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spadebrigade · 4 years

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eyes on you - sfw version

author’s note: hello! this is “eyes on you”, a version of my fic on ao3 that has the smut cut out. click here for the original, which also has the tags + summary

author’s note (continued): please note that this is a sequel to my longer work, a fortune i couldn’t foresee. but you don’t need to read it in order to understand this one shot!

we begin with this song. now onto the fic:

This was his moment. Kuroo closed his eyes, took a deep breath. It only took one phrase to spark a revolution, one song to set a nation’s heart on fire. And he was just the person to take on this challenge, delighting in the water droplets as they cascaded over his bare body. Taking in one more deep breath, he belted out:

“I love you, baaaaaby, and if it's quite alright

I need you, baaaaaby, to warm the lonely niiiiight~”

For the world to hear. Well--for Kenma to hear his terrible singing through the noises of the shower running in their shared apartment. He was just getting into the nonexistent music, singing excruciatingly slowly while he lathered his hair into a mohawk, before he stopped.

Why hadn’t Kenma banged on the door for him to shut the fuck up yet? Between the awful singing and the cheesy lyrics, he’d expected his boyfriend to have a complaint by now.

Rinsing off the remaining suds, Kuroo hummed the rest of the song to himself. He still couldn’t believe that he and Kenma were dating. All those years he’d been in love with his best friend, and it turns out it’d been mutual the whole time? He shook his head, muttering “what the fuck” to himself. But he couldn’t bring himself to be too mad about it, because they were together now. And as was his right as both boyfriend and best friend, he was going to annoy the fuck out of Kenma.

He slung a towel over his waist, not even bothering to dry off the drops of water that ran down his chest. He had far more important things to worry about, like bursting into Kenma’s room without knocking.

“What are you up to?”

Kenma sat in his desk chair with his back turned to the door. Kuroo didn’t need to admire him in secret anymore, but it was habit. Some part of his chest fluttered at the sight of his boyfriend so focused on his computer screen, ears covered by headphones and hair piled into a neat bun.

“I’m streaming,” Kenma said, occupied by some fantasy world on his monitor.

“What are you playing?” Kuroo stepped into his personal space, leaning forward and dripping water onto the keyboard.

“Oh my god.”

It was the utter disbelief in his voice that made Kuroo look up, to see wide honey-brown eyes. “What?”

“You’re half-naked and my camera is on.” He gestured to the stream of comments running across the screen. Kuroo caught a “WHO IS THAT” and plenty of tongue and water emojis.

“Oh.” He’d already forgotten he was in a towel. “Well--” He hadn’t signed up to perform for such a wide audience today, but he was going to deliver. “I gotta give the people what they want...Check out these guns.” He posed, flexing his biceps and making kissy faces at the camera.

“Get out,” Kenma pushed him out of the camera’s range. “You’re going to get me banned for pornography.”

He threw his head back into a hyena laugh, making his way towards the door. He was giddy, having achieved his goal of annoying Kenma for the day.

On his way out, he heard his boyfriend speaking into the mic: “The chat is being too much today. That’s just my roommate.”

Kuroo clicked the door closed. Right. Just his roommate.

When he sat at his desk later, trying to study, he knew that Kenma hadn’t meant it that way. They were boyfriends, and they were out as a couple to practically everyone they knew (Bokuto and Hinata had been particularly happy to find out, insisting on double dates that Kuroo agreed to and Kenma was horrified by). But Kenma was a Youtuber and hadn’t yet told his audience, for a number of reasons.

One was for their privacy. As Kenma had explained, “If my fanbase finds out I’m dating someone, they’ll have a lot of opinions about it. And that’s not something I want to deal with until I have to.”

And Kuroo understood that. But there was one reason that he wasn’t exactly comfortable with.

“Plus,” Kenma had said on that cold night when they were both sitting on their hard lump of a couch, “Yuuji and I have this whole thing going on right now. He’s been desperately single for a while and the fact that it looks like we might be dating is helping his views, and mine.”

Now, Kuroo chewed the end of his pen. He and Kenma hadn’t even been together that long, but he felt like he was already putting on a suit for the funeral of their honeymoon phase. When they had finally gotten together, the world didn’t stop for them--Kuroo had to pay attention to his exams, and Kenma had to pay attention to his Youtube career.

So much attention to his Youtube career. If he wasn’t recording a video, then he was editing another video, or streaming. At least Kuroo got to tag along when Kenma vlogged something, though he’d only be there to help with the camera.

But there was one thing he felt good about: they were going to have a Movie Night, a semiregular tradition that neither of them ever skipped. They’d take turns picking bad movies and Kenma would order some food, and Kuroo would cook something healthy in an attempt to balance it out. Last time, Kenma had chosen a film about a murderous car tire and this week, Kuroo planned to outdo him with a 2002 3D animated Christmas movie that was sure to be a heap of hilarious garbage.

Once he’d finally finished balancing the last of the chemical equations, Kuroo found himself in the kitchen, preparing cauliflower. It was a methodical process; washing, chopping, baking (even though their oven kind of sucked and raised the temperature of the entire apartment). He was in the middle of it when Kenma shuffled out of his room.

“Are you cooking?” He tilted his head, sniffing the air.

“Yeah, I found this dope recipe. It’s gonna be so awesome, you’re gonna have to like vegetables.”

“Right,” Kenma snorted. “Listen, I have to skip the movie tonight. I’m gonna hop on Yuuji’s stream and it’s gonna take a while.”

“Oh,” Kuroo said in a voice that he hoped covered the sound of his heart dropping to the bottom of his chest. “Okay.”

“Don’t you have homework to finish anyway?”

“Yeah.” He watched Kenma pluck an apple off the counter and disappear into his room.

Kuroo was left alone with the cauliflower. He lifted the bowl towards his face, staring at the zombie broccoli. “You still like me, right?”

It didn’t answer. He would have been worried if it did.

He continued cooking in silence. One missed movie night wasn’t a big deal, right? They could watch movies any time.

Or that’s what he told himself as laughter echoed from Kenma’s room.

≡

Kuroo thought that he could shake off these negative feelings, but they stuck to him like a wet paper towel.

He’d never been the jealous type in relationships. When his middle school girlfriend confessed that she liked another boy, he let her go with no hard feelings. With all his one night stands, he’d never felt possessive. If anything, he preferred to leave before he or his partner could marinate too much in their shame. But then again, when he’d been with all of those people, his heart had stayed behind in Kenma’s hands.

The word “jealous” left a rotten flavor in his mouth, but he couldn’t deny that was how he felt. When he went back into his room, pulling his laptop towards his face way too close like a preteen looking up boobs, he started researching this Yuuji that Kenma was spending so much time with. The Wikipedia page popped up on Google:

Full name: Yuuji Terushima

Occupation: Youtuber

Alias: PartyHair

Sliding in earbuds, Kuroo clicked around his channel. Immediately, his latest video began to autoplay.

“Welcome back, everyone! It’s your boy Yuuji…”

Kuroo frowned. This guy was fucking smokin’. A chiseled face, perfectly styled bleached hair, and was that a fucking tongue piercing?

He groaned. It was a secret wish of his to get blown by a guy with a tongue piercing. What if it was Kenma’s too?

A voice in his head told him he was being a total dumbass right now. And obviously, he didn’t think that Kenma would ever cheat on him--or actually leave him--based on who around him happened to be hot and have piercings. But Kuroo was still fucking mad about it.

After watching over an hour’s worth of PartyHair’s videos, Kuroo had brewed himself a fat pot of Old Man Grumpiness, complete with a dash of edge and a sprinkle of angst. One that he was still letting simmer when Kenma peeked into his room later.

“Good night.”

“Night,” Kuroo borderline growled, curling up under his blanket.

Kenma quirked an eyebrow in response. “I think you need to sleep.”

Sending incoherent mutters in response, he heard Kenma quietly click the door closed.

Kuroo would be damned if he waited his whole life to get this boy’s attention, only to lose it in a matter of weeks.

But he was still being a little bitch the next day, as Bokuto noted when they got lunch together.

“I’m not being a little bitch,” Kuroo crossed his arms, watching with annoyance as Bokuto scarfed down a burrito. “I’m just--I’m just pissed that he’s spending so much time with some other dude, y’know? We’ve only been dating a few weeks. Shouldn’t our hands always be in each other’s pants?”

Bokuto nearly choked, letting out a boisterous laugh. “Why the fuck would you assume that?”

“I don’t know!”

He shook his head. “Dude, if it really bothers you that much, why don’t you just talk to Kenma about it?”

“Because I don’t want him to think I’m some kind of possessive creep.” He leaned his cheek on his hand dejectedly.

“But you are some kind of pos-”

“Thanks, Bo, I get it.” He stared down at his untouched food.

“Look,” Bokuto gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze, “relationships are about communication, right? I always tell Akaashi what’s on my mind.”

“Yeah, I know.” Kuroo had heard plenty of times, from Akaashi himself, how it could be a little overwhelming to hear every passing thought about is it possible for two people on opposite ends of the universe to experience sunrise and sunset at the same time? And sometimes it was things like what do you think dirt actually tastes like?

“Me and Kenma don’t really work that way.”

Bokuto grinned knowingly. “Kuroo, which of us has been in a successful long-term relationship?”

He groaned, knowing exactly where this was going. “You.”

“And which of us was miserable until he listened to my genius advice to confess to Kenma?”

“Me…”

“Exactly,” Bokuto shot off some finger guns, before stealing some food off of his plate. “So maybe listen to the love expert this time around.”

He hated the fact that Bokuto was right, that he actually knew more about these things than Kuroo. But he didn’t need the reminder to know that Bo was an expert in loving people, was just natural at being adored and loved by everyone in the room. Kuroo, on the other hand, was not that kind of person. He was a little shit--and glad to be. But he didn’t want to only be a little shit to Kenma. He wanted to be a very nice shit, that smelled like roses. That you might want to cuddle with during a cold night. Okay, he was bad at metaphors.

♠

Kenma slid a hand over his face. “There’s more?”

He’d found himself having a peculiar problem ever since Kuroo had wandered into his room with a towel on. The entire internet was thirsting over his boyfriend.

The chat was spammed with comments, and within a few minutes, his Twitter was flooded with screenshots of Kuroo’s abs.

ana_the_beara: who the f**k is this hottie?! @ kodzuken

kr1kit: @ kodzuken says that’s just his roommate…

chanchan28: oh my god they were roommates

Kuroo had wandered into his room for all of one minute and now he had to deal with hundreds of thirst tweets, questions about his dating life, and speculations about Mr. Wet Abs’ identity. It was all a bit much for him to handle. (Though he did have to give credit to the people who made memes and edits during the stream, seemingly seconds after the whole thing even happened.)

He had a ton of damage control to do, especially considering how he and Yuuji were supposed to be dropping hints that they were together. He hoped that the other Youtuber wouldn’t be mad about it.

“That’s actually so funny,” Yuuji laughed on their phone call, scrolling through the memes. “But it could be a big help! It’ll, like, make more noise, y’know? Get people talking, which will get us more views.”

So that was one thing he didn’t have to worry about. But this whole “possibly-dating-other-online-people” business was starting to feel like more trouble than it was worth, as much as he liked hanging out with Yuuji.

How long did this have to go on for anyway? He’d much rather spend time with Kuroo. Speaking of Kuroo…

Maybe he could go for a movie tonight. So what if his homework was a day late?

♠

Kuroo was on the couch with his laptop, in the middle of solving equations that he should have done earlier, when Kenma walked into the living room.

“Hey, I have some free time. Want to watch a movie?” He settled in beside Kuroo, criss-crossing his legs.

He glanced at Kenma, before returning his gaze to his laptop. “I have work to do.” Shit, that’d sounded too sharp. Now Kenma was looking at him with furrowed brows. “It’s...homework.” He added awkwardly, as though that explained his terrible mood.

“Are you okay?” Came the inevitable question, gentle as it always was, laced with concern.

‘I’m fine,’ was what he’d wanted to say. That was not what came out.

“Oh so you want to hang out with me just because your schedule cleared up?”

He got a look of bewilderment in return, and looked away, his skin heating with embarrassment and anger.

A hand reached over and Kenma slowly closed his laptop, looking at him directly. He couldn’t bring his eyes to meet that catlike gaze.

“Are you saying that I don’t make time for you?”

There was the question. The confrontation.

“Well, you don’t.” As he said it, he felt like a petulant child, throwing a fit over nothing. But he couldn’t stop himself.

“Kuro, we’re both in a busy time right now. You know that.” His voice was measured despite the irritation that colored it.

He turned now, arms crossed and eyes glaring. “Why don’t you go hang out with Yuuji?” He spat the name.

Kenma blinked. Processed. “...You’re not seriously jealous of Yuuji?” Halfway between a question and a statement.

His shoulders scrunched as he sunk into the couch, silent.

♠

“Oh my god. Is that why you've been acting so weird lately?” He took Kuroo’s silence as an invitation to invade his space, gently pushing away the laptop and scooting even closer.

“You’ve been spending so much time with him! And half your followers think you’re fucking.”

“What does it matter if they think that when I’m fucking you?”

Kuroo huffed, turning his head away again.

“Kuroo, what does it matter when you’re the only person I masturbate to?”

He whipped his head back immediately, overcome by a blush that had already infected not only his cheeks, but also Kenma’s.

“I’m the only person you masturbate to?”

Now it was Kenma’s turn to look away. “I--I’ve been into you since forever. You already know that.”

He grinned. “But this is another level, kitty cat.”

Kenma groaned in frustration, his tied-back hair unable to cover the embarrassment on his face. “I’m out of here.”

“Kenma,” Kuroo said, in both shock and amusement at his boyfriend’s reaction. He didn’t have time to say anything else before Kenma was off the couch, out the room--

“Hey!” He scrambled to his feet, following after him. Kenma was fast, but not fast enough. Kuroo caught his hand in the hallway. He was anticipating a struggle, but didn’t receive one--Kenma’s face was turned away, but their hands were nonetheless linked together.

He led his embarrassed boyfriend into the room where this whole mess started, walking past the gaming setup and settling on Kenma’s bed. He sat among the pillows, but the bed’s owner settled in the farthest corner towards the wall, pressing his hands to his cheeks as though to absorb the redness.

“I masturbate to you, too.”

The confession relaxed Kenma’s shoulders, but his voice still came out quietly, “I always wondered--” He interrupted himself, shook his head. “Sometimes, I...I heard you doing it.”

Kuroo raised his eyebrows. “Me masturbating?” The answer to his question came in the form of sheepish nods. “...Did you like what you heard?”

“I--yeah, idiot!”

♠

A pillow landed on Kuroo’s face, earning his laughter. A devilish smile grew on his face. “Well, if you liked that song, I can give you a concert.” He was already shrugging out of his shirt. “You’ve got the best seat in the house.”

Maybe Terushima had a sexy piercing and some of Kenma’s time, but only Kuroo had the honor of gracing his boyfriend’s fantasies. And he was going to prove just how grateful he was.

“Did you see the news articles about your little display in my room?”

Kuroo snorted as he settled back, getting comfortable. “Did I make you jealous?”

“No,” he answered too quickly, crossing his arms. “Idiot.”

He let out his dorky hyena laugh, which, to Kenma, somehow sounded sexy. Before he could say anything else, Kuroo put on an enticing, yet filthy show for him to watch, which he may have participated in. Which may have involved a fantasy of a steamy shower in a lake house that they’d visited as kids.

When the show was over, they both settled back against the pillows breathlessly.

“Kuroo,” He began with a quirked brow, “if you were thinking of shower sex, then why set it in the cabin?”

He felt Kuroo’s chest shake as he laughed. “You’re finding plot holes in my masturbation fantasies?”

“Well, yeah.”

“It’s because...it’s scenic.”

Kenma scoffed at the obvious lie. “Come on, you’re clearly in a sharing mood today.”

“All right,” Kuroo sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “It’s because that summer...when we first visited that cabin...it’s when I first realized I love you.”

His heart skipped a beat. “It was?” Suddenly he racked his brain, trying to remember anything special that happened, any sign that Kuroo’s feelings towards him had changed. But there was nothing. They’d acted like dumb kids during that week away, just like they had every week before that.

“Yeah.” Kuroo smiled. Not that devilish grin of his, but one that was more honest, that spread over his face easily. “It was actually because of your mom.”

“What? Stop joking--”

“It’s not a joke!” He laughed, meeting Kenma’s eyes. “It really was because of her. I wanted to go to the deeper part of the lake without any adult supervision, and she wasn’t having it. It went something like…”

“I want to go in the lake.” Insisted young Kuroo, pointing to the opposite shore. “Me and Kenma wanna see the fish.”

“No, Tetsurou.” Mrs. Kozume tutted. “What if something happens while you’re over there and we can’t help you?”

“But I can swim! I won’t drown.”

She put her hands on her hips. “What if Kenma drowns? Will you be happy if I die from a heart attack?”

“But I didn’t even hear what she was saying,” he chuckled. “Me drowning was one thing, but putting you in danger...that was something I could never risk.”

Kenma had no idea how Kuroo could do it--could make him fall in love more and more.

“I thought about it a lot. But I decided that if someone else drowned--this is gonna sound horrible,” He shook his head, smiling. “If someone else drowned, I wouldn’t be nearly as upset. Except maybe my dad, but. The point is, I cared about you more than anyone else. Your mom must have been happy because I dropped the idea of going that deep into the lake.”

“Can we stop talking about my mom?”

Kuroo broke into another laugh. “Fine, fine. There were a few times at the lake that I thought about kissing you, but I chickened out each time...I really wish you’d been my first kiss.”

Kenma felt his chest expand. He knew how much Kuroo regretted fooling around with other people before they’d started dating. “...You don’t remember, do you?”

He received a curious head tilt in response. “Remember what?”

♠

“My eleventh birthday.”

“Wha--” Kuroo broke off his own question in confusion. “I remember your eleventh birthday. It was a few months after we visited the lake. Didn’t we have a sleepover?”

Kenma nodded. “We did. But that’s not what I mean.”

“Enlighten me.”

“All right. But give me the blanket first. I’m cold.”

“Even while resting in my loving arms?” Kuroo sighed dramatically, before pulling the blanket up over them. “There. Now tell me.”

“Okay,” Kenma tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, looking at a spot on the wall. “My mom bought me that cake. Do you remember? The one with the hedgehog on it.”

“Right. Because you liked Sonic, but you wanted him to look like a real hedgehog.”

“Yeah,” He nodded. “And she only told us to eat one piece so we wouldn’t get hyper. But then she went to sleep and we ate mochi instead?”

“Because it’d take longer for her to notice it was gone.” Kuroo grinned.

“You got this bit of chocolate on your nose. And you were laughing about something--I don’t know what it was, but it felt like a light inside of me switched on.”

“Your gay awakening?”

He snorted. “Basically. But that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you.”

“What, Kenma?” Kuroo whined. “You’re leaving me in suspense here.”

Kenma ignored him. “Do you also remember how you said you wanted to stay up all night long? And then you fell asleep at 11:30.”

“Well we were playing volleyball all day!”

He chuckled. “Well...before you fell asleep, we were talking. You asked me if there were any girls I liked.”

Kuroo’s eyebrows rose upwards. “And what did you say?”

“Anyway, Kuroo...have you ever kissed anyone?” Newly-eleven-year-old Kenma asked as Kuroo yawned.

“Me? No.” He shook his head sleepily.

Kenma turned over to his side, looking at Kuroo intently. Kuroo, with his messy hair covering half his face and his arms tucked behind his head, stared comfortably at the ceiling.

“Is there anyone you want to kiss?” Kenma asked, his heart beating faster.

“Mm, I dunno.” Kuroo turned over to face him. “I’d need practice.”

“We could practice.” He said before he could think better of the words, his pulse in his ears. He started to think of something to say, to cover it up--

“Mhm.”

Kenma’s breath stopped in his lungs. He scrunched up his face, gathered up the courage, and planted a peck right on Kuroo’s mouth. The world tilted, forever changed.

“...Kuroo?”

The only reply he got was a loud snore.

“No way.” Kuroo burst into laughter, much to Kenma’s annoyance. “I was asleep?!”

“You were, you ass.” Kenma rolled his eyes. “It was so embarrassing.”

“I guess that’s why you never mentioned it, huh.” Kuroo said, pulling Kenma’s hair free from its ponytail to run his fingers through it. He supposed that he was forgiven for the actions of his twelve-year-old self when Kenma hummed contentedly and leaned into his touch. “Actually,” he said with a small smile, “I’m kinda happy that happened. Because it means we were each other’s first kiss.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“And you’re gonna be my last kiss, too.”

“...Kuroo?” Kenma gave him that cute, furrowed-brow look.

“When we’re all old and wrinkly, you’ll still be the only person I wanna kiss.”

Kenma scoffed, turning over. “What a dork.” But there was no hiding the pink that had bloomed on his cheeks.

≡

“So,” Kenma said to his camera, leaning back in his gaming chair. “Next question: what is Kodzuken’s sexuality? Ah, I might need some help with this one.” He picked up his phone, dialing a number before putting it to his ear. “Can you come in here? I need you for a minute.”

A moment later, his door opened. “You called, kitty cat?”

“I told you to stop calling me that.” Kenma scoffed. “Anyway, come here. I need to tell my viewers what my sexuality is.” He gestured to the camera.

Kuroo squatted beside his chair, rubbing his chin in thought. “Ah, Kodzuken’s sexuality...well, it doesn’t matter, does it? Because he's mine.”

He suppressed a chuckle, but a smile still leaked from his lips. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

“No problem.” He stood, pressing a kiss to Kenma’s cheek. “Don’t be too long, okay? I’m making dinner.”

“Okay.”

Upon hearing the door click closed, he turned back to the camera. “Well, this answers the next question: who is Mr. Wet Abs?” Kenma waved his hands, knowing he’d later edit in pictures of them together. “He’s not just my roommate. He’s my boyfriend.”

And whatever he’d have to deal with--however many questions, comments, or gaudy headlines--it was worth it.

Ending notes: a million thanks to both my good friend ana and the lovely lauren for beta-ing this fic for me <3 and thank YOU for reading! please feel free to let me know what you think :D

my ao3

my instagram: @ spade.yy

#Fic #kuroken #afifc #kuroken fic rec #eyes on you

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ninaparkk · 4 years

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⌠ JENNIE KIM, 21, CISFEMALE, SHE/HER ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, NINA PARK! according to their records, they’re a THIRD year, specializing in COVERT OPERATIONS (CP) + KNIFE FIGHTING SKILLS, SWORD TRAINING, PRECISION SHOOTING, FIREARMS & SWAT TRAINING; and they DID go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of ( skater skirt, thigh-high boots, cherry flavored lip gloss, ice latte, french manicured nails, pink diamond choker, floor filled with shopping bags, echo of punching bag through the halls during unholy hours ). when it’s the gemini’s birthday on 05/27/1998, they always request their COQ AU VIN from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation. PINTEREST

TRIGGER WARNING: death mention, alcohol, underage drinking

Hi, I’m back. I miss y’all. I totally recycled her intro coz she is still 100% that bitch

Being the only youngest and only daughter in her family, Nicolina Park or Nina was so used of getting her way. From life-size doll-house to limited edition designer bags, if she will do well, she will have it all. Not like it was hard for her at all. She was cunning and wouldn’t mind side-sweeping her brothers just to be the number 1 in their household and get rewards.

With 5 years gap between her brothers, she never really grown close to her brothers. Even if they were off to boarding school, Wesley and Charles still gets the attention of their parents so whenever they are home, she made it her life’s mission to torment them. Nina mostly gets away with it.

The lack of attachment with her brother was compensated with the bond that she had with her cousins, Jude and Rose. They grew up together along with Josephine Tran. Nina would practically dragged them to her antics if she could.

Nina always had this high energy but that changed when Rose was found in her room. With Jude avoiding her and her practically blaming Jo for Rose’s death, she had no one to turned to. For her, she was not given a moment to grieve which turn her a little bitter.

Came her first year in Gallagher, she was a little excited because maybe she will be reconnected with Jude but little did she knew, she was taking a break. She figured, she couldn’t let her world stop spinning, she had to move on and so, she turned to her new best friend, Little Miss Tequila with a dash of lime and salt.

Nina didn’t reach the point where she became addicted to it because let’s be real, it’s hard to obtain alcohol in this goddamn school but it became a problem of it own. Her almost harmless pranks to torment her brothers when she was younger had been honed into manipulating skills. She had learned to talk people into doing things for her like obtaining drinks or stealing homeworks so she could be ahead of the class. She had thrown people under the bus along the way really.

It was at the end of the first year when she went on a down low when she got a boyfriend. At first it was nothing serious but she felt hard, too serious that she almost said those three damn words, too serious that she discovered she was scared of attachment—or it was something she developed. If her very own cousin could turn her back on her, the others will do so she ended it.

A year of being a good girl and she went back to her old habit. Not to say that she couldn’t have a soft spot for anyone but for those who got to know her a little bit, any acts of niceness is questionable.

PERSONALITY

Alright so is hmm she is a bitch. Joke. I really don’t know how to describe her aside from that but she is very competitive, ambitious to a fault. She hates idiots but probably hates you more if she thinks you can be better than her. She had a lot of energy to argue especially if she is right ( she thinks she is all the time ) and very passionate about things she likes. Nina has little to none filter although she didn’t say things just to be mean but she tell things because it’s true ( at least that’s what she likes to tell herself ). She has a tendency to downplay great things she sees in people and would often nitpick someone’s flaw first before knowing the rest about them so yeah, she is a bit judgy. Kdding, she is VERY judgmental. First impression really last for her. She will never apologize for anything and will stop at nothing until get what she wants. Nina has a few likable traits like hmm well uhm she is…responsible? And actually a good leader when it comes to projects. Never late. LIKE NOPE. It’s hard to get on her good side but once you are in, she will probably ruin everyone who did you dirty. Like she is definitely not the ideal friend a person could have especially when it comes to giving emotional support but she is good at figuring things out. Nina never forgets when you did her a solid and will ban you from her hate list.

WANTED CONNECTION

I mean, we can discuss if you wanna keep the connections we have with Nina. But here are some ideas.

Enemies - preferably from same major or year, one that matches Nina’s skills. When they spar, people have to stop them from killing each other.

Exes from Spy School - hot times Exes in Gallagher - she’s a thot

Ex-Friends - bc she is the worst

I’m SPEEPY. HMU so we can brainstorm

#gallagher:intro

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spnfanficpond · 5 years

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October 2019 Pond LiveChat Recap

We had a great time chatting with @evansrogerskitten tonight! Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your wisdom!

Today, we got together and talked about writing smut! We discussed the legalities around sharing smut on the internet, vocabulary choices, created a spreadsheet of terms we can all share and use, and encouraged each other to not be afraid to just write. A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut. Due to the nature of the chat, there may be some parts of this recap that might be considered NSFW.

To start us off, @mrswhozeewhatsiswrites shared some research into the legalities of posting erotica on the internet as it relates to minors. (We are not legal experts. This information was obtained through Google searches. If anyone can provide links to sources that contradict these, we will add them to this post to ensure the most correct information is provided here.)

Michelle: To try and keep it short and sweet, from everything I read, if a minor reads smut online, it's not the writer's, poster's, or web site's responsibility to keep it from them. It is the parent's, or the school's/library's responsibility. (Basically, whoever is providing the internet connection to the minor is responsible for filtering out content that might be harmful to that minor, not the parties creating or disseminating that content online.) Schools and libraries and other institutions that get government funds are usually required to have some sort of filter in place to prevent minors from accessing porn and erotica.

What makes this so difficult to research is that written erotica is not mentioned very often in obscenity laws. Most laws focus on images or videos, not the written word.

No matter what it is, though, to be prosecuted under obscenity laws, the material must first be ruled to be obscene. Legally, there is a difference between obscenity and erotica. Obscenity is generally illegal, and erotica is protected speech. There are many different sets of rules and guidelines that have been used to determine if something is considered obscene or not. The most widely used current set of guidelines is the Miller test. From my research, most (if not all) erotic fan fiction would not be considered obscene because of its ‘literary, artistic, political, or scientific value’.

Some interesting links in relation to this subject that go into detail:

Wikipedia - US Obscenity Law - About halfway down, there is a section on non image-based obscenity cases in the US. The first part of this section, which deals with the written word, is very enlightening about the differences between obscenity and erotica. Further down is a section about criticism of the laws which shows some of the gaps in the law where free speech lives. Continuing on, the section about censorship in schools and libraries explains the part CIPA (Children’s Internet Protection Act) plays in protecting minors from material that could be considered harmful to them.

Online Art Rights - Sexual Content - This site details the many attempts at limiting indecent material on the internet through the years. (Scroll down and click on the plus signs in the black bars to expand each section.) In each case cited, the court ruled that to ban all objectionable material would interfere with free speech because it would reduce all content to a level appropriate for children. They also concluded that since less restrictive means exist, such as user-controlled filters and the like, those tools can be used without reducing all discourse on the internet. The section on Child Pornography at the bottom might be of interest to anyone who writes Weecest smut, though.

The only possible exception that I think would affect the SPN fandom would be those who write Weecest smut. Child pornography seems to be the exception to every rule that protects free speech. Where every other depiction of a sex act might have a ‘but’ that makes it erotica (and therefore legal) instead of obscenity, child pornography in any medium is considered obscenity. Anything that even just looks like child porn is considered child porn, even if no children were a part of the making of it. This includes cartoons and CGI and adults made up to look like kids. If it’s advertised as children in a sexual situation, it’s child porn. So, I imagine it could extend to written erotica IF someone were to decide to push it.

Now, that’s a huge if. Someone would have to read it, object to it, and insist on prosecution for it. I think if that were going to happen, given 15 years of SPN fan fiction, it would have happened by now. But I would still keep my Weecest smut-free, or implied, or at least over the age of consent (which varies, so 18 is just easiest to use).

Also, AO3 complies with the laws regarding filtering for minors. If you do not have an account, you are required to click through a step that tells you that you are about to view something explicit. That's really all that sites and such are required to do. Hence, Tumblr making you click through and view on dash blogs they mark as explicit.

@emilyshurley I think there might also be a sorta solution just to play it safe. I saw that people who make mods for games like Sims 4 and stuff have a page for terms of download. What that is is that if you click their masterlist it will take you to a post where they list their conditions and have the words "I agree" and link the actual masterlist to that. Now this might take a little effort but we could add something similar before our masterlists.

This is all legal stuff, not site-specific rules. Each site can implement their own decency rules and enforce them how they see fit. For example, Tumblr, as a company, can decide to delete your blog. (They’ve stopped doing this since The Purge, now just marking each blog explicit and making you click on a couple things to get to those blogs they deem explicit.) Should they choose to do this, it does not mean that you’re in trouble with the law.

Now, onto the fun stuff!

Q: What is the first thing you think of when someone asks you for advice about writing smut?

Ash: Word choice- don't make the reader cringe. It's easy to fall into that because smut can be graceful and tasteful if it's done right. And that starts with thinking through word choice and how the scene is flowing. It's not easy to write smut! I think a lot of non-writer readers do not realize that.

Note: During the chat, we created a Google Sheets spreadsheet, with two sheets in it, with lists of words to use to refer to different things when you’re writing smut. The first sheet is Good Words, and the second sheet is Bad Words. Everyone can enter words they like and don’t like on both sheets, and we’ll crowd-source this problem! Check it out and add your favorites!

Michelle: A smut scene takes ten times as long for me to write as anything else. Just keeping track of limbs is difficult! And clothing....sometimes, I just make them dry hump so I don't have to deal with removing all the clothing! Other times, it's just, "Somehow, you suddenly found yourself naked." Like, there's a million great ways to get characters naked, but if I'm tired, angels snap.

@fictionalabyss (Mel): I've read stuff where a position makes no sense and it ruins the whole thing for me. Michelle: I actually bought a couple of those posable dolls from IKEA. (IKEA - GESTALTA, Artist’s figure) @babypieandwhiskey (Cam): I’ll have to use my daughter’s old Barbie dolls! I can keep track of both limbs and clothing!

Q: Ash, what are a few of the words that turn you off when you're reading smut?

Ash: It's usually words that sound so "romance novel"-ish to me. So "turgid member" is a good example. Please no one ever write that. Mel: Sometimes, keeping it simple is the safest and best bet. Ash: Absolutely, Mel! Sometimes we don't need all the extra words if we're showing the heat that's already there between them.

[What followed was a long discussion of various terms you definitely should not use in serious smut. They’ve all been added to the spreadsheet linked above, so fee free to check it out.]

Michelle: EVERYONE has those words that squick them, and it's damn near impossible to write a smut scene that doesn't include a word that will squick someone out there. So, don't stress about what words you do or don't use, cuz there's always gonna be someone out there who doesn't like something. Just make sure YOU think what you're writing is hot. If you don't get warm under the collar from it, no one else will, either. Ash: I highly recommend everyone is reading their fics out loud to see how it all flows. You'll catch errors and weird words there too.

Q: Ash, how do you get in the frame of mind to write something you personally have never experienced? For example, certain kinks.

Ash: Whiskey? LOL No, I do a lot of research- google, porn, erotica. Trying something out in person helps too! But we're writing fiction. You can make a kink work for your scenario too.I mean, I've written a reader squirting after 5 minutes to move things along but we all know it takes longer usually. And that's the fun! I've never actually been with 2 dudes but I f-ing love writing it. @atc74 (Angelina): I've always said I don't need to kill someone to write a murder scene. Ash: Smut is all about having an open mind. It lets us and the readers be someone else.

Question submitted earlier by @erins-culinary-service: I've wanted to try writing smut but never known exactly how to start and what words to use to describe everything. I've had sex so I know the sensations, positions, etc I'm just not sure how to write it all down any advice?

Ash: So sometimes I can't just start from "they kissed..." I start wherever I can see it best. So is it oral sex, or already doing it, I just jump in. And then I come back and fill it in. And I just write, no stopping once I get going. So the "cock into her hole" can be fixed later on my next edit. I just gotta get the idea out and then go back and make it hot. My smut is never hot in my first draft. Michelle: I think that's what stops a lot of writers, is thinking they have to publish their first draft. Editing is totally a thing. Just get the ideas on paper, and then make them hot later. Ash: Oh yeah, I go through at least 3 drafts per fic. Plus my beta version. Yeah, no one is ever going to see your drafts so don't worry about starting somewhere, anywhere. Michelle: And remember, practice practice practice - As with any writing, the more you write it, the easier it becomes. I wrote Third Wheel as a way to challenge myself with writing smut. Do a kink bingo or alphabet challenge. Just remember, you’re gonna write crap at the start, but crap makes good compost. Ash: Taking some time between edits is important too. It'll help you see different ways, AND you'll start having breakthroughs during the time away. Bingos are a great challenge that will help a writer grow. Cam: Writing smut is like sex, you're first time is going to be awkward and things won't be perfect, but with practice it gets better. Mel: I have a series that shows even the millionth time having sex isn't perfect and can be all laughs 🤣. But yeah.

Question submitted earlier by @focusonspn: i wanted to know about ways and words to describe orgasms and how to approach the moment after it without being awkward or forced. some people say those are the easiest things to write, but somehow i always have a hard moment trying to write them.

Ash: Hmmmm, as for the moments after- that's understandable, it is hard because its a transition. I think it's doesn't have to be an extended part of it- unless they're about to have a talk or aftercare needs a scene, it can be as simple as "we drifted off to sleep." Michelle: As always, my advice is to read smut that other people write that you like, and take note of what they do. Mel: Someone can get up and get dressed and leave. They can play in the fluids. They can lay there catching their breaths for a moment. It can be simple. Sometimes it doesn't need a flourish and that flourish can make it seem forced. Michelle: I think it depends on what type of smut fic you're writing. Is it fluffy smut where they're all in LOVE and kissy and stuff? Or is it Soulless Sam and Demon Dean just getting down and dirty and claiming you for themselves? Or, Soulless Sam or Demon Dean just getting their rocks off and they don't give a shit? @emilyshurley (Emily): Also this might be my f*cked up brain but I think if someone is not comfortable with a lot of fluffy buildup to smut trying soulless!Sam or Demon!Dean could be a great start. You also have a little room to do a little out of character. Michelle: We are blessed with a world that includes all types of characters and all types of situations, from curses (sex pollen, love potions, etc) to supernatural beings, to inspire and give us chances to write all kinds of smut. There are no limits to what you can do in Supernatural, so there are no limits to what we can write. Ash: Yeah we can really make most kinks work in some way in the SPN worlds. Emily: Also again with going out of character I read a captain America fic where it could have been a little out of character how he jumped straight to sex (someone commented that) but sex pollen made it work. So basically these tropes/kinks can also be good devices for writing NSFW fics to if you struggle to get the characters write in the beginning.

Other links mentioned:

Emily: I saw this advice list on Tumblr, so thought I should share it: List of Smut Writing Guides

Ash: This one, too: @smut-101′s Smut Tips Masterlist

And last, but definitely not least...

Ash: Always, always, always write for you. Readers come and go but you have to be satisfied and proud of what you've written. And everyone should get so much credit for trying to write smut. It's difficult but its does get easier and more fun with practice!

General Pond Updates and Reminders

What we’ve got cooking up next: Not much, at the moment, since everyone is busy, so we’re just trying to keep up with the day-to-day at the moment! Our to do list is still long, though, and will not be neglected forever!

Reminders:

Angel Fish Award nominations are accepted all month long! No need to wait to tell us how much you liked a fellow Fish’s work! IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A NOMINATION, BUT HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PRIVATE MESSAGE CONFIRMING WE RECEIVED IT, WE DIDN’T GET IT. Be sure to use Submit instead of Ask!

Don’t forget to submit your stories to be posted to the blog! When your stories are on the blog, then they are easier to nominate for Angel Fish Awards!

Say hi to September’s New Members!

Check the Pond CALENDAR to see when Big Fish will be in the Skype chat room/discord general channel and other Pond and SPN events are happening! Know of something that’s not on the calendar, send us an ask or submission with the deets info details! The calendar offers a lot of features, such as showing you when things are in your own timezone! Since we’re an international group, that’s a definite plus!!

We don’t have a topic or speaker set up for November’s event, yet, so if there’s something you want to talk about, or someone you want to talk to, LET US KNOW!

#spnfanficpond live chat #chat room #let's chat #pond chat #THE CHAT ROOM #chat recap #smut #vocabulary

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ninaxpark · 5 years

Text

TRIGGER WARNING: death mention, alcohol, underage drinking

Hi, it’s me again with a second character. I can’t resist. Anyway, here’s my other baby girl. As early as now, I am asking for forgiveness already for everything about her.....

It was at the end of the first year when she went on a down low when she got a boyfriend. At first it was nothing serious but she felt hard, too serious that she almost said those three damn words, too serious that she discovered she was scared of attachment---or it was something she developed. If her very own cousin could turn her back on her, the others will do so she ended it.

PERSONALITY

OPEN CONNECTIONS

THE BEST FRIEND - they are probably too much alike or the opposite. Nothing in between. The only person who can stand Nina probably. Also, someone to call Nina’s bullshit tbh. She met Nina during her first year, pretty much when she is in the process of ‘almost’ grieving for Rose. Probably the only person that saw her cry.

THE EX-BOYFRIEND - once upon a time, Nina was in love and when she realized how hard she fell, she got distracted and she didn’t like it so she broke up with him. They've been together for a year in a half or less. It could either end in bad or good terms, depends on how he took it. She is probably still like ‘MINE’ whenever someone’s around them. This someone doesn’t have feelings for her anymore probably.

THE ENEMY - someone she had double-crossed. Or someone she had an unhealthy competition with them. This person used to be a friend but Nina only befriend them to take advantage of them.

OK here is some randoms but equally wanted

Spy School mates - gals she went to spy school with

Exes - nothing to serious on her end to be honest. She only had that ONE serious love she royally fucked. Like she probably cheated on them lol

Flings/FWB/ONS - bitch needs to fuck the stress out of school ok

Annoyances - people she constantly butt heads on bc she is a fake bitch

Study buddies - coz studying is srs business ok

BI - someone Nina had been a bad influence with. She had probably got them in trouble at some point.

#gallagher:intro #this is a disaster but hit like and i will slytherin to your dms ok

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toast-the-unknowing · 5 years

Note

I have this idea that, the more I think on it, my love for it grows. I'm so endeared at this point. And part of me wants to share it, but I'm also deeply afraid to because it's too niche/so unconventional that I assume people won't like it. Then they'll vague post about, I'll see their posts and get too discouraged to create any sort of idea again. Much less share it. I don't know. I realize I should do things for myself, first and foremost, but I'm all too new to this content creator thing.

If you love this idea but you worry that sharing it with people will discourage you, then I think it’s a perfectly reasonable decision not to share it with people while it’s still in the creation stage. Maybe people won’t like it, maybe they will vague blog about it, but if that’s going to be the case, you might as well put it off for as long as possible, right?

Think about your idea, be endeared by it, work on it, maybe find one or two trusted friends to spitball with – your ask made me vividly hallucinate the voice of one of my teachers in college: on one occasion he mocked all the students he’d had over the years who showed rough edits of their film to literally anyone they could get to sit still long enough to watch it, and then ended up with dozens of conflicting notes, many of them from people who had no context for or understanding of the film, or maybe even no idea how to talk about film at all. DON’T DO THAT. There are two-three people that I ever talk to about my TRC WIPs, which is partly because 1. I trust their artistic opinions, 2. I trust them to be positive but also upfront, and to not talk about that shit to other people, but also just 3. I feel like if I talk about my WIPs to tons and tons of people then I’m robbing my brain of any motivation to actually write the damn thing. If it can get all that satisfaction just from people’s reactions to the concept, why would it bother to do the hard work of actually creating the damn thing?

Creators should do things for themselves, yes. Your enjoyment is the only thing you can ever be certain of. I’ve written things that I expected to get a big response, only to get less than I hoped for, and that stings! All the more so because I then feel silly and entitled. But as much as we give ourselves mantras about how we’re writing for ourselves, the truth is it’s easier to write when you have an expectation that SOMEONE will want to read it, and it’s discouraging to work on something that you “know” no one will want to read. How you handle those facts is up to you:

you can acknowledge that this one is just for you and make your peace with it

you can pick that one trusted friend you think will like it and keep them in mind as you go (runs the risk of that friend not reading it, or not reacting as you’d hope; don’t take that out on them, they don’t really owe you a response, but feel free to drop them the link and say “I think you’d like this one”)

you can promise yourself the next one will be a big popular crowd pleaser (feel enormously free to break that promise as soon as your done and write another niche, unconventional thing, with “that popular crowd pleaser” forever on the horizon as the next next thing)

you can try to balance “what I want to do” with “what I think will be popular” (I’m thinking about John Scalzi’s story about writing Old Man’s War – military scifi was what was selling well at the time, and he wanted to sell well, so he wrote military scifi – but he found a way to tell a story he wanted to tell, within that genre)

you can ignore what you want to write and just write what you think will be popular (NOT RECOMMENDED)

Honestly if you have an idea you love, that you are enamored of, you are so lucky! You have so much fun ahead of you! I wish you joy with it, and honestly I think keeping it to yourself for now, or keeping it between one or two trusted friends, is a very good call.

When it is time to share it…well, maybe people won’t like it. That’s entirely possible. I think in general people are much more likely to just ignore something they don’t like, especially something “niche” or “unconventional,” than they are to vague blog about it. (Pro tip: anyone who vague blogs about your beloved project, or really about anyone’s beloved project, is a supreme candidate for unfollowing and/or banning. Who needs that shit on their dash?) But maybe you’ll be surprised! Maybe people have been SECRETLY WAITING for something just like this all along. Maybe you will get very few readers but the ones you get will LOVE IT TO DEATH and be SO GLAD THEY GOT SOMETHING LIKE IT. Maybe the fact that this is niche and unconventional means that no one has seen anything like it or even thought about it, and your project is going to hit them like a bolt or lightning. Maybe they will go into it expecting not to like it and you will win them over – another good reason to present the thing as a fait accompli. It’s very very easy to reject something based on a premise; if you give it to people as a complete project then you’re doing the work of getting them on board while they go along. Anyone who’s been in fandom long enough has received, written, or read comments like “wow I never thought I would like X but you made me love X.”

Why not be someone’s X?

#fandom #writing #Anonymous

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shitfics · 6 years

Text

Ace in the Hole; ontae; nc17 (1/4)

Becoming a personal chef for an esports team in LA isn't what Jinki imagined he'd be doing to advance his career -- but it's a job, and one that'll take him far from things he's been trying to forget. The distance will give him time to recover and spend time on himself. The only hitch in his plan is the Saviors' star offense player, Taemin, who seems all too happy to strike up a friendship with him -- and something more.

ao3 mirror

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Hi all! It’s been a while since I posted anything...part of that’s because of working on my big wip and the other part of it is because I wanted to wait till the next thing I post is 100% done before putting it out there. Once this is all posted, it’s gonna be just under 30k. ^^ As always, thanks to my wife and my best writer buddies @minsunshine and @fleckle for betaing.<3 New parts will be posted every other day until the story is finished.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I got really into overwatch league this year? And like always, when I get into something, I write a shinee au for it... ^^; Taemin’s a pro player and Jinki is the recently-hired chef for his team. The story doesn’t require any prior knowledge of overwatch/esports...I did it kinda like my dragon age au to make sure it’s accessible to anyone. Here’s a shitty edit of tracer with what I imagine their skins to be like. (And ofc, if you want the gritty details about Taemin’s hero pool/who he’s based on/who plays what on his team I’d be happy to answer.) I tried to do my best for the cooking part with research, but obviously I don’t have in-depth knowledge of Korean cooking, so...please forgive any errors.

The room flickers in the bluish light of the muted television. Jinki adjusts the pillows stacked besides him, trying in vain to find a comfortable position. He wants to at least have a chance of dozing off, considering his new job starts tomorrow. But the leather of living room couch is unworn and unforgivingly stiff -- no better than his new bed -- and the strangeness of being out of Korea for the first time in his life would keep him awake regardless.

Tucking an arm behind his head, he squints at the time on the setbox -- 3 AM -- and settles down to continue watching the drama he’d put on an hour ago.

Despite it’s poor ratings, he’d been following the show since it started. The plot’s cliche, the dialogue’s atrocious, and the actors are awful -- but he gave it a try when he saw how much the the male lead looked like Changsun.

Jaw clenched, he reaches back for the remote.

Don’t think of him. He’s on the other side of the world.

He flicks down a channel, then one more, until he lands on the last of the three Korean-language channels available in LA. A music show isn’t something he’d normally watch, but at least the ridiculous makeup and outfits make it easy entertainment...

“I was wondering when you’d change the channel. That drama’s pretty bad, from what I’ve heard.”

Jinki jolts up. The remote falls from his hand to the wooden floor with a clatter that makes both him and the man behind the couch to flinch.

“Sorry -- I didn’t think I’d startle you.”

“It’s fine.”

In the dim light, it takes Jinki a moment to recognize the man’s face. He’d only met Taemin that afternoon, when the manager had introduced him to the team over their take-out lunch.

He picks the remote up from the floor and sets it aside, saying nothing more. They hadn’t talked during their first meeting -- Taemin had sulked silently through the meal and left for his room the moment he was done eating. All Jinki knows about him is the few facts he’d picked up from reading articles about the Savior team.

His in-game name is ACE. All caps, like most of his teammates, which apparently was a common thing with pros. Taemin is -- or was -- their star player, until his recent slump. And now he’s bearing the blame of their loss streak.

Jinki doesn’t know enough about Overwatch to say whether or not that’s true, but he knows better than to bring it up.

Taemin stuffs his hands into his pockets. “You’re up late. Are you going to be cooking for us tomorrow?”

“It’s what I was hired to do, so yeah,” Jinki says. “I’ll be making all your meals from here on out. I’m just having trouble sleeping.”

“The move is tough at first. It took my body a while to adjust to LA.”

Jinki raises a brow at him. “If you’re adjusted, why’re you up so late?”

“I was grinding out some practice and lost track of time. Then I wanted a snack, so I came out here and saw you...” He shrugs. “Figured I’d say hello.”

Jinki stares at him for a long moment, unsure what to say. It’s hard to see the relaxed, smiling man in front of him is the same gloomy one he’d met that afternoon, but he’s more than willing to toss that first impression aside. He could hardly blame him for not being chatty after another loss.

He drapes an arm over the back of the couch. “Would you want me to cook you something?”

Taemin blinks at him, surprised. “Wouldn’t that take a while?”

“Depending on how stocked the fridge is, I can probably come up with something quick.”

Taemin’s lips spread into grin. “Well, if you’re offering...”

“Sure. It’ll be good for me to get used to the kitchen before I have to cook for all nine of you tomorrow.”

With a small groan, he stands and stretches to ease out the cramps in his legs. Being crammed on a plane for half the day had made even standing feel like a chore. The living room is separated from the kitchen by only a half-counter, but Taemin still follows after him to flick the light on for him.

“I’m not really allowed to use anything but the microwave, but I can show you where things are if you have any questions...”

Jinki snorts as he opens the fridge to look for ingredients. “What’d you burn?”

“I never said I’d burned anything.”

“Usually people only are banned from kitchens after they’ve started a fire.”

“I didn’t start a fire -- just ruined one of our pans.” Taemin scratches the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed. “I was trying to make ramen and burned all the water out...”

Jinki laughs and walks to the pantry, checking it as well. There’s plenty of rice cakes in the fridge, along with gochujang, but no anchovies for the starting broth -- which he’d want, if he were to make tteokbokki to his usual standard...

He doesn’t want to make anything average, but looking at Taemin’s eager expression -- and considering his admitted lack of skills -- he has a feeling even the lazy version will impress him.

Closing the pantry door behind him, he turns to Taemin. “How does tteokbokki sound? I don’t have the ingredients to make it up to my usual standard, but--”

“That sounds amazing,” Taemin agrees, eyes alight. “Will it take long?”

“Maybe thirty minutes, at most.”

“I can wait for that.”

Smiling, Jinki pushes up his sleeves to his elbows and begins pulling the ingredients he’ll need out of the fridge. Taemin circles out around to the half-counter, where several stools had been set up along the edge, and plops down in one of them to watch as Jinki sets a pan on the stove to heat and starts cutting the green onions.

As his knife dashes against the cutting board, Taemin leans further over the counter onto his elbows, mouth open in awe.

“Damn. You really are a professional.”

Jinki laughs. “Your team is paying me, so I should hope so.”

He starts on the mix of gochujang, sugar, and pepper flakes that he’ll add with the rice cakes once the flavor of the kelp has seeped-in enough to make a broth. The stove is on the other end of the kitchen from the counter, forcing him to keep his back to Taemin as he works, but he can still tell he’s being watched.

It should make him uneasy, probably, considering they’d just met. But it’s hard for him to be uncomfortable in a kitchen, and at such a late hour, it feels more like a strange and spontaneous form of intimacy than an intrusion.

After a few minutes of stirring, the rice cakes finally turn soft, and the sauce thickens to the shiny, orange-red coating indicating its done. He dumps out the pan of tteokbokki onto the plate, feeling his own mouth begin to water as the scent wafts up, then carries it over to where Taemin is waiting -- somehow, with chopsticks already in hand.

He sets the plate down warily. “You should probably wait a minute, it’s still hot--”

Without looking up, Taemin plucks one of the steaming tteokbokki and plops it in his mouth.

Immediately, his eyes scrunch up. He flaps his hands violently and leaps out of the stool. “Shit, shit!”

Jinki holds a hand towards him, as if to help, and watches as he struggles to swallow the too-hot piece of rice cake. “I tried to warn you -- it’s not that it’s too spicy, is it?”

“No, it’s fine.” He hits his chest with his fist and coughs. “I’m just a dumbass.”

“Or just really hungry?”

Taemin grins back at him. “It can be both.” He picks up another piece, and this time he blows on it thoroughly before placing it in his mouth and letting out a small and satisfied moan. “These are good. We got some from this Korean place we found nearby, but nothing can beat having a personal chef make you a serving of tteokbokki at four in the morning.”

With a light laugh, Jinki grabs a pair of chopsticks from one of the kitchen drawers and takes a seat. Taemin eyes him suspiciously.

“I’m not that hungry, don’t worry. I just want a few.”

“I was just teasing,” Taemin says. “You made them, so you can have as many as you want.”

Jinki smiles and picks one up for himself, chewing it critically as Taemin quickly makes his way through another three of the rice cakes. After grabbing one more, he gestures for Taemin to have the rest, watching from the corner of his eye as he concentrates wholeheartedly on devouring the entire plate of food.

He’s cute, when he eats. Jinki hadn’t noticed before -- because of how surly he’d seemed, and because of how focused he’d been on making a good impression with the rest of the Savior team -- but now he can’t help but admire Taemin’s looks. His jaw is well-defined, his smile handsome, and his hair is a plain black that draws attention to his dark eyes and the silver piercings he has in both ears. Though his hair is messy, it looks good, and Jinki watches with a little too much interest when Taemin stops eating for a moment to run a hand through his bangs.

When Taemin finally shifts his attention away from the tteokbokki to meet his eyes, he quickly looks away.

Taemin frowns at him. “You want the last one?” His lips pout around the question as he pokes the rice cake with his chopsticks.

Jinki shakes his head. “No, you can have it.”

With a broad smile and a small mumble of thanks, Taemin picks up the last rice cake and eats it without hesitation. The silence that follows is comfortable, but Jinki finds himself zoning out and nearly staring again. He quickly pushes back the barstool and picks up the now-empty plate, bringing it with him as he hurries to the kitchen.

“I’ll clean this up. We should get some sleep, since you have a game tomorrow.”

“Yeah, probably.” Taemin agrees, though his head is tilted in clear confusion at Jinki’s dash away. “Thanks again for cooking -- I’m looking forward to breakfast.”

Jinki gives him a parting nod before he leaves the room, then turns his attention to the dishes and exhales.

* * *

Spoons and chopsticks clatter in the background as Coach Sooman goes over the Savior’s strategy for the match ahead. There’s no manners among the players in the scramble to finish off all the food Jinki had cooked for their first meal of the day. Elbows bump into hands as the players reach for second servings of side dishes, and squabbles over the last remaining pieces of meat are resolved with hushed games of paper-scissors-rock whenever their coach stops in his speech to look down at his playbook.

Coach Sooman flips a page and looks to Taemin and Joy, his partner on offense.

“We’ll have to be careful not to get caught up in any one-vs-one with the Lion’s offense. With Taemin’s performance lately, there’s no guarantee we’d win that duel, and we know they’ll use that as a distraction to dive on our backline.”

“Got it,” Joy says as Taemin grabs another piece of egg. When he hums happily and reaches for another, the coach sighs.

“I’m talking to you, Taemin. Stop stuffing your face and at least make a show of listening.”

Taemin’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he looks up. “Sorry. The new chef is just really good.”

Jinki hides his smile by looking down at the dish he’s washing, but not before sharing it with Taemin.

The coach grumbles and clears his throat. “Yes, we’re all hoping having you well-fed will get us out of our slump. But we can’t win with our stomachs alone.”

Taemin laughs lightly. “Yeah, but it’ll help.”

“We hope so,” Coach Sooman stands, lips tight. “Get ready to be out in ten. We’ll do our first scrim and warm up at the arena.”

The sound of chairs being pushed back fills the dining room as half the team stands to gather their things. Jinki wishes each player good luck when they pass the kitchen and file out the front door.

Once the team is gone, he finishes cleaning up the team’s dishes from the first meal and the rest of the kitchen so he has the whole counter to work on the post-match dinner. He’s planned to go all-out, with the coach’s permission -- short ribs and a few dozen side dishes -- and has to get started on the marinade and figuring out the grill in the house’s backyard.

The Saviors’ game starts at four. He puts it on his phone to watch from the corner of his eye as he washes and cuts vegetables. Though he hasn’t the slightest idea how to follow a game as fast-paced as Overwatch appears to be, the match casters’ commentary makes it obvious the Saviors are falling short.

The final score is a disappointing three-one. When the last map is lost, the camera pans out to the team’s faces, which scale between stoic to downcast. Taemin’s frustration when they stand to shake hands with the winning team is obvious, from the tension of his bows, and it’s then that Jinki closes the stream to focus on getting the grill started so it’ll be ready when the team returns.

Judging by how much the team had enjoyed the earlier meal, he’s going to be able to lift their spirits with the feast he’s preparing.

The team’s return brings life back to the team house, though the air is tense. Kibum, Joy, and Wonsik pile into the den for a hushed post-mortem of their match, while Minho and Taemin disappear upstairs into their shared room without a word.

Only when he begins bringing food to the table does the mood seem to lift. The first plate of ribs he brings in from the grill pulls the group from the den into the dining room, and a few minutes later, the rest of the team has piled in to eat the side dishes he’d placed on the table and watch him eagerly through the window as he cooks the next serving of meat. Every bite is followed with praise, and the coach waves him over after clearing his plate.

“We made a good move, hiring you. I haven’t ever seen Minho bounce back from a loss like this.” He nods to the tall, lean-built man on the far end of the table. “He and Taemin take losses hard -- they usually sulk in their room the rest of the night after one. It’s good to see at least one of them get out here with us.”

“I’m glad to help,” Jinki says. “Do you think there’s some kind of meal that could drag Taemin out, too?”

Before the coach can answer, Kibum -- who Jinki has pegged as the blunt one of the team -- scoffs. “If meat doesn’t bring him out of his cave, nothing will. I think he’ll always be testy when he underperforms.”

Coach Sooman glances at him sidelong. “Remember what I said about discussing your teammates?”

Kibum sighs heavily and reaches for another piece of cubed radish. “It’s not mean if it’s the truth...”

Before Sooman can respond, Jinki bows out by picking up a few empty dishes and returning to the kitchen. He might work for the team, but he’s not sure he wants to be privy to their grudges.

The rest of the night, thankfully, passes without any more internal strife. He cleans up after the team leaves, hand-washing the quality pans and cutting boards he’d used, and loading up the dishwasher with all the serving bowls and utensils that’d been dirtied over the night. By the time it’s done, he’s exhausted, and he eagerly returns to his single room to collapse into bed.

He opens up a phone game to pass the time, but loses interest quickly, and ends up in his contacts -- where Changsun’s name stills sit at the top.

Against his better judgement, he taps on the name. His heart clenches as he rereads the last few messages where he’d arranged to pick up his remaining things from Changsun’s apartment.

That’d been two months ago: just long enough to forget when he’s busy, and just long enough to remember when he has a moment of idleness.

Not wanting to be tempted into messaging him, he tosses his phone aside and rolls out of bed. He can at least make himself useful by taking inventory of what was left in the fridge after the feast he’d made today.

His room is close to the living room, and the glow of the television gives him enough light to find his way there.

Taemin is slumped on the couch, watching some music countdown show with glazed eyes. He barely glances up when Jinki enters, but still mumbles a greeting.

“Hey.”

Jinki raises a hand in greeting. “Hey. What’re you doing up this late?”

Taemin gestures to the television. “Just watching some garbage. Couldn’t sleep again. I took too long of a nap after we got back from the game.”

“That sucks,” Jinki says. He shuffles awkwardly when Taemin says nothing further. “I’m going to take inventory now to make my morning grocery trip a little easier.”

“Smart.”

It’s a clear end to the conversation. But when he moves to leave and breaks eye contact with Taemin, he sees his expression fall from dull to something almost anguished -- and against his better judgement, he stops beside the couch.

“Did you, uh, ever eat anything for dinner? I noticed you weren’t there.”

Taemin shrugs without turning to look at him. “I found something to snack on.”

“Alright, but feel free to let me know if you want me to whip up something for you. I’m sure we still have enough ingredients left for a single serving of something.”

Taemin scoffs. “I’m not going to make you go through the trouble of cooking me a meal this time of night.”

“I’m fine with it,” Jinki says. “C’mon, I’m sure you’re craving something.”

Taemin frowns at the television, guilty, but eventually lifts his head to look at Jinki with a pout.“If it’s not too much trouble...pajeon sounds really good right now.”

“Pajeon coming right up, then,” Jinki says. He begins walking towards the kitchen, and hearing Taemin follow him, speaks over his shoulder. “And don’t feel guilty about this, I could make these in my sleep.”

Taemin’s lips pull into a small smile. “I’d like to see you try that.”

Jinki laugh and opens the fridge to pull out green onions. Taemin takes a seat on the other side of the counter and rests his head in his hands, watching in silence as Jinki’s knife moves up-and-down the cutting board. When he turns, he feels Taemin’s gaze shift to the back of his neck.

“What made you decide to take this job?”

“Um--” Jinki swallows and looks over his shoulder. He can tell Taemin’s curiosity is innocent, but the question still catches him off guard. He pulls out a pan and flicks on the burner before answering. “I wanted a change, I guess.”

“Yeah, I can understand that. Is there a reason you chose LA in particular?”

“Not really -- just heard of the opening through a friend. I’d have been happy to go anywhere outside of Korea.”

Taemin raises an eyebrow. “Bad breakup?”

He grimaces. “...Something like that.”

“Well, it’s her loss. You’re willing to cook on demand and you’re good at it. I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t want to keep a tight hold on that.”

“Thanks.” Jinki grins, but doesn’t correct him on the pronouns. Keeping the team in the dark about his sexuality is likely the only option he has for keeping his employment.

Taemin goes quiet again as he finishes mixing the batter and frying the two pancakes he can get out of the leftover green onions, but the mood is still lighter. The invisible weight that’d kept Taemin’s shoulders slumped seems to be gone, and when he drops the pancake on the cutting board to slice it up for easy eating, his eyes instantly light.

“That smells amazing. How long till I can eat it?”

“Just another minute.” Jinki grabs a plate from the cabinet, then arranges the pieces of pancake neatly besides the small cup of dipping sauce he’d mixed as Taemin frowns.

“You don’t need to do that fancy presentation stuff when it’s just me you’re cooking for.”

“It’s habit. And I only want to serve things that look good.”

“I guess that’s why you’re a professional, then.” Taemin smirks at him, not breaking eye contact until Jinki sets the plate in front of him and he grabs his first piece. His eyes close then, in food-brought bliss, and he bounces in his chair. “Fuck, this is good,” he says, mouth still full. He blinks up at Jinki as he grabs another. “You don’t mind me cursing, do you? I just assume it’s fine, since my teammates do it a lot and I’m around them so much...”

Jinki laughs. “I don’t mind. We’re practically the same age, right?”

“I’d think so. When were you born?”

“Eighty-nine.”

“Oh, four years older than me. I’m ninety-three.” He looks up through his lashes as he dips another piece of pajeon. “Can I call you hyung, then?”

Jinki’s voice hitches at the wide smile Taemin sends him. “Yeah, I’m alright with that.”

Taemin beams and takes another bite. The food disappears quickly, as they talk about random things -- the weather and traffic in LA, the annoyance of jetlag, their struggles with adapting to constant presence of English outside of the team house -- and Taemin sits back with a long sigh after finishing the last piece.

“This really makes me regret missing dinner. I can only imagine how good your barbeque is...”

“You’ll get to have it eventually.”

“Soon, maybe?” Taemin says, hopeful.

“We’ll see. I’ll have to ask the manager if he’s alright with me spending so much on meat again.”

Jinki takes the now-empty plate and gathers the rest of the dirty dishes to bring them to the sink. When he turns on the faucet, Taemin circles around the counter to join him and snatches the pan out of his hand.

“Let me help. It’s only fair, since you did all the cooking.”

As Jinki starts on the cutting board and plate Taemin picks up the second sponge from the rim of the sink to begin washing his stolen pan. Though the kitchen is fairly large, the sink is small. Their elbows bump into each other as they work, making Jinki’s skin prickle. The unexpected proximity is making him notice again that Taemin’s an attractive man.

He clears his throat. “So, what made you decide to do play Overwatch professionally?”

Taemin shrugs. “I’ve just always been good at it. I’ve been pro since I was sixteen, though I played a different game back then.”

“Wow -- I had no idea anyone started that young.”

“A lot of us do. Most of my teammates have been in the sport for years.”

Jinki thinks back to Kibum’s comment earlier that day. “Have you been with them long?”

“Most of the team is new to me, but I’ve been with Kibum and Minho for years. It’s nice, because we know how we all play, so we work together well -- but we can see each other’s weaknesses, too. I think they’re frustrated lately because they know exactly how much I’m lacking compared to my usual standard. It makes the losses harder, knowing I’m responsible for them and everyone knows it.”

“I don’t know much about Overwatch, but it doesn’t seem fair to blame yourself for the loss. It’s a six person game, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re only responsible for one-sixth of a loss.” Jinki flings soap from his hand to tap his forehead. “Basic math.”

Laughing, Taemin shakes his head. He finishes cleaning his pan and sets it on the dish rack. After wiping his hands dry on his pants, he pats Jinki on the back. “That’s not how it works at all, but thanks.”

“Of course. I’m here for stomach and moral support.”

Taemin walks backwards, an amused smile on his lips as he exits the kitchen. “Get some sleep, hyung. I want to make sure you can get up and make us another big meal.”

“You’ll be getting it no matter what, don’t worry.”

He receives a cheeky two-fingered salute before Taemin disappears up the dark staircase.

When the team wins their first game since Jinki’s arrival, he goes all-out. He texts the manager for permission to splurge once the moment he sees the score -- a tight 3-2 that was a hard-won reverse sweep -- and hurries down to the local grocer to purchase every cut of fresh meat he can think of.

By the team is back home, riding high on their victory, he has the grill started and plates of meat prepared for cooking. The weather outside is pleasant, and the team piles onto the few pieces of patio furniture they have to eat the few side dishes Jinki had already set out as they wait for the meat to cook. Coach Sooman brings out what must be a half-crate of soju bottles, which are quickly opened and poured. The team’s appetite is voracious, forcing him to bounce back between the their table and grill to keep up as they consume everything he cooks the moment he sets it down, but he doesn’t mind.

All of the players are happier than he’s ever seen them. Taemin’s hands move rapidly as he recounts one of his plays to the group, broad smile infectious, and Kibum and Minho join in his story-telling to emphasize how surprised they had been when Taemin won them the fight.

The hours pass quickly until the last of the food disappears and the players begin to filter out one-by-one back to their rooms. The patio and living room are entirely empty by the time he’s done cleaning up, and for once, he falls asleep minutes after collapsing into his bed -- only to be woken quickly after by knocking on the front door.

With a long sigh, he shuffles out of bed and exits his room, squinting down the hall towards the front door of the team house. He expects it to be shut -- more than a few players on the team had locked themselves out of the house after late-night trips -- but the door is open, and Taemin is in front of it, passing money to a man in a blue uniform shirt. Taemin finishes the transaction in hushed tones before taking a box from him, then shuts the door.

When he turns around, he startles, nearly dropping the box in his hands.

Jinki meets him halfway down the hall. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to start startle you.”

“I should be sorry for waking you.” He sighs. “I told them not to knock when I made my order, but I guessed they missed those instructions.”

“It’s fine, really.” Jinki rubs at his eyes, then looks at the box in Taemin’s hands with disbelief. “You ordered pizza? After midnight?”

Taemin pouts. “I had a craving...”

“I still can’t believe you’d cheat on me like this after I made such a good meal.”

Taemin laughs. “If you join in, it’s not cheating, right? I’ll split this with you.”

“My stomach’s going to regret it, but alright.”

Taemin carries the box into the living room, not bothering to pick up plates on the way, and sets it on the small coffee table. Soju bottles from earlier are still scattered across the surface, and Taemin reaches for an unopened one to set in front of Jinki.

“You want to drink? I guess you didn’t get to much earlier, since you were cooking.”

Jinki twists the bottle open, then gestures for Taemin to pick up a glass. “Grab yourself one. I imagine you wouldn’t have offered unless you wanted to drink, too.”

Taemin raises a brow, then hold out an empty glass with both hands. “Caught me.”

After Jinki finishes pouring him a drink, Taemin does the same for him. They both knock back their first glass before opening the box, then pour each other another to have with it. The pizza is greasy, but good -- Jinki eats nearly half, and Taemin finishes off the rest -- and pairs well with the soju they down between each slice.

Taemin’s cheeks gain a drunken flush midway through his third glass. He reaches over Jinki for the remote, placing one hand on his knee for balance, then slumps back into the couch and flips on the television.

“What do you wanna watch?”

Jinki shrugs. “Whatever’s fine. We only really have a few channels to pick from, anyway.”

Taemin bounces between the three Korean channels they get before stopping at a drama. “This is that shitty drama you were watching the other night, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s watch it.”

Jinki side-eyes him. “Why do you want to watch it if it’s bad?”

“To laugh at it, obviously.”

He collapses back onto the couch, bumping into Jinki’s shoulder on the way. The room spins, just enough to make him secure about his decision to stay put, even if he should be going to bed at this hour.

The TV becomes a bleary fixture as they near the end of the bottle. Taemin empties the last of it into Jinki’s cup. The now-empty bottle of soju clinks against the edge of the table as he drunkenly tries to place it back, until Jinki grabs and does it for him.

“Thanks, hyung.” Taemin slumps back against him, with his head on Jinki’s arm, and a hand on his knee, and exhales softly.

Jinki bites his lip, trying to ignore the warmth that buzzes across his skin at each point of contact. Taemin’s palm on him is firm, and absently shifting upwards, but that doesn’t mean anything. There’s no way Taemin would be making a move on him. He’s just drunk.

Taemin sighs and adjusts again, settling further onto him, until his head is resting entirely in Jinki’s lap. Jinki holds his breath. If Taemin stays still, this should be fine, as long as he focuses on the television and keeps his thoughts as far away from Taemin’s lips as he can -- but Taemin doesn’t.

His hand moves higher. His cheek turns, and his weight adjusts, putting a pressure on his groin that makes heat prickle down his body. The sweatpants he wears hide nothing when he throbs.

Taemin stirs, turning to look up at him. “Are you...?”

“Sorry,” he interupts, throat tight. “It’s not on purpose.”

Taemin stares. The light from the television flickers behind him, leaving a shadow of his hand as he reaches up towards the bulge in Jinki’s sweatpants. When the screen glows white for a commercial, Jinki can tell that his cheeks are flushed bright red.

“It’s alright,” Taemin says. “I don’t mind it.”

Jinki says nothing.

“...I’ve kind of wondered what another guy would feel like.”

He looks down, pulse racing. This is a bad idea. A terrible idea, considering his relation with the team is tied to his employment. But his body is already heating, from the liquor and the image of having a hand so close to his dick for the first time in months.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Taemin confirms, voice low. “In my hand, or you know --” He licks his lips and looks away. “Mouth.”

He swallows. Everything Taemin says has an edge of innocence to it -- as if he’s never done this before -- but Jinki can't shake the feeling that his approach was too deliberate for that to be true.

He’s not sure he cares either way.

Slipping a thumb into his waistband, he tugs it down an inch. “If you really want to try, then...that’s alright.”

Taemin nods to him, almost shy, but the hand that moves to him isn’t. He helps Jinki pull down his sweats, and a second later, his mouth is open and pressed to the opening of his boxers. Jinki twitches at the sudden sensation, biting his lip, and clenches the leather of the couch when Taemin begins massaging him to full hardness.

The tease is unbearable. He watches breathlessly as Taemin runs his lips along him, covering every inch of him through the fabric until a wet stain pools from the head of his cock. He keeps his lip pulled between his teeth, trying not to make a sound, but a hiss escapes him when Taemin reaches into the slit of his boxers and pulls him out.

The risk of the situation is obvious -- he’s in the living room of his team’s house, having his dick handled by one of their star players, that may or may not have ever slept with a man in his life -- but he’s too far along to want to stop.

Taemin looks up at him briefly, as if making sure he has Jinki’s attention, then licks quickly across the base of his shaft. When Jinki shivers, he repeats the motion, holding Jinki steady in his palm as he moves up with tongue. The thick taste of precome when he reaches the top makes his eyes scrunch shut, but his mouth continues on, pressing and circling around the head of his cock until Jinki is forced to stifle a moan into the back of his hand.

Taemin’s eyes flutter up to him at the noise. “Does that feel good, hyung? Should I keep going?”

“Please.”

When he places a hand in Taemin’s hair as encouragement, Taemin shudders under his palm and leans forward, lips parted, and slips his mouth over the tip of Jinki’s cock. Without any further teasing, he takes more of it, sliding down easily from the spit he’d left behind.

Jinki gasps - he hadn’t expected so much, so soon - and he barely has time to wonder at how naturally Taemin finds a rhythm with his hand and mouth. Heat rolls under his skin as he tightens a hand in Taemin’s hair, only to release it when that draws out a loud but muffled moan around his cock.

There’s no teeth, and no fumbling. Taemin strokes the half of him he can’t fit in and keeps his lips tight around the rest, moving faster until Jinki is gripping the side of the couch for some semblance of control. The brief glimpses he gets of Taemin’s expression through his bangs is pure concentration, and something about that makes the pleasure already building under his skin quicken its pace.

He grips the couch again. “If you keep going, I’m gonna come.”

The warning doesn’t make Taemin pull off. His tongue flattens out, no longer taking time to lave over his cock when he reaches the head, as his fist tightens and twists to match the faster pace of his mouth.

Jinki holds his breath and covers his mouth, too afraid to make a noise. His cock stiffens as Taemin’s head continues to bob in his lap, and after two more tugs, his eyes squeeze shut as he comes into his mouth.

Taemin pulls away from him once he’s done, sitting up on his elbows and swallowing thickly. He’s panting, cheeks flushed and pupils blown wide when he looks up. His lips are spit-slick and red -- and on impulse, Jinki tugs him upright into a kiss. When their lips meet, Taemin's brows shoot up with surprise, but his confusion vanishes when Jinki cups his cock through his jeans.

“Shit.”

The curse is hissed through his teeth as he pushes into Jinki’s hand. He’s hard, all-too-easy to feel through the denim, and wastes no time in helping Jinki open them when he feels him fumbling at the button.

Jinki uses his other hand to pull him closer, until Taemin is forced to straddle him and he’s sinking back into the corner of the couch. The heat and weight of Taemin over him makes it hard to breathe, but it’s more than worth it. His cock is heavy and warm against his palm when he reaches up to grope him through his boxers, and warmer still when he reaches through the slit to hold him without impediment.

Taemin jolts when Jinki presses their lips together again, hips jerking down, but he doesn’t break away -- he crawls further into Jinki’s lap, deepening the kiss as he moves, until they’re chest-to-chest and he can feel the slick precome from Taemin’s cock begin to bleed through his shirt.

One of Taemin’s hands threads fingers into Jinki’s hair as he keeps the other braced against the couch for balance. The faster Jinki goes, the harder he trembles, until their haphazard kissing turns into nothing more than panting against Jinki’s chin. Jinki runs his free hand down over his back, then up under his shirt, enjoying the familiar smoothness of taught muscle under his palm before shifting his hand to squeeze Taemin’s ass.

Another curse is muffled into his neck. Taemin hardens in his hand when his fingers dig in, body going stiff, and exhales softly. He twitches with each stroke, come spilling from him in short bursts that coats Jinki’s fingers and shirt.

The silence that follows makes Jinki suddenly aware of the television still playing in the background. He wipes his hand on his shirt, and Taemin backs away, breathing still shallow and fast.

Their eyes meet briefly. Taemin’s bangs are stuck to his forehead, damp with sweat from where he’d buried his head in Jinki’s neck. His lips pull in an uncertain smile, though his gaze is pointedly fixed away as he tucks himself back into his underwear.

“Sorry about your shirt.”

“It’s fine.”

When Jinki says nothing more, Taemin moves back, balancing carefully until he’s back on his feet. His eyes flick down quickly when Jinki tugs up his sweats, then up to his face.

“We should probably go to bed, huh? We both drank too much.”

Jinki tries to read Taemin’s expression in the dark, but comes away with no hint at his feelings, other than nervousness -- which he feels plenty of too, now that he’s more sober. He can only hope that Taemin’s skittishness won’t lead to something that would get him fired, kicked out, and subsequently deported.

He holds his shirt as he stands, careful to keep it away from any of the surrounding furniture.

“I guess I’ll see you in the morning?”

“Yeah.” Taemin smiles tightly. “Sure thing.”

#ontae #esports au #the saviors colors are similar to london spitfires for obvs reasons #and god i haven't posted in so long its nerve wracking!!!#i hope y'all enjoy #;o;

61 notes · View notes

theorderofthetriad · 2 years

Note

Hey op, you make a good point in your post but you might want to reformulate it a little bit..? Because a lot of pro-censorship people using CP are talking about fictional content (like underage fictional characters, etc) and not actual CP, which *is* absolutely banned on AO3. I know it's not your intention at all, but to someone who doesn't know the context, your reply might make it seem like there are real images of real, abused children on the website, when in fact anyone trying to upload any of those is getting banned and reported to the police.

((Oh also if it's ok, if you reply to my previous ask could you please screenshot it and censor the name instead of replying directly? I would prefer not to get harassed by the same mob that is currently attacking you 😅))

no, i won't screenshot this. you chose to send a message to someone who had anon off, you don't get to then dictate what happens to the ask after that. If you think your point is so important to make that you had to come to my ask box where anon is off to make it, then it's an important enough point to keep your name attached to. This response is specifically a response, to you, so, yes, i'm keeping your username attached to it. I will, however, turn reblogs off and not put it in any tags, because this response doesn't need to be spread around, it just needs to be on my blog.

Also, if I'm being attacked, it is news to me. There are some people responding to that post and clowning, but i haven't been, like, targeted, by people disagreeing with it.

The post in question

On to your actual point. The post has over 10,000 notes and is out in the tumblr wild, so i don't understand what you think me editing it now is gonna do about the wording issues you think this post has.

That being said, I was actually really specific about my wording. I used the phrase "CP" a total of once in that post, when i was roughly quoting a post made by someone for censorship: "[i saw] a post literally on my dash of the "if you're not for banning content on ao3 just admit that you like CP" ilk." I never referred to the content on ao3 as CP, somebody else referred to the content on ao3 as CP, that's literally the entire reason i made the damn post.

In my next paragraph, I say that "I do not like and do not want to see underage content," note i did not say CP. I said underage content because underage content is the thing that ao3 has, it's the warning tag that ao3 uses that I use to exclude content, its tag's existence is the thing that people for censorship are pearl-clutching about.

I didn't waste words on the post trying to specify that ao3 doesn't allow actual CSEM, or explaining how the "underage" tag includes a huge diversity of non-pornographic content because i was trying to make a very specific point concisely. The post was about how censorship will only censor the filtering system and not stop the content from being published and viewed on the site, and as such without those filters people will see such content unwillingly, I wrote my post with the focus on that.

Also I didn't waste words because, and I can't stress this enough, the pro-censorship crowd does not give a flying fuck about the semantics of CP vs CSEM vs CSAM vs "Underage", they will use all those phrases interchangeably as though they are all the same thing, they will not admit they're wrong or fix their word usage when someone points it out to them (and many many posts have been made to point this out to them.) So I saw no point in specifying those differences in my post. I'm not going to waste my time hitting my head against a brick wall when I've seen people do the same countless times before and not work, I'm not wasting my time making the same damn arguments on the subject that have already been hashed out to death.

If someone read my post without context, misunderstood what I wrote, and decided to assume they understand the situation based solely on my post without bothering to further look into the subject, that is 100% their problem, and not of my concern.

#this is like the fourth time in my entire ten plus year tumblr existence that i've had a post get over 3 thousand notes #and maybe like the tenth time a post of mine has gotten over a thousand notes #i wasn't expecting it to gain the traction it did #i was just trying to make my very specific point that i've never seen brought up #i didn't write it to be the be-all-end-all of the discussion i wrote it to point out one very real consequence of censorship #and what the content being censored is is actually completely irrelevant to that consequence #gosh i'm SO sorry my post i wrote off the cuff after seeing an unpleasant post on my dash isn't 100% perfectly addressing the subject!

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thatcanadianfangirl · 6 years

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Colours -Part 2-

Jackson Whittemore X Jen

Requested: yes

Plot: Every single soul sees in color until they lose the hope of finding a soulmate.

Word Count: 2,949

A/N: I'm still struggling. Sorry, but here the second part to colours. I know it took forever and I'm truly sorry. Also only most of this is edited, not all of it. If you are younger than 13 please don't read my works, mature content.

part 1

It’s been a week of hiding out in my apartment and that day had become unspeakable. Avoiding life’s reality became my new routine, even if the voice deep down inside whispered ‘Snap the fuck out of it. That’s your damn soulmate.’ I never did, It wasn't known as logical in my anxious working brain.

I replayed every step of that day in my head over and over again. The moments of my heart having a panic attack in my rib cage. The way Jackson’s now blue eyes sparkled, vibrantly, and the way I dashed off from him and away from my favourite café. I was scared, I was overwhelmed. If I’m being honest I thought I would never find him. As the horrid thought started to settled in ,he suddenly rolls up out of fucking nowhere.

I was startled, like a spooked horse from a gunshot.

In my mind there was nothing else I could do, I believed I was destined to level down for less. I was wrong and it happened incredibly fast, one minute I was okay with only having a soulmate. The next, I was facing my true soulmate, In my mind everything was unfolding too fast.

The anxious and eager knock on my apartment door threw me out of my strangling mind. I settled the chip bag I was devouring just seconds ago, down beside me. Grabbed a hold of the remote, pausing the Disney picture on the screen. Searching for a clearer sound of who decided to disturb my depressed peace.

Jen don't ignore me, I left you alone for a full seven days. You know rule number three. I bribed your co-worker to cover your ass, so I better get a thanks because it wasn't easy. Also I know your in there, I could The Little Mermaid playing before you paused it. I mean where else who you be, lets be real.” Monica yelled through the door, only coming out as a loud murmur. Though I could hear every word perfectly fine.

Rule number three:

If something emotional or personal happens to the other. Leave them alone for a whole seven days, then you can act like a psycho .

Rule number Four..

I sighed loudly rolling my eyes to the back of my head, I yanked the comfortable blanket from around me. My seven days are up and I'm not too happy about it. I’m glad Rule number three wasn't made any longer, because I don't think I’d ever go back to reality if more days were added.

once the Seven days are up it’s time to let reality flow again, no matter the conditions. Within those days on vacation from the real world my house has turned into a disgusting hibernation cave.

Turning off the T.V I scooted my butt of the couch and towards the door to let my crazy bestfriend inside. I pushed the door in a little bit with my body before turning the dead bulk and swinging the door open.

I had to admit she looked different, maybe it was because I’ve always saw her in a colourless state. Or that she actually did change within the days we haven't seen each other. Her hair now a dirty blonde, almost reaching a light sandy brown. Her eyes a dull grey with small hints of blue specks. Monica’s skin was peachy with a tinge of a tan, flawless like the rest of her.

“Whoa” The word was shared between us. like and echo through an abandoned house. I faintly smiled at her, I didn't know what that meant. “I never thought I’d see you again.” Monica spoke defiantly sensing my confusion.

“I know the colourless me was almost like an alter ego, a depressed alter ego that hid me under multiple layers. That Jen is a distant memory now... God I missed your ass.” I spoke understanding where she was coming from.

We’re both captured in silence before colliding into each other’s embrace. My arms wrapping around her neck as her’s circled around my waist. I breathed in relief, god I missed her more than I would of liked to admit. We stayed into each others arms, taking this moment all in. Without her. I couldn't see a life without her, She’s my sister.

“I missed you too.” She mumbled but I heard her clearly. I started to pull away while she continued to talk. “But I knew you needed the time and space to gather yourself again. And of course rule number three.” Monica said light heartily.

“Yeah I did and I’m ready to return to my life, clean my apartment. Go back to work and when I’m ready, I’ll find him at the cafe down the road. And Jeremy is a sweet guy all you have to do is tell him that you already have a soulmate. He’d understand.” I smiled at her, happy to have her back.

“It’s okay you can tell him for me and while you're at it tell him I’m a lesbian too.” We laughed together at her comment. Jeremy was a dork and so damn clueless, but I couldn't ask for better co-worker.

Monica obviously chose to stay over, helping me clean up the pig’s den I’ve been currently living in for the past week. I truly don't know how I survived in this filth, it was absolutely disturbing. After taking my beats pill from the bathroom, Monica played her music an we began our cleaning marathon.

We danced and goofed around, having fun and making the most out of it. With her anything can become fun, she was that kind of person. Though through the process I heard a lot of ‘Holy shit you’re so disgusting’ or ‘I think you’re brother came to visit early’ which got boring after the first ten times she said them.

But what can I do, I love the girl.

waking up to a clean and quite atmosphere felt refreshing for a recovering mind. I remembered just days ago, I woke up to a loud TV playing something from the Disney Channel. I didn't usually fall asleep watching T.V, but when I do. I’m mostly likely not feeling the best and always something Disney.

Disney is my comfort blanket bringing me back to my childhood-self. Guarding me from the adult world that happened to be my reality.

I tapped on my Shawn Mendes playlist from my phone for it to be heard from my Bluetooth speaker. I loved the way Shawn’s voice soothed me to a calming state that felt so unbelievable. Gathering myself in the shower today felt different, maybe it was the first time in forever I felt like my old self again.

The cold water cascades down on my body waking up every tired muscle and cell. feeling more refreshed than I’ve felt in a very long time. It was amazing. My hands slipped all over my body, once they reached my left shoulder blade they slowed. Feeling the soulmate mark embedded into my skin, rough and texturized. I could the shape at the tips of my fingers, it’s a simple leaf.

what’s the meaning behind it, there has to be a reason why it’s that, right? My mother and father share a poppy on their wrists. They say they know what it means, but didn't want to tell me till I found my soulmate. Now they can, but I don't think I want to know. It’s their mean I didn't want to intrude.

I had gotten out of the shower and began to get ready for the day ahead. somewhere deep down I could feel this day is going to change my life forever.

Pulling my olive green bootie on I said goodbye to the cat and I was out the door. Hoping that they give me enough courage to enter the café that my soulmate was employed at

To relief stress from taking controlling of my body, leading me back to the apartment. I lost myself to my workout playlist, finding the beat and slightly dancing to it. Surprisingly it felt amazing, my spirit felt free and happy.

It wasn't long before I found myself standing in front of the beautiful café. Removing my earbuds with a quick yank I stared at the café’s big words. ‘The Black Rose’ The place I adored and happened to hold my mate hostage.

One thought crossed my mind, why haven't we made eye contact sooner? I mean I have been going to this coffee shop since I moved here. I think I've seen him a few times before, but no eye contact. It seemed weird, almost unnaturally strange.

“Miss are you going to go in or stare at it like you're banned from it?” A smooth and gentle voice flooded my ears. My head snapped to the source, a little boy, no older than thirteen. “Um-.” My words got caught in my throat, I must of looked deranged just staring at the sign.

The boy smiled at me sweetly before walking forward and opening the door. Still the smile stayed as he held the glass door open for me. There was no chance for me to deny him now, especially with those brown puppy dog eyes. Brown was a gorgeous eye colour, But blue seemed to be above it.

I looked around quickly, not catching anyone who had saw my strange staring. I return his bright smile as I walked in , “Thank you, you're such a gentlemen.” words spilled out before any thought. “Of course, my mom taught me to be.”

I was a little amazed at his manners, because I’ve bumped into teenagers around his age before. They didn't have anything close to what he had, rude, anxious little demons. This boy a pure angel with his adorable smile and politeness.

“Than she was doing something right.” Was my last words to the young boy, my mind no longer distracted. My mood changing from happiness to determination, it was now or never.

This is my soulmate, nobody else's.

This is my life, nobody else's

I walked my strong path up to the barista having one thing on my mind. I need to talk to Jackson, not even worrying, if he was working or not.

Melting brown eyes stared into mine, “Is Jackson here?” I asked breathless, his name just rolled off my tongue like it was the most natural thing. Amusement showed on his face. his one eyebrow lifted, as if testing me like I wasn't worthy.

“And who are you exactly?” He asked carefully,

“His soulmate.” With those words the guy’s head was over his shoulder immediately. “Jackson!” He hollered loudly and waited. My heart pounded hard in my chest, this was it. I’m going to see my soulmate, actually see him.

“Yeah?” His husky voice muffled behind a door. My mind slipped out of confidence, this was a terrible idea. What was I thinking, I obviously wasn't!

“There’s someone here for you.”

Well it’s too late to back out now. remember, now or never.

“I’ll be a few seconds.”

You know never seems like the better option.

The barista’s head whipped back towards me, “Tell him I headed outside, thank you.” I spoke before walking towards the door. Outside I glanced down at a broken crack in the pavement, it felt strange, in a perfect world nothing was meant to be broken, maybe bent, but never broken. It reminded me that this world was far from perfect.

“Listen,” Jackson’s voice wavered, I turned around startled by the way it had affected me. Seeing him forcing his vibrant eyes to the ground was confusing. He took a deep breath before continuing. “Last night was a complete and utter mistake. It was only a distraction, not an attachment. Honestly it didn't help like I thought it would, but it cant happen again. I have a soulmate...” He trailed off.

It took milliseconds to put two and two together, he slept with someone else to forget me. it didn't work, but my soulmate had sex with another women. I didn't want it to hurt, but god did it ever. Like a rope wrapped it’d self around my heart and pulled until it cut into two. It was a bloody crime.

My throat grew to a throb as my eyes stung as tears lined my eyes. Fuck it hurt. “I know because she is me.” I choked my words out before turned my way back home. My hand clutched towards my mouth trying to stop my sobs.

“Shit.” Jackson mumbled under he’s breath. I heard his feet charging after me, I wanted on of those unnatural cracks to open up and take me under. It was too late, Jackson hooked his hand in mine. Tingles erupted and made their way through my body. Making my mood change rapidly. He yanked me back and towards him.

My free hand made it’s way under my eyes and wiped my warm tears away. My throat’s throb no longer in tact. “Wow you're breathtaking.” His tone dreamy as I raised my eyes to his blue ones.

I’ve never seen anything more memorizing than the shade of blue in his eyes. His perfect and sharp features, his skin having no flaws. He was perfect and couldn't be more blessed.

“She really meant nothing, It-”

“Stop, Jackson, I know.” I said softly.

“God your voice sounds as if you stole it from an angel.” he said in the same tone as before. It made a giggle erupt from my chest at the way he said it. “I think you just took my breath away.” He spoke seriously as his expression was blank.

“Jackson I think we need to start again if you want your slip up to be left behind.” I slide my hand out of his as my rational thoughts came back to me. Regretting it because I was know missing how his physical contact made me feel.

“Okay, well at least I'm on break.” He said lifting up his wrist and checking the time. “I have thirty minutes, now walk a little ways down the sideway.” He directed. I smiled with a confused expression I started walking backwards, “And why exactly I am I doing this?” I asked him still looking into his vibrant eyes, I don't think I could ever get tired of that color.

“You wanted to start over, so we are. You’ll come walking back, distracted my your phone or that cute dog across the street..” I whipped my head to the other side of the street when he said ‘cute dog’ and there was in fact a beautiful dog.

It was a white German Shepard, It was almost like I was colourless again. except the colour of it’s fur happened to be brighter. I had spotted it’s light honey coloured eyes once it glanced in my direction. One beautiful creature.

“Jen” At the sound of my name rolling off his tongue I mentally purred. I loved the way he said it. I turned towards him pulling my lips inward as I got distracted before I was meant to. “Sorry.” I laughed out.

He rolled his eyes but nevertheless his smile remained. “anyways. you’ll get distracted and ill bump into you. Its an easy plan should go easy.” He said and at that moment I realized he was being completely serious about this. I know it wont be that hard to fall in love with Jackson cause I already adored him.

I did exactly as told and bumped into him, my shoulder pressed against him and the sensation of sparks had me gasping. I dropped my phone that I used for my distraction, Jackson held onto my waist and skillfully rescued my phone from hitting the cement flooring.

A sly smile made it’s way onto his lips as he said “My bad I didn't see you there.” I wanted to laugh because this was already planned out, but I kept my act on. “It’s fine I wasn't watching where I was going.” I responded back. “A beauty like you shouldn't have to.” He spoke out. I couldn't help but feel the blush creep up my neck.

“The names Jackson and I think I just found my Soulmate.” I giggled slightly at the way he said it. He handed me my phone back after I watched him save him number into my phone.

“Jen,” I smiled up at him as he pulled my body closer, “Well, Jen Let me take you out for a cup of coffee.”

I frowned and loosened his grip on me, his face fell just slightly. Just the reaction I was wanting. “I don't do coffee.” I spoke with a vaguely disgusted face.

“What are you talking about? The day I met you. you had a coffee with two sugars and two cream. and you have the audacity to say you don't do coffee.” He spoke in some kind of rant. I rolled my lips in to stopping my laugh, But I knew I couldn't hold it in as I raised my hand to my mouth and laughed.

“That wasn't funny.” He said through gritted teeth playfully. He captured me into his arms and squeezed my to his chest as I continued to laugh. It felt as if we’ve know each other our whole lives instead of a few moments.

Jackson still held me in his arms as our giggles began to diminish in the air. his hold on me loosened a bit and I enjoyed the moment we were in before he had to go back into work.

“Yes I’ll have coffee with you.”

“You didn't have to say I already knew.”

#Jackson Whittemore #Jackson whittmore imagines #teen wolf imagines #teen wolf #thatcanadianfangirl #jackson #Whittemore #teen #wolf #TW imagines

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ryukoishida · 7 years

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QZGS | The King’s Avatar Fic: In which law student!HST crushes on coffee shop manager!YWZ, feat. witch/teashop owner!WJX and programmer!YX. [coffee shop AU]

Title: The Magic Hour is Now Fandom: The King’s Avatar / Quan Zhi Gao Shou Character(s)/Pairing(s): YuHuang; with a hint of WangYe Summary: When an exasperated, love-sick Huang Shaotian has had enough of suffering Blue Rain Café’s manager Yu Wenzhou’s quiet, perfect smile day after day, he decides to seek help from Wang Jiexi, a famous tea sommelier (and witch) rumoured to be able to brew tea with various magical properties. [Coffee Shop AU] Part: 1/1 Rating: PG-13 A/N: Utterly self-indulgent. You have been warned!

Writing Commission | Editing & Translation Services

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‘It’s him again…’ Yu Wenzhou thought, unsure why he was still surprised.

Without his first sip of caffeine, it was almost impossible for the manager of Blue Rain Café, a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop mostly frequented by college students from a nearby campus and locals residing in this area, to carry any sort of conversation without offending the first customer he encountered this morning.

After covering a loud, unattractive yawn with the crook of his elbow, Yu Wenzhou pushed a tired hand through his sleep-ruffled hair and strode past the man who was waiting by the glass door. He managed a weak wave in the blond-haired man’s vague direction before digging into his messenger bag for his keys and unlocking the shop.

“Good morning, Wenzhou!” Huang Shaotian responded in his usual chipper voice, tone warm and full of sunshine, but it was too much sun and too damn bright for Yu Wenzhou to handle this early in the morning.

Yu Wenzhou half-hummed and half-grunted in reply as he shuffled his way into the coffee shop like a dispirited zombie and slipped behind the counter, and Huang Shaotian, as was his usual routine, let himself in after the seemingly sleep-deprived manager and helped himself to the stool by the wall-mounted bar nearest the front counter. The windows let in pastel orange and cerulean glow of the first hint of a wintry dawn and casted Huang Shaotian in a halo of soft, gentle light as he made himself comfortable for the moment.

As the college student discovered upon the first time of his morning visit almost four months ago, the first thing Yu Wenzhou did after putting his belongings away was not doing opening tasks like prepping pastries in the display case or checking up on equipment but was instead turning on the expresso machine to start brewing himself a mug of fresh coffee.

While the expresso machine whirred quietly in the background and the scent of freshly ground coffee beans saturated in the cool morning air, Huang Shaotian looked on with quiet interest, a palm sliding under his jaw to support his head, while he watched the dark-haired barista sluggishly move about to pour himself some coffee and add a dash of milk that started a silent, swirling storm of white mixing into black.

With the kind of reverence one usually only reserved for prayer to the gods, Yu Wenzhou cradled his steaming mug with both hands like his entire life was depended upon it, eyes fluttering closed, and took a tentative sip. The warm steam rose up, clouded around his hair before dissipating, and Huang Shaotian watched with a suddenly parched throat, mesmerized by the way Yu Wenzhou swallowed his mouthful of coffee like a man tasting water after days of dehydration.

‘Fuck! Get a hold of your fucking self, Huang Shaotian!’ he scolded himself inside his head, finally noticing that he’d been staring for way too long to be deemed polite.

“Feeling more alive?” Huang Shaotian asked with a grin when he saw the manager blinked a few times with more clarity as if he’d just fully woken up from a dream and become aware of his surroundings once more.

“Much,” Yu Wenzhou turned towards him with his trademark courteous smile, though it was laced with a hint of self-consciousness as well when he added, his cheeks tinting the softest of pink, “I’m sorry you always had to see me in this state…”

“Nah, that’s okay, that’s okay! I should be the one to apologize to you — for barging in before you even get a chance to get ready for opening,” Huang Shaotian quickly said, golden gaze tracing along Yu Wenzhou’s disheveled hair, pink cheeks, and pale but smiling lips.

“I couldn’t very well leave a customer waiting outside in the cold, could I?” Yu Wenzhou said with another harmless smile. It seemed that no matter what, Huang Shaotian just couldn’t get past that infuriating smile: sure, the expression was welcoming and friendly, comforting to anyone who walked through the threshold of Blue Rain Café, but there was an unspeakable distance buried along the curve of his lips as well, and Huang Shaotian wanted nothing more than to further investigate this enigma of a man.

“Is that the only reason why?” The question was out of his mouth before he could filter it through his brain, and Huang Shaotian immediately regretted it. Ever since he discovered this coffee shop and its beautiful yet mystical manager four months ago, Huang Shaotian, who, as a first-year law school student, had a tightly-packed schedule and could only manage to squeeze out some free time in the early mornings and late nights, had been hanging out at the café any chance he got.

“Do I need a better reason than that?” Yu Wenzhou tilted his head to the side a little, slightly amused, his smile growing a little crooked, a little more mischievous. Initiating a challenge, almost.

‘Fuck,’ Huang Shaotian muttered to himself again, gaze darting to the ground and his cheeks getting warmer than he’d like to admit. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’

“What can I get for you? Your usual?” Yu Wenzhou seemed to return to his normal charming and capable self after consuming the cup of invigorating coffee, and he was ready to start his day’s work, by serving his first customer with the utmost professional attitude.

“Y-Yes please,” Huang Shaotian almost choked.

He gave up. He just couldn’t do this anymore. Any time he even attempted to ask for Yu Wenzhou’s number or ask him out or even try to remotely flirt with him, it was as if the manager was ignorant of his advances, or worst still, perhaps he wasn’t at all interested and was just rejecting him in a subtler manner that Huang Shaotian had yet to realize.

He needed to know, Huang Shaotian sipped the perfectly brewed and flavored rose black tea latté with an obvious frown, and almost cursed out loud when his tongue burned from the heat of the beverage.

“If you stare any harder, I think Xiao Lu is going to call the police,” Ye Xiu, a frequent patron of Blue Rain Café who liked to sit by the smoking area in the back corner of the shop for hours on end, was referring to Lu Hanwen, the youngest staff member in the café but was highly proficient in the art of coffee-brewing nevertheless, as he tapped out a few lines of programming code on his keyboard before he sent his friend a knowing glance, “he seems awfully fond of the manager.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Huang Shaotian sighed, finally tearing his gaze away from Yu Wenzhou’s figure and returning his attention back to his own laptop screen and the mug of caramel macchiato in his hand. The case study he was supposed to be reading was impossible to understand, as if the document was written in a foreign language, but Huang Shaotian knew that he was just too distracted and keyed up to concentrate.

“You know, I heard the teas from Big-Eyed Wang’s teahouse is quite efficacious in curing illnesses of the heart. Apparently, he can fix anything from healing heartbreaks to attaining one’s desires.”

“I’m not heartsick, you asshole!” Huang Shaotian yelped defensively, earning glares from hardworking students from nearby tables, and he immediately lowered his voice, glowering at Ye Xiu. “I didn’t realize you’re as superstitious as those high school girls who are naïve enough to believe in that kind of bullshit, Ye Xiu,” Huang Shaotian teased him back as he settled back in his seat across from the slightly older man. “Anyway, where did you even hear that from?”

Huang Shaotian might be skeptical, but he was also a curious creature at heart. He was also desperate as hell, but he wasn’t going to let Ye Xiu know that; his relentless torment would only intensify.

Besides, sorcery of this level and use was nothing unusual nowadays, since government had long lifted the ban on such branch of magic years ago, claiming that herbalism and similar witchcrafts that promoted healing of the physical and emotional wellbeing could actually be a good thing for the public.

Ye Xiu took a leisurely drag on his cigarette and breathed out a trail of white smoke before he replied, “Some girls were talking about it earlier. They seemed very convinced that the teas worked in ways that would help resolve their troubles, as Wang Jiexi had promised.”

“You are such a nosy eavesdropper,” Huang Shaotian tutted at him with an exaggerated disapproving look, wagging his index finger at him. “Absolutely shameless.”

“It’s called being observant,” Ye Xiu shrugged, then shifting his gaze towards the manager of the coffee shop who was politely greeting the next patron in line, continued, “something that the man you’ve been passionately having a crush on and grossly salivating after is obviously not — at least when it comes to you and your embarrassing and artless wooing.”

“Can you not be so crude? Jesus fucking Christ!” he almost spilled his beverage over his lap at Ye Xiu’s obscene comment.

“But it’s the truth,” Ye Xiu turned his dark eyes back at Huang Shaotian, his lips tucked into a small smirk, “isn’t it?”

Ye Xiu slid a crumpled business card across the table, the pleasant moss green and cream white of the paper and text embossed with the name, address, and phone number of the shop he’d just informed of Huang Shaotian. As hilarious as it had been for him to observe Huang Shaotian’s different tactics (and different ways and degrees of failing) of pursuing the oblivious Yu Wenzhou for the past few months, Ye Xiu really couldn’t stand the college student’s constant whining and puppy-eyed worshipping from afar anymore.

“Give it a try,” Ye Xiu said with a twinkle in his eyes, “you never know.”

He sneaked into Tiny Herb Teahouse like some sort of unsavory criminal, his curious but cautious gaze looking around his surroundings as if he was a soldier trespassing enemy territory.

Where Blue Rain Café was painted in oceanic blues and furnished with tarnished oak tables and chairs that welcomed patrons seeking temporary shelter from fierce winter evenings, Tiny Herb Teahouse was all crisp glass and minimalistic designs that allowed natural light to come into the shop from all directions, strands of light splitting into pieces by the hanging plants that trailed delicately all over the interior — an inviting sight and a serene place to enjoy a cup of tea and a good book in the summer.

“I-Is Wang Jiexi around?” Huang Shaotian approached the staff standing closest to him and asked in a stage whisper, his eyes flitting this way and that as if he was afraid of being spotted by someone he knew.

The staff member who was manning the counter, upon seeing a potential customer acting in such a strange yet equally suspicious manner, looked like he was about to dash to the backroom and asked for assistance given the chance, but he stood rooted in place and forced himself to smile as politely as he could before he answered, “Mr. Wang is busy attending another patron at the moment. Did you make an appointment?”

“An appointment!? Fucking hell… You’re actually serious, aren’t you?” It was difficult to keep his voice down because he was partly panicking but mostly just annoyed. He wanted to have this… this heart problem of his fixed before he drove himself crazy and resulted in consequences he’d definitely regret later.

“Um…” the young man shrank further back, unsure of what to say at Huang Shaotian’s outburst.

“Yifan, do we have a customer?”

“Mr. Wang!” the staff turned around in relief at the quiet, eloquent tone of the teahouse owner’s voice and lowered his head in respect, “Y-yes. This gentleman would like to see you, but I told him he needs to make an appointment first…”

Wang Jiexi, the well-known witch and herbalist renowned for concocting various kinds of potent potions and liquid spells guaranteed to grant the users’ any powers, was a young man in his early twenties who donned a casual set of oversized sweater, knitted scarf, and jeans; one of his eyes was veiled behind stylishly cut forelocks, but the other eye — the one that was glancing over at Huang Shaotian with a cold, calculating light — was the shade of vibrant green, like the heart of a living forest.

“Send him into the consultation room,” Wang Jiexi told Qiao Yifan, who happened to be one of his apprentices and helpers in the teahouse, and continued, “I still have some time before my next appointment. This shouldn’t take too long.”

He disappeared behind a set of swinging doors to the back area of the shop without another word to the patron, leaving Qiao Yifan to smile apologetically at Huang Shaotian as he led the blond down a narrow passageway until they reached a small, cozy room. Qiao Yifan invited him to take a seat while he waited and offered him a cup of jasmine tea as he did so.

It might be a consultation room, but from its homely furnishings like the cushioned armchair Huang Shaotian was sitting in to the plant-inspired paintings, books, and decorations scattered all around the room, it looked more like someone’s den than an office-type setting.

“So, what can I do for you, Mr…?”

Wang Jiexi closed the door quietly behind him and settled into the seat across from the other man, crossing his legs elegantly, his face never displaying any sort of emotion.

“Huang Shaotian,” he quickly introduced himself as he leaned forward with brightened eyes. “I heard from Ye Xiu that you can help me, that you’re very good at… uh, making certain… types of, um, teas…”

The more words trickled their way out of his mouth, the more hesitant Huang Shaotian felt about this whole grand master plan of his. Who the hell in their right mind would think drinking a cup of specially concocted tea was going to solve something as complicated as unrequited love?

“Is this the first time you’ve used services like mine, Mr. Huang?”

“Services…?”

“Witchcraft,” Wang Jiexi clarified, though he didn’t need Huang Shaotian’s answer to know for certain.

“Yeah,” Huang Shaotian replied a little sheepishly. “You know, not that I don’t trust the expertise of your people or anything, but I always manage to resolve the problems in my life with my own abilities. I never needed the extra boost of power or whatever it is that you witches boast of providing for your customers…

“Again,” he protested with his hands raised in front of him when he spotted the icy glance that Wang Jiexi sent him, “it has nothing to do with your capabilities, or whether or not I doubt them, I swear! I just… never saw the need was all.”

“Then you must be at the end of your rope if you’ve decided to come seek answers from a witch,” Wang Jiexi said, tone calm as the mirrored surface of a lake on a windless night.

“I guess you can say that, yeah,” Huang Shaotian admitted with a dry, humorless chuckle, his head lowered, and a bitter smile tainted his lips. “I’m a desperate man.”

“You wish to seek an answer, but you will not get it from me,” Wang Jiexi began even before Huang Shaotian had a chance to tell him his problem, his green, glimmering eye widening just a degree as if that one motion could let him see through Huang Shaotian’s heart: the twisting, twirling storm of confusion, want, and fear of possible rejection dancing a waltz that made him dizzy. “There’s someone in your life right now — someone important, someone you cherish — and you want to know if they feel the same way.”

“Well I’ll be damned, Ye Xiu wasn’t actually bullshitting when he said you’re good,” Huang Shaotian was impressed when he let out a burst of laughter.

Wang Jiexi’s lips curved up into a grin, and then said, “Ye Xiu told me everything.”

“Tch, fucking hell, and here I thought you can actually read my mind,” Huang Shaotian swore, his expression darkening immediately.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Wang Jiexi remained frustratingly impassive, his lips still tucked into that irritating, all-knowing smirk. “But if what you need is the eloquent language to help you confess your feelings to the other person and if you are not afraid of getting the most genuine answer from them, I do have something that might be able to help you.”

“H-Hey, listen, I don’t want anything that would superficially affect his emotions just because he drank your weird tea, okay? I might like him a lot — like, a lot a lot — but… if his feelings for me are only there because of someone else’s doing, then I don’t want it.”

Huang Shaotian bit his lower lip, his cheeks tainted slightly pink from his admission.

“Huh, so you’re the more virtuous type. I like that,” Wang Jiexi flashed him a quick, haunting smile and reassured him, “Don’t worry. What I have in mind is nothing like the love and lust incenses I make; it will not imitate an emotion that does not exist within that person’s heart.”

The witch got up and walked to the side of the wall where a cabinet, stretching from the floor all the way up to the ceiling with hundreds of little unlabeled drawers, stood. From one of the lower drawers by the left side, Wang Jiexi pulled out two glass vials without any hesitation and returned to his seat. He placed the vials on the table, and then with his eye fixed firmly onto the uncharacteristically quiet Huang Shaotian, he began to explain.

“When you feel ready, prepare these teas separately according to the instructions I’ll give you. It’s nothing too complicated, but the amount of time the tealeaves should be steeped in the water is important; the longer you let the leaves sit in the water, the weaker the potion becomes.”

Huang Shaotian nodded, his previously unconvinced expression had shifted back to one of utter concentration as he continued to listen.

Wang Jiexi tapped a finger gently against the vial with a blue stopper, the glass showing bits of what seemed to be brown tealeaves and dried flower petals of azure and violet shades. “This is the one you will drink. It will give your heart the strength and your mind the semantics to tell the person what you have wanted to tell them for the longest time: your heart’s deepest and truest desire.”

“And this?” Huang Shaotian pointed to the other vial with the green stopper, his hand, as much as he was unwilling to admit, was shivering a little at Wang Jiexi’s words. The contents looked slightly different, with dark green tealeaves mixed in with white dried petals. “What does this one do?”

“This tea you will brew for the person you are confessing to,” Wang Jiexi said, “it will ensure that they tell you nothing but the truth — no sugarcoating, no roundabouts whatsoever. As for how they will react to your confession, it will entirely depend on how they feel about you. In other words, the answer may not be the one you want to hear.”

“I get that,” Huang Shaotian released a small sigh and carefully gathered the two vials of tealeaves into his palms, “but at least I’ll finally know for sure.”

“May the spirits give you strength and confidence in your pursuit,” Wang Jiexi said, his tone never changing from its serene softness but there was a hint of genuineness that Huang Shaotian appreciated anyway. “You can give your payment to Yifan on your way out.”

“Good night, Manager Yu!” Lu Hanwen shouldered his backpack and tightened his scarf around his neck before he stepped out of the coffee shop and into the cold night.

“Thanks for your hard work. Take care on your way back,” Yu Wenzhou waved goodbye at the young barista with a gentle smile.

“Xiao Lu, done for the night?” an irritatingly familiar figure appeared from the shadow and stepped into the orange glow of the streetlamp just outside the entrance.

“Are you here to bother the manager again?” Lu Hanwen immediately switched on his defense mode, glaring at the blond with distrust.

“Aww kid, give me a break, will you? I don’t mean any harm, okay? I just want to have a chance to talk to Wenzhou,” Huang Shaotian explained.

“You want to talk to the manager, and you could have picked any hour of the day to do so, but you decide to do it late at night when there’s no one around?” Lu Hanwen scoffed, crossing his arms, “yeah, tell me that you don’t have any ulterior motives at all.”

“Alright, alright, fine, fine, you win, okay? You win. I do, in fact, have ulterior motives,” Huang Shaotian sighed with exaggerated defeat.

“I knew it!”

“But it’s something that little brats like you have no business sticking their noses in,” Huang Shaotian said, and when he saw that Lu Hanwen was about to protest, he quickly cut him off, “I promise I’m not going to do anything weird — er, weirder than usual. I just want to talk to him without a goddamn audience. Now please just run along and go home?”

Lu Hanwen opened his mouth, ready to argue, but then he noticed how serious Huang Shaotian looked, the gold of his eyes darkening into the kind of solemnity seldom observed on the usually happy-go-lucky college student, that the young barista momentarily found himself at a loss for words.

“If something were to happen to the manager,” Lu Hanwen lowered his voice in a threatening manner, though it didn’t come out as intimidating as he’d like with his shorter stature and boyish face, “you’ll have to answer to me.”

Huang Shaotian agreed and after a few more foreboding warnings from the barista, the young man finally begrudgingly left him alone and went on his way.

“Why does Xiao Lu hate me so much? What did I ever do to him, huh?” Huang Shaotian whined loudly the moment he entered into the comforting warmth of Blue Rain Café.

Behind the counter, Yu Wenzhou was doing the last bit of closing duties, wiping down equipment and making sure that all the machines had been turned off.

“Shaotian, what are you doing here?” Yu Wenzhou sounded a little surprised when he turned around to face him with a small smile and raised eyebrows. He knew that the college student would sometimes come in during the evenings to study until closing time, but this was the first time that he’d wandered in after the shop had already closed for the night. “I’m sorry but I won’t be able to make you anything; I’ve already cleaned and locked everything up.”

“Oh, no, no, no, I’m not here for coffee. I, uh, I’m wondering if I can perhaps, maybe, walk you home tonight, if that’s cool with you, that is…” Huang Shaotian rambled, scratching his cheek with a finger, and after a poignant pause, added as an afterthought, “Also, I brought tea.”

“How thoughtful,” Yu Wenzhou’s smile grew a little wider as if he found Huang Shaotian’s unexpected gesture rather endearing, “just give me a few minutes to close up.”

“Yeah, sure, absolutely, I’ll, uh, get out of your way and wait outside,” Huang Shaotian nodded and swiveled around to get out of the coffee shop as fast as his legs could carry him.

What the fuck was that?! What was wrong with him? Oh my god. His heart was thundering beneath his ribs like something fierce and demonic, and he could hardly breathe even as fresh air filled his nostrils. Hell, he could barely carry a comprehensible conversation back there! He hadn’t drunk the potion yet, so he knew it had nothing to do with the magical concoction, but if he was already this nervous at the prospect of walking with him alone at night, Huang Shaotian could scarcely imagine what drinking the tea could possibly do to resolve this entire mess.

“Ready to go?” Yu Wenzhou asked after locking up the entrance, but when he received no answer from the usually boisterous man, he tried again, calling his name softly, “Shaotian, is everything okay?”

“Huh?”

Yu Wenzhou was looking at him with concern, brows drawn into a worried frown, eyes seemingly even brighter and more mesmerizing than usual under the warm glow of the streetlights.

“Uh, yeah, I’m fine,” Huang Shaotian laughed uneasily having been caught off guard, and handed one of the cups he was holding to Yu Wenzhou, who took it with a nod of thanks and another quiet smile. If he’d noticed Huang Shaotian’s lingering gaze at his cup, Yu Wenzhou didn’t comment upon it. “I hope you like herbal tea.”

“It’s much healthier than coffee for sure,” Yu Wenzhou laughed lightly, noting the irony of his statement as he was the type of person who couldn’t function at all without consuming at least one cup of caffeine first thing in the morning. Throughout the day at work, the amount of coffee consumed would be diluted with more milk and sugar and syrups to fuel him through the busy hours.

Yu Wenzhou took a whiff, his eyes briefly fluttering close at the pleasant flowery and citrusy fragrance, before taking a careful sip, the steam slithering out from the lip of the cup and rising up to cloud around his hair like a fragile halo.

As Huang Shaotian watched him swallow, he looked for signs of any changes that the tea was supposed to cause, but he couldn’t find any visible clues that could tell him whether or not the potion was actually working like it was supposed to.

He’d just have to trust Wang Jiexi on this one, Huang Shaotian thought resolutely, and took a big gulp of tea from his own cup. He’d made certain to brew the tealeaves as instructed and surveyed the timer like a hound so that he could take out the tealeaves, fully soaked and tainting the water into a glazed green and sunset gold, on time.

The tea was, fortunately, the perfect temperature for him, yet he couldn’t help but grimace at the taste that first hit his palette: so bitter that he swore he could feel the particles seeping deep into his bones and making his skin crawl. Yet, after the first mouthful, the aroma of something akin to cornflowers, spicy with a subtle hint of sweet aftertaste, filled his mouth and soothed the restless storm of his heart.

‘It’s working… It’s actually working!’

“This is really good,” Yu Wenzhou commented after he took a longer sip and glanced over at him, “where did you get it?”

“Tiny Herb Teahouse,” Huang Shaotian replied without thinking, and then added quickly, “a friend recommended their teas to me.”

“Tiny Herb…” Yu Wenzhou mouthed the familiar name to himself, lost in thought, and then said with a glint to his eyes, “isn’t that the specialty teashop run by a witch named Wang Jiexi? I heard that his personal brews make for powerful potions that grand the drinkers any powers and wishes they desire.”

“Ahahahaha, is that what you’ve heard? I have no idea that they specialized in that sort of thing, like, at all! Wow, that sounds very cool, very cool indeed. Witchcraft, huh? Damn.” Huang Shaotian was never good at acting; he was a smooth talker — an elegant debater at times even, which was why he’d chosen to pursue the career of law — but when it came to Yu Wenzhou, it was as if he’d lost the basic ability to string words together into an intelligible sentence.

“Shaotian,” Yu Wenzhou stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing the other man to halt as well. While they were walking side-by-side, they had inevitably wandered closer, their arms brushing against each other’s occasionally, and now that they were facing each other, Huang Shaotian was startled by their proximity. A small step would bring them even closer, but neither of them was ready to take that step.

“Y-yeah?” He couldn’t read the emotion in Yu Wenzhou’s eyes — they were dark as night, almost like ink had been dripped and mingled into that rich shade of blue — nor could he interpret the firm line of his pale, full lips.

“Is there anything you’d like to tell me?” Yu Wenzhou asked softly, a light touch played upon the string of Huang Shaotian’s heart, the single note echoing and hanging in the air between them like something tangible. “Anything at all?”

Huang Shaotian took another nervous sip from his cup, almost thanking the bitterness and the malty aftertaste, the clarity of thought and strength of heart, that the tea brought. He breathed in deeply, lifting his gaze to look intently at the man whom he’d fallen in love with during the few months he’d known him (as ridiculous as it might sound, but nonetheless painfully true), and somehow, the sight of Yu Wenzhou — eyes warm and serene, cheeks slightly chaffed pink from the winter breeze, and wisps of hair falling into his eye as the wind teased through them — was enough to strengthen Huang Shaotian’s resolve.

“Actually yeah, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” Huang Shaotian said, his mouth curving upward into a tense but genuine grin, fingers tapping on his cup in a random rhythm, “Yu Wenzhou, I know we haven’t known each other for long — or you know, we don’t know much about each other at all, I guess, but I’d really like to change that between us. It’s weird because even though we barely know each other, there’s just something deep in my heart that won’t let me let go of the thought of you. Wait, did that sound super stalker-ish just now? I’m sorry, I totally didn’t mean to do that, please don’t freak out! Uh. What I mean is, I want to know you better but not simply as a friend, and, um, I hope you’ll give me a chance as well.”

He was losing his words and his nerve, but it was already too late: he was baring his heart for Yu Wenzhou to see and judge, and there was no going back.

“Shaotian…” he reached out for him — tenderly, delicately — and Huang Shaotian caught his wrist with his hand, lacing their fingers loosely together.

“Wait, wait, please, let me finish, I’m almost done, I promise,” Huang Shaotian tightened his hold on the other man’s hand to silence him, and called out his name, savoring the syllables, the sweetness and flight of joy that they brought, much like the strange yet pleasant aftertaste of the tea he drank. “Wenzhou, I like you very, very, very much! Will you go out with me?”

Yu Wenzhou laughed; he covered his mouth with the back of his hand out of politeness and the sound was muffled, but Huang Shaotian was sure that the manager of Blue Rain Café was laughing. At him. Definitely.

His heart instantly sank.

He was going to reject him. After he stopped laughing, that was, whenever that was going to be.

Despite this, however, their hands were still linked. Huang Shaotian was too numb and horrified to realize that he was still holding onto the other man’s hand, and it didn’t look like Yu Wenzhou had any intention to pull away either.

Even if he was laughing at him, the sound of his laugher was a lovely sound, but once he’d come to his senses, he would tell Huang Shaotian the truth — the truth that he probably didn’t want to hear, the answer that would probably tear his heart apart.

“I sincerely apologize, Shaotian,” Yu Wenzhou pulled him close with lingering chuckles until they stood face-to-face, blue eyes staring into gold, a soft smile and a softer touch of his lips against Huang Shaotian’s knuckles that made the blond shiver and his cheeks grow warm. “I didn’t mean to laugh. I’ve just been waiting for so long that I thought I was getting my hopes up again.”

“You’ve been… waiting?” Huang Shaotian was confused for a good few seconds as Yu Wenzhou’s words revealed their meaning, and his eyes widened comically at the realization. “You mean to tell me that…”

“That I’ve taken an interest in you since we met? That the reason why I always remember your order and make it just the way you like it is my subtle way to let you know that I like you? That I, too, am an awkward fool who’s terrible at this romantic wooing?” Yu Wenzhou let go of Huang Shaotian’s hand, and the blond was already starting to miss his warmth, but then Yu Wenzhou was caressing his lower lip with his thumb, slow and deliberate and full of promises, and Huang Shaotian’s mind went blank. “Yeah, that’s basically what I’m telling you.”

“Well, fuck,” Huang Shaotian said after two beats, because honestly, what else was he supposed to say at this point?

“Uh-huh,” Yu Wenzhou chuckled, his heated breaths and the floral scent of the tea was all Huang Shaotian was aware of and he found himself leaning forward even more, their lips almost touching but not quite. Yu Wenzhou lowered his voice into a whisper, dark eyes gazing at the blond’s parted mouth, his intention never clearer. “May I?”

“Please,” Huang Shaotian breathed, closing his eyes by instinct, and he felt the scent of flowers growing overwhelmingly potent, filling his senses, filling up his heart until it was beating steady and strong, as their lips touch in a chaste kiss.

In the back of his mind, Huang Shaotian reminded himself to thank the witch who had somehow made this happy ending a reality.

But right now, he needed to concentrate on kissing Yu Wenzhou back with as much fervor as he could muster, and their teas — still steaming and half-full in their respective cups — were left forgotten for the moment as they continued to sought for each other’s taste to make up for lost time.

“What a rare sight,” Wang Jiexi said, putting down a cup and saucer on the small round table before taking a seat on the only available chair across from the man he was addressing. In the glass cup was freshly brewed tea in the shade of honey-brown, and on the saucer a sprig of some leafy plant acted as a simple decoration. “Drink up.”

“What the hell is this?” Ye Xiu pushed the cup an inch away from himself, his eyes dimming with distrust. “I’m not drinking this, no thank you.”

“It’s a sage infusion with lemon,” Wang Jiexi said, nudging the cup towards Ye Xiu again, “it’ll get rid of your smoker’s breath. And you will drink the entire thing if you want to do anything with me today.”

Ye Xiu was no fool; he caught the underlying meaning of his lover’s threat and sighed, giving up almost immediately.

“What brought you here anyway?”

“If I have to see Huang Shaotian and the manager of Blue Rain flaunting their newly established romantic relationship in my face for a second longer, I will jump off a fucking bridge,” Ye Xiu shook his head, ceasing his work on the laptop for the moment, and took a hesitant sip from the teacup.

He grimaced at the taste.

“Jealous?” Wang Jiexi asked, lips tucked into a teasing smirk.

“Not at all. I’ve got you all to myself, don’t I?” Ye Xiu pulled the other man over the length of the table by his scarf and traced his fingertip along the witch’s jawline, gentle fingers brushing back auburn forelocks to reveal the brightness of his other eye. Wang Jiexi insisted on keeping his slightly bigger eye hidden behind his hair, but Ye Xiu had always thought his eyes were the most charming and beautiful part of him.

Working with all sorts of teas and aromatic plants, Wang Jiexi smelled like he was constantly surrounded by fields of different flowers and herbs, and that distinctive scent called out to Ye Xiu like no others could. He leaned in closer, eyes hooded with his face angled slightly to make it easier for them to kiss, but he was stopped by Wang Jiexi’s index finger pushing roughly against his lips, interrupting him rather rudely.

“Drink,” Wang Jiexi reminded him with a hard glare.

Ye Xiu groaned and settled back into his seat, begrudgingly picking up the cup and starting to drink obediently.

“What sort of tea did you actually give him?” Ye Xiu asked after half of the tea had been consumed.

“Just the shincha with a sprinkling of honey-infused citrus blossoms, and the Lapsang Souchong black tea with some dried cornflower and anise hyssop,” Wang Jiexi told him, though he knew that Ye Xiu had no idea what those were.

“Did you even cast a spell on those tealeaves?” Ye Xiu’s arched a brow.

“He didn’t need the magical properties of my teas,” Wang Jiexi said with a casual shrug, “he just needed a push.”

“And how much did you charge him?” Ye Xiu’s grin started to widen.

“The usual price,” Wang Jiexi avoided his lover’s teasing gaze.

“And you didn’t even give him a friendship discount? Scoundrel.”

“I still got to make a living, don’t I?”

---

A/N: Thank you for reading until the end!

#quan zhi gao shou #qzgs #the king's avatar #yuhuang #wangye #bowie's crappy writing

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tumbalumps · 7 years

Text

Monsoon vs Bladewolf

Another pile of shit I wrote when I was high

Monsoon never could have predicted that such a mundane task like shopping would trigger such extraordinary events. It was early evening as the cyborg strolled around Lidls doing his weekly shop. His basket was almost full of his usual items - magnet polish, tooth whitener, hair straighteners, scrap metal, tarantulas and some oil to fry them in... There was only one more thing, perhaps the most important thing, that he needed to get. He turned into the alcohol aisle and spotted a lone flagon of white cider; the last one in the store. At the opposite end of the aisle was Bladewolf who had also been shopping for his essentials. His robot dog eyes were on the cider too. Sensing he may have competition, Monsoon decided to take no chances and dismembered himself to launch his speedy tornado move to get straight to the prize. Bladewolf launched into action and bound down the aisle with his artificial tongue flopped out. The pair collided inches away from their goal creating an explosion of spilled shopping items and Monsoon's body parts. "This cider's mine!" Monsoon declared pulling himself together and clasping a hand on the flagon. "Negative," Bladewolf responded in his monotonous robot voice as he wrapped his tail around the neck of the bottle. They exchanged deathly stares and did the only thing they knew how: fight. Monsoon pounced on him but Bladewolf was no easy prey. He tail whipped him in the face and flipped him off and soon they were rolling around the supermarket floor grappling for the cider like a pair of amateur wrestlers on Money in the Bank. During the struggle a strange feeling of Deju vu came over them and it dawned on them that they had met before. Ten years ago, in the early hours of a Saturday morning, they had just so happened to bump into each other whilst drunkenly staggering home from a club. Memories were vague but weird sexual activity had taken place in a phone box that never would have happened if they had been sober. Ashamed of themselves, they had gone their separate ways and repressed it as deeply as possible, never seeing each other again. Each wondered silently if the other was thinking the same and decided not to mention it, in the hope that they had forgotten. Meanwhile, the scuffle had attracted the attention of the security guards. Two stern looking cyborgs stood over them with their arms folded. "What's going on here then?" the first asked, raising an eyebrow. They yelled at the same time drowning each other out with their childish squabbling and resorting to hair and tail pulling. The security guards looked at each other and shook their heads. "If neither of you are willing to back down then you will have to share." "No way! I have won this!" "Negative. Failure of this mission would violate tonight's objective." The guard spoke firmly, "If you do not agree to share we'll have no choice but to ban you both from the store and report you to your bosses." It dawned on Monsoon that the consequences of this would be dire. Not only was this the only shop for miles but he did not want Armstrong to know he had been wrestling an AI dog on the floor for three litres of white cider. Regrettably there was no choice in the matter. They begrudgingly glared at each other and nodded.

Monsoon's apartment was bigger and the closest so they agreed to go there. Bladewolf planned to share a little with him then swipe it when his back was turned. Monsoon had no intention of sharing any at all (not with Bladewolf anyway). The first thing Bladewolf noticed about Monsoon's apartment was that it was one of a kind. His jaw dropped when he saw the living room. The carpet was invisible under a sea of what to the untrained eye looked like scrap metal. There were bits of tank, helicopter, car parts and set aside even some motorcycle parts. Some of them had the creepy purple Lorentz aura about them. The leather sofa was covered in them too leaving only a small space for a single person to sit down. Plant pots were dotted around in random places and numerous Richard Dawkins and Hendrik Lorentz pictures hung on the wall as if Monsoon worshipped them as gods. The last thing he spotted was propped up in the corner: that damn, godforsaken, unholy Wheel. He would stay as far away from that thing as possible. The so called living room appeared as nothing more than a magnetic scrap metal lab. Bladewolf concluded that it most definitely deviated from the social norms he was programmed with. Monsoon spied the stunned look on his face and explained, "It's simply the way things are; this way I know where everything is so it’s easier and more efficient. It's who I am see. All is as it should be." "We shall be needing some glasses. Do you think you could find some amongst all your weird shit?" Bladewolf shot back, realising that perhaps he had been learning too much of Raiden's vocabulary. Monsoon grunted and reluctantly fetched two half pint glasses. He would permit Bladewolf to that before he booted him out of his house and kept the cider. He also permitted him to sit on the only seat in the room, but only so he could creep him out by sitting on the ceiling. To his annoyance, Bladewolf did not seem phased by this, he was an AI afterall. An uncomfortable silence fell on the room, which Monsoon broke by disconnecting his hand and rifling through Bladewolf's shopping bag. "Let's see what you got, shall we," he grinned snidely at him. "Ooh a squeaky toy, a dog dish, Pedigree Chum... What's this? A leash, dog collar, a Brazillian edition pot noodle and WKD! Tell me: what would a dumb AI dog want with those?" "I see no reason to share my objectives with you," Bladewolf answered coldly. "Do as you please!" yelled Monsoon angrily as he necked his cider in one. "I've got my own objectives to attend to." Rattled, he threw the shopping bag down purposely spilling all the contents and scurried into the kitchen, which was also covered in various vehicle parts leaving only a small space on the worktop and cooker. There was something that bothered him about Bladewolf's shopping list. He put it down to nothing more than paranoia and began making preparations for dinner: fried tarantulas with crickets as a garnish - they were a delicacy in Cambodia. He only made the effort to cook on special occasions or when entertaining guests. All he had to do was get rid of Bladewolf before the said guest arrived. Bladewolf padded into the kitchen curious about what the unusual smell was. Tarantulas! What the hell! But that was not the only odd thing he noticed; "I calculate that the portion sizes are inadequate for just a singular meal. Are we expecting company or is this strange concoction for me?" "I see no reason to share my objectives with you!" Monsoon shot back sarcastically. Bladewolf scowled and headed back into the living room as the smell of fried spiders became overwhelming. He figured the extra meal probably wasn't for him and he dreaded to think what kind of people Monsoon mixed with. If they were anything like him then the situation would become even more awkward; one was bad enough. He may have had some weird tendancies, however he wasn't stupid and had taken all necessary precautions to guard the precious cider in keeping it right next to his fryer amongst bits of magnetic scrap. A distraction was needed. Heading back into the so-called living room, Bladewolf pondered over tactics. For reasons his giant intellect could not fathom, he got a weird kick out of antagonising the cyborg. He found him strangely intriguing: a worthy opponent. He was drawn to one of the plant pots, (which looked oddly out of place amongst all the mechanical equipment) to see what he was growing. There were some pretty pink flowers alongside some psychodelic looking mushrooms that were probably best avoided. Bladewolf smirked and pushed the pot off the ledge. Monsoon heard the smash and came dashing in, "What are you doing you stupid clumsy mutt?" Bladewolf replied with a hint of smugness, "Oh erm.. I apologise. I seem to have broken one of your Pol Pots." "What did you say?" Monsoon snarled. He was very sensitive about the traumatic childhood he had spent on the killing fields. "Plant pots." Monsoon gave him a death stare that was invisible from underneath his dome. A fake smile appeared to mask his plotting, "Oh, I must have misheard you. I suppose it’s OK I've got loads more." Bladewolf looked at him suspiciously. Why was he suddenly being nice? Monsoon's grin spread, "How about we try and be amicable towards each other seeing as we will be sharing this cider." "Your terms seem acceptable." "Good doggy. How about we play some fetch?" he said whipping out the stick he'd stolen from his shopping bag. Bladewolf's tail wagged furiously; he was a sucker for a game of fetch. The fact that Monsoon was willing to play it with him almost made up for how obnoxious he had been earlier in the supermarket. He happily followed him into the garden jumping up and down in excitement. Monsoon had a huge grin on his face that was difficult to read without seeing his eyes. Was he wide-eyed and full of joy or scowling sinisterly? Was he to be trusted? He tossed the stick far into the garden and it disappeared into a bush. Perfect; it was the ideal cover for him to perform his stealth attack... Bladewolf fell for it hook, line and sinker; he darted across the garden to the shrubs, only to find that the stick had been replaced by one of Monsoon's detached legs, which swiftly sprang into action and booted him in the face. Damn that crafty cyborg! He decided he had to up his game... Monsoon retreated back into his kitchen, chuckling maniacally to himself as Bladewolf lay whimpering and injured on his side. His fried tarantulas were almost cooked to perfection. The timing was perfect for his date were due to arrive very soon. Nevertheless a quick codec call to make sure he was on his way wouldn't hurt. 'Good evening my love. I trust you are on your way. I have prepared an exquisite meal for us. I am looking forward to seeing you.'

Meanwhile, in a nearby motel room, Jetstream Sam sat up in bed and wiped his brow after enjoying a steamy session with Raiden, who lay flat out exhausted next to him. He reached over to the bedside table and discreetly checked his codec. It had only been abandoned for a mere hour but already had several messages left on it. He sighed - it was hard being as popular as he was. It was even harder still to satisfy the tremendous sex drive he had... No singular cyborg, human or animal had managed to fulfill it, which is how he justified enjoying them all. "Who's calling you?" Raiden mustered up the last of his strength to ask. "Don't worry, nobody as good as you, pretty boy," Sam smiled, playfully running his fingers through his hair. It was true, Raiden held the largest place in his heart (still that didn't give him the right to be so possessive!) but there were things he craved that he just couldn't satisfy. That was where Monsoon and Bladewolf came into it... He had dates with both of them lined up. Monsoon harboured some of the kinkiest freakiest fetishes that not even the darkest XXX website catered for, while Bladewolf would be his loyal unquestioning servant and do anything he wanted just like the obedient dog he was... And the beauty of it was none of the three were likely to speak to one another so he could use the same puny excuse to get away and have each think he was their one and only. "You know I have VR training to go to," he smiled at Raiden. "I know," Raiden said glumly. "Same time tomorrow though?" "Of course. I'm missing you already." He kissed him and departed for Monsoon’s place, smiling to himself, “I’m just getting started!”

Bladewolf padded back into the house after escaping the rogue limb, his pride literally dented. Analysis of that damn Monsoon, who stood frying his tarantulas with that infuriating grin on his face, concluded that he really was a smug, creepy weirdo and it was just as well that he had that big thing on his head to contain his ego. But it was OK, he would have the last laugh. For now he would let him think that he had the upper hand while he planned his next move. In the living room, in pride of place above all the junk and hanging on the wall were Dystopia, Monsoon's precious Sais. It was where he hung them when he was at home and not ripping people to shreds on the battle field. If there was a way of getting to him, then this was certainly it. So... Monsoon wanted to play fetch? If he was going to get treated like a dog then surely the only thing to do would be to act like one! He tore them from their throne and pinned them down with his metal paws like a hungry predator going in for the kill. It was in a dog's nature to maul and chew things of value. A regular dog would go for things like furniture, slippers or newspaper but he was a cyborg dog with razor sharp metal teeth that could tear up much more. The Sais were infused with Lorentz, which made them a little tough, nevertheless he managed to leave some jagged teeth marks as he slobbered and savaged them as if they were a bone. Monsoon would be furious... On hearing the feral growling from the kitchen, the cyborg dashed in to see what destruction he was causing. It was to his complete and utter horror that his beloved Dystopia were being mauled by that vile mutt! "What the hell do you think you are doing? How dare you!" he bellowed. Bladewolf looked up a sweet look of satisfaction upon his face to see the enraged Cambodian launch himself at him. He should have expected a revenge attack! Yet again, they became embroiled in a whirlwind of metallic body parts grappling at each other on the floor, hair and tail pulling like children. Once again the feeling of deja-vu swept over them. The claws of Bladewolf scraped down his attacker’s face, slicing one of the few human parts he had left. Monsoon’s artificial heart thudded and his skin tingled. Obviously, he felt more pain to his actual flesh than his cyborg body would permit and the scratch gave a jolt to his senses and made him feel alive! A desire he could not understand nor control took hold of his senses and in the grip of its vice he pinned Bladewolf onto his back and ran his tongue along his snout. Bladewolf’s eyes widened with curiosity and the same unknown feeling took hold of him too…

Drawing ever closer was Jetstream Sam, after taking a quick shower to erase the smell of he and Raiden’s bodily fluids from their earlier encounter. He felt as fresh as a daisy but of course it wouldn’t last if past experiences with Monsoon were anything to go by. He was a kinky devil and such an attentive lover! His hair slick back in his usual ponytail he walked up Monsoon’s street with a cocky swagger in his step and a cheeky grin on his tanned face. What sort of fetish would he be indulging in today? He tapped the heavy front door but there was no response. Strange noises could be heard inside: rhythmic grunting and moans… Sam was intrigued so tried the handle. Monsoon usually left it unlocked when he was expecting him although he liked to knock just out of politeness. However the door was open. Nothing could have prepared Sam for what he was about to see.

There was Bladwolf being pinned to the ground by Monsoon who was holding him by the scruff with one hand while violently fisting him with the other. A twisted expression was upon Bladewolf’s face as he yelped and Sam was unsure as to whether or not he was enjoying himself or just in vast amounts of pain. There was no such doubt with Monsoon though; his sadistic grin was spread ear to ear. It was at least a minute before either of them noticed that they were being watched but Sam was more than happy to watch the show. “Ahem…” Sam said clearing his throat. The interruption startled them. Bladewolf was mortified – he had genuine feelings for Sam and did not want him to think of him as being disloyal. On the other hand, Monsoon could not have cared less because he had no interest in being in an exclusive relationship, or any kind of relationship for that matter other than a sexual one. “Sam… why are you here?” Bladewolf asked. “I could ask you the same question,” Sam said, intrigued. “This stupid mutt was helping me warm up for you,” Monsoon grinned. “He was just leaving.” “Well, let’s not be too hasty,” Sam said, the corner of his lips curling into his own cheeky grin... "Let's dance!"

#monsoon #bladewolf #jetstream sam #fanfiction #cider

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fallen029 · 7 years

Text

God Slayer

It wasn't immediate. Not by any means. At first, he was very much so the jerk she'd expected him to be in a relationship. Distant, apathetic, and, as Elfman would say, all man.

But that was nice too. Different. Mirajane was so used to men fawning over her and practically throwing themselves at her feet. The same way that he was usually treated with women. Not her though. They were equal at that, she figured.

It took months. Many months, in fact. From their first date (which was a stretch to call it that as he'd happen to be out at a restaurant alone, waiting for the Thunder Legion to show up, as she got stood up on a date at the same place. When he noticed, he called her over and, as the Thunder Legion's practice was running over, they ended up not making it and it was just the two of them. Mira considered that their first date. Mainly because they hooked up afterwards…) onward, Laxus had always tried his hardest to seem unimpressed with her.

At times, she even believed it. He would break dates and, early on, they weren't really a couple yet, so he'd still date other women, almost purposely bringing them in her vicinity, just to irk her.

"I don't know why you bother with him," Lisanna would remark a lot. "I mean, I like Laxus, but he sure is a dick sometimes."

"It's nothing serious," she'd always say. "We're just…dating. And he's only like that to get under my skin. So I don't let it bother me."

"Uh-huh."

"I don't. And I can date whoever I want too."

And she did.

For a bit.

Three months in, Laxus had had enough.

"I saw you yesterday," he said when he stopped by her house one morning, early. She was in the middle of fixing breakfast for her siblings before heading off to the guildhall. Still, she only turned, allowing him entrance. "Last night, really. Out. At the park."

"Really?"

"Yeah," he grumbled as he came in. "Who was that guy?"

"Brian."

"Mirajane-"

"What? You asked."

"Why," he hissed, "were you out with Brian?"

"Because he takes me nice places. And he's really funny." She didn't even glance back at him as she made it back to the kitchen. "You should have come over and said hi."

"And why would I do that?"

"I dunno. I would have if I'd seen you."

"Mira-"

"You want an omelet?"

"No, I don't want a fucking omelet. I- Hey!"

She'd turned and swatted at him with a spatula. "Behave."

"What did I-"

"No cursing."

"Mira-"

"And I don't get what you're doing here, Laxus," she went on as she headed back over to the stove. "So I went on a date. And? Did we have plans?"

"No, but-"

"Then what do you want?"

"I don't want you-"

"Laxus! Did you bring Bickslow with you? Or Evergreen? Or Freed? Or…well, I guess that's all your friends. How sad."

Lisanna was in there then, coming into the kitchen as well, no doubt checking on her food. Still, she came to grin at Laxus for some reason.

He wasn't in the mood.

"What were you saying, Laxus?" Mira prompted. "About what you want? Or-"

"Nothing." Turning, he walked passed Lisanna and called over his shoulder, "I don't want you dating other guys, demon."

"You don't control me, Laxus. And besides, we're just dating. We-"

"No. We're not."

"Then what are you doing?" Lisanna ventured, though she kept eyeing her sister. Mirajane just giggled though

"Just stop seeing other men. Now. I mean it."

"Or what?"

"There is no or what. You're doing it."

"That means that you can't date either, Laxus."

"I know what it means, Mirajane." The front door was opened then and, before it was slammed, Laxus just repeated, "I know what it means."

So, with a bunch of giggles between the two Strauss siblings, they knew that it was obvious she'd broken at least one bond that held Laxus Dreyar down. They were now official. Exclusive.

That definitely wasn't something Laxus was used to.

And Mira eased it into him slowly. Didn't jump down his throat the few times she found him talking to other women in the beginning. As long as nothing happened, she wasn't going to force anything. After all, it was a big adjustment.

About two months later though, they went through the next big step.

"What," Bickslow complained as he came into the man's apartment one day, "is all this stuff?"

"What are you gripping about?" Laxus grumbled. He'd invited him and Freed over for a few drinks, but if they were going to be annoying before they even got through the door, well, they could just forget all about that. "Huh?"

"This stuff." Bickslow went over first to the coffee table, which used to be littered with filthy magazines and old cigar butts along with a few beer cans mingled in. Now it housed a neat stack of Sorcerer magazines and a big, orange candle. "I mean, boss, what the hell are these?"

"They're called coasters," Laxus grumbled as the man picked one up. His babies came over to investigate as well, the stupid dolls oohing and awing the whole time. "And they're for…for… Freed?"

"You put your drinks on them," the man said as he took a look around as well. "So you don't leave rings on the coffee table."

"Thank you."

"Why the hell would you care anything about that?" Bickslow was still rather suspicious. "Boss?"

"It's my damn coffee table," he grumbled, going to take a seat on the couch. "If I want to keep it from getting rings on it, then-"

"And what's up with this?"

"It's a pillow, Bickslow." Laxus was only growing more and more annoyed as the seith picked up one of his couch pillows, frowning at it. "And I'd like it if you set it back down."

"The hell does a couch need a pillow for? A couch is a big pillow!"

"Bickslow-"

"And what happened to all the magazines that I'd peruse while I was over?" Bickslow tossed the pillow back down before looking at the coffee table again. Picking one up, he said, "Who the heck wants to read Sorcerer Weekly? Unless you're, like, featured or something boss-"

"No," he grumbled, reaching out to snatch it. "These happen to be the editions where Mirajane has spreads. And I… She made me get rid of the other magazines. If I want… Look, this is just the way it is now, alright?"

"She makes you only look at photos of her?" Hmmm. Snickering then, Bickslow moved to pick up one of the magazines. "I wanna see what exactly-"

"No way!" Laxus jumped up, taking it from him. "Buzz off."

"No fair, boss! Everyone else gets to look. And she's the one that does 'em. Clearly she wants me to look. And if I really wanted, I could just go buy my own magazine."

"Then do that." Laxus sat it back down on the table. "'cause you ain't looking at these ones."

Sigh. "Yes, boss."

"I, for one," Freed spoke up as he took a good look around, "am enjoying what Mirajane has done to the place. It looks much homier than it did before."

"The demon didn't do crap," Laxus grumbled. "What? You think that she tells me what to do or something? Huh? Freed?"

"N-No! I didn't say that. I just-"

"'cause she don't." Laxus took a seat once more. "I like…candles. And Sorcerer Weekly."

"Do you also like fruit?" Bickslow had disappeared off into the kitchen. "'cause I ain't ever seen you with a bowl of fruit. And what's up with your fridge?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's all neat and organized and-"

"Laxus," came an echoing voice then. Great. Freed had made it into the bathroom. "This place is sparkling clean! When did you find the time to do all this?"

"What are you sayin', huh? That it wasn't clean before? That I'm some kinda pig or something? Is that what you're saying, Freed? Huh?"

"N-No, but- Oh. And these towels are quite nice. Bickslow, come look. He has even gotten a new theme going on."

"Theme? You have a themed bathroom now?" Bickslow dashed from the kitchen then to go check it out. "Is it dinosaurs?"

"Not that kind of theme," Freed sighed. "It's the color blue."

"Oh, wow!"

Laxus was seething then, over on the couch. "Would you idiots, knock it off? I-"

"Bedroom, bedroom, bedroom," Bickslow's babies chanted as the man himself, after glancing into bathroom, took off for the place. "Bedroom, bedroom, bedroom."

"Hey!" Laxus got to his feet once more. "Stay out of-"

"Oh, wow, boss." The man couldn't help his snickers. "You got it bad."

"Shut up. And get out of there. I mean it. Now. That's an order!"

But Bickslow just stood in the center of the bedroom, glancing around. On the dresser was a photograph of Mirajane and Laxus as well as one of her by herself. Then the man's usually purple and silky bed sheets were replaced by these blue ones with some sort of white design on the comforter.

"What's up with blue and white, huh?" the seith asked as Freed peeked in as well.

"Mira's hair and eyes," Freed offered up easily. "Am I right, Laxus? Is that what-"

"It's not anything," he grumbled. "The demon just thought I needed new-"

"What's this little thing here? You into stuffed animals?"

"What? No. I just-"

"It's a little dragon," Freed said, coming into the room before going to snatch it off the dresser. Bickslow picked up the one next to it.

"And a little devil. Horns, tail, and all." Grinning over at Laxus, he said, "You're pretty dang cute, boss."

"Give me those!" Laxus went to take them back. "If you get them dirty or something, Mira will flip."

"What else do you got that's new, boss?"

"Nothing! I-"

"Oh, Laxus," Freed said then as, after giving up the stuffed animal, he went over to the closet. "You haven't."

"You're right. I haven't done anything! So the two of you-"

"Haven't done what?" Bickslow turned to glance over as well. "Huh?"

"Huh?" his dolls mimicked. "Huh?"

"He's let her move in."

"What?"

"I have not!" Laxus went to slam his closet door shut. "Get out of here! Now! You're banned from the apartment."

"How come you got so many dresses in there then, boss, if she ain't moved-"

"Because, stupid," he said, frowning at the seith. "She has to wear something after she spends the night, right? So she needs stuff over here for when that happens."

"She gets to stay the whole night? What an honor."

"Shut up, Freed."

"B-But I really meant it. To have that bestowed on you-"

"Man, boss." Bickslow's tongue fell out of his mouth as he cackled some. "You really into this one, huh?"

"Shut up."

"You do not have to be all embarrassed by it," the other guy went on. "I mean, Mirajane Strauss is-"

"I don't fucking get embarrassed. But you know what you're about to get?" Laxus was getting all worked up then, sparks jumping from his body. "Huh?"

"Uh…gone. In fact, I'm gettin' gone right this minute!" And he was. Bickslow was hauling ass out of that apartment, his babies following, none of them even looking back. "Later, boss!"

Freed, however, couldn't take hints as well and just grinned at the man. "Do they have names?"

"Do what have names?" Laxus asked, still a little grouchy as he went to set his plushies back on the dresser. Mirajane had picked them up a couple weeks ago and claimed them to be their babies. When she was over, they usually slept in bed with them. His demon was a little off, but she was a keeper.

"Your little…toys. Or are they supposed to be you and Mira? Or-"

"Freed?"

"Hmmm?"

"Get out. Now."

That wasn't even the worst thing the demon did to him. Not at all. Slowly, she made it very clear in his mind that, over everybody else, she reigned supreme. Even over himself.

This was driven home one night when, somehow, they got caught out in the rain.

Which wasn't that big of a deal for Laxus. He was a lightning mage, after all. Thunderstorms only furthered his power, he figured.

Mirajane though, who was sporting a new dress, was not nearly as happy.

"Laxus," she complained as they made a run for it. "I told you that we shouldn't go out tonight!"

"What are you whinin' about, huh? What? You gonna melt or something?"

"No! But my dress-"

"Demon," he groaned as he slipped off his big coat before moving to hold it over her head. "Just let me-"

"Aw, Laxus," she giggled, calming down some then as he literally got drenched. Stupid woman. "You're so sweet."

"Yeah, yeah. Stop saying it, alright?"

But he was. And, by the eleven month mark, Mirajane was more than a little antsy for their anniversary. Laxus had told her himself that he'd never gotten that far with a girlfriend before. And definitely not been monogamous that long. Part of her was feeling anxious to get it all over with. Maybe even skip celebrating it all together. Then he wouldn't realize and wouldn't be able to have his own little freak out, right? Or plea for freedom?

So she didn't bring it up to him. At all. She honestly was hoping that he'd just forget all about it and do nothing for her. The anniversary of the day when they'd actually went on their first date had been rather awkward in and of itself, though Mirajane didn't consider that their true anniversary for obvious reasons. And Laxus had taken her out to dinner, but she could tell he was just phoning it in.

All the better not to even bring up the real one, when they both agreed to be exclusive, right?

"That's silly," Lucy told her when she mentioned this to her. "Out of all the people I know, you're probably the one that would get the biggest kick out of celebrating an anniversary. So why-"

"It's hard to explain," she told her.

But was it really?

Because wasn't it just easier to have no expectations than to have high ones and be let down?

Only…she wasn't let down. Not at all.

In preparations though for him dropping the ball, she'd made sure not to end up together the night before. That way she could wake up over at her own place, in her own bed, and hopefully keep herself from crying over the fact that he had no idea what date it was.

But when she woke up, before sunrise like always, something was off. Usually she'd go and grab a shower before her siblings woke up (if she gave them a chance, they'd use all the hot water without a second thought), but when she left her room to do so, she could hear someone already up, messing around downstairs. It sounded like Lisanna. Which wouldn't have been odd, had she not been talking to someone else. And considering she could her Elfman snoring all the way from his room, she knew that it wasn't him.

"-narcissistic of him, I think," she heard her sister saying.

"Not at all," came the reply. A man. "See, the boss has these little plushies back at his place, yeah? Of a dragon and a demon? So this big one here is kinda, like, the biggest one he could find. She's gonna love it."

"Gonna love it!"

"What are you doing here, Bickslow?" Mira was quick to head into the living room once she placed the first voice, as well as the five that mimicked it. "And what-"

"Oy! You weren't supposed to get up so early," the man complained as she came into the room to flip on the light. Lisanna was sitting over on the couch, watching the seith as he set up around the room. Sure enough, Freed was there as well and frowned at the sight of the woman.

"Mirajane," he said, bowing his head. "We were just…well… Laxus got called away on a very important job. The Master came to see him last night and needed him for something. But he had us go ahead and get all of your presents over here."

"Yeah. He made us get up super early too," Bickslow complained. "We had to, to lug all this stuff over here. Lucky us, Lisanna's so nice and helped us out."

He had to have bought her at least a dozen bouquets, all of them already in their own vases around the room. Then, sitting on the coffee table, was a cake box with the top open, with the words 'Happy Anniversary' scrawled on it. Then, of course, there was the giant yellow stuffed dragon that Lisanna and Bickslow had been arguing about. She went to look at it first.

"He also bought you a new dress," Freed said, nodding over at the box, which sat on the couch next to Lisanna. "And-"

"What-"

"Well, it's your anniversary, ain't it?" Bickslow cleared his throat then. "He also wanted me to deliver a message."

"What?"

In a much deeper and gruffer tone, the man said, "Hey! Demon! You better have me a present too! And when I get back, we're going to dinner! So you better be off!"

Lisanna clapped. "That was a pretty good Laxus impersonation, Bicks."

He snickered. "Thanks, Lissy, I-"

"Bicks?" Mirajane frowned over at her sister then. "Lissy?"

"Huh?"

"And how did Laxus get in contact with you anyhow, Lisanna? I would have heard it if he came over," she said slowly. Her sister blushed slightly then as Bickslow's tongue went back up into his mouth. "Did you even come home last night? I-"

"Hey, Mira, want me to make one of my babies go into the dragon doll. Huh?" Bickslow was the master of distraction. Err, Mira was just so simple it wasn't hard was probably closer to the truth. "Like it's a real baby?"

"Ooh, yeah!" it was her turn to clap. "Do that!"

"You know," Freed whispered to Lisanna as he went over to her. "You're going to have to tell your sister some time."

"Why?"

"Lisanna-"

"I know, I know," she groaned, watching as her boyfriend made her sister's new dragon fly around the room, crashing into nearly everything. "But she'll act all weird about it, you know?"

"Seeing what she did to Laxus," Freed sighed. "I know exactly what you mean."

And when Laxus got back to town, he took Mirajane to the fanciest of restaurants, even braving riding a train just for her. Then he went out and bought her some jewelry.

"Really, Laxus," she'd told him. "You've spent too much on me already."

"No way, demon. I've always got jewels to spare for you."

And really, there wasn't much resistance in her tone anyhow.

That day, the one where they celebrated their anniversary together finally, was probably the true fall of the empire known as Laxus Dreyar. He was finally able to admit, then, that something was different. That things really were different. And that he'd do everything in his power to keep them as they were.

Which meant, of course, putting up with more of the demon taking over. Not that he'd put up much of a fight to begin with. Slowly though, his apartment went from just being decorated by Mirajane to being full-fledged lived in.

Not that either of them would call it that. Not at first anyhow. But one day, when Mirajane woke up once more at his apartment to realize it had been over a month since she'd even taken a nap in her own bed, she knew something had changed.

And somehow, Laxus came to the same conclusion that morning.

"You off today, demon?" he asked when she stirred on the bed. He was standing over by the closet, getting dressed.

"Mmmm."

"Good." He was putting on one of his purple button-up shirts and, with a sigh, she pushed up to go do it for him. He always liked it when she got the buttons for him. Not to mention, she didn't mind stroking his abs a little while she did. "We got somethin' to do."

"What, dragon?"

"We're moving you in, of course."

"Wh-What?"

He patted her on the head, his usually stoic face sporting a grin a jack-o-lantern would be proud of.

Or Bickslow for that matter.

"I was laying there last night," he said. "Right next to you."

"I remember."

"And I thought about how much I… Well… You stay here a lot now. I mean, Mirajane, you have more stuff in the closet than I do."

"It's not my fault you're a minimalist."

Staring at her, he said, "I know you were waiting for me to ask or something, so I figured I might as well just get it done now."

"No, Lax," she said with a shake of her head. "I wasn't. I honestly never thought that you'd even want me to live with you."

"Silly, demon." He bowed his head then to nuzzle it against hers. Mirajane just blinked up at him. "Silly, silly-"

"Have you been drinking?"

"No."

"Laxus-"

"If you don't want this-"

"Did I say that?"

Staring down at her, he paused for a moment before saying, "I know this is really impulsive, but I have actually thought about it for awhile."

"Really?"

"A few times. But I know that you like living with your siblings. And to give up that house to come stay in my tiny apartment-"

"You can come stay with me then, in the house. You-"

"No," he sighed, shaking his head slightly. 'Your brother and sister live there too and-"

"Then I'll come stay here." She still had her hands resting on his chest and ran them down then before over to his arms. Gripping them gently, she said, "I would live in a box with you if I had to. I just didn't think that you would want this."

"I didn't think you would."

Giggling slightly, she grinned for a second though it fell right after.

"What?" he asked. "Did I say something? Or-"

"Well, your lease and stuff. And now I have to help pay rent-"

"We'll figure it out," he said, leaning down to nuzzle his head against hers again. She was learning to like that. "Demon. I love you."

"Laxus…"

"Don't you know you're supposed to say it back? Huh?"

She just let out a soft breath. "Yeah, I know. I love you too."

Not that it was all smooth sailing from there. Sure, Laxus was in a good mood that morning, but Mirajane knew that wouldn't last long. He rebelled at one point, about three months after she'd moved in. The honeymoon period ended and the realization started to set in. He spoke out against all her rules about staying out all night and drinking so much. About how he wasn't ready to be tied down and that monogamy wasn't for him.

It was, by far, the worst fight they ever had. She wouldn't talk to him for three weeks. Then again, one of those weeks, he wasn't talking to her either. She'd run back home and there was no way that Elfman and Lisanna were letting him anywhere near her.

Bickslow wasn't too pleased with him either, though Laxus, who'd learned of Bickslow and Lisanna's relationship that night when he went to the man for help with the anniversary stuff (she'd been over at his apartment, sleeping in his bed, practically naked, it wasn't that hard to draw conclusions), wasn't in too much shock over that. If Mirajane had changed him, Lisanna had the seith turned into a whole new man.

Not that he didn't need it, anyhow.

Freed, though unhappy to see Mirajane so distraught and Laxus all confused and upset, thought it was his chance.

It was not.

Because after those three weeks, Laxus marched over to Mirajane's house and faced the music. And, after a few unsuccessful attempts to get Elfman and Lisanna to let him in, he arrived one day to find them both out.

But Mira was home.

And didn't want to see him.

"Demon," he groaned as she shut the door in his face. "Look. I brought our babies."

"Go away."

"Mirajane-"

"No, Laxus. Go."

"I don't wanna talk through a door!"

"I don't wanna talk at all."

Growling, he banged on it again. "Just give me a chance here. I brought these damn plushies. Don't you at least want them?"

Well…

But when she opened the door to take her stuffed animals back, Laxus forced his way into the house.

"Hey-"

"I can't believe you fell for that," he grumbled as she just slammed the door behind him. He knew too that she couldn't be that pissed if she wasn't going to just throw him out. Though he thought that he was stronger than Mirajane, he'd never actually use any of it against her. So she came at him, she'd easily overpower him. But she didn't. "Demon."

"Stop calling me that. And give me my babies!"

"Here."

She snatched the little dragon and demon with a frown. "And where's the other one?"

"I didn't carry him over here. He's so big!"

"Well, I want him. And all my stuff. You-"

"Mirajane-"

"No. You can't just do this, Laxus."

"Do what? Apologize? Believe me, I can. I just don't very often." He looked off then. "But I'm going to for you. I'm sorry. I…I got drunk. And overwhelmed. I mean-"

"So what? That's an excuse? That-"

"No, it's not. Demon-"

"You think that you can just go out, have sex with whoever you want for three weeks, and then come back to me with some half thought out apology and I'll-"

"I didn't sleep with anyone."

"Bullshit, Laxus."

If Mira was cursing, he knew he was in trouble.

"I didn't."

"I don't believe you. So just go." Turning, she headed off then, no doubt towards her bedroom. "Elf and I are going to go over to the apartment while you're out on a job and get all my stuff. So take one soon please."

"No."

"Goodbye, Laxus."

"Mira, you're not listening! I was mad and angry and… It's a lot, okay? And when I look at myself sometimes and the way that things have changed- Just don't walk away! I'm pourin' out my heart here, you know."

"You're not even taking this seriously."

"I am too." He followed after her. "Mirajane, I…I love you. But sometimes you just… You were talking about having babies and how we were gonna move into a new house and I just… I panicked, alright?"

"Not alright." She was to her bedroom then and shut the door behind her. He just rushed to open it and follow her in. "Laxus-"

"I've missed you so much. I've come over here, looking for you. And every time I go to the bar, you're not working! For two weeks, you haven't worked at all. What's up with that?"

"I took time off."

"Just to avoid me? Are you really that mad?"

She had gone to put her stuffed dolls on the dresser and didn't glance back at him. "You said that you didn't want to be with me anymore. I've done nothing, but give you time and space and I've never forced you into anything. I wasn't the one that made us exclusive. I wasn't the one that asked to move in. I didn't ask for your commitment. I didn't ask for your-"

"Mira…Please…"

"Laxus, stop it. You're-"

"No. I… I can't…be alone anymore."

"You-"

"I get drunk every night and you're not there to rub my stomach and tell me what a bad dragon I've been and the apartment smells like shit again and I woke up the other night to snuggle and you weren't there."

"You don't even like snuggling."

"I know! I hate it. But I know that you like it. And I was all ready to roll over and give you a few snuggles, to make you happy, but you weren't there."

"Yeah, Laxus, because you said that you didn't want me there."

"You don't think I know that? That I don't regret that? Damn it, Mirajane, who the hell else would I be doing this for?" He was trying to get some of his virility back then, sound less weepy. "I'm here for you. For us. I get it, alright? You don't need me. You love me. You like me. We have fun together. But you know that if I popped out of your life right now, you'd be able to go one with life. Fuck if I don't know it. You'll get a guy that takes care of you and doesn't make it so hard to love him and you'll be happy.

"And I want you to be happy. I really want you to be happy. But… I think I can make you happy too. If I didn't, I wouldn't be here. I can, Mira. Really. It'll take work, but the hell have I been doin' for the past year and a half if it wasn't putting in work? And I stumbled. I fucked up. I know. And you can tell me to screw off if you want, I'm not gonna hold you back, but baby, I need you.

"I really do, Mira. I…I… I'll never get someone like you again. All the other women I'm with, they like being able to say that they're with me. They think I'm…I dunno…hot, I guess. And I'm a damn good mage. That's just a given." He knew he was getting a little off track (talking about himself could cause that), and tried to get back to the point. "But they don't…and this sounds stupid, but they don't care about me. Not like you did. You wanted me to be more than what I am. None of them did. They just wanted me to buy them nice things and take them places and were fine when I'd turn around and treat them like shit the next moment. Just because they'd gotten with me.

"Not you though. You tried to make me better. You did make me better. Bad damn it, Mir, I'm not perfect yet. I know. And this just goes to show it, right? Your jobs not done yet. You're not finished with me. You can't be finished with me." Then, taking a deep breath, he came closer before slowly, very slowly getting down on his knees in front of her. Mira just stared down at him in shock.

"L-Laxus," she whispered, blushing. "I… This is just sad. Stop it. You-"

"I am sad! I'm losing you and I don't want to. I made a mistake. A big ass mistake. But I'll do anything to fix it." Damn. There went that masculinity again. Sigh. The things he did for the demon. "I've never gotten down on my knees for a women. For anyone. Begged for something. But damn, Mira…What do you want, baby? Just tell me."

"Laxus-"

"You want a house? I'll get a house. A baby? I'll give you a fucking baby. I'll marry you. I'll buy you a boat. You like boats? I'll put up with my damn motion sickness to take you out on a boat this second if-"

"It's not about what you can give me," she told him then, finally turning to face him. "It's about what you did. You hurt my feelings. You embarrassed me. The whole time that we we've been dating, everyone though that you would do this to me. But I told them that they were wrong. That they were more than wrong about you. That they didn't see you the way that I did. That you didn't want them to. That there was a special side to you that only I got to see. But then you went and ruined it. Really ruined it. You screamed at me, you forced me out of our apartment, you told me that…that… Laxus, you hurt more than my feelings. You broke my trust."

"But I didn't sleep with anyone. Why won't you listen, demon?"

Staring down at him, she said, "Some speech won't just win me back. Being cute or submissive or even making more false promises isn't going to work. You're gonna have to show me that you're sorry. Not just tell me."

"From just one fight?"

"That was more than a fight," she said. "And you know it. We've fought before. We've fought a lot. You were tired of me and wanted me gone."

"Mira-"

"No, Laxus. You did. You wanted to go out, do whatever you wanted, and you didn't want me around while you were doing it."

"I… I thought about it. After you left. And I… It's just different, Mira, for me. I haven't done this before."

"And you think that I don't get attracted to other guys some times?"

"I don't like to think about it, no."

"Laxus-"

"I… I was out. And I was drinking. With Freed. And this woman was… And I just thought…it's not fair. That she was into me and I couldn't even get anything out of it because you were at home waiting for me and I… I was drunk, Mira. I didn't even touch her."

"No, you just came home and bitched me out for happening to be your girlfriend."

"Mirajane-"

"I love you. But I don't like feeling like crap, Laxus."

"I made you feel that way once. Just give me another chance." He was still down on his knees too and damn if that wasn't mortifying. "Do it for the children, Mirajane. And their poor stuffed bodies. You think they can deal with joint custody? Huh?"

He wasn't funny to her then. Not anymore. "Laxus, shut up."

"I-"

"And get up. You-"

"I don't want to get up." And then, leaning forwards, he rested his head against her stomach, tossing his arms around her. Her dress felt soft against his cheek. He'd never been in that position before. Hmmm. "And I damn sure don't want to give up. So I'm not going to. If you want me to prove myself, fine. I will. I'm not going away, Mira. Not as long as I know I can do this. And I do. I can. And if I have to prove it to you, I will. I can make you so happy, baby. If you would just give me another chance. I-"

"Shhh." With a sigh she moved to rack her fingers through his blond locks. "Shhh."

"I love you."

"I know."

"I…I… I've never talked this much all at once. I'm kinda out of things to say."

"That's okay."

"…So are you coming back home?"

"No."

"What?" He tilted his head up then to look at her. "Mirajane-"

"Not today." She wiggled free of him and, feeling rather foolish, he got slowly back to his feet. "But thank you."

"Wha-"

"I told you," she said as she went to go open her bedroom door. "It's a process."

"Mirajane-"

"Goodbye, Laxus. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

He didn't want to go. At all. But…well… He'd gotten something accomplished at least.

"I'll bring the other one over," he said, glancing at her. "Huh? The big dragon? Tomorrow morning?"

"'kay. See you then."

Apparently, he'd forgotten how hard it had been to get the demon to love him in the first place. He hadn't even been trying back then. He'd just been…him. And slowly, she'd changed him. Now, as the new guy he was, he was finding that getting her to trust him was no easy feat.

But he was trying. A lot. He stopped going out all the time with his friends and spent more time with her. A rededication, he figured. He couldn't live without Mirajane. Not anymore. So he wasn't doing anything to risk losing her.

It was his life on the line after all.

And Mira wasn't that hard on him. She just…was apprehensive. In those three weeks, she had slowly begun to come to terms with the end of their relationship. It'd always been in the back of her mind, anyhow, that it could come crashing down around them. Every other relationship she'd had ended, after all. Why should theirs be so different?

Because it was them. That's what Laxus thought. Theirs was different because it was meant to be. It was divine. He just didn't need Mira or just want her. He…appreciated her. She was really something. Special. He'd never seen someone care so much about those around them. Someone who'd had so much darkness and yet been able to turn it all to light. She was almost angelic.

But, of course, Satan was the most beautiful angel of all.

It took another month before Mirajane really moved back in with him. And man, if Laxus wasn't on his best behavior after that. She knew it wouldn't last. The backrubs, the flowers, the little stuffed animals that he was picking up all over the place by then. But…she was eating it up while it lasted anyhow.

And when they reached that mark three months later of living together for as long as they had before the big blow up, she held her breath. But…nothing. Laxus didn't even seem antsy. And the forth went by. And their second anniversary.

Things weren't perfect, not in any regard, but they were…nice. And she was starting to get in unmarked territory too. He was officially her longest boyfriend and, well, she hoped he was her last.

Laxus wasn't showing any signs of letting up either. Of getting tired of her. Not loving her. They fought. They'd always fight, she knew. And once, he'd been the one to walk out. But it was only for a night and the next day they talked it out.

She was pretty sure that was the key. Talking things out. If they could get that down, they had a chance.

Oh, and eventually, she did find out about Bickslow and Lisanna. And she was annoying about it. For Laxus too. She drug them all out on dates together with Elfman and Ever and even sometimes, Freed would pretend to just happen to be in the area and show up too. But that was another story for another time.

The point was, as months turned to years and eventually, they both stopped holding their breath and just got used to one another and just…were. Laxus was with the demon. For the long haul. And, though he didn't enjoy every moment of it, he did enjoy her. She became his world. His central focus.

For a little while.

Because eventually, those little dolls just weren't cutting it for her anymore. And, after finally getting married, she also got that baby out of him.

"Mmmm…" Mira sighed on morning as, after getting the whining baby from his crib, she returned to the bed with him. Laxus was mostly awake then and took the boy from her before laying him on his chest to rest some more. "Who'd have thought, huh?"

"Thought what?" he whispered as he stared down at his son. He was getting pretty good at crawling recently and Laxus couldn't wait until after breakfast, when they could go out in the living room and watch him.

"That all this time we've been so concerned with Dragon Slayers and we actually had a God Slayer in our midst."

"You think my boy's gonna be a God Slayer?" Laxus was still making faces down at his baby and hardly listening to her.

"No, dragon," she told him with a giggle as she moved closer, laying a hand on his chest, right next to the baby. That got his attention and made her husband glance at her.

"Then who?"

"Me, of course."

He blinked. "Come again?"

Pushing up slightly, she smiled at him as she said, "You're the Thunder God, aren't you?"

"Demon-"

"If you're not slayed, dragon, I don't know what you are."

She was leaning over for a kiss then and, after he gave it to her, he turned his head down to nuzzle against the boy, Raidyn, pressing a kiss against his little tuff of hair. It was so light at that point that they weren't sure if it was going to stay that way and be like Mirajane's or darken out into a more traditional blond as he got older.

"I'm tellin' you, demon," he mumbled to her. "He's a looker."

"You're changing the subject."

"You think you slayed me?" he asked. "Huh?"

"I know I did."

"I believe you," he sighed as the woman laid back down, snuggling against him. "Mirajane the God Slayer, huh?"

"It's only fitting. I am a demon, after all."

Grinning, he nodded. "After all."

#Miraxus #Bixanna #Freed Justiine #Fairy Tail #Fanfiction #Mirajane Strauss #Laxus Dreyar

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you-did-well-my-love · 8 years

Text

Drama Review: Hwarang

The biggest disappointment of 2016 and probably 2017, screw you writers.

Rating: 2/5. If I’m being generous, 2.5.

OST: I wasn’t the biggest fan, but that might have just been my hatred for the drama boiling over onto everything else. When you listen to the album, there are some good songs. But they kept playing the same two bland songs over and over again. I personally recommend It’s Definitely You by V and Jin, and Memories of a Miracle by Jeon Woosung. Hyungsik’s song is really nice too.

Genre: Romantic Comedy, Historical

Synopsis: History is often made on the backs of truly passionate, talented young people. During the Kingdom of Silla, a group of elite youth known as Hwarang (literally "Flowering Knights") would wield great influence. These dashing, talented knights – Moo Myung, Sam Maek Jong, Soo Ho, Ban Ryu, Yeo Wool, Han Sung, and maiden Ah Ro – could outsmart and outfight anyone as they pushed for justice in Seorabeol, the capital city. One of them would become King Jin Heung of Silla and change the course of history.

Thoughts/Review: (spoilers)

This drama was a mess, and I’m going to rip into it. If you don’t want to hear what I believe are legitimate reasons this drama was bad, then don’t read further.

I’ll get what I liked out of the way in the beginning because there’s not much. The actors were all great. I thought the actors who played the Hwarang embodied their characters to the T and you could really feel the bromance and how well they got along off set. When their was comedy, it was great. I loved how Ah Ro called Sam Maek Jong out after the forced kiss. “If kissing me against my will wasn’t a mistake, then was it a childish tantrum?” was the best line of the entire drama. Plot-wise: I loved the romance between Ban Ryu and Soo Yeon.

That’s about it.

This drama was an overwhelming disappointment. I waited so damn long because they kept pushing the air date back, which only built up the hype more. Then they had all these promotions with the six boys, and I was SO excited.

That is my first complaint. The synopsis is bullshit. The drama is not about our lovely “dashing, talented knights” rather it is about a pathetic love triangle with a female lead who does nothing but get into trouble and cry.

This drama was about the Hwarang. It was called Hwarang. There was not enough Hwarang.

It started out very promising, and with a great cameo from Lee Kwang Soo, and the comedy was pretty great. But the more you watch, the more it goes to shit. The reason I kept watching is because I wanted to see how things turned out. I’ve been a fan of Hyungsik’s since High Society and enjoy watching his dramas. Minho and V are my babies. And I fell in love with Do Ji Han and Ban Ryu’s character.

The first mistake was making Ah Ro think Moo Myung was her brother. The two of them did not have chemistry, and I think that just sort of killed anything that could have bloomed between them. There was no development in their romance, there was a weak attempt at internal conflict with Ah Ro and her feelings, and then they were all of the sudden in love with each other.

Also, there was literally no point for them to lie to her. This wasn’t like That Winter the Wind Blows when he was trying to scam her. They should have just told her “Hey, your brother died, this is his friend and I want to take care of him out of respect for your brother.” and then given her her right to mourn her brother’s death. Looking back, that was the first sign to get out while I could.

Their romance wasn’t the only romance I had a problem with. It was Soo Ho’s crush on the queen. If they had cast someone else as the queen, it might have been tolerable. But I could not stand the queen. Could not stand her. The actress was expressionless and emotionless unless she was screaming over something stupid.

Second thing I disliked, the first being the romance lines, was the editing. It was really jumpy, and made the whole thing seem weird. For example that one scene in like episode 7 or 8 where Moo Myung fell off the horse. He hadn’t shown signs of any problem for the past like five episodes and all of the sudden he blacked out and fell off his horse with no pulse, and suddenly Ah Ro regrets all of the terrible things she yelled at him literally three seconds before in a different scene. SPEAKING OF WHICH did they ever explain why he passed out? I don’t think they did? Add that to the list of problems...

The third thing I disliked was Ah Ro. She was so boring. I don’t blame Go Ara (entirely... some things she did and certain lines she delivered annoyed me) but the character was really poorly written. She was really shallow with barely any background or personality. All the writers had her do was run around between the two boys and cry. Her most interesting scenes were when she was acting as a physician, and there were hardly any. When they did happen, they lasted for merely seconds. Then she went back to crying and moping about Moo Myung.

It was so damn repetitive. Moo Myung gets his dumb ass injured and Ah Ro cried about it. Or Ah Ro got her dumb ass in trouble, and cried about it.

Which leads me to my next problem.

My biggest issue with the drama: terrible writing.

Such poor writing. It took them forever to set up the story, the Hwarang weren’t formed until episode four. A drama that was supposed to center around them didn’t. We got to episode fifteen and the plot hadn’t progressed one bit. Episode 19 was literally a waste of time. And boy did they twist history.

First, I want to talk about Han Sung’s death and how it showcases the terrible writing. I remember before the episode aired, a ton of articles came out saying “BTS’s V’s character revealed to play a key part in setting the final conflict into motion.”

It’s a common trope when you have a group of friends; killing off the youngest, the purest, the last person who deserved to die. It’s used to really rip into that raw emotion of the main characters, and as the Hwarang writers were trying to do, set the final conflict into motion.

But they fell so flat. They spent less than half an episode killing him off, spent half the episode talking about him. Yeah I cried, but it was because of the emotion delivered by the actors. Taehyung did so well and so did Yoon Woo with his tears, but the second they opened up their mouths and delivered the dialogue + the editing of the scenes absolutely killed the suspense.

And his death was supposedly so important, but then they don’t even mention him again save for that one line by Yeo Wool in episode 19. Nobody even told Ah Ro that her precious friend died.

Now, about how badly they twisted history:

Someone on twitter explained this better, and I’m sorry if I butcher the facts, but the main thing is that they twisted history too much. I know that it’s necessary to do in historical dramas, but this was too much. History should be used as a guideline.

To explain: the Bone Rank system was a very real thing, and the writers twisted it to give Moo Myung a fictional character an illegitimate claim to the throne. As the person on twitter explained it, when the queen’s brother gave up the throne (i believe it was because of his illness) he gave up his entire family’s line to the throne. Meaning Moo Myung was not a sacred bone and had no right to the throne.

The pathetic two-episode “battle” for the throne was the worst thing they could have done for the drama. It was weak in intensity, dialogue, and emotion. And it was just plain stupid. Especially when you look at how historically significant King Jinheung was/is.

History aside, it’s still stupid. The writers spent 85% of the drama pushing Sam Maek Jong’s struggle against the queen and pushing that he is the rightful king, and then all of the sudden Moo Myung, who is supposed to be his friend, comes along and tries to steal the throne from him? Moo Myung is the main character, and the viewers are supposed to support him, but after all of the build-up behind Sam Maek Jong’s struggle to claim the throne, all I felt was sympathy towards Sam Maek Jong and resentmore towards Moo Myung for betraying his friend. That is not what I want to be feeling as a viewer.

Seriously, that is not how you sell a product to a consumer. That’s what dramas are: a product. The viewers watch dramas and support them with their money because they are captivating and enjoyable, not because it makes them feel like shit.

Did they not have editors? Did nobody really stop and think, “Hey this concept here doesn’t push the plot forward, rather it drives it backwards”???

You could tell through the OST the mood they were trying to set. They were trying to make Jinheung the enemy, but they absolutely failed.

And the ending.

I liked the swearing of the allegiance to Jinheung. It delivered the emotion it was supposed to and was exciting. That’s the only thing I liked.

The montage basically proved that Sam Maek Jong was the real main character.

And then, oh get this, they NEVER TOLD ANYBODY ELSE THEY WEREN’T RELATED. I get that everyone probably made the connection on their own but like the viewer has to assume since nobody ever actually put it into words and it’s like jesus you can’t just drop a plotline like that. SUCH. MESSY. WRITING.

And what pisses me off the most:

Ban Ryu and Soo Yeon’s had a half-assed resolution.

Soo Ho had no resolution

BAN RYU AND SOO HO HAD NO RESOLUTION

LITERALLY THE LAST THING SAID BETWEEN THE TWO WAS SOO HO TELLING BAN RYU TO STAY AWAY FROM SOO YEON OR SOMETHING STUPID

where the fuck was Yeo Wool

And then they had a riding into the sunset, THEY RODE INTO THE FUCKING SUNSET, without Soo Ho.

I mean I understand if Minho had SHINee activities and couldn’t make it, but like they could have done something different to include him. At least say that he left and went of to travel or something.

This drama was pathetic and I’m glad it’s over. I feel bad for the actors whose hard work was wasted in bad writing, editing, and directing. I look forward to seeing them in other projects, but I am never watching anything from this writer again.

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Finished 02/21/17

#hwarang #park seo joon #go ara #hyungsik #minho #v #taehyung #do ji han #park hyungsik #kim taehyung #choi minho #jo yoon woo #kdrama #drama review

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