#but once you look at a random stranger or a fandom and are like yeah THEY have to know about my PCs? main character syndrome behavior.

[utilitycaster]

I've been accused of arrogance many a time and yeah, there's some truth to that, but I am the image of humility compared to people who put their random D&D PCs in actual play main tags or as reblogs/replies to barely related posts.

[moonlinos]

Invisible string (pt. I)

♡ Pairing: Lee Minho × fem!reader / Hwang Hyunjin × fem!reader

♡ Synopsis: With your terrible history of boyfriends during high school, you swore off love and vowed to get through university without a relationship. Things are great: you’re in your junior year, in an uncomplicated arrangement with a friend with benefits, and living in a nice sharehouse with two amazing roommates. But things begin to change once you meet Lee Minho, a student in your new class who vows to change your perspective on love.

♡ Genre: A ‘lite version’ of a soulmate AU, fluff, eventual smut, light angst, pining, jealousy, strangers to friends to lovers, friends with benefits

♡ CW: Swearing, sexual themes and discussions, mentions of anxiety/panic attacks, alcohol consumption, mentions of smoking

♡ Word count: 16.4k

♡ A/N: This is a three-part story because I can’t shut up. The second part will be posted sometime next week, and I’ll link it here. I’ve been writing all my life and have written for maaaany fandoms, but being on Tumblr as an active reader of SKZ fics made me want to write for them. So, yeah, guess this is what I’m doing now.

part II →

You are woken up by Hyunjin shifting beside you on the bed. He groans, arm reaching to mess with your already closed curtains. You chuckle.

“You know, the curtains won’t close any more than that.”

“I keep telling you your bed is in a terrible position,” He grumbles as you turn to face him with a smile. “Who thought placing a bed right under a window would be a good idea? Mornings are fucking hell here.”

You shrug. “Well, it’s not my house so I didn’t exactly have a say in that matter.”

“I told you a million times I could help you move it.”

“And I told you a million times Mrs. Choi doesn’t like for us to mess with her furniture,” You explain, turning under the sheets so you could face him before bringing your fingers up to pinch his cheek. Hyunjin scrunches his nose. “Speaking of which, you need to leave. You know her rule: no—”

“No boyfriends spending more than two days at the house,” He interrupted you with an eye roll. “I’m not your boyfriend, though, so that rule shouldn’t apply.” He shrugs.

Hyunjin has been one of your best friends since you first met over two years ago. It was Hyunjin’s first college party and one of the many times your housemates had dragged you along on a night out. His friends had dared him to try and chat you up, arguing it would be hilarious to see him get turned down by an older girl. What they hadn’t expected, however, was for Hyunjin’s clumsy attempt at flirting to be so endearing to you; his pink cheeks and bowl-cut hair made him look like a helpless kid despite his height towering over you. Before you knew it, you had spent the entirety of the party talking to him about everything and anything, only stopping once your housemate Eunha emerged from inside the house to drag you home with her as she desperately tried to dodge a rather insistent guy’s advances. After that day, you and Hyunjin became almost inseparable.

You can’t quite pinpoint when you began hooking up. It was meaningless in the best sense of the word. It was simply something that had happened. All you can remember is that Jisung had recently bleached Hyunjin’s hair after yet another dare from his friend. It had started with cuddles, which turned to kisses, which turned to touches, until you eventually slept together for the first time sometime last year after an excruciatingly stressful exam period. It had never once gotten weird between the two of you; the line was always clear: you were just friends who hooked up due to convenience. Everybody had needs and stress and shit complicating their lives, and fucking your best friend was far more practical and safe than going out to look for a random hook-up whenever you needed it.

You find yourself smiling at Hyunjin once again. His now long black hair fell in his eyes as he stretched his arms over his head.

“Yes, you’re not my boyfriend, but how am I supposed to explain what we are to a little old lady?”

“Doesn’t she always say she’s super modern?” Hyunjin raises his eyebrows at you with a chuckle. “Maybe she’d like a situationship of her own and you’re depriving her of that by keeping this knowledge to yourself.”

You roll your eyes at his words, attempting to push him off your bed. “Why did you sleep here, anyway?”

Hyunjin sits up on the bed, a pout on his full lips. “I had a shitty date. I was sad and lonely. Glad to know you were paying attention to my story.”

“Hyune,” You sigh, ‘When you tell me said story while fucking me, can I really be blamed for not remembering anything?”

Hyunjin flicks your forehead lightly. “Yes, you can. At this point, it’s like our thing to vent about bad dates during sex,” He argues before getting up from your bed, finding his shirt, which had somehow been thrown over your study desk.

“You mean it’s your thing,” Correcting him, you get up as well, turning to fix up your sheets. “I don’t even go on dates and you know that. The only thing I vent to you about is how awful academic life is.”

Once you turned to face him again, Hyunjin was busy messily tying his hair. His brows promptly furrowed as he took in your words. “Remind me why you literally never leave the house again?”

“Just don’t want to get distracted. Getting my degree is more important than getting a boyfriend.” You lie with a shrug.

Your history with relationships was something you kept secret from everyone you met after high school. You feel embarrassed, as if it was all somehow your fault. After five failed relationships where you had been the one to be broken up with or cheated on, you began to accept that maybe the problem really was you. Maybe something about you makes men want to yell at and cheat on you. Perhaps you are just bound to be a distraction until they find someone better.

Which is why you don’t date.

Would anyone go through the hassle of reading a long, tedious book if they already knew about the bad ending?

Hyunjin rolls his eyes at your answer, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your degree isn’t going to keep you company when you’re eighty and alone.”

“Well, my degree isn’t going to wake up one day and suddenly decide to leave me either,” you refute, earning an annoyed groan from your friend as you walk past him to leave your room.

“You literally never have fun, though. All you do is go to class, work, and study. You should at least pick up a new hobby,” Hyunjin insists as he follows you, walking into the kitchen-living room area. “Go out more, stop avoiding college parties like the plague before it’s too late to experience the joys of watching your friend throw up on some random person’s couch.”

You make a face at the offers, grabbing your mug from the cupboard. “Why would I want to see that? Besides, I have hobbies.”

“I meant a social hobby. Sitting in your room watching fucking iceberg videos isn’t sociable,” He explains, and you let out an aggrieved gasp. Your iceberg videos were educational and entertaining, thank you very much. Behind you, your housemate’s bedroom door opens, and you turn to watch as she stumbles out of her room, looking half-awake. “Soojung, don’t you think she should get a new hobby?” Hyunjin addresses the blonde girl, who stares daggers at him.

“If I say yes, will you two stop speaking so loud?”

Hyunjin slams one hand on the kitchen counter, his other pointing a finger at you. “See, she said yes. You’re outnumbered, now you have to stop spending all your free time holed up inside your room.”

Soojung groans, stepping into the kitchen and shoving Hyunjin to the side. “He’s annoying, but he is kind of right,” she mumbles.

Truthfully, you did feel bad about having essentially wasted three years at university by actively avoiding parties and invitations any chance you got. The only parties you did attend, however, only served as an irritating reminder as to why you shouldn’t put yourself in those situations. Parties and bars only meant desperate college boys. Desperate for sex, for attention, for a potential relationship. For someone’s heart to break. You had met Hyunjin at a party, for fuck’s sake. Who knows just how south things between you two could’ve gone if he had become interested in you romantically?

But, as much as you hate to admit it, Hyunjin is right. Your life is essentially an endless loop of studying and working. You only socialize when your roommates are home, when your few friends come over, and when you and Hyunjin hook up. But you aren’t ready to step out of your comfortable bubble of avoidance, so you settle for the best thing you can think of.

As Hyunjin rummages through your fridge like he lived there and Soojung stirs her coffee blankly, you loudly set your mug down on the counter. “An elective course,” you announce.

The both of them turn to face you with the same puzzled expression.

“The fuck?” Hyunjin questions, and you roll your eyes.

“I’ll take an elective,” you explain matter-of-factly, “The university offers a lot of great courses in things I’m actually interested in. It’ll be a way for me to get out of the house without having to watch a friend of mine puke on a couch or whatever atrocity it is that you said.”

Hyunjin slams the fridge door closed, earning a scolding scream from Soojung, and walks over to where you’re standing. He pulls you into a tight embrace, and you can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “You’re such a fucking nerd, what the fuck, but I’m so glad your hermit life is coming to an end.”

The elective course you choose is Japanese. It’s a language you’ve always been interested in learning, and while you know the class is merely introductory, you figure it will be fun to learn some phrases and expressions. You might even find yourself wanting to learn more in the future, and you’ll undoubtedly be glad you took this class during university.

Even if that means having to endure Hyunjin calling you a weeb.

You are able to begin attending classes a week after signing up; the lessons lining up with your work schedule to a T. The professor explained that, since you had joined the course late, you would likely need some guidance with phrases and words the class had already been taught. You didn’t mind, actually feeling excited in the morning despite your boring routine classes since you knew you would be doing something new you enjoyed in the afternoon instead of simply killing time around your house until it was time for you to work.

You walk into your first class ten minutes late, mentally cursing Eunha for being so good at telling stories about her weirdly entertaining life that it made it physically difficult for you to drag yourself away from her. You mouth a brief apology to your professor before scanning the room and scurrying over to the only available seat. 

You sit down in haste so as to not disrupt the class any further, swinging your bag over your chair and accidentally knocking over your seatmate’s water bottle all over his side of the desk. Luckily, the bottle lands on the soft surface of his notebook, barely making any noise. Unluckily, said bottle had been filled with coffee, staining his notes a faded brown color. You silently gasp, instinctively reaching out your hands to fruitlessly try and dry the pages that are now sticking to each other.

“I am so sorry, what the fuck,” you mutter under your breath as you continue to inspect his notebook frantically. “I’ll buy you a new notebook and another cup of coffee as soon as class ends, I promise,” You whisper to him, your eyes boring holes into the stained pages as you watch the bitter liquid slowly dissolve some of the black ink. At this point, you’re rambling out of nervousness, but you can’t seem to stop, adding, “Hell, I’m so angry at myself for what I did I’d bind you a new notebook and brew you some fresh coffee myself.”

You mentally berate yourself for your word vomit. It was just your luck that you would make someone hate your guts on the first day you attended a class.

After what feels like minutes of silence from him, you are prepared for the imminent burst of rage bound to come your way, the guy’s wrath more than likely stirring inside him as he sits beside you and watches as you foolishly shake the piece of paper, hoping it will miraculously return to its untainted state.

However, what you aren’t prepared for is the small burst of laughter that leaves your seatmate’s lips; it’s quiet, but you’re close enough to him to be able to hear it.

You furrow your brows, finally mustering the courage to look up at him for the first time.

“Did you…” You trail off. You feel a strange sensation inside your chest as your eyes meet his. It was something you had never felt before, a small burst of a fluttering that briskly washed over you before disappearing just as quickly. Like a pinwheel was placed inside of you and a strong wind had suddenly started blowing. You shake your head, returning to the matter at hand. You are probably just experiencing some anxiety due to what has happened, you argue mentally. “Did you just laugh at me?”

As you finally take him in properly, the guy before you looks as dazed as you felt just now, courtesy of your minor panic attack; his lips agape and his round eyes blinking while his dark pupils are fixed on you. You two remain that way for a few seconds in an impromptu staring contest that causes the peculiar feeling to bloom inside your chest once again.

When he finally speaks, his voice is soft. “You… offered to bind a notebook for a stranger,” His lips twitch into a grin. “It was a little funny.”

You open your mouth but promptly close it, unable to come up with an answer that wouldn’t make you appear like more of an idiot than you already do. You sigh. “Sorry,” you mumble, your voice low as well. “I say stupid shit when I’m nervous.”

He waves his hand dismissively. “It’s okay. I’m—”

“You two, on the back,” your professor calls out in a louder voice, however still keeping her calm demeanor. You and your seatmate turn to look at her. “I’m going to teach a few new phrases useful for traveling now. How about you two talk after class? This is actually quite perfect. Minho is one of my best students, so he could help you catch up to where we are.” She offers the two of you a small smile, and you feel your cheeks burn.

This class wasn’t mandatory, and you didn’t need it to get your degree. It is still a class, nonetheless. Ever since high school, you’ve always hated people who disrespect their professors by brazenly talking or sleeping during class.

“I’m sorry, professor,” You muttered. Beside you, your seatmate — Minho, as he was just called — scoots closer to you and whispers something you don’t understand under his breath. You look at him, confused. He chuckles, and you feel his breath on your cheek. It makes the odd fluttering return.

“Gomenasai,” He repeats more clearly, his voice louder, “It’s ‘I’m sorry’ in Japanese.” He offers you a smile, and you soak in just how good-looking he is. Ever since you first raised your head to look at him — when the pinwheel inside your chest rapidly spun and unexplainedly made you feel nervous — you knew he was a handsome guy, but his soft smile and calm eyes made him look even more annoyingly pretty.

Before you’re able to do it yourself, your professor speaks again and pulls you out of your trance.

“In this case, Sumimasen would be a bit more appropriate,” she corrects Minho, who clicks his tongue and mutters something under his breath. The woman chuckles at his reaction. “It’s okay. This is also something you can explain to Y/N after class.”

As the class went on, you couldn’t help but notice how Minho didn’t take any notes. Your mind latched onto how you ruined his notebook and how it was your fault that he couldn’t properly study during today’s class, so you couldn’t find the courage to offer him some paper so he could take notes.

After almost an hour of unrelenting guilt swallowing you up slowly, you place your hand on Minho’s shoulder as soon as the professor announces class is over after assigning the students a small written assignment.

“We could talk outside? If you want,” you offer him, feeling the now-familiar nervousness come back, making your mouth speak faster than your brain can even think to rationalize, “There’s a bench I really like outside this building. It’s a good spot. There’s a nice shade, and it’s secluded enough that people don’t bother me when I’m studying. Or googling how to bind a notebook.”

Minho lets out a brief chuckle. “Okay. I would love to talk on your favorite bench.”

You blink at him. “I don’t have a favorite bench.”

“Hm, it sure sounded like it. You listed some good attributes of that bench,” He argues, a grin etched onto his lips.

“I told you I say stupid shit when I’m nervous.”

He raises an eyebrow at your words. “You’re nervous?”

“Of course I am. I never bound a notebook before.”

Minho lets out a hearty laugh this time, his head thrown back and his eyes turning into crescent moons before he shakes his head. He picks his notebook off the table, showing you the crinkly light brown-tinted pages. “It’s dry now. I actually kind of like it, gave the pages a sort of vintage vibe. You don’t have to bind me a new notebook,” He reassures you, placing the small book into his bag. “As much as I would love to see how that would turn out.”

And just like that, your nervousness fades away. You smile at Minho, asking that he follow you over to your favorite bench.

The two of you talked for almost two hours. During that time, Minho helped you catch up with the vocabulary and phrases you had missed in class. When you asked him how he was able to know so much off the top of his head, his lips curled into a crooked grin as he sheepishly told you that he had been taking Japanese lessons since he was in high school. He explained that because he procrastinated signing up for an elective course, the advanced class was full by the time he got to it, so he decided to go for the introductory one instead. You chuckled and questioned why he would choose to spend his time on a course when he already knew everything being taught. He shrugged and explained that it was nice to have at least one class in which he didn’t have to try and that the fact that it made him feel smart also helped.

Not even your shift at work was able to make your conversation stop flowing, as Minho offered to walk with you to the coffee shop upon realizing it was near his apartment.

That was one of the many coincidences and things in common you found to have with each other that day.

It started with ordinary things like the fact that Minho had three cats back home just like you and how he had been collecting plushies since he was a child, while you had started your own collection as soon as you had access to money of your own. Or how your favorite authors were Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë — Minho swore you would die if you saw the special edition books he had back at home.

Then, it became a bit more amusing as you found out that Minho had worked at a convenience store chain when he first finished high school, and it was the same one you worked at for your first job after starting university. And you both had worked there for exactly a year and two months before quitting. You then told him about how you ended up attending this university after your top three choices turned you down, and his choices were the same as yours. And just like you, he also got rejected by his top three options, which led him to attend the same university as you.

You two couldn’t hide your bewilderment, eyes widening and lips bursting into laughter as these linked facts kept spilling out during your conversation. It was strange, you thought, but in a comforting way. It was almost as if you two had been living weirdly similar lives, all while having no clue about the other’s existence.

The two of you approach the small coffee shop while talking about your degrees. You try your best not to bore Minho with your ‘existential crisis-inducing psychology talks,’ as Hyunjin always put it, and you mostly listen to him as he talks about programming. He tells you that his dream is to develop cozy games that people can jump into without much thought, simply to relax. He says he knows how stressful life is and that people sometimes need something they can mindlessly do to get their minds off of shit. You resonate with it more than you care to admit, as cozy idle games are one of your favorite things to do while locked inside your room.

“So I do these freelancing gigs to make money but I’m actually set to start my first quote-unquote real job in two weeks,” he beams as you two stop in front of the coffee shop. Minho’s eyes lit up the moment he started speaking about his degree, and although you didn’t understand most of the terms he used, it is always endearing to watch someone talk about something they’re so passionate about. “There’s this guy who’s graduating soon who recruited me and a friend for a project he’s working on, so it’s not technically a job and we’ll work in his living room. I’ll still get some money and the chance to actually develop something, though, so it’s better than nothing.”

You smile at him. “If you like programming as much as your words led me to believe, I’m sure it won’t even feel like a job.”

Minho’s ears turned a faint shade of pink, and he scratched his head. “Sorry, I talked your ear off about shit you don’t even understand.”

“I think everybody likes to hear people talk about things they like,” you assure him, “It was a good talk. I still can’t believe we have so many things in common. It was kind of funny how they kept coming up.”

Minho chuckles, bouncing on the heels of his feet. “Guess the universe is giving us signs that we should be friends.”

“It seems like it.”

That day, you work with a persistent smile engraved on your lips. You can’t remember the last time you felt so good about meeting someone new. Despite your awkward first encounter, you found that talking to Minho was as easy as talking to an old childhood friend. It felt refreshing. The last friend you made was Hyunjin — whom you were so grateful to now for pushing you out of your comfort zone — and after that, you had unknowingly closed yourself off.

Minho had managed to open up your mind to the idea of letting someone in almost comically fast. And you loved that.

It’s been a month since you’ve been attending Japanese classes, and your studying sessions with Minho — which always turned into long conversations on what now had really become your favorite bench — were a weekly appointment, much like having him walk with you to work twice a week.

Today, however, Minho stopped you with a hand on your shoulder as you made your way toward your usual spot. When he asked you if you would like to study at his favorite bakery today instead, his eyes rapidly blinking as he looked at you through his bangs which had grown to slightly cover his eyes since you met him, you just couldn’t say no. He stammered as he promised that the place was even closer than the one where you worked, so you wouldn’t be late for your shift.

You smiled at his apparent nervousness, finding it endearing. You knew all too well how stressed you felt when offering something new or initiating plans with a new friend, and Minho seemed to be the same.

“Good thing you made this offer today, on my day off,” you bumped shoulders with him. “It’s almost like you knew.”

You begin walking, and Minho gently pushes you to the side so that he’s the one walking on the edge of the side of the sidewalk. You shoot him a questioning look, and he blinks at you again.

“Sorry, force of habit,” he chuckles, “My mom taught me a guy shouldn’t let a girl walk on the street side. I know it’s old-fashioned and probably made me seem like an ancient guy who wouldn’t let his wife work or something. Sorry.”

You shake your head. “No, it’s kind of sweet. I never had anyone do that with me.”

You feel the pinwheel twirl inside your chest again.

The two of you approach a familiar building together. You furrow your eyebrows as you take in the floral curtains on the windows and the pretty font adorning the store sign of your favorite bakery. You think about how it would be nice if you two came here on another day. Maybe you could use that opportunity to finally introduce Minho to your other friends.

You only realize Minho has stopped walking when he calls out your name. When you turn around, he’s standing in front of the bakery with a smile.

“This is the place.” He points toward the white door with a nod as you return to where he’s standing.

No fucking way.

“This is your favorite bakery?” You ask, although it is a stupid question. Minho nods. You play with the strap of your bag. “Okay, this is starting to sound ridiculous, but I swear I’m not lying. This is my favorite bakery, too.”

Minho’s eyes widen at your words, and his lips curl into a smile again. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I will not,” You chuckle.

Minho opens the door and the two of you walk inside, the familiar smell of freshly brewed coffee and baked goods bringing back great memories you made in this place. You often come here with your two roommates; it’s close enough to both your house and university that you can skip out on taking the bus, the atmosphere is always relaxing and comforting, not to mention the delicious cakes they sell. You smile to yourself as you remember Eunha scuffing down far too many slices of their chocolate cake after a nasty breakup a couple of months ago, tears streaming down her face so violently that the poor little old man who owns the shop appeared to check up on her.

“Their lemon cake is my favorite.”

“The lemon cake is what made me—”

You and Minho speak concurrently, with you unable to even finish your sentence before you both freeze for a couple of seconds in front of the only small table available at the crowded shop.

He’s the first one to move, pulling out his chair a bit awkwardly. “We should…” He trails off before clearing his throat as you sit down before him. “Should really make a written list of things we weirdly have in common.”

“At this point, I think it’d be easier if we made one of what we don’t have in common.”

You two settle for the obvious choice of two pieces of lemon cake with a cup of coffee for him and a glass of cola for you. Minho almost looked offended when you informed him that you hate coffee, wondering out loud why you even worked at a coffee shop before ensuring he could change your mind with just the five amazing facts about coffee he thought about off the top of his head. You shrugged him off with a grin. You couldn’t deny the irony of being a barista and having to make endless cups of a drink you despised daily, but you were sure Minho could never change your mind about coffee.

You two talked about your improvement in Japanese in the last month until the waiter returned with your order. Minho insists you’re a natural and could be on his level in a couple of years if you tried, but you roll your eyes at his compliments. You’ve never been naturally good at anything. That wasn’t about to change now.

“You know,” Minho begins once the waiter steps away from your table, looking around the coffee shop. People slowly started to leave as it got later in the day; the place was now much quieter, and the atmosphere even more cozy. “I used to think I would meet somebody in a place like this.”

“Like, in a romantic sense?”

Minho hums, still looking out to his side. You notice his side profile is really pretty, and you have to hide your smile by sipping your drink.

When he returns his gaze to you, he’s the one smiling. “Yes, in a romantic sense. Like being destined to meet someone.”

“Look at you, a hopeless romantic,” You roll your eyes with a chuckle. You never thought of Minho as someone like that. He seemed rather methodical, always following a routine and too engrossed in his codes to be preoccupied with something like love.

Minho furrowed his brows. “Why the eye roll?”

“I just don’t believe in that stuff,” you shrug with a small smile, “Stuff like destiny, soulmates, love…” You trail off, taking your spoon and poking the slice of cake in front of you. “Love has the awful tendency of being bad.”

Of course, you once believed all those things. Doesn’t everybody? But love has shown you time and time again that those are things reserved only for some people. And, clearly, you are not one of them. So why believe in it?

“It’s the most amazing thing in life,” Minho’s voice almost startled you as you were so deeply entranced in your thoughts.

You don’t lift your head to answer him, instead drawing mindless shapes on the icing on top of your cake.

“What is?”

“Love,” He replies in a soft voice. When you finally look at him, you’re surprised to find Minho’s deep eyes already looking at you, a small smile adorning his lips. “Love is the most amazing thing in life.”

You freeze.

You tear your eyes away from him, gaze focusing on the plate in front of you again.

You were careful with your rules. No parties, no bars, no talking to your male co-workers unless absolutely necessary, and no male friends unless they were in a relationship or proved beyond a reasonable doubt to only be interested in you platonically — which was what Minho was. So, why did him bringing up love make you feel so nervous?

Under the table, you unwittingly bounce your leg. This was stupid. Minho has been your friend for a month now; you see each other twice a week, and you talk for hours, always so comfortable around each other in a way that is still so new to you. He has never flirted with you or treated you in any way that led you to believe that he wanted anything more than to be your friend. You will not let your foolish trauma ruin what was proving to be an amazing friendship. He was simply sharing his thoughts on a topic. That’s all love was: a conversation topic.

You force out a chuckle as you snap yourself out of your senseless panic and look up at Minho once more. “We can just agree to disagree?”

He’s quiet for a few seconds, something you can’t quite pinpoint swimming in his deep eyes as he looks at you. Instead of breaking the silence, he scoops up a piece of cake with his spoon and raises it like a glass. You shake your head with a giggle as you realize what he’s doing, toasting your spoons together at the center of the table before you both eat your spoonfuls of cake.

“You know,” He speaks as soon as he’s done eating, his eyes having never left yours. “Love can never be bad. I don’t think so, at least. It never makes anything worse. It can only ever make things better.”

You hum and shift in your seat, lowering your gaze toward the table. The truth is, you hate talking about love. That — coupled with your shame regarding your past relationships — is the reason why you never indulge in this type of conversation, even with your own mother. But years of swallowing down your thoughts and opinions whenever the subject was brought up only caused a buildup of emotions in your throat. So much so that you only realized you were talking once you were midway through a sentence.

“Love can make so many things worse,” you affirmed, your eyes following the polka-dot pattern on the tablecloth, “Losing someone is bad enough, but put love into that equation, and it just worsens tenfold.”

Minho nods. “By that logic, you can say that having someone by your side is always good, but if it’s someone you love, it makes it better tenfold, right?”

You let out a chuckle as you realize you two could go back and forth about that subject for ages.

But it felt good to finally speak out your feelings on the matter, so you continue, “Love can’t be that great if people can so easily fall out of it and for so many different but equally stupid reasons. You’re suddenly not attractive to them anymore, or you have different opinions, or they love picking fights but hate it when it’s the other way around…” You trail off, swallowing down a lump in your throat as you speak out of experience. But Minho didn’t need to know that. You lift your eyes. “Not to mention falling in love with a new person all while supposedly already being in love with someone.”

“That’s not genuine love,” Minho shakes his head with furrowed eyebrows, as if it was his first time hearing of such things happening. “Real love is unconditional and understanding. Real love makes the person you love beautiful simply because they’re them. Real love doesn’t allow you to hurt the person you love because it feels like you’re hurting yourself as well.” His expression softens, and his eyes lock onto yours. “And real love makes it so that you can only see the one you love. You can’t possibly fall in love with someone else if you’re truly already in love.”

You gnaw on your bottom lip, nodding slowly. You hate the fact that part of you is desperate to believe that what Minho said was true. And you hate it even more that an even bigger part has already dismissed every single word that left his lips.

Desperate to shift the subject from Reasons Why My Exes Left Me — which only leaves you feeling sad and pathetic — back to Love Is Amazing, you decide to try and lighten the mood.

“Okay, but then explain to me how love is so great when you can just have sex with anyone, and it feels the same either way?” You question him with a teasing grin on your face. Minho shakes his head with a smile and eats another bite of his cake. You continue, “Be it a stranger at a party you met ten minutes ago or the love of your life, sex will always be sex. Therefore, you’re wrong, mister Love-Makes-Everything-Better.”

Minho chuckles around his mug, eyes closing as he almost spits out his coffee. His eyes are like crescent moons when he looks at you again, clearly amused by your words. “Well, yeah, of course, sex will always feel good no matter who you’re doing it with. It’s sex, and sex feels good,” He shrugs dismissively. “But sex with love is different. You aren’t just fucking, just fulfilling your own desires selfishly. Love makes sex better because you feel good simply by making the person who’s so important to you feel good. It makes you want to melt into the other person and become one with them because close isn’t close enough when you’re in love.

“Touching them feels like a gift, like heaven. Tasting them feels like heaven. Hearing their voice in their most blissful state feels like heaven. The trust and connection you feel in that moment is heaven, and that’s only possible through love. You can have sex with anyone, but you can only make love to someone you love, and those are two different things. That’s how love makes sex better. Therefore, I’m not wrong.”

As you take in Minho’s words, spoken so casually, like it was common knowledge, they leave you speechless. You watch him as he smiles triumphantly when he realizes you aren’t going to refute him — because you can’t refute him.

You berate yourself mentally as you notice the familiar feeling of arousal wash over you as you repeat his words inside your head. Not because it was Minho who said those things, but simply because that kind of sex sounded so good. Good in a way you had never once experienced before. Like heaven, as he had put it.

Your experience with sex has always been simply about fulfilling desires. You thought that was all there was to it.

Until now.

And even so, with your ex-boyfriends, it was always unbalanced. Ninety percent about their pleasure and only ten percent about yours. The first time you had a guy go down on you was the first time you had sex with Hyunjin, and by that point, you had already had five boyfriends. It felt weird when it happened, and you remember Hyunjin whining about how you didn’t have to ask him every five minutes if he was really okay with doing that. It had always been different with him, the good kind of different. He had never been selfish during sex; if anything, Hyunjin was too much of a giver, sometimes forgetting about his own pleasure in order to focus on yours. You thought that was the best sex you could ever have.

Until now.

Because, even with Hyunjin, there was never a genuine connection. It never felt like a gift to touch him and have him touch you. It was never anything more than sex, more than something you both did because it felt good and it was easy. He slept in your bed, and he cuddled you until morning came, but it had never once felt anything close to what Minho described.

You can’t help but wonder if Minho has ever experienced that. You desperately want to ask him, but you two aren’t close enough for that yet.

You also can’t help but wonder why you spend the rest of the evening raging a war against yourself as your mind is consumed with thoughts of what it would be like to experience that kind of sex with him.

It’s late in the night on the following Saturday, and your phone incessantly vibrating under your pillow rudely demands your attention just as you’re about to fall asleep. You squint your eyes as you type in your password. You sigh as you see Hyunjin’s name on your screen because of course it’s him.

Hyune: I’m outside open the door Hyune: please open the door? quick? Hyune: mrs. choi is gonna kill me if I use the intercom pls I don’t wanna die Hyune: I’m in my pajamas do you know how humiliating this is

Hyune: and I’m highkey pissed off Hyune: I WILL sleep on the bench outside your house if you don’t let me in and then I’ll die and who’s gonna live with the guilt? Hyune: you Hyune: OPENM TEH DOOR

You roll your eyes at his dramatic texts, stepping out of the comfort of your bed and padding across the floor as quietly as possible so as not to wake up your roommates. You open your front door and speed past the hallway and Mrs. Choi’s home, reaching the outside door in record time. It’s something you’ve done more times than you care to admit in order to let Hyunjin into your house. Your tenant was a sweet woman, insistent that she was modern and understanding of ‘young people’, but she despised people coming into your home any later than midnight.

You step outside, finding Hyunjin pacing back and forth like a creep in front of your house. True to his words, he stood in his checkered pajama pants and a black t-shirt. His hair was in a ponytail, the strands messily sticking out everywhere like he had tossed and turned in bed before coming here.

“You look like shit,” you speak up, causing him to jump and let out a gasp. You chuckle as he scowls at you, climbing the few steps to reach the door.

“I had a fight with Mingyu,” he grumbles as you two walk toward your front door. “He told me I spilled paint on his favorite shirt, which is fucking impossible since I don’t even paint anywhere near his shit.” 

“I mean, you are a messy painter.”

Hyunjin shoots you a look as you close your front door behind you. You take off your shoes and walk toward your bedroom in silence. This was routine. Hyunjin knew the rules: no knocking on the outside door, no buzzing the intercom, no shouting from outside, keep your voice down in the hallway, no talking until you reach your bedroom. It was all automatic at this point.

His voice is louder when he speaks again inside your locked bedroom. “First of all, I am not a messy painter. The paint is messy, not me. Second of all, if Mingyu wasn’t a fucking idiot, maybe he wouldn’t leave his favorite shirt on the floor of the living room right by my art corner,” Hyunjin huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, “If that’s how he treats his favorite shirt, I feel bad for his girlfriend.”

You let out a chuckle, which is cut short by him pulling you into his arms. “Hyunjin, that analogy makes no sense.”

“Yes, it does. You treat your favorite shirt like shit, you treat your girlfriend like shit,” he states matter-of-factly before pulling you into a kiss.

This was routine. It was all automatic at this point.

Hyunjin kisses you like he’s angry. Because he is, and that’s one of the reasons why you two do this. You let out your frustrations during sex. You complain, and you let off steam until you both feel okay again. It’s been this way for a year and some months now, and you never once thought anything of it. It was beneficial for you both, so why change or question it?

But that was before your talk with Minho. Before you were awoken to the truth that you’d been having meaningless sex your whole life.

When you’re pulled away from your thoughts, you’re already laid in your bed with Hyunjin hovering over you. His lips and hands wander through your body as he mumbles things you can’t quite understand; you can only make out your name and Mingyu’s mixed with curses. You try to bring yourself back to the moment, bringing your legs to wrap around Hyunjin’s waist and bring him closer to you.

He stops kissing your neck and yanks his shirt over his head, his hair untying in the process and falling on his face like a curtain. You giggle and try to fix it with your fingers. Hyunjin pouts.

“Don’t you think I’m right?”

You frown and hope he can’t see your confused expression in the dim lighting. You truly weren’t paying any attention to what he had been saying, too engrossed in your thoughts and too busy feeling sorry for yourself. Hyunjin’s tendency to tell you about his frustrations during sex always left you a bit puzzled, but it was also oddly sweet. It was like he trusted you so deeply as a friend that he believed he could share anything with you, no matter the time.

So you nod, lightly pulling at his hair. “Of course you’re right.”

He hums and buries his head on your chest, grinding his hips into your clothed core. “Of course I’m right,” he mumbles under his breath.

Everything is a blur after that, your mind insistent on repeating Minho’s words like an annoying echo. When Hyunjin’s tongue fucked you hastily, and he murmured something about you tasting so good, all you could hear was Minho’s voice telling you how tasting the person you love feels like heaven. When Hyunjin pushed his cock into you, his hands gripping your thighs and head buried in your neck, all you could think about was how this sex paled in comparison to what you could’ve been having — what you could have already had — if only you weren’t so damn unlovable. 

You knew that Minho didn’t intend to make you feel bad with his words. They weren’t targeted at you. But that didn’t stop your mind from sabotaging and putting yourself down. It was one of your biggest talents, after all.

Your body was present and responsive the entire time; you moaned because it felt good, and you kissed Hyunjin because you wanted to. But you were mentally somewhere else.

And the worst thing is, you’re a hundred percent sure Hyunjin doesn’t even notice it.

Because this wasn’t love. This was only sex.

And this was all you had ever known.

Time flies by faster than your brain can comprehend; before you know it, another month goes by. You only managed to go to your favorite bakery with Minho one more time before your work hours were changed, your shift now starting a mere thirty minutes after your Japanese class ends. He still walked you to work twice a week, but you would be lying if you said it didn’t upset you to have to let go of your weekly talks.

Minho also became busier due to his own job. With so little time to see each other face to face outside of class, most of your talks took place over text. He talked about his job with so much adoration it made you a little jealous; his partners were now simply friends he worked with, and his joy over finally being able to create a cozy game made it so that he pushed himself over his limit, often sleeping on his friend’s couch after working until four a.m. and getting through the next day on excessive amounts of coffee.

That was how you two came up with the idea of Minho dropping by the café where you work to pick up coffee for him and his friends. He would drop by at least twice every day, his friend’s house — which also served as their office — only one bus stop away.

The first time Minho came by, he had his wallet and phone in one hand, a sharpie and a block of sticky notes in the other. You eyed him curiously as he scribbled on the piece of paper while your co-worker prepared his coffee. When he was done, he stuck the note to the monitor in front of you on the counter. You furrowed your brows as your eyes shifted from the Japanese words on the bright yellow note back to Minho’s smug face. You were certainly grateful he at least had the courtesy of including the romanization of whatever he had written down. Not that it helped you in any way.

“Since our studying sessions after class were rudely taken from us, this is your extra homework. It’s all words we already learned. You just gotta think a little bit, and you’ll figure it out. You’re smart, I know you can do it,” He assured you.

Expect you weren’t that smart and ended up giving up by the time you got home that night. The piece of paper was no longer sticky on the border due to you carrying it around all day, boring holes into it as if that would magically give you the answer. You snapped a picture of it as you got ready for bed and sent it to Minho, begging him to put you out of your misery and simply give you the answer. ‘I want to drink coffee,’ he replied. You slapped your hand over your forehead with so much force you were sure the entire house had heard you. He was right; you did learn that in class. Curse the Japanese language for being so difficult.

After that, it became a routine. You waited expectantly for Minho’s visits daily, but you are extra excited today. It’s a Friday, and your birthday is tomorrow. After much pestering from Eunha, you agreed to have a small gathering at your house. It only made sense to invite Minho; he’s become one of your closest friends in the two months you’ve known him, after all.

As he walks into the coffee shop, sticky notes and sharpie in hand, you chuckle to yourself. You two chat about the development of his game, with Minho kindly using layman’s terms when explaining it to you. He also tells you about how one of his friends got so frustrated with a code that he threw his phone at a wall before immediately regretting it and crying on the floor next to Minho’s desk. Before you can get worried, he assures you that it’s just an ordinary day at the office, and the three of them end up laughing everything off at the end of the day.

After taking his order, you watch as he begins writing down your homework for the day on the small piece of paper in his hand. As you look around the coffee shop, most tables are empty, and the sun is starting to set outside the glass doors.

“You wanna come over this Saturday?” You ask Minho, who looks up at you before adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. That was one thing you learned about Minho since he began coming over: he wears glasses. Not every day, but enough times for you to notice how good he looks with them. But friends find each other attractive all the time, you justify it. “You never came over to my house, and my roommates really want to meet you. Plus, it’s my birthday tomorrow.”

Minho’s eyes widen. “Your birthday? And you save that information to the end?”

“It’s not a big deal. I usually never even celebrate.” You shrug lightly. You’ve never been big on birthdays, as you just don’t see the reason why it’s supposed to feel different from any other day of the year. “But my roommate pestered me to do something this year, so I agreed to have a party.”

Minho shifts on his feet. “I… really hate parties…” He trails off.

“It’s not a party party. I promise!” You hold up your pinky finger. “It’s more of a get-together, just my roommates and my only two other friends. And, you…” You trail off, “If you come.”

Minho blinks his eyes a couple of times before tearing the piece of paper he was writing on from the pad and crumpling it in his hand. He quickly jots down something new and sticks it to your forehead.

“Minho!” You scold him, to which he laughs, his nose scrunching and eyes crinkling. You advert your gaze from him as your persistent thoughts regarding how unfairly pretty Minho is begin to flood your brain once again. You take the note and analyze it:

はい (Hai)

You smile as you understand the word, looking up at him.

“I’d love to come to your birthday party,” He beams. “Thank you for inviting me.”

To say Minho is nervous would be an understatement.

He gets out of his car twice, ready to march back inside his friend’s apartment like a coward and pretend that nothing happened both times. Only when he thinks back to how you smiled at him when he agreed to your invitation does he find the courage to start the car and drive to your house. He’d noticed for a while now how much he likes you. But it was when he agreed with the idea of going to the café you worked at to pick up coffee that it truly dawned on him that he really liked you. Minho hated taking the bus, he hated doing anything other than zoning out on the couch during his breaks, he hated bustling shops, and he hated how his co-workers both managed to have such intricate coffee orders.

Yet he agreed to that idea, even suggesting he drop by two times a day.

He noticed he’d felt a familiar small whirlpool inside his chest whenever he was with you, when he heard you talk about something you liked or saw you smile. He’s also noticed that this tiny whirlpool has been growing bigger and bigger the more he’s been around you.

But that doesn’t scare him. Minho loves love. He loves to be in love, to love someone, and to make that person feel loved. It’s his favorite thing about life. If he was honest, he missed it so much he didn’t know how he was able to live without it.

Just down the block from your house, he parks his car and gathers his phone and his present for you — clearly clumsily wrapped, even with his co-workers’ help. He feels another wave of nervousness wash over him as he approaches the house; he’s an hour late and needs to mentally prepare to socialize with people he’s never met before. Minho chuckles as he realizes a silly party makes him more nervous than the prospect of possibly falling in love.

You open the door almost as soon as he rings the intercom, and he walks down the hallway into your house door; the crooked box he’s been holding makes his hands sweat. The first thing he notices as you open the door is your styled hair with a big white bow on the back, looking much prettier than the ugly bow he and his friends managed to stick on top of his present. He smiles at the sight and scratches his ear in a futile attempt to stop them from turning red.

God, he really liked you, didn’t he?

“Thank you for coming,” you tell him with a smile. Minho notices the quiet music playing inside the house, the simple decorations, and the cake on top of the kitchen counter. He mentally sighs in relief. This truly wasn’t anything like a big party. “You’re wearing your glasses again,” you point out as Minho walks inside and removes his shoes. He subconsciously reaches his left hand to touch his wire-rimmed glasses that sit on his nose bridge. He grimaces and curses at his friend for making him stay later than he was supposed to today.

“I had no time to go home and change,” He apologizes, fingers now toying with the stupid bow on top of the box. “I usually wear contacts, but they make my eyes dry if I stare at the computer for too long, so I just… wear my glasses at work…” Minho trails off, suddenly feeling stupid, his eyes looking anywhere but toward you.

You chuckle, lightly touching his glasses for a second before moving away again. “You always come to the coffee shop wearing them, and I think you look really good,” you assured him. His eyes quickly met yours, only for you to advert your gaze this time. “You should wear them more often.”

Minho only hums, lightly nodding his head. He feels stupid all over again as the image of himself throwing his contact lenses down the drain crosses his mind.

Clearing his throat, he finally hands you your gift. You giggle at the mismatched wrapping paper and poor excuse of a bow, which makes Minho let out a chuckle and murmur an apology. You open the box, and your eyes light up when you spot the stuffed bunny you have been raving about since you two met. It was the only animal missing from your collection, but you couldn’t find the right time to save up money to buy it. Minho didn’t need to ask if you liked it as he watched your smile grow bigger as you looked at the brown bunny.

“Come, I gotta put him in my bed now,” you beamed and took Minho’s hand in yours, leading him to the living room. There, five people sat on the couch and on the floor. Minho furrows his brows as he takes in a head of light brown hair covered by a familiar beanie. “These are my friends. Eunha’s the girl with short hair on the floor, and Soojung’s the one with blonde hair next to her. They’re also my roommates,” You point at them as you speak. “That’s Jisung sitting next to Soojung; he’s also her boyfriend. And then Hyunjin, with the long hair, sitting next to Chan on the couch. Everyone, this is Minho from my Japanese class.”

With that, you pad off to your room with your bunny in tow. As Chan finally turns to look at Minho, his shocked expression mirrors his. They stare at each other for a while before Chan finally breaks the silence.

“What the fuck, that’s my co-worker.”

Minho narrows his eyes. “So this is why you had to leave an hour earlier today?”

As you come out of your room, you chuckle. “Chan is your co-worker?” You ask Minho, “I can’t believe this. He’s been our friend for longer than I’ve known you. He came like a package deal when Jisung began dating Soojung.”

“Damn, dude, you hate me so much you never talked about me to your friend?” Chan gasped, a hand over his heart. “I’m hurt.”

Minho rolls his eyes but is unable to stop a small grin from forming on his lips as the entire living room erupts in laughter. “Of course I talked about you. I talked about you and Seungmin all the time. It’s just I…” Minho shifts on his feet, shrugging. “I never said your names.”

More laughter seeps out of the group of people, including Chan, and Minho finds himself laughing along this time, shaking his head at his own stupidity. 

He sits beside Chan on the couch while Hyunjin heads to the kitchen with you. He quickly asks him how he came to be friends with you in the first place. Chan explains that he’s been in a class with Jisung for almost two years, and the boy had always pestered him about ‘old people’ needing to hang out with people their age. That’s how he ended up meeting Soojung as soon as she became Jisung’s girlfriend. You and Eunha were an inevitable addition, seeing as you were not only roommates but also great friends.

You offer Minho a beer, which he declines. As much as he wanted to, no beer was worth having to take the bus back home. He silently sips his cola as he watches your group of friends chat. You end up sitting beside him on the couch, your friend Hyunjin to your right.

Minho finds that he missed getting together with people like this and didn’t even realize it. His only friends were left behind back at home, and although they were less than an hour away by bus, their busy lives prevented them from meeting in person. Minho’s favorite memories from his teenage years were having his friends over and just doing nothing for hours, talking about stupid shit until their stomachs hurt from laughing. Eating takeout on the couch with Chan and Seungmin after work came close, but they were always too tired and too stressed to entertain the idea of making jokes. Those were times when Minho realized he had really become an adult.

Jisung’s loud voice suddenly booms through the living room and startles an already drunk-looking Eunha, who murmurs something about the younger boy giving her a heart attack one day. 

“I’m bored,” he grumbles, draping his body over Soojung. “Let’s play spin the bottle.”

Soojung rolls her eyes at him, flicking his forehead. “Are you a teenager?”

Jisung pouts, sitting up straight once more. “We’re in university. University students play this fucking game all the time,” he states matter-of-factly. “Don’t make me regret falling for an older woman.”

“Jisung, I’m only three years older than you, I’m not—”

“Don’t make me call you noona.”

Soojung inhales deeply before turning to face the people sitting on the couch, placing one of the empty beer bottles scattered around her feet on top of the coffee table. “Let’s play spin the bottle. But let’s do dares instead of kissing, that’s too boring.”

Jisung beams, cuddling close to her like a needy child. Minho chuckles at the sight.

Eunha scoots closer to the couple so the group is seated in a circle around the coffee table, half of them on the couch and half on the floor. Minho never had the chance to play spin the bottle, which seemed to be such a staple game of one’s teenage years. By the time his friends were off sneaking into clubs and drinking behind their parents’ backs, he was already in a committed relationship and well aware of the fact that he didn’t enjoy parties.

It seems silly, but he’s glad he won’t live past his youth without experiencing such a trivial thing.

Soojung spins the bottle, and the neck stops facing Chan while the bottom faces Jisung.

“Take your shirt off,” Jisung waves a finger at Chan, who looks somewhat disoriented. Minho chuckles under his breath just as you do the same. You two face each other and let out a hearty laugh, your arm coming to rest on his bicep before retrieving back to your lap faster than Minho hoped it would.

Soojung squishes Jisung’s cheeks and places a small kiss on his lips. “You’re such a fucking chaotic bisexual,” she giggles, “Y’know, Chan, Jisung has had the biggest crush on you since you two first met.”

Chan shakes his head with a stifled laugh and proceeds to remove his shirt, neatly placing it on his lap.

Jisung is next to spin the bottle, this time landing on Soojung, who you dare to show her most embarrassing text. After showing the group a string of texts showing raunchy screenshots of a manhwa she’d been reading at that time, all sent to one of her class group chats which included some professors, she lets out a heavy sigh and orders Eunha to spin the bottle before any questions can be asked.

This time, the neck faces you while the bottom faces Eunha herself. With a smile, the short-haired girl dares you to kiss Minho.

He feels his smile drop at the very second the words leave her lips. This was not what he had in mind for tonight.

“What?” You sputter, “Why?”

Eunha shrugs, adjusting herself so she’s seated upright and staring right at you. “Well, he’s the only one here who would be actually fun to see you kiss. Jisung and Soojung are okay with each other hooking up with other people, so that’s no fun,” she explains, using her fingers to list her reasons, “I’m not into girls, so that’s no fun for me. Hyunjin is too obvious. We all already know Chan, so it would also be boring. Minho is like fresh meat. That is fun.”

Minho’s brain begins finding a suitable excuse for why you two can’t kiss, because he’s certain you have no interest in doing it. Not only are you friends, but your reaction didn’t exactly exude excitement at the prospect of kissing him. Just as he’s ready to lie through his teeth, you turn to him and place your hand on his shoulder, a touch so soft he’s barely able to feel it through the fabric of his shirt.

“Is this okay with you?” You ask him, the tone of your voice so sweet Minho feels like it melts his every thought until his brain is nothing but a sugary pool filled with only you. So he nods because god, yes, this is okay with him.

You gingerly place your right hand on his cheek, bringing your faces closer until your lips press together. The whirlpool inside his chest spins fast, like a vortex dragging every sense of his body toward you and only you.

You remain still for a few seconds, Minho’s eyes opening slightly to search for any sign of regret on your face. Before he can even properly look at you, your lips begin to move against his — gently and carefully, like you’re not sure if this is what he wants. Minho deepens the kiss and hesitates three times before committing to placing his left hand on your waist. The giggles around the two of you nothing but a muffled murmur to him. He presses another kiss to your lips, his body shifting until he is all but caging you against the back of the couch. But just as he swipes his tongue across your bottom lip, you push him back with a smile, Minho chasing after your lips.

He blinks a couple of times, eyes zoning into your smudged red lipstick. He subconsciously bites his own bottom lip, wondering if any of the color transferred to him. The surrounding murmurs bring Minho back to the moment this time, awkwardly clearing his throat before lifting himself off of you and sitting upright on the couch. He tunes out every comment regarding the kiss to the best of his abilities, focusing his energy on slowing down his heart rate. When he catches you giggling while looking at him, your arm touching his bicep yet again, he nods, grabbing his cola bottle from the floor and taking a sip.

Minho can’t remember the last time kissing someone got him so worked up. He entered a long-term relationship at such a young age that he’s only now realizing how unaccustomed he is to kissing someone new, to the rush that comes with having your lips pressing against the ones of someone you like. It was exhilarating and a bit terrifying all at the same time. He was awkward, unsure where to put his hands, uncertain if you were enjoying yourself. He was also greedy, wanting the moment to last for much longer than it had.

This had cemented the fact that he does, in fact, really like you.

After kissing you, the whirlpool living in his heart had now fully transformed into a tiny hurricane — with great chances of growing even bigger.

Minho only notices the game has continued upon hearing your voice complaining beside him. He watches as Soojung shrugs.

“It’s the only thing I could think of, sorry.”

“But why?” Hyunjin asks, placing his cup on the coffee table. “It’s a stupid dare.”

The blonde girl scoffs. “No, it’s not. I’ve had to basically live with you two for the past year, and it’s common knowledge how easily you get a boner for her.”

“Not true,” Hyunjin retorts, although it sounds more like a question than an affirmation.

Eunha blurts out, “You once got a boner watching her stir a cake mix.”

Hyunjin opens and closes his mouth before groaning, pulling you into his lap by the waist. You apologize to him quietly, to which Hyunjin shakes his head with a small smile.

Minho feels as if he’s intruding on something private.

You sit on Hyunjin’s knees, almost falling off his lap as you clearly try to keep some distance between the two of you. Hyunjin clicks his tongue and pulls you closer to him until your back is pressed up against his chest. He whispers something in your ear, to which you lightly slap his arm as his lips upturn into a grin.

Minho is definitely intruding on something private.

At some point, you turn so you’re sitting across Hyunjin’s lap, your body now facing Minho. He can’t help but watch with dark eyes as the younger boy’s hands wander through your body; playing with the buttons on your blouse, squeezing your thighs, and caressing your skin a little too close to the hem of your skirt. He furrows his brows as he tries to understand your relationship with Hyunjin, seeing as you’re obviously not put off by his hands on your body.

Minho is so transfixed by the sight and his racing thoughts that he only realizes the game has ended when someone taps his shoulder from behind the couch.  When he looks back, Chan is holding a cigarette and motioning towards the stairs that lead to the house’s terrace.

In the chilly open space above the house, they sit on a bench behind a tall vertical planter. Minho wonders who tends to the garden as he observes the various flowers, as well as some vegetables and herbs scattered around him. The terrace is small; the garden taking up all the space, an old wooden railing that overlooks the quiet street the only other thing in his sight.

He and Chan chat about school and work, as they often do nowadays. After Chan recently broke up with his girlfriend, Minho found that his friend had become much more closed off, so the list of subjects they would talk about became minimal. Chan bites his thumb before taking a long drag of his cigarette. He chuckles when he mentions being scared of graduating next year. Minho bumps his shoulder with him, arguing that being in his situation is worse. He admits that he regrets starting university late and that being in his first year when he should already be in his third is discouraging. Chan dismisses his worries, reminding him of how Minho is often the one to fix broken codes and come up with ideas for their game whenever Seungmin gets stuck.

“A degree is just a piece of paper,” Chan says, throwing his cigarette butt at a nearby trashcan. “You’re already a fantastic programmer, Minho.”

“You’re just saying that because I saved your ass today.”

Chan shrugs. “You’ve saved my ass basically every day since we started working together.” After a beat of silence, he asks, “Why did you start uni so late, anyway? You never told me.”

Minho hums, digging his brain for a way to sum up the entire story. “It’s complicated—”

He’s interrupted by footsteps on the stairs leading to the terrace. A loud giggle echoes through the open space before you and Hyunjin step into their field of vision. The long-haired boy holds you from behind, and you two stagger toward the railing.

“Wish everyone would go home already so I could just fuck you,” Hyunjin whines as he turns your body around so you’re facing him. Minho almost chokes on nothing at those words, and Chan stifles a laugh with his hand. He curses the small space as they’re able to so clearly hear everything you’re saying.

You playfully kick Hyunjin’s shin. “Don’t say it like that, Hyune, what the fuck.”

“It’s true, though,” Hyunjin continues, pressing you against the railing. He towers over you, so the only thing Minho can see from where he’s seated is your white skirt floating in the wind behind the tall boy. “I had a stressful, terrible, awful, dreadful week. All I kept thinking about was coming over and relaxing with you.”

“See, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so awful.”

Hyunjin clicks his tongue. “There’s nothing awful about fucking. I know how much you like it, don’t act so coy.”

Minho watches as your hands clench around Hyunjin’s gray shirt, pulling him closer and kissing him softly, much like you had done to him a few moments before.

Minho presses his lips into a thin line. He connects every dot available to him inside his head and suddenly feels pathetic.

Hyunjin being too obvious of a choice for you to kiss, his hands all over your body, his words about fucking you, the way you kissed him like it was a habit.

If you had a boyfriend, why did you agree to kiss him?

The words swarm Minho’s brain. He vaguely recalls you and Hyunjin eventually walking out of the terrace. Chan starts a one-sided conversation about one of his classes, with Minho humming after every couple of sentences to appear like he’d been listening when his head is too busy wondering how to feel about everything.

Minho recalls Eunha walking up the stairs and shouting for the two of them to come downstairs to sing you happy birthday. He recalls Hyunjin’s hands wandering through your body throughout the song, his lips pressing small kisses on your face and lips as you smiled. He recalls feeling confused, stressed, jealous, and pathetic.

Minho is only truly back to the present moment once Chan’s voice bids him a loud goodbye, and the door slamming behind him makes his senses finally return to him. As he looks around, he notices that the only people left in the living room are Jisung, Hyunjin, and you. Beside him on the couch, Hyunjin stretches with a loud groan.

“I’m gonna take a shower. D’you have any of my clothes in your room?”

You sigh from where you’re sitting on the floor, resting against the television stand. “Of course, I do. You’re always living shit behind, you’re like our third roommate at this point.”

Hyunjin chuckles, walking over to give you a small peck on the lips before disappearing into your room. Minho gnaws on his bottom lip with a bitter smile as he realizes Hyunjin will sleep over at your house. The ugly feelings return as he remembers his thoughts about you these past few weeks when he unknowingly cultivated too big of a crush on you. Even on his way here tonight, when he had chuckled to himself at his lack of nervousness in the face of potential love.

Love.

Minho can’t help but wonder why your view of love is so negative when you’re in a relationship. And, at the same time, he doesn’t dare to think about it for too long, fully aware that his foolish affection-filled brain will come up with a myriad of reasons — all where your boyfriend is the sole culprit for your distaste — and Minho knows better than to let those thoughts linger for too long inside his mind. He knows himself all too well, knows only awful shit would come out of assuming things about your relationship; the urge to beat Hyunjin senseless for being a shitty boyfriend and making you think that way about love being the worst of them.

“I’m too drunk to go back to my dorm,” Jisung suddenly speaks, his eyes glazed over as he stares ahead. “Gonna crash here tonight, too.”

Minho takes that as his cue to leave.

You walk him outside, a small smile on your face the entire time. He feels guilty not being able to reciprocate the gesture. As you tell him goodbye, thanking him for coming, you pull him into a hug. You hadn’t hugged much since you met, and Minho foolishly wants to draw you closer to him, to feel your body pressed against his just as it was pressed against Hyunjin most of the night. But he can’t do that.

“Are you okay to walk back by yourself?” You ask him as you pull away.

Minho nods, forcing out a small smile. “My car is parked just down the block.”

“That’s why you didn’t drink!” You exclaim with a giggle, “I forget that most people our age already drive. My anxiety didn’t allow me the chance to even try and get a license, so I just accepted my fate of taking the bus.”

“I could drive you…” Minho trails off. There he goes again, being pathetic. “If I have the time… You can give me a call and I’d be happy to drive you anywhere.”

You smile at him, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him into another embrace. Minho smiles genuinely as he buries his head in your hair.

The drive back home has Minho feeling stupid all over again as he thinks about how you’re probably in bed with Hyunjin by now. The whirlpool is back inside his chest, but it isn’t good or welcome this time. It’s agonizing and painful.

Love had never been painful. Love had never been bad.

But he had never experienced love toward someone who already loved somebody else. Although you brazenly state that you don’t believe in it, you must feel some type of love toward Hyunjin if you’re willing to be his girlfriend.

As he silently drives home, Minho finds himself agreeing with you.

Maybe love can be bad, after all.

Minho feels stupid.

This has become a constant in his life.

He had always thought of himself as a logical person. Programming had taught him that everything is predictable and fixable if you work on it hard enough. A broken code? It may take him six hours of staring at the computer to figure out it was nothing but a missing semicolon, but he will get there in the end. It was annoying and frustrating, but it was always something easily fixed.

He thought love was like that. It had always been like that with him.

Until he fell for you.

Minho was coming to terms with the fact that maybe love and programming were nothing alike. Love isn’t predictable. Loving someone who is already in love with someone else isn’t easily fixed. He can’t backspace and delete your boyfriend from the equation.

It’s been a little over six months since you two first met. Minho has consistently gone to the café you work at every day, and you two still had endless talks over text messages. You talk about everything and anything, from silly things like sharing pictures of both your growing plushie collections or your love of that particular coffee shop’s lemon cake to more serious topics like how Minho learned how to cook when he was twelve so his mom wouldn’t have to do it by herself, and now his roommates take advantage of that, or how sad you are that next year you will have to leave the house you’ve grown to love so much.

But, whether it is in person or through text, you still avoid the topic of love. You don’t ever bring up Hyunjin unless he’s part of a story you were already telling, and Minho feels his heart heavy as he slowly allows himself to imagine what it could be that led you to hate love so much.

He desperately wants to ask you, know your reasons, and make sure you’re happy with your boyfriend. But he doesn’t want to overstep any boundaries and doesn’t know how to go about it without scaring you. So he never does anything, like a coward.

Minho finds himself coming over to your sharehouse on most weekends since summer break ended. Your countless get-togethers at that house have become a hard-to-break habit. Hyunjin, Jisung, and your roommates are always assured to be there, with Chan joining whenever he isn’t overwhelmed with work or school, which was rare.

Minho had always been a hopeless romantic, always doing things for love that people repeatedly warned would result in regret. This time, it was forgoing visiting his parents and friends back home just to spend most of his summer with you. Despite not being able to pursue you in the way he truly wanted to, Minho still wanted to be your friend. You were still a fantastic person he loved to have around; that didn’t change simply because you had a boyfriend. Although he could feel a bit of his heart cracking every time he had to see you, all while knowing he couldn’t do anything about his feelings for you.

He couldn’t change your perspective of love if he weren’t allowed to love you.

In all the time he spent at your house during summer break, he ended up becoming good friends with Jisung, as you tended to stick next to Hyunjin most of the time. Minho didn’t mind it; he is your boyfriend, after all. At least, that’s what he repeats to himself every night he comes over like a mantra as he almost masochistically forces himself to watch how Hyunjin kisses your lips and caresses your skin or how you play with his hair and snuggle with him on the couch. He also endures the countless nights he’s left your house knowing all too well that Hyunjin would be spending the night with you in a way that Minho can only ever dream about.

Tonight, in particular, Hyunjin seemed to be all over you like bees on honey, buzzing around you everywhere you went, his hands never leaving your body as he pulled you closer to him every time you even slightly pulled away. Because god forbid your bodies not be touching in some way for even a split second. Before he knows it, Minho is downing his third bottle of beer of the night.

From where he’s sitting on the couch, Minho rolls his eyes as discreetly as he can while he watches Hyunjin pull you to sit on his lap on the floor as you all get ready to play a game of cards. He gnaws on his lower lip because he knows he’s being petty and borderline childish. You’re Hyunjin’s girlfriend. Of course he’s all over you, of course he wants to be close to you, of course he wants you on his lap. Minho concludes with a bitter chuckle that he is, indeed, pathetic when it comes to you.

He gulps down more of the awful-tasting cheap beer.

The night comes to a close after far too many rounds of Cards Against Humanity, with Jisung winning more than half of them. His ethics and morals fly out the window the moment the cards are handed to him, as he manages to create the most absurdly offensive phrases known to men every single time. Minho found himself groaning and yelling at the younger boy as the alcohol took over his system. He doesn’t know how much of it was simply his annoyance at Hyunjin clinging to you like a koala throughout the entire game disguised as competitiveness.

He doesn’t think he’d like to know either.

Like every night he comes over, Minho is the last person to go home. He has to call an Uber, far too buzzed to want to sit at a bus stop all alone at this time of night. He hadn’t even noticed how he kept downing his drinks until he felt the familiar buzz of inebriation wash over his body a while before the game ended. Although slamming his fist into the coffee table with a whine about how he had only been given lame cards should’ve been a sign.

As he waits outside your house by the fence, he suddenly hears the door shut behind him and your voice calling out to him. He smiles at the faint slur of your speech and the way you drag out the last syllable of his name like you always did when you were a bit drunk.

“I told you to wait for me!” You reprimand, opening the gate to stand next to him. “Look how lonely you look here all by yourself.”

Minho just shrugs with a smile, shaking his head. He did wait. He waited almost half an hour after announcing he should leave as you disappeared into your room with Hyunjin. He was still waiting, in fact, only mindlessly scrolling on his phone for the past ten minutes instead of finding a ride as he hoped you would come outside when you saw he wasn’t in the living room anymore.

You poke his shoulder, bringing his attention away from his phone to your smiling face.

“Tonight was fun, wasn’t it? Especially that last round when Hyunjin won after being tied with Jisung for the whole game,” you grinned, “Seeing Jisung make a whole damn case about how much better his card was really made my night. Think that’s the first time I’ve seen him act like a law student since I met him.”

Minho chuckles, bringing his attention back to his phone. Seeing your smile and how your eyes light up while you talk about something you like brought back the whirlpool inside his chest, which wasn’t a pleasant feeling any longer. It made him glum to think how a once beautiful feeling had turned into nothing but discomfort simply because he was lovelorn.

He hums. “You must be proud to have your boyfriend put an end to Jisung’s annoying winning streak.”

“What do you mean?”

Minho looks up from his phone, eyes wandering through your puzzled face. He furrows his brows for a second. Maybe you’re both drunker than he’d thought.

“I mean, it must’ve been nice to see Hyunjin win after Jisung basically made us all want to quit the game,” he explains, watching as your expression turns from confusion into shock before you let out a loud laugh.

Minho’s eyes widen, worried your laughter might wake up your neighbors. He gently shushes you, his arm grabbing your shoulder, but your smiling face only makes his lips stretch out into a grin. He suppresses a giggle as you catch your breath, shaking your head.

Minho smiles at you so fondly he’s certain he looks like an idiot. “What’s so funny?”

“Hyunjin isn’t my boyfriend,” you explain like it’s obvious. “We’re just friends. I thought you knew that.”

Minho only then realizes he had never once heard you refer to Hyunjin as a boyfriend, nor had any of the people around you. But his assumptions weren’t so ill-judged, either. You two acted like a couple. It wasn’t so absurd to assume that you were one.

He finds himself staring at your amused face for a few seconds before forcing himself to turn his attention back to his phone.

You acted like a couple, but you were just friends. Minho groaned mentally.

“So, you’re like friends with benefits?”

“Yeah… I don’t particularly believe in love anymore, Minho. I thought you knew that from our talk a while ago,” You chuckle, shifting on your feet. “Hyunjin is one of my best friends. We just hook up ‘cause it’s convenient.”

Minho hums, his fingers ghosting over his phone screen. “Sounds like you’re running away from love.”

He blinks a couple of times as he takes in his own words. He would have never said such a thing if it hadn’t been for the liquid courage flowing through his veins.

You shrug, moving to sit on the white bench just outside the house. “Well, yeah, that is what I’m doing. Love hasn’t been kind to me at all. I have no interest in going after it, only to be hurt again. It’s a movie I’ve watched before and I hated the ending every time.”

Minho bites the inside of his cheek, finally clicking the button to find a ride, his thumb pressing on his phone screen more forcefully than he intended. He felt angry. You didn’t deserve to settle for a friend with benefits due to convenience. Had you wanted to be in that situation, it was your every right to do so, but you were in it out of fear of being hurt.

He felt sad. He wished you didn’t equate your past experiences with love to everything it could be. Bad experiences in love were possible for everyone — even for him, who used to believe unwaveringly that love could never be hurtful — but that didn’t mean it was all there was to it. Minho desperately wanted to show you that. The good side of love, the side that made him put it above everything else in his life on so many occasions, the side that made him crave it even now when it hurt more than it felt good.

And, strangely, Minho felt relieved. It was a small percentage of the chart of current emotions he was experiencing, but prevalent nonetheless. He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he felt happy Hyunjin wasn’t your boyfriend and, most importantly, that you weren’t stuck in an unhappy or toxic relationship, as he had so often feared.

His ride arrives, and he’s overcome with a wave of courage. Minho would much rather live with regret than with a constant ‘what if’.

Shoving his phone inside his pocket, he offers his hand to you, who looks up at him curiously from where you’re sitting on the bench before taking his hand. Minho pulls you to your feet and hugs you. With his hand on your waist, he pulls your body closer to him, finally holding you tightly the way he’s always wanted to do. He presses a kiss to your head, bringing his lips to your ear and whispering, “I’m gonna change your mind.”

He feels your body shake with a chuckle, but he only tightens his hold on you.

“What?”

“About love, I’m gonna change your mind,” He answers matter-of-factly, “You deserve to feel love without being afraid.”

Minho pulls back from the embrace just enough to see your face, and he’s surprised to find you smiling up at him. He smiles back.

“I will change your mind.”

Minho had just dropped you off at your house, ready to drive around aimlessly until he absolutely had to go back to his dorm, when Seungmin texted him.

Kim Seungmin: hey my sister’s engagement dinner is tonight Kim Seungmin: and i might have fucked up something in the code i was working on so now there’s a chance that you fish 100 rare fish at once 🤪 Kim Seungmin: pls pls do me a solid and fix it before chan sees it and kills me? Kim Seungmin: love you hyung 💚

Minho initially groaned at the messages, thinking of the many ways in which he could murder Seungmin and get away with it. But, ultimately, he didn’t want to go back to his dorm anyway, so he gladly turned his car around. If he was lucky, this would take hours and he would have a valid excuse to crash in Chan’s cramped living room.

He punches the code to the front door and his friend greets him with a puzzled expression.

“I forgot to do the, uh, troubleshooting for this week,” Minho blurts out. It’s the first lie he can come up with, and he hopes it’s convincing enough. Chan nods slowly. Seungmin might have saved him from having to endure his roommates on a Saturday night, but he still owes him.

“It’s all good,” Chan says with a sigh, “I’m most likely gonna pull an all-nighter designing these new characters. Anyway, how did you waste your time today?”

Minho has been taking you on what he likes to call Subtle Dates for a month now.

Chan affectionately calls them Waste of Time Dates.

Minho rolls his eyes, sitting down on his own desk. “We went to Han River and walked around till sundown, then watched the Banpo Bridge water show.”

Days like today were rare, so Minho was happy. Most weekends, it seemed as if the whole world was conspiring against anything he planned with you.

“Oh, how romantic of you,” Chan gasps, feigning amazement. “Did you at least kiss her this time?”

“You know I can’t just kiss her like that. I know she’d freak out if I tried to do anything romantic with her,” Minho taps his fingers on his desk, knowing he sounds ridiculous. But he has a plan. He just hopes this plan actually works out soon. “I don’t mind being patient.”

He hears Chan scoff. “So, you took her on another one-sided date and then drove her home so Hyunjin can fuck her?”

Minho’s fingers stop tapping on his desk, his hand coming down to slam on it before he can stop himself. He lets out a heavy sigh, and Chan mumbles an apology. But, the truth is, he knows his friend is right. Just last weekend, Minho dropped you off straight into Hyunjin’s arms, the younger boy waiting for you to come back in front of your house.

And Hyunjin wasn’t the only inconvenience that rendered it almost impossible for the two of you to spend time together. Minho had to cut most of your dates short due to Chan calling him about something urgent that only he could fix at work, or you canceled altogether because your roommate was upset and you didn’t have the heart to leave her alone like that. There were also times when Minho was too tired to even go out at all, like on the day of his birthday, which resulted in you coming over to Chan’s apartment and eating cheap takeout food with him and his two friends.

Minho found himself dealing with countless bumps in the road when it came to finding a way into your heart.

“I didn’t mean to say it like that,” Chan says hesitantly, “You clearly like her a lot.”

Minho repeatedly opens and closes the code he’s supposed to fix. He sighs. “I like her more than a lot, and I don’t even know when that happened.”

“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” His friend explains, his face disappearing behind his own computer screen. “I just can’t see what will change if you go on dates with her when she doesn’t even know they’re dates and if she’s just gonna go home and have sex with someone else. I don’t get it. What difference does it make?”

He can hear Chan scoffing, although he tries to disguise it by clearing his throat. Minho shakes his head.

“It makes all the difference because that’s not love. I wanna show her what love is, and that it isn’t always bad. I promised her that I would.”

Chan sighs, sliding his chair toward the mini-fridge by the couch. “Agree to disagree?” He asks, grabbing a bottle of water and tossing it in Minho’s direction. He grabs it mid-air, just before it hits him in the face, and clicks his tongue.

“Agree to disagree.”

Minho plugs his headphones into the computer, drowning out the noise of Chan’s pen sliding across his iPad with his brown noise playlist. But he can’t drown out the obstinate thought ringing inside his head, screaming at him that Chan is right.

Taking you out on dates — which you don’t even know are dates — doesn’t really make a difference if you’re just going to go back to your convenience with Hyunjin at the end of the day. If you think you’re just friends going out together, and you go back home at night to the comfort of sex without the love you’ve been running away from for so long, what Minho is doing truly is useless. 

It’s just like when he argues with Seungmin through their codes, screaming at the younger boy in all caps about something that’s broken, even though he knows he’s going to be the one who will end up having to fix it.

Minho’s fingers come to a halt on the keyboard.

Closing his work, he opens up Google and finds the first flight he can to Japan. Almost as if he’s on autopilot, and his brain is completely shut off. He books the flight and the cheapest hotel he can find, using almost all the money he’s saved up to move out of his hell of a dorm. It might be the most idiotic thing he has ever done in his life, but he’s so in love it hurts him. And he loves love, and love with you — the thought of that alone has his heart beating at his throat. He doesn’t want to keep on with these futile attempts at trying to make you see that love is good and that, maybe, love can be good with him.

The truth is, he feels scared. Maybe even more scared than you do. He is terrified of knowing the answer, of finding out that maybe he could change your mind about love but that it would simply lead you to someone else’s arms and he would have to endure the pain of unrequited love until it inevitably faded away with time.

Minho would gladly live with that pain if it meant you were happy.

But he needed to know.

He adjusted his glasses — a childhood nervous habit that returned after he started wearing them more often since you complimented him months ago — and retrieved his phone from his backpack.

He typed and deleted more times than he’d like to admit.

Me: Hey, it’s late sorry  Me: Just wanted to know if you’d be up for a trip to Japan? Me: In two weeks Me: For study purposes Me: We’d finally have the chance to use what we learned in class lol Me: Chan was supposed to go with me but he has a family thing so he can’t anymore Me: Everything’s already paid for and he said he doesn’t mind if you go in his place Me: Lmk what you think

Minho’s fingers typed as his brain came up with excuses and lies, sending more messages than he needed to. He couldn’t tell you he booked a whole damn trip with you just to see if maybe, possibly, you have feelings for him too.

He all but throws his phone across his table after turning on Do Not Disturb. He’ll need to muster up the courage before reading your answer, and having his phone buzz for anything that wasn’t your reply would just be torturous. He felt stupid, would feel even more so if you turned down his invitation. He almost doesn’t want you to answer, wants to pretend he never even sent anything.

Because it was stupid.

But love is stupid, and he is in love.

Worst-case scenario, he’s stuck with Chan in Japan for a weekend while he laughs at him.

Best-case scenario, he spends a weekend with you in Japan. No letting you go back to another man at the end of the day, no more hiding that he is taking you out on dates, no more distractions, no more inconveniences of your daily lives.

Minho opens the code he was working on again, quickly typing out:

// NOTE: Minho will fix this.

[thisliminalspacedaydreams]

Do not confuse Enthusiasm with Entitlement.

Hello!

I’m relatively unknown in the fanfiction world which is great, but I’ve got some friends who are known, and I’ve got things to say, from an outsider perspective.

I’m a writer, but I’m also a reader. I participate in the fandom in the way I know how, which is through writing stories.

Here’s what fandom should be. It’s a village, called Fandom, and people all interact in the village in some way. Write, Art, Ideas, Comments, Reblogs, Kudos, Podfics, Bookbinding, Etc etc etc. It’s a Smurf village, because currency doesn’t exist, and everyone does what they can for the community to thrive, for fucking free. They offer gifts, and encouragement, and once a week we all gather round in the center of the village and scream about it in a very unhealthy way. Some people are more active than others, some like to be known, some prefer to remain anonymous, some watch from the sidelines and everything is done with care and a warm heart between our teeth.

There are pockets of that, which, great.

Here’s what fandom is, sometimes.

1/People elevating others to the point of God, sometimes dragging other writers down (for no reason, no one asked to be rated as the best fic writer of all time) to make a point. What is the point? Is there one?

2/People harassing writers for more things. Write an epilogue, write another chapter, write this and that. Writers aren’t your own personal AI machine to make what you want to write. A lot is blamed on age, and perhaps there is an element to it, but I believe it’s just decency. An 18 years old kid is capable of making sensible decisions, just like a 24 years old, just like a 14 years old. Your age doesn’t give you a passe-droit to be a dick to people you admire (!!!???!)

3/I won’t even touch on the subject of hate reading because that’s just straight up insanity.

But it’s just… hate and tantrums and anger breeds more hate and tantrums and anger. There isn’t a virtuous way out of that, and I’d love for people to…just, cater to a more positive experience for everyone.

When your fingers are typing rot on your computer, you are venomizing everything that it touches: the people who will read it AND the people who will respond to it.

So far, from what I have seen, this behaviour leads to only one thing: depressed writers/artists/etc who stop writing/drawing/etc, or pull their work, or take breaks, or retreat from the limelight because it is too much.

You are pushing too much.

Enthusiasm is wonderful. It’s a powerful tool and should be used, everyone on this fandom is posting because we looked at The Thing and thought, “yeah.” No one in the history of the world (I hope) has posted after thinking “that is straight up shit and I hate it with a passion.”

Enthusiasm does need to be curated in a healthy way. I understand that Fandom is for fans, but it is also by fans. No one here is better, everyone here is different.

Some writers have a voice that resonate with more people, or stories that resonate with more people, and that is perfectly fine, but, once again for the people in the back, do not confuse Enthusiasm with Entitlement.

In what universe, in what galaxy do you believe complaining about someone’s work will make them go “oh right, nevermind all the work I put into this thing I love, let me just do the thing a random stranger is asking me to do.”

Do not confuse Enthusiasm with Entitlement.

Maybe I sound like bitch, but by god, the shit I’ve heard from my “popular” friends the past few months is absolutely mad. Mad, people.

You are normal people, and SO ARE THEY.

They have lives and interests and they are people. Treat them as such.

Do not confuse Enthusiasm with Entitlement.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, I hope everyone enjoys Le Mange Dieu et le Dévoreur de Mondes, which we wrote and enjoyed writing, and which does not mean other writers weren't doing their own thing and writing other stuff in the meantime, and I HOPE we can all start to have some fucking respect for the people who spend hoursdaysweeksmonths pouring over a project and posting it for fucking free, all at once, so it’s not stressful for the reader. YOU.

Because against all fucking odds, we actually care about our readers. When you’re being nice.

Thank you and good day from a Fandom Elder.

[astronicht]

20 Questions for Fic Writers Tag Game

@birdylion tagged me, thanks!

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

48 apparently. I started moving stuff over from ff.net pretty late it looks like, 2014-ish.

2. what’s your total AO3 word count?

465,791

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Various! In my heart I sort of consider myself currently a mix of mdzs and F1 rpf main, hockey rpf almost main. None of these stances reflect reality <3 I most recently posted moto gp rpf, mdzs, and hockey rpf-- so hey wait maybe I'm not totally off-base.

The WIPs I'm most active in right now are, amusingly, Stranger Things and Stargate Atlantis, with mdzs making itself known on the back burner.

4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

WHO IS WINNING IN THE THUNDERDOME TODAY

the field meets the wood - mdzs, wangxian. The one where Lan Wangji is kidnapped by salt merchants, and Wei Wuxian unmakes them with historical math. I think this is the best prose writing I've ever done and I'm thrilled that it's currently outpacing the other usual suspects.

pro bono - mdzs, wangxian. The vampire AU I wrote as a joke based on a thread for a few friends. Due to a couple shipwrecks and banishments, WWX and LWJ get stranded in the Italian Renaissance; Lan Wangji is also a vampire; don't worry about it. If (1) is my best prose this is the overall storytelling I'm most satisfied with.

2:08 AM, softly - mdzs, wangxian modern AU. About coming home after a bad night out to find someone you most want to see. Prose is kinda weak, alas, but I get why it's up here.

swinger of birches - mdzs, wangxian Practical Magic AU. Coolest writing experience I will probably ever have. I wrote this live, via tweets, over the course of a month. I had a little staging document but i was only two or three tweets ahead at any given time. It felt like-- oral storytelling, or something.

somnophilia in the time of vampires - mdzs, wangxian, sequel to pro bono. Pretty much entirely pwp. I set it in the same inn that Anne Rice set a scene in Cry to Heaven, as a little joke for myself.

What's interesting is that every single one of these was written either directly for someone, or because someone wanted something. I love filling a need.

5. do you respond to comments?

Yeah, some, though it's totally random which ones I get to.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

salt and vinegar, vinegar and salt (hockey rpf) is literally tagged "hopeful ending" so it's not too bad, but it's not meant to be perfectly happy.

scurvy (mdzs, wangxian) and the fic it follows (floodplain (silt)) I wrote very purposefully to not end with a sense of ease. I care about these characters I lot, and they tend to get softened down in fanon after a while. I love them in the parts of canon when they're miserable and cruel and unable to get better, too. And I needed to write that, I guess.

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

haha probably swinger of birches (see question 1). It's a romance movie fusion, which helps, but it also leans into the "second chances to have everything you thought you lost in the war" of the canon. Plus the "hey what if we DIDN'T pass on the generational trauma" that is the absolute heart of mdzs.

8. do you get hate on fics?

Once got a serial TERF commenter who was going around. Weakling.

9. do you write smut? If so, what kind?

That's my wheelhouse, baby, that's what I'm most comfortable writing and what I like. I've covered a lot, but idk what the themes are. Except maybe the intimacy of sex in the bathroom/in the shower. I write a passable amount of kink, I guess? I also write a passable amount of lesbian sex. this is because i'm gay.

10. do you write crossovers?

No. I do AUs a lot, including AUs set in another fictional universe, but I don't like crossovers. They make my teeth itch.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Hope not!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah! I have blanket permission for translations, so long as they link back to the original (and with a strong preference that they're on ao3). Someone did my wangxian lesbian scific AU in Spanish, which is cool as hell.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yeah! Well! Okay they're not POSTED but that's mostly my fault. I learned to co-write with @dulosis. phillyverse will take the world by storm! geoverse will be our white whale and THEN take the world by storm! we have a batshit number of words of chatfic from back when I was more active in mdzs. Frankly some of my favorite writing.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

in the pines, the wangxian semi-pro-dom modern AU fic. I accidentally lived out the final scene in real life with a tinder hookup (NOT what you're thinking. I took her out to eat after one of the hookups, and I was not considering fic plots at the time), and it feels kinda bad now to try to write the wangxian version of something that actually meant a lot to me (because i am both a lesbian and NOT good at casual). I think she only reads Star Wars fic if anything, but what if she found it, you know?

Also this one hockey rpf fic that was like, very much about Leon renewing his passport and the deal with living on a continent you didn't grow up on, but also-- kind of did. That's only in the gdocs tho.

16. What are your writing strengths?

You'll know the atmospheric humidity in any given scene.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Goddamn dialogue.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

A few. I've seen a very small number of good fics where bilingual folks are doing neat cultural/diaspora stuff with it, especially in modao with chinese diaspora writers. That's cool as hell, but also not my lane. I've also seen people in hockey rpf do some neat stuff with this with, say, Leon Draisaitl, especially in the context of a non-German pov character learning some German. But in those cases, the best simulation of hearing a German sentence you don't understand is written with dialogue in English interspersed with blanks.

Instead of just writing out full sentences of dialogue in a different lang from the prose, I love being conscious of what language the characters are speaking in. I am much more interested in playing with that, and I can do that best in English. If my characters are switching between languages I switch up the English diction a bit; I remember how names will come up in sentences differently, I think about how something would sound to whisper. For untranslatable things, or stuff that sounds weird in English, I just use the word in the language, in the English sentence, and that's that. I love having to abide by the limitations and abilities of Chinese or Italian or whatever; I love knowing how dialect will affect communication.

The only time a full line of dialogue in a foreign language makes sense is if the pov character doesn't understand it. But it's very unlikely that the pov character will BOTH a) not speak a language at all, necessitating that it shows up in another language from the prose, and b) the pov character can actually ID every single word clearly enough that it makes sense to write it out. So largely I'm personally uninterested in it, because outside of some narrow applications (most of which aren't my purview) it doesn't do much.

That said, Mr Fruits Baske Sohma Shigure speaking random french is perfect. What a terrible man. Love him.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Probably Fullmetal Alchemist, but I'm not sure.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

harsh! harsh! overall, maybe pro bono (wangxian vampire AU). today. tomorrow it will change.

I'm tagging anyone who wants to play!

[incorrectringsofpower]

Season 2 First 3 episodes thoughts (spoilers below the cut, DO NOT click the cut if you do not want to be spoiled!)

Episode 1

The dimples are a bit disarming ngl.

The chorals Bear added are interesting. Someone translate them please and thank you.

Ewwwww bug!Sauron nope nope nope.

Why hallo there handsome asshole :D

What's in the pouuuuch? (I don't think we're ever gonna find out tbh)

O shit are these the raft redshirts? Oh nooo.

I support horse girl rights and wrongs.

Mooom, Galadriel is a lying liar who lies.

Gil-galad looks so done lmfao. "Great-auntie whyyyy."

Elrond about to pull an Elwing.

I want to see my little boy (Isildur). (Where is heeeee?)

Hello Glüg, you SDCC photo gem.

Ah Waldreg you fucker. Guess you figured out between seasons that he ain't Sauron.

Lmao not Sauron pulling a Moses on Adar. Wtf are you doing buddy?

Nori my beloved

Wow The Stranger has so much vocabulary now. I still think he swallowed a Harfoot dictionary.

Ok additional Harfoot food note: Beetles (scarab beetles?)

Oh yeah some fic writers are reaaaaally gonna enjoy the scenes of Halron chained and collared. Here comes another fic deluge!

Sauron, don't you remember what happened with Huan in the FA?

BEN DANIELS TIME LET'S GOOOOO.

RIP to this random elf messenger bc I don't think he's gonna make it.

Ben Daniels has the raaaaange.

Eärendil mentionnnn. And Beleriand mention! I wonder why the Mariana Trench option wasn't considered in the TA. Update: Ok nvm Círdan will answer that for us.

Poppy! Hopefully the others can still travel without the maps she took.

The music is so prettyyyy.

"Your people have been set free." #doubt (show me the proof! also why did Sauron want that? He needed slaves to work the fields in Mordor, right?)

Ah Waldreg did die in the exact episode we predicted.

More elf nuns!

Elf costumes! I need an analysis post!

Lmao Elrond's face. "Grunkle Círdan, you betrayed meeee!"

Galadriel: How 'bout I do anyway?

Elrond: Thanks I hate it.

Galadriel: Please don't jump off waterfalls again.

Mirdania! Aw shit Halron got there before the nameless doomed Lindon elf.

Ominous ending music, Bear.

Episode 2

DWARVES MY BELOVED

I love the terrace farming so much.

Dwarf food note: Mole-tail stew, Large mushroom (chanterelle-like) that is very valuable, smaller mushrooms, gourds!

ilu Disa

This scene was exactly what I needed for dwarves and dwarvish food reasons.

Oh shit not my dwarves :(((

Alfirin seeds!

Ooh creepy!

New elf characters! Do they have names? Please give them names!

"Crush two spiders with one boot." Ooh I hate the foreshadowing of that metaphor. Hates it, hates it.

More foreshadowiiiing.

Mirror of Galadriel foreshadowing specifically!

Eregion is so beautiful and majestic (thanks, Season 2 budget!). Sure do hope nothing bad happens to it! (sobbing)

Yup, RIP Lindon messenger elves.

I looove this music.

Skeletor! (By the power of Grayskull!)

Ooh cultists.

The Dweller is back!

"curse upon our flesh" wut

I have a bad feeling about this. (Wait, wrong fandom)

Where is Narviiii.

Do Disa's friends have naaames? Wait x-ray actually was helpful for once. Rachel Payne as Brenna and Laura Jane Matthewson as Revna! I'm so happy she has named friends who even gossip!

Hi Narvi!

King Durin: But do I still have grandparent's rights?

"Stubborn as a root-bound parsnip!" Hah.

Oh my god he's working on ships. I love that so much.

Ooh shit a flashback to the woods scene from Udûn.

Why are you shaving, sir? Sir.

Ahhhh poetry mentions from the FA! How nerdy.

The bell seems bad.

Eye of Sauron?

Uh-oh. Is this how he learns how squishy hobbits are on adventures?

Ooh he's developing door ideas. Fun!

I get the feeling Mirdania ain't gonna last the season, either.

Fuuuck tower foreshadowing.

Ooh elf umbrella!

Oh you little weasel!

"I'm going to open a First Age bottle." Love that detail.

"Are you my friend?" Hoo boi.

Ominous thunderclap. Ooooh.

Is he gonna larp as an Istar? Lmao.

"Soon every realm will fall." Because of you, asshole!

Title drop!

Wow. Okay. Playing on his insecurities and also calling him the "Lord of the Rings". Overdoing it a bit much there, Ronnie?

"I am your partner." screech

Pope-galad says you need babysitter, Gal. I'm sure this will go splendidly!

Episode 3

Bronwyn ;_;

Berek best boi my beloved

Sad Elendil and Valandil :(((

YESSS OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING. EVERYONE STAY CALM. IT'S HAPPENING!

ISILDUR SAVE YOUR HORSE FOR THE LOVE OF ERU.

Pls don't kill Berek. I couldn't stand it 😭

ISILDUR BEST HORSE GIRL

THEY'D BOTH BETTER LIVE OR SO HELP ME

FUCKING RUN ISILDUR FFS

(GOD I HATE LARGE FANTASY SPIDERS AND THIS IS WHY)

Ooh the shells funerary detail!

Eärien girrrrl your evil phase alarms me.

This ship is so saddd :(

More ominous tower shit.

Pharazôn, you weasel 2.0.

Fucking foreshadowiiiing.

Valandil my beloved! Oooh tension with Kemen.

A baby orc! Fascinating!

Damrod has arrived!

More title dropping!

"--a friend." The emphasis was so funny.

Durin is suspicious. Love it.

Celebrimbor: Well if I start a Catholic schism then so be it.

It is your moment, Holly-boy, but also your doom. You're being Anakined into Vader by Palpannatar.

Isildur has discovered the DnD means of equipment acquisition.

Noooo more dead horsies :(

Estrid :D (please don't be evil)

Lmao at least he knows proper wound procedures lol.

DO NOT HURT BEREK

Potato food spotted!

ARONDIR YASSS

THEY STOLE BEREK NOOOOO

Arondir sir you are low on arrows.

Arondir ;_;

Bronwyn :(((( fuck I'm so sad about this

I will never recover from the Aronwyn ship, I fear :(

Theo, buddy, need someone to talk to?

Sad version of Aronwyn theme nooooo :(

Really not liking how much King Durin's crown sorta resembles Sauron's this season.

Theo taking over his mother's skills :(

Yup, poisoned orc arrow theory confirmed.

Stepparenting with foreshadowing for Numenor, delightfulll.

Please don't be foreshadowing.

Who is his dad? Oh no hurtful, Theo. Buddy :(

My Garden Fam is broken and I'm deeply unwell about it.

Theo-Isildur friendship time?

BEREK HEIST BEREK HEIST

Isildur really is so relieved to be alive and not eaten by spiders that he's gone friend mode. How very like his Grunkle Elrond!

Oh no Isildur mom backstory :(

Don't cry Isildur and Theo bc then I'm gonna cry ;;_;;

Also now this is a narrative parallel!

Ah good gift discussion next to the word "precious" is throwing my brain. Oh lordy.

Please don't be evil, Estrid! I'm already suffering without Bronwyn and both Disa and Míriel are doomed af.

Theo wtf are you doing?

ENTS.

No don't lose the sword Galadriel gave you!

Míriel in white, Elendil in blue and gold, Pharazôn in red. Totally Kate Hawley doing some fascinating storytelling here.

Oh no my quote about Elendil and his daughter in a courtroom is suddenly very apt. Oh dear.

What did Elendil see?

Huh the unrest happened sooner than I thought.

EAGLE TIME LET'S GOOOO!

Eagle: Y'all are gonna die!

Elendil: Top 10 anime betrayals and by my own daughter. Wtf.

Annatar gets his own cute lil forging outfit :D

More symbolism!

Oh god what a way to end the first 3 episodes. Send help.

[mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea]

10 Questions for Writers

10 Questions for Writers tagged by @sunnysideprincess

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

156, but two or three of those are Round Robins I participated in, and two are collabfics. The rest are all mine, though.

2. what’s your total AO3 word count?

902,447

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Marvel is my main squeeze fandom, but I've got one Stranger Things fic up and I want to write a few more. I've got a tiny Hannibal fic up, one solitary M*A*S*H that had been a request of one of my besties (and that was definitely enough and I love that show), and there's a Contrarywise/Trickster's Touch ficlet up. Oh yeah, and I have a few Bill and Ted fics up and some other random old stuff that I finally stuck on my AO3 (Lost Boys, From Hell)

4. do you respond to comments? why or why not?

Always. First off, it's so rare these days to get comments because of all the reasons/excuses people give for not leaving comments on fics that to get comments is such a treasure and joy, so of course, I'm going to comment back. Second, if some of those reasons/excuses are true (shyness, anxiety, awkwardness) then I'm doubly grateful for the people who do comment - esp if they are commenting while anxious/shy/awkward - that I want to make sure they realize that their comments are appreciated and that they are not bothering me with their comments. Though I still don't understand that concern. If a writer doesn't want comments on their fics, they'll set it up so that no one will comment. If we've got our comments open, we want comments and you're never bothering us with them.

5. have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don't think so. Given how wildly unpopular I seem to be as a writer, I can't imagine anyone wanting to steal what I've written.

6. have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yep. I've got two collabfics up on AO3 that I wrote with @scottxlogan, and we've got two more in the wings just needing to be finished so I can post them up.

7. what’s your all-time favorite ship?

No. I don't have one all-time favorite ship. I have many favorite ships - Loki/Tony Stark, Loki/Bucky Barnes, Loki/Steve Rogers, Loki/Emma Frost, Loki/Justin Hammer (don't give me that look, they're fun), Tony/Bucky, Tony/Steve, Tony/Scott Summers, Tony/Emma Frost, Steve/Bucky, Steve/Scott Summers, Steve/Emma, Scott/Logan, Scott/Bobby, Scott/Kurt... I mean, that's just the Marvel list, and it's not even a complete one. There's also Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, and so many others from other fandoms that I may not write for but I like to read.

8. what are your writing strengths?

Apparently humor, Easter Eggs, dialogue, fluff, sexy times, and making people hungry by including food into so many fics.

9. what are your writing weaknesses?

World building if I'm having to create a world from scratch. I can do it, but it's a lot of work and then I get stressed. I used to world-build in rp writing with my former roommate, and when we quit writing, I thought I might take some of our old rps and turn them into og fiction, but there are some that are so wildly extensive in the world building that I will probably stick to re-reading them and not actually trying to re-write them into og fiction.

10. first fandom you wrote for?

If we're talking the first time I ever wrote fanfiction without knowing that fanfiction was a word, that'd be the Children of the Corn fanfic I wrote when I was 12-13. It was in pencil, and it was big time Mary Sue, and I don't even have it anymore because over many decades, the pencil faded/smudged, and I'm pretty sure I tossed it into the trash. (It was sooooooooooooooooooo bad.) The first fandom I was in once I knew what fanfiction was - Jay and Silent Bob. Yes, I still have those fics, and no they aren't posted anywhere, and they won't be. With the exception of a Loki series fic I wrote that has a tiny crossover with Dogma (that was called a therapy fic), I won't go back to that fandom.

Thanks for the tag!

Tagging: @mistressofmuses, @stormxpadme, @soliloquent-stark, @whinysteve, @kleenexwoman, @mcfiddlestan, @chaotic-hypnotic-erotic, @chaoticgardenbread, and anyone else who wants to play!

[ritens]

yay more tag games, more opportunities to wrangle dd2 Rau lore. Looking forward to tormenting Lane some more in the future too tho, he is the blorbo.

❖ The Basics:

Name : Raures

Age : 123 (is there any concrete lore about how elves age and even reproduce because??? making shit up as i go here)

One good trait : Easygoing

One bad trait : Gullible

❖ Habits:

One bad habit : Easily disposes of items he doesn’t need at the time but ends up requiring later. The opposite of a hoarder.

One good habit : Has pretty good hygiene even when out camping. Thank you, elf life. (on another note, managing to wrangle pawn Lane into having frequent baths has been a massive feat as well)

One habit they can’t break : Q-tips in ears.

One they’ve broken : not dressing up before going out. Yeah there was a time Raures would go to the market to fetch some fresh breakfast veggies in naught but briefs.

What they’re afraid of : The possibility that he might be on the wrong side of history. He worries about being neglectful.

❖ Family: 

Their parents names : Father Rhodan, Mother Khlystre

Their siblings names : n/a

Other relations : Uncle Woulle back in the Arbor

Favourite childhood memory : He loved spending time together with his parents, picnicking out in the meadow. When the sun shines through the leaves of trees just right, he tends to stop for a moment to savour the memory in his mind.

Favourite childhood toy : His first set of wood carving tools. A present from his father. He carved lots of things. Who needs house borers when you have a child with the less hazardous version of a knife running around.

Embarrassing story : Messed up a lot when learning human tongue. Once told a merchant they should consider trying soup made of old boots. He was trying to buy potatoes and cabbage for his parents for the veggie soup they were making. He attempted smalltalk. It was his first time practising the language with strangers.

Favourite family member : both of his parents were inseparable and he did not separate them in his mind either. They were constant in his life unlike most other people he’d met along the way.

A story about that family member : Khlystre once played a prank on her husband and son. She knew about other races more than the other two and was their walking encyclopaedia. She made up a nonexistent human holiday. Both Rhodan and Raures believed her and then wished human villagers a good ‘fish and chips’ day.

❖ What they prefer:

Coffee or tea ? Tea. Chamomile or Linden tea specifically.

Showering in the day or night ? Both tbh. He will wash up whenever he feels like it.

Taking baths or taking showers ? Bath. I’m not sure showers even exist in this world. Haven’t seen any. Then again the npcs seem to shit on the streets as the only toilets I’ve seen so far are in watchtowers and in JAIL of all places.

Writing or reading ? Reading. Especially letters and papers, diaries he has no business snooping through.

Platonic or romantic love ? Raures dreams of romance but has trouble committing knowing he’d outlive his potential partners.

Iced tea or lemonade ? Iced tea given the chance. Puppy eyes at random mages and sorcerers to put a little ice in his cup.

Ice cream or smoothies ? Smoothies. REFRESHING

Cupcakes or cake ? Cake if it’s got fresh fruit in it. And the thicker the frosting the better.

Beach or mountains ? Tough choice. Probably the beach as it feels more like home to him, despite the brine looming in the water. Easier to gather filling meals from waters also.

Tagged by @arisenreborn

Going to pass this onto another fandom- Tagging @alteredsilicone bc it’d be lovely to read more casual stuff about Viri or Temi <3 also @riftwalker-limbro if you ever feel like further fleshing out Vince or whoever you feel could work for this.

[cranberrymoons]

hi! i'm sage. I'm glad you're here!

this blog is multi-fandom but I'm deep down the firefighter rabbit hole right now. stranger things and supernatural brainrot are also here to stay 😔

you can find my writing on ao3 here and under the 'my fic' tag on this blog and in the masterlist under the read more. reblogs of other peoples' fic are tagged as 'fic', and writing resources etc are tagged as 'writing'

fic masterlist 🩷

look who's inside again 16,846 words | rated m | buckley-diaz family, chris character study, reconciliation, follow-up/prequel to i'm holding on (barely)

chris misses his dad. he misses his mom. he misses buck. he's still trying to figure out what it means that he misses them all in the same way.

close ain't close enough (til we cross the line) buddie | 9,884 words | rated e | infidelity, possessive sex

buck and eddie are not even approaching normal about each other; things escalate quickly (aka: the sexting fic, part 2)

late night high (i'm floating) buddie | 1,649 words | rated e | drug use, self-realization, mustache burn 😌

eddie gets very very high and realizes several important things about himself; buck's just trying to follow along

911

i'm holding on (barely) buddie + helena character study | 12,543 words | rated m

August comes, and with it comes Eddie. Eddie and that friend of his who was there back at the start of the summer, the one Christopher has talked so much about over the past few months. Buck this, and Buck that, and – All of it. Helena takes one look at them, and she knows. eddie and buck take christopher home to california; helena and ramon decide to follow

nothing wrong with me loving you buddie | 4,496 words | rated e | infidelity, sexting

He’s not thinking about it. He’s not. He’s definitely not. Buck leaves for the night, gets in his car and drives away like everything’s normal – normal because it is, it literally is, it’s the most normal night in the world, and Eddie is the most normal he’s ever been, and then maybe an hour later, he gets a text. buck and eddie watch red white and royal blue together; one thing leads to another (aka: the sexting fic)

i'm a cliché (who cares) buddie | 7,326 words | rated e

“You okay?” Buck asks, and Eddie blinks, lets out the breath that had gotten caught in his throat. “Yeah,” he says, even though – no, not really. “Sorry, just – a surprise, I guess. Hearing from him.” Which is weird, come to think of it, because they used to be close. Closer than anything, as close as – well, as close as him and Buck, but in a different way. In a way that felt frantic and clinging and desperate, something to hold onto while they were being shot at. Eddie hears from an old army buddy; it brings a few things to the surface.

let me put my lips to something buddie | 2,524 words | rated e | blood kink, possessive sex

It’s a rush, having sex with Buck. And he thinks part of it is probably down to this, the fact that it’s something that finally feels right-sized after a lifetime of not. That’s a big part of it, but another part of it is that it’s him. Him. Everything. The way it feels like they could consume each other like fire and it still wouldn’t be enough.

we all fall down pre-buddie | 1,634 words | rated m | infidelity/angst

Buck hates that he was here for this. He hates that he was here for this, Eddie and his girlfriend and the fucked up thing with the woman who’s not Shannon, and Buck just standing there in the middle of it, the four of them trapped together in Eddie’s living room on a random Thursday night like something out of a soap opera because they all happened to converge at once. when the metaphorical house burns down, you don't want to be the only one left standing in it

closer than my hands have been buddie | 4,578 words, rated M

Eddie never feels easy. Tommy feels easy, but Eddie – he doesn’t. He doesn’t feel easy now, and he didn’t feel easy last night, and he didn’t feel easy the night before that or before that or before that. Well, except for the parts where he did, when everything felt easy and loose and uncomplicated. Free. He misses that feeling. buck and tommy are together, and eddie's fine with that. it's fine. it is.

i feel a change in the weather (i feel a change in me) buddie | 2,133 words | rated M

It all comes to a head on the hot dusty path up to the top of Runyon Canyon. It feels inevitable, feels like something they’ve maybe been inching toward in fits and starts ever since they met. Feels right and easy and lived-in already, like a favorite shirt that’s been folded in the back of the closet for years, just waiting to be picked up and put on. buck and eddie go for a hike, kiss in the sunlight, and fall in love, not necessarily in that order.

you and tequila make me crazy buddie | 1,533 words | rated M

His arm is still draped over Eddie’s shoulders, hand still holding the other side of his head, and he shifts so that his fingers push up into the hair at the back of his neck, thumb slotting up against his ear. And he’s so close. Half an inch closer and he’d be able to feel Eddie’s heartbeat under his tongue, solid and sure and alive, and – “Hey,” says a voice above them, sharp enough to cut straight through the fog that’s settled over them. “There you guys are.” in which buck and eddie lose chimney because they're drunk and horny

for the rest of mine buddie | 644 words | rated M

It happens on a Tuesday night, with the soft whirl of the dishwasher running in the kitchen and ESPN on low in the background and Chris’s homework left laying out on the coffee table when he went to bed about an hour ago. 

heart in throat (am i dreaming?) buddie | 1,227 words | rated T

I kissed someone, he imagines himself saying eventually, when he’s ready. I think I really like him. Just like that. No big announcement, no declaration, but just – just letting it sit there and breathe between them.

already standing on the ground buddie | 1,195 words | rated T

Buck lets out a laugh, one hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck. Laughing like he’s relieved, like he can’t quite believe the words coming out of his own mouth. “We were on a date.” And – Eddie blinks. “Oh.”

such a sweet thing (i wanna do everything) bucktommy | 5,582 words | rated e

Buck doesn’t want to take it slow. He doesn’t want Tommy to ease him in or treat him gently. What he wants is to suck a dick.

stranger things

here you come again stommy | 16,172 words | rated e

Steve and Tommy haven't talked in nearly three years. After everything, maybe the best way forward is back.

so fondly today steddie | 8,267 words | rated E processing trauma, getting together | tumblr post

Eddie's hair is pulled up on top of his head, and there’s a piece of it falling down to frame his face, and Steve’s sleep-deprived brain sends a shock of want rushing through him. Want: he wants to touch? Wants to look? He’s looking. Wants to… something? He feels electricity crackle at the backs of his teeth and he blinks, wanting. Wanting so badly that something aches inside his chest. (it's been a few months since everything, and steve is beginning to realize some things about himself)

get it off your chest steddie | 7,415 words | rated E rough sex, spanking, read the ao3 tags! | tumblr post

“You think this is me taking you apart?” Eddie asks. He lets go of Steve’s hair and plants a hand in the center of his chest, then gives him a shove toward the bed. “That’s adorable, Steve. Seriously.” (or, steve and eddie have life-affirmingly good sex) aka my Consent Is Sexy manifesto

dressed up to the eyes steddie | 8,737 words | rated E rough sex, spanking, read the ao3 tags! | tumblr post

Steve almost didn’t come out tonight. It’s been a long day, and he kind of just wants to be at home in his sweatpants, curled up on the couch with takeout and an old movie, but – But he’d agreed to be social tonight – if nothing else, in Robin’s honor since she was supposed to have a date tonight but is trapped in bed with the flu – and so… here he is. Being social. Ish. Socialish. Steve and Eddie are strangers in a bar... or are they?

something so pretty steddie | 3,087 words | rated M | tumblr post

Eddie raises Steve's hand to brush a kiss over his knuckles, then catches him around the waist again, swaying them back and forth to the rhythm of a Bangles song coming from the radio. “I said you look pretty, and I meant it. Deal with it.” Steve feels a reluctant smile pull at the corners of his mouth. “Really?” (the girls paint steve's nails and it causes him to feel several enormous feelings)

can't start a fire steddie | 3,831 words | rated T | tumblr post

“Are you sure this is okay?” Steve asks in an undertone once everyone has arrived that first night. He looks genuinely nervous, which is… insane; he’s a bat-wielding, bat-biting jock who saved the world, and Eddie’s just – “I don’t think your friends like me very much.” Eddie feels the corners of his mouth draw down as he follows Steve’s eyeline to where the others are huddled in the corner talking amongst themselves. (steve doesn't need people taking care of him. except, maybe he kind of likes it when they do)

the sweetest thing steddie | 14,022 words | rated E

It had started out simple enough between them, Eddie making some off-hand comment about Steve not being able to hold out for a whole month and Steve, ever unable to back down from a challenge, rising to the bait. “Whatever,” he’d said, rolling his eyes. “A month? Please.” He could do a month. Easy. He just hadn't counted on Eddie being – well. Himself. eddie goads steve into a No Nut November challenge; he never said anything about taking it easy on him

the seas be ours (steddie pirates au) (2 works, 10,943 words, rated E)

Eddie The Dread Pirate Munson captures the Harrington heir with the intent of ransoming him back to his family for an easy payout. He really could not have guessed what he was getting himself into.

back in the new york groove (26,823 words, rated E) summer 1999 | tumblr post | ch 6/? rockstar eddie/middle school teacher steve, soft dom steve

“Ha!” Eddie says, jabbing a finger into Steve's chest. “I have a publicist. That automatically makes me cooler than you.” “Oh yeah? Well I have about eighty twelve year olds back in Santa Monica who think I’m the coolest guy on the planet.” (new york isn't home, but it's the next best thing) Steve and Eddie chaotically parenting their gen-z toddler in the late 90s (part of the future fic series)

future fic series (23 works, 64,995 words, rated G-E)

a love letter to the idea of home or, the happily-ever-after future in which Eddie is a rockstar and Steve is a middle school teacher and they have a bunch of kids and live by the ocean (rockstar eddie + middle school teacher steve)

a love to last past saturday night (3,550 words, rated T for now but will go up in later chapters) | ch 1/? coffee shop au

There’s a little cafe at the end of Steve’s block that he’s only ever been in once.  It’s called Corroded Coffee and it’s dark in there and maybe a little pretentious, but not pretentious as in… people reading classic novels or having discussions about French Cinema. Pretentious in the sense that there’s an intimidating collection of vinyl records taking up half an entire wall and they use single origin arabica beans and the scary baristas look at you sideways if you order regular milk in your latte.

misc. series:

kinktober 2023 (14 works, 39,566 words, rated T-E, stranger things)

a collection of fics written for kinktober 2023 and eddie month 2023 prompts – works can also be found on tumblr under the "kinktober 2023" tag

steddie microfic (16 works, 6,502 words, rated G-E, stranger things)

a collection of microfic written for the monthly steddiemicrofic challenges – works can also be found on tumblr under the "steddiemicrofic" tag

discord drabbles (16 works, 8,479 words, rated G-E, stranger things)

a collection of drabbles/microfics written for daily discord prompts – works can also be found on tumblr under the "discord drabble" tag

steddie holiday drabbles (29 works, 21,715 words, rated T-E, stranger things)

the 2023 fic advent calendar! a collection of fics between 300-1,000 words each, written for steddieholidaydrabbles' prompts and warm-up rounds – works can also be found on tumblr under the "steddieholidaydrabbles" tag

[silverstoryteller]

Here we go, part one of my Dark Rise readthrough! Beware, as this series will include spoilers for both Dark Rise and Dark Heir. I have read the Captive Prince trilogy, so I was already pretty sure I'd love it once I did read it, but I put it off for a while until I was ready to get into a new fandom. (And also until the second book came out.) I did manage to avoid almost all spoilers going in; I knew from reviews that there was a twist at the end, and knowing Pacat, it was going to be a good one. Ditto, the romance: I knew there was a dark-haired protagonist with a bitchy blond love interest and that their names were Will and James but, crucially, not which was which. I also had the cover of the sequel to go off of, which did influence my theories just a bit.

So, knowing the above plus the summary of the first book, I made a pre-book prediction: The twist was going to be that the supposed Chosen One was going to turn out to be the big bad, or related to him, and that it would turn out he was aware of this the entire time. And yeah, I was pretty much spot on, wasn't I? It's a testament to Pacat's skill as a writer that by the time I got to the twist, it still surprised me that I turned out to be right. I had been leaning more toward Will being related to the Dark King, not being him. I wasn't sure Pacat would actually go that far, but oh boy, I loved being wrong!

This post will cover the Prologue and the first chapter.

Prologue

First of all, the map is very nice. I did notice there’s no indication of Bowhill on it, which, I realize it’s likely outside the bounds of this map, but I’d still like an indication of which direction it's in, but oh well.

Confession time, the first time I read this book, I vaguely remembered that one of the main couple was named James, but I got it in my head somehow that that was the name of the MC, not the bitchy blond LI. So I read this entire prologue under the impression that James was the protagonist, and all I thought was, ‘Wow, Pacat sure is bold, introducing a flash forward that shows her MC being a total asshole. I figured he’d turn out to be an edgy bad boy by the end, but this is a lot more than I was expecting!’

Then I got to Chapter One and Will’s introduction and, ‘Oh, nevermind, I’m just dumb.’

I did catch on during my first read that James was formerly with the Stewards, so I wasn't shocked when that was revealed later.

“He said the words like there was a system of honor in the world, like all you had to do was appeal to a person’s better nature and goodness would prevail.” I bet that's exactly what smol James tried to do when he got kicked out of the Hall, and now I'm sad.

‘“The boy’s alive.” James felt hotly resentful that it made him stop.’ I do wonder why, at this point, James seems invested in a boy he hasn’t even met yet. Is he that invested in Simon's plans at this point? I have a half-baked theory about it, but I’ll talk about that in one of the later chapters.

Chapter One

Will! <3 Despite my pre-book prediction, I got taken in by Pacat’s misdirection pretty early on, so a lot of his sneakiness in the early chapters went right over my head. Look at him, saving a stranger from a totally random accident that occurred because somebody didn't do their job right, I’m sure it's a coincidence that tying the ropes was Will’s job and that's the part that just so happened to break and lose all of Simon's cargo. What a sweet boy! (No, but seriously, he must have felt so guilty that he almost got an innocent person killed.)

Also, I found myself thinking about the details of barges during my first readthrough, and I realized that, hey, I’d never once wondered about how they stopped river barges so they didn't run into the docks in the 1800s in my life, but now I know, and that's neat! I love it when authors flex about all the research they did before writing their novel.

“Accidents were common on the docks. Just last week Will had seen a plodding draft horse shy unexpectedly as it pulled a barge along the canals, breaking its ropes and overturning its boat.” Pacat's got me so paranoid now that I'm half convinced Will caused this accident too.

Hey, are we ever going to find out what's up with the mirror, or is Will literally just hallucinating his past life onto a convenient surface?

[dem-obscure-imagines]

New Year's Eve Kisses 2022

Note: Hello, friends, and Happy New Year! At long last, and for the third year in a row, I present to you, New Year’s Eve Drabbles! I tried to make reader gender neutral in all of these, aside from the Kili one, which is a continuation of The Book Keeper! It may also serve as an introduction for a possible sequel to that fic.

Fandoms: Stranger Things, MCU, Tolkien, Harry Potter (fuck JK Rowling; Trans Rights are Human Rights), Once Upon a Time

Total Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: Mentions of alcohol (champagne, mostly), kissing (obviously), and two (2) marriage proposals. Also mentions of Eddie’s bat scars.

Eddie Munson

Word Count: 0.4k

Quite honestly, Eddie Munson didn’t think he’d live to see the end of 1986. It had had its ups and downs and its Upside Downs, but through it all, he’d had you right at his side, his second-in-command, his cleric, and, in real life, the very person who’d saved his life and ensured he’d live to see 1986 fade into 1987.

You and Eddie had been friends since elementary school. You’d been bullied as a kid, but Eddie didn’t put up with that and he didn’t want you to, either. He’d stood up for you one fateful day in the third grade and made a friend he knew he’d cherish for the rest of his life.

At the moment, the two of you were at Steve Harrington’s New Year’s Eve party, a sentence neither of you thought you’d utter, with some of his friends as well as Eddie’s bandmates, the Hellfire Club, and a few of Dustin’s other friends. Trauma was a weird thing, after all, and bonded the most unexpected people.

“Here.” Eddie handed you a solo cup full of booze and you sniffed it before taking a sip of whatever mystery punch the rest of Corroded Coffin had poured together.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He leaned against the kitchen counter, taking a sip of his drink as well, tattooed arms folded across his chest.

“Another one, huh?” You chuckled, shaking your head. “Another year.”

“Thanks to you.” He nudged you with his elbow. “You really saved my ass, you know? I really don’t think I’d be standing here without you, big ugly bat scars and all.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve saved my ass plenty of times, Munson, I’m pretty sure we’re even.”

He smirked, bumping his shoulder into yours. “You think so?”

“I do.” You nodded.

Steve drew everyone’s attention to the countdown, which was nearing a steady close.

“Hey, uh, (Y/N)?” Eddie said, his words slowing. “So remember that…not running away thing I was working on?”

“By running straight into a herd of evil mutant bats, yes, I recall.”

He scoffed. “Heh, yeah, well, um…There’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I…you know what, fuck it.”

“What, Eddie—”

He smashed his lips against yours as the ball finally dropped, kissing you hungrily. You kissed him back, spilling your drink as you surrendered to his embrace. It was uncharted territory for both of you, sure, but just like your DnD campaign, you couldn’t wait to explore it with him, side by side.

Druig

Word Count: 0.5k

When the New Year finally rolled around, the Eternals that were close enough decided to throw something of a celebration, just as you’d all done in the years before you’d split off and gone your separate ways. Now that Druig had finally come out of hiding, he was standing in the corner of the room, sulking, snacking, and sipping champagne as he watched some random guy flirt with you across the room.

You and Druig were…complicated to say the least. You weren’t together, not officially. You obviously both cared about each other a lot, but neither of you had ever taken that next step, not before Druig had all but dropped off of the face of the planet.

You’d missed him, of course, but you weren’t sure how to bridge that gap, if that was even still what either of you wanted. He was the Hades to your Persephone. Quite literally. Your dynamic was where Sprite spun the legend to begin with.

“Why the long face?” Sersi asked, standing next to him, that soft, compassionate look on her face.

Druig shrugged. “Dunno. Just…not feeling the party, I guess.”

“Is that so?” She asked. “Why’s that?”

“Just…thought it would be different, is all.”

“Huh, well, looks like someone else might feel the same way.” Sersi nudged him, motioning to you with her head. Sure enough, you were giving the ‘help me’ eyes, stuck in conversation with the stranger in front of you.

“Oh.” Druig said, straightening up his jacket before standing up and briskly walking to you. “This guy botherin’ you, love?”

“Who’s this?” The frat bro in front of you asked, looking Druig up and down. It was true, Druig was much shorter than the lunkhead, but, of course, Druig had his own secret weapon up his sleeve.

“I’m their boyfriend.” Druig announced, slipping his arm around your waist. “Who are you?”

“Kyle.”

“Well, Kyle, if you don’t mind too much, I’ll be borrowing the beautiful, beautiful (Y/N) for the rest of the night.”

Kyle looked like he was about to retaliate, but then a golden hue took over his eyes and he turned around abruptly and walked across the room and out into the cold.

You chuckled and looked over at Druig. “Thank you. You just saved me from a riveting conversation about NFTs.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “What’s an NFT?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

He grinned. “I’ll take your word for it, then.”

“How are you doing?” You asked, leaning into him a little more.

“Better now.”

“You looked a little grumpy before.”

“You noticed.”

“I always do. Especially when it’s you.” You smirked, mischievous. “So you’re my boyfriend, huh?”

“For the evening.” He shrugged. “Or longer, if you want.”

“Are you finally asking me out?”

“Might be.” Druig pulled you closer to him, his hands on your waist as the other Eternals began their countdown. “Are you saying yes?”

“Might be.” You repeated, nose brushing against his as you went in for a tender kiss.

Kili

Word Count: 0.8k

“So the Dwarves are coming over here for New Year’s Eve…why?” Your friend Chelsea asked, hanging up some 2023 balloons.

“Because they already had their New Year’s on Durin’s Day there, so…” You shrugged. “You know how they are, they just like parties.”

“That is true.” Kili nodded, walking into the kitchen.

Your face lit up when you saw him, and you walked over to him, surrendering to his embrace. “When did you come over?”

“Just a moment ago, my love.” Kili replied, pressing a kiss to your lips. “Do you need help preparing the festivities?”

“Actually, yes. Do you and the guys want to bring the drinks in from the car?”

“One step ahead of ye, lassie.” Dwalin replied, sipping from a bottle of beer he’d found out there, Fili and Thorin carrying in cases of beer behind him. You had bought a lot of it, but you still weren’t sure it would be enough to satiate the Dwarves. Only time would tell. Worse case scenario, they could go back through the portal in your closet and get some ale from Erebor.

“Thanks, guys. Anyone wanna go with Phil to pick up the pizzas?”

“I will!” Ori volunteered excitedly. “What’s pizza?”

The pieces slowly started to fall into place. You explained human New Year’s Eve traditions to the Dwarves whenever they asked questions.

“Kissing at midnight?” Thorin asked, well within earshot of Kili. “Does it have to be your betrothed?”

“Nope! Some people kiss total strangers, but if you have a partner, you usually kiss them, yeah.”

“Interesting.”

“Why, you have someone in mind, uncle?” Fili asked, teasing.

“No, of course not.” Thorin shook his head, flustered.

“Hmm.” You hummed, laughing softly. You turned to Kili, smirking. “Do you know who you wanna kiss?”

“I have a faint inkling, yes.” He smirked, pressing a kiss to your cheek.

In no time at all, the party was in full swing and the dwarves were distracted very effectively by the New Year’s Eve countdown, mesmerized by the colors and songs and segments included. Ori was taking notes ferociously while the other Dwarves participated in a drinking game led by one of your friends.

You sat in Kili’s lap, chatting with the others, sipping on champagne, and waiting for the final bell to toll, bringing 2022 to a close.

“Do you have a New Year’s Resolution?” Dori asked you, sampling some champagne himself.

“I’d like to write another book.” You said, leaning into Kili. “What about you?”

“I do have one.” Kili nodded. “But I think I’d rather tell you in private it it’s all the same to you.”

“Oh?” You asked.

He nodded, giving your hips a push off of the couch and taking you to the other room. You looked up at him curiously. In your world, the Mortal Realm, Kili stood about six feet tall, as opposed to his usual 4’ 10” that he sported so proudly back home. It was odd how your height difference flip-flopped back and forth, but you were coming to love it.

“So, I’ve been doing some research.” He began, taking one of your hands with his own. “It may be too soon, but…” Kili reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box. He slowly got down on one knee, offering the box to you.

“Kili…” You whispered, your voice breaking. “Is this…?”

“Open it.” He urged, his voice faltering.

You opened the lid of the finely crafted wooden box. It was clear he’d made that from scratch as well, and sure enough, inside, you found a small tuft of green velvet, atop which sat three things: an intricate engagement band, which looked much like the claddagh ring he’d made for you, but with a diamond in the place of the emerald in the other ring, which currently sat, upright, on your right ring finger. The second and third were matching wedding beads, meant to be braided into your hair and his, to signify in Dwarven society that you were married.

“Oh my God. Kili, I…”

“In this New Year, in your world, in mine, I wish to marry you, to be your husband, to care for you for all of your days. And if you’d have me, my One, I would love to make you my wife.”

You nodded, tears slipping from your eyes as you pulled him back to his feet. “Yes, Kili. I love you so much. So much. I can’t wait to marry you.”

Kili pressed his lips to yours, collecting you in his arms, kissing you for the remainder of the year, your last year as an unmarried couple as it slowly bled into the year in which you would finally be married to the Dwarven prince of your dreams.

Neville Longbottom

Word Count: 0.8k

“Professor Longbottom?” One of Neville’s fourth year students asked, entering the greenhouse. It was winter break and only a handful of students remained in the castle, along with the few professors who had stayed. It had been a few years since the Battle and Neville had returned to Hogwarts, now the Herbology professor.

“Yes, Tilda?”

“Have you seen Professor (L/N)? I have a question about the extra credit assignment for their class.”

“I haven’t. Did you check their office?”

“I did, it was empty.”

“Huh.” Neville thought for a moment, running through your favorite places in the castle that you could have stolen away to. “Well, what’s the assignment?”

“We have to write about a Muggle holiday we haven’t learned in class yet. I wanted to write about New Year’s Eve, but…”

You walked into the greenhouse, holding a bundle of flowers. “Neville, have you--? Oh, hello Tilda.”

“Professor (L/N)!” Tilda grinned.

“She has a question for you.”

“I thought you might be in here with Professor Longbottom…” Tilda admitted with a shy grin. It was no secret to most of your students that there was something going on between the two of you. “I have a question about New Year’s Eve. So, the kiss everyone talks about, is that before or after midnight?”

“Oh, a New Year’s Eve kiss? It’s usually right at midnight. Muggles believe it’ll bring them luck in the new year.” You explained for her.

“Ohhhh. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much.”

“Of course. Let me know if there’s anything else you need! Will you be at the party tonight?”

“I will!” She smiled, saying goodbye to both of you before walking away.

“A New Year’s Eve kiss?” Neville raised an eyebrow, taking a step closer to you as soon as Tilda was out of sight and earshot.

“It’s tradition.” You shrugged, resting a hand against his cozy sweater vest. Outside, there was snow falling in large, fluffy flakes, visible through the greenhouse windows. “And if you’re lucky, you just might get one tonight.”

“What are these for?” He motioned to the flowers in your hand, changing the subject, his cheeks reddening. He had grown up a lot since you’d first met him, that was for sure, but every so often, the shy side of him showed itself again, reminding you of that shy Gryffindor boy you’d first fallen in love with. Little did you know he was nervous about something else that the evening would bring.

“They were in my office.”

“Well, you should put them in water, they’re lovely.” He replied, knowingly.

You rested your arms on his shoulders, pressing your forehead against his. “Thank you, Nev.”

“Of course, love.”

***

Later in the evening came the party Headmaster McGonogall was throwing for the few kids who were still there, as well as the staff who had volunteered to stay behind. The Grand Hall was decked out with silvery decorations, the tables near the front of the room loaded with food and punch.

You and Neville kept orbiting each other, keeping a safe distance to remain professional, but it was terribly obvious to anyone who knew the two of you that you shared a deep connection.

“You look lovely, dear.” McGonogall complimented, looking at your outfit.

“Thank you, Headmaster.” You thanked. “Happy New Year.”

“A Happy New Year indeed.” She eyed Neville, standing in the corner. “Mr. Longbottom looks quite nervous, does he not?”

“Oh.” You glanced over at him and she was right. He was pacing, even as midnight approached. “Yeah, he does. I’ll go check on him.”

You walked over to him and grabbed his attention, pulling him to a private corner. “You okay?”

He nodded, shaking.

You took his hands in yours and felt the way he was trembling. “Hey, hey, what’s going on?”

“I…” He sighed. “I’m…”

“Take your time.” You encouraged, your voice soft.

He took a long breath, centering himself, that Gryffindor courage finally taking hold. “(Y/N), I have been in love with you since our fourth year. When I saw you at that Yule Ball in this very room…I knew that I had to…to do this someday.”

“Do what someday?” You whispered, watching as he, shakily, pulled a tiny box from his pocket, opening it to reveal the most gorgeous engagement ring you had ever seen, its gem in the shape of a flower, metal leaves on either side of it. Tears pooled in your eyes. “Oh, Neville.”

“Will you marry me?”

In the background, you heard the students counting down to the new year while you had a brand new life waiting in anticipation for you to make your choice.

“Yes, Neville, of course.” You rushed into his arms, pulling him into the tightest hug while he exhaled a sigh of relief. “I can’t wait to marry you.”

And sure enough, right as the new year hit, you sealed your promise with a sweet kiss.

Peter Pan

Word Count: 0.8k

“What, so you’re telling me you don’t celebrate New Year’s?” You asked in disbelief at the nightly bonfire. It had been a few months since you’d taken up permanent residence in Neverland with Peter and the rest of the Lost Boys, but you’d been visiting the place in your dreams, and their self-appointed ruler, for that matter, for several years.

“What point would there be in that?” Felix asked, rolling his eyes at the sentiment. “Time doesn’t pass here. We don’t have a calendar year like they do in the Mortal Realm.”

“Then how do you keep track of time?”

“We don’t.” One of the other Lost Boys laughed.

“No other holidays?” You asked, eyebrows scrunching together. “None at all?”

“Nope.”

“Huh.”

You didn’t say much after that, thinking about it. You’d been trying to keep track of the days since you’d left home, and you knew it was probably getting to be around that time there. Not that you wanted to go back; you didn’t. But it still felt strange, one last final difference that further divided your new life from the one you had left behind for the adventure of a lifetime.

Pan found you later, studying the look on your face. He didn’t like when people were sad; it brought the whole vibe down, but he had a soft spot for you, had picked you especially to be, well…his. He wanted you to be happy for that reason, too. It hadn’t entirely dawned on him why that was, why your feelings were so important to him.

“Love?”

“Hmm?”

“Something bothering you?”

“Not really. It’s not important.”

He chuckled and sat in front of you, pinching your chin with his fingers and forcing you to meet his eyes. “Yes it is. What’s going on?”

“I just…Felix said you guys don’t really celebrate holidays here. I guess it makes sense. I should have realized that sooner, I guess.”

Peter thought for a long moment, putting the pieces together. “You miss holidays, then. We celebrate a lot, have parties nearly every night.”

“Yeah, I know, and I like those a lot too, but…I don’t know, something about…the rituals, I guess. I think New Year’s Eve would have been soon. It’s one of my favorite holidays.”

“Is it?” He raised an eyebrow, taking your hand. “Well then…let me see what I can do about that, eh?”

***

A few nights later, Pan sent you out with Felix on a “special errand.” You weren’t really sure what you were supposed to be looking for, but he’d said something about seashells, so you and Felix were combing the beach and collecting some.

“I was skeptical of you, you know?” Felix admitted. It wasn’t any surprise to you that was the case. Felix was Pan’s right hand man, after all. Most of his job was figuring out who was and wasn’t to be trusted. “But…something about having you here…Pan is different, more powerful, lighter, even.”

“Thanks, I think.” You chuckled. “You’re not so bad yourself, you know.”

“I’ve been told I’m something of an acquired taste.”

“Yeah, well…I appreciate you looking out for me. You both made the transition a lot easier.”

“Anything for Pan’s Chosen.” He bowed playfully as you gathered the last of the seashells and you began the long hike back, only to find…the campgrounds were decorated.

There were glass orbs and flickering lights dangling from the tree branches, a large grandfather clock propped up against a tree. In the center of it all was Pan, dressed in a sparkly gold suit, holding an even sparklier gold outfit for you in his arms.

“What’s all this?” You asked, looking around in awe.

“It’s New Year’s Eve, love.” Pan insisted, smirking. “Here, get dressed. I’ll save you some champagne.”

“Champagne?” You asked, incredulous. “Where did you get all this stuff.”

“Details, details…” He shook his head, giving you a little push towards your hut, where you quickly changed into the new outfit before meeting him outside, where the Lost Boys were acting out what you could only assume was supposed to be some form of a New Year’s Eve broadcast while the grandfather clock began to tick down to midnight.

Peter took your hand and raised it to his lips. “You look absolutely stunning.”

“You clean up nice yourself.” You chuckled, still in disbelief at everyting that was unfolding around you. “I…”

“You don’t like it.” His expression fell.

“No! Oh my gosh, Peter, I love it, I just…I can’t believe you would do all this for me…”

He met your eyes, his voice very serious. “I would do anything for you, (Y/N). I suppose I’ll just have to keep proving that to you.”

It truly was one of the best nights you’d had on Neverland, if not in your life, and sure enough, when midnight hit, Pan made sure he wouldn’t miss out on perhaps the most important New Year’s Eve tradition of all. And he met you under the stars to capture your lips in a sweet, tender kiss.

[hiddensneker]

Sorry if this sounds all over the place I have like a horrible headache but

IF YOU SEE THIS PERSON PLEASE BLOCK THEM!!!

I’ve seen a lot of people (mostly minors) follow and interact with this person despite the large amount of red flags they have on their profile so I just want to lay out every reason why this person is extremely weird and you should stay as far away as possible.

1. the whole “fandom mom” thing

Guys please I know most of you are minors and don’t see the problem but an adult should NEVER try to make themselves come off as someone as trustable as a PARENT to a minor. ESPECIALLY if they never interacted before.

As a minor if you ever see an adult try to do this the first thing you should ask yourself is “why does an adult want me to immediately put so much trust into them”. Any adult should understand that trust from a minor is not something you can demand from them. That should be built up naturally through your interactions and even then, they’re not going to look up to you in the same way as an adult. It should always be the minors choice on if they consider you a trusted adult. Adults should never try to force that onto someone and if they do then that’s clearly a sign they don’t have good intentions.

Being a parent is having a position of power and authority over a minor. Minors are expected to look up and do everything their told to by a parent. Which is why it’s dangerous for adults to try to make themselves come off as a fandom adult. It’s putting them in a position where they can easily abuse or take advantage of minors.

Now to be clear I’m not saying that “oh any adult who’s not your birth parents can’t be you parents” obviously found family is a thing. But the difference between those situations is that found family is between a minor and a adult who they known for years and have presented themselves as a responsible role model. This is a random stranger on the internet who most people met like a week ago.

And I get it, most minors just assume this is a joke and isn’t meant to be taken seriously. And I completely understand that assumption. But any adult should know that even as a joke, that behavior is extremely weird. It’s only really an appropriate thing to joke about if it’s with other consenting adults. We’ll get back to this-

Especially since she’s doing this without the consent of the minor in some cases. Seriously, some people who she called her “babies” are people who don’t interact with her, have never said it was okay for her to “adopt” them, and are just randomly being put into this situation REGARDLESS on if it makes them comfortable.

“Oh but she’s just joking” uh yeah about that

2. She’s 100% serious!

Yesterday on Mother’s Day. She had done us the honors of gracing us with this post:

There’s ALOT to break down here, and I’ll get to that. But the main thing I want to point out is that she’s taking this 100% seriously.

So no it’s not a joke, atleast to her. She’s genuinely expecting these minors to look up to her as an adult.

Let me reiterate, she’s trying to claim that random minors who don’t consent to being adopted are her ACTUAL children.

This should be extremely worrying to anyone, this is breaching so many boundaries for a lot of people. Especially those who don’t even consent to this. To barge in and try to claim that a minor should look up to you as an actual parent is extremely invasive. And as a 33 year old women, she should know that.

What’s worse is that she’s luring minors into a false sense of security by letting them think it’s a joke. Until they’re comfortable enough with these interactions for her to reveal her alternative motive.

Most of the people (even those who play along) never actually agreed to be put in this dynamic. She just came along and presented herself like that. And under the assumption that she was most likely joking, those people played along. Once she got them in the position where they no longer think it’s strange or weird, she revealed that it wasn’t a joke at all and that she was serious.

THIS IS MANIPULATIVE BEHAVIOR. THIS IS THE BEHAVIOR OF SOMEONE TRYING TO USE MINORS. THIS IS NOT HOW ADULTS NORMALLY INTERACT WITH MINORS.

For comparison, I have many adult friends and I’m friends with people who are younger then me. Those friendships were built by simple interactions and conversation. I was never stressed or forced to see them as some sort of authority over me and I didn’t do the same to my friends. The choice to trust my adult online friends to the point I feel comfortable asking them for life advice came from multiple years of building trust and them stepping in to tell me when I’m in a situation where I was in danger or I was accidentally putting other people in danger. Not because they wanted me to trust them but because they genuinely wanted me to be safe.

They did not randomly dm me in discord going “oh wow your a minor and I’m an adult? I should be your fandom mom” and then after like a month tops of barely interacting they go “oh actually that’s not a joke you really are my child and you should see me as your parent”

3. Other massive red flags

To address the elephant in the room. If an online adult ever goes up to you and says “your the child I could never have irl”

you turn your ass around, and you run as fast as you can towards the hills

I literally can not stress enough how absolutely fucking weird and creepy that is. That is some shit you’d see in a 2008 psa about adults trying to use minors on the internet.

No, you are not some random person on the internets replacement child. You are not on the same level as an actual irl child. That is an extremely weird thing to put on a MINOR.

Again, these are random people she approached and just went “oh yeah you will suffice as the child i could never have”

This isn’t even something that you would drop on anyone regardless of age ESPECIALLY a minor. It is absolutely not a minors responsibility or worry to have to live up or deal with YOUR trauma.

This is something that no joke I think can be extremely traumatizing to put a minor through.

It’s also pressuring them into following along with this weird fantasy, because if they say no then their suddenly a jerk who’s taking away your “dream”.

Like please god do not ever put minors on this kind of position. And if your a minor and a adult tries to put this on you LEAVE! LEAVE IMMEDIATELY!!! GET OUT AS FAST AS YOU CAN THEY DO NOT HAVE GOOD INTENTIONS WITH YOU!!!

The appropriate way for an adult to deal with a situation like this is to get therapy or help from OTHER adults. They do not drag minors into their weird coping mechanisms.

Oh, and can we take a closer look at that passage about them being lead by god into the fandom?

Now to be clear, I have nothing against people who are religious. As long as your not trying to push harmful believes or follow people who push it *cough*

But the wording and phrasing of this part of the post is extremely weird and manipulative. First of all, literally trying to come off as if their a saint of god send to the fandom is weird. Like I think regardless of religious stance we can all agree with that. This is a fandom for a lego show meant for 7 year olds not a sinners convention. It also, again, puts them in a position of authority and trust, since their literally making themselves seem holy.

But also, that end part “which led to hearts I somehow knew needed me”

Uh, quick question, who actually needs this lady? Like no seriously, who needed a random 33 year old to call you her child? I know I don’t.

Which leads to the point of, why is she trying to convince us that theres a problem that only she can fix?

Like really think about that, this is 33 year old women going up to random minors, claiming they need her help and putting them in a vulnerable position so that they can put their trust in her to fix it.

That’s extremely manipulative to try to convince people that there’s a problem with them.

Are a lot of people in this fandom have issues or in need of help? Well yes, i mean we do enjoy a lego show that’s not out of the question.

But there’s no way for her to know what we need NOR is she actually qualified or trust worthy to help us with those issues.

What’s also worrying is that manipulators tend to use peoples vents or issues to learn their insecurities and use it to manipulate their victims further.

Which is why it’s extremely worrying that she’s trying to present herself as a messenger of god meant to “help” people in order to encourage people to approach her about their issues.

4. Why does this matter?

Throughout conversations I’ve had with people either through my posts or otherwise. They’ve always said one thing. “Well we can’t prove she has alternative motives”

While I’ll disagree with that (she already stated her alternative motive which is using minors to fulfill her coping fantasy of being a mom). I think that’s not really what’s important here.

Even if we give her the benefit of the doubt (which we should not do given her behavior) and assume she has good intentions, that doesn’t mean that her behavior isn’t extremely worrying or already harmful and that we shouldnt encourage minors to recognize these red flags and avoid them.

Vanata is putting herself in a position where if minors don’t immediately recognize these red flags, then they might not be able to escape until it’s to late.

It’s not just her “making people uncomfortable”. She’s purposefully targeting vulnerable minors and is trying to convince them to put her full trust in them.

Her method is to slowly break down their barriers until their comfortable with what she wants them to do. That’s what’s dangerous here and that’s what we need to look out for and prevent.

We need to encourage minors in this fandom to recognize manipulative behavior from adults and to stay away. We need to teach minors to be liberal when blocking people and to turn away the minute a adult seems off putting or weird.

It is my honest opinion that it’s better if a minor accidentally avoids a harmless adult then a situation where a minor is being taken advantage by an adult.

We need to discourage other adults from using terms like “fandom moms” or putting themselves in that type of position of power if they do have good intentions.

Vanata has put herself in a position of power over minors in this fandom and is trying to ask them to introduce her to more fandoms and we NEED to stomp this out before it becomes a bigger issue.

And if your a minor do NOT try to contact her about this. Your putting yourself in a situation where she can manipulate you further. Just block and avoid her please!

[biffhofosho]

Vixen

Fandom: Monsta X

Genre: Smut, natch.

Word Count: 8.5k

Pairing: Hyungwon x OC

Trope: Strangers to lovers

Synopsis: Inside this room, he finds his doom.

The Vibe: Abandoned buildings, quiet fall nights, cocky boys who refuse to turn down a dare, best frenemies, dense shadows, overactive imaginations, mysterious strangers, overt song references, fighting a losing battle, doing as nature compels, straight up wild fucking, need need need, lust for dominance, the illusion of control, peril, open questions with clues to the answer for the curious reader, who is she?

A/N:  The first of my October vibe fics! We’ll see the next one in about a week! 

“Wildfire” kind of ruined my life in the most spectacular way, so much like “Tailor Made,” this fic is inspired heavily by the song. Hearing Hyungwon singing those lines demanded something a little spooky and definitively naughty. Felt like experimenting in present tense for a change, too. Oh, what this boy does to me. Down bad.

He isn’t supposed to be here.

Hyungwon knows that. How could he not? Jooheon is convinced the place is haunted, and Hoseok says there isn’t enough ramyun in the world to convince him to walk through those doors, which hang like crooked teeth over a crumbling tongue of weed-infested steps. But it isn’t Minhyuk’s childish dare that ultimately propels him up to the front stoop of the abandoned building; it’s Kihyun’s firm order that Hyungwon is not to do it.

Hyungwon turns around and looks at his six friends. Most of them look worried, save for Kihyun, who’s definitely annoyed, and Minhyuk, who’s positively delighted.

“Remember,” says Minhyuk with his phone out and his timer up, “you have to stay in for a whole hour. If you come out early, I get your PS5.”

Hyungwon scoffs and syncs his timer with his friend’s. “Yeah, yeah, and when I see you in an hour, I get your Gucci messenger.”

“And if you don’t come back out in an hour, don’t expect anyone to go in looking for you,” snaps Kihyun, but Hyunwoo is shaking his head, so Hyungwon knows the eldest will come charging in there regardless looking for him the second the timer ticks to zero.

“This is a stupid bet. Why don’t we just forget it and go get some fried chicken?” Hoseok suggests.

“Let them do what they’re going to do,” Changkyun says with a shrug and goes back to scrolling through his phone without another glance up.

“That’s the problem. Hyungwon always does what he wants to do,” quips Kihyun.

And thanks to that one sentence, it doesn’t matter what anyone else says. Hyungwon is going in. He and Kihyun have been sparring all week since Hyungwon overslept and missed half of their group project session, so he’s bound and determined to put an end to Kihyun’s carping at least until the next time he oversleeps.

Before anyone else can squeeze in another comment, Hyungwon has wriggled through the gap in the sagging boards and leaves behind his biggest critic and all their friends. The moment he’s on the other side of those doors though, his bravado fades. Spite is all well and good to feed his challenge with Kihyun, but it’s no match for his own fertile imagination, which is currently having a field day with his surroundings.

The building is in even worse shape on the inside than it is on the outside. It smells like rot and mildew, and right away, Hyungwon’s “emphysema lungs”—as Minhyuk affectionately calls them—flare up with a cough that he manages to choke down… just in case someone is listening, even though he reminds himself again and again he’s alone. He’s alone.

Hyungwon’s not sure what kind of business this once was, but it was some kind of office judging from the broken typewriter and cobwebbed filing cabinets laying on their sides on the floor. Random ledgers and books litter the rooms and leather chairs spew their cushioning through old tears. It’s hard to tell exactly how long this place has been abandoned, but there’s an old invoice wedged under a busted lamp and a layer of filth that Hyungwon thinks reads “1982.”

It seems odd that a business would leave so much property behind when it closed, let alone in such a scattered mess, and right away, his imagination charges toward the inevitable conclusion that maybe it wasn’t a bankruptcy that drove out these people but something menacing like a fire or a murderer.

Or a ghost.

Hyungwon slaps his cheeks to knock Jooheon’s scaredy-cat voice from his brain.

The urge to serve out his hour just inside the entryway is overwhelming, but that’s not the whole dare. Hyungwon has to make it to the fourth floor—to the room with the moth-eaten curtains where Jooheon swears he saw the ghost of a girl—and wave his phone to everyone below.

He supposes it’s better to do it now rather than later. His friends might think he’s chickening out, and even if he is, he doesn’t want to look like it, not with Yoo Kihyun waiting with an “I told you so” already in the chamber.

Hyungwon takes a deep breath and then a step forward. The board immediately creaks underfoot, but at least it feels solid. He’s not so sure the stairs will be in as good a shape, which is what Hyunwoo was worried about, but Minhyuk said that was part of the challenge.

There isn’t a spot on the floor that doesn’t wail with each footstep, and if a murderous hobo is living upstairs, as Kihyun assumes, there’s no way it doesn’t know a trespasser is on his way.

Hyungwon instead chooses to focus on structural integrity before his mind can manifest a half dozen scary stories, so he plots a course through the hallway toward the stairwell, which is easy to spot thanks to the alley floodlight spearing the holes in the filmy windows. His shoes leave footprints in the dust, so at least he’ll be easy for Hyunwoo to track when he plummets through the floor into the spider-infested basement.

Okay, this was a stupid bet to take, Hoseok was right. It’s not just dangerous—it’s gross here. Hyungwon doesn’t like bugs or dirt or unnecessarily risky adventures. He likes iced americanos and sleeping and arguing with his bossy friends about sleeping, all of which he should be doing now instead of this.

Something creaks overhead.

Automatically, the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

It can’t be a ghost—ghosts don’t have feet, right? It can’t be a murderous hobo—they certainly do have feet, but there’s nowhere in this damn building that doesn’t squeak to hide the other footsteps. It must be a rat or maybe a raccoon. Instead of being reassured, Hyungwon is disgusted. He should just leave. He can always buy another PS5. Might take him a while, but it would be awfully hard to save up if he’s suffering from the bubonic plague.

But then there’s that sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued plague of a best friend out front, no doubt waiting for his own smug victory lap, and that resolves Hyungwon’s mind—the bubonic plague probably has fewer lingering side effects than being bested by Yoo Kihyun.

Hyungwon reaches the stairs. He’s happy to see they’re concrete and in relatively sturdy shape. The railings are another matter—wooden and rotted through—so he’ll have to take his chances without a handhold. He decides to hug the wall, where the integrity should be much stronger, and he heads upstairs.

By the second floor, he’s feeling confident, and by the third, he’s feeling cocky again. But by the fourth, reality sets in. Hyungwon is where he’s supposed to be, but he also feels like he’s definitely not supposed to be here.

For all intents and purposes, the fourth floor looks like the first—filthy and cluttered and creepy—though it’s better lit thanks to the holes in the roof and a brighter stream of streetlights from more sides. But the brighter light has the unintended consequence of casting ominous shadows from things that shouldn’t be terrifying but now are.

Hyungwon nearly teeters backwards down the steps when he catches sight of a coatrack out of the corner of his eye, and he definitely lets out a gasp when he rounds the corner toward the front room and sees a figure at the end of the corridor. That turns out to be a fake potted tree though, and he’s left feeling like both an idiot and a chicken.

There’s another creak, and he flinches before he realizes this one comes from him as he heads down the hallway. This one has a carpet runner, and every footstep wafts up mold and dust that sends his emphysema lungs into a spasming frenzy that he can’t choke back.

His hacking coughs reverberate up and down the fourth floor, and there’s literally no way a murderous hobo won’t hear him now. Hyungwon outright races toward the front room because what’s the point of keeping quiet now if Jooheon’s angry spirits are already onto him?

He reaches the front of the building, out of breath and sweating profusely despite the short jaunt, and checks his timer. Fifty-three minutes left.

Damnit.

Hyungwon glances right then left, double-checking for the curtained room he’s supposed to enter. It’s on the right, and he sighs. He did it. Now just to put on his best indifferent face as a metaphorical middle finger for Kihyun and Minhyuk…

Hyungwon flexes his jaw and shakes out the tension from his face before he enters the room. He heads straight for the window and finds his six friends steadfastly watching for him. Hoseok is draped all over Jooheon, relief visible like a lighthouse even from the fourth floor. Kihyun is scowling per usual while Minhyuk still manages to look confident he will win. Changkyun and Shownu show no emotion, but Hyungwon knows from their dead-eye stares that that’s how they show their support.

Hyungwon waves his phone as instructed, and Hoseok gives two thumbs up. Now, it’s just a matter of the countdown.

He opens his camera app to take a self-righteous selfie, and the second he flips the angle, he’s covered in gooseflesh.

Something is behind him, and it’s definitely not a tree or a coatrack and it’s much too big to be a rat. The light is dim so the camera is struggling with graininess, but whatever’s behind him moves, and Hyungwon’s skin crawls. It’s a subtle shift, as though it doesn’t want to be seen or doesn’t want to be there either, until it finally disappears.

Exactly like a ghost…

Maybe it would be better to pretend he hasn’t seen it at all, but Hyungwon really doesn’t have a choice. He sucks in a hard and fast breath.

He turns around as if in slow motion and finds the other occupant huddled in the corner.

It isn’t a ghost at all, nor is it a murderous hobo.

It’s a woman.

She’s making herself very small from her perch on top of a desk in the corner. Her arms are wrapped around her shins and her chin is behind her knees so only her very wide eyes are peeping at him. When their gazes connect, everything changes for reasons he can’t possibly fathom.

She springs down from the desk, landing on feet so light that the floor doesn’t even creak. She races forward, stopping halfway to Hyungwon. Her head cocks to the side as though she’s trying to figure out why another human’s here instead of the ghost maybe they both were expecting.

“Oh! Hello!” she says. Whatever fear she’d harbored vanishes. Her voice is cute, a little like a bark of an excited puppy. She’s clearly surprised but, still, she’s waving at him, her hand like a metronome on the highest speed.

“H-hi,” Hyungwon stutters. He sounds stupid, but at least he answers.

He studies her eyes first. They slant up at the edges with mesmerizing brown irises in the center. They might look predatory in the wrong face, but in hers, they’re eager and alert and trained solely on him. Her wavy hair is streaked with brown and auburn and even a funny little strip of white at her crown that somehow makes her look younger instead of older. Her ears stick out, accentuating the cuteness in an already cute face.

A sweater swallows up her petite athletic frame just as her sweatpants do to her legs. She looks so soft and small compared to his long, wiry frame that Hyungwon has the irrational urge to pet her on his lap. He wonders if she’d purr. Okay, that’s a ludicrous thought, but he can’t stop himself from thinking it.

But as cute as she is, there are a few weird scars that catch his eye, too. Even though her hands are fidgeting inside those long sleeves, he sees the raised scratches on them. They’re old, dark brown against her fair skin, and in neat parallel lines of four. Peaking just above the sagging neckline of her sweater, there are a few more scars, but these are not scratches but punctures.

Her ears twitch as she smiles. “What’s your name?”

“Chae Hyungwon,” he says with the same robotic voice he always did for class roll calls.

“What are you doing here, Chae Hyungwon?”

She doesn’t say her name back, and she’s already asked another question, so it would be rude to ask his own instead of answering hers.

“I don’t know,” he replies, only realizing a second later that he knows exactly why he’s here but he’d completely forgotten for a moment. “I mean, my friends dared me to spend an hour in here. Some of them think this place is haunted. I don’t, uh, um, obviously, so, yeah, that’s the story of me in this place.”

She cocks her head, and her big ears twitch again with the motion. “Your friends are in here, too?”

She sounds a little tenser now, and she looks it, too. She’s fast and restless and bouncy, pacing along the edge of the room now somewhere between anxious and excited, and Hyungwon isn’t sure if that’s because of him or his friends or that’s just who she is.

“No, they’re waiting for me outside. See?”

He moves to the window and waves down, everyone but Kihyun waving back.

She doesn’t move to the window. In fact, she backs a little further into the corner again.

“Are you here on a dare, too?”

“Sort of,” she says.

“Mine’s an hour,” Hyungwon repeats and then realizes he's already said that. He’s really batting a thousand here…

“Mine’s a little longer than that.”

“Overnight, huh?” he says with a frown, trying to imagine one corner of this spider palace that even he, a world champion sleeper, could find comfortable enough to bed down. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she says, still looking warily to the window. “Time’s almost up. I just have to tough it out a little longer.”

Hyungwon presses his lips together as he studies her. There’s a pile of clothes on the desk behind her all balled up. They’re dirty, too, but not covered in the layers of filth like the rest of this place.

He narrows his eyes. “Are your friends spending the night, too?”

“No. They think I’m being silly. They don’t want me here.”

Hyungwon smiles a little. “Neither do mine. So, what’s to stop you from leaving?”

“Me,” she replies simply.

“You sound like my friend Kihyun. He’s good at following through on things or, more importantly, making everyone else follow through on things. If he weren’t standing right outside, I’d have already gone home. Not because I’m scared,” he’s quick to add. “Because there are tons of other things I’d rather be doing.”

“Like what?”

She almost sounds like a child when she asks a question. There’s not only genuine interest in it but pure innocence, as though she’s never imagined anything more interesting than this crumbling building.

Hyungwon’s finding it hard to answer again. What is more interesting than this building and the pretty girl in it?

“I don’t know,” he says, “lots of stuff. Sleeping, video games, movies.”

What a lame answer. He’s embarrassed.

But she doesn’t seem to mind. It’s almost like she’s never heard of those things, the way she has her head tilted further to the side. She smiles, toothy and bright.

She’s so cute, he thinks and realizes too late he’s grinning dumbly at her.

Then something passes over her eyes, a little flutter that chases away the brightness there. Her small mouth tightens around the edges, and she’s pacing the wall again. When she speaks, her voice is much heavier. “Maybe you should go and do those things.”

Hyungwon takes a step toward the door. He might be off in his own world half the time, but the other half, he reads people pretty well. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I can wait out my time downstairs now.”

He gives her a quick bow and is about to slip out, confused and more than a little disappointed, when she zips in front of him like a lightning bolt. He had sensed she was fast, but in this foreboding place, he almost jumps out of his skin.

Those angled eyes are wide and jittery as she scopes him out from head to toe. She’s biting her bottom lip. Maybe she’s trying to flirt—Hyungwon is familiar with his effect on women after all—but the more she shifts from foot to foot, he supposes that may just be wishful thinking.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m not well,” she confesses, “which is why you should leave.”

Hyungwon smiles gently. “I tried, remember?”

The heaviness of guilt anchors the edges of her elegant face as she says, “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Is it contagious?”

“I’m not sick—”

“Then let me help you,” he insists. “How can I help you?”

“It would help if you left, Hyungwon,” she says firmly, or maybe it’s desperately. “I won't get in your way this time. But you should hurry.”

Her eyes look even more wild now though they’re darker, narrower. Her nose twitches, too, and it would be cute if it weren’t for those eyes. Just like that, she’s pacing the length of the wall again, and she’s not biting her lip but worrying it.

“I can’t leave just yet,” he replies. That’s true—he still has forty minutes on his timer—but it’s not really honest. He doesn’t want to leave.

It smells different in here now. There’s still the fetid aroma of wet dirt, but it’s appealing now, primitive and animalistic, and it awakens something inside him. Hyungwon never feels like this, like there’s some base need in the pit of his belly growing unchecked and yearning for fulfilment, but right now, looking at this woman challenging him with her feisty eyes and restless stance, an urge to chase her overwhelms. And if the coil in his stomach has its way, it will only be satisfied when he pins her to the ground and takes her as his body demands.

But that’s not Hyungwon. He’s a cool, quiet guy known for lazing around and zoning out. Not to be conceited, but women come to him. He doesn’t have to hunt.

But he wants to.

He wants her.

He knows that’s ridiculous. He doesn’t know this girl, and she’s certainly not the reason he came in here. Literally everything is screaming at him to run from this feeling. It’s an abandoned building with mushrooms growing out of the floorboards, for God’s sake. This isn’t the place to come for a passionate rendezvous or to meet the girl of his dreams—or, at least, maybe not for a guy who likes a bed and his woman on top.

“Stop it,” she says.

“What?”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

Hyungwon swallows hard, knowing he’s been caught. “Sorry. You’re right, I’ll go.”

He takes another step to leave, and again, she blocks the door with her small frame. The weird intensity in her eyes has diffused, and now, they are big and round, looking up apologetically at him. It almost gives him whiplash, and he can hardly believe it’s the same girl.

“That was so rude of me,” she blurts. “Please forgive me. I haven’t talked with anybody in a while, and my manners were always bad to begin with. Please stay if you want to. I mean, I want you to.”

There’s that urge to pounce again, the one that keeps getting stronger by the second and far worse the closer she stands. He realizes that smell—the musky one that gets his blood pumping—is coming from her and not the building. When she’s this close, his mind spins and yet stills on one inevitable conclusion.

He has to have her.

Hyungwon isn’t a forward type of guy, at least not when he’s just met someone. He likes getting to know people, likes connecting with them on deeper levels and likes when they think of him in his own category—as someone they want to run to when they need an ally. He doesn’t leap, he falls—helplessly and accidentally before he even knows he’s tripped. This is different because he’s leaping and falling all at the same time, and he’s painfully aware of all of it.

“Oh, this is really bad,” she says, changing tone again. Her hands are knotted in front of her, and she’s twitching and shifting, but her eyes are steadily lashed to him. “Why didn’t I let you go?”

His mouth is dry, his brain is fuzzy, but his vision is clear and focused on the pretty, wild creature in front of him. “If you still want me to go, I will. I’m not trying to freak you out.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s mine.” Hyungwon doesn’t understand, but before he can say so, she adds, “I can’t help it. It’s not a matter of what I want. I need you—”

“You need me to leave?” he finishes, his voice brittle.

“Yes,” she says slowly, “but…”

“But?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you go.”

At just the brush of her fingers on the back of his hand, sparks shower over him. In an instant, his world is consumed by fire. Her nails are sharper than he realized, and they scratch enticingly across his skin.

“I didn’t think it could happen so fast,” she murmurs. “And it was almost over…”

He wants to ask what she means, but the pads of her fingers slip into his hand and stroke his palm in a way that makes his brain short-circuit. What’s left of his thoughts is divided between the way her chest is heaving and the part of her lips as she borderline pants for him.

She reaches a hand up to his cheek and strokes him. Hyungwon closes his eyes and leans into it because he simply has to.

“Why did you have to be so beautiful?” she whispers. “I knew they would tempt me, but I thought I could outrun it.”

“They who?” he mumbles as he falls deeper into her whirlpool gaze.

“Maybe I still can…”

Called by her throaty voice, he leans down expectantly, but she smiles at him and jerks her head to the side at the last second. Hyungwon imagines he sees mischief as much as desire in those eyes, but he’s never met someone so difficult to read—it's like she’s a dozen different books at once.

“If you want me,” she says with freshly wet lips, “you have to catch me.”

With that, she darts through the door and into the hallway. Hyungwon spends only a few seconds weighing his options—it’s a dark, condemned building and she’s a total stranger—before he runs after her.

She is fast, but his legs are long, and he closes the distance between them easily. He thinks he has her just before she reaches the top of the stairs, but then she zips to the left and into another shell of an office. Hyungwon is right on her tail, but she’s nimble and hides behind a dusty desk, squaring off with him in a staring contest. There is fire in her eyes as there no doubt is in his. When she smiles, she looks like she is laughing at him as much as she is baiting him. Her teeth look sharper in the thin light, and her cheeks are blazing. She’s a different person than the timid thing who’d cowered from him on first sight, but then so is he.

Hyungwon is a nice, reasonable guy. He doesn’t play games. He’s open and honest, if sometimes far too blunt. He doesn’t think he’s a pervert even if his usual fantasies sometimes stray into an X-rated realm. But in no time at all, this woman has driven him to some kind of madness. She’s all he can think about. He can smell her all over him. He tastes her already—wild and deep and lingering on his tongue. He feels her, too. He’s done none of those things yet, though that doesn’t stop him from feeling overrun by his desire to do all of them at once.

While Hyungwon is lost in his very intense fantasy of her, she bolts back into the hallway witha savage laugh.

“Shit!” he mutters, and his feet reel underneath him.

He almost misses her disappearing into the room at the end of the hall, and even though he’s sure he saw her come in here, when he finally enters the room, there’s no sign of her, not even a smeared footprint in the dust.

Hyungwon’s heart plummets. She’s gone.

Just like that, she’s vanished from his life, leaving only a monsoon of desperate emotions sloshing in his chest.

He runs his hands through his hair. Was she a ghost? It’s stupid to think that, but maybe it isn’t. Okay, it still is.

Get it together, Hyungwon, he scolds himself.

She’s still here. She has to be. His heart is still hammering and his palms are still sweaty. He can feel her energy charging every inch of him. He leans into that and lets his body, not his brain, guide him through the labyrinth of file rooms and offices. With every footfall, he senses he is closing in. The how is not important, all that matters is that he finds her again.

Hyungwon clears everything on the top floor except the last room in the back corner. By now, his pulse is throbbing in time with his very painful erection, but he is sure she’s in here. He can feel her setting his skin on fire.

The anticipation is driving him crazy. Hyungwon is not one to chase anyone, but the thrill is intoxicating. He's drenched in sweat and steeped in anticipation. Where is she? He needs her.

Now.

The last room is an old conference room, with a big, dusty table, dozens of crumbling boxes, a few scattered chairs, and no exits. She has to be here.

Hyungwon looks for signs of her. There’s a chair on the floor and a handprint on the table. She was here. She must still be here.

His eyes cut through the shadows to which he’s growing more and more accustomed. In the corner, there’s an empty bookshelf, but she’s not beside it. There’s also a storage closet. His gaze sharpens on it.

Quietly, he steps forward, and when he’s right in front of it, he takes a deep breath and yanks the knob.

“Found y—”

His triumph dies on his lips. She’s not in there either.

She’s a ghost after all.

His stomach lurches.

There’s a sudden bump and whoosh, and Hyungwon wheels on his heel. From under the table darts a figure, lean, lithe, and fast as hell. But he’s been waiting—every atom of him has been waiting—and he lunges. His hands close around a narrow waist, and he surges forward until they run out of real estate.

Hyungwon has her caged in against the wall, and she whirls around so their eyes meet. She is much smaller than he is, but she doesn’t cower. Instead, her breath is racing. Her eyes flash along with her teeth. Her excitement charges Hyungwon with some kind of delirium he's never felt for a woman before. He has never been so hard in his whole life. It’s like he was made to fuck this woman. He will never feel fulfilled unless he does. It’s terrifying, but it’s all so natural.

“I don’t know what’s come over me. I swear I’m not usually like this,” he blabbers as he looms over her, panting in her face.

“I know,” she says, and it almost sounds sad. It’s just enough to dam the lust so Hyungwon can think straight again.

“What’s happening to me?”

“You should fight it,” she urges. “You should run.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“I don’t want you to go, Hyungwon. I need you to go. I need you to run.”

His lips press to the crown of her hair. He breathes her in, his mysterious vixen. Her hair smells strongly of mustiness, of nature and the earth, of dampness and decay, but underneath it all, she smells of desire. It’s real. It’s primal.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.                

“Why do you keep apologizing?” Hyungwon asks, tracing her face with his hand.

It’s the first time there’s some kind of ice in her eyes to temper the flames. “Because I want to make sure you know that I really did try to resist you, but I won’t. I can’t. I want you too much.”

With their fates sealed, she collides with his mouth. Her tongue slides between his, and a burst of cold unfurls in the center of all the heat, almost like she’s been sucking on an ice cube. Hyungwon moans because the sensation is as unexpected as it is delicious. Her nails bite into him sharper than expected, but the pain is a welcome reminder that she is real and not some ghost.

The cold spreads through his body like a riptide, pulling parts of him on a strong current to her. He hasn’t experienced anything like this before. Deep down, he knows she’s right—he should fight; riptides kill—but it also feels like it was always meant to be a losing battle and, more importantly, one he doesn’t mind losing.

But slowly, the cold morphs into heat, a scalding heat the way frostbite feels like fire. The deeper her tongue probes his mouth, the hotter he burns even as he’s frozen in place. Her moan at his taste makes his arm give way beside her, and he tumbles into her, intent on crushing her beneath him.

Her hands spool into his hair in response as her hips rut against his thigh.

Good, she’s as crazy for him as he is for her, and Hyungwon only wants to make her crazier.

There’s so many things he wants to do to her. He wants to taste every inch of her. He wants to suckle at her perky breasts and nibble on her hard clit and eat her out until she can’t walk and he has to carry her everywhere for the next day, but right now, he has to bury himself to his hilt inside her. It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s what he needs, it’s what she needs—to cum for each other while knotted up together in their dank little love den.

Hyungwon breaks their kiss to grab her shoulders before he swivels her around to bend her over the conference room table. Her hands squeal through years of grime, leaving frenzied tracks of need like wild fucking animals. It rustles up a cloud of dust and mildew that would usually send him into a sneezing fit, but it’s like all his senses beyond his woman have dimmed. He only smells her. He only tastes her. He only needs her.

She lets out a little moan that sets his teeth on edge. Everything about her is egging him on, and he’s losing his mind. His hands find the waist of her pants and yank them down so hard that seams pop. She snarls but so does he.

Her heat slams into him like a radiator waiting to scald the first errant touch. Hyungwon wastes no time. He gropes her sex with his whole hand, letting her dripping core coat his palm in sticky desire. He rubs in a frenzy—he can’t help himself. He’s not sure what he’s doing because he’s never done things like this before. This isn’t him. Hyungwon is a slow lover, a purposeful lover. He likes getting lost in his partners and staying lost. Maybe he’s doing that now, too, but this is far more feral.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” she whines, wriggling her ass against him and smearing more of her arousal all over his hand.

Hyungwon unzips his jeans and groans the moment he’s freed from his denim prison. Now, he wants the pressure of her cunt bearing down on him in relentless waves, that riptide pulling him ever deeper inside her. He won’t deny either of them any longer.

He takes the wet lust drenching his hand and smears it along his length so he will be able to take her faster. He can’t waste another second. The head of his cock fits snugly at her entrance. He can feel her pulsing with the promise of a fast, hard fuck, and he’s so sensitive, he’s ready to blow his load before he’s even inside her, so he pushes in without warning.

She yelps, her nails scratching the table, but it’s immediately followed by an obscene moan. She swivels her ass to swallow every last millimeter of his member and whimpers, “It’s been so long, but I don’t remember it ever feeling this good.”

Hyungwon’s brain is combusting. She shouldn’t say these kinds of things to him. They only serve to make him wilder.

One of his hands snakes up under her shirt and grabs one of her tits, squeezing hard as much to hold steady against his fast rhythm as it is to sample yet another one of her secret pleasures. She fits so well in the palm of his hand, too. Her nipple slots between his fingers, and he tightens them, which sends a cry from her lips and a shiver through her cunt.

“Don’t stop,” she begs. “Don’t ever stop.”

“I never will,” he grunts in return.

Maybe it’s the depth of his voice or maybe it’s the crackle of flames in it, but she moans and pushes back hard against him until he bottoms out again. It feels like he’s somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach, he’s burrowed so far inside her, and every ripple along her walls seems to constrict around him, tethering him to her, frantic to keep him.

Unexpectedly, Hyungwon cums.

He expects to be embarrassed, to be ashamed at his performance and his lack of willpower, but since he’s met this untamed creature, he’s had none. He should have known, and yet the strength of his release takes him totally by surprise. It’s like he’s emptying everything he has into her, and he really, really, really needs her to take it all and beg for more, more, more.

“Yes,” she whines and works her ass against his hips as if she can read his thoughts. “Yes, so deep. Feels so good inside me.”

It’s like her words lengthen his climax. It feels like he’s being drained not just of his seed but his life force, and it feels wonderful. Hyungwon collapses onto her back and sandwiches her against the table; only then does he remember to breathe.

“I’m s—” he tries to splutter out between pathetic gulps of air, but her keening drowns it out.

“I need more, Hyungwon.”

He wanted her to beg for more, but what does he have left to give now? It was the wickedest orgasm of his life. His legs are jelly, his mind is mush, and inside her ravenous cunt, his dick is throbbing. Fire marches through his veins, setting his extremities to tingling. He’s hyper-aware of the way her core is massaging his length, milking him for all he’s worth.

“You have to give me more,” she whimpers, and it sounds borderline frantic, like she’s choking back tears.

Hyungwon pulls out nearly all the way before he glides back in through his own sticky release.

She wails gratefully.

He’s already cum. Why is he still hard? Why does he still want her so badly?

Again, he fucks into her, much more leisurely this time, promising himself he’s going to savor her like she should be savored, but suddenly, her hand reaches back and stills his hips. Her nails bite into his tender flesh and he growls.

“On the table,” she orders, and despite how his reasoned mind balks at the idea of his body touching all the filth, her orders are not to be disobeyed.

Hyungwon sits on the table edge, but she shakes her head lightly.

“Lay down.”

He does so without hesitation, and she purrs before she slides out of her sweatpants as he does out of his own. There’s not even time for either of them to slip out of their shirts before the need for each other takes an even firmer hold. Nimble as a wild animal, she pounces on the table and stands directly over him. The table creaks but mercifully gives no other sign of protest.

His vixen is small, but she towers above him. From here, he gets a front row seat to watch his massive release leak down her toned thighs. As embarrassed as he is at his brief showing, a flash of pride burns brightly in his chest. She is his and everyone should see it.

She crouches then, fingers pressed for stability on his tensed stomach while her other hand encircles the base of his cock. Her eyes are predatory now. She licks her lip and sinks down onto his shaft.

Hyungwon groans so loudly, he’s worried the guys outside might hear and come looking for him.

“That’s better,” she says breathily after her own moan trails off. When she’s ready, she braces her stance on either side of Hyungwon’s narrow hips for a better grip on the dusty wood and begins to bounce.

She’s too good at this. She’s just too good in general. Her compact, wiry frame gives her speed as well as agility, and she pistons with precision on his cock.

In the silence of the abandoned building, their bodies are loud—grunts and sighs and ragged breaths, squelching and slapping and creaking table legs. Hyungwon is generally comfortable in silence, but not today and not with her. He wants to hear their sin as much as he wants to feel it, and, fuck, does it feel good.

Before, with him behind her, it felt primal—it felt urgent. But she is using him now, stealing what she wants from him this time, and even though he’s just here as a tool, that makes him feel more powerful than ever. She only feels this good because of him, because of what he gives her, and that knowledge, more than anything, brings the tightness back to his stomach.

Beneath her, Hyungwon is coming apart. His eyes roll back in his head as he falls victim to every ounce of pleasure she wields against him. He’s always favored being under a woman—savoring the sight of her face slackening with release as her breasts sway with her natural rhythm—but she is different in every way. She isn’t tiring, she isn’t begging. She’s taking and taking and taking, and all he wants to do is offer her more.

Maybe she won’t beg, but Hyungwon’s certainly not above it.

“Don’t stop,” he croaks out. “Don’t ever stop. Please.”

She opens her eyes then, stares down at him and then his fingers, which have coiled around her waist at some point when he was lost in her. Her eyes glow like embers dying in a fire, but with a blink, that image is gone.

Even if Hyungwon tries to convince himself this is more than just using each other, there’s nothing romantic about this. It’s fucking, plain and simple. He feels raw and savage and rabid with lust for this woman as she bounces up and down on the full breadth of his cock.

But as he looks up into her face, those strong cheekbones contoured even stronger by her building euphoria, he thinks maybe this could become more than two strangers succumbing to base need. She’s beautiful and impulsive, sure, but she’s also elusive and captivating, and there’s something about her that makes him think she has an old soul, too. Maybe they can be more than perfect one-night sex. He wants to be. He wants her to continue to need him.

Or maybe that’s just his fantastical mind justifying why he’d plowed dick-deep into a woman who still hadn’t told him her name.

Her moans are climbing higher while at the same time getting shorter and more frantic. She grips his wrists to ride him harder, and just as her walls seize around him, Hyungwon breaks her hold to wrap his arms around her and pull her flat against his chest. Her hair fans across his cracking lips as he heaves, desperate for the air that seems to be steadily thinning as he plows up into her.

She’s keening now but so is he, and together, they mewl as Hyungwon buries himself as deep as he can get and unloads again. This time, he feels it in his toes, his thighs, his belly, even the back of his head. His vision swims with the strength of his climax, and his hug constricts so violently around her that she digs her claws into the meat of his shoulders.

Hyungwon lingers inside her, his hips still hovering in mid-air to make sure the last trickles of his orgasm remain within her painted walls. Eventually though, his legs give out, and he eases them both back down to the table.

She is limp on his chest, and if it weren’t for the high-speed thundering of her breath against his neck, he might have worried she’d passed out.

“Why didn’t you run?” she asks from the safety of the hollow of his throat. Her voice is breaking, and a shiver runs through him.

Slowly, she lifts her chest from his. Her hand cradles his head while an unexpected tear falls from her eye onto his chin.

“Why would I ever run from you?” he replies gently.

Hyungwon traces the back of his hand across her cheek to wipe away the track of her tear, but it only provokes two more from her.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asks, earnestly terrified that he has.

“No,” she sniffs. “I did. I will. I can’t help it.”

“It’s okay,” he soothes.

“Hyungwon?”

She sounds small and helpless, and it makes every part of him want to hold her even closer.

“What?” he says.

“Forgive me?”

“For what?”

“For this.”

She descends like a feather, her body lightly kissing his from waist to chest to lips at last. He wishes they were naked so he could feel every inch of her the way he’s meant to, but he will take as much of her as he can get.

Right away, Hyungwon discovers this kiss is different than any kiss he’s ever had. It’s hard to explain, but he feels it like it’s his first and last kiss all at once. There’s so much weight in it though their lips are merely dusting one another’s. It’s making him lightheaded and a little giddy. Through the gentle caress of swollen skin, he lets out an airy sigh, and, dimly, he thinks he sounds drunk.

Through his shuttered eyes, he senses a faint golden light, almost like the first tinge of sunrise, but he knows they are still deep in the throes of night. He opens his eyes and finds his lady soft and delicate above him. It’s almost as if the light is emanating between them, for he can see every detail of her face with perfect clarity—the curl of her lashes feathering her cheeks, the sharp upturn at the tip of her nose, the pointiness of her brows dulled by their gentle kissing. Hyungwon closes his eyes again to better enjoy the sensations of her walls squeezing his waning hard-on and their breaths melding into one another.

As his tongue sweeps deep into her mouth now, ice unexpectedly marches through his veins. He’s been on fire this whole time, but now he is frigid to his very bones. He gasps, and she returns the favor to push into his mouth. It’s not just her tongue he feels now, but a strange round shape, like a marble or a bead. Everything in his body is cold, but this is warm. So warm. It rolls around in his mouth, getting hotter by the second. She is playing with it, too, almost like two cats bandying around a ball of yarn.

Hyungwon knows this isn’t normal, but the cold is shutting down his senses, like a bear preparing for hibernation. He’s had the two best orgasms of his life, and he is tired. Now, his eyes aren’t closed just to appreciate the feel of the woman above him, but they’re closed because he wants to fall asleep inside her. He would be content to never wake up from her hold on him.

Somewhere in the dim cavern at the back of his mind, a little voice tries to call to him. It wants to rouse him; it wants him to open his eyes, but Hyungwon can do neither. It’s like seeing his dreaming self from outside his body, and he’s helpless but to watch himself drift deeper into acceptance.

The bead in his mouth feels like molten lead. It’s getting hard to remember simple things. Where is he? Why is he here—wherever this is? Who is he? He thinks he knows. He thinks it’s important. He knows he’s supposed to know these things, but they’re not as important as they once were.

“Wonnie, man, where are you?”

As soon as Changkyun’s deep voice booms up the stairwell, the world crystallizes. The heaviness on Hyungwon’s chest lifts, and he sucks in a violent breath as though he’s just made it up from the bottom of the ocean in the nick of time. The fire that has seared his skin for the last hour extinguishes, too, leaving only the memory of the burn throbbing all over him. Inside his veins, the ice thaws, yet he’s still frozen. He remembers his name and his friends. He remembers his bet. He remembers the abandoned office building, but he does not remember how he got to this room.

Hyungwon tries to move—to call out—but he can’t. He feels drained, lifeless.

“Come on already! You won. Don’t be a showoff,” shouts Kihyun next.

Everyone pauses for Hyungwon’s inevitable retort, but none comes.

“I thought you weren’t coming in,” Minhyuk chides in the silence, which earns him an immediate “Zip it” from their stern-lipped friend.

His friends’ voices feel much closer now, though Hyungwon’s pretty sure they’re still on the first floor. The stairwell acts like a PA system, transmitting their banter with perfect clarity.

“I swear to god, if that clever brat slipped out the back—” Kihyun warns.

“Why don’t we split up?” suggests Hyunwoo. “Everyone, take a floor.”

Minhyuk chuckles. “You don’t get enough credit for how shrewd you are, hyung.”

“We can cover more ground this way,” the eldest assures though, after a pause, he continues, “and it will be easier for Hyungwon to answer us if it’s quieter.”

“I don’t like the idea of splitting up,” hedges Kihyun. “It might be better to look in pairs.”

“Chicken,” Minhyuk baits.

“Do you want me to call in Jooheon and Hoseok?” asks Changkyun.

“What would be the point?” says Minhyuk. “Even if we could get those two babies inside, we wouldn’t be able to hear each other over their screaming, let alone Wonnie.”

Hyungwon should be heartened that his friends are searching for him, but he can’t feel anything except the vague notion that he should be trying to call for help. Even his eyes are unfocused. The room is cloudy just like the last leg of his life.

He remembers feelings: ecstasy, relief, a quick ice bath of sadness, followed by listlessness. And that is where he’s stayed, mired in grayness.

“Wonnie!” shouts Minhyuk this time. His voice is a thousand times louder and more demanding than Changkyun’s. It shakes something awake in Hyungwon.

“Here,” he answers, though it’s a pitiful sound, like a mewling kitten in the rain. Nobody hears him.

His friends take turns calling until, finally, Hyunwoo gets close enough to catch his little cries.

“Up here!” the eldest bellows as he turns the corner and finds Hyungwon stretched out on the conference room table.

Hyungwon doesn’t remember much after that save for a weird shiver of embarrassment that follows Minhyuk’s incredulous shout: “Dude, why are you naked?”

His friends help him dress and bring him downstairs. They douse him with questions, none of which he can answer because he’s still not sure what happened. All he really remembers is waking up in the hospital just the right side of Death’s door with snippets of a surreal dream that are both too wonderful to remember and far too terrifying.

He doesn’t know what happened on the fourth floor of that decrepit office, and he’s not sure he’s ready to know.

And yet…

The day he’s released from the hospital, Hyungwon finds himself sitting on the curb outside that building. And the day after that. And the day after that. And most days after that for the next couple of months.

He stares up into one window in particular every time. He expects to see a ghost because that’s what Jooheon assures him nearly killed him, but he never does. If it were a ghost, it would come back, right?

He wants it to come back if just so he knows he’s not crazy. Or maybe that’s just the safe answer he gives to all his friends. The truth is much more shameful than that.

As close as he was to death that day, Hyungwon had touched some kind of happiness he hasn’t been able to feel since then. It’s probably grotesque, but at least it’s honest.

Sometimes he thinks about going back inside, but he’s not stupid—well, that stupid. He feels like his answers are in there along with his memories, but his friends would never forgive him if he went back in, so he doesn’t. He just sits and stares at the window, hoping something more then the memory of fire and riptides will unlock. It feels important.

So for now, he sits, legs folded up like a paperclip at the end of a dead-end road, staring up and zoning out, the wisp of a voice on the edge of his brain.

Forgive me?

Something rustles in the overgrowth in front of the building. Hyungwon shoots to his feet, his eyes trained into the twilight. It’s far too small to be either a human or ghost. A flash of rust and white. An eye of golden flame. A cat or a fox maybe. Either way, it signals it’s time for him to leave his post. It’s getting dark and there’s always tomorrow.

Maybe that will be the day he remembers the one elusive, beautiful, important thing he never wants to forget.

[minologistt]

your debut stage/promotional stage | BTS reaction a series

genre strangers -> crush , reactions

MAKNAE EDITION

warnings Y/N is a girl in this one because its a GG

M.LIST

----------------------------------------------------------

PARK JIMIN

he was seated in the middle of the crowd, yawning every once in a while due to how long the performance line ups were taking. if he were truly being honest with himself, he was only here to see the latest debut stage.

sure he could always see it from the comfort of his own home, rather than be seated with other people who possibly don't care about the performances at all. however he needed to see this particular stage in person to meet one of the members from this new girl group.

the space went dark as the stage lit up with colorful lights and five female silhouettes began to step forward, a spot light lit each of them up and that's when jimin saw her.

she was beautiful, not in the standard type of beauty but her own category. the group made elegant and large moves across the stage as they displayed their voices for everyone. by the time the whole show was over, along with introductions, jimin quickly made his way backstage so he could get a glimpse of this girl close up. his members weren't far behind as they all snickered at the desperate boy.

"i think i could've had a lot more movement here, ya know?" Y/n frowned as she chugged down her water. the new group was standing in the middle of a lobby. a staff member came over quickly and pat sweat off her forehead, another was fanning her with a random paper. "i think you did pretty well, especially for a debut stage, you looked like a pro out there.. at least thats what i think," jimin spoke as he casually strolled up behind the woman.

Y/n turned around with a shocked expression, nearly dropping her water. "oh my! aren't you park jimin of BTS?" jimin only chuckled at the shocked face of the woman. "yeah that's me.. uhm," he scratched the back of his neck as he sensed his members coming up behind him.

"you're Y/n, correct? i couldn't remember your last name, my apologies!" namjoon quickly came to help out his, obviously nervous, friend. "that's me alright, it's alright sometimes i can't remember it either with how unique it is," a laugh escaped her lips as her attention dragged to the taller male. "so, uh, my friend here came to ask you for your contact info.. in case you need any help navigating Korea," namjoon elbowed jimin and with that jimin took his phone out slowly, anticipating a rejection.

"really? i have been getting lost lately so that'd be lovely!" a bright smile appeared on her face as she gave jimin her contact info. he received it with a wide grin and a deep blush.

KIM TAEHYUNG

the TV was displaying a rerun of an award show that was hosting a promotional stage for a new girl group. they were popping off well with all sorts of fans. the screen was finally displaying the new group as their intro began. tae was seated comfortably on his couch with a bowl of ramen and a glass of water.

as the group continued their performance with much grace. one of the members caught his eye. at the end of the performance they all introduced themselves, however tae was intently paying attention to one of the members only. so, he did some research and found their youtube channel that was started only last month. he found a video dedicated to getting to know the members.

"hello [fandom name], it's me, Y/n!" the woman on the screen was breathtaking. her hair was well done in every clip, her skin was glowing, her smile was beautiful and her body was another story. tae was hooked, he looked into anything about her. he found her age, height, where she was from, her favorite food, hobbies and favorite places to visit.

he even at some point messaged the Bangtan gc about her.

BangTHATtan

tae : did you guys hear about that new girl group, debuted 2 months ago

rAApmon : yeah, they nice girls

jiminie : they areee

jin hyung from bighit : they think im funny so auto 10

kook : they called me a baby, we're at war

tae : wait have u all talked to them before me?!

suga hyung : 😂 pretty much loser

tae : ARE U KIDDDING?! 😡 I WANTED TO MEET THEM >:(

best hyung hobi : i can help you out with that :)

tae threw his phone across the couch and covered his face to muffle his yells of excitement.

JEON JUNGKOOK

he just so happened to stumble across a pop up stage performance with colorful lights. the crowd wasn't huge but not small either, so he stepped through the crowd to find a good spot to see what was going on.

"busan are you readyy?!" a beautiful woman approached the center of the stage and introduced herself as the groups official leader and lead vocalist. the other members went on, and introduced themselves as well.

despite all the other members introducing themselves as well junkooks eyes were set on one woman in particular. The woman who introduced herself as the leader. her skin was amazing. Her features were unique and unlike the beauty standard, her outfit was flashy, and her voice was soothing.

her style of dancing and her tone of singing, drew him in quite quickly. however, just as quickly as the mini concert started it ended, but he was so entranced with the woman that it took him a minute to realize that the concert was over or what he assumed was in concert.

jungkook was a bit unsatisfied with just seeing her up on the stage and preferred to see her closer. so he tried to put his superstar status to use and get backstage, or at least in the VIP section if they had any.

eventually he found his way to the backstage, and saw her standing inside of an open tent with staff surrounding her. she was gorgeous even though she was covered in sweat. with a deep breath he marched forwards and tapped her shoulder, disregarding the staff asking him how and why hes back stage.

"oh my..! aren't you jungkook of BTS? how are you here?" the woman, whos name is Y/n, beamed at him. "yeah thats me!" he blushed a bit and rubbed his neck. he began fiddling with his lip ring out of nervousness as she began questioning why he came back stage. " 'm sorry, uh, i just thought you were gorgeous and a good singer and dancer too! you know, like, good at your job-" jungkook's rambling was cut short as a staff member soon stopped by to let Y/n know of their soon departure.

"thank you thank you but i'm kinda in a time crunch right now.. is there anything you needed before i gotta run?"

"uh.. can i get your number?"

 minologistt | do not copy, translate or edit this.

[theleakypen]

Fic Writer Interview Game

Thank you for the tag (almost 2 years ago) @gusu-emilu!

I am tagging literally anybody who sees this and wants to play :D

name: Puck

fandoms: multifandom! although Untamed/MDZS continues to be my main

two-shots: I never understand this question but it looks like it means to rec your own two-chapter fics so here we go: Stories More Beautiful Than Answers (CQL, Mianmian gets to meet Jin Ling post-canon) and Rhûnlanders (I published it as a series of 2 separate fics, but it's basically 1 thing: Songxiao in Middle Earth - Xiao Xingchen is an Elf and Song Zichen is a Man, both from Rhûnland so they're still Asian)

most popular multi-chapter fic: Obviously Yunmeng In-Laws (my and @iamwestiec's CQL modern AU groupchat fic which had bafflingly runaway success) has to be the answer to this. But if we're only going by ones written solely by me, it's But, After All, I Am A Wen (incomplete Wen Qing canon divergence wherein she actually takes and uses the comb Jiang Cheng gave her to commit treason and save her family's lives)

actual worst part of writing: having the fucking brain space to fucking write, fuck. it's been really hard bc i have so many other obligations and they eat my brain so even if i have ideas i can't get them to turn into prose :(

how you choose your titles: in order of likelihood: first, quote from the fic itself; joint second place, something kinda descriptive of the fic or lines from a poem or song

do you outline? not generally. I did outline my multichapter Wen Qing fic bc it's so much more ambitious than anything else i've ever worked on and I occasionally do something resembling in an outline in the doc of my one shots when i know what happens in the sections but don't have the prose yet; it's usually, like, a series of bracketed statements.

ideas you probably won't get around to, but wouldn't it be nice? oh god so many lmao. i have an entire channel in my writing discord that is just these ideas. One idea I have is a Songxiao no eye transfer AU because BSSR doesn't open the mountain back up to XXC and how they have to deal with that. Also I have yet to write any Witcher fic but I've been playing Witcher 3 and I really wanna write a Vesemir POV fic that's 5+1 "5 times Geralt sent some random-ass stranger to Kaer Morhen and 1 time he came home" inspired by all the times in Witcher 3 when you can help someone and then be like "Oh yeah you'd be welcome at Kaer Morhen"

spicy tangential opinion: not that spicy but i wish more people would comment, especially on the smaller/less popular fics. i see your kudos! it makes me happy! but i'd love to know your thoughts if you have any!

callouts @ me: none of my self-callouts are writing-related, it's all just - clean your room, go the fuck to sleep, you're not a teenager any more and your body hurts less when you do basic life maintenance tasks. (honestly i'd probably also write better/more if i did basic life maintenance tasks so it counts lol)

best writing traits: Westie once said I'm good at making soft things hurt and I hold that compliment close to my heart <3

[redheadedwhat]

See How We Shine Chpt 6: A half formed plan

Fandom: Stranger Things

Pairing: Eddie x OFC (can be read as reader insert)

Warnings: Just some cursing for now.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

By next Monday Dustin had a plan. He had questions, he needed answers, and his first step was to call in reinforcements. 

“Guys,” he sat down at their usual table in study hall, ready and raring to go. “I think there’s something weird about Minnie.” 

“Of course she’s weird.” Mike shot back, his voice in a hushed whisper since he didn’t want to get in trouble with the teacher overlooking study hall. “She hangs out with Eddie.” 

“We hang out with Eddie.” Lucas added his own whispered voice to the conversation.

“Yeah, and we’re weird.” Mike pointed out.

“No, I mean weird .” Dustin insisted. “She always seems to know stuff she shouldn’t, and Eddie said she always has exactly what he needs in her bag, like she knows he’s going to need it.”

“That’s not weird.” countered Mike. “Nancy always has random shit in her purse. That’s why girls carry them.” 

“Nancy never carried a full-sized first aid kit in her bag.” Dustin continued. “And, Mike, you said she showed you a drawing of the Demogorgon!” 

“Maybe she gets hurt a lot.” Lucas argued. “And the Demogorgon was in and out of the Upside Down like a million times before El got to it, I’m surprised more people didn’t see it.” 

“Ok, then how did she know about this.” Dustin pulled out the keyring Minnie had handed him the other night and showed it to the other two. “I’ve never shown anyone this and she handed it to me without even having to ask if it was mine.” 

“Maybe she saw it fall out of your pocket.” Lucas shrugged.

“But she told me my girlfriend was sweet.” Dustin insisted, shaking the metal keyring in front of their faces. “How could she possibly know it was from Suzie?” 

They didn’t have an immediate answer for that one. There was nothing overly romantic about the keychain. It was just a rectangular piece of metal with zeros and ones etched on the front. 

“What’s it supposed to be anyway?” asked Lucas.

Dustin blushed, fidgeting a bit before mumbling. “It says ‘I Love You’ in binary code. Suzie made it for me.” 

Lucas and Mike burst into laughter at their friends' obvious embarrassment, causing Dustin to blush even harder. Thankfully for Dustin, their amusement was cut short by the teacher glaring at them from her desk.

The boys immediately quieted down, not wanting to risk detention.

“Ok, maybe she knows binary code?” Mike whispered once the teachers attention was off of them.

Dustin stared at Mike with a blank face. “Does she look like the type of person that can read binary code?” 

Lucas gave Dustin a pat on the shoulder, “I think you’re looking into this too deeply. Not everything has to have a supernatural explanation.” 

“Yeah,” Mike agreed. “I think she’s just regular weird.” 

“So, you guys aren’t with me on this?” Dustin asked, already knowing the answer.

Mike and Lucas both shook their heads. 

“Fine.” Dustin sighed. “But, I’m gonna keep looking into it and if I’m right, I get to say ‘I told you so’.” 

—--

Ok, so the first part of his plan was a failure, but Dustin was not discouraged. He’d just have to question Minnie on his own. The tricky part was how to approach her without alerting Eddie. Luckily for him, his chance came later on that same day when he caught her by her locker before lunch.

“Minnie!” Dustin ran up to her, slightly out of breath.

“Oh, hi.” She smiled, shutting her locker, “Eddie’s not here. He’s got business during lunch today.” 

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you,” Dustin said. “If that’s ok.” 

“Sure,” Minnie replied, obviously a bit surprised. “This is my lunch period, but I was just going to sit outside and sketch if you want to come…” 

“Sure!” He nodded enthusiastically, letting her lead the way. “Hey, if you have lunch now how come you never sit with us?” 

“I have art class right before lunch so I usually stay in the art room,” she explained. “I can get a bit distracted when I’m working on something, so I stopped even trying to get to the cafeteria.”

Minnie led him to a bench on the side of the school and carefully laid her things out. Once everything was to her liking she sat down and began to sketch. Dustin was trying to figure out if she was ready for his questions when she finally spoke.

“You can talk, I promise I’m paying attention, I just need to get some stuff down.” 

“That’s fine. I just wanted to see if I could ask you some questions.” Dustin sat down next to her. “I’m doing an extra credit project for Sociology.” 

“Sociology?” She asked.

“Yeah!” Dustin nodded, his voice raising slightly. “The study of people. And social groups. Stuff like that.” 

If Minnie noticed the slight awkwardness in his tone, she didn’t mention it. “Ok, how can I help?” 

“I’m writing about myths across different cultures. You’re not from around here, so I wanted to ask you about myths or urban legends that you know.” 

This was the best plan Dustin was able to come up with on his own. He had been hoping to workshop a few ideas with the guys, but since he was flying solo, this would have to do. 

“Sure.” She shrugged, scribbling away. “Ireland is full of myths.”

“Can you tell me about any that are personal to you? Or your family? Like, a family story.” Dustin pulled out a notebook, wanting to make this look as legit as possible.

Minnie hummed, trying to think of something to share with the boy. “There’s the myth of the changeling.” 

“What’s that?” asked Dustin.

“Supposedly the fae would take human babies and exchange them with fae children.” She explained. “You would suspect your child is a changeling if they were sickly or strange. If they asked weird questions or knew things they weren’t supposed to.”  

“Your family told you about this?” Dustin questioned, waiting for her to elaborate. 

Minnie nodded, adding something to her sketch carefully. “My brothers used to tease me and call me a changeling when I was little.”

“Were you sick? In the hospital a lot maybe?” Dustin asked, trying to keep his questioning casual.

“No, not at all.” she replied with a shake of her head. “Never been in the hospital. I had a bit of a vitamin deficiency, but my parents sorted that out.” 

Ok, so no hospital and no lab. Maybe they did things differently where she was from, but based on Dustins knowledge of human experimentation it doesn’t sound like Minnie went through anything like what El did. 

“So you were just strange?” He asked carefully. When she simply nodded he continued, “In what way?” 

“There was one night,” Minnie began. “I don’t remember it very well, but my brother Declan stole a toy from me. It was loud and annoying and he wanted me to shut up. Basic annoying older brother stuff.” 

Dustin waited for her to continue, still taking notes.

“But this toy was my favorite so I wouldn’t give it up. No matter where he hid it I would find it.” She continued, smiling slightly as she remembered her brothers retelling of this tale. “Finally he got fed up and smashed it right in front of me.” 

Minnie scowled down at her drawing and shut her eyes briefly. Dustin wasn’t sure if she even remembered that he was there until she continued. 

“From what he says, I got so angry that I screeched like a banshee, which is another creature of Irish myth, and broke every window in the house.” 

“Did you really?” Dustin asked with a hushed voice.

“That’s what Declan said.” she shrugged. “I was five, so I don’t remember it very well. Dermot agrees with Declan, but my Dad said that it was just a coincidence. Lightning struck the house and caused it to shake, making the windows break.” 

“Is that what your mother said, too?” He questioned carefully, remembering that Eddie had warned them against talking about the girls deceased mother. 

“Weirdly, whenever we’d ask our mother, she would just insist that it never happened.” Minnie replied, seemingly unbothered by the topic. “Mother didn’t really like to talk about myths or the supernatural, which I always found strange since her mother, my Nan, was extremely superstitious.” 

“Was she?” Dustin asked, his curiosity causing him to stray from his mission for the moment.

“Oh very.” Minnie smiled. “She would never disturb faerie circles, would go out of her way to avoid certain rocks, and always left offerings for the fae when she could. I’m not sure if she really believed in it or if she was just set in her ways. Thought it brought good luck, I guess.” 

Minnie told him a few more stories of her grandmother and her superstitions, explaining how they connected to the myths and folklore of her home country. If Dustin was actually doing a report, she would have been a great source of information. 

“I’m going to ask a few more specific questions.” Dustin told her, finally getting back on track. “This is more to do with paranormal stuff.”

She nodded and motioned for him to continue before turning to a new page on her sketchbook. 

“Ok, have the lights in your house ever started flickering out of nowhere?” He asked, paying close attention to her facial expressions. 

“Sure.” Minnie nodded. “But I live on a lake, the power gets unpredictable sometimes. That’s what Dad says.” 

“Has anything ever moved without you touching it?” He continued, looking as if he was actually reading from a list.

“Not that I can think of.” She answered. “Sometimes I’ll put something down and walk away, a pencil or a cup or something, and when I look next, it’s beside me. Far away from where I thought I put it. But that’s just me being forgetful.” 

Dustin nodded and made some notes. “Do you ever know about things before they happen? Or things that no one has told you?” 

“Oh, all the time.” Minne nodded, thankfully not finding his line of questioning odd. “That’s part of why my brothers called me a changeling all the time. My mom just said I’m intuitive.” 

“What kind of things do you know?” Dustin tried to play it cool, but this is exactly what he was looking for. 

“Just little stuff.” Minnie shrugged. “Mostly I’ll just see something and know that I’ll need it that day without being sure why. Like when I had the first-aid kit.” she explained. 

“Anything bigger than that?” He asked, almost breathless with anticipation. 

Minnie stopped sketching and glanced at Dustin, who flinched slightly, feeling a little guilty about deceiving her especially when she was so receptive to helping him with his non-existent project.

“Eddie says I have a lot of conspiracy theories, but sometimes an idea just pops into my brain and I feel like it’s the truth.” She told him. “He never says it, but I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m crazy.” 

“Trust me, I could never think you’re crazy.” Dustin promised her.

She looked him over and nodded, seeing that he meant what he said. “I’m not even sure how to explain it. Sometimes I’ll touch something or see something and I get…an impression, I guess you could call it. It’s kind of like picking up a book and reading a random page, you have the information, but no context.” 

“Can you give me an example?” He asked as he inched closer to her, not wanting to miss anything she said. 

 “Last year I bumped into Andy in the hallway, knocked his books everywhere. He was pissed.” She scoffed and rolled her eyes at the basketball players past behavior. “I picked up a book to give back to him and for some reason I just knew that he had a bottle of vodka hidden in his locker. When I told him to stop bitching because I knew what was in his locker he turned white as ghost and stopped bothering me, so it seems like I was right.” 

Dustin nodded, still taking notes, but not trusting himself to speak. He wanted to blab about the Upside Down and all the supernatural stuff he’d seen over the years. To let her know that she wasn’t crazy and she wasn’t alone. 

“Also, I know the Starcourt Mall didn’t really catch on fire.” 

That caught him off guard. Dustins head snapped towards her, his mouth hanging open.

“Eddie definitely doesn’t believe that one.” Minnie laughed. “I just know there was something else going on there, just not sure what.” 

“What else does Eddie not believe you about?” 

Minnie put her current sketch aside and grabbed a different sketchbook from her backpack. She flipped through a few pages before finding what she was looking for. “I saw this in my garden a few years back.” she said, handing it over to him. 

Dustin had heard about the drawing from Mike, but seeing it made him lose his breath. There was no mistaking that Minnie had drawn a Demogorgon. 

“I believe you.” Dustin said quietly, handing the sketchbook back to her. 

“Thanks.” She smiled shyly, not used to hearing that. “I also had a thought about the police chief they said died last year-” 

“Whatcha guys doing?” Eddie pushed his way between Dustin and Minnie on the bench.  “You showing the freshmen your monsters again, Mouse?” 

“He asked.” She insisted, closing her sketchbook and putting it back in her bag. “You all done with your business?” 

“Yeah, finally.” Eddie groaned, throwing an arm around the girl. “Guy took forever to decide, but I made him pay the ‘asshole tax’, so I am currently rolling in dough.” 

He hopped up from the bench and pulled Minnie up with him, twirling her around playfully. “How about I treat you to lunch? I’m sure you two didn’t eat anything out here.” 

Dustin moved to get up with them when Eddie pushed him gently back onto the bench. 

“Not you, Henderson.” 

“What? I didn’t get any lunch either!” Dustin protested. First Eddie had interrupted his conversation with what Dustin could only describe as the worst timing in the universe, and now he won’t even feed him?

“Yes, but I can’t be seen corrupting the youth, now can I?” Eddie put his hand on his chest as if the mere thought hurt his heart. “You need to get to class, you’ve got a bright future ahead of you. Mouse and I are beyond help by now!” 

Dustin looked like he wanted to complain, but Minnie gave him a pat on shoulder. 

“He’s right. You should go to class.” 

“Fine.” he heaved a sigh and picked up his backpack. “Thanks for your help.” 

“No problem.” Minnie smiled as she playfully resisted being pulled away by a very impatient Eddie. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” 

“Yeah, yeah, very sweet.” Eddie interrupted before Dustin could say anything. “You’ve hung out with Henderson long enough, now it’s time to give me attention.” 

Minnie finally allowed herself to be pulled away, giving Dustin a parting wave while Eddie yelled for him to get back to class. 

Dustin trudged back into the school, mentally trying to sort through all the information he’d just uncovered. Her answers had only given him more questions. He was positive that there was something different about her, but it doesn’t seem like she’d been experimented on like El. She was never in the hospital and he’d discreetly checked her wrists, both of which were free of tattoos. Could she just be extremely perceptive? Dustin didn’t think that was likely. She knew about Starcourt and she’d been about to say something about Hopper. There was no way she was just coincidentally right about that on top of all the other weird stuff. 

The boy wasn’t quite sure what to do from here, but hopefully he now had enough evidence to convince Mike and Lucas that he was right. He couldn’t wait to say ‘I told you so’. 

-----

Sorry for posting these back to back! Didn't keep on top of tumblr at all.

[katytheinspiredworkaholic]

Little rant that I promise has a point:

I stopped watching Stranger Things halfway through season 3... I tried TWICE to continue watching it but somehow I just lost interest, like, I love Robin and Steve and Dustin and Hopper and the whole gang and the plot was interesting, but I just wasn't in the mood to keep watching it so I didn't.. I have a pretty good idea of what happens though (thank you random bloggers who post the plot through gifs and edits, you are the backbone of fandoms and the reason I know lots of things about lots of fandoms).

Anyway, so, I didn't see any eps with Eddie, like, cero. I know who he is, what he does, his ending... So when I started seeing Steddie as a ship I was like, yeah they look cute together ngl, next.

And it's been like that for some time now, until recently when you started reblogging tons of steddie things that my interest was picked, so I started reading some of the ffs you reblog and loving some fanarts...

And what can I say, I'm a hardcore shipper now, you turned me into a Steddie shipper hahahah I am motivated to watch the rest of the show just to meet Eddie and see firsthand his interactions with Steve and the gang.

So thank you I guess 😂 and if anyone ever tells you that you reblog too much about x topic or whatever just know that you reblogs made me ship them so yeah, keep up the great work hahaha

Tl;dr you made me ship Steddie through all your reblogs and I am going to actually see the last season to fangirl about them a little hahaha

I cannot tell you how excited that makes me. And how much relief I feel that my reblogging all this Steddie and ST content has reached someone I follow <3 because I do worry xD I can't help it. I've been working on a very long dual-story fic for Steddie the past two months and reblogging all the other wonderful content here is the only way I've been able to scream about the ship. There is some serious A-Game writers and artists that are focused on them, there's a lot to enjoy for something that's only been a thing for like a year.

But thank you so much for telling me all of this 😭💕 I love hearing that I've converted people, it's such a badge of pride for me no matter the fandom. C: Season 04 is a _trip_ and I really enjoyed watching it even the first time through last year, so I hope you enjoy it just as much! (It's also kind of nice that you already know how it ends for Eddie, so there's no surprises, but tbh I have a lot of theories about that and what is going to happen in season 05 so... clown nose and shoes activated).

ANYWAY -- thankyouthankyouthankyou and you're welcome xD I have a lot more ST and Steddie stuff queued up and more is being written everyday so it won't be stopping any time soon 😊 and eventually my fic will join the roster once it's done. Thank you for your kind words and making me feel better about flailing about these two dumb boys. It's my favorite pastime xD dumb boys in love