#but the conductor has punched his ticket

[soda-sparkss]

HOME-BOUND

Its me again, hi <3 I've made yet another Welcome Home Au called Home- Bound where You're on a Train to Escape Your Mundane Life. Every friendly neighbor has their own cart on the train, with Julie's being the first one you're seated at and Wally's being the conductor car. Make your way through this whimsical little train ride that seems to last for Eternity! Where are you headed? Who knows! Trying to Escape the train once you're on will result in a proper Punishment. If you get off before the train Stops, there will be no moving from the spot that you landed on. Any physical or emotional violence caused to the train will result in consequences varying in severity depending on how much damage you've done. Please do Remember that the train is your Home the train is your Home the train is your Home the train is your Home the train is your H Oh, and one more thing! Don't Forget Your Ticket.

Cars are in order starting from the back. Sleeping/Boarding Car Jullie's Car Poppy's Car Sally's Car Howdy's Car Frank's Car Eddie's Car Barnaby's Car Wally's Car/Conductor Car

First off, We have our Humble Conductor, Wally Darling!

Being at the front of the Train, Wally has many responsibilities as a Conductor. Once you board the Train, he will come back to the Boarding Car to punch your Ticket. It is Imperative that you have it, lest you be sent right back to the station!

Second up is Barnaby B Beagle! Wally's very very very close "Friend".

In this lovely dog's car, he can be found cracking so many fun jokes! Heck, he has an entire book full of Comedy skits from passengers who were Fortunate enough to make it up to his car all the way from the Boarding car! Though, if you want to leave, you'll have to give him another skit to add to his book!

Next up is the darling Mailman, Eddie Dear!

This dearest mailman send out all the letters and Tickets to future Residents of the Home Bound Express. He's quite the workaholic, especially during the nighttime hours! If you happen to make it to his car, be in for a load of sorting letters, snacks, and lovely stories about all of his travels on the Train! Poor guy is a afraid of snails too..

Next up is the trains Librarian, Frank Frankly!

If you enter his car, you'll be greeted with books up the Wazoo! He will insist you look at any one that interests you. The books are written by him and consist an encyclopedia of facts about every existing bug on the planet. Not one bug left out! Unfortunately, if you want to leave, you'll have to take a quiz. Find a book about a specific bug he tells you about, read through it, and then tell him what you learned. Careful not to let the bookflies(book butterflies!) distract you! After you tell Frank the facts you learned, you have to navigate your way through a maze in the garden behind his library. Don't worry, the bugs will guide you!

Next up is the 'local' Grocer, Howdy Pillar!

Who can resist a Pillar who advertises his wares so well? He has everything from the little doodads to wild thingamajigs! Careful you don't get lost in the maze of his stock. If you want to leave, however, you must buy something or solve a little riddle of his!

Next up is the ONE AND ONLY!! Sally Starlet!

This Star is always putting on a Show!(With sleep and snack breaks, of course.) Her seemingly endless act will have you wrapped up in a world completely different from your own! Her whips and twirls will thread a story right before your very eyes! It's Almost Impossible to Look Away!! Also, nighttime shows are provided for people with insomnia, headphones are provided for those with sensory issues, plushies and hand santizer are provided for people with anxieties or obsessive compulsions.

And following right behind her is Poppy Partridge!

Who doesn't want an absolute sweetheart to take them under her wing and provide a comfortable place to Relax! Treats are baked for anyone who wants one! Beanbag chairs cots, futons, and a plethora of cushions are provided, as well as DvD players and a TV for Entertainment. Careful, too many sweets from this lovely Partridge will send you into a Deep Sleep.

Then we have the lovely Julie Joyful!

Julie is so playful! If you step foot into her car, you're in for a whole day full of fun games like Tag, Tic Tac Toe, and Hide and Seek! Hide and Seek is her favorite game! Though I can't say the same for her victims Passengers.

And then the Train himself, Home!

While Home is the train, pictured above is his physical manifestation. If he doesn't have a cup of tea, he'll probably be smoking Candy Cloud, which is their form of tobacco.

And Last but not Least, You!

That's right, You! YOu reading this right now! Go ahead and put yourself in the au, draw yourself interacting with the neighbors! You can use this base, I'll post a blank version soon enough! A HUGE huge thank you to @mumimoondrops and @severalbonez for helping me with designs and the story! Mumi is a co-owner of the au. Notes and Disclaimers: Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in Welcome Home. They all belong to @partycoffin. And while two people have already made train conductor au's I wanted to make my own story and designs for the cast! Design Inspirations: @chez-cinnamon, @clownsuu Tags: @3amclothesmonster, @dottyorange, @doggwwoggy23, @kennethmoop, @snowshinefivez5, @larzuen, @nyx-mrbones-2360, @vixxproductions, @sedittedice, @mumimoondrops, @ari-jay, @strugglebugglemoth, @wheatlover, @unpleasantbread, @mockhound, @purplefoxy14, and @anonymous-paperbag

[reticent-writer]

Blood demon art: Plants P1, P2, P3, P4, P5(current), P6,

✿✼:*ﾟ:.｡..｡.:*･ﾟﾟ･**･ﾟﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*ﾟ:*:✼✿　　

Rengoku gave you a ticket as the man approached. You gave it to him to punch.

'Somethings wrong.' you thought as you smelt the newly punched ticket. Its faint but you can definitely smell lower moon Enmu. The lights started flickering and suddenly you were back at the infinity castle. In your father's experiment room.

'this can't be right.' you looked around to find something- anything out of place. Nothing.

You could hear footsteps approach the room.

The door opened.

"Papa!" You ran up to him as he kneeled getting himself ready for impact as your body hugged him, a near bone crushing hug if he was human.

"I'm sorry papa, I only wanted to see the flowers I never wanted to cause you trouble." You sobbed into his shoulder as he comforted you.

"What are you talking about, Y/n? What flowers, you have a flower garden in here?"

"Oh right my flower garden. Can we go there I wanna show you something." You pretended to be confused, You realized this was a dream. You didn't wan to wake up.

--------

"Ah little Y/n your father is worried to death over you, let's get you home yeah." Enmu said from the first car.

He sent a child to bring you to him.

It's uncommon for a demon to sleep as soundly as you but it was also hard for you face reality. You caused many problems for your father and against his wishes. However, you weren't guilty of it. In fact your glad that you were able to see the outside world and meet so many people... The same people who want to kill demons.

You want everyone to get along but it's not that simple. You'd rather not think about it.

What a mess, a sad tragedy.

"Did I do good?" The child brought you laid you in front of Enmu.

"Yes you did, A wonderful dream awaits you."

The poor girl fell to the ground. dead.

"Y/n~ I would what you could be dreaming about." Enmu pet your head. "I would've never thought my little spell would work on you."

--------

*back in the dream*

Dragging him to your flower garden you sat him down it the center.

"Blood demon art: Botanical Communication." (name is a work in progress)

As your demon art activated the flowers around started to dance and change color creating a beautiful display of mesmerizing imagery. You danced with the moving flowers as they formed each image. Muzan clapped and encouraged you to continue.

The images you made mimicked the things that you have seen on your time outside of the castle.

This might be a dream but It's the happiest you've been in a long time.

'I should wake up now... I should- shouldn't I'

--------

The train has now been completely taken over by Enmu. You were in his 'head' with the conductor to watch over you. It wasn't long before Hanafuda and the boar man to know that and start attacking it.

They successfully killed the lower moon and broke the spell on you.

You woke up in tear on the ground. Looking around you see the derailed train behind you. You try and push you self up failing to see you right arm and leg have been broken.

✿✼:*ﾟ:.｡..｡.:*･ﾟﾟ･**･ﾟﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*ﾟ:*:✼✿　　

Tag list: @american-idiot21, @unhappy-filling

Y'all ready to see Akaza. I'm making a poll in the next one. You decided how the story will turn after that.

[flametrashiraarchive]

I know I said Kyojuro would never die on my watch but…

Imagine boarding the Mugen Train and finding yourself sitting near this handsome but eccentric man in a flaming haori. You truly try to mind your own business but he's far too fascinating to ignore. His eyes shine brighter than candle flames, his fiery hair is wild and unruly, and his smile is so contagious you have to cover your mouth with your hand to hide your own. You watch out of the corner of your eye as he eats box after box of beef and rice, effusively expressing his delight after every mouthful. 

And then a bunch of kids join him and he's just so good with them, and you can't help but melt a little as they gather around him and he shares his food with them. There's just something about him. He's magnetic, and before you know it you're full-on staring at him. He's far too distracted by the kids and the food to notice though.

"Ticket please," the conductor says, ending your reverie. You hand him the ticket and he punches a hole in it.

The lights flicker for a second, pulling your gaze upward. 

"Hello!" A bright, cheery voice says beside you.

Your heart leaps as you see the fiery man standing right next to you, smiling down at you. 

He sits beside you and you chat for the rest of the journey. The conversation flows easily; you tell him about your life and he tells you about his. You laugh together, share little in-jokes, and when it comes time for you both to disembark the train, you find you don't want to leave each other's sides. 

So you don't. You go and get lunch together– he somehow still has room for more food! Lunch leads to a walk together. Then dinner. Then talking beneath the stars. When it finally gets too late you bid each other farewell with a promise to meet again tomorrow. 

And you do. You meet up the next day and the next day and the next. Before you know it you're head over heels for each other. He proposes, you accept of course, and the pair of you marry. You live in a beautiful house, filled with love. Children come, just as fiery and sweet as their father. He kisses you every day, tells you how much he adores you. Every single day, long after the children are grown and have children of their own, long after both your hair and his turns white. 

You love each other with your entire hearts, your lives filled with a happiness you can scarcely believe is real. 

And then you wake up to the sound of screaming. The sun is low in the sky; it's morning, and the Mugen Train is wrecked. You have no idea what is happening… your husband is gone, your hands are young again. Every inch of your body hurts. 

People in brown uniforms are fussing over you, patching you up, telling you everything will be alright. 

Your heart thrums as you search for him. Was he hurt in the train wreck? The thought sickens you.

"It was a dream," they tell you. "You were on the Mugen Train. A mechanical fault caused fumes which made all the passengers hallucinate. You're okay now."

The medics take you away on a stretcher and that's when you see him, the man you love, his body being covered by a shroud as the children you remember from a lifetime ago wail and mourn his passing.

Grief hits you like a landslide. You can't breathe, not without him. And as the medics carry you away, ignoring your desperate pleas, it occurs to you that you never even knew his name.

[writing-time-bitches]

Onward! // Submas drabble

Based on this post by @critterbitter ! Go check it out. Now. 🔫😐

\\\

Zephyr loved his job. He loved being a subway conductor even if the workplace was at times subpar with its safety. Sure the rails needed to be redone, sure the AC sometimes shorted out, and sure people tended to battle on it a few too many times per day but by Arceus’ eighteen plates did he adore the Unovan subway.

The one thing that could possibly outdo his love for trains and railways are children. And there’s a certain trio of kids that come by every time, without fail, when his train comes to a stop in Nimbasa City. They loved the trains almost as much as Zephyr did, particularly the twins. The Sinnohan girl and her Blitzle were quiet, likely due to her language barrier, but they always seemed to be just as excitable.

It was commonplace by now for Zephyr and the kids to exchange greetings when they entered his train. And recently, the Sinnohan has been speaking more too! Zephyr would be lying if he said he didn’t feel like a proud father.

The kids, now with a new companion in the form of dwebble that relaxed in the blitzle’s bags, were seen commonly working on homework when the train was moving. School was starting up again since the summer has drawn to a close. The twins, especially Ingo, would often help their foreign friend with her Galarian and homework.

And today they seemed particularly determined though…

“Right on schedule, Mr. Zephyr!” Emmet and Ingo shouted in tandem, ending off with their hellos. Elesa waved with a grin and their pokemon did the same. Zephyr couldn’t help but let a smile slip through his stoic work facade as he tipped his gray hat at them. They hurriedly approached the subway doors exchanging friendly nods when they entered.

“Oh, by the way…” Zephyr rummaged through his coat pockets and produced four clear plastic bags that were tied with a cute yellow. Blitzle perked and brayed excitedly as he recognized one of the bags’ contents,”I remember you mentioning what treats your pokemon liked so my husband and I made some for you! I apologize if their not the best, I’m not exactly a baker… the sugar cubes are infused with lemon.” Zephyr mentioned, scratching at his growing stubble with an air sheepishness.

Elesa’s and Emmet’s grins grew wider and Ingo produced one of his signature odd Purloin-like smiles. Elesa bowed,”Arigatou! Thank you Mr. Zephyr!” Blitzle drew his lips back in an excited snarl as he sniffed at the bag of sugar, Elesa laughed and sat down in one of the seats close to the door he stood at. The twins were quick to follow her lead.

Zephyr loaded on more passengers, punching their tickets and all, requesting all pokemon larger 3ft be returned to their pokeballs unless they are medically trained. Once the last person was onboard he turned to the twins behind him, and as if they had used Foresight, they turned at the same time. Zephyr didn’t have to say anything they were already jumping to their feet.

Zephyr crouched down and turned on his radio,”Attention all passengers, Line 6 is now departing.” He held the black box towards the boys who screamed into the radio,”ALL ABOOOOAARD!”

All three of them snickered at the yelps and curses of surprises that echoed both within and outside the train. Elesa cackled at a group of teens who turned to glare daggers at Zephyr and the boys while holding their ears.

Emmet grinned with a mischievous triumph, foot tapping,”I am Emmet. I will never grow tired of that.” Ingo nodded in agreement,”Indeed, we owe a gratuitous debt for the times you’ve allowed us to send this train off.”

Zephyr gave a mere chuckle and stood up, straightening his coat,”Ah it’s no big deal. By the way,” he turned to his little passengers,”where are you headed off to this time?”

“Route 10.” Came the synchronized answer. Zephyr’s pale blue eyes widened before a worried frown found its place on his face,”Route 10? Are you sure? You know the cliffs are unstable there… and it right next to the League, plenty of powerful pokemon will be there.” All three nodded their heads, Ingo piped up seemingly having predicted the conductor’s hesitancy,”We are well aware of that. We plan to strictly stay on Boufallant herding trails and on designated hiking trails. And,” he spared a withering glance at his brother,”we will run and hide at the sight of any overly-strong pokemon.” Emmet shrunk at at the glare and exaggerated words,”I am Emmet. I prrrromise to follow the rules.”

Zephyr bite his lip, unconsciously running his hand through the thick brown curled locks of hair under his hat, a few strands fell into his eyes as he glanced between his young passengers,”Are you sure…? Are you going to tell your uncle where you’re going at least?”

Emmet and Elesa gave a shug while Ingo nodded,”That is the first thing we will do when we reach Opelucid. Right Emmet? Elesa?” Under the glare of the eldest twin the two electric-type enthusiasts were quick to nod. Satisfied with their compliance he turned to the other with complete self-assuredness and confidence.

Still, Zephyr couldn’t help but feel a little responsible.

“What if I came with you for part of the hike?” He offered. The trio blinked, apparently having not anticipated that response. Elesa was first to recover,”No need! We handle ourselves perfectly good!” She tried, her Sinnohan accent thick upon her clumsy tongue. Emmet nodded, with his little tynamo sparking,”I am Emmet! Thank you for the offer but no thank you.”

When Ingo hadn’t responded as well the two looked at him with a badly hidden pleas. Ingo, being the ever so responsible young man he was bite the side of cheek in consideration,”… I would not be opposed to the notion…” at that the litwick atop his hat started spewing words a mile-a-minute. Zephyr had no clue what she was saying but from Ingo’s grimace it seemed like something of a scolding. Ingo picked up his ghostly friend and muttered something in argument but the litwick was not hearing it.

Sighing in a dramatic defeat he looked up at the grown he had grown to trust sadly,”I must apologize, it would seem the party’s against a chaperone.” Elesa and Ememt and their pokemon gave a not-so-quiet cheer for independence while Ingo sat in remorseful silence. Zephyr sighed through his nose but gave an understanding smile,”It’s ok, I understand. You’re all growing up to be young adults now, it’s only expected you’d want to go off alone. But promise me one thing, you’ll call your uncle once you’ve reached Route 10’s entrance and when you get back to the city ok?” At that everyone nodded (Litwick gave a begrudging accepting nod and pouted; she will always crave independency and chaos) and Zephyr smiled.

“Good. I hope to see you soon when you’re done.”

Emmet tapped his foot nervously against the cold pavement of the station. Night was starting to fall and the Line 6 train has not arrived yet. Similarly Elesa had begun to pace around the small bench they were seated on, chewing on her already short nails.

Emmet leaned back and complained to his friend,”When is train gonna get heeeeerrrrugh.” He drawled, swinging his legs as he tilted his head to look at his brother who was busy trying to find out why their train was so late. Emmet didn’t like this. Line 6 was never late. Never. Zephyr would never let the subway be so late, especially when he and his friends were supposed to board. Litwick was unusually quiet too, she would definitely be complaining loudly by now but she was statue still as if her wax had cooled off and quiet as the stale wind in the tunnel they were in.

His and Ingo’s moms must be worrying. They should’ve been home by now…

Where the hell was Line 6?

A soft choked gasp erupted unbidden from his brother. Straightening with alarm he and Elesa turned to the eldest of the three,”Ingo? What’s wrong?” Ingo, face sucked pale as the snow that surrounded Iccirus City, turned to face his companions. Emmet felt the unease that was already bubbling in his stomach rise to just underneath his skin at the horrified and grief-stricken look on Ingo’s face. What happ—

“Line 6… had a derailment.”

Two days after the reported crash, the Nimbasan kids stood at the edge of a gathered group of mourners. Their pokemon were tucked in their pokeballs today.

The sun beat down on the group in an almost mockingly cheerful way. Elesa wished the scenery was like what it was in movies. Clouds should be covering the sun, the threat of rainfall thick in the air and congested with sombre music. Not the energetic chirping of pidoves, the yawns of sewaddles and swadloons or the cheerful floating of nearby whismsicott.

It should be depressing. Not single sound should be heard but the barely contained sniffles and sobs of the grieving.

Elesa glanced at the tombstone’s writing: Here lies Zephyr Harrison, loving son, brother and husband. 19xx - 19xx.

Elesa quickly has to look away, hands gripping each other tightly enough that she could feel her nails dig into her skin. She couldn’t bear to think about the kind train conductor who smiled at her proudly whenever she spoke a sentence in galarian, or the man who had given all of them tailor-made gray conductor hats that matched his. She couldn’t bear to think of the man who felt like a doting older brother or a second father.

Next to her Emmet was swaying a little too hard, almost tipping to fall on his face one too many times, and staring— no, glaring— at the earth beneath him like it had wronged him in some inexcusable way. His smile was no where to be seen, replaced by a tight, wobbly straight line instead. His eyes were misty with unshed tears.

Ingo wasn’t much better. His face was schooled into a mask of indifference as he stared distantly past the grave and stock still like a statue. The only thing that told you he was alive was the uneven and short breaths he was taking, as if trying to not burst into fat ugly tears.

To be honest, Elesa was trying to not do the same. She never noticed how constant Zephyr was in their lives until he was 6 feet in the ground. Her mind couldn’t stop replaying all the little moments she had shared with the older man, his fond smiles and the proud glimmer in his eyes, other tics the man had. Like adjusting his hat just before leaving to the control car, or carting his hand through his hair, or how his eye twitched every time he dealt with a Karen on his train. The slightly off-center quirked lips in his teethy grins.

Grief burrowed itself deeper in her heart when she realized she was never going to feel Zephyr’s hand ruffled her hair with unsaid affection.

Elesa was going to miss Zephyr.

The twins were going to miss Zephyr.

[bitebitesnap]

Gear Station gets a minor side attraction of the animatronics used to run the trains. Due to heavy traffic the normal agents and conductors aren't able to keep up with both the train schedules themselves and the battle arena built in afterwards, so they commissioned a pair of animatronics to help with the workload.

Designed to be based off the twin dragons lore, one white and the other black, they quickly rise to fame as the stations beloved twin conductor drones. Emmet's design is to appeal to the younger generation more as a smile is seen as more friendly while Ingo is meant to direct passengers to their stations with his terse and professional demeanor.

Problem is these animatronics are a bit finicky. The company that made them is still new so some components need to be switched out often due to being outdated. This has lead to some...slight problems in the developing ai's in the machines.

Emmet's polite commentary is clipped short more and a distinct tone of sass is becoming prominent. After years of being a bit of a punching bag to delinquent kids he's prone to angry outbursts and refusing to be touched. It's thought that his ai is learning to be aggressive from young kids being too rough with him so it's heavily suggested to be nice to him. it doesn't seem to be helping.

Ingo, however, is becoming less and less approachable, even unnerving. Late night passengers swear on seeing the drone appear at random without making any noise at all, some even saying he's come right up behind them just to redirect their course to the right gate. He seems to maintain his polite demeanor just fine, until someone does something out of line. Many state he's snapped into a kind of blind fury and stormed over towards the perpetrator(s) just to snag the back of their collars and hold them up like a stray pokemon to be scolded. One such statement commented on how his eyes glowed with a purple fire much like an enraged ghost type, as if he was possessed. Multiple scans haven't yielded any results of possession, though a few agents have taken to keeping ghost types nearby just in case.

A cautionary warning is at the ticket booths to be aware of the drones aggressive behaviors and that while they're working on a solution the drone's are completely harmless.

Let's just hope you're able to fix it.

[tenderlyrenjun]

Married

re:preview no. 1 and no. 2

minors + bots do not interact; fic rec blogs without comments do not reblog

A/N: from a joke idea to a poor fic preview to a final fic ... here it is! and it took me a little less than 2 weeks to write this, so please take it with a grain of salt. also, ik that i said i hate childhood friends to lovers (for psych reasons), but jeno is just so friend shaped.

summary: you take jeno to be your lawful wedding date, in busan.

includes ... girl/afab reader, porn with feelings, mutual pining, strong!jeno, they’re both government officials with the city planning department, jaehyun (127) marries mingyu (svt) btw ... smut warnings ... sex dreams, lingerie, oral sex (f + m receiving), masturbation (f + m), fingering, spanking, 69ing/ish, big dick!jeno, choking/breath play, edging (kind of but not really), praise during sex but not like a kink, unprotected sex, and so, so much consent ♡

wc: 25,9k (again, i am so sorry)

again, minors + bots do not interact

“Hey … hey, wake up. The conductor hasn’t come by to punch our tickets yet, and you’re sitting on them.”

You gently pat Jeno’s face where the 5:30 sunrise glows, barely seeping down the half-shielded window; he immediately closed it, about five minutes ago, once the night ended, more irritated by the sun waking him up than moving beds from his apartment to train, but he still kept a small part cracked, as if wanting to relive the road trips home during Seollal, when you two, excided by leaving college at the earliest moment, would book the cheapest rides and get picked up before rush hour. Your long sleeves scratch along his freshly shaven jaw, like scrubbing pillowy softness into his cheeks, and he tries to ignore it – tries to ignore you, except you become extra annoying, squeezing his face harder until he has to slap your hands away to avoid sleeping on the empty hard seat beside him, the last one in this connected row, where his blazer, a less comfy pillow than your narrow shoulder, takes residence. Jeno slides his palm across yours, enveloping your wrists like handcuffs, fixing them on your thighs. You have to take a moment, tongue weighing heavy and dry. He never really lets you forget how strong he is, oblivious to it all.

Even last night, when you helped him last-minute stress pack (a.k.a. the real reason you stayed at the 00-Line apartment), you hopped on his overflowing luggage, complaining that one clap from him would snap it shut (or completely break it, but you felt optimistic!). Granted, your shoes sat on top of all his clothes, preventing it from zipping up without something weighing it down – which is why his blazer sits on the bench, not in his bag, or yours. You told him that he could put it in one of your bags, but you both knew there was no room, what with all your different wedding outfits. He deadpanned at you, hearing that revelation – the multiple wardrobe changes –, throwing his facial cleanser at your loose makeup bag (the one you ended up shoving in his backpack too).

But not everyone can just wear one suit like him! You have the pre-wedding outfit, before you change into your attendance dress at city hall while you help Jaehyun set up; then, there’s the dinner dress, which you plan on also using at the rehearsal dinner, and a dress for the real reception, and of course you need a backup in case something happens to one of those, in addition to the matching shoes, because shoes (and accessories) elevate the appearance, as you reasoned, which made him visibly nervous for some reason, as if you would leave him looking like an outsider with your family, the same family he has known since middle school. You reassured him that he will always match with you, and if not, Busan has a thousand stores to buy a tie … which would have the potential to also not fit in his bag, like the blazer, but you two – he – can make it work! He makes everything work, like a superpower.

Jeno end up wearing the blazer over his hoodie, to the station, giving him a needed second layer against the dark 16-degree weather. He looked more put together with it on, than he probably actually felt, especially considering that he only had 10 minutes to get ready before Mark drove you to the KTX station. Although, the façade breaks now that it’s just the two of you in the booth – no strangers, no coverups, no friends, no expectations; so when he picks his head up and his hoodie falls, navy fluffy hair sticking out at random angles, you stop staring at your hands below his and catch his bangs, tucking them back gently into place. You want to move him into your lap (it might be more comfortable), but not yet; the conductor still has to punch your tickets, and you don’t want to repeat Chuseok 2020 when the conductor scolded you for laying across the bench. Plus, you never really get the chance to do this with him, be this close to him, not that you don’t want to, or that it’s too hard.

You just … never get the chance.

“How are you this awake,” he groans, raising his analog watch into squinted view, nearly crying laughter as his eyes close again, cheek pressing into your shoulder, “at 5:37 AM?”

You roll your head dramatically, provoking more grumbles out of him that make you giggle as he jostles. “Some of us actually go to sleep earlier when we know that we have a schedule at dawn.” You graze your recently manicured nails into his scalp, mumbling through a smile, “You knew we were going to leave for Jaehyun’s wedding a few days in advance; you were there when I booked our tickets; he invited us to lunch because of you.” Jeno makes an objecting noise. “Ah, maybe I should’ve invited Haechan instead.”

“Hey.” Jeno smacks your thigh, his long fingers curling behind your knee to pull you closer. You gulp, praying that he cannot hear the knot in your throat. Apparently, his displays of strength are inversely related to his energy levels; the less energy he has, the more he uses his strength with you. But thankfully, he remains oblivious, poking your stomach with his furthest hand. He slinks up your shoulder, massaging down your tension to get selfishly comfortable, warm breath exhaling into your neck. “You fell asleep maybe 20 minutes before I did,” he objects, arguing the root of the problem, as if knowing that he will always be your first choice, “and that was, like, four hours ago.”

“Ha,” you laugh sarcastically, masking the new sweat on your palms under your sweater paws. You rub your hands together for a second, bouncing the heels together, before pushing him up, with all your strength, holding him there long enough – despite a series of complaints – to take the tickets from under his ass. “I wasn’t the one who said,  ‘No,’ to coffee when Jaemin offered.”

“He went to sleep when I woke up!”

“Eh,” you wave off and lay him on your shoulder again, “Excuses.”

“You’re so mean to me,” he whines, pouting, cuddling you so tightly that your revolve falters, “I’m doing you a favor, and you’re being mean to me.”

You comb his hair again, soothing all the wrinkles in his forehead, not denying it. He is partially correct. You do take advantage of his kindness – merely because he offers it so nicely, on a silver platter; it is a reason why you lo… why you … why you return it so easily, albeit quietly, like now. He will attend your cousin’s wedding this weekend; he lets you overpack his luggage; he opens his apartment to you with wide arms. And in return, you paid for the KTX tickets and hotel; you reserved a slot at a shooting range in Jeonju where your layover stops; you let him fall asleep on your shoulder right now, even though you are tired as hell, too.

Besides, your cousin, Jaehyun, probably would have invited Jeno to the reception anyways. He invited everyone, on a limited occupancy, from Eunwoo to Jihyo. And Jeno , who once wished Jaehyun to be his older brother, is pretty close with your family. There is no way he would not end up in the family photos.

“Ugh.” Jeno sits up, rubbing his eyes single handedly with the arm detached from you. “Why did we agree to lunch? We could be sleeping right now.”

You laugh at him, tugging him back down easily, and ghost your fingers in his hair. “Mingyu has to finish up some work project before they can go on their honeymoon, so Jaehyun suggested lunch to give his fiancée some uninterrupted time.”

“Boo, they’re just going to fuck,” Jeno yawns, starting to fall asleep again. “You stay over at my apartment all the time, it’s like you practically moved into my room, and there’s no way you get any work done.”

“Ha … ha .. a .. yeah …” Totally not distracted by him, or how much freer he is in his bedroom, always wearing basketball shorts without underwear as it seems, always manspreading enough for you to see. It is definitely not the same thing. You lift your head to look over the seats. “Where is that conductor? We need to get moving.”

Jeno slides you back down. “But really, you got this?”

“Ye-yeah.”

“Alright.” He nuzzles into your neck, almost kissing your skin when he tilts his chin up. Your entire body freezes for a second, anticipating, hoping, that he kisses you, any part of you. But he doesn’t. And you press your lips together, eyes closing too, just briefly, as not to fall asleep. “I’m going to take a quick nap. Wake me when we get there?”

“Yeah, okay.”

As he settles into sleep, Jeno’s head slowly nods forward, and you cup outside his cheek, catching him before he falls, lingering your nails behind his jaw for a moment, for this moment, until you spot the conductor. Amazing timing. You sigh. Jeno’s fingers twitch closed, briefly, like a reassuring hug that you misinterpret – willingly misinterpret – as something more, like this is okay, it is okay to have feelings during arbitrary moments. You inch apart from Jeno again, shifting on your hip, into the aisle, and pick up the tickets again, holding them so tightly that little veins fold onto the papers.

The conductor comes by, moving ever so slowly, like he wants to help you preserve this moment, with your best friend unconscious on your shoulder, and as though he could read your heart, he says, “You’re a cute couple."

"Ha ... thanks," you smile politely, biting your lip, grounding yourself with a look a Jeno. He spasms in his sleep, hand squeezing your thigh again. “Oh, right.” You hand the tickets over, reality resuming. You try to cease your shaking hands between your thighs, shoulders raised as awkwardly as the smile on your face, but Jeno’s hand, his strong hand, splits your legs, so you give up.

“We still have some chocolates left from White Day,” the conductor informs softly. The entire world seems to calm down, or stay asleep, for Jeno’s sake, and you don’t blame them, lowering your own tension too. “I can bring some for you and your boyfriend if you like.”

You swallow thickly, licking the corner of your mouth, considering it selfishly because why would anyone reject free candy?, but you shake your head. “No, I’ll – I’ll, ah … wait for my b-boyfriend to wake up first. H-he really likes chocolate.” Oh, my God; be cool, you scold yourself, but the nerves make you feel bad, like you are too close to Jeno or you make him uncomfortable with other people’s assumptions.

“Alright,” the conductor nods, smiling at the two you, practically repeating cute couple, “Let me know. I’ll save some for you.”

After he punches your tickets and hands them back – an archaic practice, and vain, since you checked in electronically around 5 AM – you grab Jeno’s hand.

And, in his sleep, he weaves your fingers together.

Attention, passengers: we are approaching Jeonju Station in five minutes. Please collect your items; we will be stopping shortly.

Jeno yawns awake, lulling his neck tall along the line on the backrest, kneading the kink in his spinal cord that keeps forming after he sleeps on your shoulder (he should really move onto your chest). Speaking of you, Jeno reaches at his sides, left and right, fingers dancing into the empty seats, not even finding his blazer. He peaks an eye open, wincing as the full morning light assaults his vision, then he actively looks for you, and finds you easily, already standing, pulling down your bags from the overhead hanger. A wheel jams on the railing, making you lean on your toes, shakily, to get it down, but you look unstable, so he immediately gets up, the second he sees your ankles wobble, and steadies you by your lower back, using one strong hand to bring down the luggage by its handle, his palm lingering too long.

The timing hasn’t been that great lately, these last few days – months, if he’s being honest. Like, yeah, you practically spend every waking moment together, a side effect of knowing each other since middle school and now working together on a project for urban revitalization in the lower Seoul district, but there are little things that still separate you from him. Not enough to make him feel as if you are drifting apart as best friends, as childhood friends; only enough for him to notice that he relies on you to be his personal comfort, his home away from home. And maybe, he thinks, this trip can recenter your relationship.

So, he starts by closing the distance.

Except, as strong as he might be, Jeno knows he is unaware of how much he uses at any given moment, and you tense in front of his hand, instinctively jolting up and hitting him square under the chin with the back of your head.

“Ow!”

“Sorry!” you scream, equally cringing and grabbing your hair, before finishing lamely, not knowing how to help, “sorry. You scared me.” You step into his personal bubble, practically into his chest, and grab his chin before he can cover up the temporary pain, holding him almost as long as he touched your back, except he didn’t have a valid excuse to you that long. He holds his breath, as if a doctor started the inhale-exhale stethoscope check, but you stop talking.

“You could’ve woken me up,” he tells you, moving your hand with his jaw, staring at your lips, willing you to talk or break the beat. “I know the bags are heavy,” he says, which translates to I would’ve helped you.

“Yeah, but you looked so cu … so peaceful. I didn’t want to wake you until I absolutely had to.”

Jeno nods, fair; he’s done the same in the past when you were in college, especially after exam season, after you pull multiple all-nighters in a row but still make plans with your friends. Like, there was this one time, you stayed over at his apartment, a different one than he lives in now, one closer to Uni, for Haechan’s birthday party later, and you fell asleep on his bed while he played League with Jaemin and Jisung. He ended up waking you up about ten minutes after the party started, to give you a bit more than an hour of sleep. Needless to say, neither of you were the first to wish Haechan happy birthday, for which he only accepted monetary penance, but Jeno thought it was worth it, no amount of money enough, to see your smile refreshed and echoed in your posture.

“Hey, is that my blazer?”

You glance at the lapels, slightly raising your arm as well, as if you forgot that you were wearing it. “Yeah, sorry, I – I got cold.” You slowly take it off, shaking the sleeves off your shoulders. “Do you – Do you want– ?” Do you want it back?

“No,” Jeno interrupts, fixing his jacket by the lapels over your shoulders again. “It’s alright. Wouldn’t want you to get hypothermia”

Once it situates correctly on your body, Jeno trails his hand up your arm, rubbing your bicep, sensing that the cold probably got to you, given that the loud air conditioner in the back contradicts the clear sunny sky. Then, the train stops, violently, and you both reach your arms out to steady one another, ultimately falling against the chairs, his waist pressed tightly against yours. You inhale sharply, first, and he copies you, hands brace above and below each other’s elbows. Neither of you really stand this close to each other, having too much respect for your friendship. He can name less than a handful of moments: 7 Minutes in Heaven at the beginning of 9th grade; an awkward dance at your first high school dance in 10th grade; truth or dare during sophomore year of college; accidentally pressing against you in the copy room at work after the shelves in the supply closet broke and the handyman shoved a thousand boxes next to the printer. Jeno doesn’t know what is different now; this, too, is probably another rare occurrence. He has loved you forever, never making a move, but …

“Th-thanks,” you whisper, quickly pulling away your hands.

There it is.

“No, um, no problem.”

Wordlessly, you go through the unloading motions: you stacking his backpack on the roller luggage, him taking the duffel bag that you claimed was heavy. Jeno closes the distance again, putting his hand behind the small of your back, walking you preemptively down the aisle. You slump against his palm, resting your cheek occasionally on his bicep as more people file out in the front, and he lets you, slinging an arm around your shoulders, because the fatigue is probably hitting you now that you have to force your body to move.

Once you get to the front of the train, an exit almost like a plane since you sat in the middle of the cart (not the most coveted place, since you can’t recline or get out quickly, but the easiest to snake), the conductor greets him:

“Hey, you’re awake!”

Jeno points at himself, lines forming between his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” the conductor confirms, handing over a small bag of chocolate hearts. “I saved these for you.”

“Thanks?” He tilts his head to the side as he unwinds himself from you, accidentally bumping his elbow on your head, and accepts the candies with two hands – a clear bag of shiny pink and yellow Hershey’s mini-chocolate bars. “Why us– ?”

“Okay, thanks, have a good day!” you shout, pushing him into the station, barely stopping to bow before exiting the train.

Jeno manages to catch the conductor’s last words, something about good-bye and being cute. “Do you know what that’s about?”

“Nope,” you lie badly, and he gives you a skeptical look, which you ignore. “But fr-free chocolate.”

So he lets you ignore it, eating one. It tastes good, but he swears he hears you exhale in relief.

The layover in Jeonju lasts two hours, until a little after 10:30 AM, but it feels like two minutes.

You spent the entire time latched onto Jeno, supporting your caffeinated body through all the laughter and smiles – yours and his, as you surprised him with activity after activity, a thank you for coming, for willingly enduring gossipy aunties practically cross-examining him on the reception floor and drunk uncles at the karaoke machine who would otherwise be tone-deaf without the drinks in their hands. After the first activity – a short 30-minute session at a shooting range – Jeno picked you up with his knees, spinning you around outside the building, repeatedly crushing your torso between his beefy arms. And when he thought that was it, you Uber’ed to the Jeonjuchun River and rented a couple bikes next to one of the pretty pavilions (big mistake; you had to go back to the start and wait for him there because you couldn’t keep up without your ass catching on fire!). His dumb, wide smile made you want to keep going, plus you had a last planned surprise to grab coffee and pastries at the Mural Village, having called ahead two days prior to reserve a couple of their signature glazed donuts, his favorite.

So, it makes sense that when you get on the last train to Busan, exhaustion hits your entire body full force.

As Jeno packs the bags on the overhead hanger, you sit sideways on the chair, watching him, noting how his hoodie slightly rises, right under his belly button, confined neatly by the prominent outlines in his abs. To really sell whole ‘not-checking-out-your-best-friend’ bit, lean into the spine of the booth, lazily leaning your head against the leather cushion, half-closing your eyes, lazily leaning on your own shoulder, arms folded comfortably across your stomach. You don’t know where the lie and truth meet, but you still wear his blazer, and the earthy cologne keeps you awake, as a (poor) substitute for his proximity, until he kneels down next to you.

“Tired?”

You can hear the smile in his cheery voice.

“Mmhm.”

If he were Jaemin, you might’ve cancelled every surprise (or just not planned them) and accepted his offer to take a nap in the station while the next train arrives. If he were Renjun, you might’ve left later in the day, or the previous day, or maybe not even planned lunch with your cousin, since the two don’t really know each other that well. If he were Haechan, you might’ve gotten teased after the second you stared wobbling on your toes, needing his support to get you on the train, or he would have driven all the way to Busan in that newly painted car, taking turns at rest stops. But no, this is Lee Jeno, your best friend since middle school. You used to joke that you had a platonic crush on him, that you manifested being his best friend from the moment you saw him; you just didn’t know that it meant this.

“Short on words?” he jokes. Earlier, you were more talkative than him, a side effect of being as awake as he is now, before you ate a peanut butter jaffle, nearly falling asleep as you finished breakfast, like a child after Seollal dinner with the grandparents. “You had so much to say when you were willing to let me, your best friend, starve.”

You roll your eyes, leaving them closed when he takes his seat, offering his arm as a plushie for you to cuddle; you also shift your hips, invading his personal space to lean even deeper on him. “As if you would starve. How many donuts did you eat? Six? A dozen? How many sandwiches?”

“Are you calling me fat?”

You slide your arm across his abdomen, letting your hand dangle on the other side. “I’m saying you’re just giving me more surface area to hug.”

Jeno rolls his eyes, his entire head, mocking your actions from the first train ride, “Excuses.” You slap his chest, accidentally groping his pec (you were aiming for his arm), and leave your hand there, slowly dragging your wrist down his abs (again, not intentional – and hopefully he feels that way too) to hug his waist. He brushes your hair behind your head, equally running his thumbpad along the curve of your ear. “I got this one; take a nap.”

“You got the tickets?”

“Eung.” He pulls them out of his front pocket. “Freshly printed from the KTX terminal –“ He grabs your fingers, gently rubbing them between his like helping you wash your hands. “- ink smudged under your nails.” You groan when he drops your hand.

“Bags put away?”

“Yeah, all four of ‘em.”

“Make sure the pastries–”

“Shhh.” Jeno curls his hand over your mouth. And you are tempted to lick his palm, except your mouth is too dry, so you resign to breathing through your nose above his long fingers. “Sleep; I got this.”

“You know, these seats recline …”

“Shh,” he repeats, laying you back down on his shoulder.

Unfortunately, you wake up the next hour after a train attendant bumps your booth with her snack cart. Ironic, since you had a weird dream involving Haechan as a Domino’s delivery boy (even though he hates American fast food!), dropping off a pizza with all the pepperoni replaced by Jeno’s eye smile, and you paid using a ₩100,000 bill with Renjun’s college CSA (Chinese Student Association) presidential portrait in the middle. Eh, you’ve had weirder. Like that dream – after Jeno started working out more … diligently, in college – where you basically pounced his bones at the end of multivariate calculus in the middle of the lecture hall. That, and the one with a young Bill Nye.

You inhale deeply and push your palms on either side of your legs, inadvertently groping Jeno’s thigh in the process, making him jolt too, when you get yourself upright, leaning a little more on him than the chair.

“Everything good?”

“Hmm?” you yawn, stretching your limbs under his arm, which somehow blanketed you during the ride. You spare it a glance before looking up at him again and answering his question, “No, yeah, all good, just –” Another yawn escapes you. “– tired’s’all.”

Jeno squeezes your torso into his chest. “You can go back to sleep. We have a little more than an hour until Busan.”

You nod into his hoodie, almost accepting it.

Then an egg sandwich with your name scribble on it appears in front of your nose. And you reluctantly wake up, shaking Jeno off your shoulders as the train attendant hands you a small paper food-box, the lunch that you reserved with an extra ₩10,000, in case the jaffle place was closed on Thursday mornings. With the professional photos and multilingual descriptions, you practically could not say no to the gilgeori toast.

Except, you can and you do. One bite into the brioche, after the attendant leaves, you barf the mashed pellet onto a napkin, quickly washing away the taste with some water.

“Don’t like it?” Jeno teases, giggling loudly. Then he takes a bite of his caprese katsu sando and immediately regurgitates it into an empty paper cup on the table. “Oh, ew.”

The two of you exchange raised eyebrows and nod at each other, verbally confirming, “Switch.”

As you finish your second sando, of three, occasionally nibbling Jeno’s food, just to make sure that you really don’t like it, the train unexpectedly shuffles forward, making a fast stop as if it almost missed the station – not the Busan Station, which you aren’t sure whether to be happy about. On one hand, it would mean that the conductor almost missed your stop in Busan (literally impossible, since it is a major station), if you were in Busan; on the other hand, reality, it just jerks the entire cart, your bags and everything loudly jangling above. You hear the rumpled plastic tote bag, full of pastries from a local shop near the Mural Village, squish between the luggage bags, and you immediately get up to save them.

Jeno’s hands stabilize you as equally quick, when you crossover his legs to enter the aisle. His strong fingers dip into your skin that exposes after you grab the pastries, your hoodie lifting right below your belly button. You exhale shakily and look down at him. He concentrates on reading the stats on the game he lost when you got up. You come back on your heels. Then the train jolts again, stopping for real. And Jeno grabs you harder, probably more surprised than you, given the way his wide eyes ask if you’re okay. You nod, then dig through his backpack, pulling out a Tupperware in addition to the pastry bag, and take your seat again – all while aided by Jeno’s massive hand.

He takes the bag from you, holding it in front of him on the table, as you open the Tupperware, to check if everything was all good – no broken cookies.

“Oh, thank Go– Hey!”

Jeno takes one of the cookies with bigger chocolate chips, although the edges are distorted, curved out of shape. “Yum, I love your mom’s recipe.”

You frown, whining, “I made those for Jaehyun and Minghyu.” You pinch his arm, closing the box and taking the bag before he eats everything there, too. “Plus, you ate an entire bakery in Jeonju. How are you so hungry?”

“Nothing compares to a mother’s recipe.” Jeno bites into the cookie again. You cross your arms under your chest, trying to emulate your best mom-caught-him-with-his-hand-in-a-cookie-jar state. He doesn’t crumble, but he coaxes the last bite into your mouth, smiling after you comply.

You roll your eyes, sighing, “God, these are good.”

Jeno rolls his eyes too, munching on his last sando again. “I love that you’re so humble about your baking skills,” he laughs

But all you catch are the I love you and his crinkly eye smile.

Attention, passengers: we have arrived at the Busan station. Please gather your belongings and departure the train at your nearest exit.

The actual stop is even worse, if that’s possible, than the other 500 it took to get here. And Jeno finds that he doesn’t like this train very much – the stop is too abrupt, and there was no warning like the previous ride. He might even file give a comment or two on the feedback card, assuming there is a box somewhere for it. Once, he gave a thumbs-down on a YouTube video for not effectively helping him tie his boxer hand wrappings. Or, maybe, the driver sucks.

He just hates that you wobble so much every time you stand up in the cart, even though the ride is over now. Not that he hates helping you. He doesn’t mind, almost enjoys it, if he were being honest – holding your waist between his long fingers, under the guise of steadying you or warming you up, given that he never really gets to be this close to you. And he takes advantage of the moment, of your exhaustion, inhaling the remnants of your shampoo as you nestle into his chest, face first.

You mumble something incoherent against his shirt, then groan when he laughs.

Jeno pushes you back up, for less than a second because you fight him, trapping his waist in your arms. He laughs a little bit louder, and his shoulders rise to his ears, allowing him to hug you around your neck, practically suffocating you between his beefy biceps. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

“I said –” You lift your chin, pouting at him through your eyelashes. “– the Uber will be here in five.”

“Oh, then should, um, should we …?” He gestures to the exit.

“Yeah,” you doze, shaking yourself off him, shoving your hands in his blazer pockets. Jeno frowns. He hopes you can get more sleep tonight, especially since the hotel is, like, 20 minutes away from the train station. “Let’s go wait over there.”

Jeno throws his arm over your shoulder, guiding the two of you through the automatic double doors, his hand hanging in the air above your chest. Outside, you slant onto him more, wrapping your arms around his waist again, turning your cheek on his pec, eyes half-closed too. He can smell his own cologne on your skin. But, scared that you might hear his heart skip a beat, Jeno rotates you into his neck, resting his face on your hair. He only gets half-a-second though, until your phone beep beeps, altering the Uber’s presence two meters away, which is even closer than he thought. Seems like everyone wants time with you, at his expense. But as the car pulls up, honking, confirming your ride, you yawn one more time and fix his hoodie, with your arms circling behind his head, before packing the luggage in the trunk. It takes Jeno another moment for his body to move. He waits until you have to pat the car seat to grab his attention – because no matter what, he’ll always leave an eye out for you, an ear open for you, an arm free for you. And he follows.

Everything goes fuzzy during the 15-minute drive (the driver took the freeway, rather than the streets), without an object to distract him. He basically ordered you to sleep, as if the car vibrations weren’t a strong enough lullaby, shushing you into the crook of his neck, like he leaves that place specifically for you.

“– cute couple.”

Jeno snaps his neck up. The driver’s – an older man ��� eyes reflect a smile through the rearview mirror, and he repeats it:

“You two,” he clarifies, “You look like a cute couple.”

The sentiment echoes later, again stealing the air from Jeno’s lungs, once you arrive to the hotel, accurately predicted by the app on your phone, not that he was counting down the meters until you arrived …

Jeno barely lets you thank the driver, shoving you through another automatic double doors set with renewed vigor. You give him a weird look that he cannot quite narrow down, so he ignores it, pointing to the front desk, unaware of how much time has passed, not wanting to block the entrance. You turn slower than him, and he thinks his cover has blown, that you will know that the Uber driver said something weird, something he has pondered since, basically, middle school. But instead of asking question, you answer the concierge’s questions: Name and ID? Credit card? Reservation for … two? Jeno taps his toes into the ceramic tile, tempted to pull out his phone, but he doesn’t, in case you need him.

Then, she makes the point that snaps his neck up again: “You two make a cute couple – oh,” she frowns, typing into the computer. “A room with two beds?”

“Yes,” you confirm, sounding like gritting through your teeth. Jeno cranes his neck forward to confirm, but as he does, the concierge grants you the room tickets and you move on, pulling him by the hand – interlaced fingers – toward the elevator, avoiding the topic.

Silently, again, Jeno follows you through Floor F to Room 23, only stopping when you roll his luggage in front of the TV and dresser. He copies you, unsure what to do or say without knowing exactly when Jaehyun, or Mingyu, will stop by for lunch; although he expects it to be soon. You put your hands on your waist, staring at the floor. He almost asks you what you’re thinking about, but you cross your arms under your chest, sheathing your hands under his blazer.

“S-sorry about that,” you whisper, so quietly that he has to step closer. “Be-because she thought that we, um, th-at we are –” You wince. Jeno reaches out, squeezing your shoulder, thumb rubbing harder to reassure you further. “– were a couple.”

“It’s o– ”

“The same thing happened with that train conductor.”

“What?”

Maybe he sounds too surprised, because you look mildly offended, mouth agape. And he pauses, for what feels like eternity, until you laugh. Then, he laughs. You sway forward a little bit, both hands landing on his chest. He catches you, steadies you, again, laughter fading into a smile.

“Sorry, about that,” Jeno apologizes honestly, by the tone of his voice: soft and comforting. He rubs the back of his neck, feeling like he owes you some sort of explanation. “I guess I was too close to you.”

But you disagree.

“No, it’s fine!” you reassure him right away, as if all his worries are ridiculous – which they might as well be, since you are his best friend (don’t tell Jaemin; although, Jaemin tends to be more affectionate than you in social settings, and they have been mistaken for a couple on quite a few occasions, even with you present). Then, you glance at your hands, darting between your fingers on his shoulders and his eyes. “I w-was probably too close to you to-too.”

And with that, you retract your hands.

But he catches them, puts them back.

“It’s okay,” Jeno promises, his palms stroking small circles into your waist. “The Uber driver also thought we were a couple.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

A beat passes.

And in that beat, Jeno realizes that neither of you are like this with your friends – you don’t hang off his arm; he doesn’t spend an entire night staring at you from the corner of his eye – and neither of you were like this as kids – you weren’t each other’s first kiss; never have you been called out for cuddling, justifying it as “we’ve been doing this since we were young!”. But this could be the residual pent-up energy from forcing his body not to immediately find you in every setting. Like, his judgement can lax while the real world pauses outside the Busan border. You know, he has let you borrow his clothes from middle school through college, to now; he has held your hand across the sidewalk, making sure that you stay on the side furthest from the cars on the street; he has hugged and kissed (your forehead) and cuddled you in the past. And each time, he shoved any inkling of feelings back down.

“I –” Jeno starts, but you are too close to his face and words fail him. He needlessly brushes hair away from your face, as if the action would bring him clarity. It doesn’t; it gives him more questions than answers, especially in the way that you slowly crawl toward his face, eyes trained on his lips. Jeno returns it, mouth parted on the last syllable he said, shoulders falling down, down, down. He slides your hips over his, stuttering his hand onto your cheek, letting you rest in his palm, your head turned, ready if he closes the distance.

You lean forward on your toes, standing tallest on his shoulders. He mimics you, getting smaller, as a way of asking for your consent, and this time, you copy him – copy what he usually does – flickering your gaze to him until enough time has passed. You get closer … closer … closer …

Ping!

“S-s-sorry,” you mumble, pulling out your phone from your back pocket but not pulling away from him. Jeno bites the inside of his mouth, unsure whether to move, since you don’t. One breath escapes his lips, mutually breaking the moment. “It’s – It’s Jaehyun – Oh,” you exclaim, as if realizing the proximity for the first time. You step back, escaping his grasp, pointing toward the bathroom at the front of the room. “I-I sh-should get ready. He – He – Jaehyun, my-my cousin, um,” you stutter, shaking your head at the ground, “I don-I don’t know why I’m telling you that; you know him.” You grab your duffel bag, but it pounds the floor. Jeno thinks you weren’t aware of how heavy it is, and he raises his eyebrows. “Anyways, -” You smile at him, hands pressing into your hips. “- he – Jaehyun – will be here in 30 minutes. I-I’m gonna go change an-and get ready in the bathroom. Yeah, uh, bye.”

You slam the door.

Another five minutes later, after he collapses on a bed, it hits him: Jeno almost kissed you.

Lunch goes off without a hitch. Mingyu picked an Italian place called La Bella Citta, which was originally meant to cater their wedding, until Jaehyun decided that he wanted traditional food at the reception. It is a pretty expensive place, hence why they paid (partially because you and Jeno are the siblings he never got). And the lunch followed a simple formula: Jeno makes a (bad) joke; Jaehyun brings up an unrelated anecdote, chuckling prematurely at just the thought; Mingyu laughs too hard, accidentally spilling champagne; and you get a bunch of memories, smiling fondly as Jaehyun cleans Mingyu’s shirt with a Tide pen.

Well, there was this one thing.

Your risotto didn’t taste very good – the rice was overcooked; butter had been added over oil; the dish lacked its creamy texture, more soupy in consistency. Thankfully, Jeno exchanged half his steak with you (not the tenderloin part, of course). No one would have noticed; had you not been so obviously gawking at him for the gesture, because it sparked Mingyu’s clumsy ass to comment something about doing the same for Jaehyun in the past. And then Jeno turned it into a competition for which of them has exchanged more meals with the Jung family (although you don’t share the same last name; you are part of the family by extension).

While they battled it out, with Jeno winning since he did take your egg sandwich on the train earlier, Jaehyun poked you in the arm. “So you brought him?”

You narrowed your eyes. “Is that a problem?”

“No, no,” he shook his head, “I just thought you might bring Jaemin or Renjun – I never see Renjun, and he buys really good gifts.”

You snorted. Yeah, right. Renjun bought a choco pie for Jaemin’s birthday, like, at midnight, from a convenience store; he bought Jeno PJs, even though Jeno doesn’t wear pyjamas (you can attest); and he bought you a thrifted candle holder which broke after you put an electric candle in it. If Jaehyun wanted a good wedding gift, he should have told you to bring Jaemin. Still, you would’ve brought Jeno; like, no matter what, you would have asked Jeno first, and he would always say yes. Even during that awkward orientation week in college when his physics professor caught him shotgunning two beers at the same time right before class (it happened twice); you begged him to go to office hours with you, needing constant reassurance that you did not, in fact, sound like an idiot.

“And I thought you liked Jeno,” you frowned.

“No, I do; probably not as much as you, but of course I do. If you didn’t tell me before the wedding invites went out, I would’ve sent one to him myself.”

After that, everything everywhere happened all at once; you didn’t have time to contradict him, or self-reflect – Mingyu spilled more champagne; Jeno leaned his arm behind your chair, using his other hand to pull you closer, to help you avoid touching the entering wedding party; Jaehyun tilted his big ass forehead at you knowingly. You were almost relieved to head back to the hotel, instantly collapsing on your bed without changing out of your Sunday finest clothes instead of responding to Jaehyun’s cryptic observation.

“I’m dead; I’m dead,” you complain, throwing your arm over your eyes to block out the golden hour seeping into your room. Dramatically, you fall backwards onto your bed, relaxing your entire body into the comforter. You peak under your arm to find Jeno when he doesn’t respond, and he smiles back at you, hanging up his blazer before taking a running start.

“Oof!” Jeno flops like a fish beside you, covering his eyes too. “All of us are dead,” he jokes, referencing the drama he started last week. You started it first, binging it a couple days after it aired, but when he told you about it, you didn’t have the heart to tell him that you’d already seen it and watched half the season with him. It became part of your daily lunch routine, not that you know how long it will last. Your urban revitalization project is temporary, a bit long term temporary, spanning until maybe October, but still temporary.

You shift onto your side, hands folded in prayer under your head as a pillow, scanning his peaceful face. “Hey,” you whisper tentatively. You wait another few seconds (maybe even a minute) before opening your mouth, hand reaching out to touch him. “Jen, I –”

“Yeah?” his voice rasps.

“I j-just wanted to thank you for coming with me today,” you change your mind, recoiling before he opens his eyes, which he does, peering at you with the same wide curiosity as the day you met him, “And switching meals with me all day. I – I –” You inhale. “– I really appreciate it, really … appreciate you.” You whisper the last bit, hoping that he doesn’t catch it.

But he does.

“Of course,” he tells you, like he could never say no. And suddenly, you cannot recall an instance when he has ever denied you the thing – he shares his food with you; he helped you spontaneously paint your apartment at 3 AM; he gives you his clothes at the crack of dawn. “You’re my best friend.” Now you can remember the moments – he wouldn’t do the laser tag tournament with you (and Jaemin); he turned down your invite to The Griffin Bar; and worst of all, he outright refused to go to Renjun’s Single’s Appreciate Day party with you. “I’d do anything you ask.”

You roll onto your back, facing the ceiling, and close your eyes.

“Jen-Jen-Jen-Jen-Jeno, Oh!” your rapid legato whimpers wake Jeno up.

First, his body reacts, an involuntary twitch from his feet to head. Next, everything above his torso moves, his arm covering his eyes. He turns into his elbow, away from the window that isn’t as bright as he thought it would be. He, then, remembers that he, somehow, fell asleep on your bed, or you two fell asleep on the same bed; neither of you really got the chance to figure out the sleeping arrangements, since yesterday had so many activities. Not that it mattered, or was a bad thing; you did spend the previous night in his apartment, in his bed. Granted, you slept feet to head, him on top of the duvet with another blanket.

Jeno drops his arm down his cheek, cautiously opening an eye to the other half of the bed.

His hand and jaw fall.

You moan his name again, mouth gaping at the ceiling, eyes twisted shut while your back arches off the mattress. At some point in the night, you must’ve changed, or you wore that lingerie set under your dress the entire time at lunch. Jeno cannot help it; his eyes find your tits spilling out of your teeny-tiny mesh cups that don’t look like they would cover up very much skin anyways. He tries to move to your face, but his willpower fails, and he looks for the source of your moans: your hand between your legs. Unfortunately, you still wear the matching, lacy panties, and your palm hides just how wet you are, the other fisted into the sheets by his thigh.

Jeno bites his lip. Why would you wake him up like this? Do that next to him? … Unless …?

Experimentally, Jeno leans onto you, pressing his still-clothed chest over you bare arm, the one attached to the blanket, clawing it roughly. He kisses your shoulder, ghosting his index finger down your naked stomach. Your moans get louder, more encouraging, so he doesn’t stop. God, Jeno wonders how you have this pornographic glow at golden hour, before the day even starts, that he cannot get enough of. You arch further off the bed, into his touch, making his fingers pad deeper into your skin, increasing their pressure until he gets to your pussy. He cups around your hand, guiding the way you grind into your own hand. But desperate for more movement, maybe more of him, you scissor yourself. And he can feel it, feel your knuckles flex, forcing your thighs separate for the deepest stroke.

“Fuck, you’re so wet.”

“To-touch me, please, Jeno, touch me.”

Jeno inserts his fingers with yours, simultaneously rutting his fully erect penis on your leg, which makes him realize that he is too clothed, but he doesn’t want to pull away from you. Instead, he straddles one of your legs, grabbing the opposite side of your neck. Blindly, using his tongue to find your most prominent vein, he sucks at your throat. He kisses you, kisses your neck, sloppily, repeatedly, until you whine even louder. Jeno has to break away, moaning into the air, his chest sweating through the white whore shirt. The two of you might get a noise complaint; is it bad that the potential turns him on? He barely gets to return to your neck, barely gets to make that wet mark even more tender, when you reverse the positions.

You push him back down, temporarily, just long enough to flip your hair over your shoulder and climb his waist. And apparently, he makes a strangled sound, because you release his shirt, smoothening out the wrinkles, mumbling something about buying him a new one later, but the entire action makes more of your hair fall down, so Jeno sits up quickly. You slide down his lap, only stopped by his long, thick cock standing under his pants. His dick outlines your ass curve, pushing your cheeks further apart. With the new position – the better position – he shoves your hair back, fisting it into a ponytail the same way you fisted the sheets, exposing your neck again. He starts a new hickey, too impatient to find the last one (it is on the other side), sucking his way down. Your bra straps fall down your biceps at this point. The plastic little adjuster springing free with your tits as Jeno bounces you in front of his cock, too much acceleration rolling your body on top of his chest that he has to force his body to slow down before he cums prematurely. He wants to cum inside you.

The decision to end the foreplay, the juvenile grinding, occurs when you rip his shirt open, mumbling something about buying him another later. Your nipples rub on his pecs, almost purposefully missing his, circling around the areola. He grunts throatily, catching your ass and pulling your cheeks apart, slapping them twice, fast, as a punishment for your sopping pussy teasing him, ghosting his cock.

“I want you,” he breathes, “I want you so bad.”

“Then, fuck me.”

Jeno hooks a finger around your panties, moving his knuckle slowly over your clit until your legs shake as much as his do. He gives you a quick look, a quick kiss, before lifting you on your knees, positioning his cock between your legs. You brace your hands on his shoulders, lowering yourself with his hand on your hip. He gets halfway in your pussy, the both of you throwing your heads back, moaning to the ceiling. After a brief recovery, he trusts in all the way.

Jeno stutters his hips down, preparing the next thrust, his eyes shut tighter than your pussy walls around his dick.

Then, he wakes up. For real.

He jumps, in a cold sweat, the birds chirping outside. And maybe, Jeno should be concerned now. Initially, he just looked for you, as the first thought crossing his mind while he opened his eyes – eg, when you slept over at his apartment, feet to head, him too scared to sleep next to you in case he accidentally confesses murder, or close to, during his sleep; when he slept on your shoulder in the train; this current moment.

Yeah, technically, he is in your bed – hotel bed, but still. Jeno fumbles around the mattress, untangling himself from the blanket that you probably put on him last night. When he stands up, in the small aisle between the beds, unbuttoned pants slipping off his waist, the hem covering half his feet, he recognizes that these are yesterday’s clothes, from the lunch with Jaehyun and Mingyu. He stumbles toward the night, every part of his body warm, his cock burned by the teasing memory of almost pounding you in the very bed he just woke up in. Of course it was a dream; it was too good to be real. Jeno grumbles, palming the small table for his glasses. As he puts them on, he finds the hotel stationery branded with your messy handwriting:

Left for coffee xx be back in 30 ♡

Jeno nods his head. Half an hour. The other half of the bed was vaguely warm, he remembers. He looks to the other bed – still made, pressed enough to bounce a ₩500 coin off. Evidently, you fell asleep next to him, too, and even though he cannot recall who fell first, he can recall who woke up first and how he woke up. His cock writhes, twitches under the waistband of his Calvin Kleins, no longer swinging between his legs; it wants to know how deep your vaginal canal is, and Jeno steadies it, groaning because he spent half the day steadying your pretty waist. The thought makes him involuntarily squeeze tighter, makes him realize that his underwear constricts the blood flow that rushes to his cock head, stopping at the base like a spiteful cock ring. So, he frees his entire length, shimmying his bottoms below his ass, and hops onto the empty bed, with what he assumes is enough time to finish what his dream started.

Focusing on the upper half, Jeno dry rubs his tip, roughly massaging his finger around the head, expediting his orgasm like a college freshman testing out the sock-on-the-door myth with a solo session. His fingers curl tightly around the circumference, slowing down his thrusting. Pre-cum quickly dribbles above his navel, leaking into little pools in the crevices of his defined abs. He slathers it along his entire cock, twisting his palm up and down, moans loudly bouncing off the walls. The wetness creates the foundation for his fantasy, conjuring the image of an equally moist mouth choking down his fully length, your mouth choking down his full length. Jeno knocks his head on the wall, whole body panting into the air. His hips float, too, and he chases his hand, a poor replacement for pussy or a sex toy; ass coming off the blanket as sweat builds up on his body. He unbuttons half his shirt, sliding his fingers to his nipple. That familiar tension in his stomach creeps into his chest, and his moans get more desperate, louder.

Then, as if his dream were a premonition, you come out of the bathroom, wearing a low-cut sports bra and matching tight, black leggings.

“Ah!!” you both scream.

A beat passes, maybe an hour, Jeno cannot discern between his exhibition rising and your gaping mouth.

You react first, running into the bathroom.

“I thought you were out getting coffee?!” he shouts, covering his dick with the blankets. It twitches underneath.

“Why would you think that?!” you scream back, before calming down and cracking the door open a little bit, “I got back five minutes ago. I was putting stuff in the bathroom for my shower.” God, his dick really twitches. He might even cum untouched. You sound like the beginning of a bad porno, and maybe his fantasy was an actual bad porno, but the thought of you, with so much exposed skin, willing to expose more skin under hot water. “Why are you –”

“I thought I had time!” he interrupts. He stands up and pulls his pants on, silently screaming at his boner to go away. It doesn’t. And he resigns, praying that you won’t see it. “I thought I would hear you bring me a coffee too and have time t-to-to cover it up.” You usually buy him a coffee too; you did it all four years through college – barged through his heavy apartment door, or announced it, pressing the iced coffee on any bare skin available.

“It’s in the fridge! I didn’t want to wake you after yesterday.” You slowly come out of the bathroom, and he turns around, wincing when his still-hard penis bounces against his hip. “It’s an iced coffee,” you tell him, biting your lip and avoiding eye contact. You cross the room toward the mini fridge. Jeno sucks in a breath. The coffee is inside. Of course it is.

When Jeno coughs, you immediately turn around then look away as equally fast, having accidentally made eye contact with his penis (and him with your tits, again, just like in his dream). “Do you, um, do you still want to take a shower first, o-or can I, um, get in there?” He scrunches his nose at the poor choice of words.

“N-n-y-you can go first,” you stutter through a mirrored cough.

His shower lasts the half hour he thought he had.

Overcoming awkwardness has, surprisingly, never come up in your relationship with Jeno, not even through the ungainly middle school phase, during when you confidently kept your fleeting crush on him a secret. Well, you hoped it was a fleeting crush. Those feelings bubbled up on and off for years, and currently, they were on. Last time they turned off (aka when you suppressed them), Jeno had a girlfriend, a long-term girlfriend, for two years. You thought you were in the clear, thought you were over it, permanently, especially after they got stupidly expensive promise rings, but habits are hard to break. And you crawled right back to him.

You step out of the bathroom, towel shaking out the water droplets from your hair, casually dressed like you arrived from Hongdae. The oversized shirt doesn’t stick to your skin as much as your sports bra earlier after your quick run in the streets, or the blouse that you nearly sweated through at lunch yesterday as the afternoon temperature increased to accommodate for spring. You jump on your bed. Well, you guess this is your bed, the one closest to the entrance and bathroom, because Jeno … occupied the other one. You glance at it, instinctively hiding your hands under your tousled covers, then shake your head. As you look away, you see your handwriting on the hotel stationery crossed out in perfectly straight lines (a symptom from majoring in architecture, you know) above Jeno’s cursive:

Went down to the lobby for breakfast. It ends at 11.

You flicker at the digital clock beneath a disconnected lamp: 10:05 AM. Still early. You got up some time around 5:30 or 6, your body absorbing too much sleep, having passed out almost right after getting back to the hotel from lunch. Unfortunately, Gwangbok-Dong doesn’t open until mid-morning, about 10:30, so you couldn’t buy a wedding gift yet (you have an envelope of cash for the reception, but Jaehyun added a registry link qr code on the invites). You also hoped to give Jeno more time to sleep, knowing that he must’ve gotten five interrupted hours total in the span of 36 hours. Shopping without him would have knocked out a chore, the only chore really, and then you two could buy him a tie or just wander around the area, which, come to think of it, costs a lot of money. It costs money to breathe, Jeno once joked during an ECON 305 lecture sophomore year, so now, you might as well take advantage of the complimentary bibmbap.

By the time you get downstairs, the chefs have disappeared, and only three plain bibimbap dishes remain amongst the sparse assortment of other breakfast snacks. At least this moment has somewhat perfect timing; you didn’t have very good timing earlier when you caught Jeno with his dick in hand (or did he not have good timing? You have no idea). You snake around the buffet-style tables, picking up a small mango juice and a few side dishes in addition to the main. Once you have a decent portion, you walk toward the half-empty seating area, scanning the chairs for a place to sit. You kinda look like a new high school transfer student searching for a clique – do you sit with the band geeks and their giant brass instruments? Do you sit with the chem nerds and finish the homework that’s due tomorrow? Or do you latch onto the one person you vaguely know so that people don’t stare at you for standing too long?

Yeah, you immediately find Jeno playing some cart rider game on his phone under the table. Nice to know that the sentiment is returned, ha.

“He-hey,” you mumble, clanging your tray on the metal table. “Do you mind if I sit here?”

Jeno looks up at you and puts his phone in his pocket. He gestures to the seat already pulled out, as if it were waiting for you. “Yeah, of course.”

You eat a few bites, hoping that the tension will go down the longer you are in his presence, but he fidgets by your side, rubbing his feet together loudly over the wood flooring. He gives you an apologetic stare, waiting for you to break first. Slowly, you finish chewing part of the egg and wash it down with juice, equally marveling at him, unsure how exactly to say alright, we both know that I caught you masturbating and you probably finished off in that not-so-short shower without (1) scarring the other guests and (2) completely altering your relationship. Like, you didn’t even have sex!

“About this morning,” you start, “I should’ve knocked.”

“No, no.” Jeno shakes his head. “I should’ve … not … done … that. We’re sharing a room for the weekend, an-and it’s your space as much as mine. I’m sor-”

“I mean,” you interrupt, pushing your spoon around the bowl of rice, “it happens. You – Guys get … those,” – morning wood, hard-ons, boners – “an-and it’s not like you were thinking about me. I get it.”

Jeno makes a strangled noise, so you whip your head at him. Suddenly, you notice his proximity, and you push all the way back into your chair, accidentally skidding it across the floor. Your eyes go wide, eyebrows more talkative than your sputtering mouth. You aren’t stupid; he knows that, but Jeno is too honest for his own good, even at the expense of his own thoughts. He bites his lip, evidently saying more than intended, and that is how you have known him for the last decade – overly blunt, blurting out his thoughts easily, every answer written on his face, stuck on the tip of his tongue.

And you cannot help yourself when the memory of his massive cock resurfaces, his pre-cum pooled at the neglected slit as his fingers massage right under the head. Your fight-or-flight response activated before you could make a conscious move to take the leap, to get even closer on him than the train allowed. You wonder, breath hitched, whether you idealize his cock – whether he idealized sex with you. On your end, it has been a while since you last got laid, a couple months, bit of a dry spell hitting you at the start of this new urban revitalization project to fix up the arts district around the SeMA. The initial funding took some convincing, both the government and museum not seeing the necessity, but once your team got the ball rolling and you were able to pull in Jeno, the lead architect, and Renjun, a graphic designer, you figured that time would be more in your favor.

That was not the case.

Your team leader divided the project based on skill-level, meaning that you had to cooperate on the ground level with Jeno and Renjun, planning every move from point A to point B. So, while half your coworkers enjoy hoesik, probably out there hitting on clubgoers and getting laid, you stay at the office past witching hour, hunched over blueprints and maps and expense reports. The only saving grace, really, is working with your best friend. … Your best friend who just inadvertently admitted that he jerked off to the thought of you. … Your best friend whose dick you currently think about, trying to revisualize whether you remember it correctly. Maybe you need a refresher.

“We don’t,” Jeno clears his throat, still avoiding eye contact, hands rubbing on his jeans, “um, we don’t need to talk about it.”

You bite your tongue.

Because you do want to talk about.

Geotechnical engineering, in college, was easy. Jeno received A-level marks all three terms, nearly a 100% in the second term. Designing a new plaza around the SeMA, for your project, was easy. Jeno got his first design approved by the MOLIT and the Cultural Heritage Administration, based on a 4AM napkin sketch. Fuck, even finding your G-spot in his dream was easy (although, credit is due to the movie magic directed by his subconscious). But all of those have something in common: a template. You know, like, engineering follows a basic algorithm, as do project designs. And he’s had years of experience giving people orgasms, even made a few squirt, so he can just manipulate a technique to best suit your pussy.

With this, with you, with the real you, Jeno doesn’t know what to do, or where to start, when you are so close to him, concentrating on straightening out the main knot in the tie you wrap around his neck. I’ll buy you a new one echoes in his mind, the assurance you whispered in his dream, now that you are actually out shopping. He can smell your own body wash this time, compared to the cologne on his blazer in the train station. And you probably don’t even know how hard it was for him, then, to not kiss your neck. Maybe that’s why his subconscious creates a pattern out of it: bring you close (like at on the KTX), taunt him in his dream (give him the kiss he wanted and set up something more), bring you close again.

It took a moment, both times, to actually build up tension. The first time, he scarcely kept his eyes open, couldn’t really appreciate your body, half-tired, half-scared; probably why his subconscious went easy on him last night, as if having mercy for all the dick veins in his heart. And when he caved, you caught him. Jeno spent the better part of this shopping excursion keeping his distance – e.g., even though you browsed home appliance stores together, he walked a few meters behind you, only stopping to make commentary:

“What if we get them an air fryer?” he suggested, to get out of there as soon as possible and relieve the awkwardness.

You refuted, “They already have an air fryer. Mingyu bought one, since Jaehyun can’t cook.” Right. “Makes him feel like Baek Jongwon.”

So, you settled on a nonstick, ceramic, pink Always Pan set (in addition to the cash envelope) that Mingyu might get more use out of and help lessen the dish load. But you let Jeno pick the color.

“There,” you finish, eyebrows unfurrowing. You turn him toward the adjacent mirror, arms crossed over his chest. He doesn’t immediately scrutinize your work (not that it was necessary; you have been tying his ties for formal events since MUN championships in high school). Your hands linger, warm, on his shoulders, falling slightly on his pecs. Then, you let go, palms up as if an AED machine alerted you about the next incoming shock. “I’ll either do this same knot –” A cape knot. “– or an Eldridge knot, depending on which dress I choose, but both look good for a solid color tie, like this one.”

“What about a trinity knot?”

Jeno cannot believe that he is making small talk with his best friend about the various types of knots; the same best friend who vomited into a cup 0.2 seconds after entering a bar, resulting in your entire group getting kicked out, and then fell asleep on the sidewalk outside, resulting in a cop arresting all seven of you for the night because you made it seem like you were all blackout drunk. Your relationships survived that whole mess, despite everyone losing the ₩25,000 entrance fee (although, Haechan and Renjun refused to go out with you for, like, a month). Most importantly, your relationship with him survived that; actually your relationship with him didn’t even take a hit. He nursed you back to health the next day, which might have, or not, been a symptom of his excessive drinking – tucking you into bed with a thousand blankets, bringing you 35 water bottles, taking your temperature every 4 minutes.

“Mmm,” you consider, fixing your gaze back at his neck. “Probably not. It’s not really formal enough for a wedding, and I’m already on the fence about an Eldridge knot, in case Jaehyun or Mingyu want to wear one – it’s like if I wore a white dress to their wedding. People would think that we were getting married.” Jeno raises an eyebrow and is met with silence. You drop into your hands, twiddling your thumbs, a forced laugh bubbling through your esophagus. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s, um, it’s fine,” he reassures you. He should be sorry, for making you deal with his emotions. “You could, um, tie it change it at the wedding hall, or, um, at the reception. I don’t think I’ll end up wearing it all night.”

“Or you could learn how to tie something better than a half-Windsor,” you tease, slowly lifting your head.

An identical smile breaks onto his face. “It’s a classic for a reason!”

“Call it what it is: basic.”

“I haven’t had to learn how to do other knots!” Jeno pushes your shoulder, laughing when you do. “Besides, it’s never about my clothes. I’m just the accessory, your arm candy.”

Your giggles fade, then almost as if remembering the distant morning, you separate from him. And he has to close the distance again. He tentatively reaches for your hand, boldly threading your fingers together. You don’t react, instead choosing to focus on the glass display case under the mirror. Your hair moves just a little, the strands loose from your ponytail blowing, slightly, in the wind. His hand could replace it – the hair tie – if you wanted (it’s what his subconscious wants), but you focus on the glass display case under his reflection. You fiddle with the blade of a tie that you both rejected earlier (ha, you seem to be rejecting a lot of things today). The color didn’t suit his skin tone or the garden wedding theme; Jaehyun made sure to include a sample of his bouquet in every invitation. How is he going to be a good wedding date, to you, if you can barely look at each other?

“Did I sa–?”

“Let’s buy this one,” you decide, interrupting him simultaneously. You pull the purple off him, as if un-marking him. Another stark contrast to his dream, which has him wondering whether his fantasies are boring. “Then, we can get dinner at that bistro down the road. I know you’ve been craving steak, and Jaehyun is doing a chicken-or-fish style reception.”

Jeno shakes his analog watch into view: 3:27 PM. You finished breakfast before noon. Should you leave now, you might be able to finish dinner just as quickly (or long), based on your pace eating bibimbap, and grab coffee before the café by the hotel closes.

“Yeah, okay. Sounds good.”

Jeno pays for the tie and an extra two white dress shirts (just in case), as well as a chocolate bar from the tiny stand at the register, stacked near the gift cards. You thank him, but it is the least he can do – (1) he feels really bad for this morning, and (2) you essentially paid for every other part of this trip except the food. He reassures you that you need not apologize; you are his best friend, but then you throw that back in his face when he brings up money. Both of you keep parroting “don’t worry, it’s fine” at each other, only to retreat into awkward silence.

You hold the shop entrance open for him, gesturing him out the door, then walk a pace behind him. The medium-sized, paper shopping bag swings between the two of you; well, it would, if he stood next to you.

Jeno stops.

“What are we doing?”

You pause too, body freezing mid-motion for a second, then you look over your shoulder, eyes looking him up and down. When his head tilts to the side and his eyebrows furrow, you turn around.

“We’re going to the bistro,” you answer, as though it were obvious.

But Jeno already knows that. He made the plans with you half an hour ago. “No, I mean this. Why are we –” He shakes his head again; he knows why, too. His reflection in a department store catches his eye, so he pulls you from the middle of the sidewalk around the corner, somewhat hidden behind another building. “What are we doing?”

“Jeno … are you okay?”

“I’m serious! We practically spend every day together, it feels desolate when you’re gone, and … and –” He steps into your personal bubble. “You’re not here with me right now.”

“Jen,” you drag out his name, looking away from him, “I don’t think you know what you’re saying.”

You are not hearing him.

Jeno cautiously withdraws his hands from his bomber jacket. His nails accidentally scratch the pocket inner lining, giving him a chance to back out, to reconsider his declaration. But he doesn’t need a second chance; he just needs the first chance. So, instead, Jeno grabs your palm, inching his fingers up your elbow, and scans your eyes. Without resistance, you draw him closer at his waist. The shopping bag falls down low on your wrist, drumming against his thigh and yours. He feels your leave his waist and slide up his cheek; he has to close his eyes, not entirely believing the way his body betrays him, leaning into your face.

“I … I …” he pants, head spinning.

“Hey, it’s okay,” you assuage. He can feel your breath on his lip, so he sucks in air, lips parted slightly, scared he might ask for too much. And maybe that is where you get a signal – get the signal – because he feels you rise to the tips of your toes and kiss him. “Let’s just order room service.”

Why did you say that? Let’s just order room service. The suggestion prolonged the time before you could kiss him again, because once you got back to the hotel, heels practically floating off the ground, you had to wait.

Luckily, the hotel was just around the corner. If you ran, you would have been upstairs in 10 minutes, but the two of you took your time, practically strolling through Gwangbok Road. He walked beside you this time, his pinky occasionally grazing behind your hand.

And in the elevator, Jeno became bolder. His entire body, previously trembling, gravitated toward you, latching onto every part that you would allow, and you gave him permission, made it known that you wanted him to touch you. You almost pressed him into the reflective wall, trapping him on the cold metal railing, but you restrained yourself; you already made that initial move: kissing him (well, it was the next move, since you caught him masturbating, earlier, to the thought of you. Then, he was the first person out the elevator, practically dragging you into the bedroom, nearly detaching your arm. Outside your hotel room, Jeno kissed you. Your hips knocked beside the key swipe, making it easy to fumble the key card out of your pocket and through the lock. You didn’t open the door immediately, choosing, instead, to stand on your toes, and wrap your arms behind his neck, essentially climbing him, like a tree, in the empty hallway, the shopping bag floundering on his back. Jeno paused the kiss, trailing his lips away, ghosting his breath on your tongue. His gaze flickered from your parted mouth to your eyes, and you saw his dilated pupils grow bigger. He pointed his eyebrows to the green light, right before it turned red. You scanned his face for another rejection, and seeing none, you opened the door.

But once you got inside, Jeno sat you on the bed, perching you where you fell asleep next to him last night. You dropped the shopping bag and your jacket to the floor, staring up at him the entire time, hopefully inviting. While he towered over you for this second, you admired your work – bruised lips, static hair, flushed skin, even his breath bated. Subconsciously, you touched your bottom lip, dragging it down to see if it were equally swollen (it was). Jeno took a step forward, but changed his mind, ordering room service from the restaurant downstairs through the phone on the nightstand.

Now, you flicker your gaze over his body, checking him out like a man who convinced his foreigner girlfriend not to dress modestly at the clubs. Your eyes flicker slower, up his tiny waist (that makes his flat ass appear a little plump) to his strong biceps, sleeves pushed up to reveal more skin, back to his lips, which mumble a swift thank you before returning to the edge of the bed. You slide to the very tip, spreading your legs wide open enough for him to stand between. Jeno curls his thumb under your jaw, lifting your chin, maybe admiring your features too. You hope that you look equally disheveled.

Jeno gently pins you on the bed, slithering up your torso, brushing his pecs on your tits. He grabs your waist, fingers dipping toward your butt, dragging you to meet his pelvis.

“You have to tell me,” he says, eyes closed, millimeters from kissing you again, “right now, that you want this, want me, before we do anything more.” His thumb comes under your shirt, drumming an indiscernible beat directly on your stomach, just around your belly button, almost unsure which direction to go – toward your pants, toward your bra, outside your shirt. Your breath hitches, and you feel your body sink lower into the mattress. “I need to know that we’re on the same page.”

“Can’t you feel it?” You guide one of his hands down your pants, his long middle phalanges driving cautiously into the seam. He cups your pussy, falling level on your chest. His lungs pant heavily into the back of your neck, tickling the hairs into standing up. “I want you.”

Jeno chases your lips, barely managing, “Not what I meant.” With your consent, he kisses you again, and you, consumed by his undivided heat, ignoring everything that isn’t his touch, like the white sheets rusting under your long hair as his shirt grinds into your abdomen, riding your clothes up. He hooks a hand under your thigh, switching the positions for you to straddle him. His legs stretch forward, feet planting into the ground, which gives him the leeway to sit up and brush your hair back into a makeshift side ponytail. Jeno scans your eyes, darting side-to-side, all the tension melting away after you smooth his shoulders. “I … I …”

You caress his cheek, having mercy on his dick (currently hard under your ass), and lift his chin higher. “I know what you meant.” You press your lips into his, chastely. He responds, puckering his lips each time you peck him, but he also frowns – frowns deeply enough for you to really pull away; his frown looks more intense than you felt. “I …” you whisper, sliding your arms on his shoulder, fiddling with his hair. You teeter on your knees, shifting your weight across his lap. He stops you. “I like you so much. More th-than friends.” Then you kiss him again, to wipe your confession away, because you can live with it. You can live with the repercussions of his mistake; you can be his mistake. This doesn’t have to be a whole thing. You don’t need to finish your confession with his rejection.

Jeno whimpers your name, tugging you away by your hair. “I –”

“It’s okay,” you whisper, “You don’t need to say it. Just me –”

“No, I need to –” He sucks in a breath. “Can I kiss you?”

You shake your head, an actual mistake because he freezes; you only meant it in disbelief. So, you lower down again, sliding your hands under his jaw. You turn your head to the side and mumble, “Don’t stop,” before reconnecting.

Jeno pats his palm on your pussy. His opposite hand, the one above your hip, fingers your waistband, scratching continuous circles, waiting for an affirmation. “I meant kiss you here.” He pouts at you through his eyelashes. “Can I kiss you lower?”

You shimmy off his lap, pushing him into the bed. “Everywhere,” you answer hastily. He helps you glide off your pants, and his veiny hands are all you can concentrate on, everything else blurring until he fondles your clit, above your black panties.

“Do you like this?”

“God, yes,” you pour moans into his mouth, holding his throat straight, like a tall glass for iced tea. When he inserts a single, long digit between your wet pussy lips, he winces, as if being penetrated himself, as if you found his prostate on the first try without any lube other than your spit. He adds a second finger, his longest finger, the middle finger, the ‘fuck you’ finger (literal in this case), prompting you to hump his hand. Your hips roll forward, increasing intensity. You gasp when he scissors his fingers wider and crosses them over one another, like a promise, then you bounce higher, your ass cheeks squeezing together. “Fuck, I didn’t know you could do that.”

Jeno slips in another digit, curling all three forward, his ring finger (the free one) twitching unrestricted. “I guess there’s still a bit you don’t know about me,” he blows into your gaping mouth, your moans following his rhythmically to the beat of some song you cannot think of while riding him.

You sink all the way down his hand, grinding your clit on his palm, and take off your shirt. Before your tits can spring free, Jeno pulls you close, trying to suck marks above your bra. You grate broken ah, ah, ahs, growing louder whenever his fingers sheath completely inside you. As if goading you, he slaps your jiggly ass, twice for every once you shake down. You yank Jeno away by his hair, darting through his swollen lips, his flushed cheeks, his narrowed eyes. Under you, his dick twitches.

“Should I –“ you pant, slowly stopping on his hand. But he seems not to like that response and drives his fingers back up. “Can I,” you correct, “ah, ah – Can I help you with-with that?”

“I want you to cum.” Jeno squeezes your ass cheek, and you fall into his lips again. Your tongue falls out, stiff, virtually asking for something to occupy your mouth. He takes his free hand, shoving it between your lips, pushing your tongue down, saliva pooling under his fingerprint. “Are you close, pretty girl?” His hand moves faster, rougher. Your thighs twitch. “Feels like it.” Your panties threaten to slip back into place, so he rips it. “Sorry,” he mumbles carelessly. You don’t blame him, too focused on your legs tensing up but his thumb on your tongue pushing you back down.

“Don-don’t worry,” you whimper, “I, ah-uh, have a – ah – nother pair. They’re also black, fuck, but lace. Hides better under my-my dress.” You skid lower down his waist, and his cock stands up on your ass.

“Fuck, you’re going to ruin me.”

“Untouched?”

“Maybe.”

However, you don’t like the thought, considering it unfair – unfair to him that he has to settle for a cheap orgasm; unfair to you that you cannot milk him dry between your thighs. So, you descend his legs, prying him open at the knee. You spare it a glance, covered by his jeans, wondering what it would be like to bend over it, ass in the air, spanked harder.

“Hey,” Jeno calls, snapping you back to attention. You relieve your thighs, unclenching, to stare at him. “Is this –” he inhales sharply, possibly trying to come off nonchalant, like it would be okay if you decided to stop, decided that you didn’t want this anymore; you swoon. “Is this still okay?”

“Of course.” You meet his eye. “Always.” You loop the tops of your fingers under his waistband, above his Calvin Kleins, the name brand embroidered as thick as his veins leading under it. “Can I help you with this?”

“God, yes, please,” he finally answers, throwing his head back on the pillows.

You unzip his pants, the sound bouncing off all four walls without any moans to cushion it; you could practically hear a pin drop. Jeno props himself on his elbows, and his abs crunch forward, tightening his impeccably defined six pack. Like, you already knew – since college – that he sculpted his body at the gym like Pygmalion did Galatea, but it adds pressure, not because your hand wraps around his cock (you have yet to touch him), rather because his gaze burns holes through your hands.

“You don’t,” he mumbles, “You don’t have to take it all. If you can’t. You don’t.” Jeno shakes his head, his hair shyly hiding his eyes. “I just want you, so it’s o – Fuck.”

You lick the premature bead of cum, digging your tongue in his slit to clean all of it out. Your thumb and index fingers wrap, tightly, below the glans. You bob your head a little lower, tasting just the tip, flittering your eyes to gauge his reaction. While your inexperienced days are behind you (pun intended), Jeno has this magical first-love quality about him, that makes sucking his dick seem like your first, like when two rom-com leads finally have sex, except it’s in a car on a cliffside for added drama. He appears to agree – how? You don’t know exactly for sure, but people outside your relationships have mentioned that you make a good first girlfriend.

Jeno involuntarily stutters his hips higher, pushing half his cock past your lips, making you gag. Evidently, there are many things about him you still don’t know – namely, how big his dick is. You always suspected him to be above average, especially after his sporadic growth spurts in high school, but you never imagined that this would be your way to measure him! He can barely fit half his shaft through the rim of your lips. And it gets worse (better?) when you hollow your cheeks, scraping your tongue above your teeth, because your mouth squeezes him out. Jeno mumbles a string of curse words, nearly screaming them as you suck harder, his fists twisted in the blankets. You pull off his cock, replacing your mouth with your hands, albeit tighter, and spiral your saliva down to the base, leaning tall on your knees to spit more on his tip, in the slit from where precum bubbles out.

“I told you: I want you.”

“Fuck.” Jeno throws his head back. “Okay, sit on my face.”

You stop moving your hand, subconsciously throbbing your palm to the beat of his (dick) pulse. “What?”

Jeno’s fingers tap on the blanket, his voice increasingly whiny, “Sit. On. My. Face.”

You comply, kneeling around his cheeks, knees brushing his shoulders – which still wear his shirt, nothing but his abs and penis exposed. All the cloth touching your skin makes you feel more vulnerable, most likely more vulnerable than Jeno, and he might regret this in the morning. So, as he anchors his extra-large hands under your thighs, digging into your muscles, you pinch his shoulder, like a safe word, a safety action. And he stops.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, curving his neck to see you better. Maybe you frown too deeply or maybe you are on the verge of tears, because he sits up again, immediately spinning in front of you. “Hey, -” He gingerly reaches for your cheeks, holding your chin above his fingers. “- We don’t have to do this, if you don’t want. It’s okay. I want you to want this.”

“I,” you swallow, cautiously looking into his eyes. You cover your chest, hide your boobs by your bra – the only clothing on your body - and naked arms. “I just,” you mumble before finishing lamely, face warming with his hand, “feel really naked.”

“Oh,” Jeno says simply. He scans your face indiscernibly, so you, not wanting any of this to end, raise your eyebrows suggestively and glance at his shirt. “Oh!” Jeno takes it off, elbows crossing on either side of his ears, showing off his Dorito torso. And you must have been leaning forward, because you fall into his chest, a hand bracing widely on his obliques. You sheepishly raise your face, slightly ducking under his perky nipple; you lower eye-level with it and hesitantly lick it. “Fuck. Is this why you wanted me to strip?”

You flatten your tongue under his areola, then flick upward, tentatively building more pressure until you have his waist in both your hands, holding him steady while you massage his nipples. Your opposite thumb pushes small circles where your mouth neglects, almost kneading him like that time he taught you, in Chem 224, how to use a mortar and pestle properly, holding the ceramic bowl firm against the thick pestle breaking apart various solids into fine powders. Deeming his left pec marked enough (by your nails and lips), you move to the right, leaving a moist path between his boobs, but, rather than fondling the other side, as you did when it was dry, you fist his dick, dragging him forward. You assume Jeno gets the hint, given that he traps you on the sheets, under his flexed biceps. He kicks off the rest of his pants and slithers up your body, pressing his completely naked body into yours, only your bra left as a barrier. Jeno straddles across your hips, his cock spasming, as if asking you to do the last honors while he gropes your entire lower half, massaging your ass with the heels of his palms.

“Do – do you-you still want me to sit on your face?”

“No,” he heaves instantly before doing a partial push up (push down?) to kiss you, aggressive and instant. You can feel his broad deltoids pinch together while you ground yourself on his muscles, using the moment as an excuse to grope him. He swirls his tongue in your mouth, simultaneously smacking his wet lips to you, making you constantly chase him, come up only to be pushed down again. “Fuck, mayb-maybe later.” Later. You’re going to do this again. Jeno holds his torso still, slowly moving his cock between your pussy lips, lubricating himself prepared. “I want, uh, I want to be inside you,” he moans, voice breaking, “Can I fuck you? Please?”

You guide his tip into your cunt. “Please.” And when he stretches your hole, urging his girth past the involuntary tightening, you arch your hips up. “Full, full, fuck.” He shallowly thrusts, pulling out a little bit, only to push in more. Your thighs shake, and you point your feet down, curling your toes, to keep your legs separated enough for him to go faster. But you notice that, while he pistons in and out of your cunt, you cannot feel his balls slapping your ass; you cannot hear the distinct skin-on-skin noises – that’s when you realize: he’s not completely in you, despite the full feeling practically in your cervix. “Jeno,” you whine, “Fuck me.”

“I am,” he answers, breath quivering through gritted teeth.

“Harder,” you beg, fidgeting to give him additional access, little grabby hands wriggling along the outline carved around his muscles. “More.” You claw into his well-defined six pack. “F-fill me up all the way.”

Jeno mattes your hair down with his thumbs, coaxing your eyes open again. You peak through just one, then slowly open the other; you can feel the lines in your forehead melt away. Just for a second though. Because he uses your temporary relief to bottom out. You barely process any of his movements, until he kisses you again, his thrusts stuttering too gently. His breath trembles, controlled, masking the way his hands fight some urge to bruise your hips, so you hook your shin around his strong leg and topple him. When you sink down on his dick, taking every inch, pussy working overtime to accommodate him, the both of you groan. You honk his pecs, matching each squeeze with your breath. The bedsheets rustle, having come undone with all your tossing and turning, and Jeno kicks the blankets off the bed, sitting up. He mouths your perky tits, tilting his head to the side, jaw dropping with his tongue to suck as much skin as possible. You grab the headboard, accidentally slamming it into the wall, once, twice, three, four, five times, when he circles his hips, dick flopping around inside your cervix, ridiculously deep. Jeno grabs your ass, strikes your skin hard to start bouncing you on his lap. He helps you keep his cock inside your pussy, guiding you less than halfway up and banging his skin against yours. The position pushes you forward, allowing his shaft to graze your sopping clit, vulva pinning opened.

“Ahh,” you scream, “Je-Jeno, I’m-I’m –“ You throat tightens, words choking, “Oh, shit, I’m gonna cum.”

Jeno brings his lips to yours, half a millimeter away. He grunts, abs tightening too. “Cum, baby, you can do it. You can do it. Come on, baby.” He grabs you by the throat, holding you in place as he licks into your mouth, eating up every moan, every breath, and fucks you faster. Your pussy gets wetter, more malleable, and you finally cum, toes curling, unwinding in his chokehold, tongue flopping out. He kisses your pink, plump tongue, lips smacking heavily, moaning out his nose and mouth, “Uh, uh, uh, fuck. Can-can I –“

“Cum inside me,” you finish for him, answer for him.

Jeno propels his cock a couple more times, the last one driving both of you into the air. Thick spurts of cum shoot into your pussy, almost adding another inch, the tip of his cock hitting, jerking, on your G-spot. You sit there for a little bit, your bodies slumping down the headrest, possibly addicted to the way your walls continuously milk even more cum out of him.

When he finally finishes, cum forcing its way down your thighs, he kisses you. “So … about sitting on my face?”

Your face lights up, the thought of him eating his own cum out your cunt way too exciting, and you push him on the bed, immediately popping his cock out and straddling his mouth.

An obnoxious ringing interrupts Jeno’s dream, way too early (well, anything that wakes him up is too early), and he whines at it, preferring to sink into his heated mattress pad. But the default iPhone ringtone seems especially heartless, right now, for whatever reason – even though he probably wake up earlier than this during the work week. He buries his head in his pillow, trying to force the alarm into snoozing. His nose brushes into the soft pillowcase, inhaling the aromatherapy. Then, it moves … you move. And Jeno remembers the night before. It wasn’t a dream this time.

You slam your hand on the nightstand, briefly sliding out of his arms. The alarm – your phone – persists though, falling to the floor. You mumble a small fuck under your breath, softer than last night; the memory makes his dick twitch. He feels you crawl over the edge, rustling the bedsheets, your ass brushing his dick away. You dip heavier into the side with a Herculean effort, reaching for your phone, then slide it onto the mattress under your pillow. He tries not to react, tightens his already closed eyes, but his dick twitches. Thankfully, you seem blissfully unaware, nuzzling back into the pillows, a hand crossed over your chest, breathing deeply.

Jeno exhales through his nose, relieved. You must’ve fallen back to sleep – good, honestly, with work and then the whole train ride mess a couple days ago. Maybe he can use the time to finish what he started yesterday morning. Unfortunately, when he grabs his cock, points it up, his pelvis scrunching his abs, your thighs part, just briefly, then close again. The tip catches between your ass cheeks, trailing toward your pussy, sliding with back and forth, aided easily by how wet you are. Jeno internally groans at the thought of you having a sexy dream, hopefully about him. You start swaying, and your arm starts shaking, and your breath labors – you are touching yourself: your neck, your arms, your stomach, your clit. All the shifting spurs Jeno into action. He slowly and shallowly rocks his hips forward, spreading your natural lubricant across the top half of his cock. You lean into him, hands changing to claw his burly naked shoulder, and guide his fingers to your cunt. At the new position, the closer position, he sloppily mouths the part between your neck and shoulder, his breath as hot and heavy as his tongue.

You freeze for a second, stiffening your posture, and he thinks that maybe he misunderstood or that you changed your mind, so he slowly pulls back. His cock springs free from the tight crevice, wet and warm and hard, twitching on your round ass.

“I’m sor – Did you not – I thought – I’m sorr –“

You turn around and kiss him quiet, throwing a leg over his hip. Your heel digs into his lower back, above his flat ass, lodging the tip in your pussy again. Slowly, you lower yourself on his cock, kissing him harder the further you sink down. Once he is completely inside, you pull your face back and wrap your arms around his neck, practically fusing your bodies together. Everything moves too fast for him. Jeno is unable to appreciate your touches. He makes it known with a mewl, chest beating quicker than yours. And as if you sense it – best friend intuition, you might say in any other situation where his dick isn’t in you, like wordlessly handing over a bag of ramyeon that you ‘borrowed’ from Renjun’s room – you brush a few strands of hair away from his eyes, and he opens them this time. You’ve always been good at comforting him: when he had a panic attack over losing his wallet, when he got reprimanded at work for shredding the wrong abstract, etc. He has always known it. Well, not always; he doesn’t know where it began, but he knows the feeling will last forever, like a vow. Jeno hugs you around your waist, tighter, asking you to move for more or to stop for less, because, much like last night, should you give him an inch, he’ll take a meter.

“Don’t be sorry,” you beg, humping his cock again. “I want you.”

Jeno loses balance and falls on his flat ass, his thighs sandwiched densely between yours. He fumbles around the bed, pushing away the thin sheet to see his cock disappear in your pussy. It should be impossible; you should be tight, having nothing to prep you beforehand, but maybe his stroke game last night was enough, you came twice on his cock alone, the stretch evidently lasting through now. The mattress creaks and the headboard hits the wall as you bounce firmly, knees jabbing into the bed. Your breath shakes, abs visibly flexing, and you fall forward, hair splaying over his shoulder. He licks his middle finger, then drags it under your thigh, trapping his cock in a V, using his lubricated finger for added pressure on your clit, his dick abusing its underside. His free arm belts behind your back, index finger teasing outside the rim of your asshole.

“Oh, oh,” you scream, biting your lip, pawing the comforter for some stability while he rams your little cunt. “F-f-ffuck.” He spanks your ass, dragging the meaty flesh up with a glowing hand mark. “Cu-cu-cumming. Mmm, oh my god, I’m so c-close.”

“Already? Shit.”

You tuck your hips forward, and he takes advantage, moving his hands under your torso, massaging your clit with all his fingers and sucking your tits. The repetitive sounds synchronize – your whimpering, his whimpering, your skin slapping into his, the bed springs screeching, your cunt squelching. All of it overwhelms his senses, and had you not been so close to his ear, Jeno would’ve missed your mantra:

“Jeno, Jeno, Jeno,” you squeal, moans getting increasingly louder, “I’m cumming, I’m cumming, cumming.” Your pussy drools cum down his legs, and he gradually decelerates, riding out your orgasm.

A beat passes, full of tense heavy breathing, before he pants in your face, nearly screaming (as if you hadn’t done so a moment ago, in his ear, with his face buried in your neck). “Breakfast,” he says simply, loudly, trying to hear himself through the ringing in his ears that preserves the way your moans sound, as if this could end on Monday morning when you get back to your real lives – which it could. You never said what this is. “Should we, um, should we get breakfast?” He remembers your alarm, trying to suppress the hardness in his cock, as if this were all just a formality, a complimentary wake up call not provided by the hotel, and he looks away, but he doesn’t go far, only dropping to your lips, not wanting to part, even in his view. “You know, that first meal of the day, typically eaten during moan-morning, often in, um, including rice, eggs, milk –”

Jeno flickers his eyes away from your lips, catching you gazing at him. Somehow you make it less creepy than when he does it. There was this one time at the end of high school when he checked on you, in the next cubicle over, in the library, only to find you asleep on your textbook, relying on osmosis rather than flash cards to study for the CSAT; 15 minutes passed and he felt like he regressed into that middle school nerd who just stood there, wheezing. Or that other time in international student building during college when Renjun slapped him on the arm because he was staring at you too long; he lied, saying that he was just making sure you got the right coffee from the vending machine, but Renjun knew. Jeno is convinced that his entire friend group knows how he feels about you – Haechan tried setting him up with you back in high school; Jaemin practically read his diary; Mark … Mark might actually be the only one who doesn’t know, for sure, but he definitely suspects something!

You grab his chin, snapping him out of his thoughts, and search his face before kiss him, your eyes fluttering closed as you grind him through the overstimulation. “Cum in me,” you order, “I’ll milk your cock dry.”

“Fuck,” Jeno breathes, never detaching his lips. He hugs low on your waist again, slapping your ass with both his hands. And when he can’t take it anymore – take the grinding, the clenching, the bouncing – he mumbles your name in your mouth, “Baby, I ne, uh, I need to cum. Let me cum inside you,” he takes you up on your offer, like the more-than-decade-long pining stops at a dam, at your answer.

Wordlessly, you shove you tongue in his mouth, cradling his cheek as he leans deeper between the pillows. You grab whatever length of his cock that is not in your pussy, and he whimpers when you throb your hand around him, teasing the other half inside your cunt. Jeno scoots forward, using the momentum to slap himself all the way in you, making your hips stutter. Fuck, you’re tight. And he knows that it’s a dumb myth for the vagina to be this compact, narrow canal, but your wall muscles barely conform to his girth, and the thought boosts his ego, so he holds you steady against his chest, repeatedly ramming your pussy with long thrusts. Your tits jiggle off your chest, scraping his pecs, almost slapping him in the jaw as he tilts his head up to suck more bruises under your chin, to soothe you from all the choking last night.

“Je-Jen,” you stammer, “I don’t –“ You swallow, shaking your head. “My legs are-are going to giv-give out.”

“It’s okay, baby, just breathe,” he tells you. He punctures your hips at a faster pace, like giving your pussy CPR, ordering your clit to administer a shock, blowing the kiss of life for the both of you. “In, out, in, out, in, out,” he guides, “You can do it.”

Jeno flips you on your back, an oof resounding the room, yelps and giggles following. He gives you a second to gather your composure, regulate your breathing, then pistons his cock repeatedly in your pussy. His tip catches on a particularly hard clench, and your walls refuse to let him go, trapping him in a spot that abuses your G-spot. He pushes the entire length inside you, practically fucking your cervix again, driving your back arched. You writher along the mattress, hair splaying among the sheets. His fists outline your obliques, thumbs erroneously pointed outward, trying to support your back. He accidentally slips on a particularly hard thrust, but before he can save himself, he protects your skull from hitting the headrest or your arm from getting crushed by his chest. Phew. Maybe if he were weaker, he would hold you on the bed, thrusting in a way that lets the both of you fall into the pillows, or maybe if he were stronger – mentally and physically – he would be able to stay up, not tempted or dizzy at the sight of your slightly parted mouth. Jeno readjusts his hands – one pushing your waist into the comforter, for his own support, and the other creeping toward your neck. You lift your chin up, giving him consent, and it takes him a second to move forward; he didn’t think he would get this far, that you would completely let him manhandle you. But, he guesses, he doesn’t know everything about you, and he is so excited to discover more. He pads his fingers on either side of your esophagus, squeezing just enough to make breathing a little harder for you, make it harder for you to follow the breathing pattern he ingrained in your cunt.

“Fuck, baby, breathe just like that.” Jeno peeks an eye wider, glancing at the blanket tosses away. Cautiously, he drifts his gaze to your stomach, and his cock twitches. You moan loader, almost confirming him thoughts – is he really that deep? Your pussy clenches. “Fuck, I’m gonna cum.” Jeno kisses you. “Cum with me,” he moans your name.

You used to make fun of him for being such a romantic, always cooing when he’d swoon over Knox and Chris, until he decided that he didn’t like their romance anymore. It’s too possessive. Although, he understands the sentiment, because the way you look at him, now, face contorting over your second building orgasm, incomprehensible whines spilling into the air. He should have done this sooner, should have kissed you sooner, and he would have, if he had known it would lead to this, because he can do it; he can bury the depth of his feelings while you sort yours out. If he can have you this close, like this, he would do anything.

Jeno draws his hips back, your name snagging on his moan. He feels your fingers dig in harsher as your legs tense up, tension building in your stomach. His knees chafe against the sheets, rocking an imprint into the mattress that keeps your legs open. Jeno slows his thrusts, instead hammering his entire cock harder. He tries not to cum prematurely, wanting to see your second orgasm of the morning overstimulate, but as he abrades your clit, holding your thighs wide, he feels himself shoot a thick rope of cum deep in your pussy, and it’s not long until he spills everything else, fucking you through his own orgasm, fucking his cum into you, your hole greedily drinking it all. You follow a few hits later, shaking your ass to help yourself along, then Jeno collapses, sweaty hot body enveloping your matching one. He presses sloppy, wide, open-mouthed kisses on your clavicle, steadily trailing up your neck, your cheek, and pecking you on the lips.

“Better than your dream?” you giggle, returning a kiss.

“Way better.”

Getting out of bed takes forever. The first time you tried to leave, you sat on the edge, stretching your arms upward. You bent over, standing on the ground, reaching for your toes, shaking off the jelly sensation, but Jeno, equally awake, rejuvenated from the twenty-minute rest since his cock was in you, leaned over the edge as well and made out with your pussy, licking all the way to your rim and back. Rather than shoving his head away, you pushed your hips back, for more, and eventually returned to bed, kicking up your legs and giggling your way into another blow job. The second time you tied to leve, you had to cross over Jeno’s body to get to the aisle between your beds, since your bed was pushed against the wall). You slithered a leg over his waist, balancing your palms on his shoulders, his cock twitching on your ass. He grabbed you by the waist, holding you there. You raised your eyebrows, pretending to be innocent (even though you really did want to get out of bed) as his cock hardened.

And now, the third time, your legs shake on your way off the mattress, having experienced way too many orgasms in less than thirty-minutes.

“Come back to bed,” Jeno whines, patting the empty warm spot you previously occupied.

“No,” you laugh, holding your arms out for balance before you fall again. You slap his grabby little hand away from your ass, much to his dismay, and pick up one of the new shirts you bought him yesterday that slipped out of the bag after Jeno kicked over a blanket. “I’m hungry,” you pout, facing him and buttoning up the top few buttons. “I need something to eat.”

“You have something I want to eat.”

“Real food, dork.” You walk over to your luggage, hunching over, ass on display but too far away from him. He groans, and you can hear him flop back onto the bed. You slip on a pair of panties, and his groan gets louder, making a smile instinctively spread on your face. “Come onnnn,” you complain, crawling onto the bed with a blouse and bra in hand, inching into his face, “Let’s grab something at that bistro. We won’t have a lot of time tomorrow at the wedding, and it’s already 5.”

Jeno sits straight, back against the headrest, his arms behind his head, showing off his thick muscles and tiny waist. He looks you up and down, a frown settling into his lip as he releases his arms with another groan. “Are we doing this backwards?”

“Doing what?” you ask, focused on exchanging his top for yours, another long-sleeve but black this time. You creep onto his lap, legs folded over the edge. He instantly goes to stabilize your waist, and you replace your arms around his neck, giving him a chaste (albeit sensual) kiss on the cheek, the corner of his mouth. “I just want to get dinner.” You put a hand on his arm, doing your best to give him a set of puppy dog eyes that you hope he cannot refuse. “Please?”

Jeno throws his head back. “Okay, let me put on some pants.”

The wait time at the bistro exceeded the amount of time it took to get ready and Uber over there, so you decided to look for something else. It seemed as though the universe wanted to punish your feet, everything else either closed by noon or surpassing an hour wait. You know that Jeno hates waiting more than 45-minutes. If he even knows that the restaurant is trendy or high-end, he won’t leave the apartment.

“I’m sorry,” you mumble and stop in the middle of the sidewalk, an empty sidewalk around the corner from yet another restaurant. Jeno slows down ahead of you, a hand coming out of his blazer to rub the frown lines in his jaw. “I didn’t think everything would take this long.”

“Hey,” Jeno calls, stepping into your personal bubble, preventing you from looking away by cradling your cheeks, “Hey. It’s okay. We’ll find something.”

“No, it’s not okay,” you shake your head, tearily looking into his eyes. The night sky almost obscures them, but Jeno led you close to a building with motion sensor, external lights. “It’s ridiculous, honestly, and you keep comforting me, but I’m starting to feel like a bur –”

You are cut off by your own gasp when Jeno kisses you, effectively shutting you up, and you melt into his arms. He simply puckers his lips, kissing you as long as he inhales before breathing out, just enough to regulate your heartbeat. The whole world slows down around you, every sound muted except the gentle smacking of his lips. One of your feet pops, kicks up, and you lean into his touch, fully assuaged.

Jeno pulls away first, leading you over to an open hotteok stand without a line. He orders two for each of you and a large soda to share, paying quickly. The vendor compliments the two of you as a couple, but when you go to correct him, Jeno interrupts you again, a hand on your lower back, thanking the guy, and walks you down the street. Once you get to a bridge, streetlamps connected by strung lantern lights, he relaxes against the railing, using the warm pancake to heat up his hands. You look him over again, then glance at your attires; it seems weird – you both wearing nice date clothes but eating ₩10,000 snacks, sharing a soda instead of wine.

“What?”

“I just …” You turn the wrapper around in your hands, gaze falling to the chewy dough. “How are you so nonchalant about everything?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are w-we going to pretend that the stuff in the hotel room didn’t happen? Like I didn’t confess that I like you, more than platonically?”

Jeno sighs, casting his gaze to the floor. But, like, why? You are the one vulnerable right now. In the last 24-hours, you confessed, to liking him more than friends. You only ever came close three other times; three times in 12 years: at the beginning of high school, motivated by your friends to take control; at the end of high school, before graduation, when you thought that he would go to KAIST instead of Yonsei with you; in the middle of college, during volunteer work at a soup kitchen. And each time, you chickened out. You thought that maybe, after you entered the workforce, like a real adult, you would face the music, face these constantly lingering feelings, and maybe, this is it; this is the music, but something about him, about this, regresses you back to that teenage girl feeling: shy and insecure.

“I –” Jeno inhales, crumpling the hotteok wrapper into his pocket, then waddling over to you. “I don’t think you know what you’re saying.”

You frown. He is not listening to you. Why else would you repeat the friendship-shattering phrase? You thought that this was it, that you could live with being his weekend mistake, but that involved getting a solid response from him, something tangible to let you know how he feels.

“I just … You don’t …” You lick your lips, gradually dropping your gaze to the floor, unable to face him with all this uncertainty. “I,” you emphasize, pointing your middle phalanges above your heart, “don’t know what you’re saying. Jen, I want some cl –”

For the second time tonight, he cuts you off with a simple kiss, long and chaste, holding you by the neck, as if the action exempts him from explaining himself. And maybe you are easy to sway, because you let him kiss you in the middle of a bridge overlooking the Busan city streets, convincing yourself that having him physically close is the same as having him emotionally close.

Jeno hopes that he won’t be like Jaehyun on his wedding day – absolutely insane. Well, he hopes that he won’t be like this on his wedding day, with you, oscillating between awkward silence and carrying out his childhood, assuming that he marries you. Granted, the wedding cake did melt, and another groomsman, the best man, Yuta, is running late (delayed flight from Japan), and Jaehyun did rip his tie, hence why Jeno, now, runs around the Park Hyatt Hotel, searching for any front desk attendant to point him toward a sewing kit at the very least. He should have brought his back up tie, a skinny black tie that he definitely does not know how to turn into a cravat, and he cannot ask you, not after last night when he evaded your question by sleeping with you.

Left. Right. Left again. Jeno looks around the empty, second-floor hallway, above the equally empty front desk, adjacent to the imperial staircase. Promptly, he shuts the door, inhaling and exhaling under the weird single lightbulb at the center of the ceiling, eyes shut, trying to imagine his happy place.

“Jeno?”

He sighs, shoulders dropping, face finally relaxing without the groom-zilla pacing and spiraling without “his soul mate” to calm him down, but Jeno cannot refute very much. Even in his dreams, you exist. And maybe he talks too little, or you talk too much; maybe he doesn’t say enough, or maybe you don’t say the proper words, but he could live in the in-between, in the that moment after you say something and right before he doesn’t. So, he sinks into your enveloping voice, engrossed by just the sound of his voice, no pressure behind it – pressure to answer your ‘I like you’ confession with his thousand-word ‘I love you’ confession; pressure to have the ‘what are we’ conversation; pressure to face your inevitable rejection that, although you feel something more than friendship for him, you don’t feel the same way. Except, Jeno doesn’t just feel the warmth from your words.

Your fingers slowly touch his tall shoulder, pads of your fingers dipping in harder to grab his attention. And he screams.

And you copy him.

It takes a moment for him to turn around, a hand over his heart, patting down his lapels. But when he does, when he finally looks at you, as if he were the groom this wedding, waiting for you, the bride, to surprise him at the end of the aisle, Jeno’s breath stops. He cannot discern whether it’s due to the shock value of being in close proximity to you again, in an intimate setting almost rivaling 7 minutes in heaven (though he can say that he’s had more than 7 minutes in heaven with you, outside a closet); or it’s because you look absolutely stunning, somehow making the lime green garden wedding theme work for you – Jaehyun practically shoved a floor-length dress in your arms the moment you both arrived, absolutely exhausted, half-filled coffees pressed against your foreheads, above your sunglasses blocking the sunlight, as if you two were hungover (you weren’t; neither of you have drank more than water this weekend so far), before he directed you to Mingyu’s “side of the hotel”, even though you are his cousin, and took Jeno to his side. And, when you initially asked him to be your wedding date, Jeno didn’t expect to stand with the wedding party, thought he would just have to sit in the audience, watching you stand at the altar in front of the wrong man (granted, your cousin and his groom), but Jaehyun gave him a matching green tie and the second groomsman spot.

“Ha-ha-hi. What, um, what are you doing in here?”

You, staring at the floor, feet squirming clickty clack in your heels, hold up a tiny sewing kit. “Stealing some supplies for Mingyu. He brough an extra cravat and wants me to sew in tie, as a precaution, in case something happens to the current one.”

Jeno lets out a small laugh, and you slowly look up at him.

“What?” you frown.

“Nothing,” he smiles at you. “Just … they’re really meant for each other. Jaehyun ripped his tie, and he sent me looking for a sewing kit to fix it.”

You furrow your eyebrows and tilt your head to the side. And Jeno coughs weakly into his hand, trying not to think about the way you kissed him, last night, head tilted again, eyes half-lidded, lips parted slightly. “What about Yuta?”

“Delayed.” Jeno jingles his watch into frame. “He should be arriving at Incheon in the next few minutes, but he won’t be here until, like, 20 minutes be-before the wedding,” Jeno trails off slowly at the end. The ceremony, the intimate short portion of the early afternoon, starts in two hours. Except, right now, the closet seems more intimate – perhaps 50 people will be accommodated later, the ballroom, and if he translates that into this space, about a tenth would be in attendance. And they probably would not like to witness him undress you with his eyes.

“Mmhmm,” you hum, stumbling your fingers onto his lapels. You feel the material once, under your thumb, then smooth out imaginary wrinkles. He has to wonder what you see that he doesn’t, but he says nothing about it, not wanting you to leave him. “Luckily, Jaehyun has you then, huh?” You press your palm into his jacket, just the one time, above his rapidly beating heart, then start dropping your hand.

But he catches you.

“I’m lucky,” he says, the words falling from the tip of his tongue, like breaking the dam, letting all the pent-up and unresolved feelings flood, “to have you.” Jeno subconsciously tugs you forward, by your hand, until you stand just a hair away, your dress breathing like a Lee Byung-Ho sculpture for SeMA’s Aging World installation a few years ago (he took you and spent the whole time scribbling your name next to the notes that he had to decipher later for his extra credit essay). He flickers his eyes across your face, waiting before he gets an approval. You stay still for the longest second in history, and he mirrors it, mirrors you. When you appear to move away, he also copies that. “Sorry. Sorry. I know we’re in a kind of uncomfortable spot, and I probably shouldn’t’ve –“

“Jeno?”

“… Yeah?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Please.”

You fist his jacket, ruining the lapels more obvious for him to see, making him stagger forward. He braces a hand on the bookcase storage behind you, pulling your lower back toward his pelvis to help you evade ramming your spine into the shelves, but he still falls, face first into yours, one strong arm keeping you close, the other hovering above your cheek, too scared that he might crush you with the impossible weight of his crush, his feelings. You try to comfort him – as you always do, like a rock – fluffing his hair. Then, your foot slips, stiletto heel snagging on a loose roll of toilet paper. And he catches you, of course, always, holding your waist so tightly that you might crack. You echo him, this time, grabbing, groping, gripping every surface that you possibly can. To stop himself from toppling you, he bunches your silk dress at your hip and shoves his strong leg between your thighs. He drags you up his knee once, twice, thrice, and you moan.

“Jeno,” you barely manage to breathe, after one kiss, lips tight. You go lax in his arms, fawning over his arm like a damsel in distress – head thrown back, hair starting to tangle at the roots, leg hooking onto his waist. He moves down to your neck, your collarbone, your chest; he slides down the spaghetti strap for easier access, peppering wet kisses onto your skin. “Oh, my God,” you moan, arms tightening around his neck, drawing him impossibly close and thrusting your half-exposed tits in his face. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

Jeno kisses you harder, his tongue barely poking out, bottom lip dragging up. His inhales feel – and sound – heavy, trying to inhale everything about this moment.

“I want you,” he mumbles, nose brushing your cheek. He stops kissing you, open mouth panting into your ear. “But not like this. Not right here.”

“Jen,” you whine, sliding your hand under his jacket, clutching the back of his dress-shirt slightly untucked. “Please. I want you.”

“I – “ he gasps. “I –“

Then your phone rings.

I want you so bad, but not like this. I want to make love with you.

“He-hello?” you answer. You press your forehead to Jeno’s, and he takes the opportunity to analyze your face, the face he has memorized in his daydreams. Jeno twirls a loose, long strand of your hair, tucking it behind your ear. “Yeah, I f-ff-found it.” He presses a singular kiss under your jaw, tongue hunting for a prominent vein. And when he finds it, he pushes, harder, sucking just light enough not to create an ostentatious mark. “Mmm,” you nearly moan wantonly, legs giving out, “I-I’ll br-bring it by right now. O-okay, yeah, bye.” You quickly hang up the phone, dropping it to the floor, and wrap your arms around Jeno’s neck, returning one kiss, the final kiss, long and chaste, everything spilling out. “I have to go,” you whisper, sliding down his thigh.

“Yeah,” he mumbles back, “Me too.”

During the wedding, you did this a lot.

Thankfully no one noticed, or you hoped that no one noticed – you and Jeno staring at each other, across the altar; you behind Jeonghan, Mingyu’s best man; him behind Yuta, Jaehyun’s best man. You wanted to pay attention to the grooms, and their lovely ceremony, but seeing Jeno, just a few people away, had you quixotically imagining him at the forefront of the room, surrounded by your own friends and family. Who would be his best man: Renjun, Jaemin, Haechan? Would you get married in his hometown, or maybe abroad? What would you wear – Leehwa, Vera Wang, custom Prada?

Everything faded in front of you, when he met your gaze, staring you down over Yuta’s shoulder, closest to the officiant. You thought that the venue’s organization had it out for you, putting you on a pedestal below Jaehyun, but as Jeno returned your acknowledgement, you realized that the venue was, really, protecting your feelings, because the moment you locked eyes, the entire weekend flashed through your memory – almost kisses, actual kisses, accidental touches. You had to suppress all those feelings, make sure none of it was written on your face, like they meant nothing, like you don’t know what his current suit looks like crumpled and on the floor of your hotel room, like he belongs closer to you. The cheers following Jaehyun and Mingyu’s ‘I do’s were the only thing to bring you out of your own head, to draw the details of reality again, as if you willed time itself to move into the reception so that you could have Jeno to yourself again, restoring the intimacy of this affair to the grooms.

Unfortunately, it took a bit longer to even breathe in Jeno’s direction.

Both the Jung and Kim families shuffled everyone down to the reception ballroom, where even more friends and family and colleagues waited. You had to go back upstairs, without Jeno, to change into your party dress – the silk purple one, a shorter material that matches the tie you bought him. And then, the tables separated you as well, sending Jeno to mingle with other singles and you with your distant cousins, through the first course as both grooms, together, made their rounds, greeting every guest and expressing their gratitude in low bows for coming to celebrate their union. You finally found an escape during the main dish, which forced everyone to pull food from a buffet table rather than be served the same appetizer.

“Hey,” you bump elbows in line with Jeno, stealing his attention from the galbi-jjim, a small smile fighting your cheeks. “I – I can’t believe we got separated there. Do you think I can sneak you back to my table?”

Jeno chuckles and places a rib on your plate, using the obnoxiously large tongs to fix a batonnet carrot atop the meat. “I hope so,” he answers honestly, nose crinkling as a sign of it. “You’d think that they would put us together, since I’m supposed to be your plus one.”

“But I guess not,” you finish for him. You look over your shoulder at your table – nearly empty, like the preceding pew taking communion, then whisper, like making a tryst between spies, “Meet me at my table when you’re done. You can take my aunt’s chair; she’s dreadfully boring.”

You finish plating the traditional food that Jaehyun picked out for the occasion (according to Mingyu) and return to your table (Table No. 3) ahead of Jeno, who stopped to wait for a restock of japchae right before the dessert platters. He is easy to please – and they do say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach – because after he plates his noodles, he looks over his shoulders and sneaks a bite, eyes prettily fluttering closed, lips puckered around the tips of his manicured nails, licking his fingers clean. You try not to laugh, biting it behind an inevitable smile. Jeno finds you, easily, as he always does, tilting his head in confusion, but you wave him off, gesturing for him to finally join you, make you feel at little less alone among the extended family branches.

“Here, take some of the japchae,” he says, already unveiling a nearby fork from the dark green napkin cloth and piling it next to your rice. “It tastes –” He kisses his fingers. “- chef’s kiss, amazing.”

“You two make a lovely couple,” your aunt interrupts – not the dreadfully boring one; a different aunt, a younger aunt, who, just two years ago, claimed that she wouldn’t be like the rest of the peanut gallery, gossiping and leaping to conclusions about everyone younger’s love lives. You and Jeno sink into your respective chairs, deliberately avoiding touching each other. She leans in, over your arm, almost daring Jeno with her excited Princess doe eyes. “Can we expect another wedding soon?” He coughs. And you drop your metal chopsticks. And your aunt leans back, shrugging as if she hadn’t dropped a bomb. “It shouldn’t be a surprise. I’m probably not the only one who is expecting it. You graduated college – what – 10? 13? months ago. Right now would be perfect for you to get married, while you’re still young.” She briefly points a spoon at Jaehyun and Mingyu, before chopping up her almon bowl. “They got married young, and now they’re going to honeymoon across Europe. I’m just saying –“ She shoves a bite of food in her mouth. “It’s better to get married young – you grow together; finances are easier to manage; your health is in good shape, etc. etc.”

Your other aunt, her wife, finally joins, too, and smacks her arm. “Are you bothering another couple about getting married?” She turns to you with sympathetic eyes. “Sorry, after we got married, four years ago,” she emphasizes more to her wife than you or Jeno, eyes slightly narrowed (although playfully) on the last syllable, “she has been obsessed with weddings.”

“Happens when you marry a wedding planner.” They kiss.

You turn away, shyly looking at Jeno, mouthing an apology.

Surprisingly, he leans into your ear, whispering. His initial breath, before he even says anything, sends shivers down your spine, and he grabs your arm, rubbing your naked forearm for warmth. Oh. He mistook it. “Just play along,” he instructs. You can feel a hair move from its place. “It’s easier to say that you don’t know when we’ll get married than to explain why we’re, um, you are not dating.”

“W-we don’t actually know when we’ll get married,” you answer, gradually building your voice to conversation decibel.

“See! I told you they were a couple! There is no way that they wouldn’t be. Look at them!”

You cautiously glance at Jeno, stopping at his matching purple tie (he must’ve changed when you changed; and lucky him, a simple tie is easier than an entire dress), because you do not want to be so obvious about your lie. The train conductor, the Uber driver, the hotelier … they all thought the same, but since then, the start of your trip, you discovered that he does want you to touch him, in all the ways that carry meaning (and then some). You just do not know to what extent. He never said anything, never explained anything, not that you are entitled to his feelings. And you tried to reason it all – maybe you say too much, not really letting him, or maybe he says too little, constantly shocked to silence by all the secrets you spill.

You open your mouth at the round table, but another aunt of yours comes by and pinches Jeno’s cheek, saying something about how handsome he is, the statement echoing far off in your ears. And thank God, honestly; you did not quite know what to respond, merely hoping that, if you simply opened your mouth, your Broca’s area would follow. It didn’t.

“Yes, yes, but as you mentioned, my lovely date does not have a drink, so we best fix that,” you hear Jeno express. You peek to your side, then up, seeing him having stood at some point in his conversation. He throws you a look, eyebrows raised, eyes wide, smile nearly rectangular, and nods toward the open bar. Oh! You stand up, too, albeit clumsily, knocking your thigh into the mahogany, the silverware and ceramics jostling; you give your aunts a hasty bow and apology before taking Jeno’s arm. “See,” he says to your other aunt, “We must be going. There is a long Island iced tea out there with my name on it.” They laugh together, then you let Jeno drag you away to the open bar, away from prying aunties.

“Long Island iced tea?” You quirk a single eyebrow. He refused to drink those ever since the 2020 trip to Germany when you, Jaemin, and Renjun got so fucked up on Long Island iced teas, consuming more and more, claiming that it just wasn’t hitting, until it did, that the four of you missed your nonrefundable trip back to Incheon.

Jeno rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, I, uh, couldn’t think of a different drink.”

You flutter your eyes to the drinks menu, reading through the specialties until you find the Long Island iced tea … right above the Sweet Pink Punch, a fruity pink margarita that is definitely right up his alley, had he had a few drinks in his system already. You raise your eyebrow even further up.

“Okay! I wanted the pink drink,” he pouts. “Is that what you want me to say?” The bartender immediately pops one up on the counter for him, pointedly fluffing the pink little petals over the equally pink salted rim. Jeno groans. “So not what I wanted.”

“Here,” you laugh, flagging down the same bartender. “I’ll take a six blueberry kamikaze shots and a whiskey smash.” It is Jeno’s turn raise an eyebrow at you, and you laugh harder, lightly smacking him on the stomach. “Don’t look at me like that. We’re just gonna take a couple shots to take the edge off this whole party, –” A bit of liquid luck, if you were being completely transparent. “– then, we’ll make a few rounds and leave early. The key is – thank you –“ You pass him half the shots and put your drinks close together, making it ambiguous which belongs to whom. “– The key is to make a strong impression, and since we were at the altar today, I think we’ve got a free pass, but, just to be safe, –” You down a shot. “– we’ll take a few more photos, schmooze Mingyu’s cousins, note a talking point for later, then –“ You click your tongue. “– we’ll bounce.” You down another shot. Just one little glass remains, filled on your side of the bar, while your date has yet to even touch the table, so you look up at him. Jeno has an arm folded under his chest, opposite fingers dragging his bottom lip down, intermittently padding inside his mouth. And you swallow, throat suddenly dry with only liquid courage to drink. “Is … Is that okay?”

“Huh?” He drops his hand, and your eye follows, mouth drawing a continuous blank. “Oh, yeah,” he answers. “But, um, we don’t have to leave right away. It’s your cousin’s wedding; it might be fun to hang around with everyone for a bit.”

Jeno doesn’t know why he said that – We don’t have to leave right away, and it might be fun to hang around for a bit. Those few rounds you talked about (not the shots ☹) turned into hours, even more after you offered to stay while everyone else left, to help clean the reception hall. Jeno stood up, also, to start piling dishes into bus tubs, but you, and the others helping, only gave him easy-to-complete tasks or shooing him away. He eventually just sat down, sporadically drinking a bottle of soju, watching you laugh with your aunt and Mingyu, now your cousin-in-law, over something he couldn’t hear from so far away.

And when Jaehyun approaches, Jeno misses him, too caught up in the way your eyes almost physically light up at Mingyu’s umpteenth gawky faux pas of the night.

“How long?”

Jeno jumps, straightens his back. He relaxes after seeing Jaehyun, who looks far calmer than a couple hours ago. Maybe marriage suits him, brings out the vulnerability that no one really sees unless they get a few drinks in him. Jeno wonders if marriage would change him. Would he be more conscientious? Introverted (if that were even possible)? Would he have the same level of self-control? Or would his sex life get worse? And what if he didn’t marry you? He wants everything that marriage entails, even the compromises he might not be able to think about right now, but he isn’t sure that he would want it if it wasn’t with you.

“I …”

“How long have you been in love?” Jaehyun repeats, a knowing look quirked into his smile.

Jeno inhales, once, twice. He opens his mouth. Then, he puts down his bottle. “Forever,” he answers quietly, “maybe.” He winces. That sounds wrong, so he corrects himself, “Probably. Your cousin …” he starts, not saying your name, because if he does, he might accidentally confess something that he wants only you to hear.

Jaehyun chuckles, possibly more intoxicated than Jeno. It feels like that time in high school (Jeno cringes at how often he’s thought about his teenage years, like someone stuck in the past, but he cannot help that he has spent half his life with you) – that time in high school, near the end, when you invited him to his first college party, Jaehyun’s college party. So many things happened, so many firsts happened: his first beer, his first time losing his wallet (it was in the garage refrigerator), his first hickey; he emerged from a random bedroom, tugging up the collar of his shirt, and accidentally bumped into Jaehyun who was coming out of the bathroom from a different – but similar – experience.

“Dramatic,” Jaehyun comments. And Jeno whips his head to look at the groom, but he finds him looking at Mingyu. Jeno turns, too, but his eyes find you instead, instantly forgetting about the wedding party, until Jaehyun starts talking again. “Though, understandable.” Jaehyun spins his chair to Jeno, crouching a little closer, like he is about to reveal a secret. “You know, I almost asked you to give a wedding speech too.”

“Me?” Jeno points to himself. Jaehyun nods, re-affirming. “Why?”

Jaehyun shrugs, leaning back. He takes Jeno’s soju. “Because you give good speeches.” He tilts his bottle to Mingyu and you dancing and singing (Mingyu off-beat; you off-key). “My husband –” He smiles (that annoying and sickening lovey-dovey smile … that Jeno can’t help but want too). “– thought it might make you confess.”

“What?!”

Jaehyun shrugs again. Then, a beat passes, and Jeno opens his mouth, but Jaehyun gets up to join you and Mingyu; you pulling him up by an imaginary lasso. He hands back the soju, shimmying toward his husband. Another jealous pang bubbles in Jeno’s chest, and, yeah, he may not be the best person to let give a speech, or he might be the best. Sure, he wants that – to be called someone’s (your) husband and dance the night away with them (you); and yeah, he thinks about what it means to be in love, or what love itself means, and he comes to the same conclusion, every time. He comes to the same conclusion as you gesture for him to join the mini-after party, starting up an old SHINEE song on your iPhone that everyone knows.

More muzak fills the silence, albeit awkwardly now, through the first floor of the hotel. Jeno holds the sensor open, allowing you to enter first and push the Floor F button. He takes a place next to you, leaning on the cold wall, flushed face finally starting to mellow. You stare at the red numbers increasing on the monitor above the door, adjusting the hem of your purple cocktail dress lower than his tuxedo jacket hanging off your shoulders, rubbing your thighs together at your knees. The reception lasted longer than you anticipated; weddings, especially those so deep in Busan, tend not to exceed two hours, but you stayed passed 7 PM, since 11 AM, helping around where you could. And maybe it started out as a way to avoid Jeno, after the previous night, then all the discomfort and embarrassment faded, once you got a kiss and liquid courage. It seems to have faded by now though.

“Beautiful, um, beautiful ceremony,” Jeno mumbles, scratching the back of his neck and biting back a smile.

"Yeah,” you agree, breaking into a nervous smile. You fumble with the silver cufflinks, the memory of the last time you were confined to a small space with him – the closet at the Park Hyatt Hotel – at the forefront of your brain, and you wonder if his breath would be warm, or warmer, on your neck now. A glimpse of Jeno crawls into the corner of your eye, so you look him up and down. He doesn’t appear tired, rather lost in thought, like you, lips sucked in as if preventing another secret from falling out (or maybe he has to throw up). It becomes harder to ignore the weekend tension, the unsaid confessions, the sex. “Jeno, I lo –”

“So –”

Silence pulses, and the elevator goes up a floor.

You both close your mouths again. Perhaps you should have taken the stairs; the huffing and puffing would help you break the quietude. Beautiful ceremony was the first thing he said to you since getting into the Uber from the reception hall. And before that, he only made small talk, interrupting you if he even sensed a deeper conversation. It was frustrating, but you also understood. You kept bringing it up at inopportune times. Either the next task (eg, the wedding, the not-your wedding) or the atmosphere (eg, too many people) prevented you from really talking it out.

“Oh, you go first.”

“No, you were talking first. You go.”

You inhale. “Jeno, I lo –”

Ding. You have arrived at Floor F.

There it is again.

Jeno shrugs his shoulders sheepishly, gesturing for you to leave ahead of him. “We can talk about this in our room.”

Our room. Funny enough, since you two moved into the new gender-neutral dorms, at the beginning of college, people assumed that you were roommates (oh, my God, they were roommates) and were quite shocked upon finding out that Jeno chose to stay with Jaemin and you with an upperclassman, Yoohyeon, who had the same major as you but was in her last year. And similarly, to this hotel, your room – our room – is in the middle of the Fth Floor. Yay, more awkward silence to tread through. :|

You fall into routine with Jeno, as you step foot in your hotel: he takes your his jacket from your shoulders, hanging it in the closet by the door, and you saunter towards the closest bed, eyes trained on the ground as if an officer asked you to for a walk and turn test. You kick your shoes off by the heels, nearly moaning when the straps release your feet, and rub the bottom before a blister appears. Jeno, equally shoeless, joins you, sits beside you, his thighs parted widely on the space you give him.

“Jeno, I lo –” you start. But he leans over, caressing your cheek, and kisses you, slow yet passionate. His thumb rubs long, comforting lines above your jaw, helping you to relax further and you accept, holding onto his arm for stability. You add another hand, behind your back, supporting yourself as he guides you down on the neatly pleated duvet. He almost tries to say something through the embrace, his tongue clicking a syllable or two above your teeth. “Are – are we doing this again?”

Jeno pecks your lips and rests his warm, exposed forehead against yours. “As much as you want to.” He kisses you again, falling alongside you on the open bed, turning you from the edge. “I,” he pants, eyes closed, chest rising. You brush away his hair, pushing back all the strands you can bunch, stealing the moment to selfishly admire him without the weight of ruining an already intimate affair with your affair. “I – I can’t do a onetime thing with you.”

“Me neither.”

Jeno opens his eyes, instantly analyzing your face. “What does that mean?”

“It –” You peck his lips again, rolling him under your body, straddling his waist. “– means that this feels good.” You grab him by the collar, a button falling undone. He immediately finds your waist, just like the train ride, hands belting through your short dress, dragging the silky material up your thighs. You can feel his shirt scratch into your skin as you both find the most ideal spot. He winds up further on the bed, arms mingling with the sheets, and you slide down his hips, slipping to his dick, teetering on your knees, preemptively riding him. “Do-do you like it?”

His body freezes, and you fear that you did something wrong, touched something wrong, said something wrong, but then, Jeno shimmies his hips, sliding down his trousers. You feel his cotton Calvin Kleins touch your own cotton panties; your pussy practically activated by the twitch of his cock. He taps high under your thigh, drumming hard enough to jiggle your ass, almost contemplatively.

“I … like it,” he decides to say, but his easy-to-read face frowns and he opens his mouth again, “I … I love it.” He bites his lip. “I love … I love you. So much.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” Jeno gazes into your eyes, and you try your best to reciprocate, because you do reciprocate everything: the looks, the feelings, the love. Slowly, he sits up, rolling his spine toward you. When he gets in your face, millimeters away, he tucks your hair behind your ear again. You trap his hand there, clamping it between your cheek and shoulder, leaning into him. “It’s okay if you don’t feel the same,” he whispers, but you both know that your relationship would not survive the depth of either one of your feelings, not after all these years.

“I love you, too, Lee Jeno,” you answer, kissing him before he can say anything else.

He slithers his fingers under the sides of your underwear, twisting them up, his face pliantly moving in your hands. You grind through your panties, and after a moment, you find his dick, grazing just the tip through your ass, all the way to your clit.

“Shit,” he moans. His hands readjust on your waist, gripping tighter, making you moan. “Are we doing this again?” You nod your head, holding him still and diving a bit lower. Your thighs adapt to the new curve in your back as you sloppily kiss his neck, tongue exploring his clavicle. “Then, sit on my face.”

Jeno helps your legs around his face, licking the wetness up your knees. His constant eye contact tells you to watch him, and you have to fight the urge to completely melt on his washboard abs. Jeno pulls the crotch of your panties to the side, a finger hooked around the black lacy material you once mentioned, that you looked forward to wearing after he ripped the other pair. You nearly lodge a complaint at the silence and the emptiness, but then, he moves. He flips you over, simultaneously tearing away your underwear, clawing your ass to ride his face; his chin lifting, abrading just under your clit. Your forehead falls to his groin, nails scratching into his bare legs – smooth and muscular. He starts peppering tiny kisses all over your vulva, tongue probing the further you soak his face. As a distraction, you unbutton his shirt, from the bottom up, fisting the hem, dragging up his torso. You walk backward, on your knees, punching holes into the mattress, exposing his abdomen. Experimentally, you lick a stripe through his well-defined abs. His knee kicks up. You do it again.

“Princess,” he whines, forehead resting on your inner thigh. “I won’t be able to control myself if you touch me like that.”

“I’m barely doing anything,” you mumble, crawling to his leaky cock again. Jeno, vindictively, adds a finger, and another, and another. He licks your pussy, swirling his tongue near your rim, then jumping back to your cunt, joining his three fingers. You fall forward, groaning, and take his cock, clothed, in your hand, drawing his tip along the lines of your lips, suckling the head.

“Fuck.” His head hits the mattress. It makes you feel attractive, sexy, to turn him on like this, and you love it.

“God, I love you,” you whisper.

“I love you,” Jeno returns. He almost nips your skin, lips barely covering his teeth in time. “So much,” he breathes, almost awed.

“Jeno, I’m gonna cum.”

“Wait!” He pulls his face off. “I want to see you.”

Romantic. And you guess it’s the season, that heightens, if not adds, to the sentiment. So, you contribute, trying to give him everything and more – that is what you have been doing all weekend with the train ride and the food and the hotel and the clothes, giving him your whole self.

You scramble off his chest, turning around, to face him. He flickers from your eyes to your hair and combs the staticky baby hairs back down. And you like to think that you’ve gotten to know him more, the last couple of days, think that you’ve gotten more accustomed to the little gestures, the tender indicators which show you something lasting. You lean down again, slowly, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips. He rolls you under him, trapped by his strong biceps, humping his dick between your legs, not allowing you a single moment of refractor. With his lips sewn into yours, he extracts his cock, lubricating it with your vaginal spit, teasing your hole. You swivel your hips, trying to push him inside. And just you think he might taunt you further, your orgasm hanging by a thread, he presses forward, centimeter by centimeter.

“Fuck,” you both groan, heads thrown back. A beat pulses, letting you, and him adjust to the size, the tightness (even though you spent 24-hours practically attached to his pelvis, skin sticking in this same way).

“Okay,” you exhale, “Okay. Move, please.” But Jeno keeps his head glued on your shoulder, breath shaky, chopped by tiny whimpers. You groan his name, elongating it when your voice chokes on a sob, feeling his thick cock throb inside you, raw and bare. “Jeno, please, I wan – I need to cum.”

Without looking at you, Jeno pulls back his hips, thrusting shallowly, his tip flopping around your cervix, searching for your sweet spot. And he knows when he finds – you know that he knows he found it – because your face contorts, eyes twisting shut, body relying on his touch to see. At some point, he meets you in the middle, greedily rolling his torso on top of you, roughly dragging you through the bed sheets. Jeno kisses you again, the same tender passion rising but more fervent, like he needs to chase the moment, like he missed out on chasing you all these years. So, you slow down, gasping into his mouth, showing him that you are here, with him, for him, forever, if he wants. And you let out a strangled cry, repeating his name like a mantra, hooking your arms under his shoulders:

“Jeno, Jeno, Jeno, Jeno, Jeno.”

He starts fucking you faster, increasing his pace as his name disappears into a series of blurry sobs on your tongue; he smashes his lips on yours, slamming his hips hard – hard even for him, judging by his own low-pitched whines. Your dress chokes your waist, the straps having slid down your arms, off your wrists, and your boobs spring free, somewhat free, since he holds you so close. You pull him in, nails clawing his back, flexing your legs away to give him the freest access to your cunt. He finds some stability in your clit, pushing the pulsing nub into his thrusting cock.

“Tell me you’re going to cum.”

“I’m so close. Please, please, please.”

Jeno pinches your clit. Your back drives off the mattress, trailing his abs, grinding every inch of skin that you possibly can, both of your outfits doing little to obstruct the tension, only adding strenuous friction. His hand punches the mattress, to avoid losing balance, and gives him more leverage to move faster, if that were even possible. In, out, in, out, yank, pull, prod, in, out. You babble more nonsense, brain barely processing quick I love yous and his name, before an earthquake shatters your sympathetic nervous system, breaking down the walls that blocked your orgasm. Your body trembles, rolling upward, accidentally meeting his thrusts, and your pussy spasms, coaxing out weepy hiccups from Jeno. You push two fingers between your bodies, around the base of his cock, helping his orgasm. And you feel the first ribbon of cum shoot deep in your cervix, his shoulders shuddering, but he keeps going, jamming his cum far up your cunt.

You lay there, curling around his arm, taking his cum while he planks above you, watching your spasms lessen. Jeno moves first, removing your clothes and situating the two of you by the pillows. He pulls you into his chest, shimmying your dress off your legs and his shirt off his shoulders. You let yourself close your eyes, melting into his arms, into the weekend, into finally getting the love of your life. And maybe minutes, or an hour, passes, not that you’re counting, because you’ll have him as long as he will have you. And you think he feels the same, know he feels the same when he whispers a phrase that only people who want to be together for a long time say:

“So, when are we getting married?”

[johannestevans]

Paper Houses

Fantasy/romance short. A train conductor begins a relationship with a regular passenger.

7k, rated M, M/M. Some sweet autistic 4 autistic love and affection with a build to the relationship and some fantastical elements on the side. Adapted from a TweetFic.

CWs for past domestic abuse, physical abuse, scars, and implied ableism.

--

Roy sees the same man on the train on his commute pretty much every weekday he’s working. He always sits at a table – he likes to book a seat in advance no matter what, and Roy knows he’s not scared of insisting a seat is his when he has booked it – and does the most complicated papercrafts Roy’s ever fucking seen.

He does incredibly detailed, delicate work with paper and a scalpel, makes whole sculptures fold perfectly out from a page like it’s nothing at all.

He always works very neatly, and he has a little handheld dust buster in his satchel that he uses to hoover up the lingering flakes of paper that fall free from his work. He’s fastidious about it, never leaves a mess, never even leaves a single piece.

Roy doesn’t know his name.

Whenever he books his seat, he somehow sets it up so his name isn’t on the ticket – it just says the name of the company he works at. Roy is always too nervous to ask about it anyway, the papercrafts – the man never looks at him as he comes by anyway, let alone talks to him, just slides his ticket over so that Roy can punch it and then takes it back.

He dresses business casual and has a very neatly trimmed beard. Sometimes, Roy thinks about his beard, and wonders if he uses the same dust buster to clean up the bits of hair in his sink when he trims it down.

One morning Roy comes down the train to find that the man is not sitting forward and doing his papercrafts as usual – he’s asleep, and the table in front of him is empty.

Roy leaves him be.

The next morning, the man says as Roy comes by in a tone of complaint, “You didn’t punch my ticket yesterday.” He has an unexpectedly low voice, hoarse and crackling at its edges, as if it’s been used a lot for shouting.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” Roy says. “Do you want me to punch today’s ticket twice?”

“How ridiculous,” says the man. He is carving Big Ben from yellow paper. “Yes, please.”

Roy does. He should move on immediately, feels prickling warmth creep under his skin and feels just slightly unsteady on his feet, but he forces his mouth to move despite the instinct to move on. “What’s your name?” he asks.

“William. My mother calls me Bill, which I’ve never liked.” He has somehow pinned paper hands to the clockfaces which turn when he pushes them. “What’s yours?”

“Roy.”

“Hello, Roy.”

“Hello, William.”

Roy can’t think of anything else to say, and so he moves on.

William lingers, as ever, on his mind.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

[lycanlovingvampyre]

MAG 128 Relisten

Activity on my first listen: putting up a new fence.

BASIRA: "Jon. Don’t turn on the light. Go get Melanie, quickly." Get Melanie? For what? She’s not Buffy the Vampire Slayer anymore.

BREEKON: "That’s right. Just wanted to – to drop off a package." That pause after “Just wanted to”. He's so unsure of what he's doing...

JON: (with compulsion) "Why are you here?" BREEKON: "Dunno." (pause) "‘S not right, on my own. Not right. No point in doing it on my own." Breekon & Hope... Still a better love story than Twilight... (I like how TMA makes us feel for people and monsters who did terrible things. But in the end I guess we're all just human?)

BREEKON: "Make me." [AND ALL AT ONCE THERE’S A STRANGE SOUND, MUSICAL YET HOLLOW, AND IT SEEMS TO BE BUILDING TO –] JON: "Stop." Seriously this "strange sound, musical yet hollow" and then Jon putting a stop to it is actually really badass. How's that for recording enemies into submission!

BREEKON: "What are you – stop it. Stop it!" [WHEN THE ARCHIVIST SPEAKS, IT HAS AN ECHO TO IT, REMINISCENT OF THE HOLLOWNESS FROM EARLIER:] JON: "No." Yes Jon, show 'em you're not everyone’s punching bag anymore!

I btw also always thought Breekon just couldn't stand the gaze of Jon anymore and fled the Archives, perhaps tossing over a table or a chair in his way and slamming some doors (Does this count as door motif? Oh, when we're on the subject of slamming doors! There is a video of Sam Sam the music man breaking down the TMA main theme and he said those smashing sounds at the end of the theme are supposed to be slamming a door! Just because it's such a stereotypical thing for the horror genre - see MAG 85 Upon the Stair "And please don't slam the door". Such a fitting coincidence! But I already said in one of those Relisten posts, coincidences like this happened a lot more often than people probably think, it's a blessing for artists!) Ok, lost the thread a bit there. I think the image of the telekinesis comes from the fact, that we don't really hear any footsteps? (And I think, people wanted to give Jon a bit more badassary probably? He's demonstrating it so well already in this scene, why not go a bit further xD I generally like it, but I think it doesn't really fit into canon, he'd be too op.) Thing about footsteps in TMA is it's a bit inconsistent until S5? This has bothered me in a few instances before, like the end of MAG 21, when Martin storms into Jon's office. We only hear the door and the squelching of the worms. No out of breath sound aaand no footsteps. There was another one when I thought it's really missing footsteps, god I can't remember what it was... What I'm saying is, I wouldn't really get hung up on (the lack of) footsteps here.

"We started in a plague." / "It wasn’t the plague they feared; it wasn’t the death that waited in our wagon. It was us. Two strangers rolling towards them, unstoppable and uncertain, wearing faces they would only half-remember, bringing a fate they would beg their god to forget." Hm, wearing faces they would only half-remember... Strangers at the time of the plague I’d think more of those masks plague doctors wore - being literally unable to see their faces.

"Poor wretches who emerged from Millbank, with tales of Australia and its cruelties on their lips, bundled into the cramped and creaking ship that would drag them away from everything they loved. And towards everything they feared. That was the first time we saw what would become this place: The Eye’s Pedestal." Hold on, wait! Is that another reference that Millbank Prison was a place of power for the Eye? The Robert Small was a convict ship and (Western) Australia was a penal colony of the British Empire..

"We were conductors on a train, prim suits and scowls, a relentless beast of iron and steam that never seemed to get you exactly where you wanted to be unless there was something dreadful waiting for you. We punched tickets, ignored questions, and threw off those who looked like they were having too fine a time of it." Lol, is that a dig at public transports? xD

"We carried and lifted and helped the circus move towards its next destination, the next doomed town." Makes me think that they probably would have made superb roadies!

"Sometimes we joined the show, lifting weights and things that looked like animals. Sometimes we lifted members of the audience. Sometimes we even put them down again." First of all, lol, that last sentence. Second, throwback to MAG 24 - the two strong-men!

"And so we took the casket, a hungry thing of the earth, a crushing, choking tomb that will not let you die because it is too much what it is for death to find you there" “Too much what it is for death to find you there”... Saying the End has no grasp within the coffin. And not just the End because Daisy also lost her connection to the Hunt in the coffin. Eye + Web being the only ones with a chance to make it out.

"It was one like us that found it, a thing of shifting names and deja-vu. A fool, that believed because it found the coffin in chains, it would be an easy thing to control, to bargain with." Confirmation that MAG 2's "John" was a capital-S Stranger.

"She took him from me, made us a me." Still a better love story than Twilight!!!

"And she doesn’t get to die for that. She gets to live, trapped and helpless, and entombed forever." There are fates worse than death-trope.

"I have never known hate before. I have never known loss. But now they are with me always, and I desire nothing but to share them with you." Still a better-

JON: (voice shaky) "Statement.. ends." [HE COLLAPSES.] Since Melanie makes fun of Jon in MAG 189 about him collapsing again I have the headcanon that Melanie came across collapsed Jon, was like "Alright then" and just left again. (Maybe she went to tell Basira.)

BASIRA: (inhale, set) "Right. Keep it safe; I’ll be gone a few days. I have some leads I need to follow up." Oh, that (whatever that was exactly) was what Elias was proposing to Basira at the end of the previous episode, not his actual plans about the coffin. Alright, gotcha, I'm on track again!

@a-mag-a-day

[manwalksintobar]

Biography of LeBron as Ohio // Sean Thomas Dougherty

When is a poem one word? Even at 17 he was Baraka            on the court, Coltrane gold toned, a kind of running riff, more than boy-child, man-child, he was one word like Prince.             How back in those drunken days when I still ran in bars & played schoolyard ball             & wagered fives & tens, me & my colleague the psych-prof drove across Eastern Ohio              just to see this kid from powerhouse St. Vincent, grown out of rust-belt-bent-rims, tripped             with the hype & hope & hip hop blaring from his headphones, all rubber soled             & grit as the city which birthed him. We watched him rise that night scoring over 35,             drove back across the quiet cut cornfields & small towns of Ohio, back to the places             where we slept knowing that Jesus had been reborn, black & beautiful with a sweatband crown rimming his brow.             He was so much more than flipping burgers & fries, more than 12-hour shifts at the steel plant in Cleveland.             More than the shut-down mill in Youngstown. More than that kid selling meth in Ashtabula.             He was every kid, every street, every silo, he was white & black & brown & migrant kids working farms.             He was the prince of stutter-step & pause. He was the new King. We knew he was coming back the day after he left             his house in Bath Township. He never sold it. Someone fed his fish for years. Perhaps our hope? Fuck Miami. Leave Wade to wade through the Hurricane rain. LeBron is remembering that woman washing the linoleum floor, that man           punching his punch card. He drives a Camaro, the cool kid Ohio car driving through any Main Street. He is the toll-taker, &             he is the ticket out. He keeps index cards documenting             his opponents’ moves. One leans forward before he drives. One always swipes with his left hand. The details like a preacher             studying the gospel. He studies the game like a mathematician conjugating equations, but when he moves he is a             choreography, a conductor passing the ball like a baton. He is a burst of cinders             at the mill. He is a chorus of children calling his name.             The blistered hands of man stacking boxes in Sandusky, the long wait for work in Lorain. A sapling bends             & reaches in all directions before it becomes a tree. A ball is a key to a lock.             A ball is the opposite of Glock. America who sings your praises,            while tying the rope, everyone waiting for Caesar to fall, back-stabbing media hype city betrayed             by white people with racist signs.             I watch the kids play ball in the Heights, witness this they say. We will rise. I watched             LeBron arrive & leave, I walked, I gave up drinking as he went off & won a ring. The children’s chorus calls out sing             brother, sing. Everything is black. Storm clouds gather out on Lake Erie. But the old flower-hatted women             at the Baptist church are heading out praise cards, registering teenagers to vote. To turn a few words into a sentence. He is a glossary of jam, & yes he is corporate             chugging down green bubbly Sprite, running in Beats head phones, he is Dunkin his donut, he is Nike, witness, ripped.             On a spring day in Akron a             chorus of children is chanting his name on the court by the chain-link fence. He is forged steel, turning his skinny body into             muscle, years of nights lifting, chiseling, cutting, studying. Watching the tape. To make a new kind of sentence. He is passing             out T-shirts, this long hot bloody summer he was returned to the rusted rim along the big lake. He is stutter-step. He is             spinning wheel. He has a cool new hat. He is speaking of dead black children. He is giving his time. To make the crowd             sway like wind through a field of corn.             Does LeBron think of dying?             Does the grape think of dying as it withers on the vine by the lake? Or does it dream of the wine it will become? He is wearing a shirt that says I Can’t Breathe. They said he was arrogant. I said he was just Ohio.             He married his high school sweetheart. Bravado laid out on the court. No back down, he is Biggie with a basketball inside             of a mic, no ballistics, just ballet. He is Miles Davis cool, quietly cerebral, turning his back, tossing up             chalk like blue smoke, blue notes, blues. He is Akron, Columbus, he is heart & Heat turned to lake effect blizzards,             freighters frozen in ice, looking for work & no money to eat. He is Ashtabula & Toledo. He is carrying so many across the             river, up through Marietta.             The grapevines are ripe in Geneva.             He returns, Man-child, Man-strong, Man-smart, Man- mountain, Mansfield to East Akron, minus into Man, or should we             say Mamma raised? Single mother fed, shy child, quiet child who grew, who suffered & taught his body to sing, his             mother worked how many shifts, doing this, doing that, never gave up for her son. He is third shift at the rubber             plant in winter, he is farm hands & auto parts piecework & long nights the men at the bar, eyes on the television.             The lake tonight is black as newly laid asphalt. There are no ellipses. He is turning paragraphs             into chapters. Long ago the hoop Gods made this deal at the crossroads, Old Scratch is flipping the pages             of his program & waiting high in the stands—to belong to a place most people would call             nowhere, to show the world how tough we truly are, twelve-hour shifts at the Rubber plant in Akron. How he is, how             he is a part of this asphalt court we call Ohio, & how we suffer, & how we shine.

[ed-frankward]

A Herald of Harold's Demise (Ch. 1)

(This got a bit unwieldy and will have to be split into two parts, though the second part isn't written so maybe it'll only be one part. By my imprecise calculations it will take about 5 minutes to read, if you're so inclined.)

Harold the Mouse had tragic eyes and unremarkable ears. His past was punctuated by trauma which he has since worked through in a healthy manner so it won't be of much relevance. He himself couldn't tell that his eyes were tragic. Every time he looked at them they just stared back at him. Both of them. Perhaps they became tragic at some point and he had missed it. Perhaps they were always tragic and he didn't know any better. On the occasion of his thirty-fourth birthday, he rested his tragic eyes upon a yellow missive which he had nearly mistaken for a sharp cheddar. The missive bade him summons to the stronghold of Stronghold, King of the Mice, who, in his keep, kept a strong hold of his realm. Harold had long held a special place in Stronghold's heart, for Harold was one of the great knights of the Southlands, hailing from a place as close to the edge of the map as you could get without falling off. If Stronghold needed Harold's help, which the missive didn't specify but was likely to be the case, it could only mean that there was something needed doing that needed done discreetly.

Harold gathered up his broadsword and made for Broadway. He would need his tragic eyes, his unremarkable ears, and all four of his legs about him on this journey to the heart of the kingdom. This far south, where there wasn't much more south to go, the land was full of certain perils and perilous uncertainties — some of which had played into Harold's traumatic past but which he's moved on from now so the details aren't important. Were he to make it to Babybel Castle within a fortnight, he'd need to board the last of the last of the trains out of Centre Center before rail service was discontinued indefinitely.

Running along a darkened Broadway, it had been painted jet black since his last visit, Harold devised a plan to fortify himself for his odyssey. Upon arriving at the terminal, he purchased two tickets for the last sleeper train and scampered over to Stuart's Little Pizzeria. He approached the counter, making sure to nonchalantly display his two train tickets and audibly mutter something about how hungry his friend was. He ordered an extra-large pie, Original flavor, and scanned the cashier for any hints of judgment. Not perceiving any, he breathed a sigh of relief. He then raced across the street to a novelty gift shop and purchased an 'I <3 Southlands' blanket with which to conceal the pizza.

Harold boarded the sleeper train shortly before it awoke. The blanket-wrapped extra-large pizza box strapped to his back prevented a graceful entrance to his cabin and he had to briefly tilt his body to fit through the sliding door, a motion he hoped had not unfavorably distributed the melted cheese atop his pie. The Conductor announced that she was absent an insulator and would be making her rounds when she had sorted herself out. Harold took the opportunity to sate his appetite twice over. When the Conductor at last arrived he attempted to persuade her not to punch his ticket, but she was the two-time featherweight champion of Southlands High and would not hear reason.

"Why are they discontinuing rail service?" Harold inquired.

"We've run out of trains," the Conductor responded. "Single-use trains were not the step forward in rail transportation we thought they would be."

"I guess sometimes you have to learn things the hard way, eh?" Harold said with a shrug. "How many passengers have we on board this evening?"

"Strange way of phrasing that question. And why did you shrug?" the Conductor shrugged. "It's just you, me, the guy driving the train, the chef, the engineer, who might also be driving the train, and one other passenger." With that, the Conductor spun on her heels, toppled over, spun on her heels again and exited the cabin.

One other passenger, Harold thought to himself. Is that what she said? He had lost focus while considering whether the engineer might also be driving the train. Es ist mir egal, Harold concluded in a language he didn't speak. With that, he spun on his heels and fell asleep.

Bang! And a loud one at that. Harold awoke with a fright and prepared for a fight. A noise like that meant hand-to-hand combat with an eminent foe was imminent. A flurry of hurried footsteps drummed down the hall outside his cabin. The door at the rear of the rail car opened and shut before he could stick his head out for a peak.

"Stop right there, criminal scum!" the Conductor yelled as she entered through the front of the car. Harold stepped out into the hallway and locked eyes with her.

"What evil has beset our locomotive, my lady? Whatever it may be, it will face its extinction at my hands, which double as my legs."

"Spider-Bandits! They've taken one of the passengers!"

Harold couldn't believe his unremarkable ears. Hand-to-hand combat with an opponent that has twice as many hands was a tall order. He thought for a moment about retrieving his broadsword but decided it would be too cumbersome an extraneous item to carry into hand-to-hand combat. He followed the Conductor to the final car of the train, a two-row Volkswagen Golf which the Spider-Bandits were loading with the efforts of their banditry. There were two of them. Great big things, each with as many legs as you could count until you got to 8. Their eyes were as dark as their intentions. One of them was lifting a screaming burlap sack into the trunk of the Golf.

"Unhand that sentient burlap sack or face justice!" Harold demanded, putting down his decorum and up his dukes. The Spider-Bandits fixed their attention upon him. They spoke in unison.

"Weary knight, what trauma has befallen you? There is great tragedy in your eyes."

"I'm not weary." Harold glanced at the Conductor. "I don't know where you're getting that from. And also, the details of my traumatic backstory are really not that important since I've worked through it with the help of a psychoanalyst and don't feel like it has to be the thing that defines me and makes me interesting."

"Boring!" The Spider-Bandits leapt toward him and the Conductor. The one carrying the burlap sack swiped at Harold with a gangly appendage. Harold jumped back, narrowly missing the blow. He wouldn't miss it for long though as another leg came down on his head. The knock knocked him onto the floor. Meanwhile, the Conductor, now wearing a pair of boxing gloves, pressed B and performed a side special that launched her into the other Spider. She unleashed a barrage of attacks, dazing the Spider. Harold took advantage of his position on the floor and used his tail to propel himself underneath his Spider. He came up behind his enemy and let loose a salvo of punches, the rat-a-tat-tat of which reverberates around the Southlands to this day. With both Spiders temporarily incapacitated, Harold retrieved the burlap sack while the Conductor opened up the rail car's side door. Being that the train was passing over a lake, they pushed the spiders out of the door and released one of the train's lifeboats.

With their enemies vanquished, Harold and the Conductor exchanged high fives, thumbs up, and other congratulatory gestures. Harold turned to the burlap sack. "I've never met one of your kind before, but I'm glad to have rescued you."

The sack began to wiggle and, to Harold's astonishment, a nose and a set of whiskers emerged from its opening. The sack was merely a sack, not itself a conscious being. Instead, it was a container for a container containing consciousness. The conscious container that emerged was a mouse, the most beautiful mouse Harold had ever seen. A lengthy sequence of metaphors would be required to describe her beauty, particularly if you were being paid by the word.

"Thanks for saving me brave, though weary, knight and your perhaps romantic partner the Conductor." The mouse smiled.

"Of course," the Conductor said with a nod.

Harold shot a look at the Conductor. "Well actually some of the adjectives you used are inaccurate and your conjecture about the status of our relationship is incorrect."

"Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Maxime Weygand, but you can call me Ms. Maxime Weygand."

"Pleased to formally meet you, Ms. Maxime Weygand," the Conductor said, putting an arm around her. "Let's get you back to your cabin and you can tell us why the Spider-Bandits took you, why you're on this train, and what possible connections to King Stronghold you have that for some reason we don't know but will be of immediate relevance."

"Oh, thanks Conductor, I like you."

The Conductor and Ms. Maxime Weygand walked back toward the passenger carriages. Harold looked around, bemused. Why didn't she say she liked me? What is with this 'weary' nonsense? Is the Conductor making a move on her? Did I make a move on the Conductor? Such questions rattled around his recently hit head as he walked alone toward the front of the train with heavy steps. How the train was stepping heavily he did not know.

[coffeeadult42]

The Polar Express - Truths

What to expect Set to the sounds of the movement picture, travelers are going to experience again the classic account as they are whisked away on THE POLAR EXPRESS™ for a enchanting vacation to the North Pole. Along with a brand new and dynamic environment and a one-of-a-kind style, the EXPRESSs™ ride will definitely provide guests a special experience. It's a enjoyable, relaxing experience, to be certain, but likewise delivers the possibility to experience the world of aviation itself.

Once on panel, the Conductor are going to operate their method with the trainer and punch your golden ticket as you’re provided warm delicious chocolate and a delicious cookie by our dancing cooks! Happen and see our amazing dining take in. And come celebrate our birthday party with the enjoyable, family-friendly experience of a family members of five. Or go solo…let us all possess a little bit of fun and celebrate your birthday party together with us! Travelers are going to checked out along with the traditional little ones’s manual, The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg. The movie follows the life of one American as he seeks his dream of coming to be a helicopter pilot, soaring business plane. One afternoon in April 2012, while checking the accommodation's safety work desk with his other half in the kitchen space, a guy putting on a face mask strategy and uncovers his identification as the man who has phoned in the attack. Once at The North Pole, Santa and his Elves board the train to welcome travelers and each guest is offered the first present of Christmas – a silver sleigh alarm. When travelers receive within, Santa's Elves can hear a information from the individuals at the main steering wheel that contacts them all the method home. If passengers are worried concerning the information, they can easily take the alarm by palm and pass it to other elves behind the steering wheel. Throughout the vacation, characters on each car top passengers in caroling and on board home entertainment – merely like in the movie! The film features a brand-new "Sonic the Hedgehog Movie" caroling party (though the second is limited to 30), a part by Nick Fury, and a "Sonic the Hedgehog Movie" caroling date with the lead female when she goes to the shopping mall… The primary style of the video shows this timeless motion picture participating in out in actual time. Each guest will take home a keepsake sleigh alarm in add-on to the terrific moments helped make on this unforgettable experience. The brand-new attribute feature an updated GPS system, enhanced air travel settings (altitude is no much longer controlled by seatbelts or other commands), enhanced air conditioning and an optionally available Top illumination attribute (the new Top illumination light bulbs are right now also brighter). The entire household obtains some additional reward: 4 of our favored toys are going to be shipped each full week. We request passengers get here about 45 moments just before their parting opportunity and inspect in at the will contact work desk located in the Westbrook Station Ticket Office. Please note that this is only a sample purchase. For full details please get in touch with 503-929-7545. Take note: Please note that to get in your tickets, you must have the important image I.d. and an appropriate id memory card to offer on your ticket settlement. You must bring your legitimate recognition with you to the ticket workplace.

Panel begins roughly 20 minutes prior to departure opportunity. The driver receives a brand new back bumper and substitutes the initial one with the new frontal bumper. All the vital components additionally are custom-made ordered from a factory system. During the quest to the terminal it is vital to secure a good bargain prior to the yield journey. Before you go to your station you will certainly be asked about a brand-new door or home window. What you obtain previously and after relies on your individual choice. Please call us for a checklist of the possible locations. While hanging around to for the Boarding Call you can easily stay warm in your vehicle and tune in to our Polar Radio broadcast frequency on your broadcast at 87.7 FM for announcements. We can easily also supply details to assist you consider your summer months rest or also help you discover a holiday season event. Join Related Source Here on Facebook and the Net, get connected to other visitors and get a whole lot of aid at the local area community center and various other places. To find out additional regarding what produces the Polar Radio Program one-of-a-kind, check out http://www. Please get there on opportunity as all trains leave as scheduled without exception. Please keep in mind that boarding and parting opportunities are stated from regional times. The bus routine is based on true hours taken by our bus service, while it additionally reflects our assumptions of trip times. (BHRS/VDS) The HSRF bus service runs coming from 13:01-6:00 p.m. each technique by means of San Clemente. The HSRF timetable for bus companies is offered below.

[teamconductors]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Lost Tracks of Time, Chapter 8

Summary: Sneasler guides Team Conductors to a certain pokemon in search of a way to recover Ingo’s and Emmet’s memories.

Author’s Note: This chapter contains one of the hardest battles to write so far, mostly due to who the opponent was. I hope you enjoy this!

Thank you @furiouskettle for Ingo and Emmet’s designs as Sneasels!

(Shippers DNI)

In the Pearl Guild’s library, Ingo, Emmet, and Sneasler gathered around a table to discuss Ingo and Emmet’s theories about their memories. Calaba kept a careful eye on Chandelure and their blue flames and mentally prepared to use Water Pulse in case something goes wrong with that pokemon.

“And what is a train?!” Ingo asked. He held a shortlist of the items from his bulletin board. “The records about pokemon trainers were familiar, but we haven’t found any books about trains! Emmet and I deduced they are for transportation, but there’s something amiss about why we know so many terms yet can’t remember trains themselves!”

“Yep. It’s verrrry weird,” Emmet said.

“Just like you guys. Alright, cool. So there’s a small number of pokemon rumored to affect and maybe recall memories, but there’s only one within our region that owes me a favor,” Sneasler said. She flipped through a book called Sinnoh’s Legends. Upon reaching the entry she was looking for, she slapped the book onto the table in front of Ingo and Emmet.

“Uxie?” Ingo read out loud. “Uxie, Uxie… Do I know that name?”

“”The Being of Knowledge”,” Emmet read. “Our memories are the ones on the ground, Sneasler, not our knowledge.”

“Don’t sass me, Emmet. Uxie has the power to erase memories, so I’m thinking they can help restore them as well.”

Ingo closed the book and slid it back to Sneasler. “So we set our destination to where Uxie resides, which is-“

“Lake Acuity,” Ingo and Sneasler said at the same time.

“Oh no, don’t do that stuff with me!” Sneasler backed up from where Ingo sat. “I don’t need to give these pokemon anymore reasons to think we’re siblings.”

“They’ve made up their minds. You should embrace it, Big Sis.” Emmet’s smile remained on his face as Sneasler gave him a venomous glare.

“Lake Acuity is our destination then. Emmet and I already conducted safety checks, so we can leave immediately for a straightforward journey,” Ingo said.

“Don’t put your cargo before the engine or whatever. Lake Acuity and the other two lakes got swallowed by mystery dungeons ages ago, and the one that got Acuity was the Snowpoint Ruins, which is like Bonechill Wastes but norther.”

“Our destination is Lake Acuity via the Snowpoint Ruins route. Got it,” Emmet said.

“Since we are entering a mystery dungeon, could we check the job board for any Snowpoint Ruins rescues? I would feel guilty of enlisting the help of a Noble without that, at least,” Ingo said.

“Never stopped you before,” Sneasler said. “But sure, whatever makes you feel better, Ingo. Let me punch your tickets and get out of here, aight?”

Sneasler, with both Sneasels in her basket with freshly punched tickets, stood in front of the job bulletin board, reading their locations: Ancient Quarry, Grueling Grove, Veilstone Cape, Deadwood Haunt, and lastly, Snowpoint Ruins.

“Oh. Oh yeah, there’s a job.” Sneasler ripped the paper from its pin. She sighed. “It’s a Distorted Floor.”

***

Snowpoint Ruins had a snowy floor like Bonechill Wastes, but while the wastes’ snow was packed into a dirt-like surface, the snow in the ruins covered the stone floors. The stone brick walls were decorated with lit torches and the occasional carvings of dots in geometric patterns. The dungeon was unusually barren of pokemon, save for the occasional Bronzong or Bronzor that would melt under Chandelure’s fire. The team breezed through the floors, allowing their minds to wander and for the Sneasels to enjoy the snow crunching beneath their feet.

Eventually, Sneasler stepped down a flight of stairs and was greeted by darkness. Snow sparkled along the ground but hardly counted as a way to see the floor. “Oh, here we go.”

“We reached our first stop. Let’s find our client Tangela first,” Ingo said as he and Emmet walked down the stairs. “Then we can get him through the terminal to outside.”

“I hate how the light beam door things always go to the outside of the dungeon.” Sneasler crossed her arms. “Why can’t it just go to the rest of the dungeon instead of making us start all over?”

Chandelure was the last one to enter, and the stairs disappeared behind them. “Chandelure, light the way please,” Ingo said. Chandelure smiled and floated down a corridor.

After walking through several corridors, the group saw their client run down a hallway towards them. “Good day, Tangela!” Ingo said. “We are Team Conductors!” Before Ingo could finish his spiel, Tangela sprinted and jumped at Ingo’s body, making him fall flat on his back.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Tangela said. After realizing he was on top of Ingo, he jumped and circled Emmet and Sneasler like a child presented with ice cream. “I haven’t been able to see anything for so long! I just wanted to run, but I kept bumping into walls! Thank you!”

“Alright, Spaghetti Legs, just get in the basket,” Sneasler said as she took off her basket and slapped open the top. She already had to deal with Ingo and Emmet; she didn’t want to keep track of a hyperactive Tangela. He hopped into the basket, nearly knocking it over. Sneasler promptly closed the lid and got her basket back on her back. “Okay, I haven’t seen any light beams yet, so keep going.”

Though the dungeon floor was completely dark, Chandelure’s flames provided enough light to show that their footprints in the snow marked where they have been. After a half-hour of walking, the group encountered footsteps from much earlier in the day.

“We made a round trip,” Emmet said.

To confirm Emmet’s suspicion, Ingo pulled out the map of the floor. Chandelure’s flames barely allowed the group to see the map. “We explored the entire floor?”

“How?! I didn’t see a single light thing!” Sneasler said. She yoinked the map from Ingo’s hands and put it up close to her face. “We actually went through the entire floor. What the heck?”

Ingo gently grabbed the map from Sneasler’s hands to look at it again. “…Oh, that’s peculiar. There is an icon for stairs!”

“There is? In a Distorted Floor??”

“Set our destination there!” Emmet said. He began walking in the direction of the stairs with his arms and legs straight and swinging wildly. The others followed behind him.

The map showed that the stairs was in the very corner of one of the rooms. When Team Conductors got to the area, Chandelure went ahead to float right on top of the stairs that would go to the floor below them. However, their light displayed a problem even from a distance.

“It’s just a hole in the ground,” Sneasler said as she got closer. “How is it stairs?”

The two Sneasels and Sneasler gathered around the hole and saw more darkness below them. Looking around the edges of the hole gave the group the answer to the burning question.

“The stairs are upside-down!” Ingo said. He pointed to what he looked at. Indeed, the stairs went away from them and faded into the darkness. Sneasler’s jaw dropped. “These Distorted Floors are getting stranger each time we visit them.”

“Verrrry strange,” Emmet said. “But this is our only route forward.”

“We don’t know how far down below it goes,” Ingo said. “Jumping down will likely result in broken legs. Chandelure, do you think you could float all three of us-“

“Four of us!” Tangela said from inside Sneasler’s basket.

“All four of us down?” Ingo asked. Chandelure frowned a little but still nodded.

“Actually, if Chandelure provides some light, I could climb down the steps,” Sneasler said.

“Very well. That should ease the load on Chandelure’s arms,” Ingo said.

“And one more thing… Ingo, I want you to go down the steps, too.”

“Pardon?”

“Listen, I can do scaling easily, but you can’t just rely on me and Chandelure to get everywhere all the time. You’re a Sneasel, for goodness’s sake! You need to learn to climb.”

“While I appreciate your encouragement, I am not sure if I can. Last time I tried to climb, my hands got stuck in a tree, do you remember?”

Sneasler pinched the bridge of her nose. “As if I could forget. I can’t believe Irida called me to help you… but that’s why you need to practice.”

“I was there on the tree. Do I need to practice climbing, too?” Emmet asked.

“Yeah I remember, and yes you do, Emmet. But I’ll deal with you later. Just… hang out on Chandelure and be encouraging or something,” Sneasler said. “Watch me.” She laid on her stomach. Tangela could be heard tumbling around in her basket as she turned around and hanged her legs off the hole. Her claws hooked onto the edge of the stair entrance as she let her body hang. Her feet swung then held onto the stairs, and she began scaling down. “Your turn, Ingo!”

“Very well… Follow the rules and drive safely.” Ingo hooked his claws on the edge of the hole and dropped down. His small body swung around, and his feet scraped at the stone stairs. After a purposeful swing, he was able to gain a footing. He took a claw out of the entrance and hooked onto one of the stairs. He did the same with his other hand and grabbed onto the next stair.

“So far, so good,” Sneasler said as she looked up as Ingo. His legs shook when he removed his hand from the stone.

“All aboard!” Emmet grabbed onto Chandelure’s arms and let himself dangle. Chandelure floated down the hole, keeping pace with Ingo’s climbing.

Each of Ingo’s movements were deliberate. The texture of his claws digging into the stone made his fur stand on ends, but he had to press on and avoid thinking about how far out their destination was. Emmet cheered him on in spirit.

Then, after several successful steps, Ingo found that he dug his left hand too far into the stairs. He tugged and tugged but couldn’t get the claws out.

“Sneasler, he’s stuck,” Emmet said.

“Damn it.” Sneasler was a couple steps below Ingo, so she had difficulty seeing him. “Don’t panic yet! Make sure your other anchor points are solid and relax your hand.”

With Ingo confident his other hand and feet were firm, he tried to allow his hand to loosen up. Of course, it was difficult to relax when thought about trying not to fall, how far down they were, how upset Emmet and Chandelure would be if he got hurt from climbing, and several other unpleasant thoughts that wanted to make Ingo’s life hell.

“Ingo, you got this.” Emmet’s words rammed through Ingo’s head.

Ingo took a breath in and, instead of relaxing his hand, dug his claw into the stone until he broke through it. The pieces of stone barely missed getting into Ingo’s eye. “Bravo! I know it’s only one victory, but I did it!”

“Good job, but we’re not on the ground yet. Keep going.” Sneasler, even at her strange angle, was able to see the shaking in Ingo’s legs worsen. His strength was giving out. “Actually, hold on.” Sneasler climbed up the steps and picked up Ingo’s body with one hand. “That’s enough for today.” She placed him on top of her basket.

“Are you certain? I can continue climbing, Lady Sneasler,” Ingo said.

“Yeaaaah no. Just stay there, please.”

After climbing down the stairs for another minute, Emmet found that Chandelure lowered him to the ground, and Sneasler let herself drop and fall a couple inches.

“Wait… why aren’t the stairs disappearing?” Sneasler asked.

“This is another Distorted Floor,” Emmet said.

Ingo took out the map. “The map reset. This really is a different floor.”

“So now we have multiple Distorted Floors in one dungeon? Seriously??” Sneasler asked.

“It appears so. Let’s hope we find our terminal this time.”

The team only needed to walk another 5 minutes before they found it.

“THERE IT IS!” Sneasler ran towards the beam of light that only she could see. Chandelure and the Sneasels could barely keep up her pace. Sneasler nearly tripped over her own feet, but she tore open the beam while running past it. “Let’s get outta here. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

Team Conductors took the portal to the outside of the dungeon. It took Ingo and Emmet a moment to get used to the sunlight after being in the Distorted Floors for over an hour, but Sneasler just immediately dumped Tangela out of her basket like a tube of dough.

Tangela immediate jumped to his feet and ran around Team Conductors. “We’re outside! We’re really outside! Thank you!!”

“We’re not finished yet,” Ingo said. He took his badge off his coat, and Emmet did the same next to him. “Allow us to transport you to the Pearl Guild. All aboard!”

“Thank you! Wee!!” Tangela’s body sparkled as he teleported away in a beam of light.

“Finally! He kept shaking around in my basket. I was getting worried he’d fall out or something,” Sneasler said.

“Thank you for your assistance as usual, Lady Sneasler,” Ingo said. “The Distorted Floor should have disappeared with everyone exiting, and our journey to Lake Acuity should be much more straightforward now.”

“Hopefully,” Emmet said.

***

Indeed, the second dungeon trip of the day was much smoother without the threat of a Distorted Floor. As before, the first half of the dungeon was barren of pokemon, save for the occasional Bonzor or Bronzong. The second half of the ruins, however, was filled with psychic pokemon, forcing Emmet to stay ahead to protect his brother. Though Sneasler shared the same type weakness as Ingo, she had strength and Shadow Claw on her side.

The group arrived at the bottom of the ruins. In a large carven stood a lake so large that it seemed that only water-type pokemon could cross it. The center of a lake housed an island with an entry to another cave.

“I don’t remember the lake being underground,” Ingo said.

“That’s probably a mystery dungeon side effect,” Sneasler said. “…Wait, what?”

“So Uxie should be at the center island. How shall we cross the water?” Ingo asked.

“We could build a track,” Emmet said. “Or use Chandelure again.”

The ground rumbled beneath everyone. First it was subtle, but the tremors increased, causing rocks and dust to fall from the ceiling.

Ingo noticed Sneasler facepalming. “Lady Sneasler, do you know the cause of this?”

“I totally forgot about this bit,” Sneasler said.

Something rose from the lake in front of the landlocked group. Water rushed over it, obscuring its form but making it clear that it towered over every pokemon in the cave.

“So… Uxie likes to protect themself by making an illusion of a gigantic legendary pokemon fight anyone who comes close,” Sneasler said.

When the water completely cleared, the giant was revealed to be a white figure with yellow and black rings and three sets of eye-like gems. Dots ran down the center of its “face”. Strange foliage covered its body, especially the top of its head and along the legs.

“And this one looks like… Regigigas.”

“It’s an illusion. Can it still battle us?” Emmet asked.

“Yes, it can battle. It can hurt you.” Sneasler and her companions watched the Regigigas walk onto the ground. “…And it can kill you.”

“Good day, Regigigas illusion! My name is Ingo, the fellow next to me is Emmet, and… Huh?”

Regigigas drew its arm back. Ingo Bulked Up and watched the giant swing its arm to punch Emmet. Ingo ran to push Emmet and take the hit, but the fist just stopped short of decking Ingo’s entire body. Ingo and Emmet were understandably confused, but then the black rings around Regigigas’ arm came to life and grabbed Ingo. Before Emmet could try and rip the vines away from Ingo, the black vines lifted his body up and into Regigigas’ just-opened hand.

“Ingo!” Emmet yelled, trying to jump up as if he could personally free his brother.

With Ingo in its hand, the Regigigas copy squeezed. Regigigas’ Crush Grip made the poor Sneasel scream. He normally liked pressure on his body, but Ingo heard and felt something cracking. He couldn’t think of any possible way to escape.

Sneasler dropped from the sky and screamed as she fell claw-first and struck Regigigas’ wrist with Dire Claw. The illusion’s grip on Ingo loosened. Ingo took a sharp breath, and he went back to screaming when he realized that he was falling.

“All aboard, Ingo!” Emmet hung on Chandelure’s arms, as Sneasler had used the ghost pokemon to gain the high ground. He and Chandelure were above Regigigas and flew down.

Ingo caught Chandelure’s arm with the ends of his claws, but he pulled himself up to see Chandelure’s face. “What a last-minute stop! Bravo, Chandelure and Emmet!”

Chandelure flew around to get back about the Regigigas illusion. Sneasler used her claws to hang onto Regigigas’ arm and repeatedly struck it with Dire Claw. “Why aren’t you getting poisoned, you giant ass?!” A shadow drew over Sneasler. She looked up and saw Regigigas’ other hand coming to grab her. She ran up its arm and onto Regigigas’ head. Chandelure shot Will-O-Wisps at the giant pokemon, making its foliage burst into flames and Sneasler cuss from being so close to the fires. When his pokemon floated above Regigigas’ head, Ingo dropped and landed next to Sneasler.

“You learned Drain Punch, right?” Sneasler asked. Emmet’s Ice Shards whizzed past her head and struck Regigigas.

“I did,” Ingo said.

“Good. Get healed.” Sneasler drew her hand back. Energy swirled around her fist, and she Drain Punched the illusion on its head. Ingo mimicked the same move and found himself feeling better. Regigigas stepped forward. The movement caused Ingo to lose his balance and slip off the pokemon. Sneasler and Chandelure were both prepared to catch him, but Ingo caught his claws on one of Regigigas’ eye-like gems.

Sneasler suddenly dropped down to the ground. Wondering why, Chandelure and Emmet from above noticed pink energy surrounding the giant pokemon. “Ingo! That’s Zen Headbutt!” Emmet let go of Chandelure, making the poor ghost panic. Emmet was able to kick Ingo off Regigigas before it ran forward straight into the cave wall at a faster speed than any of the pokemon expected.

“Emmet! Are you alright?!” Ingo asked. Though Emmet’s dark-typing neutralized Zen Headbutt itself, his small brother was still crushed by a pokemon at least six times their size. Regigigas stepped backwards, revealing Emmet’s body pressed onto the wall. Emmet pulled an arm out of the wall and gave everyone else a thumbs up. Chandelure, angered that their trainer’s brother was hurt so much, unleashed Mystical Fire at Regigigas. Sneasler ran up with another Drain Punch.

Ingo ran up to Emmet, who fell out of the wall. “Emmet, how close do you believe we are to Victory?”

“Hm… Closer than you think,” Emmet said. He saw the pokemon’s black vines struggled to try and grab Sneasler. One step at a time, Regigigas turned to face Chandelure and Sneasler. “One combination of attacks should finish it. Follow the rules!” Emmet formed several small Ice Shards into one large shard in his hand.

“Drive safely!” Ingo’s hand swirled with draining energy.

“ALL ABOARD!” Ingo ran forward and jumped up, preparing to strike. Emmet threw his Ice Shard right above Ingo’s head. The Ice Shard fell in front of where Ingo’s fist would strike, allowing him to drive sharp shards of ice into Regigigas in addition to Ingo’s super-effective Drain Punch.

Ingo fell back to the ground. The Regigigas illusion stood completely still, then it tipped over. Sneasler and Chandelure ran away before the pokemon was able to get one last Heavy Slam on them before it fainted. The ground shook with the fall of the giant, knocking down Ingo and Emmet.

“Huh. Nice work,” Sneasler said. She stepped over the black vines to meet up with Ingo and Emmet. “You guys good?”

“That was a fun battle. I hope we fight like that again,” Emmet said.

“I didn’t like the Crush Grip, but I’m glad it’s over,” Ingo said as he carefully stretched to make sure his body had no broken bones.

Sneasler looked down at the illusion and kicked its arm. “…Huh. This is the part where it disappears. Why isn’t the illusion disappearing?”

“…I am not Uxie’s illusion,” Regigigas said, their voice echoing through the cave. “I… am the real Regigigas.”

Sneasler’s eyes widened as Regigigas stood back up on their feet. “What the hell??”

“…Did we just battle a legendary pokemon and win?” Ingo asked.

“We did!” Emmet flapped his arms and oversized sleeves. “I am Emmet. We battled and we won!”

“Why the hell is the real Regigigas here instead of Uxie’s illusion?!” Sneasler asked.

“…You are the Noble of the Cliffs. …I apologize for fighting you. …I was sleepwalking and attacked anyone before me. …You fully woke me up,” Regigigas said.

“Regi, you didn’t answer my question. Why are you here?” Sneasler asked.

“…I can trust you and your companions. …Follow me.” Regigigas took the three non-floating pokemon in their hand and carried them across the lake to the central island. The water came halfway up Regigigas’ body. Once the giant reached the island, the team walked inside the cave while Regigigas waited in the lake.

Inside the wet cave, a lone pokemon laid in the center. The pokemon was smaller than Ingo or Emmet and had a yellow domed head and a single red gem on their forehead. They were curled in a fetal position with twin tails wrapped around their body.

Ingo ran ahead of everyone else, immediately sensing something was wrong. Ingo placed his hand on Uxie’s body, consciously making sure he did not poison the pokemon. “…They’re alive. They’re still breathing.” Upon closer inspection, he noticed that the gem on Uzie’s head was cracked.

“What happened?” Sneasler asked from over Ingo’s shoulder.

“…I am unsure,” Regigigas said from outside. “…Uxie called to me to wake up. …By the time I found them, they were comatose.”

“Crap, this is serious. We need to get them out of here.” Sneasler took off her basket and placed it on the damp ground.

“Please hold on, Lady Sneasler. Regigigas, would you allow us to transport Uxie to the Pearl Guild for medical attention? The pokemon at the guild would be more than capable of protecting them. Does that satisfy your safety concerns?” Ingo asked.

“…The Pearl Guild is a trustworthy location. …I will allow it,” Regigigas said.

“Emmet, your badge please.” Ingo and Emmet removed their badges from their coats and presented them to Uxie. Uxie’s body glowed, and a beam of light teleported the pokemon out of the dungeon.

***

In the Pearl Guild’s infirmary, Uxie rested on a bed that, unlike the other beds in the guild, was a proper mattress with sheets. Gaeric the Glalie watched over the pokemon, waiting for a healing salve he prepared and slathered over Uxie’s gems to take effect. The infirmary was empty, but outside the entry stood several Pearl Guild members, including Irida, Chatot, and Team Conductors.

“This is concerning,” Irida said as she closed the door to the infirmary. “And you have no idea how this happened?”

“My apologies, Guildmaster Irida. Regigigas had no suspicion as to how it happened, so neither do we,” Ingo said.

“…Okay. Since Uxie is down, I want to check on the other Lake Guardians as well. I’ll inform Adaman about the situation and ask his guild to check on Azelf at Lake Valor. Lake Verity… both of our guilds are rather far from there, but I believe we are closer. I will have another team go there to visit Mespirit tomorrow morning. Did you get all that, Chatot?”

“Yes, I did,” Chatot said.

Irida turned to face Team Conductors and Sneasler. “Thank you for finding Uxie. I fear what would have happened had you not thought to visit them.”

“They would likely still be in a coma,” Emmet said. Ingo nudged him with his elbow.

“I’m still wondering how this happened… But I doubt we will get answers today. For now, you are dismissed. Again, thank you all for your service. You earned your rest.”

Team Conductors and Sneasler walked back to their tent in silence. Ingo, Emmet, and Sneasler stood around Ingo’s bulletin theory board. Chandelure floated above the group to provide light.

“Well, that mission went off the rails. Sorry, boys,” Sneasler said.

“No need to apologize, Lady Sneasler,” Ingo said. “We were able to transport Uxie to safety, which is a higher priority than our personal matters.”

“And we battled a legendary pokemon!” Emmet’s hands shook from the excitement. “I had fun.”

“Glad you’re having fun, nerds.” Sneasler crossed her arms and frowned. Her gaze drifted as she was lost in thought and settled on Ingo, who was staring at his board as though something would literally jump out at him. She smiled to herself.

[asknarashikari]

@hxmxbros Sorry about this haha! Something happened to your asks but I was able to save a screenshot of it. I also hope you don’t mind me combining them since they’re kinda related ^^

“How on earth is this possible,” Yamato said, looking rather faint as he gazed at the group of children before him. “You’re... you’re just kids. You...”

“Yamato-san?” Kagura asked, taking Yamato’s hand gently. “Are you alright?”

“No, I- Kagura, you didn’t tell me-” He gasped, reeling back from his Team Weirdo cohort. “Why didn’t you say anything about this?”

“Eh? Kagura, you didn’t tell him?” Tokacchi asked, fiddling with his glasses.

“I didn’t want you guys to worry,” she explained, looking down. “And Takaharu-san and Marvelous-san didn’t say anything, even though...”

“They knew?” Yamato cut her off, and Kagura nodded, her lip quivering. “Well... I’ll have to have a word with them about that,” he muttered, almost to himself. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset,” Kagura fretted.

He sighed and patted Kagura’s head. “It’s not your fault, Kagura-chan. It’s just...” he swallowed. “This wasn’t what I was expecting from my senpai... Gosh, that sounds so weird...” 

“It’s alright, Kazakiri-san.” Hikari said. “We’re kinda used to it by now. And it’s just as weird for us.”

“But if the Rainbow Line hadn’t recruited us, then our town would’ve fallen to the Shadow Line,” Mio explained.

“Y-You were... recruited?” Yamato’s face darkened, and the young ToQgers all took a step back at the low growl his voice had become. “Who did this?”

Right glanced at his teammates. “Why do I get the feeling that we just opened a huge can of worms...?”

~0~

“Yamato, no!” Misao cried as he threw himself on his friend, trying to hold him back as he thrashed violently against him. 

“They were children!” Yamato yelled, furious and indignantly, at the strange creature with a rabbit-mascot head and his subordinates. “They were children and you used them as soldiers in a war! How could you?!”

The Conductor and Ticket raised their hands up in an attempt to placate the Ranger. “The Rainbow Line works off the power of imagination,” Ticket tried to explain, “so children were the best choice to wield it-”

“That’s BS and you know it!” Yamato growled. “Are you saying no adult in this whole world has an imagination strong enough to wield your power?” he seethed. “Seven billion people on this planet, and not one above the age of twenty met your criteria? Heck, not even a teenager, at the very least?!”

“...He has a point,” Akira said, from the corner where he was lurking.

“...It was them, or no one else.” The President said firmly. “And yes. I admit they were young. Maybe too young.” He sighed deeply. “But they were the best people for the job then, and they still are now.” 

Yamato trembled in Misao’s arms, but his shoulders relaxed, dropping the punch he was about to throw. Misao loosened his hold on the other man, but didn’t let go off him. “Keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll sleep better at night,” spat the eagle ranger bitterly, before he wrenched himself away from Misao and stormed out of the train. 

[teamfreewill56-blog]

Hi! I rewatched Mugen Train again last night but there's one thing I'm confused about and it's when Kyojuro fights those two demons near the start of the movie. I can't wrap my head around if it's a dream or not because I think near the end of season one, we saw a glimpse of the first demon he fought. But after he kills them both it cuts to them all sleeping so I'm confused

Hello! So the two demons that Kyojuro fights in the beginning of the movie are a dream. Enmu states that "Once the conductor punches them [the ticket] creating clamp marks the spell activates." (Episode 4: Insult). The first demon Kyojuro kills doesn't show up until after everyone's ticket has been clipped. Enmu also confirms in the manga:

The light flicker is the visual indicator that it's entered into the dream realm (or at least, I interpreted it that way). Enmu's spell gave everyone a shared dream while in the beginning stages of the spell in order to make them believe they were still awake and he used that dream to put them at ease about the demons on the train. That's why the scene about the boys asking Kyojuro to be his tsugukos suddenly gets so goofy and jarring and then we get that abrupt cut to them sleeping. Because this is how the dream started I suspect that's part of why Kyojuro and Tanjiro found entering their personal, separate dreams to be so alarming and suspicious. The dream changed and they noticed so both of them went "hold up what's going on! Where am I?" And the reason I think they don't question it further is because they get confronted/put in an immediate situation with their family members and that gets them fully immersed into the dream. Hence why as Tanjiro's falls deeper into his sleep he says "I don't know what came over me" when his family asks about why he burst into tears upon seeing his brother and sister when in the moment he saw his siblings he definitely knew he was seeing two dead people "alive".

I hope this helps!

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Emp-ire “The Angel On My Side.”

Hope everyone is having a good day. And I hope you all like seeing Ramirez a little more because he is going to be present a lot in these next stories. I hope you find this fun because I had fun writing it :)

“Relax would you, you look like…. Well you look like you're sitting in the dentist's office waiting for a root canal.”

Adam looked up from his hands as the shuttle rocked from side to side, “Sory, I just generally prefer to drive. This guy keeps dipping too shallow and it's making me nervous.”

Ramirez rolled his eyes and kicked back to take a look at the pamphlet he was reading, “Listen to this. I picked this up back on the station and it's  pretty interesting read.” He cleared his throat, “Within the last eighteen months GA xeno planetary analysts have green lit twenty potential colony planets for human habitation. According to xeno-scientific experts, these planets are all perfectly habitable, and unlikely to ever produce sentient life of its own. Each of these planets has a suitable climate for a large population though xeno experts will be  strictly limiting colonization in an effort to not destabilize the planetary ecosystem. Each colony will be heavily monitored by members of the xeno colonization taskforce. Efforts will be made to keep the natural landscapes of the planet as intact as possible. For these reasons the use of technology, and natural gasses are being strictly limited by the Interplanetary Energy Association. Some experts postulated that these limits on technological use might have a hand in deterring colonists, however this theory has proven to be false as slots for planetary habitation fill up quickly. Furthermore xeno cultural experts have been stunned at the sudden and rapid development of micro cultures within the colonies. The term they are using is called Rapid Microcultural Evolution, often these cultures are very specific and very niche to each planet often based on dead or outdated human cultures from history largely influenced by popular media.”

He set down the pamphlet, “Isn’t that cool, I was reading in here at it seems like there are “themed” Colonies now. Like the one we are going to is like wild west, but there is also a sort of greek/roman style one that popped up in the milky way, and even a victorian one out somewhere in andromeda.” Adam tilted his head, “Guess you and I are going to have to start a colony.”

“Alright, what theme are we gonna pick, can’t be sci fi because we live in that.”

Adam leaned back in his seat, “You ever stop to think that we only consider it sci fi because I watched too many space movies from the 2000s. Technically it's not sci fi its sci fact. I have a house on the moon, and fly a spaceship.”

“Good point.” He walked to sit over next to Adam, “So what time period do you think is cool.”

Adam tapped his foot on the ground, “how about…. Renaissance?”

“I was thinking vikings or WAIT Aztec.”

“Mmmm some of my ancestors were viking.

“And twenty bucks says some of my relatives were Aztec.”

Adam shrugged, “Just mix them together and make Aztec vikings and ‘bam’ you have the craziest space culture ever. Big ass viking men who drag you back to the ziggurat to pull your beating heart out of your chest for a good Maze harvist.”

The two of them laughed for a second until the shuttle dropped into upper atmosphere, and then the two of them went relatively silent as they prayed to make a safe landing as the shuttle rocked and bumped through the upper atmosphere. The sky on the planet was a very vibrant blue, almost more so than earth, and as they descended towards the barren open desert, they thought they might have seen a oup of horses riding north over the barren, rocky  landscape.

When they landed, Ramirez stumbled from the shuttle and out into sunlight throwing a hand up to protect hi face. 

It was hot, and the croaking of strange alien insects rose up around them. The site they were at was arid and mostly deserted with a single wooden building before them and a shiny new set of train tracks.

The two of them stared, “Awesome.”

Looking around, they could see miles and miles of open plane, mostly desert, but some tufts of strange looking scrub brush and more than a few rocky plateaus rising into the sky.

Then they looked around at the people.

They were not disappointed.

Men and women alike in jeans and suspenders, with wide brim hats and gun belts. Some of the women had on long skirts and decorative hats or even bonnets on a few occasions. There were a few horses tethered to the side of what they assumed to be the train station.

“I think we are a bit overdressed.” Ramirez said, leaning over to whisper to Adam.

He nodded, lets go change and then buy some train tickets to the capital. We have to find somewhere to get horses if we want to make this any sort of experience.”

Ramirez frowned as they made their way towards the train station, kicking up dirt in his wake, “Wait, horses, hold on I thought we were just going to kick up around town, go to the saloon, get drunk and maybe hit on a couple of bar maids or something.” 

Adam snorted, “Please we can’t go to the cowboy planet and not put our equipment to use.’

They shoulder their way through the double doors, their feet clattering on the wooden flooring. A few faces looked up at them from the waiting benches, but mostly they ignored the two strangers.

Adam motioned ramirez towards the bathrooms and the two of them made their way over, Glad that this was at least one modern convenience that they got to keep. Ramirez took a little while to get his gear on, and when he stepped out of the bathroom Adam was already waiting for him. 

Waiting for him leaned up against the wall, the brim of his hat low over his eyes. Ramirez was a bit surprised at how well the other man fit into the role. He was wearing a light blue button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up at the elbows, and a black vest over that, his hat was black and he had blue jeans tucked into black boots. A brown leather gunbelt hung at a canted angle on his hips.

When he looked up Ramirez grinned And adam shook his head, “You dumbass, do you even know how to put that on.”

Ramirez looked down, “What!”

Adam walked over, “I thought you lived in texas.”

He grabbed Ramirez by the shoulders and began adjusting his clothes, “Come on, If you are making me spend time with you, the best you could do is not look like a dumbass.”

Ramirez held up his hands Grinning as Adam grabbed the pistol from his holster and adjusted the belt.

“Hey Adam, is that your gun belt or are you just happy to see me.” 

Adam looked up at him with a withering gaze, “I hate you you know that.”

Ramirez grinned, “I know.”

Adam flipped the gun around, “Holster Like this if you want to be authentic, now quit being a dumbass or we are going to find out what it feels like to get a bootheel to the balls.”

“Kinky.”

He didn’t see the short side handed slap that came for the side of his head but still felt it was worth it as he tugged on his hat.

His poison of choice was a white shirt and no vest with brown boots and the light tan hat from earlier. He thought he looked sexy as hell. In fact he would go so far as to say the both of them looked  pretty hot. Two eligible bachelors out on the town…. Well one eligible bachelor and a slightly less eligible bachelor with huge baggage issues still hung up on his one and only love, but that was more of a mouthful.

Adam left Ramirez standing by the door and walked over to buy some tickets, which were also being purchased using credits as anywhere else. When he walked, his boots clomped over the floor and jangled lightly. No one bothered to look up as he went past making it clear just how common that occurrence was around here.

He came back later with two train tickets and sat on the bench next to ramirez leaning his head back against the wall.

Adam crossed his arms over his chest and pretended to be asleep, while some alien insects buzzed around the room rather annoyingly.

It was hot and Ramirez tugged at the collar of his shirt.

They were there for probably thirty or forty minutes before a distant train whistle jolted the two of them back into wakefulness.

Adam stood and so did Ramirez, the two of them jogging noisily outside onto the wooden platform in order to watch the train.

Though the train had wheels and ran on tracks, big, black and impressive, it clearly wasn’t run on coal or natural gas. However, whoever had designed the thing had clearly put great emphasis into making it look as realistic as possible, and the thundering roar as it rolled over the tracks was something to behold, vibrating in their bones in a way that just wasn’t captured by the maglevs of earth.

“Damn, that is cool.”

Adam smirked a little, “hey think the train will get robbed on our way back to town.”

Ramirez grinned, “If we don’t, I want my money back.

The platform around them started to fill up some, and they stepped back as the train pulled to a stop, urged back by a few conductors as a couple of passengers stepped out carrying bags. Some of them were cleary tourists, though there were a fwe who looked like citizens.

Stepping onto the train, the two of them were ushered into a car in the back and sat in an uncomfortable wooden bench as they watched the other passengers slowly filter onto the train. No one even looked at them twice, except, Ramirez noticed, a very pretty cowgirl who stepped o second to last and sat a few rows behind.”

He grinned and elbowed Adam in the ribs, who looked over at him with a raised eyebrow.

“I think this planet is going to really benefit from….. A latin lover.” he whispered seductively.

Adam punched him in the leg.

He yelped, “Ouch, dude, no sense of humor.”

“I don’t know, I thought that was pretty funny.” The two of them shared a laugh as the train began to chug forward over the tracks, slow at first and then faster and faster until the landscape was rushing by below them.

The ride was rather bumpy and sort of loud, but they were ok with that. 

The sun inched towards the horizon as the train moved, and the sky faded from blue to a delicate violent towards the horizon.

At some point Adam drifted off at his side and ended up slumping against the window.

Ramirez let the poor guy sleep and sighed.

It had been a rough time for the crew, and for him, but he hoped he was doing the right thing by coming out here and taking him on some sort of adventure. Sure he had selfish motives, and wanted to see cool things, but he liked to think this was mostly for his friend.

The entire sky was almost purple now, and the light of a distant city sprung up before them.

He nudged Adam awake, and the other man sat up blinking owlishly as he looked around. Little lanterns on the carriage had been lit, illuminating the interior of the train with dim yellow light. The train began to slow, and then pulled to a stop as they got to their feet and stepped off.

Walking off the wooden planks of the train station and down into the muddied dirt road of the Bramble Colony Capital: Two Sun.

The streetlights had already been lit though horse drawn carts and carriages were still being pulled through the streets.

Dogs barked on occasion and voices rose up from houses and establishments on either side of the wooden boardwalk street.

“Where to?” Adam wondered/

“The Saloon!”

“You are such a dumbass.” Adam said, shaking his head, but he followed after Ramirez. Walking down the street their boots clattering voer wooden boards and through mud the leather of gun belts creaking slightly as they walked.

“Dude I feel like such a badass.”

Ramirez turned to look at Adam eyebrow raised, for the first time since their trip started, he seemed genuinely excited.

“Glad I’m not the only one!’

“Hey!”

The two of them drew to a halt in the mud turning to the side where they spotted a man sitting on one of the wooden porches. Ramirez’s eyes widened as he saw the shiny golden star on the left side of the man’s chest, “Sheriff!”

The man Raised an eyebrow probably not used to being greeted so enthusiastically.

“You two new around here?”

The two of them grinned at each other as the man’s exaggerated rural drawl fell over them.”

The man narrowed his eyes.

“Yes sir, just visiting.”

“Well you see this building behind me.”

“Yes sir.”

“You two fools get into any trouble and you'll be behind bars faster than a thoroughbred from the starting gate, you hear me.”

Ramirez jumped up and down in his boots turning to look at Adam, “Wild west jail.”

“Not a tourist attraction Ramirez.” He turned to look at the Sheriff who was still eying them and grabbed his friend by the shoulders steering them clear, “We’ll keep our noses out of trouble Sheriff.”

Ramirez was still grinning as they made their way down the street, “Do you have a death wish?”

“He won’t kill me, but wouldn’t going to cowboy jail be a great story.”

“Getting dragged would also be a great story when all my skin pealed off.”

“Dragged?”

“Old west form of punishment where you get dragged behind a horse till dead.”

Ramirez shook his head, “I will go with a no on that one, also not a big fan of hanging, but I could do a firing squad as long as I was allowed to make a really bad pun before I go.”

Adam snorted with some amusement as they made their way towards the loudest building on the street. From the sound of the out of tune piano on the inside and the drunken singing , they were in the right palace.

Adam Grabbed Ramirez by the back of the shirt and dragged him away from the swinging doors, “Hold on, hold on.”

Ramirez stopped, “What.’

“Ive always wanted to do ths.”

“Do what?”

Adam cracked his neck and his knuckles before stepping towards the door and pushing both open. The clatter of his boots was loud on the floor and Ramirez waited for that expected moment when all of the sound would stop and everyone would turn to look at them.

That…. Did not happen.

In fact, no one noticed the two young men as they made their way inside the hot, cramped room smelling of liquor and sweat.

“My disappointment is immeasurable and my day has been ruined.” Ramirez whispered.

Adam frowned, “yeah my expectations were, well, expecting something better than that.”

Together the two of them made their way over to the bar, both leaning against it in exaggerated nonchalance before bursting into laughter. The bartender, a stern looking redhead walked over, “And what do you boys want.”

Ramirez patted Adam on the back, “me and my friend are looking to get very drunk very quick, think you can help us.”

The woman sighed, but ducked behind the bar.

Adam tilted his head at Ramirez, “I thought you didn’t like it when I drank.”

“When you drink alone, yes, but when you drink with me, we have a party.”

“Sure we do.” Adam snorted 

The woman came back a moment later with two shot glasses and bottle which she set on the bar, “This will get you drunk.”

Adam flipped over the bottle to take a look, “Shit, Ramirez, this is practically paint thinner.”

“Tastes like to too.” The woman said as she poured two shots of the stuff and slid it over to them.”

Adam took it gingerly like it was a snake about to bite him.

Ramirez raised the glass, “Ready when you are, cowboy.”

“Don’t call me that.” Adam said raising the glass, and together they kicked it back bith grimacing and sputtering as they came back up to set the shots back on the bar. 

Adam wiped his eyes, “Damn, Like…. Rubbing alcohol.”

Ramirez waved a hand in front of his face “Makes my eyes burn just thinking about it. Another!”

“Sweet heavens above.”” Adam Implored, but slid his glass back to the bartender, who seemed very amused.

“Are we going to end up in jail by the time this is over.”

“Probably.”

They took another shot.

It was about ten or so minutes later when Adam started to feel the warm fuzzy sensation inside his chest. Ramirez had already vanished somewhere tryin to woo the local population. No one was safe.

He took a seat at the bar head down staring at his glass.

Why was he thinking about Sunny all of a sudden.

“Someone break your heart.” The bartender said dryly. When he looked up, he expected her to be wiping at the same greasy spot of counter with an even greasier rag, but she was simply leaned against the bar staring at him.

“That obvious?”

“Nine out of ten times its the best guess, besides, most of the time two shots from that bottle can lighten anyone’s mood.”

“You got something….. Strong but like…. Good tasting?”

“You mean something brightly colored and fruity?”

“Yeah, something brightly colored and fruity.” She Smirked, “You're braver than most men at this bar.”

“I knew we were dressing as cowboys, but I didn’t know the 1800s let us borrow their views on drinks too.”

She laughed, and returned a few second later with a martini glass full of bright green liquid, “There that should do for yah.”

He sipped at it a little, and satisfied it wasn’t going to peel the first layer of his insides began to drink.

“So, this girl of yours… she leave you.”

“No uh…. I sort of left her.”

“You some kind of simpleton…. Idiot maybe/”

He sighed and slumped down in his chair. “That’s what I’m told… I left her…. So I wouldn’t hurt her. I don’t think she understood but….. I’ve been pretty messed up since the war.”

“A soldier huh.”

“Not much of one.”

“ANd your friend over there, the one dancing on the table, is he a soldier too?”

Adam turned around to look towards where Ramirez was standing on a table and dancing around like a moron to the flight of the drunken crowd below, “He sighed, do you know what a synonym for moron is?”

“What/”

“A marine.” He stood, “Hold on a second while I go get him, “ 

He walked over to the table hands on hips and looked up,”Ramirez, Get down from there.”

“Or, or you could come up here.”

“Or I damn well won’t.”

He turned around in a circle stamping his boot and clapping his hands.

“Come on! Have some fun.” off in the corner the piano was going loudly getting faster and faster.”

“If you don’t come here I pull out the shoe.”

Adam looked back at the bartender who looked more amused than she did annoyed. So he sighed and held up a hand, “help me up.”

Ramirez grinned and grabbed him by the hand, helping to haul him into the table, where the two of them linked arms and began dancing around in a circle in some horrible tandem rendition of square dancing mixed with swing dancing. The table wobbled dangerously back and forth threatening to tip over as their weight distribution swayed around and around. Laughing and Drunken chanting started up as the piano started to go faster and faster.

Those who were able to sing along in time with the words, soon stumbled over them, their lips tripping over the words that spilled from their mouths.

Adam and Ramirez stomped their boots and kicked up their heels in a wild tornado, both of them having surprisingly good rhythm. The piano grew faster and faster and faster until they were simply spinning around in a wild circle.

And then the door slammed open.

The piano cut off, and Ramirez went tumbling into Adam causing the two of them to pitch backward off the table and hit the floor with a loud “thud”. The room was dead silent except for the sound of boots rattling over the ground.

Adam ad Ramirez groaned rolling into sitting positions as they looked up at the intruder.

The man they saw was…. Greasy and unkempt with a snarled black beard and a pockmarked face. He wore a tatty black leather jacket and grimy fingerless gloves. His clothing was travel stained and filthy. When he walked into the room, his smell was just as present as he was.

“Don’t stop on my account.” He said, “it looked like we were just getting to the fun part.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing back here Louis.” the bartender snarled,”I thought we made it very clear that you weren’t welcome last time.”

The man raised his hands innocently, “Oh please, I am just here to/...collect charitable donations.”

“Get out! Or we call the sherif.”

“Sheriff is busy…. Chasing outlaws outside of town.”

Adam and Ramirez exchanged looks as they slowly got to their feet.

The man reached towards his belt, “You boys stay right where you are.”

Adam raised his hands, “Woah, no harm done.”

Adam glanced towards Ramirez, giving him a look as he began to inch quietly to the side. Adam moved strategically in the opposite direction keeping his hands up.

He tried to look as shifty as possible to keep the man’s attention, “I think you should leave like the lady said.”

“Oh ho so one of the twinkle toes dancing boys thinks I should leave.”

“I do, so i am going to ask politely first.”

“And then what.” his hand inched down hovering over the grip of his gun. Adam did the same, though his fingers had gone numb. He was a good shot, but dueling! He knew he would fumble! He just knew it.

“I’m going to stop you.”

He laughed, “Oh you wil,l will you.”

Adam stared hard at the man’s face watching Ramirez move into position behind the man’s back, “I will…. I have the angel’s on my side.”

The man started to laugh.

Ramirez struck, grabbing a bottle from the nearest table and cracking the man across the back of the head with it. The man went down hard but Ramirez doubled over clutching his hand,”Fuck….. My hand! I thought those were so supposed to break! Shit.”

Adam leaped forward pinning the man to the ground.

A few other men and women rushed forward to help and soon enough they had him hog tied on the floor.

He stood up heart beating with exhilaration.

Ramirez rubbed his hand and groaned in pain.

Adam pressed his knee into the man’s back.

The bar tender came around from behind the bar, “That was a dumb move boys brave but dumb.”

Adam looked over to where ramirez was still nursing his wound, “yeah, I think that describes us pretty well doesn’t it. I got this guy, the rest of you can go back to drinking.” 

The bartender shook her head, “You buys drink free tonight.”

Ramirez grinned, “how can I say no to that! Drinks on me!”

Adam ignored the cheering of the bar for a moment, as he pulled the guns from the mn’s belt, and…. A very large knife. He noticed the decorative handle and, out of curiosity, pulled it out. It felt heavy in his grip, with good heft. He tested the edge against the hairs on the back of his arm, and they fell away smooth.

“Not bad.” he muttered.

Sunny would like…..

He paused

Looked down, looked around and then back down fighting with himself internally before.

Discreetly tucking the knife into his own, empty, knife sheath.”

Looking up he saw one of the serving girls staring at him.

He blushed and held up a finger to his lips.

She smiled, ruby red lips parting slightly, and winked at him, turning away exaggeratedly as if she hadn’t seen anything.

The door crashed open again a few moments later, and the Sheriff came barging into the room huffing and puffing like a bull, covered in dust, fingers stained with cordite. He paused in te doorway frowned at the scene before him and walked over, “Louis Grey.”

He looked down at Adam, and then Over at Ramirez who was taking advantage of his momentary glory.

“Thought I told you not to get into trouble.”

“You never told us not to stop it.”

He grunted and motioned to a few men to help him drag the body back to the jail, “Guess this is a thanks I owe you then. He has outstanding warrants in several counties, can never catch him though greasy little weasel.”

The unconscious man was dragged away only just beginning to stir. The sheriff shook his hand. “You boys be safe, and try not to do something so dumb next time.”

Adam touched the brim of his hat. “Yes sir.” He reached down to touch the knife at his belt, “We will make sure of it.”

[eeveedel]

Hi all, I haven’t recced some fics in awhile but...today is fic writers appreciation day! And there are so many fics that I love so very much and have brought so much happiness into my life. 

And it just so happens I have a personal document where i’ve kept track of fics I’ve read for the past 3-4 years, categorized by tropes. So I thought it would be fun to rec you my all-time favorite fic from each of my personal categories! There are so many good fics so I hope you enjoy. And if you want a full fic rec list for any of these categories, please tell me! 

And a big thank you again to all of the lovely authors out there, I hope you have a lovely day and now how valued your work is. 

A/B/O

Sisterwives by jaerie

This was it, the moment Louis had been waiting for his entire life. Giddy excitement bubbled up as he held hands and stared up at his soon-to-be alpha and husband and grinned. The ceremony was small and simple, but Louis didn’t mind. Fresh flowers pinned into his hair and a brand new outfit was all he needed to feel special in front of their few witnesses. It was just some members of his family and a few of the church elders in attendance as was customary for any marriage beyond the first wife within the faith.

First wives were the ones to have elaborate weddings with the whole community involved. An alpha’s first wedding was a celebration of an their coming of age, his first steps into fulfilling God’s prophecy. There were many glories for an omega that came with being a first wife but also many responsibilities. Louis had never aspired to be a first wife or even a second. He wasn’t experienced enough to be the leader of an alpha’s many wives and children and he didn’t think he’d be up to the task.

Louis was just fine in the position he was stepping into as the seventh.

Or Louis thinks he's getting everything he's ever dreamed of. Harry helps him find what makes him truly happy.

Action/Adventure 

The Dead of July by whimsicule

Harry is Captain America, and Louis’ been dead for 70 years.

Age Gap

White Pages, White Lace, Big Hands, Pretty Face by thechesirepussycat

“He touches his sides, his neck, his lips, all the places Harry has just been, all the places that still tingle from Harry’s touch. Such a strange feeling Louis has, so unreal and nerve-racking. He can’t begin to describe what Harry has done to him, what about Harry makes Louis want to call him… Daddy.“

Or, a gratuitous Sugar Daddy!Harry and Student!Louis AU.

Angst

Bot by tomlinsunshine (11k)

Zayn builds robots; Harry is a big fan of his latest model.

Break Up

got the sunshine on my shoulders by hattalove

five years ago, harry styles left his tiny home town to make it big as a recording artist. he didn't have much regard for what he left behind - a life, a family, and a husband, who woke up one morning to find him gone.

now, harry has everything he could possibly want: he's rich, famous, and adored by everyone he meets, including his boyfriend. but when said boyfriend proposes to him, he's forced to face the uncomfortable facts of his past - and louis, who's spent the last five years returning every set of divorce papers harry sent him.

(or, an au based on the movie sweet home alabama.)

Canon

nonstop earthquake dreams of you by lumineres

And there's heat behind it, blazing, plasmatic, like stars crashing together, like an explosion in space, like a supernova, like a black hole--everything else sucked out of existence. There's no bed and there's no pillow and they're not lying down, just floating somewhere, somehow, and there's no room and there's no X Factor house and there's no Niall snuffling or Liam's deep, even breathing and there's no wind or traffic outside and there's no hum of the heating unit and it's all just Louis. All encompassingly Louis.

or, harry falls hard and finds louis already at the bottom

Classics

Love Is A Rebellious Bird by 100percentsassy and gloria_andrews

AU in which the boys still make music. Louis is the concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra, Harry is the New! and Exciting! interim conductor/ex-cello prodigy who "has made Mozart cool again" according to Esquire Magazine (Louis hates him immediately, which is definitely why he internet stalked him in his dark bedroom late at night that one time), and Niall is the best. Zayn and Liam are around too.

College/Uni 

Could be Kissing My Fruit Punch Lips by thechesirepussycat

Harry happens upon a porn site that specializes in live videos and sort of falls in love with the cute boy he only knows as Kitty.

And then he gets the surprise of his life when he finds out Kitty attends his university...

Crime

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by haroldslouis 

1997 AU where Harry is a bank robber and Louis falls in love with him

Dom/Sub

No Control Club series by SadaVeniren

Harry, a popular BDSM blogger, writes a negative review about Louis’ club. Louis wants to have a chance to make it up to him.

Dunkirk/Alex

Poison & Wine by tilthesundies

Alex comes home from the war to find a stranger living in his flat.

Dystopian/Apocalypse

things have gotten closer to the sun by starseas

when a solar flare is announced to end the world in twelve days, harry reunites with the people that he used to know better than the back of his own hand.

Enemies to Lovers

you flower, you feast by stylinsoncity 

He's King of the Underworld, but don't assume Louis has it all. He could stand for some excitement in his monotonous, eternal life and maybe, even.....a soulmate.

(Despite not having a soul.)

And along came "Harry"

Established Relationship

I Only Ever Want You by itsmiz

Louis and Harry's relationship goes through a series of changes while Liam and Zayn discover new things about themselves, as well.

Or: Louis & Harry and Liam & Zayn begin to have sex in front of each other and a lot of kink-discovery results from that.

Fairy Tale

Red by frosteddream 

Shockwaves were sent through the village after the McPherson family was savagely killed. There were people who feared the beast that did it, and then there was Louis, or, as most people liked to call him, Red. (Little Red Riding Hood AU.)

Fake Dating 

And Then a Bit by infinitelymint

Harry and Louis fake a relationship for publicity. Eventually it becomes a lot less fake and a lot more real.

Famous (non-1D AU)

a million roses (bathed in rock n roll) by deLILah 

au. harry sings in smoky dive bars; louis misses his flight home. they go to coney island in the morning.

(aka - harry is lana del rey, and louis makes him a star.)

Fashion

Just my style by thoughtsickles

Harry is sick, and the only thing that might help him is the pheromones from his mate--problem is, he hasn't got a mate.

Louis' just been disowned, and taking part in a medical study where he has to cuddle with some strange alpha seems to be his only option for earning a bit of cash.

The hippies and Omega Rights campaigners are busy changing the world--but all Harry wants is a chance to live.

Fluff

Dreaming of You by velvetoscar

The Begrudging Starbucks AU.

The world is winter and steamed milk and creamy espresso shots. The world is a never ending queue. The world is a Starbucks logo and a pink-cheeked smile from Niall and a bored scowl from Zayn and the world is Louis watching his best mate, Liam, fall in love with their newest customer, Harry. Who may or may not be in love with Louis. The world is cruel.

Frat

Soft Feet, Fast Hands, Can’t Lose by dolce_piccante

American Uni AU. Harry Styles is a frat boy football star from the wealthy Styles Family athletic dynasty. A celebrity among football fans, he knows how to play, he knows how to party, and he knows how to fuck (all of which is well known among his legion of admirers).

Louis Tomlinson is a student and an athlete, but his similarities to Harry end there. Intelligent, focused, independent, and completely uninterested in Harry’s charms, Louis is an anomaly in a world ruled by football.

A bet about the pair, who might be more similar than they originally thought, brings them together. Shakespeare, ballet, Disney, football, library chats, running, accidental spooning, Daredevil and Domino’s Pizza all blend into one big friendship Frappucino, but who will win in the end?

Friends to Lovers

OmegaVision by jaerie 

Tomlin Networks Presents: OmegaVision starring Louis Tomlinson! The world's first 24/7 reality channel available in over 150 countries worldwide following the life of the first male omega born in over a century. Follow Louis through his daily routine, the ups and downs of growing up or just leave him on for comfort. There are many reasons to tune in but, no matter what yours may be, there's always a part of Louis that is just like you!

Or a Truman Show au that nobody asked for where Louis is Truman and Harry just wants to be his mate

Girl Direction

Never Enough by idekboo

Louis couldn't get enough of Harry and that gorgeous body of hers. She wasn't shy about letting her know.

High School

I found a love (darling just dive right in) by wonderlou

Louis, an omega with very little control. Harry, an alpha with a lot of emotion. Neither of them have any idea what do to with this little thing called love, but they'll be damned if they don't put up a good fight.

Historical

Coax the Cold by MediaWhore 

England, 1897.

English Professor Louis Tomlinson’s passion for the occult has been a source of mockery and derision for most of his life. When he hears whispers of a travelling freak show newly established in London claiming the existence of a monstrous sea hybrid, half-man, half-fish, Louis sees it as his ticket to credibility amongst his peers. The summer he spends undercover working on the show, however, gives him much more than that.

Miscellaneous/Unique

the impossible now by stylinsoncity

A wish on Christmas Eve sends Louis to an alternate dimension where Harry is a member of One Direction.

Mpreg

The Things I’d Do to Wake Up Next to You by dirtymattress (36k)

Harry wakes up to a pregnant Louis Tomlinson and a wedding band on his finger.

Mythology

Say Hallelujah, Say Goodnight by alivingfire

Louis is an angel who is just a little too bad to be good, Harry is a demon who is just a little too good to be bad, and they're both a little too in love to be impartial when angels and demons go to war.

PWP

mr. tomlinson by iwillpaintasongforlou

Louis is a billionaire CEO who makes grown men cry and rival companies crumble. He's also an omega. Harry is the quiet cupcake of a man he calls his alpha and the only one who gets to see Louis as anything less than fearsome.

Roommates

streetwise hercules by bottomlinsons

Uni AU, where Louis pretends to be Harry's boyfriend to scare away his one night stands.

Royalty

feel the chemicals burn in my bloodstream by togetherwecouldbealright 

Harry is a journalist with a lot of secrets and Louis is the future king of the United Kingdom; they live together for 60 days.

Spies

never gonna dance again by togetherwecouldbealright

Louis is a spy and Harry is a dancer. The only real thing they know is each other.

Soulmates

Nameless Night by green_feelings

For their 18th birthday, every person receives a letter that reads a simple date. That is the date you'll meet your soulmate.

Harry and Louis have different beliefs, live in different worlds and have different dreams, hopes and fears. Yet, they're not so different from each other when it comes to love. When their paths cross, there is no doubt they belong together. Except for that one, essential difference: they didn't receive the same date.

Or, a fic about differences that make no difference at all: Harry and Louis are soulmates. In every way possible. Featuring Niall as a role model, and Liam and Zayn as a different kind of role models.

Summer Romance

Rivers til I Reach You by embodied

AU. Louis studies astronomy; Harry studies Louis. They spend their summers on the water and it shouldn't be complicated (spoiler: it is).

Supernatural

Howls Like a Beast (You Flower, You Feast) by indiaalaphawhiskey (16k)

France, 1754. Château de Versailles.

“You don’t love me,” Louis had said, utterly blasé as he callously fractured the heart of a Harry that was just barely eighteen.

“I do,” Harry had insisted pleadingly, green eyes already watering.

Louis had rolled his eyes, exasperated and flippant in the way only beautiful, young boys could be when faced with the affections of a baby prince. He had run his finger down Harry’s cheek then, had forced him to look into his eyes as he delivered the final blow.

“You’ll change your mind once you’ve seen more of the world,” Louis had teased, pressing a brutally delicate kiss onto Harry’s lovely, pure cheek. “Once you’ve been properly defiled.” He had whispered filthily, delighted by the gasp he heard, the frantic pink blush that had rested high on Harry’s cheeks, the power he had felt at knowing he could make the Crown Prince squirm.