#being told 'nah they signed a legal contract not much we can do at this point'

[natasharomanoff]

i am beyond the point of burnout WOOOOO

[heathsbitch]

Treat You Better ➳ PEAKY BLINDERS

xiii. MR SOLOMONS

          A few days had passed since the incident with Tommo, Ivy and her family. Things were tense between the Shelby man and the Solomons girl. But that day, he had to suppress his pride. It was the day of the Epsom races, a prestigious and well-known event among her family. Her family. Ivy's heart was raw but Tommy didn't take that into consideration, he had happened upon her house early in the morning and said that she needed to go with him. To see her father. And that could only mean one thing. She had to manipulate him.

"For the next ten minutes, you don't do or say anything I haven't told you to do, alright?" Thomas ordered James. Ivy had briefly met him. She had learnt that he was a writer and quite a timid man, he seemed nice though. "Alright?" Tom repeated. "Yeah." James responded. "Ivy, you know what to do." They rounded the corner to the door of the bakery. The girl could see a man leaning against the wall, Ollie. He was her old friend but he always followed her dad's orders, even if it meant going against him. Ivy knew how to manipulate him, though. "Hey, Ols." She greeted as she walked up to him. "Ivy?" He choked out. "We're here to see my dad, care to let us in?" Ollie stayed silent so they went to walk through the doors to the bakery. "Wait, just you two. He stays out here." He motioned at James. Perfect.

'Confidence, confidence, confidence. Follow the plan, no matter what.' Ivy told herself as they walked through the entrance of the bakery.

Thomas and Ivy had only walked a couple of meters into the bakery when Tom bent down to tie his shoelaces up. He was close to a barrel, Ivy was standing behind him and Ollie in front. Everything was going to plan. The worker huffed, annoyed that he had to wait. He went back to the sheet of paper he held in his hand, not looking at what Thomas was doing. Tom stood up and they continued to Alfie's office. Sometimes workers in the bakery would give the girl strange looks, they remembered her and were confused as to why she was back. Ivy surveyed the area, searching for one person in particular, Ezekiel. But he was nowhere to be found. Ollie walked into the office, "Sir, you have some visitors." He opened the door wider so Tommo and Ivy could walk through, him first then her.

"You alright, Alfie?" Thomas placed himself into one of the chairs at the desk. Ivy looked up from her feet to gaze directly at her father. He was stood up, silent. "Fucking hell, Tommy? How did you end up with her? Eh?" He moved over to his daughter but she held her hands out in front of her. She wasn't sure if he was going to hit her or hug her. He did neither, he just grabbed the girl's shoulders, lightly though. "Where the fuck have you been?" He hissed through clenched teeth, yet Ivy could almost make out some sentiment in his voice. He cared for her; she was his daughter at the end of the day. "Alfie, let her go. We're here for business. You can do this later." His grip loosened and he walked back to his desk. Ivy smoothed out her clothes but didn't speak, not yet. "Did you cut her fucking tongue out, Tommy. Can she speak still?" Alfie asked as he took a seat behind his desk. "She speaks when she wants to," Ivy told him in the third person. "Business first, though, father."

He seemed to be taken aback by her formal tone. "So he's dragged you into all of this as well, eh?" His daughter didn't reply so he lifted his feet up onto the desk and pulled a newspaper into his lap. She stood in front of his desk, her hands resting on it. "You dragged me into this. I just have a new boss." The sound of a phone ringing shook through the office. The plan moved swiftly forward. Thomas had told Ivy that he was expecting a phone call from his eldest brother, Arthur. "That will probably be for you, won't it?" Alfie spoke, his eyes firmly placed on his daughter, not quite believing she was in his own office, after all this time. The phone rang again and Tommo stood up to answer it. "Hello," He paused as he waited for a reply. "Arthur? You're out?" Relief washed over the girl, she still didn't know how Tom managed to do it but he always managed to find a way out of things, no matter how sticky the situation was. Thomas sat down on the chair again, grunting in the process. "Right, so that'll be your side of the street swept up, won't it?" Alfie finally took his eyes off of Ivy and looked towards Tom. "Where's mine? What have you got for me?" He lent forward on his desk, the same dominance that radiated off of Tommy now radiated off of Ivy's father too. Nerves flowed through the girl, the plan could go horribly wrong. 'Confidence, confidence, confidence.'

"Is that what you're here for, Muffin?" Ivy winced at the nickname, she hadn't heard that in a very long time. The girl didn't realise how much she had missed hearing that word come from her father's mouth. It had been years, a childhood nickname, a resemblance of simpler times.

Thomas bent down to pick up the papers that were kept in his bag. They held terms to an agreement that he had drawn up. "Signed by the Minister of the Empire himself." Tom said. "Yes." Alfie mumbled. "Which means that you can put your rum in our shipments and no one at Poplar Docks would lift a canvas." Ivy laid out the agreement for her father. "You know what, I'm not even gonna have my lawyer look at that."

"Nah, it's all legal, Mr Solomons." Ivy informed her father as she took a seat next to Tommo. Ollie stared at the pair, suspicion raising his eyebrow. "You know what, Muffin, I trust you. To a certain extent. That's that. Done," Alfie fiddled with his hat before leaning down to grab something from his desk. "So, whiskey." He pulled out a bottle of alcohol and placed it in front of him. The young Solomons' hand was ready to grab for her gun at any time if it was needed. Her father was a slimy man, and quite unpredictable. "There is one thing, though, that we do need to discuss." Thomas lit a cigarette and gestured for Ivy to talk to her dad. "And, what would that be?" She lent forward slightly, her elbows resting on her knees. "It says here 20 percent paid to us of your export business."

"As we agreed on the telephone." Thomas reassured his business rival. "No, no no. You see I've had my lawyer draw this up for us, just in case," He lent over the desk to pass the pair some papers. "Who's the boss here? Him or you?" Ivy raised her eyebrow at him but nodded towards Tom. He cleared his throat but continued talking. "It's says that, right here, that a hundred percent of your business, goes to me." He pointed at the contract as if they were actually going to agree to a deal like that. Ivy scoffed at his stupid suggestion. "I see." Thomas took another drag from his cigarette. "It's there... but, don't worry about it, right, because it's totally legal binding. All you have to do is sign the document and transfer the whole lot over to me. Throw Ivy into the deal as well." The girl scoffed again at his stupidity. "Will you stop laughing? This is man stuff," Her father spat at her. Ivy went for her gun but Tommo grabbed the girl's hand before she could do anything. "Feisty, that's my girl." Alfie said before sitting back in his chair. "Sign just here is it?" Tom turned back to Alfie. "Yeah." He agreed. "I see. That really is funny, that is." Ivy's dad tutted, "You too?"

"Now that's funny," Tommo continued. Ollie gazed at the business exchange, unsure of how it was going to end. "I'll give you 100 percent of my business?" Thomas nodded but Alife just sat there, confused as to why they were laughing at it. "Yeah." He said. "Why?" Ivy asked her dad.

Ollie pulled a gun out of his pocket and pointed it at Tommy's forehead, Tom did not flinch. The worker's hand shook as he held the gun, "Ollie. No, no, no. Put that down, they understand. They understand," Alfie lightly scolded. He pulled the gun out of his hand and set it on the desk. "Tommy's a big boy, he knows the roads. And Ivy, well, she's my daughter. She knows," The girl gave an unimpressed glare at her dad, Ivy thought he would be angrier but he seemed fairly calm. "Now look. It's non-fucking negotiable. That's all you need to know. So all you have to do is sign the fucking contract and give me my daughter back. Right here." The girl felt like she was being tossed in between her parents. Both wanted her back, but did she want them?

But lucky for Tom and Ivy, James was still outside and their plan was going swimmingly. Ivy just had to stay calm. "Right here?" Alfie handed Tommo a pen to sign with. "With your pen." He chucked in front of the Peaky Blinder. "I understand."

"Good. Get on with it." He kept on pointing at the contract, anger clearly started to flow through him. "You see, Mr Solomons, we have an associate waiting for us at the door," The girl began to reveal the plan to her father. "I know he looks like a choir boy but looks can be deceiving, can't they, father? He's actually and anarchist from Kentish Town-"

"Ivy, shut the fuck up before I shoot your 'boss'. Alright?" Alfie told his daughter with a calm voice. "Now when we came in here, Mr Solomons, I stopped to tie my shoe lace," Tom told him as he stubbed out his cigarette. "Isn't that a fact, Ollie? I stopped to tie my shoelace and while I was doing it, I laid a hand grenade under one of your barrels," Ollie became increasingly flustered. "Mark 15, with wire trip."

"And our friend upstairs," Ivy began. "He's like one of those anarchists that uh, well they blew up Wall Street, you know? He's a professional, basically," Her father's eyes darted between Tommy and his daughter, not sure whether they were telling the truth or not. "And he's in charge of the wire. If we don't walk out that door by the stroke of seven, he's going to trigger the grenade and... your very combustible rum will blow us all to hell," Ivy lent over the desk again so she could be face to face with her father. "And I don't care. That's your fucking fault, father. You've already killed me. Tommo's dead as well. We just do not care." Alfie's eyes brimmed with concern, it was obvious he was trying to hide his emotion but guilt consumed him, as it did with Ivy. The words pouring out of her mouth had come from Tommo, not her. She was told to do anything to persuade him and it hurt her to say those things to her own father. Yes, he was harsh, but Ivy had begun to believe he could be forgiven for what he's done.

"He tied his lace, Alfie, and there is a kid at the door." Ivy smirked wildly as Ollie frantically spoke to her dad. "From a good family too, Ollie. It's shocking what they become." Tom added. "What were you doing when this happened?" The eldest Solomons turned to look at his employee. "He tied his lace, nothing else." Ollie tried to defend himself. "Yeah, well, what were you doing?" Alfie repeated. "I was marking the runners in the paper." Ollie timidly said. Thomas pulled his pocket watch out and left it resting in the palm of his hand. "What are you doing?" Alfie was now lent on his desk, anxiousness running through his veins. "Just checking the time. Carry on." Tommo placed the watch back in his pocket and Ivy smirked, glad that the plan was working. "Alright, Ollie, I want you to go outside, yeah, and shoot that boy, in the face, from the good family." He handed the gun back. "Anyone walks through that door that isn't me or Tommo, he blows the grenade."

"He tied his fucking lace, Alfie." Ollie was becoming increasingly scared and worried, applying more pressure on Alfie to make a decision. "I did tie my lace." Tom taunted. The eldest Solomons held the gun in his hands but didn't point it at anyone. "I bet, 100-1, that you're fucking lying mate. That's my money." Alfie told the pair. He spun the barrel of the gun around, trying to intimidate Tommy and his daughter. "You've failed to consider the form." Ivy told her father. "I did blow up my own pub for the insurance," Thomas began. Ollie took a deep breathe in but Alfie stayed quiet, considering his options. Perfection yet again. "Okay, well, considering the form, I would say 65-1. Very good odds. And I would be more than happy for you to sign over 65% of your business to me. Make it-"

"65?" Ivy cut her father off. "No deal. Ollie, what do you say?" She taunted the worker now, knowing that he would react with fear in his words. "Jesus Christ, Alfie, he tied his fucking lace. I saw him," He warned his boss. "Look, he planted a grenade, I know he did." He tried to persuade the stubborn Solomons, but he sat there, glaring at his daughter. He was not one to bend easily, especially to his own daughter. "Alfie, he's To-" Alfie burst out of his chair and slapped Ollie across his face. Memories flooded into Ivy's mind of the night she left. The Solomons grabbed Ollie's collar and brought their faces close together. The worker's breaths came out fast and short. "You're behaving like a fucking child. This is a man's world. Even Ivy knows that," Alfie shot a poisonous glance at his daughter that stood only a couple of feet away. He dropped his worker and smoothed out his clothes.

"Now take that apron off, and sit in the corner like a little boy. Fuck off, now." Ollie followed his orders, his head hung. "Four minutes." Ivy told her father in a singing voice, leaning back in her chair. He gave his daughter another poisonous glance. "Four minutes." Alfie repeated her words. He grunted as he sat back in his office chair. "Right, talk to me about hand grenades." Ivy gestured for Tom to speak and clasped her hands in front of her, waiting for the men to talk. "The chalk mark on the barrel at knee height said 'Hamilton Christmas'. I took out the pin and put it on the wire." Thomas pulled the pin out of his pocket and held in front of his face to inspect it.

He dropped it into a small, glass ashtray and Alfie swiftly moved to pick it up. The pair never broke eye contact. Tension filled the room, so thick you could cut it with a knife. The clock was ticking, time was running out. After checking out the pin of the grenade, the baker began to speak "Based on this," He took a pause in his words and shook the pin around in his hand. "Forty-five percent" Tommy leaned forward, "Thirty and you can keep Ivy."

"Thomas-" Ivy warned the Shelby but Tom put his hand up to reassure her, he had not mentioned selling her off in his plan. Alfie cut his daughter off. "Oh, fuck off, Tommy, that's far too little." He threw the pin back at Thomas and sat back in his chair. "In France, Mr Solomons, when I was a tunneler, a clay kicker, 1-7-9... I blew up Schwaben Hohe," Tommy began to play with the pin. "Same kit I'm using today." A small smirk rested upon the Shelbys lips, it was cynical. "That's funny that," Alfie was now leant on his desk, his hands clasped together. Ivy's heart pounded against her chest and she could feel her pulse in her neck. Her father was becoming unpredictable, she didn't know what he was going to do or say next. "I do know the 1-7-9, and I heard they all got buried." Shit. Ivy took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. "Three of us dug us out."

"Are you digging yourself out now?" Alfie quipped with a calm voice. "Like I'm digging now." Tom agreed. Ivy stayed there, silent, unsure of what to say or do. Silence filled the room and the men stared at each other, a blazing fire between their eyes. "Fuck me." Alfie whispered to himself and sat up straight, he fiddled with the gun that rested on the desk. "Listen, I'll give you thirty-five percent and I get Ivy once a week. That's your lot." Ivy went to protest again but Tom had a plan. "Thirty-five and once a week." Tom nodded and the men stood up. They spat in their hands and shook them. Ivy grimaced at their gross gesture. "Tom." Ivy whispered and grabbed his arm. "Not now." He said back. "You'll get Ivy every Friday. She'll come here at 11am whether she stays the night is up to her. Goodbye, Mr Solomons." Thomas started to leave the room and he pulled Alfie's daughter out with him. "I want her here now." Alfie protested but the pair had already left. "Tommo, why did you do that?" Ivy asked the Peaky Blinder as they left the bakery. "I knew he wouldn't take the deal if you weren't a part of it. That was the best and only way, Ivy."

"So, you used me." Ivy stopped in her place. "It was the only way. Come on, we have other things to do."

xiv. THE EPSOM RACES 

MASTERLIST

[laruna]

— interloper.

characters. lim yuri, min yoongi, kim namjoon.

word count. 21.1k

genre. angst, fluff, friendship, romance, slow burn

warnings. underage drinking, hospitals, car accidents, mentions of family issues

summary. when yoongi feels like an interloper, yuri reminds him that he belongs.

November 7, 2011. Big Hit Entertainment Building, Seoul.

While Namjoon signed his contract until earlier that year, he still had to wait until the dorms were built to move in. Yuri gave Hitman Bang an earful when she found out he had signed him as a trainee when the company didn’t even have fucking dorms yet, but Namjoon fully assured her that it was okay and quelled her rage long enough to stop her from biting the poor old man’s head off.

But it all worked out eventually. Namjoon moved in when the dorms were built back in August, and without the awkwardness that parental presence at his house entailed, Yuri invited herself over as often as possible, practically making the dorms her second home. 

It’s almost a kind of domestic bliss, the way her and Namjoon lived before, cooking for each other and cleaning up the shitty company building until they get so tired they fall asleep on the floor. Sometimes, if she’s really lucky, he’ll offer to let her share his bed. You know, since all the empty beds are going to be occupied by other trainees eventually, and it’d be rude to give someone a used bed, right? Of course.

It’s a Monday when they go to the dorm and actually find the bed across from Namjoon’s occupied.

“...hi.”

The new trainee’s name is Min Yoongi. He’s only a year Namjoon’s senior, but despite the closeness in age, he doesn’t seem willing to bond with them at all. If anything, he barely talks to either of them. According to Hitman Bang, Yoongi is from Daegu, and the only speaks so little because he’s still trying to get used to Seoul’s dialect and is embarrassed that his satoori keeps slipping out.

Yoongi only talks when necessary, like a coworker. They spend the first week or so not talking about anything but work—music, in their case—but even that they can’t be friendly about. Despite their similar interest in hip-hop, Yoongi and Namjoon have very different approaches to rap music. To music in general, really.

Yuri can’t help but feel as if Yoongi has kind of an edge over them. On top of being a year older, he’s also both a producer and a rapper. Yuri is only the former and Namjoon is only the latter, so it’s like he’s got the force of them both combined. She can’t help but feel a little bit small, next to him. 

When they argue about something in the studio, he tends to use this as leverage, telling them to just listen to him because he knows better about this kind of thing. That escalates into arguing, which usually consists of Namjoon and Yoongi yelling at each other while Yuri desperately tries to mediate the situation. The current tally she’s been keeping in her journal shows that Namjoon having won two arguments, Yoongi having won six, and Yuri having successfully distracted them from finishing eleven. She likes to believe that means she’s winning.

Hitman Bang begs to disagree.

He finds out about it one day when he comes to visit her when she’s alone in the studio. The old man never knocks before entering, Yuri notes the invasion of privacy with annoyance. Even so, he kicks it up a notch by glancing over at the journal she’s left open on the corner of her desk. He laughs when he sees the page headed argument wins, pointing to the to the tallies by her name.

“I’m not surprised you’re in the lead,” he laughs. “You’re a menace.” She cringes when she remembers his first impression of her. She wasn’t exactly… tactful about it, but it got the point across well enough. Now that he’s her boss, though, she worries it’ll give him more reason to check up on her, and she would rather selfishly indulge in having some alone time with Namjoon.

“I’m not!” she defends herself, flustered. “I just know better than to waste my time arguing with boys. My points are for when I stop them from arguing, okay? Not having to hear them try to bite each other’s heads off is a win for me.”

“Hm.” He purses his lips at that, regarding her with a look she can’t quite read. She hates how unreadable he is. Her instincts have rarely failed her, but the old man is one of the few people whose energy has yet to come to her.

“Don’t be afraid of fighting,” he tells her after a bout of silence. “They should be able to fight if they’re angry. You should let them fight, let them yell if they’re angry. Even fist fights are fine. It’s okay to fight. Fearing fights only makes conflicts grow bigger.” Yuri shifts uneasily in her seat.

“I don’t like fighting. I don’t like yelling. I don’t like fists,” she says. “I get enough of that at home.” She doesn’t mean for it to slip out, doesn’t even realize that it does until the old man makes that face.

“Oh, Yuri.” He says it more sincerely than she’s ever heard from anyone at the dad age.

“Oh my God, no,” her voice cracks as she speaks. “We’re not doing that. We’re not having, like, a moment. I’m not emotionally prepared for that. I’ll cry and I’ll hate you.” He just nods at that, before awkwardly clapping a hand down onto her shoulder.

“Just remember that you can’t solve everything between them,” he says. “Let them resolve some of that on their own. You won’t be around to resolve things forever.” It feels like a jinx, the way he says it, but she still nods along.

“Okay,” she says. Sounds like simple enough advice to follow.

“And try to befriend Yoongi, okay?” he adds. She wrinkles her nose. That one seems a little harder.

“Okay,” she says anyways. She’ll definitely try.

Namjoon wrinkles his nose when Yuri proposes inviting Yoongi to the Lim household.

“He doesn’t really know anyone else,” Namjoon rationalizes. “Wouldn’t it be a bit awkward for him?”

“That’s the point, dummy,” she says, “I think it’d help him learn to get along with everyone, is all. Including us, hopefully. I don’t know.” Namjoon sighs, if only because she’s been getting harder and harder to say no to these days. He’s not sure why.

“Alright,” he agrees.

Unexpectedly, it’s significantly harder to get Yoongi to agree.

“I barely know you guys,” he deadpans, and Yuri winces. The I told you so look that Namjoon shoots her doesn’t help, and only reminds her of how much she’s always struggled with making friends. 

Hoping to spare her pride, she persists. This is the only opportunity she has to have everybody over in a while—she doesn’t know the next time her father’s going to be working overtime and they’ll have the house to themselves. Knowing him, the old man would probably bite her and Kyunghee’s head off if he came home from work and saw everybody over on a daily basis.

“You can,” she offers softly. “Get to know us, I mean. Please?” 

Yoongi only raises a brow, seemingly unconvinced.

“We have alcohol?” she offers, but the inflection makes it sound more like a question. Namjoon smacks her arm at that, only for her to shoot him a look that says, What? It’s true! Awkwardly, she adds, “Also, um, free food.”

And that’s enough to convince him, apparently.

Yoongi looks starstruck when he first enters the Lim household, suddenly feeling very small. Or at the very least, smaller than usual. He was easily the shortest of the company’s trainees, second-shortest of everybody in the building, towering over only the perpetually tiny Lim Yuri. He almost has a heart attack when said tiny girl takes his shoes from him to put in the garage. It’s her big-ass house, after all. Shit, just being here makes him feel like he should be the one serving her.

Yuri and Kyunghee explain that their father is out working overtime and... doesn’t really say anything about their mom, but the others know better than to bring something like that up unprompted, so they don’t.

The alcohol is present as promised, provided by none other than resident adult, Ikje. Was it illegal? Yes. Was that going to stop any of them? In the words of Donghyuk, ‘hell nah!’

What terrible, terrible influences, Yuri thinks.

She’s never had alcohol before, nor does she plan to have it anytime soon. Not for any legal or moral reasons, mind you—with the amount of alcohol so freely available in her household, she could probably sneak as much as she wanted whenever she wanted. Personally, she just thinks it smells weird and makes her dad act like a crazy person.

She’s only fifteen, but they make it seem fun. They take the thin metal tail of the soju bottle’s metal cap and tighten it into a straight, brittle line. Everyone takes turns flicking it until Kyunghee’s fingers finally break it off. He makes a face when Ikje fills the shot glass in front of him with soju as punishment.  

Yuri doesn’t miss the way he side-eyes Donghyuk before downing it, like he’s trying to make sure that he’s watching. Like he’s looking for approval. She wonders if that’s how she looks at Namjoon. She wonders if that’s how Namjoon looks at her. He’s on her brain too often, these days. Namjoon, Namjoon, Namjoon. 

They’ve gotten even closer since they made up, and she’s learned a lot more about him since then. He’s still the stickler that refuses to drink in public where he could get in trouble, but he still still laughs and encourages the others’ antics in private, maybe even allowing himself a shot or two. He is also more than the sexless smart dude that she stereotyped him as when they first met, as she has come to learn through his awful, nasty jokes. 

She really was right when she said that he had a whole solar system in his head. Whenever he seems like he could fit into some mold, he immediately proves her wrong. Kim Namjoon is everything.

In contrast, Min Yoongi isn’t much to her at the moment.

When she turns over to look at him, she immediately feels bad for not really paying attention to him the whole night, especially when she was the one to have invited him. The only reason she’s even paying him any mind right now is because he’s just situated himself next to her at the table, as a now drunken Ikje has thoughtlessly occupied his previously-claimed spot. 

Yuri isn’t sure if it’s because he’s not comfortable enough to drink around them yet, but she finds the way he innocently refuses to drink is a little endearing in the same way she found endearing when Namjoon refused to do so back in Hongdae. Instead, Yoongi opts to eat his entire body weight in meat, and is on what she believes is his third plate of fried chicken wings. Respect.

It’s a nice environment, and Yuri really is still adjusting to the fact that this is actually her life. She has a solid friend group that eats and drinks and laughs and plays stupid games together in her house. It’s relaxing. It’s safe. It feels like home. They feel like home.

It’s when they hear her dad’s car pull into the driveway a couple hours earlier than anticipated that makes Yuri remember, oh yeah, home kind of sucks.

In the next few minutes, their living room descends into absolute chaos. Kyunghee moves to swipe all the food and shot glasses off the table and into the sink, Yuri helps load them all into the dishwasher, Ikje is scooping all the soju bottles up into his arms, and everyone else is drunkenly scrambling out the back door. Once they’re all collected, Ikje climbs out the back window, for whatever reason. She blames it on his batshit drunkenness.

Everything is in the clear by the time their dad steps in. The entire scene is inconspicuous enough, Kyunghee passing Yuri plates from the sink to load into the dishwasher like they just ate a nice dinner. They even go so far as to force awkward smiles for their father, but he simply nods at them in acknowledgement before rubbing at his temples and makes his way upstairs, clearly still stressed from work. Kyunghee breathes a sigh of relief when he hears his father’s bedroom door click shut.

“We’re good,” he says, clasping a comforting hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Go lock the back. I’ll finish up the dishes.” Yuri nods, before making her merry way off to follow her brother’s orders. She nearly jumps out of her skin when she’s about to lock the back door and sees a male figure standing ominously in the shadows instead.

She turns on the back light, and lo and behold, there stands Min Yoongi, eating a fucking chicken wing on her back porch. And he has the audacity to look surprised, like she’s the one who shouldn’t be there on her own porch. Heaving a sigh, she steps outside, closing the door behind her as quietly as possible.

“What are you doing here?!” she whisper-yells. “Why didn’t you go with the others?!” It comes off as more aggressive than she intended, but the last thing she wants is for him to get caught and in trouble when she’s the one that invited him over in the first place.

“Namjoon went to sleep over at Donghyuk’s place,” he explains awkwardly. “Ikje went to sleep over at Hunchul’s place and, uh. I wasn’t invited to either. Ikje dropped me off here from the dorms, so… I don’t really know how to get back to the dorms from here.” 

Yuri heaves a sigh. She’s going to have to give everyone a stern talk about the importance of camaraderie and the no-man-left-behind policy. After shooting a quick text to her brother, she uses the house key hanging off of her lanyard to lock the back door.

“I know Seoul like the back of my hand,” she says. “C’mon. I’ll walk you back.” 

“I don’t know how I feel about you walking back home alone so late at night,” he says. “It doesn’t sound very safe for you.” His genuine worry makes her heart warm. Those unexpected moments of sweetness he has always throw her off. Not in a bad way, though. It’s nice.

Unfortunately, the rest of the walk is significantly less nice. They spend the first ten minutes arguing over whether or not it really is safe for her to be walking back home alone so late. He feels bad that she’s out because of him, but she insists that it’s fine as she’s done so many times before. 

“Taking the subway home and walking home are two very different things,” he admonishes her. She resists the urge to roll her eyes at his patronizing tone.

“Relaaaax. I’ve got pepper spray,” she justifies herself. “Also, I hold my keys between my fingers.” She even holds up her hands for emphasis.

“I’m sure you could give a good stabbing if you wanted to,” he snarks. He doubts the tiny girl before him is capable of causing any physical damage, even with a deadly weapon in hand.

“Are you making fun of me?” she whines, and he snorts, because it really should be obvious. “I’m just trying to make sure you get home safely, and this is the thanks I get?”

Yoongi stops in his tracks to think about it for a moment, cheeks flushing with embarrassment as he does so. She obviously means well, as annoying as she may be. She’s also his junior, and when he thinks about it, he’s just being mean to her for no good reason.

“Fine. I’m sorry for being an ass,” he relents with flushed cheeks, more for his conscience than anything else. “It’s just that—I just like being alone with my thoughts when I walk, that’s all. You’re not annoying.” 

Or at least, not that annoying, he doesn’t say.

“I know I can be annoying,” she says so matter-of-factly that it makes him feel even worse. “And my brother can be the same way. He likes just thinking, too, so I can just be quiet if that’s what you want. I just want you to get home alive, that’s all.” His eyes soften.

“I’ll be fine,” he assures her. “I can defend myself if I really need to. I was on my school basketball team, you know. Boxing, too.”

“With these noodles?” she says bluntly, reaching over and taking hold of his arm. “And how did you get into the basketball team? Aren’t basketball players supposed to be tall?”

“You don’t have any right to talk about height,” he says, staring down all 150 centimeters of her frame as he snatches his arm back from her. “And my arms are not noodles just because I’m not built like The Hulk.”

“We can’t all be Kim Namjoons, I guess. He’s got biceps for days.” Yoongi gives her an amused look at that, and she flushes uncharacteristically. “Sorry. That was weird. Just don’t—nevermind. I’ll stop talking now.”

“No, by all means, keep going,” he teases. “As long as you don’t mind me telling him about it later.” She gasps at that, smacking him in the arm.

“Oh, so now you want me to talk!” she huffs, smacking his arm. “You will be telling him no such thing, Min Yoongi! You don’t even talk to him about that kinda stuff, anyway!” He laughs as he jumps ahead to get away from her playful smacking, smiling so wide that Yuri can see his gums showing. They’re cute. She decides that she likes them.

“You really like him, don’t you? Namjoon?” he chuckles, far too blunt for her liking. It’s a special kind of adorable the way that she so visibly shrinks at his words, he thinks.

“We’re not dating, I, um—” she sputters. “Is it obvious? That I like him, I mean.”

“Relax,” he says. “It’s not. Really, I don’t think he knows. I don’t think anyone knows except Kyunghee, and I only know because of him.”

“My brother knows?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck that guy.”

Yoongi laughs at her sudden vulgarity. She really got really blunt and fiery when she wasn’t thinking, even with her seniors like him. It makes things feel a little bit more comfortable.

“Relax,” he repeats. “I think he just knows you? Because he’s your brother, I mean. He was like, ‘I just have to tell someone and nobody talks to you so it’s okay.’ So I doubt he’s told anyone else.”

Yuri nods, inclined to agree. She’d never tell Namjoon about Kyunghee’s crush on Donghyuk, and she has enough trust in her brother to know that trust goes both ways. Still, she feels bad that the exclusion Yoongi goes through on the daily is so obvious, even to her socially-awkward brother. But she has her own relationships to worry about.

“Just don’t, like. I don’t know. Interfere in whatever is happening, okay?” she huffs. “You’re the only one who knows, as far as I know. I just… don’t try to plant any thoughts in his head, okay? I want whatever happens to happen naturally. Because he likes me for me, or something.”

“Spoken like a true romantic,” he says sarcastically.

“Oh, stop it,” she whines. Yoongi laughs.

“I won’t,” he assures her.

He doesn’t know when they started walking again, but it feels just a bit less awkward and stilted now. Yuri’s just a couple steps ahead of him, guiding the way. Wrinkling his brows, he stops dead in his tracks.

“This isn’t the right way,” he says. “You take a left here.”

“No?” she says. “The subway pickup is right here.”

“I’m not taking the subway, I’m walking, remember?” he says.

“What?!” she says. She didn’t mind the fifteen minute walk to the subway, but this was too much. “The whole way? The whole walk back to the dorms is like, an hour, Yoongi! Jesus, if I knew we were gonna be walking the whole way, I wouldn’t have come.”

“Well, you don’t have to walk me home if you didn’t want to,” he says. “You’re the one who offered.”

“I didn’t think you were a crazy person!” she huffs. “Why don’t you just take the subway?”

“I spent all my money on chipping in for dinner, how the hell am I gonna afford a subway ticket?” he snorts. “Look, I can walk however long it takes, but I can’t spawn food out of thin air like you guys can.” He tries to say it as casually as he can possibly manage, but the venom still leaks through. Her face visibly drops when he says it.

“Oh,” she says, her voice tiny. “I didn’t… sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Stop that. You’re being weird,” Yoongi says. 

He hates this part. He hates the pity looks he gets from rich people like the Lims who have year-long subway passes their father bought—who, by the way, probably gets to sit pretty in a big office telling other people what to do while overworked laborers like his parents carry the South Korean economy on their backs.

But he digresses. He doubts she’s the kind of person who’d want to listen to his long-winded spiels on the economy or the government or the Gwangju democratization movement, anyway. Really, he doubts she’s type to need or think about funds at all.

Much to his surprise, she does.

“Okay, but like—just to make sure—money for that kinda stuff isn’t an issue for you guys, right?” she asks. “Like, Hitman Bang is feeding you guys?” There’s a level of threat to her voice that reminds him of the story Bang PD told him when he first joined the company, of her marching into his office to make demands for her friend’s safety. Loathe as he is to admit it, the image of it is equal parts genuine and endearing of her.

And maybe that’s why he feels the urge to spill his guts to her so suddenly, then. Maybe it’s also the warm, almost disarming energy in the way she talks to him now that they’re finally speaking one-on-one, despite his previous assumptions. Maybe it’s how innocent her eyes look when they shine under the Seoul streetlights.

“You know, I… I used to make beats out of a studio in Daegu,” he confesses. “Most of the time, I’d get scammed out of them, though. The guys who went in and out of the building would rip my shit off or use them but never pay me back, so like… I didn’t make much. But I stayed there because I still wanted to make music and using the studio was cheaper than buying equipment on my own.”

“Oh,” is all she says, pressing her lips together in a thin line. It’s definitely not the kind of thing Yuri and her brother ever had to worry about, seeing as they were so well-off. Hell, they were giving away the shit that Yoongi was slaving his life away over for free.

“So I couldn’t really pay for food or transport that easy, you know?” he continues, against his better judgement. It’s the first time he’s ever talked to anyone about this, and fuck, it feels so good. He can’t stop himself. “In front of the studio, there was this Chinese restaurant that sold jajangmyeon for 2000 won, and down the street, there was this place that sold janchi guksu for 1000 won, and like… I don’t know. It sounds stupid, but I had to worry about that shit everyday. If I ate the janchi guksu, I’d be able to get the bus and if I ate the jajangmyeon, I’d have to walk 2 hours to get home. So. I don’t know. I’m just stuck thinking like that, I guess. I know it’s not like… a thing anymore, but I feel using public transport still makes me feel guilty.”

“Mm.”

“Sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”

“It doesn’t,” she reassures him. “I’ve just, um, never had to think about stuff like that. I’m sorry you had to, though. It sounds shitty.”

“Not your fault. Don’t apologize for something like that.”

“Okay,” she says, smiling up at him. “Thank you for telling me, Yoongi.”

“Uh. Yeah. No prob,” he says, cheeks flushing in embarrassment. His flush only darkens when she shoves a couple of won in his hand, and he realizes she’s been slowly guiding him in the direction of the subway station this whole time. “Wait, h-hey—”

“No, no, I don’t need it,” she says when he shoves the money back into her hands.

“But—”

“It’s fine,” she assures him, soft smile still gracing her features. “I’d rather not walk all the way back to the dorms. Just take it, you’ll be doing me a favor. You don’t have to pay me back or anything, either. It’s not that much, anyway.”

Yoongi frowns. As much as he wants to argue with her, he’s tired enough as it is, and he has no doubt she’d stay up all night just to stay here and debate this with him. 

“Okay,” he relents. She grins in what he believes to be triumph before gently taking hold of his hand in one of hers and placing the money back into his grasp with the other. She waits outside for the subway take off, like she’s afraid he won’t do as she says unless she sees it happen. When the train lurches to a start, he watches her figure retreat through the glass windows. 

There’s a stark contrast to her soft hands and the fussy way she thrust her money at him, he thinks. 

Lim Yuri is a strange, strange girl.

Namjoon jumps in his seat, startled when Yuri suddenly marches in, plops in to the studio chair next to him, and looks up at him with crossed arms and a very non-threatening scowl on her face.

“I have a bone to pick,” she says, and his brain immediately kicks it into panic mode as he rakes through his mind for anything that he could have possibly done to upset her within the past week.

Namjoon likes to consider himself a considerate person who wouldn’t want to upset anyone, but for some reason this feels different from pure consideration. At the beginning, Yuri was just Kyunghee’s kid sister who happened to help make good music. These days, though, she feels more like a peer than a junior, more like a friend than a dongsaeng. 

For whatever reason he can’t quite pinpoint, her opinion of him has become quite important to him as of late. The idea that he’s done something she disapproves of makes his hands sweat. Even so, he manages to keep his composure, nodding as calmly as he can manage.

“What’s up?” he asks, cringing at the way his voice cracks. The way she sighs as she scoots her chair closer to his amps his anxiety up to eleven.

“You guys need to be nicer to Yoongi,” she says sternly, “You all really excluded him last week. He said you guys all went to each other’s houses after bouncing out last week and he just had nowhere to go. Why didn’t you guys plan for that or something?” Namjoon droops inward, like a kicked dog.

“Sorry,” he says, face hot with embarrassment despite immediately trying to justify himself. “It’s just—it was just kind of weird because nobody is really close to him or anything. The only person he really talks to is Ikje, and they’re not really even friends. We didn’t know how to broach the subject with him, or if he already had plans or anything, you know?”

“You could’ve asked,” she huffs, “I mean, I walked him to the subway station so he could ride back to the dorms, so everything turned out okay in the end. But—”

“By yourself?” Namjoon cuts her off. “That’s dangerous. Did you walk back by yourself, too? That late at night? Something could’ve happened. Why didn’t you ask Kyunghee to do it?” Yuri shakes her head fondly at his worrywart antics, and he sighs in relief when she smiles. It’s a warm reminder that she’s really not that mad at him.

“You sound like my dad,” she giggles, gently shoving at his arm. “Stop that. I’m trying to be mad at you.” He can’t resist cracking a smile back at her.

“Sorry.” He doesn’t sound apologetic.

“Anyway,” she continues, her tone considerably lighter, “Yoongi and I talked a bit when we were walking to the station, and like… I don’t know. It just made me realize how excluded he really was from everyone else. So can you just talk to him more, or something? And please try to get the other guys to talk to him more, too?”

“Yeah, of course. But for future reference, you could’ve called for a group discussion for this,” he chides, playfully adding, “I thought you were just mad at me for something. I really thought I did something wrong and didn’t know about it. You gave me a heart attack for no reason.”

“Sorry.” She laughs shyly now that it’s her turn to apologize. “It’s just—you’re the only one who really listens to me, you know? I feel like the rest of the guys kinda just see me as a little kid. I mean, I get it, because Kyunghee is my brother and Donghyuk is his best friend and Ikje is old, but like. I don’t know. I don’t feel like they respect me like you do, sometimes.”

Everything she says comes out in that nervous, rambly tone that she uses when she wants to keep things light, no matter how serious it actually is to her. Namjoon frowns.

“Sorry,” he says again. She shrugs.

“Not your fault,” she says, “I think things are gonna get better with Yoongi around, anyway.” Namjoon raises a curious brow at that.

“Oh?” is all he says. Yuri nods, like that’s an answer.

“He’s cool,” she says. “He was a little rude at first, but he got really shy and apologized when I pointed it out. Can you believe it? A man! Apologizing! Men never apologize, Namjoon!”

“I resent that statement.”

“Shut up, man,” she teases. They both chuckle at that. “Anyway. I think that you should try to talk to him, if anyone. I can’t tell you everything he said ‘cause that’s his business, but I will say that you’re both really passionate about music, so I think you’d get along really well.” Namjoon wrinkles his nose at her idealism, not quite sure about that one. 

He supposes she’s sort of right, seeing as music is probably the only thing he and Yoongi can agree on. Even saying that is a stretch, because their very different methods of music-making lent cause to many studio debates. It’d probably be more accurate to say that music was the one field in which they respected each other enough to discuss things amicably. If the conversation wasn’t about music, they spent more time throwing passive-aggressive one-liners at one another than talking about anything else.

“I don’t know about that,” is all he decides to say.

“It can’t be that hard,” she says, pouting. “Yoongi is a nice person. And even if there are things you don’t agree on, you can’t deny that he works really hard. So at least try? For me?”

“That walk to the subway really changed you, huh?” he jokes. He’s expecting her to laugh or roll her eyes or smack him or something, but she nods sheepishly instead.

“He gives me good vibes,” she says like it’s an explanation.

“There you go with your vibes again,” he says. It comes out a bit more passive-aggressive than he’d have liked. 

The atmosphere is a bit too fragile for him to start another debate, but it bothered him that she could dislike people like Hunchul because of the bad vibes she got from him, yet expect everyone to drop everything and befriend Yoongi because he gave her good vibes. She says that it’s just her intuition, but he thinks it’s just an excuse. Even without him saying all this, though, she rolls her eyes when she picks up on his implications.

“Yoongi really is a good guy, okay? I can feel it,” she tries convincing him. “I actually saw him smile, Namjoon. And he never smiles! And it was all cute and gummy! I know he comes off as kinda cold, but he just seems soft underneath it all. I just think he’s a person who’s been through a lot.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you have a crush on him,” he teases. For whatever, the prospect of that makes him more uneasy than it should.

“I’m being serious!” she whines, smacking his arm. “I’m not asking you to stop fighting or arguing with him or whatever if that’s what you want. Just… try to make up after you fight.”

“It’s just weird,” Namjoon admits sheepishly. “It’s not like I want to fight, so I don’t. Especially if it’s over something stupid. I just try to ignore the little things. But then all those little things pile up into one big pile of resentment until I get mad at him for something stupid and he thinks I’m crazy and I’m still mad at him and it’s weird.”

It sounds stupid when he says it out loud, but the way that Yuri purses her lips and nods in understanding as he speaks makes him feel a little less crazy about it all. She’s always been someone that people just feel comfortable around, and Namjoon himself is no exception.

“It’s not weird,” she reassures him. “Fighting isn’t bad, I don’t think. I don’t love it, obviously, but Hitman Bang said the other week that being afraid of fights is only gonna let stuff like that and make the conflict big and worse. All I’m asking is that you at least talk to Yoongi.”

She looks up at him with those doe eyes when she says it, big and hopeful and pleading, and he can’t possibly bring himself to say no.

“Alright.”

Ever since his talk with Yuri last week, Yoongi has been finding instant ramyeon cups in his desk.

At first, he thinks it’s a one-off thing, maybe Yuri’s apology for saying something she thought was insensitive because he made her feel bad and she needs to soothe her conscience. But once he’s run out, they quickly get restocked when he’s not looking, and he has to admit that it warms his heart. He didn’t expect his words to affect her nearly as much as they currently seem to. 

He appreciates that she doesn’t give him the noodles directly or even say anything about it. It lessens the guilt he already feels from receiving free food from his junior. Yuri doesn’t ask for any thanks or even any acknowledgement, not breaching the topic beyond asking if he’s eaten yet.

Lim Yuri, he’s come to find, is not as bad as he thought. A little naive, to be sure, but nothing like the selfish, spoiled little girl he’d conjured up in his head when he first met her. He feels bad for the image he’d once conjured up of her in his head, the little brat surrounded by shiny, foreign production equipment who was no doubt born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

Lim Yuri is kind and generous and even thoughtful when she wants to be. She feels too hard, so sentimental that she cries when a beat she’d been working on for the past six hours fails to save before her computer shuts off. He tells her she can just remake it, but she sniffles and shakes her head, saying that it just won’t be the same as the last one.

“That beat was, like, my baby, Yoongi,” she explained to him that day. “I can’t just replace it, you know?” He doesn’t quite get what she’s getting at, but nods anyways. Over time, he comes to find those weird antics of hers he once found annoying to be kind of… cute? Even if he doesn’t get them. Even now, as she whines cutely, all he can offer is a couple of comforting pats atop her head. He wishes he had more to give.

Maybe that’s the worst part of being the poor kid, he decides. Everyone is impossibly kind here, and he’s probably making an ass of himself by meeting that kindness with a cold distrust. So he brushes off their niceties knowing that he has nothing to give back in return, and thus is seen in a doubly awful light. He tries to comfort himself with the knowledge that at the very least, that prickly demeanor means that nobody is expecting anything of him.

After all, Yoongi doesn’t do well with expectations. He’s not the son his parents expected him to be, who’d get good grades and go to university in pursuit of a business degree or something before slaving away at a desk from nine-to-five everyday for the rest of his life, nor does he want to be. 

But he has to be something.

Hence why he’s in need of a job. Not one of the office jobs that his parents suggested, mind you, but a simple part-time job to hold him over on top of being a trainee so that he doesn’t feel like a useless moocher. Thankfully, he’s already got it in the bag. As expected, they can’t just hire anyone, so they’ve just got one little test for him before they can officially put him on the employee roster.

What he doesn’t expect is to run into Lim Yuri, numerous plastic bags in hand.

“Yoongi!” she shouts when they make eye contact, running up to him excitedly. He’s never seen anybody that excited to see him, even back home in Daegu. It makes his heart feel a little funny.

“Hey,” he says, “I didn’t expect to run into you. What are you doing? Are you alone?” As annoyed as she wants to be, she can’t help but be endeared by the concern she shows her, the same kind that he showed her back when she walked him to the subway.

“Well… yes. But it’s fine. I’m not a kid, you know? Don’t worry about me so much! Really, you just sound like a grandpa when you talk like that,” she teases, “I bet one of these days I’ll come into your studio and you’ll be sprawled over the floor because your back gave out or something.”

“Hey, Hitman Bang says I’m an old soul,” he jokes, a wry grin on his face. She rolls her eyes.

“That’s just a polite way of saying he’s surprised that you’re this young and already depressed,” she snorts, but he can tell that there’s no malice to it. Still, it’s so unexpected of her that he has to do a double-take before bursting out laughing. 

He doesn’t even notice the pedestrian light flash on until she links her pinky with his and walks him across the street. Surprising even himself, he can’t bring himself to really mind that much. In due time, he’s found himself growing adjusted to her touchiness. It’s kind of nice, when he thinks about it. It makes him feel a little less like an interloper. Makes him feel like he belongs where he is.

“It’s fine!” she assures him. He doesn’t look very convinced. “We’re in broad daylight, Yoongi. I just finished grocery shopping.” She lifts her bag-lined arms up for emphasis. “It was my turn this week. Kyunghee and I take turns with groceries since our mom isn’t around.”

“Makes sense,” Yoongi says. Now that she mentions it, they’d only ever mentioned having to avoid their father whenever everyone came over to the Lim household. He’d always just assumed their mom was out or at work or upstairs—never that she wasn’t around at all. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious about it, but it seems too heavy of a topic to pry about right now, especially when he already has somewhere to be.

“What about you?” she asks. “Where’d you come from? Or are you headed somewhere?”

“Work,” he explains. “Sort of. It’s just a part-time job. I haven’t technically started yet, but I’m going to. It’s a delivery thing, so I’m just going to test the delivery bike so that they can see that I actually know how to drive and won’t ride around like a crazy person.”

“Like a motorcycle?” she asks enthusiastically. “A real one? You know how to ride a motorcycle?”

“Yeah,” he says as nonchalantly as he can manage, secretly revelling in how much it impresses her. It’s cute of her, he thinks, the way she’s so wowed by the little things. It’s like every conversation with her is an ego boost.

“Can I come watch?” she asks hopefully, eyes glittering with excitement.

And how could he possibly say no to that?

It’s a little silly, how bouncing-off-the-walls excited she is when they get there. Even the old couple who own the restaurant he’s supposed to be delivering for are enamored with her, wrapped up in conversation about meat buns or something. She really is genuinely sweet with them, so much so that they barely take notice when Yoongi mounts the bike they’ve prepared for him to test-ride.

It’s an older Yamaha model, the ‘YD250’ on the scratched up by what he assumes can only be years of wear and tear. He thinks nothing of it as he revs the bike up to life, but before he can take off and begin driving, he’s cut off by Yuri’s voice.

“Hey, hey, hey!” she calls out. “You should be wearing a helmet!”

“It’s in the box,” the old man explains. 

“I’ve ridden without one before,” Yoongi mutters, resisting to roll his eyes at their safety concerns. And Yuri calls him the old person. Even so, he opens the delivery bike box mounted on the back of and reaches in to grab hold of the big black helmet so that he can put it on. “Happy?”

“Very,” Yuri says, sounding far too pleased for his liking. The old woman chuckles at their banter.

Yoongi takes off in a flash after that, quickly riding around the busiest blocks and most bustling streets a couple times, the image of Yuri’s enthusiastic eyes as he rode away on the motorcycle burned into his mind. It’s nice to be admired so deeply. It’s the only reason he’s still on board with the whole idol thing, after all. He doesn’t want to rely on his parents and their money for everything, though, so right now he just needs this job to help support his training. 

He’s officially got the job, they inform him when he gets back. They also tell him that Yuri has been vouching for him in the mere minutes that he was gone. She ducks her head to hide her blush at that, and he finds her shyness in the moment impossibly cute. It only intensifies when she pipes up.

“Can I join you? On the back, I mean?” she asks bashfully. “I’ve, um, never ridden one before. I just think it’d be neat. You can just take me home, if you want. It’s not super far from here, I think.” In any other circumstance, he’d say yes in a heartbeat, but she’s asking him this question in front of his employers. Thankfully, the two nod when he looks to them for permission.

He can’t but feel kind of mortified by the way the old couple coos at him when he takes off his helmet off and places it atop her head, taking extra care to fasten the buckle tight. 

“Cute,” she says. “But what about you?” It’s the little things like these that remind her how thoughtful and softhearted he is, even if he doesn’t really care to show it.

“I’ll be fine. I’ve ridden without one before,” he echoes his earlier sentiment. She doesn’t look convinced, but the old man speaks up before she can get a word in.

“Get your girlfriend home safe, alright?” he says, clapping his hand down onto Yoongi’s shoulder a little too forcefully. Both him and Yuri send each other an embarrassed glance at his assumption, but neither can find it in them to correct the old man.

“Yes, sir,” is all Yoongi says.

The ride back home is a lot less nerve-wracking than he had expected. Yuri’s soft from head to toe, he notes, like a little human pillow. Against his expectations, the feeling of her form pressed against his back throughout their ride in the city feels more comforting than restricting. So much so that he actually feels a little bit disappointed when they get to her house and she has to let go.

He helps her unload her groceries from the delivery bike box, watching as she takes every bag but one. He reaches in to grab it until he sees what’s inside—ramyeon. The exact kind that spawns in his desk every week. At that moment, he realizes that she left that specific bag inside on purpose.

“This is for me,” he says. It's a statement, not a question.

“Mmhm,” she replies. “It’s my favorite brand. It’s got that little egg brick in there, you know the one? These things are mostly carbs, so I think it’s a good source of protein. Good for building muscles.” He frowns, baffled as to how she can be so nonchalant about all this.

“You don’t have to keep doing this, you know,” he says. “I have a job now, so I can buy my own food if I’m ever craving anything beyond those cardboard chicken breasts Hitman Bang gives us.” Yuri giggles at that. “I’m serious. I’ve already gotta pay you back for the last couple of weeks. I’m not sure if my salary is gonna be able to keep up.”

“Hey,” she says gently, staring him down a bit more earnestly now. “You don’t have to pay me back for anything, okay? The ones I get for you are only, like, 1200 won per little cup.”

“Isn’t 1200 won kind of a lot?”

“It’s not,” she assures him. “It’s not that big of a deal. It’s fine. It’s really fine. It doesn’t hurt me at all. If it did, I wouldn’t keep doing it.” Yoongi pulls a face, not entirely convinced.

“You may not feel bad, but like—I feel bad.”

“Well you shouldn’t.”

“But I do,” he says. Yuri sighs.

“Yoongi—”

“It’s not just the ramyeon, you know?” he says, staring mindlessly at some spot on the ground. Anywhere but her face. It’s a daunting task when he speaks so earnestly. “It’s just—you do so much for everyone all the time. And I’m just—I don’t even talk to anybody.”

“Hey.” Yuri speaks softly, taking one of his hands between both of hers in what he thinks is an attempt to comfort him. Her hands are just as soft as they were that night by the subway, he muses. “You can’t blame all that on yourself, you know? I know the other guys aren’t the best at being friendly and inclusive and all that, but that’s not your fault. It’s more of a time thing.”

“A time thing?” he asks.

“We’ve all known each other for, like, two or three years before you came here,” she explains. “ So I think they’re just trying to get used to you? But they don’t dislike you! If anything, I’m sure they’ll like you soon. I mean, I already like you, so it shouldn’t be too hard for them to follow suit.”

“Okay,” he says, thinking nothing of the flush that spreads up to the tips of his ears.

Namjoon supposes that now is as good a time as any when Yoongi steps into his studio.

He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous. After all, Yuri points out, Yoongi is the one alone in Seoul with nobody to talk to. When she puts it like that, it makes them all sound like assholes. Maybe they are. But it’s fine, because Namjoon is finally going to be nice and converse with him about something not music-related. The bar is on the floor. All he needs to do is open his mouth and say something.

“We need to talk,” Namjoon says. He immediately knows he’s said the wrong thing when Yoongi’s eyes widen like saucers, anxiously backing up until his back hits the door like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t be. “Oh God, no, not like that. You’re okay. You’re not in trouble.”

“Oh. Alright,” Yoongi says, visibly relaxing.

“I just, um. I wanted to talk,” he repeats. “I feel like I’ve been… mean? But I’m not trying to be. It’s just that I’m supposed to be the leader, but you’re the hyung. “And you also produce a lot of our songs—which I’m really, really grateful for, of course. I just don’t know how to talk about things as a leader without seeming disrespectful. I try to keep my mouth shut about it, but I guess that’s how things like that build up, you know?”

“My mom gave birth to me,” Yoongi says, seemingly out of the blue, and Namjoon laughs. It’s that loud, booming laugh of his that always fills up the whole room.

“What—?!” he laughs incredulously.

“Let me finish,” Yoongi says, hopelessly fighting to the smile off of his face. “My mom gave birth to me. My mom is older to me, obviously, and she’s done a lot for me, too. And of course I’m grateful for that, but that doesn’t mean I won’t fight her on some things. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything she says, because I haven’t. Neither have you—if we did, neither of us would be here right now. We’d be like, I don’t know, doing cram school or preparing for university shit or something like that. I think I’d resent her if that’s what I was doing right now just because I wanted to please her. That’s why it’s okay to fight. If we don’t, then all that resentment just grows.” Namjoon smiles fondly at him.

“You really are an old man,” he chuckles, prompting Yoongi to raise a brow at him. “Hitman Bang said the same thing, you know? About fighting being good, since conflicts just get bigger if you don’t fight.”

“Well… he’s right.”

“Wiser words were never spoken,” Namjoon replies.

“So no more not-fighting?” Yoongi asks. It’s so ridiculous, the way he has to phrase it—but Namjoon nods, so he supposes that it gets the point across well enough. “We’ll try to resolve problems instead of avoiding them completely.”

“No more not-fighting,” he agrees. “Resolving things. Not avoiding them.” He holds out a pinky.

It’s a ridiculously silly sight, Yoongi thinks, the way Namjoon’s large hand offers out a pinky for what he thinks must be a pinky promise. Seeing someone as big as Namjoon do something so childish is unfairly endearing. He must’ve picked up from Yuri, he muses. Yoongi can’t help but laugh.

“Did you just giggle?”

“Huh?”

“That was kind of cute, hyung.” Yoongi flushes a dusky pink.

“…shut up.”

Yuri doesn’t come in late on Sundays anymore, Yoongi muses.

She always used to come in late on Sundays, which was a stark contrast to her appearances right after school on weekdays and her early morning entrances on Saturdays. He doesn’t know how he didn’t notice before, but he supposes it’s a good thing that he does now. It means that at the very least, they’re taking note of each other’s presence. 

Yoongi does think it’s weird, but for as curious as he is, he is not nosy enough to ask about it. Normally, it wouldn’t even cross his mind to do so, but with the talk he had with Hitman Bang last week about getting along better with everyone, he’s having second thoughts.

Yuri may not be a fellow trainee, but she’s still a member of their team. He only just started talking easily to Namjoon, so Yuri is easily the most comfortable person to talk to. After a rather heated internal battle, he gives in and brings it up to her.

“I’m glad you come in on Sundays, now,” he says, as nonchalantly as he can manage. “What cleared your schedule up?”

“Oh!” she says, pleasantly surprised that Yoongi is taking the first step in making conversation. “My mama worked as a vocal teacher before she divorced my dad and moved away, so my little brother Daniel and I would go over there to help her, especially with translating stuff since her Korean wasn’t very good. I used to go over to help the other lady who works there on Sundays since she’s nice and I liked singing!  But Daniel handles all that now, so I’m free to work here with you guys.”

That’s certainly a can of worms. He’s learned more about her and her home life from this single conversation than he did from the night he was over at her house, but he doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable by pressing further about the deep shit, so he keeps his digging as shallow as he can.

“You sing?” he says, and she flushes.

“Yes,” she admits. “But like. Not in front of other people. That’s scary.”

“Like stage fright?”

“Sort of,” she says. “It’s different. More like, scary in the sense that you have to share your art that you’ve poured all your heart and soul into for so long. Because then when people reject it or don’t like it, you feel like they don’t like you. On top of that, people also care about visuals and dancing and aegyo, and like… how am I supposed to fulfill all those categories?”

“I get that,” he says. He always knew that music would be a big part of his life, but he never imagined he’d be performing for other people. The thought of scrutiny had always made his stomach churn, but that’s basically all that idol life was. He’s not sure how he’ll handle it. “You don’t think you’ll ever be singing on a stage one day?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. Maybe one day,” she says. “Maybe if I was more… you know.” She grimaces as she makes a vague gesture with her hand.

“Mm-hm.” Really, he doesn’t know, but it seems like a touchy subject. 

He deems it better not to pry.

Big Hit and Source Music are due to debut a girl group soon, Hitman Bang says.

Unlike the boys, they’ve even got a name—GLAM. Yoongi, however, has yet to know the group’s trainees beyond seeing them in passing. After all, Source is the one handling all the management and promotion and all that fancy stuff. 

(Hitman Bang says he’d never be able to manage a girl group because he doesn’t understand women. It takes all of Yoongi’s willpower to stifle a laugh when Yuri says she’s not surprised.)

Meanwhile, all Big Hit has to do is help make their music. 

Yoongi feels a bit of pressure when faced with the prospect of making music for somebody else. Music has always been a very personal process for him. The thought of someone else interpreting his work was both exciting and overwhelming. While the prospect of someone interpreting his work or liking his work enough to perform it piqued his interest, the idea of someone either fucking up something he made or pitching his work to someone who’d only reject it was anxiety-inducing.

To his relief, that is not what he is currently doing.

At the moment, he’s currently mixing a demo for one of GLAM’s future songs, touching up the vocals so that they stand out above the instrumental’s bouncy synths. It has a nice vibe to it, he muses. It’s in English, but he understands enough of it to make out that it’s about getting ‘too close’ to somebody who’s supposed to be a friend. Hitman Bang must’ve purchased it from some overseas songwriter. He’s not sure why. It seems like it’d be an expensive process, and even after buying it they’ll have to translate it back into Korean. What was the point of all that hassle?

At least it sounds nice, Yoongi supposes. It’s a cute, pop-based little R&B track with airy vocals. The high notes are clear and smooth, with a distinct little squeak at the end of the high notes. It’s almost familiar, he muses, but he’s listened to a lot of music in his lifetime, so—wait a minute.

Yuri. That’s Yuri’s voice.

He recognizes those little squeaks anywhere, reminiscent of the whiny tones she makes whenever she’s being stubborn about something. It’s harder to pick up on when she speaks in English, which he supposes he should’ve assumed she’d know how to speak. He recalls Namjoon offhandedly mentioning that she was his English tutor a couple of times, as well as Yuri mentioning translating for her mom. Still, he’s never actually heard it come out of her mouth. It’s kind of jarring.

Against his better judgement, he asks her about it.

“Oh! Um, yeah, that’s me,” she admits, laughing sheepishly. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“It’s good,” he assures her. “Your voice is pretty. The lyrics you wrote are catchy. I bet you could be an idol, if you wanted to.”

“Uh-uh. I don’t think so,” she says just a bit too forcefully, “I’m perfectly content just producing for you guys. Seriously.”

“That’s selfless of you,” he says. She shakes her head.

“It’s actually a little selfish, when I think about it,” she laughs nervously. “To be honest, I think a big part of my support comes from living vicariously through you guys. Saying it out loud makes it sound kind of awful, but you guys are doing things I could only ever dream of doing. I’m just here to make sure you guys are as successful as possible at all the things you’re doing, you know? Even though I’m not actually, like, putting in all the work and being on stage and all that.”

“You could, if you really wanted to,” he says encouragingly. She shakes her head.

“I mean, I don’t think I look very idol-like,” Yoongi muses. 

“You do!” she argues. Poking at his pale cheek to emphasize her next point, she says, “White as sugar, just like old man Bang said. You’ve got that glass skin, you know?” 

“That’s because I don’t go outside,” he says, self-deprecating as ever as he swats her hand away.

“Oppa,” she whines in a way he thinks is unfairly cute of her. “Just accept the compliment, okay?” He rolls his eyes, but relents to her wishes anyway.

“Thank you,” he says.

“You’re very welcome,” she says, sounding far too pleased with herself. “Don’t be like that, okay?”

“Like what?” he says, wrinkling his nose.

“Well… you know. Mean to yourself about how you look,” she explains. “Namjoon is the same, which is sad. And also just not great for an idol, you know? You have to be at least a little confident in your looks, or you’re gonna be miserable every time the stylists dress you. It takes them longer than you’d think. Or so I’ve heard.”

“There’s not much to be proud of,” he deflects, not missing the way that Yuri rolls her eyes like that. 

When she raises her hand, he thinks she’s gonna flick his forehead or prod at his face again or something, but instead she places a finger on the tip of his nose. He furrows his brows together.

“What—”

“Your nose is cute,” she says matter-of-factly. He can’t help the strangled noise of surprise that escapes him at that, face growing hot as he flusters. “And your pale skin makes it easier to see when you blush, too. That’s a strong charm point as well, I think. You’ve got lots of charms.” He turns away, shaking his head in disbelief. 

Still, it’s nice to know that somebody thinks so.

Yoongi presses the end call button on his phone just a little too forcefully.

Another phone call, another argument with his parents. It was instances like these that made him not want to call them at all. He’s always in this limbo of guilt, grateful that they paid for his trainee contract while also being angry at the way they constantly voice their disapproval. He slams his phone down onto his desk in frustration. 

Apparently, it was louder than he thought. His studio door opens up a sliver, just enough for Yuri to peek her head in.

“Hey,” she calls softly. “Everything alright in there?” Yoongi pulls a face that makes it obvious that no, he is not alright. “Can I come in, then?” 

Upon his nod of approval, she files into the room, gently closing the door shut behind her. She walks over and settles into the seat across from his, sliding it over next to his so she can lay her head on his shoulder. Her touch is comforting, he thinks.

“Talk to me,” she says. “What’s wrong?”

“Sometimes, I think I should just… I don’t know. Anything to stop shit like that from happening,” he sighs. “My parents nagging me, I guess. Just go back home. Go to college. Get a nine-to-five. Have a nice family, or something.” And Yuri frowns, because she gets it.

It’s something she’s spent many days and nights comforting Namjoon over when he’s just had another argument with his parents over the same exact thing. She wishes she could relate or understand, or anything to comfort him—but she can’t. 

She’s glad the two can talk to each other about it now, but she can’t help but feel a little jealous that she can’t be a part of the conversation and can help them. She almost scoffs at herself for envying them being able to bond over their unsupportive parents. How fucked up was that?

Heaving a sigh, she hops up and takes a seat on the edge of his desk, careful to mind his production equipment. She swings her feet up into his lap, in that very casually touchy Yuri-esque way of hers. Impulsively, he brings a hand up to gently tap at her shin. She tries not to giggle at the ticklish sensation.

“Yoongi,” she starts, as seriously as she can manage. “Not to be, like. A downer or anything. But when your parents are gone, where would that put you? Stuck in a job you hate for no reason?”

“Six feet under,” he snorts, and she gasps.

“Not funny!” she whines, kicking at his hand. Her assault on his poor palm only gets worse when he bursts out laughing. “So not funny!”

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, but he’s still laughing.

“I really am trying to be supportive,” she huffs, a bit less childishly, now. “But I can’t like. Get it, get it, you know? The only reason I have any idea what to say here is ‘cause I’ve had this talk before. You know, if you two tried talking to each other more about personal stuff, I think you’d see that you and Namjoon are more alike than you might think. I’m not going to spill his business, but. I’ll just say that I think if anyone were to get it, it’d be him. It took some coaxing from my dad, but both my parents are okay with me pursuing music, now. As long as I took the producer route and not the idol route, at least. But still. It’s a good start. I’m lucky. I’ve got it better than a lot of people do, I think.”

“Would you?”

“Hm?”

“Take the idol route,” he clarifies, looking down at her shoes. “If you were given the choice.”

Sometimes, Yoongi feels like he’s never been given a choice. It feels like he’s been given every setback in the world. He’s never had the support or the funds or the hunger for fame that so often accompanied those pursuing music. He can barely remember why or when or what began his relationship with music, but he so vividly remembers feeling it, feeling like music chose him rather than the other way around. He can’t help but wonder what someone who seems to have been given almost all the choice in the world has to say about the only restrictions she’s been given.

Not much, it seems.

“Oh, um, nah. I don’t think so,” she laughs nervously. “I’m just—I’m not really pretty enough?”

“You are pretty,” he says, too quickly and too naturally to be insincere. He doesn’t miss the way that she ducks her head to hide the flush flooding into her cheeks.

This must be the vague ‘you know’ thing she was always talking about, Yoongi muses. He really should’ve picked up on it from the moment she said she didn’t look very idol-like. He’s never been the type to kiss up, so he hopes she knows that he means it. 

“You’re so—stop that,” she whines, embarrassed. She half-heartedly attempts to kick at his hand again, but makes no move to try again when she misses. “You’re too much.”

“I’m serious,” he says.

“I know,” she squeaks, hands flying up to cover her flushed cheeks up in embarrassment. “That’s the embarrassing part. Get some taste or something.”

“Don’t be a hypocrite, Yuri,” he says, rolling his eyes. “You always tell Namjoon and I not to be insecure about appearances, but you act the same when it comes to yours.”

“That’s different,” she whines, “You and Namjoon are gonna be in front of the cameras. I’m gonna be behind them. I don’t need to muster up any kind of confidence for that. Which is good. Because I don’t have it.”

“Looks don’t matter to me,” he says flatly. “But confidence does. I’m not gonna hold your hand and tell you that you’re pretty all day, even if I think it’s true, ‘cause you’re not gonna believe it no matter how many times I say it.”

“Ouch.”

“Let me finish,” he continues, “Even if it isn’t your looks, you deserve to at least be confident in something. Your music, your grades, your music, whatever. You’re generous and thoughtful. Don’t let society make you miserable just because all they care about is appearances.”

Yuri doesn’t say anything, her face still buried in her hands. More than a little bit concerned at this point, Yoongi flicks her forehead through her bangs. 

“Hey, you good in there?” he asks. She doesn’t reply. Just sniffles. Oh, fuck. “Uh, sorry, I—” Yuri shakes her head, finally lowering her hands.

“Don’t be,” she laughs nervously, still teary-eyed. “That was one of the nicest things a boy ever said to me. You should be, like, a motivational speaker or something.” He snorts.

“I can’t give advice to like. People I don’t care about,” he says, grinning awkwardly, “I’d just tell them to get their shit together and I’d get fired.” Yuri can’t fight the smile off of her cheeks at that.

She’s sure she’d know that he cares through his Yoongi-isms alone, but it’s nice to hear it from the man himself. He wouldn’t be giving this advice if he didn’t care. 

Min Yoongi cares about her, and it makes her heart feel warm.

Lim Yuri has become an unexpected addition to Yoongi’s delivery sprees.

Yuri’s arms, small and gentle, have become a comforting presence as they wrap around his waist. The old couple doesn’t seem to mind the extra person joining him on his trips, content with her politeness and the fact that she isn’t demanding any money despite providing help. They coo about the highs and lows of young love whenever Yuri arrives to join him on his trips, and Yoongi can’t find the energy within himself to correct them.

Things go on like this for a long time, hours, days, weeks, of this halcyon. Her arms keep him warm in the winter and her cold hands keep him refreshed in the late months of spring. The old husband hands them a bag of leftover food for them to eat together, an wistful smile on his face. 

They eat in the midst of impromptu therapy sessions, which usually consist of Yuri comforting Yoongi as he complains about his problems. It’s okay, though, because she likes to give advice and she likes how deep his voice is when he talks and she doesn’t have many problems of her own to complain about, anyway. When she does talk, it’s always lighthearted, talking about a song she wrote or something dumb Kyunghee and Daniel did or how cute Namjoon’s dimples were on that particular day. 

One day, curiosity kills the cat, and Yoongi asks a question that’s been killing him from the start.

“Why do you like Namjoon so much, anyway?” It’s something Yoongi asks out of the blue, so much so that he doesn’t even realize he’s asking it until it slips out. He’s not sure what he’s expecting until she answers, and when he does, he realizes that his expectation was literally anything but what she says next.

“No reason,” she says, and he’s so thrown for a loop by the words that leave her that he practically stumbles over his feet when he hears them.

“Wait, seriously?” he says. “I’ve read your lyrics, you know. You’re good with words.”

“I am?” she says, sounding far too surprised for his liking.

“Yeah. Which is why I thought you’d have a way better answer than that,” he says. “I expected you to talk about…” He pauses as he sifts through his brain for all the things that he personally finds attractive about Namjoon. “…I don’t know, his dimples or his height or his good grades or something.” All things that he lacks, Yoongi muses with insecurity.

“Oh my God. Those are all, like, great and all, but they’re not like… why I like him,” Yuri giggles. “He’s just—I don’t know. There’s a lot of things about him that make me like him, but I can’t, like, come up with an itemized list. It’s not like one day he reached a quota in traits I liked and suddenly I liked him. I just realized I did. I just… felt it. It felt right. He felt right.”

“Oh.” Yoongi feels a pang of jealousy at that, like an itch he can’t scratch. Maybe it’s because a tender part of him can only dream of being loved so dearly.

He silently wonders what it would be like to be loved by a person like Lim Yuri.

Namjoon has been feeling himself growing fonder and fonder of Yoongi in these past months.

Finally learning to talk to him without being all weird has helped with that. Without the formalities, they’re both able to speak a lot more freely. In the time that they’ve done so, the two have been able to talk about and bond over their rocky family situations and their choice to pursue music.

What’s fueled his fondness more than anything, though, is Yoongi’s little habits—the way he runs a hand through his jet black hair as he shyly recommends jazz and art study because they seem like the type of thing you’d like, Namjoonie, the way he always wears those grey jacket and sweats because they’re warm and winter is starting to trickle in, the way he smiles with his gums just like Yuri said he would.

Those two have gotten impossibly close lately, Namjoon notes. Now, he doesn’t think he’s the most perceptive person in the world, but it’s hard to miss the tenderness in their actions. Every time he steals a glance in their direction, they’re exchanging knowing glances or whispering softly to each other or linking pinkies in the way that Yuri loves to do so much.

It’s only natural to conclude that Min Yoongi and Lim Yuri are involved.

He doesn’t know why it bothers him so much. It has no reason to, right? But it does. He combs through his mind for any possible reason that it should. Maybe it’s because Yoongi, who’s agreed to be more honest with him, hasn’t told him about it. Maybe it’s because Yuri, ever perceptive, has been one of his closest friends for years and yet seems to have no intentions in telling him about it despite how painfully obvious their interactions make things.

The familiar sting of loneliness rises sharply in his chest when he sees them interact, like they’re in their own little world, with seemingly no room for him. He feels like he’s spying on their relationship when he shouldn’t be. He feels like a voyeur. He feels like an interloper.

Maybe this is how Yoongi felt when he first came to Big Hit, he muses. If this is how he feels just watching him and Yuri, he can’t imagine having to watch everyone who’s known each other for years talk and laugh together from the outside. The more he thinks about it, the more he feels selfish and ridiculous for being so bothered by it. After all, who was he to meddle in their affairs?

Maybe it’s high time he finds one of his own.

Yuri’s sheets are soft, Yoongi thinks.

They’re at her house today, Yuri not feeling very keen on having this conversation in the Big Hit building for fear that Namjoon might walk in on them while they’re talking about him. Right now, she’s half-heartedly producing something on her bedroom computer and venting to Yoongi as he lies on her bed.

She rants about how Namjoon has been talking a lot about girls lately, clearly bothered. She especially seems bothered by the fact that Namjoon won’t let her be as touchy with him as she used to be. Normally, Yoongi wouldn’t give a damn about other people’s affairs, but things are different, this time. While he’s not personally bothered by it, he doesn’t like the fact that it bothers her so much, for whatever reason he can’t quite pinpoint. 

Dear Lord, she even goes into detail, describing each and every pretty girl in a way that is far less flowery than he believes Namjoon would speak about a girl.

“And then there’s Jieun, who they all say is a good kisser. What does that even mean? Like, what the hell makes someone a good kisser? You just jam your lips together, right?”

“You’ve never been kissed,” he says, more a statement than a question.

“Yes?”

“Kinda late, don’t you think?” he says. Yuri gasps as she smacks at his arm, clearly mortified.

“No it’s not! Shut up!” she says indignantly. He’s trying to take her seriously, but her squeaky little whines make that hard.

“Sorry—” he tries apologizing through his laughter.

“You don’t sound sorry at all!” she whines. “It’s not funny, okay? It’s fine! I’m still young!”

“You’re sixteen already!”

“I’m only sixteen!” she huffs, crossing her arms and turning away from him. “I-I have time, okay? We can’t all be heartbreakers, Min Yoongi.”

“Heartbreaker?” he repeats. “I haven’t had a girlfriend since middle school.”

“I never said you were one,” she defends herself.

“You implied it.”

“I—whatever!” she huffs. “I’m saving my first kiss for someone special. And it’s gonna be somewhere magical, like under the cherry blossoms at the Goyang Flower Festival or on a picnic blanket under the stars on New Year’s or something.”

Oh my God. He’s trying so hard to stop his laughter. 

“Did you swallow a fucking romance novel?” he laughs. “My first kiss took place in the hallway after gym class, so like. Don’t be surprised if it sucks and you mess up and slobber all over them or something like that.”

When he turns to look at Yuri, she looks incredibly nervous. She’s come to a still in her spinny chair, nervously pulling her hair over her face as she ponders his words with utmost seriousness.

“Do you think that?” she asks, voice small.

“What?” he asks. Wordlessly, she sighs, wheeling her chair backwards over to where he’s lying on her bed. She cranes her neck back onto her bed, coming face-to-face with him.

“Do you think I’ll mess up my first kiss?” she says softly. Not that she needs to speak anything but—she’s so close he can feel her breath against his nose. He pulls away, face aflush.

“You’ll be fine,” he mutters, voice cracking. 

Yuri gives a huff, seemingly dissatisfied with his answer. She hops down from her chair—there’s an inherent cuteness in the fact that her feet don’t touch the ground when she sits on it, Yoongi muses—and up onto the bed, right next to him. He rolls his eyes when she settles onto her knees and urges him to sit up, too. He obliges, in spite of his annoyance.

“What was your first kiss like? Aside from the whole being in the hallway thing?” she whispers, like they’re telling secrets. There’s nobody else in the house but Daniel (who’s probably got his headphones cranked up to a hundred percent), so Yoongi can’t help but find her antics endearing.

“My first kiss was just a kiss. Nothing bad. Nothing mind-blowing,” he says with a shrug.

Even that’s a bit of a stretch. They were both gross and sweaty and their teeth clacked together. But he already feels kinda bad for making her doubt herself so much, and he doesn’t want to aggravate her worries.

“So how did… did you just…” she gestures awkwardly with her friends as she trails off, unable to articulate whatever she wants to say. He gets it, though. He always does.

“You just go for it,” he says, “It’s the kinda thing you just feel your way through. Just don’t think too hard about it. You’re good at doing things without thinking, so it should go well for you.”

“Gee, thanks,” she says, rolling her eyes at the back-handed compliment. “It’s just—I don’t wanna mess up in the future if I ever… you know.”

“Just say kiss,” he teases. “It’s not as sacred as you’re making it out to be. It’s just lips-on-lips. If humans never decided it was a thing to kiss people you liked, it wouldn’t be important at all. It’d just be an exchange of germs.”

“It’s important to me!” she bristles, so aggressively that it throws him for a loop. She takes note of her overreaction, coughing awkwardly before returning to her normal volume. She repeats, “I-It’s important to me. I just want it to be nice. I don’t wanna be disappointed. And I don’t wanna be someone else’s disappointment. That’s why I’m asking you this.”

“What are you asking?” he says, raising a brow.

“Augh!” She buries her face into her hands, miserably failing an attempt to hide her flushed cheeks. Peeking through her fingertips, she gently continues, “Just… hypothetically… purely for practice reasons… it wouldn’t count as my first kiss if you could, um. Help me. Try. Practice. I don’t know.”

The room goes impossibly quiet. She can’t say a word after that, the pair just staring at each other in awkward silence, him impossibly floored at the suggestion. Their faces go blank as Yuri processes what the hell she just did and Yoongi processes what the hell just happened.

When it all finally clicks, Min Yoongi has the audacity to fucking smirk, gums showing and all.

“Practice,” he repeats, no lilt to it, no bite. His attempts to remain straight-faced are to no avail, because her pouting up at him is all it takes for him to burst out laughing.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” she yells, pushing him back down onto the bed. “Just forget it! Forget I said anything!” She hooks a leg over his waist, pinning him down before grabbing a pillow and smacking him as hard as she can with it. The pain does little to quell his laughter.

“Get off!” he laughs in-between smacks. “You’re too much!”

“Are you calling me heavy?!” she asks, more fake-offended than anything.

“What—no! What the fuck made you think that?!” he tries to sound indignant, but he’s still laughing, and before he knows it, she’s laughing too. When the laughter subsides and the room goes quiet, they both realize what kind of situation they’re in. Yuri’s still got him pinned down, having just talked about first kisses. Kisses in general. Having just proposed that they kiss. The air goes tense.

“So,” Yoongi says, cutting through the silence.

“So.”

“I didn’t. Uh. I didn’t say no.” He has the decency to look embarrassed, now, cheeks flushed and eyes blown wide. “Unless you don’t want to.”

The two stare at each other for a moment after that, like they’re waiting for the other to back down. A Clint Eastwood-style duel of the eyes, so to speak.

“I won’t start something I can’t finish,” she says decidedly.

She leans in as promised,

presses her nose against his—

“I’m sorry!”

—and promptly places both hands over his mouth.

The motion isn’t harsh enough to hurt too bad—only a light sting—but it is very sudden. Yoongi blinks up at her a couple of times in surprise just to reassure himself that whatever that was actually just happened.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “For um—yeah. I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do this? Because, um, you know. If someone asks me when my first kiss was, I’ll have to say, ‘Oh, it was on my bed at like, 11PM when I was in high school. A-And that already makes me sound terrible! And then when they ask with who, I’ll have to say, ‘Oh, just with my friend that I work with so I could practice kissing for the future since I was in love with our friend!’ And that’ll be my stupid goddamn answer! And that’s… that’s, um… that’s kind of not very romantic…”

Her voice tapers off towards the end, quieting in what Yoongi thinks is embarrassment as she takes his hands off of his mouth. It really does sound kind of ridiculous when she says it out loud. Maybe Yoongi was onto something when he laughed at her for sounding like she ‘swallowed a romance novel.’ To her relief, his next response is anything but patronizing.

“Hey,” he says, “Relax. Don’t apologize for changing your mind, that’s just—that’s just weird. Don’t force yourself to do shit you don’t want to. That’s weird.”

She’s so close. They’re still nose-to-nose, breath tickling each other’s lips every time the other speaks. He awkwardly pats the back of her thigh a couple of times, which she reads as a signal to roll off of him. She obliges. Even though she knows he doesn’t mean much by that little touch, the intimacy of it still makes her blush. Thankfully, he can’t see it with the both of them laying back down onto the bed and staring awkwardly at the ceiling above them. Yoongi pretends to find interest in the faded glow-in-the-dark stars on her bedroom ceiling.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” he repeats.

“Sorry,” she says again.

“It’s fine,” he reassures her, because as mortifying as the situation is for them both, it really is fine.

She blindly reaches her hand out to find his, feeling around until their fingers meet. When he fondly links his pinky in hers, the way she always does with him, she decides that a kiss isn’t the kind of thing she should be rushing into, anyways.

Yoongi just assumes it isn’t weird.

After all, Yuri settles against him so naturally, her face buried into his neck and her studio chair sidled next to his as he sits at his desk and works on mixing what he hopes will end up being a song on their first album, whenever that comes out. Were it not for the way that her breath hit the sensitive skin of his neck, he would barely even register that she was there.

Well. Maybe not barely.

She’s so warm, the way she presses against him. She’s always warm, except in her hands, but it’s fine because his hands are always colder. Her cold fingers thread through his hair, and it reminds him of how accustomed he’s become to her touchiness. It’s just a habit of hers, he’s since learned. She has a lot of little habits he once found weird, but now only sees those habits as things that make her Yuri. 

Yuri who hides behind her hair when she’s shy or nervous. Yuri who only wears half her jacket and leaves the other half hanging off for no reason. Yuri who wordlessly leaves ramen cups on his desk. Yuri who has to link her pinky with someone else’s when she’s nervous. Yuri who awkwardly bends her hands to link both of hers together when she doesn’t want to be a bother.

But it’s come to the point where she’s never a bother anymore. If she were, he wouldn’t have situated himself in her life as the outlier, the one person who coaxes her to talk about all of her problems because she’s the one resolving everyone else’s. Yuri taking always feels like giving, because he takes in her little habits and private thoughts that she shares with him and nobody else. It makes him feel more important than it makes him feel annoyed.

She has a special bond with everyone at Big Hit, and even with the Source Music and JYP trainees they practice with—she wouldn’t be going out of her way to force them all to resolve their conflicts, otherwise, even if they see her as nosy and meddling because of it.

In everyone being special, he supposes, he has gone full circle in no longer being special. Maybe he is, but he’s not as important to her as say, Kyunghee, her own damn brother, or Namjoon, who she stares at like he holds all the world’s answers. With that, Yoongi takes his place in her heart at a solid bronze (at the very most), which stings a little more than he’d like to admit. 

He hasn’t had much opportunity to grow as close to anyone at Big Hit—hell, anyone in Seoul—yet. Maybe that’s why he’s grown so attached to her like this. As sad as it is, she is quite literally the one person in the whole city that he’s close to. Listening to all her problems like this makes him feel like he’s just as important to her, so he can feel a little bit less pathetic about holding her so close to his heart. Even if the problems that she tells him reveal anything but.

“I’m so stupid,” she whines against his neck. Her warm breath gives him goosebumps.

“Jeez, you’re not. How many times do we have to go over this?” He’s been comforting her over this for the past half-hour now.

Namjoon has a girlfriend now. A tall girl from his advanced algebra class with great math skills and pale skin and sharp eyes—everything that Yuri does not have. He knows she’s insecure about it from the way she wrinkles her nose when she sees her reflection in the mirrors of the practice rooms. It makes him want to throttle Namjoon, despite him probably not having a clue.

“Sorry,” she says, her voice small, “For dumping all this on you, you know? I don’t wanna be that friend who only ever talks to you when I have problems. I kinda feel like I’m using you.”

“Hey, hey. It’s fine. Relax,” he says, feeling her nod softly into his neck as he continues, “It doesn’t bother me.” In fact, he prefers it, is what he doesn’t tell her. Humiliating as it is, he revels in feeling like he’s giving something, when he always feels like he’s taking from her. Like everyone is taking from her.

He knows what it’s like to be a producer, always behind the scenes of it all. She says she’s perfectly content with it, but he once said the same thing back in Daegu. But even when he chose to do things and make things for other people like this, there was always that underlying feeling of feeling like something has been taken from you. Sometimes it was just wanting the same amount of recognition as the people singing the songs you made.

Being young in society meant a desire for acceptance, and what bigger acceptance was there than fame? He recognizes the stars in her eyes whenever they practice with the other trainees in JYP’s big, shiny entertainment building because his own eyes held them once, too.

He’s still a trainee, so maybe they still do.

But for now, he’s letting himself dream small, living in the studio whenever he doesn’t have to practice those stupid dances Hitman Bang has them do. For now, music comes first, especially with his current job as one of the company’s main producers.

Producing is a lot harder with one hand, he muses, noting that she has at some point monopolized his left one when he wasn’t paying attention. He interlocks their fingers in spite of it all. With his ability to perform keyboard shortcuts impaired, he delegates the task of manually clicking things to his free hand. It’s annoying, but the feeling of her hand fit so snugly in his makes the inconvenience feel worth it. They sit like that for a while, quiet as one of her hands threads through his hair and the other softly strokes at his hand with her thumb.

“I like your hands,” she says. “They’re nice to hold.” Yoongi swallows. She’s so close to him that he’s scared she’ll hear how fast his heart is beating. To his relief, she says nothing of it.

“They’re just hands,” he says as nonchalantly as he can manage. “Cold hands.”

“Usually when you hold someone’s hand they get all hot and sweaty and clammy and gross, which is why I do the pinky-linking thing,” she muses, “Yours don’t do that, so they’re nice to hold. And they’re honestly not even that cold.”

“They are,” he argues.

“I don’t think your hands are ever that cold,” she says, her voice a teasing lilt. “I think you just keep saying that so you have an excuse to have your hands held. I bet you secretly love skinship.” He rolls his eyes, tightening an arm around her tiny frame.

“Watch it. Your life is in my hands,” he says, as flatly as he can manage for maximum ominosity.

With a squeak, she flies off of him like he’s on fire. He can’t help but smile, wide and gummy, at her Yuri-esque antics. Even when she turns away, shaking her head fondly, he can feel his heart swell in his chest as he looks at her. It reminds him why she’s the first one at Big Hit he was able to really talk to. Everything feels easy and comfortable with her, the way he felt back in Daegu.

His reverie is interrupted by Namjoon’s voice booming from the studio next to his.

“Yuri!” he calls. “Can you look at this for me?”

Hearing this, she does a little happy dance with her feet. It’s a habit he usually finds endearing, but right now it just makes his stomach twist. She waves him off, dropping everything—she even forgets her water bottle on his desk—to run off and attend to whatever Namjoon needs her for.

“I’ll be back,” she says in a sing-song voice as she’s out the door. 

He knows she will. She always comes back to him whenever Namjoon isn’t available.

Yoongi runs a frustrated hand through his hair, not sure why it bothers him so much. The fact that he doesn’t know why it bothers him so much bothers him more than anything else.

Yuri is awake at the Big Hit dorms at two in the morning.

This is nothing out of the ordinary, though. Whenever their dad was out of the country on a business trip, she always took the opportunity to stay out past curfew as a chance to spend her nights at the Big Hit studio while Kyunghee played video games with Donghyuk in the dorms. She always had to hide in the studio until early dawn so as to not get caught by Hitman Bang, who made it clear that he detested the idea of someone so young being out late just to work for him.

Today is different, though. Today, she’s in the dorms, taking a well-deserved break from work as she lays on her stomach next to Yoongi and watches a movie with him. She brought the DVD over from her house, thinking nothing of the way her father’s old American movies lined the TV stand until the day Yoongi bashfully mentioned wanting to watch it.

So here they are, watching a Korean-subbed version of Scarface on the tiny screen of his laptop. Yuri can’t enjoy the movie very much, finding it a bit too bleak and violent for her liking. And it just never gets better. It’s just hit after hit, one bad thing happening after another. She’s sure that if she squinted hard enough, she would be able to appreciate the cinematography and whatever deeper meaning the film holds, but that sounds like too much brainpower to be using at two in the morning.

Yoongi seems to find it interesting, though. He’s enraptured by every word that leaves the main character’s mouth, so much so that Yuri would be surprised if he forgot she was there. It really seems like he’s in his own little world. Instead, she finds her entertainment in his little gasps of delight, the innocent widening of his eyes, the way his grins of anticipation look as they’re illuminated by the dim light of his laptop screen.

It’s unfair, she thinks, how pretty Yoongi is. Perfect skin and catlike eyes and gummy smiles and he’s not even trying—hell, he doesn’t even have a skincare routine! God really does pick favorites. Yuri absentmindedly brushes a strand of hair out of his eyes, one he’s probably too entranced by the movie to notice. She hums softly at the way he leans into her touch without thinking.

She wonders if anyone is ever going to look at her this way.

There’s no time for her musings to continue when she hears what sounds like someone throwing their guts up in the bathroom. It stops for a moment before continuing, and Jesus, that sounds pretty brutal. She nudges Yoongi with her arm.

“Sounds like someone’s dying in there,” she says. He furrows his brows together in concern.

“Huh?”

“Someone’s not having a good time in the bathroom,” she says. “Did Namjoon undercook the chicken breasts again or what?” As if on cue, the poor guy is retching again, and Yoongi shakes his head.

“Jihoon,” he says, pausing the movie before he stands up and dusts himself off. “He hasn’t been feeling well for a while, now.” Yuri gets up and follows Yoongi when he makes his way towards said bathroom, cringing at the distinct sound of dry heaving as they draw closer. Yoongi knocks on the door before entering, his frown deep-set when he sees Jihoon hunched over the toilet.

“Hey,” Yuri says softly, stepping forward and placing a comforting hand on the small of his back. “Are you okay, buddy?” Yuri and Jihoon aren’t exactly the closest—of all the Big Hit trainees, Namjoon and Yoongi nabbed that spot—but he’s still nice to talk to, always offering to walk her home when it got too late like a good oppa. Seeing him like this breaks her heart.

“‘M fine,” he rasps, despite the pain in his voice telling them all that he is anything but. “Probably just food poisoning. No big deal.”

“Food poisoning for three days?” Yoongi says, obviously in disbelief. “It could be a stomach bug. Or God forbid, appendicitis. You really need to get yourself checked out.”

“It’s fine, hyung. I—” he begins, but the need to heave again cuts him off. Yuri rubs comforting circles into his back some more, unsure of what else to do. She sends a questioning glance Yoongi’s way, who looks just as concerned as she does.

“We’re taking you to the hospital,” he says. Jihoon groans, but doesn’t have the energy to resist.

The drive to the hospital is tense, Yuri filing in the back before Jihoon so he can lay his head against her shoulder and she can make sure he doesn’t throw up anymore. Meanwhile, Yoongi pushing is the edge of the speed limit, eyes darting back and forth between the road and the rear view mirror to make sure that they’re holding up okay in the back. Yuri sends him a reluctant thumbs up.

Yoongi insists that they take Jihoon to the emergency room, where they take Jihoon to the back. As soon as he’s out of eyeshot, Yuri watches with wide eyes as Yoongi takes out his wallet and puts down a hefty payment for the walk-in fee.

“I can pay for it,” she says, shaking her head as she fishes for her wallet in her own jacket pocket. Yoongi smiles, a bittersweet thing, at the unspoken words—she knows how much he’s struggled with money in the past. Even so, he shakes his head, reaching out to tenderly fit his hand into hers.

“There are worse things to spend my money on,” he says. “You can’t really put a price on anyone.”

Something in the way that she sees Yoongi snaps, then, but she has no clue as to what it is. She’s not sure if it’s the lack of sleep or the lateness of the night that makes her think this, but something about him reminds her of the moon, at that moment.

They stay like that the rest of the night, side-by-side in the seats of the hospital waiting room. Yoongi’s lashes flutter dreamily at the way a sleep-deprived Yuri noses against him, softly muttering sweet things against the sensitive skin of his neck and meaning every word.

“Your heart is warm, Min Yoongi.”

Yoongi can’t help but notice the way that Yuri’s wrap around him a little bit tighter during their deliveries, these days. More than that, he can’t help but notice how much he likes it.

He’s slowly accepting the fact that this might be a thing that he will have to address in both himself and with the rest of the Big Hit team later. Yuri being her normal touchy self was one thing, but him finding himself enjoying her touch rather than just allowing it was… new. It’s scary and exciting all at once, but mostly the former. For now, while it isn’t a problem, he chooses to ignore it.

He still puts the helmet on her head himself, pulling the buckles tight and making sure it’s fully secure before anything else. He takes extra care with it these days, tender in the way he always does it for her like it’s the first time. He feels like a little kid all over again, the way he cares like this.

It’s easy for him to psyche himself out of things, convincing himself that she’s just being all touchy because that’s how she is, but then she does little things that make him think it isn’t all in his head. Just last month, she gifted him with a black Yamaha helmet, covered with stickers of Kumamon and logos of brands he likes and Scarface, even though he remembers her having a pointed disinterest in the film while they watched it on his bedroom floor.

He never anticipated that he’d actually need it one day.

He doesn’t know how it happens, who went too fast or too slow or turned when they weren’t supposed to. All he remembers is tightening his arms around Yuri as they tumbled off the bike and onto the ground, hoping that she’d be okay. 

She always kicked in his protective instinct, being so small and so delicate. The thought of her getting hurt because she wanted to help him out makes him feel impossibly guilty.

Yoongi’s fading in and out of consciousness, vaguely registering Yuri’s voice sobbing into her phone on what seems to be a 1339 call.

“He’s—he’s unconscious,” he hears her sniffle, “Oh my God, he—um, no, no, he has a helmet on. His head is under the car. His body’s sticking out from under it. I just—I don’t wanna move him, ‘cause, oh my God, what if I hurt him? Oh God, what do I do? I don’t know what to—no, ma’am, the street is—um...”

When he wakes up, he’s lying in a hospital bed, groggy and miserable and aching to the joints. He’s in the emergency room, he realizes, the same one he drove Jihoon to only weeks ago. His heart sinks when the doctor informs him that he’s got an incredibly bad shoulder injury—no more boxing, no more basketball, he tells him. It was nearly dislocated, he says, so don’t move too much. Don’t put too much pressure on it. Just relax for a month or so.

This sends him into a full-blown panic. He doesn’t have a month. He’s never been much of a dancer—of everyone, she should probably be practicing the most. This sets him back far behind the others. How is he gonna catch up? How is he gonna make up for that?

As soon as the doctor leaves, the weight of the whole world hits him all at once. He can even feel himself hyperventilating, but is halted by the shock of a gentle hand reaching out to grasp his. When he turns, he sees Yuri sitting on the hospital chair next to him. Lord, he was so out of it he didn’t even realize she was there. She’s got bandages on her legs, but other than that, no major injuries. He breathes a sigh of relief.

“Hey,” she says softly.

“Hey,” he says, slowly blinking up at her.

“Why did you do that?” she says, voice cracking.

“Huh?”

“You, um, kind of,” she begins, “…broke my fall? You held me. I don’t know. I crushed your shoulder. That’s why it’s all fucked up. Why would you do that?”

“I—I don’t know,” he admits. “I wasn’t thinking. I just felt like it was the thing to do at that moment.” She whines pitifully at his answer, squeezing his hand as tight as she can.

“I just feel like I owe you one,” she says. “Something. Anything. I don’t know.”

The tender part of him tells him to assure her that she has no need to do any such thing. After all, nothing was more important than other people—especially Lim Yuri—but the scared part of him takes over.

“Make me a promise,” he says softly. She leans in to hear him better, nodding as she does so.

“Anything,” she says.

“Promise me you won’t tell the others about this injury. Please.” Yuri furrows her brows and widens her eyes upon hearing this, obviously not expecting that answer. She practically rips her hand from his at that, pulling back from him as if appalled.

“What?!” she says. “Yoongi, no! They have to know about this!”

“They’ll worry. They’ll bench me. They’ll pull me out,” he says. “I promise you, it’s better if they don’t know.”

“What, so they can make you dance and exercise and all that shit with your injured shoulder? If it was sprained, that’d be one thing, but this is a serious problem! You’re only gonna hurt yourself further by not telling them.”

“I don’t care. It’s fine.” Yuri shakes her head.

“I just don’t get it,” she says, sniffling. “How you can care so little about yourself when I—when everyone—cares about you so much.”

“I’ll be fine,” he assures her. “It’ll heal. Everything will, alright? I just need you not to tell anyone about it.”

“Of course,” she says, as flatly as she can manage. “I owe you one, after all.” Yoongi knows her well enough to sense the bite in her tone. He rolls his eyes.

“C’mon,” he clicks his tongue. “Don’t be like that.”

“Don’t be like that, then,” she says, pressing her back to the opposite wall of his little hospital room. “It’s just—it’s just so stupid, Yoongi.” She slides down against the wall and onto the floor, looking impossibly small and hopeless in a way that only makes him feel guiltier. “You don’t have to pay anyone back for any of the nice things we do. You think we do all that just to kiss ass, or what?”

“What—no! Of course not.”

“Then why am I keeping this a secret, huh? Tell me that,” she says. 

Yoongi pauses for a moment, deep in thought. Every single thought falls upon him, all at once. He thinks of the evaluations next weekend and he thinks about his family back home. He thinks about the money they spent on his trainee contract and he thinks about the amount they’ll have to pay off, regardless of whether or not he debuts. His heart beats wildly in his chest. His head pounds away.  His lips press together into a thin line.

“There’s so much at stake,” is all he can offer as an explanation. What else can he say?

“All the more reason to trust us, then, isn’t it?” she says desperately. “Come on. No way anyone would let the company drop you. I’d fight for you, you know that! We’d fight for you. No one else can rap and produce like you. Don’t you remember what Namjoon said? You can debut before him, or he can debut before you, but it’s important that everyone supports each other, always. He’d be here for you, if he knew. He wants to be there for you. We all want to be there for you. You’re so loved. You just have to trust us. You just have to let us in.”

“Sorry I don’t remember every little thing Namjoon says,” he scoffs. “I’m not you.”

“Are you really talking about that right now?!” she bristles. “This is serious, Yoongi!”

“I’m being serious,” he says firmly. “You’re the one bringing up Namjoon while I’m lying in a hospital bed. He’s the leader. He’s the one I’m worried most about. The whole group is built around him. I don’t know if I can trust him not to tell any of the staff about this. If he does—, if anyone does—they have a reason to drop me as a trainee. I can’t let that happen, Yuri.”

He doesn’t know why he’s saying these things. He’s talking out of his ass right now. After all, he trusts Namjoon. He likes Namjoon. But the pain in his shoulder and the claustrophobia of the tight little hospital room makes him feel anxious, restless, paranoid. He wants to get up and move and run or do something. But he can’t, so all he can do is project every negative feeling bogging down on him onto other people.

“If you can’t trust Namjoon,” she says softly. “Can’t you at least trust me?”

A beat of silence is her only answer, Yoongi’s lips pressed together into a thin line as he looks away.

“I can’t believe you,” she says, voice cracking. When he hears her begin to sniffle and sob, he has to force himself not to look back at her, guilt and shame bubbling up in his stomach.

He doesn’t even get to see her as she storms out, slamming the door shut behind her.

Yoongi feels incredibly alone.

He really shouldn’t, though—after all, his family comes all the way down from Daegu just to visit him while he’s in the hospital. They bring him all sorts of different foods, agreeing with his complaints that hospital food really, really sucks. After repeated assurances that he’ll heal just fine, they ask him about trainee life, about his food, about his friends. On the third day, they ask why nobody else has visited him. He lies and says that they’re all too busy training, when in reality they don’t even know that he’s here. 

The insecure, self-loathing part of himself wonders if they’re even worried.

Rationally, he knows they are, because he misses them, too. They’ve been in such close proximity that it’d be impossible for them not to grow as close as they have in these past months. He chuckles softly whenever he thinks about the way they were so rarely separated, bonding and laughing over situations where Hoseok was using the shower while Donghyuk used the toilet and Namjoon brushed his teeth, all at the same time.

It only makes Yoongi feel worse about the last conversation he had with Yuri, making an ass out of himself over Namjoon of all people. Namjoon who he’s lived with the longest. Namjoon who he gives his shirts to when they come in two sizes too big. Namjoon who he holds so dearly. 

He wishes he didn’t have to be apart from everyone for so long to realize what an ass he was being.

It hits him the worst on the sixth day his family visits him and they bring him a cup of a very familiar brand of ₩1200 ramyeon. He saves the little egg brick for last. It tastes bitter in his mouth. 

As he reluctantly finishes his water, listening to his brother, Geumjae, and his parents chatter about their dog and their work and the weather in Daegu. Usually, catching up with them felt like a much-needed break, but right now he just feels restless. 

He’s been lying in this hospital bed for too long. Listening to nothing but their idle chat for too long. He’s been drifting in and out of sleep so much that he probably wouldn’t even know how many days he’d been in the hospital if his phone didn’t tell him. The repetition of it all ends one day when the nurse informs him that somebody’s coming up to visit, even though his family is already there in the room with him.

After a set of gentle knocks, Lim Yuri appears from behind the hospital door like an angel.

She introduces herself to his family a bit too formally, bowing more than she needs to, like she’s trying to impress them. It’s cute of her. What’s even cuter is the way she blushes and flusters in surprise when they ask if she’s a Big Hit trainee and she waves her arms around as she explains that she’s a producer. She looks nothing like an idol, she says. Geumjae jokes that Yoongi doesn’t look anything like one either. He glares at his brother from the hospital bed.

Yuri looks shy as she tells them something too softly for him to hear, but they nod in understanding and send Yoongi a knowing look as they file out of the door with promises to visit tomorrow. His cheeks flush in embarrassment as he realizes he’s going to have a lot to clarify for them then.

His flush deepens when she sets the plastic bag in her hands on his side table, clambering up the bedside to take a seat beside him. He moves to make space for her, revelling in the way the warm skin of her thigh presses against his arm. 

“Did you eat?” she says softly. “I brought you food.”

“Yeah, I ate,” he says. “Thanks, though.”

A beat of silence. She reaches down to grasp his hand, which fits so perfectly into hers. When he squeezes it, she squeezes back. Everything feels like it’s falling back into place where it belongs.

“I didn’t tell anyone, like you said. I told them all that you went back to see your family in Daegu. Said it was a family emergency that you didn’t really wanna talk about,” she says softly. “Told Hitman Bang, too. I think you should be okay if you want to stay here for the next week or so.” He shakes his head.

“It’s okay. I’ll be discharged soon,” he assures her. “Next two days, maybe. It won’t be completely healed, but I’ll just tell them that I fell down the stairs back home or something. I don’t know. Gonna try to play it off as nothing major.” 

She hums in reply, squeezing his hand again. He can tell she still disapproves of his secrets, but is willing to keep them if that’s what makes him comfortable. She slides down so she’s laying next to him, legs slotted nicely next to his. He feels a wave of comfort wash over him as she gets touchy with him, like nothing has changed.

Seeing as Yoongi has never been the touchy-feely type, one would think that this would annoy him. To his own surprise, it doesn’t. If anything, he finds himself reveling in her affections. It’s weird even to him, the way he likes her touch so much.

Wordlessly, she starts playing with his hair. She’s always liked his hair, she’s said before, all sleek and smooth—she doesn’t like her own hair and the way they curl at the ends. And he’d frown every time she talked about herself like that because he thinks she’s one of the cutest people he knows.

Not that he could ever tell her that without shrivelling up and dying of embarrassment.

He’s snapped out of his thoughts by her wandering fingers, which have moved on from playing with his hair to prod at his ears. The sensitivity makes him cringe, but it isn’t an entirely unpleasant thing. He gasps sharply when her fingernails nip at the shell of his ear in a way that feels like the sensitive skin is being bitten. Mortifying as it is to admit, the goosebumps that rise on his skin stem from a sensation more pleasurable than it is uncomfortable. It feels good. Suddenly, the touches that he once found curious and innocent—childish, even—make his face go hot.

“You have something you’re not saying,” she chides. “You can tell me, you know, if it’ll make you feel better.” He turns in closer to her, close enough that her breath tickles him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “For saying stupid shit that I didn’t mean. I was jealous and stupid and angry.”

“Apology accepted,” she says immediately, trailing her finger back down from his ear to prod at his bready cheeks. “I’d forgive you even if you didn’t apologize, you know. I missed you too much.”

“I missed you, too.” 

She freezes, then. They both do. Yoongi doesn’t even realize what he says until it’s slipped out—it’s probably the most intimate thing he’s said out loud. The closest thing he’s ever said to I love you.

“Can I kiss you?” she asks suddenly. “I just—I know it’s not super romantic to ask, but I don’t just wanna do it without your permission, so—” Yoongi’s face burns a dark crimson as he cuts her off.

“Yeah,” he chokes out. “Go ahead. Please.” He can’t trust his voice to say much else. His hands are shaking.

When she presses her lips against his, everything feels different. 

It’s like every shitty romance movie he’s ever watched has come to life in his bones. Every cheesy metaphor—the sparks flying, the angels singing, the flowers blooming. It’s the way he finally understands why wars have been waged and empires have fallen for a single heart. It’s the way Yuri smells like cherry blossoms and whatever else is in her girly lotions. It’s the way he’s never felt like this before.

It’s different from his first kiss. It feels exactly like Yuri said it should feel. Maybe because it’s her. 

And Min Yoongi finally understands why Lim Yuri put so much importance into a single kiss.

Yoongi doesn’t know how long he’s been avoiding her.

It’s not like he immediately iced her out after the kiss. It was a gradual thing, each interaction slowly becoming more and more unbearable. The first time he can recall feeling things start to fall apart was when he made some rude joke that he can’t even remember now. All he can remember is the way she laughed afterwards, so naturally and so easily that he couldn’t help but to think about how everything with her was just easy. Easy to tease, easy to joke with, easy to share secrets with.

That’s how things should be, right?

And then it spirals. Makes him think about his girlfriend from middle school, a smart girl with pretty hair that sat in front of him in class, who began going out with him when he shyly asked her out via letter. He could talk to her normally before, could ask her for pencils and for homework help, but once they began dating he couldn’t even do that much.

It’s weird, the way he acted so differently once romantic expectations were set up. There’d always been this tense aura of awkwardness around them, and he could vaguely tell that it annoyed her, but he was too chicken to do anything about it. He never thought it could happen with Yuri, who he always felt so comfortable, but here he was now.

He feels pathetic, agonizing over this when she’s probably thinking about Namjoon. Even if she does like him back, there’s a clawning fear in his gut that tells him that he’s never going to compare. He wonders how long she’d do that, seesaw herself over to him whenever Namjoon was unavailable. Moreover, he wonders how long he’d let her.

Everytime her little hands found themselves laced in his, the rate at which his thoughts dissipated and his heart melted became laughable. If she asked, he’d probably let her do whatever she wanted with him forever.

The tiny, selfish little devil on his shoulder whispers to Yoongi that he would possibly-maybe-kind-of be more compatible with her than Namjoon. Even without thinking too hard about it, he knows it’s a terrible thought just from the way it makes his stomach churn with guilt.

Namjoon and Yuri have known each other for several years longer than he’s known either of them. He’s nothing more than an interloper in this relationship, and it’s conceited of him to even think he has any kind of chance when he probably isn’t even in the running. The possibility of being in the running scares him more than it excites him, at this point.

So he ices her out.

With how frigid he’s gotten, it should come as no surprise that she wants to hang out more with the trainees at JYP and Source. These days, she’s been over in their dorms more often than she’s been in theirs. He only ever sees her in the studio. Even then, he only speaks to her indifferently, replying to her when it has to do with music and brushing off her attempts at small talk. It reminds him of his interactions with Namjoon back when they first met, tense and awkward and professional.

And speak of the devil.

“Hey,” he hears Namjoon say, his voice deep and distant at his studio door. “May I come in?”

“Sure,” he says thoughtlessly, not even bothering to look up from the song he’s producing on his computer. That changes when Namjoon seats himself on the seat next to his and he can practically feel the air go tense, forcing him to turn and give Namjoon his full attention. The way that his leader, who was a year younger than he was, could command so much authority with his presence alone was both admirable and terrifying.

“You’ve been avoiding Yuri,” Namjoon says. He immediately knows there’s no beating around the bush with this one. Regardless, he pushes his luck.

“I haven’t,” he lies through his teeth. Yoongi has never liked lying about matters of the heart. If it were anybody but Namjoon, he wouldn’t have, but he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. Namjoon sighs, obviously in disbelief of the lie. Yoongi doesn’t blame him.

“Look,” he says. “I’m not asking you to tell me what’s wrong, or what happened between you two or whatever. If it was between two members of this group, then I would have to. It’s my job as leader to be responsible for you guys. But whatever is going on between you and Yuri? That’s your business. It’s not my job to keep up with our producers, no matter how much I might want to.”

“But you do want to,” Yoongi clarifies.

“Of course,” he says. “I mean, she’s not just a producer to me. She’s my friend. And so are you. So I’m asking you this as a friend, and not a leader.” Yoongi raises a brow.

“What are you asking?” he says.

“I don’t know. Just don’t be mad at each other anymore. Please.” Namjoon sounds impossibly desperate, hopeless in a way that feels incredibly out of character for him. “I don’t like seeing you guys mad at each other. Remember what Hitman Bang said? It’s okay if you wanna fight or yell or whatever. Just sort it out. I don’t know what she did, or what happened between you, but everyone seems pretty miserable without her around, including you. So please make up soon. Please don’t be mad at her anymore.”

“I’m not mad at her,” he says, and it’s the truth. If anything, he’s mad at himself—but not at her. Never at her. “It’s just… weird. I don’t know. But I’m not mad at her.”

“You think she knows that?” he says, and Yoongi’s heart immediately sinks.

“Probably not,” he admits, suddenly feeling a large wave of guilt wash over him. Now that he thinks about it, she’s probably been blaming herself this whole time. Yoongi’s face burns hot with shame.

“Then you should let her know.”

“Hey, can we talk?”

Yuri practically jumps in her seat, eyes widening like saucers as she whips around upon hearing the voice of Yoongi of all people at the studio door. She hesitates for a moment, but it’s not long before she gets up to let him in. Over the months, he’d gotten harder and harder for her to refuse.

“Okay,” she says as she unlocks the door, letting him into the studio. They’re face to face now, so much so that his incredible closeness reminds her just how much he towers over her. He always said that he was short, but he’s pretty tall to her. It only makes her all the more nervous.

She hasn’t had the opportunity to talk to Yoongi alone like this about something non-music related in months. She can’t beat around the bush with this one—she doesn’t know the next chance she’s going to get to say what she wants, so she has no choice but to say it outright.

“Let’s not fight anymore,” she says, gently dropping her head against his chest. It comes out soft and sad and a thousand times more pathetic-sounding than she’d originally intended. “I won’t kiss you anymore. We can pretend it never happened. Just talk to me again. I miss you.” The way her voice cracks breaks his heart into little pieces.

“We’re not—we’re not fighting, Yuri,” he assures her, stern and gentle all at once. Hesitantly, he brings an arm up around her to rub gentle circles into the small of her back. “We’re… disagreeing.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you,” he says. “And even if I was, it wouldn’t be because you kissed me. Why would I be avoiding you because of that? I said that you could, didn’t I?”

“But you are mad,” she says.

“At me,” he clarifies. “Not at you.”

“Why?” she asks. “Yoongi, tell me.” He flushes, feeling incredibly trapped by the way her doe eyes look up at him. Refusing her wishes feels impossible, these days, so he supposes that honesty is the best policy in this case.

“Because I wanted you to kiss me again,” he admits, cheeks burning hot with shame. “Even though everything was fine as it already was.” Yuri blinks slowly at him upon his admission.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I think I get it,” she says, and despite being forgiven, he can’t help but frown at how understanding she’s being—it’s more than he deserves at this point, if he’s being honest.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s scary.” Words are hard right now.

“I think it’s why I could never say anything,” she continues. “It’s so easy to love someone without them knowing, because you get to live off these happy little fantasies of being together and everything being perfect in your head. I think that’s why being loved back is scary. Because then anything is a possibility. It’s kind of like—it’s kind of like finishing a really good webtoon.” He chuckles softly at the comparison, fondly bumping his nose against hers. “It is! Because then you have nothing left and you’re hit with that post-webtoon depression, because the fun and the fantasies and the excitement are over and then you’re left to deal with the real world. And sometimes the real world means that everything changes, or that even if the person you want loves you back right now, they might change their mind later on. And that’s scary.”

“I still want to be able to talk to you like we used to,” he says. “But I also still want to kiss you. I don’t know. It’s weird.”

“Kiss me, then,” she says. “We don’t—we don’t have to think about it or talk about it or decide anything. Just kiss me. Please.”

And so he does.

It makes him shiver, the way she seems to shrink when her back presses against the wall, the way she feels so small when he cages her between his arms, the way her tiny hands find purchase against his chest before travelling up to wind behind his neck.

Yoongi can’t find it in himself to be afraid at that moment. He’d kiss Lim Yuri forever, if she let him.

[smile-smile-ichthys]

Hosts of Japan - Chapter One

Featuring @whatdoyouexpectthistime @smutmylifeup and @hifftn

Hosts of Japan is a multi-chapter fic about a young woman, H, who runs a business of hiring out voltage men to travelling ladies to show them around Tokyo. But when she gets a phonecall with a strange request, will she finally let go of her past and learn to love someone who deserves it?

Inspired by these multi-chapter fics - MJS and High Voltage

“For three days? Yep, no that’s not too short, we do any length of time no problem” I said to a new potential client over the phone “Yeah of course, I’m sending over the terms and conditions for you to sign now via the email you gave me”

Typical day in the office really, me trying to talk to a client and explaining everything to them, all the while Mieke pulling stupid faces in the office opposite mine. Why did I rent an office floor with glass doors? Oh yeah, thought it had a nicer, more welcome feel to it all. Bad move.

“Yeah just read over them please, there’s not much to read unlike some companies” Mieke pulled another stupid face “and just sign it and send it back then we’ll pair you with a host” and another “sure sure, talk soon, thank you, bye!” I hanged up and she instantly stopped.

I stood and she turned back to her computer, but that didn’t stop me from going over to her little office.

I loved working here, it was my business after all, but I knew I had hired the best team when I actually enjoyed coming in to work every day. ‘Hosts of Japan’ was my idea, my business, my baby which had blossomed in the past couple of years. Each month was getting booked up within days of releasing it, it was getting so busy we were beginning to debate whether we needed a couple extra hosts. Who knew women coming to visit japan and wanting a handsome Japanese tour guide would be so popular? After all, who knew Japan better than the locals? The business was growing beautifully and with the next month of December being released in the next few days, I knew it was time to find new hosts.

“Mieke, you’re gonna have to stop doing that whenever I’m on the phone” I scolded her.

“Oh, but it’s so funny to try and make you laugh on the phone” Mieke laughed, spinning on her chair to face me.

“It’s really not” I argued.

“You do it when I talk to the guys! Remember last time I was on the phone with Nomura? You had me choke on my coffee and he genuinely almost came round to check I was ok! I was the one checking on him!” she laughed, making me reminisce. Ah good times.

Mieke was an awesome, kick butt, friend and colleague I had hired. She was mainly in charge of looking after the health and wellbeing of the hosts. With her no mess attitude, she made sure the guys stuck to the 11pm curfew when working with clients. Only if it had been agreed upon prior to the clients’ holiday would they be allowed to stay out with them past that time. It kept them safe, and gave them time to go home and get some sleep. In order to ensure they were going home and looking after themselves, I had to have someone who was willing to tell someone off, especially those who could charm their ways out of it. Mieke knew how to do that, and my God she could do it well. God only knows the amount of times Nomura has asked to stay past the 11pm curfew because his client was cute…

We knew things would happen from time to time. Ladies with attractive men who could flirt and charm their way out of anything, things were bound to happen. Yeah, we had rules about that but only loose ones. If they weren’t scheduled in and bound by contract, what happened in hotels, parks, beaches, whatever, we didn’t mind. Most of the time, the guys did as Mieke asked and behaved, I think there was only one instance when we first started when a host broke the contract. He didn’t stay, thankfully. Mieke kept them in line, that’s all I asked for.

“Ok, ok, that is true, how are the guys anyway?” I asked.

“Yeah, they’re good, they’ve sent their availability for December, and to be honest, we’ve got a good amount of time with them, but demands getting pretty bad now” Mieke expressed her worry.

“I know, I asked Miho if she’s managed to find some suitable guys to help ease the strain” I explained “think Jazz is coming in today to go through them with me, I think we should try two more guys for December and January before thinking about getting more”

“At least we’re six months in advance, so it’s shouldn’t be too hard” Mieke smiled.

“Nah, shouldn’t be” I smiled back.

“Shouldn’t be what?” Jazz asked as she came in to Mieke’s office.

“Too hard to find some guys” I said, perching on Mieke’s desk happily “Who have you got for me?”

Jazz chuckled, handing me a couple of folders. I opened them to find two extremely attractive guys, and yet they seemed a little different to the other men we had already hired. I wasn’t sure what, but they both seemed to…glow slightly. Some strange aura.

“Strange aura right?” Jazz said.

“Yeah, how did you…” I asked.

“I felt the same, even on the phone to them, they both seemed pretty confident in themselves, but I don’t know, just felt strange is all” she explained.

“In a bad way?” Mieke asked, taking one of the folders from me.

“Not especially, didn’t feel anything bad about them” Jazz said.

I read the file left with me, while Mieke read the other. ‘Miyabi’, aged 26, short ash blonde hair, loves to mingle with everyone, even shyer people, super confident, freely available.

“Hmm, this one looks good for those who are unsure about venturing out a bit, but also those who really want to go out and do new things, probably not good for those in between” I said.

“That’s what I was thinking” Jazz said.

“Hmm I’m not sure how to pronounce this guy’s name…” Mieke said “But he’s cute and seems to fit the in between section perfectly, someone respectable and understanding, he seems approachable too”

“I think he said Huedhaut, but he did also say Hue was fine” Jazz said “So, what do you think? Should I bring them in to interview properly?”

“Got the green light from me, two different guys to cover every kind of traveller” I grinned.

Jazz and Miho were perfect for the job. They mainly helped with how to run the business, advertising, legalities and all that, but they definitely knew who to hire and who not to go near. Also, them both having partners in the law and business department helped as well.

Miho was engaged to a fine gentleman Goto in the police force, high ranking, naturally. Only the best for her.  Jazz was with a business, and bar, man named Kunihiko. He was dashing and charming, again, only the best for her too. Every time we all went out together, even Mieke and her boyfriend, Ryosuke, I could certainly tell they truly loved their ladies.

That’s when my phone rang. It was him.

“H, if you answer that and it’s him, I’m gonna…” Jazz began but I had already picked the phone up.

“Shhh, hi, how are you?” I asked.

“I’m good, thank you kindly H, are you free tonight? I wish to ask you something?” Genzo asked, making my heart race.

Genzo, my close friend ever since I move to Japan all those years ago. He was with me through thick and thin, he even gave me the last of the money to get this business going. And yet, he had never felt the same way about me as I felt about him.

“Tonight?” I glanced at the girls, both of them annoyingly rolling their eyes at me. They didn’t like Genzo, both told me he’s a creep and I should move on, but…I couldn’t. “Yeah, I’m free tonight”

“Great usual place, see you at 7” he hanged up.

“H, don’t do this to yourself, look, Ryo knows someone who would be way better than him, why don’t we double date?” Mieke suggested.

“Kuni even knows a few single guys too” Jazz pitched in “don’t put yourself through this hope again that’s he’s going to ask you out”

“I’m not, I know he usually just asks about business plans each month, I mean December is due soon so, makes sense” I noticed them glaring “come on, I’m fine, honestly”

My office phone began to ring and I ran off, thankful for the disruption.

“I just hope someone snaps her out of it one day” Jazz said.

I plonked myself down in my chair once again and happily answered the phone.

“Hello, H from Hosts of Japan speaking, how can I help?” I smiled.

I was expecting a female voice, so I must have been quite shocked to hear a male since Mieke and Jazz were by my side instantly.

“Good afternoon miss H, my name is Aleck, I was wondering if I could speak with you about hiring one of your hosts for an important visit next month” the male voice explained.

“Oh, right, well erm, problem is…”

“I understand you are fully booked up, miss H, I have seen your website availability, however this may seem a silly request, if I may” he ever so polite, and spoke so softly, he even soundly slightly American.

“Ask away sir, no request here is ever silly” I grinned, but it sunk when he asked.

I must have been silent for quite a while as Aleck kept asking if I was alright.

“I…I’m fine, I do believe though, I will need some time to think and talk over with my colleagues about this request, is there a number I can call you on?” I took a number and hung up the phone.

“What? What was it?” Mieke asked.

“I think we need Miho here too…I’ve just been asked to host a two week holiday for the Prince of Liberty…”

[mistwolf-wanderer]

A Professional in a Team of Randos

Commission I did for @viceterships !

Genji Shimada contacts Hana Song to request that she join Overwatch. She turns him down, and tells him exactly why.

Genji Shimada sits across from Hana “D.Va” Song. Canned coffee and instant ramen sit on the table before him, neither impressive nor repulsive, staring him down with as much intensity as Hana’s stare. He carefully reaches over and takes the ramen and chopsticks in his hand and peels back the lid before stirring the contents around. He sniffs.

“Spicy flavor?” “I wanted to see you suffer.” “Thanks.”

He takes a long, careful sip of the broth, coughs, and nods before opening the coffee and taking a deep swig.

“I am suffering,” he remarks. “So you win.” “Always play to win,” Hana sighs, rolling her eyes.  “So why are you here, unannounced, shoving dusty-ass Overwatch flyers in my face?”  Genji swallows and takes a second to compose himself. She waits, crossing her arms.

“We have thirty minutes until my stream starts and I kick you out,” she comments. “I hope you’re aware.”

He nods.  “Of course. Friends though we are, I wouldn’t have you missing your stream for me.”

“Who said we’re friends?”

“I assumed we were, after all those games we played together, and the races we’ve had.”

“We are,” she grins.  “So continue.”  

Genji sets down his coffee and bows his head respectfully.  Hana snorts.

“I’ve come to ask you to join overwatch as D.Va.”

Hana looks at Genji for a beat, face neutral. She taps her chin.

“Nah.”

“‘Nah’?”

“Yeah, I’m not doing that.”

Genji rubs his face.  “Are you bound by contract or something? I would think you of all people would jump at the challenge of saving the world from devastation.”

Hana clicks her tongue.  “It’s not an issue of ‘can’t’ or ‘not allowed,’ it’s an issue of ‘won’t’ and ‘this is stupid’.” She sits back. “Overwatch was disbanded―end of story. So why bring it back?”

“I told you, we believe the world needs heroes―”

“―And we are those heroes. But has it ever occurred to you that even all you guys put together won’t be enough?”

Genji looks at her quietly, curiously.  He waits for her to go on. Hana gestures to her symbol―the bunny that marks her mech as her own.

“The reason you’re here is for that, not me.” She gives him a once over. “You have master tacticians and military leaders at your back. So, check and check, you already have what Hana Song can give.” She sits back. “You need D.Va, and you need my MEKA. The strength. The armor. The bullets. But did you ever think to wonder where it comes from?”

Genji nods.  “MEKA is a branch of the Korean military, which uses human pilots instead of drones to fight hostile omnics.”

“Right,” Hana says.  “But MEKA doesn’t come from the military alone, specifically because of the people involved.”  She smiles and points to Genji. “You’re a gamer, Genji. You’re not pro, but I’m sure you’ve played enough competitive games to know what I mean when I say we’re not always exactly…”

“―Team players,” he finishes.

“A good shotcaller can bring a team together,” she says, bringing her fingers into a mesh, “but when you’re all pros, sometimes you all think you’re a shotcaller, and the team falls apart.”  She lets her hands fall back to the table, undone.  “We customize our MEKA with sponsorship money, not military funds. We’re barely qualified to be called military, if you look at the way we operate. No uniform, no ranks, no true military training.”  She points to the Overwatch flyer.  “You’ll be like us at level one.”

“A team of heroes from across the world have the diversity we need to tackle every obstacle, but…”

“You know they’ll be relatively untrained, with little to no chemistry at the first go, and the civilian casualties and environmental destruction will cost you millions when―not if―you get sued.”

Genji sits back, uncrossing his legs and leaning back and closing his eyes.

He can see in his mind’s eye a future where everyone is together.  The world’s best assembled before him.

And they are nothing like the team he knew years ago.

Half are gone, the other half is made of new recruits.  The one with the most military experience is Fareeha Amari, Ana Amari’s only daughter, and he can see the shadow cast behind her. Not nearly as tall as her mother’s.

Angela Ziegler has no incentive to return―not after what happened in Switzerland.

Reinhardt will answer the call, but the man is over sixty now, with a creaking back and old suit of armor.

Reyes and Morrison are dead, or they should be. But of course, Genji should be too.

He blinks.  The list of names goes on and on.  For a second, he thinks of Hanzo and sighs.  He rubs his eyes.  “So what do you propose we do, Ms. Song?”

Hana grimaces.  “Ew, don’t call me that, it makes me sound old.”

“You are nineteen.”

“And we’ve yet to move, as a society, from the idea that women should be married by 25. So don’t call me that.” She makes a face. “Or else I’ll start calling you Mr. Shimada.  Or maybe Shimada-sama?”

Genji grins and laughs lightly, putting a hand on his face. “Please, Hana, never call me that again.”

“Contract signed and honored, pal.” She grins.  It fades quickly.  She leans back on her hands and looks to the side, out the window to the city lights outside.

“That was quite the face journey you went on,” she comments.

“I was just thinking about how you’re right.”

“About?”

“Overwatch being a bad idea.”

“I don’t think that making a group of heroes to address worldwide pain is bad, but we aren’t the Justice League. And they had their fair share of legal issues for obvious reasons.”

Genji sighs again.  “So what do you propose instead? The wheels are in motion, and I can’t just tell them to shut down alone.”

“I feel like the answer’s obvious.”

Genji cocks his head at her.  “How so?”

“MEKA only works because of three things, and it’s the same reason all pro-gaming teams do well.”  She counts off on her fingers.  “Team synergy, public support, and sponsorships.  Money.”  She looks at her symbol again.  “This icon is mine, not the military’s. And my fans recognize me for it. They don’t recognize me because I’m in MEKA, they recognize MEKA because I’m in it.”

Genji nods slowly.  “Overwatch was shut down for a reason,” he says, contemplative.  “I may have been one of those reasons, at some point.” He sits back up and looks at his hands.  “With these hands, I…” He sighs. “Let’s say I was angry back then. Overwatch gave me an outlet,” he closes his hands, “but it wasn’t what I needed.”

“Not what the public needed either, I assume.” She watches him think and crosses her arms.  “And now that Overwatch is disbanded, you’re fundsless.”

“Totally broke,” Genji agrees.  “And I’m dead to the world, so I’m not getting any of my inheritance.” They share a grim chuckle that falls swiftly into silence.

“I don’t have a solution,” Hana professes.  “Your name is wrecked. Brand name, I mean, and that’s what you’re selling.” She sighs. “Maybe for some of the members, it would be enough to call them back just to relive the glory days. But the public will see those faces and remember what happened. Meanwhile, your newbies will be disorganized and without a real common goal.”

“Isn’t saving the world a common goal?”

“Isn’t it always? Everyone wants to rule the world or save it―and those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”  She sighs.  “You see it, right? The issues an org like this has?”

“I do,” Genji says.  He gets up and stretches, servos whirring as he does.  He sighs.  “And here’s what I want to propose to you.”

He takes a second to breathe.  “Overwatch may not be able to offer you anything. Perhaps joining us would only bring you down.”  He looks back down at her, then bows at the waist. “But we need you. You said it yourself―you have the fans, the sponsors, and you know how to make a team work.  You have the platform that could make us work.” He stands up straight and smiles at her, hesitant and sincere.  “We may not know everyone who needs saving, or have the best history, or even have a lot of money, but I know that we could become better.  And I think you could help.”

Hana blinks at him slowly.  “That’s a lot of smooth talking,” she says slowly.  “Turning all my points on me like that and stroking my ego...you’re a real piece of work.”  She smiles.  She gets up and hands him his coffee and ramen, both gone cold.

“We’re friends,” she says.  “So for you? Maybe I’ll think about chasing something totally stupid, like an extralegal superpower organization with a shit ton of guns.”  She pats his back, then turns him around.  “But for now, I need you outta here.  I have a stream to do, and you’re in the way.”

Genji grins and puts his mask back on his face before saluting and climbing out her window.  She leans out the window and shakes a fist at him.  “Use the door next time!”  She sighs and stretches before settling before her computer and setting up her stream.

She settles into her persona as D.Va and begins her stream, interacting with the fans casually while she gets into the flow of the game.  On a whim, she glances back to look at the flyer Genji left on her desk.

Ana Amari’s valiant image stands clear on its faded-print surface.  She returns to the game, thoughtful.

“So what do you guys think about Overwatch?”

[isolavirtuosa]

Unlikely Office Romances 3-4

[fanfiction] Gundam Wing, 1x2x1, probably PG-13ish though there are some mildly sexy times and the usual trashmouth

Dr. Heero Yuy, Preventers forensics expert, can’t seem to get over his crush on his former wartime comrade Agent Duo Maxwell.  Agent Duo Maxwell can’t seem to stand the sight of him… and yet…?

Holy shit, Gundam Wing fandom, way to come out of the woodwork.  I hope this story isn’t too weird for you all........  I’ll post about 4 parts a day until we get to the end (25).

Parts 1-2

Parts 3-4 under the cut  

- 3 -

             Monday morning found me at my desk with nothing to do again.

           “No L3 Brotherhood goons trying to import weapons?” I asked.  “No attempts by the Earth to start an arms race?  No cartel money being used to train child soldiers?”

           “Nope,” Andrea said.

           “What is wrong with the world?!”

           Hilde gave me the look that statement deserved, while Andrea just giggled.

           I sighed, leaning back in my chair and staring at the ceiling.  I’d given up the payday-to-payday, seat-of-your-pants bounty hunting lifestyle to work for the Preventers.

           I wasn’t always so sure it had been the best choice.

           Sure, I was poor and homeless as a bounty hunter, but at least it was interesting.  It wasn’t a mind-numbing, nine-to-five, paper-pushing office job.

           Quatre came bustling in and suddenly made a beeline for me.  “Duo!”

           “Hey, Q, what’s up?” I said, spinning around in my chair to face him.

           “I need some help in the lab.”

           “Isn’t that what you have an intern for?”

           “Maia’s helping Heero get ready to testify tomorrow,” Quatre explained.

           “Oh, the L3 Massacre trial started this week, huh?”

           Quatre nodded.

           “Well I guess I’m not doing anything…” I said, anxious for a reason to get out of the office, but not really looking forward to spending time with Quatre.

           “Great!” Quatre said, grabbing my arm and dragging me along.

           “Have fun!” Andrea called after us with a snort.

           I flipped her off, making it seem playful when it really wasn’t.  Sometimes she got on my nerves.  It was fine for me to call Quatre and Heero out on being dorks.  They were my dorks.  We were brothers in arms when we were barely even big enough to see over our gundam consoles.

           Andrea didn’t know them like that.

           “So what am I helping you with?” I asked warily as we got into the elevator and started descending to the basement.  The Preventers Space Headquarters was actually the ESUN Bureau of Investigation Headquarters, with an office for Preventer agents tucked out of the way on a middle floor of the giant high-rise building. Our forensics team was shoved in the basement.

           “I want you to test something out for me,” Quatre said, looking gleeful.

           “As long as you didn’t build another Wing Zero down there,” I muttered.

           Quatre laughed.  “Of course not.”

           I shook my head.  Quatre reminded me more and more every day of the mad scientists who had made us what we were.

           We reached the basement, and Quatre swiped his ID through the reader on the door to the lab.  “Welcome!” he said, grandly gesturing me inside.

           The lab was state-of-the-art when it was built 10 years ago, back when the Preventers could actually get funding. It was still immaculate, as it was well-maintained by Heero, Quatre, and their skeleton crew of lab geeks.

           “Wear this,” Quatre said, grabbing something and sticking it on my head.

           “Don’t mess with the hair-” I tried to protest, but it was already too late.  “Dammit, now I have to walk around with hat-head all day.”

           “And you will still be the most beautiful man in the office,” Quatre said, ushering me through another door.

           “Uh, thanks?” I said, suddenly finding myself standing in an empty room with walls stained every color of the rainbow.

           “Okay, can you just stand there?” Quatre said, checking the clip on a gun he had suddenly pulled out of nowhere.

           “Uh…”

           Quatre clicked off the safety and pointed the gun at me.

           “What exactly am I helping you with again?”

           Quatre grinned and fired the gun in rapid succession.

           “The fuck?!”

           “Did you feel anything?” Quatre asked.

           “Besides my life slipping through the cracks?”

           Quatre nodded, pulling out a clipboard.  “You can take off the helmet now.”

           “Wonderful,” I said, taking it off.  Then I squinted at it.  “Are these… bullets?”

           “They’re blanks,” Quatre waved off my concern.

           “You just shot me in the head five… six times with blanks?!”

           “Yes, but did you feel anything?”

           “Fear?”

           “Your heart rate is barely elevated and your skin pallor is normal.”

           “Seriously, is this what you and Heero do down here all day, try to kill each other?”

           “I told you, they were blanks.  You still haven’t told me if you felt anything.”

           I thought about it.  “No, I thought you missed.”

           “But as you can clearly see, I hit the target all six times.”

           “Could you not refer to my precious head as a target?”

           “I’m sorry, I hit the test apparatus six times,” Quatre said with an apologetic smile.

           ‘Apparatus?’ I mouthed to myself.  Quatre had gotten so weird since the war.  He’d turned the Winner Corporation over to his sisters, and had switched his master’s degree from business to engineering.  After he started at the Preventers, he seemed to devote his life to forensics and inventing weird shit.

           “So you didn’t feel any kind of impact?” Quatre continued, scribbling something on his clipboard.

           “No,” I said, starting to feel impressed.  Like I said, he invented a lot of weird shit, but he was good at it.  “The helmet absorbed the shock?”

           “That was the theory.”

           “Wait, you just shot me in the head six times based on a theory?”

           “This could be really useful in the field,” Quatre said, taking the helmet from me.

           “It’d be good in a firefight,” I agreed.  “No distraction from stray bullets.”

           “It didn’t feel heavy?”

           “No, it was really light,” I said.  “Not like the clunky standard-issues we have now.”

           “Excellent,” Quatre said, writing some kind of final note on the clipboard with a flourish.  “So what do you think about Heero?”

           “Huh?”

           “He’s an attractive guy, yeah?”

           “Huh?”

           “You two would make a cute couple.”

           “Huh?”

           “You should ask him out.”

           “Huuuuh?”

           Quatre grinned at me.

           I looked at him like he was crazy, which he probably was.

           “You’ve never thought about it?”

           “No,” I said incredulously.  Then I paused.  “Well not in recent years…”

           “Ah-HA!” Quatre said triumphantly.

           “I’m not interested, Q.”

           “Don’t be like that.”

           “I’m not being like anything, he’s not my type.”

           “Do you have a type?” Quatre asked, squinting at me.

           I squinted back, trying to figure out if he was asking a genuine question or was reading me on being a slut.

           “What harm could one little date cause?”

           “We work together, so I’m thinking a lot…”

           “Sally and Wufei are together, and that seems to be going fine.”

           “They are not!” I said, getting more and more convinced that Quatre’s grasp on reality was lacking.

           Quatre smirked.

           “They aren’t…”

           He smirked some more.

           “She’s like a hundred years older than him…” I tried. “And Wu… I’m sorry, I can’t picture him with a woman.  Or a man. Or even like an animal something. He’s just so…”

           Quatre was still smirking.

           “What do you know?!” I demanded, because this was the best office gossip since the Coffee Bandit Incident.

           “I know that Wufei’s been staying over Sally’s almost every night lately.”

           “They’re probably working.  They both love work.”

           “And I know they went to Le Poisson Rouge together,” Quatre countered.

           “The fancy French place in the main colony cluster?” I asked.  “Shit, how much do those two get paid?”

           “More than us,” Quatre said, shaking his head.

           “Said the little rich boy.”

           “So do you believe me yet?”

           “You present compelling evidence,” I said, then thought about it.  “Wait, how do you know all this stuff?”

           “I put tracking devices in everyone’s phones.”

           “You what now?”

           “I put tracking devices in everyone’s phones.”

           “Um, okay, but is that even legal?”

           Quatre shrugged.  “Une told me to.”

           “She told you to stalk us all?”

           “The wording was slightly different, but yes, that’s correct.”

           “Uh…” I said.  “I don’t think I’m comfortable with this.”

           “Commander’s orders.”

           “No, seriously, I’m not comfortable with this.”

           Quatre smiled.

           “Soooo, you’re stalking all of us?”

           “I’m not stalking anyone,” Quatre said.  “The commander wants everyone’s movements monitored in case of an emergency.”

           “Well my movements are private,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and feeling violated.

           “Yes, of course,” Quatre said with a pacifying nod.

           “So you’re not tracing me with your little phone lojack?”

           “Oh, no, of course I’m monitoring you,” Quatre said. “Commander’s orders.”

           “Well, if you’ll excuse me then,” I said, moving towards the door.  “I need to go smash my phone with a hammer a coupla hundred times.”

           “That seems like a waste,” Quatre said, walking with me back to the main door.  “Especially since I’ll just tag you with a tracking device somewhere else.”

           “Q, come on now, does the commander really need to know about everywhere I go?” I tried to reason with him.

           “Yes, in case your status as a Preventer agent or former gundam pilot is compromised,” Quatre reasoned back at me. “Also, in case of some kind of attack or code red armed uprising where you need to be located immediately.”

           “I knew I signed my life away when I signed that damn Preventer contract,” I muttered.

           “Duo, are you actually mad or are you joking around?” Quatre asked, adjusting his lab coat.  “Sometimes I can’t tell.”

           “Sometimes I can’t tell, either,” I said, patting him on the shoulder.  “But nah, I’m not mad at you.”

           “Good,” he said, smiling his sunny Quatre smile. “It’s nice to talk to you away from everyone else.”

           “What do you mean?”

           Quatre shrugged, fidgeting with his coat again.

           “What?” I repeated, eyeing him.

           Quatre’s blue eyes met mine.  “It’s just a very us against you kind of feeling.”

           “Agents versus lab geeks?”

           “That about sums it up.”

           “I don’t mean to treat you differently,” I said. “It’s just… it’s like we’re living in different worlds, ya know?”

           “I guess,” Quatre said.  “But haven’t we always been living in different worlds? It doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.”

           He was really laying on the guilt trip after admitting to stalking me.  “Yeah, I gotcha,” I said, squeezing his shoulder before letting go.  “Let’s hang out or something next weekend, catch up on shit.”

           “I’d like that,” Quatre said, his smile lighting up his face.  “And Heero can come, too.”

           I eyed him warily.  “Is that what all this is about?  You want to set me up with Heero?”

           “The two are related,” Quatre admitted.  “But I do want to spend more time with you.  I wish the five of us could be closer.”

           I felt a weird twinge inside of me.

           Quatre smiled at me knowingly.

           “Is Saturday night good for you?” I finally asked. “I have to cover the office during the day, so…?”

           “Yeah, I’ll email you later,” Quatre said agreeably, swiping his card through the door to let me out.

           “Did you have fun with the nerd brigade?” Andrea teased when I came back.

           “Yeah,” I said, booting up my computer.

           “Really?” she asked with a snort.

           I didn’t answer, staring at the loading screen.

           “Who pissed in your cornflakes?” she asked, spinning around in her chair.

           “Schultz, don’t you have anything better to do than behave like a trained circus monkey?” Wufei demanded, suddenly slamming a folder on his desk.

           ‘Trained circus monkey?’ Trowa mouthed to me over our computers.

           I snickered.

           “What part of me looks like a monkey?!” Andrea cried in protest.

           “The part where you’re getting into tomfoolery instead of doing your damn work!” Wufei said.

           ‘Tomfoolery?’ Trowa mouthed to me.

           Hilde was trying to hide her laugh, but I just let it out.

           “Something funny, Maxwell?”

           “Yes, sir, that would be you, sir.”

           “Go alphabetize the storage room!”

           I sighed, standing up with a flimsy salute and dragging myself off to the storage room.  I hadn’t been told to alphabetize the room in weeks, so everything was probably all over the place in there.

           At least it was something to do.

           Wufei had invented ‘alphabetize the storage room’ to punish me, but I mostly just messed around with the copy machine and did art projects to brighten up the office.

           Today I decided to cut out a chain of people holding hands: one with a spiky ponytail, one with two pigtails, both in an endless line.  I glued the printer paper together to make sure the chain would be nice and long before I started cutting.

           “What are you doing?” Hilde asked with a shake of her head.  She went over to the copy machine, which didn’t fit in our small office and had been relegated to the storage room.

           “Shit, Hil, this is just too good,” I said, rubbing my hands together.  “Quatre said that Sally and Wufei are totally doing the do.”

           “Can you translate that into English?”

           “Porking?  Boning? Fucking?  Having sexual intercourse?  Copula-”

           “I don’t believe it,” she said, cutting me off because she knew I could go on for hours.

           “It’s true,” I said.  “Hey, did you know that there are tracking devices in our phones?”

           “Yeah,” she said, giving me a weird look.  “It’s in our contracts.”

           “Oh.”

           “So what does that have to do with anything?” she asked, gathering up her copies and getting ready to make her exit.

           “Huh?” I said, concentrating on cutting out the details of Wufei’s balloon pants.  “Oh, right, yeah.  Quatre was all stalking Wu and Sally, and said Wu was spending the night over at Sally’s a helluva lot.”

           “No way,” Hilde protested, but now her interest was piqued.

           I finished cutting out the last part of my doll chain and spread it open with a grin.  “Ta-da.”

           Hilde burst out laughing.  “You are shit, Duo.”

           “Yep,” I agreed.  “Wanna help me color it?”

           “I can deal with these later,” Hilde said, dropping the copies she had made on the floor and sitting next to me.  Hilde would always be my partner-in-crime.

           I grinned, passing her a box of colored pencils, which had been located next to the copier ink.  The room was surprisingly more-or-less alphabetized, so we had plenty of time for the important things.

           Hilde started on the Wufeis, drawing slants for eyes.

           “That’s looking kinda racist,” I informed her.

           Hilde made the next Wufei’s eyes huge and Disney-style with long lashes.

           I almost choked on my laughter.  “Looks just like him,” I finally gasped out.

           “Fucking right it does,” Hilde cackled, getting ready to start on the next Wufei.

           I grinned, turning my focus to my first Sally. I gave her sunglasses to subtly portray her badassness.

           “Hard at work, I see.”

           We both glanced up at Trowa and waved.

           He studied what we were doing for a long while before finally asking, “Why?”

           “You know they’re getting it on, right?” Hilde asked.

           Trowa leveled her with a ‘you gotta be shitting me’ look.

           Soon the three of us were all busy coloring away. It was nice, bonding with my two best friends on the floor of the storage closet.

           Until my boss came bursting in, yelling about inappropriate appropriation of Preventer supplies.

           “Wufei and Salllly, sittin’ in a tree,” I cooed, waving the paper chain at him.

           Wufei turned a really interesting shade of red.

           I found myself cleaning all of the toilets in the 30-story ESUN Bureau building for the rest of the day like some indentured janitor.  When was I going to learn that Wufei was my boss, and that pissing him off always had consequences?

           Never, because it was hilarious.

           As I was cleaning my fortieth toilet, I found my mind wandering to my conversation with Quatre.

           After the war, I’d lost touch with everyone except Hilde.  We operated a scrapyard together on L2, but I found myself getting antsy.  I started taking on some bounty hunting jobs, and soon I was away from the yard more than I was actually there.

           Une got in contact with us during the L3 Missile Conspiracy in AC 199, and Hilde and I both helped the Preventers root out the terrorists and bring the incident to a close.

           Hilde decided to stay, selling the scrapyard and wiring me my share of the proceeds.

           I found myself homeless, but not really caring. I moved with my bounties, living out of cheap hotels.

           I liked it.  I really, genuinely liked it.  Hunting bounties was dangerous.  It could also be mind-numbingly boring in the research stages, but I lived for the hunt. I liked the trashiness of it.

           We all claimed to want to live peaceful lives after the war, but civilian life wasn’t for any of us.

           Quatre and Heero had come the closest to being civilians, and maybe that’s why I’d found the two of them the hardest to get reacquainted with.  Trowa, Hil, me, and even Wufei were all high speed car chases and gunfire, while those two were quiet evenings at home with a mug of tea.

           I just didn’t see what we had in common anymore.

 - 4 -

             “That’s what you’re wearing?” Mariemaia asked, aghast.

           “What’s wrong with it?” I asked, glancing down at my jeans and t-shirt.

           “This is your first date with Duo!  Wear something nice!”

           “It’s not a date,” I said, sitting down on the couch next to her.  “It’s dinner.”

           “That’s like the definition of a date.”

           “No, it’s the definition of dinner,” I said, staring her down.  “Quatre’s coming, too.”

           “Well, then it’s a pre-date.”

           “When are you two going to accept that Duo’s not interested in me?”

           “Probably never,” Mariemaia said agreeably.  “Now will you change?”

           “Pick something out,” I said gesturing towards my room.  It was easier to just let her do what she wanted instead of spending the next hour arguing.  Mariemaia was one of the most stubborn people I knew.

           She skipped gleefully off to my room and immediately started making noise.  I could tell she was taking things out of drawers and throwing them all over the place.

           It was my fault for inviting her over.

           Or rather, it was my fault for not rejecting the invitation that she gave to herself to come over before my dinner with Quatre and Duo.

           I sighed and turned on the news.

           She came out after a while, looking frustrated but clutching some of my clothes in her hands.  “Has anyone ever told you that you have no fashion sense?”

           “Yes, you,” I said.  “Many times.”

           “And yet you still haven’t taken the hint.”

           I shrugged.

           “This is the best I could do,” she said, tossing a darker pair of jeans and a different colored t-shirt at me.

           “What’s the difference?” I asked.

           Mariemaia glared at me.

           “You’re a pain in the ass,” I informed her, taking the clothes and going back to my room to change.

           There were clothes everywhere.  I massaged my temple for a moment before closing the door and changing.

           “Okay, you look less like a bum,” Mariemaia said approvingly when I came out.  “Now that hair…”

           “Isn’t it time for you to go home?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.

           “And leave you to your own devices?” Mariemaia asked with a snort.  “Fat chance.”

           I turned up the level of my glare, but Mariemaia had long since become resistant to it.  I often imagined that having Mari in my life was what it would be like to have a sister.  A very irritating sister.

           I moved in with Une when Mariemaia was nine, and I lived there for five years during my undergraduate, master’s, and doctorate studies.  It was a strangely domestic arrangement for a former terrorist, a military colonel who had once devoted herself to killing said terrorist, and a child who had been bent on crashing a colony into the earth and killing everyone.

           Mari cooked, I did the dishes, and Une paid the bills.

           Une’s work with the Preventers had her going in early and coming home late.  I found myself being the one to take Mariemaia to school and tuck her into bed at night. Until she started junior high, anyway, and told me I wasn’t allowed in her room anymore because there were ‘private girl things’ in there that I wasn’t to see.

           Having spent most of my childhood being raised by assassins and mad scientists, the concept of family was something foreign to me. Yet somehow over those five years, I started thinking of Mari and Une as my family.

           “They domesticated you,” Quatre was fond of saying.

           That’s why Mariemaia could act like my bratty sister. Because that was basically what she was.

           “Look, I get that you’re going for the naturally tousled look,” Mariemaia said, attacking my hair with a brush.  “But it requires a lot of effort.”

           I stared at her in the bathroom mirror.

           Mariemaia grinned, grabbing some gel and working it through my hair.

           “I don’t own any hair gel,” I said, squinting at the bottle she was using.  My glasses sat on the counter, apparently a hindrance to the hairstyling process.

           “Don’t I know it,” she replied with a said shake of her head.  “I came prepared.”

           “Stop making such a big deal about this.”

           Mariemaia tilted her head to the side, studying my face as she continued to work on my hair.  “What’s wrong, Heero?”

           “Nothing.”

           “…he said but was obviously lying…”

           “It’s nothing,” I reiterated.  “I just…  Stop acting like this is something that it isn’t.”

           “You’re having dinner with the guy you’ve had a crush on for like half your life,” Mariemaia said.  “That’s a big deal in my book.”

           “You’re a teenage girl,” I said dismissively.

           “What the hell is wrong with being a teenage girl?” Mariemaia asked, giving my hair a more-than-necessary yank.  “’Sides, I’m gonna be a bona fide 20-year-old next month.”

           “Do I have to buy you a present?” I asked, happy to change the subject.

           “What?” she asked, giving me a disgusted look. “Of course you have to buy me a present.”

           “Yeah, but you’re going to be an adult, so…”            “So you should buy me an even better and more expensive one than the presents of my childhood.”

           “You gave me a coffee mug for my last birthday.”

           “You love that coffee mug.  It has your beloved Gundam Dynames on it.”

           “Yes, but it could not have cost more than ten credits.”

           “You can’t put a price on that kind of thing!”

           “You stopped making sense about five minutes ago.”

           “Buy me an expensive present, you damn cheapo bastard!” Mariemaia exclaimed, pinching both of my cheeks.

           “What do you want?” I asked, struggling to form the words through the straining of my cheeks.

           “Your love and affection,” she said, dropping her hands from my cheeks and draping her arms over my shoulders.

           I raised an eyebrow at her in the mirror.

           “And a car.”

           “You don’t even have a license…”

           “A pony?”

           “I don’t think they allow ponies to live in dorm rooms.”

           “Well, then buy me a stable to go with it.”

           “Of course, why didn’t I think of that?”

           Mariemaia hugged me tight for a moment, leaving me feeling stiff but not uncomfortable.  Then she let go and gave my hair one last tousle.  “It’ll have to do, I guess.”

           “Stirring words of confidence.”

           “You’re actually pretty good-looking,” Mariemaia said, studying my face.  “You just need a haircut and some moisturizer.  And better clothes.  And-”

           “I have to go now,” I cut in.

           “You’re welcome.”

           “Thanks, Mari,” I said, ushering her out of the bathroom.

           “Why do you always sound sarcastic when you say thank you…?” Mariemaia muttered.

           I picked up my wallet and keys at the door, and we left the apartment together.

           “Have fun,” she said as we parted ways at the station.

           I tried to smile, but I was pretty sure it came out as a grimace.

           Quatre had already gotten a table when I arrived.

           He waved me over excitedly, and I went to sit next to him.

           “Hey, Duo should be here soon,” Quatre said, holding up a basket towards me.  “Breadstick?”

           I shook my head.

           “Did you do something with your hair?” he asked suddenly, squinting at me.  “Is that… product?”

           “Mariemaia.”

           “Ah.”

           And then there he was, brown braid swinging over his shoulder as he strode into the little Italian bistro like he owned it.

           “Duo, over here!” Quatre called with a wave.

           Duo looked over, and when his eyes met Quatre’s, his entire face lit up in a smile.

           No, this was not going to work at all.  Just looking at him made me stupider.  I couldn’t believe it.  Why did Duo have this effect on me?

           “Hey,” Duo said, taking the seat next to me.

           “Hi, Duo, glad you could come,” Quatre said sunnily.

           “Good evening,” I said gruffly.

           “What up, fellas?” Duo asked, seeming completely at ease as he took a breadstick and started chomping on it.

           “I’ve been working on the patent application for my shock-absorbent helmet,” Quatre said cheerfully.

           “Oh, yeah?” Duo said.  “Make sure I get in on some of that dough for being your test dummy.”

           “Oh, no, that was volunteer work.”

           “Why are rich guys so damn tightfisted with their money?”

           “How do you think we stay rich?”

           “By screwing over the little guy?”

           “Well if you feel that strongly, I’ll send you a fruit basket after I’ve made my first million.”

           “A fruit basket?”

           “One of the nice ones, with the cut fruit on the spears, and the chocolate?”

           “Okay, those are pretty good…” Duo hedged.

           I watched the two of them banter back and forth, both with easygoing expressions on their faces, and felt completely left behind.

           “So what’s good here?” Duo asked, picking up the menu and flipping through it.

           “The arrabiata’s nice if you don’t mind a little spice,” Quatre suggested.

           “I’m known to dabble in the spice,” Duo mused, flipping back and forth between two pages.  “All right, yeah, I’m going for it.”

           “I’ll have the same,” Quatre said.

           Then they both turned to look at me.

           I hadn’t even thought about what to order.

           Duo gave me a funny look and turned back to Quatre.

           That was how the entire dinner seemed to go. Quatre and Duo chatted easily, seeming like long-lost friends, while I sat silently and poked at my lasagna, occasionally taking a perfunctory bite.

           Quatre cast me a concerned look at one point, his eyes probing into my own.

           I just shook him off.

           “This was fun,” Duo told Quatre after we’d split the bill.  “We should do it again.  Soon.”

           Quatre beamed.  “Yes, we should.”

           “Night, guys,” Duo said, walking out ahead of us.

           “Night,” Quatre said.

           “Night…” I echoed, but Duo was already gone.

           Quatre gave me a knowing look as we walked towards his apartment, which was only a couple of minutes from the restaurant.

           “Don’t,” I said.

           “Don’t what?” he asked.

           I leveled him with a glare.

           Quatre, shrugged, looking forward again.

           After we’d gotten up to his apartment, I collapsed into an armchair and crooked my arm over my eyes.

           “What was that?” Quatre finally asked.  “You hardly said a word the whole night.”

           “I told you this was a bad idea.”

           “No, it was a great idea.”

           “He thinks I’m an idiot.”

           “No one thinks you’re an idiot.”

           “Then he thinks that I am socially retarded.”

           “Well, yes, but there’s a grain of truth to that.”

           I groaned.

           “That’s why he likes you,” Quatre said, patting me on the head.

           My groan turned to a growl, and I finally pulled my arm from my eyes to swat his hand away.

           “I know people, Heero, and Duo cares about you,” Quatre continued, undeterred.  “You two had a special bond during the war, and that kind of thing doesn’t just go away.”

           “What about you and Trowa?” I countered.

           “I think if he and I spend some time together, we could find common ground again,” Quatre said confidently.  “Look at me and Duo.”

           “Yeah, you two are getting along grandly,” I muttered.

           “He’s easy to talk to.”

           “For everyone in the world except me.”

           “You’re being a bit overdramatic.”

           “I’ve been spending too much time with Mariemaia.”

           “I think it’s time you tried expanding your social circle,” Quatre suggested.

           “I… socialize…”

           “The internet doesn’t count.”

           I glared at him.

           Quatre just smiled warmly at me and went to pour the tea.

           Even without his scientifically questionable space heart, Quatre knew me better than anyone.  We’d been working for the Preventers together since we were 20, starting out as interns while we worked our way towards our doctorates.

           Une had tried to recruit us as agents, but we both felt the same way.  We were done killing.

           The Preventers could wax as poetic as they wanted about being a peacekeeping organization; all of the agents had a kill count.  They did what had to be done to maintain peace.  Quatre and I couldn’t do that, not anymore.

           Une was the one who suggested we come into the organization in a more behind-the-scenes capacity.  She had to outsource all of her lab work and crime scene analysis to the ESUN Bureau of Investigation, and Une hated dealing with outsiders. There was always a risk, and she wanted her own in-house lab technicians to help maintain the secrecy of the Preventers.

           Lab work suited Quatre and I.  Quatre liked inventing things, while I liked analyzing things.  We worked well together and enjoyed what we were doing.

           Sometimes I wondered if we were becoming the next generation of mad scientists.

           Sometimes I wondered if that was a good or a bad thing.

           “Your tea’s getting cold,” Quatre scolded me gently.

           I looked down at the china cup in my hands and took a drink from it.

           “Don’t look so depressed,” Quatre said, nudging my knee with a socked foot.

           I offered him a smile.

           “Don’t do that either,” Quatre said with a shudder.

           I sighed.

           “Things will work out, you’ll see,” he said reassuringly.

           I didn’t feel reassured at all.  “What are you planning now?”

           “Nothing,” Quatre said with all the innocence he could muster.

           “I’m going home now,” I said, getting up and putting the empty teacup in the sink.

           “See you at work Monday?”

           “Yeah,” I said, taking my leave.

           It was time to go home to the sanctity of my computer.

[theplaguezine]

LEFAY

Interview with Charles Rytkönen by Daniel Hinds

(conducted August 1999)

When it came to classy power metal, you would have been hard-pressed to beat Sweden's Morgana Lefay.  Combining epic arrangements, soaring vocals and plenty of stellar musicianship, the band delivered album after album of consistently top-notch material.  Unfortunately, they ran into some sticky legal trouble and the result was a two-year low profile, a line-up shuffle and an unwanted name change.

Fortunately, the band survived with their artistic integrity intact, and has emerged this year as Lefay with possibly their best album to date, The Seventh Seal.  Vocalist Charles Rytkönen explains the current situation and leads us through the hurdles the band has overcome…

Now that the album has been out for a bit, what are your feelings about the album? It feels good. (laughs)  We did another album and released it, so that's about it, I guess.  We are satisfied with the songs and with the mix.  I don't know how the sales figures have been, but I think it has been pretty good in Europe.  I'm really curious about the States, how it will be.

How have previous albums done in the States? I think not so good…  Then again, perhaps you could blame the company we had at that time (Black Mark) a little bit.  I don't know if they had a good promotion in the States - I can't imagine they had.  Noise Records, at least here in Europe, is very good.

What does the title 'The Seventh Seal' refer to? It's based on the story about the Seventh Seal in the Book of Revelations by St. John the Divine, in the New Testament.  It's based on that armageddon, doomsday news kind of story.

The cover art is quite beautiful.  Was the concept for it the band's or did you leave it up to the artist? The basic ideas have always been the band's, but then we say to the artist, Kristian Wåhlin, he can do whatever he wants.  We really trust him because he is so good and he has the same kind of fantasy as we do.  So it's a combination between our basic idea and his talent and feeling for it.

How did you first get in touch with him? I don't really remember that, actually.. (laughs)  I think it was a rumor from the beginning that he was really good and so on.  I remember that I called him up the first time, when we made the Knowing Just As I Album, and I asked him if he could do a cover for that with an angel holding something in his hand.  He came up with the sandglass, actually - that was his idea - and we thought it was a cool thing, so we've used it ever since.  It's like a story itself, the cover art.  I would like to collect the originals. (laughs)

I'm sure you've heard this one too many times already, but what exactly happened with Black Mark that resulted in the name change? Mmrrrrrh - wrong question!  (laughs)  No…oh god, it was a mess actually.  We weren't satisfied with Black Mark and we felt like we were being fooled a little bit and we signed a bad deal from the beginning.  We were really green, we knew nothing about this industry at all, and we just signed it.  'Wow, we have a record deal here!'  It could have said in the contract that we would have had to run around naked in the city, whatever - we just signed it.  We have never seen any money from that company, so we were really bored.  Then we were on tour in '95 and some guy from Noise Records came up and asked if we wanted to be on their label, and we said, 'Yeah, for sure, no doubt about it!  We can go right away!'  From that moment we had hard times.  We had lawyers involved for nine months, struggling about something, I don't know what - I just want to play, you know.  In the beginning of that mess, three of the members decided that they wanted to move to Stockholm and get some real jobs so they could earn some money for once in their life.  It was okay with us and we told them they had to come to Bollnäs, that's our hometown, if you want to stay in the band.  You have to come to us and do the rehearsals.  They couldn't do that, so we had to take three new members.  Then we had to change the name to Lefay because of some stupid…I don't know why exactly, but we're Morgana Lefay under disguise now.

Was there ever a thought to change the name completely? Yeah, a quick one. (laughs)  We thought about it, but then we were really pissed that we couldn't use the name Morgana Lefay because I invented that name a long time ago.  When I was a young kid, I wanted to have a band with the name Morgana Lefay, so I was really pissed.  We decided to just take away 'Morgana' and keep Lefay and Noise Records agreed with that as well.  We were thinking of names like 'Fuck You All' and "Fuck Black Mark'…'No Name'…(laughs)  Stupid names, you know.  But we're used to calling it Lefay now.

What was it about the name 'Morgana Lefay' that made you want to use it for a band name for all those years? I have always been interested in fantasy stuff and old tales, occult things as well.  I was really into that story about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table for a while there and Morgana Lefay was like…wow, what a name for a band!  So we took that.  Before that it was Damage and before that it was Superstition.  Before that it was…something I don’t remember. (laughs)

Can you tell me a bit about the re-recording of your first album, Symphony of the Damned? Yeah…  We made the original album in 1990 and we made it on vinyl, 537 copies, just to see ourselves on vinyl.  We didn't have a contract at that time and everyone was happy, every day. (laughs)  It was badly produced and everything was bad with that album, but now since a couple of years ago, there are some die-hard fans who have bought that album in Germany, even though we never sold it in Germany, and they are willing to pay 1000 Swedish Krona (about $122) for it.  They were telling us, why don't you re-release that album?  We had thought about that from time to time, but we've lost the master tape.  Perhaps that is good luck, since it was so badly produced.  Now we decided to re-record it instead, plus we have four cover tunes on it as well.  We did this for two reasons.  It is a dedication to all the former members of Damage and Morgana Lefay and it is for our fans.  And perhaps it will buy us some time to make some new material for an upcoming album here. (laughs)

What are the covers that you chose? It's "Crazy?!" by Nazareth from the Heavy Metal soundtrack, "Captain Howdy" by Twisted Sister, "Strange Ways" from Kiss and "Cocaine" by J.J. Cale.  It's some odd covers, perhaps, but we think they are good and a little bit…you can really relax to the last song, "Cocaine." (laughs)

From what I understand, you've never had as much success in Sweden as in other places like Germany and Japan.  Has that improved any in recent times? Mmm, Sweden is a tough market when it comes to heavy metal.  There are bands like HammerFall, for example.  They had good luck - they were doing what they did at the exact right time, so they are really big in Sweden.  Big is not BIG like Metallica, but very well known, even for people who don't listen to heavy metal music, while we are well known among the people who are really into heavy metal music.  So there is a bad metal scene in Sweden.  It's okay underground and I think it is growing, but the people of Sweden are really fast to fall into the trends that come from the States and England.  So there is a lot of fuckin' techno and hip-hop and Ricky Martin shit.

Do you keep up on the metal scene much? Nah.  The rest of the band does, but they are single or perhaps they have a girlfriend.  Me, I have a house and a family, a girlfriend of 15 years and we have three kids together, so I'm a busy man actually. (laughs)

Does that make it difficult to tour? Yeah, of course.  You have to deal with your brain all the time, having a bad conscience and stuff.  But I have a wonderful girlfriend who is behind me on this 100%.  Our oldest child, she is 8-years-old and she's also used to this, even though she thinks it sucks when I go away for a month.  I'm really scared about going for a long tour, like 5 or 6 months.  I actually don't know if I am capable of doing that.  One month or five weeks, that's about the limit for me.

I've heard that you have an interest in blues.  Who are some of your favorite artists? Almost all the black artists, like Howlin' Wolf and…whatever.  The really old, original blues.  Then I also like some blues mixed with rock and I am still quite fond of some of Janis Joplin's songs.  I mean, I don't sit and listen to blues all day long, but it's really relaxing to listen to when you're in that mood, it's perfect.  Mostly, I listen to metal and hard rock, especially old hard rock like Uriah Heep.  The 90s is almost totally unknown to me, I'm more into the 70s and 80s as well.

When did you first become serious about singing? I never became serious about it. (laughs)  It was in school, in the 8th degree and some friends of mine said they were going to start playing in a band and were like,' I will play the guitar and he will play the drums and he will play bass and he will also play guitar - do you want to sing?'  'Okay," I said and then I started to sound something like…I don't know, it's really embarrassing to think about how it sounded. (laughs)

So you were self-taught? Yeah, definitely.  I don't know if I can do this, but I've come to accept my voice since a couple of years now.  I'm doing my best and I really like it, but then there are a lot of singers that I really admire and I'd like to sound like some of them, like Rob Halford.

How do you get inspired to write lyrics? It can be I wake up and I've had a dream, which was really weird, so I have to write something about it.  Or it can be from a book that I've read.  I read a lot of fantasy books and horror books.  I was really into the occult stuff when I was like 18-years-old and I'm still very interested in it to this day, but at that time I read just about everything I could about good and evil and all kinds of unexplainable things, and that has given me a lot of things to write about and to think about as well.  Is good that good and is evil that evil?  There's a lot of questions and that inspires me to write about such things.  And also just fairy tales, about goblins and elves and stuff like that.  Everything that is not so common.  We live in reality, we can see reality on the news every day.  Of course, I can write about stuff like that as well.  Like David Koresh, the mad messiah thing over in the States, that is a real thing but it is still so strange and that people can be affected by one person so much that they commit suicide, I think that's amazing.  It's so sick and it really pisses me off, actually, because one should have a distance to everything, even to oneself.

Morgana Lefay Official Facebook