#but we were taking an my horrendous self image and how it is a fact

[tamagotchikgs]

why was my therapist like YOURE NOT UGLY!! u might think a lil different ,,, but that’s ok

[so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site]

(Cripes, I hope I'm not over-asking, but I've been thumbing my copy of the Companion while looking at your blog, and the wheels in my head are turning on Things What To Say.)

Re: the Companion and the Corinthian

I'm not sure I'd necessarily agree the quote from Neil out the Companion is trying to erase the Corinthian's queerness or blunt it? Like, quoting directly here, page 57 in my softcover second edition, from chapter 4 under the header "The Corinthian and the Cereal" Convention":

Hy Bender: Where did his name come from?

Neil Gaiman: It's a seventeenth-century slang word for a licentious rake who does things like frequent brothels. But Sandman's Corinthian doesn't have sex; he eats eyeballs. And he's homosexual, in the sense that he prefers to eat the eyeballs of boys.

And then they continue on to discuss the place and the letters and the columns and the leather, much as Puck alludes in The Kindly Ones. If there are other passages discussing the Corinthian that bring up queerness in any way, I've missed them while looking over the book, and will be happy to have them pointed out for further reference.

But taking the quote as is, Gaiman's bringing up sexual activity and orientation to note how the Corinthian deviates from one who you'd call a corinthian in the context of its original slang meaning. He is promiscuous and unprincipled, but instead of prostitution and rape his chosen vice is devouring eyeballs; rather than the presumed heterosexuality of the original term, he targets men. In a sense, it's actively calling attention to the fact the Corinthian's closest thing to a sexual behavior is uniformly male-oriented, which doesn't much seem an attempt to deny he's gay-coded.

Now of course, we ARE effectively implying he doesn't experience sexual or romantic attraction in the way a typical person might, but given how he's presented in the comics, I don't think I'd argue he does myself either. Unlike his TV counterpart, he doesn't have those moments when he chooses to sleep with a hot young guy rather than eat his eyes, or invites comparison and contrast with Hal by sharing a scene with him, or wins cautionary sympathy by proving a genuinely effective protective big brother figure for Jed, or pleads for Dream's understanding towards his yearning for what it's like to experience life as something other than a nightmare in parallel with Gault's. On the page, he's a much rawer id-force, personal pleasure expressed as inflicting misery and suffering upon others, the dark mirror Dream intended warped into self-serving, self-justifying abominable acts, the definite fuel behind the serial killers' gross self-flattering collective dream. His every appearance prior to full reveal plays on images of kidnapping and alleyway assaults and the aftermath of butchery through his "eyes," and we're left with a decidedly ugly figure behind a conventionally handsome face. He's the slinking, cringing force that hides behind platitudes of strength and righteousness, only to fall to nothing on exposure to reality.

(There's conversation to be had about Gaiman evoking predation and perversion with a character who eats eyes as bastardization of sexual activity and only eats the eyes of young men and boys besides, but I'm driving at a particular idea here so all I'll say there is God Were The 90s A Different Time Even If You Were Otherwise Progressive, Huh.)

My point is, the nightmare who walks as a man is much deeper in monstrosity on the page, and coming after Brute and Glob's twisted replication of the Dreaming, as capstone to the horrendous visions of gutless self-styled hunters, he's both exemplification of that issue's themes and a means of making the audience wonder how this still-kinda-a-horror-title comic is going to top itself with Fiddler's Green before you learn he's a completely benign figure we've known for several chapters now. The text doesn't much invite you to sympathize with him until he is remade in The Kindly Ones, and even then it's done through the filter of Matthew's mistrust and the uncertainty about Morpheus choosing THIS murder-happy failure for recreation. That reformed model spends most of his time bantering with Matthew, acting creepy, tracking down Daniel, and reacting to the destruction of the Dreaming, so there's not much to go on regarding what kind of person he is vis a vis queerness, and while I'll admit I've read about none of the Dreaming, Gaiman's dismissiveness towards developments in that title make me inclined to believe he probably wouldn't reference it unless directly prompted. Opportunities to dig into the Corinthian as a queer actor in the pages of Sandman itself are low - that obviously changes with the Netflix series expanding his role and complicating his person, but that's a long long way away from these 1999 interviews.

So it's like, I get the defensiveness that's arisen over the quote, but the take-aways didn't sit right with me, and putting it under close examination with the contents and context of the book as written, I think it's fair to say the Corinthian of the page is only really homosexual insofar as eating eyes is what he does to enact power and control over the helpless in place of sex, and he prefers the eyes of men to those of anyone else. If I'm frank, the lack of direct quotation or cross-examination in the posts concerning that passage look a tiny bit like a game of telephone, which I've fallen victim to myself in other fandoms in the past.

Course, you're under no obligation to agree with my interpretations here, and it's entirely possible I'm dead wrong (after all, with regards to the other Companion topic, I didn't make much of the claim about the fire motif other than "hm, yeah, so it is there, nifty" until you and others pointed it out as a potential issue and got me thinking deeper, so I'm curious to know what you think!

This is a great expansion/contextualization of the quote about The Corinthian!

Honestly you said it better than I could, but it really does fall under "the 90s were a different time." I did figure that, given the time period, saying The Corinthian was straight-up gay wouldn't have gone over quite as smoothly as it would today, so Neil might've also been hedging a bit with the whole "he desires men... to literally eat" thing. Plus, as you note, the implications of linking predation with queerness is also screaming "definitely a different time."

I find it funny that fans were complaining about the change of him being canonically pansexual for the show, when the canon they were coming from was...this highly metaphorical and dated representation.

tagging @violetoftheendless since I know you like Cori

[butwhatifidothis]

So. Took a look into that fic @nilsh13 is going through the comments of. Dunno if I’ll actually go through the entire thing - 300k words is certainly a lot of words to read through, especially with it still updating, but I’ve read through/am reading through longer ones - but I jumped to the latest chapter to get a feel for where the fic’s at now.

I’m not halfway through the chapter and I have Words To Say lmao, under the cut

This is going to be as serious a critique about the sections I’ve selected as possible - I want to be clear why I think what is being written is not of high quality, pointing out specifically what I have wrong with it. 

Here are some snippets of the fic (boldened), and following those snippets are my thoughts on them:

“My actions have caused immense turmoil, pitting friend against friend, mother against daughter, and brother against sister*,” muttered Edelgard, desperately trying to drive any hint of self-pity (emphasis mine) from her voice. “My best friend has been disowned by her family, Hubert and Ferdinand’s fathers are dead or imprisoned, and the woman I love is now deemed a heretic by the Church that once offered her shelter. The weight of my decisions seems to pull down all who are caught in the shadow of the Imperial crown.” The Flame Emperor gave Professor Hanneman a wan smile. “Whatever imagined slights you believe you have committed against me, they pale in comparison to the carnage my own words and deeds have unleashed.” 

""I made my choice, the only choice I could make, and dragged this continent down to hell with me. It makes me a poor ruler, and an even baser person, but that was the path I knew I must take."" 

“"It is funny you use the word ‘choice’, Miss Edelgard. When I resigned my title to study at Garreg Mach, I lost marriage prospects, became penniless outside of a small stipend…I even renounced the opportunity to have a family.” Hanneman smiled, his whole body suffused with melancholy. “Really, how could I dare to dream of bringing a daughter into a world this senseless and cruel, knowing that someday, she too, could be hurt in such a way? I…I would not survive it.” The man’s body shook. “I sacrificed those things, things I desperately wanted, because the chance to allow my sister to rest in peace was more important. And I would make that choice again, despite all that it has cost me. You are much the same.”"

"“But your sacrifices were your own,” protested the Emperor of Adrestia. “Thousands bleed for the choices that I have made, and sacrifice themselves for the cause that I have placed before them. There is a profound difference-“"

"“We are both wise enough to know a painful truth,” said the scholar with a melancholy smile. “No matter how grave the sins, no matter how many innocents suffer…there will be countless individuals who will defend the law not because it is just, or righteous, but because it is the law. They will permit a hundred Abysses, and a thousand women to be raped, and a million dead children, as long as such actions do not disturb their order.” He placed a hand on Edelgard’s shoulder. “To stand against such moral rot, knowing that the world will despise and vilify you for it, is the truest sign of not only a just ruler, but a good woman.”"

"The academic’s words blazed with the passion of both a scholar and a man who had watched his world crumble to ash. A man who had been forced to live in the remnants of a life forever altered by the cruelty of both society and of humanity. And yet he had fought, the only way he could, to make the world better. It gave the Flame Emperor new resolve."

"“I…” He turned and looked away. “I believe in you, Miss Edelgard. When I see you, and your determination, your spirit, your bravery in choosing not what is easy, but what is right…it reminds me of her.” Fingers clenched around his locket. “I will fight for you, in the way I should have fought for my sister, long ago. My strength is meagre, and my courage more meagre still. However, all of it is yours.”" 

The author writes Edelgard as one trying to give pity onto herself for her actions, despite how negatively they affect her, due to the immense ramifications those actions have had on those both around her and those under her care. This is the appropriate response to someone who has done as morally dubious an action as starting and spearheading a war that has led to the deaths and suffering of countless innocent people, some of whom were undoubtedly already going through immense suffering without war compounding itself onto their already existing pain. She - rightfully - points as, as a negative towards herself, that she has forced thousands of people to sacrifice their lives, livelihoods, friends, family, homes, etc. in order to continue with her war. Edelgard's canonical self-justification - that she had no other choice to do this - is properly utilized, and further characterization is given to her when she herself recognizes that performing such horrendous actions on the people under her care makes her a poor ruler and terrible person. This is, in truth, a decent set-up for her to go onto a possible path of redemption or self-realization.

However, that progress is forcibly stopped and reverted by Hanneman justifying her actions and recontextualizing them in a morally good light. In fact, the entire story does this, as characters act wildly out of character in order for Edelgard to be seen as good in comparison to them. Focusing on the quoted lines, however, Hanneman relating him giving up nobility and going into momentary poverty - whether true to canon or not - to Edelgard's war actively paints her actions as something that she had a right to be making, which she does not, as they force others to make sacrifices for her cause. When she herself rightfully points this discrepancy out, Hanneman excuses her actions by pointing to another - supposed - source of turmoil and essentially saying "You are more right than x, therefore your y actions are not only better, but objectively good, and make you a good person." He says nothing of the inherent injustice of taking away the choice of the people to live as they want and fight for who they want as well as deliberately taking away any semblance of safety from them, and makes objective statements about Edelgard's moral righteousness despite her taking actions that would, by definition, make her moral righteousness a subjective matter at minimum.

Hanneman is projecting the image of his sister and his own personal sense of justice onto Edelgard, and thus sees her as just as much a victim of the war and society as everyone else. Edelgard is a young woman who has gone through trauma due to Crests, as was his sister, and he himself (in this story, though not within the quoted lines) wanted to beat the man who abused his sister to death, and so he sees Edelgard using violence as a means to achieve justice as not only not questionable, but morally good and brave, as he felt he was not brave enough to enact "justice" onto the man that caused his sister's death. Instead of this being settled, focused on, or even mentioned, despite its obvious nature due to deliberate connections Hanneman himself makes, it is used as a means to showcase that Hanneman is a, for lack of a better term, "expert" on what he is saying when speaking to Edelgard. He knows what it's like to want to force change, he has by-proxy experienced the apparent injustice of the Church - not human society, not his family's decision to allow his sister to be married off, not the man who caused her death's decision to discard her, but strictly the Church and only the Church - and so he can "rightfully" justify and excuse Edelgard's morally questionable actions and paint them in a solely positive light, with no nuance or gray whatsoever.

Edelgard, in the first quote, attempts to say her actions without a tone of self-pity, and yet the narrative itself pities Edelgard. She should be allowed to feel bad about her actions - not because they are causing unfathomable suffering on people who were underserving, but because they’re just hard decisions that she was good and brave to make and maybe she can feel a little bad for herself for making them. She shouldn't feel responsible for choosing to start the war - in fact, did she really have a choice, or did everyone else in society force her to? She shouldn't question whether she's a good person or not, because she simply is - no debate, no question. She is - “justly” - standing up against "moral rot"; that she does so with even more moral rot is irrelevant, because, according to the story, it is not as rotten as that she's up against, therefore it is no longer rotten in the first place. War has been completely justified, as it is now not the last resort of desperation that could only ever be morally grey at its absolute best, but an objectively morally white decision of an objectively morally white person who is facing an objectively morally black opponent.

The actions of other characters attempt to paint Edelgard as someone closer to the former, but I will - maybe - eventually go over how those characters are extremely mischaracterized in order to prop Edelgard as their moral superior. 

[camslightstories]

All of you

Lena Luthor x Fem. Reader

Request - Anonymous

Warnings: Angst, homophobic comments, self hatred, negative comments and thoughts. 

Notes: Hey Guys! How are you guys doing? So First of all I'm sorry for taking so much time to write and I hope you guys are doing great! My messages and asks box are always open. I think this request has been the easiest but scariest to write and I hope you would like it! It’s a little overwhelming I know but I'm here if you need a friend.

I’m always open to hear about suggestions, comments, theories and more. Right now until I get caught up with my request I'm not accepting more but when I finished all of them, I will! Hope you guys enjoy have a great day!

Taglist: @captain-josslett​ @aznblossom​ @multi-images

National City had become your home after you and your family immigrated to the US from Y/H/C. The streets that once looked mysterious now were more than familiar. The library which took your time most of the afternoons. The park that was less than a mile away from your house where you went to find calmness when you could. The small cafe restaurant right around the park where you and your family went to celebrate sometimes when your parents could afford it. The small music store in which you spent your summers working and studying during your high school years. Everything was familiar, was safe and it didn't change with time. 

You appreciated your family, you loved them and you couldn't be more grateful for them but there were times that you wish you understood them. Every day your parents had been putting pressure on your shoulders that sometimes was too hard to manage, there were comments of how you needed to look, how you needed to be, what you needed to be, and more. You kept quiet as both of your parents recited every day what was wrong with you and what needed to change.

With the passing of the years you learned to keep quiet and just go with whatever they were saying, it was easier. Easier to explain to them why you wouldn't want things, or why you would feel a certain way. And with two parents constantly reminding you how you need it to be to fit in society, you learned to keep quiet. 

There were contradicting things, and comments that made you wonder about your life with them. Things like ‘We came here for you, we had a built life in our country but we wanted you to be better, small jokes about the LGBT community jokes about people with different weight and more. They would comment on what you were wearing, what you had done with your hair, why you wouldn't put makeup on, why you wouldn't hang out like the other kids, everything had always a small comment and you learned to live with it. 

Sometimes you wished you would say something, as you cried in your bedroom until you couldn't more. You looked at the mirror and saw all of those imperfections that they had remarked, and you hated it. You hated the fact that you stood in front of a mirror and every single time there was a self-hatred coming from you.

You hated that you didn't look like they wanted as much as you tried. You hated that you weren't comfortable with everything you did even though they said that it was going to make you feel sure of yourself. You hated the fact that you couldn't go an hour, feeling like the best you could without having a comment on how you looked. How it wasn't appropriate for society, how you looked like a shadow, a scared child, someone who doesn't take care of themselves, how you just looked unpleasant even if you tried your best. 

The black combat boots you had been longing for so long had finally found a way in your feet, after months of doubts and saving you had finally got them. You moved your feet as you sat in the car on the way to the restaurant with your family since a friend of your parents was in town. 

A smile on your face as you check your outfit, a grey crew neck knitted with black mom jeans, and your small cross-body purse on your right shoulder. Without noticing you guys had arrived at the restaurant. You got out of the car, like the moon and the stars brighten the night, looking up smiling, you registered that it was the first night out your family had made a comment about how you look, and with victory, you started to walk to the sidewalk beside your family. 

Your father looked up from his phone and eyed you from head to tone in a questionable glance, before sighing as he rubbed his temples. “Y/N, you look like a homeless person. Couldn't you at least find something good to wear in that closet of yours? We are dining with the O’mells, couldn't you at least look presentable ”

“Yeah, little sis looks like princess Fiona. All ugly” Your older brother joked as he laughed loudly, hitting you in the shoulder. Your bit the inside of your mouth as the insecurities started to come into your thoughts. Rubbing your shoulder carefully because of the impact.

Your younger brother interrupted, before both of the guys started to laugh. You looked down at your shoes, as you felt a tear ran through your cheek quickly cleaning it as you heard your father clearing his throat. “Don't get me started on the horrendous shoes, what are you a lesbian?”

“You have five minutes to look presentable, put on makeup so you don't look like a zombie, and next time you are not entering with us if you don't look like the lady you should be.” He said before opening the door of the restaurant as your mother gave you the keys to the car.

“Yes sir, I will. I’m sorry, so sorry” You responded immediately only to be ignored by them. You breathed in and out as you felt the need to let the tears fall but keep quiet looking at the car window as your reflection came across it. 

Your head was so involved in your insecurities that you see the young black-haired woman that had been standing a few meters from you watching the scene unsolved.

Lena stood there captivated by you the moment you had gotten out of the car, completely forgetting the fact that she had called over a taxi. Clenching her jaw as she saw the way your family had basically shamed you. She waited until they had left and walked to where you stood in front of the car window. 

Your Y/E/C eyes staring back at yourself lost in your head. Your hands held the car keys strongly, as a way to control your insecurities. You bit your lip as your eyes raked over your face, tears invading your eyes.

She slowly approached you before touching your shoulder softly. You flinched as she did, and turned around immediately with a concerned expression on your face. Your eyes looked down apologizing only for two green eyes to be looking right at you. 

Her black hair falling on her shoulder, a green tucked-in shirt, and a concerned expression hidden behind the charming smile of the woman. Immediately speaking as she kept eye contact. “Hi, I’m Lena”

“I’m Y/N, Y/N Y/L/N” You responded introverted after a second with fidgeting hands.

“Lovely name, for a charming person” She stated flirtatiously with a smile. You looked at the green-eyed woman confused, the older woman tilted her head as you immediately looked behind you curiously because of her comment. 

Noticing Lena’s expression you pointed at yourself, and the woman seemed to understand perfectly, nodding rapidly with a smile on her face before speaking. “You are quite lovely, and I would love to offer you dinner if you want tomorrow?”

“I-” You started as your insecurities flowed in. You were looking at the black-haired woman apologetically, only to stop as you looked over to the window to see your family on one of the tables smiling and laughing with the O’mells. 

Looking away from them, you looked down and back up. Glancing at her before finishing talking as fast as you could, letting out a sigh which converted into a small smile when the green-eyed woman laughed as she put her hand out, asking for your phone. “Yeah, I would love to”

“Okay then. Here is my number darling. See you tomorrow at 7 here then.” She stated rapidly as her hand lingered on your phone, while you annotated your number on her phone. 

A taxi stopped in front of the restaurant making the black-haired look away from you as she sighed. Lena walked closer leaving a small kiss on the palm of your hand before walking away. A redness crept on your cheeks as she did, making you look at the ground. 

---

Ten months, ten great months. With hidden moments that made your heart flutter every time. Kisses that grounded you, comments that made you blush furiously, cuddles after hard days, dates that you wished to be never-ending, and moments that you cherish every second of it. Your insecurities and fears were forgotten by the comments Lena made, only coming out on small moments that were inevitable, moments when you felt the self-hatred coming back, moments where you loved everything except yourself. 

The soft smell of plumerias invaded your nose as you sat in the university library, books surrounding your table as you studied with handwriting on the notebook and the other rubbing your temple while reading through the book in front of you. 

You kept studying until a soft hand touched your waist softly, immediately you moved away looking at the person weirdly ready to argue with the person only to find your girlfriend in her business attire. The bouquet was full of plumerias on one of her hands and a large bag of food on the other hand with a charming smile on her face as she sat next to you.

Your face lightened up speaking and immediately blushed when she reached for your cheek leaving a small peak on it, trying to remove the evident red mark on your cheek she rubbed it softly with her hands. “Babe! What are you doing here?”

“Hello, love. I wanted to see you, plus I knew you weren’t gonna eat anything because of your research project and I miss you” She responded immediately smiling widely.  

You tilted your head before shaking your head carefully looking at her before looking down to the carpet floor as you responded. “I miss you too, you didn’t have to come all the way here. You are a busy woman Lee, I’m not supposed to waste your time-”

“Darling, don't ever doubt that you are wasting my time. To me it's the best and most important part of my day is when I'm with you” She interrupted bringing your face up with her finger, closing the distance between the two of you immediately with a short breathtaking kiss. With your cheeks burning red, the two of you rested your foreheads with each other as she spoke softly looking at you as if you were the most precious thing on the planet, and with that glint in her eyes, she made you believe it. 

---

The different laughs are heard on the balcony as the rest of Lena’s friends and somewhat your friends sat on the living room floor. Screaming, laughing, eating, and competing in another game night. You stand on the balcony with a wine cup and your phone answering the text your dad had sent you. Your dry and immediate response was already answered with a goodbye. Your fingers hovering over the keyboard as you hesitated and typed the wanted message only to remove it immediately as you took every last drop of the wine on your glass. 

Staring at the lighted city, you wondered. You wondered if you were finally ready, you wondered if the feeling of happiness and butterflies in your chest would ever become pain again, you wondered if what your family had said over the years was true, you wondered if Lena would ever get tired of you, if she would wake up one day and realize the butterflies she once had for you were now gone, you wondered until you felt the familiar presence of your girlfriend hugging you from behind. 

She murmured into your neck, as she rested her chin on your shoulder. Your scented shampoo and fragrance filling her nose makes her leave small kisses on your cheek while speaking “Are you okay?”

“I want to tell my parents, Lee” You immediately admitted turning around meeting the sight of your girlfriend. Her hair was down with small waves on the end, her oversized button-up shirt you usually wore in her apartment with rolled sleeves and some of the bottoms completely open revealing some of her freckles on her cleavage.

A sincere look of confusion, worries, and happiness on her face. Grabbing both of your hands delicately she spoke when you kept silent and started to fidget with your fingers. Rubbing the palm of your hand softly as she spoke. “Y/N, love, are you sure? Whatever you want to do, whenever, and however. I'm always going to be by your side”

When the words came out of her mouth, she didn't hesitate to bring you into a warm embrace, holding you close by the waist as you rested your head on her shoulder. The two of you swaying slowly at the sound of the music Kara had put on the TV while you spoke softly looking up to kiss her only to be interrupted by a yelling voice. “Thank you-” 

“You took my potsticker! Lena, Alex took my potsticker!” Kara yelled, glaring at Alex. Alex kept her challenging stance glaring at her sister, Sam, and Lucy choking down the laugh as the Danvers Sisters kept up. 

“You ate mine! Y/N come and defend my honor, your best friend's honor” Alex shouted desperately, making you laugh as you looked at Lena, seeing her chuckled before walking inside separating the two when she took the other box of potstickers out of the refrigerator, both of them running to the kitchen to either side of the black-haired woman.

You laughed as you saw Lena scold your best friend and her best friend, making them walk back to the sofa giving the potstickers to Sam and Lucy and leaving some for you and her. The Danvers duo sitting on the floor as they started to shuffle the cards quietly, pouting making everyone else laughed with you. 

---

The silence that overwhelmed the car made your heart rate somewhat faster, thoughts, possibilities, doubts, and insecurities running through your head. As your now white knuckles were gripping the steering wheel. The sunlight of the afternoon made the pressure increase, the smell of the variety of pastries on the back of your girlfriend's car

Lena watched you worried as you sat quietly. It had been half an hour since you guys had arrived and there wasn't any movement from you, she wouldn't even know if you were breathing if your chest wouldn't move when you did. Worried now as she feared you hurting yourself, mentally. She decided to speak up softly putting her hands on top of yours which immediately softened in her hands. “Y/N/N, if you don’t-”

“I do, I'm ready” You pleaded while looking over at her, meeting her careful glance.

She responded, giving a small kiss on the cheek as you grabbed the pastries. Making you nod slowly as you got out of the car. “Okay, love. I'm right here by your side”

As you knocked on the door, the nerves that were once quiet now were rigging in your ears loudly. Your little brother opened the door and went to say something only to stop when his gaze fell on Lena, immediately accommodating his posture before opening the door completely with a smile on his face, to which Lena responded with another smile.

“Hey Jo, it's everyone here?” You asked for his attention only making him scoff, you shifted uncomfortably in your feet. A small voice in your head repeating the name again and again like a song as you stepped to the side.

He answered before extending his hand to your girlfriend. Lena looked at him weirdly, controlling her feelings when the 16-year-old kid called you that but kept the fake smile for your sake. “Yeah, but aren't you gonna present your charming friend? Thought you were better than that Fiona”

“I’m Joseph, you can call me anytime” He flirted with the green-eyed woman only to be ignored completely. 

She claimed following your glance at the pictures on the wall. Various family photos on them and also photos of your brothers with awards and trophies and only a few of them of you. “Lena”

“Y/N is here and she brought company!” Your older brother yelled as you stood in the middle of the living room, Lena by your side. 

Lena looked around as the two of you stood waiting for your parents, the house was completely clean, without a spot of dust in any place. Pillows, blankets, photos, books, and everything was perfectly placed, at first it seemed comfortable, cozy, and homey until she realized the fact that it looked too perfect. To perfect to be happy, to perfect to be comfortable, to perfect to make mistakes, to perfect to be yourself.

Your older brother was sitting on one of the edges of the couch with his phone in hand, glancing at Lena flirtatiously as she stood by your side. Your younger brother was leaning against the door frame texting when your parents came out of the kitchen. 

They looked at you curiously before speaking. Your Dad immediately commented on what you were wearing before extending his hand to take Lena’s. You gulped down when Lena looked at you when you kept quiet only responding as respectfully as she could.  “Couldn’t you at least look presentable?... Welcome to our home, I’m Y/F/N”

“Lena, Lena Luthor” She responded respectfully, shaking his hand and giving your mother a small smile. 

Your older brother, Nick, questioned as he looked at you up and down, rolling his eyes right before glancing at Lena flirting “And how in the world did Scar score to be Lena Luthor’s friend?

Lena looked at you shocked when you kept quiet and avoided her glance. She was about to counter back a response only to be stopped by the sound of your voice.

Clear worry and fear in it. You fidget with your hands after you set the box of pastries aside hearing your mom commenting “Yeah, darling put those there before you look like all of those people on the TV, horrendous” 

Lena clenched her fist and kept her head high, her expression slowly with each comment changing into her CEO character. Tensed muscles, head high, fake plastered smiles, and the confidence like she had the whole world in her hands. Even though her whole world was standing less than a foot away from her.

“I wanted to tell you guys something,” You said, taking a step towards them. All of your family watching curiously.

“I’m Y/S/T and she is my girlfriend, Lena” you continued as Lena took your hand for support. Your breathing had gotten quicker and the tears of fear in your eyes were evident, with a trembling lip as you spoke.

“That’s a good joke” Your younger brother responded letting out a small laugh while the rest of your family kept silent looking between you and your girlfriend. 

“Just because you decided to look unpleasant all the time, making no guy ever attracted to you so you know decided to be with a woman” Your father was the first one to get out of the trance scoffing in annoyance and anger. 

Your mother gasped yelling, with anger in her voice. “It’s a sin, Y/N!”

“It's a sin, Y/N. We are Christians just because you're immature and hideous and nobody is attracted to you, means you are going to break the rules, young lady” Your father claimed getting closer to you with a demanding voice, his finger pointing at you threat making you take a step back.

You pleaded to take a shaky step closer to him, only to immediately flinch as he screamed angrily. “Dad, plea-”

“NO! Absolutely no! We are not going to accept your idiotic tactics, just because you can't find someone to love you! Newsflash Y/N, like that you won't ever!” He screamed angrily, taking a step closer, making Lena step in with her CEO stand in front of you grabbing your family’s attention. 

Tears came slowly out of our eyes as you looked down, biting your lip to keep the soft whimpers and sobs that were coming out. Your dad eyed the black-haired woman up and down before stepping back letting out a sarcastic laugh, making your girlfriend raise her eyebrow in question to him.

“And her! Do you really believe someone will love you? And will be attracted to you? A woman you know how complicated women are with their taste. You need to get the thought in your head that if you don't change. YOU WON'T EVER FIND LOVE!” He shouted. 

“You have no reason nor sentiment to treat her like that!” Lena claimed as she stepped in front of your father. Clenched fits with white knuckles, a threatening stand, and an intense glare with a clenched jaw containing her anger.

You took a step forward putting a hand in her bicep making her turn around immediately, recognizing the soft touch of your hand. You spoke softly only to be interrupted by your mother’s yelling. “Lee, please. It doesn't matter-”

“Out of my house! NOW! And never ever come back until you change from being an abomination” She yelled as she slapped you, making you gasp before walking out of the door with tears coming down your eyes. 

Lena glanced at them finding pain, hatred, insecurities, and more. The soft makeup you had on your face had become black spots on your face. Your Y/E/C colored eyes were hidden behind the redness. A red evident mark on your face where your mother’s hand had made contact with your skin. Every single detail made her angrier and angrier by second, losing control at the side of you hurting. 

“She is perfect just the way she is, a completely passionate, sweet, kind, emphatic, wonderful, selfless person. And she is so much more of what you guys told her, she is perfect” Lena snapped as she felt the anger take over.

How dare they treat you like that? How dare they tell you those things? How could you stand to all of that? How dared they thought and said things like that of you? How couldn't they see the amazing human you were?

“This is my house-” Your father started as he looked at her angrier with a challenging look on his face in which your girlfriend returned.

She said, taking a step back, raging herself soothing her black dress. “It may be your house but first I will have to be dead for you or anyone else to treat the person who is my whole world like that” 

“You know, you guys may think she is a complete mistake, abomination, and more but she is perfect, she is the person I fall in love with every single minute more and more. You guys are the ones losing the greatest thing in your life, I feel sorry for you but the truth is you don't deserve, hell I don't even deserve her. Have a great day and I think it's a little over the top but if any of you tries to reach Y/N just to be like that then I can sure I will make your life a living hell” She finished letting out a smile of satisfaction when all of them clenched their jaws and kept quiet before walking out. Leaving your family madly quiet in the living room.

Your knees were high and pressed into your chest as the furiously streams of tears came down. Somehow the smell of Lena in the car calmed you, the sweet smell of mint and lavender invaded your nose. The only sound you could hear was your heavy breathing. The passenger leather seat felt uncomfortable, the salted flavor of your tears on your lips as you cried, everything felt wrong as the thoughts and insecurities run through your head.

Everything they said was true.

You are an abomination, nothing and no one will love you.

So full of imperfections, so full of horrible things, full of-

“Love? I need you to breathe with me. In and out, darling please” You heard her pleaded as she grabbed your hand, noticing the way everything felt too close, too overwhelming, too bad. 

Lena kept stroking your back as she kept your hand close to her chest making you feel the way her chest rises and falls trying to make you follow it. Your eyes kept staring at her hand with yours as your sobs started to calm down, and everything began to zoom out. In a blinking moment, you stumbled into your girlfriend's arms, holding her tight, hiding in her chest making Lena hold you as close as she could trying to keep her own tears out when she saw how hurt you were. With her reassuring and words, the minutes passed slower than usual.

“I’m sorry” You murmured repeatedly into her neck, as she started to stroke your hair. When tears began to fall again from your eyes. 

She didn't wait for another second to bring your face to rest on her forehead, both of you sharing an Eskimo kiss. The closest, the comfort of it brought you happiness and butterflies in your stomach which were abruptly kicked out when the thought of what your family said came back to you.

You pulled away meeting green tearful eyes, which made your heartbreak more. The voice in your head telling you it was all your fault, that she wouldn't want you anymore or that she ever wanted you because your family had opened her eyes to what you truly were. With a shaky and broken voice, you commented fearfully as you glanced back to her eyes and your trembling hands. Scared of what was going to happen next, scared of everything as you tried to hold on to the happiness she had made but you knew the moment, Lena would say the words. You will break in million pieces, beyond repair and everything would feel worse than it was before because you had met your sun and without it, the night would remain constantly reminding you of her  “It’s okay if you don’t want me anymore, I know what they said it's true-”

“Y/N, what they said wasn't true. You are far away from what they said you are perfect and wonderful and I don't know how they can see you like that because all I can see is my whole world, the love of my life, my person” She interrupted cleaning your tears with her thumbs as she grabbed your face by the cheeks bringing you closer to her slowly. 

Holding you like if you were glass, afraid of breaking it, afraid of losing it or damaging it because to her you were the best thing in her life and she wasn't going to let you go. It was the moment your eyes met, when you saw, heard, and felt everything. There was an understanding of what the two of you meant, all the love, all the happiness, and the pain, everything was there standing freely in silence. 

In a silence that made you believe it, she made you believe every word, every action, and the love and comfort which radiated out of her expression made you forget everything. The comforting and loving silence was more than enough to let everything behind, to dream of the desired future you both wanted. It was perfect, you wouldn't change a thing of what you were feeling or what had happened because everything led to that moment, the moment you knew you were going to be okay, the moment you realize that for the first time in your life you felt like enough, the first moment in your life you called something that was part of you perfect. The happiest moment of your life for now.

[xseaxwitchxkpop]

Too Much Overthinking

A/N: This fic is pretty reflective of my own thoughts and pretty self-indulgent. While I kinda wanted to keep this to myself, I felt that there’s other people that could benefit from the comfort of the fic that I tried to go for. Self-love, or at very least self-acceptance, is such a hard journey and sometimes our heads get the better of us. The reader is not necessarily female, so I used no female pronouns, but the reader is framed as femme-presenting, so keep that in mind when reading. So many of fics like these end in sex and it irks me because us fat people are not fetishes, we are people, and deserve to be comforted as such, so I decided to write what I want lol. Also I chose Jongho because he comes off as very emotionally mature and very emotionally intelligent (ignore the fact that he was one of two members that caught my attention and made me stan Ateez lol).

Genre: Comfort

Reader Type: femme!reader, plussize!reader

CW: very negative thoughts, body image issues, a little emotional lol

Requested: NO

Group: ATEEZ -- Jongho

Word Count: 1,491

The boys stayed late at the studio, the night steadily getting darker as you stare out the window and watch the moon climb into the sky and shine. The day feels over already and Jongho once again misses the dinner you made him earlier, complete with missing the cute lunchbox cake you got to celebrate your two year anniversary.

Your heart sinks and your mouth turns into a frown -- you never considered yourself clingy or codependent, but there are times when perhaps you would like him to think about you a little more or that you wanted to stick to his side and never let go. 

But him missing this special dinner tonight triggered your negative thoughts and began a less-than-savory night for you; no, you don’t blame him for your thoughts because he didn’t force you to think the things you do, but the current situation certainly doesn’t help.

The soft blankets welcome you with arms of warmth and the mountain of pillows cradle your head as you stare at the ceiling with horrid thoughts running through your heads. You’re too fat, anyway, didn’t need the amount of carbs in the noodles. Your stomach sticks out and sweeps the edge of the counter in a way it shouldn’t, time to lose some! You’re nothing but a good fuck for him, he’s definitely trying to get another woman that’s thinner...they’ve been using a lot of female backup dancers lately…

You whip yourself around in your blankets, trying to squash the thoughts or at least put a temporary stop to them. 

You’re not sure how much time has passed, but you hear the door to your apartment opening and closing, accompanied by shuffling that indicates Jongho came by and took off his jacket, shoes, and made his way to the bedroom. 

You feel the bed dip down behind you and a solid chest snuggle against your back; his arm threw itself around your body and squished you against him, squishing your stomach in the process and making you feel extremely uncomfortable. His breath lingered on the back of your neck as you heard him whisper that he’s sorry for missing the dinner and that he’d make it up to you tomorrow.

You certainly didn’t want him to know you’re awake, but your mouth moves faster than your brain: “Are you actually?”

His breathing hitches, not realizing that you are still awake. The grip around your midsection loosened and you take the opportunity to lift his arm off of you and scoot away from him. He props himself up on his elbow and peers at the back of your head -- you can’t see the hurt and confusion in his eyes, but you can at least feel the searing gaze aimed at the back of your head.

“What do you mean by that?” he asks, wanting to reach out a hand and rub your arm, but forcing himself to stop. He knows that he fucked up by missing the anniversary celebration, but the synergy of the group was radically off kilter today and it took longer than it should have for all of them to perfect the choreography and he was going to explain tomorrow. But he can’t figure out why this bothered you so much -- you were always understanding and that’s one of the reasons you had his heart.

All you can do is sigh, not wanting to burden him with your negative thoughts, but your tear ducts have other ideas and so thus did your brain.

“What I mean is why stay so late? And without so much as a text or phone call?” you mumble.

“Hmm?” he says, not quite hearing you.

You sit up and turn yourself to face him, barely holding back tears. “Do you not love me any more? Am I not attractive to you any more? Am I just a good fuck for you at this point?”

Jongho’s face fell (not that you can see it in the darkness of the room) and he reaches out to your vague silhouette, wanting to caress your face. “Y/N --”

“No!” you shout at him, hugging yourself and scooting yourself further from him, the hard surface of the wall hitting your back.

“There’s gonna be a day where you wake up and realize that you don’t love me any more, realize that my fat stomach is not cute or good for gripping but repulsive, that my back rolls aren’t sexy but gross, that you’re just lying to yourself and lying to me! You don’t find me sexy, you don’t find my body attractive, and you’ll wake up and realize that and leave me! There’s so many better people out there, yeah, with thinner bodies, with no protruding stomach, with slim arms and a defined jawline, no fat poking out in their bras, with legs that don’t rub together and chaff and can fit beautifully into short skirts…one day, you’re gonna wake up and look at me the way I look at myself.”

Tears leave streaks down your face as you ramble. You tighten the blankets around you in an effort to hide yourself. And Jongho, your boyfriend of two years who has done nothing but make you feel loved, that shows you off in public and is proud to have you for a S/O, feels his heart drop so low he doesn’t know if it is in his body any more. His eyes also sting with tears hearing how you view yourself and he’s at a loss for what to say; he knows that you don’t think highly of yourself, but to hear it in its entirety, with you in tears and hearing, unfiltered, what goes on in your head hurts him. He remembers the intense struggle that Seonghwa had with his own image and how he still slips into that mindset sometimes, but you’re not Seonghwa and can’t be reassured the same way.

Jongho crawled his way to you and cupped your face, forcing you to look him in the eyes as much as possible. At a loss for what else to do, he places his lips gently on yours and just stays there; he feels the wet tracks from your eyes to your chin and the ragged breaths through your nose from your crying.

He eventually pulls away but stays close to your face, rubbing his thumb across your cheekbone. “Why are you thinking these things, hm? Was it because I stayed late? I really am sorry about that,” he whispers into the space between you two.

“I...I don’t know...I just...you’re using more female backup dancers...and you missed my...missed my dinner.”

“What do female backup dancers have to do with anything? Do you think any of them can take me from you?”

You look up at him as he hits the nail on the head, pathetically sniffling in an attempt to not only regulate breathing but also not to open the floodgates again.

“Oh, sweetheart, nothing like that will happen,” he says, pulling you into a tight hug, fighting you, fighting him because the last thing that he wants is for you to think he’s gonna leave you high and dry. 

You sink into him, trying even harder to not cry and trying not to think about how you look when crying, trying to ignore the thoughts that tell you that you being an ugly crier is part of the reason that you are horrendously unattractive.

“But what if it does? They’re fit, they’re healthy, they’re attractive…” you start, muttering into his shoulder.

“Who said that?” he counters with lightning speed, not letting you finish the statement. “You? You can’t trust your opinion of yourself in the mirror, how are you to judge what I do and don’t find attractive? You say they’re attractive to me because you don’t find yourself attractive enough to be with me, which your heart will tell you is not true.”

You can’t hold anything in any more and let yourself cry, and not just a small one. You soak his shirt with tears, you claw your way onto his lap and hold him in a death-grip, and you cried, a cathartic one that poured at your emotions into this one cry.

Jongho can’t do anything but hold you with a heavy heart; hearing you cry your heart out hurt him to a degree and he had to hold back his own tears threatening to spill. 

He leans back against the mountain of pillows, pulling you with him, and rubbing your back and squeezing your shoulder. You cry yourself to sleep, eventually becoming dead weight on your boyfriend’s chest, which he wholeheartedly embraced. He slowly falls asleep after you, promising himself that, despite the good communication you two had, he’d try to be more mindful of how much you feel loved and ensure that he doesn’t leave doubt in the future for his love for you.

[everybody-talks]

The Interrogation

Date: March 21st, 1982

Location: The House of Bones, West Wing

Starter: self-para

It was cold here. That was Lucinda’s first thought when Lily had brought her in. She’d gone into a room without her, leaving her outside in the spacious hall. Lily had explained to her who this group was, what they do, and at some point, Lucinda had found herself accepting an offer to come talk to them. No one else was offering to right the wrong that had been done to her uncle. What else was there to do? So, now, here she was, staring at a closed door, alone, in an unfamiliar place.

She hated to admit it, but she felt anxious without Lily there. She had become a familiar face, and they’d had each other’s back as they battled through their previous location. Wherever that had been. When she was there, she’d thought that place was ostentatious. But, this new place might as well have been a castle! She was staring around her in awe, when the door before her suddenly swung open, an unfamiliar voice telling her to enter.

 Inside, there were six chairs turned to face one solitary armchair. In each of the chairs sat a person she’d never seen before. To her dismay, Lily was not among them. She’d left her alone with... whoever these people were.

Something about the way they sat indicated authority, so Lucinda did as she was told. She walked in slowly and took a better look at the wix staring at her expectantly.

There was a blonde witch with what Lucinda could only describe as a “regal air” sitting closest to her. Although her face was harsh, there was something deep in her eyes, maybe a sliver of softness, as she watched her enter. There was something elegant about her, with an aura of steeliness that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Next to her sat the the other end of the spectrum. While the blonde witch sat with enviable composition, the witch next to her had sprawled herself out upon her seat and didn’t even appear to be looking at her. As Lucinda got closer, she noticed the horrifying state of this woman’s hair. The pink was just... horrendous, and her stature was not doing her any favors. But, her eyes suddenly flicked up at Lucinda, and all thoughts of studying her vanished. There wasn’t a sliver of softness to be found there.

Beside her sat a wizard that looked at her as though she was a not so interesting textbook. His face was near unreadable, and his stature was perfect to the point of being unnerving. When she made eye contact with him, he didn’t move a muscle. So, Lucinda averted her eyes and moved down the line.

The next wizard was most certainly the leader. She had no way of knowing this, but there could be no doubt. His aura matched the blonde woman’s, though his expression was just slightly more open. He nodded at her slightly as she entered. Perhaps he was the one that had told her to come in.

The next to last wizard looked as though she was a guest he’d invited but never met before. He was relaxed slightly into his chair, though his expression was a bit blank. His eyes seemed to absorb her every move when she walked in, so she made no attempt at eye contact with him.

And, finally, the last wizard had certainly seen better days. He was also sat back in his chair, but there was an edge there, an energy that read as nervous, but was most likely something else. Almost hyperactive. He seemed to twitch ever so slightly, as though he couldn’t bear to sit still. He was eager for this to start. Or, perhaps, for this to be over with.

Once she’d finally settled into her chair, the wix before her exchanged glances, as though to decide who would speak first. After a few glances, the blonde witch turned to fully face Lucinda. Without preamble, she spoke.

“Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”

Lucinda was somewhat taken aback by the sudden question. No hellos, no introductions, no acknowledgement of what she’d just been through. Her nerves still felt the echoes of the previous battle, so her response came out more petulant than she’d intended.

“If this is about whether I’d like to join your... your group or not, all I know is I just fought my way through a sea of masks! I’d imagine that’s pretty high up the list of “what I’d be getting into,” right?”

The woman seemed slightly amused by this answer, to Lucinda’s surprise. With the tiniest of pauses, the blonde witch continued.

“Why do you want to be here?”

Lucinda felt a heavy ache she’d been ignoring throb in her chest. 

“I could never forgive myself if I didn’t do something about this.”

She gestured vaguely with her right hand. She didn’t say what. She figured they knew.

The blonde witch seemed satisfied. She sat silently for a moment, as though something else was going to happen. When nothing did, she turned slightly to face the disheveled witch sitting next to her, who was currently picking at her nails. They finally made eye contact, and the pink-haired witch swung her legs forward and leaned towards Lucinda.

“Can you fight?”

The question was matter of fact and harsh. Lucinda felt her skin begin to crawl at the question. Images of her fifth year DADA professor swam to the top of her mind. When she realized that hesitating too long might cost her this window, she finally stuttered out an answer. The bravado from the fight was completely gone.

“I- I’m here to help. In whatever way I can.”

It was a bit of a lame answer, and the witch did not hide her disappointment at the lackluster response.

“Well, what can you do?”

Lucinda was not prepared for this. She awkwardly rattled off whatever came to her head.

“I’m- I work- well, worked- I worked as a potioneer’s assistant! I mostly dealt with the prep work for the ingredients and... things... OH, and I played Quidditch! I was a chaser! And, Quidditch Captain! Two years running! And, I could always-”

“ How do you feel about the fact that your shop was destroyed and your coworker was murdered?”

The witch had spoken over her, not even letting her finish. Something about her expression, the lack of interest, or even disdain, caused her to speak without thinking.

“How would you feel about that?”

Lucinda met the gaze she’d been working hard to avoid. The eye contact was left unbroken for what felt like an eternity, before the witch shrugged, sat back, and tapped the wizard next to her.

“ Would you have wanted to join even if your uncle's shop had been spared by the Death Eaters' attack?”

The wizard’s question lacked the guarded nature of the previous questions. In fact, it lacked nearly any emotion at all, almost registering as a statement. But, the calm after the storm brought Lucinda back down a few notches.

“To be honest, I didn’t even know the extent of all this until now. Would someone who’d never payed a sport in their life want to join the local football team? I’m here now. That’s what matters to me.”

She tried to infuse her words with sincerity. She waited for the wizard to continue, but to her surprise, the next, kingly wizard spoke up instead.

“Are you here because you believe in the Order's cause, or are you only looking for revenge?”

Lucinda could think of nothing to say to that. Her mind went blank, and her mouth opened and closed uselessly a few times. She was certain her chances of entry were flying out the window until she noticed the smile spreading across his face.

“Not that the latter necessarily precludes your induction; we're not above using your rage to our mutual advantage. I just find it best to know how far, and to what ends, we likely can or cannot rely on you for.”

Lucinda paused for a few more moments before answering.

“... Listen. Joining a vigilante group was not exactly on my to-do list. I had a steady job and a quiet life, and that was what I wanted, and what I’d take back now if I had the option. But, I don’t have that option. Not anymore.”

And after a small pause, she added:

 “The short answer is: I prefer the word justice.”

The wizard’s smile grew slightly wider at that response, and he gestured his hand to the second to last wizard.

His face was surprisingly warm as he turned his eyes onto her. But, the warmth in his face would contrast sharply with the question he asked.

“You are here because the shop you worked in was under attack. Do you realize that being here means it might get attacked again?” 

Lucinda felt her stomach drop to her toes. Oh, Merlin. She hadn’t thought of that. She looked at the wizard’s eyes a bit more closely and swore she could see the cogs turning behind them. This man was not as kindly as he appeared. He was not to be crossed.

But, as she studied him, the answer rose to her mind like a body being washed to shore. It was a simple truth, one she would avoid if she could.

“... The only way to stop that from being a possibility is to stop them. Completely. I see that now. It’s the only way. Look. I saw the people in Diagon Alley. I saw their faces. Average wix, like myself. There’s no hiding anymore. For any of us.”

His face lost its warm glow at this. His expression became calculated, the cogs whirring actively before her eyes. He was unreadable.

Just as she turned to face the disheveled wizard farthest from her, he stood. And, as he did, the rest of them did, too. As one unit, they all walked out of the room and left her alone. Again,

She listened as closely as she could without daring to rise from her chair. At first, she could hear nothing. As the minutes went on, she could make out some faint noises that may have been conversation. Suddenly, she heard what only could have been muffled shouts. She couldn’t make out the words at all, perhaps there was some enchantment cast, but someone was very clearly upset. She dug her nails into the chair as she listened.

Then, silence. Silence for a long while.

Finally, the door opened. It swung open so violently that Lucinda stood involuntarily.

To her dismay, the pink-haired witch stood there alone. From the looks of her, it was to her dismay as well.

She marched herself towards Lucinda, grabbed her hand harshly, and slapped something cold into her palm.

Lucinda winced at the harshness and looked down. In her hand, sat a silver tag.

“Welcome to the Order. Meet me here tomorrow.”

And then the woman was gone.

[puddygeeks]

Wᴇ Cᴏᴍᴇ Rᴜɴɴɪɴɢ - Tʜᴇ 100 Bᴇʟʟᴀᴍʏ x OC - Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 21: Gᴜɴsʜᴏᴛs Iɴ Tʜᴇ Dᴀʀᴋ

Masterlist

Episode: Day Trip

Rating: Mature

Summary: During her time in the Skybox, Indigo formed a precious friendship with fellow outcast Octavia Blake, the girl under the floor. At first they thought their departure from the oppression of the Ark was a blessing, but quickly came to rely on Indigo's keen survival instincts. The 100 struggle to meet the challenges of Earth whilst Bellamy strives to lead the wavering teenagers and his irresponsible attitude fuels constant conflict with Indigo. Their only shared interest is in protecting Octavia and Indigo beings to suspect that there is a deeper cause to Bellamy's seemingly irrational choices. As the consequences of his actions mount up around him, he finally begins to confide in her and she discovers more than she ever bargained for. 

Fandom: CW’s The 100

Pairing: OC x Bellamy Blake

LONG TERM ONGOING PROJECT :)

My writing is entirely fuelled by coffee! If you enjoy my work, feel free to donate toward my caffeine dependency: will work for coffee

Warnings: Mature content. Non-consent, language, sex, self harm, suicide, anxiety, helplessness, torture, captivity/confinement, alcohol/drug use.

Chapter Twenty-One

I hurried as I travelled back to Raven and Finn, who were gathering a small group at the far end of the camp. The light was fading rapidly from the sky, so I occupied myself with building a fire that I could settle people around to keep them warm. Raven approached me with confusion. 

“What are you doing back here? I thought you two were dealing with the ship side?” She asked and my stomach lurched as I realised that my lies were starting to clash. I mentally cursed Octavia for cornering me into this and tried to think of a believable answer.

“There was hardly anyone left over there so I bought them over this way, I thought it would make sense to keep everyone together.” I commented, using some honesty to buy myself time. I had checked that there was no one near the dropship before returning, so I was confident in sharing this information. “Octavia’s staying there a little longer to double check there’s no leftovers.” I surprised myself at how easily I lied and I continued with my task to ensure that my words seemed casual and authentic. “Okay, the fire’s going, it’s getting darker so it’ll get real cold soon. Could you send anyone who is calm enough over this way and I’ll start wrapping them up. We also need to get water, we might as well try flushing it out of people. The sooner we can get this out of their system, the better.” I instructed as I tried to both change the subject from Octavia’s whereabouts and consider the needs of the camp simultaneously.

“Yes ma’am.” Raven replied willingly and I was surprised not to find any sarcasm in her tone. It was unusual for me to take control of a situation but as our normal leaders were off jaunting in the woods, I didn’t have much choice but to step up. My stomach lurched as Bellamy’s strange behaviour earlier flitted through my mind and I had to force it out so that I could concentrate on the situation in front of me. Finn slowly made his way over with several containers of water and I smiled at him as I took them gratefully. 

“Thanks. Are you sure you should be up and about just yet, Mr Big Hero?” I asked as I assessed him with concern. He seemed to be moving fine but I was uncomfortable allowing him to be so active without Clarke here to clear him for action. He smiled bashfully at the name. 

“I think I’m ready to manage a little babysitting.” He chuckled under his breath. “Raven said that you helped a lot with the surgery and all that. Thanks for keeping her calm, I know it can’t have been an easy task.” He spoke evenly and his tone was genuinely thankful. I cleared my throat awkwardly and decided not to mention that we likely wouldn’t be sharing a moment like that again for a while.

“You’re welcome, we’ve gotta keep our numbers up.” I replied as an excuse and he laughed. “Besides, I hardly did anything. Raven and Clarke were the real MVPs.” I replied gingerly, rubbing the back of my neck and hoped to scare off his kindness.

“I don’t know, I heard some pretty tough radio talk, even through my coma.” He laughed playfully as he peeked at me. “I think you might have missed your calling on the Ark, communications could have made great use of you.” He winked and I laughed in response to his assumption. “I’ll get you some blankets.” He stated as he shuffled away.

Soon people started to arrive following Raven’s directions and I wrapped them up in the makeshift blankets that Finn delivered and settled them around the fire with some water. It wasn’t long before I had my hands full with a confused group to babysit and Finn and Raven took up positions nearby to help keep an eye on the more active members. I no longer had to focus on distracting anyone, as the wanderers kept us plenty busy. It had gotten properly dark by the time Octavia sauntered over to the fire and I was growing restless as I considered that Bellamy and Clarke still hadn’t returned. Octavia nodded subtly from the edge of view, acknowledging a job completed. She then casually approached as Raven and Finn watched and I had to quickly remind myself of the narrative that I’d spun. 

“Hey Tavi, no stragglers left on your side of camp?” I asked, trying my best to seem casual as I hoped she would understand what I was doing and not accidentally reveal my lies.

“No movement that way, and I just dropped Jasper at his tent to join Monty for a nap. He’s finally stopped screaming about grounders so I think we’ve got a rough time scale for when it wears off now.” She laughed as she made her way over to sit beside me, and I was impressed at how naturally she caught on to the situation. I was also pleased to hear that the boys were safe and sighed in relief.

“Any sign of Clarke or Bellamy over there?” I asked with genuine concern as my mind returned to their absence. Octavia shook her head and I only grew more unsettled. “Okay, do you think you can take over here? They’re mostly all chilled by now but it sounds like effects should be wearing off soon anyway.” I asked as I got to my feet but she grabbed my arm and glimpsed up at me in concern.

“Of course, but where are you going?” She asked, checking me closely.

“I need to look for our missing leaders.” I smiled gently in the hope that she wouldn’t cause a scene but to my disappointment she glared back. I didn’t want to draw any attention to the fact that I was leaving and sat back down before anyone could notice that we were behaving strangely.

“No, absolutely not, you can’t go alone.” She spoke adamantly as she studied me and I sighed deeply. I didn’t have patience left to argue with her today and wished that for once she wouldn’t make things difficult.

“We don’t have the manpower to launch a full search party right now Tavi. I don’t even know where they went, so it’s not like I can go far. I’m just going to do a small venture in their direction and hopefully I’ll bump into them on their way back. If I don’t come back quickly enough, you’ll have more people back to normal to send a rescue group.” I smiled gently and she frowned back at me with an unconvinced face. “Come on, your brother’s out there and he could be hurt.I need to see what’s going on.” I reasoned as I gazed at her but she continued to frown at me. She sighed as she reluctantly let go of my hand. 

“Fine, don’t take too long, or I’ll send the whole camp.” She threatened and I didn’t doubt her seriousness for a moment. I got to my feet and I crept out quietly so as not to draw attention. I gathered some limited supplies and snuck into the woods.

I wandered aimlessly in the direction that I had seen them leave in and within no time struggled to tell where I was in the darkness. I tried to look for any signs of them, but it was much harder to track than Finn made it look when he led the group. I couldn’t ignore the building anxiety in my gut the further I went and kicked myself for believing that I would simply bump into them out here. I stopped walking and stared out into the dense gloom that surrounded me from all angles. I considered turning back, but I was haunted with horrendous images of the things that could have happened to them out here if they’d taken the nuts with them. I hesitated, frozen to the spot as I deliberated with myself. With no better ideas, I called out into the trees. 

“Bellamy! Clarke!” I shouted into the shadows and waited nervously for a few moments, but nothing changed. I couldn’t think of anything else to do and I knew that if I got lost out here there would be a frantic search party sent by Octavia. I was about to turn back towards camp when a gunshot rang out in the distance. I didn’t waste a second in reacting to it as I took off in the direction of the sound. My feet pounded in the mud at the same pace that my mind obsessed over the million awful scenarios that could surround the gunshot. I strained to keep my focus in the moment as I rushed blindly into whatever danger awaited me. Just as I started to worry that I may have lost the trail, two more gunshots carried between the trees and I followed them with a terror gripping my chest. My heart raced wildly and I panted in a mixture of exhaustion and fear.

“Get the hell off of him!” I recognised Clarke’s panicked voice immediately and forced myself into a manic sprint. As I drew closer, I could hear the sounds of a struggle and I prayed that they were safe. Moments later I fell into a clearing and I could barely comprehend what I was seeing. There was a dead body of someone I didn’t recognise sprawled out in the middle of the clearing, and leaning against opposite trees facing each other were Clarke and Bellamy. Bellamy was screaming wildly and clawing at the air around him, whilst Clarke yelled over in his direction with desperation. As she was closer and seemed to be more lucid, I dropped down to her side first.

“Hey! Clarke, you’re okay, look at me.” I spoke firmly, taking her face in my hands and forcing her to meet my eyes. Her face felt warm in my hands, but she seemed to be past the point of fever and from what I could tell, she was able to concentrate on me. “You’re alright, what you’re seeing and feeling is just the effects of the nuts we found earlier, they’re causing everyone at camp to trip bollocks. Here.” I handed her a bottle of water from my belt after removing the cap to make it easier for her. “Start on this, you need to rehydrate all that fluid you’ve sweated out with your fever and we want to try flushing this out of your system as soon as possible.” I spoke firmly but slowly, ensuring that she was absorbing the information and she nodded in acknowledgment. Bellamy was getting louder behind me and I could hear that he had started to hyperventilate. “You just sit there and keep drinking, stay calm and let me know if you start seeing anything weird. I have to deal with him.” I explained quickly, watching her reaction to check that she would be okay alone.

“I’m okay, I can help.” She whispered in a hoarse voice as she tried to lift herself from the ground and I firmly pushed her back into a seated position.

“Clarke, the best thing you can do for me right now is to sit there and get sober so I can concentrate on Bellamy. Can you do that for me, please?” I stayed in her eyeline and waited for her to nod reluctantly. As soon as she did, I turned on the spot and began to approach Bellamy. He was screaming out gibberish between jagged breaths, and he repeatedly appeared to lash out at thin air. He didn’t seem to notice my presence at all, as if he were seeing straight through me. “God, he’s having a really bad trip, almost everyone else at camp is just having pleasant hallucinations.” I commented, as I slowly tried to enter his space and moved carefully in an effort not to startle him. “Has he been like this for long?” I called back to Clarke in question as I kept my eyes fixed on him. I reached out to touch him as gently as I could, but he immediately flinched away from me. Although our contact was brief, I was able to feel the scolding heat that poured off his skin and I could see the sheen on his face that indicated he was still running an extreme fever. 

“Hours, I can’t get through to him, it’s like he can’t even see me.” Clarke explained quietly between deep, steadying breaths. “He was lucid for a little while when we were fighting Dax, but straight after he went back into panic. This is the worst I’ve seen him yet.” She confirmed and I sighed regretfully as I processed this information. As I got closer, I could make out the obvious signs of a struggle, as there was hardly any part of his face that wasn’t swollen or blood smeared and I was saddened to see him in such a state again. 

“What have you tried already?” I asked, watching closely as he attempted to defend himself against whatever attack he was experiencing in his mind.

“I’ve yelled at him, shook him, I even tried slapping him to shock him out of it.” Clarke breathed, sounding remorseful about this choice. I sighed thoughtfully as I studied him and his jagged movements caused him to hit himself. He didn’t even seem to notice the impact as he was so lost in the visions and inspected him sympathetically. “He’s going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t calm down, hours is a long time for the human body to deal with that level of panic.” Clarke added poignantly and I wrecked my brain for a way to reach him.

“He’s too deep in the hallucinations, he might be too overstimulated already to react to shock.” I muttered, pacing around as I considered any other possible options. I didn’t have enough knowledge of drug use to know what would usually be recommended and I wished that I’d learned more useful skills before we were sent to Earth. 

As I observed his movements, he reminded me of Octavia as he began to scratch at his arms. During the beginning of our friendship in the Skybox, Octavia would have frequent panic attacks about returning to her cell. All of her years of hiding from the guards in her mother's quarters had left her with a residual fear of being contained. It took a while for us to find coping mechanisms to help her manage this fear and in the meantime, I had to learn how to calm her during an outburst. When I looked at Bellamy, despite their many differences, I noticed some similar behaviours in their panic and I began to wonder if the same method would work on him.

He was hyperventilating hysterically now and his lips were turning blue, a telltale sign of lack of oxygen that I remembered from Octavia. With little time left to hesitate, I approached him and fell into his space. I crouched over him, placing my knees either side of his thighs and pulled him into my arms. At first he fought me and only seemed to be more panicked by the sudden contact. It was substantially harder to contain him than it ever was with Octavia and I didn’t allow myself any time to doubt, as I knew I had no other ideas. I pulled him in tighter as I remembered that Octavia would continue to lash out with her arms until I stopped her and so I pulled his arms down to his sides and embraced him around them. I held him tightly in place, allowing him to feel the pressure around him and tried to speak gently in his ear. 

“It’s okay, you’re safe. What you’re seeing isn’t real, it’s not real Bellamy, you’re safe, shh.” I whispered gently as I felt his arms finally calming and after a few moments I dared to risk releasing them. They flopped loosely to his side and he didn’t attempt to hit anything again, much to my relief. Instead, he continued to tremble in my embrace and I slowly moved a hand to his neck to feel his pulse. It was hammering so fast that it was hard to even count and the heat that poured off him made me sweat. He was no longer shouting, but he continued to hyperventilate and I knew that we were still in a risky situation.

“You’re safe Bellamy, it’s okay, the threat isn’t real.” I spoke in a slow, calming manner as I held him to me, hoping to draw his attention to me over whatever horrors were happening in his mind. “If you can hear my voice, I need you to concentrate on it. Don’t listen to anyone else, listen to me.” I asserted and I felt his breathing hitch. I took this break in gasps as a sign that he was listening to me. “That’s it, you’re safe. Everything is okay, you’re just hallucinating. You ate some bad food and it’s messing with your head. I promise, what you’re seeing isn’t real.” I explained gently as I waited for him to calm. I moved my hand slowly to feel his pulse again and I noticed that it was finally starting to slow down. I let out a small sigh of relief and gripped him to me again. I cradled his head with one hand, tenderly stroking his hair in a soothing manner as I continued to talk to him. 

“That’s it, you’re doing well. Try to slow your breathing down for me. You’re safe. Raven and Finn are taking care of everyone back at camp and Octavia didn’t eat it, so she’s safe with them. Everything’s okay.” I spoke slowly as I tried to clear any concerns that may be bothering him and felt that his breathing was finally starting to become more regular. He didn’t seem to be any more lucid yet unfortunately, so I decided to try implementing some of the methods that I’d learned to refocus Octavia when she was lost to panic. “Listen to my voice, I want you to really focus on it. Good. Now, focus on the other things you can feel in your body. The cool, wet ground beneath you, the cool crisp air on your skin. Listen to my breathing, the wind in the trees. Can you feel my arms around you, my hand in your hair, my breathing near your ear? I need you to focus on those things around you Bellamy, what you really see, hear, smell, taste, feel. Pick them out in your mind. You’re safe, come back to us.” I have clear instruction and prayed that it would be enough to bring him out of his mind. As I finished guiding him through the technique, he finally spoke in a small, exhausted voice. 

“I-Indigo?” He asked with such deep uncertainty that my heart broke for him. I finally released him from my grip, leaning back into his lap to view his tear streaked face. 

“Hey you.” I smiled warmly and he stared back at me in wide eyed confusion. “Here, drink some water, you’re dehydrated and I need you to start flushing this crap out of your system.” I handed the open bottle to him and he took it from me with shaking hands, sipping from it delicately. “You just sit still and drink that okay? I’m just gonna go check on Clarke, I’ll be right there and then I’ll come straight back to you.” I explained quickly. 

I moved before my heart strings could stop me and rushed back to Clarke’s side. She looked much calmer now and I checked to find that she had drunk almost the whole bottle of water that I’d left her with. I held my hand to her forehead and felt that she was almost back to a normal temperature. As a last precaution, I took the flashlight from my belt and gently flashed it at one eye at a time, confirming that she was back to normal dilation. 

“Okay, you’re good. You can start gathering stuff to go back to camp. I’m gonna check on Bellamy and once he’s ready, we’ll move.” I ordered. Clarke nodded and started to get to her feet. I turned back to Bellamy, who was staring wide eyed at the body and was slowly losing control of his breathing again. I rushed back over and sat beside him on the opposite side from the body. I gently took his face in my hands and guided him to look at me. “Hey, no, don’t look at that, look at me. I need you to stay calm, it’s gonna take a little while for this stuff to fully work itself out of your body, so you can’t get too panicky or you’ll start tripping again. Stay focused on me and take some deep breaths. Alright, good. See, surely I can’t be that scary?” I smiled gently and felt a twinge of worry when he didn’t even flinch toward a smile back. It was unusual for him not to respond to humour, even in the most stressful situations. “You’re okay.” I breathed as I regarded him with sympathy. 

“No, I’m not.” He whispered with fresh tears rolling down his cheeks as he panted for breath. “My mother...if she knew what I’ve done, who I am-” He choked up momentarily with emotion, the pain of the time here crashing down on him all at once. “She raised me to be good. And all I do is hurt people.” He paused to sniff as his desperate eyes met mine. “I’m a monster.” He spat with a devastating conviction. 

“No Bellamy, that’s not true!” I gasped as I wiped his tears away and gazed at his broken expression with an aching heart. “Your mother raised you the best she could, as all parents on the Ark struggle to do in that stifling environment. But she also crushed you under the weight of the responsibility that you were far too young to bear. You have done everything in your power to keep Octavia safe and I know that she would be proud of you for that. None of us ever expected to be here in this situation, and I’m sure if she could see you now, she wouldn’t see a monster. She’d see a survivor, she’d see the man who made the difficult choices to keep us alive. We wouldn’t have made it this far without you. We need you Bellamy.” I spoke earnestly and even surprised myself at my own honesty. Bellamy scoffed and looked away from me. My stomach churned as I processed the self loathing of his words and I was compelled to guide him into a more beneficial thought process. “I know my words don’t take away the guilt and the pain you’re feeling. I can’t even begin to imagine what you feel, with everything that is on your shoulders. But it’s time to stop waiting for forgiveness for your mistakes and start facing them.” He looked back at me with fear in his eyes and I sighed. “And you know what, you may not want to hear this, but it’s time for you to forgive yourself. You are only one person thrown into a situation that is impossible to have prepared for. You made mistakes, yes. Shockingly you’re not perfect. But it’s time to stop beating yourself up over them and start acknowledging them. Take responsibility and face up to the consequences. You can’t run forever Bellamy.” I finished gently as I gazed into his eyes and he sighed, watching me with a terrified expression. 

“How do I do that?” He asked in a small shaky voice and I smiled at him with gentle encouragement. 

“One step at a time, but you’re not going to be doing it alone. I’ve got your back.” I asserted as I reached out to squeeze his hand.

“Jaha will kill me when he comes down.” He breathed and my stomach lurched at the mention of the Chancellor. I hadn’t even considered yet that he would be one of the people to come down and I felt a fire burning inside of me at the thought. 

“I won’t let that happen.” I growled with more fury than intended and he finally showed a hint of a smile at my veracity. “How much does Clarke know?” I whispered as I leaned into him inquisitively. 

“Everything.” He sighed and I raised my brows in surprise. I guessed it was hard to keep secrets when you have crazy hallucinogens in your system and tried to be understanding about him involving her in his crisis. 

“Okay, in that case, we’ll work it out on the way back to camp. Come on, up you get.” I helped him to his feet with difficulty as Clarke carefully approached us. “Let’s get back to camp, people are going to be getting worried.” I suggested as I supported Bellamy to find his balance weakly. 

“We have to go back to the building we found first, there’s supplies to collect. We can’t afford to risk anyone else finding them first.” Clarke stated firmly and I stared at her in surprise. I couldn’t imagine how we were going to transport them with them in such a weakened state but I reluctantly agreed so that I could get them moving. 

We walked slowly as we wandered in a tight formation back to their discovery. I reluctantly assisted in packing up the supplies they’d found, which mostly consisted of copious amounts of guns and we spread the weight between us as we started on our return to camp. Bellamy was unusually quiet during the walk and I noticed that he kept glancing back over his shoulder fearfully. I wanted to believe it was due to the paranoia of his earlier visions, but I’d been considering his strange behaviour this morning alongside some information I’d gathered since seeing him again and I had a suspicion that I knew what was really going on with him. Now that he was calmer, I couldn’t hold in my thoughts any longer and turned to look at him with impatience. 

“You weren’t planning on coming back to camp, were you?” I asked quietly to keep Clarke from hearing our conversation. His eyes shot to me in surprise and as he realised that I was awaiting an answer, he looked away in avoidance. I scoffed in response to his unintentional confirmation of my theory. “I knew something was wrong when you left. Were you even going to say goodbye?” As the question left my lips, I heard the hurt in my tone and inwardly kicked myself for allowing that to show. Bellamy stared at the ground with a guilty expression, his head hung low in a silent answer. “Did you really think you could just hide out in the woods? You must’ve known that I’d look for you?” I quizzed him before quickly stumbling over my words as I realised exactly what I’d said. “Among others of course.” I added hurriedly. 

“I didn’t think about it in any detail, Indigo. All I knew was that Jaha was making plans to come down here and if I stayed in camp I was a sitting duck.” He mumbled in a poor attempt at an explanation and I sighed deeply at him. I could tell that this fear of inescapable punishment was still messing with him as we marched back in the direction of camp. 

“Hey Clarke?” I called out to her as she walked with purpose just ahead of us and she slowed to meet my side. “You know all about this mess now, have you got any bright ideas for keeping Bellamy alive and in camp?” I asked as I shot an accusing glare at him for trying to abandon us, implying that I could tell that he was still considering running at this very moment. “Jaha isn’t known for his mercy and if he tries to punish Bellamy the way he would on the Ark...well, there’s gonna be more than one life lost, that’s for sure.” I spoke honestly as I imagined the guards trying to take him for execution and I couldn’t even account for the damage I’d be willing to do to stop it. She stared up at the sky thoughtfully for a while as we trudged through the forest. 

“I’ve known the Chancellor most of my life. I don’t approve of most of what he does, but he’s actually a much more reasonable man than most of the Ark realises.” She spoke in a distracted voice as she explained and I scoffed at her words. 

“Yeah, cuz the death penalty for any and all crime is totally reasonable.” I spat and she squinted at me in a defensive manner. “I’m sorry, I know you’re not the enemy. What was your point?” I spoke sheepishly following my unintentional attack. 

“Jaha is always willing to discuss terms, trades and compromises. I know him well enough to know how to convince him. I could help you talk to him.” She flashed Bellamy a hopeful smile but he only responded with confusion.

“What could we possibly trade him for? I can’t imagine we have anything he would want in this paradise.” He asked with a bitter tone as his exhausted face revealed his doubt.

“Information; you offer to tell him who asked you to shoot him, but only in exchange for a pardon.” Clarke sounded genuinely enthused with her idea and I felt a small shred of hope blossoming in my chest. Bellamy stared at her in surprise, and I joined him, before breaking into a wicked smile. 

“You know what, that could actually work. You’re secretly sly Clarke! I’ll have to watch you in future.” I chuckled as I was hit with a feeling of genuine relief. I turned back to face Bellamy. “What do you think Bellamy? Are you ready to deal with this?” I asked as I watched him closely, hoping with everything in me that he wouldn't turn and run. He finally broke into a smile and my heart fluttered at the sight. 

“Let’s do it. Nothing else left to try.” He answered and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

The remaining walk to camp felt easier and I was more relaxed than I had been in days. I knew that this was still a gamble, but I trusted Clarke’s judgement and her history with Jaha to pull this off. As we approached the edge of the fencing I split off from them, allowing them to make their grand, victorious entrance without my interference. Instead, I went to find Jasper who was finally back to his normal self and happily sleeping. Monty was also sitting in the tent and when I entered he shifted awkwardly.

 “Hey, if it isn’t my two favourite troublemakers.” I chanted with a smile as I sat beside him. “Are you guys feeling okay?” I asked with a hint of concern as I looked between them. 

“I’m fine. Jasper was feeling pretty exhausted, but it sounds like he spent a lot of his day panicking, so I don’t really blame him.” He explained as he watched Jasper with care. He cleared his throat and avoided looking back at me as he spoke again. “I’m really sorry if I came across as weird earlier, I tend to say some pretty wild stuff when I’m...you know.” He spoke in a small voice and fidgeted his hands awkwardly. I struggled to stifle a giggle as I remembered the numerous compliments he’d given me during the day and instead I focused on trying to ease his entirely unnecessary embarrassment. 

“You think you were wild? Did Jasper remember telling Octavia he loved her yet?” I asked playfully and Monty snorted in laughter. “Twice!” I crumbled into giggles at the memory and was glad to be able to share some humour after such a difficult day. “Seriously, we’re good, don’t worry about it. I’m just glad you’re both okay. I’m gonna find Octavia and I’ll leave you to comfort your friend here. I get the feeling his ego’s going to be a little bruised when he wakes up.” I winked, before heading back to the main activity of camp. 

I glanced around to seek out Octavia and I had already begun to approach her when I noticed Bellamy hovering awkwardly nearby, observing her with a beaten puppy expression. He hadn’t noticed my presence, so I quickly stepped to the side to remain out of his line of sight. I watched as he gingerly wrapped a blanket around her and she glanced back at him in annoyance. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened between them in the last few days, but I had the impression that some hurtful words had been exchanged. I hoped that they could find a way to trust each other, but I knew that it would take time for this to build. I was too far from them to hear what was said, but I could tell from Bellamy’s body language that he was trying his best with her and I smiled at the sight.

“Bellamy!” Clarke called as she emerged from the tent where the communications with the Ark were stored. Unfortunately this was right beside the spot I was hiding in plain sight. Inwardly, I cursed her for interrupting their bonding moment until she spoke again. “It’s time.” She said with a significant tone and I glimpsed over in shock. I didn’t expect them to launch into their plan so quickly, I hadn’t had a chance to even discuss it with Bellamy yet. I made the quick decision to not involve myself in the situation. If he felt ready to do this now, then I was glad that they were immediately getting it out of the way before he could change his mind. He didn't notice me as he turned from Octavia and took a few steps toward the tent and I considered backing away. He suddenly stopped mid way and turned back to face her. 

“The grounder escaping, was that you?” He spoke with an accusing manner and my blood felt like it turned to pure ice at his question. Octavia didn’t even turn around, keeping her back to him and I found myself thanking every star that he wasn’t facing me as I tried to force myself to behave normally. I knew that he wouldn’t approve of my part in it and after how close we’d grown tonight, I was terrified of disrupting this hard earned peace. I genuinely couldn’t tell any longer if he’d be angry or if he would allow me the time to explain. I felt myself spiralling into panic as I awaited her response.

“I had nothing to do with it.” She replied coolly and my heart skipped a beat. I didn’t know how to feel about her involving me in her lie and I despised that I’d found myself caught between her and Bellamy. I forced the feeling to the back of my mind to deal with later as Bellamy sighed and continued toward the tent. I startled as he finally noticed me and I considered simply walking away, but his vulnerable eyes drew me toward him. I walked to him as if in a trance and simply put a hand on his forearm. I steeled myself as I stared up into his eyes with a confident smile. 

“You're going to be fine.” I spoke with an assertive sense of belief and he smiled nervously in return. “I’ll see you on the other side as a free man.” I breathed, releasing him to enter the tent. I tried desperately to force myself to leave, to trust them to manage the situation and fill me in after. I couldn’t help the slideshow in my mind of all the times things had gone wrong and Bellamy had run off, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave the edge of the tent. I waited right outside, straining to hear what was said.

“Mr Blake, I’ve wanted to talk to you for some time now.” The chancellor's voice was clear and assertive and it sent chills down my spine.

“Before you do, I’d like to say something. When you sent us down here you sent us to die, but miraculously, most of us are still alive. In large part, that is because of him, because of Bellamy.” Clarke’s voice was calm, but her words made it clear that trusting her was the correct choice here. She knew exactly how to present her case. “He’s one of us, and he deserves to be pardoned of his crimes just like the rest of us.” She asserted and I couldn’t help but to be impressed by her.

I felt like I could barely breathe as I waited for the Chancellor’s response. Although I knew that this was the best chance for Bellamy, I was also terrified that this was the moment I would find out that there was no hope for him here; I wrestled my anxiety at even the thought of it.

“Clarke, I appreciate your point of view, but it’s not that simple.” The chancellor replied and I felt like I might heave at any moment. I reminded myself that they hadn’t thrown in their trade yet, it wasn’t over.

“It is if you want to know who on the Ark wants you dead.” Bellamy spoke assertively and I felt my heart swell with pride. I waited for what felt like an eternity for a response and couldn’t even move a single muscle in my body.

“Bellamy Blake, you’re pardoned for your crimes.” The Chancellor’s answer was firm and decisive, and I felt myself gasp out for air. I dropped to a crouch, just catching myself before I hit the ground and held my head in my hands.  I felt tears freely roam down my cheeks and the relief poured over me in an overwhelming wave. I forced myself to a standing position so that I could rush to the tent to compose myself.

[tinayoufatlarrdd]

She (iii)

Part one.

Part two.

If there was anything Y/N learned the past years she’d been dabbling in this industry, was that those who survived were those with the thickest mask. No matter what kind of personal turmoil was in the way, unless it’s something to market, it would be meticulously tucked away. So tidy and pristine as if these people had two faces: one for the world and one for themselves.

Harry, especially, was a master of this sort of mind trick. No one really knew how he truly felt behind his charming rockstar persona. He was always so smiley and friendly even in a horrendous day. His extraordinary composure in the public’s eye really was his strongest suit and no one really doubted he would ever cross that lifelong built-up image. (Except that one time he blew up in front of Y/N and ruined her entire career).

So it wasn’t a surprise when Harry came with the warmest attitude to the show venue that day. People would scream his name and he would politely reply with a gentle, ‘How are you?’ even when he didn’t get a wink of sleep the past few nights, overthinking that moment the love of his life slammed her door closed, but this time it might be for good.

He did doze off for a while as he waited for Y/N to miraculously reopen the door and take him back that night, only to find her superintendent waking him up as it was already three in the morning and him curling up by her doorway got her neighbors worried that he might be a homeless person.

“Go home, son,” the super helped him up. “Give her some time.”

He complied. That’s how desperate he was: he took an advice from a superintendent because he simply didn’t know how to fix this mess himself.

He was exhausted and diluted. But no one could see over the dazzling black suits that somehow highlighted his dimples. No one but Y/N.

Y/N knew the moment he walked to the backstage, he immediately put his shades on which meant he must’ve gotten pretty dark circles under his eyes. Y/N also knew the moment he decided to take a small break just right before going on stage, people thought he needed a wee when he must’ve needed a time off before performing, something he did when he felt overwhelmed or not in the right mood. And of course Y/N noticed the moment he just nodded politely to his ex girlfriend, to which she just blatantly ignored, meant he really was finished with her—if he was still smitten, he would be pining over how beautiful she looked in that couture lingerie.

She couldn’t fathom how much she hated herself for knowing this much about Harry. And it made her so angry at herself because it just showed how much she still loved him but at the same time she still couldn’t trust him. She was in so much agony.

She had fun though, taking pictures of the lovely models before they took the runway like badasses that they were. She had the best time of her life in the hasty backstage. The rush and adrenaline just pumped her inspiration up.

That was until Harry started performing. Her eyes were glued to the TV screen right above the vanity and so did the many pairs of eyes in that room. Everyone was captivated by the energy Harry exuded on that runway. He really was a star, even brighter than the gorgeous supermodels.

“He changed the song last minute. Just the last song, though,” Y/N heard the crew whispering right behind her, as if they’re afraid the news would freak everyone out.

“What? Why?” one of them exclaimed but was immediately shushed by the others.

“I don’t know. Famous people are weird as fuck,” the other one snapped.

That, she agreed.

“What about the models? How are they supposed to walk unrehearsed to the new music?”

“He said the tempo is the same so it’s still pretty much as rehearsed. Just different melody or something,” the crew took a collective deep nervous breath. “You know our boss knew and agreed—dude must’ve been very charming.”

“Of course, he’s Harry fucking Styles.”

Y/N was nervous for Harry. He could ruin this whole show and definitely his own career with such impromptu decision. Well, maybe not as plummeting as hers at that time, but he would be slandered if he didn’t nail this. Why would he risk his unblemished reputation when his previous set list was just perfect as it was?

Then it hit her.

The intro was way too familiar for her to miss. The piano subtly kicked in, spotlight fell into the first model who professionally hid her own confusion of the song change. Then suddenly the whole band started playing and Harry came running to the stage with his glorious charisma and sang his heart out.

It was Rolling Stones’ She’s A Rainbow. It was their song. He changed it to their song.

Y/N still couldn’t believe the length Harry actually went for her when suddenly she saw his supermodel ex entered the runway. Her face couldn’t hide it: she was excited because according to her claim, it was their first date song instead. She looked… prepared for Harry to do this grand gesture to her.

Harry knew this time would come, that his ex would walk exactly as he tried to confess to Y/N. He tried to dodge away when she tried to nudge his cheek playfully, just like the other models did, but it happened. And the whole crowd cheered since they thought they were still together.

So he did the only thing that crossed his mind, that would put an end to this love triangle once and for all. As he hit the chorus, he stared at the camera knowing Y/N would watch it from the backstage TV.

“She comes in colours everywhere, she combs her hair. She’s like a rainbow!” he exclaimed. “Coming, colours everywhere. Oh, Y/N… She comes in colours!”

There. He said it. Her name was immortalized in his performance tonight and probably forever because it’s broadcasted live worldwide and he’s Harry Styles.

A loud gasp left Y/N’s mouth and she could see from the TV how his ex was just as surprised but remained posing and smiling so widely as if her grin would hide the unpleasant surprise in her eyes. When she walked back, she didn’t try to tease Harry. Instead she just strode pass him like he didn’t exist.

What happened next was a blur. It was an absolute shock for Y/N and maybe the whole world who all seemed to put Harry’s enigmatic love life under microscope. She went on autopilot mode while doing her job because apparently his fans found their photo together and pointed out that she was the girl Harry sang for and bombarded her phone notifications into overheating. Because of that, his ex girlfriend apparently realized who she was and came up to her. She asked Y/N what exactly happened between her and Harry in a not-so-friendly tone but Y/N was just as confused. She barely answered when the supermodel had to get back to the runway for the closing walk.

This sudden attention directed solely to her was too overwhelming.

She hated being the center of attention. Well, she loved it when it’s about her work but certainly not for this reason. And she wasn’t exactly mad at his gesture too. In fact, it was kind of sweet knowing how outrageous the thing he just did. But she just didn’t know how she felt towards him as a person. Should she forgive him just because he proclaimed his love whilst risking his career for her? Should they start over knowing he could easily betray her trust again?

When Harry finished his setlist, which was spectacular to say the least, he ran to the backstage. He needed to see Y/N but she wasn’t there. He checked everywhere and she was nowhere to be found. He made an appearance to the after party at some exclusive nightclub with only intention to find Y/N, but she wasn’t there either. He wanted to find her but he just didn’t where to start.

Did she need more time? How much more?

“What the fuck was that?” his ex walked up to him as he slurped a glass of apple juice by the bar.

“An apple juice,” he said nonchalantly, not really focusing his thoughts on her.

“No, I know what that is,” she rolled her eyes. “I mean what was that back on the runway? Did you do something behind my back with that girl?”

Harry just sighed. “We dated after you dumped me last year.”

“What? Don’t you remember what she did to me?” she lingered her hands on her hips as if stressing her importance.

Harry raised an eyebrow. “What exactly did she do to you?”

“You know, she… She—“ she tried to mutter some words but it failed to come out because now that she repeated the toe stepping incident in her mind, she herself realized how ridiculous the whole thing was—just plain irritating, ol’ A-list celeb stereotypical antic.

“Thought so too,” Harry mumbled to himself.

And with that suddenly it was crystal clear. He really couldn’t even see what he used to see in this woman. She was not kind, maybe she was in her own version of life that was filled with fame, but not kind enough to treat other people respectfully. And the fact that he changed himself to accommodate that behaviour, run back to her, beg for her love, and leave Y/N who actually helped him find his old self back—it all made him sick to his stomach. He couldn’t let Y/N slip, not again.

Harry quickly said goodbye and made his way to Y/N’s apartment. He knocked so hard, so ferociously that if her super didn’t come out and stop him he could’ve broken the door.

“Please, it’s really late,” the superintendent tried his best to hide his anger.

“Sorry, I just really…” Harry tried to catch a breath.

“She’s not home yet,” he informed Harry. “For fuck’s sake maybe she really did need some time, don’t you think?”

Harry nodded.

Then it struck him like a lightning. She must’ve been thinking and there’s only one place she’d go to in the entire world.

Harry sprung after thanking the super and almost got hit by a car twice on his way. He didn’t even know why he was such in a rush, he just needed to find her as soon as possible. He couldn’t bare to lose her again even for just another second.

Running through the winter air really wasn’t the most fun exercise especially when Harry wasn’t dressed for one. But when he saw her there, it all paid off.

It was the garden where they used to have spontaneous picnics under the stars. It was always her favorite place to pace down, and most of the times it was with Harry. She even used to say that she wanted to be burried there when she died. That’s how Harry knew she’d be there.

No one was there but her, the portable turntable they used to bring, and the shared blanket they used to snuggle in.

Harry walked slowly to her but she didn’t notice. Her eyes were closed and he could hear the muffled melody from her headphone—she must’ve played it on maximum volume to shut the world out, it’s her thing that he just got used to overtime.

She still didn’t realize as Harry sat next to her. He didn’t dare to sneak into the blanket although he could freeze to death. He didn’t want to scare her off again. He just wanted to be there, to see her enjoying her own little world that he was once in, looking like the sweetest creature he’d ever seen.

Harry sat there for almost half an hour, exchanging his stare back and forth from the beautiful winter sky to Y/N. He craved to be a part of her world again yet the harsh winter just kept testing him. It didn’t take long before he started sneezing so awfully that it surprised Y/N so much she jumped from her very comfortable position.

“Harry?! What—“ she saw his red nose and shivering body, and immediately pulled him into her blanket.

She hurriedly untied her scarf, wrapped it around his neck, and grabbed his hands so he’d be warm. And Harry just couldn’t stop thinking, why on earth did he ever leave this amazing person who cared about him just as much as herself?

“Are you warm now? Oh my God, Harry, I am so mad at you!” she screamed but he knew it was of worry. “This is the coldest winter. Don’t you see the news? Are you out of your mind?”

“Yes,” he whispered in between his shivers.

“What?” she asked as she began letting go of Harry’s hands but he gripped her thumbs like a baby, not wanting to lose touch of her.

“I just g-go…” he gulped. “I go crazy without you. Please, come back to me. I’m sorry I’m an asshole.”

She sighed. They just stared at each other but Harry knew she was thinking. There was love in her eyes, but so were fear and anger and doubts. He understood her hesitation, though, so he just savored this moment with their hands clasped together under the moonlight that might be their last, hoping it would never end.

“You really hurt me a lot,” she said lowly.

He could only stare down. He knew he didn’t deserve another chance with her after everything he did, but he wished he could show her that everything would be different. After all, he really knew for sure how he felt now. There’s no room for second guessing in him, no more supermodel first love, just Y/N.

“But you made me happy too,” she said it almost like a mock to herself. “Happiest I’ve ever been in my whole life. Now I’m the crazy one.”

He couldn’t believe what he’d heard that his gaze immediately went up to see her pressing her lips just like she always did when she tried to hold back a smile. He really loved the little things about her, all of them.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“You’re gonna have to work very hard to hear those words from me,” she answered.

His cheeky smile just lit up, showing off his dimples. “You don’t have to, I already know you do.”

“You’re on a fucking thin ice here,” she frowned.

But Harry didn’t care. He knew she loved him so much and that would always be enough even when she never wanted say it.

“That was one bold move at the show,” she removed the headphone jack from the portable turntable and put it on speaker.

“So that wins you over?” he gently laid on his back and opened his arms as if asking her for a cuddle.

There was still lack of trust in her movement considering it had been months since they even touched each other but when she finally laid inside his warm embrace, it just felt as pleasant as it used to, if not better. Harry couldn’t even describe his feelings at this moment—he was just… home.

“That and the warning my super gave me lately,” she answered lightly. “About a tall man with a lot of tattoos sleeping on my doorway."

“Such a tattle-tale,” he rolled his eyes.

She just chuckled. Oh how Harry missed her laugh.

“I love this song,” he said as Neil Young’s Harvest Moon played from the turntable.

They both remembered that day she finally let him in, she played this song too. But they didn’t say anything. They were just enjoying each other’s warmth as Neil Young kept serenading them.

She could feel him nuzzling her hair, a little habit he always did when they’re cuddling and she obviously missed the past months they’re apart. She knew they would need a lot of struggle to rebuild this but she was sure the moment Harry held her hands tightly and put them inside his coat pockets, that he wouldn’t let go again. With them, it’s always the small things.

[shartlord420]

What do you think Matt Engarde would be like if he wasn’t bad?

EXCELLENT question. And I apologize in advance- the reason it took me so long to answer this one is because.......... I have a lot of thoughts, and Tumblr has no character limit, so I wrote an essay. Hope you don’t mind a bit of light reading!

 So, to start with, I think we need to answer a few questions first.

 1.  What is it that makes someone good or bad?

 I don’t think anyone would really ague that Matt is a good person. He’s a villain character! He’s the big bad of Justice for All, of course he’s a bad person.

But why exactly is that? What is it about him that makes him a bad person?

In my opinion, the terms good and bad are a little too vague. Everyone has their own view of morals and right and wrong, good and bad. So, to simplify things, instead of good or bad… I’ll be approaching things as either “harmful” or “helpful”.

And Matt Engarde was indeed a very harmful person overall. His beliefs and his actions both caused immense harm to those around him, and even ultimately to himself, even if he believed he was acting in his own self-interest.

So, the question is, what would Matt Engarde be like if he wasn’t as harmful as a person as he is? What would that look like?

And to get to the bottom of that… we go to question number two.

 2.  Why is Matt Engarde a harmful person?

 Now, we don’t exactly have a fully fleshed out canonical character backstory for Matt, so we aren’t going to be able to sift through his childhood and pinpoint “Ah, there it is, THAT’S why he’s so fucked”, but we can still look at all that we do know about him and try to piece things together from that.

So, what do we know about Matt?

Well, he’s an actor. A young actor, in fact. They don’t give us exact dates when it comes to the beginning of his career, nor details about his acting career. But from what we do know, he’s been acting at least since he was 19, presumably earlier. He was 19 years old when Celeste died. We don’t know how long her relationships with either man were, and we don’t know how much time had passed between Matt breaking up with her and her starting to date Juan. Considering how heavily everything effected Celeste, though, I’d wager that it was at LEAST a year for all of this to transpire, maybe more. So that puts Matt as a starlet of at least 18.

Personally, I would wager that Matt was probably a child star, or at the very least had his start in the entertainment industry rather early on. My friend proposed the idea that he likely had fairly wealthy parents that were also in the industry to some degree, and I’d put my money on that as well.

The acting world is tough. It’s something you find out pretty early on if you have any sort of interest in it. Acting, singing, modeling- stardom is difficult to obtain. The competition is real and cutthroat. It’s hard work. It seems like a really dreamy job from a distance. Plenty of people fantasize about being discovered for their talent and just rising to the top, but that’s not really typically how it works.

Sure, it’s certainly possible to have raw talent and to be scouted! But the illusion that everyone has equal chances and opportunity is just that: an illusion. Just take a moment to look through the early lives of child stars. On the rare occasion you’ll see a starlet who came from nowhere but just happened to be scouted, but for a majority of them you’ll see two common factors pop up. Wealthy parents and/or parents that are in the entertainment industry themselves. The fact that they ended up in the entertainment industry wasn’t luck or chance- they had what most other kids didn’t have. They had opportunity.

There’s no part in Ace Attorney where it’s stated that Matt Engarde came from a wealthy family, or came from a family with roots in the entertainment industry, but it feels like a natural conclusion to me. Considering his wealth, his early rise to stardom, his prowess in the entertainment industry, and all of his flaws- these can all be easily explained under the assumption that he did indeed come from a privileged upbringing such as that.

So, what does this mean for Matt Engarde?

 “Because of the nature of show business, child actors are exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex at an early age. At the same time, young actors must constantly cope with rejection, jealousy, self-scrutiny, obsessive thoughts, and the nonstop need to be perfect.”

“These children are at high risk of becoming emotionally unstable and of becoming drug, alcohol, or sex abusers.”

 … the entertainment industry is rough. It’s a difficult field for an adult, let alone a child. I’d say this would give ample insight into how someone could end up the way that Matt Engarde did.

He’s competitive. Well, of course he is. Growing up in the industry he’d know he’d have to be if he wants to get anywhere. His fellow actors aren’t peers, aren’t potential friends- they’re competition. Everyone dreams of getting the lead role, but only one person can. You have to work to get that lead role. And presuming he grew up in the darker parts of the industry… well, he’d know that not everyone plays fair to get that lead role. So why should he? That’s showbiz, baby.

It isn’t uncommon for child stars to kind of miss out on a normal childhood. They’re working from a young age. Less high school drama and clubs and friends, and more private acting classes and sets and homeschooling on the road… less opportunity to just get to know people under normal circumstances. His entire world would pretty much just be within the industry. All his peers would be those in the entertainment industry with him.

… Which would make everyone else potential competition. And if everybody’s competition, if everyone is potentially willing to do whatever is necessary to ensure their rise to the top… well, then you can’t really trust or get close to anyone, can you? Because if you let your guard down and trust them, well, then they might just use that against you. It’s a weakness. Trusting in others and getting close to others is a weakness. He can’t expose vulnerabilities- it’d put everything he works for in danger.

And so when you mix this warped entertainment industry worldview with a level of privilege, you get someone who just kind of believe this is how the world works. And instead of being faced with consequences for the things he does, he’s instead met with nothing but rewards. As long as everything’s under the radar, everything’s fine. Keep up the public image and you can do whatever you want. No comprehension of real world consequences or the impact of his actions because they never affect him, and they’ve been completely normalized to him. Why would he think twice about it?

So of course he’d be a fucked up individual with no qualms about harming others.

But let’s also discuss the implications about being a person who can’t trust others, who doesn’t allow himself to rely on others, who views closeness and vulnerability as weaknesses and dangers.

Human beings are social creatures by nature. We weren’t designed to be alone, we just weren’t. People break down in isolation, people suffer on their own. Nobody wants to be alone, not really. We seek out communities, we form bonds with one another, we’re stronger together. That’s the one truly beautiful and wonderful thing about humanity- our unbelievable social nature that leads us to do shit like raising tarantulas and wholeheartedly loving them. Human beings didn’t survive and thrive because they were strong and powerful and coldblooded. We thrived because we worked together. We thrive because of our connections, our bonds with other people.

So you can imagine the toll it would take on an individual who believes that they simply can’t get close to another human being. Someone who views everyone around them as a potential threat instead of a potential friend. Someone who thinks they have to control and manipulate the people around them instead of just knowing and being able to trust that those around them have their best interests in mind.

What an absolute fucked up way to live.

It’s like being a parrot who believes that if they make a sound they’ll be hurt. If you know anything about birds, if you’ve ever had a bird, you know what I mean. Birds don’t shut up. They just can’t! There’s no way to train a bird to not be noisy, it’s just the way they are, and it’s hard wired into them. They’re social creatures that engage with each other by screaming all the time. To exist without doing something that is natural to them would be stressful, to say the least.

To be a human deprived of genuine human connection would be agony. And without therapy, you wouldn’t even know why you feel so terrible. It makes sense that someone like that would harbor a lot of pent up emotional turmoil, stress and frustration. And even if they weren’t able to place exactly why they felt that way, it would make sense that those feelings would intensify when they saw others actually being close with one another. Other people doing the thing that you believe you can’t do, seeing people being happy doing so. And so, that anger and hurt and frustration would be aimed at those people. Lashing out.

Because they’re wrong and stupid to do such a thing. Because the world is dangerous- how can they just brazenly trust in another person, so proudly display such a horrendous weakness? They have to be the ones in the wrong. Because it can’t just be him, right? Because then why would it just be him? What’s so wrong with him that there’s no one out there that he can trust? Why can’t he have that? It has to be them who’s wrong. It has to be. To admit otherwise would be world shattering.

You can see shades of his desire for closeness with others if you look closely enough. Even if he denies himself personal relationships, he soaks up the adoration and praise from fans. It’s like the illusion of closeness without the actual intimacy. It’s ultimately hollow, so it could never truly fill the hole, but it’s something. Fame and popularity and approval from the public- that’s his substitute. But it’s not the same.

In his breakdown you see it too. He finally gets slammed with the consequences of his actions, and in those final moments, it’s painfully obvious to himself and everyone around him. He’s alone. He’s completely and totally alone. He’s a man who’s burned every single last one of his bridges, and no matter how much he begs for someone to help him... there’s no one coming to his rescue.  

The closest thing he had to genuine intimacy was most likely with his cat, Shoe. Because cats can’t stab you in the back. Cats don’t think like that.  You feed a cat, you take care of it, and it loves you. A cat isn’t the same treat as a person is. So, while there’s minimal evidence with regards to Matt’s relationship with Shoe, I do like to imagine that Shoe was probably very important to him. A very precious friend indeed.

 And this brings me to answering the final question! (You know... the actual question you asked?)

 3.  What would Matt Engarde be like if he wasn’t bad/harmful?

 Matt Engarde was undoubtably a harmful person, but that doesn’t mean he was devoid of positive traits. If he were actually able to push past his issues, if he were able to allow himself to trust in others and work on forming actual bonds with other people… well, I don’t think he’d change too dramatically.

The biggest difference I’d say would be him actually being close with others, or at the very least trying to. Being more genuine and vulnerable with others, instead of constantly putting up an act and shutting others out. Being honest and trying to trust others instead of default relying on manipulation and control tactics.

Besides his struggles, he’s also a very hardworking man. As horrible as some of his methods were, he was undoubtably a skilled actor, and it takes WORK to get to where he did. He had dreams and ambitions and he had the determination and the skill to achieve them. If he could rely on his hard work and genuine connections instead of manipulations and blackmail… that would be a better Matt.

He has a genuine passion for acting, for performance. I don’t think that would change.

I think he wouldn’t rely on playing dumb as much. He’d be more honest and open. Somewhere between his fakey nice persona and his evil persona, something more real. I don’t think he’d pretend to be as nice, he’d be a bit more openly obnoxious and mean and competitive, at least at first. Which may sound counter-intuitive to being a better person, but it’s being more open and honest about his feelings. You don’t just flip a magic switch and fix your world views. But being honest about how you feel instead of bottling it up inside and pretending all the time makes it a lot easier to make progress, to have your worldview challenged and improved upon.

I think he’d probably always struggle a bit with competitiveness and impulsivity and anger, but with time and appropriate help and guidance, he’d be able to manage it in healthy ways instead of lashing out and letting things spiral out of control.

So I guess overall, I’d say Good Matt would be kind of just a toned down version of regular Matt. Matt With Therapy, basically. Being aware of his issues and working on them, not letting things spiral out of control, actively doing personal damage control and preventing himself from lashing out at others, and working on developing interpersonal connections and bonds with others while being fussy and complaining the entire way. But ultimately being a lot, lot happier and healthier.He’s a kind of childish theater kid, he has a flair for the dramatic, he has a tendency to get caught up in himself and forget about others- I don’t think any of this changes. The main real difference is simply the willingness to think about people other than himself, and to see the value in his relationships with them, and to put the effort into maintaining them. The choice to do better. That’s all.

[alchemist-shizun]

So close feels so afar

Inspired by this post by @draw-your-perfect-world

Word Count: 2,777

Taglist: @ragingdumpsterfiremess

Characters: Roman, Deceit, Remus, Patton (briefly), Logan (briefly), Thomas (briefly) and Virgil

Pairing(s): Let’s say if you squint in one way it could be Roceit, if you squint in another way it could be Prinxiety, but it can all be interpreted as platonic

Warning(s): (Characters are all sympathetic), negative thinking, self-deprecation, self-doubt, swearing (once)

Summary: Thomas is having trouble with his content, it’s gone on for so long that the sides themselves are starting to overwork so much they get overly stressed. Roman has a thought. A bad myriad of thoughts. 

A/N: Before you read, let me warn you that this is written in second person from Roman’s point of view. Soooo, two angsty Roman fics in a row huh? I feel the need to write one in which he only gets all the cuddles and gets appreciated aah pardon me for breaking your hearts, but the opportunity was too good to be passed up. Hope you enjoy!

✾

❝ My heart is twisted, heavy, wrong.It's like it knows I don't belong.

The world is big, lovely to be.And yet, there is no place for me. ❞

It wasn't the first time for you, was it?

« I don't know, guys ... I think we should just discard this whole video. »

The heavy feeling on your chest as you realized that, in the long run, your contribution didn't matter anyway, that your motivation was starting to fade away, letting the hopelessness take its place instead.

That everything you did or tried to do didn't matter or was useless, in any case.

You tried to speak, and god all those eyes on you, the attention you once sought now felt like the unbearable weight of a thousand people's judgment. You felt uneasy in front of the four people you knew and that knew you best.

When Thomas sighed and looked away, no longer paying attention to your words, you began to stagger as you tried to rescue the pieces of your confidence that had started to inevitably break and fall into the pit of your chest, pushing and pulling you towards the heavy void.

Your voice died down and your argument lost its meaning along with its importance.

« Great. This was a complete and utter failure. » Logan sank down faster than any other day. You wondered what had happened to his problem-solving nature and his constant willingness to help in critic situations.

You believed he was ... better at this than you. In fact, you had no idea why you even bothered to give your own input on the topic.

Well, there was always this urge to prove yourself in the eyes of Thomas you'd been having for quite a while, maybe even too long, so much that you grew accustomed to it.

Maybe the problem with that was that, unlike Logan, you felt. You thought that was what was wrong with you all along.

Sure, Patton felt too, but he had dealt with that for such a long time that he knew how to handle it and how to still be reasonable through his thinking process.

Virgil, despite having to manage some of the worst feelings, was also cautious thanks to them, analyzing every possible outcome.

And you? You had your passion. Sure, that was a big part for Thomas's interests, but beyond that?

You felt.

You felt ... like something wasn't right.

Because when Logan disappeared, leaving a somewhat irritated expression as the last image of him, you blamed yourself.

When Virgil shrank in his hoodie and shook his head before sinking down, you blamed yourself.

And when Patton excused himself with a pained look on his face, you blamed yourself yet again.

You grimaced and ignored the knot forming in your throat.

« I'm sorry. » an apology that felt as useful as your ability to solve the situation that same day.

The blaming didn't stop when you sank down before you could hear Thomas's response.

Did you even want to hear it?

You traced the little drawings you had carved on your door years earlier, refusing to get into a room that seemed so foreign; did "Creativity" even fit you anymore? You couldn't remember the last time someone didn't shoot down one of your unreachable ideas.

Like a thunder in the middle of a quiet evening, a memory appeared on your mind and flashed before your eyes: it had happened little after Virgil had fully joined your part of the mindscape. You had agreed that, in any circumstance and for any issue, you would've been there for each other. Always.

You went to Logan first: as we already mentioned before, problem-solving, right? Wrong. Or, at least, in that particular moment.

You were met with a terribly stressed logical side, that you were pretty sure was trying very hard to keep the "logical" part as he paced around his room almost literally shaking with nervousness.

« Not a good time, Roman. » was all you heard when you opened his door with caution. Before you could justify your visit, he excused himself and went back to look like the same messy state his room was in.

Patton was your second choice, but how much of an appropriate idea could it possibly be, when you saw him lying on his bed feeling even worse than you? Your selfless nature rushed over your body and you ended up comforting him instead of trying to open up on your own feelings.

Why did it always have to end up like this? Why couldn't you just talk for once? Patton would have returned all the favors you gave him, you were sure, then why was it so difficult to admit you felt sick of yourself?

You closed the door of his room behind yourself, your heartbeat increasing. You were almost there. But you just couldn't find it in yourself to worsen Patton's already precarious condition with useless musings that would have only broken his heart.

No, you were completely wrong. There was nothing to be concerned about, the only problem was Thomas's enormous lack of content and you had to shove away whatever problem you had.

Now didn't that feel absolutely horrible to think that, Roman? There was no escaping it.

While trying to understand why you were doing this to yourself, you came across Virgil's door.

Your hand hovered over the handle. One twist and it would've been it.

You backed away and decided against it. If Logan and Patton were already feeling horrendous, who knows what you might have encountered.

You looked to your left and your eyes met the dark sides' rooms.

And you wondered, just for a split second, you reflected on that thing. Something you were so afraid to name but that came into your mind so often you almost believed it.

It had started in the imagination, when Remus playfully once insulted you and you hadn't found the will to deny anything.

Then, while by yourself, you started being more critical of your own ideas and works, you sat for hours with a blank stare coming up with nothing but blatant banalities.

Eventually, you slipped up. That one game night, when you agreed when someone called you an idiot. You knew they didn't mean it, but you still felt like you needed to point out that yes, you thought that too, deeply and every single painful moment of your existence.

It was the way Virgil called that. 

Self-deprecating.

He said it was his job and Patton insisted both of you should have stopped saying terrible things about yourselves.

Neither of you did.

That term stuck with you and you weren't able not to wonder if perhaps there was a possibility you could identify with it.

And when the other came, right then, with you staring at the dark sides aisle, that feeling of wrongness increased to the point you couldn't bear staying in the "light" sides corridor anymore.

In a matter of seconds you rushed over to the door of their common room.

When he opened up, expression neutral but just that slight bit surprised, Deceit raised his eyebrows. « Well? » 

« Self-doubt. » there it was. 

« What? » 

« There's been a mistake. » you tried again, you couldn't follow your breathing pace anymore. « We need to switch places. »

« Switch- I'm not following you. »

« I am self-doubt.»

« Huh? »

« You're self preservance. »

« I'm flattered and all by this enchanting game of words, but I really think you should get some rest. Did Remus hit your head again? I told him to refrain from that. »

You shook your head visibly and a heavy sensation rose in your chest. Your shaky hands gently pushed him back and you let yourself into the room. « You don't understand. »

Your eyes searched for one thing only. One person only.

Remus had propped himself up on his elbows, previously lying on the couch in the, you believed, most normal position you had ever seen him.

You approached him, all the eyes were on you just like moments before, and you were sure you were also metaphorically reconnecting with his dark nature. Or was it really dark? Didn't you make that up?

While Remus's face showed veiled concern, you sat on the floor in front of the armrest. He sat up and looked down on your bleak self, an eyebrow slightly raised.

With your chin buried in your crossed arms on the armrest, you felt the urge to break down to anyone that would just finally, finally and simply listen.

And you didn't even know where to start.

« You were right. » Deceit cautiously came close as you spoke. You noticed him, with the corner of your eye, take a seat on a chair next to you, leaning toward the scene. « I'm just like you. Not worlds apart, nowhere on opposite spectrums. »

Remus shook his head. « What are you talking about? » he whispered, more like a reprimand than a question.

You couldn't help but insist, your eyes started to burn and you realized you were blinking back tears. « You know what I mean. »

Oh, but when did anyone, actually? So gone and lost, so miserable you refrained from ever believing in the others' understanding.

« It just took me longer to come to terms with it. Too long. And now I've messed it up because it's too late to fix this, to fix me. »

« Ro- »

« No! » you buried your face in your arms, nose pressing on soft material. Deep inside, you knew you did that only to suppress the fact that you were on the verge of crying, of showing yourself weak and incapable to get back up on your own. « I am not Creativity! » but you knew hiding it didn't have a meaning anymore.

Your head shot back up and you stared at your brother with a tear-stained face. « You are. More than me. »

« You're saying I should replace you? » Remus's voice sounded offended. No, almost ... hurt.

You nodded, holding your breath to refrain the flood of seemingly nonsensical words from flowing out of your mouth. Or, at least, you tried to do that.

« It's that- » you shuddered. « I haven't been productive in forever, and you're always here having different ideas every single day. »

« My ideas are- »

« It's obvious you're better at this than I am. » you looked down and allowed one terrible thought in your mind. You believed, clouded by your own insecurities, that maybe he should have taken your place. « I should just stay here with you. »

« Don't say that. » Remus got up, his voice a mixture of mortification and annoyance. As he made his way to his room, you couldn't have known how the thought actually completed his sentence. Don't get my hopes up.

You slumped back from the armrest and lowered your head so that you couldn't notice Deceit finally standing in front of you and offering you a hand to get back on your feet.

You looked up.

« I know everyone tells you to be wary of me, but can you trust me this once at least? »

You took his hand.

In a matter of seconds, both of you were sitting on the couch, trying to sort out the thoughts that were piling up in your head.

« I don't think I belong with them. » Deceit had asked you to give voice to your troubles. « I've been the least useful and now Thomas is barely creating content or having ideas. I should be the confident one, I should be comforting him while all I do is ditch everything that comes to my mind. »

« And how does that make you feel? »

« Worthless. » you immediately blurted out. « Futile. Stupid. A waste of space. » the words kept coming in an overflowing self-deprecating chaos. « And the others see it, too. »

Deceit gave you a questioning look and you immediately felt like you said something wrong. « You haven't confronted them about this? »

« It's unimportant. It's simply a fact. They're all too stressed over the issue Thomas is having. »

« They're? You're not including yourself, why? »

« How can I be stressed over something when I'm doing nothing for it? »

The look came again, but this time you felt like he was trying to scan your soul by solely staring in your eyes. You didn't know how much time had passed before he spoke again, but you could have sworn that, for a moment, nothing else around you existed.

« Roman, have you ever thought that you feeling this way might be the cause of Thomas not being productive? »

This time, the confused expression landed on your face. How could that be? No, definitely not. That was not the case. He probably meant that they should get rid of him since he was causing so much trouble, he-

« You've already seen how our behaviour can affect him drastically. If you feel like that, you might be preventing yourself from using your powers fully, thinking it's useless to even try, and thus you're limiting yourself. »

« ... And in doing so I'm limiting Thomas. »

Deceit nodded with the same energy of a person that finally got their point across, the relief and satisfaction of someone that was able to make their interlocutor understand an important topic after hundreds of tries at explaining.

« You are a terrible liar, and I can't believe they haven't realized this yet, but I can't also change the fact that you're an astounding actor. » he sighed, but that line left a sad smile on your lips.

« I'm a man of multiple talents. »

« Also, you don't have to belong anywhere, Roman. Having you here, on a rough time for Thomas, though, I don't believe it would be ideal. » his gaze had fallen to the floor before his voice turned lower. « We're all trying to look out for him, you know. »

That was when your look turned softer and you understood. You started wondering things that weren't meant to be brought up just yet, but that might have been troubling him for a while.

As you were looking for the right thing to say, Deceit gestured for you to follow him to the door he then opened as soon as he was close enough. Out of it, the corridor to the others' and your own rooms.

« Go and tell them. You might spare us some more agonizing days before they figure it out on their own. »

One step out of the room, and you didn't even get the chance to thank him. The door closed behind yourself so quickly you almost believed you had dreamt the entire conversation.

With no time to process it all at once, another figure poke out of a door and pulled you into yet another dialogue.

« Ro? » Virgil rubbed at his eyes sleepily. « What are you doing over there? » there was no accusing undertone, just genuine curiosity. Then again, it might have been the sleepiness, you told yourself.

You approached him. « Just venting. »

« To Deceit? » still no complaining.

« He seemed to be the only one available. »

Virgil nodded, then you could have sworn you had seen a faint nostalgic smile curve his lips. « Good choice. »

« Huh- »

« Why didn't you come to me, again? »

« You were sleeping. »

His mouth, this time, twisted into something more somber. « Roman,» he called, lifting up his gaze. « When I said you could come to me when you needed it, I meant I could make an exception on executing you if you were to wake me up. »

And you didn't know if it was for Deceit's comfort earlier, for Virgil's softer voice or for the general hopefulness you finally regained after seeing a flicker of light coming from the end of the tunnel of your insecurities, but you found yourself with your arms wrapped around his chest.

« Oof- alright. » he patted your shoulders a couple of times. « Come on, big guy, let's get the others. I woke up from a three-hour nap and apparently all my problems haven't been solved by some kind of deity yet, so I think we deserve a fucking break. »

You allowed yourself to smile and, this time, you meant it.

« We truly do. »

[thememcry]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

My muse is:   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent ( potentially ) / fandomless

Is your character popular in the fandom?  YES / NO. 

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. (apparently there are youtube comments circulating about how boring or weak aerith is. if an explanation needs be provided for how strong of a woman, character, and fighter she is in her own regard then the point of the character is missed entirely.)

Are they underrated?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant to the main story?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant to the main character?  YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

Are they widely known in their world?  YES / NO.  (the big baddies know of her, the little baddies know to look for her and the heroes just learned of why she’s important).

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL.

How strictly do you follow canon?

      it depends entirely on the person / character i’m writing and what verse they’re in. when someone approaches me and doesn’t specify a verse i give them main verse (ff7r) and follow canon as closely as i’d like. but most of my threads diverge from canon for exploration or other purposes. i’m not concerned with how close to canon my aerith is ------obviously i’d like people to hear her voice when i have her speak, or see her performing the actions i have her commit to but i’d also like this interpretation to be my own. so when someone reads a piece of my writing they say oh yes, that’s kay’s aerith definitely.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutual.  

      i could make an entire post about all of the things i love about aerith gainsborough on its own, so i’ll try not to let this be too rambly.

      she is such a three-dimensional character and she always has been. people expect just to meet the damsel in distress, to rely on cloud and company to help her out at every twist and turn. square even did a good job selling her appearance: soft pinks, gentle features, and when she was given a voice actor the first few times they always went the route of someone who had a lighter lilt. to the first glance she is very much all of those things. except it’s not all she is.

      aerith wears masks to cover the horrendous things that happened to her as a child: experimentation, the shocking loss of her mother after escaping it, crushing loneliness, an awareness that she was different and nobody around who understood the properties of that difference to explain it to her in a way that didn’t terrify her. she heard the planet, could tell when people passed away and rejoined the lifestream, surrounded by all of these voices yet so fucking alone. and did she let it make her bitter? did she become angry or cold, jaded or cruel? no. aerith is kind and giving without being too self-sacrificing and without making her boring. she’s not as innocent as people are made to believe.

      look at her first interactions with cloud. she flirts mercilessly with him, and then you discover she did it to zack, too. she’s not afraid to express herself in any fashion and she’s unapologetic about how forward and positive she is. despite all of the shitty things that happened to her, she’s still all of these great things. she’s scrappy, she can be a brat (ask the turks!) and she blooms under the cover of oppression that she lives. sure, she’s in a beautiful house with a loving mother figure but she’s in the slums and she’s being watched constantly by some part of the company that wants to see her dissected or worse.

      and she’s divine. no, literally. of course it takes her death for the realization of that divinity to really be understood by the fan base and even by her own party, but once aerith dies she becomes an actual deity. it’s sad that you don’t get her in your party any more but it’s obvious how much she affected everyone she worked with (and even those she didn’t). they spend the rest of the game avenging her, they spend the rest of the game explaining their grief over her loss, promising her death won’t be in vain. and once that’s done? there’s an entire movie where cloud deals with his grief over everything, but mainly his self-appointed guilt over her death. as if he could have changed it? i mentioned to @seraphicwiing​ in a conversation (an au one) about sephiroth and aerith ------he didn’t kill or break her. he gifted her divinity.

      so this sweet flower girl goes from a first appearance damsel in distress to an actual conduit of the planet, watching over her friends and everyone else from the spiritual plane of it. controlling the lifestream itself to rise up and crush back meteor.

      if you don’t like her by this point, it’s a lost cause. honestly, just go play pacman or something.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).  

      maybe strong female leads aren’t your cup of tea? perhaps you really wanted aerith to maintain her softness and have none of the bite or edge that i argue make her interesting?

      some people want a strong woman to be something like paine in ffx-2, or lightning in ffxiii, or even lulu in ffx itself ... dark and perhaps a bit brooding, angry with someone or something. they can be gentle but they’re mostly a razor sharp edge threatening to slice anyone who tries to get close to them. aerith is arguably a hot take on the stronger female leads ... even compared to tifa. you don’t doubt that a woman who fights with her fists is a tough, bad bitch ... but aerith isn’t physically strong. she’s the image of a princess honestly and that’s just not what some people want to see or deal with.

      arguably her personality can come off a bit strong. she’s snarky and, as i said, a tease. she can be bratty from time to time and that can absolutely be read as irritating, especially to someone whose looking for negative personality traits to focus on at a first glance.

      and a lot of people just see her as a love interest to cloud. and she is, i won’t deny that. it’s been further addressed in the remake with her dream sequence that cloud absolutely has feelings for her. it dredges up the age-old argument from 1997 of: tifa or aerith. why does it have to be or? why can’t he love them both in different ways? or the same way? it’s not like aerith has a lot of time to be the love interest, anyway. we all know how disc 1 ended, by this point.

      perhaps people see her end-game divinity as a deus-ex mechanic. sure, it kind of it. but the game never hid its intentions of why aerith was there. she was always special, we just didn’t know how. she always had holy, we just didn’t know what it meant at the time. but it does seem a bit convenient that right as the meteor is going to crush midgar ------here comes the lifestream, holding it back so holy can stop it! wow, amazing! darn that aerith and her connection to the planet. how awful. maybe cloud could have just braver’d it.

What inspired you to rp your muse?  

      i love her. it’s just that simple. she’s so complex and so different from other characters i tend to gravitate toward. she has a darkness but she’s good, genuinely. i usually go for people who are deeply seeded in some kind of trauma, or are just generally a piece of shit. and aerith certainly has her trauma, but she’s risen above it. she chooses to live her life as much as she can before the ultimate doom clock ticks to 0, you know?

      i admire her beauty. not just her physical beauty (and she is), but the beauty of her as a person. i wish i could be as endlessly positive as she is, even faced against such awful odds. i wish i could be the kind of person who surrounds themselves with people who love them, despite their flaws. but i am very much the opposite of aerith.

      i consider myself endlessly lucky to be a mouthpiece of some kind of version of her. this is a character i’ve had a connection to since i was like, 7 or 9 (and i’m 30 now). the very fact that i get to log in every day and express some form of this wonderful character keeps me connected to her. she has a loud voice in my head, and i think she always had. i think that remake just re-lit the flame for her.

      i wrote her a long time ago, during myspace rp days. but we all know how myspace ended. so i choose to write her now because it feels right. and i really do enjoy having someone who shines so brightly in my head.

What keeps your inspiration going?  

      the same as everyone else, i think: music, clips of the character, art of her ... but mostly? my writing partners. i wouldn’t be anywhere without the people in this site who come to me every day with an interest in my interpretation of aerith. i never expected so many lovely humans to want to see what i can do with her. but i have people dm’ing me on discord every day with ideas or thoughts, with musings or what-if’s ... and it really just keeps this muse so alive for me.

      even though i have a backlog of drafts and inbox things to answer, i can know that they will get done ... it’s just up to me as a human to write things out.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO. 

Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO.

Do you sometimes write drabbles?  YES / NO.  (i’d prefer to write out a reply to a solo drabble).

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO. 

Are you confident in your portrayal?   YES / NO. 

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO.

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO.

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?

      in the proper context. i don’t want someone coming on here and telling me i play aerith wrong because it’s not what she would do canon. that’s cool, i don’t write her strictly canon. but if i’m having doubts and i ask for the feedback, i’m open to it.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character?  

      always. i am 100% always accepting development questions.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?  

      nope. i don’t care if you agree with my headcanons or not. i’m sure there are people who don’t like that i have a ship with a sephiroth, or a reeve, or that i’ve had her mess around with rufus or biggs. i’m sure there are people who despise the way i make her speak to people ... and that’s fine. they’re allowed to. but this is my interpretation of aerith and so far i’m loving everything that i’ve gotten to do with her. especially those things that include character building with others.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?

      they’re allowed to disagree. they’re also not beholden to follow me. i won’t be upset if they unfollow me. it’s their comfort, after all. and i’d rather spend time on here enjoying myself than either having someone voice their dislike of my interpretation or get vocal about how they’re uncomfortable.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?  

      people have really hated aerith since 1997. they’re allowed to have their silly opinions of her. and i’m allowed not to entertain them.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?  

      please do. i’m human and i make mistakes. i’d love to fix them.

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?  

      yes, but i’ve had people mention that i seem a little unapproachable. please approach me. if you want to write with me let me know. if you want to chat ooc with me talk to me. i promise i’m an absolute dimwit on my side of the screen. i’m spacy but i try to be as nice and welcoming as possible. somehow i’ve conned a few friends out of this rpc already with my idiocy, so please please please come chat with me.

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

[alxndre-0001]

Black Mirror Episode Impressions

So I got into watching the series a little before classes begun and here are some thoughts:

Warning: If you don’t like a non-rainbow image of people,then do not proceed.

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

Fascination over other people’s misery

Aka social voyeurism, our tendency to find satisfaction in other people’s scandal. I feel like the sex with the pig wasn’t the voyeuristic act itself, it is  a stand-in for something far more insidious and cruel, our tendency to fascinate over the humiliation of other people. 

On how public opinion shapes political and personal events

Note how PM Callow was forced to fuck the pig not because of any apparent security reasons to save the princess but it was ultimately the social pressure, which changed overwhelmingly after the finger was cut, that drove him on. The social pressure which was misinformed since the netizens who clamored for it did not really understand the problem behind closed lines. They merely relied on media which was twisted to cater to sensationalism and people’s natural love for anything scandalous. In effect, PM Callow fucked the pig.

But it wasn’t only that event which was shaped by public opinion, I think the suicide of the artist/ kidnapper was also egged on by public opinion that is if we assume that he did all of that to prove a point, like a social experiment that people will forget about the kidnapping if they are presented with something as horrendous as fucking a pig. His point having been proven, his predictions were confirmed that people are truly fucking terrible.  And it depressed him so bad enough to kill himself. But this theory backfires if we assume that he planned everything out and knew what was going to happen down to the very last detail. The other reason for his suicide, for me, and which I think is more far fetched is that upon seeing the pig fucking on the telly, he actually participated in the hypocrisy of the masses which he dared to expose. The artist, if I remember correctly, actually sat and watched Callow as he fucked the pig, if he did know his plan was going to work anyway, why sit and revel in the disgusting horrowshow? Perhaps he found himself fascinated by the scandal as well? I don’t know but the artist’s suicide is the most baffling angle in the episode for me.

Public opinion causes movement both on a social and personal scale. 

Our words have an impact to shape reality, if Callow was not pressured to fuck the pig, he wouldn’t have had. But one cut finger later, and the tides of the masses changed.

But there is also an interesting angle about the performance art of the artist. If the whole pig fucking thing was meant to be taken as an art work, then the artist’s statement makes a lot of sense. Often in art, even in literature, art works with controversial value (think Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Egon Schiele’s artworks, Balthus with Therese, Dreaming) often become sensational because of the controversy they generate. The masses no longer see the whole point of the artwork. In Lolita for example, the people pounced on the pedophilia and incest plot of the book when all Nabokov really wanted to portray was something else entirely, that Humbert was a bad man and that he hopes readers should not be easily taken in by the poetic words of a madman and essentially an unreliable narrator. But the merit of Lolita as an artwork was reduced to its shock value, the entertainment which people consume.  

Similarly, in this episode, the artist wanted to send the message: Look beyond the entertainment to see something far more important (i.e look beyond Callow’s sex with a pig to see that the Princess was indeed freed). But of course, humanity being the disappointing lot that we are, glued our eyes to the pig fucking. I started to realize what a truly fantastic show BM is from this point on because it did not only criticque the people who watched the pig fucking and literally dropped everything they were doing to do just that. It also criticqued US, the audience that watched the episode itself. I admit that while the pig fucking was going on, I wasn’t even thinking about the princess and whether she was alive. I was only absorbed by the scandalous thing happening right before me. Who am I to criticize the citizens when I am just like them? This is the self-awareness that sets apart this episode from the others, I guess. It was like watching a microcosm of real life, the ultimate Black fucking Mirror – like looking at yourself in a mirror only to find that your image has been darkened by so much filth, our darkest tendencies being handed to us in one show. Great first episode, by the way, Brooker.

The fact that two months after the pig fucking, the whole thing was forgotten, people moved on with their lives which scares me tbh. This only goes to show that we have become desensitized with the sensationalism and violence that goes on in the real world as it is shown almost daily whether in newspapers or television. Reminds me of what Susan Sontag said in her work, “Regarding the Pain of Others” where she cites the influx of violence and brutality in television as having altered the way we empathize about real people and real world events. The word is desensitization. And it is true, when we reduce real events into mere forms of entertainment, we dilute their gravity as events with consequences on real people.

It was believed by the French Enlightenment thinkers that distance ( a child from UK may not empathize with an enslaved child in a Boko Haram situation  because of geographical constraints) and time (zeitgest, generational gap) delays our moral response. The distance in this episode and in real life as well is the technology. The screens in our televisions and computers, create a distance which delays and frustrates our ability to protest to morally objectionable acts and to truly connect with each other. Or we may protest, but it is fleeting or hollow – we may protest that there is child slavery in Nigeria but it stops there, we move on. Take the people at the pub for example, the ones holding their mugs of beer anticipating Callow’s humiliation, acting as if what was about to happen was the fucking Superbowl, they look as if Callow was not a person, like Callow was not even one of them. Nobody really thought about the humiliation Callow could be feeling at that very instant. They did, however manage to feel some form of sympathy for him midway but sympathy is not empathy much less compassion. Someone even said feeling sorry for somebody can be a mere recognition of the fact that you’re doing so much better than the other person.

WHITE CHRISTMAS

Does existence need to have a body? Or is it the mind that gives existence to a person?

Are the cookies an extension of the person or are they a different entity from the person himself herself? I find it odd because they can be given punishment although they do not cause any effect to the original as in Joe’s case. If the purpose was to punish then necessarily, the cookie should have been considered a different entity but still an extension of the original, forming part of the original, even if it feels like a simulation of the real us. 

Is it just the real person who can be punished? Who knows in the future, a simulation of us can also be punished. Akin to our social media selves, in a sense the persona we have in social media are mirrors, mere shadows of our real selves, just like cookies, they are a fragment of ourselves. Our online personas or cookies can be punished as well despite them just abstracts of us when we are subject to online humiliation, criticism, our online selves can be manipulated as well by companies who profit from it, like Smartintelligence.

In the very last scene, the people gave Joe’s cookie an existence enough to consider its confession as legally binding to convict a person. They did not treat it as mere evidence but something that could speak for itself, one woman even saying in the effect that Joe need not talk as the cookie already talked for him. Also the part where Joe’s cookie was subjected to repeated punishment. If it was considered as punishment, then necessarily, one must consider his cookie as existent in the first place? No one can punish a non existence after all.

Matt’s ending was fitting, like “a taste of his own medicine” kind of thing, pretty ironic in my opinion because in the first scene with the cookie of the woman, he controlled the cookie, forcing it to submit to whatever he wanted. But in the ending scene, he was deprived of his own existence, he was made invisible because he was basically a non-person, as if he does not really exist. It’s also kind of snarky how in the first few scenes, he said that people did not want to feel invisible and yet that was exactly what happened to him. In a sense, he is just like the cookie of the woman, he is deprived an existence of his own through the conditions imposed on his freedom by the prison authorities. Notice that in both cases, their existence are conditional, the woman’s cookie to the whims of Matt, Matt is totally blocked from anyone through the whims of the the prison officials or whatever they are called. Since they have no freedom on their own, we can say they are tools, they do not exist.

Which also reminds me of one idea which goes like this: a self cannot be created without others. Does Matt still exist when others are totally effaced in/from his life? How can he have a self(existence) when he could no longer jnteract with others? I feel like Matt’s punishment is even more cruel that that of Joe’s

Torture can also be of different forms

Will it be ethical if we create versions of ourselves in the future without giving them the same rights as we do have? Are copies of us considered as humans?

The similarity in White Bear where there was some sort of a cycle of punishment. I find it interesting, the repetitive nature of punishments to highlight their meaninglessness and banality.

WHITE BEAR

Public persecution through social media or the internet.

Our particular inclination to fascinate on other people’s misery.

“Are the sound waves making them behave like that?”

“Maybe they’ve always been that way, they just needed the rules to change.” 

Well, interesting to note because technology (the white bear radio waves) are mere enablers of our innate tendencies to enjoy other people’s misery, be it in social media or otherwise.

Using the excuse of serving justice as a veil for such tendencies, when in truth we become even more brutal than the people we condemn. Ironic that we condemn rapists, murderers, terrorists, people who dehumanize others but in our condemnation, we have dehumanized such people as well.

Social media to ventilate social outrage which becomes quite easily disproportionate. It becomes a place to condemn people.

Shockingly unfair that Victoria did not know what she was being accused of, yet people do not really point this out. Her lack of knowledge about her alleged crimes or the fact that she was an accused in the first place makes this episode almost Kafkaesque ala The Trial, although later on we do know what she is accused of. Is it ethical in the first place to condemn a woman who has no idea what she is being accused of? Is justice merely carrying out the punishment or does it also concern giving a fair trial to a person?

The performative nature of social media in expressing social outrage, in fact everything in this episode feels like a performance. The participation of the viewers, the whole structure of the show hinges on performance, the value of entertainment even to the detriment and humiliation of very real people. Our humiliation  becomes a commodity for people to consume.

On the punishment of Victoria It is cruel because she is made to relive the humiliation several times and yet her memory is erased every single time. If the point of the punishment is to reform Victoria (assuming it really is) then why not let her reform on her own and understand the consequences of her actions? This is where the intent of the punishment is revealed— the punishment means nothing, it is not meant to reform any criminal or prevent any form of future criminality, it is merely a performance after all. It is absolutely meaningless. I wonder if our criminal justice system operates on the same principle – the meaninglessness of punishment which is fundamentally cruel because it completely dehumanizes the accused.

FIFTEEN MILLION MERITS

The myth of meritocracy 

Notice how the bikers are basically given the false hope that they could escape their monotonous daily lives if they could only earn enough credits to buy a ticket to enter Hot Shot and have a chance to elevate their status in society. One finally gets the credits, buys a ticket to HotShot, however this is where the myth falls apart. Notice how Abi, basically within the first few minutes that she got in the rehearsal room was already asked to go on stage, on the ground, as we later learn that she was attractive. She did not even get to sing in the rehearsal room the judges barely considered her singing voice despite her having the best voice thus far in the competition or something like that according to one judge. One of the girls in the rehearsal room was practically complaining that dhe had been singing for a week yet Abi gets scouted first, the girl who just stepped inside the room like five minutes ago. Notice also that Bing was scouted on the basis that he looked “ethnic”. Both Abi and Bing’s talents, merits or what have yous flew off the window the moment their physical qualities became the basis for letting them go on stage. What happened to good old talent and skill?

On the “ethnic” comment, I find it quite racist, as it feels like it referenced how white people exoticize Black people.

Meritocracy is a lie because in this episode, one’s hardwork and talents did not become the reason for how Abi and Bing escaped the bike room. Abi got out because she was hot and perfect for porn, her singing was discarded. Bing on the other hand, got out because he sold out. It wasnt his talent that made him leave the biking room, it was the shock value of his dissent which appealed to the judges and the masses and not his prepared dance.

Bing is a tragic anti hero because unlike Abi who had compliance juice which coerced her to porn, Bing had none and consented fully to his own exploitation. He was adamant about the hypocrisy of consumerism, the endemic classism in that world, capitalism and so on. However, the moment he benefited from the system that actively exploits others including himself, he sold out. He took the benefit and forgot the cause. This is not very different from people who are fully aware how a system creates inequality to others, but because of the advantage they acquire from such system, they refuse to question the status quo. In Bing’s case, he pretends to criticque the system with his shard of glass, but it is a hollow dissent, it’s all just fashion, there is no conviction or real belief to it, at least no longer.

On the nature of exploitation

 The reason Bing went to the show was his rage against the exploitation that the system were committing against basically everyone. But he eventually played by the system which he used to critique.  Which brings the question, is Bing still exploited? He who has actively consented to the exploitation of the system just so he could live a better life? Will his consent erase the exploitative nature of the deal he got?

An example: are employees who are basically treated like slaves, no wages, no rights no nothing, any different from a class of employees who are given high bonuses, plenty of benefits but are not allowed to unionize or bargain with their employers although they willingly disregard such abuses because of the benefits they receive? I think they’re both exploited just on different levels. Just because one receives benefits from an exploitative system, does not mean they are no longer exploited, exploitation does not need to be total for it to be exploitation. Just because something is wrapped in something pretty, does not mean it is good.

Similarly, Bing’s participation in that very same system, makes him exploited despite his better life and richer status. He only got out of s smaller box to go to a bigger box, and yet the reality of the exploitation still remains, the system still fucks him over, he hasnt really gotten out. In fact, this time it’s worse, the system has profited from his outrage, the only thing which sustained him and which remained real and authentic to him. He laments during his performance that the system makes everything real into the artificial shit it sells to the masses. But that’s exactly what he became in the end, he was a COMMODITY, his individuality as a person was reduced to nothing but consumption for the audience. And this is why he is an anti hero. Imo

Which makes the ending even sadder. Bing looks out on a seemingly real landscape view, drinks a fresh juice from a jug very different from the vending machine crap he used to get before, and despite the debate on whether the view was real or simulated, one wonders still that Bing got his new, “authentic” lifestyle from reducing his individuality as a commodity, from bare exploitation of the system which he now participates, so are they real, afterall? One musician said, is something beautiful if it came from ugliness? Is something authentic if it came from exploitation?

Commentary on how capitalism exploits what is authentic and real to something  that can be consumed or basically, a product. Capitalism operates on taking advantage of other people as well as anything real and genuine in this world, making a product out of all of them. In this way, capitalism objectifies people ( as in the way Abi was reduced to her beauty and entertainment value for porn), it is a system that slowly dehumanizes the worth of a person. And yet, the masses love it,we love objectifying people for our benefit, to entertain us etcetera etcetera. I feel like the reference in the episode to reality talent shows was not very accurate but still a good one. I would have liked it if the producers used a more relevant kind of reality show which operates on other people’s drama (Keeping up with the Kardashians, Jersey Shore and basically other shows that thrive on scandal) because it much likely depicts our tendency to make entertainment of other people’s lives. Where does one draw the line? Reality tv has been such a part of us and though I don’t particularly enjoy them because of the sheer and blatant script behind their “real” interactions, but I also don’t know. Television and the internet has become such a ubiquitous media form that people can hardly be blamed for failing to assess the kind of entertainment they consume.  But just a quick snarky comment, the Kardashians are just like Bing, they play by the system,of course they have amassed an empire out of it, but still doesnt change the reality that they are a product of the system, the system that thrives on this exploitation.  

Again, what an interesting episode. I love episodes that analyze our relationship with media and the entertainment we consume because as much as we’d like to believe television and media are just for fun, they aren’t. In fact, I think media has the most insidious kind of influence on anyone, and also most subtle because some references and statements can be jacketed into harmless, good fun. Again this echoes, at least for me, the message in The National Anthem , that through media and television we create a distance between one another, delaying our moral response to things which may be otherwise exploitative.

SHUT UP AND DANCE

The hypocrisy of vigilante  justice. The people in Shut Up and Dance had their own brand of justice which involves taking the law into their own hands. But in doing so they resort to highly questionable methods such as coercing the criminals into various other crimes.  I feel like this kind of meting out a penalty in the name of “justice” is fatal for several reasons. One, this encourages a sort of moral superiority exercised without individual responsibility. Note that the hackers were the ones who can determine who were the criminals to be punished and for what punishment they should be given in relation to the seriousness of their crimes, what then was the basis for their standard of someone committing a wrong?  When justice is determined by a select few, it becomes no justice at all and opens the gates for abuses. The hackers could easily base the misdeeds of their victims on purely arbitrary grounds and subject anyone, even on the flimsiest misconducts into excessive punishments.

Conscience as the best judge The hackers code of justice seems not to be based on the law, the hackers did not after all say Kenny and the rest committed violations of the law, instead they operate by relying on the pressure created by personal conscience. Note that the hackers mainly blackmailed the victims to a release of the incriminating videos or whatever, however the victims were driven with fear knowing that what they did had moral consequences whether to their reputation or families.

The hackers were clever not because they laid out almost unexpected traps but because they force the victims to face their own conscience, to take individual responsibility for their actions, that which they believed they were protected from because all their crimes or misdeeds were done in anonymity, in secrecy. The conscience being a powerful motivator, the hackers were very subtle in their coercion,  as they did not even have to directly present the horrific effects in the even the videos or objects get leaked to the public.

Excessive punishments

This episode together with White Bear, White Christmas and Hated in a Nation all deal with how punishments are given and considered.  Note how the structure of the narrative are different for White Bear, White Christmas, Shut Up and Dance. In these episodes, the audience is hidden from the fact that the main protagonists are criminals convicted for some crimes ( Victoria with child murder, Kenny for child porn, Joe with murder???). In fact, the stories are told in a way as if to humanize the criminals as they were later on subjected to horrific punishment after the audience is made privy that they indeed committed some horrible thing. Unlike in Hated in a Nation, the narrative was pretty upfront that the targeted individuals were somehow already publicly condemned albeit for very slight misconducts and or misinterpreted, blown out of proportion statements.

I suspect there is one very good reason for doing so. In all these episodes, a very crucial theme presented was the question of whether excessive punishment even for the worst criminals (Victoria, Kenny) was ethical. Note that social punishment being one of the main premise, the writers of Black Mirror must have realized that for us to look at  punishment as immoral and inhuman, we need to look at it objectively without the crimes committed by Kenny and Victoria being factored in. Black Mirror seems to be saying this kind of excessive punishment is immoral and inhuman and cruel in all instances whether done upon a guilty or innocent person. Suppose in the very beginning of White Bear, we already learned that Victoria helped and watched on as a child was being murdered by her boyfriend, would that have changed the way we looked at how she was basically maltreated the entire time? Knowing our tendency to believe that the very worst criminals deserve the worse treatment, I bet many people would say Victoria being tortured in such manner was justified. In fact, there was a survey online about whether she deserved her lot and unsurprisingly, majority believed she truly had it coming (compare it if Victoria was perfectly innocent). For them, it was justified because she’s an absolute scum from the lowest depths of misery and so she must be horribly treated. But because the narrative was structured in a way that we see Victoria and Kenny as humans first before criminals, we were forced to reconsider the torture and social humiliation done upon their person. We think, “Wait up, was it really right, what they did to these two?”. If we knew them as criminals first, we would have responded differently, that Victoria and Kenny deserve even more beating and cruelty. But such thinking is deeply flawed. THIS KIND OF PUNISHMENT IS WRONG IN ALL INSTANCES WHETHER DONE UPON A GUILTY OR INNOCENT PERSON. Black Mirror is saying to judge the wrongness of an act, we must look at the act itself and not the person who committed the act. The wrongness of an act does not change just because it is being done upon a terrible person. To think otherwise, to believe that the wrongness of an act is relative to the person who did it means to have a partial idea of justice, that justice is kinder only to those who are infallible, those who have never done any mistake, those who possess no flaws. Criminals after all, have rights and in no way I am saying they should be exempt from the law. By all means, jail those menaces but give them their due.

See how narrative structure can be so powerful? In the beginning, we are fooled that Kenny and Victoria are perfectly fine individuals who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Tabula rasas, no stains. Of course, the audience would have a deep sense of injustice, I dont know about anyone, but I did with Kenny, because I wrongfully believed he was a minor ( lol the actor looked so young) and looked utterly horrified for something so innocent such as jacking off in-front of a camera, like big fucking deal, right? It isn’t a crime, surely. And yet when the plot twist was subtly but beautifully delivered at the end, I was forced to face the moral ambiguity of the whole situation. Was it wrong to coerce Kenny to commit more crimes and kill another person? Was it wrong for the hackers to release the video and not have kept the end of the deal? Or was it perfectly justified because Kenny was a fucking pedophile and just imagine the children in those photos who are fucking jacked off by some person? And this is the true gift of Black Mirror, to place us at morally ambiguous points about our use of technology to justify our transgressions against other people. Moral ambiguity is the best way to present satire and commentary without the show becoming preachy about some moral code, Black Mirror allows for the audience to think for what they may but first consider the consequences.

I see this all the time especially with criminals of heinous crimes, social media outrage pours on, often wishing ill to such people. And though I understand and empathize with the outrage, and though social media outrage has no substantial effect to the meting out of the final punishment, we cannot deny that we are guilty to the thinking that cruel acts are justified when done to cruel persons. We have the tendency to view justice as some sort of a thing which can be deserved only by good people and not those who have failed morally or otherwise, in some way. That’s why we have right to due process, why we still give fair trial to an accused even if his case is so damning, precisely because we recognize that justice is for everyone.

Having said that, I think Kenny needs to go to jail and FAST however he did not deserve all the psychological torture and manipulation. Aside from those other acts he did unwillingly, his punishment should only concern that for the child porn however he was driven to commit robbery and even had to undergo having to kill someone. The punishment was severely disproportionate from the crime he was supposedly being judged for. We live in a society with such a flawed sense of justice.

Black Mirror as a whole

And yet the most persistent message so far by Black Mirror, is that try as we may to criticize the people in their universe, we are very much part of that world. The ridiculous people of the UK, the audience in Hot Shot, hell, by watching the show itself – which is in an entertainment form, we can become complicit to the exploitation in media. In fact, I noticed how many BM episodes, show the very performative side of the internet and essentially of humanity– everything is a performance, there is an actor, and there is the audience who benefits from the show.

Shut up and Dance for example reminds me of a puppeteer show, Kenny and Hector and several others, dance to the music of the hackers, their actions are controlled as if with strings in a puppet show. Also the title itself shut up and dance, maybe it’s a song, but we know someone else is shutting them up, making them mere puppets of the show. Also, the ending music which was truly haunting and disturbing, was one of-my favorite songs during high school. It is called Exit Music by Radiohead which was supposedly to be used in a Romeo and Juliette movie, the one with Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, a story based on a play.

In Nosedive, Lacie was unhealthily obsessed with putting up a show for everyone to give her the social approval and validation she needed to hike up her ratings. The technology in their world also exploits this need to feel seen, to feel important, to feel that one matters despite it being provisional, the rating system system presents a very classist way of categorizing people based on the social ratings given by just about anybody.

In White Bear, Victoria was subjected to a series of humiliations and brutal attacks only to realize that what she went through was a simulation of the kidnapping and murder to a child she committed with her boyfriend. She was revealed into an audience, who enjoyed each and every instance of her suffering and I believe they even paid for the show? Though she is a criminal, was it really justified, the performance derived from someone’s misery?

Some people said it was an amusement park, like a carnival. In fact, now that I think about it, Victoria does feel like a caged animal, the whole town is her whole cage. The people who take pictures of her down the road resemble onlookers in a carnival show where because of an attraction’s grotesque nature, they are fascinated to take pictures of it. She is subjected to multiple tricks, just like a lion in a carnival, where she expected to bring out a most pleasing experience for the crowd. The fact that she is a tamed animal made for performance is brought down by the fact that each day she has to forget the previous events, otherwise her horror, her suffering and her utter ignorance for the cause of it all which is the selling point of the show would be lost and the show would become uninteresting to the public.

White Bear is so interesting to me as a manifestation of the performative capacities of technology and of men because we already see it happening right now. In Twitter for example, a man who by sheer amount of fake news or misinformation can quite easily become the hunted in a public persecution. Granted Victoria is a whole different situation because she is actually a criminal, however, sometimes we mask our love for entertainment regardless of who suffers in a sense of social outrage, justice, horror to moral violations but the truth of it all is our hypocrisy. We don’t really want justice to be served, we just want a stage to present that we are morally superior than other people. And I deeply lament that. There is a thin line between expressing opinions on social injustices or crimes and enjoyment over other people’s misery. Regardless of whether the person is criminal or an innocent person, this kind of social performance and dark pleasure is unjustified.

This is really no different from public executions all through out history. I always wondered about the appeal of such events which bring hordes of onlookers as if putting a person in the guillotine was so entertaining. Some people say it was to deter crimes by showing a horrific picture of what can happen as a punishment. If it’s really about that that brought the audience, they why go to witness an execution, the knowledge itself that the guillotine is where criminals end is enough to scare some people. But I think it is more than that, maybe it’s also about social voyeurism, a dark fascinating picture of another person’s suffering, the “thank god it’s not me” mentality. The audience from the public executions in France is really no different from the people in Hated in A Nation or White Bear. We just look because something suffering can be entertaining especially if done on people we particularly dislike, we do nothing until we become the hunted and see how exactly that feels like. There’s a word psychology gives to it: SCHADENFREUDE, or the feeling of pleasure one gets from the misery of others.

and so on...

HATED IN THE NATION

The excess of call out culture — the plot revolved around personas who mysteriously die one by one until it was discovered that they were actually attacked online days prior for some unpopular remarks. The cause of death? Bees or ADIs supposedly made to function like real bees who can cross pollinate flowers. The episode, for me, examined the effects and ignorance of call out culture which can escalate from genuine offense at someone’s statement or action to a witch hunt of some sorts, sometimes even leading to death threats. The journalist, the rapper and the random lady all did something very minor and not even illegal to warrant them becoming the victims of the DeathTo hashtag. It’s also quite obvious why the producers used bees to represent as the attackers, hives of bees = hive mentality.

Individual responsibility — the hacker, upon his manifesto being found out, laments that the people who participated in the DeathTo hashtag were irresponsible, that they refused to consider the consequences of their actions or to take individual responsibility for their participation. I also wonder why the internet seems to dilute our understanding of individual responsibility.

Which reminds me, of one activity we did in Philo class in college, our professor asked what if we all had a cloak of invisibility like Harry Potter, what would be the first thing we’d do? A lot of us, unsurprisingly answered robbing a bank or retaliating on someone who had wronged us in the past. Either way, all the answers were more or less conventionally wrong. She asked us to participate in that activity either before or after she showed us the White Bear episode. It was only after a few years that I realized the crucial question she wanted us to explore: Why does anonymity (both in social media and in terms of hiding behind the cloak) increase our propensity to do wrong? The obvious answer is people are often only encouraged to do good because others are looking. That is not to say it is wrong but for me there is also another reason and which I wondered many times — anonymity shields us from personal responsibility. The internet, anonymity gives us a reprieve from the reality that our freedom goes in two ways, our actions have consequences

[icosmohunters]

chapter nine : benignity

chapter nine of cosmo hunters!

word count : 4.4k words

synopsis : quinn was hurt during the hunt for the master of puppets, and the puppeteer remained untouched after hope chose to retreat. in the midst of the boy’s recovery, hope finds herself opening up to the others. 

it was a catastrophe, bringing the boy into the ship without bringing him incredible pain. the way the others hovered over him and rushed him around, running about for cloths and freezing cold water and bandages and needles and threads. hope had to stand back because it wasn’t her place to intrude.

they had put quinn on one of the spare bottom bunks, and all hope could see from the window over enzo’s broad back was dawn’s head moving at times and the sweet sound of her voice which would often be interrupted by the pained cries from the injured boy.

she couldn’t watch, nor listen.

blinking slightly, she moved away from the door and like a ghost, carried herself to her room. perhaps if she fell asleep, if she awoke the next morning, this nightmare would be over. a self-inflicted nightmare, one which she had caused due to her very aloof plan of taking down a cybercriminal for good. and someone had gotten hurt because of her actions. because of her recklessness.

sometimes she viewed moments like these as pure karma. was this the universe’s payback for her unnecessary rudeness? for her snappy attitude? for her unkind approach to things? for her coldness? did she deserve this for whatever reason?

resting her hand on the wall, hope blinked a couple more times and then viewed her red hand where the blood was drying. before she could dry heave, she rushed to the bathroom and in a frenzy, hurried to wash it off, wanting to rid it from her skin, the imprint of her foolishness. hope then splashed her face and smacked her cheeks before groaning.

“ you didn’t stab him. you weren’t the one who told him to get hurt. so why are you the one taking all the blame? ”, the bounty hunter was scolding herself, her mother wasn’t there to do the job. looking at herself in the mirror, her plain face soon contorted into a growing grimace. she whimpered and ran to dry her hands and her face.

exiting the bathroom, hope paused for a moment and frowned more. her chance to get the puppeteer was gone because she put a group of innocent people in danger. they weren’t saints but they didn’t deserve to be hurt by something that was meant for her. why did she even agree to take them? she knew something was going to go bad, she felt it.

and now here they were, struggling to remain calm after their mechanic was struck by one of the androids. hope didn’t even have the energy to seethe with rage at the man who inflicted the harm towards them. maybe when she grounds herself, she’ll be able to actually feel . . . something.

“ hope! ”.

the girl let out a yelp and smacked a hand over her mouth before looking at who stood before her. enzo. looking concerned, hands behind his back. she saw this as the first time he’s ever seen her in this sort of state and she wanted it to be the last time, she couldn’t afford to lose it. not now. not when they needed to feel secure or sane.

she felt her food begin to rise and focused on not doing so, focusing on better well-being that might be brought if she attempts to sleep. gulping, she removed her hand from her mouth and upon adjusting her posture, let out a small sigh. “ sorry, i was a bit dazed, that’s all ”, she replied. and then looked in the directions of the rooms. “ is he going to be alright? ”.

“ hope, you’re shakin— ”.

“  —n-nevermind me! quinn, how is he? is he stable? does he need a blood transfusion? what about his internal conditions, is anything bleeding from the inside? i can ask a.j to do a sca— ”.

“ hope! ”.

“ oh for god’s sake, enzo, tell me! i wouldn’t give a fuck if i was at the verge of dying right now, my worries are on quinn and whether i’m going to have to fly a dead kid through space to burry him somewhere! ”.

hope had grabbed a handful of the man’s shirt and squeezed it into her fists, ready to practically headbutt him to get him into the right frame of mind. or maybe to fix her very own, which seemed to have gone haywire, melting in the worry and the guilt of the entire situation, she hadn’t even gathered the courage to lift nebula off.

releasing her grip from his shirt, hope let out a shaky exhale and covered her face behind her trembling hands. “ s-sorry . . . ”, she muttered, shaking her head. she was losing it, absolutely losing it for no reason. she knew quinn was going to be okay, especially at the hands of an expert like dawn. but in the case that he wasn’t doing well, the captain felt like it was her right to know. “ god, i’m sorry. ”

“ it’s alright, all of this is messing with all of us ”, enzo reassured her and then crossed his arms across his chest. “ but really, hope, if you think any of this is your fault, you’re mistaken. if anything . . . it was my fault for agreeing to come. we should have stayed. but then the thought of you handling it all by yourself, you wouldn’t have made it. ”

she hated to admit it but he was right. she’d seen those androids, they looked hellish, like things manufactured in the deepest pit of the underworld, murderous and cold. they would have reduced her to dust in an instant.

the girl ran a hand through her hair, “ so, it’s kind of both our fault’s. we should have come better prepared, with better ammunition and maps and more people. people from voyage. god, i don’t know how i’ll ever get my hands on him again. after this, he’s shifting, he’s not going to the same place. ” she groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. “ i lost him completely. ”

“ to be fair, it was too ambitious of voyage to throw you into a mission like that. one person could have easily died in there, they need an entire team ”, enzo spoke and frowned. “ i know you like to be independent, hope, but you wouldn’t have lasted a second in there by yourself. ”

“ i wouldn’t be able to handle fighting one of those things again. ”

“ what things? ”.

“ nothing. ”

enzo recommended for her to get some rest as best as she could. as if that was going to be easy, the horrors she’d seen today would come back to haunt her in the deepest parts of her dreams. perhaps she would dream of that pale picture that stared at her once in a dream, waiting, twitching, eager for her to step forward so it could lunge.

wandering into her room, hope grabbed her bathing equipment as she needed to wash up properly before thinking about going to bed. sometimes you forget things because you’re so exhausted. towel and soaps in hand, she wandered off.

the first thing she noticed after she started to fill the bath up whilst undressing is that her ankles looked like they had been bashed to pieces. it was probably from when she tripped up the juggernaut, forgetting he was made of metal and her legs were made of innocent calcium. not even dense muscles like hers would be able to survive without an injury.

her right ankle belonging to her dominant leg was pretty much wrapped in bruises, it was purpling. she could cry at the sight of it. it was horrendous, an enormous patch of purple on the surface of her skin and she didn’t even think to touch it, she just added drops of eucalyptus oil in the bath and hoped for the best.

bathing for around twenty minutes hope found her eyes closing spontaneously at times, hinting her exhaustion that had risen to a hundred ever since she properly relaxed. the smell of the eucalyptus oil was possibly the best aroma in the world aside from that of her mother’s food, it relaxed her body and her mind. but the images of today wouldn’t stop flashing in her mind.

and she tried to put them to sleep. she got changed after drying herself and searched for her sleeping pills and took them with a glass of water on the side of the bed. clapping her hands, the lights soon switched off and she tossed to her left side, the most comfortable side to sleep in. 

and then she waited, waited for sleep to take notice of her and take her away into a land of dreams, sweeter dreams compared to the ones she’s been having. her eyes were heavy but her body just wouldn’t relax. and every time she closed her eyes, she gets that sensation.

that someone is watching her, closely observing through some sort of entry, through some sort of gap through the space-time continuum. it was the feeling that lingered from having to deal with the puppeteer, the great, psychotic puppeteer.

the vision of his eyes came to mind and hope snapped her own eyes open and turned her bedside lamp on before gulping. she couldn’t sleep. even though she felt like she was going to faint, it was impossible for her muscles to relax. or her mind. nothing was relaxing. she was beyond perturbed. 

yet she didn’t want to stay awake. she needed to sleep. she needed rest, a.j wouldn’t let her lift off the nebula in the morning. realizing she was still on mars, hope got out from beneath her bedsheets and approached her window. looking out into the martian night sky. she sighed softly.

it looked too much like home. in fact, she just felt the homesickness growing painfully intense by looking at a sky littered with stars. it wasn’t earth, but among those stars, home could be spotted. home. 

“ a.j, what day is it on earth today? ”.

“ april tenth. ”

hope frowned. in two days' time, her home would be littered by color and lush, a new beginning to the seasons and a new beginning to life in general, inviting the bloom of flowers and the gathering of friends and family to celebrate rebirth. she wasn’t religious, but easter was somehow one of her favorite holidays.

“ would you like to send a message to your parents, captain? ensuring your safety? ”, a.j questioned once more.

hope looked out into the stars and then hummed, “ no. leave it. i’ll pay them a visit eventually. ”

time skip  ﹏

staying awake, it was difficult. but it wasn’t as if she would be able to sleep anyway, not with a million thoughts being fired in her brain. her head was consumed by all sorts of worries and perceptions, some that may be seen as worrisome but hope didn’t really share them with anyone. she felt that if she closed her eyes, she would see something. 

and this thing would keep her awake for hours at an end. there was a perfectly dark night sky out there, a sense of familiarity rather than floating through endless space with no awareness of time. she didn’t take advantage of it, though.

mars had a twenty-five-hour cycle, and currently it was three in the morning. the captain was in the lounge, nursing her nerves with a can of energy drink that she had stocked up on after a brief visit to a grocery store. she had spoken to enzo roughly five hours ago, and since then hope hasn’t seen or heard from everyone.

at this point, she was assuming the worst. the kid died, she was tempted to believe. nobody cared to drop in to tell her of anything, maybe he was still healing or was struggling to sleep like her and so they were trying to soothe him into a state of painless peace.

the doors slid open and hope’s tired eyes moved towards the figure that came in. it was dom, he looked like he hadn’t slept a wink either, still in the clothes from the mission and with a grave expression on his face. when he took notice of her, hope prepared to be yelled at.

to be blamed, to receive a good scolding. but nothing ever came. he just stared at her for a moment and then averted his gaze away. “ is he alright? ”, she questioned. “ the kid. is he okay? ”.

“ stable ”, dom replied and hope let out a sigh of relief, bracing herself for a but. it never came, though, as dom went over and got himself something from the vending machine. “ what flavor of energy drink do you choose? ”.

hope blinked but replied, “ cherry. ”

dom hummed and then tapped away at the screen on the vending machine. it was silent for a moment, hope had grown used to speaking to the rest but she never did the same with dominic, not after what happened between them just after they came out of the j-colony. his bruise looked slightly better but it was nowhere near healed.

“ he’s healing okay ”, he said to break the silence. “ the cut didn’t reach any vital organs but it was somewhat deep. a.j had a look, which was quite useful. but quinn’s healing slowly now, vivi’s watching after him in case he wakes up in pain. ”

“ i’m sorry. ”

“ don’t be. ”

for that and also for the bruise, hope wanted to say but was unable to.

dom walked near to the couch and hope saw the same cherry drink she was holding in her hands. popping the can open, dom took a sip and appeared puzzled for a second before grimacing. “ that’s strong ”, he managed to say with another shudder.

hope chuckled softly and looked to the doors when they slid open once more. enzo walked on through, it seemed as if he hadn’t gotten any sleep either but he at least had gotten changed. “ nice seeing you two getting along ”, he commented with a tired grin. “ why are you awake, cap? ”.

“ got a late-night craving. my sleeping pills didn’t work, so there’s no point in staying awake. besides, i was worried about quinn ”, she stated as the young man approached. “ is there enough medication for him? ”.

dom snorted, “ more than enough. ”

“ you could heal an entire army with what you’ve got stored in there, cap ”, enzo added before stopping by her and offering a small smile. “ quinn will be alright, he just needs plenty of rest and good food. i was in the kitchen, i saw some bags on the counter. did you go shopping? ”.

oh. hope blushed softly and looked down. she’s never been one to blush, at all. she was slightly embarrassed to have been found out, she was going to put the food back into the fridge but then completely zoned out and forgot. 

“ yeah, i did ”, hope revealed. 

enzo gasped and clapped happily, “ vivi is gonna whip us something good tomorrow then and i cannot wait for that. you should see the soup she makes when one of us is sick. ”

it was refreshing to see them back to their normal antics, it was better to see them all smiling, though, it brought a sense of safety. that she didn’t have to worry about all that’s happened and that all would be well within a given time. sure, she had missed the chance of killing the puppeteer.

but it was suspicious why voyage had even given her a task like that, especially one for her to complete alone. if he was on top of the list, they would’ve most likely offered her some sort of help. they didn’t, they forced her to do it by herself with the impression that she wouldn’t pass the task on, and she didn’t.

and now someone had gotten hurt. whilst she wanted to take the blame, the pirates didn’t allow her to. dom and enzo settled on the couch to watch something or play a video game, hope wasn’t paying too much attention to be sure.

because she soon lifted herself from the couch and left the lounge, her attention dragging towards the door of the rooms they were allocated in. she wasn’t too certain if dawn and quinn were awake, but she knew vivienne was, so it was worth going in to check. she could see with her very own eyes just what had been done to heal the boy.

once the doors slid open, hope looked into the room for the first time in a while. they hadn’t made a total mess of it, most of it was clean except for some bags by the window which hope assumed were clothes of some sort. or comfort items. 

craning her head to the side, her eyes widened at the sight. quinn was laying down on the bottom bunk of one of the spare beds, a blanket over his body. his chest rose and fell gently and some color had returned to his face. seeing movement on the top bunk, hope saw it was dawn, fast asleep.

vivienne had put a chair right beside where quinn laid, she had a reading light on and a book open against her lap. she was wearing some pleasant grey pajamas that looked rather comfortable. and it suited her a lot. upon taking notice of the other girl, she smiled softly. “ you’re still up ”, she noticed.

“ so are you ”, hope replied and approached her. she briefly crouched down beside the bed to get a better look at the sleeping boy. it was a weird habit of hers, something she had developed back home. always waking up early and immediately checking if her brother was still sleeping and if he was feeling okay. even now, it didn’t feel that different. “ poor kid . . . i feel awful for what happened. ”

vivienne reached over and brushed the hair out of quinn’s eyes, “ he was in pain but he never once spoke about it being anyone else’s fault. he just fell asleep a couple of hours ago after dawn gave him some morphine. ” hope’s eyes widened. “ i didn’t know morphine was even legal to have outside of a hospital. ”

“ yeah, well i needed it once a long while back ”, the girl described. she didn’t linger on the subject for too long and chose to sit on the edge of the bed rather than crouching and cause more pain to her ankles. “ he’s going to be fine, though. he just didn’t deserve getting hurt. ”

“ wait, did you deserve it instead? ”, vivienne questioned, turning back to her book with a chuckle.

“ yes ”. vivienne’s smile dropped. “ i would have rather gotten hurt than allowed someone else to take the hit. i should have stayed with you guys but . . . i don’t regret it. the puppeteer came into contact with me. he knows my name, my reputation, he knew i was nothing against him alone. but he knew there were people . . . people under my responsibility. ”

“ you think he commanded the attack ”, vivienne assumed.

hope nodded, “ it’s probable. he knows his own bunker, surely. it was easy for him to know we came in, we just weren’t careful enough. and it’s not enough to just shoot at the security cameras. he has eyes scattered everywhere. ”

she thought that he knew they were there even when they were above, on the surface of mars hunting for the ravine. those abandoned apartments, he could have easily stored something within them, something so high-tech that not even hope’s rogue sonar picked up anything. nothing at all.

but he knew that they were coming and when they were coming, it was how he worked. eyes everywhere, so everywhere that you couldn’t even begin to think where the first eye was. he was vulture flying above, waiting, watching as the prey draws closer before striking.

hope shivered slightly and shifted her position, trying not to think too much about the incident. it would make voyage angry but she had already dropped a word in, sending a distress signal as someone had gotten hurt during the mission and to pass the quest onto a team, not a single bounty hunter.

as strong as she was, she wouldn’t have lasted a second in there had she gone alone.

“ it’s going to be easter in two days back home ”, vivienne said suddenly, and hope was glad that she did. it was nice to talk about home sometimes. she relaxed slightly and nodded. “ do you celebrate it? ”.

hope chuckled, “ yeah, my family does. we’re not religious, we’re just easily influenced by others. but my mom usually puts chocolate eggs around the house and we all try and find it. usually, when he’s there, dad holds a nice barbeque for the neighbors. ”

“ no exterior family? ”.

“ nope, we keep to ourselves. besides, the exterior family is across the country. most are in canada, they like the cold for some reason ”, hope explained and looked towards quinn, fixing his blanket over him. “ i’d like to go there someday. ”

“ home? ”.

“ canada. ”

the two girls shared a gentle laugh, soft as to avoid waking the others up. it was nice, hope had to say. admitting it was hard but she liked the company, it made a difference. she knew that she was arrogant in the beginning, believing that she was fine on her own but sometimes having someone around makes a difference, especially for someone engulfed in solitude like this particular bounty hunter.

“ if you . . . want to go, to see your family, i could definitely tell the others we’re making a stop first ”, vivienne proposed slowly, trying to find the right words. “ i can’t remember the last time we’ve all been to earth. ” 

hope smiled. smiled. the pure selflessness had led to a sudden swarm of butterflies in her chest, it was very flattering to see the woman being so caring, she’s never quite seen anything like it. and it invoked a reaction that not even hope was used to. but the smile stayed for some reason, she didn’t try to wipe it away.

running a hand through her hair, the girl nodded. “ yeah, y-yeah that’d be nice. dad went through a lot a while back and i haven’t exactly been the best daughter, haven’t visited him. it’s cool between us but . . . i can imagine it looks bad ”, she explained softly, staring at her fingers. “ it’s nearly been a year since i’ve been home. ”

“ you must miss your family terribly ”, vivienne pointed out and tilted her head. she seemed to have forgotten about her book. “ is it just your parents and you? ”.

hope shook her head, “ it’s me, mom, dad and connor. ”

“ who’s connor? family dog? ”.

hope snorted and suppressed the urge to burst into total laughter. she slapped her knee slightly and adjusted herself on the seat, her smile didn’t fade, though. her eyes lit up at the mention of her brother. her tone even changed as she tilted her head and answered, “ my baby brother. ”

vivienne gasped softly, “ oh god, i’m sorry, i didn’t know. ”

“ no, it’s quite alright. he’s quite puppy-like, anyhow ”, the girl replied, her smile still completely intact. she appeared starstruck, but that gaze she had, that aloof expression of happiness, that was love. absolute love for a younger brother who she would die for. 

vivienne beamed herself, though it seemed to at something else. “ well, i can imagine you’d be very happy to see your family. we can go to earth, maybe it’ll cheer quinn up. besides, easter is a great holiday to go back home to ”, she suggested, looking back towards the sleeping boy. 

“ yeah, i suppose we can all go ”, hope said softly and nodded, and then looked towards her wristband. “ but . . . i have to take you guys to where you have to be. maybe you can get better help there. ”

vivienne frowned, “ do you want us gone that badly? ”.

hope was rendered speechless. she didn’t want it to seem like she had wanted to get rid of them or move them off her ship. it was just that quinn could find better help, better medication and better food somewhere where there was actually something to offer. hope had nothing to offer to them at all!

but she also really wanted for them to stay until he’d healed. and perhaps a stop by earth could do the trick. but hope wasn’t too certain about it until she looked at vivienne. she didn’t want them gone.

not now.

and perhaps, not for a while . . . maybe until all of this was over. until quinn was healed and until easter had gone by. she needed time to ensure that they would be leaving safely without voyage trailing behind them, on the hunt.

“ w-well, not really ”.

vivienne’s expression softened and she averted her gaze back to her book. “ then it’s settled. you can take us, i’ll tell the others in the morning. try to get some sleep, though, cap ”, the woman said and hope paused, she’s never been referred to as captain by vivienne.

nodding either way, the bounty hunter rose from her seat and wrapped her arms over her chest and walked towards the door, looking back for a moment. viviennne seemed to be happily enjoying her book, but she was smiling, even if it was ever so slightly gentle.

“ good night ”, she called back softly.

vivienne looked up and chuckled, “ good night, captain. and thank you. ”

[gukyi]

moonlight melody (ii.) | jjk

summary: when your loving best friend playfully pranks you one too many times, you decide that revenge is best served hot, over a period of thirty days, and with a little extra help from the best violinist you know (sorry jimin).

or, the one where during your month-long vacation in italy with your youth orchestra, you realize that vengeance is sweet but fake dating jungkook is sweeter.

{fake dating!au, university orchestra!au, vacation!au}

pairing: jungkook x female reader word count: 25k (still sorry mobile users) genre: fluff, minor angst warnings: more obnoxious slow burn. lots of comparing jungkook to famous italian renaissance artwork. characters being oblivious. the usual in your fake dating lineup. the beautiful image of hoseok wearing bright yellow shorts with green polka dots. a/n: i said a week, i actually meant a week and a day. here she is, folks. this fic is straight up 104 pages in my google doc, what a beast. is this the monster or am i? the world will never know. big thanks to everyone who’s been waiting so patiently for this fic!! you guys are the reason i even finished it. im now going to hole myself up in my room and watch my concert vids.  edit (4.16.20): the very wonderful @jtrbluv​ made this incredible playlist for this fic and i can’t recommend listening to it enough!!!!! please put this on while you read <3

part one | part two (finale)

The first thing that Seokjin says when your train pulls into the Santa Lucia station in Venice is, “if I don’t become an Instagram model and make thousands of dollars off of tea detoxes and teeth-whitening products after this trip, then I don’t want to hear it.”

The first thing that Yoongi says when your train pulls into the Santa Lucia station is, “You have fifty-three followers and all of them are fake accounts you made to follow yourself.”

Seokjin gasps, appalled at such an accusation thrown his way. “How dare you challenge my integrity, my honor, and my dignity.” He asks like a presidential candidate being insulted during a televised public debate. The comparison honestly isn’t that far off.

“You had any of those to begin with?” Jimin mutters under his breath, but it’s loud enough for everyone within a five feet radius of him to hear it. Taehyung chokes back something between a bark of laughter and a snort, and winks when Seokjin turns his head around to glare at him both threateningly and affectionately.

“Okay, second of all, fuck you,” Seokjin spits out, the resolve of the aforementioned presidential candidate shattering. Though, with any hint at how politics is turning out these days, you suppose swears probably aren’t off the table just yet.

Namjoon scrunches up his nose, looking as lost as he always is. “What happened to the first of all?” Seokjin shrugs because it’s incredibly clear that he has no idea where the first part went either.

“Feels like just yesterday we were in Rome,” Taehyung muses to himself, false-nostalgia tainting his tone. He looks thoughtfully up to the sky as if reflecting on past memories.

“It was yesterday,” Hoseok interrupts. “In fact, it was this morning, too.”

“Did. I. Stutter.” Taehyung says sharply without turning his head. Perhaps he would look a little more menacing if he didn’t have this absolutely horrendous sunburn decorating his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, making him look more like a Strawberry Shortcake character than a university student. It doesn’t help that his shirt is almost comically frilly. He looks like he walked right off of a high fashion runway.

You barely notice Jungkook coming up behind you, suitcase and violin in hand. He touches your side to get your attention, and when you turn to him you make no effort to fight the smile that grows on your face. His being always seems to lighten up your mood.

“Hey,” you say.

“Hey,” he replies. “You didn’t hear it from me, but Bang wants to give us this week off to explore Venice on our own,” he whispers, out of earshot of everyone else. You know that the second Jimin is going to hear this he’s going to beat his chest and holler like Tarzan. Jungkook knows better than to speak loudly.

“Seriously?” You ask in disbelief. Even if you are all college students you are, quite frankly, shocked that Bang would give you that much freedom. A whole week all to yourselves? It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but everyone always says to try new things.

“Seriously,” Jungkook confirms with a nod. “I think Bang’s gotten so sick of us that he’s willing to let us loose like animals for a week so he can recover his lost brain cells.”

You hum in agreement, Jungkook’s suspicion probably not that far off. A middle-aged man can only take so much from fifty college students before he is driven off the edge. You don’t blame Bang in the slightest, especially because on your last night in Rome, it took seven of you to convince Taehyung not to sneak into Bang’s room and write the entire Bee Movie script on the complimentary notepad. You are wholly unsurprised that Taehyung still has at least the first 300 words memorized.

“We don’t have any performances here, do we?” You ask Jungkook.

Jungkook shakes his head, purses his lips. “Don’t think so. They start back up in Florence.”

It’s hard to think about Florence, now that you’re here. But Florence is only a week away and then you only have about ten days there before your trip is over, your time is up and you have to board a plane back home. It feels so far away and yet at the same time, you know that it is right at your doorstep.

“Really?” You ask, skeptical. “I’m surprised Bang didn’t schedule any.”

“I will bet you all of my college tuition that Bang organized this trip so he would have this week of peace right in the middle of all the chaos. The eye of the storm.”

“Are we the storm, Jungkook?” You ask even if you already know the answer.

Next to you, it seems that Jimin has convinced Hoseok to play his newest piece out loud, and so Hoseok’s grainy rap blares through his grainy speakers as everyone hoots and hollers. You are pretty sure that Taehyung is doing every outdated dance he can think of to the beat, crying out in enthusiasm at Hoseok’s song. It’s a good song, you’ll admit that much. If this were a movie, then some agent or music producer would coincidentally be walking by, hear Hoseok’s song, and offer him a prestigious record deal right on the spot. Instead, the only passersby are disgruntled tourists who frown as they pass your rambunctious crew, shaking their heads to themselves.

Jungkook nods. “We’re the storm.”

You wish you could say you were shocked.

Bang rounds everybody up at the lobby of the hotel you’re staying at, not necessarily one of those chain lodgings but also not a tiny alleyway of a place. Behind you, you can hear Jimin and Taehyung plotting to steal Seokjin’s clean underwear. Boys are disgusting.

“Okay, everyone,” Bang announces with a clap of his hands, loud like the beat of a snare drum. “As you may already know, I don’t have any performances planned for this week in Venice.”

Small gasps and very loud whispers break out throughout the orchestra. Jungkook reaches down, and for a second you think he’s going to grab your hand, but instead he pinches the side of your shirt and makes you squeak, much to the disruption of everyone else. As the blood rushes to your cheeks you give Jungkook a heavy shove, your upper body strength from all that cello-lifting paying off when he stumbles slightly. Fucker.

“And I am making the slightly-unsettling decision to give you all this week off to do what you please,” Bang continues, and so do the gasps. You can hear the smack of skin that signifies a high five, and turn around to find Jimin wincing slightly as he caresses his reddened palm. Next to him, Taehyung grins, almost proudly. “Nothing is planned save for a couple of small things closer to the end of our stay here in Venice, so you all have until then to do what you wish.” He eyes Taehyung and Jimin suspiciously. “Please don’t make me regret this decision.”

And even if Taehyung and Jimin are orchestral hooligans at best, you know that they’ll keep on Bang’s good side.

Bang ends his announcement there and goes to speak with the hotel staff to check in.

Namjoon clasps his hands together as the seven of you turn to face him, waiting for his next move. “Now that Bang’s not going to be breathing down our necks, I say that we take our time in Venice to go—”

“Sightseeing.”

“Drinking.”

Seokjin and Yoongi glare at each other.

“Uh, I was going to say we go and explore, but alright, I guess,” Namjoon says tentatively. “I think that we should divide up into two groups just to make travel a little easier, though. I don’t think the water taxis outside can handle eight fully-grown college students.”

“Well,” Taehyung interrupts. “Seven fully-grown college students and Yoongi.”

Yoongi tweaks Taehyung’s nipple in retaliation, eliciting something between a hiccup and a squeak from the latter.

“Okay, I call Namjoon,” Jimin announces, latching himself onto Namjoon’s arm. The process feels eerily similar to when you had to pick groups for projects in high school.

“I call Jimin,” Taehyung mimics, and suddenly Namjoon’s got himself an entire conga line on his arm. He sends something of a pained look Yoongi’s way, and you’re pretty sure that it is out of pity that he joins Namjoon’s group, leaving you with Jungkook, Hoseok, and Seokjin.

“Have fun losing all of your brain cells, fuckers,” Seokjin teases. Namjoon’s face, if possible, becomes even more distorted.

“Bold of you to assume I had any of those to begin with,” Taehyung responds cheekily, just the right amount of self-deprecation evident in his voice. “At least we’re not stuck with Mr. and Mrs. Lovebird McLovebirdson.”

“Excuse you?” You say, only mildly offended that Taehyung would tack a name such as that onto you and Jungkook’s relationship or whatever the hell it is that the two of you have going on.

“Leave him, Thumper,” Jungkook says with a fond smile. Taehyung glares at him suspiciously. “He’s just teasing you.”

“You’re the only one allowed to do that,” you say with a pout, making Jungkook poke a pointer finger into your chipmunk cheeks.

“Is that right, Thumper?” He asks with a smirk.

Seokjin huffs out a sigh. He looks about as pained as Namjoon, but for an entirely different reason. With a groan, he asks, “Anyone willing to trade?”

The films that romanticize early mornings in foreign countries and strolls along cobblestone alleys are bold-faced lies, that’s what they are. They are ridden with the sweet, deceitful art of movie-magic and morphed into constructions designed to appeal to the losers in their bedrooms watching them on their shitty Windows laptops. They are anything but the truth.

It is six in the morning when Jeon Soyeon is shaking you awake, and six-thirty in the morning when a certain fake boyfriend is outside your door, a guilty grin on his face.

“Care to explain why I’m up at the ass-crack of dawn, Jungkook?” You ask with a single raised, eyebrow, tapping your foot impatiently with your hand resting on the side of the open door.

“Okay, first of all, the sun rose like, an hour ago, so I don’t wanna hear it,” Jungkook points out. “Second of all, Seokjin and Hoseok said that they’d meet us in San Marco at eight, so I thought we could grab breakfast together.”

“Did you text Soyeon and ask her to wake me up for you?” You continue to interrogate, paying little attention to the plans at hand that Jungkook’s suggested.

Jungkook smiles guiltily. “I wanted to surprise you?” He says it more like it’s a question that he’s asking you rather than something akin to a romantic statement.

You turn your head around to sneer at Soyeon, who is honestly too kind to be blackmailed into doing Jungkook’s dirty work. She’s pretending not to listen to your conversation, whistling loudly to herself as she stares at the corner of your hotel room, acting natural. You know you won’t be getting any direct eye contact from her before you leave for the day, so you exchange the glare on your face for a sigh, looking back to Jungkook. He’s looking as hopeful as ever, though you have a sneaking suspicion he already knows you won’t turn him down.

“Fine,” you relent, rolling your eyes. You grab your mini backpack from where it rests against the television stand/dresser hybrid. “You owe Soyeon a gelato for getting her to do this for you.”

“Believe me, I know,” Jungkook says with a nod, clicking his tongue and sending a finger gun Soyeon’s way. She grins in response, waving wildly to the both of you. At least someone’s getting something out of this ridiculous deal. “Come on, we better go before Bang catches us up this early.”

And this is how you land up at a small Venetian café far from any major tourist sites after stumbling around the slowly-waking city. The tourists aren’t awake yet, the busy streets aren’t filled yet, and it feels sort of like this is your everyday reality: a coffee in the morning on a sidestreet in Venice with your boyfriend. Well. Almost boyfriend. Very close to being a real boyfriend boyfriend. Fake boyfriend.

“You ever crave something disgustingly unhealthy for breakfast?” Jungkook asks as he digs into his breakfast pastry, berry-colored jam leaking from the sides.

“As in?”

“Some healthy, hearty Shin ramen.”

“Don’t tell me you eat that for breakfast,” you say in slightly horror, looking up at Jungkook. Sure, you’ve had your fair share of ramen for meals, but at least you tend you gravitate towards granola bars for most of your morning meals.

Jungkook doesn’t respond, instead choosing to grimace as his answer.

“That is absolutely horrifying,” you tell him.

“It does a fantastic job of waking you up, that I can confirm,” Jungkook tells you, pointing at you with the spoon by his untouched caffé latte. You told Jungkook he could just order a hot chocolate since he hated coffee anyway, but the latte was barely two Euros and Jungkook honestly panicked at the last second. You feel bad, because he’s wasted his money either way, so he might as well do it on something he’ll enjoy.

“If you won’t drink your latte, can I have it?” You ask tentatively, motioning to it. Nothing like a good bit of caffeine in the morning to get you ready for action.

Jungkook nods, almost too enthusiastically, even going so far as to push the saucer towards you, the pattern in the cup swishing with the movement. “Sure, go ahead.”

You take his cup and bring it to your lips, sipping softly as the hot liquid runs down your tongue, stinging your taste buds just the right amount. Your group doesn’t have too much on your itinerary for today, which must be the reason why he’s so resigned, so laid back. Or perhaps that’s just his normal disposition. Regardless, watching Jungkook as he plays around on his phone distracts you enough while you’re drinking to give you an awful foam moustache, much to Jungkook’s enjoyment.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Jungkook says as you’re reaching for your napkin. “Let me take a picture of you.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” you mutter to yourself. “Must you?”

Jungkook’s adamant. “Yes. I don’t have a single photo of you on my phone and we’ve just spent the last week and a half in Italy.”

“So the first one has to be of me with a coffee moustache?”

“You look cute!” Jungkook insists.

You scoff. “I beg to differ.”

“The more you talk the more your moustache fades,” Jungkook tells you with a pout. “C’mon, Thumper, please?”

You resign. “Quickly.”

Jungkook silently fist-pumps the air before snapping a photo of your pout. The moment his camera begins to lower you wipe off the remains of your coffee moustache with your finger, sticking it in your mouth to finish the job. You paid money for this thing. Actually, he paid money for this thing. And you’re not going to let it go to waste either way.

“See? Cute,” Jungkook says, shoving his iPhone in your face to reveal your glowing, coffee moustache-laden grin as his lockscreen, visible to anybody who turns on his phone and swipes left to spam his camera roll. You have to admit, even with the unflattering view Jungkook’s knack for photography still shines through. The photo looks much better than anything you could ever do. “You look great, Thumper. Lockscreen-worthy.”

“Can you explain to me where the Thumper came from? I feel like I never got the memo,” you ask, the thought just popping into your head. The nickname is endearing, sure, much more so than something basic like “baby” or “angel” and much less greasy than “darling” or “sweetheart”, but you’re not exactly sure where it came from. Not that you’re complaining.

“When your cheeks puff up,” Jungkook says over a mouthful of pastry, “you look like Thumper from Bambi. You know, the rabbit. The resemblance is, quite frankly, uncanny.”

“You’re saying I look like a cartoon bunny.”

“In a cute way!” Jungkook emphasizes. And then, softly, “You should know by now that I think everything you do is cute, Y/N.” Jungkook says it like he’s discussing the weather, taking another bite of his breakfast.

You pause, parted lips slowly sealing themselves as you sink back in your chair.

You didn’t know that at all.

Piazza San Marco has already begun to overflow with tourists by the time you and Jungkook arrive, seeking out familiar faces. The conversation from earlier is almost entirely forgotten, save for you. Sometimes, in fake relationships, you’re starting to think you prefer it when everything is a lie rather than hearing the truth come out.

Jungkook, on the other hand, is as normal as ever, tugging you with your hand in his own when he spots Seokjin and his bright red baseball cap, worn backwards like a frat boy. You can only hope that he’s got SPF 100 on his face, because the sun already seems to be burning right through the pavement. Hoseok has on his terrible shorts. Maybe you should stare into the sun, go blind just so you don’t have to lay your eyes on those monstrosities. Permanent retina damage doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.

“I cannot believe you are wearing those,” you say when you walk up to them, staring Hoseok’s shorts down. He flaunts them, feeds off of your disgust. They look just as awful now as they did in eighth grade. Not much has really changed since then. Maybe your heights.

“Were you under the impression that I wouldn’t?” Hoseok challenges, posing a valid question. Perhaps Hoseok packed them just to spite you at eleven at night, three hours before you had to go to the airport, but he also definitely fully intended on wearing them, and now, here you are.

You narrow your eyes. “Touché.”

“What are we doing today, Less Important ‘Seok?” Hoseok asks enthusiastically, hands on his hips like a superhero from a cartoon. He turns to Seokjin with a grin on his face like he didn’t just send him a thinly-veiled insult, one that takes Seokjin approximately five seconds to process.

Then Seokjin says, “Excuse me?”

And Hoseok smiles.

“I say we go explore,” Jungkook suggests, adjusting the straps of his backpack. He’s got luggage locks on the damn zippers like the world’s most cautious tourist, but you find the neon green locks quite endearing. Nothing like the fluorescent color of a Sharpie highlighter to deter those pesky pickpockets. “Today’s a great day for all of those Instagram shots you want.”

Seokjin seems to perk up at that idea. “Nice, brand deals here I come,” he says, rubbing his hands together evil-villain-style.

“I could really use some photos for my portfolio,” Jungkook says, sort of like an aside.

“You’re making a portfolio?” You ask him, curious. It’s incredible, that Jungkook has so many projects going on at once, so many talents that he’s already refined, perfected. You can barely walk in a straight line, sober.

“Yeah,” Jungkook tells you softly, hand reaching up to tug on the camera strap around his neck. “To remember the, uh, the trip. It’s very picturesque here.”

Seokjin’s loud voice interrupts the both of you, shifting to see him standing in the center of the piazza with a peace sign by his face. “If it’s so picturesque then why am I not being photographed for my very first sponsorship?” He shouts, motioning to Jungkook’s camera like a CEO standing at the top of a skyscraper, watching down at his minions doing his dirty work. If Seokjin, God forbid, ever became Instagram famous, you know that all of you would end up suffering. He would hold his follower count over your heads for everything.

Jungkook sighs, pressing the silver button on his camera without even bringing it up to eye level to peer into the screen, haphazardly clicking away after making an educated guess as to the lens view. He’s either right on the money or currently taking about ten shots of Seokjin’s knees and nothing else. Either way they are Instagram-worthy.

Seokjin takes absolutely no notice of the fact that Jungkook is half-assing his photos and moves back towards the group after about thirty seconds of random camera-clicking, satisfied. You wonder why Hoseok always has it out for you with his outlandish pranks when you are almost certain that Seokjin is infinitely more gullible than you in every sense of the word. There have been multiple occasions during in which Seokjin has searched for his glasses, only to find out that they were not only on his head, he was also wearing them.

“Okay, the sun is shining, the clouds are gone, it’s only marginally burning temperatures, which means that we are going to avoid every tourist attraction in this city for the entire day,” you declare, clapping your hands together. Nothing sounds truly more awful than marching around a densely-packed part of town with no air conditioning and a million other people with a million other body heats.

“Dude, I’m sweating just standing here,” Hoseok says, taking his grossly-fluorescent visor off of his head and fanning himself with it.

“We could probably alleviate that problem by moving into the side streets, which are shaded,” you say.

Jungkook chuckles, but the lot of you are already moving out of Piazza San Marco, veering towards the nearest side street that you can find, eyes scanning for shade. “Emphasis on the word ‘probably,’” he jokes, an entirely valid statement because even in the shade you can feel the sweat running down your back.

Even without the use of water travel, you manage to find some pretty spectacular places within walking distance. Venice is like playing legato notes in an allegro piece, the kind of city where you hold onto each moment for as long as you can even though your days there are numbered, even though the fast pace of your travel will catch up to you eventually. Bang always reminds the orchestra that you can’t cut legato notes short otherwise they just become mundane, average notes. That’s Venice.

There is no method to your madness, if you could even call it that. Without the pressure to see all of the tourist sites at once, time limits and schedules entirely vacant, you are not walking around Venice so much as you are strolling around Venice, taking in the scenery and landscape without a rush to be anywhere at all.

You would almost imagine that it would be just you and Jungkook together, hand-in-hand as you waltz down the pavement in a gorgeous foreign city, if it weren’t for Hoseok cracking jokes next to you and Seokjin stopping your entire group every block in order to snag another photo. Not that you can really blame him any more, now that you think about it. You’d want to remember as much of this trip as possible too.

“We’re gonna get back to the hotel and I’m gonna plug in my camera and every single photo is going to be Seokjin with a peace sign in front of his face,” Jungkook tells you in mock exasperation, rolling his eyes as Seokjin beckons him over towards a piece of street art that he wants a photo in front of. It’s a very tasteful street art image, an incredibly bright red stack of buildings with a face coming out of it. You laugh at Jungkook’s expense, because that’s what he gets for being a kind, giving, and photographically talented individual.

The two of them prance over to pose in front of the wall as Hoseok and you stay back, hanging around on the opposite side of the street.

“Y/N,” Hoseok says, nudging your side. His voice is soft, muted, meaning that he’s about to tell you something he doesn’t want the other two to know about. “You and Jungkook seem to really enjoy each other’s company.”

You scoff, a little concerned about what direction this conversation is about to go to. “Why wouldn’t we? We’re dating.” Fake dating.

“Well,” Hoseok says hesitantly. “I mean, you’ve barely ever spoken to each other prior to this trip but after you guys got off the plane it just… it seemed like you were happier. You know? Especially this past week in Rome, and now. You just seem really happy.”

“Am I typically unhappy?” You ask with your eyebrows raised.

“No, not like that,” Hoseok says. He lets out a big sigh and keeps his eyes trained on Seokjin and Jungkook, who are still fooling around across the street. “You just seem to really like him. I’m glad.”

You keep silent. For a split second, you feel guilty again, guilty that you’re tricking your best friend into thinking that something so real, so genuine, is a sham.

“I’m glad he’s making you happy,” Hoseok continues, and as bad as it sounds, you want your best friend to shut up and stop talking. Stop saying these things because they make you feel bad and confused and worried all at once. “You deserve someone like Jungkook.” And, as if that isn’t enough, he says, “He looks like he loves you a lot.”

Does he really?

It’s then that Hoseok straightens out his posture and returns to his smiling self as Jungkook and Seokjin make their way over, giggling about something stupid that you didn’t notice. You wonder if Seokjin got some good photos, but then you realize that with Jungkook, they won’t be anything less than perfect.

(Jungkook looks gorgeous when he giggles. His nose scrunches up and his eyes crinkle and he laughs like he doesn’t know how to stop laughing.)

“Ready to go, Thumper?” Jungkook asks, reaching a hand out. You take it without a shadow of a doubt. It’s strange. It’s beginning to feel like it belongs there.

“Where to next?” You ask, facing a crossroads. Each way leads down a different path, one that could lead you somewhere else, but that’s the beauty of it all.

Jungkook grins. “Anywhere.”

You make a vow to yourself that you’ll come back to Italy when you’re rich and famous and can afford to splurge on ten thousand dollar Dior dresses and fast passes to the biggest attractions, but even as a college student with an exponentially increasing amount of student loans and about four dollars and thirty-three cents in your bank account you know that there are some things that you just have to do in Italy.

One of which being a gondola tour.

“You know,” Namjoon says matter-of-factly with his mouth filled with some sort of unnamed pastry with jam, “the gondola tours are 100% not worth your time. You’d do better just walking around yourself.”

The eight of you are gathered at the same café that you and Jungkook found on your first full day here, far from any tourist traps and bustling morning crowds. The old lady who seems to be the only employee speaks very little English, but even though you, a youth orchestra group in which none of you speak Italian, are her only customers at such an early morning hour, she is making a wonderful effort at communicating with you.

Namjoon has already picked up the vernacular of the region. No big deal.

“Okay Mr. I Spent Fifty Euros on the Doge’s Palace,” Hoseok mocks pointedly, drinking his latte with a very unappealing slurp. “Stop being such a hater.”

“In Namjoon’s defense, it’s called the Doge’s Palace,” Taehyung points out.

“Yes, because a hallmark of Venetian Gothic architecture and its rich history have anything to do with a deceased meme from five years ago,” Yoongi deadpans, downing another one of those tiny little espresso shots like it’s nothing. It travels down his esophagus and lights everything on fire along the way and he doesn’t bat an eyelash.

“Doge may be dead in our minds but he will live on in our hearts,” Taehyung preaches.

Namjoon rolls his eyes and turns back to you, the genius who had the idea of an overpriced gondola tour for the four of you in the first place. “They’re overpriced, overrated, and severely underwhelming,” he continues like some politician trying to convince you to join his cause against overpriced gondola tours for the sake of his campaign. Since when did he become the end-all be-all of tour guides? He bought that one travel book on Venice and suddenly he thinks he’s—

“I don’t know, I thought it was a good idea,” Jungkook adds in, swinging an arm over your shoulder as moral support.

Taehyung frowns. “That’s because you’re in love with her, dumbass.”

Jungkook chuckles at that, but you can tell that it’s forced and awkward and uncomfortable from the way his body stiffens beside yours and the way his eyes begin to dart around. He must feel just as guilty as you about this whole arrangement, grimacing at the way everyone thinks he’s in love with you.

(“He looks like he loves you a lot.”)

“Very funny,” Jungkook says with a glare to his best friend.

Taehyung winks.

“Listen, if you guys wanna spend your money that way, be my guest,” Namjoon says, resigning his argument. It’s very clear that his debate skills will only get him so far when he’s trying to utilize them with a group of college youths in a foreign country very recently hopped up on caffeine. “But it’ll be a waste of your money.”

Hoseok scoffs. “We’re in Italy on a school-sponsored trip and we already have thousands of dollars in debt because the American banking system is ass,” he reasons. “What’s a couple more dollars going to do?”

To that, everyone cheers.

The last time you were on a boat, you had accompanied Hoseok’s family on his annual fishing trip during spring break when the both of you were twelve. Against both of your better judgement, you and Hoseok climbed into his father’s kayak to boat around the lake that your lodging rested up against despite the fact that neither of you knew how to kayak. Five minutes later the both of you were held up by your lifejackets as the kayak floated away, unmanned, far out of reach as the both of you tread the freezing cold water. It’s one of your fondest memories.

It’s been six years since you were on a boat and the uneasy, queasy feeling you receive from being on one still hasn’t faded. In fact, it seems to be amplified now that you are surrounded by new friends who haven’t seen you throw up before, unlike Hoseok.

Granted, a gondola is kind of the Venetian dream, when you think about it. The kind of activity that everyone in the movies does whenever they visit Venice, and soft violin music is playing in the background as an unnamed man steers the main character and their love interest and everything is romantic and soft and not at all sweaty and crowded.

This is not a Venetian dream. It’s more like a Venetian reality.

Seokjin and Hoseok have been bickering for the past ten minutes on the correct way to put on a lifejacket when neither of them are wearing theirs correctly, and your fake boyfriend is paying you hardly any attention because his face has been stuck in his camera ever since you boarded. The added cushioning is causing sweat to dribble down your back in droplets, turning the part where your shorts meet your t-shirt into a damp, uncomfortable mess. This kind of sucks and yet, you don’t think you’d rather be anywhere else.

Seokjin sighs, looking towards the back row, where you and Jungkook are sitting. He’s got one arm wrapped around your waist—you feel bad because his hand is most definitely damp from your sweat—and the other is holding his camera up to his eye, snapping as many photos as he can as the boat travels down the water, like he’s going to make some stop-motion animation film. “You guys are so lucky,” he says.

“Us?” You ask, confused.

“When I’m rich and famous I want to bring my significant other here and get a gondola tour and travel the city together, and you guys get to do it even though you are neither rich nor famous,” Seokjin declares, exasperated, envious of whatever the hell you and Jungkook have. “This is like, a prime love location.”

“Yeah, because you’d know anything about love,” Hoseok says with a taunting sneer. “Pretty sure the only girl in your life is your bassoon.”

“Talk about her behind my back all you want, but do not insult Bessy in front of me,” Seokjin says, a hard glare etched on his face. The expression makes Hoseok double over in laughter. You’re almost 100% sure that if it were socially acceptable, Seokjin would sleep with his bassoon every night just to make sure it was warm and protected. You know, like a sentient being. Except it’s a wooden instrument. With keys that can bend very, very easily.

“You and your bassoon can suck my ass,” Hoseok continues just to be unbearable. You know Seokjin isn’t taking what he says to the heart, but it doesn’t stop the older from reaching over to ruffle Hoseok’s hair. You swear you can see droplets of maroon sweat fall from his locks as Seokjin gives them a good shake.

“You guys are some lucky motherfuckers, I hope you know that,” Seokjin says, pointing to the both of you accusingly. He’s got something in between a fond look and a sneer on his face. You know he means nothing but the best.

Jungkook pulls you in for a side hug, your body squishing against the heat of his own for a brief second before he lets go. “What can I say, you’re a catch, Thumper.” He presses a sweat-laden kiss to your cheek, but the touch of his lips on your skin no longer catches you off guard. In fact, it’s almost like you were waiting for the next time he would kiss you. Almost.

“I think I might throw up and not from seasickness,” Hoseok says with the most horrified look on his face.

You turn to Jungkook, only to find him grinning unbearably wide, a sun of a smile on his face as he looks down at you. Looks at you like he’s spent all this money just so he could be in a gondola with you in Venice, not for any of the sights along the way. His camera’s still held up in his hand but he’s no longer clicking away, instead savoring the view right in front of him. You can’t imagine what sort of otherworldly acting skills Jungkook might have if he’s able to see some façade of beauty in your sweaty, heat-stricken body, but you suppose that anything’s a stretch at this point. You’re already head-deep into this fake dating thing. How much further can you go?

“Oh!” Seokjin gasps aloud. “The lighting is perfect here! Quick, Jungkook, take a photo of me!” Immediately the man strikes a perfectly constructed pose, pretending to look off into the unknown distance with his head turned away from the camera, faking a candid photo to the soft sloshing of the water against the boat. Seokjin, quite frankly, looks ridiculous, but you have to admit that the light gives him a sort of heavenly glow. One that will probably translate very well on Instagram.

“He’s right, Thumper,” Jungkook says, bringing his camera up to his eye. “The lighting is perfect.”

And without warning, suddenly Jungkook is turning himself ninety degrees and snapping a photo of you before you can stop him, the fond smile on your face too slow to be erased before the camera click goes off.

“Jungkook!” You hiss.

“What?” He asks defensively. Seokjin’s still posing with his head facing away from the camera, and so he’s been totally bamboozled into thinking that Jungkook is snapping photos of him. Hoseok seems to have noticed this fact, and is trying to muffle his laughter as best as he can without giving it all away. “The lighting really is perfect.”

“I look and feel like a pile of sweat in a plastic bag,” you tell him like it’s obvious that he should have noticed how truly disgusting you look. Even though you are by the water it feels like your body is burning from the inside out as a result of the blazing sun despite the copious amounts of sunscreen you’ve been layering on your body. Your hair is matted down and everything is sticky.

“Drifting through the wind?” Hoseok supplies unhelpfully, making you reach over and smack him.

“You look beautiful,” Jungkook corrects, and he takes another photo, just for good measure. “I don’t have enough photos of you on my camera, Thumper. You’re my girlfriend and I’ve barely been taking pictures of you.”

“So?”

“‘So?’” Jungkook repeats. “Thumper, everything you do deserves to become a memory.”

For the rest of the day tour, Jungkook snaps countless photos of you, ones of you posing and ones of you caught off guard, refusing to stop despite Seokjin’s indignant cries of “I asked first!”. He says it’s because he doesn’t have enough on his camera, because of all the places you’ve been to in Italy thus far this is the one where he wants to remember you most.

You wish you were good at photography. Maybe then this whole fake-dating thing would seem a lot less fake.

When Yoongi suggested drinking as a legitimate activity that the eight of you did together while in Venice, he genuinely wasn’t kidding. Jungkook texts you after another long day of walking around and avoiding tourist sites together, skipping down side streets and eating big cups of gelato, while you’re fresh out of the shower in your room. The rest of the girls are all out, so this is the only time you can secure a nice wash other than a rather unholy two in the morning. You just want to decompress, maybe go out in a little for some bruschetta but nothing else, when you read:

going out tonight gonna crack open a lot of cold ones with all the bois

please come with taehyung really wants to try italian alcohol

And then, because you apparently have no choice when it comes to him:

dropping by ur room to pick u up in twenty minutes

Which leaves you twenty minutes to get dressed, dry your hair, and put on some makeup before Jungkook is knock, knock, knocking at your door. The only reason you’re even putting effort into your appearance for such an excursion is because said excursion is occurring at a time when the sun is not beating down your back, and therefore copious amounts of sweat are no longer a factor. Well. If Taehyung has a club in mind, then maybe copious amounts of sweat will be a factor. But that is a bridge you will burn when you get to it.

You don’t really know what nightclub life will be like in Italy, though you’re fairly certain sleazebags of the male specimen are probably a universal issue. Luckily, you’ve got yourself a very handy dandy fake boyfriend to rescue you should any trouble arise.

To be quite honest, you’re surprised that nobody in your group’s made any effort to legally acquire some booze beforehand. You’d think that they’d take advantage of the lower legal alcohol limit as soon as they set foot in the country, but it doesn’t seem to be very high on their list of priorities. That is, until now.

You have just finished adjusting the collar of your dress when Jungkook knocks on your door, the sound of his fist against the wood reverberating around your entire hotel room like an echo getting farther and farther away.

“No entourage?” You ask, surprised to see him standing alone. You’d been half-expecting him to knock on your door with the entire possy behind him, waiting. He’s been fidgeting, that much you can tell, by the way his hands have been clasped together and his right foot’s unnatural position towards the left one.

“Just me, Thumper,” Jungkook admits guiltily. “Ready to go?” He holds out his hand, warm palm waiting for your softer, rounder fingers to join with his long, slender ones.

“Nothing quite like getting drunk in Venice on a university-sponsored vacation,” you say in lieu of any sort of greeting. You figure that your hand intertwined with his is enough of a hello.

He grins. “If the entire world turns to shit, we can blame Taehyung.”

It seems like a good enough plan to you.

Speaking of the devil himself, you and Jungkook meet him and the rest of the bunch in the lobby. Taehyung’s got sunglasses on the head—even though it’s eight at night—for the aesthetic and a very nice satin shirt you are absolutely positive is going to be going into the garbage after tonight. Not that you have ever had any drunk experiences with any of them besides the occasional thing with Hoseok in high school (you drank together in your bedroom without your parents knowing, how scandalous), and even then it was in the comfort of your own home without much of a risk factor.

“You are going to lose those sunglasses so damn quick, Tae,” Jimin says as you walk out of the hotel, already beginning to scan the streets for the closest bar. He even makes a show of snatching them off Taehyung’s head, wearing them himself just for fun. Taehyung makes grabby hands and says some stupid insult about Jimin’s height as he retrieves them from Jimin’s nose bridge. “Last time you got drunk you lost your Epipen. Who the fuck brings an Epipen out to go drinking?”

Taehyung gasps. “You never know which places might have corn!”

“In their drinks?”

“Is Taehyung allergic to corn? Is that what I’m getting here?” You ask, leaning over to ask into Jungkook’s ear. Not that Taehyung wouldn’t answer you perfectly fine either, you just think he seems rather busy, bickering with Jimin and playing a game of capture the flag with his sunglasses that he’s wearing at night.

“Yeah,” Jungkook nods. “But it’s like, just raw corn. The moment you cook it, he’s not allergic to it anymore.”

Not that you’re one to judge allergies or the people who have them, but Taehyung’s allergy is so specific that it fits him perfectly. Like, if nothing else, that is the most Taehyung thing about him. His allergy to raw corn.

“Hey! There’s a bar!” Seokjin shouts as you stumble across a little nook tucked away on one of the Venetian side streets, a wooden sign hanging above the open archway that reads BAR. Not many people are frequenting said joint, mostly because it’s a weekday at eight and literally nobody except people with a lot of free time (i.e. college tourists) go drinking on weekdays at eight.

You don’t rush into the bar per se, but the average speed of the group overall seems to increase before becoming a constant rate of significantly-faster-than-before as everyone gets to the bar, ready to live the dream of being zazzed in a foreign country to the highest degree possible. You know, even if you’ve never gotten drunk with him before, that Taehyung would immediately go up to the bartender and demand the strongest thing they have if the two spoke the same language. Unfortunately, Taehyung’s trapped looking at the chalkboard with fun chalk colors and hoping that his alcoholic beverage translations are accurate.

Not that any of the drinks would have raw corn in them to begin with.

For a particularly bustling city, even on a pretty average day, it surprises you that despite the date and time, there are only a couple of other patrons in the bar. Venice is busy every hour of every day, even if some times are more packed than the others, but your group makes up a hefty majority of the people in here. Rambunctious, boisterous college students who don’t know good alcohol from bad because all alcohol tastes the exact same flavor of instant regret.

Even still, Italians are known for their booze, and that is simply something you cannot escape while here. It doesn’t take much, just a bit of clambering to order, before you can already feel the liquid going to your brain, a haze settling in in your mind that doesn’t seem to be able to dissipate. Not that anyone else in your group is faring any better, because quite frankly, none of you seem to be able to hold down your alcohol well. Besides Namjoon, who is doing remarkably well.

Hoseok is draped over Seokjin’s back, unintelligible moans leaving his lips and fanning out on his shoulder. The heat makes Seokjin drunkenly try to toss ice cubes Hoseok’s way, but his aim is very unsurprisingly terrible. You’re almost positive Seokjin doesn’t have that kind of hand-eye coordination even when sober. Yoongi has struck up a wordless conversation with the bartender and seems to keep receiving drinks upon drinks, but they are very obviously watered down with soda and lime. Jimin is only the slightest bit of a disaster, but it is Taehyung that is slowly jumping off of his rocker.

The alcohol seems to have subdued Jungkook slightly, leaving him in the same mindless fog that you’re in. Neither of you know what’s just happened in the past five minutes but you know that you’re in Venice, and you know that you’re together.

And that’s really all that matters.

Taehyung is in the middle of a recreation of the Bee Movie script yet again, only he is reciting it dramatic monologue-style, meaning he’s about to collapse on the table as part of the theatrics of it all, when Namjoon suggests that you leave and start heading back. It’s late. The time feels like it’s passed too quickly. Jungkook is warm and the alcohol has given him a soft glow. He is gorgeous and you adore him, really adore him, only the slightest bit.

Even if Namjoon is definitely the most sober one out of all of you—something you admire, especially since over the course of the evening he certainly didn’t shy away from the drinks when given—none of you really know where you’re headed. Your cardinal directions have switched and the sun is already far below the horizon so you can’t figure them out. Namjoon’s phone is on three percent. The world is your oyster.

There is nothing quite like the fantasy of stumbling around a romantic, street-light-laden city like Venice while inebriated. Not to the point of any serious harm and certainly not enough to incapacitate you so severely that you’re incapable of any sort of basic function, but enough to have your head spinning and for all of the lights that decorate the streets to bleed together, like a photo out of focus. Enough for the world to seem a little bit happier even if nothing has changed, and even if there has just been a new political campaign designed to ruin the very foundation of democracy.

When in Venice. When life hands you an instrument, it is music that you must play.

Somehow, someway, you get lost. Not that you’re at all surprised by this since it took five minutes to get from the hotel to the bar and you’ve been clambering around Venice for at least fifteen. Somehow the direction your group has vanishes and it is like all hell breaks loose but nothing actually escapes. Jimin and Taehyung are in a constant state of giggles, laughing and laughing and laughing about something that nobody else will find funny. Namjoon has somehow been coerced into giving Yoongi a piggyback ride, and so he trudges along as Yoongi sucks on an ice cube from the plastic cup in his hand, wincing whenever the cold touches the back of his front teeth. Somehow, Seokjin and Hoseok haven’t ripped each other’s heads off and are instead engaged in a very serious game of drunk chopsticks, Hoseok continuously pulling the move where he splits up his one hand into two, just to bother the elder.

Somehow, Jungkook hasn’t let go of your hand. Not since when you left to go down to the lobby a couple of hours ago. This entire time you’ve been connected by a lifeline, your two hands interlocked between your bodies as you sip your margaritas and cocktails and pretend just for a second, that none of this is fabricated. Pretend that just for a little bit, when your brains are clogged and your hearts are beating, that there is no big reveal at the end of this trip to devastate your friends, no messy breakup you have to stage all for the act. That Jungkook can be Jungkook and you can be you and the us, whatever us it is that you have, can just be an us.

Somehow, after another eight minutes of walking (and three of Jimin yodelling) you find yourselves in, of all places, Piazza San Marco. The tourist traps are closed for the night but the view will never die, the sight of such a gorgeous location will forever hold the same beauty. Not that Piazza San Marco was your intended destination, but it certainly is a stunning one. One that even at night, when all of the visitors have gone back to their hotels and only the locals, free to roam as they please, are out for a nighttime stroll, takes your breath away.

“Hey, I recognize this place,” Hoseok points out mindlessly. He won the game of Chopsticks, and now Seokjin wants a rematch.

“Piazza Marco Polo,” Jimin tacks on incorrectly, too busy trying to wrap Taehyung up in his sleeves. So far Taehyung’s shirt is wholly intact and his glasses have made their way from the top of his head to the back of it, hanging off of his ears like a true college student.

“Gorgeous here,” Namjoon comments aloud, only one who can articulate such an admiration for the view while mildly hammered. He’s one of the lucky ones; the alcohol flows in and out of his system at the snap of his fingers. “Even at night. Gorgeous.”

“Imagine living here,” you add on just for some food for thought.

Living in Italy would be as much of a dream as you could imagine. A little apartment in the good side of town, top floor with no elevator or air conditioning. Dark red shutters and a soft breeze that blows through the windows. Street music playing from below, history right at your doorstep. Art museums with the world’s treasures only a fifteen minute walk away. The best cheese, wine, meat in the world, at your fingertips.

And then suddenly the dream changes. You blame it on your drunkenness before you can make out the new image in front of you. You’re still in Italy, still have that apartment in the good side of town with a soft breeze and maroon shutters. But there’s a figure standing by the tiny kitchen island. A violin case by the couch. There are Polaroids decorating the walls, each with scrawled dates underneath them. The figure turns around and it’s Jungkook. Suddenly the image is different, you are in Italy and you have an apartment and you eat the best cheese and drink the best wine and Jungkook is with you every step of the way. Almost like it would feel strange if he wasn’t. Like he belongs here.

There is art, and there is art.

There is art that the world has analyzed, stared right through the cracks in the paint. Art that is revered, honored, with plaques and Wikipedia pages and courses dedicated to them. Art that is meant to be shown off, boasted by museums as if to say “Look what we have”, art meant for the human to look at.

And there is art, art that the world has ignored. Hidden art, shadowed by the things that people recognize, that people know. Art that peeks in through the cracks in the paint and raises its hand softly to say that “I’m here. Don’t forget about me.” Art that is meant to sit in plain sight, right in front of you but never obtrusively. Art that moves with you.

There is Jungkook.

Lost in thought, you turn to find Jungkook sitting down on an empty step, swallowing heavily as his body slowly but surely rids itself of the alcohol. The haze is still there but no longer is it growing. Only settling.

“Hey,” you say softly, finding yourself getting down next to him. Jungkook’s eyes are transfixed on the stars. “You’re drunk.”

“I am not,” Jungkook says, swaying only the slightest bit. You could blame it on the wind if there was any. He keeps his gaze trained on the sky above. Not many stars are visible from here, the city lights keeping them hidden from his view, but you can make out a few. The lucky ones, not shadowed by the weight of human life.

“You are,” you insist, and he doesn’t fight it. “What kind of a fake girlfriend am I supposed to be when my fake boyfriend is drunk?”

Jungkook forces a chuckle before pausing. You don’t really expect him to answer. When you look back down, the rest of your group are charging around Piazza San Marco, so much free space that they don’t know what to do with themselves. If you squint, you think you can see Yoongi and Taehyung sparring. Or at least, Naruto-running towards each other.

“You don’t have to be my fake girlfriend,” Jungkook suddenly blurts out. You turn to him, caught off guard and surprised he even responded to you when you had spoken to him well over thirty seconds ago. “You could… we could—” You don’t understand. What’s he trying to say?

“Jungkook?” You ask, leaning in, hoping that his eyes will meet yours, even just for a second. He sounds like he’s about to spill out his deepest secrets, his darkest fears, to an unsuspecting stranger.

“Oh, God,” Jungkook says before he rushes to his feet and beelines to the nearest public trash can. You gasp to yourself, watching in horror as Jungkook leans over, body rocking back and forth. He doesn’t actually vomit, nothing comes out of his mouth, but it is the sight of such uneasiness that has you truly worried.

“Jungkook!” You should, getting up yourself and jogging over to him. He still has yet to empty any of the contents from his stomach out of his mouth, and as you reach him his body seems to slow, like the whole thing was just a false alarm in the first place. “Jungkook, are you okay?”

Jungkook looks up at you, and even if you are both shrouded in the darkness of the night you can tell that he’s embarrassed. But it’s like his entire demeanor just shifts, a volta in his personality, when he sees you, his shoulders lightening up and a soft grin breaking out onto his face. “Yeah, Thumper,” he says, promises, even as he stands next to a public trash can. You swear someone wolf whistles, but you are hardly paying attention. “I’m okay.”

Venice ends like this: for once, the skies are cloudy. Not that the overcast weather makes the temperature any less boiling, because even if the sun is gone the humidity remains. But the clouds are nice. You’re leaving on a Thursday, when all of the other tourists who are leaving on the weekend are still in the heat of their explorations around the area, desperate to cram in as much as they can in a three-day period.

Venice ends like this: even though you’ve seen Jungkook plenty since then, he hasn’t made a single mention of what happened that night in Piazza San Marco, and you aren’t going to press him on it any further than you did then. What Jungkook said that night was a fragment, pieces of an incomplete sentence that his brain couldn’t add the finishing touches to, not necessarily just because he was drunk but because it didn’t seem like he had the final words to say anyway. Venice ends with what you are certain are memory cards after memory cards of Seokjin and you in Jungkook’s possession. He could never really keep himself from pressing the silver button on his camera.

Venice ends like this: with an unfinished story on a cloudy day.

“Florence, here we come!” Seokjin shouts as everyone is rolling out of the hotel, ready to head to the train to take you all the way down south, the final destination on your trip.

It feels bizarre, calling it the last stop. The final place. Because you still have over a week there, but it’s the last over-a-week you’ll have in Italy, the last several days before you inevitably have to fly back home, a plane ride you are absolutely dreading. Italy is the kind of place that makes you wonder why you didn’t visit sooner. Florence is where all of the lasts will be, last gelato, last museum, last sidestreet. Last performance, last painting. The very last of your relationship with Jungkook, whatever behemoth of a fake relationship it’s turned into.

Time flies so quickly, and yet you feel as though the next week will pass by like molasses. A last week to savor the best and forget the worst. The last week you will have to spend walking around Italy with your hand in Jungkook’s, with him taking an unnecessary amount of photos of you, with him stealing your pasta and you sharing his pizza.

Lots of lasts. Lots of firsts, too. Everything is unfinished but this feels final, no matter what.

“Can’t believe we’ll be home in ten days,” Namjoon says, his words eliciting a grumble from the rest of the group, who refuse to face the truth until it knocks them square in the nose.

“Feels like just yesterday Yoongi destroyed his internal organs by downing multiple shots of espresso,” Taehyung reminisces like Yoongi’s nothing but a memory, a piece of the past.

“I’m right here, fucker,” Yoongi mutters, standing next to him with his flute in his hand.

“Sometimes I can still hear his voice…” Taehyung trails off, purposefully looking in the opposite direction from where the flutist is standing just to bother him more. Yoongi then proceeds to practically knock Taehyung right into Seokjin, who then shoves him back, leaving Taehyung caught in a push-and-shove sandwich as the two go back and forth like Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

“Better make the most of this, right?” Jungkook asks to you as you slowly migrate from the hotel, saying goodbye to the staff as you shuffle out with your big suitcases and backpacks and instruments. You’re positive that the hotel employees are thrilled to be rid of you. “Only one place left.”

“So many things that we have to see there,” you say, already dreaming of the gorgeous artwork and the history-rich architecture that’s waiting for you a mere two hours by train away.

“Well,” Jungkook says somewhat haughtily. He can’t hold your hand because his are filled and so are yours, but he can nudge up against you, sticking close to your side, like he’s afraid that if he loses you he’ll never get you back. “We’ll just have to stick together, hmm?”

You think of Venice. And Rome. And the way that Jungkook can see the beauty in everything, the way he can capture it even better than he can view it. The way that with a simple change of degree the whole angle changes, the perspective alters and becomes something brand new but not any less beautiful. You think of Jungkook and you think that, if it’s your last week in Italy, you may as well milk this relationship dry while you still can. Before whatever comes after a fake relationship, be it friendship or that awkward limbo of acquaintances or barely acknowledging each other on the sidewalk. And even if you know that Jungkook is waiting for the day when you break up to come as well, you pray you won’t lose him to distance, to time. Pray, selfishly so, that he’ll stay close to you.

It is people like Jungkook, you recognize, that are people you need to cherish.

On the train, Hoseok and Jungkook play rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets to claim the seat next to you. What’s funny about this round, however, is the fact that Hoseok puts out scissors three times in a row, making it easy for Jungkook to beat him and secure the spot right beside yours as his home for the next two hours. Hoseok had taken a psychology course in freshman year and his professor taught him the most foolproof way to win at rock-paper-scissors every time and Hoseok disregarded it entirely. Curious.

Jungkook, having very evidently not gotten enough sleep the night before, settles in down next to you before saying, “I’m tired, can I use you as a pillow?” He leaves no space for a response as he places his head in the crook of your neck and his eyes flutter shut.

Florence does not need photos to take your breath away. Florence steals your lungs right from your body, leaving you no room to even try. Cuts off your air supply from the source in order to leave you in a permanent state of awe, like you’ll never get used to a city like this.

Granted, you’re extremely excited just to be here, an enthusiastic puppy getting taken to its new home for the very first time. Not unlike the other two cities you’ve visited thus far, Florence is rich with art, history, culture, and you simply cannot wait until you dive head first into it all. Florence is the type of city that always has you on the edge of your seat, wanting more. A perpetual cliffhanger.

The nicest thing about the city is that everything is within thirty minutes of everything else. At no point in time will you need to hop onto some form of public transportation, whether it be a train, a taxi, a gondola. Nothing is truly off limits in Florence, not when you have so much time to spare. Florence is the city where you are meant to get lost, begin wandering down some side streets and lose your way entirely, because what is the beauty in the destination if you ignore the beauty in the journey?

“I was supposed to be saving my money for textbooks next year but fuck that shit!” Jimin cries out as you head down towards the Arno, making your way right towards Ponte Vecchio. Not that any of you have any intentions of buying jewelry that costs more than a mortgage, but you know that the stores along the main street that takes you there are worth your while. “Thank you illegal PDFs!”

“What the hell are you even going to buy?” Seokjin asks, looking Jimin up and down like a mannequin. “You already own like, one of every single clothing item in existence.”

“I reject this statement,” Jimin declares, but it’s no use. Seokjin’s right. Jimin seems to own everything despite what you know is a lack of funding in his bank account. He must go thrifting a lot. “I’ll figure out a way to spend my money, don’t shame me.”

“Think about it, Seok, how often you gonna get to go shopping in Italy?” Namjoon reasons, the peacemaker within the group.

Seokjin scoffs, as if that’s even a question he’s being asked. “Lots, obviously? Just gotta wait until my Instagram career takes off. Then I’ll be here every summer, bitches!”

Everyone laughs, partly because Seokjin’s enthusiasm is just genuinely amusing and partly because you all know that his Instagram career is going nowhere except the garbage. Things like that only happen to people with connections or people who are rich. Seokjin is neither, though he swears that he has a second cousin who’s a K-pop star. You aren’t necessarily sure if you believe him.

“Have fun melting your goddamn face off,” Jimin comments bitterly. His pointer finger and thumb are pinching the collar of his shirt as he fans it out in the hopes that he’ll cool down what must be burning skin underneath. Jimin’s got a casual dress shirt and shorts on and his sweat stains are quite honestly, record-breaking. You can’t imagine yourself to be any better. Simply walking on the concrete makes your body temperature rise something fierce and unrelenting. “It’s balls hot here.”

“It’s balls hot here everywhere, climate change is real,” Yoongi says snidely, though he isn’t faring much better. “This is what greenhouse gases are doing to our goddamn ecosystem.”

“I’m sorry?” Taehyung asks, and you already know that whatever is about to come out of his mouth is going to earn him some sort of physical response from Yoongi. “Global warming is a hoax created by China to steal American jobs. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Yoongi mutters even if the fondness peeks right through his words.

Fanning yourself as you beeline to the closest shaded part of the sidewalk, where the veranda offers a brief and weak respite from the blazing rays beating down on you, you heave out, “I could go for a water bottle. How about you Jungko—?” You turn to find the boy you thought had been walking right behind you gone, vanished into thin air. You know he couldn’t be far but the crowds on this road seem to be never-ending, and for a split second you’re worried you’ve lost him entirely.

“We lost Jungkook!” You shout to the rest of your friends, who are currently loitering outside a watch store as Jimin and Namjoon take a peek inside. They all shrug in response, none of them feeling any sort of a sense of urgency to find the boy. What if he’s been sucked into a black hole and none of you know because none of you bother to look for him?

“Of course we did!” Hoseok says, shrugging it off like it’s nothing. “He’s probably taking photos in one of the alleys!”

“I’ll go get him!” You shout to them. Hoseok gives you a thumbs up before he caves and walks into the watch store, desperate for any sort of air conditioned haven that he can find, even if not for very long.

Walking against the current of the crowd, your eyes scan the smaller streets that jut out from the main one, searching for the boy with the camera. He must be down one of these, in no scenario would he ever stop in such a busy road to take photos. And then, near the very beginning of the downhill slope, you see a mop of dark hair and a camera.

“Jungkook!” You call, rushing over to him. He’s looking at some smaller works of street art, tiny little drawings on the sides of buildings and walls of political cartoons, lips, stick figures. They look like tattoos on the skin, each with a different meaning, spread out along an arm or a chest or a back. Little drawings that make up a bigger picture. “Jungkook, you disappeared on us!”

“I hate being in the sun,” he tells you, which, valid. You hate it too. Never have you hated that ball of fire in the sky more than this vacation. “And these drawings are amazing. Very quirky, would probably get accepted into a top college.”

“You can’t just vanish like that, you know,” you tell him pointedly. “It’s busy as shit here. We’d lose you. I’d lose you!”

Jungkook places a hand on his heart, feigning appreciation. “Aw, would my girlfriend miss me if I was gone?”

You barely take notice of the way the word “fake” has slipped from his mind.

(Maybe if you pretend it’s not there this time, you can pretend that it was never there to begin with.)

You scoff, rolling your eyes even if his words cause a little grin to break out on your face. Jungkook seems to have this permanent effect on you where, in his presence, you’ll always end up smiling. He’s just a wonderful person. Someone worth smiling for. “No, just don’t wanna be held liable for your disappearance. I’d have to pay your college tuition. Fuck that.”

“Ever the romantic, Thumper,” Jungkook says. His smile reaches his eyes, makes little wrinkles appear at the corners of them. People say wrinkles are bad but wrinkles are proof that you are living your life the right way: filled with laughter and joy. Finding something truly wonderful and being unabashed about your admiration for it. That’s how you’re supposed to live your life. “Say Firenze!”

Yet another classic Jungkook as he catches you off guard, quickly pulling up his camera and snapping a photo before you can object, the familiar click of the camera ringing out throughout the alley. You know what the photo looks like before he can show it to you, know exactly what it’s going to be before seeing it yourself. It’ll be you, standing in front of the conjunction between the alleyway and the main street, the perpendicularly-moving crowd an unfocused blur behind you. It’ll be you, clear as day, with the beginnings of a giggle on your face.

(You. In love with the man behind the camera.)

“That’s going into the portfolio for sure,” Jungkook declares as he quickly scans through his most recent takes. “Some of my finest work, if I do say so myself.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Jeon,” you say as a warning, even if you know he’s right. In everything that Jungkook does he is improving, getting one step closer and closer to complete and utmost perfection. Jungkook is the kind of person God created and then realized that they were too close to immaculate, but it was too late, because he was already here. “Come on, we gotta meet up with the rest of them. Pretty sure Jimin’s about to drop all of his money on a watch.”

Jungkook sighs. “Not again.”

This time, when you walk into a clothing store, it isn’t one with articles that cost more than a car. Luckily. Meaning you can comfortably shop without your eyes widening comically when you look at the price tag. It’s another one of those movie fantasies, shopping in a visually, culturally, and historically breathtaking place like Italy. Another one of those silly tourist things you’ll do just for the hell of it.

You’re in the middle of inspecting a button-down shirt, one that is entirely asymmetrical in both its design and its pattern, with horizontal and vertical stripes crashing into each other, when Hoseok comes up to you with the most obscene shorts you have ever seen (save for his awful, awful denim ones). They are a fluorescent canary yellow, the color you would find in a Crayola box for elementary students, and they have bright green polka dots covering them. They’re horrifying, and yet, only Hoseok would ever be able to pull them off.

“What in tarnation,” you say, not so much a question as it is a gasp, eyebrows furrowing instantly as Hoseok holds up the offending article of clothing. It looks more like a very diseased banana than a piece of clothing.

“Aren’t these great?” He asks enthusiastically. “And they’re on sale!”

You wonder why. Maybe if you were back home, at your own shopping mall, you would tell him that he’s about as fashionable as a colorblind giraffe and that it would be a waste of his money, but you’re not back home. You’re in Italy, and if in Italy Hoseok wants to buy what may or may not be the ugliest pair of shorts you’ve ever laid eyes on, then, well, who are you to stop him?

“You know what, Hoseok?” You say, nodding your head in support. He deserves to treat himself, even if his tastes are questionable at best. “You do you.”

“Treat myself, bitch,” Hoseok says confidently, turning to face what you’re browsing through. It’s mindful shopping, not the same kind that you do back home, because you only have one chance to buy something nice. No returns, refunds, or exchanges. “What are you gonna get?”

“I don’t know. Something nice.”

“Way to be specific, Y/N,” Hoseok says sarcastically.

You scoff, accosted. “You have no right to be talking to me about fashion when you have those monstrosities in your hand.”

Hoseok gasps. “How dare you insult these shorts. They are now my pride and joy and I will always wear them around you just to spite you.”

“First of all, fuck you,” you spit out though there is no animosity to your words. Hoseok cackles before prancing off to find some other hideous items in the sale section hidden in the back corner, away from the customer’s view. Not without good reason, of course.

With your best friend gone, frolicking around the store’s lower level, you begin to migrate yourself, eyes scanning the racks and shelves and mannequins for something to catch your eye. For some reason you seem to have become pickier than before, as if the change in location suddenly altered your own taste when it came to shopping, like you’re being stingy because you know you can’t just up and return the items like you could elsewhere.

That is precisely when you feel a figure slide up next to you, placing a soft kiss on your cheek to alert you of his presence.

“Hey, Thumper,” Jungkook says. “What do you think?”

Over his graphic tee, he’s got on a faux leather jacket, a sleek black material that looks much more expensive than it actually is. It fits him extremely well, hugs the biceps he’s gotten from so many years of violin-holding and perhaps a couple years of some devoted weightlifting as well, compliments his flawless figure and small waist. It looks great on him. You find it only a little strange that a store in Italy is selling a high-quality, thick leather jacket in the middle of summer.

“It doesn’t go with your shoes,” you tell him, looking down at the Jesus sandals look he’s sporting.

Jungkook rolls his eyes. “Aside from my shoes, what do you think?”

You can’t help but be honest. This relationship has turned you into one hell of a softie. “It looks great on you, Jungkook. Everything does.” It comes out kind of like a sigh, like it’s something he should already know, so why is he bothering asking you? Does he need you to tell him that he’s beautiful too?

“You really think so?” Jungkook asks, looking at you as he takes the jacket off, hanging it over one arm as he flattens it out.

“Well, after Hoseok came up to me with the Satan of shorts, everything in this store seems nicer than it really is,” you joke. Jungkook laughs knowingly, having obviously caught a glimpse of Hoseok and those demons while walking around as well. “But yeah, I’m serious. You should get it.”

“It’s a little expensive,” Jungkook says hesitantly, eyeing the price tag. “I don’t know, maybe it’s not worth it. It’s not even real leather.”

“So? Save a cow and get it,” you tell him. “You shouldn’t be scared of it. We’re in Italy. You’re with your youth orchestra group. I’m here. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Words to live by.

Galileo Galilei once said that you must “measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.” And you’ve lost count of the amount of times that Jungkook has pulled his hand into yours but you know that he’s kissed you on the cheek five times and you’ve seen him smile about as many times as there are stars in the sky. But what you cannot measure is your relationship with him. There is a contract written on a napkin somewhere but you wonder if he’s accidentally thrown it away while cleaning out his backpack, and you begin to wonder if you even care if he has. Galileo Galilei says that you need to make measurable what is not but you don’t know how you’re supposed to begin counting out your relationship with Jungkook when you yourself don’t even know how to define it. All of these numbers must add up to something but there is an unforeseen variable that you cannot solve for.

Galileo Galilei is a genius, but even still there are some unanswered questions.

On the edge of Florence and north of the Arno river is a smaller, less frequented church than the Duomo in the center called the Basilica de Santa Croce, and it is where Galileo is buried alongside people like Dante, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo. It is the deathbed of legends, of names permanently etched into history as shining stars, forgers of what is now the present. The Basilica de Santa Croce is not only an architectural wonder but it bears the names of some of the world’s most famous writers, philosophers, artists, leaders.

It just so happens to be your tourist stop of the day.

“That’s Dante!” Jimin shouts as you come up to the church, pointing towards the statue to the left of the main doors. Engraved in the stone is his name, Dante Alighieri. “He wrote that one book about hell.”

Namjoon looks as though he’s about to have an aneurysm with Jimin’s very obvious lack of deep and immense respect for not only the book but also the author behind it. You are willing to bet very good money that Namjoon poured out his heart, mind, and soul into the study of the book, whenever he was forced to read it during his mandated schooling. Coughing, he corrects, “He wrote the Divine Comedy, largely considered to be Italy’s greatest literary work, one of which features the poem Inferno. Yes.”

“That’s what I said,” Jimin says pointedly, making Namjoon sigh. You suppose that’s what he gets for easily being the only one in this entire group who’s somehow managed to retain the majority of his brain cells. You are actually quite impressed he hasn’t lost more considering how often he spends time with Taehyung.

“I’m really looking forward to this one,” Jungkook leans in to tell you as Namjoon doles out the tickets. It’s the middle of the day on a weekday and there is absolutely no line to enter, a shocking sight in a bustling tourist center like Florence. “Inferno was my favorite thing that I’ve ever read in all of high school. Knocked out Slaughterhouse-Five for the top spot.”

“Damn, what did Vonnegut ever do to deserve that, huh?” You joke, holding out your ticket for the guard waiting at the door to inspect. He gives a hearty yet stern nod and you and Jungkook walk inside. Ahead of you, Seokjin and Taehyung are already “ooh”-ing their way around the Basilica, much to the chagrin of literally everybody else. Hoseok’s already on his way to shushing them.

Jungkook loses his ability to speak when his eyes catch up with his mouth as he takes in the sight before him. Graves are littered throughout the entire building but shrines have been built into the walls, with messages and statues and marble decorating their designs. The people here deserve to be buried with such high distinction, revered so deeply not only by Italians of hundreds of centuries but by the whole world for their contributions to society, beliefs that have shaped the world as you know it.

You’d think he’d been rendered entirely speechless if it weren’t for the awe-stricken “Wow” to leave his mouth as he stares around the building, unable to focus his eyes all on one spot for there is simply too much to see. He doesn’t know where to turn but he does seem to be drifting towards Michelangelo’s tomb, a move you definitely saw coming considering the past two weeks spent here. Namjoon, Jimin, and Taehyung are busy looking at Machiavelli’s burial site, and a quick glance their way tells you that Namjoon is currently reciting all of Machiavelli’s greatest accomplishments as Jimin and Taehyung dumbly listen in. Hoseok and Yoongi are strolling around without a clear destination in sight, letting the grandeur of the place sink in. Seokjin has striked up a conversation with another group of Korean tourists, a family with two young children. They seem to be getting along incredibly well, and Seokjin even offers to take a photo.

“Never in a million years did I ever think I’d get to be here,” Jungkook tells you as you come up to Michelangelo’s tomb. A bust of the artists rests atop a stone coffin, and next to it, statues. “These women represent Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting,” he informs you, pointing to each respective statue. “His favorite things.”

“That’s—”

“It’s nerdy, I know,” Jungkook jokes, even if he continues to stare. He takes it all in like a breath of fresh air after being locked up for a year, lets it pierce his skin and melt into his bones. “I don’t know, I just think that he’s a genius.”

“It’s not nerdy,” you promise, equally as floored by the sight in front of you as well as beside you. Jungkook speaks like his passions aren’t worth being passionate about, but you think that he’s brilliant. “It’s really fucking cool, actually. The fact that you love this stuff so much, Jungkook. It’s incredible.”

“You think so?”

You nod. Knowledge is beauty and Jungkook is the most beautiful of them all.

Conveniently, right beside the Basilica de Santa Croce, on a road barely a five minute walk away, is a gelato store with an abundance of flavors to choose from. And it just so happens to be next on your list of places to visit, the overwhelming heat of Florence scorching your skin the moment you leave the blissful shade of the church.

On the Via Dei Neri there is a little gelato shop that bears the same name as the street, and when you arrive it is mostly empty, save for a couple of tourists who are seated in the plastic chairs in the corner of the store. Admittedly, the gelato here looks a lot more scrumptious than the thick, artificial flavors of Rome and Venice, beautiful colors and swirls decorating the tubs of the sweet.

“Wow, look!” Hoseok says, smacking your shoulder roughly as he points. “Mango cheesecake! And rice!”

“Rice?” Seokjin overhears, budging in. “Move over. My Asian ass is shaking.”

The one in Rome had over a hundred flavors but every single one of these look more delectable than any of the ones there. You can’t help but ache to taste each and every one, even if you know you’ll only be able to consume one or two before your stomach is filled to the brim.

This time, you are a little more giving with your blackberry and rose gelato, allowing Hoseok a single scoop of each with that tiny plastic spoon of his, letting him divulge into your gelato as you respectfully decline a bit of his own. He’s already attacked the entire surface area of the damn thing, and while mango cheesecake sounds delicious, Hoseok’s saliva, less so.

“It’s your loss,” he tells you over a mouthful of the dessert. He then proceeds to slurp up half of it like an animal starved. Your best friend is, quite frankly, disgusting.

“What’d you get,” Jungkook asks as he plops down heavily into the open seat next to you. You can hear the bone-shattering crash of something and peer under the table to find his phone lying face down on the floor. “Ah, fuck it. It’s already broken.” He shrugs carelessly and makes no move to retrieve his cellular device, much to your anxiety. You don’t know what he’s on but it’s certainly doing wonders for your fine lines.

“Blackberry and rose.”

“Oh, can I have some?” Jungkook asks hopefully. You sigh, resigning yourself to a life of letting all of the people close to you mooch off of your food, and hold out the cone to him. He helps himself to a small scoop of each flavor, humming in appreciation as he pops the whole thing into his mouth. “Mmm,” he says. “A rose by any other name would taste as sweet.”

“Nice wordplay,” you compliment dryly. “Let me have some of yours.”

“It’s mango,” he tells you, scooping some and holding it in front of your lips, ready to feed you. You comply instantly, opening your mouth to let him pop the spoon inside. And then, catching you off guard, he quickly takes a dollop on the tip of his finger and wipes it on your nose, much to your shock.

“Every fucking time we get gelato they’re at it again,” Jimin huffs when he sees the both of you giggling in the corner, retreating to the table where Seokjin and Yoongi sit, clearly trying to avoid looking your way so they don’t vomit up their gelato. “I think we’re gonna have to exile them from our gelato-scapades.”

“You know you don’t have to talk about us like we can’t hear you, right?” Jungkook asks pointedly.

“We know,” Jimin nods. “Go be gross elsewhere. I’m trying to stuff my face into the food of my culture.”

“Gelato is not the food of your culture,” Yoongi says. “We have the same fucking culture.”

“Ah ah ah,” Jimin says, shushing Yoongi with a finger to his lips. Yoongi, in retaliation, licks Jimin’s entire digit, but Jimin doesn’t even flinch. Like it’s normal for his finger to be licked by his friends. “This is rice gelato. Therefore, food of my culture.”

Seokjin, the biggest cone of rice-flavored gelato in his hand, high fives him.

Almost never does Bang receive enough credit for the work he puts into this orchestra. It’s his heart and soul and you are almost positive it’s the only thing he cares about, even if he’s spending the majority of his time sending glares Taehyung’s way. He’s the reason you’re even in Italy in the first place, and he is also the reason that you are currently standing in a line with tickets to enter Florence’s most famous art gallery instead of having to wait around for four hours in the blistering heat just for a spot in line.

“I pray to all of the higher powers above us and perhaps some demons as well just be sure that this place has air conditioning,” Taehyung declares as he attempts to fan himself with his ticket, the floppy piece of paper doing absolutely nothing for his body temperature. Even though you’re standing in the shade, covered by the shadow of the Uffizi, the heat is, quite frankly, still overwhelming.

“Don’t hold your breath,” Seokjin mutters. “The Lord works hard but the sun works harder.”

“Fuck that,” Taehyung grumbles, as if that’s going to do anything to calm the 500% humidity currently permeating the air.

“If you’re going to spend this entire trip complaining about the heat you’ll never be able to actually enjoy it,” Namjoon advises wisely, preferring to keep his obvious distaste for the weather to himself.

“That’s where you’re wrong, good sir,” Taehyung says, shooting Namjoon a finger gun alongside a wink. “I can complain about the heat and enjoy the trip at the same time. I’m a good multitasker.”

Namjoon rolls his eyes. Taehyung’s always been like this.

The Uffizi, ironically enough, is shaped like a gigantic U, where you start at the very top floor of the museum and make your way around and down, slowly traipsing through room after room of stunning artwork, whether it be sculptures, paintings, and everything in between. You find the setup to be much more manageable than some of the other museums you’ve been to in your time as a museum aficionado, the layout easy to navigate and certain exhibits entirely unhidden.

More than once does Jungkook urge you to break away from your tour group and go exploring, and you almost cave in once or twice, but you understand that, between the two of you you are part of that select group of kids in your orchestra that don’t actually give Bang minor headaches, and therefore you should probably stay with your group, for Bang’s sake.

“This city is the birthplace of the Renaissance as we know it, please?” Jungkook asks, tugging on your arm as you enter another room filled entirely with stone sculptures and busts. You actually find his desire to abandon the tour group quite endearing, like he appreciates art so much he wants to explore it, admire it, cherish it in his own time, without having to keep up with the quick pace of the tour guide. It is something so unabashedly Jungkook, an unapologetic want to let the art sink in for himself without the crackly voice of a tour guide speaking into his ear.

“Jungkook, you know we shouldn’t,” you advise him, quite honestly shocked that you have turned into the sole diligent orchestra member between the two of you. Never in a million years could you imagine Jungkook wanting to break the rules and you wanting to follow them considering who you are as individuals and who you hang out with as friends.

“Aw, come on, Thumper, live a little,” he pleads. “Look, we’ve already drifted to the back of the group.”

He motions up ahead of you, where the tour group is currently gathered around a particular sculpture that even Jungkook bears very little interest in. You and Jungkook have strayed behind, and the rest of your friends are closer to the front, too immersed in the tour to notice your absence. Jungkook’s got a gleam in his eye and a wonder decorating his features, like he’s aching to get out and explore as much as he can. One of his hands is held tightly to his camera, the other, in your own. You can’t believe you’re about to do this.

“Fine,” you submit to his desires, not that you seem to mind very much either. You seem to have gotten progressively weaker and weaker to Jungkook’s causes as the trip’s gone on, both a blessing and a curse. “But if we get in trouble, it’s your fault.”

“Yes!” Jungkook cheers. He keeps his eyes trained on Bang, and when the conductor has his back turned to you, he grabs onto you and you quickly shuffle out of sight.

“This is literally such a shitty idea, Jungkook,” you tell him as you enter a different room, filled less with sculptures and more with art from the Gothic, pre-Renaissance periods. “We could get lost.”

“We’ll be fine,” Jungkook says, shrugging off your concerns. “I snagged a map. Look. We’re a couple of rooms away from The Birth of Venus and Primavera.”

“You just wanted to explore this place by yourself,” you say matter-of-factly, sighing as Jungkook tugs you towards another piece of artwork, lined with gold, blue, and red. It portrays a part of the story of Christ, a common muse amongst the artists of the age.

“This is true,” he admits to you, “but I’m not by myself. Look, I’m here with you.”

And maybe he only means that in a literal sense but you take it to heart anyway, allow yourself to fall into this fleeting dream where you and Jungkook are in Italy together, no loud group of friends or youth orchestra to interrupt your plans, where it is just you and him and the city of Florence all to yourselves. Where you can do what you please and take as much time as you need and explore all you want without anybody stopping you. Where you can hold hands and it isn’t just for show and take pictures of each other to preserve in the photo albums of your brain and your heart. A dream where you are in Italy together and there is no contract standing in your way, a bitter reminder that even if the location is real your relationship is not.

“I guess,” you say out loud, more a reminder to yourself than to him that you are together physically and nothing else.

“Come on, Botticelli is a couple of rooms over,” he says quickly, tugging you towards the prize he’s got his eyes trained on, arguably the most famous of the pieces housed in this museum. They’ll have crowds in front of them, for sure, but that’s alright. Jungkook’s tall, and he’ll be able to lift you up in more ways than one.

Though Jungkook does seem to be in a bit of a rush to get to the paintings, he takes his time exploring each room, reading the plaques in earnest and staring as closely as he can at the paintings, analyzing each one like the art student he was meant to be. It’s wondrous, really, the way he falls so deeply into the art in front of him, like a well he’ll never escape from. He looks at each piece like it is just as important as the one next to it, even if they aren’t nearly as famous as others, because to him art is a gift, a treasure that should be preserved, recognized, and celebrated.

As you approach the open doorway to the room containing Botticelli’s work, Jungkook gasps softly beside you, floored even from seeing the work from far away. It’s right there, right in front of him, and it’s as though Jungkook doesn’t really know what to do with himself now.

“Hey, let’s go,” you murmur to him. His feet seem to have given up and he’s rooted firmly in place, like if he takes another step he’ll simply collapse. “Come on, Jungkook. You’re almost there.”

It seems as though he’s in a trance as he follows you along, tugging him closer and closer to the piece. Primavera has less of a crowd in front of it than The Birth of Venus a few meters away, and so you pull him up close, standing right in front of the painting as he stares at it from in front of the glass that protects it.

“Look,” you whisper to him as if he needs the extra instruction. Jungkook can’t help the way his camera immediately comes up, knowing that even if he stares down the painting for another fifteen hours it will never be preserved in his brain the way a photo is.

You don’t know if you’d rather gaze at the artwork or at Jungkook, who is as much of a masterpiece as everything else in this museum is. You elect, just for today, to let your eyes drift to the art, because maybe, selfishly so, you’ll be able to continue looking at Jungkook long after you’ve left Italy. You barely notice the way he leaves your side to get a couple of different angles of the painting, allowing yourself to sink into the art as much as he has. You lack the analytical abilities and artistic prowess that Jungkook possesses at the tips of his fingers but that’s alright because you don’t need either of those to know that this is a piece of artwork worth saving.

“Beautiful,” Jungkook says when he joins back up at your side, your fears of being caught by your tour group long forgotten. You can’t help but wish that he wasn’t talking about the art but instead talking about you, but that is a thought to be shoved into the deep crevices of your mind, far from anything that may leave your mouth.

The crowds mean absolutely nothing when Jungkook lays his eyes on The Birth of Venus, the painting illuminated by a single bulb but otherwise shadowed for safe-keeping purposes. There’s an entire Chinese tour group standing in front of the painting, old ladies whipping out their massive iPads to take a thousand photos from the exact same position as though one of them will turn out better than all of the others.

“This,” Jungkook says when you finally make your way towards the painting. He doesn’t need to elaborate. You know. Italy is a dream for someone like Jungkook, someone who can’t help but fall in love with every new piece of art he comes across. And Jungkook is a dream for someone like you, someone who can’t help but fall in love with—

“Is this what you had dreamed of?” You ask him softly. Jungkook isn’t taking out his camera for this one. He doesn’t need to. This one he’s studied, analyzed, inspected, down to each and every stroke of the brush. Even if Jungkook isn’t an art major he is an artist nonetheless, and a painting as famous as this one is something he doesn’t think he’ll forget. Not in a million years.

“More,” he whispers back, and it feels sort of like a slow motion movie, like the world is stopping but you’ll forever be able to gaze at this painting, like it is the only thing left for your eyes to look at. That’s what this feels like. Jungkook’s grip on your hand has gotten tighter but you don’t mind at all, not when he looks like he’s just seen a supernova burst in front of him. Jungkook’s eyes are permanently decorated with wonder but right now they seem to have something else in them too, like awe, like amazement, like pure beauty is staring him right in the face and he doesn’t know what to do with himself because of it.

“Don’t you want to take a photo?” You ask, nudging his camera. Jungkook’s camera hangs limply from his neck and even if he’s got a hand holding the device he makes no move to do anything about it.

“No,” Jungkook says. “This is the kind of thing I want to remember all to myself.”

Sometimes, you wonder what goes on in that head of his when he sees artwork like this. Artwork so famous, so revered, so breathtaking, that he doesn’t know what to do with himself, how to react other than with an open mouth and an awed expression. But then you realize that the way he feels when he stares at paintings like The Birth of Venus, like The Last Judgement, is the way that you feel when you stare at him. Because even if he doesn’t realize it, he himself is art, the same kind of art that he loves. Art that is worth remembering.

You and Jungkook catch up with your group somewhere along the first floor, near the end of the guided tour. Not that any of them noticed that you were missing in the first place, though Hoseok does send you a wink and a cheeky little smirk when you make a reappearance. And as the tour guide wraps up, pointing out a couple of the last few notable pieces of art, you ask Jungkook how he feels, and he tells you that he never wants to forget this moment, right now, because it is everything he has ever wanted.

The city of Florence is littered with so many art museums, galleries, palaces that it’s hard to catch a break in such a bustling city. Not that you really mind, especially since they give you the evenings off to do your own thing, but it’s easy to recognize that this city is the birthplace of the Renaissance when, with each corner you turn, there is another place to be discovered, art to be found.

Someone who very, very obviously does not mind this whatsoever is Jungkook. In fact, when you spend so much time with him you often times find yourself roped into his expeditions to seek out more paintings, sculptures, churches, architecture, anything that even screams Florentine art to him. Not that it’s something that particularly bothers or inconveniences you. Especially when the rest of your friends are sick of Jungkook’s unyielding desire to art and you are, as his honorary fake girlfriend, are not.

Throughout your week and a bit in Florence you can’t count on both of your hands how many different museums, churches that you’ve explored together. Jungkook’s got a hand on his camera and he doesn’t seem to want to let go, constantly taking photos of the art and the mosaics and the designs and of you, even if you sometimes tell him you look awful and that the art is worth remembering more than you are. Jungkook seems to beg to differ. He says that all the photos are for his portfolio. You imagine that thing must be a mile long at this point considering how many memory cards he’s gone through during this trip.

“I’m hungry,” you whine one day when you’re journeying on your own for a little around lunchtime. You’ve got an arranged tour (courtesy of Bang) for later in the afternoon, a trip to The Academy to see Michelangelo’s David, but right now you’re free to do what you please. Jungkook’s already gotten you to go into the Basilica di San Lorenzo this morning, and your stomach is grumbling.

“Hey, here’s a place,” Jungkook points out as you come up the street to a restaurant in a square-that-is-not-a-square-but-more-like-a-triangle, a place with indoor and outdoor seating. The smell that wafts through the air is enough to have you and Jungkook both asking for a table for two, sitting down by the side of the covered outdoor veranda as you stare down the menus. They’ve got a pasta list the same size as some of the essays you submitted in high school, all of which look as appetizing as the previous.

“This place knows how to treat pasta-lovers well,” Jungkook comments as you pick out your pasta of choice, one with truffle that you know is going to be stinking up your breath for the rest of the day. It’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make for the sake of the meal. “I want to order everything.”

“Slow down there, tiger. We can come back, if you’d like,” you suggest, the implications of another fake date slipping your mind. The question of “What are we?” makes you laugh from how overused it is, but even still, it applies perfectly.

The waitress comes by quickly, taking your orders and swooping up the menus, and you’re left alone listening to the sounds of the street music from several meters away, a father and a son performing in the middle of the square to passersby. It feels peaceful, homey. Like this is where you are meant to be.

“Let me take a photo of you,” Jungkook pleads, already making to get his camera out. “Please?”

Instead of objecting like you normally would, you nod, allowing Jungkook to snap as many pictures as he wants. It’s high time you indulge him, with how much he asks you to. Smiling softly, you grin towards the camera as he snaps away, unable to erase the smile that grows on his face at the sight of you. You wonder if you really are that photogenic, because all of your school IDs say otherwise, quite frankly.

“Okay, now let me take a photo of you,” you demand, making grabby hands over the table towards Jungkook’s camera. Very rarely is Jungkook ever the one in front of the camera, always preferring to be behind it, have his finger clicking away on the silver button, which you find astounding considering how deserving Jungkook is of having his photo taken, deserving to have that luxury just as everyone else.

“What? No way,” Jungkook says, holding his camera near and dear to his heart. “No. I don’t get my photo taken.”

“That’s about to change,” you declare, going so far as to stretch over the table to see if you can loop Jungkook’s camera over his head to snag it for yourself.

“Excuse me?” Jungkook asks indignantly, though he’s making absolutely no move to stop you, already resigning himself to the reality of you snagging a photo of him. You easily pull his camera from him, sitting back down in your seat and holding the camera up to your eye, letting the lens focus in on the man sitting in front of you.

“You heard me,” you tell him. “Smile, Jungkook. A picture’s worth a thousand words.”

With a sigh, Jungkook does. He closes his eyes and grins widely and even through the tiny viewfinder he looks gorgeous, looks like he’s just part of the photo instead of the focus of it. Looks like he belongs here, in Florence, surrounded by the art that he so loves and the food that he craves. He smiles and it reaches the corner of his closed eyes and God, he’s beautiful. You don’t think the camera does him justice, but it sure as hell comes close enough. With a click, you take the photo and lower the camera, hoping that maybe, if he doesn’t hear you, you’ll be able to look at him just a little longer.

“Alright,” you say softly, handing him back his camera. “There. Now you’ll get to remember yourself here, too.”

Maybe, if you’re lucky, he’ll remember the girl behind the camera as well.

Michelangelo’s David is the kind of art that you don’t know what to do with yourself when you finally lay eyes on it. The kind of art that renders you not only speechless but your mind blank, an iconic piece of work that is the emblem of an era, an art form in and of itself. That’s what it is. David is the kind of art that holds nothing less than the highest praise possible.

It’s strange, organizing a tour group for a place like the Academy. It’s small, well-known only for its housing of Michelangelo’s famed statue. There’s not very much else to see other than some lesser known pieces, nor is the place suited for massive herds of people at a time. Even still, the building manages to cram in fifty youth orchestra members without too much of a hassle, so you suppose that the capacity is bigger than you thought.

David is, unsurprisingly, the main attraction. He has an entire section of the biggest room all to himself, standing proudly at the end of it. And even peering through the cracks of the doors in the entrance is enough to get Jungkook grinning, aching to see the sculpture for himself. Michelangelo isn’t necessarily Jungkook’s idol but he’s someone Jungkook knows so deeply, so profoundly, that it leaves a heavy impact on him either way.

When you make it inside the main room, Jungkook stops. His breath catches in his throat as he stares up at the sculpture, the five-meter tall man of marble proudly waiting for him at the end. The rest of the group shuffles ahead of him, desperate to get as up close and personal with the statue, but Jungkook refuses. He stays back to admire, looking above all of the people gathered around the glass barrier protecting the sculpture, a perfect view of the Biblical hero. Wordlessly, he pulls out his camera, immediately snapping a photo.

There is so little to say and so much to look at. What you are laying your eyes upon is nothing less than the symbol of an artistic god. Jungkook keeps a firm grip on your hand but says absolutely nothing, instead opting to simply walk up to the sculpture, look at it with his own two eyes, let the sight sink in like he has with so many others. This is a piece of art he wants engraved into his brain, etched permanently into his memory, and it’s easy to understand why.

He says nothing but he doesn’t need to. You can see it in his eyes, the way he gazes at the statue like if he blinks, he’ll forget it entirely. That expression of pure wonderstruckness in his eyes, decorating his face. He’s smiling, though. Like this is where he’s meant to be, nowhere else. He’s smiling and he’s beautiful and David is art but so is Jungkook, in every sense of the word.

It’s strange. It’s like you’ve fallen for Jungkook without even meaning to. Like the napkin on the tray table means nothing anymore.

With two days to go before you have to leave Florence, leave Italy once and for all, things are beginning to wind down. With visits to the major attractions already tucked under your belt and your last performance over last night, Bang seems have lost all motivation to keep his youth orchestra organized and instead has just given the lot of you free reign until you have to meet in the lobby of the hotel the day that you leave. It’s probably a mistake on his part, but you aren’t going to ruin your freedom by admitting that aloud.

Hoseok dragged you out the entire day on the hunt for clothes, leaving Jungkook to his own devices as Taehyung clung to him like a koala bear, citing his newfound girlfriend as reasoning for their lack of physical contact over the past few weeks. Jungkook had repeatedly reminded Taehyung that the two of them have slept in the exact same bed every single night since the beginning of the trip, and Taehyung is no stranger to draping his entire body over his bed buddy for the sake of warmth and comfort.

You and Hoseok and Jungkook and Taehyung reach the lobby of the hotel at roughly the same time, far past normal dinner time for such non-Italians like yourselves. Hoseok’s got about five shopping bags in his hands and looks about ready for a fat nap, but Jungkook and Taehyung are alive as ever.

“Long day, Hobi?” Taehyung asks when he sees your best friend, already collapsing into one of the chairs in the lobby.

“The longest,” Hoseok agrees. “Made all the more long by this one right here.”

“Excuse me!” You cry indignantly. You can’t believe Hoseok would roast you like this in front of your own fake boyfriend and his best friend. How could he do you like this. “I am a morale booster and incredibly fun to be around. Jungkook, vouch for me.”

“She’s fun sometimes,” Jungkook admits nonchalantly, making you sneer at him. Of course.

“Alright, fuck you.”

“You wanna bet?” Jungkook challenges.

“I’m taking Hoseok to the hotel restaurant before the two of you start doing something about the obvious sexual tension in the room. Okay, bye!” Taehyung says quickly, grabbing onto Hoseok’s arm and practically dragging him towards the hotel elevator before either you or Jungkook can stop him. The two of them disappear from your sight faster than you can say Florence, and pretty soon is it just the two of you waiting in the lobby.

“Have you eaten?” Jungkook asks, checking the time. It’s nearly eight o’clock, and the last thing you had was some plum gelato in a gelateria by the Duomo a couple of hours ago. You are, admittedly, a bit hungry.

“Not yet,” you tell him.

“Cool.” Jungkook nods. “Let’s go out.”

And so you and him leave the lobby in search of a nice restaurant to settle down in, perhaps indulge in a spritz since it is your second-to-last night, after all. Not that there’s a shortage of them around, but most of them seem to be filled to the brim with tourists, persistent waiters inviting you inside in the hopes that they’ll be able to gain your custom.

“Was there really some unresolved sexual tension between us in the lobby?” You ask, Taehyung’s words popping back into your head as Jungkook swings your interlocked hands together in between your bodies as you walk. “I didn’t even notice.”

“I don’t know, man, you were the one who said ‘Fuck you’. I didn’t know you wanted to bone that bad,” Jungkook jokes, though the sentences come out of his mouth completely seriously, making you gasp.

“Not like that! My God,” you exclaim in shock, giving Jungkook a shove. “Don’t talk about it like us wanting to bone. That’s so… unsexy.”

Jungkook chuckles. “Would you rather me be sexy about it? Didn’t know you were into exhibitionism, either.”

“You’re unbearable.”

“You love me,” Jungkook teases. It’s weird. Maybe you do.

“That’s debatable,” you warn, especially after the conversation you’ve just had. “Don’t forget about our napkin contract. Nowhere did it have any specifications on any sexual tension, real or not. So I don’t wanna hear it.”

Jungkook nods, lips pursed into a tight line at the mention of the napkin. “Yes, the napkin contract,” he says stiffly. “I had almost forgotten about that.”

That makes two of you.

You eventually stumble upon the same restaurant you had eaten at the day you went to see Michelangelo’s David, the one in the square-that’s-a-triangle. It’s busy, but the sound of Italian drifts through the air and you and Jungkook both know that you’ve found yourselves a restaurant worth visiting a second time, one without obnoxious tourists such as yourselves to ruin the immersion.

The two of you order the exact same things you did the last time you were here, but Jungkook’s left his camera with Taehyung (on accident, of course), meaning no photo opportunities tonight.

“Cheers to our second-to-last night in Italy,” Jungkook says, holding up his orange spritz. You grab your own, clinking his glass.

“Cheers.”

It’s bittersweet. You don’t want to go but you don’t know how much longer you can do this if you stay. Like you’re trying to hold onto something that’s not real in the hopes that maybe, if you grab tight enough, it will be. You know that the feelings, whatever kind of feelings they are, you have for Jungkook are indecipherable at best. Wondering if you’re in love with him or just in love with the feeling or if you’re even in love at all. When you look at Jungkook it’s not necessarily love. No fireworks, no fanfare. It just feels like beauty. Like you’re staring down a sense of euphoria in the face, and it’s him. Peculiar.

Your curfew is at ten o’clock sharp, but you and Jungkook have spent the last two hours lounging at this restaurant, making mindless jokes and tasteful commentary and laughing all the same. You’ll probably miss your curfew, but neither of you seem to mind. It’s gotten quieter at the restaurant now, most of the customers long on their way, but you and Jungkook have stayed. Watched as the sun set and the street lights came on, illuminating the cobblestone roads and alleyways as everyone makes their way back home.

“Do you wanna go?” Jungkook asks. The check has long since been taken but you and Jungkook made no effort to leave when it did. In fact, your waitress even gave the two of you a small glass each of complimentary champagne.

“I don’t want to go back to the hotel,” you whine, the idea of bringing this night to a close so soon incredibly unappealing.

Jungkook shrugs. Grins softly. Holds his warm hand out. “We don’t have to go back to the hotel.”

And this is how you end up strolling the streets of Florence, long after the other tourists have gone back to their places of lodging and only the locals remain, celebrating at bars and making their way back to their own homes. It’s a clear night tonight, not a single cloud covering the navy of the sky. There are hardly any stars visible in a bustling city like Florence, but that’s alright (Jungkook’s eyes are more than enough to keep you satisfied) because the moon is out, a crescent glow alongside the warm yellow of the street lamps.

The feeling is like the first day you put fairy lights up in your room and the sun sets and suddenly everything is romantic and wonderful and cozy all at once, a foreign sensation you are perfectly willing to get used to. That’s what this night feels like. Cozy. Homey. All things that make you wish it wasn’t so soon that you had to go, because you’ll never get something like this again. Something so intimate, so real.

There are only a few street musicians out playing now, most of them having packed up for the night, awaiting the next day to start the process all over again, but there is enough to create a little soundtrack for your stroll, the hazy hum of background music soothing your pounding thoughts. Jungkook doesn’t have his camera but it’s nice to see him without it, nice to see him walking with no purpose in mind, without his beautiful eyes hidden behind the black device in his hands. Without that camera looped around his neck it feels more like an everyday evening stroll rather than an excursion in Italy, like this is something you do normally, a routine that you have. It’s nice. It’s warm. It’s all him, really.

“This is so peaceful,” Jungkook comments as you stumble upon a lone street musician. She’s playing a soft melody on her flute, the soprano sound soothing, music to your ears. You don’t recognize the tune but you don’t need to, not in order to appreciate good music and talented players.

You and Jungkook wait around her for a while, loitering on the other side of the street as the moon reflects off of the silver of her instrument. She seems to notice your presence, smiling to herself as she continues to play. No dancing, this time. No need for it. You and Jungkook can simply sway back and forth the sound, the melody, without needing to break into moves.

When she finishes what you are sure is the fourth or fifth song you’ve hung around for, Jungkook walks up to drop a five Euro bill into the case in front of her, a donation she greatly appreciates. She deserves much more than five Euros, the both of you know as much. Someone as talented as her deserves a spot in an acclaimed orchestra. She’s not playing Top 50 Disney tunes, she’s playing sonatas, chorales, etudes, classics, all from memory. It’s clear she’s been studying the craft for plenty of years. The two of you clap as you leave, continuing to meander down the rest of the street, telling her grazie as you go. She deserves a lot more than this, but it’s all you can offer her right now.

“That was so nice,” Jungkook comments as the two of you wander around. You have no idea where you are, not with all of the stores you had been using as landmarks closed up, blinds drawn and doors locked, but that’s alright. Sometimes you don’t need to know where you’re going, you just need to know that you are going.

“I know,” you agree softly, humming the tune she had left you with. “Bang would like her.”

“I think that the London Symphony Orchestra would like her, quite honestly,” Jungkook compliments, something you absolutely have no choice but to agree with. She made your night.

“This is nice, too,” you add on softly. There’s little energy left in your bodies after such a long day, but just enough for you to continue to wander, no desire to go back to the hotel any time soon.

“This?” Jungkook asks, confused. He doesn’t stop walking but he does turn to look at you, a bewildered expression lacing his features.

“This. Walking around at night with the street lamps. It’s like… seventy degrees and breezy. There aren’t any more tourists. The alleyways are dark but still comforting. I like this. I like being here.”

The “with you” goes unsaid but you hope that Jungkook picks it up anyway, hope that he recognizes all the thoughts in your head you are too afraid to say aloud for fear that they may be lies or worse, that they might come true. Hope that the things left unsaid are said nonetheless, but in a wordless way.

Jungkook hums to himself, turning back to face forward. You don’t know what that means, but you can feel the way his hand on yours gets tighter, afraid to let you go. What’s bizarre is that you’re afraid for him to let you go as well.

There is something about Florence that feels more final than any of the other trips. Like this is the end of the road, the last stop. Because the nagging voice in your brain keeps reminding you, over and over, that you and Jungkook agree to stop with this fucking nonsense, put an end to this fake relationship but this real contract at the end of this vacation, and here you are. When you first wrote that thing down on the airplane napkin the end of your trip in Italy felt light years away but now, now it’s just on the horizon but you think you’d rather never see the sun again.

“I like being here, too,” he says softly, so inaudible that you could barely hear him if it weren’t for the quietness of the world around you.

You eventually become aware of your surroundings when you come across the magnificent Duomo, made all the more enchanting in the moonlight. It’s difficult to miss and even more difficult to not know where you are, other than the center of the city. Your hotel shouldn’t be too far away from here, down one of the side streets that connect to the square where the Duomo rests. Even in near darkness, it is an architectural marvel. The stones aren’t as colorful in the dark but that’s alright because you can still see the different patterns, the different shades of marble as they blend together.

“Hey, look,” Jungkook says, pointing up. There’s a bird flying overhead and it makes the entire scene all the more romantic. “A beautiful end to a beautiful stay in Italy.”

“Speaking of ending things,” you say, the idea popping into your head before you can stop yourself. You know you shouldn’t. Selfishly, you know that if you don’t mention anything then maybe this façade of a relationship can continue far past the end of this trip, but you won’t do that to yourself and more importantly, you won’t do that to him. You’ve fallen in love but it feels more like you’ve fallen in love with the feeling than with the boy. You can’t do that to him. “When are we gonna tell our friends?”

“About what?” Jungkook asks, clueless. Like he’s really forgotten.

“About us, silly,” you say, hoping to keep the tone light in spite of the darkness around you. “We’re finished in a couple days. The least we could do is fess up and come clean.”

“Oh,” Jungkook says, the realization sinking in. The smile that once decorated his face is gone, replaced by something unreadable. “Right. I forgot about that.”

“Yeah,” you say, forcing a laugh. Oh God, it’s getting awkward. It’s getting awkward and tense and stiff and this is exactly what you didn’t want, what you were hoping wouldn’t happen because that means that this fake relationship has become too real. It means that somewhere you had crossed the line between acting and reality but neither of you know when that happened and now you’re too scared to go back. Fuck. “I mean, I’ve always been pretty bad at confessing.”

Jungkook’s silent. He’s thinking. You can tell by the way his mouth sits solemnly on his face, the furrow of his brows. He’s standing in front of the Duomo with you but no longer are your hands intertwined. You can’t remember when they stopped being connected, and more importantly, you can’t remember who did it first. He’s thinking and you’re afraid to find out what about, worried that whatever he says will cause the whole thing to come crashing down like a wrong move in a game of Jenga. That’s what this feels like, now that you think about it. That’s what this whole relationship has felt like. Like a game of Jenga where everything is fine until everything isn’t.

And then, Jungkook pulls you in close, his one hand on your waist and the other around the back of your neck, and he kisses you.

Really kisses you. His warm lips press firmly onto yours and you gasp at the sensation but your body immediately melts into it, a feeling you cannot believe you starved yourself of for so long. He’s always been right there but you’ve never done anything about it until now, and now you don’t know what to do because of that. He really kisses you and it feels like a million years and a split second all at once because holy shit Jeon Jungkook is kissing you and you’re kissing back and then—

“I’m bad at confessing, too,” Jungkook says shyly, out of breath. His eyes are wide, like he can’t believe he’s just done that but it’s too late to take it back.

“Jungkook, what—”

“This whole thing, I don’t want it to end, Thumper,” he tells you. “It’s always been real to me. Fuck the napkin contract. I’ve always wanted to be with you, prank or not. I don’t want it to be over.”

It’s too much. It’s everything you were hoping to hear but your mind can’t seem to process it. Like a tsunami crashing into a pier, and you’re standing on the edge of it hoping that you stay dry but at the same time wishing it takes you with it.

Practically speechless, you say, “Jungkook, I—”

“Please, Y/N,” he begs, but you already feel yourself drifting away, a piece of wood floating out to sea. Your feet are moving faster than your heart but that’s alright because when in doubt, run.

“I can’t, Jungkook,” you say softly. You don’t notice the tears until they’re streaming down your cheeks, warped from your footsteps on the cobblestone as you dash away. “I can’t.”

You don’t turn back around but you don’t need to, not when you know Jungkook will still be there, as heartbroken as ever.

The next day is spent in your hotel bed, and that’s it.

You’re kidding, but you wish it was like that. You snuck into your hotel room far past curfew to a bed and a half of your sleeping roommates and, barely remembering to wipe away your makeup and brush your teeth, climbed into bed sniffling, wishing that the whole thing had just been a memory.

You know that it’s real when you wake up the next morning to find five missed calls and a dozen texts, all from Jungkook. You swipe away each one, letting the notification disappear from your phone, and that’s when you notice your empty room and the knock at your door. Hardly caring about your just-rolled-out-of-bed appearance, you trudge up to the door and find an animated Hoseok behind it, eyes wide and bucket hat a fluorescent highlighter yellow. He’s always had a thing for colors like that.

“Y/N! Ready to—oh my god, are you okay?” He asks.

“I’m fine, Hobi. I just woke up,” you tell him, not wanting to alert him of anything alarming. You’d hate to ruin his vacation with woes of your non-existent, pretend love life. It’d also mean explaining the entire thing to him, and you don’t know if you’re willing to sacrifice yourself like that. Not yet, at least.

“You just woke up?” Hoseok asks, in shock. “It’s noon! You never wake up this late, not even back home! Are you sure everything is okay?” He asks. He’s too good of a friend, too used to your mannerisms and habits. Nothing slips by him, goddamnit.

“Yes, I swear, Hobi,” you say, rubbing your eyes to get the sleep gunk out of them. “What do you want?”

“Well, I was going to ask you if you wanted to come out with me and we could go on a last-minute adventure before we have to leave tomorrow,” Hoseok suggests, an excursion that sounds much-needed considering the overwhelming amount of time spent with Jungkook the past few weeks, only to find yourself starved of his contact. “You could invite Jungkook, if you want. I don’t know what he’s up to…”

“No! No, it’s okay. Jungkook doesn’t need to come along with,” you exclaim, perhaps a bit too loudly for your liking. Hoseok scrunches up his nose in confusion, tilting his head like a bewildered puppy. Quickly, you search for an excuse before he can say anything. “I’ve been spending so much time with him recently. We should just do something together.”

“Alright… whatever you say, I guess.” Hoseok’s still hesitant, rightfully so, but he leaves you be and lets you get ready, camping out on your bed playing the new Harry Potter game on his phone. Last you heard, he was getting ready to duel that “bitch, Merula” in the courtyard. You emerge from your bathroom fifteen minutes later, though you would hardly consider yourself Italy-ready, you look mildly acceptable and hope that you’ve done a good enough job disguising the bags under your eyes, that the puffiness from last night’s crying extravaganza has gone down. It’d be nice if you could just simply go through the rest of the day without having to think of Jungkook but you can already feel yourself worrying about him and what he’s getting up to, what state you left him in last night. You don’t think you can bring yourself to see him again, even if on accident.

Hoseok’s animated self keeps your mind fairly occupied, though. He does a good job of distracting you even if he isn’t trying to, another one of the qualities he possesses that you so envy. He barely takes note of your less-energetic self, much more tired and reserved that normal, chalking it up to vacation fatigue rather than self-inflicted heartbreak. Luckily enough. You’d rather not start out your next conversation with him with, “Hey, remember when I told you Jungkook and I were dating? Well, it was all pretend except I ended up falling for him and now I don’t know what to do with myself, please help?”

“We didn’t get to spend a lot of time at Palazzo Vecchio, let’s go back,” Hoseok suggests, skipping up the street. “There’s that baby David that we didn’t get a very good look at.”

“We saw the real thing, Hobi,” you remind him.

“I know, but this one is just as cool and just as important,” Hoseok insists. “Namjoon told me that Palazzo Vecchio is Florence’s city hall. Isn’t that cool?”

You suppose it is. Though, anything that Hoseok gets excited about is cool in your eyes.

You spend the day out with Hoseok and it lightens your mood extraordinarily, Hoseok’s joy and excitement contagious, getting the best of even you. You knew that you made the right choice when you befriended Hoseok back as children. He always seems to know exactly what he’s doing, without even trying. The sun works hard but Hoseok works much harder.

“Can’t believe this is all over tomorrow,” Hoseok admits as he spreads out in the center of Palazzo Vecchio, happily lying down like a starfish in an aquarium display. You wonder if just the front of his body will get tanned from this, even if he spends only five minutes in the position. You’ll never let him live it down if he returns home from Italy with the front half of his body much darker in color than the back half. He’ll look ridiculous. “Wish we could stay here forever.”

“You and me both,” you admit. You wonder what Jungkook is doing right now, if he’s thinking of you just like you’re thinking of him.

“Feels like just yesterday Yoongi was downing three shots of espresso in quick succession.”

“He did do that yesterday, didn’t he?” You ask. You have this vague memory of him at a cafe somewhere in Florence, ordering either a third or a fourth espresso shot like the absolute heathen he is.

“Wait, let me rephrase that. Feels like just yesterday Yoongi was downing three shots of espresso in quick succession in Rome,” Hoseok emphasizes, making you laugh. He’s right, though. It does feel like just yesterday you were landing at the Rome International Airport and Jungkook was placing a slobbery, wet kiss on your cheek. Feels like just yesterday the two of you confessed your relationship to your friends. Feels like just yesterday you were standing in the Sistine Chapel, staring up at the ceiling together.

And it was just yesterday when all of the memories came crashing down around you, an earthquake striking your mind and leaving it in nothing but a pile of rubble.

“Are you gonna want to come back here? When we’re out of college and paid off our student debt?”

“So, never?” You joke even if the harsh reality permeates your jest. Capitalism can suck your left big toe.

“Okay, true,” Hoseok admits. “But seriously. Are you going to want to come back? When you’re older? Before the rising sea levels suck this entire peninsula under the ocean?”

And you think to yourself that you’d love to, but only if you got to come with a certain someone. Wishful thinking.

Hoseok drops you off at your hotel room after you grab some sandwiches to eat for dinner, and you’re about to close the door and pass out from a long day of walking and an even longer day of thinking, when you spot Seokjin jogging towards you. You think that he’s going for Hoseok but then he stops at your room, sending you a small smile.

“Hey, Y/N,” he says. “Mind if I come in for a second?”

“Come on in,” you invite him inside. Seokjin paces about the little floor space left in your room—Minnie’s ridiculously messy—before taking a seat on the edge of your shared bed with Miyeon and the only surface that isn’t covered in clothes. “What’s up?”

“Have you spoken to Jungkook recently?” Seokjin dives right in. The mention of his name is an arrow to your heart but the abruptness of it all causes alarms to go off in your brain.

“Uh—” you begin, sputtering for an answer that won’t lead to you giving yourself away. “Why do you ask?”

“Because his mood has taken a 180 this past twenty-four hours and I am almost certain it has something to do with you,” he says, but it doesn’t feel like he’s placing blame or pointing his fingers at you. It more just feels like an observation, something he’s picked up on in the past day. You’ll give him credit for that, at least.

“Wow, alright,” you say, hands up in surrender.

“Listen, Y/N,” Seokjin says before running a hand through his hair. It reaches the back of his neck and he tilts his head back, exasperated. “I know that you and Jungkook have had a fake relationship this entire time.”

“What?”

You stumble for a response, stuttering hopelessly even though Seokjin’s very obviously seen through your entire act. Are the two of you that transparent?

“Unlike everybody else, I didn’t have my headphones in when the two of you were discussing the terms of your agreement on the plane. I had very conveniently locked them up in my overhead carry-on and was much too lazy to fish for them,” Seokjin says pointedly, making you groan in despair as you collapse on the bed beside him.

“God, could this vacation get any worse?” You ask to the higher powers above you.

“I didn’t tell anyone, obviously,” Seokjin reminds you. “And quite frankly, I had no idea that it would snowball into this. I thought the two of you were just doing this for laughs and that’s it. You were gonna get everyone real good.”

“That was the plan,” you mumble bitterly.

“You know, Taehyung and I spoke a couple of days ago. About the two of you.”

“You didn’t tell him, did you?” You ask, grumbling into the pillow you’ve stuffed over your face. If you pray hard enough, maybe the ground will open up and swallow you whole.

“No, I’m rather good at keeping secrets, even if I wasn’t supposed to find out in the first place,” Seokjin says haughtily. “Taehyung told me that he was really proud of Jungkook for stepping up and confessing to you on the flight.”

You suddenly feel very guilty.

“He said that Jungkook had had this huge crush on you for ages beforehand and was just too scared to do anything about it.”

That makes you pop up like a puppet in a box, the pillow coming off your face and straight into your lap as you turn to Seokjin, shocked. “What?”

“He said that Jungkook really deserved somebody like you, because you made him so happy,” Seokjin continues, as if the life-altering revelation that Jeon Jungkook has been harboring this massive crush on you for ages prior to the agreement isn’t enough. “He said he hadn’t seen his best friend this happy in a really long time.”

(“He looks like he loves you a lot.”)

“You’re fucking with me,” you declare, the only feasible explanation at this point. There’s no way this is real. This is just another big prank orchestrated by all of your friends because Seokjin went on blabbing and now they’re getting back at you in the cruelest of ways. There’s no way that this is real.

“I’m not,” Seokjin insists firmly, and there’s a desperate part of your heart that’s aching for it to be true but your brain has the power and it’s telling your heart to move on. “But Jungkook’s been really down lately. I know that maybe you thought that the relationship was fake but it’s obvious that he didn’t.”

“It—I—” you begin, unable to form a coherent sentence. “But I was the one who fell in love with him! How is this even possible?”

Seokjin chuckles, a smile blossoming on his face. “I guess he had already fallen in love with you before this whole thing even begin.”

“I’m so fucking stupid,” you groan to yourself, collapsing back onto the bed and pressing the pillow over yourself, muffling your wails.

“You’re not, Y/N, listen,” he demands, pulling the pillow away from you. You wrestle him for a couple seconds but eventually let him have his way, the heat of the cushion coming off of your face. “Maybe the relationship was pretend on paper but it was rooted in reality. For the both of you. It’s clear that there are some feelings between the two of you. Maybe that’s why we all fell for it. Because it was real. You guys thought you were fooling us but the only people you were tricking were yourselves.”

“When did you get so wise, hmm, Seokjin?” You ask ruefully, unsure as to what to do next. You can’t just go back to Jungkook and ask to call an end to the fake part and but leave the relationship.

“I’m not wise, Y/N,” Seokjin says. “You two just looked like you needed a third party to help out.”

You grin, unbelievably thankful for a man by the name of Kim Seokjin. “I guess so, huh. So, what now?”

“Well, as far as I last heard, Jungkook was hanging around the Duomo. He told Taehyung he wanted to stay back for a little while.”

Your face lights up and your heart starts beating. “Really?” You ask, perhaps a bit too hopeful.

“Yeah,” Seokjin nods. “Go get your man.”

You bolt out the door.

Sure enough, you find Jungkook walking around the edges of the square, headphones in as the sun slowly sets over the horizon. There are still plenty of people out and about, finishing up their meals or just settling into their seats, and the street musicians are alive and active. Jungkook comes to a halt in front of a pair of violinists playing on one of the smoother streets in the area, a small crowd gathering around them.

Quickly, wordlessly, desperately, you dash up to Jungkook before he can slip from your sight and out of your hands forever.

“Jungkook!” You shout, and he can barely hear you over his music but he turns nonetheless, eyes widening when he sees you rushing towards him, already out of breath. You’re in orchestra, not a sports team. “Jungkook, wait!”

He doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but he does take a single earbud from his ear, turning to you with furrowed brows and a scrunched-up nose. “Y/N, what—?”

“Jungkook, don’t go,” you say as you catch up to him. Your shout seems to have interrupted the music in the background, both violinists and the crowd around them stopping to watch you. “I don’t want this to be over either.”

“What are you saying—?”

“I’m bad at confessing, too. Really bad. You probably already figured that out,” you joke, chuckling bitterly to yourself. “But when you said that you it’s always been real to you I realized that it’s always been real to me as well. That I don’t want to let you go, not here, not on the plane, and not back home. I want to be with you wherever you go.”

“You’re shitting me,” Jungkook says.

You shake your head, smiling at his disbelief. Like he can’t believe that all of his dreams are coming true. “I’m not. Fuck the napkin contract. That shit’s probably all crumpled up anyway. I want to be with you for real, no faking it, no acting, no games. I don’t want to pretend anymore. I want you.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Thumper?” He asks, coming up to you. His warm hands find purchase on your waist as he pulls you in close, guarding you tightly. You don’t even realize that you’re crying until his thumb comes up to wipe a stray tear away, and you laugh.

“I love you, Jeon Jungkook. For real, this time. No more contracts,” you tell him, gazing up into his eyes.

You have seen Jungkook stare at the most brilliant pieces of art in the world, seen him gaze into his camera to get the perfect shot, seen him glance at his music quickly before launching off into a song he’s memorized, and finally, you can say that you’ve seen Jungkook in love.

“You know what, Thumper?” He asks. “I love you too.”

When you kiss, the entire crowd and the two violinists explode into applause, but you barely take notice of them when Jungkook’s lips are on yours. Maybe Italy’s over but you and him are just beginning.

“Tell me about that portfolio you were making,” you say on the flight home. Everyone’s asleep around you, all but Seokjin wholly unaware that your relationship was even a farce to begin with. You think you’d like to keep it that way. Though maybe, in five years, you’ll come clean. Hopefully by that point, none of them will mind anymore. You’ve pushed the armrest that separates your seats up so you can snuggle up against him, his body temperature all the warmth you need on this frigid airplane.

“Oh, that?” He asks. He pulls up a page on his computer, and suddenly you’re presented with an entire album of pictures of just you, some you recognize and some you didn’t even realize he had taken. “It was this.”

“Are these all of me?” You ask, leaning in close. There must be at least four hundred photos in here and each of them have at least a bit of you in them, whether it be you talking with Hoseok or Namjoon or Yoongi or staring at art without knowing that Jungkook had been behind you, or the ones he’d convinced you to pose for or the ones that he sniped right before you had realized.

“Essentially, yes,” Jungkook admits guiltily, a cherry red tinting his cheeks as he curls in on himself, embarrassed. “I thought that when Italy was over, we’d just go back to being acquaintances or something, and I didn’t want to forget it. So I made this.”

“You have an entire album dedicated to me?” You ask. God, being in a relationship has turned the both of you into fucking softies. “I’m touched. Thank you.” You add onto your gratefulness by pressing a kiss into his cheek, making him blush impossibly harder.

“Yeah, well. I didn’t want to forget anything,” Jungkook says, something you can definitely agree with.

“Well, now you don’t have to,” you promise. “We can make new memories all the time, so you can delete that photo album of me. Or at least turn it into an Italy album rather than just a My Girlfriend album. That’s fucking cheesy as shit.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m never getting rid of this thing. There’s gems like this,” Jungkook says, pulling up a photo of you blowing into a tissue after a particularly hard sneeze in Venice.

You gasp, both endeared and incredibly offended. “Oh my God, I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“I hate that I love you.”

“You know what? I’ll take it,” Jungkook says, pulling you in and planting a wet kiss on your cheek, right at the corner of your lips. “I hate that I love you, too.”

“Get a room!” Jimin shouts from next to you, sitting in the seat directly across the aisle from yours. He’s got this disgusted look on his face, but you and Jungkook just grin to yourselves. You have a feeling that you’re never going to get sick of grossing out your friends with your obnoxious public displays of affection.

“Can’t, the bathrooms are too small for what we want to do!” Jungkook calls back, making Jimin dry heave onto the floor beside the two of you before angrily stuffing his headphone back into his ear and hoping that the two of you will just shut the fuck up, for once. “I’m never gonna get sick of doing that.”

“Good.”

“Hey, Thumper, do you want to see all the photos I took of Seokjin? He’s gonna become Instagram famous, but not in the way he wants to because all of these photos are meme-worthy,” Jungkook asks, already clicking around to pull open the album.

“Oh my God, yes. You gotta send all of these to me,” you say, wrapping your body around Jungkook’s left arm as he begins to filter through each photo.

Jungkook’s got the window shade next to him cracked open the slightest bit, the night sky wholly unobtrusive considering the rest of the cabin is dark. You can’t make out the moon but you know that it’s there, somewhere, singing a melody that only the two of you can hear.

⇒ hmu with feedback or just talk to me here!

[theorynexus]

As we reach 49, we near the half-way mark in the century of posts. My word, how many of these will there be?

Oh, and we are at Page 25 of Meat, which means that if the prologue were not included, this would represent a near perfect, “Two posts per page” ratio.  Buuuut... things haven’t quite worked out that way, I guess.

... This all seems very ominous. Her speaking about trolls in such a way does not bode well for her mental state, I think.  Hard to be certain, but... hmm.  The implications of these generalizations about human nature suggest that she is either having great difficulty with the challenges Dirk is presenting to her, or that her aforementioned ascension is causing continued challenges to her mental stability.   The scrutiny mention makes me lean further toward the former, but I don’t believe I can support either wholeheartedly, at the moment.

While in broad strokes I can certainly embrace this idea, no, it certainly is not sinful or dysfunctional to question it.  This is because human beings are both social creatures demanding intimacy and belonging and individuals demanding singularity and personal excellence. To fully abandon one or the other is in fact to renounce humanity.   In particular, to pour one’s self into a collectivist mentality that would seek to obtain a higher being via the blurring of thoughts and personae together to the exclusion of such matters as the love and concern one might feel for one’s wife is absolutely anathema to humanity, and should be repulsive to anyone who truly understands what it means to be human-- ... even if they have personally obtained a state already that sets them up as being more than human in the sense of capability and mortality.

Grrrrrr...!   You’re taking her agency from her, Narrator!   To take away from her choice as you suppress her powers and seemingly use them to expand your own is just... horrendous.  I struggle now to properly express it, but the suppression of agency is a threat to her identity and undermines any important decisions, consent, or beliefs that she might come to express in the near future. Choosing what is or is not important for someone to know, especially when it is taking advantage of someone who’s in as vulnerable a situation as she is, is reprehensible, and absolutely sickens me, because it flies right in the face of her Classpect, as well. She should be able to understand and see the importance of what’s going on around her, and sense the information he’s suppressing, darnit!

Hmmm.   ***scratches my head***     I do wonder, though.   This paragraph makes it seem as if she might be in a better position than she seems to be in. To ask who is calling is not necessarily to suggest you do not know, in a technical sense, I suppose.  Her hiding her actual face alludes to deception, and the ghostly image of herself seeming to speak, yet leaving the Narrator uncertain, could imply a certain degree of growing capacity to fool him, in general. I suppose this goes back to the statement that both of them think they are acting as puppet masters in their own little games.  There certainly could be a sense of competition that is actively going on between them. A lack of information as far as Rose has been concerned, previously, along with the way that the previous last encounter we were able to have with her before the Kanaya calls made it seem like her body had slipped into unconsciousness, so this sudden contradictory information makes it hard to judge things.

I am sorry to see Rose react that way.   That said: I now see that her earlier statements (at the beginning of the page) were largely meant as ground work in an argument that suggests she does not buy what Dirk’s trying to sell. I am very much glad to see that realization hit me, and quite obviously appreciate her point of contention.  On the other hand, from a philosopher’s perspective, I also very much enjoy the fact that Dirk quite rightly brings that sort of question to the table, which is indeed necessary to answering that sort of question without doing so in a manner that is quite emotionally-based, biased based on deeply-ingrained preconceptions, or otherwise faulty in nature.

HEY, KIERKEGAARD IS GREAT!!!   Also:  I do in fact know that Rose is dealing with a severe migraine, and that it is likely that she might otherwise be more amicable to such discussions... albeit to what degree, it’s impossible to say.

I really do appreciate the fact that the lack of academic studies on the Kids’ parts is being actively integrated into the story.   I would like to suggest that I very much do believe that many of them are quite intelligent, and have developed their minds in such a way that with time, the seeds of great philosophers might sprout inside many of them; however, I do in fact remain skeptical that Dirk has had anywhere near the life experience to be properly judging the issues he’s attempting to tackle, right now. Certainly, if their time in their universe had left the group in their later 20s or early 30s, I could see him being in a better position to make the sorts of weighty arguments and decisions he is apparently making (those of pursuing unity of consciousness and greater godhood of being, alongside the others, it would seem).    Even the example of Kierkegaard, who began publishing important works relatively early in his life for a philosopher, was nearing 30 at that time.

I was quite surprised that Dirk is playful enough to admit the silliness of his prior statement of credentials, for a moment, but honestly, that is quite in-character.  Whether or not this actually causes him to pause and think about things differently is an entirely different matter. I most certainly don’t think it shall do so.

This entire sequence is absolutely beautiful and hilarious.  Also, Hegel’s pretty hilarious to bring up, at least to me.  Specifically:  Kierkegaard was an absolutely vehement opponent of Hegelian branches of philosophy, so his name coming up from Dirk shortly afterward is quite ironic, which I’m sure was quite intentional on Hussie’s part. The fact that this is all being argued via shorthand makes this all surprisingly humorous. As for the last bit he’s bringing up:  that’s a nice segue into the actual argument/discussion.

Indeed, he brings up a somewhat valid point. This is part of the Ultimate Riddle.  However, he fails to realize one greatly important thing:  Free will is totally a thing in Homestuck. It’s just that certain timelines are important to the integrity of reality.  Thus, they have to be pushed for, and the collective will of all life to persist nudges things in that direction, via interactions of Light, Void, Hope, and DOOM. It should also be particularly noted and emphasized that the decisions of individuals determine their fates, as shown especially via the death mechanics of godhood. Beyond this, there theoretically should be quite a bit of wiggle room allowed in getting from point A to point B on the “necessary stuff needs to happen” list, as shown via the fact that the Kids dawdled so bloody long in the first place before giving John their own version of The Choice, and essentially booting his butt out to face LE, in this timeline.

Yes, your flexing of narrative control in your limited, likely temporary fashion most certainly shows a lack of free will, especially in light of the feats of defiance that people have shown to your commands, and how closely your level of influence resembles that of other such writer figures in your position.   My mind particularly turns to Andrew Hussie’s ghost influencing Caliborn, as well as the resulting shaking of the website as he attempted to crowbar its stability out of existence in retribution for Hussie’s mockery.    Of course, that author seemed to be closer to omniscient--- or at least better at managing loose threads ---than the current ego taking up the Narrator’s seat. He certainly didn’t seem to be quite so cocky, and seemed a bit more performative in his role than the current one.  Perhaps that’s because of the fact that he purposefully secluded himself from the main action of the story, unlike you.

***laughs hysterically at the irony of this amateurish lack of self-control, and the surprisingly go-with-the-flow sort of   modus operandi  that someone who projects such Machiavellian capacities has embraced*** This whimsical little break from the serious analysis and following of the story that I generally do has compelled a thought, a question, and an idea into my mind, it would seem.  Namely: of course Dirk’s growing understanding and mastery over Heart will naturally have afforded him an understanding of the narrative nature of the world of Homestuck. After all, Heart, very similar to Light, deals with the true nature of things: while Light deals with broad categories of knowledge, information, data, code (overlapping with DOOM), luck, relevance, and fate, Heart deals with the true nature of things in a simple, core-oriented fashion-- it looks at what a person’s soul is, and what that makes them; the nature of love and of social bonds associated with them (which partially overlaps with Blood), and the core nature of Reality, Truth, and the Aspects which relate to them. Given this nature for Heart, his deepening connection with it would naturally cause him to tend toward a wider understanding of the world around them-- and specifically, the Narrative.   Given his awakened awareness of this, it is logical for him to then become jaded concerning free will, and likewise, given his particular Classpect (Prince of Heart), it is natural for him to attempt to use his heightened capacities to interface and tinker with the story. The fact that his Class, which would traditionally be interpreted as a Destroyer, can be used to subvert its aspect (read: transforming the way it develops by partial destruction in the same way that a gardener pruning a plant manipulates the development of the plant in their care) can be evidenced in numerous ways. Most prominently:    Dirk destroyed Caliborn’s core identity as Caliborn by fusing his soul with three others, thus forming Lord English;    Brain Ghost!Dirk attempted to destroy Aranea’s identity as a living soul, not by fully rending her spirit, but by removing it from its place in contact with the Ring of Life;  finally, Dirk-as-Bro radically altered Dave’s identity over the course of his lifetime, but most clearly and impactfully via the rending of his katana and the scratching of his shirt’s disk (which were both highly symbolic of Dave’s soul, if the fact that the Scratch taking place on just such a disk or his sword[s] later being able to transform from broken to whole via time magic [also an expression of Dave’s soul, and its resilience+destined transformation] didn’t clue you in). To the point:  It is something of a wonder that Dirk has not yet begun to realize his limitations via the constraints that his manipulation of Narrative have placed upon them. My suspicion is that while his interface with Rose(? the way the story presents the aftermath is confusing, considering her continued seeming consciousness+own thoughts) may have increased his capacity to See Light, depending on how precisely it works, he has (as of yet) not such command over relevance and agency as he’d like us to believe. Furthermore, he is still not quite at the point that he has fully realized his understanding of Heart, either. The fact that he is questioning Free Will certainly shows that he is on the brink of an epiphany, but he seems to have become a bit lost in the reeds, as it were.   Many characters have fallen at this point because they have attempted to egotistically promote their own will and desire to the subversion of others and the needs of the wider world. Aranea and Vriska come to mind, but also Lord English, assuming that he has indeed perished as the Narration would have us believe. This is a natural part of Fate, and I am quite certain that if Dirk remains on this path, he will fall afoul of that same Just end.  Even if he does have the capacity to control the influence of one of the four Aspects which seem to deal most with Fate/ (which are Time [for obvious reasons of timing and timeline mechanics {including the Scratch}], Light [via Relevance, Canonicity, Luck, coherence, and Necessity], Heart [with regards to Classpects and their relation to key world interactions/expressions of self, entangling of individuals with one another, and through the reflections of Self across timelines {see Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff persisting on the Alpha Kids’ side of the Scratch, for example}], and DOOM [via most of what the aspect has to offer:  rules, inevitability, factors {especially disasters} outside of one’s control, et cetera]), this does not mean that Dirk truthfully has wider control over Fate, generally, nor does it mean that he can avoid the consequences to his actions. I should also at this point randomly insert a statement suggesting that the other 8 Aspects can be split into two camps: Choice/Freedom ---  Mind, Hope, Breath, Life and Mixed/Paradoxical  --- Space, Void, Blood, and Rage The former of these two categorizations should be mostly obvious:  Mind represents personal choice (both in the way you present yourself, and in your course of actions), Hope represents belief transcending the mundane and Possibility beyond the restrictions of what should be Real and/or opportunities beyond what would seemingly be available to you given the constraints that present themselves; Breath is all about freedom from constraints (up to and including the constraints of physical being) and the ability to fly off in various directions (often beyond the expected/normally available paths); and finally, Life, being the antithesis of DOOM, allows for the breaking of rules (see the sugary explosion of rulebreaking that was Trickster Mode) and the extension of possibility beyond what would be something’s inevitable end (healing, revival, prototyping, et cetera). As for the latter set:   Space has a associations with birth, potentiality, and the breaking of barriers, but Space itself is as much a curse as a boon-- yes, it does allow for the interaction of beings with the physicality of the world, and it allows for the continuation of life; yet Homestuck is a Gnostic text, and that means that one must also take Space to be one of the principle forces which constrains action by allowing the defining and regulating of the world; and it imposes corruption upon things by allowing for a stage wherein the Aspects can mix and form more complex concepts.  (Mind you, this is of course quite important for human life, and those of us who live in the material world could argue that it is therefore a “good”, from our perspective. Nonetheless, that fact-- that it enables such ��corruption” demonstrates in and of itself that this belongs in a “mixed” category.) Void is a bit simpler:  It is the Aspect of the unknowable, uncertain, and so on; but most importantly, these barriers which tend toward the production of impossibility do at the same time hide a very important flip-side of the coin --- that is, Void also presides over imagination, which is the force which brings forth possibility from fantasy and drags ideas into physical reality. As such, this slippery element of existence very clearly exists in a liminal state worthy of this group. Blood’s binding capacity ties one to the physical world, but it simultaneously entrenches one in the subtleties of social existence, which is above/beyond the bestial sort of being that Blood’s carnal title would suggest. Furthermore, while blood is by its nature a binding, restrictive force, it is one which allows for one to be given purpose. Binding yourself to a group of friends to cooperate with one another and find higher purpose is at the very heart of what Homestuck is. This allows for greater possibilities than what would be able to be accomplished alone-- and this is the nature of many (perhaps most) contracts and bonds that can/should be made: they allow for the formation of restrictions, but those are in exchange for other benefits.     This is why Karkat would make a great leader:  Blood is the Aspect that is closest to the Social Contract which underlies political life. A player who deeply relates to/embodies this Aspect in a well-fulfilled manner therefore is a natural fit for political power. Rage:  ... Don’t even get me started with Rage. I’m a Capricorn and I don’t understand that nonsense.  It narrows your mind, blocks out your thoughts, and skews your brain. Despite the fact that it should be the Aspect that focuses you and makes sure your head doesn’t hang out in the clouds all the fricking time, it’s like banging your head on a cinder block every single time you try to wrap your thoughts around it. Don’t bother with considering such double-edged Tragi-Comic garbage Aspect. Just... waste your time and focus your thoughts on something else. Now what the heck was I talking about...?

[ryanmeft]

Capernaum Movie Review

“I was expecting to be a good man.” So says 12-year-old Zain, who surely still has time. Time, however, movies differently when you’re a in extreme poverty. Zain’s parents care nothing for him or his many siblings, protesting about all they have been through while their children attempt to survive with little support. The slums of Lebanon are seen here as Hell on earth, run by shady brokers who will sell anything and (this is implied) ignored by the powers of the world. The main product of the dealers is poor people, who do not fall through the cracks so much as exist inside them. Zain’s 11-year-old sister is callously sold in a forced marriage to a man who leers over her in a way that can cause Atheists to pray for his destruction. He dreams of going to Sweden, where no one calls you names just for being there and people must knock before they come into your room. On such stones is paradise laid.

Zain is played by then 12-year-old Zain Al-Rafeea. He, his parents and his six siblings (I believe; it feels like the film deliberately makes it hard to keep track) live in an apartment which, in America, we would consider too small for two people. His father (Fadi Yousef) appears to occupy his time sleeping on the couch and insisting that his children are worthless and that he will kill them if they don’t stop, you know, behaving like children. His mother (Kawsar Al Hadded) is no less abusive, but sees to the most very basic needs of the children while bemoaning the terrible burdens they have placed upon her. The toddler of the family can be seen chained to a wall by the leg and playing with cigarettes. There is nothing redemptive in them; when their son takes them to court for his being born---a symbolic gesture---they talk about nothing but their own complaints. When he is in prison for stabbing the man to which his sister (Haita ‘Cedra’ Izzam) is sold, his mother insists that her new pregnancy is a gift from God, something so hypocritical and callous it offends the very idea of human feeling.

Yes, a 12-year-old boy is in prison. He stabbed the man in question because what he did to his 11-year-old sister beggars both belief and description. Before that, Zain had fled and lived with older African immigrant Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), who is trying to keep her infant son Yonas and herself from being deported. Zain becomes the boy’s caretaker, and it is through the young baby’s eyes, in a way, that we see the world of the slums. Certainly, he cannot speak, but he does not need to. He behaves the way every baby behaves, and through him those of us who are comfortable in our safe houses in the world of laws and protections can understand something of Zain’s. Simply by the baby being there, we instantly grasp the horrendous falsehood behind the commonly repeated lie that those who are poor simply do not work to better themselves. What can a baby do, after all, to change his situation? And what can adults do when they have no law to turn to and are at the mercy of the same people who benefit from keeping them in their place? It may be possible, however despicable, to look at an adult who is suffering daily and say “They could have changed their fate.” A child, however, cuts through all our self-protecting rationalizations.

The films of Ramin Bahrani, one of our century’s overlooked great filmmakers, portray the situation of those in poverty too great to describe as an endless ordeal. I thought of them while I watched Capernaum, but Nadine Labaki, who was nearly an adult when the Civil War in her native Lebanon ended, has made a film which makes Bahrani’s seem positively glamorous. There is little hope in this place, but not no hope, perhaps because the human mind can only handle so much.

And there’s no doubt Labaki and her fellow writers ask us to endure a lot, though not, of course, as much as kids just like Zain do everyday. Al-Rafeea was a refugee himself, for 8 years. I have been inside of a slum, once. I’ve never ventured to describe it in detail. I can’t, but I can say it was much like what is seen in this film. Does that qualify me to say I understand? Not by a mile. I mention it because it has been argued that films like this exploit human suffering for drama. I would ask those who say this exactly how they would prefer such stories reach the public. Most people who bother to read reviews will never be so much as near one, and documentaries simply don’t draw crowds. One major criticism seems to be that there’s any sense of drama here, even a tiny bit, instead of just pointing the camera and doing nothing. It’s essentially criticizing the film not for any deficiency it had, but for not being an entirely different kind of film. The question in a film like this should not be “Should it have a story?” but rather “Is that story effective?”

It is. Look at how Labaki takes the entire middle stretch of the movie to focus simply on Zain’s life as a surrogate (and very young) father. During this long stretch, there is precious little traditional drama for us to glom onto. Zain changes diapers, feeds the child, lives out his days with concerns a young boy should not have. When Rahil is detained while trying to obtain a new ID from a crooked dealer, he finds himself on his own with the child and with no notion of why or what has happened to the mother. This section includes a five-minute scene in which his one goal is to get the child to stay by a wall near a street while he sells second-hand goods. Labaki, in fact, avoids the easy drama she could get out of, say, having the child wander off and become lost. Instead, it is just a day in the life.

Controversy has sprung up, too, over the film’s message. Plot descriptions, which are all but useless for films like this but which many regard as all-powerful, have said it is the story of a boy suing his parents for being born. It isn’t. That makes it sound like a dark comedy. That IS something Zain is doing as the film begins, but it is a mere backdrop; when you find out why he is doing it, you will understand the metaphor Labaki and the writers are drawing from it, and no, conservative critics, it is not that having children in poverty is bad. I believe it is simply that having children for the sake of having children is wrong, which almost no one would disagree with. The horrible father at one point insists he had to have children because it is expected of him.

The film succeeds on its own terms, and those terms are to tell a story largely of one young boy doing the best he can in a hellish life. It would be a shame to spend your time with the film wishing it were a different film, and thus miss much of what it has to offer.

Verdict: Must-See

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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