#dusted off an old sketch i found in a folder

[baraturts]

[serejae]

margaret

myung jaehyun x doodler!reader

syno; a pencil lead you to him now

a/n ; uncapitalization is intended, some kissing, inspired on our beloved summer besides the exes factor lol :-), enjoy

it was a late night, jaehyun wasn’t home yet and you couldn’t quite fall asleep yet. so you decided to kill two birds with one stone. ever since you were young you had a hobby of drawing, it was normal for you to get asked from people to draw them. unfortunately for them your drawings don’t focus on people but rather sights. as you organized your old drawings you came across a dusty folder hidden all the way in the back of your shelf, curious to see what it is you grab it and clear the dust off. the cover of the folder doesn’t go unnoticed with masking tape messily on it with the words “DO NOT OPEN. YOURE CRAZY.” written on top. you laugh to yourself slighty and take the risk going against your past self. when opening the folder a tiny pencil falls out and all the memories suddenly flash back. picking up the pencil, you immediately sit down and go through the folder.

-

it was almost 2 years ago. you were sketching in a cafe when you got distracted by your phone that you didn’t notice one of your pencils falling out of your pencil case. someone suddenly diverts your attention away from your phone. looking up you see the most (not even exaggerated) mesmerizing man, his lips turn up slight and he clears his throat “sorry for bothering you, but your pencil fell” he said with a slight blush on his face and reddish ears. you laugh slightly and thank him expecting that to be the end of your conversation but to your suprise he paused for a second thinking about what to say

“are you here alone?”

the wise answer wouldve been no, i mean you dont even know the guy

“yeah”

“can i sit?”

-

while reminiscing the moment you played with the pencil, the pencil was special, not only because it lead you to jaehyun but the steps it took to realize you loved him.

there were 2 drawings of jaehyun. the only drawings you ever drew of a person

-

drawing 1 .

its been 2 weeks since you met jaehyun. you both had been talking regularly and you hated it: not because you disliked him or anything but rather the opposite. you found yourself developing a

crush. :-/

as you sat at your table shaking your good pencil between your fingers staring at the blank paper that seems to be staring at you back. thats when you started imagining eyes, nose, lips, a face on the paper but not just anyones face. it was myung jaehyun’s. you never had the urge or willingness to draw a person but something inside your soul was telling you to. trying to push the thoughts back you starting thinking to yourself

“i don’t even remember his face accurately”

“its been 2 weeks pfft”

*ding*

pausing at the notification you flip your phone over and the screen illuminates.

myung jae !

**ONE NOTIFICATION **

“if your not too busy do you wanna ft?:p”

fuck.

before replying back (a obvious yes) you scramble your desk for the pencil he had handed you that day. the pencil was tiny, you kept it because you kept forgetting to throw it away but once you find it you reply with a

“sure”

cant seem too desperate right?

and as he calls you and the screens connect, your met with a familiar face and start doodling. focusing on his voice and you drew, you looked up every so often studying his face.

after finishing you date the corner and shove it in the back of your drawer.

-

drawing 2 .

your crazy.

its been 9 months since you first met jaehyun and it takes every muscle in you to not draw him. you can’t feed into your delusional or into the thought that you might have a crush on him. at this point its more then a stupid crush. you would say you just really really really like jaehyun but you guys werent even dating yet and thats the problem.

everyday for these past 9 months the two of you have become incredibly close, might i add a little too close.

all you could think about was him and normally in situations like this you would draw things you like to get your mind off of whatever you were stressed about which sadly wouldn’t work in this situation

as he was what you like and all you could think about.

after a hour on debating (3 minutes) you sigh and open your camera roll, opening the album “mjae<{3” your favorite photo of him, one you didnt even know you took but there was something different about the photo

his eyes.

theres no way he couldnt feel the same about you, right?

shut up.

you stopped the thoughts and started doodling, sketching all the details on his face. youve memorized his face probably more then your own now that you think about it.

adding the finishing touches and dating it, you back away from the paper and stare at it

how does he have you wrapped around his finger so well?

grabbing your phones you search variations of questions into google

“why cant i stop thinking of a guy”

“how to know if you like a guy”

“does my crush like me????” you made sure to find one made bv a guy to insure accuracy.

unfortunately the answers didnt help you

they all lead back to love

and thats when you realized

you don’t really like myung jaehyun

your inloveeeeeeee with myung jaehyun.

jumping onto your bed you scream into your pillow and go into a rage. scrambling around your room you find a folder, empty everything inside, get tape from your desk and aggressively put the tape on there. taking your marker you write “DO NOT OPEN. YOUR CRAZY.” you stuffed the current drawing in there as well dug in your drawer for the previous one. once inside you grab the pencil that started it all and put it inside too. then shoving it to the back of your shelf.

-

a year after meeting jaehyun thats when he finally asked you to be his partner, he had asked to meet in the same cafe you 2 had met. you arrived on time while jaehyun was a bit late, you didnt mind too much though. while waiting you scrolled on your phone when you suddenly heard a voice

“excuse me?

i think you dropped this.”

you look up confused and see a bouquet of flowers with a sticky note attached to it

“be my partner? (plz)” as well a silly drawing of you and jaehyun as cat and dog. looking up you see his familiar face that has a reddish tint

“of course.”

-

you hear the door open snapping you out of your thoughts

“baby? im home!”

“at my desk jae”

you hear him shuffe his way to your desk and kisses you on the head before looking at your desk

“oh look! its the pencil i gave back to you when we first met, you still have it?” he laughed, his eyes shift over to the two drawings on the table of no other then, him.

“woah…”

he said as he picked up the drawings seeing the dated marks

“these are amazing babe, but i thought you didnt draw people?”

you look down at the pencil and smile

oh you couldn’t wait to tell him the storied behind the drawings

you looked up at the sticky note on your wall before opening your mouth

“funny story…”

[biolizardboils]

Crumpled Up Pages: Old Captain Underpants WIPs #1-4

The First Epic Movie turned 5 earlier this month, and I dug through some old folders to write this post about it. In the process, I found some fanfic ideas I’d written down, fleshed out a little, and then forgot about for years. So while hyperfixation still has its grip on me (and while there’s still some extra activity in the tag), I figured I’d finally set these dust bunnies free!

A few ground rules before this deep dive descends:

When I say “fleshed out a little,” I’m putting major emphasis on the “little.” Some of these docs contain detailed notes and snippets of dialogue, but others are just a title and a vague one-sentence summary. I’ll be transparent about what each one contains, and try to fill in the bigger gaps by memory.

If you were around for the CU Fandom Renaissance of 2017, some of the ideas here might sound familiar, ‘cus I refitted them into fanart and headcanon dumps that actually got posted. I’ll link to those where they’re relevant.

These were all written and abandoned months before a CU show was even announced, so there’s no Epic Tales content or characters in here. Sorry if you were expecting any!

I’m splitting this into two posts cus it was getting and taking too long. This first part will cover the 4 simplest, fluffiest WIPs; the second one will tackle the 6 sadder, more character-heavy ones. And with character-heavy stuff comes spoilers for the movie and books — especially the books. If you haven’t read all 12, you’re probably wondering why anyone would care about Captain Underpants spoilers. First off, your loss; second off, BEWARE!

And finally: if you write fanfiction and feel inspired to use any of these ideas? You have my permission to do so! Seriously, steal anything here and put your own spin on them! I don’t care much for credit, but if these old things help fuel someone else’s creativity, I’d love to know!

That’s enough prep, probably. Plug your nose!

WIP #1: Inspiration

It can come from even the worst of places. ...And people, in this case. [Book!Verse, pre-Book 1.]

This document contains a long script, but no context; I can remember the gist though, so I’ll insert that in-between dialogue. Basically it’s third grade, and George and Harold are in detention again. They cheat to fill up the blackboards like usual, but they’re too bummed out to start a comic afterwards. George sits around stewing in his frustration while Harold angry-scribbles Mr. Krupp yelling.

“...Why does he hate us so much, George?”

“I dunno. Maybe ‘cause he can’t handle our coolness? …Nice drawing, by the way.”

“Thanks. …It’s making me sad just lookin’ at it, though.”

“Yeah, me too. …I wonder what he’d look like if he smiled.”

“...?”

“...I mean, like, a real smile, not an I’ve-got-you-now smile.”

“Oh. Hmmm…”

Harold erases Krupp’s wide yelling mouth and draws a goofy smile in its place.

“Aw, man, now it’s just creepy.”

“Darn.”

The boys keep editing the drawing until it stops being creepy and starts being funny. George erases Krupp’s toupee, remembering the time they stole it and the teachers couldn’t take him seriously without it. Harold draws one of his office curtains around his neck, adding more color and kinetic energy. Soon they’re struggling not to laugh out loud, but they manage to calm down… until George gets an idea that takes the sketch from great to legendary.

“Waitwaitwaitwaitwait. Remember what my pop said about Superman yesterday?”

“That he looks like… DUDE. Duuuuuude.”

Harold redraws Krupp’s entire lower body so he’s only wearing underwear. Then with a flourish, he adds the finishing touch – two dots on his chest – and they both lose it. All their laughter finally prompts the real Krupp to check on them, and predictably, he rips up the drawing. It upsets the boys in the moment, but they’re still in much higher spirits than before, and brainstorm a new comic about their new creation as they skateboard home.

“You think we should make his origin issue first?”

“Naw, let’s get right to the action! His outfit’s already the perfect hook – finally, a superhero who actually does fly around in his underwear!”

“Yeah, and he could fight with Wedgie Power!”

God, rediscovering this gave me the most uncontrollable grin. From the date it was last opened, I think this fic was meant for September 1st, 2017 (Book 1’s 20th anniversary), and I gave up after missing it. For shame, 2017!me. For shame.

——————————————————————————————————

WIP #2: Untitled Boomer One-shot

Harold won’t admit it, but he’d slay a dragon for his little sister. [Book!Verse but only cus this scene was deleted and is thus dubiously canon]

This doc’s nothing but notes, so I’ll paraphrase the plot: Ms. Hutchins takes Heidi and Harold to Boomer the Purple Dragon: Live! Harold was gonna stay with the Beards but they cancelled last minute, and he’s grumpy about it the whole time. When the show ends, kids gather in front of the stage to meet Boomer; Ms. Hutchins suddenly gets an important call, and makes Harold walk Heidi up there. 

But the dragon’s mascot suit is big up close for a 6-year-old, and Heidi gets so scared she starts crying. She’s rooted to the spot and waves her arms in panic, but “Boomer” thinks she wants a hug and waddles closer and closer... until Harold kicks him in the groin. Their mom understandably grounds him for it, but Heidi is grateful and calls him her hero :)

This one was based on the classic “kid hits mascot in the weak spot” genre of AFV, but also on an early memory of mine! My sister and I loved Arthur as babies, so our mom took us to see this thing. The characters suddenly being real (and huge) was so upsetting that we scream-cried until she took us home early. (Speaking of Arthur, it’s a shame Heidi’s never really done anything in canon, I can see her having big DW energy.)

——————————————————————————————————

WIP #3: When Worlds Collide

It was less “love at first sight” and more “love at first squawk.” [Book!Verse, Book 7.]

A quick refresher: George told Harold to take Crackers back to dinosaur times, but he left her in the treehouse with Sulu instead. Later in the book, they’re shown snuggling in their sleep 🥺🥺 Anyway, this fic was about what they got up to in between! It’s actually the most complete of the lot, but only because it’s so short and simple.

It opens with Harold introducing them to each other, leaving out some treats for them (hamster food for Sulu, crackers for Crackers), then telling them to play nice until he comes back. They do not. Crackers pulls a Thunderclap the moment Harold leaves, Sulu karate-chops her throat until she spits him out, and they wreck half the treehouse in the ensuing chase.

Eventually they settle for standing in opposite corners and hissing at each other. Then Sulu… *squints* …records Crackers’ hisses with his bionic ears and plays them back so they can communicate? …Yeah, okay, why not. The outline ends after this sudden development; I’m guessing they talk things out and start to catch feels, before settling in to sleep. Anyway here’s the few sentences I actually wrote out:

Harold opened the door, Sulu got on the floor, and in walked the curious dinosaur.

[…] As predator and prey faced off, a little boy and his mother happened to be walking down Vine Street. “Mommy,” said the little boy, “I can hear a bionic hamster and a pterodactyl fighting in that treehouse!”

“Oh, please,” his mother scoffed. “How do you even know what that would sound like?”

The boy considered pointing out the CHOMPs, SQUEAKs, and SQUAAAWKs emanating from the tree in big blocky letters, but decided it wasn’t quite worth the trouble.

The doc ends with a reminder to not refer to Crackers with any pronouns until the two pets can understand each other. Also I was gonna title this after a Tony Orlando and Dawn song as foreshadowing, but I couldn’t choose one, so instead I went with this Spongebob song lol.

——————————————————————————————————

WIP #4: Untitled Tommy One-shot

The school’s been near bully-free ever since Treehouse Comix Inc. was formed. Tommy reflects on this from the safety of his locker. [Movie!Verse with a hint of Book 9. CW: discussion of bullying.]

A Kid I Never Named knocks on Tommy’s locker and offers to trade Pilkeymon. They have to be sneaky, because it’s the 90′s and they have to slip a Link Cable through the locker vents without being spotted.

As they trade, the other kid asks Tommy why he hides all the time. He explains that it’s a habit from when Kipper Krupp terrorized the halls. But Kipper left four years ago, and the legend of Wedgie Magee has kept other bullies at bay ever since; the other kid points this out and asks why he still hides. This led into “a somber discussion on adverse school experiences and the long-lasting coping mechanisms they cause” (exact words from the doc). Unfortunately 2017!me never wrote any dialogue, and I’m mad at her for that.

Trivia drop! I used the Pilkeymon joke a few times at @treehouseblogsinc, but it’s way older than that, and also not mine: Pilkey.com used to have a coloring game named Pilkeymon’s Paintbox. It even had art of Dav’s old spiky-haired avatar with Pikachu ears! There’s no trace of it on the Internet anymore, but I swear I’m not making this up.

I left a note here to add that Tommy has glow-in-the-dark stickers in his locker, which ended up in this headcanon dump. There’s also a list of last names I came up with for him but never chose between: Chambers, Lakatos (which I shared once here), and Lockenspiel. Right now I’m leaning towards the last one, it rolls nicely off the tongue.

——————————————————————————————————

That’s it for now! Not gonna lie, I’m still nervous about posting the other 6 WIPs. Most of them deal with Book 12, and all the tough subjects that that entails. But hey, I made this bed, and by God am I gonna lie in it. Thanks for reading so far!

[crystalgirl259]

The Flame and the Dragon Ch4

Chapter 4: The Duke

Kai sighed in relief as he dropped the bags at his feet and plopped down next to the equally exhausted Lloyd on the side of the town square fountain. The large, glistening fountain outside of city hall in the dead center of the entire city. Built only a handful of years ago, this fountain at the old town center was there to represent the importance of all generations, both young and old, and what they have to offer. Its position within the city was meant to represent the strong mind and balanced way of life the city strived for.

It was designed by Nya.

She had wonderfully captured the natural beauty of the region and used a personal style to convey her vision in this piece of art. Every element was crafted and created with deluxe materials from local suppliers, ensuring this monument will remain an important aspect of the community spirit for many more years.

"Think we got enough food?" He teased.

"Well, we got everything on Nya's list." Lloyd smiled. "You remembered the chocolate right?"

"Yes, I remembered the chocolate." Kai rolled his eyes playfully. Lloyd smiled and dug into his big brother's bag before pulling out a folder and opened. He thumbed through the pages until he found a small back of stapled pages and pulled out the top one, smiling before placing the pack in Kai's lap.

"Care to show your favorite little brother what you've been working on?" He flashed a bright smile and his infamous pleading look.

"Maybe later," Kai replied calmly, earning him a look of pure shock from the blond boy. Kai could never resist Lloyd's babyface when he wanted something. Kai just laughed and scooped his collection of papers in his hands before looking at the one Lloyd picked out. The poem was written in his hand above the image of a field of roses. At the heart was an ancient castle that dated back to the early 18th century. The only difference was this castle was pure white, each stone chiseled from stabs of pristine marble.

Lloyd leaned over his brother's shoulder, immediately engrossed in the detailed sketch of his big brother's.

"Jeez Kai, you could give Nya a run for her money."

"It's just a sketch."

"It's still awesome! Now, can I see the poem or not?" Lloyd pleaded with a whine in his voice.

"No!"

"But it's amazing!" He begged and giggled as Kai blushed.

"You think everything I write is amazing." He smiled, rolling his eyes.

"Because they are!" He insisted, kneeling over the side of the fountain to dig through Kai's folder. "Didn't you say that one goes with another poem or passage? Here it is!" He cheered in victory pulling out another passage Kai wrote and placed in his lap. "This one! I remember cuz when you were reading you had this really dreamy look on your face." His smile almost split in half at the dark blush suddenly covering Kai's face. He snatched both things away and stuffed them back in his folder.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, green bean." Kai insisted with a small smirk. It would have convinced anyone else despite the faint scarlet dusting Kai's cheeks, but not to Lloyd and Nya.

"Yes, you do! You wrote that about the Dragon Lord didn't you?" He smirked playfully. The brunette's eyes nearly bulged out of his skull at Lloyd's innocently smirking face.

"How do you know that?!" He spluttered, completely flabbergasted. The youngest Smith almost burst out laughing at his older brother's panic.

"I didn't, but it's written all over your face!" He gasped in between laughs. Growling in defeat, Kai ran his hand through his hair and sighed.

"Yes, they were inspired by the fairy tale, but no it's not about him, I wrote them after I had a dream." He explained as Lloyd blinked in bewilderment. "I know silly, right?"

"No! I wanna hear it!" He insisted widening his eyes. Rolling his eyes again, knowing Lloyd wouldn't let the subject drop, he continued.

"Alright, well, every night, I dream I'm in a field of flowers outside the castle and while I'm there, I hear a song playing and I follow it; then I see a man standing there holding the most beautiful music box I'd ever seen."

"Is he handsome?" Lloyd asked, teasingly, but Kai chose to ignore that question.

"The music was so lovely; it reminded me of the songs Mom and Dad used to sing to us, but in the most amazing voice I've ever heard." He sighed in awe. "The second I woke up, I just wrote the poem down and then I just couldn't get that man out of my head; I kept dreaming about him more and more." He explained unwittingly, letting his hidden passions seep into his voice; something that didn't go unnoticed by Lloyd. His smile only widened until it nearly split his face in half.

"You're in love~" He sang and Kai almost fell off the fountain. "You're in love with your dream prince!" He teased, with a smirk that put even his siblings to shame as he leaned over his older brother. "And don't try and deny it either, that might work on someone else, but not someone who's known you as long as I have!"

"The Dragon Lord is only a fairy tale, he's not real." Kai sighed, saddened, looking heavenward for assistance to his dilemma.

"Don't worry, bro; I'm sure you'll find your true love." Lloyd encouraged, leaning against the brunette's shoulder. Kai chuckled and ran his fingers through Lloyd's blond hair.

"You're a hopeless romantic, green bean."

"Hopeful." He corrected mischievously. Both boys broke into a fit of laughter until they were interrupted by the sound of a carriage and horses pulling to a stop. Just like that, everyone in town stopped to carry out the weekly ritual that was as practiced and routine as everything else in Ignacia. Everyone was more than happy to greet the two people that were exiting the carriage. The first to exit the expensive, flamboyant carriage was a middle-aged woman wearing a simple but expensive pale green dress.

Her long black hair was tied in a high ponytail by a pretty dark green ribbon, while her toxic green eyes glowed against her deathly-pale skin.

She was a noble maiden without a doubt, but she was not the reason everyone had stopped to stare. The man she turned and bowed her head to was. The brothers recognized his walk before he even stepped out of the carriage. He looked nobler than the woman. The man stepped out of the carriage adorned in a black suit that looked like the most expensive embroidery anyone had ever seen and a necklace of the finest craftsmanship. The outfit was only a simple outing suit but it was still the most expensive thing either brother had ever seen.

The pants alone probably cost more than their entre combined wardrobes.

His white gloves were molded the man's perfect hand and the suit hugged his muscles tightly. The newly polished shoes shined as he stepped down from the carriage. Men and women became lovestruck at his appearance and some people were instantly struck with jealousy or admiration. That combined with perfectly smooth, unblemished white skin, a perfect face, long jet black hair with a green streak in it, and ghostly green eyes, Duke Morro Vento was in every inch a fairy tale prince.

After all, Morro's family had founded the town and still owned it to this day.

Kai never realized how rehearsed Morro's walk was. It was coy and arrogant, just like his glances and his audacious smile. Morro must have returned from a successful trip because he seemed more arrogant today. Kai's gaze turned to Lloyd who nodded in understanding. Both boys picked up their books and the groceries, ready to leave. But a second too late, the duke's gaze found them and he smiled, a seductive smirk that Kai hated more than anything else.

Again he strolled over, cutting off their only exit before the two boys could sneak away.

"Hello, Kai." He smiled sweetly, but the teen saw right through it.

"That's Mr. Smith, your grace." He retorted with a hard gaze. At one point he may have been allowed Morro to call him by his first name, but he had lost that right years ago. Morro's predatory gaze immediately hardened when the brunette used his title instead of his name, though he'd told him time and time again he was allowed to. Kai simply refused to. It was so hard to believe that this arrogant and pompous man obsessed with luxury and social position was the same sweet and free-spirited kid the Smiths knew as children.

Morro's grandfather and their father Ray had been close friends for years.

It was solely because of Morro's grandfather the family moved to this town in the first place. Morro's grandfather had been Duke of the city and the peasants for almost sixty years. He had made it perfectly clear he was just as much a citizen of the town as the rest of the valley. He never cared for social status or reform and only for the well-being of the town and the citizens. As a result, the two families had been quite close. Morro was only two or three years older than Kai.

Sometimes their parents joked about the two of them getting married one day.

This was something Morro's parents took to heart for the future, especially as the children entered adulthood. Ray never considered the idea, especially since he knew none of the children seemed to like Morro in that manner. But once Morro's grandfather died and Ray fell ill, everything changed. Once Morro and his family took the role of Duke and Duchess, and delighted in the royal lifestyle, the Smiths saw less and less of Morro. He'd become too comfortable in the position of his family.

"How many times must I ask you to call me Morro, Kai?" The Duke smiled sweetly, hoping for a romantic response. The brunette just rolled his eyes and gathered his papers together before tying his folder closed. He lifted it to put it away but Morro suddenly snatched it.

"What are these, beautiful?" He asked with mock curiosity, flipping through the papers.

"Your grace, please return my property." He said and it took every ounce of Kai's willpower to remain civil. It was for the sake of his family's good name that he didn't snatch it from his hands and scold him like a child.

"Did you write all these, darling? You must have way too much time on your hands if you waste it scribbling away and reading books." He laughed and Kai growled at the mockery in Morro's voice.

"That's not true!" Lloyd exclaimed and was on his feet faster than anyone expected of the young boy. "Kai's an amazing writer, if you even bothered to read them instead of spending all your time in that stupid shack you call a palace, you'd recognize some good writing." He growled at the duke. A few eyes widened and jaws dropped at Lloyd's comment, but Morro paid the boy no mind and snapped the folder closed, holding it as if it were a discarded garment.

"Oh darling, you have so much promise; don't you think it is about time you got your head out of those silly stories and started paying attention to more important things?" He asked and his voice held a seductive purr that made Kai shiver in aggravation. "I mean, the whole town is talking about it! You spend all your time working at that little shop or reading, it is such a shame." He spoke in such a dreary tone as if Kai's life was that of an unfortunate pauper.

Kai closed his eyes and ran his hand through his hair.

He let the duke rant, knowing full well he wouldn't care if he was paying attention to him or not. It had been this way since Morro became the Duke. He accepted the position with a smile and had since turned his ambitions to accustoming Kai to the royal life. The trio lost touch with him as a result, especially Kai, who rejected the idea of the rich and nobility; preferring a life of freedom away from petty, materialistic things. After all, he was perfectly happy living with his siblings where the three could carry out their dreams.

Of course, Morro didn't notice or even care.

"Of course, if you were married to a more... privileged person you wouldn't have to work a day in your life." Morro grinned as his emerald eyes fixed in a cruel seductive glint and met Kai's amber orbs.

"Marriage?" Kai repeated as his eyes widened. "I don't think so Morro, I like working and besides, I don't want to marry just anyone; now, please return my folder." He ordered, attempting to mask the hostility in his voice, holding out his hand.

"Oh, but it wouldn't be just anyone." Morro continued, ignoring the brunette, and held the folder out of his reach so Kai's gaze was fixed on him. "You of all people deserve far more than just anyone; you deserve someone beautiful, wealthy, well-respected-"

"Those are all material things, Morro, not what you should be looking for in marriage." Lloyd cut him off, his hands balled into fists at his sides.

"Give me my folder back, Duke Vento."

"You need someone who's known you since you arrived in this town, who's courted you for years." He smirked as he leaned closer to the brunette, irritation marring the seductive charm.

"I won't ask you again Morro, now stop acting childish and give me my stuff back!" Kai thundered in a harsh tone. Taken aback by the scolding and the looks of the townsmen, he regained his composure and with as much dignity as he could muster returned the folder to Kai.

"Very well, we'll talk later than; come along, Bansha, let us return home." He smiled as he gestured to the raven-haired girl, who followed obediently. Kai's amber eyes were almost red with rage until Lloyd pulled on his arm a bit. Kai's gaze turned to his little brother's curious stare.

"Is he really so naïve that he can't tell you're ignoring his flirting on purpose, or is he just acting?" He asked as he cocked his head cutely, making Morro suddenly freeze in his tracks and Kai burst into laughter, his anger forgotten. Morro turned around with a mortified look on his face. Did Kai's brother just insult him? Without even trying?

"How dare you!" He snapped, pointing accusingly, his composure shattered.

"Now, now, my lord." Kai chuckled. "He's only joking, come on Lloyd, let's get home before Nya wonders where we've been." He smirked and Lloyd smiled as the two scooped up the groceries and books and strolled past the duke and the noblewoman and down the street towards home. Once they were out of earshot of town and Morro, Kai turned to his smiling little brother.

"Thank you for that, green bean; I swear I would have beat the crap outta him if he called me 'darling' one more time."

"I don't know why you put up with him!" Lloyd asked with a snort. "You'd think it would finally penetrate that thick skull of his that you're not interested!"

"I doubt that." Kai sighed, annoyed. "Morro never was one to give up." He added and he knew that was true from experience. Morro had waited and tried for years to coax him to his side. "Hopefully when Nya wins this year, we'll finally have enough money to leave this miserable place." He smiled, confidently.

"I hope so!" Lloyd cheered. "Even I'm getting sick of this town, but I'd miss Dr. Saunders and Brad." He admitted. Kai hummed in understanding as he looked at the large clock tower and his eyes widened.

"Oh shit! Look what time it is!"

"We didn't even make dinner yet and you know what happened last time we got home late?" The youngest Smith groaned as he turned to his middle sibling with concern.

"Don't worry, Nya's a smart girl; she's not dumb enough to repeat her mistakes," Kai assured him. No sooner had Kai said those words, however, an explosion erupted from the Smith home, and thick black smoke pooled from the chimney and kitchen windows...

[scaryscarecrows]

Garden of Stone

He doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t sleep because he’s still hearing that gunshot and seeing that dog only sometimes it’s not the dog, it’s Kitty (what’s left of her) and-

Yeah. There’s a reason he’s sitting on his bed, shivering in the cool night breeze and watching the clouds vie for coverage of the moon.

Granny took something for her aches and pains-some bitter concoction the doctor makes for her-that’ll keep her asleep tonight. He takes advantage of this to get dressed and go outside for a walk.

It’s heavy outside. The breeze is pushing the clouds around, but there’s a weight to it. Rain’s coming again, he can feel it in the air.

He takes a path more on muscle memory than any real intention, and ends up at the old cemetery. The gate hangs on rusty hinges, more for show than anything, and he lets himself in and heads to the back, to the Grey Lady.

The Grey Lady probably used to be The White Lady, but she’s been here longer’n anything else, since before the civil war. He likes her. She’s quiet. Friendly, almost, for a grave marker.

He settles cross-legged at the base of her skirts and leans his head against the cold stone. She’s lifelike, apart from the blank gaze-it’s always a little surprising those skirts aren’t soft.

The moon manages to make itself visible, at least for a moment, and the crosses and tombstones gleam under its weak light. A barn owl, silent as a ghost, makes a sudden dive. There’s a squeak, and then it rises with a gently-swaying tail dangling from its talons.

Crunch, crunch.

Footsteps?

Crunch, crunch.

Yep, footsteps. And whistling, which is surprisingly creepy this late at night.

Doo-doo-da-da-dee-dee-dee-doo-doo-dee…

What is…wait. He knows that tune…what is that…kookaburra. Weird.

Crunch, crunch.

He scrambles behind the Lady and waits. Probably just someone out for a late-night walk, or maybe a tramp passing through. They get those sometimes, but it’s awfully late…

He pokes his head around the Lady. The moon’s still out, illuminating the path with surprising clarity. And, more importantly, the walker.

He doesn’t know that silhouette, which is strange in and of itself. Maybe it’ll come to him…nope. He has no idea who that is.

Whoever it is opens the cemetery gate and now he’s starting to get a little nervous. Late-night walkers he can understand, but he’s never seen anyone else here this late at night.

Crunch, crunch.

And no one ever comes this far back, ever.

The moon seems brighter than ever and he presses up against the Grey Lady, clinging to some childish fancy that she’ll protect him. Which is silly, there’s nothing to be protected from-

“I know you’re here.”

He catches his breath, pinching his lips shut to keep from making any sound. That voice is unfamiliar to him. It’s a genderless voice, not from around here.

“Come out. I want to talk to you about earlier.”

There’s nothing he can use for a weapon. He’s going to have to run for it and hope whoever this is doesn’t have a gun.

“About what you saw.”

He didn’t see anything.

“Don’t be frightened.”

He’s not.

He takes a deep breath and mentally gauges the distance between him and the gate, factor in clusters of tombstones to avoid, add in potential gun…

“Don’t run.”

Joke’s on them! Ask anyone-good luck catching Jonathan Crane if he’s really decided to ditch you. Call it a side effect of ‘I don’t want to be thrown in the pond again’, whatever.

He dashes out from behind the Lady, dodges a cross, and promptly flings himself behind a tombstone when a shot rings out.

“Stop.”

This isn’t the same thing as ‘get off my lawn’ or even ‘the book or you, Scarecrow?’ This isn’t even close. His heart’s going a million miles an hour and he doesn’t remember seeing anything with this much clarity-every little crack on the stones, every speck of dust, it’s all so vivid.

He doesn’t want to die. Not like this.

Like hell like this. He wants out of this goddamn town, and not in a pine box. He wants to get out and see the ocean and go to university and-

Crunch, crunch.

He’s going to have to risk it. It’s dark-the moon’s ducking back behind a cloud already.

He bolts for the gate, trying to keep low and not run in a straight line, and there’s another shot that whizzes too close for comfort.

The gate looms up, still partly open, and he squeezes through the gap and takes off down the road.

Crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch!

There’s another shot and he veers off-path, hoping they’re not familiar with the area. Okay…turn here, mind the tree root…

They’re not familiar with the area-the crunching has slowed. He can’t see them anymore, but that’s all right, he can hear them trying to feel their way.

Why does this tree have to shed so many leaves? Doesn’t it realize that the noise it’s causing could get him killed?

He inches back towards the main road, freezing every half-step, until he feels plain dirt under his shoes at last.

Crunch-cru-FUCK.

A nervous grin flits across his face. They’ve found the tree root, sounds like.

He backs away until he’s pretty sure they haven’t seen him, then turns around and runs for home.

* * *

Kitty’s not at school.

He doesn’t notice until second period, because they don't share a first and he presumed she was running late. But no, she’s not here and there’s a sinking feeling that says something’s wrong.

Nothing’s wrong. That’s ridiculous. She’s probably sick or something, that’s all. This has nothing to do with…whatever they’ve stumbled into. Nothing.

So he collects her homework assignments and pretends he’s not relieved when she answers the door that afternoon.

“Hey.” He’s never seen her this pale, or in pajamas, and it’s weird. “You can come in.”

He shakes his head.

“I-I brought your homework.”

She grimaces but takes the folder.

“Thanks.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Stomach flu.” She lowers her voice. “I needed a day, but Mum thinks it’s a bug. Y’know.”

“Did you tell her what happened?”

“She’d never let me out again!” That would be ideal. “M’fine. Just…this never happened at home.”

“Don’t…just…be careful.” Mrs. Richardson’s not around, is she? He doesn’t hear her… “I ran into someone last night, I don’t know what they were doing, but they, ah…they thought I’d seen more than I did. I guess. I don’t know.”

“What are you on about?”

“They shot at me and chased me down the road. I’m fine.”

She hugs him and oh god what does he do? Hug back? Stand still? Pat her head?

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know-”

Yeah, well, too late now.

He hugs her back, stiffly, and wonders if she’s going to let go. She doesn’t seem so inclined.

“Kitty?”

“Sorry.” She steps back. “I didn’t…there wasn’t much to see.”

“They thought otherwise. So just…just be careful.”

“What’s going on?”

He shrugs.

“I don’t know. Anyway. Um. There’s a test on Friday in math, just so’s you know.”

“Ugh.”

“It’ll be fine. Math is easy.”

“Maths is a fucking nightmare!”

“Watch your mouth!” Mrs. Richardson warns and Jonathan jumps. How much has she heard? When did she get here? “Hello, Jonathan.”

“Hello, Ma’am.” She frowns. What? It’s been ingrained, he can’t just turn it off! “I was just dropping off Kitty’s homework.”

“Thank you.”

“Thanks a lot.” Kitty grumbles. “I’m dying and you bring me work.”

“Go back to bed, sickie.”

“Mu-um…”

“Don’t you take that tone.”

She pulls a face.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Feel better?”

“Can I get you anything, dear?”

“No, I need to be getting home. Good-bye, Ma’am.”

“Mary!”

He tries a smile and turns around before she can try to make him say it.

* * *

He’s not nosey. That trait is reserved for his less enlightened neighbors. He is, however, annoyed that someone felt the need to shoot at him. He takes offence to that sort of thing. That’s a reasonable feeling, in his opinion.

So it’s for that reason alone that he’s sitting at his desk with a piece of paper and a pencil, drawing up a list of everyone in town.

He knows the person last night wasn’t a local, but there’s something about that property they’re interested in. A little too interested in-shooting at trespassers, okay. Hell, he can see some asshole losing their temper with the dog, even. (Griggs once chased a stray cat with a razor blade, boasting that he was gonna skin it alive. Jonathan has no idea how a black widow found its way into his backpack. None at all.)

But tracking him down? That’s weird. If he’s going to be shot at, there’d better be a good reason. Or at least a reason he can understand.

He jots down Wicker’s name, pauses, and makes a note that Wicker’s probably dead. Or at the very least incapacitated. He certainly wasn’t the one chasing him last night. He doesn’t love his property that much.

Who else…that’s everyone.

Why did he bother? He made a list. Wow. So productive. He already knows it wasn’t anyone from town, what good does this do?

He scrunches the paper up and slumps down in his chair. This is pointless. This is pointless and he’s just going to give up and when he sees Kitty tomorrow, he’s going to tell her to do the same. Hell, she’s probably going to drop it without his input. She was rattled this afternoon.

It’s bugging him, though. Nobody cares about Wicker-for all he knows, the guy’s been dead for months. So why the paranoia? What’s out there to find?

He frowns, un-scrunches his paper, and flips it over. The house had looked how he imagined it always had-bed, table, trunk. Nothing of value. If someone killed the old man for money, they probably weren’t getting much.

He sketches out a little diagram anyway, trying to remember if he saw anything else. Kitty might’ve-she’d said there was someone inside, had gotten a look through the window.

Hmm.

There’s a low rumble outside and he glances up. The sky’s black-rain. Rain is here. He’s not going out tonight, that’s for sure.

Well…maybe those rumors about gold are true. Why the place looks as bad as it does remains a mystery, but that might explain…

Forget it. He doesn’t want to know.

[minyoongijjangjjangmanboongboong]

Dissonance Chapter Ten

Description: After spending a year studying abroad in America, Y/N returns to Seoul hoping to greet the familiar city as a new girl. But what will she do when she’s met with old friends she’d rather forget? It seems the strings of fate are determined to test her resolve…and her willpower.

Genre: Fluff and Angst

Pairing: Taehyung x (f) Reader

Word Count: 13.5k

Tags: Badboy!Taehyung, Non-Idol!Au, Rockband BTS!Au, Bassist Taehyung!Au

Warnings: Swearing and mentions of alcohol, although infrequently

A/N: Alright, here’s the thing-

I have no excuse haha. Unfortunately, there was just WAY TOO MUCH to cram into this one chapter for it to be anything short of about 13k. I wish I could have shortened it for you guys! But there was so much to unpack and explain that I really couldn’t find anything to cut. ANYWAY!! One of you lovely folks asked me last week if this chapter would be all flashback, and at the time I planned on writing back in the present day after about 6k words, but I just couldn’t condense everything to make that happen so it is ALL retrospect! I’m sorry! As always, please feel free to shoot me a message whenever you’d like. I’ll respond to all asks within a day of receiving them. And please send feedback, critique, comments, or questions my way and I’ll try to address them! Love you guys, and thanks for the unwavering support!

- Mercury

Previous Chapter – Next Chapter

Masterlist

I met Kim Taehyung when I was three. Of course, I couldn’t remember it. But from the stories my mother told me the two of us had hit it off even then. He’d been my neighbor, living only one house down the street. I wasn’t aware of when or how our friendship began, but if I unpacked the filing cabinets of memories in my brain, he was present in nearly every early one, slid away neatly into individual manila folders and cherished for posterity. Growing up so close together meant our families became close too. His parents would often pick me up from school, and mine would often host sleepovers during which we would giggle from rooms apart, both of us nestled into sleeping bags and pressed close to the wall that separated us. 

It wasn’t until we were around seven that we meant Jimin. He’d moved in across the street from us, moving from serene Busan to bustling Seoul. He’d fallen into step with Taehyung and I perfectly naturally. 

“Get off of me!” he’d screamed one sunny spring afternoon when we were eight. We were wrestling on the ground, tearing up the grass of his mom’s manicured front lawn.

I shook my head, sitting atop his chest and glaring down at him. His face was squished in distaste as he wiggled beneath my weight. “No! Not until you take it back!”

“I don’t wanna!” he shouted, flailing his arms.

I smirked. “Then I’m not moving.”

“Agh!” he exclaimed, glimpsing Taehyung as he was crouched in a fit of giggles beside me. “Help me!” 

Taehyung had only given Jimin an unsympathetic shake of the head before he stood and towered over the two of us, blocking out the sun as he observed from above. “You shouldn’t have said she looked like a rat when she laughed.”

“But it was true!” he said, squirming. “She looks like those rats when they hiss!”

I bounced on his chest and stuck out my tongue. “And you look like a beetle with a bowl for hair,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “My mom cuts my hair!”

“And she uses a bowl to do it!”

He sighed and let his arms fall flat against the earth. “Fine,” he murmured beneath me.

“Is that all?” I asked, my voice sickly sweet. Jimin’s breath escaped him as I bounced once more and he shoved me a little. “I take it back! You don’t look like a rat!”

I laughed in triumph and Taehyung offered me his hand to help me off of our friend. Jimin sat up and glared at each of us before, after a moment of watching us chuckle, he began laughing too and stood on his own, dusting off his cargo shorts.

We entered middle school together, all of us painfully awkward and horribly unaware of it, and navigated the choppy waters of adolescence together. With how much grief we gave each other, it was easy for each of us to think middle school would be easy: a piece of cake. But it proved difficult.

“You found him?” I asked on the phone as Taehyung hovered beside my ear, desperate to hear a response.

Jimin laughed loudly, and the speaker blasted in my ear. “Yeah,” he said. “I asked my mom and she wouldn’t tell me,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, urging him on. “She said you were better off not knowing.”

“But I found my birth certificate in the attic and guess whose name is on it?” he asked.

We didn’t have to guess. “Jimin! That’s so cool!” exclaimed Taehyung and, as his face inched closer to mine so he could speak into my phone, my heart skipped and I quickly pressed the speaker button.

Jimin’s voice echoed through my bedroom as he shouted, “I know!” 

“So what are you gonna do? Are you gonna try to find him?” I asked.

Jimin hummed. “I guess,” he said, then laughed. “I’m gonna try to find him online first though.”

“Want us to come over?” I asked, desperate for Taehyung to move just an inch away from me.

“Can you?”

“We’re working on homework,” said Taehyung, then met my eyes and we laughed. “So yes.”

“Alright! I’ll leave the front door unlocked,” said Jimin, and I heard him shuffle in the background. “Operation Find Jimin’s Dad is live!”

Operation Find Jimin’s Dad yielded results that none of us could have foreseen. He’d found him, the three of us poring over Jimin’s desktop computer that afternoon, and he had sent his father an email. His gentle hands were shaking as he did it. I’d longed to write it for him, to somehow take the pressure from his shoulders and put it on mine. But instead I simply watched him type with unsteady, fumbling fingers. 

His father’s reply came later that night and contained only four words:

Please don’t contact me.

Please don’t contact me…

The words crushed him. Four simple words dismantled all the confidence and hope he’d built over the course of twelve years without this man. He’d wanted to face his father boldly as a strong young man, he wanted him to be proud. But in the end, all he got was a cease and desist. Again, I couldn’t help but wish for his pain to become mine so that on his face there could be only a smile and in his mind there could be only good thoughts. Of course that was unrealistic.

Growing up is hard, no matter who you are. 

But it shouldn’t be that hard for someone so good.

Middle school also marked the beginning of Taehyung’s days spent with his grandmother. His parents worked full time, and despite being kind and generous as far as parents go, they weren’t around as much as Taehyung needed them to be. Part of me always wondered if perhaps he longed for acknowledgement because he lacked it at home. But his days with his grandmother had been, from his accounts, some of the best of his life. I’d visited one day in autumn when we were twelve. 

The house was spacious, but each would-be empty space was filled to the brim with knickknacks and decorations which seldom matched. On nearly every wall was a piece of artwork, hung meticulously and framed with precision. I didn’t recognize any of them, but as he gave me a tour Taehyung listed off every one.

“And that’s a copy of a Manet painting,” he said. His tone was boastful and his dark eyes revealed a pride I wasn’t so used to.

“Sweetheart, that’s Monet,” said a gentle, slightly quaking voice from behind us in the living room.

I turned to meet his grandmother who, despite her age, stood with refinement in her shoulders and a soft but calculating gaze. She smiled at me, docile. “Hello, Mrs. Kim!” I called, bowing to her.

She laughed and shook her head, clicking her tongue as she placed a hand gently upon my shoulder. “Please just call me Grandma,” she insisted with a smile.

I glanced up at her and flushed. Anyone who had a house like this with so much art and so many secrets was someone to be respected. “Okay! It’s nice to meet you, Grandma.”

Taehyung gave my side a sharp jab with his elbow. “Stop being so weird,” he whispered out the corner of his mouth. “Gran, what are we doing today?”

She grinned, showing almost all her teeth. “Today,” she said, rubbing Taehyung’s head with her shaky hand, “we are painting the birds.”

The three of us went outside into her backyard. She kept a garden, but not like my mom’s. Hers was groomed and watered and nurtured with care. All around the enclosed space was climbing greenery, potted plants, trees losing their leaves, and perennial flowers perched towards the sun. I remembered that garden. 

We sat three in a row on a stone bench, each of us glancing skyward to catch a glimpse of the birds as they danced in the trees. We hunched over our pads of paper, each of us sloppily dragging lines where they shouldn’t be. Taehyung had been shy when his grandmother asked us to present our pictures, kicking dirt around on the ground instead of looking at her.

“Come on now,” she insisted, tugging on Taehyung’s beet-red ear. “Let Grandma see.”

Taehyung glanced at me and then at his grandmother and, with a cautious furrow of his brow, handed his pad to her. I inched nearer to see his work. It was lovely, even despite his age. He’d managed to sketch the gesture of a bird mid-flight, adding detail by looking at other, less transient birds. It looked like it might fly off the page.

“Tae,” I said, looking at him with wide eyes. “You’re so good!”

He flushed as he looked at me and then, as if I’d said nothing at all, his attention went straight back to his grandmother. “Gran?”

She had been staring at the piece, pensive, for a good while. Quietly, her lips parted in a smile and she met his eyes, the afternoon sunlight catching in her white hair. “Sweetheart, it’s what I expected.”

Taehyung’s brows went wide. “Huh?”

She chuckled, releasing Taehyung from his worries, and nodded her head at the sketch. “It’s lovely, Taehyung,” she said. “It’s lovely because you made it.”

Never before then and never again after did I see Taehyung’s face become so bright. Even with the boundless beauty of nature before my eyes, all I could see was that big, boxy smile, head tilted to the side, eyes squeezed nearly shut. He had done it that day as he basked in the genuine praise from his grandmother: he became too bright to look at. 

A few months later a new girl came to our middle school. The boys weren’t sure about her at first. She seemed a little scary, they’d said. We’d been placed in the same class, she and I, while Jimin and Taehyung had ben dispersed elsewhere. Our teacher insisted someone show her around and nobody’s hand shot up like it usually did when we got a new student. I supposed the boys were right. 

She stood with an impossibly straight spine and eyes that darted around terribly before settling on something and fixating. She seemed to see right through you. She wore our uniform strangely well, leading to rumors on her very first morning about her hemming it to look better. I found out later that her mother had simply bought the wrong size. It was rare for the class to be so stunned into silence as we were that day, and I was no less intimidated.

But as time in that horrible silence dragged on, her shifting gaze landed on her white tennis shoes and her posture became slightly more awkward. I wasn’t sure why, but seeing a girl with such a strong presence become so small made my heart feel funny. I raised my hand.

Hyerim and I became fast friends, much to Jimin’s dismay. He’d become accustomed to the way things were between Taehyung and me. Hyerim’s assimilation into the group was rocky, and more than one lunch was spent separated from the boys to allow them time to get used to the idea of her. The first time we all hung out was a month after she’d arrived.

“And this is my dad’s office,” I said after having given her an exhaustive tour of the house.

She smiled at me gently, running a hand along my father’s white wooden desk. “What does your mom do?”

“She works with my dad.”

“And your dad’s a businessman?”

I nodded. “He’s the Quality Control Manager at this big retail company,” I said. “He trains people and stuff.”

Absently, she chuckled. “Sounds really boring.”

I grinned. “Sometimes when he comes home his eyes aren’t even open.”

She laughed. “I’d rather die,” she said.

I tilted my head to the side. Wasn’t it normal for adults to hate their jobs? “What do your parents do?” I asked.

Her brown eyes went wide as she looked at me and cleared her throat a little. “Um…my parents do just…normal stuff,” she said, looking down at the desk, touching a few scattered books, avoiding my eyes.

I flushed. She didn’t want to talk about it and I had enough social knowledge at that point to know not to push her. Instead, I wandered towards my father’s window and glanced out at the street. I watched a frisbee sail through the air, cutting the sky in its path, before falling to the ground in my front yard. I raised my brows. I followed the trail the frisbee had taken and found at the end of the rainbow a sheepishly grinning Park Jimin, having made a poor shot.

I sighed and opened the window. “Whoa!” called Hyerim, grabbing my forearm as I slung half my body out the window.

I turned to glance at her. “Hm?”

Worry was etched into her features. “Didn’t your parents say to stay inside the house?”

I chuckled and shrugged. “They’re never here anyway. Who’s gonna tell?”

“Shouldn’t we use the front door?” she asked.

I shook my head. “My parents installed a security system, like, a year ago that logs whenever someone opens the door,” I said, then laughed. “Don’t worry. I do this all the time.”

The two of us clambered out the window and trampled a few flowers on our descent. I led the way across the front yard, snagging the frisbee as I jogged, and sent it flying back towards Taehyung who caught it with a smile my way. I returned it. Hyerim approached behind me and glanced anxiously between the two boys.

I smiled at her. “Don’t be shy. They’re stupid,” I said.

She laughed and nodded. “Alright,” she said slowly as Taehyung tossed the frisbee her way. She was quick to catch it, but her left foot snagged the lace of her right sneaker and she stumbled on the grass.

I raised my brows and the boys ran over to see if she was okay. “Oh my God! Hyerim, are you alright?” I asked.

She looked up at me, eyes straining against the sunlight, and blinked. “Huh?”

“You fell pretty hard,” said Jimin, crouching beside her with a pout. “You should have been more careful!”

“She was just trying to catch the frisbee,” I countered.

He shot me a glare. “So? She should have let it go,” he said.

Hyerim cleared her throat and sat up a little. “I’m fine,” she said.

I glanced at her. “Sorry. It was a low throw,” said Taehyung as he stood beside me. 

She shook her head and gave him a grin. “It’s cool. It didn’t hurt.”

“Oh! But your shirt,” said Jimin with a groan. “God, see? I told you she should have let it go.”

“Stop nagging,” I said.

“Nagging means he likes her,” said Taehyung, to which Jimin gave his kneecap a swift shove.

Hyerim glanced down at her white button-down shirt and her eyes went wide. There in green was a stain the size of Seoul, wrecking the pristine uniform. “Oh shit,” she whispered, staring at the stain with worry.

“Can’t you wash it?” I asked.

“My mom’s gonna kill me,” she said, shaking her head as she stood to her feet. “Oh man. She was telling me about how important this uniform was.” She raked her fingers through her hair.

“Hyerim, it’s okay-,” I began.

“It’s not!” she shouted, then shook her head again. “It’s not.”

We went inside and promptly washed her shirt. The thing came out of the dryer looking as good as new, and Hyerim’s panic subsided as she buttoned it back up. But in her fear I saw something I haven’t been able to forget, something that I’d seen somewhere else. She didn’t want to face her mom. It was a terror so deep and difficult to explain that kids who have felt it tend not to need words at all. I’d definitely seen it before.

“Y/N!” boomed my father’s voice on the first day of summer that year, just a few months after that peaceful day with Hyerim.

I sprinted from the living room into my bedroom, hoping that in locking the door I could escape his rapidly approaching voice. He was shouting after me: no obscenities, no harsh words, but with a tone that said everything for him. I pressed my back against the wall beside my bed, the wall with the window that looked outside. 

“You probably can’t come out and play soccer today, huh,” said Taehyung as we’d left school that day. “Since you’re in trouble.”

“If you didn’t sneak out you wouldn’t be in trouble,” said Jimin, pursing his lips.

I shoved his head and laughed. “He never says yes anyway, so what am I supposed to do?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “Besides, you’re in trouble too,” I said, flicking the silver earring in Taehyung’s left lobe with my index finger. “I’ll come out once he gets home. I’ll ask this time.”

“Oh, I’ll come too!” said Hyerim, taking up Jimin’s left side.

Jimin groaned. “Nobody invited you,” he’d said.

Hyerim, having learned in the subsequent months that his teasing was idle, simply ruffled his hair and smiled. “I’ll wait at Jimin’s house.”

I stood beside my window then, listening to my father shout outside my door, and saw all three of my friends standing in the street, kicking a soccer ball around. Upon catching the sight of motion from my window, Taehyung turned to look at me and waved with a bright smile which I couldn’t return. Hyerim and Jimin turned towards my house as well and hopped about trying to rouse my attention.

I blinked at them. “I’m getting the key,” said my father from outside my door.

I stiffened and turned back to my friends who by then had caught on to something strange going on inside my room. I gnawed on my lower lip, furrowed my brow, and stared out at them for a moment longer. The three had gone still, simply looking back at me. I heard the door handle jangling as my father fiddled with the lock and quickly yanked the white blinds across my window, shutting myself in a world away from my friends outside.

I turned towards my door and watched as my father shoved his way inside, knocking a few of my books onto the ground as the door hit my table. “Y/N,” he said, his tone now measured which was somehow scarier. “We need to have a talk.”

“Another one?” I asked, my voice meek.

He scoffed. “Yes,” he said, nodding with wide eyes as if I were no more than a tiny, stupid child. “We need to have a serious talk about your grades.”

“M-My grades?” I asked, confused.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

“Know what, Dad? I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been doing really well this year,” I said.

He shook his head. “Tell that to the C on your report card,” he said.

My eyes went wide. “What?”

“My office,” he said, turning on his heel and walking out into the hallway. I followed quietly behind. “You spend so much damn time with those boys, you’re starting to prioritize them over your schoolwork. Isn’t it Kim Taehyung who’s been calling you out at night lately?”

I shook my head. “It’s not his fault. I’m the one who makes the plans,” I said. He scoffed. “He’s a troubled kid, Y/N. His parents say he’s acting out lately,” he said.

“Dad, he’s a good per-,”

“He’s trouble.”

He didn’t let me sit when we had meetings in his office, instead forcing me to stand in front of his desk as he rattled off scoldings. My mother walked by, still dressed in a pantsuit from work, and instead of walking into the room she simply shut the door with a sigh and continued on her way. Perhaps I’d expected her to be on my side once.

Perhaps that was expecting too much.

There was something unspoken that united the four of us during those honeyed days, something nobody bothered thinking about too hard. The bond of frightened children grew and developed into the bond of young adults who had people they didn’t want to disappoint. 

Taehyung and I were sitting on the bleachers after our graduation from middle school, the sun casting golden light on his skin as he leaned back on the bench behind us. Jimin and Hyerim had to go to family dinners, but my parents had been too busy to come to graduation, leaving me alone. Taehyung insisted that he also had no plans. He said that even though his parents had closed their restaurant for the afternoon to attend.

I knew better.

“Are you sad?” he asked quietly from beside me.

I inhaled slowly, and then released it. “No.”

“Really?” he asked.

I nodded. “It’s been like this too long now for me to feel anything about it.”

“Sounds like sadness to me,” he said, then opened his eyes and glanced up at me from below. “You’re lucky though.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How so?” 

He smiled. “You have people who expect something from you.”

I scoffed. “That’s lucky? Seems like a burden the more I think about it.”

“It’s best when people believe in you enough to want you to reach your potential,” he said, and I remembered that day in his grandma’s garden.

I thought it was strange. How was I lucky? I had two parents, sure. That was more than Jimin and Hyerim. But they were stringent, authoritarian. Sometimes I wondered if they cared for me at all, or just wanted me to do well for their own benefit. Look at our gifted daughter. She’s special. She’s smart. She’s ours.

But Taehyung saw it as a blessing…

I learned why that summer.

Taehyung invited Jimin and me over to his house late one night. I was as usual grounded for reasons unknown and as usual had to sneak out my bedroom window, quiet as a mouse. I tiptoed across the grass of my front yard, the silver moonlight guiding my way down the street. Taehyung was sitting on his porch and Jimin was standing beside him. I approached and smiled down at Taehyung who had lazily restrained his hair with a bandana. It was getting too long.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you here today,” began Taehyung, clearing his throat as he stood to his feet and smirked down at each of us. I watched him, wary, as Jimin groaned. “Oh my God, shut up. What do you want at one in the morning?”

Taehyung smirked. “Behold,” he said, pulling a bottle from behind his back. He chuckled and tilted it this way and that. The label read Jack Daniels and immediately my eyes shot wide open. “Stolen from my dad’s secret stash in the locked kitchen cabinet.”

“Tae!” I exclaimed, mindful of the volume of my voice as it echoed down the street. “You’re gonna get in huge trouble,” I whispered tersely.

He rolled his eyes. “If you don’t wanna try it you can go back home.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That’s not what I meant! I said you, Tae.”

“Like I said, stay or go. I’m trying it,” he said.

Jimin tossed his head this way and that, then chuckled. “I’m in,” he said. His mother wasn’t as strict as mine. If he got caught, the worst he’d get was a slap on the wrist and a scolding.

But Taehyung…

“Tae,” I said, warning.

He met my eyes and in his gaze I caught something new that I hadn’t seen before, something vulgar. “What?” He said it like it was a curse word.

“Did something happen today?” I asked, my brows furrowed.

Taehyung’s sharp expression faltered for only a moment before he reigned his indifferent composure, unscrewing the cap. “Nothing you need to worry about,” he said before taking a hearty swig.

I watched his face screw up into a pinch before he stuck out his tongue and shook his head, hopping from foot to foot as the alcohol moved through him. “Gimme,” said Jimin, reaching for the bottle. He too took a sip and did a jig on the porch. 

Taehyung glanced at me, expectation in his eyes, and raised his eyebrows. “Well? You in or out?” he asked. That steeliness in his gaze…it unsettled me.

“In,” I said without thinking. If I had to stay and drink to get to the bottom of that look, I’d do it.

I did get to the bottom of it that night.

Just not the way I expected.

We were sprawled on his front lawn, the Jack sitting a quarter empty between my hip and Taehyung’s thigh. All of us were spread on our backs, staring skyward. Jimin had been talking a while about something I couldn’t pay attention to. I was absorbed in the stars, in their twinkle. I caught a few of Jimin’s words slurring together but made no comment. I chose instead to stare at the universe spread out before my eyes, hoping to find answers there.

“I think my parents hate me,” said Taehyung suddenly from my side.

Jimin quieted and looked over my chest to stare at Taehyung whose eyes were steadfastly fixed on the heavens. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I think they hate me,” he said.

I blinked at him for a long, drunken moment. “How could they hate you?” I asked. “They’re your parents,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders, still staring. “They’re giving up.”

“Giving up on what?” I asked.

He sniffed a little before shutting his eyes. “They’re giving up,” he repeated.

I heard the front door open behind us and was quick to my feet, although I wobbled and swayed once I was standing properly. Jimin followed suit. But Taehyung stayed laying on his back, his eyes shut to the world, to the universe over his head, to his father’s silhouette in the doorway. 

I don’t think I’d ever heard Mr. Kim shout before. Mrs. Kim was thankfully sleeping unawares inside, but it was hard to believe anyone in the neighborhood could sleep through Mr. Kim’s booming voice. Of all the scoldings, none were directed towards me. None towards Jimin either. He continued to chew Taehyung out even though the boy was still resting on his back, eyes shut, in the middle of the front lawn.

Roughly, Mr. Kim grabbed Taehyung by the shoulder and pulled him to his feet. Taehyung stared up at his father with nothing short of contempt. Even through the alcohol, I could recognize that. Mr. Kim shook his son’s arm and pointed at me, his brows furrowed.

“You can destroy yourself, Kim Taehyung, but do not drag these kids into it. These are your friends,” he said.

Taehyung avoided his father’s eyes. “No shit.”

His father scoffed and nodded, like he’d just understood something crucial. “You, I can understand. But why would you bring Y/N with you? When you know she has expectations to fulfill?”

There it was.

Taehyung looked over his shoulder at me and I saw a few tears glistening in his brown eyes. Quickly he looked away, back down towards his feet, and shook his head. “I didn’t force her,” he spat.

Mr. Kim shook his head. “You’re a bad influence on her. She works hard and you distract her.”

I shook my head. Was it okay to interject. “Mr. Kim, it’s not like-,”

“Shut up!” screamed Taehyung, meeting my eyes again. This time the tears were brimming. If he didn’t do something quick they’d fall over his lids and spill onto his flushed cheeks.

I blinked at him. “Tae, I-,”

“Sweetheart, go home, okay? You too, Jimin,” said Mr. Kim in a decidedly gentler tone, still gripping Taehyung’s arm too hard. “I’ll be sure to punish Taehyung, but you two don’t deserve to go down with him while he self destructs.”

I stared up at Mr. Kim. I thought of all the things I could have said, all the ways in which I could have helped. Maybe if I had, all of this wouldn’t have happened. If I’d only stepped in, persisted, advocated for him…maybe we could have all avoided a lot of heartache. But instead I simply nodded and turned on my heel, Jimin at my side with an arm around my shoulders, and ambled down the road towards our houses.

I realized as I climbed back through my window into the navy blackness of my bedroom, crawling under the covers as tears began to flow in rivulets down my face, what Taehyung had meant. Because even when Jimin and I had been caught red-handed alongside him, Taehyung was the only one being blamed, the only one found guilty in the court of his father’s favor. After all, Y/N had expectations to fulfill. Not Taehyung. 

I realized what Taehyung thought his parents had given up on…

High school was a blur of activity. I joined the literature club and dedicated most of my days to reading and writing. Hyerim began exploring makeup with the theatre department, although she was still too timid to branch out much. Jimin took up guitar and the boys started their band, enlisting local idiot Jeon Jungkook and scary senior Min Yoongi to flesh it out. High school marked the period of discovery which led us all in different directions. The sweet days of shyness and uncertainty, the thrill of first love, the moments with friends that became cherished scrapbook memories: all of the good times blur together like watercolor. It was the bad times which kept our diverging paths parallel, kept us all close together. The hardships seemed once again to unite the four of us. Hyerim’s mother had gotten remarried over the summer, much to the teasing of Jimin and Taehyung who liked poking her where it hurt. She spent most of the summer getting to know her new-new step-father after the previous one left before graduation. This meant the gang hadn’t found its way back together until school began. Although I saw Taehyung and Jimin frequently and we spent many afternoons cooling down by pools or hiking up hills to eat kimbap in the sun, it felt like something had changed between us. Jimin and I had been witnesses to something visceral and horribly personal. It was something that prideful Taehyung probably never wanted us to see. 

But we’d seen it. And it couldn’t be unseen.

Nonetheless, we carried on as if everything was normal. When the four of us could finally find time to spend together, it was already two weeks into the school year. We all sat leisurely at a park beside the Han River, climbing on the empty equipment after class. The river was the same as it had always been: flowing, massive, shimmering, and seemingly endless. I welcomed the constancy.

Jimin and Hyerim left to grab ice cream from the vendor down the sidewalk, Jimin demanding that it be his treat for us and voting Hyerim to act as pack mule. Taehyung and I sat quietly side by side, breathing in the crisp air, saying nothing for a few moments. I liked the atmosphere, and I found a bit of solace in it. Taehyung and I hadn’t been alone much since that night over summer.

“I got a job,” said Taehyung as he rested, ankles crossed, swaying on the swing beside me.

I smiled and shoved his shoulder. “Tae! That’s awesome!” I exclaimed.

He turned to me with a proud grin. “Mhm. Wanna know where?” 

“Where?” I asked, turning fully towards him.

“The art store by school. I can go right after class and walk home,” he said. He was beaming.

I smacked him once again, causing his swing to jangle. “I’m so proud of you,” I said.

He stilled for a moment, then turned to me. “What?” 

“It’s hard to find a part-time job, especially when you’re only fifteen. I think it’s really cool that you decided to do it,” I said with a smile.

He cracked a small smile in return before chuckling. “Sorry, just…that’s what my grandma said when I told her yesterday. I guess…I don’t know, I wanna do better.”

“I believe in you.”

He turned to me with round eyes. “You do?”

I gave a sharp, resolute nod. “Mhm. With my whole heart,” I said.

He chuckled and his cheeks went pink. He ruffled his hair a little. “Jeez,” he said. “You’re embarrassing me.”

As he blushed so did I, and I struggled to figure out just why that was. Had he always been so handsome, or had he grown into it gradually with age? Looking at him, bathing in the sun and skin tinged pink with chagrin, I couldn’t recall ever seeing something so beautiful.

Jimin and Hyerim returned with four cones and ice cream dripping down their forearms, so the conversation between Taehyung and me ended there. I couldn’t place what his expression had meant then, but as I thought about it later I realized what it was. He didn’t have many people believing him him after all…

Sophomore year marked yet another change. Friendships between girls and boys was…not really the same as it was when we were younger. There were expectations now, stigmas to overcome. And with stirrings in my chest I couldn’t name, I began to view time alone with Taehyung as a minefield, and I tried to dance through it with grace but often ended up stumbling. Sometimes my gaze would linger too long. Sometimes I would go to playfully smack his shoulder and my hands would graze his chest. Sometimes I would be too busy watching his lips move to hear the words coming out of them. But nonetheless, we remained inseparable.

That year the band was less active than before. One Saturday night, however, Hyerim and I sat on Jimin’s beanbag chairs, the basement dark with twilight seeping through the high narrow windows, and the boys were playing their instruments with fervor, singing pitchy but passionate as they all felt the music course through them. Yoongi had gone away to college further in the city and wasn’t around too much, so any time the budding band spent together was precious time practicing. 

I wanted to pay attention to Jimin’s improvement on the guitar, and I longed desperately to commend Jungkook on his powerful, emotive voice, and God did I want to pat Yoongi on the back for a job well done playing drum sounds on his keyboard, but in the end the only one I could see was…

“Tae looks hot,” commented Hyerim from beside me, her voice a whisper in the music.

I flushed and turned to her suddenly. “What?”

“You’re practically drooling. Don’t pretend you didn’t notice,” she said with a laugh.

I did notice, of course. How could I not have? He stood up there with all the charisma and confidence of a superstar and when he looked out past his old wired microphone he looked out at me. He smiled my way, boxy, vibrant. He looked alive. I could have watched him all night.

Later when we had all parted ways, Hyerim and I had opted to spend the night at her house. It was late, so we crept in quietly in the hoped that perhaps we wouldn’t rouse her mother. We slipped through the front door and planned to keep to the carpeted rooms to reach the stairs, hoping our steps wouldn’t too loud.

“Jesus Christ,” exhaled her mother from the kitchen.

Hyerim and I stiffened in the pitch-black entry room. “Mom?” asked Hyerim quietly.

Her mom flicked on the light and rubbed her eyes at us. I smelled alcohol on her from several feet away. Hyerim and I glanced at each other before glancing back at her. “You two were out so late,” she said with a yawn.

Hyerim nodded. “I know. I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Don’t be sorry, be smarter,” she said with a laugh. “Dongmin is coming over tomorrow, so you two better be…not here.”

I stared at Hyerim with wide eyes. I’d never seen her mom drunk before. Perhaps because we’d come home unannounced without letting her know first? “Okay. We’ll go to Y/N’s place in the morning,” said Hyerim, her voice small.

She nodded and turned on her heel, ambling back into the kitchen. “I don’t even wanna smell you in the morning.”

Hyerim and I exchanged another tense look before rushing up the stairs and into her bedroom, shutting and locking the door. We stood in silence for a long time, and unlike with Taehyung this silence was anything but comfortable. It was heavy. It lingered in the air like something alive and I wanted to pierce it. But in the end, just like with Taehyung and his father, I couldn’t.

“Sorry,” she said quietly before falling onto her bed and staring strangely at the floor.

I shook my head and sat in front of her feet, my hands on her lap, beckoning her to look me in the eyes in the quiet bedroom. “Hyerim, don’t apologize.”

“But she’s…she’s never like that in front of you,” she said.

I nodded. “But you didn’t do anything.”

She finally looked at me and I saw the quiet desperation in her eyes. This was reality for her. “I’m still sorry.”

I shook my head and pulled her into a hug. I held her tight, like I wished I would have with Taehyung that night years before. I smoothed her hair and felt her arms wrapped tightly around me. I let her stay there safely until she moved away, both of us on the floor now, facing one another. Neither of us bothered to turn on a light. She and I simply sat there, talking about nothing in particular.

A few months later Hyerim’s mom married Dongmin. Hyerim, despite what I might have expected, was overjoyed at the news of their engagement. When I met him, I understood why. He was a tall, gracious man with gentle eyes and a bright smile. Whenever he was around, Hyerim’s mom was smiling too. And that made Hyerim happy, even if she never said so outright. All of us went to the wedding and we danced together as playful sixteen-year-olds often did. It was a night I remembered for its softness, for its joy. We’d been freezing cold, but we’d been happy. For a moment, we all forgot that what united us was our pain, our sadness. We simply danced.

For a few months, things were peaceful. Taehyung and I became closer and closer. Although his grades were poor and he often skipped classes, Taehyung was spending most of his time writing music and I commended him for it. Hyerim was happier. Jimin had finally found the courage to block his father’s email address, the loose, weak tie he had to the man, and it seemed we were stronger than ever. The year came to a close quietly, and each of us found time to work on what we enjoyed that summer. I wrote more than I had ever written before, Taehyung worked on his lyrics, only sharing them with me occasionally, Hyerim bought a proper makeup kit with what she’d saved up from her birthday in the winter, and Jimin had begun to take guitar very seriously.

Amongst this harmony, of course, were blips of chaos. One night Taehyung had called me breathing heavily saying he’d run away from home and asking if he could stay at my house for the night. Without asking any questions, I’d let him in through the window and guided him to the floor where we sat facing one another. He said nothing for a long moment, simply looked off towards the side of my bedroom.

“What happened?” I asked.

He met my eyes sharply, that same look he’d had the night we’d tried alcohol for the first time, and shook his head. “My dad found my journal.”

“And?”

“He basically shat on it,” said Taehyung, scoffing. “Like…they tell me I need to apply myself and then when I do they give me shit for it.”

“Hey,” I said, taking his hand and shaking my head. “Taehyung, you have talent,” I said. “But more than that, you have determination. And you have people on your side, rooting for you.”

“Not my parents.”

“They’re rooting for you too,” I said, then shrugged and slowly let my hand settle back on my lap. “Just in their own way.”

He sighed. “At least your parents believe in you enough to let you do what you like. They know that since it’s you…well, since it’s you you’ll do fine no matter what,” he said.

I scoffed. “You’re kidding…”

“Do I sound like I’m kidding?”

I crossed my arms and gave him a glare. “Kim Taehyung, you’re an idiot.”

His eyes flashed up to meet mine. “Excuse me?”

“My parents…if my grades slip…even the slightest, Taehyung…,” I began, then sighed. “Nobody’s parents are perfect.”

“At least your parents try.”

I stared at him and, instead of feeling butterflies like I might have under different circumstances, all I felt was frustration. Even though we were so similar, even though we were both burdened by parents whose idea of success didn’t match our own, it felt as if we were incapable in that moment of understanding one another. Nonetheless, I set up a few blankets and some extra pillows on the floor for him. I shut off the light and, silently, the two of us went to sleep.

Junior year was our downfall.

The beginning of the year followed much the same pattern as was set at the end of the previous year: all of us excitedly pursuing our individual goals while simultaneously supporting the goals of the others. Taehyung and I began to bond on a deeper level. We started spending weekends at the art store, pondering pieces. He would read my essays for competitions and give the okay before I submitted them. He was my soundboard and I was his. His grandmother had the two of us over a few times, although Taehyung was there frequently on his own. Every time we went, she told us more about famous artwork, and every time we left we seemed to leave happier.

Everything was fine, or as fine as it could be…except for Hyerim.

I hadn’t noticed until halfway through the year, but her smiles had gone quite forced, her jokes less frequent, her gaze slightly sharper, slightly harder. I wasn’t sure exactly what had changed, but from what little she divulged it seemed things between Dongmin and her mother were going sour. She tried to give it her best, but it was blatantly clear to anyone watching that she wasn’t herself. Blatantly clear to most anyone it seemed but me.

I began working on my essay for Professor Lee’s competition. It was a piece I’d thought about writing for a long time, and it was greatly inspired by my friends. I wanted to encapsulate the feeling we all had together, that sense of profound connection amongst troubled kids: how they find each other and how, in our case, they lift each other up. It was sincere and I’d spent hours meticulously choosing each word, each comma. It took me months to get my thoughts in order properly enough to write it.

That winter break, on December 31st, I met with the gang to window shop during Christmastime. The four of us walked aimlessly through the snowy streets of Seoul, poking our noses against the glass and shoving each other across icy pavement. Hyerim’s arm was looped around mine and it seemed her spirits were finally lifting. Perhaps it was the atmosphere.

“What are we doing after this?” she asked, craning her neck to turn backwards and look at the boys as they walked behind us.

I flushed. “Ah…well, I need to finish up my essay,” I said.

Her eyes went wide. “It’s due the week we get back to school, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“How do you remember that stuff, Hyerim?” asked Jimin.

Hyerim rolled her eyes. “Because I actually pay attention to my friends when they talk,” she said.

“I knew it too,” said Taehyung, raising a mittened hand.

“Anyway,” I said slowly. “After this I’m heading home.”

“Ah, can I come too? I wanna read what you’ve added,” offered Taehyung.

I turned to him and nodded. “Okay.”

We smiled at one another for a long time before I slipped on a patch of ice and Hyerim had to steady me through her laughter.

Taehyung and I departed from the group at the bus stop and headed back to my house. I was grateful he’d decided to come back with me. I had his birthday gift wrapped and ready to give to him. He’d made me swear not to make a big deal of his birthday, but I couldn’t help but prepare something at least. I’d considered throwing a big surprise party, but Jimin had it covered. Once Taehyung returned to his home, the whole gang would be there, plus Jungkook and Yoongi, with cake and presents and the whole nine yards. Although we hadn’t planned on Taehyung offering to come to my place first, it seemed like a pretty convenient way for Hyerim and Jimin to set up the finishing touches.

I sat at my desk after I’d made my final revisions and watched him read my essay, the laptop illuminating his face. While he read, I pulled the gift from my closet and held it to my chest, waiting for him to lift his eyes and look my way. Finally, he finished and finally, he looked up from the laptop. Upon taking in my smile and the gift-wrapped rectangle I held, he squeezed his eyes shut and grinned, groaning as he did.

“Happy birthday!” I shouted.

“Y/N!” he whined.

I laughed. “I know you didn’t want anything! But it was cheap so don’t worry.”

He smiled and stood up from my bed, setting the laptop aside and bounding towards me. He took the gift from my outstretched hands and unwrapped it quickly. He stared down at the picture frames for a long, long while. He blinked at them, his lips parted as if to speak, but no words escaped him.

“I wanted to get better prints, but I figured you’d scold me for buying them,” I said with a laugh.

His eyes met mine. “You…Y/N,” he started, then shook his head and stared down at the printed copy of A Pair of Shoes. “Why are there two?”

I took the one on the bottom and held it close. “I wanted it to remind us,” I said, then smiled at the picture. “To always work hard and do our best. To put our whole effort into it so we can kick off our shoes at the end of the day and feel like we really did something.”

He smiled at his own copy. “Even if nobody’s looking.”

“Even if nobody expects you to do it,” I added, taking a careful look at him.

He glanced at me and smiled with a nod. He set his painting on my bed and, without so much as asking first, wrapped his arms around my body and held me so close I could hear his heartbeat. My face went hot as I hugged him back, heart pounding in my ears. He rested his cheek atop my head and breathed deeply. I shut my eyes, allowing myself only a moment to indulge in the feeling of his arms around me, his chest against my cheek, his breath blowing my hair.

“I love you,” he said softly.

I could scarcely hear the words over the sound of my heart. But somehow I managed to choke out, “I love you, too.”

I knew he didn’t mean it the way I meant it. But, for that day alone, I pretended he did.

I should have known better.

After the party, Hyerim stayed the night at my place and we spent most of the night talking about this and that. I told her about what had happened with Taehyung and she’d jokingly gagged. She did something that night that seemed odd to me, but I was too euphoric from Taehyung’s words and Hyerim’s shift in mood to say much of it. She asked to borrow my computer so she could send an urgent email. She said she’d forgotten to tell our teacher that she would miss the first day of class after break. Of course, I’d allowed her access to the laptop.

I really, really should have known better.

A week later I was ready to submit my essay online. I’d decided to do it a day early, to sooth my nerves. My fingers were shaking, my hands unsteady as I pulled up the correct folder. Taehyung and Jimin had come over to support me, but Hyerim said she had family obligations to attend to. I understood, especially with the way things were at home. 

I searched through the folder with a pout. It wasn’t there…

“Huh,” I said aloud. “Let me just-,” I began, but stopped speaking so I could focus. I typed the title of the document into my search bar and again…nothing.

Nothing.

“What the fuck,” I whispered.

Taehyung and Jimin sat worriedly beside me on my bed. “What is it?”

“It’s not here.”

“What?” exclaimed Taehyung, taking the laptop from my limp hands. He searched as well and, predictably, found nothing.

I stared at my wall as the events became clear to me. Hyerim asking to stay over that night. Hyerim asking for my laptop. Hyerim refusing to come to my house to submit it with me. Hyerim, Hyerim, Hyerim.

“Y/N, did you accidentally delete it?” asked Jimin, shaking my shoulder.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Then did someone else delete it?”

I looked over Taehyung’s arms to see my screen. He was scouring the trash bin, searching for deleted files, searching anywhere. Of course, there was no trace of the document.

“I’m getting your parents,” said Jimin, standing and rushing out the door.

I turned to Taehyung and met his eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

“What happened?”

“It…it had to be Hyerim,” I said in a whisper.

Taehyung’s eyes went wide. “What?”

I nodded. “It…had to be.”

“Y/N…,” he said, but there was nothing he could say to make it better.

My parents entered the room flaming with rage, each demanding as Taehyung had to examine the laptop themselves. I shook my head. It was no use. The work, the months of conceptualizing, the weeks of writing, the days of workshopping…all of it was lost without hope of being found.

Needless to say, they were livid. Taehyung was gracious enough to explain what had happened for me, saving me the pain of incriminating my best friend once again in a crime I felt too hurtful for her to commit. I wanted to know why. I wanted to face her and hear what she had to say. But I also wanted her to disappear. I hated her. Fiercely. But I loved her just as fiercely.

I began writing a new essay that day, scrambling to recall what I’d written in the original document. Taehyung and Jimin had stayed by my side the whole day, even staying overnight to help keep me awake as I furiously typed. I’d never written so much in such a short amount of time. This competition was so important. If I won this award…I would be in the optimum position for college acceptance. While I didn’t think much of college itself, I knew that not going was not an option. And it wasn’t just me who needed this to go well. My parents needed this award. Possibly more than I did…

The next morning at 8:58 I submitted the horribly unpolished, inelegant piece two minutes before the deadline. My hands weren’t shaking anymore. I just wanted it to be over. Once finished, I collapsed into my bed and, without so much as saying goodbye to my friends, I fell asleep on the spot and did not awake for four hours.

I would have allowed the storm to pass with Hyerim, to simply disassociate from her and let her live with her conscience. But my parents weren’t quite so pacifistic. They contacted the school that Sunday morning as I slept and demanded Hyerim admit to her crimes. The next day at school, despite having emailed that she would not attend that day, Hyerim showed up in the principal’s office with her mom behind her. My parents could not attend.

She sat staring at the principal, not once meeting my eyes. I wished she would have so I could have seen if there was remorse there, if there was guilt…regret. But she didn’t give me that luxury. Instead she simply stared ahead.

“Hyerim, did you delete the file?” asked Principal Kim, his tone severe.

Hyerim’s mother spoke for her. “Sir, she did not and would not and frankly it is offensive that her best friend would accuse her of something like this,” she said, casting me a sickening glance.

I blinked back tears and stared back at Principal Kim. “I am asking Hyerim,” he said, then turned his attention back to her. “Did you delete Y/N’s piece?”

Hyerim blinked at him, not once looking my way, and coughed a little. “Sir,” she began. “Y/N still submitted her essay on time. So I don’t really understand what we’re doing here.”

I stared at her, the tears brimming in my eyes threatening to spill if I kept looking. “Hyerim, this is extremely serious. Sabotaging a fellow student’s work is grounds for suspension. Possibly even worse.”

“Stop scaring her,” said Mrs. Lee with a sigh. “I said she didn’t do it.”

Principal Kim turned his attention to me and upon seeing my expression his own softened. “Y/N,” he said gently. “Are you sure somebody else couldn’t have done it?” 

I glanced over my shoulder at Mrs. Lee who was staring at me with wide, angry, expectant brown eyes. “I…,” I started, my voice cracking. “I might have deleted it.”

At this, Hyerim’s face snapped towards mine and, wide-eyed, she stared at me. Only this time, I couldn’t look at her. The tears were falling freely now. “Ex…excuse me, Y/N what are you saying?”

“I did it,” I said with a nod. “I did it, so let’s stop here.”

“Why would you…I’m sorry, I’m having trouble understanding,” said Principal Lee.

I wiped my eyes and stood to my feet, grabbing my backpack and slinging it over my shoulder. “I did it,” I repeated. “I did it myself.” Before anyone could question me further, I rushed out of his office and down the hallway.

My parents told me to push it until the end, they told me that under no circumstances was I to bend and let her off the hook. They said I would regret it forever. They said if I came home and she wasn’t in trouble, I would be. It was my future on the line after all. Our future.

I wanted to find the girl’s restroom where I could cry freely, but before I could someone grabbed my arm and pulled me into an embrace. I recognized those arms, that heartbeat. Taehyung rubbed my head and shushed me as I sobbed into his chest. I could take no more, I could stand no more. There I crumbled, in the busy hallway, wrapped up in the protective embrace of the person I loved most but, for some reason, couldn’t have. It all felt like too much. 

And it didn’t stop.

Despite gaining Professor Lee’s approval and contact, I couldn’t help but slip into dejection. I stopped spending time with the boys for a while, and I did the bare minimum in school. I had become someone gruesome, and my thoughts reflected it. I didn’t want people close to me. My parents seldom noticed this change, and if they did they simply used it as a reminder to work harder, push further. This was supposed to be the beginning of the homestretch, they said. I couldn’t afford to slack now. 

Hyerim became more distant at school. I heard Dongmin and her mother divorced. She dyed her hair pink, started acting differently, stopped going to the theater productions to help with makeup. She became someone different, or perhaps she became the person she’d been all along. To plot to ruin someone’s life and have it not only fail, but backfire seemed cruel in itself. And I wanted to pity her. But every time I saw her sitting alone, every time her pink head passed by me with no one at her sides…a part of me felt sickly vindicated. That part made me ill with contempt. And, try as I might to hide it, Jimin could tell from the micro expressions on my face exactly how I felt.

One day towards the end of the year he approached me outside the girl’s locker room where I’d just finished changing. He pulled me by the arm to the front of the gym and met my eyes seriously.

“You’re upset,” he said.

I huffed. “No! For the last time, I’m not,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Save it. You’ve been practically crucifying yourself since the thing with Hyerim happened. Like you have something to feel guilty for.”

“Jimin,” I warned. “Drop it.” I was dangerously close to the edge, and I could feel it calling for me.

He shook his head. “No, I won’t,” he said, placing his hands on my shoulders and looking me squarely in the eyes. “You are the victim here. You.”

I shook my head. “She made a mistake,” I repeated the mantra. I knew then that I wasn’t saying it to redeem her, but to redeem myself.

“Shut up about that! Just…tell me how you really feel for Christ’s sake! You’ve been holding this in for months!” he shouted, shaking me.

I shoved his hands off of me and crossed my arms. “If I say it then it’s real,” I said slowly, glancing away towards the polished gym floor. Kids were just starting to make their way to the gymnasium after changing, but my voice echoed terribly.

“Say it!” he exclaimed. “God, please just say it. Because I’m starting to think you’re feeling guilty for just existing.”

“You wanna know what I feel guilty for?” I asked, meeting his eyes. “I feel guilty because every fucking time I see her I want to hit her! I want to scream at her for what she did! I hate myself more every single day that I have to see her face. I want her to disappear,” I said. “And that’s disgusting.”

“No it’s not,” he said slowly, patting my head softly. “It’s normal to feel like that. It’s okay.”

The gym had gone slightly silent at my shouting, although I wasn’t sure how much they could have heard. One thing I knew for sure though, glancing out at the scatterings of people on the floor. Pink-haired, red-lipped, sharp-eyed Lee Hyerim had heard it as she stood by the bleachers. She’d heard it. And in those sharp eyes I saw the beginnings of tears.

Before I could say another word, she was shuffling back into the locker room. I stared slack-jawed in her wake. I could muster nothing more, because there by the wall was Kim Taehyung, his brow furrowed and his expression more troubled than my own as he stared at me. I’d never felt more disappointed in myself. I was ashamed of my own honesty.

That summer was a welcome reprieve from the torments of the school year, and it was the summer Taehyung and I began to act slightly different towards one another. I wasn’t sure who started it, but he held my hand more and we sat closer. Despite him witnessing my public proclamation of hatred for Hyerim, he never mentioned it and he never made me feel like a bad person for it. It was yet another unsavory moment we all collectively chose to ignore.

But senior year brought more pain than I imagined.

Hyerim left the school. I heard about it from Jimin who had giddily relayed the information to me on the first day back. I felt a sick pit of guilt in my stomach, a shame too profound for words. I’d driven her away. I’d made her feel unwelcome in this place. I’d done it. I���d said I wanted her to disappear, but somehow when she did the feeling of her absence hurt more than the burden of her presence.

And the year quickly began with heartbreak. Taehyung’s grandma was getting sick, unable to keep food down. She was hospitalized for a few weeks, and Taehyung frequently skipped classes to spend time with her. I visited the hospital with him one weekend, considering that even if I skipped class for something noble my parents would have a fit, and I remembered seeing her so frail and quiet had made my heart feel sore from the inside. I couldn’t imagine how Taehyung felt. I tried to help him, to support him, but he was like a walking corpse. He was listless. He lost weight. I saw him more often in the neighborhood than at school.

I worried for him, but I worried more for his grandma. Her health was rapidly declining, and it was difficult not to see the hands of time constricting around her neck. She was so lively, so happy and generous. But she had been reduced to silence, dullness, drugs to numb the pain that also numbed the personality. 

She passed away that fall.

And part of Taehyung passed away with her.

I saw him less and less, and when I did it was only in bursts. The one person he felt believed in him, the one person who saw in him nothing but boundless potential…was gone. He began to spiral. His grades slipped further, he stopped coming to class altogether. The only time I could catch a glimpse of him was when Jimin forced me along to parties. I wasn’t sure what I expected when I went, but his hands tangled in numerous girls’ hair, his face flushed from too much alcohol: that wasn’t it. I tried not to feel hurt, but it was as if every time his eyes found me in the party he was quick to find a girl instead. 

It was a quarter through the year when I saw him with her. Hyerim. The two of them were pressed messily against a wall in some stranger’s house, their hands rampant on each other. Jimin had been by my side when I’d seen it and, without words, I’d rushed from the house and into the nighttime street. Jimin followed me but, to save him from seeing me crying, I ordered him back inside and promised I’d send him a text when I got home.

“You’ve been going out a lot lately,” commented my mother over dinner the next night.

I cleared my throat and nodded. “I guess.”

“Why is that?” she asked, still examining her steak with an almost comical precision.

I couldn’t very well tell her that I could only see Taehyung, the boy she had never truly approved of, if I went to these parties. I couldn’t tell her that not seeing him made me feel isolated, adrift. I couldn’t tell her how worried I was, how deeply concerned for him I had become. So instead I simply shrugged.

“You should stop,” said my father from beside her with a gruff clearing of his throat. “You’ve been doing well in school lately and you’ve been accepted early into Hongik. It’s time to get serious.”

“I’ve been serious,” I said.

He shot me a look that quieted me down. “And you’ve been spending less time with those boys. Good for you.”

I sighed into my food and stood from the table. “Where are you going?” asked my mother.

I took my plate and washed it before placing it on the rack to dry. “Not hungry.”

It was all too much. I started seeing Taehyung posting photos with Hyerim on social media, started seeing him ushering her out of his house at odd hours of the night. I wanted to be less affected, but things were starting to overwhelm me. I didn’t know what to do. I was trapped between my guilt over what I’d done to Hyerim and my hurt from what she’d done to me. I was trapped between my love for Taehyung and my sense of self preservation. I was trapped between my parents’ expectations and my own wants and dreams. It was too much.

Winter break came and I went.

I wasn’t sure what my plan was, or where I wanted to go. But anywhere was better than home, and any feeling was better than the ones I had there. I left my phone at home, packed only my favorite clothes, stole some of the cash my father kept hidden in the floorboards of his office, and left in the early morning. I considered telling Jimin, but couldn’t bring myself to face him. Everything was just too complicated, too connected.

I rode the train as far as Daegu before I’d had enough and got off. For a few days I wandered the city. I ate and I wrote and I rested where I could, staying in cheap hostels or following strangers from restaurants to the couches they offered me for the night. I wasn’t the type to best reckless, but I didn’t know what else to do. The anonymity intoxicated me. Nobody knew me here, nobody knew a damn thing about me. All they knew was I was a girl with little money and few belongings, sitting in a barbecue joint or a fast food joint or a park bench in the cold. Nobody expected anything from me. 

I stayed away as long as I could muster before I began to miss my bed. It was a silly reason to return, but something about the comfort of my bedroom made the cold nights in food tents feel less desirable as the novelty wore off.

Of course, I arrived to the biggest punishment of my life. I was too tired to care. Existentially tired. Deeply, in my bones tired. I couldn’t even find words to fight back as my father screamed at me. I couldn’t even draw my curtain so the neighbors wouldn’t see. I simply sat on my bed, staring at the carpet and remembering when the people I loved loved me back.

Jimin didn’t talk to me for a few days, but cracked when he saw me at school. I was sure I looked haggard. He’d said nothing about my disappearing act and simply scolded me for the bags beneath my eyes. He asked if it was because of Hyerim. I said nothing. It was more than that, so much more. Of course it hurt that she seemed hell-bent to take the things I loved away from me. Of course it hurt even more that Taehyung hadn’t so much as reached out to me since I’d disappeared. But it was more than that. It was everything. I was sick of being me.

Slowly things became easier. I got used to Taehyung’s absence and I fell into the familiar step of the prodigal daughter in my household. I went to college. Jimin and Taehyung moved into a little apartment together. I didn’t go there much, only if he wasn’t there. That first year away had granted me a taste of the anonymity I’d felt in Daegu. It had helped me return to myself, if only a little. But then Professor Lee offered me the study abroad opportunity.

I wasn’t sure why I hesitated. I couldn’t place the reason, and I couldn’t place why the idea of leaving the country felt so painful to me. I’d left the city knowing I would return soon. I’d gone away with the intention of coming home after a week or so. But this…seemed bigger, somehow more permanent. I wasn’t scared to go to a new country, nor was I scared I would feel homesick.

No.

The reality hit me hard the day before I was set to leave. 

I was scared to leave because then the physical distance between Taehyung and I, the one kind of distance we still had left that wasn’t so very uncrossable, would be too far to reconcile. I’d been holding on to a stupid, foolish hope that someday we would grow back to one another. Even as friends.

I was stupid.

I should have known better.

“I just…I don’t know if I want to go,” I said to my parents that day as we met for a late lunch. I swirled my cappuccino around in its cup to avoid meeting their disappointed eyes.

“Y/N,” sighed my father. “For the love of God, can’t you just make one thing simple?”

I shut my eyes and nodded. “I know. I’m just…I’m scared.”

“This is the biggest opportunity you’ve ever been offered,” said my mother, taking a loud sip of her iced coffee.

“Life-changing,” said my father.

“I know.”

“And you still don’t want to go?” asked my mother with an exhausted sigh. “I don’t understand you sometimes. I love you, but I really don’t understand you.”

I glanced up at her as she stared out the window into the busy street. “Do you know everything that we’ve done for you?” my father asked carefully.

I looked at him. “I…of course,” I said. “You’ve given me everything. And I appreciate that so much.”

“We’ve given you more than everything,” he said, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We’ve given you a good education, presented you with every opportunity. And all we have ever asked is that you live up to the potential we see in you.”

“And I’m trying to, it’s just I-,”

“Is this about that Taehyung boy?” asked my mother with a scoff. “It always comes down to him, doesn’t it?”

“No!” I said, but I was too quick.

She raised an eyebrow. “How many times have we told you not to spend so much time with him? How many times do we have to tell you?”

“We even spoke with him!” exclaimed my father. “Your senior year, you remember?” he asked my mother.

She nodded vehemently. “That’s right. We told him point-blank to stop dragging you down. And what does he do?”

I stared blankly at the two of them. “Excuse me, you what?” 

My father sighed and this time rubbed his forehead. “We had a chat with him about your…differences. Aptitude differences. We told him that if he continued to associate with you, he would only be pulling you away from success.”

“When…when did you have this chat?” I asked quietly.

“Oh, in the fall sometime.”

“After his grandmother…,” I began, feeling sick.

“God, and that Hyerim girl,” began my mother with a groan.

My father rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe Principal Kim wouldn’t expel her,” said my father with a sigh. “And after we donated the money for the new lockers.”

“You…you donated money?” I asked. “Like a bribe?”

My mother chuckled and took another sip. “If you want to use ugly words. See, this is what we meant. We do everything for you, Y/N.”

“Well, the donation did do something good,” he observed with an idle yawn.

“The counselor did…encourage that girl to leave the school according to the secretary.”

My mother nodded. “It worked out well,” she said, then chuckled. “Ah, and that Dongmin.”

My father laughed. They were really on a roll. “Goodness, that’s right. The day I fired Dongmin was the day the company finally started running smoothly,” he said.

My eyes went wide again. “What?”

He nodded. “He was too preoccupied with his home life and wasn’t prioritizing his work so I fired him. Didn’t I tell you?” he asked, like it was nothing. Like losing one’s job was nothing.

“He worked for you?” I asked, my voice wavering.

“Oh sure. How do you think the two got introduced?” asked my mother with a light chuckle.

Things started to fall into place. Her mother’s contempt for me that day in the principal’s office, Hyerim’s contemptuous actions which felt slightly too calculated to be hers alone, her mood deteriorating in the months preceding the incident. Dongmin must have become resentful at home after being fired for spending too much time with them. It must have changed their entire dynamic.

It must have changed absolutely everything.

I felt disgusted. Not only with my parents but with myself. I wanted to fall into my bed and curl up there. I wanted the world to pause itself for a moment. I wanted it to reverse. I wanted to talk to Hyerim instead of condemning her. I wanted to grab Taehyung by the cheeks and tell him all the wonderful things he could still become, even without his grandmother’s support. I wanted to tell my friends that I loved them. I wanted to support Taehyung when his dad said those horrible things.

I wanted a do-over.

I stood to my feet and stared down at my parents as they laughed. “What are you doing? I hope you know we aren’t done talking about the study abroad issue,” my mother said.

I nodded. “Yes we are. We are done talking about the study abroad issue,” I said, my eyes wild as I saw the ugliness in them that they’d passed to me. “We are done talking period.” I grabbed my jacket and bag and rushed out the door, my whole body shaking. 

I walked down the street not knowing where to go, but before I could stop myself my fingers had dialed Taehyung’s number. “H-Hello?” he asked, his tone audibly surprised.

I sniffled. “Meet me.”

“Huh? What?” he asked, groggy.

I wiped beneath my eyes. “I’m coming to the apartment,” I said before hanging up.

I arrived at his front door and banged four times, sharply. He opened it and stared down at me. The afternoon light caught in the hollows beneath his eyes.

He wasn’t sleeping well. “What are you doing-,”

“Taehyung I love you,” I said, staring at him with an unwavering gaze.

His eyes went wide and he coughed a little in surprise. “What? You…where is this coming from?”

“From my heart,” I said, then exhaled, shutting my eyes to compose myself. I was meeting him properly after two years and this was the best I could do? “I mean it. I meant it before and I mean it now.”

“I…I’m sorry, but-,”

“Don’t respond. I was saying it because you needed to hear it,” I said.

He stared down at me warily. “What’s going on?”

“My parents told me what they did,” I said slowly, watching my toes.

He was quiet for a long moment. The air was dead between us, no charge in it. We were like strangers. We’d never been strangers. Suddenly, he laughed and I looked up to see him rubbing his eyes and ruffling his hair. Had he just woken up? At four? “Y/N, that was like…a lifetime ago.”

I blinked at him. “So it didn’t…affect you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I’m not that delicate.”

I furrowed my brow at him. “Okay,” I said.

“Is that it then? Can we be done here?” 

Perhaps my parents’ inadvertent confession had given that hope in my chest wings, had given it something to hold on to. If he’d distanced himself because of their stupid warning, I could easily forgive him. In a heartbeat. I could erase the two years of sadness and fear of intimacy and release it. If he’d left me because of my parents and not because of me…I could absolve myself of some small piece of blame.

I placed a hand on the door and stared up at him, my eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t fight them as they tumbled freely down my cheeks. “Kim Taehyung, I want you to be a person with me right now,” I said, voice trembling. 

“I am,” he said easily, as if seeing me fall apart in front of him made him feel absolutely nothing.

I wiped my eyes with my free hand and shook my head. “Look at me right now and tell me if my parents had anything to do with you and me drifting apart.”

He chuckled down at me. “Drifting apart? That’s a bit liberal,” he said, then laughed heartily. “I would say I ran and you chased.”

“Taehyung!” I shouted. 

He looked down at me and shrugged. “Anyway, don’t worry about it. Just keep doing your college thing.”

“I’m leaving for America tomorrow,” I said.

He nodded and pursed his lips. “That’s neat.”

“For a year,” I said, and this time his expression shifted by the smallest degree. I caught it nonetheless.

“Cool.”

“Taehyung, this isn’t you. You’re better than this. You’re capable of more than this,” I said, the tears trailing hot down my cheeks.

He shook his head. “Jesus, not this again,” he mumbled. “Listen, I’m not the same kid I used to be. I’m not interested in this immature ‘let’s do our best’ attitude. I’m doing what I want and that’s just fine.”

“Taehyung,” I whispered.

He met my eyes, steely, and shrugged. “What?”

I sniffed. “I still believe in you.”

He rolled his eyes and grabbed the door from my hand. “Well don’t,” he said. “You were right before,” he said with a smirk. “It’s a huge burden when people expect something from you.”

Before he shut the door I jammed my foot in the frame and winced as he slammed it against the side. He was quick to pull the door away, shocked that I put myself in physical harm. “I’ll be waiting at the park by the Han River where we all met after school.”

“And why are you telling me this? Move your foot,” he said, tone cold.

“I’ll wait until midnight. And then I’m leaving. For good,” I said.

“Are you asking me to make you stay?”

I nodded. “Make me stay.”

“What?”

“If you ever cared about me, even a little bit, you’ll come,” I said. “And you’ll make me stay.”

He huffed and kicked my foot out of the doorway. “Don’t wait.”

“Until midnight,” I said with a nod. “Please come.”

Midnight came and went. I sat on the swing by myself, kicking tornadoes of sand into the nighttime air. Part of me hoped he might come, even a few hours late. I knew he wouldn’t. Hope had only left me disappointed. I glanced down at my phone at three in the morning and saw a slew of texts from Yuna, terrified that something bad had happened. I knew I’d shared my location with her to sate her fears, but with the lack of actual response on my end I could understand her worry. But it was too much to explain to her, too much to tell her.

I was exhausted just thinking about it.

I wandered over to the park bench and shut my eyes as I laid down atop it. I would have slept had it not been for the tears that kept falling. I wasn’t sure when they had started, but they made it hard to rest. I simply laid there, doing nothing, saying nothing. Waiting.

Waiting for someone who would never come.

Waiting for someone who didn’t exist anymore.

The tears kept coming.

“Y/N,” whispered Yuna’s voice from above me. I opened my eyes and saw over her head a tapestry of waking sky, navy giving way around the edges to the beginnings of yellow daylight.

I stared up at her, but my vision was blurry. I was still crying. “Yu-,” I started, before the crying turned to a sob that shook my body. I sat up and she wrapped her arms around me, holding me close and rubbing my back.

“Sh,” she cooed. “It’s okay.”

“It-,” I said, then sniffled, “It’s not.”

“It will be.”

I shook my head against her neck, my tears falling onto her back and ruining the shoulder of her shirt. “No.”

She nodded and continued to rub my back. “Do you know what time it is? Do you know how much sleep I could be getting?”

I shook my head again. “What-,” I paused to sniffle. “What time?”

“It’s after four in the morning, Y/N.”

Four hours.

I’d given him for hours to show up.

And he never came.

So the next morning, I got on a plane and left.

[a-taller-tale]

Float On

Summary: Grif said he was jealous of the way clouds float once, so he shouldn't be bitching about the lack of gravity. Notes: My Reverse Big Bang writing entry based on Emmujin's wonderful grimmons art. This was a really fun piece to work on.

Also on Ao3

“I miss retirement,” Grif said randomly.

Simmons frowned in concentration, taking another hallway according to the map on his helmet screen, Grif following behind him. He kept his voice low. “Really? You miss retirement? You said we were all driving you crazy, and then when we left you got so sad that you made a bunch of volleyball replacements of us.”

“I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“You had to give me some kind of context when you said you kept ruining Church’s balls.” 

They were also really shitfaced that night, and Simmons had felt both confused and some other dark feeling he couldn’t name. Grif was always saying how Church was a jerk, he had no idea they ever—

“Yeah…” Grif sighed. “But don’t you miss retirement?” They both paused to duck into a corner and avoid some random people in lab coats marching down the hall talking about planning an office birthday party.

“It was nice at first, but then it did get kind of boring,” Simmons admitted once the group had passed them. “And we were regularly in a similar amount of mortal peril during retirement as we were in active duty with Sarge and Caboose that bored anyway.”

“Okay, true. The robots vs. dinosaur war got a little hairy, but I’m not really a fan of this kind of action either.”

The remnants of Project Freelancer, and by extension Malcolm Hargrove’s Charon Industries projects, were still keeping them busy. Retirement hadn’t worked out with their imposters running around causing havoc, so they weren’t safe to try again, no matter how remote the moon, until everything had been taken care of.

The latest mission had been complicated when half the team was capturedagain by some sketch lab they had been investigating again. Sometimes it seemed as if their strange lives were just stuck in the same seasonal cycle over and over again.

“You have to make a deal with me,” Grif continued. “After we rescue the guys we need another vacation, a real one, without Donut to set things on fire. I’m thinking the Vegas Quadrant.”

“Deal, but you’re using your own credit cards.—Oh, this closet’s got what we need.” Simmons opened the door to reveal extra scrubs and lab coats folded neatly and ripe for the taking. There was even a lost and found box with various extra stuff to wear under the coat.

If Simmons thought about it too hard it would gross him out since the clothes were probably dirty, and it reminded him of when the gym teacher made him go through the lost and found when he purposely “forgot” to bring gym clothes hoping it would excuse him from participating—that bit him in the ass—but desperate times called for desperate measures. Sarge needed them.

Simmons grabbed a sweater and some slacks that looked long enough. There were nursing shoes of various sizes in the corner.

It wasn’t until Grif closed himself in with Simmons and started stripping out of his armor that Simmons remembered a similar situation in a similar closet last year. Simmons coughed and moved on to the coats so Grif could take his pick of the lost and found, and starting looking through the sizes, grabbing one that would fit Grif and tossing it back in his direction, backing deeper into his own corner to change out of his armor.

“Capers where we need a disguise. We really have been hanging out with Blue Team too long…” Grif grumbled, running his hand through his helmet hair and re-tying it back. “Donut and Lopez better show up soon. Donut will hate missing an opportunity to dress up.”

“Well they—” Simmons interrupted himself when he saw what Grif had put on his feet. “Are you wearing socks under your sandals?” Grif smirked in a way that Simmons knew meant he did it just to piss him off. “There are regular shoes right there!”

“Do you have a problem, Simmons?” Grif asked pleasantly. He definitely did this on purpose. He knew this was one of Simmons’ pet peeves!

“No. You know what? Live your life the way you want to. See if I care.” Simmons cared. He cared so much. And Grif knew it, that asshole. Grif grew up on the beach! Shouldn’t socks under his sandals be sacrilegious or something?

In their new disguises, they made their way to the labs area. It was definitely the night shift, and they didn’t even run into too many people on the skeleton crew. Which was great since they hadn’t been spotted yet, but made it more likely that when they were spotted, they’d be recognized as not belonging. They needed to get this done as quickly as possible.

Simmons was suddenly shoved forward into an empty room out of nowhere, and there was a large warm hand clapped over his mouth before he even had the chance to squawk at Grif. “Guards,” Grif whispered. “Guns.”

Simmons nodded—then remembered himself and whacked Grif’s hand off his face. “Ow,” Grif grunted.

Through the window in the door they looked out to see the two guards with their menacing looking rifles and white armor, like Storm troopers, or Wyoming, or The Meta.

Man, bad guys were always wearing white armor these days. It was becoming its own cliché now. They needed new “good” and “bad” colors. But what would a good color be? …Forget Blue Team, Simmons was hanging out with Donut too much.

Once the guards had passed, and Simmons’ heart had calmed down, he started searching the room. It was pretty empty. There were several empty tables, beakers, test tubes, and various scientific detritus littering them. An empty bookcase stood against one wall behind a desk. It didn’t look like this room was in use very regularly.

“Dude, we’re never gonna find anything cool in here.” Grif said, wiping some dust off a table. “It’s all nerd stuff.”

“Grif, do you even remember what we’re looking for?” Simmons asked testily.

“More snacks?” Grif replied dryly, putting an Oreo in his mouth.

“What the— Where did you even get those?”

“Secret snack stash. There’s one in every room in every workplace that has ever existed in the universe.” Grif pointed to the drawer he’d just opened and there were a lot of snacks in there. But considering that it looked like no one used this room there was no telling how old this stuff was–Oh, were those Red Vines? He hadn’t had one of those in years!—No,focus Simmons.

“Ugh, whatever. Just help me look for a computer terminal. Or a tablet, or datapad, or anything that connects to their network, so I can unlock the holding area and then we can get the hell out of here.”

Grif sighed. “Man, if Sarge wasn’t in there with the Blues we could just go. Not do any of this dangerous shit. I’m sure they’d be fine. Caboose has stupid good luck. We don’t. You remember some of these guys have guns, right?”

“You have a gun too,” Simmons pointed out.

“Uhhhh...” Oh no.

“What the hell, Grif? Did you leave your gun with your armor? Are you serious?”

Grif at least managed to look a little sheepish. “These pockets aren’t very deep.”

Simmons looked down at his own coat, and admittedly where his pistol was bulging out from his pocket was both really obvious and ridiculous. He looked up to see Grif trying to store cookies for later. “But you have room for an entire box of Oreos.”

“Priorities, Simmons.”

“Ughh whatever." Simmons continued looking, with some help from Grif, which was better than zero.

Grif found an ancient looking laptop on a sliding tray under one of the lab tables. Simmons nodded grimly. It was shitty and old, but it could work.

Simmons pulled it up in a corner out of view of the window and prayed it would turn on. This was actually an ideal place for them to hack into the system if the guards didn’t come in very often. It was slow to boot up, but when it did, he was able to bypass the password protections easily and get into the system. “Yes! Score.”

Grif gave him a raised eyebrow, but didn't say anything. Good! Simmons was doing all the hard work here! He kept a look out at the door while Simmons went through the databases. Luckily they were clearly labeled. Environmental controls, locks, lights… “How long is this gonna take?” Grif asked, but Simmons could tell he was worried rather than impatient.

“Just another minute/ I’m working as fast as I can!” Simmons sniped. He should know Simmons didn’t work well under pressure.

“There’s another patrol coming this way,” Grif whispered.

“I’ve almost got it,” Simmons said, his fingers flying against the keys. It reminded him of high school and college, his fingers flying across screens and keys like he was made to do it. As natural as breathing or swimming or hiding in the computer lab from bullies until 9 o clock at night.

There were red lights on each of the cell blocks and on the third try the lights on cell block C went from red to green. “Got it!” Simmons said triumphantly. They had been getting along so well lately, Sarge might actually give him a pat on the shoulder for this one.

“I found them!” said a guard from the hall.

Grif dropped the Oreos. “Oh fuck.”

Simmons looked around for a weapon, but the room was pretty empty aside from some chemistry equipment, the laptop and Grif’s fucking Oreos.

Bang, bang, bang and the door flew open. Three guards came in, guns at the ready. Oh god.

Simmons suddenly felt practically naked without his armor on.

“Simmons,” Grif said nervously out of the side of his mouth, backing into the wall.

“I know, hang on, I have an idea!” Simmons threw Grif his pistol. “Try to hold them off.” Simmons turned back to mess with the computer. He went back a few folders. There. Environmental controls.

Score one for the nerds. Computer science can save the day. Screw the jocks!

The three guards marched in, armor gleaming menacingly. “Surrender and put your hands up!” The first guard yelled.

Grif lifted his gun as guard number two fired his gun, aiming at Simmons, but between the shot and the impact the world tilted on its side and suddenly they weren’t on the ground any more. They were floating. Holy fuck.

“This was your plan??” Grif asked in disbelief, feet above his head, arms pin wheeling as he tried to get right-side-up again.

“It’s a good distraction!” Simmons cried defensively, trying to figure out how to steer himself.

Grif managed to get upright just in time to miss being shot by the first guard. “Oh, holy shit.”

Simmons remembered some of his training in antigravity before he was shuttled into the Freelancer Sim Trooper program and managed to awkwardly swim close enough to grab guy number three’s gun. He looked like he was the slowest one—there was one guy like that in every team—and Simmons was right. Simmons reared back and slammed the gun into the back of the guard’s head as hard as he could. With a pitiful whine, the guy slumped unconscious, but he didn’t really go “down” because they were all floating. Huh. That was less satisfying than it should have been.

Grif fired his own gun and guard number two went down. Which left guard number one who was—Where was he?

Simmons actually saw stars, which he thought was more of a cartoon thing, when an impact hit the back of his own skull. Everything went dark before he even had the chance to cry out.

“I’m jealous of clouds,” Grif said, his eyes were half lidded in relaxation, the irises glowing under the light of the sun. He looked like he belonged there. Like his natural form was to lay in the grass and the sun.

That was a weird thought. Stop it, brain.

“Clouds?” Simmons asked. “That’s random. What do you mean?”

They were lying on their backs in the shade beside the ditch where the warthog was stuck. Normally, Simmons wouldn’t shirk his duties, but he was tired of being the only one pushing the Warthog while Grif tried and failed to get it started again. He knew better than to ask Grif to trade. If he tried Grif would talk him into knots until Simmons was hanging over his credit card information without realizing he’d been tricked. Sometimes Simmons hated that guy. But he didn’t today.

When Grif groaned, “Break time, use it or lose it,” and flopped down in the grass, Simmons only sighed and paced for a minute before joining him.

It was nice to take a break anyway—not that he’d tell Grif that and give him another excuse. But it seemed like ever since they’d gotten to know the Blues on a last name basis there had been non-stop running around and having adventures.

Grif had been so weird and tense lately too. This was a good break from the odd nervous energy he kept displaying around Simmons.

Decision made, when he had tossed his helmet off, Simmons followed suit.

“What’s that about clouds?” Simmons prompted him again when Grif didn’t answer right away. Sometimes when Grif got in a “deep” mood he got pretty insecure about it. And yeah, any clumsy mistake or slip of the tongue was currency to tease each other later, but Grif should know by now that the philosophy stuff was cool with him. Simmons wonders why they’re here too—how they got here, what it all means—a lot these days.

Instead of backing off of the subject like Simmons half expected him to, Grif looked at Simmons and smiled contentedly. Grif may have looked relaxed in the sun, but he looked a little flushed too. Right, the fan in his armor was broken. Which he only seemed to bring up when they were out on a mission. He never brought it up when they were just sitting at home watching TV and someone could actually repair it.

“Clouds don’t have to run around chasing Blues, or listen to Sarge or anything. They just float around.” Grif sounded so wistful and relaxed. Simmons was suddenly enormously grateful for this break in the shade.

“Clouds also don’t get to gamble or eat or drink alcohol and I know you love doing all those things,” he couldn’t help pointing out.

“Yeah, you’re right. Guess I just want the power to float. Can you imagine taking a nap floating in the clouds? It looks so soft.”

“Actually, it would be damp and cold. Haven’t you ever been in a plane in that area of the atmosphere?”

“Have a little imagination, Simmons,” Grif scolded him, but he sounded fond around a yawn. “You don’t have to think about everything so realistically all the time. Think about those clouds having the consistency of cotton candy and the sun hitting you just right and you’re floating like you’re in an inner tube and just letting the air take you wherever it wants you to go. Like a current…” Grif trailed off, leaving Simmons with the uncomfortable impression that they had maybe possibly somehow accidentally just had an intimate moment.

Simmons waited for him to continue, but when Simmons looked back at him, Grif’s eyes were shut and his breathing was already even, like his own story had lulled him off to sleep.

They really should have tried to head back already, but Grif looked so peaceful, and it was the most comfortable they had been together in a while. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so,” Simmons said quietly, and totally didn’t watch his teammate sleep like a creep for two hours.

“Simmons! Simmons!”

Simmons felt a flash of annoyance. What the hell was Grif doing waking him up. It took him so long to go to sleep. And his head hurt. Had they been drinking last night?

“Simmons,” Grif said again insistently. “Wake the fuck up, there could be more guards coming. We gotta get out of here. How do we get down?”

Simmons winced and opened his eyes into slits.

They were floating. “Oh my god,” he wailed. “Is that blood?”

He’d seen a lot of blood in his career as a soldier, and bled a lot too, but it was indescribably creepy to see it floating in little driblets around them.

“Yeah genius, its blood. You let some asshole hit you in the back of the head. I shot him back, but there could be more guys coming.” Simmons blinked and was able to take in more of the room. Grif was near the bookcase, trying to hold onto it and panting and flailing and looking a little panicked. The bodies of the three unconscious (dead?) guards that had attacked them were floating through the air.

“How do we get down?” Simmons asked himself, the pain in his head was making everything foggy, and the vision in his cyborg eye was flipping like a TV with a bad signal.

“I don’t know! You’re the computer guy.”

“Right. The computer... If I can find the computer I can…” He tried to adjust his position and his stomach flipped worryingly too. He did not want to throw up in front of Grif in anti-gravity. He had to find the computer. Did it float off? “I think I just remembered I’m afraid of heights.”

“—You are not. I’m the one who’s scared of heights, and I’m fine.” The sheen to his skin said otherwise, but Simmons chose to believe he was telling the truth. When Grif was calm it was easier for Simmons to freak out. Wait, no, when Grif was freaking out, it was easier for Simmons to calm down. Whatever.

“Come on,” Grif urged as if sensing his thoughts. “You can freak out later. Let’s get down and find everyone else now.”

Simmons nodded, looking around for the laptop, which was floating below them, near a beaker of ominous purple glowing liquid that he wasn’t sure he had seen earlier. Better not touch that. This lab dealt with some really sketchy stuff.

Simmons attempted to steer himself downward to reach it, but only ended up doing a 360 in the air and knocking himself into one of the bodies. “Shit!”

“Hey, calm down, dude. Everything’s okay. You took a big hit there, huh? If I get you to the computer will you still be able to undo what you did? I promise once we get out of here we can get your head checked out, okay?” Grif sounded gentle and he was babbling a little bit, and the injury to his head must look pretty nasty for him to sound that nice.

Simmons realized he was shaking a little and tried to take deep breaths to calm himself as Grif swam towards him, knocking some objects out of the way, and using one of the unfortunate guards as a springboard until he reached Simmons.

As soon as he was within reach Simmons grabbed at his hand tightly. The warmth of Grif’s hand calmed him down immediately. He was still dizzy and his head was still buzzing but Grif was right here with him and they were floating just like Grif wanted.

Grif’s face was flushed like it had been that day too, which was odd because it wasn’t really hot, and they were indoors so they weren’t in the sun, and Grif’s armor cooling system didn’t matter because they weren’t in armor.

“I got you,” Grif said, and Simmons felt like he was floating. –Oh, well they were floating. Simmons looked back down at Grif’s hand like he just realized he was holding it. “If I have a counterweight it’ll be easier for me to navigate,” Simmons murmured dazedly.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Grif said, and he squeezed his hand back. “That makes complete and total sense.”

Jeez, Grif was acting weird. “Yeah, so we’ll get to the laptop and then—”

The Oreos floated by along with the box in the opposite direction of the laptop. “My Oreos! They didn’t get destroyed!” Grif said. He was tempted.

“Grif, if you pull me towards the Oreos, and more guards come in and we die, I’m going to kill you,” Simmons said with a sobriety and certainty he totally felt.

“Fine.”

They side eyed the unconscious—or dead, or just napping—guards as they awkwardly flailed, attempting to figure out how to get closer to the laptop.

The first time Simmons got his hands on it, he accidentally batted it in Grif’s direction. Grif had to bat it back to him, and Simmons finally let his hand go so he had two to work with. He missed the warmth already.

“Do your magic, dude,” Grif said. “Just try to give me a countdown before we crash into the floor. A ‘prepare for impact’ works.”

“Mmm…” Simmons managed to get back onto the environmental control screen without too much trouble, though his head was feeling glitchy too now. Like his attention kept flipping channels. This is the code for—Grif’s hands—press Esc add three backslashes—floating like clouds it would be so nice to nap right here. Under the sun. Cotton candy. Grif’s eyes warm and glowing.

Simmons didn’t remember finishing, but gravity came back to them slowly. Grif was below him, bracing for impact. Simmons floated down, closing his eyes and clutching the laptop like the favored teddy bear his dad threw away when he was six. Instead of the rough landing he was bracing himself for, he landed on something soft and warm.

“Hey, uh… you’re a little close there.”

When Simmons blinked his eyes open he was looking straight into Grif’s deep brown eyes. They weren’t glowing because there wasn’t any sunlight. But they were still pretty. And he was still so dizzy. He was draped over Grif and there were no hard edges like there would be with their armor on. “Oh good, it worked.” He dropped the laptop and dropped his head into Grif’s soft chest.

When he lifted his head again, Grif looked distinctly redder in the face.

Grif could say all that sarcastic stuff all he wanted but his face showed… something else Simmons couldn’t really interpret it, but he looked…. Good.

Their faces were closer. Oh, good. Grif’s eyes were wide, but dilated. Probably from all the adrenaline. Yeah…

Grif’s heart—Simmons’ old heart—raced under him, even though time felt like it had slowed down. Gravity really messed with you. Space was like that.

Simmons’ eyes closed again. They were sharing breath. He still felt like he was floating, orbiting Grif, and being pulled closer and closer by some force. Grif inhaled sharply, and Simmons’ realized their lips were just about to brush, and that was like floating too.

“Guys, there you are!” The door slammed open and Simmons groggily pulled away.

Donut was standing in the doorway. Of course it was Donut. Perfect timing. Thanks a lot, Donut. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“Yeah, the getaway ships been revved up to go for ages! Bow-chicka-wow-wow.” And Tucker. Of course.

“[It looks like we interrupted something],” Lopez said in Spanish. “[They were about to make out. Finally. After years of sexual tension. Maybe we should just leave them here.]”

Simmons was distracted from watching Lopez speak Spanish at them even though literally none of them could understand it, to wonder why Grif was suddenly coughing and scrambling to get up. “We definitely weren’t doing that!”

“What?” Simmons asked. Was he… responding to Lopez?

“What? Nothing!” Grif said. “I don’t know any Spanish, stop accusing me!”

Simmons got up unsteadily. “Okay, whatever, jeez.” Grif wordlessly helped support him as they made their way back to the ship.

Sarge harrumphed and examined him and made the flipping in his eye and his head stop. There were a few stitches and some pain medication too.

Grif made a couple of half-hearted attempts to extricate himself from Simmons once they got to the ship, but oddly enough, most of their friends were leaving Grif and Simmons alone. Grif was so much more secure when they were left alone that he relaxed a little bit, and didn’t make too much of a fuss about Simmons leaning on him and dozing.

Simmons still felt like he was floating. A glow from the sun in his cheeks. Or maybe it was just the blow to the back of the head.

[omnical]

I Sing the Body Electric... (1/?)

( Next )

Summary: All her life, forensic pathologist Dr. Angela Ziegler has dabbled much with the dead. After a bout of self-realization, she decides it was time she learned how to deal with the living.

And maybe ask her colleague out for a date somehow.

Genre: AU, Romance. Dark humor. Oh, and ghosts and psychics (anyone a fan of pushing daisies?)

Characters/Pairings: Angela, Lucio, Fareeha (mentioned), Pharmercy

Rating: T, mentions of body gore and third party violence, dark humor.

Links: AO3

Victim died from a singular sharp force: a penetrating wound to the head, resulting in cranial injury.

Left side, approximately 1.53 inches superior to the left orbit.

No murder weapon discovered in the crime scene.

Angela hummed, tapping her lip with the pen.

She paused the voice recorder and wrote her thoughts down on a yellow notebook, leg bobbing, her mind sinking deeper into concentration. By her elbow, a steaming cup of coffee remained untouched, and a nine-hour-old, empty sandwich wrapper laid crumpled up in a ball. Empty coffee cups littered her desk, alongside a mess of sticky notes with crucial thoughts written on them, such as: ‘the nasal cavity?’ and ‘lentil soup’.

Her uniform smelled freshly of antiseptic and murk from the examination they had performed earlier today. It sunk into her skin, her hair; lingering under her nose. Nothing she wasn’t used to, but being used to the smell did not mean she wouldn’t enjoy a long, hot shower back home. Finally, wiping biscuit crumbs off her wobbling keyboard and cracking her long, crooked fingers -- Angela got to work threading the details together. Her peering blue eyes did not break away from the notes and sketches she accumulated, as she typed down her meticulous observations regarding the case. And after what felt like hours, Dr. Ziegler sat back stiffly, curled hands hovering above the keyboard as she skimmed through her official autopsy report, eyes straining from overexposure to the monitor light.

She needed a few more moments of scribbling and typing and biting her pen. Playing the recorder again, keeping it on repeat; she listened to the sound of her voice, crackling and interspersed with static:

Body was found by janitorial staff at 1:30 PM.

According to the man in question, he was lying face-down on his desk, his pose suggesting a struggle, which explains various points of discoloration on his skin…

Blunt force trauma found on abdomen… bruising prominent beneath the left rib –

Where was his position when he received that bruise again?

Angela hummed, her thumbs tapping a random rhythm on the keyboard's space-key.

Once she reached the end of the tape for the third time, marked by a soft ‘click’, afternoon had already come and gone, her desktop monitor the only light bathing her in blue. She hid the recorder in the drawer, her free hand busy alternating between drafting a few rough sketches on paper, and typing exact details on the autopsy report. The doctor took a moment to grab a folder for Case #765 on top of a pile, opening it and flipping over to the photos of the crime scene: dried blood splattered outwards in every chaotic direction on the victim’s mahogany desk; his leather writing pad askew, probably because of how the body fell upon its expiry. She pinched her pen idly between her nose and upper lip, noting how neat the rest of the victim’s desk looked otherwise. She wondered what Satya would say about that particular pattern of blood. It looked like a bunny rabbit.

“Doc Ziegler?”

Cutting herself off in the middle of her thoughts before it drifted too far, Angela reached out to grab her coffee cup, not minding its ice-cold contents, and re-read her notes during their Internal Examination. Angela could only imagine what kind of weapon the murderer used. Or get an idea of what it was, at least, after seeing the results of the death blow herself. This seemed like a tricky one.

“Doc?”

Now if she were to make a guess, it would have been an extremely sharp knife with a serrated edge or…

Angela blindly grabbed for her pen, cocking her head when she realized, during her feverish thought process, she had lost the blasted thing somewhere and could not for the life of her remember where…

“Yo, Dr. Ziegler!” Angela blinked rapidly when Dr. dos Santos’ face appeared in front of her peripheral vision, her blurry sight sharpening until she could see the quirk of his eyebrow and his amused smirk up close. “Busy?” After a pause, a few seconds spent allowing her mind to buffer as she forcefully snapped herself back into reality, Angela jumped in her chair and uttered a small and startled ‘oh’. Her speeding thoughts halting violently in its tracks, not unlike a race car screeching out of the road in a rabble of chaos. She blinked again and, similar to the spread of colored dye blooming in water, her mind began to consciously feel the kinks and aches in her bones ignored for too long. A beat, and she realized her stomach had also released an embarrassing rumble on top of it all. She sent Lucio a sheepish look.

“Doctor, I’m sorry, I -- ” Angela shoved her skewed glasses up her nose, “You startled me.”

Lucio shook his head and rested hands on his hips while he regarded his frazzled mentor. There were biscuit crumbs dotting the corners of her mouth, and her blonde hair stuck up in several different directions all at once. Her clothing was rumpled and frayed, high heels pushed to the corner of her desk, leaving her feet covered in wrinkled stockings, and -- there were coffee stains on her shirt. He sighed, wondering who was really looking after who, in their professional relationship.

“So,” he said, elongating the word into a drawl, “Please tell me you ate lunch?”

Dr. Ziegler cleared her throat, “Yes, of course I had lunch.” she said, wiping crumbs off her chin. “I had something hot and soup-like almost an hour ago, and – “

“I don’t think coffee counts as ‘lunch’, Angela.”

Angela groaned in defeat and closed her eyes, watching bright spots dance beneath her eyelids as her body melted into the chair like putty. She breathed in deep, then stretched her legs out with an exhale. “Just finishing up on some paperwork, that’s all. You know how I get carried away sometimes.”

“How about all the time? And I think ‘carried away’ wasn’t exactly the term I was looking for. Try ‘workaholic’, or ‘perfectionist’.” Lucio leaned his hip against Angela’s desk, crossing his arms, and peering down at her with a mock frown, his neon green headset bunched up around his neck. Even if Dr. Lucio dos Santos was many years younger than her, and technically working under her, Angela hunkered down into her seat feeling much like a child under the watchful eyes of a parent. “When was the last time you took a ten-minute break, young lady?”

“I am not working too hard,” Angela groused. She sat back up in her seat with a grunt, feeling her back and neck pop. “This is just regular me, doing my regular me things,” She shot him a look. “Mom.”

“Don’t give me lip, young lady, you know you’re wrong about this,” Lucio said, “As your colleague, you know I respect and look up to you. But as your friend? You gotta start taking care of yourself, Angela.”

Angela huffed through her nose and began to get her hands busy, stacking the mess of reports which covered her desk into a neat-ish pile, and actively trying to avoid the look Lucio was giving her. “Just be glad I am out of my funk, Dr. dos Santos. I am happy, motivated, and ready to take on the next seventeen cases.” Even the smile on her face felt fake. “Bring it on.”

“Uhuh.” Lucio wryly glanced at the mess of documents under her desk. “Angela, I’m sorry I gotta tell you this, but you have got to get a hobby. Doing something other than work might help you more with this midlife crisis thing.”

“I am not having a midlife crisis thing. I’m not that old, doctor. And–” Angela raised her eyebrows, denial written plainly across her face, “I do have a hobby,” she said with a shrug, “It just so happens that my hobby is related to my work.”

“Your hobby is dead bodies.” Lucio muttered.

“Solving problems. Discovering the unknown.”

“… About dead bodies.”

“Now, if you would kindly excuse me,” Angela threw her entire weight into tossing a giant, teetering stack of documents on the floor next to her feet with a huff. “I was, in fact, about to go and take my break.” she said, dusting her hands together, “Want to have lunch with me, doctor? It will be my treat.”

“It’s seven-thirty in the evening, Doc.”

“Oh, well, time flies I suppose.” Angela said, opening one of her desk drawers, then absentmindedly shoving Jim Jam wrappers and empty coffee cups inside. As if that would make her trash disappear in the morning.

After six months working in King’s Row Forensics Department, the terrifying sight of Dr. Ziegler’s desk hygiene was common enough for Dr. dos Santos to see. He learned early from older residents how futile it was to drag Dr. Ziegler away from a job, and Dr. dos Santos no longer stared at her and her atrocious, self-destructive habits in awe. Their student-mentor positions didn’t stop Lucio from chastising her about her work ethic, especially after witnessing drawn shadows prominent under her eyes everyday, and her smudged make up only completed Angela's usual look. Now one of Lucio’s many fears was finding Angela Ziegler in their morgue someday.

However.

Dr. dos Santos peered at her above the rim of his glasses, and noted the glow about her cheeks with a raised brow.

"Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen you this excited about solving a case since…”

“I am always excited about solving cases.”

“But where was that Doc Ziegler who was ‘tired of it all’ and who ‘wanted to do something new with her life’?” he asked, “Someone who wanted nothing to do with ‘death and dead stuff’? Don't give me that look, you know what I'm talkin' about."

"Lucio--"

"Where was that Angela Ziegler who was planning to quit and maybe try being a football coach or a field medic or something?”

“She is still here, and she happened to get a grip on reality after a lot of thinking.” Angela said, ducking her head, as if that would hide the dusting of red on her cheeks. “Besides, I am already finished with this case. The precinct needs it urgently tomorrow, and, you know…” she stumbled on her words.

“And?”

“I had to finish it quickly.” Angela finished lamely, her voice raising an octave higher as if that would make her sound innocent with her intentions. “Detective Amari was asking about it this morning, and I felt compelled to help her crack this case as soon as possible.”

Lucio felt both his eyebrows reach up his hairline. “Oh. I see. I see.” he said, a twinkle reaching his eye while he casually turned to check his nails, trying to appear more interested with its polish rather than the conversation itself, “Detective Dimples is an awesome source of motivation, isn’t she? Hoping to share a hobby with her, huh?”

“Oh, Lucio!” Angela almost jumped out of her chair, smacking his shoulder with a manila folder. “Don’t call her Detective Dimples.”

“Hey, you were the one swooning over her ‘smoky voice‘ and ‘beautiful smile’ a few days ago.” Lucio laughed, rubbing at the spot she slapped. “Admit it, doc, you’re too gay to handle another meeting with her.”

Angela exhaled, and schooled her features before she became too flustered; raking her fingers through her hair, and hoping the red flush now covering her neck down would fade before another nosy nancy came into the office.

Relax. You are a doctor. You are a professional.

She straightened up in her chair, and folded her hands together in her lap. “I wanted to make sure I handed it in right away, that is all.” she said, managing an impressive professional lull in the tone of her voice. “I didn’t want to make our relationship with the precinct worse than it already is. And secondly,” Angela’s brows pinched in annoyance, and pointed at her office with a sharp jab of her forefinger: “‘Detective Dimples’ stays inside this room, doctor.”

“Detective Amari’s bone structure and cheekbones are so sharp and prominent–“

“Lucio.”

“It makes me want to take up anthropology. Oh Detective.”

“Lucio!”

“Fine, fine, I promise I won’t bring it up again.” he said, trying not to double up in laughter, his poor attempt almost making him slip off her desk. “Professional reasons my ass, though, I know you’re her favorite in the lab. Always asking about you and your ‘thoughts’.” he waggled his eyebrows, “You should ask her out instead of doing this–” he motioned his hands at her vaguely, “Weird flirting ritual thing you’re doing. I doubt you can woo her by talking about dead bodies, Doc Ziegler.”

“I do no such thing, doctor.”

“You need to get out there and get a life. Any life. Get a hobby. Get some friends. Ask Detective A out on a sweet date. Live a little.”

“I do have friends. You’re my friend, yes? Sometimes I even read books.”

“Thrilling.”

“And the detective and I do connect, socially, but just as acquaintances and nothing more.” Angela said, pulling her fingers thoughtfully, “I am a grown woman, doctor, I have complete control of my life.”

“Last time you spoke to her, you struck up a conversation about bile.”

“Well, I thought it was fascinating.” Angela grabbed the rest of her documents and began to rearrange them in a tray next to her monitor, this time with less gusto, feeling herself hunch over as her mind began to conjure up depressing thoughts. “I don’t think I am her type, anyways.”

“Oh, nonsense.”

But it was true. Whether Angela liked it or not, why would anybody consider dating a frumpy, high-strung workaholic, who liked to open up dead bodies for a living?

Dr. Ziegler and Detective Amari were connected through their profession only, no matter what her feelings were. They barely did anything beyond striking awkward pleasantries and empty conversations with each other. Trying anything more proved too much for her to handle. She found it difficult navigating through compelling words above work jargon, while stuttering and pushing through her infuriating and terrifying feelings. Not even the universe was kind enough to let them to meet on different circumstances, thus, they only ever saw each other to discuss murder cases among... other things.

Angela’s eyes, tired and unfocused, turned to look back at the autopsy report, wishing she could get sucked back into its world, where things had more clarity and sense and nothing was embarrassing.

Angela wondered when speaking with the dead became easier for her than dealing with the living.

She checked the time on her digital clock, blinking when she read it was now seven-forty six in the evening. The lights from the city cast a glow over the smoggy horizon, and as Angela listened carefully, she could hear police sirens echo off from a distance. She wondered if it was going to be another case they would eventually find through their doors.

Another body, another life ended.

She felt a hand on her shoulder ground her, all teasing gone from Lucio’s voice. “You won’t know unless you try, Doc.”

EDITED (26/09/17): Just the pacing and switched some words :) Thank you!

[anari3l]

Portrait of a King

Words: 1325

Characters/Pairings:Reader, Thorin, Thorin x Reader

Summary: Reader is an artist, struggling to draw Thorin 

Notes: based on this prompt from @imaginexhobbit 

If you weren’t covered in orc-blood - or your own, for that matter - you were usually covered in dirt from your trek with the Company of Thorin Oakenshield. And, if you weren’t covered in dirt, blood, sweat, or any other grime, you seemed to be covered in charcoal dust up to your elbows.

You weren’t sure how the packet of parchment had survived this long, or how you had managed to draw twelve dwarves and a hobbit and save them.

Tonight, by the fire, you were working on two separate portraits. One was of the youngest dwarf, Kili. You had managed to draw his brother three days ago on another rest, and now, you were finishing up that damned smirk Kili wore at all times, smudging the charcoal with your fingers to render the correct shadows and highlights.

Shuffling the papers as you got more comfortable, your thumbs left little prints in the corner as you packed Kili’s portrait away. The new parchment sitting before you had a handful of studies on it, all from different moments of the journey. All of them, of your leader, Thorin.

For some odd reason, you could not draw the King Under the Mountain. You had studied his gait, the way he stood, the way he held the weight of all those he cared for on his shoulders, but his eyes.

The line of his nose, the way his mouth curved just slightly on the right when he tried not to smile … you could draw  every speck of personality Thorin possessed, but his eyes was where you drew the metaphorical line.

Scribbling across another failed attempt, you bit your lip, lifting your gaze to look over the dwarves sitting about the fire. Thorin sat across from you, talking with Dwalin as they both smoked their pipes. His eyes had found a twig or pebble to watch near the fire’s edge, and you took your chance, dipping your head back down, tongue poking out slightly in concentration.

It took three more days of hiking before you were able to return to your sketches, and even then, you hated what you saw. You had sketched Thorin that night by the fire, Dwalin at his side, but something was off. Shuffling closer to the fire for light, you noticed the arch of his brows, the creases and smile lines …

And his damned eyes!

Settling back against the trunk of the tree, listening as the dwarves started to tell stories around the fire, you found your gaze drifting up to Thorin, your hand working the charcoal into the parchment with only a few glances down to make sure you were placing the lines in the correct spots.

A short cough came from over your left shoulder, but you found yourself too engrossed in the work you were doing to look up and acknowledge the visitor.

“Wonderful drawing there,” Thorin started, his gaze on the pile of landscape sketches and maps laying out next to you on your bedroll.

Whipping your head around to look at him, a lump rose in your throat, and you subconsciously moved your hands to cover the portrait of him you were working on. “Th-thorin!” you started, gaze flicking to the spot across the campsite where he had been sitting mere minutes before. “Is there something I can held you with?” you asked, glancing down as he flipped through the maps and drawings you kept in your possession. You didn’t mind, you had shown most of the others your work, but Thorin had never seen any of it, and now, remembering what you had been working on, your dropped your gaze to your lap.

Staring back at you from the parchment was a perfectly rendered portrait of Thorin, one you had finally managed to get his eyes right in … one of the few where you noticed an emotion other than determination on his features.

“What is it you’ve been drawing, then?” he asked, setting down next to your bedroll. “You’ve been staring --”

You blushed, and hoped the twilight and dim campfire hid it. “Er … Well,” you tried, setting the charcoal back into your small case and leaning over to pull Kili’s portrait from your folder. “I’ve been drawing the Company …”

With Kili’s portrait, the others came with it, their corners scrunched and dog-eared from being slid into the folder. Thorin smiled brightly as he looked down to his nephews and friends, holding them gently between his fingers so he wouldn’t smear them more and ruin them.

“These are beautiful,” he commented, looking up to you, meeting your gaze.

You held your breath as you smiled back to him, noticing for the first time the sparkle in his eye as he spoke to you. You had thought Thorin was hard and straight-edged, intimidating and scary. Glancing to the drawing in your lap, you bit your lip, checking to see if you could render his eyes any different. And found that they were perfect, showing an emotion you didn’t think Thorin could convey. Admiration.

“And what has your attention tonight?” he asked, stacking the parchments neatly and setting them aside, on top of the folder.

“Well …” you muttered, straightening and looking down to Thorin’s drawn face. “Did you know … your brow furrows when you are in thought?” you asked.

“Why does that have anything --?”

“No, wait,” you started, reaching into your pack and pulling out a leather bound book and flipping it to a random page. “I’ve been trying to draw you since we met in the Shire. Your eyes crinkle at the corners when you smile, but charcoal can’t duplicate that. Your stance when you’re armored and carrying a weapon is similar, but also completely different to when you’re unencumbered, lounging about camp,” you added, smile brightening your features, flipping a page to a side by side of Thorin in both scenarios.

Thorin was speechless as he watched you, small smirk lighting his features as he listened to you critique your own work.

“You’re infuriating, you know that?” you asked rhetorically.

Moving your arms out of the way, you pushed the piece of parchment you had been working on towards him, folding your hands in front of your mouth to bite your knuckle. “You’re … you’ve got this spark in your eyes … right now, in fact … I’ve spent weeks trying to draw it correctly.”

Thorin looked down to his portrait. He was seated against a tree, much like the one he had been seated at for dinner, pipe in his hand. His eyes were trained on something in the distance, his smile genuine and infectious.

“If you hate it, you can tell me ... “

“Why would I hate this?” he asked, genuinely concerned as he met your gaze.

You shrugged, pulling your knees to your chest.

“These are wonderful … All of them, including this one,” he added, holding his portrait up slightly. “You’ve got every tiny detail, and yet I still look younger than I am,” he chuckled.

You laughed slightly, too. “I draw what I see, and you’re not all that old ....”

Thorin smiled back, handing over the parchment. “I wish to see more of your drawings when they’re finished if you don’t mind. I’d like to see your talents gracing the walls of Erebor one we reclaim it.”

“I’ll show you whenever I finish something,” you smiled, reaching for one of your pencils. “Oh, and THorin,” you added as he stood to move back to the main camp. You scribbled a short note and a signature on the bottom of the parchment and held it out to him. “You can have it. I’ll no doubt draw many more.”

Thorin laughed, stepping up to your side and pressing a chaste kiss to your cheek in thanks. “Get some rest,” he added, smirking as he noticed you blush at the kiss, before turning on his heel and heading back to his bedroll.

[cryamore]

MINI UPDATE PART 2: Backer-only Discord Server Questions

Part 2 of the mirrored recent Kickstarter update. More video clips and images and animations after the jump.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Rob has currently been optimizing the code as we've accumulated a lot of bloat over the years from old textures, deprecated code and a horrible folder hierarchy. He's also improving our control scheme as we're both pulling the trigger on making the attack button R2/RT on a controller (Space on keyboards) and with doing so map the abilities to the face buttons on a controller by default for easier setup. The reason we didn't do this from the get-go was concerns about the interact button (usually a face button like O or B) having a dual-role with a combat button which may cause problems in combat if you're facing an enemy while interactive triggers are around you.

The solution we've come up with involves having your face buttons bound to field commands by default (examining, nap bag, etc.) but holding R1/RB (Shift on keyboards) toggles the face buttons to ability hotkeys. This should make for less worries in combat flow. We may change the key assignments depending on how things feel but we at least want to get that adjustment added into how combat works.

Thanks to experiments done in one of the mini-games to be included in Cryamore, Rob has also implemented the limited camera control system we cooked up for the minigame into Cryamore so the player can move the camera around to see ahead. It's helpful if you're using a ranged weapon or if you want to make sure the coast is clear before you bring out the Nap Bag.

Here's a clip of it in action. Sadly you can't see Rob actually press the keys but trust that it controls well.

The video also shows the in-editor vs. compiled performance. While the in-editor runs fine, the compiled version runs even more smoother as I mentioned awhile back.

Rob's also continuing work on the other character portraits and here's a sketch for one of the children in Ghilcrest, Uni Nauticus.

On my end, I'm wrapping up the last few areas of the Overworld layout. I can't show the whole map like I did in the backer-only update but here's a few of the new additions to it.

We'll look into using the Overworld map I've done as the in-game map as well, with a tweak or so here and there.  

Also here are a couple of monsters that are getting the pixel polish treatment that I never got around to posting here...

Gagak can be found in the Phantom Marshes and Berribun below him can be found around the overworld.

Here's a few of the other development video clips we shared on the Discord server.

Above was an older VFX test for Esmy's Boulder Dash Lv1 skill. The ground crack texture is nice but it does look odd when done near a ledge as the crack texture extends out into what should be air, it's a downside of not having 3D environments. This will be fixed, however, as the angle of the cracks are currently based on the older, "isometric" perspective. The trails also clash with the dust cloud. It's something we're going to have to work on to achieve a look that works.

Above is an older recording of one of our backer monsters, Hubbler, in action (along with another backer monster, Nictate, idling in the corner). Hubbler proved to be one of the most deadliest mobs we've had in the game but ONLY if there are aggro monsters nearby (can you figure out what's going on?). Do excuse Esmy's sprite shaking though, I've yet to animate and pixel her sprite for this condition and also excuse the greyboxed environments, they're going to be prettied up.

Also up above is a test of the emote bubbles that Rob cooked up awhile back up to give NPC sprites an extra bit of expression.

And finally here's an older bug that happened.

Esmy can't stand still as an invisible Chief Silvershark talks to her and Bagel pretends nothing weird is going on... also the camera focus lost control. Thankfully this has been stamped out already.

And to add to all this stuff that our Paypal backers or non-backers may have missed out on from recent backer-only posts, here's a retread on other stuff that aren't too spoilery...

Character portraits are getting polished up.

Ghilcrest's buildings are undergoing some visual polish too to further reflect the transition of the people from steam tech to cryam-tech.

More of Esmy's weapon attacks are getting the visual polish that they need in the form of pixel art, what you see above is the secondary attack for the Axe and the Daggers.

More enemies have been getting their pixel polish too. Topmost is one of our bosses and below him is one of our backer monsters, Black Claw.

FAN SPOTLIGHT

Some of the backers on the Cryamore Discord showed their support for the recent update with some fanart and I wanted to share their awesome works!

Here's an Esmy by Sakurafire, about to channel an ability through her condensers or doing a "we can do it" arm pump, either one works for us!

and here's another awesome looking Esmy looking off into the distance, by doghateburger

We love seeing fan works and I'll be featuring any more that get sent our way (unless you'd rather we keep it to ourselves)!

Again, the next FEATURE update will be talking about..

Not Bliss per se, but the process of animation and pixel art that goes towards making Cryamore.

Stay tuned!

- CM Alan

[shleyaay123]

What Curiosity Brings

Inspired by this lovely piece of fan art by @thegreencarousel and the many posts of Crewt Auntie @linddzz. Now on AO3.

Credence Barebone/Newt Scamander 

“It was Newt, of that Credence was absolutely positive, and yet the Hufflepuff was nowhere to be found.”

Credence knew that snooping through another’s belongings was wrong. Snooping was the result of too much curiosity, and curiosity came from the Devil’s whispers. Curiosity drove even the purest souls to sin. Snooping led to belts, punishments and pain.

Snooping led to finding wands under beds and Mother screaming as she flew across the church rafters.

So it was certainly not out of curiosity that Credence rifled through the bottommost drawer in the desk that Newt had so long ago pushed into the corner of his shed. He had run out of ink and hadn’t been able to find another inkwell in the chaotic debris of parchment and seeds and vials that Newt called his workspace. Of course, without more ink, he could not finish his task of deciphering and editing Newt’s notes into something comprehensive and grammatically correct. And so, not wanting to aimlessly wander the suitcase in search of his energetic lover—oh, and how Credence’s neck flushed warm and red at the very thought of that new development, indeed—he had begun to pull out drawers and shuffle their contents around with soft nudges of his fingertips.

Curiosity did not make him open the bottommost drawer in the desk, but before he could recognize the signs of its arrival within his mind, his eyes had caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of the drawer behind a thick brown folder. At first he jumped, afraid he had stumbled across one of the tinier creatures calling the suitcase home. Very quickly, however, did he realize it was something else entirely.

And that was when the curiosity struck.

Curiosity brought his hand forward. Curiosity folded his fingers around the brown folder and pulled it into the light. Curiosity possessed his mind and drove out any thoughts of privacy, of punishment or sin. Curiosity, so innocent and silent, made him open the folder and stare at the photograph laying at the edge among fading yellow pages covered in scrawling, glistening calligraphy.

Credence was not unfamiliar to magical photographs anymore. The old textbooks Newt loaned him when the Obscurus had finally settled back into his bones and magic had become something less mysterious were full of them. He had seen plenty of smiling portraits of influential wizards and sketches of bubbling cauldrons with black ink spilling over their rims, but this...this was...

A cold breath slithered from his lips as he pushed a loose cascade of dark tresses up to one side of his head in an absentminded gesture of unease.

This was all wrong.

It was Newt, of that Credence was absolutely positive, and yet the Hufflepuff was nowhere to be found.

Gone was the confident, determined posture that came from being around his charges, and there was no sign of the playful smirk that appeared when the wizard was being particularly badgering and teasing to those he trusted most. The young man in the photograph held a dark jacket over his shoulders, more like a security blanket than a cloak, his ginger hair cut short and his eyes shadowed and dark from a clear lack of sleep. His cheekbones were sharper, his freckles less pronounced, and despite his youth, there seemed to be a stifling weight upon his posture that Credence could never imagine his current companion suffering through today.

The younger Newt wore a dust brown uniform with simple braid and buttons, a multitude of restraining belts and pouches wrapped around his waist, hips, and chest. He stared at Credence for only a few seconds, each one painful and pleading for some unknown torment to end, before quickly shifting away to the floor. Even this familiar lack of eye contact felt off, as though this young wizard was afraid of being both praised and rejected for his very existence.

The Newt that woke Credence every morning with a gentle hand on his arm and a kiss upon his lips was not fond of maintaining eye contact with humans, either, but never did he attempt to apologize for himself in any way, shape, or form. His Newt remained, in all circumstances and weather, a wild, fantastic beast all his own. This young soldier, this innocent boy, practically screamed guilt and despair with every shift of his slowly hunching body.

The Obscurial found it all a bit too familiar.

“Credence?”

“Ah!” Credence clutched the folder to his chest, blinking rapidly in the sudden onslaught of awareness that he had been crouching on the floor of the shed for quite a while now. The shadows that stretched up the walls had grown higher, darker, as the sun at the height of the suitcase began to fade into a dusky orange. “I’m sorry!”

Credence turned his head and peeked up between the curls that had fallen back over his shoulders, watching as Newt tilted his head to the side and smiled.

“What on earth are you doing down there?” He asked, ignoring Credence’s automatic apologies with the same amount of concern he had never given them to begin with. “Drop something?”

“...no...no, I-uh…” Credence loosened his grip on the folder pressed to his chest, and only then did Newt seem to realize that it was there. Subtly, so much so that anyone who didn’t know the Magizoologist extremely well would have never noticed, his expression froze. With a sinking feeling in his gut, Credence watched as Newt’s lips grew tighter, his eyes grew darker, and his shoulders pushed back as though bracing for a standoff with a wild, stampeding Graphorn. His smile stayed in place, plastered and false, as though he were determined to push his worries out of his mind through sheer force of fragile optimism.

Had Credence been physically capable of hating any part of Newt, that fake smile would have been at the top of his list.

“I’m sorry. I was looking for more ink. I didn’t...” He whispered, forcing his gaze to settle on a spot of mud that had managed to find itself stuck to Newt’s white collar. He had been with Newt long enough to know that no beatings or scathing remarks would follow his confession, but the silent fear of being cast aside still thrummed through his veins with every shaking breath he took. “I saw the picture move, and I wanted to see what it was.”

“...Hmm, you found the picture of me and my brother, then?” Credence winced at the slight strain in Newt’s falsely cheerful voice before glancing down at the photograph in confusion.

“You have a brother?” He had been so focused on the faded depiction of Newt that he had completely overlooked the taller uniformed man standing at his side. Now that he looked closely, however, he realized that besides the light sprinkling of freckles across their cheeks and a similarly chiseled jawline, he never would have known that the two men were related.

Where Newt had shuffled uncomfortably in his own skin with a frown, his brother stood tall and straight. His eyes were hard and cold, though not unkind, as he stared back at Credence’s curious expression. His hair was darker, straighter, and slightly styled to lie flat along the top of his head in a futile attempt at self-control. A dark wand rested lightly in his right hand, though Credence had no doubt that that same grip could become unyielding and proficient in a manner of moments at the first sign of trouble. As the image of Newt shifted his gaze downward, the elder Scamander raised his chin as though silently attempting to compensate for his sibling’s shortcomings.

Credence decided that he disliked him immensely.  

“Yes. Theseus, he’s older than me. He’d already been in the war for almost a year before I joined the DRRB on the Eastern Front.” Newt groaned as he bent down to join Credence on the floor, folding his legs beneath him as he leaned over the open folder. “This was taken before we went our separate ways, about two weeks after I started training. My mother insisted.”

“Durb?” Credence asked incredulously.  

“Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau.” Newt chuckled, his eyes never shifting from the photograph of his past. “I don’t think anyone was surprised. Theseus wasn’t, at least, he made that quite clear.”

“He looks…” Credence bit his tongue, not wishing to offend the older man more than he already had with his violation of privacy. Damn his curiosity.

“Intimidating? Brave? Dashingly handsome?” With each description, Newt’s voice dropped slightly in a strange mix of bitterness and resignation that did not sit right with Credence at all.

“Bossy.” Credence felt Newt’s head snap up, and just before the Obscurial could open his mouth to apologize once more, a high pitched wheezing followed by a short, deep snort echoed through the room. Credence looked up from the photograph to see Newt’s fist hovering in the air below his chin, as though he wished to politely cover his snickering mouth but was powerless to do so. His eyes crinkled in mirth, and the cold squeezing in Credence’s gut loosened ever so slowly.

“Oh, you are wonderful,” Newt wheezed. “That, yes, he was definitely bossy. But, I suppose, he wasn’t the worst as siblings go.”

Credence felt his cheeks heating at the compliment and quickly glanced back down at the folder now sitting in his lap, pushing the photograph to the side and skimming the pages behind it. There were a few newspaper clippings detailing the gritty horrors of different warzones, with black and white landscapes devoid of any life littering the sides of bleak texts. Behind the clippings where thick pages of what appeared to be early versions of Newt’s field notes, all concerning different breeds of dragons. Rough sketches of claws, wings, and snouts were splashed here or there with charts and uneven paragraphs, and Credence could not help but smile.

“Did you like working with them? The dragons?” He asked, pulling out a fully detailed drawing of what was labeled as a “Ukrainian Ironbelly”. The beast had an impressive wingspan, its body arching upwards in a proud stance that showed off the detail sketched in the scales running up the dragon’s side. Deep red eyes stared at an invisible opponent, its jaws unhinged as though about to release a jet of flame into the air.

“…for the most part. They really are the most beautiful beings, if you treat them well.” Newt reached up and gently took the drawing out of Credence’s hand, scrutinizing his past work with a hint of a smile and a soft sniff. “Not easy to do when you’re forced to ride them into battle, let me tell you.”

Credence tried to imagine it, tried to picture Newt’s young freckled face twisted in fear and determination as he held onto the horns of his beloved beasts, with dark clouds crashing down upon them en masse. Just as the image began to fully form, and just as the cloud began to morph into something so much more personal and violent, he banished it forcefully with a shake of his head. The last thing he wanted or needed was to think of Newt screaming and falling…or worse…

Newt must have noticed his mouth twist in despair at his morbid thoughts, because the next thing Credence knew, there was a gentle hand in his hair rubbing at his scalp in soothing circles.

“Hey,” Newt murmured in his ear, “none of that, now. I’m right here. It’s alright. It was a long time ago.”  

Credence forced himself to nod. After a brief hesitation, he placed the folder onto the ground and folded his body into Newt’s calming embrace. They sat like that together, lost in memories and daydreams alike as the sounds of the worlds beyond the doorway filtered in and out of the tiny shed. Credence glanced at the old sketch of the Ukrainian Ironbelly still resting in Newt’s hand, admiring how far they had both come in so short a time, together and apart.

“…well, some things haven’t changed, at least.”

“Hmm?”

“I still can’t read your handwriting very well.”

“My handwriting is perfectly legible, thank you! It’s not my fault you Americans just use chickenscratch and be done with it!”  

[virtual-lara]

Did you know...

There was a story called 'Down Among the Dead' published by the Times newspaper to compliment the Times exclusive level that was created in 1999. It was written by Erica Wagner, who was the then literary editor of The Times and there were 7 episodes, each published every Saturday, starting on 27th November 1999 and finishing around the New Year 2000. Sadly, this piece of Tomb Raider history has been lost to the sands of time, and there is only the first episode available on the web. The story for the first issue is as follows:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Lara was bored. November days in London weren't really her style - it had been too long between adventures. In this first of seven episodes, Erica Wagner, the literary editor of the Times, launches Lara on a perilous journey across three continents to the heart of the greatest Egyptian mystery of them all. Now read on....

Lara rounded the corner and - just as she'd suspected the thing was waiting for her. She felt the adrenaline rush up into the roots of her hair as he lunged at her, swearing, but she feinted, drawing from behind her the lead pipe she'd kept concealed. She swung it at him with all her force, but he was fast too, and managed to dodge away, in the blink of an eye she was staring down the barrel of a gun. Everything slowed, she could see his finger tighten on the trigger, and she heard the shot be fired, point blank, at her chest.

"Bloody hell," Lara grumbled, pushing her computer keyboard to the side of her desk. What rubbish these computer games were. Anyway, she had better things to do. In front of her was a mountain of papers, books and files... she was sifting through them, trying to decide what the topic of her next book should be. Scott had it Easy: An Antarctic Escapade? Barrelling through Borneo? Nothing seemed quite right. She got up and made herself a cup of coffee, looking out her kitchen window at the garden of the house stretched out before her. The leaves were just starting to turn, she beloved roses had closed and fallen, gone to sleep for another winter. This was always the time she wanted to get out of England, not sit at her desk.

Well, there might be one way... she picked up the letter she'd left lying on the table the day before. It had come... regular as clockwork, as it did every year from her godfather Jeremy, the man responsible for so many of her adventures. Each year he took her travelling, the price of her ticket always the same. She had to solve the puzzles he'd set, which revealed their starting point. It could be anywhere in the world and the test was always exciting.

Now the first of his puzzles lay before her, it wasn't hard for Lara to summon up the interest, but her concerns about her nest professional move still hung over her. She wasn't a girl any more, after all, and she had to earn a living, all this tomb-raiding was one thing but it wouldn't pay for the upkeep on this place. She sighed and sipped her coffee, and heading back to her desk, nearly tripped on a book that had slipped out of a not exactly orderly pile. Treasures of the Cairo Museum.

She knelt. She'd forgotten she owned it. She leafed through the pages, Jeremy's clue still in her mind; the conjunction of the two was serendipitous. As she gazed at stone and gold, in lapis and alabaster. It almost seemed to her that she could smell the dust and bustle of Egypt. She dropped the book quickly. She'd had an idea.

The original copy of the letter no longer existed: the archivist had explained to her that once it had been set in type, it would have been thrown away. It had appeared in The Times in March 1923 "Death comes on wings to he who enters the tomb of the pharaoh." The novelist Marie Corelli reminded the paper's readers - avid for news of what would be revealed in the recently opened tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun. She claimed the admonition could be found in an ancient Arabic text in her possession, but all the same her warning might have gone unremarked had not Lord Carnarvon, patron of the tomb's discoverer, Howard Carter, died just a few days later. The "Curse of the Pharaohs".

What rot, Lara thought to herself as she looked carefully through the boxes the archivist had set in front of her. In 1922 The Times had paid £5,000 for exclusive coverage of the greatest archaeological discovery of the century. News from the Valley of the Kings arrived by runner to Luxor in those days: Lara sighed a little, wondering if life before e-mails and modems wouldn't have been rather more exciting. With its thick brick walls and small barred windows, the archive was quiet as a tomb on this rainy London afternoon.

She knew it was cheeky, just showing up. Luckily her uncle who she hadn't seen in years, but never mind - had been up at Oxford with the Editor, reading classics. She'd met him a few times and thought he'd seemed all right. Sitting on a fat sofa in his low-lit, low-ceilinged office, she had a feeling he didn't know what to make of her. Still, he'd let her into the archive. Before she left she wandered over to his bookshelves and pulled off a volume of Xenophon in the original Greek which, she noticed, had once belonged to "The Times Intelligance Service". Definitely, those were the days. She rattled off the opening paragraph for him; her Greek wasn't rusty as she'd thought. That, at any rate, made him smile.

Death comes on wings to he who enters the tomb of a pharaoh. She sat with a pencil between her teeth, wondering where all of this was leading her. The archivist popped his head round the door. "You all right in there?" She started.

"Yes, fine thanks", she said. "But is this all the material?" Somehow, curse of no curse, she hadn't found what she was looking for.

"I think so," He said. He seemed a nice enough fellow, Lara thought. He'd told her he was new on the job; been there six months. Lara couldn't have stuck it, shup up in dusty offices all the time. He counted the boxes in front of her. "Hang on", he said. He went into the back, and after a few minutes returned with another, smaller than the others, made of wood, not cardboard. "Funny", he said, "I thought it might be part of that lot". There was a small label on the front, neatly written in black ink, in an old-fashioned hand; '1923' was all it said. "I've not been through it though". He bent and blew dust off its lid, "Looks like no one has, or not in a while anyway". He smiled at her, "there you go, then". He left the room, shutting the door behind him.

Carefully, Lara opened the box, setting the lid on the table besider her. Inside was a mass of papers, unsorted, yellowing. All the other boxes had had their contents neatly divided into folders, tidily arranged. In truth, when she'd seen them her heart had sunk, she couldn't believe she'd find anything really new in such pristine order. But this... Carefully she began to sift through the material; much of the handwriting, she could now tell, was Howard Carter's. Occasionally she saw the failing signature of Lord Carnarvon. Mostly it was accounts; there were columns of figures and names of photographers, journalists, news agencies. Among the papers she spotted something else, hidden near the bottom of the box. It was a little handmade notebook. About thress inches by four, made of thick heavy paper and bound with waxed twine, its cover was stained but unmarked. The first page was blank. On the next page some numbers; confused sums. Then a sketch or two; details, it looked like, of jewellery or statues. A Horus eye stared out at her. On the next page, Carter's writing again, this time cramped and hurried. She began to read:

They say this is the most important archaeological find ever to have been made in Egypt: perhaps anywhere in the world and certainly I know that to be true. And yet I am still quite certain that there is more - of greater importance still, that is possible. And what I have found so far might well lead me on to the next, if I could only -

"How's that?"

The archivist. Her heart was pounding. Slowly she closed the little notebook; it almost fitted into her palm.

"Fine, fine," she said quickly, trying not to sound out of breath, "It's, um, more of the same, you know... accounts, ledgers, that kind of thing,"

"Not too exciting?" Lara smiled, unconvincingly, she was sure. "Not really." The archivist shrugged, "Well, you know where I am if you need me," he said.

When he'd gone, Lara hastily rearranged the papers from the box, piling them back in. They'd never miss the notebook. Well, they wouldn't, would they? It had been sitting here all these years, not doing anyone any good - she was the one who should have it, she could do something with it. Grinning, she slipped it into the inside pocket of her leather jacket. She felt better than she had in months.

The next installment of Down among the Dead will appear on Saturday December 4. The story will run until the New Year.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

To end with a few notes, we notice that the render as shown in the background of the newspaper is very suitable for the story so we wonder if the render was created specifically for this story/ game. It can be seen on the cardboard sleeve for the limited edition disk that contained this game. Please share your thoughts on this and if anyone knows anything about the six other episodes, we would love to hear from you!

Credits:

Pictures: Uploaded by user Lopez @ CroftNotes

Text: Please don't just copy and paste this elsewhere (as we have noticed that some of our other posts have been copied without credit). This took a lot of time and work to correctly right up and understand what some of the lines said.

To check out the other pages in this supliment of the The Times Newspaper, check out this post on the Tomb Raider forums.

To read episode 7, the finale of this story, see here.