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nerdzzone · 3 years

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Only For A Moment: July

Summary: A series of shorter one shots from Chris and Whitney’s life together throughout the pandemic. Some happy times, some harder times, some fluff and some things a little more sexy - they work through it all as they try to get settled in their new and blossoming relationship.

Chris Evans x OFC

Part of the Once Bitten/More Hearts series

Only For A Moment: June

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July 2020

Chris was stressed.

It was understandable as he'd just launched his new endeavour - A Starting Point - but it was worrying me how anxious and overwhelmed he seemed to be. The feedback so far had been good, but he was still concerned about how it was going to be received and whether or not people would actually find it useful. He had several long, full days of interviews scheduled to promote it and explain what they hoped to achieve and, after the first week, he was exhausted which made him moody and withdrawn.

It didn't help that Grayson had quickly adjusted to having our undivided attention and was growing increasingly frustrated with his dad's busy schedule. The Friday after the launch, Chris promised him that he'd be done by bedtime so he could tuck him in, but technical difficulties got in the way and he was once again stuck in front of his laptop until well into the evening.

And that was where I found him, at almost nine o'clock, when I went to see if he'd be finished anytime soon. I'd poked my head around the door and saw him sat at his desk with his head in his hands and the sight made my heart ache. Sneaking up behind him, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

"Hey," I greeted him softly. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine," he assured me, but the sigh that followed told me otherwise. "Just tired. It's been a busy week."

"It has. We've missed you."

My words weren't meant to add guilt to his stress, but I realized my mistake when he winced.

"Sorry," he mumbled, placing a kiss on my arm where it rested across his chest. "I did try to finish early today - I suggested we push the last interview until tomorrow when we hit the connection issues, but they weren't having it. Was Grayson mad that I missed bedtime again?"

"Not mad," I shrugged. "Just a bit disappointed."

Chris' head fell forward and his shoulders stiffened.

"That's worse."

"No, it's not," I insisted, squeezing him tightly. "He was just a little sad, but he got over it. I promised him that you'd do something fun with him when you weren't so busy and he accepted that."

"I was actually thinking of taking him to the museum to see the dinosaur exhibit," Chris admitted. "They just reopened, but he'd have to wear a mask."

"He'd love that," I smiled, knowing how much both of them loved their father and son days. We'd made an effort to give him more one on one time, but it was limiting when we hadn't been able to leave the house much until recently. "And I think he'd be okay with a mask. We can order one and get him to wear it at home for a bit to get used to it."

"Good idea," Chris nodded. "I can do that tomorrow"

"Or I can," I suggested, kissing the side of his head. "You're busy enough at the moment. And you're stressed, I can feel the tension in your shoulders."

Chris sighed again and I felt a pang of sympathy for him.

"I know. This project just means a lot to me. I want it to do well."

"And it is," I reminded him as an idea hit me. "C'mon, I know what you need to help you relax."

"Oh, yeah?" Chris smirked and I rolled my eyes as his mind had clearly gone straight to something dirty. "What would that be?"

"Probably not whatever you're thinking of," I informed him. "But there's some pizza left in the kitchen. Go have a slice of that and then meet me in the bedroom."

"Alright, I like the sound of this."

His smirk had grown and I swatted the back of his head as I slid my arms off of his shoulders.

"Don't be such a perv!"

He laughed and stood up from his chair as I shook my head and he pulled me in for a quick kiss before we headed downstairs and went our separate ways.

If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was run the perfect bath for relaxation. It had been my tradition every evening after I'd dropped Gray off at Chris' house - I would pour myself a glass of wine and take a bath, enjoying the opportunity for a long soak without the risk of Grayson interrupting. The bathtub in Chris' en suite made that indulgence even better due to it's size and depth and I'd taken advantage of it several times during our stay with Chris. Which meant that I had quite the assortment of bath salts and bubble bath to create the perfect bath for Chris.

The tub had just finished filling up when he walked in and I heard him chuckle at the sight.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed."

"Oh, shush," I teased, turning around to face him once I'd turned off the taps. "This will be much more effective than whatever you were imagining."

Chris scoffed at that claim, a smirk firmly on his face.

"I disagree."

"I'm sure you do, but that's too bad. Now, strip."

"Ooh, I like it when you're bossy."

His comment earned another roll of my eyes as I crossed my arms and waited for him to do as I'd instructed.

As he did, I couldn't help, but stare. He seemed to be toning up even more during our quarantine and the sight of his perfectly sculpted body took my breath away every time I had the luxury of seeing it. He caught my gaze and colour flooded my cheeks as I knew that he'd seen me gawking at him, but despite the smug look on his face, he made no comment as he climbed into the tub.

Once he was settled with his head resting back on the edge of the tub, I sat down on the closed lid of the toilet and picked my phone up from where it was sitting on the counter. I unlocked the screen with the intention of replying to my mother who had messaged me while I was getting the bath ready, but a giggle slipped from my lips when I saw what was already open on my phone from earlier that day. Chris raised a questioning eyebrow and I debated whether or not to tell him about it. It had the potential to send his stress levels sky rocketing again, but if he thought I was hiding something from him, it would probably irritate him and ruin his mood anyway so I came clean.

"Hannah sent me a link to an Instagram account today that posts lots of gossip stuff," I informed him. "Most of it seems to be just random submissions, but they've been right a few times, I guess, so people seem to believe whatever they say now."

"And why did she send you a link to it?"

"Because apparently you're engaged."

I was smiling as I broke the news to him because obviously I knew it wasn't true, but Chris let out a groan of annoyance.

"Engaged to who?! To you?"

"No, to a mysterious blonde. Apparently, the person who sent in the message has a friend who spotted you picking up some takeout with this woman. Her ring was clearly on display and you were openly affectionate with her while you waited for your food."

"That's just a straight up lie," Chris huffed. "I don't know why people waste their time making this shit up and I really don't know why you bother reading it."

"It's not like I seek it out, but Hannah finds it entertaining to see what people are saying about us," I shrugged. "You have to admit that it's kinda funny. It sends everyone into such a frenzy."

Chris shot me a look.

"Funny isn't the word I'd use."

"C'mon, it's a little amusing!" I smiled, scrolling down to the comments. "Like, look, they're discussing whether or not I fit the description in case I just dyed my hair blonde. But then someone else says they saw me in L.A. two weeks ago, around the time you were with the blonde woman, so it couldn't possibly be me. They're like little detectives."

Chris rolled his eyes, but there was a reluctant smile on his face.

"Detectives aren't allowed to just make things up," he pointed out. "Unless you took a secret trip a few weeks ago that I didn't know about."

"No, I didn't," I laughed. "You have some very creative fans."

"I don't think it's my fans who write that stuff. It's probably other people trying to antagonize them."

"Well, it works like a charm. They go nuts trying to decide if it's true. I just wish they wouldn't get so mean about it sometimes," I admitted. "Like, some of them were saying how glad they were that you'd moved on from me finally because of how cruel it is that I ruined your life by trapping you with a baby."

The scowl on Chris' face instantly returned with that additional information and I scolded myself for saying it.

"I should have let Downey sue them all like he wanted to when it first leaked that you were pregnant," Chris huffed. "Then maybe by now these gossip pages would know better than to post shit about us."

"It would have just made things worse," I insisted as a smirk slid onto my face. "Besides, it doesn't really bother me. I'm the one sitting next to you while you lounge completely naked in a bubble bath while they spiral into a jealous pit of despair."

That comment earned me a laugh before he sat up a bit higher in the tub.

"Why are you sitting over there anyway?" He asked. "Get in here with me."

I smiled at his demand, but shook my head.

"This isn't supposed to be a sexy bath. You're supposed to be relaxing."

"And what better way to relax than to share a bath with the woman I love?"

A statement like that was hard to resist, especially as he grinned up at me from the tub with that amazing smile of his. I relented with surprisingly little resistance and rose from where I was sitting.

"I suppose that's fair..."

Putting my phone back on the counter, I turned so my back was to Chris. I could feel his eyes burning into me as he stared and I bit back a smirk. I quickly undid the button on the shorts I was wearing and slid them down my legs, bending at the waist as I stepped out of them. A noise of approval came from behind me as I stood up again and I shot him what I hoped was a sexy look over my shoulder before I pulled my shirt over my head. After slipping out of my bra and quickly pulling off my panties, I left them with my shorts and turned around with one hand over my chest to keep it covered until I was settled in the tub under all the bubbles.

"Wow," Chris grinned. "You're so fuckin' hot."

I giggled at his compliment, feeling a wave of self-confidence from my little strip tease.

For the past few weeks I'd been spending more time in Chris' home gym and I was feeling the positive side effects - more than just in my slowly developing muscle tone. We'd had a fight one night not long after our first pool day when I made some self-deprecating comments that rubbed Chris the wrong way. He scolded me rather harshly for always talking badly about my body and, while at first his exasperated reaction made me shut down, it eventually led to a very open conversation.

I explained that I wasn't just fishing for compliments all the time. I had some serious insecurities and - as analyzed by Hannah who was a very well trained psychologist - I tended to put myself down first before someone else could do it. I informed him that it wasn't just the body changes that come from pregnancy that bothered me, but the fact that I hadn't had much time to go to the gym since Gray was born - when he was with me, I was busy with him and when he was with Chris, I was busy with work.

He understood where I was coming from and reminded me that his home gym was available for my use any time I wanted, but insisted that I make sure I was doing it for the right reasons. He didn't want me killing myself to change how I looked when I didn't really need to, but I assured him that my motivations weren't all vanity related. Sure, I wanted to look good, but I missed feeling strong and healthy.

After our conversation, I’d started taking some time every day to get some exercise and the difference it was making to my confidence even after a few short weeks was huge. So, hearing Chris' praise now made me feel wonderful because I was actually starting to believe it.

"Thanks," I smiled in response to his compliment as I got settled in the bath tub. We were facing each other, my legs draped over his thighs so my feet were resting by his hips and my bum was between his shins. He grabbed my hand and laced our fingers together as he watched me with what could only be described as an adoring look. "It's amazing what a few weeks at the gym can do."

"Helps that you were pretty hot to start with too," he teased. "But I'm glad you're feeling more confident."

"Me too." I leaned forward to press a soft kiss on his lips. "So, are you feeling more relaxed?"

"I am," Chris nodded before letting out a sigh. "I'm sorry I've been so stressed out lately. I just want this whole thing to go well."

"And it is," I repeated my earlier assurance. "So far you've had a great reaction."

"For now," he frowned. "I just want people to actually use it and get involved."

"They will," I assured him, leaning in for another kiss. "Have I told you how proud I am of you? You're doing such a great thing, using your influence to try and make a difference. It's very inspiring."

"Well, I think you're too kind," he told me, trying to be humble despite the proud grin on his face. "Really, it's the least I can do."

"Nope, the least you could do is nothing," I pointed out. "But you're trying to help people and I'm so proud of you for that. I'm grateful that Grayson has a dad like you to look up to."

It appeared - for a brief moment - that Chris' eyes grew a little bit glassy, but he blinked a few times and they were clear once again.

"Thanks, Winnie." He paused to clear his throat. "That really means a lot and I'm sorry I've been so busy this week. I have one more podcast interview to do tomorrow morning and then I have a few days off."

"I'm glad you'll get a break, but you don't need to be sorry," I assured him. "Even though it has been kinda weird. It's crazy that a few months ago, we only ever saw each other in passing, but now I miss you when you're busy for even a few hours."

It was true. I had missed him the last few days and it did seem ridiculous when we used to go weeks without seeing each other and even then it was just briefly at a pick up or drop off. I'd been spoiled the last few months, having so much of his time. Now, seeing him every day wasn't even enough if I didn't have much of his undivided attention.

A brief flash of dread tore through me as I shared that thought with Chris because I knew this would all come to an end some day. We couldn't stay locked away in his house forever, eventually we would both have to go back to work and I knew it would make things harder. Some people found that the intense quality time was testing their relationship, but I was worried that we'd start to crumble as soon as we weren't together almost twenty-four hours a day. Once the world of Hollywood got it's claws back in Chris, I couldn't help but wonder where that would leave me.

But as always when those thoughts filled my mind, I did my best to push them away. It was likely still months before anything would change so there was no point in stressing about it now and Chris chuckled, bringing me back to the moment.

"Awe, you’ve missed me?"

His words were accompanied by a cocky smirk and I smiled despite my rolling eyes.

"Shut up."

"It's sweet. I never thought you'd be a clingy kinda girlfriend."

I wrinkled my nose in displeasure at that thought and shook my head.

"I'm not clingy!"

"Kinda sounds like you are," he pointed out. "Can't even get through a work day without pining for me."

"I wasn't pining!" I huffed, but he continued insisting that it seemed like I was. "Well, I was just about to suggest we get out of this bath, but now I think maybe you don't deserve what I was thinking of doing next."

"Get out? You just got in," Chris pointed out with a raised eyebrow. "What else have you got planned?"

Now it was my turn to smirk as I rested my hands on the side of the tub before pushing up until I was standing in front of him.

"A little extra relaxation," I told him, deliberately keeping it vague. "But I guess now, you'll never know."

I stepped out of the tub and grabbed my towel. With one last glance back at Chris who was still sitting in the bath, looking a mix of surprised and intrigued, I wrapped the towel around myself and left the bathroom - making sure to sway my hips a little more than usual on my way out.

I heard the water slosh as Chris leapt up to follow me and he appeared in the bedroom - towel around his waist and water dripping to the floor - moments later.

"Chris!" I laughed. "You're getting the floor all wet!"

"So are you," he pointed out. "But I don't care."

I hardly had time to take in his words before he strode swiftly across the room and pulled me against his chest. His hands gripped my hips so tightly that it undid my towel and he moved just briefly enough for it to fall to the floor. Once that was out of the way, he captured my lips in a kiss so fierce it made my breath catch in my chest.

I indulged for a moment, enjoying the feel of his hands roaming by body as his lips worked against mine, but then I remembered who this evening was supposed to be about. I pulled back slightly, just enough to trail my lips across his jaw and locked them onto a spot just below his ear as my hands moved to the towel around his waist. I could feel a slight bulge pressing against me - he wasn't hard yet, but it was clear that the anticipation was having an effect on him - and I untucked the towel and let it fall down with mine to give me easier access.

I heard Chris take in a shaky breath and felt him tighten his grip on me as I took him in my hand. Smiling against his skin and enjoying his little reactions, I stroked him until he was thick and full from my touch.

"Get on the bed."

Chris' tone was demanding and there was definitely a part of me that wanted to follow his instructions, but I resisted and moved my face away from where it was buried in his neck, shaking my head.

"No, this is all about you," I reminded him. "You need to relax."

He voiced a few protests as I kissed my way down his chest, but he fell silent as I dropped to my knees in front of him. His hands were clenched in fists by his side while I continued to gently stroke him, placing soft kisses on the top of his thigh, but when my kisses moved closer until my lips landed on his cock, his hands shot to grip in my hair. He wasn't forcing anything or trying to control my movements, but the sense of control that action gave him was something I knew he enjoyed and I smiled before getting down to business.

I licked him slowly from base to tip, making him shudder as I took him into my mouth. His hips twitched, pushing farther in and I did my best to accommodate him. Letting him slide slowly over my tongue, I stretched my jaw to get my mouth around his thick shaft. He always felt big - he was big - but this action made it even more apparent and I took as much of him as I could before sliding back up his cock.

Pausing for a moment to suck at the tip, I used my hand to stroke him as I lifted my eyes to look up at his face. His hand gripped my hair tighter as he threw his head back briefly, then returned his gaze to me and met my eyes. I smiled around his cock before letting my lips move farther down, taking him back in my mouth. Not feeling completely confident in my ability to deep throat someone of his size, I used my hand to cover the base and began to bob my head with renewed enthusiasm, spurred on by all the sighs and groans that were falling from his lips.

I could feel myself growing wet. His reactions, the position we were in, the slight tug of my hair - it was all overwhelming me and increasing the temptation to let him fall from my mouth, push him onto the bed and ride him until we both couldn't take it anymore, but I tried to stay focused as I worked his cock.

After a few minutes, I could tell he was getting close as his grip on my head began leading me more and more, a sign his self control was waning. That only spurred me on, but as his breathing shifted until he was practically panting and I could feel his thigh muscles tensing where my hand was resting, I heard a sound that would kill any mood.

"Mama!"

Grayson's voice floated down the stairs. It was distant and quiet, but enough to make my blood run cold as I instantly pulled my mouth off Chris.

"Fuck," Chris groaned, a pained look on his face as I shot up from where I was kneeling. "Fuck, that kid has bad timing."

Gray called for me again, sounding slightly closer than he had before and I threw on one of Chris' shirts that was crumpled up on the bed. Luckily, it fit me like a dress and covered everything that needed to be covered.

"I'm so sorry, babe," I flashed him an apologetic look. "I'll take care of him and you can take care of that."

I gestured to his still very hard and throbbing cock and the poor man looked like he wanted to cry as I hurried out of the room.

Turns out, Grayson was just thirsty so after a quick drink of water, I tucked him back into bed. By the time I returned to our bedroom, Chris was fast asleep as he lay sprawled out, still naked on top of the duvet. It looked as if he had just collapsed onto the bed and even though he was asleep, his face still showed his exhaustion. I felt a flash of sympathy as I pulled the blanket off the back of the chair in the corner of the room and covered him up with it, placing a soft kiss on his forehead before climbing in to my side of the bed.

August

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#chris evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans fan fiction #chris evans smut #chris evans fanfic #chris evans fic #chris evans one shot #chris evans x ofc #chris evans rpf #once bitten/more hearts #only for a moment

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nietp · 3 years

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The AI behind Bots of New York: Who will monitor the governments monitoring AI?

If you've ever been intrigued by Bots of New York, and specifically by the texts it generates, or if you were ever skeptical these texts were actually generated by a bot, it's worth looking up the model this bot is using, GPT-2, released in 2019.

Bots of New York was the first Facebook bot to use that model for text-generation, and unlike most bots we were familiar with until then, the text it generates is complex and creates a coherent, believable narrative, just weird enough to be intriguing. Though Bots of New York is looking for texts that always sound funny or chaotic, GPT-2 can generate more believable text: "people find GPT-2 synthetic text samples almost as convincing (72% in one cohort judged the articles to be credible) as real articles from the New York Times (83%)". The release of GPT-2 raised ethical issues and its creators, Open AI, published regular updates on their choices, doubts, and findings. What's especially interesting is that the concern that GPT-2 would be used for propaganda was raised from the start, which should have made the creators especially wary of collaboration with governmental organizations and of governmental use of GPT-2 in general, especially since Facebook had already publicly admitted at the time that its platform has been exploited by governments to manipulate public opinion and it has only been further confirmed since then. Instead, Open AI doubled down on the necessity to work with governments, encouraging them to introduce penalties and monitor AI-use, specifically for what they call "extremist" ideologies which include "white supremacy, Marxism, jihadist Islamism, and anarchism". We'll come back to that later, but first, this is an excerpt of what the creators of GPT-2, Open AI, released on February 14, 2019 when they made part of that model open-source:

Our model, called GPT-2 (a successor to GPT), was trained simply to predict the next word in 40GB of Internet text. Due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology, we are not releasing the trained model. As an experiment in responsible disclosure, we are instead releasing a much smaller model for researchers to experiment with, as well as a technical paper.

GPT-2 is a large transformer-based language model with 1.5 billion parameters, trained on a dataset of 8 million web pages. GPT-2 is trained with a simple objective: predict the next word, given all of the previous words within some text. The diversity of the dataset causes this simple goal to contain naturally occurring demonstrations of many tasks across diverse domains. [...]

[O]ur model is capable of generating samples from a variety of prompts that feel close to human quality and show coherence over a page or more of text. [...] [The] samples have substantial policy implications: large language models are becoming increasingly easy to steer towards scalable, customized, coherent text generation, which in turn could be used in a number of beneficial as well as malicious ways. [...] On other language tasks like question answering, reading comprehension, summarization, and translation, we are able to get surprising results without any fine-tuning of our models, simply by prompting the trained model in the right way (see below for examples of how we do this), though we do still fall short of state-of-the-art for specialized systems.

[...] GPT-2 achieves state-of-the-art scores on a variety of domain-specific language modeling tasks. Our model is not trained on any of the data specific to any of these tasks and is only evaluated on them as a final test; this is known as the “zero-shot” setting. GPT-2 outperforms models trained on domain-specific datasets (e.g. Wikipedia, news, books) when evaluated on those same datasets. [...]

Policy Implications

Large, general language models could have significant societal impacts, and also have many near-term applications. We can anticipate how systems like GPT-2 could be used to create:

AI writing assistants

More capable dialogue agents

Unsupervised translation between languages

Better speech recognition systems

We can also imagine the application of these models for malicious purposes, including the following (or other applications we can’t yet anticipate):

Generate misleading news articles

Impersonate others online

Automate the production of abusive or faked content to post on social media

Automate the production of spam/phishing content

These findings, combined with earlier results on synthetic imagery, audio, and video, imply that technologies are reducing the cost of generating fake content and waging disinformation campaigns. The public at large will need to become more skeptical of text they find online, just as the “deep fakes” phenomenon calls for more skepticism about images.[3]

Politicians may want to consider introducing penalties for the misuse of such systems, as some have proposed for deep fakes.

Today, malicious actors—some of which are political in nature—have already begun to target the shared online commons, using things like “robotic tools, fake accounts and dedicated teams to troll individuals with hateful commentary or smears that make them afraid to speak, or difficult to be heard or believed”. We should consider how research into the generation of synthetic images, videos, audio, and text may further combine to unlock new as-yet-unanticipated capabilities for these actors, and should seek to create better technical and non-technical countermeasures. Furthermore, the underlying technical innovations inherent to these systems are core to fundamental artificial intelligence research, so it is not possible to control research in these domains without slowing down the progress of AI as a whole.

Release Strategy

Due to concerns about large language models being used to generate deceptive, biased, or abusive language at scale, we are only releasing a much smaller version of GPT-2 along with sampling code. We are not releasing the dataset, training code, or GPT-2 model weights. Nearly a year ago we wrote in the OpenAI Charter: “we expect that safety and security concerns will reduce our traditional publishing in the future, while increasing the importance of sharing safety, policy, and standards research,” and we see this current work as potentially representing the early beginnings of such concerns, which we expect may grow over time. This decision, as well as our discussion of it, is an experiment: while we are not sure that it is the right decision today, we believe that the AI community will eventually need to tackle the issue of publication norms in a thoughtful way in certain research areas. Other disciplines such as biotechnology and cybersecurity have long had active debates about responsible publication in cases with clear misuse potential, and we hope that our experiment will serve as a case study for more nuanced discussions of model and code release decisions in the AI community.

We are aware that some researchers have the technical capacity to reproduce and open source our results. We believe our release strategy limits the initial set of organizations who may choose to do this, and gives the AI community more time to have a discussion about the implications of such systems.

We also think governments should consider expanding or commencing initiatives to more systematically monitor the societal impact and diffusion of AI technologies, and to measure the progression in the capabilities of such systems. If pursued, these efforts could yield a better evidence base for decisions by AI labs and governments regarding publication decisions and AI policy more broadly.

In June 2019, OpenAI testified in Congress about the implications of synthetic media, including a discussion of synthetic text in an Open Hearing on Deepfakes and AI. 6 months after the release of the small 124M model, they released the 774 million parameter GPT-2 language model (so still not the full-size GPT-2 model) and some observations made in the meantime:

Humans can be convinced by synthetic text. Research from our research partners Sarah Kreps and Miles McCain at Cornell published in Foreign Affairs says people find GPT-2 synthetic text samples almost as convincing (72% in one cohort judged the articles to be credible) as real articles from the New York Times (83%).[2] Additionally, research from AI2/UW has shown that news written by a system called “GROVER” can be more plausible than human-written propaganda. These research results make us generally more cautious about releasing language models.

[...] Detection isn’t simple. In practice, we expect detectors to need to detect a significant fraction of generations with very few false positives. Malicious actors may use a variety of sampling techniques (including rejection sampling) or fine-tune models to evade detection methods. A deployed system likely needs to be highly accurate (99.9%–99.99%) on a variety of generations. Our research suggests that current ML-based methods only achieve low to mid–90s accuracy, and that fine-tuning the language models decreases accuracy further. There are promising paths forward (see especially those advocated by the developers of “GROVER”) but it’s a genuinely difficult research problem. We believe that statistical detection of text needs to be supplemented with human judgment and metadata related to the text in order to effectively combat misuse of language models.

In November 5, 2019, the largest 1.5B-parameter model was released by Open AI, though in the meantime NVIDIA Research trained a larger 8.3 billion parameter GPT-2 model. With that came a list of findings, including this:

[...] GPT-2 can be fine-tuned for misuse. Our partners at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) found that extremist groups can use GPT-2 for misuse, specifically by fine-tuning GPT-2 models on four ideological positions: white supremacy, Marxism, jihadist Islamism, and anarchism. CTEC demonstrated that it’s possible to create models that can generate synthetic propaganda for these ideologies. They also show that, despite having low detection accuracy on synthetic outputs, ML-based detection methods can give experts reasonable suspicion that an actor is generating synthetic text.

The Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism is not a governmental organization as such but their research "informs private, government, and multilateral institutional understanding of and responses to terrorism threats". Until 2018, the current director, Jason Blazakis, served as the Director of the Counterterrorism Finance and Designations Office, Bureau of Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State. Blazakis was "responsible for directing efforts to designate countries, organizations, and individuals as terrorists, also known as State Sponsors of Terrorism, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Specially Designated Global Terrorists". Before that, he held positions in the Department of State’s Political-Military Affairs, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Intelligence and Research Bureaus. Until 2016, the director of the CTEC (then called MonTREP) was Brigadier General Russell D. Howard, a "retired Special Forces officer with thirty-seven years of military service, more than twenty of which were spent in some type of counter-terrorist capacity". The CTEC also partners with a "Master in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies" at the Middlebury Institute, which also partners with the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), giving students access to courses with the Department of National Security Affairs and Department of Defense Analysis. The Master's webpage describes this partnership as follows: "You will learn in a military environment, gaining new perspectives on international security issues and expanding your professional network through NPS faculty and students. This opportunity is only available to U.S. citizens." The curriculum includes a wide array of courses such as "Global Jihadism", "Evolution of Chinese Nuclear Policy", "Terrorism in Southeast Asia", etc. The Middlebury Institute also offers a Terrorism Studies Certificate with courses such as Terrorism and Media in the Arab World, Militant Islamic Movements, Eco-radicalism, State Terrorism, Global Jihadism, Apocalyptic Millenarianism, Terror and Counterterrorism in Africa, Terrorism in South Asia, Terrorism in Southeast Asia, Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Central Asia. The CTEC also partnered with a startup called Spectrum Labs to develop an AI detecting "extremist messaging" in non-English languages, starting with Portuguese and Spanish, and the CTEC "lead research into Brazilian and Latin American extremist movements and trends" (I wonder why they're focusing on these specific countries?). Although Blazakis teaches a seminar on the "Radical Right", there is no mention of white supremacy, far-right ideology or neo-nazism anywhere in the curriculum available on the website. But weirdly enough, when the CTEC trained a local journalist on "how to search for online extremists tied to a certain geographic region", the local extremists they found were a neo-nazi highschooler whose "goal is to become a U.S. Air Force pilot", whose "preferred authors are George Lincoln Rockwell, Julius Evola, Benito Mussolini and Machiavelli" and has "just started reading Mein Kampf", and more damningly, Dave Overton, "an associate professor of warfare of the Naval War College who teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey": the same Naval school the institute the CTEC is attached to partners with. "At least once, Overton promoted the #plandemic conspiracy theory, which serves to undermine public health efforts aimed at sopping Covid-19. He also amplifies dangerous rhetoric by using hashtags #EnemyOfThePeople to attack the press. But his primary issue of concern appears to be the exoneration of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser."

Though Open AI was right in raising ethical concerns about the release of GPT-2, considering it can generate fake articles, comments, and social media content at a dangerous speed and in a way that's very hard to detect for AI and for humans, it ended up looking for support in these ethical decisions from those who would most profit of it as a propaganda tool. Though online propaganda against socialism and communism can be laughably unconvincing these days, as we've seen with the thousands of identical tweets supporting a coup in Venezuela and more recently Cuba, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to make it much more complex and believable.

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honeypwark · 4 years

Text

[ Trust Exercise ]

↳ On Track era

↳ Xiang scares Chan. Chan gets jealous? Xiang tells the others.

TRIGGER WARNING: Xiang talks about her eating disorder in this post. She doesn’t go into detail but it is talked about.

m.list

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

The door to the studio bangs open suddenly, “CHRISTOPHER!”

“Oh my god!”

Chan jumps and all but throws his headphones off, spinning around in his chair to look toward the noise. He finds Xiang marching through the doorway with Hyunjin close behind her, laughing just a bit too much at his leader’s jump scare.

“Why?” Chan asks her helplessly, catching his breath as his adrenaline falls.

Xiang just shrugs in response, “Anyway, I’ve brought you here today to let you know that you both know about my eating disorder.”

Chan and Hyunjin look at each other in surprise.

Chan feels oddly disappointed at the knowledge that Hyunjin knows, too; that he’s not the only one Xiang relies on and trusts. He mentally smacks himself immediately because Xiang telling someone else is improvement and he’s just being stupid.

“You know?” Hyunjin asks.

“Yeah, she told me first,” Chan says before he can stop himself.

Shut up, he chastises himself. Stop being jealous over a good thing.

“Anyway,” Xiang drawls, “I’ve decided I want to tell everyone.”

“Sophie, I don’t think the company is going to let you-“

“Not everyone everyone, Chan, the other members.”

“Right, I knew that.”

“Are you sure?” Hyunjin asks.

“I’m sure,” Xiang says.

“You don’t have to if you’re not ready.”

“Don’t try to talk me out of it because you’ll be able to,” Xiang deadpans.

“Alright,” Hyunjin surrenders, hands held up.

“It’s been over a month since Chan found me,” she starts, “And I’m not magically okay now. It doesn’t just go away. But I want to tell the others because this is a big deal and I trust them to help me.”

“You do?” Hyunjin asks.

“Not really. But I know I should and I’m trying to convince myself. Fake it ‘til you make it, right?”

“When do you want to tell them?” Chan asks.

“... Tonight? Everyone’s going to be at the dorm and... I don’t know...”

Xiang’s demeanor has sharply declined from the loud boisterous girl she presents to still being awkward and guarded about talking about her problems. Chan notices and compensates for it.

“Tonight’s good,” he agrees. “I’ve still got work to finish here, but I’ll meet you at home, okay?”

“Okay,” Xiang nods.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

“Family meeting! Family meeting! Everyone to the living room for a family meeting!”

At Chan’s loud announcement upon his arrival home, the members slowly and somewhat confusedly begin trickling of their rooms and into the living room.

“Ugh, do I have to?” Jeongin whines from where he’s sat at the kitchen table surrounded by homework.

“Yes, it’s mandatory for all members of Stray Kids,” Chan says.

“... I’m resigning.”

Chan lifts Jeongin out of his chair and starts pushing him towards the living room, “Thank you for two weeks notice, but until then, you’re still a Stray Kids member.”

Jeongin groans the whole way until he’s shoved onto Changbin and Minho’s laps. He gets comfortable laying across his older members’ legs. Chan stands in front of the other members, doing a head count to make sure all eight are accounted for.

“Alright,” he says, “You’re up, Soph.”

Xiang stands from her place on the arm of the couch, swapping places with Chan.

“Okay,” she starts with a breath out. “Alright, well, um, you guys know how I trended on Naver for being super lightweight?”

There’s a murmur of affirmations.

“Well, basically, I used to be a lot heavier but then I started losing weight really quickly and I guess that caught the media’s attention. You’d think that be good, right? Like, more publicity for the group? And, yeah, it was kind of good publicity but the cause behind it wasn’t good. Like, we want publicity but not for bad things. I-I mean, we want as much public recognition as possible but for good reasons only and uh...”

Xiang trails off, stopping her nervous rambling. She scans the faces of her confused and bored looking members and feels her anxiety grip even tighter at her throat. She doesn’t think she can do this. She looks to Chan at the edge of the group.

He mimes taking a deep breath and mouths, “Breathe.”

She takes a deep breath as well, closing her eyes for a moment.

She opens them and says, “Basically, the reason I lost so much weight and am so light now is because I have an eating disorder.”

It’s quiet for a moment.

Jisung lets out a breath of disbelief, “What are you talking about? You don’t have an eating disorder.”

“Jisung,” Seungmin starts.

“No, we would have noticed,” Jisung says. “You don’t have an eating disorder.”

“She just said that she does,” Minho says.

“No, if she has an eating disorder we would have noticed. We’re not bad friends; we would have noticed. Right?”

Guilt has obviously begun weighing heavily on Jisung as he searches for anything to disprove what Xiang had told them. The others all look confused and surprised, guilt beginning to seep into their expressions as well. Xiang quickly shuts down their self-blame.

“Guys, I didn’t want you to know,” she says. “None of you even know when I’m on my period unless I tell you. I hid this from you so you weren’t expected to know.”

“Can-... can you tell us how long?” Changbin asks gently.

“I started in, uh, late... June of last year. But it kind of fluctuated in how bad it was. I’ve been working on getting better since the... beginning of March?”

She glances at Chan, who nods to agree with her timeline.

“Yeah, that’s when Chris found me,” she says. “I was kind of having a breakdown in the bathroom and he helped me. I told Hyunjin about a week ago.“

“So you’re okay now?” Felix asks hopefully.

Xiang has to let him down; she’s promised herself she’d tell them the truth.

“No,” she says. “It doesn’t just go away because people know now. But I’m trying and I have gotten better. But I still can’t trust myself. I want to move past this; I want to recover. But I can’t do it on my own. And I trust you guys to help me.”

“We will,” Minho speaks up.

“Yeah, definitely,” Felix agrees quickly.

There are a few other shorts agreements from the other boys.

Suddenly, Seungmin stands and walks over to hug Xiang.

“Ah, what are you doing?” she complains.

“This is a hugging moment, Changho, get over it.”

Changbin stands and runs over to join the hug.

“Ah, stop!” Xiang yells.

“Accept our love and support!”

“Bitch, get off!”

Next, Jeongin comes over with Minho to add to the hug.

“Nooooo!”

Xiang complains loudly as the rest of the members come over to join in the hug. Eventually, though, she falls quiet at the center of the meaningful, albeit awkward group hug. Xiang is content, even if she won’t show it, happy to have all of her members support. She rest her cheek on Seungmin’s shoulder and lets them all hug her for a little while longer.

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thinkingaboutyoungroyals · 3 years

Text

Falling For You But You Are Worlds Away: Chapter 4

AO3

Three months passed. The winter snow melted and made way for spring showers.

Simon was proud to say that he had managed to adjust to life in New York fairly well.

The first month was difficult, there was no doubt about that. He was constantly sad and missed his mother, Sara, Ayub, Rosh, and… Wilhelm. He mostly stayed home unless Ana or Tia Elena would drag him out. He hated the subway and how loud and tight it was. And he rarely talked to anyone at school unless he really had to and mostly stuck to Ana’s side during lunch and GSA meetings.

But, eventually, he got used to all of it.

His homesickness was often abated by speaking to his mother every week and messaging Sara, Ayub, and Rosh on Instagram almost everyday.

“How are you, mi amor?” his mother would ask.

“I’m fine, Mama,” he would reply.

“How’s school?” she would follow up.

And, then, Simon would tell her about his day, what he and his new friends have been up to, and toss something in about how much the subway sucks.

“Spoken like a true New Yorker,” Ana said when she heard him.

Simon also made a new Instagram so he could post photos of his adventures in New York (he had to abandon the old one – there were too many creeps sliding in his DMs and many of them made him sick to his stomach). After much urging from Ana, he finally joined the school’s Glee Club and met some nice people he could hang out with. And he and Darren from GSA had become very good friends.

It was obvious from the get-go that Darren had the biggest crush on Dominic, the GSA president, and was always flirting and trying to get the older boy to go out with him. Dominic always refused, stating school as the priority over dating. It never deterred Darren, though, as he kept trying. Simon both admired his persistence and found him kind of idiotic for going after someone who didn’t want to go out with him.

(“All in the name of love, baby,” Darren said in response to Simon’s blunt observation.)

And, speaking of dating, Simon was pretty proud of himself for actually managing to go on a date. Even though he said he wasn’t looking to date, at first, he found himself wanting to give it a shot. So, he said “yes” to the one boy from Glee Club who asked him out. He was nice and had a beautiful singing voice. It didn’t really go anywhere, though. Simon partly blamed it on the fact that the boy wasn’t really his type and partly because he really wasn’t over Wilhelm, yet.

But, it was progress… right?

And, today, he was making one more step towards it.

“I think you’re next,” piped Ana from the seat beside him. “You sure you want to do this?”

Simon swallowed the lump in his throat. “Y-Yeah,” he managed, a little nervous. “You said this will help.”

His cousin bit her lip and shrugged. “I mean, it’s a superstition… belief… thing. I don’t know if it works but people say it does.”

“No harm in trying.” Simon fiddled with the sleeves of his sweater. “Besides, it’s getting long anyway.”

“Hi,” said the kind-looking Asian woman. “It's your turn.”

Simon nodded as he stood up. He followed her until they reached an empty chair, which she swung towards him. He sat and she whirled it around to face the mirror.

“What would you like?” she asked as she fastened a long black cape over his body.

“Um… can you cut about… three inches?”

Her eyes widened. “Really? You have nice curly hair. Prettiest I’ve seen.”

He blushed. “Thanks. But, um, yes, just cut it, please.”

The hairdresser looked a little sad at the prospect of cutting Simon’s hair but she nodded and prepared her tools.

Simon took one last look at his hair – his curly mess of a hair that Wilhelm loved to playfully tug and run his fingers through.

It will be gone soon. And, maybe, along with it, his feelings for the Crown Prince of Sweden.

..........

Wilhelm was making no progress in moving on. Maybe because he didn’t really want to move on.

He had been regularly meeting with the school therapist. It helped his anxiety a little but it wasn’t like he could really talk about missing Simon, regretting his decisions, and how he wished (for the thousandth time) that he wasn’t a prince.

But, if there was anything he learned from being royal was that if you wanted something done, efficiently, you can either delegate or do it yourself. And since he could not delegate his search for Simon to others, he would do it himself.

The smell of hay and horses greeted Wilhelm as soon as he stepped into the stables. It didn’t bother him, he liked horses. They were nicer than people so he understood why Sara liked them so much.

One black horse tapped Wilhelm’s head as he passed and Wilhelm paused to rub its nose. The horse snorted, making Wilhelm chuckle before going on his way.

As expected, he found Sara in Rousseau’s stall, happily brushing him as she made small talk.

Wilhelm paused, unsure about continuing. She was still angry with him and he couldn’t blame her. But, three months had passed and he was desperate. He would face her wrath if it meant he could finally know where Simon was.

Clearing his throat, he stepped closer.

Sara turned her head and as soon as she saw him, her smile disappeared and her eyes narrowed.

“What are you doing her, Prince?” she practically hissed.

Wilhelm bit his lip. “I just… want to talk to you.”

Sara turned back to Rousseau. “I’m not telling you where my brother is.”

“Sara, please.”

She put away the brushes before turning to him. “Why should I do that for you?”

Wilhelm bit his lip, stumped. Sara’s gaze was piercing on him and if looks could kill, he had no doubt he was a goner.

“You’re not… doing it for me. Not really.”

She quirked an eyebrow.

Wilhelm took a deep breath and released a sigh. “I made a mistake,” he confessed. “What I did to Simon… it’s unforgivable. I shouldn’t have left him alone. I should have… done something different. But, it’s done and there’s nothing I can do anymore. That’s why I need to talk to him again. I need to make it up to him. I just… Sara, I just…” He bit his lip again. “I miss him… I miss, Simon. And, I know I don’t deserve him. But, I miss him.”

Sara continued to stare at him, her face unreadable. She wasn’t budging.

Wilhelm swallowed, not really wanting to resort to what he ended up saying next.

“And... You owe him… and me.”

Sara blinked. “What are you talking about?”

Wilhelm took another deep breath to strengthen his resolve. “I know that you knew that August leaked the video.”

He watched as her expression finally changed – from indifference to shock.

“He promised to help you apply for a grant but he didn’t. So, you told Felice what he did and she didn’t speak to you for a week. I know because she told me but begged me not to do anything. She cares about you. And I wouldn’t have anyway because you’re Simon’s sister and he loves you.”

It was Felice who helped Sara get the grant, gave her recommendations and everything.

“But, you never told Simon any of this. So, yes, you owe him and you owe me.”

She glared at him. “I don’t like you.”

“I know.” Wilhelm took a tentative step closer. “Please, Sara. I need to talk to him.”

She sighed. “Mama will be angry with me.”

“I won’t tell her that you told me.”

Sara pursed her lips as she looked at him, as if examining him for more lies. Then, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again to catch his gaze.

“Just so you know, I’m just telling you so that you’d leave me alone. And don’t you dare tell Simon about me and August. I… I’ll tell him, myself. Just not right now because he’s not here and I don’t want him to be angry with me while he’s so far away.”

Wilhelm held his breath, his heart beating as he waited in anticipation.

“He’s in New York. We have an aunt there. He’s living with her.”

New York. Simon was in New York. That was only eight hours away by plane. The Royal family had a private jet. Could he get away with borrowing it and leaving for a weekend? Surely, it wouldn’t hurt to just pop in, right? He could come up with some excuse to his mother. Hell, maybe she didn’t even have to know!

“Wilhelm.”

His mental plans were disrupted by Sara’s firm voice. He looked at her as she frowned at him.

“I know what you’re thinking. And you shouldn’t. Simon is okay there. He has friends. And he likes New York.”

The hope in Wilhelm began to wither.

“It’s not forever, you know,” said Sara. “He’ll be back.”

Wilhelm swallowed, fingers digging into his palm. “Does he hate me?”

To his surprise, Sara chuckled and shook her head. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do to make Simon hate you.” She stepped up to him and awkwardly patted his arm. “You don’t have to worry about that. Just… let him be, for now, okay?”

Wilhelm nodded. “Okay. Thank… Thank you, Sara. Thank you.”

She offered him a small smile. “Anything else?”

He shook his head then looked at Rousseau. “Need help?”

Her eyes widened at that. “A prince? Helping at the stables?”

He shrugged and walked over to Rousseau. “I know how to ride and I’ve helped take care of horses before.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious, before shrugging. She picked up the brush again and tossed it at him.

“Then, get to work, Prince.”

Wilhelm smiled. He and Sara barely talked before, even when he and Simon were… together. He felt a little awkward around her, sometimes. But, maybe they could be friends. After all, they were both missing Simon. That was one thing they had in common.

“I still don’t like you, though,” she said.

One step at a time.

........

Wilhelm kept his promise to Sara and resisted getting on his private plane and taking off for New York.

He lasted until June.

And, it wasn’t his fault, really.

He heard Madison and Felice talking about the latter visiting her in New York during workies.

So, Wilhelm had leaned over and asked, “Can I join you?”

Maddie blinked in confusion. “What?”

“Can I join you in New York?”

Maddie's brows furrowed. “Um… sure. But, why, though?”

Wilhelm grinned. “Simon is there. And I want to see him.”

#young royals #simon x wilhelm

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arch-venus25 · 3 years

Text

The Head and the Heart, Part 1

Hello everyone,

I am submitting this for @just-the-hiddles‘s The Damnit Jim, I’m A Vampire, Not A Landlord Fic Frenzy. I chose prompt “1....You can pay your rent in money or in blood.” I was inspired by all the prompts and will probably use them throughout the series. Basically I use the prompts as guide-lines.

This is the first time I have written and shared a fic online-- or ever really! It’s also the first time I’ve written anything modern so please let me know what you think! I hope I’m posting this correctly--I created the title art--LOL I’ve never done this before. I’m aiming to update the series each Tuesday. So here we go...

Series Masterlist: The Head and The Heart

Summary: The twins are taking a night off from their graduate studies-- or at least Tessa is; her twin sister, Antha, is just trying to keep her out of trouble. What starts as a night of good old-fashioned fun and flirting quickly changes as they find themselves at the doorstep of the Hollow House Bed and Breakfast.

Characters: OFCs Antha and Tessa King, original characters/vampires

WARNINGS: 18+ for suggestive themes and violence, cursing, implied drug use, implied rape, stressful/scary situations, vampires, and characters with incredible hair-- you’ve been warned. Read at your own discretion.

Word Count: 2770

Part One: Faced with Foolishness

“Well, you know Tessa, she’s being Tessa,” Antha murmured into her phone as she watched her twin sister cozy up to her flavor of the month; Tessa flipped her box braids off her shoulder, the beaded ends flirtatiously tinkling against every surface they met. As if watching a photo negative version of herself, Antha mourned her nonexistent reputation. Had she not spent years hiding in her books she may have been able to rival her uninhibited doppelganger in white hot-pants.

“Why do you let her do this to you? It never goes as planned, and next thing you know I’ll be cleaning you two up and feeding you McDonald’s at two thirty in the morning!” She didn’t need facetime to picture Doug wincing through the phone, pushing his Buddy Holly styled Ray-Bans up the bridge of his nose.

“So what you’re saying is how could I let Tessa do this to you?” She laughed, rolling her Havana twists through her fingers to fight off the June humidity. Talking to her best friend helped her forget just how long she had been holding it in line to the bathroom.

“Ant, look I don’t like that bar—you want me to come get you?”

“And leave her? I can’t do that—listen, if we don’t call you for a ride home by midnight just come get us. I’m exhausted and I don’t think she will party that long. Besides, you-know-who just showed up.” She watched as Franco the Flake appeared, wasting no time to linger over her sister—Tessa’s flavor of the month, forgotten within an instant. Antha’s eyes rolled like marbles as she turned away to better hear her friend on the phone; some fraternity boys nearby began fist-pumping into the air as the bartender served up a line of shots for them.

“Ugh, the Flake… well I can hear things are getting started on your end—I’ll keep my phone on me, just don’t drive. Leave her car and I’ll get you two—there’s maniacs out there especially on Friday night.” He warned.

“I owe you,” she groaned and hung up. Antha finally arrived in the ladies’ room, only two women away from her sweet release. She watched as the women cornered the mirror like crazed wanton things, bending and zhuzhing, adjusting their “girls” to their perkiest potential through scantily low apparel.

“Heeeyy…” She quietly greeted the woman that exited the nearest stall. The stranger gave her a haughty elevator eye from head to toe making her feel severely underdressed for a Friday night out. When she threw on a sun dress today, she never anticipated her sister would abduct her after class and have them gallivanting across town. Tessa’s exact words were “Godamnit Ant, tonight we’re gonna have fun if it kills us!” A Cheshire Cat grin spread across her face as she floored the accelerator of her Neon, then cranked up the bass as the radio station started their basement remixes. Fun if it kills us.

Antha stared at her white sandals, her nail polish was chipped and at least three weeks old. Then she looked to her messenger bag hanging on the back of the door. It was covered in Community College film badges and club stickers, per her friend’s preferences. Antha liked her graffitied messenger bag. Like a billboard, it made her appear she had a life outside of her graduate studies.

She should have been at home, text books spread on her lap, feet up. She could hear Doug’s old Buick coughing its way up Momma’s drive, then fumbling outside the door, trying to knock with a third of Popov, case of Dogfish Head, and pizza in his arms. Then he would throw everything on the coffee table and announce “I brought Casablanca!” to which she would say “Oh, more white people movies?” and unphased, he would reply “Good god woman, it’s not Birth of a Nation!” Antha smiled, thinking of their weekly ritual of pretending to do research while gossiping long into the night until Zoey and Tessa would drunkenly Uber home. The distinct shamble, like the walking dead, would scrape up the gravel drive signaling their arrival.

“Hey, you almost done in there?” An annoyed voice yelled over the door, cutting through her reminiscing. Antha could see the reds of the stranger’s eyes between the door crack.

Instead of lounging on the couch surrounded by good beer and even better friends, Antha found herself being hustled by some Fireball-turned-up twat—all under the guise of having fun. “Yeah, sorry about that.” She replied and flushed. She tightened the belt holding in the billowy fabric of her flowy, mid-thigh, sunflower-printed sundress. It was passed down from her grandmother to her mother and so on. Looking like she walked off the set of a 90’s music video, she admitted that at least she was cooler than the other girls sweating in their skin-tight jeans and heels.

Some pretty young thing burst through the door past the line and vomited into the trash bin next to Antha while she washed her hands. It was only nine o’clock. That was a bad omen. When she caught her reflection in the mirror, she realized she pouted just like Momma in those sorts of situations. She dampened a paper towel for the poor thing and could hear her mother’s words repeating in her head: “When you’re faced with foolishness—you take care of it.” Her mantra: Take care of it. Antha’s mantra: Do what Momma says. Tessa’s mantra: If it ain’t fun don’t do it.

Antha applied her vanilla lip gloss as she thought on her mother. She made a promise as Momma was lowered in the ground that they would graduate. It was her dying wish that the twins became modern women with college degrees and to have options; to escape the laboring of farming and perhaps even the rinse and repeat of corporate Delaware. That’s all there was in their state: Farming or banking.

She tucked her shoulder-length braids behind her ears; she truly missed her dreadlocks, but ever since the time Tessa’s boyfriend mistook her for his girlfriend, she cut them off. She was always the one to compromise. Not tonight she decided. Tonight was going to go her way. They would wrap up this foolishness by midnight.

Antha sighed and knew it was time to face the havoc of the bar when a chatty patron pawed at her sundress asking if it was “vintage”. She replied, “Well it’s old as hell if that’s what you mean,” and hurried out the ladies’ room into the sweltering cacophony of nightlife.

Fighting across sticky tile and sweaty rednecks she made a beeline for the bartender. “Mar, can I get two?” She bounced on her tip-toes to cut through the crowd huddled around the length of the tacky wooden bar. Maria motioned to the other side because she couldn’t reach through. Antha continued to fight her way through the herd. She could barely hear over the din of the 2016 campaign commercials and sportscasting when Maria slid two cocktails toward her. The southern comfort and coke cocktails reeked with vanilla syrup, Tessa’s favorite. Antha stared into the melting rail drinks and realized she didn’t know what to order herself because she was always the water-boy for her twin.

“Hey, did you see what’s-his-face is in town?” Maria interrupted her thoughts.

“Sure did.” She groused and tilted her head in the general direction of where she saw Tessa and Franco last. Through the bodies, for a moment, the crowd parted and the two stared.

Stepping back from her esteemed role as the older sister, by barely two minutes, Antha admitted to herself that Tessa always looked good. Her off-the-shoulder top exposed a flawless ebony collarbone, shoulder blades, and arms. As if she was the Queen of Sheba incarnate, her tiny wrists were decorated with gold bangles. Her earrings matched the beads in her hair, reflecting light in her hazel eyes. A waterfall of thick box braids fell down her back and over her shoulders, past the tops of her thighs. Her years of dance complimented the country-chic white cut-offs that revealed just a hint of under cheek when she bent across the billiard table.

“If I were a man, I’d pray for her to bite my head off quick and painless.” Maria laughed, her ponytail frizzing from the heat of her work; her hands rapidly dipping then shining high ball glasses.

“But that’s not her style.” Antha replied wryly.

“You’re both good girls. Now you keep her out of as much trouble as you can—I’ll send Kyle ‘round to your table with beers, just let me catch up here!”

Maria was right: they were good girls. All of Tessa’s shenanigans aside, she never forgot cake for a birthday and with everyone’s break-ups she always had a bottle of Jack stashed with a shoulder to cry on. Tessa was the one that painted Antha’s nails and always lent her the best outfits when the event called for it. On occasion she was even known to deliver soup when her sister ran a fever.

Tessa was the heart of the operation and Antha couldn’t begrudge her just because she was the head.

For better or worse, they were sisters.

Antha reluctantly clutched the chilled drinks and felt a pang of relief in the sweltering bar. She couldn’t see her sister at the billiard table with the onslaught of shuffling patrons, so she decided to move toward her booth. She narrowly missed being covered in appletini as the DJ scratched in one more summer top ten into his rotation. Before she could move forward a voice pinned her in place.

“Your sister’s the worst, you know that?” A nice-looking guy glared at her. His teeth gleamed pink in the red bar lights. Antha bet he had a handsome smile on account of those white teeth, but he was not smiling now. She squinted through the hazy dance floor and recognized him as the guy Tessa arrived with before Franco appeared.

“Hey John, don’t fret, Tessa’s just catching up with an old friend—he comes into town every so often, don’t get upset.” She yelled back at his face as kindly as she could manage over the blare of the oncoming band tuning their instruments. For some reason he didn’t seem to believe her and his chest instinctively puffed up.

“John? I’m José!” He replied. Antha felt embarrassed for both her sister and herself. She grimaced unintentionally, realizing she had said it all with very few words.

She tried to defend their position with a weak excuse. “José, I’m bad with names and faces—” but he stormed off before she could piecemeal a string of bullshit. There goes another Mr. Last Month.

This was having fun. Antha doing damage control on last month’s flame, while Tessa stoked a new one. All of the nice memories of her sister evaporated in the heat of the interaction. She grumbled to herself, as she had grown tired of babysitting, not just Tessa but the men-children she dated. When she finally confirmed her party’s booth, she parted the shadowy sea of basic bitches.

Tessa was giggling like a school girl when her sister dropped the sweaty glasses onto the ratty old table. Franco at her neck like a leech. I hate this guy, Antha thought to herself. He turned his hot gaze on her, “Hi Antha, didn’t see you there.” His drawl was thick like humidity. She thought about giving her drink to Tessa’s date, but now that she could see he was it, she plopped down and selfishly sipped one of the nasty cocktails without offering the second.

“Oh hey Brian,” she said playfully, “where’s your camera?”

“Ant, now you know this is Franco, stop playin’!” Tessa tore her eyes away from him for a split second, but after she threw her daggers she was back ogling him like a dog does a bone.

“Sorry, it’s hard to keep all these blue-eyed, blond, gentlemen straight.” Antha marginally resisted saying yokel under her breath.

Tessa had a type. Beyond all logic, light eyes were the buckle in her knee, the hitch in her breath; and Franco was at the top of her list. Antha assumed he was the Porsche in her garage amongst a long list of Ford’s, but she honestly didn’t know the whole story. All she knew was that Franco showed his face sparingly and only after dark. He would disappear for weeks at a time, which earned him the endearment The Flake.

Now, Antha hadn’t dated enough men in her young life to sort them by color and size, but Tessa had. To her credit, her tastes were diverse, she did her research and knew what she liked. No one blamed her either. With that hair and those legs, Tessa could have anyone she wanted. The great appeal of Franco didn’t add up to Antha though. She found him suspicious. She thought his truck was too loud, his jeans too torn, and his eyes much too heavy.

Franco made idle conversation, inquiring after the twins’ classes as if he cared. His blond, three-quarter parted hair was glossy under the dim lights. When he pulled his tooth pick from the back of his ear and chewed on it, it made him look like an old-fashioned mobster—well until that Delmar twang spilled out of his hillbilly mouth. There was an allure about him; all of his parts matched, but his smile unglued those pieces. A smile that never quite reached his eyes.

Antha found herself sizing him up, drinking the disgusting cocktail faster than she wanted. I bet he has plastic zip ties and rope in his truck bed, she thought. She didn’t truly know why the image popped into her mind, it was just a feeling she got when his eyes were on her; made her feel like a snack, as if he would eat her alive right where she sat. No more Unsolved Mysteries for me this week, she insisted to herself.

“Mmmm-hmmm.” Was the best response she could offer when he spoke to her directly. Tessa continued chatted about her business management courses as he deeply stared at her. Antha figured there was no real room for her in the conversation so she took out her world cultures text and flipped to her last page. She liked hanging out, however her final thesis was demanding all of her energy. The page fell open to vampires in the section of Egyptian mythology. She thought how ironic as her eyes shot up at the man sitting across from her.

“So, there’s this bonfire by Slaughter Bay, I thought you ladies could come with.” Franco suggested lazily like it was too exclusive to be excited about. “You can shotgun babe and we can put Antha and her friends in back.” He eyed the textbooks growing damp on the table. Antha finished the first SoCo and started the second just to cope with him. “You could call up the girls.”

“Zoey… Zoey... Zoey!” Tessa dramatically said into her drink and then laughed. Antha couldn’t help but smirk as Tessa explained to him her girlfriend was like Candyman and could be summoned via a pint of beer. The joke was partially lost on Franco.

Before Tessa could agree to go Antha piped up, a little less shy now that her liquid courage had kicked in. “Sounds awfully romantic, but we can’t.” Before she could continue she was interrupted.

“Hey girl haaayyyy!” Zoey appeared as if out of thin air and snatched one of the beers sent over by the bartender. “You goin’ nowhere without me—not after I Ubered across town!” Her two rando friends hollering and sloshing their drinks.

“How the hell do you do that?” Antha insisted, amazed that their friend appeared.

“Uhhhh, never you mind—we can make bonfire plans later—its ten o’clock, I’m here and Bieber is playing! GET UP!” Zoey declared, the glitter from her eyes dusting every surface.

“Keep an eye on my friends.” Antha told Franco as she abandoned her books to be dragged to the floor. This was the moment she decided she was getting them all out of there; she didn’t like the sound of a bonfire with him and she certainly wasn’t allowing Tessa to go on her own either. She sent a pre-written text message to Doug: “Get here.” Which was their code for its really going down, I need back up.

Twinning Taglist: If you want to be added or removed just let me know; please share with anyone that might be interested. I would love any and all feedback so I can learn and become a better writer. Thank you! I tagged some people that I thought would be interested in this. @myoxisbroken @just-the-hiddles @vodka-and-some-sass @nildespirandum @yespolkadotkitty @latent-thoughts @emeraldrosequartz @villainousshakespeare @hopelessromanticspoonie @caffiend-queen @poetic-fiasco @lokimostly @dianamolloy @marvelgirlonamarvelworld @brightsunanddarkmidnight2-0 @cateyes315 @mooncat163 @nuggsmum @plastic-heart @myraiswack @wolfpawn

#landlord vampire fic frenzy #twinning vs vamps #arch-venus25 writes

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inkedstarlight · 4 years

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Bittersweet: Chapter One

Summary: Nesta up and moved the minute she graduated high school. Now, seven years later, her father has died. After years of separation, Nesta is now living in the same city as her sisters, with Elain as her roommate. Feyre introduces Elain and Nesta to the Inner Circle. But they're missing a certain member... Cassian returns to the Marine Corps to find two new members of the Inner Circle. He pushes Nesta's buttons more than anyone ever has. Cue heavy angst, mutual pining, and a very, very slow burn. Note: So I’m reposting this because I made a lot of changes to the fic and just wanted to start fresh. I had deleted the last things I posted for it, but now it’s officially here! I also just uploaded it on AO3 too, and you can read chapter one here! Warnings: heavy angst Bittersweet Masterlist

June

Nesta was accepted into graduate school today, and she didn’t know whether to cry or smile.

To throw a pity party or a celebration.

To be or not to be.

She was trifling through her mail this morning when she saw the large envelope with the words ‘Prythian University’ printed front and center. She wasted no time ripping it open, and a gasp left her mouth when she read the first sentence.

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Master’s program of English at Prythian University.

She had grabbed her phone to tell someone about the news, but her smile quickly faded when she realized she had no one to call, no one to celebrate with. No one to tell her, “I’m proud of you.”

Nesta had scrolled through her contact list, which consisted of only fourteen people. Fourteen people and not one of them close enough with her to warrant such a text. Heart sinking in her chest, Nesta slammed her phone on the coffee table and fell on the couch. A lump formed in her throat, but she refused to let a single tear shed.

But she was in no position to complain. Nesta chose to move away. She chose to be alone. She was the only person to blame for her own unhappiness.

Nesta had lived in the dreary state of Massachusetts since she graduated high school, leaving her family behind in Maine. The place that conjured nightmares, that was teeming with ghosts. Every corner she turned in her hometown, she was met face to face with her past – the one she so desperately tried to forget. Her family had lived there since Nesta was born. They didn’t have the funds to move to a better town or a bigger house. Up to this point, Nesta’s entire life happened in that horrible town.

Her younger sister, Elain, cried when Nesta announced her decision to move to Massachusetts for college. Feyre’s eyes remained dry, but she wished Nesta good luck.

Nesta and her two sisters had been close as little girls. Sure, they were wildly different from each other – Elain was intelligent and soft-spoken, Feyre creative and stubborn, Nesta hot-headed and brash. They argued. They resented each other in ways sisters did. But they looked out for each other. Since Nesta was just five years old, she did everything she could to protect her sisters, whether they knew it or not.

When Nesta was just fourteen years old, their mother left them. She walked out of the door forever, and everything changed. Elain was crushed but she continued to look out for their father, whose depression worsened when his wife left without saying goodbye. Feyre took her absence the hardest. She had the closest relationship with their mother as the baby of the family, relying on her more than her other sisters. Feyre was the last one to see her. Apparently, their mother made her promise to look out for the rest of the family. She said Feyre was the only one who could do it. And because Feyre was stubborn to a fault, she kept that promise every damned day.

And Nesta? Nesta was relieved and confused and angry and heartbroken. She still was.

So, when Nesta left for college, she promised that she would keep in touch with Elain and Feyre. They all promised. However, they inevitably got busy with their own lives and grew apart. When Elain graduated high school just two years after Nesta, she chose to remain in Maine to tend to their sick father. She attended community college, even though she’d dreamed of being a pediatrician since she was just nine years old. She sacrificed her opportunity for a higher education, and Nesta admired her for that. At the same time, however, she also wanted more for her sister. She had a habit of being too selfless. Always giving, never receiving.

Just a year later, Feyre became the last to graduate. She too flew from the nest, heading west to Colorado. Nesta wasn’t the only one who had a distaste for their hometown. Feyre was born an adventurer. She wants to explore, create, travel. More importantly, Feyre was doing something for herself. Feyre had assumed the role of provider when their mother left them in their youth. At only thirteen, she managed to find a job, and continued to do so until she was eighteen. Feyre had grand plans to visit every New England state during her high school career. She wouldn’t shut up about the places she would see, the people she would meet.

Feyre didn’t stepped foot outside of Maine until she graduated.

The only person Nesta completely cut loose was her father. Elain and Feyre had tried to rationalize with her about this many times, but Nesta put an end to every discussion.

Elain was very close with their father. Feyre was neutral. Nesta resented him. She knew they judged her for that, even if it wasn’t explicitly said. She also understood their reasoning.

They just didn’t understand hers.

Last Nesta heard, Feyre had found her niche at college. Back when they called more often, she had gushed about her new friends and latest conquest. His name was Rhysand (to which Nesta sniggered – who named their child that?), and the pair had recently begun dating after a year of pining for one another. Nesta told her that their love story sounded like the kind of fanfiction she (shamefully) loved. From what Feyre told her, it sounded like she was head over heels, despite her sarcastic deflections.

That was two years ago.

Of course, Nesta had spoken to both her sisters since then. It was rare for them to call, but they would share occasional text conversations. Just last month, Nesta texted Feyre to congratulate her on graduating Summa Cum Laude. It didn’t go much beyond that, though.

Nesta and Elain’s text message history was quite sad to look through. Once a month, Elain would send her an update on their father’s wellbeing. Nesta would not respond. The next month, she would receive another update. No response.

It never angered Nesta to see those texts; it only saddened her.

Elain wore her heart on her sleeve, ever the peacemaker in the family. Her intentions were pure, but she didn’t know the story of Nesta and their father’s relationship. She’d asked, but Nesta was always quick to shut her down.

Despite their one-sided texting, Elain called Nesta every couple of months. It was awkward, but it warmed Nesta’s heart to hear her sister’s voice. Their calls never lasted more than ten minutes, Nesta the one to end the conversation. When they hung up, however, guilt crushed her. Nesta was slowly losing everyone she loved, and it was entirely her fault.

After Nesta had gotten her undergraduate degree in Massachusetts, she worked at two minimum wage jobs for three years to save up enough money to pay for grad school (along with several loans). Her first choice, Prythian University, happened to be just outside of Boulder, the town where Feyre was living. It was also one of the best graduate schools for an English degree in the country.

Nesta considered telling Feyre her news. Obviously, she had to share it at some point. But anxiety crept into her chest whenever she picked up her phone to tell her. What if Feyre wasn’t happy about it? What if she didn’t want Nesta living near her? She had created her own life in a new state. Nesta couldn’t just interrupt after years of shutting her out.

After spending the entire day overthinking, Nesta decided to venture downtown in the evening for a small, lonesome celebration. She would treat herself to a drink (or two), go home, and read a romance novel or two while Iroh, her black, grumpy cat, snuggled in her lap.

So, there she was. Sitting at the local bar, legs crossed as she people watched. Nesta had even dressed up for the occasion. She wore a dress that fell to her ankles, the forest green color complimenting her golden-brown hair. Her arm sleeve tattoo was on full display, and her other ink that disappeared beneath her dress. Dark kohl coated her eyes with a smokey finish.

The bar itself was a welcoming environment. String lights latticed the ceiling, the bulbs providing dim lighting for those who had secrets to keep. Wooden tables faced a small stage at the opposite end of the building – presumably where they held open mic nights. Dark oak walls were plastered with photographs, license plates, and other décor.

It being a Tuesday night, there weren’t many people out. Nesta noticed a couple middle-aged men drinking beers together, an older couple sitting close in a booth, and a small group of what looked like college aged women. Smiles were etched on all their faces. Nesta lifted her hand to touch the frown she wore. It only deepened.

Just be happy for once, Nesta thought to herself.

As the bartender refilled her gin and tonic, someone approached the barstool to her left. Nesta glanced sideway to discover a young man with a hard face. He looked about her age with dark hair and a tanned complexion. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way. Removing his leather jacket, he revealed the fitted shirt he wore, which clung a body that screamed “I go to the gym every day.” Before he sat next to her, the man dropped a duffle bag on the floor with a loud thud.

He didn’t seem to notice her as he flagged down the bartender and ordered a drink. His voice was low, tired. She recognized the sound. It was the sound of someone who was exhausted, and not just in the physical sense.

“Running away from home?” Nesta asked. The man turned his head to find her gesturing to his oversized bag.

Why did I just say that? she asked herself. Nesta rarely made conversation, much less with some stranger at a bar. It was abundantly clear that she had certainly drunk enough alcohol to wash away any and all inhibitions.

He chuckled. “Something like that.” The man peered at her closer. His hazel eyes twinkled in the dim lights as he inspected her. “Bad day?”

“Care to elaborate?”

A sober Nesta would have shut him down before he had the chance to even ask. A sober Nesta wouldn’t have even made conversation with this dark, handsome man.

Alas, she was three drinks down and had no intention of stopping anytime soon.

“I got into my dream school,” she started. “It has a really great grad program. When I read the letter, I reached for my phone to tell someone. Only, I realized I had no one to call. I… I realized that I’m all on my own.”

He stared at her for a moment. “That’s quite a feat. You should be proud.”

Nesta shrugged, uncomfortable with the man’s genuine tone. She never figured out how to tolerate a compliment, much less accept it.

They fell silent before he spoke again.

“I’m about to be on my own, too,” he confessed, focusing his attention on his calloused hands that rested on the counter. “And I don’t know how to feel either.”

No wonder he looks so exhausted, Nesta thought. She could see the conflict in his body language, his tone. War was waging in the stranger’s eyes, and it didn’t seem like the first time he’d gone to battle.

She wanted to ask where he was going. What was in his bag. Who he was leaving behind. But Nesta only nodded with understanding.

I see you.

In that moment, they formed some sort of kinship. They weren’t just two strangers at the bar. It was longing, Nesta realized. Longing for a connection, a companionship. To escape from the perpetual loneliness.

They stared at each other until the man broke his gaze when he checked his watch. He cursed.

“I have to leave now if I want to catch the bus,” he explained. Nesta watched him down the rest of his drink and stand up.

“Good luck,” Nesta said feebly as he shrugged on his jacket.

She wanted to say more. He seemed to need it… and so did she. “Whenever you get lonely, just remember that strange girl at the bar. She’ll be thinking about you.”

His face softened. “Good luck,” he whispered.

#nessian #bittersweet #nesta archeron #cassian #acomaf #acotar #acowar #acosf #a court of mist and fury #a court of thorns and roses #a court of silver flames #my writing #fanfiction #angst #fic

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svtxsoju · 4 years

Text

01. crush that hangover! | dear miss soju

ღ Synopsis: College is hard. Love is even harder. Good thing the students of Mansae University can write in to Miss Soju, the campus’ very own romance advice columnist! The only problem is she’s never been in a relationship. Ever. There’s no telling what kind of chaos she may cause in the love lives of several of MU’s most eligible bachelors. Too bad no one knows who she really is! ღ Characters/Pairings: college AU! Seventeen & OC’s, Pairings TBA! ღ Genre: Romantic Comedy, Slice of Life ღ Warning(s): Mentions of alcohol, underage drinking, mentions of sex, language, bad jokes ღ Word Count: 5.0k words ღ Binu’s Note: ever stare at a selfie so long that it looks weird? ya that’s this chapter for me. there were just so many elements that i wanted to get right, but i kept changing things and now i can’t look at it anymore :c i’ll properly proofread it later, but for now enjoy!! i have some other content ima post later so i’m p excited for that hehehe anyway ya happy friday!!!

《 ⊛ Author’s Note & Credits ⊛ Disclaimer ⊛ Masterlist ⊛ 》

《 Previous ⊛ Next 》

Monday, September 2, 2019 9:05AM

This was not how Joohyun had imagined her first day at The Front. Whenever she described this moment to Jihoon, she was very clear about the way she would walk in so confidently that the senior writers would wonder why they forgot to email her an invite to their 8:30 meeting. Jihoon, who relished in raining on her parade, predicted that they wouldn’t even know her name. But she had no time for his blunt realism, because she had been living as a made-up person since June and her corporate daydreams were the only things keeping her sane. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but she figured that once they saw her talent, everything would be just fine.

So it’s not difficult to imagine Joohyun’s distress when she just barely stumbled into the office this morning, nursing a mind-melting hangover.

She should have known she would be a goner when the sports section interns had challenged her to a drinking game at last night’s welcome party. Her drinking partner, a small girl interning at HR, had only made it two shots in before falling asleep on her lap. For the record, she had still made sure that she was the last intern standing (although she definitely wasn’t the same bright-eyed freshman that could chug a pitcher of soju and beer just to spite Jihoon). Looking around the office, she felt a little relieved to find that the other interns were suffering just as much as her, if their slumped positions and pained groans told her anything. So much for giving a good first impression.

Joohyun was trying her best not to look like she was two steps from an early grave when she was approached by a big woman with a laptop in her arms. She awkwardly bowed her head to greet her, but the woman’s gaze never left the screen of her Macbook. “Miss… Joonyoung?”

“Oh, that’s not--”

“You’re the new advice column intern, correct?”

“Oh. Yes, that’s me, but that’s not my--”

“I’ll show you to your desk.” Without so much as a glance, the woman turned on her heel, now typing furiously on her laptop. Joohyun followed behind glumly.

This was all Jihoon’s fault.

“So, how’s your first day going?” Jihoon asked over his bowl of ramen. He flagged down the tall waiter and ordered a bowl of rice.

“Fine,” was Joohyun’s curt answer. In truth, it was far from ideal. She had watched longingly as all the other interns were assigned with their first projects, while she was left with an empty inbox. How was she supposed to write an advice column when there was no one asking her for advice? She spent most of the morning familiarizing herself with the previous entries of The Front’s dating advice column, the most recent of which dated to the newspaper’s May issue… from 1997.

When her supervisor told her to take a lunch break, she had made a beeline to meet Jihoon at the restaurant near the cafe he worked at. Now that she was sitting in front of him though, she wasn’t quite ready to confess that her dream job was much more mundane than she expected. “Hey, wasn’t this a fried chicken shop last semester?”

“That bad, huh?” Jihoon clicked his tongue. Joohyun sighed - she didn’t know why she even tried to hide anything from him when he’s known her for 12 years. He probably knew some parts of her better than she did. “Come on Joo, don’t give up on Miss Soju so easily. It’s just because you’re a little hungover. We watched The Notebook like five times this summer! What more do you need to know about true love? Do you want me to set you up on another date with that freakishly tall dude for more hands-on experience? Ah, speak of the devil!”

“Thanks, Mingyu.” Joohyun took the bowl of rice and gave the server a sweet smile, which greatly contrasted with the glare she shot at Jihoon soon after. The server, a stunning boy with jet-black hair and tanned skin, stuck his tongue out at Jihoon. She waited until Mingyu went to the other side of the restaurant to serve a rowdy group of boys to whisper-shout at Jihoon. “Can you try not to expose my identity to the whole campus before I even get the chance to write my first ever entry?”

“Ohhh, that’s why you’re sulking. No one’s sent you a letter yet so you didn’t get to do anything today,” Jihoon said. It sometimes got annoying how he could read her like she was his worn-out copy of his favorite sports manga. She had to admit though, he did find ways to make it worth it. Like when he said, “I might actually be able to help you with that one, if you want. I can make a little shout out for Miss Soju on my stream tonight. For a small price, of course.”

“You’re streaming tonight?” The girl perked up from poking at her noodles. Over the past three years, Jihoon had built up a cult following through Woozi’s Universe, a Twitch stream where he shared music made by the underground artists on campus (including him). He only ever released new music on Mondays, so tonight would definitely have a large viewership. Joohyun immediately went into her business pose lest she show how eager she really was. “Well, what would you like in exchange, Mr. Lee?”

“I merely request that you pay for my lunch today, Ms. So,” he replied. Joohyun looked in horror at Jihoon, a petite man who ate like he was three boys going through puberty; today alone he had had an extra-large bowl of ramen, three orders of rice, and two cans of Coke.

Then, she imagined facing an empty inbox for the rest of the week. Yup, this was definitely worth it. That didn’t stop her from making a show of taking out her wallet, taking care to sigh extra loudly. She had to give Jihoon his moment to revel in his triumphs, otherwise he would get grumpy.

Jihoon cackled giddily. “Pleasure doing business with you as always, Ms. So.”

“Pretty sure my hangover is coming back.”

“Oh shit, shut up!” Jihoon suddenly yelped and ducked underneath the table.

“What the hell, Jih--”

“No, don’t say my name! He might hear you and then I’ll have to talk to him,” Jihoon whispered, jerking his head towards a bright yellow blur skipping to the back of the restaurant. “He’s one of my fans. He found out I worked at the cafe and now he keeps coming in to talk to about how sad his sex life is.”

Joohyun pursed her lips and peeked a glance over. He had joined the table of rowdy boys. “Hmm, maybe I should say hi... he seems like a potential Miss Soju reader.”

“Just pay the check already, woman!”

The new interns at The Front were not the only students sporting hangovers that day. This can only be expected of the second week back at MU. Sunday night had been the explosive finale of a full week of department welcome parties, happy reunions, and lots and lots of alcohol. Some of the incoming freshmen were convinced that Mansae University was not actually a school, but a training ground for surviving as many shots of soju as physically possible. That is until they woke up on Monday morning and still had to drag themselves to their 9AM’s, suddenly faced with the reality of what college really was: an endless cycle of perpetual hangovers and school work that’s due way too soon.

This was all good news for the new ramen shop on campus, which had been serving the hoards of hungover zombies since 10AM. Vernon, who was in great pain from the night before, had been ambushed by his roommate after his morning class. He was brought to the restaurant under the pretense of curing his woes with a bowl of warm soup and noodles. When he caught sight of a man in red waiting for them at a back table though, he immediately knew what was actually coming.

“Hello Vernonnie,” Seungcheol greeted him with a sly smile. “Care to take a seat next to me?”

“Uh, not really,” Vernon mumbled, but he sat down anyway. He scrunched his nose at his roommate as the boy slumped into the seat in front of him. “Traitor.”

“Sorry babe, Seungcheol hyung promised me free lunch. Also, you’re one to talk, after you abandoned me to fend for myself last night--! Ugh,” his roommate, Seungkwan, clutched at his head, where a rusty hammer persistently tapped away at his temple. “Hyung, why did you do this to me? My face is gonna be bloated for the rest of the week. I have an audition in two days, you know!”

“Hey, I did ask you if you were sure you wanted-- what was that you ordered? Oh yeah-- ‘the strongest drink that is legal to serve in South Korea’!” Seungcheol said, his eyes wide. As he got more defensive, he began to point his finger excessively at Seungkwan. “And what was it all for? To impress your new crush?”

“I am way too hungover to get lectured by a couple of hypocrites,” Seungkwan grumbled. “I was trying to get some inspiration, you know, a drunken spark of genius! How else am I supposed to figure out how to confess to them?”

“Okay, I wasn’t actually asking,” Seungcheol ignored Seungkwan’s offended gasp in favor of turning his attention to a fidgeting Vernon. His cherry red lips now returned to its wide grin. “I am here to discuss where our dearest Vernon went off to last night.”

“Um.” Vernon answered with a nervous smile. “I just went home early--”

“Bullshit!” Seungkwan looked absolutely scandalized. “It wasn’t enough to abandon me, so now you’re lying too? I don’t know if I can take much more of this!”

Vernon had only officially known Seungkwan for two whole weeks, but with the way the two had been inseparable since move-in day, everyone at the freshmen dorms had assumed that they had known each other for years and years. He knew that someone like Boo Seungkwan was a rare find as far as random dorm assignments went, and that not everyone was so lucky to have a roommate that reminds them to eat real food once in a while or a friend who’s willing to take care of them when they get their first real hangover. Just for that day alone, Vernon knew that Seungkwan deserved to know where he went. Plus he shared a room with him, so it’s not like he could hide anything anyway.

Seungcheol shook his head and slung an arm around Vernon’s shoulder. His grip wasn’t tight but firm enough that Vernon knew he was trapped there until he confessed the truth. “Look, I don’t need any details! I just wanted to make sure that you’re staying safe and all that junk. Also, I would like to know what base you got to.” He erupted into a fit of giggles, but soon cleared his throat to return to his investigation. “Really though, tell us what happened.”

It wasn’t like Vernon didn’t want to tell Seungcheol either. Vernon’s and Seungcheol’s families had known each other since the two boys were in middle and high school, and when he found out that Seungcheol would be a senior at Mansae University that year, he felt some of his nerves ease up about moving out. Seungcheol had always been like an older brother to him, and was always there when he needed his help in high school. He trusted him!

That’s probably why he subconsciously blamed Seungcheol for the pain he was going through at the moment. When the upperclassman had offered to sneak Vernon and Seungkwan into a party at the karaoke bar that he bartended at, the two freshmen all too eagerly accepted without thinking of any consequences. They had received no pointers, no words of caution. How were they supposed to know that bar parties were completely different from welcome dinners? And how was Seungkwan supposed to know that downing so many cocktails within the hour wasn’t a good idea? Most importantly, how was Vernon supposed to know that he would meet someone like her there? Vernon groaned into his hands as he could no longer resist the flood of memories from the night before, and leaned into Seungcheol’s shoulder as he tried to recoil from his past self. “Hyung, it hurts too much to say out loud.”

“It’s okay buddy, take your time,” Seungcheol patted his head gently and called the tall server over. Vernon continued to let out unintelligible noises of regret while the senior ordered bowls for all three of them. “How are you even hungover right now? I only remember giving you one drink last night before you went off with--”

“I’m not hungover.”

“Oh. Then what are you?”

“An idiot,” Vernon mumbled through his fingers. “A big, cringy idiot.”

Seungkwan raised his hand, looking frantically between the two boys. “Excuse me? Did I miss the reading homework? Went off with who? Last night? What? How drunk was I?!”

“Very drunk, but that’s not why you didn’t notice Vernon’s new friend. You were a little occupied with your own conquest,” Seungcheol stage-whispered from across the table. “Honestly, you two are wild. It’s only two weeks into fall semester and you’re already out here simping.”

“Um, and? I saw you making googly eyes at several ladies last night!” The higher Seungkwan’s voice rose, the harder the rusty hammer banged inside his head. “Ow.”

“Those were just my friends who happened to be ladies! Sorry that my eyes are just naturally soft and alluring,” Seungcheol said, batting his long, dark lashes at the boy. “What were her eyes like, Vernon? I only noticed that she had a nose ring. Couldn’t really see her properly while you two were ‘talking’ in the corner...”

“The corner! A nose ring!” Seungkwan repeated and clutched at his chest. “Tell me more.”

“We were just talking!” Vernon finally spoke, his face stuck in an embarrassed grimace. “There’s not really much more to tell. I just know that she’s the coolest girl I’ve ever met and I’ll never meet anyone like her again.”

“What! You two were talking for like two hours! And I saw you leaving with her!” Seungcheol said a little too loudly for Vernon’s liking. The server gingerly approached their table with their orders, setting the bowls down as quickly as possible before rushing away. Vernon noted to give him a big tip when they left. “Don’t tell us that’s all.”

“I just dropped her off at her apartment and went back to the dorms,” Vernon confirmed to Seungcheol’s horror. “I really didn’t want it to be just last night.”

“So... you asked her out?”

“No.”

“You got her number?”

“No.”

“Her Instagram? Her Twitter? Her student ID number? Do you even know her name?”

“I already said I was an idiot,” Vernon whined. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to talk about it. But yes, I did at least get her name.”

It was the only thing he could think of since he woke up. She was the only thing he could think of since he woke up. The way her eyes had lit up while they talked about her major. The way her lips had curved into a clever smile when she told a joke. The way her small hand had fit in his as they walked to her apartment. Then, he would remember how he completely fucked it all up before he started, and his headache would return full-force.

“Dude.” Seungcheol fixed him with a stern stare, but it was kind of hard to take him seriously when his mouth was full of noodles. “Have you never asked a girl out before?”

“You know I have! I don’t know what happened either, okay? I guess I just froze up when she looked at me… then I just went home after telling her good night.”

Seungcheol feigned a gag. “Gross. I was joking earlier, but you’re an actual simp. Hate to break it to you like this.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Seungkwan piped up from where he comfortably rested his head on the table.

“That’s nice, Seungkwan, but ‘sweet’ isn’t gonna get either of you laid,” Seungcheol chuckled. “Vernon, your girl was clearly waiting for you to make the next move. Trust me, girls don’t just ask anyone to walk them home.”

“I didn’t want to look like a creep!” Vernon sullenly stared down at his untouched bowl of noodles. “What am I supposed to do now, hyung?”

“Yeah, lend us your wisdom, O Alluring One,” Seungkwan chanted. “You clearly have plenty of experience from the past three years.

“Like I said, I just have a lot of friends,” Seungcheol shrugged, then suddenly checked the time on his phone. “Oh shit-- speaking of friends, I have to meet one for a study session at her apartment in 15 minutes.”

“Sounds nasty.”

“Your mom’s nasty,” Seungcheol retorted with a provocative smile. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Boo! Then maybe you’d be able to think of how to confess.”

“Uncalled for!”

He placed several bills on the table and checked his phone again. “This should be enough to cover lunch, kiddos. I wish I could help you two, but I’m booked for the rest of the day. And the week.”

“But what if I meet her again?” Vernon asked desperately.

“Then text me! I might not reply right away though. I’ve got two classes later and then I have dinner plans--”

“Another girl I presume--”

“Shut up! I also have to go to the gym before doing… uh, doing a thing. And then I have a shift at 24H.” Seungcheol stood up and looked at the distressed boys before him, his soft eyes more affectionate than alluring. Was he like this as a freshman? He reached over to ruffle the freshmans' heads. “You two should probably leave soon, too. I’ll see y’all later!”

And just like that, Seungcheol was gone, and Vernon was once again left without any advice from the senior. Vernon was never one for dramatics, but his personal failures felt like a gray cloud of shame hanging over him. He began to worry that he was just gonna have to live like this forever, because nothing in the world was bright enough to break through his doom and gloom (well, her smile probably could, but Vernon was never going to see that again). The fact that Seungkwan seemed like he was about to Train to Busan his ass any minute now didn’t really lift his spirits either.

Lucky for him, the universe was not going to let him give up so easily. At that moment, a boy with glaringly yellow hair and a heavy camera on his shoulder bursted through the entrance. His smile brightened when he spotted the two boys in the back and he didn’t hesitate to bound towards them, skipping right past the server welcoming him in. “Seungkwan! I knew I’d find you here.”

“Dearest Vernon, it seems we have been joined by the lovely Soonyoung hyung. Perhaps he might know the medicine we require to ease our ailments in love,” Seungkwan suddenly stood up, all signs of his hangover expertly hidden. He smiled directly into the camera lens. “Hyung, would you kindly share your wisdom with us lowly freshmen? Pray tell, how does one woo the object of their affection?”

Vernon, who was well-acquainted with Seungkwan’s antics by then, watched on in silent amusement. If anything could distract him from his internal turmoil for a moment, it was Seungkwan; even if he was just spewing nonsense. What really made him crack up though, was the way Soonyoung (that was his name, right?) was clearly trying very hard to suppress his giggles. “Um,” Soonyoung managed to cut in breathlessly. “You know I’m not rolling, right? Also, I didn’t understand any of the words that just left your mouth, but it definitely felt like you were putting some sort of ancient curse on me. Hi, I’m Soonyoung by the way!”

Vernon introduced himself and shook Soonyoung’s hand. Seungkwan could only sigh in exasperation at Soonyoung’s lack of culture (not that he was surprised of course). The boy apparently thought it was a good fashion choice to leave his apartment wearing a tiger print button-up. “I was asking if you could help us out with confessing to our crushes,” Seungkwan said with a roll of his eyes.

“Ohh, that’s what you said!” Soonyoung laughed until he was keeled over, clutching his stomach. Vernon and Seungkwan could only watch him with great expectation. When the boy finally caught his breath and wiped the sweat from his brow, he gave the boys a very serious look. “Yeah, I haven’t gotten any since January. So you should probably ask someone else.”

This also did not surprise Seungkwan.

“Excuse me?” The tall server approached them again, clearly giving them his best ‘I hate working in retail’ smile. “If y’all are done eating, could you please leave? You’re disturbing the other customers.”

“I’m eating, I’m eating!” Soonyoung smiled until his cheeks reached his eyes, a power move that he saves for occasions where he found himself in trouble, which happened more often than he’d care to admit. Once the server let them be, muttering something about not getting paid enough, Soonyoung turned his killing smile onto the two boys. “Can I have some of this? I can Venmo y’all later, I’m pretty broke right now.”

Vernon pushed his uneaten ramen towards Soonyoung, who looked at him as if he was the sun itself. The boy carefully set down his film camera and immediately began slurping away. Vernon nodded his head towards the contraption and asked why he was carrying it around.

“Oh, I rented it before coming to find Seungkwan. I’m thinking about making him the subject of my film project this semester, since the theater program is pretty buzzed that he’s joining this year!” Soonyoung patted the camera affectionately.

“‘Thinking about?’ I thought I was your final choice!” Seungkwan blurted. The ramen he had for lunch seemed to have finally restored some of his strength, because he no longer clutched at his temple when his voice rose.

“I said ‘most likely’ choice! I just want to keep my options open,” Soonyoung responded with great care. He didn’t want to hurt Seungkwan’s feelings, but he was definitely re-evaluating alternate subjects at the moment. “It’s only the second week!”

“This is why you’re single,” the theater major said in a huff. “Lack of commitment!”

“Hey! I am perfectly capable of commitment. It’s the girls that don’t want to commit, ” Soonyoung said in a small voice, and looked off into the distance wistfully. “I really hope Woozi does put out a new song tonight. Maybe he’ll tweet something soon.”

“Woozi? Who’s that?” Vernon asked. At this point, he was just looking for anything that would fend off his memories, which lingered at the edges of his mind and waited for moments of silence to bring him another fresh glass of cringe. He was pretty sure that he had experienced well above the recommended daily serving.

“Oh, he’s a Twitch streamer from MU! I was actually gonna say if you two are really struggling in the love department, you should definitely check out his stream tonight.” Soonyoung nearly wiggled with enthusiasm. “He usually promotes songs from artists around the area, but his self-composed songs are my personal favorites. They’ve been what’s getting me through this dry spell, honestly.”

“Oh, that sounds pretty cool.” It sounded like it was right up Vernon’s alley, actually.

Soonyoung nodded. “You listen to them and you just feel hopeful to find the kind of love he sings about. I’ll send you the link later!”

“Underground artists? No thanks, I think I’ll stick to Eva Noblezada,” Seungkwan scoffed. “I don’t really think a stranger can help me with my problems. They don’t even know me.”

“Oh come on, Kwan. Let’s just give it a shot!”

Even after all his grumbling, Seungkwan still sat beside Vernon at one of the desks in their dorm later that night. They had opened the link Soonyoung had sent them, and munched on some snacks while they waited for the stream to start up. Vernon waited with baited breath for his distraction to begin; he had spent most of the day attempting to wall off any thoughts of her or last night, but it was kind of difficult to think of anything else when all of his professors only droned on and on about quizzes and homework.

When a boy with fair skin and burgundy hair came into frame, he nearly sighed in relief. The streamer appeared to be sitting in a small, dark office only illuminated by his computer screen and several pink neon signs that hung on the walls. Vernon could recognize the faint outlines of several guitars and a keyboard behind him. The boy clicked around for a while as more people joined the stream before finally waving into the camera.

“Hi guys, welcome in! Thanks for joining Woozi’s Universe. If you’re new here, I’m Woozi and I like to write songs sometimes. If you’re an old subscriber, I’m really sorry for the long wait. I’ve been working on a lot of projects, doing some collabs - I’ll actually be releasing one of those collabs tonight and I’m really excited for you guys to hear it. If you have any new songs you want to listen to together, go ahead and leave them in the chat!”

As soon as the stream started flowing, Vernon immediately knew why Soonyoung gave Woozi such rave reviews. The guy just had good vibes and he definitely knew his music. Vernon was hooked. Even Seungkwan, try as he might to look disinterested, couldn’t help bopping his head occasionally.

“Thanks for the subscription @chweinggum! You just helped me reach my tenth new sub for tonight, and you guys know what that means. Time for the new song! It was really fun to write this with my collaborator, so we really hope you like it!”

After spending the past hour just vibing in Woozi’s Universe, discovering new songs and artists, Vernon had really hyped himself up to hear the streamer’s personal work. If Soonyoung’s words were true, this would be the song that would truly heal his heartache, the song that would push him to forget about the whole ordeal. He listened in anticipation as pleasant harmonies played through his laptop speakers. But as the song progressed, Vernon did not quite feel the reprieve he was hoping for. In fact, he was kind of taken aback. The lyrics… felt like they told his story. Maybe not word for word, but enough to make Vernon stare at the laptop screen with his mouth open. What kind of hocus pocus, That’s So Raven, mind reading shit was this? The song broke down the walls he had tried to build throughout the day and left him vulnerable to its strangely upbeat and energetic tune.

He had to admit that he didn’t hate it. The cringe from his own actions did not disappear, but the song helped him focus more on the moments that made his heart flutter, the moments that incited those pesky butterflies in his stomach. They were the moments that made him so hard on himself in the first place and the reasons why it hurt so much that he messed up. She had made him feel seen. She had done everything right. And all he wanted to do was to show her that he saw her too. He just had to figure out how.

Woozi clapped his hands loudly when the song came to an end, bringing Vernon out of his deep reverie. “And that was Pretty U by yours truly! I collaborated on it with an artist who doesn’t want to be named as of now, so I’ll just say it was great to work with such a talented person and I hope to work with them again soon! Anyway, we know the lyrics are pretty cheesy, but let’s just say it’s based on a juvenile romance! I tried capturing that giddy feeling of liking someone and wanting to tell them pretty words but losing confidence at the last second. I’m sure we’ve all been there before.”

Vernon sat up, nodding his head as if Woozi could see him. After his song scanned his soul like that, Vernon figured it wasn’t impossible.

“I know that some of my subscribers listen to me because they go through these kinds of hardships. But I wanted to say that my songs can’t fix everything. Even I go through it sometimes and I need someone to lean on. There’s actually a new thing I just found out about from a friend - ‘Dear Miss Soju’. It’s a column that they’re gonna start publishing on The Front’s website, and you can anonymously write in all your burning questions about love, relationships, or sex. So if you’re having a hard time confessing like in this song, just know that there’s someone out there to help you out!

“Since you’ll be anonymous, you can write about your heart’s deepest desires, even if it’s a little freaky. Yes, I’m talking to you, user @callmesoon, please stop trying to tell me about your sex life. Anyway, I’ll put the email in the description for anyone that’s interested!” Woozi paused to laugh at several of the comments. “No guys, The Front does not sponsor me. But I can tell you about a company that does sponsor me. Hello Fresh--”

Seungkwan closed the laptop and sighed. “Well, that didn’t help me at all. Soonyoung hyung said this Woozi guy was gonna make me feel better, but now he’s just telling us to spilll all our secrets to some other stranger. What a scam! Right, Vernon? Vernon?”

By the time Seungkwan turned to look at his friend, Vernon was already writing his second draft for his email. The boy sighed again. Maybe he could give it a shot.

The next morning, Joohyun opened up her laptop to find thirteen emails in her inbox. She smiled.

Now she could get to work.

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bibliocratic · 4 years

Text

TMA jonmartin fics

Organising these, mostly so I can keep track to be honest. All some flavour of jonmartin, predominantly fluff or angst. cws in original tags.

Updated as of June 2020

If you'd like to send any prompts, feel free! All of these are also bundled together on A03.

Martin tries to rescue Jon from Elias, post-160

JONAH MAGNUS Oh, but, look. Look at him, Martin. Isn’t my Archive magnificent?

MARTIN [whispered, almost fearful] Yes.

Martin feels the pull of the Lonely. Jon draws a bath.

“Come on,” Jon says, enfolding their hands together. His voice is kind, and that’s never died, no matter how the world bricked it up and starved it of sunlight. Jon’s kind to his bones, and it wells up from the deep down of him.

Jon pulls the way, and Martin follows behind.

Even after Jon stops being the Archivist, they aren’t safe. (parent!AU)

“I would like to propose an idea,” Martin says. Softer now. More tired. “and I-I want you to hear me out.”

“OK.”

“Whatever it is.”

“You’re not exactly inspiring confidence.”

Martin gives him a Look.

“OK,” Jon says, rubbing his thumb over Martin’s knuckles. “OK, I promise. Whatever it is, I-I’ll at least listen.”

Martin's nightmares never quite leave him

Martin feels the question form there, at the centre, the tentative journey it traverses before he hears 'Can I…. I mean, do you want to…?’

The question isn’t fully born before he’s heaving great waves of sobs into the chest he’s pillowed on. Like clockwork, the arms come round, always an inch too tight a grip, and somehow that makes this easier to bear.

Things were always going to catch up with them eventually

He’s a light sleeper, and they knew he would be. Didn’t want him to wake too soon, to be denied a proper welcome. Jon shifts and stretches and burrows as he slips dazedly into consciousness, nestling tighter against the body next to him still fast-asleep before the thick weight of sleep is dropped and he jolt up, a punched out breath of shock escaping them.

And finally they are witnessed. They watch his expressions free-fall from understanding to despair.

Local Man cheats at card games, Local Avatar is smitten

Martin likes playing, not necessarily competitively, but where he does excel is in cheating. Jon catches him swapping out a three for a queen out of the corner of his eye – well, Martin wants him to catch him – and his smile is wide and shocked and gleeful in his own way –you cheat! How could you?!

soulmate-identifying marks, or: fuck yeah tattoos

“The Archivist?” Peter Lukas asks. His voice isn’t mocking. Martin isn’t sure what it it.

He hates the tone of it.

“Do you want something?” Martin responds curtly. Frosty. Tugging his sleeves back down pointedly. Peter’s expression is ever so proud.

Something is wrong. Martin just can't put his finger on it.

“Sorry,” Jon says, without sounding sorry in the slightest, almost cheeky. He bestows another kiss that is not a kiss to Martin’s neck, scraping a little with his teeth.

“Sleep,” Martin repeats, groggy but firm, and traps the soft, unblemished skin of Jon’s hands in his own.

Martin has certain standards

Jon feels a wide smile begin on his face (still so rare, still hard-won, but Martin teases them out of him with the smallest things these days).

“You hipster!” he says with delight, secretly pleased he’s found something he can tease Martin about. “Have you thrown out my teabags just to make a point?”

Jon wakes up and finds Martin gone

– Something is absent from us. –

Jon opens his blinking, feeble human eyes. Feels around with his finger tips, feels the cool sheet next to him, the unoccupied imprint on the pillow.

Martin is not next to him.

Jon strikes a bargain to save Martin

Martin is blinking away the sediment build-up of unshed tears and they roll down his face, shrivelling in the strict grip of the cold.

“I thought,” he says thinly, “I thought I was going to die alone.”

“You aren’t going to die,” Jon bites out, and it only has the ghost of a furious intensity but the sentiment soaks in it. He feels the Loneliness recede, with a slowness that’s impartially mocking. “You aren’t going to die. I won’t let you.”

Martin showing normal, genuine human anger, feat. Blackwood Snr.

“Right,” comes the short response. “I am – you know I am trying here.”

Martin’s voice goes low and flat and judgemental.

“And how long until you lose interest this time?”

MLM solidarity front, or: Tim and Martin go drinking

“I mean – I – I’d like to. If you – if you still want.”

Tim grins, and his cocksure manner is on display like a theatre curtain lifted. He stands up, doing a stupid little bow like he’s trying to make Martin laugh.

“t'would be my honour to lead you astray, Master Blackwood.”

Back-and-forth early morning teasing

“It’s a bit late to tell me you’re a dog person,” Jon chides instead. “I’m afraid I might have to call this whole thing off, if that’s the case.”

Martin looks up at him with his face squashed into his ‘you are not, and have never been funny, Jonathan’ face.

Martin hides an injury. Jon is freaking out in his own way.

He can taste grit and dirt in his mouth and there’s a stinging dampness on his upper lip. He blinks, coming to terms slowly, and it’s then that he realises, just from a brief glance, that Jon is absolutely fuming.

Jon is getting better at expressing what he wants

Jon reaches out, and like setting fingers to the board of a violin, delicately fits his hand against Martin’s. Like he’s memorised exactly the places where they go, the coves and shorelines where their islands can align.

Martin’s grip has never been as careful. His fingers engulf Jon’s smaller size, cushioning them in a sturdy grip.

How to proposal to your boyfriend during an apocalypse, and definitely how not to.

Jon tries to write vows.

Domesticity and going on holiday, post Watcher's Crown

“Jon!” Martin is shouting with his head shoved in the under-stairs closet. “You got your raincoat?”

“I won’t need it,” comes the low response from the kitchen.

“The weather said it might rain.”

“It’ll be fine,” Jon replies, only half listening really, with a willfully misplaced confidence in the weather.

“I’ll pack it anyway,” Martin calls back, kicking something else with his foot that sounds like the hoover. “In case.”

Jon does not react well to ending the world. Martin puts together the pieces.

Under the watch of that terrible sky, Jon crumples like something demolished.

Martin catches him. He always will, he remembers thinking.

In the Lonely, Jon hugs Martin (set mid-159)

Jon’s arms go around him, and there is nothing tentative, soft-shoed, there is no awkward displacement holding him slightly at a distance. Jon’s arms go around him, and he – his body unfolds against Martin’s. There is much too much of him, a surge of all-at-once motion and Martin feels like splintering.

Martin's not the only one susceptible to the Lonely

He hears the wash of mile-distant waves, as though behind the shelves to the front of the shop, and thinks not here, not here.

He tries to shake his head loose of the fog beginning to bind it like cobwebbing wisps. But the world has such terrors in it, and the Archive keeps record of them all. And that’s what Jon is, in the end.

The day-to-day ramifications of being a record of ceaseless terror

In the dark, under the covers, the sound is the shift of grave soil, of pressing earth, but it is also Martin, ensconced in warm empty dreams, Jon trying to breath through his nose and not wake him up, and it can be all of these things at once.

Supportive Martin and the Eye-based horror his boyfriend sometimes turns into.

“Stop.”

The rats stop. So does Martin. The scream bubbles un-made and unvoiced in his chest and he can’t blink the blood out of his eyes. He can’t see Jon, but he doesn’t expect to. It’s not Jon that’s here with them any more.

'I'll stay right here, ok?”

“The ambulance will be here s – ” Martin starts, trying to be gentle, but Jon tightens his grip ever so kindly, shakes his head.

“I don’t think I’ll be waiting around for that,” he says, and it’s almost light-hearted in the face of what they both know is now inevitable.

Patron swap, Lonely!Jon, Beholding!Martin

It is a surprise to no one that upon taking over the Institute, Peter Lukas turns his hand at trying to steer Jonathan Sims to the Lonely.

In the days after the end of the world, Jon finds Martin a gift

“Woss, what’s wrong?” Martin starts, but Jon’s pressing something into his hands firmly, so self-satisfied, joyous and smug with a mysterious success, and he feels his own grin start to blossom in kind, wanting to take part in the same delight. “What is it?”

sleep doesn't look pleasant, spoilers for 161

Martin won’t wake up. Eyes clenched closed, breathing laboured, and for a long while, Jon’s world gets quieter as his own immediate louder fear rises like gall in his throat. He tries compelling him even.

Jon doesn’t know that this will happen every time Martin dreams.

Jon is admitted to hospital. Martin frets.

Jon nearly died today, his brain keeps reminding him. You nearly lost him, you nearly weren’t fast enough.

Trans!Jon, Trans!Martin, intimate rituals

Jon’s hair is getting long.

Morning rituals, Jon admiring the view.

But he much prefers this slow and lazy unwinding of a day because he gets to study Martin. He puts his elbows on the wooden table off to the side of their pokey kitchen, and enjoys watching an artless, intimate one-man performance just for him, as he acclimatises to the day.

Scottish honeymoon, soft get-together

Martin wonders why Jon didn’t go upstairs. Take the bed. The cottage is an old crofter’s place, two small and utilitarian bedrooms where they discarded their meagre belongings on arrival.

Martin looks at the tea. Feels the scarf under his head, the heavy coats weighing him down.

Thinks he might know why.

Monster!Jon, AU S5

“What the fuck are you?” she says. She does not lower her weapon. The guard to her left has raised her own.

All of its eyes blink out of rhythm as its unseen mouth moves with that croaking, piteous whisper. “He’s, he’s human, he’s hurt and he needs – he’ll die, please.” The man it is carrying looks human. Painted with dirt and filth, the slick of insects broken over his skin. His breathing is starting to rattle.

Tim is mildly cursed, S1 shenanigans

Whoever is closest, but usually Sasha, will give a sarcastic cheer. To which Tim – cradling his injury, glowering with a fire-starter expression at whatever file or paper or fragment dealt the blow – will reply: “Piss off, right, it’s not funny, I’m cursed. This is a curse.”

OG Archive crew sad hours

There could have been a day, when they’d all just talked.

Martin struggles to readjust to the world, post 159

Some days though, when the tempest around has dropped from squalling, Martin feels brave enough to look over at Jon.

Jon and Martin’s post-s5 wish list

“Martin?”

“Hmm?”

“After all this, after we’ve – what do you want to do? If we manage to – ”

“When we manage to.”

“Fine, when all this goes back to the way it was, what do you want to do?”

Safehouse drabble

Jon doesn’t sleep but this rest is as close to peace as this world allows him.

AU S3, Breekon and Hope take Martin, not Jon.

Tim always thought Martin was reliable. Unshakeable.

That he was always going to be there.

Martin’s daemon is a spider. People have mixed feelings about this.

“Aron,” Martin says slowly. He keeps his hands folded on his lap but his fingers twitch to reach out. “This is – we’ve settled, haven’t we?”

Aron can’t nod. His form can’t allow for such an expression. But he brings his legs in closer, pebbles up and won’t look at Martin, and that’s answer enough.

Aspec Martin Week - Daemon!AU

Martin has always liked watching Emer. The flash of gossamer-white wings circling Jon’s head or sat on his wrist like an overly-extravagant watch while he read statements.

“Stop looking,” he used to hiss at the moving lump under his shirt, poking many orb-like eyes over his collar to stare even when Martin stopped. “It’s rude.”

Aspec Martin Week - Martin’s first Pride

Restored from their dramatic hangovers, Monday comes. Martin arrives huffing and delayed from the Tube to see Tim’s stuck his flag so it stands battered and proud over the lid of his laptop. Sasha’s made her small desk teddy bear hold hers. And it’s the memory of the day, the sun and the heat and the wild dizzying lack of expectations of it all, that gives him the courage to bring the flags he carefully preserved in on Tuesday, to put them jutting out of the mug on his desk that holds his stationery.

Honestly, he doesn’t expect anyone to comment on them. It’s not like anyone else comes down to their offices anyway.

Aspec Martin Week - Martin comes out (with help)

You surge against his lips again so he can’t see your nerves, you stupid, unfounded, calcifying anxieties, the barriers you keep putting up yourself because you are so terrified of being happy.

“Maybe… not tonight?” you mumble into your shared air. If he pushed, if he asked again, you would. He dragged you from the shoreline, out of the fog, this is the least you can give him. You’d lie on your back, or you’d cover him with your shape, and you’d try so hard to make him happy so he wouldn’t notice you not sharing the same. “’m a bit tired.”

Tricky, is what you are. Perjurious. Prevaricating. Two-faced.

Martin is a massive fan of Jon’s multitude of eyes

“I just want to see,” Martin mimics petulance and Jon huffs a smirk.

“They are my eyeballs,” he responds primly, putting down a dry mug and picking up a plate to towel off.

“What’s the point of having horror-bestowed physical improvements if you don’t show them off?”

Martin worries about being a father

That’s not – ” Martin says, stops. Pulls his hands away from his face, his eyes puffy.

He takes Jon’s hand, still perched on his knee, laces their fingers together. Over the baby monitor, Jon can hear the soft untroubled in-and-out of their son breathing.

“I sounded like my dad,” Martin confesses finally. Fat tears well up and stagger down his tear-prickled cheeks. “I sounded exactly like him.”

Martin and Jon get wine drunk

Jon sticks out his tongue. Martin tries to poke it with his finger, and Jon reels back with another one of those wine-laden expressions, earnest and open as a window.

“I want to know everything about you,” he says, struggling with finding the opening at the top of the pack, before he pauses, dutifully following up with a no-less sincere and concessionary: “But not if you don’t want to.”

There’s nothing sexier than open and honest communication (post-166)

“I fucking hate the Buried,” Jon says into Martin’s shoulder.

“It sucks,” Martin agrees. “You er – you have any more poetry this time?”

Martin feels Jon’s ‘no’ like an earth tremor over his breastbone.

“Worms,” comes the reply muffled shapeless into his coat.

“Like…normal worms?”

“People worms.”

“Rrright. Less fun then.”

Martin has some thoughts about the Web

Martin does not think about spiders.

(Except he does.)

Did you feel, Jon had proposed delicately, like she was influencing your mind at all?

Jon’s world has no certainties. No maps, boundaries, no promises that can remain unquestioned.

Martin has the edges of his world now. He has to be able to trust in them.

Jon gets hurt and doesn’t tell Martin

Jon burns when Martin puts a hand to his forehead, and he won’t wake, not for Martin’s calls and shakes, not for anything. When Martin goes to check, the wound on his leg has rooted from ankle to thigh, festering rot-black branches of something sludgy and swollen and varicose tracing the same lines as his veins.

The Corruption wars with Beholding upon the battleground of its Archive, and there is nothing Martin can do.

Martin still struggles with his mental health

It was easier, Martin thinks sometimes, when he could blame it on the Lonely.

Episode 170 could have gone so many different ways

This is your house, we whisper to him.

You have always been here alone, we promise.

We recite to our beloved that he has never been loved, and our winds, our walls, our winding mists tell him so often that eventually he believes us.

#tma #long post #jonmartin #the magnus archives #fic #prompt fills #jonathan sims #martin blackwood

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mearihellalicious · 3 years

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It’s 4 o’ clock in the morning in the most humid city I have ever lived in. I was suddenly awakened by a random noise outside my apartment. As a light sleeper, dozing off again is a hard thing to do. So,what would a solitary woman do at this time of the day? Reminisce. Think of the good old days.

Out of the blue, I stumbled upon my chat box. Heaps of ‘ancient’ talks strolled me down through memory lane. One particular conversation with a guy urged me to write this expressive piece.Perhaps this confession is no longer valuable now since it has been several ages ago, but the thought of penning down a revelation thrills me at this exact moment.

They say the best memories in a person’s life happen in high school — when we are too old for playgrounds but too young for night clubs. I can’t say it’s true for me, but I do have happy high school thoughts. We've been classmates for four straight years in high school. Back then, we were paired up through the matchmaking prowess of our classmates. They assumed we looked good together, that we had ‘physical chemistry’, if that’s even a valid phrase to describe it.

True enough, you were quite a good-looking guy but I was not attracted to you in the slightest bit. Nevertheless, you were the kind of guy who knew how to carry yourself in the most desirable way possible. You were always neat and sweet-scented. You could pull off a white shirt and jeans outfit and would simply look gorgeous.

All throughout my mundane high school life, you consistently made me feel ‘special’ but I hardly cared at some point. The way I treated you was on a mood to mood basis. At times, I rode along with your trips, no matter how strange; other times, I felt irritated with your insistent presence. Sometimes, we seemed to be getting along pretty well; most times, I argued with you and ignored you for no acceptable reason at all.

During summertime, we communicated through text messages or landline calls. I could recall how bipolar I was by asking you to move on from me and promised to remain friends once classes start in June. But the next day, we would cry over the phone, asking each other to hold on to whatever we have — although I didn’t know what was the most appropriate term to label that kind of relationship. We seemed to be more than friends but less than lovers.

As each year passed, we became closer to each other. I was aware of how you felt about me. Everyone else in the class knew it too since you were vocal about it. Yet I didn’t take your emotional state seriously. I would talk to you only when I felt chatty or when I needed something. Every time it rained, you would take your polo shirt off to cover me so I didn’t get wet. Whenever I was hungry, you fed me. Goodness, you were a selfless man!

But then again, I took you for granted because I was eyeing on someone else. I had a lot of silly crushes, not to mention, I went crazy over them. You made me know how jealous you were of the guys I fancied but it was no big deal for me. You quickly became just an option. Despite myself, you stayed still.

Then one day, I was walking alone around the campus, a group of freshmen were calling my name. One of them introduced herself to me. She told me she was your sister. I didn’t realize until then that she was attending the same school.“You’re Ellen, right? My brother really likes you and even keeps your photo under his pillow,” she exposed. From that day on, we somehow became friends. She teased me an awful lot as she revealed all the weird things you did and just how much you adored me.

Every Valentine’s Day, you never ran out of romantic ideas. Although I was single, I never felt out of place. When I arrived in school, a small bouquet of flowers was already waiting for me onmy desk with a note or chocolates with it. You even baked cake for me when I requested it from you. However, on our last ‘Hearts Day’ in high school, things were different. Something happened two days before V-Day.

As an active girl scout, I normally spent my vacant time in that room exclusive for us. When we entered the room, my friend saw an envelope on the floor addressed to me and was signed as ‘secret admirer’. I didn’t believe it until I saw the letter and read it. It was about the sender’s love for me and the hope that I felt the same way. I was clueless who it was from but our classmates pointed their fingers at you. You stubbornly denied the claim saying, “It’s not me. Don’t flatter yourself!”

The next day, I found another letter from ‘secret admirer’. It was an acrostic poem of my name. The words were so deep and heartwarming that I could feel myself melt. Finally, on the 14th of February, another letter came. It was very simple — a whole sheet of bond paper filled with ‘I love you’. I thought there was nothing to it until I noticed there were some capital letters in them, which my best friend and I figured the message, “Please meet me today at the YES-O (Office) at 6 PM. I will be waiting for you. Please don't bring anyone. I want you to be solo. Don’t worry, I only want to introduce myself.”

I was sold to the belief that someone was playing a prank on me so I didn’t plan on meeting the sender.It was raining hard that day and we were having our daily girl scout formation at the oval field. Suddenly, you arrived and called out my name. I excused myself from the drill to meet you when you said, “Someone’s waiting for you at the office, why didn't you go?” “For real? I don’t care whoever he is,” I replied. Then with downcast eyes, you answered, “Honestly, it was me.” At that point, you handed flowers to me and I teasingly punched you in the arm. It felt so awkward that I rudely sent you home. That was our final romantic encounter.Before we graduated, we made a pact that if wewere both single by year 2019 (I’m not even sure of that anymore), we’d meet each other again at the Taoist Temple and we’d start things right.

Several months later, I got into a relationship. We didn’t see each other for quite some time and the communication spiraled from little to none at all.Surprisingly, on my first birthday after high school (since my birthday falls during summer), I was at home when a kid approached me and handed a letter with a rose and said, “Someone asked me to give it to you.”

As I learned it was from you, I ran hurriedly outside the house, hoping to see you again, but you were already gone. I was so moved knowing you still cared for me even when I was already dating someone. You went through all the trouble just to greet me. A few days later, I argued with you for what you did, for simply disappearing. As an apology, you paid me a visit and we chitchat over the pizza that you brought.

During college, we had separate lives. The last conversation we had in 2012 was about our plan of going abroad together, particularly Germany. You wanted me to meet your grandmother and you even said you would still marry me. Perhaps it was meant to be a joke, but I probably believed it at that time.

All of a sudden, you met your first girlfriend. I came out from two terrible relationships while you were in a blissful state with her. I saw all her posts of your little surprises for her, your sweet gestures. I knew the feeling too well and I understood how lucky she was. I felt nothing but pure happiness — that you finally found someone who could love you the way you were supposed to be loved.

Unexpectedly, I noticed that I could no longer see any of your updates in Facebook. I searched for your name and I realized I was already blocked. You unfollowed me on Instagram and you removed me as your Twitter follower. Complete loss of contact.

The last thing I heard was your relationship with her was going strong and you were intensely in love with each other. I used to envy her but I realized that no, I don’t wish to be her. I don’t deserve a man as great as you are. I might not be able to handle you. I only wish you all the happiness in this world.You may not be my TOTGA but you were my sweetest ‘what if’. I hope when you get married, you would at least invite me so I get the chance to witness the happiest day of your life. Yes, there was never an ‘us’ but there was you — someone who once in my life treated me right — because once upon a time, you were my fairytale.

PS. to whoever know him, please don't mention his name:)

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boywivlove · 4 years

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| Title | Lost My Way |

| Pairing | Min Yoongi x Reader

| Word Count | 1K

| Genre | Pianist AU, fluff, slight romantic moments, slight angst

| Summary | Min Yoongi was a rising prodigy in the pursuit of his career as a musician, but after a car accident his hands are left with severe injuries. It takes years for him to find his way again, and he will never give up his dream, no matter what life throws at him.

| Warnings | descriptions of accidents and injuries.

| AN | My second drabble for the `BTS Bingo Collaboration` with `ficswithluv` and I’m really glad to get this out!! Im going to be posting a lot more drabbles in the weeks to come !

----- “Even if Im slow, I will walk with my own feet Because I know this path is mine to take. Even if I go back, I will reach this path Eventually I will never I will never lose my dream” ----

If you asked Min Yoongi before graduation, where he thought he would be in two years, it wouldn't be here. He would have answered that he would have liked to be training with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, having been offered a place with them straight after graduation. He never could have guessed he would be sitting in a physiotherapy clinic , his hands barely able to hold a pen, all because of a head on collision with a drunk driver. But fate has a weird way of messing with people's lives, doesn't it?

He hadn't always liked piano, in fact, up until he was 15, he had never touched a key. Yoongi had grown up streetwise, not classically trained. But during a summer school program, he thought what the hell and took it as an elective. It was either that or track… no thanks. Yoongi was quick to learn how to play, his teacher noting that he was the quickest student to learn the ins and outs of playing. After he had been given the confidence to play, he had started to pride himself on his dedication to his skills, and to have it taken away from him because of one stupid, selfish ass hole… it burned him. It made him angry. He was supposed to make something of his life, to be recognised for his skill and get off the streets.

The crash happened one night in June, he had stayed late to practice for his upcoming exam. The driver sped right through a red light, and right into the front of Yoongi's car, he couldn't remember exactly how he got to the hospital, but they said he was lucky to be alive, his head had been split open upon impact, his face and body had been scraped by the glass from the windshield. But the injury that he felt the most were his hands, severely impacted by nerve damage, when he first woke up he had thought they had been amputated, not being able to feel them at all. The doctors had said there was a 40% chance he would be able to control them again, but it wasn't 100%. And to Yoongi, that wasn't enough.

“How are you feeling Yoongi?” He didn't look up to address you, but he nodded his head in acknowledgement. You were the newest in a string of physiotherapists assigned to help Yoongi try and work through his injuries. The others Yoongi had driven away from his outbursts of anger. You were younger than the others, only a year or so older than him, and he had to admit you were pretty to look at. And you hadn't asked for a replacement therapist for him yet, it had been 6 months and you still stayed with him. Yoongi was grateful, even if he had a hard time showing it.

It wasn't that Yoongi didn't want to get better, he wanted nothing more than to be able to use his hands again, but at the same time, he was tired of trying and getting nowhere. He was angry.

He hated that what happened happened to him, after he had worked too hard to get to where he was. He would never, ever get an opportunity like that again, it wasn't just his slot in the symphony and his ability to play he lost, his friends, he had eventually pushed them away one by one. He couldn't stand the sympathetic way they spoke to him, giving him advice they found on google on how he could get his hands back to the way they were. What the fuck would they know about anything. The only person he seemed to open up with was you, you didn't push him, but you did challenge him to do the exercises.

The therapy was slow, infuriatingly so. It was like no matter what he did or how much he tried, he was incapable of the simplest of things. His writing looked like chicken scratch, he would barely grip onto anything without dropping it, even getting dressed took twice as long and made his hands ache,

“You've made some great progress in the last year, I know it's not as much as you want it to be, but progress is progress.”

It was a slow process, painstakingly slow. But after months of you challenging Yoongi with the physiotherapy, Yoongi could finally see some progress. He could write his name in a somewhat presentable way, he could fully grasp anything without it aching, but he would hold things slightly. It even hurt less to button up his shirt in the morning. You were so proud of Yoongi for sticking at it and trying as much as he can muster. The whole reason you took this job was to help people get their lives back on track, and to see Yoongi smile when he was able to do something with his hands made it all worth it.

You had decided to pay Yoongi a visit today instead of being cooped up in the clinic for hours, there was no reason you couldn't do his exercises at home afteral. Yoongi had given you a spare key to let yourself in, and had told you the flat number that was his. You had brought him some lunch from a bakery you remember him saying was his favourite place to go after practice.

Fiddling with the key in the lock you made your way inside and set the lunch on the kitchen table. You heard a soft off key melody being played in the next room, re must have not heard you enter. Making your way slowly to the door, you spot him sitting at his piano, his hands tentatively playing the keys. You could see the concentration that was etched onto his features, and the shaking of his hands. It was a serene moment that you loved to see with him, but it was cut short when you heard another off key moment, and his hands slammed into the keys, causing him to cry out. You rushed over to where he was in an instant, afraid he had hurt himself, he seemed to only then notice you as he let you inspect his shaking hands.

“You know better Yoongi, no straining your muscles!” You look over his hands, gently turning them over in your own.

“Whats the point of trying to get better if Im NOT getting better, what the fuck am I suposed to do! I'm no closer than I was when all this shit first happened!”

Your heart went out to him, it really did. You knew Yoongi's background from your little conversations during your sessions. You knew where he'd come from and how hard he'd trained and worked for this chance.

“That's not true, you've made great progress, a year ago you couldn't even pick up a pen, let alone play the piano like you just did . Yoongi I know it's hard, but a big part of recovery is the patience and time you put into it. It's not an overnight thing. You know that..”

He said nothing, just breathing through the numb feeling he now felt in his hands. He nodded slowly and looked up at you, your hands still holding his own.

“What if it never goes away… Y/N what if everything I've worked for can never come true, and I'm stuck with a bunch of what ifs for the rest of my life….”

“Is that what you're most afraid of?”

He nodded, his shoulders shaking slightly. “I've worked so hard… I've put so much energy into this, I can't imagine doing anything else…”

“Yoongi, I know you can do this, you just need to give it time. And I know you're gonna get back on your feet, and you're gonna get over this… you've just got to give it time.”

He was nervous. He was so fucking nervous. It had taken him years after the accident to get here. Watching just off the stage as the audition before he finished up, he was good, his melodies were flawless. Yoongi had to commend him on his steady hand. Looking at his own, he was full of doubt. He wasn't sure he would be good enough to do this audition.

He walks out in a daze. The nape of his neck started to feel hot. He introduces himself, and he takes his place on the bench. He swallows, and looks out to the crowd. It was then he saw you enter quietly, taking a seat in the empty isle. You came. He suddenly thought of everything you'd said to him through his recovery, the promises of staying by his side, the encouraging smiles when he started practising again. Even when his sessions were over, you still stayed in touch with him and encouraged him even more. It wasn't until the judges panel motioned for him to start that he gave his hands a small squeeze.

Life hasn't been easy for him recently. Everything had changed for him. It was a slow process. But he's here, he made it.

One step forward, two steps back. He'd never lost his ambition, it was just buried under fear and doubt. But now, he was ready to reach his dreams, and he had you as his light in dark times to guide him.

#ficswithluv #fwlbingo2020 #bulletproof bingo #btsbookclub #armysource #hyunglinenetwork #bangtanscenery #bangtanarmynet #min yoongi #min yoongi imagine #min yoongi x reader #yoongi x reader #yoongi imagine #yoongi drabble #bts fanfic #bts fic #bts imagine #bts #min yoongi au

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endless-vall · 4 years

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Worth the wait - Ethan x MC fanfic

summary: Ellie knows she shouldn’t... But she sends a text message to Ethan anyway.

Author’s note: It’s been a long time since Open Heart released chapters. Even longer since I posted an oph fanfic. But it’s nice to get back into it.

Had this one in my drafts for a while, finally finished it. Hope you like it!

Ellie ploped down on her bed after a long day.

Her mind raced, but there was that one thing that lingered in her mind.

She knew she shouldn’t be thinking about it, certainly not now. She had better, bigger things to worry about. Kyra’s surgury, Raf leaving town... Whether June was telling the truth about only sleeping with Tobias and not scheming with him...

But now, that she actually had a moment to herself, her mind went back to that moment.

To the moment Ethan grabbed her and pulled her in for a kiss.

A warm, sheepish feeling spread through her chest as she bit down on her lip.

She knew he did that to cause a divertion, so that the Mass Kenmore employee didn’t suspect they were spying on them, but it didn’t make it any less magical or passionate.

Ellie’s mind wandered to the kiss they shared the other night, when she left Ethan to talk with his father.

It’s been the second kiss so far this year, and she could feel her heart beating hard in her chest the longer she thought about it.

She knew Ethan wasn’t doing this to be unfair towards her.

He didn’t want to jepordize her career, but he probably longed for her as much as she has been longing for him.

But still... She didn’t know what to make of it.

And she knew she should be focusing on other things on hand...

But she simply couldn’t help it.

Before she could stop herself from doing it, she took out her phone and sent out a massage.

A simple ‘Hi’

Not a minute later her phone screen lighted up.

‘How are you?’ Ethan replied.

He probably assumed she wanted a comforting shoulder with everything that’s been going on lately...

But honestly, it wasn’t exactly what she wanted.

Or rather... A shoulder wasn’t enough.

‘I should be going to sleep before my next shift tomorrow.... But I can’t.’ She types. She can see the sign Ethan is typing but she shoots out the next massage before he can say anything.

‘I keep thinking about that kiss.....’

Ethan stops typing.

He doesn’t reply for a while.

Long enough for Ellie to sigh and conclude he probably decided against replying for the sake of her future, like he’s been doing this whole year.

She throws her phone to the other side of her bed, and gets up. She changes into some pajamas, ready to call it a night, trying to force herself to not think about Ethan and get some sleep.

But then her phone chimes in again. She looks at it from the other side of the room.

Ethan names pops up on the screen, and Ellie sighs again.

She shouldn’t be hurrying to the phone like that, but she does.

‘Ellie....’ It’s all it says, at first.

‘I know... I shouldn’t have said that... But I can’t help the way I feel’ She answers.

She doesn’t expect a reply this time.

She rolls her eyes. Why bother answering at all. What use did typing ‘Ellie...’ give him? She can practically hear him, imagining the way her name rolls out on his tongue, the longing and heartbreaking sound of his voice....

Another text brings her back to reality.

‘I’m outside.’

Ellie’s eyes fly open in surprise.

She checks her window, and, without fail, Ethan’s car is parked up front.

Ethan’s out, leaning over it, waiting.

Ellie’s heart races in her chest. What is he doing outside? What if anyone sees him? What are she going to say to him?

She didn’t think she’d get this far when she first sent that text...

But nonetheless, she puts some sneakers on and gets out.

Thankfully, everyone are either on their night shifts or sleeping soundly in their rooms so at least she doesn’t have to sneak out or lie to her roomates.

Even though they all know about her and Ethan... They should probably keep a low profile. And definitely shouldn’t be caught sneaking around in the middle of the night.

After a few minutes she’s out, getting closer and closer towards Ethan.

“Hi.” She finally breathes out, and Ethan watches her carefully.

“... Hi.” He smiles, gently.

“I...” And.... Yep, she hasn’t thought this through.

“I brought dinner.” Ethan saves the conversation.

“Oh?”

“I know it’s nothing fancy or the chicken I promised you the other night... It’s just some mac and cheese... But it’s homemade, not the box kind.” He gestures to a bag near his feet, Ellie hasn’t noticed it up until now.

“Sounds great, actually.” It just now hit her, how long it has been since she last ate. She wonders whether Ethan realized that as well and that’s why he decided to treat her.

“So... Not that I’m that against eating in my car, but...” He motions to the apartment building front door, a question in his eyes.

“Actually, I think I have a better idea.”

They climb the fire escape staircase, until they hit Ellie’s floor. They have a window exit in their apartment and Ellie has the key, but there’s also enough space for a group to sit there on their floor.

Ellie spreads out a blanket that’s been sitting there from the last time she, Sereena, Jackie and Aurora had their girls night, before inviting Ethan to sit beside her.

Ethan raises an eyebrow. “I’m not sure if I should be more worried that you set this whole thing up with a blanket ready to go, or if you used just a random balnket you found.” He comments but still agrees and sits down next to her.

Ellie chuckles, her lips curling into an amused expression.

“We sometimes hang out here,” She points at the window exit. “But honestly, i’m impressed it’s in such a good condition.”

Ethan chuckles too, before handing her a box and a fork. She opens the box to reveal the promised mac and cheese, the smell making her stomach growl in excitment.

Ethan watches as she takes the first bite, and smiles brightly as she nods approvingly.

“Ohmygod... This is soooo good.”

He digs in.

After they both finish their meal, Ellie sneaks in and out of the appartment to fetch each of them a bottle of beer.

They lean against the wall, and Ellie siezes the opportunity to lay her head on Ethan’s shoulder, and he wraps his arm around her.

And that moment right there? It what makes her believe they still got this. Even if things aren’t always easy and fun or make sense.

That moment, along with other, small moments, are worth the wait.

The sky night is peaceful and beautiful, and Ellie watches it with awe. She tries to memorise the moment, never wanting it to end.

“Ellie,” Ethan gets her attention.

“Mmm?” She murmurs, but lifts her head and looks at him.

He’s so close right now... She looks into his eyes and feels as if she’s been struck by lightning.

“Ethan...”

“We... Probably shouldn’t.” Here he goes again.

Ellie watches him intently... Her eyes slowly drifting down towards his lips.

She plays along. “We... Definitely shouldn’t.” She licks her lower lip seductively, before looking back up and meeting his intense gaze.

Ethan gulps.

“Dammit, Ellie.”

And they close the distance.

Ellie sees fireworks. It’s amazing how it’s far from their first kiss... Hell, they’ve kissed earlier today, but still, it never loses it’s charm.

Ethan kisses her like he never wants to let go, and she kisses back just as eagerly.

Hands are thrown and curls in each other’s hair, desparate to feel closer to each other, any way possible.

They’re a mess of tangled limbs, as they slide over the blanket Ellie placed earlier.

They make out until they’re both out of air, and only come up for air.

Ellie’s lying on top of Ethan, and his hands are still holding her close, as they both catch their breath.

“So...” Ethan says nervously.

“We can talk about it later.” Ellie assures him, a genuine smile on her lips.

Ethan nods, copying her smile and pulling her closer, hugging her tightly.

And it’s like they both agree, silently... That it’s worth the wait.

They’re worth the wait.

#playchoices #open heart #oph #ethan ramsey #ethan x mc #playchoices fanfiction #fanfic

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brokenmusicboxwolfe · 3 years

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With running out of storage space for pics, it’s time to unload insomnia writing with another round of....

From the drafts!

In this case I was rambling on about my hating Spring. I wrote this about a month ago, but it’s still 100% true and will be until half past June.

As usual, no proof reading and no promise it’s complete, but I just couldn’t delete it.

I HATE this time of year.

The days get longer and warmer, and I get sadder and sadder.

It’s spring, people say. The season of new growth, rebirth, young love, and blooming flowers. How can you not feel all that hope, optimisim, and potential?

But I think that’s the point. It makes me aware of what I lack, what I can never be or have.

Oh, I’ve had an amazing talent for focusing narrowly on the now and believing everything would work out somehow. I’d figure things out or get lucky or something. Stumbling through each day with a bullheaded determination and never letting myself linger on the futility of it all, distracting myself with anything interesting I’d come across along the way served me well.

Yet this never worked in spring.

The budding of the trees and the explosion of daffodils in all the yards would mark the start of if it. I’d find myself thinking about things to do with life. Beginnings and births would become thoughts of maybes and could bes that I longed for, but always found out of reach.

Despair and disappointment. Lost and alone. Trapped in a cage with no way out.

As a teenager I’d end up having a kind of meltdown every year. I’d run off to the woods to skip school at least once, hiding and crying. I would just not be able to stop crying, and at the time I was so ashamed to cry I could go the rest the year without shedding a tear, so this was dramatic for me.

My parents were great about it, never once chiding me even. Not talking about it really either of course, since I was always seen as fine really. They just assumed I’d cope, and if going to school the next day like normal, without the slightest blip in the grades I wasn’t having to work for anyway, was coping I suppose I was.

I suppose mostly it just would throw them. They knew of my insecurities and anxieties, but I don’t think they ever could quite see the depths of unhappiness that stayed submerged most of the time.

And that was when I was young. Back then there was still possibility and potential. I was a kid with a future ahead of her.

It was reasonable to assume that one day I’d have all the things I wanted. I’d have friends and family, someone that loved me, a career, a purpose, a few adventures, and just enough success that I could live comfortably enough survival wasn’t a daily worry and feel I’d accomplished at least one good thing to make the world better.

Okay, maybe just a few of them. But certainly I’d have at least some of those things, because it would be almost impossible not to at least accidentally end up with a few of them.

Or not it turns out.

Middle aged me has discovered just how bad a person can be at life, and how luck can end up not compensating at all. A life really can just be a slide downhill and you can suddenly realize you not only have no realistic hopes any more, you actually peaked at four!

The last few years have been increasingly worse. What used to offer stability and comforts have twisted into sources of anxiety or simply been stripped away. My loved ones have been lost to me, leaving me now friendless and alone. Worrying about surviving day to day, and trying to accept I can’t hold my world together occupies me thoughts. I have to let go of even little things that give me pleasure.

The future I never much looked to I can see more and more often as a bleak, dark, wasteland.

My optimistic and hopeful side is nearly gone, burned away by the bright glare of harsh realities. It gets that way when things never seem to work out and day after day offers fresh disasters you won’t be able to fix.**

I can’t even divert myself with all those little things. You may have noticed my photos are more perfunctory than they even used to be, my sculpting more awkward, and my text posts only venting and moaning. I don’t notice things and I can’t seem to get my imagination to work, and these were the cornerstones of my emotional survival.

Spring used to be the depressing time for me, and I could hold it back the rest of the time. Since certain events in 2012 that were the tugged threads that began the unraveling of the fabric of my life, it has increasingly gotten so the whole year feels like the awfulness of spring.

And yet spring is still actually worse.

The world comes alive each spring, while I wither just a bit more each year.

To be clear, I do NOT want to die. Never have, and expect I never will. As I like to say (and think I got from Blake’s 7) I intend to live forever, or die trying. (didn’t work out to well for them, did it! LOL).

I do admit I frequently try a little little mental trick of telling myself to think of myself as already dead. The idea isn’t I want to die, but that if I’m already dead the story is over and it doesn’t hurt anymore. If my story is still going on I desire what I can’t have and hope for what I can never get, so daily have to deal with the rapidly increasing impossibility of achieving any of it. It’s like starving to death slowly. It’s painful to very rationally and clear eyed face the simple fact that my life will get no better. The dead don’t feal pain, or grief, or loneliness, or fear, or unrequited love, or guilt, or shame, any of the rest of what has weighed me down.

So the game is to be a ghost, haunting the places I wander. I observe the world without an ache at being ignored, since most people never see a ghost anyway. I let myself be adrift between a warm memories of the past and the empty rooms of the present with no dread of the future, because that’s the story of others and not me. Nothing new can hurt a ghost.

But it’s just a thing to comfort myself when things are bad, but it never quite works. I can tell myself to pretend to be dead, but I’m very much alive. I feel and feel and feel, the raw nerve too sensitive girl still.

My other thing to repeat to myself on bad days is “I don’t matter.” This isn’t self loathing or anything, but me keeping my suffering in perspective. I’m not significant and contribute nothing to the world. I’ve no one depending on me or noticing me. If I died tomorrow only my mother would even mourn, and one day I won’t even have her. My sufferings are only mine and mine alone. I do not matter to the world.

Oddly this can be comforting and freeing. I don’t have to feel ashamed about how I’m stuck living. If a repair is out of my reach, well no one else is bothered so I can just deal with it unrepaired. I only have to worry about enduring.

But that’s the rub. Enduring can be grueling.

Watching your home rot away around you, being unable to get a vehicle repaired because you can’t get a lift to a repair shop, limping as you try to cut up a fallen tree blocking your driveway using only a handsaw, wearing five layers topped with a thick coat in your house in winter because you don’t exactly have heat, deciding what food not to buy yourself because you need to buy feed for the animals, and a thousand other things. It’s tiring.

Not mattering to others can’t stop you mattering to yourself. Mattering is what hurts. “It doesn’t matter” you shrug off. “It matters” you can’t ignore. My life is too full of things that “matter”, despite my attempts to feel otherwise.

And here is Spring, salt in the wound of my life. I’d probably be depressed in a good life this time of year, and I’d probably be depressed with the current state of my life whatever the season. The two together? I just want to curl up somewhere. Believe me, if I didn’t have so much I have to do I’d just stay in bed until June...

**Today’s disaster? I shattered the screen on my iPad. It still works, obviously since I’m writing this on it, but if it ever stops I won’t be able to afford to replace it.

#rambles #depression #spring #seasons #tired

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