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lockefanfic · 4 years

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Business Trip: 780 Days

Parts One, Two, and Three of the Nayeon prequels.

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Day 3:

On your first date Im Nayeon reaches over and swipes the two pieces of delicious-looking salmon sashimi off the wooden tray of sushi the waiter had just placed in front of you.

“I love salmon,” she says.

Her theft complete, she takes two pieces of tamago sushi from her own tray and places them on yours. It was clearly meant to be some sort of payment or compensation for the grand theft sushi that had just been committed in front of your very eyes - a deal you were clearly on the losing end of.

You look up at her, still a little dumbfounded at her brashness during a first date, when most people were often overly concerned with being on their best manners and presenting the best version of themselves that they could. But here she was, swiping the two most delicious - and expensive - pieces of sushi from you, uncaring of your say in the matter.

You are about to open your mouth and start a tirade about how unjust and unfair this transaction was for you, when she gives you a smile - toothy and gummy, not a hint or remorse on her adorable features.

The prominence of her two front teeth remind you a little bit of those of a rabbit. You smile back despite how surprised you were by her sushi theft.

This probably wasn’t going to last very long.

Day 7:

ImNayeon says: I had a good time last week :)

You say: So did I!

ImNayeon says: I owe you some salmon I guess. Free on Friday?

You sigh out loud as you receive her text. You didn’t have the best of first dates. You didn’t have much in common, she seemed a little more straightforward than you would’ve liked, and you weren’t sure you were over the entire sushi theft thing.

She was cute, though, and that smile - that damn smile.

You didn’t know it at the time, but as you type your response a smile has crept onto your lips.

You say: Sure - pick you up at 7?

Day 20:

Your first time was awkward.

You were both young and inexperienced, bumbling around each others’ bodies trying to recreate things you’d seen in porn or trying something that might have worked with a previous partner, not quite realizing just yet that every person’s body is different, and what worked for your prom date on prom night was by no means guaranteed to work for this young woman.

But what you lacked in experience you more than made up for with enthusiasm. It had been months since your last hookup, and from the second you’d entered her dorm room you were metaphorically and physically salivating at the opportunity to sleep with her. Nayeon seemed a little more hesitant, a little more nervous about where things were going, but she was still clearly as into it as you were, if the soft gasps and sighs that left her mouth as you explored her neck were any indication. Your hands, hungry to finally have the opportunity to explore her body for the first time, roam her small, tight frame, squeezing her cute little butt, caressing her back, pressing against her sides.

You both stumble onto the bed - quite literally, as you were both too focused on exploring each others’ mouths to realize how close it actually was. Nayeon falls onto it first, a cute little giggle leaving her mouth as she does so. You loom over her for a moment, enraptured by her smile, those cute bunny teeth of hers, those welcoming lips, her button nose, those perfect, expressive eyes rendered into adorable upside down arcs - her image took your breath away.

You find a smile appearing at the corner of your lips, the way it always seemed to whenever you spent time with this amazing young woman who had been at the center of your thoughts over the past couple of weeks. Sometimes it was something she said or did that made you smile - a funny joke, the way she reacted with half-serious anger when you teased her about her unusually large hands, the clumsy way she blew strands of hair away from her face while she studied. Sometimes she made you smile just by being her - when she was doing nothing in particular, managing to bring a smile to your lips even before you knew your lips were moving.

The sex that was to come was awkward, clumsy, far from being the best sex you’d ever had. But when it is over and you are both lying there with her head on your chest, you take a moment to look down and watch as she begins to doze off, her eyes slowly becoming too heavy for her to keep open, until finally she drifts off and begins to lightly snore.

You add that moment to the growing list of moments when Im Nayeon made you smile.

Day 21:

“...and counting you, yeah, that’s the number.”

Nayeon takes a moment to respond, and you fear that you might have surprised her with how many girls you’d slept with. Should you have lied? What number was she expecting when she asked you? You tilt your head as best you could to try and get a look at her face as she rests her head in the crook of your neck. She is facing away from the nearby window and the mid-morning sunlight of the day after your first time together sheds little light on her expression.

“Is that… a lot for you?” you ask.

“No, no it’s not,” she replies, “Don’t worry, I’m not a prude or anything. People can sleep with as many people as they want. It’s just sex. This isn’t the 1800s.”

You find it a little difficult to gauge her reaction from her flat response.

“Some of them were just one night stands. Stupid drunken hookups at house parties. They didn’t mean anything-”

“What about me? Do I mean anything?” she asks suddenly. She tilts her head up at you, and you are relieved to see the cheesy smile on her face that told you she had meant the question mostly as a joke.

“Of course you do,” you reply, before giving her a quick kiss on the forehead, “I don’t usually buy my sexual partners dinner.”

Nayeon gives you a punch to the gut, and while she meant it to be playful it still caught you unprepared.

“What about you?” you ask once sufficiently recovered. “What’s your number?”

Nayeon takes another moment to consider her answer, tapping her bottom lip with her index finger as though reviewing the entirety of her sexual history in her head. The length of time she takes to compose her answer makes you more than a little nervous, but you resolve to accept whatever number she gives you - she was right; it wasn’t the 1800s.

Nayeon’s finger leaves her mouth and she places it back onto your chest, where she begins to idly play with a random patch of skin.

“Counting you?” she asks, softly.

“Yeah.”

“One,” she answers.

Day 113:

Im Nayeon turned out to be a pretty good shot.

Of the ten targets set up at the carnival booth you were currently visiting, she downed eight with her BB gun - good enough for the surprised staff member to give her her choice of oversized stuffed animal.

“You’re a pretty damn good shot,” you say as you leave the booth, a large stuffed rabbit slung over your back. “If you’re some sort of international super spy you should probably tell me now.”

“Nope, not a spy,” she answers as she takes a bite from the large cloud of cotton candy she just bought from a nearby stand. She rips off a small piece and pops it into your mouth before hooking her arm in yours.

“Special Forces?”

“Nah, I don’t take orders very well.”

“Cop?”

“Fuck cops,” she says plainly, an edge in her voice. “No way in hell I’d ever want to be a cop.”

Day 283:

It didn’t take long for sex to become a regular and frequent occurence with Nayeon.

It almost seemed like your first time together had flipped a switch inside the young woman, as though she were introduced to this new exciting thing that she had to have at every opportunity.

You were both taking mid-level classes now and while the school workload and extracurricular commitments had ramped up, you both made sure to set time aside for each other. Nayeon was a caring, loving young woman and you were constantly in awe at the fact that you were lucky enough to be in a relationship with her. She was everything you had ever wanted in a girlfriend, and you did your best to make her feel as such. She rarely admitted it with words, but you could tell from the small things - the way she held your hand, the way she always bought you little trinkets and snacks and gifts, the way she looked longingly into your eyes every now and then - that she must have felt the same.

It surprised you, then, that such a sweet and caring girl could be so aggressive and daring when it came to sex. You’d figured her to be the vanilla, simple type, especially after your first time together - but she quickly became open to experimenting with different positions and kinks. It was most often her that wanted to try new things in the bedroom - or the library, or the bathroom. Recently she’d taken a liking to two new kinks - light bondage, and sex in increasingly daring places on campus.

Nayeon hated the professor of the mid-level criminology class she was currently taking, and so she wanted to exact some measure of revenge on him by having sex on the lectern in the lecture hall a few hours before her class. It was a flimsy excuse, but you weren’t one to turn down such an opportunity.

She even dressed for the occasion - her blue plaid skirt and the tight white button up she wore gave her all the appearance of an innocent schoolgirl, even if the shirt was currently undone and the skirt bunched up around her waist. She even went through the trouble of wearing white knee socks and a blue tie to complete the schoolgirl ensemble, although the tie was currently serving rather admirably as a restraint for her wrists, bound behind her back.

You are almost worried that being pressed face down onto the lectern without her hands to support her was painful for her, but the tightness of her tight, slick pussy wrapped around your cock and her endless stream of only half-suppressed sighs and moans convinced you that there was nothing to be worried about. Your hands wander her helpless body as you take her roughly from behind, sometimes squeezing a cute ass cheek, sometimes pulling her body back by her shoulders as you slam forward with your hips, sometimes grasping a handful of chocolate hair, moistened with sweat, and pulling back, enjoying the gasp of pleasure and pain that leaves her throat with each tug of her hair.

Fucking her over the lecture hall lectern was a risky move, of course, given that absolutely anyone in the university community could have walked in and witnessed you pounding away at her - but Nayeon’s sexual appetite had become more and more ravenous in the past couple of months, and when she decided she wanted it, you were in no position to refuse her.

It had started simple enough, with some relatively vanilla sexual positions in her dorm room or yours. And then it turned into weekends where you did little more than eat, sleep and fuck. Then you began fucking on campus, starting in the library against the bookshelves, and then in washrooms between classes - culminating now in this afternoon’s escapade, your most brazen one yet.

You wonder, for a split second, what the punishment might be should a faculty member walk in and find you two going at it atop the lecture hall’s stage. But as Nayeon’s pussy tightens around you and her moans begin to reach a crescendo, you realize that you would have accepted any such punishment with a happy, satisfied smile on your face.

“I’m gonna fucking cum on your cock,” Nayeon states through gritted teeth, matter-of-factly, as though she were answering a question posed by her professor, and not being fucked atop his lectern. “You’re so… so fucking big inside me.”

The audacity of the situation she had put you in - the thrill of the possibility of being caught, her schoolgirl outfit, the tight, wet heat of her pussy and the level of arousal she was clearly experiencing - it was no surprise how turned on you both were. Your bodies made it obvious.

“And you’re so fucking tight, Nayeon. Are you… gonna think of us fucking on this lectern when you’re in class later?”

“Fuck yes!” Nayeon gasps, “Fuck, fuck yes, I want to picture you fucking me on this lectern while the professor gives his lecture, it’s gonna make me so wet, oh fuck, oh fuck… I want to sit in class with your cum in my pussy, fuck, you’re gonna make me cum!”

“Fucking cum for me, Nayeon,” you spit.

“Oh fuck oh god I’m gonna fucking cum oh fuck I’m cumming!--”

You grit your teeth as she does just that, her body tightening and pulsating around you, her limbs shaking as she tries and fails to contain the pleasure radiating out from her core. You consider joining her, and your aching cock almost begs for release as it continues to pound the quivering young woman atop the lectern - but you do your best to hang on a little longer, seeking to savor every moment, relish every thrust into Nayeon’s tight, slick pussy.

And so when the door to the lecture hall opens, you almost don’t realize it.

Nayeon is thankfully more alert than you, and even through her post-orgasm haze she realizes the danger the opening of the door posed to the both of you. Before you realize what she is doing she pushes herself off you and off the lectern, ducking beneath it. On her knees, she quickly turns to face you and before you know it she takes your cock into her mouth.

You are left breathless, suddenly going from having your cock buried in your girlfriend’s pussy to having her under the lectern and having your cock buried in her mouth literally leaves you unable to move, much less process the fact that someone else has entered the lecture hall.

It is a few more seconds before you are cognizant enough to realize that the newcomer is dressed in grey overalls - a janitor. While he is far off at the top of the stairs that lead to the entrance of the large lecture hall, from his stooped posture you could tell he was likely an older gentleman. The fact that the lectern is a solid piece of wood, combined with the janitor’s age and eyesight, likely meant that there was little chance of him realizing Nayeon was there.

“Oh, sorry, professor, I didn’t know you were in here. Just cleaning up the garbage bins,” the janitor says as he shuffles towards the bins at either corner of the hall.

“Oh, no problem at all,” you answer, your voice wavering only slightly as Nayeon continues to take your stiff, aching cock in and out of her mouth, “I’m just… getting some notes ready.”

You make a show of shuffling some random papers and forms that were lying atop the lectern. You are too afraid to look down, knowing that the sight of Nayeon’s large, expressive eyes as she took your cock in and out between her lips, her arms still bound behind her, might be too much for you to handle.

“Nice weather we’re having, eh?” the janitor asks in a pleasant tone as he finally reaches one of the bins at the corner of the hall.

“Wonderful!” you snap, your voice cracking as you answer, “-wonderful. It’s pretty damn hot down there.”

“Down there?” the janitor asks, quizzically.

“Out there. Sorry. I meant to say ‘out there.’”

“Ah,” he responds, before shuffling, painfully slowly, towards the other bin.

Beneath the lectern Nayeon redoubles her efforts, as though challenging you to cum before the janitor leaves the room. Her lips tighten around your cock, her tongue dancing in random patterns around and under your head, each swipe of it sending fierce shocks of pleasure shooting up your spine. Your grip tightens on the lectern’s edge as you seek some outlet for the pleasure.

You try to focus on the random notes that some previous professor had left on the lectern, trying to avoid looking down at Nayeon as she continues to suck deeply on your cock. At the top of the lecture hall the janitor has almost reached the second bin.

You notice some struggling going on beneath the lectern, and you glance down long enough to see that Nayeon has relieved herself of the tie wrapped around her wrists - you hadn’t deemed it necessary to double knot it, trusting in her lust and newfound desire to be bound up to keep her wrists tied.

You watch, enraptured, as Nayeon takes you halfway into her mouth, her eyes locked on yours, lips tight around your shaft. Her hands now free, she quickly slips her already unbuttoned white shirt over her creamy shoulders before quickly reaching behind her and undoing her bra, letting it fall from her now topless frame. She lets your cock pop out of her mouth, jerking it slowly with her right hand as she straightens her torso and lets you have a glimpse of her naked chest, a thick stream of saliva dripping from her lips to fall down her chin and onto her small, round breasts.

As she continues to jerk you off with her right hand, eyes still fixed on yours, her left hand drops to her upper chest before capturing one of her own stiff nipples and pinching the hard bud between her index finger and thumb. You gasp audibly as you watch her touch herself. Knowing every ounce of your attention is fixated on her, she slips her hand between her legs and beneath the hem of her skirt. From the sudden pleasured expression on her face you know she has slipped her fingers inside herself.

Eyes glazed over with pleasure, she locks her gaze on yours and takes you into her mouth again.

Nothing else exists in your world. Never mind the janitor - every one of the two hundred seats in front of you could have been filled with students and nothing could have stopped you from watching, helplessly, as Nayeon brings you to orgasm. In reality it probably only took twenty seconds or so of her sucking your cock while she fingered herself - but in your mind it seemed to last forever.

A split second before you reach your peak you bury yourself as deeply inside her mouth, reaching down involuntarily with your right hand to grasp the back of her head and thrusting your cock as deep between her warm, wet lips as you could. Nayeon gags slightly as the head of your cock enters her throat, but she manages to control her gag reflex, and maintains it as your orgasm overtakes your senses and you send thick, hot semen down her throat. Time became abstract - seemed to slow down and then stop completely as you fill Nayeon’s mouth and throat with your cum.

“All done!” comes an announcement from some far away voice - and it takes you a few seconds before you realize it is the janitor, having finally reached and emptied the second garbage bin. “Sorry to bother you again, professor. Have a wonderful class.”

“Th… thanks,” you mumble as the janitor gives you a friendly wave, one you struggle to return with a weak wave of your own quivering arm. Your knees have similarly gone weak, and you are holding onto the lectern with both hands now, struggling to remain upright.

Beneath the lectern Nayeon tries to ensure that she swallows as much of your cum as possible, her throat working quickly to greedily swallow each rope of thick semen that you give her. Despite her best efforts she fails, some of the large volume of cum escaping from the corners of her lips to drip down her chin and onto her naked chest. When she has swallowed as much as she can she swirls her tongue around your hyper-sensitive cock a few times before finally releasing it from her lips. As her mouth leaves your cock it remains joined to her lips by a thick stream of semen, before the rope snaps and drips onto her naked upper chest.

“Fuck, I wanted it in my pussy,” she says as she begins to clean your slick cock with a thirsty tongue, “I guess you’ll have to fuck me here again tomorrow.”

Day 365:

“It’s leaking out of me.”

“Jesus, Nayeon, it was your idea. I thought you cleaned up before we left the bathroom.”

“I didn’t know there would be that much. I thought I drained you this morning,” she answers, squirming about in her seat. She straightens her dress as best she could, but there was no hiding the recent wrinkles that came with having said dress pulled up around her waist.

“Either way, it was hot as fuck,” you admit. Having sex in a university library or even in a lecture hall seemed woefully vanilla now that you could both add sex in a high-class, overly expensive restaurant’s bathroom to your list of achievements.

“Definitely,” she answers, a sly smile on her lips and a slight blush on her cute, puffy cheeks. It amazed you, sometimes, how she could switch so quickly between being adorable and sultry and beautiful. Sometimes she was all three, all at the same time.

“Anyway,” she continues, “I got a present for you. It’s our anniversary, if you didn’t notice.”

She bends to pick something out from her purse before sliding the rectangular velvet box across the table. You are a little surprised, suddenly worried that the new pair of running shoes you’d bought for her earlier in the day was now not enough. What the hell were you thinking getting a girl a pair of Nikes for your anniversary? In your defense, she loved to run, she loved Nikes and she had insisted that she make it easy for you by picking out a pair for you that she wanted... but you should’ve known better, should’ve gotten her a bracelet or a necklace or-

“Open it,” she says, softly, a small, sly smile on her otherwise unreadable features. She takes a small bite of her salad, but her eyes remain locked on yours, as though wanting to capture every split second of your reaction.

You are a little apprehensive when you reach for the box and open it, expecting a watch or bracelet or some other expensive piece of jewelry.

Inside is a circular strip of red leather - a choker or collar of some sort. Its buckle gleams in the restaurant’s low light.

“Um, thanks, Nayeon,” you answer, a little puzzled by the present, even if it was clearly of exceptional quality and looked quite expensive. “I don’t own a pet, though.”

“It’s not for animals,” Nayeon answers as she pushes around some of the lettuce on her plate. “It’s for a slave. It’s for me.”

Day 712:

“It’s not a sexy anniversary present this time, so don’t get your hopes up,” Nayeon says as you tear the neatly applied wrapping paper from the box. Sitting next to you on the couch of your apartment, she idly plays with the necklace you had just given her, her fingertips tracing the outline of the silver bunny rabbit at the end of the black leather string. Her lips curve upward in a soft, happy smile. You’d learned from last year and weren’t about to make the same mistake two years in a row.

“I’m sure it’s awesome no matter what it is,” you reply, truthfully. You finally open the box to find a blue hoodie inside it - simple in design, but you could tell by its fabric and its details that it was a high quality one.

“You’re always shivering in those ratty old sweaters and jackets of yours,” she notes. “I can’t have my boyfriend freezing his ass off all the time.”

You smile as you give the hoodie a closer look, admiring its stitching and the detail work. It was such a simple present, but it spoke of how much she thought of you.

“I love it. I’ll never take it off.”

Day 741:

Nayeon is playing idly with your knuckles atop the restaurant table as she describes an interesting case study in her criminology textbook - something about inter-jurisdictional police work, or something like that. Truth be told, you could barely piece together what she was going on about, other than the fact that it involved the rules and regulations put in place when law enforcement agencies and personnel from one country have to work in another.

She seemed engrossed in the topic - and while she was an intelligent young woman who seemed to breeze through all of her classes with flying colors, she had rarely shown this much actual personal interest in any of her other school work.

So while you weren’t quite following or understanding every detail she was relating about the complexities of international law and its relation to cross-jurisdictional law enforcement, you were content simply to watch her speak, gesturing expressively with her free hand while she kept her other atop yours, her thumb idly stroking the knuckle of your index finger. You smile and nod, content simply to watch her talk about something she was so deeply interested in.

The waiter arrives with your order - two wooden trays of assorted sushi. He gives you both a friendly smile as he places the food down on the table; you’d been to the restaurant almost weekly since your first date there more than two years ago. Despite the waiter’s friendly demeanor and the impending prospect of another delicious meal, you feel a ping of sadness in your heart as Nayeon lets go of your hand to make room for the newly arrived food.

Almost as soon as the waiter leaves, you pick up your two pieces of salmon and reach over to drop them onto Nayeon’s tray. In return she leaves you with her pieces of tamago, which you’d come to love over the past couple of years.

You look at each other and share a smile. She begins to dig into her food, but your gaze lingers on her for a moment more, your smile refusing to leave quite yet.

Day 751:

“Huh,” you say out loud as you read through the email.

“Mmm?” Nayeon asks as she pops the last french fry on her plate into her mouth. You are both sitting in the university student union building, having just shared a quick lunch between classes. Sitting next to you, she leans over to get a better look at the screen of your laptop.

“I applied to this job at this company called JYP last week, and they want to interview me.”

“Ooooh. I hear they’re gonna be big soon. Go for it.”

“Not sure if I’d even want the job if I were to get it, though,” you answer. “Their head office is all the way on the other side of the country and I’m not gonna move all that way for a job - even if it does sound a bit like a pretty cool company. And it’s for a pretty low level position.”

“You should still take the interview - it might be good experience for the future, when you’re doing an interview for a job you’re more serious about. Worst case scenario you make a fool of yourself in front of people you’ll never see again. Best case scenario, you get a job offer from one of the best companies in the industry.”

“Yeah, I hear thousands of people apply for these new-grad positions and they only accept a handful. It’s a career-defining opportunity… but making people move to the other side of the country so they can start at the bottom making coffee for meetings is a big ask.”

“You’re a fresh grad - they’re not gonna give you your own team and have you travel the world making deals right off the bat. There’s no point in thinking about it, either way. Take the interview, and if you get an offer that’s great, if not, well, at least you got some experience out of it.”

“That’s true,” you admit. “Okay, let’s make deal. I’ll take this interview, you apply for that grad school program you’ve been thinking about.”

Nayeon groans - she was majoring in criminology and was thinking about pursuing a career in the field, but hadn’t quite decided on whether grad school was something she wanted to pursue given the amount of work that it would entail.

“Ugh - you know how I feel about that.”

“Nayeon, you love the field. You don’t stop telling me about these new cases you come across in your classes. Your grades are more than good enough. It would be awesome for your career.”

“I suppose. But we’ve been over this. I want to find a good job right after graduation. I have plans for post-school life. We have plans.”

You nod, knowing Nayeon was referring to the idea of the both of you moving in together after graduation. Things were getting pretty serious with her, and you were both looking forward to taking the next step. You’d caught her once or twice looking at listings for apartments around the city in neighborhoods you’d both liked. And more than once her gaze lingered for more than a few seconds at rings in jewelry stores as you passed by them on the street.

“I get that, but you can still work while you’re in grad school. And hey, if we live together, it won’t be so bad. Soon you’ll finish the program and get a job as an international crime fighter and I’ll sit at home being your trophy husband - which is my real dream job, let’s be honest.”

Nayeon giggles, snuggling closer to you on the cafeteria bench. Her cheeks blush pink, and it takes you a second to realize it was probably because you used the word ‘husband.’ While you knew you were both young and the idea of marriage seemed a little premature, you would’ve been lying if you’d said it hadn’t crossed your mind once or twice over the past couple of years.

“Husband, huh? What makes you think I want to marry you?”

“Well, I’m your dream guy,” you answer as nonchalantly as you could, “of course you’d want to marry me. We’d live in a perfect little apartment downtown next to our favorite sushi restaurant and we’d have three dogs named Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle. You can go off chasing bad guys in foreign countries while I concentrate on being the very best - like no one ever was.”

“I suppose that does sound like a dream come true,” she says softly, her eyes suddenly thoughtful. She touches the silver rabbit on her necklace, her fingers tracing the well worn patterns on it.

“Right? So we’ve agreed, then. I’ll interview for JYP, you apply for that grad school program.”

“Gah, fine,” Nayeon submits, although you could tell her reaction was more than a little exaggerated. Her cheeks are still flushed, her eyes still wistful, as though she were processing the thousand little thoughts running through her head.

“Good. Let us drink to our agreement.”

You raise your half-empty can of coke, and Nayeon picks up her water bottle.

“To chasing our dreams,” she says, before you tap your drinks together.

Day 783:

It takes Nayeon most of the morning to get out of bed.

When she finally drags herself to the washroom to look at herself in the mirror, she can barely recognize the mess she sees in its reflection.

Her eyes are red, dry, and itchy after having spent the night before crying herself to sleep. For a moment she thinks of grabbing her phone, of calling you and telling you that you could still be together, that you broke up prematurely, that you were meant to be - that you could maybe give a long distance relationship a try. It was a temptation that came up often in the past three days since your breakup. Every time it came up she fought it off, even if every time she did it cost her in tears and heartache.

She sighs. You were probably already starting your new life on the other side of the country. Far away from your university, far away from the sushi restaurant where she traded egg for salmon, far away from the apartment open houses that she’d hoped you would visit together - far away from the life she thought she’d be living with you.

She feels the tears start to well up again.

But this time she tries her best to fight them off, wiping at them with a tissue before they have the chance to fall down her cheeks.

She needed something, anything to get her mind off of you. And while the prospect of crawling back into her bed and allowing sleep to dull her heartache was appealing to her, she knew it would solve nothing, wouldn’t do anything to help her recover. She was sad now, and she would be sad when she woke up.

The new textbooks for her graduate program in criminology, sitting in a pile on her desk, catch her attention.

Eyes still red and teary, she breaks the first one open and begins to read.

Day 2,013:

It takes Nayeon most of the morning to get the stench of the decomposing body out of her nostrils.

“Jesus Christ,” her partner swears as they step out of the main elevator in the building where the murders took place, “I won’t be forgetting that any time soon.”

“Neither will I,” she agrees, taking long sniffs of air through her nostrils in a vain attempt to cleanse her sense of smell.

“What’s your call, boss?”

“Jealous wife stabs cheating husband to death in his sleep. There was a hunting rifle and ammo elsewhere in the house that she could have used if she just wanted him dead. They were filthy rich, so I doubt this was life insurance fraud or anything like that. This wasn’t about money. Use of the knife suggests it was personal. Passionate. Repeated stabs, too, not just one clean cut. She wanted to send that asshole a message as she killed him.”

“Their mistake was in getting married,” her partner states, unprompted. He fancied himself a bit of a playboy, although Nayeon knew his self-confident exterior and dismissal of long term relationships masked an internal irrational fear of commitment. She’d always been good at getting the measure of people, even before her job as a detective allowed her to turn it into a career.

“Whatever,” she says, dismissive. “Let’s pull the CCTV from the building, especially the ones from the underground garage. This was a crime committed in the heat of passion. Unplanned. I’m guessing she panicked, took their car and drove off. We should be able to pull a license plate - make sure you get it out and distributed in case she stayed local. They’ve got a ton of money so she’s probably out of the country by now, but we can at least track the car on airport CCTV and deduce what flight she hopped on. Pull their credit card info and start looking for flights. Once you have that I’ll start having a chat with my contacts in those countries.”

“Roger that, boss,” her partner says. “Another case Sherlocked by the great Im Nayeon,” he adds, before heading off to track down the building superintendent.

Nayeon smirks in his direction as she ducks under the yellow police tape that bars the entrance doors to the building, pushing past the gathering crowd of concerned apartment neighbors.

As she approaches her squad car to head back to the precinct, her phone vibrates in her jacket.

“Detective Im,” she answers.

“Im? Im Nayeon? I’m not sure if you remember me, but this is Park Jihyo of the Seoul Metropolitan Police. We met at that convention in Madrid last year.”

“Of course I remember you, Jihyo. How are you? What’s up?”

“I’m doing good, thanks. Listen, something’s come up here in Seoul that I was hoping you could help me with.”

Nayeon puts her phone on speaker, continuing her conversation with Jihyo as she pulls the squad car out of the garage and starts to head back to the precinct.

After their call Nayeon reaches under her jacket to the black string of the necklace around her neck. Her fingers find and trace the outline of the silver rabbit hanging from it.

The chance to chase an old dream. It was time to see if it would come true.

Author’s Note:

Too much fluff? :P

Yes, this was heavily inspired by 500 Days of Summer lol. I had thought of having the days in mixed order like in the movie but decided to keep it linear so as to not confuse people.

Let me know what y’all think. :)

#kpop fanfiction #kpop fanfic #kpop smut #twice #twice nayeon #im nayeon #male reader #pov smut #twice smut

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hxseok-honee · 4 years

Text

peripeteia | part 20

a/n : AHHHH I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKE THIS PLS LMK WHAT YOU THINK also this is the longest thing ive ever written ever im so tired it took all week so i hope its good!

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Y/n is sitting down by the Black Lake when she feels herself becoming faint. A cold sweat breaks on her skin just as her brain starts to feel foggy, and she knows it’s time. It was normal for students to skip class and find a comfortable place to wait on their Clock Day -- Hoseok had told her that it feels a lot like a dream, one that leaves you unable to move or do much of anything until the process is complete, and it was only after a few unlucky souls had fainted in class or on the stairs that professors started allowing students to take the day off in order to ensure everyone’s safety. Of course, lots of students still had the unfortunate experience of being caught off guard in corridors or on the stairs while trying to find a safe place to sit until it passed, so Y/n had traveled in an especially hurried manner while she was coming down to the lake. Luckily she’d picked a great time to settle down because not even ten minutes had passed since she’d arrived. She had been trying not to think of Namjoon on a day like this, but she can’t help that her only thought when she starts to feel sick is that she wished he were there with her.

The cold sweat turns to extreme warmth suddenly and almost violently, and she has to steady herself by putting a hand in the grass and breathing deeply until the world stops spinning. She can tell the edges of her vision are leaving her, the impending blackout looming dangerously close. Overcome by the heat sticking to her like a thousand burning hot knives, she starts to crawl over to the edge of the lake, desperate for something to cool her skin. She makes it there, but not quite with enough time to do anything else. The last thing she sees is her own reflection in the water beneath her. The sight of her eyes clouding over completely -- reminding her not coincidentally of the murky color her divination professor’s eyes turn when overtaken by a vision -- is all that’s left before her eyesight is completely lost and she’s forced to surrender to fate’s will.

The darkness in Y/n’s mind stirs, and she’s filled with the sensation of free-falling. As she drops through space with no end in sight, a small gray dot appears from below. It grows as she approaches it, transforming into a cloud of smoke very rapidly and enveloping her completely as she passes through it. She can feel that this cloud is meant to steady her, slowing her movement until she’s no longer falling, instead floating -- where she’s headed, she has no idea, but as long as she’s no longer falling to her death, she’s happy.

The smoke around Y/n begins to clear, and she notes that her feet are placed gently on hard ground, not far from where she’d been floating for those few moments. The rest of the smoke fades away, the last wisps of it sticking to her surroundings in order to solidify the world she’s landed in. She realizes immediately that she’s standing in the Hospital Wing, only noticing that everything around her is gray and colorless, much like a memory, as an afterthought.

Glancing around, she finds that all of the beds are unoccupied except for the last one on the left side. The curtains are drawn, and Y/n can hear Madame Pomfrey rustling around inside, the matron’s voice carrying over to Y/n. The student inside, a young male student by the sound of it, is whimpering slightly. As Y/n approaches the curtain, she notes that in between noises, he’s breathing heavily, almost sighing in pain.

“It’s alright dear, it’ll pass in no time, I swear it -- oh, there’s no use. Poor boy can’t even hear me.” Pomfrey pushes the curtain out of her way as she exits, carrying a small tub. Y/n watches her walk across the room to a sink, where she pulls a wet towel from the tub and wrings it out, dumping what looks like ice water down the drain when she’s done. Humming softly, Y/n glances back at the curtain and sees it’s been left slightly open, allowing her access to the student inside.

When she peers in, she’s met with the sight of Namjoon -- more specifically, an 11-year-old Namjoon -- lying in the bed, looking much too small and much too ill.

No, he’s not sick. He just looks sick.

The thought crosses Y/n’s mind when she takes him in fully -- when she takes in his eyes. Clouded over completely, staring up at the ceiling as if lost in time, Namjoon is drenched in sweat and is letting out small, periodic whimpers of pain, but he has no idea. He’s experiencing his Clock Day, and there’s no way for him to know how he looks until it’s passed.

Approaching him slowly, Y/n tries to process the information alongside everything she’d believed about Namjoon’s soulmate experience up until this moment. If he’d always known who his soulmate was -- if he’d known since first year -- why hadn’t he said anything? Why had he let everyone believe he was only just having his Clock Day? Why was he hiding his soulmate from them?

Standing over him, observing the emptiness in his gaze and wondering if that’s how she looked right now, somewhere outside of all of this, she can’t help but bring the back of her hand up to the side of his face -- he was just a kid. He had no idea of the man he’d become.

The moment her fingers graze over his cheek, sticky with sweat and unbearable heat, his whimpering stops and his shoulders start to fall, all the tension in them leaving. His eyes shut slowly, and a long sigh leaves him. A chill runs down Y/n’s spine, and she feels a deep panic forming in her chest -- had she hurt him? Was she not supposed to touch him? Did she just affect something and change the future in some way?

Just as she’s starting to truly fall into a pit of despair, Namjoon’s eyes are opening, his eyelashes flickering as he readjusts to the light of the room. His eyes are no longer clouded, but he’s still staring off into distance, trying to process what he’d just discovered. Y/n sits in the armchair beside his bed, watching intently as he blinks a few times before sighing. He looks too serious for a first year.

Hobi was right. No child should ever have to go through this.

The sound of the Hospital Wing doors slamming open shatters the moment of contemplation, prompting Namjoon to crane his neck to try to see past the curtain. Y/n finds herself doing the same. She can hear Pomfrey’s stern reminder for quiet, followed by footsteps -- only one pair, but they’re very hurried, almost a full run. The curtain flies open, and all of the breath in Y/n’s lungs leaves her in an instant.

She’s staring at herself -- a smaller, cuter version of herself. A version of herself that remembers this day with striking clarity. Hearing from Hoseok that Namjoon had felt sick that morning and gone to the Hospital Wing just as dawn had broken, 11-year-old Y/n had raced down to see him, skipping first hour, completely unconcerned with anything that wasn’t the boy lying in bed before her. 17-year-old Y/n remembers the fear that had taken her younger self, her head filled with thoughts of only Kim Namjoon, the smart but troublesome boy she’d met on the train just a few months prior. Y/n remembers the pain that had filled her that day, wanting nothing but to be next to him, and she’s hit with a sudden realization.

Whipping her gaze around to watch Namjoon, she sees that he has yet to say anything to her younger self, simply gazing at her with an unreadable expression on his face. It’s one of immense turmoil, but there’s a glimpse of something else just underneath his pain -- something that looks a lot like hope.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Y/n’s watches the girl with her own face make her way slowly over to Namjoon, setting her bag on the ground before standing beside him. Namjoon remains silent, just watching her -- taking her in with eyes that first year Y/n had never seen before. Taking her in with eyes that she would continue to see over the years but never understand -- eyes that could only start to make sense to 17-year-old Y/n in this moment.

She watches -- the pieces of Kim Namjoon starting to fit together in her mind -- as her younger self becomes uncomfortable under her friend’s gaze and breaks it by reaching out and taking his small hand in her equally tiny one. Y/n watches -- her memories of Kim Namjoon finally forming one coherent vision in her mind -- as young Namjoon stares down at their interlocked hands, her palm sitting perfectly in his, before looking up at her, a smile lingering on the edges of his mouth.

Y/n watches as one of her most prominent memories of Namjoon takes form before her eyes, finally making sense after six years. Staring down into her lap, she tries to make sense of every other memory of him the stands out, but she realizes fairly quickly that there’s no use. Every memory of Namjoon stands out to her. Every single one. Closing her eyes, she lets out a deep sigh, her brain an endless mess of smoke and confusion.

When she opens her eyes, she’s no longer in the Hospital Wing. Everything is still gray, but it’s too dark to tell exactly where she is. She can, however tell that she’s sitting on the edge of something soft -- something that reminds her of her bed. It takes a few moments for her eyes to adjust, but she’s able to see eventually that she’s sitting in a bedroom. However, it isn’t her own.

Skimming her fingers along the blanket around her, it takes no less than ten seconds to find him. Namjoon is sleeping beside her, looking much taller but not much older.

Third year. He grew a foot over summer holiday but still had the face of a kid.

Glancing over at the bed across from her, she confirms that she has the right time when she sees a blond Hoseok -- an experiment they had all regretted participating in -- fast asleep, his mouth hanging open and his limbs all over the place.

Returning her gaze to a 13-year-old Namjoon, Y/n notices with concern that he’s frowning deeply in his sleep, small sighs reaching her ears every few seconds. Leaning in to see him more clearly, she has to hold back a scream -- even knowing full well that he can’t see or hear her -- when his eyes open suddenly. He looks a bit shocked, but more obvious is the expression of sadness on his face. He blinks a few times before sitting up, staring down at the blanket while he thinks. Eventually, he wraps his arms around his knees and hides his face as he curls up. Y/n is overcome with a feeling of immense sadness.

After a few minutes, Namjoon lifts his head, and it pains Y/n to no end to see that he’s been crying. He sniffles once, drying his face with his shirt, before reaching over to his bedside table for his phone. Squinting when the light of his screen tries to blind him, he opens his text thread with 13-year-old Y/n and starts to type a new message. Present Y/n peers over the top of his phone and reads the words upside down, knowing that she probably doesn’t even need to.

NJ : you okay?

Y/N : how did you know i was awake?

NJ : you’re always awake

Y/N : okay well how did you know that im not okay

NJ : i had a bad dream

Y/N : you sound like my grandmother

NJ : got the bones of a grandmother, too

Y/N : you do crackle a lot when you move

NJ : are you going to tell me what’s going on

Y/N : ,,, diana’s sick,, like really sick

Y/N : pomfrey’s trying to treat her

NJ : omw

Y/N : ???

Namjoon throws the blanket off of himself and, scooping up a sweatshirt from on top of his trunk, slides his feet into his slippers and heads out of the dorm as quietly as he can. Y/n follows, knowing exactly where he’s headed. Watching these memories from his point of view, however, is filling in all the gaps in her own, so she can’t help but be intrigued by every moment -- every step Namjoon takes, every time he speeds up a little bit as he covers the distance between himself and the Hospital Wing, every time he slows down as he’s turning corners, still careful of the prefects roaming the corridors. When he finally turns the last corner, Y/n watches as he stops in his tracks, staring down the corridor at a younger Y/n, one who’s been sobbing for hours as she paces in front of the Hospital Wing doors, one who’s already encountered three prefects who have all given her a free pass because of how distraught she is. It’s two in the morning, and Namjoon is staring down the corridor at a Y/n who’s been here since ten and hasn’t said anything to any of them.

Sighing, Namjoon shoves his hands in the pockets of his pajama pants, making his way down to her. She notices him when he’s about halfway there, offering him a weak greeting before resuming her endless pacing. He stops right beside her, watching as his friend passes him once, twice, and then twice more. He finally puts his hand out, latching onto her arm and gripping tightly when she tries to pull away. Wordlessly, he pulls her toward him, bringing her into his arms and securing her in his hold when she finally falls into him, losing all of her strength.

Throwing her arms around Namjoon, she cries into his neck, needing him much more than he could ever know. All he does know is that he’d been woken from his sleep, filled with an impossible sadness that made him want to run to her, wherever she would have been. He would have run to her even if she’d been in the forest, or off the grounds entirely. He’d needed to find her because he feared his chest would cave in from the amount of pain he felt when he didn’t have her next to him. He’d wanted to take all of her sorrow away, but in the process of finding her he realized that he could breathe again once he had her.

Walking them slowly over to the wall just outside of the Hospital Wing, Namjoon pulls away from Y/n just for the time it takes for them to sit down together, and then she’s back in his arms, leaning against him heavily as he whispers words of comfort to her. They stay like that until just before breakfast, when Pomfrey comes out and sees that they’ve fallen asleep, clinging to each other tightly. Unbeknownst to anyone, 17-year-old Y/n is sleeping not too far away, having drifted off while watching them talk throughout the night.

When she wakes, it’s still dark, but she’s sitting in a well-lit corridor. More importantly, she’s sitting across from an even older Namjoon, who’s perched on a windowsill scrolling through his phone even though it’s well past curfew. Rubbing her eyes as she stands, Y/n makes her way over to him, leaning in to see what he’s up to. There on his screen is a picture of the prefect schedule, and he keeps zooming in and out of the section with Y/n’s name on it. She chuckles, shaking her head as she takes a seat next to him and waits for whatever’s to come.

Only a few minutes pass before footsteps can be heard echoing nearby. Namjoon perks up, putting his phone away and looking toward the end of the corridor expectantly -- Y/n can’t help but smile at how cute he is. Following his gaze, she watches as her younger self turns the corner, wand well-lit despite the castle lighting being phenomenal in this area. She’s showing off her freshly polished prefect’s badge and smiling as she does her patrol. Y/n looks at this younger version of herself and has to hold back a laugh.

Oh, to be fifteen and a total dork.

Y/n watches as her younger self looks straight ahead, completely focused on her duties, and she’s fond of this annoying rule-follower she used to be. She remembers clearly how happy she’d been to be named prefect, and she’d wanted to do her best. So she’d polished her badge and kept her notepad ready and gone on her first patrol in a dweeby kind of excitement. Not even an hour in, she’d found Namjoon.

“Joon? What are you doing?” Namjoon smiles, waving her over excitedly. With a cautious look on her face, she approaches her friend, who she is well aware had become a bit of a troublemaker over the years but still finds him adorable and harmless. He pulls his bag off his shoulder and starts to open it, talking as he does.

“Well, I didn’t know if patrol would be boring or lame, so I brought you a book just in case!” An enormous smile fills her face, and she laughs softly as he pulls out a stack of reading materials. “Okay, actually I brought a lot because I didn’t know what you’d like… hopefully you like books on various niche topics and magical research.” He lifts his gaze, beaming up at her as he holds out the stack of books, waiting for her to choose. Y/n puts her wand away, stepping up him and glancing through the titles. She pulls one out that has magical creatures on the cover and nods decisively as she flips through it.

“This one looks cool.” She stops leafing through the pages to watch Namjoon as he puts the rest back and begins to ramble.

“Oh, that’s a great choice! They have this awesome chapter on veelas and the genetic traits that get passed down to their children, which is super cool when you think about half-veelas or quarter-veelas or even one-eighth-veelas, which are kinda rare, but-” He cuts himself off, realizing that he’s gone on for far too long and taking a sheepish glance at Y/n. She’s smiling at him so sweetly he swears his heartbeat actually stutters for a moment, but he clears his throat and points at the book in her hand. “I should stop talking… don’t want to spoil it for you.” Y/n tucks the book under her arm, aiming her smile down at her feet as she responds.

“Thanks, Joon, I’ll make sure to tell you what I think of it when I’m done… by the way, you do realize you’re out after curfew, right?” Namjoon hums awkwardly, lifting his bag onto his shoulder as he stands.

“I’m only out if you say I am.”

“What does that even mean?” Namjoon laughs at her confusion, reaching out and locating a piece of hair that’s fallen into her face. He runs it back until it’s tucked safely behind her ear, at that point letting his arm fall to his side and taking a couple steps back.

“You suddenly have no recollection of seeing me tonight… that book is yours now. Have a good first patrol, Y/n. I’m proud of you.” Not giving her enough time to respond, Namjoon turns on his heel and disappears down another corridor, one leading to Ravenclaw Tower. Y/n just stands there staring after him, only remembering the book in her arms when it just about falls to the ground.

The older Y/n watches her younger self look back through the book for a bit before lifting her gaze to the spot where Namjoon disappeared, a small smile gracing her features and she starts to wander down her route for the night, almost no attention paid to anything outside of her new book. Y/n knows well that she’d return to her room that night and place it on her bedside table, picking it up every night to read just a bit more, as it was an admittedly difficult book deserving only of Ravenclaw eyes. She would eventually get through it, and then she’d read it again to really feel like she got it all. It still sits on her bedside table, always unpacked at the beginning of the year and put in its own spot next to her.

Y/n waits as the scene fades around her, and the space fills up with new setting -- soon she’s surrounded by the castle staircases.

She knows this scene well -- it’s the day that she’d fallen down the stairs from Tae and Jimin’s prank. She can tell by the crowd of people that’s gathering. 6th year Y/n hasn’t made it there yet, still in a meeting with Dumbledore about prefect matters that was running a little late at the moment.

This was supposed to be the ultimate prank of the year -- and it certainly was memorable, but not entirely for that reason. Jimin had just had his Clock Day not even a week prior, and he and Tae were celebrating their newfound love the only way they knew how. The entire school knew about it, and the professors had long given up trying to stop the two Slytherin troublemakers. Someone steps up beside 7th year Y/n, busy scrolling through their phone. She looks up and is met with the sight of 6th year Namjoon, smiling down at his screen as he bombards Y/n with annoying texts, complaining that she was late. Yoongi’s standing with Jin, Jungkook, and Hoseok not even five feet away, and he calls out to Namjoon excitedly when he spots the Ravenclaw.

“Joon! Over here, over here! We got some great spots to watch the show!” Jungkook bites his lip and looks away, hiding his extremely fond smile. Jin and Hoseok make amused eye contact, and Y/n can see now by Jin’s lingering gaze and their small grins that they’d been dating for a while and that the rest of them were all just blind to their very obvious love.

Yoongi makes his way over to the tall boy beside her, striking up a conversation about his new plant and some fun caretaking methods he’d found online the other day. Namjoon nods along, still slightly distracted as he glances around the massive crowd for his favorite person. He has his back just turned enough to not be able to see that 6th year Y/n has emerged not too far away and is searching for her friends. Y/n watches her younger self make her way along the side of the banister in their general direction, and she’s very aware of what’s to come in the next few moments.

Jimin and Tae had bewitched the staircases to move on their command, shifting them out of their normal rotation pattern in order to lock them firmly into the sides of the walls they’re attached to, effectively creating a cavern more than 10 stories high, giving them room to set off the insane amount of fireworks they’d made all the way from the Slytherin dungeons. The fireworks were supposed to go to the very top of the castle, exploding just before they crashed into the ceiling. They were never set off.

As Y/n was looking for her friend group, knowing they’d be somewhere close to the stair banisters, but having no idea what the plan was, she’d stepped out onto one of the staircases to get a better angle to find her friends. Since her meeting had run late, she’d missed the very aggressive announcement from Tae that no one should step onto the stairs for at least ten minutes before the show started, and the chaotic soulmates were down in the dungeons, just about to execute their plan. They never saw her.

Y/n can’t bring herself to watch what she already has painfully etched into her memory, choosing instead to watch Namjoon converse with Yoongi in the moments before her tragic staircase accident. She’s extremely lucky she’d been watching him.

She knows that the staircases have started moving when she hears people cheering, but she actually knows almost half a second before that. A painful, ice cold chill runs down the length of her spine -- it’s like nothing she’s ever felt before, and she’s felt the fear of falling 20 feet off of a staircase.

She realizes that the feeling is coming from Namjoon -- he’s the one feeling that ice cold pain coursing through his veins. It’s as if the world stops -- one second, he’s listening to Yoongi explain how to pick the right terrarium, and the next, he can’t hear anything at all. Y/n also can’t hear a thing -- everything’s muffled, and all she can hear is a heartbeat, thumping so loudly, so quickly that it could only belong to the girl who’s currently tumbling down a set of stairs into a free fall.

Namjoon turns, and Y/n can see that he knows exactly where her younger self is without having ever seen her. With a strength that she didn’t even know he possessed, he shoves past every person between him and the banister, literally knocking some poor Hufflepuff boy to the ground as he rushes to the stairs.

Throwing himself against the side of the wall when he gets there, Namjoon finds Y/n’s eyes almost instantly -- she’s staring up at him as she falls, still in shock at what’s happening. Y/n won’t remember until this very moment, when she’s standing in her own memory, but she’d seen Namjoon take action as she was falling. He hadn’t been quite fast enough -- she’d still hit the second set of stairs and pass out right there -- but he had managed to slow her down before she’d landed.

Namjoon pulls his wand out of his pocket so fast that the older Y/n hadn’t even seen him do it. Pointing it straight down at her, he calls after her, a silent spell manifesting from nothing but the force of his own will -- the force of his complete and total terror that something would happen to her. It’s the first time he’d ever been able to successfully cast a silent spell, having complained for weeks that he wasn’t able to get it no matter how much he practiced. Y/n feels it all in that moment, all of the soul-shattering fear Namjoon was carrying, and she has to lean heavily on the wall to steady herself, wondering how he’d managed to push past that and cast the spell successfully.

The spell hits Y/n squarely in the chest, instantly slowing her fall. It isn’t enough to prevent her arm from breaking, and it isn’t enough to stop her from complaining for the next full week about a backache, but it is enough to soften the landing and keep her safe from something much worse. They’d been lucky, really -- the stairs she’d landed on just happened to be passing beneath her on its way to its formation. If another second had gone by, she’d still be falling into the dungeons.

Y/n watches everything from above, and she can hear everyone jumping into action. She can hear everyone’s cheers turn into gasps of terror, and she can hear her friends all calling for her, all rushing to the nearest staircase to get down to her. She can even see down into the dungeons, where Tae is holding a firework and a flame, where Jimin is calling out to him frantically to stop. But most clearly, she can see that Namjoon is already at her side, having scaled over the top of the wall and essentially taken his chances at getting down to her as quickly as possible without falling. He’s shaking her furiously, grabbing her face and yelling for someone to alert Pomfrey when she doesn’t respond, already out cold. Jin is yelling down at Jimin and Tae, instructing them to move the staircases carefully so Namjoon can get her to the Hospital Wing.

Namjoon holds tightly onto the side of staircase as Tae brings it around to the corridor leading straight to the Hospital Wing, gripping Y/n tightly in his other arm as they go. He doesn’t even wait for the stairs to stop moving -- as soon as they’re close enough, he’s scooping her up in his arms and running full speed into the passageway, disappearing from view completely.

Y/n watches the rest of the room devolve into chaos -- Jimin and Tae fly up from the depths of the dungeon on Jimin’s broomstick, gesturing wildly at their friends as they all barrel down the nearest staircase together in an attempt to follow after Namjoon. Jin is pulling Hoseok along by his hand as they race to the front of the group, Jin trying to get Hoseok to his best friend as fast as possible. Yoongi is clinging to Jungkook’s side, eyes wet, and she can see him whispering mantras of positivity to himself as they go. She can see he doesn’t believe them even as he says them, and Jungkook is the one to take over and reinforce the words as they run together. Jimin is guiding himself and Tae up the cavern and back around as Tae shouts for the crowd to disperse, threatening to set the fireworks off in a dangerous way if they don’t all get lost. He looks very much like the Slytherin he is but never shows to the world.

Everyone leaves just as Dumbledore is running into the space, commanding the attention of the two Slytherins. Jimin looks back at Tae and, knowing full well how much trouble they’d be in if they got caught, they head straight for the headmaster. Landing beside him, they don’t even give him a chance to start reprimanding them -- they both start yelling at the same time, pointing desperately in the direction of the Hospital Wing and begging him to come with them to see if he can do anything. The old wizard is so thrown by the display that all he can do is follow after them as they run to join their friends.

Y/n watches everything from the top of the stairs. She sees everything -- all of the chaos, all of the fear -- and she thinks about the fact that she’d had absolutely no idea any of this had happened. She’d passed out and woken up a day later, in a world of pain but thankfully not seriously hurt. She’d watched her friends come and go every day, and she’d noted that Namjoon only ever left her side to eat and shower when he was sure she was sleeping. It was the only thing she knew about the entire accident, and it wasn’t even close to what actually had happened. She doesn’t even notice when the scene changes, too caught up in her own thoughts to register the smoke filling her vision and flowing into something new.

The smoke clears, leaving her shrouded in trees and darkness. She’s standing at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, the moon full and bright above her. She can’t see Namjoon anywhere, so she starts heading in the direction of the castle, its silhouette visible in the distance. She’s about halfway there when she hears it.

“Namjoon likes me, Namjoon likes me!”

“How did they make you Head Girl? You’re a child!” Unable to mask her smile, Y/n hurries out past the treeline and in the direction of the voices, this memory much more recent. Just there past a grove of trees sits a cluster of rocks, outlining the edge of the lake well. Namjoon is heading over to them now, hopping carefully until he gets to a spot that he likes. Y/n can barely make out her younger self, herself from not even a few months ago, crouched by the lake, running her fingers through the water lightly. Y/n heads toward Namjoon just as her other self is yelling back to him.

“This water’s cold as fuck!” Y/n remembers the feeling that comes next, but it’s a different experience in Namjoon’s perspective. That feeling of adoration she’d felt all those weeks ago down by the lake -- the feeling that had left her wondering what her soulmate was up to at the time -- makes sense now. It makes complete sense to her, just as everything about Namjoon is finally starting to make sense. Every glance, every smile. He’d always known. He’d just been waiting for her to notice him -- he’d been waiting for her to love him.

A quiet yelp followed by a bit of rustling catches Y/n’s attention, and she’s not surprised to find Namjoon has already caught her from wiping out on the rocks and is holding her gently, just a few feet away. Feeling strangely intrusive, Y/n averts her eyes, settling down on the rocks and staring out at the lake while her younger self shares her first intimate moment with Namjoon.

A few moments later, the sound of mumbling, followed soon by paper being slapped on skin, alerts Y/n of her own exit from an awkward moment. Turning back to the scene, she catches herself running away in the distance -- truly a humorous sight indeed -- but her attention is on Namjoon. He’s staring down at the detention slip that had been stuck to his face, chuckling slightly to himself. Y/n’s heart warms at the fondness in his expression, thankful that he hadn’t been discouraged by her behavior.

“This girl, I swear…” He starts to head back into the castle, and Y/n can tell she’s meant to follow. They make their way slowly through the castle, Y/n watching as Namjoon gets lost in his thoughts. They make it all the way up to Ravenclaw Tower, where Namjoon stops suddenly just before the entrance to his common room. He’s still lost in his thoughts, but there’s a smile spreading slowly across his face. It finally reaches his eyes, and suddenly he’s spinning around in the corridor, punching the air and literally bouncing in place as quietly as he can.

“She almost kissed me!” Running up to the door to his common room, he completely ignores the riddle that the eagle knocker asks him.

“Did you hear what I said? She almost kissed me! Can you believe it?” The eagle knocker remains silent while Namjoon parades around in front of the door, eventually opening its mouth.

“How lovely. Please answer the question.” Halting his excited bouncing to glare at the knocker, Namjoon answers the riddle with an impatient wave of his hand. The door slides open, allowing Namjoon to rush into the common room and up the stairs to his room, Y/n following behind in a shocked daze at Namjoon’s display. Throwing the door open and barely managing to get his shoes off, Namjoon hops on top of his bed, chanting happily.

“Hobi, wake up, wake up! She almost kissed me tonight -- wake up, bitch! I’m having a moment here!” Y/n watches from the door as Hoseok rolls over in his bed and reaches for something she can’t see. Their third roommate, a kind but rather quiet boy named Roger, starts to whine loudly, begging Namjoon to quiet down. She feels bad for him -- he’s been put through a lot with them as roommates -- but she forgets about him completely when she sees Hoseok’s shoe fly across the room with shocking speed and accuracy. It hits Namjoon in the face, sending him tumbling to the ground instantly.

“Shut it, you overgrown kindergartner! If I sleep through first hour tomorrow, I’m ripping every single one of your hairs out of your head with my bare hands!” Despite the pout that forms on Namjoon’s face as he sits on the ground holding Hoseok’s shoe, Y/n can’t help but laugh at the interaction, very typical of her two Ravenclaw boys. He sits there for a few more seconds, enough time for Y/n to cross the room and take a seat on the trunk at the foot of his bed. Watching him carefully, she’s pleased to see that his frown soon becomes a smile once again as he recalls the events of that night.

Climbing onto his bed, he reaches into his pocket for his phone, sending Y/n what she remembers to be a very sweet goodnight text. Once that’s done, he tosses the phone onto his bedside table before taking it upon himself to flop back onto his mattress dramatically, smiling dreamily up at the ceiling. The last thing Y/n sees before the smoke pulls her away is Namjoon placing a hand on his chest and scrunching up the material of his shirt -- the material that lies just above his heart -- and closing his eyes, the smile lingering on his lips.

The moment the smoke places her in her next memory, Y/n realizes it isn’t a memory at all. She’s standing in a massive group of people -- her entire class. They all have smiles on their faces, and they’re all hugging one another and taking photos. But this isn’t what she notices - it’s their outfits. All the same, all identical. The cap and gown.

Graduation? But this is months away…

Her own laughter reaches her ears, and it doesn’t take much longer to find herself. She -- her older self? -- is standing with the rest of their friends, laughing as Diana tries to chew on Jungkook’s dress pants. Only five of them are wearing gowns, the Slytherins and Jungkook still stuck at Hogwarts for another year. Hoseok is taking photos of Jin, who looks like he’s suffering not only from the heat, but also from his boyfriend’s scrutiny.

“Come on, Jin! Just one smile for the camera, and I will let this go -- my mom wants a photo!”

“Why does it have to be of just me? She’s your mom!”

“Because she says you’re the most handsome person she’s ever seen, and I completely agree.” Jin waves Hoseok off, unwilling to take the photo. That is, until he makes eye contact with Yoongi, who’s standing just a little ways away. At the sight of his roommate pulling a mini magical cactus from within his robe and brandishing it at Jin menacingly, Jin turns to Hoseok with a wide smile.

“I love photos, let’s take ten!” Confused but pleasantly surprised, Hoseok lets Jin lead him off toward the lake for their photoshoot. Y/n starts to laugh uncontrollably as she watches Yoongi tuck the cactus back into his robes innocently, and it unnerves her to see that her older self has also witnessed the exchange and is laughing alongside her.

Turning back to the larger friend group, almost desperate to avoid another coincidence with herself, she finds Namjoon bent at Jungkook’s feet, trying to keep his cap on his head as he wrestles Diana from Jungkook’s leg. Jungkook is crying out in pain at the claws that have been buried in his ankle -- no one sees that Jimin and Tae are enjoying the show immensely, even going so far as to start recording the entire thing.

When he finally manages to remove the cat from the poor Gryffindor’s limb, Namjoon stands and turns to Y/n, narrowly avoiding a claw to his face in the process.

“Please tell your demon cat that scratching people’s ankles off is rude as fuck.” Y/n laughs, reaching for Diana and cooing at her once she’s safely in Y/n’s arms.

“It’s not her fault Jungkook is such a thicc boy and attracts the attention of anything that wants a bite -- isn’t that right, Diana?” Diana curls up and purrs in response, sending everyone into a fit of laughter and comments about Jungkook’s thiccness as the Gryffindor scowls at the cat. The younger Y/n almost joins their laughter, but something catches her eye before she has time to look away from her older self.

Just there on her left hand -- the same hand that is cradling Diana -- sits a ring, one she’d never seen before. Ignoring the discomfort of being so close to a version of herself that didn’t exist yet, she approaches the girl in front of her, taking the ring in fully. A small diamond is nested in the band of it, shining brightly despite its size. She can’t stop herself from looking up at Namjoon, who stands beside her older self. He’s staring down at her, the smile on his face one of humor from the current situation, but also one of love and adoration, known only to them.

Y/n watches the moment and knows she’s the only one who can see it, despite being the only one who isn’t physically there. She can see how much Namjoon loves her and how happy he is to be able to show it. As the scene fades, she can’t help but wonder if what she’s seeing is really the future -- the image of a Namjoon who hasn’t acknowledged her in weeks comes back to her, only serving to bring pain into her heart. She doesn’t bother to try to see where the smoke is taking her.

She’s staring down at a wooden floor, in a house she doesn’t recognize. Lifting her gaze and glancing around, however, she finds that it’s quite a nice home. The smoke had left her standing in the middle of the kitchen, and she can’t help but run her fingers along the counter top as she makes her way through the room. It’s spotless, but it looks lived in.

Comfortable. Beautiful.

Passing under an archway that opens into the main room, she can see stairs leading up to the second floor, the front door just past them. Taking in everything as she moves through the room -- the sofa draped in various warm blankets, the tattered book sitting open on the coffee table, the array of house plants sitting on the windowsill -- she can’t help but feel like this home is perfect for her. Just as she makes it to the stairs and is putting a foot on the first step, the sound of rustling in a room off to the right calls her attention.

Approaching the room, she peeks her head around the doorway and finds herself looking into an office, lit with the warmth of a fireplace crackling softly in the corner. She doesn’t even see the person sitting at the desk until they lift their head, clearly awakening from an unexpected nap.

Namjoon stretches in his seat, arms reaching high above his head as he lets out a tired groan. He looks older, maybe by 4 or 5 years. There’s a stack of files next to where he’d been napping on the desk, and there’s a smear of ink across his right cheek from his quill. Looking around his immediate area, he swears softly under his breath.

“Where did I put them?” He’s just about to stick his head under the desk to search for his missing item when a quiet meow rings through the room. Y/n looks down just in time to see a very familiar cat entering the room, a pair of round specs dangling from her mouth. She hops up onto the desk once she reaches it, taking a seat on top of whatever Namjoon had been working on before dropping his glasses into his outstretched hand. With a fond smile, he places the glasses on his face before scratching the back of the cat’s ear.

“Thanks, Diana. I knew you’d like me one day.” Y/n watches the exchange, filled with a mixture of disbelief and joy. Never once in the seven years she’d known Namjoon had Diana expressed anything other than complete disdain for the Ravenclaw, and yet here it seems they’ve been friends for ages.

The front door opens behind her, followed by the soft call of a voice that sounds much like hers but more mature.

“I’m home! Joon?” She watches Namjoon smile as he peers through her into the other room.

“In here!” An older Y/n -- 4 or 5 years older -- steps up beside her younger, shocked self in the doorway. She’s wearing business attire, and she’s carrying a bag of takeaway, which she holds up for Namjoon to see. She looks poised, impressive -- but she still looks like herself. She doesn’t look like a stuck-up adult. She just looks… older.

She looks pretty freaking cool.

“I saw you still had a lot of assignments to grade when I was leaving this morning, so I got your favorite.” Namjoon cheers, moving to stand from his seat but taking the time to point cutely at Diana, still seated peacefully on his work.

“Diana brought me my glasses! I think she finally likes me.” He looks very proud of this fact, even reaching out to pet her one last time. She swipes at his hand in anger, scratching his palm slightly. They glare at each other for a moment before Namjoon gets up, shaking his head. “One day she’ll love me.”

“Namjoon, we’ve been married for five years and she only just today did one nice thing for you. You’ve still got a way to go with her.” Rolling his eyes, he approaches Y/n and leans forward, planting a kiss on her lips. Younger Y/n has to look away, slightly shaken by the unexpected display. Only when he’s pulled away does she feel comfortable enough to look again, attributing the warmth in her face the fireplace not too far away.

“How was work?” Y/n sighs, reaching out with her free hand to wipe at the ink on his face, giving away that he’d been napping just before she arrived.

“It was fine. The Minister’s been on us to meet fiscal year deadlines as if we’re not drowning in his debt. I’m just happy to be home.” The tired look in her eyes fades once she starts smiling up at Namjoon, who’s taken her free hand in his own and started leaning against the door frame while he was listening to her. It puts him in the perfect position to bring his lips to the top of her head in a comforting kiss, which only serves to widen her smile.

“Well, Mrs. Kim, you are doing a fine job over there at the Ministry. Meanwhile, I was so confused about the fact that one of my students doesn’t know the difference between transformation and switching that I took a stress nap instead of writing feedback for him.” He laughs lightly when Y/n puts her index finger against his forehead and pushes him away from her. Diana following closely behind, she heads into the kitchen, calling back to him.

“Not everyone is good at transfiguration, Joon -- remember how I was? I would have failed my N.E.W.T without you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if we’d done more studying instead of messing around that night you would have gotten a better score.” Younger Y/n blushes deeply, barely managing to follow behind Namjoon as he heads into the kitchen as well.

“I passed, didn’t I? And if I remember correctly, I’m the one that actually wanted to study -- you just got bored because you’re a know-it-all.” He barks out a laugh.

“Guilty as charged, but can you blame me? I waited seven years for you to love me, I was obsessed with you once we started dating… I still kind of am obsessed with you.” Younger Y/n watches Namjoon corner her older self between two counter tops, smiling cheekily down at her and laughing when she pushes lightly against his chest. Taking her in his arms, he suddenly becomes serious, his smile dropping.

“Y/n?” Both of the women in question keep their eyes on Namjoon, entranced by him, just as it had always been -- entranced by his presence from the moment he’d come into her life.

“Thank you for loving me.”

Y/n can feel herself reaching out to him, disregarding the futility in it, but she doesn’t get the chance to call out to him. The smoke has started to fill her vision -- but it doesn’t transform the room smoothly. This time, something takes hold of the back of her belt, latching onto her and yanking her upwards, out of the smoke entirely. Muffling her scream with her hand, she watches the cloud of smoke shrink below her until it becomes the spec of grey she’d seen when this all started. She screws her eyes shut, dizzy from the climb -- confused beyond belief but finding her resolve in the truth.

When Y/n opens her eyes, she’s staring at the lake, and it’s gotten much darker. She’s also much farther away from the lake than she remembers being when she first fainted -- she can see more of the shoreline, and she’s fairly certain she’s under a tree. Trying to scan her surroundings, she tilts her head up before coming to a stop, registering that there’s something very soft underneath her cheek.

“You’re awake.” The voice, although familiar and comforting, is a shock all the same, so she jumps in surprise, turning her head to locate it. She finds herself staring up into Namjoon’s eyes, and she realizes belatedly that the soft thing under her is his leg. Lifting herself off of him with her elbow, she takes the time to glance around -- there’s no need to examine the grounds, of course. She just isn’t prepared to face Namjoon.

“How did you know where I was?” She says this while glancing around herself still, adjusting her positioning until she’s leaning back against the tree. Namjoon shifts next to her, bringing his knees up to his chest and resting his chin while he stares out at the lake.

“I could feel that it was starting… and I just knew where to find you.” Y/n nods, deciding to just be satisfied with his response instead of questioning the mechanics of it. They sit in silence for a few minutes, simply staring out at the lake together as the sun begins to set. She can feel that Namjoon’s waiting for her to say something, so, gathering her courage, she turns to him, holding her tongue until he’s met her eyes, which he does after a brief pause.

“You knew this entire time?” Namjoon looks away quickly, unable to face her. He nods once, and she takes this as her signal to continue, her frustrations with him over the past few weeks boiling to the surface. “Then why have you been avoiding me? What’s been going on with you?” Groaning deeply, he leans back against the tree, his limbs dropping into a sort of sprawled position beside her. His eyes are shut, brow furrowed. He looks conflicted.

“I was an idiot --”

“That’s a massive understatement.” His eyes find hers, and he turns fully to face her, his expression earnest and a bit desperate.

“I freaked out, Y/n. When Hobi said it wasn’t guaranteed that we’d end up together, my entire world fell apart. I had always assumed we’d be together and that I just had to wait for you to find out it was me -- I thought it was enough that I loved you. But then he started talking about free will and people without soulmates and losing the emotional connection and -- I lost it, okay? I lost it. Everything I’d believed about us for the last seven years was ripped apart… but I was an asshole.”

“Yeah. You were.” His eyes drift down until he’s staring at the ground, clearly humbled and apologetic. “But… I understand --” When he whips his head up to look at her, his eyes appear to have become hopeful. “I mean, what you did was fucked up, the boys are really upset--” His head dips again, his frown deepening. “But I understand why you freaked out. I just… wish you had handled it better.” They sit in silence together, Y/n staring down at the top of Namjoon’s head while he waits beside her, looking not unlike a scolded child.

“Did you think I would be mad once I found out you’d known all this time about us?” He glances up at her briefly before returning his gaze to lap, where he finds great interest in picking at his fingernails. Slowly, and only after a small sigh, he nods, still refusing to meet her eyes.

“Even after everything we’ve been through -- all of the flirting and the deep talks and late nights together?” Another nod. “Do you realize how stupid that is?” He stops fidgeting, choosing instead to examine the ground extensively while he thinks. Finally, he nods, pulling his head up to look into her eyes before nodding again, gaze solemn.

“I know. I’m really sorry. You have no idea how painful it was to know I’d hurt you… I just thought that if you really were going to choose someone else -- or at the very least if you were going to be disappointed in me being your soulmate -- I… just thought I should distance myself beforehand… But I hated every second of it, and I wish I could take it all back... I’m sorry.” He looks like he’s going to continue, but Y/n stops him. Reaching out, she takes one of his hands in hers, intertwining their fingers while nodding.

“Okay. I forgive you -- it’s going to be hard for me to trust you fully again, but I forgive you.” She squeezes his hand, and for the first time since waking up, she smiles at him. Taking her in, Namjoon can’t help but feel overwhelmed with affection, and he knows she can feel it when she starts to snicker at him. Nudging her playfully, he turns back to the lake, sitting beside her as they lean against the tree. Their hands lie clasped in her lap, a slight zap of electricity running through their palms every few seconds. The feeling is new but warm, one of completeness.

“So… what was your Clock Day like?” She doesn’t bother turning to look at him when she asks, knowing he’ll just keep staring out at the water while he ponders.

“It was… a lot to handle as a first year.” She nods, remembering Hobi’s words once again. “There weren’t very many memories, actually. It was mostly visions of the future. We hadn’t known each other that long -- how could I have anything substantial to remember yet? Actually… do you remember coming to visit me in the Hospital Wing?”

“Yeah, of course. That was my first memory.” He hums, thinking about that day a little longer.

“I knew you would be coming. It was the first vision that the smoke showed me.” She smiles fondly at that term -- “the smoke” -- because she knew there was no other way to talk about it. The inner workings of fate and magic were too advanced for any one person to understand and talk about eloquently. “It showed me that you were on your way -- when you showed up, I thought ‘Ah, so my future really has been decided’. But then… things kept changing.” Y/n looks up at him, taking in the expression on his face. He looks lost, confused about the truth -- but there’s something resigned about it, as if he’d accepted that the world was much different than he thought.

“What changed?” He looks down at her before dropping his eyes to their intertwined hands.

“The way I’d seen my future wasn’t the way it always turned out. Eventually I figured out at that the visions the smoke shows you aren’t set in stone -- they’re more potentialities than fact. There was something about the way our reality developed that changed things along the way -- sometimes they were just small details, but sometimes entire events were different… like your accident.” With a furrowed brow and concerned interest, Y/n leans in, urging Namjoon silently to continue. He does so only after a sigh.

“You weren’t supposed to become a prefect. In my visions, we were just normal kids who got into equal amounts of trouble and made it through school without anything remarkable happening. But you were always a high achiever, so when you were made prefect, I was surprised, but happy for you all the same… except… if you hadn’t become a prefect, you wouldn’t have been late to the fireworks show. We would have gone together, and you would have heard the announcement about the stairs because you wouldn’t have been in a meeting that had run late. I wasn’t prepared for you to fall because that wasn’t the reality I had seen… I had no idea that day was going to happen.”

They sit in silence, staring out at the lake together as the words settle in the air above them. It weighs down on them -- the complications of fate and reality, the power of free will in a world ruled by destiny. Things never turn out quite like they’re supposed to, and Y/n can only guess how unimaginably terrifying that would be for someone who’d relied on fate for so long.

“That’s why you were scared I wouldn’t want to be with you -- you were already nervous that things had turned out differently up to this point, so hearing that not even our future is guaranteed tipped you over the edge.” She can see him nodding out of the corner of her eye, and she finally feels like she understands. “Well, even if you have acted like an idiot for the last few weeks, I still want to be with you. I think I always have.” Namjoon squeezes her hand tightly, a breath of relief leaving him -- one that, frankly, she had no idea he’d been holding.

“Well that’s good because I already picked out the necklace I was going to give you at graduation, and it would just be plain awkward to return it.” She turns to him in confusion.

“Necklace? In my vision it was an engagement ring… to be honest, I’m not ready to get married yet.” Namjoon looks at her, eyes shining with mirth.

“That’s also good to hear… I don’t have the money to buy you a ring yet.” She pushes him away, laughter ringing through the air. The word “yet” doesn’t go unnoticed, however, and she tries to hide her face from him as redness creeps up her cheeks. If he catches her blush, he doesn’t say anything about it, instead choosing to move onto a different subject.

“Did you… have a vision about us a few years from now? Living together in a really nice house? I think I was taking a nap?” Y/n smiles and closes her eyes, finding herself leaning against Namjoon as she reminisces on the vision.

“Yeah, you were grading Transfiguration homework, and I was getting home from work… I worked for the Ministry.” He hums, wrapping an arm around her as he reflects on her words.

“In mine you worked at St. Mungo’s -- you were a healer.” There’s a pause, and then he chuckles under his breath. “I think I like you as a healer better. ‘Healer Y/n’ has a sexy ring to it.” With a scoff that sounds a lot more like a laugh than she’d care to admit, Y/n is pushing herself off of him and rising to her feet, leaving him behind as she heads down to the lake. Namjoon’s hand around her wrist a few moments later, pulling her back into his chest, has her laughing openly. Her hands find his waist, where she anchors herself and clings to him, reveling in the fact that she can do this kind of thing now.

They stand there for a while, watching the sun set over the horizon, thinking about their lives up until that point. When the last of the light disappears below the water, Y/n takes a deep breath and lifts her head from Namjoon’s chest to look up at him. Feeling that she’s moved, he glances down at her, realizing only when their noses touch just how close they are.

In a rush of courage that can only be the mark of a Gryffindor, Y/n pushes up on her tippy toes, pressing her lips to his as gently as possible. She isn’t ready for the way the world seems to stop all around her -- she isn’t ready for the way her heart stops, a flame finding its spark within the cavern of her chest. It spreads like wildfire to the rest of her body, getting stronger the longer she kisses him. It burns through her and attracts her to him like an addiction all the same. The love she feels for him in that moment -- coupled with the force of Namjoon reciprocating the emotions, completely in time with her -- is enough to set her skin alight, tearing through every nerve in her body.

Only when it’s too much -- when she feels like she’s going to explode with this burning energy -- does she pull away, breathing embarrassingly hard. She can’t even tell that he’s having the same difficulties as her, having also just experienced the pure collision of forces that had knocked the wind out of her. He barely has time to register that she’s leaning her head against his chest and is whispering something to him in her surge of emotion. What he hears has him lifting her face with his hands as he yearns for another kiss, seven years overdue.

“Thank you, Namjoon… Thank you for waiting for me.”

#bts texts #bts au #bts smau #bts social media au #bts soulmate au #bts hogwarts au #kim namjoon #namjoon x reader #namjoon texts #namjoon au

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pop-punklouis · 3 years

Note

hey hope. this is probably oversharing and definitely overstepping, but i really just need to rant. this is gonna sound weird but i just started freshman year, so i'm probably one of your younger followers. but honestly i'm so stressed and anxious. i have friends and most of my teachers are good, but i'm honestly not used to the workload. everyone else seems so carefree, but honestly, i've always cared too much about grades and stuff like that. i sort of coasted through middle school, and now i'm really worried that i've reached my peak and nothing will ever come easy to me again. it all sort of hit me tonight and there's just this giant ball of dread in the pit of my stomach. i know school will get easier, but by the time i get used to it, i'll have to deal with college, and getting a job, and living on my own. really, i have no fucking clue what i'm doing, and i'm just quietly marinating in that feeling. so yea. hope you're having a good night.

oh no, hi babe!!

you’re most definitely not overstepping at all. you guys can always come to me and talk about whatever. never feel like you cant! and listen *cracks back* *takes a drag from a cigarette* as an elder 24 year old, i know high school very well. high school was….. not the best experience if i’m being perfectly honest lmao. yet, that wasn’t so much on school as it was those around me and the environment. i loved learning, actually, even though the workload was a bit heavier.

there’s always going to be these nerves when you start a new chunk of academia. middle school…. high school…. college… because it’s all so unknown and you don’t know exactly what to expect!! fun fact: i still get that way every time i start a new semester of schooling— i freak myself out about the syllabus and work load but almost always i adapt to it quite quickly and that anxiety dissolves. im saying that only to let you know that you’re not alone in feeling this dread and fear. many, many people do. but, this pressure doesn’t have to cripple you. it is different than middle school, you’re right, but i found that the way you study and prioritize that study, ultimately, defines how stressed the workload actually is on you. i had a great AP BIO teacher freshman year of high school that taught me everything i know about study strategies and organizing the time to get into coursework without feeling overwhelmed. he used to be a professor, so his way of teaching reflected that. so! i’m going to pass those tips onto you x

1) make sure to organize your workload based on class and what deadlines are due the soonest (i recommend getting a tiny planner just for course work) this allows you to see a physical embodiment of your schedule and what needs to be done without just scrambling in your brain. 2) have the recorder on your phone ready anytime your teacher is lecturing in class (this has been my absolute lifesaver), so you can go back and listen to it whenever you want and also write notes from that recording without the pressure of the clock. 3) any extended assignments such as readings or projects or essays etc. don’t have to be done all in one sitting. prioritize blocks of the reading or parts of the project/essay for certain days and only get that done on those specific days. this causes you to feel less overwhelmed about workload as you’re chipping away at it little by little instead of facing it head on. 4) if it’s written on the board or repeated twice— it’s important and will probably come up again later on a test or discussion etc. 5) read out loud as sometimes it’s better attained if you can hear the information that you’re reading. 6) flash cards!!! are your best friend!!! use them!! 7) color code certain sections of notes or information you’re studying as i’ve always found that color helps me retain what i’m studying when it comes to regurgitating it later. 8) if you find that you don’t understand parts of the coursework, find examples that relate to your experiences rather than the textbook. 9) always ask questions or even go to tutoring if you don’t feel comfortable enough with something that was taught in class— i never needed tutoring before high school and i had too much pride to go when i needed it so i flunked a few tests before i realized that my pride is dumb and it helped tremendously. and 10) most importantly, give yourself room to breath!

i know when we spiral down an anxiety rabbit hole, our mind just lays intrusive thought over intrusive thought until we’re lying in a puddle of defeat and thinking that our life is going nowhere lmao. but, you’re so young, bb. you’re just starting high school. these thoughts about college and jobs and living on your own do not have any right to cause you this much fear and existential dread right now. it’s still a ways away, and isn’t affecting you presently. i’ve learned that giving yourself grace and focusing on your present more than your past or future keeps you from having a meltdown. you can only control your present, and it’s vital that you take it one step at a time. you don’t have to try and climb all the stairs at once. face each struggle or worry as they come not as they materialize in your mind. life is all about these stepping stones that culminate into something larger, so don’t feel like you have to take on the world every day. sometimes, you can just take on a monday and let tuesday wait.

sorry for this being so long!! i hope this at least encouraged you a bit. you’re going to kill freshman year. i just know it ✨

#grey

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underoossss · 4 years

Text

Dancing Under the Rain - H.O

PROLOGUE

pairing: detective!Harrison x female reader

warnings: might be angsty at times, mentions of death, murder investigations

AN: this story wouldn't let me sleep until I started writing down all my ideas (although in no specific order at first). There will be a time skips sometimes, but I’ll label them so its not confusing. I hope you guys like it, I’m always very self conscious about everything I write (even schoolwork) so I feel like im sharing a bit of myself with you here. Let me know if you enjoyed it. Thank you to Marcia who made this moldboard for me a while ago!💖

---

Over the years you have learned the pros and cons of living in a small town.

The pros:

You can escape from your previous life, from anything that hurt you and start over. No one knows who you are or the past that seems to sometimes follow you like a shadow sometimes. It’s a fresh start and 4 years ago, that was exactly what you needed.

That’s how you ended up in Dewitt, three hours away from Cambridge where everywhere you went people look at you with pity in their eyes. It’s as if losing your brother hadn’t been enough, no, people had to remind you with every look and every how are you? What were you even supposed to say? Devastated would only make people worried and okay made them believe you’re lying to them. Either way you felt like shit, there wasn’t a place you could go that didn’t remind you of him so you did what anyone else would do. Pack up your things and move to a remote town close to the sea where no one knew you.

The cons:

People talk. A lot.

Not that people aren’t nice, they are, well most of them. However, that doesn’t make them any less nosy or gets rid the river of gossip that inevitably flows when something different from the routine happens. You expected it going in, if word got around in Cambridge then it would certainly get around in Dewitt. Therefore you kept quiet about any personal details or stories, to them you were the psychology professor that owns the bookshop/café in Harold street. You drive up to Cambridge twice a week to lecture your students and Skype any of them who need office hours. During the summers you give online classes and put pastel blue tables outside your store for people to read or talk. To everyone there you were the nice young lady who makes some really nice coffee, who is always smiling and who tutors whoever needs help in science or English lit. Gossip is a plague though, one that no one can escape so that’s how find out a detective has moved into town. Richard Mensen has gone missing and it’s been a week since his family, or anyone else saw him. The local authorities haven’t gotten anywhere so they sent someone else to help.

You walk to the entrance of the bookstore and glance at the police station as a man steps out of a car and walks inside. Harrison Osterfield, the detective from London who you can tell already walks with a massive weight on his shoulders.

-----

Everyone is looking, there are cameras and reporters and Harrison just wants to go home. Eight and a half months after arriving to Dewitt, the case was finally solved. Richard Mensen was dead, that they discovered three weeks after arriving. The next eight months that followed were about finding out who did it, why they’d done it and convicting them for ruining a family’s life. They were also full of judgement, Harrison should be used to it by now, but he’s not. His palms sweat and his heart beats too fast under the attention of everyone in the town, every look of disappointment they had sent his way for taking so long.

You do it, Harrison wanted to say, go and solve it if it’s that easy. He puts on a neutral face, his mask, and tries not to give away how terrified he is of fucking up someone else’s life because of his shortcomings. He hasn’t so far, but he lived in fear of it happening. It’s brought him sleepless nights trying to figure cases out, cost him relationships and his confidence. He is sure of one thing though, they got the right guy convicted and now he can go to his little house in the outskirts of town and sleep for ten days.

“The case has been closed, the killer was sentenced to life in prison around thirty minutes ago. We kindly request the press to let the affected family rest and finally deal with their grief at this time. The people of Dewitt can be in peace now, we consider this case to be an anomaly in the otherwise safe community they live in. That’s all I have to say.”

Harrison steps aside and leaves the reporters standing outside of the station as he takes off his tie and shoves it in the pocket of his navy blue suit. The cool spring breeze pushes his hair back as he walks along the sidewalk by the many stores in Harold street. He takes a deep breath, feeling the tension leave his shoulders and smelling freshly ground coffee. Your bookshop is right ahead, the red flowers by the window blooming beautifully under the spring sun and contrasting with the pale yellow of the storefront. Harrison checks his watch, 2:30pm, it’s a bit too late for a coffee but he didn’t drink his usual one this morning and he’d be dammed if he doesn’t take this excuse to see you.

You’re sitting on a table by a bookshelf when he steps into the shop, there’s some papers in front of you, a cup of tea far away from them and what looks like a blueberry muffin by your right hand. You’re focused on what’s in front of you while you take a piece of the muffin with a fork and bring it to your mouth. Setting down the fork, you chew on the pastry as you grab a pen and scribble something on one of the papers. It’s only when someone clears their throat behind him that he realizes he’s been leaning on the doorway and staring at you for more than a couple of minutes.

His ears feel like they’re burning when he steps into the shop to let the other person in. He mumbles a quick sorry and walks towards the register where the drink menu was displayed.

“Detective Osterfield.” You smile, standing up when you notice him come into the bookshop. “How was court?”

“Please, Y/N, call me Harrison.” He feels himself smile as he shakes his head. “Court went well, he got a sentence and the case is close.”

“That’s good. I bet you’re looking forward to rest for a while.” You walk around the register and move to the expresso machine. “Your usual?”

“No, umm, if I drink coffee right now I won’t sleep and I really need a nap.” He scratches the back of his neck. Why is he always so nervous, he’s seen crime scenes and blood but he can’t talk to you without feeling like a teenager. “But maybe one of those chocolate cookies you’ve got there.”

“Oh! I’m sorry if I’m keeping you then, let me get that cookie for you.” You push your hair behind your ear as you grab a small paper bag and use a napkin to pick a cookie from the jar. “Here you go.”

Harrison can’t help but return the smile you give him and moves to take his wallet from his jacket. “No, you’re fine don’t worry. How much to I owe you?”

“Oh, forget about that.” You chuckle, smoothing the white blouse you are wearing. “Take it as a thank you for making our town safer.”

Harrison’s ears burn once more, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.” You shrug, suddenly looking shy. “Are you, umm, staying in Dewitt? With the case being closed and all?”

Harrison hadn’t even thought about leaving, this town had become part of his routine and he dared say he’s grown fond of it. Not to mention he’d grown fond you. “Yeah, I’m staying.”

“Good, great that’s nice.” You smile. “Would you like to take a walk down to the beach someday? It’s okay if you say no, don’t feel like you have to say yes because of the cookie, it’s not a bribe or anything I just-“

“Y/N.” Harrison stops your rambling stepping towards you. His heart is beating a mile a minute, you just asked him out. The broody shitty detective that takes eight months to figure out a case. He’s the luckiest shitty detective there is. “I’d love that.” He says, taking your hand.

“Really?” You smile, his eyes meet yours and he’s surprised to see his own. Eyes that smile but not all the way, eyes that are hiding something painful that’s locked away in your heart.

“Yeah.” He smiles back, squeezing your hand with his before stepping back. “We can go whenever you want, just let me know.”

Let me get to know you, he thinks. And when you nod your head and smile at him again he is almost certain that you will. It could take time, but he’s willing to wait until the moment you decide you will.

----

Let me know your thoughts! ✨

chapter 1 - chapter 2

#dancing under the rain fic #pauwrites #Harrison osterfield x reader #haz osterfield x reader #haz osterfield #harrison osterfield #harrison osterfield imagine #detective au #harrison osterfield fic

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c0untb00z · 5 years

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I would just like to clear, I don't hate the BBC Dracula 2020 Show. In fact, I actually like the idea of Dracula being set in modern times like in the show, but I would like it a lot better if it wasn't written like a fucking reader insert fanfiction.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some reader inserts every once in a while but they're meant to be on Wattpad. Sometimes, you can find really fucking good fanfictions that could genuinly be movies, but this really just feels like someone wrote an erotic fanfiction for Dracula. It almost reminds me of a worse version of 50 Shades of Grey with less kinky sex.

First and foremost Agatha Van Hesling. I actually kinda liked her personality, how driven she was and determined to never give up, but she was literally created for a love interest. In Dracula by Bram Stocker, Sister Agatha is a nun that nurses Jonathan back to health, claiming he was 'sick in the head' as he ranted of what he had seen and warning others of Dracula. She doesn't even have a last name.

However there is a Dr. Van Hesling in the book, hes dutch(???) Professor that mentors and taught(????) Jack Seward who was in love with Lucy, who was fed off of and eventually killed and eventually undead by the means of the one and only Dracula. Dr Van Hesling plays a large role in the plot of the book. He has an open mind and was able to draw connections between things that some others couldn't, as he had access to more sources and could speak to most off the charecters involved. He's the first person to present the idea of a vampire, and Lucy turning into one. Thanks to Jonathan he was able to identify the vampire feeding on Lucy as Dracula and finds out how to kill the vampires.

So basically Agatha was literally fabricataed for the sole perpose of being there, to fall in love with Dracula or something.

I know we all are horny for Dracula. I'm horny for Dracula. Vampires are fucking hot but the sexiest part of vampires is that they ya know. Kill you and are mercily and heartless. The show does show that in a lot of parts and even decapiates a nun and yeets it into a gaggle of nuns which i fucking died at. But it also, humanizes him way to much, hes literally a monster. The scene in the boat with lord whats his name really portrayed that. It was really,,,, weird cause me being a kinky fucker I don't find the particular phrases of "you're going to need to be quiet now," and " youre doing so well" that creepy and if anything a little hot but looking at the circumstance and the look on that kids face, it was like r e a l y fucked up. Which is why i liked that scene. It showed just how fucked up Dracula is.

To be fair i did like Cleas Bangs acting and casting as Dracula. He had a certain charm that was ever so s l i g h t l y off. I heard people say he just 'made up an accent' but fuck you guys its a fucking danish accent you incolent twats anyways. He could be really funny at times and i actually apprecited it.

However the casting AND acting of the modern parts is absolute shit. Ep.3 is where i kinda gave up on the show and finsihed it for the sake of torturing myself. FIRST OF FUCKING ALL LUCY i cannot fathom how P I S S E D i am about Lucy. Why did they have to make her a phone obsessed basic asshole with no regards to anyones emotions besides her own and the extent of her personality is 'getting likes on socail media is all i care about because it makes me feel validated so im gonna wallo in self pity because i was obiously written by white man in his 50s that would have made me white if he wasnt forved to throw in diversity points" like shut the fuck up steven king.

Also lucy and mina never meet??? Theyre in different fucking time lines??? Theyre friendship and love for eachother was fucking golden how dare you rob that form me and give me a garbage bag full of shit with a shiny little bow on top in its place jesus f u ck.

The cemetary scene was o k ay i gues?? I liked the little nod to the book with the bloofer lady and the concept of random sprits being undead because of unfinished buisness. But this really just felt like it was slapped in the show for the sake of going on a date with Dracula in cemetary. I actually kinda apperacted it but it just felt awkward.

Also who the f u ck is Lucy's friend? The gay one??? Like,,,, is that supposed to Arthur???? His chatecter was so fu king weird and offset he just didnt feel like he should be in there. Hes literally just there for a-50-year-old-man's-interpretation-of-young-women-now-a-days verson of Lucy to have a gay best ffriend.

Ok i not even sure if i want to talk about Quincy. It just hurts. It physically hurts me to think about how d i r t y they did my baby. His charecter is the defination of american chivalry, just as great as regular chivarly but with a little extra cowboy vibe. Quincy is jist the biggest,,,, sweet haert,, like he asked lucy to marry him in his cool american cowboy voice cause he knew lucy loved it and it always made her laugh. And even when she turned him down becayse her heart belonged to arthur, he stayed. All he wanted was for lucy to be happy and all he requested was that they stay frirnds. Hes also invovled with taking fkwn dracula although hes not a main charecter percice ly as he doesnt have any entires in the book he still has an amaizing precence and sometimes while reading the book ill be readying one of dr sewards passanges and think "huh i wonder what quncys doin. I hope hes dooin good. Cowboy vibes n stuffs" amd boy dles he do that. Everh dracula film adaptataion robs us. R O B S U S of quincy morris best scene. In the middle of dr van helsing ranting about vampires( thats basically what half of the book is. I could write a 4p minute mono louge of his rambling jesus how does sweard take note of all this) quincy litterally just walks out. And nobodg really pays any notice beside glancing ag his leave and shrugging at one anouther and going back tl listneing tl van helsing explaining his vampire fan theories quincy moris , the quincy morris from texathe untited states of the amerkca the land and the free and also cowboys.stands outside of the bouilding and pints his gun up at. Dracula whos in the shape of a fucking bat eves ddopping outside the window and just fucking,,shoots it. Now he doesnt hit it cause thatt wouldnt be as fun as brutally stabbing the fucker witja wooden stake. But S T I L L. And the fucking bullet hits the window that everybodys in anprobably causes arthur to shit himself the ppoor boy. Can you belive that theh didnt fucking flim thatfor any dracul? Now i i under stands why not put in this adaptation because quincy is only mentionsed like three god damned times. And when theh DK mention him jesusnshit they literally jsut made him some popular jock from amwrica just to conter jacks white twinky ass and then they had him propose to lucy in the middle of a fucking night club and she says yes???? Lile ok jut throw Arthur out a window then cause cause fu c k him i guess. And then after lucy dies he jjsy fucking moves ?? The only thing thta makes this version of qincy quinccy is the fu king name and fact hes from america

Ok now jack fucking seward. He reminds me of when ylu forget you had a pb&j in your back pack so in the bos after school you pull it out cause yoyr hungry and yoyr mom put WAY to much jelly on it so now its like. All obsorbed into the bread and joggy and squished. Just sad and really white. They even had some kid call him whate bread and they werent fucking wrong. His obly personality traits were ' omg i love lucy but shes a hoe ;,,,((' and being connected to Zoe.

Now last and definately least the god forbaden ending. Just thinking about it gives me a fucking head ache. So , jesus, zoe, who is agathas great niece or someshit, a d looks exactly like her (its literally the same fucking actress) is a detective lile scitist reasearching dracula. So dracula is illedatly attracted to her becasue he thinks shes like agathas reincarnation or soenshit. So he tries tk drink her blood at one point and spits it all out and pukes and sjit cause her blood is poisonous bevaise she has fucking c an c e r. So later we find out that draculas weaknesses ( the sun crucifix) arnt actually real hes just afraid of dying so he has like irration fears or some shit so for some fucking reason. They deside. Its a good iea to end the show with this:

Dracula fucking drinks all of zoes blood killing her and himself because her blood poisonus. And ghe fucking emd scene is them like,,, in the sun???? Or soemt hi ng??? And theyre naked and like presumably fucked and dracula says some shit like " its doesnt have to hurt" and i almost tore my wrist open wiith my teeth because of how shitty this ending is.

Not lnly is it disrespectful to zoe but agatha, agathas whole thing was K I L I N G. dracula she wanted him fucking D E A D she woULDNT FUCK HKM

And like just after finding out that he can be in the sunlight with out fucking dying and that crosses just make him umcomfortable or some shit he just desides to kill himself??? DUDE YOU JUST FOUND OUT YOURE PROACTICALLY MORE INVINCABLE THAN YOU WERE BEFORE AND YOU JSUT FUCKING OFF YOUR SELF ??? HE COULD HAVE FUCKING RULED ENGLAD AND SPEAD VAMPIRISM OLL LVER THE FUCKING COUNTFY AND WORLD KF HE TRIED HARD ENOUGH AND HE KILLS HIMSELF BECAUSE THEY WANTED A STUPID SAPPY ENDING

anyway if anyone actually goes through the effort of reafing my god damn eS S A Y about Dracula that i finkshed typing (im not gonna bother editing tbh) at 4 fucking am. Then thank you and please get a life

#vampire #dracula #dracula2020 #bbc dracula #bbc dracula 2020 #3 am essays cause im pissed #dracula bram stoker #bram stoker #draculaxreader apparnetly

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legion1993 · 5 years

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together forever!

AN: this is another piece for @icantlivewithyou for her 800 followers challenge! enjoy! ps. sorry about the long beginning i kinda lost track of what i was doing with the story... but it still works...

Prompt 54 “Let’s forget about destiny.”

pairing: Draco Malfoy x Reader

summery: there isnt one...

masterlist

another year had come and gone, hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry was one of the best things to ever happen to you, the best decision your parents ever could have made...

over your years you mastered every spell you were taught, you learned spells to use in your daily life... you were favorite amongst all your teachers...

well all except Snape but then again he really didnt like any student that wasnt in Slytherin, and even then he sometimes rarely tollerated them... as extra credit you were one of Hogwarts spell tutors...

meaning basically you were the only student brave enough to tutor the students who needed extra help with their assignments. let me give you a hint as to which house had the most trouble with staying focused...

thats right it was the Slytherin house... meaning you a Ravenclaw were the only ravenclaw dumb enough to say yes to the job... even for extra credit the other ravenclaws wouldnt do it...

but the only slytherin that stuck with the tutoring throughout the years was Draco Malfoy... he was dashing but fraternizing between houses was frowned upon, i mean if it happened it happened no one would dare stand in the way of soulmates...

about a year ago to this day you and Draco had met outside of school. you were in diagon alley when he found you in the book store, you went to the 3 broomsticks to meet privately...

to get a head start on some of the paper work for tutoring.. both you and Draco had turned 18 within a week or 2 of eachother...

this was one of the reasons Madame rosmertta didnt say anything to anyone about you 2 being there together. she handed you 2 a complementary birthday butterbeer, and went back to her regular customers...

Draco: “that reminds me i made you something... its just something i happened to make when practicing some art spells... this is to say thank you for not giving up on tutoring me...”

you watched him place a small box on the table in front of you, with the tap of his want he made appear a glass figurine of your house crest... you picked it up and held it...

YN: “Draco i’m impressed you found a talent that you enjoy... well done... i am grateful for this token... all i got from my family was a fully paid 2 years away from home. just me myself and i... in a magic community just outside of paris...”

Draco: “kind of like a place of your own type thing... when do you move in?”

YN: “supposed to be going to check out the place over christmas break... did you want to come with?”

Draco: “so long as no one sees us that we know, we should be good... i’ll just tell my parents that im doing some travelling over christmas break and that im not coming home, that im doing some soul searching...”

You could only smile as Draco held his glass of Butterbeer towards you...

Draco: “to our final year at Hogwarts...”

YN: “may it shine supreme...”

you clinked your glass with his... thats when both of you felt it, a burning into your arms, it was like an instant connection... something that had slowly been building over the years.

Draco moved closer to you, your secluded location now hiding your unforseen passion.

Draco: “whats happening?”

YN: “i dont know its almost like we are magnetized...”

Draco: “its like a new string of feelings.”

your hands at that moment became intertwined.. it was like the force of 2 magnets being forced together, but the connection broke when a familiar voice broke the room...

Lucius: “Rosmertta, business is good i presume...”

Rosmertta: “its fine lucius, what can i do for you today?”

Lucius: “im looking for a place to host a private function is one of your rooms available...”

rosemertta had to think for a moment she knew you and Draco were back there... she made something up on the spot...

Rosmertta: “let me just go do an inspection of one room thats just come available... ill be back in a jiffy to bring you back there...”

lucius as impatient as he was, wasnt gonna argue with rosmertta... she came back there to where you children were and did a sound proofing spell on the room...

rosmertta: “you both need not be here right now... boy your fathers out there... flash yourselves someplace else far from here... ill cover your scents... ill also not tell anyone you were here...”

you both thanked her, grabbed all your things, holding hands you both thought of a different place, far from there... you guys wind up in an alley near the london station... you look at Draco as he does you, both of you searching for something that is there but shouldnt be...

Draco: “can i walk you home? or do you have to be home?”

YN: “i dont have to be home right away but i sense you wanna talk about what happened back in the 3 broomsticks...”

Draco: “can i try something?”

you nod unsure of what it is that he wants to do, at that moment it hadnt hit you... till he popped both of you to a room he had rented in the leaky cauldron, thats when he wrapped his arm around your waist slowly, he moved his other hand to cup your cheek, your body was starting to react...

thats how it started, the sneaking around, the lying, the keeping it a secret from everyone. except for a few weeks in summer when draco would come to your secret place and stay with you, he also was kind enough to help you move some of your stuff...

the start of the school year...

YN: “our last first day of school like ever... how the hell are we gonna survive next year...”

Hermione: “i dont know but if anything it will be awesome! when is the first quidditch game of the year?”

You had to think about that for a moment but as you were thinking you heard a voice like a whisper in your ear...

Draco: “meet you in the quidditch house i wanna talk to you about the upcoming game schedule...”

you didnt reallize it but you now had a goofy smile on your face...

Hermione: “okay spill girl!”

YN: “spill what?”

Hermione: “whats with the goofy look on your face?”

you had to recompose yourself... you turned to Hermione and smiled lightly...

YN: “so for my birthday my parents got me a all expense paid 2 year home away from home type thing... they want me to experience my own world away from them for 2 years...”

Hermione: “what thats amazing! and congrats again on the big 18 i cant believe we will all graduate from here at 18.. but that smile on your face was one of a love struck girl... is there something your not telling me?”

YN: “no girl if i was in love with someone dont you think i would have told you by now...”

Hermione only had to think about that for a moment for she knew as well as you that there wasnt anything you girls wouldnt tell eachother.

Hermione: “okay ive gotta go meet the boys ill see you for whats our first class together?”

You pulled out your class list and smiled...

YN: “potions... but right now i gotta go get changed and meet Draco at the quidditch tent, he is captain for slytherin he wants to discuss the game schedule or something...”

Hermione: “please be careful dont let that dick wad walk all over you... we will see you in potions... love you...”

YN: “love you too...”

you stalked off to your dorm to place down your bags, and get into your quidditch gear, making sure that you are not seen too long by many, but seen and marked as arrived...

you headed down to the field. you arrived at the captains tent to find only one other captain signed in currently. you knew the other captains werent as worried about quidditch on the first day... but with Slytherin and Ravenclaw teams being the only 2 teams to ever make it to the semi finals for the wizarding world champs...

lets just say that was part of yours and Dracos ploy to get to spend time together. sneak a few moments here and there... but this was the captains tent the one that ravenclaw and slytherin teams have shared for decades.

you entered the tent after sound proofing it... and smiled lightly at the sight of Draco all comfy on the lounge chair...

YN: “hey...”

that was all you had to say, Draco laid his eyes on you and got off of that chair so fast you didnt have time to blink... you also really didnt care... it was kinda fun sneaking around...

Draco cupped your cheek and kissed you ever passionately... he knew that there was a very slim chance that you werent feeling the same way he was...

Draco: “god that train ride was dull and long... it would have been more fun if you had been beside me...”

YN: “i know but we have to keep up appearances... who has the practice field first...”

Draco: “hufflepuff... we have the evening slots... which i guess is so they dont interferee with our afternoon classes...”

YN: “i can see if i can swap my slot with Gryphindor so i can put my tutoring slot this evening...”

Draco: “i guess my girl has 1st and 2nd years that also need help...”

YN: “yep my tutoring list is already growing and most studentz have only taken 1 or 2 classes by this point...”

that of course is when the earth shook... both you and Draco pulled out your wands searching for anything to be the cause... thats when you both recieved a fire message... because you both were also your house prefects... you both popped over to just outside the great hall where students and teachers were gathering...

both you and Draco were called up front with the other prefects and teachers..

McGonigal: “teachers we need to try and keep the students calm... prefects your task is to keep your houses in order... Dumbledore and a few other teachers have gone to see about the school barrier... if its what we fear the school is about to be under war.. we have also sent owls to all the families of the normal and first year students... alerting them of the situation... they will have the option to pull their student home if they desire...”

Draco: “professor, what or who exactly is attacking the school?”

Mcgonigal: “death eaters... followers of you know who... now everyone to your stations and brace yourselves... and prefects keep in contact... leave all quarrels and bickering at the door... right now everyone in this room friend or foe is allied...”

the great hall where many a banquet and dinner and ball party whatever type of event was or had been held... the room this year was set up so from left to right it was Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Gryphindor & Hufflepuff...

so over the last year and a bit, you and Draco could steal a few stolen ‘bickering’ exchanges... you two had developed a kind of love-hate relationship for the public eye... the daily prophet one year had a rivalry photo between your 2 houses... it was a huge deal...

anyway back to the matter on hand. after settling your Ravenclaws down, your other prefect went to sit at the other end of the table as Draco now came to sit across from you. he noticed you putting your head in your hands and the pannic setting in, he decided that instead of sitting on his side he would come and sit beside you.... ‘pretend to be friendly’

Draco: “are you okay, YN?”

you turned your head slightly and shook your head, you were beyond scared right then you didnt know what might come out of your mouth...

YN: “no im not... what if your father is out there? are you really prepared to face him?”

Draco: “well i mean if it comes down too it yeah, but it will be alot harder for us to keep you know what a secret from the effects of whatever curse they decide to throw at any number of us...”

YN: “i know thats what i’m afraid of... i mean we have kept us a secret for almost 2 years... i think the world deserves to know...before everything goes to shit...”

thats when Draco got up and walked over to mcgonigal..

Draco: “excuse me professor but i think i know exactly what inspirational speech to give right now... may i?”

Mcgonigal: “of course mr malfoy...”

Draco stepped up to the podium and cleared his throat, thus making everyone in the room turn their eyes to him.

Draco: “we live in a world today where voldemort and his death eaters think they have a spotting chance at ruling both the wizarding world and the muggle realm... this is why hogwarts and other schools were started to train the younger genration of witches and wizards alike in the art and practice of magic. but today we are gathered for a different cause, our school is under attack, but i know we have all seen a change in the last few years here within these walls, within our lives, within our houses, we never cease to amazing ourselves and eachother. but one thing that has amazed me over these past few years, is how amazing YN of ravenclaw is... you know what she sits over there at the other end of her table because she exhausts herself every single damn day. tutoring, being a prefect, leading the ravenclaw qudditch team, and still going to her regular classes. YN you have changed my life in ways i can’t express in alot of words but i have several little words now that will change both of our lives... may all of you bare witness to this momentus moment. for if we live through this tragedy we will be in a time of celebration.”

Draco comes around the podium and stands on the stage in front of you...

Draco: “YN, lets forget about destiny, lets forget for a moment that we are under attack, or surrounded by our peers, lets pretend that its still summer and we are hiding in a alley way outside of london station hiding from my father, lets forget about what the world already thinks of us, and show the world what and who we can be together...”

this earned all the students and all the teachers to put their eyes from you to Draco as you now stood up to Draco’s getting down onto 1 knee...

Draco: “YN will you marry me?”

you started walking towards him slowly...

YN: “Draco you changed my world too, i was a little lost before you came into my life, i knew that there was something there from that first day till that day a year ago when we talked without hesitation or speech impediment, or stuttering or any barriers... i know a different side of you as you do me... i guess what i’m trying to say is: Yes of course i’ll marry you!!!”

the entire great hall bared witness as you ran up the stage and into Dracos loving embrace, tender arms holding you close, his lips then passionately kissing you with a joyous noise erupting from the entirety of the room. then Draco used his new found arts magic skill to forge you on the spot a diamond ring, he slid it on your finger and the kissing continued...

you guys were interrupted by several teachers including your house teachers and several others, then approached by your partner prefects, and your head boy/girl... then you were approached by Ron, Hermione, and Harry...

Hermione: “YN girl, what i mean how, i mean when... i mean you said you werent interested in anyone...”

YN: “we wanted to make sure we were gonna last first before we told anyone... we have been sneaking around, and making excuses, making up little white lies, taking no small moment however small for granted...”

Harry: “well Draco i guess if YN ends up with anyone i suppose i should be happy she ended up with someone who wont break her heart...”

Draco: “ya well i know if i did that she would kick my arse... so im gonna avoid that...”

Ron: “i suppose i agree with both hermione and Harry but i guess i should add that its a good thing your both 18 now right...”

You and Draco looked at eachother and smiled...

YN: “yep during the summer within a week or 2 of eachother...”

Draco: “thank you all of you for supporting us... i’m sure...”

just before Draco could finish his sentance... the windows of the hall were blasted open... Draco you harry hermione and ron all crouched and huddled together, then looking up at the sound of a voice speaking from the smoke entering the room...

Lucius: “oh my my my what is happening here... it looks like a bunch of marry ment was going on...”

thats when Lucius spotted Draco and how defensive he was of you... then he noticed the ring on your finger...

Lucius: “boy get away from that girl.. or i swear i will beat you with my belt son...”

Draco: “never you cant make me...”

this made everyone clear out of the way... this was a wizards stance... kind of like 1,2,3 shoot... except it was cast your spells and see whose wins... Draco and you already having your wands ready prepared your shots...

Lucius: “Avarda Kadarva...”

Draco: “impedimenta..”

YN: “imperio...”

Lucius had his aimed right for you and Draco...

Draco Aimed his right at his father that slowed him right down.... long enough for your spell to hit lucius and point him and one of the death eaters...

this was the start of the great Battle of Hogwarts as well as your new journey of life with Draco... but thats another story for another time...

#iclwy writing challenge

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sgreffenius · 4 years

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Have a look at the image that goes with this article. I do not copy it here, for fear of copyright violation.

When I read the subtitle for this piece, I naturally thought of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and others who warn us about the surveillance state. The NSA can offer up a million reasons why it should monitor our communications; the FBI can offer a million more. Yet not one of these agencies can offer a single reason that justifies their abrogation of the Fourth Amendment.

Every criminal in history can tell you why they steal other people’s money. Vladimir Putin can tell you. Donald Trump can tell you. So could Jesse James, were he alive. But if you tell them, “It’s illegal,” they go mute. They have no response. That part escapes them somehow. “Why do you rob banks?” someone asked James. “Because that’s where the money is.” “Why do you spy on innocent people without a warrant?” “Because we need your private information to keep you safe.”

You’ll see the reason for this riff when I tell you what this article is actually about. First, the author’s byline:

By Shoshana Zuboff

Dr. Zuboff, a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, is the author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.”

Have you heard that term before, surveillance capitalism? I had not. You find out quickly, though, as if one needs guidance, that the phrase does not refer to the NSA or FBI, or any other government agency. It refers to Facebook! The article uses heavy terms like epistemic dominance and epistemic inequality to make you think the author is learned. In fact, the author uses academic bullsh*t to persuade you Mark Zuckerberg has horns and a long red tail. When a corporation that large knows so much about you, the company must be diabolical.

Apparently not relevant to Zuboff is that Facebook makes money through voluntary interactions with its customers. They have all heard the wisecrack, “With Facebook, you are the product.” Everyone understands that Facebook offers numerous services that people like. They understand, in return, that Facebook gathers information about its users, and finds ways to make money with that information. Facebook’s paying customers - advertisers - appreciate the company’s ability to target ads to your mobile phone. Facebook’s non-paying customers - you and me - know ads are part of the package, that the ads support Facebook’s free services.

So far, this model fits with others we’re acquainted with from way back. Network television offered free programs, and hoped you would watch the ads as well: laundry detergent and household cleaners on General Hospital, beer and trucks on NFL Sunday Football, toys and sugary cereal on Captain Kangaroo. In that case, ads targeted a show’s expected audience, or demographic. Now firms have better methods to gather audience data. That’s called surveillance. If you make money with your ads, that’s called surveillance capitalism.

The yawning gap in logic here is that every interaction an individual has with Facebook is voluntary, whereas every interaction with government is not. Take me. I have a Facebook account, but I seldom use it. I feel I waste my time whenever I go there. I certainly do not put Facebook on my phone. As a result, Facebook has scant data about me that it can use to make money.

By contrast, did NSA ever ask me if they could gather data about my phone calls, email messages, internet communications, and God knows what else? Could I file a Freedom of Information Act request to learn what data they already possess? If I wound up on a no-fly list by mistake, would I know why, or how to correct the error?

The answer to every query about government surveillance is no. Nothing is voluntary, everything is opaque - which means secret. As savvy internet users, we know Facebook’s business model. We know how it makes money, and the role our personal information plays in that process. Yes, the Cambridge Analytica revelation made people shake their heads. Now Mark understands that he better just sell advertising, and not sell data to third parties. If he does sell data to third parties, he better not get caught.

On the other hand, if Mark wants to sell ads to KGB hacksters, more power to him. Of course, he does not know they are KGB at the time of sale. The FBI tries to convince us they knew, but who listens to them? They won’t even hint how they know anything. At least Mark tries to act in good faith. When he tells congressmen that he wants the FCC or whatever to regulate him, he means it.

Now we have to return to Zuboff’s thesis. I could not read past the first couple of paragraphs, except to see if somewhere down the page she mentions government surveillance. She does not. The entire piece is about how Facebook threatens our democracy. It’s a standard NYT hit piece, designed to bring down Facebook yet again, with all the anti-capitalist vibe you could ever seek in this genre.

Well I have to tell you, Dr. Zuboff, that Facebook has no obligation to observe the Fourth Amendment. Government has promised to do so. Like every other successful communications outfit - such as Times Warner, Disney, or The New York Times - Facebook gathers information about its audience in order to meet its advertisers’ needs. It does not sell subscriptions or movie tickets. It receives most of its revenue from advertisers. Thus it has to do market research. Market research is not surveillance. Surveillance is spying.

If you want to argue that Facebook engages in espionage against its audience, you will have a hard time of it. Ever since the Cambridge Analytica blunder, it has tied itself in knots to prevent another fiasco, to explain its privacy policies, to give users control over their information. Most users say, “Forget it. I just want to chat with my friends, catch up with the latest posts, see vacation pictures. I can’t be bothered with so much privacy stuff.”

What was government’s response to Snowden’s revelations? “Hang 'im. He’s a traitor.” NSA has no interest in transparency, we know that. All of these security agencies say they want to protect us. They keep telling us how unsafe we are so they can keep spying on us. They keep spying on us because information is power. Governments always want to accumulate power.

At least Facebook does not prevaricate. It welcomes us, and the information we bring, because it can use that information to satisfy its paying customers. That’s how users become the company’s product. For billions of users around the globe, the tradeoff is worth it. That is, they are happy to turn over a small portion of their online profile to a company that gives them a multitude of information services in return. Most Facebook users feel they get the better of the deal. If they felt otherwise, they would leave the platform.

I have stayed away from one other word in Zuboff’s title: coup. It suggests that Facebook took over our country, or our democratic institutions, by force. The word insinuates some sort of surprise attack. In fact, Facebook has played defense for some time now. It hardly has the capacity to ruin our democracy, nor does it want to. Government’s self-destructive activities attack our democratic institutions every day. It does not need Facebook’s help to bring about dystopia.

From the left’s point of view, Facebook’s size alone makes it bad, no matter what it does. When Elizabeth Warren says she wants to break up Facebook, she does not seem to care whether the hydra grows new heads. She just wants to see the original heads lying bloody at her feet. For her, that means government has cut Facebook down several notches, has made it less threatening. Smaller is always better, if you do not like large, profit-making corporations. She does not, obviously, think the same way about government. For those she represents, powerful government is better government.

I wish Mark would just take a stand, as Bill Gates did against the FTC and the EU. Both bodies made absurd claims about Microsoft’s software bundling and other ‘acts in restraint of trade.’ Eventually the jokers just went away. As a consumer, I do not like doing business with Microsoft any more than most people do. Microsoft, however, is not a criminal organization. However anti-competitive it may be at times, it makes its money honestly, with transparent business practices. The same goes for Facebook.

You cannot say the same for government. It wants to control you. It gathers information about you to that end. It does not care whether its data collection methods violate the law. From every point of view, surveillance threats to democracy originate with government, not with any private corporation. Call Facebook’s practices surveillance capitalism if you like. Government’s brand of surreptitious surveillance is far more dangerous.

#united states politics and government

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ohgoddard · 4 years

Text

Those Loyal Dogs.2.

Carmichael slept soundly in his bed, only happy thoughts floating about his head. His numerous cuts and bruises that usually swelled and caused him discomfort decided to take a break this night, providing him with some much needed sleep. And though his thoughts were majority happy, the weight of what he knew slumped mightily in his mind. Almost enough to tear him from his soft satin sheets and try and solve the unsolvable conundrum in his mind, or otherwise try and speed up the over moving constant speed of time. For what he had learned has kept him up for countless nights already. Truth be told, he would not be awake now if not for the pills Jin had put in his food and recently heat-dried sheets that his first-mate Cerri had just laid out.

Carmichael knew that the crew was getting worried at his countless nights awake, staring into the burnt and barely legible journal that the old orc they found floating in the wastes clutched in his hands. He barely found a moment’s respite away from it, often calling out his name. The Orc himself, the figure that Carmichael believed to be his dad, has been very quiet and not awake for more than a few hours at a time. They always mumbled one thing or another about a gnome and some human, a snake person, worms, a cathedral, and an angel. But mostly he stared into the wall, hollow eyes brought by terror and fear. Carmichael wanted to be down there every minute, but he knew it was not the right thing. The poor orc was torn from death’s grasp, so obviously there would be a period of time until they would be able to speak like a normal person. Like his dad. However, his natural instincts fought against his ever growing anxiety and fear that would have caused him to leap to the bedside or journal, and kept him strapped into his bed. He slumbered for the first time in weeks.

Cerri threw open his door with such velocity that, if people bursting into his room not been a common thing and he had gotten a much sturdier door, would have shattered the hinges.

“SIR!” she shouted, finally stirring the captain from his sleep. The half-orc woke with a start, his baggy eyes fuzzily coming into focus on his dark-elf first-mate. After being awoken in such a harsh manner, his analytical mind took over and her scanned the whole area while reaching for the sword behind his bed.

His room was still the same, he was still on his normal bed. His desk was untouched, he saw no ship outside his window… His eyes went to Cerri. She was dressed as nice as ever. Rough brown pants, fluffy white shirt with a simple red coat she stole from a Royal Naval Marine. Her silvery hair was tied into a long but comfortable pony-tail thrown over her shoulder, with her red eyes looking at him confused. Her mouth was moving, maybe she was saying something?

I always forget how nice she looks.

“Captain?! Hello?!” she shouted, shaking Carmichael from his stupor. He shook his head, trying to orient himself. “Ah! Yes, sorry. Got a bit-” “Were you checking me out again?” Her eyebrows raised a bit, as if not fully sure of what she said herself. Carmichael stood from his bed, still fully dressed from when he went to sleep. “What? No. Never. I would never.” His stammering was all that she needed to reaffirm her suspicions. Cerri’s confused look was replaced with one of playful teasing. “You dog, you so were! Why, that is so unbecoming of a great captain as yourself!” She crossed her arms over her chest, speaking in a teasing manner. As Carmichael hurriedly put his own coat on, doing his best to hide his face from her. “Really though sir, I cannot blame you. I am quite the drow.” A small giggle escaped her as the sentence closed.“We can talk about my manners later, Cerri. What was it so important you had to run in here and wake me up?” She is observant, but never to the matters at hand. So what if I looked at her for a really long time and forgot why she came in here? I do that to everyone. I think.

Cerri snapped into the worried attention she stormed into the room with, suddenly remembering her excuse for invading wildly into her favorite captain’s room. “AH! Yes, um. Drokgar just got back from his trip from one of the worlds. He just got back in through the portal with the target. And well, the target is not pleased. You are needed in the hull where the target is...now. Drokgar is in the med bay.” Carmichael spun on his heels. “DROKGAR IS WHERE?!” Cerri sidestepped out the door way, barely seconds before Carmichael ran through it. The gust of wind that followed nearly knocked her on her butt, but she held on to the door frame as she saw the captain run down the hallways of sleeping sailors in hammocks and down the stairs.

“What’s gotten into him?” Cerri heard Jin’s voice before she saw him, walking just into view holding a small mug with a dark black substance. As Cerri moved out of the doorway and into the hall, closing the door behind her, she took the mug right out of Jin’s hands and downed the whole thing. Jin looked on in amazement. After she swallowed she looked in amazement at Jin herself. “Jin, its not even 8 a.m. What in the divines name are you doing drinking stout?!” The poor AI just kinda looked on in awe still, as he was surprised the dark elf was still standing before him. “That.. had an alcohol per volume amount of 15%! How are you standing?! It was to my knowledge very few organics could even-”

“Jin,” she cut him off ,”why were you drinking hard liquor this early?”

“I was bringing it to the captain, its his usual wake up drink for the past few weeks.”

Cerri sighed deeply, dragging a face-palm. “From now on, bring him water. Only, water. If he has a problem, tell him its on my orders.” Jin nodded before walking off down a separate hallway, presumably the cantina. Cerri herself began to walk down the hull, they were going to need all the help they could get until the captain got back from the med bay. I swear, she thought to herself, if he doesn’t take it easy on this it’s going to kill him. He needs to remember we are a pirate crew. We work for money. Who cares if a few realities die? There are actually infinite. What about us? His crew? Jin?....Me? She pushed those thoughts away for now. He always has us in his mind. He cares. But this..its dangerous. He doesn’t know what hes up against.

=====================================================================

Carmichael made it to the med bay, an informal term given to a few beds in a spare room where they just so happen to keep all the medicine they find. Most sailors just drink and bandage themselves, lying in their hammocks after a particularly tough raid. They really only come here when they're sick, which isn't often on the weird vitamin filled meals Jin cooks for everyone. Right now though, it was empty save for the Captain and the lead physician. It is worth noting that the lead physician, Drokgar, was lying on one of the beds with the largest pile of ice over his right eye.

“Aye told ye before ‘n I’ll tell ye again, I’m fine Carmichael!” Drokgar looked evry roughed up, so it was easy to discount this. His glasses were broken, his clothes torn, and blood was dripping down from the cut on the huge lump above his eye. “You do not look fine, Drokgar. What on the divines purple skies did this to you?!” The gnome sighed before his captain, and leaned back into the small pile of pillows he had collected behind him. “Not a what, Captain. A ‘who’. The man ye told me to go nab, another one of your ‘not fathers’. He did not take kindly to me taking him away from the people he was traveling with. A gnome, some angel. A drow.”

At the mention of these part members, Carmichael connected them to the mumblings of the other orc they had picked up, the one the crew has been jokingly referred to as “The Professor” for his tweed pants. Could there be a connection?

“Yup,” Drokgar continued, “he put up quite the fight before I managed to put the clamp on him and through ‘em through the tear. He got one hit on me, and Carmichael it was just a graze. Cuz if it was a real hit i’d be dead!” The gnome laughed heartily after this, before turning into a rough cough and stopping. “Oh gods, yeah he did also kick me with a lil peg leg of his and it got me in me ribs. Gonna be a bit ‘o rest fore I can be on my duties again. Im gonna take the next ‘extraction’ mission out. I mean I loved the research and all, the looking up of people via memories and messin with them, but i’m a tad bit past my adventurin days. Maybe send Cerri, she’s been beggin to go out. Maybe Lionel, eh? He’s a newbie but-”

Carmichael cut him off by quickly leaning in and hugging him. The gnome let out a little gasp of surprise and slight pain before slowly hugging the half-orc back. “I’m just glad you're back.”

“Ah, don’t you worry son. Gonna take a lot more than one unruly and crotchety orc to get me! Hell, when he calms down I bet he and I will be good friends!”

Carmichael made sure Drokgar was nice and comfortable before leaving, blowing out the lantern on his way out. He’s right. I don’t know why I thought I could just take people, especially people like my dad, by force and then send a gnome. An old gnome at that. Good thing he’s a quick guy. I thought he could at least talk to him, but that must not have worked.

These thoughts kept in his head, alongside the comments of the gnome and the angel. It could be that these are the same that the ‘The Professor’ mentioned in his murmurings? Perhaps next time he is awake he can talk to him about them. Such thoughts were immediately thrown out of Carmichael’s head when he felt the shaking down the hall. An inconsistent shaking, one that shook the entire floor. And it was a loud, slamming noise. And the shouting did not make this noise any less worrying.

“WE NEED MORE ROPE!!” “WHERE’S THE RUNES?!” “SOMEONE GET THE CAPTAIN!”

“CERRI HOLD THE-” Another loud smash, the sound of metal on metal. Carmichael ran down the hallway, turning the corner into the brig. The room, usually looking like nothing more than a wooden jail cell with iron bars, now had a sole occupant of a large steel box. Said steel box had about seven people around it, hastily attempting to tie it down via chains and ropes. Among them was Cerri, who ducked at the last second to avoid a dent that suddenly formed in the box.

The box was covered in these dents, huge divots in steel that stretched the tension of its strength. It looks like it was covered in huge spikes, the number of these divots being in the dozens. Another loud crash and the captain saw another huge divot shootout from the metal box. It took the shape of the huge fist that caused it, and it was accompanied by an angry yell.

“WHERE AM I?! WHERE IS THAT DAMN GNOME?! WHERE ARE MY DEPUTIES?!”

Carmichael stood there before the towering steel box, now recognizing that these are all [i] fistmarks. “Jesus christ, just what kinda person did Drokgar bring back?!” A sailor yelled out as a steel fist collided with his face, sending him flying into the wooden walls behind him. Cerri lept back at the last second to avoid the same fate. “FALL BACK!” she yelled to the remaining sailors by the box. She turned her head to see the captain had arrived and flashed a smile of relief. “Thank the divines you’re here! We couldn’t hold him any longer, I think he broke the band Drokgar put on him.” The box shook again, more divots coming out. Carmichael drew his sword, the enchanted rapier known as Giant’s Needle. “Sailors!” he yelled, “retreat behind me and Cerri! Be prepared to give the alarm!” He did not need to tell them twice, the men and women quickly retreating behind their Captain and First Mate.

Their retreat could not be better timed, as this time the punch wen through the box. A huge green fist punctured the steel enclosure, peeling like paper. Soon another fist came right behind it, and Carmichael could see into the darkness a pair of yellow eyes staring out. The hands retracted, and began to tear the box apart, opening it up like a wrestler on stage. Stepping through the huge hole, stood a towering orc. Carmichael went into analytical mode.

He noticed the orc was shorter and smaller than he expected. The memories that Drokgar showed him revealed a general that could kill multiple demigods with a single hook. This could be said general, but many many years past their prime. He noticed the missing leg, replaced with a crude make-shift prosthetic made out of pipes and gun springs. The orc’s white and grey hair confirmed the old age, but everything else went away from that theory. He was still massive. His biceps, while not like a young orc, were still bigger than Carmichael’s head. And the orc was angry.

He lowered himself into a boxing-style fight stance, glowering at the dark elf and half-orc in front of him. “You have one minute to tell me where I am, and where my deputies are. Or else I will bear down on you the entirety of my strength and lawful ability.” A sailor, brave or stupid, came running out from behind the Captain. Carmichael was too slow in stopping him, the sailor too quick and their clubbed weapon drawn. It wasn’t even a laughable ‘fair’ fight. The orc sent a quick jab into the sailor’s stomach, them falling to the floor. Carmichael didn’t even see his fist move. This must have been a surprise to the orc too, as he glanced at his own fist in shock for a short while. But if anything this made him bolder. He readied his stance again.

“I am going to ask one more time. What did you do with my deputies?” Carmichael raised his sword. He was not looking forward to this fight. “We have not touched them,” he began to say, his eyes darting to the gold star resting on the orc’s shirt,“ Mr.Sheriff. We have only taken you. And it was for a good reason too.” The orc began to growl.

“You better give it quick. I owe them my life, multiple times over. I will not let you kill me until I repay my gnome friend.”

But just as he was about to open his mouth, Carmichael was distracted by another lumbering noise. The orc noticed this too, as his eyes followed the Captain’s. Walking down the hallway, perhaps awoken by the noise, was The Professor. His hair was still messed up. His glasses crooked on his face, and he was wrapped in a blanket. To everyone’s surprise, he was moving. And it was this shock that allowed him to enter the big, unopposed. So now, standing in the brig in front of the Captain and a first mate who left to go yell at the fool who let The Professor out of bed, were two orcs.

Who looked exactly the same.

“Did”, The Professor spoke in his deep voice, raspy from disuse, “you mention a gnome?”

The Sheriff eyed up the disheveled academic man before him, noting that he was much bigger than he. “Yes, so what?”

“Did you know a gnome named Kevi?” The Sheriff became still. Unmoving.

“Yes..I did.” The Professor looked on the other orc with a blank look, but his soft blue eyes began to come into focus a bit more. “And a snake named Asmodeus? And a human named Samuel? An angel named Kazfiel?” The Sheriff dropped his guard entirely. His arms fell to his side, as he looked into the face of himself.

“I..I did. Yes.”

The Professor looked into the eyes of himself too, then let his blanket drop to the floor. He leaned forward and hugged himself. “Please tell me...please tell me they are ok. I started all of this. Everything… Please tell me I did not kill him. Please..”

And the Sheriff, shocked at the sudden embracement, just stood there for a minute. The soft sobs of The Professor made the only noise. Carmichael watched on with intense focus, not feeling the tears welling in his eyes. The other orc gently put his arms around The Professor, and held him closely. “Yeah.. you didn’t kill them. You didn’t kill them. It’s not your fault.”

The other orc looked up from The Professor, at Carmichael in the doorway.

“Are they safe?” Carmichael nodded.

“Buddy, you and I need to have a talk after this. For now, call me Hiram. I need to catch my friend here up on a lot of things.”

#BoA:TS

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