabric that was clearly enchanted. Fallon and Faline had collected knives, which were, of course, gone. But Manon found sheathes the two must have been making before the last time they’d left the keep. And in Thea and Kaya’s room, a wooden box carved with intricate patterns that fit in the palm of her hand. It was locked, and Manon had no intention of prying it open.

In fact, a part of her felt odd about going through their rooms, even if they had already been largely picked over. But with each item, she’d felt a calm settle over her. Like with the place, these things weren’t her sisters. But they were meaningful parts of the greater whole. All of the things she’d collected were indicative of their owners - some obvious and unsurprising like Vesta’s arrow, others secretive and unknowable like Lin’s portrait.

And Asterin’s broom.

Manon could think of no better reminder to live her fullest life than that.

***

Dorian groaned with exhaustion as he entered his sitting rooms. A full day of meetings with lords and merchant guilds. That alone would have been hell. But he’d had to sit there knowing he could be with Manon in mere seconds.

After learning the spells and symbols to open a wyrd gate, he’d made the mature decision to not leave immediately. He’d had guests after all. Aedion, Lysandra, and Evangeline stayed for two days. Two days that, under other circumstances, would not have felt interminable. By the time they left, he’d become overwhelmed with the nonsense discussed during today’s meetings.

And both Chaol and Yrene had thoughtfully pointed out that walking out of a fire-ringed wyrd gate into Manon’s bedroom might not be the best idea. He’d write to her so she could decide where and when. The letter was already on its way.

But as he walked towards his bedroom, shedding clothes, his finger itched to trace out the marks. He was going over the alphabet in his head as he entered the room and stopped dead in his tracks.

Her scent. It was thick in the air. Warm summer breezes and meadows.

Spinning in a circle and finding the room empty, he ran into the bathing room. Only to find it deserted too.

Back in his bedroom, he noticed something on his bed. A stack of books with a small package on top. It was the only free place to put anything, as every other surface was covered.

Dorian sat the box of pastries aside and examined the four books. Three romances and one collection of fantasy tales. Judging by their wonderful smell, an indescribable book smell he loved, their old age was obvious. A piece of paper fell silently from one and he smiled even before he could read the writing.

Hello princeling,

While I appreciated your gift - especially Qara’s pastries - I prefer our usual greeting and so I thought I’d use my own paper this time.

You may be surprised to know these books belonged to Ghislaine. You knew she was a bookworm of course. But you didn’t know of my plans to return to Blackbeak Keep to retrieve them. I didn’t know it myself until I decided to try and outdo your gift.

Dorian laughed, looking at the books with new appreciation.

I hope I have succeeded. And that the pastries are still fresh. Qara refused to send the recipe. I suppose that means I remain her favorite.

Ghislaine had a small collection, which I plan to use as the start of a royal library here in Morrigna. Perhaps we can schedule an official visit in the spring for you to come and assist with its development?

-Your witchling

P.S. If Altai put this package where I told him to, you need better guards.

To be continued...

***

Note - I hate making up place names. But I grew too lazy to keep calling it Rhiannon’s City. And in the spirit of unity, I think the witches will give it their own name once they are settled (unless it already has some other canon name we were just never told). So I named the witch capital Morrigna. Morrigan is not just a character in the acotar series. She’s also an Irish goddess who is often described as a trio of sisters called the Morrigna. So...kind of like a three-faced goddess?? Maybe? I don’t know. I’m not sure how it’s pronounced exactly, but I thought the symbolism was cool. 

Thanks for reading! If you’d like to be tagged (or untagged, no offense taken) on future manorian fics, let me know.

@itach-i  @nestasbucket  @manontrashbeak  @blackhavilliard @chloe123love607 @bookishwitchling @jimetg98  @mis-lil-red  @sierrareads @yourfacesickens-me @awesomelena555  @monstrousloves-explodinggalaxies

[all-hail-the-witcher]

every book i had to read for english and why i didn't like any of them

i woke up thinking about this and decided to make this post. for context, i went to public school and was on the honors/ap track for english. i am a firm believer that english teachers ruin books for their students inadvertently. this is my experience:

6th grade language arts

we read three books during 6th grade, bridge to terabithia, the cay, and where the red fern grows. and i had to read a wrinkle in time over the summer which i didn't understand like at all so I'm just gonna skip that one honors english was not a thing until 8th grade where i went to middle school so this was a regular english class and i hated it. it was also a double period class for some reason, so i had an hour and a half of language arts every day. 

it took us half the year to read bridge to terabithia. i am not kidding. that book is like maybe 100 pages and it took us a good 4-5 months. this is because our teacher stopped us every time we got to a pice of figurative language and made us analyze it. every. single. piece. i got so bored that i read ahead and then got in trouble for reading ahead. needless to say, i absolutely detested bridge to terabithia and would not touch it to this day if my life depended on it. 

after bridge to terabithia we read the cay. this took us the rest of the year. the cay is a relatively short book as well so i got bored with this one quickly as well. i really dont remember much about the discussions, but i remember a long one about how the cover was “inaccurate,” which, yes, it was but i dont know if a bunch of 11 and 12 year olds need to spend a week debating that. i think i hated it mostly because, again, we read it for 5 months. 

the last three weeks of the school year, our teacher gave us a book and said “here read this before school ends because we have to read three books a year and we only read 2″ (for context, the other language arts class had read about 5-7 books that year and found it insane that we were “still reading bridge to terabithia”) so i read where the red fern grows. all in all it wasn't a bad book, i did kind of enjoy it, but since i was rushed reading it on top of all my other homework and because it was definitely ahead of my reading comprehension level, it wasn't my favorite.

7th grade language arts

now, a bit of a disclaimer here, this was the year that i was in language arts with the guy i had a crush on and one of my close friends at the time. so, i didn't really pay that much attention to begin with. we read quite a few books in this class, but I'm not sure if i remember all of them. again, this was a double period. 

i think the first book we read was freak the mighty. i remember not liking this book because i felt like i was missing something. there was definitely some kind of metaphor or something in there that i was supposed to get but because i was literally twelve i didn't get it and i didn't find the meaning in it. theres nothing more frustrating than reading a book that you dont understand.

after that I'm pretty sure we read the wave. it was explained to us that the wave is supposed to symbolize how the n*zis came to power and all that stuff, and while we all knew this, i dont think we really Understood it. (probably because we were 12). we all kinda saw it as a joke and thought it was funny. i think that if i read it now i would be like. “well shit this is really interesting” but 12 year old me wanted to make fun of it with the rest of my class. 

i think we read seed folks next. this was another book that just went over all of our heads. its about how a garden changes a whole bunch of peoples lives which is like, super interesting. but none of us got it and were like “lol this is stupid” so much so that we actually stopped reading it. like my teacher stopped having us read it.

I'm fairly certain the last book we read was the miracle worker. a lot of us had had to read parts of it before that class so we were all kinda familiar with it already. i vaguely remember some kind of obnoxious class joke about the book that was probably rude. i remember finding it interesting, but there were so many activities we did about the book that i lost interest. 

8th grade honors reading

this class was A Trip. i liked the teacher, but she was a little out there. its unclear whether she got fired or just didn't come back after that year. i had a lot of fun in her class but it was usually because we all bonded over hating the assigned reading.

i dont remember what order we read the books in and i dont remember if this was all of them, but to the best of my recollection this is what we read

we definitely read romeo and juliet. by the time you're in 8th grade, everyone knows the story of romeo and juliet, so it wasn't like that suspenseful or a surprise or anything. but we had to act the reading out. yes we had to act out romeo and juliet. with burger king crowns. and wrapping paper swords. clearly the teacher was trying to have fun with us, and it was fun fun for awhile but it got old. especially when you got participation points taken off your grade if you didn't read for once of the characters (which is massively unfair because not everyone wants to get up in front of a class in a paper crown holding a wrapping paper tube and read in old english when you're 13 but whatever). 

we also definitely read animal farm. it was another book that went right over our heads (or, mine at least). i didn't actually really understand it until i had to read the communist manifesto for ap euro senior year. and our teacher talked in a bad russain accent the entire time? i could barely keep the characters straight, let alone analyze the underlying message and all that. now i might actually like it since I'm a history major and have a decent background on the russian revolution, but at 13? no thanks.

the one book that everyone hated (including the teacher herself) was farewell to manzanar. it was a memoir about a young girl growing up in the japanese internment camps and looking back on her life and stuff like that. the story itself was very interesting and we all learned a lot from it. but the person who wrote it did not know how to write. it was confusing, some chapters made no sense, and none of us generally knew what was going on. we had to finish the book because we were the honors class, but the regular class got to stop after chapter 6. 

i think we only read 4 books that year and the fourth one was the outsiders. this was one of two books that i actually liked the entirely of my public school education. i kinda vibed with it when we were reading it and then i vibes with it more once i got to high school and rediscovered it. it was just a good book, pretty solid, good themes, fantastic. 

9th grade honors english

i absolutely hated this class. hands down the worst teacher i ever had. she was one of those that should have retired 20 years ago but was still teaching for some reason. and she hated kids. legitimately. that was the first time i got a c and it took my parents a long time to realize that it wasn't because of me, it was because the teacher was absolute shit. the only thing that made that class bearable was the fact that my friend was in there and so was this guy that totally like her so he would flirt with her pretty incessantly and it was Hilarious. 

we read so many books that year and i hated all of them. a lot of them were like greek dramas and plays? like we read oedipus rex and julius caesar and antigone. and i hated all of them because the teacher made me hate reading and made it seem like a chore. 

by far the worst was the old man and the sea. i hated that book, hemingway was terrible. i struggled to find any kind of meaning in it and connected all of my responses to the bible because my teacher loved it when people did that.

we read inherit the wind and to kill a mockingbird and all quiet on the western front which were the only books i found remotely interesting. but i still hated them because i knew that we would have to do her reading quizzes which were impossible so it was pointless to read the book anyway. 

and we also read a raisin in the sun. i dont remember what this was even about except that there was some kind of insurance money involved. but by this point we were all really done with our teachers shit and my one friend legitimately said during class “but, ms. [name] if you put a raisin in the sun, doesn't it just get more raisiny?”

10th grade ap english language and composition (american lit)

i loved this class and the teacher but i hated all the assigned reading because we read it for the ap test. everything you read was in the context of having to find themes and shit to write about on the ap. so i didn't really get any of the books for that reason. i think we only read three and they were the scarlet letter, the crucible, and the great gatsby. i kind wish i paid more attention to gatsby and i think i would like it more now but at the time i detested it. we also had to read grapes of wrath over the summer and i hated that. i wanna read books to read them, not to come into school and write essays on them. also the ending was weird and i hated it.

11th grade honors (british lit)

another bad year of english, not quite as bad as freshman year, but still bad. still hated it. i outlined many fics in that class. the teacher did not like me and i did not like her. she also talked in this weird fake almost british but not quite accent that sometimes still haunts my nightmares. she was also one of those backwards feminists who claims they're a feminist but still was sexist in her favorites and the way that she treated people in the class?? after english i had math and my friend (the same girl who said the thing about raisins freshman year) and some others would complain to our math teacher about our english teacher. math was essentially a support group for english where we would discuss answers to reading checks. 

over the summer we read 1984, which, cool concept (esp right now) but i hated knowing that i had to find some kind of deep meaning in it because i was going to have to write an essay on it as soon as i came back to school.

from there i think we read beowulf which was interesting. i dont know if we actually read the whole thing or just excerpts but again, i hated looking for meaning.

we read a tale of two cities which was like the one book i actually wanted to read because i am a huge fan of the shadow hunters book serieses and will and tessa quote that book all the time. i think if i had read it to read it it would have been better but first, dickens is wordy and weird and second i dont really wanna have to search out symbolism while I'm reading because its required.

we read macbeth, which i just didn't like. idk why. i just kinda thought it was stupid. i dont really have an explanation for this one. i think it was because we read it in the old english and that confused me a lot of the time.

and we read jane eyre. the only thing i remember from jane eyre was “pathetic fallacy” which is where the mood of the scene is reflected in the weather. i dont wanna dissect a book like that. and also my teacher referred to the book as “jane” but she said it “jAAYYneeE” which was annoying. 

12th grade ap lit

dear god. this class. i had issues with this class. our teacher was something. everyone was afraid of him. e v e r y o n e. he ran detention and didn't know how to match his clothes and wore skinny ties. he had three swell bottles the he would bring with him to school every day. people claimed he used to be in a rock band and that was why his voice was so high pitched and weird. some said his wife left him, others said he had a kid. we were genuinely confused by him. he didn't teach, he yelled at you for doing things wrong without giving any instructions on how he actually wanted it done. he made college out to be some big scary thing where we would all be trampled. but mostly, he was an existentialist. 

we had to read song of solomon over the summer. i hated it. i didn't hate it because of the messages and all that stuff, no the book itself was good and toni morrison is a great author. i just hated the fact that there was graphic description of incest, necrophilia, or sex at least once every 5-10 pages. i didn't wanna read that. and it turned me off the book. so when he asked us if we liked the book when the year started i said no and i argued with him about it. and he hated me for the entire year. 

next i think we read waiting for godot. which was absolutely terrible. its literally a play where nothing happens. it would have been funny except that i knew i was gonna have to write an essay on it. how do you write an essay on a play where nothing happens? literally all of our discussions about it were about existentialism and it was terrible. 

we read the metamorphosis, which everyone hated cause it could have been written in like 4 sentences. and our teacher thought he was So Clever for assigning it to us. he thought it was the biggest joke. and he went on and on about how its about existentialism and blah blah. the book would have been funny had he not only discussed it in regards to existentialism. 

i think next was hamlet. i would have like hamlet had we not discussed it only through the lens of existentialism. its a good play, but i hated it because of the way he talked about it. even now, i only like it to make fun of the way he liked it. my friend and i send hamlet memes to each other all the time but only cause they remind us of our teacher.

one flew over the cuckoos nest. the second and final book that i actually liked my entirety of school. i dont know why i liked it, but it was just a good book. our teacher also had some kind of weird cowboy trope thing that he thought mcmurphy fell under which i thought was hilarious. the essay i wrote on that book was the only one he wrote “nice job” on and i still have it somewhere

my friend claims that we also read the stranger. i dont really remember what that book was about except some guy shot some people. there was definitely something in it that i didnt get. 

anyway in conclusion required reading ruins books. when i told my creative writing advisor that i out of all the books i read for school i only like the outsiders and one flew over the cuckoos nest she was like “yeah, english teachers really ruin books for students”

[trading-strategies-news]

Seeking Alpha: 3 Fortress REITs To Own During The New Era Of Physical Distancing.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4339929-3-fortress-reits-to-own-during-new-era-of-physical-distancing?utm_source=news.google.com&utm_medium=referral

Consider investing in only the highest-quality companies with the best balance sheets and great management teams.

It’s a strategy that has worked very well for Warren Buffett and his followers over the years.

We believe that our three A-rated picks will eventually generate sound price appreciation as their underlying business models are all built to last.

There’s a line from the classic film Princess Bride that goes, “Goodbye, boys! Have fun storming the castle!”

It’s a satirical line from a satirical movie, with one character turning to another to ask, “Think it’ll work?”

The response is, “It would take a miracle.”

If you’ve seen the movie even just once, you can probably easily envision the whole scene, including the joviality at the start of the very brief conversation and the sardonic certainty at the end. (If you haven’t, you’ll just have to take my word for it.)

But the truth is that castle storming back in the day was supposed to be a long shot. Only extreme levels of planning, plotting, and resources could pull them down.

They were built to be fortresses, strategically designed with features such as:

Arrowslits – Holes up high in the structures from which archers could let their weapons loose while remaining largely protected.

Keeps – Towers that rose as high up as possible to give great views of whatever might be coming.

Moats – Water-filled trenches that armies couldn’t easily cross unless a bridge was procured.

Portcullises – Heavy metal gates to protect main entrances.

Barbicans – Fortresses outside of the fortress designed to be the first line of defense.

Really, that last word, “defense,” sums up their strategy. The lords who commissioned them took every precaution possible to protected what was theirs.



Source

A Model Worth Following

Dr. Dan Spencer, author of The Castle at War in Medieval England and Wales, writes on Military History Now:

“In their day, medieval castles represented the state-of-art in military engineering.

“Erected by kinds and feudal lords during what we now commonly call the Middle Ages, these foreboding strongholds… were defensive in nature, being skillfully designed to resist attacks by armies many times larger than those manning its parapets.

“But of course, a castle was only ever as strong as its weakest point. As such, great efforts were made by builders to ensure that their castles could withstand an enemy onslaught.”

Some of them did a phenomenal job of it too, as evidenced by their still-standing structures today. Google “castles to visit today” or some such thing, and you’ll no doubt find plenty of places around the world.

Of course, considering how land invasions aren’t nearly as popular as they used to be, castles are admittedly a little passé. They’re great to bring in tourist revenue, it’s true. But they don’t present the same awe-inspiring military deterrent now that planes and bombs and battleships exist.

Even so, that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate the concept they were built on. Warren Buffett certainly does, has, and no doubt will. He’s long-since been promising a “financial fortress” for investors in his Berkshire Hathaway(NYSE:BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B) fund.

By that, he means he invests in only the highest-quality companies with the best balance sheets and great management teams.

It’s a strategy that’s worked very well for him and his followers over the years. And it’s one I’ve seen significant success in as well.



Source

The Value of a Properly Fortified Fortress

For the record, I know about the news story currently circulating on most major financial sites: “Warren Buffett’s ‘Fortress’ Is Breached by Coronavirus-Related Shutdowns.” It starts out:

“Even as market watchers await Warren Buffett’s splashy move to seize on fallout from the current crisis, his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. hasn’t been spared by the pandemic.

“Coronavirus-related shutdowns across the U.S. have hit Berkshire units from See’s Candies and a shoemaker to industrial behemoth Precision Castparts. That could leave a few scars on the conglomerate…

“Buffett’s business partner, Charlie Munger, put it bluntly. ‘We’ve got a few businesses, small ones, we won’t reopen when this is over,’ he told The Wall Street Journal without naming the units.”

But here’s the thing. Fortresses don’t promise they’ll never get cracked by a battering ram or chipped by flying projectiles. As the article above – and every single castle throughout history – indicates, damage can be done.

For that matter, they don’t even promise they can withstand absolutely everything that comes their way. Nothing can, as proven by Krak des Chevaliers, an epic, all-but-invincible Crusader castle in Syria, that was surrendered, not by force, but by siege and, perhaps, a forged letter.

They only have the best chances around, which is why Bloomberg acknowledged:

“To be sure, Buffett’s promise that Berkshire will ‘forever remain a financial fortress’ hasn’t been broken yet. The company reported a $128 billion cash pile at the end of last year, as well as a stock portfolio valued at more than $248 billion.

Besides, “Some of its biggest revenue generators remain on solid footing.” And its similarly solid footing we’re looking for today through our own “revenue generators” in the REIT sector.

The companies below have plenty of cash on hand with significant chances of making plenty more cash in the future.

Here’s what they have to say for themselves.



Source: iREIT

3 A-Rated REITs We’re Buying Today

One of the good things about being a financial writer in the REIT sector is that we have tons or research at our disposal. This includes data from Seeking Alpha, Sentieo, FAST Graphs, and the wide world of Google. It’s very useful to have all of this information because it provides us with the most actionable intelligence to support our buy-hold-sell recommendations.

Given the latest COVID-19 risks we have carefully evaluated our entire REIT spectrum in order to model the impacts related to rent collection and future earnings. Accordingly, there are a number of REITs that we have downgraded to either Speculative, Hold, or Sell as we anticipate future dividend cuts and or suspensions.

We’re all living in unprecedented times and while strong balance sheets are essential to any business operation, we consider cash flow the primary test as it relates to dividend sustainability. That being said, we decided to focus the content today on three A-rated REITs that support our Buy or Strong Buy recommendation.

These three REITs appear on our list because we believe their dividend is safe and that the shares can be purchased at a reasonable margin of safety. We recently downgraded Simon Property (SPG) to a Spec Buy, and we plan to address this name in a detailed article later this week.

Our first pick on the list is Public Storage (PSA), a self-storage REIT whose capital structure is nearly bulletproof because it utilizes perpetual preferreds instead of debt (no refinancing risk). Its business model is one that is consistent through business cycles and its management has shown themselves to be immensely talented.

PSA is unique in the REIT industry (actually, virtually unique compared to any company) in that its capital structure is overwhelmingly comprised of common and preferred stock - debt is a measly 3%. PSA is the largest REIT issuer of preferred stock and has mastered its use in the capital structure. It’s this use that has created the fortress known as their balance sheet.

Income investors often recognize the security and performance available with the purchase of PSA, but are often turned away by the low dividend yield. However, thanks to the Covid-19 inspired pullback, PSA’s dividend yield is now 4.3% with a P/FFO handle of 17.4x.

To be clear, we don’t view PSA as a Strong Buy today, but we’re glad we included shares in the Cash Is King portfolio (just a Buy). We like the business model, and while the summer months could be challenging with lease-up (due to stay at home rules) we have a high degree of certainty that customers will continue to use storage in the weeks and months ahead.



Source: FAST Graphs

Our next fortress pick is Realty Income (O), the monthly paying bellwether that has become the staple for many retirees and income-oriented investors.

The primary reason that O has sold off (-31.9% total return year-to-date) is because of the company’s exposure to theaters (6.7%) and gyms (7%). Given the elevated risk of tenant defaults, specifically bankruptcies, it’s likely that certain stores may close, and Realty Income’s payout ratio could narrow.

We believe that Realty Income’s payout ratio – which is in the low 80s now – is adequate to handle the short-term shock to earnings. Essentially, we’d agree with the CEO’s optimism when he said that, “We feel very good about our liquidity situation: our ability to continue to pay the dividend and grow the dividend.”

Importantly, we also feel comfortable that Realty Income has an impressive A-rated balance sheet. The company is the only net lease REIT with an A-rated balance sheet and has protected its fortress balance sheet by strengthening its liquidity position by drawing down $1.2 billion (bringing the cash balance to $1.25 billion). There’s around $1.2 billion of capacity remaining on the $3 billion revolver (with an accordion of another $1 billion).

It’s important to recognize that Realty Income has around 50% of investment-grade rated tenants and we believe this investment policy (focusing on quality) will pay dividends during the next few months. Realty Income also has the least exposure to private equity-backed tenants and this provides us with a higher degree of confidence that Realty Income’s tenant base will keep paying rent.

Furthermore, and I cannot emphasize this enough, Realty Income is the most diversified net lease REIT and while certain sectors (like theaters and gyms) could put temporary pressure on the payout ratio, Realty Income is in the best position (of all net lease REITs) to weather the storms.

Shares are now yielding 5.7% with a P/FFO multiple of 14.8x (-30% below normal range). We are maintaining a Strong Buy at this time.



Source: FAST Graphs

Our final fortress pick is Federal Realty (FRT), one of just two shopping center REITs on our buy list.

FRT’s balance sheet is by far one of the strongest in its industry, as illustrated by its (1) net debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of 5.5x, its fixed-charge coverage ratio of 4.2x, its weighted-average debt maturity of ~10 years (near the top of the sector) and its weighted average interest rate of 3.8%.

FRT ended 2019 with over $127 million in cash on its balance sheet – up from just $64 million a year ago and management said it has no outstanding balance on a recently expanded $1 billion credit facility.

While FRT is known for its retail exposure, it's important to remind readers that the company has diversified its business model to include a variety of profit centers including:

Residential – 11%

Office – 9%

Fitness, health, beauty – 9%

Discount Apparel – 9%

Full-service restaurant – 9%

Full-service apparel – 8%

Grocery – 7%

[homenum-revelio-hq]

Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix, Nutteh!

You have been accepted for the role of MARY MACDONALD, with your requested faceclaim change to Imogen Poots! I really loved the way you brought Mary to life! I could tell through your application that you truly understood what this version of Mary Macdonald, a character who often gets pushed to the side, is all about! I’m so happy to see you embracing her dark parts. I am so excited to have you as part of this roleplay!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Nutteh

AGE: 26

TIMEZONE: CST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: I work full-time, but one para interaction per week is more than doable. When I get into something, I get really into it.

ANYTHING ELSE: No. 

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Mary MacDonald

AGE: 20

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cis-female, she/her. She is bisexual, if she had to identify herself, but truth be told the idea of placing her heart in anyone's hands - be they male, female, or anything in between - is a daunting proposition. 

BLOOD STATUS: Muggle-born

HOUSE ALUMNI: Gryffindor

ANY CHANGES: I'd like to change her FC to Imogen Poots, if possible. She has a slightly softer look than Emma Mackey, but there's an underlying darkness - a potential for darkness - that I think is important for Mary's faceclaim.

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY: 

Mary MacDonald is good at “soldiering on.” She is adaptable, capable of flexibility when it means a better chance of achieving her goals. A hectic family life prepared her for such a thing. Navigating the streets and slums of Glasgow at a young age made her a direct-line thinker; when the only goal was survival, it was hard not to be steadfast in one’s endeavors. The Sorting Hat debated putting her in Slytherin for that reason, which is perhaps why she’s so close with Alice, but it’s not a trait that makes her particularly gregarious. She finds it difficult to be a devoted and dependable friend when she is wary of people’s intentions, and Mulciber’s attack only exaggerated that part of her psyche. It’s unfortunate, as her splintered relationship with her family has left her in desperate need of real friends. Always a worrier, Mary is used to thinking ahead; but, after she emerged from her fifth year with that long, nasty scar across her cheek, she was convinced she’d grown soft. Her need to be one step ahead of everyone else has morphed into a kind of high-functioning anxiety. She and fear are close fellows and she hates it, but at this point she has become quite good at using it to drive her.      

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY: 

Mary was born in Glasgow, Scotland to eighteen-year-old newlyweds Richard and Ruthie MacDonald. The pride of Mary's young life came from pointing at her parents' few grainy wedding photos - "That's me!" she screamed, jabbing a finger at her mother's swollen belly, straining beneath her wedding dress. Her elder brother Adam, however, was a more concrete installment; he stared blankly at the camera from his perch in Ruthie’s arms, not at all moved by the joyful occasion.  Love ruled the MacDonald household - it had to, as they didn’t have much else. Two more children followed - Patrick and little Holly - and Mary knew nothing but family. All six MacDonalds lived in a three-bedroom flat above Ed’s Bakery, a rather seedy establishment with an owner whose heart was far bigger than he let on. Richard built ships and worked long hours, and Ed employed Ruthie downstairs. Mary’s childhood was filled with the scent of baking (and sometimes burning) bread, and it was spent leading hodge-podge football matches in the back alley. Underneath it all, though, was a kind of dutiful sobriety; she wanted to be like the other children at her muggle primary school, seemingly carefree, but there were things to be done and things to be taken care of at home and she didn't know how to not care. 

That was why it was so jarring when her Hogwarts letter arrived, accompanied by a witch with square spectacles (who, it can be noted, took quite a liking to Ed’s biscuits). Mary’s magical abilities revealed themselves late and subtly; footballs seemed to do exactly as she willed them during games with her siblings, and any spats she had in Ed’s shop mysteriously set the baked goods to burning. The news that she was a witch, however, was somehow less unfathomable than the idea of being away from her family for nine months out of the year. She was used to being surrounded by them, by focusing only on their well-being and their survival; she didn’t know how to have thoughts that didn’t include them. Ruthie and Richard were proud and very supportive of their daughter’s new endeavor - at times, perhaps too supportive. Mary would never admit it, but she agonized over their eagerness and enthusiasm for most of her first year. Were they glad to be rid of her? Were they happy to have one less mouth to feed? She missed them and her siblings something awful, but as time went on she made peace with the anxious squall in her head. To this day it’s unclear, but if her mother and father did want to get rid of her she doesn’t blame them. Their family was a loving family, but it was also a hectic one; as Mary grew older and wiser (or perhaps more cynical?), she became inwardly critical of her parents. Why have so many children if you don’t have the means to care for them? She used to believe love was enough, but when her little brother Patrick was sent to prison for robbery shortly before her graduation, she wasn’t so sure. Perhaps this was why her relationship with her family, once so strong she could scarcely think of anything else, faded. It was gradual, but she was engrossed in a new world while they stayed engrossed in theirs - they had to. They taught her hard work and flexibility, but they both intentionally and unintentionally taught her to protect herself. Despite Richard and Ruthie’s example, Mary learned how to dodge missteps, how to keep from acting rashly and damaging any chance of her own survival. Of course, the more sinister and dire the war becomes, the further she strays from self-control.    

OCCUPATION: 

Mary was fifteen when she was attacked; she was fifteen when she was left panting against the wall of a third-floor corridor, clutching her face as portraits screamed and gasped around her. She was in the thick of her O.W.L.s when Mulciber, a boy two years her senior, unleashed his prejudice upon her, and she only wished he’d done it sooner. If he’d had the sense to do it before she started studying, she would have known what to say when asked about career choices. The attack had done everything it wasn’t meant to do; instead of silencing her, it made her bolder. Instead of making her shrink away from magic, it spurred her on, adding fuel to a fire she’d been allowing to smolder inside her. 

Upon graduation, however, Mary was at a crossroads. She wanted desperately to be an auror, but the Ministry was beyond corrupt and she knew better than to expect anything from it. She idled, working odd bartending shifts at The Leaky Cauldron whilst scanning the Prophet behind the bar. That’s where Dumbledore found her, and his proposition to join the fledgeling Order of the Phoenix wasn’t one she had to think much about. Still, it wasn’t making her any money - organizing against dark wizards wasn’t a job, especially the slow, hum-drum way the Order went about it. As good as she was at getting by with very little, she needed something more. 

The first time she heard his name was during an Order meeting, said with an air of discomfort and slight distaste. He was one of those radicals, one of those militant rebels who found murder a perfectly good way to deal with Voldemort’s regime. Both confirmed and suspected Dark Lord followers were turning up dead all over Europe, and Mary’s skin prickled. The Order did not endorse him, but she met with him in secret; if anyone were to find out or ask her about her current employment, she’d maintain that she has to make a living somehow. It’s an excuse that doesn’t quite fit, but working underground as an assassin, for lack of a better word, keeps her out of the public eye and in a stream of steady income (sometimes more than steady, and in Mulciber’s case, sometimes out of the goodness of her heart).        

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER: 

The speed with which she rose through the ranks came as a surprise, though not to Mary. It was poetic, really - a muggle-born barrelling her way into the “inner circle” - but she didn’t allow herself to think about what it all meant. Every now and then she wondered if her recruitment was meant to be more of a statement than an actual tactical move, but in the end it didn’t matter. If it started as a statement, fine. If Dumbledore recognized the need, the hunger for revenge eating her from the inside out, that was fine too. How she got there wasn’t as important as what she was doing now that she was here, and Mary clings to that thought. She isn’t blind to the Order’s setbacks, but she is comforted by all they have done - all she has done. After the attack during her fifth year, she often wondered why Mulciber didn’t kill her. He had the chance, didn’t he? Why hesitate? Well, she didn’t hesitate, and sleep comes quicker now than it has in years.  

SURVIVAL: 

Preservation is a strong instinct for Mary - she’s good at surviving. Glasgow was in a period of economic decline while she was growing up in its underbelly, and she learned how to avoid trouble, how to avoid being robbed (not that she had anything of value). This was why, as much as Mulciber’s attack drove her forward, it also shocked her and gave her self-esteem a firm shove backward. How did he sneak up on her? Why didn’t she expect anything? Why wasn’t she ready for him? Since then she has worked hard and resolved to be more prepared, more perceptive; it seems all well and good, but she has heard the term “trigger-happy” thrown around more than once. As much as her vigilance has helped her, it’s also made her somewhat of a liability.  

RELATIONSHIPS: 

At this point, Mary’s relationships with the rest of the “inner circle” are strained. She’s been successful so far, hasn’t she? So why do these men (save for Alice, and what the fuck is that all about?) seem so keen on dismissing everything she says? She’s taken Death Eaters down before, likely more than her peers know, but they’re so focused on outwitting and outmaneuvering the opposition that they’re forgetting the merits of just going for it. That’s why the methods of the newest recruits have her straining to hear their conversations, glancing sideways at them as she heads for “inner circle” meetings. Dorcas, Emma, and Benjy are people of action, and Mary respects that. It’s only a matter of time before she offers her help, especially if things keep slogging along like they currently are. 

Her relationship with her family is all but nonexistent. It’s been a year and a half since she saw her parents, and Adam doesn’t write to her anymore - that stopped before her fourth year. The distance became too great to bridge with friendly letters, and now Mary doesn’t know how best to do it. Besides, she doesn’t have the time, and sometimes she feels that the farther away she is, the better it is for them.    

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS: I ship Mary/Chemistry. It's hard to know exactly what her relationships to other characters entail at this point, but if accepted I am happy to discuss those in depth with my fellow players.

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE? 

I suppose Mary has had the luxury of seeing the muggle and wizarding worlds as two separate entities. She isn’t totally naive - she knows muggles aren’t immune to the unseen war raging among them - but given her experience as a muggle-born with a more or less indifferent family, she can’t help but see a stark line between the two. So far her parents and siblings remain unaffected, and that makes it difficult for her to understand the plights and fears of her fellow muggle-borns, especially ones with strong, lasting familial bonds. 

When it comes to wealth, she has a gigantic chip on her shoulder as well; she appreciates the Potters’ and McKinnons’ generosity, but she never allows herself to stay at their estates for long. Seeing the sheer scale of their fortunes sometimes makes her sick, nevermind that they’ve been nothing but kind to her.    

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? 

I'm looking forward to dabbling in Marauders' Era again. It's been ages, and there might have been some light peer pressure involved in my applying at all. But now that I've done it I'm really excited! One thing that I think always turned me away from Marauders' Era was the fact that there was a concrete endgame. We know what happens to these characters, so exploring the bits in between seemed silly to me. Now I'm starting to understand the draw, and I think this roleplay being AU is opening a lot of doors and making me feel less constricted.

PLOT DROP IDEAS:

I’d really like to play with Mary’s questionable occupation. She has focused on targets with stark, black-and-white, obvious loyalties to the Dark Arts so far, but I think it’d be fun to have her confront a gray area - perhaps being sent for someone who is good and does good but doesn’t set themselves firmly against Voldemort? Perhaps someone within the Order? I want her job to become a source of contention within the Order if/when the other members find out.  

ANYTHING ELSE? Nope!

[mysweetestcreature]

Meus Amor (Hogwarts!Harry) Part III

(Banner by the lovely @pretty-hazza)

***

Series Masterlist

***

A large grey cloud lies above the castle of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, blocking any chance for the sunlight to produce it’s much-needed warmth. Despite it being June and the end of another year fast approaching, the atmosphere that surrounds the grounds is one that none can describe. It’s the type of feeling that leaves nerves bouncing about in the chest and makes it hard for the lungs to function properly without reason.

So much has changed in these five months.

Five months. That’s how long it had taken for him and Draco to mend the vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirement. For the entire duration of that time, Harry had wanted nothing more than to see it fixed, so he could go back to his normal routine instead of spending nearly every night disposing of dead pixie bodies in the Black Lake. He’d been running out of excuses to give Y/n of why he’s been feeling so tired in the mornings. And maybe now he can focus more on keeping her as unaffected as possible rather than having to divide his attention with this bloody task. 

Ever since Y/n had been sent to the Hospital Wing because of that dimwitted Hopkins, Harry can’t help but keep a close eye on her when someone that rouses his suspicion just as much as looks at her funny. At first, he thought his paranoia had been overriding his sensibility, after all, he and Draco are the only two death eaters within the student population (at least that he’s aware of). Although, it has come to his attention that there are those, much like Hopkins, that are well aware of the occurrences within the Dark Lord’s circle. The scariest part of this is that Harry doesn’t know what they know. He hasn’t been able to pinpoint the extent of their knowledge, and if they’re aware of what he has dangling on a thin thread.

As he sits on the floor, however; his back perched up against the cabinet’s sleek wooden exterior, he can’t deny the uneasiness that’s eating him up from the inside. The bird they had used for this final trial run pecks greedily on the feed he had laid out for it on a small napkin. It’s alive, so incredibly full of life and completely unscathed by its journey to and from the sister cabinet at Borgin and Burkes. He had checked it for any lost limbs but found it to be as healthy as ever. 

“We’ve done it,” he says, although any traces of confidence are absent. The thoughts of what the Dark Lord will have in store for him refuse to leave the forefront of his mind. He’d be mental if he were to assume that this would have been the extent of his services. The mark on his forearm a constant reminder that he’s bounded to this world he wishes he had never known. 

It’s almost comical how even through the use of concealment charms, he can still feel the dark mark sit heavy on his skin. Every single day he’ll feel it prickle with pain underneath his sleeves, as though someone were stabbing him with a hundred needles inflamed with the Fires of Hell. He’s grown accustomed to the pain, however; and he’s surprised that he still feels anything at all. 

“So, we have,” Malfoy’s voice just as weary. His steel grey eyes mindlessly staring out in front of him. His usually slicked back hair disheveled from having run his hands through them one too many times in the past half hour. This isn’t where he ends.

The bird chirps its jaunty melody, a tune that would make even the grumpy Mr. Filch crack a wholehearted smile. Its song reminiscent of all good things that life has to offer, like warm summer days that one can spend lazing away underneath the cooling shade of an oak tree with his favorite person. But to the two boys sitting in the Room of Requirement, it serves as a prelude of what will happen come the fortnight. 

An underlying feeling of apprehension burns at the pit of his stomach whenever he thinks about it. He wishes he didn’t know, at least that way his conscience would save him from the shocks of pained regret that leaves the blood running thin within his veins and the tips of his fingers becoming as cold as metal.

***

Recently, it’s dawned on Y/n that by this time next year, she’ll be a full-fledged adult (by Wizarding World standards, that is). Both her parents have started getting on her back about plans for her future in bits and pieces from each one of their lengthy letters, and it really has started to freak her out. It’s not that she hasn’t given it much thought because of course she has! It’s just that she seems to be incapable of coming to a solid conclusion because she doesn’t have the faintest idea of how she wants to go about making such an important decision, and she’s not even an indecisive person. Being a half-blood, she gets the best of both worlds, so her options are virtually unlimited. And she guesses that may be where she’s at a disadvantage. 

There are two roads that she can choose from. She could proceed with her education and move forward and attend a muggle university. But what would she study? Arithmancy and Astronomy are two of her best subjects, but the idea of being a mathematician or astronomist doesn’t quite tickle her fancy. Her mum works as a clinical trials manager for a major pharmaceutical, having received a degree in biology from Imperial College London. The benefits that come with the job are more than satisfactory, whatever that means. 

The other choice is to find herself a place in the Wizarding World workforce, but it seems as though it’s limited to jobs within the Ministry. Her dad loves being an auror, even though the hours have become quite hectic in the passing months. She remembers when she was a little girl and he’d take her to the office and let her play with some of the trinkets––all safely de-hexed, but cool nonetheless––in the Improper Use of Muggle Artefacts division because he and Arthur Weasley had always gotten along well. 

As she lays wide awake in her bed, each one of her roommates fast asleep at this late hour––or would it be considered early? ––she lets out a long huff of annoyance because she knows she doesn’t need to worry about this just yet. But she hates the uncertainty of it all. From what Harry’s told her, he’s meant to take over his family’s business (they’re a manufacturing company that supplies various potions to hospitals all around the United Kingdom). In short, he’s got a himself a secure plan. And thinking about Harry and the future simultaneously just makes her smile because she can’t see one without the other.

***

“I presume you come here baring good news?” The greasy-haired professor doesn’t bother to turn around, his attention instead directed to the uneven taps of rain drops against the window pane. Harry can see a fogged image of the man’s reflection from where he stands on the other side of the deep colored mahogany desk. His face as undecipherable as ever, his eyes hinting no emotion as he stares forward into the storm. 

Harry clears his throat then stretches his jaw as he gets a feel for the words that rattle in his mouth. “Yes, sir,” he reports, his hands digging into the depths of his pockets and toying with the fabric between his index finger and thumb. “Everything is in order for…” but he can’t find it in himself to say it aloud. His chest rises as the oxygen swirls through his flared nostrils. “It’s ready.”

Snape just barely turns his head, the side profile of his face shadowed out by the darkness that stretches across the four walls of the room. And yet, Harry can still feel the penetrating observance of his eyes. 

A long-aggravated silence rings through his ears and pokes at the base of his spine. He swears there’s a hint of something else infused in the air that surrounds them. Could it be a fragment of hesitance that exudes itself with each calculated breath? Ever since Harry had learned about Desmond Styles’ participation within the inner workings of the Dark Lord’s army, it had seemed to be a known fact that Severus Snape’s loyalties had been with Albus Dumbledore…so the question remains as to why he’s found himself in a situation such as this one. Was the Dark Lord’s power and influence really that strong, that he could steal away an ally of the greatest wizard to ever live? (And yes, Dumbledore is the greatest wizard to ever live. Even a blind man could see it.) Or maybe he was holding something over Snape’s head as well. It definitely isn’t an unheard-of tactic.

The sound of the clock striking midnight from all the way in the tower can be heard over the lack of vocal acknowledgement. He supposes that now would be the appropriate time to bow out. With tired steps, he drags his feet over the creaky wooden floorboards. All he wishes to do is close his eyes and melt into the comfort of his sheets and sleep for the next week or so. Before he can fully push down on the door’s bronze lever, the man behind him finally speaks up.

“Protect her,” is all he says. Harry’s brows form a crease just above the bridge of his nose. His heart picking up speed as he turns abruptly on his heel, a sudden cackle of lightning revealing an absence in front of the window. 

***

Tick.

The pendulum of the large clock sways back and forth, never missing a beat. Minutes being reduced to meager seconds, and the scribbling, scrabbling, scratching of students quickly jotting down their final thoughts becomes more frantic.

Tock. 

Fuck. Where has time gone? Has it really been three hours already? Looks like the Pepperup Potion only does work if one has a cold. 

Tick.

There’s a faint sniffling coming from somewhere in the back––poor lad has most likely cracked under the pressure. Is it question fifteen? It’s most definitely question fifteen. 

Tock.

“Quills down,” Professor McGonagall announces to her sixth year N.E.W.T.-level class. A mixture of groans and sighs of relief spread through the space as the sound of chairs scraping against the floor fill every corner of the examination room. Some students look as though they’d just been on the end of particularly horrific bat-bogey hex, while others are just relieved that it’s all over, erupting in cheers because freedom is just upon the horizon, nearly tangible in their palms. 

Y/n caps her ink bottle and carefully places each quill in their allotted slot in her pouch. If there’s one thing she hates, it’s when their feathers get all ruffled (the other day she’d scolded her boyfriend for just tossing them in his bag…tossing them!). “That wasn’t bad at all,” she says, looking up momentarily to smile at Liam who had been seated right in front of her for the last three hours. 

“I thought it would be loads worse, honestly,” Liam snorts as he stretches out his arms. “That question about the bird conjuring charm? A first year could’ve easily answered it!” he shakes his head and lifts himself out of his seat. 

“It was a bit harder than that, you modest,” she teases in response, reaching over and swatting his shoulder. Ever since she’d first met Liam in first year––they’d become friends when she sat next to him during the start-of-term feast––he’s been known to be exceptionally bright. (And although he’ll never admit it, she knows that he had a small crush on Hermione Granger up until recently. Poor lad had been in a horrible mood when her and Ron Weasley had come to a mutual understanding.) 

As for her, she’s just excited that Harry will be coming home with her once they arrive back at King’s Cross. If all goes well, she’s hoping that maybe he can stay a bit longer…say the whole the summer? She mustn’t get too ahead of herself, of course, but she can’t help it! Just imagining all that they can do in the next few months has her feeling all bubbly inside, like whenever she eats a bunch of Fizzing Whizzbees all at once. Never before has she felt this happy and excited to have someone in her life to the point where she gets giddy just thinking about him.

Strong hands slide around her waist and pull her into their owner’s sturdy chest. Light kisses trail across the side of her face, and she can’t help but giggle as she relaxes into his inviting warmth. He’s like her own personal furnace when she needs it. “Go well?” Harry asks, turning her around in his arms. She hums a response, bringing up a finger to poke the crevice of his dimple that accompanies an utterly adorable lopsided smile. 

***

“Do muggles really wrap their dicks in rubber or some sort?” Harry shoots up from the floor, only to hit his head on the underside of his four-poster, where he had been searching for something that he can’t even remember at the moment because the throbbing in his head shoots to the front that he can feel it just above his eyebrows. A string of colorful words rush out of his mouth like water through the pipes as he balances himself on his feet.

“What are you on about?” he shoots back, grabbing a pillow and chucking it harshly in Niall’s direction. He catches it though, then plops down atop Harry’s mattress, kicking his shoes off––he knows much Harry hates dirty feet on his perfectly clean linen––and linking his fingers together behind his head as he stares up at the drapes above him. 

“Overhead Justin Finch-Fletchley in the courtyard earlier, said something along the lines,” he muses turning on his side to look at Harry, who still sports the scowl along his polished features. “Was just wondering if you knew anything about it or if Y/n’s already wrapped your willy up nice and snug.” Niall falls into a fit of laughter at the progression of emotion displaying on Harry’s face. 

“No, she hasn’t,” he rolls his eyes at the blonde. What irks him more though is that he actually knows what he’s referring to because he’d begrudgingly asked Y/n this a short while ago, and how he wishes he hadn’t. When magic folk have sex, they mutter a simple contraception charm to eliminate the chances of an unplanned pregnancy or take the Morning After potion if they’ve allowed the hormones to gain the upper hand. But he can’t even wrap his mind around having to wrap himself in a pathetic piece of rubber whenever he wants to be intimate with his girlfriend because it really does seem like the ultimate mood-killer.

Other than that, he’s been making his best efforts into learning more about muggles for her sake because he’s fully aware of how important that part of her life is. So far, he’s learned all that he can about what not to do in front of those who think that magic is only a mere part of a kid’s birthday party entertainment act. Not to mention that he’ll be thrown into that mix in the coming days. And fuck, he’s so bloody nervous about the concept of it all. More than anything, he wants her parents to like him because he just really loves her, bless him he does. This could very well make or break them (aside from everything else going on). She says that they’ll love him, but he’s not fully convinced just yet. 

***

It’s a day for the girls, or at least that’s what she’d been told when they’d dragged her out of their dorm room before she could fully open her eyes. She understands that she hasn’t been spending as much time as they had in the years prior, so this little expenditure is long overdue. Also, Hermione had given her a look of pure desperation because there’s no telling what will happen if Lavender says something to piss her off if she isn’t there to accompany them. They’re still at each other’s throats about the whole Ron ordeal, which is partially the reason that she spends so much time away from Gryffindor Tower. 

That’s how she finds herself in the middle of Gladrags Wizardwear, scavenging the racks for something that will catch her attention. She has half the mind to purchase those socks that scream when they get too smelly, just for the fun of it. Or maybe she should look into buying her dad some new robes to wear at those Ministry formals because her mum has been complaining about him wearing the same outfit at the Christmas parties. 

“Oh!” she spots a dark blue button-up that she’s certain would look absolutely amazing on Harry. He’s also in need of some more clothes because she may have nicked a few of his nicer shirts whenever she spends the night. They’re just so comfy and soft and have his scent embedded in each threat, and now over a dozen of them are stored away in her trunk. 

“Is that for the beau?” Parvati comes up behind her, pushing her gorgeous raven hair behind her shoulder as she takes a closer look. When Y/n offers her a blushing smile, she claps her hands together. She’s always telling her how adorable her and Harry are. And since he’s taken to sitting at their table during meals more often, he’s less of a mystery (for the most part) to them. “That’s so sweet!” 

The sound of hangers crashing to the floor disrupts their conversation. “It’s sickening, is more like it,” Lavender rolls her eyes. Yep, she’s still bitter. “Boys are nothing but immature assholes that’ll break your heart once they’ve taken all they’ve can from you because apparently you’re only good for a few months until he’s moved on to someone else!” Every person single in the store pauses what they’re doing, most offering their looks of pure sympathy because the young witch is so completely distraught. Even Hermione can’t even refute such a statement because deep down she does accept to be the reason that for her heartbreak. “Now which one of these dresses brings out the gold in my irises?” Had she not just had a mini fit, Y/n would have told her that the two dresses she’s holding up appear to be the same exact shade of purple. Despite herself, she points to the one on the left, the apparent ‘amethyst’ color, and Lavender rushes into one of the fitting rooms towards the back of the store. 

***

The library is still his favorite place to snog his girlfriend, especially after exams when it’s left nearly deserted. They had snuck past Madam Pince’s desk while she had been interrogating a few students on their––ridiculously long––overdue books. No wonder the librarian is on edge all the time, with all of the nagging she has to do come the end of every year. They had caught the end of a particularly impassioned speech about how books are meant to be treated with the utmost respect, and not to be used as means for cleaning up niffler feces during Care of Magical Creatures. And Y/n can’t imagine the reason why one would even go about such a technique. (Everyone knows that Hagrid stores the really good cleaners in the shed!)

Harry has her pressed up against a bookshelf in the dragon section because it’s always nice and toasty compared to the others, and she still feels a bit cold despite it being so close to July. She never leaves her room without some sort of extra layer, and he’s resorted to bringing along a spare jumper with him just in case she might need it. 

“We’re going to get in trouble,” she giggles into his mouth, and he swallows each one as he continues to suck fervently on her bottom lip. There’s a lingering taste of toffee on her tongue, one that he finds to be particularly intoxicating at the moment––but really, when doesn’t he find anything about her to be? 

“Don’t care, love,” he mumbles back, his breath tickling the shell of her ear as one of his hands reach down to hook under her knee to lift her thigh to wrap around his hip. Goosebumps scatter all across her skin as his calloused fingers run higher and higher up her lower half. She bites her lip and tilts her head back, granting him access to as much of her as possible.  

There really is no chance that he’ll ever get enough of her. From her love of all things sugary, to her obsession with reading Witch Weekly articles that he’s sure are written without suitable evidence to support whatever point they’re trying to get across. Even her animosity towards flying––which is not to say that he still isn’t trying to get her more comfortable on a broom because he really is trying his best. The other day he’d planned on giving her some lessons, but his Gryffindor is a determined little thing. She knows he can never resist her, especially when she ups the soft and cuddly factor by the tenfold. It only took a bit of convincing and sweet tender kisses to the base of his jaw, and the next thing he knew they were having a picnic by the lake with Ashes during a rare appearance from the sun.

They manage to go another couple of minutes before getting interrupted. It’s a low cough that barely reaches his ears, and he’s a bit annoyed because he was this close to getting to love on her proper. A part of him is afraid that it’ll be Madam Pince about ready to zap his bum into oblivious because they’ve been warned so many times before about this. She’s threatened him with multiple detentions until the day her leaves the doors of Hogwarts for the last time. But he turns only to meet…well, he’s not quite sure who she is. 

“Can I help you?” he asks.

The girl, who appears to be no older than twelve stares up at them shyly, her nose twitching in the slightest. “Professor Dumbledore wants to see you in his office,” she barely squeaks out. 

What? Professor Dumbledore wishes to see him? In his six years of being a student here, he doesn’t think he’s spoken more than ten words to the elderly wizard, and those had just been respectful greetings when they cross paths across the field. 

Y/n rests her palm on his chest, smiling genially at the girl before offering her thoughts. “Are you sure he needs this Harry? I’m sure you mean Potter, yeah?”  

“No,” the girl replies timidly. “I have a note requesting for Harry Styles.” She reaches into the pocket of her jeans and pulls out a precisely folded piece of parchment. Harry eyes it suspiciously for a moment, before taking it from in between the girl’s fingers. 

Harry, please meet me in my office this afternoon for a spot of tea. I hope you like earl grey! The password is ‘sherbet lemon.’

All the best,

Professor Dumbledore

Now he’s completely fucked. He closes his eyes and leans forward against Y/n’s forehead, taking in deep breaths through his nose. “I’ll stop by Gryffindor later, yeah?” He gives her a departing kiss, letting his hands slide down from around her waist slowly until they’re at his sides.

***

Before his knuckles can knock on the door of the headmaster’s office, it swings open before him. Harry looks up from his feet and peeks his head into the spacious room with ceiling lights illuminating the space rather delicately. 

“Come in, Harry,” he hears a voice call out for him, and he finds it to be so impeccably warm and inviting, and the type to hold so many stories about everything life has to offer. “You’re just in time! I’ve just got it up to the perfect temperature,” he motions to the pot, with blue floral accents lining the edges down by the base, as well as around its slender spout. He chooses to focus on this, rather than Dumbledore’s wistful smile as he walks forward. 

A wave of déjà vu washes over him. He’s been in this type of situation before, albeit the sense of hospitality somehow making him feel a bit queasy. It was only some nights ago that he’d been standing on the other side of Snape’s less luxurious desk, delivering news that would affect the person in front of him now.  

There’s a mumbling coming from above, he allows his gaze to drift upwards, where all portraits of former Hogwarts Headmasters scatter across the wall. An argument seems to have arisen, from the words he can just barely make out. “Will you lot hush, can’t you see we have company?” Phineas Nigellus Black yells out. Dexter Fortescue scoffs aloud, “I will if Fronsac would shut that bloody insufferable trap of his!”

“Gentleman,” Dumbledore turns around, his hands placed firmly on his hips as he gives them all such an authoritative expression that makes each pair of lips pull tightly in a straight line. “You all know how much I enjoy your company, but maybe take the day to visit your other portraits, hmm?” Each former headmaster beckons a departure, shifting to either side of the frame and disappearing from eyesight (although, he does hear one of them mutter a complaint of being kicked out of his own office). “Harry, my boy, please do take a seat.”

Harry climbs the platform that Dumbledore’s desk is situated on, a noticeable timidity as he takes them one by one. A chair––presumably for him––sits just opposite of the grander chair of the headmaster. It has a deep shaded red cushion sitting nice a plump atop of it. When he sets himself down, he finds his bum just molding in the awfully comfortable padding. “Profe-”

“Do you take milk and sugar in your tea?” the elderly wizard asks him. 

“No, sir,” he quips. He listens as the steaming liquid pours into the matching tea cup. Dumbledore reaches across the table to hand him the cup with its matching saucer, to which he cautiously takes from his wrinkled hands. The seemingly charred skin rousing his attention for the time being. “Thank you, sir.”

***

She’s growing restless with each passing minute. When Harry had been called up to the headmaster’s office, she had expected it to only last a half an hour, tops, and that had been over two hours ago. What could Dumbledore possibly want with her boyfriend? He’s not a troublemaker by any means, well…unless you count getting yelled at by Madam Pince or Filch, but if that were the case, she would have been called up as well. 

What if he’s going to talk to him about his father? Harry would absolutely dread it! It’s understandably still a touchy subject for him. She’s working on a letter to send her dad before they leave. It’s basically her begging him not to bring up anything about Desmond Styles and especially about You-Know-Who. She hears the snide comments that have been erupting from particularly obnoxious students about how the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And if it weren’t for her mum teaching her to not let such heathens affect her in any way, no matter how much she wants to snap back at them for implying such things about Harry. 

“Will you quit it? I can’t bloody focus on my book when you’re being all fidgety,” Liam scolds her, thwacking the cover of George Orwell’s 1984 to her feet rested in his lap. She sticks her tongue out at him, kicking the book enough that it lands face down on the carpet. “Oi, the pages will crease!” 

***

“You and Ms. Y/l/n are an item, yes?” Dumbledore asks, genuinely curious as he sets the teacup and sauces down on the flat surface. Harry nods, a fondness in the way he smiles. “Ah, to be young and in love, as the saying goes, I think.” Both chuckle soundly. Conversation has been rather light, and there must be something in the tea because Harry’s feeling so at ease in spite of the internal chaos his nerves had been sending him through earlier. It’s definitely the tea, he thinks. There had been this natural sweetness to it that let his muscles relax enough so he could be a more sociable human being. 

It’s also oddly satisfying to gush over his girl to someone that isn’t Niall. The blonde Irishman has been up his arse lately because his most recent date had gone horribly wrong by the time the food had come to the table. He still isn’t quite sure what happened, but he guesses it would be in everyone’s best interest to not pry into the matter. Which is why when Y/n had surprised him the other day with that button-up she had bought on her day out with the girls, he had to hide it under his shirt because Niall’s mood would only get worse if he were to have seen. 

“And we’d do anything for the people we love, yes?” A twinkle in his eyes as he peers over his half-moon spectacles that look as though they’re about to fall over the tip of his nose.

“Yeah,” Harry finds himself saying, his lips formed into that boyish grin that could accurately tell anyone how enamored he is. “I’d do anything for her.” Then it hits him. The reason why he’d been invited for tea this afternoon was this. He wipes his mouth down with the napkin spread out on his lap. “Professor, I-”

Dumbledore sits back in his throne-like chair. His fingers stroking along his long grey beard, picking out a few crumbs from the biscuits they had been indulging in. “The thing about love is,” he pauses momentarily, chuckling to himself when he finds a particularly chunky crumb tangled in the tips. ���Is that it has the power to drive us to do things––some that we may not be proud––because we fear losing those who mean the most to us.” Harry swallows hard, and suddenly the tea is leaving a tart taste in his mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” his voice lost in the guilt. “I-I wish I didn’t have to do this, but he…I can’t lose her.”

“You shouldn’t apologize for wanting to protect your loved ones, Harry.” Dumbledore stands up and comes around the desk, leaning back along the edge just meters away from where Harry becomes restless on the plump red cushion. “You are a better person than you think you are.”

***

It’s a few days later, his girl fast asleep on his chest as places repeated kisses to the crown of her head. The curtains around his four-poster providing them with the privacy needed to shield themselves from his four––now three––roommates. 

Tonight, is the night. The night that will spark the beginning of a war that he isn’t sure will ever cease to exist, at least in this lifetime. Maybe he can convince Y/n to run away with him to some place where the Dark Lord’s influence doesn’t reach. They could start their life there, in their own personal oasis where they wouldn’t have to worry about surviving into the next day. He would marry her, find her a nice rock that would look gorgeous on her fourth finger alongside her current ring. Then maybe when they’re ready they could have a few precious little babies, a mini him and a mini her running around in their diapers and making Ashes’ fur change colors each time they giggle whenever he tickles their squishy little bellies. He bets they’ll inherit a proclivity for sweets just like their mummy, and hopefully won’t jump on her ‘no flying’ business because he’s definitely planning on taking them out on his broom once they’re old enough. 

She starts to stir in her sleep, burying her face further into the crook of his neck and mumbling his name ever so softly. He strokes her hair and whispers sweet nothings into her ear to keep her safe away in dreamland. “Shh, I’m here, angel. I’m right here.” And then she’s still again, the steady rise and fall of her chest comes as a relief. 

It doesn’t last though. At exactly 10:49 pm on the 30th of June, the Hogwarts community says goodbye to their beloved headmaster. His body lays lifeless on the cold ground at the foot of the Astronomy Tower. Niall had woken them up in frantic haze, and the three of them rushed out to see if the spreading news had any truth to it. Although Harry had been dreadfully anticipating this moment for six months. And now that scene is right in front of him, it’s inexplicable and something he wished he could shield her from. 

Harry holds on to her hand tightly as they become encompassed in the crowd gathered around the fallen wizard. The sniffles and cries of students and faculty alike are released into the darkness casted by the storm cloud overhead. When Y/n catches a glimpse of Harry Potter hunched over Dumbledore’s body, bitter sobs growing louder and louder as he shakes him, urging him to open his eyes.

But he doesn’t. And the sight bites at everyone’s heart.

Professor McGonagall is the first one to draw her wand. A small ray of light emitting from the tip as she stares up to the sky through a glossed layer of tears. In an almost practiced manner, hundreds of wands are raised up in the air, fighting off the shadows that creep around in the antagonistic night until a stroke of illumination nudges its way to disperse the cloud of its evil presence and give the headmaster the rightful parting he deserves, even if the world isn’t quite ready to say goodbye. 

Y/n softly cries into his chest, her tears absorbing through the material of his thin grey tank and burning his skin. The last words spoken to him still fresh in his mind and holds such important meaning. It had been simple, but to him, it meant the world. Not because now he feels vindicated for having the dark mark permanently embedded on his left forearm, but because he was served hope on a silver platter. He sucks in harshly, his eyes scanning through the crowd in search for that unmistakable head of platinum blond hair that he had been working so close with for months. 

Draco Malfoy is nowhere in sight, he had fulfilled his mission. 

And now Albus Dumbledore was dead.

***

When Harry pictured himself meeting his girlfriend’s father, he hadn’t anticipated it being at a funeral. He knows Dumbledore hadn’t wanted him to feel guilty about this, but that’s easier said than done. What if his father had never become a death eater during the first Wizarding War? Would he have been forced to help mend the vanishing cabinet that still remains up in the Room of Requirement? He likes to that things would have turned out differently. He and Y/n walk into the Great Hall hand in hand when she suddenly releases her grip on him and runs towards the man, bringing him in for a big suffocating hug. 

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Nicolás pulls away and runs his hand down her ponytail with a faltered tug of the lips. He looks a bit older than she remembers him being over the holidays. A few greyer hairs sprouted at the roots of his hairline and the wrinkles just below his eyelids more prominent when he smiles. 

“I’m fine, dad,” she assures him, running her hand up and down his arm. “Just shaken up is all.” She didn’t know how much she missed him until today. All her life her dad had been her protector, the one she’d run to whenever she was stricken with a nightmare or in a mood when she hadn’t done as well as she would have on a test. But now she has two men to make her feel protected. She looks to her side, anticipating Harry to be there, but instead he’s standing awkwardly where she had left him. Oops. “I’ll be right back,” she tells Nicolás.

Oh gods, he panics as her heels click on the marble floor. She holds out her hand to him when she’s about arm’s length, to which he takes gladly as a reflex. (Curse his desire to always be touching her in some way.) “Want you to meet someone,” her doe-like eyes beaming up at him as she gently tugs him her direction of origin. And now he’s staring directly into a similar pair of eyes, although these are much less loving and much sterner than what he’s used to. 

“Mr. Y/l/n,” he acknowledges, “it’s…um…” breathe, Harry, breathe! “an honor to meet you, sir.” Fabulous first impression, Harry. Ten points to Slytherin! To think he’s been just centimeters away from Voldemort himself, and yet this is probably the closest he’s been to shitting his trousers. 

Nicolás looks him up and down, and Harry can practically feel the judgment oozing with each moment of passing reticence. He tilts his head to Y/n, her lip caught between her teeth as she tries offer him glances of encouragement. 

“Harry,” Nicolás finally breaks, “it’s about time we be properly acquainted.” Harry lets out a long breath––although it’s unobserved by the Y/l/ns––and nods gingerly. Even Y/n exhales in relief because she just wouldn’t know how to handle such a stiff situation at this time. She knew her dad would be sensible, after all, that letter she’d ending up writing him had been about fourteen pages, front and back, which included very clear directives to be nice to him. 

They chat for some time, dancing around the topic of what’s actually happening around them until they’re forced to accept it and find their seats in an empty pew alongside Liam and Niall. Y/n hates funerals, probably more than anyone else she knows. Those hymns they play during the procession of the casket touches her the wrong way and she often finds herself feeling a bit nauseous. But never like this. Now more than ever, she swears that the pungent smell of incense floating around the room touches her nostrils in the worst ways possible. What is this wretched stench? Harry notices the faintest tint of green on her and wraps an arm around her shoulder. 

“Are you okay?” his feels her forehead with the back of his hand. Thankfully she hasn’t got a temperature, but it still doesn’t overcome the fact that she looks about the shade of a green Anjou pear.

***

The train pulls away from Hogsmeade Station, the image of the castle gradually leaving their sites as the engine picks up speed. No one knows what’s to come in the next school year with everything that’s happened. Professor McGonagall had given a solemn message during the end-of-term feast that put things into perspective for many students. This is all really happening. It’s no longer a fear of the when, but a fear of the now. 

“I’m glad we’ll be far away from here,” Harry says as he watches the countryside pass them by. Some of the land destroyed in one of the more recent death eater attacks, the once abundance of prosperous crops now reduced to ash beyond any magical repair. That’s the thing about dark magic, its effects can be irreversible, or as good as. 

The Ministry has come out with a slew of statements, each one as desperate and unbelievable as the last. The people need security, not just near empty words promising a safer tomorrow. Because now the safest place in all of Wizarding Britain has been tainted so drastically that parents will most definitely withhold their children from returning next term; and if Hogwarts is no longer a refuge for security, then what place is?  

“We should just stay away forever,” he says into a whisper. Y/n looks up at him through her eyelashes.

“Where would we go?” she dares to ask him, tracing her finger over his torso. He shrugs his shoulders. “Doesn’t matter, as long as I’ve got you, I could live just about anywhere.” 

“You mean that?” 

“Every word.”

***

Harry likes Muggle London. More than he’s willing to admit. 

The idea of living here crosses his mind whenever he finds something new that he genuinely enjoys. Muggles have these nifty screens that have people inside of them that lets everyone know what the weather is outside before even setting foot out the front door. He’d been glued in front of the telly for a good couple of hours before Y/n had to forcibly drag him away because he’d been sitting too close and would definitely strain his eyeballs. She thinks it’s cute though, how excited he gets when he learns something new or is presented with some crazy invention unconceivable to the average pureblood’s brain. 

He’s getting along with her parents as well. Linette Y/l/n is such a wonderful woman and now he knows where Y/n gets her sweetness from. The first day they’d arrived, she’d asked him what his favorite meal was and prepared it for dinner a few hours later. (Don’t tell anyone, but he thinks it’s better than what his house elf, Tin-Tin, has ever made. If word gets out, then he knows the poor little elf would punish herself.) Nicolás is at work most of the time, but they did go out for lunch yesterday, and the two talked all things quidditch, much to Y/n’s contempt. There’s still a smidgen of tension that linger in the air between them, but Harry doesn’t let it affect him for his girlfriend’s sake. He still isn’t certain if he likes him or not because sometimes he feels himself being observed a little too closely for his liking. 

What he likes most of all, however, is that her room is right across the hall from his. And since this isn’t school, he’s actually allowed to enter her bedroom––which he’d been in once before on Christmas Eve into Christmas day––and really get a feel for who she is. Her room is just as adorable as she is, he decides now that he’s finally had a chance to soak in every detail. The walls painted a muted pink that appear white at first glance. She has a whole shelf full of pictures of her through the years in order of when they had been taken. 

“You were such a cutie, just look at those pigtails!” he gushes, picking up a picture of her from when she was only five years old. This of course causes her to blush and give him that pout that always manages to make him swoon. “Now you’re a right beauty, aren’t you? My beautiful girl that I love to bits and pieces.” He pulls her into his lap and nuzzles into her cheek. “Love you so much, I do.” These muggles are making feel even softer than usual. 

“Yeah?” she giggles, giving him a quick peck to the lips as her fingers tread up into his brown curls. He nods thoughtfully and kisses her chin. “That’s a relief because I love you lots too.” 

Their loving looks soon turn into much more, their lips languidly moving together while their hands roam over each other’s bodies. Her parents aren’t home, which makes this the ideal time to show her just how much he means every word of his affections. (Imagine the look on Nicolás’ face if he were to walk in on them.) He’s quick to pull her shirt over her head, laying her down on her back on top of the mattress.  

***

She washes the mixture of sweat and sex off her body, humming along to a Beatles song she had heard her mum blasting before she’d left for work. Her strawberry scented body wash all nice and foamy on the loofa that she moves all over her skin. 

“Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes there beneath the tides-ow!” she drops the loofa on the shower floor and cups her breasts in her hands. The girls have been feeling awfully tender recently, and she thinks it might be because her period will soon be gracing her with its presence. She’d nearly punched Harry in the gut earlier because he’d taken to tweaking one of her nipples in his mouth, which under normal conditions would have definitely gotten her motor running, but they’re so ultra-sensitive right now that it just didn’t feel good at all. This could only mean that its symptoms are going to hit her like a load of bricks. 

***

They take the Piccadilly line from Gloucester Road to Covent Gardens. (Harry’s become completely taken with the London Underground, says the tube is his favorite muggle invention of all time.) She figured she’d show him the wonder that is Neal’s Garden, with the eccentric multi-colored buildings that spread throughout the alley. It’s not as crowded as other parts of London that she’d taken him to. There are definitely less people here than when she had taken him down the entire length of Oxford Street. No, this place has just the perfect number of civilians to make it feel alive and vibrant. 

The tight passageways lively with different stores to fit all the health and wellness needs anyone could ever have––Y/n drags Harry to the location’s namesake organic beauty shop the second she spots it, and the two invest their money in lovely smelling moisturizers for both the body and face. She’s seen his toiletries bag, and there’s just as much product (maybe even more) than in hers. This really does explain why he’s got such perfect and pore-less skin. 

When their stomachs grow a bit peaky, they find a quaint little restaurant at the end of the street that Y/n claims to serve the best pizza in all of London. Both moan at the taste of the gooey cheese stringing along after each bite from the wood-fired crust that has just the most delectable crunch to it. The two share a few innocent kisses here and there that taste of tomato and basil but are sweet nonetheless.

“You’ve got a little…here, I’ll get it for you, love.” He leans in attaches his lips to the side of her mouth to rid it of a tiny dribble of pizza sauce. “There, all clean,” he cheeks, winking at her before helping himself to another slice. 

Because there’s always room for dessert, at least as Y/n so proudly believes in, they share a large cup of gelato between the two of them on a bench in one of the more secluded areas. The lady behind the counter had only given them one spoon, so she feeds the both of them, alternating who gets to take a bite from the creamy goodness of stracciatella. But Harry is a bit greedy, directing the spoon to his awaiting mouth when it had been on its way into hers. 

“Hey!” Y/n gasps, furrowing her eyebrows because that bite had had a good amount of chocolate on it––and he doesn’t even fancy chocolate as much as she does! She dips her finger alongside the inner edges of the cup, coating it nice and even with a chunk of cold sweetness before rubbing it all over the side of Harry’s face. “You’ve got a little-” she mimics him, stifling a fit of giggles because he just looks so absolutely scandalized. 

“So that’s what you’re playing at, yeah?” He takes a fingerful of gelato and smears down the entire length of her nose and over her cupid’s bow. And they end up getting in a little food fight, ignoring the stares of those around them as they flick whatever remains in the cup at each other. 

By the end of it all, they’re both a sticky mess, and Harry pulls them into an empty washroom and freshens them both up with a cleaning spell that rids their clothes of any evidence of a mess. And they may have taken longer than they thought because someone comes banging on the door as though meant to punch through it. “Oi, no shagging in the toilets, there are people out here that need to have a wee!”  

***

He’s happy, so unexplainably and purely happy that he doesn’t think anything will ever top the feeling. It’s like all of their problems have been left behind in the Wizarding World, and now they’re free to carry on with their lives without fearing for the worst. 

As they head back in the direction of the tube station, he revels in how the warmth of the sun radiates onto her hair, casting somewhat of halo around the rim of her head. Gods, he didn’t think it was possible for her to look even more angelic than she already does. And he just can’t help himself. He presses her in between him and the outside wall of a store, one hand on her waist, the other just above her entire height. His lips hover over hers, breathing into her mouth as he looks down at her through half-lidded eyes. 

“My perfect angel.” She can feel the air of his words puff in her face as she reaches up and cups his face to finally press her trembling lips to his in a passionate exchange that has her knees buckling and barely able to support her weight had it not been for him holding onto her so tight.

***

“You two seem to have had a nice time,” Linette says when they enter through the front door. 

Y/n kisses her mum on the cheek. “Sure did,” she smiles, pulling out all of their shopping bags from her little purse. Extension charms surely are a blessing to this world. 

“Did you have fun, Harry? Hope this one didn’t tire you out too much. I know I’m always an exhausted mess when we go out,” Linette pokes fun at her daughter, who in turn scrunches her face into a pout. “Oh, don’t be like that. If you keep making that face, it’ll get stuck that way.” 

The playful banter between a mother and her child, it all feels so foreign to him. He can’t remember the last time he and Anne had shared a laugh, or even a look of admiration like Y/n and Linette are now. He and Gemma used to pick her flowers from the garden every morning when they were smaller. Tin-Tin would help them pick out the prettiest ones with the largest petals and greenest stems and wrap them up in some fancy colored paper to give to her at breakfast. Those are the memories he holds dearest to his heart because it’s all he has left of their once happy family.

“What’s wrong?” Y/n asks, wrapping her arms around his neck and bringing him out of his thoughts. “Haven’t said a word since we’ve gotten here.”

He shakes his head and pecks gently at her forehead. “It’s nothing, love. Just tired is all.” She eyes him suspiciously for a moment but decides to drop the subject. They talk about the day’s events with Linette. Y/n shows her all the things she bought, from the boots she had gotten off a clearance sale to those hydrating facials masks from Neal’s Yard Remedies that are meant to tighten the skin and leave it looking young and refreshed. 

***

Y/n hums happily as she helps her mum in the kitchen, that same Beatles song from earlier today. 

“Since it’s just us girls here,” Linette speaks up, popping her head out the archway leading to the dining room. “Tell me about him,” she bumps their hips together as they chop the vegetables for stew she plans on serving later.

“Well,” Y/n starts, overwhelmed by all the things she can say about him because she could go on and on about even the simplest of his habits that she can’t decide on where to start. “He’s amazing, mum. Really, really great.” A smile lifting the edges of her lips. She really does feel like the luckiest girl to someone like him love her the way he does. “I always get butterflies in my tummy when I’m around him, he treats me like I’m a princess.” 

“I’m happy for you, lovey. He seems like a nice boy.”

Knowing that her mum approves of him means the world to her, and she knows that her dad will come around full circle as well. 

“I know you probably don’t want to talk about this, but as your mum I feel obligated to ask.” Uh oh. “Have you two,” she bops her head as if that would make what she was trying to elude to so blatantly obvious. “You know, you’re young and sometimes young people get into these moods and one thing leads to another and…”

“Mum!” she gasps, dropping the knife on the cutting board and covering her ears. “You’re right, I don’t want to talk about this!” La, la, la. She much rather engage in the whole ‘future’ conversation because at least that doesn’t involve something so private. 

But Linette’s fingers wrap around her wrist and forcefully remove bring them away from her head. “I’m not entirely sure how you magic lot take care of this kind of thing. Just promise me you’re being careful, yeah? That’s all I ask!” 

“We are, mum. Promise,” she groans, ignoring the way her stomach flips over into somersaults. Thankfully Harry’s still asleep in his room, and won’t ever have to listen to how mum is making her cheeks flush a violent shade of red. 

“I’m just saying!” Linette pokes her sides. “And I think you’d appreciate me talking to you about this than your dad because God only knows he’d sputter out.” 

***

He stretches out the knots in his back after having waken up from a rejuvenating nap. The sheer white curtains allowing some of the sunlight enter into his room and lighten his aura. Although, he’s feeling a bit annoyed because he could’ve sworn that his girlfriend had been asleep next to him when he had closed his eyes. She’s probably in the kitchen snacking on those Mars Bars that she bought while in queue at the Waitrose yesterday. His feet swing over the side of the bed, his head still trying to wake up along with the rest of his body.

There’s an unaccounted-for gust of wind that blows his hair onto his face. Maybe he had left the window open, or maybe Y/n had done so before she left? He finally lifts his bum off the soft cushioning and limps his way over. He moves the curtain aside, but he’s despondent to see that everything is sealed and locked. His eyes instinctively move up to look past the window as a sudden chill rattles his bones. 

Across the street is a man dressed in all black robes, his long white-blonde hair pulled back into a small low ponytail. He stands there with no regard for the curious glances of pedestrians that pass him on the sidewalk. This man shouldn’t be here. That had been part of the deal. Harry’s fists curl tightly into his palms, his nails digging crescents in the skin. The man outside signals for him to come down with just a finger. He’s taunting him, trying to intimidate him, and gods, he hates that it’s working. 

Harry grabs his wand from the side table then apparates to the empty alleyway a few houses down. He skillfully lands firmly on his feet without a hint of imbalance. His wand shoved back into his front pocket, it’s handle covered by his shirt. 

The approaching footsteps kick the bits of rubble on the ground. A daunting laugh nearly venomous to the ears. “How’s life amongst the muggles, Styles?” 

“Get the fuck out of here, Yaxley.” He grips his neck tightly in his hands and shoves him harshly into the brick wall, half the mind to choke him on the spot. 

The death eater struggles to breathe, but a smirk still remains on his face. “My, my, someone’s got himself a temper,” he chokes out. With the tut of his tongue he draws a letter from his robes pocket, his name addressed on the front of the envelope in finely printed lettering. “A message from the Dark Lord.” 

He eyes it cautiously before releasing his strangling hold and snatching the letter from his pale fingers. Yaxley coughs out as he tries to absorb more oxygen in his lungs. He glares at Harry but doesn’t act on whatever bitterness he may have racked up. 

No, instead he decides to push all the buttons he knows will emit a desirable reaction. “Got yourself quite the girl there, lad. Would be right shame to see something happen to that pretty face of hers.” 

Ignore him, he tells himself. It takes all the strength given to him the forces above to not react. Not when her and her mum are so close distance. 

“Couldn’t have just sent an owl?” he sneers, tearing the top of the envelope and pulling out the folded piece of paper that he expects to have some sort of new assignment he’s meant to complete. When he unfurls it, however, there are two words written.

We know.

“What is this bullshit?” Harry looks back up at Yaxley, crumpling the paper up and throwing it at him. “This some kind of joke?” ‘They know’ what? Harry can truthfully say that he hasn’t an idea of what this could be pertaining to. He’s not an idiot, he would never do something to put his girl’s life at risk. 

“Interesting,” Yaxley circles around him. “The Dark Lord will be absolutely floored when I tell him. Might want to consider paying mummy a visit.”

“Wha-” But before he can get out another word, black smoke fumes into the air as the death eater flies up into broad daylight. He hears a medley of gasps from the main street, his dropping in frustration. 

What doesn’t he know?

***

The next day he makes up an excuse that he has to pop back home for a bit because his mum has come down with freak disease, and Gemma is stuck working overtime at St. Mungo’s. Y/n seems to be understanding, although she does get a bit pouty because she had planned for them to head up to Hampstead Heath this afternoon. He promises her that he’ll be back to get a show of the sunset, and then he’s off. 

He apparates into his childhood bedroom at Styles House, a rush of nostalgia hitting him as he takes a good look around. It’s just as he left it, not a single speck of dust cloaks over any of the surfaces. 

“Master Harry! Tin-Tin is so pleased to welcome Master home!” he turns around at the pop of the house elf. 

“Where’s Mum?” he asks her, patting her head. 

“Mistress is in the den. Would master like Tin-Tin to let mistress know that he’s here?” she smiles widely at him. She’s always been very attentive, and he remembers how he almost set her free when he was younger.

Harry runs out the door and descends down the grand staircase, nearly tripping over his own feet in the rush he’s in. 

“Mum,” he breathes out once he’s stood under the archway. Anne snaps up at him, her eyes growing wide surprise as she covers her mouth with both hands. They stare at each other for what seems like hours. 

It’s Anne that makes the first move, she gathers him in her arms and pulls him in for a tight embrace. She cries softly, and he’s not sure what kind they are. The way she rubs his back tells him she’s happy to have him here, but then there’s something else saturated in each one of her tears. 

“Mum,” he repeats, grasping her shoulders and pulling away far enough to look directly into her eyes. “I need to know if you’re not telling me something.”

Her mouth opens but closes immediately after. She peers behind him as if looking for something. “Where is she?” she questions sternly. He returns the stare. “Come with me.” She takes hold of his wrist and leads him outside through the gardens and towards the cabana that he’s only ever been in a few times in his life. The doors open before them, and close loudly when they’re fully situated in the room. This is where they keep the Styles family tapestry. The faces of its members dating all the way back to the fourteenth century. 

Anne walks further into the room, towards the middle where the most recent generation is located in this intricate web. Her arms are crossed over her chest as she stares at the bottom of their family’s section. Harry follows her eyes, starting from his grandparents, down to his parents, then Gemma and himself, then finally…

***

A/N: Oh goodness, it’s been a while! Thank you all so much for your feedback and support for this series.

What do you think is going to happen next? Tell me here!

[peachyzens]

love letters (two)

love letters (two)

masterlist: previous | next

genre: fluff, angst summary: “Stars in the night sky can’t compare to the ones i see in your eyes.” Crushes were unconventional, especially the one you had on Kim Mingyu. (3,339 words) a/n: kind of late but here is part 2 of the series :~) masterlist can be found here! 

The rest of your seventh grade year went by in the blink of an eye, the anticipation towards getting out of middle school fueling your senses. Your crush on Mingyu still remained as strong as ever, there was just one problem now.

You weren’t the only one.

Kim Mingyu has decided to try out for the basketball, or so you heard. Gossip went around near the end of seventh grade, soon reaching your ears. When you heard the rumors, you almost wanted to laugh out loud. The boy was adorably scrawny, there was no way he could survive on the basketball team without getting injured.

Eighth grade proved you wrong.

Kim Mingyu was now a popular jock in your local middle school, hell, he was even known by other schools. When he showed up on the first day of eighth grade significantly bulkier and taller, more people took notice of his cheeky grin and distinct features.

“Woah, who is that with Seokmin and Minghao?”

“I think he’s new, I’ve never seen him before!”

“Wow, he’s so tall and hot!”

“No way, you’re telling me that the hot guy is Kim Mingyu? Wow, what a glo-up!”

That being said, you weren’t the only one crushing on Mingyu. The trio, who was formerly seen only as a duo plus one, remained as the school’s sweethearts, having people fall for them left and right. You were slightly bitter, having discovered about the charms of Kim Mingyu way before these people would bat an eyelash at him, but that was just how it was. That’s all your connection was with him—a one-sided crush.

“I’ve missed you girls so much!” Rachel gushed, wrapping her arms around the three of you as best as she could when seated at the lunch table.

“It’s only been like three months, and we still met up during the summer!” Jennie rolled her eyes, yet falling into Rachel’s embrace.

“I know I know, but wow, summer really did good for some people. Like, have you seen Kim Mingyu? He’s crazy cute now!” Rachel gushed in a quieter tone, causing you to nearly choke on your water.

“Yeah! He really wasn’t lying when he said he was going to join the basketball team, but wow, it worked out great for him. He’s a complete king now!” Jennie gushed as well, you nodding in agreement. But in your eyes, he was always somebody that mattered.

As much as you agreed with all the gushing about Mingyu, there was that underlying anger at how people only paid attention to him now that he changed. You were there when he was he past self, and you were still here at his new transformation. Yet, you were in no position to say anything when the only person who knew that you were there for him was just yourself.

The halls were deserted at this time, yet your footsteps were echoing throughout. It was abnormally early to be at school, but it wasn’t the first time. For the first time in the new school year, you were going to leave another note in Mingyu’s locker. After your first note the previous year, you couldn’t stop hiding little notes in his locker. Whether it would be an inspirational quote you stumbled upon or some encouragement during difficult times, you quickly jotted them on your paper before sealing it up and slipping it in. Having done it many times, it was second nature to you by this point.

With your hands sliding your backpack off your tired shoulders, you set yourself down along the wall with a small smile. Just thinking about your letters and the impact they had on Mingyu made you happy, and you were hoping he felt the same way about them. Placing your backpack in front of your feet, you leaned your head back with a small sigh. Coming to school this early several days a week definitely took a toll on your body, with your dark circles becoming more prominent than before. You shut your eyes, resting them before the bustle of students entering would soon wake you up.

However, the sound of a frantic dash down the hall and your backpack flopping a few feet away woke you up sooner than you would’ve preferred. With an irritated opening of your eyes, you were almost stunned to see Kim Mingyu in front of you, profusely apologizing for the mess he made. Your heart stopped for a second, or at least it felt like it did, with how lost in your daze you were after seeing Mingyu.

“Are you alright? Once again, I’m so sorry, I was running late for practice and I wasn’t paying attention,” he rambled on, snapping you out of your daze. You realized that you hadn’t zipped your backpack up all the way, the contents slightly strewn about from the impact of Mingyu’s crash. He was frantically gathering all your supplies as you sat there.

“Huh? Oh, yeah! I’m sorry! You don’t have to pick it up, it’s my things!” you spoke up for the first time, now reaching for your scattered belongings.

“No, really, it was my fault! I wasn’t paying attention and I,” he paused mid sentence, taking your attention from the colored pens you were picking up. You turned to him to see his eyes stuck on something—your stationary, the same one you would write his letters with. With a look of horror, you quickly grabbed the stray pens and the papers out of his hands before shoving them back into your bag.

“Ha, well that’s the last of it! You should go now, you mentioned you were late and I don’t want to keep you here any longer!” You spoke, hoping he wouldn’t notice how hard your heart was beating against your chest and the bead of sweat that was threatening to fall from your forehead.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I should go. Sorry about that again.” He spoke in a distant voice, as if he had a lot of things on his mind. You were mentally cursing your carelessness, quickly standing up and heading in the opposite direction, not taking any more glances towards Mingyu to save yourself from the embarrassment. You let out a sigh of relief hearing his footsteps start to run again in the direction of the gym. You just missed the last glance Mingyu shot towards you, one that was filled with interest as a small grin appeared on his face.

“Wow, these are so cute! Why are you giving them to us though?” Jennie raised a questioning eyebrow at you, as Rachel shuffled through the sheets of stationary you were giving them.

“I bought too much, I thought it would be better to share them with you guys than let it collect dust in my desk.” You shrugged nonchalantly, hoping they would buy it. Jennie shot you one last wary glance before redirecting her attention to the stationary, soon the reason for her wariness forgotten as the cute puppies on the paper screamed her name.

You felt a weight lifted on your shoulder. You had thought long and hard about how to make Mingyu think that the admirer wasn’t you, you just weren’t ready to be found out so soon. Not to mention, there was rarely anybody around school that carried the same stationary as you, since the store you often purchased from was a hidden treasure only you knew about. Not anymore, there were two more individuals who carried the same papers, meaning there was a smaller chance that Mingyu could narrow the admirer to you. You felt bad using your friends cluelessness for yourself, but you had to do what you had to do.

“Dude, you need to tell me where got these papers ASAP, Mingyu actually spoke to me about them!” Rachel spoke once you all sat down at your usual table. Feeling your heart beat in nervousness, you asked for her to elaborate. “I have a class with him, and he sits in the back while I sit in the aisle. So when he was walking to his seat, he saw that I had these papers on my desk and actually stopped to ask me where I got them from!”

“Did he say anything else?” You spoke up, acting as normal as you could.

“No, I just told him I forgot the name of the store because I didn’t know what else to say! I was too stunned that the Kim Mingyu was speaking to me!” Rachel sighed in exasperation, soon mumbling about how Mingyu must think she’s an idiot. You felt yourself let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding as Jennie was too busy rolling her eyes at Rachel to take notice.

Been there, done that, you thought to yourself, finding Rachel’s reaction to Mingyu speaking to her much more relatable than anybody would’ve thought.

Living in a safe neighborhood, you were glad to be able to freely walk around at night, equipped with nothing more than your essentials and a pepper spray can just in case. You skipped down the street to your local stationary shop, having run low on supplies since giving some to Rachel and Jennie for damage control.

Feeling in a particularly good mood this night, you decided to take a small detour and pass through a neighborhood park you were familiar with in the past. Living in the same neighborhood since childhood, you practically knew it like the back of your hand at this point. You felt your feet drag yourself to the park you used to happily play at, expecting to have it to yourself.

What you didn’t expect was to see Kim Mingyu, sitting on a bench as he stared up at the sky.

You immediately stopped in your steps, staring at him with an awestruck expression. Not to mention, he looked totally endearing in his natural state. His typical jeans replaced by a pair of joggers, a simple graphic tee on his torso, and freshly washer hair that looked soft to the touch.  You just stared at him with admiration in your eyes, you wanted to know how someone could be so beautiful without even trying.

As if he sensed your presence, he took his attention from the sky and brought it to you instead. His face showed an expression of recognition as he greeted you with a smile and a wave. Now, you stared at him with a shocked expression.

“Seeing each other a bit often now are we?” He spoke, with that stupid grin on his face that did things to your heart. “Want to sit?”He offered you, being the friendly neighbor he is.

Hell yeah! You thought to yourself, instead opting for a polite “sure” and taking a seat on the end of the bench furthest from Mingyu. Seeing how he glanced at the plastic bag containing things that would soon end up in his locker, you quickly put it on the other side of you, obstructing his view.

‘I’ve been stargazing for quite a while now, it’s really pretty out here.” He started speaking, the grin not leaving his face as he soon directed his attention back to the clear sky. Following his actions, you also turned to face the sky.

And boy, was he right. It was more than pretty, it was beautiful. Spending most of your time in a crowded city or stranded in your room, it was not common for you to take a look at the stars.

“Yeah, wow, it’s absolutely gorgeous. In the years I’ve lived in this neighborhood, I’ve never taken the time to look up,” you spoke mindlessly, your thoughts coming out and to his ears. He smiled in agreement.

“Yeah, I know. It’s been awhile since I’ve stargazed like this. With things getting more hectic, I haven’t found the time to sit out here. Say, you said you live in this neighborhood?” He asked, taking a glance at you.

“Born and raised,” you nodded. He nodded in understanding, and that ended your conversation. Instead, it was replaced by a comfortable silence as you both basked in the beauty of nature, the wonders of the sky doing all the talking for you. Although, he would occasionally speak up and point out constellations in the sky to you, naming them and a little bit of their history.

“Wow, you really know your stars don’t you?” you turned to him with a teasing grin. His cheeks  slightly flushed.

“Y-Yeah, it’s something I’ve always been interested in, astronomy. It’s just so cool to learn what could be out there, and the expanse of how these things reach to. Like, did you know that our Sun is considered a medium star? Meaning, there are stars out there that are even bigger than we could ever imagine, and if they were closer to us then it would probably take over our Earth.” He rambled on, and you looked at him with interest. You probably fell for him even more, seeing how passionate and knowledgable he was when talking about stars. “Sorry, I keep rambling and you’re probably getting tired of it.”

“No! Not at all, it really is interesting stuff.” You reassured him, causing a the same smile that would give you butterflies to spread across your face. Before you two could initiate any further conversation, the vibrations of your phone cut through your comfortable silence. You pulled you phone out to see your dad questioning your whereabouts with a text, almost cursing him at his timing.

“I guess that this is my cue to leave, but it was really nice looking and learning about the stars Mingyu!” you stood up, slightly dusting off your pants. Mingyu stood up as well, stretching his body.

“Yeah, I’m sorry you had to listen to my rambles. Do you want me to walk you home?” He rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish smile, turning to you. Your heart starting beating faster at the thought of him walking you home, your hands slightly brushing each other as you walked side by side. Steady conversation flowing out between you two, it sounded like the perfect cliche to fall in love to. “Hello? Earth to y/n?” He interrupted your daydreams, your face slightly heating up.

“No! It’s fine, you should head home too, it’s kind of late and there’s still school tomorrow.” You reassured him, despite more attempts to walk you home. As much as you would’ve like to have him walk you home, your heart wasn’t ready for the incessant pounding.

The next day at school, you saw Mingyu’s tall self in the hallway and smiled, the thoughts from last night seeping into your mind. Thinking he won’t see you, you were proven wrong when he returned the smile on your face and waved happily. Thinking he was waving to someone else, you quickly looked around to find someone to be returning his wave. But, there was no such person. He inwardly chuckled at your confusion, soon being dragged away by his teammate. When you turned around, you found him to have disappeared, much to your disappointment.

There was no way he was waving to me, there are a ton of people in the hallway he could be waving at.

“Hello? Earth to y/n?” The words were familiar to you, only now they were being said by a different voice. Just hearing those words brought your thoughts back to the previous night, only for them to be interrupted by Rachel shaking your shoulder. You finally snapped back to reality, salad falling off your fork and your friends shooting you wary glances.

“What?” You blurted out, knowing very well that you were zoning out.

“You keep disappearing from our conversations, I have to make sure there’s still someone in that little head of yours. What’s on your mind?” Jennie questioned, a sly grin on her face.

“Nothing, just worried about the future and stuff, you never know,” you pulled the answer out of thin air, hoping it would ease their worries. Even though Mingyu was known crush from other girls, they would freak out hearing you had a one on one session with him under the stars. Not like you were doing anything bad anyways.

“I know girl! There’s that dance coming up, the really fancy one! I wonder who’s going to ask who.” Rachel glared at her salad, lips pouting at the thought of a date.

“Whatever! Who needs a date, I got you girls as my dates!” Jennie squealed, excited to get ready in fancy dress for the night.

“Yeah! For sure, say, I’m going to run to the restroom real fast,” you excused yourself, grabbing your bag. The pair waved you off as you snuck out of the cafeteria, not actually heading to the restroom. You walked through the quad, filled with students scattered about, enjoying the time all students looked forward to—lunch. You sneakily stepped into the deserted hall, save for some people grabbing things from their lockers. Turning around the corner, you found the hall where Mingyu’s locker was, and felt yourself let out a sigh of relief seeing the absence of people in there. Grabbing a new letter from your bag, you quickly stuffed it into his locker as you passed by it, making it seem like you were doing nothing more than just walking past. After nearly a year of dropping letters in his locker, you were getting good at it. With a triumphant smile on your face, you went down the hall with a slight skip in your stride.

Stars in the night sky can’t compare to the ones I see in your eyes.

It was definitely a more cringe-worthy letter you ever wrote him, but you just wanted to find a way to incorporate stars into this letter. Not to mention, he did light up like the stars in the sky when talking about them.

Your heart slightly pounded as you headed back towards the cafeteria, thoughts filling your mind. You were worried he might figure out that you were his secret admirer, yet you waited three weeks to put this letter in just to be safe. There was no way he could come to an immediate conclusion that it was you. Constantly reassuring yourself, you walked through the doors of the cafeteria with a sigh. Hearing the sounds of cheering and clapping, you looked around confused. There was a crowd near the stage of the cafeteria, soon breaking apart after the fiasco. Your heart slightly stopped seeing Mingyu there, staring sweetly at some girl you’ve probably seen on the cheerleading squad.

“Will you be the Star of my Night?” his sign read, a large poster filled with references to the upcoming dance theme. Seeing the bouquet of roses in her arms, you could only assume that she agreed. Turning away with a heart slightly heavier than normal, you found Jennie and Rachel also taking glances at the scene.

“Wow, that was so cute! Did you see that y/n?” Rachel gushed, staring at the scene with envy. Your head felt stiff turning around to take another look at the happy new pair, still talking to each other with shy yet sweet smiles and giggles.

“Yeah, it’s adorable,” you forced out, slightly accepting the fact that you and Mingyu were no more than acquaintances. Ugh, never in a million years will he do something like that for me.

“Yeah! I heard they’ve been getting pretty close lately since he joined the basketball team and she’s the cheer captain, there’s a lot of talk going around about them.” Jennie spoke in a hushed tone, sharing all the gossip she’s heard the past few days. You ended up zoning yourself out of the conversation, Jennie and Rachel too busy sharing their details to notice, and fiddled with your fingers.

He was never yours, but why did seeing him with someone else hurt so much?

[yeolaltair]

Breathless [ I ]

Genre: Smut [M]

Length: 1.9k 

Pairing: Baekhyun x Reader

The feel of his lips on mine was thoroughly imprinted onto the my mind the longer we laid there in my bed. The feeling of his lips on my dark red ones. The whisper of his lips across the sharp plane of my collarbones. The touch of his lips as it met my neck, kissing slowly, not too hard yet not too soft either, enough just to make sure it made a marking.  I closed my eyes at the sweet sensation on my neck, grabbing at the pale pink sheets of my bed that were far too innocent for whatever was happening on it. The tips of his finger trailed down my waist, gently and lightly, and I could have sworn bits of fire trailed in their wake.  A part of myself wondered how exactly I landed myself in such a position, but no answer came to me. All that came back to that underlying question was more, more , more. More of his touch. More of his lust. More of this drug that he was giving me.

The window of my room was wide open but the coldness that breezed in did nothing to cool the rising flames in me. It was hot, burning hot. Just like the boy on top of me who could have possibly been from the depths of hell considering what he was doing to me with his wicked, wicked tongue. Heaven or hell, both seemed fitting. However, it did not suit as a reasonable explanation as to why he was in my room that was not deemed appropriate for whatever he was or was about to do to me.  The innocent fairy-lights that clung to the edges of my bookshelf, the small pots of plants lining the edge of the windowsill, none of it appropriate at all.

I allowed a soft moan to escape within me at the first touch of his tongue against my skin. A small movement, and yet it felt like a thousand sins. I felt his lips that were against me curl into a small smile at the sound. A sign of an approval, or perhaps a sense of pride that would be the brush stroking his ego. I didn't know, and I didn't care.

" Enjoying yourself aren't you," He whispered against my skin, his grey eyes that were a result of the colored contacts he was wearing, meeting mine. Moonlight that came through my window rained down upon us, and all it did was compliment his grey hair that I had to resist the urge to run my hands through, his lips that were now stained with red from my lipstick, and his eyes that were near fascinating.

" Don't be so proud cocky just yet. If this is the best you've got, trust me I've had better." A feline smile made its way across my lips as I allowed the lies to tumble out of my mouth. It was a lie, heck, he was the best one I've had yet but that wasn't important for him to know.

And when his eyes turned feral, I knew,  that my choice of words had been the correct ones.

" Well then we will just have to make some changes to that."

And I could have sworn I began purring the moment his hands met my satin blouse, and ripped it wide open. The short silence that filled my room was immediately broken with the sounds of the small buttons falling to the floor, one by one.

There was no time to react to that because instantly, his lips were attached to the pale skin of my body, specifically the skin directly my breasts. I felt him kiss, suck and tongued that area, pouring out all his anger onto attacking that area of skin, and I could feel myself getting wetter with every second that passed. His eyes met mine, and I could have sworn his eyes shone with a promise that I would regret saying those words.

His fingers trailed to the back of my neck, and I felt myself anticipating, waiting, as i felt him unravel the bundle of knots holding my bralette upright. I felt the tips of his fingers pull on the string hard, fast, before  finally , it came undone. I was already biting my lip down hard when he helped me discard the flimsy piece of floral lace that I wore. Neither of us cared as he threw it down onto the floor.

The cold breeze of the night immediately attacked my vulnerable skin, and both of us watched as my nipple hardened under its freezing touch. I felt my breath hitch as he slowly brought a finger and traced it lightly around my areola. Cunning, wicked, there were the words that circled my mind as I watched him, a small smirk planted on his face as he watched my nipple harden further under his gaze.

" Tell me baby, do the guys before me ever touch you like this?" He said soothingly, his thumb rubbing over my hardened nipple hard and rough, circling it slowly. The moan that left my mouth escaped sooner than I wanted it too, and I cursed myself for the lack of control I had. But soon, even words left my mind, when I felt him pinch my nipple between his thumb and forefinger and pulled lightly. Never, never had a man touched me like this.

My back arched into his touch and his smirk widened even further. I was losing myself under his grip, under his control and what's worse, was that I enjoyed it.

I watched under my lashes as Baekhyun lowered his head down further, giving me a teasing smile as his mouth drifted closer to the other nipple that was free of his touch. Yet.

" Tell me baby," His voice was hoarse as he spoke, his voice sounding like dripping honey to me, " have the guys you ever had made you feel like how I make you feel right now?"

I watched as the tip of his tongue touched the roof of his mouth slowly, emphasizing the 'now', before he licked his cherry lips. His eyes never left mine as he lowered his mouth closer to my nipple and blew a breath of cold air. It hardened, but before I could even close my eyes, he wrapped his mouth right around it.

He sucked on it, hard and rough, his gaze never leaving mine. I felt as his tongue circled my nipple once, twice, before I lost all control of myself and groaned. I ran my fingers through his soft grey hair as he slowly pulled my nipple between his teeth, biting slightly. I felt myself drenched in the piece of lace I wore under his actions, and I could only hear myself begging deep down for more, more , more. As his tongue kept me under his control, he tortured me too with his fingers at the same time. My mind was spinning, body burning as I closed my eyes, moaning softly.

He released my nipple with a loud 'pop' and I whined at the loss of contact. At the sound, Baekhyun's eyes shimmered with satisfaction. But i knew, he was barely done with what he had just started. My eyes drifted from his and down, only to be met with the piece of dark blue satin blouse of his still worn.

" Your clothes are still on." I said, my eyes narrowing at the unfairness. Baekhyun looked down at his blouse and chuckled softly, " Indeed it is."

From where I laid on my bed, I pushed myself up onto my elbows before pressing my chest against his. Baekhyun immediately sat upright, and didn't stop me as I planted myself in his lap. I straddled his hips, with my legs by his side, doing nothing to conceal my velvet skirt that left little to the imagination that night. My fingers slowly crawled to the top of the blouse, attacking the first button that held it in place. I felt my lips curl into a small smile when i felt his hands land on my ass. The first of the buttons on his blouse came undone just as I felt him give my ass a small squeeze. A small but rough one, that said I was his for the night. All his, and no one else.

" One," I whispered under my breath, my fingers immediately moving to the second button directly below.

He watched me closely, carefully, as his hands palmed my ass, pushing me closer to him. My dripping crotch immediately met his his bulging hard on that was struggling against his tight skinny black jeans, and I felt myself gasp at the sensation.  My fingers worked on the next button much faster than the first, just as he lowered his lips, meeting mine.

The second button came undone easily.

" Two." The words were hushed against his lips as I moved on to the next button.

His fingers slowly crawled up my thighs and I felt my breath hitch when Baekhyun's fingers rose to move the piece of fabric covering me to the side. His smile against my lips turned sinister as he dragged a finger right between my lower lips. Pure amusement and satisfaction lit up his eyes at the wetness he found of how dripping wet I was.

" Three." I hissed through gritted teeth as he ran his finger back and forth between my lower lips, collecting the drenching wetness he found there. My legs weakened, just as my hands moved onto the second last button, shaking.

Baekhyun's eyes never left mine as slowly, his finger left me and instead, trailed right back up. His eyes slowly fucked me as he inserted his wet finger into his mouth, tasting me. He tasted the wetness of me, of how my body longed for him, of how it wanted him to slowly fuck me hard into the following week. And, at the first taste, he smiled around his lips.

The button came undone just as he removed his finger from his mouth.

" Four, a number sweet just like you." He whispered against my lips before kissing me, allowing me a chance to taste how I was. My fingers finally began on the final button just as our lips began moving passionately each other.

I felt the final button move through, escaping freely just as his hands returned to where it was once before. Baekhyun smiled against me, as he slowly inserted his finger into me, stretching me. I moaned loudly, pressing my chest against his bare one, loving the sensation of my hard nipples against his hard stone chest. I felt his bit on my lower red lip, as he whispered once again,

" Five."

-

Streams of the morning sunrise that flowed through my open window hit me, as finally i opened my eyes. The first sight that I had was the the pastel pictures pasted on the wall, some of it threatening to fall, the tape taped to it losing its sense of worth after so many months. I laid there, allowing myself to bask in the morning light. It felt like a dream, all of it and perhaps it was.

However, as my eyes met a strange and unfamiliar necklace  with the letter " B" placed on my nightstand left unattended, and the feeling of soreness between my legs hit me,

I knew otherwise.

[A/N] this is my first imagine being posted here, and i’ve already sinned so much. holy gods someone help me 

[sachiro]

The Many Faces of Victor Nikiforov - Episode 3

And we’re back with episode 3! There’s actually a lot to be said about Victor here even though the focus isn’t on him most of the time. We get to see the choreo for Eros and Agape for the first time, get some more insight in how Victor acts around people other than Yuuri, and truly get introduced to Victor the Coach for the first time.

Again, I’d like to delve into this set and look at the specific scenes chosen. I hope everyone enjoys!

We start off with the intro choreo to Agape. When I chose this gif, I found myself stuck between three different options: the intro, the close-up of him skating with his fingers steepled, and the ending. In the end, I realized it didn’t matter because I had the same thing to talk about for all of them. With the intro, we see Victor reaching out with open hands as if to bring something into himself, in the middle it seems as if he is thankful and holding something gently, and at the end he presses back out from his chest with his hands firmly clasped. If we combine this with the concept of agape – unconditional love – we can see a possible interpretation of bringing love into oneself, holding it gently, then, with a firm grasp on it, giving back. I’ll talk a bit more about the meaning of the Eros and Agape routines in respect to Victor in a few, but I still felt the choreo was interesting in the respect that it also tells a story – a story of the acceptance of outside love, of cherishing that love, and of giving it back.

The second and third gifs I’d like to first talk about as a pair. Both are from the Eros choreo, but if you look at Victor’s expressions, are almost complete opposites on the emotional spectrum. The first looks to be confident and suave, and the second looks so vulnerable and sad that I couldn’t help but wonder at the contrast. Then I thought about the story of Eros, how it tells a story of a playboy who goes after “the most beautiful woman” (I say that in quotations because there’s actually no woman in this tale, it’s actually a man stealing the heart of another man then disappearing from his sight). Then I started to question the choreo in this program, whose perspective is it being told from? In the end, I came to the conclusion that it’s both. We see the playboy at the start (the first of these two gifs) and at the end when there’s a pushing away gesture. As for the jilted man, we see him in that second of the two gifs. Victor undoubtedly gets lost in his skating and his expressions become very telling as to the emotional meaning behind the programs he’s skating.

On that note, let’s look at these two individually. The suave, seductive look at the beginning of the program to me always looks so empty. After you get past the initial heart-eyed reaction of Victor looking that way in your direction, you start to see how devoid of emotions that expression really is. What we’re actually watching is Victor’s media face in action. I feel there are a couple of reasons for this but the primary one is simply that Victor is not a playboy. He tells this story with two parts within Eros’ program, but he at heart is not and has never been a playboy. So the only way he knows how to portray something like that is through his carefully crafted image that relies entirely on the watchers being too smitten with him to catch the fact that there’s nothing of him actually in it. In most cases, it takes multiple watches of this particular Victor smile to catch it but when you see it, it’s really difficult to unsee.

On the other hand, we get the third gif of this set, where he looks so incredibly sad during the Eros choreo. If you check out Yuuri skating the exact same clip, you can see that his face is completely different (confident even), which says to me that Victor’s expression here is intentional on the side of the creative team. The reason for that? This is Victor emulating the man who was seduced and then abandoned, left with his own thoughts for three months and attempting to figure out what exactly happened the night he was (quite literally) swept off his feet. We don’t know if this expression existed at this point in the program before Victor came to Hasetsu, but the fact that this is not the face of the playboy within the story is undeniable. And the sadness we can see painted on Victor’s face is a clear indicator of how he feels in this position at this point in time. Unlike when he tries to play the part of the playboy, this role is much truer to him. We are looking at the true Victor Nikiforov, unshielded and wearing his heart on his sleeve. Truly, something that one can only see on the ice.

This fourth gif… well, I could say a lot of things, but they would mostly be stating the obvious. He’s gunning really hard for Yuuri in this moment, both (I think) because he wants Yuuri as well as because he knows Yuuri wants him. Victor isn’t as oblivious to Yuuri’s interest as Yuuri thinks (or rather, hopes) he is, even if Yuuri keeps trying to run away from it. That said, if you compare this Victor, who is actively trying to seduce Yuuri and show him “what Eros is to him” to the suave look at the start of Victor’s rendition of Eros, it brings to light just how false the look in the Eros choreo is. Because if this look here is genuine, then there’s no way that the look in the program is too.

Even though the face in this fifth gif is meant to be comedic, I can’t help but think deeply about this scene. This is the face Victor wears immediately after Yurio calls him out for saying that Agape isn’t a program where one shows off their confidence, and yet still skates it so confidently. Victor then gets asked what Agape is to him and he deflects the question back onto Yurio with an overly bright smile and a flimsy answer – “you just feel it, how am I supposed to tell you?”. What this says to me isn’t that Victor is some sort of genius, as others in-show continue to say he is, but quite the opposite (in terms of his own emotional awareness and how that comes out in his skating, anyway). Victor skates out his feelings, the same way that Yuuri does, and that always reflects into his programs. But, as we can see if we look at Stammi in episode 1 and combine it with the knowledge that he was lonely but didn’t know it, he isn’t always fully aware of the full emotional depth to these programs in regards to himself. So, if we assume that Victor’s confusion and obvious diversion mean that he doesn’t know what Agape the program means to him, then can we figure it out? I think so. There are many things that agape as a base concept could mean for Victor – it could mean Makkachin, his skating family, or his fans, among others. What I think it means, when you take in the entirety of the program’s meaning and how he skates it, is that it’s a love letter to his audience. It’s always looked to me like a complete story. Going back up to the first gif, where I described Agape as an acceptance of love and a giving back, I feel that we can apply that here. The program also feels like an all-encompassing gesture, almost like a goodbye of sorts. We can look at Eros and Agape as programs that are 2 sides of the same coin. If Eros is Victor’s struggles to move on to a new part of his life (a beginning), then Agape is his struggles to move on from his past and present (an end). So, even if Victor doesn’t realize it, I think that Agape was meant to be a goodbye to his skating career. He knew his time was coming, and while he didn’t want to let it go, he also knew it was almost time. And so, Agape was born as a way to say to his audience, “thank you for the love and support you have given me all this time”. Truly “Agape” indeed.

Returning to the comedy, this sixth gif is pretty much a clip of Victor’s suffering in action. Just earlier that week he shoved his face right up in Yuuri’s, got the guy all flustered, and asked him what Eros meant to him. And the answer that Yuuri came to was food. FOOD. Not only does Victor know that this isn’t what Yuuri’s Eros actually is (he knows it’s him), it doesn’t even make sense to the story of the program. From a more outside perspective, sure, food can make sense if you only look at the written definition for desire, but on a conceptual level, what Eros as a program truly embodies, katsudon couldn’t make any less sense. Unfortunately, there’s not much more Victor can do other than scream internally about Yuuri’s obtuseness to the entire concept of sexuality that seems to only exist when he’s sober.

Or he can go drown his frustrations in alcohol, which is what he ends up doing. Throwing his responsibilities for the night out the window, he decides that drinking until dawn is the best way to come to terms with his current situation. As comedic as this scene is initially played out to be, it actually brings up a serious underlying issue. When Victor doesn’t know what to do with his emotions, or he feels lost, he drowns his sorrows in alcohol. Whether he even realizes he’s doing this, we can’t know for sure because he’s never mentioned it himself but I worry both for his kidney and his mental health that this seems to not just be a one-off occurrence but a habit. Even if you factor in the possible use of the Russians being heavy drinkers stereotype, the fact that Victor is shown drinking every night since he arrives in Hasetsu and then goes off to get smashed after getting ignored (yet again) by Yuuri before proceeding to coach with a hangover in the middle of an intense training week doesn’t speak well to how he processes his unpleasant emotions and situations.

The third to last choice is a gif, even if it’s not moving. I chose this still image shot specifically because it presents us a view of Victor with a very uniquely complicated expression and none of the other shots of him during this scene really portray how far into his own head he is in this moment. I feel that this is Victor when he realizes he’s at a crossroads in his life and there’s nothing more he can do to affect the outcome. He’s taking a moment before he needs to go out and judge both Yuris’ skating to consider what either result will mean for him. On one hand, if Yurio outperforms Yuuri, which Victor at this point know is the most probable given what he’s seen over the last week, then he will need to give up on the spark of hope he felt from the banquet, the viral Stammi video, and saw in Yuuri himself when he accepted Eros. Victor would return to Russia, to the place that he felt was suffocating him, as a coach and not even a skater. He knows that his heart doesn’t want this, even if his logical mind knows that if Yuuri can’t perform to his potential then it’s what he’s promised to both of them. For Yuuri, the only way he could outperform Yurio would be to show Victor that spark that was shown within the viral video, to reawaken the side of himself that he showed Victor at the banquet, and to channel the confidence he had when he was first assigned Eros and demanded Victor stay if he won. For Victor to get the outcome he wants, Yuuri is going to need to pull out all the stops and show to the world (or at least those watching this ice show) the potential that Victor has seen only in small spurts so far. Looking forward from there, Victor knows that working with Yuuri isn’t going to be straightforward, but it’s still what his heart desires. He knows he has a bias, but as much as Yurio yells about Victor breaking a promise by coming to Japan (he didn’t, he still choreographed a debut program for him), he is still a man of his word and will go back to Russia if Yuuri can’t show Victor right here and now that that spark still exists. In light of all that, it’s no wonder Victor foregoes the pep talks during the warm-ups!

This second to last gif was the moment that spawned a world of controversy when this episode first aired. There were many people who initially found it hard to believe that Victor could take a situation involving Yuuri this seriously, but now that we’ve learned so much more about him, we can look at this scene a lot more critically. The thing that stands out to me the most is Victor’s honesty. Yuuri confides to Victor, through his actions more than his words, that he’s anxious but is swallowing down that emotion for the sake of showing Victor that he is all that Victor has seen in him. That he can perform up to Victor’s standards. And Victor takes this seriously and honestly. Victor does care about Yuuri, on every level that this question could imply. Yuuri wasn’t looking for a response when he admitted his worries to Victor through seeking out a comfort hug but he got one anyway. Victor reassured Yuuri on a deeper level than just “I’m looking forward to your skating”. He was assured that Victor is there for more than that, as well as for more than flirting, but for Yuuri as an entire individual. And Victor wants nothing more in this moment than to see Yuuri succeed. Victor does still want to stay in Japan, and he lets Yuuri know this through the exact words he uses – a direct response to Yuuri’s wish for if he wins, to continue eating katsudon with Victor. As tough as Victor has had it since he got to Japan, he still doesn’t want to leave. And I think this is exactly what Yuuri needed in that moment; honesty, and the reassurance that his feelings were reciprocated.

This last gif is one of the first real glimpses we get of Victor the Coach. Even at this early point, we can attribute his pat on the back then instant critique way of greeting Yuuri as he came off the ice as an emulation of the coaching style that he has had used with himself for years. Victor would have definitely seen how other coach and skater pairs interacted, but the only real long-lasting experience he’s had with a coach has been with Yakov. We know from watching the show that Victor’s coaching style evolves (and quite rapidly) to suit Yuuri’s needs but it’s fascinating to see where he begins, and how confused he is when it very obviously doesn’t work with his student.

That ended up becoming a lot longer than I initially planned but it turns out I had a lot of thoughts, especially concerning Victor’s portrayal and interpretations of Eros and Agape. If you got this far then I hope you enjoyed and if the wall of text was too much then I still hope you liked the gifset regardless! Thanks for reading! :)

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [Duetto]

Bonus because I can never get enough of Victor skating: