#but you do owe other people at least a passing attempt at empathy

[wormtoxin]

i’m gonna be real, the cultural perception that trans women are predators is absolutely vicious and immediately dangerous to women. but idk if policing the behavior of trans perverts online is my ideal solution. internalized transphobia has led me to more immediate repression and danger to myself than much else. i’m constantly terrified to publish (admittedly completely boring and safe and marketable) erotica because someone might make such an accusation against me. Trans artists’ reputations have absolutely crumbled on accusations with less stable foundations. I don’t love transphobia. I’m really lucky that the worst kinds of transphobic violence i’ve experienced have been through a screen. I just don’t know that extra surveillance and moral hyper-vigilance is gonna work out in our favor here, girls.

[queerheadcanoncentral]

hi hi! hope you're doing good :)

im a sucker for angst and wilson, so could you please write some hcs for him? could include anything from bad childhood memories, mental health issues etc! thanks you sm if you do it :))

James Wilson angst headcanons

Cw: bullying, homophobia, the f-slur, self-harm, alcohol, pills, suicidal thoughts and attempts, depression, self image issues, it's all angst.

—⁠☆—⁠☆—⁠☆—⁠☆—⁠☆—⁠☆—⁠☆—⁠☆—⁠☆—⁠☆—⁠☆—⁠☆—

He was a bit feminine in his behaviour as a child and got relentlessly bullied for it until he graduated from highschool. It was both physical and psychological. He got beat up, spat at, humiliated and called names. He never stood up for himself and is regretting it to this day.

One time on a middle school camping trip he got pulled out form his cabin by the other boys and dragged outside. Some of the boys were holding his arms behind him, some were putting lipstick on his lips, cheeks, eyelids and wrote "faggot" on his forehead, some were stripping him down and putting women's underwear and a bra on him. They tied his wrists above his head and hung him by them from a tree branch. While it was happening, some of the boys went to get girls from their cabins, so by the time he was put up on a tree, everyone was laughing at him. It took a few the worst minutes of his life for the teachers to wake up and help him get down. When teachers tried to discover who did this to him, none of his classmates said anything and neither did he.

He is so overwhelmed all the fucking time. The constant pressure of taking care of his patients while taking care of House and by extend, his patients, is killing him.

Most of the days he just fells numb.

He gets dressed, brushes his teeth, puts on a smile for everyone else and goes to work, works, eats lunch, works some more, goes home eats dinner by himself, goes to sleep. rinse and repeat. that's what he considers a good day.

His empathy is killing him. Not only does he have to care all the time about everyone, but he also has to care in place of everyone else because why does it seem like no one else actually cares they say that they do but they don't because of they did no one would be alone no one would have to die alone like his patients like so many people around the world and like him.

Nobody cares about him like he cares about other people and it is killing him.

He drinks wine every night. Wine or whiskey or scotch. People usually don't mind when you drink a glass of wine with dinner…or five; they just think to themselves “it's just wine, it's classy, it's french” - but when you do it everyday, it's a problem.

He has attempted at least twice, one of which was after Amber died. The night he and House met he was gonna attempt but while he was in jail he was glad that he had no way of carrying through on his plan. That may be part of the reason why he is still friends with House, he feels like he owes his life to him and he hates him for it sometimes.

His go-to are pills and alcohol, maybe because it leaves a bigger chance that he will wake up the next morning, which sucks but oh well-

He feels like a fraud. He has built this image of himself of a man who likes everyone, always gives a shit, and who will be there no matter the time of day or if he has something going on himself. But often that is not who he is in his thoughts. In his thoughts he catches himself being bitter and toxic and he feels horrible about it; he completely disregards all the times that he is kind and genuinely cares and the fact that it doesn't really matter what you think as long as you don't say it out loud and your actions are good.

attachment issues.

He has a tendency to take on others problems as his own as if him carrying the burden of their issues will take them off of others.

He isn't good with loss. You would think that after three divorces he would get a hang of it, but he hasn't. Every time he loses someone, wether they just left or passed away, it hits him like a ton of bricks and sends him down a spiral of guilt and booze. He wonders why? What he could have done differently? Why are they doing this to him?; every time it feels like someone is ripping his heart out of his chest with hands lined with barbed wire.

That's why he cuts himself. Usually on his thighs or upper arms so that he can still roll up his sleeves at work without anyone seeing the scars. Even during his lowest lows he still thinks about others. He still comes into work the next day even tho he has a raging hangover and is covered in band-aids and bandages. He still smiles at others and says his hellos on his way to his office.

[daisies-write]

that Illumi Flower short GUTTED me... thank u so much! 😭 can you do more illumi angst where he finds out hisoka cheated on him, illumi's rethinking his life and himself, and then he meets reader s/o who turns his life around?? sorry if that's too angsty you can ignore if you want <3

Ooooooooooooh!!! I personally am from the people who only see Hisoka-Illumi’s relationship as practical and not romantic so honestly it was fun writing all this in another point of view!! Also idk about this one piece honestly, everthing feels so OOC T-T I did my best. I hope you’ll like it nonetheless<3

-Yasu

Craziest

Requested by: anon

TW: mention of cheating but other than that just really OOC characters, i’m very sorry idk how to write qfstrydjukfytjdhrstgeqfz-

Writer: Yasu

Word count: 1923

    To be completely honest, that was to be expected. This whole situation, this relationship, from its inception to its inevitable end, was incredibly toxic. A marriage only for the benefits of the death of the other and the benefits of death only, so where had he screwed up? When had he gotten so attached to this eccentric magician that it hurt - something he didn’t think he could feel for years now - upon learning he had fucked someone again?

    It wasn't new anyway. Hisoka had never deprived himself of the pleasure of a drunken night out and it's not like he owed anything to anyone. This marriage was really just an arrangement and Illumi had always known it but things had changed, on his side at least. His feelings had somehow mutated very slowly, imperceptibly over the years spent with Hisoka. He wouldn’t say it was love, he didn’t know what it was anyway. Assassins don't need friends, let alone lovers, that was what he kept saying to himself that night.

    The sky had darkened very quickly and Illumi had hung up on Hisoka who spend a good ten minutes to describe his latest follies with his new one night stand. The dark haired man didn't have the strength to hear his voice anymore and as strange as it sounded, Illumi was feeling exhausted. The streetlights were starting to illuminate the city and in the few minutes that seemed to last for hours, night had fallen and the nightlife of the big cities began.

    The tall buildings, boulevards and shops had come alive, as they do every year during the approaching winter festivals; people wrapped in their warm clothes and sheltered under their umbrellas crowded happily. Some laughed with friends, some with family, some held hands in a small but beautiful show of love. and this whole, peaceful universe contrasted so much with Illumi’s in a nostalgic painting.

    He walked along a street whose name he had forgotten, in a place he did not know, lost in his world which seemed even colder than the rain that pounded over his body. He had no emotions on his face, as always, but he thought. He had thought so much that he had come to question his existence, his being. “Who am I, what am I, where am I going? “

    He strolled gracefully between people who never seemed to notice him; he was a shadow, a tiny piece of darkness that roamed against the walls as he walked tirelessly hoping to find a goal, some hint of nonchalance but in vain. The cold was burning his skin but it was nothing as his physical capacities were out of the ordinary, inhuman. So he didn't understand why you had stopped in the middle of your path, eyes wide open, worried. So genuinely worried about him.

“Sir, do you feel okay?” had you asked softly, while holding tight your umbrella.

    Illumi saw no point in answering and didn't give you one more thought. He resumed his walk, thinking you would do the same. But where his physical abilities were incredible, your empathy and kindness were even more so, out of the ordinary, inhuman. Or actually, very much human.

   “Sir, wait please!”

You quickened your step after him, and so he stopped and turned his head to watch your face, unphased.

   “What do you want from me?”

   You smile at the question. You didn't want anything from him: he worried you, that’s it. His gaze seemed so far away and so cold and as the burning match of pure love that you were, you refused to let it go like that.

   “I just felt like you needed someone to reach out for you, for some reasons,” you said, a gentle smile playing on your lips.

   Illumi didn't understand. To tell the truth, he didn't understand any of the words that came out of your mouth, nor their tone, nor their intentions. It was too sweet for his world, too foreign. He had never had real warmth and never felt the need for it but you were there and making your presence known as you see fit. So he just watched.

   Your smile never left you as you carefully undid your scarf. Illumi was tall so you needed one jump and another to get it around his neck while he drowned in incomprehension. Your neck was cold now but you didn't care and lifted your umbrella higher in an attempt to cover Illumi's head.

   “Can I buy you a hot chocolate? Coffee perhaps? ” you asked.

   But Illumi wasn't listening to you, his eyes fixed on the scarf you had so gently forced around his neck. New questions had crept into his mind in a mad dance, a mix of emotions that overwelmed him in a heat he didn't know; he wasn’t feeling hot, just warm. Did you just burst the bubble of his world? Did you just made a little hole in it to blow hot air, and make him experience a part of the humanity he lacked? Could someone do this in a few seconds? Could you?

   “Who are you?” he asked after finally catching one of his racing thoughts.

   "Me? My name’s (Y/N)! ” you said. “So? What do you prefer? ”

You could.

   “Why?”

You didn't mind his questions, you did know it might be weird to have a stranger come out of nowhere to put a scarf around you and invite you to a drink.

   “Well, it’s better if you drink something you like, right?” you giggled. “And you have no coat, nor an umbrella and you’re wearing short sleeves! I figured out a scarf would be welcomed, haha! ”

   Illumi was looking at you once again. He scanned your face, looked for an ounce of malice, possible betrayal, but found nothing. There were really strange people on Earth. He decided to accept, perhaps in the hope of forgetting his existential questions that he usually never had. Eyes black, dark and lost hovered over your frame thinking that perhaps wouldn’t be so bad to wait his next mission with someone. You weren’t sure why he accepted but you were glad nonetheless.

   “Great! I know a perfect café not so far and I swear, their pastries are just delicious! ” You point to a café with warm appearances and decorated with Christmas garlands. “You’ll like at least one thing there for sure!”

   You were right, the pastries were excellent and the room wasn’t too crowded. Illumi had kept the scarf on even while drinking his coffee while you smirked at him through the steam of your drink. He amused you with his perfect posture and manners.

   "Do you come from a rich family?"

   "Yes."

   "Ah, I knew it!" You laugh. "What family?."

   “Zoldycks.”

   Your eyes widened for a moment and Illumi thought he had scared but you still laughed, still so sweet. You didn’t seem to mind.

   “Wow! This is quite something! "

   “Most people would have at least started getting nervous after hearing that, and yet you are laughing.” Illumi sighed. “I think I have something that keeps attracting crazy psychopaths.”

   "I'm not a psychopath!" You pouted slightly and sipped from your hot chocolate. “And what do you mean by you’re always attracting them?”

   “My husband.”

   You bursted into intense laughter.

   “Who- “you breathed sharply through your laugh. “Just who calls their husband a psychopath?”

   “Because he is.”

   And your laughter started again. Illumi calmly explained everything there was to know about his relationship with Hisoka. You listened eagerly, finding every detail fascinating. Illumi had a complicated life, but he never seemed to talk about how he felt. He told everything as one would recite facts, with the utmost objectivity. Illumi didn’t feel as if talking about his life was important but you seemed to enjoy it and he couldn’t care less about what you knew about him. You were weak so he didn’t have to worry and just went with the flow.

   “It's a strange story. I hope you’ll figure everything’s out! ” you said once he finished talking.

   You looked at the walls around you and found the story of your new acquaintance even stranger in a place like this. The walls were a beautiful honey color, the armchairs extremely soft, the dishes were delicate, the smells mingled in the air, the sounds were joyful, and the shadows on the floor danced to the rhythm of the candles. What a great place to tell such a horrible story.

   "You’re crazy too, aren’t you?" said Illumi after a while of silence and a last sips of coffee. “Even crazier than Hisoka, I’d say. But you don’t particularly look like it, it’s just a feeling. I don’t know what is making me see you that way.”

   You put your cup down, closed your eyes and breathed in one last time the smell of butter and cinnamon before standing up. You put your coat back on and picked up your umbrella.

"Because you're right, I am crazy."

   His eyes never left your face now. He didn't expect you to be leaving so soon, or at least it seemed soon to him. When he checked the time on his phone, he surprised himself when he saw that at least three hours passed. You stayed three whole hours entertaining a stranger because his eyes looked weird to you and he couldn’t understand.

   “Perhaps I am the craziest!”

   “Perhaps. But why?”

   You played with your fingers as your gaze turned dreamy. Illumi noticed at that moment that you were breathtaking. Your whole being was so different from his world of extreme violence, cold and burning from Hell. You had a good heart, a beautiful soul, a touch of idealism that was so peculiar to him. Any other day, and he’d find you foolish. Tonight, your foolishness was welcomed.

   “I do believe that Humans are amazing and that the world is good. And because I so firmly believe this, I know I am crazy. ” You bite your lips. “For me, there’s no other possibility.”

   “Even with people like me?”

   “Especially with people like you,” you said. “You’re bad, awful even. But somehow you’re still human. And you still said yes to a bit of simple pleasure; a conversation and a coffee.”

   You smacked your cheeks to make your embarrassment go away, still smiling.

   “For me, it’s the proof that you aren’t that heartless, and that no one really is. ”

   Once you said goodbye to him and left, Illumi started thinking again. For a long time. So long that the café closed and he had to be kicked out by the manager.

   Outside, the rain had stopped but the cold was still there. The world seemed as dense as before, the sky still so dark, but the garlands of color were no longer annoying and the laughter of families and friends didn’t seem so loud anymore. Illumi realized that he was still wearing your scarf, that the taste of coffee still lingered on his tongue as the echo of your laughter in his ears and he hated that he liked it.

   He lived in the craziest world that could possibly exist and it’s a person like you, a big idealistic as well as a little bit of a simpleton who had just decided and succeeded in turning his life upside down in a few hours and a drink, in a way that even Hisoka or anyone could ever do. And he hated that he liked it even more.

   Maybe you really were the craziest. And maybe he wanted to see you again.

[solar-pxwered]

As promised, here is a snippet from the first chapter of my Jinko fic.

       There is no war in Ba Sing Se.        At least, that's what the Dai Li had been pushing on the people for decades, and after so long hearing the same sentiment, being told to stay quiet, and citizens disappearing when they tried to tell anyone otherwise...well, the people of the city had begun to believe it. If you lived your life, did your job, kept your head down, and just fell in line then you were left alone. So it was that decades down the line, not even the actual Earth King had known the war was truly happening let alone the common people.        This was why when the Fire Nation and Dai Li brought down the great walls no one was prepared to stand their ground against the occupancy. The lower ring citizens weren't trained in any weapon use other than muggers and their cheap knives or the occassional sword passed down through a family from their original arrival as refugees. A simple girl whose family ran a wool stall in the market least of all.        Jin had never felt more afraid than when she witnessed the komodo rhinos stomping down the streets, packing the solid dirt even more firmly than the millions of feet before them. Fire Nation soldiers rode on their great backs and warned citizens to get indoors lest they face the consequences and Jin had taken refuge in the tea shop she frequented, a horrible realization sinking into her chest.        "So it's true," a patron of the shop was whispering quietly behind her, out loud but to himself. "I've always heard rumors about the Fire Nation but no one could ever prove it. We really have been at war this whole time then?"        "It would seem so." Mr. Pao confirmed in a grim tone. "Rumor also has it that the Earth King has just...disappeared and is nowhere to be found."        "Dead most likely." One of the city guards muttered, his hand at his hip was shaking as if he was debating running out there to clash swords with the invaders.        Jin seriously hoped he didn't; this was no time for a show of bravado.        "What do we do?" Her voice sounded so small, choked in her fear as she clutched the neckline of her robes and worried the material there.        "What can we do?" the guard responded with a defeated sigh. "We wait. We keep our heads down, and we survive."        That had been two years ago now.        "Jin, dear, can you cut me off a yard of the undyed wool please?"        Her mother's voice broke the girl from her memory and she shook her head to clear it as she grabbed the shears from the table. "One yard of undyed, coming right up."        Life went on.        Ba Sing Se had continued to thrive even under the rule of the Fire Nation because the rules still remained the same: live your life, do your job, keep your head down, fall in line. Jin's family had continued their business and opened the wool stall the very next day and, even though they had no business at all, it had spurred the other members of the marketplace to follow suit and soon the market was a bustling, busy place once again as they all adjusted to the new normal.        There were those who spoke of grand schemes to overthrow their new government, whispered plots over pints of cheap ale and tobacco smoke in the seedy taverns of the Lower Ring, but the few who tried to rise up were very quickly and very publically stomped back down. Jin was well familiar with the scent of burning flesh and hair after only a few days. But over time things had settled down and even the more raucous of rebellion groups had been crushed in the months that followed the first march into the city.        Thankfully, the months of occupation were few; a mysterious group of people had reclaimed the city, or at least that was the story. All who were present to see it told tales of firebenders using the comet to destroy the occupants, of waves flowing in the streets which washed down the lines of soldiers, Earthbending being used to crush tanks and topple statues, and even tales of epic sword fighting.        If the stories were to be believed then it would mean their liberators were representative of all the nations combined...and Jin was happy to believe that.        Whatever the case, the city was free again, King Kuei had returned from his long absence and tales from the world began to trickle into the streets; each one was more fantastic than the next!        The Avatar, the last of the Air Nomads, had defeated the Fire Lord in combat. Kyoshi Island's famous warriors had represented the Earth Kingdom with unmatched ferocity. Three children had taken out the entire Fire Nation air fleet. The Dragon of the West himself had freed Ba Sing Se. There had been a siege on the Fire Nation during the eclipse.        Today a new bit of news was making the rounds.        "Have you heard?" the woman buying the undyed wool was asking her mother in a conspiratorial way, "They say the new Fire Lord is on his way to the city and should be arriving in the next day or two. Apparently the King invited him personally to discuss trade agreements and reparations."        "I should think so," Jin's mother, Yon, replied easily as she wrapped the wool in paper and tied it with twine to complete the package. "The Fire Nation owes the world far more than empty promises. If he's as eager to change the world as they say then what better place to start than here?"        "Ah, but they say this isn't his first expedition at all! I heard the Earth Kingdom colonies were the first places he went and that there were uprisings and that he came to stomp them out!"        Yon's lips pursed unhappily and she shook her head.        "He sounds like more of the same. It's almost like those people are born without any empathy."        Jin bit her lip, turning her back on the gossip as she put the remaining wool back in it's container. Her mother's statement brought back up those stupid feelings she had been trying to quell for years now; feelings related to a certain Firebender who she knew was nothing like the evil Princess who had conquered the city from within. A shy boy with a scar on his face who served tea and lived in peace among them.        She was no fool. He had all but blurted out the truth when he had lit those lanterns at the fountain that night. She could still see the nervousness and heard the awkwardness in his tone if she closed her eyes and focused on the memory of that strange date with the strange young man. She could still smell the heat frome the quickly summoned flames in the air. He had firebent those lights into being and he wasn't fooling anyone with his "don't peek" attempt. She hadn't peeked, of course, but she hadn't needed to.        Lee had been a Firebender, and Lee was nothing like the rest.

[muwur]

hii :-) ur writing is so cute!!! could i uhh get some super fluffy mayb a lil suggestive one shot or scenario about being quarantined with oikawa post-time skip? 🥺

quarantining

✩ oneshot ✩ for oikawa

❧ gn reader

✎ 2.2k words

a/n: gotchu! hopefully i didnt take too long ;(( i have trouble getting inspo, it usually will hit me all at once or neverr. hope you like cx

wishin i got some quality times during quarantine, y/n out here rlly living their best n domestic life smh

also, i hope this was fluffy! ik i made it a bit silly and playful so i hope thats ok! lmk if you would like me to attempt again and id be more than happy too cx

requests: open!

So far, it’s been a month into quarantine. Despite having lived with Oikawa’s needy self for the past two years, being stuck at home with him all the time definitely tested your patience, especially when he was bored, seeking attention, and missing volleyball.

“Oikawaaa, hold on, I’m almost done with work. Maybe talk to Iwa for a bit until I’m free,” you suggested as you typed away at your computer, not even sparing your whiny boyfriend a glance as he lamented about his boredom.

“Iwa’s already asleeeppp and there’s nothing to do hereeeee,” he complained. He pulled up a seat next to you and poked your cheek repeatedly. “Having a long distance best friend and an s/o who doesn’t care about you is harddd, why does life give me such a hard time?” he despaired, referring to his best friend who lived in another country, and you, his partner, who was trying to do work so you both could be financially stable in the middle of this pandemic.

You rolled your eyes in response and turned in your chair to face him, grabbing his cheeks in your hands and giving them a squeeze. “Boohoo, I think someone’s gotten a little too used to having fan girls entertain him all the time.” You gave his pouty lips a quick peck. “I’ll be done in 20 minutes, max. Go watch some tik toks or something.”

After you returned to doing your work, Oikawa settled for wrapping his arms   from behind you and resting his chin on top of your head. He hummed to himself some trendy tik tok song he discovered the other day as he played with your hair, and you found the vibrations from his throat and the soft tugs on your scalp strangely soothing.

As much as you rolled your eyes or scoffed at his antics, you loved when he would go out of his way to catch your eye. Oikawa knew what would get to you. He could make you smile, laugh, piss you off, or comfort you in an instant.

You felt your heart soften at a memory from not too long ago.

“Hmmmmm,” Oikawa thought aloud, stroking his chin with his thumb. “Put that one... here.”

“Yes ma’am,” you responded, placing a pillow in the gap between two other pillows. Then, you both took opposite ends of the same blanket, draping it over the array of pillows you arranged on the living room floor and thus completing your pillow fort.  

He eagerly slid inside the castle and patted the spot next to him. “y/nnnn, hurry up and lay here with me so we can watch our favorite show while we cuddle and I feed you~”

You couldn’t help but smile as you obliged, easing into the spot next to him. You both lay on your stomachs, supported by a single, long pillow stuffed underneath your chests. Oikawa hooked an arm around your waist, closing the gap between you two. His free hand reached for a bag of your favorite snacks. He opened it, picked up a piece, then held it up to your face.

Just as you were about to take a bite, your face contorted into an expression of shock and betrayal when you saw him quickly seize the piece into his own mouth. Looking at your gaping face, he raised a mischievous eyebrow. “Oh, you thought that was for you?”

And that was how he ended up face down and star fished on the floor, with you sitting cross-legged on his back and triumphantly munching on your snacks, surrounded by a chaotic mass of fluffy pillows and blankets.

“I win,” you giggle through your bites.

“No fair! That pillow to my face came outta nowhere!”

15 minutes passed by when you finally finished, closed your laptop, and hugged his arms. “Alright, I’m all yours now, what’s up?” you tilted your head back and glanced upwards to meet his gaze, the corners of your lips turning upwards in a small smile.

“Wellllll, I was thinking of sharing a nice dinner together, maybe a fragrant bath...” he trailed off, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

“Pffft,” you spit out, shoving his face away playfully and getting up to your feet. “Only if your highness will make me dinner. I’m hungry after a long day’s work of breadwinning. What have you even been doing all day?”

“Uhhh...” Oikawa pursed his lip and looked at the ceiling in faux thought. Then his eyes landed back on you sheepishly, “Nothing.”

Laughing, you gave his cheek a soft pat and took his hand, leading him to the kitchen. “Of course, I expected nothing less of you, Lazykawa,” you jibed, well aware you were using one of Iwa’s classic nicknames on him.

“Fine, fine, I’ll get something ready for us. You just sit your pretty self at the table and watch.”

"I want a close up view, though,” you remarked, snaking your arms under his own from behind as he was investigating the fridge’s contents.

“Works for me,” he winked.

You clung onto him and followed his steps around the kitchen, taking in his refreshing scent and observing judging his meal preparation.

“Mm, yes, instant ramen, quite the challenge, Oikawa. What’s your strategy?”

“Divide and conquer. Watch and learn, y/n.”

He exaggerated his movements throughout the cooking process, which made clinging onto him a bit of a struggle, to say the least. He finally poured the cooked noodles and soup into a large bowl, adding in some boiled eggs, seaweed, and green onion for embellishment. “Voila!” he bragged, carrying the dish slowly to your small dining table as you continued to follow him. Oikawa set the bowl down, “Dig in, honey.”

Unlatching yourself from his back, you took a seat next to him and lay a head lazily on his shoulder. His heart fluttered at the sight of your cheek nestling comfortably into him, and he mentally kicked himself for letting your proximity make him experience those first date jitters all over again, even though it’s been four years since that time. He took in the details of your face, feeling his heartrate quicken when your eyes slowly flickered upwards at him from underneath your eyelashes. Your sweet lips parted slightly, looking like honey could drip from them at any moment. They were captivating, but tread the wrong way and he could be left stung. He wanted them to say his name, longingly--      

“Well, are we going to eat or just sit here and let the food get cold?”

“O-Oh, right,” he stuttered out, taking a pair of chopsticks and dipping them into the bowl. How had his mind strayed so easily? He might act like he could keep his cool all the time, but with you, that was a different story. Four years whipped by quickly, but the thought of you never failed to bring him a sense of comfort, anticipation, embarrassment, and intrigue all at once.

He picked up a few strands of noodles and blew on them gently. The steam from the bowl rose to warm both your cheeks, marking them with a dewy, rosy tinge. Oikawa brought the noodles up to your open mouth, which you received with such delight that he had to refrain from gushing over how cute it looked. He continued to feed both of you, listening as you talked about work, how your friends were in quarantine, and what you wanted to do when things got back to normal. Although he was attentive, making sure to acknowledge your words with some sort of response such as a nod or a reply, he could feel a knot in his stomach begin to tighten ever so slightly. When his mind wandered, he couldn’t help but think about what the future held for you both.

You were one of the most supportive people in his life. You decided to move here in order to stay close to him and support his career and passion for volleyball. You found yourself a job in order to help make a living and adjust to your new lifestyle. You put effort everyday into your relationship, making sure you looked after one another and communicated your needs. Your empathy and understanding were unmatched, and he couldn’t imagine what his life would have been like for the last two years if you never came along with him. Reaching back farther, he was almost positive the last four years of his life and all the good that’s come his way since then was thanks to you.  

“To be honest, that ramen hit the spot more than I expected it to,” you sighed with satisfaction. Then, you looked over at him and noticed the slight furrow of his brows. “Tooru...? Helloo?”

You waved a hand in his face and jolted him from his thoughts. He took your hands and looked into your eyes with a spark of determination. “Y/n.”

“Uhhh... Yes?” you asked, a bit confused.

Closing his eyes briefly and taking a deep breath, he proceeded. “The years we’ve been together have been among the best in my life. You’ve never failed to make me feel safe and happy, and I can’t imagine what my life would be like without you by my side. I need you to stay with me, to look after me while I also take care of you. I know we’ve only fantasized and shared jokes about the future, like when we tell our children stories, you’ll make fun of me and share with them some of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. When we get a pet dog (or cat, or any other pet you prefer), I’ll have to compete with it for your attention, and I’ll probably lose. When I’m old and my knee finally gives out on me, you’ll lug me around on your back. But I don’t want those things to remain little jokes; I want to experience all those moments with you, no matter how big or small. That said...”

Once Tooru realized what he was about to suggest, his cheeks flushed and he accidentally bit his tongue. “Ow, fuck!”

Startled and still caught off guard from his sweet words, your eyes widened as you choked out, “H-Huh?? What’s wrong, what happened?? Tooru?” You tried to convince yourself the heat you felt was due to the hot ramen and your concern for Oikawa.

I was just about to ask for your hand in marriage.

He held his hands in front of his face, waving them around in frantic dismissal. “N-Nothing, I just bit my tongue..!” Gotta think, gotta think of a cover...! What else could I even say that would make sense after having said all that..?!

He took in another deep breath and held up both your hands again, bringing them close to his mouth and giving them a kiss.  “When this is all over... W-Why don’t we take a trip somewhere? We’ll go anywhere you like! Just us two, going on adventures, having drinks, doing fun things.”

You sighed out in relief, releasing your pent-up anxiety. “T-That’s all?! I-I mean, ah yes, of course! That sounds amazing, I’ve always wanted to go to *insert place here lol* and this would be the perfect chance!”

You cupped his face gently and brought him in for a warm, soft kiss. His lips meshed with yours as his hand reached for your jaw. His thumb caressed over your right cheekbone, pulling you closer and giving you a sense of security.

Though, at the back of your mind, you had suspected, Was he about to propose? But then you thought, Nah, if he was considering it, I don’t think he’d do that right now, stuck at home during quarantine. Now, what if I proposed before he did.... Hm...

And his mind was filled with, Oh thank god I caught myself, I don’t know what I would’ve done, I don’t even have anything ready, I never thought about it as seriously as I did in that moment, what was I thinking, also ramen tastes kinda good on their mouth...

A few minutes passed when you broke apart. He spent a few seconds looking into your eyes, which glistened with passion and love. “You’re really sweet, Tooru, you know that?” you said with a smile. He smiled, giving you a kiss on your forehead before standing up abruptly, much to your dismay. But then he offered to wash the dishes, much to your content and appreciation.

He finished not too soon after, then walked into the living room to find you splayed out on the couch and browsing your phone.

“I made dinner like I promised, so into the bath we go!” he yelled, hooking his arms underneath your back and legs to lift your body. You yelped in surprise, dropping your phone on the sofa. You instinctively wrapped your arms around him, laughing as he rushed towards the bathroom.

“Fine, I’ll keep up my end of the deal,” you said, reaching for the bathroom door’s handle and turning it open. Once inside, he kicked it shut with his foot and set you down on the sink counter. He moved towards the tub to turn on the warm water, then came back to the counter and held up two bath bombs. “So, you want rose or lavender?”

But instead, you hooked onto him once more and pulled him into a needy kiss.

Someday soon, when this is over, you’ll be mine forever, y/n.

Despite having lived with Oikawa’s dorky self for the past two years, having to be stuck at home with him all the time had definitely its perks. There wasn’t anyone else you would’ve rather spent your time with, that’s for sure.

a/n: fihuofiejmcg i tried LOL, i hope you liked, honestly was just typing ad goign along till i got ideas! I wouldnt let myself sleep until i finished this sdfghjk anyways. we luv oikawa. also i hope that last thought of his dont sound creepy LMAO

ps i shoulda been filling out my job application but lmaoooo

[lideria]

Second Nature. | Doyoung

Request: Ahah, this was not a request I just really like to make myself suffer sometimes. This is about a childhood best friend who returns after a long time.

Author’s Note: I have kind of had this storyline already and whenever I looked at Doyoung I thought he would fit into it so well. This is a scenario rather than an imagine, so it might not be fully relatable. Plus, I’m sorry if this hurts you.

Warnings: THIS IS SAD, not proofread bc I suck at it, very downbeat pov, mentions of alcohol consumption/intoxication, mentions of divorce, mentions of injury, lots of emphasis on loneliness, plus there is a dog in this story so if you’re scared of doggies/you’re a cat person, I apologize. English is my second language so there might be errors! Let me know if there is more please!

Word Count: 11664 too many words for my own good really

Genre: ANGST, fluff, childhoodfriends!au, bestfriends!au, friendstolovers!au (???), two surprise AUs that I cannot say for the sake of the story.

I hope you all enjoy! If that’s even possible! Because I felt emotionally drained just by writing it!

“Catch me if you can!”

You let out a loud laugh as you start sprinting at full speed. Your friend and neighbor Doyoung lets out a shriek before picking up his pace, both of you running through and inevitably, over the green grass of your shared garden that is scattered with white and yellow flowers all around. Parents look at your way as they take a sip of their coffee, smiling under the mug. “Don’t sweat too much, it gets chilly in the evening!” His mother shouts when the two of you run close by them. One of you answers okay, but you both cannot make out who it is because the caution only falls on deaf ears.

He catches you when you are running close to the fence, catching you by your shoulders and accidentally pulling your hair. “Ow!” He hisses along with you as you turn back. You are very clearly pissed of, which only alarms him a little further. “Doyoung! I told you to be careful with my hair— it’s longer than yours.”

“I didn’t do it intentionally! I’m sorry. You can pinch my arm so we’re even.” He sticks his arm out, his blue and grey bracelet hanging off loosely from his wrist. “No, but I want a cookie.”

He audibly gasps. “I only have 3 left!”

When you shrug, he sighs and heads inside their vacation home. It takes him a few minutes to go to the front of the house where their kitchen is and come back and by the time he’s back, he finds you sitting at the bottom of the fence. Your face brightens up when you see him and his mother’s cookies, inarguably the best dessert to come after your mother’s. He sits next to you and hands the treasure. You still notice the frown on his face. And you hate seeing him upset.

So, you break the cookie in half— an imperfect half. You get the smaller piece to yourself and hold out the bigger half for Doyoung to take. He smiles the Doyoung smile and takes it before stuffing it in his mouth.

It was a bright, sunny day. You had been at the beach ever since the morning, now late in the afternoon, with Doyoung and his family and yours. Having a sandwich for breakfast and a picnic for lunch and snacks, swimming every other second in between. Both Doyoung and you loved swimming in the aqua blue waters that would occasionally change colors to a deeper blue. More specifically jumping from the pier in what you claimed to be “athletic poses” that were, in reality, sad yet funny excuses for superhero jumps.

“I’m sorry to disappoint, honey, but I think Doyoung had that one.” Your father says when both of you climb up to the pier after your 7th jump, for the votes of your parents on who jumped better. “Yeah, I can’t jump quite as high. It’s because he plays volleyball,”  Doyoung snickers beside you with good intentions, but you still feel a little defeated. “It’s okay, you dive better than me.”

“That’s true, you suck at diving.” The realization of having said a bad word hits you both sooner than ever, and you both cover your mouths in surprise. He is smiling under his hand. You can tell because his eyes are squinting. His parents start laughing and Doyoung too lets go of the laughter he has been holding in. But of course, your parents do not look all that amused. “That’s another month before you get a pet.”

You switch to protest mode in an instant. “But it slipped from my mouth, I didn’t mean it!”

“Just because it slipped doesn’t mean it’s okay,” Your mother claims calmly, and you jump a little with frustration. “But—“

“Whining won’t get you closer to getting one.” Your father sternly adds. You stop immediately, rightfully kind of really upset. Everyone is silent until Doyoung pulls a little on your arm. You know what he means, so you let him drag you back towards the pier. Frustration stings at your eyes and Doyoung can sense it, so he nudges you a little. “Come on, don’t be sad. I’m sure a month will fly by.”

He does not receive any response, even though you argued there’s still at least a year internally. He kind of knew he would not be getting a response, because that is what you act like when you are upset. Seeing as you were, he crossed off the possibility of jumping off the pier with you for the time being. Instead he sat down at the end, dangling his legs, patting the spot next to him for you to sit. You follow his actions.

“Doyoung?” Your voice sounds like you were frowning. “Hm?” He does not look at you, because he does not like seeing people upset. “How is middle school? Is it fun?”

You were just going to be starting middle school, whereas he was going to begin his second year. As always he wanted to tell you the truth. Considering your mood, though, that might have not been the best idea. So he did not. “It is! Plenty of good friends,” Which was not necessarily a lie, but it definitely was not how it went for a lot of people. He feared you would be one of them, as you had a tendency to make friends with everyone and that was not how socializing went in middle school. But for all he knew, everything could be different and you could have an amazing middle school experience. “After school activities are really fun as well.” That definitely was not a lie. Doyoung loved volleyball. “I can’t wait to go back.”

“I’ll swim. That makes me happy.” And it must for real, because he hears the excitement in your voice.

He grins. “Then go for it.”

With that, Doyoung pushes you off the edge. Although surprised, you suspected he would do that subconsciously as he had a habit of pushing people into the water when they have just dried off to entertain himself— a rather evil habit that everyone hates. For payback you splash him with water. He splashes you back as if it would do anything, and you splash him again while calling him another bad word that your parents luckily would not be able to hear and soon enough, it turns into a splash fight.

It was the first day of Doyoung and his family’s arrival that year. You woke up feeling excited, because your best friend was finally here after a whole 5 days of waiting after your own arrival to the summer house. So you ran out to the garden right after breakfast, more than ready to see your friend.

Instead, you were not ready to see him all that much. At least not with his arm in a cast.

You go up to hug him as usual, and he mutters a low, disappointed “Hi.” In return, you give him a much brighter greeting in hopes of bringing his mood up. It does not work.

The day goes on. Both your families and you have a shared lunch, catching up on the previous 9 months they had not seen each other. Their moods are much higher than Doyoung’s and yours. His mood had made you inevitably moody as well. He was not up to play, he was not up to go to the beach, he was not up to go to the grove… It felt like he did not want to do anything. But it was summer. Not the time to be sulking around, even if his arm was in a cast.

Then came an idea.

There was a patch of young olive trees planted near your houses. They were only around the same height as you were, though it varied from tree to tree. You loved how the trees looked when they were passing through the road in between the patches a few days ago. So you only suspected Doyoung would like seeing them as well.

You run up to the parents and ask them if you could take him there. They agree without much hesitation, only warning you to make sure to stay off the road and to wear proper shoes to protect from the bugs and thorns.

Taking Doyoung there was a struggle. Making him agree to go was harder, but he also kept complaining how hot the weather was (as if it had never been that hot before) and how he was too tired (which he should not have been, because you knew he tended to sleep on car rides, and it was an overnight drive for them to get here).

But the second you arrive at the patch, something changes.

He smiles in awe at seeing just how small the trees are and how they shine under the sunlight. You both sit under one of the trees, both of your heads touching some leaves, and it leaves a funny feeling on your heads. You both giggle for quite some time until it just starts feeling nice.

“What happened to your arm?” The question was impossible to hold back, and you thought talking about it would make him feel better. The tone in his voice makes you not so confident about that. “I was dipping to hit the ball, and the arm I wasn’t using— I wasn’t paying attention to it. It twisted and snapped when I landed on it, and now I don’t know if I can play volleyball anymore.” Doyoung lets a sigh out then and it is full of feelings you cannot make out the heavinesses of, because you lacked the experience.

You hiss with attempted empathy. “What are you gonna do instead?”

He sighs again but you can make the feeling behind it out this time, it is annoyance. “My music teacher wrote my name down for a conservatoire, and both mom and dad really wants me to go. Even my brother wants me to go. Weird.”

“Singing sounds nice.” But Doyoung does not look too keen on the idea. In spite of it you smile, hopeful. “If he’s saying you should go, then you have to sing for me sometime.”

He chuckles at that and looks at you as if you suggested something out-of-worldly crazy. “Yeah. Sure. Don’t depend on it.” Then he looks down and whines upon seeing his arm and the sun hitting it— the black cover on his cast. “Ugh, it’s so hot and itchy. I can’t even swim this summer and it’s only the start,” His mouth twitches and wobbles a bit the moment he is done complaining, and you frown, even though the fact that he only realized his arm was making him feel uncomfortable when he looked at it still makes you want to laugh a little. “I’m sorry.”

Doyoung throws you the crazy look again. “I was the idiot, why would you be sorry?” There was genuine curiosity in his voice before he chuckles breathily, in what might be disbelief. You pull on his blue and grey bracelet. The beads looked okay, but the strings were a bit worn off. “We’re best friends?” You suggest, to ring a bell more than anything.

He nods just once, agreeing, examining his bracelet when he notices your gaze on it. “We should really change the strings. Yours look terrible too.”

You look down at your bracelet, green and red like a watermelon as 8-year-old Doyoung had said, and mumble. “Yeah, we really should.”

The idea comes that very second. You just seemed to beam with ideas today. “We can put the beads in your pocket and tie the strings onto the branch. A friendship tree, yes?”

He looks up and smiles. “Okay. I guess to keep in peace as well.”

You had to help him every step of the way because he lacked an arm and through the experience you come to learn that an arm is a very serious lack of a thing. Through the summer he could not do much functioning until they had to leave to get his cast off around a month and a half later, and in turn you chose not to swim when he was at the beach reading books while accompanying his parents and yours. Instead you chatted with him and put handfuls of sand in his t-shirt (being careful not to get any in his cast, of course, partly for your own safety as well) every time he told you to just go and swim, until he was too pissed off at you.

And you stayed with him and offered a piece of your mother’s tiramisu as he cried for the first time ever since the first year you met, after he got the news that his arm was in too fragile of a condition to play volleyball again. Because that was all you could do.

A chilly night, sitting on top of one of the low branches of a random tree close to your shared backyard. It would be scary if you couldn’t see the lights coming off from your houses. Or if birds were not still chirping through the calm silence. But as you sat there, blueberry muffins in your hands, it was almost comfortable. If not for the bumpy bark you had been sitting on, of course.

It was the last days of summer. More and more people were leaving, closing off their summer houses for the duration of off-season. Doyoung and his family would be leaving tomorrow, whereas you and your family would stay for just a few days longer simply because everybody loved this place with its variety of trees and its beach.

“Are you excited you’ll get to compete this year?” Doyoung asks suddenly. You nod immediately and with eager. “I’m gonna win gold.” The sheer ambition in your claim makes Doyoung chuckle, which annoys you a little. He had started doing that a lot this summer, laughing at the stuff you would claim. You look at him as if to ask why he laughed even though you know he was going through the weird phase and lucky for him, he gets the signal. Then he shrugs. “I don’t know. Winning seems important for everyone and it’s silly. Just enjoy what you’re do—“

His voice cracks. “—ing.”

You try your best not to laugh, honestly. But he breaks first, so it is only fair that you start laughing too. His voice had been doing that for almost half of this summer, which was apparently a sign of growing up.

Puberty, being a preteen and all that. You had your fair share of experiences. It was funnier when it was not happening to you.

You mock his voice when you give him an answer. “I’ll just enjoy what I’m doing!” His eyes widen a little at that and he turns a little further towards you in surprise. “Hey, that sounds like how I sound in my head!”

Both of you lose it at the silliness of the sentence, it hurts your stomach after a while. It also takes a lot of effort to not slip from the branch and fall down onto the ground. What cuts through your laugh sooner than expected was his mother calling him back, shouting quite loudly that they would be leaving before sunrise and that he needed his sleep so he should better come back before she locks the door and goes to sleep.

The way down is faster and easier than the way up had been. Doyoung stuffs the remainder of his blueberry muffin in his mouth before clapping his hands together a couple of times to clean them of crumbs. He turns to tell you that the two of you better hurry up, but the way your face looks stops him. “I’m gonna miss you,” These exact words would always leave your mouths when it was someone’s time to leave this place and the reality of not being able to see each other for another 9 months set in.

Doyoung visibly relaxes, knowing nothing was wrong. “I’m gonna miss you too. But it’s okay, it’s just 9 months— we always wait that much. Plus,” He smiles widely. “You’ll finally have a pet next summer.”

“And you’ll sing.” He shakes his head immediately. “Please?” You press your chances because it was annoying what he was doing to you. He had never played volleyball with you when he used to play (even though it was rightfully so, as you were terrible at it) and now that he was actually really good at singing (proof being that he had taken part in several shows his conservatoire organized) he would deny you the chance to hear. You were best friends. That basically gives you the right to hear his singing.

Something changes in him, as his eyes widen slightly. “You know what? If you actually manage to get a pet, I will. Deal?” You know he thinks you cannot manage to do it. But you can. So you take it.

“Deal.”

Doyoung and his family do not come next summer.

Or, rather, for several next summers.

You ask your mother the first summer he is not there, your arms on the counter and your head resting on top as you watched her cook. “Mom, Doyoung’s not coming?”

She was washing off some produce from your garden to make a salad before they went bad when you hit her with the question. You do not get an answer, and she does not slow down, so you ask again after a few seconds when she takes out a knife and the chopping board. “Oh, his father has a different work schedule now,” She answers, slicing the cucumber. “They can only use the house on spring breaks.”

Heartbroken, you turn back around to go back into the living room to play with your puppy along with your father.

On the third summer, you hear various tumbling sounds coming from outside and the faint voices of your parents through the glass. The sun is barely up, the sky a pretty pink. You hear voices of a couple of old people. Maybe more, but you cannot make it out, as sleep was fighting with you to rest just a bit longer.

There is darkness for a while. Second time you wake up the sky looks more peachy with hues of yellow. The tumbling sounds have left their place to the sound of slamming metal doors and old engines that you think can only belong to trucks, but the noise is okay, because within less than five minutes the vehicles leave.

You ask about it at breakfast. Your father takes your hand in his as he drops his cutlery, and tells you he is sorry, before revealing that Doyoung and his parents had sold the summer house. Betrayal (lighthearted betrayal which only has place in your heart during your teenage years) slowly washes over you and you stand up abruptly before mumbling something about finishing your breakfast in your room. With unshed tears in your eyes, you gather your plate and leave.

Both of your parents’ sighs are audible when you are climbing up the stairs.

By the fourth year, their house already starts to get the old, rustic, sultry look any abandoned house would get.

You grow every year, that much is sure. Your puppy does so at a much faster rate as well. Your parents get deeper wrinkles on their face. Spots on their hands. The trees get taller, thicker and older. The summer house starts smelling of nostalgia rather than just of sea salt and rarely used furniture. The beach gets even emptier than how it used to be. The grove gets lonelier and scarier. The produce of your garden loses its taste at some point. You slowly start to abandon the idea of going out to the backyard, except for the times you went out with your dog. Jumping off the pier gradually gets less fun than it once was. Your swimming partner has four legs instead of just two.

When you get your first phone, excitement washes over you with hope as company. You ask your mother if you can get Doyoung’s phone number if he has one, but she says that they have lost touch with his parents and that they do not speak to each other anymore.

Excitement leaves your body, and your smile falls.

Some couples of other years pass as time has no intention of stopping, and on one of them your father moves out. With one less person in your summer house, the emptiness grows bigger. With one less person in your summer house, the environment loses its golden glow. The leaves, even under the bright sunlight, only look a sad variety of greens. Rooms feel so much bigger. Memories start off as sweet remembrances, but they surely turn into hauntings when every single thing reminds you of one.

After your father leaves, the only person you have left in your summer house is your mother. The only things you have left is cooking and baking with her, walking around aimlessly, and sitting in the quiet at the pier with your only four-legged companion.

You slowly realize that childhood is gone. Never to come back. Growing up turns out to be loss of great people and great things, and it slowly starts to make sense why your parents kept telling you growing up and being a grown person is not as exciting as you were making them out to be when you were younger.

Summer loses its magic and grows weary. Yet, despite it all, the summer house remains as your safe space.

Because there is only the struggle of loneliness, unlike what the longer part of the years throw at you.

Yet loneliness does not prove to be much easier.

Growing up and going to college, moving out of the house took a toll on your relationship with your mother. It was not noticeable until the first time you came back for the summer break, when it started to seem like you ran out of things to talk about easily. Movie nights grew more frequent. Cooking and baking still were the fun things to do, at least.

It was not that you could not get along with her, or you had too many fights. Being around her was still comfortable. It was just that your mother could never be your friend, let alone your best friend. There were a fair amount of things you would not talk about with her. Even though she must know this, she would try to fill the gap Doyoung had left.

It was not possible. You suspected it never would be. Because he felt like second nature to you and he was gone. How could anyone replace second nature?

Her trying to fill the gap your father had left was one thing. The other was not all the same.

Summers got quiet and lonely after Doyoung left, yes. More so after your father left. But as you kept growing up and sharing less with your mother, the dimension of your loneliness shifted. It started feeling more like isolation.

And it was then, that you felt like true happiness started shifting away from you.

Your favorite time to hang out at the pier is around sunset hours.

The beach was the emptiest around that time and the night, because the general population was old and dinner preparation would keep them from going out from late afternoon and onwards. After sunset— the usual dinner time for most of the neighbors— porch lights would get turned on immediately. And when dark blue paints over the sky while the moon slowly comes out, the sounds of old neighbors visiting each other and chatting, sometimes playing games on their porch and laughing along would travel to the wooden pier where you would be laying down, listening to the wavering sea. It had quickly grown to be one of your fondest things about the summer.

That afternoon is no different. It is almost the golden hour on a hot day, and your dog is absolutely spent after a long walk so you both deserve to get a breather, really.

You move towards the end of the pier and sit down, alerting your dog gently to do the same. Her tail thumps repeatedly against the boards as she sits down looking at your hand. You cannot help but smile at her cuteness. Opening up the water bottle you had brought along, you place your palm under it curled like a bowl. Letting the water flow down carefully, you let her drink the water from your palm.

She ends up drinking most of the water in the bottle but still sweats afterwards. Happy and content despite sweating, she looks around and at the water, watching the few fishes that were swimming towards the seaweed bunched around the pier’s legs, wagging her tail in curiosity. You look at the water as well, but your mind is elsewhere. Wondering about your father.

He had promised you to come and visit before summer ended and here you were. Halfway through the summer— almost more than halfway.

Something in you started wondering if he would keep his promise a while ago. The hope that held onto the promise started dimming as the days went on.

You let a huff out in an effort to lighten the tightness in your chest. It works ever so slightly, and your companion turns her head to you. She has always had a talent in understanding when you were upset— maybe an instinct, and this time was no exception. She lies down next to you and nags at your hand. Giving in was too easy when it was her. You start petting her and letting her lick your hand and arm.

Perhaps it is magic, because her efforts of cheering you up works without any exceptions. Not giggling is impossible.

Her and you lay down, playing around for a while as her attempts of licking your face gets more frequent and although you adore her, you do not want to be licked on your face. It turns into a wrestle rather quickly. Her paws press on your stomach sometimes which is far from a pleasing experience and it is when she really just makes you nauseous that you force her down to a hug. It takes too much time huffing and puffing and annoyed-sneezing for her to calm down and stop wagging her tail but she stops eventually.

Literally seconds later there is the slightest creak on the boards and she picks her head up. The tail starts wagging and thumping again. You ignore it, wanting to cherish the moment.

“Hey! I’ve been looking for a certain someone, can you help?”

The familiarity of the upbeat voice pulls a weak string at your heart automatically. The string sends waves of electric all throughout your body and it surprises you how much it can burn still, after years of no contact, and it is only a familiarity.

Breathing deeply, you answer. “Unless you’re looking for your grandparents, I don’t think so.” The creaks get louder, nearer. Then they stop. The wagging tail is way too excited for its own good as the thumps get faster and harsher, and she starts getting excited again, trying to look at and smell whoever it is that stands near you.

A face hovers far above yours with a smile. “I don’t think I’m looking for my grandparents.”

Your breath hitches and you let your companion loose without meaning to. She wastes no time in jumping up and become acquainted with the intruder.

Except he is not. He is not an intruder. He is a familiar face. Hell, he is more than a familiar face. He is second nature.

And just one glance at his not changed but grown face takes all the betrayal, the disappointment, the feeling of having fallen out of place away. And it takes everything in you to not start crying on the spot. Instead you smile big, spring up onto your feet and throw your arms around his middle to hold him close, so close that he does not have the opportunity to leave, not now. His shoulder welcomes your face to nuzzle itself in and you take the advantage fully— shocked, even though it was an obvious fact, that he had grown so much. His arms find their places around your back comfortably. Hugging felt natural and safe but still weird to some extent, because it was not like how it was 8 years ago.

“Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you?” Your voice still shakes even though you keep the tears inside. He places his chin on top of your head as you nuzzle closer and lets out a breath himself. “I think I do.”

After many minutes of hugging and letting the emotions out in the form of squeezes and nuzzles, both of you sit down where you were stationed before Doyoung appeared. One of his hands keep petting your four-legged best friend while he keeps his mouth occupied, talking to you to catch up in any way.

You could not stop looking at him. Taking it all in. Just how taller he had gotten— though not a giant like he had sometimes hoped he would turn out as, but you do not tell him that— and how sharper his facial features had gotten. Yet it comforted you how he had not changed. You could go back in time and look at him, and compare the two looks you had seen, and you could easily tell that this person in front of you was Doyoung.

His jet black hair, even, had not changed much at all. It was still in his face in some way. It was as if he had just physically grown up, and nothing had changed other than him growing taller and his features setting in place.

That comforted you, although you were not sure why.

Curiosity took over you as you kept chatting in the comfortable silence. There was so much to learn about him. It almost felt like you were meeting with a new person. Almost.

“Where are you even staying?” The question feels kind of uncomfortably intimate for you to ask after so much time, but you do not want to lose anything that you had with him. So it would only make sense for you to act as if it is still there. He does not seem to mind the question too much as the answer comes sooner than you would expect, without the awaited stare. “I’m crashing at a friend’s couch. He lives near here.”

“Who lives here all year?” You mumble in disbelief. But you trust him in telling the truth. He smiles back, looking around as if to check the environment. “Everything looks the same. This place aged well,” His gaze shifts back to you, warm and gentle. “I can’t say the same about you, though.”

There is nothing harsh about his words, but you cannot help but feel taken aback. “What do you mean?”

He shrugs, not even bothered about your dog sweating over his leg as he keeps petting her. “A lot of things feel different about you. You look different too.”

“Is that to say I haven’t aged well?” You joke, making light of the situation. It would be a lie if you did not admit that his words did not hurt you in the slightest. Even though you knew that they held some truth value. He huffs, letting his head fall to the side, annoyed. Like the olden days. It makes you too happy to see it. “That wasn’t what I meant and you know it. There is just, something off about you, it hits you in the face.” He stops for a second to look at you properly again. You do not look offended, so he continues. “But I don’t think everyone would be able to notice it enough to make a deal about it, you know?”

It is your turn to shrug with one shoulder, and click your tongue a little, shaking your head as if this whole thing did not bother you. “Mm, I grew up,” He throws a look as if to say I know, but you keep on talking. “And I changed. Nothing too crazy.”

“You’re sweeping it under the rug, but I’m gonna let that go this once.” He says as your dog’s attention span on him expires, and she goes to lay down at the corner of the pier, a spot where she can have her own space and a rather okay view of the fish living down there. “This once?” You ask, unable to stop the hope from surfacing.

“Well,” Doyoung turns his body to face yours. He sits criss cross. “I’ll be around until the end of summer. I just assumed we can keep seeing each other?”

A laugh breaks through years of quiet summers as your heart flutters. “Of course, yeah.” Doyoung smiles back his smile, his one of a kind smile, and you have to pinch yourself to know this is not a dream.

It is not, and night had never come faster in years.

Getting to know your best friend for the second time was a weird experience. You had to ask him what he was studying since he was going to begin his senior year of university, to which he answers musical theatre. Upon that you smile a witty smile, pointing at your companion who picks her head up after she realizes she was being pointed at, and tell him that you had gotten a pet so he would have to sing to keep his promise.

He laughs and answers okay. But not now.

Within minutes, he updates you on almost everything. He tells you stories of this band he was part of where he formed his friend group, and how he had been picked up as the male lead for Tick, Tick… Boom! at the end of his sophomore year so he actually had to learn how to dance. Doyoung claims to not having been the greatest in it, so you ask with all the curiosity in your heart if he managed to get a date out of the musical. You get an answer of an overly confident of course, which tells you more than you need. Despite not having heard his singing, or having seen him dance, you tell him that he must have been amazing at it. When the argument comes you simply shut him up with the fact that he was picked as the lead.

Doyoung mentions not seeing his family for that summer because of the fact that school had ended only fairly recently, and because he could not not see this place anymore. He adds that he never even mentioned coming here to his family to eliminate any chances of them insisting he would go see them, and that he would really appreciate if you kept his presence here a secret from your parents as well. You agree to it, partly because he is still someone you could do anything for, and partly because the selfish feeling of wanting him to yourself only for a while.

The mood kind of goes down when he asks “So, uh, what was life like after I left?”

The question makes the smile fall off your face involuntarily for just a second before you push through and fight it off, smiling once again. “High school was hard, first of all.”

One of his eyebrows rise in surprise. “Oh yeah? What was it like?”

Without even stopping to think, you answer truthfully. “Like you ate shit, and tried to throw up the shit you ate, but it took you 4 years to do so.” There is a wince of disgust before he answers. “Ew. That sounds miserable.”

“Was in fact miserable.” You admit. The shits-and-giggles attitude breaks faster than you intend to. “My parents got divorced in junior year, and my father had to move out, so that was a big contribution.”

Doyoung does not look surprised, but upset. He looks down at his hands before looking back up at you. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Again, a shrug, as your lips waver. “It’s whatever.”

Silence. Uncomfortable silence maybe for the first time ever since you met him.

So you break it. “You know what? This is a reunion, and I really don’t wanna talk about how a break up that’s not my own affected me. There are lots of happier things to talk about,”

The two of you keep talking with each other for hours and hours on end. You are sure he misses the dinner at some point unlike you who were used to having early dinners. Naturally you have to take a break every once in a while to help your dog do her business, but you hold your own business inside to have all the time you can with him. It still felt as if he would leave again and never come back.

But at some point he has to leave, so you let him go. Not without a “Let’s exchange numbers?” though.

However, the answer you get is not all that satisfactory. “Sorry, I can’t. I’ve a foreign number since I study abroad and— yeah. I didn’t activate my local one this time. And you know how internet connection is here.”

“Basically nonexistent,” You agree. “But how do we meet up if we can’t—“

He smiles. “I can just come here every night after dinner.”

Your breath hitches again. Happiness beats in your heart. You could certainly do with that. “Sure. If it’s alright with you, I mean.”

“It’s why I’m here.”

In all honesty, the fact that Doyoung is back does not hit you until around the end of the first week.

The week in itself is fairly uneventful if you overlook the excitement his presence gives you. You mostly just speak to each other, to catch up on all that lost time. One thing you notice is how affectionate and all over each other both of you seemed to get, and on your part, it was still about making sure he was truly there. Hugs quickly grew to be the default state you would hang out together. If his arm was not around your shoulders, your arm would be stationed at the small of his back as you sat at the beach or the pier, and if neither was happening your legs would be sprawled across and over his lap.

Nothing about the affection you two seemed to gain felt awkward. It came so naturally.

The only weird thing about Doyoung was how he managed to be so punctual. You would show up at the pier as soon as it got dark, basically— and often he would already be there waiting. If not, he would only be late for around a few minutes. You could not tell if it was intuition the both of you shared, or a silent agreement. Whatever it was, it was a great thing, and you were thankful for it, because it gave you the time you so badly needed with your best friend.

Keeping Doyoung a secret from your mother proved to be harder than you initially thought. The fact that you were almost a fully grown adult about to start junior year of college seemed to be an irrelevant fact as soon as you started staying outside for too long in the night, and you had to swear to your mother several times that everything was okay. You excused yourself saying it was too hot when sun was out, and the beach was breezy and enjoyable in the night, so you would rather hang out with your dog then.

Which was not all a lie. She seemed to enjoy herself a lot more then, as well, and sweat a lot less. Not to mention her liking of Doyoung.

Randomly on one night you notice the bracelet still on Doyoung’s wrist. It makes you smile silly. “You still have it on.” Your finger goes and pulls on it, reminding Doyoung of the fact. He smiles fondly. “Why wouldn’t I? Don’t you?”

You pull your leg out of the water and show him. “I do, just not on my wrist.” The green and red beads shine on your ankle with the moonlight, and your leg goes chilly when the breeze hits. Doyoung’s reaction looks questionable at best so it only prompts you to further explain yourself. “Motivates me to hold my ground. It’s easier to remember who I am this way.” The words awaken something you would rather not feel ever again. Your chest hurts with the rush of the stinging feeling, but you hold yourself to endure it.

He stops as another wave hits both of your legs and furrows his brows. “What does that mean?” You turn back around to face him better— he looks hurt, somehow. As if he can feel what you are feeling inside. You take a breath. “I was very lonely, you know,” The tone of your voice reflects the hurt you kept dearly inside, and you have to physically squeeze your hands within themselves to not let the cracks reach the bottom of your feet where they would break you in half. It is the first time you ever admit it and the words sound harsher in your ear than how they used to sound inside your thoughts. “I still am, in a way. And it’s hard to not want to run away from everything when the world basically gives you all the reasons to. So I had to stand my ground.”

When his mouth opens to say whatever he had on his mind you turn your back to him. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Your dog passes by you two, running along the shore and playing in the water, blind to the atmosphere.

Doyoung respects what you say.

Although thankful for his silence, it eats away at you for days. Some part of you keeps saying that you are not letting Doyoung get as close to you as he has been letting and is letting. Because he lets you know how his biggest dream is to really debut in a Broadway show, and how singing means so much to him now. You know he studies in one of the best schools for musical theatre. You know about how he is lifelong companions with his brother now, instead of enemies like how they had been when you were children. You know he is still very afraid of anything remotely creepy. You know his biggest insecurity is his dancing and his biggest fear is being involved in anything violent and getting hurt. You just know so many things about him. And he keeps telling you even more with excitement beaming off of his eyes.

And it makes you feel bad. Because you cannot bring yourself to talk about everything like he does.

For one night, you let the attitude fall, though.

You decide he can get to know something if he wants to, because that night you had promised each other to meet at a later hour than you normally would have. You had promised your mother a proper dinner and chat, inarguably a nice way to spend your evening, and there were a bit too many glasses of drinks in your system. Luckily you were still highly functional— treading on the fine line between tipsy and fully drunk. It was more or less an open invitation to an interrogation with how talkative you were.

Doyoung notices the slight sway in your steps before a second even passes. He chuckles a bit, giggling as you throw yourself into his open arms. His giggling prompts a sluggish laugh from you because it is just so cute. And he helps you to your station of just a bit over two weeks. He helps you sit down without slipping, and helps your dog to calm down a little by petting her head.

He is still a very good friend.

You do not bother to open your mouth, because the sky is dark, the pier is dimly lit, the breeze is soft and chilly, the smell of sea salt is intoxicating, your old love bug of a dog is wagging her tail looking at you, and Doyoung is sitting right beside you. Your head is on his shoulder.

It feels so perfect. Why would you want to talk?

But he has other plans.

“Do you want to talk about last week? The night when we were walking along the shore, I mean?” His voice is gentle as ever. Even though the question is highly expected, you huff. Yet your head acts on autopilot as it nods. “Sure.”

He clears his throat. “Why do you feel lonely?” The question is blurted out and not cautiously asked, as if had he tried to ask it with caution he would not have been able to.

Still, it feels like he has to ask the hardest questions. But, you jump into an answer without any preparation. “First, you left. Every single summer I waited for you to come back. Along those summers I kind of,” The act of jumping into an answer does not seem to be all that easier than working through the painful thoughts, so you trail off a bit before you pick your words back up again. “I guess I kind of felt betrayed and, um, lost trust? I never tried to be friends with anyone and the amount of people that take the first step towards someone who clearly won’t try is fairly low, you know?” You look up at him, and he is already looking down at you. Gently but without a smile.

“So I didn’t have friends, really. Not like you. Then, like I told you— dad left. Was the icing on the cake. I was too used to his presence, like yours. Both of you were with me for more than half my life and suddenly you weren’t.” You scoot closer to him as an instinct and he welcomes you, like he always does. “I guess that hurt the most.”

“Was too big of an emptiness to handle?” It sounds so lighthearted, yet is so spot on. So you can only nod as you hold onto his arm. “Yeah, but I handled it.” Plus, it had payed off— he was here and soon, your father would be too.

Your father calls you a few days later on a sunny but breezy afternoon when you are in the backyard playing with your dog. His voice sounds tired and old— a fact you could only realize when you were not face to face with him. Tired maybe because of his work schedule. Old because you were not the only one growing up.

But his voice is not only tired and old, it also sounds genuinely apologetic. “Hey, honey, I don’t think I’ll be able to visit you there this summer. I’m so sorry. Maybe we can spend time next summer, you could even get an internship here before senior year starts?”

Yet it still sounds just like a mix of made up excuses. “You can’t or you won’t visit me?” The question is bitter with every sound that leaves you, and your father certainly seems to get the point as a sigh echoes in your ear soon after. “I don’t think your mother would enjoy me being there, so how about we just see each other in winter break, hm? It’s sooner than summer break, and a few months will fly by with school. I’m sure.”

“Making truce for a week shouldn’t be so hard after that many years of marriage.” Your argument is intended to reflect the disappointment in your voice and it does, but there is also a very obvious hint of hope in there that goes unnoticed. “That’s not how relationships work, honey. I’m sorry. Please don’t get mad at your mom, okay? Tell her I said hi, and call me back when you feel better.”

And he ends the call.

It takes everything in you to not throw the phone hard to the ground. Instead you call your dog to come sit next to you on the grass, and cuddle her in hopes of getting better. By ways of magic, perhaps, she can tell your heart is broken and that you need the company. So she calms down in lightning speed and just nuzzles into you, and you stay there like that, her sweating and looking around and rarely whining and hugging you closer, until your mother calls you in for dinner.

Dinner is uneventful save for your mother asking you if you would be going out again, which you would be. She talks to you about these new recipes that she has found in this new recipe book she bought and you pretend to be interested in the matter. In all honesty you could not care less but it would not be justifiable to say that since you knew you would be devouring the sweets if they came to existence in that instant.

You finish your food in silence before grabbing your denim jacket and making your way out of the door with only a stern and noticeable “Dad says hi.”

Doyoung is luckily already at the pier that evening even though it is slightly earlier than your usual meeting time. He is sat down at the end, looking down and watching the small waves hitting the legs of the pier. He must hear your feet on the boards because he immediately turns around and lifts himself up to his feet, but his smile falters when he is able to make your face out in the dim light. “Why are you alone? Something wrong?”

It is only his question that reminds you that you had rushed to the pier with one less friend because you forgot to bring her. That had never happened before, and the fact that you had the ability to forget weighs heavy on your shoulders— to the extent that you only look down at your feet in shame and break down when the tears invade your eyes without any signal.

Nothing happens for a few seconds as you weep. He takes the first step towards you after the initial shock and slowly brings you into a hug as you mumble shaky apologies with trembling hands. You are enclosed in such a hug that you cannot even hug him back, and he keeps reassuring you that it’s fine, that you don’t need to apologize for crying, and that you’re so strong. He keeps combing through your hair with his fingers, and at some point he helps you sit down before pulling you back into a hug.

Calming down is hard because of too many things hitting you at once, and perhaps because your newly-built happiness had taken another blow to it. “Dad’s not coming.” You manage out after a while, and he listens as you ramble. “There’s only a couple of weeks until I have to go back and—“

You sob. “I just want childhood back. Everything was better back then. He was here, you were here, we were happy. I’d give everything up to be kids again if I knew we could.”

His eyes are brimmed with tears too, but he would never tell you that. Instead he pulls you in closer if it even is possible, and takes a deep breath before speaking up. “What can I do for you?”

“Can you sing?” The low mumble vibrating into his chest reaches his heart, and he cannot bring himself to say no. It takes mere seconds before he takes in another breath and jumps into a song.

You are just so young at this very moment, my dearest Life ahead has hopes and joys Promises of happy days For you, for an eternity Neither loneliness nor any lies may ever bring tears to your eyes You've wept enough when you were born, Let that be the final, the last

Doyoung’s singing is beautiful. His airy voice that carries so much emotion with it only makes you cry harder initially, which makes him panic slightly as he keeps trying to check up on you, but you just shake your head and bury your face deeper into his chest. The song touches every living cell in your body and gives you a strength you would never expect a song to give you, and it makes you feel hopeful.

Just a bit, but it is a start of something that blooms in your chest.

And you do feel better afterwards, though it takes you some time to quiet down properly. Doyoung asks if you are actually feeling better when the sniffles subside, and you nod.

Then an idea strikes you, and you smile.

You shove Doyoung with your hand. “Ow! What was that for?”

Slowly rising up to your feet, you look at him. “Catch me if you can!”

And you bolt away from him.

It takes more time than strictly necessary for him to realize what you mean. His words only reach your ears when you have already made your way to the beach. “I thought we outgrew this!” And he starts running to catch you.

Playing tag on sand is more difficult than you remember. Maybe because you really outgrew this game, or maybe because it is dark, possibly both, but you could not care. You were too busy with running away from him, who by the way, was much better at tag than you would expect. He still had the speed he once did while you were kids and playing the game in your shared backyard, and the fact that you two were playing on sand does not seem to be phasing him too much.

You have to resort to running along the shore with your feet in the water to slow him down, but he still comes dangerously close to catching you. So it is really your only resort to run back onto the pier.

Except the pier is not wide enough to fit two adults circling the width of it with that much speed. It would only grant a chance for Doyoung to catch you. But, the adult you was crazy enough to do something the child you would never have the bravery to.

You do not know how you manage to take off your denim jacket that fast, but you do, and you let out a scream of adrenaline just as he shouts at you to stop— and you jump into the water when you reach the end.

The water is definitely colder than how it had been in the morning when you were swimming, but you still laugh as you make your way to the surface. Doyoung looks at you with wide eyes and a smile. “Come on!” You manage out. “A little water shouldn’t scare you from catching me.”

He laughs at the invitation, takes a few big steps back, and runs forward to jump into the water himself.

Your mother scolds you in the morning about the fact when she asks you why you have got a minor cold all of the sudden, but it certainly is worth it.

“You want to sleep over at ours tonight?”

You ask him the question as summer’s last days quickly approach on a night (basically almost a morning) where you have stayed up for too long. There was not much reason to let him go back to his friend’s house. Especially when you did not trust him with traveling in the dead of the night.

It freaks him out a bit, you can tell, because he physically gets a bit smaller and fidgets. “You know I can’t, what if your mom—“

“She’s sleeping, I swear. She never stays up this late. You can just sleep for a few hours and leave when the sun comes out.”

He cannot protest the idea much after that, because he knows you would not let him go.

Together, you leave the pier and start walking back to your house which takes quite some time, but it is nice. Walking back towards that direction with him again flutters your heart. It makes you want to squeal in excitement. But at the same time it is not exactly like how it was when the two of you were kids. There was something different.

You could not put a finger on it.

Your dog trails behind you, trotting contently as you walk arm in arm. Walking that way had started off as a joke around two weeks ago when the both of you walked through the streets neighboring the beach. You two played a game of two elites roaming through the streets of the commonwealth as you told him what the neighbors had been up to in the years that he had not come. And then, it just stayed as a habit.

Because it was comfortable. And because you liked being close to him.

When you reached the backyard, you opened the gate and let him and your dog in. The bugs were still playing a symphony of various different screeching, and your summer house was pitch dark as you had expected it to be.

You make your way towards the back door and slide it to the side, and one friend of yours makes her way inside and onto her bed immediately. The other friend is not so quick. You turn around to tell him to hurry up before mosquitoes make their way inside, but you find him stuck in place with no intention of moving as he looks at what used to be their house.

You slide the door back and walk back to him.

“It looks so.. run down,” He sounds so genuinely sad for the first time ever since he came back. It hurts you to see it. “And old. I wish I could help it somehow.” The second half of his words only come out as a whisper as he inspects the place that holds his better part of childhood memories.

“Nobody’s bought it. Your parents could buy it back if they wanted to, but it does require a lot of work inside.” You suggest calmly, and with hope that is supposed to be ironic yet quite the opposite of it. Doyoung looks so confused at what you say. It takes him a good moment before it clicks. “Yeah, yeah, true. I don’t think they’d do it, though.” He sighs, thoroughly considering whether to stay there and look at the house, or to go back in. He chooses the better option even though it is hard. “Let’s go inside.”

It takes too much effort to coerce him into sleeping with you on your bed rather than having him sleep on the very uncomfortable couch. You tell him more than enough times that his back would be broken if he ever attempted even taking a nap on the couch— speaking from experience— and he just ends up giggling shyly when you tell him it does not have to be weird if you two sleep together.

So you two go to your room. As the furnitures never really needed to change, your bed was still a twin bed, which only prompted Doyoung to get that much shier.

You two get in the bed and under the covers, you on the side against the wall to give him the chance to leave comfortably when he has to. To make him feel better about it, you take your phone and set an alarm to the exact minute of sunrise, and he laughs when you tell him he is too much of a scaredy cat.

As your twin bed’s width commanded, you had to cuddle to have a chance at sleeping comfortably. Your head on his chest feels better than ever, his breathing hitting the top of your head slightly funny. He giggles when you giggle at the feeling. You can imagine him smiling crystal clear in your head and surely, when you look up at him, he is.

It is just a shame that you do not hear his heartbeat when you turn back to sleep, because you really wonder if it is beating as fast as yours do.

Just a few days before you have to leave.

You ask Doyoung to come in the afternoon that day because you want to have a picnic, which he agrees to. Both of you meet at the pier around an hour before sun would start to set, and share a hug before he starts to make his way to the end of the pier. But you stop him this once. “I wanna take you somewhere else.” He agrees to it without much questioning.

The trails seem to be a bit more overtaken by thorns and wild flowers, so it takes you a bit longer than it should have to get to the patch of olive trees. You look at him expectantly when you arrive and, surely enough, he has one of the most beautiful smiles on his face. The happiest, too, if you recall right.

You lead him to your tree and set the bag of snacks down, preparing the place— laying down the old table cloth to sit on, taking out the packed sandwiches and olives and the blueberry muffins. He is too entranced looking at the tree to notice, but he throws an apologetic glance when he realizes.

“Where are the strings? I can’t see them,” He claims. You point to one of the higher end of the branches, a place where they definitely were not initially placed. “I had to change their location as it grew,” You explain. “They were too tight to stay where we’d tied them when we were midgets.”

Doyoung laughs and its remainder stays on his face as he finally spots the strings on the tree. He looks at it for a minute or two in adoration, but his eyes hold something a bit sadder inside.

Maybe he misses childhood, too; you never stopped to think about it before.

Soon enough he sits down. You unwrap your sandwich and suggest he does the same, but he tells you he is not that hungry though he would make sure to eat it.

A warm chatter starts between you two. He asks you what you would be doing for junior year, which was pretty set already— you would be looking for internships left and right, and trying to survive the mountains worth of assignments. Midterms and finals would surely be getting more difficult as well, but that did not matter all that much. An internship would help you find a job, so that would be your focus.

You ask the same to him, what he would do that year before he graduates. It must be exciting to graduate, and Doyoung tells you he would have to start looking for places to live and extend his immigration status in one way or another while he auditions maybe hundreds of times before he manages to land himself in a good musical and hopefully a good position.

He can do it, you know. There is no way he cannot with that voice. You tell him that, and he gets a bit flattered before telling you his concerns do not have too much to do with singing but rather with dancing.

You tell him he still can.

That ends up being the finish line for that conversation and you finish your sandwich in silence, only looking at your phone sometimes to see if you have any texts or calls from your mother, since she is the one that has to take care of your dog.

He watches the leaves wave in the constant breeze this summer offered this place, and picks up an olive from the cup you had brought. He holds it up and lines it with the branches that are decorated with unripe olives, and squints his eyes before asking. “Did these come from here?”

You nod your head enthusiastically. “Mhm,” Your hand lands itself on the trunk behind your back. “From this tree itself. My dad collected them when he came here in October last year.”

Doyoung smiles and pops the olive into his mouth. He looks genuinely delighted to be eating it, which makes you happy.

The two of you continue chatting and bickering and relaxing until sun starts setting, which signals that you have to get going. The summer house still had to get cleaned and tidied up to get ready for being locked up for the off-season, and the amount of work you and your mother had to do was a bigger deal than it needed to be. Not to mention the fact that you had to carry so many stuff to and from this place every year, so there was even some packing to do, which you hated. University experience really brought too much of it.

And then there is the fact that somehow, you would have to say goodbye. Having to say goodbye to Doyoung gave you a nostalgic feeling, but mostly it made you feel sad and scared. The day you would have to tell him goodbye for who knows how long was approaching without any mercy, which did not make it any easier to plan what to do next or how to say it before going to sleep at night.

So maybe it is only fair to say what is going through your mind. Which is that you do not want him to leave again. “Doyoung,” You start off. He looks into your eyes with full attention. “Don’t leave again. Not for long.”

The request prompts the start of silence. But it is only for a short while before he gulps, and answers with determination. “I won’t.” He shakes his head. “Not again.”

The untold promise makes you so happy you can cry, and what he happens next is really not something that had a thought behind it.

You place your hands on his jaw and bring him closer, so much closer to you until your lips meet, and his hand springs to hold yours on his face with shock. What you seem to be doing shocks you as well, but you cannot exactly stop yourself. You did not want to. And you certainly are sure you would not stop unless he wants to.

Yet, he also does not seem to want to stop. Because after the initial shock that lasts for what must be only a second, he holds your hand tight and places his other hand on the small of your back. His lips are so soft and airy, and the way he kisses you is so endearing. It feels like he is repeating his promise without words, telling you he is here now, and he would be here when you come back. You stop and pull away from him just for a second, looking into his eyes that shimmer before leaning back in and pecking his lips again and again— kissing him thank you, thank you, thank you. He holds you in place and kisses you for what you know is going to be the last time, and he kisses you so forcefully it screams I love you; I don’t know how it happened but I love you and I want to keep loving you.

You push back against his lips in an attempt to say I love you yourself, but you have to pull away and hug him tight to make any sense.

It takes a moment for him to start speaking, and when he does, he sounds absolutely horrified. “We need to talk.”

You pull away from him again and look at his stressed figure. It makes your heart drop. “About this?”

He shakes his head at first but then nods. “I need to tell you something. We really need to talk.”

The happiness in you dares to falter, but you will not let it. Not this once. Not when you are this happy. So you lift yourself up onto your feet and shake your head, because you will not let him bulldoze something he had built himself. “You know what? No. Let me live with this just for a night.” Doyoung tries to protest, opening his mouth, but you cut him off before he can even start. “Just one night, Doyoung. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

He only nods slightly, and you mutter an “I’ll leave now, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” Before packing everything back up and handing him his sandwich, and rushing back to your house.

It takes you only a short while to get there because of how fast you were walking, and you do your best to get into the backyard and into the house without making much noise, because your mother was not expecting you. She might have been sleeping.

And granted, the house is silent and calm when you first walk in. But then you spot the figure of your mother hunched over the island counter in the kitchen, on the phone. You are about to go ahead and hug her from the back as a surprise when her barely audible sob stops you. It is impossible to go unnoticed just how hard she is crying, because she cannot even let it out fully. It makes you wonder why, what was wrong, but then she speaks—

“I’m serious. Our child was speaking into pure emptiness and it’s.. I don’t know what to do. I’m so scared.”

[aashiquidreams]

I was hesitant whether I should share my story. I decided to do it anyway because I need to clear my heart and my story might help someone in need.  

The passing of Indian actor Sushant Singh Rajput made quite an impression on me. I notice that beside feelings of sadness, I also understand how a person can come to the point of wanting to end it all. When I was 22 I attempted suicide. I was desperate. For years I had been walking around with pain and sorrow and I felt that no one understood me. There was some form of help, but not the kind I needed back then. Therefore I saw only one way out. For weeks I walked around with the plan and made preparations. I don’t think anyone noticed. No one saw how bad I was doing because I was Nora! Nora who was always fun and happy. Nora who always smiled. "How can she be doing bad?" people often wondered. I don’t blame them for that. I was (and still am) good at hiding my emotions when I'm doing really bad. I was good at pretending to be fine or I would just isolate myself. I didn’t want to burden anyone with my problems, sorrow and pain. The fear of being judged and labeled also didn’t help. Whenever I did open up to family, friends or colleagues, I heard things like “Be strong, Nora!” “Why are you crying?” “You're not going to cry again, are you?” “Life is full of beautiful and good things, keep your head up!” Or phrases like “Come on, everyone feels bad sometimes. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”  “You are still so young! Child, you haven’t experienced anything yet!” and “You have everything, why are you sad?”

Even in the hospital my family was angry and attacked me with phrases like “I hope you die anyway!” “It must have been a cry for attention.” “If you really wanted to die, it would have worked.” “You're crazy!” “Why all this drama?” There was no understanding, let alone help. I will never forget how alone I felt during that time. I felt worse than before the suicide attempt. (I'll spare you the details of what happened afterwards.) Despite everything, I got through it and fought for years to get better and created a better life for myself. I’m still fighting for myself because depression will always lurk around. Many years later, I'm still in therapy and I’m still looking for ways to improve my mental health. I’m still learning. I have gained fighting spirit and strength after that dark time, but I know that’s not everyone’s experience and that everyone's struggle is something very personal. In the years that followed after my attempted suicide, there have been numerous moments when I thought of suicide again. I haven't had an easy life and battling your own mind can be quite tough. The last time I felt like ending my life was in September 2018. After many disappointments, I had allowed someone into my life again. Someone I trusted with my vulnerability and my life story. Someone I had come to love. Out of nowhere I was abandoned, without giving me a reason or an explanation. I believed it was my fault and that I wasn’t worthy of love. Fortunately, my fighting spirit and strength saved me once more. The presence of my two cats also made a difference in the past ten to twelve years, especially when I felt like giving up. Throughout the years I’ve been blessed with some close friends that I came to see as family and they understand me. Even though I’m not a practicing believer, I know God is always watching over me and is taking care of me. As you can see there are different reasons why I’m still here today, but it doesn’t mean that I’m never lonely or sad.

Yes, life has its ups & downs. Yes, there are nice and less nice people. And disappointments are a part of life. However, I think we should be more careful with each other and we should look out for each other a little more. Think before you break someone's trust or hurt someone. Seek help if you’re knowingly and willingly hurt others (bullying, lying, cheating, abuse, etc.), chances are you need it. Whenever you notice someone’s not doing very well or if someone confides in you, don’t look away. Instead try to talk about it. If you can’t, that’s fine, but communicate this with the person you’re dealing with or seek information about how to help or seek advice from a professional. You don’t owe anyone anything, but a bit of empathy and humanity is the least you can offer one another. I know out of experience that it can make a difference for someone. Be good and kind to each other. Help each other out wherever you can. I am available here on Tumblr if you feel the need to talk. You are not alone! There are people who you can trust and who do understand how you feel.

Take care of yourself and each other!

Love, Nora

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Was reading your response to the Okumura Ryuji/Morgana fight, and the way the person worded Ryuji's character made me wanna ask... Do you think a bad fanbase is a fair reason to dislike a character? I've heard people say things like "no look at the character too", but... For example, I'm very neutral on Ryuji. When he's good, hes SO GOOD, EXCELLENT BOY, but Ann is my favorite girl. Guess who he pervs on exclusively and is rude to all the time? I've never seen his fans talk about (1/2 sorry)

His rude behavior, or his pervy tendencies, or his more selfish desires regarding the PT. That's fine!! Not everyone wants to constantly talk about bad things their fave has done!!! But people referring to him as a "woman respecting king" so insistently rubs me the wrong way, since he treats Ann Like That. That, and (more personal) i remember making a post/ask thing once about my grievances with Ryuji, esp his perv stuff, and the fans that interacted very aggressively denied his behavior (2/3)

And it even turned into a big discourse on the blog I submitted it to (it was that one confession blog). All the people that responded and just tried moving the arguments to "well Yusuke did this-" or even tried to push blame on Ann "she was asking for it" just kinda cemented my already growing dislike for Ryuji. Super sorry this is so long!!! Final question: is a bad fanbase a fair reason for disliking a character? (3/3)

Don’t say sorry about multiple sent asks, I don’t mind kfdsjla;fja As for the answer, I want to say yes and no, but really it’s just “yes with a side note attached.” Yeah, it’s ok to not like a char because of their fans, but I think it’s as long as you know why you dislike the char beyond the fans (well tbh, imo it’s usually the crazy fans so I think stans is a better word, but even then there’s diff stans). And tbh, I....can’t....think of a character I don’t like that the fandom/fanbase does....but I know nothing about the char all the while (closest and most recent example this....is....I know people dislike that grey haired moe blob on twitter even tho I don’t think they watched the show, and while I’m not a fan of the moeblobness I don’t know anything about the char so I’m personally not upset). I can only name chars I don’t like because of what happens in the text, fandom be damned (but sometimes they don’t help). Which is why it’s a yes with a side note. If you don’t like the char despite not knowing them.....probably get to know the char first even if your impression is clouded by the fandom....at least you gave the char a chance. 

Under cut cause length (first few sentences in the first paragraph under the cut/tldr at the end gives you the answer a bit more in depth, the rest is rants related to that and why I get frustrated in a similar sense too, but yeah sorry if I repeat myself, I kinda jumped all over + my tendency to try to nail a point home I feel like might’ve had me repeat a bit more than usual akslfjdakfjaf):

I say this because.....it’s hard....it’s hard to keep them separated, unless you completely isolate yourself from the fandom (which is basically impossible if you wanna keep up with news, even the comment section is part of the fandom tbh...and you might be looking down their for diff reasons). And then.....well...the big reason....sometimes seeing the fans really highlights the reasons you dislike the char. That’s what happened to me and Makoto, specifically cause of....a certain fan (and buddy if you happen to see this, nothing against you, no bad blood, def won’t mention your name I respect you and the debates we had)....AND TO THE TUMBLR READERS WHO GET NERVOUS: It wasn’t on this website in case anyone is freaking out so if you’re thinking “Oh god it’s me” it is most likely not you (tho I think we do know each other on here cause of usernames/saw each other in passing but we def aren’t mutuals last time I checked), and while I do respect that person.......my god did they highlight the reasons I had issues with P5 and Makoto. Ironically in trying to defend her and show off her good sides, I realized the writing issues more and more and her bad sides became more glaring. It turned my frustrating dislike and attempt to try to work out my issues with her and P5 (ironically “working out” in hindsight would’ve been me....denying and refusing to look at P5′s flaws) into....well......the salt factory you know today. (same thing happens with like......Yukari and Junpei fans too tbh...that’s more recent tho, it feels like they are just downplaying their negatives constantly and I’m not about that). Basically, you probably have issues already, they are just more pronounced now. 

As for “look at the character”....you kinda already are doing that, and that’s probably where your existing issues originated from (tho if someone wants a more in depth reason as to why, while you DON’T OWE them an explanation, it is also hard for someone to understand your feelings and reasons if you don’t try to explain). 

As for Ryu, yea, I getcha, I like the guy, I’m neutral positive on him....was my best bro but he’s 2nd best thanks to post-Kamo writing. I like him because of his positives, but I always keep his negs in mind because. Cause like while I agree with the fans IT MAKES NO SENSE! P5′S WRITING IS BAD! it happened, same as I agree that Anne kicking Ryu’s ass, along with the other girls, is shitty. Hate the scene, and I accept that it happen (low key gonna start some kinda 2nd wave war with this bs cause the fandom be like that, but I’m really surprised no one took Anne smacking Ryu behind the neck cause he was being too loud as super offensive and abuse.......it’s def something a friend might do, not like belting him just a tap, and it’s framed as chill and also as warning him to reign in the volume control, but high key surprised no one has tried to cancel her cause of that). BUT that DOESN’T mean it erases all the creepy stuff he’s done. Is he the goodest boi when he’s being good? The best. Is he always a good boi? No, he def is not. And hearing that he is can be frustrating to people that do see his flaws (cause they are there). And like....you are 100% able to like a character despite and because of their flaws, while also accepting they have those flaws. I do it with Yosuke, Ryuji (for the most part), Teddie, Shinji, Ken, Kanji (when he’s not around Naoto, then he’s in a trash can for me), P1/2 casts, Aigis, Mitsuru, as long as the flaws are within reason and are treated pretty well....then I’m ok with it. (again, Kanji/Ryu have moments when I’m like....NOPE! but when they aren’t doing the bad thing I’m cool with them). As long as the flaws are withing reason (aka they aren’t making a jerk person out to be the person in the right, or the writing is trying to sweep what they did under the rug, or trying to force us into empathizing with them despite what they did while also trying ot sacrifice empathy towards another char.....*cough*Makoto/Yukari/Junpei*cough* if the writing isn’t doing that...... I’m probs neutral to pos on them). 

Like I’m fine if they are criticizing the writing and being like “Him doing this makes no sense cause it conflicts with the good boi we’ve already seen!” That’s a-ok! Not only do you recognize your char has flaws, you also are able to identify issues with the writing. But saying “so I’ll choose to ignore that scene” isn’t....ok. Because sadly it did happen, as contradictory it did happen. AU it all you want, but you have to accept it happened outside of that AU. Like, I don’t like the Mika conflict in Anne’s CoOp, by which I don’t like how it went down (100% fine with Mika, and there being conflict with her). How it the whole thing started doesn’t make sense if you put MainStory!Anne in her CoOp. MS!Anne can read the room and other people’s emotions (only other person capable of that is Haru, or at least with Mona), hell she was so good at it she noticed something was up with Shiho without Shiho telling her about it! The issue was the fact Anne’s not a mind reader and could only assume the issue Shiho was going through that Anne was aware of (and that was her spot on the team). Now MS!Anne is not like Yosuke, she doesn’t put her foot in her mouth. She’s not like Naoto who can’t read the room. She’s not super eloquent, but can empathize and when she can interact with people she can do it pretty well. So why the hell does she basically not think before talking and insult Mika? Sure Anne’s not GREAT at school, but she’s not a moron, she can talk to people. But her CoOp makes her a moron all around, 100% airhead, and that’s how her issues with Mika start, by not thinking before talking and accidentally insulting her via blatantly “not caring” about the job to a full time person......it’s stupid, it makes no sense, I hate it. But it’s there, the flaw might not be present in the main story, but for the all around character (cause CoOps are included) it is now and I just have to deal with it. We can bitch about it all day (and trust me I will) but it happened. Basically never frame it as “it didn’t happen,” but instead “It SHOULDN’T HAVE happened.” One is denial, the other is critiquing the text. 

Anyway my rant aside, yeah I hate it when...well Ren/Ryu/Yusuke (no one’s said Mona yet, cause....well yeah...which is good they haven’t labeled him as it yet tho), are labeled as “drinking respect women juice” and I’m like “I have one to a few women who would disagree.” I know some people will argue Goro is drinking it, and imo he’s not....he’s just eating the “I don’t discriminate sandwich” which is different. And yeah the “But Yusuke-” yeah yeah we’ll get to him, but right now we’re talking about RYUJI. I’m not a fan of derailing a topic *war flashbacks* *shivers* anyway. But yeah I remember that debate, I was probably one who was like “We’ll get to Yusuke but right now we’re talking about Ryuji” and pushing the blame onto Anne is disgusting and Kamo Arc!Ryuji would be very upset. >:( (btw high key I think I was the first one who started the first anti-makoto war wave with me saying “yeah Anne shouldn’t have apologized Makoto started it and blah blah she was an ass” not the exact words but basically just calling her out on her shitty behavior cause the game certainly didn’t......tho as Miley Cyrus would say.....”I didn’t mean to start a waaaaaar~!” I actually wrote my first Persona Problems on that topic.......but it got lost in the drafts....my photo examples kept getting messed up which is bad considering the whole post really relied on them....I should try to dig it up tbh....)

Tldr/short answer: Yeah, you probably already have issues with the char to begin with tbh, and the fanbase can highlight those issues more. It’s also hard to escape the fanbase (I see stuff I don’t wanna see despite trying my hardest to avoid certain circles, it just happens).

[illyrianwingspans]

Do Not Go Gentle: Hopeless

Link to song: Hopeless by Halsey

Synopsis: Some fresh air and a little bad news for Feyre and Rhys. 

TW: Mentions of dark thoughts and abuse. Please read with caution. 

Ao3 Link

Chapter 19: Hopeless

“Okay, so this button here is my calendar. It’s all colour coded by level of importance so I ignore the stuff that doesn’t matter and prioritize the things that need my absolute focus.”

Rhys had been teaching me little things here and there about the tasks I’d need to do while working for him, despite the fact that I hadn’t agreed to anything yet. He was meticulous about everything, organized his life to the very minute.

“So what’s this box here in green?”

“That’s Cassian’s appointment with me today. He says it’s to look over possible changes security codes in the building, but I know it’s just to whine to me about his salary being lower than Amren’s.”

“Okay, and this one in red over here?” It read: Extremely important lunch with extremely important person.

“That’s our lunch date tomorrow, darling. Can’t quite miss that, can I?”

I slapped Rhys on the arm and he chuckled before setting his laptop down and heading for the kitchen. He came back with two mugs of coffee, and I thanked him quietly before he sat down next to me.

“I wasn’t told of this lunch date. What’s the extremely important matter we’re discussing?”

Rhys smirked. “Well, we have a few items to go over for your contract, and I need your signature for official documents and the such. Are you ready to sign on at Night Industries?”

I took a sip of my coffee, glancing up at him over the rim. “I guess you’ll find out tomorrow.”

“Tease,” he said before rifling around some more on his laptop. “Have you got a CV prepared?”

“I’d love to give you that, but it’s pretty blank. And my references wouldn’t quite answer if you called.” Andras, for obvious reasons, and the CEO of Spring Corp, for other obvious reasons.

Rhys shook his head. “Sorry, that was a stupid question. Nonetheless, I am looking very forward to it.”

I sighed and lounged across the couch, the very same one that Cassian sat upon last night before flipping the table during our absolutely failed attempt at playing a peaceful game of Monopoly. “Don’t you have better things to do?”

“Don’t you have better things to do than asking me that question over and over again?” Rhys replied as his fingers tapped away at his keyboard.

“Well, there are a few movies on Netflix that seem to be calling my name, but I’m sick of television.”

Rhys jammed his finger on the enter button, and the sound of an email sending filled the room before he closed the top of his laptop. “Let’s go for a walk, then.”

I raised my eyebrows. “A walk?”

“Fresh air. It’ll do us both some good.”

I looked down at the clothes I was wearing, old sweatpants and a hoodie. Rhys only rolled his eyes. “I’ve seen you in worse, darling. Come on. Let’s go.”

***

The park in Velaris was still gleaming with rain from yesterday’s showers. Gravel crunched beneath the sneakers I wore, still muddy and damp. Rhys didn’t seem to mind as his gaze wandered to the river flowing beside us. In the park, others had gathered despite the overcast clouds threatening to unleash their wrath upon us at any moment. We’d driven over and parked the car a few miles back, and walked in silence amongst the sounds of city life surrounding us.

“Do you come here often?” I asked quietly. We’d settled on a bench looking out upon the water before us. Dog-walkers and joggers passed by, just another blip in their daily routine, seemingly so mundane in such an overturned world. Well, overturned for me, completely and perfectly normal for everyone else, though I knew it wasn’t fair to make that assumption.

Pain wasn’t exclusive to one person. Suffering was a whore, and fucked over anybody in its wake.

Rhys said, “I used to.”

“Before?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

He blew out a breath and shrugged. “Lots of shit happened. I can’t even keep track of it all anymore.”

To keep our minds on something lighter, something better, I asked him, “I know you say your employees are your family, but what about the rest of it? Parents? Siblings?”

He chuckled at the first bit and ran a hand through his hair as the wind picked up and whipped at our clothes. “My friends,” he corrected, “are family first, employees second.” He paused for a moment, then continued, “My parents and I had a house on the outskirts of the city, but my mom wanted us to live in Illyria. Her and I moved there after she got pregnant with my little sister, to my dad’s utmost frustration. He finally came to join us when my sister was born, and we lived there all together for a little while until he had to go back. My mom refused to join him.”

“They didn’t get along, I’m guessing?”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t the best of pairings, to say the least, but they understood each other. And underneath all of it, they loved each other.”

It made me think of my own parents. How everything had gone to shit so quickly after my mother got sick, how my dad fell apart in the aftermath. I didn’t remember her, my mother—but I remembered the fallout after her, of which I still sheltered myself from all these years later.

“Where are they now?”

He exhaled sharply through his nose. “About fifteen blocks away from my house.”

“They live so close by and you’ve never mentioned them?”

“I visit them every week. At the cemetery.”

Oh. Oh, gods. I was a horrible person. “I’m so sorry, Rhys.”

He shrugged. “House fire.” A few seconds later, he added, “A freak accident.”

We were quiet for a few moments longer, and I said, “My mother died, too. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.” Talking about death hurt the most, because what else were we supposed to say to each other? How do any words even attempt to fix the burning voids within us stemmed from their absences? What truly stung, though, was that my mother never even held a true space within me—I did not know her, I only knew the aftermath of her disappearance.

Rhys stood from the bench and wandered over to the river’s edge. He leaned over the ledge of the metal railing, staring down at the thrumming waters, below, and sighed. I took up spot next to him, our biceps pressed together, and the warmth of his touch grounded me despite the cold around us.

I stared at him as he stared out across what seemed like a vast, endless being soaring in front of us. And the lingering pain on his face, clouded with memories unknown to me, was enough for me to say, “You know, this goes both ways. I can talk to you, and you can talk to me. Whenever you need.”

Rhys dragged his gaze away from the Sidra and wondered, “A thought for a thought?”

“What do you mean?”

“I say something on my mind, then you say something. Like a trade.”

My nails dug into the skin around my thumb, a nervous habit I’d never seemed to drop, and winced at the tearing skin. “Okay.”

“I’m thinking that sometimes I want to wipe this whole city off the map so I can start over, and buy us a little more time. I’m thinking that I was an idiot to ever let Hybern sink its teeth into my company and fool us all. I’m thinking that for the rest of my life I’ll be trapped under their thumb, that I’ll be trapped under that bitch and all the havoc she caused my people and I.”

I could only focus on that slip of information. Trapped under who? What woman could’ve caused the agony shining on Rhys’s face, so blindingly painful that he winced at her very memory?

At the question on my face, Rhys only added, “There’s a bit more to the story about my history with Hybern.” Looking upon the peaceful scenery before us, it seemed like a shame to poison it with our misery-soaked words. “It’s for another time and place.”

Maybe it was because of the jagged pieces of truth that he offered me, but it filled with a sort of courage and recklessness that had me quietly murmuring, “I’m thinking that I must have been a fool in love to allow myself to be shown so little of Spring Corporations. I’m thinking there’s a great deal of information and secrets and shady bullshit I wasn’t allowed to see or hear about and maybe I would’ve lived in ignorance for the rest of my life like some fucking pet.

“I’m thinking,” the words choked up in my chest as Rhys’s gaze softened, full of concern and empathy, “that I was a lonely, helpless person, and I fell in love with the first person that showed me a shred of kindness. Of safety. I think he knew that—maybe not entirely, or actively, but he wanted to be that person for someone. A protector, a guardian. And that may have worked for the person I was before. But maybe not for the person I became. Not after…” I couldn’t breathe those words yet. Not after I shot those two people, not after life had gloriously and marvellously fucked me over completely. And though the words were selfish and hateful despite everything he’d done for me, they were a beam of truth I’d kept far, far down in my withered soul, tucked away even from myself.

I’d been gone merely two weeks, and I was already shitting all over his name. I was no better than him, no better than the angered man who’d done everything to keep me subdued.

“That was five. I owe you two thoughts.”

“Keep them. For another time.”

We both looked at each other for a moment, wind off the briny waters ruffling our hair. Rhys murmured, “Suriel used to do this thing at our appointments. Rate my mood on a scale.”

I nodded my head. “I did that, too.”

“I feel like a solid seven, today,” Rhys said. “You?”

I debated it for a few brief seconds, then admitted, “Four.” Better than yesterday, but still not enough.

“Okay.” He tucked my hair behind my ear, and it felt so natural I didn’t even blink at the gesture. “How about I cook some Mac and cheese for dinner tonight. Would that bring you up to a five?”

I only grinned, the slightest curve upwards of my lips, and said, “Four point three.”

***

We sat before the TV, bowls of macaroni and cheese in hand, watching the news. Nothing really exciting—preparations for the upcoming city summit, a shooting in the east end of town, a puppy parade for the local shelter. Rhys told me about the dog he had when he was younger, a loyal German Shepard he adored—but ultimately had to give away after it literally chewed through a wall. It took all of Rhys’s strength and will to keep his father from shooting it.

When we were done, Rhys and I brought our bowls to the kitchen, and I filled the sink up with soapy water to wash the dishes. He did so much for me, carved too much time out of his day for my sake, that it was the least I could do. Despite my protests, he still stood beside me to wipe them dry, our elbows grazing whenever I passed him another rinsed plate. The townhouse was quiet, peaceful with only the soft hum of the TV behind us, that I wasn’t even surprised when it blared Breaking News and ruined the moment.

Rhys shut off the sink and I wiped my hands on a nearby dishtowel before we quickly meandered back to the couch before in the family room. The news reporter was saying words, words that didn’t even make sense—

Then he was there, right there on the screen, as though he fucking knew I was watching him.

Everything else around me disappeared as the CEO of Spring Corporations said, “Thank you for joining me today. Unfortunately, the information I have to share isn’t good, and it breaks my heart to announce that my fiancee Feyre Archeron has gone missing.”

Distantly, I knew that Rhys already had his phone out, probably dialling someone from the Inner Circle to find out what the fuck was going on. I couldn’t listen, couldn’t even think about it as he was standing there at the podium of Prythian Police Station. Cameras flickered and flashed as he paused, then said, “Her location is currently unknown, and she was last seen at Spring Corporations, a safe location she was told to stay until after the scene of our apartment had been cleared, the day of the second attempt on her life. The security footage we gathered shows her being carried out by Cassian Noctis, a current employee at Night Industries.”

“Shit,” Rhys was muttering beside me, “shit, shit, shit—”

“He is currently in custody. His apartment was searched, but Feyre still remains missing. If anyone has any information upon her whereabouts, I beg you to please call the info line on your screen.”

I didn’t think I was breathing. How had they gotten Cassian? When? How come we weren’t called the second it happened?

“Feyre, if you’re seeing this by some miracle,” his voice was thick with tears, and I nearly vomited all over the hardwood floors as his eyes practically bored into mine. “I love you. I swear to all the Gods I will do everything I can to get you back.”

My fingers, with a mind of their own, reached over to the remote and turned the screen off.

“We need to go. Right now.”

Rhys was saying something else, so many things, but I was spinning.

It’s like I could still feel him. I could still feel each and every claw of his control, of his anger—they pinned me to where I sat.

Even from afar, Tamlin held my head under the water. I was drowning. I was screaming for air, but he shoved me into the deep end and let the waves crash over me.

“Feyre, we need to leave.” I didn’t realize he was kneeling before me, his eyes filled with desperation. I didn’t feel Rhys’s arms around me as he lead me to the townhouse entrance. As he fed my arms through the jacket and slipped a scarf around my neck, sunglasses in my pocket. We got into his SUV and he careened it down the street and into the city.

But I was drowning. Consumed by the water. Consumed by the flames in my mind, the towering inferno trapping me. The flames or the fall? Those words played in my mind over and over again as streets passed by in my peripheral vision.

“I’ll go back.” The words escaped my lips before I could stop them, emotion creeping up my chest and searing my throat as my vision blurred. “I’ll go back, Rhys. It’s okay.”

“Don’t take his bait. Let us figure this shit out before making any decisions.”

“He’s never gonna stop,” I breathed. “I can’t keep letting him destroy you guys. I won’t.”

“It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than this to destroy us, Feyre.” He tore into the parking lot and jammed on the breaks when he slid into a space. “Put your glasses on, cover your face with your scarf, and hood up.”

I did as he said automatically, and he came around to my side of the car, equally concealed as me, before we sped to the front doors of the PPS. There were press and cameras everywhere, but I kept my head down, trying to follow Rhys’s tugs on my arm forward and into the station. The yells and raucous was sealed off as soon as the doors shut behind us.

Mor was instantly there, despite the cops’ protests, and Rhys snarled, “Why the hell wasn’t I called?”

“You were called as soon as we knew, Rhys, which was about ten fucking minutes ago. They’ve had him all afternoon without telling us. We thought he left early.”

“Where’s Azriel?”

“On his way. Cassian hasn’t said anything. Amren’s finally in there with him, but we’re not saying a fucking thing.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong, Mor. They’ve got nothing on us.”

“They do until we say otherwise. If we want to clear ourselves, we need to tell them everything.”

Everything. I knew what everything meant. Everything was every bruise, every scar and every cut on my body at his mercy. Everything meant all of me, surrendering my shrivelled soul.

After all they’d done for me, I couldn’t think of anything else to help them. Show them what he did to me, or waltz right back into my prison in chains for the rest of my life.

Mor and Rhys were arguing, and didn’t realize when I stepped up to the counter, peeling off my hood, my glasses, and said, “My name is Feyre Archeron and I’d like to speak with whoever’s in charge of this case. Alone.”

[invertedeidolon]

The Longest Library #3: Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock (Or, Eidolon again talks way too much about previous relationships, also, pretty art!)

(This is a series in which I attempt to read and review all (or most of) my library of 297 books.)

Rundown: Postcard artist Griffin Moss gets a weird letter from a weird lady who can apparently see what he's drawing telepathically. They form an ill concieved bond over it. The story is told in colorful postcards and envelopes you can open and then read the mysterious things inside. 4.5/5 for calling me THE FUCK OUT and having some BOMB ASS ART.

I can't give it a full 5 because not everyone is going to have that experience when they read this. It's just going to look very strange and floaty and things won't make very much sense. This book hits close to home with me because it heavily echoes (more like yells about) my first long distance relationship. I'm not really able to see this book through any other lens, so that's what my commentary is mostly about.

So for the part that ISN'T about that stuff though: The art is amazing. Even though it's made by one person technically, both fictional artists have their own, distinct style. Let's be real: The art and the interactivity is the main draw of this book. There are envelopes inside with letters carrying a myriad of little details: Griffin uses a typewriter for his long-form letters, and bits where he's crossed out typos or added in letters with pen, or that Sabine's correspondence is something I now recognize as someone who uses quills or manual dip pens. The inconsistency in the color of her writings suggests she's using a homemade ink, brownish in color, slightly too watery. Maybe it's even watered down watercolor and not even ink at all. They've also made the background of her letters and cards a rich dark gray, while Griffin's is a clean, sterile white.

"Will you explain to me about those geometric paintings you did at Art college? I want to understand their hidden language of color and shape. It's so alien to me."

So this is about the fourth time I'm reading this book since I first got it, and now that I have to write about it, I'm noticing so many more details. Here the line "It's so alien to me."is written in smaller, slightly more rounded letters. The ink is much darker here too, suggesting she wrote this slowly, thoughtfully. What a detail!

Anyway that's it for the objective bits of the book, the rest is entirely subjective from here on out.

"The phenomenon that links us has taught me much about you, yet I am ignorant of your history."

My years and years of suffering emotional abuse set me up to be able to read and predict what was going on in your head perfectly, as well as respond in the most helpful ways with eerie precision, yet I am ignorant of your history, and who you really are (because you use such obtuse floaty language and metaphor. Who were you really? Suffering, but that's about all I could tell.)

"Why doesn't this alarm me as much as it should?"

Because we're already "in". And I "feel safe" to you because I've been trained to be the least offensive, most placating being in the universe. If I could build a business model on conversational comfort, if I could sell my goddamn empathy like the capitalist machine really wants me to, *I'd be so rich*. It would be like, a step down from therapist. Anybody want a virtual friend for like an hour? Gimme 20 and we can watch stupid videos or I can calmly talk you through bread making. It's okay, you can cry. GOD PLEASE LET ME JUST SELL MYSELF SAFELY, I WAS MADE FOR THIS GODDAMNIT.

"I want to hear everything. Write in detail. Tell me all about yourself. I demand to know - please."

This is like fucking CRACK to those with a suppressed self. An unwitnessed self. "Someone who's interested in ME, and won't yell at, ignore, or dismiss me for talking! Holy fuck I love you!"

"Finally I knew who you were. I counselled myself to be cautious and find out what you were like before revealing myself fully."

Sabine at this point is to the reader who I was to Him. A weird mythical creature, the non-human monster of your lonely adolescent imaginings, who is intimately aware of your secrets, "I've been watching you" it says before introducing you to a wondrous world free of the pains of living, where you actually feel loved and all is well forever and ever. Except I wasn't as inhuman as I wished to be.

"Occasionally I'd come home to a re-enactment of The Battle of Britain in the front room. [...] My entrance would make no difference to their dogfight, but when one of them accidentally (and inevitably) knocked over a pile of books, they'd stop instantly and unite to examine the extent of the damage."

The whole 'making light of a not-great home life because it was your normal for so long that you still haven't learned that you need to be horrified about it' thing. As well as passing it off as something funny. Thankfully this character's parents (SPOILER?) get literally run over by a truck and he gets sent to live with his mom's step sister who is really good and lets him ditch school to become a potter's apprentice and eventually go to art college. He never really deals with the grief when the step sister dies, OBVIOUSLY.

"And hearing that my existence eased your pain made my heart race. We have found one another, and I give thanks."

Hearing that my existence wasn't going to be punished but instead, made someone happy? Fucking HEROIN. Downplay it a little with grateful gentleness, I don't want to be punished for being presumptuous or for seeming like I like it too much. If I like things too much they get destroyed, hard.

"My kinsmen are responsive to me - but there is no one to reach my heart, and you who are so far away, have been closer to me than any man on the Islands."

This is something I remember. So far all they've done is shared eachother's life stories and gushed about how close they feel now. She (like my past self), has confused the feeling of 'finally, a witness! they're witnessing me! I've been Seen!' with the feeling of attachment. Of course she would feel infinitely more attached to this man. She's witnessed his most private moments as a creator for a good portion of her life. It's been a mainstay throughout her adolescence through adulthood, so of course an unwarranted sense of intimacy is going to be attached to this mysterious figure. The whole thing wrapped up in a dream like sense of mysticism.

"I remember your first erotic drawing; I was trembling from head to foot by the time you'd finished. Was that Sarah? No don't answer; I'm only teasing."

...Unless? (Man the implications hurt to think about. I REMEMBER THIS FEELING. This author has unintentionally called me out. I wonder how much of Sabine’s writing is actually calm, or if she’s reigning herself in almost constantly?)

"I was finding it hard to get over the idea of there being other men in your life when I reached the part in your letter about my erotic drawings. I stopped being jealous. We were lovers and I hadn't realized it. The drawings weren't of Sarah; they were of you."

ow ow ow ow ow ow JUST SAY IT ow ow ow ow, Also, I REALLY wanted her to be like 'bitch that looks nothing like me, what the fuck', but instead she's all like "So you've been making love to me ten thousand miles away - how tantalizing." URGH. TOO CLOSE, TOO FAST. DISENTANGLE YOURSELVES NOW. GRIFFIN GET HELP.

"I had failed to understand how unhappy you are. You cover up with jokes and a front of being self-contained. I'm worried for you."

EVEN SHE SEES IT, GET HELP.

"When you found me, I thought my loneliness had gone for good. I was kidding myself. I desperately desire your company. I haven't talked to anyone in three days. I was sure I was going to start seeing your pictures like you see mine. I've tried so hard. [...] How can I miss you this badly when we've never met?"

BECAUSE YOU MISS HUMAN CONTACT AND YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FAMILY LEFT YOU NERD, GET HELP. DON'T HANG IT ON ONE PERSON WHO IS TOO FAR AWAY TO HELP YOU IN THE WAY YOU NEED.

"Island magic works on island souls. You and I will heal eachother."

ANTIDEPRESSANTS MAYBE UUUUGGGGHHHHH

"I've started to hate this city, this country, all these stupid fucking people [...] I finally snapped. [...] I want to know what you look like."

*HEAVILY RECOILS*

"Why, my kindred spirit, are you prepared to settle for a postcard of my face? If you wish to see me, why not come here? What is there to stop you - you're clearly unhappy where you are. Come."

Yes. I offered and I offered and I offered. What's to stop you from just fucking TALKING TO ME instead of DISAPPEARING OVER AND OVER AGAIN. and then COMPLAINING THAT YOU'RE SO HURT AND LONELY. I'M LONELY TOO. WHEN I HAD THE MONEY YOU DIDN’T TAKE MY OFFER FOR ME TO COME SEE YOU, SO WHAT THE FUCK IS UP KYLE?

"Foolish man. You cannot turn me into a phantom because you are frightened."

This kind of sentiment is what lead to the breakup. This feeling of being large, and dark, and slighted. Being real and supernatural. Make your choice. Say REAL words instead of just flagellating yourself. Do I exist to you?

"If you will not join me, then I will come to you."

Unfortunately, Sabine has what I definitely did not: Mobility, the ability to make things real. She had a job and money and her own life and the ability to travel. I had a shitty little shared room in my parent's house where I spent most of the time partially starved and dodging devils in one form or another. Many many times I wanted to spontaneously show up and give him the closeness that he needed. But I couldn't. And he wouldn't take my words. He wouldn’t take me.

3 down, 294 to go.

[liliumlies]

charlotte octavanio

As before, white petals fill your vision once again. until it all that’s left is a blinding light. You still cannot move. The darkness turns into a white space, but there is still nothing.

A new dream forms. You feel memories flowing into your mind.

(cw: discussion of having kids)

The fallen leaves crunch beneath your feet as you trek through the woods, not far from your home, followed closely by your younger siblings.  While you’d never been allowed to leave much, that never stopped you from sneaking out on occasion.

“You know dad is going to be mad once he finds out we went out here again, Charlotte.” Your sister, Giniveve, reminds you for the sixth time this walk alone, but you laugh it off like always. 

You know you aren’t supposed to be out right now.  You’re supposed to be cooped up in the house, teaching them how to read and write at the moment.  You were the one practically raising them at this point.  Not that you minded having the two of them seeing you as their smart responsible teacher in addition to their older sister.

“I’ll take the blame like normal,”  you pat the top of both their heads, “ so don’t you two fret about a thing.  Besides, if they’re going to make me teach you about all these things then I think it’s only fair you actually get to see them, too.” 

Jeremiah, the youngest of you, pipes up to back you up, “Yeah!  You need to listen to Lottie, Ginny.” 

You point out plants and animals and explain in excruciating detail everything you'd read about each one to the both of them.  It was an approach to teaching that suited you more than sitting around a dusty house.  

Even if it’s not what you’re supposed to do, the world is fascinating and beautiful.  You wish you things could just stay like this.  The three of your wandering, free and together.

This doesn’t last forever, though.  

It’s your wedding day, and this is never what you wanted.  People keep telling you congratulations, and you force a smile.  Everyone else seems so happy on the day that you’d regret for the rest of your life.  You go through the motions without any regard for how you actually feel.

Your parents are overjoyed you listened to them and all their demands.  As you tried to push harder against what they wanted for you, they tightened their hold.  More rules, more expectations, until you gave in, and got stuck marrying a man you don’t love to make them happy. 

It’s not too long until you’re living with this man, and any hopes you had for freedom away from your parents were quickly dashed.  Each day he seems more controlling than the last.  You want nothing more than to leave.

You stand in the dining room, Matias, your husband, staring at you after you’ve come home late again.  Your husband argues with you any time you leave the house, and it's only gotten worse with each year.  He hates when you leave, when you don’t listen to him, or when you try to stand up for yourself.  You still keep trying, pushing against his rules, but you back down when he raises his voice. You grow bitter with each passing day you’re trapped with a man with rules for who you can see, where you can go, everything you do is restricted in one way or another.  Each attempt at pushing back is eventually quelled, and you hate to say by the end of it you really were scared of him. 

It did have an end, eventually.  Although, it couldn't have come soon enough.  

It was late one night, years into your marriage when you awoke with a start at the smell of smoke.  You cough as it fills your lungs, and stumble into the hallways, surrounded by the intense heat of the fire starting to spread through the building.  The panic rising in your chest is pushed down as you make your way towards an exit, the flames close to you a constant threat.  

And then you hear your husband's voice, pained and calling for help.  Calling your name over and over.  You stop in your tracks.  You're pretty sure he's stuck in his office, trapped there by the fire.  There's a chance you could save him if you turned back around and walked further into this.  

But you keep moving forward, his cries for help fading into the background of the flames enveloping more of the building.  You push through the front door, collapsing on the ground outside the building and staring back up at it.  You don't know if you regret what you did, but you know you were free.  

Everything you owned went up in smoke, but the moment the last of your burns heal, you've already made up your mind to run away from all this.  You weren't going to fall back into that same pattern of having someone else control your life again.  You're bother is the only one you tell about your plan, knowing the rest of your family wouldn't understand, and you promise to write as often as you can. 

You take what little money you have and make your way to England, just getting as far away as what you had could take you, jumping between odd jobs to keep yourself fed well enough.  It was rare you stayed in one place for too long, making up for lost time traveling.  It wasn't easy, but you'd take the lonely nights where you went hungry over how your life used to be.

You do finally end up in one place for a while, landing a stable job as a governess to a family with two daughters.  One is young, about five who you spend your days teaching reading and writing to like you used to do for your siblings.  The other was closer to your own age.  A woman named Sana.  She was kind and cheerful, but you always suspected there was something she was hiding. 

Minding your own business had never been in your nature, but no amount of snooping had yet to reveal anything substantial.  It wasn't until you walked into her room unannounced without thinking about it to see if she was in need of anything, that you saw a glowing light and a wound suddenly closing before your eyes.  

Sana was horrified at your discovery, but you were ecstatic, quickly offering to keep this secret in exchange for getting to learn more.  Her agreeing was reluctant at best.  All that mattered to you, though, was learning about whatever you had wandered into.  And thus began your private meetings where you spent your time mostly taking notes for her and picking up a few things as you went through the process.  She was trying to experiment with new ways to heal people, help them live longer if possible.  You didn't really care what it was you were learning as long as it was about magic in the end. 

The time you spent together, you grew closer.  The tentative partnership slowly became something more like friendship.  She showed how to do little things like start to get a read on other's feelings, and while it never came naturally to you, you tried, and she was patient.  Despite all the lessons on magical empathy, you still can't quite place feelings you start to get when she holds your hand during a lesson to teach you about channeling magical energy.  She was bright and hopeful in a way that you had lost at some point, still believing there was so much beauty in this world and the people in it worth saving.  Even if you didn't believe in that anymore, you realized you believed in her. 

This place started to feel like home as you settled into this comfortable routine, and invitation comes one day that promises for a wish to be granted.  You don't know why you received it instead of her.  Frankly, you're glad it was you given the risk that might be involved.  It was a risk you were willing to take, though, to repay her.  You could help further her research, help her save lives.  You owed it to her at least to try, no matter what you might be risking.  You were sure you could handle it, and it would all be worth it in the end.  You lie and say you were visiting family before venturing off. 

You never expected to make friends along the way, but there were a few who understood.  You find a little of what Sana always seems to see in others; although, you don't ever think you'll fully get it.  Your chances of being able to really thank Sana grow slim as the days pass, but you find some worth in what you did gain here.

All of that slips through your fingertips quickly, you don't even realize what's happening.  Your life is taken away suddenly and without any warning.  

[audrewrites]

chapter one: the bounty

a/n: hi friends! this is my first attempt at writing literally anything since i was like 12 so please let me know what you think! this could definitely be a series if y’all wanted it! with each chapter i’ll include a few of my fave songs that had an influence on the chapter (even if they seem irrelevant lol)

chapter song (s) : you should see me in a crown - billie eilish, elastic heart - laura dreyfuss & noah guthrie, carry me away - john mayer

The air in the cantina was sticky, far too sticky for the young women’s preference. In that moment she was thankful for the yellow strip of fabric that kept her hair pulled from her face and neck. It was crowded, but that’s what she wanted. Needed. The only reason she was in the cantina was to hide, maybe get a drink, and find a place to sleep other than the streets.

The music was mediocre at best, but it was far better than the one-sided conversation the man next to her was attempting to have with her. However, the conversation in the room seemed to dull significantly and she quickly glanced behind her. In the doorway of the cantina stood a Mandalorian in all his glory, his masked eyes gazing around the room. Her blood ran ice-cold in her veins.

She wasn’t positive that he was there for her, but nonetheless, she was out of her seat in an instant and running for the back exit, praying that maybe she had gone unnoticed by the Mandalorian’s prying eyes. She knew she had no such luck as soon as she heard the clanking of his armor and weaponry behind her, his heavy footfalls almost in perfect time with hers. She ducked into an alleyway and continued to run, hoping that she could lose him. She had only been on this planet for a few days and in the village for a mere few hours so she truly had no idea where she was going or where any of the winding streets ended up.

After trying to throw off the Mandalorian by ducking into a few more side streets, the young woman found herself unlucky enough to have turned into a dead-end alleyway. She turned to face the Mandalorian in pursuit of her and held her hands up in surrender as she slowly back towards the wall at the end of the alley.

  “Hello Mandalorian...”she quipped, a sight smirk on her face, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Turn around.” He barked, emotionless.

  “Okay, metal man. Calm down.” She responded quickly as she turned around and offered her crossed wrists behind her.

He immediately shut the cuffs around her wrists and tugged her to face forward. With a huff of breath, the young woman attempted to blow her hair out of her face, her yellow hair fabric lost during the chase. She found her heart aching at the thought of losing it, for that fabric had been her trademark accessory since she was a young child back on her home planet.

As they began the trek back to the Mandalorian’s ship, the young women eyed the civilians around her. They all stepped out of the way as the Mandalorian marched her through town, on purpose she wasn’t sure.

When they arrived at the Mandalorian’s ship, the young woman took a deep breath anxiously. Her end was near, she was just lucky the Mandalorian finding her wasn’t her end. The Mandalorian nudged her up the ramp  and she found herself complying without second thought. It was easier to do as he said than to risk a blaster bolt in her head.

She was lost in thought; thinking about her past, her family, her village. She hadn’t thought about it in a long time. She thought about what was to become of her. She was bound to be caught eventually, she just didn’t think it would be this soon. She thought she had more time. When she snapped out of her thoughts, she realized the Mandalorian was readying to freeze her in carbonite.

  “Wait!” She fumbled over the single word. It fell messily out of her mouth and she cringed at how desperate she sounded.

The Mandalorian halted in his motions and looked up at the girl. The desperation in her eyes struck a cord within him. The look reminded him of one his mother gave him, one of the last looks she gave him. He felted his hardened heart ache at the memory of his mother, a women he loved dearly.

  “I promise you, whatever that bounty is for. Whatever they told you. It isn’t the truth. None of it’s true. I’m not a bad person. I’m not a criminal like they say I am.” Once agin the words tumbled from her mouth before she had a chance to think. She had never been this inarticulate in her life.

  “I don’t care about the truth.” He lied. He cared about the truth, about justice. But he had a job to do. He needed the credits.

  “Please...please just let me tell you the truth. Let me tell you why I did what I did. Why I have a bounty over me. I need someone to know. I need one person to know what really happened before they kill me.” She pleaded with the Mandalorian. She knew as soon as they arrived to her home planet, she would be killed.

The Mandalorian eyed her curiously through his helmet. Her request was odd to say the absolute least. It got him to thinking. Why was the truth about this bounty so important to her?

On the one hand, she seemed non-threatening. She was cuffed. She was exhausted. Mentally more so than physically, but her epic sprint in an attempt to evade the Mandalorian had obviously taken a toll on her.

On the other hand, though, was the fact that her epic sprint had taken a toll on him as well. She was strategic in her evasion, more so than any bounty he’s ever had. He was quite tired as well. She had a hefty bounty over her head. If he let his guard down for even a second, he could end up dead. He had no idea what this girl was capable of, but judging by the size of the bounty, she was capable of something terrible.

  “Fine.” He hears himself speak the short, affirmative word before his mind could even catch up. Though the exhausted gleam in her eyes when he said it eased his anxiety over the situation.

He nudges her towards the cockpit of the Razor Crest and she slowly begins making her way towards the front of the ship. She walks slowly, eyeing everything around them. Though, the Mandalorian couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed with her. Perhaps he was thankful for the short change in pace from his normally high-speed life style.

She takes a seat in the co-pilot’s chair and looks around, admiring the technology before her. Though she had seen many ships in her days, this was the first time she had sat in the cockpit and truly seen a ship. Seeing all the lights and buttons made her feel like a child again.

The Mandalorian takes a seat in his pilot’s chair and begins readying the ship to leave the planet. He notes that she had yet to begin speaking, and he started to wonder if she had a change of heart. He wondered if she had accepted that her truth would likely die with her.

  “You can talk. I’m listening.” He said in a short, gruff way. To the untrained ear, he seemed angry, annoyed. But deep down he was showing the young woman that although he seemed preoccupied, he was invested in her story. In her truth.

She inhales deeply before she begins, obviously preparing herself for the story that only she seemed to know.

  “A crime syndicate invaded my village. They took over everything. Politics, education, resources, everything. All the resources were piled into one building, the ‘Resource Center’ they called it. To get anything, and I mean absolutely anything, you had to put in a request. Sometimes they would review it right away, if you could give them something they wanted. Other times it would take days or weeks to hear back from them. 

The Mandalorian stayed stoic as he listened to her. So far there were no indicators as to why she had such a large bounty on her head. Just a sad backstory that hit a little to close to home as he knew how deeply violence effected villages and cities and planets.

  “My younger brother fell ill. Very ill. So I put in a request at the resource center for medicine and made sure they reviewed it right away.”

  “What did you give to them?” The Mandalorian couldn’t help himself as he interjected into the young woman’s story. She had said herself that they only reviewed supply requests right away if you had something they wanted.

  “They would only accept one thing from me. Men like that think that’s all a woman is good for. I did what I had to do.” The way she sneered was enough for the Mandalorian to understand what she meant. He felt a pang in his chest as her took in the weight of the words that had come out of her mouth in a stream of fire.

  “Anyways, they denied the request. I went home empty handed. As time went on though, my brother got worse. I put in another request for medicine and got denied. So my family put in a request to travel to a different planet for medical attention. Denied.”

He could sense her pain. People often thought that the Mandalorians had no feelings, but that was far from the truth. The Mandalorian felt something for her, though he was unsure what. Anger at the people who tortured her village, maybe. Empathy, perhaps.

  “I was fed up. He was going to die soon. So I broke in. I took what we needed. Only what we needed, and it wasn’t enough for them to notice. I made sure he survived. Word got around that I was able to get into the Resource Center and people started to offer to pay me to smuggle supplies to them. I could have said no, but they needed me. My people needed me and who was I to leave them to suffer? So I did it. I smuggled supplies for weeks. Months even. But the head of the syndicate found out and started to look for the person who was stealing. My people would hide me in their homes for a few days at a time before passing me to the next home to protect me.”

The Mandalorian was shocked to say the least. She had stolen, but to save her brother. Was this what made them so mad? This was too large a bounty for stealing supplies.

  “It went on like this for a few weeks until they were able to figure out who I was. Immediately my village loaded me on to a transport ship so I could get out of there. So I could be safe. I ended up on some sand planet, Maker knows where. I did some odd jobs around there until I heard that they were after me. So I hopped another transport to a new planet. I’ve been doing that since the day I left. Hopping transports and smuggling ships. I haven’t been home in years, I have no clue if my family is even alive anymore.”

Her voice began to waver, though she tried to cover it up with a cough. The Mandalorian could sense that she was beginning to feel emotional.

  “How did you know I was after you?” He asked. Usually people with bounties on their head were none the wiser, easy catches. She was easily the hardest bounty he had ever taken, after the child.

  “Mandalorians don’t often come after people of the likes of me unless there’s a sizable bounty.” She chuckled sadly. He could hear the tears in her voice and granted himself a glance back at her.

Her tired eyes were wet with tears and he could see the remnants of one trickling down her face. She raised her cuffed hands to wipe at her eyes, attempting to mask the hurt.

  “Mandalorians do not often allow bounties to escape either. How did you manage to get away?”

His question came out more harsh than he had wished.

 “A woman never reveals her secrets.” She jeers, the playfulness evident in her voice, though it could have been easily missed due to the wetness of her remaining tears and the obvious exhaustion that was setting in.

The Mandalorian considers this for a moment. He considers her story, her truth as she had called it. Her bounty was so large because she had escaped the hands of many bounty hunters, of many Mandalorians at that. Though, she was not a bad person. She was not a criminal. And as rude as it sounded, not worth such a large bounty, especially considering what she had done for her family. For her people.

She had made a great sacrifice, the Mandalorian could see that. That’s why he found himself standing and closing the space between them. The tension was palpable as she looked up at his mask. Her heart caught in her throat at the Mandalorian approached her. He was tall and the Beskar armor made him all the more imposing. The look in her eyes made her heart leap into he throat and he began to feel slightly nauseous. She looked defeated, like she had accepted her fate, but behind the defeat was a small glimmer of hope. He hadn’t taken a chance to really look at her, but he found himself admiring her beauty.

She wasn’t beautiful like the other women he had been with, and there had been a handful. Her hair and skin seemed permanently dirty from years of running, but was indicative of her hard work. Her skin was splotchy with red spots, probably from spending too much time in the sun. Her hands were rough and calloused like his. The small gem in her nose glimmered in the dim light of the Razor Crest. She was unconventional in every sense, but to him it was everything. And he hated it.

  “You’ll stay and work with me. Lay low until I can get your bounty cleared.” He grunted as he removed the cuffs from her wrists, revealing the screaming red indentations beneath them.

She looked up at him in shock. She felt like she was going to throw up. Tears stung at the corners of her eyes and her hands began to sweat as her heart rate increased tenfold. Before she could even think she was on her feet and throwing herself into the Mandalorian’s arms, wrapping him in a tight hug of thanks.

Jumbled words tumbled from her lips as tears fell from her eyes. The Mandalorian felt himself go stiff. He couldn’t quite believe what he had just done and it had been a long time since he experienced any contact like this. The girls shaking form in his arms, however, brought him back to reality and he found himself relaxing slightly. He gave her small pats on the back in a way the he hoped was comforting.

The young woman could sense his apprehension and slowly stepped back and quickly wiped her eyes with her sleeve as she corrected her posture, obviously wanting to keep up her front she had put on earlier, though the Mandalorian could sense that she was tired and broken. He began to silently walk to the small sleeping area on the ship, it would have to do for now. She quickly caught on and followed behind him. He did his best to make sure she was settled on to the small cot before he began to make his exit.

  “Hey. Since I’m going to be living with you...well working with you, or for you, I’d really like to know your name.” He heard her call after him. He turned to face her.

  “Mando.” He said simply, though there was a slightly playful lilt to his voice that almost gave away the smirk he held under the mask.

  “Well, Mando. Thank you. For...you know...”she trailed off, not really sure what she could call what he did. Sparing her? Maybe. Saving her? Yes, but that seemed too extreme and she was tired of sounding weak and desperate.

He examined her for a second more as he took in her tired eyes and the way her body was slowly giving into the exhaustion of a life on the run. Her hair fell in a frizzy, tangled mess around her face, her signature hair piece long gone. He could see that she was somewhat comfortable, she felt safe with him, otherwise she wouldn’t be slowly lowering herself to lay on the flat pillow that sat just behind her. The Mandalorian quickly turned on his heel and returned to the cockpit before he could allow himself to feel anything for the remarkable young woman that was now sleeping in his bed.

As he sat down in his pilot’s chair once more, he couldn’t help but think about his choice. How was he going to get the crime syndicate to pull the bounty? Possibilities of the future blurred through his mind as he glanced back to the sleeping area. The modulated sigh that left his mouth was indicative enough of the feelings he felt for her: he was in deep.

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#5) [Otome Games/BTS] An Update on Aeon Dream Studios - hiatus, founder leaving, allegations of emotional abuse and non-payment by a former employee, + more

View the discussion on reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/amiuas/otome_gamesbts_an_update_on_aeon_dream_studios/

Post (words by original poster linked):

This is an update to my previous post here which has some background and a Tl;dr at the end for those who need it. It's time for an update as a lot has happened in the past month.

Before that, though, here's something I missed in my last post: a scandal in June 2018 where ADS tweeted on their official account to call out a fanfic author on Wattpad for copying ADS's work. The tweet included an image containing the author's username, leading the fifteen-year-old author to receive harassment from TTEOTS fans who had seen the tweet. Considering TTEOTS itself did not have legal permission to be using BTS's likenesses, the call out post seems rather hypocritical. There was also an exchange in the replies where the devs passive aggressively blamed a fan who asked for help due to the app being glitchy.

So, to recap where we left off:

The studio went silent for a couple of months at the end of 2018, letting a promised release date for TTEOTS pass without comment. In mid-December the CEO emerged to link her inability to work to a BTS member sustaining a minor injury, and then pushed back Echoes to 2019 (initially promised for March 2017), giving no date for further TTEOTS content.

January has brought renewed anger and attempts to raise awareness by ex-fans and customers who have been burned by the studio.

January 14th

In two tweets on her personal account, the CEO decried the capitalisation and dehumanisation of BTS through merchandise and idolatry and condemned fans for buying products that contributed to this. This was certainly an ironic tweet to make for someone who:

dehumanised BTS by turning them into characters for her game without their consent;

promoted the game using BTS's faces, name and existing fanbase, and strongly encouraged fans to pay for crowdfunding, TTEOTS merch and, later, the monetised Premium version;

enticed fans to buy Premium by promising Premium-exclusive content such as eventual romantic content with said characters, further dehumanising the members of BTS without their consent.

Several people responded pointing out the hypocrisy of making such tweets after capitalising on the faces of BTS, but the CEO did not respond; instead one fan chimed in to defend the studio.

January 18th

The CEO posted a new blog on ADS's official website announcing a hiatus for financial reasons. It is no longer accessible for reasons I'll explain, but there is a cached version viewable here. The hiatus will last until at least March and means writing and programming will continue but almost everything else is paused and their social media presence will be reduced. Elaborating, she explained that they had "been on hiatus in some ways since September [2018]", having slowed work due to budgetary constraints.

The post also included a vague paragraph about a personal financial settlement she was owed from a person referred to as "He-Shall-Not-Be-Named" which she had planned to invest into ADS, but allegedly he had dragged out the proceedings and this, combined with the "untimely" cease and desist from BigHit Entertainment and decreased sales, led to financial difficulties. During the hiatus, which will last until March or later, the CEO wrote that she would work on novels and commissions in order to help the company.

Ex-fans linked the hiatus post in the Steam forums and in a post on /r/otomegames. Criticism was directed at numerous parts of the statement, including:

"We promised you guys a lot of things, and we’re going to deliver, come hell or high water. It might not be in the time frame I had planned, but it will be done. I am definitely known as a person of my word." (emphasis added)

A claim critics would happily dispute, and:

"Anyway, as a result I decided the best thing for us was to be honest, now that I knew more, and let the fans know exactly what was happening as soon as possible and take an “official” hiatus." (emphasis added)

This latter statement attracted particular criticism considering the studio had already been winding down development activity since September but had failed to inform fans and eventually went radio silent for roughly 2 months, leaving TTEOTS fans confused and worried about the status of the game. Further, this hiatus post was not announced anywhere on ADS's social media, leaving those who had noticed it wondering exactly how this constituted keeping fans in the loop.

January 25th

On the 25th, the CEO made several tweets, one of which began with:

"Lately, relationships have ended in my life. I'm grateful for the lessons I learned. Courage, generosity, empathy, honesty, openness are all traits required for a healthy relationship."

Perhaps coincidentally, that same day the other remaining founding member of the studio announced her departure for mental health reasons. As she is no longer an employee I will not link directly out of respect but here is a screenshot of the main tweet. This left ADS with two remaining employees - the CEO (the only remaining founder) and a writer who had formally joined the studio in February 2018 and who is allegedly now living with the CEO. This departure means there are now four former employees listed on the official ADS website. The third founder was the longest serving former employee at 2 years.

Shortly afterwards, the official ADS Twitter tweeted out a new hiatus statement on their official website, the previous one having vanished. The new post was shorter than the first - down to 426 words from the original 1,089 - and now included the departure of their founding member as a reason for the hiatus.

The tweet attracted a mix of supportive and critical replies, with former fans and backers wading in to demand answers about the two versions of the hiatus post and to back up frustrated TTEOTS fans. Unusually, the CEO appeared in the replies to respond to some of these criticisms, tweeting that:

anything perceived to be "shady" by critics was merely due to their founding member struggling with her mental health behind the scenes;

the second hiatus blog was the "same exact blog" as the original except for the addition of the founding member leaving (in fact the original was twice as long);

the only reason they didn't share the original hiatus post on Twitter was because the member responsible for sharing it had quit.

January 27th

The CEO posted two blogs on the ADS website: a post detailing her plans for restructuring and fulfilling their obligations, including hiring more freelance staff after the hiatus, and another detailing the struggles of ADS from their founding, written in response to a critic who had apparently claimed not to believe in the recently departed founding member's mental health issues. (I am unsure what comment(s) the CEO was referring to specifically as the reference is vague.)

As you've probably guessed, ex-fans picked this latter post apart too.

"I haven’t seen all the bad things out there about us. I don’t read them, because I know that some of it is made up,and would only distract me from my job. I know the truth, and I have always been honest, even if there were things I couldn’t say. I have no motive to lie, and I know these people don’t know or understand me." (emphasis added)

Critics wondered how the CEO could know if criticisms are made up if she doesn't read them.

"I thought of the possibility of course, of hanging it up, working on providing refunds to people (what, you REALLY thought we were so dishonorable as not to do that?)..." (emphasis added)

Of course, as mentioned in my last post, numerous customers had reported difficulty obtaining refunds (despite a threat from the devs that backers who were toxic would be forcibly refunded).

On their official Twitter account, they also announced plans to move away from social media and focus on communicating through the "healthy space" of their Discord channels. Ex-fans speculated this was a way to more tightly moderate speech and shut out critics. One began lurking in the official Discords, reporting on what the studio's remaining employees were saying and alleging that critics' arguments were being misrepresented by ADS devs to their fans in the Discord enquiring about the controversy.

This user also heavily hinted at having testimony from an inside source that supposedly included emotional abuse allegations against the CEO, but was holding off on saying anything due to concerns about preserving the source's anonymity.

28th January

Despite failing to give a release date elsewhere, the developers posted a backer-exclusive Kickstarter update which as a non-backer I cannot read, but according to a poster in the Steam forum it gives the release date for Echoes as March 2019, despite the hiatus.

The CEO also tweeted refuting past criticism that she was throwing employees under the bus in her updates, and closed by stating she would not be tweeting about negativity or rumours anymore.

29th January

A Twitter user who is the MDSOA Deluxe Edition Kickstarter's highest backer (to the tune of $2000+ USD, proof posted on their Twitter account) posted a series of tweets strongly condemning the studio. She claimed one employee from the studio had blocked her (something at least one other backer has also reported) and that she had been refused a refund.

In fact, when she had emailed the studio in November 2018 asking for refunds for physical Kickstarter rewards which did not yet exist almost 2 years after the Kickstarter in question - and indeed still do not exist - ADS responded that crowdfunded pledges are "donations" and "ordinarily considered non-refundable", with the promised rewards being "just a perk". (This screenshot of the reply is embedded in one of the tweets.) However, they generously stated they would "consider it" when they start sending out merchandise.

In fact, according to Section 4 of Kickstarter's Terms of Use, this is very much not true: "project creators must complete the project and fulfil each reward." Backers are owed regular updates, and if the project fails, creators must go to lengths to show why they failed, prove they used funds appropriately, and either refund backers with any remaining funds or use this money to complete the promised project in another form. The only way to terminate these obligations to a backer is to issue a refund, ending the contract between them.

And, in any case, the developers had promised refunds in December 2017 for those who wanted them and had set up a page for refund sign-ups which they posted about in January. As such, it's clear their email response was not consistent with their past statements, especially as some people were previously able to get refunds. What changed?

Again:

"I thought of the possibility of course, of hanging it up, working on providing refunds to people (what, you REALLY thought we were so dishonorable as not to do that?)..."

31st January

Meanwhile, ADS were posting teasers of new character designs for TTEOTS, including one of the redesigns that had been made necessary by the cease and desist in August 2018. As the main male characters had originally been based on BTS they had all appeared Korean, but the redesigns had changed the races of some characters to reflect a more racially diverse future.

On the 31st they posted a passive aggressive tweet with a meme gif alluding to comments they had apparently received in the past, encouraging people to unfollow if they were likely to be upset by future character designs, all of which are "various shades of brown", with one also being agender. Again a mix of supportive and critical replies followed; even some of the studio's supporters criticised the tone as condescending and unprofessional. Several responders appeared wary of being branded as racist for criticising Five's redesign for not fitting his established character. One or two even expressed views that the devs were intentionally avoiding adding white characters out of spite or pettiness. Matters were not helped by ADS making a couple of replies of a similar hostile tone.

1st February

At last, the "inside source" that had been hinted at came forward: the former Lead Artist and Art Director at ADS, Monzana21.

Monz alleged in a Twitter statement that she had been a victim of emotional abuse at the hands of ADS's current management, ended up in the hospital with extreme exhaustion, and when she left the company received only one and a half months' payment for 7 months of work. She appealed to people to question what is happening at ADS and why they have lost so many employees, but declined to give further information publicly in order to protect herself and her friends and coworkers. In other more recent tweets she added that people in the art community are also aware of abuse and mistreatment within ADS and the scamming of fans.

Replies were overwhelmingly supportive, with a couple of other Twitter users who had interacted with ADS chiming in to say that their experiences with ADS were also negative and they did not doubt the veracity of the allegations.

Since then, any tweets on the ADS Twitter have numerous responses asking about the abuse allegations and trying to spread awareness, but the studio still has plenty of eager responses from fans as well.

On her personal account, the CEO tweeted to thank those who believe in her for their supportive messages and retweeted this on the ADS Twitter, but there has otherwise been no official statement on the matter outside of Discord. There, the CEO has outright disputed the allegations (compilation), as has ADS's other writer (compilation), and members of the Discord (some of whom address the CEO as "mom") have mostly taken them at their word, while people who were already critical or doubtful of the studio appear more inclined to believe the former Lead Artist.

The #TTEOTS, #MDSOA and #MDE Twitter tags are awash with criticism towards the studio from numerous different users, and new tweets from the CEO and the official ADS Twitter are quickly met by former fans and backers banging war drums. The fallout from the abuse allegations has yet to settle and presumably more drama is to come.

Tl;dr

Throughout January, angry ex-fans have increased efforts to raise awareness and turned ADS-related accounts and tags into a battleground on Twitter

Conspiracy theories abounded as a post about a hiatus for financial reasons was never shared, then vanished and reappeared significantly edited down a week later

A founding member of the company departed for mental health reasons

A $2k+ backer alleges she was refused a refund for items she had not received and was informed her Kickstarter pledge was a "donation" and "ordinarily non-refundable"

ADS stirred up further controversy with more passive aggressive tweets

A former employee came forward with allegations of emotional abuse and being underpaid for 7 months of work, which the remaining ADS members have refuted

[solar-pxwered]

Reparations

                                - a Jin x Zuko story written by Panja Mysy

☆ ☆  AO3  ☆ ☆

❀ ❀  Tip Your Waitress  ❀ ❀

Story below the cut to keep people’s dashboards clean and cut, of course! Enjoy!

   There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

   At least, that's what the Dai Li had been pushing on the people for decades, and after so long hearing the same sentiment, being told to stay quiet, and citizens disappearing when they tried to tell anyone otherwise...well, the people of the city had begun to believe it. If you lived your life, did your job, kept your head down, and just fell in line then you were left alone. So it was that decades down the line, not even the actual Earth King had known the war was truly happening let alone the common people.

   This was why when the Fire Nation and Dai Li brought down the great walls no one was prepared to stand their ground against the occupancy. The lower ring citizens weren't trained in any weapon use other than muggers and their cheap knives or the occassional sword passed down through a family from their original arrival as refugees. The citizens weren't soldiers; a simple girl whose family ran a wool stall in the market least of all.

   Jin had never felt more afraid than when she witnessed the komodo rhinos stomping down the streets, packing the solid dirt even more firmly than the millions of feet before them. Fire Nation soldiers rode on their great backs and warned citizens to get indoors lest they face the consequences. Jin had taken refuge in the tea shop she frequented, a horrible realization sinking into her chest.

   "So it's true," a patron of the shop was whispering quietly behind her, out loud but to himself. "I've always heard rumors about the Fire Nation but no one could ever prove it. We really have been at war this whole time then?"

   "It would seem so." Mr. Pao confirmed in a grim tone. "Rumor also has it that the Earth King has just...disappeared and is nowhere to be found."

   "Dead most likely." One of the city guards muttered, his hand at his hip was shaking as if he was debating running out there to clash swords with the invaders. Jin seriously hoped he didn't; this was no time for a show of bravado.

   "What do we do?" Her voice sounded so small, choked in her fear as she clutched the neckline of her robes and worried the material there.

   "What can we do?" the guard responded with a defeated sigh. "We wait. We keep our heads down, and we survive."

   That had been two years ago now.

   "Jin, dear, can you cut me off a yard of the undyed wool please?" 

   Her mother's voice broke the girl from her memory and she shook her head to clear it as she grabbed the shears from the table. "One yard of undyed, coming right up."

   Life went on. Ba Sing Se had continued to thrive even under the rule of the Fire Nation because the rules still remained the same: live your life, do your job, keep your head down, fall in line. Jin's family had continued their business and opened the wool stall the very next day and ,even though they had no business at all, it had spurred the other members of the marketplace to follow suit. Soon the market was a bustling, busy place once again as they all adjusted to the new normal. 

   There were those who spoke of grand schemes to overthrow their new government, whispered plots over pints of cheap ale and tobacco smoke in the seedy taverns of the Lower Ring, but the few who tried to rise up were very quickly and very publically stomped back down. Jin was well familiar with the scent of burning flesh and hair after only a few days of the occupation. Over time things had settled down and even the more raucous of rebellion groups had been crushed in the months that followed the first march into the city. 

   Thankfully, the months of occupation were few; a mysterious group of people had reclaimed the city, or at least that was the story. All who were present to see it told tales of firebenders using the comet to destroy the Fire Nation defense, of waves flowing in the streets which washed down the lines of soldiers, Earthbending being used to crush tanks and topple statues, and even tales of epic sword fighting. If the stories were to be believed then it would mean their liberators were representative of all the nations combined...and Jin was happy to believe that.

   Whatever the case, the city was free again and King Kuei had returned from his long absence and tales from the world began to trickle into the streets; each one was more fantastic than the next! The Avatar, the last of the Air Nomads, had defeated the Fire Lord in combat. Kyoshi Island's famous warriors had represented the Earth Kingdom with unmatched ferocity. Three children had taken out the entire Fire Nation air fleet. The Dragon of the West himself had freed Ba Sing Se. There had been a siege on the Fire Nation during the eclipse.

   Today a new bit of news was making the rounds.

   "Have you heard?" the woman buying the undyed wool was asking her mother in a conspiratorial way, "They say the new Fire Lord is on his way to the city and should be arriving in only a few days. Apparently the King invited him personally to discuss trade agreements and reparations."

   "I should think so," Jin's mother, Yon, replied easily as she wrapped the wool in paper and tied it with twine to complete the package. "The Fire Nation owes the world far more than empty promises. If he's as eager to change the world as they say then what better place to start than here?"

   "Ah, but they say this isn't his first expedition at all! I heard the Earth Kingdom colonies were the first places he went and that there were uprisings and that he came to stomp them out! Apparently he and the Avatar got into a heated disagreement and they almost came to blows."

   Yon's lips pursed unhappily and she shook her head in disappointment.

   "He sounds like more of the same. It's almost like those people are born without any empathy."

   Jin bit her lip, turning her back on the gossip as she put the remaining wool back in it's container. Her mother's statement brought back up those stupid feelings she had been trying to quell for years now; feelings related to a certain Firebender who she knew was nothing like the evil Princess who had conquered the city from within. A shy boy with a scar on his face who served tea and lived in peace among them.

   She was no fool. He had all but blurted out the truth when he had lit those lanterns at the fountain that night. She could still see the nervousness and heard the awkwardness in his tone if she closed her eyes and focused on the memory of that strange date with the strange young man. She could still smell the heat frome the quickly summoned flames in the air. He had firebent those lights into being and he wasn't fooling anyone with his "don't peek" attempt. She hadn't peeked, of course, but she hadn't needed to.

   Lee had been a Firebender, and Lee was nothing like the rest. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------    Night fell dark and heavy on the Lower Ring, the shop keepers counting up their earnings for the day and many of them were dispersing to the newly opened public houses and seedy pubs to spend any excess they might have. Drunks and vagrants and beggers lined the dirt streets under the glowing lamplight, spending and making money both, feeding habits and trying to make it in the simple hell of poverty.

   Jin didn't stand out physically, dressed in simple browns and light greens, but her green eyes help far more light than most of the inhabitants of this area of the city. She held her head high as she walked, her steps light and sure. The wooden sign of her favorite establishment called to her and she smiled at the familiar creak of the door as she opened it, the light, smells and sounds from inside pouring into the street as she did so.

   "Jin! Over here, I saved you a spot!" a voice called and Jin searched the crowd for the source of the voice. She found the object of her search and smiled, waving to convey she had heard the message.

   "Hao, is it just you tonight?" Jin greeted her friend as she sat in the empty chair next to him at the four person table.

   Hao smiled and shook his head, his black hair falling into his almond shaped eyes and he pointed vaguely at the area of the tavern often used for dances when there were musicians who chose to play. Tonight was a sort of special occasion, the end of Summer and the recognition of the seasons changing to Fall, and it was displayed nicely in the gold and orange and red colors of the banners strung between the high, slightly warped wooden beams of the establishment.

   "Nari and Akemi are over there, probably trying to catch the attention of that fiddler." 

   Jin found the two girls with no problem, the two of them linked arm in arm as they skipped in a circle in time to the music, a simple dance usually done with several other people so you could switch partners on each pass, but it was clear that they were having enough fun without anyone else on the dance floor. Nari's chestnut brown curls bounced with every skip and she had her head tossed back in laughter, Akemi was always much more calm and collected so the only hint of enjoyment on her face was a simple smile.

   "Ah, yes, of course. When Nari's on the hunt, men and women beware." Jin laughed lightly, "So how was work today?"

   Hao tipped his mug back and took a large swig of the ale Jin knew was inside before he let out with a heavy sigh.

   "It wasn't the best," he admitted in a bitter tone of voice, swirling the contents of his cup around as he looked inside the pint. "I guess people just aren't in the mood for candles even though the days are getting shorter."

   "Hey, cheer up, Hao," Jin reassured him, "With the long, warm days coming to and end people will be needing what we've got to offer more and more every day. You'll make up for the slow summer, don't worry."

   "Yeah, yeah, I know," Hao rolled his eyes good naturedly and nudged Jin's side with his elbow, "Hey, you never know, maybe I'll marry into money."

   "Keep dreaming, Waxy!" Nari's always overly loud voice cut into the conversation as she plopped heavily into the seat across from their male companion. He gave her a rather unamused sort of sneer and she responded by sticking her tongue out, arms crossed over her chest.

   "No luck with the fiddler, I'm assuming?" Hao shot back and it was clear by the way Nari rolled her eyes that he was correct.

   "Hey, his loss!" Nari countered easily as if having her advances rejected was nothing. She seemed almost bored as she called out to the waiter as he passed. "Hey, can we get three pints over here?"

    "Oh, none for me," Jin said quickly but Nari ignored her.

    "Hi, Jin!" Akemi said softly as she took the last remaining seat at the table. She was far too prim and proper for such a place as this but for all her manners and quiet personality, Akemi has never once felt like she didn't belong in their rag tag group of friends. She didn't have the unkempt curls of Nari or the typical Earth Kingdom green eyes like Jin or the almond eyes like Hao; she was pale, blonde and blue eyed, a very uncommon mix of traits in one person in this part of the world. 

   "Akemi, you're someone who might actually appreciate a little bit of cultural news, unlike these two troglodytes." Jin had been eager to share her news with someone of equally open mindedness as she, Hao and Nari just weren't as interested in anything beyond the walls of Ba Sing Se. "I heard rumors today that the new Fire Lord is coming to visit King Kuei in a few days."

   "Oh my!" Akemi leaned forward, her blue eyes flashing with interest, "Did anyone know the purpose of the visit?"

   "Not that I've heard," Jin admitted, nodding to the waiter as he set her pint in front of her. "But I imagine it has to do with trade deals and reparations and the like. Politics, of course, he's way too busy to be coming here for a vacation."

   "Well, it's about damn time he showed his stupid face here," Nari grumped as she tucked into her pint with almost barbaric fervor.

   "How do you know his face is stupid?" Akemi asked innocently, "Maybe he's incredible handsome and smart to boot!"

   "Please," Nari rolled her eyes, "He's Fire Nation."

   "Have you SEEN Fire Nation people?" Hao asked, incredulously. "I mean, not trying to be funny, but they're HOT!"

   Jin and Akemi laughed and even Nari cracked a smile inside her pint glass so no one would notice.

   "Yeah, yeah, ok," she admitted, "But isn't he old as hell?"

   "The Fire Lord?" Jin raised an eyebrow, "Have you been living under a rock, Nari? The new Fire Lord is only nineteen, the youngest in a very long time."

   "Huh," Nari seemed thoughtful at that bit of knowledge, "Hey, maybe I'll be the one to marry into money instead of Hao."

   "Dream on," Hao echoed her earlier insult with a grin that earned him a chunck of hard bread in his face. Akemi didn't even seem upset at the loss of her bread as she laughed along with the other girls. "Real mature Nari. You know I should really-"

   "Oh, would you two just kiss already?" Jin interjected.

   That brought a profound silence to the table and they all finally focused on their drinks and the cheery atmosphere of celebration in the room. After a few more drinks, everyone forgot about the Fire Lord, their jobs, the failed attempt at wooing the fiddler and even Nari was laughing out loud by the time the four of them stumbled into the street. 

   "See you guys tomorrow night?" Akemi, the only sober one, asked as she held Nari upright.

   "I've got no plans," Hao confirmed.

   "Be here with bells on," Jin added, a hiccup escaping at the last word and making her giggle.

   Nari and Akemi headed East as Hao and Jin headed West towards their homes, arms draped over eachothers' shoulders as they walked without a care in the world as the alcohol worked it's magic. 

   Just another workday ending in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se.

[d0gdaze]

3.

The body swap au a surprising amount of people asked for, actually.

Read on AO3 / Summary

Pairings: Eddie Kaspbrak / Richie Tozier

Warnings: swearing, sexual references

Chapter 3/?

Prev | Next

Word Count: 4676

Eddie’s playlist

Mother Nature must have had it out for someone in Derry, because the storm hit hard. Overnight, the roads were flooded, trees bared of their leaves, some smaller ones nearly uprooted from the harsh winds, and though it had since reduced down to a drizzle, the sky remained dark and threatening well into the morning.

Richie didn't like the rain. Everything was wet and cold and grey, and that one part of the roof in the hallway always leaked, and the thunder meant he barely got any sleep, and his midday smoke breaks with Beverly were compromised. But, rather than feeling miserable about the weather, he woke up on that Tuesday morning with a newfound appreciation for it.

The storm had blown the power out.

There wasn't any music, or horrid singing.

The window was still closed.

Eddie wasn't awake yet.

Holy shit.

The grin that took over Richie's face then and there was only comparable to a child's on Christmas morning. Giddiness bubbled up in his chest, and he giggled – actually giggled – at the feeling. He couldn't remember the last time he felt this unashamedly happy right after waking up – to be honest he thought this might be the happiest he'd ever been, maybe period. He chose to blatantly ignore how sad that fact was.

This was going to be a great day, he thought.

He practically skipped down the stairs at seven-ish, graffitied-to-all-hell backpack slung over one shoulder, wearing (relatively) fresh clothes and his favourite, most obnoxiously coloured hawaiian shirt over a white long-sleeved one, with his hair hanging over half his face, still damp from the shower. Morning showers, ah, how he'd missed those.

He hummed a tune absentmindedly as he went about collecting his shoes from where he had thrown them haphazardly into the living room the day before. He couldn't quite place where he'd heard it, for a while. He was just about to shrug it off, until he caught himself subconsciously singing.

“I used to think maybe you loved– FUCK,” he hit his palm against his forehead, as if he could physically dislodge the song from his brain. “Damn it, Kaspbrak.”

Beverly raised an eyebrow at him as he strutted out of his house, half a minute after Mike announced their arrival via car horn, smiling wider than she had ever seen him.

“What the hell are you so happy about?” she asked as he approached, faking a scowl.

“And hello to you too, gorgeous,” he winked, and proceeded to make a show out of taking her hand and bringing it to his lips, planting a kiss on her knuckles. She snorted out a laugh and yanked her hand back.

“Seriously, did you hit your head or something? Wait,” she did a double take, mouth falling open in an overly exaggerated gasp, smacking her hand over her heart, “did you actually shower? Who're you trying to impress, Rich?”

He shrugged, sucking in a breath through his teeth.

“Nobody, my dear,” he reached forward and took the cigarette from behind her ear, turning it over in his fingers before putting it in his own mouth. She made an annoyed sound in protest, but didn't actually stop him from doing so. “Today's just my day, y'know? I can feel it.”

“Well, could you bring it down a notch? You're making the rest of us look more miserable in comparison,” she brought her hand up to ruffle his hair. He laughed, jerking his head away. Something shiny caught his eye as he did.

“Would ya look at that,” he said, slightly muffled by the cigarette, and leant down to pick up the piece of copper. He held it up in front of his face, squinting slightly to make out the engravings.

“Lucky penny,” Beverly teased, crossing her arms over her chest, “guess it really is your day.”

“Yup,” he flipped it in the air and caught it, then shoved into the front pocket of his jeans, “guess so.”

“How goes it, Mikey-boy?” Richie asked as he squeezed himself into the back seat, without half the usual displeasure.

“It goes fine,” Mike replied, “you're very chipper this morning. Anything interesting happen?”

“Maybe,” Richie said, smug as anything, for some reason. Mike shot him a slightly confused glance in the rearview mirror but didn't press the matter. “Sadie's? We have heaps of time.”

“You still owe me for yesterday's,” Beverly reminded him as she swung herself into the car, “but I'm game.”

“Oh shoot, hold on-” Richie started patting himself down, searching his pockets for spare change. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans, awkwardly thrusting his hips up as he did. He pulled out what he thought was a dollar bill and dropped back down into the seat. “Here's- oh!” He held up the crumpled tenner, attempting to straighten it out a little.

“Aw, Richie! So nice of you to pay for everyone!” Beverly grinned before snatching the note out of his hands. Richie let her take it.

“Just give me the change, yeah?” he laughed. An old Billy Idol song faded in on the radio.

Oh yes, he thought, sneaking one look back up at Eddie's window – he could just see out the back windscreen that the curtains were still closed – this was going to be a great day.

Eddie was having what was possibly the worst morning that anyone had ever had in all of human history, and it was unbelievably unfair, because he had never done anything wrong in all his life and he did not deserve this to be happening right now at all, and the universe or whatever was making him go through this terrible fucking morning obviously had a personal vendetta against him. He may as well have just crawled into a hole and died because that would have had a better outcome than what was currently happening. Everything was SHIT and FUCKED and every other cuss word out there all rolled into one – and even then it wouldn't be enough to describe how downright awful this morning was for Eddie Kaspbrak.

His internalised tantrum came and went, only really lasting for five seconds before he unclenched his jaw and took a breath. Really, it wasn't that bad. Not great, sure, but not the end of the world, and he knew that, it was just good to let all the frustration out preemptively. His alarm hadn't gone off, and for the first time in four years his mother had woken him up, immediately jumping to the conclusion that he had contracted a debilitating illness overnight and that was the only reason why he would still be in bed at – god forbid – quarter past seven in the morning. He had spent a good five minutes trying to convince her that no, he was fine, his alarm just hadn't gone off, and he could still make it to school if he hurried, and she had reluctantly let him get out of bed.

Hurrying, he soon discovered, was not something that came naturally to him, nor was it something he was particularly good at, especially when factoring in the compulsivity he had when it came to his bathroom routine, the lack of power – and therefore light –, and his mother asking him if he needed help with anything every three seconds, making him feel more like an invalid and less like a kid who woke up an hour late. But he did the best he could do under the circumstances, which involved brushing his teeth with one hand and pulling his socks on with the other, and ended up leaving the house – albeit looking just slightly disastrous – with just enough time to make it before the bell rang if he turned his walking speed up a to a power-walk and didn't stop by his locker first.

So he walked, fast, granola bar shoved into his pocket that he only grabbed in a last-ditch effort to calm his mother's nerves so she would release her death grip on his shoulder long enough for him to bolt, one hand desperately trying to flatten his hair out to a mildly presentable degree and the other swinging wildly at his side in time with his steps. It had stopped raining for the most part, only spitting lightly now, but he could deal with that. He just had to keep the pace up, and get to school. Easy enough, right? Today was going to be an okay day, he thought, if he could just get to school without any issues.

But you know what they say, when it rains it pours.

Okay, so maybe it was kind of a dick move on Richie's part. But he deserved it! For what he did the night before! So it was okay! Right?

They had picked up their shakes – and damn, they were good, as always – and were on the way back to school when they saw him; head down, walking quickly, undoubtedly going to be late. He looked a lot less put together than usual, even from behind.

Richie knew he probably should have just given the poor guy a break, maybe just flipped him off out the window and let it be. He knew he probably shouldn't have done what he did, that he probably ruined the kid's whole day. And at the very least, he knew he probably should have felt some sort of empathy after the deed was done.

But the opportunity was just too good to pass up, and Richie was nothing if he wasn't an opportunist.

So yeah, he told Mike to drive through the puddle.

Okay, he may have ordered, and then begged him, and then bribed him that he would do all his homework for a month, and then bribed him with fifty dollars. And then lurched forward and grabbed the steering wheel anyway. Not that he was desperate or anything.

It was almost majestic, in a way. The wave of water – so much water, it really didn't look that deep, honest – sprayed up from the tires and hit Eddie – the poor bastard had turned around when he heard the car approaching – face on, absolutely drenching him from head to toe. And Eddie stood there, shocked expression, hands held up in a feeble attempt to block his face from the onslaught. And they drove away, Richie absolutely beside himself, howling with laughter and full of sadistic pride, Beverly with her hand covering her mouth as she tried not to spit vanilla milkshake all over the dashboard, and Mike just- well. Mike watched Eddie get further away through the side mirror, feeling guilt bubble up in his stomach. Because that's who he was, way too sympathetic. Sometimes Richie was worried it was going to rub off on him. He wasn't sure if he could handle being a good person.

“Oh, COME ON.”

Eddie watched after the car, at that four-eyed twit in the back seat, looking like he was going to piss himself from laughing so hard. He hadn't been driving, but it was so clearly his fault, judging by the middle finger that came flashing up through the window just before the car turned a corner, and by the fact that he was an asshole, and only he would think this was funny.

He was soaked, and dirty, and definitely covered in germs, and his books would be all wet, and his shoes were going to be soggy and uncomfortable all day, and his hair was going to frizz up and be all over the place, and it was cold out so he was probably going to get sick, and he was still fucking late for school.

He should have just turned around and gone home, had a shower and gone to bed, but that would have meant admitting defeat – and facing his mother, and possibly a hospital trip to check for water-born diseases, but mostly admitting defeat –, so he took a deep breath, swallowed his pride and kept walking. His shoes squeaked with every step, and he found himself pouting – actually pouting. And he wasn't crying, it's just that there was dirt in the water and it got in his eyes, and he was only sniffling because it also got up his nose. And he wasn't going to cry, because he was an adult and adult's don't cry because they get splashed with puddle water. He was going to go to school and change into his track uniform – thank god his mother made him bring it in a plastic bag, something he never understood nor appreciated until now – and he was going to miss some, if not all of first period, and he was going to feel miserable and uncomfortable all day, and people were probably going to laugh at him, and it was all going to go to absolute shit, but he was going to deal with it. Like an adult.

He was also going to murder Richie Tozier, but that could wait.

By the time he got to school, class had already started, and the hallways were mostly deserted. He made a beeline for the nearest bathroom, head down, trying to look unsuspicious, though he wasn't sure how well he was doing.

The thing with walking with your head down, with wet hair hanging down over your face, is you can't actually see where you're going, and eventually you're going to run into something. Or someone, in Eddie's case.

He fell back, rather unceremoniously, onto his arse. The person who's back he had just barged into only stumbled forward. Eddie thought, briefly, that that was unfair.

“Watch it,” the person spat, spinning around once they regained their footing. “Oh.”

He looked up, squinting against the fluorescent lighting. Of course it was Stan. Because the awkwardness from the day before wasn't enough, obviously.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, gritting his teeth. Stan swallowed visibly, then offered a hand out to help him up. He looked at it for a few seconds, before standing up by himself. Stan frowned, narrowed eyes scanning him as he brushed himself off.

“Did you,” he said, almost hesitantly, “take a shower with your clothes on or something?”

“Hilarious,” Eddie replied, deadpan. He straightened out the hemline of his shirt. “Obviously not.” He restrained himself from throwing an insult in.

“Okay. Really though, why are you all wet?”

“Why don't you ask your friends?”

Stan shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Richie?” He winced slightly as he said it, almost compassionately.

Eddie gave him a look that he hoped said, 'No shit, sherlock. Who the fuck else?'

“Sorry,” Stan said, quietly, ducking his head and biting his lip. Eddie studied him for a drawn out moment.

“Why aren't you in class?” he said, his tone a lot less snarky and a lot more genuine. Stan's head shot up, frown dispersing, replaced with what could have been a smile if you looked close enough, side-on, possibly with the aid of a magnifying glass..

“Study period,” he answered simply.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

They held awkward eye contact for what was probably the most uncomfortable five seconds either of them had ever experienced. Eddie sucked his teeth slowly, letting out an odd, slightly embarrassing squeaking sound.

“I should g-”

“I need t-”

They both spoke at the same time, cutting each other off. It was followed by incredibly nervous laughter from Eddie. Stan scuffed the toe of his shoe on the linoleum.

“I should be studying,” he said, a little loudly, then creased his brow, looking as though he had surprised himself a bit.

“Okay,” Eddie replied, almost breathlessly, for some reason.

“So,” Stan continued after a moment, “I should go. To the library. To study.”

“O- kay?” Eddie repeated, the end of the word raising up an octave.

Stan licked his lips, eyes darting around Eddie's face. Eddie suddenly regretted every choice he had ever made that lead to this exchange.

“Bye then,” Stan said, before turning and leaving faster than he had seen anyone turn and leave before.

“Bye,” he said, even though Stan was already out of earshot.

He regained himself, waiting for his soul to return to his body after it ejected itself out of humiliation, and started walking towards the bathroom, making a mental note to never look Stan Uris in the eye ever again. Not that he thought that would be possible now.

“I feel bad.”

It was lunch, and Richie and Mike were sitting at their table in the corner of the cafeteria, closer to the food line and away from the doors. It was situated directly across the large hall from where Eddie and his two nerd friends sat, and when Richie positioned himself just right in his seat he had a perfectly clear view of the sad-sack himself, who appeared to have switched out into his gym clothes – and gym shorts, damn them to hell –, hair still a bit wet and unkept – a very unfamiliar sight – and looked downright depressed, hunched over a seemingly untouched wholemeal sandwich. Not that Richie was looking, or anything.

“Well, ya shouldn't,” he said, pointing a plastic fork in Mike's direction, who hadn't been able to rid himself of his guilty, vaguely queasy expression since that morning. “He was one-up last night, and now the score is even. It was a fair shot.”

“Yeah, but look at him,” Mike glanced over, and Richie's eyes followed. His friend – Barry? No, Ben, yeah. The one with the stutter, or was that the other one? Anyway – whats-his-face had moved to put an arm around his shoulder. “We should apologise.”

“Don't you dare,” he said, ungraciously shoving a forkful of mac and cheese into his mouth, “no apologies. It's a rule.”

“What's a rule?” Beverly slotted herself in next to Richie, while Stan appeared beside Mike, dropping a chemistry textbook on the table. “Am I missing out on something?”

“Not a thing, sweetcheeks,” Richie said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek before she pushed him away with a look of disgust, “s'just Mikey here,” he swallowed his mouthful of pasta, “Mikey here wants to go say sorry to Kaspbrak. But we don't play like that, and he knows it. Ain't that right, Stan the Man?”

Stan glanced up from the book, eyebrows raised.

“Oh, I was actually gonna bring that up. What did you do to him?.”

“Nothing, just drove through a puddle that he happened to be standing next to and he may have gotten a little rainwater on his cardigan. Not even a big deal.”

“He was drenched, Richie.”

“How would you know? You talk to him this morning?”

Stan looked back down at his textbook.

“Maybe.”

“You're not going soft on the fucker, are you Stanthony?”

“Don't call me that,” the tips of Stan's ears flushed pink, “I just think you should apologise for this one. You know how he is about-” he hesitated, just for a second, nose wrinkling, “hygiene and stuff. This might have been a step too far.”

“Stan, are you- fucking hell,” he exhaled sharply, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Guys, no one's saying sorry, got it? It's done. It's over. I got my kick in, he'll get me back with some pathetic bullshit tomorrow. That's how it works. We fuck with each other. No one's allowed to feel sorry for him.” “But-”

“No, Mike! So fucking what, he got his clothes a little wet. Boo-fucking-hoo. Maybe it'll teach him to dress better.”

“He dresses pretty much the same as Stan,” Bev pointed out, “if you think about it.”

“Nah,” Richie rebutted, “Stanley dresses like, like,” he gestured his hand towards Stan, lip pursed as he tried to think of an analogy, “Stan dresses like your cool english teacher, you know? Like that one that every one likes and he's kinda chummy with you and lets you call him by his first name, you feel? He pulls it off. Kaspbrak looks like your shitty math teacher who probably plays golf on the weekends and gets pissy if you use your phone in class. Scratch that, he confiscates your phone if he even sees it. You know the type. He's probably gonna buy a station wagon in the future.”

There was a moment of silence, all three of them looking at Richie with varying expressions of confusion.

“That was-” Beverly said, “oddly specific.”

“Thank you,” he smirked, smug, as if it were a compliment. “Now are we done? We all agree to not apologise?”

He looked between Mike and Stan. Stan rolled his eyes, returning full attention to his textbook. Mike opened his mouth, no doubt to protest, but shut it after a moment and nodded, dropping his gaze to the tray of food in front of him with the same guilt-ridden expression.

“Great! Now that we're all on the same page,” Richie stood, picking up his tray of half-eaten food, “I'm gonna go chain smoke under the bleachers, like the good christian boy mama raised me to be. Miss Marsh?”

“M'eating,” Beverly replied, stuffing another tater tot into her mouth.

“Right,” he took a step out, not at all looking where he was going, “see you losers la- OOF.”

Eddie Kaspbrak was not an intimidating person. It was practically impossible for him to scare people. He was barely five foot five, standing much shorter than his friends and most of the other boys in the school, and quite a few of the girls, and despite being rather fit, he looked quite frail. When he was a kid, his mother use to say it would be easy for someone to pick him up and snap him like a toothpick, and he believed her, because back then anything his mother said was basically god's word. He wasn't hit with the same puberty truck that Bill and Ben were – instead it was more like a puberty tricycle. He never quite shot up, never quite lost the roundness in his face or had his voice drop an octave like his friend's had. He didn't necessarily still look like a child, but he definitely wasn't going to be fooling any liquor store employee or nightclub bouncer any time soon. And the clothes he wore only aided to accent his non-intimidating qualities, the light coloured sweaters, the faded jeans, he knew his wasn't exactly the manliest of wardrobes.

All in all, Eddie was the last person you would expect to be able to make someone feel small.

Richie Tozier had never felt smaller in his entire life than in the moment that followed.

As timing would have it, Eddie had gotten up and travelled across the cafeteria to the garbage bins to dispose of the sandwich he wasn't going to eat. He knew he would unavoidably have to walk right past Richie's table, so he made sure to do as he always did when needing to avoid confrontation; head down, walk quickly.

Richie had stood up, lunch tray in hand, unaware of his proximity to the other, still busy conversing with his friends. He had taken a step, then another, out into the walkway. Eddie hadn't looked up. Head down, walk quickly.

Richie took another step, and turned around.

Eddie looked up, only a split second too late, but too late nonetheless.

Richie sentenced had been cut off by the sound of his lunch tray first hitting Eddie square in the chest, and then clattering to the floor.

The collision drew attention from only the immediately surrounding tables, hushed whispers replacing whatever conversations were taking place previously.

He didn't react, at first, just froze, jaw tight, gaze stuck on the floor, midway between the yellow plastic tray, face down with bits of food splattered beneath it, and Richie's worn down combat boots. His breath was so slow and shallow, there was a point that he wasn't even sure he was breathing.

Richie, for a moment, was sure Eddie had died standing up. He was unnaturally still, just staring at the ground, completely stone-faced. I broke him, he thought, I actually fucking broke the kid.

Eddie looked up, finally, at Richie's face. He decided, seeing as his brain had apparently tried to reboot itself, to base his reaction on Richie's next move. He raised one eyebrow, oh so slightly. It said; this is a test. Answer it wrong, and I will kill you.

Richie was unbelievably put off by the look that Eddie gave him. It wasn't angry, upset, annoyed, anything he was expecting. It was a challenge. The fucker was challenging him. And he really wasn't going to like what would happen if he lost.

“So,” he started, thinking harder about his word choice than he ever had before, “I know you're not going to believe me, but,” he paused, slowly raising his hands up in front of him, as if a gun was being pointed at him, “that was totally an accident.”

The calm before the storm, as they say.

“What,” Eddie said, barely a whisper, “the,” his hands balled into fists at his side, so tight they started shaking, “fuck.”

“Oh Richie,” Beverly muttered from the sidelines, “you poor son of a bitch.”

“Are you actually kidding me, Tozier? Wasn't this morning enough? You have to get your fucking chucks in twice in one day?” Eddie decided then and there, that being an adult was overrated. He was a brat, and he was going to be a brat.

“Chill out a bit, man,” Richie took a brave step forward, snapping his head around to the growing number of spectators, “It's just a stain, it'll come out.” His voice was hushed, praying to every god he knew that this wouldn't escalate in front of everyone.

Eddie was fuming by now – and, ironically, kind of having the time of his life –, his face heating up, and chest heaving. He saw Richie flinch, for a fraction of a second, and felt proud.

God, he was a sadist.

“Just a fucking stain, are you serious? Are you actually fucking serious, Richie?”

Richie wanted nothing more than for an eighteen-wheeler to come crashing through the wall of the school, killing him instantly. “Calm your shit, Kaspbrak, I'm sorry.”

“Sorry? You're fucking sorry?” Eddie had to remind himself that he wasn't supposed to look happy while this was happening, purposefully deepening the scowl on his face. “You are the most inconsiderate, infuriating, irritating,” fuck, running out of synonyms, “disrespectful, single-minded, asshole-piece-of-shit-stoner dickwad,” dickwad? “that I have ever fucking met and I hope you burn in hell, you absolute fucking-” “KASPBRAK.”

Both the boys jumped, as did quite a few of the onlookers who had gathered around their little love spat. Mr. Wagner, the school principal, had pushed his way to the front of the crowd, looking red-faced and mildly disarrayed, to say the least.

“Sir, uh, we were just-”

“Can it. Detention,” he pointed a spindly finger at Eddie, who scoffed a high pitched scoff, and then at Richie. “You too.”

“But I didn't-”

“No but's.”

“BUT SIR-”

“TOZIER.”

Richie let out a defeated sigh.

“Yes sir.”

The man took a deep breath, shooting a look between both of them.

“This,” he gestured to the tray and the food on the floor, “cleaned up.” He turned to look at the crowd of students. “Nothing to see, git.”

Everyone dispersed, going back to their own seats, leaving only Richie and Eddie standing there, pretty much robbed of all their dignity, staring each other down like they could set fire to the other with their eyes.

“I hate you,” Richie spat, top lip upturned to show his teeth.

“Go to hell,” Eddie returned, with the same amount of passion.

“I'm already there, princess.”

“Oh, fuck off, asshole.”

“You fuck off.”

“How 'bout both of you fuck off!” Beverly stood, grabbing Richie by the arm and pulling him away towards the doors of the dining hall, but not before shooting Eddie a look over her shoulder. “He'll see you in detention, hotshot.” She punctuated her sentence with a wink.

This is the worst fucking day of my life, he thought.

Tag list (bolded won’t tag):  @fanficisgoodforthesoul @i-is-gazebo@dandeliontozier @panicatbakerst @howellhxlic @musicalsaftermusicals@bernaynay @bust-a-move-bev @reddie-to-go @richietoaster@omgboiledcabbages @reddietofall @flowersiren @lousytrashmouth @get-fcking-reddie @finnwollfhards @bjrdies @steve-harringtwin @thecastlebyers@books-and-donuts @valenschmidt @grasshoppper @80s-trashmouth@beepbeeprichiellc @little-miss-hellraiser @okay-i-get-it-alreddie @finn-trashmouth @welctothelosersclub @kaspbrakseggo @lolahood @sad-synth @turtleneckrichie @reddieforanything

[red-rosa]

So this is the fourth time I’ve tried posting this. I’m getting a bit irritated with it. Hopefully now this...mess of me trying to get my courier’s reasoning in words rather than thoughts works out. Apologies for being under a keep reading but it is what it is. 

It was difficult, sometimes, to look back at the haphazard whirlwind that had been her life for the last few months and decipher what exactly had been the last act before something inside had shifted and she gained a desire for the now familiar taste of war that coated her tongue. What had led her here, standing on aged and cracked marble with a cigarette given life from a lighter she didn't own and a jacket, stained with Mojave dirt and the blood she'd been promised by so many, slung across her shoulders. She hadn't gone into this with betrayal on her mind. At least, not from her. It was her back that carried the invisible scars of her past, not her hand carrying the blade. The thoughts that had first circled harmlessly like a record through her mind hadn't been cruelly marred into the swarm of sharks they were now by simple oaths given by everyone she'd met. The old mantra of help me, and I'll help you had been shouted, whispered, and pleaded in her direction for days, some twist of fate given by a god that had to be laughing at them even now. She was supposed to be the one dead, not standing here with an eerily quiet screen in front of her and unknowing new empire in her bloodstained fingers. Her existence wasn't supposed to impact so many others, the ability to impact anything beyond her own forged path. But here she was, a crown in her grasp and a brewing war on the horizon.

So, what had it been? What had been the last straw, the last bad bet made on her supposedly bought loyalty?

Loyalty. A funny word, that. What did it even mean in a world that had already died, where its remaining residents were mere vultures picking substance from it's sun-bleached bones? They were all ghosts of a old world. What did they have use for in morals such as loyalty?

Perhaps that had been it. Her need for some stability, some promise that wasn't empty words poured into her ears while they all gouged what they needed from this stranger's soul and mind. She hadn't gotten it from an army to the West. No, those bears had sent their cubs out into a starved wasteland, letting them die simply because their pride wouldn't allow them to back down from a war no one they were "protecting" had wanted in the first place. She was just another poor soul they had to rescue, too proud to admit that she held the cards they needed to play this game. She hadn't gotten it from the East either, what with their offer of bloodshed and revenge even as they sneered behind her back at her "weaker female soul". Certainly it hadn't come from the customer she had failed. Yes, she could admit she'd failed. Her only job at the time, to carry that mysterious chip in her pocket across the lifeless sand, had ended in the package being whisked away and her with earth in her teeth. She was owed no loyalty there; she hadn't earned it by any means, and was lucky to be given another chance rather than be discarded like was common in this time. So why had she broken?

Ironically enough, in a high-stakes situation, it had been too much time that had ruined her. She'd spent her days after that first meeting with the "ruler" of this city on its streets, simply watching the world around her move at a too slow pace. There were people here, people who'd been given another chance like she had. Only....Only they weren't. They were a mimicry, a puppet show, their shadow master pulling the strings to a tune that had lost its heartbeat the moment two countries had laid down the death sentence for the entire human race. She could sympathize; sometimes the strings tied to her wrists and ankles felt more like a noose around her neck than a guiding hand on her shoulder. None of their lives were their own, not as long as three powers threatened to rampage over the Mojave, rolling like thunder and destruction over all those deemed too little to know.

Empathy. She was feeling empathy. That was the word she was looking for. Empathy. That nagging feeling at the back of her mind when she'd crossed into Vault 21, spoke with an overly chipper vaultie whose home had been lost in the name of admittedly-needed progress. That tugging and bothersome emotion running through her bloodstream and hunching her shoulders inward as an invisible defense when she found that room of horrors in Gomorrah that had, until now, gone either unnoticed or unpunished. The little song that played in her mind as she urged the lost and hapless off the cracked streets they made their beds on and towards an unsteady future with a group who simply wanted to help but lacked the resources to do so.

It was ironic. The very thing she'd been screamed at for lacking, had lost numerous souls over, was part of what drove her now. Back in that hotel room in Novac, her little smile as sharp as its mirror with the spider-webbed cracks along the side, she'd been told she was as cold and unfeeling as the machine that had pulled her from the ground. Her silent agreement had closed the room's door and, unknowingly, opened another deep in her mind. Just a crack, mind you. Not enough to let anything through, but just enough to wonder. It widened when later, around a campfire, another soul had left her to wander alone, claiming she cared about no one but herself when she'd voiced disagreement with the handling of a trade route no one seemed to be missing anyway. The gap forced itself open more on the airfield when she'd heard the snarled parting insult about her lack of humanity when it came to the idea of revenge. But it wasn't until she'd reached the heart of the desert, it's bright lights drawing in hungry hopes and dreams, that the door had been thrown open. There she'd been given time to discover what dirty plot had landed her in this role of both warlord and victim. She could see the damage done to the walls, the misguided attempts to bring back a piece of the past in a world that had already moved on. All this time had passed and yet, and yet....Still stuck. Still in place, still helpless, all a prime target for both a bear and a bull.

It was empathy for this city and the people clinging to her in the storm they had little choice but to face that had done it. Here, in a place known for its sin and wealth, she'd cracked open her own rib cage and dug through the ruins of a fractured personality, finding a glimpse of what had been in an effort to heal wounds she hadn't been aware of existing. They'd hooked on, unknowingly, the people that lived here. Talked to her, bonded with this stranger, allowed her to see beyond the glitz and glam and view the soft underbelly that was human nature. In those late nights over whiskey and sunsets and shared stories, she'd found people who weren't just more strangers on the road to either pass or speak to in brief, wary conversations. They were her family, and time had run out for them.  

She'd finished the cigarette, tucking the remains away inside a pocket as she turned away from what might've been a monumental mistake. The courier knew this would haunt her, keep her up at night, wondering if she'd just given it a little more time and faith... There would be negativity. Not everyone would understand that it wasn't greed, like she knew the armies of East and West would shout at her in the days to come. It wasn't a need for power, something she was aware they'd all speculate about in this uncertain time. No, she thought, climbing the stairs once more and heading out towards the new world that, if she wasn't careful, would shatter at her fingertips and cut them all. It was simply for a family that had woken up the trembling creatures that were her empathy and loyalty, to give them, and perhaps all who roamed this desert the gods forgot, a real chance.