#but sometimes feel your body finally heat up sufficiently and cross the line to become warm blooded again

[annabelle--cane]

being a somewhat strange person, your friends and family get used to hearing strange things about you rather quickly, until you say something that would knock an unsuspecting classmate or coworker flat but your well-acclimated closer companion simply nods and says "stands to reason," so there's a certain joy in occasionally saying something so unusual that your own mother of twenty-one years puckers her lips in shock and says "marina... that's not normal..."

[jamestrmtx]

Fairytale Complex - [Undertale | Sans x Reader]

[Gender Neutral, Frisk's Parent Reader | Slow Burn]

Chapter Twenty One | It's Showtime! (Part 2 of 3 | His POV)

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Alternate Chapter Title(s):

Saint Behind the Glass** (Song Referenced)

or

The Extra Corny One With A Second Song Title Reference, Part 2½**

• • •

**This basically reveals Part 2 and 3 were meant to be Chapter Twenty-Two at one point (similar to how various chapters from the old version of FaiCom have been merged together here), buuut each chapter has essentially took place on different days in this version, so...

Let's keep that format, shall we?

• • •

Something's wrong.

That single sentence continues to repeat itself over and over as he makes it from Ruins to Hotland with the human, who remains quiet and distant during the entirety of the walk.

They're obligated to take off their jacket and reveal a sweaty tank top midway through, leaving their arms bare, these they try to hide from his line of sight by crossing them and glancing aside. He wonders why they do that at first, until he witnesses how hefty and soft-looking their arms are, a noticeable difference compared to the toned muscles he often saw from those who worked at the Royal Guard. Whether the human felt unconfident of their appearance or vulnerable as a cause of the nightmare he assumed to be related to, Sans wasn't completely sure of. Either way, he's aware it's best not to bring that up currently. The ups and downs to their health and body had shown greatly through these past few months, and though they were recovering little by little, they seemed to be facing some more frequent downs, as of late. Their call from a few days ago and the weak state they were in as they climbed into the back seat of Papyrus's car were just enough to make him fear there's something bigger going on.

"Shoulda worn shorts or somethin'," he comments, noticing they already seem to be affected by the heat. Frisk ventured through a variety of climates with no trouble at all, yet their parent was showing signs of fatigue in their body within a few minutes into their walk through Hotland. The place had grown about twice as hot since he last visited, though he doubts the human will believe him if he were to say that out of nowhere. They could likely take it as him trying to console them for their inability to be stronger than him; or their own child, for that matter -- someone meant to see them as a role model rather than a frail and dependent person. "Wanna borrow some of mine?"

The human stares at him like he's made the most absurd suggestion there is, similar to that of mixing water with cereal or cooking steak in a toaster. "I swear, you test your luck with me a little too hard sometimes."

"I mean it, though."

"...We're not even dating yet."

"Yet," he says, mirth in his tone. "As in, there's still a possibility for us to become official?"

"Oh, stop it." They frown and fumble with the keys hanging from their satchel; he notices their nails are stubby, and bits of dried blood can be seen at the corners of plenty. "I… I don't know when you're being serious with me or not anymore."

"I meant that, too," he states, chuckling. "Would it be late if I told you I got that punch at the bar, 'cuz I had my head way in the clouds -- thinkin' about you?"

Sans receives no comment or reaction other than (Y/N) looking elsewhere and moving aside to walk a bit further from where he's at.

As a consequence, he takes a step closer, catches them with a 'hey', and reaches for their cheek when they look down at him. "...What's the matter? Your face's burnin'."

"We're in Hotland," they retort, rolling their eyes and brushing his hand away. "Ice's frozen. Water's wet. The sun's scorching-"

"-Just like you."

They walk off again, albeit with some struggle now that the heat of Hotland has combined with their embarrassment.

"And I'm not gonna wear your shorts. It would be a waste of time for me to take a break just because of some heat -- I'm not weak."

"Not sayin' you are. Just sayin' I don't want you to die from a heatstroke."

"Either way, I overlooked my situation, and I failed to prepare for it." A solemn look falls on their face, coupled with a firm posture. "I should've kept in mind my health, so it wouldn't be right for you to try redeeming my lack of preparedness. I should've asked Frisk or you more about this." They take in a breath and sigh it out. "...even if you can adapt to it just fine, and even if Frisk didn't have as much trouble to adjust as me."

Hot-headed and fiery might just be the finest ways to describe the human's current attitude, yet he very well knows making another joke about their temper -- combined with their hotness and the place they're currently at -- would be far too much. It wouldn't surprise him if they decided to call off the tour halfway through. Patience wasn't quite their main trait, though they practiced a sufficient amount of tolerance when it came to confronting his constant coquetry for the duration of those two months one of their coworkers mentioned in the chat; he can hardly believe it's been that long, and even less how close he was to kiss them that one time on the couch. More than sixty days of dealing with his presence had to be considered an achievement of some sort, even if their feelings were mutual. The monster's completely aware of how tiring and exasperating he can be on the often occasion, so he finds it best to start rationing how much he can be at once; too much of something's rarely ever good or effective, after all.

"But... Alright. Risking it would only make it worse, either way." Their gaze turns soft and they concede with a quiet huff. "Wouldn't we have to go allll the way back, though?"

"Not exactly," he replies, winking.

Sans proceeds to unzip his jacket and reveal a folded bundle of clothing underneath it.

"I know you can be stubborn sometimes, so I came prepared." He turns it over and adds, "There's a full set of clothes there, in case ya wanna freshen up at Met's old hotel before we keep goin'." His hands brush with theirs as they take the clothing from him. "It's been abandoned for a short while now, but I'm pretty sure the water's still runnin' well, for the most part." His gaze falls on their belongings again, and he gives into a cheekier grin as he continues with, "I've noticed somethin' about you, by the way."

"And what would that be?" they ask, mouth straight and tone wary.

He observes the satchel again -- the more-heavy-than-it-looks bag they almost always seemed to carry along with them, be it for something as typical as their job to something as simple as going out for a walk. What made it odd was knowing what contents could be found inside, these he has a vague recollection from when he had no other choice but to organize their bag after having gone through it when they fainted at the bus. Sans can still remember having rummaged through layers of Frisk's clothing, school supplies, and even a few monster-aimed medicines before setting the first aid kit back to its rightful place. The only things he could recall to be truly theirs were their cellphone, wallet, keys, and eyeglasses case. Going back to that memory makes him wonder -- were their priorities in the format of a list -- what number they would label themself with.

"You usually carry stuff in that bag meant for other people -- not you." He eyes the pocket with a few contents poking out from it. "...Or am I Ied to believe that bright pink Husky hairpin's yours?"

The human looks confused for a moment, until their eyes cast down at their bag and assess the pocket his gaze is most focused on. Then, they come across one of the smaller ones, where the mentioned accessory stays clipped to. "It- It's not! That's just in case Frisk needs it." They take it and hide it away in one of the bigger, emptier pockets. "It's their favourite hairpin, and they use it more often now that their hair's getting longer."

"But they ain't here right now."

"Yes, but what if they need it later -- when I go pick them up?"

He can barely contain the joy their overly defensive expression brings upon his face.

Perhaps it's pure projection or coincidence, but they appear to resemble the same dog he mentioned with the stance they hold, not threatening in the slightest and charming at best, but still ready to attack -- figuratively, of course. Hearty laughter escapes him, though he covers it up with a harrumph. "I'm surprised you don't carry the whole house with you, at this point."

"It doesn't hurt to be prepared."

"If only you applied that thought for you, too."

They swat his skull with their hand and let out a chuckle. "Don't nag me, teddy bear." Nonetheless, a more serious look overcomes them as they sigh. "You're right, though." With how quiet it gets and how long that pause lasts, it appears as if they've become lost in their thoughts. "Not only did the social worker suggest it, but it's not fair for me to keep bothering you or anyone else because of my..." They scratch their throat and grin. "...consistently questionable life choices."

"Is that a promise I'm hearin'?"

"A big and definite one."

• • •

Half-open windows help bring some clear air into the stuffy room, as does the air conditioner set to the coldest temperature possible by lessening the dryness and heat of the wind. It's all paired up with the scents of the fresh cinnabunnies and iced coffee he carries in some paper bags, food he bought at Snowdin while the human showered. Sans sets the meal by the nightstand, covers it up with some aluminum foil, and -- finally -- wipes a layer of dirt away from the mirrored dresser before assembling some toiletries on it. Then, he sits down in bed, closes his eye sockets, and waits. The sounds of his soul beating, the breeze blowing the curtains, and the shower running are the only melodies to take over the quiet of the hotel. Turning on the radio by the nightstand further assists those noises and aids in transforming the room into a more welcoming and cozy spot, overall. The last thing on his mental to-do list is to wait some more by checking his phone and updating himself on any new messages, some few from (Y/N)'s coworkers wishing him luck. A grin's inevitable as he reads through these a second time.

The shower turning off and a door unlocking are the next changes he notices, along with the radio switching from music to news.

Sans feels his breath tremble when the human steps out. They're dressed to the nines despite their attire being composed of the simplest clothing possible: a new pair of his below-the-knee shorts, these fitting slightly above theirs as a result of their taller height; plus one of his baggiest shirts, now almost at belly button length for the same reason as the first piece. What makes such a common attire seem so complex and thought-out is how well they've adjusted it to their figure; it's either that, or he has his head in the clouds again. Regardless, they knew how to fix an outfit, and it wasn't that of much surprise if he compared it to the time they pulled the same trick when borrowing some sleepwear from Toriel's wardrobe.

Or, then again…

He was slowly becoming infatuated with them and couldn't avoid finding them attractive -- no matter the clothing worn.

At the sight of (Y/N) having their back turned to him while they perform their finishing touches by the dresser, he approaches them as quietly as he can, yet he lets himself be seen halfway with the reminder of the nightmare they had and how startled they could likely be if he tried anything extreme. He goes to hug them from behind when they catch him getting closer, though they say and do nothing in response. Still, his expectations of no retaliation are promptly shattered as they turn around, grab his hands, and twirl him once, preventing the hug.

"Nice try, teddy bear," they comment, smiling. "Do try again next time." They wink.

It's a knockout when the radio decides to switch back to music, inspiring in them what he assumes is an urge to take their current hold on him to lead him into an impromptu dance.

"So… You want to get flirty with me again?" they ask, grabbing his hands tight as they sway him left and right at a rhythmic but easy motion. "Then you've got to handle me flirting back." One hand holds his left one up while the other places his right one on their waist. Theirs then falls on his shoulder when he keeps his where they placed it at, this one he has trouble keeping still with how close he is to touch their skin, part of their waist now more exposed with their movements, showing the “love handles” he'd teased them about since he first flirted with them. A subtle but no less playful smile stretches their lips; their eyes soften, though mischief flares in their gaze. "I've made the decision to trust you," they comment, twirling him around once more. "So if you'd like us to be official, we can, but…" Their steps slow down as they trail off in their thoughts.

He treads in with, "You need to wait until the CPS thing's over with, right?"

They nod. "Unfortunately."

Their sorrow stays brief and their playfulness returns, replacing their momentary frown for yet another smile. "My memory might be a bit bad though, as I've never heard you say you like me before." To further increment the effects of their teasing, their lips fall close to his teeth but end up lower, kissing his jaw instead. "...In other words," they add, hands locking firm around his neck and bringing him closer to them. "Speak now, or forever hold your peace."

Sans feels his face turn about as warm as theirs felt, and he can tell they've noticed, based on the way their face lingers close to his -- waiting.

"...I like you," he says, far too quiet to be labeled anything but a murmur; even a thought could be considered louder than his words.

They land another kiss, much closer to his teeth. "Couldn't hear you."

"I like you, puddin'," he repeats, stronger this time. "Can you, uh… do that again, though? It felt nice."

They nod, lean in further, and press yet another kiss to his face. "Gladly."

With that, the human carries on with the dance. They sway him left and right and perform small circles across the hotel room, adding a twirl every few seconds -- sometimes with them taking the lead, and vice versa. "I like you, too, Serif." Despite the meaning and weight of their words, a frown arrives on their face. "But…" They hesitate. "I still have some doubts, and I think that dream I had confirmed that."

"Would you like to talk about it?"

A few seconds of silence remain and the song ends, dropping tension in the room.

"Not now, but… But maybe later?" They let him go. "If possible, I'd like to talk at the Judgment Hall -- where you last worked before leaving the Underground."

Despite his best efforts, the skeleton can't avoid commenting, "Want me to judge how good you look right now?"

The human sighs, loud and long. "...Babe?"

"Yeah?"

"Stop."

He lets out a resounding, jovial laugh at that.

Their tone's genuinely sad, as so's their expression.

They look a hundred and ten percent done with him, though they still push forward with a, "Be serious for a moment, please. I… I really mean it, and that dream I had…" Demurral returns to their words. "It involved one of my fears about Frisk's safety, and well…" They take a deep, shaky breath. "A- And my own safety when I'm around you."

The severity of their statement dawns on him, and his view distorts itself from an attractive human to a vulnerable one standing in front of him, weak and poorly prepared -- completely alone with him in a large, abandoned, and dilapidated hotel. They were easy prey from the viewpoint of an Underground Sentry. He could easily take them captive with their current state of health and their lack of knowledge in combat. Were he still assigned to that job, had (Y/N) fallen in Frisk's stead, and were finding that seventh soul still a priority, he could just as easily inform every other member of the Royal Guard to bring the human down to the Monster King's bidding. Unlike Frisk, they had little to no determination left in their soul; a quick and direct intervention meant danger for them.

And had he still that same mindset to this day, his agreement with Asgore to serve and protect (Y/N) would be something he could break -- something simple to deal with if he framed the blame on someone else. He could just as likely tolerate some jail time for failing to fulfill his part of that job with no protest. The only real obstacle would be (Y/N)'s child themself, knowing they were likely going to guard and care for their parent unconditionally. But even then, they were still alone with him presently; in other words, he could cover up any potential evidence of him being a culprit with time to spare. Perhaps Frisk was the hero of the story, but (Y/N) was still an NPC -- someone easy to get rid of with the right amount of caution and preparedness.

"You mentioned something about Karma before, and well…" They break the silence and snap him out of those thoughts. "I've made a lot of bad choices and awful mistakes, so that makes me wonder if, m- maybe…" Tears form in their eyes as they breathe in -- once, then twice. "If maybe I don't deserve any of this kindness or forgiveness that I've been getting recently, and… And that maybe I don't belong in this story, y'know? Frisk has done all the work here so far, and they've overcome plenty of obstacles, too. Meanwhile, I- I'm a weak, ill person with a dead-end job -- trying to keep a holey row boat afloat with napkins." They let out a shaky sigh and fail at a smile. "I get that you like me, and I can't deny or ignore my own feelings for you, but I'm… I'm an unworthy, ungrateful person. We've known each other for barely half a year. Th- There's stuff you don't know about me yet -- just as I don't know about you."

Their face shines with tears, these they can't bring themself to stop with how many pour down, and how fast these are. "I've already troubled and hurt Frisk enough as it is, and I've... I've troubled well-meaning family like Brenda just as much with my mistakes." They cover their face as they sit down in bed, trying to contain their sorrow. "...And then I have these awful, intrusive thoughts that seep in whenever I think I'm doing better. I don't want to bring trouble to you or any other monsters, either, but reminding myself of my past worsens these feelings, kn- knowing I might screw up again and again and again."

Feeling the situation's getting too rough not to establish some control over it, Sans sits down with them and grabs their wrists, tugging at these for them to look down at him.

Fear reaches their gaze as they stare at his irises, completely overcoming their bright and cheerful attitude from earlier.

"Breathe," he says, voice low as he loosens his grip on their wrists -- at the feeling of them shaking almost violently under his hold. "We'll go to the Hall in a few. But, first... I'm gonna need you to calm down a lil' more." He lets go.

They nod, close their eyes, and let a few more tears drift down before he dries the rest of these off with the sleeve of his jacket. "...Alright."

When they shudder, sniffle, and recover some sense of tranquility, they look at him again and smile. "And thank you for showing me patience."

He smiles back and brings them in for a hug -- long, tight, and strong. "That I've got plenty of, puddin'."

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playing with a heart

title: playing with a heart pairing: lee jooheon/reader genre: office!au/friends with benefits!au/unrequited love!au summary: whenever any of them goes through a heartbreak, the other is there to make them feel better—physically, emotionally, in the verge of desire. as time passes, heartbreak becomes more bearable, romance is more understood and the two office coworkers grow apart. jooheon may never become a memory, she believes, pondering if she wants to go back to his arms simply because he would never break her heart or because she wants to give it to him after all those years. type: angst/fluff/suggestive/romance/humor word count: 17,178 disclaimer: this is part of my august special called ‘the anti-love club’. each story can be read individually, however, you’d be getting a little bit more of backstory along with some easter eggs if you read each of them, as well as helping me with support. the masterlist can be found here.

The folders are not uneven. Not when the colors are matched. Purple, indicators of the creative processes of the newest infomercial, goes with purple. The blue ones include casting for the next image of their product, sufficiently prominent in their own stack, edges lined with edges, dust moved by pats of her palm against the surface. The brown ones, however, boring beyond repairment, are the ones with the most information—needed for the camera-people, the crew of editors, the investors, sponsors…all of which should be studied by her.

Though, organization does make it easier. There is this prickly feeling in the back of her eyelids, accompanied by the frenzy of hand movements when she sees mismatched colors or disorganized matters. Her desk, pristine and clean, is a place that is often used by her and still, not a single speckle of dust dares to rest on the surface. Everything has to be perfect, like the timeline of an infomercial. If it develops its idea too soon, people will feel lost. If the idea takes too long to approach the watcher, someone will get bored.

Being the head of a department in an infomercial company is its own responsibility. Being so while also being way under forty is the tight feeling of pressure that she never dares voice out. But what does she voice out? If anything, her words are always glued to the back of her tongue, thinking that actions speak louder than words…and practically eating down her worries when her boss had insisted on having another head on the department. They want to expand, way beyond what they had already constructed, and while her ideas have been significantly developmental for the growth of their company—her boss’ words, not hers—, there needs to be something else.

Someone who doesn’t mind about the colors of the folders, or organizing the coffees for the meetings that the team take part of every Friday.

A person whose innovation was creative, more than logical.

The drink he ordered from the coffee girl should give her a glimpse of who he is. The swirling of the ice cubes inside the cup drop water on its surface, sweating down until it rests on the ebony colored long table, perfect for meetings. Her fingers ache to press a cloth down under that surface, to wipe and wipe the reminder of someone being in her line of job, sharing her office, making her the second in charge—uncontrolled, in a way. Before she could do so, the weight of the clear glassed door of the meeting room is pushed open, the air conditioner from outside freezing the place and doing wonders for that iced coffee, droplets becoming less rapid on their downfall.

The first person to get inside is not a worker of her team. None of the editors, none of the planners, no one that she could recognize—that doesn’t make him any less fitting. Some people can fit somewhere even when they are clearly not part of such a spot, and he’s the sponsor for such a concept.

It only takes some thinking for her to guess who he is. If he’s not from her team, he must go by the name her boss had uttered into the quickened air of the morning yesterday. Lee Jooheon. Whose black hair is perfectly styled back, as if the world bent at his will, sharp and complicated eyes not quite matching the dimples that appear on his features once he lets the door close under its own movements, catching sight of her.

“Oh, I didn’t know someone would be here.” He says, moving. “Good morning.”

Jooheon is a rampant tornado from the moment he meets her. From his casual style when he tugs at his perfectly snug tie, leaving it dangling just a little bit. From the way he takes a seat in front of another person’s iced coffee, instead of sitting in front of his seat. From the way his legs part for a second before crossing over each other and reaching towards the sets of folders. He inspects one, leaves it there, crooked.

Had it been anyone else, she’d be annoyed. Her blood would boil, rise in the way of a volcano before realizing the gates of her mouth will never open, will never utter a single word. She doesn’t, however. Something about him exudes beauty, knowledge, in the way he can be so chaotic yet so sweetly so at the same time. Unknowing, he is, much more when she exchanges the iced coffees before he can set his lips around the straw.

“This is yours.” She breathes out, voice too unused, coming in a whisper that is not expected of the head of a team. Jooheon lifts his gaze at that, raising his eyebrows slightly before wrapping his fingers around the cup of iced coffee. “Uh, I organize everything before the meetings. This is not your seat, but if you’d prefer to be here, I could re-arrange everything.”

“Where is my seat?” He asks, inspecting her features as if he’s surprised at such…professionalism. Coming invited, he still was too forward, and she had no issue with it. The depths of his dark eyes speak of ignorance; maybe, that’s what Jooheon is—crooking things without knowledge, all because he thinks the world works just like his mind does.

Her fingers extend, pointing at the two seats at the edge of the table. “The one on the left, right beside mine.”

Jooheon stands up, though not quite taking his gaze away from her as he speaks. “So, that would make you the head of the department.” A curt nod, she gives, earning a narrowed-eyed glance from him before his lips finally take the first sip of the iced coffee. “You’re pretty soft-spoken for being one of the bosses here.”

“I guess,” She says, now taking a good glimpse at him when he is a bit farther away. His eyes, those that she had seen from up close, are bathed in shadows when he is away. Lips that look too chapped, body that seems fragile with each breath he takes and a pulsating mannerism on the side of his cheek, tightening and tightening, as if about to explode.

She may not be good with words, keeping them dead on her mind, but Jooheon is the contrary and whatever he is caging in—troubles that he, obviously, wouldn’t tell a person that he has known for five minutes—, he can’t seem to stand.

“That’s why you’re here.” She adds. “…My boss would like for me to be like you.”

The newest transfer of the department—and at a good position, at that—finds comedy in her voice. So much so that his rounded cheeks show the depths of heaven in his dimples, slowly but surely growing in the tiniest of grins when he says: “Ah, come on, no one should want to be like me.” And the weight of those words does not go unnoticed by her, heard and felt when she realizes that Jooheon’s day must have creaked under his own weight, compilations of memories marking him as useless. “But…whatever. Ah, nice to meet you.” His smile becomes brighter, eyes twinkling, a mask for him. Beautiful, yet not…how he’s feeling. “Care to explain to me what today’s meeting is about? I was not informed further about the information.”

Taking a seat beside Jooheon, the expanse of his body heating her side, should have felt like him protecting her, but for that one time…this strange feeling that looked to have him belonging, instead of simply fitting in, overtook her. Glazed her over to the point that the chaotic nature of his existence, of him, would be an invitation for her. For, there needs to be disorder for her to organize. There needs to be chaos for the world to rearrange itself.

###

The first time he got his heart broken in front of everyone, it didn’t even show.

Every morning of the past month has consisted of watching Jooheon crumble to himself. The smile is there, but it’s too bright to be real. The crispiness of his button down shows the wrinkles of tossing the fabrics aside and picking them up for the next day. Talking to him comes in spurts of knowledge, in random conversations while he is seated by the mess that is his desk and she is in her own world of immaculateness. She’d watch him, how his fingers work on the keyboard and sometimes, he ignores calls as long as they come from one number. One number that may be the cause of Jooheon’s somber expression. A set of numbers that she wishes she could erase, all for the sake of not watching him hunch to himself, as if broken.

Her observational skills make her oversensitive—she knows this. Guessing and putting pieces together works for puzzles, but it doesn’t work for people. Jooheon, still, goes out with his new coworkers. He’s on time for meetings and for the dinners that follow after, and maybe the conversations that mostly consist of listening to him may be the cause of her romanticism towards him. Of seeing him as an attractive person, sharing a tight space with her, and yet knowing little to nothing about him and hence, not letting him get to know her, no matter how hard he tries.

His hair falls on top of his forehead, the ashy strands glistening with his usual gel when he leans over her shoulder, trying to look at what she’s typing on her laptop. “Is that the one terrible script that we denied last week?”

The thought of such an atrocity being aired on TV is enough to have her sighing, leaning back on her chair, almost a little bit on him, if her shoulder caressing the expanse of his broad chest is enough leverage. Jooheon doesn’t move, comfortable in his position, his knee pressing to the back of her seat. “Yes,” She initiates, going over the first few paragraphs again. “I’ve been fixing it for the past hour but the idea is just so bad. Condom commercials are already difficult, even worse when they make them corny like this.”

When she turns to look at him, his eyes are already on her. Glistening, reddened lips wrapping into a smile when he juts his chin forward. “Leave that for tomorrow. The team have already left for dinner and they’re asking if we’re going to join them.”

The document blinks back at her, calling her to stay. To rearrange the letters, make sure the punctuation is perfect, or scratch it entirely and ask her team of writers to start anew. How can one say no to the shape of his lips, the mole on his eyelid, the briefly lasting happiness of him that she wants to embrace and get to know? The answer remains unknown for her, but she knows what she would usually do had she been asked for anyone else.

“I don’t know…I think I should stay behind.” After all, talkative is not one of her traits and sitting down while having dinner with everyone not uttering a single word is awkward for her. No amount of pushing could ever make her be part of that group, even someone as Jooheon had fit in entirely.

His fingers hook around the edge of her seat, moving her entirely until he is hovering over her. Smiling. Jooheon smiles but he never does it with the heart, and it takes all in her to avoid the attraction that tells her that, maybe, in her silent pleas she can get to sneak a grin away from him. Genuine. “You shouldn’t. Firstly, because I’d pay for you if you went.” Jooheon begins with a good reckoning. “And secondly…because it’s not fun if you’re not there.”

“How so?”

“You’re the only person that makes me feel at ease here.” He comments, pushing his hand against her wrist before wrapping his fingers idly around it, bringing her up to stand face to face with him.

“I rarely speak, Jooheon.” She conquers, her free hand reaching for her laptop and saving the last few bits of the document before turning it off. Who is she to say no to the storm that promises to sweep her away?

Laughter rises on his tired features, unspoken threads of problems snatched away from his head at the sight of her. “That’s the fun part. I’ll have to take the words out of you. I’ll make myself so interesting, you will never stop talking to me.”

This determination of his will only be the cause of their doom—their imminent closeness that could either end badly or perfectly fine. This could strengthen their job together, just like how it could become their weakest link. Yet, with the warmth of him and that enigma that wraps around his every being, she plays with her fingers, wrist still held in between his own when she smiles at him. “…I guess you got lucky with the fact that you’re already interesting.”

A quirk of his eyebrow should be enough, a reaction that does not match the drag of his feet when he gets to the office early in the morning. “Oh, is that so?” He asks, fingers moving downwards, playing with the bracelet that dangles from her skin. A smile, that’s all she can give him when the tips of her ears turn red and she has to pull away. For her sanity, or perhaps because nothing good ever comes from playing with fire. “I guess I’ll have to find out what it is that makes me so interesting.”

While he trails right behind her as they get out of the office, continuing with the conversation easily, her mind wanders on the possibilities of nearing fire so much that she burns herself, but aches are still existing beings. Maybe, this danger that she sees raking from him is just part of her imagination. Sixth senses don’t have to be right all the time.

###

The sour taste of the coffee rests heavily on her throat. Silent, like she normally is—how she was bound to be the moment her opinions were pushed in disbelief when she was younger. Not a word could be heard from her as she inspects the office; not a lot of people were there, to start with, some of the security guards, a few of the cleaning team and some assistants. Someone lacks in there, the importance of his seat captured by the faux lights in the room, ones that she should turn off to replace for the natural lights that passes through the curtains, but the neither-nor morning leaves her paralyzed, almost too lazy to move.

On the back of her eyelids, she can make out the figure of him. That daydream in the form of a coworker, the culprit of her wildest dreams, the taste of sweetness that she longs to feel after a long sip of caffeine. Jooheon is an energizer—the more he heals, the more he beams, but coloring a picture will never be enough to cover the small glimpse of color that passed the lines, or crossed it rather. No matter how much she speaks to Jooheon, he still doesn’t know her and hence, she doesn’t know him. Acquaintances, they are, but that doesn’t take away his power.

The strength he has of making her feel as if her clothes are constricting against the soft breaths or sighs, he takes out of her with his dreamy presence.

But some matters will remain silent. Some flirtations cannot be anything more than. The thought passes her head when she looks at her reflection when opening the curtains, the polished windows showing the expanse of her. Mug of heated coffee on hand, gray skirt matched with dark tights, white shirt with an unkempt collar. She’s controlled, which is why her fingers feel the fabric of the collar until the center is perfectly aligned with her axis. The fall-out is simply not her style.

Happiness floods the otherwise silent office when Jooheon comes barging in with someone from her designing team. Tsubasa. The shorter male is holding a cat in between his fingers, its green eyes widened in surprise at the amount of attention. Jooheon, instead, stands in front of it with a smile, weaving index finger caressing the cat’s neck, soon after calling out her name,

“…We found this cat on the way to the office.” He calls out, though her body is already folding over itself softly, trying to run away from the smaller animal—still, in a way, terrifying for her. Perhaps, it’d be the fine beige hairs it’d leave on her clothing if she got too close, or it’s the fact that animals had never been too pleased when around her. “Are you scared of cats?” He asks, only to have Tsubasa scoffing.

“Boss, lighten up. This baby could be the office’s pet.” The worker brings the animal up to his face, gentle paws pushing his glasses down until the material falls on the floor. That is enough to have Jooheon laughing, and the woman reaching forward when Jooheon nears her.

The warmth of his arm wrapped around her shoulder is comforting, much more when he continues speaking: “See? That’s a good guy. He even hates Tsubasa as much as everyone else.”

“Hey!”

“What?” Jooheon tilts his head to the side, beaming down at her while her eyes inspect his features. When will he resolve every question inside her head? As to why her hands only seem to find leverage when he is around and how she wouldn’t mind messing her life up for once as long as he’s there to support her through it. “So…maybe, I could help you pet it.”

“I’d love to. Animals hate me.” His fingers slot in between hers, hand reaching forward when moving along with his. His body is pressed to her side, speaking softly—a habit he may have learned with her.

“No one could hate you.” Tsubasa holds the cat out for her to pet its fur around the neck, only lasting a few seconds before the cat closes its bright eyes to relax. “See? He’s nice. Animals are nice.”

“You prefer dogs, though.” She comments, one of the many things they have shared on their conversations together, only to hear Jooheon chuckling.

“Don’t say that in front of the kitten.”

“Ah, he doesn’t understand.” Tutting him, she takes the kitten’s paw in between her fingers, rolling the fur softly in between her fingers and sharing one smile with Tsubasa before the moment switches immediately.

Rugged claws cling to her thighs, passing the material that covers them and ripping them in the process of running away. Perhaps, a little bit overwhelmed or still not used to the people around him, the cat attacked her quickly, in the blink of an eye, only capturing her attention when a hiss leaves her lips, hand letting go of Jooheon’s to reach for her thighs. The tights are broken, ripped apart to show glimpses of her skin with blotches of red, scratches showing the tiniest bit of blood.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Tsubasa voices out her thoughts, because she shall not speak her worries out, but the pain and embarrassment is enough to have blood flooding her head. Tsubasa is the first one to act, already looking for the cat around the office. “I’m going to get it out of this office. I think he really doesn’t like the boss.”

Jooheon’s eyes are concentrated on something else, on inspecting her features for any source of pain when even as she is kneeling down to look at the scratches on her legs, Jooheon’s face appears underneath her eyesight. “Damn it, how am I even going to be able to go around the office looking like I got ran over?”

“You won’t, take your tights off and—” Her coworker rushes to open the door for her, taking off his blazer in the process of covering the front of her thighs. “I don’t know, if you want me to buy you a pair of pants or another pair of tights, I can do it. We just need to clean those scratches up, just in case.”

The quick movement of his steps in front of her shelter her as they move away from the main office, their pathway leading to the closest bathroom. “I think I can deal without a pair of tights. But fuck, these scratches really hurt.”

The door is opened in front of her, Jooheon’s hands delicately leading her inside while he stands outside. “I’ll clean them up for you,” He says, eyes trailing over her features before he licks his bottom lip into his mouth. “But be quick, I don’t want them to get infected.”

The position she finds herself in only ten minutes later is a loud picture. Jooheon, kneeling in front of her, while at their office. Door locked, curtains drawn closed, a cotton pad dabbing onto the newly freed skin that has her tossing her head back and closing her eyes tightly. Animals still hate her, but life may not. The concentration on his features is unlike anything she has seen; eyebrows drawn together in a front, lips pressed together and letting his dimples be seen for reasons other than being utterly happy, only parting from time to time to blow on the healing skin.

His phone rings from the other edge of the room, blinking in that natural way it does, but Jooheon doesn’t seem to move at all. He never does.

“Aren’t you going to get that?”

His index and thumb roll the cotton pad onto itself, dusting it on the deeper scratches by her knees. For a cat so small, it surely did some damage. “Let it ring. I don’t want to pick up.”

For the first time, her throat aches to ask, her mind desires to know and she has the bravery, when looking at the top of Jooheon’s head, to say something to the man that has worked its way into her deepest questions. Unanswered. “You never get it whenever that ringtone goes off. I know it’s someone that’s bothering you, but…” Her whisper trails off, caught off guard when Jooheon looks at her, before returning to the task at hand. “If you want to talk about it, we can.”

His mouth remains shut for a few seconds, leaving her at the edge of her seat the more the silence drags on. “It’s…it’s a girl I was seeing a few months back. No matter how many times I tell her it’s over, she keeps bothering me.” Jooheon replies and while the words may have seemed harsh, something in his tone wavers.

“How does she bother you?”

Jooheon trashes the cotton pad then, blowing on the skin of her thigh with a shuddering breath. The tingle that goes down her spine should have not been electrified by his actions; hands spread on top of his own legs. “We hooked up; she had a boyfriend. I got beaten up by said boyfriend and she keeps calling me.” He retorts, her lips parting after wetting them, releasing a soft sigh once he does so much as try to stand up. Her fingers hook on his wrist, however, like how he normally does when he tries to tag her along.

“…Wait, why did you get beaten up?”

“Ah, I was all talk.” Jooheon cusses himself, running his fingers through his perfectly styled hair. Not anymore, a few strands let loose at that and even then, she can’t bring herself to care. “I thought that fighting for it was the right decision. She said she loved me, after all, it didn’t matter if she suddenly had a boyfriend because—huh, I really thought love was enough.”

The image of him fighting, fists bawled to protect his utmost desires, is almost something she can’t imagine. “Don’t worry, it happens.” She replies, standing up just in time to look into his eyes. “I knew something was bothering you from the moment I met you.”

“Why?”

“When you’re not smiling, your sulkiness shows immensely. It’s not a bad thing, but you should…let those feelings flow.” She replies, hands going up towards his forearms, speaking to him in a delicate manner. “I’m here for anything. I know it’s difficult to get over someone—”

“I’ll get over her.” Jooheon speaks over her, looking around her features before his eyelids become heavier, fluttering closed for a second before he opens them again, looking down at her lips. “I’m on the way there.”

She smiles at that, almost ironically. “How so?”

“With you.” The bravery of his voice comes from the chase. Jooheon is the kind of man that loves going straight for the brightest diamond, not to taint it but to cherish it. His smile widens at that, looking into her eyes once again. “You may not notice it, but talking to you has been the only way I can seem to feel less stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.” Her voice touches his skin softly, breath ghosting over his lips from the proximity in between the two. “Being brave is an act not a lot of people can recognize, but I do. You were brave, not stupid.”

Her coworker hovers one hand on her shoulder, as if afraid to touch her, but with all the intention in the world to ask for permission in one simple glance. “I’m sure you’re the only one that sees it that way.”

She quirks an eyebrow at that, eyes roaming over his features and those pair of lips that are just calling her to heal him. To see that smile in its biggest expansion. “And I may be the only one to help you forget.”

The sky swirls in all kind of colors when Jooheon takes up on her promise, body reaching forward until his hands are splayed on the back of her neck, lips meeting in a less-than-brief reunion. There is something tragic in the way his lips seemed to be perfectly made to kiss hers, as if the slope of his nose and the cupid’s bow on his lips was meant to caress every fiber of her skin. He’s dangerous in the way he moves, abdomen leaning forward, hands relaxing until they are resting on her waist and for the first time, she can’t find control in her. No longer can her voice get caught in her throat, not when her back is pressed to the dark wood of her desk, when Jooheon whispers all his secrets in one kiss, a few swipes of his tongue against hers, in the way he lets go of her skin to say.

“And I’ll help you forget, if you need me, too.”

###

The world intertwines in feelings, in connections past the oceans and the lands, crossing the bonds of a million people in between to unite two. Two souls, who even from afar, could love each other so strongly that the gates will be opening, slowly, until a hug will remain engraved in their brains—the reunion, she’d call it.

But that is not her situation. The gates towards her love, if anything, close tighter the most she tries to talk to him. Her boyfriend of eight months, the one man after Jooheon that had been powerful enough to sweep her off her feet, to have her forgetting the existence of heartbreak and simply let go to the simple caress of the fleeting kisses he left before he had to depart. The plane going suffocated her, but she kept going—against all odds, she is a believer. A believer that seriousness in a relationship will always end in a happy ending, that what she pours in her texts will be able to reach Jaehwan, the man whom she promised her utmost love to before he left.

It was her fault. A meeting with her old friends had been enough to unite them; that one man that she had not seen since high school, the one person that she had never even looked at twice but had suddenly grown into handsome features. Wide nose, rounded lips, and a swipe of his hair that almost made him look comical. Jaehwan, whose translator ways had interested her, is flying away with the passing of time. Less texts than at the initiation of their relationship, hence less calls. If someone asked her now, she would not be able to describe the timbre of his voice.

Someone she does recognize is the man that enters the office with utmost glee, weight off his shoulder, whistling a song under his breath. Jooheon is recognizable; from top to bottom, from the finest hair on his face to the sole of his feet, a man that she had gotten to know in more ways than one before her relationship with Jaehwan started. She needed a companion, to think irrationally for once, and Jooheon needed to forget—to feel like love was meaningless if not physical, to feel like himself again.

Not a single word had been uttered by him when she started this relationship, other than the fact that Jaehwan, to him, is as flavorful as a speckle of salt on boiling water, there to create pasta. Meaning, lacking spice, or lacking whatever it is that would make him interesting. The moment they met, by some kind of occasion in which Jaehwan had picked her up, Jooheon’s smile had been so tight and fake that she almost thought he’d pass out from the pressure on his cheeks, but…the matter became less meaningful when more people in her life claimed that whatever she saw in Jaehwan, no one else sees.

Her fingers hover over her lock-screen, touching it slightly to keep the image there. The last picture Jaehwan and herself took before he departed, his smile bright when her lips press down on his cheek. Immaculate, unlike Jooheon, the man dresses so preppily he could very much come out from a movie of the 90’s.

“Jooheon,” She calls out, well aware that she has spent a little bit more than she should looking at her phone screen. The man doesn’t stop his motions, pouring two cups of coffee to start the day nicely for the two of them. “Why do men cheat?”

“Ask someone who has cheated,” Jooheon replies, taking the mugs in between his fingers before moving towards her. Confident and relaxed strides and the dimples that never leave his face whenever he sees her, that’s what she looks at when Jooheon takes a seat across from her, the chair dragging obnoxiously against the floor. “And not all men. Don’t generalize.”

“Ah, I’m speaking about majorities.” She swats her hand, taking a sip of her coffee before letting out a raged sigh. Jooheon may have been a sexual escapade, some kind of romantic relief, but beyond that…he’s a friend. He may know what to say in this situation. “I have another question.”

“You always have questions.”

“I’m a curious lady.”

Jooheon quirks an eyebrow at that, bags forming under his eyes when he sneakily adds: “Oh, I know.” He conquers, her eyes searching around the room in case anyone has heard them, for the tone of his voice must have crossed any kind of boundaries with a taken woman. “But ask me, since I already know where this is going…”

Of course, he’d know. Intelligence is not something people expect from Jooheon, but it is very much a term that belongs to him. “Okay, do you think…Jaehwan would cheat on me?”

Honest, he is, when he says, “There is no way for me to judge that.” He breathes into the dense air, making her groan lightly while she throws her head back. “Like, that’s a complicated question. There are people like Tsubasa—assholes of assholes—that never cheat. There are angels that cheat all the time. It’s a matter of values, and how much they respect the person they’re with.”

That doesn’t help her, because she needs a vision into Jaehwan’s brain. She craves for the feeling of being wanted, or perhaps some words from him that could secure his return—for her to feel like she is not in the sidelines of his life. “I guess…” She lets her voice trail, only to have Jooheon sighing.

“You want to talk about it?”

In any other occasion, she would. Jooheon is the type of man to keep secrets treasured, but the more she thinks about it, the less she wants to voice it out. Perhaps, if she lets the air know about the intentions inside her head, something would switch—something would change. Instead, she shakes her head, watching as Jooheon stands up from his seat and moves towards the door, perhaps to start on one of his informercial projects.

His fingers rest against the doorknob before he opens it, looking at her from afar. “Just know that I’ll always be here for you, okay?” He says, though the words are not meant to be as weight as her head make it out to seem. “…Not just in the way we used to be before, but as a friend.”

“I know.” She says, though there is nothing more than she’d want that for Jaehwan to kiss her like Jooheon did. Like he wanted to exchange his soul with hers and let the two coexist.

Though, once the door closes and she looks at her phone, she can think of someone who is not always there. Suffocated, she feels, when she tosses her phone on her purse and prays for something to happen to the two of them. A happy ending, she wishes for, but at this point…do those even exist?

###

This bench she is seated on is the worst place to be at. Not because it is miniscule, or because it is so crooked and torn that it may as well fall under her own weight, but because this is the place in which the smokers of the building rest when on their lunch break. The aches of cigarettes cling to her clothing, dusting it, falling on top of the black fabric and creating patterns around it. The wind in this part, right behind the building, is brash, moving her hair out and about with its strength. This can only push into her nostrils the stench of the trashcan nearby, but with her knees pushed to her chest and her lips trembling at the ache of her heart, eyes already dropping silent tears, she can’t bring herself to care.

Because for the past eight months, she has been nothing but trash. Jaehwan had seen her as some badge of pride, another woman to have under his belt, and suddenly forgot about her. The pictures in her screen scalded her fingertips the moment she had to get in a friend’s account to see what her boyfriend had posted, for he had blocked her, only to be met by pictures she had never seen. With another woman, at that, far longer than she had ever been him with. Months that transcended into years, a love that happened before she even existed, before she even got the title of a girlfriend.

More like a fucking mistress.

And someone as organized as her, that shook out of exasperation whenever she saw something out of place, had suddenly been torn into pieces, rearranged, a puzzle that may never fit, because her heart is broken way beyond relief. Sometimes, she’d catch herself looking forward—imagining all the kisses she had given him, all the hugs she had shared, all the promises that he whispered into her skin before fleeting away. Jaehwan may not have been the best of lovers, but when has love been about that? It’s a feeling that pries itself into her life, condescends her, treats her as if she’s worthless and makes her the cause of it all. For trusting. For loving.

Who even loves anymore?

The weighty metal door that leads to the back of the building creaks so loudly that it takes her out of her trance, but she only presses her face harder into her knees to stop anyone from seeing her face. The scrap of someone’s feet against the pavement floor is loud, and said person does so much as take the small seat on the uncomfortable bench by her side. This person clearly doesn’t care about their office attire getting fucked over, smelling like cigarettes, bathed in ashes, pointlessly existing.

A hand settles on her back, and she works her way around taking her blazer’s sides and using them as a curtain for her features, but her name is called—so softly, tutting, that it almost feels like she is back into being the person that she used to be. Before eight months ago, when she had given herself to the hands of the devil, sporting a sense of comfort.

This is the kind of person that has heard her, even through her silence. Jooheon is the one man that had touched her skin and while not trying to reach for her soul, had done so. Softly, in that matter of his that screams danger but translates into dulcetness. Once she lifts her gaze, still keeping most of her face covered by her blazer, Jooheon is, indeed, there, but not in the way that she expected him to be: lips pursed in a soft smile, eyes gleaming under the light of the sun with worry.

“What is that?”

A rap of his knuckles against the material of the helmet, he answers: “A motorcycle helmet. I took it from Tsubasa in case you wanted to let your anger out and threw something at me.”

Shoulders shaking thanks to her sniffles and her hands rubbing at her face to stop the tears, she scoffs at his words. “Jooheon, I’m not going to throw anything at you. I’m angry at someone, just not you.”

What she doesn’t expect is for his hand to reach forward, patting her skin away from its dampness when the helmet muffles his voice. “Let’s talk about it. You need to tell me what is going on.”

A deep sigh leaves her lips, though a brief smile is given to him. “Only if you take off that helmet. You look hideous.”

Jooheon does indeed wrap his hands around the helmet, putting it down on the floor. “Thank God, I was starting to feel like that one racer—Lee Hoseok.”

The wind blows on his dusted pink cheeks, eyes inspecting her face like they always do, as if he wants to search her purpose in just her gaze or know her like the palm of his hand. Memorize her, he has done a couple of times, in which she’d hide her face in his neck and try to take the attention away from her features. On times in which Jooheon would be a close looker, as if hunting for that glimpse of her heart—her intentions, even.

Her fingertips reach for his, not a hold of lovers but one of leverage, his thumb rubbing against the back of her palm when she says: “Jaehwan cheated on me. Or more like, he cheated on someone with me and I didn’t even know about it.” Before Jooheon could reply, however, she surprises herself by speaking more. “What is it about me, Jooheon?” She asks. “Am I that undesirable? Am I not enough to change someone’s life? I have done nothing but love him, respect him for the past eight months…and he didn’t even feel guilty. He cut me off in the blink of an eye.”

“From my point of view, and I am sure there are other people that think like this, you’re not undesirable.” Jooheon speaks, patting her hair to make sure it doesn’t look as untamed as it is, thanks to the breeze. “And Jaehwan is just an ass. Since he couldn’t get anyone to suck his dick when he was younger, now he’s out here trying to play the cards of a womanizer because he’s got some good looks, if you squint.” That is enough to bring a smile to her face, chuckling at his words. Jooheon is way better at voicing out his thoughts than she is. “I really don’t know what you saw in him.”

Brought together by this bound that exists around them, as if one of them is oxygen and th other one needs to breathe, she rests her head against his shoulder. “A future.” She answers, voice vacant the more she thinks about it. “You did look like you couldn’t stand him when I introduced him to you.”

Jooheon chuckles, his eyes half-closing from the harsh light of the sun. When she looks at him, his dimples are present and unlike the last time they were this close, she is the one heartbroken and he simply exudes peace. Gotten over it, he seems to have done. “I just couldn’t understand why you would go for someone like him.”

“What does that even mean? Jooheon, he was not bad looking—”

“I know,” He answers. “But something didn’t click. I don’t know the dude, but now I realize I must’ve realized something, deep down.”

“That’s right.” Though, betrayal still clings to her, making her feel dirty. The hands of a man whose heart was devoted to another woman had caressed her skin, and it felt oddly fitting for her. Jooheon had gotten over someone with her help, Jaehwan had used her for the pleasure of feeling more like a man and now…she’s left wondering what that makes her. Perhaps, not worthy of a fulfilling relationship. “Jooheon?”

“Mhm?”

“Do you think I’ll ever find someone who loves me?”

Jooheon’s smile widens at that, looking down for a millisecond before resting his hand on the skin of her thigh, pulling down her skirt to cover up more of her. “I’m sure of it,” He replies, looking at her before giving a nice pat to her leg. “…And until then, I’m here for you to remind you the kind of woman that you are.”

“Too quiet to ever have someone interested in me?” Her insecurity pops out, pulling away slightly just before she hears Jooheon correct her.

“Too thoughtful to not have someone wanting to know the depth of that brain of yours.” Jooheon presses his finger against her temple, face hovering over hers before he sighs. “Stop being insecure. He doesn’t deserve to have you thinking about yourself in this light.”

She shudders at the reality of it all, at the reception of such a situation that always brings her to his arms—because, with him, her heart seems to be protected, body worshipped, mind caressed with the gentles of memories. Jooheon, though just a friend with benefits, had promised to be there for her through every heartbreak, every moment in which she’d feel down, in the shape of a friend or a lover. In this case, however, now freed from the restraints of a relationship and seeking for revenge, to prove to herself that someone else could definitely desire her, she speaks.

“Thank you, Jooheon, for being here with me.”

“I did say I’d help you get through your heartbreaks, just like you did with mine.” Jooheon replies, lips pressing down on her cheek before the dangerous treat trails down to her ear. “I’ll do anything you want.”

She chuckles at his words, hand connecting to his shoulder to push him away softly. “Then, let’s go out for dinner tonight.”

“That sounds great.”

It takes less than she would have imagined to get up from such a bench and dust off the remaining pieces of her broken heart along with the aches on her skirt.

Jooheon will always be there to help her forget.

###  

“Are those groceries?”

“I don’t know, Jooheon, do these look like anything but groceries to you?”

Anyone would think that their relationship is weird. Well, lack of one thereof. Their friendship indeed does fall into a sense of normality that would, otherwise, be seen as romance. As she unloads the recently bought groceries, the eerily calm Sunday morning playing in the background along with the faint sound of the early news speaking into the soft air, Jooheon lays his body against the doorframe of her kitchen. One glance at him is enough to confirm that his shirt is still tossed somewhere on the flooring of her bedroom, taking mental notes to pick up on the way there, but that is much too bothersome when she gets to see the glory of Jooheon early in the morning.

You see, it always falls back into this. The two of them, together, calling it simply sex—relief, in a way—before spending more and more time together. His name always touches the tip of her tongue when she meets her high school friends and she surprises herself talking about him from time to time, only hoping that he does, too. Jooheon, even when he could leave once the skin of his neck becomes painted in the shade of her lipstick and his body is sedated by absolute bliss, decides to stay. Especially when it’s a Sunday morning.

His pants are on, thankfully, his long torso coming into view when he goes to stand by her side, helping her unload the vegetables that she had bought—in her attempt of having more salads and less instant food, she had make it a necessity in her household. That, along with fruits, one that Jooheon takes out to smack her head with.

“Who would have thought you had an attitude to you?” Jooheon questions, face void of that professionalism he has around the office, hair done a mess and all thanks to her. She, the most organized person in this world, can become carefree when around him.

Opening the doors of her refrigerator, leaning her weight against the ceramic decorations on the wall, she starts to stack the device up with some of Jooheon’s help. “You’ve known me for over a year. You should know I aim to surprise.”

The joking manner is there, much more when Jooheon wraps his arms around her waist, body leaning forward when the warmth of him almost burns her, skin clinging to the uncovered parts of her forearms. “Aim to surprise me with some breakfast, then, because I’m hungry.”

She gasps at his words, though the smile on her face screams that she knows he doesn’t mean it. Jooheon does have some bite to him, back to his teasing self, a little bit out there. “Make some for yourself!” The whine in her tone is present, feeling his wide cupid’s bow trail down her cheeks until he captures her lips in a short kiss. “Help me out put the groceries inside the fridge instead of talking nonsense.”

Listening, Jooheon moves towards the grocery bags, taking some out and giving them to her. “I just think that it’s funny when you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad.” She replies, looking up from the refrigerator’s door to see Jooheon running his fingertips through his hair. His face breaks into a smile, cheeks becoming prominent under the weight of his happiness.

“I’m halfway there, just give me time.” Jooheon answers, her lips bursting into giggles when he comes over to her with the last few bits of the groceries, looking at her with interest.

“You’re not going to get me mad.”

“Oh, word? You think I won’t?” The challenge is there, some dramatic tone in his voice the more he teases, and she nods her head, snatching two apples away from her batch before tossing one at Jooheon.

“I know you won’t.” Because, there is no way that she can truly get mad at Jooheon. The man has inspected every crevice of her soul, studied every bit of her body and made it his, made every man poor in comparison to what he could do to her. Not only when his hands are pushing her clothing away, but even when they’re merely talking—when he’s the first person she sees almost every morning, or how he never forgets to share one or two meals outside of the work with her. Definitely not when his fingers trail on the edge of the high neck of her top, rubbing the fabric with the tip of his index finger.

“Ooh, this fabric is thick. What are you hiding under there?” Jooheon pretended to peak, only to have his hand taken in between her fingers, staring at his eyes with a weak smile on her features.

“Nothing.”

“You never wear that turtleneck. First, the sleeves are too short. Secondly, you don’t like it.” Truthfully, Jooheon is equally as observational as her. Without counting, of course, that she had never been one used to the attention. Only someone like him would know what type of clothing she likes, one of their many conversations, some useless, some not. Only Jooheon would realize that the weather is too hot for a turtleneck, but there is still something to hide.

“You’re talking as if you don’t know.”

“Oh, I know,” Jooheon says, leaning forward until he is mere centimeters away. “Isn’t it annoying? That I know but I still ask.”

“No,” She utters, voice sending a kiss his way with the tremors behind it. “You’re talking to someone who dealt with Tsubasa after his break up, day and night. I think I can deal with you being annoying for once.”

His fingers, splayed on top of her arms, bring her closer until she stumbles forward, arms grasping at his waist. “Well, looks like I lost.”

“And what do I win?” She asks, quirking an eyebrow before Jooheon leans forward, pecking her lips.

“A kiss.”

“Just one?”

“Just one.”

Somewhere, she had once read that when something is meant to be—it will be felt at the depth of her heart. This moment, in which she is trying to snatch a kiss away from the man that puts his face away, feels like it is fitted for forever. Only, that it just isn’t the case. Jooheon will fall in love once again in the future, or so will she, and when something goes wrong, they’ll get back into each other’s arms. Perhaps, a duller feeling, like a bad day or the need to get off. All matters that connected them, and it’s best to keep it that way, but the domestic look on his features spoke about more, just when he hangs out with her, making her feel like someone is willing to stay.

For her.

Until one of them decides that they need to move on, that is. Only friends that help each other feel less lonely, less heartbroken, always thirsting for the attention of a lover.

He stays because he’s lonely, and so is she. Is there anything else to it? She wants to think there isn’t, that the warmth on her chest comes from the familiarity of his touch.

###

To this day, an anniversary, it makes two years and seven months since the last time she kissed Jooheon. Two years and five months since he started his relationship and three years since she realized that, if he broke up with his girlfriend, she’d probably be back in his arms in the blink of an eye.

Is it Jooheon’s anniversary, or her anniversary of longing for him—lonely, not sedated for this amount of missing him? Not as a friend, but as a lover instead.

The thought first came to her imagination when Jooheon first called it quits on their rendezvouses. His voice had been so lifted, so beautiful, prompting about a date that had gone so well—his rant had been everything any person would like to hear. From the shape of this woman’s smile, to how conjoined he felt to her career as an odontologist, to how he couldn’t simply get her out of his head, no matter how hard he tried. At the time, she shrugged it off; it was not the first time Jooheon ended their beneficial relationship for something somewhat serious, but the more time passed, the less she saw of him. Even as a friend. As a coworker. All that left Jooheon’s lips is that one name, the dreaded name of the too-perfect woman.

Sora.

Sora, whose smile is too bright, too beautiful. Whose talkative persona matched Jooheon’s better than hers could ever, and the few times she has seen her in the dinner getaways with the team at her office, she knows Sora is even more affective than she has ever been with Jooheon. Just, better, that’s what Jooheon seemed to be aiming for. Hair pushed back, the swirl on her short hair reaching her earlobe at its lowest point. Small lips that welcome a bright smile, her job is not one to disappoint.

Her spot is too cramped, elbows trying not to bump into anyone as she fetches another piece of the stirred vegetables on her plate. The restaurant is far more filled with people—children of some of the workers, the boyfriends, girlfriends, fiancés, mothers, fathers, all in the name of a pre-Christmas celebration. Alone, as she always is, always meant to be, she sits by the middle, having no one to talk to but the perfect view from the tray of sauces she’d snatch away, if her hand was not too far away and if she could actually voice her concerns out, for once.

Or maybe, she’s mortified. Jealous, for some reason, clinging to her in the obnoxiously boring attire that clads her. Gray skirt, white button down, and the same hairstyle ever since she got out of college. Mundane, monotone, the type of woman no one would stick around for too much because…there is nothing special about her. Sora, on the other hand, is a laughing track on feet—or even the show itself. Watching an episode of FRIENDS would definitely include less laughter than the one she receives for merely opening her mouth.

It doesn’t help that Jooheon and Sora are right across from her, his eyes beaming at the mere sight of her. He’s in love, and yet, the little demon at the depths of her heart screams for her to do something. To take him back.

But she couldn’t, that’s not the type of woman she is.

And that is, also, not the type of man Jooheon is.

He doesn’t even look at her. Over two years of not seeing her in that light takes away any hopes—extremely bad ones, at that—that he would ever go back to his arms. So, for the umpteenth time in her life, she shuts her mouth and stands up, reaching forward for the stacks of sauces before connecting her gaze with Sora. The woman sends her a small wave, and she can simply nod her head with a faux smile. The least she could do is get along well with her, and the few times they have talked, Sora was nice. A bit over the top with her jokes, but some people thought they were comedians.

Sliding the utensils in between her fingers and dipping some of her vegetables on the sauce that she had poured on her plate, the moment is cut short when Jooheon’s chair is pulled away from the table, talking in between his girlfriend and himself before the moment deems itself too dense. If the oxygen was lacking before, it seems to disappear the moment she realizes the position he is in—smiling, because he is on one knee, dropped to Sora’s side who is holding her mouth in both hands, the table now quiet when he asks:

“Sora, will you marry me?”

And of course, this is meant to happen. The day in which Jooheon, as innocently as possible, stomps on every possibility of them ever being something more than. More than what? She doesn’t know, perhaps more than sex toys for each other, or partner replacements for when things get too tough. His eyes shine with uncertainty, people whooping at the mere sight of him. Jooheon, in there, proclaiming his love for the one person that had seemed to capture him.

…It’s not her.

Sora tucks a strand of her extremely short hair away from her face, taking Jooheon’s wrist as she speaks to him softly. Though, anyone could make out the words she said. “Jooheon, stand up.”

His smile falters, and even though she has always wanted him for herself, this is clearly not what she wanted. His heart practically rips through his shirt, wanting to reach for the woman who hisses at the sound of his: “What?”

“I—I need some time to think about my decision. I think I’m not ready.” Sora mumbles, having Jooheon smiling uncomfortably, the velvet black box on his hand closed when he takes a seat once again.

“That’s okay,” He turns to the group of people, smiling when he moves his hand. “We’ll have to wait, then. There’s no rush.”

But that ring seems to be thought out, in Sora’s favorite shade—gold—and from the little glimpses she had gotten of it, it was definitely expensive. Sora’s chair is pulled away from the table, excusing herself after saying. “I don’t think I can do this.”

But Jooheon follows, a fighter over everything and anything. Seated on her spot, she waits for them to come back, plays with the cabbage on her plate until it could become part of the ceramic, but after some time, she stands up from her seat, not even giving much of an excuse as she moves through the open restaurant. People don’t look at her, invisible, much less interesting than the couple that had practically fallen in front of everyone’s eyes, but she doesn’t care, much less when she pushes the door open and she sees him.

His back is hunched, fingers holding onto that one box that is in between his fingers, and if she could hear his thoughts, she would know if he’s pondering on throwing it in the middle of the avenue for some car to step over it or keep it to himself. Sora is gone, like her purse by the table, like the smile on Jooheon’s face. When her hand rests on top of his back, his muscles stiffen and just when his eyes connect with hers, he sighs.

“It’s you.”

“Who else would it be?” She asks, and maybe his face showed clear signs of wanting it to be Sora, but she tried to push it away. Instead, there are more important questions to answer. “What happened?”

“She said we needed some time off,” He explains briefly, the wind caressing his features, the much more casual clothing on his body in shades of blue and black. “…Apparently, she needs to be free for a while before actually settling down. She said she needed time, and if she wanted to come back, she would.”

And she wants to scoff, but it is not her position to do so. After all, no one had surprised her with a proposal. “So, it’s a break?”

“A break-up.” Jooheon corrects, pushing the box away in his pocket before bitterly laughing at himself. “Because the one day I decided to take someone seriously, I get fucked over.”

“Jooheon—”

“No, it’s okay.” The man shakes his head, letting out a ragged sigh before crossing his arms over his torso. “Could’ve been worse.”

“You need to let yourself feel, Jooheon.” She tells him, taking his forearms in between her fingers before breathing his name softly. “Look at me.” He doesn’t, and she calls again. “Look at me, please.”

He finally does, speaking in a delicate tone. “What?” There’s a pout on his features, deep and rooted sadness in his eyes. Crushed hope.

“If she loves you, she’ll come back.”

“And what if she doesn’t?”

The black night eats her alive, perhaps in sin, in lusting over someone who is clearly in love with someone. The two of them had made it clear that nothing would ever cross their lines of coworkers, friends, and benefits. There is no seriousness to think about, no depth, no backstory, no heart to play at his mercy. Nothing.

But what she feels is not nothing, and this may be the devil speaking within her, or perhaps that one sense of security that looks for him—desires to have him feeling just as protected.

“…You’ll forget eventually, if she doesn’t.” The weight of those words even has Jooheon sighing, knowing fully well what forgetting has always meant for them. Running away, never facing the consequences of love in solitude, leaning on the other to feel…loved. “But she’ll come back, you’ll see.”

Those words may bite her in the future, and the bullet of life, betrayal, loyalty and purity is stuck in between her lips when Jooheon says: “How do you know?”

“I don’t,” She answers. “But if she sees what I see in you, she won’t be able to let go.”

He laughs, not sincerely at all, because he thinks of it as what a friend would say. What he doesn’t realize, however, is that letting go of him will always be difficult. Who’d let go of the curtain that shields them from the Sun every morning? Who, in their right mind, would let go of the hand that has kept them from falling into the depths of the ocean?

Who could stop wanting to have him when getting all of him, but none at the same time?

“Want to go back?”

“I’d like to go back home.”

“Text me, then.”

Jooheon smiles at that, sneaking his hands inside his pockets to get his keys out. “I will. Good night.”

“Go home safely!”

This is the best behavior that could come from whatever turmoil goes inside her heart, wanting to trash everything away, disorganized, so unlike herself. Maybe, a part of her wished to be who she is when around him, or she simply feels the most honest to herself with Jooheon.

The night might be the only one to know this deeply rooted secret of hers.

###

One night. What can happen in one night?

Lips spread on top of her neck. Danger. That can happen. Just like the sense of comfort that comes from feeling his breathing by her side, deep and tranquil at some points, rapid and seeking for release in the other. Stupidity can come as well, with the constant reminder of how much of a second option she is. When he took a taste of her lips that night, it felt as though she was taken a bite of a prohibited fruit—as if, for some sense of glory, she got to feel him, coexist in the same wavelength as him, but never have him. Because, even now, when Jooheon is once again free and trying to liberate himself in the way that he used to before his relationship with Sora, that one night had been enough for him to prove that it was either her, or no one at all. Her, being that one odontologist he can’t get out of his brain.

One night, three months ago, is enough to have her dizzy to this day, and the blame falls on the jet-black night they shared together, in the comfort of his home, breathing each other’s names in hopes of engraving it in their souls. It never happened, but right now, the memory comes in full force with each trip to the bathroom, each twist of her gut, the sweat that pools at the roots of her hair and the excuse that she comes up with to leave the office early. One night is enough to have her in the hospital, hands wrenched together, heart going to fast it could lead her into cardiac arrest at some point—guilt, fear, all of the like settling on her stomach, making the nausea even worse.

This has been going on for days. Four, to be exact. Woken up by the sense of needing to throw up and doing so, as well. One look in the mirror may be deceiving, there seems to be nothing different, but everything seems to be out of place at the same time. One night can do so many things, just like it can bring someone new into the picture. The image of the possibility is a punch to her chest when she is reminded of where she is. In a hospital, lying to her own boss, in front of a gynecologist’s consulting room, waiting for her turn with other women around her. Some alone, some accompanied.

Most of them definitely not worrying about being pregnant with the child of a man who doesn’t love her at all. Desires her? Possibly, as far as physical connection can go. Appreciates her as a friend? Certainly, but could that be the case if she calls Jooheon?

The metal chair is too cold when she leans back, looking at that contact that starts to blur under her gaze. Small eyes, wide smile, rooted dimples and a glint in his eyes that is mischievous. Jooheon is gentle, in a way, in the depth of his soul, and had it been Sora, he may have rushed in there…but what about her?

A coworker.

The head of the department along with her.

A friend who helps him forget he feels.

Her fingers wrap around the device, not caring about nothing more than the possibility of a little human being growing inside of her, with his eyes or his nose, her sentimentalism or his strength. None of the latter mattered when her phone is brought up to her ear, taking a few rings until he calls her name and she speaks softly.

“Jooheon, I’m at the hospital…and I’d like for you to come here. Can I send you the address?”

The chatter in the background stops, the sound of footsteps following his next statement. He must have moved somewhere quiet. “W—What happened? What? Are you alright?”

Alright? Alright, she would have been, if years ago she had not gotten oversensitive about Jooheon’s smile not being entirely pronounced, or if she had just gotten over her own heartbreak with Jaehwan by not tangling herself up with Jooheon. Or, rather, if she had given him time to grieve the rejection of a possible marriage. Instead, she finds herself to be the antonym of alright. “…No,” She answers. “I’m scared.”

“Did something happen to you?”

She can imagine his next reaction when she says: “I think I may be pregnant. I’m about to get checked, but I feel so scared in here. Can you come over?”

Jooheon could have easily hung up on her. He could have screamed at her, telling her why the fuck her pills did not work, and for how long she has felt like this. He could have told her that, no matter the results, that child will never be his. Hell, he could even say it could have been anyone’s, but a shuddering breath is what Jooheon gives her. “…Are you sure?” A hum is all she can muster, before Jooheon clears his throat. “Sure, send me the address, I’ll be there.”

Her eyes close tightly, aware that people may look at her pathetic worried figure when she breathes out a tiny: “Thank you.”

The image of him when he pushes the doors just fifteen minutes later, rushing through the hallways until he is in front of her, will forever be engrained in her brain. His hair, always pushed back, is now messed up on top of his head, fingers hooking around his tie to loosen it when he sees her. His smile is tiny, panic settling in his eyes the more she inspects him.

Once he takes a seat beside her, his hand hooks around her, tightening it softly—reassurance. In that point, she really starts to see something else. If they were to have a child…who would they look like the most? Would they grow up wondering why their parents are not together? Would they not care? Would they be held tight by Jooheon, as if they meant the world, or would they live with a bitter father that never wanted them to begin with? The questions clouded her brain—always a curious woman with too little answers—but the moment is cut short when another woman enters the consulting room and there are about two people before she has to go inside.

“H—How did you know?” Jooheon asks, voice uncertain, looking at her for the briefest second.

She connects gazes with him, tightening her hold around his fingers to feel safer. How could she end up having a child when her life feels so…perfectly put together that it doesn’t exist? “I—I didn’t get my period this month. Not yet, at least. And…I’ve been throwing up too much these past four days, I can’t even get in my car without getting sick.” She whispers, moving her hair to one side of her face, cradling it softly. “Jooheon, trust me when I tell you that I don’t want to ruin your life with this. I don’t want you to hate our child, if they even exist inside of me, because of our wrongdoings. It’s all my fault for sleeping with you when you’re so caught up with Sora—”

“It takes two to tango. Don’t blame yourself entirely.” Jooheon tries to play around, but a smile can’t even phantom to even appear on her face. “I’ll tell you the truth: if we have a child, I’m taking care of them.”

“But…” She trails her voice, leaning back on her seat and resting her hand against her forehead. “Jooheon, you don’t love me.”

“I love you as a friend. I owe whoever may be growing inside of you that much.” As always, he takes responsibility, making her close her eyes tightly, tears wielding up at the corner of her eyes, unnoticed by the nurses that pass by her, the people that go from one corner of the hospital to the other, equally as mortified as her—some even happy with the outcomes. “Don’t cry.” He tells her, knowing what her silence means, the sleeve of his blazer already coming up to rub at her eyes.

“What…what if there is a baby growing there? What will the people at our job say?” She asks, breathing deeply when her lungs feel too inflated, like she can’t even let an ounce of oxygen in. “They’ll think I’m some slut, and I may be at this point. What if I am not a great mother? Some people are not built for this, it has never been in my plans to get pregnant, much less like this—”

“Hey, no rushing.” Jooheon brings her hand up to his mouth, plump lips settling on the harsh skin of her knuckles, not minding the sturdiness of the bone. “From what we know, it could be something else. You’re constant with your pills—”

“What if it isn’t?” Uncertain, she questions. Never had she worried about such a thing, always running on luck, or maybe just being mindful—like she is with anyone, but Jooheon. The ignition to her loss of control.

“Then, we’ll have to start thinking…” Jooheon prompts, letting out a soft breath when he sits with his back straight, one leg crossed over the other. “Do you think they’d have your eyes?”

This baby, that possibly doesn’t even exist, is in Jooheon’s imagination. If they do exist, he wants to know about them—to raise them and love them, something unexpected from him, and while she may be equally as lost…she finds herself opening her eyes and sighing. “I hope that, if they do exist, they have your eyes.”

“Why?”

“They’re prettier.”

Jooheon, for the first time since being there, actually laughs. “They’re not, come on—”

“You’ve never seen yourself when you smile, clearly.”

And this is the part where it downs on her, that daydreaming about a child with Jooheon, out of all people, is exactly what she shouldn’t be doing. She can already imagine it—the people at her job speaking, talking about how she snatched Jooheon away the moment he separated from his possible fiancé. Her job, for instance, could be taken away from her or put in a lower position from her lack of professionalism, to sleep with her coworker—and her closest one, at that—just as absentmindedly is so unlike her. That, along with the cries that woke her up late at night, that awkward moment that may come when this child asks how their parents met. Not only that, the changes on her body—on her soul, on the life she lives, on the days she gets for herself, on this rooted insecurity she feels for even speaking out whatever bothers her.

…She hasn’t even voiced out what she feels for Jooheon, much less is she able to lead a household to bring a child into this world.

By the time she is inside the consulting room, examined but so far from it, looking up at the ceiling and hoping that the dents in the ceiling can be counted by her pupils, she feels even more scared. The place is too cold, just like the substance spread on her lower abdomen, and the contrast is immense when Jooheon holds her hand. When, in the eyes of this doctor, they are just a scared couple. A couple, not two friends who happened to have sex a few times and then, ran off to someone else. This is no way to bring someone into this world—

How can she welcome a baby when she had not loved herself enough to not fall into Jooheon’s arms again, no matter how nice they were as people when alone?

The doctor, Mr. Hong, wipes off the gooey liquid from her abdomen when he speaks softly, levelled. “You’re not pregnant.”

It doesn’t make her happy, just like how it doesn’t make her feel sad. If anything, her muscles loosen, her lungs can feel liberated again and she lets go of Jooheon’s hand, sighing in relief when she throws her head back. Whatever imagine they had thought out in the waiting room—his eyes, her lips, that mole on his eyelid, all vanished away behind her eyes, into the depths of the memories she doesn’t need to come back to for a while.

“What do you think her stomachaches and vomiting are, though?” Jooheon asks, helping her up the bed when the doctor clicks his pen and places it inside the pocket of his lab coat.

“I’m going to ask for some examinations. It could be food poisoning just like how it could be bacteria of some sort. There’s no knowing if we don’t check.” The doctor answers, already slipping a piece of paper in between her digits, signed by him. “It was a pleasure to meet you, too. Keep trying.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“Always at your service. Have a nice day.”

Once out the door with Jooheon, the look of relief in his face is enough to match the smile on her face, but one good look at his features lets her know that, even when he would have taken care of his image as a father, he may have preferred this outcome with someone else. Sora. To hold her hand through it all, to kiss her knuckles instead, to pout at the reminder that they are not going to have a baby. Sora and Jooheon. Jooheon and Sora. In love. Or maybe possibly wanting to build a future together, one in which someone like her would be forgotten, because if she had once served him as a source of forgetfulness, she is now entirely erased from his brain at the presence of Sora.

This is the moment in which she realizes that her future with Jooheon is not written, but oh, how badly is her desire to have him. Not carnally, but as someone that loves her. The one man that would help her out in the mornings after their meetings, the same guy that knows her like the palm of her hand, the one that understands her silences, her hums, makes them into music and connects them as thoughts. But…

What is she to him?

Curiousness killed the cat, but who is she to him?

He said it earlier—

I love you as friends.

I love you.

As friends.

Friends that love each other—no.

Because enough is shown mere weeks later, when laughter comes from Jooheon’s mouth as he nears the office, talking to Sora—and she hears the nicknames that spill from his lips, the way he seems to be entranced on her speech about her day. He may understand her silences, but he doesn’t understand the longest one, the one that screams for him to love her instead, just like how she loves him. Instead, her pregnancy scare had been a push, something to remind him to stop trying to forget with some other woman, but go back to his normal life instead.

A life in which she will always be in the sidelines, that one silent watcher, radio silence in a way. Jooheon will always go back to someone else—be it Sora, be it anyone who captures him, but never her. Had she been too easy, too organized, too…mundane? Had she been too quiet, too reserved, too unreachable? But he loved to chase—

And she liked to be chased by him, until the road was empty, dust falling on her eyelids until she swears she can see the image of him.

But he fleets away.

###

The screen plays the same video over and over again. An infomercial that she can’t quite wrap her fingers around. The background, too dull. The actor, too overexcited. The concept, broken. This perfectionism of hers has only heighted with the passage of years and has only pushed her for more opportunities. Over a year ago, the fear of losing her job to an unplanned pregnancy had been enough to take into consideration her future—think that, for once, she needed to have her voice be heard, to make a name for herself over everything and anything. Hence, the hardest work ever put into her projects comes from her.

Her pen clicks once she halters the video, the screen perfectly displaying the ending of the video. With the pointy tip of the pen, she points towards the video. “I don’t like the hues in the back. It looks cheap. That color of purple is not appealing to the eyes. If anything, it’ll hurt the viewer’s eyesight.” She comments to her partner in the office, the one person that has accompanied her for the past few years—once a transfer, now a necessity. “I know we can’t keep spending money on remakes, but someone in the designing team is giving us information that is not being portrayed on the screen. We were never told they’d use such a background, and I don’t remember hiring this guy as an actor.”

The man’s tongue peaks on the side of his cheek, nodding his head at her words. “We may have to ask about it, because…” His fingers trail over the organized piles of folders, opening one before showing it to her. “Someone told us they’d be using a house as a background, not a green screen, and the actor had not yet been decided upon because the company said they’d look for someone else.”

She writes down on her notes, sighing at the utter irrationality of it all. “The newbies must have done it,” She says. “They don’t have enough patience to wait on a project. I don’t know what is going on with them at this point.”

“We should have a talk with them. I think it’s already enough that we give them several chances when—” Jooheon adds, though his voice is cut short when he tries to speak again. His eyes lift up at that, looking to her side to see the man seated beside her, Jooheon’s hair shorter than it was in the past, eyebrows drawn together before an amused smile appears on his lips, fingers pointing towards her collarbone. “That is new, when did you get that?”

Such notice comes to her with heat up her face when her chin folds slightly to look at her collarbone, catching a glimpse of her new tattoo appearing from underneath the small slit of the opened buttons of her shirt. The rose is delicate, thin, small and yet so painful, a reminder of a nice time just a month ago. “It’s a tattoo.”

“Oh yes, Sherlock. Of course, it’s a tattoo!” Jooheon points out, leaning forward until he is squinting at it and she hooks her fingers around the fabric of her shirt, pulling it to the side the slightest bit to let him see. “That wasn’t there before.”

“I got it a month ago.”

The black haired man looks up at her, taking the pen from her fingertips and pointing it at her accusingly, though the smile on his features speaks wonders. “…So, the rumors are true.”

Confused, she asks: “What rumors?”

“That you’re out and about with the tattoo artist that participated in that one commercial we did.” Her shamefulness can’t hide on her face, cheeks puffed out even when she tries to hollow them to push the grin down. Taeoh, she knows who the person Jooheon talking about is—the one man that had actually waited for her long enough, that took it upon patience and clear charisma to take up on her heart after her last relationship. Without counting Jooheon, Jaehwan had been her latest boyfriend…and that ended up well. Now, with a new title to take care of, she decided to keep it a secret. What is hidden can’t be hurt. “What was his name? Taeoh, right?” She hums, taking her pen from his fingertips just when Jooheon smiles. “Oh, Taeoh. Are you dating him?”

May as well move on, from Jooheon, from the heartbreaks caused in the past and how he tried to heal them, and stay with someone who tried. For her, for a future, to love her through and through. She pulls her shirt straight, buttoning it up while she speaks. “What is it with you? Why are you so curious?” She tuts, only to have Jooheon clasping his hands together. The ring on his finger beams, Sora’s and Jooheon’s marriage still not taking place…but definitely closer than it had ever been.

“Because, after Jaehwan, you were not willing to be with anyone.”

Anyone but you, she wants to correct.

The day in which everything blossomed into something else may have come in the exact time in which she didn’t have them. In those years spent in Sora’s arms, when her solitude mixed with envy and jealousy. Jooheon was the only man clouding her thoughts, and it’d eat her alive until the day she died, but…moving on was important. It was the only thing that could help her grow into her skin, to a better person.

“…Jaehwan was over four years ago, Jooheon.”

The man gasps at that, eyes widening, lips parted. “For real?”

She chuckles, leaning back on her seat and nodding her head. “For real.” She answers, because Jaehwan may have been a timeline in her life, but her ambition with Jooheon had lasted for years. At some point, letting go of him came as second nature—as necessary, for her health, for her vision in the future. “…It was so long ago, I’m over Jaehwan. Besides, Taeoh had proved to be a great guy.”

Jooheon’s face softens. “By giving you a tattoo?”

“Ah, I wanted a tattoo either way.” She swats her hand, looking ahead before thinking of all the reasons as to why there is a flutter in her chest of hope, a glimmer that tells her that people may have used her—Jooheon, himself, without noticing—, and she may have used them back, but there is always a point of changing. Growing up, some call them. “…He just eased into conversation. Made me feel more at ease…welcomed me into his life. He’s…the type of man that never pushes you, never lets go you either…he holds you, cradles you in his hands and—” Understands the mess that she had always been, helping her rearrange the pieces of her by herself, with some help of his own. “He’s…amazing.”

For a moment, she thinks she sees a flicker of fire in Jooheon’s eyes—lips puckered up, Jooheon gives her a smile. “I’d like to get to know him.”

Looking at the commercial one again, now with the volume lower, she shakes her head. “Jooheon, you know what happened when you met Jaehwan. You couldn’t even look at the guy without getting angry.”

“And he ended up cheating on you.”

“Cheating on someone with me without my knowledge, actually.”

“…Cheating on you and his other girl. Point of the story.”

“Do you really want to get to know him?”

The plea in his eyes answers an unspoken question in between the two, one that she had never been loud enough to voice out—did you even love me as more than a friend? The thought crosses her head from time to time, when she learns and studies the complexity of their case. Not trying, or perhaps, never giving themselves a chance to try, because she’s too quiet and Jooheon was always reaching for something else. Now that he is an impossibility, too close yet too far away, too…reckless to reach out for, she wonders more. The question ponders on her head…what had been about her that never convinced him to try for something more?

This bites her as guilt, freezes her bones like a taste of ice-cream while diving in with teeth. She has a boyfriend—Taeoh, who has done nothing but try to get her to learn herself as much as he does, but her mind still comes back to Jooheon. Whose hands had seemed to be carved for her, whose dangerous ways in the sheets may have coincidentally engraved themselves as the best she’s had.

But this is not about sex.

It had…never been about sex.

It had been about her curiousness, the type that had her finding herself at his door—questioning herself why she is there if not for him, as a soul, as a body, as an existing being at the same time as her. This warmth he radiates when he smiles at her and nods his head excitedly at the idea of meeting Taeoh breaks her heart the slightest bit, because this means that there was no past.

Whatever she had to discover went back and choked her, got the words away from her mouth when she almost confessed her feelings to him, and now it comes back in waves. In soft reminders that kiss her skin, a tingle that leaves her buzzing, that imagines her with him in a time in which he’d open his heart. A time that never happened.

“I can make it happen, then.” She answers, because this may have not been how it should have ended, but it’s more about how it should have begun. Him and her, being distant yet close in the shape of friendship, accepting each other’s hardships, not leaving the taste of their lips on the other’s skin.

“I’d love for Sora and Taeoh to meet.” He says, and of course there needs to be one for each. One for him. One for her. Another story for both, one that did not connect with their past friend with benefit’s. After all this time…it was never about them.

It was Jooheon and her. Perhaps, there needed to be a comma there—a separation, a double-spacing spot for them to just exist at the same time, but never unite. His breaths could no longer be felt against her back while he slept by her side, much less would she get to kiss those lips again…and it haunts her, it really does, in a way that has her frowning at her own thoughts, though briefly.

She’s falling in love with someone else, and yet, she is reminiscent of all that could have been. Stories that never completed themselves, ones that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

“I’d love for him to meet you.”

Taeoh meeting Jooheon, worlds colliding, perhaps a vision for her to see how much better she had it now. Destiny knows what it is doing, but greed needs more—

Or perhaps, rejection had burned her far stronger than she ever imagined.

###

Why is it different now, if she has lived like this before?

It is not the same time she wakes up to an arm wrapped around her waist, where all the little hairs on the person’s body could poke through the shirt and bring a sense of warmth. If anything, it’s a bit sticky—or stuffy, is more of the word, whereas it would be different if she was alone, but the warmth in her chest tells her that she would not mind staying a few minutes in that position. Cutting through the windows is the light, seeking for a reaction out of her, wishing to wash away the remaining bits of the red wine that simmered in the back of her throat the more she conversed with Jooheon the previous night. Laughter growing louder, conversation growing fonder.

And maybe, this is why it was never pure and entire physical attraction with Jooheon, because there is too much to talk about—music tastes, shows, embarrassing stories, so on and so forth, pushing her closer, but still holding onto that one delicate hand that rests on her knee. Taeoh was present, so was the woman with the glistening engagement ring that matches Jooheon’s, and the wine became more necessary from them on. Sleepy, she wanted to feel, like it’d take a flutter of her lips to go off dreamland and make shapes of the man she loves: Taeoh, to not live this reality that always asks her for more.

Her perfectionism must have gotten the best of her, shaped her to be hurt when she was not the type of person Jooheon would have settled down with, but that is far away from her brain when she feels a pair of lips pressed to her nape. Different from Jooheon’s—thinner, making her open her eyes to watch the organized room. Had the former man been there, there would be clothes scattered somewhere or his phone blinking from the bedside table, but silence fills the cold room, her freezing nose resting against the covers, smelling the scent of Taeoh, like that one orange-based soap he uses during his showers before every night of sleep.

When she was younger, much younger than today, a first choice was never what she had considered herself to be. Experimentation had been there, in shapes of people who kissed her and told, or simply dismissed her as someone monotone. At the time, she promised herself she’d work her hardest to earn the heart of the person she loved—that even silently, she’d always reach for them and have them as hers.

The thing is…love shouldn’t be about fighting. Love is based in promises, in sweet nature, in feeling content even through every hardship, to want the other to belong and improve, to simply coexist—even sometimes, silently.

Deep in her soul, she probably wants to reach for what is most known: to be someone’s second option, to never be good enough. Her eyes suddenly feel weightier when her fingers graze the skin of Taeoh’s tattooed arm, wrapped around her with such tenderness, bringing her closer until he can fully feel the expanse of her. This man is an exception, like he truly loves her, enough to put his art on her body but also to make art out of her, her heart liberated from that sense of insecurity that always has littered beneath her.

Never good enough.

Never the first choice.

But she’s on the way to believing that she may be Taeoh’s.

The man breathes deeply, grasping at the side of her body when he says: “When were you going to tell me you had something with Jooheon?”

Her body stiffens, eyes staring at the city outside the curtains, this same position once held with another man—and she’d never be able to forget the man that clouded her brain with so much irresponsibility that she felt free. Though, nothing was more freeing than finding peace with the pieces of her that linger in her thoughts. All feelings are valid, whether they are saddening or angering. “I—I—Uh, I—”

“He looks at you certain way, you know?” Taeoh asks, turning around until his arm slips away from her, extending his own behind his head to support the weight of it. “Like, I don’t know how to explain it. It reminds me a bit of when I go back to my hometown.”

She turns around at that, not knowing what to say, instead tracing the outlines of his face when his eyes flutter close. “Taeoh, I—”

His brown eyes settle upon her, the slit on top of his eyebrow touched by her fingertips, finally looking back at her. “Whenever I go back…I know I’ll leave again,” He says. “But I try to cling onto it as much as I can. I try to make myself believe that there will always be somewhere better, but there is no place like home. I feel like…I’ll fall back there one day, probably in the far future, because you can never be too far away from home.”

Could she ever be too far away from Jooheon? Love may not last, but it also may not exist. Proven by Taeoh, though, there seems to be something—something that she has never gotten to know in her life, and she plans to discover it. “We didn’t have anything special,” She tries to convince herself, reminiscent of the times her heart felt as if it did not belong to her when around him. Isn’t that love? “Well, it was more of an agreement.” She breathes out, resting her cold nose against his neck, trying to hide her face and press a fleeting kiss to the skin. “If I got my heart broken, I’d try to find comfort in having sex with him. If his did, it’d be the same thing. We were ignorant…” She replies, pulling away until she grasps Taeoh’s face in between her hands, looking into his eyes. “And no matter what happened then, I can tell you one thing.”

“What happened? You said you didn’t have anything special.” Taeoh no longer keeps a comfortable distance, his eyebrows furrowing slightly, eyes pleading for her to love him.

She could be content with loneliness.

She could be content with Jooheon, if he was hers.

She could have had a million stories to tell, but none that felt as fitting as Taeoh—none that could be as loving as him.

Flowers may come with thorns, specially roses, but this is the last time she fears prickling herself. Honesty may lead him closer to her, all roads steps into their forever. Or perhaps, a love that could last as long as it needs to. “I…felt connected to him, I don’t think he did. I’d say it was infatuation, it all came crashing down on him when we had a pregnancy scare.” She confesses, voice soft to let out that one secret that had been captured in between Jooheon and herself. “…I’m not perfect, I can tell you that much, but I am certain that whoever was part of my past cannot compare to you.” She mumbles, pulling away to look into his eyes, watching the uncertainty in them. “P—Please, trust me…”

Taeoh takes her by the neck at that point, kissing her with the fervor that he lacks—almost powerless, he mumbles: “I want to trust you.”

“You want to or you will?” She ponders, lips captured into another kiss when, once again, she is proven just how much he cares about her.

“I will.”

###

The letters blink back at her, gray background and black ink fastening the headlines of the newspaper into her brain. Just like all those times before, the smell of coffee lingers in the air, the door to Jooheon’s and hers shared office right in front of her eyes. Many years of memories—some alone, some accompanied, all blend into nostalgia.

People cling to nostalgia for some damned reason. It is as though in fear of living the future, we cling to the past. We look for excuses, for a push, for that one grain of insecurity that keeps us tied to the floor. For some reason, the paper in between her other hand is sufficient proof of the out-and-out fear that beholds her body. It owns her, it always has, because settling for this company—though, excellent at the beginning, now simply falling into normality—had seemed like what she needed to do. Being chosen, for once, had always been the brightest moment of her life.

For some time now, a month even, she has built the possibilities of the past—crafted the memories back to realize that, in her own way, part of her personality had been shaped in fear. Of being judged. Of speaking up. Of being anything but a hundred percent invisible. Reason as to why she has kept the same job for years. Another reason as to why desiring Jooheon was an impossibility for her—until, he was truly an unreachable person and it broke her. The hopes she had were crushed by her fear of rejection, of being loud and confident.

This is not the part in which she changes herself, but it is the part in which she improves.

The newspaper almost slips out from her fingertips when she enters the office, Jooheon’s back resting against his seat, legs propped up on top of his desk, inspecting the folders that she had left for him to revise the previous day. The coffee is ready and by his side, there is a single cup for her to drink from. He knows she’ll always be there on time, but he doesn’t know her change of mind, much less does he expect to look up at her and see her in a different attire after years.

His smile widens, and it would be a lie for her to say that, after all those years, Jooheon does not do wonders to her soul. That, in a way, she’ll always be fond of the depth of his grin and that look that he throws her way that shows appreciation. Maybe, she should have known the difference between that and love.

This time around, her tattoo is on full display—small, tiny, but she doesn’t cover it. Doesn’t cover herself up anymore. Her blazer is long forgotten, the elegant and posh thin strapped shirt serving her as coverage for today, paired with loose and straight pants, perfect for her last day at the job.

“Morning,” Jooheon says, eyes scanning her body before the twinkle with happiness. “First time I see you wearing something different for the office.”

“Mhm,” She hums, shrugging her shoulders as she slides the piece of paper in between her hands on top of Jooheon’s desk. “I thought I had to leave this place and close this period of my life with something different.”

Almost in a rush, Jooheon sits up, the folders falling on the floor obnoxiously, papers messily scrambled when he takes her resignation letter in between shaky fingers. His beam disappears, eyes scanning the printed words before speaking out: “W—Why? No, you can’t leave.”

And he looks at her as if he’s pleading, begging, as if for one last time he wants to take her heart in between his hands and play with it to his will, like an instrument that plays beauty for him, but rakes in sadness for her. A tune that they will never get to match to. “Taeoh and I have been thinking about moving to his hometown to live together for the past month and so…” After the realization of importance entered her brain as knowledge. Who is important for her? Herself—and Taeoh, too, the only man that had heard her speak; had loved her silence, but had loved her voice even more. “I got accepted. Here’s my resignation letter.”

Jooheon blinks softly, thinks for a moment before throwing his head back. His gaze is blank, looking up at the ceiling as if there is a land far-away in there. His train of thought is loud, even when in silence. “You’re leaving?” He asks, a whine to his tone when she nods her head.

“Yes.”

“What about all those years together?”

As coworkers, he should clarify, but when he looks at her once again, she thinks he may be talking about something else. “I—I’ll cherish them.”

“And what about me?”

“I’ll remember you.”

But if she had to choose, she’d turn back time. If she had a choice, she’d be louder about her words—try to get him and clear her head of any lingering questions with the enigma that is Jooheon. Had she fixed his broken heart for him to love someone else? Probably, and he must have done the same for her, this is further shown when Jooheon stands up from his seat rather quickly, letting the resignation letter rest on the desk when he opens his arms widely.

“Give me one last hug to remember, too, then.”

Her movements are quick when she finds herself in his arms again, hands sprawled around his waist, arms tugging him harsher against her body, as if to breathe at the same tempo as him and turn back time to the first time she held him. She’d want to tell her past self to never get to know him, to never cross that line of professionalism, and maybe this wouldn’t have been the ending for the wildest ride of her life. Instead, however, she gets to feel his breath fanning on top of her shoulder, that one that has the tattoo made by Taeoh.

The person she is today may not be perfect, but it learned something from the mistakes she made with Jooheon. If he hurt her, he did it at the hands of life, destiny knowing what it is doing.

But she’ll leave him with one last heartbreak, one last memory of who they are today—two lines that never connected, two worlds that collided and created a explosion instead.

Two hearts that had played a game together, and didn’t win.

[superbataddicted]

Writer's Month 2019

Day 22 Prompt: Summer (Warning: Description of sexual content. Nothing too explicit.)

Fandom: Superbat, Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, Superman/Batman

Writer: batzmaru65

Bruce eyed himself in the mirror, displeasure evident on his face. He plucked at his bodysuit, first where his torso was, then his thigh, disliking the fact that the suit was not fitted snugly against his skin.

“Shall I increase your food intake, Master Bruce?” Alfred asked, hiding his amusement behind an impassive expression as if that could fool Bruce.

Of course it did not. For Bruce shot an irritated stare at Alfred’s reflection in the mirror, knowing very well that his butler was laughing hard at his current predicament.

“Happy right! ‘Cause now you have an excuse to stuff me with more food.”

“Whatever you say, Master Bruce,” Alfred gave an elegant bow, hiding his smile as he bent down to pick up the discarded cape and cowl, leaving Bruce to fume all by himself.

With a frown creasing his brows, Bruce stalked out of his bedroom and into his study. He grabbed his phone and sent a quick text. Then he turned to face the French windows, arms crossed over his chest, braced for the confrontation that would come swiftly.

True enough, a sudden gust of wind which set the curtains fluttering, and the cause of Bruce’s problem was there, looking super upset and unhappy.

“What’s the meaning of this!” Clark flashed the text on his phone at Bruce. He had come so quickly that he had not changed out of his reporter’s attire. His hair was a mess, his spectacles askew and his tie flung back over his shoulder.

Bruce struggled to remain stern in the face of such adorability.

“It means what it means.”

Clark scowled. Bruce was in one of those moods again, making decisions without first consulting him. It’s a hard habit to crack and sometimes Clark wanted to strangle him for doing that.

“I object! You passed judgement without first seeking the defender’s opinion and that’s an injustice.”

“Injustice my foot! My body/s suffering and I’m declaring a state of emergency so you’ve to do as I say until I get the problem fixed.”

At the word ‘suffering’, Clark’s eyes widened in concern and he quickly scanned Bruce only to find nothing amiss. Except for a few scratches and bruises, Bruce was in perfect health.

“I don’t see any problem.”

“Don’t see...” Bruce gritted his teeth, eyes narrowed in annoyance, “ How can you bloody see anything when you’ve been like a horny teenager the whole summer long! I’m already wrung dry by the fucking heat and then you have to work me through the night with your damn insatiate appetite. No wonder I’m losing my body mass so fast! At this rate, I’m going to become too skinny to fend off my enemies.”

“But I can’t help it,” Clark cried, turning on his doleful puppy eyes at full blast, well-aware of its impact on Bruce, “There’s simply too much sun and so much endorphins buzzing in me and I just can’t stop craving for you.”

Bruce immediately turned his back on Clark, knowing very well what his lover was trying to do.

“That’s too bad,” He shouted over his shoulder, “You’ll have to wank yourself from now on. For I’m not going to have sex with you until I gain back my body mass.”

He then strode off in a haste before Clark could pull any more tricks that would make Bruce cave in.

-

Many days later.

Clark heaved a body bag onto the metallic-looking bed that was surprisingly soft and yielded like memory foam under the sudden weight. He unzipped the bag, smiling apologetically at a glaring Bruce all trussed up like a chicken, naked except for a pair of boxer shorts.

“Sorry for the rough treatment,” Clark lifted Bruce out and began untying him, wincing at the muffled curses that were leaking out despite the gag. That was why he chose to leave that to the last.

“What the fuck are you doing! How dare you treat me like this!” Bruce yelled once the gag was removed, pouncing on Clark and gripping him by the cape pinned to his shoulders. He would much rather punch Clark but knew it was a waste of effort as ‘The Man of Steel’ would not be hurt one bit by it.

Clark let Bruce shake him like a ragdoll, hands going round his waist to support him, letting him work some steam off before he pressed forward and kissed him. Bruce jerked his head back but Clark chased after him and it was now Clark pouncing on Bruce, pinning him to the bed and smothering him with kisses until Bruce gave up struggling.

Bruce glared at a grinning Clark, hating how easily he had succumbed to him.

“I just want to help you with your problem.”

“By kidnapping me to your ship!”

“No, by removing a major factor that’s contributing to your weight loss.”

“Then why are you still here!”

“That’s so cruel,” Clark stared reproachfully at Bruce, “I’m your boyfriend, your lover, your destined one, our fates are bounded together as written in the stars and...”

“Oh shut up!” Bruce's hair was standing on ends. For someone who could break the world easily, Clark could be super cringey with his words. Bruce simply could not get use to it despite years of exposure.

“Okay.”

And Clark really kept quiet, settling himself comfortably over Bruce, fingers brushing softly across Bruce’s cheeks, his nose, tucking stray strands of hair back in their places. He was so peaceful and contented whereas Bruce was becoming more agitated by the minute. He had a dozen questions bugging him to no end and unlike Clark, he did not have the patience when it came to dealing with his boyfriend. Ask him to crouch for hours on a stakeout, he can. But ask him to play this hold-out-as-long-as-you-can game with Clark and he always loses in the end

“Will you quit dawdling and just tell me what you want!” Bruce finally barked out, lips pouting resentfully.

“Only if you promise to accept what I tell you.”

“Fine, whatever!” Bruce growled. The faster he did what Clark wants, the faster he could get back to Gotham and the work waiting for him there.

“Thank you!” Clark beamed and his hands began to wander down Bruce’s body with lecherous intentions.

“Wait!” You haven’t...” Bruce squirmed, breath hitching as fingers teased his nipples,

"Oh sorry,” Clark kissed him as an apology though his fingers did not stop their ministrations, “Forgot to tell you that we’re officially on leave until summer ends.”

“What!” Bruce jerked up, eyes wide in disbelief, “That’s impossible! Gotham..”

“Dick has agreed to step in and the rest of the family will help out.”

“But..”

“The Titans have sufficient manpower to watch over Bludhaven without him around.”

“Even then, we can’t simply...“

“The League has approved our leave.”

“On what grounds!” Bruce tried to push Clark off but was hindered by the fact that Clark had a hand over his groin, groping enthusiastically.

“It’s called lover’s leave,” Clark watched eagerly as Bruce arched his head back at the pleasure Clark was giving him.

“There’s...ahhh...no such...*gasp* thing...!”

“Oh, yes there is,” Clark latched onto the crook of Bruce’s neck, sucking until a hickey was formed before he let go, licking his lips in satisfaction, “I proposed it and it was approved immediately by the League a few days ago.”

Bruce was already gone by then, barely even listening to what Clark was saying. His hips was thrusting into Clark’s fist while his hands scrabbled against Clark’s suit, desperate to get it off so that he could feel Clark’s skin.

Smirking, Clark bent down to kiss Bruce again, open-mouthed, hot and hungry. So much for not having sex with him huh just because of a few lost pounds over the summer months. And anyway, Bruce would gain back his body mass in no time. Alfred was cooking up a storm and Clark intends to feed every bit to his lover in between their romps in the bed.

(Why Clark managed to get the League to approve this new type of leave is because everyone was dying to have something like this. They're always missing out in terms of time spend with loved ones and now that the League had grown so much, they can afford to have something like this. Already there is a waiting list after Clark and Bruce. The next in line is Hal and Barry, followed by Oliver and Dinah. Even Diana is applying for the leave, though she refused to divulge who her partner is.)

(This is also a follow-up to another story I had written awhile back. It's called A Hot Summer's Night - My Thoughts' on You. You can read it here on AO3. The idea is also based on a suggestion from a reader in the comments section.)

[ryujinrk]

-.✦･｡ﾟMGA season 5: episode 4, outfit             performing ed sheeran “cross me” ft Chance The Rapper + PNB Rock             with @rksihyeon (lyrics + line distribution)           mentioned briefly: @rkxsnh​, @rkhyeon​, @rkyeji​             @rkxbin​, @rkheejin​, @rkjaemin​, @rkkyungsoo

Surviving to the next episode again and again has always been expected by the teen but the further into the competition she comes, the more anxious she honestly becomes. Working as pairs proves to be difficult for her even if her partners are the sweetest things, having had the experience of being betrayed before she can’t help but wonder if she will be once again. Last week she was paired with Sakura who she already know and are close friends with, which in honesty did make things a little easier, but when doubled with a stranger Ryujin was sceptical. The trust that she ultimately need to have in others has been so swindled to the point where it sincerely is difficult even trusting in her friends and aquaintances 

She learned rather quickly that her worries were unjust though, when she started working with Sia she noticed right away that the two of them get along well and that they do have each other’s success at best interest. Ryujin is a team player, she know that it is how they will make progress and it is simply who she is as a person-- she will do whatever she can to make sure that not only does she pass to the next phase, but that her partner does as well. And that has nothing to do with the fact that they are eliminated in pairs this season. They practice mostly at 1MILLION dance studio, which is practically where Ryujin has grown up-- having started dancing there at nine years old she is familiar there, and was the one to suggest it.

With the summer heat Ryujin made sure that they kept cool and relaxed by bringing the pair a chilled drink each, fruity smoothies for Sia and iced mocha lattes for herself. In return, the elder saw to it that the teen was well and sufficiently rested throughout their time together as a pair. In one way they behaved like friends who genuinely cared about each other’s well being-- which ultimately is their stage concept as well, best friends who don’t let anyone in the way of their friendship. Both of them came with song suggestions, Ryujin proposing Ariana Grande’s song “Side to Side” but felt more inclined towards Sia’s option of Ed Sheeran’s “Cross Me” with Chance The Rapper + PNB Rock though both would be good alternatives.

-.✦･｡ﾟ

Seated next to Sia in their assigned seats Ryujin think that they look so darn cute in their matching outfits, the elder wearing the darker outfit while the teen wearing the lighter. Reason behind that obvious to them but likely slipping the audience; as a rap and vocal duo people do often see the rapper as the thug one and the singer as the innocent one, so they decided that today they are switching it up. Ryujin, the rapper, prepared the white and endearing look while Sia, the vocalist, preparing the more dark and mysterious vibe. “I’m so excited,” she note towards the other in a whisper while waiting for the performances to start already. Ryujin can’t wait until it all begin, and she’s so eager to watch Olivia with Hohyeon.

As well as Yeji and Changbin, and Heejin and Jaemin. Those are the ones that are interesting this week, in her personal opinion, along with the question-- will Kyungsoo dance, again? 

Ryujin sure hopes that he will because she want to see a lot more of him and see what he has to offer. Compared to their blind date set up by their parents he definitely show other sides, all the while she can spot the same man that she already met before. Pairs after pairs perform on stage and soon enough, sooner than Ryujin has grown used to actually, it’s her turn to step up and she is confident as ever walking next to her partner who has such an amazing voice; their stage is different from what she has done so far, much different from it really, which makes it a little scary. Although they have both practiced hard, alone and together, and have come down to a satisfying stage, Ryujin can’t help but worry. What if the judges don’t like it after all? What if they expected something else, or perhaps even more of her already?

“5040 Shin Ryujin and 5026 Kim Sia.” They are finally called to the stage.

Glancing over to the elder with a little smirk she reveal how much she crave to be on stage, if she can say so herself she believe that the two of them have prepared a strong performance-- Ryujin has faith in them, and in in their stage. Once reaching up to the center she bow down in front of the judges, introduce herself and step into position. Ryujin begin the moment she get a cue from Sia, her verse starting off before the music come in. As she deliver her part she rap with perfect English as a result of having English speaking family members, she has spent so many summers in America with her grandparents she barely has an accent. They walk ahead together, oozing of attidude as Ryujin effortlessly pass her opening verses, and execute a little secret handshake of sorts that they prepared to show their close friendship during the second part of Ryujin’s verse making sure to hit it with the beat of the song.

Anything she need, she can call me Don't worry 'bout her, that's my seed, yup, that's all me Just know, if you cross her, then you cross me Cross me, cross me, if you, if you, if you, if you (Ryujin)

Anything she need, she can call me Don't worry 'bout her, that's my seed, yup, that's all me Just know, if you cross her, then you cross me Cross me, cross me, if you, if-

While it’s originally a supposed love song Ryujin enjoy that they have attempted to switch it up like they did with their outfits, that rather bringing a romantic love song they turn it into about a friendship instead. Her verse came to a seemingly abrupt end but that is on purpose, just as in the original song. She doesn’t make too much out of herself when Sia  sing her part as it’s the elder’s time to shine, but she moves her body gently to the beat of the music. Sometimes encouraging the other with ad libs of ‘yeahs’ and ‘mhms’, nothing too extra. The music stops at Sia’s “ayy” but before anyone has the time to wonder if they are done Ryujin comes back around with a beatless rap consisting of the same verse that she opened with. This time, instead of ending it abruptly the two of them merge their parts into a smooth transision.

Anything she need, she can call me Don't worry 'bout her, that's my seed, yup, that's all me Just know, if you cross her, then you cross me Cross me, cross me, if you, if you, if you

Sia sing the refrain with her beautiful voice and Ryujin can’t help but feel a little envious, having yet to gain any confidence in her own singing. The teen has given up that dream, and she has settled with the fact that she is a dancing rapper instead. Having two lines in this refrain she make sure that she understand what the lyrics are about, so when she deliver the words of ‘anything she need she can call me’ she look over at the elder with a smile and an endearing look in her eyes, as though the two are actually friends who will do anything for one another. She is surprised how well they work together on stage, considering the fact that they met as strangers. The part come to an end as all things do and finally, Ryujin is coming in with the actual rap. Due to her age, they decided that she would rewrite some of the lyrics.

And she ain't messing with no other man Now what you not gon' do Is stand there 'cross from me like you got Kung Fu Death stare, crossed arms, running your mouth like a faucet But you don't know that my girl been doing CrossFit Pew! Kung Pow! Knock you out with a cross kick Blowing air out, wear you out, you exhausted Know she gonna slide anytime you girlies gossip Keep a lil' blade in her smashin lip gloss kit, ayy No one say hi to me without her Better pay your respect to the queen Better do that ish without a flirt Gotta respect the HBIC Couple of things that you need to know If you still wanna be friends with me 

During her verse she use the technique that she always does during her raps, her mind doing that automatically by now; always think one sentence ahead, prepare the next sentence while delivering so that the words won’t stumble. The flow is a little strange to her but she manage it well, having practiced from dusk till dawn to perfect her part. That’s what she enjoy about these performances, that she don’t necessarily need a specific place to practice. When she near the second part of her verse she step closer towards Sia, and while she express the words ‘better pay your respect to the queen’ she motion with her fingers as though she’s crowning the other female. She grin broadly after that and finish her verse strongly, then gesture towards the elder who is assigned to end their performance with the song’s signature phrase. Happy with their stage she bow down again as a kind of ‘thank you’ for allowing her to perform again. 

[hlwim]

Not All of Me Will End [1/3]

Summary: Nothing remains of her but what must be left behind. Tags: Character Death, Cancer, Tragedy, Angst, Bittersweet, Post-Canon Pairings: Royai, Edwin, Havolina AO3  ff.net

who lives

Smoke gathers beneath the ceiling’s blackened tin tiles—a match for her mood, and for the roiling green clouds that gather low over the city. Riza could add a little cirrus stream of her own, but all she has is the cigarette holder to tap against her lighter, ivory clacking on silver again and again. They’ve been waiting nearly an hour, stiffly side by side and still in uniform, as though either of them will be going back to work afterward.

“What’s the point of rank if I can’t use it to get anywhere?” Roy sighs, pulling out his pocket watch to check the time, and he smiles at her. He doesn’t know the way that she knows. “Are you alright?”

“Of course,” she says. “I’m sure it’ll only be a few more minutes.”

A wave of vertigo ripples upward between her eyes—and the half-filled lobby blurs into a slumbering beast, churning, burbling, gasping with thickened lungs. The steady heartbeat of patients marching the corridors and tangled in their IV lines, the thrumming of each slippered footfall that plays her broken nerves to insentience—she calms by pressing her fingernails deep into her palms, carving long purple furrows across the spongy flesh.

The nurses chitter like insects across the floor, hiding their oddly jointed limbs beneath dark blue dresses, pressed leather boots, starch-white aprons crossed over the back. Hats pinned to hair carefully pulled into uniform curls—such dreadful little halos. One of them approaches, with black eyes and pin-pricked red lips and a slithery grayed tongue.

“Captain Hawkeye. Doctor Hauer apologizes for the delay. He’s prepared for you now.”

Roy’s hand on her back is not subtle or standard politeness—he has caught her twice in the last month from falling back down the stairs. Something in the exertion of climbing would send a sheet of foggy blackness across her vision and then, just as her fainting spell during the commemoration parade, Riza would groggily wake to find herself propped up by his steadying arm. Even now they are keeping to a slow pace, passed on every fifth step by an annoyed orderly or harangued custodian.

Doctor Hauer’s name is at last set on the glass of his door, in careful white etching—he’s new from the north, highly recommended and with a fellowship purchased directly from the führer’s considerable coffers. At least, from all this meaningless mess, Central City Hospital can boast of retaining the best diagnostician in the country. He won’t look like much in print, but she can imagine, somewhere in a distant memorial garden, his stately stone glower presiding over a mossy plaque dedicated to his advances in various medicinal sciences. Such men are almost never properly paid tribute in life, so she can find some comfort in knowing she probably wouldn’t have lived to see it regardless.

“I’m sorry,” he says, no preamble, no offer of tea, “but it is exactly as we feared.”

“Cancer.”

“Yes.”

Riza nods. She knew, in all the ways that Roy did not, and his fingers tighten painfully around hers.

“Are you certain?” he asks.

“I spoke to my colleagues in West City and East, and they both concurred with my initial reading. The shadowing on the film clearly indicates wide-spread metastasis.”

“What does that mean?”

Hauer glances at Roy and then back to Riza. She can, to some extent, respect his desire to keep her the center of the conversation—but it feels so unnecessary. Like the broken beaks of a thousand furious birds, rain begins to peck at the glass behind the good doctor’s head.

“Although the size of the mass in your lungs leads me to conclude that it is the originating site, your previously described symptoms—dizziness, hallucinations, blackout spells—strongly suggest that there may be a mass in your brain as well.”

He points, with alarming accuracy for not even bothering to turn his head, at the tacked-up transparency of her chest. The closest she will ever get to witnessing the true complexity of her own desiccated husk, save for running a knife beneath her ribcage and peeling back what flesh is found there.

“It also appears to have reached your lymph system. We could draw blood to confirm the presence of malignant cells moving throughout your body, but at the current rate of growth, in a matter of months…”

A twisting grimace.

“As they say, truth will out.”

“Is that—is that how long…?”

Hauer’s eyes are a brackish-green, painted with flecks of yellow by an unsteady hand. In one eye, the sclera holds a streak of bright red, and the pulse it hides could almost be visible, she thinks, by changing the angle of her observation. His left eye flickers first, followed by the right a quarter-millisecond after.

“It’s difficult to say with any accuracy. The disease process is unique to each person.”

“So then what’s our next step?”

She is not trying to memorize this moment or even Roy’s face—she is merely observing the cool milky sheen of his skin, the youthfully short lines bundling above his brows, the click and clack of his tongue and teeth as he seeks a futile reprieve. They—Hauer and Roy, and not Riza, who folds up her hands in her lap and watches Roy’s face without feeling the slightest change in her own—discuss medication and surgery and radium therapies with such naive hope cutting their lips to ribbons.

“No,” Riza says. The birds have left the window—for all its crescendo, the storm was brief and will have left only a discomforting haze to line the streets and sidewalks.

“Riza, there’s still options—”

“Not for me.”

“But they’ve had success—”

“In skin cancers. And most of the patients went on to develop a different cancer and died anyways, after a few years.”

He wants to protest, his eyes a pair of open wounds twisted wide by the gears of coming grief. The clouds have cleared from his side first—he sits in a shower of sunlight and reaches to her, delicately seizes her hands and pulls them to his lap. They stand sharp as plucked feathers against the dark wool of his uniform.

“I read the same studies as you,” she finishes.

“But it could work.”

It is difficult to explain the logic of what remains so… obvious. Hauer has withdrawn, content to study the bleed and retain his commentary. Riza, in a half-remembered instinct for solace, runs her narrow thumbs across the wide expanse of Roy’s palms.

“Cut me open,” she says, unblinking, by force of love and misery willing the certainty to bridge the empty air between them, “and scoop out what they can. Then weeks under one of those awful lamps or even worse—a tube of radium sewn up inside me until it burns through.”

He shakes his head as she speaks—his imagination is well-stocked with atrocity and no doubt illustrates each word with a facsimile of what its truth might be.

“Is that what you want for me?”

Ruined by all of it—torn open and shredded by the indifferent abyss. She sees him as one might see a lone telegraph pole with its lines all cut loose, fading fast into a horizon that welcomes no minute alteration. He squeezes her fingers, trying to coerce heat from his calloused skin into her. He speaks very quietly—not a whisper, but an inability to draw sufficient breath for each word.

“I want you to live.”

She smiles, somewhat, tempering the cruelty with a cold sigh and a tremor which passes, without origin or end, between their joined hands.

“Well,” she says, “I’m not going to.”

Roy’s car has broken down again, so they take a black taxi back to Central Command. The driver seems to sense their disquiet and leaves the divider up, assuming possibly that they have a need to talk—but they only stew in a long silence. The rain begins again, and ends, and then restarts and finally quits the greened sky for yellowing pastures somewhere south.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the hallucinations?” Roy asks. He speaks to the closed window, hands curled to fists in his lap, brow knit, frowning, eyes darting from face to face when they stop near a crowd. He will want a solution from his frustration and will find nothing.

“I don’t know,” Riza says. “It only happened a few times. I thought sometimes it hadn’t happened at all.”

Anger rolls from his shoulders in cutting waves. It radiates, and she wants to lay her hands along the span of his back, to absorb his heat and make it her own, to become the yawning, roaring void that has opened inside him: a little well of sadness, which seeks an ocean to drown it.

“I’m sorry.”

Their attendance at Grumman’s table is required, and she tells him immediately, wishing no delay to the plans that now must follow. He rages, of course, stalking the edge of his favorite Aerugian rug as he narrows his sights on the appropriate prey.

“I built that hospital!” he snarls, expelling foul breath with the lie. “Every brick belongs to me, and if they think they can reject my granddaughter for treatment—”

“I don’t want treatment,” Riza says, turning her fork to cut into a fig. “I made the choice.”

He softens to speak to her, just as always—she is glad, again, that he had no choice but to give her up as assistant. Familial affection is smothering at any distance.

“But, my dear heart, you’re far too young to give up.”

“No, I’m not,” she says, arranging her plate and cutlery for the ease of the maids, who will sweep the room spotless once they’ve gone through to the library, each night making such quick work of erasing all traces of their disorderly occupation. “I’m going to die.”

Grumman rages through the nightcap, malcontent as always with realities outside his making. Roy won’t defend her outright, but he’s far enough to her side to ignore Grumman’s attempts at alliance. Riza nurses a tiny glass of port, happy to let silence be her best answer.

She is the last to leave the library but stops short of climbing the first step. Roy will have found a room for himself somewhere in the east gallery—still trapped by the old etiquettes. They will not share a bed under this roof, which seems a trifling thing and yet—she can almost relish the possession of feeling again—some silly part of her is hurt. No matter that they’ve made love before, or that long before the tendrils of this nightmare began to tug at her ribcage, they had made such public promises.

Grumman had demanded an announcement and then disseminated one himself, when neither of them proved obliging. An alert of required celebration, and the drab party that followed—she thinks she still can smell the smoke of dusty candles and the flowers left too close to open flame. Smoke like meat, like the rabbits she hung inside that big hollow oak and the door she’d made of bark to cover, to pack with clay and come back later when Father lost his patron and they’d gone three weeks without anything but bread and foraged apples—

Riza curls her fingers around the ugly finial at the base of the bannister, feeling the weakness drain through her grip. There is no smoke here. The engagement party was months ago, and all its guests have gone home to sleep. Very carefully, she slides down to sit on the last carpeted step.

This is not the main staircase of the house—the grand incline that sweeps from the gilded foyer up to the narrow walk which runs from the east wing to the west—but a disused passage back to the kitchens. The sort of walk servants might have taken fifty years ago, slipping surreptitiously from their rooms in the attic to the basements. What need did they have for decoration? This landing holds a vase long empty of flowers, a dusty candelabra, and an overly-ornate bureau. And overseeing all, the painting.

Liesel Grumman, aged sixteen years, preserved and pickled in a brine of oil pigments and glaze. Her hair is styled in loose curls, her narrow body draped in white, and her hands are clasped primly on her lap—not one on top of the other, but palm to palm. Her eyes are blue, her throat bare, and her skin smoother than the brushstrokes that conjure it.

But the varnish is yellowing. The painting has gained a haze, and the corner of the frame is chipped of its gild. Riza shuffles herself forward along the carpet, not quite steady to stand on her own, until she is kneeling at the base of the bureau, looking up into her mother’s eternally averted gaze.

Berthold had had nothing to say on the subject of his late wife—other than that she was late and his wife—and Liesel had left precious few letters for perusal. Vaguely, Riza remembers a cardboard portrait of their wedding buried somewhere deep in the cellar: a matching pair in black, Liesel smiling gently and Berthold scowling.

If there had ever been anything like a journal of hers, Grumman never spoke of it. Despite the elopement which had separated them forever, he seemed to still think of his daughter as loyal, darling, sweet, pure, incorruptible—but her gaze in the painting is more dead than demure. The bureau is weighted and steady as Riza ascends, leaving her shoes to topple in the carpet, her elbows digging into the rough panels on either side.

Her eyes are a detached, icy blue. Round, large, surrounded on all sides by sclera barely distinguishable from her snowy white skin. Riza presses gently on the prick of her mother’s painted iris, flattening the peak. She didn’t really look like this. She never could have—and anyway, if she did and Riza knew, the memory is gone now in a foggy haze of black.

It is happening more and more—things Riza knew not because she could conjure the memory itself but because the vague shapes of it still threaded themselves in and out of other recollections. Impressions of a movement, of a tree weeping leaves into a river, a negative space between thought and thought, marked out only by its absence. It’s creeping closer as well, swallowing whole days and nights of solitude. She finds herself frantically scribbling out every thought that might someday find importance, before they can flit away from her fingers.

And what she does remember still—played out before her helpless gaze like a zoetrope glued to her face. A whirling vortex that melts to a view of Eastern Command, where Grumman brought her to the painting before even telling Riza who she was. Who she was—peering down from above the fireplace, amber-trapped, perpetually pre-elopement, pre-death, pre-decay, prevented from any comment on her own current condition—and he leered like a supplicant, offering up no sacrifice worthy of the penance sought in such adolated immortality.

Riza slides from the bureau unsteadily, spiked with sudden fear that the world has shifted itself while her back was turned. And it has—the shapes of Grumman’s old sitting room recede, bleeding backwards into carpet and empty wall and worn step, and her own shoes, kicked over and empty. She can’t remember how to get back to her own room, or what twists and turns will take her to where she is supposed to be. This isn’t home—it’s a stop in the pilgrimage to the end, and she sets her left hand on the wall, ready to resume.

By morning, Grumman has attained some level of acceptance. He is the last to come down for breakfast, white-faced and gray-shadowed, and he takes his seat without bothering to bring a plate.

“I’m going to see General Armstrong today,” Riza says. A maid woke her in the parlor at sunrise and lead her back to her room, where she slipped uneasily behind the mask of a dressing gown and slippers.

“You don’t have to,” Roy says, as his spoon scrapes across the bottom of his cup.

“I should,” Riza replies. “I want to.”

The grapefruit tastes like nothing, but she still winces. Grumman’s butler, with a stare of gravest concern, brings the old man some eggs and sausages, which he does not touch.

“When you return,” he says, barely managing to unfold his napkin, “we might discuss hiring on a nurse or two. To help out.”

“There’s no need. I’ll be going back to the house next week.”

His lip curls up like a burning leaf.

“You can’t possibly—”

“It is my home,” Riza says steadily.

“Wellesley is too far.”

“I had a telephone line installed. The tenants left last month.”

Roy’s stare shifts up from the newspaper he hadn’t been reading, fixing on her—furious, offended, incredulous. He must have thought they were in this together. Riza stares back, her mouth flat as her mood.

“I’m going back to the house,” she says. “There is no argument.”

“Riza, please, you must be reasonable about some of this—”

“Every Hawkeye,” she says, slow and deep and clear as a tolling bell, “for two hundred years was born in that house, and now the last of us will die there.”

Grumman’s fogged glasses clink against his spoon, and he sets his fingertips against each eyelid.

“I wish you would stop saying that word,” he mutters.

Roy waits at the bottom of the stairs with her dress coat—undeterred. They have covered the subject of stubbornness extensively in their time together, so she just sighs and turns around, allowing him to slip the sleeves up her arms and slowly pull each button through its slit. Her whole uniform has been freshly mended for this: its last exercise in the sun. The piping is bright white, the braids are neatly aligned in rows, and each metal pin of rank and office and regiment sparkles with shine. He keeps himself to civilian clothes.

His leave of absence has no doubt been expediently approved, or sits atop that neglected pile of forms awaiting the führer’s signature. Another piece in its waiting place.

They could take Grumman’s car, but she doesn’t want Armstrong to be immediately defensive. Roy orders a cab, and she almost wishes it could be the same driver as yesterday. This one is fine enough, although he smiles with too many teeth. Riza dislikes him instantly and wants, viciously and without cause, to see him frown instead, thinking to dim his irreverence with a remark about her condition. But that was her father’s way, never hers, and the impulse passes.

Roy keeps to his side of the bench when she steps in and settles against the door. She is beginning to miss him, even inches apart, and soon he’ll have his chance to miss her as well. Without hesitation, Riza slides her hand across the polished leather padding and slips her fingers between his.

He looks at their hands first, and then up to meet her gaze. She’s still half-sure he’ll pull away. There is nothing to say to the darkness growing behind his eyes.

The Armstrong estate suffered yesterday’s rain just like the rest of the city—every time, Riza expects it all to be unblemished and opulent, recently emptied of party guests and yawning for new attention. But instead, it is a quiet house hunched up and drawn in, dripping from its cornice like a near-empty wine bottle, unstoppered and tipped on its side.

There is a butler to let them in, and another butler to announce them. Having no business but escort, Roy is shown into the library, and Riza takes the next step without him.

Maybe they’re not all butlers. Three of them stand against the wall in the stately dining room, livery pressed to sharp creases and stares scalding. There must be one table for parties, and this smaller table for every day. Lieutenant General Armstrong sits at the head, newspapers spread on her left and correspondence unopened on her right, with her picked-over breakfast plate neatly in the center. Her brother is also on the right, sitting far down the table—but no doubt as close as she would allow—and he stands when Riza enters.

“Madame General, Captain Hawkeye to see you,” the door-opening non-butler says, bowing deeply and backing from Riza’s peripheral vision before returning to upright.

“Good morning, Captain Hawkeye,” Alex says. “Would you care to join us for breakfast?”

“Thank you, no—I’ve eaten already.”

“Is there some urgent matter?” the general interjects. “I didn’t send for you. I thought you were off planning your betrayal of a wedding.”

She does not look up from the newspapers, squinting to follow her forefinger across the narrow print. Alex gives her a look of almost matronly disapproval.

“Olivier doesn’t mean that, Captain. We’re both very happy for you.”

“Don’t speak for me,” she snaps, now lifting her coffee for a sip—obstinance. Riza used to find that horribly endearing in a commander. “The captain’s choice in romantic partner has already been reflected in her annual review.”

“Olivier, don’t be impolite.”

“I wonder if I might speak to the general alone,” Riza says. Her knees are beginning to strain, and the heels of both feet grow hot. She might have laced her boots too tight in her haste to leave.

“Of course, Captain. Please excuse me.”

Alex nods, rises, and ushers the butlers from the room. The general turns to her correspondence, unfolding a concealed pair of reading glasses and setting them on the end of her nose.

“I can’t believe the cheek of you bringing that worthless cur into my library.”

She loves scolding over a meal. How many bottom-rankers had Riza brought to her table at supper, every one of them knock-kneed with hunger-strengthened fear, to receive a lashing of words no less capable of stripping flesh from bone than the stiffest leather strap?

“It’s bad enough you’ve accepted him—and now he follows you around everywhere like a sick dog, so eager to throw his victory in my face.”

She points with a butter knife.

“You know I take this all as a personal offense.”

“I know, ma’am.”

But what could she do about it? Her refusal would have changed nothing more than—distance? Perhaps Riza would never have gone in to check. The air around Briggs is so thin, and she’d been teased for her inferior Western lungs more than once. Perhaps one morning an enlisted aide would have been sent to her bunk, to rouse for inspection, and she would have just been found, blue-lipped and silent forever.

“Don’t tell me that he’s gone and knocked you up. The thought of that idiot propagating—”

The sting is surprising.

“I’ve said something cruel, haven’t I?”

Riza opens her eyes—surprised again, to find that she had closed them. The general has set aside her letters and her papers and hidden once more the glasses she wants no one to know of, and she watches Riza with her hands folded on the edge of the table.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s serious. And I’ve made some mockery of it.”

The overly-familiar upward rush of illness—Riza is standing close enough to the table to grip the back of a chair before she can completely collapse.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m afraid I must sit in your presence.”

The general returns to her own seat slowly, too startled to conceal her concern. Beneath the table’s edge, Riza’s hands are shaking.

“What’s going on, Captain?”

“I came to submit my resignation, ma’am.”

She nods. She might be angry, disappointed, annoyed—but none of this shows in the knit of her brows.

“And I can’t refuse. No matter if I wish I could.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Is it—is there anything—”

A fragment of a generous offer. A lilt in her voice, a downward shift in tone, maybe even something close to a tremor. They are not—will never be—anything resembling friends. And there is such deep relief in it.

“But I’m sure the führer’s exhausted every possible avenue—to confirm…?”

Riza says nothing. The general nods, sliding into her earlier pose, back rigid against the chair, hands shuffling through the correspondence pile, eyes averted—but Riza knows she is not done just yet.

“You’ll stay here, with your grandfather?”

“No, ma’am. I own a house in the Western District. We’ll go there in a few days, when the rest of my affairs are settled.”

The room has reoriented itself around its own wavering silhouettes. Riza can stand without shaking, and she sets the chair back against the table with a muffled click of polished wood on wood. She can even manage parade rest, fixing her stare on a single flower carved into the painting frame directly above the general’s head.

“I’ve briefed Lieutenant Falman already on my projects and as specifically as possible on expectations in serving as your interim adjutant.”

“There will never be an equal replacement.”

Riza’s fingernails bite briefly into the flesh of her palms.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“I suppose that’s it, then. You are dismissed.”

She never looks up. Riza could imagine a slight twitch passing through the general’s occupied hands, but why bother? This is almost exactly what she wanted.

Yet another butler meets her outside the dining room. Roy has broken the containment of the library, and he does not smile at her return.

[biasedwriting]

Skin Talk [VIXX, Leo] ||1||

Characters: VIXX’s Leo || OC

Soulmates au inspired by @animeotakupooh / @vixxscifiwritings ‘s soulmate au “Your Words on My Skin” as well as the discussions we had while she was writing it.

General concept :  In a world where the marks on your skin also show up on your soulmate’s.

Warnings : trash writing after a long time

Length : Two-shot

It started off bizarre when at the age of six or so, coloured streaks resembling marker marks appeared on his skin. He found it fascinating to be honest, the nonsensical green and red patterns that criss crossed over his arm, belly, and even his legs.

"My, your soulmate is a messy baby, Taekwoonie!" His mother claimed when he displayed this sudden phenomenon to her.  She had suspected his soulmate to have been born somewhere a year and a half ago when she spotted random birthmarks appearing on her son's skin all of a sudden, only to fade over the day. There would be new doodles every day, colours streaking across his skin and Taekwoon would gaze at them with fascination. The marks would fade over the day and new ones would appear the next. Sometimes he would doodle on his skin and wonder if the person on the other end could understand what was going on. Not that his doodles had any shape or form. Over the years, the meaningless scribbles on his arms took form and shape. Often circles, spiralling over his forearm. Sometimes, splatters of paint or ink, sometimes it was  thin scrawls written with a pen.

 Minah would wait, blinking at the empty spaces of her skin, waiting for some formless patch to appear like magic. Sometimes she felt like she was the only one talking; scribbling endlessly onto her skin, waiting with bated breath to get nothing. Oh, but the days the marks did turn up, she squealed, happy to see some oddly shaped monster (or rather, Taekwoon’s attempt at drawing a puppy) painted on her skin. Sometimes it would be to-do lists, odd observations, some days it would just be a pen squiggle appearing on her arm. It was random, strange, and infrequent.

 At fifteen, Taekwoon found the doodles on eyes on his forearms a little odd. He felt like he was constantly being watched. The random anime character names made him chuckle, but the little star on the edge of his wrist, that, he found very sweet as it stared back at him, dark in contrast to his pale palm.

 She smiled when she saw another small star appear right next to it. It reminded her of the fact that even if she felt alone and insignificant, at the tender age of eleven, there was always another star to help her shine. She pressed her lips to the star, smiling, knowing that she wasn’t alone.

 Taekwoon groaned in pain. This time the injury seemed to run deep and he was worried that his dreams of becoming a soccer player had been crushed. He sighed unhappily as he looked at the bruises on his body. The doctors had insisted that he stay in bed till he recovered, but boredom was killing him and all he could do was listen to the few tapes he had and stare at the ceiling.

 Then they appeared.

 The little bandage doodles appeared on every bruise. He blinked, following the lines that showed up taking the shape of a bandaid. His soulmate was watching. His soulmate knew. His soulmate was trying to help in their own strange way.

 Taekwoon  let out a laugh as tears pricked at his eyes and a small heart was scribbled right next to the biggest, most painful bruise. And all of the sudden, Taekwoon felt like everything would be okay.

 Taekwoon panicked when the skin around his eye purpled all of the sudden. There was no pain for certain so he knew that somewhere in the universe, something had caused his soulmate to injure themselves. Moments of panic were put to rest when he saw a scrawl appear on his forearm, written hurriedly. His first message from the person who was his soulmate.

“Sorry! I dropped the showerhead on my face by accident! I promise I’m not a punk! :3”

He let out a laugh, reaching for the marker on his desk to write out a “take care of yourself, silly.” right under the squiggly writing on his arm. He grinned when he saw “Thank you! I will! <3” appear right next to it.

They did write to each other frequently. They didn't know how to work this system out. But some days, Taekwoon would wake up to a “have a nice day”written across his palm. Some days he would wake up to lovely poetry written across his thigh.

 One day he woke up to  bruising on the back of his hands, the injection marks, and the single word “ill” written on his wrist which sent him into a worried frenzy. It was followed by silence for months as he wrote prayers onto his skin, feeling the anxiety and sickness that his soulmate was feeling. It reminded him of how close they were wound together and all he wanted to reach across to hold onto the warmth he could feel fading into the distance. He didn’t realize he that his heart had tightened, wound up, till the day the words appeared on his skin. The strings of his heart loosening, filling his lungs with air that he didn’t know he had been missing.

 “Thank you for the prayers, I am better now.”

 The familiar handwriting caused a wave of relief to spread across his chest.

 “Do you think soulmates can be friends?”

They had finally started talking, scribbling little notes to each other on their arms. Sharing enough and yet not knowing who the other person was. Somehow the anonymity gave them comfort.

 So when this message suddenly turned up in the middle of the night. She frowned, realizing she had never thought about that. But how much would a fourteen year old think when her major concerns was to get through school while her soulmate’s was to navigate through the beginnings of adult life?

 “I suppose. I haven’t really thought about it.” marker ink blotches on her skin.

 “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

 “Of course we are.”

 It wasn’t till months later that she woke up to a single bruise on the side of her neck. She gazed at it, baffled, poking it to see if it hurt. Sure, she had seen her share of bruises as well as her soulmate’s share of them, but this one was odd. She pulled a pen out of her pocket and shifted the sleeve away from her arm.

 “You have a bruise on your neck?”

 There was no response for hours. She sat there, staring at her arm, waiting for some sign only to be interrupted by a hiss from her sister.

 “Kim Minah! You’re fourteen and too young to be getting involved with someone!”

 She turned around to gape at her sister who was pointing at the said bruise on her neck and ranting furiously.

 “Involved?” she blinked “this isn’t mine though.”

 Her sister paused, blinking “clearly your soulmate is an ass.”

 Taekwoon stared at the scribbles on his wrist as they appeared in rapid succession.

 “Since we are friends, when were you going to tell me that you were seeing someone?”

“Because I have to go around explaining the hickey on my throat.”

“My sister thinks you’re an ass.”

“I don’t even know what to think.”

 “I didn’t think you’d understand...yet.” he began slowly, feeling his heart sink. Sure the girl he had met was beautiful and sweet. They had courted for months and yet...it just didn't feel right when she kissed him. It was deeply unsettling the way his heart simply rejected her acts even though his body tried to reciprocate it.  His soulmates was too young. He wanted to protect his soulmate.

 “I understand you think I'm young and probably don't understand relationships.” the words stung as they appeared “I don't mind you liking someone else...but please don't break my trust by not telling me.”

Taekwoon stared hard at the words as they faded off his arm knowing that his soulmate had wiped them off.

 It was hard not to talk to each other even then. Their souls were far too intertwined with one another to truly hate. Taekwoon had been apologetic. Sufficiently so, he hoped. He knew that his relationship with his classmate wouldn't work out because every time they spoke, he felt awful. She was wonderful for certain, but beyond the pleasantries, something just didn't click.

 “I broke up with her.” the cool metal of the pen nib scraped against his heated skin. The ink spread over in small blotches, following the pattern of his skin.

 “Is she alright? Are you alright?” came the response, clearly written with a thin marker.

 “Yeah, something just didn't feel right.”

 “Well, you always have me.”

 “How Exciting.” he chuckled, knowing that on the other end his soulmate was furious.

 “You're a real pig for someone who is going through a break up and is supposed to be my soulmate.”

 “But you're stuck with me.”

 “I wouldn't want it any other way :)”

 “Who the hell is Han Sanghyuk and why is my soulmate constantly talking about him?” Taekwoon grumbled. His sister looked at his arm, covered in scribbles, chuckling at how excited his soulmate was to be hanging out with someone with so many similar interests.

 “Awww our little baby brother is jealous!”

 “Everyone thinks we're dating, It's hilarious how we're the talk of the town though!” Taekwoon gritted his teeth as he read “how has your singing been going? I hope you're going to audition for a nice company who doesn't try to kill you. I'll  come for your fansign when you make it big. I promise.” And immediately he was smiling.

 “What if I fail and become a vocal coach?”

 “I'm  signing up for your classes.”

 Taekwoon grinned, picking up his marker to respond.

 “Although I promised I'd sign up for Sanghyukkie’s dance classes too.”

 Taekwoon was grumpy again.

 Even after the many assurances to Taekwoon that she was not dating ‘that giant lump of human!’ Taekwoon was still being a pouty and annoying child. After all, his soulmate was seventeen and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop her from liking anyone, considering his own past. But she was his soulmate damn it!

 The worst hit though came months later when Sanghyuk had the audacity to write “Property of Han Sanghyuk.” Right below her shoulder. Minah had sufficiently slapped his hands away considering the two were not on romantic terms. She was also in the middle of her “I am not property, I am my own person!” rampage. He chuckled, holding the Sharpie away from her as she tried to snatch it from him, calling him several expletives. But all of the sudden he paused, gaping at her arm as a big red cross appeared across his name and three letters appeared beneath it.

 Minah's arm now read  “Property of JTW”

Next

[mx-requests-forum]

[Fulfilled] Do It For Me~

Prompt: Hyungkyun, bratty sub!hyungwon and dom!changkyun

Fulfilled by Moderator M~

Words: 1754

Warnings: explicit rating

AO3 Link (For Easier Reading)

“Try harder, maknae~” Hyungwon complained, staring down at Changkyun with half-lidded, bored eyes, watching unamusedly as Changkyun struggled to pleasure him. Flickering his eyes up, Changkyun frowned, frustrated that nothing he had tried that evening was up to Hyungwon’s impossibly fluctuating standards. He’d tried kissing his neck, but that was no good, so Changkyun moved down to his chest, but apparently he was being too rough, so he started using his mouth. It seemed like nothing Changkyun did could satisfy his boyfriend anymore.

“I am trying,” Changkyun responded, getting tired of his bratty boyfriend. Raising his eyebrows, Hyungwon clearly begged to differ, staring down at Changkyun from his perch on the bed.

“I said try harder,” Hyungwon repeated, voice sounding cold and annoyed. “You should know what makes me feel good by now,” he continued, absently playing with a strand of soft, brown hair, eyes shifting to stare at something more interesting, or in this case, the ceiling. Trying to hold back from audibly groaning in annoyance, Changkyun decided to kick it up a notch, sucking on Hyungwon’s nipple with a sense of urgency as he tried to prove himself.

“Ow- ow—OW! Changkyunnie, stop--” Hyungwon cried out, clearly exaggerating his pain to exacerbate his frustration with Changkyun. Pulling back with a low grumble of annoyance, Changkyun stared up at his boyfriend, starting to have his doubts that anything could please him anymore.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Changkyun asked, giving up on this infinite guessing game that Hyungwon was putting him through. Sighing, Hyungwon flickered his eyes back to Changkyun, giving him a stare as if he knew nothing.

“What I want is for you to make me feel good,” Hyungwon said, an airy, almost haughty tone to his voice. Changkyun nodded, raising his eyebrows, prompting him to actually answer his question but without any sass this time. “Try sucking my dick, you’re usually pretty good at that,” Hyungwon offered, spreading his thighs and impatiently awaiting Changkyun’s services.

Happy to at least have gotten some clue as to what Hyungwon actually wanted, Changkyun began undoing his boyfriend’s pants, a little frustrated to see that, despite his bitching, Hyungwon was actually already half-hard. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Changkyun ran his tongue along the head, placing wet, delicate licks along the sensitive tip. Hyungwon slipped out a trembling, breathy moan, lounging back onto the pillows of the bed and spreading his arms, finally starting to become content with Changkyun’s efforts. The boy could suck dick, if nothing else.

At the positive reaction from Hyungwon, Changkyun started picking up the pace, putting his all into sucking his boyfriend’s cock, his skillful tongue wrapping around the girth of it. Sucking around half of the length into his mouth, Changkyun swallowed around it, sparking a whimpering moan from Hyungwon.

“Good,” Hyungwon choppily said, the praise barely even uttered from his mouth- as if it almost pained him to say it. Changkyun stared up at Hyungwon, scrunching his eyebrows together as he continued to suck his dick, fully planning on giving the man an exacerbated look- except Hyungwon wasn’t even looking at him. Refocusing, Changkyun took the rest of Hyungwon’s length into his mouth, choking slightly at the intrusive feeling. He then bobbed his head, starting a nice, steady rhythm on Hyungwon’s cock, occasionally glancing up to see if Hyungwon was even paying him any attention.

Slipping out long, drawn-out moans, Hyungwon gripped the sheets, his thighs instinctively spreading. Even if he had trouble admitting it sometimes, Changkyun could seriously make him lose his mind in pleasure. Hyungwon squeezed his eyes shut, not even attempting to hold back the multitude of moans and gasps pouring from his lips as Changkyun slurped up his cock. The feeling was overwhelming and incredible, and Hyungwon felt his thighs tremble from the sheer intensity of Changkyun’s talented tongue. He didn’t want to cum like this though, no- he wanted something better.

“Stop,” Hyungwon said, voice short as he sat up, staring down at Changkyun with an unamused stare that contradicted his panting breaths and flushed cheeks. Removing his mouth quickly, Changkyun looked up, a little surprised to see Hyungwon so done with him, especially considering how much he appeared to be enjoying himself. Changkyun blinked up at Hyungwon, waiting expectantly for his next words.

“I want you to fuck me,” Hyungwon said, laying back down and spreading his ass cheeks, blinking cutely over at Changkyun- obviously trying to tempt him. Not trusting this demureness, Changkyun squinted his eyes, getting up onto the bed and reaching his hand down, pressing a fingertip against Hyungwon’s entrance.

“Do you want to ride me?” Changkyun asked, and then frowned, quickly realizing that Hyungwon hadn’t actually prepared himself earlier, even though Changkyun had asked him to. He gave Hyungwon a slightly frustrated look, not quite sure what he was going to do with the boy.

“Do I look like I want to do all that work?” Hyungwon rhetorically asked, clearly content in his comfy spot laying amongst the pillows. “No, that’s for you to do~” Hyungwon said, a cheeky grin crossing his features. Changkyun hated the fact that he actually found that expression adorable, and he began searching around the pillows, quickly locating the bottle of lube. Squirting some out, Changkyun began rubbing it between his fingers- knowing that if he didn’t warm it up, Hyungwon would have something else to bitch about.

When it became sufficiently warmed, Changkyun rubbed it against Hyungwon’s entrance, dipping his finger inside slowly and wiggling it around. At the tiny sound of pain from Hyungwon, Changkyun’s eyes darted up to look at the boy, making sure that he wasn’t going too fast. At the lack of any other response, Changkyun began inserting his finger deeper, groaning in satisfaction at how easy Hyungwon was to penetrate. They’d been doing this a lot lately, and Changkyun was glad that he didn’t have to work as hard to prepare the boy anymore. This didn’t stop him from adding another finger, scissoring it and trying to stretch Hyungwon as best as he could before he got the real thing. This, however, was apparently too much for Hyungwon, and Changkyun’s eyes flicker up to Hyungwon’s face as he hears an annoyed whine.

“It’s enough, stop fingering me already~ Just give me your cock~” Hyungwon complained, wiggling his ass as if he were trying to dislodge Changkyun’s fingers from inside him. Shaking his head, Changkyun continued fingering him.

“No, Hyungwonnie-hyung, I need to put in another finger first,” Changkyun said, trying to ignore the long, drawn out whine that Hyungwon cried out as a result of him saying this.

“No, you don’t!” Hyungwon protested, now physically reaching down to grab onto Changkyun’s wrist, actively removing his fingers. “Fuck me,” Hyungwon repeated. “Now.” Deciding to just give Hyungwon what he wanted, Changkyun slipped on a condom, lining his cock up with Changkyun’s entrance and pressing inside slowly. Reveling in the way Hyungwon’s body trembled at the new sensation, Changkyun exhaled slowly and deeply, eyes devouring the sight of his boyfriend taking his cock.

After letting Hyungwon adjust to the feeling for a few more seconds, Changkyun then began outright fucking the boy, thrusting his cock in and out of the wet, tight heat. Slipping out a deep, dark groan, Changkyun stared into Hyungwon’s face, gripping on the boy’s raised leg to get even deeper inside him. Moaning brokenly at the intensity of Changkyun’s thrusts, Hyungwon stared blearily over at his boyfriend, impressed with how good he was fucking him. Getting pounded into the pile of pillows, Hyungwon gripped onto the sheets, trying not to slide out of place as Changkyun mercilessly fucked him.

“Is it good?” Changkyun asked, his voice desperate for acknowledgement. Hyungwon whimpered, turning his head to the side and feeling his cheeks warm.

“Yes,” he quietly responded, embarrassed now that Changkyun was actually giving him exactly what he wanted. Laughing breathily, Changkyun quickened his pace, slamming against the one spot that always drove Hyungwon wild.

“You finally admitted to it~” Changkyun bragged, not saying much else as his mouth was preoccupied with a hoarse grunt, hips grinding against Hyungwon’s. Pointedly ignoring the comment, Hyungwon gripped the sheets tighter, raising up his legs so Changkyun could go even deeper, knowing that he was going to cum soon. At a particularly incredible thrust, Hyungwon’s eyes widened, and he whimpered, toes curling.

“I’m gonna cum-” Hyungwon hissed out, desperately arching his back and pressing his ass closer to Changkyun. Filled with a sudden sense of urgency, Changkyun began pounding Hyungwon harder, making an effort to hit his sweet spot with every single thrust. Eyes rolling back, Hyungwon’s body trembled, feeling ridiculously close, but just not quite there- “Jerk me off, now!” Hyungwon spat out, eyes staring up at Changkyun needily. Obeying his demand, Changkyun tried to simultaneously fuck him and jerk him off, quickly pushing Hyungwon to his orgasm. Cumming with a high, desperate moan, Hyungwon squirted his cum across his body and Changkyun’s hand, noticing hazily that some even splattered onto the sheets and wall. Not really caring, Hyungwon rode out his orgasm, breath coming out in hot, short spurts. Above him, Changkyun let go of Hyungwon’s cock, instead focusing on attaining his own orgasm. Luckily, he was already rather close, and came, filling up the condom while still fully inside Hyungwon.

After a few minutes, both boys came down from their orgasm high, and Changkyun pulled out of Hyungwon, peeling off the gross, cum-filled condom, and then standing up to dispose of it. From his perch on the bed, Hyungwon lazily watched his boyfriend move around, still reeling from the hard fuck he’d just gotten. As if finally noticing all the cum he was covered in, Hyungwon grimaced, realizing that it was already starting to cool into a wet, gross mess.

“Changkyunnie… come clean this,” Hyungwon said, blinking over at Changkyun with innocent eyes, feeling too lazy to actually get up to grab tissues himself. Grabbing the tissues and walking back over to his boyfriend, Changkyun started gently wiping away the goopy cum, getting as much off as he could with the tissues he’d grabbed. Feeling his heart warm at how much Changkyun dealt with his admittedly occasional brattiness, Hyungwon reached his hand out, stroking the side of Changkyun’s face adoringly.

“I love you~” Hyungwon said, smiling sweetly. Cheeks warming at the cute response, Changkyun smiled back, wiping away the last dregs of cum.

“I love you too” <3

[corneliussteinbeck]

GGS Spotlight: Marcie Sislow

Name:   Marcie Sislow Age: 39 Location: Seattle, WA

What does being a Girl Gone Strong mean to you? It means being unafraid to live in your own skin! Discovering my own strength increased my self-confidence and has helped me to be a better role model for my daughter. I believe being self-sufficient is empowering, being confident in your imperfections is freeing, and being able to move with a healthy body is a privilege. My mantra is mindful, attainable strength. It’s something that I strongly strive to achieve every time I train myself or others. It’s a state of mind, and it’s a movement! In today’s busy life we need to be ever more present in our daily activities, and that includes training. Being mindful,present, and truly showing up connected with your body is as important as your fitness journey.

Attainable strength is something that we can all strive to achieve. It takes dedication, consistency and most importantly a support system. Girls Gone Strong has been my support system!

How long have you been strength training, and how did you get started? I’ve been consistently strength training for the past five years. It all started after the birth of my son who is turning six this year. My turning point came in the fitting room of one of my favorite clothing stores. I was about eight months postpartum. After I had a full on meltdown and cried in the fitting room while nursing this new baby, I decided to take control of the situation and do something about it. I went home that night and did an internet search for at-home fitness. One of the first things that caught my eye was an ad for a kettlebell DVD. I had no idea what a kettlebell was, and I wanted to learn more. My search led me to Neghar Fonooni. After contacting her, I started online coaching and quickly fell in love with kettlebells and strength training.

What are your areas of expertise in health and fitness? I’ve always been a sporty kid. I played soccer, ran cross country in high school, and ran a half marathon back in the day. For a little over three years, I worked as a paramedic in Chicago while I finished my degree in exercise science. After graduation, I decided I wanted to add some more skills, and went on to become certified in massage therapy through the Cortiva Institute of Massage in Chicago. Today, I am a proud SFG-1 Instructor, RKC Instructor, Onnit Foundations coach, and lover of all the tools in the toolbox! I tend to gravitate towards unconventional training because it’s fun!

What does your typical workout look like? It depends on what I’m working toward at the time, but on a typical day I start with some mobility work, and I usually start my sessions with a couple sets of Turkish get-ups and light swings. Currently I’ve been doing three or four total-body, strength-focused days with some kind of metabolic finisher during the last five to ten minutes of my session. Variations of the deadlift, squats, chin-up practice, military press, and swings are some of my favorite things to train. As far as a finisher, my favorite right now is a Tabata of 20 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest for eight rounds. I’ll throw in whatever I’m in the mood for that day.

Sometimes I stick to the plan, and sometimes I don’t I think it’s important and just listen to what my body is in the mood for that day.

Favorite Lift: Two of my favorites moves are the deadlift, because of the booty gains and the KB Turkish get-up. The get-up is one of those moves that engages your whole body, and it almost feels like a beautiful piece of choreography. It’s like a dance with your kettlebell. It’s graceful and powerful all at the same time!

Most memorable PR: Crushing my snatch test for the SFG and RKC! I completed my test by snatching 100 reps in five minutes with a 16kg kettlebell. The last two minutes of the test took absolutely everything I had, but I wanted to finish what I started so badly that I was nearly in tears at the end! Besides being physically challenging, it was such an emotional journey for me because I had been training for this and trying to get to that finish line for quite sometime. It felt amazing to finally accomplish something I had been working toward for so long.

Top 5 songs on your training playlist:

So What’Cha Want/Beastie Boys

W.O/Ministry

Strobe/deadMau5

My Own Summer(Shove it)/Deftones

Gasolina-DJ Buddah Remix/Daddy Yankee,Lil John,Pitbull

Top 3 things you must have with you at the gym or in your gym bag:

Sling Shot Hip Circle I use it to activate my glutes as well as in my dynamic warm up

Bose wireless headphones

EO Everyone Baby Wipes for those post-training wipe downs

Do you prefer to train alone or with others? Why? Alone. Training is a chance to shut off the world and get in my own head. It’s my zen! With two kids, my home life is far from quiet. I crave that alone time where I can blast my angry music, smash some weights, and not think about anything other than the lift.

Best compliment you’ve received lately: I was at my favorite coffee shop(El Diablo in Seattle) recently when a very fabulous man came up to me and asked me if I was wearing fake lashes. I said no, just wearing mascara. He then waved his hand in the air and said “YAS Queen…SLAY girl….you are blessed!” The thing about that morning was that I wasn’t feeling very fabulous, and I was battling some negative voices in my head. That one minute interaction with this stranger totally changed the way I was feeling. In that moment my attitude totally changed, and I went on with my day with a better attitude. When in doubt……slay, girl!

Most recent compliment you gave someone else: The most recent compliment I gave was to my daughter. I told her that her curly hair was looking extra fabulous. It totally made her morning!

Favorite meal: Does dessert count as a meal? Hmmm….Pizza, pancakes, and pie…oh my!

Favorite way to treat yourself: A cup of chamomile tea at night in my favorite robe, with my lavender heating pad wrapped around my neck… total #grandmastatus happening at my house. I also love getting regular massage and a mani-pedi.

Favorite quote: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light!” — Dylan Thomas

Favorite book: I haven’t really read for pleasure in quite sometime, which is something I’d like to change. The last book I enjoyed was Born Survivors by Wendy Holden.

What inspires and motivates you? My kids, Sophia and Trent. They are fearless and care-free little humans. They inspire me to charge into the world fearlessly and confidently. As we grow up, we tend to lose that care-free attitude toward life. We stop questioning, and we stop wandering. We are raising our kids to question everything and to never be afraid to wander and get lost in the world. How are you supposed to find yourself if you never truly lose yourself in the first place?

What do you do? I’m a kettlebell coach, mom, wife, and personal trainer. At one point in my life I considered myself to be a professional booty cleaner but thank goodness those days are no more!

What else do you do? I love trying new things, I’ve only been in Seattle for the past three years, so there is still so much to explore! I enjoy taking long walks, paddle boarding, eating all the things, and am pretty darn good at making pottery. I also love making potions and lotions! In another life I must have been a healer or a medicine woman, since I have a strong connection with plants, herbs, and homeopathic medicines. I love making healing tinctures and syrups, herbal soaps, soothing salves for those callused hands, and loads of other medicinal concoctions.

Describe a typical day in your life: Depending on the day…

5:15 — Wake up. 6:15–7:15 — Teach my kettlebell class. 7:15–9:20 — Head back home and drink my coffee in silence before getting the kids up and starting our morning. Breakfast is made, backpacks are packed, then I walk my kids to school. 10ish — Head back to the gym get my own training session in, and depending on if I’m teaching another class, I hang out till after. If not, I head back home. 12ish — Lunch, laundry, house stuff 1:30–3ish —  Work on business development, write programs for clients, catch up on emails, etc. 3:30 — Pick up kids from school. 4–6 — After-school activities, homework with the munchies. 6–7ish — Dinner and clean-up 7–8ish — Hang out, family time 8ish — Put the kiddos to bed. 9–10ish — Relax! Watch my trash TV, with my cup of tea and my lavender heating pad, then bedtime!

Your next training goal: What’s next for me is getting jacked before I hit 40 this year! I’m going big, and I’ve started the Bigness Project from my friend and fellow GGS Kourtney Thomas and GGS Advisory Board Member Jen Sinkler. I’m really loving the change of pace and the change in training tools, and I’m excited to see what the end of the journey will bring!

What are you most grateful for? I am most grateful for my health! A few months ago I had a severe vertigo attack that landed me in the ER. It was so violent that I thought I was having a heart attack! Fast-forward through many trips to the doctor, meds, and finally seeing my naturopath. I was diagnosed with Benign Paroxysmal Vertigo. It completely floored me for months. I was bedridden and just the simple task of walking my kids to school became the most difficult challenge of the day. Training and teaching were out of the question, when I couldn’t look up or look down without getting severely dizzy. This humbling experience taught me to slow down and really listen to my body. I had been juggling too much for so long that my body had finally said enough!I’m starting from scratch with my training, but I can finally do deadlifts and Turkish get-ups without feeling queasy. My strength is slowly coming back but I’m just grateful to be able to do what I love again!

Which three words that best describe you? Outgoing. Bubbly. Annoyingly happy.

What’s the coolest “side effect” you’ve noticed from strength training? One of the best side effects of strength training is being able to lift my kids however and whenever I want. They’re getting big, and I can still keep up. Also, I love my friends call me when they need help lifting anything heavy.

How has lifting weights changed your life? It’s definitely made me more confident and has opened the doors to be able to teach others what I’ve learned along the way. I feel so lucky to be able to do what I love each and every day.

What do you want to say to other women who might be nervous or hesitant about strength training? In today’s busy society, we make ourselves the very last priority, when in fact, we should put ourselves at the top of our list. Do it! We only get this one life, this one body, to truly discover our inner and outer strength. We are given these amazing vessels.

What a shame to go through life without ever really knowing what you’re capable of!

All professional photos by Paolo Sanchez. Location FUELhouse, Seattle, WA

Feeling inspired?

If you’re inspired by Marcie, read on to learn more about — and join! — our community of strong, supportive women…

The post GGS Spotlight: Marcie Sislow appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.

from Blogger http://corneliussteinbeck.blogspot.com/2017/04/ggs-spotlight-marcie-sislow.html

[dropsofletters]

tales of a perfect rhyme

title: tales of a perfect rhyme pairing: son hyunwoo/reader genre: poet!au/painter!au/forbidden love!au/friends!au summary: Sometimes, you’re bad at exactly what you desire to become the most. That’s her case and it also is Hyunwoo’s when they realize that they are not exactly good at the arts they desire. Yet, their youthful personalities and their blossoming love seems enough to stay happy throughout their toughest times, until it is not enough. type: angst/fluff/romance/humor word count: 12,540 disclaimer: this is part of my august special called ‘the anti-love club’. each story can be read individually, however, you’d be getting a little bit more of backstory along with some easter eggs if you read each of them, as well as helping me with support. the masterlist can be found here.

Without the chirping tone of birds outside her window, what would be of her? Without the sunshine that gleams through it, the smell of fruits lingering in the air—too dulcet, yet too necessary, what would her life be like?

The question does not go through her head often, for her mind remains too busied by the beauty of the winery around her. Her house, on its own, is surrounded by fields and fields of fruits, green and blooming, the peak of existence. The oxygen in her lungs has always been easier to breathe, more lightweight, the reason as to why mischief is the first thing she thinks about when the ashes of sleep are dusted away from her face.

This room has seen her grow up into the woman she is today. With old paintings from her youthful days, running up to her uncle with paint-stained fingertips creating images of the rainbows she’d get to see after every ounce of rain. Some of them are newer—a portrait that said uncle, the owner of the winery, had gifted her for her seventeenth birthday, and clearly…some of her newest pieces of art. Nothing too excellent, mixes of colors a la Pollock, not quite looking for a shape or an imagery, but a feeling instead. One that she always dares to call normality—it may be happiness, just like it may be a routine, but in her thoughts, she knows that whichever way she decides to go, the winery will always be her home.

The paint on her walls is a contrast to her colorful sundress, yellow with daisies on top of it, but the length is not exactly what she is looking for. To anyone that has seen her walk through the streets, or simply riding on her bicycle, they’ve captured a glimpse of her style. The painted sneakers, the fixed dresses, the shirts that end up bleached or died or cut. The itch starts from her soul and ends up on the tips of her fingers, desiring to make a change in her life that can translate through her. She thinks that happiness shall be shown as long as it’s had, and it shall be prided on.

Perhaps, the reason of her happiness may be having breakfast right now and her gloss-coated lips press together while she looks at her reflection in the mirror. A pair of scissors is already going through the edge of the sundress—making it a tad bit shorter, a lesson that she learned when she had her second boyfriend and she felt more confident on her choices of clothing. The thing is…there are days in which she wants to exude the mentality that art is in herself, in a way, that as long as she can create something, her mind may never be dulled.

The fabric is shorter by the time she steps out of her room, not perfect, but sufficiently flowy for her to walk down the set of stairs and approach the cream-colored kitchen. The microwave is buzzing, her uncle’s shaggy head of hair covering the majority of the surface while he leans down to look at the coffee cup that is being heated inside the machine. The old man has done nothing but support her dream, that one memory of her youth that told her to be an artist…even when everyone else had told her that she’s not good at it.

Art is not about being good, she tries to tell herself. It’s about enjoying life in a different way. About feeling and letting others feel.

It will never pay the bills for her, but that’s why the winery exists.

Her attention is caught on someone else, sipping on a colder drink of coffee, then slurping from the spoon hovering over his rice bowl, so heated that a cloud forms on top of the breakfast. One of the winery workers, with golden skin and matted black hair, more often than not faintly moved away from his eyes, to show those small senses of gravity in their chocolate hues. His lips are plumped up, as if he’s always blowing on his meals to eat them—and that may be the case, for one of the few times in which she gets to see Hyunwoo open his mouth is when he is relishing on the taste of her Uncle’s infamous cooking.

Or that’s what the other workers at the winery say; that Hyunwoo is sweet, but too quiet. So eerily quiet that he seems to blend into any wall, any floor, any seat…though, she cannot see it that way. The moment Hyunwoo stepped into that winery, she was very well out of a relationship and promising to the world that love does not exist. She’d said she would never take any other man seriously, and he came in like a gentle breeze. Not a tornado. Not a tsunami, like the soft reminder of his laughter early in the morning, or the looks spared throughout a few months until a friendship started in between the two of them.

Her weight leans forward, staring at Hyunwoo’s eyes when he captures her gaze before jotting her chin forward. “Give me some of that,” She says, making sure that she crosses her arms under her chest, legs extending as a way of capturing his attention. And she has it, shredded glimpses of his interest in his eyes, in the way those lips quirk up and give her a foretaste of that soul that hides underneath his quiet nature. To some, he ruins the mood. For her, he creates it.

“Your uncle made you a plate.” He tells her, though his spoon is already balancing itself on the expanse of his hand, nearing her lips until they part and take a bite of the meal, paired with eggs. When the spoon is once again nearing his plate to scrape some contents off, her eyes trail to the notebook by his side, some words scribbled, others hidden under the blurred lines of a word he may not have liked…and still, Hyunwoo opts to use a pen.

“You got some writing done during the weekend?” And perhaps, a poet-to-be like Hyunwoo should really go for a laptop, and a Word Document at that, but his style is to keep it simple. Hyunwoo may not be the most profound, romantic of men—heck, he may not be one of those rooted poets that grow up to be stars every few years, creating a new wave to be remembered by textbooks, but the relaxed expressions on his features when finally having somewhere in which he can voice out his thoughts and concerns is more than she could ever ask for.

Hyunwoo nods, ready to spurt some knowledge of his endeavors back at home when her Uncle clears his throat, resting the expanse of her plate on the counter, the seat that she would be taking place in right beside her Uncle’s favorite worker. His strength has helped her Uncle endlessly, with carrying the wines, organizing them, making sure that his poor, old bones don’t struggle at the mere weight of his bent knees. “Pull your skirt down and stop fluttering your eyelashes like that.” Her Uncle says, giving her a pointed look when she simply shrugs her shoulders.

“Can’t pull it down, I already cut it.”

“One would think that once you became an adult, you wouldn’t be so…stubborn, but the older…the worse it becomes.” Though, the tiredness in his voice doesn’t dismiss the nostalgia on his tone. Days that were difficult, yet part of her growing-up process. The leather of the seat digs on the back of her thighs when she takes her spoon in between her fingers, her other hand already sneaking to reach for Hyunwoo’s notebook and read over his poems.

Something about him will always be tranquil. Just like wine, he makes her feel—sleepy, a bit heated, ready to embark in her biggest adventure but take it slow while in the process. He swirls on her tongue, intoxicates her, leaves a flutter on the pit of her stomach, a heartbeat against the other to race and see who wins, it brings her to the sky and puts her down on her feet in such a gentle, caring way. “Ah…I’ve heard that before. I’ll settle down eventually.”

Though, while munching on her meal and hearing the utensils on both men’s hands moving with precision to eat as fast as possible before getting to work, her fingers hook on the small, yellow, somewhat bitten pencil that rests in between the pages, scribbling down a note that only Hyunwoo could read.

“When will you write me a poem?” She writes first, on the last line of the one poem she read before drawing an arrow towards the piece of art itself. “Also, you’re improving.”

The pencil glides from her fingertips for him to take, and she swears she sees his expression lighten up, cheeks filled with food when he writes some words of his own. “What do you want me to write about?”

The action repeats itself, sparing one glance at her Uncle, too lost in the news displayed on the television to pay attention to her. “Whatever I make you feel.”

His response reads: “I can’t.”

She voices her thoughts out, speaking in a hushed voice while looking at him. Hyunwoo’s trembling expression turns towards her Uncle, but she knows that the old man is not what is stopping him—if anything, her Uncle would be over the moon if she got to date Hyunwoo, more seriously past this flirty relationship they hold. Instead, she basks on his presence, his manly scent, the way his white t-shirt hugs his body, jeans cladding his thick legs. “Why? Do I make you that speechless?” She counterparts, quirking an eyebrow when Hyunwoo chuckles and shakes his head.

“I just need time to think about it.” He whispers. “I’m not that good of a poet, yet.”

“You write about the winery, though. The trees, the fruits, the people here. Why not me?”

Why not her? Why not the woman that has promised herself that she’d capture his gaze and practically make it impossible to tear it away from her? To have Hyunwoo has always seemed holy, in a way, almost like getting an angel sent directly to her…all memories of the past few years merging into one single thought: that it has never happened. Without a lot of trying, and with a lot of work to do on the winery and on their preferred choices of art…it never happened. “It will happen someday.”

Though, she can only pucker her lips up, taking another bite of her meal before leaning back on her seat, arms crossed over her chest as a way to release the stress that is pent-up inside of her. Maybe, Hyunwoo would not see her a muse—that one person that takes every single breath away from his lungs, even in a place filled with trees. Or that one person who clouds his mind, even in his dreams, creating images of what-could-have-been’s that he can only fantasize about. “I won’t get younger at the pace you’re going.” The only sound she receives is his chuckle, shaking his head at her antics. This counts another day of a failed try of getting to be his muse, or simply to see more of a glimpse of interest from him. Not surprising, though somehow digging on her chest, she stands up from her seat after a few quick bites of her meal, doing her best to finish the rice before she continues on with her day.

Not without wrapping her fingers around his shoulder to speak into his ear:

“You’re lucky wine gets better with the passage of time.”

###

The trees wave against each other, dancing with the wind, singing their lonesome blues with every movement of their leaves. Instead, she finds the happiness in them—in the hope that the Sun glares down onto their existences, in the way animals seem to be happy around the winery and in the workers, too, not only Hyunwoo but everyone else, as well. Though, if she’s honest with herself, she wishes she could be a good artist, for painting Hyunwoo should be the best benefit for a person of artistic desire.

He’s far away, like he always is. So close, yet so far away when the day is welcomed into their lives. Another day in which she has to smile to hide the absolute adoration behind her eyes and another shrug of her shoulders when her uncle asks anything about Hyunwoo and herself. There’s nothing, she says, and it may be like that—if it was not for the way he smiles at her when he looks up from his position at picking up the sweetened violet grapes, because those eyes scream for her to finally settle down.

For him.

With him.

To have him.

The concept had always been foreign to her—settling down. There are too many beautiful people in this world; too many lips to taste; too many nights to remember. Plenty of times had she heard the words whore or slut used to describe her around the city, small in comparison to the ones in other countries…and she’d say that the concept is so…antique. Perhaps, she could image the word escaping the lips of a sexist man trying to sound remotely attractive while also demolishing the amount of things a woman can do…or, something easier, it’s the word that people use when they can’t understand the complexity of dating. Or maybe, she just sees it from the other end of the spectrum.

But Hyunwoo did not see her like some cheap woman who would much rather have her legs opened than her mind, because that’s not the case…and it will never be for him. The beige hat to shelter him from the sun moves a bit with the wind when his fingers stretch to wave at her, a gentle smile on his features—one that reads have a nice day, instead of the usual this is just a pleasantry before we have sex and have to pretend we don’t know each other after. And surely, with any other man she would have gotten tired…she would have simply said that not a lot of people are made for kissing and telling.

But this is Hyunwoo, the one man that saw her as an artist, as the glide of her brush against a canvas that reads…nonsensical matters. No one sees her art as worthy. No one but Hyunwoo.

When she stares back at the canvas, right after sending a wave back, she realizes that what she does is not art. If she had to conceptualize it, she’d go past Van Gogh or Pollock, past whatever The Louvre could show—that’s the history of art, but it happened way before all those people that crafted the popular side of art. Why is it that people had forgotten that they are art themselves? Art that when described, when coming to life, could be beautiful just like how it could be utterly disgusting. In her eyes, there will never be enough museums and art history books that would ever be able to help her become the artist that would showcase something to the world that matches what Hyunwoo makes her feel.

Her fingers hook around her sketchbook, moving away from the living room of the house while the flapping of wings dulls after two seconds of its initiation, her parrot resting on her shoulder. It may be a bit movie-esque, and Hyunwoo has compared her to a pirate countless times, but nature exists within her…and Hyunwoo is the tranquility that matches her softened heart. A heart that has prickled edges, too much intelligence for its own good, but that can become warm at the mere sight of him.

Art goes past colors—past the damned lines that she does in the name of showing what it is that goes through her head, past what she could ever comprehend, perhaps more understood by an expert…but she can give a name to what Hyunwoo makes her feel.

The caress of fingertips over someone’s back. Traced over lines, bumps, love handles, marks, reddened spots, moles—softly, gently, chilling, relaxing, yet so intimate. It can be done wrongly, when asking for a massage after a long day to someone who is not interested, for example; just like it can be the most miniscule of gestures that breathe out an ‘I love you’. Hyunwoo, with his voice alone, makes her feel like a teenager that has gotten her waist grabbed for the first time—not with a pull to make her feel uncomfortable, but with gentleness, the steps in between them taken far too slowly, too meticulously.

But…she’s not the type to get scared about what her uncle may think if Hyunwoo ends up dating her.

So, what is it that stops her?

Hyunwoo is kneeling down, the fabric of his pants dirtied by mud, his white tank top showing his glowing sweaty skin in the faintest golden color. With a raise of his eyebrow and a stare from the corner of his eye, he says: “Isn’t that my favorite pirate?”

Her fingers move at their own accord with her little pencil, too worn out that it creates the faintest of lines. She starts with the shape of his face—oval, with small eyes that glisten immensely, one more closed than the other as if deep in thought; his lips, plump, asking for a kiss, making her beg mentally to have him speak more. He doesn’t speak enough for how delicious his voice is to hear. “Depends. Jack Sparrow is not on your list?”

“Not when you exist.”

“Smooth.” She replies, looking at her sketch and furrowing her eyebrows. Realism is not her forte—but what is, really? Deep in this whole nonsensical heartbreaker stance that she has created for her, lost in a never-ending summer, she has tried to cover that insecure part of herself. The one woman that never grew up as a talented individual—that loved art, but was never good at it. Hyunwoo is the same with poetry, though he’s far more talented at other stuff around the winery, and an exquisite wine preparator. “I tried to draw you, but it looks like the lovechild of…a goblin and yourself, actually.”

“I wanna see.” He says, knees creaking when he stands up, nearing her body and making her pet parrot fly away. Sunny, an odd name for a parrot…but it just happened to stick around in between the staff at the winery.

Pressing the sketchbook to her chest, she looks into his eyes. “No. I’m shy.”

“You read my poems all the time—” Hyunwoo starts before squinting his eyes, smiling at her when tilting his head to the side to inspect her features. “Wait, did you just say that you are shy?”

For a woman who claims to love sex, casual dating and never getting too attached to anyone—for people are just that, equals, individuals supposed to coexist with each other to get to the end-line, she has definitely gotten attached to Hyunwoo. She’d say, even, he’s the cause of her abrupt stop in dating around. “I mean, I can be shy about things.” She starts, a shrug given by her shoulders. “Much more when those things look like shit.”

“Is it the first time that you’ve tried drawing me?” He asks, and she finds herself speechless.

“Depends.”

“Stop saying depends—”

“Would you think it’s silly of me if I had tried drawing you before?”

Twirling around after his response, a smile crept up on her features when she hears him say: “I’d think it’s sweet.” He tells her, the creaking of grass under his boots sounding behind her, holding her sketchbook to her chest, her dress moving with every movement she gives.

“I never do you justice, though.” She answers, trying to get away from him simply to tease—to have him chasing, following, at the edge of his seat for every word she says. Hyunwoo is a man that has, at least, a vast majority of the people in the city head over heels for him, and to see his quiet persona crumble into a bashful beam at her presence boosts her ego, truthfully—and gives her hope, if anything. For what? Only God would know.

“Don’t look down on your art.”

“We both know it’s not art.”

At that moment, he takes her by the wrist, turning her around until the expanse of his wide and toned chest connects with hers. Eyes to eyes, lips to lips, and when he breathes out an answer, she swears the air has sent her a kiss from him her way. “I’ll give you something and you give me your sketchbook to see how you drew me.”

Her eyes roam his features before scoffing. “Money?”

“I don’t have money, you know that.”

“Ah, a kiss?” Trying her luck, Hyunwoo raises an eyebrow, chuckling at her words.

“Not when all the workers are looking at us.”

“I’ve done worse—”

“I know,” Hyunwoo indicates. “But I’m not one of your worse moments.”

“Right, you’re the best.” She mumbles, knowing that losing him would probably hurt her as much as a blade digging into her sternum, towards her heart, dissipating to the rest of her body—electrifying her with one last breath. His fingers slip into the pocket of his baggy jeans, getting a small notepad out before putting it on her hold, snatching her sketchbook away from her hands just in time to open it.

Her eyes flicker towards the opened notepad, reading pages and pages of a supposed ‘her’. The poems are short, far too small for them to be thought-out pieces, but…they exude the kind of love that is simplistic, softened, all around a bit immature. “You know?” Hyunwoo answers, ripping the page away from her sketchbook before giving it back to her. “I’m going to keep this.”

“I’ll only keep this if the ‘her’ in the poems is me.”

Hyunwoo gives a few steps away from her, walking backwards as he speaks. “…Wouldn’t you want to know.”

The world shines brighter for a second, in the way it falls over his body and clads him in the shape of her daydreams. Where they stand will always be the reason of her reminiscing, something that shall never be taken away from her. “I do,” She adds, arms crossed, rushing towards where he is. “Because I’m the perfect rhyme for anything you think about.” She teases, knowing fully well that Hyunwoo’s mind will always be a mystery to her—but she knows there is attraction, this magnetism in between them that keeps them close, much more when he halters his steps, hands ending up on top of her uncovered arms.

A rhyme is more than tunes that sound the same. A rhyme needs profoundness, meaning, history after history behind syllables that match. “…You’re not wrong.” Hyunwoo breathes out, the wind blowing a bit on his hat, his hand reaching up to keep it in place. “Just, read the poems, don’t overthink it.”

“I won’t.”

And he leaves, blocking the noise of the birds with his steps, with the hum on his voice as he relishes on the sound of his favorite song of the week. For some reason, she feels like dancing when seeing his back depart from her and when her fingers feel the glide of the sheets of paper against her fingertips.

Her.

She’s ‘her’.

Unnamed, she shall remain—like a song that he heard on the radio, learned from one listen, and will never be able to find. But she’s there. Oh God, she’s there, settled, waiting for a smile from him, a rhyme to fit her, a moment that is not fleeting. For a chance to make Son Hyunwoo fall in love with her, and have a future with him.

But she’s not a woman to call a ‘forever’.

###

“Is this the apple wine you guys prepared this week?”

Hyunwoo has his hands crossed over his body, the light of the storage room of the winery barely powerful enough to cast down on his softened features. He quirks one of his eyebrows, a habit of his, and turns to look at her after humming. He has listened to her, she knows, but maybe he needs some confirmation, smiling at her before turning to the pristine shelves that showcase years and years of wines, all of different tastes. “Ah, yes,” He initiates. “It’s not fermented completely, well, not yet. I had to go over the recipe time and time again with your uncle—been a long time since he last prepared one of those.”

They’re not tipsy, but they’re alone. The sound of music is in the background, soft, steady, some jazz that relaxes them into—probably—sharing a drink or two. The door is locked, everyone is back at home and her uncle is certain that they’re adding the labelled stickers to the bottles to send them off to a store tomorrow. That, however, is only halfway done by the time she started to inspect the shelves. “Do you think it’s good?”

“It may taste a bit like cider, I believe.” But he doesn’t give much of an answer, instead taking another sticker and a bottle, lining it up perfectly before sighing. “Why?”

“Ooh, why must you think there is a reason behind me asking?”

“Because you’re you.”

“I’m the company’s publicist.” She defends herself—even when the title is not paired with a degree, it damn right fits her. She has done everything and anything to take the company to social media, exploiting it to getting more clients, more stores to buy their products—and of course, a few pictures that entice anyone to try their wines. “I need to know if what I’m selling is good.”

Hyunwoo chuckles, dragging a seat until he is seated in front of the spacious, glassed table where the newest bottles were placed, fresh out of fermentation. “So, you want to try the apple wine?”

“I want to try it with you.” She corrects, already looking for a switch to clear the room with more lights, smiling to herself at the sight of the city from the small windows. “It’s Friday night, Hyunwoo. And even on Friday nights, you’re always stuck here.”

Though, he can only give a soft answer. “I know.”

But why?

Why?

Why is someone like him just so given to the winery?

Her hand touches his shoulder, softly, gently, dragging her fingernails over the expanse of his t-shirt to ask: “Why?” Because she’s not one to stay with her curiousness, the questions that overtake her even at the peak of the night.

“Just because.”

“I don’t get it.” She skips the conversation, moving around until she is in front of him on the chair. His legs are extended, parted, fingers wrapped around a bottle of wine and she actually takes it from him and places it on the desk, getting lost in his eyes the more she speaks. He’d never see the poetry of him. “You’re a dancer, Hyunwoo. You’re meant to be in some club, dancing the night away with some girl—”

“I have you,” Hyunwoo replies, though they’re not a serious matter—much less have they voiced out their clear ministrations, what unites them. Their start had been simple, for Hyunwoo is a dancer, took years of classes just like her, artists that found love in some other shape of art…and ended up not being good at it. Their only choice was to get better together. “…And that wine really is calling for me.”

Slipping her fingertips on the bottle that had captured their attention, she uses a utensil to open it, grabbing two glasses with quickened movements. “I knew you’d end up trying it!”

“You always make me try new things.”

“Because you’re a boring grandpa, sometimes.” She answers, passing the glass down to him, surprised when his arm wraps around her waist, bringing her down to settle her weight down on his thigh, her knees pressed to his, his eyes staring directly into her soul after taking a sip of the wine. She follows his actions, sighing in delight. “This is good.”

“It is.” He answers, smiling at her with that glint behind his eyes. “At least, I’m good at something. Wines, you know.”

She blinks at that, letting her hands roam his face, learning every aspect of him—of the lips she has gotten to kiss a handful of times, never too profound, as if afraid of falling. But Hyunwoo is a ticking bomb, he’s waiting to grab her by the hand and drag her into the depths of bliss that is…being around him. “You’re good at everything, Hyunwoo.” She replies, leaning closer until her shoulder is against his chest, her head resting on his shoulder. “Just because you weren’t good at poetry from the beginning doesn’t mean you’re bad at it.”

“I just don’t get it,” Hyunwoo mumbles. “Poetry? Someone like me shouldn’t even be rhyming stuff.”

“Oh yeah, sure, let yourself get carried away by the supposed stigma of society that says that buff men can’t be sensitive or have a braincell sometimes.” She huffs out her answer, looking into his eyes and seeing the adoration in them, his silent stance speaking more than his words ever could. “We’re dancers—of course you’d end up liking poetry. You’ve danced to poetry, without knowing,” And her smile expands in a grin when she remembers that one night in which they did go out to dance, the night of their first kiss, the reason as to why Hyunwoo never disappeared from her brain. Hips snug together, arms slotted in fitted ways; two souls conjoining. “It’s music. Hyunwoo, if there’s anyone that does music justice in this world it’s you.” She takes a sip of her drink just at the same time that he does, the dulcet taste sticking to her tongue, begging to be taken away by him. By his kiss. “The difference is that music sticks to our brains—the lyricism of it is meant to be remembered, but poetry sticks to the soul. Let your soul speak, if it’s about the winery or about me, just let it have a voice. It’s getting better, I promise.”

His arm tightens around her waist, leaning forward until his lips press to hers softly, carefully, as if he’s afraid he’ll be caught, and he may. When Hyunwoo pulls away, his legs parting even more in the process. “You’re a doll, you know that?”

“I try to be for gods on legs just like yourself.” She replies, leaning her weight back before closing her eyes at the warmth of him. “Hyunwoo…”

“Yes?”

“We’ll make it someday.” She says, trying to sway into his heart, surprised to feel his breathing stopping for a moment, as if taken off guard. “You, as a poet. Me, as an artist.”

“I don’t think so—”

“That’s what dreams are for, aren’t they?” She replies. “It’s not for thinking, it’s for imagining, dummy.”

And she may imagine that, someday, her fingers may hook around a brush just at the same time that he reads over a book. Just at the same time that they grow away from that winery and turn into the exact persona that no one would have ever imagined them to be. And more than that, together, to be exact.

But that’s what dreams are for.

###

“Do you like Hyunwoo?”

Taking care of children may probably be one of the things she likes the least—but someone at the winery had brought their daughter to work today, and having children close to alcoholic drinks may not be the best of ideas. Hence, while seated in front of her canvas, in front of the window that sometimes shows the figure of Son Hyunwoo—just like now—, she wonders why the child that could not even braid her hair a few minutes ago now is intelligent enough to guess that she likes Hyunwoo.

Seojin swings her legs back and forth, seated on a chair right beside her, and she turns to look at her briefly, a smile on her features. “Maybe,” She answers, earning a big beam from the seven-year-old child. Once returning to her painting, a mess of colors and emotions that she cannot explain—too much green and yellow, currently, perhaps inspired by Sunny, hanging around the living room, she voices more of her thoughts out. “Why do you think I like him?”

“Because you look at him like how my mom looks at my dada.” Seojin replies smartly, moving the little baby hairs away from her face to look at the man that is kneeling down in front of the greeneries to pick up some fruits. “Hyunwoo looks like a prince.”

“He does.”

Curiousness overtakes her. “Then, why isn’t he your prince?”

Simple, she believes, the answer slips her tongue just when she stares away from her canvas, twirling her brush in between her fingers when Hyunwoo becomes a clear shadow that passes through the window, embarking a trip towards her heart. She had been touched by too many people, in love plenty of those, she had gotten drunk far more than a princess could ever tell, made mistakes that were horrendous, tainted her soul in distrust. That’s not something a princess does, or a doll, like Hyunwoo calls her sometimes. “Because I’m not a princess.” She answers, shrugging her shoulders just when she creates another line of the canvas, quickened and interrupted by Seojin voicing out her concerns.

“But you like him…if you like the prince, that makes you a princess.” Seojin speaks quickly, standing up from her spot and getting in the way with her canvas, the tips of her messy hair—still in a braid—getting scattered with a bit of paint. She does her best to take the small towel that hangs from her shoulder to clear the brown strands, but Seojin is not paying attention. “Why don’t you make him your boyfriend?”

Because it may be a bit crazy—a bit too out of what she normally does, simply date around and wait until it is over. It may mean love and part of her just fears what that could mean, or if Hyunwoo would even want something like that, for he had not voiced it out either. “I’m afraid he’d say no.”

“You’re pretty, though.”

“It takes more than being pretty to get a man like him.” She tells her, only to widen her eyes when Seojin rushes towards the entrance of the house.

“Of course not, you’re nice and cute, what else does he want?!” Seojin fires back, too overexcited when she opens the door with swinging motions, not helped by the strong wind that almost closes it again. “I’m going to tell him—”

“Seojin, no!” But Seojin moves too fast, already running to the left to go to the field in which Hyunwoo is working at. Without knowing, she stands up quickly, letting her brush fall on the floor just as she feels her heart racing at the mere words that Seojin had brought to life innocently. Someone’s half, a story to tell, a tale to finish—a fairytale, one that she has never lived, never got the chance to have with the people that she liked.

The wind moves her hair, her dress, crazy just as she wonders through the fields, hearing the giggles that escape Seojin’s lips. Just when she picks up her steps, the heels of her boots digging deeper into the grass, she watches Hyunwoo kneel down in front of Seojin, putting his ear closer to her lips just when she mumbles something to him. Slowing down her steps as she nears them, she’s met by Hyunwoo’s stare that trails up her legs and towards her features, giving her a piece of his heart in a smile.

She has never been this nervous—not when seated on his lap, not when kissing him, not when she promises herself that Hyunwoo is the reason behind her solitude these past few months, afraid of getting her heart broken, but also needing more of him. Her fingers slot with each other, trying to look for leverage, just when Seojin lifts her hands in the air, happiness overflowing. “She likes you!”

“Seojin, I asked you not to go out running like that.” She scolds softly, letting out a sigh at her last word, only to watch Hyunwoo nearing her.

“She came here to tell me a secret.” He says.

“We both know it’s not a secret.” She replies, wary of the small eyes that are staring at them as they speak. Hyunwoo is having the time of his life with this, his broad chest shaking with laughter. “You’re not even good with children, stop pretending you are now—”

“I’m not.”

“Hyunwoo—”

His fingers go through his hair, the strands curving to cup his face softly, caressing it with the twirl of his bags. Parted, showcasing his forehead that creases a bit when he speaks. “But, I like you, too.” He tells her, speaking nonchalantly, albeit laughing a bit to himself. Perhaps, the people around—ahem, Seojin—may be the reason behind his nervousness. “What if we settle this with a date? Friday?”

“…As if you were not going to spend your Friday night with me already.” She answers, her voice cut short when a set of plucked, small flowers flies in the air and falls on top of them. The extended hands and the huff that came from Seojin is enough of a reason to showcase that she must have plucked some flowers, thrown it at them as some sort of celebration.

“You’re so cute together!”

“Ah, Seojin, don’t pluck the flowers like that. That hurts them.” Scolding, she starts, only to hear Hyunwoo muffling his laughter when she kneels down and picks Seojin up on her hands, the weight making her puff her cheeks out. “I’ll take her inside before she starts telling people that I like you.”

“No one knows?!” Seojin voices out, only to have her hand pressing down on her small mouth.

“And no one will know, Seojin.”

Turning around, she feels Hyunwoo’s eyes on her form and she swears she hears his laughter, the promise of an endless love and a date that may be the start of her doom.

###  

Living in the moment, that had always been her mantra. And what a way to live in the moment, it is, to be held in Hyunwoo’s arms.

Never had anyone taken her breath away, in a way that her chest constricts and still, she can’t have enough oxygen inside of her. But he does. Of course, it is the man that is dancing the night away with her that is doing so—the only person in this entire town that could have her thinking of a house in a hill, with not so immaculate decorations but homely ones instead, of walking barefoot on the tiles to reach him, wrap her arms around him as he downs his first cup of coffee of the day. But he does. Son Hyunwoo does, absentmindedly perhaps, simply by smiling at her, by holding her closer and dipping her into the dance floor, as if she’s a feather and he’s a bird—meant to coexist together.

Because, once every few moons, someone like her falls in love…and it is so slow and calculated in its process that she is surprised by her patience, by her abstinence in having him, but Hyunwoo is worth it. He’s worth waiting a million years, the slow music around them in the romance themed Friday night, paired with lighted up hearts in pink shapes is everything she could have never imagined happening. But here’s Hyunwoo, a predicament, the one stone in her road that had her falling and she’d go back and do it again if she had to.

…She had never been one to learn from her mistakes, after all, and if Hyunwoo is one…

This is the greatest fucking mistake of her life.

Her fingers wrap around the edge of his collar, opened buttons welcoming his taut chest that she traces with the tip of her index finger. “Showing some cleavage here, I see.” She says, sending a toothy grin that she can’t imagine herself giving to anyone but him—one of those that show her gums, make her seem a bit childish, and yet speak of nothing but excitement. “We’re twinning, then.”

Hyunwoo’s smile falters, his eyes flickering down to the neckline of her dress before laughing at his own antics. His cheeks are tainted pink, or maybe the lights are deceiving her, but it’s a nice color to match his beige button down and that rosiness of his lips that she will probably dare test later on the night. Probably meaning…certainly, as long as he’s into it. “You talk a lot.”

“And you talk too little.”

“I’m not a man of words.”

“You’re an action man?”

“I don’t know, I’d have to show you.” And with that, he presses her body closer to his, her hands stopping her ministrations to expand on top of his chest, catching her footing quickly, learned from years of dancing. Her feet move with expertise, along with his, the lingering smell in between them of fruity drinks and dinner. His hand moves on her waist, rest along her hips and sighs heavily, as if nearing their bodies will end of suffocating them but also filling them up with attraction. Past attraction, even, whatever it is that flutters on her chest and has her thinking about the beauty of being held by him instead of simply voicing it out is some magic that she can’t quite explain.

“Ooh, Hyunwoo is talking big.” She wiggles her eyebrows, trying to regain some power and speaking because—damn, it’s what he does. He gets her tongue going, her mind railing, her heart aching simply to have a piece of him. Hyunwoo seems like her future, and she’d be disappointed if this is not some sign from life that the only man that she feels like falling in love for is anything but trouble. “Let me tell you something. I’ll recite a poem to you, Shownu.” The way she spits out the poet name he had come up with has him smiling, nodding along to her words. “Roses are red, violets are blue—”

“Aren’t violets supposed to be, well, violet?”

“Don’t go smart on me now.” She replies, resting her head against his shoulder and looking towards the other couples dancing; some older, some younger, some definitely together for a long time, some learning to fall in love. Where do they fall? Where do an artist and a poet fall more than together? “You know what? I forgot. Thank you. Now, I can’t tell you anything.”

Hyunwoo closes his eyes when he laughs, rubbing his thumbs against her hips before he lowers his head slightly, bending his body in a way in which he can capture her lips in a kiss, though fleeting and soft. “My pleasure to make you speechless, doll.”

She squints at him, taking him by the face with both hands to stare into his eyes. Well, he’s not wrong, for the tip of her tongue is trying to look for words to tell him, for flirtations to whisper in his ears, for more than simple actions to clarify her interest in him, one that is already as clear as water, as the sky, as a glassed window itself. Because…she has talked enough, to other people, to people who did not want her to speak but still pretended to listen, and who would think that someone like her could find love in something as silent as art, and Hyunwoo, himself?

“You’re something else.”

“Good thing?”

“Very good thing.” She complies, leaning forward to press her lips to his, relishing on the taste of him before humming, eyes still closed. “I wish I could tell everyone just how head over heels you have me.”

But she can’t. She can’t turn this relationship serious, because it would not benefit them in the work place—Hyunwoo has more to lose than she ever could, but also because the timing of them will never seem to be right. She has to hold back, not because Hyunwoo is slow in his movements to her heart, but because he’s so skilled in his way there that she’s afraid something else could happen. What if it doesn’t work out? What if he’s indeed a prince, and she ends up running away in fear of the constricting seriousness of the situation?

“I have you head over heels?” He asks, as if he likes to hear her saying such things…and damn, he probably does.

She gasps, contrary to what one would believe. “Of course. Hyunwoo, I’ve been practically into you for the past few months and you still think I’m not head over heels?”

“Why?”

“What?” She asks, watching the way he lowers his lips and kisses her softly, delicately running his tongue on top of her upper lip, her hands trailing down to his neck, grasping softly to feel the pulse in there, Hyunwoo’s arms wrapped around her body entirely by the time he speaks again.

Rare. Of course, it had to be something important if Hyunwoo dares voice it out. “Why don’t you just show me how head over heels you are?”

This is exactly how she finds herself in Hyunwoo’s apartment, how suddenly being friends flashes in the back of her eyelids and reminds her that it has not been months, but years since Hyunwoo has taken up the vast majority of her heart. In the couch that he lays her on to take off his shirt, lips latching to her pulse points, sucking the soul away from her with each flutter of the plumpness of his skin, she had told him about the eleven years she spent in ballet classes and in between chuckles, she had admitted to being kicked out for flirting with the instructor’s son too much. The shirt that is thrown on the floor by the time he leads her to his room, hands expanded on her thighs, reminds her of the night three years ago—New Years’ Eve, when Hyunwoo couldn’t go back home to his parents and his frown was evident. At the time, she had done her best to prepare a meal for everyone at the winery to enjoy, and it was called a coincidence when Hyunwoo’s favorite meals were served on the table.

Or that bed, the background noise of the sheets the one she listens to whenever he calls her, saying how much he misses her—listening to her and sometimes, telling stories of his own. The timing with him will always be off, because she’ll forever be scared of waiting for too long, even when his legs are parting her own, strong muscles resting on each side of her head, his heart pressed to hers, skin to skin. Everyone says that waiting…fuck, waiting is the key to love.

Like waiting for someone to wake up.

Or waiting for someone to come home.

Or waiting for the day in which she believes she’ll have earned his love.

Because Hyunwoo cannot be a love affair—she wouldn’t forgive herself if she gets to taste him once or fifty times, but never forever. It’d be tragic, just like the sighs that leave her lips, the way her nails cling to him, the smile on his face that reads adoration—that sees her as more than a line in his body count, more than a friend: he sees her as art, and that’s all she has ever wanted to be.

Art is complicated, and she finds herself being egotistic, like she has always been. Selfish, in a way. Her hands cling to him, her lips press to his skin, to his neck, wants him to be more of her own, wants for every crevice of his soul to belong to her. When her eyes connect to his, his hair is done a mess, ruffled and ruined just by her, the skin of his neck bathed in sin, Hyunwoo can only reciprocate the kiss that lands on his lips, fervent, needing to have the moment last for an eternity, the one eternity that she has never wished for.

In one kiss, she expects to have her confession be read. She expects Hyunwoo to listen to the silence, like she does with him, but maybe, he doesn’t understand…that one simplistic kiss is screaming at him that she’s falling in love—

No, that she is in love. And it feels like she is floating on the shore of a beach, the tingling sensation matching with the rays of sunshine making her forget that there is a world around her, that there will be repercussions like a broken heart or worse…a fired man.

With one last breath of his name, she hopes the confession fell into his ears, one that reads a single sentence:

I love you.

###

“Where is my book of poems?!”

“What?”

Pulling her gaze away from the break-up app showcased on her phone in between her fingertips, she looks at Hyunwoo practically turning the house upside down in his repertoire to find his notebook. When entering the kitchen, well overdue the time in which he goes back home, the trails of the night seek after him when he lifts whatever surface he can to find that notebook, that damned notebook that she knows means the world to him.

“My notebook. Did you take it?” Hyunwoo asks, eyes shaking, for she knows better than anyone else that, just like her sketchbook, his notebook includes motions of his being that no one should read, or have gotten to read other than herself. His hands are already resting on her arms, as if keeping her in place will resolve the predicament, they’re in, but she simply shakes her head. “Fuck, I swear I left it on this counter earlier—”

Scratching the back of her head, she watches as Hyunwoo moves with anxiousness, for the first time showing a sign on his face that screams…hopelessness. Perhaps, he’s afraid of losing what he had worked so hard for, or he’s afraid that tomorrow morning he’ll wake up to the sound of his poems being read to the daylight, to be showcased as a comedy, when all he has done is try to find a sense to that inner voice of his. “Let me help you.” She tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, looking around the couches in the living room, under the mat, whichever bump in it inspected by her.

“This is it. I’ve lost it.” The hopelessness in his voice comes soon enough, throwing himself over one of the seats, slumping immediately with his hands softly bounded in front of him.

“You have not, Hyunwoo. I’m here to help you out—”

“It’s not here, and it’s definitely not in my car.” He answers, not even sparing her a glance when she nears him, arms outstretched to hold him in her arms. “Goodbye poetry, goodbye that stupid dream of mine—”

“Your poetry is not hidden in that notebook, it’s in you, Hyunwoo. Stop it.” She replies, taking his face in between her hands before letting her faded lipstick create a shadow on his lips with a gentle kiss. “Don’t say those things.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’ll shatter this earth if that means getting that notebook back.” After months of this relationship, unknown to the world, three months of absolute joy, she’d do everything to give him the world if she could. “Make that a promise. I won’t ever give up when it comes to you.”

And what’s with this…feeling that tells her that letting go of Hyunwoo will be impossible to her? That she has found it, that thing that her friends had always talked about. That love that goes past summer nights and the heat that comes with forgetfulness, or with winter and its need for warmth—a love that stands even when a train is nearing it, when saying goodbye could be easier than staying. But, she decided to stay—to stay for a long while, as long as he lets her, and so far…it has not been so bad.

If hiding in the storage room every Friday night as a date is excellence, then so be it. If hiding their romance to the eyes of everyone at the winery is what it takes to have Son Hyunwoo, so be it.

“Don’t be scared,” She tells him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and nearing his face to her face, rubbing soothing circles on his shoulders. “I’ll find it, I promise. I’ll find it.”

“No—”

“I said I’ll find it, and I will.”

Because she’d drop a star from the sky itself if it meant seeing him at peace, like he always is.

Which is why she almost turns the entire house upside down the next day, as if looking under the sofa will get her the precious notebook that her boyfriend is looking for. Sunny is somewhere, flapping its wings and resting on her shoulder as if to help her, and she even skips breakfast to favor finding a part of Hyunwoo’s soul. It’s only when she opens the door to her uncle’s office that she finally gets to see a glimpse of a notebook, seated on top of the mahogany desk her uncle is by, and it’s opened, shown to the world to bare Hyunwoo’s soul.

The weight of the flooring creaks under her, though it is not as loud as the thumping inside her chest when her eyebrows crease, moving with precision to reach for the notebook and plater her hand on top of the pages to cover the peeping eyes of her uncle.

“What do you think you’re doing?” She says in between a whisper, hearing how her uncle stops his typing away on the keyboard before continuing, fingertips ushering her hand away so he can look at one of the poetic pieces written by Hyunwoo.

“I’m doing Hyunwoo a favor.”

“He’s been seeking for this notebook since yesterday, Uncle. That’s not helping him—” She tries to grab the fabric away, only to be stopped by a hand that wraps itself around her wrist. The glisten of happiness behind her Uncle’s eyes is clear, the document in front of him bleeding the words of Hyunwoo’s soul—sweet, caring, silent. “Explain.”

Her uncle lowers his glasses, plopping some of the blueberries on a white plate inside his mouth, munching slowly, with precision, patiently like he lives his life when he speaks: “I happened to come across it yesterday afternoon and took the time to read it. My boy has talent.” Her uncle replies, but her mind can only worry about the poems there—the little notes that they had shared in their written conversations when her uncle is in the room, perhaps dusted over with some lines on top of it caused by Hyunwoo’s precaution or if they are easily shown for the world to read. “So, I looked for some poetry contests online and I am mass sending my favorite poems—or a variety of such. The only way I can pay Hyunwoo for the support he has given me the past few years is by letting him go to something bigger than what he has right now.”

Letting him go, why is it that he is the only man that she has never thought of letting go of? His fingers always spread when around them, trapping her hand as if meant to be together forever. Sometimes, she likes to believe she’ll reach older years by his side—that one day she’ll get to see Hyunwoo with gray hairs, and he’d let his fingertips trace her wrinkly cheeks, pinching them with his usual smile on his face. Letting him go to another place, a place in which he’d become a true poet, could mean that he is simply leaving the winery, just like it could mean that he’d have to go anywhere else. Around the world, probably. Somewhere where opportunities for writers are far more fruitful.

She tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, speechless, watching as her uncle continues to type and he asks a question, one that she can’t give an answer to because she can’t listen to him. Her ears beep intensely at the mere reminder that Hyunwoo is not a forever, because the title doesn’t exist or perhaps, because it has never been meant for her. His arms will not always wrap around her waist, his sighs won’t always end up on her nape, leaving her with a trail of goosebumps that can only be intensified by a kiss.

Another muse could exist in the far future for him.

And her canvas may consist of darker colors once he is gone.

“I see,” She breathes softly, only to earn a pointed side-eye from her uncle.

“You alright?”

“Kind of.”

“I’m doing this for him. He’s always said how he wants to go somewhere else, travel the world, you know? It would be nice if he got accepted.”

That’s a promise that she has heard in their late-night conversations, a reminder that the tapping of water on the vase will sometime overflow and leave them with the taste of memories. Her fingers try to wrap around the notebook again, but she ponders on the options of badness and wellness, of destroying his future or keeping him to herself. Instead biting down on her tongue, she nods at whatever her uncle said.

“Don’t tell Hyunwoo.”

About what? About the opportunities that will surely start to appear like clouds on his days?

“I won’t.”

And with that, she slips away from the room with a saddened sigh leaving her lips. Positivism lingers with nostalgia, it seems as though there is a goodbye—a piece of her mind that reads with certainty the words:

One day, you will have to let go of him.

Because, if you love him, you let him go, huh?

###

“It’d be cute.”

“What would be?”

“If one day, when we live together, we could hold one of your paintings up as decoration.”

His arm is extended on top of his bed, knees digging onto the mattress, his hand interlocked with hers on top of her abdomen. His body is resting by her side, black sweater riding up his tanned skin, looking at her with a messy hairstyle right after the small nap he had taken the moment they had arrived to his apartment. Hyunwoo is staring at her, she realizes, cheek pressed to his taut muscles, eyes inspecting her reaction when she finally pulls her gaze away from that one movie they had been wanting to watch—the initiation of a good actor, that had both written the script with his best friend, just as he had starred in it. She can remember the name of the actor right now, but it’s not like she cares.

Weeks after Hyunwoo’s stolen notebook issue, she had been the one to deliver it back to him after her uncle had stopped signing up the poems for every contest that he could find online. The life had been returned to Hyunwoo’s gaze, and he seemed to be more tranquil, breathing normally after days of silence that meant no one had read his poetry book. Instead, she’d take up on more working around the winery, trying to distract herself from her muse and on the long run, stopping herself from thinking of the end of something she feels like has just started, even after years of mutual attraction.

She rubs her free hand against her face, a few bumpy stops that she had not tried to conceal with makeup the first thing she touches, and still Hyunwoo looks at her as if she’s the world itself. Her worries may be spurts of non-knowledgeable insecurities, maybe Hyunwoo is the one person that won’t leave her.

“You would want to live with me?” Her voice doesn’t drop flirtatiously, instead she brings their joined hands up to her lips, kissing his knuckles in hopes of one day seeing his finger glisten with a band that calls him her husband. It’s stupid to think in a long run, to imagine Hyunwoo as the man to settle down with her, but he’s the one talking about it.

“Of course.” He says, eyes twinkling when he smiles, his fingers expanding to caress her bottom lip.

“I don’t think my art would be beautiful enough to be in our future home, though.” She replies, voice going through the depths of what their home would like. Tranquil, homely, perhaps with woodened decorations and too many memories—pictures of the people they love, of themselves, perhaps with a pet going around, or some old wines decorating the shelves.

Still playing with her lips, he answers. “Stop it.”

“I mean it.”

“Your art is fine.”

“Ah, I’m not good at it. We both know.” She says, shaking her head before straightening her back, sitting up on the bed and letting her asleep legs crack at her extension. “But what is it that you see in me that has you wanting to live together? That’s a big step.”

Her boyfriend turns around until he is facing the ceiling, their hands pulled away when he crosses his own over his chest. He breathes in softly, a smile plastered on his features, almost dumbly, too many thoughts that he can only voice out in a few words. “Because I love you.”

Oh, that would make sense. For time has taken its sweet years for her to feel as though he’s the only man that will ever love her for who she truly is, past the summery dresses and the faux smiles. “What do you love about me?” She asks, in a mere whisper that has her coming closer to him, as if nearing him will make her remember every part of Hyunwoo, in case she ever dares to forget about him in any day of her life.

“Can I say everything?”

“Yes,” She laughs, trailing her fingers up and down his arm, pecking his shoulder through the fabric of his shirt before resting her nose against the material. “I love you, too.”

“I know.” Hyunwoo answers, sparing a glance at the movie before she captures his attention again.

“Your phone has gotten a few notifications. Aren’t you going to check them out?”

With his phone in vibration, he may have not noticed. “Oh yes, I hadn’t noticed.”

Hyunwoo stands up, his physique in clear view for her when he moves towards the bedside table, picking up his phone and squinting at the screen. For a moment, she inspects his room—the one piece of art that is hers and he had hung up there, in belief for her passion, and the little bits of him that rest in memories on every spot, even on the pillows that are now too uncomfortable in comparison to his body. She studies his expression, how a white light washes over his face and he reads, reads until his smile is permanently plastered on his face, until he checks his messages and whatever notification he had gotten before he wraps her up in the biggest of hugs.

Those that take her breath away, that has her chuckling at his strength, pressed down by the weight of his body, feeling every movement of his lips while they press down incessantly on different spots of her face. Her cheeks. Her neck. Up until when he decides that speaking is a necessity, that whatever has overjoyed his chest shall be shared with her.

She’ll never forget that smile—that smile that had warmed her, just like how it had turned her blood cold. Hyunwoo shows her the screen, but it is too close to her eyes for her to inspect more than the big letters. Not necessary to read more, because Hyunwoo speaks with excitement. “You didn’t tell me your uncle had sent my poetry out. I just got an offer of representation and a call to sell my book and get a contract!”

She wishes she could keep him, that she could trap him in her arms and simply tell him to stay there, to let the silence in between them fall into normality, into a sweetened lake that will take them to endless romantic bliss. Instead, she clasps her hands together, because his happiness is hers—and love is about that, giving more than receiving. “Fuck yes, I’m so proud of you! Is it for real?”

“Yes, your uncle just confirmed it!” And his lips slot with hers, in a way that tells her that he really does love her and maybe…he will stay. She will be the culprit of his poems, he will be the outline of the shadows in her paintings and their love shall remain like that. Two rhyming words, they are, joined together by a verse—and not another word could ever compare to the magic the two of them work.

“Let’s celebrate!” She cheers, wrapping her arms around his neck and squealing when he lifts her up from the bed, moving towards the kitchen to what is clearly a night filled with take-out and cheerful conversation.

Waiting for this, for Son Hyunwoo, is the best decision she has ever taken in her life. There is no regretting that.

###

That one hat that she had seen on Hyunwoo’s head plentiful of times is now on top of her hair, caging the memories to her brain the more she paints. Realism is not her forte, she will always say it, but a sigh leaves her lips when she finds herself painting the outline of him—past the muscles, the lips she dares to kiss, the eyes that look for her everywhere and anywhere, but in his soul. Hyunwoo will always be a soul in green—like the greeneries around the winery, where she met him, and the calmness of him is a representation of nature.

Love affairs are supposed to be red, passionate, they are supposed to feel like sex and carnality, they are supposed to be plenty of things…but Hyunwoo is not a love affair. If anything, he is the only man she has ever loved. The brush dimly moves against the canvas, her hair framing her face uncomfortably, but she doesn’t dare move the strands, because there is this vacant voice in the back of her head that is telling her something will happen. The twist of her gut, the taste on the back of her tongue, everything reads fear, like in any occasion she will be moved by her feet, dragged through the ground, given a piece of reality for falling in love.

Hyunwoo is somewhere around the winery, God knows where, speaking to the representative on the phone to state the conditions of the contract he will be signing with the company for the publication of his poems. This makes her nervous, but more so angry at herself.

What a fucking egotistic bitch, she can only tell herself, not because she is envious of what Hyunwoo will surely approach with his talent, but because she is afraid of losing him. Scared that one day Hyunwoo will look at his success and think of her as a loss more than a win. At some point, she lets the brush rest against the canvas for a second longer. A dot. A dot on the figure that is supposed to be her boyfriend…an ending, because dots can mean the finalization of an idea, just like how it can mean the end of a story.

She doesn’t hear footsteps, not even Sunny dares make a noise, tranquil on the windowsill when Hyunwoo lets out a sigh that speaks wonders. It has all the meaning of her world in one single breath that falls deafly, as if he knows there is something deep in her mind bothering her. His lips press to her temple, his eyes dare close to flutter his eyelashes against her skin and when he finally gives her an answer, there are undertones of happiness in his voice:

“They want me to move to New York for the publishing of three poetry books.”

And this is excellent—it’s the best of the best. It’s the opportunity Hyunwoo always wanted and the one that he deserves, but long distance is something that she doesn’t know if she could bear. She could always leave with him, live alongside him like they had always planned—but she’s tied to her uncle’s waist. The poor man, only getting older, needs to be thought about from time to time and the winery cannot be kept together without someone helping him.

So, this means that her dreams are crushed.

This means that leaving is not a choice.

“That’s good, Hyunwoo. Congratulations.” She tells him, putting the brush down and twirling around on her chair, not as excitedly as she used to whenever she wore a flowery dress. Instead, he inspects her features, a small smile grazing his features. The whiteness of the room contrasts his beam, the twinkle in his dark irises when he says:

“We could always leave together. You’d have huge opportunities as an artist there—”

“No, love. I can’t leave.”

“Why not?” His fingers stop playing with hers, trying to look for the certainty of a possibility that has been broken. That, once again, leaves her with the lack of a bound that will never be broken.

“My uncle is not getting older, and you know his health is not the best nowadays. I can’t—I’ve been selfish my own life, I can’t leave him like that.” The affection in her voice must have softened something within him, and Hyunwoo is about to drop the subject, leave the talk for later like he always does, but instead, she continues. “D—Do you think we should break up?”

“What?” Hyunwoo asks, his voice rushed, waiting for her to correct herself.

“You will go live to New York. I will stay here. I don’t know if—” She cuts herself off, looking up to the ceiling and biting down her bottom lip. She has always been the one to break relationships up, but with this one, she can’t do it. Her eyes flicker, her tongue twists and she has to grab his hands stronger for her to gain some power. “I don’t know if it will work, truthfully.”

“Is that what you think?” His eyes flutter with endless blinking, trying to process exactly what she is saying and she feels her heart being ripped when she realizes what is happening—

She is finally speechless.

And in the worst of ways.

“Tell me why.”

“I can’t…I can’t leave, you can’t stay.” She tells him, shaking her head. “And I will never forgive myself if I stop you from being the poet that you always wanted to be.”

And even then, when anger overtakes his features along with disappointment, Hyunwoo is the most beautiful man she has ever met—inside and out. Her fingers trail through his hair, her lips leaning forward to seek a kiss out of him but when they join in the sweet gesture, his lips capture her strongly, as if needing more of her, as if letting go hurts him as much as it hurts her. His soul is trying to engulf hers, to down her in the most gorgeous of memories that started with poems about her, spoken insecurities, healed hearts, too much time to waste and of course, an ending.

His arms wrap around her tightly, her lips unwrapping from his to breathe out against his shoulder, her eyes closing tightly when she repeats: “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Love isn’t enough in most situations. This is one of them.

###

Her uncle would have probably loved to see the scenery in front of her.

The bustling city, the flickering lights, the people that join and walk alongside each other, the cars passing by and the extreme comparison to the winery. Perhaps, he would have not liked it as much—but who is she to know. Instead, she tries to make her way towards the café near her hotel room, desperate for her caffeine intake before her visits to the endless museums that she had looked up online. It’s difficult to move, much more when people press to her side, but she manages.

What catches her attention is the old looking library that passes her by as she walks on the sidewalk. The windows are huge, perhaps more than one floor in the place, showcasing the newest of releases or the most classic of pieces. Her feet retract the slightest, smiling at the sign that reads poetry and looking for a certain pen-name that she knows better than her own. The simplistic cover is enough to have her eyes widening, looking around as if caught by destiny—because Hyunwoo is there, by his penname, of course, but he’s there.

With persistence, she moves inside the library, grabbing one of the copies of the book that had caught her attention—the first one, one that she had been too fearful to ever look for, but now blinks at her almost mockingly. Or proudly, really, this would not have happened if only she had been selfish and snatched the notebook away from her uncle’s hands.

Some decisions are good on the long run.

Her fingers flick through the pages, recognizing some of the poems, even tutting at the fact that some of them are edited but his being still is exuded in his art. A little bit after, however, she is surprised to see an outline that she recognizes immensely—that one drawing that she done of Hyunwoo, more of a sketch, that he had kept with him, now plastered on the edge of the first book he released. Years later, and she had never noticed this.

The poem surprises her, the words ‘her’ its title, reminiscent of how she had always wondered if it was her that he was referencing. The more she reads, the more her smile widens…because nothing has been edited, not even a single syllable, and that is enough to press the book to her chest, closing her eyes to match the tightness of her chest.

He will always be the best rhyme for her poems, but it’s time for her to start a new one.

It’s time to let go.

That doesn’t mean she lets go of the memories, buying the book and pressing it to the depths of her purse, pushing the door open to go have her caffeine intake.