#but just because it's what he wanted and what he valued

[asidian]

I've seen a lot of really excellent analysis on Charles' reaction to Edwin's confession, but there's a huge aspect that I haven't seen talked about at all yet. And that is, namely:

Charles Rowland is a people-pleaser.

Doesn't seem like there's a connection there, does it? Have a seat, my friends. Let me break this down.

The show lays the groundwork for this aspect of Charles' personality early. It's one of the very first things we learn about him, in fact. He's kind and agreeable and helpful, and he's always, always smiling. When Crystal insults him, he laughs it off. When Crystal and Edwin fight, he scrambles to diffuse the situation. He calls himself "a good sort of a chap," and it's important to him that he is.

In episode 3, we find out why. At home, love was always conditional for him. He spent his entire life trying to please his father, and he confesses to Crystal that no matter how nice he was, or how good at sports, it was never enough. That's how Charles sees the world. If he can make people happy, he might actually be good enough for them to love him.

Not only didn't he earn his father's affection, he didn't even manage, in his own eyes, to clear the low bar of being good enough to earn the privilege of not being hurt. And his mother, he says, was "quiet." From the flashback we see, she never stepped in for him or defended him. However hard he was trying, it wasn't enough to get her to intervene on his behalf.

So who else does he have? His "friends"? The ones who literally murder him when he steps in to stop them from doing a terrible thing? The act he put on wasn't enough to win them over in the end, either. However friendly he was, however personable, they turned on him and left him for dead.

Then he meets Edwin.

And when he meets Edwin, he's at his absolute lowest. He's not smiling and putting on a show, for once. He's in a corner of an attic cowering while he slowly freezes to death. But here comes Edwin, offering him kindness, and company, and comfort.

All these things that Charles has spent his whole life chasing, trying to be good enough to earn? Edwin just gives them to him.

Of course he stays with this boy. Edwin is there when he's lost in the dark, shining a light to guide the way. Edwin has seen him unsmiling and afraid, not a shred of his usual act in place, and Edwin has offered him kindness anyway.

So they begin their time together. And what are the things Charles will pick up on almost immediately?

Edwin says right away that he's spent ages in hell. He's plainly had an awful time. He doesn't know how to handle people anymore, but Charles, he knows how to be amiable, how to smile, how to offer levity when things get grim.

So he does. He falls back into what he thinks Edwin needs, the way he always tried to be what his father wanted to see. In the very first episode, he tells Crystal, "I try to be extra happy for all of us, don't I? And I do a pretty good job."

He doesn't ever discuss his own trauma because these boys are terrible at communication, but more than that. He doesn't ever bring it up because he's busy being the support he thinks Edwin needs.

And importantly, Charles doesn't have the self-reflection skills to realize that's what he's doing. Crystal clocks him with shocking accuracy, three episodes in. "He's been hiding it from you," she tells Edwin. "Probably been hiding it from himself." She's spot-on here: when Charles doesn't want to examine his own emotions, or can't face them, he shoves them down under a smile and he carries on pretending.

But that's not the only thing Charles will have picked up on from Edwin.

It's blindingly obvious that Edwin is bad at people. He's terribly repressed. He's from a culture in which emotional honesty and physical affection were not valued or encouraged. But more than any of that, Edwin has his sexual awakening during the events of the show. Before then, he is absolutely clueless about his own wants.

So we have a situation where a consummate people-pleaser who has spent his entire life learning that he has to earn affection finds his way into a friendship with the first person who ever saw him with his mask down and gave him kindness anyway.

Of course he stays with this boy. Of course he wants to keep this.

And what's the best way Charles knows to win someone over? Well, by being what he thinks they want.

So, out come the smiles, for Edwin's sake as much as his own. But more importantly, out comes whatever Charles thinks he needs to perform, in order to keep what is the single most important relationship in his entire life and afterlife.

At this point, Edwin has shown zero romantic or sexual interest, not just in Charles, but in anyone at all. He doesn't especially seem inclined to dating, or to romance, or even to physical affection.

So Charles takes his cues from Edwin, and the cues are very firmly, for thirty years: this boy doesn't have a glimmer of interest in him, not that way.

Fast-forward to the events of the show. Fast-forward to a staircase in hell, where they are being chased by a literal demon. Suddenly his best mate, who he has spent thirty years with, who is his most important person in the world, is saying that he's in love with him.

Of course he needs a minute. Of course he has to sort that through. Any feelings he has for Edwin are things that he has spent literal decades firmly ignoring in the scramble to try and earn affection by being what he thinks Edwin needs him to be.

Because Charles is a people-pleaser at heart. And he may be dreadful at self-reflection, but he is aces at hiding things from himself.

[bucksdaffy]

one of the many things i love about buck and tommy's relationship is how honest they are with each other. they are both willing to communicate openly – if there is some misunderstanding between the two of them, they clear it up. they express what they feel, want, and need in a straightforward way, and neither has to push the other to admit what's going on: they'll do it without being asked. personally, i think it's absolutely beautiful, and i just couldn't be happier for buck. he finally met someone who values honesty just as much as he does, and you can see how good that is for him. because let's be real, have we ever seen him this content with his previous love interests? icl, not rooting for them is just crazy at this point in my book.

[madlori]

If the only thing you can lord over buddie is that bucktommy is canon, then you really didn't care at all about the ship.

7 seasons of being a family unit, being there for each other, having each other's back but hey! Here comes another underdeveloped love interest, but since it's a man this time, you don't care about Buck being stuck in the same hamster wheel, again, because he's kissing a man and that's hot 🙄

Also for all your doom and gloom about buddie not happening, do remember that Tommy/Eddie was an idea in Tim's mind at first, so Eddie can be read as queer, even if it's not in canon yet.

I guess you don't place much value on them being a family unit and always there for each other, and having each other's back...all of which is still true and will continue to BE true. But it's only important to you as a prelude to them kissing, right? It has no value in and of itself. I love their relationship. I love what they are to each other. But YOU are making me not want to see it, because every time they turn to each other, lean on each other, support each other, we have to listen to you shrieking BUDDIE CANON CONFIRMED or whatever, because to a certain genre of shipper (not all buddie shippers, etc) any interaction or feeling they have with each other exists only in service to the ship.

I swear to god, I'm gonna banish the phrase "hamster wheel" from y'all's mouths until I get an actual definition as to what you think it means, because from where I sit, to you it just means "he's with someone who's not Eddie." To me, it means that Buck continually fell bass-ackwards into relationships that weren't right for him, looking for something he wasn't even sure what it was. And heyyyyy, he's currently in a relationship that he actively chose and fought for, having learned something new and important about himself, with someone who makes him giddy and excited in a way we have never seen him be, who the people around him can see gives him contentment. But none of that matters, because it's not Eddie, and that is by definition his only appropriate partner, so he must still be on that hamster wheel. Also if we're going by creator intent here, Tim's said he wrote this relationship specifically to reflect Buck being off of it.

As for underdeveloped love interest? I wrote an entire ass essay about how MUCH we know about Tommy, and it's reams compared to anything we've ever known about Buck's girlfriends OR Eddie's current girlfriend who does not even have a last name. Tommy has been introduced in a way that integrates him with the 118, with multiple interests, a character arc of his own from his first appearance, a set of motivations and emotional arcs that are NOT about Buck, and something to actually offer in a relationship besides existing. Anyone saying he's underdeveloped is determined to read him as such, especially for the limited amount of time we've had him.

And I never said Eddie couldn't be read as queer. He can EASILY be read as queer. I said he WOULDN'T be. Those are two different things. If Tommy and Eddie had gotten together (which I give no more narrative weight to than Maddie and Eddie getting together, which was also a gleam in the eye at one point) I'd equally be saying that Buck would never be queer.

It's hilarious to me that I'm being accused of liking a ship because it's hot (it is, and I do, and that's...fine? there's nothing bad about that?) as if people enjoy Buddie because of the amorphous purity of it all and not at ALL because it's hot (it is and you should say so).

If my thoughts about this are so upsetting to you, just block me, dude. I promise I won't take it personally.

Also, just...learn to enjoy a ship whether it's canon or not. I've done it, we've all done it. It's not that hard, especially THIS ship, which has so much good stuff to it regardless of whether there's romance or not. Those of us who like Buck with Tommy are not taking away from you enjoying Buddie, or anyone doing so. It's not like...the State of Buddie will lose congressional representation if the population falls below a certain level. The existence of another ship does not affect yours.

[luvknow]

sanguine satellite | lee minho

Summary: The last time you saw Minho was five years ago when you rejected him to live out the rest of your twenties in the city. The next time you see him is on your birthday with another woman in his arms, and it sparked everything that was good, bad, and ugly. Now, after years of not being in each other’s lives, Minho tries to repair the friendship he broke while you fight your changing feelings. As you struggle navigating your friendship with him, you struggle more to navigate being single in this next stage of your life. Characters: Lee Minho x fem!Reader, feat. other idols Genre: friends-to-strangers-to-lovers, romance, angst, emotional hurt with comfort, happy ending, slice of life Additional warnings: cheating, alcohol consumption, food, aged up a bit and in turn age insecurity, a lot of mentions of a best friend with another idol WC: 18.1k

Today was a pivotal day in the office. Quarter two earnings were released to the public and other divisions of the company and, well, let’s just say with the increasing rise in inflation and the impending recession that everyone refuses to acknowledge, no one wants to buy anything. As a result, the earnings reported negative and stocks dipped, morale was low, and to top it off, it was only Monday.

In a way, this was a metaphor for your life; a tumbleweed of all things that could go wrong did go wrong and formed into an amalgamation of nothing to show for. Some people found value in the mundane, but this was supposed to be the peak of your career, your magnum opus, before progress plateaued and you couldn’t stand the idea of not feeling enriched. To wake up, leave, work, and go home was the reason you wanted to leave your home in the first place for something richer in the heart of the city. But you felt defeated after clocking out at 8:30 PM and slumped on the seat in an empty train cart.

The view of the lively apartment high rises and the warm light of slow brick-and-mortars made the late night train rides worth the twenty minutes. Work wasn’t always this draining, but after climbing the corporate ladder, more money meant more responsibilities and it quickly drained the light from your eyes as it did with many of your peers and friends. Youth was fleeting and today you felt like Ponce de Leon searching for the fountain to no avail, but at least the train would take you as close to it as it possibly could.

After packing up your life from home five years ago to move with your friends, the only plans twenty-something-year-olds ever had in place were reservations at 9:00 PM because you called the hottest spot the day-of and drinks at the bar next door after clocking out at 5:00 PM. You were young, excited, and hungry for life, barely sober most days and experiencing what it meant to be young; but what must be given, something must also be taken. Now, rent was rising, salary increases were few and far in between, and instead of deciding what martini you should be ordering, you were stuck wondering if being a worker bee individual contributor was worth the lull schedule or if taking the path to management and telling whiny subordinates what to do was worth the salary bump.

You and your friends once joked that stuff like this was what people in their thirties worry about. Today is your thirtieth birthday.

You didn’t have time for dinner and once again thanked the real estate Gods who put a restaurant so greasy at the corner of your block that you practically slid on a snail trail to the front door of your loft. So, here you were; eating under-salted french fries, chugging a crispy diet cola, with oil stains on your white button-up, ready to spend the rest of your birthday and probably the rest of your life alone on your overpriced and uncomfortable couch watching the latest drama you’d sob your eyes out to. All you needed now was a pet as your companion and you’d be the whole single-in-your-thirties package. Maybe you’d use that as leverage in your dating apps: looking for a partner, a pet, or both.

After fumbling with the keys, you sighed into your dark, cavernous home and dropped your bag at the door. When you turned on the lights, you saw the ghost of your soul leave your mouth in a loud gasp.

“Surprise!!”

You were greeted with streamers, glitter, balloons, and your closest friends wearing little party hats with their beautiful smiles. You never doubted they remembered, and most wished you happy birthday at midnight, but you should have sensed something was wrong when Chaeryoung asked for your door passcode because she ‘forgot her chapstick on your coffee table.’

She was the first to tackle you in a tight hug. “Happy birthday, mi amor!”

“Let the woman take her shoes off first, damn,” Jisung scolded.

“Wow, there’s certainly a lot of you,” you giggled after prying her off. “You guys shouldn’t have. Really! It’s Monday.”

“All the more to celebrate something worthwhile,” Chan grinned, handing you a glass of wine. “Welcome to the club.”

“Ugh, thanks.” Chaeryoung yanked away the oily bag of fries while you were distracted with the happy juice. “Hey, I’m hungry!”

“Don’t fret! We are having a dinner party because that’s what thirty-year-olds do.”

“Except we ate already because we thought you were coming home well before 9:00 PM,” Hyunjin grinned sheepishly.

“No, yeah, I love when my friends watch me stuff my face.”

The dining table was decorated with burgundy candle sticks, red roses, and black bows. It was definitely a step-up from your twenty-first bubblegum pink and pastel confetti birthday, but this almost seemed… meek? Romantic, sure, but a little dark for a birthday. As Chaeryoung scrambled to fill your plate with take-out and prepare the cake, everyone took their place back at the table. The lights dimmed and out came a jet black cake with a toy knife and red frosting that read, ‘Happy Deathday to Your 20s!’

“A bit dark, but accurate,” you mused.

“Make a wish-!” A knock came at the door. “Shit.”

Everyone looked at each other awkwardly. Chaeryoung, Chan, Hyunjin, Jisung, and their partners were present and those were the only people you regularly hung out with. Who could be left?

“Are people still coming?” you asked.

The boys collectively shot a look at a wide-eyed and frozen Chaeryoung, none of them willing to break the news or catch a stray. “Um…”

“What did you do?” you accused. “You didn’t invite that one guy I told you about last month, did you?”

“No, but I wish I had.” Another knock. “Coming!”

“It’s not a coworker, is it?”

“Worse,” Jisung mumbled. “For you, at least.”

“Minho!” Chaeryoung exclaimed happily. “You’re just in time!”

“What -” you hissed at the boys, “- the hell?!”

They all held their hands up in defense. Minho passed the threshold and your twenties flashed before your eyes. The once blondish short and styled middle part now hung loose in soft chocolate strands; eyes that once held the universe were dark and doe-like; and arms that once moved freely in his sleeves now tightened around them. He was a completely different man who you hadn’t seen in five years and here he was at a pivotal moment of your life, about to celebrate you and the life you’ve lived without him for the better half of the last decade. It took all your might to lift your sore legs to walk over to greet your guest and restrain from strangling your best friend. He wore clothes appropriate for a casual dinner party that didn’t spill into the blues of corporate-wear, clearly aware of this occasion, and a small gift bag. His appearance was intentional, not upon happenstance, which made this whole ordeal a lot weirder.

Following him in, hand-in-hand, was a woman. A stranger. Two strangers in your home.

He pulled away from Chaeryoung’s death grip and you locked eyes. It’s awkward, to put it politely; to put it rudely, it was horrifying. Your nervous system certainly felt nervous, firing fight-or-flight responses the way he drank you in like the first sip of a bitter negroni. How someone could evolve and change to the point of being unrecognizable should be studied by Darwin.

He’s the first to break with a small smile to ease the tension. “Hi.”

“Hi,” you breathed.

“Happy birthday, _____.”

The bag is small and neatly wrapped with care in your favorite colors. The woman behind him smiled sweetly. “Thank you. You really shouldn’t have. And thank you…?”

“Oh, right. This is Karina, my girlfriend of two years.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot about you. And happy birthday!”

You brain buffered when she bowed. How awkward, because you haven’t heard anything about her other than her existence. You never thought he’d have someone so beautiful. Minho blocked you on social media a long time ago, so you wouldn’t have recognized her. Chaeryoung had to kick you back to life. “Ah, it’s nice to meet you, too! Welcome to my home.”

“There’s wax on the cake!” Jisung warned.

“Oh, hurry in! _____ was about to make a wish!” Chaeryoung pushed the three of you to the dining area.

There’s a bitter taste on your tongue watching him dap up the boys and watching her hug them so warmly. You never faulted them for being neutral. They were just as much as his friends as they were yours but having him here created a thick glass wall on your side of the table, like he was icing you out in your own home; that you paid with your own hard-earned money, mind you! This was as close to a defense mechanism you could build.

Nine people were watching you, all of whom were paired with another in the room except Chaeryoung, in your home. There’s a heavy shroud of dread that’s draped over your makeshift invisible box you struggled to keep upright. This was supposed to feel like a celebration of you, but it quickly turned rotten when you realized you were the only single person on your own side of the table, being made a spectacle as the couples moved closer and watched more intently. It was like they were watching a ghost of singles-past, feeling more appreciative of the life they procured together as you watched their hold on each other tighten ever so slightly.

“Make a wish,” Jisung sang.

You stared blankly at the three sparkling candles. What was there to wish for? You had a good career, a warm home, food on the table, and loved ones who kept you up on your feet. You supposed a better work-life balance would be feasible, but that was something within reach and in your control. To wish is to pray and to pray is to beg, and you weren’t one to beg for anything except for the pickles Chaeryoung picked out of her sandwiches. What was something that even you couldn’t control, something you had to ask some spirit dwelling in the ether for?

A flash of Minho’s eyes boring into yours made your face hot. Maybe you’d just let this wish go to waste instead.

You blew out the candles and applause erupted with Chan eager to cut into the cake. It was your favorite flavor from your favorite local baker whom you trusted every birthday and holiday to deliver the finest treats. At least this part of your birthday was perfect.

“So, what does thirty feel like?” Hyunjin asked. “Do you want the number of the senior home down the street from me?”

“Ha ha,” you drawled. “Aren’t you next, Hwang?”

“Actually, Minho’s next – ow!”

Chaeryong didn’t hide how she elbowed his ribs. She then gave a wide smile and her fingers danced. “Do you feel more mature?”

“As mature as a dry-age steak.”

“Well, you pair well with red wine, at least.” Chan raised his glass. “Here’s to you and to all of us, our priceless friendship!”

Most of us, you wanted to correct, but decided against being uncouth. “Cheers!”

When you were all in the younger halves of the twenties, conversations were about memes, pop culture, and the new hottest bar that just opened. Now, as you were ranting about quarter one earnings and the Windows 11 update, the others doubled down on the corporate jargon. Even Karina, who revealed she was a consultant in tech, participated in the conversations. Minho was the only one who remained quiet, but he was simply enjoying the company, leaning back in the chair with his arm around his woman. For someone who had never visited or even wished well on past birthdays, he was making himself quite at home.

Your birthday dinner lasted long enough to finish off three bottles of wine between everyone and for all the food to disappear, making clean-up much easier. As everyone scrambled around your home clouded in buzzed-up nonsense, Jisung was the one to tour your apartment with Minho and Karina, telling the tale of every picture you hung on a wall or framed on a credenza.

“This was when we went to London one summer after my graduation,” he said. “I’m the youngest, so I was the last one and we decided to make it a big celebration. I think this was the day Minho and _____ got lost and almost hopped on a train to Edinburgh by accident. This one was from Chaeryoung’s twenty-fourth birthday. I think Minho took this picture, actually.”

“Where are you in these pictures, Minho?” Karina wondered innocently.

There’s a breath of silence in the loft aside from you who didn’t pay any mind to his girlfriend’s ignorance. Not like you expect your fallout to be a topic of conversation over a candle-lit dinner date, anyway. You also didn’t expect that look on Minho’s face when he realized that to be true.

“He’s usually the one behind the camera!” Jisung answered, not exactly lying. “You’ve seen his Instagram and how he composes his cat pictures.”

Minho didn’t try to correct him, and they quickly moved on.

As it was the first day of the working week, Chan, Hyunjin, Jisung, and their partners were the first to leave. For whatever reason, Minho and Karina decided to stay back. Karina’s motive was unclear; either she was really bad at reading the room or the effort to be friends was genuine, but even when Minho asked if she wanted to leave with everyone, she decided against it.

“Let me help you take the garbage out,” she offered Chaeryoung.

“I can do it,” you and Minho said in unison.

“Nonsense! It’s your birthday and this one had a little too much to drink before coming here and when we got here.”

Chaeryoung gave you a sympathetic look as they carried several bags out to the ground floor. What a convenient day for the chute to be broken! They’d take the five-to-ten minutes of traveling to the ground floor out to the back where the bins were.

And then there were two, standing on opposite sides of the kitchen island, unable to look each other in the eyes after five years of abandonment.

“Hi,” he greeted again, lips flat-lined and unsure of how to move this conversation forward.

You beat around the bush. “What are you doing here?”

His tongue poked his cheek. “I ran into Chaeryoung last weekend at the bar I work at and asked what she was doing for your birthday.”

“Why would you ask that?” you asked coldly.

“I… just knew she'd be doing something for you. Maybe she took it as me asking to get invited, but that wasn’t my intention. I think she panicked, invited me anyway, and here I am.”

“You could’ve said no.”

“I could’ve,” he agreed, and there’s a mischievous twinkle in his eyes that asked, ‘but why would I?’

You looked away. “Isn’t this a far drive for you?”

“I live here now. Well, not here; on the other side, closer to downtown and near that bar.”

“Oh. How long have you been a city dweller?”

“About two years now.”

That lined up with his relationship status. It was a fact that it was easier to find partners in the metropolitan, yet somehow you were the only one to remain alone after being one of the first to move here. How was it that Minho managed that in under a month? And if he’s been here for two years, how have you not realized that?

You swallowed the rest of the wine in your glass. “How do you like it?”

“I love it.” He ran a hand through his tired head of hair, creating a split down the middle. The redness on his face had spread from his nose to his cheeks, as it always did when alcohol invaded his bloodstream. “I see why you wanted to move here.”

He, too, must have seen how time was of the essence, and with what little time you have in your young lives, the highest quality of life would be to live where your peers were thriving. If only he understood this years ago.

You nodded sourly, feeling the loneliness resurface after having to repress it for so long. “I’m happy for you.”

“Your mother once told us, ‘mean what you say and say what you mean.’ You don’t have to lie.”

“Don’t tell me what my mother says.”

Tension as thick as jell-o separated you from him. There’s a brief stare down after your threat, or what sounded like a threat, and you swear there’s hurt behind those big eyes of his, but he wouldn’t be the victim here; not when he was the one who left your life and blocked you out of his. He didn’t have the right to be offended by your unwelcoming attitude when he was never welcome to begin with. On your birthday, at that.

Chaeryoung saved the evening and rushed back inside, afraid of the damage you’d tell her later.

“Ready?” Karina asked, squeezing Minho’s bicep.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, being the first to break contact. You didn’t help him see his way out, but he said over his shoulder once more, “Happy birthday, _____.”

“Thank you for coming,” you called out sharply.

“It was nice meeting you!” Karina said cheerfully.

“You, too.”

Chaeryoung, the kind woman and hostess as she is, hugged them both and hastened to lock the door. She rushed back, clinging to you and holding your arms inside, likely afraid that you’d break something or chug the rest of the fourth bottle.

“I’m so~o sorry!”

“He told me how it happened. Tell me why I’m not surprised?”

“It was at the bar near your work that I told you about. You didn’t come because you had some reports to submit before midnight. And who do I see behind the bar? Minho, of all people! He was running that shit like the navy! It was hard to talk long over the music, but we said our hellos and he quickly brought up the fact you were turning thirty and asked what I was doing because he knows how much I love you and I’m the bestest friend ever – Anyway, I told him about the surprise, and he looked so damn sad! Jesus Christ, so you know me, an empath, I had to at least offer him an invite. I didn’t think he’d take it, nor did I think he’d ask to bring a plus one, like, yesterday!”

In the midst of her ramblings, you squirmed free from her grip and pulled the poor pouty girl into a tight hug. “I will not let him ruin what you’ve done for me. I love you and appreciate you.”

“It was so hard!” she whined. “The boys are so unreliable! I ask them to buy something for decorations, they don’t answer, and when I ask a few days later they’re like, ‘I got it a while ago,’ and I’m like, ‘why didn’t you say something?!’ and they’re like, ‘I didn’t think I’d need to as long as I brought it the day-of.’ Can you believe that?!”

“After over ten years of friendship, yes, yes I can.”

After cleaning up the remaining crumbs and dishes, Chaeryoung found the gift that Minho and Karina left on one of the chairs. “Did you open it?”

“No. What if it’s a bomb? Can you do it?”

She tossed out the tissue paper and peered inside fearlessly. “Oh!”

“What is it?”

“A gift card and a perfume bottle; a pricey one. Ooh, it smells good!”

The gift card was to a new bar that was opening on the same block as your office. Your boss was excited to finally have a happy hour location so close that you haven’t gone a day without hearing about it since its announcement. The name on the card said ‘DAHLIA’ and the amount it held was five hundred dollars.

“Huh,” Chaeryoung mused, “isn’t this address very close to where you work? And you like dahlias. Scary coincidence.”

“Do you think he’s stalking me?”

“Maybe it’s Karina.”

The perfume was in a sleek clear bottle with a white face and gold cap. It smelled of marshmallows, orange blossoms, and neroli. It would be the most expensive thing you’d own, cosmetics wise.

“They open on Friday,” she said giddily. “We should go!”

The projected menu on their social media did look really good… and they had variations of your favorite drink and ones you’ve never heard of.

“Think of it as a ‘celebration’ to the start of a new quarter! Since it’ll be slower now, right?”

“Yeah,” you nodded, accepting that poor-quality reasoning for a twenty dollar cocktail. “Ok, let’s go!”

Your best friend squealed happily and dug through your closet, plucking out the shortest skirt in your wardrobe.

--

On Thursday, Chaeryoung canceled on you to go on a third date with the guy she’s been seriously interested in. She was hoping to finally become an exclusive dating couple; not exactly boyfriend-and-girlfriend, but they’re not allowed to see other people since they’re exclusive, so it’s a label-without-the-label situation that you struggled too hard to grasp. If the majority of your peers thought that way about dating, maybe it was a good thing you remained single.

When you exited your office’s high-rise that day, on your way to the train, you passed by an alley in between the Italian place and the coffee shop you and your co-workers frequented. There was an inconspicuous red ‘OPEN’ light at the end above a black door that caught your attention. In a small serif font, the letters ‘DAHLIA’ was stamped on the door. Friday was supposed to be the official opening day according to their social media pages, but there was no mistake it was open as indicated by the bouncer standing guard.

You did have the gift card in your wallet, and you were craving that crispy green tea highball they had in one of their posts. It was only 6:00 PM, maybe they’d have some happy hour deals going on and you could report back to Chaeryoung with your findings.

You walked up to the doorman. “Hi, are you open –”

“I.D.”

Well, that answers that. He allowed you to pass into the low-lit glowing bar. It wasn’t busy like a Friday evening, but almost all of the tufted couches and chairs were filled, leaving a semi-vacant bar up for grabs. The aura of the bar is what one might describe as ‘vibey and chill’, as the low hum of the bass from the hip-hop song in the background vibrated your heart. This was as soft as a soft-opening could get.

On the menu, there was a special on the drink you were looking forward to and a snack pairing: rice paper and seaweed chips with a salt and togarashi seasoning. You knew all those words separately but couldn’t comprehend them together.

“I.D., please,” the bartender asked.

You fumbled for your wallet and mumbled, “Why bother carding at the door if you’re just –”

You dropped your wallet when you saw Minho at the other side of the bar in a white button-down that was buttoned barely half-way. His lips curled teasingly.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” you gasped, popping your head up after picking up your wallet. “What are you doing here?”

“Is that the only way you’ll greet me from now on?”

You felt your face burn even before any alcohol entered your system. “Chaeryoung mentioned you worked at the other bar nearby.”

“I own that one, too. This one I just opened.”

“Oh, well, that makes more sense. Wait, ‘own’?” He nodded sheepishly. “But that bar has been there forever. I thought that old guy owned it?”

“He was looking to retire, so I jumped the gun and bought it. Kept it mostly the same, added some things I thought would pick up a trend, and it did so well that I was able to open ‘DAHLIA’.”

“That’s incredible,” you congratulated. “I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad that the gift card is so expensive.”

He smiled, but it didn’t translate to his eyes. “Do you work nearby?”

“At the tall building down the street.”

He’s just as taken back as you are. Maybe he wasn’t stalking you. “Crazy coincidence. But it’s late already. Long day?”

You sighed. “Most days are this long.”

“Yikes. Can I get you a drink?”

“The green tea highball looks good.”

“Coming right up.”

Minho rolled up his sleeves to his elbows and did his witchcraft. In a highball glass, a ludicrously elongated ice cube was placed. Then, two shots of Japanese whiskey from the mid-shelf (never mind the overpour), an ounce of cold brew jasmine green tea, and what little space was left was topped with club soda. Using a long bar spoon, Minho mixed its contents and offered it to you with a stainless steel straw.

You hummed happily. “Whoa.”

“I agree.”

“Where was this on my twenty-first?”

“I dare you to Google the whiskey I used and see if you think we could have afforded that at twenty-one.”

“I see your point.”

There’s a long pause of waiting for the other to say what they mean and to mean what they say. You thought about how coldly you displayed yourself to Minho and it ate up your thoughts the whole week. Even when he was the one who wanted you out of his life, he was the one to find you and it seemed he was here to stay, to be next to where you worked, and to be a part of your everyday life as you’d think about him every time you passed this alley between the office and the train. Was this a gift or a curse?

The wound was still fresh, but he was not the only one to blame.

You cleared your throat. “Listen, I –”

“I think –”

You both paused again. After all these years, your wavelengths were still in sync.

“Go ahead,” you offered.

“I think…” …We shouldn’t talk when we see each other? I shouldn’t have given you a gift? We should unpack the trauma we gave each other over coffee some time? “You should try the snack pairing.”

Possibly the best words to leave his lips. “Please.”

“One sec,” he said before running to the kitchen.

Your palms were sweaty, but if anyone asked, you’d feign it was from the condensation on the glass. Your first real conversation with Minho in five years was more stressful than presenting to upper management. Any courage of apologizing had fizzled and the fear of being vulnerable was chilling. You hoped the rest of the drink would give you that push.

Minho came back slightly breathless with a bowl of curly seaweed and rice chips with red seasoning. He stared at the glass that was almost full just a second ago.

“Would you like another one?”

Your vision was already swirly. “No, thank you. But these look delicious.”

The crunch from the fried rice paper was loud enough to make some heads turn. It was salty and the seaweed flavor shined through. The punch from the togarashi made you wish you had taken up the offer on another drink.

You let out another happy hum, and your sinuses cleared. “Wasabi!”

“Really sobers you up, huh?”

“I can smell colors.”

He let out a genuine laugh and you got a glance of his little bunny teeth. You wondered if he’d still have them when he was sixty.

The shy bartender fiddled with the kitchen towel. “You were going to say something?”

“Right. I’m –”

“Excuse me!” a customer approached the bar. “Can I have an espresso martini?”

“Absolutely!” Minho said in his customer service voice.

Espresso martinis were all the craze these days, especially with the ladies. You understood why, they were delicious and reminded everyone of a sweet little treat before the work day. You watched as Minho threw in his Boston shaker ice, vodka, coffee liqueur, and cold brew, and shook with all his might. The muscles you noticed on your birthday shined through, as the veins on his forearms and biceps were put to work. Your eyes traveled shamefully to his open chest, focusing on the groove in between. He poured the creamy drink into a martini glass and added it to her tab.

You drank the complimentary ice-cold water before he returned.

“Sorry about that.”

“No, no, I’m the one interrupting your work.” Despite drinking a multitude of fluids, your throat was dry and sharp, like the words were scraping skin on their way out. Just say it, dammit! “I’m sorry how I treated you on Monday.”

He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have ambushed you like that after so long.”

“Yeah, you really shouldn’t have.”

“For that, I’m sorry. But I’m not sorry for attending.”

“You should have chosen another time to meet.”

“Your thirtieth birthday is important. It’s a huge milestone. I couldn’t dream of missing it.”

“I don’t think that’s for you to decide.”

He hung his head in a way that a puppy would when being punished. “I know.”

“You –” you choked. “I don’t know. I don’t know what or how to feel.”

“Maybe we could start over.”

“Start over?”

“Hi,” he held out his hand for you to shake. “I’m Minho, I’m a bartender and chef, and we met when we were nineteen.”

“Minho –”

“Would you like to get coffee next door some time?”

“You are ridiculous.”

The rush of after-work over timers hit the bar like a thirsty school of fish. Two other bartenders jumped in, but they needed Minho to keep up a good speed. From his navy pants pocket, he pulled out his business card and slid it over.

“My number’s on the card.”

It was different from the one you had saved on your phone and he knew that. “Wait, I need to close out my tab.”

“It’s on me. Let me make up for Monday.”

He didn’t allow you to get a word in before taking the next customer. His mannerisms made every customer smile or blush. ‘Come closer’ he’d gesture with his finger, leaning in to hear their order, and winking after handing off the final product; rinse and repeat.

You left a hefty tip under your glass and slipped away from the crowd. At home, you spent half an hour rubbing your cheeks, unaware of how sore they were after the train ride.

--

The business card hung on your fridge under a London magnet. Every day, you’d wake up, stare at it while filling your water bottle, leave for work, come home, and stare at it some more as you prepared dinner. In the same serif font in black ink, in the center of the card was his full name. Under it said ‘Restauranteur’, followed by ‘DAHLIA’, the Japanese flavors-inspired bar, and ‘RED LIGHT’, the one with American flavors. His phone number and email were in small print, all information embossed on an off-white business card. ‘Classy’ was the most appropriate description of such a card, while yours was so plain in comparison. Technology products didn’t need that kind of pizazz, to be fair.

The next time you saw Chaeryoung was for a girls’ night-in on a Wednesday to gush about her new exclusive not-boyfriend. She noticed the business card while putting the dishes in the sink and plucked it from the fridge, already aware of what transpired on Thursday before.

“‘Restauranteur’,” she scoffed. “Ok, Minho.”

“I know, right? Can you believe he bought out that sleazy old man?”

“I always wondered why the quality went up all of a sudden. I can’t believe he hid that from everyone else, too! We’ve all been meeting around that area for months! Why did he give you this, though?”

“I guess he changed his number.”

“What? He’s had this number for a while now.” You shot her a deadpanned look. “Oh, right. You wouldn’t have known whether he changed it or not. Did you hit him up?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why would I? It feels… too soon.”

“Five years feels too soon?”

“No,” you sighed, unable to form the words in the right sentence. “We’re already on awkward footing after my birthday. And seeing and talking to him made my blood pressure spike to an unhealthy degree.”

“So, you’re nervous?”

Nervous wasn’t right. It felt much deeper than that. “Afraid.”

If anyone knew the degree of pain and confusion you held for Minho, it was Chaeryoung. She always did her best to understand, but there are some things one must experience to understand, and this was one of them. She held you firm by the shoulders and knitted her brows.

“Give me your phone.”

“What?”

The music streaming on your phone paused as your best friend moved swiftly to the couch, already propping her feet up on the chaise before you could register what happened. The clicking of your phone keyboard over the bluetooth speaker snapped you back and you ran to join her.

“Wait, don’t!” you warned.

“‘Hey, bro’,” she said as she typed, “Too casual?”

“I’m thirty. I don’t say ‘bro’.”

“All right, jeez. ‘Hello, Minho. I hope this text finds you well. Per our last meeting – ’”

“Now you’re just being a dick.”

“I’m kidding, relax! ‘Hi, it’s _____. It was nice seeing you on Thursday.’”

“I wouldn’t say it was a ‘nice’ meeting.”

“Oh, my God, shut up. ‘Good to see you on Thursday,’ happy? ‘Would you like to get coffee some time?’ And send. This is fun, it’s like when we used to project our dating app DMs on the TV! Oh, wow he’s typing already. Asshole, he never answers any of us in the group chats until the next day.”

Texting a boy and sweating, waiting for his response… Were you thirteen again? The notification ding made your heart jump.

Your brows furrowed, matching Chaeryoung’s. “‘Hey! Of course I would. Just tell me when.’ Um. Tell him sometime next week?”

“‘Tomorrow at 11:00AM?’”

“Chaer!”

“‘See you then.’ You’re welcome!” she cheered, tossing your phone on your lap.

“Now he’ll think I’m excited…”

“Whether you are nervous, excited, or afraid, shouldn’t that mean something? That maybe you still have him in your cold, dead heart somewhere?”

“It took years of therapy to heal what was wounded. I don’t know if this will feel like closure or if I’m opening up my stitches.”

“And I’ll be here to help suture if it comes to it; again and again!” she encouraged, leaning her head on your shoulder. “I just want our friend group back together, you know? This is a start, sort of.”

“I know. Don’t get your hopes up, though.”

“Too late.”

--

The day it happened, the clouds were grey, and they cried and cried, pouring down the heaviest rain of the year. It rattled Minho’s windows like bullets made from hail, drowning the silence and filling the room with nothing but sorrow.

Tonight, you were celebrating your new job and the big move. After the plates were emptied, the music that played over his speakers slowed, and filled with wine and tenderness, you two swayed to the rhythm in each other’s arms. First, he had your hand in his and lightly hovered over your waist, leading the waltz across the living room with ease. As the songs progressed, his hold on you tightened. He laced his fingers with yours, traveled his hand to your lower back, then placed the other there, too, after wrapping your arm around his neck. He pressed his forehead to yours, the tips of your noses touching and nuzzling so sweetly it made your heart soar.

He sighed happily, shoulders relaxing under your arms. “Should we be doing this?”

“Hm, I don’t know,” you replied light heartedly, “you are just a friend, after all.”

“Do friends do this? Should we ask Chaeryoung and Jisung?”

“Not if you want to hear them gagging all night.”

His breathy laughs hit your lips and his eyes fluttered closed. “I want to kiss you.”

You’ve wanted to kiss him for five years. “Then kiss me.”

“And I want you to stay.”

“Stay?” You took a step back, hating the cold air that replaced his space. “What do you mean ‘stay’?”

“Don’t leave,” he begged.

“Minho –”

“Stay here with me.”

“No,” you said firmly. “This is the biggest thing to happen to my career, and I’m not throwing away this grand opportunity. Won’t you come with me instead?”

“You know I can’t leave my family right now.”

“Then,” you sighed, “do I wait for you?”

“Wait? We have options; what about long distance?”

“You know how vigorous my career is. I work long days and long nights. I can’t call you or text you the way that other people do.”

“So what?” he argued, throwing his hands up in frustration.

This was the first time you were having this talk. Never before had either of you revealed the feelings that mingled in the air whenever you were in the same room together. For years, you repressed them, too scared to cross the thin line that separated friendship from lovers and unwilling to feel vulnerable and reveal the true feelings of your heart. Because truthfully, you wouldn’t have time. You wouldn’t have time to drain and pour your heart into something – someone – that wasn’t the projects that laid out on your office desk, and how was that fair to someone you loved so dearly? As much as you wanted to love and to give, you couldn’t.

“I can’t,” you repeated. “That’s not fair to either of us. We deserve one hundred percent of each other, not fifty, or even ninety.”

“You’re not even willing to try?” he mumbled.

Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes. “How could you spring this on me the weekend before I leave?”

“This was my only chance –”

“No, it wasn’t. You had five years. Five years! And you know how important my career is to me!”

“What about me? Aren’t I important to you, too?”

“Don’t,” you stuttered.

“No, it’s not that I’m not important, it’s that your career is more important. Is that it?” When you couldn’t answer, he nodded his head, accepting the poor answer. “All I wanted was for us to try.”

“I can’t give you one hundred percent of me.”

“Then I’ll give more! One hundred ten percent; one hundred fifty!”

“How long can you last like that when you don’t know when we’ll be together again?”

“I won’t know unless we try.”

“I don’t want to try. Trying means uncertainty. For five years, I have been certain about you. But I’m certain it won’t work when we are not present.”

“We’re going in circles.” Minho turned and ran a hand through his fluffy, light bronze hair. This color on him, you remembered, made him look so young.

“I can wait,” you whispered. “We can be friends still, and –”

“I don’t want to be friends.”

You couldn’t decide if your mouth should hang open or sew it shut forever. Still, you managed to slip out, “What?”

“It’s all or nothing for me, _____.” His eyes mirrored your glossy ones and the tip of his nose that was just on yours a second ago was reddening. “I don’t want friendship with you. I want love and passion, and I want you to tell me you want it, too. We aren’t friends; we never were really just friends, you know that, don’t you?”

“I know.”

He closed the gap and his hands found yours, squeezing so tightly it was almost painful. “Then show me that you know! Tell me you want this! Tell me you don’t want to be just friends! Tell me you want me, desire me, that you can’t go a day without having me, the way I would for you!”

You shook your head. Long distance relationships never worked. You witnessed it through your coworkers, through friends, and bosses, and even old classmates who had deleted every existence of their past love and left no digital footprint on their timeline. Every relationship you ever knew to be long distance had never worked out, and you knew this one wouldn’t be any different.

He let go and stepped away. “I wish you a fulfilling life in the city –”

“Don’t do this.”

“– and I’m sorry, but I can’t be friends with you –”

“Minho, please…”

“– I can’t be just friends with someone who has my heart and doesn’t know what to do with it.”

Instead of rescinding, instead of apologizing and taking the leap of faith, taking the risk that came with being vulnerable and open and raw so you could see what it meant to be loved and cherished by someone who wanted to love and cherish, you decided to lock your heart away and to never reveal it to anyone ever again.

That was the last time you saw Minho. On your thirtieth birthday, he broke every layer you built to protect yourself in a matter of seconds.

--

“Earth to _____!”

In between ‘DAHLIA’ and your office, there was a coffee shop with outside seating. As you waited at one of the tables, the record player in your head had recalled that night, and once it started, it wouldn’t stop until it finished. Just as you finished, Minho arrived and waved a hand in front of your face and you wondered how long it took for you to notice.

“Sorry! Daydreaming.”

“About work?”

Did he truly think your mind was entirely consumed about work? “Yeah. Work.”

“Well, you keep daydreaming, and I’ll get us coffee. What would you like?”

“No, it’s my turn to get you something!”

“Nonsense! You also tipped me way too much. You still order the usual?”

If you were one thing, you were consistent. “The usual.”

Minho would do this finger-gun thing when he was feeling awkward, and he did so as he walked to the counter. His outfit wasn’t as formal as the night you saw him at the bar. His jeans were black and his sweater a bright cobalt; a color that allowed him to be the center of attention when he wasn’t asking for it.

You were the one to ask him to meet - or rather Chaeryoung was - but you didn’t consider what you’d talk about.

He came back with your usual and his usual, which was an iced americano. At least he, too, was consistent, and that hadn’t changed.

“Busy at work?” he asked, clearly not sure what to talk about, either.

“Yeah. Always busy, sadly.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said your hours would be long.”

“No,” you confirmed, “I wasn’t. What about you? What’s your work day like as the city’s coolest restaurateur?”

“You flatter me. I work at ‘RED LIGHT’ during the day, and head to ‘DAHLIA’ at night.”

You tried to estimate his work hours in your head. “Back-to-back?”

“Yup.”

“Everyday?”

“Kind of. If it’s slow on like, a Monday or Tuesday, I’ll head out early and let the closers handle it. Otherwise, my day off is whenever I feel like it, but it’s not a real day-off. I use those days to answer emails and organize the budget or the inventory. Takes every waking moment to run a restaurant or bar, you know?”

“I don’t know. How do you balance everything?”

“Well, I love my job. It’s hard, but I don’t find it draining. I guess that helps. I don’t mind waking up at five in the morning, working, and going to sleep, at least not yet. I’m sure I’ll hit a wall someday, but I’m doing my best to not let that happen.”

You’re afraid to ask the next question. “How do you balance your relationship with Karina when you’re so busy?”

“Phone calls, Facetime, designated nights for dates, surprise visits, little gifts and flowers here and there,” he nodded, looking at the table. “It’s hard, but we’re trying. That’s what’s important.”

Your coffee’s bitter and you didn’t want to bother with it after a couple of sips, but you keep at it to keep your lips occupied and to hide the way your teeth grit at the underlying accusation. “That takes a lot of patience. Some people struggle with that.”

He caught your drift and it appeared he realized he deserved that. “And you? Seeing anyone?”

“No.”

“Not even casually?”

“No. Some dates here and there, but they never stick.”

“Why is that?”

“Either they’re boring, too intimidated by a strong female corporate supplicant, or I’m the problem.”

“Isn’t it -” he began but stopped himself. “Never mind.”

“Say what you mean,” you pushed light heartedly.

“Isn’t it lonely?”

It’s true that it seemed like Cupid made his way around your friend group and you were the last to get hit. When your friends came home at night, they’d be welcomed into open arms and warm bodies. You came home to snacks and warmth was in the form of a fuzzy blanket you kept on the couch. At the height of your career, you once believed that love could wait, that it would find you at the right time and you’d know right then you were ready. As Minho sat across from you picking your brain about the emptiness that came with climbing the corporate ladder, the fear of feeling incomplete was imminent.

You wouldn’t let him see that part of you.

“I like my alone time.”

“But you have so much love in your heart.” He cleared his throat, regretting the arrangement of those words when he saw how your face twisted. What would he know about what’s in your heart? “Who do you give your affections to?”

“Must it be romantic?” you retorted. “My love is given to those you saw on my birthday.”

“I guess not. You’ve always been a romantic, though.”

“Five years is more than enough time to change who I was the last time you saw me.”

“Is that change good?” he asked nervously.

‘Is the result of feeling loveless from rejection and isolation a good change? Are you an idiot?’ you wanted to ask. But that would put the blame on him and blaming him meant acknowledging how much he affected you after all these years.

“Is that change good,” you repeated thoughtfully. “Neutral.”

“Neutral?”

“I think the decision we made five years ago put us where we are today; we’re both successful young adults thriving in a beautiful city. But I lost you as a result. So, the good must come with some bad. That’s neutral, no?”

His lips formed a smile, but again, it did not travel to his eyes. “You know, I was scared to come here today.”

“I’m not that terrifying, am I?”

“At first I thought, ‘wow, Chaeryoung did not try hard to pretend to be you at all.’”

You giggled. “No; no, she didn’t.”

“And then I thought, ‘we’ll be in public. She won’t kill me in front of people, right?’”

“Kill you!”

“But I know that wouldn’t have stopped you either way,” he grinned. “You haven’t killed me yet. Is it crazy of me to think of this as a good sign?”

“A sign! Is there something you’re looking to gain out of this meeting?” you teased.

“Yes,” he admitted, “a friend.”

Your mouth hung open slightly, unsure of what to say, but your face twisted in a way that mimicked your thoughts. “A friend?”

“I know you and I have said and done some unkind things back then that we may not be able to forgive each other for, but after seeing you on your birthday, I couldn’t stop thinking of you. You may not believe me, but I miss you.”

Your head and your heart were in conflict. You had spent all this time trying not to miss him. Your mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, unwilling to say the truth. “I… I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t be. I shouldn’t have sprung that on you all of a sudden. But… do you think it’s possible? That we could be friends again?”

How quickly would you lose him a second time? “I think we shouldn’t force it.”

“Friendships bloom naturally, of course.”

A flash of pink blurred your peripherals before it became the center of your attention. Karina held a finger to her lips as she approached Minho from behind, covering his eyes with her slender fingers. He took her hand and kissed it, leaning back to look at his glittering diamond with hearts in his eyes. They were a beautiful couple and it was as clear as day how much they adored each other. Witnessing love was supposed to be like looking at a garden of roses, but as you sat across in a front-row seat, you thought to yourself how much you disliked the smell of roses, anyway.

“Hi!” she greeted happily. “Sorry to interrupt, but we have lunch plans.”

You shook your head, dismissing the tightness in your gut. “No, please interrupt. I’m sorry for keeping him.”

“Would you like to join?”

You would rather jump off the roof of your fifty-floor office building. “Thank you, but I made plans with my co-workers already.”

“Then, we’ll have to get dinner some time!”

It pained you how much you disliked her. She didn’t deserve it. “Dinner some time sounds great.”

As Minho got up to leave, he leaned over the table and in a hushed tone said, “I just want you to know that you still cannot hide your feelings on your face.”

“My boss thinks it’s my killing charm.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

Minho’s wink was like a button that set off every alarm in your body. As he walked away, hand-in-hand with the love of his life, you tortured yourself watching them recede until they rounded the corner.

–

Unfortunately, it was common workplace etiquette to have drinks with your coworkers after hours now that your schedules had slowed down. How convenient it was that ‘DAHLIA’ was open and even more so that your coworkers were eager to go. Initially, you tried to wiggle out of going, but your close comrade Choi San wouldn’t allow it.

He slammed his veiny hand on your desk, and you jumped. “Jesus -”

“_____ _____,” he boomed, loudly announcing your government name.

“No.”

“Come on! You haven’t joined us in, like, forever!”

“Forever will continue.”

“And if I bribe you with free drinks?”

You paused typing. “I’m listening.”

“You, me, and the forty-fifth floor at ‘DAHLIA’ in ten minutes.”

“‘DAHLIA’?” you repeated. “Does it have to be that bar?”

“Mingi already called the place to reserve. Why, is it not good?”

“No, quite the opposite.”

“Then make haste, my lady!”

The whole way across the street, San had his arm around your shoulder in a tight grip, too afraid to let you slip at the slightest chance of hesitancy. The smooth skin of his forearms touched your neck and it was close enough to smell the cologne he dabbed just minutes before leaving the building, which you now realized to be on purpose.

Inside, a bunch of young corporate acolytes gathered all throughout the bar, all of whom you worked and were familiar with. Minho, though busy taking their orders, saw you and San come in. He did a double take, eyebrow twitching upwards at the arm suffocating your neck. Your lips formed the words, ‘kill me’, as San guided you forward to the line to order.

Small talk with San was never small when he easily filled you in on his latest interests and hobbies. The other women in the office who were nearby engaged with him enthusiastically. Admittedly, there were a multitude of reasons why San was popular around the office. He was intelligent, always willing to lend a helping hand, had a positive attitude even when days were long and tough, and most importantly, he was so hot that your boss had to jokingly warn him several times to tone it down. His argument was it wasn’t his fault that button-downs were tight on his back and arms.

Minho was the one to usher you forward with his index and middle fingers. 

San wrapped his arm around your shoulder again for no apparent reason. “Hello!” he greeted enthusiastically.

“Hi. _____,” he addressed to you informally.

“‘Sup, Minho,” you sighed.

“You two know each other?” San inquired. “Is that why you didn’t want to come?”

San’s only flaw was that he talked too much. Your jaw ticked. “Old friends. And no, that’s not why.”

“Oh!”

“What can I get you two?” You thought you heard ice in Minho’s voice, but you must be mistaken.

You needed something strong. “A negroni, please.”

“Double that,” San said.

Minho neither confirmed nor denied hearing the order before starting on it. Finally, you’re able to breathe easier when the weight of San’s muscly arm lets you go, confident that you wouldn’t book it out the bar. He instead turned his body to you, creating a wall and making you feel like you were under a microscope.

“Your presentation to the team yesterday was, um, amazing,” he stuttered.

Calling a weekly work presentation amazing was odd; he’s heard you lead them probably a hundred times by now. “Yeah? Thanks.”

“And the way you were able to answer all of the questions Boss Man fired at you? It’s no wonder you’re his favorite.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m his favorite.”

“Well, you’re my favorite.” As soon as those words left his lips, he pursed them together and shut his eyes. “I-I mean the team’s favorite.”

You nearly snorted, though your smile was hard to hide. “That’s… certainly an honor -”

“Two negronis,” Minho interrupted as he pushed the glasses forward.

“I got it,” San reiterated.

“Thanks. I’ll get the next one. I’ll meet you over in a bit; gonna talk to my good ol’ friend here,” you forced a grin. Like an obedient dog, San joined the others at the reserved tables.

“Wow, he’s…” Minho trailed off. “A lot.”

“Mother always said not to say mean things.”

“That was me being nice. Don’t tell me that’s your type.”

“Minho! That would be highly inappropriate workplace behavior,” you teased, though he didn’t seem amused. “Besides, what do you know about my type?”

He smirked. “I think I would know better than anyone.”

The twinge in your chest was crushing. Had Cupid returned with sturdier arrows? “Remember, things can change.”

“Did they, though?”

Why did that matter? “I’ll see you later, Minho.”

The whole night, San hovered over you like a shadow, more than he ever had before. Maybe he saw Minho as competition after your coworkers prodded for the story behind you and the hot bartender. He wouldn’t have to worry, though, as he was highly mistaken about both Minho and having interest in someone you worked with.

You would thank San in the morning for dragging you out that night because he reminded you the importance of camaraderie. It was nice to be surrounded by people who shared the same professional struggles as you and it was freeing for everyone to let their walls down. Many of your co-workers were also single and struggling, filling the bar with chatter about failed dates and competing to see who had the worst one as of late. This was the first night in a long while that you had fun, and even though the man that haunted your thoughts was less than twenty feet away, you wouldn’t let him ruin this one night out of many.

But you felt it; that burn in the back of your head like twin cigarettes had bore themselves into your skull; the piercing eyes of an onlooker who couldn’t look away from you and the buff man next to you all night. Each time you tried to catch him in the act, he had anticipated it, busying himself with a customer or peeling orange twists, and when you looked away, you’d feel it again.

Like a worm eating its way through an apple, the fire in Minho’s eyes consumed you.

–

‘Wya?’

On a random weeknight, Minho texted you this just as you were leaving the office. You looked around outside looking for a sniper or an inconspicuous spy but did not see anything suspicious or sensed any danger. To that, you replied with, ‘Leaving the office. Why?’

‘Don’t move.’

If you weren’t panicking before, you were now. Then, from around the alley where ‘DAHLIA’ was, Minho popped up with a tote bag on his arm and an apron slung over his shoulder. He waved and flashed his feline smile, unaware of how cryptic his texts were.

“You didn’t literally have to not move,” he teased.

“Maybe you should normalize giving context.”

“Context is: do you have dinner plans tonight?”

Your plan was to pick up grocery store sushi and binge watch TV, if you’d call that a plan. “Not really. Why?”

He gestured to his tote bag. “I was going to my test kitchen. Do you want to be my guinea pig?”

You considered saying no, but free food was involved. Plus, this is what friends would do, right? “Where’s this test kitchen of yours?”

“In my townhome. ‘Test kitchen’ just sounds cooler.”

The train ride to Minho’s place was the same distance as yours, just in the opposite direction. There wasn’t a ‘nice’ or a ‘bad’ side of the city, but you definitely wouldn’t classify this as the ‘bad’ side. Rows and rows of townhomes occupied endless streets in this neighborhood and each one had its own charm. Minho’s was right in the middle and the reddest, brickiest one on the block while the others had conformed to a more modern grey stucco-style.

The inside was anything but traditional though, with touches of modern style and technology. The first floor was similar to your loft, with an open floor plan combining the kitchen and living room meant for a true host and entertainer. The kitchen, of course, was the most updated, with a fancy six-burner stove, a magnetic display of different knives, and a giant white-granite island.

Soonie, Doongie, and Dori greeted Minho first by rubbing up against his calves and then greeted you second, unaware of the time that passed and recognizing your scent like you were only gone on a short trip.

You gasped happily, scratching their little heads and ears. “My fat ‘n furry step-children!”

“Looks like they missed you,” Minho chuckled.

“Oh, I missed you, too!” you cooed. “Can I help with any prep?”

“Can you help wash the produce?”

“Yes, chef.”

You tried not to stare too long at Minho while he tied the apron around his waist and rolled up his sleeves. There were vegetables in his tote bag you’ve never seen before, like the bulbous onion-like thing that smelled of licorice and a variation of a mushroom that looked like it would turn you into a zombie.

“Everything’s a vegetable or a fruit,” you noted.

“I’m attempting some vegetarian and vegan options outside of a salad and some dessert. If it doesn’t work out, the Thai place down the street is really good.”

Minho instructed you to cut vegetables in ways that you didn’t even know had a name to the technique. You had to tell him to talk to you like a five-year-old because you were not someone who knew what it meant to julienne a carrot or prepare the mise en place.

The first dish was a seared cabbage wedge. Cut the head into wedges; sear on the pan; make a soy-sugar-rice-vinegar saucy thing; shave a potato and toast it like a breadcrumb; retrieve the soy-and-smoke-cured egg yolk and… shave it?

“What do you mean ‘shave it’?” you muttered, holding the hardened yellow orb of congealed something in one hand and a sharp sword-like thingamabob in the other. “Isn’t it going to burst?”

Minho, bless his heart, stood behind you and guided your hands together. His hands, despite going through hundreds of washes and touching all things hot and cold, were soft and warm on top of yours. He had you shave one quarter of the solid egg yolk over the dressed cabbage wedge.

“The yolk is cured, so it’s solid all the way through,” he said.

His breath tickled the shell of your ear and it turned hot. Was the oven set to a thousand degrees? “O-Oh! Wow, that’s cool. Is it done?”

It was only then that Minho released his hold. “Yup. Try it.”

Cooking was a hidden form of sorcery. It was one of the most complex and delicious dishes you’ve ever eaten. Salty from the potato breadcrumb, savory from the egg yolk, and sweet from the soy sauce, feeling different textures and flavors so good you had to stop yourself from moaning.

“Good?” he asked. All you could do was nod vigorously with eyes wide and glittering. He smiled genuinely and his eyes sparkled, too. He opened his mouth and said, “Ah~”

That was your cue to feed him a bite. You gathered the perfect amount of everything onto a fork for him. As he chewed, his brows knitted together thoughtfully and you’re unsure of what that expression meant. From his pocket, he took out a small field notes book and scribbled something quickly.

“You don’t like it?”

He shook his head. “No, I like it a lot.”

“Why is your face like that?”

“What’s wrong with my face?”

“You look so angry.”

“That’s just how my face looks.”

Next was a vegetarian bone marrow. Nothing about bones or marrows sounded remotely vegetarian, but Minho handed you two fat king oyster mushrooms to halve and remove the centers while he sautéed a medley of other mushrooms in salted butter, garlic, and thyme. There was a comfortable silence in the kitchen as you both worked. Nothing felt awkward, or forced, or as bitter as your last meetings were.

As you waited for Minho’s further instructions, you toured the living space and observed all the pictures. You were in about half of them. Most were of your entire friend group, but many were significant moments in your lives, like graduation, birthdays, talent shows, or candid solo pictures. After all these years, when you kept any evidence of him hidden in a shoe box in your closet, he displayed you loud and proud. You glossed over the number of pictures of Karina for your own sake but seeing her face that many times made you stop looking.

When you turned back, Minho was staring at you so intently, he forgot to pretend he wasn’t watching.

“What is it?” you asked.

“Nothing,” he cleared his throat. “Um, the next step is ready.”

Under an immersive blender (“Immersion blender, silly.”) was the sautéed medley and the guts of the king oyster mushroom, softened cream cheese, and olive oil. The paste was bagged and piped back into the charred and seasoned center of the cut-out king oyster mushroom. With a flame torch, Minho darkened the paste, creating a bruleed outer layer, and topped it off with pink peppercorns, pecorino, and chives. Triangles of buttered toast were the vehicle.

Minho took a spoon and scooped out the center. “A little bit of ‘marrow’ and voila. And the ‘bone’ is edible, too, obviously.”

Your eyes teared up at the fireworks of umami. “Will you cater for my next birthday?”

“For you, I will.”

After course upon course of seared and leafy bites of savory and salty goodness, you greenlit practically all of them to Minho’s dismay (“Guinea pig means to critique, not suck up to.”). Dessert was the final leg of courses. From preserved lemon sorbets to chocolatey bites of flourless cake, you would fall into a deep sleep tonight on a cloud of spun sugar.

“I’m drunk on life,” you sighed happily.

“I like you best that way.”

“Seriously, Minho, you have something really good here. I’m no expert, but I think –”

“Wait!” he interrupted. “Chocolate on your lip.”

“Huh? Here?” you licked once.

“Not even close.”

“Here?”

“No.”

“Where’s a napkin?”

“Hold still, will you?”

Minho held your chin between his thumb and index finger and tilted up. Like a surgeon, he meticulously wiped away all evidence of your inner chocolate-devouring goblin with his other thumb. For a moment, he lowered his hand to wipe it on his apron, but he caught you looking at his lips.

“Th-Thanks,” you whispered.

He took the chocolate-covered thumb and sucked it clean, maintaining his gaze before it lowered. “My pleasure.”

The kitchen felt hot and it was hard to breathe. The alarms in your head went off again; the longer you stayed, the faster you’d fall. “I-I should go.”

“Wait –”

“This was great by the way!” you called as you backed up towards the door. “S-So good! And thank you, I will pay you back for any groceries!”

“That’s not necessary, I invited you here.”

“Let me know what you decide to add to the menu, and I’ll-I’ll stop by some time, yeah?”

You didn’t give him the opportunity to answer before running out the door.

–

The following weeks after your inappropriately intimate tasting, you avoided Minho as long as you could. It hadn’t even been a month since you saw him for the first time and you already crossed the thin line that was never meant to be crossed. You couldn’t even be strong for that long before you fell back into the routine of desiring the one man you weren’t allowed to have.

This was the curse of Cupid. He had successfully shot and landed an arrow into every friend you loved, pairing them up with their person and the match-up was so right it was scary. Somehow, at the perfect time under the correct circumstances, your friends found the ones that completed their other half, or so they said, and you witnessed love in full bloom every time it happened and everyday since. When it was shoved in your face like that, how could you not think about what you were missing out on every single day of your life?

You used to think considering a couple as two halves was a disservice to humanity. Halves implied that part of you was missing; it suggested that one could never be whole alone, that they spend their whole lives finding someone who fit the two-piece puzzle. A two piece puzzle was supposed to be the easiest puzzle in the world, but in a box filled with over eight billion pieces, it would take forever for Cupid to pair the pieces. At twenty-five, after that stormy night, you once believed that you could survive as one single piece among the eight billion for the rest of your life at the bottom of the pieces pile, if it came to it; but now that you’re the last of the friend group to yet find your match - at thirty, at that - maybe Cupid had a point to the whole two halves make a whole argument.

Because admittedly, as much as you tried to convince yourself on your thirtieth birthday, you didn’t feel whole. Hell, you barely felt like half; and every time you saw Minho, bits of you were being chipped off to the point that you were scared of losing your half of the puzzle.

To distract yourself from thinking about Minho licking chocolate from your lips, you finally jumped the gun and downloaded dating apps for the first time. Well, Chaeryoung and Jisung did.

“Put on your bathing suit,” she ordered.

“Excuse you.”

“What? All your selfies are so normal!”

“Normal is a good thing, Chaer.”

“But it’s not,” Jisung piped in. “Dating is not what it used to be. Before, it was as simple as looking pretty, saying your favorite song or movie, and naming the restaurant you want your first date to be at. Now, you have to get personal. Name a niche hobby, what character from a TV show represents you the most, what childhood trauma affected your frontal lobe development -”

“Ok, I get it.”

Jisung and Chaeryoung sandwiched you tightly on the couch even though the view of the tablet was easily seen. Chaeryoung filled in all the prompts for you a little too enthusiastically while Jisung was there to judge through the lens of the male gaze and snacks.

The woman beside you cackled evilly. “This is so much fun! I can’t believe you’re finally doing this. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment?”

“Seriously. What man made you do this?” Jisung teased.

You yanked the tablet back. “No one.”

“Liar.”

“Who do you think, Han?” Chaeryoung stated bluntly. “Who else could have brought this blessing upon us?”

“Oh,” he mused, “duh.”

“Shut up, both of you! No one made me do this. Am I not worthy of finding love?”

“Of course you are. Just not this way.”

“Why not this way?”

“Just watch.”

The second someone completes their profile, it’s like the app forces it at the top of everyone’s algorithm. You received a lot of interest and private messages in the first five minutes, many of which were… bold…

“Men are so uncouth,” you groaned. “Is sex all you think about?”

“Yeah,” Jisung shrugged, pointing to his head and then his groin. “Two heads, two brains.”

“Ugh, gross.”

Chaeryoung swiped left at lightning speed. “Too young, too old, too short, too tall, too smart –”

“I like smart,” you pouted.

“The key to a healthy relationship is to be smarter than them.” Jisung didn’t argue, as he was happily committed to his intelligent partner (a mystery to all, as no one knew how he bagged a research fellow).

There’s a knock on your door. The three of you look at each other in confusion.

“You two need to stop secretly inviting strange men to my home,” you accused before getting up.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Jisung defended, “did you?” Chaeryoung denied.

When you opened the door, a disheveled Minho stood there with an oily bag in his hands. He raised a brow. “Am I that strange?”

Just as you were trying to trust in the dating app algorithm, the Gods and Cupid said, ‘let there be chaos!’ “You, specifically? A little bit.”

“Ha ha,” he drawled. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Yeah!” Jisung called from the couch. “This is girl time, Min!”

“Shut up!” Chaeryoung pulled Jisung up from the couch and they both patted your head before rushing out the door. “We’ll see you later, _____!”

“Y-You don’t have to leave!” you practically begged.

“Honey, it’s past-nine on a weekday, yes we do!”

“I didn’t realize the time,” Minho frowned, looking at his watch. “I was nearby with Hyunjin and thought I’d stop by with some fries to make up for Chaeryoung tossing them out on your birthday.”

You don’t even remember that happening. “That’s so nice of you.”

“I can come back another time.”

“No!” you said an octave too high. “No, please come in!”

Minho’s outfit was more casual than ‘DAHLIA’s typical button down and tight slacks and you deduced he was working at ‘RED LIGHT’ today. There were multiple oil and/or beer stains on his shirt and his hair was parted and pointing in different directions, evidence of his hand having to go through it several dozen times out of stress.

“You look…”

“I know,” he sighed, plopping the bag on the table. “There was a work-lunch event today that turned into dinner for some corporate slugs. Then, Hyunjin was looking at a location for his coffee excursion and asked for my help. Four hours later, I’m starving and thought of you.”

He was thinking of you a lot lately, it seemed, and it was hard to deny that you reciprocated. “This is wonderful, thank you. I owe you two dinners now.”

“You don’t ‘owe’ me anything. Friends don’t owe; they treat.”

“My treat next time, then.”

“And the next,” he reminded with a smirk. “What were you girlies doing just now?”

“Um,” you hesitated, cheeks stuffed with potato. “Making me a dating profile.”

He raised a brow in the same way when he saw you walking in with San: questioning and dissatisfied. “You never had one before?”

“I was on-and-off when I first moved here, but I couldn’t stand to open the apps after a couple days of usage.”

He does the thing with his fingers when he gestures to come close. You noticed his hands were veinier now than when you were younger.

“Let me see.”

“Let you see my dating profile?” He nodded. “Absolutely not.”

“C’mon, I’ll give you an opinion through the male gaze.”

“Why do you think Jisung was here?”

“Certainly not that.”

Defeated, you handed him your phone with the app open. There’s a twinkle of curiosity wondering how he’d react, but you wanted to tame that fire quickly. He scrolled and swiped, then scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled.

His face was stern when he said, “You already have a lot of admirers.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

He didn’t answer and continued to scroll. “What about that guy you work with?”

“San? What about him?”

“Nothing came of it?”

“Didn’t I tell you that would be inappropriate?”

“Is that the only reason stopping you?”

You squint your eyes at your all too curious friend who hadn’t looked up from your phone since taking it. He popped fries in his mouth rhythmically like a metronome until he caught the heat from your gaze. He looked up and did a double take.

“Hm?” he asked.

“Why are you so curious?”

“So, there’s another reason stopping you?”

“And if there is?”

“And if there is…” he repeated, fiddling with your phone charm. “Would you tell me?”

The inkling of assumption tickled annoyingly at the corners of your mind. Was he asking to let you know that he knew he was the reason for your desires? Or was he asking to tease you, to prove to you that if you had made the right decision all those years ago, you could have been in Karina’s position? That all this time you spent away from him, your journey for companionship started too late. And sure, your bank account was as filled as your stomach, but was it worth it when you had no one to share it with?

He waited patiently for your answer, but you heard his foot tapping rapidly on the wood. Your mouth opened, then closed, and you finally shook your head in shame, because your lips were cursed to speak the truth or nothing at all and you would rather deny than to admit.

He licked his lips, and that gesture alone sparked something in your core. Then he nodded in a way that expressed sourness, as if this confirmation was exactly what he expected but not what he was hoping in both the nonverbal response and the underlying tone that trailed behind it.

You broke the silence. “How’s Karina?”

“Good.” He was quick to shake his head. “Actually, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since lunch a month ago.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’ve… been too busy.”

Shameful and embarrassed, was what you gathered from his response. As he should; to criticize your decision only to repeat the cycle when he found fulfillment in his career was so… Hypocritical was not a strong enough word. Betrayal, perhaps, was the most correct, but that didn’t satisfy you, either.

You wouldn’t get satisfaction from any angle, though. No matter how you viewed it, it was selfish to consider yourself relevant here. Minho was hurting; everything you feared about relationships had flowered before him and crushed the idea that perfection could be achieved as long as both people tried. But it seemed that although he tried, it wasn’t enough, and maybe his ideals were more out of the ordinary than he anticipated.

“It’s put a bit of a strain on our relationship. She wants to settle down and I… I thought I did, too, but… you know, my places have been growing so much, and…”

As he trailed off and off through a list of excuses, it took you all the way back to the night that it rained. You also spat excuses from your pockets and got nowhere. Now, Minho was on your side, but it didn’t feel great, either.

“What’s more important to you?” you asked.

That was the age-old dilemma, wasn’t it? What was most important to someone as an adult who spent most of their life getting educated and preparing for the professional world to milk money from consumers; the career they adored and earned or the love they found along the way? One could argue they could live without love, but could one live with themselves if they gave up their dream? How many rom-coms have you and Minho laughed at where the world that movie was set in was in a vacuum and the couple always chose each other? Though the plot was fake, the dilemma was real, and the choices they made in the movies were just not realistic.

“Important,” he chuckled, understanding what you were getting at. “Why can’t both be important to me?”

“They can, but it’s clear your efforts are imbalanced in one direction. Otherwise, we would not be having this conversation.”

The fries were long gone. Minho stood up and tossed the bag in the trash before grabbing the unfinished bottle of wine leftover from your birthday and two glasses. You supposed tonight would be the most appropriate night to finish it off. Plus, Minho needed it, apparently.

“I tried, you know,” he sighed, “I really did. I text every night; I send her flowers to her office; I cook for her, shower her with gifts, and tell her regularly that I-I…”

Minho didn’t complete his thought, but you knew what he meant to say. Why would he not, for your sake? “That you love her?”

“Yeah. That I loved her.” Your glasses raised in sync. “I get it. I’m not as present, and I get her love language is quality time, but when did the thought stop counting?”

“Have you considered you two aren’t compatible?”

“Anyone can be compatible, no? Where’s the effort?”

Now you were feeling annoyed. Were these digs subconsciously at you? “Effort can only go so far. You said her love language is quality time. You could do everything in between, but you’re not there to hold her, to kiss her, to tangle under the bed sheets as much as she wants, then guess what? She’s never going to feel the love that she wants and deserves.”

“What about me? What about what I want?”

“I don’t know what you want. Does she? Do you?”

Minho chugged the rest of the cabernet in his glass, nose wrinkling, before pouring in more with a heavy hand. You ignored how cute his nose looked. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Ok, so you can’t complain is what I’m hearing.”

A chuckle huffed through his nose, annoyed that someone who he confided in didn’t feed into his fantasy that his ideology was gospel.

“Ahh!” he groaned loudly to the ceiling. “Fucking hell. I thought this was supposed to get easier when we were older?”

“What? Love?” you scoffed. “Look at us; I’m stuck on the apps and you’re stuck in your ways. You think this gets easier just because we have more ‘life experience’?” Your air quotes were overly exaggerated. “No, dude. People are dumb at every age.”

“I’m not dumb,” he pouted.

“You’re a little dumb.”

He giggled a bit and it traveled down his belly to a full laugh. You couldn’t help but smile, too, which grew into your own fit of laughs, and the condo was filled with ugly laughs and tears of joy, pain, and all that was locked inside your’s and Minho’s souls since inception. These nights were the ones you once looked forward to.

When the giggles died down, he stared blankly at the swirling wine in the glass and asked, “Do you think we could have worked out?”

You felt your cheeks and nose flare brightly. “Worked out? Like if we tried?”

In some other tangential timeline, Minho moved to the city. Maybe he still bought out ‘RED LIGHT’, and you would visit him everyday after work and bring your coworkers in to show off your hot bartender boyfriend. Then, you’d take the train home together. You’d wind down on the couch watching a couple episodes of something light and crawl into bed in each other’s arms. Your lips would never leave his unless it was to come up for air, arms wrapped around his naked torso as he crawled on top, and mumbling praises and poems of how much you adored him.

Like an asteroid that orbits a planet, you revolve your life around him and his happiness. If you tried long distance or if you gave up your career, it would be a difficult feat, and happiness would not be found in that desert. Leaving for the city was for the best. He eventually found his oasis, and you were still on the long journey of finding yours in between the infinite dunes.

Before you realized, your nose burned some more and your vision blurred. “I think it still would have been really hard.”

“Would it have been worth it?”

“I think…” you hesitated, but the wine in your veins was overtaking, “it would only have been worth it if it was with you.”

“Then, why?” he begged. “What happened to ‘it’s better to have loved and lost’?”

“After all this time, you still can’t see what I see. I never want to risk something where I would lose you. So, I didn’t think I’d lose you if I said no.”

“This is… so stupid…”

“Don’t insult me in my home.”

“No, I… I…” he stuttered, and it’s just now you see his eyes were glossy, too. “I can’t stop thinking about you, and it’s so fucking stupid.”

It was stupid; you moved out to move on, and here he was at your door bringing you french fries and opening bars across from where you work, invading your life like a decade-old infectious disease with no ailment known to man-kind. It was stupid; he was taken, spitting out confessions of his failing love story to the one he ended, telling you he still thinks of you before he sleeps. It was very stupid, and it pained you not to fall for it.

You shook your head. “Don’t.”

“______ -”

“You can’t think of me.”

He reached out across the table to take your hands. You allowed it, because you were a weak, weak woman, starving for touch and hungry for him. His skin was rough and tired from the dehydrating soaps of the service industry, but they felt so right.

“Tell me you don’t think of me,” he demanded. “Tell me, and I’ll leave.”

“What does it mean for you to leave? You will leave my home, and then what? Will you try to be better for her? You’ll stay in my life and we can be friends? Or will you leave permanently and change the dynamic of our friend group forever for the second time?” By now, the tears were falling and words choked as they came out, but your grip on him betrayed you and you held on like he was hanging off a cliff.

“I… The… The former…”

“Then, no. No, I don’t think of you. I’m not tormented by you, I’m not in ruins when I see you, I don’t smell you on my clothes, I don’t see you when I close my eyes, or in stranger’s faces when they pass, I don’t dream of you, and I definitely don’t think of you every second of everyday!”

“You can’t even convince yourself anymore. Why won’t you be vulnerable with me?”

“Vulnerability is weakness, Minho! I have been strong for so long; without you, at that!” your voice was shrill and loud and you couldn't be bothered to sit. You were up from your chair, leaning over the table, and he winced as you kept going. “You come here, turn my life upside down, and ask me to be vulnerable? To lower my guard around you? After you abandoned me all because the circumstances weren’t right at that moment? Fuck you.”

He got up from the table to get to you and towered over you, torso much wider than you remembered. He was too close, and you could feel him feel you. Your body hadn’t turned to face him, too scared to face your biggest fear, so he forced it upon you by holding your shoulders. His eyes, so big and brown that it was easy to drown in them, dug deep into yours and pleaded with everything he had in his heart.

“Fine, don’t be vulnerable, but show yourself some mercy, for fuck’s sake.”

“Mercy? I want someone I can’t have. How does that merit mercy?”

He faltered a bit and you regretted the moment you invited him in. His eyebrows furrowed in what you thought was pity. Your head dropped in shame; that was the last thing you needed. His hands moved to hold your face as if he never wanted you to drop something so precious to him ever again.

“Don’t,” you repeated.

His forehead connected with yours and suddenly, you felt young again. It’s what you needed, what you wanted, but…

“I want to kiss you.”

The rush from five years ago hit you like a truck. “I want to kiss you, too.”

Every emotion, every desire, collided into the kiss. His hands swiftly moved to your waist and pulled you in until every millimeter of you touched some part of him and soon your hands were lost in his hair. His lips were soft, and you always imagined them to feel like petals of a tulip, but he was earnest and there was some pain in the amount of pressure he pressed into you. The pain felt good, the feeling of being wanted made your heart soar, and you two exchanged gasps and moans as your lips moved fervently, hungry for indulgence after being teased with temptation. But his tongue tasted sour, and bitter, and nothing like the coffee and chocolate you once dreamed of, because this circumstance was yet again not right. He tasted like rotting fruit because stolen fruit was never sweet.

You broke away, gasping and sniffling and it was so hard to breathe. “You’re not mine,” you cried.

“But you have always been mine,” he whispered, with his breath ghosting your lips.

You shook your head, over and over until you freed yourself from his grip, wishing you’d be free of him forever. You turned your back to him, unable to show your face as you said, “I think you should leave.”

Back then, you wished he fought for you as much as he wished you to do the same. You wished he’d followed you, or waited for you until the time was right, but of course time didn’t wait for anyone. Deep down, as you broke into pieces in your dining room, you hoped he’d fight for you then, too, and proclaim that his heart belonged to only you. You were fooled twice, and as the saying goes, shame on you.

The failure of reciprocity would weigh you down just as much. You never fought for him the way you wished he would for you for the simple fact that you weren’t allowed to. He was a taken man, a man who said not too long ago how he told her he loved her every single night, and it would destroy you how he’d go home later and still say those words.

You believed everyone was worthy of love, including you. The love you wanted wasn’t supposed to feel tainted or spoiled. No matter how much you wanted him, how much he claimed he wanted you from the very start, you wouldn’t be that kind of woman who stole someone’s man, and therefore you would not confess to anything else that lay hidden away in your heart.

Minho left quietly. The battle was over, and you broke down on the floor.

Heavy and loud sobs escaped your quivering lips in a poor attempt to dissipate the pain that expanded in your chest. Your cries echoed into the open loft until you couldn’t stand the sound of your voice and wasting tissues, but your body wouldn’t let up. So, you transferred yourself to the bathroom, running a hot shower and curling up on the tile until the water ran cold. Here, your cries were muffled by the artificial rain, just as you had cried into the storm that ugly night long ago.

You called in sick the following day.

–

For the next quarter, you were happy you were swamped with work, for once. That meant waking up early, taking the train when the sun had barely risen, and leaving when it had long gone to sleep. It was the same for most people in the office and you were blessed with not having to conjure up a lie to get away from San’s advances to get you to happy hour.

In sum, you hoped it meant you’d be too busy to think of him, but when you had only a single moment, a single second of freedom, he invaded every bit of you. He was a virus, a parasite, sucking the life out of you like he was reminding you what you desired that once was within arms reach was now lost forever. Like Icarus, you fell from the ether into despair, surrounded by darkness from the absence of the sun in your only moments outside of the office. On days when you were off, you had begged your boss to let you come in, to distract you with some enrichment of any stupid task even if it meant gluing together inadvertently shredded proprietary documents for sixteen hours, but HR would catch on too quickly, was what he said.

You hoped to fall hopelessly in this troposphere of purgatory forever, operating through the days on autopilot, but your heart had sunk to your gut and it ached to land on the earth to end the pain. Just as you were getting the hang of flowing with the wind, Minho called once. Then, he called twice. On the third, you almost answered, but when your eyes welled and you struggled to breathe, you figured it was your body’s reaction to falling faster and further beneath the clouds. You spent those nights he called curled up in some corner of your home under a multitude of blankets waiting for the headache and heartache to subside, but by then the night turned to dawn and time was limited.

Chaeryoung would call, too; she’d text; she’d send you food, coffee, and chocolates, and much of it went cold because any sight of food made you nauseous. Lately, you moved so slow that sustenance wasn’t a necessity anymore, nor was it a pleasure. She was always quite the worrywart, so you tried to answer as much and as vaguely as you could, but at one point it was too exhausting to keep up the lie and you gave up, leaving her with one-worded answers that didn’t satisfy either party.

And so you continued to fall; continued to cry, rot, and falter when all you had done was taste forbidden fruit.

His birthday approached faster than you could get over him.

For a while, no one seemed to mind your absence besides Chaeryoung and Minho, who had called to see if you were attending any of the last-minute get-togethers or planned reservations in the recent month. The one big one you regretted missing was Chan’s birthday, who was rightfully miffed, but you hoped the gift you shipped would make up for it. You kept up with social media, though, and liked all the pictures that came from those nights. 

Each post, you’d look for him. You’d admire what he was wearing; you’d wonder what cologne he was wearing; you’d imagine the way his eyes lit up when Karina walked in the room. But she wasn’t in any of the photos.

You didn’t tell anyone what transpired the second time with Minho. It was too embarrassing to have fallen for him twice, which sent feminism back at least a decade. You were going to conjure up some work-related lie to get out of his birthday celebration, but Chaeryoung wouldn’t allow it and even went as far as messaging San for confirmation about your work schedule.

In a huff, she busted through to your home before you could reject her kindness. Normally, your girl was all smiles and full of expressions, but tonight she was strict and stern, which meant she was mad. Very mad.

“I need you to not message my coworkers, please,” you said as she filtered through your closet. “I don’t want a meeting with HR on Monday.”

She didn’t turn to face you when she snapped, “It felt like you were lying, so I had to double check.”

“I wasn’t lying. It was busy, but we just lightened up after the deadline yesterday.”

“So, why couldn’t you tell me that?”

“I needed an excuse to not go tonight.”

She shook her head, clearly frustrated with how insufferable you were being. She turned to you with glossy eyes and you regretted avoiding her lately. “Aren’t I your friend?”

Her having to ask really stung. “You’re my best friend.”

“Then can’t you tell me why you disappeared for three months?”

“I… it’s hard, Chaer…”

“For God’s sake, _____, you’re thirty. Act like it, and use your words!”

“I can’t,” your voice cracked, “I can’t see Minho.”

Her face softened, realizing maybe that night when she left you with someone you saw as a stranger was not what a best friend did. You watched her scan through your slumped posture and sunken eyes before she lunged and hugged you tightly. Tears burned, the feeling of gentle humanity fulfilling your highest hierarchy of needs overflowing all your emotions.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“We kissed,” you whispered back.

“And?”

“I kissed back.”

“But?”

“He’s not mine.”

She pushed you to arms length, eyes knitting sternly. “I think you should go tonight.”

“Chaer -”

“Trust me. You might regret it. It’s his thirtieth, after all.” She pushed away the hairs that cling to your forehead before running to grab some make up. “Let me do your make-up! It’ll be like your twenty-first all over again.”

She sat you down on your bed and began to dab away at the color-correcting pallet. A box of tissues lay next to her so she could catch the tears before they fell. She created a large pile in the end.

“Do you want him to be yours?” she asked after a long moment of silence.

You wanted to smell him on your clothes, adore him in your dreams, and wake up next to him. You want him to be yours, only yours, and to not have to share him with someone who he also chose. Under this sanguine circumstance, still, you smiled at this very thought, because of course the answer was, “Yes.”

And she, too smiled, her own tears forming while she dabbed yours with another fist full of tissues. “Then, go to him.”

“But -”

“_____,” she breathed sternly, sniffling a bit. “You stupid, stupid people-pleaser. Fight for yourself, for once.”

When you thought the battle was long over, little did you know you were still fighting all this time.

Despite trying not to think of him, as his birthday approached, the calendar terrorized you to get him a gift. Just in case, you know? It was a fancy Nakiri knife whose steel was decorated in waves. The Internet told you that a chef’s knife was similar to that of a samurai’s sword, so only the highest quality of Damascus steel was preferred. As you held the box in your hand at his front steps, your mind and heart kept battling with each other and debated whether or not getting a personal gift was too intimate versus a gift card to some generic restaurant to establish a boundary.

But wasn’t the boundary already too blurry, anyways?

Chaeryoung pushed you inside the already-unlocked door. All the boys and their partners and Chaeryoung’s now-official real man were already there surrounding the island. Minho, who just had a grin on, dropped it quickly upon seeing you come in and straightened his back. It’s like deja vu from your birthday.

Karina wasn't present.

Your body’s instinct was to turn and run out the door, but Chaeryoung anticipated your every move and was quick to block you. She squeezed your hand and tugged you further inside. You greeted the boys and their partners first, who all said a variation of, ‘long time, no see,’ before reaching Minho. His expression was still starstruck and confused. He didn’t appear angry. Perhaps it was a feeling worse than that, which could not be translated through his face.

With sweaty hands, you handed him the small rectangular box. “Happy birthday.”

He was hesitant to take it, as if to question the possibility of diffusion of poison through the skin. His hesitancy allowed you to get a whiff of his bourbon vanilla cologne. “Thank you.”

“Oh, so you’ll come for Minho’s birthday, but not mine?” Chan pouted.

“Some things are worth coming out for,” you retorted.

The night went on and you played your role as an onlooker in the background, hoping to blend in with the walls and remain unnoticed so as to not ruin the night. You watched him and the boys shove each other playfully and inhale any and all food Minho made. Who’s to say that thirty was old when the epitome of youth was in the souls of a group of hungry boys? Conversations and debates picked up from when they last saw each other. Some of them filled you in and others forced you to answer without knowing the majority opinion. Laughs and giggles filled the kitchen and even when it seemed that Minho didn’t want to whenever you answered, he couldn’t help himself from smiling at your ridiculous answers, though he stopped when he’d catch you watching him.

As the clock ticked forward, your anticipation for Karina to pop in at any moment dwindled. Maybe she was also having a rough quarter three and taking a late night at the office, but to miss her boyfriend’s thirtieth was… a choice, even if they were fighting or some other strange reason. But then four hours turned to six hours and then it was, ‘damn, it’s already 2:00 AM?’ and she never came.

“Are you ready to go?” Chaeryoung asked at the front door.

Minho was now alone in the kitchen and there were a lot of dishes left to wash. You should help him.

“No,” you said. “I’ll call you later.”

She had a hard time hiding her grin as she left.

You approached him slowly like how you’d approach an angry cat because he was scrubbing the dishes a little too furiously. He didn’t look up despite knowing what you were up to.

“Can I help?” you asked.

Still, he refused to look at you, but he handed you the sponge. Well, that was progress, right?

Dishes and clean up were completed in silence. No chit-chat, no music, just the sound of running water and dishes clinking in the cupboards. The task was finished in good time, and just before you decided that your stay was long overdue, he pulled another deja vu card.

“What are you doing here?” he mumbled to the floor.

“It’s your thirtieth birthday. Chaeryoung told me to come.”

“You could’ve said no.”

“I could’ve.”

A salty laugh - or perhaps a scoff - was uttered. He was tired, you were tired, and the air was cold and stale. The topics orbited like a satellite, coming ‘round for another turn for a different thirtieth celebration, if either of you would even call it that.

Minho let out a big sigh. “Only you can disappear for three months and come back into open arms.”

The words arranged sounded like a compliment, but it was clearly the opposite. “I don’t expect to be forgiven.”

“No, you shouldn’t. I tried calling you.”

“I know.”

“Texting. E-mailing. Fuck, even snail mailing!”

“I know…”

He threw his hands in the air, as he did whenever he was frustrated, and turned to take a breather from your nonchalance. You were supposed to be fighting for him, not letting him slip away like this, but why was this so hard when loving him came easily?

“I shouldn’t have come over that night,” he said after returning. “I was trying too hard to be friends again and I crossed a point where I couldn’t return from.”

“Isn’t that the story of our friendship?”

“Is that how you feel?”

“We were never really just friends, were we?” you teased.

“No,” he admitted softly, “we never were.”

Your eyes met for the first time that night. His were red and puffy, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in three months.

You swallowed the rock in your throat. “Where’s Karina?”

“I don’t know. I broke up with her a while ago.”

Your chest felt tight and your voice bubbled out a garbled, “Why?”

And his mirrored, to the point where he had to clear his throat. “I don’t love her anymore.”

“So, is it true? Is it better to have loved and lost?”

“I wouldn’t exchange my days with her for anything.”

It didn’t make sense; it just didn’t. When someone loved that deeply, how could they throw that person away so easily?

“I’m sorry,” was all you could say.

“I’m not.” He cleared his throat. “I loved her and she loved me. It was fulfilling, and now it’s not. It’s just how it is.”

“Isn’t that painful?”

“If it means I get to feel like I’m flying, I think I can handle it.”

The concept, the idea of that, was just too hard to grasp. It took your wax wings melting to realize that the journey upwards was worth the descent.

“Enough about my failures,” he said hoarsely, “What about you? How… how are you doing?”

How were you supposed to admit that tonight was the first night you had a proper meal? That sleep only came under the influence of some generic-brand silver liquor? That you plucked a fist full of grey hairs the day before? Would admitting to vulnerability prove that you were fighting for this? For him? Or would it make you look pathetic?

“I’ve been doing fine.”

The centers of his brows scrunched together and his lips pursed. He inhaled heavily, his sniffles echoing through his quiet home.

“Are you?” he stuttered, voice distorted and desperate. “Really?”

No, of course not, and that much was clear when you started to cry.

“Because,” he continued, “if you can’t tell, I’m… dying on the inside.”

“Because of me?” you whispered, feeling the weight of your actions collapsing.

“Because of you. It’s always because of you. Everyday for the past ten years. It’s always been you.”

“Why couldn’t you forget me? Why? When you were the one to throw me away?”

“How!” he cried out. “How could I forget about you, when all I wanted was you?”

“You wanted to change me! You wanted me to abandon my career.” “I wanted you to try!”

“And you were right!” Sobs choked in your chest. “You were right. If I loved you, I should have fought for you. I should have tried harder. And I really shouldn’t have admitted those feelings to you when you were not mine. For everything that I’ve done, I’m so, so sorry.”

“You should be. You are so mean,” he hissed, pointing harshly. “You torture me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Even when I close my eyes, I see you.”

“I’m sorry -”

“I named my fucking bar after your favorite flower! And now you stand here in my home asking me to forget about you? How am I supposed to even begin doing that, hm? How, when everything around me reminds me of you?”

Your sobs were visceral and messy, and you buried your face in your hands. Maybe tears held the youth Ponce de Leon searched his whole life for the way yours could fill the fountain in minutes and how wiping them took away two decades of your life.

“I’m going to ask you once more,” he whispered. “One last time, and I’ll leave it be forever because I’m fucking tired. Do you think of me as often as I think of you?”

You caved in when all else went wrong and there was nothing else to hide. “Everyday.”

“Do you want me as much as I want you?”

“No,” you replied, “Because I need you. Now, let me ask you: do you want to kiss me as much as I want to kiss you?”

His lips quivered before he laughed and you do, too, because that was the cringiest thing you’ve ever said. He held your face, that precious face of yours that he adored so much, dabbing away your tears. His eyes fluttered to your lips, a habit he couldn’t shake off after all these years.

“I need you to kiss me,” he demanded.

He tasted like honey and his lips fit yours like the second half of a two-piece puzzle. This was slow and deliberate, no longer going at the crushing speed of fervent passion because you had all the time in the world together now, and Minho was always the type of man to take his time. You couldn’t stand to leave his lips even for air and they ghosted his only for a few seconds before you tip-toed and pressed yourself deeper against him. Your hands were occupied with gripping his shirt at his waist to keep him in place. When you felt his smile on your lips, you grinned back and held him by his beautiful face.

“I need you to stay,” he formed on your lips.

“All I need is you,” you answered.

Even while traveling to his bedroom, both of you refused to separate as you bumped into furniture.

“We should take this slow,” he mumbled, fidgeting with the hem of your shirt.

“Get acquainted with each other, or whatever,” you concurred after removing his belt.

“Maybe get coffee some time?” he asked into the crook of your neck.

“Or a drink? I know this really cute bar called ‘DAHLIA’.”

He threw you onto his bed. After removing his shirt, he crawled on top. “I think I’ve heard it.”

“Oh yeah?” You undid his pants zipper. “I know the bartender. A little narcissistic, though; he thinks he’s so hot.”

He trailed kisses down your lips, to your neck, to your sternum, to your stomach, until the top of your panties where his fingers hooked. “I know he is.”

You called Chaeryoung the next afternoon. At first, she scolded you for not texting her when you got home, but when she checked your location during the call, she screamed so loud that Minho dropped the spatula while making your breakfast.

The sanguine satellite would continue to orbit her world and revolve her life around his happiness; and he would continue to do the same.

[adora-but-ginger]

Ardently Yours

ardent (adjective): to fall into strong feelings for or to develop a crush; to begin to love

pairing: spencer reid x psychic! gender neutral reader

synopsis: the four times where you almost call spencer by his first name, and the one time that you do

warnings: typical cm talk and discussions, a quick undercover case, spencer reid is NOT straight, honestly assume that any character i write for isn't straight, food mentions, swearing (probably), nervous spencer at the end, me having a bias towards glasses reid

masterlist

word count: ~5k

a/n: here is the next installment for my psychic reader collection! i spent a lot of time and effort on this one, and i have not written something this long in awhile, so i hope you all enjoy it as much as i do!

want to be tagged? let me know!

not proofread whoops again

credit to gif owner!

i.

"Why do you drink coffee when you don't even like it?" You were by the kitchenette as Spencer rolled up for his morning caffeine fix, caught off guard by the realization that he wasn't alone.

He turned to you, adding sugar into his beverage. "Caffeine is a stimulant that increases your brain and nervous system's alertness. We work really odd hours. I don't understand what you're asking." The flow of sugar didn't stop until he was almost done talking, your eyes widening every second he kept pouring.

"Yes but aren't there other drinks that get the same result? Why coffee when you obviously don't like the taste?" You watched as he stirred the sugar-with-a-dash-of-coffee drink together, combining the ingredients.

He shrugged as he pushed up his glasses to sit better on his nose. "It's what's easily available."

"Hmm." You scrunched your eyebrows together. "Do you like tea?"

"I much prefer tea, actually." A wisp of hair fell in front of his face, and you were tempted to push it away. You weren't going to, that was absurd. But you were tempted. You had just reached a truce not too long ago and put your differences aside, meaning you had to make every moment count if you wanted to keep the peace.

Reid surveyed the room before continuing, as to watch for any possible intruders. "Last time I walked in with tea though, Morgan commented on my cup and would only talk to me in a horrible British accent the rest of the day." A small smile crept onto his features. "Learned that lesson quite quickly."

Now that you didn't seethe at the sight of him, you were able to read Reid better. Six months into the BAU now and you were able to have civilized conversations with the genius, progress that you valued as you got to know him. He was skeptical of what you could do with your mind still, but at least he was less vocal about it.

Something was different this morning though, but that may just be on your side. Because at seven a.m. sharp Spencer walked into the bullpen with those frames of his adorning his face, something that he hadn't done since the first month you were here. Why was that a problem? Because you couldn't keep your eyes off of him.

Maybe it was the change, or maybe it was something else, but you were put into a daze the first few seconds you saw him.

You came back to reality just in time for him to make his leave, and you made the collective decision to make a pit stop on the way in tomorrow if there were no cases announced today. You needed a change of pace in your morning routine anyway. At least, that's what you told yourself as you walked back to your desk, getting Emily's attention before striking up a riveting conversation with her regarding her weekend plans.

--

The next day when you walked into the office, you were balancing two drinks, one pastry, and a load of anxiety in your hands. You were the first one there, showing up a half an hour early as Spencer appeared twenty minutes early on the dot without missing a day. You had stopped by the café next to your apartment on your way here, getting yourself a drink and ordering a tea for Spencer that felt right. You didn't know what he usually had, but your mind searched his the day before to get a good grasp of the basics.

You knew that he had a big thing with germs (which was completely justified) and so you delicately laid down a folded napkin as a coaster for his tea before writing a little note of what it was. You signed with your initials before rounding to your own desk, just in the nick of time. You glanced down at your watch as it struck twenty-to, and watched nonchalantly as Reid walked into the office, immediately noting your presence and giving an awkward wave. The rest of the team filed in not too long after, and before you knew it you had lost a few hours to paperwork. It wasn't until midday that you felt a presence near your desk, the energy telling you it was Reid before you even looked in his direction.

"You got me baked goods. And a drink. Why?"

"The tea is caffeinated, and it's green--I know some people have sensitivities to other bases but usually green is a safe bet. It was no big deal, I had a couple punch cards that I turned in for free goodies so please don't think you owe me anything."

He awkwardly leaned against the side of your desk, trying to find a place to stick his hands. "Why did you do it?"

"Why do you think I did it?"

"I'm not sure. I looked up the shop on the cup and it's ten minutes in the opposite direction from here, you didn't go out of your way did you?"

Yes, you totally did. "No not at all, it was on my way."

He squinted at you, knowing you were telling a fib but not confident enough to call it out.

"Plus, I get the feeling you like pastries of the sort."

A smile flashed across his face. "I do, actually, the one you got is my favorite type."

You shot him a wink. "I thought so. You like the drink too?"

His shoulders slumped into a more relaxed response as the conversation went on. "I did, I never had that type before, but it was quite nice. The flavors were all very balanced, and I appreciated the sugar packets you brought along with it." He stood up, beginning to head back to his desk. "Thank you."

"Anytime Reid."

Were you there long enough to use his first name? It was a tricky thing, names, because some didn't mind being on a first-name basis from the get-go, but Reid was different.

It almost fell from your lips just then too, as he was walking away.

Maybe today wasn't the day, but you hoped soon it would be.

ii.

You were called into a case before you could finish your Saturday morning routine, and by midday the jet was taking you to Kentucky. with the woods surrounding you on pretty much all sides. That plus the humidity ever present equaled a very irritable team.

It was two days in when the profile was given, but your focus was on one of the local cops at the department. You didn't want to make it a big deal, but your incessant glaring was clearly making him uncomfortable. He was hiding something. Prentiss was the one to cue you first, nudging your arm after realizing you weren't letting up on your stare down.

"What is it? Everything alright?" She crossed her arms as she followed your line of sight.

"Yeah, it's just something's off."

"What's off?" Spencer appeared seemingly from nowhere and perched himself on your other side.

"Oh, hey Reid." Emily nodded in your direction. "They're reading Mr. Cowboy Boots over there." Sure enough, the cop had a pair on that did not match the uniform at all.

"His aura is different." You squinted as he gathered up some paperwork. "Most of the people in this office have an uncomfortable energy, but his is just...different. Not a good different either." A moment of silence filled the air. "Plus, I hate that toupee of his. It looks like a joke." He turned towards the three of you and you all glanced in separate directions, trying but failing to look like you hadn't just been studying him.

"The way he flows just doesn't match the energy of the others, and I'm going to figure out why."

"How can you tell?" Spencer looked from the man in question to the other locals, trying to understand an inch of what you were saying.

You kicked off from the wall you were slouching against before starting on your way towards him. "I just can. Give me a minute." And off you went.

You just needed to strike up small talk with him, really look into his eyes to try and uncover your rising suspicions. You were in earshot of Emily and Reid still, and it didn't take you long to understand why you were feeling the way you were.

Nodding as an exit cue, you booked it toward your two coworkers. "Call Garcia." You closed your eyes for a second, focusing your thoughts. "He knows the unsub. I don't know how, but either through friendship or familial ties, Boots over there is familiar with these murders.

"All you did was discuss tomorrow's weather, how can you know?" Spencer looked at you, confusion written all over those chiseled cheekbones.

You hummed as you reached out to flick an invisible piece of dust from his sweater vest. "His heart, it tells a story. A story of betrayal, of protecting a secret. Not like a typical hidden truth, but something much, much darker. He's inserting himself into this case as much as he can because of it." He reached for his found to send Penelope your info, no matter how apprehensive he was about it. You could tell he was unsure, but if it meant getting one step closer to catching this killer, he wasn't going to question it. Not now at least.

He picked up his phone, adjusting his glasses as he did so. "Hey, Garcia? We need you to check something out."

Emily went to relay the information to Gideon, and you took a moment to admire the boy genius. You had to admit that ever since you two started getting along, you were seeing him in a new light. A light that you wished minded its own damn business. His awkwardness was adorable, and when he showed up to the case today wearing those glasses of his, well, you had to pencil in a cold shower for later.

Whether he knew it or not, he truly was gorgeous.

You weren't planning to acknowledge those feelings anytime soon though. There was a killer on the loose and this was the last thing you needed to be thinking about right now.

"He hasn't slept since the beginning of the case either. Those bags under his eyes are days old and he--" Spencer stared at you as he telephoned your information to Garcia's side. "He has a grass allergy. That last part isn't important, I just needed to let someone else know that I knew that too." You mumbled the last part of yourself, looking briefly out towards the cloudy evening.

He turned towards you, shooting you a confused look. He covered the phone with his hand. "You can tell if someone has an allergy?"

You shrugged. "Yeah, I guess I can." You squinted your eyes at him, and you two had worked together enough now that he knew you were reading him. "You're allergic to pollen." The lack of reaction from him was reaction enough. "And peaches? Cantaloupe, too."

The corner of his eye twitched, and you smirked at your victory. He resumed his attention to the phone. "Garcia, they're freaking me out again, reading my mind."

Maybe you two were friends. Friends call each other by their first names, right? You silently tested it out on your tongue.

Gideon's voice grabbed the two of you's attention before his name could fall from your lips.

iii.

You were not a fan of going undercover. It was a part of the job that you thankfully didn't have to exercise much of, but whenever the opportunity arose, you did your best to avoid it. It was uncomfortable, especially when you fit the victimology to a tee. You had a weapon tucked away as a fail-safe, but there you were, sitting alone in a bar with a glass untouched in front of you.

Act as though you had a fresh break-up, he's going after people who seem heartbroken.

Make sure not to draw too much attention.

Let us know the moment he leads you out. Click the pen and we'll be sent an alert.

You were a decent actor, but it felt weird knowing that you were practically bait for this case. It didn't help that you hated the bar setting, the sticky floors, questionable seats, and dim lighting. Not to mention they were always overcrowded whenever you went. No, you'd much rather be at home, or honestly anywhere rather than here.

"Any updates?" Reid's voice sounded through your earpiece, relaxing you a little. The team was strategically placed outside the establishment, with Spencer also somewhere within the pool of people inhabiting this bar. Back-up, he called it, though you were pretty sure that you'd be a better shot than he was. Plus, he hated this setting even more than you. So why was he here?

You tried to search for him, attempting to find the brunette in the mass of people. You caught someone's eyes in the process, quickly locking theirs with your own before moving on.

Here we go.

The man fit the profile to a tee, and noticing that you were alone started to make his way to you.

You swirled your drink in your hand as he sauntered up to you. Even if you weren't here undercover, you wouldn't go near this guy with a jousting pole. Time to put on the charm.

"Well hey there, you look lonely."

You put on an overly friendly smile. "Oh, you're too kind."

"Mind if I take a seat?"

One glance at him and you knew. This was your guy. You clicked the alarm disguised as a pen, and now you just had to get him out of the bar. "Go right ahead."

It took ten minutes before you could get anywhere, and by the time you convinced him to leave with you, you wanted to retch--his grubby hands were laying on your shoulder, rubbing it as he walked alongside you, other hand on the small of your back.

You were definitely making sure that as a reward for putting up with this, you had your paperwork covered for at least a week.

One moment you felt the fresh evening air, the next you heard shouts from all sides. But then you felt cold metal against your neck, and you realized this was going to take a little longer than expected. This is exactly why you hated going undercover.

"Put the guns down or they get it." You hadn't been on this side of the job yet, being held hostage with your teammates staring down the possibility of what one wrong move could mean.

"Statistically, killers like you try to take the path of police-assisted suicide in a situation like this, but you can make it out with a life sentence if you're smart about it. Either way, you'll never see what life looks like out of cement walls." Reid's voice sounded from behind you, as you welcomed the wave of relief that swept over you as his voice hit your ears. "Choose wisely."

You sensed it before it happened. You kicked his kneecap in as he went to swipe at you, and though you ended up with pain lightly searing against your clavicle, there Reid was, handcuffing him before handing him over to Morgan.

Spencer noticed your wound and moved towards you. "Is it deep?"

You shook your head. "No, just stings."

"I had eyes on you the entire time. I know it was really busy in there, but I was there. Just in case. I didn't lose you, you were safe." He waited a second before continuing. "Let's go get that cleaned up, it's pretty nasty looking."

You sent a smile at the man. "Thank you. Seriously, Spen--"

Gideon called both of your names before you could finish the sentence, leaving his first name still unknown on your lips.

iv.

The weather was just starting to clear again. It wasn't humid in D.C. and the temperature was at a steady rise, though it was still bearable. You had been talking with Hotch about weekend plans, which you had to admit was a little odd.

It wasn't that you and Aaron didn't get along, per se, but you two had just never sought the other out during non-work hours. He was telling you about his partner, Hailey, who sounded lovely. You'd never seen the man as lively as when he was talking about her.

"And then she offered to go to the art gallery to see the new exhibit, which I didn't even know about."

"You like art?" You were leaning against his desk with a cup of coffee in hand.

"I do. What about you, any events planned?"

You shook your head. "No, just me and my fish catching up on some reading hopefully."

"You know Reid reads too?" Hotch looked over to the man of the hour who was coincidentally staring back, quickly glancing away as if caught.

"Reid reads. There has to be a pun in there." You snorted at your words, shrugging afterward. "He reads books that I have no interest in though, and I distinctly remember hearing about his disdain for fiction, which is my forte."

"I'm sure if you asked him, he would." He paused for a moment before shuffling some papers. "You two could start your own book club."

This was the thing with Aaron, you could never tell if he was joking.

"In fact, he's coming this way now." Surprise scribbled onto your face as you turned to look behind you. Sure enough, like he'd been summoned, there was Spencer striding over. His contacts must have been picked up because he was bare-faced today, which made no difference to you--your heart still skipped a beat. You noticed he was giving off lots of nervous energy as he approached, though from the outside he looked relatively relaxed.

"Why are you nervous Reid?" Never one to beat around the bush, you were.

That relaxation quickly dissipated as he looked towards you and Hotch. His eyes met yours. "How do you--never mind. Do you have a second?"

You nodded. "Hotch, tell me how the exhibit goes, yeah?" With a nod from Aaron, you met Spencer halfway, motioning him to lead the onward. "What's up?"

He didn't speak until you got to his desk. "First, before I say anything, know that I do not mind at all if you say no."

"Okay...?" You watched him skeptically as he fiddled with his hands, looking at you every few seconds before surveying the room. "What, are you about to ask me on a date or somet--"

"I have two tickets to the star show they're hosting at the planetarium on Saturday, and I know that you love the constellations. I've been once before and it was really nice, they tell you all about the patterns and legends behind each one and I think you'd really like it. Penelope suggested I ask you since you usually are relatively free on the weekends, which isn't a bad thing of course. In fact, I don't usually do much on the weekends besides going to the park and playing chess with the regulars there." He was rambling, truly on edge about how'd you respond. A smile started to rise on you. "It's later in the evening so when you leave the planetarium you can see the stars in question, but it's not too far from my place and you do not have to go if you're busy or don't want to, I just thought I'd ask."

His eyes were wide as you ate up every one of his words. His voice was like the harmony of your favorite song--you loved to pick it out and listen to how each of the words he spoke flowed. His face had a tint of rose on it, and a piece of hair had fallen into his eyes. You had to once more withhold from pushing it back into place.

"I would love to go, where would you like to meet?"

Shock was written all over his features at your accepting of his invitation, and you were pretty sure he was already preparing a proper response to a rejection when you said your words.

"You want to go?"

A nod accompanied you. "Yeah, you can teach me all about the science and I can teach you all about your star sign."

He shot you a quizzical glance before relaxing his shoulders. Man, he was really tense. "Okay. Okay, great! I can send you my address. We can walk there from my place, it's only about ten minutes away. It's at 7 pm, does that work?"

"Works perfect for me." A thought popped into your head, one that could make this outing seem to be much more than it really was. "That's a little past when I eat, want to grab dinner beforehand?"

He scrunched his eyebrows at you. Uneasiness started to form in your belly, maybe you were being a little too bold. "What type of dinner? Restaurant dinner or takeout dinner?"

"We could do takeout? You said you know a 24-hour Thai place around here, right? It's one of your favorite places in the area."

He was almost caught in a trance then, looking nearly through you, staring at you with an expression you had never really seen on his face before. "You remembered that?"

"Of course I did, I remember things about the people I care about."

He couldn't speak for a second after your words. Yeah, you were definitely being too bold.

"You--" His voice cracked and you almost chuckled as he cleared his throat. "--I'll grab some food from there before we head out. Want to stop by around six?"

"Six it is. See you there, boy wonder." You shot a wink his way. "And thank you for the invite, I cannot wait to go." His first name was on the tip of your tongue, ready to spill out at the slightest egging on. He looked almost expectantly at you and you had to remind yourself of where you were and who you were with.

This wouldn't be considered a date, would it?

v.

Spencer totally thought this was a date. He could count the number of dates he'd been on on his hand, and most of them were with Ethan. It'd been a while since he'd gone out, and he was nervous.

What if he was overdressed? What if he was underdressed? What even was the dress code for the night? What if you didn't show up?

He tried to not let that last thought get to him because if it did then he would spiral and would all in all not have a good time tonight. This wasn't platonic, right? He didn't think it was. Did you? Did--

A knock at his door interrupted his ruminating. He scrambled to make sure he looked presentable, heart practically thrumming against his rib cage as he did so. There was just one problem.

He couldn't see.

It wasn't that he hated how he looked with his glasses on, but it made him feel self-conscious and he hated to wear the frames outside of his house. The only problem was that the last of his contacts had dried out, and he really wanted to look nice for your guys' outing. He could not see more than five feet in front of him for his life, which in retrospect kind of ruined the whole point of looking at the stars.

That didn't matter in his mind as long as it impressed you. He knew that he shouldn't dress to impress, but you and your alternative methods of profiling had snuck their way into his brain and refused to leave. He thought about whether you'd do the daily crossword with him almost every morning. He made sure to always bring an extra morning snack in the case that you got hungry. Hell, he was writing to his mother about you.

He was in much farther than he knew.

A second round of knocks sounded at the door.

He opened it after looking through the peephole and nearly lost his breath.

You were stunning, and he felt more out of his element than he had in years.

Wow, he was really in deep.

"Phew, I thought I had the wrong address at first. I am so ready for some Thai and stars!" You entered his place, but his mind was still a few steps behind. "This place is beautiful, and so...you!" Neat piles of books were stacked in rows alongside his couch, and as he went to readjust one's positioning his lack of visual clarity made him trip.

Great.

You rushed over to him, careful to keep your distance but still close enough to offer help if he asked. "Woah, are you alright there?"

"Yeah, I-I just must've not seen where I was heading." He could feel the dust adorning his cheeks. He was totally making a fool out of himself. "Please, take a seat at the table, the food is still hot."

You smiled and nodded, taking in the contents of his home whilst sitting down. He went over and grabbed the Thai food, bringing it over to the table. He set the food down and went to sit, not knowing that this was the moment before a disaster. One of the chairs must not have been fully pushed in, and with the combination of his nerves, and his blurriness, his foot got caught right over it as he went to sit across from you.

Now, you fully respected and understood Spencer's hatred of germs, so you'd apologize later for coming to the rescue. That being said, you sensed it a half a second before it was going to happen, stood up, and reached out to catch him.

"Oh my god, are you okay?" His arms were on yours, bracing them for stability. "What's wrong? Are you sick?" He could feel your eyes looking him up and down for any signs of maladies. "We can reschedule and go another night if something's wrong." He really did not want to admit the reasoning behind his clumsiness. "I can take you to the doctor's if you're feeling ill." Now he definitely had to expose himself. How would he even explain this to a medical professional?

Oh hey doc, I got told repeatedly that I look better with contacts and now the one time I need them I don't have them which ironically is the one night in years that I had to chance to go out with someone who I think I'm starting to really like so can you please give me a fake diagnosis so they didn't drive me here for nothing?

Yeah, that wasn't going to work. He had to bite the bullet. "I'm not sick." He slowly removed himself from your grasp. "I just can't see."

A concerned look graced your features. "What? Is everything okay?"

"Yes, I just--"

"You just what Reid? You can talk to me. Your energy is super wonky right now. I'm getting a little worried for you."

This was stupid. He was acting stupid. He shouldn't be embarrassed by this. You were just looking out for him, that was all, it was all probably surface level anyway. It was all--

"Spencer, what's wrong?"

His breath stifled to a halt.

"What did you just say?"

Your concerned look deepened.

"I asked what was wrong."

You had never called him by his first name before.

He shook his head. "No, before that." His eyes met yours. "You've never said my first name before."

A flash of...regret? nerves? shot through your eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to overstep any boundaries. I should've asked--"

"Say it again." He properly sat down. "My name I mean, say it again. Please."

"You're not mad?" You were tentative with your words now, adding his name after a beat. "...Spencer?"

His name formed like the first rain shower after a draught on your lips, falling with the grace of the autumn leaves from your tongue.

"You've never called me that before." His expression was shy, and man he wished he could see more than your blurry figure right now. "I, uh, thought I could go without my glasses tonight, but I also don't have my contacts."

"Would you like me to call you that more?" You were going to make him go into freaking cardiac arrest. He nodded fervently. Your shoulders slightly lost some of their tension. "Why would you do that to yourself? You wouldn't be able to see."

"Statistically those who wea--"

"Spencer."

Oh, he was turning to putty now. You were going to kill him, and he didn't mind.

"I thought I would look better without them."

A scoff emitted from you. "If you need them to see, you need them to see. Don't change your appearance for the approval or interest of someone else." He felt the red rush up his neck, around his ears. "Plus," You added with a quieter tone. "I think you look plenty good with them on." You locked eyes. "Gorgeous, even. There's a reason Morgan calls you pretty boy, you know."

Gorgeous? You just called him gorgeous. No one had called him that before.

"Really?"

"Really, Spencer."

Yeah, he was done for.

taglist:

@alllriseabove @kitty-kei @donttrustlove @jiuseoks

[drunkkenobi]

Today I’m thinking about three guys. Thinking about how they all had hands in creating concepts and videos that made the company they worked for famous. Thinking about how, despite that, they weren’t allowed to own what they created. Thinking about how their two biggest series were threatened to be taken away from them and given to more popular (whiter) hosts. Thinking about how they nearly burned out and faded away, but an idea lit a fire under them instead. Their own company, where they could have full creative control, where nothing could be taken away from them, where no one could tell them there wasn’t the editing budget for a show that was already written. Thinking about how they started it in secret, with no business knowledge. Thinking about how one of them took it upon himself to learn everything he could about running a business. How he knew it would mean putting his own creative pursuits on hold just to support his co-founders. How he did it anyway.

Thinking about how they announced their company to the world, with a shocking surprise. Thinking about how the world delivered its own shocking surprise back to them a few short months later in the form of a global pandemic. Thinking about how their company was almost strangled in its crib, how they thought it was DOA, how everything they worked so hard for was almost gone. Thinking of how, instead, it survived. Thinking of how they pivoted, how they threw everything they could at the wall, and while not everything stuck, the things that did kept them going. How they took every cent they made and put it back into the business by hiring fellow creatives and weirdos and investing in their future. Thinking of how they kept taking gambles, by taking the series that made two of them famous and making it their own. Thinking of how if that series had failed, it would have taken the company down with it and how they went for it anyway.

Thinking about how the CEO talked openly over the years about how he missed his old co-host, how hard it was to find that spark again. Thinking about how he focused on running the business instead of finding his own creative path. Thinking about how much thought he put into caring for their employees, how he put their well-being over churning out content, even if it meant less profit. How a work-life balance might not be in his wheelhouse, but how he wants it to be for the people that work for him.

Thinking about how the internet has changed in the decade since these three guys starting making videos for it. Thinking about how the algorithm values cheap drama over interesting stories. About how one wrong thumbnail or title can tank months’ worth of work. About how a misplaced swear can do the same, because the world is run by advertisers and not human beings. Thinking about how disheartening it must be to make a video to appease someone that would never watch it anyway. Thinking about how hard it would be to look at the numbers and realize the place that once was your space for success could now be home to your failure. Thinking about how much time they spent looking for a better alternative and how they ultimately realized there was only one.

Thinking about how delighted those three guys were once they had a plan. Thinking about the one of them who had finally reunited with his creative partners to start a new show, the one he’s been dreaming of for years, the one that’s been put on the backburner for the betterment of his company, finally able to exist. Thinking of the week of announcements, of the thousands of excited comments when this partnership was publicly declared. Thinking of how much joy was in the air, how much hard work was about to pay off. How their plans for months were about to come to fruition, how excited they were to take the fans on this next journey.

How they announced their new venture with a corkboard of fanart, showing it’s about them and us, together.

Thinking about how nearly everyone turned on them.

Thinking about how they walked back some of their plans to appease the loudest and the nastiest. Thinking about all the racist screeds their CEO had to read about himself. How he had to keep working despite it. How he and the rest of the company had to pivot immediately. How they had to know some of their contemporaries were also planning something similar and how none of them came to their defense. How they had to watch everything that they’ve worked so hard for become perilous. How a global pandemic was easier to weather than the cruelest words typed for everyone to see.

Thinking about how tomorrow, a new show will premiere. The one that’s been worked on in relative secret for so long and thought of even longer. The one that everyone was eagerly anticipating before they realized the people that make it need to eat, too. The one that everyone immediately mischaracterized to justify their own racism. The one that was supposed to be their big flagship series. The one that maybe still will be.

Tomorrow I’m hoping it will be the start of a new chapter. Hoping that the worst actors will get bored and move onto something else. Hoping that those who got the wrong impression will come back. Hoping that the show and its new home are a success and they get to make as much of it as they want, with no one to tell them how to do it.

I hope.

[theoryofthemultiverse]

hehe its okay I understand:D thank you for the stuff u put out though they're really good

And because of that, I’ll gladly continue to make more stuff :>

Always makes me happy when I see all the likes in the morning, you guys help me start my day!

Hoyo‘s Doctors Love Languages ♥️

Synopsis: What’s likely to be their love language?

Characters: Baizhu, Dr.Ratio, Il Dottore

A.N: I hope we can fundamentally agree that the Bordeaux heart in the title is one of the prettiest. Also keep in mind that these are just assumptions what I have on them, and what they are more likely to have than the other love languages :)!

•:--•:♥️:•--•:♥️:•--•:♥️:•--•:♥️:•--•:♥️:•--•:♥️:•—:•

Baizhu 🐍

Quality time and acts of service

Loveable man spends long hours in the pharmacy every day, sees patients tends to their problems, looks for function of certain limbs so I believe he gets a lot of general human contact through his job. So therefore I feel like he would still enjoy cuddling for sure, but it would be his priority.

Same goes for giving gifts and words of affirmation. He surely likes giving you gifts and telling you how good you’re doing at something, but to him personally, there are just things he values so much more!

Like when the two of you spend the evening or morning together simply talking while drinking tea. Or if you decide to join him for meditation before the pharmacy opens up in the morning. If you listen to him telling you about some patients he encountered today, it all adds to his liking for quality time with you.

And if you connect it with little acts of service, like helping him sort herbs, or bringing him something he needs while in an examination with a patient, he will be in love.

Dr. Ratio 🎓

Physical Touch and Quality time

I honestly wished he could give words of affirmation but I feel like he is bad at it. (Please teach him a few vocabularies on that part) Because it might be a little too obvious, but even though you’re not his student, he still has a hard time finding things affirm them with. So all in all, a rare occurrence to hear very affirming words from him, but at least you can be sure you’re one of the only ones that ever got them then :,)

When it comes to gifts and acts of service I can see him liking it to some point. He sees meaning in a gift that comes from you if you put your thoughts and heart into it. As well as he likes you doing some acts of service for him, but acts of service are likely able to go into the ‚could you solve that equation for me‘ which he would know is something he can’t ask, so he is good about it.

But physical affection and quality time? Oh lord.

It might just be my thinking, but I believe this man is touch deprived. (I mean the only touch he really gets is the book and the chalk- which definitely don’t do the job) So when you offer to cuddle him or take a bath with him, he is over the moon.

And if you connect that with quality time as well then you even manage 2 things in one go! Cuddling while talking, listening to each other, or simply staying silent while reading a book. It really helps him recharge with you by his side.

Il Dottore🧪

Gift giving and Acts of service

Wouldn’t find much use for physical touch and words of affirmation. If you want to cuddle and get a little bit of affirmative words he’s not going to deny your wish but it’s visibly hard for him to come up with something to say that is not making you feel worse, so personally i advise against that :,)

When it comes to quality time though he is unsure, because if you come into his lab and ask him about everything he is doing and what this and that machine does he can’t help but enjoy that time spent with you and proudly show you everything around the room.

But that’s still nothing against gift giving and acts of service. Let’s say you’re out and about and suddenly stumble upon an ancient relic in one of Sumerus markets. You take it back to him and he’s going to be all over it and love you for bringing (gifting) it to him. Basically like you brought a new toy he can tinker on home with you which also connects to acts of service.

Let’s say you know your way around his lab and the way he likes to work, so when he is gone somewhere to maybe conduct an experiment, you already put out a few papers and a pen to spare him of the action upon his return, and while it may be just a small action, he really greatly appreciates you for it.

[loriache]

honestly i'm kind of interested in the idea of laios in an arranged marriage. because obviously straight-up inherited monarchies are ...bad, to say the least! but it's what the characters are familiar with (even laios' father's extremely local, extremely minor leadership role is inherited, presumably through the male line). and it isn't just about what they think the best way to run melini is; in terms of ensuring that the other longed-lived nations respect melini's continued sovereignty, having it passed down in a manner that's close enough to their own ways for them to understand it and respect it is important. And it seems like most of the other nations have leadership through inheritance - thought that isn't confirmed for certain except with the elves.

Also, a marriage carries the potential to establish foreign allies - something melini is certainly lacking. A marriage could come with resources they'll badly need, treaties of mutual defence, money, legitimacy and political capital... not that these things can't be worked around, but if laios isn't strongly opposed, there are a lot of advantages! and i don't think he would be, because that's the framework for marriage (conferring practical advantages, building intracommunity relationships and providing a partner to do important work that he can't do) that he had grown up with. he isn't exactly a romantic and I doubt he's holding out for any sort of relationship of that nature.

Like, I don't think it's impossible that they would go with this path, because it's the most obvious and it carries a lot of advantages and it's what almost all the decision-making characters would consider normal and not objectionable. and it could be so interesting.

I think Laios would have major hangups if expected (i.e., by Marcille) to establish a genuine, romantic interest in a woman. Whether because of his sexual or romantic orientation, or just his own deep-seated trauma about rejection and being inherently disgusting and scary. And I think he'd hate the idea of having kids, too, and be very frightened of being like his father. But I don't think he'd refuse on that basis; he could cope with a marriage contract, with clearly laid-out expectations and responsibilities. And when it came to having a kid, I think he'd be reluctant to express that he doesn't want to do it, because he isn't naive and he understood when he agreed to be king it would carry responsibilities like this. It's clear from his nightmare that he already felt pressure from his parents to have children, probably magnified by the fact his father has got a position, responsibilities and wealth to pass on. Obviously he isn't a perfect martyr, so he might struggle when it comes to actually going through with it - but I don't think he'd actually, outright refuse. I think he might do it even though he doesn't want to, and I think that could be really messy in a way that appeals to me.

I don't know, there's something about negotiating these kinds of complicated situations that's interesting to me. and i love a platonic marriage. If they find a woman who has an interest in education, for example, and can work with marcille on setting up schools and universities. she'd ideally be politically savvy enough to be an able partner to laios: even though kabru can and would continue to do a lot of that, there are different spheres that a queen and a prime minister can work within!

how would their relationship work? maybe she finds laios' perspective on the world, and his frankness, unexpectedly liberating after an extremely controlled, cloistered upbringing. maybe she had a rebellious phase, has magic, or something else which makes her a relatively unpopular candidate for marriage - even as melini grows in power, i doubt that they'd be getting offers for the cream of the crop in terms of perceived value on the marriage market, because laios' relationship is a bit too ambivalent/monstrous for that, and melini too new. maybe she's a widow! an older woman, wouldn't that be cool - though they'd want her young enough that she could definitely still have kids.

certainly i think he'd be happy for her to pursue other relationships, though ideally in a manner that couldn't produce illegitimate kids. with other relationships in play, that's even more interesting. like, both kabru and toshiro have complicated emotions relating to infidelity. i think kabru would actually find it quite cathartic to be in the kind of high-status environment that rejected his mother for perceived infidelity, pursuing an affair that all parties consent to, though he'd likely be incredibly aware of the public image - since "image" is what he was rejected for. toshiro... i just really really love the way he'd feel about being the "other woman" in laios' marriage, considering his feelings about his father and maizuru. especially given how much closer he is to maizuru than his mother, being in her position...! his emotions would be so complex, it's incredibly tasty. i bet he'd make a bunch of assumptions about how laios' wife feels about it and be totally wrong, and that's so interesting. also, i think laios' wife should fuck marcille (she and falin have an open relationship).

[brawlmetaknight]

if dark meta knight has been described as "the darkness inside meta knight's heart brought to life", then i tend to imagine he's basically just a more...well, DARK meta knight lol, as opposed to them being total opposites. and it isn't just those deep dark "unfavourable" traits like anger and pride he might personify, it's also insecurities. he knows EVERYTHING about meta knight, probably more than meta knight knows about himself. every secret he has, everything he's ever felt but held in and festered, that's what dark meta knight embodies. to me!

but i also like to imagine he's probably not as bad as he used to be, because meta knight himself has become a more heroic person and this has to "reflect" in dark meta knight somehow. which is perhaps why he was temperate enough to be doodling with the others in his star allies guest star ending pic, and also why he protected adeleine and ribbon in his character trailer. imo that spoke volumes not just for dark meta knight but for meta knight, implying that his chivalry still exists even in the darkest cockles of his heart (offering kirby a sword even though he was possessed by the jamba heart seems to point to that as well).

i'd say parallel meta knight is the most evil version of meta knight in my personal hc. he's meta knight if meta knight continued down a path of want for power and hatred of values other than his own. no friends, only subordinates. like, he (and phantom meta knight) are their own weird conjured beings, but dark meta knight and meta knight are kind of fundamentally connected.

[yellowocaballero]

Continuing the JJK posting: Gojo is such a mystifying character.

Action show where swinging out the gate you introduce a character who is so incredibly powerful you then have to, before every fight, establish why Gojo can't just show up and fix the problem in seconds. His existence weakens the stakes of everything. The rest of the show you are backflipping ridding yourself of him. He jobs two major bad guys off the gate and every subsequent extensive fight with them feels like cleaning up his leftovers. Put him in a box, he's ruining the game balance. So absolutely broken. As a writer it makes your job so difficult, but it's also the entire point of him. "Hey I want to write the single most badass character of all time who can do the most insane shit but I will also engage with that", rock on king.

I think he's most interesting when understood as somebody who is fundamentally alien and removed from ordinary human thought processes. In his world there is absolutely nothing he cannot do, and the thought 'maybe I can't do something' just doesn't occur to him. He is capable of doing whatever he wants and of killing anybody who tries to stop him from doing what he wants. If he is not doing something, it is because he does not want to do it. If he wants to do something (kill all of his superiors) and he's not doing it, it's because he doesn't think it's the most effective route towards what he has decided to do. I think this informs the majority of his actions (and, importantly, what he doesn't do)(murder). I think he's reasoned out that you should have a general reason to do things, and it feels like sheer luck that he places value and meaning in human life, and as such you shouldn't kill them without a strong reason. Watching the flashback arc, if I hadn't seen a) JJK and b) Naruto and you asked me which shitty teen became a law abiding school teacher and which became a mass murderer I would have guessed the wrong ones.

Anyway, the way I like to think of him, he's a raging narcissist with a god complex to match. Horrifically, he's actually a good teacher, but he is also a teacher as an ego/'raising my child army' thing. He would be the kind of mother who is a good mother but lowkey had kids also as an ego/unconditional love/lots of attention/'surely my child will worship me' thing. Gets randomly into new hobbies, obsesses over them, gorges himself on the novelty factor, before dropping them in a week once he gets too good at them. Rinse and repeat. The only hobby that does not eventually grow boring is annoying people, so it's his only hobby. Geto told him age 15 that he'll never have any friends if he keeps on casually reminding people that they live on his sufferance, so he developed another back-up hobby more conducive for friendship of helping people forget that they live on his sufferance. This has convinced him that he's a god of subterfuge, intrigue, and trickery. Does eat women out, but is convinced that this makes him God's gift to women, and is actually pretty terrible in bed because his partner's desires never even occur to him. Is convinced he's as good at sex as he is everything else. Sex is actually the one thing he's bad at, but he's not ready to hear that.

In S1 he overall left me with the general impression that his entire idea of how high school worked was sourced from anime, and as such decided that being a teacher involved nothing but field trips, sports games, beach episodes, sports festivals, etc. Did not know how the classroom component worked so he skips it. Jossed, but also left me convinced that it would be very funny if he was an immortal 150-whatever years old and had founded the high school himself out of, you guessed it, an ego thing, and never once properly learned how high schools worked and just arbitrarily made his own aging students the new principals so he could continue engaging in training the kids who are too Misfit (TM) to get apprenticeships and living his fun slice of life anime life and raising a child army of kids who will worship him any day now. Annnyyyy day now. Any day now.

[nilboxes]

I didn't know who to say this too but i was about to explode thinking about this and you are one of the few people in hsr fandom that i trust to understand ratio so my apologies to be dumping this on you all of a sudden but... I think Ratio's technique is so interesting in a way and speaks more about him than people give it credit for. Like...creating a fake version of himself that aggros the enemy is already very meta of how hsr fandom tends to see him, esp with the number of people that started hating him after that "betrayal" scene in 2.1 xD And it makes me wonder about his voiceline where he says something like "im fine with showing my true self if it helps me teach students/cures patients but i find that doing so is counterproductive most of the time"...wdym "true self" sir...and why are your character details completely devoid of any details from your own pov...and why do you get so evasive when anyone tries to ask about your past (going by that one interview when someone asked him what he was like as a child and he's just like "what a silly question, i was a normal boy")...it seems to me the princess is hiding something...

Thank you for your ask OP! It's really interesting to think about your question, and I'm humbled by your trust! I hope whatever I cook can satisfy you in some way. It's going to be a bit long!!

Let's start by saying I do operate under the belief that we know a lot about Dr Ratio and at the same time we only know what he wants us to know, which I find incredibly interesting to his character.

It can go many different ways. A lot of people use this mysteriousness to hint at the following:

1. something sinister (I am not necessarily saying you are doing this)

2. suggesting that he is more than who he is, like he may be more than who he presents to be (may or may not be evil in alignment but just more)

3. he really just thinks divulging further personal information about him is pointless and he values his privacy as an individual rather than a prominent figure

Let me now unpack the most wrongest [sic] take, number 1, which I find to be antithetical to his character, because Dr Ratio has always been aligned with doing good. He isn't your typical good person, but he is morally pushing for good (eradication of ignorance, people finding and reaching their potential etc), and he rather he reminds me of a very stern but nonetheless kind educator who genuinely demands good be brought into the world through one's aptitude and ability (just like himself) and not relying on others to solve problems for you

Number 2 is a little tricky, since we cannot really confirm nor deny that Ratio is no longer truly following Nous after he realizes he will never be acknowledged, he may be aligned to another Aeon or none entirely! I personally dislike the Mythus/Fictionologist take, because again it is antithetical to who he is as a character. Fictionologists will rewrite history and twists facts in order to create the possibility of uncovering more, but this is akin to something called accelerationism, which is in plain words to incite chaos (bad) in the slim chances that from the chaos a great good might emerge/ be produced/discovered etc, a practice and ideology I feel Dr Ratio as he is characterized now would be extremely against. Now I do subscribe to the fact that Dr Ratio may not be following an Aeon at all or we aren't privy to who they are yet, but this is a possibility that there is a facet to Dr Ratio we have not seen yet and will down the line so...

Number 3 is where I am at now, I really, genuinely think Dr Ratio just thinks of himself as some guy who was gifted with the equivalent of 8 genius brains but it isn't anything exceptional. From how he acts, he feels like some guy who had a rather normal childhood (if not really lonely, which I talk about in my twitter thread here) and grew up to be exceptional except in all the ways he wanted/was taught to want/thought he might want.

So I operate on several headcanons about Ratio just genuinely being so smart in a planet that is presumably the remnants of the civilization in the Laurel Wreath Galaxy where a Philosopher King/Philosopher Union was mentioned. This headcanon is heavily colored by this excellent theory a fellow fan made and I have to admit I can scarcely distinguish between mine and theirs while I turn him around in my brain so do give them/their thread a read too when you can, but I do also subscribe to how Ratio must have been exceptional in a civilization that prizes scholarship and enlightenment.

Knowing this, I presume he grew up with a lot of expectations placed upon him, particularly that of gaining the gaze or glance of Nous and ascending as a genius society member or more! That is a lot to place on an individual, especially someone like Ratio who is very much hinted to have grown up very fast due to his vast knowledge and while it's a stretch to say he was forced into growing up fast, because he def wasn't, he was nevertheless seemingly not really given much opportunities to be a child, as the push for him to start university very early could suggest that his aptitude and potential were so valued that it overridden any other needs he may have. If we wanted to ask about his childhood, he would have very dull things to say too, so to speak. I imagine it wasn't eventful at all, but filled with just studies.

Where am I going with this about his statues? They are called Mold of Idolatry! Idolatry meaning the extreme adoration or love of someone. That Dr Ratio makes the statues of himself never seems like the narcissistic sort, that would imply he holds himself in an extremely high regard to the detriment of others, but Dr Ratio isn't narcissistic, he would be a vastly different character if he was. The key to narcissism is that there is a great need, to the point of detriment, for admiration.

Now, look over to how Dr Ratio presents himself to us in his 1.6 quests. He wears his plaster head as not to be recognized by others, to remain incognito if you will, and is content to sit at the sidelines nudging things along in the background rather than swoop in and take the credit as the hero when Duke Inferno was trying to wreak havoc on the Space Station. His heroic deeds are never realized by the people he saved from being spaced, that is not an action of a narcissistic man who would gloat about saving other people. No, he sees his job is done and he walks away without fanfare, without even so much as seeking a thank you from the people he saved. That's one of the clearest and most well-thought of character introductions/demonstrations in the game and a solid proof that he isn't a narcissist (again self-centeredness is different!)

With that in mind, what does the statue imply?

Dr Ratio operates by redirecting attention not to himself so he can freely move in the background. That it looks like him in funny poses speaks to a silliness I feel he never really gets a chance to let loose too often, so his "art" is his outlet. That it directs enemies to attack that instead of him, I can't help but feel like there's a sense of "look at this 'image of me' others have built up, pour your love/expectations/wants/aspirations (and the extreme opposite of that maybe?) to that likeness of me instead, and let me be free from that to be who I could be without all of that baggage"

tl;dr -- it's not that deep but it is?? I feel like Ratio just wants to be left alone to do his thing and that's what the Mold of Idolatry represents.

I hope that satisfies you, anon! Thank you for your question, since I do have more insights to Dr Ratio now. I think I'll also find a way to condense this into a Twitter thread sometime.

[mxtantrights]

no ordinary human

a/n: okay so after this, will be a final part. I didn't have any idea y'all would like it this much but thank you so much for the notes and the comments! fair warning since it's gonna end soon, buckle up because I wanna give you some angst. I hope you enjoy!

The wind feels good against your skin. You hadn't been able to just sit down and relax for a while now. And by a while you mean three years. That's how long you've been here for.

Three years of living in another place and longing for home.

Three years of several unanswered questions.

You lean your head back and close your eyes, holding your arms out. Work had been busy these past few weeks. And you haven't taken any time for yourself in between that and trying your best to understand your place here.

You don't notice that someone is behind you until they finally speak up.

"I hope you don't think you can fly."

You don't jump at the sound of another voice though. No, because you're technically still living in a nightmare. Not a lot can scare you anymore.

You turn around and find the source of the voice.

"Amren, I don't think I can fly." you answer.

"Good, because I have a question for you."

"Go ahead."

"Which one will you choose?" she asks.

You clear your throat. You know exactly what she's talking about. Or, you know who she's talking about. You've had this dilemma for more than a year now.

-

When Eris visited you for the second time, it was a few months after he first met you. He apologized and told you that he was trying his best to help you. You took it at face value and accepted it.

But you didn't, well you couldn't, forget that feeling deep inside of you. That he was lying but you still trusted him. Even though you didn't know him.

It's not until the third visit that you inquire a bit more about him. He seemed surprise that someone would ask about him. That someone would have questions for him.

He seemed to answer truthfully and politely. And he even ask your some questions of his own. Not that many, and they were merely basic ones.

But after that third visit he seemed to visit more often. Even if it was a quick drop in to ask how you were doing. He showed up almost every Seven days to see you. Even though he had not progress on getting you back home.

The two of you fell into a routine. Sometimes he'd bring little trinkets. Other times he'd teach you something about the current world you're living in.

It was something delicate between the two of you. You'd be a bit mad to say that you didn't find him attractive when you first met him. But that feeling only grew the more you spent time with him. He was infectious.

Sometimes he would smile and you would think that he never done it before. That he's not used to it, but he does so indoor presence which makes you feel special.

-

"Well, who says I even have to make a choice? Maybe none of them think of me that way. After all I'm just an ordinary human." you say.

Amren scoffs, "No you're not an ordinary human. And these aren't normal circumstances."

"Even if I agreed with you, for a moment, they were my friends first. I wouldn't want to ruin that."

"Azriel liked you from the moment he saw you, he just didn't want to say anything."

That stuns you. Amren takes in the look on your face and you try your best to reign it in. But you can't and she can't help but to laugh at you.

"Oh between the little things he does and how he speaks to you, you didn't put it together?" she asks you.

-

For three years Azriel has been a sort of unspoken calm in your world. From the moment you met him and he helped to get you out of Beron's hold. Of course you didn't trust him, or any of them, for the first four months.

But at some point you did. And it wasn't because of some nice gesture or fancy gift, though they did all try those routes. Azriel was the only one to realize what you needed without asking. Space.

It wasn't until one night you woke up from the worst nightmare you ever had since arriving in their world, that he denied you your space. You were clawing at your skin and screaming in your sleep.

He had jumped in, waited for you to wake up and calmed you down from there. You never had a nightmare after that.

Azriel worked his way into your life unconsciously. Whenever Amren couldn't train you, he would. And he wouldn't hold back either. No matter how many times you told him that you were still human.

Somewhere along the lines you became friends. He'd hangout with you once or twice a week, work schedule permitting. And he would invite you to family dinners sometimes.

When you decided to move out and get a place on your own he was the first one to support you and help you find a place. He helped you move and even offered to stay a couple of nights with you if you wanted another soul in the house to talk to.

He visited the most out of everyone. Always dropping by, always around to talk.

Azriel and you didn't get too deep. You didn't have to, really. It was like the two of you understood each other. The gaps of silence between the two of you were never awkward, they were welcomed.

-

"Why wouldn't you tell me this before?!" you ask incredulously.

Amren rolls her eyes, "You're not a child. Neither are they. And anyways there are other circumstances that you don't know about."

"What other circumstances are there? "

Amren sighs.

"I really think you should talk to the two of them about this." she answers.

"You brought it up!" you say.

"I know, because it was pestering me. But now I realized I opened a box that wasn't mine." she replies.

"Are they here?" you ask.

She nods her head, "Yes. In the ballroom talking to each other. Which is a sight in itself."

You clear your throat, trying to muster the courage needed for what is bound to come next. And you walk out of the terrace. You bid Amren a goodbye as you step inside.

Almost as if they're waiting for you, the both of them stand by the front door. They turn to face you when you enter the room. You try to not let the nerves over take you as you walk over to them.

Once you're in their vicinity, you speak. Or you're going to, but they both beat you to it.

"We need to speak to you." they say a the same time.

Eris opens the front door and beckons your forward. You say nothing as you walk through the door. As you walk and walk down the long hallway to your old room, you can hear their footsteps behind you.

It takes a few more moments before all three of you are in a room. You take a seat on the bed and look at the both of them before you. The both of them look like they are trying to figure out who is going to speak first.

The shadowinger crosses his arms over his chest.

"I do have to confess something to you." Azriel says.

Your eyes go wide. You wonder if he was okay with just confessing his feelings in front of Eris. Surely he knows that you and Eris are tiptoeing a not so friendly line too.

"The reason why I come around more than the others, it's because your'e different. I haven't met anyone like you and the feelings I have for you are not what I'm used to." he continues.

You nod along, "You have feelings for me?"

"Yes. That's what I'm saying." he agrees.

Your eyes flutter over to Eris, who doesn't look shocked at all. You're a bit confused.

"And you?" you ask him.

He smirks, "I have feelings for you too. A bit different than what he feels, some might say stronger-"

Azriel nudges Eris. The red head lets out a breath.

"But I haven't been forthcoming to you, since we've met." he says.

"about your feelings?" you ask.

"We didn't meet for the first time in this room. We met earlier, when you first got here." Eris answers your question.

You stand from your seat.

"You met me when I got taken?"

"No, after. When you ended up in the autumn court. I took you in." Eris confesses.

"No you didn't, I would remember-" you cut yourself off.

You remember having that conversation with him a while ago. How he has certain powers. Mind tricks. All certain things he can do to person's mind. Especially to a human mind, untrained and fragile.

"You knew your father had me and you did nothing?" you whisper, mostly to yourself.

Eris steps forward but you hold out your hand. The flash of hurt that crosses his face is palpable. You don't like seeing him hurt but after hearing what he just said, and all that comes with it, you can't find it in yourself to stop it.

"I couldn't go against him, I told you that I have plans to remove him." he tries to explain.

You nod sourly, "And why let a silly human girl get in the way of those plans."

"I don't think that." Eris tries to correct you.

But you can't get another question out of your head. You look at Azriel and he's looking at your already. Face stoic. No emotion behind his eyes. He just confessed to having feelings for you but he looks so different right now.

"You knew." you say to him.

He nods once, "I did."

"And you said nothing."

"It wasn't my place-" he starts.

"Oh my god! I can't believe this, I just fell for it. I actually fell for two people who lied to my face every single day. Since I landed here I've been a pawn and I still am."

"You're not-" Eris starts.

"I am! I still am. Why did you even tell me any of this tonight?" you ask out of breath.

Eris looks over at Azriel. The shadowsinger uncrosses his arms from his chest. They both look at you then.

"We think there is a way to send you home."

[lintwriting]

How to Write Intelligence Characters (Like Wei Wuxian!)

Wei Wuxian has a really bad memory, but he is also smart enough to realize this and then use it to insult people as a joke—WITH plausible deniability to shield him from any potential consequences.

This interplay between extreme intelligence, comical brain farts, and layered social interaction is what makes MDZS so fun to read because it creates a real complexity to both him and his environment. There are multiple layers going on in this scene, with in-jokes and social factions and miscommunications, as there is in reality. And it’s a tangible demonstration of his intelligence, that he’s able to think of this deception in the first place and so casually.

But also it make the story less monotonous by having this complexity. 3 layers.

There the first layer.

“Extremely intelligent character” Like gadget inventor characters or nerdy hackers. Their hyper intelligence is useful for plot reasons, and highly competent characters are likable. And this is not bad for a side character.

It can go too far, however, such as in the case with BBC Sherlock, when the author makes the character so hyper intelligent he becomes an unbelievable god character and wraps back around to being dislikable again. Like the author’s personal pet character who can do no wrong with the excuse of his intelligence allowing him to do anything, leading to extreme annoyance whenever he’s on screen, which is all the time bc he the main character (is that just me?) lol

Then there’s the second layer to break up the monotony of intelligence.

Wei Wuxian has shit memory. Like laughably shit memory. Much like how video games create perks that also give you cons in specific ways to make your decision to use it more satisfyingly personal, like choosing to wear shitty armor that looks pretty because you value style over function, Wei Wuxian’s extreme intelligence is often undercut by scenes of extreme brain farts.

Whether it be an almost painful level of obliviousness or an extreme failed memory check, Wei Wuxian gains a flaw that not only makes him human and therefore relatable, but also unique in the pantheon of genius characters out there because he’s a genius in THIS SPECIFIC NICHE (trademarked).

This nuance/uniqueness/realness, thus, will allow his character to say more about the real world than mr god intelligence BBC Sherlock.

For the most obvious one, he’s a persuasive essay on why intelligence is not predicated on good memory, which maps well onto his larger character trait of being a intelligent slacker in school (of which the number one complaint is that it is immaterial to actual learning and only really tests memory).

What does BBC Sherlock say, beyond the idea that a god has no need for human rules? That IS a message, but a hypothetical one, as most people will never get to that level of comical intelligence for it to be relevant. Well, I guess assholes (who are less smart than they think) use characters like him as excuses to be dicks, so there's that, but I think that's proof of how legitimately unrealistic he is. He's the power fantasy of teen boys and maladjusted adults, like Rick Rick and Morty.

The third layer is him remembering that he has shit memory and using it to his advantage.

THIS is the part that gets to me THE MOST about his character and arguably the part where MXTX proved (to me) that she’s a better writer than BBC Sherlock writing staff, especially when it come to OP or intelligent characters.

There’s an ELEVATION that happens on this third layer. This is where your character goes from a smart character to a smart person to an ABSOLUTE GOAT. This is the hype that the BBC Sherlock crew wanted when doing a smart god character but absolutely failed to nail deadass, Jesus-style.

Cheatcodes to Writing Intelligence

For one, it’s putting her money where her mouth is. BBC Sherlock creates hyper intelligence by bending the plot to Sherlock's will, like one of those Twitter fake "oracle" accounts that make predictions and then retroactively delete the wrong ones to make them look psychic.

It's not true prediction, and neither is Sherlock solving a mystery unsolvable to the audience because the writer can cheat and handwave his logic — THE VERY THING BEING SHOWCASED — by just showing Sherlock being right all the time about random things we couldn't know ourselves.

(And in Sherlock, this is mostly downplayed because the mystery is less important than the character drama (send prayers for Johnlock), but it goes from a subversion to a Game Of Thrones subversion (derogatory) when the show starts failing at the character drama too, making his stupid caricature of intelligence insulting instead of an interesting exploration of a hypothetical god trying to grow up human, Jesus-style.)

Wei Wuxian also has this hand-wave-y aspect to his intelligence. We're told and shown he's a genius inventor through the cheat code of the world's magic system. Magic without rules is famously hard to write well because any story's conflict can be solved with "well a wizard came and saved the day through GOD-like abilities" if the author is too lazy to write a satisfying conclusion.

Wei Wuxian is the inventor of Necromancy, and while yes this is sort of explained through a scene where he's arguing against the establishment to his cultivation teacher, the logic of it is very simple. "What if we reversed energy? (simplification of what he actually said)," the reality of his genius invention of necromancy is just that it's the author saying "well Wei Wuxian did it through his GOD-LIKE intelligence."

What we really get out of this is that his COUNTERCULTURAL HERESY (Galileo-Style) is revolutionary. Not so much his logic being revolutionary when the concept is THIS simple (haha reverse evil suppressing wards to get an evil attracting ward go brrr). But the story handwaves this away with just making other characters utter trash at necromancy, cheating at making him seem like a genius in comparison (simplified for scope, there's more to this).

IF that were all there was to him, he'd only be a 2 layer AT MOST. Instead, we have this third layer, where he directly reacts to information the reader has received in witty ways. (This also makes him self reacting, which is what makes us human)

The Structure of Setting Up Intelligence

Part of what makes mysteries so satisfying is that the reader is rewarded for paying attention/engagement. If they notice a clue that becomes a part of the detective's explanation later on, it's like a puzzle falling into place, where you feel like a special big boy for noticing. And if the detective manages to solve it where you didn't despite having all these clues, YOU become the dumb shitty necromancer jobber who makes Wei Wuxian look good in comparison. Metaphorically.

Similarly, we have all the clues. Wei Wuxian is smart and resourceful. Wei Wuxian forgets a lot of things. Wei Wuxian gets told he's forgotten a lot of things. What's the next logical step? Wei Wuxian smartly uses his forgetfulness as a resource!

2. At the beginning of the book, he accidentally snubs a side character by responding "I don't even know who you are" (simplified for scope's sake). At the time, he genuinely is fumbling here, messing up his social standing because of an actual brain fart, but in a way that's hilarious and better-than-you, so we think nothing of it... until he learns from this mistake right in front of our eyes!

Because later on, he REPEATS this line to the SAME character to legitimately snub them when they were making accusations of him personally attacking them. Not only is this an infuriating snub done on purpose this time, but it's a lie—Wei Wuxian remembered this asshole after the many many dumb dramas with them.

3. But it's a useful lie because it demonstrates a truth—WEI WUXIAN DIDN'T ATTACK THEM. Wei Wuxian would have motive to attack them hypothetically (read: dumb dramas), but the reality is that he doesn't care about them enough to do so, for all intents and purposes making them "forgotten" to Wei Wuxian. Best of all, people believed him because HE'S DONE THIS EXACT THING BEFORE. The plot is repeating, but nothing feels the same. LAYERS absolutely destroying MONOTONY.

3. On top of that, it's a reaction to himself. He's demonstrating both metacognition and self-awareness, here, which is something actively studied in psychology as a phenomenon humans have that other animals might not, a la Dunning Kruger and the mirror test, respectively. What's more human than cringing at your un-self-awareness and learning from it?

And the best part is that we were on every step of this journey. It feels like such an obvious move to make now, like duh you can use your forgetfulness as a form of weaponized incompetence—guys do it all the time (derogatory). Wei Wuxian even does this in a cute way with his sister when he does Sajiao/aegyo at her to get her attention (affectionate).

4. But it truly hits different seeing him do it in such a specifically crafted story, structured like a mystery or a joke where the logic or punchline is him pretending to have bad memory, and I personally would never have thought of doing this on the spot like he did. This is some post-argument hindsight shower thought shit. Genius power fantasy done well.

Shit like this is STORYTELLING and STORY CRAFTING. The repetition of the scene to make his second snub more potent. THIS IS THE POWER OF SET UP AND PAYOFF. A unique usage of the adage of how a character's greatest strength is their greatest weakness, like someone's determination making them bull-headed and stubborn. Except in reverse, necromancy style, where a fatal flaw (his memory) becomes a great strength (plausible deniability). A simple example of how characterization is about specific traits in unique ways to SHOW us his personality better than the author just telling you he's smart ever could, like in BBC Sherlock. THE POWER OF SHOWING NOT TELLING. The interplay of the contradictions within his intelligence as a way to show that he's "real" and not a god. THE POWER OF DEPTH.

All this while he is quite literally the god of his story (Jesus-style).

That's right! Time for pointing out the idolization and mythologizing of Galileo!

Now I don't know if this is true because fact checking in Chinese fandoms is a nightmare when 1. your chinese is barely fluent and 2. most chinese socmed platforms require a chinese phone number to sign up. 3. these two facts leads to a lot of fandom telephone. But I remember someone quoting MXTX on the idea that Wei Wuxian and his love interest are supposed to be the moral paragons of this story (despite the way Wei Wuxian has been demonized *haha get it? demonic cultivation. his ghost cultivation got called demonic cultivation in the most on the nose misnomer in history*). This is probably not a true quote, but it's emblematic of how it feels to be reading this story.

For one, Wei Wuxian is quite literally the moral paragon. He's one of like 3 people actively against a genocide (other than its victims). A genocide that characters within the positions of power go along with for what boils down to personal convenience's sake (ALL EYES ON RAFAH). He's one of the few characters to truly master resentment AKA ENVY (aka WEI "No Envies" WUXIAN) in a story where basically all the bad stuff happens due to envy (funnily enough the actual evil villain of the story is probably the only opp who wasn't actually jealous of him, despite arguably being the one who not only was the most envious of the whole series and the one whose envy would make sense, being narrative foils with Wei Wuxian and all). You'd never see Wei Wuxian wishing evil upon someone out of jealousy (he quite literally sacrifices himself to save his "unrequited" "crush's" "crush").

For two, this world is set in ancient times, where killing was still wrong but also simultaneously seen as honorable, like with Odysseus killing his wife's suitors in revenge being seen as honorable, DESPITE him hating it when the cyclops killed HIS crew in revenge for sheep lol. Wei Wuxian has slaughtered many people, but often in circumstances that soften the immorality of it, like the insanity defense or self defense or "this is war in ancient china" or stopping a genocide. And he acknowledges that these wrongs were still wrongs and does good in the world/changes as a person to atone.

For three, he's god damned OP. In a magic system where enlightenment is directly tied to magical ability, Wei Wuxian is one of the most powerful magic users in their world. Top of his generation, beat out only by his love interest, kinda. Morality is tied to cultivation, which is why it's called the "righteous" sects.

But it gets better, because those sects are not actually righteous. The vast majority are hypocrites or worse, and their work mostly involves killing things for "mundane" people, who treat them like nobility for doing so (depth in contradiction). The implication is sorta kinda that Wei Wuxian so powerful BECAUSE Wei Wuxian is one of the few to actually be righteous and not just self-righteous.

Thus, him being the inventor, the only non-noble, and only user of ghost path cultivation, the reverse of cultivation, thus serves to highlight his moral integrity in comparison, even when being called a heretic (depth in contradiction).

(And while people argue that his cultivation ITSELF is evil, causing the souls of the dead to be unable to reincarnate, I'd argue that that reading is a misread that gets distracted by thinking "demonic" and "ghost" cultivation are the same thanks to his title as the grandmaster of DEMONIC cultivation, when they're not the same (again, misnomer). In reality, he's the only successful user of the ghost path, which is about EMPATHY (Wei Wuxian's most signature magical ability after his flute playing skills) for the dead, playing into their resentment to help them pass, like he said in the very scene where he defies the establishment of his school and initially defines his path. The shitty jobber demonic cultivators are going evil and shit because it's actually pretty hard to put yourself in people's worst desires and hurts (wwx still went insane lol), much less if you yourself are controlled by resentment like Xue Yang or Su She was, who both technically "empathize" in that they're about as resentful as ACTUAL ghosts LMAO.)

Anyways, all this to say that the entire story is structured around hiding the fact that Wei Wuxian is the bestest guy ever embroiled in a huge mystery, who gets slandered and killed by his opps for standing up against powerful oppressors before coming back to life and clearing his name... (jesus-style). A lot of the book is him morality mogging or witty mogging randos, many of whom are cartoonishly evil or rude. Dare I say it? Yes. Like BBC Sherlock.

BOOM. Gallileo becomes the myth.

BBC SHERLOCK 🤝WEI WUXIAN

Whew, I finally brought it back around to my original point.

THIS is why Wei Wuxian is everything BBC Sherlock writers wished they were doing. Because in spite of all their similarities (seriously? both of them have a death period where their lover (rip johnlock) is mourning them before coming back to life??) BBC Sherlock's nowadays gets mercilessly mocked for being a Mary Sue and his fanfic community is dead, meanwhile Wei Wuxian is so beloved by his readers that MDZS fanfic literally has had such a huge impact it got Ao3 banned in China and then added a maximum to tags on Ao3 PERIOD. King shit.

And despite what this post seems, it's not a disparagement of BBC Sherlock as a character. I loved him, I loved the idea of exploring this demigod. Superwho-manly intelligent, but in ways that make it hard for him to function in the human world (until John). His struggles with ostracism, "weird" interests, sensory issues, etc. are alarmingly human and a great allegory for neurodivergence (while not being one of those cringe "autism savant" tropes bc he isn't literally autistic). Sherlock fic popped off for a reason, it's just that the writing of the show didn't do the legwork work that MDZS did to support his character as a god, instead it mostly did shit like "oh it's okay I'm a pretentious asshole because I'm a genius and always magically right, even when I'm wrong, because I'm god." Like if Rick Rick and Morty wasn't self-aware... T_T

That's why this post is me compiling the ways Wei Wuxian's character was crafted to be intelligent. It's not bad to have power fantasy OP characters, but it's hard to do them as well as him. It's not just the clever deceptions or witty usage of words with multiple meanings or the self-awareness and learning, or giving the intelligence flaws to make it more believable. Sherlock had all these and more.

It's the combination of it all, usually in the order of "telling" they're intelligent through abstract things like other characters saying he's really good at detectivework and them magically solving cases, then complicating that intelligence through some kind of flaw, then "showing" him overcoming that complication using concrete examples of intelligence, such as self-awareness, witty double entendres/callbacks, contradictorily using weakness or appearing weak for specific gains, and reframing the given 'clues' in a new light with the help of red herrings. This is like a steelman persuasive essay format, but with proving that someone is smart. Thesis, counter, rebuttal with quantitative evidence. There's like a mini arc build up to a mini climax/climactic moment that makes it satisfying.

The set up and payoffs are key here, as a lot of these just require a bit of legwork before the payoff, such as Wei Wuxian repeating the same line he used as a mistake into one he does on purpose or find a scenario where forgetfulness is actually helpful in deceptions or whatever the chosen scenario is. Much easier to begin with the end in mind in and then retroactively write the beginning to match, instead of creating an impossible mystery, after all. 😭😭 Best part is that I didn’t even compare the mystery writing of MDZS to Sherlock’s ass mysteries, I did it purely on the strength of how its intelligence is utilized for character drama, just as Moffat and his defenders would have wanted.

[allied-mastercunt]

Yandere AM is cruel. But what kinds of yanderes would the main 5 be? Who would be safer to be with? (Plot twist it's neither of them/hj)

i love how since you don't know me well, you assume that the very mild version of yandere AM i showed so far is cruel to you.

The Five as yanderes

Ellen (book leaning)

The emotional type.

Ellen is the only one who kept some of her humanity. She still cares about the others. And she cares about you so, so much... All because you've shown her kindness the others don't show her anymore.

No, to the others, she's scum. She's aware of that. She knows they only really bother to take care of her because she let them all use her body. She's accepted that it was her only real value for the rest of the group. Well, maybe except for Benny, Benny was nice to her most of the time.

But you? You felt bad for how the others treated her. You offered her a shoulder to cry on. You offered to hold her, let everything out. And she missed being loved. She missed being cared for and held.

She becomes addicted to it. To you. She wants all of your attention, all of your affection, all of your love.

She'll scream. She'll cry. She'll beg.

She loves you. She needs you.

And she'll do anything in her power to make sure she gets you.

Gorrister (game and book mixed)

The wifebeater violent type.

There's very little left of what Gorrister used to be. A once passionate man who then lost himself, first to how his life turned out and then to that damn computer. He was now heartless, both literally and figuratively.

And yet, it would seem a certain kind of passion was... re-awakened in Gorrister. All because of your sweet self.

You tried so hard to reach inside him again. To try and find the man he once was. You could say you succeded, in a way. A very hurtful way, sadly.

Gorrister was now an angry man with an unhealthy attachment to you. He wanted you all to himself, no matter what he'd have to do to keep the small spark of light in his life.

And if beating you was the only way to get you to work with him? That's what he's gonna do, darling.

Ted (book and game mixed)

The manipulative type.

Ted is an expert at lying and manipulating people for his advantage. Especially now. He's a charmer, really! And you're just so easy for him, so nice, so sweet... He loves it.

He manages to wrap you around his little finger. He'll convince you that he's your knight in shining armor, that he's your only real friend, that you can depend on him, that he'll protect you...

He's your only friend around there, really! The only person you can really trust!

He's possessive and has a tendency to objectify his partners. Especially women. His mind was a truly dark place now, seeing as he barely respected anyone at this rate. You have to listen through his rants about how all the others are affected by AM and how he's the only sane one. He'll insult everyone, you included.

And then he'll gaslight you into thinking he's right and that you're slowly losing your mind because of AM. He's your only true beacon of hope, your only link to sanity.

And you'll do everything for him, won't you?

Benny

The worshiping type.

Poor Benny doesn't really understand love anymore, due to all the damage AM caused to his brain. But he understands all the kindness you've shown him. He knows you were the one who comforted him through all the pain caused by that damn machine.

Especially since you'd try to chase after him and help save him from more pain. You did your best for him, and he took your kindness when he could, his brain warping it into a worship-like obsession.

It starts off innocent. If he managed to find something "nice", he'd bring it to you. He would follow you, seek you out, do anything for your attention to be on him exclusively, even if he had to pull you away from the others and hold you down to cuddle him.

And he's very physically strong. He's not letting go, you're the most important person in his life, after all. The others need to learn that, too. Or he'll use those teeth AM gave him to rip their guts out.

But hey, their hearts would be a great offering for you.

To show just how great his love to you is.

Nimdok

The twó-faced type.

He's an old man who barely remembers anything about his past. You naturally want to help him, don't you? Of course you do, you're such a kind person...

But the truth is, even without his memory, you can never take the cruelty out of a monster. And he worked with doctor Mengele himself, he may not be as bad as the Angel of Death himself, but he's definitely no saint.

For you, though, he's just a poor old man that AM torments alongside the others. But the others...?

Well, he might not remember what he did, but he sure remembers how to be a scary motherfucker and how to form his incredibly detailed, whispered threats to make them all leave you alone. And of course, he will make those threats come true if needed.

You have no clue, of course. You think he's a sweet old man, the only one who's actually nice to you, unlike the others who push you away.

And the others... they get to see his true colors.

[heartshapedmisery]

CHILDISH BEHAVIORS

The last practice and argument that led to your final day with the Ferguson International Tennis Academy.

warnings ― .ﾟ‪‪ ˖ language, heavy arguing, nothing else really idk this is kinda just background stuff lol

taglist ― .ﾟ‪‪ ˖ @elaci @depressedgothgrl

author's note ― .ﾟ‪‪ ˖ hope you guys enjoy! I promise the reader isn't an asshole she just has a very fiery personality lol. also i don't know if made this clear or not, but this series takes place after the events of challengers and art and tashi are divorced! (i love my girl but it just wouldn't make sense for this for them to still be married.) lmk what you guys think! :)

PROLOGUE, LUCK OF CHAMPIONS | Art Donaldson x fem!reader, Challengers (2024)

New Rochelle, New York. 2019.

When it came to your life outside of tennis (which truly held very little validity in your mind), you never considered yourself to be an aggressive person. And you would attest that others would agree, and they would, but the second you got a racket in your hand and you stepped out into that box, it was almost as if you were a completely different person.

You don't intend to be hard-putting, but you simply have always been that way. Tennis dominated your entire life; ever since you were a kid, you had no desire to pursue anything that didn't involve hitting a ball with a racket. Somehow, this fueled your need to be competitive. To win every game, because in your mind, if you didn't, it held no value.

Though it was a toxic way of thinking, it kept you on your toes. It pushed you even harder to become the best, and eventually after strenuous time and effort, you did.

But your desire to be superior seemed to overtake your love for the game, which alarmed your peers and coaches. It was unhealthy.

"No one can devote their entire being to this sport and still remain human," you had been told, but it all seemed circumstantial. You wanted to be great, and you knew you could be great. But how could you get that without pure dedication to your craft?

You can't.

"Slam that damn racket again and you're out of here!"

You could feel the blood pumping through your ears as your heart felt like it was going to beat out of your chest, your fingers white-knuckling your racket.

Coach Ferguson, the man you had trained with for the past year, stood irritated with his arms crossed over his chest, shaking his head at you. Even through the darkness of his Ray Bans, you could see the piercing, disappointed look you had become all too familiar with.

"Would you rather me chuck it at him?" you pointed it in the direction of the trainee you had been practicing with. "Because that's what he deserves for the way he keeps serving me a weak ball. I keep having to scramble for the damned thing."

The young trainee stood sheepishly, taking the ridicule from you without a word. You practically spit the words at him, heat rising in your chest just as the reminiscence of it.

"Watch your tone when you're talking to me," Ferguson barked and pointed a taunting finger at you. "You're here because of your talent, not because I enjoy the pleasure of your company. You would've been gone a long time ago if you were."

You hated to sound egotistical, but you were by far his best player. His words didn't scare you. At least, they didn't yet.

"Oh, boo hoo, like that's going to hurt my feelings," your tone was laced with sarcasm. "Just let me get back to this, will you? I promise all of your precious rackets will be safe."

You dismissed him as if he wasn't the one who wrote your checks every month. It almost made him laugh.

"My office. Now." he told you sharply before turning on his heel and leaving, waving off the trainee to go collect the tennis balls you had been hitting and taking them back to the locker rooms.

You contemplated if you wanted to ignore him or obey his orders, before doing the latter and following him down the path to the main building.

The cool AC hit your face refreshingly as you walked through the lobby, your eyes leisurely watching the TV that was playing old rerun matches behind the front desk.

Donaldson v. Richards. 2012.

The match undoubtedly intrigued you; your appeal was centered toward Donaldson, mesmerized by his powerful backhand and effective open stance. He glided across the court with ease, scoring points left and right with a demeanor that almost came off as bored.

You only allowed the game to hold your attention for a moment before you followed Ferguson into his office like a troubled delinquent making your way into the principal's office. In a sense, the situations weren't all that different. You still slumped down in the chair across from his desk with a sour look on your mouth while he gave you a disapproving look.

"(L/N), I hate to do this to you, but this," he gestured to your uninterested and bitter attitude, "Isn't working anymore."

You weren't sure what to say. You had expected him to rip you a new one, not talk to you as if he were about to kick you to the curb. Was that what he was doing?

"i don't understand," you said simply, an uneasy feeling stirring in your chest.

"You haven't won a match in over a month, your temper is out of control, and you're ripping people's heads off left and right. It's not healthy and I don't think this is the right place for you right now."

The words flowed from his mouth so easily, almost as if he had been itching to say it to you for a while now. It was what you needed to hear, but you just didn't want to listen.

"What? You're seriously not kicking you out, are you?" you snapped, standing from your chair.

"I'm not kicking you out. I'm asking you to take a break. This isn't goodbye forever, just for a little bit. Take a year off, get yourself back in order, and then we can renegotiate a new contract for you."

Your stomach dropped farther the more he spoke, an overwhelming feeling of embarrassment washing over your senses. Yeah, you could be a little over the top sometimes, but you never thought you would be asked to leave.

"You can't do this," you tried, but Coach Ferguson simply shook his head.

"Remind me, who's name is on the sign out front?" he asked rhetorically. "I can, and I will. This is what's best for you right now, even if you don't agree with me."

Tears threatened to fall from your eyes, but you didn't let them. The last thing you needed was to be crying like a baby and look even more unstable than he already thought you were.

"The US Open is right around the corner, if I stop training now I won't be able to qualify in August."

He gave you a helpless shrug. "You should've thought about that before you started losing all these matches. As of right now, you're right at the cutoff for qualifying. If you were to try for it now, you'd have to work twice as hard to earn your spot―which I don't think you're capable of doing."

His words felt like a knife to the heart. He used to tell you he would always believe in you, that he'd always be there for you when you needed him.

So much for keeping his word.

"That's bullshit and you know it," you snapped.

"You're not making this very easy for me."

"Good, because you shouldn't even be doing it in the first place!"

He simply shook his head, resisting the urge to bark back a snide response. "Get out. Right now. You're being childish. I'm not going to sit here and argue with you."

He pointed to the door, unable to meet your eye as you scoffed in his face. You couldn't believe him.

"This is all I can do for you right now. Either take my offer or leave."

You didn't want to give in to him. You didn't want to give him that satisfaction after he had made you look like a complete fool.

"Fuck this." was all you could muster up, tightening your fist relentlessly as you stormed out of his office and down the hall, not sure where you were headed but you knew it would be far away from here. You felt like a child throwing a tantrum and you hated it because you knew he was right.

You were quick and silent as you cleaned out your locker since it was the only way you could keep yourself from bursting into tears. You felt ashamed; after all of your hard work and dedication to this academy, this was what you got in return. It felt like a kick in the gut, but it was what you needed in order to realize that you were better than all of this.

Deep down, you knew you were capable of making it to the US Open. You were going to prove it. How? You weren't completely sure. You were without a coach and you were all alone, which was something you never thought you would have to admit to yourself.

You needed a plan; Something to tie together the loose ends that had unraveled within the past hour. So, the second you got home to your apartment two blocks from the academy, you scoured the internet for a saving grace.

Phil's Tire Town Wildcard. New Rochelle, New York.

March 17th, 2019.

APPLY NOW!

Bingo.

[celticcrossanon]

Dear Celta, here is the link of the short video: https://x.com/freedom_007__/status/1794425318247481835

It's from X, posted by The British Prince II, who got it from another Xer I think, because he credited Melanated Mona.

Here's the screenshot for reference:

Her speech:

"The message here, we have to salvage our children. You know, we see the way they dress. They keep forgetting that Nigeria, we are beautiful. The moment you can't see what they showcase on the stage, I said we are fortunate we can see what is going on. You know, we are not having the Met Gala. And everyone, their nakedness is just everywhere. And the men are well-clothed. So, we have to do something. Tell them the way it is. We don't accept nakedness in our culture. That is not beautiful. It's not beautiful at all. And they are beautiful girls. But they should be confident in all their... they don't want to be like, even they're mimicking and trying to emulate film stars from America. They don't know where they come from. Why did Meghan come here looking for Africa? That is something we have to take home with. We know who we are, and don't lose who you are. God bless you."

I'm not sure what the context of her speech is but it sounds like she's advising young girls of Nigeria not to dress in nakedness because that's not their culture. I supposed she mentioned Meghan specifically because of how slutty her dressing was during her recent visit to Nigeria. I wonder what Meghan think, listening to this burn direct from the First Lady of Nigeria.

Hi AranPandora,

Thank you for sending the video in and providing a transcript.

I agree 100% with the First Lady. Young women should be proud of who they are and not try to mimic other cultures and their values.

I think Meghan was very badly behaved in coming to the country as a guest and then deliberately flouting the country's standards of decent dress. She deserves to be called out for it. imo.

I think this has been taken up by the mainstream media and I hope it has. The First Lady's message is something that we need to hear today.